“This country is going to hell and working people need to fight.”

Emily Turnbull was elected to the 35-person ILWU Local 10 executive board on November 10. Turnbull built on support she’d received for opposing the ILWU bureaucracy’s surrender to the shipping bosses’ contract bribe, brokered by the Biden administration to keep labor peace. Her election program laid out a clear path of struggle for longshore workers to fight for their class interests. Backed by some 25 percent of those who voted, the most voluble support for her campaign came from lower tiers of the workforce, the B-men and casuals. Her call for the abolition of tier segregation had a felt impact among these workers, who don’t even have the right to vote in union elections. She also ran for Caucus and Convention delegate and received over 60 votes, although she was not elected.

We salute Turnbull’s election to the Local 10 e-board. This is the first time in many years that ILWU longshore workers have elected a candidate who ran on a fighting class-struggle program. This cuts through the reformists’ lie that the most you can hope for in this period are left-talking class-collaborationist bureaucrats like those who run Local 10. We print below Turnbull’s platform:

The ILWU should:

• Not have signed the contract and fought for better.
• Oppose tiers—bring Bs and Casuals into full union membership and steady men back to the hall—and fight for a shorter workweek with no loss in pay.
• Fight for Black Liberation.
• Oppose U.S. military operations, whether involving Ukraine, Israel or China.
• Oppose the Democrats and the Republicans.
• Build a workers party that aims to put working people in charge of the U.S. from top to bottom.