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Earlier this week, commemorating the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., dock workers in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., staged a work stoppage, shutting down ports in both cities. The longshoremen cited legislation in Wisconsin and Ohio as the reason for the protests, which also coincided with labor rallies in the Bay Area.

Union members marched on the Federal Reserve building in San Francisco on Monday, according to Oakland’s KTVU-TV, protesting the passage of bills in the two states limiting collective bargaining by public employees.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, which represents dock workers in both Bay Area cities, staged the day-long port shutdowns.

“It is Wisconsin’s fierce resistance that is inspiring all of us today,” one member of the union’s executive board told the Worker’s World newspaper, which said “the big container port of Oakland was deader than a doornail.”

A non-union truck driver protested to the Oakland TV station that the work stoppage “screws up our whole day, don’t even know if we’re going to get home. It’s idiotic.”

Such port shutdowns are relatively common in the Bay Area – ILWU Local 10, which once counted among its members charismatic labor leader Harry Bridges, staged another one in October related to a controversial police shooting.

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