Working In These Times
Solidarity Divided: Occupy Protesters Shut Down Ports Without Union’s Support
Signs are seen at the entrance of Port #5 on December 12, 2011 in Portland, Ore. Hundreds of Occupy Portland protesters effectively shut down two of the Port of Portland's busiest terminals on Monday, preventing about 200 longshore workers from going to work. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images)
Yesterday, Occupy protesters attempted to shut down ports along the West Coast. In particular, the protesters targeted SSA Marine, a company owned in large part by Goldman Sachs, as a way of protesting both corporate greed and the working conditions of port truck drivers who are denied basic workers right by being classified as "independent contractors."
But while the Occupy movement declared solidarity with the port workers, including the truck drivers and members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Longshoreman’s union did not vote to shut down the port.
Ultimately, protesters were successful in shutting down some terminals at ports in Oakland, Portland, and Longview, Wash. Workers in Portland and Longview were sent home with pay, but in Oakland, 150 workers were sent home without any pay, according to ILWU spokesman Craig Mierelles.
But the decision by an outside group to shut down the ports and cause workers to lose a day’s pay without them first getting their consent raises serious questions about the Occupy movements willingness to bypass a labor union's own democractic decision making process.
In the past, the ILWU shut down West Coast ports to protest South African apartheid, stand up for farm workers’ rights and other causes. On May 1, 2008, the ILWU shut down ports for one day in order to protest the War in Iraq. Most recently, workers illegally shut down the all the ports in Longview, Wash., for 15 minutes, as I previously wrote about for In These Times.
But this week, the ILWU was against Occupy protesters' efforts to shut down the port, despite protesters claiming they were engaged in the struggle in part to show solidarity with ILWU members in Longview resisting the use of nonunion labor at the Port of Longview. In a statement to union members and affiliates on December 6, ILWU President Robert McEllarth said,
The ILWU has a long history of democracy. Part of that historic democracy is the hard-won right to chart our own course to victory. As the Occupy movement, which began in September 2011, sweeps this country, there is a real danger that forces will attempt to adopt our struggle as their own. Support is one thing, organization from outside groups, attempting to co-opt our struggle in order to advance a broader agenda is quite another and one that is destructive to our democratic process and jeopardizes our over two year struggle in Longview.
Outside groups claimed that the ILWU did not want to formally support the effort to shut down the port in part because they were afraid of a lawsuit for illegaly shutting down the port. Earlier this year, as my colleague Josh Eidelson reported for Working In These Times, the Pacific Maritime Association sued the ILWU when longshore workers in San Francisco and Oakland shut down their respective ports as part of a national day of “We Are One” actions in support of collective bargaining on April 4.
Many supporters of Occupy movement claimed that support among ILWU rank-and-file members was there, but that top leadership did not want to endorse in part because of legal problems and for other reasons. In a Salon article entitled “Occupy vs. Big Labor,” writer Emily Loftis criticized the union’s decisions to support the port shutdown saying, “Just as the 1 percent now has to listen to the 99 percent, Big Labor has to listen to the rank and file. Dec. 12 marks a step in the evolution of the movement from a collection of improvised tent-villages to a national network of empowered, community-conscious problem-solvers.”
Stan Woods, an activist involved with the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, told The Guardian that most rank-and-file workers support yesterday's action, despite their leadership not endorsing it. Woods said, “the ones I’ve spoken to are strongly in support of the Occupy Movement.”
Leaders within the ILWU, however, claim the portrayal of ILWU as a bureaucratic union representing labor’s 1% are overblown. The ILWU have a long history of taking dramatic action to support their own union members even when they break the law and risk the financial well-being of the union. (Currently, the union is facing $315,000 in fines for breaking a federal injunction by blocking grain trains from entering a non-union terminal at the Port of Longview. Workers in Vancouver, Canada and Tacoma, Wash., went on illegal wildcat strikes to protest police brutality that union members and supporters faced from police when they blocked the tracks.)
“I am proud to say that I am in a union where my President is out getting beat up by cops on the railroad tracks in Longview instead of sitting behind some desk like most union bureaucrats,” says ILWU Communications Director Craig Mierrelles.
