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Oakland’s Third Attempt at a General Strike

Posted Thu, 01/05/2012 - 5:38pm by IWW.org Editor

Originally posted on libcom.com - November 11, 2011

Jessica Mitford wrote:
Oakland was still at the frontier, where the issues were sharper,
the corruption cruder, the enemy more easily identifiable…
There was nothing abstract about the class struggle in Oakland.

—Jessica Mitford in
A Fine Old Conflict (1977)

Oakland, California has historically suffered by being in the shadow of the golden allure of San Francisco across the Bay. From the Gold Rush to the Summer of Love to the Castro District as a Gay Mecca to the Dot.com Boom, San Francisco has been known around the world as a magnet for get-rich-quick dreamers, bohemians and idealists. Berkeley, bordering Oakland on the north, was the birthplace of radical student agitation throughout the 1960s, beginning with the Free Speech Movement on the University of California campus in 1964. Oakland has always been a gritty industrial town, whose working class residents have ranged from reactionary whites in the Ku Klux Klan (in the 1920s) and Hells Angels (after World War II) to blacks at the cutting edge of civil rights struggles, and today is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the U.S. Oakland was thrust onto the world stage in 1966 with the Black Panther Party and its militant self-defense of the African American community.

The radical history of the Bay Area is like a giant tapestry and its threads run through the whole region. Telegraph Avenue is 4.4 miles long; it merges into Broadway at Latham Square on the Oakland end, the exact location of the strike of women retail clerks at two department stores on either side that sparked the 1946 General Strike. That strike led to the Taft-Hartley Act (the 1947 federal law banning strike and solidarity tactics that make general strikes possible) six months later and was the beginning of Cold War politics that smothered class struggle for a generation. On the Berkeley side, Telegraph ends at Bancroft Way right at Sproul Plaza on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Exactly 18 years later, on the exact day that the Oakland General Strike was officially declared, December 3rd, the Cold War began to thaw in a mass arrest of over 800 (the largest mass arrest up to that time in California) at a Free Speech Movement sit-in at Sproul Hall. Several of those student protestors had been radicalized by participating in Civil Rights organizing in the Deep South for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); many had taught at Freedom Schools. For the rest of the sixties, U.C. Berkeley was shut down several times due to mass student strikes and protests, including a month-long occupation of People’s Park by the National Guard, sending waves outwards as the youth revolt spread throughout the world.

Even within Oakland, the tapestry has threads that are deeply rooted in previous periods of heightened class struggle, having cross-fertilized with other radical movements across the country, as well as the world. Being that San Francisco is at the tip of a narrow peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water, Oakland became the mainland terminus of the transcontinental railroad when it was completed in 1869. Trains ran along 7th Street through West Oakland to the Mole, a railroad wharf complex extending into the Bay where ferries completed the journey west to San Francisco. During the nationwide Pullman Railroad Strike of 1894, workers occupied the tracks around the Mole, disabled trains, and the whole community prepared to defend the strike. In subsequent years, landfill pushed further into the Bay and the site of the Mole is at the heart of the current Port of Oakland, the destination of our mass march and shutdown during the attempted General Strike on November 2nd.

The Black Panthers had a significant base in West Oakland, where massive railroad yards had been built at the western terminus of the transcontinental line. A thread, although tenuous, connected them with the legacy of African American railroad porters who settled there a generation before. The area became the West Coast organizing center for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a socialist union founded in 1925. The Brotherhood came out of the radical ferment of that era; in October 1919 Brotherhood founder A. Philip Randolph wrote in The Messenger, “The Negroes and the Industrial Workers of the World have interests not only in common, but interests that are identical.” The IWW, whose member are called “Wobblies,” is an interracial revolutionary union founded in 1905 in Chicago that adopted a class struggle approach to organizing through direct action and the strike weapon, striving towards class consciousness and the general strike, with the ultimate goal being the creation of a classless society.

The Wobbly spirit – best embodied in the opening lines of the IWW preamble: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common” – was pervasive in the Bay Area, especially in the class unity, solidarity actions, sympathy strikes that exploded into many mass strikes and in turn led to at least two full-blow general strikes.

What Next for Occupy Oakland?

