By Gwen Davis

On Tues. Jan. 20, work stopped at Terminal 18 at the Port of Seattle for the entire day after Longshoremen walked off the job.

Today, the terminal reopened and workers are back, according to Bob Watters, SSA Marine's senior vice president.

Workers left on Tues. because they demanded that the operator hire more workers for Terminal 5, something SSA wasn’t willing to do.

According to Watters, however, workers’ request was outside of SSA’s jurisdiction.
“They were asking us to hire more people yesterday, but we did not need more people at Terminal 18,” he told West Seattle Herald. “Workers said to us ‘if you don’t hire more people for Terminal 5 we’ll walk off and might be back at noon.’”

“We said, ‘if you’re going to walk off, don’t bother coming back until tomorrow,’” Watters responded to them.

SSA Marine only operates Terminal 18 and doesn’t have rights to operate Terminal 5, which is property of the Port of Seattle.

Watters said that he doesn’t know why workers asked SSA to hire more people for Terminal 5.
“There’s no work over there,” he said. “I don’t know why there was a request for workers.”
Yesterday, West Seattle Herald connected with the Port of Seattle media relations department, but it declined to answer questions at the time.

This incident is most likely yet another chapter in the greater Port of Seattle labor negotiation story.
Since May, the Port of Seattle experienced work slowdowns as the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) attempted to hack out contract negotiations.
Terminal 18 is the largest container facility in the Pacific Northwest.
Check back soon for updates.
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