The Dispatcher, December 1996
Edited by HARVEY SCHWARTZ
DON LIDDLE
“The state negotiator, told me, ‘If you strike, I’ll have you in jail’.”
I was born in Davenport, Washington in 1938. My step-dad was a staunch union guy. In any household he was in you was going to know about unions because that was what he talked about. He got me a job in a feed mill in Tacoma, Washington. The Butcher Workmen’s Union was there. Everything my step-dad told me over the years about the union suddenly made a lot more sense now that I was on that job.
After two years I got laid off from the mill and come to Portland. I worked in a rubber mill for ten years as a member of Local 504, United Rubber Workers. I held all the local offices—president, sect.-treas., shop steward. I was fired for union activity and got my job back through arbitration, but my day were numbered. So I started lookin’ around and found out they were hiring at Western Transportation. That was an IBU bargaining unit. I applied and was hired there in 1969.
At Western I did dock warehouse work, loading and unloading barges of paper products. Over the years, a number of people who went to work at Western had also worked at that rubber mill. They started askin’ me if I’d be interested in runnin’ for union office. I was elected Vice-President for the Columbia River Region in 1975.
In the late 1970 the mu was affiliated with the Seafarers International Union (SIU). The IBU national president, Merle Adlum, wanted the IBU to give up its autonomy and become part of the SIU’s Atlantic and Gulf (AG) District. In my opinion, it was not in the best interest of the IBU members to merge with the AG District and lose control over our local affairs. We wanted to continue to have a democratic union where we elected our people. The AG District did not have union democracy like we had. They didn’t elect their business agents and patrolmen like we did. Those people were all appointed.
There were also conspiracies between Merle Adlum and some of the officers of the IBU to give our jurisdiction to the AG District. In 1978 they allowed the IU and Crowley Maritime Corp. to throw 200 southern California IBU guys out of their jobs and then replace them with SIU AG District people.
So we had an enormous philosophical difference between factions over where this union was goin’ and what it was going to be. Because of all that, in 1978 I decided to run against Merle Adlum for IBU president. I was elected and took office in early 1979.
After I became president we continued to meet and negotiate with the SIU International and the officers from the AG District about gettin’ those southern California jobs back. The SIU held out carrots: “Maybe something could be worked out.” But there were always conditions, and eventually the SIU said, “We can do this and this, but you’re gonna have to merge with the AG District within a year.” This they knew we were not going to agree to.
While this was goin’ on, they again took some IBU jobs away, this time in Santa Barbara, and assigned them, through backdoor deal to the AG District. Well. in our affiliation agreement with the SIU, our rights were spelled out just like in our later agreement with the ILWU: If the SIU took work from IBU members and assigned it to other parts of the International, or to people outside the International, that would be grounds for us to disaffiliate. So I held an IBU Executive Council meeting in October 1979 and we voted to disaffiliate from the SIU. Our IBU convention unanimously ratified the decision that December.
The SIU tried to raid us in a number of areas after we went independent. They attempted to take over our members in Alaska and Hawaii. We took it on heads up with state supervised elections. Their argument was, “Don Liddle and his Executive Council took you out of the AFL-CIO, out of the house of labor.” Our argument was “Yeah, but we’re free to continue to have the kind of union people want.” And we won overwhelmingly.
In April 1980, we had a serious confrontation with the Washington State Ferry System that indirectly led to our affiliation with the ILWU. The Ferry System was determined to have part-time people who would only work during peak hours. We were very opposed to an open-ended part-time employee situation. Of course, there was money. Our membership had not been keeping pace with the cost of living. The other big issue was hiring practices. We wanted the hiring hall for people to gain access to Washington State Ferry employment. The Ferry System wanted no part of that.
During bargaining, when it was apparent there might be a strike, Fred Peil, the state negotiator, told me, “If you strike, I’ll have you in jail.” I said, “I don’t think you can do that, but have at ‘er.” That broke the meeting up. So that threat was out there the last couple weeks of bargaining. When the strike deadline arrived our 700 Ferry System members voted to reject what the employer had on the table and we went on strike.
The next thing I knew I was up before King County superior Court Judge T. Patrick Corbett in Seattle. He told me to order the membership back to work. Well, I had no authority as IBU President to force anybody to go to work. I said “I can’t do that.” He said, “You’ll do that or you’ll stay in jail ’til you do. Myself and Larry Miner, our Sect.-Treas. then went to jail.
When we went to jail we had some of the things resolved. We got hiring through the union. We had the part-time issue resolved; we agreed to a formula where they could have a few part-time people. I know wages weren’t resolved because after John Burns, our attorney in Seattle got me out of jail in a day and a half, I remember going back to bargaining over wages.
This is about when Jimmy Herman got involved. He was the ILWU president then. He wanted me to contact him. I did, we met, and things happened. I told Jimmy what the issues were, where our membership was, and why we were doin’ what we were doin’. He said the longshoremen had just had a meeting and wanted to help. One thing led to another. Soon the longshoremen were shutting the waterfront down in the state of Washington. That got the talks goin’ and got the settlement done.
There’ a great appreciation from myself and the IBU membership for Jimmy Herman’s help. Beyond that, what Herman and the ILWU did was what you were supposed to do in those days. That’s the way union people thought: “If we can do something to help shove this thing off dead center and help these workers, we should do it.” There was never any talk about or hint at any condition attached to that help. Herman made hat real clear from the first moment because there were a number of unions wantin’ us to affiliate with them. He said, “There’s no strings attached.”
The strike came out very good. We got some raises with cost of living factors hooked on ’em: “Not less than 9%,” which amounted to over a dollar an hour back in those days. We’re talking about some really good raises over a three year contract. Hey, we were only on strike for 12 days. I was really proud of that outcome.
After the trike the state legislature instituted civil service to take away our ferry workers’ collective bargaining rights. I had an idea. I told Jimmy, “What if I talk to the governor and tell him that you, Jimmy Herman, are suggesting that they create a blue ribbon panel of labor politicians, and Ferry System people to study the possibility of replacing that law with a process where we still have collective bargaining, but with binding arbitration instead of the right to strike.” He said, “Anything is better than that nonsense.”
I talked to the governor and that blue ribbon commission became a reality. Out of that commission we were able to adopt some legislation to replace that civil service stuff and preserve the essence of collective bargaining.
While we were an independent organization we developed some great relation hips with the unions that offered us affiliation. But I always had a great deal of respect for the ILWU Harry Bridges, and that whole tradition. The ILWU was my first pick for affiliation, although I never professed that until mid-1980 when we got to the point where we really needed to do something to put some foundation under our union.
I started raising the issue of affiliation at membership meetings up and down the coast. We had two special meetings in every region, and I attended every one. At the second meeting we would vote on which organization the members would prefer. The ILWU was the uncontested favorite. I was having talks with Jimmy Herman, obviously, about this. I talked to some of those other unions, too.
Then we had a mail ballot vote of every member asking whether we should affiliate with the ILWU the number one choice in those meetings. It passed with 82% in Oct. 1980. The ILWU International Executive Board officially approved the affiliation the next month, and we became the IBU, Marine Division of the ILWU.
We never were concerned that, “We’ve gotta affiliate with the ILWU because if we get in a beef they can really impact for us cause we’re right on the water with them.” We believed that would be there whether we were affiliated with them or not. But we believed therefore that we should belong to that organization! “Hey,” we felt, “the can help us, we ought to be in the family with them. We ought to be there for them.”
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