Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA)

TWSC: SYNDICALISM CLOGS THE PATH

The Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, composed of a handful of retired workers, some actually from the ILWU, convened a well-attended meeting (mostly by long term leftists) in SF on Tuesday, March 31^st, at the church across the street from ILWU HQ. This followed the ILWU caucus to discuss and review the current tentative agreement (TA) with the Port Management Association (PMA), the bosses.

For the most part the attendees were leftish supporters of the ILWU and only a few actively working ILWU members showed up. The meeting was advertised as a discussion of the difference between business unionism and militant unionism. The executive editor for the Logistics Management (Logistics Management) Journal warned management that this meeting was the core of a Vote No campaign advocating the TA be rejected.   Reading the leaflet for this gathering, one could surmise the attendees would be shown a road forward, a path to a decent contract and a road out of the current stagnation and backward consciousness perpetuated by the labor bureaucracy and current crop of leaders of the ILWU in particular. But this was not the case and never was in the cards as we will show.

Considering the decline of the ILWU leadership’s militancy even to the point where Business Agents were witnessed acting as SCAB herders during the Oakland Port Truckers picket line, and some back gate scrambling to scoot past the anti-Zionist ZIM pickets last summer in Oakland, militant workers could have expected the seasoned militants of the TWSC to present a balance sheet of the ILWU’s trajectory, and a path forward for victory. Sadly that was not forthcoming.

Among the cast of presenters none explained that for the fight against concessionary bargains to succeed, the “A” men would have to embrace a program that unites with the “B” men and especially the “casuals”, who labor without benefits and only slim hope of ascending to decent jobs with regular living wages and benefits. None of the presenters explained how the union which fought for its birthright against the shape up and for the hiring hall had fallen victim not only to a two tier system but to a three tier system. The cancer of the caste system was lamented but no fighting program was offered. The caste system isolates the top tier from the lower two as well as from the port truckers and other dock-based warehouse workers, who by their thousands subsist on low and sub-living wages (often organized by the Teamsters’ and Laborers’ internationals.)

This materialist stratification of wages is the basis for the conservatism of the ILWU leadership and explains how the ILWU leadership’s long-term support for the Democratic Party acts as a lock on the door of the class struggle, blocking the union from leading labor to defeat Taft Hartley through struggle. No one explained that the bureaucracy was an expression of the material interests of the labor aristocracy arrayed against the historic interest of the workers to take power by expropriating the bourgeoisie. One speaker hinted that the bureaucracy dresses like and lives like the bosses but this is an observation divorced from programmatic proposals for the workers to rally behind.

The assembled were presented with some history and some critique of the current TA but very little in the way of a program for the dockworkers to move forward or to advance the class struggle and build the type of unity in action and program needed to unite the working class to win in this period of capitalist offensive.

Dan Coffman, the ex-president of Local 21 of the ILWU in Longview, WA, retold the story of militant pickets blocking the grain train in 2011, of the role of the “ladies auxiliary” in standing down the cops, and the powerful support of the retirees who provided both financial support and cooked breakfast for the workers on the line. Coffman lamented that despite the militancy of the workers, he himself signed off on a concessionary contract which he explained was the same deal the workers could have gotten within the first two weeks of the initial confrontation. He explained the job losses the ILWU accepted by giving up the master console and the elevator, losing at least two jobs in the elevator and one on the ship, losing the hiring hall and accepting the 12 hour day in lieu of the 8 hour day they were fighting for.

Coffman, no communist, lamented that the labor movement is at its lowest point since the 1960’s and 70’s when he claimed the Democratic Party supported the workers. A point which none of the self-proclaimed Bolsheviks on the dais corrected. In closing, Coffman again lamented he signed the contract and made a call for a “Working Party,” which concept he quickly qualified by stating we needed it to be open to business owners. Maybe it was obvious to all that the type of business owners he was talking about was the mom and pop shop and the Avon sales force and the “independent truckers,” but he did not have the classical tools of historical materialism which would have guided him to explain the task of building a workers party that fights the bourgeoisie for the allegiance of the lower levels of the middle class.

