Longshore union officers arrested

By Herb Kaye

This article was reprinted from the April 18, 1998= issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

SAN FRANCISCO - Brian McWilliams, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and seven other officers of the union were arrested at the offices of the Australian Consulate on April 8 in a protest against that government's role in trying to bust the Australian longshore union.

The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), representing seamen and "wharfies,"as been the target of a yearlong assault by the government aligned with Patrick Stevedoring Co., one of the largest stevedoring operators in Australia, to bust the MUA and operate non-union.

To this end, the government sanctioned the training of Australian soldiers as strikebreakers in Dubai until publicity about the project forced Dubai to close the operation. Now, the government is offering to put $250 million into a fund for the fired union dockworkers in an effort to buy their compliance with the union-busting project.

The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), a worldwide federation of seafaring and dockers unions, is asking all of its affiliates, including the ILWU, to target shipping lines using any stevedoring company that has replaced MUM members.

Meanwhile, the fact that the attack on the MUM is not an isolated instance, is indicated by news that dock workers in the Greek ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki struck on April 8 and 9 to protest the privatization of dock facilities in those cities. The government of Prime Minister Costas Simitis agreed to privatize 11 state-owned corporations over the next two years, as a condition for entering the European Union's currency union.

Closer to home, ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco is faced with a challenge by the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe Railroad and its contractor, Pacific Rail, which loads and unloads container trains in the BN/SF yards. Local 10 organized the 100 workers in the yards, won an NLRB election and signed a contract with Pacific Rail, only to have BN/SF fire Pacific Rail and replace it with a non- union contractor with a non-union work force.

This is the pattern that Parsec carried out in Los Angeles in 1995 when 400 members of the Teamsters union lost their jobs, and in Seattle, last year, where Parsec fired the yard workers and now operates non-union. Now Local 10 is faced with a major struggle to restore the jobs of the original workers who joined the local and won a contract they thought assured them at least some security.