At the Convention ILWU President Brian McWilliams presented to the delegates some representatives from a few of the newly organized ILWU units. Below are McWilliams’ introductory remarks and excerpts from the workers’ statements to the Convention.

I have said it many times and I will say it again ”organizing is the most important and toughest job of a labor union. It is the best example of the principle of solidarity, of how a worker's best self-interest is the self interest of all other workers together. The best way union workers can protect their contracts, their hard-won wages, conditions and benefits” is to make sure all other workers enjoy the same higher standards.

Understanding this, the delegates at our 1994 Convention made a commitment to organizing, to rededicating the ILWU to the kind of organizing that built this union in the first place. But those delegates fell a step short; ”they provided no budget for their ambitious goals. When our administration took over after the 1994 election, we devised a new assessment plan to begin funding the Convention-mandated organizing program.

That was the 2-4-24 assessment where members would pay an extra $2 per month in per capita for 24 months to build an organizing war chest. We brought that plan to the members in a rank-and-file referendum and they overwhelmingly endorsed it.

Three years ago, at our 1997 Convention in Hawaii, I stood before you and asked you to make a tough decision, to raise our members' per capita so we could devote 30 percent of it to an expanded organizing program. You responded in true ILWU fashion and voted for that organizing program.

With that money we hired a talented and experienced staff of organizers and with local input developed a strategic organizing plan. Now I want to share with you the results of those efforts.

In the last three years our union, the International staff and the locals together, have brought more than 4,500 new workers into the ILWU family, increasing our membership by more than 10 percent. And we did it at a cost of $800 per new member, far below the average AFL-CIO cost of $1,000 per member. And we are positioned to do even better in the future.

But these are just statistics, and while they are very good statistics, there are real people behind those numbers, real people who have struggled through much adversity to become a part of our union. I want to introduce you to a few of our modern-day working class:

Mary Winzig, Powell's Books worker

When we first started to organize, we were so afraid of management finding out we were meeting late at night and meeting in bars. And we were so scared to wear our union buttons. I actually put mine in my pocket and would pull it out every now and again and look at it.

Look at us now. We closed the damn store. We are out on strike. We are so bad-ass!

We decided to unionize with the ILWU because of its good name, its progressive politics, because we were able to charter our own local, and for its rich tradition and militancy. The ILWU commands respect. I fully realized that yesterday marching out with you from the Convention to Powell's Books and seeing how the police moved aside so we could join the workers. It was so amazing. I think all of us in Local 5 know now how it feels to be in a union.