The April 6 town hall meeting in LA featuring PMA head Joe Miniace and ILWU Vice President Jim Spinosa is billed as being “aimed at union members”.
ILWU members should beware when Miniace, that wolf in sheep’s clothing, talks about the “spirit of cooperation”. This is the same character who, in 1997, took the ILWU to court in Oakland over the Neptune Jade solidarity action with the Liverpool dockers and simultaneously tried to jam LA longies with a federal injunction against job actions.
As the announcement for this event stated: a video will be presented that “will stress the need to rekindle the spirit of cooperation by management and union that made the original M&M agreement successful”. The rank and file of the ILWU in several ports opposed the original M&M. It took the authority of Harry Bridges to sell the M&M, which according to PMA’s St. Sure made windfall profits for the employers. Longshoremen lost conditions, jobs and the hiring hall was undermined with the introduction of the steadyman system. Today, San Francisco steady longshoremen are trying through local negotiations to get out from under 9.43, as it shackles the longshore worker to the employer.
Our union’s strength is derived from the powerful coastwide maritime strike of ’34 which ended the employers’ shape-up with the creation of the hiring hall, effectively under union control. Now, if the ILWU “cooperates” with Miniace, the PMA will replace our hiring hall with a computerized dispatch system giving them full control of the jobs. No! No! No!
Let’s not get sidetracked by this snake oil salesman. Our future and our strength remains with labor solidarity here and internationally – just as it did in the ’34, ’46 and ’48 strikes against the shipowners and stevedoring companies. Don’t be fooled by Miniace’s phony appeals to the “spirit of cooperation.”
The struggle against PMA continues,
Jack Heyman #8780
