Abstract
Presente is a book for our times. Union membership is growing, but so is inequality. Working-class jobs are coming back, but what exactly is a working-class job? Foreign wars are raging, but should unions speak out on international affairs? And what exactly do union shop stewards and local officers do?
Herb Mills has answers to these questions and many more. In an easy and engaging style, he puts real-life stories into fictional form on the waterfront in San Francisco. Steve Morrow, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 10, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU; originally the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union), arrives at the docks at ten minutes to six each morning. We follow him as he meets the night shift when they are leaving and bringing him their problems to be solved. The morning shift is arriving and looking to see if yesterday's problems have been taken care of: “nasty” toilets, asbestos problems, unsafe railings that lead workers “straight in the drink,” walkouts, threats, and bosses “who didn’t give a goddamn about us dockworkers or our safety.” Morrow's list goes on and on.
But beyond the day-to-day problems of loading and unloading cargo for huge ships going around the world, Mills highlights the tensions for a union dealing with critical social issues at home and foreign policy abroad. This is a story about coalition building with religious leaders and the media, in an effort to change the foreign policy of the United States government while also keeping union members out of jail for violating their contract.
In December 1980, Morrow learns from a shop steward that military equipment bound for the “fascist government of El Salvador” will soon be loaded onto one of the ships in this busy port. Earlier efforts to successfully shift US policy on supplying arms will soon be challenged by the incoming Reagan administration. Mills weaves together the daily work by gathering facts and building a massive campaign to include the Social Justice Commission of the San Francisco Archdiocese, local newspapers, CBS, international union officers, union members up and down the coast, a memorial service, political and corporate connections, and exactly what the longshore workers were being asked to load on a ship. Could dockworkers be forced “to undertake work they view as immoral?”
This is a teaching novel for programs in labor education, sociology, labor relations, and foreign policy. There could be more details about the work on the docks, the characters we just barely meet, and the foreign policy context, but we are also introduced to an unusual author who has written more on these topics. Herb Mills was a Berkeley student who eventually received his PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine. He was an autoworker who moved to San Francisco, got a job on the docks, joined the ILWU, and never looked back. He wrote, talked, organized, negotiated, and represented the workers. According to the San Francisco Chronicle (2018), when asked why someone with a doctorate would unload ships for a living, Mills would often reply, “I’d rather sell my back than my head.” He is an inspiration for intellectuals who are activists and for workers who are intellectuals. In the Salvadoran spirit for which he fought: Herb Mills, 1930–2018, Presente!