On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront A shipyard labor struggle in San Diego leads to a conspiracy trial— but who is conspiring against whom? BY PATRICK MARSHALL Leonard Weinglass, lawyer and veteran of some of the...
...Many in the Ironworkers local disagreed...
...One major reason," says Van Bourg, "is that the local conducted strikes without the approval of the International, which they must have...
...Its two major industries— tourism and military production—have cushioned the area from the worst effects of the nation's economic troubles...
...That isn't what's going on here...
...And they don't even know they're getting ripped off...
...Even the other unions tell us that the way the Ironworkers got into the yards at NASSCO was through a sweetheart deal designed to keep the [Pacific Coast] Metal Trades out...
...Checks should be made out to the Clarence Darrow Foundation, c/o the Committee to Defend the NAASCO Workers, P.O...
...Beginning in December 1979, however, when Kaiser Industries sold its interest in the company to Idaho-based Morrison-Knudsen, relations between the workers and the management took a definite turn for the worse...
...In fact, Barton has admitted that he was gathering information not only for the FBI, but for the San Diego police as well...
...They've engaged in red-baiting before, and they know it can draw attention away from what's really going on here...
...Insubordinate language, as they call it, can be heard in the yards every day...
...Beginning with the recession of 1973, however, a new sort of worker—more highly educated, socially aware, and, in some cases, politically active—began to turn to places like NASSCO for work...
...Many, hoping or fearing that conditions in San Diego may become more prevalent nationally under President Reagan, have come to view the NASSCO conflict as a test case...
...Salas believes that the International was simply waiting to see if it could get its own man into office...
...In response to the loud but peaceful demonstration, embarrassed NASSCO officials immediately fired seventeen of the workers, including most of the union leaders and shop stewards...
...They're just trying to make it look like there's something evil in the union...
...They're willing to put up with the dangers for a while...
...There's a lot of bad feeling in the yards right now," said one Ironworker of the trusteeship move...
...Temperatures reach 140 degrees...
...No union member likes to see his union put into trusteeship," says carpenters' steward Jerry Day...
...Workers have speculated that Barton got his job at a price...
...When the union pressed for Crain's reinstatement, the relatively minor confrontations began to snowball...
...Rather, it resulted from changes in the national economy—and Patrick Marshall is an associate editor at Pacific News Service in San Francisco...
...Cranes, almost twice the height of the ships, roll down the docks on railroad tracks and lift heavy steel plates lightly into the air, guiding them to their proper location on the massive hulls...
...After the high drama of the conspiracy trial subsides, the conditions which produced it will remain...
...The company responded by firing ten more workers...
...The tapes Barton secretly made of his discussions with the three workers indicate that at least once, when David Boyd had second thoughts about the possible bombing, Barton talked him back into it...
...While most communities across the nation have been struggling through a recession and now cringe at the prospect of reduced Federal aid, this sunny California city has continued to grow with little apparent distress...
...It's cheaper for the company to pay workman's comp for somebody that gets hurt than it is to take care of safety...
...Barton claims that he was just a guy looking for a job when he came to NASSCO...
...There's usually little ventilation, so the room is full of smoke...
...The main evidence against them came from a coconspirator who turned out to be an informant for the FBI...
...According to Flynn, Crain was fired for using profanity when a foreman asked him a question...
...Research for this article was assisted by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism...
...Barton is heard to say...
...They have, in effect, priced themselves out of the construction business...
...Economically, San Diego is a city of extremes...
...civil rights organizations that the Government may be renewing its efforts to harass citizens it perceives to be on the "active Left...
...The trial of the three shipyard workers was not simply another battle in the unending war between,the FBI and "communist conspirators...
...The arrests were not, however, the end of the troubles for the union or the company...
...This is the only shipyard in the nation with an Ironworkers local," says Salas...
...To Salas's surprise, the Ironworkers International also made an issue of communist involvement...
...Also revealed during the trial was a meeting on August 22, more than a week before the deaths of Beebe and King and more than three weeks before the arrest of the three workers—a meeting in NASSCO offices between company officials, the FBI, and the San Diego police intelligence unit...
...He wasn't alone: When the union held its regularly scheduled elections in December, Salas—though still out of work and barred from the yards by NASSCO officials—was elected to the leadership...
...As with Ab-scam, it may be entrapment into bribery, or it may be entrapment into extortion, drug buys, or fencing operations...
...When the city's second-largest employer, the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO), found its normally complacent work force erupting in a full-blown labor struggle last summer, that was cause for concern...
