Buy A Troublemakers Handbook 2

Reviews of A Troublemakers Handbook 2

Subscribe to Labor Notes

Support Our Work--Donate to Labor Notes

Request a Free Copy of Labor Notes

Sign Up for Labor Notes Email Updates

Labor Notes Homepage

Nationwide Campaign to Defend the 'Charleston Five'
SOUTH CAROLINA LONGSHORE WORKERS REFORM THEIR UNION, BUILD COMMUNITY TIES, STOP SCAB LABOR, FIGHT POLICE REPRESSION AND BUILD INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
by Dan La Botz

If we had to choose one story that showed both the kinds of attacks the labor movement faces and the unity and creativity that it takes to beat those attacks, we couldn't do better than to choose International Longshoremen's Association Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina.

As we entered the twenty-first century, shipping lines and stevedoring companies supported by the state government attempted to introduce a non-union operation on the Charleston docks. It was not their first attempt. Over a hundred years of workers' self-organization to create strong unions and high-paid jobs was threatened.

The local responded by mobilizing members to shut down the non-union facility. The authorities counterattacked with violence and repression that sent several workers to the hospital or to jail, and eventually indicted five workers on felony charges. Throughout 2000 and 2001 workers and unions around the country came together to defend the "Charleston Five."

Not only did the Charleston Five win and the ILA defend the 100 percent union operation in Charleston, but the local also succeeded in virtually ruining the non-union operation and in destroying the political career of the state Attorney General who indicted the Five. How did they do it?

ILA 1422's response arose out of a more than decade-long battle to democratize the local union, as well as the struggle to build a reform movement in an international union with a legacy of corruption and bureaucracy. The ILA 1422 struggle demonstrates the relationship between workers' control of daily work, union democracy, militancy, and internationalism, in a victory that had labor activists nationwide saying, "there's one for our side." Members' combativeness, union solidarity, and political power came together to win a victory of national and international significance.

SOUTH CAROLINA: ANTI-UNION STATE
South Carolina represents a special challenge for any union. In 2000 the state had only 78,000 union members, just 3.6 percent of the workforce. This is the second-lowest figure in the nation, higher only than North Carolina. In part the non-union situation is a legacy of plantation slavery, sharecropping, and Jim Crow. This "right-to-work" state had a history of a white power structure controlling black labor.

During the conflict discussed here, the state passed a new, stronger "right-to-work" law in an attempt to further intimidate and weaken unions.1 In addition, the state legislature passed the so-called "Ken Riley law," named after Local 1422's president, which forbade the governor to appoint an ILA representative to the State Ports Authority board.2 South Carolina's labor laws were directed not only against labor in general but against the ILA in particular.

In addition, even in 1999 South Carolina was still flying the Confederate flag, the banner of slavery, over the State Capitol. ILA 1422 was a leader in the fight to take down the flag, and in fact, the local's commitment to fighting on both fronts, against racism and to defend unions, was to prove one of its strengths.

THE PORT
The Port of Charleston, the fourth busiest in the United States, is the motor of the local and regional economy, providing access to national and international markets for corporations such as Michelin, BMW, and Caterpillar. The port is estimated to create 78,000 jobs, $8.9 billion in sales, and $258 million in tax revenues for South Carolina alone. In 2000 the State Port Authority (SPA) earned $85 million in profits, handling 1.5 million 20-foot containers and "break-bulk" (loose cargo) worth $33 billion.

The local maritime industry employs about 5,000 workers, about 800 of them longshoremen. They work on docks owned by the SPA, a state agency that operates much like a private business, aggressively seeking to control the port and expand business. Stevedoring companies hire the longshore workers to load and unload ships, with Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) hiring most of the ILA members. From time to time non-union stevedoring companies such as Winyah Stevedoring, Inc. (WSI) have also worked on the SPA docks. State law requires the docks to be open to both union and non-union operators.

Control of the port and its labor force thus represents a key element of the state and regional economy for both capital and labor. Both have enormous potential power in the port, and a great deal at stake. The existence of a powerful union on the docks acts to strengthen labor organizations in an otherwise weak right-to-work state.

In addition, longshore workers stand at the crux of globalization. They are the interface between the national and the global economies. Multinational shipping corporations may be said to have created the global economy—beginning with the slave trade in the 1500s. Today, when virtually everything made ends up in a container that will move from truck to railroad to ship, and then in reverse order back again, the shipping companies and the ports are the corporations that make globalization possible. In the struggle over globalization, longshore workers are the frontline troops. This makes their fights not only battles between working-class Davids and corporate Goliaths but also struggles symbolic of the whole period we are living through, one that pits global capital against human rights.

THE ILA
The Charleston longshore union arose more than a hundred years ago, out of a strike in 1867 by recently freed slaves who worked on the docks. They struck for better wages—and won. In 1869 they joined the East Coast dockworkers union. After some union mergers, by World War I the ILA stretched from the Great Lakes down the East Coast and into the Gulf of Mexico, and later extended its power to the West Coast. In the mid-1930s, West Coast longshoremen carried out a successful strike in San Francisco and pulled all the West Coast locals out of the ILA to create the International Longshore and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). While the West Coast ILWU became known as a progressive union with a social justice orientation, the East Coast ILA became known for its ties to the Mafia.

During the prosperous 1960s, the ILA negotiated long-term contracts that won high wages, while gradually ceding control of technology and modernization to the employers and permitting the mob to operate on the docks and in the union, especially in New York and New Jersey but also in Florida and Puerto Rico.Until this day, the U.S. government is still going after the Gambino and Genovese gangs for involvement in ILA locals, and the union remains under threat of Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges. The AFL expelled the ILA in 1953 but readmitted it in 1959, during which time the New York Waterfront Commission was formed to ensure fair hiring practices.

ILA International officers did not hesitate to do well for themselves. In recent years, when the ILA had fewer than 60,000 longshore members (a majority of them black), several members of the nearly all-white executive board each made over $400,000 a year.3 Many officers throughout the union hold multiple positions, allowing them to rake in huge salaries; President John Bowers makes $500,000. "Too many of our leaders are driven by salary and not by the needs of our rank-and-file," said Riley.4

LOCAL 1422 IN CHARLESTON
About 98 percent of Local 1422's 800 members are African American men. Many of them live in the area of Charleston known as "East of the Cooper." Two smaller ILA locals represent workers who are not longshoremen; Local 771 Clerks and Checkers has a mostly white membership, and ILA 1422-A is the maintenance local. Often led by ILA 1422, the three locals cooperate closely.

