Hundreds of Longshore workers overpowered security guards in an aggressive raid on a Washington state grain terminal, officials said Thursday, and the action drew quick rebuke from a federal judge that has tried to curb the union’s escalating tactics in an ongoing labor dispute.
Workers have been battling for the right to work at the new terminal in Longview. But U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton issued a preliminary injunction to restrict union activity, saying there was no defense for the aggressive tactics used in recent days.
Protesters twice blocked the pathway of a train carrying grain to the terminal at the Port of Longview on Wednesday, and early Thursday morning hundreds of them stormed the facility, overwhelmed guards, dumped grain and broke windows, police said.
The dispute halted work at four other Washington ports, including Seattle, on Thursday as hundreds of longshoremen refused to show up or walked off the job.
Leighton said he felt like a paper tiger because the International Longshore and Warehouse Union clearly ignored a temporary restraining order he issued last week with similar limits. He scheduled a hearing for next Thursday to determine whether the union should be held in civil contempt.
“The regard for the law is absent here,” the judge said. “Somebody is going to be hurt seriously.”
Six guards were trapped for a couple of hours after at least 500 Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said. He initially referred to the guards as “hostages,” but later retracted that after the guards clarified no one had threatened them.
“The guards absolutely could not get out,” Duscha said. “They feared for their lives because of the size of the crowd and the hostility of the crowd.”
No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested _ although Duscha said that could change if police are able to use surveillance video or other means to identify the protesters.
Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting train brake lines and spilling grain from a car at the EGT terminal, Duscha said. They also pushed a private security vehicle into a ditch.
The union believes it has the right to work at the facility, but the company has hired a contractor that’s staffing a workforce of laborers from another union, the Portland-based Operating Engineers Local 701 cheap pay day loans. Representatives of the engineers union did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
In Seattle, Tacoma, Everett and Anacortes, hundreds of Longshore workers failed to show up or walked off the job Thursday in apparent solidarity with the Longview activists, halting work at those ports. Union leaders said they had not called for any such actions.
“It appears the members have taken action on their own,” said ILWU spokesman Craig Merrilees from union headquarters in San Francisco.
He said some workers might have been motivated by a photograph of ILWU President Bob McElrath in police custody in Longview on Wednesday.
McElrath was not arrested, but an Associated Press photo showed him being grabbed by several police officers before union activists intervened and grabbed him back.
Police arrested 19 protesters as they blocked railroad tracks on Wednesday night, allowing the train to finally arrive at the terminal.
The protesters in Longview have portrayed themselves as being on the front line in the struggle for jobs and benefits among American workers in an economic downturn. But while union strife has flared up around the country _ most notably in Wisconsin _ the aggressive tactics seen in Longview have been a rarity in recent labor disputes.
Labor activists insist that after receiving tax breaks and promising to create well-paying jobs at the new $200 million terminal, EGT initially tried to staff the terminal with nonunion workers. Following a series of protests by the Longshore workers this year, the company announced it would hire a contractor staffed by workers from a different union.
“Today, the ILWU took its criminal activity against EGT to an appalling level, including engaging in assault and significant property destruction,” the company’s chief executive, Larry Clarke, said in a written statement. “This type of violent attack at the export terminal has been condemned by a federal court, and we fully support prosecution of this criminal behavior to the fullest extent under the law.”
Pyongyang’s vow Monday to scrap all South Korean property at a joint mountain resort could mark the end of what was once a rare haven for curious southern tourists within the borders of North Korea.
For a decade, visitors from the South came in droves to Diamond Mountain, essentially a modern South Korean resort an hour’s drive into the North, where they could play golf, relax in hot springs and soak up the folklore of the beautiful nearby mountain.
However, one of the few bright spots of cooperation between the divided countries has been on hold since a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean woman visiting the resort three years ago.
North Korea is now threatening to end it completely by getting rid of South Korean assets and opening up the resort to international investors. On Monday, Pyongyang ordered all South Korean workers at the resort to leave within 72 hours and banned any South Korean property from being removed.
The North is angered by Seoul’s refusal to resume the lucrative tours until Pyongyang formally apologizes for the shooting death and allows a joint investigation.
