June 25, 2004
Changing Face of San Pedro
Arian Returns As ILWU Local 13 President Committed to Bottom-Up Unionism, Community Activism
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

     If you ask David Arian about who had the greatest influence on his life, you will hear about working class heroes.
     You might expect that hero to be only Harry Bridges, the founding father of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Like his father before him, Arian knew Bridges well and followed in Bridges’ footsteps to become International President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the early 1990s. People who’ve known both men say there’s a strong resemblance in their politics, attitude and organizing philosophy. When Arian took office, rather than buy new furniture, he pulled Bridges’ old furniture out of storage, and said, “If it was good enough for Harry, it’s good enough for me.” And, while serving as President, Arian established the Harry Bridges Institute (HBI), which works to promote a broader, deeper and richer working-class culture, both within and beyond the union’s membership.
     So, when it comes to the greatest influences on Arian’s life, what could be more natural than Harry Bridges?
     His parents, of course. “My greatest influence was my mother’s influence, she had an incredible social conscience,” Arian recalls, followed closely by his father. “My dad had the greatest influence in terms of rock solid unionism, and working class consciousness,” he adds.
     This may help explain one of HBI’s earliest accomplishments — establishing the annual labor heroes’ dinner on Cesar Chavez’s birthday ten years ago. It was the first such honoring of Chavez, explains labor lawyer Diane Middleton. Middleton, who helped Arian launch HBI, said it “Introduced the very important concept of the labor hero.” She explained, “Our board felt very strongly that people like Brittany Spears and Michael Jordan are not the sort of role models kids need. That their own parents were the true heroes. People who weren’t big shot labor leaders, but people who went to work every day, cared for their families, and cared for their unions.” People just like Dave Arian’s parents.
     “We wanted to start the idea that these were heroes,” Middleton continued. “We would choose five or six people, write up their stories, bring them up on the stage, and let their children see that the whole community thought they were heroes.”
     Although Arian and Bridges both served in the union’s highest office, they showed much in common with those working class heroes. As former HBI Executive Director Hector Cepeda explained, “He could care less about how history remembers him, as long as he preserves the union. He’s very selfless in that regard.”

Harry Bridges Institute

     Arian served one term as President of the International, and was just recently reelected President of Local 13—20 years after first winning that office. Others have held high office far longer, but Arian has no regrets. “I never expected to get elected. It was like a freebie,” he says of the highest post, which he won by just a few hundred votes. “When I got defeated, [as president of the International] it was like a liberation in a way. It’s the kind of job that makes you more conservative than you are… I had to make decisions that, if I was out on my own, I would have disagreed with.”
     As President of the International, Arian had three main objectives: Re-establish internationalism, create an educational program, and claim all jobs in ILWU’s jurisdiction, “from top to bottom.” That’s just what happened with the negotiations in 1993, but the next international president killed it.
     “Now we’re back,” says Arian, reflecting on where the union is today. “Many of the programs, education, PR, research, are now in full blossom. They were dormant for six years. I began the process, but I couldn’t complete the process, and the whole union has embraced it.”
     HBI relocated to San Pedro when Arian lost his re-election bid in 1994. Arian recognized the ILWU’s shortcomings in connecting with the community. “Every union needs a means to do that… to promote ideas beyond the union—international solidarity, rank-and-file unionism, fighting for social justice and equality, much broader questions than unions are willing to pick up.”
     Although named after the ILWU’s founding President, HBI is just as much the shadow of David Arian as it is a focal point for his enduring influence—an influence that is inseparable from those who influenced him as well.
     Cepeda believes that the most important aspect of the Harry Bridges Institute is its effort to preserve the history of retired longshoremen—the centerpiece of which is the HBI’s video history project.
     “We had done almost 100 interviews with people who had been through the big strike [1934], subsequent strikes, people who could describe the backbreaking work, getting bit by scorpions, the shapeups, working hours and hours with no breaks… That video history project recorded the oral history of people who are no longer with us. Without it, all that precious information would have been lost.”
     HBI’s current President, Shannon Donato, became involved in HBI as the volunteer coordinator for the Harry Bridges Centennial in 2001. She stresses its role as “a hands-on action center,” rather than a library. This summer, she notes, HBI is bringing in a teacher and four students from Banning High School, who will develop a labor studies curriculum for their entire school.
     Through the Friends of Labor (FOL), HBI has involved union family members and the broader community in a variety of different actions and struggles. During a bitter struggle between the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and their shipping company, FOL helped turn away a scab-loaded ship, forcing it to return to Australia. “During the MUA lockout, when armed thugs came and removed longshoremen from their jobs, Dave didn’t look at it as a faraway conflict happening to someone else,” Cepeda explained. “He looked at it as something that could happen here. He looked at it as a lesson.”
     “I knew Harry Bridges probably from the day I was born,” Arian says, so strong was Bridges’ presence in his parents’ lives—his picture, his words, stories, philosophy and example. He wouldn’t meet Bridges in the flesh till he was a teenager. After their first meeting, “I saw Harry on a regular basis,” Arian recalls.

