On May 27, Pacific Maritime Association bosses filed a lawsuit against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
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The PMA’s actions are a deliberate attack on the union. They are using any means at their disposal to force the union to take cuts in wages and benefits. According to union officials, differences on the terms of the new contract in negotiations remain on pensions, pay and job security.
The expired contract covers 20,000 workers.
In their claim to the National Labor Relations Board, PMA accused the ILWU of engaging in the planning, coordination and publication of a work stoppage scheduled to occur on or about May 1, 2008 at ports throughout the West Coast.
On May 1, International Workers Day, the union closed 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington. The action was the first ever U.S. labor strike against the Iraq war, closing all West Coast ports.
The PMA wrongly claims that the work stoppage was an “unlawful secondary boycott” under federal labor laws outlined by the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the “Wagner Act” of 1935. The NLRA bars labor actions that force a boycott of other companies or compel another employer to recognize a union.
The PMA claims that the ILWU did not have a dispute with PMA, a multi-employer bargaining association, or any of PMA’s approximately 70 member companies, all of whom employ ILWU members.
The legal prohibition of a secondary boycott is an attack on a labor union’s right to free speech and free association. It became part of the NLRA when the law was amended by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Though the establishment of the NLRA was a historic victory in that it legalized the workers’ right to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining, it also imposed many restrictions on unions in the interests of the capitalist bosses.
In the post-war witchhunt era, the Labor-Management Relations Act, more commonly known as the “Taft-Hartley Act,” was passed in 1947. Among other anti-union measures of the act, it institutionalized a ban on secondary boycotts. Since boycotts are used almost exclusively by unions, it is an anti-labor prohibition.
But the “secondary boycott” designation does not in any way apply to the ILWU’s May Day action. A secondary boycott is an “action in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business.”
On May 1, the ILWU was in fact conducting its union affairs with a gathering or meeting guaranteed in their contract.
The strike had its origins in the Labor Conference to Stop the War, held in San Francisco in October 2007. The conference called on individual unions to establish policy in favor of industrial action against the war. In February, the ILWU Longshore Caucus debated the action. Vietnam veterans spoke in that debate and swung the vote to overwhelming support for a workers’ action to stop the war.
The ILWU work stoppage is a tradition. In the past, the union has closed down the ports as a political act not related to labor-management disputes. The ILWU work stoppage came after the PMA refused a normal union request that the monthly facility for stop-work meetings be granted for the day shift on May 1.
In April of 1999, the ILWU put in the same request to participate in rallies supporting death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was wrongfully convicted of killing a police officer. The PMA granted the request.
But they were not in the midst of contract negotiations that year.
The PMA threatened the ILWU with legal action should the workers go ahead with the work stoppage.
According to ILWU International President Bob McEllrath, union members made their own democratic decision in early February when Longshore Caucus delegates voted to take action on May 1.
He said, “Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren’t loyal or accountable to any country,” said McEllrath. “For them it’s all about making money. But longshore workers are different …We won’t stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of 3 trillion dollars.”
