*Labor's Untold Story- Lessons Of The Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes Of 1934- A Communist Perspective

Click on title to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, Number 940, July 31, 2009, commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the famous Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes that went a long way toward organizing the local truckers, and later the over-the-road drivers into one powerful international industrial union. Academic historians can draw one set of conclusions from a study of that struggle, communists, as here need to draw the practical political lessons for when that next big labor upsurge takes place. Be ready, and be ready for anything they throw at us. Read this article for starters, especially about the tactics of the capitalist opposition and the appropriate militant labor response.

Labor's Untold Story- William Z. Foster And The Union Organizing Struggles Of 1919

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for labor organizer and American Communist Party leader William Z. Foster in his early, pre-Stalinist days. He will be the subject of much more discussion about early communist work in the trade unions and about his Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) that was a proto-type for a political labor caucus in the unions.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story- William Z. Foster And The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL)

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for William Z. Foster and his Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), a proto-type for a political labor caucus within the trade unions.

Every month is labor history month.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor'Untold Story- The Historic Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes Of 1934 In Pictures

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of the great Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934. The class struggle continues.

Every month is labor history month.

*Labor's Untold Story-Honor The 75th Anniversary Of The Minneapolis Teamsters' Strikes

Click On Title To Link To James P. Cannon's Writings On The Great Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes Of 1934

Commentary

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of three great labor struggles that ended in victory in heart of the Great Depression(the 1930s version of what we, at least partially, confront today); the great General Strike in San Francisco that was led by the dockers and sailor unions and brought victory on the key issue of the union hiring hall (since then greatly emasculated); the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes that led to the unionization of truck drivers and allied workers in that labor-hating town and later to the organizing of over-the-road drivers that created one of the strongest (if corrupt) unions in North America; and, the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike whose key component was leadership by the unemployed workers. Does all of this sound familiar? Yes and no. Yes, to labor militants who, looking to a way out of the impasse of the condition of today's quiescent labor movement, have studied these labor actions. No, to the vast majority of workers who are either not organized or are clueless about their history. In either case, though, these actions provide a thread to how we must struggle in the future. Although 75 years seems like a long time ago the issues posed then have not gone away. Far from it. Study this labor history now to be ready to struggle when we get our openings.

*******


This year is the 75th Anniversary of the great Minneapolis Teamsters strikes that paved the way to the later over-the road trucker unionization that was to make the Teamsters Union one of the strongest unions (if at the same time one of the most corrupt but that is a story for another time). Here is a 1934 article by Socialist Workers Party(SWP) (then Communist League Of America)leader James P. Cannon who was also a key leader behind the scenes (and not so behind the scenes when the law came looking to arrest him and Max Schachtman) about the lessons to be learned by labor militants from that great series of strike actions. I also recommend "Teamster Rebellion" and "Teamster Power" by local Teamsters leader and later SWP leader Farrell Dobbs. Those books trace the rank and file struggle and the later over-the road fight that he was instrumental in leading.


James P. Cannon

The New International
1934

Minneapolis and its Meaning
June 1934
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Written: 1934
Source: The New International. Original bound volumes of The New International and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack


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Standing by itself, the magnificent strike of the Minneapolis truck drivers would merit recognition as an extraordinary event in modem American labor history. Its connection with the second wave of labor struggles to sweep the country since the inception of the NRA, however, and its indubitable place as the high point of the present strike wave, invest the Minneapolis demonstration with an exceptional importance. Therefore it has come by right to be the subject of serious and attentive study and of heated discussion. This discussion, despite all the partisan prejudice and misrepresentation injected into it, is bound on the whole to have a profitable result. The best approach to the trade union question, the key question of revolutionary politics in the United States, is through the study and discussion of concrete examples.

