Longview port workers set an example for the entire

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labor movement.

twice closed the Port of Oakland—once on Nov. 2 in the course of the “general strike,” and again on Dec. 12.

While no one knew the precise date that EGT would attempt to send its grain cargo ship up the Columbia River, the tension grew in mid-January as a grain ship set anchor at the coastal port city of Astoria, Ore., 30 miles from the EGT operation. Both sides saw this as a test of strength, which if successful on EGT’s part, could open the door to expanding scab operations along the entire West Coast.

It was in this context that rumors of an impend­ ing settlement began to circulate. At the initiative of Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, negotiations were opened between the ILWU and EGT on Jan. 23. A tentative agreement regarding arrests was reached that included the dismissal of most, but not all, of the charges filed against some 225 union activists and their supporters. It appears that the settlement con­ cerning the arrests has been approved by the ranks of Local 21. Since then, all six jury trials have dismissed EGT charges against ILWU members, indicating that the Longview community has no stomach for jailing courageous union fighters and their allies. The ILWU is pressing for the dropping of all charges.

EGT has bought out the contract it signed with the General Contractors, the agency that hired the Inter­ national Operating Engineers Union to scab on Local 21. At present there are no scab workers at the EGT facility—only ILWU Local 21 members. In the mean­ time, the grain cargo ship anchored at Astoria has left, thus eliminating the immediate threat to load grain from EGT’s terminal.

An announcement approved by the Solidarity with Longview working groups of Occupy Oakland, Occupy Portland, Occupy Longview, and Occupy Seattle reads as follows: “Supporters of the Longview workers are still planning to mobilize if needed, but are asking the caravans [organized to travel to Longview in defense of Local 21] to wait for official word on the contract negotiation outcome. If in fact the membership of ILWU Local 21 approves a contract, Occupy will mobi­ lize in celebration of this victory for the community of Longview and workers everywhere.”

There is no doubt that some minority elements in the Occupy Movement have made excessive, if not foolish, statements that dismiss the U.S. labor movement in its entirety and see the Occupy movement, despite its absence from capitalism’s central points of production and transport, as a present alternative to the unions. This usually anarchist and substitutionist minority, who have claimed to represent the “89 percent” of

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(continued from page 6: “ILWU Local 21 Victory!”)

One Is An Injury to All,” was put to good use as Local 21 initiated a call to the entire labor movement and all its supporters to mobilize in Longview to challenge the planned scab operation. Local 21’s call was enthusiasti­ cally supported by AFL-CIO-affiliated Wash­ ington State county central labor councils, which called on “all able-bodied workers” and community supporters to come to the aid of Local 21.

ILWU Local 10, based in the San FranciscoOakland area, allocated $10,000 to organize Bay Area caravans to prepare to join the Longview mobilization. The San Francisco Labor Council allocated $1500. Union lo­ cals across the country and AFL-CIO state federations, as in Wisconsin, passed resolu­ tions condemning the government’s use of the military to break strikes. Carpenter lo­ cals in the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construc­ tion Trades Council broke ranks with the Trumka leadership to condemn EGT scab herding.

A powerful new ally in the form of the broad Occupy movement joined the ILWU Local 21 cause early on. This was seen in the course of the Nov. 2 “general strike,” called by Occupy Oakland to protest the brutal po­ lice dismemberment and tear-gas and pep­ per-spray attack on the Frank Ogawa Plaza Occupy encampment and the police-fired canister-missile that fractured the skull of encampment activist Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veter­ an. In that action, 30,000 protesters closed down the Port of Oakland, with the obvious solidarity of ILWU Local 10 members, who refused to cross the Occupy “mass picket lines.”

While the ILWU’s International leadership took its distance from this port closure, it was not so passive on Dec. 12, when Occupy Oakland moved to organize a West Coast port shutdown in solidarity with Local 21. A message of appreciation from Local 21 Presi­ dent Dan Coffman was read out to the Oakland crowd of 6000 and widely publicized. ILWU tops in contrast, stood in direct opposition to this partially successful effort—instructing its members to cross the Occupy picket lines up and down the coast. Even here, a num­ ber of ports were closed, including Portland, where an estimated 4000-5000 mobilized.

