Local 4 member Rick Anderson retires, recalls activism and five generations on Vancouver’s waterfront
One of the most visible activists during the 2013 grain lockout at UGC in Vancouver, fourth-generation Local 4 member Rick Anderson, officially retired in January for medical reasons after a 28-year career on the docks. Anderson spoke with the Dispatcher on his proud family history of nearly 100 years on the Columbia River waterfront, his own union activism, and the diagnosis that led to his retirement.
Five generations
“My great-grandfather and my grandfather were both in the Strike of 1934,” said Anderson. “In 1938, my great-grandfather retired after being crushed by corrugated steel inside a boxcar. He stayed alive for a few years, and ultimately died from those injuries.” Loa Anderson was the first of the five generations in the ILWU.
The second and third Anderson generations, Richard and Lee, brought fourth-generation Rick to the docks in the early 1970’s.
“I remember going to the grain elevator as a kid,” said Anderson. “It was great, because Dad and Grampa would fight over who would buy me the most stuff off of the coffee wagon. Grampa worked in the grain elevator for years and years.”
Anderson got the job through the employment office, working his way up from casual and getting his A book in 2005. His grown children, Brandon and Brandi, were both drawn as casuals and are working on the docks, making them the fifth generation.
“They love it, oh my god, are you kidding me?” said Anderson. “I’ve had Brandon and Brandi on picket lines, and coming to union stuff, since they were born. Actually, Brandi saw me get arrested. The guys had to take my daughter and my car to the hall when I was getting packed up and taken to jail.”
Jail? More on that to come.
From Woolen Mill to the docks
Anderson worked at the Pendleton Woolen Mill and served as president of the mill’s union while casualing on the docks in the 1990’s.
“I was the youngest union president at Pendleton Woolen Mills; I was 28,” said Anderson. “I took them through negotiations. We got the biggest raise, and a 401K in addition to pension and vision care. Growing up in a longshore family, I was a little more militant than the average president that they’d had at the mill. When we had our strike vote, I kept holding off on saying, ‘yes, we’ll accept this contract.’ The company threatened to go to Mexico. I convinced our membership to vote to authorize the strike. Even though we never struck, it gave us a lot of leverage in negotiations. We got the best contract they’d ever gotten. … I attribute that to growing up ILWU.”
Anderson worked nights on the docks while working days at the woolen mill, at times with just two hours to sleep.
“When I got my white card, I had to show up at the dispatch hall every day,” said Anderson. “I realized I would get fired at the mill because I would show up late to my job. But the docks were the priority for me. Everybody knew, even my bosses at the mill knew, that obviously the docks were going to be a much better career path.”
‘Always liked being a soldier’
Anderson’s ILWU upbringing and experience as a union president at the mill gave him the momentum to get involved in ILWU service right away, over time being elected to several local offices and serving on the Executive Board, Central Labor Council, and the Puget Sound District Council.
ILWU International President Willie Adams, whose home port is Tacoma, considers Anderson a good friend for 30 years, and recalled being impressed when Anderson and his fellow Local 4 member Cager Clabaugh regularly made the trip north to participate in District Council meetings.
“They were always solid guys, solid figures for the union,” said Adams. “Rick wears his feelings on his sleeve; he has always bled ILWU. People might not know about him out there, but if I were in a foxhole, I’d want him there with me.”
Indeed, Anderson says, “I always looked at myself as a behind-the-scenes kind of guy; I never needed to be up front. I learned a lot from the officers who were above me, like Cager, Brad Clark, Jared Smith. Jerry Johnston back in the day. I always liked being a soldier. They could call, and I’m on my way. I did pickets and rallies everywhere from Tillamook to The Dalles.”
Anderson is indeed a soldier, a decorated Navy veteran whose ship was fired upon by Libya in 1985. Anderson’s wife, Carla, is an Air Force veteran, his father was in the Army, and his son served in the Marine Corps.
