Charleston Port Making New History
by Jack Heyman
May 8, 2001

A significant page in maritime labor history is being written in Charleston, S.C. This is a story about workers and their bold struggle to defend their jobs and unions.

Last year members of the predominantly-black International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 were in the forefront of a march protesting the flying of the Confederate flag over the state capitol building in Columbia.

The following night, Jan. 20, some two hundred union members, joined by all-white ILA Local 1771 and the integrated ILA Local 1422-A, were picketing at the port of Charleston at a terminal adjacent to their union hall when they were attacked by 600 riot police mobilized from around the state. Their fundamental right to picket, a First Amendment right, was bloodily suppressed by police.

The longshore workers had been protesting the Danish shipowner Nordana's use of a low wage, non-union stevedore company, W.S.I., to load and unload a ship. That work had previously been those longshore unions.' 

Police provoked the already tense situation by brutally clubbing Ken Riley, the new reform-minded president of the union, as he was trying to maintain order. The picketers, black and white, were enraged by this unwarranted attack and a melee ensued.

Photos by the news media show the police, not the workers, armed with weapons. Yet the media, with few exceptions, invariably blamed the longshore workers for the violence. Moreover, the conservative, pro-business media omitted the fact that police agencies had several planning meetings for just such an anti-labor police mobilization in the port.

While the initial charges of trespassing were thrown out of court, South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon later filed criminal charges against five union members with an 'inciting to riot' felony for which they face up to five years in jail.

Clearly, what is motivating Mr. Condon is his political appetite to be governor, using this legal onslaught against unions and blacks as his ticket to office. When Condon was George Bush's campaign director in the state, he ran demagogic "law and order" radio ads in South Carolina conjuring up this 'violent' labor gangster image. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Just before the Civil War began with the firing on the Union's Fort Sumter in the port of Charleston, the Charleston Mercury opined: "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man...and the Northern states will yet have to introduce it. The theory of a free society is a delusion."

After the war and the defeat of slavery, freed black longshoremen in Charleston organized one of the first waterfront unions, the Longshoremen¹s Protective Union Association and won a strike for wages. They've played a leading role in the labor movement in the South ever since.

Now, their descendants are struggling to defend their decent living standards and working conditions won through strikes and collective bargaining over the years, but are still being met with the full force of the state. 

After solidarity actions last April from dockworkers in Spain, the shipowner Nordana signed an agreement with the union, but the recalcitrant non-union stevedore company W.S.I. continues its civil lawsuit for financial damages against the unions and their members for $1.5 million. This and the criminal lawsuit by the state could have a chilling effect on organized labor and free speech in the U.S.

But this time Condon and his cohorts could be biting off more than they can chew. This trial is seen by a growing number as an attack on the fundamental rights of unions, blacks and on free speech. 

South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna DeWitt has enlisted the support of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the nationwide labor federation in the defense campaign of the 'Charleston 5'.

Longshoremen, angry over the victimization of their fellow workers, are pledging to protest by shutting down ports on both coasts of the U.S. when the trial begins. Such an action is unprecedented in U.S. labor history.

And dockworkers' organizations internationally, angered by this legal lynching and wary of anti-labor attacks under the rubric of 'free trade,' have pledged to join them in a day of solidarity with the Charleston 5 .

Once again, Charleston may spark history-in-the-making as workers around the world shut down ports in a massive display of labor solidarity.

Jack Heyman is an Executive Board member of the San Francisco longshore union, ILWU Local 10. When not working on the docks, he writes on labor and politics.