Solidarity is our right!

Every union in the Labor Party has had to battle to defend their members' right to strike and show solidarity with other workers. But last year, one employer - the Pacific Maritime Association - went after the Labor Party itself for its expression of solidarity.

In September 1997, the Labor Party's Golden Gate chapter, along with activists from a number of other union and community groups, set up a picketline at the Port of Oakland, at the berth of a ship called the Neptune Jade. This ship had been loaded by scab labor at an English port. (Two years earlier, the Mersey Docks and Harbor Company had fired 500 dockers at the port for refusing to cross a picketline in Liverpool, the only remaining unionized British port.) ILWU members refused to cross the picketline at the Neptune Jade berth, and the cargo was never unloaded. (At its January meeting, the LP Interim National Council voted to endorse the actions of the ILWU and the Golden Gate Chapter.)

The PMA and two of its affiliates retaliated by filing suits against the Golden Gate chapter and several other individuals and organizations, seeking financial damages. The PMA also sought a permanent injunction against ILWU Local 10 and 34 forbidding them from honoring a picketline again at that berth. The defendants moved to have the lawsuits against them thrown out as an infringement of their First Amendment rights.

On March 10, charges against the Golden Gate chapter and one other party, ILWU Local 10 Executive Board member Jack Heyman, were dismissed. The judge ruled that Heyman had been engaging in "lawful free speech acts" protected under U.S. and state law. However, the judge did not dismiss suits against the other defendants in the case - in particular, Robert Irminger, regional chairman of the International Boatman's Union, which is part of ILWU. In their discovery motions against Irminger, PMA is seeking the names of anyone connected to the picketers, membership lists and minutes of meetings of all unions and organizations involved, all their correspondence, faxes and e-mail, with the intent to add more defendants to the lawsuit.

"The ruling on Heyman and the Labor Party," notes ILWU president Brian McWilliams, "reaffirms our contention that this is a First Amendment issue and that these lawsuits are illegal harassment and intimidation. The PMA does not have a legitimate right to the information they are seeking, and we will not even look to see if we have any of what they request." He adds: "This is not over until every lawsuit against every individual and organization is dropped. Until then, the PMA will face ever escalating actions by the ILWU and the national and international labor movement."

For information, contact ILWU at (415) 775-0533.

Short takes

A report on healthcare commission by the AFL-CIO, Paying More and Losing Ground, concludes that 75 percent of the decline in employer-based coverage is the result of management shifting costs to workers. For a copy of the report, call the AFL-CIO at (202) 637-5041.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that union membership levels are still dipping - unionized workers now constitute 14.1 percent of wage and salary workers, down from 14.5 percent in 1996 (and 20.1 percent in 1983). Black men have the highest rates of membership (20.2 percent), white and Hispanic women the lowest (both about 11 percent).

Dethroning Crown

The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union is going after Crown Petroleum. Two years ago, Crown Central Petroleum of Pasadena, Texas, charged that OCAW members were sabotaging the plant during contract negotiations, and locked the 252 union members out. The union is determined to get those workers their jobs back.

OCAW is building on the fact that Crown Petroleum already has a lot of enemies. African American and women employees of the small refinery have filed a civil rights suit against the company charging that it is denying them pay raises and promotions and "cultivating an atmosphere that is openly hostile to those employees." Environmentalists don't like Crown much either. For one thing, Crown CEO Henry Rosenberg has been prominent in advocating the deregulation of environmental control. OCAW is now working together with environmentalists to amass evidence of Crown's pollution record.

"We did a study that concluded that Crown's pollution tripled after the lockout and the replacement of experienced union workers with lesser skilled contract workers," reports OCAW's Joe Drexler, who is coordinating the Crown campaign. "And the people who are paying the price for it are the people who live around the refinery - a mostly Latino neighborhood. It's environmental racism if I've ever seen it. There are few labor disputes in the U.S. that so effectively link the issues of union-busting to racism to sexism to environmental racism and environmental destruction."

OCAW is organizing a boycott of Crown, focusing especially on Baltimore. (Crown markets most of its gas in Baltimore, the D.C. suburbs, and northern Virginia - as well as Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina.) The union is looking for allies in its fight, and for labor organizations everywhere to write letters of protest to the company.

For more information, contact Joe Drexler at OCAW, (303) 987-5349.

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