Dockworkers Have the Power
to Stop Imperialist War Cargo and
Win Union Control of Technology
Use It!

Dockworkers head up march to the port of Genova as part of a huge nationwide “block everything” strike that brought a million people into the streets and shut down ports, railroad and highways in solidarity with Gaza. CALP port workers (above) have taken the lead in blocking arms shipments to Israel. (Photo: Matteo Minnella / Reuters)

By Jack Heyman

U.S. president Donald Trump rumbles fatuously on as his phony “peace” plan for Gaza unravels, the U.S./NATO war against Russia sinks ever deeper in the mud of Ukraine, and his bunker-buster blow failed to put a dent in Iran’s nuclear program. In the U.S. he has sent federal agents in military gear to grab immigrants off the streets in one city after another: Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland and soon New York. Now he has sent 10,000 U.S. troops, a fleet of stealth fighter-bombers and a naval armada to attack Venezuela. His economic war on China blows hot and cold, and now there are joint preparations with Israel for another attack on Iran. The world becomes increasingly destabilized and distraught.

But Trump has also met resistance. Port workers from Morocco to France, Italy and Greece have refused to handle war cargo for Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians. Italian dockers’ action touched off two mass strikes, on September 22 and October 3, after Israeli commandos seized the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza. Ports were shut down by dockworkers, trains stopped by rail workers, stations occupied by protesters, major highways blocked and a million people demonstrated for Gaza in Rome and other cities. The fascist-led Meloni government called the walkouts “illegal,” but was powerless to stop them.

On September 26-27, dockworkers in the port of Genoa, Italy held a conference of European and Mediterranean port unions on the slogan, “Dockers Do Not Work for War.” The conference issued a document looking to “an internationally coordinated strike in the near future” against shipping war materiel to Israel or elsewhere. At a public meeting the next day, I brought greetings from International Longshore and Warehouse Workers Local 10 on the U.S. West Coast. I emphasized the need to “defy the union bureaucracies to take the action that’s necessary to stop military cargo,” to “hot cargo” (refuse to handle) goods for imperialist/Zionist wars.

As the Italian strikes show, dockworkers have the power to spearhead major class battles. What’s needed is a fighting leadership and a class-struggle program to point the way.

The Fight Against Job-Killing Automation

Containers are unloaded from ships by remote-controlled gantry cranes onto driverless vehicles at the Hutchison Delta Terminal in the port of Rotterdam, Netherlands. Containerization and now the push for full port automation have reduced the number of dockworkers in Rotterdam from over 13,000 in the 1950s to less than 3,000 today. Dealing with the threat of job-killing automation is an existential issue for dockers. For union control of technology!
(Photo: Jasper Junien / Bloomberg)

Now, in the wake of these powerful actions by Mediterranean-area port workers, the East Coast U.S. International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the International Dockworkers Council (IDC) are holding a conference in Lisbon, Portugal on November 4-5 to address the issue of automation. Their call is for “People Over Profits.” Of course, under capitalism profits are the sine qua non, key to making the wheels of commerce and industry turn.

Defending jobs against the ravages caused by speed-up, wage-gouging and “labor-saving” technology is of critical importance for the organized working class. That can only be achieved by bringing the workers’ power to bear, centrally through strike action to shut down production in the ports, backed up by working-class mobilization in the streets. But neither job action at the point of production on the docks nor capitalism are mentioned in the conference call. 

Over the last 50 years, since 1975, there has been roughly a four-fold increase in seaborne trade worldwide, measured in tonnage – from 3 billion metric tons to 12.6 billion tons.¹ But over the same time period, since the mid-1970s when containerization really kicked in, there has been a nearly 20-fold increase in global seaborne container trade, from 5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) to 190 million TEUs.² Yet the number of dockworkers has fallen sharply, in the United States cut in half, from over 100,000 in 1975 to barely 50,000 last year. In Europe, the decline has been even greater, by two-thirds to three-quarters, with the number of dockworkers down from 300,000-400,000 to less than 100,000 today. The numbers are a little fuzzy, but the trend is clear.

Booming trade with China sustained the port workforce, but a number of ports around the world are already operating with remote-controlled cranes and other digital machinery. The maritime industry is being greatly transformed with the introduction of heavy container-lifting machines and computerized cargo tracking devices. This advanced automation portends a radical reduction in jobs unless dockworkers can coordinate actions internationally to gain control over the introduction of new technology. They have the power to do that because they are at the nexus of global trade.

