Jack Heyman Speaks at International Dockworkers Meeting

European Port Workers Call for
Strike Action to Stop Arms

On Friday and Saturday, September 26-27, a meeting of European dockworkers was held in Genova, Italy to discuss common action around the watchword, “Dockers Will Not Work for War.” The meeting built on recent actions by port workers in Morocco, France, Italy and Greece blocking arms to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It was called by the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), one of the larger “rank-and-file” unions in Italy, with affiliates in several ports, including the CALP (Autonomous Collective of Port Workers) in Genova. The League for the Fourth International was there as Jack Heyman, longtime dockworker and maritime activist and retired member of the West Coast U.S. International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) spoke to the assembly on the second day, bringing solidarity greetings from ILWU Local 10 and a message of international class struggle against the imperialist warmongers and Zionist butchers.

In the days before the meeting, on Tuesday, September 22, the USB and other rank-and-file unions called a “general strike for Gaza.” The strike was huge, with a reported one million marchers in protests across Italy, the main ports shut down, rail lines struck, highways blocked and piazzas filled (see “Mass Strike for Gaza Brings Italy to a Halt: For International Strike Action to Stop U.S./Israel Gaza Genocide!”) The unions vowed to strike again if Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, which it did on the evening of October 1, seizing hundreds of volunteers bringing aid to Gaza. Immediately, protesters went into the streets all across Italy. On October 3, another “general strike” was held, this time called by all the rank-and-file unions and the CGIL, the largest labor federation, something previously unheard of.

The October 3 pro-Palestinian mass strike was even larger than September 22, with some 2 million marchers in 100 cities. Once again, ports were closed, rail lines and highways blocked. The fascist premier Giorgia Meloni, head of the right-wing coalition government, dismissed the “pro Pal” strike action as a “long weekend.” Transport minister Matteo Salvini of the far-right Lega again threatened to “regulate” the right to strike. But the “human wave for Gaza” (Il Fatto Quotidiano, 4 October) was so massive, filled with young protesters (the “Gaza generation”), that insults and threats only intensified anti-government fury. The next day a national Gaza solidarity demonstration called by several Palestinian groups brought a million protesters into the streets of Rome, with Palestinians at the head of the march, followed by the militant unions.

At the September 26-27 dockers meeting, in addition to port workers from Civitavecchia, Genova, Livorno and Trieste in Italy, there were delegations and representatives from CGT dockworkers in France; ENEDEP port workers in Greece; the LAB union in the Basque country; SZPD port workers in Slovenia, as well as representatives from Cyprus and Hamburg, Germany and Spanish observers from the European Dockworkers Council. The ODT union in Tangier, Morocco and the Liman İş dockers union in Turkey were unable to attend because the Italian government refused them visas. Francesco Staccioli of the USB reported on the second day of the meeting that they had agreed on a common document, and “We are now aiming at an internationally coordinated strike in the near future.” The assembly hailed recent actions stopping shipments at the U.S. military base at Camp Darby, in Taranto and Ravenna.

The League for the Fourth International has called from the outset to “Defend the Palestinians Against U.S./Israel Genocidal War on Gaza!” (10 October 2023), and in particular for “workers action against the shipment of arms to Israel and Ukraine.” Many leftists and trade-union militants see labor action as part of a popular-front “antiwar movement” built on pacifism and butter-not-guns reformism aiming at a cease-fire. The Flotilla included representatives of the Five Stars Movement and Democratic Party, mainstays Italian imperialism, and it had an escort of warships of NATO members Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey (up until the last moment, when they peeled off to let Israel do its dirty work). In contrast, the LFI has emphasized that “Class-conscious workers must seek to use their proletarian power to drive the Zionist occupiers out of Gaza and the West Bank,” including calling for “mass strikes against the imperialist rulers.”

Jack Heyman’s speech was well received, particularly in recounting actions by the ILWU against South African apartheid in 1984 and the May Day 2008 strike that shut down all West Coast ports against the U.S. imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also took on trade-union divisions, fostered by the pro-capitalist bureaucracies, that have stymied solidarity action by unions worldwide. In Italy, the militant “rank-and-file” unions (sindacati di base) organize separately from the bureaucratized labor federations (CGIL, UIL, CISL), each calling their own separate “general strikes.” Yet while the federations are utterly subservient to Italy’s antilabor laws, all appeal to the Italian (bourgeois) Constitution’s “antiwar” clause (Article 11), and Law 185/1990 Article 1 §6(a) against export of arms to war zones, which are basically dead letters.

