Court Denies Injunction in Port Strike

The Daily Labor Report reveals Judge Michael H. Simon of the U. S. District Court for the District of  Oregon denied an NLRB petition to hold the ILWU and two locals in contempt of a previous injunction against secondary actions and threats in the ongoing strike at the Port of Portland, Oregon.   Lawrence Dubé has the story:

A federal district court in Oregon Dec. 10 denied a National Labor Relations Board petition to hold the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and two of its locals in contempt of a preliminary injunction that barred the union from engaging in secondary actions and threats in a labor dispute at the Port of Portland, Ore. (Hooks v. Int’l Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 8, D. Or., No. 12-cv-1088, 12/10/12).

An NLRB regional director alleged that little more than a month after the board obtained an injunction under Section 10(l) of the National Labor Relations Act that prohibited the unions from engaging in work slowdowns and stoppages at a Portland terminal, ILWU sent letters that threatened four ocean carriers with the filing of grievances in support of ILWU’s claim to work on refrigerated cargo containers. NLRB called the union letters “an all-out flaunting†of the preliminary injunction.

But Judge Michael H. Simon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon disagreed. Calling the legality of the union letters “a complex legal question subject to reasonable differences,†the court said NLRB failed to establish clearly and convincingly that the labor organizations violated the terms of the terms of the Section 10(l) injunction.