OEA Press Conference on ILWU May Day Action Against War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw8lwKTguoo

On 4/29/2008, the Oakland Education Association held a Press Conference supporting the ILWU May Day Action Against the war. Speakers from UBC CWA UPTE, UTU 1740 and ILWU Local 10 rank and file leader Jack Heyman. Also joining the press conference was Cindy Sheehan who is running against Nancy Pelosi for Congress.

http://maydayilwu.googlepages.com/home

The Labor Video Project produces a bi-monthly labor tv show and also produces documentaries about working people and labor.
Labor Video Project
P.O. Box 720027
San Francisco, CA 94172
(415)282-1908
lvpsf(at)labornet.org

(http://www.cft.org/home_news/conv08adoptedres.pdf, page 52)

Late R E SO L U T IO N 32

May 1st Resolution

Submitted by Yvette Felarca, Berkeley Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1078 Committee Socio-Political

Be it resolved that the CFT will publicly support state-wide and local actions on May 1st against the war and in support of immigrant rights, including the ILWU’s port-wide, West Coast shutdown, marches, boycotts, and other mobilizations of labor, community, and student organizations.

April 17, 2008

One Longshoreman's Opinion

Stop PMA's Phony Legal Attack!

Defend Our Union!

Support the Caucus Resolution!

Around contract time, it often gets hot between unions and employers. I've been in the trade union movement 50 years. (I joined the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union when I was 14 years old.) I have never heard an employer use such bogus arguments to deny workers their right to a union meeting particularly at contract time. Longshore workers, by democratic vote, have decided to stop work on May Day to stop the war, a war that most people in this country oppose. It's the war that's illegal, not our decision to stop work. PMA legal threats will only anger longshore workers, especially now during negotiations, a time when Local 10 has usually led the locals on the Coast in job actions showing our union's strength to bolster the Negotiating Committee. Our action was decided by a democratic debate at the Longshore Caucus and that's the highest body in the ILWU Longshore Division when it's in session. PMA can't change that decision.

The ILWU International requested to change the date of our stop work meetings in April 1999 and PMA agreed. The purpose for the meeting change was to lead a demonstration of 20,000 people in San Francisco to help save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent black journalist on death row in Pennsylvania. PMA didn't have a problem then and shouldn't have a problem now. We also had negotiations going on then and there was a helluva lot more shipping going on then. It's clear PMA is trying to test the will of the ILWU membership Our antiwar action has the backing of many trade unions as well as the San Francisco Labor Council, the International Dockworkers Council and the International Transport Workers Federation, representing longshore unions in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, “One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.”

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor’s power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S. Moreover, the resolution voted by the ILWU delegates opposes not only the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, but also the war and occupation of Afghanistan (which Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain all want to expand). The motion to shut down the ports also demands the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the entire region, including the oil sheikdoms of the strategically important Persian/Arab Gulf.

By Deborah Schoch - Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, July 1, 2007

Racing a midnight Saturday deadline, negotiators for port terminal operators and for 750 union clerical workers continued contract talks late into the night, hoping to avert a strike that could cripple the nation's two largest seaports.

Members of the clerical union at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach voted unanimously Friday night to authorize their leadership to call a strike if a new three-year contract was not crafted before the old one expired, said John Fageaux Jr., president of the Office Clerical Unit, Local 63, of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Longshore workers have pledged to honor picket lines at the twin ports, which together rank as the fifth-largest port complex in the world.

A key sticking point is a clause sought by employers that would allow the shifting of some jobs to other U.S. cities and to China, Fageaux said Saturday afternoon. "At this point, we're pretty far apart," he said.

The terminal operators' lead negotiator countered that job outsourcing is not an issue.

"We've proposed nothing that would allow that," said Stephen Berry, who is negotiating for 14 terminals and steamship company agencies. Instead, employers recently made a generous proposal that increases wages and benefits, he said.

L.A. port spokeswoman Theresa Adams-Lopez said the ports are not part of the talks.

"All we can do is have the port police ready to make sure everything goes smoothly," she said.

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.