Collette Melia and Sue Mitchell (speaking)
of Women of the Waterfront with former A.E.Staley hunger striker Dan Lane
(on right, in purple sweatshirt) at the Detroit Free Press strikers' rally.Photo: Bruce Allen
Collette Melia and Sue Mitchell (speaking)
of Women of the Waterfront with former A.E.Staley hunger striker Dan Lane
(on right, in purple sweatshirt) at the Detroit Free Press strikers' rally.
Photo: Bruce Allen
Exhausted but radiant after nine flights and countless meetings in their non-stop 19 day tour of the US West Coast and MidWest, Collette Melia and Sue Mitchell are "just now beginning to absorb this absolutely wonderful experience".
In Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Astoria, and Los Angeles the Women of the Waterfront found a hidden America - strawberry pickers, machinists, poets, health workers, musicians, teachers, journalists, longshoremen and women - and recognised each other.
"It was a shock to see the same things happening," says Sue. "We told them about Blair and Europe, they told us about Clinton and NAFTA. But they were amazed that housewives would get this involved in an industrial dispute. I felt we had to make them know the full story and sense the pain and suffering we've gone through in the last 19 months."
"People who already knew about the dispute responded to meeting us in person," Collette adds. "Because we are able to talk emotionally about the impact of the dock company on our home life, people react differently. When we spoke to 400 longshoremen at 6 a.m. from the dispatch box in the ILWU Local 13 hiring hall in Los Angeles, you could have heard a pin drop."
A few hours after landing in Chicago, the WOWs flew to Detroit for the "Labor Notes" conference to greet the plenary and lead a two hour workshop, meeting Mexican strawberry pickers, Detroit newspaper strikers, Canadian activists... They were also pleased to find delegates from the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) including Pilots and Mates President Tim Brown. He was surprised an d annoyed to learn that transatlantic shipper ACL returned to Liverpool last summer after leaving for a month in the wake of industrial action on the East coast and in Sweden.
In a workshop on globalisation, Collette explained how the sacked men had to reach out for support given the 1989 defeat of dockers' organisation in Britain and the press blackout which surrounded Liverpool in the first year of the Lockout. Detroit postal workers took the point. They want to contact their counterparts in Britain.
Back in Chicago for the premiere of "All for One", a new video edited by Larry Duncan of "Labor Beat" on the January 1997 world-wide dockers' actions, union activists including lecturers and writers packed into "The Bookstore". They discussed the run up to the Lockout, when a new flexible 12 hour shift system with men called back to work after a few hours sleep wrecked any semblance of home life.
Nobody got much sleep in Chicago either. Then it was off to San Francisco. Three hours after landing WOW were in Oakland for a rally with water workers at "East Bay Mud", where big pay cuts were being imposed. "We could feel their bitterness like ours," says Sue, "and we told them 'organise now - don't wait for management to split you'."
Walking through San Francisco she recognised Jack Hirschman, whose verse for Liverpool and Korea caught her eye and ear in the video.
At midnight before a 5 am flight to Seattle, the women stopped off at the airport mechanics (Machinists Local 1781) AGM. From here on, it was the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) who took them to heart. In their homes, dispatch halls, docks, and bars, the union showed Women of the Waterfront how deep their committment to Liverpool runs. In January, the ILWU shut down 7 major ports for 8 hours in solidarity and every coastal port in Oregon struck for 24 hours. Casualisation, privatisation and deregulation threaten the West Coast as well.
In Seattle, Local 19 President Larry Hanson introduced Sue and Collette to a mass meeting in the hiring hall, where a "tarpaulin muster" (passing the hat) raised $1000. The WOWs were especially touched because they'd come to thank the longshoremen for the financial support they were already giving. It was here, speaking to the clerks, that Sue found size XXX men in tears as they relived the dispute. "They told us we'd reinforced them 110%," says Collette. "We'd come at a crucial time, with the threat of new berths being set up based on non-longshore labor." Local 52 (Supercargoes, Supervisors and Checkers) Secretary James Dean assured them, "No-one will lose their homes in Liverpool. We'll see to that."
Local 23 in Tacoma invited WOW into their own highly sensitive discussion on discrimination against women within the union. "We weren't sure we should be here, but they insisted," says Collette. "We raised $1,300 in another muster, and then spoke to the ILWU paper 'The Dispatcher'."