The second strike wave under the NRA raises higher than the first and marks a big forward stride of the American working class. The enormous potentialities of future developments are clearly written in this advance. The native militancy of the workers, so impressively demonstrated on every strike front in recent months, needs only to be fused with an authentic leadership which brings organization, consciousness, and the spirit of determined struggle into the movement. Minneapolis was an example of such a fusion. That is what lifted the drivers’ strike out above the general run. Therein lies its great significance—as an anticipation, if only on a comparatively small, local scale, of future developments in the labor movement of the country. The determining role of policy and leadership was disclosed with singular emphasis in the Minneapolis battle.

The main features of the present strike wave, on the background of which the Minneapolis example must be considered, are easily distinguishable. Now, as in the labor upsurge of last year, the attitude of the workers toward the NRA occupies a central place. But the attitude is somewhat different than it was before. The messianic faith in the Roosevelt administration which characterized the strike movement of a year ago and which, to a certain extent, provided the initial impulse for the movement, has largely disappeared and given place to skeptical distrust. It is hardly correct, however, to say, as some revolutionary wishful thinkers are saying, that the current strikes are consciously directed against the NRA. There is little or no evidence to support such a bald assertion.

It is more in keeping with reality to say that the striking workers now depend primarily on their own organization and fighting capacity and expect little or nothing from the source to which, a short year ago, they looked for everything. Nevertheless they are not yet ready even to ignore the NRA, to say nothing of fighting against it directly. What has actually taken place has been a heavy shift in emphasis from faith in the NRA to reliance on their own strength.

In these great struggles the American workers, in all parts of the country, are displaying the unrestrained militancy of a class that is just beginning to awaken. This is a new generation of a class that has not been defeated. On the contrary, it is only now beginning to find itself and to feel its strength. And in these first, tentative conflicts the proletarian giant gives a glorious promise for the future. The present generation remains true to the tradition of American labor; it is boldly aggressive and violent from the start. The American worker is no Quaker. Further developments of the class struggle will bring plenty of fighting in the USA.

It is also a distinct feature of the second strike wave, and those who want to understand and adjust themselves to the general trend of the movement should mark it well, that the organization drives and the strikes, barring incidental exceptions, are conducted within the framework of the AFL unions. The exceptions are important and should not be disregarded. At any rate, the movement begins there. Only those who foresaw this trend and synchronized their activities with it have been able to play a part in the recent strikes and to influence them from within.

The central aim and aspiration of the workers, that is, of the newly organized workers who are pressing the fight on every front, is to establish their organizations firmly. The first and foremost demand in every struggle is: recognition of the union. With unerring instinct the workers seek first of all the protection of an organization.

William S. Brown, president of the Minneapolis union, expressed the sentiment of all the strikers in every industry in his statement: “The union felt that wage agreements are not much protection to a union man unless first there is definite assurance that the union man will be protected in his job.” The strike wave sweeping the country in the second year of the NRA is in its very essence a struggle for the right of organization. The outcome of every strike is to be estimated primarily by its success or failure in enforcing the recognition of the union.

And from this point of view the results in general are not so rosy. The workers manifested a mighty impulse for organization, and in many cases they fought heroically. But they have yet to attain their first objective. The auto settlement, which established the recognition of the company union rather than the unions of the workers, weighs heavily on the whole labor situation. The workers everywhere have to pay for the precedent set in this industry of such great strategic importance. From all appearances the steelworkers are going to be caught in the same runaround. The New York hotel strike failed to establish the union. The New York taxi drivers got no union recognition, or anything else. Not a single of the “red” unions affiliated to the Trade Union Unity League has succeeded in gaining recognition. Even the great battle of Toledo appears to have been concluded without the attainment of this primary demand.

The American workers are on the march. They are organizing by the hundreds of thousands. They are fighting to establish their new unions firmly and compel the bosses to recognize them. But in the overwhelming majority of cases they have yet to win this fundamental demand.

In the light of this general situation the results of the Minneapolis strike stand out preeminent and unique. Judged in comparison with the struggles of the other newly formed unions—and that is the only sensible criterion—the Minneapolis settlement, itself a compromise, has to be recorded as a victory of the first order. In gaining recognition of the union, and in proceeding to enforce it the day following the settlement, General Drivers Union No. 574 has set a pace for all the new unions in the country. The outcome was not accidental either. Policy, method, leadership—these were the determining factors at Minneapolis which the aspiring workers everywhere ought to study and follow.