When the Occupy Wall Street organization in New York City allocated $12,000 toward the organization of caravans to Longview and other mobilization ef­ forts, it was clear that Local 21 had a new and impor­ tant ally that was serious about mobilizing to defend labor’s cause.

The stunning reversal of EGT, embodied in its return to the bargaining table and the intervention of the Washington state governor to try to settle this dispute has no explanation other than an emerging and major change in the relationship of forces on the ground. It is one thing for a giant multi-billion-dollar conglom­ erate to take on a small ILWU local; it is quite another when that local successfully calls on its allies inside and outside the trade-union movement to mobilize in massive numbers to challenge the bosses and their capitalist state, that is, its police, military, courts and anti-union legislation.

Local 21 took on these powerful forces and, indirect­ ly, perhaps, the ILWU tops as well. The latter pledged to mobilize workers in Longview, while at the same time guaranteeing the Pacific Maritime Associa­ tion bosses that no other West Coast ports would be closed—a contradiction indeed!

If the ILWU bureaucracy had any real intention of challenging the union-busting effort at Longview it could not divide its forces and present a credible pow­ er at the same time. It could not promise the bosses in the massive ports of Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Oakland—and at every other port—that work would continue as usual while mobilizing in Longview at the same time. In fact, the most serious challenge that the ILWU could offer would be to mobilize the full power of ILWU’s Longshore Division to simultaneously shut down the scab operation in Longview and close down the West Coast ports.

ILWU tops bend to Taft-Hartley While ILWU’s international president, Robert McEll­ rath, pledged to support the impending Longview confrontation, his statement went to great lengths to affirm its obligations under the Taft-Hartley law to refrain from interference with what that reactionary law defines as “the full flow of commerce” (see Social­ Noah Berger / AP (Left) Occupy leads huge march through the Port of Oakland, Nov. 2, effectively closing it down when ILWU workers refused to cross the mass “picket lines” in solidarity.

List Action, January 2012, for key por­ tions of the ILWU statement).

Taft-Hartley, historically dubbed the “Slave Labor Act” by the labor movement, was passed by Congress in 1947. It explicitly prohibits juris­ dictional strikes, wildcat strikes, soli­ darity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picket­ ing, and closed shops. In short, it bans labor from mobilizing in solidarity with workers under attack.

Early on in the Local 21 struggle, one could argue that McEllrath’s statement was little more than a de­ fensive formulation aimed at official­ ly protecting the ILWU from future lawsuits and punishment under TaftHartley. But it soon became clear that “protective” legal language was not the ILWU’s intention.

When Labor Solidarity Committee members of Occupy Oakland and leading activists in Local 10 traveled to Portland and Seattle to join with Local 21 rank and filers and other trade-union and Occupy leaders at public meetings to plan solidarity mobili­ zations for Longview, the ILWU officialdom was outraged.

In Seattle some two dozen ILWU officials, led by three Northwest ILWU presidents, physically attacked a meeting of some 200 Occupy and trade-union activists gear­ ing up to mobilize for the then impending Longview confrontation.

The officials’ stated pretext for the disrup­ tion was that they were demanding to read aloud McEllrath’s statement, which warned against any efforts to close West Coast ports and against ILWU locals taking their lead from forces not under the control of the ILWU—a more than oblique reference to the Occupy movement. These ILWU leaders were physically escorted from the meeting but not be­ fore they had hurled a few punches and screamed vile and sexist epithets at a number of the woman who helped monitor the meeting.

Some in the solidarity and socialist movements have argued that this confrontation might have been avoided had the meeting’s leaders agreed to read and debate McEllrath’s fork-tongued statement early on rather than announcing that it would be read imme­ diately after the meeting’s speakers had concluded their remarks. Whatever the merits of this view, they are subordinate to the fact that it was well known in advance of the meeting that the ILWU officials aimed to disrupt the Seattle solidarity event rather than en­ gage in a fraternal exchange.

The ILWU’s top leaders judged with fear and trepi­ dation that their most likely tepid Longview protest might have taken on a different character altogether had the Occupy forces proved capable of mobilizing forces on the scale of or exceeding the 30,000 that had closed the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2. The ILWU ranks themselves could not be other than inspired by tens of thousands of working people mobilizing on their behalf.

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The labor movement — based in critical economic sectors such as construction, transportation, and manufacturing — retains the power to bring the system to a grinding halt.