Copyright 1998 by Bay City News
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998
Lawyers for dockworkers and union activists asked a judge today to dismiss a lawsuit by the shipping industry stemming from a job action at the Port of Oakland that stopped a ship from being unloaded. Last Sept. 28, demonstrators met the incoming Neptue Jade with a picket line.
They were part of an international effort by labor and pro-labor groups to show solidarity with 500 dockworkers in Liverpool, England, who had been fired two years earlier and replaced by nonunion hands. The Neptune Jade's cargo had been handled in Thamesport, England, by the unionists' former employer.
The Pacific Maritime Association, the shipping industry's West Coast collective bargaining agent, and companies disrupted by the four-day picket line maintain that the demonstration was illegal and cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The demonstrators say their actions were legal and the lawsuit should be thrown out because it is an intrusion into their First Amendment rights and an attempt to scare off such picketing in the future.
After hearing arguments today, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Henry Needham Jr., took the case undersubmission and said he will decide later this week whether to grant the union activists' bid to have the case dismissed.
If the case is not dismissed, it will proceed to trial at a
later date.