Over several decades of contract negotiations and strikes, the union made longshore jobs good jobs. In 2003 workers earned about $27 per hour plus benefits, plus a "royalty" of $3 per ton, amounting to a yearly pay-out capped at $16,000. While some members make as high as $100,000 a year working overtime, many make around $60,000.

The union exercises strong control over the workplace by running the hiring hall. Workers are organized in gangs of seven and led by a foreman known as the gangleader. Gangleaders are elected by the gang members in an election run by the local. Instead of stewards, the gangleaders are the union's representatives in the workplace. Ken Riley, Local 1422's president, says, "We have a lot of control because we have 100 percent control over the dispatching of our members to the job assignments. Employers call in orders for crews, and we organize the hiring. We put the men into the particular gangs."

KEN RILEY LEADS REFORM EFFORT
Ken Riley, Local 1422's president, has been at the center of the struggle to democratize the local and to resist the employers.

His father was a gangleader, but Riley went to college to study business administration, while working part-time on the docks. While in college Riley and his brother Leonard helped to found the school's black fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. When Ken graduated, though, he couldn't find a job in Charleston. "After a year of floating resumés," he says, "I decided to go to work on the docks. I began to work full-time in 1977 and was taught to do everything: to drive trucks and forklifts, and run the Pasico cranes." Leonard was involved in all of these activities with Ken, from college to the docks. They were a team.

Leonard explains the brothers' attitude toward the union: "We recognized that we had to be involved, because we were going to spend a lot of time working. So it was like an investment. If we had children and family, they would probably follow us there as well. It's an investment in your future, for you, your family, and your family's family.

"I think Kenny's idea and my idea of what is fair and how the union should work goes back to old work ethics that we were taught by our father, and our religious beliefs about what's right. We had problems with how the union actually ran. We believed in making the grievance machinery work, we believed in having the rank-and-file members participate in what becomes our contract. These were the fundamentals we talked about, and that later got us elected."

Ken Riley's first attempts to get involved were rebuffed. "I attended union meetings," he recalls. "I had been active in fraternities and had been a leader of the African American Society in college, and I noticed that the union leaders were unskilled in coordinating meetings. I approached the president, Benjamin Flowers, and offered to give him some help with parliamentary procedure and running a meeting. He was offended."

Riley decided to run for office as the voice of younger workers who had not been well represented. "There was an election coming up, and to run for office you had to have been in the union one year, which I would be by the day of the election. I figured out that if I just had the support of the younger workers, I could get elected. So I went to the low-seniority guys and said, let me be your voice on the executive board. I was elected in 1978; I was about 21 or 22 years old."

One lesson of the ILA 1422 story might be that union reform doesn't take place overnight. Riley explains that he and the other younger workers worked for almost 25 years to transform their union. "I served on the executive board and as recording secretary for several years. During this time our president had become very dictatorial, and I decided to run for vice-president to send a message that the members were unhappy with him. I ran in 1984, and I got about a third of the vote, but then I was out of the leadership for two terms. In 1991 I ran for vice-president again and won."

By this time, Riley explains, "Charleston had become a major player in the ILA system. We were second in size only to New York." As local vice-president, Riley began to raise concerns about the large amounts of members' money collected by the International but not spent on strengthening the union. Members paid a dues assessment of 10 percent on their royalties, and 58 percent of the ILA's budget came from this source. When Riley's group raised this issue in 1992, "the local president, Benjamin Flowers, and the international president, John Bowers, began to attack me.

"Flowers had become dictatorial. He refused to hold board meetings or membership meetings. So in 1992 we filed charges against him with the International. The International then threw our local into a trusteeship—but they appointed Flowers as the trustee, while we were all thrown out of office.

"We filed a lawsuit against the local, the International, and John Bowers," Riley explains. "We had no regrets about filing such a suit. We had exhausted internal remedies and we had no other way to fight for our rights. The trusteeship lasted 18 months, and we had to deal with constant legal motions that cost us $98,000. They lifted the trusteeship one month before the case would have gone to court, so that our suit became a moot point."

Riley and his allies decided that once the trusteeship was lifted, they would make their move to take power and reform the local. "In 1994 I ran for vice-president again, and I lost. But that was okay, because it gave me three years on the dock to educate the members."

Riley explains that it was the experience of being back down on the dock that in fact made it possible for him to become president. "The dock is freedom. You make money. There's something new every day. You work when you want to work. It's the best place to be. You're with the guys and you're just hammering." To this day, Riley works on the docks at least a few night shifts a week. All Local 1422 officers get their benefits through their work on the docks, saving the local money and ensuring that officers stay in touch with the members.

"This was not a solo effort. We had a group of people working with us, about 10 or 12 activists. We organized by talking to the men on the job. We would be two hours lashing the containers in the hold, and we talked with the men."

Part of the strategy was to get to the most influential workers, the gangleaders, Riley explains. "We got to some of them who were educated. Not all gangleaders are influential, but some are, and when they speak, people listen. If the members choose him, you figure he must have something going for him." Winning over several of the gangleaders would be key to the victory of Riley's slate.

Another part of the campaign was carried out in the union hall at the regular meetings. The reformers had to prove to the active members that they were better informed than the incumbent officers about important matters. "We kept in constant contact with the other local presidents in the area," Riley explains. "We learned what was going on in the union. We would go to a union meeting, and they would say something, and then I would reach in my folder and take out a letter or a document and read it to them. We kept blowing them out of the water. We kept proving that they weren't telling the truth."

In the election campaign, Riley and the other reformers went after each and every vote. "The union wouldn't give us membership lists, but"---he smiles—"somebody threw the old copies of the membership lists in the dumpster, and then told us. So we went to the dumpster, got them out, and went through them.

