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ILWU Stands Up
Again Against Anti-Union Attacks
by Repost
Tuesday
Sep 27th, 2011 12:58 PM
Corporations
Try To Break the Unions at
Washington
and
Oregon
Ports
. ILWU Fights Back!
Workers make a stand
By Jack Heyman
Longshore workers on the
Columbia River
caught everyone’s attention three weeks ago when they blocked a move
by a multinational grain consortium that threatened their union and
their jobs. The media berated hundreds of longshoremen “storming”
the
port
of
Longview
,
Wash.
, and dumping thousands of tons of grain from railroad cars on the
track.
Most accounts glossed over that in opening its $200 million Export Grain
Terminal, St. Louis-based Bunge North America refused to abide by the
port’s contract to hire workers from the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union, Local 21. Bunge threw down the gauntlet, then acted
shocked when the ILWU resisted. More than 125 longshore workers and
their supporters have been arrested, including ILWU International
President Bob McEllrath. He was released after police were surrounded by
some 500 angry longshoremen. U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton
complained because his anti-picket injunction has been defied, saying he
felt like a “paper tiger.”
The Local 21 union hall proudly displays a banner, “Defend the Picket
Line, Defend Free Speech.”
Why such a militant struggle to defend jobs?
At a time when poverty in
America
has reached the highest level in 50 years, maritime companies want to
eliminate good paying union jobs. Last year in
Philadelphia
,
Del
Monte Fresh Produce Co. went nonunion, violating its agreement with the
East Coast International Longshoremen’s Association. Now Bunge wants
to do the same on the West Coast. It’s a threat to all waterfront
unions and all workers. Last February and March, labor supporters
occupied the
Wisconsin
capitol and held marches of more than 100,000 to protest an attack on
unions. That electrified workers around the country, but the action was
derailed after it became a political football for Democratic Party
politicians. So now teachers and other public workers in
Wisconsin
have no bargaining rights. ILWU pickets proudly wear T-shirts reading
“No
Wisconsin
Here.”
This scenario may change. A line has been drawn on the waterfront of
this country. Trying to disguise its union-busting as an inter-union
squabble, EGT hired Operating Engineers Local 701 to do the longshore
work.
That fiction won’t wash.
Washington
and
Oregon
state AFL-CIO’s are supporting ILWU, as is the ILA, pledging “full
support.” Corporate arrogance could provoke a first-ever shut down of
all
U.S.
ports at once. And
Panama Canal
pilots, who recently joined the ILWU, as well as the International
Dockworkers’ Council and the International Transport Workers
Federation are also on board.
The American working class, like European workers protesting antilabor
attacks, could awaken. EGT needs to ship the grain to the global market
to make its profit. But longshore workers and their supporters aren’t
backing down.
Just last week, Local 21 President Dan Coffman and a dozen “Women of
the Waterfront,” members and supporters of the longshore union were
arrested for sitting down on the railroad tracks in
Longview
. As Shelly Porter, a young longshore worker and mother of a young
daughter who’s been arrested three times (once at night in her home),
put it, “We’ve got no option. Either we defend our jobs or we have
nothing.”
Longshoremen on both coasts couldn’t agree more.
Jack Heyman has worked 45 years in the maritime industry as a seaman and
as an
Oakland
longshoreman.
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