7435 Michigan Ave., Detroit, Michigan 48210 www.labornotes.org   #300 March 2004

East Coast Longshore Workers Consolidate
Reform Efforts at Florida Meeting

by Marsha Niemeijer

More than 35 longshore workers, representing ports as far north as St. Johns in Canada and as far south as Miami, met in Tampa over the weekend of January 24 to step up their efforts for democratic reforms in the International Longshoremen's Association. The activists are all members of the Longshore Workers Coalition, a growing reform group within the ILA.

Meeting participants voted to establish the LWC as a formal organization with a platform, a membership structure with dues, elected officers, and a regular newsletter, which will be distributed throughout the entire union within the next few months.

Delegates adopted a platform calling for democratic change within the union. The platform calls on the ILA to commit to: the direct election of international officers through a mail-ballot system; a response to global industrial changes such as automation; and deeper relationships with the West Coast longshore union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and other international unions.

CHALLENGE MARITIME ACT
The platform also calls on the union to protect its members in the wake of the Maritime Transportation Security Act, which bans (among other things) workers with felonies committed in the previous seven years from working in U.S. ports.

Kimoko Harris, a business agent for ILA Local 1883 in Wilmington, Delaware, said that the docks have often been the last stop for workers with felonies. Harris explained, "African Americans represent about 12 percent of the population, but given the inequities in the criminal justice system they represent over 60 percent of the population with prison sentences and past felonies. This act will disproportionately impact the minority communities…"

Coalition members voted to actively circulate a petition calling for the protection of dock workers' and other workers' rights to employment now threatened by the Maritime Transportation Security Act.

LWC activists argue that the Act should be amended and that funding should immediately be allocated to arm dock workers with training, information, and equipment so that they can help stop dangerous substances and weapons from entering the United States.

Harris presented the petition to the ILA leadership immediately following the LWC meeting. "They took it and agreed to circulate it to all the locals. They told me they would also make contacts with the ILWU about this petition," said Harris.

GAINING VISIBILITY
There was a sense of urgency in the air at the meeting all weekend in Tampa. Ken Riley, president of Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina and co-chair of the LWC, said: "We met to discuss how we could increase the momentum for reform within the ILA. Our interventions during the ILA International Convention in Puerto Rico in July 2003 really helped give the LWC credibility as a group within our union that is exposing the fact that local union leaders are suppressing the democratic rights of ILA members in their locals. The LWC is concerned with taking the pulse of the membership and addressing their concerns."

A first-time participant, Lovette McGill from Local 1416 in Miami, said that she attended in order to be able to inform her co-workers about the real issues affecting them. "When I started working on the docks and I found out about the two-tier wage and benefits structure in the ILA, I was greatly disturbed. There will be just one pay scale-a lower one-in about fifteen years, when the workers under the higher wage and benefits scale have retired," said McGill.

She continued, "I attended as an African American woman working in a male-dominated industry. My female co-workers need to be informed about this. Women need those better wages, because there are no men in our households, especially in the African American community."

Riley and others say they have been receiving more requests for comments and interviews from the media than ever before.

This media attention has drawn the ire of the international leadership. When Riley agreed to an interview with the Daily News, a major New York newspaper, little did he know that he would be asked to justify his statements.

The article, "The Fat Cats on the Waterfront, How Bosses Load Up on Pay Despite Their Ever-Shrinking Union," quotes Riley as saying, "Too many of our leaders are driven by the salary and not by the needs of our rank-and-file. Their time has come and gone. But the old guard still operates like they did in the '60s when our ports were booming."

At a meeting where Riley was asked to explain his comments, he told ILA officials that it was their insensitive leadership that created the LWC.