Interview with US docker on L'pool strike (fwd)

[Luciano Dondero <DOND001@xxxxxx>]

--forwarded--
>From: Chris Bailey <chrisbailey@xxxxxxxxxx>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <union-d@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Interview with SF Longshoreman
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>Jack Heyman is a docker from San Francisco. He visited Liverpool
>12-13 January on behalf of the International Longshoremen and
>Warehousemen's Union to express solidarity with the sacked
>dockers on strike since 28 September. Arriving in the wake of
>industrial action by rank and file members of the (East coast)
>International Longshoremen's Association who respected a picket
>line of Liverpool dockers in Newark NJ, Jack was given a standing
>ovation by the 500 men. He told them they were "reigniting trade
>unionism" all over the world.
>
>After a march and rally on Saturday, Jack Heyman spoke to Greg
>Dropkin for LabourNet.
>
>I haven't seen this kind of militancy for years, I'd have to
>think back to some of the militant miners strikes in West
>Virginia in the United States. But the support they're getting is
>astounding to say the least, because there hasn't been this sort
>of international campaign in a long time.
>
>Most of the cargo from Liverpool to the United States goes to the
>East coast. And so the rank and file longshoremen on the Atlantic
>coast have been refusing to unload the scab cargo. It is quite
>unusual given the state of class struggle in the United States.
>There's an atmosphere that if you go on strike you may not have
>your job. So to say that these East coast dockers have honoured
>the picket line in support of a struggle not in their country or
>their union but of another union in another country is quite an
>amazing feat.
>
>Unfortunately, Liverpool ships don't come to the West coast. If
>they did, I think our rank and file would respond in the same
>manner. However there are other ways that we can help, one of
>which is to spread the word around to other dockers unions
>particularly in the Pacific Rim and South America to support this
>critical strike.
>
>I think dockers are beginning to realise that the struggle here
>in Liverpool is one we can all identify with. The employers have
>been pushing casualisation everywhere. So to the extent that the
>Liverpool dockers are successful in combatting the employer here,
>it will have a ripple effect around the world. That's why
>solidarity is exploding internationally.
>
>LabourNet: The strike has had to go outside the law in Britain.
>What kind of legal constraints do American workers face?
>
>For workers to win struggles, we've always had to challenge the
>law. In the United States for example not too long ago, blacks
>were not permitted to sit at a lunch counter with whites. Blacks
>sat down at the lunch counters. It was illegal but it spread like
>wildfire and became known as the Civil Rights movement. But a lot
>of those tactics like the sit down which challenged private
>property, came out of the labour movement in the 30's. Our modern
>labour movement in the United States was born in the sit down
>strikes in the auto factories. Employers said it's illegal for
>you to occupy the plant. And it was illegal under capitalist law.
>However workers challenged that and won.
>
>LabourNet: What are the main organising issues for the ILWU now?
>
>As I said, one of the big issues is casualisation. The longshore
>union has jurisdiction on the docks, but the employers are
>attempting not to register any new longshoremen. I think they're
>called "permanent" here, we call them "A" men, or registered
>longshoremen. So we're having to fight the employers over
>casualisation, which essentially means organising workers on the
>docks. That's why this is not just a liberal gesture of support.
>It's rooted in a material basis, that if the Liverpool dockers
>win their fight against casualisation it will have a ripple
>effect in the United States as well.
>
>In the last few weeks the ILWU has had some good press, which is
>rare. I think the headline in the Journal of Commerce was
>something like "Aggressive West Coast Longshore Union Organises
>Unorganised Workers".
>
>These are not longshoremen. They're in the longshore industry.
>They're office workers, people that plan where the containers go
>on the ship. And you know quite often office workers are the most
>exploited workers because they put on a coat and tie or they can
>wear a dress to work and they think they're privileged, they're
>the aristocracy of labour. They don't even identify themselves
>with labour, they think they're part of management. In reality
>they're making half of what longshoremen make. So when we went in
>to organise the planners, mainly in the Port of Los Angeles, we
>met with great success.
>
>Of course there was resistance from the employers, they didn't
>want to recognise the planners as part of the ILWU and we had to
>persuade them otherwise. Somehow the ships that came from the
>docks where employers were refusing to recognise these workers,
>those ships weren't unloaded. So in very short order the company
>came around to a realistic position that they were going to have
>to recognise those workers.
>
>LabourNet: Do you think that there is any permanent possibility
>of international rank and file organisation and how do you see
>the forthcoming Liverpool conference in terms of that?
>
>Well I not only see it as a possibility but as a necessity.
>Unless the dockers can organise themselves internationally I'm
>afraid that unionised dock forces around the world will be
>decimated.
>
>Three years ago the ILWU sponsored the conference that brought
>together all of the dockers unions in the Pacific Rim trade. More
>recently a couple of years ago we sent a delegation down to
>Mexico in the wake of NAFTA, which we saw as an effort by a
