Open Letter To Paul Bigman And Labor Notes From Jack Heyman

Open Letter To Paul Bigman And Labor Notes From Jack Heyman

Paul,

I’ve been overseas for a while and just got back in time to help the Stop Zim Action Committee organize a successful community picket against the Israeli ship, Zim Shanghai, in the port of Oakland on September 27 protesting the genocidal Zionist killing of over 2,100 Palestinians, most of them Gazan civilians. In the best tradition of the ILWU not one container was handled by longshore workers.

On August 16, a community demonstration of a few thousand was called by Block the Boat against the Zim Piraeus. It delayed the ship’s arrival. The next 4 days much smaller spontaneous community pickets were organized and longshoremen honored the line. Zim tried everything to get the ship worked. Finally, after the third day they deceptively reported to Marine Traffic that she was sailing. She left the SSA terminal, headed out the Golden Gate to sea, but then made a Williamson turn and headed back to port, this time to Ports America.

Since there’s no contract in place some longshoremen feeling their power, refused to be shifted to the Zim ship behind the picket line. Others simply worked at a safe snail’s pace. One crane operator boasted barely any cargo was moved before the ship was forced to sail. Yet, the Israeli government disingenuously claimed cargo operations had been completed when the ship sailed. The Palestinian trade union federation commended that solidarity action. But, shamefully echoing the false Israeli statement minimizing the effect of the dock action, ILWU Communications Director Craig Merrilees appeased PMA and Oakland port officials saying "All the work was completed" before the ship left port at 8:45 a.m.” (SF Chronicle 8/20/14)

So, back to your Sept. 10, article “Grain Agreement Ends Lockouts in NW Ports” in Labor Notes, a magazine edited by Merrilees’ friend. You call the concessionary master grain agreement “a hard-won” contract. And you say that “Although the employers attempted to bring lower standards to the Pacific Northwest agreement, the ILWU blocked the majority of objectionable terms.” Both of these contentions obviously fly in the face of easy-to-document facts.

The truth is that the NW grain agreements ceded historic gains, gains that made the ILWU a powerhouse among unions internationally. Now, PMA companies salivating over the huge grain concessions, are acting aggressively in the longshore contract negotiations. If we don’t accede to their demands, they’re threatening to pull the tentative medical agreement or even lock us out. TRAPAC managers in LA were operating transtainers just as consoles are being run by grain terminal managers. TRAPAC, owned by Mitsui, is one of the EGT partners. Had ILWU taken strong action against EGT, the “standardizing” grain contract as Coast Committeman Sundet called it, we wouldn’t be facing such PMA’s threats today.

Yes, the NW lockout was ended but at what cost? ILWU’s history is to fully mobilize the ranks to drive off the scabs and in that way, end lockouts and win strikes. But in the NW grain lockout the McEllrath/Sundet leadership did nothing to stop the scabs who were taking our jobs and thumbing their noses at us as they crossed our picket lines. So, it was no surprise that they’d surrender hard-won gains to end the lockout.

The contract scuttles the union hiring hall, the heart of our union’s power, giving the employer control of the cargo hook or grain console and eliminates clerks. It allows the employer to use non-ILWU labor when work is stopped. It makes a mockery of our hard-won rights to honor picket lines, standby on safety, go to the monthly union meeting or honor the “Bloody Thursday” martyrs or any contract holiday. Maybe you don’t get the impact of these concessions because you never worked as a longshoreman or an ILWU member. You’re perspective comes from someone who used be a paid staffer at the International.

As you yourself admit the ILWU made major concessions: giving away control of the console (cargo handling operations) and the supercargo (No clerks jobs on the ships). The PNGHA got just about everything they’d demanded at the start of negotiations two years ago, using the EGT contract as their boilerplate. The danger of acceding to such demands by the grain monopolies was made clear in a signed leaflet by Local 10 and Local 8 retirees and members, veterans of many ILWU battles--Herb Mills, the late Leo Robinson, Howard Keylor, Larry Wright, Chris Colie, Delbert Green, Jack Mulcahy, Anthony Leviege and myself. (EGT-Longview Longshore Contract - Worst Ever!)

The real question is: Why did longshoremen in the grain ports vote 93.8% in December 2012 to reject the employers’ last, best and final offer which is essentially the same contract and now vote 88.4% to accept it? Portland Local 8, the largest grain port, voted down the Cargill/TEMCO deal (similar to the final grain agreement). And they tried to stem the tide of concessionary bargaining by holding rallies in the port but were blocked by the International. Local 21 members were not even given the right to vote on the concessions-setting EGT contract as is stipulated in the ILWU Constitution. You failed to report any of these pertinent facts. Could it be that after two years of negotiations and over one year of a lockout and scabbing, that longshore workers had no confidence in their International to stop the scabbing and get a better contract? Such lack of confidence in International leaderships was expressed in your Labor Notes article on the Machinists’ struggle against Boeing.

