Taking the Long View on Longview
ILWU local #21 and supports at EGT
We had started on a Saturday night, only a handful of us talking back and forth on email,
and it went on well into the dark hours of Sunday morning; type email address, copy, paste, send,
type email address, copy, paste, send, again and again until my fingers were sore. I was one of a
hand full who were doing the mass emailing of the press release. We were in Oakland but there
were people from up and down the west coast involved in the planning of the action that we
expected to be coming soon. We were sending out a statement announcing the mobilization of
the Occupy Wall street groups from a number of west coast cities to support ILWU local #21 in
Longview Washington in its fight against the grain exporter EGT. There had been months of
planning and discussion, often quite heated, leading up to the anticipated action. The press
release announced our coming to meet the first grain ship that was to be loaded, and with ILWU
local #21, and other organized labor groups we were going to try to stop it. The next day
Governor Chris Gregoire of Washington ordered EGT to the table, the union took down its picket
lines. While we claimed to still be in a ready state, most knew it was over. In a week or so word
came that a contract had been signed in some strange circumstances and that the contract
included some really bad things some that might be precedents in other, future ILWU contracts.
There were lots of opinions among people who followed the event but of course most of main
street America didn’t even know the whole thing had happened. While I had played only a small
and peripheral role in the whole thing it had dominated my thoughts for weeks and I wanted to
know what the port workers themselves thought and what had actually happened there. So when
I had some time off in early May I went up to see what I could find out
Time line of events, directly and indirectly related to the conflict in Longview
February 2011: Occupation of Wisconsin state capital in protest of attacks on union rights in that
state. State budget in deficit due to debt burden, blame put onto shoulders of public sector
workers
July 2011: EGT (a conglomerate of the grain exporter Bunge and others) opens a state of the art
grain handling facility, at the port of Longview Washington. EGT had announced its intention to
not use ILWU labor, in violation of its agreement with the port of Longview and went to court to
try to get out of this part of the agreement. EGT had received millions of dollars in assistance in
opening the facility including: the building of the dock for the facility, the rail link and the
paving of an access road from the port of Longview, THE COMMUNITY’S TAX DOLLARS!
There are several months of trouble-shooting before an industrial grain facility of this size can be
put into service. There were attempts at deliveries of grain by rail. Trains and the gates were
repeatedly blocked by ILWU local #21 and its supporters causing BNSF rail to stop delivery
attempts. The actions of the workers and the increasingly intense police response gains national
and even international media attention.
9/8/2011: Some 800 union workers and community supporters storm the terminal and dump over
100,000 tons of grain on the train tracks. Overwhelmed, the police and private security guards
stand aside or run. EGT does not successfully receive a grain delivery until Sept 21.
9/9/2011: NLRB requests an injunction limiting pickets and judge issues a restraining order,
limiting pickets to16 people.
9/17/2011: Occupation of Zuccotti park in New York sparks beginning of Occupy Wall Street
movement
11/2/2011: So called “general strike” in Oakland Ca. in response to the heavy handed closing of
Occupy Oakland encampment on 10/26/11 by Oakland police, (many were injured in the police
raid including Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who was shot in the face with a rubber bullet) Tens
of thousands participate and shut down central Oakland and the port of Oakland, Occupy names
as one of its purposes “solidarity with Longview ILWU local #21 against EGT”.
12/12/2011: Partially successful shut down of most west coast ports by Occupy movement “in
solidarity with ILWU #21 fighting EGT” as well as for other reasons. It was completely
successful in a number of cities, only for a few hours in others. The top leadership of ILWU is
publicly critical of actions, though most rank and file ILWU workers, along with a majority of
port truckers honor the lines set up by activists and do not cross.
12/31/2011: President Obama signs the NDAA (National Defense Appropriations Act) of 2012.
Section 1021 of the act allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens without charge or trial if
they are suspected of involvement with terrorism.
1/3/2012: ILWU International President Robert (“Big Bob”) McEllrath issues an announcement
to members of ILWU regarding the coming of the first grain ship to the Longview port and
states, among other things, that ILWU members should; “take extreme caution when dealing with
supporters of non-ILWU sanctioned calls to action”, an obvious reference to the Occupy
movement, some saw this as simply legal cover others as a bid to remain in control of the
struggle and separate ILWU #21 member’s from its non-ILWU supporters.
1/5/2012: Officials from several northwest ILWU locals come to a solidarity/planning meeting of
Occupy Portland, ILWU #21 members along with activists from other ILWU locals and other
unions, to read the McEllrath statement as well as a statement critical of Occupy, advocating
Occupy activists stay away from Longview. Most in attendance walk out. ILWU members from
other northwest locals are pulled off Longview picket line by International leadership.
