Ingalls workers’ strike. Lessons on labor resistance in U.S. Gulf

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24377.shtml

Ingalls workers’ strike. Lessons on labor resistance in U.S. Gulf
By Saladin Muhammad
Apr 21, 2007, 20:55

On March 8, more than 7,000 workers at the Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., went on strike demanding a decent contract. The Ingalls workers are represented by 15 unions; 11 are affiliated with the AFL-CIO Pascagoula Metal Trades Council that represents 6,700 production workers including asbestos workers, boilermakers, machinists, operating engineers, painters and allied trades, plumbers and pipe fitters, sheet metal workers, and the unaffiliated carpenters, guards, laborers and teamsters.

Fourteen of the unions voted down the first two contract proposals presented by Northrop Grumman, the corporate owner of Ingalls. Grumman is one of the U.S. government’s major military defense (offense) contractors.

After a nearly month-long strike and amid mounting pressure from the Katrina disaster’s continuing impact on the workers and their families, union members voted on April 4 to accept a contract that had only 18 cents more than was offered in the first two Grumman proposals.

The vote count reveals a deep dissatisfaction among a majority of the workers with the contract, and with the government’s complicity with Grumman’s exploitation and disaster profiteering off its workers. The vote count was 1,370 in favor and 910 against, totaling only 2,300 of the nearly 5,000 members who had voted down the previous contract proposals and for the strike.



The nearly 3,000 union members who did not vote represent a silent majority who did not support the contract, but who felt that the Ingalls workers could not hold out on strike any longer. This figure also indicates a high degree of demoralization among the workers because of the lack of national support or promotion of the strike by the national trade union movement.

This lack of national trade union support for a strike against a major corporation by workers in the Gulf Coast disaster areas sends a very disheartening message to all workers in the region. It says that the trade unions have not made the fight for a Just Reconstruction for working people on the Gulf Coast a major part of their national agenda. This limits the power of the working class in this region when their struggles can’t get national support. This has serious negative ramifications for workers throughout the region, and for the development of a powerful movement for a just reconstruction throughout.

FULL story at link.

[cloudbase]

1. The SMART campaign

to organize the Gulf mariners didn't work too well, either.