The medium of organization in Minneapolis was a craft union of the AFL, and one of the most conservative of the AFL Internationals at that. This course was deliberately chosen by the organizers of the fight in conformity with the general trend of the movement, although they are by no means worshippers of the AFL. Despite the obvious limitations of this antiquated form of organization it proved to be sufficient for the occasion thanks to a liberal construction of the jurisdictional limits of the union. Affiliation with the AFL afforded other compensating advantages. The new union was thereby placed in direct contact with the general labor movement and was enabled to draw on it for support. This was a decisive element in the outcome. The organized labor movement, and with it practically the entire working class of Minneapolis, was lined up behind the strike. Out of a union with the most conservative tradition and obsolete structure came the most militant and successful strike.

The stormy militancy of the strike, which electrified the whole labor movement, is too well known to need recounting here. The results also are known, among them the not unimportant detail that the serious casualties were suffered by the other side. True enough, the striking workers nearly everywhere have fought with great courage. But here also the Minneapolis strike was marked by certain different and distinct aspects which are of fundamental importance. In other places, as a rule, the strike militancy surged from below and was checked and restrained by the leaders. In Minneapolis it was organized and directed by the leaders. In most of the other strikes the leaders blunted the edge of the fight where they could not head it off altogether, as in the case of the auto workers—and preached reliance on the NRA, on General Johnson, or the president. In Minneapolis the leaders taught the workers to fight for their rights and fought with them.

This conception of the leadership, that the establishment of the union was to be attained only by struggle, shaped the course of action not only during the ten-day strike but in every step that led to it. That explains why the strike was prepared and organized so thoroughly. Minneapolis never before saw such a well-organized strike, and it is doubtful if its like, from the standpoint of organization, has often been seen anywhere on this continent.

Having no illusions about the reasonableness of the bosses or the beneficence of the NRA, and sowing none in the ranks, the leadership calculated the whole campaign on the certainty of a strike and made everything ready for it. When the hour struck the union was ready, down to the last detail of organization. “If the preparations made by their union for handling it are any indication,” wrote the Minneapolis Tribune on the eve of the. conflict, “the strike of the truck drivers in Minneapolis is going to be a far-reaching affair. . . . Even before the official start of the strike at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday the ’General Headquarters’ organization set up at 1900 Chicago Avenue was operating with all the precision of a military organization.”

This spirit of determined struggle was combined at the same time with a realistic appraisal of the relation of forces and the limited objectives of the fight. Without this all the preparations and all the militancy of the strikers might well have been wasted and brought the reaction of a crushing defeat. The strike was understood to be a preliminary, partial struggle, with the objective of establishing the union and compelling the bosses to recognize it. When they got that, they stopped and called it a day.

The strong union that has emerged from the strike will be able to fight again and to protect its membership in the meantime. The accomplishment is modest enough. But if we want to play an effective part in the labor movement, we must not allow ourselves to forget that the American working class is just beginning to move on the path of the class struggle and, in its great majority, stands yet before the first task of establishing stable unions. Those who understand the task of the day and accomplish it prepare the future. The others merely chatter.

As in every strike of any consequence, the workers involved in the Minneapolis struggle also had an opportunity to see the government at work and to learn some practical lessons as to its real function. The police force of the city, under the direction of the Republican mayor, supplemented by a horde of “special deputies,” were lined up solidly on the side of the bosses. The police and deputies did their best to protect the strikebreakers and keep some trucks moving, although their best was not good enough. The mobilization of the militia by the Farmer-Labor governor was a threat against the strikers, even if the militiamen were not put on the street. The strikers will remember that threat. In a sense it can be said that the political education of a large section of the strikers began with this experience. It is sheer lunacy, however to imagine that it was completed and that the strikers, practically all of whom voted yesterday for Roosevelt and Olson, could have been led into a prolonged strike for purely political aims after the primary demand for the recognition of the union had been won.

