When Kenneth Riley, president of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422, returned to Charleston last week from the West Coast, he had two $50,000 checks in his briefcase and a new appreciation of how the ILA-Nordana battle here has made waves across the world.
Riley received the $100,000 after speaking to union dockworkers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The money is for a fund set up to help pay legal bills for ILA longshoremen charged in the Jan.20 clash with police.
“I’ve never gotten such a warm welcome in my life,” Riley said Wednesday of the West Coast visits. “They were really blown away about what happened in Charleston.”
The $100,000 comes on the heels of a $5,000 donation from the ILWU in February, and Riley said dockworkers in Canada may chip in another $50,000. He said the ILA has received offers and expressions of support from longshoremen in Spain, Denmark, England and Australia.
“The issue isn’t just about a small shipping line,” he said, referring to Nordana Line, which started using non-union longshoremen last year.
“The same thing is happening all over the world. What happened here has struck a nerve.”
After Riley spoke March 1 to members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 in San Francisco, the union passed a resolution supporting the ILA’s “courageous fight to defend their union jurisdiction.”
The resolution also condemned the state of South Carolina for “amassing a 600-man police force to suppress the (ILA’s) right to protest” and “seeking Grand Jury action against longshore union members.”
Last month, a union in Copenhagen offered financial assistance and said in a statement: “We understand that South Carolina is a right-to-work state and it therefore is a hard but necessary fight that you are now engaged in. With the help of fellow workers and the international docker community, you will succeed.”
Riley said the support shows how dockworkers across the world are concerned about incursions by non-union longshoremen who often work for lower wages.
“A few years ago, there was a non-union situation in Sydney, Australia, that’s a mirror image of what’s happening here,” he said. “Non-union labor loaded the ship, but when it got to California, the (ILWU) refused to unload it.” The ship eventually returned to Australia.
“We’re seeing a continued attack on labor organizations in the shipping industry,” he said. “Our viability is at stake.”
While dockworkers across the world are facing competition from non-union longshoremen, the shipping industry has its own problems.
Experts say the industry has more ships than it needs to carry the world’s cargo. This has reduced rates and cut into shipping lines’ profits, forcing them to merge and cut costs to stay afloat.
Union longshoremen are a tempting target, particularly in the United States where longshore work is a bastion of high-paying blue collar jobs.
A recent report on West Coast dockworkers, for instance, showed that a full-time member of the ILWU earned an average of $101,500 per year. A typical ILWU foreman earned $160,832. An ILA member in Charleston also can make $100,000 with seniority and overtime.
Union leaders say that good salaries are nothing to be ashamed of, and that longshoremen are important contributors to the local economy. Moreover, they say that working on the docks is dangerous and difficult.
It was in this volatile atmosphere, however, that Nordana, a small Danish shipping line, decided last year to end a 20-year relationship with the ILA in Charleston and use a non-union company, Winyah Stevedoring Inc. of Georgetown.
(A shipping line hires a stevedore to unload its ships. The stevedore, in turn, hires longshoremen. )
While Nordana is a minor player in the port of Charleston - it sends just two small ships here a month - dockworkers feared that if the line succeeded in bypassing the ILA, other lines might follow.
Frustration grew every time a Nordana vessel called, culminating in the Jan.20 waterfront riot.
Four longshoremen have been indicted on rioting and conspiracy charges.
The melee also encouraged state lawmakers to propose a bill outlawing union membership on state commissions, including the State Ports Authority.
“Everyone in the state ought to understand,” Riley said,“that if the state snuffs out organized labor, no one’s going to speak for the plight of working people.”
The next Nordana vessel is due in Saturday, and Riley said protests against the line will continue.
