Why Is This Important Today?

You may be asking:

Why should I bother reading a bunch of old papers you guys dug up somewhere?

Well, there’s an old saying that’s just as true today as it was when it was first said:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

In the course of researching into the 1947-49 period of the ILWU’s experience, we had hoped to discover how the ILWU won virtually every fight it fought, what its policies and its strategy and tactics were; and what strategies and arguments the workers’ opponents—the bosses (both the specific West Coast maritime employers and the bosses more generally, i.e., big business as a class with certain interests) and the government—were using against the Union, and what were their goals at the time. We wanted to see what was done then, what has changed on both sides since, and what we could learn from it all.

We found out that, in some cases at least, there is nothing new under the sun. During the 2002 contract negotiations leading up to the big coastwise lockout, Joe Miniace and his team—the global shipowners, the corporate elites that control politics in this country, the two big business parties in government, big business lobbying groups—seem to still be using the same old playbook.

For example, compare the roles of the National Association of Manufacturers during the ’48 struggle and the West Coast Waterfront Coalition during the run-up to the 2002 lockout. Compare Bush’s now-infamous threat to use the National Guard against the longshoreman with the way his Democratic predecessor, Harry Truman, acted in 1948. Examine the parallels and you’ll see. . . .

What happened in 2002—like what’s bound to come in 2008—was predictable, almost boring, when you read how they attempted the same things, nearly exactly, back then. A lot of today’s employer/right wing political arguments are almost verbatim quotes from what was being said and tried back then. (Maybe they’re hoping we've forgot!)

Today, for example, it seems uncannily familiar when corporate-sponsored, syndicated columnists in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times write about “the need to break up the ILWU’s monopoly of trade.” In ’48 those of the same ilk were crowing about the need to apply the nation’s antitrust laws to labor unions! (You remember “antitrust laws” from high school history, maybe…. They were those quaint, outdated statutes that are still on the books in America, to prevent corporations from becoming so powerful that they might come to dominate the government, overthrow democracy and establish fascism.)

During the period covered by the issues of The Dispatcher archived on this site, the ILWU was certainly not broken, and had no need of being fixed! It faced far greater external threats to its survival then than we do today. A militant and informed rank and file, together with a seasoned and aggressive leadership, beat back attack after attack, and licked virtually all their enemies.

In 1947—mortally frightened after the great national strike wave of ’46—Congress passed the Labor-Management Relations Act, better known at the time and since as the Taft-Hartley Slave Labor Law. It was intended to tame the labor movement by making some of its most time-honored and effective tactics—like secondary picketing and hot cargo actions, for example—illegal. It also outlawed “closed-shop” union contracts, allowed state governments to pass “right-to-work” laws that made organizing next to impossible (especially in the South), and attempted to force labor’s most militant and successful leaders out of union office on the coat-tails of an anti-“Communist” hysteria that was being whipped up by big business interests. This was among the most regressive and reactionary pieces of labor legislation the world has ever seen, in any country.

It was specially aimed to take down, among others, Harry Bridges and the ILWU. Well, Harry and the ILWU defeated this attack. They didn’t do it by backing down and trying to reach a compromise with the anti-labor forces, either. They met the attack head on and came out victorious. These newspapers explain how they did it. It might be useful to know about now.

In 1948, the Waterfront Employers Association (a forerunner of today’s PMA), led by Frank P. “Fink Hall” Foisie—and with invaluable assistance from other big time exploiters of labor such as the powerful National Association of Manufacturers—attempted to smash the ILWU to bits by destroying the union hiring hall. The entire weight of the United States federal government—under the Democratic Party President, Harry S. Truman—was brought to bear to stop the union from conducting a struggle to win.

The ILWU had the deck stacked against it. But its militant leadership and its engaged rank and file went into action, and—despite the imposition of a Taft-Hartley “cooling-off” (no-strike) period—did not back down, did not look for political saviors, did not capitulate one inch, and won a resounding victory and attained the best contract the longshoremen ever enjoyed—a contract that laid the groundwork for everything we’ve got now. (You can read that contract on these pages, in the Nov. 1948 issue of The Dispatcher.)

