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71' STRIKE VOTE! YES
– 9317
NO - 343
From
Dan Imbagliazzo
The ballots have been counted.
We’re going on strike. Those
damned Employers have been screwing us around for months.
If they don’t want to negotiate, we’ll show ‘em we mean
business. We have to.
We’ve given ‘em enough. Harry
sez if they don’t come around by expiration time, we hit
the bricks. This was
the buzz everyday in the months leading up to June 1971.
No matter where you were, in the hall, on the job or with
friends, the talk was strike or not.
Fact and fiction boiled constantly in the rumor pot.
One thing was clear; talks with the Employers were going nowhere.
After two five-year Mechanization and Modernization contracts,
the first from 1961 to 1966 and the other from1966 to 1971, the union
was at a crossroads. Work
opportunity had plummeted and union membership was falling rapidly.
Our future appeared very uncertain.
Manning on new container operations was bare bones. The union,
anxious for a fair settlement, had begun negotiations in November 1970.
After many months little had been achieved.
Frustration with the tough Employer position had grown and grown.
Negotiations with the PMA were recessed on June 7, 1971.
Bridges called the caucus back into session in On July
1st 1971 we hit the bricks. This is the 30th
anniversary of that strike and a period when a lot of good men stuck
together and fought hard and long for what they believed in. This is a
look back at some of the issues that we felt were so important. The ink
on my book wasn’t yet dry. I
became a “B” man, with sponsorship, in June of 1966 and my book in
1968. Proudly following our
leader Harry Bridges, I went out on strike with a lot of guys that had a
lot more seniority than I had. Each
of us has our stories and memories of that period.
One of the things I remember is that my wife was nine months
pregnant with our first child. Every
so often I hear of one of these guys or see a photo of a dock or ship
and my memory is jogged back to that time. We were
assigned to picket docks by gang. There
were over a hundred gangs then. If
there were particular guys you wanted to picket with, you quickly joined
a gang. Roy Wilson (dock
board) who, if I remember correctly, picketed with Dave Castro (retired)
and John Nizitich (deceased), signed a bunch of us up in gang 51.
Each group of three picketed one 6-hour shift every three days.
There were four rotating shifts 12 to 6 and 6 to 12 a.m. and p.m.
My first shift, midnight to 6 a.m., was in front of the tin
warehouse where Evergreen is now, Berth 232D, with Erv Pelica (deceased)
and Richard Contreras (hold board).
Each group held that picket assignment for four months. A strike
is a very serious matter. There
are only three strikes in our history.
The ’34 strike was our struggle for recognition.
In 1948 the Employers, trying to take advantage of the fact that
Republicans had gained control of Congress and had conveniently changed
the labor laws for their big ship owner friends, were determined to
finish us off once and for all. That
effort backfired (I will write about that one another time).
What caused us in ‘71 to go as far as we did? The
’61 and ’66 M&M contracts were brought about by a desire of the
Employers to increase production and decrease manning.
Remember, in ’61 there were no container ships as we know them;
everything was break bulk. The
Contract contained restrictive load limits of 2100 pounds.
This meant that only one load of pipe or one coil at a time went
over the rail. In ’61
these sling limits were eliminated.
When a teamster brought a load to the docks he had to take it off
his board, place the cargo on the warehouse floor and then dockmen would
re-palletize it so it could be loaded aboard ship. This double handling
by longshoremen meant a lot of man-hours.
This work was abolished. Manning
was severely reduced again in 1966. When forklifts were brought into a
hatch, instead of bringing in additional longshoremen to drive that
lift, “holdmen capable of driving a lift” was agreed to.
We now call them “key” holdmen.
Another new category invented in that contract was the
“swingman”. For
the first time a longshoreman could be required to “swing” from the
ship to the dock. Previously
men worked on the ship or the dock, never both.
Cage gangs with reduced manning were introduced and front men
were eliminated. In 1971
there were about four container yards in LA-LB.
The union could see containers, with 20 tons of cargo in each
box, as the final deathblow to this union.
What was done with a ship and dock gang using up to 20 men and
taking 5 hours could be done in one lift of one large box.
During the 10 M&M years production rose an astounding
139% while labor costs per ton dropped 30%.
Meanwhile man-hours plummeted from 26.7 million in 1966 to 19.7
in 1970. Seven million
man-hours lost in just four years! 1960
had seen the union agree to Section 9.43 wherein skilled men could be
hired on a steady basis. In In
exchange for all these innovations the union got large wage increases
and something called the M&M fund.
