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Local 19 Votes 93% in favor of LDC grain agreement

Makes major progress in bringing foreign grain exporters in line with American employer

Longshore workers from ILWU Local 19 who work at the Port of Seattle’s export grain terminal in the North Harbor voted in favor by a 93% yes vote to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement with Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) following three years of tough negotiations with the Netherlands-based corporation.

Negotiations for the new agreement began in the spring of 2018, and the previous agreement expired on May 31, 2018. The improvements in this new successor agreement are significant because:

1) This agreement achieves wage parity and creates a level playing field with the American-owned grain exporter, TEMCO, which was previously paying a higher rate than the foreign-owned LDC. TEMCO, a joint venture of Cargill and CHS, employs ILWU grainhandlers at its facilities in the ports of Tacoma and Kalama, Washington, and Portland, Oregon.

2) The ILWU believes this historic agreement with LDC will pave the way to bring negotiations with other foreign-based grain exporters in line.

The other foreign-based corporations hiring ILWU workers in the Pacific Northwest grain terminals include:

  • United Grain Corporation (UGC)– owned by Mitsui of Japan, operating at the Port of Vancouver USA, Vancouver, Washington.
  • Columbia Export Terminal (CET) – owned by Marubeni of Japan, operating at the Port of Portland, Oregon.
  • EGT, owned by Korea-based Pan Ocean/Harim and U.S.-based Bunge, operating at the Port of Longview, Washington. This LDC agreement will serve as a benchmark for 2022 negotiations between ILWU and EGT.

“This new grain agreement between the ILWU grainhandlers on the docks and the European employer brings both parties into the future to build upon our decades of successful, profitable movement of grain in the Pacific Northwest. It includes advanced training programs, workforce stability, and operational improvements that will improve working conditions and productivity for the benefit of America’s farmers and workers,” said ILWU Coast Committeeman Cam Williams.

“In addition to the other improvements, the grain negotiating committee succeeded in ending a two-decades long practice of a non-ILWU subcontractor performing maintenance work,” said Rich Austin, Jr., Local 19 president. “This accomplishment will return jobs and jurisdiction back to the ILWU where they belong.”

ILWU workers continued to work and export grain during negotiations. Bargaining was difficult, but in the end, negotiations resulted in a collective bargaining agreement that preserves good, family wage jobs for workers. The men and women of the ILWU have loaded grain for export in the Pacific Northwest since 1934.