Teamsters: Bush/UAE Port Scam a Precursor to Union Busting?

[newswolf56]

President Bush has told us to trust him on giving management control of six major U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, but given Dubai’s anti-union laws it might be impossible for union workers to speak up about security concerns.

All Americans, including U.S. port workers, have strong reasons to raise concerns about the deal:

At the port of Dubai and throughout the United Arab Emirates (UAE), unions are outlawed;

In 1997, Dubai agreed to train Australian mercenaries to be strikebreakers;

(snip)

We cannot allow a company, based in such an oppressive, anti-union nation to operate our vulnerable ports.

At a time when President Bush is calling on all Americans to be more vigilant about terrorism, this plan completely contradicts that.

Full text at:

http://www.teamster.org/06news/hn_060224_7.asp

Note too my own post on this topic yesterday:

Union Official I Know Speculates It's to Smash the Remaining Unions

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2476199&mesg_id=2476266

_________
Edit: Italics added to make it clearer the source is a Teamster bulletin and not my own writing.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

1. Teamsters Union's

balls where cut off long ago; Can't fight corrupt businesses and the Bush administration anti-labor practices when there is a fear by the majority of union members of losing their jobs.

Signed
a former Teamster

[WorkersToPower]

2. The labor aristrocracy

The reason isn't "lack of balls". It's that the union bureaucracy is seperate from the working class, and pro-capitalist.

There's a real need for rank and file organizing to counter this sort of shit.

See: "What we can and must learn from the New York transit workers' strike"; http://www.freepeoplesmovement.org/lib1b.html

[Toots]

14. Teamsters and "Union Bustin"

:rofl: Teamsters Union hired Scabs to build their New Labor Hall in Houston in 2000 because they said Union Labor cost too much......Fuck the Teamsters...

[upi402]

3. They busted the electricians and operators unions in the Port of

Seattle. They removed know local, long time workers -and replaced them with out of state non-union workers. Some foreign nationals.

I mean *IF* we're at war.... what the hell is more safe than long time, local workers to watch the coming and going at our very vulnerable ports of entry?


Major General Smedley Butler was right. War is a racket. BushCo couldn't care less about homeland security. Just looting the treasury and picking the remaining meat off the skeleton of the American worker.

[oasis]

4. Union busting is very much a part of the plan. (n/t).

[PA Democrat]

5. More on the UAE's involvement in the union-busting efforts

in Australia below. I started a thread on this topic yesterday as well.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2476680

In a striking demonstration of the effectiveness of global trade union co-ordination, action by the London based International Transport Workers Federation has succeeded in stopping a secret plan, backed by the right-wing Australian government, to train Australian soldiers as strike breakers in the Gulf state of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Following threats made by the ITF last week to target shipping services to Dubai for industrial action in ports around the world and an urgent meeting on Friday afternoon between officials of the ITF and the Maritime Union of Australia at the Kensington Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, visas for the 70 strong mercenary force which arrived in Dubai earlier in the week were cancelled along with their contract with the Dubai port authority.

Clearly believing that the U.A.E., a country in which trade unionism is illegal, was beyond the reach of the ITF which had already proved effective in defusing a government organised confrontation with the dockers union in the port of Cairns in September this year, the Australian government was clearly behind the scheme to give cargo handling training to its soldiers during their long service leave prior to their being used to break the power of the MUA on Australia s waterfront.

http://www.labournet.net/docks2/9712/dubai.htm

[senseandsensibility]

6. I am appreciative that my brothers and sisters in the Teamsters

are doing whatever they can to fight this travesty, and I support them one hundred percent. Of course union busting is part of this.

[upi402]

7. unions ILLEGAL in UAE

After all, look what the first Executive action initiated by Bush was;
http://www.hud.gov/offices/olr/dbsuspension05.cfm
He suspended Davis Bacon in 4 states in the Katrina area.

Thanks a lot W, that'll help folks down there. It'll save them all those burdensome trips to the bank.

[PhilipShore]

8. Virginian Pilot: Local Teamsters protest port deal for Dubai company

Virginian Pilot
Local Teamsters protest port deal for Dubai company
February 25, 2006

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=100189&ran=84676

NORFOLK –– James Wright got the call from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Thursday night. The posters came Friday morning.

Wright, president of Teamsters Local 822, had less than 24 hours to organize a Teamsters-sponsored rally in Norfolk protesting the planned takeover of operations at six U.S. port terminals by a company from the United Arab Emirates. The local represents about 2,300 workers at UPS, Smithfield Foods and other local companies.

[omega minimo]

9. Yeah-- UAE nixed unions when the slaves tried to organize

:yoiks:

[upi402]

10. LOL

I better nominate this one.
:kick:

[PhilipShore]

11. Seattle Post Intelligencer: Unions fight for safety at port rally

Seattle Post Intelligencer
Unions fight for safety of port workers at rally
February 25, 2006

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/260835_portlocal25.html

The uproar over the sale of several domestic shipping operations to a United Arab Emirates-owned company continued Friday, as about 100 people rallied in Seattle and called for it to be stopped for national security reasons.

Standing near the Port of Seattle's Pier 46, protesters -- most of them Teamsters and International Longshore and Warehouse Union members -- questioned whether the sale to Dubai Ports World would harm the country's safety.

Al Hobart, a Teamsters International vice president, said the United Arab Emirates has had a spotty record on national security and that two of the Sept. 11 terrorists were based there.

The rally Friday was one of about 20 nationwide, he said.

[omega minimo]

12. K&R

:kick:

[newswolf56]

13. This needs to be kept alive: come on, people; if we're gonna...

talk the talk, let's show the world it's not bullshit and walk the walk too! Especially since the fascists are already playing their divide-and-conquer race card to (once again) discredit the labor movement -- and some foolish people are even falling for it.

:kick:

[senseandsensibility]

15. kick

for the unions