Defend ILWU Borax Miners!

LOS ANGELES, March 8—On January 31, the Rio Tinto Group mining giant locked out the unionized workforce at the world’s second-largest borax mine, located in the Mojave Desert town of Boron, California, after five months of contentious contract negotiations. The nearly 600 miners are organized in Local 30 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In the face of outright union-busting by the world’s third-largest mining company, the ILWU International has offered up words of solidarity but not the urgent labor action necessary to force Rio Tinto to back down.

With a declining global market share in borax, the company is carrying out a plan worked out months ago to eviscerate the union. Its final contract offer prior to the lockout would abolish the closed shop, allowing Rio Tinto to hire non-union labor; junk seniority rights in promotion, transfer, scheduling and layoffs; and limit the union to four shop stewards who could perform their duties only on their own time. Coupled with a no-strike pledge, the proposal was a calculated provocation that would strip away every reason to have a union while slashing benefits and introducing onerous work rule changes, such as mandatory overtime. When the union membership rejected this offer, the company locked them out and bused in scabs. On March 5, after the ILWU filed charges against the company with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Rio Tinto bosses withdrew a few of their demands while keeping the ILWUers locked out.

The Rio Tinto Group is a multinational conglomerate that grew out of two companies, one British, the other Australian. Focusing on this fact, the ILWU bureaucracy has pushed national chauvinism, putting out leaflets complaining that a “powerful foreign-owned company” is “attacking American workers” and taking away “cherished Constitutional rights.” Whatever their flag, capitalists seek to drive up profit margins by attacking unions everywhere—the ILWU itself was born through bloody battles against the red-white-and-blue shipping and stevedoring companies. And we recall that the ILWU’s founder Harry Bridges, venerated by the ILWU tops, was himself born in Australia and was repeatedly threatened with deportation by the U.S. government.

Based on the lie that workers have common interests with their “own” bourgeoisie, the ILWU tops’ flag-waving chauvinism poisons the potential for international labor solidarity. Workers from Australia and Canada to Southern Africa have waged their own labor battles against Rio Tinto in recent years, while union miners from Turkey and maritime unionists from Australia have sent delegations to Boron to show their support. Dock workers are strategically placed to stop Rio Tinto’s union-busting in its tracks since it is through their hands that borax is shipped around the globe. ILWU locals, rail and other unions in the U.S. and internationally must mobilize to “hot-cargo” (refuse to handle) scab borax! Not America-first chauvinism but international working-class solidarity!

A generation ago, the bosses pulled out all the stops to break the union in Boron. In a bitter, 132-day strike in 1974, police clashed with striking workers in the streets, and the company set up a makeshift runway to fly in scabs. We wrote at the time in WV No. 62 (14 February 1975) that the strike went down to defeat “because ILWU leaders allowed borax to be shipped (some by ILWU longshoremen!) and refused to organize anything but token outside support.” Throughout the U.S., union power has been sapped under a leadership that preaches class collaboration and reliance on the capitalist Democratic Party and state agencies like the NLRB. Democratic president Barack Obama has more than proven his merit to Wall Street. Workers need their own party, independent of all the parties of capital, which will fight to expropriate the capitalists by establishing a workers government.

We print below a report from the L.A. Spartacist League on a February 24 rally in Boron for the locked-out workers that was organized by the AFL-CIO.

Reporter’s Notebook

Though only about two hours from L.A., when you go to Boron—a company town of 2,000 people—you feel transported back 50 or 100 years in time and dropped in the middle of the movies Salt of the Earth or Harlan County U.S.A. In fact, the solidarity we witnessed was both inspiring and frustrating. Inspiring in that it showed the potential for multiracial class struggle; frustrating in that the whole event was an exercise in blowing off steam and dissipating militancy.

