ILWU Rejects Boycott of Military Cargo to Israel

I attended the 30th international convention of the ILWU in June. Local 10 had sent the convention a resolution (initiated by retired longshoreman Jack Heyman) that our union boycott military goods to Israel to stop the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Though I was not an elected delegate, I went to fight for the resolution. The movement to free Palestine is at an impasse. Millions have hit the streets, but U.S. imperialist backing for Israel remains “ironclad.” The only thing that can stop the genocide is the American working class taking action that threatens the interests of the imperialists not only in the Middle East, but also here at home.

Many in the Palestinian solidarity movement have been looking to the ILWU, with its “progressive” reputation, as a union that could initiate such action. If Local 10’s resolution had been implemented, it could have ignited workers action nationally and internationally. But it was overwhelmingly defeated. Instead, the convention approved a resolution for a Gaza ceasefire that simply mirrors the hypocritical rhetoric of the Biden/Harris administration. I think your readers would be interested in learning about the debates (or lack thereof) at the convention because they demonstrate just how much the liberal Democratic politics pushed by the ILWU leadership, and the entire U.S. labor bureaucracy, sap labor’s strength and disarm the working class.

I knew there was little chance of the resolution passing. It was introduced after the Local 10 executive board had rejected my motion to sponsor a labor-centered May Day stop-work protest in the Oakland port. Such a protest could have rallied port truckers and other unions behind longshoremen in a show of labor power to demand an end to the genocide in Gaza. Having opposed a stop-work protest over Gaza, the Local 10 leadership had a need to burnish its pro-Palestinian credentials. President Trent Willis supported Heyman’s resolution, arguing that “radical resolutions” should come from the local. Such “progressive” paper resolutions are a dime a dozen in Local 10. The text of the resolution was not handed out for members to read, and there was no serious discussion of what it would take to implement it.

Heyman’s resolution painted a boycott of arms shipments to Israel as squarely in the ILWU’s “progressive” tradition of support to the Palestinian cause, citing Local 10’s past actions against the Israeli shipping line, Zim. It also cited Local 10’s 1978 refusal to load bomb parts for Pinochet’s junta in Chile, and its 1980 boycott of a military shipment to the Salvadoran Junta. But these latter two were one-time actions taken in conjunction with a sector of liberal Democratic Party opinion. What Heyman’s resolution proposed was an ongoing boycott of U.S. military shipments to Israel, one that would put the union up against all wings of the U.S. ruling class, which view Israel as their indispensable ally to police the Middle East.

This is the kind of action that the ILWU has never undertaken because its leadership has always backed the liberal wing of U.S. imperialism. ILWU founder Harry Bridges supported the U.S. during World War II and advocated a permanent no-strike pledge as the war ended. While quite capable of militant union tactics and occasional criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, Bridges always made sure the union kowtowed to the shipping priorities of the U.S. military. Even during the Cold War, when the U.S. government branded Bridges a communist and tried to destroy the union, the ILWU kept military goods flowing. The union had a paper position against the Vietnam War, but it continued to ship the matériel, which was crucial to U.S. imperialism’s war against the Vietnamese Revolution. To this day, the ILWU contract includes a provision that it must work military cargo, even on holidays.

In playing up the union’s previous actions, Heyman significantly underplayed the obstacles to his resolution’s implementation. ILWU President Willie Adams has been one of the most outspoken labor leaders in support of Biden, backing the NATO imperialists in Ukraine, bragging of his visits to Biden’s White House and refusing to utter even a limp ceasefire call in the face of the horrific genocide in Gaza. In a July 20 posting on the “Labor for Palestine” site, Heyman blames the resolution’s failure on the union’s “right turn” under the Adams leadership. But in supporting the Democratic Party Commander-in-Chief, Adams stands squarely in the Bridges tradition. The “progressive” union bureaucrats are no less a part of the problem; if anything, their occasional paper criticism of U.S. foreign policy allows them to more effectively demobilize union struggle.

Defending the union’s endorsement of Biden (now, of course, transferred to Harris) in his opening remarks to the convention, Adams acknowledged that come November “some” on the International Executive Board (IEB) were “going to vote the other way and we have to respect that.” Echoing the Democrats, Adams warned of the threat of civil war, adding, “We can’t let this kind of dreadful disease tear the union apart.”

This disease is tearing apart the ILWU (and most others) because labor leaders like Adams are insisting that it is in the workers interest to keep the liberal “Establishment” represented by Biden and Harris in power. All the workers’ justified anger at falling living standards and social decay is channeled by Donald Trump into racist, anti-immigrant, anti-woman and anti-trans bigotry. Meanwhile, the ILWU tops’ enforcement of the division of the longshoremen into steady men, A’s, B’s, and casual workers has created a dog-eat-dog mentality that is the main obstacle to collective action in defense of the union itself, much less the besieged Palestinians.

