ILWU honors internationalism of slain Local 37 officers on 30th anniversary of assassinations

 

Over two hundred ILWU members, community supporters and labor activists gathered at the University of Washington campus in Seattle to celebrate the lives of Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo, two young, reform-minded officers of Local 37 who were assassinated in broad daylight while working at their union hall in Seattle on June 1, 1981. Local 37 was a longtime

ILWU local that affiliated with the Inlandboatmen’s Union in 1987. At the time they represented approximately 1,500 cannery workers at fish processing facilities in Alaska. The event is known to local activists as “The Cannery Union Murders.”

The two courageous reformers put their lives on the line to rid the local of corruption, favoritism and to build greater ties between the ILWU and a labor movement in the Philippines that was engaged in a struggle against the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

The Marcos regime declared martial law in 1972 and workers were one of the regime’s first targets. Strikes were outlawed; wages for workers decreased by almost 40% and many of the country’s top labor leaders were arrested. In April of 1981 at the ILWU convention in Hawaii, Silme and Gene introduced a resolution calling for an ILWU delegation to investigate “the state of trade unions, working conditions, and civil liberties of Filipino workers.” Within a few months, they would both be killed, but the connection between their activism and subsequent murders would not be fully revealed for many years as an international conspiracy was eventually exposed that involved secret agents, a foreign government, high-level corruption and political assassinations.

“Silme and Gene represented the best elements of the ILWU. They were dedicated unionists who fought for the interests of all workers and were committed to building a democratic union,” said Terri Mast, Secretary-Treasurer of the Inlandboatmen’s Union (IBU) and widow of Silme Domingo. “They were murdered for fighting for the rights of workers here in the US and in the Philippines. Today, as millions of workers around the world mobilize to fight the assault on labor rights and topple dictatorships in the Middle East, the solidarity that Silme and Gene died for is as important as ever.”

ILWU Vice President Ray Familathe and Secretary-Treasurer Willie Adams attended the event as did officers and members from ILWU locals and the IBU throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Special guest speakers included Ray Familathe, Paddy Crumlin, National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and the President of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and Raymundo Ruiz Rueda, a member of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). The SME has been on strike in Mexico for the past 18 months and is under fierce assault by the Mexican government. The ILWU offered early support to the SME in 2009.

There are several projects underway to keep the work of Silme and Gene alive including a documentary film that will chronicle their lives and contributions. A book project is also in the works to publish the history of Local 37 that Gene had written. A memorial scholarship to the University of

Washington has also been established. Professor James Gregory, Chair of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies presented the first $5,500 scholarship to Stephanie Velasco, to fund her first year at the University of Washington.

Internationalism celebrated

The international solidarity work of Gene and Silme was right at home in the ILWU, which has a rich tradition of internationalism to this day. The 30^th anniversary memorial service for Gene and Silme celebrated that tradition and underscored its importance today. “I’ve been an internationalist for 25 years,” said Ray Familathe in his remarks at the event. “One of my proudest moments as an ILWU member was when Nelson Mandela, recently released from prison in South Africa, spoke to a crowd of over 100,000 people in Los Angeles. He personally thanked ILWU members for their support in helping to defeat apartheid.” Familathe stressed that internationalism is a part of everything the ILWU does. “It’s a part of every contract we negotiate. Our employers are global, so we also have to be global.”

“This is not just something that happened 30 years ago that we can forget about,” said Paddy Crumlin. “In this ‘New World Order’ of global capitalism, the courage and internationalism of these two courageous leaders is needed more than at any other time.”

“Gene and Silme paid the ultimate price for standing up for the working class,” said Willie Adams. “I am also inspired by the tremendous fortitude of Terri Mast. She refused to quit in the face of violence and repression and continued the work of Gene and Silme. That speaks to her courage as a trade union leader.”

 

Rank and File reformers

Both Gene and Silme were second generation Filipino Americans. Gene Viernes was born in 1951 and was one of 10 children from a working-class family in Wapato, WA. At the age of 15, he joined his father, Felix, in the Alaskan canneries where he worked as a “slimmer,” one of the hardest and dirtiest jobs on the line. In his first years in canneries, Gene was not known as a rebel. But after several seasons, the conditions inside the canneries and unfair treatment of the Filipino workers politicized him. It was not long before management and even some Local 37 officials, began to see Gene as a trouble- maker, because he fought against the discrimination and injustices he saw in the canneries.

“We first got upset over the way [management] treated our fathers. The old men couldn’t even talk back to the foreman. It really hurt us to see the old men treated this way. That was the catalyst for action,” recalled Viernes’ boyhood friend and co-worker Andy Pasua in a 1982 article on the murders published in the Seattle Weekly.

