Here in Bellingham, THE reason for us to accept the pollution, noise and loss of valuable land to a Canadian company are jobs. Yes, we need better paying jobs in Bellingham and Whatcom County, and we expect the ILWU Longshoremen are paid a great living wage, and most everyone we know, including Save The Waterfront support them fully.
How many jobs are being created?
Although its the basis for the Port’s and ABC’s argument in support of the huge dangerous metal pile, the numbers just don’t add up. Its either because ABC and the Port keep changing them, or because they aren’t local jobs.
Lets take a look. Back on October 28th, 2022 the Port quoted 40 total people loading the ship, Blue Everton. This was the total list, from ABC Employees, Pacific Terminal Services Company, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 7, Transmarine Navigation and Port staff.
Fast forward to September 2023, and now 60 Longshoremen from the ILWU are loading the ship, along with ABC Employees and all the rest listed above. Are they loading the ship faster?
Even today (October 2nd, 2023), the Port’s site says ’40 people are involved’.
So it was 40 a year ago, and now well more than 70. The ship though is not just taking a week to load but 10 days. So the time to load has increased, and the payroll has doubled.
WHAT?
Great right? For jobs at least...
Hold on. This is not agriculture, or manufacturing, where increased hands in the field or on the sewing machine, can equal an increase in output. The same long arm excavator’s, dump trucks, bull dozer, and crane’s are working as last year. When you can’t load by hand, or increase your quantity of heavy industrial machinery, where does the labor work? We don’t know. Does ABC and the Port?
So lets say the jobs are real. Sorry to ABC, because their payroll to load a ship just doubled.
Unless those jobs are really good paying jobs though, they don’t really help our community. Whatcom county has the lowest unemployment rate in the 30 years the graph shows at the Fed. We don’t need jobs, we need better paying jobs.
But what if most of those good paying jobs aren’t even local? Since the ABC ships started coming in, the local ILWU has hired 8 new for a total of 18. This is great, but is it enough, or could more have been hired if the Port focused on truly green, sustainable projects? If 60 Longshoremen just loaded the latest ship in September 2023, this means that 42 Longshoremen from elsewhere came in, worked for 10 days, got paid and went home to other busy Ports.
The math equates out to 6 Full Time Equivalent local Longshoremen jobs. These are simply the facts, along with many confusing numbers from the Port and ABC.
You can make the decision for yourselves, “Is this project good for Bellingham?”
