Kees,
First of all, let’s be clear about one thing: dockworkers’ unions internationally need to build an effective response to the government/employer attack against the Charleston 5. They have come to symbolize labor’s struggle to defend its fundamental right to picket, strike, etc. in a global economy.
How that is done is obviously up to each dockworkers’ union DEPENDING ON ITS COMMITMENT, not necessarily limited by restrictive, anti-worker laws, as you would have us believe. When the time is right these laws need to be challenged. In Britain, Thatcher’s anti-worker laws, now eagerly enforced by Blair’s “New Labour” government, which you support, were boldly challenged by the Liverpool dockers.
Here, in Oakland, in the Neptune Jade action in support of the Liverpool dockers and ILWU’s subsequent defense campaign, longshore workers did not cross the picket line DESPITE THE ARBITRATOR’S LEGALLY-BINDING DECISION AND DESPITE THE PRESENCE OF POLICE.
And when the PMA (employers association) took us to court demanding a laundry list of union records, the port was shutdown, as we rallied in front of the courthouse. In the end the employers dropped their lawsuits. Some were even dismissed by the judge.
The ILWU, like other longshore unions, are relatively recent affiliates to the ITF. Some of us have a more militant history and somewhat different view of the law than that of the more conservative ITF. In organizing a labor action, it is one thing to take into consideration the laws of capital which bind the working class. It is quite another to blindly accept those restrictions in each and every case. That was the essence of my amendment in the conference document at the Long Beach on International Dockworkers Solidarity Conference. The lawyer concurred. That amendment was accepted unanimously, as I recall. I don’t know if you voted on that document.
Lastly, you mention the ITF’s Miami conference of 1997. That conference was called because of the awareness that the Liverpool dockers’ struggle had aroused in dockworkers’ unions internationally re: unionbusting privatization and casualization by employers and governments. Yet, incredibly, the ITF did not allow them to address the delegates during the official proceedings, when action could have been voted on and taken. The Spanish union, Coordinadora, that represents 95% of dockworkers in that country and did a stellar job in supporting the Charleston longshore unions last year, were excluded from your Miami “solidarity” conference.
That Miami conference was billed as a pledge of solidarity. However, a few short months later when an International Day of Action for the Liverpool dockers was being organized, the ITF did nothing to support it. ITF couldn’t even mention the “L” word, Liverpool. It was a struggle that could have been won, should have been won, if it hadn’t been for the betrayal of the T & GWU leadership.
We must not be afraid to criticize corruption, especially in the highest echelons of the trade union bureaucracy, if dockworkers are to advance. This is why it is important to learn the lessons of the Liverpool dockers, so they aren’t repeated in the Charleston 5 struggle.
Jack