Yet this is the premise upon which all the Stalinist criticism of the strike leadership is based. Governor Olson, declared Bill Dunne in the Daily Worker, was the “main enemy.” And having convinced himself on this point, he continued: “The exposure and defeat of Olson should have been the central political objective of the Minneapolis struggle.” Nor did he stop even there. Wound up and going strong by this time, and lacking the friendly advice of a Harpo Marx who would explain the wisdom of keeping the mouth shut when the head is not clear, he decided to go to the limit, so he added: “This [exposure and defeat of Olson] was the basic necessity for winning the economic demands for the Drivers Union and the rest of the working class.”

There it is, Mr. Ripley, whether you believe it or not. This is the thesis, the “political line,” laid down for the Minneapolis truck drivers in the Daily Worker. For the sake of this thesis, it is contended that negotiations for the settlement of he strike should have been rejected unless the state troopers were demobilized, and a general strike should have been proclaimed “over the heads of the Central Labor Council and state federation of labor officials.” Dunne only neglected to add: over the heads of the workers also, including the truck drivers.

For the workers of Minneapolis, including the striking drivers, didn’t understand the situation in this light at all, and leaders who proceeded on such an assumption would have found themselves without followers. The workers of Minneapolis, like the striking workers all over the country, understand the “central objective” to be the recognition of the union. The leaders were in full harmony with them on this question; they stuck to this objective; and when it was attained, they did not attempt to parade the workers through a general strike for the sake of exercise or for “the defeat of Governor Olson.” For one reason, it was not the right thing to do. And, for another reason, they couldn’t have done it if they had tried.

The arguments of Bill Dunne regarding the Minneapolis “betrayal” could have a logical meaning only to one who construed the situation as revolutionary and aimed at an insurrection. We, of course, are for the revolution. But not today, not in a single city. There is a certain unconscious tribute to the “Trotskyists”—and not an inappropriate one—in the fact that so much was demanded of them in Minneapolis. But Bill Dunne, who is more at home with proverbs than with politics, should recall the one which says, “every vegetable has its season.” It was the season for an armed battle in Germany in the early part of 1933. In America in 1934, it is the season for organizing the workers, leading them in strikes, and compelling the bosses to recognize their unions. The mistake of all the Stalinists, Bill Dunne among them, in misjudging the weather in Germany in 1933 was a tragedy. In America in 1934 it is a farce.

The strike wave of last year was only a prelude to the surging movement we witness today. And just as the present movement goes deeper and strikes harder than the first, so does it prepare the way for a third movement which will surpass it in scope, aggressiveness, and militancy. Frustrated in their aspirations for organization by misplaced faith in the Roosevelt administration, and by the black treachery of the official labor bureaucracy, the workers will take the road of struggle again with firmer determination and clearer aims. And they will seek for better leaders. Then the new left wing of the labor movement can have its day. The revolutionary militants can bound forward in mighty leaps and come to the head of large sections of the movement if they know how to grasp their opportunities and understand their tasks. For this they must be politically organized and work together as a disciplined body; they must forge the new party of the Fourth International without delay. They must get inside the developing movement, regardless of its initial form, stay inside, and shape its course from within.

They must demonstrate a capacity for organization as well as agitation, for responsibility as well as for militancy. They must convince the workers of their ability not only to organize and lead strikes aggressively, but also to settle them advantageously at the right time and consolidate the gains. In a word, the modem militants of the labor movement have the task of gaining the confidence of the workers in their ability to lead the movement all the year round and to advance the interests of the workers all the time.

On this condition the new left wing of the trade unions can take shape and grow with rapid strides. And the left wing, in turn, will be the foundation of the new party, the genuine communist party. On a local scale, in a small sector of the labor movement, the Minneapolis comrades have set an example which shows the way. The International Communists have every right to be proud of this example and hold it up as a model to study and follow.

