Rank-and-file workers stand with Wisconsin struggle

Clarence Thomas, member of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, called out to the crowd from the podium at the San Francisco anti-war march on April 10, “Everyone within earshot of my voice should understand this. ILWU Local 10 needs your support. We cannot be intimidated and silenced.”

Thomas was calling on everyone there to defend his union local against a vicious attack by the Pacific Maritime Association following a dockworkers’ job action on April 4.

On that day, labor and civil rights movements coordinated national actions to defend collective bargaining and workers’ rights. The events honored the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was assassinated on that date 43 years ago while supporting bargaining rights for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn.

In answer to the AFL-CIO’s call for “no business as usual,” ILWU Local 10 members engaged in rank-and-file resistance to the anti-worker offensive symbolized by events in Wisconsin. They stayed home from work on April 4. For 24 hours, no shipping moved through the ports of San Francisco and Oakland, Calif.

The PMA hit back with a cease-and-desist arbitration award, and is now suing the union in federal court. According to Thomas, the PMA has desecrated the memory of Dr. King, and is now attempting to squelch the most basic right and self-expression of any worker in a capitalist economy — the right to withhold labor power.

However, the San Francisco Labor Council quickly called for “a mass mobilization of all Bay Area Labor Councils and the California AFL-CIO to rally in front of PMA headquarters in San Francisco on Monday, April 25, to demand that the court suit be dropped and that the vindictive lynch-mob procedures against the union in the arbitration be halted immediately.”

On April 4 this writer interviewed Thomas, a former ILWU Local 10 secretary-treasurer and current executive board member, about the historical and special relationship of his local with Dr. King.

Photo: Delores Thomas

Interview with Clarence Thomas

WW: Why were Local 10 members moved to take this rank-and-file resistance?

CT: What a lot of young trade unionists don’t know is that Dr. King was in Memphis to support sanitation workers; 90 percent were African American. They had no union, no effective way to address grievances. They were making rock-bottom salaries, and the workers were arbitrarily sent home, losing pay. Their equipment was antiquated and poorly maintained. In 1968 two sanitation workers were killed, swallowed up by packers. There was no workers’ compensation. Each family got a month’s pay and $500 toward burial costs.

It is ironic that we are facing the same conditions as public sector and private sector workers today.

On Sept. 21, 1967, Dr. King was made an honorary member of ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco. He was in the Bay Area to launch a seven-city concert headlined by Harry Belafonte and Joan Baez to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Dr. King spoke at our union meeting, and that connection with Dr. King is very significant for our local.

ILWU Local 10 has responded to the attacks on collective bargaining and on public workers in the state of Wisconsin by volunteering not to go to work today. Ours is the most militant rank-and-file, bottom-up union in the country. Local 10 is the social conscience of the ILWU.

We have a responsibility to step forward and take action to have a strong union and continue the tradition of Harry Bridges and other founders of the ILWU who believed the union has a commitment to the fight for social justice and the survival of the working class. Or should I say the emancipation of the working class.

Interview with Trent Willis

This writer also interviewed ILWU Local 10 member and former president, Trent Willis, who explained the April 4 action by his local’s members.

TW: We understand the attack [on Local 10] and how serious it is. We face an all-out assault on unions in this country. Membership is down to 10 percent or fewer of organized workers. The effects are starting to show.

Dr. Martin Luther King is a hero. He showed the connection between the union movement and the social movement. When the brothers and sisters start putting it together, we are stronger. Working and unemployed, everyone is a worker. We need to make them not be unemployed, but to have jobs.

I am proud I stood by in honor of the Wisconsin workers. I am glad my brothers and sisters stood with me. The fight is not over. This is either a new beginning or an end of the labor movement, as we know it.

Go to www.workers.org to read San Francisco Labor Council April 11 resolution supporting ILWU’s Local 10 solidarity action with Wisconsin workers.