Some 300 members of Local 1814 of the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA) walked out on June 15, 1999, after working without a contract for more than nine months.

Daniels, a member of the union committee, has worked for 20 years in the packaging department. She and other strikers were participating in a June 17 benefit concert and dinner at "The Ship's Mast," a bar just a few blocks from the plant. The event culminated a day of activity, including a morning rally in front of the refinery that included members of the Teamsters and Laborers unions.

According to Charles Milan, a packaging mechanic and shop steward with 35 years in the plant, the issues in the strike are the company's demand to be able to contract out an unlimited amount of work, the removal of the seniority system, the elimination of three holidays and eight other paid days off, staggered workweeks with straight pay for weekend work, an end to guaranteed hours per year, the right to reopen the contract at will, and the reduction of the workforce by a third as a result of a decision to shut down the filter house where raw sugar was processed and to instead ship in liquid sugar syrup.

Domino Sugar is owned by the British company Tate & Lyle PLC, which has already shut down two Domino refineries in Boston and Philadelphia. Workers at the Baltimore plant signed a contract late last year and workers at the refinery in New Orleans signed a contract in February after a two-week strike. Workers at both plants are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Tate & Lyle locked out 760 corn-processing workers at A.E. Staley in Decatur, Illinois, in 1993 during contract negotiations. Domino workers had participated in solidarity activities around that strike.

Workers at the Brooklyn refinery have been through two other strikes in recent years--one in 1989 that lasted three months and one in 1992-93 that lasted more than five months. The average seniority in the plant is 20 years, so most of the workers were part of at least one of these prior battles.

A big majority of workers who went on strike 12 months ago are continuing to press the fight. Unemployment insurance that most of the workers were receiving ran out earlier this year. Many are now working other jobs and do picket duty before and after work and on days off.

Strikers report that 58 workers have resigned from the union and crossed the picket line. In addition eight members of the boilermakers union, who had been honoring the strike, are now working.

The first anniversary of the strike comes in the context of a series of protest actions by other workers in New York. "You would not believe how many people in this city are out on strike," Daniels said. "At first, when we walked out, we were just thinking about ourselves. But the only way the unions will become stronger is by supporting each other. We've been out to the picket lines at the Museum of Modern Art and at a lumber company here in Williamsburg. This morning we even went with a couple of Teamsters to visit workers on strike at a carwash not far from here."

Bookshop workers, librarians, assistant curators, and other museum workers at the Museum of Modern Art have been on strike for more than two months. A dozen members of Teamsters local 1205 have been picketing Rode & Horn Lumber since October 1999, when they were locked out by the bosses after rejecting a proposed 10 cent increase to their hourly wage.

In addition to the pickets organized by the striking ILA workers, members of several other unions regularly hold informational pickets outside the refinery, both as solidarity actions and to protest work Domino is contracting out to nonunion outfits. These include members of Teamsters local 282, several locals of the laborers, and members of Local 30 of the Boilermakers union.

According to Local 1814 vice-president Joe Crimi, the union is planning a June 22 protest against Tate & Lyle at the British embassy and plans to send a delegation to the Tate & Lyle stockholders meeting in London in July.

"The scabs crossing the picket line was definitely the biggest blow we've had," Janet Dunbar, a shipping department worker, noted. "The company wants us to think that we have to go back. It makes all kinds of offers. But we won't just surrender." Dunbar said the company offers $100 to anyone crossing the picket line who gets another union member to also do so.

"They used to try to play people against each other even before the strike," Daniels pointed out. "They'd organize these company picnics and dinners to try to convince us we were all family. But we're not a family. And with the time we've put in this place, we won't let them discard us like garbage."

"It's about dignity," Brian Walker, a product attendant who had worked 13 years in the refinery, noted. "We're not going to go back in without our heads held high."

The New York Central Labor Council has set up a fund to aid the strikers. Contributions can be sent to: C.L.R.C. Domino Strike Fund, ILA Local 1814, 70–20th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11232.  
 
 
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