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League, convinced of the need for union political action, and certain that working people needed to exercise the right to vote in order to secure whatever gains they were able to make through unionization. The League was the first union political action organization in Hawaii.

The 1938 elections on Kauai propelled the political career of a Portuguese shop owner, a member of a sugar plantation family, into a prominent legislator who introduced the first bill, written incidentally by Jack Hall, allowing agricultural workers to form and join unions. It took six years before the bill was passed in 1945. That legislator was J.B. Fernandez, who defeated Lindsay Faye, a plantation manager, and subsequently succeeded by his son, Billy, and granddaughter, Lehua. The activities of the Kauai Progressive League presaged the successful political action program of the ILWU formally organized in 1944 when it was established in Hawaii after a group of far-seeing longshore workers convinced Harry Bridges and the International union that the time was ripe for organizing Hawaii’s basic labor force—workers in the sugar and pineapple industries.

There have been vast changes since my early interest in the labor movement in the first third of the 20th century. When this interest began, life in the islands was controlled by the Big Five—Alexander & Baldwin, American Factors, C.Brewer, Castle & Cooke, and Theo H. Davies—whose power was extended through interlocking directorates outside of agriculture into banks, utilities, the media and the Republican Party.

The decade and a half after the ILWU was established in Hawaii represents one of the most vibrant, exciting, and productive periods in the development of the political economy of Hawaii. These events included:

The impetus for other workers to form and join unions of their own choosing.

The first successful industry-wide strike of the sugar industry in 1946 which united workers and families numbering over 80,000 individuals of every ethnicity and eliminated the paternalism of plantations by the placement of workers on committees in equal participation with management in the dispensing of services covering housing, utilities, recreation, and health care.

Between the union and the law firm of Bouslog & Symonds, the old laws of the monarchy, the Republic, and the Territory which curbed the right to organize unions and stunted civil liberties of Hawaii residents were challenged and subsequently repealed or amended by legislation.

The successful challenge to continued power of the Big Five by the longshore strike of 1949 amidst the virulent red baiting of the media with the ILWU remaining intact after the six-month stoppage. 

The strike also involved the successful challenge by Bouslog & Symonds of immigration law regarding deportation, tied in with the U.S. Attorney General’s list of subversive organizations on behalf of a striking longshore worker.

The arrest and conviction of Jack Hall, regional director, along with six other individuals for “teaching the overthrow of government by force and violence” but later vacated by the Supreme Court, consolidated the strength of the ILWU as rank and file members interpreted the case as an attack on the Union.

One of the highlights of the case was the stunning taping by Robert McElrath, union information director, of two FBI agents who attempted to make a stool pigeon out of Jack Hall through discussions with the Local’s late education director, David Thompson.

Incidentally, Communists were involved in the organizing of America’s trade unions in many industries, including longshoring, especially after the 1935 Wagner Act. Critical Studies of the communists in union organizing credit them with devotion to unions and recognition of the needs of workers to be treated with equality and justice regardless of color or creed.

This vibrant period was marked with eminent success on the political front: the high elected percentage of union endorsed candidates, including union members; the repeal of the death penalty, with the Local in strong partnership with Bouslog & Symonds; the enactment of progressive social and labor legislation unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, minimum wage, etc. Later this union was involved in Hawaii’s becoming the first state to allow abortion, one of 9 states to enact a temporary disability act covering non-work caused accidents and illness; collective bargaining for government workers; prepaid health care for employed workers. 

Labor Day, 1947.

The major contribution to the rejuvenation of the Democrat Party in 1954 through the Local’s 1944 Political Action Program with unit constituted political action committees and as initiated through the efforts of the late Governor John A. Burns and the returning AJAs. In other words, ILWU had the bodies and the PAC; Burns and the AJAs furnished the idea.

The granting of statehood in 1959, despite the delusion of a Communist threat in the ILWU as perpetrated by various national and local congressional hearings.

These accomplishments were characterized in this way when Governor Burns addressed the international convention in Seattle, April 6 to 13, 1959. He said:

“And as we analyze the situation in Hawaii and to give proper credit where it is due, I am going to make a statement that I have made before in Hawaii. They (ILWU) created the climate that could allow others and themselves to develop a freer society than that which they had. The foundations for democracy in Hawaii were laid by the ILWU because they freed the working man of the plantation (at that time some 27,000 people) from the economic and the political control of management; because they enabled them to realize that they had dignity, that they were citizens who had a right to their own opinions and a right to participate in such little government as we had. They created the climate to develop a freer society than that which they had.”

You might also be interested to learn that my old sociology professor at the University of Hawaii, Andrew W. Lind, in a government hearing, asserted that more than any other organization, the ILWU was instrumental in eliminating racial discrimination in Hawaii.

