Original message sent 01 September 2007:

Brothers and Sisters,

Tonight the San Francisco Central Labor Council voted unanimously to endorse and support our conference.  The motion, made by ILWU Local 34 delegate Glen Ramiskey, was  seconded and motivated by delegates from the Machinists' Union, SEIU and the SF teachers' union.

Ramiskey, in an impassioned appeal, reminded the delegates that the war abroad is inextricably linked to the war at home. He pointed out that just last week two black ILWU Local 10 longshoremen were maced beaten and arrested in the port of Sacramento by private security guards and the Sheriff's Dept. as part of the "war on terror".* He appealed to the union delegates to support the conference motion and to organize workers' actions against the war through their unions.

Endorsements for the conference now include the British Rail Maritime & Transport Union, Japanese Doro-Chiba, NYC Labor Against the War, and UTLA, the teachers' union in Los Angeles.

The vice-president of the South African Transport Workers Union will speak at the Conference.

- Jack Heyman.  For more info on the conference, contact me at:  jackheyman@comcast.net

By Joseph Plaster - San Francisco Bay Guardian, July 17, 2007

More than 100 tractor trailers were lined up at 6:30 a.m., inching toward the Port of Oakland's Terminal 7, waiting for their next load. Against the backdrop of the San Francisco skyline, a mammoth freight ship emblazoned with the name Hyundai glided toward the port, pregnant with multicolor shipping containers.

A driver told the Guardian that he expected to be in line for at least two hours waiting to drop off the empty container attached to his big rig. His 1989 truck lacks air-conditioning, so the windows were rolled down, allowing diesel exhaust to pollute the air he was breathing.

It's the same scene at many of the port's other terminals: long lines of ancient trucks slowly snaking toward their destinations, their primarily immigrant drivers performing the essential and thankless task of transporting cheap clothes from Asia to the nation's big-box retailers or helping to export California's agricultural goods to Hawaii.

The fourth-busiest container port in the nation, the Port of Oakland is the economic engine of the region, providing thousands of jobs and more than $1 billion in revenue. But activists say that the port system has also led to sweatshoplike conditions for truckers and created a health crisis for the surrounding community.

By Gordon Smith - COPLEY NEWS SERVICE, July 1, 2007

LOS ANGELES – The attitude that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have toward talk of a proposed megaport in the remote Baja California bay of Colonet might be summed up in three words: What, me worry?

Predicting that a river of Asian cargo flowing into the United States will continue to swell for at least the next 13 years, officials at the two Los Angeles-area ports – the largest by volume in the nation – say there's likely to be plenty of freight for everyone even if the Mexican port is built 150 miles south of San Diego.

“The sense right now is that there's enough cargo to go around. We're not seeing developments like Punta Colonet as being threatening to our port,” said Mike Christensen, deputy executive director for development for the Port of Los Angeles. “We're looking at it as a safety valve as much as anything else.”

Port of Long Beach spokesman Art Wong agreed. “Realistically, we can't handle all of the growth,” he said.

Still, as delays dog the proposed port in Baja, the two Los Angeles-area ports – together with their related agencies and private partners – are gearing up to spend billions of dollars to expand container terminals, replace bridges, streamline rail and freeway connections, and make other major infrastructure improvements.

Hands Off Iraqi Oil!

WHEREAS, in the opening days of the 2003 Iraq invasion, US soldiers were ordered to protect the Oil Ministry, oil fields and refineries while wholesale looting of Iraq’s antiquities unfolded. The message to Iraqis was clear: “We’ve come for the oil.” There were no weapons of mass destruction. Rather than democracy, the US brought massive destruction and civil war to Iraq; and

WHEREAS, giving credence to Iraqi fears, the oil cartel has prepared a new Oil Law which, if enacted by the parliament, will put effective control of Iraq’s vast oil resources in the hands of foreign companies. Nationalized since 1975, Iraq’s oil was, before the years of US sanctions and invasions, the foundation for a relatively high standard of living, producing more PhD’s per capita than the U.S. and a health care system prized as the best in the region; and

WHEREAS, President Bush says the war is not about oil but his actions belie that claim. Before the 2003 invasion, the State Dep’t “Oil & Energy Working Group” met to plan how to open Iraq to foreign oil companies. The proposed new Oil Law is virtually a photocopy of the “Options” plan first conceived in Texas long before the US occupied Iraq. The law would create an Oil & Gas Council, on which would sit representatives of Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, BP, etc., whose tasks include approving their own contracts; and

Written by Leslie Radford  - Friday, 27 April 2007

Independent truckers announce the LA port will shut down on May 1, the first victory for the 2007 May Day Mobilization for Immigrants' Rights.

