1934 West Coast Longshore Strike
Encyclopedia
The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as a number of variations on these names) lasted eighty-three days, triggered by sailor
s and a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast
ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike, along with the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike
led by the American Workers Party
and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934
led by the Communist League of America
, were important catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism
in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations
.
s since the years immediately after World War I
, when the shipping companies and stevedoring firms had imposed the open shop
after a series of failed strikes. Longshoremen in San Francisco, then the major port on the coast, were required to go through a hiring hall operated by a company union, known as the "blue book" system for the color of the membership book.
The Industrial Workers of the World
had attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors and fishermen in the 1920s through their Maritime Workers Union. Their largest strike, in San Pedro, California in 1923, bottled up shipping in that harbor, but was crushed by a combination of injunctions, mass arrests and vigilantism by the American Legion
. While the IWW was a spent force after that strike, syndicalist
thinking remained popular on the docks. Longshoremen and sailors on the West Coast also had contacts with an Australian syndicalist movement that called itself the "One Big Union" formed after the defeat of a general strike there in 1917.
The Communist Party
had also been active in the area in the late 1920s, seeking to organize all categories of maritime workers into a single union, the Maritime Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), as part of the drive during the Third Period
to create revolutionary unions. The MWIU never made much headway on the West Coast, but it did attract a number of former IWW members and foreign-born militants, such as Harry Bridges
, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States.
Those militants published a newspaper, "The Waterfront Worker", that focused on longshoremen's most pressing demands: more men on each gang, lighter loads and an independent union. While a number of the individuals in this group were Communist Party members, the group as a whole was independent of the party: although it criticized the International Seamen's Union
(ISU) as weak and the International Longshoremen's Association
(ILA), which had its base on the East Coast
, as corrupt, it did not embrace the MWIU, but called instead for creation of small knots of activists at each port to serve as the first step in a slow, careful movement to unionize the industry.
Events soon made the MWIU wholly irrelevant. Just as the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act
had led to a spontaneous explosion in union membership among coal miners in 1933, thousands of longshoremen now joined the fledgling ILA locals that reappeared on the West Coast. The MWIU faded away as party activists followed the mass of West Coast longshoremen into the ILA.
These newly emboldened workers first went after the "blue book" union, refusing to pay dues to it and tearing up their membership books. The militants who had published "The Waterfront Worker", now known as the "Albion Hall group" after their usual meeting place, continued organizing dock committees that soon began launching slowdown
s and other types of job actions in order to win better working conditions. While the official leadership of the ILA remained in the hands of conservatives sent to the West Coast by President Joseph Ryan of the ILA, the Albion Hall group started in March, 1934 to press demands for a coastwide contract, a union-run hiring hall and an industrywide waterfront federation. When the conservative ILA leadership negotiated a weak "gentlemen's agreement" with the employers that had been brokered by the mediation board created by the Roosevelt Administration, Bridges led the membership in rejecting it.
The sticking point in the strike was recognition: the union demanded a closed shop
, a coastwide contract and a union hiring hall. The employers offered to arbitrate the dispute, but insisted that the union agree to an open shop as a condition of any agreement to arbitrate. The longshoremen rejected the proposal to arbitrate.
s, housing them on moored ships or in walled compounds and bringing them to and from work under police protection. Strikers attacked the stockade housing strikebreakers in San Pedro on May 15; two strikers were shot and killed by the employers' private guards. Similar battles broke out in San Francisco and Oakland, California
, Portland, Oregon
and Seattle, Washington. Strikers also succeeded in slowing down or stopping the movement of goods by rail out of the ports.
The Roosevelt administration
tried again to broker a deal to end the strike, but the membership twice rejected the agreements their leadership brought to them. The employers then decided to make a show of force to reopen the port in San Francisco. On Tuesday, July 3, fights broke out along the Embarcadero in San Francisco between police and strikers while a handful of trucks driven by young businessmen made it through the picket line.
Some Teamsters
supported the strikers by refusing to handle "hot cargo" - goods which had been unloaded by strikebreakers, although the Teamsters' leadership was not as supportive. By the end of May Dave Beck
, president of the Seattle Teamsters, and Mike Casey, president of those in San Francisco, thought the maritime strike had lasted too long. They encouraged the strikers to take what they could get from the employers and threatened to use Teamsters as strikebreakers if the ILA didn't return to work.
