On Monday, Dec 12 in Vancouver, several dozen Occupy activists staged a morning blockade of the Port of Vancouver and then held daylong protests that snarled traffic in and around the Port. The actions were held in conjunction with the day of action by the Occupy movement directed at ports up and down the west coast of North America. See the articles below on that subject.
Activists say their action received sympathy and support from many port workers. But leaders of the BC Federation of Labour, Vancouver and District Labour Council and port unions condemned the action, saying that it went opposite to the ‘original goals’ of the Occupy movement. The unions are fresh off a municipal election campaign effort in the Vancouver region in which they directed considerable human and financial resources to support local capitalist politicians who are in the pockets of real estate developers and other one-percenters, including the successful candidate for mayor of Vancouver. The latter is the mayor who brought in the police and courts to break up the ‘original’ Occupy protest in the city.
The history of militancy of the working class and trade unions is a very appealing legacy to the young activists of the Occupy movement. They understand what is has accomplished. But they are confronted today by the inertia in the unions that is holding back the defense of the working class and its interests. The movement is onto something very important in seeking to break down that inertia and reconnect to a seemingly distant legacy. However imperfect its actions may appear, they are a whole lot more meaningful and significant than any ‘slow and gradual’ approach, including support to capitalist politicians who are in the pockets of the real estate industry bloodsuckers, that would simply serve as an excuse for do-nothingness.
RA
With Port Actions, Occupy Oakland Tests Labor Leaders
By Malia Wollan and Steven Greenhouse
New York Times, December 13, 2011
OAKLAND, Calif. — In most cities, the Occupy movement has been thrown on the defensive, struggling to regroup and plan new protests after being evicted from its encampments by the police. Not in Oakland.
Long the most militant Occupy branch, Occupy Oakland has continued to push the movement’s campaign against the wealthiest 1 percent even after losing its perch in front of City Hall. It spearheaded a one-day action on Monday in which thousands of protesters rallied at West Coast ports from San Diego to Anchorage, effectively closing the Ports of Portland and Longview, Wash., and largely shutting the Port of Oakland.
In the process, Occupy Oakland has cast itself as the true champion of America’s workers, creating a potentially troublesome rift with the Occupy movement’s sometime allies in organized labor.
Several labor leaders criticized the plan to disrupt the ports, which cost many longshoremen and truck drivers a day’s pay. And union officials were irked by Occupy Oakland’s claim that it was advancing the cause of port workers even though several unions opposed the protests.
For example, several days before the disruptions, Robert McEllrath, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, issued a statement warning: “Support is one thing. Organizing from outside groups attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another.”
Organizers at Occupy Oakland shrugged off the criticism, saying many union leaders are afraid of bold action. The Occupy movement, they say, is doing more for working people than some unions and union leaders are.
“You can’t co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class,” said Boots Riley, 40, a rap musician with the Coup who helped plan the port shutdown. “The organizers of this movement are the working class, and these are issues that belong to the working class. No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.”
Occupy Oakland led the push to shut West Coast ports, holding conference calls two or three times a week with as many as 40 Occupy protesters in cities from San Diego to Seattle to plan and coordinate the disruptions. Occupy Oakland also sent $1,000 each to four other West Coast Occupy groups to help finance outreach and organizing for the port shutdowns.
The Oakland protesters also made regular visits to the longshore union’s hiring hall in San Francisco to gather support from rank-and-file workers. They printed 50,000 fliers about the protest and went to the Oakland port, one of the nation’s busiest, to distribute them and talk to nonunion truck drivers.
“The Occupy movement is a union for the 99 percent, and certainly for the 89 percent of working people who are not in unions,” said Barucha Peller, 28, an unemployed writer who helped plan and rally support for the port shutdown.
The Occupy strategists said they were carrying on the struggle of longshore workers at the Longview port, who have been pressing EGT, a terminal operator, to hire longshoremen instead of workers from another union. A court had imposed a strict injunction against illegal activity by the longshore union after some members had engaged in violent protests.
