Port awards massive rail corridor contract despite union concerns about safety record

Rotschy LLC has been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for child worker violations, gruesome 2023 accident in La Center

This story has been changed to correct wrong information due to a source’s error about the contractor’s eligibility to bid on public works projects. See paragraphs in italics for changes and updates to this story.

Sidestepping union safety concerns about the low bidder’s worker safety record, the Port of Longview commissioners Wednesday awarded a $44.7 million contract to develop its long-planned rail expansion project.

The project — the most expensive in port history — will add two new rails to the existing two-track rail corridor that links the port to the BNSF main line — bringing the total number of track sets to four — and prepare the railroad beds (without the rails) for the eventual addition of four more.

The project has been under development since 2014, and port officials say it is key to attracting new business and supporting existing ones on the port’s industrial waterfront.

The vote was 2-1, with commissioners Alann Erickson and Jeff Wilson (who voted remotely) approving the contract with Rotschy LLC of Vancouver, a non-union contractor who was the lowest of five bidders.

Union trade workers Matteo Russo Jr. right, and Salvador Fernandez, both of Portland, join other union members outside Port of Longview headquarters Wednesday morning to call attention to the safety record of contractor Rotcshy Inc.

Neither Erickson nor Wilson commented in public to explain their votes and went into an executive session on another matter immediately afterward.

Port Commissioner Evan Jones, a member of the electricians’ union, voted no. His union-endorsed motion to toss all bids and start the bidding process all over failed for lack of a second in support.

Wilson, a state senator and Longview Republican occupied in the state legislative session, did not immediately respond to my request for comment.

Wednesday afternoon, Erickson said by phone that the port had “no compelling reason” or legal justification for discarding the bids and starting the process afresh. Rotschy was responsive to the bids and contract specifications and likely would have sued the port, delaying the project, Erickson said.

He acknowledged that Rotschy had a troubled safety record some years ago and had been barred from bidding on public works contracts in Washington by the state Department of Labor & Industries, the agency that oversees workplace safety.

However, Erickson noted, the contractor has been off that list since 2018 and its safety record is comparable to other bidders — a notion that union members scoffed at during the meeting when the port’s contract attorney made the same claim.

Note: On Thursday, Rotschy officials finally responded to requests for comment and disputed Erickson’s report that the company had been barred from bidding public works projects in Washington. Erickson then backed off his report. However, according to the port, “Rotschy was on L&I’s ‘Severe Violators List’ for an incident in 2019, but it has since been removed.” An L&I spokesman Thursday said the agency does not bar businesses from bidding on public works projects based on their safety and health record. But it can bar them based on violations of prevailing wage, insurance and licensing laws.

Rotschy representatives left the meeting immediately after the decision and did not return my requests for comment Wednesday afternoon. They did not address the port commissioners during the brief meeting.

Even though it is a non-union contractor, Rotschy is required to pay workers at “prevailing wages,” which are minimums set by the state based on collective bargaining agreements, wage surveys and other factors.

About 125 union members from about a dozen different construction trades packed the port meeting room to oppose the bid award to Rotschy, arguing that the company has poor safety and apprenticeship records that should have disqualified it as a bidder. (State law requires that public works projects costing $2 million or more use apprentices for at least 15% of the labor hours.)

Outside the port’s “White House” headquarters, the bed of a bright yellow union pickup named “Rat Tracker” sported a sign that read, “Shame on Rotschy for Violating Child Labor Laws & Injuring our Children.” It was held up by a large balloon depicting a mean-looking, bow-tied pig.

The state Department of Labor & Industries fined Rotschy $156,000 for a trenching machine accident in La Center that cost an 16-year-old worker both his legs in the summer of 2023. And last February, L&I fined the company $52,000 for a host of child labor violations (the location of those violations was unclear).

In the latter action, state L&I investigators found seven different minors had been allowed to operate earth-moving machines or heavy equipment; 35 were assigned to work so close to the machines that they were vulnerable to injury; 11 minor workers were denied meal breaks; and eight young workers worked an illegal number of hours on school days more than 150 times. One teen’s work day started before 5 a.m., L&I reported.

The status of the fines was not clear Wednesday. An L&I spokesman did not return repeated calls for comment. (Note: Nick Massie, Rotschy’s corporate advocate, said Thursday the company has paid both fines.)

The young worker who lost his legs was participating in a work-based learning program that allows students to earn credit and gain experience working outside the classroom, according to L&I media posts.

