Jeff Quam-Wickham is a graduate of Antioch College.  He applied its deep and wide experimental philosophy to many aspects of his life.

In the 1920s the California Oil Producers’ Association editorial headline read, "The Open Shop Must Precede the Open Door." They wanted to bust unions at home, and they exported their open door foreign policy. That’s still their policy today. In 1935, oil producers split apart the industrial organizing of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific by fomenting a tanker strike without the democratic workers’ consent. In 1941, the Exxon sailors’ union -- a company union -- formed.  Ten years after the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, the Exxon sailors' union finally organized into the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific.

The Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers -- led by Anthony Mazzocchi and Steve Wodka -- held hearings about cancer-causing oil cargoes, in 1977. Epidemiologist Peter Infante testified, among others. But company unions were still in the tanker fleet, including ARCO ships now owned by Conoco Phillips. In 1987, a strike by the ILWU Inland Boat Union demonstrated by crude political arithmetic that oil cargo longshoremen had the highest mortality rate in the state.  This statistic was later confirmed by California Department of Health Services. Preventive and precautionary engineering was first voted in California Air Districts in late 1988, just before the wreck of the Exxon Valdez early in 1989.

These twin events -- precautionary engineering against air pollution by tankers and a ship wrecked by a haphazard anti-democratic Exxon Shipping Company -- created a classic contrast. Democratic trade unionism won preventive controls, while Exxon created a second massive disaster for thousands of oil spill clean-up workers who are still sick today. The oil spill clean-up workers need health studies and health care now! Current nationwide campaigns against air pollution in ports owe much to these earlier labor and environmental efforts. Together, democratic trade unions have been fostering port security, environmental and occupational health, and creating many green jobs along the way. Si se puede!

Jeff Quam-Wickham