[Peace-discuss] US awards Iraq port contract to anti-union company

[R Braun]

Last night, the White House awarded a ~$5M contract for managing Iraq's
only deep-water port to company with a severe anti-union history (yer
tax dollars at work!):

| Date:  Tue, 25 Mar 2003 13:17:59 -0500
| Subject:  White House awards contract to anti-union company
|
|     From the Portland [Oregon] Labor/Peace
|     http://laborpeace.shacknet.nu/mailman/listinfo/laborpeace
|
| According to Reuters, the White House today awarded a $4.8 million
| contract to Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) to manage the Iraqi
| port of Umm Qasr.
|
| SSA is a notoriously anti-union company that has led efforts to break
| longshore unions around the world.
|
| Last year's lockout of West Coast longshore workers was driven in large
| part by SSA.  International Longshore and Warehouse Union president
| James Spinosa termed SSA "the primary roadblock to an effective West
| Coast longshore contract settlement," and accused them of "undermining
| negotiations, because their primary interests are in breaking the union."
| Even before the West Coast lockout -- which was prompted SSA demands
| that the Pacific Maritime Association crack down on workers -- the
| company had already moved 150 union jobs from the Los Angeles port to
| a non-union logistics location in Utah.
|
| In the late 1990s, SSA was part of an effort to break the Australian
| dock unions.
|
| Most recently, SSA pressured the government of Bangladesh to let it open
| a private port that would compete with or replace a government-owned
| port and its unionized workforce.  Despite having the support of the
| US ambassador to Bangladesh, SSA's proposal was ruled illegal by the
| Bangladesh High Court in November 2002.
|
| Perhaps unsurprisingly, the shipping industry gave 68% of its $4.3M
| in campaign contributions to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle.
| SSA CEO Jon Hemingway personally gave three-quarters of his nearly
| $10,000 in personal political contributions over the past three years
| to Republicans.
|
| It is hard to overstate how repulsive it is that a company which has
| made a career of attacking unions and undermining job standards around
| the world is now going to make money off the blood spilled in Iraq.
| All I can say is, I pray to God that no longshore workers, and no
| children of longshore workers, lost their lives in the battles that led
| to this contract.

(You can see the AP report of the contract here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030325/ap_on_re_mi_ea/war_iraq_reconstruction_2
)