Youtube Free The Charleston Five Campaign And Reform Of The ILA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ophWV80ex34

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/2258

Jack Heyman: ILWU: on the anti-war dockers strike and Barack Obama

ILWU (US dockers union) Executive board member who organised first strike against Iraq war on mayday this year, speaks about the recent strike against the war and Barack Obama.
The Mayday action was the first labor strike against any war in the US, not just Iraq, that was a critical fault of the anti-Vietnam war movement, that we weren’t able to link up the labor movement with the anti-war movement. I know its happened in France, Austrialia and some other countries but never the USA.

Background to the ILWU
The ILWU really became a force within the labor movement based on the 1934 strike, when all ports on the west coast were on strike and there was a general strike in SF. A large part of the leadershpio of that strike came from the CP. The politics of our union came from the Stalnists of that time. In 1995 there was a founding conference of a labor party in the USA, we attempted to intervene on the basis of a labor party that would fight on a programme in the working class. But it was an idea that dried on the vine, in large part because the TU bureaucracy in the USA is joined at the hip with the Democrats and they will do whatever they can to stop an independent working class movement in the US.

http://www.lrp-cofi.org/TWU100/trackdiv_election.html

LRP Supporter Wins Transit Union Post

In June, track worker Eric Josephson was elected Vice-Chair of the Track Division in Transport Workers Union Local 100, the powerful union of New York City’s subway and bus workers. Josephson is well-known in the union as a consistent fighter for workers’ interests. He is also widely known for his revolutionary socialist views and his support of the League for the Revolutionary Party and the newsletter it sponsors, Revolutionary Transit Worker.

Josephson’s election campaign literature highlighted immediate demands of struggle for track and all transit workers such as the fight for safe working conditions, preparations for the upcoming contract struggle and for democracy in the union. It also prominently championed revolutionary socialism as the alternative to increasing misery under capitalism and raised a perspective of union action over a range of issues from racist police brutality and anti-immigrant attacks to the imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Josephson won election to the same post previously, in 2000, running against both the old-guard bureaucracy and the “New Directions” caucus which at the time had a reputation among the ranks as a militant opposition. This time Josephson did not face competition from other opponents of the incumbent leadership. His electoral victory by a 2-to-1 margin over a supporter of incumbent Local President Roger Toussaint certainly expressed a protest by many against Toussaint’s betrayal of the union’s 2005 strike and his increasingly dictatorial rule over the Local. But it also indicated the support Josephson enjoys as a well-known fighter against the bosses and the willingness of many to back his proposals for action.

NYC TWU Dissident Alleges Special Treatment Claim TWU Tilts Election

http://www.thechief-leader.com/news/2008/0523/news/007.html

Dissident Alleges Special Treatment
Claim TWU Tilts Election

By ARI PAUL

A candidate in a division election at Transport Workers Union Local 100 has claimed that the union's leadership is unfairly playing favorites by putting his opponent on release time and giving him lists of members in good standing with voting rights.

JOHN CHIARELLO: Local 100 playing favorites.
Line Equipment and Signal Division Recording Secretary John Chiarello is running against New York City Transit Signal Maintainer Shawn Welcome for one of the division's three executive board positions. The board position has been vacant since April 2007, when Richard Conte left the bargaining unit for a management position. Division rep Pete Foley, who is aligned with Mr. Chiarello, is running against Eli Harris, another division rep, for the vice chair position.

More Time to Campaign

But Mr. Chiarello, who was elected on the dissident Rail and Bus slate in December 2006, said that his opponent was put on release time, freeing him from his NYC Transit duties and giving him more time to campaign.

Meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, even as a growing political and economic crisis stoked fears in the United States and the rest of the world, a new caucus of North American railroad workers established an organization that hopes to spur solidarity, unity and democracy within and between unions that represent rail workers across North America. Caucus members came from five different unions in the rail industry, traveling from coasts, as well as north and south, to attend the proceedings. All came on their own time and their own dime.

In the AM session, those in attendance adopted the name “Railroad Workers United” as the official name of the organization, adopted a “Statement of Principles” to serve as a moral compass for the group, and approved, with a number of amendments, a set of bylaws to govern the organization until the next Convention. In the afternoon, nominations and elections were held. Eleven members were elected to the leadership body – the International Steering Committee (ISC). From this body were then elected an Executive Committee composed of three Co-Chairs, a Secretary and a Treasurer. Finally three Trustees were elected. For a complete listing of those elected to lead RWU, see the listing that accompanies this article. Finally, the participants passed twelve resolutions ranging from safety issues to contracting out work, from questions of diversity in the workforce to support for West Coast dockworkers union members protesting the Iraq War. For a comprehensive listing of the Resolutions passed, see the list below. For the full text of the Resolutions that were passed by the Convention, please see the RWU website

South Carolina Primary Colors: Black and White?

By Greg Palast

27/01/08 "ICH

" -- - South Carolina 2000: Six hundred police in riot gear facing a few dozen angry-as-hell workers on the docks of Charleston. In the darkness, rocks, clubs and blood fly. The cops beat the crap out of the protesters. Of course, it's the union men who are arrested for conspiracy to riot. And of course, of the five men handcuffed, four are Black. The prosecutor: a White, Bible-thumping Attorney General running for Governor. The result: a state ripped in half - White versus Black.

South Carolina 2008: On Saturday, the Palmetto State may well choose our President, or at least the Democrat's idea of a President. According to CNN and the pundit-ocracy, the only question is, Will the large Black population vote their pride (for Obama) or for "experience" (Hillary)? In other words, the election comes down to a matter of racial vanity.

The story of the dockworkers charged with rioting in 2000 suggest there's an awfully good
reason for Black folk to vote for one of their own. This is the chance to even the historic score in this land of lingering Jim Crow where the Confederate Flag flew over the capital while the longshoreman faced Southern justice.

Originally published on the IWW Website

By Ron Kaminkow

Rail Labor activists from across North America are coming together to form a new cross-craft inter-union caucus that includes all rail workers in North America. Membership is open to union members from all the various unions (once known as the “brotherhoods”) in this new organization. In addition, special efforts will be made to include Canadian and Mexican workers as well.

To build this broad based unity and solidarity, the activists have launched Railroad Workers United (RWU). “We want everyone to understand that we are not creating another rail union to compete with those already in existence”, explains Jon Flanders, member of Machinists #1145 in Selkirk, NY. “Instead, we are creating an industry-wide caucus where we can all come together to help each other build the solidarity, support, democracy and strength that is missing in our individual craft unions. Who knows what the potentials and possibilities could be for such an organization of all rail labor.”

By Jack Heyman - Nov. 12, 2007

In an unprecedented dictatorial move, the federal government has stopped Local 10 from holding union elections. For 70 years the federal government has tried but was never able to run our elections. How is that possible for such a democratic and militant union? Because two disgruntled members who were disqualified by our Constitution from running for office in 2005 and 2006, they went to the Department of Labor with their complaints. Rather than take their case to the membership for a democratic vote through a Constitutional amendment, they brought in the feds.

On Nov. 4, 2007, federal judge Vaughn Walker ordered the elections canceled and a Department of Labor-supervised election in its place. Is it an accident if the feds prevent the Local 10 membership from electing officers and delegates to the Contract Caucus which will determine our contract demands and negotiators? During the last contract negotiations, the Bush administration threatened to occupy the West Coast docks with troops if there were any job actions. Then after the employers, PMA, locked us out, Bush forced us back to work under the slave-labor Taft-Hartley Act. That’s the class nature of the government, pure and simple—to front for the employers, to do their dirty work.

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.