...The fact that Barton was not only informing on the workers but also encouraging violence and bomb-building demonstrates a new twist in Government entrapment programs...
...In 1978, Ironworkers Local 627, with 3,000 workers the largest union at NASSCO, elected an activist slate of young workers to local offices...
...Other precedents, including a Supreme Court ruling, hold that a person becomes an agent of the Government when there is coordination of activities between the individual and the Government...
...We're not a bunch of communists just because we want to get paid what other people are getting paid...
...Whether or not Barton was an agent all along, or just a worker, testimony during the trial showed clearly that by September he was trying to involve as many of the ironworkers as possible in plans for bombing the power transformers at the yards...
...Cape Cod...
...It was Barton who gave the defendants the book, The Poor Man's James Bond, which gave information on how to build explosive devices...
...The guilty verdict also revealed disturbing local loopholes regarding entrapment in conspiracy cases...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service put an end to the practice...
...Whatever the International's motives for placing the union under trusteeship, the action united the workers in the yards—and not just the Ironworkers...
...Over the last thirty years the unions have gotten flabby," says Frank Holowach, one of the ousted Ironworker leaders...
...And since San Diego is the home of the Navy's Seventh Fleet, the city's business community can only be cheered by the Government's recent decision to expand the Navy...
...Salas says that on several occasions "Barton tried to talk about bombings with him, but he told Barton to forget it...
...So many different groups were running for leadership that Salas was elected on only 300 of the 1,200 votes cast," says Van Bourg...
...The West Coast shipyards north of San Diego pay a much higher rate than we do," admits Flynn...
...This rumor gained added credence when the workers discovered that the International had been having meetings with NASSCO officials just before the trusteeship was imposed...
...In a statement to the press...
...NASSCO is the largest shipyard on the West Coast, employing more than 7,000 workers to build giant cargo ships, tankers, and destroyer tenders for the Navy...
...Barton clearly took a more active role in the bomb conspiracy than that of a passive informer...
...In August 1980, a steward who had been particularly active in the union, Stephen Crain, was fired for "insubordinate language...
...And in the sizable Hispanic and black communities, many of whose residents are not even recorded in the official figures, the rates are much higher...
...NASSCO vice-president Flynn saw Barton carrying the sign, and Barton was hired...
...According to Miguel Salas, a shop steward had just a week earlier closed down that area when workers began feeling sick from what they described as a "mysterious gas...
...Our biggest concern is safety," said one worker in Spanish...
...After failing to secure work through normal channels, he began to picket outside the management offices, carrying a sign reading, "I'm tired of welfare—I want work...
...We've got a $750 million backlog, which is somewhat unique...
...In the yards outside Flynn's office, day or night, around the clock, the docks are full of noise and activity...
...Arrested with them, and later released, was one of the union's most belligerent hard-line activists, Ramon Barton...
...As for the election, Salas points out that the International had observers present at every phase of the process and that neither they nor those who lost in the elections had raised any serious objections...
...They took our democratic vote and turned it around on us...
...With net profits of approximately $25 million last year, it is also one of the few companies making money in the ailing national shipbuilding industry...
...Our third biggest concern is wages...
...But there is a darker side to San Diego...
...It is clearly in the company's interest to attract attention to CWP involvement," says Salas...
...According to Van Bourg, the most pressing reason for trusteeship was that the elections did nothing to cure problems of factionalism in the union...
...There are still foremen working who we know used to sell jobs...
...Attorneys for the three workers plan to appeal the conviction on the grounds that the Government overstepped its authority and that Barton was, in fact, an agent of the FBI, even though unpaid at first...
...for many years, in fact, it gave NASSCO officials unusually strong control over the workers...
...We'd just stand to lose too much...
...Frank Darljng, NASSCO's safety manager, said in an interview that the odor had been caused by a roll of smoldering neo-prene, which is used for gaskets...
...Most of the workers streaming out the gates are young—with few exceptions, they appear to be between eighteen and thirty-five years of age...
...Salas, when he heard of these comments, was outraged...
...Though NASSCO received three citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in connection with the incident, the company still denied responsibility...
...Even with its unusually healthy economy, the county's official unemployment rate, 7.3 per cent, is no better than the national average...
...Most have seen someone they know carried out of the yards with a serious injury—a crushed foot or a mangled arm—and eye injuries are so common that they hardly get any attention unless there is permanent damage...
...United Shipworkers of America...
...As attorney Weinglass pointed out during the trial, in the past Government entrapment usually involved nonviolent crime...