Fearing that the Trump-Biden divide would burst out on the convention floor, the ILWU leadership did its best for the next four days to squash or limit debate on any serious issue. The resolution for the Israeli arms boycott was considered by the Resolutions Committee shortly after Adam’s speech. I was allowed to speak and argued:

None of the bureaucrats who made up the majority of the delegates wanted any discussion of an alternative path for workers. All wings of the ILWU leadership are committed to the PMA’s profitability and the strong U.S. military that protects it.

Heyman’s resolution was passed on from the Resolutions Committee to the convention floor. Even those who were opposed thought the real debate should happen there. But the leadership put off the debate on this and every other substantial resolution until the convention’s final hours. (The exceptions were, of course, successful motions to approve pay raises for the officers and an increase of the percentage of dues that locals send to the International.)

When leaders from the International Transport Federation (ITF), the Australian CFMEU and MUA and other longshore/maritime unions gave their greetings to the convention, they all heaped praise on Adams, while a few also advocated a ceasefire or other action to defend the Palestinians. Their mantra was “Peace is Union Business.” When the debate on an Israeli arms boycott finally occurred, those ILWU delegates who spoke for it mostly echoed the comments of the international delegates, citing the horrors in Gaza and the danger of world war.

They all cited the union’s “progressive” tradition, but none addressed the obstacles that stand in the way of union action. These include not just Adams and the rest of the ILWU International leadership (none of whom spoke on the issue), but the prevailing consciousness that what’s good for U.S. imperialism is good for the workers. This has been instilled in the membership by years of support to Democratic Party Commanders-in-Chief. A few of those opposing the resolution spoke openly in support of Israel. Others insisted that the union could not “take sides.” Most of the delegates from Local 23 in Tacoma—which is a strategic logistics center for the U.S. armed forces and where the ILWU regularly works military cargo on a dedicated military pier—insisted they had to vote no in order to preserve their work. In contrast, all these delegates were happy to vote for the Gaza ceasefire resolution, which passed unanimously. Far from being a “step in the right direction,” the ceasefire resolution simply allowed the ILWU bureaucracy to cover their refusal to lift a finger to defend the Palestinians with meaningless “peace” rhetoric. You will look in vain for any mention of the debate on the Israeli arms boycott in the sanitized convention account published in the June Dispatcher.

The leadership of the Palestinian solidarity movement shares the same liberal politics of the union leaders. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) has launched a “Mask Off Maersk” campaign. Recognizing the strategic nature of the shipping industry, their aim is to “shame” the profiteers who run the Danish shipping giant into dropping all their contracts to transport arms to Israel. The PYM argues that this demand is “winnable” because the arms trade is a relatively small part of Maersk’s profits.

However, the entire globalized shipping industry relies on a strong U.S. military, with Israel as its deputy in the Near East. Moral appeals to the capitalists are not going to make them act against their interests. The Gaza war has been good for business—all the shippers are raking in excess profits because vessels have to go around Africa to avoid the Suez Canal and Houthi missile attacks. The longer travel distances have been grounds to raise prices yet again.

PYM members have approached workers to support their campaign, but they rely on the same kind of moral appeals that they address to Maersk. Most of my coworkers in Local 10 are horrified by the genocide and identify with the oppressed Palestinians. They understand that it is the Democrats who are responsible for arming Israel so that it can flatten Gaza and slaughter Palestinian men, women and children. But they are disarmed by the labor traitors, who claim that the Democrats will rein in their Israeli ally if only the majority of Americans make clear they want “peace.” They are disarmed by the union leadership, which proclaims that U.S. imperialism can be a force for good in the world. It is precisely their support for the U.S. rulers that lies behind the labor leadership’s sabotage of the fight for the most basic needs of the working class here at home.

The working class is no more likely to spring into action to confront the U.S. rulers on the basis of moral appeals than Biden/Harris and Maersk are to be convinced to “do the right thing” by the Palestinians. The only way to move the workers to action to free Palestine is by making clear that doing so is crucial to advancing their class interests at the expense of the common enemy. This, in turn, is possible only if the purpose of the protest is not to pressure U.S. imperialism and the shipping giants to act with humanity but rather to land an actual blow against them. Any serious effort to mobilize workers in this way will have to contend with and expose the sabotage of the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy.

On the East and Gulf Coast ports, Maersk’s owners are facing a potential showdown with the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Negotiations between the shippers represented by USMX (which includes Maersk) have broken down over Maersk’s introduction of automated gating systems in the Mobile, Alabama, port. Unlike Willie Adams, who pledged to Biden that the ILWU would not strike during its recent contract negotiations, ILA president Harold Daggett is talking militant, threatening to lock down every port from Maine to Texas when the contract expires on September 30.

Daggett has no more intention of threatening the fundamental interests of U.S. imperialism than Willie Adams did. But if the ILA does strike, I will fight for the ILWU to take all action necessary to support our East and Gulf Coast brothers and sisters, starting in the first instance with boycotting cargo diverted to the West Coast. A strike which shuts down a good portion of American ports and wrests major gains from the shippers would do more to aid the struggle for Palestinian freedom than 1,000 “Mask Off Maersk” protests or union ceasefire resolutions.