Around 8 o'clock in the morning on July 5, 1934, shop owners in the mission district of San Francisco were opening for business. Bankers and stock brokers were already at work in the financial district. Construction workers were busy building the new Oakland Bay Bridge.

 Meanwhile, down near the waterfront, a Belt Line locomotive began nudging two refrigerator cars towards Matson Line docks on Pier 30. 1,000 police prepared to square off against 5,000 striking longshoremen in a pitched battle that would last all day long.
  It was the first of two climatic episodes that would forever change the shape of labor unions on the west coast.

Race and unions have been intertwined since the beginning of the labor movement.

Over the years, owners and bosses have used race and immigration to divide workers and keep them down.  And this practice is a live and well today. Which is why when it happens, unionists combat it everywhere it happens, even on the docks in Charleston, South Carolina.

So, for this installment of my labor history series, we're going to talk about the Charleston 5.

Longshoremen to close ports on West Coast to protest war

by Jack Heyman, SF Chronicle

Letter from ILWU Pres. McEllrath to John Sweeney

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction - key concerns being the war and the economy - the war machine inexorably grinds on.

Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.
http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/...

Not sure if this is going to happen or not.  The strike may be declared illegal, which means the longshoremen will be forced to work.
http://www.king5.com/...

updated it is happening!

I received this letter by email. The letter is a couple of weeks old, so, if this is old news to anyone, my apologies. I hadn't heard anything about this, so I thought others might want to know.

Jack Heyman

Wednesday, April 9, 2008
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While millions of people worldwide have marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and last week's New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 81 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction - key concerns being the war and the economy - the war machine inexorably grinds on.  Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

The banners carried along the Manhattan docks read: Ireland's Fight Is Our Fight! Up Liberty, Down Slavery!, The Emancipation Of The Irish Is the Emancipation Of All Mankind! and Ireland For the Irish, Africa For The Africans. The picket line was a remarkably diverse mixture of Irish American longshoremen and their wives, Italian coal-heavers and African American longshoremen.

Strikes are usually economic in nature; union labor in a particular industry goes on strike to demand higher wages, better working conditions, a stop to layoffs, etc. Few labor actions in U.S. history have the broad political implications of the Irish Patriotic Strike of 1920. A strike on U.S. docks in support of a national liberation movement was unusual in its own right. The support the walkout garnered outside the Irish community, and across the so-called "color-line," was truly significant.

I was disturbed by the Senator's statement on port management contracts. I agree with the basic sentiment that in some sense the UAE should be treated as just another country, like Britain, and that engaging in the kind of guilt-by-association tar brush against all Arab nations that the Bush administration and right-wingers peddle is disgusting.

But I am deeply troubled that the Senator is now parroting the Bush administration response to this issue, that it's no big deal, when he could have written something significantly more thoughtful, substantive, and critical.