When Collette Melia and Sue Mitchell (Women of the Waterfront) spoke in Chicago at the New World Resources Centre their story touched Ray Lopez, who helps to organise some of the world's most oppressed maritime workers, Filipino seafarers. When he learned that the Norse Irish ferries use his countrymen to crew ships sailing from Liverpool, Lopez made his way to the picket line and spoke to LabourNet.
"I hope that the Liverpool strike creates the basis for genuine workers solidarity between English workers and Filipino workers, and other workers of the world. The whole world is watching what's happening in Liverpool.
"The Philippines is the largest supplier of seafarers in the world market, numbering around 300,000.
"There is a new form of slavery now, with ships flying flags of convenience employing multi-national crew at very low wages and under slave like conditions. They are subject to physical, sexual, and mental abuse by some of their white officers, and endure long separation from their loved ones.
"On the trampers (pirate ships) they often earn as little as $250/month, plus a $50 bonus in exchange for unlimited overtime. This is way below what is stated in the contract, which is simply not honoured.
"They can not expect any help from Philippine Government officials like the labour attache, who act more like agents of the shipowners than representatives of a sovereign country with obligation to protect their workers abroad.
"Social legislation protecting foreign workers lags behind the globalisation of labour. The foreign seafarers are welcome for their cheap labour, but they don't have any protection or other political rights in the country where they work.
"Under international maritime law, the ship's flag determines its governance. The ships are registered in Panama, Malta, etc. These are legal fictions to evade the owners' social obligations to the workers.
"In most cases it's the solidarity from the dock workers that enables me, as a port Chaplain, to advocate the rights of foreign seafarers. Because it's the dockworkers who first encounter the problems. They often call me, and if we cannot handle the issue we call the ITF inspector in the port."
Before becoming active in the "Philippines Seafarers Organising Ministries", Ray was an industrial organiser in what later became the militant May 1 Federation (KMU). In 1969, he began in US drug multinational Mead Johnson, where he became president of the Mead-Johnson Employees Union and was sacked after the first illegal strike under martial law. He then became full time organiser of a labour coalition that was the precursor of KMU.
Forced out of the Philippines in 1979, he ended up organising Filipino seafarers in Europe.
"We started the Philippine Seaman's Assistance Programme in Rotterdam. After several strikes, especially the 'Saudi Independence' strike, I was thrown out by the Dutch immigration police and ended up stranded around Europe."
Ray went to the US and helped organise foreign medical workers in hospitals and nursing homes. After 1994, he trained as a port Chaplain through the Philippine Seafarers Organising Program, affiliated to the local Filipino Methodist Church in Chicago.
"Most of my seafarer's ministry is concentrated in the West Coast, from Vancouver to San Diego, where I try to develop a network of support for the Filipino seafarers by linking them with the dockworkers, Churches, and other Filipino community base organisations and existing Seamen's Missions.
"In Oakland, I met an ITF inspector named Jack Heyman. More recently, he asked me to arrange a speaking engagement for Women of the Waterfront in cooperation with Labor Beat.
"In their talk in the New World Resources Centre, the audience was touched by how a group of housewives transformed themselves into an important component in keeping this historic strike alive. They spoke about the impact on their homes if the wages are lowered, the importance of a solid medical plan and pensions that were won by generations of struggle - one cannot put a fixed value on these hard-won gains. And I felt also guilty when the WoW women told about certain clergy who tempted the workers to settle, to sell the fruits of struggle. The WoW were very clear that these jobs are not theirs to sell, they also belong to future generations of workers.
"They spoke of the solidarity forged among the families and the dockers facing economic hardship. But they will persevere for theirs is a just struggle for the rights of all working people.
"After this talk I wanted to be part of this historical event and I realised the importance of winning the Liverpool dockers strike. The whole world is looking at this as a make or break struggle for the entire workers movement.
"I promised the WoW women that we will do everything to publicise their struggle in the States and in the Philippines through churches and KMU publications.
Sue and Collette also told Ray that Filipino seafarers work on the Norse Irish ferries. They have been used to do the dockers' jobs of lashing and unlashing containers.
"Another reason I am here is to find out more about this problem. Pitting one worker against the other is a well known bosses' strategy. I will do my best, through my contacts in the Philippines as well as other seamen's institutions, to educate the Filipino seafarers in respecting the rights of the dock workers.
"The sad thing about it is that even while our people are being exported like slaves - seamen, domestics, etc. - to serve the needs of the First World, this large pool of unemployed labour is being used by the bosses to bust unions and to cow labour as they are trying to do now with the dockers.
"That shows the importance of international solidarity. Of going back to the slogan of the IWW, An Injury to One is an Injury to All.
"I know this is a touchy issue, but workers must be very sophisticated in not falling for racist slogans, because the enemy is not the 3rd World worker, the enemy is the bosses, whether they are English, American or Filipino.
"Sometimes the race contradictions are being used by the bosses to skew the sharpness of class contradiction.
"There is a real danger of a working class racist backlash against foreign workers. We should watch out for it. If we don't handle it properly, it will keep on dividing our ranks. And a divided workers movement is no match for monolithic world capital.
"It is therefore in the interest of English workers to support the struggle of Filipino and other 3rd world workers, to attain just wages and working conditions so that your bosses will not be tempted to export your job or to import foreign workers to take your job right in your backyard.
"As long as the Philippines remain a neo-colony of the First World with 55% of every peso collected paid out as interest on foreign debts, to pay off the loans from your banks, you will always have large number of unemployed third world people willing to do any kind of job because their families are starving back home.
"It is only when concrete grass roots solidarity with union to union concrete relationships, with unions who are even willing to say 'fuck the international union', that we can have a genuine world solidarity based on the common interests of all working class people in the world.
"Long Live the Liverpool Striking Dockworkers!
Victory to the Liverpool Striking Dockworkers!"
