Judging from the hue and cry of the shipowners in the news media (Journal of Commerce and the Financial Times), the September 8 International Day of Action was a success. At first the Pacific Maritime Association, the U.S. West Coast employers' organization, blustered about refusing to accept a shut down of all the ports for an 8 hours stop work meeting in solidarity with the Liverpool dockers. When they realized that longshoremen were intent on stopping work and that the employers' denial of our rights might provoke a 24 hour coastwide shutdown, they backed down. Employers were upset because nearly 100 ships were idled in ports from California to Alaska, and unlike the last International Day of Action this one included Vancouver and other ports on the West Coast of Canada as well.
Rank and file longshoremen here, angered by the treatment of their brothers in Liverpool and inspired by solidarity actions from dockers in South Africa, have turned a new page in their struggle. They've taken it on their own to hit ships found to carry scab-loaded cargo from Mersey Docks and Harbour Company ports like Liverpool and Thamesport. The Hapag Lloyd vessel, Cape Charles coming down the Coast from Seattle was already 36 hours behind schedule when it reached Los Angeles today. If time is money, then these solidarity actions are going to be costly to Hapag Lloyd and those who trade with scab labor until the dispute is resolved and the Liverpool dockers are reinstated.
While there was TV coverage of the port shutdown in the context a general labor upheaval in the San Francisco Bay area, this time CNN did not cover it. Mike Carden and myself did a joint live radio interview on KPFA, as Terry Teague and I did on the last International Day of Action on January 20. Of course, the international solidarity actions will be featured in the u-pcoming issue of the ILWU newspaper, The Dispatcher.
KEEP UP THE STRUGGLE !
VICTORY TO THE LIVERPOOL DOCKERS !
submitted by Jack Heyman, ILWU Local 10 9/10/97