This photo provided by the International Transport Workers’ Federation shows ILWU and supporters at Mitsui headquarters in Hong Kong May 10, 2013. Mitsui owns United Grain in Vancouver, WA. The protest of the lockouts also stopped by the Hong Kong offices of Marubeni, owner of Columbia Grain in Portland.
The Columbian newspaper’s June 7 article titled “Union, grain firms remain deadlocked” highlights the support that locked-out ILWU Locals 4 and 8 members are receiving from global unions. Excerpts:
Ray Familathe, the union’s international vice president for the mainland, said in a Thursday statement to The Columbian that he’s “traveled to Japan, Australia and Hong Kong, and everywhere I go, union workers send enthusiastic messages of solidarity to the longshoremen and women who are locked out in Vancouver and Portland.”
In late May, the International Transport Workers’ Federation stepped into the fray, sending a letter to Masami Iijima, president and CEO of Mitsui & Co. The organization, which represents about 700 unions worldwide encompassing more than 4.5 million transport workers, said it considers the lockout in Vancouver, based on an accusation against “a single union worker,” to be an “unnecessarily heavy handed action.”
The Union of Hong Kong Dockers and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions — both connected to the International Transport Workers’ Federation — said in a separate letter to Mitsui that the lockout appears to be “an anti-union attack and a direct attempt to avoid negotiating with them over a new collective-bargaining agreement.”