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CounterPunch
October
11, 2002
Taft-Hartley,
Bush and the Dockworkers
by LEE SUSTAR
George W. Bush and the employers want to use the
Taft-Hartley Act--America's notorious "slave labor law"--to
break the West Coast dockworkers' union. But members of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) have a message for Bush
and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA): We won't give up
this fight.
"When the PMA dictates a speedup
on the docks, we're going to have more people dying," ILWU
Local 10 Business Agent Trent Willis said at an October 4 rally
in Oakland, Calif., referring to the deaths of five longshore
workers in the last seven months. "Bush and [PMA President
Joseph] Miniace and the PMA are economic terrorists, and we're
not going to put up with it."
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka
issued a statement opposing Bush's intervention--including the
administration's threat months ago to use the military to break
an ILWU strike. Bush's intervention is "a historic juncture
in the labor movement," said Jack Heyman, a business agent
for ILWU Local 10.
"By invoking Taft-Hartley against
the longshore workers, Bush is effectively declaring war on the
working class here and the Iraqi people simultaneously,"
Heyman told Socialist Worker. "We must either go forward,
or we will go backwards. But never before has there been so much
solidarity for a union as has been expressed for the ILWU in
our struggle now."
That solidarity was on display at the
October 4 rally. Speaker after speaker condemned Taft-Hartley
and pledged solidarity with the ILWU. "We consider the use
of Taft-Hartley to be an anti-labor act, and we'll oppose it,"
said Chuck Mack, the top official in Teamsters Local 70 and Joint
Council 7, and the union's Western Region vice president.
Sue Sandlin, co-chair of the Portworkers
Solidarity Committee, said, "Taft-Hartley is a slave labor
act because it forces people to work under the conditions of
the bosses' choosing, and it makes solidarity between unions
illegal--and that's outrageous."
Members of United Auto Workers Local
2244 from the GM-Toyota NUMMI plant in nearby Fremont--partly
closed due to the dock bosses' lockout of longshore workers--were
on hand to show their support. Local 2244 President Tito Sanchez
told the rally, "Anything you want the UAW to help you with,
we'll do it. We'll be on your picket lines."
Rank-and-file Teamsters organized a delegation
from Stockton, Calif., and transit workers attended from San
Francisco. Teachers, nurses and government workers also turned
out--as did students and unorganized workers.
The ILWU will need to build on this solidarity
during the 80-day "cooling-off period" to be imposed
by a federal court injunction under Taft-Hartley. Under the terms
of the injunction, ILWU members will have to work under conditions
imposed by the PMA--and the employers have been imposing speedups
and unsafe conditions since the old contract expired July 1.
Now, with the backlog created by the
lockout, conditions will be worse--and management will once again
try to provoke workers through disciplinary actions and dismissals.
It was just such a showdown on the Oakland
docks last month that led to dozens of members of Local 10 being
fired from a job for refusing to work in unsafe conditions. When
the ILWU bargaining committee responded by instructing members
to work safely, the PMA accused the union of a slowdown and locked
workers out on September 29.
The PMA wanted to keep the lockout going
until Bush intervened, so management negotiators showed up at
a federally sponsored mediation session with armed bodyguards--and
union leaders rightly stormed out.
Negotiations in the following days seemed
to show some progress. But on October 6, the PMA suddenly presented
a worse offer than was on the table in order to provoke another
union walkout.
Taking the bosses' cue, Bush invoked
a Taft-Hartley "board of inquiry" the next day, which
will issue a report allowing Attorney General John Ashcroft to
seek the 80-day injunction in federal court.
Unfortunately, ILWU President James Spinosa
and other union leaders have done far too little to prepare the
rank and file for this kind of attack--even though it was clear
for months that the PMA wanted an all-out battle. Spinosa refused
to even authorize a strike vote, and he witch-hunted union members
who called for mobilization and job actions.
Rather than go on the offensive against
Bush and the PMA, he has consistently tried to wrap the ILWU
in the flag by claiming that dockworkers play a leading role
in "national security." This only plays into Bush's
hands by claiming that a "national emergency" has made
it necessary to impose Taft-Hartley.
Even a week into the lockout, Spinosa
wouldn't mobilize the whole union for solidarity demonstrations.
All this has made it easier for the PMA's propaganda to go unchallenged.
It's time for the ILWU--and the entire
labor movement--to take a different course. The union has withstood
attacks under Taft-Hartley before. When the law required a membership
vote on the bosses' rotten contract offer in 1948, every single
ILWU member cast a blank ballot. And when the law was used to
stop a 1971 strike, the ILWU hit the picket lines again as soon
as the injunction expired.
The dockworkers need to build on that
fighting tradition. The future of organized labor in the U.S.--and
in ports around the world--depends on it. It's time for every
union member--and everyone who stands for workers' rights--to
support the ILWU.
Todd Chretien, Scott Johnson and Snehal
Shingavi contributed to this report, which originally appeared
in Socialist Worker.
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2002
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