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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Whether longshore workers will show up Thursday at the Port of Tacoma’s cargo terminals to unload and load ships remains up in the air on the eve of this year’s May Day.
The International Longshore & Warehouse Union began planning in February for a coast-wide protest Thursday against the war in Iraq. May 1 is traditionally a day that celebrates labor and workers’ rights.
Such an event could have an impact beyond the port, including companies that depend on importing and exporting goods.
A majority of delegates from each local voted in favor of a protest and notified its employers – the Pacific Maritime Association – that the union members wanted to stop work on Thursday’s day shift to express their opposition to the war.
The union contract allows for what are called “stop work” meetings to discuss union affairs as long as they notify the PMA, the organization that represents cargo carriers, terminal operators and stevedores operating on the West coast. But such meetings are usually held during evening work shifts. The PMA denied the union’s request for the day time meeting and in March the ILWU officially withdrew its request.
But that hasn’t stopped talk of a May Day rally up and down the West Coast.
Craig Merrilees, ILWU spokesman, didn’t make promises either way, but he did say there are strong feelings among rank-and-file union members that the war is wrong and needs to stop.
“The most important thing is that the union made an extra effort to let employers know that May 1 is a special day and that they may want to do some extra planning,” he said earlier this week.
Seattle’s ILWU Local 19 said its union hall will be open for dispatch Thursday.
The president of ILWU Local 23 didn’t return phone messages on Tuesday and Wednesday from The News Tribune.
The PMA reports that its members up and down the coast plan on working Thursday and it expects a work force will be available.
That’s true in Tacoma, where container terminal managers say they are planning for a regular work day – though a few anticipate it may not be business as usual.
“If you are a stevedore, you always plan to work,” said Steve Bassett, manager of the port’s Husky Terminal.
