My Fellow Dockworkers Internationally,
The ILWU Convention was held in Vancouver, Canada from June 17-21. ILWU Local 10 brought a resolution to the convention, which had been unanimously approved at the Local’s membership meeting on May 1, the international workers day, calling for dockworkers to refuse to handle military cargo to Israel. The resolution denounced the genocidal war being waged against the Palestinian people with U.S.-supplied bombs, dropped from U.S.-built planes. It was a hard-hitting motion calling on the labor movement to take action, unlike many recent solidarity statements that basically call for a ceasefire but don’t commit the unions to doing anything. Local 10 answered the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) in Gaza and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) for transport workers to take action now, to stop the flow of arms to the Israeli military that is laying waste to Gaza.
But I have to report that our motion failed. The ILWU leadership did not oppose it in the Resolutions Committee. On the first day of the Convention International Transport Workers Federation’s Stephen Cotton was warmly received when he spoke against the war and in defense of the Palestinians. Chris Cain both of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) spoke, calling for dockworkers to refuse to handle military cargo for Israel and got a standing ovation. In stark contrast, ILWU International Officers did not say a word about the Gaza War or Local 10’s resolution. They laid back and quietly mobilized some of the major longshore locals, including those that move military cargo, along with Hawaii Local 142, which organizes hotel workers, to vote overwhelmingly, by a 2-to-1 margin against the Local 10 resolution. It was the labor bureaucracy at work.
As the Local 10 motion spelled out, the ILWU has a long history of supporting the struggle of the Palestinian people. Local 10 has respected pickets of Israeli ZIM line ships so many times that the company has stopped sending ships to the Bay Area. Had the motion been passed, it would have been a beacon for dockworkers unions around the world to follow. We could actually have mobilized to stop the shipping of war cargo to Israel from the West Coast U.S. and Canadian ports. This could have triggered a response by labor internationally, as many unions are waiting for someone to take the lead. But the titled officers of the ILWU did not address the moral crisis of our time, the genocidal U.S./Israel war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Why? Because in reality they support the war criminal U.S. president Biden.
Furthermore, they wouldn’t even play Angela Davis’ video highlighting the Local 10 resolution for the Convention until Local 10 President Trent Willis insisted it be played, and they finally relented. (Angela is an honorary member of Local 10.) On the following day, Willis asked that the video of Irvin Jim, the General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the largest union in South Africa, be shown, which powerfully supported the Local 10 resolution and called for transport workers to stop war cargo to Israel. He was told they’d let him know later. Near the end of the Convention the Local 10 president was informed that NUMSA’s 3-minute video couldn’t be shown because of time constraints! How many times we have seen this before, keeping members in the dark.
This censorship goes so far that two weeks before the Convention, ILWU International president Willie Adams had an article for our union newspaper, The Dispatcher, suppressed reporting on our Local 10’s Labor Forum to Stop the Gaza War. They refused to run it altogether, and today, after nine months of ethnic cleansing, The Dispatcher, once an award-winning union newspaper, shamefully has not published anything about this war. It reminded me of when Bill Morris, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union in Britain, not only reversed a membership vote backingthe sacked Liverpool dockers but censored any information supporting their struggle as they appealed for international labor solidarity.
But a luta continua, the struggle goes on. Every year on July 5 the ILWU commemorates the six martyrs of the 1934 maritime strike by shutting down all U.S. West Coast ports. Our featured speaker at Local 10’s event this year was Chris Silvera, secretary treasurer of a Teamsters local in New York City representing suburban train workers. Speaking about the three major strikes in 1934 – the West Coast longshoremen, the Minneapolis Teamsters and the Toledo autoworkers – he made the fundamental political point that workers need to build their own independent workers party. I’ve always run for office on that program for a class-struggle workers party that supports striking workers, immigrant workers and opposes imperialist and Zionist wars.
Politics in the U.S. is moving increasingly to the right, with both Democrats and Republicans lined up in support of the genocidal U.S./Israel war against Gaza and outrageously denouncing pro-Palestinian protests as “antisemitic.” In Britain, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer took office after purging leftists and anyone critical of Israel. But in Italy, the “rank-and-file” unions (S.I. Cobas, USB and others) have carried out strikes in solidarity with the people of Gaza and on Junew 25 shut down the port of Genoa calling for no war cargo to Israel. And in the U.S., the Local 10 resolution not only calls to on dock workers to refuse to handle Israeli cargo, especially war cargo, it also pledges to “honor picket lines protesting the war on Gaza, as we have done repeatedly in the past.”
The history of dockworkers unions in the UK, France, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada and the U.S. is filled with examples of organizing international solidarity actions to support workers in struggle and to oppose imperialist wars. Coordinated labor solidarity actions answering the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions would strike a powerful blow and could be a decisive factor in stopping this obscene genocidal slaughter. As the PGFTU poignantly said, it’s time to move from mere declarations to take collective action. Dockworkers like no others have the power to bring the wheels of international commerce to a screeching halt. It’s up to us to act. Our own history demands it.
In solidarity and struggle,
Jack Heyman
ILWU Local 10 Retired, Book #8780
Below are ILWU Local 10’s resolution and the videos of Irvin Jim of NUMSA and Angela Davis.
Angela Davis video
video2739470130.mp4 92.4 MB
NUMSA video by Irvin Jim
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVexe-uiX8CQ3vlyU07nR2Lg4jmUVoXo/view?usp=sharing
