All-out support for the striking dockworkers!

The following statement was issued Tuesday by Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US vice president.

As the vice-presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party, I express my solidarity with the 45,000 dockworkers who walked out on strike at 36 ports from Maine to Texas this morning. This struggle, along with the ongoing strike at Boeing, must become the starting point for a general counter-offensive of the entire working class!

The strike reveals the fundamental realities of modern society. It is not the Elon Musks, Jeff Bezos and other corporate exploiters who are essential to modern, mass society. It is the working class whose collective labor produces all of society’s wealth. The strike shows that workers not only have the power to bring the US and global economy to a halt. We have the power to reshape society in the interests of the world’s producers.

The stakes in this strike are immense. The docks on the East and Gulf Coasts are a critical link in the global supply chain, with ports that handle half of North America’s largest shipments. Estimates suggest that a protracted strike could cost the economy between $1 billion and $5 billion per day, with ripple effects lasting well into 2025. 

Dockworkers confront the same basic issues facing workers everywhere. They are fighting against stagnant wages and are demanding a 70 percent wage increase over the next six years. Given the impossibly high cost of living, this is a matter of survival. Workers are also fighting for their jobs, as corporations expand the use of automation—not to shorten work hours and improve living standards but to toss workers into the streets. Dockworkers are rightfully demanding protection from these technological changes and insisting on better working conditions, including humane schedules and improved safety.

This strike is part of a broader wave of working-class opposition sweeping across the United States and beyond. In the past weeks, we have seen significant strikes erupt in various industries, including the 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California; 5,000 machinists at Textron Aviation in Kansas; and 525 aerospace workers at Eaton in Michigan. In California, warehouse workers at Smart and Final grocery chain have launched their own strike. 

In Montreal, dockworkers have also walked out, raising the possibility of a North American wide port strike. And there are far more struggles on the horizon: autoworkers in the Midwest fighting thousands of job cuts by Stellantis and other auto companies; educators fighting school closures and mass layoffs in Chicago, Seattle and other cities as the government cuts schools to pay for war; and railroad workers fighting job cuts and dangerous one-man crews.

Throughout history, dock strikes have played a pivotal role in galvanizing the working class. In New Orleans in 1892, Seattle in 1919 and San Francisco in 1934, dock strikes led to general strikes that brought entire cities to a standstill. As then, so must it be today. It is time for the working class to organize a coordinated fight back!

The dock workers strike, like others, faces powerful opposition. The Biden-Harris administration and the entire political establishment are deeply committed to suppressing the strike movement. The White House, working closely with the union bureaucracy, has consistently intervened to block strikes and impose sellout contracts. Just last year, Biden, the “most pro-union president in US history,” joined hands with Democratic and Republican lawmakers to block a railroad strike. 

The state will not hesitate to act against workers when corporate interests–and the global interests of the ruling class–are at stake. Workers must be prepared for the full force of the government and corporate America to come down upon them.

A successful fight requires that workers break free from the control of the trade union apparatus. In the case of the dock, union leaders like ILA President Harold Daggett (2023 salary of $855,000) have spent months trying to reach a backroom deal with the corporations. At Boeing, workers rejected a sellout contract pushed by the International Association of Machinists leaders by an overwhelming 95 percent, and the IAM is currently trying to find some way to wear down the militancy of workers.

Autoworkers are now confronting the consequences of the sellout contracts rammed through by the UAW apparatus after its phony “stand-up strike” last year. Fain, a close ally of the Biden administration, is doing everything he can to keep a lid on seething discontent and prevent it from getting out of control.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for the formation of rank-and-file committees in every industry and workplace, as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. Workers need a network of organization to communicate and coordinate their struggles and to transfer power to where it belongs–with workers on the shop floor. 

And workers confront a political battle. The strike on the docks takes place on the eve of the US presidential elections, being held amidst an unprecedented international and domestic crisis. Trump is inciting violence against immigrants to conceal who the real enemy of the working class is: The giant corporations and the capitalist system that enriches the few at the expense of the many. 

As for Harris and the Democrats, they are fixated on war with Iran, Russia and China, and forcing the working class to pay for it. Dockworkers must reject the ILA leadership’s pledge to continue handling military shipments “to support our troops” during the strike. The demand that workers subordinate the strike to the escalating military operations of American imperialism is a betrayal of the working class and a guarantee, if not rejected, that the strike will be defeated. 

The working class has no interests in supporting the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and expanding war in the Middle East, the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the escalating confrontation with China, which threaten to erupt into a nuclear World War III. It will be our sons and daughters who are killed in these wars, it will be our wages, retirement benefits and schools looted to pay for them, and it will be our democratic rights that are trampled on, all in the bogus name of “national interests.” There are no national interests, there are only class interests–and workers must fight for ours just as ruthlessly as the ruling class fights for theirs.

The dockworkers’ strike is not just about wages and working conditions. It is part of a broader struggle against capitalism, a system that is driving humanity towards disaster. The working class must be mobilized as an independent, revolutionary force to challenge the capitalist system and fight for socialism. 

In a society organized to meet human needs not profits, technological advances will be used to shorten work hours, increase time for leisure and cultural pursuits, and sharply increase living standards. The giant ship and port companies must be transformed into public utilities that are collectively owned and democratically controlled by workers themselves. 

But none of this is possible unless workers break from both corporate-controlled parties and take political power in their own hands and replace the capitalist government with a government of, by and for the working class. Only by uniting workers across industries and countries, and by building a mass political movement to overthrow the capitalist system, can we put an end to exploitation, war, and inequality.

The Socialist Equality Party and our election campaign stand fully behind the dockworkers and all workers fighting for their rights. We call on workers everywhere to support the dockworkers’ strike, join the IWA-RFC, and build a powerful movement for socialism. The future of humanity depends on it.