[discuss-dan] Longshoemen need your help

[Doc Rosen <drdrdoc@dr.com>]

International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU)
=46or Immediate Release
January 5, 2001

Contact: Steve Stallone, 415-775-0533,
steve.stallone@ilwu.org
Freethe Charleston 5
Picketing longshore workers face felony charges, jail
for defending their jobs, five longshore workers-
members of ILA
longshore Local 1422 and clerks and checkers Local 1771
in Charleston,
South Carolina-face possible imprisonment on state
criminal charges.
They and some 150 co-workers planned to picket a ship
in their port
that was using a non-union longshore crew when the
state responded
with a massive contingent of law enforcement officers
and an
altercation ensued. The five have been indicted for
rioting, a felony
punishable by up to five years in prison. They could
face trial as
early as this February. The South Carolina AFL-CIO,
with the help of
the national AFL-CIO, has initiated an international
campaign to
defend them and their locals-one of which, Local 1422,
is
overwhelmingly African American.
"This is a very compelling case, one that brings
together all the
issues, voice at work and the right to organize, issues
of racial
justice and issues of democracy," said Bill Fletcher,
assistant to
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and AFL-CIO liaison to
the campaign.
Besides the criminal charges, the stevedoring company
that hired the
scabs is suing the two Charleston locals, their
presidents and 27
members for $1.5 million in alleged losses it suffered
because of the
picket line disrupting work. The suit raises the issue
of whether
workers can be held financially responsible for
industrial actions,
and raises the specter of bankruptcy for the locals and
these
individual workers and their families.
The trouble began Oct. 1, 1999 when Nordana Lines
notified the ILA
locals it was ending its 23-year relationship with the
union and would
begin using non-union labor to work its ships. The
local responded
with picket lines. After peaceful pickets resulted in
slight delays to
two Nordana ships, the state of South Carolina-which
prides itself on
being right-to-work state and advertises itself to
investors as having
the lowest rate of unionization in the country-decided
it was going to
break the longshore union's power.
To protect the "right" of some 20 scabs to work the
Nordana ship,
Skodsborg, Jan. 20, the state sent in some 600 police
in riot gear.
Some rode on horses and others drove armored vehicles.
Helicopters
circled overhead and police patrol boats cruised the
waterside of the
terminal.
"You would think there was going to be a terrorist
attack on the State
of South Carolina," Ken Riley, president of Local 1422,
said of the
police presence.
The police marshalled at the terminal and, for extra
provocation, in
front of the union's hall about 150 yards away. The
longshore workers
stayed away from the terminal, letting the police stay
out in the rain
and cold by them-selves and waste lots of taxpayer
money. Late in the
evening the workers reassembled at the hall and then
went out toward
the terminal to exercise their legal right to picket.
According to Riley, the police initiated the clash,
pushing back the
group of pickets. Trying to calm the situation, Riley
and other union
officers created a buffer between the police and the
pickets. At that
point one of the cops ran out of formation and clubbed
Riley on the
head. Then a fight began.
When it was over the police arrested eight longshore
workers on
charges of misdemeanor trespassing. At this point State
Attorney
General Charlie Condon rushed in, took the case away
from local law
enforcement officials, and raised the misdemeanor
charges to felony
rioting charges. At a preliminary hearing a judge
dismissed the felony
charges for lack of evidence, but Condon then went to
the Grand Jury
and sought and obtained indictments against five of the
defendants, on
the same charges that had just been dismissed. Condon
has made it
clear that he intends to prosecute the workers
vigorously and has said
his plan for them includes "jail, jail and more jail."
At the same time WSI, the non-union stevedoring company
that supplied
the scab workers, sued Local 1422 and Ken Riley and
Local 1771, the
Charleston checkers and clerks local, and its president
John Alvones
for $1.5 million in alleged financial losses.
Nordana came back to the negotiating table last April
and in three
days the company and the union came to an agreement
both sides could
live with.
Nordana said high costs pushed it to abandon the union,
so the two
sides sat down with the ILA contract to see if they
could find a
solution. The contract includes a provision called the
"small boat
agreement" for container ships with a capacity of 500
TEUs
(twenty-foot equivalent) or less. Under that section
working a "small
boat" requires the same wages, but some reduced manning
and only a
four-hour guarantee as opposed to the regular eight
hours. It turned
out that all along Nordana's ships had fallen into that
category.
Having reached an agreement with the local, Nordana
urged WSI to do
the same. But WSI pressed on, filing for a summary
judgment, claiming
the union was clearly at fault and the company had
obviously suffered
damages, so there was no need for a court hearing. But
WSI lost that
motion.
The company then amended its complaint to add the names
of 27
longshore workers to the list of defendants liable for
its losses. It
got the names by asking people under oath in
depositions to identify
all the workers they recognized from pictures of
earlier peaceful
picketing. The judge allowed the amendment, but warned
WSI that if any
of its accusations turn out to be frivolous, the
company could be sued
in return.
The locals immediately responded by filing unfair labor
practice
charges against WSI with the National Labor Relations
Board for
retaliating against the workers for exercising their
legally protected
right to picket.
Locals 1422 and 1771 met with WSI to discuss an out of
court
settlement Oct. 27, but the company wouldn't make any
reasonable
compromise. Riley said the local was willing to settle
