Thursday, March 1, 2001
By Steve Stallone
ILWU and ILA officers stood together at the Longshore Caucus March 14 in a show of the renewed solidarity between the West Coast and East Coast longshore unions. (From left to right: ILWU International Vice President Bob McEllrath, ILA General Vice President Ben Holland, ILWU International President Jim Spinosa, ILA Local 1422 President Ken Riley and ILA Secretary-Treasurer of the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast District Clyde Fitzgerald.) The ILA officers were invited to address the Caucus.
Holland thanked the ILWU for all it has done in support of the Charleston 5. “We appreciate so much the fact that you have gotten on board, you have taken it under your wing and made it one of your top projects,” he said. “I will guarantee you, we owe you one. We will be there for you.”
Holland went on to suggest the two longshore unions could and should work together on matters of jurisdiction and technology.
“We would like to sit down and talk about modern technology and where they [the employers] are going and where they want to take us and whether we want to go or don't want to go. We need to do it collectively and we need to be educated on where we are going and we all need to be on the same page,” he said. “I don't think that we can stand in the way of technology, but we damned sure don't have to be replaced by it. If we can put our heads together, we can progress into the 21st Century and take this industry into the 21st Century and we can go along with it, protect it for ourselves and for our children and the people behind us.”
Together the ILA and the ILWU have the strength to make sure things work out for them, Holland said.
“We work for the same carriers. We work for the same stevedores,” he said. “Separately, I think they can play one against the other. They can take us on. But if we put our heads together, they can't do that. If we can shut them down from Maine to Texas and from Seattle to L.A. or San Diego, however far down you go, then we've got them.”
Spinosa then echoed Holland’s remarks and pledged to keep meeting regularly with the ILA and keep supporting one another.
“Today’s world is turning fast. If we are not together, we lose,” he said. “The more we understand, the more we communicate, the more we back one another and make sure that we are not treading on each other's turf, but are actually backing one another in a struggle, that is where we want to find ourselves today.”