21st Century 
But now in the beginning of the 21st century, things have changed. The Big Five is only a shell of its former self. There are only two sugar plantations left, the same number of pineapple companies-the former bastions of union solidarity, loyalty, and devotion.

Instead, our state is dotted with hotels. Tourism, with the ups and downs which reflect the vicissitudes of a globalized political economy, has taken the place of agriculture as the foundation of the state’s economy. Both the ILWU and Local 5 have seen what these ups and downs have done to wage scales, hours of work, fringe benefits, and numbers of workers.

Hawaii has diddled with various economic development schemes without notable success. After all there is little on which we can build, other than services, because we have almost no natural resources; we sit in the middle of the vast ocean and have little control on outside factors which dictate our existence.

Here are the facts of the political economy as you deliberate in this convention and make decisions as to your future in this state, this nation and this world, and rid yourselves of the malaise that has lulled much of Labor.

¨Population: There are more than five billion people in this world; over a billion of them live in extreme poverty. The U.S. population is 282 million people of which about 15 percent live in poverty; Hawaii has a population of 1.2 million people of which about the same percentage lives in poverty. The richest fifth of the world’s population consumes 86% of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes only 1.3 percent. The world’s richest 225 people, 60 of whom are Americans, have a combined wealth of $1 trillion (yes 1 and 12 zeros after that), equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the world’s population.

There are over 100 million immigrants in the world, but only six tenths of one percent legally come to the United States, even with family reunification as the philosophy of the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1965.

Hawaii admits anywhere from 6,000 to 12,000 immigrants every year and it is not surprising that the majority are from the Asian countries since most of them were the most discriminated under the old immigration laws.

Employment: Only 13.2 percent of the workforce of 147 million belong to unions, a drop from a high of 34 percent in the 1950s and as late as 1983, 20.1 percent. Only nine percent of workers in private industry belong to unions.

Other interesting facts: men are still more likely than women to belong to unions, even though women now constitute 48 percent of the workforce. More government workers, four in 10, are union members while workers in private industry are less than one in 10.

The most unionized states are New York, Hawaii, Alaska, and Michigan. The least organized are North and South Carolina where unionized workers constitute less than five percent of the workforce. Transportation is the most organized in the private sector, while finance, insurance and real estate are the least.

Over three million jobs have been lost since January, 2001, with daily announcements of layoffs. Although the unemployment rate is pegged at 6.1 percent, it does not take into consideration the over two million incarcerated individuals or the millions who are not counted because they have exhausted their unemployment insurance.

Attacks on Unions: The composition and actions of the National Relations Board have fed the antiunion tactics of employers who manipulate the nature of work to affect eligibility to vote and play on the fears of workers by threats to close the business or to move away, all unfair labor practices that are usually not upheld by the Board.

Unionists have been forced to give back benefits through higher premiums, co-payments, and deductibles in health care with fewer benefits as well as loss of dependents coverage.

Despite ERISA, employers have moved in retirement plans that cover 44 million retirees and workers to the concept of defined contributions from defined benefit, which leaves workers to the mercies of the stock market, and no certainty of benefits at the time of retirement.

Meanwhile, CEOs, like Donald Carty of American Airlines walked away with $8.2 million payout and $2.9 million in stock options. The list goes on with CEOs receiving $4.1 million in Hewlett Packard, $71 million in Tyco International involved in stock manipulations but with layoffs of over 11,000 workers; some CEOs were rewarded with average compensation packages of $5.9 million; with paychecks 59 percent higher than the average $3.7 million paid CEOs of 365 largest companies, and even though they represent companies with the highest numbers of worker layoffs.

At the same time, it is expected underfunded pension liabilities will double to more than $80 billion in 2003, increasing the burden of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., which already has picked up payments to retirees of companies that have failed to meet their obligations in contributions.

The irony of the huge pay increases to CEOs is that they are among the one percent who benefit the most from the Bush tax cut with cuts amounting to nearly $90,000 per year, who evade taxes by purchases of art and who come from companies with offshore subsidiaries or incorporation headquarters that avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Political Action: The malaise in voter participation resulted in the Supreme Court election of a president who lost the popular vote. A 50 percent turnout in presidential and other elections do not guarantee that democracy works in our country.

At the local level, the promise for equality, justice and progress begun half a century ago is beginning to unravel because there is no united front of labor to hold endorsed candidates, mostly Democrats, feet to the fire.

Democrats, who have generally been known to be sympathetic to the needs of working people and their families, have lost the guts to carry out the vision which they so boldly trumpeted in 1954. The basic goal seems to be getting re-elected.

Technology: This is the touchstone of industry, not only in the manufacturing process which we have lost in large measure through NAFTA, WTO, IMF and World Bank but also in industries where service is the primary product, and which promises to insure profits and make human labor obsolete. Seattle 1999 can still be our guide as is Cancun to poor countries today.

