LABOR TUESDAY! for January 21, 2003

Entnommen aus der wöchentlichen Ausgabe von Labor Tuesday

Hard-selling the Dockers Pact

By Charles Walker

As this is written, the results of the tentative agreement between the ILWU and the maritime bosses have not been revealed. The vote tallies are to be announced in a few days. No one I know is forecasting that the proposed deal will be turned down. Nevertheless, that hasn't prevented the union's top leaders from telling the ranks that disaster is in store for the union should they vote the pact down. Admittedly, their one-sided argument for acceptance is scary. On the other hand, so is their single-minded attempt to scare the ranks into believing that they have no other rational course.

Although there is opposition to the deal that was negotiated under the aegis of the Taft-Hartley Act, there's no evidence that an organized opposition has come together. Usually, that means that a contract will be ratified, if only because the proponents are organized and the opposition is not. Still, the union's leaders have chosen to sell the members on the compact, not just on its alleged merits, but on the fearful consequences they say will follow a rejection by the ranks.

"What we cannot do is cast ourselves as rebels looking to defy the federal government," the leadership has told the ranks. "And this is exactly what we would accomplish by voting down the Memorandum of Understanding/MOU …. [O]nce again, the Administration has made it clear: another West Coast trade disruption will not be tolerated." Moreover, "If anyone thinks they can get more by voting ‘no' and going back into negotiations [as some opponents have urged], keep dreaming, you're wrong."

Despite the rising opposition to the administration's war against Iraq, the union's tops rest their case for ratifying the agreement on the "conservative" mood of the American people. "We live in conservative times; our society is very conservative, good jobs are scarce and hard to find, and politicians are sensitive to this. As a result, legislators weigh the conservative factor first, then make their decisions."

Moreover, the leaders plainly say that the union and its allies are helpless to help themselves without the support of the Democratic Party. "Just look at the Democrats who cross party lines and vote with Bush on so many different issues. Who do you think," they cry out, " is going to protect us or even feel sorry for us, with public opinion already dead set against us, when an issue resurfaces painting us as a bunch of overpaid and spoiled workers who already enjoy wages and benefits far above the average American Worker and now demand more?"

The leaders' fearful words today stand in sharp contrast with their defiant cries to beat back both the bosses and the Bush Administration, before they cut their deal with the shipping and terminal bosses. Back in July, the union's president, James Spinosa, declared, "When we exercise our rights to collectively bargain new contracts with better wages and conditions, when we enforce those rights the only way we can by collectively withdrawing our labor, they claim we are unpatriotic. But these are our legal rights. There is nothing unpatriotic about American workers insisting on their rights under American law." (People's Weekly World, July 6). "The entire American labor movement sees the ILWU contract as important. Everybody knows if the ILWU gets hammered, every other contract is in jeopardy," said ILWU spokesman, Steve Stallone (S.F. Chronicle, July 25).

Moreover, the Teamsters Union and the International Longshore Assn., representing the East and Gulf coasts declared they would stand with the West Coast dockers. "Teamsters President James P. Hoffa promised that his 1.4 million members, who drive the trucks that deliver and pick up goods from the port, would honor and join any picket line set up by the dock workers." (AP, June 28). The Marine Union of Australia and the International Transport Workers' Federation declared their solidarity.

Labor writer David Bacon, has written that the government's so-called war on terrorism has caused "the entire terrain of labor negotiations [to shift] dramatically in favor of business, and many unions may find themselves facing federal intervention in the months to come" now that [I]nterruptions of economic activity … are [considered] a threat to national security." Perhaps, Bacon is correct. Certainly, the ILWU's decision not to strike in defense of the right to strike reinforces the adverse shift of power that Bacon rightly deplores.

There's speculation that from the beginning the ILWU leaders never intended to strike the dock bosses. That theory was fueled by the fact that the union's leaders never asked the ranks to take a strike vote. Although the union's caucus, representing the affected locals in 29 ports, gave the union negotiators their own power to call a strike, the ranks were never given their chance to throw their weight into the balance.

Could the ranks' voice have made a difference in the outcome? It did in 1934 when the union militantly won its spurs, and again in 1948 and 1971, when it fought back against the imposition of the Taft-Hartley Act. But in those days, the union's leadership didn't tell the ranks, "What we cannot do is cast ourselves as rebels looking to defy the federal government."