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 3:11pm by IWW.org Editor

By John Reimann - Fellow Worker Reimann has been involved with Occupy Oakland, along with several other members of the Bay Area IWW since its inception. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone, though they generally reflect the views of many others who are active in OO and are rank and file union members.

The port shut down of Dec. 12 showed that there is a lot of support for and strength in the Occupy Oakland movement. Sometimes, though, the greatest problems for a movement can arise exactly out of the successes, when we don’t think enough about what problems there are. 

Worker Participation Necessary 

The port shut down was accomplished with the active involvement of almost none of the workers there, especially the longshore workers. This can become a critical weakness if actions continue against employers and those actions don’t come from the workers themselves. In fact, there were several reports that a layer of the longshore workers were somewhat hostile to the Occupy pickets, who were causing them to lose a day’s pay. 

This cannot continue. We cannot continue to act in the place of workers; we must find a way to draw in a wider layer of working class Oakland. If we don’t, we will alienate large sectors of the working class. 

In order to do this, we should make a drive into the work places. Where there are unions and where officials of those unions claim to support Occupy Oakland, we should ask them to organize work place meetings for us to meet with the workers. If they don’t do this, then their “support” doesn’t really count for very much, but in any case, we can find ways to get into those work places. The purpose of such meetings would be to discuss with those workers the issues they are confronting and how Occupy Oakland can help them. This includes the public sector workers who are facing layoffs and cuts. In many cases the union leadership has accepted these cuts, but we in Occupy Oakland should not. 

Solidarity Unionism, Occupy, and the moral right of the working class to control the workplace

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 3:10pm by IWW.org Editor

By "The Union Thug" - originally posted at nebraskaworker.wordpress.com. The views expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the IWW.

On November 2, 2011 Occupy Oakland successfully shut down the ports in Oakland along with the approval and aid of the union, ILWU Local 10, which has a contract with the port’s legal owners.  This event was a tremendous leap in consciousness and something the U.S. working class has not done nor attempted in decades.  Shortly after, Occupy Oakland passed another resolution for a West Coast port shutdown.  Occupy movements in Portland, Long Beach, Seattle, Vancouver, Anchorage, Honolulu and Tokyo responded.  On December 12, 2011 the Occupy movements succeeded in shutting down the ports completely or partially in most of those cities.  However, this time around Occupy did not have the full support of the unions involved.

This action has sparked debate between Occupy and the traditional labor movement encompassed in the AFL-CIO.  The unions’ argument is that Occupy did not have the right to shut down the workplaces (ports) where they did not work and that this needed to be decided democratically within the bureaucracy of the ILWU.

We don’t buy this argument.  The Occupy movement is a reaction to the ruling class monopolizing the distribution of profits that are produced socially and collectively by the world’s working class.  They use these profits to buy the government and re-instill this class monopoly; therefore, we must find strategic ways to disrupt the creation and movement of these profits as a class. We propose that the Occupy movement adopt a strategy of class struggle known as solidarity unionism and apply it to strategic points in the economic system that we are all protesting against.

In this article we are going to define what solidarity unionism is, as practiced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); make the argument that the entire working class has a moral right to every workplace, especially those of strategic importance in the world economy; discuss the 1934 Toledo Electric Auto-Lite strike as a historical example of solidarity unionism; and finally how this type of strategy could further the goals of the Occupy movement.

Perspective: Unions, OWS, & Blocking the Ports

Posted Tue, 12/13/2011 - 2:41pm by IWW.org Editor

By Richard Meyers - This article was originally published on Daily Kos and reused under fair use guidelines.  Fellow Worker Meyers is involved with Occupy Denver. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone.

There's a debate raging over the OWS port shutdowns, and the role of unions in the shutdowns. Some believe workers have been betrayed; others claim that unions simply cannot signal their support.

Suggesting that a union does, or does not support an action like shutting down the ports (on the basis of what we've seen so far) is a gross oversimplification. In the first place, the no-strike clause has legal implications, with the result that statements of position may exist primarily to satisfy legal obligations.

Second, as we have apparently seen with ILWU 10, there may be significant differences in position and perception between local leadership and national/international leadership.

