Something historic and momentous happened in Long Beach, Calif. May 22-26 that could have significant consequences for the future of the ILWU and the international workers movement. A couple hundred officers and rank and filers of transportation and mining unions from distant lands came together to discuss their plights and to extend hands of solidarity that will stretch across oceans.
The Second Pacific Rim Mining and Maritime seminar built on the successes of the first such gathering in New Castle, Australia in the summer of 2002, bringing together more unions from more countries and renewing and deepening the ties and commitments among them. Throughout the week the delegates networking put into practice the gathering’s theme and slogan: “Globalizing solidarity.”
As the world economy continues to globalize, as wealth and power continues to consolidate into the hands of fewer and fewer companies, we see the power of those multinational corporations (MNCs) no longer constrained by national boundaries, national governments or national laws. Instead, they are writing new international economic laws (through forums like the WTO) that supersede national and local laws made by people ostensibly elected by the people. So it comes as no surprise that the MNCs “free market” laws leave the multinational corporations unfettered to accumulate, consolidate and dominate entire industries and economies, but workers’ unions are considered “labor monopolies” that unfairly restrict economic opportunity and individual choice.
Still, a globalized economy brings its masters a new set of problems, and it brings workers a new set of opportunities and challenges. The new economy is enormously dependent on moving resources around the world, and that dependency is a vulnerability. And since mining unions sit on those resources, and transport unions, particularly maritime unions, sit all along that transportation chain, our position gives us certain power, but also makes us certain targets.
The vicious lockout of Australian dock workers in 1998 and the lockout of ILWU longshore workers in 2002 demonstrate the how seriously the employers understand their dependencies and what lengths they will go to to shore up their position. The multinational mining companies have been even more malicious to their workers and unions. Rio Tinto, the largest mining company in the world and the employer of ILWU members working the huge borax mine in the Southern California desert, also has major operations in Australia and South Africa, home of two of the other mining unions at the Long Beach conference. Rio Tinto is notorious for its anti-union activities and for its flagrant disregard for the local environments it mines.
But because we are such a vital part of such a vital part of the economy we can be of great help to each other when we are having problems with our common employers. For our mutual good, mining and maritime unions need each other—we are natural allies.
The resolution all the mining and maritime unions at Long Beach drafted and enthusiastically embraced recognizes that and commits us to that—specifically to developing a global communications network for rapid response to political or industrial conflict affecting any of us. Two such conflicts loom on the horizon.
Dockworkers in the Chilean port of Iquique, who supported the ILWU in 2002, went on strike Oct. 15, 2004 demanding a raise from $29 per day to $32. They were met by riot police who beat their leader, Jorge Silva Beron, leaving him to bleed to death on the street. Beron survived, but now the government is prosecuting him for his trade union activities and threatening to imprison him. This kind of repression cannot be allowed to happen, in Chile or anywhere.
The other immediate crisis is about to hit Australia. In recent elections the ultra-conservative Liberal Party won a majority in both houses of Parliament. Along with the Liberal Party’s Prime Minister John Howard, they have pledged to go all out to eliminate the country’s labor movement. These guys make George W. Bush and our Republicans look like moderates. When they take office in the beginning of July, they are planning to pass legislation that will give preference to “individual contracts” over collectively bargained union agreements. Workers will be granted the “freedom” to negotiate their own separate contract with the bosses. But since the laws restricting unfair firings also will be eliminated, workers will be forced to jettison union contracts and accept their employers’ terms or lose their jobs. Australian unions —they represent 25 percent of the country’s workers, two times the rate in the U.S.—are not going to just accept this without a fight. And they will almost certainly need some help.
This new alliance is an extension of our previous affiliations, national and international. In North America we have a three-party solidarity agreement with the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen’s Association (the union that represents longshore workers along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts as well as the Canadian East Coast). We are pledged to support each others’ jobs and jurisdictions as well as aid each others’ organizing drives.
The ILWU is also an active member of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), a world wide association of 642 transportation unions, (including maritime, aviation, rail and trucking) in 142 countries. Its vast network of unions, responding as we have many times to their needs, provided immense support during our 2002 longshore lockout.
We are also a founding and sustaining member of the International Dockworkers Council, a more recent grouping of strictly longshore unions that is growing and becoming a force for the international steamship companies and terminal operators to deal with. The IDC was also of great help to the ILWU in 2002. With its new growth and strength forged in the recent fight against European port privatization, it will be another valuable ally come 2008.
The ILWU is investing all these efforts to build solidarity as part of our strategy to be prepared for the 2008 longshore contract bargaining. We need to have these friendships and alliances in place now and not wait until problems are at our doorstep. We need to be prepared in advance to face them and have plans ready to help each other. We have been there for them in their times of need and must continue to be, so they will be there for us.
