Distributed By LaborNet-IGC
As A Service And In Solidarity With The ILWU And MUA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 1998
The ILWU announced today Phase One in its strategy to assist the Maritime Union of Australia in its defense against the attempt by the conservative Australian government, the National Farmers Federation and Patrick Stevedoring Co. to bust the union.
The ILWUs International Officers and International Executive Board are calling on all its members along the entire West Coast of the United States and Canada to boycott Australian beef and produce. The ILWU is also seeking to have the AFL-CIO to add thes e Australian exports to its national consumer boycott list and is asking the Japanese dockworker unions, the Zenkoku Kowan, with whom the ILWU has close fraternal relations, to join in the boycott as well.
This is something we can do right now to help our brothers and sisters in the MUA, said ILWU International President Brian McWilliams. It will be several more days before any ships using Patricks scab docks can make it to our shores and time is of the essence. The National Farmers Federation is one of the main instigators of this attack on the MUA, so we will begin by targeting it.
Patrick Stevedoring sacked more than 2000 wharfies at its docks throughout the country April 7 and is trying to operate them with scab replacements. This is the first time in many ships in Australia have been worked by non-union labor. The union workers were run off the docks in a military-style raid and their picket lines have been attacked by police in some cities. Court injunctions and anti-labor laws are being used by the company and the government to restrict the MUAs industrial action response.
The ILWU sees this attempt to break the MUA as part of a larger global strategy by international shipping and stevedoring companies, and various conservative national governments, to bust dock worker unions around the world and to destroy the union movem ent in Australia. We will not stand for this kind of activity, McWilliams added.