Brother Anthony L, a 15 year ILWU Local 10 militant, whom by way of introduction emcee Jack Heyman celebrated, had answered the April, 2011, call for action from the public workers occupying the Wisconsin capitol by putting the motion to strike on April 4^th in solidarity against the bosses attack on union rights. Anthony’s call was taken up by ILWU Local 10, which has a radical history including use of its monthly and contractually negotiated safety meetings, as a day of action on behalf of social, political and economic struggles of the workers and oppressed communities. These actions, more akin to weekend political rallies held during non-work hours, are often presented a political strikes by the most ardent propagandists, but truth be told, more often than not they are actions which do not stop work which the bosses had on their monthly planner.

However, unlike the “strike” for Mumia, the “strike” for Oscar Grant, the “strike” on May Day in solidarity with the immigrant workers, the “strike” against the Afghanistan and Iraq war in 2008, on April 4^th, 2011 the strike extended beyond the one shift safety meeting and cargoes the bosses had scheduled for that day were indeed stopped at the port! Stopping cargo flow on behalf of the international working class, in this case public workers, reminded the capitalists of the anti-apartheid hot cargo action by the ILWU in 1984, where South African cargo from the Nedlloyd Kimberly was not handled, and the 2010 symbolic one-day shut down of the Zionist ship the “Shenzhen” by a community picket, one that would foreshadow the two port shut downs instigated by Occupy in 2011.

The masses responded to the police shooting of Iraq war veteran Scott Olson more vigorously than they had for Oscar Grant. Upwards of 40,000 workers and oppressed unleashed the long-restrained fury at police brutality, the war, the oppression, the austerity, the joblessness, the militarization of the streets by the Democrats and shut down the port for more than one shift on November 3, 2011! On December 12^th, 2011 Occupy protesters went into more or less open confrontation with west coast labor leadership and challenged them to shut the port in support of Local 21 in Longview. The bureaucracy would not stop any bosses work by calling a genuine strike but conceded to the masses initiation and paid for a few port-a-potties and hamburgers; in any event the masses understood the importance of the Longview strike and wanted labor to win!

As class struggle ebbs and flows, when it does not reach resolution, lessons are learned by the masses and the flashpoints recede into history. But the unresolved crisis gave the politicizing youth opportunity to find out that many less than 40,000 can disrupt the flow of cargo. The Occupy would be successful a second time with just 5-8 thousand. The more massive the actions, the more likely the arbitrator would agree with the ILWU that the port was not providing safe work conditions and that therefore there would be no penalty for not crossing the picket line. This experience of community pickets, expressing the will of the masses over the head of the labor bureaucracy, was becoming a tool in the arsenal of the class struggle and it was being wielded both by the unrestrainable mass (such as following the shooting of Scott Olson) and by vanguard elements and coalitions of workers and oppressed peoples. The bureaucracies proposed Tentative Agreement (TA) would make it impossible for the members to honor such picket lines without financial penalties.

The community picket method relied upon the historic traditions of ILWU rank and file militancy, and the organic integration of the port workers in the workers’ communities and communities of the oppressed to honor the picket with the tradition that “An Injury to One is an Injury to All!” This is significant because in a sense the ILWU militants and the labor movement hid behind the arbitrator’s safety decision to declare the picket a worksite hazard.   And as the masses from the heyday of Occupy were no longer on the streets, the use of this method would be challenged. Our Class War journalist would, in October 2013 witness a Local 10 Business Agent (BA) act as a SCAB herder, working behind police lines used to restrain the largely immigrant port truckers and their supporters. The Port and the bureaucracy were acting on all fronts to restrain these actions. In 2014, anti-Zionist activists stopped the ZIM lines from unloading twice. As reported at this TWSC forum, Local 10 BA’s were spotted leading workers around the ZIM picket from adjoining berths.

