by C. Martin
In the early 1930’s on the West Coast of the United States, the longshoremen and the sailors, who make the shipping trade possible, were working under grueling conditions for low pay. The longshoremen made on average $40 a month, while able seamen and ordinary seamen made roughly $53 and $36 a month respectively. Both longshoremen and sailors faced extended unemployment between jobs, but when work was found they were forced to work long hours. The longshoremen could be forced to work shifts up to 36 hours straight, and the sailors would work up to 16 hours a day.
Neither the longshoremen or the sailors had adequate union protection against these injustices. The longshoremen were channeled into the gangster-controlled Blue Book Union. Through this “union” they had to use payoffs and bribes to gain work. The sailors were mostly unorganized, except for the small and corrupt International Seaman’s Union, and the even smaller militant Marine Workers Industrial Union that was part of the Trade Union Unity League.
The inhumane conditions mentioned above, along with the legal right for workers to organize through the recently passed National Industrial Recovery Act, led the longshoremen to flock into the International Longshoreman Association (ILA). The bosses, violating the law which they consider sacred only when it benefits them, refused to negotiate with the union and fired four rank and file militants. In response, the longshoremen and the sailors went out on strike up and down the West Coast 35,000 strong on May 9th, 1934. The longshoremen demanded a $1/hour wage, a six hour day, a thirty hour work week, and the creation of a union hall to remove hiring decisions from the gangsters in the Blue Book Union.
However, the bosses had nothing to negotiate; only a communist insurrection to put down. The press supported them by launching a slander campaign to paint the workers as Disney villains. Consider this “gem” from the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined “Red Army Marching on City”:
“… the communist army planned the destruction of railroad and highway facilities to paralyze transportation and later, communication, while San Francisco and the Bay Area were made a focal point in a red struggle for control of government.”
Joseph Ryan, the opportunist and mob-connected ILA president, tried to scuttle the strike by signing an agreement with the bosses over the heads of the workers. When they told him to go pound sand, he also joined in the chorus of accusing the strikers of being communists.
On July 3rd, the police attacked the picket line at the Embarcadero pier in San Francisco and a vicious fight ensued for four hours. The police attacked with their guns, batons, and tear gas while the strikers fought back with bricks and their fists. The next day saw a truce on the July 4th holiday, with the fighting picking up where it left off on July 5th. That day, known as Bloody Thursday, saw other workers and students come to the picket line to reinforce the besieged strikers.
The police wrecked the headquarters of the ILA, and hundreds were badly wounded and two strikers were killed. The two slain men were Howard Sperry, a longshoreman, and Nick Bordoise, a member of the cook’s union and the local Communist Party. By the end of Bloody Thursday 2,000 National Guardsmen were called out and it appeared that the strike was lost.
However, that very night the people of San Francisco began stirring. 35,000 people marched at the funeral for the two slain men. Then, beginning with the Painter’s Union Local 1158, local after local were calling for a general strike. They were ignoring the frantic cries of “Red” by the mainstream business press and William Green, the president of the American Federation of Labor. All but two of the city’s union locals, around 160 locals with a membership of 127,000, walked out on the morning of July 16th.
Many of the unions in San Francisco were run by corrupt and opportunist labor leaders, who comprised a majority of the General Strike Committee. They did not want the workers to go on a general strike but they went along to get along in order to not be swept away by the wave of the rank and file.
This rank and file wave led to the city being completely shut down – nothing moved without the blessing of the General Strike Committee. While the bosses owned everything, they were nothing without their workers. Not a single gear or machine ran. The bosses responded to their impotence by bringing in 3,000 additional National Guardsmen and hiring vigilantes to wreck, among other things, union halls, bookstores, the headquarters of the local communist party and other worker organizations, and even a soup kitchen run by the ILA. In one amusing incident, the police pathetically arrested 500 homeless people and accused them of being communist conspirators. Still nothing moved regardless of all force the bosses unleashed.
After slowly whittling the general strike away, the corrupt union officials succeeded in ending the general strike after four days with only the longshoremen and sailors continuing on. The workers considered it a victory though, as the bosses did not dare to use vigilantes, the police or the National Guard to assault the picket line again. Soon after the longshoremen and sailors returned to work on July 30th, the longshoremen won wages of 95 cents an hour, $1.40 an hour for overtime, a six hour day, a thirty hour week, and the union hall. The sailors won the recognition of the International Seaman’s Union, but they didn’t gain much as it was a sell out organization in the pockets of the bosses.
So what does this event tell me? It tells me something that the wealthy know all too well. It is something that we workers sometimes don’t even realize ‒ that their power and wealth rests on our backs. They are nothing without us. Why do you think the wealthy constantly try to convince us that they love us? Why do you think they use racism to divide us? Why do you think they have built a massive security apparatus to spy on us including the NSA? Why do you think they have wiped out of our collective memory the history of labor movement? They are terrified of us and what we think. They know we have the power to drag the Koch Brothers out of their mansions, and turn those mansions into homeless shelters.
