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From Canadian blog The Tyee:
Krissy Murphy, ILWU Local 500Krissy Murphy, a member of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 500, is a muscular and enthusiastic woman of 30, with bright red-henna hair and an infectious laugh. She’s been working on the docks now for eight years. Shifting containers, she says with a grin, is “like playing a giant Tetris game.”
“I always knew I wanted a union job,” Murphy said in an interview at a coffee shop down the street from the dispatch hall where she’s sent out to new tasks most mornings.
Her father was a unionized railway worker, her mother a postal worker and CUPW member, and she remembers early childhood lessons in labour solidarity — like not being allowed to cross a picket line outside the movie house in Prince George.
Her parents taught her how important it was to stand with other workers, and she observed the ways her parents’ lives were better because of their unions. They were both able to retire this year at 55, something she said would not have been possible without their union contracts.
Read the full article here
From Labor Notes:
On the heels of the West Coast longshore union’s departure from the AFL-CIO, it appears the East Coast dockers may also be headed that way. “We had said for a while, if the ILWU left we probably would too,” said Ken Riley, a national vice president of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), which represents dock workers on the East and Gulf coasts.
From Labor Notes: ”Riley said he had been bringing resolutions to conventions for 12 years saying, ”if we can’t get the AFL-CIO to address raiding we ought to pull out. ”On neither coast were they willing to take any action,” he said, ”and now it’s really coming home to roost.” Photo shows ILA International Vice President Ken Riley, right, supporting ILWU International President Bob McEllrath, center, as Pres. McEllrath faces arrest for standing up for good jobs at EGT — a multinational grain company that employed Operating Engineers as replacement workers during a labor dispute with the ILWU in Longview, Washington.”Riley said top ILA brass were still wrangling over the move via text messages as of Labor Day but were headed for the AFL-CIO’s convention in Los Angeles next week. Spokesman Jim...
From today’s Columbian:
The Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office won’t file charges against a longshore worker accused of sabotaging operations at United Grain Corp. during a labor dispute in December. The company locked out 44 union workers Feb. 27 based on its private investigator’s conclusion that union worker Todd Walker had purposely damaged the company’s machinery.
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jeff McCarty said in a letter to Vancouver police Det. Carole Boswell that he agreed with her conclusion that it’s impossible to identify the person captured on the video or to be certain “that the person in the video is actually damaging the machine.”
In a statement issued to the Columbian on Thursday, Jennifer Sargent, spokeswoman for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said: “It’s a monumental relief for Mr. Walker and his family to be able to move on from what we’ve said all along was a false allegation from the company.”
“Mitsui-UGC” — a reference to United Grain’s Tokyo-based parent Mitsui & Co. — “used this false allegation as an excuse to lock out dozens of local workers, and the whole community has suffered for it,” Sargent said. “...
Excerpts from Labor Notes:
As the AFL-CIO prepares for a convention where leaders say the goal is unprecedented solidarity with organizations outside the labor movement, the federation is turning its back on some inside the house of labor. Leaders have ruled that locals of the West Coast Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) cannot seek “solidarity charters” and will be ousted from local and state labor councils. The ILWU international disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO last Friday.
The stance is a departure from the federation’s reactions to previous disaffiliations.
The AFL-CIO has mandated that all ILWU affiliates be expelled from state and central labor bodies effective the date of ILWU’s national disaffiliation, August 30. Central labor councils and state federations have no choice. ILWU President Bob McEllrath urged members to remain actively involved in local and state labor movements.
The issue is raiding
ILWU locals have been battling other unions, including the 400,000-member Operating Engineers and other building trades unions, over what the ILWU claims as its traditional waterfront jurisdiction. In some instances members of those unions and...
Source: LA School Report
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