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2024 elections: What’s at stake for ILWU members

The outcome of the November presidential and congressional elections will have important consequences for working-class voters, union members, and the ILWU.  In July, the ILWU’s International Executive Board endorsed Kamala Harris for president because she is the clear choice to protect the interest of the ILWU and working-class voters.

Why political action matters

Electing the right people to office has consequences for the ILWU and organized and unorganized workers outside our union. Elected officials at every level of government can be allies or obstacles to our efforts to secure strong contracts, protect our jurisdiction, organize new workers, fund projects that provide increased work opportunities, build worker power, and provide support and protection to vulnerable individuals and communities.

Although it is not a substitute for building a strong, democratic union and militant labor movement, political action is one of the many tools the ILWU uses to protect the interests of the membership, organized labor, and the working class. As the writer Rebecca Solnit stated in a recent article—voting is a “chess move, not a Valentine.”

Why Kamala Harris is the best candidate for ILWU members

The Harris-Walz ticket is the clear choice to protect the interests of the ILWU and to continue moving forward with the policies started under the Biden-Harris Administration that delivered real benefits to workers, the labor movement, and the membership of the ILWU. The Biden-Harris Administration gave the ILWU a voice and a seat at the table with policymakers as they addressed the COVID-induced supply chain crisis. The Administration also passed billions of dollars in infrastructure funding for ILWU ports, ferries, and marine highway systems.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are candidates who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with workers and the labor movement their entire careers. Walz is a former public-school teacher and a long-time union member. Kamala Harris got her start politically with the support of the ILWU, which she recalled when addressing the ILWU’s Executive Board in 2019. “Every election I have run in has been with labor and the ILWU,” Harris said.

Kamala Harris’ record of supporting workers

As Vice President, Kamala Harris:

  • Played a critical role in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, investing in good-paying union jobs, bringing manufacturing back to America, lowering prescription drug costs, and raising wages;
  • Cast the tie-breaking vote that saved the pensions of more than 1 million union workers and retirees;
  • Led the administration’s efforts to increase access to affordable childcare and expand the child tax credit;
  • Chaired the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, where she championed new worker organizing;
  • Stood with striking writers when she pulled out of an event in Southern California to honor the strikers’ picket line.

As a U.S. Senator, Kamala Harris:

  • Fought to expand labor protections and fair wages for agricultural and domestic workers and walked the picket line with UAW workers;
  • Advocated for workers’ freedom to form or join a union, including supporting the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to reform broken labor legislation that stacks the deck against workers.

As Attorney General of California Kamala Harris:

  • Protected vulnerable workers by tackling wage theft and other corporate crimes.

Biden-Harris’ Investments in ILWU ports and ferries

The Biden-Harris Administration succeeded where previous administrations have failed in passing long-needed funding for America’s ailing infrastructure including our ports that play a vital role in keeping the US competitive in an increasingly global economy.

With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Biden-Harris Administration delivered federal infrastructure dollars to US ports: investing in dockside rail, new US-made cargo handling equipment, job training centers, projects for ferry and marine-highway systems along the West Coast and Alaska, and more.

Since signing BIL into law, the Administration has awarded over $744 million for projects at ports in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California. This is a massive increase in federal investment at ILWU-serviced ports compared to past administrations.

Infrastructure funding passed by the Biden-Harris Administration includes:

  • More than $385 million investment in the Port of Long Beach’s program to expand dockside rail;
  •  Nearly $70 million to improve operations at the Port of Tacoma’s Husky Terminal and modernize the Port’s off-dock container storage operations, and;
  • Over $36 million to improve off-dock storage and truck access at the Port of Oakland.
  • The Biden-Harris Administration has funded 29 projects at ILWU ports totaling over $809 million.  In addition, another $426 million was awarded to build port facilities for offshore wind in California, and a further $3.4 billion in port infrastructure and cargo handling equipment grants will be awarded before the end of 2024 nationwide.
  • The BIL provided $2.3 billion for ferry services, including funds awarded to the Alaska Marine Highway System to expand service, $13 million to improve ferry terminals, and over $49 million for an initiative to convert that Alaska Marine Highway System to hybrid-electric vessels. Ferry funds were awarded to Berkeley, CA, to rebuild the Berkeley Pier and add ferry access to the San Francisco Bay.
  • The Biden-Harris invested 5 times more dollars for ILWU ports than Trump, and by the end of 2024 that will grow to 12 to 15 times.
  • The Biden-Harris administration led the charge to increase investment at US ports, modernizing facilities, and investing in worker training.  At the same time, they supported the ILWU’s successful lobbying to bar the use of federal grant dollars to install automated cargo handling systems.

