Report to the International Dockworkers Council
CHARLESTON FIVE solidarity march and rally in Columbia, South Carolina on the 9th of June 2001.
On the 9th of June 2001 approximately 5000 people, trade unionists, citizen rights activists and others, marched and rallied in Columbia, South Carolina, United States in a show of solidarity with the Charleston Five, demanding that all charges against those five trade union members be dropped. The Charleston Five are being charged for rioting, which could send them to jail for five years, merely because they were exercising their fundamental trade union right to picket. There are of course also underlying political implications concerning State Attorney General, Charles Condon, who is planning to run for the governor office in South Carolina and who has said that he will demand that the Charleston Five be sentenced to “jail, jail and more jail”.
The original trade union conflict was about the Danish Nordana Line bringing in non-union longshoremen to handle their ships. The longshore unions in Charleston ILA Local 1422 (longshoremen) and Local 1771 (checkers) started to picket the terminal where the Nordana ships were being handled and they were finally met by 600 riot police who attacked the picket-line, arrested some of the union members of which five were subsequently charged with rioting. The conflict with the Nordana Line was solved, thanks a great deal, by a move from the Spanish Coordinadora informing Nordana representatives that they did not intend to handle any containers being loaded by non-union dockworkers.
It was thus natural for the International Dockworkers Council to take part in the manifestation in Columbia on behalf of the Charleston Five especially when I. L. A. 1422 president Kenneth Riley invited the IDC General Coordinator Julian Garcia. Julian however had to take care of other business, which prevented him from attending, and therefore undersigned was asked to go instead as the IDC representative.
I was only too happy to accept the invitation and be able to take part in this great event together with other IDC affiliates such as John Poulsen from Copenhagen and Pat Riley together with other colleagues from Saint John Canada. I was given the opportunity of addressing the meeting to extend solidarity greetings from all affiliates of the IDC and of course to demand that all charges against the Charleston Five be dropped. I also had the opportunity to meet a lot of members of ILA Local 1422 and had the honour of addressing them at a dispatch in the union hall.
The strength and organisation of the longshoremen in Charleston and their union is really impressive - in a state (South Carolina) where less than 4% of the working population are members of a union, it is really extraordinary. The hospitality and friendliness of our brothers in Charleston is also something that has to be mentioned and that gives us all great hopes for the future and for an even broader international solidarity.
In solidarity,
Bjorn A. Borg
IDC European Zone Coordinator
