Over 180 member-delegates from 84 ILWU units attended the first caucus of the union’s General Trades Industrial Grouping on June 20 and 21, 2011. Delegates from the union’s Sugar and Pineapple Groupings, and Longshore Grouping mechanics also attended the meeting. Included in the count of delegates are 38 full-time officers and staff of the union.
Nine fortunate and deserving high school seniors from ILWU families are the 2011 winners of the Harriet Bouslog Labor Scholarship. The scholarships will pay part of the tuition for a full-time student for up to eight semesters at any of the University of Hawaii campuses. The scholarships range from $2,000 per semester while attending the UH Manoa, $1,000 per semester while attending UH Hilo or UH West Oahu, and $750 per semester for any of the UH community colleges.
HONOLULU—The 30th Annual Western Regional Summer Institute for Union Women (SIUW) was held June 16-20, 2011 at the Ala Moana Hotel, whose workers are members of UNITE HERE Local 5. Over 80 union activists from more than 20 Locals in Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska participated in the Institute.
The Oahu Division Executive Board (DEB) meeting on April 29, 2011 featured State of Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations Director Dwight Takamine.
Under Republican Governor Linda Lingle, private profit and private business came first. The Department of Labor and Industrial Relations lost 61 positions, programs were underfunded, and enforcement was lax. Pro-business people were put in charge of key programs and workers rights became secondary.
Demonstrations were held in every state in the nation on April 4, 2011 to oppose the attacks on workers’ rights to bargain collectively.
“Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!” These were the last words of union organizer and song writer Joe Hill before he was executed by the State of Utah on November 19, 1915. Hill was a member of the IWW and was in Utah organizing mine workers.
The most comprehensive electorate survey—the American National Election Studies (ANES)—were carried out by the University of Michigan beginning in the late 1940s. What these studies showed was that Americans fall into three categories with regard to their political knowledge. A tiny percentage know a lot about politics, up to 50%-60% know enough to answer very simple questions, and the remaining 40% know next to nothing.
From the year 2000 to 2009 the increase in productivity of U.S. workers was 6 percent, the fourth highest in the world.
Every year the U.S. Department of Labor compares the wages, benefits, and productivity of U.S. workers and workers in countries that do a lot of business and trade with the U.S. See http://www.bls.gov/fls/home. htm#comp
Chart 1 right shows the increase in output per hour for the nine years from 2000 to 2009. Workers in Korea, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, and the United States increased their productivity by 6 percent or better.
Maui Kaiser Permanente members Kaulana Kaa‘a, Rusty Helm, and Bryan Nakamoto help the ILWU organize new members in the health care industry. The Kaiser members are highly skilled medical diagnostic imaging technicians who do computerized tomography (CT), radiologic (X-ray), and mammography scanning.
Every ILWU member should be taught to see a steward or unit officer first about problems or concerns on the job. They should be advised never to try to settle their problems with management by themselves.
There are four reasons for this:
1) the member will not have the strength of the union behind them;
2) the member may make a deal with management that could hurt other members or even be a violation of the contract;
3) the member is not trained to handle the grievance properly and may miss time limits and make other mistakes; and