Prepare to Strike! Fuse the Locals!

International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) president Harold Daggett instructed East and Gulf Coast longshore workers to prepare to strike over wages and automation on October 1. The ILA Master Contract will expire just five weeks before the presidential election. Democratic and Republican politicians are increasingly inciting racial conflict between white workers and black workers. Liberals push the lie that anyone who doesn’t vote for Biden’s partner-in-crime, Kamala Harris, must be an anti-woman racist. Meanwhile, Trump and J.D. Vance seize on workers’ justified anger at the Establishment and try to create a lynch mob atmosphere against immigrants, blacks, and trans people.

These same racial divisions threaten to undermine any strike. For example, in Newark, New Jersey, and Norfolk, Virginia, there are two longshore locals, one predominantly black and the other predominantly white. But with the right strategy, the ILA can unite its ranks and win a real victory against the shipping bosses and America’s rulers. This would show the way forward for workers across the country. To do that and win decisive gains, the union must link the struggle for more jobs and better wages and working conditions to the fight against racial oppression. Either the union moves to break down its divisions or the bosses and their liberal politicians will use them to break a strike. End the segregated union setup that undermines the ILA’s fighting power!

At the 2023 ILA convention, ILA vice president Dennis Daggett said about the contract negotiations, “If it’s a fight they want, it’s a war they’re gonna get!” That sounds good. But preparation for class war must not be left in the hands of the Daggetts and other ILA tops. Even though it is possible for them to lead a strike, they enforce the segregated status quo that could easily sink it. Longshore workers would be held back by the ILA tops’ entire strategy—to seek favors from Trump and the Democrats, declare themselves partners of the USMX company alliance and focus on boosting the bosses’ profits in the name of saving jobs.

How to Stop the Bosses’ Divide-and-Conquer Tricks

The first step is to break down the divisions by race and by craft on the docks. Up and down the East Coast, black ILA members are concentrated primarily in the longshore craft, while skilled positions such as checkers (clerks) have historically been reserved for white workers. In New Jersey, black longshoremen, white longshoremen, checkers, mechanics and lashers all work together, but they meet in isolated locals on different nights. They fight in isolation the day-to-day company abuse and unsafe work conditions. In most cases, no ILA member of any race in the New York-New Jersey port is allowed to carry their seniority into a physically easier craft (e.g., checker) or a different company’s pier; their seniority depends on the company list for each job.

At the moment, the checker jobs in New Jersey and Alabama are under the most direct threat of automation. This mainly white workforce needs unity with black coworkers now more than ever. The black and white longshoremen’s own self-defense against future job loss requires defending the checkers today.

Racial segregation is the bosses’ main weapon to keep their wage slaves divided and to defend their profit system. Separate is not equal in the unions or in society! Separate schools, housing and medical care means inferior schools, housing and medical care for black people. Liberal politicians say racial equality can only come by taking something away from white workers. This lie pushes white workers—the natural allies of black people—deeper into the arms of anti-union racists like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

White workers do not benefit from segregation. Discrimination against black people drives everyone’s conditions down. White workers are compelled to accept less than what they deserve because the bosses point to the black workers on the bottom and tell white workers: “Quit complaining!”

Maintaining separate locals damages both white and black ILA members’ ability to fight—and makes the union an easy target of liberal union-busters like Newark mayor Ras Baraka. The different locals can’t win a strike in isolation, so they shouldn’t organize themselves in isolation! The union must fight for one integrated ILA local in every port, with black and white class-struggle leaders.

Between now and October 1, we urge ILA members to ensure their strike committees are composed of workers from all crafts and locals at their port. Mobilize workers on the docks and at the terminals against unsafe work conditions and abuse by the bosses. Insist that your union reps meet with you all together across local lines.

How to Win Raises and Job Security

Longshoremen know that the shippers have been robbing them blind as they rake in tens of billions in profits annually. The base pay for new hires—$20/hour—is just slightly over the $17/hour that ILA members earned in 1986! The current top hourly rate for West Coast ILWU longshoremen is significantly higher than for ILA members.

The vast inequality for ILA new hires undermines senior ILA members’ fight for raises, job security and shorter workdays. Why give old-timers a raise to match inflation, if the boss can hire young workers at half price? The ILA should demand the top rate and benefits for all ILA members—young and old, North and South. For 6 hours’ work for 12 hours’ pay at ILWU rates! Jobs for all!

The shipping bosses, most notably Maersk, have been introducing labor-saving technology in violation of the contract. Daggett’s strategy has always been to try to stop automation by making longshoremen work faster. This is a losing proposition. It is cutting your own throat, sacrificing safety and allowing the boss to employ fewer workers.

Automation always happens in industry, the question is: Will technology work for longshoremen by reducing the length of the workweek with no loss in pay—or will it screw them out of a job? Workers, not the bosses, must control the process of automation to make it benefit them. The union must have the right to strike over safety and automation decisions at any time. Eliminate the no-strike clause!

How to Defeat Government Strikebreaking

In the event of a strike, the shipping bosses will come prepared with their government, their police and their Taft-Hartley strikebreaking law. The government will demand the union call off its strike before the ILA wins a contract. The bosses’ press will scream that the strike endangers “national interests,” meaning the interests of the bosses.

The Democratic and Republican parties both serve the bosses. When a strike has the potential to change the relations between the classes in favor of labor, they attack the unions. For example, Ronald Reagan fired over 12,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981, and Biden outlawed the railroad workers strike in 2022.

To defeat union-busting, it is necessary to know who your friends are and who your enemies are. While the courts, cops and capitalist politicians are on the side of USMX, the ILA’s allies are other workers and the oppressed. The ILA must line up support now in preparing for a strike. Solidarity does not mean sending a few thousand bucks and a letter saying “best wishes.” It means real industrial action.

Workers in many industries are confronted with racial inequality, stagnant wages, unequal pay for the same work and job insecurity. A strike organized and directed against these problems in a way that cuts through divisions and lifts up all workers would enable the ILA to galvanize not only other trade unions but also impoverished black, white and immigrant communities. This would create a powerful force to counter government strikebreaking and propel forward the fight to improve the situation of the entire working class.

The ILA should appeal to the ILWU to not handle diverted cargo in the event of a strike. Similarly, it should approach the Teamsters, rail unions and non-union port truckers, warehouse workers and seamen. The ILA has a special responsibility to assist the port truckers in organizing a union. All of labor must be prepared to mobilize its forces if the government tries to break an ILA strike.

The ILA tops, however, will not unleash a wave of labor struggle against the capitalist establishment they depend on, especially right before the election. Instead, they try to play Trump off against Biden/Harris. Expressing dissatisfaction with Biden’s intervention into the ILWU contract negotiations last year, Daggett recently had a friendly talk with Trump. This is no way forward for longshoremen—Trump is explicitly anti-union, while Biden and Harris smile and stick the knife in labor’s back. The ILA can win real gains, but it needs leaders who don’t glad-hand capitalist politicians and maintain the divisions inside the union.

Next Steps for the ILA

As Karl Marx said, “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” The labor movement must unite the struggle for black freedom with the struggle for workers’ emancipation. To carry this out requires a class-struggle leadership and begins with fighting today to advance the interests of black people and all workers against the common enemy.