John Munson was five years away from retiring and receiving his pension when work for longshoremen in Whatcom County disappeared. In 2001, Alcoa-Intalco Works, an aluminum smelter in Ferndale, suspended all operations and Georgia-Pacific West, Inc., a Bellingham pulp mill, did the same.
Shortly afterward, the Port of Bellingham was left with no cargo to ship, and the longshoremen of Whatcom County were left with no work, said Darren Williams, dispatch business agent for the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union Local 7 in Bellingham.
Munson had been working as a longshoreman in the county since 1966. He chose to transfer his union membership to Seattle and make the two-hour commute from his home on the Lummi Indian Reservation.
Now, out-of-work longshoremen and construction workers in Whatcom County are turning a hopeful eye toward potential new jobs at the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal, even if those jobs wouldn’t start for two years or more.
If plans are approved, construction of the bulk-shipping terminal at Cherry Point could begin in 2013, allowing two years for environmental impact studies, according to Craig Cole, a spokesman for SSA Marine, the company proposing the terminal.
Local unions are enthusiastic about the potential high-wage jobs and revenue the project could bring. Whatcom County unemployment was 8.4 percent as of April 2011, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department. Construction employment in the county dropped 10.9 percent from June 2009 to June 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Opponents of the project, vocal among them Bellingham-based RE Sources for Sustainable Communities Executive Director Bob Ferris, have questioned whether the jobs would go to local workers or workers moving in from out of the area. “…these jobs will only go to members of the longshoremen’s union. Certainly nothing wrong with that, but in 2005 there were only 26 longshoremen in our community which means most jobs would go to others,” Ferris wrote in a fundraising letter for RE Sources’ “No Coal at Cherry Point Campaign.”
Prior to 2001, when Georgia-Pacific and Intalco were active, there were between 30 and 40 members of the union, Williams said. Union leaders believe the high-wage jobs would stay primarily in the county where there are many people eligible to join the union and apply for them.
Project would bring local jobs
The construction of the terminal is estimated to take two years and would require between 7.5 million and 9 million labor hours, which would create about 1,700 jobs per year, SSA Marine’s Cole said. In construction projects, there are peaks and valleys, meaning there are times when many people are needed and times when fewer are needed, so 1,700 full-time jobs is an average, Cole explained. These jobs would be “family wage” jobs, meaning they are high-wage and pay enough to support a family, he said.
President Chris Johnson of Local Laborer’s Union 276, which represents construction workers in the county, said members of the union are paid $30.91 per hour for the general work they do, with a $9.13 benefit package per hour.
SSA Marine would provide an estimated 213 permanent on-site jobs on the company’s payroll once the terminal is at full operation, according to the Gateway Pacific Terminal Project Information Document. Cole said he did not have an estimate as to when the terminal would be operating at full capacity. If approved, the terminal is estimated to be up and running in 2015, but the operating capacity depends on the contracts the company secures with bulk providers, Cole said. Currently, SSA Marine has one contract with Peabody Energy to move 24 million metric tons of coal per year.
The company has estimated the creation of an additional 67 on-site jobs not paid by SSA Marine, such as tug operators and rail operators, for a total of 280 on-site jobs.
RE Sources’ Ferris is skeptical. He thinks the jobs would require a specific kind of worker who must be in a union, and said there are not enough people in Whatcom County to fit the jobs.
Cole disagreed; he said the unions would expand their memberships so people in the county can join and fill the jobs. SSA Marine may need to bring in a few experts, but the majority of the jobs would go to people who already live in the county, he said.
There are enough qualified people in the area to fill the jobs, they just need to be part of a union first, said Williams. The longshoremen’s union expects significant interest in joining the union if the terminal is built, and plans to expand its membership.
Applicants do not need to have worked as longshoremen previously to be hired, he said.
Although the union would not discriminate against people who apply from outside the county, Williams said he expects that the majority of applicants would be from Whatcom County.
“We’re going to be in a position to offer employment to people in the community that are not finding it,” he said.
Currently the union has 15 members, down from 25 to 30 members in 2003.A few of the members transferred their memberships when work in the area decreased. A few retired.
“We will increase our membership to a point that will satisfy the normal day-to-day needs of that facility,” Williams said, stating he expects a fairly large increase.
President Johnson of the laborers’ union said he also expects to increase the membership in the union if the project is built.
Johnson said he believes the majority of the jobs at the terminal would be filled by workers in Whatcom County, but the unions may have to bring up some workers from the Mount Vernon or Everett unions periodically if a large number of workers are needed on a temporary basis.