BOSSES LEARN BUREAUCRATS DON’T
The bosses may not have foreseen the Occupy Port shutdowns, but knew they had to put an end to wildcat actions, which disrupted their logistics and profits. The management association, the PMA, sued the ILWU for losses incurred on April 4^th, 2011. The bosses insisted that the ILWU pay a price for “stepping over the line” and actively challenging Taft Hartley with solidarity strike action that would ultimately be deemed illegal by the bosses’ arbitrators![1] Although the ILWU fought the PMA within the boundaries of contract language legality, it did not mobilize its membership to defeat Taft Hartley or in any way further fan the flames of workers discontent. The bureaucracy clearly was getting fed up with the membership’s latent desire to ‘fight back,’ a desire which Brother Anthony’s resolve sparked into important solidarity action in violation of the bosses anti-labor laws! In turn it was left to Bay Area members of small left organizations to march on the PMA in defense of the ILWU against the bosses’ lawsuit. A toothless resolution of the San Francisco Labor Council (SFLC) served as an alibi for bureaucrats who refused to do what was necessary, refusing to mobilize the membership to force the PMA to drop the suit. Resolutions can string together many fine words; the Wisconsin South Central Federation of Labor even went on record to endorse a general strike against the attacks on public workers. But we notice they did not call or even make any practical moves to organize for one; and likewise the SFLC left the ILWU hanging without any mass mobilization in their defense.

Brother Anthony then spoke about his motion at Local 10 to bring the steady men back to the hall (these 9.43 men are management hires, “shop men” who work everyday.) The membership approved his motion but he related that just because the rank and file votes for something does not mean the leadership carries through the fight. When the rank and file takes action to defend workers rights on a crew or work-to-rule it is the 9.43 men who pick up the ‘slack.’ He reported that there were a number of actions last year where the rank and file took action to shut down a terminal, but where they were admonished or overridden by the leadership. The consequence of which was the Local was pressured into working at the bosses pace and in the lead-up to the holidays “…we worked ourselves right out of our power….”

The emcee introduced Stacey, a rank-and-file Local 10 member. She reported that during the ZIM Piraeus protest she witnessed the BA leading workers around the picket via the TraPac back gate where she was working. Stacey claimed not to be political but explained that “…if you don’t fight for the rest of the nation how do you expect them to fight for us…?” She explained that with automation we may all be out of work in one or two contracts.

ANYBODY HEAR OF THE TRANSITIONSL PROGRAM?

Howard Keylor, a veteran of the Nedlloyd Kimberly hot cargo action, has been a member of the ILWU since 1953. In discussing the contract Howard pointed to a number of problems with this TA: he warned about hidden one-liners that will “kill you”; one example in the current contract is the removal of a letter of agreement which had made it ILWU work to drive the container directly under the cranes. The elimination of this letter effectively turns this dangerous work over to the Teamsters if they choose to pick it up. Language was also changed to legitimize crossing picket lines; the multiple pay differential scales is getting wider and the cancer of “the steady man” (men who don’t have to go to the hall for a job ticket,) is being further exploited by the bosses. The steady man situation and the caste system with the “B” men getting less pay means “…in a strike situation you cannot get solidarity…”, Keylor said.  Without presenting even a semblance of a fighting program, Howard lamented “…due to the lack of sophistication of many of the members I am not optimistic.”

Jack Heyman, another ostensible bolshevist, explained how the ILWU International had over a number of struggles, signaled to the bosses that it was no longer operating from a position of strength.  He spoke about the fight in Longview over the grain contract and how the owners of the Export Grain Terminal (EGT) wanted to eliminate all the clerk jobs and locked out ILWU out for a year and a half and brought in scabs. Our history, he explained, is to get rid of scabs as we did in Stockton in 1992. But after a year and a half, after rejecting the EGT contract by 96%, essentially the same contract was passed by a vote of 93%. Heyman did not explain how this could have happened.

The Boron Rio Tinto strikers set up pickets at the port of LA in an attempt to prevent their brothers from unloading the scab ore being mined during the Rio Tinto strike, but the ILWU leadership warned the members to stand down, let the scab ore through or lose their strike pay.   When all was settled The Dispatcher (the union periodical) called the concessionary contract a victory. And in another case in LA, the employer called the arbitrator who argued that the clerical workers’ picket was not bona fide because the union was not bargaining in good faith and ordered the ILWU to cross the line. So the “…PMA is not scared, seeing what is going on….” Jack’s warning to the members considering the TA is, “…read this TA with a fine tooth comb…you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear….”   He went on to point out how the Rio Tinto arbitrator’s ruling was overturned two years later and that the real power is the picket line. He said, “the picket line is the battle line, the class line…is at the point of production not in the arbitration room…” and that “… some of the leadership are business men who get double and triple pension and think like businessmen and play golf with the bosses.”

