Longshoremen on the docks in Bayonne, NJ. Photo: Antrim Caskey
UNION DEMOCRACY
The Longshore Workers Coalition (LWC) is an upstart faction vying for union democracy in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA.) The LWC originated as a group of dissident longshore workers challenging faulty election practices employed by union officials during the 2004 ratification of the ILA’s master contract – a labor agreement the workers labeled a “sellout.”During the June 2004 election, workers alleged vote tampering and coercion were used to get the contract. Newark Local 1235 longshoreman Diego Martinez testified he was coerced to vote for an inadequate contract by a union trustee. “After he saw I voted no, he put the paper to the side and said, ‘You don’t understand, you have to vote yes.’”
Teaming with the Association for Union Democracy, who provided legal representation, dissidents from the 15,000-member ILA fought the master contract, which covers wages and benefits for every East Coast port, in federal court.
A federal court judge eventually ruled against the union dissidents – saying that they had not established voter coercion.
EAST COAST VS. WEST COAST LONGSHORE WORKERS
The wages, benefits and political orientation of the East Coast and West Coast longshore worker unions are starkly different. Though each union has a modest membership, their critical role in the ports gives each the potential to bring the nation’s economy to a halt. However, the ILA makes little effort to organize new workers and has not had a coordinated union-wide job action of any significance in decades. New hires on ILA-represented ports earn as much as six dollars less than their West Coast counterparts and garner generally inferior benefits.
At one time members of the same union, West Coast longshore workers broke with the ILA in 1937 over industrial union organizing and the ILA’s stance against the West Coast longshore strike of 1934. The progressive International longshore and Warehouse Union struck against stevedore companies in 2002 over the loss of jobs and benefits, shutting down 29 West Coast ports.
The 2002 strike ended as a defensive victory for port workers, though President Bush threatened military intervention and evoked Taft- Hartley laws to break the West Coast union.
Comments
These cop-loving reformists are just wannabe bureaucrats who are willing to sacrifice their union to the capitalist state in order to get themselves into swivel-chairs and offices.
COPS OUT OF THE UNIONS! LABOR WILL CLEAN ITS OWN HOUSE!
Fred Bergen,
This is stupid drivel. Read the article and you'll find that the reformers were quite wary of the feds, but that in order to build trust the feds kept the mafia (the enemy) at bay. These reformers are cleaning their own house.
FACTS are facts: they rode shotgun in police cars into their union offices. SOME REFORM! They got rid of some two-bit gangsters in return for selling their union out to the most murderous, anti-labor gangsters ever: the US government. This will come back to bite the ILA members unless they reject these social-democratic union-suing fakers and build a revolutionary leadership that fights for independence from the capitalist state.
Jackarse, you remind me of the fake leftists who cheered on the counterrevolutions in the USSR and the Soviet Bloc because the capitalist CIA lackeys were able to fool you by talking about "Democracy." Uncle Sam ain't gonna give you no Democracy.
Fred,
Uncle Sam ain't gonna give you no Democracy and you know what, the rank and file union members did not ask Uncle Sam to. A judge ordered a trusteeship of the local, in came the Feds. Workers wary of Feds because of the particular person they choose to oversee the local. The Feds will be gone from the piers in less than two years. The reformers take over the local in a matter of weeks. Your rhetoric is meaningless and you have no real positions. Good thing lefty dopes do not engage in real political work.
Do people get the feeling Fred Bergen is not in a union??
Did or didn't they sue their own union? Your article says they did. These wannabe bureaucrats rode into the union shotgun in police cars. The workers will be forced to pay for the cynical opportunism of these labor-faker misleaders. COPS, COURTS, HANDS OFF THE UNIONS! DRIVE OUT THE REFORMIST BUREAUCRATS, BUILD A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY!
Yes the rank and file sued their own union, because the ILA is ran by mob associates who sell the rank and file out in contract negotiations. Which would you rather see, a union ran by racketeers or by the rank and file? The Feds have created space for the union members to do what they to do. This notion of riding shotgun with the police is pure rhetorical flourish, but misses the point of the story - rank and file union members taking back their local. Rank and file union members had little choice when the mob ran their local. They had no choice when the judge ordered the Feds to trustee the local. They made the best of out of the situation and will now run the local. Dogma blinds you Fred and you have taken a position against real union democratic forces for change. Who is the fake revolutionary now?
Wait a minute: When you first wrote the article, your gang, the "Longshore Workers Coalition," took credit where credit was due for your filthy union-suing scheme, backed by the lawsuit-happy NGO "Association for Union Democracy." But now you are hiding behind the "rank and file," after you hid behind the federal courts to get your hands on the comfy office chairs in the union HQ. No wonder you don't like being exposed for what you really are: reformists selling out the workers to their class enemy in the name of abstract "democracy." You are sorely mistaken if you think that by inviting the cops into the union, you have made "space" for anyone but the bosses. DRIVE OUT THE COPS AND THEIR UNION-SUING FRIENDS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!
Poor foolish Fred! He is actually against the progressives in the union movement! He is as dogmatic as any religious fundamentalist, only his cloak is that of perverted Marxism. The reason he is against the progressives is because Fred is not engaged in real political action, as are many people who post on www.nyc.indymedia.org and this website as well. Foolish Fred is indicative of why the Left is weak. (There is an argument that Fred and his ilk are actually counter revolutionary and opponents of the Left!) The longshoremen represent how the Left can be strong through grass roots organizing, taking advantage of the situation and being engaged the political moment at the time.
Fred, fortunately, represents a regressive dogmatic ideology that serves no political purpose other than to be perpetually in the opposition and never to build power. In fact as has been pointed out before, serves to work against reform movements in the unions. Fred takes no real position, because there are no factions in 1588 (other than the Mafia!) who would have argued for the Feds to leave. The mafia would surely crush/kill the reformers and re-establish business as usual (fucking over the rank and file).
The Feds will leave soon and the progressives will have the union. That is when the real battles begin.
2002 west coast was not a strike .they were locked out
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