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Burma & Docker Strike



Re continuing solidarity support from international unions, the
following is something to think about, as the ILO and union support for
Free Burma should take on international union activism to block freight
transport to Slorc. Any information or suggestions?

Dawn Star
Euro-Burmanet (paris)
WorldWide TOTAL boycott


Labor Video Project wrote:
> 
> From: Labor Video Project <lvpsf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: US Media Kills International Dockers
> 
> By Janine Jackson,
>         On Jan. 20, freight stopped moving in shipyards around the
> world. Dockworkers in 27 countries-including this one-conducted the
> first coordinated global work stoppage, in solidarity with fired union
> longshore workers in Liverpool, England. But news of thi s unprecedented
> act of international solidarity was forbiddent to most of the US.S.
> public: it's a measure of just how intent U.S. mainstream media are on
> depicting labor as useless and outdated that they overwhelmingly ignored
> this dramatic feat.
>         The labor action affected some 105 ports, from Japan to Sweden
> to Spain to Zimbabwe. It was organized by the International Transport
> Federation to show support for 329 members of Liverpool's Merseyside
> Port Shop Stewards who were fired in September 1995.
>  The union dock workers had refused to cross a picket line set up by
> other workers at the port. The Liverpool strike is emblematic of labor's
> fight to safeguard hard-won worker protection in the face of global
> downsizing and privatization.
>         While often taking a dim view of labor's chances, the European
> and Canadian press at least covered the stoppage. The US. media coverage
> consisted of a pitiful scattering of very short stories-most of them AP
> wire service reports that most readers never g et to see. Total
> television consisted of about a minute and a half on CNN.
>         Why such paltry coverage? It wasn't just an international story
> after all, but also a domestic one: Workers from the International
> Longhoremen's and Warehousemen's Union staged walkouts at the biggest
> ports on the West Coast-Seattle, Portland, Oakland, S an Francisco, Los
> Angeles and Long Beach. "The diruption closed down the entire West
> Coast, delaying thousands of international shipments," reported the
> Journal of Commerce, in one f the very few U.S. print media stories on
> the shutdown.
>         What exactly did mainstream reporters not want U.S. workers to
> hear? Maybe it's that a small group of rank and file workers can bring
> the much-vaunted global trade system to a grinding halt. "Those giant
> container ships aren't just carrying sports shoes and coffee beans,"
> says the newsletter Labor Notes. "They're carrying the materials,
> components, and semi-finished products that are the stuff of today's
> international, just-in-time production system."
>         These events show that workers around the world can
> recognize-and act on-the links between their struggles. "It's a global
> matter," said Jack Mulculhay, of ILWU Local 8 in Portland, Ore. where
> solidarity strikers stayed out 24 hours. (AP,1/21/)"With dere gulation
> and privatization of industries, there are attacks on worker people in
> every country in the world."
>         U.S. coporate-owned media don't simply deny their readers
> information about international resistance to anti-worker economic
> trends. They portray Europeans as hankering after the "unfettered free
> trade" system championed by transnational corporate intere sts.
>         Take the march 3 issue of USA Today. Gannett Corp.'s flagship
> daily has never been shy about it national chauvinism or its
> cheerleading for elite interests. But that day's example was especially
> vivid: "USA back on top" crowed the headline. "World Rivals
>  Envy Economic Turnaround."
>         The article described the jealousy that Europe and Japan
> reportedly feel for the U.S. economic scene. "At dinner parties in Rome
> and boardrooms in Paris, people are marveling at America's performance,"
> the paper says, giving a hint of where their reporte rs do their
> research. We never learn what people not in the boardroom-and dinner
> party think about the U.S. "model," which any fire reckoning would admit
> includes huge wage disparities, increasing poverty and homelessness, and
> widely inaccessible health c are.
>         "The unmatched ability to create jobs-and plenty of them-is
> what's drawing the USA global rave," USA Today has the temerity to
> proclaim. The reporter even cites, as an example of how Europe lags
> behind, the fact that "French tiremaker Michelin plans to i ntroduce an
> advanced labor-saving technology in North America rather than Europe
> because the USA has few laws to prevent the resulting layoffs." This is
> something to celebrate? For whom?
>         The paper goes on to say that Germany's "problem" is than unlike
> U.S. corporations, "German companies are unable to shed employees
> quickly as demand falls." It's no surprise that the corporation that
> published this paper is the same time busting unions i n Detroit. The
> 2,000 newspaper workers currently locked out from the News and Free
> Press have been on the line for 21 months because they refuse to be
> easily "shed."
>         Which brings us back to Jan. 20 and workers in 27 countries
> acting together, bringing trade to a standstill because an injury to one
> is an injury to all. From reading newspapers like USA Today, you'd never
> dream such a thing was possible. Don't believe e verything you read.
> 
>         Janine Jackson writes for the Labor Resource Center, Queens
> College, CUNY, in cooperation with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.