State officials and the media are raising a hue and cry that the union's actions opposing use of nonunion workers at the docks is a violation of the state's "right-to-work" laws. This anti-labor legislation—opposed by the labor movement and defeated in other states— is designed to protect the "right" of the bosses to set wages and working conditions, free from unions. Workers are offered the "right" to lower pay, few or no benefits, and no union control on the job over questions of safety and work rules.

But the Charleston dockworkers took a stand and refused to allow the bosses to run ragged over them. For the employers that's a dangerous example. It can encourage others to draw the conclusion that in the labor movement we can take what we're big enough to take, regardless of the laws on the books.

The hundreds of workers who marched to the Charleston docks just after midnight January 20 are part of the beginnings of a proletarian movement in the South and throughout the United States. Many of them had just participated in the magnificent show of solidarity in Columbia, South Carolina, demanding the battle flag of the Confederate army—installed above the Capitol in a racist response to the Black civil rights movement—come down.

The participation by ILA members after a vote at their union meeting, like many other workers from Charleston and throughout the region, in the action in Columbia is an example to be emulated.

Taking on broader social questions strengthens the union movement. It turns these basic defensive organizations of the working class toward those fighting the racism, sexist discrimination, police brutality, environmental destruction, and other social evils bred by the capitalist system. It helps workers see other allies, from farmers struggling to keep their land to workers in other countries, like the 170,000 striking dockworkers in India. This broader scope of vision is necessary to transform the unions into tools that workers can use to advance the interests of all those who toil for a living.

We urge our readers to build on the accomplishments of the Martin Luther King Day rally in Columbia and the dockworkers' mobilization in Charleston by joining the fight to push back the rulers' frame-up attack on the ILA members in South Carolina with the demand, "Drop the charges now!"  
 
 
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