As this issue of The Dispatcher was going to press in late November, longshore contract talks continued to be productive through the Thanksgiving holiday and were scheduled to immediately resume an intensive schedule in December. One issue impacting the talks is port...
During the final days of October, two groups of Northern California recycling workers decided that they would no longer tolerate indignities and discrimination from their employers. One group voted overwhelmingly to join the ILWU. Another group – already members of...
For the fourth straight year, Local 502 members have raised funds for the British Columbia Children’s Hospital. Every year the fundraising effort has beaten previous records. This year the record was beaten by $9,000; Local 502 members raised $41,502 which brings the...
Hundreds of visitors attending the Port of Anacortes “Bier on the Pier” festival and “Floating Boat Show” in early October encountered a giant banner with a hard-hitting message: “Port of Anacortes: blowing your tax dollars, unfair to maintenance workers,...
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Over the past week, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents over 70 multinational ocean carriers and maritime companies in contract negotiations with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), issued news releases...
The Panama Canal Pilots’ Union, a part of the ILWU’s Panama Division, is an organization representing 256 professional pilots whose main responsibility is the safe transit of vessels through the Panama Canal. Pilots’ Union recently released a video showing some of...
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Monday, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents over 70 multinational ocean carriers and maritime companies in contract negotiations with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), began a media offensive against the...
SAN LEANDRO, CA—Within days of each other last week, two groups of Northern California recycling workers declared they’d had enough of what they see as regimes of indignity and discrimination. One group voted to unionize, and another, already union members,...
OAKLAND, CA – A week-long strike by 130 low-wage recycling workers at Waste Management facilities in Oakland and San Leandro ended Thursday afternoon, October 30, after workers secured a contract guaranteeing living wages and affordable family health insurance....
by DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM It’s 4 AM. The air is cold and damp on 98th Avenue in deep East Oakland, down along the San Francisco Bay’s industrial waterfront. This is a hard geography of concrete and dust and pot-hole riddled roads latticed by train tracks. Much of the...