"We met every Sunday, usually in someone's home. We took the membership lists and went through them page by page with highlighters—green, yellow, and red. We used green for those who supported us, red for the hardcore Flowers supporters, and yellow for the 'maybes.' We would meet every week and go over every name, changing some from yellow to green. When we beat him on every page, we knew we would win the election.

"In 1997 I won by a landslide. Our slate won the entire executive board," Riley remembers. Now the job would be to show that the reformers could really build a better union.

CREATING THE STRIKE FUND
"The ILA had always been thought about as this important institution, this powerhouse—and in the old days it was," says Riley. "But the union had grown weak. There was no education, there were no community programs. I believed that we had to reorganize and strengthen the local before the truth was found out, while the impression of power still existed.

"One of the first things we wanted to do was to create a strike fund. First I succeeded in convincing the members to pass a referendum, and then I had to get the company to agree to check-off deduction for the fund.

"I told the members, 'Look, unions are under attack. We have been through some tough strikes in the past and we are going to have to face them in the future. At UPS they had strike pay of $70 a week. You can't live on that. We need to create a fund so we can survive a strike.'

"So I convinced them to support the fund. Members pay 4 cents out of every dollar they earn. I myself pay $200 per week. But after the contract is negotiated, they get their strike fund payment back. After the last contract some workers got checks for $18,000. Then we start saving again toward the next contract.

"Only three other locals have strike funds. We copied ours from Savannah. It's the greatest thing, I tell you. We had some Ironworkers at a chemical plant near here who went on strike, and after a week they were all fighting about how to help people trying to save their cars and houses. I told them, 'If you had a fund like ours you wouldn't be fighting about what to do, you'd be deciding how to pay those strike funds to your members.'"

KEEPING THE MEMBERS ORGANIZED
The reformers also had to work to maintain the organization they had built on the docks. To do that, they made use of the union-controlled hiring hall as a way to communicate with the members.

"I or one of my officers is in there speaking to the members every morning," Riley explains. "If it's a message I want the members to hear, I tell the employers that I have to speak to the men, and that if they are three minutes or five minutes late, not to discipline them. 'You'll just have to bear with us,' I tell them. We also have regular meetings with our gangleaders."

DEVELOPING UNION LEADERS OUT OF THE RANKS
Leonard Riley had also served on the union executive board, but now he concentrated on the waterfront. Leonard explained how workers on the dock constantly evaluate their co-workers, looking for potential leaders. "We see the gangleaders as the first line of defense for the union, the first line of offense for the union. Our guys and gals are suggested by the group. We all look over new people as they come into the workforce. We have an informal policy that we are productive people. We work hard, get it done, and we do it effectively. So when a new worker comes in we determine whether this person's a good worker or a poor worker. We make that evaluation.

"We start to see if a person's a self-starter, if he employs good common sense, if he's a hustler, if he goes and gets the job done, rather than just drags. You tell a guy, 'Look, I know you're just starting, so let me advise you: you want to do your job as quick as possible, as safe as possible.' And if he really appreciates this opportunity, then you look at how he handles the social structure out there, whether he's concerned about what goes on. You invite him to a meeting because, you tell him, he needs to be well-rounded. He needs to know what you should and should not do on the job. If he starts to come to the meetings, that gives you another dimension of that person." Leonard says, "Sometimes these men are fiery, and not the most electable at first. You've got to have fire, but you've got to have a premise."

In 2004 the local began an experiment with a "junior executive board," to train future leaders. The five junior board members are elected in the same way as the regular ten-member board. They attend board meetings, although they do not vote, and take notes, observe, and make suggestions. [See A Troublemaker's Handbook 2, pages 301-302.]

As the workers on the dock and the union leaders select new representatives, they also suggest formal education. Leonard says, "A person needs to have a certain amount of pep, individual fortitude, a desire to fight, but that formal education is important as well. We want people to be as formidable as the people we sit across from at the table. We believe that formal education is a key building block in union representation." So union leaders suggest that aspiring activists finish high school, take college classes, and take union classes.

GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE AS PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY
When the reformers took over the leadership of Local 1422 they resolved to reform the grievance procedure, with union reps acting as "friendly advice-givers that can help them along the way." "Every time you file a grievance," says Leonard, "there is a positive change--win or lose. It reinforces the concept of democracy on the job. It gets rid of the idea that it makes no difference. It gets rid of the idea that 'I'm not going to say anything about this one.' You make the person you're grieving against come forward to explain why they did or did not do something. The message is: I do have rights, I'm not helpless on this job. Even having it aired is positive."

Workers can also bring internal charges against a union rep who fails to represent them, which is not a right "to play with, but it is one to use," says Leonard.

THE UNION-INDUSTRY GRIEVANCE COUNCIL--INVOLVING WORKERS
The local also encourages members to pursue their own grievances or others' as they make their way through the machinery. Even before the reformers took office, they challenged the existing grievance procedure by bringing a fired worker to a grievance council meeting held in Atlanta, against the wishes of local leaders (he got his job back).

"When grievances deadlock," Leonard explains, "they go to the South Atlantic Dock and Marine Council, and there are some severe problems with democracy there, so we encourage our members to attend those grievance hearings. By doing that you get some insight into how it's done in the other ports. We have that one council meeting each quarter. We elect delegates to go, but our suggestion is that this is a wide-open process. We select people who we are hopeful will learn how to navigate these different channels, and learn a future role in leadership." In doing so, the local bucks the International, which would prefer a more closed system.

BUILDING COMMUNITY AND POLITICAL POWER
The reformers in ILA 1422 recognized that they needed a base in the community as well. "You have to recognize that the labor movement is only four percent of the workforce in South Carolina," says Ken Riley. "We would have to have political power. So we joined the South Carolina Progressive Network, a group of 50 progressive organizations. [State AFL-CIO President] Donna DeWitt brought in the state AFL-CIO and I brought in my local. The Charleston chapter holds its meetings at our local.

"We also decided to open our union hall to other organizations. Under Flowers, the union had always charged other organizations to hold meetings in our hall, and therefore not many meetings were held there. I figured out what it would cost for an organization to meet there one night a month and use the utilities—it was peanuts. But for us to give back to the community, to have them coming into the house of labor—the union would get more mileage out of that than the few dollars we were saving by not having them there.

