[071211.EN.SEA] Oakland Ready To Battle Occupy's Attempt To Shut Down Port December 12

NINE local Occupy movements on the west coast are getting ready to shut down of the ports of Anchorage, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Portland, San Diego, Seattle and Tacoma on December 12, but not without resistance.

The Port of Oakland is rallying against the shutdown which it says will impact business and working people. "Shutting down the Port of Oakland is a bad idea. It will divert cargo, tax revenue, and jobs to other communities," said the port's website.

But "Wall Street on the waterfront" says it is protesting the one per cent of firms, which include Goldman Sachs, majority shareholders of Stevedore Services of America (SSA), for "exploiting" non-union and short-run, port truck drivers "who have struggled for dignified and humane conditions in the workplace."

The Occupy movement refers to a campaign to ban on owner-operator truckers, who hold 70 per cent of the harbour trade, and to replace them with employee drivers. Environmentalists back this because only large companies, they say, can meet rising costs of anti-pollution compliance, and the Teamsters union could then organise employee drivers. Large trucking companies stand to gain market share. But the ban has run into court challenges.

Occupy campaigners also wish to hit EGT, jointly-owned by Itochu, Japan-based Bunge and Korea's STX Pan Ocean, for opening a terminal at the Port of Longview, Washington, which allegedly violated an agreement to employ dock union workers and no others. But the courts have found against the union.

The campaign aims to disrupt business at a key trading time to companies it believes creating inequality of wealth.

"Organised and unorganised working people are struggling to keep their homes and their jobs, while the one per cent - like EGT - reaps record profits," said Kathryn Cates, one of the Occupy organisers.

While the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has demanded its members - and not another union's - work at the Longview Export Grain Terminal (EGT), the dockers no longer embrace the Occupy movement as it once did, and as the Teamsters still appear to do, judging by their statements.

Source : HKSG.