A seat at the table

Electing Kamala Harris will allow the ILWU to continue the important relationship the ILWU established with the Biden-Harris administration

  • Biden is the first US president to tour ILWU ports and meet with ILWU members.
  • Biden has regularly met with ILWU leaders and consults the ILWU for input on port policies.
  •  Biden appointed the first “Port Envoy” to support port investment and to work with ports to resolve the pandemic cargo surge.  Among the Port Envoy’s first acts was to tour West Coast ports as a guest of the ILWU, meeting on the job with ILWU members.  The Port Envoy’s trips were followed by visits from three Biden Cabinet members to multiple ILWU union halls – another historic first.
  •  Biden appointed an ILWU member to the Federal Maritime Commission; the federal agency that regulates port terminals and ocean carriers.  Brother Max Vekich is the first ILWU member appointed to a senior position over port policy. This marks the first time a former longshoreman has been appointed to the FMC, bringing a critical perspective to the Agency at just a point in its history that it is significantly expanding its jurisdiction over a range of issues, including chassis management practices, data sharing standards, demurrage and detention charges, access to empty containers for exporters and much more.
  • The Biden-Harris Administration strongly supported the collective bargaining process during longshore contract negotiations and refused pressure from business interests to intervene.

In contrast to Vice President Harris’ proven record of support for workers, Donald Trump’s main legislative achievement while in office was his 2017 tax cut that only benefited Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy. His tax giveaway benefited the top 20 percent of income earners. It slashed the corporate tax rate by 40 percent, left middle and lower-income wage earners behind, and drove up the budget deficit while the promised trickle-down benefits for the working class never materialized. Those tax cuts are set to expire in 2025 and Trump promised to make those tax cuts permanent that would deliver an average $225,000 tax cut to the top 0.1 percent.

Trump’s faux populism belies his hostility to unions and workers. He wants the votes of the working class while undermining their interests and making it harder for workers to organize and easier for employers to bust unions. During his presidency, Donald Trump weakened the economic rights of federal workers and their voice on the job, stacked the National Labor Relations Board with union-busting corporate lawyers, opposed an increase in the federal minimum wage, undermined worker safety by cutting federal workplace safety inspectors to their lowest level in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) history, weakened the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s mine safety enforcement, forcing miners to work in hazardous conditions.

Trump’s disdain for workers and their rights was on full display during his recent interview on Twitter/X with billionaire Elon Musk when Trump praised Musk for illegally firing workers who went on strike. Trump wants workers divided, disorganized, and powerless so employers can pay them less and exploit them more.

Donald Trump has been running for president for nearly a decade, sewing chaos and division and the country is worse off for it. Trump’s campaign is centered on a message of negative solidarity that promotes division over unity, discord over cohesion, punches down at vulnerable individuals and communities, stokes racial and anti-immigrant anger and fear, attacks people based on gender identity, mocks people with disabilities, and places self-interest above of collective interest. The ILWU’s 10 Guiding Principles, recognize that this tactic is a tool of the employer that weakens worker solidarity, leaves us divided, disorganized, less effective in building power, and less able to protect our interests. The social unionism practiced by ILWU is based on the principle of using your strength to lift others, not using your privilege to push them down.

Workers deserve a president committed to ensuring economic growth benefits the working class, not just the 1%. Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their billionaire allies are no friends of labor or the working class. We cannot allow this country to return to Trump’s failed anti-worker, anti-union economic agenda, and chaotic and divisive mis-leadership.

“We have a choice this election between a candidate who has walked picket lines with workers and a candidate who crossed them, between a candidate. who wants to strengthen unions and a candidate who wants to break them,” said ILWU International President Willie Adams. “This is not an election to sit on the sidelines. I will cast my vote this November for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz who are true allies for workers and the ILWU.”