One worker after another, on foot or bicycle, heads for the gate and to their cars, shuttle vans, or buses. Many are wearing bright green union hats; most say they have signed union authorization papers in the last week or so.

On November 2 the newly merged company, now named Litton Avondale Industries, announced it had come to an agreement on neutrality towards the union-organizing campaign by the Metal Trades Council of New Orleans. The agreement gave the union the right to sign up workers. If a majority of the 4,000 eligible workers join, the company is supposed to immediately recognize the union and begin contract bargaining. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported November 13 that the Metal Trades Council (AFL-CIO) submitted well over the majority required for certification.

Litton Avondale Industries is the state's biggest employer and the largest nonunion shipyard in the country. Workers there are at rock bottom in pay scales compared to other shipbuilders.

"Everybody in my department signed up," said Marie Davis, 36, who cleans the ships under construction. She has worked in the yard for 14 months and said she makes $6.52 an hour in her labor grade.

Elated by the prospect of getting the union into the shipyard, Davis said her main concern is safety, although she could certainly use a raise.

"They've been sending us down places [inside the ship's hull] so unsafe that you fear for your life. Then they get mad when you complain about safety, like untied scaffold boards," she said. "My safety is more important than money," Davis insisted.

Thirty-four workers have been killed at Avondale since 1974 according to the AFL-CIO. Conditions such as these have led to many attempts to organize a union over the last 50 years.

Reginald Jones, a 62-year-old fitter and tester, has worked at the shipyard on and off for decades. But the company has told him that for retirement purposes they will only honor the last 12 years, so he'll retire with a pension of less than $400 a month.

Jones, who is proud of his Creole background, has been a supporter of the union for a long time. "I think this decision looks great for the younger workers out here," he told the Militant.

Meanwhile, workers got the news November 12 that the National Labor Relations Board ordered Avondale Industries to reinstate more than two dozen workers fired for union activity related to the 1993 union election. At that time a majority of workers voted to be represented by the Metal Trades Council of New Orleans.

Avondale Industries steadfastly refused to recognize the union and launched a vicious campaign against the workers. Last summer, a federal appeals court sided with the Avondale bosses and threw out the 1993 election. In light of the recent agreement between the union and the new management, that may be a pyrrhic victory.

"I didn't even know the names of every one of them, but lots of workers were fired or forced to quit," Jones said. "I guess I just got lucky," he added, smiling and pointing to his well-worn hard hat covered with fading "Union Yes" and "Justice for Avondale" stickers.

This important stage in the fight of these shipyard workers takes place in the context of a big shift in the mood of working people. Avondale workers got a boost from two major defeats handed to other shipyard owners this summer.

In June 6,800 workers at the Litton-owned Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, won substantial pay increases, safety improvements, and other rights on the job. They did this by successfully uniting the 11 unions that made up the Metal Trades Council that represented the workers in the negotiations.

This was followed by the conclusion of the three-month battle at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. The 9,000 shipyard workers there organized by United Steelworkers of America Local 8888 also won substantial gains and strengthened their union through the fight.

As is the case at Avondale, workers who are Black make up a big percentage of the work force at Ingalls and Newport News. From these ranks came new leaders, many with experience in the struggle for Black rights that enhanced the combativity and discipline of the strikes.

It is this mood and combativity that has emerged from the long battle for union recognition at Avondale that stares in the face of the new owners of Avondale.

Albert Bossier, Jr., the former company head of Avondale, had boasted to the workers that he would fight from his grave to keep the union out of the shipyard.

In 1998 a judge issued a cease-and-desist order against the company that included the unusual provision that Bossier either read it himself to an assembly of the shipyard workers or sit by as an NLRB agent read it aloud. The company appealed the order. The NLRB upheld the ruling days after Bossier retired November l.  
 
 
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