Allen17
10-22-2015, 04:58 PM
As a West Coast resident myself, I was doing some reading about the history of radical politics and organized labor agitation in my region.
Found this:
Until 1934, a longshoreman's job security was tied to the paternalism of the work-crew foreman; whisky, money and other assorted favors guaranteed jobs. Men milled about outside company offices at early morning shape-ups until a signal from the boss indicated that they had been selected for the day's stevedoring.
Then, in May, 1934, the jurisdiction of the company unions which were maintained by the West Coast shippers was challenged by the International Longshoremen's Association, An. The Waterfront Employers'Association of San Francisco refused the iLA's demands for union recognition, a dollar an hour wage, a thirty-hour week and a unioncontrolled hiring hall.
Led by Harry Bridges in San Francisco, longshoremen retaliated by shutting down the waterfronts from San Diego to Seattle and pressing for a coast-wide working agreement.
From May 9 to July 31, 1934, docks along the Pacific Northwest were controlled by the striking longshoremen. Normal shipments of lumber and agricultural products were curtailed, and sawmills were forced to close when lumber could no tonger be shipped by water. By June, with no end in sight, 17,000 lumber workers were laid off and payrolls were slashed almost in half.
However, members of the National Lumber Workers Union solicited funds for the longshoremen and spoke in favor of the strike; as a result, lumber and sawmill workers supported the strike and did not scab despite their own desperate straits. Even the big mills at Longview, Washington ground to a halt when for four days, beginning June 19, 1934, sawmill workers there went out on strike in sympathy with the longshoremen .
On July 3, San Francisco businessmen announced that their trucks and drivers would move through the picket lines to the piers along the Embarcadero and remove the goods stranded there since the strike began. Longshoremen attacked the trucks with bricks, and police retaliated with clubs, tear gas and gunfire.
Two days later, on Bloody Thursday, the Battle of Rincon Hill left two longshoremen shot to death by the police, thirty wounded and forty-three more either clubbed, gassed or stoned. Four days later, 15,000 longshoremen and sympathizers marched up Market Street behind a flat-bed truck carrying the coffins of the slain longshoremen Union sympathies were now cemented, and on July 16 a three-day general strike began in San Francisco .
Anti-radical hysteria engendered by the general strike spread quickly. West Coast police departments sided unequivocally with the shippers and invested themselves with the kind of patriotic fervor reminiscent of the Palmer Raids of the early 1920s. On the first day of the San Francisco general strike, Portland police searched freight trains arriving from the south in an attempt to head off a feared invasion by "flying squadrons" of communist agitators; 130 men, mostly hoboes and migrant workers, were taken into custody.
Two reputed labor agitators, who supposedly planned to "radicalize" the local longshore strike by promoting a general strike, were also found on the train.
When local shipping companies demanded protection in order to continue loading ships along Portland's strike-bound waterfront, Oregon Governor Julius Meier ordered 1,000 National Guardsmen to mobilize immediately. Fortunately, the troops remained camped on the outskirts of the city after the Central Labor Council threatened to call an immediate general strike if the Guardsmen moved to the waterfront .
Between July 16 and 21, 1934, even though the San Francisco general strike had ended and the ILA had agreed to arbitration, the Portland police continued their searches and seizures. Private residences, Communist Party headquarters, and the Marine Workers Industrial Union hall were raided. Union records and Communist literature were seized and taken to the police station.
Three men were arrested for advocating criminal syndication, and thirty-two others were taken in for violations of the Oregon Criminal Syndication Act of 1919. All of those arrested were closely associated with the Communist Party and had worked with the Unemployed Councils to keep the unemployed from crossing the longshoremen's picket lines .
Dirk DeJonge, once the Communist Party's candidate for Mayor of Portland, was tried and sentenced on November 21, 1934 to seven years in prison. The charges brought against him included advocating violence during the longshore strike, being in possession of Communist Party literature, and conducting and attending Communist Party meetings.
After the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the conviction and Dirk DeJonge had spent nine months in the Oregon State penitentiary, the United States Supreme Court, on January 4, 1937, unanimously decided that the lower courts had erred in convicting him. The Court held "that the Oregon state law as applied to the particular charge as defined by the state court is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment".
The results of the 1934 longshore strike did not pass unnoticed by loggers and sawmill workers. The joint control of hiring halls with employers, the thirty-hour work week, wage increases and exclusive bargaining rights won by the longshoremen constituted notable union victories.
More importantly, however, the organization of the longshoremen meant that woodworkers had a strong ally for their own union activities. The two groups of workers were closely linked through family and occupational associations, while the Communist Party tied together the activists in both unions. If the woodworkers struck, it seemed a virtual certainty that the longshoremen would support them.
http://www.ilwu19.com/history/1934.htm
Bolding mine.
