By Lindsay McLaughlin
ILWU Legislative Director
The ILWU Executive Board endorsed Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for President of the United States at its April 15 meeting and unanimously affirmed this decision with a Statement of Policy at its Aug. 26-27 meeting (see page 10). This endorsement was no close call. Throughout Kerry’s 18-year Senate career, he has voted for labor’s position 90 percent of the time.
Kerry supports workers’ right to organize and have card-check recognition in organizing drives. He opposes Bush’s plan to eliminate overtime pay, supports ergonomic safeguards on the job, has co-sponsored legislation to outlaw striker replacement and wants to index the minimum wage to inflation and extend and improve unemployment benefits.
But Kerry’s record is not perfect. In the past he has supported the free trade policies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations that have been so devastating to the nation’s manufacturing base and its good blue-collar jobs. However, Kerry’s position has evolved. He is committed to voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas unless these agreements include meaningful labor, environmental and human rights provisions.
Kerry has stated publicly that he agrees with the ILWU that seal checks and inspections of empty containers should be part of an overall port security strategy. He wants to focus on real homeland security programs without attacking the civil liberties of longshore workers and other workers in America.
On the critical issue of health care coverage, Kerry plans to extend affordable health care to 95 percent of Americans so they get the same coverage as members of Congress. Health experts have asserted that Kerry’s plan will lower private health insurance costs and expand the number of people covered. Lowering the cost of care will help the ILWU retain health coverage for its members.
Kerry is very concerned about the outsourcing of American jobs. He has vowed to stop tax breaks to companies that send American jobs overseas and create tax incentives to keep good jobs at home. Kerry also advocates denying government contracts to companies that move offshore.
The American labor movement, and the ILWU in particular, cannot survive another four years of George W. Bush and his band of megalomaniac advisors. In less than four years, the Bush administration has turned a record budget surplus into a record budget deficit. The economy has lost 2.6 million jobs in manufacturing alone. It has lost over 1.8 million more jobs than were created during Bush’s reign. The unemployment figures from July show only a paltry 32,000 new jobs were created that month.
Bush has used “national security” and the Sept. 11 tragedy to justify an attack on American workers’ collective bargaining rights and civil liberties. During consideration of the Homeland Security bill, Bush insisted on un-precedented power to strip collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Bush allies even had the audacity to attack Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA), a Vietnam War veteran and triple amputee, for being soft on terrorism when he disagreed with this wholesale theft of rights.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, Bush pushed the so-called Patriot Act through Congress. The Patriot Act allows the FBI to investigate American citizens and residents based in part on their exercise of their First Amendment rights. The FBI can spy on people because it doesn’t like the books they read or the web sites they visit. It can spy on people who write letters to the editor criticizing U.S. government policy or on union members who stand up for their rights.
Who could forget the Bush administration’s conduct during the 2002 longshore negotiations? It threatened to take away the Longshore Division’s collective bargaining rights. An administration official acknowledged that they were prepared to use federal troops to replace striking longshore workers. In an unprecedented move, the administration invoked the Taft-Hartley Act against the ILWU in an employer lockout.
ILWU members did not bend under the lockout and Taft-Hartley injunction. The solidarity among members proved to be the deciding factor in the ILWU’s ability to obtain an acceptable collective bargaining agreement with the Pacific Maritime Association. This contract expires in 2008. If Bush gets another term, he most likely will attack ILWU collective bargaining rights again.
The Bush administration pushed through changes in regulations to eliminate overtime pay for as many as six million American workers despite a strong opposition vote from a majority of Congress members. With these rules changes, Bush undermines the 40-hour week American workers died to win.
Even though most union members have collective bargaining agreements protecting their right to overtime, the rules changes will hit them as well. Most union contracts specify that overtime hours must be compensated at time and a half. But when those contracts expire, all bets are off. At that point the employers can insist on negotiating new language because, for the first time, many workers who had a federal right to overtime pay will no longer have it. To maintain their current protection, union workers might to have to give up other benefits or accept smaller increases.
Congress can repeal these egregious regulations, and certainly Kerry will reverse them if he becomes president.
Recognizing that working families will suffer tremendously if Bush wins in November, the 2003 ILWU International Convention made the defeat of Bush its top priority. Accordingly, ILWU members are stepping up to the plate to elect Kerry president. Washington and Oregon are so-called battleground states that could go either way. Fifteen longshore workers were trained by the AFL-CIO on Aug. 18-19, 2004 and will be placed in states where their help is needed. Some 50 ILWU members will travel this fall to different states to help get out the vote.
Though House, Senate and governors’ races are important this year, there is no more urgent need than to send Bush back to Crawford, Texas. The only way to do that is to vote him out of office and elect John Kerry.
As ILWU President Jim Spinosa said in a recent letter to ILWU members, “It is vital that you register and get out there to vote this year. More importantly, don’t just vote. Get your family members and their friends out to the polls in November as well. The very existence of the ILWU is at stake.”
