[Peace-discuss] Fwd: How Protests Against Israeli Bombing of Gaza Stopped Zim Ships

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

With Longshore Workers Support


  How Protests Against Israeli Bombing of Gaza Stopped Zim Ships



http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/12/how-protests-against-israeli-bombing-of-gaza-stopped-zim-ships/


by JACK HEYMAN

Protests against the Israeli bombing of Gaza erupted around the world 
but none had a more powerful impact than picketers in the port of 
Oakland, California in August and September. International calls for 
workers protest actions were made by the Palestinian General Federation 
of Trade Unions (PGFTU), the International Transport Workers Federation 
and the International Dockworkers Council (IDC), as well as an urgent 
call for action by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 
(BDS) National Committee. Messages of support for labor action were sent 
to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 by 
dockworkers unions Spain and England. Longshoremen and Bay Area 
activists took the initiative to act in solidarity with the plight of 
Palestinians.
After an initial attempt on August 2, several thousand turned out for a 
rally called by the Block the Boat (BtB) coalition on Saturday August 
16. However, this was not an action to stop the cargo operations with a 
/picket line/against the Zim Piraeus because Israeli-owned Zim Lines 
delayed the ship’s arrival, not surprisingly, to avoid the protests. Zim 
had done so during an Oakland protest in 2010. Instead, this was a 
spirited port rally as the ship stemmed the tide offshore. Leaders of 
BtB ended the rally, declaring a “victory” without further plans for 
picketing the ship’s docking later at Stevedore Services of America 
(SSA) Berth 57.

Independent Bay Area activists pressed for a picket and the following 
day, belatedly, BtB organizers acceded and called for a blockade on 
Sunday August 17, as the ship was docking at the SSA Terminal just in 
time for the night shift. A few hundred picketed the gates as longshore 
workers honored their picket line. The ship was not worked for that 
first shift. Subsequent picketing was done mainly by autonomous 
activists, some from Occupy’s remnants, others from BtB and the 
Transport Workers Solidarity Committee (TWSC). Again, ILWU members 
honored the lines, but picketers questioned where the BtB leadership was 
and why a call to mobilize pickets hadn’t gone out sooner? A head of 
steam picked up with longshore support to continue the picketing and 
stop the cargo operation with the successful picketing of each shift, 
day and night.
By August 19, Zim Lines’ anger had reached a boiling point. After three 
days of effective picketing with longshoremen honoring the line, the 
ship’s sailing board was set for the afternoon. But this ploy to deceive 
longshore workers and picketers didn’t work. TWSC received a heads up 
message that afternoon from a longshore supporter. Zim was moving ‘”the 
ship over to berth 22 tonight, inform everyone!!!”

Sure enough the Zim Piraeus let go lines at Berth 57 as if it were 
heading out to sea. Just outside the Golden Gate Bridge she made a U 
turn and headed to Ports America Berth 22 where pickets were already set 
up. However, this time rather than ordering longshoremen from the union 
hiring hall, Zim pulled a quickie as they had tried in 2010. They 
shifted longshore workers from another ship to the Zim ship. The 
longshore contract allows employers to shift gangs, but there was no 
contract. It had expired July 1. As maritime employers were hammering 
the union in concessionary bargaining, workers were free to do as they 
pleased. Some refused to be shifted. Others, coerced by company managers 
and union officials, worked the Zim Piraeus slowly, very slowly. One 
crane operator boasted barely any of the cargo was moved. Frustrated, 
Zim’s “flying Dutchman” shifted to Anchorage 9 awaiting berth. Finding 
none, she sailed 5:30PM August 20 for her next port of call, Vostochny, 
Russia.

This was a dramatic victory for those protesting the genocidal Zionist 
attack on Gaza. It inspired others to try to organize similar actions in 
ports in the U.S. and Canada. None clearly met with Oakland’s success. 
Some were able to delay the vessel an hour or so. Others simply informed 
longshore workers by leafleting. An “outside/inside” action requires the 
solidarity of longshore workers who discharge and load the containers. 
If they cross the picket line, use a side gate or enter when no pickets 
are present, the ship’s cargo will be worked. It’s not easy to build 
solid links with waterfront unions but Palestinian activists are trying.
Some activists wanted to picket Zim again in September, but the BtB 
leadership opposed the idea. So, the Stop Zim Action Committee (SZAC) 
was formed to picket the Zim Shanghai on September 27. Their picket line 
included three retired longshoremen who had been organizers of the 
ILWU’s 1984 anti-apartheid action, more than a dozen who had 
participated in the 2010 anti-Zim picket and four activists who had been 
on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was bloodily attacked by the Israeli 
Defense Forces (IDF). All picketers wore their “battle scars” proudly.

