The Real Lockout Story
5 Dockworkers Dead This Summer Due To Shipping Companies’ Speed-up on Docks Whipped up by “strike hysteria,”

Shipping on the West Coast broke records this summer as major corporations stockpiled imported products. As a result, the major shipping companies imposed a brutal speed-up of work that put many dockworkers in danger but generated huge company profits. Five Longshore union members died in separate incidents as a result of this speed-up. (Check out the detailed account below – rated R).

While bargaining a new contract, union leaders called for a “work safely” campaign to insure that proper training and protection of health and life comes before record-breaking profits. The big shipping companies retaliated against the dockworker safety campaign and against negotiation for jobs security by locking out all Longshore in every port on the West Coast. The Companies Iron Grip Lockout is Cracking! Show Our Support On the Picket-line.

As of Friday 10/4, several major shipping companies have started breaking the lockout and calling for Longshore union work in our and other states. Our solidarity is pressing some shippers to break ranks with the big shipping company group (PMA) lockout, and pay union members to unload. Let’s keep up the picket line unity at the locked out gates and we can win this soon. In Seattle, the JwJ Organizing Committee decided to adopt-a-picket line.

We adopted Pier 46, west of Seahawk Stadium (700 Block of S. Alaskan Way). Longshore workers rotate picket-line duty so we’ll get to see everybody at one line. In Tacoma, ILWU 23 appreciates supporters visiting with coffee, donuts, and high spirits and solidarity but doesn’t need extra picketers. Let them know that Jobs with Justice sent you. Here are the picket lines still active: YWUT Terminal at Corner of Lincoln & Port of Tacoma Rd and Evergreen Terminal at the corner of East 11th  St. & Port of Tacoma Rd. In Bellingham , Olympia , and Hoquiam, no picket lines are set up yet since no ships are docking at these locations yet.

We will let you know the status of Longview as soon as we hear. Stop Bush From Forcing More Deadly Speed-up on Dockworkers The shipping companies have tried every means to use the federal government to undermine Longshore workers negotiating a fair union contract. First, shippers and retail corporations called for Bush to bring in the US military to replace dockworkers on the job.

JwJ activists put these companies on the defensive with national protests culminating with Payless Shoes agreeing to write to the PMA and the other companies in the WCWC opposing any federal intervention or use of troops. Today we found out that Payless Shoes is pulling out of the WCWC. Now, the other WCWC companies are calling for Bush to invoke the rarely used Taft-Hartley Act to save face for an ineffective lock-out tactic and force Longshore workers back to dangerous speed-up rates at work.

The companies are especially desperate to force speed-up work as holiday season approaches. But the companies also don’t want to give dockworkers a fair contract with the right to training and living wage jobs created by new technology especially when laid off because of technology. Express our opposition to threats that President Bush will force Longshore workers back to work at deadly speed-up rates by invoking the Taft-Hartley Act.

The following points need to be stressed: 1. Longshore workers want to work and do not deserve dangerous speed-up conditions. The companies should open up the gates and let them go back to work safely. Taft-Hartley is wrong. 2. Federal Mediation is currently underway. Give it a chance to work. Longshore workers are not on strike, the companies deserve the pressure for this situation.

Taft-Hartley is siding with the big shipping companies. 5 Dockworkers Dead In the last six months there have been five fatalities among International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) waterfront workers, each more horrific than the last. On Sept. 3 ILWU Local 26 watchman Rudy Acosta was run over and killed by a top handler at the Pacific Container Terminal operated by SSA in Long Beach On July 23 Richie Lopez, Jr. of ILWU Local 46 in Port Hueneme was run over by a heavy forklift. On June 1 ILWU Local 14 member Dick Peters was checking the hatches of a ship being loaded in the Port of Eureka .

No one saw what happened, but apparently the ship-board gantry crane swung and crushed Peters against the ship itself. On March 15, Mario Gonzalez, a member of ILWU Local 26, was operating a huge mill that shreds cars into scrap metal at Hugo NeuProlers’ facility at the Port of Los Angeles. The machine jammed and Gonzalez went in to fix it. But the hydraulic-powered, several-ton door closed on his chest, killing him.

A day earlier on March 14 foreman John Prohoroff of ILWU Local 94 was routinely preparing a ship to be worked at SSA’s Long Beach terminal. The line on one of the ship’s cranes broke, dropping a 3,000-pound metal ring 30 feet and hitting Prohoroff. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. “PMA’s constant push for more productivity is making a bad problem even worse,” said ILWU International President Jim Spinosa.

“The docks are already dangerously congested, but during these negotiations several terminal operators tried to raise their posted speed limits from 10 or 15 miles an hour to 25. But even with safe limits posted, none of the equipment we are given to drive have speedometers. Accidents occur all too often and that is why one of the demands we have on the table in these negotiations is to have speedometers put in all the power industrial trucks on the docks."