CROCKETT, Calif. — “The longshoremen’s union has a long history fighting for the rights of sugar workers in Hawaii,” Chris West, president of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 142 from Honolulu, told a solidarity rally of over 200 people outside the C&H Sugar plant July 13. Ninety-one warehouse workers, members of ILWU Local 6, have been on strike here since June 15.
West headed up a delegation of 15 Local 142 members who came from Hawaii to show their solidarity. “Your fight is for all of us,” he said.
“It is about protecting retiree healthcare, preserving seniority, defending daily overtime, and refusing to surrender the hard-earned rights won by generations of union workers,” his local said in a statement.
Tens of thousands of sugar cane cutters were members of the ILWU in Hawaii before the last plantation closed in December 2016. The last shipload of Hawaiian sugar to C&H — which originally stood for “California and Hawaii” — was a month later. Now the sugar refined by the plant is grown worldwide.
“There is a meeting today with the federal mediator, management and the union, and another scheduled for Wednesday,” Local 6 striker Joshua Lopez told the Militant. “We organized this rally to show support for our bargaining committee who are going to be part of the negotiations.”
The ILWU members from Hawaii were joined by longshoremen from Local 10 in San Francisco; tugboat workers, members of the Inlandboatmen’s Union; office workers, members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and Teamsters on an organizing campaign at Amazon. Filipino youth organizations, students and other young people from throughout the Bay Area joined in.
The crowd marched behind the bargaining committee to the company offices, where negotiations resumed.
Since the beginning, of the strike C&H management has harassed Local 6 members peacefully picketing in front of the plant. So far four workers have been fired on trumped-up charges of picket line violence.
“Human Resources called me at home and said I was fired,” Robin Pittman, who has 24 years seniority, told the Militant. “I was falsely accused of stabbing a security guard with the sharp end of a picket sign—only our picket signs don’t have sharp ends. The guard also claimed I growled at him!”
“The union is fighting my firing even though I plan to retire once the strike is over,” he said. “The bosses are just trying to intimidate us. They are not going to succeed.”
Over 250 production workers, members of the Sugar Workers Union affiliated with the Seafarers International Union, vote July 15 whether or not to join the strike. Up to now, they’ve been working while Local 6 has been on the picket line. Strikers have been discussing with these co-workers how to bring their union into a common fight against the company takebacks.
New shipments of raw sugar have not made it into the refinery. The sugar-loaded cargo ship Tai Herald finally docked at the Port of Richmond, 12 nautical miles away from the plant.
Some raw sugar has been unloaded there, despite the fact Local 10 has been picketing the terminal, protesting any attempt by C&H management to truck the sugar to Crockett. The raw sugar that has been unloaded is now sitting on the ground in an area marked for decades as a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency due to DDT contamination in the water and soil there. C&H has rebuffed union charges that this will damage the integrity of the finished product, saying, “There is no difference in using this terminal or using the refinery’s.”
“This was a serious public relations misstep by the company,” striker Kendra Sparks told the Militant, since it suggests the bosses don’t take food quality seriously. So far, the company has not tried to truck the off-loaded sugar through the picket lines into the plant.
Then, overnight on July 10-11 the company had the Tai Herald, still partially laden with sugar from the Philippines, sail from Richmond to dock at the C&H plant — an open challenge to the longshore union. But as of press time, the company has made no attempt to unload the sugar. ILWU longshoremen who work at the Oakland, San Francisco, Stockton and other Bay Area ports have refused to offload the ship.
Solidarity is needed! Send a letter from your union local, your co-workers or your organization to ILWU Local 6, 99 Hegenberger Road, Oakland, CA 94621. Join the picket line in front of C&H in Crockett! Contribute to the strike fund at square.link/u/ifFpgkRO.
Eric Simpson from Oakland contributed to this article.