By John Showalter

With the 2008 contract negotiations only months away, the ILWU’s local education committees coastwise and others are working with Longshore locals to help everyone in the ILWU family learn about the negotiating process and the union’s plan for winning a better contract. A series of classes are being conducted for new casuals, ‘B’-registrants and registered longshore workers at several locals. The classes cover local longshore history, recent political activity and past contract negotiations with the employer, and how to advocate for job safety.

Classes at Locals 13, 19, 23 and 63 over the past six months are a product of the ILWU Longshore Division’s weeklong History and Traditions Conference in August 2004 in Palm Springs, Calif., according to Patricia Aguirre, Chair of the Longshore Division’s Education Committee. Some of the topics covered include: “Who We Are”; “Why the ILWU is Unique”; “How the Longshore Division Works”; “History of the Contract”; “ILWU Resolutions”; “The M&M Agreement” and “Health Benefits.” Speakers have included current and former Coast Committee Officers, regional benefits administrators, and local labor historians.
 
Aguirre and others say that these classes may be especially helpful for the casuals hired in Southern California starting in August 2004, along with several hundred others hired in Seattle and Tacoma in 2006. Many of these new recruits lack any personal affiliation or familiarity with the Longshore Division of ILWU, its history and its culture. The classes are an essential part of Casual and ‘B’-registrants’ orientation coastwise.

 “It’s important that workers have a place to go and get answers,” Aguirre said, “When new workers ask questions at these classes, it dispels rumors and misunderstandings about the union that might circulate on the job. We also want members to feel empowered and in tune with the issues we’ll face at contract time next year. Longshore work is very dangerous, and the good jobs we’ve won are important in our communities where we live. These classes will make it easier for workers to communicate that message to the public.”

The first class in the Pacific Northwest was held at Local 23 in Tacoma in December 2006. Subsequent classes were held in Southern California in April 2007. The classes will continue through the end of 2007 and into 2008 at Locals 13, 19, 23 and 63.

At a May 9, 2007 class in Seattle, International Secretary-Treasurer William Adams and Local 19 President Herald Ugles spoke to more than 300 attendees about the difficult 2002 lockout and contract negotiation—and what it means for 2008. Adams emphasized to workers—many of whom got their only impressions about the union from inaccurate media reports during the 2002 lockout—just how much pressure the union was under at that time.

“With the White House trying to prepare for war in Iraq at the time of the lockout, they could have pulled out all the stops,” he said. “They could have tried to impose the Railway Act and brought in the National Guard to do our work, but we stayed focused on the contract. It was tremendously helpful for the union when nine U.S. Senators from West Coast states wrote letters to President Bush asking him to stay out of the negotiations process.”

Adams reminded listeners that membership in the ILWU still stands for the American Dream and all of its rights and responsibilities: affordable health care, the sanctity of the union hiring hall, and respect and pensions for the men and women who came before them and built the union from the ground up.
“What you don’t know can hurt you,” he said, “These classes hopefully will educate members about just how much influence we have in the global trade industry and what we must do to preserve it.”