"We opened our doors to many different organizations: Carolina Alliance for Fair Employment, NAACP, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Democratic Party. It would be educational for them and for us. Some of our members went to their meetings, and some of them came to our meetings and learned something about a union. We had the NAACP and the Urban League, the Democratic Party and the Citizens Party.

"The chairman of the Tri-County Democratic Party suggested that we needed to rebuild the alliance between labor and the Democratic Party, and I agreed. We began to have precinct meetings in our hall, election meetings, fundraisers for the governor and Senator Hollins. The election night returns and the Democratic County Convention were held here. We became involved in politics and folks started watching us.

"Some members were skeptical about the changes we were making in the local. They'd want to go into the break room, and all of a sudden there would be a meeting in there. But for the most part everyone is appreciative; they see the newspaper write-ups about the things we've done."

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE CONFEDERATE FLAG
With its nearly all-black membership, ILA 1422 represented a powerful potential force in the African American community of South Carolina. Under the new leadership, the local became more deeply involved in the fight against racism and discrimination. The first big opportunity came as African Americans and many white and some new Latino allies acted to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina's public buildings.

"The Confederate flag represents a period in our history we are not too proud of," says Riley. "A period of hatred, bigotry, slavery, and oppression. We recognize that some people felt it was part of their heritage, and we respect that, but we say, 'Then fly the flag in some other area, but not at the Capitol.'

"Our members wanted the flag to come down. So when the NAACP called for a march to protest the flag, we sent buses. We sent cooks with grills to cook hot dogs and hamburgers. We had t-shirts and caps and banners.

"When the mayor of Charleston called for a march from Charleston to Columbia, which is 135 miles away, we had about 150 of our members at the kick-off, and we pledged 40 men to march every day. We printed t-shirts so that we all could be uniform and visible. We gave them a small stipend and provided food, and we'd bus them back home at the end of each day, even for those that walked for a couple of days in a row."

UNION SOLIDARITY
The local has also made a point of supporting other unions' struggles. They sent two vans full of members to support workers who were in court because their company wouldn't recognize their union. "When the Steelworkers went on strike at the Rhodia chemical plant," says Ken Riley, "we were the first ones on the line. We put a message on our recording at the hall for people to go down and help out on the line. The turnout was overwhelming. We voted to give the Steelworkers $5,000 a month while they were on strike. When the UAW at Mack Truck, which is 130 miles away, had a midnight strike deadline, we were there waiting to see if they would go out.

"We don't have to tug at folks anymore. Certainly there are some members who will never come to that realization, but we have a solid nucleus of people now who are much more aware of what unionism is all about and the need to support other workers in their struggles."

UNION REFORM--THE LONGSHORE WORKERS COALITION
While strengthening the internal organization of Local 1422 and building a broader base of community support, the local leaders decided to take on the bigger job of reforming the International. In part this was a matter of self-defense, since President Bowers had already shown his hostility to the reformers. But it was also a necessity if they were going to represent their members, since many issues could not be solved at the local level.

One of the driving forces behind the creation of the reform movement that became known as the Longshore Workers Coalition (LWC) was the issue of racism. Historically, the ILA had always been run by the Irish group on the Great Lakes or by the Irish group in New York. After the 1960s, in a concession to the civil rights movement, the white chief organizer usually had a black assistant. However, even when a white organizer passed away, the black assistant was never promoted to the lead position.

Something of a scandal erupted at the union's 1995 convention because three organizers had died, and in each case the black assistant had been passed over and a white promoted ahead of him. "At the 1995 convention Ed Brown should have become organizer," says Riley, "but instead they created a special new position, the 'Alex Talmadge' Civil Rights Director."

Four months after the 1999 convention in Orlando, the Local 1422 reformers joined with other union presidents, predominantly African Americans, to create the Longshore Workers Coalition. "The feeling was here we had a union where 65 percent of the membership was African Americans, and we had no blacks at the top," Riley remembers.

Coalition members felt that it was important to challenge Bowers, even if they didn't have the power to win at that convention. Just as in the local, it was a matter of raising the issues and making a name for the dissidents. "I decided that I was going to run for one of the nine regional vice-president positions," says Riley. "It was clear I was not going to win, so, after they called Rhode Island, I offered to step down and avoid the roll call if they would give me five minutes to speak. I talked about all of the issues, the officers, the race issue, and Bowers got angry and shouted at me. But after that session several members stopped me to say that my speech made it the best convention they had been to." The Longshore Workers Coalition held its first convention in November 1999, and it continues to meet several times a year, rotating among different cities in order to attract new members.

All of these measures of internal organizing, political base-building, and creating a reform movement within the International would prove important during the confrontation with the companies made famous by the case of the "Charleston Five."

FIGHTING NON-UNION COMPANIES
The fight for the Charleston Five developed out of an attempt by the corporations--shipping, stevedoring, and warehousing companies--to undermine union control of the docks.

"In the South, non-union employers were eroding the ILA jurisdiction," Riley explains. "The ILA had not controlled it, especially in the Gulf in the break-bulks which handled non-automated cargo." There had been confrontations in Houston, New Orleans, and Baltimore over the use of non-union workers on the docks.

In the mid-1990s Jock Stender, known as the "Chicken Man of Charleston," created a non-union operation to ship chickens to Russia. While union workers were making $27 an hour, Stender's workers loaded frozen chickens into freighters for $7 to $8.50. While it was a very small operation, the ILA organized pickets to protest, carrying signs reading "Scab Labor for Scab Wages" and "Unionism Is a Way of Life." But the Chicken Man never became a major player and Stender eventually lost out to larger companies.5

CHALLENGING NORDANA
The real challenge came in November 1999, when the Nordana Lines company of Denmark, which ILA members had worked for 23 years, decided to go to Winyah Stevedoring (WSI), a non-union company, to unload its ships. "I had learned at a break-bulk conference that Nordana was going non-union in Charleston," Ken Riley says, "and I had persuaded the ILA International to call a meeting with Nordana. There I learned that we were on our own. Nordana said that they had made a five-year contract with the non-union company, and maybe they would come back and talk to us after that contract ended."

