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LOCAL Announcement :: Labor

Solidarity Has No Borders To Run On Chicago Cable

"Solidarity Has No Borders, The Journey Of The Neptune Jade" about the international campaign for the striking Liverpool Dockers will be programmed on Chicago CAN TV Channel 19 on
hurs., Dec. 29, 9:30 pm
Fri., Dec. 30, 4:30 pm
Thurs., Jan . 5, 9:30 pm
Fri., Jan. 6, 4:30 pm
The Journey of the Neptune Jade video will play on Labor Beat:
www.laborbeat.org

CAN TV Channel 19, Chicago
Thurs., Dec. 29, 9:30 pm
Fri., Dec. 30, 4:30 pm
Thurs., Jan . 5, 9:30 pm
Fri., Jan. 6, 4:30 pm

www.ilwu.org/dispatcher/2005/09/neptune_jade_action.cfm
The Dispatcher 2005 > Issue 09 of 2005 > How international labor solidarity works--the Neptune Jade action


How international labor solidarity works--the Neptune Jade Action

November 8, 2005

Robert Irminger, IBU
ILWU/IBU member and Neptune Jade picket captain and defendant Robert Irminger recounted the picket action and court case at the Liverpool commemoration gathering. Photo by: Steve Zeltzer

The activities commemorating 10th anniversary of the start of the Liverpool dockers’ struggle began with the showing, appropriately, of the video "Solidarity Has No Borders: The Journey of the Neptune Jade."

"There were many actions in support of the Liverpool dockers during the course of our two-and-a-half-year struggle, but one stands out, the Neptune Jade," Liverpool dock steward Terry Teague said when introducing the video.

The Neptune Jade action will leave a high watermark on the pilings of labor history because of its boldness, level of co-ordination and timing.

"The action came at just the right time because after two years in dispute the men’s spirits were low and this picked ’em right back up," Mickey Tighe, Liverpool dock steward, noted.

It enabled the stewards to keep the dockworkers together. Like a ripple in the water, it reawakened workers’ awareness of the importance of international solidarity and became the model for other solidarity actions that followed, like the 1998 boycott of the Columbus Canada in Los Angeles in support of the Australian wharfies and the action by the Spanish dockers against the Nordana shipping line in support of the Charleston Five longshore workers.

Since previous arbitrations re-stricted the employer group, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), from retrieving its losses due to industrial actions by the ILWU, it moved to sue the individuals who were on the picket line for the financial hit its member companies claimed they took because of the picket. The PMA subpoenaed documents with information about who they were from the ILWU International, The Dispatcher, and Locals 10 and 34. Eventually PMA hauled then-International President Brian McWilliams and Dispatcher editor Steve Stallone into court, seeking to have them found in contempt of court and thrown in jail if they continued to refuse to turn snitch. The ILWU won that case based on a ruling that found that The Dispatcher, as a newspaper, had a First Amendment right to gather information without the interference or intrusion of the government.

In pre-trial motions the charges against two of the three only named defendants, Local 10 activist Jack Heyman and the Golden Gate chapter of the Labor Party, were thrown out and the court restricted PMA to suing only those it allegedly had evidence committed illegal acts on the picket line. But the court allowed PMA to continue to pursue picket captain and IBU member Robert Irminger and try to force him to name others on the line. After Bay Area longshore locals shut down the Port of Oakland July 22, rallied in front of the PMA’s Oakland office and marched 1,000 strong to the courthouse demanding the charges be dropped, and the Coast Committee threatening coastwise action if PMA carried out the prosecution of Irminger, the employers gave in.

The Labor Video Project produced the video. Following the video showing, Steve Zeltzer of the LVP, chaired the event with Irminger and Heyman speaking, followed by discussion.