The following statement may have been what sparked the editor of Logistics Management Journal to warn the bourgeoisie that there is a nascent rebellion in the ILWU led by the TWSC for a no vote. Heyman remarked, “…after EGT there were half a dozen members who signed a letter stating the ILWU was going the wrong way…, it included Leo Robinson, Howard, myself and others.”  Heyman said that following the 2008 “strike against the war” the ILWU was acting from strength and won the next contract fight, but that today those militant traditions are fading.

Heyman argued that when the union takes up community and class wide issues like the war, like “Free Mumia”, like Oscar Grant and the public workers, then the union is strengthened and emboldened to fight and win. But he then explained that the business unionist leadership are trying to deny the membership their class-based strength in an attempt to pave the road to automation which will eliminate members jobs. For Heyman, the Transitional Program is reduced to the call for shortening the workday: “A couple of caucuses ago we called for a sliding scale of wages and hours 6 hours work for 8 hours pay then you can have 4 shifts a day but the business unionists won’t fight for it. Instead there are rumors of side deals with the steady walking bosses and the steady crane men and if that is the case, “…we should kill this contract …in 1989 we killed side deals….”

Militant trade unionism in one craft with no accompanying political perspective on the situation of the entire working class worldwide as a context for your local union’s own struggle is a formula for leading workers to defeat, where it is not a formula for more defeat of the exact same kind that the ILWU has recently suffered. Episodic departures from support to the Democratic Party make the ILWU appear to be the vanguard of the U.S. working class. But this is a show for the credulous and does not bear close examination. What type of militant trade unionism makes peace with the bosses’ multi-tiered wages system, which to those at the bottom must appear as a social caste system that permits little or hope for upward mobility. In the circumstance of this acceptance it is no surprise that the ILWU would cross the port truckers’ picket lines.

A genuine militant caucus in the ILWU would not permit the mystification of the South African Freedom Charter and neither would it glorify Mandela, but would support revolutionary socialist fighters in South Africa and elsewhere with material solidarity. Such a militant caucus would lead the fight for a fighting workers labor party and would fight to cut all ties to the “industrial partnership” “team concept” and political organizations of the ruling class. Such a militant caucus would champion the casuals and port and transportation trades seeking to organize. They would put organizers on the road to build new industrial unions that fight for prevailing rate, union living wages, and jobs for all with a 30 hour week for 40 hours pay. This means that all U.S. ports must be nationalized under workers control so that the benefits of the real shipping profits are shared by the working class of the entire community. Where the merely militant trade unionist tries to excerpt selected transitional demand for the exclusive benefit of their own craft , the revolutionary caucus members will promote the entire historic workers program, fighting for gains for all workers everywhere.

From V.I. Lenin, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder “The principal reason for this was explained many times by Marx and Engels between the years 1852 and 1892, from the example of Britain. That country’s exclusive position led to the emergence, from the “masses”, of a semi-petty-bourgeois, opportunist “labour aristocracy”. The leaders of this labour aristocracy were constantly going over to the bourgeoisie, and were directly or indirectly on its pay roll. Marx earned the honour of incurring the hatred of these disreputable persons by openly branding them as traitors. Present-day (twentieth-century) imperialism has given a few advanced countries an exceptionally privileged position, which, everywhere in the Second International, has produced a certain type of traitor, opportunist, and social-chauvinist leaders, who champion the interests of their own craft, their own section of the labour aristocracy.The opportunist parties have become separated from the “masses”, i.e., from the broadest strata of the working people, their majority, the lowest-paid workers. The revolutionary proletariat cannot be victorious unless this evil is combated, unless the opportunist, social-traitor leaders are exposed, discredited and expelled. That is the policy the Third International has embarked on.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm

[1] As an historical curiosity and footnote to this episode, our reporter petitioned the executive board of the California Association of Professional Scientists (CAPS), the bogus union to which he was a dues payer at the time, and proposed that CAPS issue a statement of solidarity and supply support for the ILWU and thereby express gratitude to the members of the ILWU for having stuck their necks out and having taken direct action on behalf of ourselves and all public workers. The CAPS leadership refused to support the ILWU, resting their excuse upon the bosses’ lie that the action was illegal, a wildcat and that CAPS could not associate itself with such!