They pulled that off despite incredible odds by relying on their own unity and strength and that of the labor movement (and particularly on solidarity from the other maritime unions) and the broader working-class movements for freedom and justice. You can read how they did it in the newspapers on this website.

In 1948-49, after the victorious strike, the ILWU and Harry Bridges were so well organized that they successfully forced the employers to reorganize themselves! That's the origin of the modern PMA. It was formed because one group of waterfront employers revolted against others in their trade association who had been pursuing their political vendetta against Harry, and calling the shots for all the shipowners in the anti-ILWU drive. It would be more cost-effective in the long run, the majority of employers reasoned, to try and cooperate with the ILWU—rather than to risk antagonizing this formidable group of workers by continuing to persecute Bridges and wreck the union.

This led to a complete transformation of West Coast longshore labor relations, and to enormous gains for the membership, but it only happened because the union had stuck to its guns and fought it out.

Then during ’49, the federal government marshaled considerable energy and resources into a renewed attack against the ILWU. General Counsel Robert N. Denham, head lawyer of the National Labor Relations Board, actually got a ruling that the ILWU’s hiring hall arrangement was illegal under—ah, you guessed it right!—the Taft-Hartley Act, because, the Board ruled, it basically constituted a “closed-shop agreement.”

But the ILWU didn’t shrink away from its duty to defend their gains, and all working people’s interests. They knew their greatest victory ever had been taking away the right to hire and fire workers from their bosses and putting it into the hands of the workers themselves under a democratic set-up. They knew that this had set an example of freedom and democracy for working people, and had infuriated the big capitalists. They knew they were building a new world. So the ILWU challenged the legal ruling and won it on appeal—not necessarily because of brilliant legal theory, either, but because of the members’ power on the job and the respect they had earned fighting for their communities. The hiring hall was preserved.

The same year, the federal government—irate that the ILWU membership had defied the Taft-Hartley Slave Law by voting to direct their officers to refuse to sign the required anti-Communist affidavits—launched a high-profile public persecution against the ILWU’s International President, to have him deported back to Australia as an “alien Communist.” It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, but the ILWU and the labor movement “stuck by Harry Bridges and built the CIO,” as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others sang. Despite all these obstacles, the union fought and came out victorious. You can read about these events as they happened here.

The way the ILWU did things then—its militancy, both on the job, on the picket line and in the community; its vibrant, democratic internal life and the unity and solidarity among the members; its aggressive and skilled leadership; its energetic activism in the community for civil rights, against foreign wars, for Hawaiian statehood and democracy as opposed to a semi-feudal plantation-overseer society, against Southern lynching and Jim Crow laws, for women workers’ rights after the war, for public colleges where working-class kids could get an affordable education, against rent-gouging landlords—the list goes on and on—was certainly not something that was in need of “fixing.” It worked.

It might be pointed out that none of the ILWU’s accomplishments mentioned above were dependent for success upon politicians of the Democratic Party. The ILWU during this period was very aware of the treachery of this grouping who had long pretended to be labor’s friends. Bridges’ enmity for Truman, his big business allies, and his heavy-handed anti-labor maneuvers was visceral, as you can see for yourself by reading the union newspapers archived here.

It’s also worth noting in this regard that the ILWU was not afraid when it came to charting its own independent course politically: In 1948, the union supported Henry A. Wallace, the newly-organized, pro-labor Progressive Party’s candidate for U.S. President. Wallace hadn’t the chance of a snowball in the hot place of winning, but the ILWU was not a union to play it safe back in those days. The ILWU was also notable for defending the democratic rights of communists, socialists and other politically- radical Americans at a time when this was not a popular position to take.

In short, none of the ILWU’s historic gains were ever won through a strategy of compromise with, or reliance on, the Democratic Party. Most ILWU members during this heroic period would have found the whole idea laughable!

Just give these issues of The Dispatcher a read and decide for yourselves, Sisters and Brothers.

The rank and file has the power fix what is broken, but first we need to figure out for ourselves what’s in need of fixing. The story’s not over yet!