the Iraqi National Accord of outgoing Prime Minister Issad al Allawi, and a party of Arab nationalists.

The FWCUI condemned the balloting. “Its purposewas to impose the American project on Iraq, and give legitimacy to the government imposed by the occupying coalition,” President Falah Alwan said.

The FWCIU is allied with the small Workers Communist Party of Iraq. The oil union, which took no position on the election, is independent both of other union federations and of political parties.

Shop steward Zonette Tam had been working for 10 years toward a nursing degree while balancing her job and family life. Then on May 31 the ILWU Local 142 member received the news—she had won an AFL-CIO Union Plus scholarship. As a worker who helped organize her shop into the ILWU, the win was especially sweet.

“I had been on a career path to get a LPN [Licensed Practical Nurse] degree, but I got accepted into the nursing program at Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa and now this scholarship puts me over the top,” Tam said. “I can go for my RN and a bachelor’s degree.”

HONOLULU—Education is an essential part of ILWU rank-and-file democracy. The ILWU believes that working people are fully capable of acquiring all the skills needed to run their own union.

In a breakthrough agreement, the Hyatt Regency Maui will be the first employer to partner with the ILWU and provide employee medical and dental benefits through a negotiated Union/Company trust fund. The changeover is scheduled to take place on January 1, 2005. On that date, instead of paying HMSA or Kaiser directly, the Hyatt Maui will put the money into a trust fund. The trust fund will then pay the medical and dental bills or the Kaiser premiums.

That is why the ILWU International and our Longshore Division have emphasized education over the last several years. The 1994 International Convention and the 1997 Longshore Caucus put programs in place that have proven popular and effective, and both the ILWU International Convention and the Longshore Caucus budgeted funds in 2003 to expand them.

HONOLULU—Before Hawaii Local 142 did its training, Alex Torres thought organizing was for professionals. “I always thought it was only the organizing department that does organizing,” said Torres, who works at the Dole Plantation Store on Oahu and helped bring it into Local 142. “Here I learned that it’s about everyone getting involved,” he said.

The 2004 Legislature passed a number of good bills that bring real and substantial benefit to working families. However, a look at the voting records on eight issues supported by the ILWU reveals a big difference in how Republicans and Democrats in the State Legislature look at these worker friendly programs.

The voting record on these eight issues shows a clear difference between Democrats and Republicans on issues important to working people.

Presently, ILWU contracts require each hotel to provide medical and dental plans for qualified full-time and part-time employees and their dependents. This means that each hotel must purchase these plans from HMSA, Kaiser, or one of the other insurance providers.

Recently, a beverage worker at an ILWU hotel on the Big Island was denied a bank after the hotel received a bad credit report on that employee. The hotel said it was corporate policy to run credit checks on all employees applying for jobs which required handling money. Workers who fail the credit check don’t get hired or risk losing their current jobs.