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Crossing Borders: The Rise Of A Global Union Movement

By James B. Parks, Amnerica@Work, April 1997

At the busy Los Angeles seaport, 100 cranes were poised to unload freight from the 32 ships in the harbor-with another 16 due later that day. But the vessels would have to wait: Longshoremen stopped work on the docks for eight hours. So did dock workers in Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. In Oregon, every port along the coast was shut down for 24 hours.

The work stoppage on January 20 were part of a week-long series of actions at 105 ports around the world-staged in a global show of solidarity for 500 dock workers in Liverpool, England, who have been out of work for nearly two years.

ILWU members on the west coast and ILA members on the east coast joined dockers, seafarers and other workers in 27 countries in work-to-rule actions, work stoppages, public meetings and demonstrations at British embassies and consulates to protest the pr ivatization, deregulation and casualizaton of jobs at ports throughout the world. The actions came just one month after dock workers, at a conference in London, had formed an international alliance. "Dockers are under attack all over the world," says Norm Parks, a member of ILWU Local 8 in Portland, Oregon. "Capitalism has gone increasingly international, and we have to go international as well.".....