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June 27, 2002
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahual Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
Days That
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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June 27,
2002
A CounterPunch
Exclusive
Strikers as Terrorists?
Ridge Calls
Longshoremen's Chief
by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
At the rate things are going, it won't be long
before labor organizers are being thrown into military prisons,
held without warrant as "enemy combatants". Tom Ridge,
director of the Office of homeland Security has been phoning
Jim Spinosa, head of the West Coast's Longshoremen's Union, saying
that a strike would be bad for the national interest. Next Monday
sees the expiration of the current three-year contract between
the Longshoremen and the employers, grouped in the Pacific Maritime
Association. If the 10,000-strong longshoremen go on strike,
ports from Seattle to San Diego could shut down, meaning a big
jolt to the already floundering US economy.
A call to Spinosa by the Secretary of
Labor would not be surprising, given the stakes, but a call from
the man in charge of coordinating the battle against terrorism
on America's home turf confirms all the Left's deepest fears
that, as so often throughout the twentieth century, national
security is being used to justify strike-breaking, invocation
of the Taft-Hartley Act and declarations of national emergency
to shut down labor activism and if necessary throw labor organizers
in jail.
Longshoremen don't need to be told this.
They know it's what happened to their most famous leader, Harry
Bridges. In World War II the US government, particularly through
the US Navy, cut deals with the Mob (mainly involving a hands-off
posture on the drug trade), giving the Mobsters specific orders
on which labor leaders to rough up and murder. Between 1942 and
1946 there were 26 unsolved murders of labor organizers and dockworkers,
dumped in the water by the Mob, working in collusion with Navy
Intelligence. (For more, reade our book Whiteout,
which contains a chapter on this nasty affair.)
Jack Heyman, business agent of the San
Francisco Longshore Union (ILWU), tells CounterPunch that Ridge
called Spinosa, the ILWU international president, about 7 to
10 days ago in the midst of negotiations. "He said that
he didn't think it would be a good idea if there was a disruption
in trade and went on to say that it is important to continue
negotiating." Since then, according to Heyman, Spinosa has
been talking not only to Ridge but also to Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld.
Ridge's astounding and sinister intervention
comes in the midst of tense negotiations between the Pacific
Maritime Association representing shipowners and stevedores operating
on the West Coast and the ILWU. The prime issue is technology,
where the employers seek change in work rules. Today, Thursday,
Longshore workers are staging a rally in Oakland.
"The big thing," Heyman says,
"is the hiring hall. The PMA wants to computerize the hall.
Longshore workers died in the 1934 strike for the hiring hall.
It dictates who controls distribution of jobs, who controls the
waterfront. We eliminated corruption and favoritism with establishment
of union hiring hall. They want to put computer cards. When you
go to hiring hall you schmooze, see what is going on. Employers
don't want that."
The PMA is also demanding that the workers
begin paying for part of their health insurance coverage, a demand
that would slice into rights won by the Longshoremen in the 1960s.
"It's not fair that all these foreign-owned shipping lines
want American workers to pay more for health coverage,"
said Ramon Ponce de Leon Jr, head of the ILWU's local for the
Los Angeles-Long Beach port.
The trans-Pacific trade has grown to
become one of the largest in the world. The West Coast now has
four of the top six U.S. container ports. Wages for full-time
longshoremen range from $105,278 for general longshoremen to
$125,058 for marine clerks to $167,122 for foremen. Longshoremen
have always made it a rule in negotiations not to make any concession
without an equivalent concession from the employers. Heyman mentions
the push by European unions for shorter work weeks as one model
for demands here.
This year's contract disputes are particularly
fraught. The rapid gains in trade volume are over for the moment,
as both the U.S. and Asian economies struggle to emerge from
recession.
Shipping revenues are down. Since Sept. 11, security has replaced
commerce as the transportation industry's main priority. Residents
of port communities beef about the long lines of trucks at container
terminals that cause gridlock on their roads and pollute the
air. With the huge new container ships now being built, such
problems will get worse.
According to the Journal of Commerce,
"Over the past year, PMA President Joseph Miniace has publicly
called for the introduction of contemporary technology to increase
the efficiency of cargo-handling activities at West Coast ports.
ILWU President James Spinosa responded that the union would never
accept the type of robotics he personally witnessed at the Port
of Rotterdam."
Ridge's call comes in the context of
urgent PMA lobbying in Washington. Again according to the Journal
of Commerce, "Management forces, pointing out that shipments
through West Coast ports account for 70 per cent of the nation's
gross domestic product, have been trying to line up support in
Washington, D.C. PMA President Joseph Miniace has been a frequent
visitor to the nation's capital, meeting with members of Congress
and administration officials. Importers and exporters have also
joined the fray. They note that what happens on the West Coast
will affect companies across the country. They're trying to keep
the pressure on the PMA to stand firm in the bargaining."
There are other sinister signs that "homeland
security" is being used as a club to bash labor. The right
wing is working fiercely to make the prospective new umbrella
Homeland Security Agency non-union, again citing the paramountcy
of national security. Once again this takes us back to the darkest
days of domestic repression at the dawn of the Cold War.
Today's
Features
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahual Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership;
Calls for Fair Elections
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