ILWU Labor Conference to Stop the War

If your in the San Francisco Bay Area, please try and make it to this upcoming conference being initiated by the ILWU.

For more information and a copy of the schedule please check this website:
http://laborstopwar.googlepages.com/laborconferencetostopthewar

International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 has initiated this national conference in San Francisco, to be held this Saturday (10/20/07), and is moving in the direction of serious anti-war action. Although the call for the conference is national in scope, it could well lead to labor action at the Port of Oakland.

The clock is ticking. It’s time for labor action to bring the war machine to a grinding halt and end this slaughter. During longshore contract negotiations in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Bush cited port security and imposed the slave-labor Taft-Hartley Law against the ILWU in collusion with the maritime employers group PMA and with the support of the Democrats. Yet, he did nothing when PMA shut down every port on the U.S. West Coast by locking out longshore workers just the week before!

In April 2003, when antiwar protesters picketed war cargo shippers, APL and SSA, in the Port of Oakland, police fired on picketers and longshoremen alike with their “less than lethal” ammo that left six ILWU members and many others seriously injured. We refused to let our rights be trampled on, sued the city and won. Democratic rights were reasserted a month later when antiwar protesters marched in the port and all shipping was stopped. This past May, when antiwar protesters and the Oakland Education Association again picketed war cargo shippers in Oakland, longshoremen honored the picket line. This is only the beginning.

Last year, Local 10 passed a resolution calling to “Strike Against the War – No Peace, No Work.” The motion emphasized the ILWU’s proud history in opposing wars for imperial domination, recalling how in 1978 Local 10 refused to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. In the 1980’s, Bay Area dock workers highlighted opposition to South African apartheid slavery by boycotting (“hot cargoing”) the Nedlloyd Kimberly, while South African workers waged militant strikes to bring down the white supremacist regime.

Now Locals 10 and 34 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have called for a “Labor Conference to Stop the War” to hammer out a program of action. We’re saying: Enough! It’s high time to use union power against the bosses’ war, independent of the “bipartisan” war party. The ILWU can again take the lead, but action against the war should not be limited to the docks. We urge unions in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the country to attend the conference and plan workplace rallies, labor mobilizations in the streets and strike action against the war.