Building strong unions and a strong community: “We are teaching people the skills to create better things for our union and our community,” said ILWU Canada President Rob Ashton.
ILWU Canada hosted an online Young Workers Committee “Burgers and Beer” event on the evening of December 7th for young workers across all regions and divisions of the ILWU to meet and discuss their ongoing work over the past year. Over 50 ILWU members and casuals from every region attended the online meeting. ILWU Canada’s Second Vice President Dan Kask was the event facilitator.
ILWU Canada President Rob Ashton
ILWU Canada President Rob Ashton was the first speaker. He spoke about the way the Young Workers Committee has developed leadership and organizing skills that strengthen both the union and the broader community.
“Young workers are the future of our union. Our founding father Harry Bridges was a young worker himself,” Ashton said. “New ideas come from young workers. Sometimes our ideas become stagnant and we need new ideas to reinvigorate who we are as a union. What ILWU Canada has realized over the past 10 years that we have been doing the Young Workers Committee, is that we are learning to internally organize. We are teaching people the skills to create better things for our union and our community.”
YWC Local Reports
COVID impacted the efforts of Young Workers Committees throughout the ILWU, but their work continued despite the pandemic. Hazel Pemberton from Local 19’s YWC kicked-off the YWC local reports. Pemberton spoke about the committee’s work this year with the Seattle Committee to Stop Police Terror, voter registration efforts, and participation in actions to support striking New Orleans sanitation workers that were organized by the Local 23 YWC.
Local 502 YWC member Paul Gill spoke out their online fundraising efforts for the Surrey Food Bank. Gill said the food bank is experiencing record volume because of people losing their employment because of COVID. He said they raised a record amount of donations this year.
Local 23 YWC members Nyef Mohamed and Tyler Rasmussen detailed an impressive year of activism for the YWC in Tacoma. Their work included: support for workers organizing a union at Burgerville; on-the-ground support for striking working at seven fruit packing warehouse in the Yakima Valley; a May Day banner drop with banners reading—“COVID-19 is a labor issue”, “Everybody organize”, and “You have rights, join a union”; a Bloody Thursday webinar; support for health care workers who went out on strike fighting for PPE; and demonstrations at the TrueBlue temp agency in Tacoma in support of striking sanitation workers in New Orleans (see the December 2020 issue of the Dispatcher for details).
“Each of these workers has a different set of issues and a different set demands,” Rasmussen said reflecting the diverse set of struggles they supported this year. “But they all have something in common—the struggle between workers and the boss. To understand this is to understand why Tacoma’s young workers choose stand with doctors in white lab coats or even spend 14 consecutive weeks standing on picket line for workers in New Orleans we will never meet. We keep our eyes and our ears open to community voices while remembering the ILWU’s history, commitment to racial justice and inclusion, and how those ideas are spelled out in the 10 Guiding Principles.”
Brittni Paquette gave a report on Local 508’s newly established Young Workers Committee. Paquette said they kicked off 2018 with well-attended meetings and had big plans for the year including a fundraiser, social groups, and providing support to striking United Steel Workers. Their YWC was sidelined by COVID and had to learn and adapt along the way.
Local 5 member Andy Anderson gave an update on the impact of COVID on the membership of Local 5. While every shop in the local has been impacted, workers at Powell’s Books have been especially hard hit. They said that in March, almost the entirety of the Powells workforce of 400 was laid off. These were permanent layoffs with recall rights, Anderson said. Currently about 2/3 of the Powells workforce are still laid off. They said Local 5 has started a worker relief fund and the local has been holding online social events, and the Black Lives Matter Committee has been active. Local 5 has set up a COVID relief section on their website. Those wishing to help Local 5 members can go to https://www.ilwulocal5.com/Support/ to donate or click the Powells partner link to shop for books at Powells. 7.5% of all sales using the partner link will go to the COVID-19 relief fund.
Historian Peter Cole
Professor Peter Cole, a historian at Western Illinois University was the guest speaker. His book, Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area, is a comparative history of longshore workers in Durban, South Africa and ILWU Local 10.
He looks at the way these workers have historically have harnessed their power and commitment to multi-racial internationalism and solidarity to promote labor rights, social justice, and racial equality. Cole said that in listening to the local reports, what was discussed what right in line with the ILWU’s history and traditions that he has written about.
“I am interested in what a lot of you are talking about on this call,” Cole said. “Not just what you do fighting for your rights on the job but also how this union can be a force for good in the community and the world.” Cole gave two historical examples of the ILWU’s impact beyond the workplace.
“The ILWU took a very vocal stand against the persecution of Japanese people in1942 at a time—just a few months after Pearl Harbor—when there was widespread prejudice and discrimination against Japanese people in the United States, including the mass internment of 125,000 Japanese Americans and immigrants,” Cole said. “The ILWU was one of the few institutions in the entire country that spoke out against the internment. That was an incredible statement at the time even though now it is a standard view that it was a great injustice by the US government. Sometimes just saying what has to be said is an important act.”
The second example Cole spoke about was the how the ILWU, led by then International Secretary-Treasurer Lou Goldblatt, invested ILWU pension fund money to help build St. Francis Square, an integrated multiracial housing cooperative that made home ownership affordable for working class people.
Cole also spoke briefly about his latest book: Ben Fletcher: the Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. The book is the only biography of Fletcher, an early 20th century African-American longshore worker, a revolutionary trade unionist and leader of Local 8 of the International Workers of the World Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union. Local 8 was a multiracial union representing 4,000 dockers in 1919—a time when the deliberate exclusion of African-American and Asian workers was the norm for American labor unions.
United Way Labor partnership
Neal Adolph, United Way Lower Mainland Labour Director spoke about their organizations 30-year partnership with Canadian labor movement and work to ensure that workers and their families have access to social services in their community. Labor organization working with the United Way include the BC Federation of Labour, Canadian Labour Congress, Fraser Valley Labour Council, New Westminster & District Labour Council. Vancouver and District Labour Council
“My whole job is to make the community better in partnership with the labor movement,” Adolph said. ILWU Canada’s Young Workers’ Committee has been working with the United Way to raise money and distribute donations of food and supplies using local distribution hubs to help workers who have been lost employment due to the pandemic.
Dan Kask said that helping workers who are struggling is a form of working class solidarity. “This is a community-solidarity project, not a charity thing. If your neighbors can’t put enough food on the table, it’s because the boss doesn’t pay them enough,” Kask said.
ILWU International SecretaryTreasurer Ed Ferris
ILWU International SecretaryTreasurer Ed Ferris was the events final guest speaker. He encouraged the union activists to persevere during these tough times. “I had a great time at your Young Workers Conference in 2019. It’s been a tough year and it’s a shame we have to meet this way,” Ferris said. “We are adapting to this virus. It’s going to be with us for awhile. The next 100 days are going to be tough, especially in the states because of the failed response of the federal government. I’m inspired by all your work. Don’t let anyone discourage you or tell you it’s not your time. It is your time. Now is the time to learn about our union and to help make the world a better place.”