2013 grain lockout
Anderson served on the union’s negotiating committee for a new grainhandlers’ contract with Mitsui-owned United Grain Corp (UGC), and he was one of several ILWU members and supporters to be arrested in the months after UGC locked out ILWU workers in 2013. Many of the ILWU workers had ancestors who had worked or even died inside the grain elevator over the previous 80 years, and now they saw a union-busting firm, hired by UGC, sending scab workers through ILWU picket lines and creating a volatile situation.
The UGC lockout stories vary from colorful to painful, and, said Anderson, “I hold the record for number of arrests for Local 4.”
During one of his three arrests related to the picket line, Anderson said, “I had a grain dust truck that kept hitting me. The police chief, she said, ‘we have you on camera putting your picket sign through that guy’s radiator.’ I said, ‘well then you also have it on camera that he was hitting me with his truck.’ But they didn’t ever go after him, they came after me, they came after the ILWU.”
Ultimately, Anderson and the other workers had most charges reduced, dropped or settled out of court – though Anderson spent several hours in jail and was convicted of jaywalking while in a crosswalk designated by Vancouver police.
The nearly 18-month UGC lockout ended in August of 2014 when the union’s grain negotiating committee and the overseas grain employers operating in the Pacific Northwest reached a tentative agreement. The agreement was ratified by members of Locals 4, 8, 19, 21 and 92 the same month.
‘Started losing words’
Anderson was working in the grain elevator when he had a stroke 12 years ago, at age 45. More recently, Anderson said, his family noticed that he “started losing words. … I was having problems with my speech, and it was getting progressively worse. So they kept running me in for MRI’s, but they couldn’t find anything.”
His daughter, who is a Certified Nursing Assistant, convinced his doctors to push further.
“Thank God we have the insurance we have,” said Anderson, “because most insurances don’t allow you to get a PET scan, where they put radiation particles in your blood and take image of your brain. That’s when they realized I have shrinking of the temporal lobes. They called it Frontotemporal Dementia, or FTD.”
Anderson shared his diagnosis on Facebook in July of 2022. To help educate others, he posted a 60 Minutes special from 2019. The host called FTD “the cruelest disease you’ve never heard of,” and the most common form of dementia for Americans younger than 60. The video is online at www.tinyurl.com/sixtyminutesFTD.
‘Get checked out’
Local 4 members Cager Clabaugh and Rick Anderson are enthusiastically welcomed at Northwest picket lines. Anderson said, “I’ve still got all these memories of the good times, all the pickets, all the times with my brothers and sisters on the docks.”
Anderson has handled his FTD diagnosis by characteristically thinking of his family and friends, seeking to educate people on the disease and the need to “get checked out as soon as you feel something is off.”
“The prognosis is, it’s always fatal,” said Anderson. “There’s nothing that they can do; there’s no cure. They can just manage the symptoms and what’s going to happen to me. After the diagnosis, you’re generally not going to be around after 4-5 years; that’s the reality.
“I want my brothers and sisters to know that if anything doesn’t seem right, to get all the testing that they can get. It’s so important,” said Anderson. “My diagnosis wouldn’t have changed what’s happening to me, or what’s going to happen to me. But at least you know. It was very important for me, while I’m still OK, to get everything in order.”
‘Enjoy life the best you can’
For medical reasons, Anderson stopped working in May of 2022 and officially retired in November.
“I’m not upset,” said Anderson. “Are you going to cry about it, or are you going to enjoy life the best you can?”
On January 11, 2023, Brandon posted a photo with his dad under Local 4’s sign, and wrote:
“I had the honor of watching my father Rick Anderson retire from the ILWU local 4 this evening! 28 years he spent on the waterfront to provide for his family! One of the hardest working, selfless union man I have ever seen in my life. I’m very proud of you Dad! I hope that I can continue to carry on the family name down on the dock!”
“I feel like I’ve lived my life how I’ve wanted to live it,” said Anderson. “The dementia that I’ve got, it’s not like Alzheimers where I’ll lose my memories, until the end. So I’ve still got all these memories of the good times, all the pickets, all the times with my brothers and sisters on the docks, that you know I’ll still remember. These are all memories that I love.”
For more of this interview and additional photos, see ilwulongshore.org/local4anderson.