ILWU Local 21 Victory!

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As we go to press, the EGT conglomerate has formally recognized ILWU Local 21 as the bargaining represen­ tative for all workers at its Longview, Wash., terminal and on all vessels that load grain from that facility. Contract negotiations are underway and expected to be concluded on union-favorable terms in the next few days.

Until Jan. 23, few people in the labor and social jus­ tice movements expected anything less than a major class confrontation at the state-of-the-art $200 mil­ lion grain facility at Longview, Wash. The scab com­ plex was operated by the multi-billion-dollar Export Grain Terminal (EGT) and owned by three giant inter­ national agribusiness holding companies—Bunge Ltd. (one of the seven top grain exporters in the world), Itoche, and STX Pan Ocean.

The scene had been set for what might have erupted into a battle of the first order. That action would have been more akin to the mass labor struggles of decades past than the present spectacle of a class-collabora­ tionist labor bureaucracy acceding to the employers’ every incursion on past contract gains won in class-struggle confrontations long ago.

On the union side stood the ranks of the small but battling Local 21 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). EGT, ignoring 70 years of ILWU jurisdiction over West Coast port jobs and its pledge to the Longview Port Commission to hire ILWU workers, instead utilized the General Contractors or­ ganization to hire some 10 to 50 workers from the In­ ternational Union of Operating Engineers, Local 701, in a blatant scab-herding endeavor.

On the ruling-class side, the Obama administra­ tion had authorized armed U.S. Coast Guard vessels, which operate under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security and in collaboration with the U.S. Navy, to escort a cargo ship to load hundreds of thousands of tons of grain for export to Asia. Breach­ ing union pickets, EGT had accumulated sufficient grain via rail and truck shipments to fill this massive non-union storage facility, capable of loading a typical bulk-grain-carrying ship in 24 hours as compared to the week required at less mechanized operations.

This was the first time in 40 years that the U.S. gov­ ernment had authorized the use of the military in an overt strike-breaking operation. The cargo ship was also to be escorted by armed military helicopters. On the ground, police and associated military forces from throughout the region and beyond were readied to thwart any union interference.

To challenge this government-sponsored union-bust­ ing venture, Local 21 put out a broad call for ILWU and national rank-and-file union mobilizations—although it was by no means certain that sufficient forces would respond. Local 21 was also in close collaboration with the Occupy movement, including sending messages of solidarity with Occupy Oakland’s mobilizations that 6 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2012 Don Ryan / AP (Left) Longshore union signs ring the front of Cowlitz County, Wash., courthouse, Sept. 16. About 200 workers “turned themselves in” to law authorities after punitive charges had been levied against them for halting grain to the EGT scab shipping terminal.

unorganized workers, have good rea­ son to be harsh critics of the present union bureaucracy. But they are en­ tirely mistaken in any assertion that a movement lacking an organized class base at the point of production can substitute for a reinvigorated, demo­ cratic, and fighting labor movement, and especially one with an emerging class-struggle left wing aimed at the heart of the capitalist system itself.

This said, the vast numbers of these enthusiastic and dedicated Occupy activists see their fates tied to the vic­ tories of workers against the capital­ ist establishment and hail what they hope will be a resounding victory for the ILWU.

Class-struggle confrontations It appears likely that Local 21’s ranks will approve a basically sound con­ tract even if it includes some impor­ tant concessions that have previously been negotiated by ILWU locals in the region. History will record this struggle as among the first critical vic­ tories registered by class-struggle fighters in decades.

EGT did not eagerly return to the bargaining table. Its intention was to break the ILWU and set a precedent for future union busting along the entire coast. As far back as the 1980s the Pacific Maritime Association re­ ported, “We continued in 1986 to see a slow but steady progress toward an improved labor environment. Dra­ matic and essential reductions were accomplished in offshore labor costs. A clear reversal of a trend in long­ shore labor costs was accomplished in the East Coast and Gulf Coast ILA settlements, although a fragmented approach to bargaining was required to set this in mo­ tion” (emphasis added).

EGT’s filling its new terminal to the brim was accom­ plished with brute force, as local and regional police and company-hired goons repeatedly breached the fighting Local 21 picket lines. In early September, Lo­ cal 21, with some 250 members, and aided by ILWU locals in the region from Tacoma, Seattle, and beyond, mobilized over 1000 workers in defiance of a court in­ junction and entered EGT’s expansive 34-acre rail and trucking line complex to challenge the scabs and com­ pany goons head on. This ILWU mobilization had the added effect of closing down the Tacoma and Seattle ports.

By pulling the plug on several grain-laden rail cars, tons of grain were dumped onto the EGT terminal’s railroad tracks, while goons protecting the scab opera­ tion were “gently” moved out of the way—union style. Police and company officials later charged the union with “kidnapping” some of these paid union busters.

EGT responded soon after the September battle with a massive display of ruling-class power. They mobilized an army of cops and hired strikebreaking “protection agencies” to challenge Local 21 and its al­ lied picketers. They arrested some 225 workers and leveled a broad array of punitive charges against the trade unionists. But these workers were doing what unions are supposed to do in such disputes—close down employer operations and defend their jobs at the point of production. Fines exceeding $300,000 were levied against Local 21 by compliant judges.

The national AFL-CIO assisted the EGT scab opera­ tion when the federation ruled that the hiring of the scab workers from the International Union of Oper­ ating Engineers (IUOE), as opposed to the ILWU that had jurisdiction over West Coast ports for the past 70 years, was a “jurisdictional” dispute to be resolved by “arbitration within the AFL-CIO.” The Richard Trum­ ka-led American “Fakeration” of Labor, as the IWW used to call it long ago, bent to its higher dues-pay­ ing Building and Construction Trade Council affiliate as opposed to the smaller, 55,000 member ILWU. Local 21 calls for working class solidarity The ILWU’s signature solidarity credo, “An Injury To (continued on page 7, in “Longview port workers set an example for the entire”)