Washington’s youth employment laws identify prohibited duties for workers under 18 years old. Rotschy had a student learner exemption permitting minors to do some work that is otherwise prohibited, but use of the walk-behind trencher was not part of the exemption, L&I reported.

L&I spokesman Matt Ross said Thursday the agency denied Rotschy’s application for a student-learner exemption for the 23-24 school year and the company did not reappy for the current school year.

Wednsday morning, the wood-paneled port commission hearing room was filled to standing room only with trade union members — many wearing orange, green and yellow safety vests. Yet only a handful of them addressed the commissioners. Their tone was respectful but firm, and they clapped after each speaker urged the port to rebid the project. And following the vote they filed out quietly.

“It’s unconscionable that after hearing all these facts about the lowest bidder, the port would still even consider moving forward with an award at this time,” said Aurora Biggers, a researcher for Local 701 of the Portland-based International Union of Operating Engineers, told the commissioners.

(Local 701 is the trades local that hires out operating jobs in Southwest Washington, and many of the rail corridor construction jobs would have employed its members had the contractor been a union shop.)

Biggers reported that Rotschy has accumulated “at least” $116,000 in environmental fines for violating permit requirements and polluting the Willamette River.

“Unfortunately, these (labor law and environmental) violations seem to be a routine cost of business for the company, with a pattern of repeat violations dating back to at least 2019. … Workers from nearly every trade in the region have gathered here today because we are extremely concerned about the ramifications of the Port of Longview awarding this project to Rotschy, further enabling them to continue prioritizing greed over child safety,” Biggers said, reading from a prepared statement

Mike Bridges, president of the Longview-Kelso Building and Construction Trades Council, also urged the commission to reject the bids and start over, citing Rotschy’s safety record.

Bridges said after the decision that the port should have built more safety requirements and use-of-local-labor workers provisions into the bid specifications for the project. Asked after the decision about potential lawsuits and delays if the port scrubbed the bids and started the solicitation projects again, Bridges said those are not worth compromising safety.

“What is the price of a human life?” he asked.

Rotschy’s $44.7 million bid was the lowest of five bids the port received, followed closely by Tapani Inc. of Battle Ground at $46 million and Scarsella Bros. Inc. of Kent, Washington, at $46.2 million. Scarsella is a union contractor; Tapani, like Rotschy, is not.

The high bidder was Kerr Contractors out of Oregon at $54.9 million. The port’s estimate for the work was nearly $51.6 million.

Port Chief Executive Officer Dan Stahl explained that the contract and bid specifications were modeled from those used by the Washington State Department of Transportation, which does a major amount of contracting.

With the port proceeding with its largest contact ever, “we wanted potential bidders to be comfortable (with the terms) so that we would get aggressive pricing for the project. That strategy in the long run was successful. We got bids below the engineer’s estimate,” Stahl said in a phone interview.

After opening any bids, ports and all other public agencies must evaluate whether the low bidder has been “responsive” to the contract specifications and work terms and whether they are “responsible” contractor. If they check out, the agency must hire the low bidder under law.

Erickson said the port staff ranked Rotchey’s bid proposal well above the minimum level needed.

Stahl added: “If you toss out the bids, you have to have a cogent and compelling reason to do that. We did not have that. The legal risk to the port to just throwing out the bids out would have been considerable.”

There is some history here that makes use of a non-union contractor a touchy matter. In 2012 , longshore workers and other union workers protested — sometimes violently — at the opening of the EGT grain terminal built at the Port of Longview by a nonunion contractor.

The rail project will be financed with $16 million in federal grants, $4 million in state and local grant and $39 million in loans; and port cash. In addition to covering the construction, these funds cover costs of planning, engineering, land acquisition and wetland mitigation.

Additional tracks are needed in the rail corridor to hold freight cars — especially long unit trains — until shipping terminals are ready to receive them, Stahl said.

The extra lines are “like having s shock absorber of space between the (BNSF) main lines and the terminals,” he said.

Rail traffic off the BNSF main line is still limited to one track over the Cowlitz River railroad bridge near the Longview Wye, but that is not now a bottleneck to rail traffic to and from the port, Stahl said.

The port’s main land availability for a new industrial client is at Berth 4, the former site of the now-demolished Continental Grain elevator. The port is marketing the property but does not yet have a tenant to locate there, Stahl said.