On Thursday, Maersk, the largest shipper in the world, saw scores of Jobs with Justice (JwJ) picketers bring their Port of Tacoma terminal to a grinding halt for 3 hours. Security guards exercising legal rights to organize at this highly profitable Maersk operation have faced a management run union-busting campaign and alleged unlawful threats of mass firings. The guards are organizing with the Longshore Union (ILWU) to improve on poverty wages, lack of affordable family healthcare, and no respected voice on the job. The JwJ community activists staged a loud and lively picket line just as scores of port workers were dispatched to begin an evening shift unloading a large Maersk container ship. Concerned that crossing the line might be unsafe, port workers exercised their union contract rights to work in safe conditions and called for a neutral arbitration of the situation. In November, an arbitrator operating within the ILWU union contract deemed a similar JwJ picket line at the Maersk Terminal unsafe to cross. The arbitrator ruled that management must pay the Longshore workers for the time waiting for the picket to end. Many security guards at the Maersk terminal earned about $10 per hour when the organizing drive started, do not have access to affordable family healthcare, and are not compensated with a plan to support retirement with dignity. For many years, Maersk has undercut security guards' rights to jobs with justice by using systems of sub-contracting and "company unions." It is a system of union-busting that that is spread like a virus through out the Port of Tacoma. Craig Dameron, statewide Co-Chair of Jobs with Justice, explained that the group was sending a message to Maersk and other shipping companies that Tacoma will not tolerate companies, "that continually disrespect the rights of workers at Port of Tacoma terminals." Adam Hoyt, Co-Chair of the JwJ Pierce County Organizing Committee vowed to "work with other Jobs with Justice local coalitions and their allies nationwide to confront Maersk for violating worker rights. If management thought tonight was a headache, they don't know the migraine that's coming." Hundreds of low-wage guards at the Port of Tacoma are watching this precedent-setting organizing drive waged by the Maersk terminal guards to see if jobs with justice can be won and is worth fighting for. Maersk is the largest Danish corporation and the largest container shipping company in the world, with 110,000 employees worldwide and $44b in revenues in 2006. Maersk and other extremely profitable global shipping corporations typically hire security contractors like Securitas to insulate themselves from the responsibility of providing union living wage jobs espoused by their own publicly promoted corporate policies. Until recently, the Securitas workers were technically under the International Union of the Security, Police & Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA). When Congress enacted labor law 7 decades ago, it denied equal rights to security workers to organize unions as well as have other important rights like to picket and strike over basic worker issues. Companies helped fake unions form like SPFPA to keep guards from joining stronger unions like the ILWU and from organizing for stronger rights. |
When George showed up to work as usual in the early morning, a manager tried to force him to sign a form agreeing to not talk to coworkers about "issues" or gather with them in non-work areas, among other things. George, a low-wage security worker and strong union leader, refused this manager's demand to violate his basic worker rights and law and was told he would be fired by the end of his shift. That afternoon, managers called him into the office and suspended him for an entirely different reason— for distributing union information to co-workers. The next day a manager fired George over the telephone, reading a statement allegedly from Maersk Terminals Security Manager Marvin Ferreira, "no matter how many yellow pieces of paper guards or longshore post, the guards will never belong to ILWU." 