A local newspaper reported, "While the Danish company brings in only two ships here every month, it was the first time a major shipping line challenged the union."6

Riley and the new union leadership believed that something had to be done immediately to challenge Nordana and WSI. "I immediately applied for a permit for informational picketing. I held meetings with our members and with the officers of our three ILA locals in Charleston. We began to meet with customers (people who shipped merchandise out of the port) and with other unions in the area such as the union at the Caterpillar plant."

Ken Riley told the local newspaper, "We're not taking this lightly. We're going to protest every time their ship calls here. We're going to contact the customers who use them. We're not going to turn this one loose." About 75 ILA members appeared at the Ports Authority's Columbus Street Terminal chanting, "No union, no peace." Riley says, "The local police had suggested that they would let us block traffic on the street, but only for 15 minutes at a time. We jumped at this suggestion. They even helped, by setting up barricades to block the traffic which would be waiting to drive into the yard, so that there wouldn't be any accidents.

"But we did not close the terminal," says Riley. "A ship came and went, worked by non-union workers--and we felt helpless." Still, the protest did succeed in delaying two Nordana ships, costing the company a considerable amount of money.

Other ships followed. "The next time the guys stepped it up. My brother Leonard and the boys took it to the dock. The company pulled up the gangways and stopped the work. The State Port Authority had to guard the terminal, including the cargo, 24-7 because they had discovered that cargo had been damaged. They had to have guards with the workers all the time. We made sure they had to have guards 24-7. So every time we hit the line, law enforcement had to bring in agents from all over the area."

POLICE ESCALATE
In January 2000, the situation began to become much more serious. "About this time," says Riley, "I received a call from an African American police officer with whom I had been dealing. He told me, 'There has been a law enforcement summit, and they are going to get 600 cops to bust your picket line.'"

On the afternoon of January 20, Riley saw a fleet of buses rolling down the highway. "At first I thought they were tour buses. Then I realized they were county detention buses with wire-mesh windows--and they were full of police. I went down toward the docks and I saw troops in the street, troops blocking streets, troops up on the roofs, troops in helicopters and in police cruisers." The authorities had in fact brought in some 600 police officers.

"I said to myself, 'This is a set-up. How are we going to deal with this? We'll do nothing. We'll see who looks like a fool when they are paying for all of these police and nobody shows up.'

"I met with the two other ILA local presidents, and with the members. We announced it to the guys, and they agreed. I explained, 'What we'll do is go home and come back at midnight. Then we'll go home and come back at 4 a.m., so they have to keep calling the police back.' The union's plan was to exhaust the police and to bankrupt the local governments or the employers, whoever was paying for the police protection. The plan could have worked too, had the conflict gone on, for the State Department of Public Safety had had to spend $500,000 on police protection in the month of January, including the $200,000 spent by the City of Charleston.7

"That was our plan, and it might have worked, but later we found out that there was someone listening in on the telephone line informing the police, and the police began harassing our members," says Riley. "I got calls and went down to the hall, and it was packed with 150 to 175 of our members."

The members didn't feel right about leaving the picket lines, even if it was the union's plan. "They told me, 'We have to stick to our word. We said we would picket any ship that came in here, and we have to do it.'" The rank-and-file members were telling their officers that the plan had to be modified. Riley remembers, "I told them, 'Okay, but be careful. Do not engage the officers. They can instigate something, so be careful.'"

VIOLENCE ON THE WATERFRONT
About 200 Local 1422 members marched out of the hall, chanting "ILA, ILA" and heading for the docks. Within a short time the phones began to ring at the hall.

"I got a call that one of our members had been bashed, a white guy," says Riley. "The guys said that they were trying to push back. I ran down there. Strangely, I had no fear." Riley and other union officers waded into the melee. "We got everybody pulled back, and things were calming down, and then I got hit in the head. I was pointed out. Someone said, 'Get him, right there.' And I was hit in the head. I drove myself to the hospital.

"We couldn't find Leonard, and we were worried about him, and then he called: 'I'm on a prison bus with nine people, some badly beaten.' Leonard had gotten to the terminal, but they let the dogs loose, and the dogs got him. He was charged with trespassing, and because he was in custody, he couldn't be charged with riot and conspiracy like the Charleston Five."

The protest ended when at 12:45 a.m. the police declared it an unlawful assembly and began to fire bean-bag projectiles and tear gas to move the crowd back. A rare winter thunderstorm at 3 a.m. led the rest of the demonstrators to disperse.

That morning, the Post and Courier newspaper called what happened a "Waterfront Riot," and reported:

"Hundreds of angry dockworkers marched from their union hall to the entrance of the State Ports Authority Columbus Street Terminal early today, where they pelted police with rocks, bricks and other debris…..the worst labor disturbance on the Charleston waterfront since strikes of the late 1960s."8

The police had brought in the helicopters and cruisers, fired a smoke grenade, and brought in the dogs. At least ten workers were taken to hospitals, and several others were jailed. However, in most instances police were unable to identify anyone responsible for the violence, because upon arriving the crowd had knocked over the temporary police light. In the darkness, it was hard to say who did what.

The newspaper also reported on Ken Riley's role: "At one point, Riley was seen trying to get his men to pull back. He was hit by something and escorted away by three other men."9

Riley told the newspaper, "I had been successful in creating a little buffer between both parties, and I was trying to get one guy back, but as soon as I pushed him back, I made a half-turn and one of the law enforcement offices came out from their line and hit me in the head with a baton."10 Charleston police chief Reuben Greenberg said that Riley had "bad information," and that he had actually been hit by debris thrown by his own supporters.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ESCALATES
Attorney General Charlie Condon, a future candidate for governor, saw political opportunities in going after the ILA protesters. He immediately announced "a comprehensive plan for dealing with union dockworker violence" that involved "jail, jail, and more jail." Condon told the press, "Union members who don't like our right-to-work laws need to take their issues up with the General Assembly, not to take to the streets to riot."11 While the government, employers, and the press accused the longshoremen of starting a riot, Ken Riley argued that the authorities' use of massive police power was a provocation.

Within the next few weeks the government indicted five men--Kenneth Jefferson, Elijah Ford, Jr., Peter Washington, Jr., Ricky Simmons, and Jason Edgerton--for conspiracy and riot. The felony charges carried maximum sentences of five years for each charge, for a possible total of ten years in prison. Bail was set as high as $150,000, and the men were placed under house arrest from 7 pm to 7 am—free only to go to work or to union meetings--though they had been convicted of nothing. Condon appeared on television stating, "We will not allow these thugs to get off."

