Port Security? What Port Security?

For years, we’ve been told by the Bush administration that America’s ports likely are among major targets for terrorist attacks. Portland, Ore., longshore worker Dawn Des Brisay told  the AFL-CIO in 2004 she has “concerns about basic security issues. There is not enough focus on inspecting containers and checking their security seals.”

John Bowers, president of the Longshoremen (ILA), a union that represents thousands of longshore workers in ports from Maine to Texas, joins many members of Congress in asking for hearings and a new federal review of the United Arab Emirates-owned company taking control of major U.S. ports.

We echo U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) who correctly notes that our ports are the front lines of the war on terrorism. And the ILA is aligned with lawmakers led by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) in calling for additional review of the acquisition of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O) by DP World.

As the Oregon AFL-CIO points out:

Port security has been “under-funded, inadequate in design, poorly enforced and short-staffed, leaving workers and communities over-exposed to acts of terrorism.”

Since the Oregon AFL-CIO General Board made those comments in August 2004, the Bush administration has not addressed security concerns—but it has continued to take care of its friends.
 
And those friends include Dubai businessmen who are slated to receive the $6.8 billion contract for handling cargo at major Eastern and Gulf Coast ports—including Baltimore, just 50 miles from the White House.

But while much of the outrage over the impending port contract has focused on the potential for increased terrorism, there is another outrage factor at work: Greed.

As MediaChannel points out:

The real scandal here is not to be found in demagogic appeals and inflated fears over security or the guilt by association attacks on Arabs, but, instead with a self-serving Bush administration whose business is business.

The New York Daily News gives an idea of some of the connections that bind the Bush administration to Dubai to the point where he’s willing to exercise his first veto over any congressional legislation prohibiting the port contract:

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports (DP) World—giving it control of Manhattan’s cruise ship terminal and Newark’s container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush’s cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World’s European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley (D) is one of a growing list of Democratic and Republican lawmakers joining members of Congress opposed to the deal. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is the latest to jump into what has become a major national flap, calling on Bush to scrap the ship port deal. Two New Yorkers, Rep. Peter King (R) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D), vowed they would offer emergency legislation to block the deal ahead of a planned March 2 takeover.

In the next few days, we’ll post comments from longshore workers at affected ports and from other union members who will tells us what they think of the deal. Got a comment about port security? Send it to: blognews@aflcio.org.   

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