Portside

ILWU Local 13 said employers have "thumbed their noses" at worker pay requests. The local, representing 12,000 longshoremen in Los Angeles and Long Beach, said rank-and-file union members "had taken it upon themselves to voice their displeasure."

“Seafarers are an invisible link in the global chain and are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation,” Faker said. “Workers in the Port of Tacoma were not going to let this vessel go anywhere while these workers’ lives were in peril.”

The Department of Labor accepted 86 percent of COVID-19 claims for federal workers, while it accepted only 7 percent of COVID-19 related claims from longshore and other harbor workers. 

Stranded seafarers and port workers are facing physical and mental exhaustion, trapped on shipboard since the pandemic began. They do not have access to shore leave; some have been denied emergency medical treatment.

Seafarers were in a precarious situation long before the COVID-19 crisis struck early this year. Many workers are now stranded on ships at sea, and others are afraid to return home for fear of losing their jobs in the future.

We need to show working people that it is possible to undertake major industry reform that puts workers and their communities at its heart by ensuring future low emissions jobs are good union jobs.

Newly elected President Marina Secchitano marked the 100th anniversary of the Inlandboatman's Union with a pledge to continue its heritage of solidarity, organizing and resistance to attacks by anti-union companies or politicians.

El Faro was an overaged ship -- and the problem with old ships is that they are about as safe as old trucks. Commercial truckers don't drive 40-year old vehicles on their routes.

The walk-out, and a planned three-day strike next week, is over plans to close about 250 ticket offices and cut 950 jobs in a restructuring that Transport for London, which runs London's transportation network, says could save 50 million pounds a year.