, the police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd, then followed with a charge by mounted police
. Picketers threw the canisters and rocks back at the police, who charged again, sending the picketers into retreat after a third assault. Each side then refortified and took stock.
The events took a violent turn that afternoon, as hostilities resumed outside of the ILA the kitchen. Eyewitness accounts differ on the exact events that transpired next. Some witnesses saw a group of strikers first surround a police car and attempt to tip it over, prompting the police to fire shotguns in the air, and then revolvers at the crowd. One of the policemen then fired a shotgun into the crowd, striking three men in intersection of Steuart and Mission streets. One of the men, Howard Sperry, a striking longshoreman, later died of his wounds. Another man, Charles Olsen, was also shot but later recovered from his wounds. A third man, Nick Bordoise--an out of work cook who had been volunteering at the ILA strike kitchen--was shot but managed to make his way around the corner onto Spear Street, where he was found several hours later. Like Sperry, he died at the hospital.
Strikers immediately cordoned off the area where the two picketers had been shot, laying flowers and wreaths around it. Police arrived to remove the flowers and drive off the picketers minutes later. Once the police left, the strikers returned, replaced the flowers and stood guard over the spot. Though Sperry and Bordoise had been shot several blocks apart, this spot became synonymous with the memory of the two slain men and "Bloody Thursday."
As strikers carried wounded picketers into the ILA union hall police fired on the hall and lobbed tear gas canisters at nearby hotels. At this point someone reportedly called the union hall to ask "Are you willing to arbitrate now?"
Under orders from California Governor
Frank Merriam
, the California National Guard
moved in that evening to patrol the waterfront. Similarly, federal soldiers of the United States Army
stationed at the Presidio
were placed on alert. The picketers pulled back, unwilling to take on armed soldiers in an uneven fight, and trucks and trains began moving without interference. Bridges asked the San Francisco Labor Council to meet that Saturday, July 7, to authorize a general strike. The Alameda County Central Labor Council in Oakland considered the same action. Teamsters in both San Francisco and Oakland voted to strike, over the objections of their leaders, on Sunday, July 8.
San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi declared a state of emergency
. Some federal officials, particularly Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins
, were more skeptical. Roosevelt later recalled that some persons were urging him to steer the USS Houston
, which was carrying him to Hawai'i, "into San Francisco Bay
, all flags flying and guns double-shotted, and end the strike." Roosevelt rejected the suggestion.
The strike lasted four days. Non-union truck drivers joined the first day; the movie theaters and night clubs closed down. While food deliveries continued with the permission of the strike committee, many small businesses closed, posting signs in support of the strikers. Reports that unions in Portland and Seattle would also begin general strikes picked up currency.
of all disputed issues. When the National Longshore Board put the employer's proposal to arbitrate to a vote of striking longshoremen, it passed in every port except Everett, Washington
.
That, however, left the striking seamen in the lurch: the employers had refused to arbitrate with the ISU unless it first won elections on the fleets on strike. While Bridges, who had preached solidarity among all maritime workers and scorned arbitration, apologized to the seamen for the longshoremen's vote, the President of the ISU urged them to hold out and to burn their "fink books", the membership records of the company union to which they had been forced to pay dues.
On July 17, 1934, the California National Guard
blocked both ends of Jackson Street from Drumm to Front with machine gun mounted trucks to assist vigilante raids, protected by SFPD, on the headquarters of the Marine Workers' Industrial Union and the ILA
soup kitchen at 84 Embarcadero. Moving on, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League's headquarters on Howard between Third and Fourth was raided, leading to 150 arrests and the complete destruction of the facilities. The employer's group, the Industrial Association, had agents riding with the police. Further raids were carried out at the Workers' Open Forum at 1223 Fillmore street and the Western Worker building opposite City Hall that contained a bookstore and the main offices of the Communist Party, which was thoroughly destroyed. Attacks were also perpetrated on the 121 Haight Street Workers' School and the Mission Workers' Neighborhood House at 741 Valencia Street. A police spokesperson suggested that "maybe the Communists staged the raids themselves for publicity".
