In the wake of PMA court attacks and with difficult contract negotiations just around the bend, a special Longshore Caucus is being held. Why? To fend off PMA attacks? To hammer out contract demands and strategies? No.
According to a leaflet entitled Volume: Not Loud Enough, written by Local 13 member Chuck Brady, ILWU International President Brian "McWilliams must be removed from the Longshore Division". Brady's main beef seems to be that he holds McWilliams responsible for deletion of the "lifetime benefits" clause in the Pension Plan description booklet. Yet, at the last Caucus, former ILWU International President Dave Arian, himself a Local 13 member, acknowledged that the change in language happened while he was in office. At an International Executive Board meeting last year it was determined that the PMA unilaterally made the change. One thing is clear: reinstating "lifetime benefits" language must be a non-negotiable contract demand.
Certainly, McWilliams has made mistakes in office, but so did every one of his predecessors, including Harry Bridges. There are remedies within the ILWU Constitution and Longshore Division By-Laws to deal with the malfeasance of officers, but none call for a registered longshoreman or clerk to be "removed from the Longshore Division". Our basic organizational structure, with the president as head of the Coast Committee, has served the Longshore Division well since 1941.
There have been self-serving attempts to change it, as Brady and others would do. Removing the president from the Longshore Division would cause a wild swing at the helm of the ILWU while navigating treacherous waters.
Some say that we longshore workers are better than the other ILWU divisions, that we don't need them, they're a drain on us. That's an elitist view. It's in conflict with ILWU's founding fathers who recognized that the whole of our union is greater than the sum of its individual parts. The organizing "March Inland" was a confirmation of that egalitarian philosophy that holds no brief for the "aristocrats of labor". Should we find ourselves on strike at the expiration of this contract, we'll need all the hands we can muster for mass picket lines on the docks.
Elitism and greed, the twin engines that drive this kind of anti-union thinking, don't give a damn about the hiring hall, "unskilled" or "B" longshore workers and our coastwise contract. That road leads to port by port contracts, because they're only looking out for "number 1". Unfortunately, in the last contract that attitude was encouraged when 9.43 skills were paid 30% above the basic hold and dock rates. Not enough for Brady, he opposed that contract because it attempted to eliminate lucrative "side deals". If not principled, at least, he's consistent. In 1993, he and another Local 13 steady crane operator Dan Imbagliazzo wrote a letter to then-PMA head Coday asking him to reject a Caucus-passed union contract demand to eliminate "side deals". Apparently, PMA agreed with him and rejected the union's proposal. To paraphrase then rank-and-file Caucus delegate, now Coast Committeeman Bob McEllrath: "When our union is in contract negotiations, it's like being at war. I don't know about you, but conspiring with the enemy in time of war is an act of treason!" They were censured by the Caucus which was held in L.A.
At the November 19, 1998 Local 10 membership meeting , Brady had the audacity to address the San Francisco membership on the question of "unity" in the ILWU. Coincidentally, he forgot to tell us that he voted for the Œ93 "Top to Bottom" contract that took away Local 10's travel time and that he sued the Coast Committee in 1996 in an age discrimination suit re: the permissive rule. He lost his suit against the union just last year.
Certainly there's a need for healthy criticism of union officials, but let's keep the resolution to our problems in-house. Unfortunately, some good union members have been taken in by these labor faking attacks on McWilliams. They're so angry over some of McWilliams' decisions that they're being blinded and then led by elitist elements within our union-- the same ones that opposed the last contract out of greed because they wanted to keep their "side deals" and to hell with the rest of the Coast. An expedient solution to the problem, a quick fix, is being proposed. Democratic debate (and there's no more democratic union than the ILWU) may not be the fastest, but it provides an avenue for the rank and file to clarify and act on the issue.
Local 10 members, in an extraordinary step, voted unanimously at the October meeting to instruct our Caucus delegates to vote down any changes in the structure of the Longshore Division which has served us well over these many years. We reaffirmed that position after listening to the complaints of Brady. The feeling of Local 10 members is that it's not smart to air our dirty laundry in public just before we go into negotiations with PMA. We need to unite under a program to fight PMA rather than foolishly attack each other.
The impending victory in the year-long Neptune Jade struggle shows the way forward for the ILWU. After PMA head Miniace threatened to pound us into the ground for displaying international labor solidarity with the Liverpool dockers, he has meekly agreed to drop the case altogether. While there were and are differences between our titled officers, in the end they were able to put ILWU's oars in the water and pull together. Vice President Spinosa and the Coast Committee did a yeoman's job of hard-nosed bargaining with Miniace, whose biggest fear right now is job actions on the Coast. Adding the necessary muscle was the July 22 shutdown in the Port of Oakland by Locals 10, 34 and 91 led by President McWilliams. Support from dockworkers' unions around the world, as well as from broad sectors of the public here, helped forge this victory. We won and PMA lost!
Instead of the Caucus wasting time and money blowing off steam, we should be organizing for the upcoming contract. We need to line up solid support from longshore unions internationally, which McWilliams has been doing, in Asia, Europe and the East Coast. We need to form maritime coalitions like the Harbor Coalition in L.A. and organizations like the Neptune Jade Defense Committee to develop broad community support. We need to implement job actions to enforce safety and the contract, and like last time stop doubling without exceptions. In short, we should be exercising our union's power to send one clear message to PMA.
