Longshore workers in novel contract referendum

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Members of the International Longshoremen's Association were set to vote in November on extending their contract covering the whole East Coast. The union administration urges ILA members to vote yes. An organized opposition campaigns hard for rejection. The issues in dispute, to an outside observer, are complex, even bewildering. All that would be normal and could hardly attract attention. But what is unusual and does command interest is the extent to which the opposition has won the ability to reach the membership with its message.

The Longshore Workers Coalition, the nationally organized reform coalition which opposes the contract, is exercising the right, at its own expense, to mail 24,000 copies of an eight-page newsletter denouncing the proposed contract top to bottom and, of course, urging members to vote no. The Coalition won that right from the ILA officialdom in a painless, virtually routine fashion --- no hassle, no protracted, legal controversy. And that right is no empty formality; the ILA administration actually risks defeat in the referendum; if, that is, the ballot count is accurate and honest.

For the first time, the Longshore Workers Coalition has the easy opportunity to reach the entire ILA membership; and it uses that opportunity to go beyond contract issues and present its broad reform platform: strengthened democracy and the direct election of international officers, safer working conditions, clear and fair hiring rules, an end to backdoor deals, intensified organizing.

For many unions, this kind of open discussion on the eve of an important contract referendum would be unusual --- and gratifying. For the ILA, it must seem extraordinary. For decades the ILA had been listed by government agencies as one of the unions heavily infiltrated by organized crime. The Department of Justice's RICO suit against it remains poised but stalled in federal court. Nevertheless in this instance, whatever the explanation, the ILA points the way toward fair discussion in a contract referendum.