The stakes in the struggle between the shipping bosses and the longshore workers’ union on the West Coast have climbed with the companies’ lockout of 10,500 dockworkers. These workers face both the shipping magnates’ antiunion drive and the heavy hand of the U.S. government.

The ruling class has thrown its support behind the bosses’ assault on the dockworkers. While the government keeps up the pressure by threatening to intervene with a "task force" that includes representatives of the Office of Homeland Security, the rulers hope the shipping companies themselves can deal a blow to the union.

This fight takes place as Washington presses towards one more war in a series of offensives in the Middle East and Near East for domination of the massives reserves there of oil and natural gas. The assaults on workers’ social gains and working conditions at home and Washington’s accelerating war moves abroad have a common goal: to boost the declining profit rates of the ruling rich--particularly as a depression unfolds in this country--and to strengthen the billionaire U.S. rulers’ position in relation to their European and Japanese rivals.

The assault on the longshore workers and their union is accompanied by increasing moves against workers’ rights, such as the October 1 activation of the Northern Command, which, in contrast to other military commands deployed abroad, is designed to put military forces on U.S. streets. The Maritime Security Bill now working its way through Congress is just one example of the government’s steps to militarize the ports and restrict who it allows to work on the waterfront.

Like other bosses, however, the shipping companies keep underestimating the union fighters. Their attempt to intimidate the union by bringing two armed thugs into contract negotiations blew up in their faces. Dockworkers are outraged by the companies’ violent overtures and have resolved to fight even harder. "Open the Gates" has become a popular slogan among longshore workers demanding an end to the lockout.

The Bush administration’s threats to invoke the notorious Taft-Hartley Act, as it tries to put added pressure on union members to settle, should be denounced by the entire labor movement. The last time the law was used was during the 110-day strike by the United Mine Workers of America in 1977–78. The miners stood up to this threat and forced the government to back down.

The dockworkers’ determined struggle to defend their union is part of the broader pattern of resistance by working people to the unrelenting assaults by the bosses and their government. A victory for the longshore unionists will be a victory for all workers resisting the bosses’ austerity drive. Now is the time to mobilize solidarity, to join with union-organized pickets and protests, and to tell the truth about this fight.
 
 
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West Coast dockworkers resist employers’ lockout  
 
 
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