1/6/2012: The same group of pro-International leadership individuals come to a similar meeting
in Seattle, attempt to read the same critical statement, interrupting the speaker they spread out
through the crowd and start a fight. A YouTube video of the attack on the meeting begins to
circulate. The following week there is a “president’s” meeting of ILWU locals, no such formal
body exists in the ILWU constitution, local #21 president Dan Coffman and other local leaders
are censured and ordered to cease contact with key activists in other ILWU locals and the
Occupy movement.
Weekend of 1/21-1/22/12: Occupy activists do mass press release announcing mobilization to
meet, along with ILWU #21 and other’s from organized labor, EGT’s first grain ship and attempt
to stop its loading.
Monday 1/23/12: Washington Governor Chris Gregoire forces EGT to the table, there is a
tentative agreement between EGT and ILWU #21, pickets come down. The next day President
Obama gave the annual State of the Union address. There had been a letter writing campaign to
the President protesting the use of the US Coast Guard in support of EGT, the first time the US
military had been used in a labor conflict in decades. In the days following the tentative
agreement International Union President McEllrath meets with the membership of local #21. In a
rally like atmosphere it was stated to be a win, no mention of the many problems in it, and that
only a few legal details remained to be worked out. McEllrath advocates the members of local
#21 vote to empower leadership to accept or reject the package after legal council. Exhausted
from the struggle and trusting their leadership all but one member of the local, Mike Fuqua, vote
to allow leadership the final say without seeing the actual contract language.
2/7/12: The first grain ship arrives, with Coast Guard escort, at the EGT facility to be loaded.
ILWU workers are in facility under tentative agreement.
2/9/12: After it being negotiated by International leadership, specifically Bob Mcellrath and Leo
Sundet, local #21 President Dan Coffman is left to sign the contract with EGT, described by
some as “the worst in ILWU history.” For more in depth details on the contract see “the Maritime
Worker Monitor #11”.
http://www.labournet.net/docks2/1203/MWM11.pdf
I arrived in Longview mid-morning on Monday, May 7, and drove around for a few hours
to orient myself. It’s a little northwest town and seemed very peaceful, though the signs were still
up that read “I support ILWU” in the windows of many homes and business, but they would be
the only obvious evidence of the battle that had taken place here only a few months before.
The union hall was a little hard to find because they have no sign up now. It’s a rare thing
these days, a union hall that is also a hiring hall. There are no-doubt working adults in America
who don’t even know this ever existed. The employers, under contract, call the union and ask for
a certain number of workers of various skills and the union dispatches them to the various jobs,
the union controls the hiring. It’s a system that is intended to protect those most active in the
union and make favoritism on the part of the employer much more difficult. It being mid-day not
many were at the hiring hall as it was between shifts, when members of the union show up to be
dispatched to the various job sites. The part- time dispatcher Graig Briant and long-time member,
(since 1967!), Herb Roberts were there and the president, Dan Coffman, who has some
notoriety/popularity now in activist and labor circles because he had made the rounds; going to
various cities seeking to drum up support for local #21’s fight against EGT, was in the back
office. I struck up a conversation with Briant and Roberts. After a few minutes with the two men
the local’s president, Dan Coffman, came out of his office, said hello to me and told me that he
had to go. He said he couldn’t talk because he was busy, local 21’s president also works on the
docks and only collects a part time salary. Needless to say I was disappointed not get the chance
to ask him about some of the specifics of the contract, the local’s relationship to the International
union and Occupy.
Briant and Roberts were a bit cautious at first: (who could blame them? during the fight
there had been reporters trying to pose as members coming to the hall, EGT spies posing as
reporters, FOX news had called them “ILWU terrorists” and there are still many law suits going.)
but they warmed up after a few minutes. The introduction, as with the others I met, had an
awkward start as I told them fairly quickly that I currently work as a water plant operator and the
union that represents us is affiliated to the Operating Engineers. Local 701 of the Operating
Engineers were the scabs at EGT during the conflict, that’s right union scabs, little wonder the
unions are so weak these days with this kind of dis-unity. Top Op Engineer leadership and the
tops of the AFL-CIO, the country’s main labor federation, described the whole thing as a
“dispute over jurisdiction” and would not intervene to stop the scabbing. The fact that I had
raised it to my union rep and to the people I worked with along with my involvement with
Occupy got me accepted.