But the Occupy planners also knew that they had chosen a target that was symbolic of multinational corporations, including the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which owns a major interest in a company that operates many port terminals. They also figured that disrupting ports was relatively easy and likely to bring them lots of attention.
While the protests drew support from some port workers, others were dismayed by the disruptions. “They’re taking money out of my pocket,” said Lee Ranaldson, 63, a nonunion trucker from Cleveland who said he had been blocked from dropping off his cargo of refrigerated meat for more than 12 hours. “Who are the leaders of this thing and what do they want?”
Some union leaders noted wryly that the Occupy movement — after gratefully accepting major donations of money, food, sleeping bags and winter clothing from labor unions — had repeatedly warned unions not to seek to co-opt them.
With the port effort, the Occupy movement suddenly seemed to be engineering protests and work stoppages on its own, essentially co-opting the unions’ cause instead of working with them.
While praising the Occupy movement’s goal of helping the 99 percent, Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, faulted the protesters’ tactics, saying, “I don’t know how you call a strike without involving the union or the workers.”
But the Occupy activists said unions were too timid about pushing the interests of workers. “The 1 percent has been able to write and pass labor laws that are designed to restrict the amount of action that can legally be taken by a union. Most union officials today refuse to challenge those laws,” Occupy organizers wrote on a Web site explaining the port shutdown. “It is the responsibility of rank-and-file workers and their allies to escalate the labor struggle. Occupy can spearhead this movement.”
Some Occupy participants and labor experts asserted that the longshore union, which they said feared endorsing the protests because of the court injunction and pending contracts, was not really opposed to the port disruptions and was happy to see the Occupy protesters carry on its fight.
“It reminds me of what John L. Lewis, the great mine workers’ leader, did when the mine workers engaged in a wildcat strike,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “He’d give a wink and a nod.”
Craig Merrilees, a spokesman for the longshore union, denied there was any such tacit approval and said his union resented the Occupy organizers’ assertions that the union was craven. “It’s silly to lecture the I.L.W.U. about being overcautious when the members of this union have always been willing to be courageous and put their bodies on the line,” he said.
Malia Wollan reported from Oakland, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.
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Two postings from the Postside Labour listserve:
1. West Coast Port Shutdown Sparks Heated Debate between Unions, Occupy
By Evan Rohar, Labor Notes, December 12, 2011
For the second time in a month, the Occupy movement called for mass action to shut down port operations. This time, the occupiers targeted the entire West Coast. The Occupy Oakland General Assembly unanimously adopted a proposal November 18 calling for the “blockade and disruption of the economic apparatus of the 1% with a coordinated shutdown of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12.” (General assemblies are meetings, open to all, that make decisions for Occupy groups, using consensus.)
The motion declares solidarity with Longshore Union (ILWU) members in Longview, Washington, in their struggle against grain terminal operator EGT. The company has refused to hire ILWU members and is now in a drawn-out battle that could shape the future of the 4,000 union members who work the Pacific Northwest’s grain elevators.
Occupiers planned the shutdown without consulting with the union, and the ILWU put out a statement December 6 to its members and supporters disclaiming support for the action and claiming its prerogative in the fight against EGT. “The ILWU has a long history of democracy,” wrote ILWU President Bob McElrath. “Part of that historic democracy is the hard-won right to chart our own course to victory.”
Members of the Occupy movement interpreted the union’s distancing itself as, at best, a legal safeguard against the fines that could result from a work stoppage that violates the contract’s strike bar. At worst, they saw it as a product of the union movement’s timidity, born of decades of retreat and identification with employer interests.
ILWU members and officials expressed alarm at how the port shutdown was called and questioned why the Occupy movements called for action without consulting the people that action would affect most.
Occupy spokespeople responded that they reached out to union members after the shutdown call was made. Kari Koch of Occupy Portland said they have been flyering at shift changes at the port for a week. “We would not be doing this action if we didn’t have any support from the rank and file,” Koch said.
