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CHARLESTON,
USA, Aug 21 (IPS) - Five dockworkers are to stand trial here next
month on riot charges stemming from a year-old incident. Their ordeal
has become a symbol of the war waged by the U.S. state of South
Carolina against unions in general and black workers in particular.
The
longshoremen - Elijah Ford Jr., Ricky Simmons, Peter Washington,
Jason Edgerton, and Kenneth Jefferson - face felony riot charges
arising from a confrontation on the Charleston docks Jan. 20, 2000.
They could go to prison for five years.
Meanwhile,
the men, four black and one white, languish under house arrest.
They cannot leave their homes after 7:00 PM, except to go to work.
They wear electronic bracelets around their ankles, an ugly reminder
of the shackles that bound blacks in the U.S. South under slavery
and in prison-labour chain gangs.
''The
state of South Carolina has declared war on labour and on black
workers in particular,'' says Bill Fletcher, a fellow at the George
Meany Centre, a training and research institute run by the main
U.S. labour umbrella, AFL-CIO. Fletcher is also national organiser
of the Black Radical Congress.
The
port of Charleston, where the men work, is one of the largest in
the country. Although South Carolina has the lowest percentage of
union members nationally, all the longshore workers in the port,
all but two of whom are black, belong to Local 1422 of the International
Longshoremens Association.
That
union status came under attack last year, when a Danish company,
Nordana, announced that it intended to load and unload ships using
non-union workers.
"This
had never happened before," recalls Local 1422 President Ken
Riley. "Those jobs are something we cherish, and this operation
was going to tear down our industry standards. We've spent forty
years of hard work fighting for wages high enough so that workers
can send their kids to college, and afford at least a middle class
standard of living. When we found out they were going non-union,
we knew we simply could not tolerate it."
Local
police cooperated with the longshoremen when they set up their picket
lines to protest. But the state's attorney general, Charles Condon,
decided to draw a much harder line. He assembled an army of 600
state troopers and highway patrol officers, and on the night of
Jan. 20, 2000, they escorted non-union workers into the port with
helicopters and armoured personnel vehicles. Riley went down to
the picket line to try to prevent confrontation, only to be beaten
by a trooper and carried off to the hospital.
A
melee followed.
When
a local judge subsequently dismissed charges against arrested unionists,
Condon publicly condemned the decision, convened a grand jury, and
brought indictments against the five. He unveiled "a plan for
dealing with union dockworker violence S jail, jail, and more jail,"
and added that he would call for maximum bail, no plea-bargaining
and no leniency for union dockworkers. "South Carolina is a
strong right-to-work state and a citizen's right not to join a union
is absolute and will be fully protected," Condon said.
Condon
is a candidate for governor. He chaired the George W. Bush electoral
campaign in South Carolina, and was a member of the Bush presidential
transition team. "He used our situation in his ads, announcing
that South Carolina needed to elect Bush to stamp out unions,"
Riley charges. "And in the same speech when he announced his
run for governor, he gave as a reason that South Carolina must rid
itself of labour unions."
It
is not an idle threat. The state's economic development authority
advertises for investors around the world, boasting that workers'
productivity ranks with the nation's highest, while wages lag 20
percent below. As a result, European companies have built new factories
all along theI-85 highway corridor from North Carolina to Georgia.
None have unions.
"That's
where the industrial development in the South is taking place,"
Fletcher explains, "and therefore it's an area with great potential
for organising, if labour builds a real alliance with African-Americans.
Local 1422 not only has solid roots in the black community, it is
in the heart of the transport operation this development depends
on. A strong union there is in a good position to help other workers
get organised."
When
cities across the country began passing living wage ordinances,
requiring government contractors to pay wages capable of supporting
families, South Carolina passed a law making it illegal for any
community to establish a salary floor higher than the Federal minimum
wage.
And
when the state's current Democratic governor proposed Riley for
a post on the port commission, Condon and his allies not only shot
the nomination down but also introduced a bill in the legislature
(nicknamed "the Riley Act"), which would have made it
illegal to appoint a union member to any public board or commission.
Legislative
hostility has been a reaction to Local 1422's ability to bring black
and white workers together, and unions together with the African-American
community. Those coalitions could change the political makeup of
the South.
When
Local 1422 picketed the Nordana ship, it was joined on the lines
by the all-white union for port clerks, Local 1771. The Progressive
Network, bringing together 38 Charleston community organisations,
meets in Local 1422's hall. In reaction to the threat of the trial,
the AFL-CIO called for a national campaign to free the longshoremen,
putting Fletcher in charge. A march in early July in Charleston
drew thousands of unionists from around the country.
Condon
called criticism by the Progressive Network of the indictments "a
propaganda ploy by labour union sympathisers," adding that
"the disruptive efforts of the Progressive Network and its
comrades are designed solely to divert attention from the very serious
criminal charges of riot and conspiracy to riot filed against these
five defendants."
Try
as Condon might to focus attention on the specific charges, black
labour activists, like Fletcher and Riley, remain convinced that
the coming trial is part of a broader anti-union, anti-black worker
campaign.
"We
have to look beyond the individuals and the local union," Fletcher
says. "Just as the firings of air controllers 20 years ago
started a wave of attacks on unions, a conviction could inspire
new sentiment by authorities and employers here that this kind of
repression is acceptable." (END/IPS/NA/HD/LB/DB/AA/01)
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