Heyman’s remarks struck a chord with some in the meeting, as reported in the perceptive account by Pietro Barabino in Il Fatto Quotidiano (28 September), a left-populist daily:

“A US dockworker also took the floor, rubbing salt into the wound of union divisions: ‘We may march separately,’ he paraphrased Lenin, ‘but in the end we must strike together.’ He did not seem to be a novice and cited movements that could have stopped the wheels of war, had they not been bogged down in grotesque squabbles between unions in the United States and England. The reference prompted a response from a CGIL member, who took the floor in the ‘USB house’ to patch up his organization's controversial decision not to join last Monday’s [September 22] general strike: ‘Thanks to pressure from our own members, with the Flotilla we have reached an operational agreement with the rank-and-file unions for joint mobilization for the next general strike in case of a blockade of the humanitarian mission.’”

That is, in fact, what happened on October 3, for the first time in memory, if ever. The recent mass strikes and millions-strong mobilizations led by Italian workers – along with the actions of Greek, Moroccan and French dockworkers – as well as the Genova meeting of port workers seeking to stop arms shipments, especially to the Zionist genocidal war machine, can be a spark. As Internationalist demonstrators in the San Francisco Bay Area chanted at a Gaza solidarity demonstration on October 5, “Italian workers showed us how, workers arms embargo now!”

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JACK HEYMAN SPEECH TO EUROPEAN PORT WORKERS MEETING

Good afternoon comrades, my name is Jack Heyman. I’m here on behalf of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union from the West Coast of America. I’m here to bring solidarity greetings from the most militant port in the United States of America. In 1984 we struck against a ship from apartheid South Africa for eleven days. Nelson Mandela was in prison when we coordinated our strike in 1984. Six years later in 1990 he did a world tour. He stopped in Oakland, California and the first words out of his mouth were, “I commend the longshore union for striking against the ship from South Africa. Your action sparked the anti-apartheid movement in California.” [applause]

In 2008 we conducted a historic strike on the West Coast. We shut down every port in Canada and the United States to demand an end to the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [applause] That historic action happened because, in collaboration with the League for the Fourth International, I put forward a resolution in our local that passed unanimously to shut down every port on the West Coast. Following that was the Mavi Marmara¹ flotilla, the Freedom Flotilla, to Gaza, similar to the flotilla that’s happening now. The Israeli IDF [military] attacked that flotilla and murdered nine of the humanitarian aides. Immediately after that attack, we organized a protest for the next Israeli ZIM line ship that came into our port. At five o’clock in the morning we had two thousand people in the port stopping work on the ZIM ship. [applause] I wanted to tell my comrades from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions that ZIM line ships since 2014 do not come in to the port of Oakland and San Francisco ‒ we stopped it. [applause]

Last year the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions put out a statement saying “Words are not enough to support our struggle. We need workers, particularly in the ports, to refuse to handle military cargo for Israel.” There were many wonderful sounding statements from trade-union bureaucrats. But the workers in their trade unions were not called to action. This is hypocrisy on the part of trade-union bureaucrats. Particularly in a country like UK, but also in the United States, the main supplier of war materiel for the Zionist genocidal regime.

In every important struggle in the trade-union movement, it is always the union bureaucracy that holds back the ranks from taking action. I understand that there are several port worker unions in Italy, for various different reasons and with different viewpoints. But we must unify the port workers not only in Italy, but in Western European countries, the EU [European Union], and in the United States. We need to defy the union bureaucracies to take the action that’s necessary to stop military cargo. We need to call it “hot cargo.” You refuse to handle hot cargo to Israel. What we need to do is unify all port workers. And Lenin said it best: he said march separately, you have your own unions, but let’s strike together. Let’s strike together to stop Israel from maintaining its genocidal war against the Palestinian people. [applause]

Aside from fighting within the trade unions, there is a broader struggle politically. We need to replace the leaderships in all of the EU and in the United States, the imperialist countries that are supporting the Zionist machine in Israel. Let me conclude by saying: the only way to bring down these imperialist regimes is to have coordinated strikes, number one, and number two, we need to move toward building a revolutionary workers party in the industrialized countries. I’m a supporter of the newspaper L’internazionalista,² where you can read what I have to say more extensively. But let me finish by saying: All power to the international working class! [applause]

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