But occupiers didn’t call ILWU Local 8 there, she said. (They sent an email.) Occupiers were worried the local could be legally liable if it coordinated with protesters.
Huge numbers showed up at the gates this morning in Oakland and shut three port gates. Occupiers, who plan to disrupt the afternoon shift as well, reported no animosity from ILWU members and port truckers.
While it’s certainly the case that the union movement needs a kick in the pants, and the occupiers have done a lot to aim the shoe, ILWU members and officers say democracy in movements-union and Occupy alike-means giving say to the people affected, not assuming their participation or support because an action is just.
But Mike Parker, a retired UAW activist in the Bay Area and co-author of Democracy Is Power, said most strikes are inconvenient for someone, including other workers. Their success relies on all workers affected by an action honoring the line, whether or not they felt appropriately warned.
Other unionists involved in the occupy movement say the ILWU should recognize the need for tactical flexibility. “The Occupy movement is simply taking from labor history,” said Robbie Donohoe, an Electrical Workers member who has been active in organizing for the shutdown. “We’re making it safer for workers to challenge the boundaries of laws that were created to secure the reins of power firmly in the hands of the 1%.”
HERE WE GO
Regardless of whether ILWU leaders support the shutdown, union and community members have done person- to-person outreach to make it succeed. The Oakland Education Association’s executive board backed the call; President Betty Olsen Jones has been leaftleting port truckers at 6 a.m. along with occupiers and union activists.
A largely immigrant workforce of “independent contractors” that move cargo in and out of the ports, the truckers are legally prevented from unionizing. Some criticized the November 2 port shutdown in Oakland because the truckers were unprepared for the huge march that succeeded in shutting down the port, which trapped many of them for hours. Lacking a union, they have few structures to appeal to for support.
Anthony Levierge of the Bay Area’s ILWU Local 10 and a half-dozen active rank and filers have been passing out flyers and explaining the rationale for the shutdown to fellow members. “It’s been a mixed bag of attitudes,” he said, adding that he believed members would “honor the history and legacy of social justice unionism that ILWU members have fought hard for.”
The West Coast longshore union has a history of honoring community picket lines for good causes, but the question of how those actions are decided-and actually brought to bear against multinational employers who move billions of dollars of goods through the ports-is a complicated matter.
Samantha Levens, a Bay Area member of the Inland Boatmen’s Union, an ILWU affiliate, said education and preparation among the members should have been a first priority. She noted that some previous shutdowns took months to prepare-like a May Day work stoppage in 2008.
When confronted with a picket line at port gates, ILWU members have the right under their coastwide contract to stop work and call an arbitrator to rule on possible safety threats or the validity of the picket line.
Success in shutting down ports along the coast depends upon presenting a credible safety threat to longshore workers. If emergency vehicles cannot make it into the port, or if the workers feel threatened by mass pickets and police presence, they will call an arbitrator to decide whether the action presents a bona fide risk. The decision to call an arbitrator can delay the beginning of work, and if the workers are sent home they may not be paid, depending on the circumstance.
Port bosses warned the ILWU that the 2008 May Day stoppage against the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was “unauthorized” but members went through with it regardless. “Because the members had discussed and debated it before they voted on it and had been building support amongst the ranks heading towards the vote, the buy-in and ownership of the action was firmly in the hands of the members,” Levens said.
THUMBS UP AND DOWN
Complicating the union landscape have been efforts from Bay Area building trades unions to force labor to oppose today’s port shutdown. The Alameda Central Labor Council, with the approval of ILWU Local 10’s president, tabled a motion that condemned the Occupy action, after several delegates argued that the occupiers deserved at least neutrality. But the Building Trades Council denounced the shutdown, and the Alameda council hurriedly adopted a negative position December 5.
After the first resolution was tabled, the CLC’s Executive Secretary Treasurer Josie Camacho (whose husband Victor Uno is an Oakland port commissioner and Electrical Workers business manager) pushed a second motion decrying the shutdown.
