It's the 75th anniversary of what's known in labor lore as "The Big Strike"
-- the remarkable event that brought open warfare to San Francisco's
waterfront, led to one of the very few general strikes in U.S. history and
played a key role in spreading unionization nationwide.
It began in May of the dark Depression year of 1934 when longshoremen
walked off the job to protest the truly wretched working conditions on West
Coast docks.
Longshoremen were not even guaranteed jobs, no matter how skilled or
experienced they might be. They had to report to the docks every morning and
hope a hiring boss would pick them from among the thousands of desperate
job-seekers who jammed the waterfront for the daily "shapeup."
Bosses rarely chose those who raised serious complaints about pay and
working conditions or otherwise challenged them, but were quite partial to
those who slipped them bribes or bought them drinks at nearby bars.
Even those who were hired often weren't sure how long they'd work. They
might be needed for only a few hours or for as many as l8, sometimes even
more, usually worked at top speed without breaks. .
For all that, they were paid a mere 85 cents an hour. That brought the
average longshoreman about $10 a week, low pay even by Depression standards.
What the longshoremen wanted above all was to end the indignity and
insecurity of the "shapeup." They wanted to decide for themselves how the
dock work should be allocated, with pay and working conditions determined in
negotiations between their union and employers.
The 32,000 dock workers and their leaders -- Harry Bridges, a young
Australian sailor turned longshoreman the most prominent among them -- were
denounced by conservative union leaders, employers, politicians and by the
press as Communists bent on violent revolution.
But despite the heavy opposition, the longshoremen managed to shut down
every port along the 1,900 miles of coastline between San Diego and Seattle.
After 57 days, employers, backed by state and local government officials,
issued an ultimatum: Call off the strike or they would bring in
strikebreakers under police escort to forcibly open the ports.
Which is what employers tried to do on July 5, 1934 -- a day known in West
Coast ports since then as "Bloody Thursday." The major attempt was launched
in San Francisco, where nearly 1,000 heavily armed policemen battled several
thousand longshoremen and supporters.
The fighting ended only after 2,000 National Guardsmen in full battle-dress,
armed with bayoneted-rifles and machine guns, marched in at the governor's
order to occupy the battle zone. The fighting had ceased, but by then two
men were dead, killed by police bullets, and more than 100 wounded or
seriously injured, and 800 under arrest.
Four others were killed, hundreds of others hurt and arrested at ports in
the Pacific Northwest and southern California. But it was San Francisco that
drew the most attention, and a great public outpouring of sympathy for the
strikers.
More than 40,000 San Franciscans joined in a two-mile-long funeral cortege
for the men who had been killed on their city's docks. They marched slowly
up the city's main downtown street, men, women and children eight to ten
abreast behind the coffins laid on crepe-draped, flower-strewn flatbed
trucks.
Public support continued to mount, until a week later it erupted into a
citywide general strike. Emergency services continued, but otherwise San
Francisco came to a virtual standstill.
The state was about to declare martial law, but after four days, government
officials and the conservative leaders of the American Federation of Labor
who controlled the city's union hierarchy prevailed and the general strike
was called off.
The strikers nevertheless scored one of the most important victories in U.S.
labor history.
Victory came through President Franklin Roosevelt, who appointed an
arbitration panel that settled the longshoremen's strike by granting the
strikers almost all they sought.
Employers were required to formally recognize and bargain with the dock
workers' union, raise pay, establish a standard workweek and abolish the
"shapeup." All hiring was to be done through union-operated hiring halls,
with jobs handed out in rotation so work could be shared equally.
Soon after that, the longshoremen merged with the warehousemen who worked
closely with them. Their International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's
Union became one of the most powerful, democratic, progressive and
influential of all unions.
The longshoremen's union victorious struggle to create the union -- their
Big Strike -- strike was an extremely important signal to the nation. It
showed what could be done by workers united in a common cause, however
powerful and violent the opposition. It showed that they could win the
crucial rights so long denied them.
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Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based journalist who has covered labor
issues for a half-century as a print and broadcast reporter, editor and
commentator. Contact him through his website,
www.dickmeister.com.