General Hugh Johnson
, then head of the National Recovery Administration
, gave a speech urging responsible labor leaders to "run these subversive influences out from its ranks like rats". A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
was kidnapped and beaten, while vigilantes seized thirteen radicals in San Jose
and turned them over to the sheriff of an adjoining county, who transported them to another county. In Hayward
in Alameda County someone erected a scaffold in front of the city hall with a noose and a sign stating "Reds beware". In Piedmont
, an upscale community bordering both Oakland and Berkeley
, the chief of police prepared for a reported attack by strikers on the homes of wealthy ship-owners.
newspaper.
The arbitration award issued on October 12, 1934 cemented the ILA's power. While the award put the operation of the hall in the hands of a committee of union and employer representatives, the union was given the power to select the dispatcher. Since longshoremen were prepared to walk out if an employer didn't hire a worker dispatched from the hall, the ILA soon controlled hiring on the docks. The employers complained that the union wanted to "sovietize" the waterfront. Discharge was a mild penalty, since the worker could obtain other employment through the hiring hall.
The union soon exploited the "quickie strike" tactic to extract many concessions from employers. Similarly, even though an arbitrator held that the 1935 Agreement prohibited sympathy strike
s, the union's members nonetheless refused to cross other unions' picket lines. Longshoremen also refused to handle "hot cargo" destined for non-union warehouses that the union was attempting to organize. The ISU acquired similar authority over hiring, despite the philosophical objection of the union's own officers to hiring halls. The ISU used this power to drive strikebreakers out of the industry.
The rift between the seamen's and longshoremen's unions deepened and became more complex in the succeeding years, as Bridges continually fought with the Sailors Union of the Pacific over labor and political issues. The West Coast district of the ILA broke off from the International in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen's Union, later renamed the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union after the union's "march inland" to organize warehouse workers, then renamed the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
in recognition of the number of women members.
The arbitration award also gave longshoremen a raise to ninety-five cents an hour for straight time work, just shy of the dollar an hour it demanded during the strike. It was also awarded a contract that applied up and down the West Coast.
The ILWU continues to recognize "Bloody Thursday" by shutting down all West Coast ports every July 5. The ILWU has frequently stopped work for political protests against, among other things, Italy's invasion
of Ethiopia, fascist
intervention in Spain's civil war
, South Africa's system of apartheid and the Iraq War.
Sam Kagel, the last surviving member of the original union steering committee, died on May 21, 2007.
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
s and a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike, along with the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike
Auto-Lite strike
The Toledo Auto-Lite strike was a strike by a federal labor union of the American Federation of Labor against the Electric Auto-Lite company of Toledo, Ohio, from April 12 to June 3, 1934....
led by the American Workers Party
American Workers Party
The American Workers Party was a socialist organization established in December 1933 by activists in the Conference for Progressive Labor Action, a group headed by A.J. Muste.-Formation:...
and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934
Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934
The Minneapolis General Strike of 1934 grew out of a strike by Teamsters against most of the trucking companies operating in Minneapolis, a major distribution center for the Upper Midwest. The strike began on May 16, 1934 in the Market District and ensuing violence lasted periodically throughout...
led by the Communist League of America
Communist League of America
The Communist League of America was founded by James P. Cannon, Max Shachtman and Martin Abern late in 1928 after their expulsion from the Communist Party USA for Trotskyism. The CLA was the United States section of Leon Trotsky's International Left Opposition and initially positioned itself as...
, were important catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
.
Background
Longshoremen on the West Coast ports had either been unorganized or represented by company unionCompany union
A company union is a trade union which is located within and run by a company or by the national government, and is not affiliated with an independent trade union. Company unions were outlawed in the United States by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, due to their use as agents for interference...
s since the years immediately after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, when the shipping companies and stevedoring firms had imposed the open shop
Open shop
An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment...
after a series of failed strikes. Longshoremen in San Francisco, then the major port on the coast, were required to go through a hiring hall operated by a company union, known as the "blue book" system for the color of the membership book.
The Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
had attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors and fishermen in the 1920s through their Maritime Workers Union. Their largest strike, in San Pedro, California in 1923, bottled up shipping in that harbor, but was crushed by a combination of injunctions, mass arrests and vigilantism by the American Legion
American Legion
The American Legion is a mutual-aid organization of veterans of the United States armed forces chartered by the United States Congress. It was founded to benefit those veterans who served during a wartime period as defined by Congress...