*Labor's Untold Story- The Twisted Political Career Of Communist Party Leader William Z. Foster

Click on title to link to James P. Cannon's article (in the form of letters in 1954 to historian of the early American Communist Party, Theodore Draper)about the political perspective of William Z. Foster in the early days when they were political associates. Very interesting reading about Foster's political appetites and direction early on.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-Slavery and the Origin of the Race Ideology

Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.


Workers Vanguard No. 942
11 September 2009

Slavery and the Origin of the Race Ideology

(Quote of the Week)

Veteran American Trotskyist Richard Fraser developed the materialist approach to the black question in the 1950s in a series of articles and lectures for internal discussion in the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party. The ideology of race is a socially derived category used to justify the system of black chattel slavery in the American South, and black oppression continued as a bedrock of American capitalism even after the Civil War smashed the slavocracy. Fraser advanced the program of revolutionary integrationism: a proletarian-centered struggle against every manifestation of racial oppression based on the understanding that the complete integration and equality of black people can be realized only in an egalitarian socialist society. This means not liberal nostrums of reform, but proletarian socialist revolution to overthrow the capitalist system and eliminate the basis of racial and class oppression. The excerpts below are from an unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Prometheus Research Library that Fraser was working on at the time of his death in 1988.

Race is a social relationship between people recognizably different in skin color. Recognizability is a necessary element of the relation, but the social aspects of prejudice, exploitation and segregation are the things race is really about. Race has no legitimacy as a biological division of mankind.

Race relations today are a residue of relations between white masters and black slaves. The fact that slaves were black and masters were white was an accident of history. Light skinned Europeans enslaved dark skinned Africans. Europeans had learned about gunpowder from the Chinese and had guns. The Africans didn’t. Skin color was a fact of life that differed between these people. That difference had an ancient and interesting origin, but did not have anything to do with the ability of Europeans to enslave Africans....

The basic change in race ideology that took place at the end of the eighteenth century was to transform the slave who was socially inferior by virtue of enslavement, and was incidentally black, into a person who was inferior because he was black and hence only fitted for slavery….

Why, after three hundred years of slavery did a race theory finally appear? Several things came together. The French Revolution did not just declare that people had personal rights by nature, but that reason ought to hold sway over blind faith. The Age of Reason had been born, and a scientific, and secular, rationale was needed to justify the enslavement of people.

Furthermore, opposition to slavery was beginning to occur. Slave revolts began to give slave masters cause for concern, not to speak of the nascent abolitionist movement. The hypocrisy of the U.S. Constitution which was based on the ideal of human liberty, but recognized the legitimacy of slavery, could be counteracted by the contention that slaves were not quite human, but some sort of inferior race. This was the social basis for the appearance of race ideology as a scientific discipline.

—Richard Fraser, The Struggle Against Slavery in the United States

*Labor's Untold Story-Honor The 75th Anniversary Of The Toledo Auto-Lite General Strike

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Newsreel Footage Of The 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike

Commentary

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of three great labor struggles that ended in victory in heart of the Great Depression(the 1930s version of what we, at least partially, confront today); the great General Strike in San Francisco that was led by the dockers and sailor unions and brought victory on the key issue of the union hiring hall (since then greatly emasculated); the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes that led to the unionization of truck drivers and allied workers in that labor-hating town and later to the organizing of over-the-road drivers that created one of the strongest (if corrupt) unions in North America; and, the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike whose key component was leadership by the unemployed workers. Does all of this sound familiar? Yes and no. Yes, to labor militants who, looking to a way out of the impasse of the condition of today's quiescent labor movement, have studied these labor actions. No, to the vast majority of workers who are either not organized or are clueless about their history. In either case, though, these actions provide a thread to how we must struggle in the future. Although 75 years seems like a long time ago the issues posed then have not gone away. Far from it. Study this labor history now to be ready to struggle when we get our openings.

*****
Guest Commentary

Toledo Auto-Lite Strike

Below is a speech given by Ted Selander on June 3, 1984 at an anniversary celebration of the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite strike. Selander was a participant in the historic strike, the leadership of which shortly afterwards joined the Trotskyist movement. This article is reprinted from the March 1986 issue of Socialist Action newspaper. An expanded version appeared in the July 1984 issues.

