For Labor Day 2002, the ILWU collaborated with other unions in several activities statewide to celebrate the labor holiday.

Oahu On Oahu, 

LIHUE—Each year, Kauai pensioners look forward to a day of fun and camaraderie at the annual Kauai Division Pensioner Picnic. This year was no exception as 250 pensioners filled the patio of the ILWU building on Kauai. Kauai Pensioner Council president, Alfred Castillo, was pleased with the turnout.

This being an election year, the picnic brought out many ILWUendorsed candidates to speak to the crowd, including Ron Kouchi, JoAnn Yukimura, Gary Hooser, Mina Morita and others. Pensioners appreciated hearing from all the candidates and are more likely than most to turn out and vote.

Hotel operators maintained a healthy profit margin of 16 percent in 2001, despite a downturn in the economy in the first half of 2001 and the impact of the terrorist attacks on travel after September 11. Pre-tax profits for the industry was $16.7 billion on revenues of $108.7 billion.

remove the right of collective bargaining for public and private workers from the State Constitution. 

Politics affects our lives everyday. The right to form and belong to a union, labor laws protecting workers, Social Security, and the right of all children to attend school are benefits that exist for working families today but may change depending on who gets elected to office.

That is why the ILWU Political Action Committee (PAC) has prepared a list of endorsed candidates. Your PAC believes that these candidates will best work to preserve the rights we enjoy today and help us pursue additional benefits, such as improved Medicare and prescription drug coverage.

Working men and women of the ILWU take on multinational corporations of the PMA

Nearly 2,000 fired-up longshore workers and their supporters crashed the grand opening party of Maersk Sealand’s new terminal in the port of Los Angeles on August 15. The facility is the largest terminal in the world, and Maersk Sealand is the second largest shipping company worldwide.

These are the toughest contract negotiations the ILWU’s Longshore Division has faced in a long time. Not since 1948, when our strike broke the old Waterfront Employers Association and the Pacific Maritime Association was set up in its place to resolve the dispute, have we seen an employer so emboldened, so ready and eager to bust the union, so intently focused on making this contract the one that will eliminate the ILWU—if not immediately, then over the long term.

Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Merck, Rite-Aid, Xerox, Global Crossing and many other “great” corporations have recently been caught in scandal, fraud and crime. Company executives once hailed by the mass media as the geniuses behind the “go-go” economy have devastated employees and investors, drained pension and retirement funds and in many cases fleeced the taxpayers.

More than 200 leaders of dockworker unions worldwide pledged support for the ILWU in its bargaining with the shipping and stevedoring companies of the Pacific Maritime Association and signed a letter to President Bush demanding he stop interfering in the negotiations.

ILWU to PMA—port security first

Bargaining Statement August 27, 2002 James Spinosa, ILWU International President

James Spinosa, ILWU International President