SSA Marine would work with local unions and all jobs would be dispatched through the unions, Cole said. Every SSA Marine terminal is unionized, he said.
Longshoremen have worked with SSA Marine since they opened as Bellingham Stevedoring Company in 1949, retired longshoreman Munson said. The unions have held a few strikes and the two factions have their differences, but they generally have a good relationship.
“When they make money, we make money,” Munson said.
Unions optimistic for potential jobs
Johnson said the laborers union has reached a verbal commitment with SSA Marine that the terminal would be built with the Building & Construction Trades unions. These unions represent construction workers, plumbers, carpenters and others.
Currently, about 45 percent of the union members are unemployed, Johnson said.
“Construction is in the doghouse,” said Reinhold Groepler, a regional labor economist who focuses on Whatcom, Island, Skagit and San Juan counties.
The jobs at the terminal would be high-wage positions, Johnson said. In his opinion there are no economic negatives to this project, he said.
“In this kind of environment you scramble for any jobs you can get,” Groepler said.
Longshoremen would make up a large portion of the terminal’s permanent workforce.
Work has been scarce for Whatcom County members of the longshoremen’s union since the Port of Bellingham shipping terminal stopped operations, Williams said. Even when Alcoa-Intalco Works reopened partially, it stopped shipping through the Port of Bellingham, said Joe Schmidt, a Bellingham longshoreman who has been in the local union since 1987.
Local longshoremen commute to find work
No cargo has been shipped in or out of the Port of Bellingham in more than eight years, Williams said. The only reason the union is able to maintain operations is because other locals to the south give the members occasional work. Work can sometimes be found in Seattle, Port Angeles or Olympia, among other cities, when the local unions need additional labor for a day or short periods of time.
When the work disappeared, Schmidt started commuting to work all over the state, filling in for other local unions when they needed extra labor. He works five to seven days per week, he said as he drove from a full day’s work in Olympia up to Port Angeles to get ready for work the next day.
Commuting for work so much takes a toll on family life, he said. Around 2005, he stopped traveling because he would leave for work before his three children woke up and return after they went to sleep, he said.
Until 2009, Schmidt stayed home with his family and supported his wife’s new coffee shop. When the economy crashed and the coffee business closed, Schmidt had to go back to commuting to pay his bills. His kids are now little older; one is in eighth grade, one just graduated from high school and one graduated a few years ago.
Being gone four to five days a week away from home is tough,” he said. He doesn’t drive home most nights during the week because gas is so expensive. While traveling, he sleeps in his car or splits the cost of the room with other workers from Whatcom County if they are in the same area.
Before 2003, Schmidt only traveled about a week out of every month. “It was way better for family life,” he said.
Should Gateway Pacific Terminal be built, it would be a big boost for the local union, he said.
“I have 20 years left. I wouldn’t see myself traveling again,” he said.
If the terminal gets built, President Leroy Rohde said the work would reflect the equivalent of a 40-hour work week for the longshoremen.
“We would love for Gateway to open because we could work here rather than elsewhere,” Williams said.
Additional jobs
Apart from the direct jobs the terminal is estimated to bring to the community, Cole said the company also expects creation of a great deal of indirect and induced jobs.
Indirect jobs are created by businesses that supply materials to the terminal, such as a job at a plant to sell equipment to the terminal. Induced jobs are created from increased spending by employees. SSA Marine estimates 950 jobs from direct employment and 400 jobs from induced employment once the terminal is operating at full capacity. Martin Associates, an economic consulting firm based in Pennsylvania, conducted the economic impact study for SSA Marine and generated all estimates.
Groepler said he has not done enough research into this topic to know the overall economic impact. People who live near the train tracks may be affected, he said. *link to TRAIN story.*
But the outcome would certainly be favorable for local unions. “The problems that we will have (if the terminal is built) are the kinds of problems you want. Having work––that’s a good problem,” Williams said. “The question of having to get up in the morning and go to work is a far better problem than one of not having a job to get up and go to.”
Celeste Erickson and Rachel Lerman are Western Washington University seniors majoring in journalism.
This story is part of a package produced by the students in the Journalism 450 class at Western Washington University. They were primarily edited by WWU Professor Carolyn Nielsen. InvestigateWest co-founder and senior environmental correspondent Robert McClure advised the students when they were partway through the reporting process, and helped prepare the final stories for publication. View the remaining elements of the package here.
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