. While the IWW was a spent force after that strike, syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
thinking remained popular on the docks. Longshoremen and sailors on the West Coast also had contacts with an Australian syndicalist movement that called itself the "One Big Union" formed after the defeat of a general strike there in 1917.
The Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
had also been active in the area in the late 1920s, seeking to organize all categories of maritime workers into a single union, the Maritime Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), as part of the drive during the Third Period
Third Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
to create revolutionary unions. The MWIU never made much headway on the West Coast, but it did attract a number of former IWW members and foreign-born militants, such as Harry Bridges
Harry Bridges
Harry Bridges was an Australian-American union leader, in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union , a longshore and warehouse workers' union on the West Coast, Hawaii and Alaska which he helped form and led for over 40 years...
, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States.
Those militants published a newspaper, "The Waterfront Worker", that focused on longshoremen's most pressing demands: more men on each gang, lighter loads and an independent union. While a number of the individuals in this group were Communist Party members, the group as a whole was independent of the party: although it criticized the International Seamen's Union
International Seamen's Union
The International Seamen's Union was an American maritime trade union which operated from 1892 until 1937. In its last few years, the union effectively split into the National Maritime Union and Seafarer's International Union.-The early years:...
(ISU) as weak and the International Longshoremen's Association
International Longshoremen's Association
The International Longshoremen's Association is a labor union representing longshore workers along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and inland waterways...
(ILA), which had its base on the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
, as corrupt, it did not embrace the MWIU, but called instead for creation of small knots of activists at each port to serve as the first step in a slow, careful movement to unionize the industry.
Events soon made the MWIU wholly irrelevant. Just as the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act , officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 (Ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195, formerly...
had led to a spontaneous explosion in union membership among coal miners in 1933, thousands of longshoremen now joined the fledgling ILA locals that reappeared on the West Coast. The MWIU faded away as party activists followed the mass of West Coast longshoremen into the ILA.
These newly emboldened workers first went after the "blue book" union, refusing to pay dues to it and tearing up their membership books. The militants who had published "The Waterfront Worker", now known as the "Albion Hall group" after their usual meeting place, continued organizing dock committees that soon began launching slowdown
Slowdown
A slowdown is an industrial action in which employees perform their duties but seek to reduce productivity or efficiency in their performance of these duties. A slowdown may be used as either a prelude or an alternative to a strike, as it is seen as less disruptive as well as less risky and...
s and other types of job actions in order to win better working conditions. While the official leadership of the ILA remained in the hands of conservatives sent to the West Coast by President Joseph Ryan of the ILA, the Albion Hall group started in March, 1934 to press demands for a coastwide contract, a union-run hiring hall and an industrywide waterfront federation. When the conservative ILA leadership negotiated a weak "gentlemen's agreement" with the employers that had been brokered by the mediation board created by the Roosevelt Administration, Bridges led the membership in rejecting it.
The sticking point in the strike was recognition: the union demanded a closed shop
Closed shop
A closed shop is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed....
, a coastwide contract and a union hiring hall. The employers offered to arbitrate the dispute, but insisted that the union agree to an open shop as a condition of any agreement to arbitrate. The longshoremen rejected the proposal to arbitrate.
The Big Strike
The strike began on May 9, 1934 as longshoremen in every West Coast port walked out; sailors joined them several days later. The employers recruited strikebreakerStrikebreaker
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who are not employed by the company prior to the trade union dispute, but rather hired prior to or during the strike to keep the organisation running...
s, housing them on moored ships or in walled compounds and bringing them to and from work under police protection. Strikers attacked the stockade housing strikebreakers in San Pedro on May 15; two strikers were shot and killed by the employers' private guards. Similar battles broke out in San Francisco and Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
and Seattle, Washington. Strikers also succeeded in slowing down or stopping the movement of goods by rail out of the ports.
The Roosevelt administration
Roosevelt Administration
There have been two Presidents of the United States with the surname "Roosevelt":*Theodore Roosevelt Administration, the 26th President of the United States, 1901 - 1909*Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, the 32nd President of the United States, 1933 - 1945...
tried again to broker a deal to end the strike, but the membership twice rejected the agreements their leadership brought to them. The employers then decided to make a show of force to reopen the port in San Francisco. On Tuesday, July 3, fights broke out along the Embarcadero in San Francisco between police and strikers while a handful of trucks driven by young businessmen made it through the picket line.