*Workers’ Action: The Most Powerful Solidarity*
In 2009, the South African dockworkers union protested Zionist 
atrocities by refusing to unload the Israeli ship Johanna Russ in 
Durban. Similarly the Swedish dockworkers in 2010 protested the Israeli 
Defense Force (IDF) killings of humanitarian aid workers on board the 
Gaza Freedom Flotilla by refusing to work an Israeli ship. Anti-Zim 
protesters cite the 1984 anti-apartheid strike in San Francisco by 
longshoremen to show the ILWU’s history of solidarity actions. But that 
one and these other dockworker actions were organized by the workers 
themselves. They were not BDS actions with community picket lines. They 
were expressions of workers power! Howard Keylor, the 89-year- old 
retired longshoreman who made the longshore union motion will be the 
first to point that out.

Nor did the anti-Zim protest on the morning of September 27 require a 
picket line at the SSA terminal gate because longshore gangs didn’t show 
up to work the Zim Shanghai. An announcement was made at the hiring hall 
about the picketing. Only one union member took a dispatch slip to work 
Zim. /This was longshore workers solidarity in action. /Longshore 
workers are in a heated contract battle with their employers, the 
Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). Without a contract in place SSA had 
no recourse. So they offered a deal with the union. If, on the evening 
shift the jobs would be filled, the employers would make sure there was 
no police presence.
During the August and September protests against the Zim ships, the ILWU 
International officers issued erroneous statements to the press that the 
longshoremen weren’t going to work because the pickets posed a threat 
and ILWU hadn’t taken a position on Zionist oppression of Palestinians. 
http://www.labournet.net/docks2/1410/TWSC1.html
However, the Local 10 president explained that ILWU’s experience has 
been that in protest situations like this and the 2003 anti-war protests 
in the port /the police//are the threat not the protesters/. He was 
referring to then-Mayor Jerry Brown’s OPD opening fire with so-called 
non-lethal weapons on anti-war protesters and longshore workers alike. 
This cost the city over $2,000,000 paid to victims of the police attack 
including ILWU Local 10. This act of police brutality was listed in the 
UN’s annual report on human rights.

(http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2004/04/united-nations-report-on-oakland-port.html)
So, the deal was sealed between the union and SSA. All the jobs were 
filled on the evening dispatch and the police were removed by SSA from 
the vicinity of the terminal. Longshoremen informed the pickets about 
the union/SSA deal, assuring them that Local 10 would honor the line. 
With no police to violate free speech rights, picketers blocked the main 
gate with cars and pickets. Longshoremen saw the picket line, drove to 
another terminal and stood by with their union official. With no 
longshore workers the Zim Shanghai couldn’t be worked. Not one container 
was moved after two full shifts. Zim sent her down to LA. Irate Zionists 
were calling for the arrest of the protesters but to no avail.

One must view these Zim protests in the context of ILWU’s militant 
history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABosvjawnj4The ILWU initiated 
class struggle actions for social justice– to free Angela Davis in 1972 
and Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1999, for justice for Oscar Grant’s family in 
2010, to protest the police brutality against WTO protesters in Seattle 
also in 1999, to show solidarity with besieged Wisconsin state workers 
in 2011, refusing to load military cargo to the juntas in Chile and El 
Salvador in the 1970’s and ‘80’s and on May Day 2008 shut down all West 
Coast ports calling for an end to the imperialist wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. None of these union actions was contingent on “community 
support” but many were bolstered by community mobilizations. The first 
anti-Israeli job action by a union in the U.S. was in 2010 by Local 10 
in Oakland in which the TWSC played a leading role. Protesting the IDF 
killings on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the action depended on support 
from the San Francisco Labor Council, PGFTU and a mobilization of 
Palestinian activists. Some 1,200 protesters picketed SSA gates as 
longshoremen honored the picket line based on the “health and safety” 
provision of the contract.

