Docker solidarity stymies scab ship

Oakland, Cal.--Several hundred came to a rally called by the Liverpool Dockers Defense Committee outside the Alameda County Courthouse, Nov. 18. We were celebrating the victory of having kept the Neptune Jade from unloading its scab cargo in Oakland at the end of September. Part of the Singapore-based Neptune Jade's cargo had been loaded by scabs in Thamesport, England, where the Mersey Docks & Harbour Co. (MD&HC) is the port authority.

MD&HC locked out 500 dock workers in Liverpool in 1995 because they refused to cross a picket line there. The International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) honored the picket lines set up spontaneously in Oakland by labor, Left and student supporters. The Oakland picket line had been set up as part of an international action campaign in solidarity with the Liverpool Dockers. Not only was the Neptune Jade not unloaded in Oakland, it was also turned away from Vancouver. Japanese dockers unloaded only cargo that could be reached without touching scab containers.

An employers' group is now going after any picketers they can identify, claiming they violated a temporary restraining order limiting the number of pickets. They singled out whoever they could identify to take legal action against: picket captain Robert Irminger, a member of the Inland Boatman's Union; Jack Heyman, Local 10 ILWU executive board member; the Labor Party's Golden Gate Chapter; the Peace and Freedom Party, and even the Laney College Labor Studies group. Irminger was offered a settlement of a suspended one-day jail sentence and a payment of a $2,000 fine for employer's legal fees if he would name the other individuals and organizations on the picket line.

This McCarthyite tactic is being used against all the defendants. The chair of the Laney College Labor Studies Department, Albert Lannon, has sent out a special appeal. He said the Laney Labor Studies Club participated in a picket line only before the temporary restraining order limiting the number of pickets. Now he's being asked to inform on his students and isn't getting any support from the college administration. He's asking for community support.

The bosses are taking such extreme measures against academic freedom, the First Amendment right to peacefully demonstrate and to free speech because this speech had a dramatic effect. As Irminger said at the rally: "There is a global assault by shipping companies to break unions worldwide. They are going after the ILWU no holds barred because it is a beacon to all dock workers. We put our thumbs on the pulse of commerce. Stopping work at the point of production really inflames them."

--Ron B.

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