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Victory to the Charleston
Longshoremen!
February 27, 2000
For the first time since the January 20 police riot
against protesting Charleston dockworkers, ILA Local 1422 members
picketed a scab Nordana ship, the M/V Stjernborg. This time, on February
24, they were joined on the picket line by representatives of
International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, its President
Lawrence Thibeaux and Executive Board member Jack Heyman, at the
Columbus Street Terminal. Confronted again by a massive display of
police force, the picketers limited to 19 by a court injunction marched
and chanted defiantly, "ILA!, ILA! ILA!" and "Ain't no
power like the power of the union, 'cause the power of the union won't
stop!"
The South Carolina States Port Authority had delayed the
ship's arrival for fear that union longshoremen and checkers would try
to stop the scab loading operation by nonunion Winyah Stevedoring or it
would interfere with the dock operations of other larger ships in port.
Solidarity Can Defeat Union-busting!
ILWU Local 10, along with the other ILWU locals
in Northern California, the Liverpool dockers and the Coordinadora
Dockworkers Union of Spain had responded to ILA Local 1422 president
Kenneth Riley's appeal for support. At a Local 1422 press
conference the previous day President Thibeaux presented a check from
Local 10 for $5,000 to the Dockworkers Defense Fund to assist in
the legal battle of the Charleston longshoremen, clerks and maintenance
workers. At the rally on the picket line Heyman was roundly
applauded when he said that West Coast longshoremen stand solidly with
the embattled Charleston longshoremen. These acts of solidarity
clearly heartened the rank and file longshore workers.
The ILA had a signed collective bargaining agreement with
Nordana, a Danish shipping line, until last year when the shipping line
paid its unfunded liability in pension and welfare contributions, broke
the contract and started using nonunion Winyah Stevedoring. In
1989, when a scab stevedoring outfit tried to start up in Wilmington,
North Carolina just across the border it was met by hundreds of
protesting longshoremen from South Atlantic ports. Unfortunately,
scab operations have hit the ILA hard in the so-called
"right-to-work" South. Reportedly, the port of New
Orleans has 50% nonunion longshore operations, while Houston is 80%
nonunion!
The increased globalization of the economy can be seen in the
international amalgamation of shipowners (Maersk and Sealand, OOCL and
APL) and the establishment of global shipping alliances. Waterfront
unions located at the critical point of international transportation
have been targeted by governments and employers as restraints against
their policies of "free trade".
The successful anti-union attacks on dockworkers in Britain,
Australia, Mexico, Holland and Brazil have whetted their appetites for
more. Now the waters are being tested in Charleston, South
Carolina. Apparently, the ILA leadership has deemed this attack a
"local" problem.
The Real Story Behind the Charleston Police Riot
Longshore action on January 2 forced a Nordana ship to
leave the port of Charleston with 25 boxes and heavy equipment still on
the dock and unloaded by the scab Winyah Stevedoring company. When
the M/V Skodsborg arrived on January 20, the state provocatively
mobilized a massive display of police power-- several hundred riot
police (SWAT and SLED) and local police, tanks, armored cars,
helicopters, concussion grenades, shotguns, dogs and tear gas-- all in
an effort to intimidate and repress longshore workers from
demonstrating. Police saber rattling had already begun before the
midnight picketing when the longshore union was informed that police
were amassing riot gear and clearing out the county and city jails. It
didn't stop the courageous longshoremen and clerks.
As hundreds of union picketers approached the phalanx of
police in riot gear, one cop lunged forward with his club. A
longshoreman pulled the cop's club and both tumbled to the ground.
Immediately a swarm of cops jumped and beat the beleaguered
longshoreman. A melee ensued. Local union officials
intervened to try to quell their members. When President Kenneth
Riley, who had been facing the longshoremen with his back to the cops,
turned to the police to ask their restraint, he was clubbed over the
head. Seeing the blood streaming down the face of their president,
Local 1422 members justifiably flew into a rage. One longshoreman
confronted by a state trooper pointing the barrel of a shotgun at him,
bared his chest and cried out "Pull the trigger, 'cause we ain't
gonna stop fightin' for our jobs!" The trooper declined to
fire rather than create a martyr for the struggle. Another
picketer was struck by a police car careening into the demonstrators and
landed on top of the vehicle. Ten were hospitalized.
Eight longshore workers were initially arrested for
trespassing. The charges were later increased to "rioting and
conspiracy". The judge dismissed the charges once he realized
that the first several minutes of the police video were
suspiciously edited out. Four ILA men have now been indicted by
anti-labor, anti-black and pro-cop South Carolina Attorney General
Condon. The African American newspaper of Charleston in its
February 23 issue ran a banner headline: "ILA, Cops Melee Planned
By Cops?", while the viciously anti-union Post and Courier (whose
front page photo helped frame a longshoreman) pontificated in an
editorial (January 21) "Labor violence on Charleston's waterfront
must not be rewarded." Unions internationally must come to
the aid of our black and white brothers and sisters!
They're being railroaded by a racist, anti-union Attorney General
with ambitions to run for governor on a "right-to-work"
and "states rights" platform. Simultaneously, the
longshore unions are under attack politically in the state legislature.
Attempts are being made to tighten the "right-to-work"
law to make it more difficult for unions to collect dues or fees and
also ban union members from positions on the State Ports Authority
Board.
Labor Unity and the Fight Against Racism
A few days before the dock clash on January 20, forty
members of ILA Local 1422 with their union banner traveled to Columbia
to participate in a mass protest against the battle flag of the
Confederacy, the symbol of slavery, being flown over the state capitol
building. The port of Charleston is also a tourist mecca. It
showcases beautiful palm tree-lined streets and magnificently restored
colonial buildings, including its old slave market where the ancestors
of today's longshoremen were shamefully bought and sold like cattle.
It took a civil war to end slavery. Then, in 1867,
black dockworkers in Charleston formed the first labor
organization of freed slaves, the Longshoremen's Protective Union
Association, and won a strike for higher wages.
The first shot in the Civil War was fired in Charleston at Fort
Sumter, then under control of the Union army. Ironically, it is
once again in the port of Charleston where the class war-- to defend
unions and the decent living standards and working conditions they
provide-- is being fought. Victory to the Charleston
longshoremen!
To help the Charleston longshoremen in their legal battle please
send your contribution to:
Dockworkers
Defense Fund
c/o
Robert J. Ford, Treasurer of the Fund
910
Morrison Drive
Charleston,
South Carolina 29403
Jack Heyman #8780
ILWU Local 10
San Francisco, California
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