Photo courtesy of the Port of Portland.by Tom Price
The ZIM USA, a 3,800 TEU containership, tied up at Portland’s Terminal 6 May 14 and marked the successful end of a two-year struggle to get a new container line and third container crane at the port.
The port invested $7.5 million in a new, 16-story tall super crane, the third such crane to grace the port’s industrial skyline. Workers installed it May 3, with Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski in attendance. The port may buy a fourth crane soon.
“We worked with the port and lobbied very heavily to get this crane,” longshore Local 8 Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Holte said. “The port went out on a limb. They ordered this crane after we had lost a lot of our work in the hope we would attract more container work.”
Since then, the Yang Ming Line opened its service to Terminal 6 with the arrival of the containership Yang Ming Heights June 15. The Heights discharged footwear and general merchandise and carried away paper, refrigerated food and wood products. Yang Ming is expected to move 23,000 containers a year through Portland.
The ILWU, including the Columbia River District Council and the union’s Washington, D.C. office, had joined with the Port of Portland, other port authorities along the river and more than 200 union, city, port and business groups to lobby for channel dredging nearly a decade ago. Shipping companies “K” Line and Hyundai pulled out of Portland in 2004, leaving the port with only Hanjin container ships calling.
After many stops and starts, the Army Corps of Engineers will complete the dredging this year. And thanks to the three feet of increased draft, to 43 feet, grain ships in ILWU jurisdictions along the Columbia River can now load thousands of tons more cargo. Dredging will also allow larger containerships to navigate 103.5 miles up the Columbia River to Portland.
“The port continued to invest in capital improvements, crane and rail expansions, in anticipation that, as they delved more into the import market, they would gain because of the congestion in other ports,” Local 8 President Leal Sundet said. “All sides worked together to maintain Portland as an integral container port. Other locals and the International were supportive of that.”
The port had positioned itself as an export port, and wasn’t ready for the recent boom in imports.
“We lost business because of the sudden imbalance that took place in the demand for imports over exports,” Sundet said. “We worked hard to reposition ourselves into the import market. With a relatively small local economy that only consumes approximately 10 percent of goods imported, that means marketing the port as a transshipment destination. We are seeing success in that strategy.”
Columbia and Snake River shippers needed container service to get imports into and exports out of the region. Now they can ship directly from Portland, instead of clogging the already packed I-5 highway corridor to Tacoma and Seattle.
The region’s highly developed rail service can efficiently move much of the port’s annual $3 billion cargo load on and off the docks, and with far less pollution than diesel trucks. The port is also eager to expand break bulk services.
“The port has one of the best break bulk docks on the West Coast, Terminal 2,” Local 8 LRC Chair Karl Lunde said. “At this point it is underutilized. The port has actively shopped that property and Local 8 has always been willing to see to it that when the companies show up, the guys are there, ready to go to work.”
In all, nearly 40,000 jobs depend on Columbia River commerce, according to the Columbia River Channel Coalition, which supported the dredging. That commerce generates more than $200 million in local taxes.
This means more work for Local 8 and others connected with the port. The local will expand as a result.
“We need the PMA to give us more B-men,” Holte said. “We just brought in 15 B-men and about 60 new casuals. We’re hoping to get another 50 B-men.”