In today’s fight against the loss of jobs due to capitalist automation dockworkers cannot take a Luddite position of simply opposing all technology. In the early 1800s, the Luddites tried to smash equipment that was being introduced in the textile industry as the bosses slashed jobs. Karl Marx wrote eloquently in the Communist Manifesto about how capitalism enslaved workers to giant machines, driving down wages and throwing many into unemployment as the productive forces grew enormously. He also insisted that technology must benefit the working class and society at large, not the capitalist class. While in its “brutal, capitalistic form … the worker exists for the process of production,” he wrote in Capital, under a “collective working group,” modern technology can be “a source of humane development,” of “production for the worker.”

Internationalists BRING solidarity to ILA picket line in Port Newark, New Jersey, during the union´s three-day strike in October 2024. (Internationalist photo)

How is that to come about? On the docks we can start with the establishment of union safety committees that can shut down production where there are unsafe conditions, whether due to machinery, speed, toxic fumes or chemicals, or whatever. Longshoring is an exhausting and dangerous job. Dockworkers must insist that their right to protect their lives and their fellow workers’ lives, is non-negotiable, not up to some foreman or hot-shot, cost-cutting, time-and-motion “expert.”

Second, we can demand sharply shortened worktime with no loss in pay. Union militants in the past have demanded 30 hours work for 40 hours pay. Nowadays some skilled dockworkers in West Coast U.S. ports are already working four-hour shifts for eight-hours pay, the equivalent of 20 hours work for 40 hours pay in a five-day workweek. Or, since stevedoring is an around-the-clock operation, instead of three eight-hour working shifts, why not demand four shifts of six hours each for four days a week? In this way, the development of technology can improve workers’ lives and create more jobs, rather than throwing “surplus” workers onto the scrap heap.

But so long as the bosses are in control and the drive for profits is in command, they will find ways to screw the workers they exploit. That’s why it is above all necessary to fight for union control of technology, that the workers have to sign off on any new machinery or procedures.³ Pie in the sky? Not if solidarity is the driving force and dockers are organized internationally, ready to strike and support each other for these demands.

It can be done. It’ll mean a serious fight with the global maritime capitalists. The coordinated “hot cargo” actions against arms to Israel by Mediterranean dockworkers and the massive strikes in Italy in defiance of its fascist-led government show the potential for the power of unified working-class action against imperialist war, but also against capitalist exploitation. Dock unions can bring masses into the streets by making the fight against the ravages of capitalist automation a fight for jobs for all.

What’s the Track Record of the ILA and the IDC?

A key question for dockworkers is the history of the two labor organizations that are calling this “Anti-Automation Conference.” Unions can be an agency for social progress if there is a class struggle leadership, but beware if the leadership is in partnership with the employers and their governments.

Harold and Dennis Daggett meet with Tump at his Mar-a-Lago resort-estate, December 2024. Flattering the “America-first” president whose sky-high tariffs have sharply cut world trade will not save dockworkers’ jobs internationally. (Photo: ILA)

On the U.S. waterfront, during the three-day East Coast dock strike last year, ILA president Harold Daggett proclaimed his outfit the “I Love America” union and ordered longshore workers to continue to work military cargo.  Then, not long after the election, he and his son Dennis, ILA executive vice president and head of the International Dockworkers Council, flew to Mar-a-Lago for a photo op with Donald Trump. The president-elect reciprocated with a posting on his social media lamenting the harm caused by automation and saying “foreign companies should hire … American workers instead of laying them off,” ending with a call to “put AMERICA FIRST!”

The ILA America-Firsters credited Trump with securing their “greatest contract” ever, boasting that it blocked “fully automated” port technology, namely any equipment that is “devoid of human interaction,” and that if the union and employers don’t agree on new technology it would go to arbitration. But arbiters typically rule in the “public interest” (that is, the interest of capital), and the big business press crowed that the agreement allowed continued expansion of semi-automation in all ILA ports. Although the maritime bosses’ cartel, USMX, agreed to add one job per semi-automated crane, a maintenance worker, that doesn’t begin to compensate for the number of jobs lost.

Thanking Trump for his verbal support, the Daggetts driveled: “You have proven yourself to be one of the best friends of working men and women in the United States.” Yet Trump has now furloughed 750,000 federal workers and fired 300,000 outright. Some “friend of labor”! Meanwhile, global trade has been thrown into chaos by Trump’s imposing astronomically high tariffs seeking to reassert U.S. economic dominance. After he announced a 145% tariff on goods from for China last spring, longshore workers in Los Angeles and adjacent Long Beach, California, the two largest U.S. ports, experienced a 35% loss in work. One union official claims the job loss was closer to 50%.

