by Tom Price

Transportation unionists from Mexico, Japan, Korea and the UK met with their Bay Area counterparts Nov. 16 to compare conditions and strengthen the bonds of workers’ globalization.

Called by the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, the conference at the longshore Local 10 hall gathered workers from around the world to discuss the effects of corporate globalization on themselves.

“We have similar problems—everyone involved in transportation in this global economy will take the heat,” Local 10’s Jack Heyman said. “The capitalists understand that they not only have to make money off Third World workers, they also have to rely on transport workers, and they have to beat up on us also.”

When governments interfere, strikes over wages and conditions become political strikes, Heyman said. That occurred in San Francisco when the U.S. Park Service awarded the Alcatraz ferry contract to a non-union company, leaving IBU crew on the beach with picket signs in their hands.

“We’ve done an on-time service for 30 years,” said Marina Secchitano, Director of the IBU San Francisco Bay Region, which represents the former ferry workers. “Our former employer paid healthcare and pensions. This new guy wants to avoid that and get a three-dollar per ticket increase.”

ILWU Director of International Affairs Ray Familathe spoke on the need to internationalize the struggle.

“Some of the biggest victories we had in the labor movement have come from cross-border solidarity,” Familathe said. “Now we will take the Alcatraz campaign to European workers, where the travel agents are unionized.”

ILWU Organizing Director Peter Olney discussed international worker solidarity in the context of the ILWU’s attempt to organize the 650 workers at the Blue Diamond almond plant in Sacramento. They had not had a raise in 10 years, and many were crippled by repetitive stress injuries. The exported almonds are mostly handled by ILWU longshore members who sit at the beginning of the international logistics chain.

“Because 70 percent of their product is exported, this really means globalization in this dispute,” Olney said. “We have gone to U.S. users, but in order to bring this company to heel, we have to go after them in their most vulnerable point, their need to constantly expand their market internationally.”

Overseas delegates included Tony Nelson, steward of the Liverpool Dockers. He described how their being sacked for not crossing a picket line became one of the first internet solidarity actions.

“We decided in the pub—all major decisions in England are made in pubs—to go international,” Nelson said.

“The labor laws in the UK are so repressive, workers 100 yards away can’t help out striking workers. We were able to get our message out on the internet, and the first place we went to was New York. They refused to cross our line. We were taken to court and we won. We could picket in the U.S., but not in our own country.”

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the 73,000 member Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union in the UK, spoke on the sell-off of public assets in Britain, which continues under the Blair government, and on the need for labor’s action independent of political parties.

“When you privatize a public utility, you not only hand it over to some corporation to make private profits, you take away the democratic control of society to run it,” Crow said.

Mexican workers also face massive privatization, and millions have been thrown off their land as corporate agriculture takes over. Eduard Papino of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union reported on conditions in Mexico.

“With or without work, 50 million Mexicans find themselves below the poverty limit,” Papino said. “With or without employment, these millions of Mexicans face no other future than to beg for charity, go over to crime or launch themselves towards an ever more hostile and dangerous northern border.”

Hiroyuki Yamamoto, Secretary-Treasurer of the Japanese DORO-CHIBA rail union, spoke on privatization of that country’s railroads. Since this process began 25 years ago, nearly 200,000 workers have been fired and safety conditions have worsened, Yamamoto said.

“Reagan and Thatcher in the U.S. and the UK launched similar ‘neo-liberal’ attacks on workers,” Yamamoto said.

“Workers’ actual status undeniably shows the devastating consequences of these attacks.”

Herb Mills, retired former Secretary-Treasurer of Local 10, reminded the conference of the historical benefits solidarity had brought the union. After President Truman busted the railroad strike in 1946, he tried the same thing, without success, on the ILWU in 1948.

“When Truman said he would unload the ships using the Navy, we got wires from all over the world saying those ships would be treated as scab ships,” Mills said. “And they would not be unloaded.”