Port of Tacoma to reveal layoffs soon
KELLY KEARSLEY; The News Tribune
The Port of Tacoma plans to notify people Monday about whether their jobs have been eliminated as the organization shrinks to correspond with a decline in business.
The reductions will come through both voluntary buyouts and layoffs. The port employs 255 people.
Port Executive Director Tim Farrell has said that the port could cut up to 50 positions, according to port staff and a few port commissioners. Farrell hasn’t announced that publicly.
He said Tuesday that it’s too early to say how many positions will be lost.
“We won’t know the outcome until we get through the voluntary (separation) program,” Farrell said. “It would be premature to say anything more than that.”
That buyout program began last week. Port employees can volunteer to resign until June 8.
The buyout incentive program includes $2,000 per year of service for staff or $4,000 per year of service for “line of business” leaders, department heads and other high-level management, health benefits and career transition services.
The incentives do come with some strings. Carol Mitchell, the port’s director of human resources, said department heads, line of business leaders and executives will need to sign a noncompete agreement.
The details are being finalized, Mitchell said, but it likely will prohibit those former port employees from working for competing Northwest ports, clients or customers for a specific time period. That could include ports in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.
“The reason for the (agreements) in the first place is (management personnel) have inside information about how the port conducts business, about the port’s customers, and financial information. … Frankly the port doesn’t want that shared with its competitors,” Mitchell said.
A second restriction will apply to any employee who opts for a buyout and likely will mirror a conflict of interest policy the port has had since at least 1997, Mitchell said.
That restriction prohibits employees from delivering services to the port – related to work the employees did while at the port – on behalf of companies doing business with the port for a period of two years. Employees also can’t come back to the port to work for two years.
The Port of Seattle – which has not announced layoffs or buyouts – has a similar policy in place.
UNION CONCERNED
Port employees are anxious about whether their jobs will survive the layoffs and question how the port will operate after the cuts.
Pete Marzano, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 22, described the mood as melancholy. ILWU Local 22 represents 94 port employees, mostly in the maintenance department.
“We are deeply concerned,” Marzano said.
Kelly Kearsley: 253-597-8573
Kelly.kearsley@thenewstribune.com