Eric Larsen, member relations secretary for AFSCME Local 444 and labor liaison with Occupy Oakland, was barred from addressing the CLC about the port action. “I pleaded with them to let me speak,” he said. “They would not.” He said council leaders claimed the reason for rejecting him, and their denunciation of the shutdown, came from Occupy’s inability to communicate.
ORIGIN: LOS ANGELES
Originally, the idea of a December 12 protest was initiated by Occupy Los Angeles, to coincide with immigrants’ rights activities around Our Lady of Guadalupe Day. Sarah Knopp, a 12-year member of the Teachers union (UTLA) in Los Angeles, said occupiers decided to target SSA Marine, a terminal operator owned by Goldman Sachs with container terminals in North and South America and in Vietnam.
SSA Marine is notorious for its environmental, labor, and human rights abuses and its exploitation of port truck drivers paid piece rates to move cargo containers on and off the docks. Occupiers were also motivated by the firing of 27 port truckers who work for a separate firm, Toll Group. Those fired had worn Teamster shirts, part of a long-running campaign to beat the legal prohibitions on organizing.
After Oakland Occupy expanded the call to all ports on the West Coast, Occupy L.A. decided to stay with its original plan-a march from Harry Bridges Park to an SSA terminal, and a community picket to block a gate. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles take up 25 miles of coastland and handle 85 percent of all traffic on the West Coast, an operation too vast to blockade with the numbers the protesters expected.
Knopp and fellow occupiers stood outside a recent ILWU Local 13 meeting and flyered the workers to build support for the SSA action. They received a “totally friendly reception,” Knopp said. “Everyone thinks it’s a great idea.”
“We’re initiating a process where the Occupy movement can build a base in the labor movement,” said Michael Novick, a UTLA retiree.
Saying that L.A. occupiers recognize the ILWU is not a position to act today (and its leadership was not solicited to participate), Novick added that the port truckers may be better placed to carry out the action in this crucial port. With no union contract, they face no sanction except loss of a day’s pay.
A loose association of port truck organizers who helped to shut the port on May 1, 2006, when immigrants rights protests shook the country, met December 9 to decide whether to attempt a similar action December 12. Ernesto Nevarez, a port truck organizer, said truckers at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port stayed away for hours Monday morning as nearly 1,000 marchers rallied at port gates.
SPLIT, DEMOCRATICALLY
Every ILWU officer and international staffer reiterates the union’s solidarity with the Occupy movement and its goals. But the December 12 action has annoyed many. Cameron Williams, president of Local 19 in Seattle, said, “It’s kind of like if I planned a party at your house and didn’t ask about it.” Local officers say occupiers circumvented the union’s democratic process.
“The occupiers have been understandably confused by mixed signals from individuals in the ILWU,” said Craig Merrilees, communications director for the international. He believes some members are speaking to occupiers without the backing of the organization’s internal democratic process.
President Scott Mason of Local 23 in Tacoma, Washington, said he hasn’t “felt much movement either way” from the members. “Local 8 officers aren’t in support of it,” said Jeff Smith, president of the Portland longshore local. “If it went to a rank-and-file vote I don’t know what would happen.”
Rank and filers won’t get a chance to have their say. Local 8’s next membership meeting is December 14.
Occupiers leafleted the dispatch hall but members say they might have succeeded in convincing more of the Portland rank and file if outreach had started before the action was set.
Levens expressed support for the Occupy movement’s goal-to confront corporate power-but not its approach in this action. “The lack of communication with the members and union officials leaves the Occupy activists and union members without the benefit of sharing our [earlier] Oakland experience with shutting down the port and community pickets,” said Levens, who has been active in Oakland general assemblies.
Parker said the constraints on unions are too great to expect a better process. “Even if Occupy Oakland were the best, most democratic it could be, there is no way that they could consult with elected leaders of the ILWU,” he said. “Unions are faced with a choice of gambling everything [by openly supporting a strike] or of protecting themselves by disclaiming responsibility and honoring lines by using loopholes.”
It doesn’t help that the institutions assessing liability-right-wing courts-are not on labor’s side.