If the treatment of the elders was the catalyst for action, the discrimination in the canneries was the slow burning ember that fueled anger and resentment among many of the younger Filipino workers in the late 60s and early 1970s. White workers ate better food, had better sleeping quarters, and had better paying jobs. Filipinos had been the primary workforce in the canneries for 50 years yet they were still relegated to the dirtiest and hardest work in the fish house. Managerial positions, carpenters, machinists and other skilled jobs remained almost entirely white.

In 1972 after his complaints about discriminatory treatment went unanswered, Gene began organizing workers to take action themselves. After continued complaints about Filipinos being served lower quality food than the white workers received, Gene organized a successful hunger strike and as a result Filipino workers received a better supply of fresh juice and vegetables for the remainder of the season.

Silme Domingo also became politicized because of the discrimination in the canneries where he worked for three seasons as a waiter in the Filipino mess hall. In 1971, Silme and several of his co-workers complained about the fact white workers received overtime pay while Filipino workers did not.

They raised these concerns with management and their fellow workers. For their efforts, Silme and 10 other workers were fired for “agitating the crew” and were blacklisted by the industry.

Silme filed a grievance against the company when he returned to Seattle, but Gene Navarro, President of Local 37 at the time, did not want to upset his relationship with the company and did not pursue the grievance.

As a student at the University of Washington, Silme became very active in the Seattle’s Asian Movement that fought against racial discrimination. The conditions in the Alaskan canneries was a prime concern for the activists and in the summer of 1973, Silme teamed up with Michael Woo, an experienced union organizer to investigate these conditions. Silme and Gene met for the first time during this trip.

Shortly after Silme left, Gene organized another hunger strike. This time several weeks

before the action, workers ate twice the amount they normally did. They tricked the kitchen crew so they began preparing more food to accommodate the new demand, and then the workers went on a hunger strike and the company had to throw large quantities of untouched food into the garbage.The strike met with success and the foreman agreed to improve the food but as soon as the season ended, Gene was fired and blacklisted.

In 1973 when frustration with the local’s leadership reached a boiling point, Silme helped found a legal advocacy group, the Alaska Cannery Workers Association (ACWA) that took on the industry’s biggest companies.

The ACWA filed several lawsuits against canneries for discrimination in hiring practices, housing and food service under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. ACWA was popular among many younger Filipinos, but was seen as a threat by the conservative leadership of the local and company officials. ACWA members were blacklisted from being dispatched to work by both the industry and Local 37.

At this time, Silme also became heavily involved in Asian-community politics and in solidarity work with the Philippines. Silme became the first leader of the Seattle-area chapter of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP)— a US-based organization that opposed the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. The organization was controversial because it was seen by conservative Filipinos as being an organization of socialists and other radicals and was actively opposed by pro- Marcos members of the community.

Despite the legal successes of ACWA, Gene and Silme understood that real change in the industry could only be won through the efforts of the cannery workers themselves, working through a democratic and accountable union. That meant the Gene and Silme would first have to get back into the union, and then begin to improve conditions in the canneries by cleaning up the Local 37 house.

The courts ruled in the ACWA lawsuits that the companies could not retaliate against activists for filing the lawsuits and had to rehire them.

They immediately formed the “Rank and File Committee,” a worker run reform group that advocated for a dispatch system free of bribery and favoritism, a leadership accountable to the membership, open financial books, strong contract enforcement with the companies, an organizing drive in the non-union canneries, and stronger safety regulations in the workplace.

In 1978, the Rank and File Committee won several positions on the executive board and the trustee positions; In 1980 they ran a slate that won every position in the local except the President; Silme was elected Secretary- Treasurer and Gene as Dispatcher.

The Cannery Union Murders

 

On that June 1st afternoon, Silme and Gene were alone in the office of the Local 37 when two men—Ben Guloy, a man who Silme knew well, and Jimmy Ramil—entered the building. Both were members of the local “Tulisan,” street gang that was tied to illegal gambling operations inside the canneries.

Ramil pulled a .45 caliber MAC- 10 automatic pistol equipped with a silencer and started shooting. Gene died immediately. But Silme survived and chased the assassins into the street, despite being shot 4 times. Outside, he called for help and identified the two hit men to the firemen who arrived on the scene. He held on for almost 24 hours before succumbing to the assassin’s bullets. Guloy, Ramil and third co-conspirator, Tulisan gang leader, Tony Dictado, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murders.

