Flags Of Convenience

Many of us know that multi national corporations evade paying taxes by headquartering themselves in tax havens like Barbados and the Cayman Islands. These same global corporations shuffle their debts around the world, through secondary companies, to tax jurisdictions with higher or lower interest rates to suit whatever profit making agenda they have that week. Effectively, they are not paying taxes to the jurisdictions where their workforces reside, basically using a region for it's labor and giving nothing back to the communities that earn profits for them.

The International Transport workers Federation has been at the forefront of a global campaign to raise awareness of a similar system in the shipping, transport and now aviation sectors. Historically, if a German vessel came to port, it was built by Germans, owned by Germans and crewed by Germans. Anybody that works along the shore can tell you that this is not the case these days. Starting in the 1920's vessel's started being registered in various impoverished nation states around the world. This was done to cut costs and cut corners and is done today for the exact same reasons. Panama, Monrovia & The Marshall Islands are the most common FOC ship registrars. A ship registered under a Flag of Convenience, regardless of who owns it, or where it was built, is now registered with a third world country happy to receive much needed funds. That ship and it's crew, who are mostly from the Philippines or China these days, are now subject to the laws & regulations of the country it is registered in. This includes taxes, safety, environmental laws and things like the well being and payment of the crew in many cases being a gross modern version of indentured servitude.

Last year a vessel named the "Sider Pink" birthed up the river in Sacramento, CA. The crew was emaciated and starving and hadn't been paid for months. The vessel hadn't been re-supplied and the crew told the Coast Guard they had been pulling up seaweed for food. The Greek owner had registered the vessel under a flag of convenience in the West African, Liberian capitol of Monrovia. Luckily, Longshore workers spotted the crew and called in the ITF and Coast Guard who immediately stopped the ship from leaving until the crew was taken care of and legal retribution hashed out . The Greek ship owner amazingly had concealed his whole shipping operation under a series of small bogus, side companies.

Don't worry, here in the United States there is a piece of legislation known as the Jones Act. The Jones Act requires any vessel built in the United States to be registered here and crewed by U.S. citizens. It lays out the laws for the US Merchant Marine Fleet and even goes as far as requiring that 75% of the crew be born on US soil. This is because the United States Merchant Marines are an auxiliary force in time of war to move troops and cargo. Well that sounds good doesn't it? The United States is actually responsible and has our countries interest and our countries workers at heart? Well, right off the bat, the capitalists fucking hate it, because they can't stay competitive with a global fleet of ships whose owners are driving wages to the bottom and paying the bare minimum in taxes and fees to continue their conquest and enslavement of humankind. And all that imported shit we wear, drive and buy for our kids? Every dollar spent in this global economy makes us implicit in an unending list of crimes against humanity.

So anyways, what this rant is really about, is yesterday, the ITF began engaging the International Civil Aviation Organization at their annual conference in regards to the spread of Flags Of Convenience into the aviation sector.

Since we all fly much more frequently, then say, travel the high seas on a freighter, I figured this might be a bit more relevant and of interest to some of you. Cheers and have a nice day.

http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/8661

MARCH ON MITSUI - ILWU Local 4 Locked Out!

Today was a good day. Hundreds of Longshore workers from up and down the west coast descended upon Vancouver, WA. Folks from IBU, ITF, IBT, UFCW, IWW, and all sorts of union, labor, solidarity organizations showed up to rally in support of ILWU Local 4 who have been locked out of their grain facility for over a week now.

The lockout comes, just as all the other regional grain facilities have jointly agreed to contracts with the ILWU with relatively little drama. Today we marched on the Mitsui headquarters building, the owners of the Vancouver grain facility. At first we blocked the street en masse. Then we took over a water fountain plaza blocked off by large signs regarding trespassing on private property. Somebody joked that, "had they hired a union company to install the signs, they wouldn't have come down so easily." This place was a skyscraper fortress of glass built on a large parking garage complex. For how formidable the building appeared, the sun was out, spirits were high and literally nobody gave two shits about the lines of cops up and down the street. Our crowd was solid. Numbering somewhere around 300 I would estimate. Big Bob our international union president (who is a member of Local 4, Vancouver) was up front trying to hand a copy of the regional contract inside to somebody from the company. This company, Mitsui has locked out their local 4 work force and scab labor has been working the facility. An American security company comprised of ex US military personnel has been ferrying the scab work force safely in and out of the facility.

After about 45 minutes of occupying the street and plaza, Big Bob was able to hand a copy of the contract to somebody inside. This was more symbolic than anything. It's not like Mitsui was served a subpoena to come back to the bargaining table or anything. For all I know the packet of papers just said, "go fuck yourself."

I have to change my narrative here and frame this in reality though. All of this was well and good and a real show of solidarity today, but none of it changes the fact that scabs are loading grain in Vancouver, WA. As long as this continues, every day that goes by, undermines the power of the ILWU's jurisdiction over that facility.

What happens, when all of the focus and energy built up around this lock out is funneled into an unfair labor practice charge that will be bound up in the NLRB for who knows how long? Every day that goes by, scabs get better at their new jobs, and while the company maintains that "there have been no replacement workers at this point," management are performing longshore duties and are most definitely scabs. Fuck scabs.

There were a lot of speeches today about the company... "not knowing who they have picked a fight with." I completely agree that today was just a glimpse, of the power, solidarity and militancy of the ILWU and all the unions, federations and organizations that support them. I am just getting a supremely "douchey chill" that is reminiscent of the EGT struggle that paved the way for the current lock out in Vancouver. I would hate for this to be prophetic. The prevailing trend seems to be to save legitimate labor beefs for contract expiration time in that magic hour when unions are legally permitted to strike, and relegate all other grievances to a legal arbitration proceeding in the NLRB. They say this promotes labor peace but I assure you there is no such thing. Only labor passivity. There has to be a more urgent attitude, a reinvigorated class analyses and a DIRECT approach to solving labor disputes like this. Otherwise this company Mitsui is just sitting in their glass fortress laughing at locked out workers, who are allowing themselves to be trampled under the false weight of Taft Hartley.

Solidarity to the Longshore workers in Vancouver, WA... LOCKED OUT by Mitsui.
Mitsui are throwing away 80 years of good-faith grain bargaining in the Pacific NW.

ALL POWER TO THE WORKERS.