Defend ILWU Local 10
WHEN THE AFL-CIO Executive Council called for a day of solidarity action with workers in Wisconsin, members of International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 stepped up to the challenge and used a provision in its contract to shut down the port of Oakland.
The local has long been at the forefront of the ILWU's progressive tradition, which has involved refusing to load ships from apartheid South Africa to, more recently, supporting a community picket against an Israeli ship.
As usual, the employers are hitting back--hard. The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) claims the ILWU's "stop work" meetings on April 4 was in violation of the union's collective bargaining agreement, and has launched a major lawsuit aimed at crippling the union financially.
The PMA's legal action is one of a series of escalating attacks on the ILWU. Several longstanding Local 10 activist members and retirees have been organizing a defense campaign and are calling on the ILWU to push back with more than simply legal. Their statement is reprinted below.
Defend Local 10 against PMA attacks!
Fight for jobs through job action! No PMA deals!
July 21, 2011
Unions around the country and the world are praising Local 10 for our April 4 solidarity action for Wisconsin workers. PMA has a phony lawsuit against us for this righteous action. Yet, there's no coverage of our action or the lawsuit in The Dispatcher, the ILWU's newspaper, which is controlled by the International President Bob McEllrath.
The International officers say the phony PMA lawsuit is no big deal, but even former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark are endorsing our defense campaign. So why are ILWU International officers opposing labor mobilizations to defend our ILWU solidarity action while PMA is attacking longshore locals up and down the coast?
The employers are stealing our jobs: car jobs in Richmond (Solar Wing), stores gang at Pier 35, logs container operation on Maritime Street, cold ironing. They're also forcing unskilled workers (lashers) to do skilled work like the roustabout/lift job on the dock.
All these employer contract violations are being done to increase company profits by cutting longshore jobs. Rank-and-file members and officers who've opposed these employer violations are being targeted. We've got to protect them and defend our jobs through job action! An injury to one is an injury to all!
How is PMA getting away with this theft? They're using the biased arbitration system mainly through their arbitrator, Terry Lane, who used to be PMA manager for Northern California. He's steadily giving employers favorable decisions.
Other West Coast ports are also under attack. On the Columbia River the new EGT [Development] grain operation in Longview, Wash., is using NO LONGSHOREMEN! How can this happen in the middle of a contract?
Employers are smelling blood because of the anti-labor mood in the country. But ILWU is fighting back. Hundreds of longshoremen stopped a trainload of grain to the terminal by blocking the railroad tracks last week. We need to take action here! Unless we begin to fight back using job actions--like the Longview action--our longshore jurisdiction on the waterfront will be gone before this contract expires. A serious fight back means coordinating job actions on the coast. That's where our union power is.
Court suits and arbitrations in case after case have determined that PMA cannot sue a longshore local for monetary damages for job actions or work stoppages as PMA calls them. No money was awarded to PMA companies for work stoppages in California case #97-4923, #98-6051, #97-6757, #96-7521 and #95-5734, in which ILWU attorney [Richard] Zuckerman in a letter dated March 12, 1997, stated in a letter to the [ILWU] Coast Committee, "We are very pleased to enclose a copy of the court's decision in the above-referenced case. The court held that PMA is not entitled to recover monetary damages resulting from a breach of the no-strike provisions contained in Section 11" [of the ILWU-PMA labor contract.] Coast Arbitrator Sam Kagel decided in a 1960 arbitration involving Stockton Local 54 that the company "is not entitled to any compensation for the period that they were off the job as a result of their illegal action."
It was these kind of actions that built the ILWU and the labor movement. Without even appealing the area arbitration, the International officers are telling us to accept a deal from PMA in exchange for them dropping their phony lawsuit. ILWU is a democratic, bottom up, not a top down, union. Besides, we have local autonomy.
Why should we accept a PMA deal based on lies when PMA can't get monetary damages? They want us to falsely state that Local 10 officers organized an illegal work stoppage on April 4. They didn't.
The rank and file--both day and night--decided to stand in solidarity with Wisconsin workers for 24 hours! According to old timers, our action was in the best of ILWU's militant tradition. Be proud of our solidarity action! No PMA deals!
Trent "Buster" Willis #9038, Anthony Leviege #9576, John Hughes #9125, L.B. Ali #9038, Kasheef Bell #9202, Richard Washington #9402, Jack Heyman (ret.) #8780, James Curtis #9639, Erick "Stretch" Wright #8946, Howard Keylor (ret.) #20447, Ed Henderson #9855