Brothers and sisters, the key to an understanding of the magnificent Auto-Lite strike in 1934 is that it was a strike won on the picket line by a community uprising. I repeat: on the picket line by a community uprising.

Toledo was in the grip of a tremendous popular upsurge of anger at the greedy bosses who have to give their wage slaves a few cents more in their pay.

This was 1934 B.T. – B.T. meaning before television. As a matter of fact, it was before all the social gains when we fought for and won in the ‘30s – before unemployment pay, before food stamps, before social security, before the CIO, and before Medicare, etc.

After four years of depression, the Toledo workers were in an angry mood because of the bank failures, the idle factories, the over-stocked granaries, and the 15 million unemployed. For four years we had poverty in the midst of plenty. Even the establishment was losing confidence in themselves and their system.

Rank and file muzzled

I don’t think (as James P. Cannon once pointed out) there was any real difference between the Toledo Auto-Lite strikers and the workers involved in many of the lost strikes in the United States at that time. In practically every strike, the rank and file always displayed courage. The difference was in the leadership and their strategy and tactics. In nearly every strike the militancy of the rank and file was muzzled, many times snuffed out from the top.

The leaders are tricked by the courts, the labor boards, the mediators, the government, and the media to shift the fight from the picket line to the court and conference room. But all the while, the company keeps hiring scabs to take the strikers’ jobs.

In the Auto-Lite strike, the company was hiring scabs by the hundreds and claimed they now had 1800 workers. We understood what was happening. We knew that the strike was dying and doomed. Only some bold, dramatic action could revive it, and even then it would have to be followed up with plenty of action and support to give the company an all-out fight. And nothing short of an all-out fight would do.

As you probably know, we wrote a public letter to Judge Stuart telling him that we were going to violate his anti-labor injunction and call for mass picketing. By mass picketing we didn’t mean a few hundred, we meant thousands. Could we get thousands down to that picket line? Well, that was the $64 question.

We had spent the previous year organizing what some qualified observer said was the largest and most militant unemployed organization in the country – the Lucas County Unemployed League. We had held meetings and spoke in every section of the city and in the townships; organized countless marches, demonstrations, sit-ins; stopped evictions; won cash relief with a relief strike; and had held many, many other actions.

Because of this vast experience, we felt sure that we knew the temper of the Toledo workers. We felt we had a good chance to be the fuse that could ignite a spirit of solidarity with the Auto-Lite strikers to get union recognition and perhaps even win the first union contract in the auto plants of Toledo.

Workers violate injunction

On the first day that we violated the injunction, our mass picket line consisted of four individuals. That’s right – just four. We were arrested, jailed, convicted and let out on bail and warned not to return to the picket line. But we told the judge that we were going back. And we did – picking up some 50 pickets on the way.

After that, there were a series of arrests, each one with a greater amount of pickets – first 46, then 108, and in between many smaller numbers. Every time we went back from the courts and jail, the picket lines kept growing steadily until on May 23 there were 10,000 reported on the street in front of the plant.

Now when you have a mass picket line of thousands, it enables you to counter the company’s offensive moves. For example, they brought out a high-pressure hose and turned a stream of water on us. But it didn’t take very long for a couple of hundred pickets to take the hose away and turn the water on them.

Many times the police and deputies brutally clubbed the pickets; but before they could shove them into a patrol wagon enough pickets rushed in and grabbed the pickets away and often gave the cops a taste of their own clubs.

You know that every good union has two educational committees: one to arrange lectures of all kinds and the other to educate scabs who won’t attend classes.

Half the employees at the Auto-Lite were women who were among the very best strikers we had. A couple of days after the National Guard came in, the women grabbed a scab, took him into an alley, and stripped every bit of clothing off of him except his tie and shoes. Then they marched him, naked as a jaybird, up and down the downtown streets.