Parker says the occupiers may have to look for new ways to hit the 1%. “The continued focus on the docks, because it is easy and takes advantage of the solidarity traditions of the dock workers, makes the dock workers themselves the targets and the targets start resenting it,” Parker said.
SOLIDARITY WITH LONGVIEW
Occupy Oakland said a big part of the reason for today’s action was solidarity with ILWU Local 21 in its struggle against grain shipper EGT. Some in the movement say the ILWU officialdom, which badly needs to beat EGT, is merely covering its legal bases by distancing itself from the action. But leaders of locals up and down the coast say a coastwide work stoppage for Local 21 could actually harm its struggle, by uniting employers to support EGT.
A more immediate fear could be legal reprisals resulting from an injunction and contempt charges leveled by a federal judge against Local 21 and the international. Fines for the local’s disruptions, blockades, and grain-dumping this summer have already totaled $315,000. If a federal judge determines that occupiers are acting on the union’s behalf, Mason said, “we can be charged $5,000 for every incident.”
Still, Local 21 President Dan Coffman, who gave a speech about EGT to Occupy Oakland the day after its general assembly adopted the shutdown call, does not conceal his enthusiasm for the movement. Coffman cited the November 2 port shutdown as an inspiration to his members, who have been on the picket line for six months.
Supporters of Occupy and ILWU Local 21 are preparing for January, when a ship headed for Asia is scheduled to retrieve grain from the disputed elevator in Longview. An independently organized action could allow the ILWU to circumvent the legal minefield set in front of its own membership. “We’re going to do whatever we can to stop that ship from being loaded,” Coffman vowed.
Eduardo Soriano-Castillo contributed to this story from Oakland.
2. Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports
December 12, 2011
http://cleanandsafeports.org/blog/2011/12/12/an-open-letter-from-america%E2%80%99s-port-truck-drivers-on-occupy-the-ports/
We are the front-line workers who haul container rigs full of imported and exported goods to and from the docks and warehouses every day.
We have been elected by committees of our co-workers at the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle, Tacoma, New York and New Jersey to tell our collective story. We have accepted the honor to speak up for our brothers and sisters about our working conditions despite the risk of retaliation we face. One of us is a mother, the rest of us fathers. Between the five of us we have 11children and one more baby on the way. We have a combined 46 years of experience driving cargo from our shores for America’s stores.
We are inspired that a non-violent democratic movement that insists on basic economic fairness is capturing the hearts and minds of so many working people. Thank you “99 Percenters” for hearing our call for justice. We are humbled and overwhelmed by recent attention. Normally we are invisible.
Today’s demonstrations will impact us. While we cannot officially speak for every worker who shares our occupation, we can use this opportunity to reveal what it’s like to walk a day in our shoes for the 110,000 of us in America whose job it is to be a port truck driver. It may be tempting for media to ask questions about whether we support a shutdown, but there are no easy answers. Instead, we ask you, are you willing to listen and learn why a one-word response is impossible?
We love being behind the wheel. We are proud of the work we do to keep America’s economy moving. But we feel humiliated when we receive paychecks that suggest we work part time at a fast-food counter. Especially when we work an average of 60 or more hours a week, away from our families.
There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
There are no restrooms for drivers. We keep empty bottles in our cabs. Plastic bags too. We feel like dogs. An Oakland driver was recently banned from the terminal because he was spied relieving himself behind a container. Neither the port, nor the terminal operators or anyone in the industry thinks it is their responsibility to provide humane and hygienic facilities for us. It is absolutely horrible for drivers who are women, who risk infection when they try to hold it until they can find a place to go.
The companies demand we cut corners to compete. It makes our roads less safe. When we try to blow the whistle about skipped inspections, faulty equipment, or falsified logs, then we are “starved out.” That means we are either fired outright, or more likely, we never get dispatched to haul a load again.