At the same time WSI, the non-union stevedoring company that had supplied the scab workers to Nordana, sued Local 1422, Ken Riley, and Local 1771 and its president for $1.5 million in alleged financial losses. The amount was later raised to $2.5 million. The suit was intended to bankrupt the union, intimidate the officers, and bring the workers to heel.

On January 21, 2000, things looked quite bad for ILA 1422. The union was accused of starting a riot, several of its members had been indicted, a scab company was making inroads into its jurisdiction, and the media and politicians were having a heyday at the union's expense. Yet within 22 months the state had settled the cases with just $100 fines for each of the Five, the scab company had been routed, and the local had new ties throughout the labor movement.

How was the union able to win such a resounding victory?

WE DIDN'T KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN
Ken Riley says simply, "We won because of solidarity, and especially international solidarity." But that solidarity was possible because of both the solid base the local had built among its own members and solidarity campaigns by workers across the country and around the world.

"You have to remember," says Riley, "we were completely new at this. We had no idea where to begin. I didn't even know what to ask for.

"I had no doubt that we would eventually get the work back. But I had the haunting thought that these guys who believed enough to fight for us on the line would be faced with prison time, so losing was not even an option. We would have to do whatever to get these guys free. I did not know where to start or turn or look, but I knew in my heart and soul that we have got to win, we can't lose this. No way."

Local 1422 had two giant tasks: to convince Nordana not to use scab labor and to free the Charleston Five. The anti-scab victory came first.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
Riley went to Europe to meet with longshoremen and other unions there. The union won support from dockworkers in England, Denmark, Spain, Korea, India, and the Philippines. These unions gave money and issued statements backing ILA 1422.

Most important, he says, the Spanish dockworkers, who belonged to a militant, unofficial group called the International Dockworkers Council, "went to Nordana and said that they would not unload ships loaded by inexperienced crews because of the safety hazard. That was the key action that sparked the turnaround of Nordana."

In April 2000, through the mediation of the South Carolina Department of Labor, Nordana and the ILA reached an agreement. The company agreed to use ILA longshoremen, and the ILA agreed to put Nordana under its Small Boat Agreement, which required fewer workers.12

The SPA, the stevedoring companies, and Nordana had all been taught a lesson: non-union longshoremen would not be permitted on the docks. Charleston would remain a virtually 100 percent union port.

But the local still had to defend its members from Charlie Condon.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT FIRST
At first ILA Local 1422 leaders did the natural thing: they reached out to their own members, to the community, and to local organizations and politicians with whom they had built a relationship. Shortly after the confrontation on the docks, the union held a rally at the union hall coordinated by a state senator and involving several ministers,13 calling on the state to drop the charges and "asking people in the community to stand with us as they had in the past and to pay no attention to media lies," Riley remembers. At the rally, attended by over 400 supporters, the church leaders spoke out against an injunction limiting the union to 19 pickets in any future protests.14

"We had packed-house meetings in our union hall on many nights," says Riley. "We held fish fries to raise money, because the ILA leadership wasn't helping us. Every dime we raised was raised for the defense and the defense only. My membership authorized me to go into local resources to campaign, to travel, to educate. But we could not use money from the union's general funds for the legal defense of the Charleston Five, and state legislators had warned us that the authorities would be closely watching our treasury. We raised the legal defense money the old-fashioned way, by going to the community and the labor movement."

Some community groups and politicians came forward to support the union. But the ILA International proved a challenge. How could Local 1422 neutralize the International and keep it from stifling their struggle? Beyond that, how could they win at least nominal ILA support and endorsement?

John Bowers viewed Riley and the reformers in Local 1422 as a threat, especially since the founding of the opposition Longshore Workers Coalition. So for the first few months of the struggle, the ILA did nothing to mobilize support from other ILA locals.15 Not only that but, according to Riley, the ILA also worked to block support from the AFL-CIO and from the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), the world organization of 594 transportation unions in some 136 countries.

So Riley learned that the local had to carry out a circular kind of lobbying. They organized other unions to keep pressure on the ILA and the AFL-CIO. Then with official ILA and AFL-CIO endorsement, they could ask for backing from more labor bodies.

Local 1422 appealed directly to the West Coast dockers union, the ILWU, which had a long tradition of using its muscle to support labor and social justice causes—from opposing apartheid in South Africa to fighting the WTO in Seattle. The ILWU dug deep. "Local 10 in San Francisco gave us $5,000," Riley says. "I went out West to speak, and the Longshore Caucus within the ILWU gave us a gift of $50,000. They said come down to Los Angeles, and Local 13, which represents Los Angeles-Long Beach, gave us $50,000. The Canadian caucus gave us another $28,000. Then when we had our victory celebration, the ILWU gave us another $167,000 to pay off our legal expenses. There were contributions from many other unions, of course."

Riley also found a crucial ally in Bill Fletcher, then an assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Says Riley, "We were on the back roads, and once this guy got involved we hit the freeway." Both men understood the need to neutralize John Bowers and the ILA International, who were blocking assistance from the AFL-CIO. Fletcher told Riley, "If the ILA won't help you, we have to find a way around them. Ask Donna DeWitt [head of the state AFL-CIO] to ask Sweeney to get Bill Fletcher down there to help you."

With the backing of the South Carolina and national AFL-CIO and the ILWU, and with the Charleston Five campaign constantly in the public eye, Bowers was eventually, in May 2001, forced to give the International's official backing.

Still the ILA's record was shameful. Only after Local 1422 had raised tens of thousands of dollars by itself did the International set up a special fund for Charleston—but even then it put out a brochure suggesting that money sent directly to the local might not go to help the workers but instead to the Longshore Workers Coalition.

In May 2001, Bowers got the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) to back ILA 1422. ITF Dockers' Section Secretary Kees Marges sent a letter to all ITF affiliates stressing the need for financial support for the Charleston Five and announced a $71,000 ITF contribution to the ILA Defense Fund.16 Unions around the world contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the ILA fund—but only a portion of that money ever got to Charleston, some of it after the Charleston Five victory was won.

