The Oregonian has reported grain talks between the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers’ Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) are heating up. An “epic showdown” is looming because workers in Portland, Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver won’t accept major concessions.
The contract expired September 30 when the grain giants had threatened to lock out longshoremen and hire scabs. A port shutdown was averted only because the employers failed to file required legal paperwork in time, forcing an extension until Oct. 24. Now negotiations are set to resume Oct. 29, for the first time with a federal mediator. Simultaneously, in another proceeding the ILWU is being hit with Obama’s National Labor Relations Board suing the union in federal court for violating a judges’ order, the ostensible crime: defending the union’s container terminal contract. The Oregonian editorial (Oct. 2, 2012) charges the union with “temper tantrums” for defending contract rights.
The International Business Times (Sept. 4, 2012) reports “Big Grain Companies Reap Profits As Global Food Prices Soar and Poor Go Hungry”. The world’s four largest grain companies–Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus– known as the “ABCDs” who collectively control 75 to 90 % of global grain trade are raking in billions during a worldwide food crisis. (Bunge owns EGT ‘s Longview terminal with partners.)
In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, grain monopolies are boasting record profits, yet they’re demanding major concessions from the longshoremen who do the dangerous work of loading ships. So, who’s the real culprit?
A year ago, members of ILWU protested EGT’s attempt to break their union and impose concessions. Scores were jailed for blocking grain trains including President McEllrath who was following the will of the membership. Coastwide protests occurred on his jailing Oct. 5.
In February, state police and an armed Coast Guard cutter were deployed to escort a grain ship through picket lines at EGT and stop mass protests by ILWU members, labor supporters and Occupy activists caravanning from Portland, the Bay Area and Puget Sound. Under the threat of overwhelming police and military forces, including the Obama administration, union officials succumbed. The ranks succeeded in defending their union jurisdiction but a hugely concessionary contract was imposed without a union membership vote, brokered by Washington’s Democrat Governor Gregoire.
So now, the other profit-bloated grain companies want the huge EGT concessions that the union ranks fought against. Following ILWU’s democratic tradition, a dozen members and retirees with nearly 300 combined years on the waterfront signed a leaflet which opposed the contract. (EGT-Longview Longshore Contract – Worst Ever!) Their experience of organizing dock protests goes back to the 1978 refusal of Oakland longshoremen to load bombs for the Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile.
The militant 1934 West Coast maritime strike, like other strikes across the country, built the trade union movement which raised standards for all working people—including those not in unions– on wages, safe working conditions and social benefits. Unions fought for and won social security, unemployment insurance and medicare. Now the ILWU is on the front line defending all labor.
Last year when Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker was attacking public workers, ILWU Local 10 protested by shutting down Bay Area ports. On May Day 2008, ILWU closed West Coast ports to demand an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And in 1984, longshoremen, protesting apartheid, organized a boycott in San Francisco of a ship from South Africa.
Were these “temper tantrums”? Are these the actions of “greedy workers”? Nelson Mandela commended the ILWU for sparking the U.S. anti-apartheid movement. For these solidarity actions, longshore workers were docked pay, but that did not deter them from implementing their time-honored slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Now in Portland and other Northwest ports, the ILWU is faced with an employer-imposed contract or lockout backed by a massive police and Coast Guard mobilization. And in Vancouver, Washington the strikebreaking agency Gettier is already stationed at United Grain. This is the same outfit in 2010 that was successfully used to load scab borax in the Mojave Desert in California during a lockout of ILWU miners by the global Rio Tinto mining conglomerate.
Will intimidation by profiteering grain exporters and their government backers prevail now, or will union solidarity and ILWU unity against EGT concessions win out?
The stakes are high for all working people.
Jack Heyman, a retired longshoreman from Oakland, chairs the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee and writes about labor and politics.