PORT OF AZTLAN, April 27, 2007--The independent truckers of the Port of Aztlan, working with the Industrial Workers of the World, made good on their promise to shut down the Los Angeles port on May 1, in support of nationwide migrants' rights protests scheduled for that day and the truckers' struggle to organize.  This morning the Los Angeles Port Authority declared the port would be closed for a May 1 "holiday," thereby avoiding potential litigation from shippers facing dockers' and demurrage fees for goods left on the dock during the truckers' strike.

Ernesto Nevarez, spokesperson for the truckers, explained, "[The Port Authority] knows the truckers are going to do it [strike] anyway.  By calling it a legal holiday, they avoid liability for the shutdown.  We forced them to recognize May Day."

The announcement culminated several months' worth of planning, according to the IWW representative at the Harbor protest this morning, who added that he hoped that "the Port Authority would make May Day a regular holiday, and that the troqueros would remember it every year."

According to the IWW organizer, independent truckers of the Port of Aztlan lost their right to organize thirty years ago, during the deregulation of the Reagan presidency.  The IWW has joined with trucking organizers to "assist with their organizing."

Several truckers promised to use their day off on May 1 to join hunger strikers for immigrants' rights now in their fifth day of a fourteen-day strike at the feet of  La Virgen de Guadalupe mural outside La Placita Church.  Navarez recalled the independent truckers 2006 port shutdown in conjunction with last year's May 1 immigration boycott and their commitment to the May Day 2007 National Mobilization to Support Immigrant Workers.  "Migrants are just the victims of the global economy and politics, people who want to survive.  That's why we're out here."  Nearly every other truck honked for the half-dozen guys packing up their signs calling for the May Day strike, while two police cars parked just down the block watched the developments.

By Meredith Schafer and Chris Kutalik - Monthly Review, October 5, 2006 

Millions of dollars worth of goods sat unmoved on the docks of the United States' largest port, Los Angeles/Long Beach, as port truckers, mostly Latino immigrants, struck on May 1.  Despite being organized only informally in small networks, the truckers were able to use their position at a vital point in the economy to multiply their power.

Let's skip ahead to 2008 and imagine an even grander scenario.  Instead of a small, determined group in one locale mining a strategic position, imagine the power of hundreds of thousands of workers who control the flow of goods -- from the docks to the airports to the truck barns and package centers -- using their leverage in one concerted, nationwide effort.

Sound like fantasy?  In the spring and summer of 2008, master contracts will expire throughout the economically vital transportation, warehousing, and distribution industries, giving unions in those linked areas the rare, strategic opportunity to make an impressive show of force against employers.

By Richard D. Vogel - Monthly Review [1], February 2006.

—General Porfirio Díaz, President of Mexico, 1877–1911

Capital’s relentless search for cheap labor constantly alters the flow of surface transportation in North America with widespread consequences. The end-of-century deindustrialization of the United States and importation of cheap commodities from the Far East through the West Coast reversed historical east-west transportation patterns and established Los Angeles and Long Beach as the largest ports in the nation. To minimize transportation costs, which for many products are higher than the cost of production, intermodal transportation of containerized imports was developed. Manufactured goods are packed into mobile shipping containers at factories in the Far East and travel by ship, train, and truck to distribution centers and, ultimately, consumer outlets across the United States. Currently, intermodal transportation of cheap imported commodities is the lifeline of the American economy. In 2004, the Port of Los Angeles processed 7.3 million container units and Long Beach handled 5.8 million. These two ports alone accounted for 68 percent of the West Coast total and are, by far, the largest employers in California. U.S. workers, who have seen so many lucrative manufacturing jobs moved overseas, assumed that import transportation and distribution jobs could not be offshored and were, therefore, relatively secure.