CHARLESTON FIVE DEFENSE COMMITTEES
Meanwhile, Fletcher helped Riley to develop a strategy that involved building Charleston Five Defense Committees across the country, with Riley "on the road constantly. We had several individual members traveling; at one point we had four on the road at the same time." Riley spoke at the 2001 Labor Notes Conference in Detroit, for example. The Defense Committees held local events at which Riley and others spoke, asking supporters to sponsor fundraisers and get the word out. Representatives from the defense committees conferred via regular conference calls to strategize about the campaign.

The local and Fletcher argued that the case of the Charleston Five had implications for any worker who wanted to protest the status quo, and thus called for widespread support. The South Carolina state government, Fletcher said, was "clamping down on workers' rights to peacefully protest. If they don't have that right, then effectively workers there don't have any kind of rights to organize, regardless of what's on the books."17

The AFL-CIO also did another good turn. It sent two of its staff, Jimmy Hyde and John Cox, to help out Local 1422. "They came in and looked over the area, and got a good feel for the situation and the people," says Riley. "Then they said, 'We ought to run a campaign as if we're running for public office: bumper stickers, yard signs, billboards, the whole thing.' So we did. We had this huge billboard, with a state flag in one corner and the American flag in the other, saying, 'Free the Charleston Five.'"

The union and its supporters initially ordered 3,000 yard signs and 6,000 bumper stickers, but soon ran out and had to order another 4,000 signs and 15,000 bumper stickers.18 The yellow signs stenciled in red and blue could be found throughout the community and around the state, even around the country.

Not everything the AFL-CIO did was helpful, Riley says. "Sweeney had Bowers call me in one time, and I met with these guys at the ILA New York headquarters and they said, 'We're concerned about who you are talking to. Some of them are socialists and communists, and you've got to cut it out.'" Riley felt that his union needed all the support it could get, and he recognized that some of their most active backers were involved in radical causes. "I told them, we get help wherever we can. The reason we have gotten this far is that we do not discriminate. If I had had to depend on mainstream America, we would have gotten nowhere."

HANDLING THE MEDIA
Riley and his fellow union leaders learned a lot about dealing with the media. "In the beginning the local media were very, very harsh," Riley recalls. "So I told the members to shut off the TV. We won't respond. After a while it will get to be old news. We had several public relations firms approach us, and we hired none. Their ideas and presentations didn't work for me. They didn't understand what we were up against. They didn't know how to speak to our working class community.

"After a while we got our message together, and then we went out. We held press conferences. Our message to the public was that we built the port, from 1867 when we were first organized. We are the fourth busiest port in the nation, and the first in productivity. If the port is the engine of growth in the area, then we are the fuel. Our reputation was unmatched. WSI was an outside company, a small company, and its policies were an attack on our hard-working citizens."

Riley recalls that one television station always sensationalized the longshoremen. "They ran a report with the title 'War on the Waterfront,' and showed our members running in slow motion. We told them, we will not invite you to our press conferences. We boycotted them, until they called us."

Riley remembers that one newspaper reporter kept writing that dock workers were all making $100,000 a year, an obvious attempt to prejudice community members against them. "We invited him down," Riley remembers, "telling him we were going to have a press conference. When he got there we closed the doors and said, 'Look, you pick out any one hundred members on the list and we will get you their pay statements. We also want you to go to work for 10 or 12 hours a day, on containers stacked five feet high.' We told him what we were upset about, and we got him focused.

"He then asked us, 'Can you help me? Can you give me the stories first, so I can get them in the paper before they appear on TV?' So we said yes, we could do that, and we did, and he never ran any more stories about how much our members made."

SUPPORT FROM EVERYWHERE
The campaign made the Charleston Five a household word in many working class and African American families. Charleston City Councilman Kwadjo Campbell returned from a visit up North reporting, "I saw signs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Newark. When you're out of town and talking with black leaders, there are two things you get asked about: the flag and the Charleston Five."19 In addition to labor publications, the Five's story was reported sympathetically in The Nation, on National Public Radio, and in William Raspberry's Washington Post column, among many others.

In June 2001 Local 1422 joined unions, community groups, and social movements throughout the state in a "rally for racial justice and workers' rights" in Columbia.20 More than 4,000 union activists and leaders from across the country gathered at the South Carolina Statehouse for a rally to support the Charleston Five. Sweeney and Bowers spoke and called for an end to the persecution of the Five.

Three months later, says Riley, "We participated in the Labor Day Parade in New York. The Carpenters built a boat named 'Charleston Five' and as the people passed along, they put money in it. We got support from the community, from the ILWU, from the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Dockworkers Coalition (IDC) [a more militant dockworkers federation], as well as from other groups such as Jobs with Justice and the Black Radical Congress. A miner's widow sent me a letter written in a scribbly hand with a $5 bill in it. An ILWU women's auxiliary sent us a little check box like you get from the bank when you order your checks, but it was full of personal checks made out to our union."

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY AGAIN
For the first day of the Five's trial, in November 2001, supporters had planned an "International Day of Action in Solidarity with the Charleston Five." Defense committees around the country were ready to act. The ILWU and other unions in Europe and Asia had pledged to shut down their ports.

Shortly before the trial was to begin, the state changed the felony charges to a misdemeanor: "engaging in a riot, rout or affray when no weapon was actually used and no wound inflicted." The five longshoremen pleaded no contest and the local paid their token fines of $100 each. "We owe the victory to the increasing pressure of the movement," Riley told Labor Notes on the day of the settlement.

REVENGE IS SWEET
"The Charleston Five were now free, but we had some unfinished business," says Riley. "Charlie Condon was running in the primary election for governor. So we decided to get involved in the Republican primary--whether we were Republicans or not. When the primary was held, Charlie Condon got only 14 percent of the vote.

"So, not only are the Charleston Five free, but Charlie Condon is also free as well, free of his job, and he is coming home to the coast, because he lives where we live. We are going to welcome him back. We're putting up a big billboard, the billboard that used to say, 'Free the Charleston Five,' only now it will say, 'Welcome Home, Charlie, Compliments of the Charleston Five.'"