Six weeks after the shootings, an elderly man collecting cans and bottles found the murder weapon in a trash bin in West Seattle’s Lincoln Park. The gun was registered to then-Local 37 President Tony Baruso. Initially, Baruso said that he had never seen the gun before; he would later claim the gun had been stolen from his car, although he never reported any theft to the police. Baruso was arrested but was released without charge. During his testimony at the trial of Guloy and Ramil, Baruso would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 140 times.

The assassination of Silme and Gene shocked the labor and Filipino communities in Seattle. Initially, the murders appeared to be retributions for reform efforts within Local 37 that

threatened entrenched interests. But after a wide-ranging legal investigation launched by family, friends and community groups, a federal jury in 1989 found that former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, engaged in a conspiracy to silence political opponents in the US that resulted in the murders of Silme and Gene. The conspiracy involved the Marcos government, the President of Local 37, and a network of Marcos’ intelligence agents that operated within the United States since 1973, monitoring and harassing Marcos’ opponents in the United States with the full knowledge and complicity of US intelligence services.

Reformers undeterred

Mast said the killings stroke a blow to Local 37’s reform movement but the Rank and File Committee refused to be silenced. “They underestimated us,” Terri Mast said. “One of the hallmarks of great leaders is that they delegate and train others to lead. That’s what Gene and Silme did. The Rank and File Committee was able to honor the lives of Gene and Silme by continuing the work they started.”

The year following their deaths, cannery workers elected their entire slate of reform candidates to run Local 37, including Mast, who was elected the local’s first female president.

Conspiracy uncovered

The friends and families of Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo never believed this was simply a gang related killing. Within days of the murder they formed the Committee for Justice for Domingo and Viernes (CJDV). Baruso’s arrest on July 13, 1981 provided the first hints that there were larger motives behind the killings. “As soon as we knew Baruso was involved, there was a lot of suspicion, given his whole relation to the Filipino community, and his antagonistic relationship to us,” said Mast in a 1990 Bay Area Guardian article. Baruso was a staunch Marcos ally. He was a regular visitor to the dictator’s palace in Manila and was known to brag about his close relationship to Marcos. Baruso was even given an award by Marcos for “outstanding political service to the overseas Filipino community.”

Further indications that a broader conspiracy reaching back to Manila surfaced during the trial of Tony Dictado. “My family in the Philippines will be harmed,” Dictado, said, if he told the whole story about the assassinations. At that point the justice committee was certain that powerful forces in the Philippines were trying to cover up the truth.

In 1982, the CJDV filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Marcos and his wife Imelda. Alexander Haig and George Schultz, both of whom served as Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan and FBI Director William Webster were also named as defendants in the suit. Reagan’s State Department came to the defense of the dictator and his wife. They successfully argued that they should be granted immunity as heads of state of a friendly nation. The US officials named in the suit were also dismissed as defendants for “national security reasons.” But in 1987, Marcos and his wife would be reinstated as defendants after the regime collapsed and they took refuge in Hawaii. A federal judge ruled that they became “aliens with no official status” and would have to “defend the legality of their private acts committed in this country.”

Marcos would now have to answer the CJDV’s questions and during the discovery process, the CJDV legal team uncovered an expense sheet seized by US customs officials from Marcos when he entered the US. The expense sheet was for the Mabuhay Corporation, a dummy company that served as a slush fund for Marcos’ US intelligence operations. It was run by a San Francisco-based physician, Leonel Malebad. The sheet showed an expenditure of $15,000 for “special security projects” on May 17, 1981— two weeks before the murders. Travel records uncovered by the CJDV also established that Tony Baruso was in San Francisco on that day and stayed at hotel only a few blocks from the Philippine consulate. It was believed that the $15,000 was given to Baruso during that visit to pay the Tulisans to assassinate Silme and Gene.

On December 15, 1989, a federal jury agreed with CJDV and found the Marcos regime guilty. “The decision was a tremendous victory for Gene and Silme, and all the victims of the Marcos regime,” Mast said in a statement in The Dispatcher, after the verdict. “We set precedent by bringing a foreign dictator to justice for his crimes.”

Shortly after verdict, the District Attorney’s office reopened the case of Tony Baruso. He was charged and eventually convicted of murder in 1991. Baruso was sentenced to life in prison where he died in 2008.

“The assassination of trade unionists has become a rare event in the US,” said Mast. “The killing of Gene and Silme and the attempts by the Philippine and US governments to cover up the truth about what happened shows how threatening international solidarity work is to powerful people. It’s important that we keep alive the memory and work of Gene and Silme, not only because it is a part of our history as trade unionists, but because it is a reminder that when we work together, we can confront powerful forces and win.”