COLUMBIA — Labor leaders, including International Longshoremen's Union members from Charleston, sharply criticized Gov. Henry McMaster's comments from his State of the State address that he would fight unions to "the gates of hell."
In a Feb. 15 rally in front of the governor's office inside the Statehouse, Charles Brave, president of the ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, repeated his demand for a public apology from McMaster and said organized labor would fight back.
“You woke up a sleeping bear,” Brave railed in a fiery speech surrounded by more than four dozen supporters. “Let’s don’t get it twisted, you hear what I’m telling you? We’re here to stay, and we ain’t going nowhere.”
McMaster has nothing for which to apologize, Brandon Charochak, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement Feb. 15.
“Unions are a direct threat to South Carolina's economy, as made clear by the ILA's unlawful secondary boycott of Leatherman Terminal,” Charochak fired back. “Labor unions have destroyed the economies of many states across the country, and Gov. McMaster will not allow South Carolina to be next.”
Charochak was referencing the dispute at the root of the tensions between McMaster and the longshoremen. The S.C. State Ports Authority is fighting the National Labor Relations Board in court over whether ILA members or SPA employees should run the cranes at the Leatherman Terminal on the old Navy base in North Charleston.
The NLRB and a federal appeals panel have sided with the union. The escalating legal dispute could now be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ILA has argued that its contract with shipping lines that call at the Port of Charleston requires its members to operate the Leatherman cranes. The ports authority wants its non-union employees to continue filling those jobs as they have for decades.
Meanwhile, the union has sued some of shipping lines for using the three-year terminal, which has been nearly shut down by the litigation.
The dispute, which has seen escalating attacks between the governor’s office and the ILA as the case worked its way through the courts, prompted McMaster’s denunciation of unions in the State of the State.
“We will not let our state’s economy suffer or become collateral damage as labor unions seek to consume new jobs and conscript new dues-paying members,” McMaster said in his speech. “We will fight all the way to the gates of hell, and we will win.”
His comments infuriated organized labor.
“I’d say that hell is straight where you’re going if you don’t repent and change your ways,” Kim Smith, a member of the United Steelworkers union and vice president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, said in remarks clearly aimed at the governor Feb. 15.
Kim Smith, a United Steelworkers member and vice president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, at a Statehouse event Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, blasted S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster for his anti-union remarks.
Brave of the ILA Local 1422 said McMaster has repeatedly declined to meet with him.
Charochak confirmed the union requested a meeting the morning of Feb. 15, but the governor’s schedule did not permit one to take place. The last time McMaster and the ILA met was in 2017, Charochak said.
The rhetoric coming from the longshoremen has reached a fever pitch in recent days. In an incendiary video posted Feb. 14, International Longshoremen Association national President Harold Daggett called McMaster a “disgrace,” “redneck” and a “white supremist” who’s “got a hood in the closet.” Several speakers at the Feb. 15 rally referenced Daggett’s comments.
The governor's office declined to comment on Daggett's language.
The future of the Leatherman labor dispute could be resolved soon. The Supreme Court is expected to decide as soon as Feb. 19 whether it will hear the case. If it declines, the previous appeals court ruling siding with the ILA will stand.
Despite the fiery rhetoric from labor groups at the Statehouse, union membership as a percentage of the South Carolina workforce remains the lowest in the country. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures released last month showed 2.3 percent of Palmetto State workers are union members.
In 2017, workers at Boeing’s massive North Charleston plant overwhelmingly rejected unionization, though a small group of workers at the plant did form one a year later. The United Auto Workers union, fresh off a successful nationwide strike, told The Post and Courier in November that it is targeting the BMW plant in Spartanburg and the Volvo Cars plant near Summerville for unionization.