ILA Local 1422 also went after the non-union company that started all the problems, WSI. The Charleston dockers have continued to take contracts away from WSI and believe they can drive that company out of business on the East Coast.

In addition to all of this, ILA 1422 and its sister locals also used their mobilization to organize other workers on the docks. In April 2000 the 28-man crane crew from the SPA docks joined the ILA, and in May 104 other SPA employees also joined the union.21

HOW DID THEY WIN?
ILA 1422's dedicated members had proved that even in the worst of times, with an anti-union leadership in the Presidency and the Congress, with employers on the offensive against unions and workers, and with much of society feeling defeated and alienated, ordinary workers have the power to build a movement and win a victory.

In order to win, ILA 1422 had to do a number of things, any one of which would have been a tremendous challenge:

• They had to defeat Nordana, a powerful multinational corporation, WSI, a local stevedoring company, and the city-owned port authority.
• They had to avoid being crushed by a hostile South Carolina state government or by city police.
• They had to build a solidarity movement that extended from their local union and community throughout the United States and around the world.
• They had to do those things while part of a bureaucratic, mobbed-up international union that was hostile to their local.

The lesson is that a union that is strong on the shop floor (or the dock) is in good shape to take on bigger fights when necessary. ILA 1422 had a tradition of union and worker control and a high degree of worker participation in the union—the union hall was their daily gathering place. Members felt that the union was theirs and that their leaders were working on their behalf. The democratic character of this local union stood at the center of its success.

Given its essential role in the movement of millions of dollars worth of goods, the union had a great deal of intrinsic power—but that power was only as good as the union's willingness to use it. The reform officers launched the strike fund to show that the union was willing to use its power. And when a non-union company tried to muscle its way in, members took direct action to keep the docks scab-free.

Meanwhile, the reform officers had made a conscious effort to build the union's power in the community, with other unions, and in politics, as well as on the job site. Therefore the union had allies in the Charleston area who could be called upon when crunch time came.

The local's recent history of standing up to the ILA International also stood it in good stead. Local 1422 was not afraid to go around its International leaders when they stood in the way. Nor were the officers leery of taking help wherever they could get it, including from the more militant International Dockworkers Council as well as the official and more moderate International Transport Workers Federation.

When faced with repression from both the companies and the government, ILA 1422 leaders quickly learned how to construct a national network of support. They built enough support from other sections of the labor movement to force the ILA International into backing their strike, at least nominally.

At the center of all of these successes were a few fundamental principles: democracy, a union with a strong day-to-day presence in members' lives, physical courage, and a commitment to working not just for the union's members but for everyone in the community.

[Dan La Botz wrote the first edition of A Troublemaker's Handbook in 1991. He is an activist, teacher and labor historian based in Cincinnati, where he writes frequently for Labor Notes. He was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the 1970s and wrote a book abaout that movement, as well as books on unions in Mexico and Indonesia. He is editor of the monthly web publication Mexican Labor News and Analysis.]

FOOTNOTES

1 Bill Swindell and Tony Bartelme, "House passes right-to-work law," The Post and Courier, Feb.3, 2002. [Back to text]

2 The law was passed because Democratic governor Jim Hodges, to repay the ILA for its support, attempted to appoint Riley to the SPA board. He was forced by business to withdraw the nomination. Schuyler Kropf, "Trial balloons failed to warn Hodges," The Post and Courier, April 26, 1999, and Tony Bartelme, "Indicted Longshoremen Adopted as Union Crusade," The Post and Courier, September 3, 2001. [Back to text]

3 Carl Biers, "Charleston Longshore workers lead battle for reform," Union Democracy Review #137. [Back to text]

4 New York Post, January 3, 2004. [Back to text]

5 Tony Bartelme, "Battle for Navy base piers and property," The Post and Courier, October 3, 1999. [Back to text]

6 Jonathan Maze, "Despite local union's victory, labor divisions remain," The Post and Courier, September 4, 2000. [Back to text]

7 Tony Bartelme, "Cost of guarding port totals nearly $500,000," The Post and Courier, Feb. 17, 2000. [Back to text]

8 Tony Bartelme, "Waterfront riot: Hundreds of union dockworkers, police clash," The Post and Courier, January 20, 2000. [Back to text]

9 Tony Bartelme and Glenn Smith, "Riot's aftermath: Assessing the long-term fallout of the waterfront riot," The Post and Courier, January 21, 2000. [Back to text]

10 Tony Bartelme and Glenn Smith, "Riot's aftermath: Assessing the long-term fallout of the waterfront riot," The Post and Courier, January 21, 2000. [Back to text]

11 Tony Bartelme and Glenn Smith, "Riot's aftermath: Assessing the long-term fallout of the waterfront riot," The Post and Courier, January 21, 2000. [Back to text]

12 Tony Bartelme, "Shipper, ILA end standoff," The Post and Courier, April 19, 2000. [Back to text]

13 Dave Munday, "Ford sponsors rally to boost longshoremen," The Post and Courier, January 31, 2000. [Back to text]

14 Delawese Fulton, "Non-dockworkers may join fight," The Post and Courier, February 1, 2000. [Back to text]

15 You can get a sense of how the ILA International handled the Local 1422–Nordana conflict by looking at the ILA Newsletter, which buries a story about the central labor conflict in the country on page 17. "ILA Members Betrayed," ILA Newsletter, Winter 1999, page 17. [Back to text]

16 "Charleston Five," ILA Newsletter, Winter 2001, page 6. [Back to text]

17 Black Radical Congress website, "Free the Charleston 5," January 2001 at http://www.blackradicalcongress.org/comm/press/release010501.html. [Back to text]

18 Tony Bartelme," Rally held for longshoremen facing trial," The Post and Courier, August 21, 2001. [Back to text]

19 Tony Bartelme, "Indicted Longshoremen adopted as union crusade," The Post and the Courier, September 3, 2001. [Back to text]

20 Tony Bartelme, "Unions will protest prosecution," The Post and Courier, June 9, 2001. [Back to text]

21 Tony Bartelme, "SPA crane crew joins ILA," The Post and Courier, April 20, 2000 and Tony Bartelme, "104 SPA workers join dock union," The Post and Courier, May 19, 2000. [Back to text]