Irminger chronicled how the Neptune Jade sailed into the port of Oakland Sept. 28, 1997 from Thamesport, England, a port operated by Mersey Docks and Harbor Company which had sacked the 500 Liverpool dockers. It was the second anniversary of the strike. Labor and community activists set up a picket line in solidarity with the Liverpool dockers. At this 10th anniversary commemoration Liverpool, steward Terry Teague presented Irminger with a plaque for his dedication to the struggle.

For three-and-a-half days longshore workers refused to cross the picket line, despite a court injunction ordering them to do so. Finally, the Neptune Jade, desperate to unload its cargo in a U. S. West Coast port but finding no safe haven, departed for Vancouver, Canada, another ILWU port. Labor activists across the border also set up a picket, forcing the Neptune Jade to sail for Japan. There Japanese dockworkers, well aware of the hot cargo on board, didn’t touch the ship. Finally the ship sailed to Taiwan where the cargo was discharged and the Neptune Jade, now internationally notorious, was renamed.

Such power of coordinated action by workers in three different countries sent shivers down the spine of maritime companies around the globe. The website of the Neptune Jade Defense Committee was swamped by visits from global corporations fearful of the specter of labor solidarity.

At the Longshore Caucus held after the ILWU Convention in Portland in 2000, attorney Rob Remar, who was instrumental in helping to pilot the Neptune Jade campaign through legal channels, explained that we live in a country with repressive anti-labor legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act which makes solidarity actions, or as employers say, "secondary boycotts," difficult for unions to organize.

"The significance of the Neptune Jade action lay in the fact that the ILWU was able to implement its policy of support for their Liverpool brothers while defending itself against legal attacks," he said.

At the Liverpool gathering Irminger pointed out how the Neptune Jade action influenced later events.

"It was the Neptune Jade action which strengthened the links between Bay Area organized labor and community groups, preceding and laying the basis for a global justice movement here," he said.

neptune jade
The Neptune Jade not being worked at the Port of Oakland. Photo by: Tom Price.

In 1999, he pointed out, ILWU and other trade unionists marched with young protesters demonstrating against the WTO in Seattle. And again, in 2001, global justice activists successfully picketed an Italian ship in the Port of Oakland to protest the killing of a young anti-capitalist globalization protester in Genoa.

Jack Heyman, who had been sent to Liverpool by then-ILWU President Brian McWilliams early in their struggle in 1996, drew a direct connection from Liverpool to the Neptune Jade to the ILWU’s contentious 2002 contract negotiations and the anti-Iraq War protests. When PMA and the Bush administration threatened the ILWU during the 2002 contract negotiations, he said, these activists and dockworkers internationally were readily mobilized to support the ILWU, from marches and rallies in San Francisco to parrying with right-wing politicians in the Australian press.

Heyman said when anti-war activists demonstrated in the Port of Oakland at the start of the Iraq War, longshore workers refused to cross their picket lines as they had done six years earlier in the Neptune Jade picket line. One difference, he noted, was that Oakland mayor Jerry Brown himself participated in the Neptune Jade picket, but he now supports the bloody police repression of the anti-war demonstration.

The veil of 9/11 "national security," had been used by the government to cover the peaceful protesters as "terrorists." Scores were shot with so-called less-than-lethal weapons, including nine longshore workers and then-Business Agent Heyman was arrested while trying to protect his members against the police assault. Although the port was not shut down, the case against the police, ILWU Local 10 v City of Oakland, is scheduled for court in January.

—Dispatcher staff reports

"Solidarity Has No Borders: the Journey of the Neptune Jade" is available for $20 ( plus $5 handling fee) from its producer:

Labor Video Project

P.O. Box 720027

San Francisco, CA 94172

Voice: 415-282-1908 / Fax: 415-695-1369

Email: lvpsf (at) labornet.org

Fifty percent of the proceeds will go to the legal defense campaign to expose the brutal police attack on peaceful anti-war protesters and longshore workers in the Port of Oakland in April 2003. The campaign is being organized by the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee.
 
 

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