It may be difficult to comprehend the complex issues and nature of our employment. For us too. When businesses disguise workers like us as contractors, the Department of Labor calls it misclassification. We call it illegal. Those who profit from global trade and goods movement are getting away with it because everyone is doing it. One journalist took the time to talk to us this week and she explains it very well to outsiders. We hope you will read the enclosed article “How Goldman Sachs and Other Companies Exploit Port Truck Drivers.”
But the short answer to the question: Why are companies like SSA Marine, the Seattle-based global terminal operator that runs one of the West Coast’s major trucking carriers, Shippers’ Transport Express, doing this? Why would mega-rich Maersk, a huge Danish shipping and trucking conglomerate that wants to drill for more oil with Exxon Mobil in the Gulf Coast conduct business this way too?
To cheat on taxes, drive down business costs, and deny us the right to belong to a union, that’s why.
The typical arrangement works like this: Everything comes out of our pockets or is deducted from our paychecks. The truck or lease, fuel, insurance, registration, you name it. Our employers do not have to pay the costs of meeting emissions-compliant regulations; that is our financial burden to bear. Clean trucks cost about four to five times more than what we take home in a year. A few of us haul our company’s trucks for a tiny fraction of what the shippers pay per load instead of an hourly wage. They still call us independent owner-operators and give us a 1099 rather than a W-2.
We have never recovered from losing our basic rights as employees in America. Every year it literally goes from bad to worse to the unimaginable. We were ground zero for the government’s first major experiment into letting big business call the shots. Since it worked so well for the CEOs in transportation, why not the mortgage and banking industry too?
Even the few of us who are hired as legitimate employees are routinely denied our legal rights under this system. Just ask our co-workers who haul clothing brands like Guess?, Under Armour, and Ralph Lauren’s Polo. The carrier they work for in Los Angeles is called Toll Group and is headquartered in Australia. At the busiest time of the holiday shopping season, 26 drivers were axed after wearing Teamster T-shirts to work. They were protesting the lack of access to clean, indoor restrooms with running water. The company hired an anti-union consultant to intimidate the drivers. Down Under, the same company bargains with 12,000 of our counterparts in good faith.
Despite our great hardships, many of us cannot – or refuse to, as some of the most well-intentioned suggest – “just quit.” First, we want to work and do not have a safety net. Many of us are tied to one-sided leases. But more importantly, why should we have to leave? Truck driving is what we do, and we do it well.
We are the skilled, specially-licensed professionals who guarantee that Target, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart are all stocked with just-in-time delivery for consumers. Take a look at all the stuff in your house. The things you see advertised on TV. Chances are a port truck driver brought that special holiday gift to the store you bought it.
We would rather stick together and transform our industry from within. We deserve to be fairly rewarded and valued. That is why we have united to stage convoys, park our trucks, marched on the boss, and even shut down these ports.
It’s like our hero Dutch Prior, a Shipper’s/SSA Marine driver, told CBS Early Morning this month: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
The more underwater we are, the more our restlessness grows. We are being thoughtful about how best to organize ourselves and do what is needed to win dignity, respect, and justice.
Nowadays greedy corporations are treated as “people” while the politicians they bankroll cast union members who try to improve their workplaces as “thugs.”
But we believe in the power and potential behind a truly united 99%. We admire the strength and perseverance of the longshoremen. We are fighting like mad to overcome our exploitation, so please, stick by us long after December 12. Our friends in the Coalition for Clean & Safe Ports created a pledge you can sign to support us here.
We drivers have a saying, “We may not have a union yet, but no one can stop us from acting like one.”
The brothers and sisters of the Teamsters have our backs. They help us make our voices heard. But we need your help too so we can achieve the day where we raise our fists and together declare: “No one could stop us from forming a union.”
Thank you.
In solidarity,
Leonardo Mejia SSA Marine/Shippers Transport Express Port of Long Beach
10-year driver
Yemane Berhane Ports of Seattle & Tacoma
6-year port driver
Xiomara Perez Toll Group Port of Los Angeles
8-year driver
Abdul Khan Port of Oakland
7-year port driver
Ramiro Gotay Ports of New York & New Jersey
15-year port driver
