Department 500 - Transportation and Communication

Greetings Fellow Workers,

On behalf of our Union, the Richmond, Virginia General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World stand in solidarity with the United States Postal Workers Union and its effort to preserve the peoples post office from further privatization.

In 1967 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a Commission on Postal Reorganization, chaired by AT&T’s Frederick R. Kappel, to “determine whether the postal system as presently organized is capable of meeting the demands of our growing economy and our expanding population.” In June 1968, the Commission found that it was not.[1]

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

By Meredith Schafer and Chris Kutalik - Monthly Review, October 5, 2006 

Millions of dollars worth of goods sat unmoved on the docks of the United States' largest port, Los Angeles/Long Beach, as port truckers, mostly Latino immigrants, struck on May 1.  Despite being organized only informally in small networks, the truckers were able to use their position at a vital point in the economy to multiply their power.

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa. 

By Richard D. Vogel - Monthly Review, February 2006.

—General Porfirio Díaz, President of Mexico, 1877–1911

Capital’s relentless search for cheap labor constantly alters the flow of surface transportation in North America with widespread consequences. The end-of-century deindustrialization of the United States and importation of cheap commodities from the Far East through the West Coast reversed historical east-west transportation patterns and established Los Angeles and Long Beach as the largest ports in the nation. To minimize transportation costs, which for many products are higher than the cost of production, intermodal transportation of containerized imports was developed. Manufactured goods are packed into mobile shipping containers at factories in the Far East and travel by ship, train, and truck to distribution centers and, ultimately, consumer outlets across the United States. Currently, intermodal transportation of cheap imported commodities is the lifeline of the American economy. In 2004, the Port of Los Angeles processed 7.3 million container units and Long Beach handled 5.8 million. These two ports alone accounted for 68 percent of the West Coast total and are, by far, the largest employers in California. U.S. workers, who have seen so many lucrative manufacturing jobs moved overseas, assumed that import transportation and distribution jobs could not be offshored and were, therefore, relatively secure.