Jean Sundet, an ex-longshore worker herself, and another longshoreman took the pair around Portland docks where they saw a Toyota ship off-loading. Delegates just back from the ILWU Convention in Hawaii where Liverpool dockers Bobby Morton and Tony Nelson had spoken, now assured WOW of their continued support. Collette and Sue were told, "We'll be going to Montreal. We've got to inflict more damage on Mersey Docks." Lois Stranahan insisted "It shouldn't have gone on so long. How in 1997 have we allowed this to continue for such a long period of time?"
Astoria is a small port at the mouth of the Columbia. The grain terminal has been knocked down and ships which once stopped here now sail by to Portland. The Local 50 longshoremen follow them, when they get the call. Jerry Bitz, President of Portland's Local 40, says it's "heartbreaking to see Astoria, despite their own problems, going out to raise money for Liverpool."
Back in San Francisco, Sue and Collette met up with Whitey Disley, President of the Marine Fireman's Union. A few years ago, Whitey shipped out of Liverpool where his nephew Peter Wharton is now a sacked gigboatman. Disley inspired Major League Soccer Players Association Executive Director John Kerr to write to Liverpool star Robbie Fowler congratuling him for wearing the dockers' t-shirt on the field. Kerr told UEFA of his dismay at the fine they imposed on Fowler!
By now, radio stations were queuing up for interviews. Sue and Collette joined Jack Heyman (ILWU Local 10) in a live link to Magic FM in Liverpool. KPFG in Oakland recorded an in-depth studio interview, scheduled for broadcast on May Day. The radio station is itself fighting de-unionisation. The journalists were to meet management just after taping WOW and told them "it's really put us in the mood."
Video producer Steve Zelzer had coordinated much of the tour as a member of the International Committee for the Victory of the Liverpool Dockers. An interview with WOW was transmitted on the San Francisco cable TV show "Labor On the Job".
On May Day, Visiting Nurses and Hospice workers organised through SEIU Locals 250 and 790 were on strike against wrongful suspensions and intimidation of union activists. Collette, herself a nurse and UNISON member, carried the WOW banner with Sue as marchers chanted "Stand Up, Sit Down - there's a Health Care Crisis in this town".
May 1st was commemorated in song and poetry at an International Labor
Solidarity Rally, as Nellie Wong read:
"...Now you are here
in these United States
You show us what it means
to fight back
You shut down dock gates
in half a foot of snow
and never thought two years ago
that your bodies would be
on the front lines...
Keep on, Women on the Waterfront
clang those gates shut
open up the battlefield
where your sunlit faces radiate
where one fine day
women and men workers
will run this world"
Robert Irminger, an activist in the Inland Boatmen's Union and himself on the run to Alcatraz from Fisherman's Wharf, got WOW into prison. But they skipped town and headed for LA.
Local 13 President Joe Cortez, Johnny Espinosa, and Hector Cepeda (of the Harry Bridges Institute, named after the former ILWU president) caught up with Sue and Collette in a workshop at the University where "All for One" was being shown again. Sue and Collette had seen a video on the life of Harry Bridges and were inspired by his determination against all odds. Sean Maloney had told WOW in Seattle that today, Liverpool dockers are fighting the Government, a profitable company and powerful shipping consortia just as Bridges had done. "And, we have a similar fight to rescue our union," says Sue. "The TGWU General Secretary is sitting back and watching 500 families suffer while it's left to the rank and file to fight on alone."
It was at the hiring hall at 6 a.m. the next morning that 400 longshoremen listened to Sue and Collette, spellbound. "Some of the older men told us they fear that the younger dockers don't realise what a fight we had to build this union. That's why it was especially important for them to hear our story of what can happen."
There's a new port being built in Espinada (Mexico) and a private railway line up the coast. The ILWU is making contacts across the border because they know the fight is coming.
"I was overwhelmed with the response we had," says Sue. "It's something I'll never be able to forget. To meet so many wonderful, educated and caring people, makes us feel we're not on our own. It helps the Women of the Waterfront and the dockers to recharge ourselves, both financially and emotionally."
"The tour of the West Coast was particularly an inspiration to me," says Collette, "meeting the longshoremen and the people who've been supporting us financially and physically since Day 1. I wish that all the men on the picket line and all the WOWs could have been there and experienced the depth of the support they've won."
Women of the Waterfront would like to thank the International Liaison Committee, the ILWU, and all the other organisations and activists who helped make this tour a success.
