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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan.25, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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On The Picket Line

L.A. ORGANIZING MAP

Hundreds of Los Angeles-area unionists--members of the Longshore and Warehouse union and other workers--crowded the streets of San Pedro, Calif., on Jan. 10 to protest a threat to union labor in the port. WW correspondent John-Peter Daly reports that the protesters gathered at Harbor Department headquarters a block from the docks in a preemptive strike against a proposal to hire non-union workers. The bosses want to fill scores of jobs at the port's $120-million coal terminal outside the union contract.

Protesters chanted and carried placards as they marched past LAXT Inc., the company that will oversee the new coal facility. The firm and the Harbor Department have contracted with the Utah-based company Pacific Carbon Services to operate the facility, where coal is loaded onto freighters. If the plan proceeds, members of the union will continue to load coal onto ships, but the actual dock-side processing of the coal could be farmed out to non-union labor.

The Longshore union's Ray Familathe told reporters: "This is an informational demonstration to let them know we want answers. ... Our labor has made Los Angeles-Long Beach the busiest port in the nation, and we want our labor to continue on."

The bosses probably expect to dip into a limitless pool of desperate unemployed workers, especially Latin American and Asian immigrants, and hire them at sub-union wages in non- union jobs on the docks. If so, the way forward to super- exploit them and set them up against union members may not be as clear as the bosses hope. A major multi-union organizing drive, of which the Longshore union is a part, is under way in Los Angeles. It could transform the scene there.

The Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project--LAMAP--is

shaping an industry-by-industry organizing campaign along a 21-mile corridor from Los Angeles to Long Beach. The Auto Workers, Carpenters, Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE, Machinists, Steel Workers, Teamsters, and Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers are aiming their united efforts at "700,000 workers out there who need a union," according to LAMAP Coordinator Peter B. Olney. According to a recent report in the AFL-CIO News, "The L.A. corridor is one of the largest manufacturing zones in the United States, employing a high percentage of Latino and Asian workers, many of whom are women, in low-wage jobs." AFL-CIO Regional Director Dave Sickler says one key to LAMAP's success will be working with the communities to create a labor-community force to win union rights for super-exploited workers.

UNITE FOR VICTORY

The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees--UNITE--has won a hard-fought victory at Chipman- Union Inc. in Union Point, Ga. After a two-and-a-half-year battle there, the 550 workers--mostly African American women--finally have their first union contract. They won a $100 decrease in the medical plan's deductible, anti- discrimination protection, and improved wages and benefits, including the Martin Luther King Day holiday.

UNITE Regional Director Bruce Raynor said: "It is very significant that we were able to negotiate basic union protections in a Southern textile mill. It's some of the best language we've gotten in a textile contract. This tremendous victory shows that workers in the South who stick together can win." Chipman-Union even had to reinstate several workers it had fired for union organizing, and cough up back pay. The Chipman-Union campaign included demonstrations and picket lines, community solidarity and national support. Last September, UNITE members passed out leaflets about the Chipman-Union struggle at the U.S. Open in New York, pointing out that Adidas socks are made at the Union Point plant.

--Shelley Ettinger

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