Taylor is one of 10,500 dockworkers organized by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) who are fighting for a new contract in the West Coast ports and against the bosses’ drive to lay off union workers and speed up the pace of work.

He spoke in rejection of attempts by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents the shipping bosses, to win a legal ruling that the ILWU is conducting a slowdown on the docks. The PMA is attempting to use the Taft-Hartley Act in this effort.

On October 8 U.S. president Bush imposed an injunction under this antiunion law to end the PMA’s 10-day lockout of dockworkers. The document imposes the terms of the previous contract and requires the ILWU and PMA to hold talks with federal mediators over a 60-day period. The union is also prohibited from striking for an 80-day period that ends on December 26.

Confirming this antilabor stance, government attorneys have demanded that the union show proof that dockworkers are abiding by the October 8 injunction, which includes a clause that union members must work at a "normal and reasonable speed." Taft-Hartley grants federal courts broad powers to fine or imprison union members for violating such a ruling.

Speaking to Militant reporters at the Matson terminal, Taylor said the port bosses’ are to blame for the slow progress in clearing the backlog of freight that piled up during the lockout. "Tonight I’m filling a clerk’s job," he said. "They have so much work that we’re taking on jobs we don’t normally do, and we’re not as fast as the clerks."

On October 29 the union filed a document in answer to the PMA accusations of a slowdown. The effects of the bosses’ lockout, and not any union action, is the reason the ports are congested, it said. It noted problems such as a shortage of yard space, increased traffic on the docks, labor shortages, equipment breakdowns, and unsafe working conditions.

Taylor emphasized that safety is a key question for the union fighters. Before the contract expired, he said, workers "were going above and beyond, trying to be ‘team players’ and comply with the company to exceed productivity goals. But they turned this on us. We had guys leaping from container to container without safety vests to get the work out. We were shooting ourselves in the foot. Now we’re working under the guidelines" laid out in the Pacific Marine Safety Code, he said.

Commenting on the government’s partisan stance in the October 21 Dispatcher, the union journal, Tom Price observed, "From the very beginning the employers knew they had allies in Washington." The article was entitled "Locked out and Shaft-Hartley’ed."

Before the lockout, wrote Price, "Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge told the union any strike action would be a national security issue.... All PMA had to do was present its concessions and hold out until President Bush did its dirty work for it.

"PMA’s initial proposal slashed jobs, cut medical benefits, and undercut the hiring hall longshore workers struck coastwise to establish in 1934."

Union members are organizing to defend safety conditions, noted Price. "After five fatalities on the docks in six months, the union was simply observing safety rules as established in the contract." Nine workers have been killed over the life of the 1999–2002 contract.

Meanwhile, echoing the arguments for "national security" used by Bush in wielding the act, a bipartisan task force set up by the Council on Foreign Relations to study terrorism recently recommended "immediate action to better secure the nation’s ports, roads, and railways," according to the Los Angeles Times.

Bill Kalman in San Francisco contributed to this article.  
 
 
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