Some Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
supported the strikers by refusing to handle "hot cargo" - goods which had been unloaded by strikebreakers, although the Teamsters' leadership was not as supportive. By the end of May Dave Beck
Dave Beck
Dave Beck was an American labor leader, and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1952 to 1957...
, president of the Seattle Teamsters, and Mike Casey, president of those in San Francisco, thought the maritime strike had lasted too long. They encouraged the strikers to take what they could get from the employers and threatened to use Teamsters as strikebreakers if the ILA didn't return to work.
"Bloody Thursday"
After a quiet Fourth of July the employers' organization, the Industrial Association, tried to open the port even further on Thursday, July 5. As spectators watched from Rincon HillRincon Hill
Rincon Hill is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It is one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills."-Location:...
, the police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd, then followed with a charge by mounted police
Mounted police
Mounted police are police who patrol on horseback or camelback. They continue to serve in remote areas and in metropolitan areas where their day-to-day function may be picturesque or ceremonial, but they are also employed in crowd control because of their mobile mass and height advantage and...
. Picketers threw the canisters and rocks back at the police, who charged again, sending the picketers into retreat after a third assault. Each side then refortified and took stock.
The events took a violent turn that afternoon, as hostilities resumed outside of the ILA the kitchen. Eyewitness accounts differ on the exact events that transpired next. Some witnesses saw a group of strikers first surround a police car and attempt to tip it over, prompting the police to fire shotguns in the air, and then revolvers at the crowd. One of the policemen then fired a shotgun into the crowd, striking three men in intersection of Steuart and Mission streets. One of the men, Howard Sperry, a striking longshoreman, later died of his wounds. Another man, Charles Olsen, was also shot but later recovered from his wounds. A third man, Nick Bordoise--an out of work cook who had been volunteering at the ILA strike kitchen--was shot but managed to make his way around the corner onto Spear Street, where he was found several hours later. Like Sperry, he died at the hospital.
Strikers immediately cordoned off the area where the two picketers had been shot, laying flowers and wreaths around it. Police arrived to remove the flowers and drive off the picketers minutes later. Once the police left, the strikers returned, replaced the flowers and stood guard over the spot. Though Sperry and Bordoise had been shot several blocks apart, this spot became synonymous with the memory of the two slain men and "Bloody Thursday."
As strikers carried wounded picketers into the ILA union hall police fired on the hall and lobbed tear gas canisters at nearby hotels. At this point someone reportedly called the union hall to ask "Are you willing to arbitrate now?"
Under orders from California Governor
Governor of California
The Governor of California is the chief executive of the California state government, whose responsibilities include making annual State of the State addresses to the California State Legislature, submitting the budget, and ensuring that state laws are enforced...
Frank Merriam
Frank Merriam
Frank Finley Merriam was an American politician who served as the 28th governor of California from June 2, 1934 until January 2, 1939...
, the California National Guard
California Army National Guard
The California Army National Guard is the land force component of the California National Guard, one of the reserve component United States Army and is part of the United States National Guard. The California Army National Guard is composed of about 20,000 soldiers...
moved in that evening to patrol the waterfront. Similarly, federal soldiers of the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
stationed at the Presidio
Presidio of San Francisco
The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...
were placed on alert. The picketers pulled back, unwilling to take on armed soldiers in an uneven fight, and trucks and trains began moving without interference. Bridges asked the San Francisco Labor Council to meet that Saturday, July 7, to authorize a general strike. The Alameda County Central Labor Council in Oakland considered the same action. Teamsters in both San Francisco and Oakland voted to strike, over the objections of their leaders, on Sunday, July 8.
Funerals and general strike
The following day, several thousand strikers, families and sympathizers took part in a funeral procession down Market Street, stretching more than a mile and a half, for Nicholas Bordois and Howard Sperry, the two persons killed on "Bloody Thursday". The police were wholly absent from the scene. The march made an enormous impact on San Franciscans, making a general strike, which had formerly been "the visionary dream of a small group of the most radical workers . . . a practical and realizable objective." After dozens of Bay Area unions voted for a general strike over the next few days, the San Francisco Labor Council voted on July 14 to call a general strike. The Teamsters had already been out for two days by that point.San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi declared a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
. Some federal officials, particularly Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins , born Fannie Coralie Perkins, was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition...
