“Scrap Iron Becomes Bullets”: When Dockers Fought Fascism with Direct Action

Dockworkers possess a long history of solidarity with peoples fighting authoritarianism, fascism, imperialism, and racism. Laboring at pivotal “choke points,” dockers (and other transport workers) can interrupt trade and thus the entire global economy. For more than eighty years, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), particularly Local 10 in the San Francisco Bay Area, has inserted its radical, working-class perspective into global politics by periodically refusing to unload cargo from or load ships intended for fascist, imperialist, and racist regimes. In 1937, Japan launched the Second Sino-Japanese War. Despite its (then) overwhelmingly white membership and in coordination with Chinese Americans, Local 10 refused to load cargo aboard dozens of ships destined for imperial Japan. In the 1970s, the ILWU opposed Chile’s fascist regime, which had overthrown the previous, democratically elected socialist government. In 1978, after a Local 10 member discovered US military supplies intended for Chile on a San Francisco pier, the union boycotted these materials. In coordination with Chilean activists and other solidarity activists, the ILWU helped change US foreign policy toward Chile. Driven by rank-and-file activists, the ILWU demonstrated its commitment to labor internationalism via direct action tactics, particularly boycotting cargo.