Multiple ILWU labor leaders who spoke with In These Times claimed there was little awareness or support from rank and file for a shutdown of the ports on December 12th.
“Frankly, a lot of members are pretty confused about what’s going on, press is screwed up in ways of reporting stuff – most of these guys just get their news from television,” says Fred Pecker, president of ILWU Local 6 in San Francisco. “There are some members here that are supportive, but I doubt enough to be able to put it up for a vote. I got a local of 5,000 guys here. If these guys really want a port shutdown, they would have to work hard to build support among guys that range from left wingers to some very conservative Republicans.”
According to Pecker, when ILWU shut down the ports in 2008 in order to make a political statement about the War in Iraq, they had to work for months in order to build enough support among members to shut down the ports. Some Occupy protesters say that by taking their actions to shut down the ports without direct union consent, they are educating union members about the possibility of taking direct action. They claim that in the past, radical actions like factory sit-downs at first did not have support from many members, but were able to inspire more workers to support them once the actions were under way.
“The Occupy movement is simply taking from labor history,” Robbie Donohoe, an IBEW member told Labor Notes. “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%.”
However, Cal Winslow, author of Labor’s Civil War in California: The NUHW Healthcare Workers’ Rebellion, about the struggle of rank and file health care workers to resist efforts by SEIU leadership to force them to take concessions, says that the Occupiers' port action this week reminds him of the heavy-handed tactics of union leaders like Andy Stern.
"Both Stern and Occupy demand that workers sacrifice their right and standards for the greater good—but neither offers them a choice nor an opinion on what exactly is the greater good. And the question of 'who decides' ... is irrelevant or perhaps involves merely an 'inconvenience,'” says Winslow. “In both cases there are real problems. If we are going to see a rebirth of the labor movement, it’s going to have to come workers doing things for themselves. It’s not something that can be imposed.”
As the Occupy Movement, which has prided itself on its internal horizontal democratic decision-making process, seeks to expand and enlist new allies, it will have to weigh how its actions affect other workers’ ability to take democratic action for themselves.
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Comments
I’ve never heard a more ridiculous comparison. Stern is a man who led a union in a way that was too pro-business and far from democratic. Occupy is a nascent social movement that strives towards grassroots democracy (though hasn’t achieved it even internally yet) and has mobilized more working class people in the US than any other force in decades.
Ideally, there would have been long-term outreach on the part of Occupy members to the ILWU rank and file followed by a vote, just as happened with the anti-Iraq war shutdown. This unfortunately did not happen. But to characterize Occupy as authoritarian or elitist or vanguardist (rather than just overzealous) is a serious distortion.
u must b joking! heavy-handed tactics?
the trade which passes thru those ports affects everyone, not just the ILWU [or more precisely its leadership]. why is it my democratic right to dissent is trumped by its potentially adverse effect on union bosses? even the minority who might not b corrupt?
this is perhaps the worst piece i’ve read on the occupy movement or the port shut-downs. shame on mike elk, and shame on WITT for posting this libelous nonsense. i guess we shoulda just stayed home yesterday and waited for the okay from andy stern.
The ILWU leadership are all too typical of American labor “leaders” - gutless cowards who are afraid to fight. They fear that the union will be sued, which will put their six figure salaries, union-leased cars and no show jobs for unemployable wives, mistresses and relatives might be put at risk. The comfortable union treasury-financed lifestyles they lead are far more important to them than actually fighting for the workers!
In the ILWU’s case, they are leftist when it’s convenient, for non longshoreman related outside political causes. However, when it counts, they are absent without leave from the class wars on the piers!
I’m glad they got an embarrassing kick in the pants from the brave OWS protesters!
Occupy started as the most promising development in the US in decades, and I think it might be time to regroup, refocus, redefine the goals that people want to set. The case of the ports shows that it is essential to communicate directly with the people involved (the workers in this case). Occupy (and the progressive media) made a BIG mistake in allowing itself to be narrowly defined as a “working middle class movement.” The progressive media has remained unresponsive to a severe poverty crisis beyond the routine call for job creation (how should the jobless survive until then?). The jobs are gone, folks, shipped out, costs covered by the trillions of dollars (since Reagan) of annual corp tax cuts, in a country that so casually threw away the citizens’ entitlement to poverty relief. Ignoring the poverty crisis effectively pushed the poor out of the Occupy movement early on. Disregarding the complexity of specific job-related issues (in relation to strikes, etc.) pushes workers out.
