Workers who protect Tacoma port terminal want to join longshore union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/318346.html

Tacoma port terminal security group, guards at odds over union
Workers who protect Tacoma port terminal want to join longshore union

KELLY KEARSLEY; [e-mail]
Published: March 26th, 2008 07:34 AM | Updated: March 26th, 2008 07:37 AM

A Tacoma Tideflats security company and its security guards are at odds over whether the guards can join the longshore union.

Securitas Security Services faces charges of unfair labor practices from the National Labor Relations Board after employees said they were threatened with losing their jobs if they supported joining the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 60,000 dock and warehouse workers on the West Coast, or testified against the company at labor hearings.

And one security guard says he was fired for promoting the longshore union at work.

Securitas – which calls itself the world’s largest security company – provides security at the APM Terminal on the Sitcum Waterway. That terminal serves Maersk and Horizon shipping lines.

“Workers there who are security guards have been fighting to be in the ILWU since last summer,” Jon Brier, a longshore labor organizer in Seattle, said Monday. “They got together because of intolerable wages and working conditions.”

Securitas denies the NLRB complaint and says it’s being harassed by the union.

FULL story at link.