*BDS Won’t End Israeli Occupation – It Didn’t Bring Down South African 
Apartheid*

The BDS call for an ongoing boycott of all Israeli shipping is illusory, 
misguided and would, in reality, undermine international labor 
solidarity, aside from penalizing Oakland longshore workers who have 
already sacrificed wages by supporting the protests. Even the BDS in 
Palestine does not support an ongoing ship boycott. And what of 
Palestinians who work for Israeli companies in Israel and in Palestinian 
territories. Should they quit their jobs or demand the companies close? 
Consumer boycotts have proven ineffective and cultural boycotts would 
prevent anti-Zionist professors from speaking at Israeli universities. 
In the U.S. and Canada professors of Palestinian descent are 
increasingly under attack by Zionists for their pro-Palestinian views 
and must be defended. The other two pillars of the BDS campaign are 
based on illusions that capitalists and their imperialist government’s 
can be made to withdraw support for the proxy that does their bloody 
bidding in the Near East, the Zionist state of Israel. The imperialist 
U.S. government, the biggest war criminal of all, sends over $3 billion 
dollars in military aid to Israel. BDS won’t stop that.

/The racist South African apartheid regime was brought down not by a 
liberal BDS campaign but especially by waves of militant strikes by the 
black working class./The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa 
(NUMSA) continues that class struggle today by giving no support to the 
ANC Tripartite government responsible for the 2012 massacre of striking 
Marikana miners. They call for building a workers party to advance the 
struggle and nationalize the mines under workers control.
A serious working class program to end Zionist depredation of the 
Palestinian people would require Palestinian and Israeli workers linking 
up in a struggle against their common enemies, the Israeli and Arab 
capitalists to end the blockade of Gaza and illegal Israeli settlements, 
to tear down the West Bank “apartheid wall” and the exclusionary, 
inherently anti-democratic Zionist state. The right of return for 
Palestinians can only be won on a socialist basis of sharing the 
checkerboard land of interpenetrated peoples. The call must go beyond 
freeing, isolated Bantustans in Gaza and the West Bank and for a single 
workers state, a socially integrated Palestine, as part of a socialist 
federation of the Near East.

Already Israeli port workers in Haifa have struck twice in October 
against the capitalists’s port privatization plans. And the racist 
Netanyahu’s expansionist settlements and anti-Islamist provocations in 
Jerusalem must be stopped. But how? In the early stages of the Israeli 
state, Palestinian and Israeli workers engaged in joint strikes against 
their bosses. And it was not that long ago that ostensibly Marxist 
Palestinian parties existed where now Islamist and nationalist parties 
dominate. That political landscape can change through a common class 
struggle of the Palestinian and Israeli workers against their common 
oppressors backed up by real international labor solidarity in action.

*Solidarity to Stop Zionist Attacks and Defend ILWU Against PMA*

The actions of Oakland longshore workers in solidarity with their 
sisters and brothers under the Zionist guns in Palestine is a vivid 
proof of the power of workers solidarity action. If these actions are to 
be repeated on the West Coast and around the world, then it is high time 
to use that power in support of ILWU longshore workers as they face the 
PMA bosses’ offensive of harassment and arbitrary firings. They 
supported the protesters picket lines. Now the protesters must offer to 
mobilize support if longshore workers set up picket lines in their 
struggle. Union waterfront workers have the power and they should use it 
/now/to smash the PMA’s union-busting offensive. But the ILWU 
International leadership has abandoned its union’s proud legacy of the 
working class fighting to defend its own interests and those of all the 
oppressed, as indicated by their press statements distancing union 
support for the anti-Zim protesters. What’s needed above all is a union 
leadership committed to mobilizing the power of class struggle rather 
than seeking refuge in the dead-end of class collaboration. The way to 
forge that leadership is in the heat of the labor battles which are now 
upon us.

*/Jack Heyman/*/, chair of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, 
is a retired Oakland longshoreman. He has helped organize many of the 
ILWU dock protests since the 1984 anti-apartheid boycott action./


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