Found this:
Until 1934, a longshoreman's job security was tied to the paternalism of the work-crew foreman; whisky, money and other assorted favors guaranteed jobs. Men milled about outside company offices at early morning shape-ups until a signal from the boss indicated that they had been selected for the day's stevedoring.
Then, in May, 1934, the jurisdiction of the company unions which were maintained by the West Coast shippers was challenged by the International Longshoremen's Association, An. The Waterfront Employers'Association of San Francisco refused the iLA's demands for union recognition, a dollar an hour wage, a thirty-hour week and a unioncontrolled hiring hall.
Led by Harry Bridges in San Francisco, longshoremen retaliated by shutting down the waterfronts from San Diego to Seattle and pressing for a coast-wide working agreement.
From May 9 to July 31, 1934, docks along the Pacific Northwest were controlled by the striking longshoremen. Normal shipments of lumber and agricultural products were curtailed, and sawmills were forced to close when lumber could no tonger be shipped by water. By June, with no end in sight, 17,000 lumber workers were laid off and payrolls were slashed almost in half.
However, members of the National Lumber Workers Union solicited funds for the longshoremen and spoke in favor of the strike; as a result, lumber and sawmill workers supported the strike and did not scab despite their own desperate straits. Even the big mills at Longview, Washington ground to a halt when for four days, beginning June 19, 1934, sawmill workers there went out on strike in sympathy with the longshoremen .
On July 3, San Francisco businessmen announced that their trucks and drivers would move through the picket lines to the piers along the Embarcadero and remove the goods stranded there since the strike began. Longshoremen attacked the trucks with bricks, and police retaliated with clubs, tear gas and gunfire.
Two days later, on Bloody Thursday, the Battle of Rincon Hill left two longshoremen shot to death by the police, thirty wounded and forty-three more either clubbed, gassed or stoned. Four days later, 15,000 longshoremen and sympathizers marched up Market Street behind a flat-bed truck carrying the coffins of the slain longshoremen Union sympathies were now cemented, and on July 16 a three-day general strike began in San Francisco .
Anti-radical hysteria engendered by the general strike spread quickly. West Coast police departments sided unequivocally with the shippers and invested themselves with the kind of patriotic fervor reminiscent of the Palmer Raids of the early 1920s. On the first day of the San Francisco general strike, Portland police searched freight trains arriving from the south in an attempt to head off a feared invasion by "flying squadrons" of communist agitators; 130 men, mostly hoboes and migrant workers, were taken into custody.
Two reputed labor agitators, who supposedly planned to "radicalize" the local longshore strike by promoting a general strike, were also found on the train.
When local shipping companies demanded protection in order to continue loading ships along Portland's strike-bound waterfront, Oregon Governor Julius Meier ordered 1,000 National Guardsmen to mobilize immediately. Fortunately, the troops remained camped on the outskirts of the city after the Central Labor Council threatened to call an immediate general strike if the Guardsmen moved to the waterfront .
Between July 16 and 21, 1934, even though the San Francisco general strike had ended and the ILA had agreed to arbitration, the Portland police continued their searches and seizures. Private residences, Communist Party headquarters, and the Marine Workers Industrial Union hall were raided. Union records and Communist literature were seized and taken to the police station.
Three men were arrested for advocating criminal syndication, and thirty-two others were taken in for violations of the Oregon Criminal Syndication Act of 1919. All of those arrested were closely associated with the Communist Party and had worked with the Unemployed Councils to keep the unemployed from crossing the longshoremen's picket lines .
Dirk DeJonge, once the Communist Party's candidate for Mayor of Portland, was tried and sentenced on November 21, 1934 to seven years in prison. The charges brought against him included advocating violence during the longshore strike, being in possession of Communist Party literature, and conducting and attending Communist Party meetings.
After the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the conviction and Dirk DeJonge had spent nine months in the Oregon State penitentiary, the United States Supreme Court, on January 4, 1937, unanimously decided that the lower courts had erred in convicting him. The Court held "that the Oregon state law as applied to the particular charge as defined by the state court is repugnant to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment".
The results of the 1934 longshore strike did not pass unnoticed by loggers and sawmill workers. The joint control of hiring halls with employers, the thirty-hour work week, wage increases and exclusive bargaining rights won by the longshoremen constituted notable union victories.
More importantly, however, the organization of the longshoremen meant that woodworkers had a strong ally for their own union activities. The two groups of workers were closely linked through family and occupational associations, while the Communist Party tied together the activists in both unions. If the woodworkers struck, it seemed a virtual certainty that the longshoremen would support them.
http://www.ilwu19.com/history/1934.htm
Bolding mine.