...What they didn't like was Steve's activism...
...The "dissidents" at NASSCO represent a growing number of young activist workers in unions around the country who have come to see their own national leadership as being no less an enemy than company management...
...The law, as the judge explained it, says that entrapment can only be claimed when a Government agent was involved in the original hatching of the plan...
...Among those he tried (and failed) to implicate was Ironworker Local leader Miguel Salas...
...Significant as the trial itself may be, however, it is only the most dramatic element of a more fundamental and complex conflict—more social and economic than political—that has been brewing on the waterfront for several years...
...Just after the recession in 1973, the number climbed past 200...
...I was one of the individuals assigned to discredit a particular group of union activists and, if possible, try to keep [them] from coming to power in upcoming union elections at the time, using information supplied by informants," said Contreras...
...The role of the FBI in the NASSCO dispute—especially its use of the informant Ramon Barton—has persuaded Legal Bill Legal expenses for the three defendants in the NAASCO case already amount to $50,000, even before appeals...
...The foremen would sell jobs to them for as much as $5,00...
...Was Barton something more than an informer...
...High employe turnover has not hurt NASSCO...
...While many of those takeovers were purely administrative—due, say, to a plant closing—much of the increase stemmed from disputes within unions...
...They're supposed to belong to their members and work for the worker...
...And when NASSCO officials found themselves unable to calm the tensions—indeed, their heavy-handed attempts have only worsened the situation in the past year—the struggle began to attract attention outside the immediate area...
...Salas's victory was, however, short-lived...
...BY PATRICK MARSHALL Leonard Weinglass, lawyer and veteran of some of the nation's hottest political trials, called it "the threshold trial of the '80s": Three young shipyard workers engaged in a waterfront labor struggle in San Diego, two of them members of the Communist Workers Party, faced charges of conspiring to blow up power transformers...
...And by 1980, more than 230 locals were being placed under trusteeship each year—an increase of 62 per cent in only ten years...
...One reason that NASSCO is still so active while other shipyards are closing down is that NASSCO keeps wages and other costs down...
...And I'm not a communist just because I don't want my life in danger when they don't take care of the scaffolding...
...And though Salas himself was not involved in the indictments, nor does he claim CWP membership, he was immediately removed from his position by the International...
...Employes active in the unions found themselves subjected to abuse by foremen, grievances previously negotiated internally were forced to arbitration, and shop stewards were fired for seemingly minor infractions...
...Another worker was offered a transfer he had requested, if he would turn informer...
...The International's stance convinced many workers that the only conspiracies afoot were directed at them, and that the whole issue of communist involvement was a ruse...
...Salas speculates that Barton concentrated on involving Johnson, Boyd, and Loo for two reasons: first, because all three were active in the unions...
...But if the workers are concerned about their wages, they are even more concerned about the dangers of their jobs...
...Since the arrests had been made while Johnson and Boyd were riding in Barton's van, Barton's release suggested what the FBI was soon to admit publicly—that he was an FBI informer...
...Michael Beebe and Kenneth King had been suffocated by leaking argon gas...
...Throughout many of the weeks before the arrest he was carrying hidden sound equipment for both law enforcement agencies simultaneously...
...With respect to both issues—the divided unions and the Government's infringement of civil rights—events over the next several months should be revealing...
...And the Ironworkers' dispute with their International has led them to form a new union...
...According to workers, NASSCO began a campaign of harassment in an attempt to break up the union...
...Was he, in fact, a plant...
...the most difficult to organize...
...Immediately, the new leaders—business agent Reynaldo Incher-regui, assistant business agent Miguel Sa-las, and aide Frank Holowach—began to press for better wages and improved safety conditions...
...second, because both Johnson and Loo are professed members of the Communist Workers Party, and Boyd is a self-described sympathizer...
...The Government is allowed to participate because in the course of those activities, innocent third parties will not get hurt," says Weinglass...
...The jury apparently judged that Bar-tonwas not an agent at the time when the plan was first discussed," says lawyer Dan Siegel, counsel for Rodney Johnson...
...He had a very glib mouth...
...That, he says, is when he began to provide information to the police and FBI...
...In one instance, a worker caught stealing was told that the company would not fire him if he provided information...
...they hope to displace the Ironworkers International at NASSCO before negotiations in September...
...While the workers realize that many of the dangers inevitably come with the job, they believe the company has not done its part to reduce them...
...According to testimony during the trial, Barton was also reporting to at least one NASSCO official...
