CROCKETT, Calif. — In a joint statement, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6 and C&H Sugar management announced July 27 that striking members of Local 6 will go back to work under the terms of their old contract while contract negotiations will step up for the next 60 days.
Ninety-one members of the union who work in C&H’s warehouse have been on strike since June 15. A significant challenge they have faced from the beginning is that the production workers at the plant, who are members of the Sugar Workers Union, affiliated with the Seafarers International Union, have a different contract expiration date and have continued to work during the strike.
ILWU Local 10 members who unload the sugar from ships docked at the factory have been honoring Local 6’s picket lines. Local 6 and Local 10 members have joined together to picket at the plant 24 hours a day seven days a week since the walkout began.
Responding to a move by the company to bring in scabs to unload sugar on its dock July 21, hundreds of longshore workers from ILWU Local 10 left their jobs at the Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento ports to protest at the C&H plant, blocking all traffic going in and out. By noon, a dozen trucks headed for C&H had been stopped and traffic was backed up for a half mile.
C&H was using strikebreakers to do ILWU 10 work, operating cranes to unload raw sugar from the Tai Herald, which was docked at the factory.
The bosses were able to get a compliant judge to issue a court order saying the protest was an illegal assembly. At 4 p.m., Contra Costa County sheriffs ordered the unionists to disperse or face arrest. Nine protesters were incarcerated.
In another provocation, C&H began to truck raw sugar it unloaded from the Tai Herald at the Port of Richmond into the plant. That sugar had been dumped on a concrete strip marked for decades as a superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency due to DDT contamination.
C&H bosses’ treatment of the ILWU strikers and disregard of health standards has led to a raft of unfavorable coverage in the local media. In press interviews, strikers have been able to get out the truth about why they had no alternative but to strike, given the company’s union-busting demands.
C&H is owned by international conglomerate American Sugar Refining Group, which says it is the world’s largest cane sugar refining company. The bosses have demanded cancellation of retiree health benefits, gutting of seniority and forcing workers to work 10- to 12-hour shifts without overtime pay.
The strike has received widespread support from other unions, including an ILWU Local 42 delegation from Hawaii that came to walk the picket line.
On the day the agreement for high-level negotiations and a return to work was announced, six members of the Maritime Union of Australia joined the picket line after flying to the Bay Area from Victoria. “We have a great relationship with the ILWU,” Robert Lumsden, secretary of the union’s Victoria branch, told the Militant. “It was a considerable expense but it was well worth coming. The workers here are fighting for all of us.”
On July 25 a delegation from Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 125 in San Leandro brought a letter signed by dozens of Ghirardelli Chocolate workers in solidarity with the strike.
Local 6 striker Kendra Sparks is one of those who has spoken out in press interviews about the severity of the company’s demands. “One thing for sure, we will not agree to a settlement until the company agrees to bring back the four of us who they fired for what they claimed was violence on the picket line,” she told the Militant, referring to four ILWU Local 6 members arrested on trumped-up charges early in the strike.