Departing from Dodger Stadium in L.A., the cars in the caravan to Boron were festooned with American flags and signs supporting the Borax miners and their families. The ILWU tops’ reaction to the lockout has emphasized assisting the workers’ families. However, the need of the hour is to mobilize union power in defense of the ILWU and its Local 30 members. As we got within 30 miles of Boron, groups of workers and their families had gathered on many of the freeway overpasses. They were waving American flags and also holding signs. One prominent sign was: “Welcome L.A. Labor.”

As the caravan pulled into the union hall, the road was lined with miners and their families welcoming the caravan and thanking everyone for coming. The caravan included four big-rigs full of food from L.A. unions. There also were about 15 or 20 workers from the Bay Area ILWU, including the union drill team. The whole gathering was about 800 to 1,000 people. The spread of unions that were represented was very wide. It included many ILWU members from L.A./Long Beach Local 13 and other locals and over a dozen other unions, from the Teamsters (quite prominent, one of the big-rigs was theirs) to the United Food and Commercial Workers, SEIU service workers and California Nurses Association.

While the borax workers are mostly white, the workers who came up to support them were very integrated. Many of the Local 13 members, as well as other L.A. unionists, were Latino and most of the Bay Area ILWUers were black. There also were a few Asians from various L.A. unions.

To say that borax workers were ecstatic to see all these people is not an overstatement. But all of this energy was not put to any good use. After a brief bathroom break, everyone was urged to get back into their cars and drive around the town and up to the gate of the mine. The caravan was impressive; it had about 225 cars and most cars had several people in them. In the little town of Boron, many people came out to wave at the caravan. The cop presence was very laid-back. The cars went up to the mine gate, which was closed and guarded by a small number of cops and security guards. Clearly they were not expecting any trouble. People just honked their horns, yelled and turned around to go back to the union hall for food, the live band and brief speeches. Everything was very organized, but not to shut down the mine.

In front of the Local 30 hall was an outdoor rally with a loud sound system, food tables and the bureaucrats. People milled around for over two hours. We distributed Workers Vanguard and did not notice any other left presence at all—no salesmen, no one we knew from any left group. Interestingly, we met several women who had worked in the mine. It was physically difficult because the wind was blowing grit into everything.

A number of workers expressed frustration with the fact that they are not stopping the scabs. I was told that about 300 scabs are currently working 12-hour shifts and being housed in nearby motels. There has been picketing at the gate when the scabs go in—some yelling and screaming with no real attempt to stop them. It was clear that I wasn’t the only person to whom it had occurred that all these union workers assembled in a tiny company town in the Mojave Desert could really stop the scabs if they wanted to do so. Workers would mention “replacement workers,” but as soon as I said “scab,” they would, too.

I was also told several times by miners that if they acted too much as though they are on strike, they would lose their unemployment benefits (or rather their hoped-for benefits, as some people said they hadn’t gotten them yet). Everyone confirmed that they “aren’t eligible” for strike benefits from the ILWU International because they aren’t on strike. When I expressed outrage at this, people looked surprised, but they certainly didn’t disagree. When I asked if borax was being shipped from the L.A./Long Beach ports, I got different responses. One guy thought it wasn’t. Another thought it was and, if so, it showed the sad state of the American labor movement. When I brought up the Democrats, workers expressed both illusions and disappointment in Obama.

Maria Elena Durazo, head of the L.A. County Federation of the AFL-CIO, spoke to the rally on behalf of L.A. labor. She denounced Rio Tinto as a British company and said they couldn’t treat American workers this way, the U.S. was not a colony, there had been an American Revolution. She said she was bringing the borax workers American flags that they could wave proudly. It gave you a sense of how much the trade-union bureaucracy was pushing all the flag-waving, chauvinism, etc.—especially outrageous considering how much international support there has been for the Boron miners, from Turkey to Australia. After talking about the children in Boron as her family, she concluded by leading the crowd in chanting “Sí, se puede” (Yes, we can), which everyone chanted with enthusiasm.

While the solidarity was impressive, without stopping the flow of borax from Southern California ports and internationally, these workers are in deep trouble.