the lawsuit for
some nominal amount without admitting any guilt because
of what it
could cost in legal fees to vindicate themselves.
"We have more serious charges to concentrate on," he
said, referring
to the criminal indictments. "We need to focus on these
other guys who
stand a chance of going to prison. If these guys are
convicted based
on being identified through photos, by just having been
there, the
next time there's a struggle and we have to go to a
picket line,
workers will be reluctant to picket."
Currently the local's attorneys figure the criminal
case will not go
to court until February 2001. In the meantime the
Charleston 5 are
still under a strict curfew that requires them to stay
home between 7
p.m. and 7 a.m. if they are not working or at a union
meeting and
travel restrictions that don't allow them to leave the
state.
The South Carolina AFL-CIO and the national AFL-CIO,
are mounting a
campaign in defense of the Charleston 5. They know they
have an uphill
fight.
"The Attorney General is planning to run for governor
next time around
and he's trying to make a name for himself," said South
Carolina
AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt. "I think he plans to
make himself a
name at the expense of these five guys."
The Jan. 20 incident happened about the same time as
47,000
people-mostly African Americans-marched and demanded
the Confederate
flag be taken down from the state capitol.
"That scared the Republicans to death in this state,"
Dewitt said.
"And here you have a minority local union that's strong
and is very
involved in the political roots of the community.
They're using the
longshore union as an example because they are strong
leaders and the
state doesn't want others to see them that way."
The campaign will seek the acquittal of the Charleston
5 and complete
vindication of the 27 targeted workers and the locals
and their
officers in the WSI civil case, while building a strong
case for
workers' rights and exposing the racist efforts of the
state to limit
Black power in South Carolina. The plans include
setting up local
defense committees in cities around the country and
organizing
national days of action.
The case merits such focus because the employers and
the state
violated many fundamental rights, Fletcher said. They
attacked
workers' rights to collective action in many forms, and
specifically
African American workers rights to a decent living and
full political
participation.
"What you have in South Carolina is a situation where
the police,
under the apparent leadership of the Attorney General,
are clamping
down on workers' rights to peacefully protest,"
Fletcher said. "If
they don't have that right, then effectively workers
there don't have
any kind of rights to organize, regardless of what's on
the books."
=46letcher also said the racial component of the
struggle, especially
because it is happening in South Carolina, home of the
Confederate
flag controversy, makes it particularly important.
"Local 1422 is a largely African American local, a very
important
segment of the Charleston community," he said. "It is
significant that
they are under attack because they are living proof
that unionization
is the best anti-poverty program ever created. You have
workers with a
decent standard of living precisely because they are
unionized and
organized. And I don't think that fact escaped the
attorney general or
other anti-union forces in South Carolina."
Riley also pointed out how important these union jobs
are in the
community. "These longshore jobs are the only jobs in
South Carolina
where a Black can really move up from below poverty to
a middle class
standard of living in a short time if he comes out and
applies
himself," Riley said. "It's the only job where young
blacks who may
have gotten themselves in serious trouble early on in
life and paid
their dues to society, can get a second chance. We have
so many
stories like that."
The longshore workers' commitment to the community
extended to
political action, and that brought down attacks on
union members'
democratic rights, Riley said.
"Our problems began when we started getting involved in
state
politics," he said. "We were trying to be socially
responsible to
those around us. We can't sit there and say 'We got
ours, forget about
everybody else.' So we wanted to start trying to put
people in
positions to change what's going on in South Carolina."
Labor helped elect the first Democratic governor in
South Carolina in
12 years, who in turn nominated Riley to the State
Ports Authority.
The South Carolina Manufacturing Alliance and the state
Chamber of
Commerce went berserk and managed to pressure the
governor into
withdrawing Riley's nomination. Republican state
legislators then
introduced a bill-dubbed the Kenneth Riley
Bill-prohibiting union
members from serving on state boards and commissions.
Its proponents
touted it as a way to reduce union influence in state
politics-in a
state where only 3.8 percent of the workers are in
unions. The bill
passed the House, but was killed in the state Senate.
Currently local defense committees for the Charleston 5
are being
formed around the country. South Carolina AFL-CIO
President Donna
DeWitt has requested all State Labor Federations to
take the lead in
the formation of these committees and urge their member
unions and the
Union Cities in their jurisdictions to get involved.
The committees
will try to bring in community organizations, civil
rights groups,
religious and academic institutions, and other
political activists to
help raise money for the defense fund and to be ready
to take part in
an inter-national day of action when the criminal trial
begins.
(Checks should be made out to the "Dockworkers Defense
Fund" and sent
to: Campaign for Workers' Rights in South Carolina, PO
Box 21777,
Charleston, SC 29413. or to:=20
Dockworkers Defense Fund, 910 Morrison Drive,
Charleston, SC 29403,
Attn: Robert J. Ford) They will also work to get media
coverage of the
issue and the local community's response to the
situation.

Somos la misma familia,
Doc


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