@d’
dear sir or madam i do not wish to b rude, but it seems u have as distorted a view of the OWS as the ruminant who wrote the article.
re goals: we r a multifarious group with various political orientations. one either throws one’s hands up in disgust and bolts, or one makes common cause in the hope that we might affect at least some beneficial change. i’m at the left end of the OWS spectrum and have been frustrated often by the direction the group has taken, but the movement is supposed to represent ALL who participate. and speak for the entire 99
re the dockers: what on earth makes u think we didnt communicate with them! we did, and they enthusiastically supported the action. here’s an open letter from the truckers.http://saveourcola.blogspot.com/2011/12/open-letter-from-americas-port-truck.html. before, after, and as we marched we received aggressive support from truckers whom we passed and dockworkers as they left the port. all this nonsense u r getting from the union bosses and the vulgar propagandists in the media about worker anger is nothing more than pathetic, desperate face-saving of an ILWU leadership which has failed its membership. the bosses r not the union, the rank and file is, and they support us OVERWHELMINGLY. they have made that crystal clear.
RE ‘“working middle class movement.”: I dont know who said that but i’ve never heard it at occupyseattle nor read it anywhere, more importantly it is absolutely not who we are! we have not ignored poverty nor the poor. we provide food and shelter for anyone who wants it, and many homeless camp with us. i dont know where u came by this absurdity, it makes me wonder, but just in case u may actually believe what u wrote, it is certainly not true.
it now seems clear to me that WITT is the voice of capital [as represented by union bosses] and not labor. please unsubscribe me.
To explain my previous (discouraged) post, let me say this: I can’t even put into words how much respect (and, yes, love) I feel for every OWS participant who has made personal sacrifices for the sake of their fellow citizens, those who actually understood what/why they were making a stand. I also hoped to indirectly prod progressives into doing whatever is necessary to prevent the media from hijacking and redefining the OWS movement.
On the “working middle class” definition, this quickly became the norm throughout most progressive media, and it does serve to indicate that they have no use for those who have been pushed out of the working middle class, pushed into poverty. Under the best of conditions (which we sure don’t have) it would be years before we have enough jobs for all who need them, and yet we won’t talk about how people (those who are unlikely to find employment in the foreseeable future) should survive until then. We’ve been calling for job creation for some 30 years now, and poverty has only grown.
Probably more than anyone else, MSNBC (the evening programs) has been the media voice of the OWS movement, and they (especially Ed Schultz) have consistently narrowed the discussion to “the working middle class,” excluding the post-middle class/poor. Not a whole lot of coverage of real US poverty. Schultz specifies that he stands with the working middle class on each program, and remains oblivious to the desperately poor. When the media repetitiously defines this as a “working middle class movement,” it slams the door shut on millions of the former middle class, now unemployed.
such media as is unconcerned with those pushed out of the ‘working middle class’ and into poverty could in no way b classified as ‘progressive’. however they may choose to define themselves.
and let’s not forget that, depending on one’s definition, the phrase ‘working middle class’ is either redundant or an oxymoron. in either case it fails yr purpose.
ed who? or better yet: ed who cares! MSNBC [Moribund Specious Nonsensical Bourgeois Crap] is yr idea of progressive? we at OWS will not b held responsible for what spin big ed and the faux left put on us [nor big mike and the faux left at WITT].
lest we forget, msnbc is a joint venture between GE and microsoft, that’s bill gates and the pentagon. these r not exactly disinterested parties. if u think u r gonna get ‘progressive’ stuff from them then u should think again.
some weeks ago the OS GA passed a ‘full employment’ motion in which we endorsed the idea that people with incomes should b taxed to produce revenue to hire the unemployed for public works projects. as i recall it was unopposed.
we’re sorry if the bourgeois press didnt mention it.
dave fryett, Thank you! You actually said what I had hoped to hear, but didn’t expect to. Just how things are defined in the media can be very different from what the participants say, so the voices of those who are actually involved (directly or indirectly) are vitally important.