The Longshore Caucus did a terrific job of moving the Division forward at its meeting in early April. Delegates representing every longshore, clerk and walking boss local on the Coast stayed focused and on course with the strategy set out in our 2003 Caucus aimed at putting ourselves in a strong position before entering into the 2008 contract negotiations.

That caucus, coming just a few months after the ratification of our hard-fought 2002 contract victory, set the priorities and goals of our preparations for 2008, established a committee structure to deal with the key issues confronting us and devised a budget to allow us to follow through on our plans. The delegates this time continued to develop the program of not only building our traditional “inside game”—strengthening the rank and file’s knowledge and solidarity and using arbitrations and day-to-day contract enforcement to be better positioned for bargaining—but also inventing our non-traditional “outside game”— using political and legislative action to protect our union rights during this period when there is an antiworker majority in Congress, furthering our local, national and international union solidarity work, expanding our community involvement and designing new ways to get our work out to the public and the media.

Committees at work 
The Education Committee has been organizing seminars for scores of local officers and rank and file activists, arming them with knowledge and growing a new generation of ILWU leaders. They have gone back to their locals inspired to spread that knowledge of their union to their brothers and sisters, multiplying the number and power of activated members on the docks.

Among the educational plans for the future is a seminar on the importance and fragile nature of our top-notch health coverage. It will be brought to each of the four areas of the Coast so that all members will have the opportunity to attend and learn about the issue most vital to our families, and one that has traditionally been the bottom line of all our contract bargaining.

The Clerks Technology committee has been aggressively defending the most threatened ILWU jurisdiction on the waterfront—the work of marine clerks documenting the flow of cargo across West Coast docks. The committee, working closely with the Longshore Division’s top officers, has been strategically using the language we negotiated in the 2002 contract to protect every job we can. This is where the employers—and the Bush administration under the guise of Homeland Security—are looking for the weak link in our jurisdiction chain. But they won’t find it here.

The Caucus also continued to approve and improve our new “outside game,” building ILWU power and influence outside the negotiating room. Our Legislative Action Committee, in conjunction with the union’s Washington, D.C. lobbying office, continues to defend us against some of the boldest rightwing attacks imaginable. And it has also built bridges to Congressional members that strengthens ILWU access and credibility. Our political action work and the energy and organizing skills of ILWU members volunteering in campaigns in other states has won, if not the national election, many statewide and local races and gained for our union almost legendary stature in the U.S. labor movement.

Building community ties
The solidarity the ILWU has shown with the grocery workers and other unions in contract fights, and in the numerous community volunteer and charity efforts, is not only the right thing to do, but also a great way to build good relations in the local communities whose support we will need in the long run. Combined with the work our Public Relations committee is doing to train rank and filers to be ILWU spokespersons to both the media and other labor and community groups, and its work setting up the latest in web-based organizing, the ILWU will be better able to get its side of the story out despite the corporate media’s attempts to silence us.

Democracy, leadership, accountability, unity 
Even the way we are going about making these preparations for the 2008 negotiations is preparing us for them. The committee structure the Caucus has devised not only allows for focused and efficient work, having committees for all the various aspects of the Division’s concerns brings many people into the process. This ensures representation and democracy, but also input from every corner of the Coast, every area, small or large port, so the best proposals are fashioned on the front end, all interests are considered and balanced from the start.

The committee structure, with its many openings dealing with so many different parts of the union’s activities, gives many rank and filers with different interests an opportunity to get involved in the life of their union. And that’s all many people need—a chance to show what they can do, especially about something that matters. And in that process, again, the union builds leadership for its future.

Overseeing this all on a day-to-day basis is the Longshore Division’s Coast Committee, composed of myself, International Vice President Bob McEllrath and Coast Committeemen Ray Ortiz Jr. and Joe Wenzl. Together we make sure there is accountability and unity in direction. But this much work and this much responsibility can only be carried by many shoulders.

Get involved 
So I appeal to every ILWU member that if you understand that your union is the source of the good living you and your family enjoy, that it is that source for all your co-workers and that it fights so all workers might have that too, please contact your local officers and ask how you can get involved. Your job, your health care and your pension are not assured if the union isn’t strong enough to defend them.

The 2002 bargaining—with the employers’ devious machinations and Bush’s heavy-handed intervention— was one of the greatest challenges the ILWU has faced since its inception in 1934. The 2008 negotiations threaten to be even more challenging. That is why we are preparing so thoroughly now. Never again will we be caught unready for what the employers and the government come at us with. ◆

Caucus delegates line up to hit the mic and debate proposals.