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

Why do people get active in the union? Because they want to help others; because they aren’t afraid to challenge management and speak up for workers’ rights; but mostly because they want to make a difference for working people.

a voice in running their 401(k) plans. Congress failed to counterbalance Enron-style employer efforts to seduce workers into buying high levels of company stock and took no action to reverse the tide of corporations offering employees unregulated stock option plans rather than real retirement security that can be achieved through a defied pensionbenefit plan.