By William Brand and Harry Harris - STAFF WRITERS, Bay Area Insider, December 05, 2007

OAKLAND - A fatal accident that killed a man at the Port of Oakland Monday night is the second in as many months and has longshoremen worried about speed outweighing safety on the docks.

The accident occurred about 8 p.m. Monday on the Hanjin shipping property, 2500 Middle Harbor Road, Oakland. Police said a large truck struck and killed Edward Hall, 47, of San Francisco.

Hall, an employee of Hoyt-Shepston Marine, a freight-forwarding agency, was declared dead at the scene. Cal-OSHA is investigating the accident, a port official said.

Another death occurred at the port Sept. 24, when Reginald Ross, 39, a longshoreman, was crushed in a shipping container accident aboard a ship. The next day, Local 10, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, shut down the port in mourning.

Hall was not an ILWU member and longshoremen did not stop work Tuesday, but union spokesman Craig Merrilees said union members are upset.

"This could have been anyone on the dock," Merrilees said. "Longshore work is dangerous, but it doesn't have to be so deadly. Two deaths in two months is too many and it makes you wonder if all the shipping companies think about is time and
money.

It was a sunny day, right after lunch, when all hell broke loose for two longshoremen, sitting in their car, about to return to work.

Jason Ruffin and Aaron Harrison were approached by private security guards who demanded to search their vehicle.

The men asked to see the maritime security (or MARSEC) regulations, and one of them phoned the local business agent to try to clear up the matter.

Rebuffed at their search attempt, and angry that the two men didn't immediately acquiesce in this illegal and unwarranted search, the security guards called the West Sacramento cops.

While on the phone, both men were attacked, assaulted, dragged from the car, maced and jailed by the cops, without provocation, and charged with trespassing.

Trespassing -- at the job! Previously, the guys showed their Port ID, and the driver showed his driver's license!

They were also charged with resisting arrest!

If these were just average folks, perhaps it never would've made the news; but they were union members of the ILWU, the historically militant International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10.

Local 10 didn't take this lying down. Along with Local 34, the ILWU has called for union protests against this naked, unprovoked brutality.

Editor's note - The opinions of the author do not necessarily agree with or endorse the views expressed on our site. We include the article as an example of class struggle among transport workers.

BRENT JANG - Globe and Mail Update

In his four years at the throttle, Hunter Harrison has revolutionized how CN Rail does business, driving productivity, boosting the stock price by 150 per cent and making $56-million in 2005 for himself in his pursuit of a “precision railroad.”

Two years ago, Mr. Harrison published the term in a glossy book titled How We Work and Why, intended to be a Bible for Canadian National Railway Co. employees to follow and the source of inspiration at his so-called Hunter Camps.

At the two-day, motivational retreats for groups of managers and union leaders, the CN chief executive officer often opens the event by stressing the need to challenge conventional wisdom and being on alert to become more efficient.

Mr. Harrison, 62, can speak at the Hunter Camps for two hours without any text, personally preaching the importance of doggedly seeking to be more competitive and constantly looking for improvements.

Editor's note - The opinions of the author do not necessarily agree with or endorse the views expressed on our site. We include the article as an example of class struggle among transport workers.

BRENT JANG - TRANSPORTATION REPORTER; With a file from Gloria Galloway

Ottawa issued a back-to-work notice yesterday for striking Canadian National Railway Co. staff while a soap opera unfolded that could lead to a single union representing the best-paid train employees.

Hours before Ottawa issued its notice, about 340 striking CN employees reported for work as the walkout began crumbling. The strike by 2,800 conductors and yard-service employees enters its 13th day today, with CN management and the United Transportation Union far apart on wages and working conditions.

An estimated 600 CN managers have been filling in for striking employees across Canada, but rail service has been severely disrupted.

Federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said he plans to introduce back-to-work legislation tomorrow, clearing the way for the strike to end some time next week.

Read the entire article.

Throughout the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has forced its neo-liberal policies on Iraq at the barrel of a gun: opening up Iraq's markets, oil resources, and labor to exploitation by multinational corporations. The suffering that the Iraqi working class has endured as a direct result of this illegal war is beyond words. On January 27, protesters backed by unions and labor groups will march on Washington, San Francisco, and other cities nationwide calling for U.S. troops to come home now!

With at least 650,000 Iraqi civilians—almost all from poor and working class families—now dead as a result of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, the state of Iraqi labor is in a critical condition. Paul Bremer, formerly the top US administrator in Iraq, rewrote the country's economic rules to make it a neoliberal fantasy before he left. Furthermore, the Iraqi puppet government has continued to enforce Saddam-era anti-union laws as a part of the neo-liberal agenda. These laws prohibit union organization, strikes, or disruption of any kind in a factory or other economically important enterprise. Anyone participating in a strike or union activity in Iraq is subject to arrest by the occupation authority and treatment as a prisoner of war.

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.

Maritime Worker Monitor, a rank and file newsletter for maritime workers - Issue #8 • March 10, 2006; Editors: Jack Mulcahy, Portland • Mark Downs, Seattle • Jack Heyman, Oakland

There”s a lotta smoke being blown about the sale of marine terminals in U.S. East Coast ports from British-owned P&O to Arab-owned Dubai Ports World (DP World). Will the sale breach port security? If the anti-union Dubai port employers offered to train scabs in the Australian wharfie contract dispute in 1998 what will they do to the ILA longshoremen now? Are our jobs threatened by foreign-owned employers? Why is President Bush backing the sale of American ports?

Maritime workers need to take a close, careful look at this one. With all the orchestrated flag-waving going on it”s hard to see any difference between Republicans and Democrats, union officers and CEO”s, national security agents and politicians running for office.

To begin with the very nature of the maritime industry is international. It has been even before Columbus landed on the shores of America, trying to find a shorter route to the Spice Islands. Today, 95% of the dry cargo handled in U.S. ports is carried on predominantly foreign-flag vessels and most terminal operators in U.S. ports are foreign-owned. Our jobs depend on global trade. We”ve got a stake in fighting for union conditions on the docks and on the ships whether it”s U.S.-owned or foreign-owned. The same applies to outsourcing manufactured products like cars. The key is to make sure they”re union made. There are foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. like Toyota in Fremont, California that produce union made cars. Then there are U.S.-owned companies like Ford that manufacture Saturn cars in non-union plants in Kentucky. Keep your eyes on the union label not the color of the flag.

Whereas, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is now being placed on the fastrack to execute a black journalist and former Black Panther called the "voice of the voiceless" because of his courageous writing from Pennsylvania¹s death row opposing war, racism, and government repression against working people, and

Whereas Mumia, a partisan in the class struggle, has written powerfully on the side of embattled trade unions like the ILWU and the struggle of black people for survival during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and

Whereas, Mumia, an innocent man, was framed for the killing of a police officer of the Philadelphia police department which had been the target of three federal investigations into corruption, and