Organized Labor

By Paul Burton Contributing Writer

A mass picket and rally drew over 600 workers to the San Francisco waterfront on Dec. 9 to protest the firing of union members by Hornblower Yachts. The march began at Harry Bridges Plaza across from the San Francisco Ferry Building paraded along the Embarcadero to Pier 33 for a rally at Hornblower’s gate.

On Sept. 25, Alcatraz Cruises, part of the anti-union Hornblower Yachts, took over the contract with the National Park Service to run the Alcatraz ferry service—using non-union crews for the first time since the service began in 1973. The cruise draws about 1.5 million visitors annually.

Out of the 45 Alcatraz Ferry workers workers laid off after Hornblower took over in September, Hornblower re-hired only six. The laid off workers are members of the Inland Boatman’s Union (IBU) and Masters Mates and Pilots union (MMP). They include Deckhands, Captains, Ticket Agents, Customer Service Reps, Engineers, Facility Maintenance Workers and Fuelers. For the past several months, San Francisco maritime union members and supporters have been picketing the company and calling for re-hiring laid-off workers and maintaining union wages, benefits, and working conditions.

At the December 9 rally, Ray Shipway of the MMP invoked the memory of legendary longshore leader Harry Bridges and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leader Joe Hill. “We need to stand up for their vision of a united workforce on the waterfront,” Shipway said. “The corporations are trying to drive a wedge between workers.” In a show of solidarity, the Longshore union (ILWU) voted for a port-wide shutdown for the day of the rally.

ILWU Local 10 Business Agent Jack Heyman wrote in an Op-Ed published by the San Francisco Chronicle, that, “… Hornblower maintains a callous disregard for the lives of the workers who made the Alcatraz run into the success…. U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkins has ruled that the Service Contract Act, which requires a successor of a federal contract to pay the same level of wages and benefits as the previous employer, applies to Hornblower. But who today believes that justice can be achieved through government agencies and courts? Certainly not when judges rule that corporations can rip up with impunity labor contracts that provide for workers’ pensions, health benefits and wages, as happened to workers at Bethlehem Steel and United Airlines.”

Heyman called for unions to exercise their power or lose it: “If nonunion companies such as Hornblower can operate with federal blessing, then others will follow and the days of unions on the San Francisco waterfront are numbered,” he wrote.

Other speakers at the rally echoed Heyman’s sentiment. ILWU Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Clarence Thomas called Hornblower’s action part of a class war and “the beginning of the end” for SF unions if the anti-union company wasn’t stopped. Hotel Workers Local 2 President Mike Casey said the awarding a federal contract to Hornblower was part of the Bush Administration’s continuing attack on the labor movement. He offered a new form of “offshoring” as a way to deal with the anti-union forces. “Tell the Bush Administration to restore the prison on Alcatraz Island and make the ferry a one-way trip for the corporate criminals and federal bureaucrats,” Casey said. “This isn’t about 50 jobs, it’s about the San Francisco labor movement and California labor movement standing up for the legacy of the unions before us.”

Marina Secchitano, regional director of the IBU, said that the unions had been in bargaining in October for a successorship to bring about recognition for the IBU and the Masters, Mates & Pilots. Mayor Gavin Newsom, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the SF Labor Council and ILWU assisted in the negotiations but talks broke down with Hornblower’s owner Terry MacRae. “Our efforts to resolve our differences peacefully were met with arrogance and indifference to the plights of our members who are without jobs and health and welfare right now,” she said. “Our former employer, Blue & Gold Fleet, was able to pay all its workers full time wages, and benefits and pay their fair share to the San Francisco Port and make a profit.”

Secchitano and Shipway wrote a letter in response to a recent Op-Ed by MacRae: “Hornblower’s CEO is wrong when he says ‘anti-worker treatment is long gone from the Embarcadero.’ It is alive, thanks to Hornblower! “ They wrote that MacRae only agreed to pay prevailing wages to Alcatraz ferry crews after the unions won a federal court order forcing him to do so. “He omits that Hornblower is fighting the Labor Department’s ruling requiring it to pay the same wages and benefits of the prior ferry operator,” they wrote.

They said that Hornblower misled union members into believing that laid-off workers would be given a fair chance to secure jobs with the company.

SFBCTC Secretary-Treasurer Mike Theriault also addressed the rally. “We’re under assault in the hotels, on the waterfront, and at construction sites,” he said. “But Terry McRae has stepped into a bear’s cave and the bear is waking up.” He and other speakers called for organizing Hornblower Yachts, which has been staunchly anti-union, up and down the west coast.

The California Labor Federation has called for a boycott of Hornblower and there has been solidarity among unions in supporting the MMP and IBU. But the struggle has been difficult in part because most of the visitors who plan to visit Alcatraz are tourists who aren’t willing to change plans to visit Alcatraz if they are in town for a short visit. Only a few have changed their minds and joined the boycott in the last few months. At the rally, union members were separated from the ferry gate by a metal fence and line of police officers, so ferry customers weren’t forced to cross a picket line.

In a letter to the editor, Captain James D. Motlow wrote that, “I am no longer an Alcatraz captain because Hornblower ,with the full support of the National Park Service, did not comply with the Public Service Act during the bidding for the Alcatraz contract.” While Hornblower was able to under-bid Blue and Gold as a non-union operator , “The courts have long supported the PSA, and have now ruled Hornblower must pay the prevailing wage,” Motlow wrote. “But the contract is gone along with my job, and Homblower is contesting every position. Now we who are union and believe in fairness must fight for something that simply should have been from the get go. This was simply a sweetheart deal between Hornblower and the NPS on the back of my fair and legal wage.”

Many San Francisco building trades unions were represented at the march and rally, including members of the Painters, Iron Workers, Sign and Display, Operating Engineers, Electricians, and Carpenters. Other union members from the Service Employees, Teamsters, Machinists, Aircraft Mechanics, Food and Commercial Workers, Teachers, and IWW also marched.

For more information and updates on actions, see http://alcatrazunion.com/.