Communist Web Thursday 11th May 2000 9.30pm gmt USA: Dockers beat union-busting assault by Herb Kaye and Tim Wheeler US East coast dockers' union, the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), has won their five-month battle with the Danish shipping company, Nordana, to restore union hiring at the company's Charleston docks in South Carolina. While Nordana capitulated, the state of South Carolina is still attempting to railroad five workers on charges of "conspiring to riot" stemming from a police riot in January. The union is fighting to have all charges dropped. Charleston ILA President Kenneth Riley credited solidarity from dockers in the US and internationally for helping force Nordana to back down. The International Transport Federation helped get dockers from Australia and other countries to refuse to handle Nordana ships. The ILA's West Coast counterpart, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) leaped into action - including a $105,000 contribution to the Dockers' Defence Fund - when it learned of the brutal attack on the Charleston dockers by an army of 600 city and state police with helicopters, harbour boats, armoured cars and SWAT teams. The workers, a majority of them African-American, had gathered at the gates of the container terminal to protest against the use of non-union labour to load a Nordana ship in the harbour. That confrontation in Charleston resulted in several police and longshoremen being sent to hospital and nine longshoremen being arrested. Shortly after, the Attorney General of South Carolina brought felony charges of "conspiring to riot" against five of the longshoremen and then denied the union the right to use its funds to defend the workers. "These dockworkers have been attacked not only on the picketline but also by the South Carolina court system and the state legislature. This is a state that still flies the Confederate flag over the state capitol", ILWU President Brian McWilliams told the People's Weekly World. "This is not an isolated attack. We face the same employers with the same appetite for profits and union-busting. What they did to them in South Carolina they... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/usadockers/usadockers.html