Dave Arian’s Roots

     He remembers Bridges as a hero, but his parents were the strongest influences on him. “I knew Dave’s father real well. He was known as ‘Honest Lou’ on the waterfront, a dispatcher, a convention and a caucus delegate,” said Lou Loveridge, a past President of ILWU Local 13, who sees the son as cut from the same cloth.
     Dave’s father was born in Cardiff, Wales, emigrated as a boy and graduated from Manual Arts High School before coming to work on the docks in the 1930s. His mother came from Chicago. In addition to the women’s auxiliary of the ILWU, she was active in a wide range of social justice issues, especially civil rights, civil liberties, and peace. She was a member of Women’s Strike for Peace, the group primarily responsible for ending aboveground nuclear tests.
     Counting his mother as his greatest influence, Arian recalled a recurring dream of women crying in the dark with candles. Later in life, he learned from his mother it was based on a childhood memory. “When the Rosenbergs were executed, women around the country went to federal buildings.” His mother had taken him along as a child, too young to consciously remember.
     “My brother and I were arrested with the civil rights movement,” his sister, Laraine Arian recalls, at a demonstration in support of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. Dave had barely turned 18, and learned a great deal from the stories told by the more experienced arrestees.
     He also learned a lot from local radicals. “There were people from Yugoslavia, who fought with the partisans against the Nazis, part of Tito’s forces. There were people from Italy who fought Mussolini,” Arian explains. There were contemporary influences as well. “It was a real period of political exploration in terms of who we were.” Arian also worked on the UFW grape boycott to support Cesar Chavez in 1965, when he helped set up picket lines on the wharves.
     “He flowered in that time, in the 60s, and then he got into the union, a place you could call home,” offers Art Almeida, labor historian and another past President of Local 13.
     He’d already begun working on the docks as a casual. His first jobs were unloading bananas and cotton. “These jobs were incredibly physically hard. I only weighed 120-130 pounds.” He didn’t plan to join the union then, he was headed for community college. But then he got married, had a son, and got sponsored into the union. “I needed to work,” he says simply. “It was a hard job, but a good job.”
     He plunged into the politics as well, serving on committees, and speaking out for his beliefs. “When he came to a meeting, he would always hit the mike,” recalls George Kuvakas, Sr., an old friend of Dave’s father who’s now President of ILWU Southern California Pensioners of Locals 13, 63 & 94. “He was active in the ‘71 strike,” Kuvakas adds. But, while fiercely supporting the union, he worked to change it as well.
     Longshore workers fall into three categories. Casuals are part-timers without benefits (low men on the totem pole) dispatched to work from a separate hall. B-registered workers receive benefits, work more regularly, and “if they keep their nose clean,” Almeida explains, are fairly certain of gaining A-registration, which entitles them to join the union—which 99.99 percent do, according to Almeida.
     “When I came into the casual hall I saw the injustice,” Arian recalls. “There were men there five to ten years, and it [registration and union membership] would go to someone who was sponsored who never worked as a casual. My first involvement was to change that system.” That struggle took a long time. Arian was part of group of over 600 men, known as terminal workers (TW), who were casuals trapped in limbo for years. “Two hundred got our ‘B book,’ 400 did not.” Arian recalls. “I fought for eight years to see that they got their ‘B book.’ That was called the “TW battle,” it took nearly nine years, till 1978. ‘Til we got all of them in.”

Gatlin and the Golden Cases

     There were similar struggles to gain access to the union for blacks and women, shut out by custom and the sponsorship process. Change finally came as a result of the Gatlin and Golden cases, respectively.
     “Gatlin, they were casuals the same time I was. They filed suit,” Arian said. “They’re the ones who broke the sponsorship system, and rightfully so. I never was involved in lawsuits against the union. I always took the political route, and organized for change.”
     “One of my favorite people,” is how Joe Gatlin, who serves on the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council, describes Arian. “For a number of years there were hard feelings against the Gatlin family, and black workers in general. Dave was part of the new leadership who came in and said, ‘Hey, this is just what’s fair.’”
     The Golden case was later, during Arian’s 1984-1986 term as President of Local 13. But he was also on the registration committee before that, in 1978, when the first group of women were admitted.
     The union’s relationship to the community was always another key concern, which is why he has strong allies like Howard Uller, Executive Director of Toberman Settlement House. Uller has known Arian for over 20 years and worked with him on many occasions over that span. “He has no equal as a public speaker, with great passion, eloquence, understanding, and the ability to bring people together across different lines,” Uller says. He especially remembers, “The pummeling of the poor that happened during the beginning of the elder Bush’s administration, and the attack on those of us who serve him. There were some pitched battles on special needs housing and serving the poor. Dave was always here with us, backing us up—with others in the labor movement.”
     His recent re-election as President of Local 13, 20 years after he first took that office, was not so much a political comeback as a return to service. “A lot of people approached me when we couldn’t get another candidate…. I’m here just as a transitional person. I’m just looking to build the future with new people, and pass on what I know.”
     Under his leadership, Local 13 and its sister locals, 63 and 94, came out strongly in support of health care workers, organizing at San Pedro Hospital. “We will support hospital workers and any others who try to organize,” he explained. This includes port truckers. “We encourage the truckers to organize, joining the teamsters,” he said, but did not get into any specifics about how the ILWU might assist in their struggle.
     The union has also gotten involved in the recent Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council election. “We ran two people, two union people,” Arian explains. The others came to the union for support. “If other people had come to us and said support us and had a pro-labor position we would have supported them.”
     In effect, Local 13 is treating neighborhood council elections like any other elections, adopting a traditional endorsement system. “If somebody wants support, they can come to us for support. We’re going to continue to support those who are pro-labor. Whether they’re going to come and deal with us or they’re going to fight us, they’re going to hear the labor point of view.”
     Arian refers to his role as International President, as well as his current role, as being a “transitional” figure. Asked if another term, stressing his leadership, may better apply, he is noticeably, if only fleetingly, uncomfortable, quickly shifting the focus back to the union, the issues and the forces who have supported him.
     Hector Cepeda’s words ring true—“He could care less about how history remembers him, as long as he preserves the union.” It’s just what you expect from a working class hero.

Dave Arian. Photo: Robin Doyno.