Today in Labor History November 24, 1984: San Francisco longshore workers (ILWU) refused to unload cargo from a South African ship in solidarity with South Africans fighting to end Apartheid. They went without pay for eleven days, as they continued the boycott, until a federal court forced them back to work under threats of fines and prison. At the time, the U.S. government fully supported the Apartheid regime. Concurrent with this longshore boycott, there were encampments on many U.S. universities, with protesters demanding that their schools divest from South Africa. San Francisco’s ILWU had refused to load and unload South African ships in the past, too, with one of the earliest anti-Apartheid union protests back in 1962 (see image). In 1976, after the legendary Soweto uprising, an African American longshoreman from Oakland named Leo Robinson helped form Local 10’s Southern Africa Liberation Support Committee. The SALSC, was the first anti-apartheid group in an American labor union, helping to raise awareness up and down the West Coast.
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