The most important thing on both their minds was that I know that the whole thing wasn’t
completely over and that local politicians and media were totally on the side of the company. In
addition to the civil suit against the NLRB’s fine of over 300,000$ fine against them, the local
has three suits going with the: sheriffs, county prosecutor and city police, for civil rights
violations. “Law enforcement is still harassing our members. Every few weeks someone gets a
summons, they’re charged with misdemeanors and told that if they don’t plead guilty they’ll be
charged with more and even felonies, so you’ve got people pleading on stuff they’re not even
guilty of and doing time and paying a couple thousand in fines because we won’t quite the suits
against them, plain and simple its black mail”, Briant explained. “We’ve got a couple of felony
charges, they did nothing different than anybody else that walked away with misdemeanors but
they were recognized by one of their security or whatever, one was charged with three felonies
and offered a plea deal and told if he didn’t take it he’d be charged with more, now where’s the
justice in that?” Robert’s added. When I asked if they thought there could be some kind of fight
back against this outside of the courts. They replied that they were hoping for an outcome in the
courts that would lead to the convictions being over turned. Given the bias we had been talking
about that didn’t seem likely to me. The conversation covered some of the details of how EGT
had tried to get out of its contract with the port and some of the specifics of what they do on the
docks. They are very proud of their work and level of skill at what they do. They told me of how
hard the whole thing had been on families and how proud they were of the support they had
gotten from the community.
One of the harder questions asked was: “did they think we could have actually stopped
the ship from being loaded?” Herb Robert’s response was quick and confident, “anything’s
possible with dedicated people.” The room went silent for a moment and Briant added softly
“yeah I’m just as glad it didn’t come to that.” They both went on to describe all the many dozens
of police in riot gear, armored cars, machine guns and of course the Coast Guard gun ship which
was parked right in front of the grain terminal. “It wouldn’t have taken much for one those cops
to lose it or misinterpret the wrong move, they were strung pretty tight” Roberts added. A
humorous side of the story was the police officer who mistakenly pepper sprayed them self and
tried to blame picketers for the injury. It seemed the cop had the nozzle pointed the wrong way
when they attempted to discharge it at the crowd.
To the question of the contract being a victory, defeat or some kind of draw? Briant’s
answer was “It’s a step forward, it would be kind of hard to call it a victory” and Robert’s added
that “we saved our jurisdiction, at least partly, and that’s the main thing after 70 some odd years
you don’t just come in and take that away from us”.
Their attitude toward Occupy was very positive. There is a small Occupy group in
Longview, mostly composed of local business people and a few professors from the local college
that had played a central role in the conflict. Herb Roberts was looking for Occupy to be more
active in the summer and hoped that the battle they had fought in Longview would rejuvenate the
labor movement.
Before to long, I was in my car heading down to the port with Byron Jacobs who is the
local’s secretary treasurer though also, like the president, a working member of the local. Byron
had made the rounds to other cities with Dan Coffman and other members of the local seeking
support during the conflict. He is a fifth generation member of the Long Shore union and only a
few days before had gotten out of jail. He had to serve 22 days for three misdemeanor charges he
had plead down from an original four felonies and twelve misdemeanors, recall this was months
after the conflict’s end. When asked if he was working at EGT he explained that he was not on
the contractual “qualified worker list”, which meant he, and anyone else not on the list, was
excluded from working, completely counter to the point of a hiring hall. “If they know you, that
you played and active role in the whole thing then you’re basically on the no fly list”, he
explained.
Your tax dollars hard at work in Longview
We talked allot about the threats to the local at the height of the struggle, and the burglary
of the union hall that had happened a month or so previous. Not much of value was taken in the
burglary but the local’s ledgers, account books and meeting minuets were. Of course no thief has
been caught but it’s hard to imagine why anyone other than local or federal law enforcement
would want the local’s records due to the ongoing legal battles.
Jacobs and I met Mike Fuqua at the EGT gate. Mike had just gotten back from a meeting
of an anti-war coalition in NY City. “After the Coast Guard, a branch of the US military, got
involved on the boss’s side, that’s when allot of groups we hadn’t ever been involved with
stepped up and took our side.” he explained. The three of us went on to discuss the role federal
law enforcement played against the union. “The FBI made all these threats to our members that
if they were anywhere around the rail road tracks that they’d be taken off to some holding facility
and no one would know where you were, no phone call, no charge or that they’d loose their
‘TWIC’ card (the Dept. of Homeland security issued work permit for those who work ports)”,
Fuqua said. “They’d say we’d be deemed ‘terrorists’,” Jacobs added. “I’m waiting to see what
the Webster’s definition of terrorist is these days. They must have added two or three pages with
all the things the government is considering terrorism now,” said Fuqua. “They were here to
intimidate, no doubt about it. They come in and try to use fear mongering, they don’t like it when
people stand up, pretty soon other people hear about it and they back you and you start a
movement, well they don’t want that. They want a big corporate agenda backed by government
power,” he added.