Next day the papers carried a large picture of him on the front page, but they had their artist broaden and lengthen the tie to hid the family jewels. You can bet that picture discouraged a lot of scabs, but it got a big round of applause from the unionists in Ohio.

Strikers fight National Guard

The Auto-Lite strikers battled first the police, then the company guards and deputies, and finally the National Guard. The first day the Guard came in they fired without warning at the unarmed strikers, killing two and wounding 25.

After those murders, the enraged strikers fought the guard for six days and nights – returning again and again to face tear gas and vomit gas, bayonet charges, and even rifle fire.

During the lulls in the battle, we stood on boxes educating the guardsmen about the issues in the strike and how they were being used against the workers. By the way, the casualties were not all one-sided. The hospitals were patching up not only strikers but police, deputies, and the National Guardsmen.

On June 4, the company surrendered and signed on the dotted line a union contract giving the strikers priority on jobs, a 5-percent wage increase, and other concessions; agreed to withdraw all court charges and to pay all court costs. The logjam in Toledo had finally been broken, and 19 auto plants were organized before the year ended. The road was cleared to make Toledo a union town.

As a participant in the Auto-Lite strike of 1934, I appreciate this opportunity to join with you in this 50th anniversary celebration. It is a credit to all of you who organized this anniversary to keep alive the memory of labor’s untapped strength as demonstrated in the Auto-Lite strike and all the other battles which prove that in unions we are strong.

Below is the letter that the Auto-Lite strikers sent to Judge R.R. Stuart to inform him of their intention to violate his injunctions against picketing.

May 5, 1934

His Honor Judge Stuart
County Court House
Toledo, Ohio

Honorable Judge Stuart:

On Monday morning May 7, at the Auto-Lite plant, the Lucas County Unemployed League, in protest of the injunction issued by your court, will deliberately and specifically violate the injunction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking Auto Workers Federal Union.

We sincerely believe that this court intervention, preventing us from picketing, is an abrogation of our democratic rights, contrary to our constitutional liberties and contravenes the spirit and the letter of Section 7a of the NRA.

Further, we believe that the spirit and intent of this arbitrary injunction is another specific example of an organized movement to curtail the rights of all workers to organize, strike and picket effectively.

Therefore, with full knowledge of the principles involved and the possible consequences, we openly and publicly violate an injunction which, in our opinion, is a suppressive and oppressive act against all workers.

Sincerely yours,

Lucas County Unemployed League
Anti-Injunction Committee
Sam Pollock, Sec'y

*Labor's Untold Story-John L. Lewis And The Limits Of Trade Union (Sometimes)Militancy

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "labor leader" and United Mineworkers Union President John L. Lewis. His career exemplifies the contradictions of the labor movement in America, as well as the perfidious role of the labor bureaucracy. If that story sounds familiar, well, it is from the likes of old Brother Lewis that they got their "skills".

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story-The Strange Tale Of The 19th Century People Party's Leader Tom Watson

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for late 19th century populist leader Tom Watson and his checkered (to say the least)career.


This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The 75th Anniversary Of The Great San Francisco General Strike

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Newsreel Footage Of the San Francisco General Strike. This Is A Repost Of A June 2009 Entry On This Important Action That Made San Francisco For Long Time One Of The Great Labor Centers Of America.

Commentary

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of three great labor struggles that ended in victory in heart of the Great Depression(the 1930s version of what we, at least partially, confront today); the great General Strike in San Francisco that was led by the dockers and sailor unions and brought victory on the key issue of the union hiring hall (since then greatly emasculated); the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes that led to the unionization of truck drivers and allied workers in that labor-hating town and later to the organizing of over-the-road drivers that created one of the strongest (if corrupt) unions in North America; and, the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike whose key component was leadership by the unemployed workers. Does all of this sound familiar? Yes and no. Yes, to labor militants who, looking to a way out of the impasse of the condition of today's quiescent labor movement, have studied these labor actions. No, to the vast majority of workers who are either not organized or are clueless about their history. In either case, though, these actions provide a thread to how we must struggle in the future. Although 75 years seems like a long time ago the issues posed then have not gone away. Far from it. Study this labor history now to be ready to struggle when we get our openings.