Starting with the EGT struggle, the ILWU International interceded to prevent mass mobilizations to stop the scabbing even though there was enthusiastic support for it from labor councils, unions and our allies in the Occupy movement. What frightened PMA’s McKenna and the ILWU bureaucrats most was longshoremen leaving work in the major Northwest ports of Seattle, Tacoma and Portland and shutting down those ports to protest the police attack on their sisters and brothers, including McEllrath, blocking a scab grain train in Longview. After that successful rank-and-file action there were no more mass mobilizations.

The power of ILWU on the West Coast docks lay dormant in the fight against EGT. McKenna and McEllrath were also frightened by the Occupy march of 30,000 into the port of Oakland protesting police brutality and in solidarity with the EGT struggle. The Occupy movement would’ve been our ally in this struggle but the International, made sure that didn’t happen.

The International, maintaining top down control, kept members isolated and intimidated. Disruption of a solidarity rally for the Local 21 Longview members’ struggle in the Portland SEIU union hall was led by ILWU bureaucrats. The following day the Seattle Labor Temple solidarity rally was chaired by Gabriel Prawl, a member of ILWU Local 52 and the A. Philip Randolph delegate to the King County Labor Council. ILWU members and an Occupy speaker were at the podium when it was physically broken up by ILWU officials, some members and staffers.

Paul, you had been an ILWU staffer and were there. Maybe you weren’t one of those who physically attacked the rally participants but you defended ILWU officials who did, at the subsequent Seattle Labor Council meeting. Where does Labor Notes stand on this egregious breach of union democracy?

A year later, when Vancouver and Portland longshore locals were locked out, they were pretty much on their own, valiantly picketing the scabs as best they could. A mass mobilization was never called by the International to stop the Gettier Security scabs at United Grain and Columbia Grain at the point of production.

In fact, Gettier scabs were first used in an ILWU dispute in 2010 against our locked out miners in Boron, California. The ILWU International warned striking miners that if they picketed scab borax containers on the LA/LB docks their strike fund money would be cut off. Not one scab box was stopped! ILWU signed a concessionary contract eliminating defined pensions for new miners, just as the Machinists’ bureaucrats did at Boeing. Although scabs were still working in the Boron mine, The Dispatcher declared a “victory” and it was dutifully reiterated in Labor Notes.

The key question in labor struggles is the picket line. The ILWU's Ten Guiding Principles addresses that question head on. “Labor solidarity means just that. Unions have to accept the fact that the solidarity of labor stands above all else, including even the so-called sanctity of the contract. We cannot adopt for ourselves the policies of union leaders who insist that because they have a contract, their members are compelled to perform work even behind a picket line. Every picket line must be respected as though it were our own.” The McEllrath-Sundet leadership has consistently violated this fundamental labor principal.

The picket line of LA/LB port truckers is a recent example of ILWU violating the Ten Guiding Principles by crossing a picket line of workers trying to organize a union to represent them against our same employers. We’ve heard the excuse that it was in retaliation against the Teamsters union which was backing the port truckers. The Teamsters union raided our warehouse local in Sacramento three years ago. This should have warranted a front page article in The Dispatcher, but there was not a word. Union officials directed longshore workers to cross our brother port truckers’ picket lines not only in LA/LB but in Oakland and other major ports where there was no Teamster backing. It has got to stop if we expect to gain support for ILWU’s contract struggle against PMA, especially since we’re no longer in the AFL-CIO.

Lastly, I think it’s fitting that your article appeared in Labor Notes which purports to cover the labor movement and support the rank and file. But, they refuse to publish an article in their newsletter signed by 14 ILWU and ILA longshore activists criticizing the ILWU International’s extending the contract for 3 days to allow the arbitrator to make a decision that the LA/LB truckers’ picket is not bona fide as per the PCLCD. The union should’ve defied the arbitrator as we’ve done before and backed the port truckers right to picket and join any union they want ILWU, Teamsters or form their own union. But, longshore officials ordered the men to cross the picket line.

Here’s the other lie, apparently told to Labor Notes by ILWU’s Communications Director Craig Merrilees, which they bought hook, line and sinker: ILWU and PMA stopped negotiations and extended the contract so that negotiators could go to Portland to nail down a contract. The Journal of Commerce, the maritime bosses’ voice had a good laugh on that one, but it’s interesting that Labor Notes bought it.

Paul, I’ve seen the destruction of a once-great union, the National Maritime Union. It was the largest maritime union in the U.S. and the closest ally of the ILWU in the CIO. NMU president Joe Curran during the anti-communist McCarthy period fingered union leaders like Ferdinand Smith to the government who was deported to Jamaica and purged NMU members who had built the militant seamen’s union in the ‘30’s. Some like Blackie Meyers found safe haven in the ILWU. Curran, with no opposition left, became NMU’s corrupt “general” and loyal shipowners’ partner making deals and giving up the union’s power, while the rank and file suffered the loss of jobs, benefits and working conditions. He cynically called his big yacht “Born Free” and each new contract a “victory” as jobs and membership atrophied. I was a seaman and NMU member. Sadly, today the NMU doesn’t exist. It stands for “No More Union.” Can that happen to ILWU? Not if the ranks wake up and change direction.

Jack Heyman #8780 Local 10 (retired) October 18, 2014