Metal Trades Council neutral in Cascade's sale of Dry Dock 4

The Portland Metal Trades Council was "neutral" at an April 18 emergency meeting of the Port of Portland Commission in which commissioners voted 4-1 to allow Dry Dock 4 - the largest floating dry dock in the Western Hemisphere - to be put up for sale.

The Metal Trades Council is comprised of union locals that represent workers at Cascade General, which purchased the 56-acre ship repair yard on Swan Island from the Port nine months ago for $30.8 million.

Cascade owner Frank Foti told commissioners he had to sell Dry Dock 4 to pay off creditors. The lenders are nervous because Cascade recently lost a large oil tanker repair contract with Alaska Tanker Co. and its business partner, Cammell Laird Holdings PLC, of Liverpool, England, just filed for bankruptcy protection.

Cammell Laird holds a 49 percent interest in Cascade General.

Foti and Cascade General have operated the yard on a lease basis with the Port since 1996. "The announcement came as a shock, and we hate to see it (the dry dock) go, but it's not a value here anymore," said Mike O'Rourke, executive secretary-treasurer of the Metal Trades Council and a member of Plumbers and Fitters Local 290.

O'Rourke said that last year the 982-foot-long floating dry dock accounted for only 22 percent of the work at the shipyard. The two biggest jobs there last year - a power barge and the Columbia Queen - didn't even require it.

"The bank was threatening to shut it all down and sell it all off. There comes a point in time when you don't have a choice," O'Rourke said.

Port Commissioner Grant Zadow, who is assistant business manager of Electrical Workers Local 48, which has members employed at Cascade General, voted for the sale because Foti said it would allow him to pay his creditors.

"If that's the case, then I think he has a viable chance to operate the shipyard without a huge debt load and we can retain some jobs," Zadow said.

Foti reportedly expects to get enough for the dry dock to erase the company's $20.8 million secured debt.

O'Rourke said all the angst about massive job losses and the beginning of the end of the shipyard isn't necessarily warranted. He said the ship repair market has changed since 1997, with big tankers no longer coming upriver and cruise ships going to Asia for repairs.

Foti told the Portland Tribune that the majority of business Dry Dock 4 services has already left. "The jobs are already gone. The downsizing of the work has already occurred. What remains is having the assets that match the volume that remains."

"There's kind of a 'fuzzy math' when it comes to figuring jobs at the shipyard," O'Rourke told the Northwest Labor Press. "You can't really put a figure on it. One week our local can have 10 to 20 fitters there, and the next week none."

O'Rourke, who worked in the shipyards during the late '70s when there were three ship repair firms and thousands of employees at peak levels, said today the yard operates smoothly with 500-600 workers.

"Twelve hundred jobs sounds fantastic, but we don't have the manpower here to supply it," he said. "When it got that busy we were bringing in guys from Louisiana and from all over the country. It's never worked, and it never will."

But when Foti purchased Cascade General six years ago he envisioned a global ship repair yard with thousands of workers. Early on he invested several million dollars constructing an on-site cafeteria and training center for employees.

"It was too expensive," O'Rourke said. "I think he's finally learning the ropes after six years."

O'Rourke said that as long as enough apprentices are in training and coming up the line "Foti can continue to keep up the work."

Some critics say Foti's real intent is to piecemeal the remainder of the shipyard's assets and sell the prime Willamette River waterfront property to developers.

In fact, at the Port Commission meeting Commissioner Junki Yoshida asked Foti that very question. "It was never my intent to buy the shipyard and turn it into real estate," Foti responded. "Could it happen? Sure, it could happen."

"We've been hearing they're going to build condos there since the '70s," O'Rourke said. "Mike's word has always been good with us. I hope it doesn't happen ... he's told us it's not."

After selling Dry Dock 4, the shipyard will operate with Dry Dock 3, which is about 600 feet long; and Dry Dock 1, the smallest of them all, which is leased from the U.S. Navy on a year-to-year basis.