Saturday, December 10, 2011

In the Dec. 12 port shutdown campaign, the rank and file are leading organized labor, not the other way around

"We are disrupting for one day, but it is also a symbolic action to show that the workers are actually the ones with the power in this country."

As Occupy Wall Street groups stretching from San Diego to Anchorage mobilizefor a multi-port shutdown of the North American West Coast, union members are finding the mobilization offers more than just support against union busting and unfair contracts. Activists and rank-and-file workers say the movement is teaching them what the bureaucratic infrastructure of organized labor has made them forget: collective power.

On Dec. 12, general assemblies (the decentralized governing bodies of OWS) in Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Tacoma, Wash., Santa Barbara, Calif., Portland, Ore., Seattle, Longview, Wash., San Diego, Anchorage, California’s Port Hueneme region, and dozens of smaller camps plan to blockade ports and halt commerce for a day. There is a combined Dallas-Houston effort to demonstrate at the port in Houston. Japanese rail workers, who are sympathetic to longshoremen, who work a partner company of Bunge — the company Occupy is protesting — will be demonstrating in Japan.

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/occupy_vs_big_labor/