, were more skeptical. Roosevelt later recalled that some persons were urging him to steer the USS Houston
USS Houston (CA-30)
USS Houston , nicknamed the "Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast", was a Northampton-class heavy cruiser of the United States Navy...
, which was carrying him to Hawai'i, "into San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
, all flags flying and guns double-shotted, and end the strike." Roosevelt rejected the suggestion.
The strike lasted four days. Non-union truck drivers joined the first day; the movie theaters and night clubs closed down. While food deliveries continued with the permission of the strike committee, many small businesses closed, posting signs in support of the strikers. Reports that unions in Portland and Seattle would also begin general strikes picked up currency.
End of the strike
The calling of a general strike had an unexpected result: it gave the General Strike Committee, whose makeup was far less militant than the longshoremen's strike committee, effective control over the maritime strike itself. When the Labor Council voted to terminate the general strike it also recommended that the unions accept arbitrationArbitration
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, where the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...
of all disputed issues. When the National Longshore Board put the employer's proposal to arbitrate to a vote of striking longshoremen, it passed in every port except Everett, Washington
Everett, Washington
Everett is the county seat of and the largest city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. Named for Everett Colby, son of founder Charles L. Colby, it lies north of Seattle. The city had a total population of 103,019 at the 2010 census, making it the 6th largest in the state and...
.
That, however, left the striking seamen in the lurch: the employers had refused to arbitrate with the ISU unless it first won elections on the fleets on strike. While Bridges, who had preached solidarity among all maritime workers and scorned arbitration, apologized to the seamen for the longshoremen's vote, the President of the ISU urged them to hold out and to burn their "fink books", the membership records of the company union to which they had been forced to pay dues.
On July 17, 1934, the California National Guard
California National Guard
The California National Guard is the component of the United States National Guard in the U.S. state of California. It comprises both Army and Air National Guard components and is the largest national guard force in the United States with a total authorized strength of 22,900 soldiers and airmen...
blocked both ends of Jackson Street from Drumm to Front with machine gun mounted trucks to assist vigilante raids, protected by SFPD, on the headquarters of the Marine Workers' Industrial Union and the ILA
International Longshoremen's Association
The International Longshoremen's Association is a labor union representing longshore workers along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and inland waterways...
soup kitchen at 84 Embarcadero. Moving on, the Workers' Ex-Servicemen's League's headquarters on Howard between Third and Fourth was raided, leading to 150 arrests and the complete destruction of the facilities. The employer's group, the Industrial Association, had agents riding with the police. Further raids were carried out at the Workers' Open Forum at 1223 Fillmore street and the Western Worker building opposite City Hall that contained a bookstore and the main offices of the Communist Party, which was thoroughly destroyed. Attacks were also perpetrated on the 121 Haight Street Workers' School and the Mission Workers' Neighborhood House at 741 Valencia Street. A police spokesperson suggested that "maybe the Communists staged the raids themselves for publicity".
General Hugh Johnson
Hugh Samuel Johnson
Hugh Samuel "Iron Pants" Johnson American Army officer, businessman, speech writer, government official and newspaper columnist. He is best known as a member of the Brain Trust of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932-34. He wrote numerous speeches for FDR and helped plan the New Deal...
, then head of the National Recovery Administration
National Recovery Administration
The National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
, gave a speech urging responsible labor leaders to "run these subversive influences out from its ranks like rats". A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
was kidnapped and beaten, while vigilantes seized thirteen radicals in San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
and turned them over to the sheriff of an adjoining county, who transported them to another county. In Hayward
Hayward, California
Hayward is a city located in the East Bay in Alameda County, California. With a population of 144,186, Hayward is the sixth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area and the third largest in Alameda County. Hayward was ranked as the 37th most populous municipality in California. It is included in...
in Alameda County someone erected a scaffold in front of the city hall with a noose and a sign stating "Reds beware". In Piedmont
Piedmont, California
Piedmont is a small, affluent city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is surrounded by the city of Oakland. The population was 10,667 at the 2010 census. Piedmont was incorporated in 1907 and was developed significantly in the 1920s and 1930s...
, an upscale community bordering both Oakland and Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, the chief of police prepared for a reported attack by strikers on the homes of wealthy ship-owners.
