Even on Election Day, Virginia Port Means Business
The Port of Virginia doesn’t take a lot of breaks. Even if it’s Election Day.
While Nov. 8 is a paid holiday for dockworkers at the port, that doesn’t mean everybody will have a day off.
Several vessels are scheduled to call on the port’s terminals, requiring hundreds of workers who will get time-and-a-half for their labor.
Yet they’ll get a chance to vote, too.
“Election Day is among the most important days of the year, and we want to ensure that everyone working on the terminals has an opportunity to cast their ballot,” said Joe Harris, a port spokesman. “As those ballots are cast, operations at the terminals will continue as the work we do here is vital to the economy.”
Norfolk-based CP&O, one of the companies that employs the stevedores who load and unload ships calling on the port, is scheduled to work a handful of vessels on Election Day. They include a vehicle carrier at Newport News Marine Terminal, requiring about 32 workers, said George Brown, CP&O’s president and CEO.
Another 75 will be needed to handle a containership at Virginia International Gateway, 15 or so more to work a 64 Express barge serving the Port of Richmond and, starting the evening of Nov. 8, 100 for a containership calling on Norfolk International Terminals, for work that will continue through this afternoon.
Dockworkers in Hampton Roads are members of the New Jersey-based International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents about 14,500 dockworkers at roughly 14 ports from Maine to Texas.
The master contract that covers all of them provides for 16 paid holidays, including Election Day, said Jim McNamara, an ILA spokesman. Ten are working holidays that vary a bit from port to port, determined by local contracts.
The other half-dozen are nonworking holidays, McNamara said: July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. They’re also off starting at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
“It’s the way it’s been during my 40 years here,” Brown said.
When he started working in the port in 1975, Thanksgiving wasn’t among the holidays. During his first 10 years on the job, he worked every one of them, he added.
In an e-mail, Harris said the port was ready for business, even against the backdrop of a presidential election:
“We have a busy day ahead, in terms of civic duty and working vessels, and we’ll see to them both with equal importance.”
