by Tom Price

When Crowley Maritime opened negotiations with the Inlandboatmen’s Union in Feb. 1987, the union found the employer had one thing in mind—total victory. Crowley had proposed concessions that would have reduced wages and benefits by as much as 60 percent for the 800 IBU members in Seattle, Portland, Alaska, Hawaii and San Francisco.

Of course, the IBU went on strike. Bob Williams was the IBU’s San Francisco Regional Chair and he would be in the thick of the fight. The IBU is the marine division of the ILWU.

“He was a principled leader of the strike,” longshore Local 10 member Jack Heyman said. “If it weren’t for him, we would not have been able to organize militant actions like we did in Redwood City.”

Williams led the picketing of the scab barges that drove the scabs off the docks. The company had also brought in non-ILWU crane operators to unload the barges and workers shut the port down for five and a half hours March 20, 1987.

The strike dragged on for nine months and ended with the IBU retaining jurisdiction and beating back many of the concessions.

Williams was born March 9, 1927 and grew up in New Britain, Conn. He left home early, and after high school and the navy, he ended up in California, where he worked many kinds of jobs.

“One of his favorite jobs was working for PG&E, putting in the original wiring in mountain passes in the Sierra Nevada,” his ex wife Capt. Enid Marcus said. “He went to work on horseback and camped out, he was 19 at the time. He said that was the best job he ever had, so he was pretty much ruined for anything else after that.”

Marcus skippers ferry boats in San Francisco Bay under the Marine Engineers Beneficial Assn. contract.

“He was very concerned with fairness in dispatching and he helped rewrite the shipping rules to what they are today,” Marcus said. “The shipping rules determine how people get dispatched to jobs, how they rotate so everybody has a chance to get a job. It was one of the things he was most proud of.”

Williams served as chairman from 1985 until 1989. At home he was an avid reader and outdoors he enjoyed target shooting with antique muskets and guns. He died of emphysema Nov. 28.