>dominant US imperialism to claim the Western Hemisphere as its
>sphere of influence and as an attempt through privatisation to
>bust the unions there, and that's exactly what's going on in
>Mexico which is why we went down there.
>
>It's not easy to organise workers internationally. It hasn't been
>done in maybe a century really. There've been efforts at
>particular times.
>
>For instance in 1948 we had a strike on the West coast in which
>the government threatened to use the military to load the ships.
>Our president at the time, Harry Bridges, responded by reaching
>out to the European dockers unions and they in turn said to the
>government in effect that if the ships are loaded by scab labour
>they will not be unloaded in Europe. And that's what broke the
>back of employer intransigence and won the strike in 1948.
>
>LabourNet: One of the great problems has been the division of the
>labour movement through the Cold War. Does the end of the Cold
>War open up new possibilities for international organisation?
>
>Well it opens up new possibilities but you have to look at the
>end of the Cold War in an objective fashion, as a defeat for the
>working class internationally. I believe that the social
>ownership of the means of production is an advancement for the
>working class, and I think that that was destroyed with the fall
>of the Soviet Union and Eastern block countries. That has
>provided the capitalist class with virgin territory to exploit,
>and they're going in like the California Gold Rush in '49.
>
>The Eastern block and former Soviet Union working class is
>relatively skilled and the capitalist class has been attempting
>to exploit that internationally. For example on many of the
>foreign flagged ships, the officers will be from the Eastern
>block or from Russia and the crew will be Filipino. So for the
>capitalist class the demise of the Soviet Union has opened up
>opportunities.
>
>On the other hand it's given us the capability of reaching out to
>link up with workers in those lands, explain to them that the
>streets of America or Europe are not paved with gold, that
>privatisation means ever greater exploitation of the working
>class. And to the extent that the capitalist class here in
>England and the United States is increasing the rate of
>exploitation, it's driving workers to more desperate tactics,
>more militant tactics. And I think that's a good thing.
>
>We've taken for granted too long that we have unions and we will
>always have unions, and that's not the case. I think the working
>class is waking up to realise that we are an international class,
>and it's time to begin to organise ourselves to defend our
>unions, our standards of living and that's going to take an
>international effort.
>
>LabourNet: Are we entering a period where the whole concept of
>being in a union is under challenge, like the period before
>unions?
>
>We're really going back to the fundamentals of what unionism is
>all about, and that is directly related to the cockiness, the
>arrogance of the capitalist class internationally where they are
>pushing privatisation and the destruction of unions. In their
>minds there's a sense that they're completely unchallenged. I
>think we have something like only 15% of the workforce actually
>unionised in the US.
>
>So we're going back to the drawing table, going back to the
>basics and seeing what we have to do, what we haven't been doing
>for decades and decades, and we're relearning things. And
>hopefully this will lead to more militant tactics and more of a
>political class conciousness on the part of the working class.
>
>LabourNet: The East coast action in support of Liverpool
>contradicts the version of American politics reported over here
>of an enormous swing to the Right, the Republicans capturing
>Congress, Clinton in trouble etc. Does this mean that electoral
>politics doesn't have much to do with how workers react when
>they're presented with a class issue in America?
>
>Well I think that's in large part truth. Workers in the United
>States are politically backwards. They've never realised the
>importance of having their own party. And so quite often you'll
>find workers can be very militant in terms of a union strike for
>instance, but when it comes to the political front they vote for
>capitalist parties, usually the Democratic Party.
>
>Maybe there's a breakthrough happening now because more and more
>the Democrats do not differentiate themselves from the
>Republicans. A lot of the social programmes that were won through
>militant class struggles in the '30s are now being liquidated
>jointly by Republicans and Democrats. So I think it forces to the
>forefront the question of the political struggle being tied in
>with our economic situation.
>
>For the first time in probably 50 years there's a real
>possibility of a Labour Party in the United States. Now what
>shape that Labour Party takes, what its programme will be it's
>difficult to say at this point. There's a real possibility that
>it won't be a true independent labour party, that they would come
>out in support of the Democratic Party.
>
>I know there's a Labour Party in Britain, that it's been
>continuously more and more conservative, that they've given up
>their position for social ownership of the means of production,
>which for me is the basis for having an independent class party,
>a working class party. If a Labour Party or Workers' Party can't
>stand for social ownership of the means of production then it's a
>capitalist labour party or a bourgeois labour party.
>
>LabourNet, UK
>c/o chrisbailey@xxxxxxxxxx
>
>Any labour movement organisation or publication is welcome to reproduce our
>material. All we want is an acknowledgement. We can supply GIF format photos
>of Jack Heyman with the Liverpool dockers and other photos of the dockers
>fight on request.
-end-



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