We’ve had our problems—remember men and machines on the west coast in the 60s which all started with containerization and more recent problems in longshore negotiations in 2002 with the increased use of computers; remember our voluntary repatriation fund in the 50s when the sugar industry no longer needed workers because of mechanization. They paid off workers, especially those non citizen Filipinos with a lump sum to return to the Philippines.

These are tough days. There are no longer the sugar and pineapple industries when it was easy to organize workers; there are no longer the bakeries, the supermarkets, the auto companies, the hospitals, the cemeteries, the golf courses, the large hotels, whose goods and services are replaced by packaging, computers, overtime, mergers.

ILWU convention delegates inform the public about Pacific Beach Hotel’s violation of worker rights.

But there are the Costcos, the WalMarts, the Home Improvements, the Office Maxes, the other discount chains; there are still the banks, the insurance companies, the fast food chains which exist as the second and third jobs for workers struggling under the load of high rents, increased health care bills, higher utility and transportation costs.

Your job 
Your job as union members is cut out for you. Here they are:

Number 1: Participation. You are the union; just as your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters were members and who faced the wrath of employers and the community to organize and to fight concentrated power. Your ancestors were the ones who fought the initial battles so that you can enjoy that which you have today—better living conditions, perhaps a home, a car and other conveniences; a democratic government still devoted to civil liberties for all and with the sense of equality and justice, and despite the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts. You can’t sit back and say I’ve got it made—because you didn’t make all of it and it can be taken away from you.

All you need do to carry on that noble tradition of your ancestors to become good union members—attend all your meetings; ask questions when you are unsure; make suggestions when you think things are going wrong; an elected official who doesn’t represent you and the rank and file; a worker who is not getting the attention when a grievance is filed; know your contract well so you can represent a worker on the job and when there is trouble. Belly aching is not enough.

Number 2: Organize the Unorganized. Organizing is the life blood of a trade union. Talk union and programs with your neighbors; with parents in your PTA group; with members of your church; with the players on your ball team. Tell them how life was before and after you joined the union. Give suggestions to your organizing team of your Local; give leads about who’s who and what’s what in the plant where you work or the plant that is being organized. Be an organizer yourself, especially if you know potential signups who may belong to your club, team or fishing group.

Number 3: Solutions to Give Back. What about finding different ways of protecting your retirement so you don’t fall in the trap that Enron workers fell into with their 401(k) plans; What about the possibility of unions putting together their pension funds in one big pot to insure against loss. How about workers working in one industry, but belonging to different unions negotiating one retirement plan to spread risks but increase contributions.

What about a single payer universal health plan, such as that in our neighbor Canada so you don’t need to worry about increased co-payments, deductibles, and premiums, reduction of benefits, dependents coverage. All that is required is expanding Medicare to cover everybody, or enacting a local law.

Number 4: Political Action. It’s tough enough for union members and their families to have to contend with the myriad of endorsements and confusing programs proposed by the numerous unions in town. Forget about egos and power; go forward with one slate of endorsed candidates—based on independent political action under the slogan of reward your friends and punish your enemies. How about a legislative program that protects and extends your rights as workers with the preservation of your contracts and the guarantee of your civil liberties, rather than a program of self-serving provisions. We did it earlier—a minimum wage law that benefited non-union workers; TDI for workers who had no sick leave; we can continue to do it for the collective welfare of all residents.

Register to vote and vote on election day; convince your families, neighbors and friends that working people can exercise their power instead of sitting back and taking it from many politicians whose sole interest lies in their being re-elected because they can’t do an honest day’s work.

Be on the look out for the privatizing of Social Security and Medicare. Your security in retirement belongs in your hands, not in the hands of politicians.

Number 5: Immigrant Rights. Nearly all of us, except for the Hawaiians, are descendants of immigrants who helped to build this state and from whose ranks the leaders of this union emerged, the primary one of whom was the late Harry Bridges who founded this Union in the wake of the 1934 General strike on the West Coast.

The face of our country is ever changing. It will change because women are not having as many children as they did and because they are postponing the time when they have children. There will be a time when our country will be made up more and more of people with different colored skins, eyes and hair, just as our ancestors changed the face of Hawaii beginning with the coming of Captain Cook.

These new immigrants, many of whom are part of you, deserve and need the assistance of union members to benefit from unionization, just as your ancestors benefited from unionization. Organize them!

Number 6: Peace. Our union has worked diligently for peace, during the Korean and Vietnam Wars when it was not the popular thing to do and most recently the war in Iraq which has become a quagmire of lies, manipulations, mismanagement, misplaced priorities, and a sink hole where a requested additional $87 billion on top of the $1 billion spent weekly will wipe out the trillion dollar surplus of the previous administration and when health, education, housing, and the environment will take the back seat to defense.

The risks in working for peace are great; in the recent war, the fear of being tagged unpatriotic crushed.

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