Submitted by the Washington State Labor Council, the Northwest Washington Central Labor Council, the Maritime Trades Department, the Laborers’ International Union of North America and the International Union of Operating Engineers
Referred to the Resolutions Committee
MAY IT BE RESOLVED
• WHEREAS, the Gateway Pacific Terminal will be built and operated by union labor in one of the most financially challenged counties in the State of Washington regrettably marred by high levels of unemployment; and
• WHEREAS, the construction and successful operation of the Gateway Pacific Terminal will provide meaningful long term employment for the labor movement that will support family wages, high benefit jobs; and
• WHEREAS, the Gateway Pacific Terminal will include and utilize the most advanced environmental technology available that will set a standard for terminals throughout the world and will demonstrate that family-wage job generation and protection of the environment are indeed compatible; and
• WHEREAS, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has publically clarified the position of the federal government that the Gateway Pacific Terminal and other similar projects are independent of each other and that their environmental impacts are not related but will be subject to a rigorous review; and
• WHEREAS, the Northwest Washington Central Labor Council has unanimously adopted a resolution and recognized that the construction of the Gateway Pacific Terminal is consistent with land use and shoreline policies for the area; and
• WHEREAS, the Northwest Washington Building and Construction Trades Council has conveyed its views to the Governor of Washington and urged that responsible agencies perform a timely, rigorous, fair, and objective review of the Gateway Pacific Terminal application; and
• WHEREAS, the Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council has made its views known to the Governor of Washington that the Gateway Pacific Terminal will provide opportunities to bring back industrial and manufacturing jobs to Washington State and that it cannot be overlooked that millions of new tax dollars that will annually follow into public schools and social programs; and
• WHEREAS, the Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council and its brothers and sisters have demonstrated the knowledge and skills necessary to build the most complex of projects and fully supports family wage jobs generated by this project that will improve communities and contribute to the vitality of our nation’s economy; and
• WHEREAS, the Washington State Labor Council has enacted a resolution calling on the Local and National AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Departments, and the AFL-CIO Executive Committee to support the Gateway Pacific Terminal project in every way they can, and
• WHEREAS, the Transportation division of SMART, on behalf of the men and women working in the rail industry, unequivocally support this investment in infrastructure that would generate long term employment opportunities and facilitate the rail movement of commodities through the Gateway Pacific Terminal; and
• WHEREAS, the Maritime Trades Department, AFL-CIO, composed of twenty-one unions representing nearly five million members, as well as the Puget Sound Ports Council, strongly supports the Gateway Pacific Terminal and the contribution it will make to expand port infrastructure; and
• WHEREAS, the President of the AFL-CIO has written the Governor of Washington and stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement and has noted that privately financed projects like the Gateway Pacific Terminal provide a tremendous opportunity to increase the nation’s port infrastructure with minimal environmental impacts, and it creates hundreds-upon-hundreds of new good paying jobs; now, therefore, be it
• RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO publicly support the Gateway Pacific Terminal; and furthermore
• RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO calls on all coal companies that will ship coal from the Gateway Pacific Terminal, such as Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and others, to fulfill their moral obligation to their retired workers by keeping the promise of providing health care these companies made to their workers for decades; and be it finally
• RESOLVED, that the President of the AFL-CIO communicate this support to the Governor, the Washington State congressional delegation, and relevant federal government agencies.