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.
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