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CounterPunch
October
31, 2002
Port Bosses
Out to Smash ILWU:
This is Union Busting!
by LEE SUSTAR
An unprecedented alliance of transnational corporations
and politicians of both parties is behind the U.S. government's
attempt to break the West Coast dockworkers' union.
George W. Bush's intervention under the
anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act ended a 10-day lockout by employers
in October--and allowed a federal judge to ban any work stoppage
on the docks for an 80-day cooling-off period that expires December
26.
The Justice Department sent the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) a letter October 25 threatening
legal action after management alleged that the union carried
out a slowdown after returning to work two weeks earlier.
Months ago, the White House threatened
to use troops to move cargo under the guise of "national
security." But preparations for the attack on the union
began earlier--when the Clinton administration commissioned a
study on "modernizing" the ports.
The proposals were developed in a white
paper published in December 2000 by the Marine Transportation
System National Advisory Council (MTSNAC), an industry advisory
group that reports to the Secretary of Transportation.
The white paper was produced by Joseph
Miniace--president of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA),
the employers' group that bargains with the ILWU. The document
spelled out Miniace's goal of breaking the dockworkers' power.
When the contract covering the 10,500
members of the ILWU expired in July, ILWU president James Spinosa
agreed to accept the new technology despite the loss of 600 clerks'
jobs. In exchange, the ILWU sought continued union jurisdiction
over new jobs. But Miniace wouldn't take "yes" for
an answer--and locked out the workers instead.
According to the Seattle Times, Miniace's
rise in the PMA was backed by Stevedoring Services of America
(SSA), a Seattle-based company that's one of the world's biggest
port terminal operators. SSA, which operates a massive facility
in Los Angeles, has already moved about 150 ILWU clerks' jobs
from that port to a nonunion logistics operation and warehouse
in Utah. These are the same hard-line tactics that SSA used when
it worked with the Australian government in an attempt to break
the dock union there in the 1990s.
The SSA is also pressuring the government
of Bangladesh for permission to build a new private terminal
to replace the government-owned port and its unionized workforce--and
the U.S. ambassador has publicly intervened to support the company.
But Miniace has other powerful supporters,
too. Like MTSNAC chair Chuck Raymond, who is also CEO of CSX
Lines, the shipping line owned by the rail freight giant CSX--and
a PMA board member.
While the MTSNAC includes unions, it's
run by executives from companies like Union Pacific, which dominates
rail links to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach--the biggest
in the U.S. Union Pacific is the prime beneficiary of a new government-funded
$2.4 billion container rail line at those ports.
Known for its hostility to unions, Union
Pacific owns Overnite Transportation, which recently defeated
the Teamsters in a three-year strike. The company was also a
major campaign contributor to Transportation Secretary Norman
Mineta when he was a member of Congress.
And Union Pacific CEO Richard Davidson--a
major Bush donor--was named to chair Bush's new National Infrastructure
Advisory Board, which will make recommendations for more transportation
legislation.
Transportation industry cooperation set
the stage for the creation of the West Coast Waterfront Coalition
(WCWC), a group of importers that includes Gap, Wal-Mart and
Toyota. The WCWC endorsed Miniace's document, which was later
expanded into a formal report to Congress--and will serve as
the basis for legislative proposals to be released in November.
All this set the stage for the PMA's
10-day lockout--timed to induce Bush's use of the Taft-Hartley
law to force the issue into the spotlight. The employers want
Congress to put the dockworkers under the Railway Labor Act--which
"essentially eliminates the ability of a union to use the
threat of a strike to gain the upper hand in contract negotiations,"
the editor of the employers' Journal of Commerce enthusiastically
noted last week.
The ILWU has so far concentrated on electing
Democrats in the November elections to try to avoid this fate.
But it will take a far bigger solidarity campaign--and action
on the docks--to defeat these union busters. It's time for the
labor movement to mobilize to meet this challenge.
Lee Sustar
writes for the Socialist
Worker. He can be reached at: lsustar@ameritech.net
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