[Dryerase] Santa Claus Conquers the Longshoremen, Nov. Public i

[SARAH BOYER]

Santa Claus Conquers the Longshoremen

By Ricky Baldwin

The mainstream media have buried the biggest labor story in decades, far 
bigger than the Reagan Administration’s decision to fire the air traffic 
controllers. The Bush Administration has used the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, not 
to break a strike, but to slap down a union already locked out by employers. 
Never before has the government used this power in a lockout.

After months of hostile negotiations, mainly over outsourcing, the 
International Longshore and Warehouse Union resisted striking despite all 
media predictions. The business press had been whipping importers into a 
frenzy all summer, and shipping through West Coast docks had increased 
dramatically in anticipation. This created “more jobs than people to fill 
them,” (SF Chronicle), and the ILWU said the “speedup” was unsafe. Five 
workers had been killed on the docks in the last five years, the union 
noted, and called on workers to “work to rule.”
Break the Rules, or Else
“Work to rule” means that workers follow all safety and other rules 
strictly, depriving the employer of the unpaid or unsafe work - during 
breaks, lunch, or when safety procedures demand extra time - that workers 
normally provide. The Longshoremen also began refusing overtime and rotating 
shipping clerks so that no one clerk had to handle the busiest ports all the 
time. The most careful reader would have found virtually none of this 
information in the mainstream media.

Instead, press reports were full of employer condemnations and accusations 
that workers were engaging in a “slowdown,” a legally unprotected activity 
that involves workers intentionally dragging their feet, now apparently also 
known as a “strike with pay,” (NYT). “I have said it before and I will say 
it again,” says Pacific Maritime Association president Joseph Miniace, “I 
will not pay workers to strike,” (SF Chronicle).

The summer news of the speedup, sparse as it was before, was completely 
forgotten by the second day of the PMA’s lockout. And the workers’ 
perspective appeared as a kind of footnote, if at all: “The union denied 
that it had orchestrated slowdowns, saying it merely urged members to refuse 
overtime and to strictly follow safety rules.” But such radical suggestions 
were quickly balanced by the PMA’s plaintive explanations: “We just talked 
to the union’s international officers and asked them not to do these 
things---If they do not give us labor, then that's a strike. And if there's 
a strike, the gates would be locked,” (LA Times). The workers refused to 
call a strike, so the bosses did it for them.

Blaming the Workers

Owners closed the ports Sept. 27 and again Sept. 30, at a cost to the 
national economy estimated at $1 billion a day. Still the media blamed the 
workers. In an article titled, “Labor’s muscle on Pacific docks,” the 
Christian Science Monitor opined, “Few unions can cause this kind of ruckus 
any more.” The article recounted past strikes by coalminers, “threatening 
America’s ability to heat their homes,” and steelworkers, “roiling President 
Kennedy and national inflation,” before telling us that the waterfront 
dispute “would seem to hold the holiday season hostage, with millions of 
Christmas toys and televisions from Asia trapped on a conga line of ships 
left bobbing in untended harbors.”

For added authority, we had chief economist for Merrill Lynch, Bruce 
Steinberg: “I don't think the government will let the economy be held 
hostage by some longshoremen.” Then the article compared the lockout to a 
“violent” 1934 strike, when police had killed several dockworkers.
Backed by media cheerleading, the Bush Administration set the Taft-Hartley 
wheels in motion Oct. 7, ordering a one-day investigation. The President 
appeared to have his mind made up, reported the Associated Press, as of 
course he likely had well before the contract expired July 1. Business 
lobbyists had reported a “sympathetic ear” in the Oval Office all summer, 
citing “post-September 11 national security concerns,” (AP). Labor Secretary 
Elaine Chao warned the ILWU early in negotiations that the White House would 
intervene, possibly with federal troops.

No national media explained the history of the Taft-Hartley Act’s passage 
after World War II, with FDR dead, amid a national backlash against 
organized labor, much less the history of the act’s usage. Taft-Hartley has 
always weakened the union and often failed to settle the conflict, concluded 
one study in 2000 (Arizona Law Review). But in the media, federal 
intervention was neutral and imminently necessary.

All the News That Fits (Our Story)

After all, Christmas was coming, and probably a war on Iraq. Gifts and 
military supplies had to flow freely. A long shutdown would completely cut 
off Hawaii and Alaska. This was such an exciting story that most media 
seemingly could not bear to include the facts. When the lockout came, the 
Longshoremen volunteered to handle shipments for Alaska, Hawaii, the US 
military and all cruise ships - without pay. With the help of a federal 
mediator, ILWU convinced the owners to allow this work, but the national 
media never reported this, or the dock owners’ weeklong opposition.

Here and there in the national media, the careful reader might find a more 
revealing tidbit, such as the dock owners bragging that they would “keep the 
ports closed until the longshoremen agree to extend the expired contract,” 
(AP). But this was rare. Even when the union did agree to a 30-day 
extension, as demanded by Labor Secretary Chao - and the owners refused - 
the President invoked Taft-Hartley anyway, moving up his announcement 15 
minutes to coincide with the ILWU’s announcement that the union had agreed 
(AP). Not to be upstaged by agreement when employing force, is of course 
vintage Bush.

By then, it really should not have been surprising that the big media failed 
to report the historical significance of Bush’s decision. To do so would 
require focusing on the fact that the waterfront “walkoff” (CNN) did not 
exist, but a lockout did, and on why that difference is everything. 
Undisciplined minds might have wondered why the White House was so clearly 
and disingenuously siding with the bosses who “created a phony crisis,” as 
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka put it.
“President Bush saves Christmas,” was the preferred theme. Jubilant reports 
almost always reminded audiences of the enormous cost of the port shutdown 
and, of course, how well paid those nasty Longshoremen are anyway - the ten 
percent whose jobs haven’t already been eliminated, that is. Nowhere does 
the press mention how much the bosses make.

Negotiations during the Taft-Hartley “cooling off period” are likely to be 
ugly. Negotiators for the companies have already turned up at the bargaining 
table with armed guards, an outrageous “breach of protocol” and attempt at 
intimidation, as noted by the head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation 
Service (FMCS press release). Nowhere in the national press is this story to 
be found, much less the suggestion that it might have been the bosses 
“holding the holidays hostage”---with the help of the White House.

For use by dryerase-members. Please send an email to 
imc-print at urbana.indymedia.org when reprinted.

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