...The International, Salas explains, has had a cooperative relationship with the company for many years and wanted to assure that there would be no strikes when contracts came up for negotiation in September 1981...
...The judge's instructions gave them the impression that he was only an agent when he was first paid, and that was after the plan was initiated...
...Michael Contreras, former labor relations official, testified at the trial that he was only one of several NASSCO officials who maintained separate networks of spies in the yards...
...Wages at NASSCO average between $8 and $9 per hour, while other West Coast yards pay more than $11 per hour, a continual point of conflict between the company and the unions...
...Most of the guys are making more than they've ever made in their lives," explains Jerry Day, chief steward of the carpenters' local...
...Thus, the situation was already explosive when, on September 3, two machinists were found dead in the hull of the Cape Cod...
...Perhaps more dramatic politically than the divided state of labor, however, is the threat to civil liberties posed by the revived zeal of Federal agencies in investigations of "dissidents...
...Amidst all the confusion on the San Diego waterfront, one thing at least is clear—the jury's verdict has not resolved the problems in San Diego...
...Hell, I don't even know any CWP, except for Rodney [Johnson...
...But, following the judge's instructions, they felt they could not acquit them on grounds of entrapment...
...In a move that stunned most members, the International placed Ironworkers Local 627 under trusteeship the day before Salas was to take office...
...People were dropping off like flies, and the management didn't seem to care...
...According to Victor Van Bourg, attorney for the International, trusteeship was imposed for several reasons...
...The shipbuilding industry in the U.S...
...The political leanings of the defendants, coupled with strong evidence that the workers were set up by Federal agents, suggest that the trial may be the first salvo in a new Government assault on the political Left...
...The economic outlook of these groups bears little semblance to the rosy picture of San Diego painted by the Chamber of Commerce...
...But while most of the workers at NASSCO may not be overtly concerned with politics, the conflict has raised issues with clear and important political implications, particularly in two areas: the future of labor unions and Government infringement of civil liberties...
...But look around," he said, pointing at the workers coming off the second shift, "sooner or later they figure it out...
...Barton says that he gradually became involved in the union's efforts when he grew angry at unsafe conditions in the yards but, when things began to heat up, he felt that the situation was getting too violent...
...Two thousand out of 3,200 Ironworkers didn't even vote...
...they said that on several occasions he suggested violent acts against company officials, including strapping tanks of propane to the exhaust pipes of the officials' cars...
...We told the workers we would do something about it, and they decided to give us a chance...
...According to Darling, once the neoprene was removed the workers went back to work with no problems...
...Diminishing success in contract negotiations, coupled with charges of corruption leveled at a stream of major union officials, have caused many workers to view their own leaders as an "old guard" trying to hang on to power, at the cost of workers' benefits...
...Another reason is that we had serious questions about the election in December...
...Lon Goodwin, head of the International's Shopmen's Division, indicated that the deplorable situation at NASSCO was "created by the CWP...
...After you've been here a while," says Day, "you start looking for another job...
...During their two-year term, there were no deaths, and the accident rate plummeted...
...Like San Diego's other industries, NASSCO can draw on the unemployed in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods south and east of the city...
...is down, and has been down," says Joe Flynn, vice-president for industrial relations at NASSCO...
...While the company disclaimed responsibility for the deaths, pointing out that the two workers were not supposed to have been in the area, the unions charged NASSCO with an indifference to safety bordering on the criminal...
...Since this was the second offense of this nature involving Steve Crain, our labor relations people thought that maybe it warranted some severe discipline...
...You can't quit now, man...
...But now the chickens are coming home to roost—there's no more cushion for them to fall back on...
...someone, he thought, might get hurt...
...It was only two weeks after the deaths of Beebe and King that ironworkers Rodney Johnson and David Boyd, along with machinist Mark Loo, were arrested by the FBI for conspiring to blow up power transformers at NASSCO...
...What do you think the people in the yards are going to react to...
...A lot of people realize that and it just burns them up...
...The one bright spot in shipbuilding is NASSCO...
...First of all," he said, "there was no strike called by the leadership—the workers did it themselves...
...They just used it as an excuse to fire him...
...This is a shipyard, not an office," says Gwen Furguson, who was also a shop steward at the time...
...Besides, if that's why they took over, why didn't they do it in August when it happened, instead of waiting six months...
...Numerous witnesses at the trial, however, pictured Barton as one of the most belligerent of the union activists...
...The manner of his hiring and his behavior during employment suggest that he may have been...
...The widening split within the ranks of labor is evidenced not only by the growing number of "visible" disputes but by unions' use of more subtle means of controlling wayward locals...
