Hat-tip to Dave Broder and the Workers Liberty-sponsored Middle East Workers’ Solidarity group.  The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently passed a motion calling for industrial action to protest the continuing assault on Iraq and Afghanistan.  The motion calls the war ‘bipartisan’ and criticises both the main bourgeois parties in America, and proposes an 8 hour ‘No Peace No Work Holiday’ on May 1st, appealing for other unions around the world to do the same.  While 8 hours isn’t much, the symbolic power of working class action in this manner is immense, and we hope that other unions will follow suit.

It is a shame that 2007’s now-infamous AGM of Stop the War voted against calling for such action on the most mealy-mouthed basis imaginable.  Hopefully the motley crew of de facto Stalinists and actual Stalinists that comprises the esteemed Coalition’s steering committee will have a change of heart.

Below is Communist Students’ message of solidarity.

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FOR WORKERS’ ACTION TO STOP THE WAR

WHEREAS: On May 1, 2003, at the ILWU Convention in San Francisco resolutions were passed calling for an end to the war and occupation in Iraq; and

WHEREAS: ILWU took the lead among labor unions in opposing this bloody war and occupation for imperial domination; and

WHEREAS: Many unions and the overwhelming majority of the American people now oppose this bipartisan and unjustifiable war in Iraq and Afghanistan but the two major political parties, Democrats and Republicans continue to fund the war; and

WHEREAS: Millions worldwide have marched and demonstrated against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but have been unable to stop the wars; and

WHEREAS: ILWU’s historic dock actions,

1) like the refusal of Local 10 longshoremen to load bombs for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1978 and military cargo to the Salvadoran military dictatorship in 1981 and

2) the honoring of the teachers’ union antiwar picket May 19, 2007 against SSA in the port of Oakland stand as a limited but shining example of how to oppose these wars; and

WHEREAS: The spread of war in the Middle East is threatened with U. S. air strikes in Iran or possible military intervention in Syria or the destabilized Pakistan;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That it is time to take labor’s protest to a more powerful level of struggle by calling on unions and working people in the U. S. and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” May 1, 2008 for 8 hours 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; and

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED:

That a clarion call from the ILWU be sent with an urgent appeal for unity of action to the AFL-CIO, the Change to Win Coalition and all of the international labor organizations to which we are affiliated to bring an end to this bloody war once and for all.