This $34 million fund gave each longshoreman a retirement bonus
of about a year’s wages. For
those of us that had to keep working and suffer the affects of
automation it seemed like we might not have a job let alone collect a
pension. Those that retired
got the benefits of M&M but none of the consequences of the lost
work opportunity. Meanwhile
in ’69 the ILA won a pension of $300 at age 62 with 25 years.
For the first time the ILA had moved ahead of our pension of $235
per month at age 63 after 25 years and our pension agreement still had
another 5 years to run, until June 30, 1976.
They also had 13 paid holidays.
We had zero! The
ILA pay guarantee with the New York Shippers Assn., originally
negotiated in 1964, was radically improved in ’69 to provide a
guarantee of 2080 hours of work or pay.
That’s forty hours a week for 52 weeks.
And, they kept their manning. On the West Coast the ILWU had NO
guarantee and we had given away our manning. The
sentiment in ’71 was that the automation and lost man-hours indicated
that we were a dying breed of workers and we needed to make some
changes. These were our strike demands: ·
Jurisdiction
on containers. ·
A pay
guarantee plan of 40 hours straight time for “A” men and 32 for
“B” men. ·
A two year
contract with wage increases of .85 cents the first year and .75 the
second. ·
Pension of
$500 at age 62 with 25 years of service. ·
Welfare
benefits – add dental care and prescription drug benefits.
For those who do not qualify for pensions a life insurance
benefit of $20,000 with $20,000 additional for accidental death and
dismemberment. ·
Manning –
more local input on new ship operations. ·
Five paid
holidays in the first year and five more in the second year. When we
hit the bricks on July 1st Harry told us that we could expect
a long fight. We walked the picket lines through July and almost all of
August without any talks. Harry
said the Employers know what we want and when they’re ready to give it
we’ll have something to talk about.
Trying to sway the public, an Employer media blitz began in all
the newspapers claiming that we wouldn’t even negotiate.
Editorials rang out that the ILWU should talk.
We held fast. Negotiations
resumed August 25th. When
we first went out the harbor was deserted.
By late September there were 70 ships waiting at anchor.
In 1948
big business, with the Republican Party’s help, got a strike breaker
amendment passed to the National Labor Relations Act.
This amendment bypasses Union leadership and forces workers to
vote on an Employer’s last contract offer.
On December 14th & 15th the NLRB
conducted a vote. Local #13
voted at the old Catalina dock at the foot of As I
looked back while writing this bulletin our strike demands seem so much
less significant than they were in 1971.
But to those of us who hit the bricks, everything was on the
line. It seemed to many of
us that our future as longshoreman was insecure.
I wondered how I would be able to provide a life for my family.
Our union’s survival appeared uncertain and the fight for our
existence very important. Wages
went up to a whole $5.00 per hour! .72
cents was a big raise then. We
won the first prescription drug plan and dental for adults, pensions
were increased to $350 plus a $150 bridge until Social Security kicked
in, mandatory retirement age was reduced from age 68 to age 65, except
for full shipper’s loads all container jurisdiction within a 50 mile
zone was longshore work. We
also won the security issue, a Pay Guarantee Plan.
PGP seemed like the assurance that we had some future. After all
those days on the lines we didn’t win one paid holiday.
Holidays weren’t the imperative issue.
Our future was, for those 134 days, important enough to fight the
Employers and struggle against the might of the entire Federal
Government. Nixon
did have a last dirty trick for us in his bag. To combat high inflation
he had formed something called the Wage and Price Boards.
These “Boards” were supposed to regulate the prices a
business could charge and the wages workers were allowed to earn.
Surprise, surprise not one business was ever denied a price
increase but the government Wage Board cut our .72 cent wage increase by
.32! The Employers and the
government couldn’t beat us back to work or shove an agreement down
our throats so they cheated us out of part of our wage victory.
This “Pay Board” was later found to be unconstitutional.
Nixon left office in disgrace, as did the Senator who carried his
compulsory arbitration law in the Senate, Bob Packwood (R.Ore).
But, we are still here. The
ILWU is stronger than ever. Happy
Anniversary Strike of 1971. P.S.
I
would like to thank Gene Vrana, ILWU Education Director and Librarian,
for his help in preparing this bulletin for the membership. Brother
Dan Imbagliazzo Photo
of the Pier 28 picket line - Seattle, WA 1971 |
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