It appears the Port of Portland has now lost about 99 percent of its container shipping business. Officials at the port said German-based carrier Hapag-Lloyd is not scheduled to return the container terminal... Hapag Lloyd’s apparent departure from the Port of Portland follows South Korean-based Hanjin Shipping, which left the port in early March. Hanjin complained it was taking too long to load and unload its ships because of a nearly three-year local labor dispute between union members and their employer.

A record crop of apples, coupled with the West Coast port slowdown earlier this year, is taking a toll on Washington apple growers. Nearly $100 million worth of apples that cannot be sold have been dumped into fields across central Washington, the nation’s most productive apple region. The apples are being left to rot and compost in the hot sun, an unusual occurrence for an industry that has found ways to market ever-growing crops. “If we wouldn’t have had the port slowdown, we wouldn’t have needed this,” Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission in Wenatchee, said of the dumping.

The Gulf of Mexico ports have, indeed, started working with farmers throughout the West Coast. During the fall and winter West Coast slowdowns, that was the best option for some farmers, despite being thousands of miles farther away than Portland or Seattle. That trend is expected to continue when a widening of the Panama Canal ends in 2016.

Liberal, Union, Oops, Economy, Justice, Law, Jobs

After more than seven years of civil litigation, a federal jury has ruled that a dispute over which union got to plug and unplug reefer containers was a substantial part of the reason that the port of Portland, Oregon lost all of its containerized ocean freight services.

  In a judgement entered in part on Monday, the jury ruled that alleged unlawful labor practices by the International Longshore Workers' Union and its Local 8 were a substantial factor in causing $94 million in damage to Portland's container terminal operator, ICTSI, which pulled out of its contract with the port in 2017...

  After a brief period of deliberation on Monday, the federal jury found that ILWU's allegedly unlawful labor practices continued until March 2017 and contributed to $94 million worth of damages to ICTSI's business. The jury assigned 55 percent of the fault for damages to ILWU and 45 percent to the union's Local 8.