Diplomats from the United States and the two Koreas are separately pursuing tentative talks meant to jump-start North Korean nuclear disarmament talks, but the meltdown at Diamond Mountain of what was once a promising symbol of potential inter-Korean cooperation shows how deep animosity runs on the Korean peninsula.
The South immediately expressed regret Monday about the North’s comments on Diamond Mountain and voiced its intention to seek international mediation.
Nestled near a craggy mountain range that stretches down to the sea, the resort drew hundreds of millions of dollars of South Korean investment until the shooting death brought cross-border tours to a halt in July 2008.
Diamond Mountain tours kicked off in 1998 under the initiative of a South Korean tycoon with roots in the North. Nearly 2 million South Koreans flocked to the resort, eager to see its beauty and be part of a spirit of reconciliation that blossomed during two liberal South Korean governments’ engagement with the North.
Often hailed as the peninsula’s most beautiful peak, Diamond Mountain has been a subject of praise by both ancient and modern Korean musicians, painters and historians. The North’s media often tout its beauty, describing the way white clouds drift over its saw-toothed peaks.
The land around Diamond Mountain, however, has been seen tension since the 1950-53 Korean War. Thousands of troops died fighting to conquer hills lying south of the mountain during the war. Two years before the tours began, a group of armed North Korean infiltrators slipped south of the border aboard a submarine, rattling South Koreans until most of the agents were killed.
The start of the tours led to many of the troops guarding the border to fall back and allowed South Korean businesses to capitalize on a tourism asset they had long eyed.
The languishing resort appeared in fair condition last year when family members separated by the truce that ended the Korean War were briefly reunited under a Red Cross program. A handful of workers were stationed there by South Korea’s Hyundai Asan company, the resort’s operator. Slogans were carved into hillside rocks, with propaganda billboards hailing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as “the sun of the 21st century.”
Ties between the Koreas frayed badly last year. The North bombarded a South Korean island last November, killing four people. It also denies responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors in March last year.
North Korea in June told the South to draw up plans to salvage its assets. Hyundai Asan estimates $370 million in sales have been lost since the tours were suspended. North Korea had annually won tens of millions of dollars from the tours, analysts believe.
Hope that tours could be revived followed a meeting of nuclear envoys from North and South Korea held in Indonesia last month. A later visit by a high-level North Korean diplomat to New York was another sign that a thaw could be looming in the Korean peninsula’s icy ties.
But last month the two countries failed to agree on an additional round of talks on the fate of the resort.
“The Diamond Mount program is holding on to its last breath,” Kang Sung-yoon, a North Korea professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University, said.
An Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. executive says the cleanup of a major oil spill in the Yellowstone River has proven to be more difficult than expected and could go on for several more months.
Company vice president Geoff Craft said Thursday that areas hit hardest by the July spill should be cleaned up by the first half of October. That includes a 20-mile stretch of the Yellowstone from Laurel to Billings.
But scattered sites would need to be dealt with, including contaminated river sections downstream of Billings. Craft says work in those areas could continue until Thanksgiving.
Exxon Mobil had been ordered to complete work on the 1,000-barrel spill by Sept 9. Removing crude from hundreds of debris piles created by spring flooding has slowed the company’s efforts.
Scandinavian airline group SAS AB posted its best earnings since 2008 during the second quarter of the year on the back of more passengers and lower costs.
The forecast-busting second-quarter results helped the company’s stock to soar more than 27 percent to 15.60 kronor ($2.43) on the Stockholm stock exchange.
SAS also pleased the market by reiterating its outlook for 2011, saying it expects to record a profit for the full year.
The Stockholm-headquartered company reported a second-quarter net profit of 551 million kronor ($86 million), a marked reversal of last year’s equivalent 502 million kronor loss, when operations were badly hit by the volcanic eruption in Iceland which cost the airline hundreds of millions of kronor.
Revenues in the three-month period were also up to 11.23 billion kronor from around 10 billion kronor last year.
Although costs fell in the April to June period, SAS said adverse effects stemming from the earthquake in Japan and the implementation of the group’s restructuring program weighed somewhat on the results.
The airliner said its cost-cutting program, dubbed Core SAS, is near completion. So far, it has reduced unit costs by 23 percent since 2008. Costs related to the measures are still expected to cost another 100-200 million kronor in 2011, it said.
SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson called it the “best result since 2008″ and was positive about the prospect of continued traffic growth in the second half of the year, particularly on U.S. routes.
But, he said, the positive result is still only “a step on the way” and that SAS will continue to keep a sharp eye on the development of both sales and costs.
In the second half of the year, Gustafson said SAS is due to launch a new strategic approach that will succeed Core SAS. The program will focus on profit growth, more cooperation and clearer customer focus.
Stocks are falling at the close of trading as investors’ attention returns to the weak economy and Europe’s debt problems.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down 519, or 4.6 percent, to 10,720. It’s the third time in the last five trading days that the Dow lost more than 500 points. The S&P 500 is down 51 points, or 4.4 percent, to 1,121. The Nasdaq is down 101, or 4.1 percent, to 2,381.
European bank stocks fell on worries that the region’s debt problems are getting worse bad credit payday advance. That pulled down U.S. bank stocks. Financial stocks in the S&P 500 lost more than 7 percent.
The drop erases Tuesday’s big gain following a Federal Reserve pledge to keep rates low. The Fed said it expects the recovery to remain slow.
WASHINGTON
3M’s second-quarter profit rose 3.4 percent as slowing demand for films for LCD televisions dampened strong growth in its other businesses.
3M Co. makes office supplies such as Scotch tape and Post-it notes, coatings for television screens, roofing shingles and other industrial supplies.
The company said Tuesday that it earned $1.16 billion during the quarter, or $1.60 per share. Revenue rose 14 percent to $7.68 billion. That topped analyst expectations for net income of $1.59 per share on revenue of $7.52 billion, according to FactSet.
The Japan earthquake in March hurt sales growth by 2.4 percentage points, and cut 7 cents per share from 3M’s profit.
3M has been coping with a slowdown in films that coat the screens of LCD televisions. But sales of those screens fell 22 percent in the last quarter, faster than expected. 3M said too much inventory and a maturing market are driving TV manufacturers to go with cheaper films. Sales fell 10.6 percent to $973 million in 3M’s Display and Graphics business, the only one of its six big divisions to post a sales decline payday loans direct lenders. That division still had operating income of $222 million.
Its biggest division, Industrial and Transportation, saw operating profits of $544 million on sales of $2.6 billion.
Not counting companies it bought, 3M sales volumes rose 3.2 percent, and prices rose 0.8 percent.
Investors consider 3M an economic bellwether because of the diversity of its businesses.
“While economic growth moderated a bit in the second quarter, we believe that the global economy will continue to expand and 3M is well-positioned to capitalize on that growth,” said Chairman and CEO George Buckley.
Maplewood, Minn.-based 3M raised the low end of its full-year guidance by 5 cents, to $6.05 to $6.25 per share. Analysts have been expecting $6.23. It expects full-year profits to be hurt by 11 cents to 12 cents per share by the impact of the Japan earthquake.
Relief at the approval of a second bailout package for Greece is driving global stocks higher.
The euro109 billion ($156 billion) deal will not only lend money to the financially struggling country, but also reduces the size of Greece’s crushing debts by asking investors who hold Athens’ bonds to make sacrifices.
A first bailout of euro110 billion last year did not put Greece back on its feet financially cash advances pay day loan.
The three major European indexes rose, led by banking stocks. Asian shares were also up strongly. Commerzbank was up 1.1 percent, Deutsche Bank 1.3 percent, and Italy’s Unicredit 0.5 percent.
Google may be entering a make-or-break phase in its history now that U.S. regulators have opened an investigation into whether the company has been abusing its dominance of Internet search and advertising to stifle competition.
The probe by the Federal Trade Commission, confirmed by the company Friday, will require Google to convince regulators that its closely guarded recipe for search results is designed to give people the best recommendations, not bury links to its rivals free credit report and score.
The inquiry also is expected to peer into Google’s financial engine: the advertising links tied to the subject of each search request. Some of these commercial messages appear, shaded in color, at the top of the results page, while others are stacked in the right-hand column.
Even as Google has expanded into video, mobile phones and TV, the text advertising that pops up alongside search results and other Web content generates most of Google’s revenue
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