The ILWU Story

Domestic Affiliations and Solidarity

In representing the needs and desires of the rank and file, the ILWU has always sought to strengthen the labor movement in the United States, and to be a dynamic part of it - even when differences over programs and ideology have appeared to make unity difficult, if not impossible. The ILWU has always sought to find common ground with other unions over a variety of issues, such as foreign policy objective, civil rights and racial justice, joint or coordinated collective bargaining with common employers, and the search for opportunities to forge new alliances or federations among unions representing workers in the same or related industries.

When the ILWU was expelled from the CIO in 1950, the union - under the leadership of Bridges and Goldblatt - refused to join efforts to set up a competing labor federation. Over the next 38 years - until the union affiliated with the AFL-CIO in 1988 - the ILWU was in the unique position of being an independent union that consistently advocated labor unity. During this period of independence, the union initiated several important alliances. 

In 1971, the ILA and the ILWU formally pledged mutual assistance in the event of a longshore strike against common employers. The agreement had nothing to do with affiliation or merger of the two organizations, but was only a means to achieve collective bargaining objectives. The two unions agreed to respect each other's picket lines when they were set up as the result of bona fide disputes over wages, hours, conditions, and containerization; when they were officially sanction by the respective international unions; and when this support would not be in violation of a court order or collective bargaining agreement.

This unity took another form in 1992, when the two unions joined forces to form the Committee to Save American Longshore Jobs (SALJ). The Committee raised public awareness and lobbied Congress on the need for legal protections against foreign seamen doing longshore work when their ships were in US ports, and the general need to promote US ports and maritime industries.

At the leadership level, there were often informal talks of merger or federation between the ILA, the ILWU and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). Harry Bridges, for example, was personally dedicated to a vision of a transport workers federation in the United Sates - similar to what existed in many European countries. These conversations took a more serious turn in the 1970s after James R. Hoffa became IBT International President, but Hoffa's death and Bridges' retirement (in 1977) seemed to bring an end to them.

But within the next decade the ILWU did take several steps towards unifying the House of Labor. In 1979 the ILWU, International Woodworkers of America (IWA), the Lumber, Production and Industrial Workers (LPIW), and the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) formed the United Federation of Industrial and Tidewater Labor Organizations to bring together nearly 300,000 workers in the forest products industry. James R. Herman, who succeeded Bridges as ILWU International President in 1977, was elected president of the new organization. 

The member unions retained their full autonomy and financial independence, but gave each other mutual support in bargaining, organizing, and strike action. Then, in 1988, the ILWU received a startling communication from Lane Kirkland, then president of the AFL-CIO: an invitation to join the AFL-CIO, with assurances that the ILWU's organizational and political autonomy - and its traditional geographical and occupational jurisdictions - would be honored and guaranteed. Kirkland's proposal sparked discussion throughout the ILWU, first at the International Executive Board (IEB), then at the International Convention, and finally, at local membership meetings.

In many areas, ILWU local unions had been working with AFL-CIO labor councils and state federations of labor for years; for them, affiliation made sense. But many members also remembered the attacks on the union by AFL-CIO leaders over the years, and the deep disagreements over foreign policy and the right to dissent. On the other side, many recognized that the ILWU could benefit from access to the federation's resources in support of organizing and political action, and it procedures for settling jurisdictional disputes between unions. "What this is all about," said Herman, "is unity!" In the end, the matter was put to the rank and file, who voted in favor of affiliation.

In 1990, the IEB approved affiliation of 15,000 members of the International - those directly involved in transportation, such as longshore work and inland waterways - with the AFL-CIO's new Department of Transportation Trades, recently formed for coordination, mutual support, and resolution of jurisdictional issues between all unions in transportation industries.
Whatever the course of its affiliations and alliances, the ILWU has never relied on formal or official ties to act in concert with or in support of other unions, which have often led the way in direct action to support other workers. 

In 1965, for example, when members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and National Farm Workers Association - and later the United Farm Workers (UFW) - brought the grape strike picket lines to San Francisco piers, ILWU members refused to load the struck cargo. In one case, where an American President Lines cruise ship had already loaded the Delano grapes, the longshore and maritime workers convinced the ship's officers to have the grapes unloaded.
This was only the beginning: for the next twenty years ILWU locals - and the International - organized and participated in hundreds of actions in support of the UFW, including fundraising, food caravans, and joining the striking farm workers on scores of picket lines.

Time and again, ILWU members have dug deep to raise funds and beef up picket lines for striking workers in other unions: coal miners, machinists, newspaper workers, retail clerks, and airline employees, to name just a few.
And as trustees of pension funds, ILWU members have leveraged their votes on investments in support of worker rights, as in the case of the Service Employees International Union's Justice for Janitors campaign. Where possible, the Longshore Division of the union has also been able to invoke the unique picket line language of the coast contract, which permits members to honor bona fide picket lines of workers engaged in a dispute with a common employer - as happened in 1994, when longshore workers refused to cross a picket line by radio operators locked in a dispute with a Keystone vessel that was to worked by the ILWU.

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