They also had lots to say about lax safety standards and the general conditions at EGT.
The disabling of a safety system in the facility had led to a seven-alarm fire, since it coming into
service. The damage from which could be seen from the gate. They also felt that the EPA was
giving EGT a pass on enforcing environmental standards. “There are days I come out of my
house and I can see a plume of dust up two, three hundred feet in the air from this place,
polluting the air and water around this town,” Fuqua said.
Both Fuqua and Jacobs spoke very well of Occupy. We talked about how the Taft–Hartley
act works, the law that prohibits secondary boycotts, severely limits union’s ability to hold
mass/effective picket lines and holds liable the primary picketers in any action. Mike thought that
the law was the reason for the McEllrath’s statement, by making a separation between the local
and its supports it sought to cover the ILWU from legal liability. “That’s why these laws are in
place to keep the working class down,” Fuqua said. In regards to the role in general of the
International leadership, they weren’t very forth coming but Fuqua did say, “You’d like to think
that in a fight you’d all be on the same side for the same reason but I don’t necessarily think
that’s true.” Of the up coming International election in ILWU Jacobs said, “that bunch in charge
won’t get my vote,” “for anything Fuqua added.” Like the men at the hall they were very happy
with the support of the community and thought that more than half had been at least passively on
their side. At the height of the conflict the police were even harassing small business owners who
had signs up, supportive of the local. When asked if we could have stopped the ship Fuqua’s
answer was definite: “They were scared. They saw the fight that they brought to this town and I
tell you we would have won this battle, no matter what, we weren’t going to lose this. We were
going to do what ever it took.” We got into politics a bit and the role main stream politicians
were playing and I asked if there was any chance the local would run or support a candidate
outside the Republican or Democratic parties. They told me of just getting someone elected to
the Port Commission who was on their side in the conflict.
Later, back at the union hall, Fuqua described the meeting where the local’s members
voted away their right to vote on the contract. “There’s Big Bob saying all this stuff that we
saved our jurisdiction and got what we wanted, it’s a good deal we’re just waiting to hear back
from the lawyers about some details, pumping everybody up, and then they get everybody to
vote to accept it. I said something isn’t right here, and I voted no but I was the only one.
Everybody else voted for it.”
While we were there at the hall Kyle Mackey showed up. He is the local’s representative
on the central labor council, did much of the local’s on-line out reach during the struggle and had
been my first point of contact, a friend had written him on Facebook. The question had been put
to him in introducing the idea that I wanted to talk with members of the local about how Occupy
could have been more effective in the fight with EGT. He had written back the following: “While
we are disappointed with the outcome of the contract, most of us and myself will not talk about
the contract with non-ILWU members. We handle our problems internally. I don't think Occupy
did much wrong during the port shutdowns and EGT struggle. They communicated with rank
and file up and down the coast and basically put more pressure on EGT than we had the entire
time combined. We got more done through Occupy and the community than anything else.” I
commented to he and Fuqua that I thought it would have been a victory for the mobilization to
happen even had we not have been strong enough to actually stop the loading of the ship given
the example it would have set and the confidence it would have encouraged in many layers of
American society and for working people all over the world. “Yeah, it would have been
beautiful”, he answered. Fuqua added “you know there are probably 15 Longviews going on
right now in this country that nobody knows about.”
Occupy Protesters shut down Port of Oakland
In solidarity with ILWU local #21 on 11/2/11
Some conclusions
The story of the battle in Longview is a microcosm of everything that is
happening in this country and in fact the whole world. A huge multi-national corporation changes
its name and with the help of public money starts a new business venture. It tries to do so outside
of a contractual agreement that exists between a dockworker’s union and a public institution, a
port, because it is cheaper and gives them more control. Given a certain independence of the
local union, due to it being in a small town, and due to the nearly simultaneous up tick in
activism in the form of the Occupy movement the workers in Longview were able to hold the
line longer and conduct the battle with more militancy at least for a time. Threatened by the
intervention of the wider community and concerned for loosing control the top union leadership
actually worked against the union’s interest and intervened to distance the local from its
supporters. Ultimately the government intervenes and with the help of top union leadership
comes to a deal with the corporation that is full of bad precedents for up coming contracts.