Third, all of those stating in comments on other KOS articles that they've drawn conclusions based upon what has been published ought to hold their breath; we've never before seen a global movement like OWS interact with a mainstream labor movement before. It is very likely, in spite of pronouncements, that many union leaders at the local AND the national level hadn't yet formed opinions on a one day demonstration port shutdown; many will have awaited the opportunity to assess the effectiveness of, and the public's reactions to, the day's actions.

The history of the labor movement, characteristics of the labor bureaucracy, and the success of the effort (operationally, and perceptually) will play a role in what is about to unfold.

Occupy the Union – Occupy & Rank and File Hand in Hand

Posted Tue, 12/13/2011 - 2:17pm by IWW.org Editor

By Emily Loftis

As Occupy Wall Street groups stretching from San Diego to Anchorage mobilize for a multi-port shutdown of the North American West Coast, union members are finding the mobilization offers more than just support against union busting and unfair contracts. Activists and rank-and-file workers say the movement is teaching them what the bureaucratic infrastructure of organized labor has made them forget: collective power.

On Dec. 12, general assemblies (the decentralized governing bodies of OWS) in Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Santa Barbara, Calif., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Longview, Wash., San Diego, Anchorage, California’s Port Hueneme region, and dozens of smaller camps plan to blockade ports and halt commerce for a day. There is a combined Dallas-Houston effort to demonstrate at the port in Houston. Japanese rail workers, who are sympathetic to longshoremen, who work a partner company of Bunge — the company Occupy is protesting — will be demonstrating in Japan.

Farther inland, Denver will try to shut down a Walmart distribution center. Occupy Bellingham may block coal trains; and landlocked California occupiers will bus to the coast. According to the Journal of Commerce, the “West Coast ports handle more than 50 percent of the U.S. containerized trade, including 70 percent of U.S. imports from Asia.” The demonstration is in solidarity with Longview longshoremen who say their jurisdiction is being threatened by multinational grain exporter EGT, as well as port truckers who have been prevented from unionizing in Los Angeles. (Their little-known plight was exposed by Salon in October.)

The campaign to shut down what some call “the Wall Street of the Waterfront” is consistent with the general Occupy Wall Street message on the distribution of power and wealth. Yet, the effort faces opposition from the union bureaucracy’s upper echelons, precisely because of the conflict with EGT. Last week officials of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU ) sent out a memo reminding its members:

“To be clear, the ILWU, the Coast Longshore Division, and Local 21 are not coordinating independently or in conjunction with any self-proclaimed organization or group to shut down any port or terminal, particularly as it relates to our dispute with EGT in Longview.” (emphasis added).

So, paradoxically , where labor conflict is starkest, the union leaders reject outside support, and when Occupy Oakland acts to support the union’s members, the union itself resists. That’s why Dec. 12 looms not just as a test of strength for the Occupy movement. The port shutdown is also shaking up Big Labor.

Mobilizing without unions

The idea of a port shutdown was born out of an Occupy L.A. plan to demonstrate in solidarity with local port truckers. L.A.’s intentions exploded into a large-scale mobilization to shut down the ports along the entire coast.

Shrugging off tent removal, tear gas and rubber bullets, Occupy Oakland has become the nucleus of coordination, holding inter-Occupy conference calls; brainstorming budgets to provide camps with everything from porta-potties to bullhorns; and using union networks to connect rank-and-file members with general assemblies on the West Coast.

Hundreds of Oakland citizens are leafletting commuter trains, staging rush-hour banner drops, reaching out to non-unionized workers, and sending out bilingual teams to ethnic boroughs to help populate the blockade. Other local organizations are independently working for the event. For example, the International Socialist Organization immediately began contacting branches in relevant cities while the East Bay Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice will be hosting a pre-march teach-in about the plight of longshoremen and port truckers.

As for the possibility of future police action, the occupiers do not have to speculate. The City of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department will be working together to keep port operations running on Dec. 12. Though Oakland is no stranger to police violence at port shutdowns the police presence may actually help the protesters.

A police blockade, says one union member and shutdown organizer, is enough reason to prevent longshoremen from unloading ships. Though the longshoremen could technically ask the police to escort them across the picket line, historically, they have not done so. Such a standoff would protect the ILWU from litigation and enable it to respect– as it usually does — a community picket.

The labor battle in Longview highlights Big Labor’s awkward position of resisting a popular movement against corporate power. Longshoremen have been protesting EGT’s decision to contract with another union whose members are paid lower wages than the ILWU’s.

