Ken Riley didn’t know what hit him.
When he regained consciousness moments later, he
learned he’d been whacked between the eyes by a baton-wielding Swat Cop
dispatched by South Carolina’s politically ambitious state Attorney
General, Charlie Condon.
Riley is president of Local 1422 of the International
Longshoremen’s Association. The ILA is one of a handful of unions still
in existence in anti-union South Carolina, a state that passed Right to
Work legislation in 1954. The RTW law achieved
what its proponents intended. Today less than five percent of South
Carolina workers are union members.
On January 19, 2000, about 150 ILA members were
peacefully picketing the Danish freighter Nordana. The Nordana’s owners
were using cheap non-union labour to unload. It was getting close to
midnight when Riley noticed a small army of heavily
armed police forming up on a darkened side street.
Minutes later the police charged. Flak-jacketed
snipers on nearby rooftops began firing rubber bullets, picking off
picketers one by one as an estimated 600 police surged forward whacking
heads as the went.
Riley says he was trying to get his members to run for
cover when he was suddenly struck by a police baton almost between the
eyes. He recalls seeing a bright light and feeling a rush of warm blood
down his face before losing consciousness.
It took Emergency Room doctors twelve stiches to close the cut.
Attorney General Condon compared the longshoremen to
the terrorists that had attacked the World Trade Centre. Riley believes
Condon had ordered the police attack in order to manufacture an incident
that would boost his political ambition to
run for Governor.
If so, it backfired.
The violence of the police attack on peaceful, mostly
black longshoremen, sparked a public backlash against Condon and
sympathy for the union. And to the delight of the longshoremen, Condon’s
political ambitions were flushed into Charleston
harbor. He never became Governor and Riley claims he couldn’t get
elected dog catcher today. He has returned to his private law practice.
The ILA succeeded in forcing the Danish shipping
company Nordana to use union labour. If it hadn’t won that battle, Riley
thinks unions would have become extinct in Right to Work South
Carolina. He sees hope for resurgence but having been
battered for so long admits there’s a long hard road ahead.
The passing of the Right to Work law in 1954 was the
thin edge of the wedge. Later, successive state administrations passed
more anti-union laws including making it illegal for public servants to
join a union, bargain collectively or strike.
Today, says Riley, Corporations view the American
south as a Third World country where they can hire cheap labour to
increase their profit margins. Not a fate Ontario should aspire to.
Contrary to what Right to Work fans claim, Riley says
he’s seen that Right to Work laws haven’t brought prosperity to South
Carolina. They’ve brought lower wages –non-union jobs that have hurt the
economy by shrinking the middle class. A recent
study by the Washington based Economic Policy Institute backs him up.
The EPI found that the declining union membership in
Right to Work states triggers a race to the bottom of the wage ladder.
Without unions to negotiate decent wage rates, average annual wages in
Right to Work states are now $1500 a year lower
than in non Right to Work states.
Nonetheless, Right to Work is creeping on to the political agenda in Canada.
In Alberta, the Wildrose Party made Right to Work legislation part of its 2012 election platform. In Saskatchewan, Premier Brad Wall has asked a committee to study RTW and other “reforms” to Saskatchewan’s labour legislation.
In Ottawa, Tory MP Pierre Poilievre is pushing
“workers freedom” legislation for federal employees that would let union
members opt out of paying union dues while still enjoying the benefits
of the union contract.
Like other political and union activists I have
interviewed here in South Carolina, Ken Riley’s message to Canadians is
do NOT think that what has happened in the U.S. can’t happen to
“you’all” in Canada.
Right to Work laws weakening the ability of unions to
job security gain decent wages and working conditions he says, are
always followed by other anti-union laws and actions.
He has a long scar on his forehead to prove it.