Along with the job-killing U.S. president, the ILA and the IDC enlisted the pope in the fight against automation, seeking every manner of “support” except where it counts, dockworkers’ action on the waterfront. What does this portend for the upcoming ILA/IDC anti-automation conference in November?

A telling example of what’s in store at the Lisbon anti-automation conference comes from the IDC general assembly held in Charleston, South Carolina, this past June in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the historic 2000 strike that stopped a scab operation at that port. It was also the 25th anniversary of the first action by the IDC, the campaign of international solidarity with the “Charleston Five” longshore workers who were jailed and then subjected to months-long house arrest on charges of violating the state’s anti-union “right-to-work” law. The Spanish affiliate of the IDC, La Coordinadora, refused to work the scab-loaded ship. The ILA leadership, however, refused to support the Charleston Five defense for over a year. For more on that sordid story see the upcoming Internationalist article on the Charleston struggle.

Grotesque letter to U.S. president Trump by Harold Daggett congratulating him on the June 22 bombing of Iran.  Click on image to enlarge.

On the opening day of the June celebration, with IDC dockworkers leaders from around the world present, Harold Daggett (who did not attend) sent out an explosive letter to Donald Trump that reverberated like a hand grenade amongst the attendees. The ILA president said he wanted to “personally thank you, congratulate you and commend you on your bold and courageous decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. How proud we are as Americans to be led by you as our fearless Commander in Chief….” The grotesque letter went on:

“The men and women of the ILA, who have proudly joined with our Armed Forces for over a century in the loading and unloading of military cargo as the ‘I Love America’ longshore union, stand 100 percent behind you and support this military action against an enemy of the United States while defending Israel, one of our nation’s most faithful and supportive allies.”

While class-conscious port workers have fought to stop military cargo for Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians, and for the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, the ILA chief wraps himself in the American flag to back those criminal wars. And now the ILA website sports a photo of Daggett Sr. and Brig. General Harrison Gilliam as the union’s “Military Advisor and Consultant,” to help the ILA bid for “new military contracts for stevedoring and related terminal services” at East and Gulf Coast ports. Will that be for the U.S.’ next unprovoked attack on Iran or Venezuela, or to keep arms flowing to the Zionist war machine despite Mediterranean dockers’ boycott actions?

The embarrassed IDC delegates cobbled together a pacifist statement (which is not on their website) calling for “no open ports for war.” The IDC statement is a fraud: U.S. ILA ports are always open for war. But the issue did not die. A few weeks later, Canadian ILA Local 273 (Saint John, New Brunswick) voted unanimously to denounce Daggett’s warmongering letter. Back in 2021, Dennis Daggett Jr., the IDC general coordinator, and IDF international labor coordinator Jordi Aragunde responded to a request from the Palestine unions to boycott military cargo to Israel with a statement condemning “the massacre of civilians and children in Palestine” and opposing “working ships that operate war merchandise.” But the ILA continued to ship war cargo daily. And in the last two years, the IDC hasn’t lifted a finger in solidarity with the people of Gaza against genocide.

For Dockworkers Unity in Militant Class Struggle

I have to say that my own union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is no better on automation than the ILA. The latest contract, which came after working almost a year without a contract (abandoning the fundamental principle of “no contract, no work”), gave the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) employers cartel a free rein on introducing job-slashing automation, as long they maintained a small number of maintenance workers and any computer operations would be by ILWU members. The only fully automated terminal in the U.S., is the Long Beach Container Terminal, under ILWU jurisdiction, with autonomous trucks and cranes.

This all goes back to the disastrous 1960 M&M (mechanization and modernization) contract signed by ILWU founder and longtime leader Harry Bridges, which opened the flood gates to containerization, with huge job losses in return for higher pay. (ILWU members still earn quite a bit more than ILA dock workers.) As for solidarity, when ILWU Local 10 in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area on May Day 2024 unanimously passed a resolution calling to refuse to handle military cargo to Israel, and to respect pro-Palestinian pickets, at the union convention in June the ILWU leadership lined up delegates from ports handling military cargo to vote it down.

And while the ILA sidles up to Republicans, from Reagan to Trump, the ILWU has sought to ingratiate itself with the Democrats. During the 2022-23 contract negotiations, ILWU president Willie Adams sat on the deck of the USS Iowa in San Diego together with the PMA boss to hear Democratic president Joe Biden, and agreed there to work without a contract in order to keep commerce moving. Adams kept running to the White House for photo ops with Biden, and credited his commerce secretary for negotiating the contract. He even got a former executive board member, Max Vekich, named as a Federal Maritime Commission member, who reportedly worked the halls at the 2024 ILWU convention that voted down our Gaza solidarity motion.