EGT is an export grain facility owned, in part, by agribusiness holding company Bunge Ltd., and has employed ILWU workers on the ports for years. Bunge extracts billions of dollars a year in profits, but has a tarnished international reputation. It was expelled from Argentina this year for accusations of evading taxes. Environmentalists charge Bunge with undermining ecological recovery through intensive sugar cane andsoybean-growing in Brazil. It has also resisted South American union demands for workers’ rights.) But in the United States, the company’s name doesn’t make much news outside of stock reports and longshoremen activist sites.

The ILWU’s problem is that no-strike clauses in contracts require union leaders to foreswear labor action and distance themselves from independent action. Throughout the protests, including those at the Nov. 2 general strike and shutdown of the Oakland port, most unions did not officially sanction the strike, though they all supported it materially and in marching feet. The president of Local 21 of ILWU, for example, was a keynote speaker of the Nov. 19 march.

But resistance endures at the top of the unions. In a recent meeting, the Alameda County labor council not only refused to endorse the port shutdown, but actually considered a public rejection of the action. The proposal was eventually tabled, but the whole debate was arguably a consequence of the entanglement of big business and labor: specifically, of the labor council’s executive treasurer-secretary and a port commissioner.

“The fear of getting sued that haunts the union leadership is unfortunate,” said Barucha, a young anarchist with Occupy Oakland.

“It’s not our job to rail against union leadership,” she said. “We don’t have to come out and criticize union leadership, because we’re leading by example. The occupation movement being able to provide a better framework of getting the rank-and-file working class’s needs met. [It] exposes the recuperation of the union institution by political parties.”

For years, members of certain — not all — unions say their bosses have compromised their collective power in back-door agreements and concessions. Some resent the “team concept,” a labor term for the working relationship between union bosses and CEOs, which places efficiency and profits over workers’ needs, according to disgruntled members. There is similar sentiment regarding the unions’ long-standingrelationship with the Democratic Party — an institution also married to big business.

“The Occupy movement struck a chord,” explained Stan Woods, a member of the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee, a multi-union rank-and-file organization made up of ILWU members, teamsters, city train drivers and other similar blue-collars workers. “The union leadership doesn’t want to be left out, but they are hamstrung by their relationship with the Democrats, mayors and other politicians. They’re caught in a quandary.”

Barucha says the democratization paradigm of the leaderless occupation movement is proving to be a model for workers unhappy with the status quo.

“This is the first time there has been an exemplary movement that is encouraging and teaching people to self-organize.” The occupation, she said, allows union members to act as individual community participants and create community pickets, alongside the unemployed, the non-unionized working class, the homeless and any other supportive neighbors that share the same material needs.

One Bay Area couple who belong to another big local union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, said they and some other grocers chose to organize after watching their contracts being written up behind closed doors. The couple, who asked not to be identified, said the UFCW leaders negotiated a pension concession that they could opt out of by accepting other concessions.

“The union and the company decided all of this without employees being aware of it,” said one grocer. “They kept sending out sugarcoated letters but never once said, ‘Prepare yourself because there’s going to be drastic changes.’”

After attending Occupy Oakland’s general strike, they heard socialist and union activist John Reimann speak to the crowd. They approached him and asked for help. Out of their concerns, and those of others who had joined the strike, they formed the Grocery Workers’ 99% Club, a group of UFCW members who “have created a sort of rank and file caucus of members who want to fight to make their union do what it is supposed to do: fight for the members,” said Reimann.

“We’re not trying to break the union,” said the anonymous grocer. “We just want our voice back so we can make decisions about our contracts. That’s what we thought the unions were supposed to be about.”

And that desire is an oft-missed message of the West Coast occupation movement, often overshadowed in media coverage focused on sanitation issues and simplistic debates on violence. The occupation movement is proactive as well as reactive, offering new paradigms that transcend binary choices such as unions vs. corporations, Democrat vs. Republican, and leaders vs. followers. Just as the 1 percent now has to listen to the 99 percent. Big Labor has to listen to the rank and file. Dec. 12 marks a step in the evolution of the movement from a collection of improvised tent-villages to a national network of empowered, community-conscious problem-solvers.