A ship currently docked in Richmond is at the center of a controversy that involves a Bay Area labor dispute, a mass killing in the Philippines, and hundreds of tons of raw sugar stranded on a dock.
The raw sugar in question remains on a dock in Richmond while the workers required to transport it are on strike, with no clear end in sight.
On Wednesday, members of ILWU Local 10, a union that represents dockworkers, and the Bay Area’s Filipino community rallied at the Levin-Richmond Terminal, where sugar company California & Hawaiian Sugar was attempting to unload a shipment of raw sugar from the Tai Herald, a cargo ship.
The ship was originally headed to C&H Sugar’s facility in Crockett. But C&H Sugar warehouse workers represented by ILWU Local 6 have been on strike there since June after contract negotiations fell through over cuts in retirement and health care benefits.
In solidarity, C&H Sugar dockworkers represented by ILWU Local 10 resolved not to cross the picket line and refused to unload the raw sugar from Tai Herald at the Crockett facility.
“It’s a disgraceful thing to cut your retirees’ health care,” said Michael Villeggiante, president of ILWU Local 10. “They work for 30 or 40 years for those benefits, and then you can’t just cut them out!”
With the ILWU Local 10 workers unwilling to unload the sugar, the ship was rerouted to the industrial Levin-Richmond Terminal, where it has been docked since July 2.
There, Villeggiante said, the company has tapped workers belonging to a different union, Operating Engineers Local 3, to unload the sugar from the ship onto the dock at the Levin-Richmond Terminal.
As of Thursday afternoon, Villeggiante said the ship had been partially unloaded, and some of the raw sugar was now sitting on the terminal.
More than 200 people showed up to protest the unloading at Wednesday’s rally, including members of ILWU Local 6 and Local 10, and Richmond elected officials.
Philippine killings fuel protest
Also present were members of the Bay Area’s Filipino community, who wanted to shed light on the atrocities faced by farmers in Negros Occidental, the province in the Philippines where the raw sugar came from.
The Defend Negros Coalition, comprising Filipino groups from Northern California, helped organize Wednesday’s rally along with ILWU Local 10.
Negros Occidental, also known as the country’s sugarcane bowl, is among the poorest provinces in the Philippines, where sugarcane workers labor under severely exploitative conditions, according to the coalition.
The Defend Negros Coalition was formed after authorities killed 19 people on Negros Island in April. Among them were two Filipino American activists: Lyle Prijoles from Hayward and Kai Sorem from Washington state.
“We were alarmed to find out that there was sugar coming to the Bay Area from Negros Island,” said Ricky Pataksil, spokesperson for the Defend Negros Coalition. “Because of the low wages and the conditions that sugarcane workers in Negros face, and the history of the killings and massacres, we believe that there’s very much blood in the sugar that’s being shipped over from the Philippines.”
Pataksil said he and other Filipino activists who attended the rally are supporting the striking ILWU workers to hold C&H Sugar and the Philippine government accountable for the exploitation of sugarcane growers.
Contamination concerns
Then there is the potential threat of contamination of the raw sugar being unloaded onto the Levin-Richmond Terminal, an industrial facility.
The dock is used to unload “cement, scrap metal, coal, petroleum products, and oil,” said Villeggiante. “So, they’re loading the sugar directly onto the ground, high-piling it, and it’s being exposed to all the things that I just mentioned.”
In response, a C&H Sugar spokesperson said Thursday it is common practice for raw sugar to be handled via bulk terminals like the Levin Terminal.
“In terms of quality, there is no difference in using this terminal or using the refinery’s. Raw sugar is not food grade until it moves through a sugar refinery,” according to a statement from C&H. “Once it has been processed in our refinery, we assure the quality of our finished sugar.”
Villeggiante added that it would be difficult for the company to transport the unloaded sugar from the port to the facility in Crockett without the labor of ILWU Local 6 and Local 10.
As a result, it remains unclear how long the raw sugar will remain on the dock.
“You’re talking hundreds and hundreds of tons of sugar,” he said. “To truck it up there and then to try to put it in some sort of system to get to the silos? That’s going to be a feat by itself.”