WIN Week In Review May 2-4, 2008

By Doug Cunningham

Thousands of long shore union workers shut down west coast ports on May Day as a protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The movement of cargo was stopped, demonstrating the collective power that workers have.
The Pacific Maritime Association confirms that thousands of dockworkers refused to show up for work Thursday morning, bringing cargo movement to a standstill from Seattle to Long Beach, California. Students and others in the antiwar movement joined hands with their brothers and sisters in the ILWU for a powerful antiwar protest from Seattle to Long Beach, California. ILWU Local 10’s Jack Heyman.

[Heyman]: "This is the first time in U.S. labor history that workers have actually stopped work in order to stop a war."

Clarence Thomas is with the Port Workers May Day Organizing Committee in San Francisco.

[Thomas]: "We believe that only in a peaceful world is it possible for there to be the kinds of gains that all working people need in order to have any kind of economic sustainability."

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GM says it doesn’t want any part in settling the American Axle strike, despite the fact that the strike has cost GM $800 million and the lost production of 100,000 vehicles. The UAW strike was triggered by American Axle’s demand to slash wages in half and end future retiree pensions and health benefits. GM this week announced that more than 3500 workers are being laid off due to slow sales. Thanks to the UAW contract, these workers will get about 80 percent of their pay while on layoff.

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Longhaul truckers hit hard by skyrocketing diesel fuel prices are staging guerilla slowdowns in protest. Their latest was a national slowdown on May Day. Jesse Russell reports:
Diesel fuel prices have reached a record of $4.20 per gallon in some places and the average tractor-trailer takes 125-gallons to fill a tank. The long haulers don’t feel that Washington is hearing their plight and over the month of April they have been launching guerilla slow downs in some the country’s biggest cities by driving five miles per hour below the speed limit. The truckers are asking everyday commuters and drivers to join them in backing up the system by also driving five miles below the speed limit.

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SEIU's Andy McDonald says after being served with a lawsuit, the union’s United Healthcare West California local officers have returned $2.8 million from a special fund that they had been created. But SEIU says that still leaves $245,000 to be returned.
[McDonald]: “We want to wrap this up quickly. We want to get this money returned to UHW members and back under the financial safeguards of the constitution and federal law.”
United Healthcare West says the lawsuit is a “PR circus” and “a hoax being perpetrated on the press and, most shamefully, upon SEIU members, in order to smear us and shut down the Stern team's political opposition.”
SEIU’s McDonald says this is not retribution for UHW’s internal political dissent, and is not a step toward SEIU International taking over UHW.