[Marxism] Interview with ILWU officer

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/2/25_000_dockworkers_shut_down_west

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to turn very quickly now to the protests 
that took place here on Thursday to mark May Day. There were—in the 
largest labor strike since the invasion of Iraq, ports along the West 
Coast, all twenty-nine of them, were shut down as some 25,000 
dockworkers went on a one-day strike to protest the war. Several 
other smaller antiwar actions took place in other parts of the 
country. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of marchers in defense of 
immigrant labor rights in several cities, including Los Angeles, 
Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, 
Houston, Seattle and here in San Diego, took to the streets.

We're going to turn now to the dockworkers' strike, where the workers 
from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union brought the port 
operations to a halt from Long Beach to Seattle in defiance of their 
employers and arbitrators.

We're joined on the phone from San Francisco by Jack Heyman, an 
officer with the International. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jack 
Heyman. Can you talk about the significance of what happened yesterday?

JACK HEYMAN: Well, yeah. We were really proud here on the West Coast, 
as far as the longshore union, the ILWU, making this stand, because 
it's part of our legacy, really, of standing up on principled issues. 
And this, I think, is the first strike ever—well, I would call it a 
stop work, work stoppage, whatever you want—workers withholding their 
labor in demand—and demanding an end to the war and immediate 
withdrawal of the troops.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the significance of the arbitrator saying 
that the longshoremen should not go out on strike?

JACK HEYMAN: Well, you know, the interesting thing about this action 
is that not only did we defy the arbitrator, but in a certain sense 
we defied our own union officials. The union officials did not want 
to have the actions that we organized up and down the coast. And the 
arbitrator's decision is simply—we don't take our orders from the 
arbitrators. We don't take it from judges. The rank and file goes out 
and does what it has to do.

We did that in 1984, when the ship came in from South Africa, the 
Nedlloyd Kimberley. We refused to work that ship for, I think it was 
ten or eleven days. And that was in defiance of what an arbitrator 
said and also against what our union officials were telling us.

So we've got a strong tradition in the ILWU of rank-and-file 
democracy, workers' democracy, where we implement what we decide in a 
democratic fashion. And our action took place based on a motion that 
came out of our caucus, which is like a convention of all 
longshoremen represented up and down the coast. And we decided to 
stop work to stop this war, and that's what was carried out.

AMY GOODMAN: The action within Iraq in solidarity with your strike, 
can you talk about that?

JACK HEYMAN: Well, I think that really was the icing on the cake, 
because we were appealing for solidarity actions. And I know there 
was some actions in New York with the college teachers at a New York 
community college and teach-ins with students and so forth; there 
were postal workers that had a few moments of silence, a few minutes 
of silence in New York, Greensboro, North Carolina, and out here in 
the Bay Area; but really, the most stunning solidarity came from the 
port workers in Iraq, who struck in solidarity with us. And that was 
really a very courageous move, because they're literally under the 
gun of a military occupation there.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your plans now?

JACK HEYMAN: Well, what this action was was raising the level of 
struggle from protest to resistance, and we're hoping that these 
kinds of actions will resonate to other unions and workers.

It's already catching on with some of the port truckers. Actually, 
they've been doing actions for quite awhile. While it's not mainly 
based on the war—I think they're very much affected by the high price 
of fuel—they've been shutting down ports over that issue, but also 
immigrant rights, because many of them are immigrant workers.

And I hope that this will be an example to other workers that we have 
the power, we've got to use it. And that's how we can bring this war to a halt.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much, Jack Heyman, for 
joining us from San Francisco, an officer of the International 
Longshore and Warehouse Union.