UNITED STATES: Dock workers to stop work to protest Iraq war

Shane Bentley

At its January 15 membership meeting, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 voted to hold a stop-work meeting on March 20 to shut down San Francisco Bay docks in solidarity with protest marches taking place that day against the US occupation of Iraq.

The dockers' union branch is using a contract provision that allows for a monthly stop-work meeting to conduct its solidarity action. Local 10 is trying to organise all US West Coast ports to take the same action.

The local's business agent, Jack Heyman, believes that if the other US West Coast ports follow the Local 10's lead, "it will send a powerful working-class message to the warmongers in Washington that we don't support imperial wars like the one in Iraq".

The same tactic was successfully used in 1999 to shut down West Coast ports to demand freedom for framed black American political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Dock workers in Los Angeles last month used their "stop work" meeting to mobilise support for striking grocery workers in southern California.

ILWU Local 10 is no stranger to taking solidarity action. It refused to work the Columbus Canada, a ship loaded by Patrick scabs in Sydney's Port Botany during the 1998 Australian maritime dispute.

Two years earlier, the local took action to support the Liverpool dockers by refusing to work the Neptune Jade.

Heyman is due to appear in court on February 6 after a brutal police attack on an April 7 peaceful anti-war demonstration. Oakland police opened fire with "non-lethal" wood and rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas. Five ILWU members needed hospital treatment after the cop attack.

Heyman was one of 25 people arrested during the protest. He was dragged from his car, roughed up and then arrested for the "crime" of trying to warn his members of the violent police attack.

From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.

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From GLW issue 568