ILWU to Shut Down West Coast Ports May 1 to Protest War

When over one million marched for immigrants' rights May 1st 2006, few if any citizens paid any attention, unless they employed, or owned businesses depending on their work. Now this May 1st, the "season" is already heating up. NPR covered independent truckers yesterday staging slowdowns across the nation, grid locking urban traffic over high fuel costs. This is no joke ... [Excerpt] n a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, “One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.”

This is the first time in decades that an American union has decided to undertake industrial action against a U.S. war. It is doubly important that this mobilization of labor’s power is to take place on May Day, the international workers day, which is not honored in the U.S.

Read more about the ILWU action