...I wouldn't be surprised if some of them still do...
...NASSCO officials also knew about the trusteeship before Salas and the other local officials...
...Department of Labor statistics show that 144 locals were, for one reason or another, placed under trusteeship by their national organizations in 1969...
...In fact, San Diego—with its fine weather, large pool of cheap labor, and strong tradition of anti-unionism—could be taken for a figment of President Reagan's economic imagination, an almost perfect model of a revitalized America...
...Salas and the other elected officials were removed from office, and the International brought in an administrator to handle the local's affairs...
...They can't go into negotiations getting better contracts year after year, and they've lost touch with their own workers...
...If the interpretation of "agent" which prevailed in the NASSCO case were to remain as the guide, the FBI and other agencies could conduct such operations without fear of entrapment charges simply by deferring payment to an agent until after a plan had been initiated...
...Late in August, 200 workers expressed their displeasure by demonstrating at the public launching of the newly completed U.S.S...
...from the sharpening divergence of three powerful factions of American industry: an aging hierarchy of labor executives, growing ranks of active young workers, and industry leaders...
...Additionally, he points out that of the four slates that lost the election, three have joined him in condemning the trusteeship...
...It is not surprising that San Diego should be one of the first battlegrounds for these competing interests...
...And, although the workers at NASSCO are all in unions, they have never been able to exercise much leverage in negotiations...
...The new leaders made good use of the chance...
...Both events could well set precedents whose effects will be felt far beyond San Diego's waterfront...
...Highly mobile work forces are, as any labor organizer knows...
...Box 8383, San Diego, California 92102...
...NASSCO's Flynn attributes the improved safety to upgraded company efforts, but the workers themselves point to the 1,500 grievances filed by the new union leadership during the first year alone...
...There might be six welders squeezed into one compartment, another guy in the next room cutting metal from the other side, and someone swinging a sledge-hammer until your head is ringing...
...The year before they took office, five workers had been killed in the yards, and an average of forty-five serious injuries had occurred every month...
...In spite of the dangers and the lower rate of pay, NASSCO has no trouble finding workers...
...Ironworkers and machinists, who together account for most of NASSCO's work force, walked off the job for four days in protest...
...All the unions are supposed to have a democratic process...
...Up till recently they used to give the Mexican nationals hard hats with green stripes on 'em," said.a worker interviewed outside the gates during a change of shifts...
...This is the first case to anyone's knowledge where the Government participated in an act that was potentially harmful or violent to third persons...
...In addition, an unreleased, sworn deposition by a former security guard at NASSCO details at least two occasions when NASSCO officials pressured workers into informing on the activities of other workers...
...For while Otto Bas, San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson's press aide, calls the whole affair "an aberration caused by political dissidents," and while the Ironworkers International more bluntly ascribes the recent unrest to agitation by communists, it is clear that something more fundamental is going on at NASSCO, and that most of the workers do not have abstract politics on their minds...
...According to Salas, however, the company ignored continuing complaints of dizziness and nausea from workers in the area...
...From start to finish, it takes more than a year to build a cargo ship, more than two years to build a Navy ship...
...It was later established that prior to the deaths, the argon—used to purge oxygen from the complex of lines used in welding—had been left on...
...Going down into the ship, which is fourteen to twenty stories high, is like going into a mine—dark and dangerous," said one ironworker (most workers prefer that they not be quoted by name...
...I hear a lot about how they tie the communists in with our union," said one worker...
...In the past, the company used illegal labor from across the border, until pressure from the U.S...
...when Salas was elected, the International moved in...
...Our second biggest concern is to have the union we vote for, and the International took that away...
...Though there was never any explosion—indeed, no bomb was ever actually planted—the three workers were convicted on June 5 and face up to forty years in prison...
...A legal support committee welcomes donations, which are tax-deductible...
...Several post-trial interviews with jurors indicated that some on the panel felt the three workers were set up by Barton...
...According to the participants,,no notes were made of the meeting, and their memory of the discussion was vague...
...When we came into office in '78 things were really dismal," says Salas, twenty-six...
...Workers hammer and weld on scaffolding more than 100 feet in the air, laced around the skeletons of ships so big that new employes often get lost in the maze of corridors and compartments inside...
...San Diego's industries, while depending on this pool of available workers, recognize the potential for unrest...
...There's no checking on safety," said a machinist...
...Now they're just an empty shell, without substance, and ready to crack...
Vol. 45 • August 1981 • No. 8
