Don Liddle, former IBU President and ITF Inspector passes away

Don Liddle, former President of the Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific (IBU) the marine division of the ILWU, passed away on July 3.

Liddle was born in Davenport, Washington on January 21, 1938.
His step-father was a diehard union man who got him a job in a feed mill in Tacoma. After getting laid off, he relocated to Portland, OR where he worked in a rubber mill for 10 years and was a member of United Rubber Workers Local 504. He held various union positions over the years in the local including president, secretary-treasurer, and shop steward.

In 1969 he went to work at Western Transportation (now Georgia Pacific), an IBU bargaining unit, as a warehouse worker where he loaded and unloaded barges of paper products. In 1975 Liddle was elected vice president for the IBU’s Columbia River region.

In the 1970’s the IBU was affiliated with the Seafarers International Union (SIU). The IBU’s national president at the time, Merle Adlumm, was a proponent of the IBU relinquishing its autonomy and merging with the SIU’s Atlantic and Gulf (AG) District, a move that Liddle opposed because he did not want the IBU to lose control over its affairs.

In 1978, after IBU members at Crowley in Southern California went on strike, IBU President Merle Adlum and the other officers of the IBU allowed the SIU and Crowley to replace 200 IBU members with SIU members, spurring Liddle to successfully challenge Adlum for IBU president. The struggle with SIU over those jobs continued, and in 1979 the IBU’s executive council voted to disaffiliate from the SIU; the decision was ratified at the IBU convention that December.

“We wanted to continue to have a democratic union, where we elected our people. The AG District did not have a union democracy like we had. They didn’t elect their business agents and patrolmen like we did. They were all appointed,” Liddle said in an oral history conducted with ILWU historian Harvey Schwartz.

In 1980, a strike by 700 Washington State ferry workers resulted in Don Liddle and IBU Secretary-Treasurer Larry Miner being jailed after a Superior Court judge ruled the strike illegal. Liddle was ordered to end the strike, to which he responded that he had no authority as IBU president to force anyone to go to work.

The state court jailed Liddle and Miner for contempt of court where they stayed for nearly two days before their attorney got the charges thrown out. ILWU President Jimmy Herman reached out to Liddle stating the ILWU members wanted to help. Shortly after discussing the WSF workers’ demands—a hiring hall, fair wages among other demands—the ILWU shut down the Puget Sound ports for 24 hours. The stoppage reignited talks that eventually led to a settlement and end to the ferry workers’ 12-day strike. It was a pivotal moment that eventually led to the IBU’s affiliation with the ILWU.

Liddle helped to strengthen the health and welfare benefits by creating the national IBU Health Plan and a national pension plan. He also created the San Francisco Income protection plan to provide assistance for members who were laid off due to the introduction of fast ferries.

In 1987, following a 9-month Coastwise strilke against Crowley Maritime, Liddle took a leave to run Unimar (formerly WFI Industries)— then one of the largest shipbuilder and tugboat companies on the West Coast. The company was emerging from bankruptcy and as part the reorganization process 73 percent of the company’s ownership was transferred to its 400 workers through an employee stock ownership plan.

Following his return from leave, Liddle ran for his former position of Regional Director for Columbia River Region, where he continued to represent members with distinction until he accepted the position of ITF Inspector in the Columbia River.