Today in Labor History May 9, 1934: Longshoremen began a strike for a union hiring hall and union recognition, ultimately leading to the San Francisco general strike. After World War One, West Coast longshore workers were poorly organized or represented by company unions. The IWW had tried to organize them and had some successes, like in San Pedro, in 1922, but they were ultimately crushed by injunctions, imprisonment, deportation and vigilante violence. While longshoremen lacked a well-organized union, they retained a syndicalist sentiment and militancy. Many Wobblies were still working the docks. On May 9, 1934, longshoremen walked off the job at ports up and down the West Coast, soon to be followed by sailors. Goons shot at strikers in San Pedro. There was also violence in Oakland and San Francisco. Street battles between the cops and strikers continued in San Francisco, heating up on July 3. Things came to a head on Bloody Thursday, July 5, when police shot 3 workers (two of them died). The attack led to a four-day general strike that effectively shut down commerce in San Francisco, despite police violence and attempts to weaken it by national unions. In 2017, San Francisco renamed the big plaza across from the Ferry Building Harry Bridges Plaza. Many of the city’s recent Palestinian solidarity protests have taken place there.
Today in Labor History March 30, 1990: Harry Bridges died at age 88. He helped found the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) and led the union for 40 years. Bridges was born in Australia in 1901 and moved to the U.S. in 1920. He joined the IWW in 1921 and participated in an unsuccessful nationwide seamen’s strike. In 1922, he moved to San Francisco, to become a longshoreman. His militancy won him considerable support and he was soon elected a leader of the new longshoremen’s union. He helped lead the 1935 San Francisco General Strike. This was one of the last General Strikes to occur in the U.S. because the Taft-Hartley Act banned them in 1947 (in the wake of the 1945-1946 Strike Wave, with over 4.3 million U.S. workers going on strike, including General Strikes in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Stamford, Connecticut; Rochester, New York; and Oakland, California). One of Bridge’s most famous quotes was, “The most important word in the language of the working class is solidarity.