Black workers threatened in SC labor trial

Supporters from across the country gather at the SC State House on June 9, 2001 to rally for the Charleston Five, shown (from left): Kenneth Jefferson, Rick Simmons, Peter Washington, Elijah Ford and Jason Edgerton.

By David Bacon

Charleston, South Carolina, 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 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 US South under slavery and in prison-labor chain gangs.

“The state of South Carolina has declared war on labor and on black workers in particular,” says Bill Fletcher, a fellow at the George Meany Center, a training and research institute run by the main US labor umbrella, AFL-CIO. Fletcher is also national organizer 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 armored 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 … 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 labor 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 organizing, if labor 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 organized.”

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 organizations, 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 labor union sympathizers,” 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 labor 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.”

South African trade unions forge ahead with plan to strike

Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug. 27— South Africa’s powerful trade unions, furious over the government’s privatization program, forged ahead with plans Wednesday for a crippling two-day general strike on the eve of an international racism conference in South Africa.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has called on its 1.7 million members to strike from Wednesday to Friday, before some 15,000 delegates are due to descend on the South African port city of Durban for the week-long conference organized by the United Nations.

The decision to go ahead with strike action raises the stakes between the government and COSATU, its alliance partner which has vehemently opposed Pretoria’s schemes to privatize the power, telecommunications, transport and defense industries.

The government is equally furious over the timing of the strike, which it said could paralyze the economy and crucial services ahead of the UN meeting which opens on August 31.

“The conference stands in danger of being severely undermined by an organization that professes to support its objectives. If COSATU were to have its way, the strike would paralyze the economy, as well as services critical for the conference to succeed,” a statement issued by the cabinet said. COSATU, which has the support of the South African Communist Party (SACP), says the anti-racism conference, while laudable, would not deter unions from protecting workers’ rights.

“The working class has borne the brunt of the transition while the rich, including the new enfranchised black bourgeoisie, benefit from privatized state assets,” said COSATU, referring to the promotion of economic rights for black South Africans following the dismantling of apartheid in 1994.

The dispute has also unleashed a heated polemic between COSATU and President Thabo Mbeki.

On Friday, Mbeki accused the trade union federation of joining hands with rightists and using workers as cannon fodder.

In a statement on the Internet publication “ANC Today”, Mbeki said: “The question that arises is why lies are being told (about the government’s programs) and false claims made of the possibility of easy victories over the colonial and apartheid legacy.”

“Whose interests do they serve, who abandon the morality of revolutionaries, so that they can use workers as cannon fodder to launch an offensive aimed at defeating their own liberation movement!” Mbeki went on to say.

On Sunday, COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven rejected Mbeki’s charges.

“We reject what they say about us. We can substantiate and prove everything we had said about the ANC (African National Congress) government,” he said.

Tony Leon, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance, on Sunday called on the government not to let itself be influenced by its ally.

“Their influence over national economic policy has been disproportionate and damaging since 1994. A ruling party must govern for the benefit of all the people, not for a unionized minority.”

Source: Agence France Presse

Anti-privatization strike in Burkina Faso

Aug. 17— More than 1,000 workers from 13 public companies took to the streets of Ouagadougou on Thursday in response to a call from their unions for a 24-hour strike against the government’s decision to privatize their enterprises.

Chanting slogans such as “No to the auctioning of the national heritage!”, “Down with wildcat liberalization!” and “Down with Bretton Woods injunctions!”, the strikers marched to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security where they handed a message to Minister Alain Ludovic Tou.

“In our message we repeated our opposition to privatization,” said Issobié Soulama, a member of the group of unions that called the strike. “We’ve seen the consequences of the first privatizations, which brought about sorrow, misery and death among workers.”

Throughout the country, main and branch offices of strategic companies such as the water and energy utilities were closed on Thursday as a result of the strike. Residents of Bobo Dioulasso -- Burkina Faso’s second largest city -- said that there was a massive mobilization of workers there. However, water and electricity supplies were not interrupted since the companies hired workers to ensure a “minimum service”. There were no immediate reports of violence or arrests after the Ouagadougou march.

The unions want parliament to revoke a bill on the privatization of the utilities, which it passed in July. However, in a declaration on Wednesday, the government reiterated “its firm will” to pursue economic reforms, including the privatization program which it started in 1991. It said it could not stop the reforms in midair.

The government considers its privatization program a success. Since 1991, it says, it has received some 12 billion CFA (US $16 million) from the sale of state companies, and was able to save some 4,000 jobs. Workers, on the other hand, say more than 4,000 workers lost their jobs in the first wave of privatizations. In June a government audit of public companies showed that 20 had financial deficits, the highest being the state fuel-distribution utility, with seven billion CFA (US $9.3 million).

Source: UN Integrated Regional Information Network

Strikes hit hospitals, schools, in Honduras

Aug. 27— Honduras’ 56,000 teachers held a one-day strike on August 14 over wage demands, leaving about 2 million preschool, primary and secondary students without classes. Hundreds of teachers blocked highways in four parts of the country for two hours, while thousands demonstrated at the presidential palace and the congress building in Tegucigalpa.

On August 15 the 7,500 members of the Honduran Union of Medicine, Hospital and Affiliated Workers (SITRAMEDHYS) began an open-ended strike to demand a pay raise of 1,400 lempiras (about $75) a month. Professional nurses joined the strike, along with medical students; the auxiliary nurses had already been on strike for 12 days.

Workers said hospitals would only offer medical care in life-or-death emergencies, while clinics would continue food programs and some programs funded by private groups. In the El Progreso hospital, local SITRAMEDHYS treasurer Servio Tulio García said patients who had appointments or needed other services should come to the hospital; to add pressure for the workers’ demands, the staff would not charge the usual fees.

Some 100 auxiliary nurses carried out a sit-in near the presidential palace on August 16 to demand that the government comply with requirements to pay for extended and night hours. National Association of Auxiliary Nurses President Amparo Alvarado Romero said the protesters had hoped to meet with Presidency Minister Gustavo Alfaro. “Look how they’ve stopped us here as if we were gang members,” she said. “We came in a peaceful demonstration, and they’ve restricted our liberty.”

Alvarado Romero promised that the 8,000 auxiliary nurses would stay out on strike until their demands were met.

Source: www.americas.org