Aftermath
While some of the most powerful people in San Francisco considered the strike's denouement to be a victory for the employers, many longshoremen and seamen did not. Spontaneous strikes over grievances and workplace conditions broke out as strikers returned to their jobs, with longshoremen and teamsters supporting their demands. Employers conceded many of these battles, giving workers even more confidence in demanding that employers lighten unbearably heavy loads. Longshoremen also began dictating other terms, fining members who worked more than the ceiling of 120 hours per month, filing charges against a gang boss for "slandering colored brothers" and forcing employers to fire strikebreakers. Other unions went further: the Marine Firemen proposed to punish any member who bought a HearstWilliam Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
newspaper.
The arbitration award issued on October 12, 1934 cemented the ILA's power. While the award put the operation of the hall in the hands of a committee of union and employer representatives, the union was given the power to select the dispatcher. Since longshoremen were prepared to walk out if an employer didn't hire a worker dispatched from the hall, the ILA soon controlled hiring on the docks. The employers complained that the union wanted to "sovietize" the waterfront. Discharge was a mild penalty, since the worker could obtain other employment through the hiring hall.
The union soon exploited the "quickie strike" tactic to extract many concessions from employers. Similarly, even though an arbitrator held that the 1935 Agreement prohibited sympathy strike
Sympathy strike
Secondary action is industrial action by a trade union in support of a strike initiated by workers in another, separate enterprise...
s, the union's members nonetheless refused to cross other unions' picket lines. Longshoremen also refused to handle "hot cargo" destined for non-union warehouses that the union was attempting to organize. The ISU acquired similar authority over hiring, despite the philosophical objection of the union's own officers to hiring halls. The ISU used this power to drive strikebreakers out of the industry.
The rift between the seamen's and longshoremen's unions deepened and became more complex in the succeeding years, as Bridges continually fought with the Sailors Union of the Pacific over labor and political issues. The West Coast district of the ILA broke off from the International in 1937 to form the International Longshoremen's Union, later renamed the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union after the union's "march inland" to organize warehouse workers, then renamed the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
International Longshore and Warehouse Union
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and Alaska, and in British Columbia, Canada. It also represents hotel workers in Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska, warehouse workers throughout...
in recognition of the number of women members.
The arbitration award also gave longshoremen a raise to ninety-five cents an hour for straight time work, just shy of the dollar an hour it demanded during the strike. It was also awarded a contract that applied up and down the West Coast.
The ILWU continues to recognize "Bloody Thursday" by shutting down all West Coast ports every July 5. The ILWU has frequently stopped work for political protests against, among other things, Italy's invasion
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire...
of Ethiopia, fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
intervention in Spain's civil war
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, South Africa's system of apartheid and the Iraq War.
Sam Kagel, the last surviving member of the original union steering committee, died on May 21, 2007.
See also
- Everett massacreEverett massacreThe Everett Massacre was an armed confrontation between local authorities and members of the Industrial Workers of the World union, commonly called "Wobblies". It took place in Everett, Washington on Sunday, November 5, 1916...
- History of the west coast of North AmericaHistory of the west coast of North AmericaThe human history of the west coast of North America is believed to stretch back to the arrival of the earliest people over the Bering Strait, or alternately along a now-submerged coastal plain, through the development of significant pre-Columbian cultures and population densities, to the arrival...
Further reading
- The Big Strike, by Mike Quin, ISBN 0-7178-0504-2
- A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco, by David F. Selvin. Wayne State University Press (July 1996). ISBN 0-8143-2610-2.
- Dock Strike: History of the 1934 Waterfront Strike in Portland, Oregon, by Roger Buchanan
- Reds or Rackets, The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront, by Howard Kimeldorf, ISBN 0-520-07886-1
- Harry Bridges, The Rise and Fall of Radical Labor in the U.S., by Charles Larrowe, ISBN 0-88208-001-6
- Workers on the Waterfront, Seamen, Longshoremen and Unionism in the 1930s, by Bruce Nelson, ISBN 0-252-06144-6
- Agitate, Educate, Organize: Portland, 1934, by William Bigelow & Norman Diamond, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Spring 1988
External links
- San Francisco General Strike of 1934 photographic collections, via Calisphere, California Digital Library