While the ILWU #21 members are heroes and did most of the heavy lifting in the battle
the fact that it ended, even under the terrible terms it did, with the union keeping it’s jurisdiction
over the work was because of involvement of the wider community, through Occupy and other
channels. Its interesting to imagine how much more successful the resolution would have been
had the International Union leadership embraced and encouraged the support it was getting from
the wider community and used it’s full strength, including other actions at west coast ports,
rather than seeking to keep the whole thing wrapped up behind the limits of the Taft-Hartley act.
There are stories like this playing out all around us: schools being closed, public
buildings being sold off, attacks on workers pay and working conditions, the on going
foreclosure crisis side by side with tax funded bank bail outs and on and on. These issues may
seem unrelated but they are not. They all flow from the fact that the system is not set up to serve
us but instead is set up to serve a tiny, wealthy elite. What ever it is you have in the world you
won’t keep long if your neighbor is loosing what they have. I was disappointed but not surprised
to find that there was a non-union log staging business right across the road from the EGT gate
where local #21 members are now working. How often do we walk right by the homeless guy, or
ignore yet another story of police brutality, (a teenager named Alan Blueford was fatally shot by
police as he ran away from them in Oakland while I was in Longview) or see union construction
workers or nurses eating lunch thinking nothing of the fact that those who made them the lunch
are being paid minimum wage. We should know if our neighbor is about to be foreclosed on and
be prepared to help them fight the bank. Whether or not we have kids or if our kids are grown we
should protest the closing of schools or other cuts to public services and help organize to reverse
them. The right wing media makes all kinds of bank with playing the badly paid against the
relatively well off workers, private sector workers against those who have public sector jobs.
Now is the time to cut across this. You fight for yourself when you fight for someone else.
At this point less that ten percent of the work force of this county is union and it is hard to
imagine that changing with the kind of leadership we saw from top ILWU in the Longview
struggle. Occupy was like a gift from God in the struggle against EGT and ILWU leadership not
only moved to distance itself from it but even sent people to solidarity meetings of it’s own
members to disrupt and pick a fight, to say nothing of the fact that they did not mount a real
campaign to fight EGT themselves but they left local #21 to mostly go it alone. We can wish the
activists in ILWU luck in the struggles to reform their union from the inside and hope for their
sake and ours that they are successful. Occupy and other activists should not hesitate, in coming
conflicts, to call foul when leaders of unions are dropping the ball on their members or not
supporting other workers or social issues but if doing so always remember that a union’s
leadership is not its rank and file.
There has been a myth for years that the Democrats are the friends of labor and working
people in general. When your allies and friends are shown time and again to not be your allies
and friends it’s time to go it alone and make new ones. Clearly no mainstream politician was any
help to local #21, in fact president Obama used the military against them. We need a political
party that represents wage earners, the retired, students, the unemployed, small businesses and
family farmers. One doesn’t need to be a political scientist to know that only members of the two
major parties are going to win elections for State Rep, Governor or federal level positions at this
point and time but city councils, school board or special districts could be won by those who
actually want to change the system and are from outside the two major, pro-big business parties.
As social movements continue to grow we will hopefully see more activist and non-mainstream
candidates coming into these local posts. Someone friendly to local #21 was recently elected to
Longview’s port commission. We can hope they will be different but so often reformers come
into politics and with the best of intentions they are either sucked into the machine or spit out by
it. Without some clear goals and the active backing of movements like Occupy this is likely the
outcome. School boards, city councils and special districts, like ports, all have specific issues
they face, specific things the community needs that activist/non major political party candidates
would fight for but a winning and uniting theme that should be a demand by anyone seeking
political office would be to reset lower, any debt held against public agencies, individual house
holds and small/family businesses in reflection of the fact that the main interest rate charged by
the Federal Reserve to the banks has been reset to near zero now and has always been far lower
than the rate charged the general public, a subsidy paid to the private banks and investment firms
as they borrow it cheap and lend it back to us at a profit or gamble with it in the stock market or
in the trade of instruments like credit-default-swaps. This theme along with absolute opposition
to all cuts to public services could be the basis of the party we need. At the heart of this country’s
problems is the private/for-profit banking and investment system. The alternative is a public
banking/finance system, run with its decision makers elected by and controlled by the public
they serve, run not for profit but to keep communities thriving; workers employed, schools
funded, seniors cared for and infrastructure maintained. The banks were bailed out and it’s time
the rest of us were.
Eric Gee