Yardbird

Blues

25 Years of a Wobbly in the Maritime Industry

by Arthur J. Miller



The book is about real workplace experiences and issues in the maritime industry such as: workplace safety, general working conditions, environmentalism and how to begin to make earth safe ships, the bosses, the unions, different types of ships, the great danger to workers and the environment of FOC ships and more. All that from the viewpoint of a Wobbly.

The chapters are: The Blues; The Making of a Yardbird; Down Houston Way; Types of Maritime Vessels; Making Dreams Real; Blues Again; Green's Bayou; Improving Goods; Asbestos, the Dust of Death, Speed Up and Die!; Working on the Mississippi River and Louisiana Jack; The 1985 New Orleans Waterfront Metal Trades Strike; Pains in My Wrists; Meeting Up with Todd Again; It's a Love Boat!; Fire on the Water; Such a Foolish Notion; Environmentalism and the Maritime Industry; In the Belly of a Love Boat, or I got them Old Fireroom Blues Again; Greed Upon the Oceans: Flag of Convenience Ships; Spiraling Downwards; Screwed Again; Dignity of Labor; What is the Value of a Worker's Life?; Health Care Should Be a Right, Not a Privilege; The IWW Centennial: One Shipyard Worker's Perspective.

The introduction was written by FW Carlos Cortez.



The real purpose of my writing is not to get my views as an individual published, but rather to try to help encourage working people to speak for ourselves and to write about our direct workplace experiences. I believe strongly that this is a very important part in worker self-organization. Too often workers are talked down to as if we are just sheep to be led and that our only role is to be followers. I believe workers do understand our class situation and we understand industry and how to change it better than any would be leaders and that real workers’ self-organization, that we control, is the only means to reach worker self-management. And to do that workers must speak for ourselves. Me, I am nothing more than a rebel Wobbly shipyard worker.

— Arthur J. Miller



200 pp. $17.95 ISBN 978-0-9737827-8-3