The history of maritime and waterfront union organizing, as in every other sector, is rife with class collaboration ad infinitum. Why? Because class betrayal is the common coin of the trade-union bureaucracy – “the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class,” in the memorable words of U.S. socialist Daniel De Leon. Theirs is a history of lies. They are the embodiment of the “labor aristocracy” (Lenin’s famous phrase), a privileged layer that sits atop the unions whose job is to undermine class struggle at every step. It’s their raison d’être. There is a glaring need for dockworkers unity, but it must be unity in class struggle against the capitalist maritime bosses.

In 2022, nine European unions were expelled from the IDC over internal issues centering on the Daggett/Aragunde leadership. Several of them then joined together to form the European Dockworkers Council (EDC). Last year, in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, several of the longtime founding leaders of IDC unions were strongly in favor of unions acting to defend the Palestinians. On March 31, 2024, Björn Borg, former president of the Swedish Dockworkers Union, wrote:

“The Israel attack on the Palestinian people is so terrible that I hardly can put words on what´s going on. I really hope for as many trade unions as possible will come together to take solidarity actions in support of the Palestinian people but I have very little hope for the IDC as well as ILWU and ILA.”

And on May 5, 2024 Jimmy Donnovan, former president of the Maritime Union of Australia, wrote in a congratulatory email on the passage of the ILWU Local 10 resolution: “The IDC must support the Palestinians against the Israelis and blatant Zionism.” Both are no longer with us.

The IDC, as indicated, has refused to defend the Palestinians. And while the EDC has issued pacifist statements and some of its affiliates – including La Coordinadora in Spain, the French CGT in Fos-sur-Mer and the Swedish Dockworkers Union – have taken action, the Council as such has not yet launched a campaign to stop the flow of arms to Israel that has made the genocide in Gaza possible. To take forward the struggle for real, fighting labor solidarity, new organizational forms must be found.

In order to combat the consequences of a new wave of automation that threatens to decimate the already weakened numbers of the longshore unions, in the United States, there ought to be a single, militant dockworkers union encompassing all three coasts. That will not come about by combining the two sellout bureaucracies of the ILA and ILWU but only through building an opposition class-struggle leadership in a battle against their policies of class collaboration. In Europe and North Africa, the fight against job-killing automation must have the unions that have actually fought for workers solidarity with Gaza in the forefront.

And while reformist “labor parties” act, along with the labor bureaucracies, as a transmission belt for capitalist ideology within the working class, there is an urgent need to forge workers parties that challenge the rule of capital, through a fight for transitional demands such as that for union control of technology, and that champion the struggles of the oppressed, first and foremost today to liberate the Palestinian Arab and Hebrew-speaking working people and all the peoples of the Middle East from the yoke of Zionism, the domination of imperialism, the rule of monarchies and military dictatorships, and of all the capitalist rulers.

Jack Heyman (center) with Genova dockworkers outside European port workers meeting to stop war cargo.  (Photo: L'internazionalista)

Will a fighting program emerge from the Lisbon conference for action on the docks to stop job-killing automation? Given the class-collaborationist pro-imperialist, warmongering ILA and IDC leadership, don’t bet on it. Those who seriously want to fight this existential threat to the very existence of the strongest sector of the workers movement must go beyond simple trade unionism and fight on behalf of the entire working class and all the oppressed. The first order of business of any conference to fight the maritime bosses who are a linchpin of imperialism must be to take a stand and stop the death cargo used to massacre the Palestinians, Iranians and others.

Mobilize the power of a militant working class to link the struggle against the devastation of Zionist/imperialist war on Gaza and against the devastation of capitalist automation in the ports, fighting for jobs for all amid the ruins of decaying capitalism, and the masses will come out. Port workers have the power. Use it, or lose it!  ■

Jack Heyman was recognized by ILA Local 1422 for being in the forefront of the struggle of the Charleston Five dock workers jailed for picketing scab stevedoring operation in Charleston, South Carolina in January 2000. He has been an organizer of  numerous solidarity actions in the ports of Oakland and San Francisco: 1984 anti-apartheid strike against a ship from South Africa; 1995-1998 Liverpool Dockers international campaign; strike captain during the 2002 PMA lockout; 2008 all West Coast ports shutdown against the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; 2017 action to stop a fascist (Patriot Prayer) provocation in San Francisco; 2010-2023 various port actions protesting the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.

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