The Cunningham Report

What's The Buzz
07/13/2008

Negotiations between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents 71 waterfront employers, became increasingly sticky late last week with the PMA charging union members with slowing down production in Tacoma and Los Angeles-Long Beach while talks continue...ILWU spokesman Craig Merrilees discounted the union actions in Tacoma and Southern California, saying that the PMA was making a mountain out of a molehill... Still pending is the PMA request to the National Labor Relations Board for the labor agency to file a charge against the ILWU over the May Day shutdown of West Coast ports for one shift by union workers as a protest against the war in Iraq.
-- The Cunningham Report

Join Jobs with Justice and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in "No Peace – No Work" Rally at Noon, May 1st

Jack Perry Memorial Park, 1729 Alaska Way South Seattle Between Pier 30 and Pacific Maritime Institute

At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, many working people were opposed to the invasion. Now the overwhelming majority want to end the war and withdraw the troops.

The war is currently costing over 720 million dollars a day if continued, it could rise into trillions of dollars which could be spent on pressing domestic needs, including universal health care, job retraining, adequate housing and education.

The international Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has called for a united labor action on May 1, 2008, International Workers Day, to demand an end to the war.

Later in the day join Jobs with Justice and El Comite for the 9th Annual May 1st Immigrant Rights March and Rally "We are not undocumented, we are not illegal, we are workers!"

Please note the corrected time and location below:

March starts at 4pm at Judkins Park
2150 South Norman Street (near St. Mary's Church)

For more information please contact JwJ Staff Organizer

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the TWSC. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Matt Smith - San Francisco Weekly, February 6, 2008

Imploding U.S. mortgage markets leave behind trillions of dollars in economic damage. The dollar's slide against the euro and the yuan raises fears of a currency collapse. January job losses portend recession.

To these threats to U.S. economic stability, add a new and severe one that is brewing in the conference rooms of the Cathedral Hill Hotel, a blue-collar establishment on Van Ness. There, West Coast dockworkers' representatives are devising a strategy to renegotiate a unified ports agreement with shipping companies that is scheduled to expire July 1. If the renegotiation is as fractious as it was in 2002 — when shippers attempted to break the union by shutting down 29 West Coast ports for 10 days — an extended dispute could paralyze U.S. economic activity and send financial markets tumbling.

A shutdown like the last one "carries the very real risk of triggering a sudden crisis in international financial markets," U.C. Berkeley professor Stephen Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, wrote in a 2002 paper. When I spoke with him last week, he said he'd be watching the situation this time, too: "I don't think the significance is any different. At some point, you start running out of parts, and the factory stops, and the factory that relies on that factory for components stops, and you have a chain reaction that's really rather a nightmare."

September 10, 2007
Contact: Paul Bigman
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
206-214-6169

SEATTLE, Sept 10 - More than 100 demonstrators shut down a major terminal at the Port of Seattle today to protest alleged U.S. labor law violations by Seattle-based National Frozen Foods Corporation (NFFC).

The protest, led by Washington State Jobs with Justice, took place at the Hanjin Shipping Terminal 46. NFFC uses the terminal to ship frozen vegetables to customers in Asia. The Hanjin Boston, chartered by Hanjin from German shipper NSB, was set to transport NFFC products from Seattle.

NFFC is one of the five largest private-label frozen vegetable processors in the United States. NFFC workers in Chehalis have been represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters since 1945.

Armed with fliers and noisemakers, the group blocked the main entrance to the 88-acre terminal, chanting slogans in support of workers’ rights and demanding that longshore workers not load the cargo, while distributing fliers calling on NFFC to return to the bargaining table.

In response, longshore workers and marine clerks from the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) stood by in accordance with their collective bargaining agreement until the issue was resolved. The terminal operator agreed to isolate the NFFC cargo, put it on wheels and have NFFC remove the cargo from the terminal.

By Joe Dockerman

ranknfile19@gmail.com

The "Continuous Operations" and "Elimination of Unit Breaks" agreement signed with SSA by Ugles & Co. of ILWU Local 19 Seattle exposes these union officers as hypocrites in the fight for clean air in our port communities.

Seattle, Aug. 16--In my first article earlier this week, I exposed the fact that Herald Ugles and the other ILWU Local 19 officers are participating in a scheme--together with Stevedoring Services of America and the Pacific Maritime Association--to take away the rights of Seattle waterfront workers to their historic union coffee breaks as outlined in our Pacific Coast Longshore Contract Document.

But there's more to this story than immediately meets the eye.

Besides being an abject betrayal of ILWU principles, an attack on the rights of union workers and a give-away that weakens the Coast contract and strengthens our sworn enemy, SSA--just months before negotiations--there is also an issue of public safety and health that all members of our community should also be aware of and concerned about.

By Joe Dockerman
ranknfile19 <ranknfile19@gmail.com>

Seattle, Aug. 15--In a stunning betrayal of the militant rank-and-file ideals upon which the ILWU was founded, Local 19's officers duped a tiny minority of the local's membership present at last Thursday's stop-work meeting into a sell-out of unparalleled proportions.

On August 9th, on behalf of the Port Labor Relations Committee, President Herald Ugles tabled a "Continuous Operation Document" (see attachment) between the local union and Stevedoring Services of America Terminals, which will eliminate unit breaks at Terminal 18 in the Port of Seattle. The motion to adopt the new work rules, in exchange for at most five more jobs on container operations--although the memorandum's language itself is so vague that even this slight gain in manning is not even for sure--was passed by a slim majority at the tiny and unrepresentative meeting.

The underhanded tactics used by the Ugles/Manwell/Ventoza regime to ensure the membership meeting would be tiny and then to blackmail those members who did show up into passing the give-back measure have been the subject of lively debate around the Seattle waterfront in the days since the August 9th meeting.