Hundreds of longshoremen storm grain terminal in Washington
The predawn labor protests came after a clash with police Wednesday in which hundreds of longshoremen blocked railroad tracks near Vancouver, Wash., to prevent grain cargo from reaching an export terminal 45 miles farther west. In that protest, they far outnumbered officers, pelting police with rocks and spraying them with pepper spray, police said.
Police were not present during Thursday's predawn action at the terminal, but they said six security guards were held inside a guard shack while protesters attacked the train, broke windows in the shack and pushed a private security vehicle into a ditch.
"Yesterday there were probably 300 or 400 of them. Today there was even more, and we were just outnumbered," Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said in an interview.
The call for mobilization hit the International Longshore and Warehouse Union's Facebook page Thursday morning: "Call out the troops, we're going on a road trip!" one union member wrote.
The eruptions cap a simmering summer of labor unrest at the new $200-million grain-shipping facility in southern Washington state, newly opened by Bunge North America subsidiary EGT, the first major grain export terminal built in the U.S. in the last two decades.
The ILWU has insisted it has the right to work at the facility, but EGT has hired a contractor, General Construction of Federal Way, Wash., which is employing members of another labor union.