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The following is presented for informational purposes only. The political and factual points are those of the authors. I will present other material on these actions at a later date.

San Francisco and the General Strike
By Paul S. Taylor and Norman Leon Gold

What really happened in San Francisco's general strike? What were the issues? What do they mean to labor, employers, the community? What of the vigilantes and their violent anti-Red campaign? Two Californians here give the story down to date


Survey Graphic, September, 1934 (Vol. 23, No. 9), p. 405.


SIXTY-FIVE thousand trade unionists during four July days staged on the shores of San Francisco Bay the second and most widespread general strike in United States history. From the sixteenth through the nineteenth they carried out an extended maneuver which surprised, bewildered, gratified, or terrified and maddened the average citizen. To most Americans there is something reign about a general strike, and a bit ominous—like the "dole," storm-troopers, socialists, communists, fascists, and a lot of other things that used to seem farther away than they do now. But to many on the Pacific Coast, experience has made the general strike at least real, however differently they may interpret it—as a splendid demonstration of the strength and "solidarity of labor," a victory for the "real leaders of labor," a "sell-out" by labor "fakirs," a "strikers' Dictatorship," or an "insurrection."

The San Francisco general strike of 1934 was in no sense a "sport." It is but the latest of a long line of conflicts between employers and employed in that area, many of them, like the general strike, centering about the waterfront, and focusing on the degree of control over employment to be exercised by employers or by union. For power flows from job control. Beginning in the late eighties, the shipowners' association established a hiring-hall as a device for breaking union power. The sailors struck, proposed joint control, were refused, and then beaten. In 1934 the longshoremen demanded substitution of union-control for employer-control of hiring halls. The employers proposed joint control, here refused, and the issue finally went to arbitration. The general strike was but a climax to the 1934 phase of this perennial struggle for power.

Waterfronts the world over provide dramatic examples of the local accumulation—characteristic of many industries-of over-supplies of under-employed workers. We lack neither knowledge nor example of how to "decasualize" this waterfront labor. Indeed, Seattle employers have taken the lead among American ports in achieving regularization, and the other ports of the Pacific Coast, except San Francisco, have more or less followed suit. But in San Francisco the "good employer," while maintaining his individual labor relations on a fairly advanced plane, allowed general employment practices in his industry to lag behind those long recognized by experts in industrial relations as intelligent and beneficial. The philosophy of the agent who for years has managed waterfront labor there is suggested by his characterization of marine workers as "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and by his statement some years ago that "Really, what we are trying to do is to put the spirit of Jesus Christ in these men," a profession promptly balanced with: "Of course, you've got to put the fear of God in them, too." Under this regime, the well-known abuses of an overcrowded labor market flourished: under-employment, low earnings for many, long and fruitless waits at the docks, petty graft as the price of jobs. These were the conditions, against a background of protracted unemployment and insecurity, of anxious hope stimulated by the rights of collective bargaining under the National Industrial Recovery Act, of a left-ward surge toward more aggressive labor activity both within and without the trade unions, from which the waterfront strike, and ultimately the general strike, developed.

THE first rumble of impending conflict on the waterfront was heard in October 1933 when 400 longshoremen struck against the Matson Navigation Company, claiming discriminatory discharge of members of the newly formed International Longshoremen's Association (ILA.) The company refused to recognize the ILA, but after mediation, reinstated the men. This act sounded the death-knell of a curious organization, the "Blue Book" union, or Longshoremen's Association of San Francisco. Fourteen years earlier the Blue Book union had arisen during a strike from a schism within the ILA; organized by the gang bosses as a right-wing dual union, the employers promptly accorded it recognition and a "union shop" agreement which consigned the original ILA to a lingering death. Strangely, the Blue Book union later was welcomed into the San Francisco Labor Council in 1929 as a "transformed" company union, but ejection followed in 1931 when it was ascertained that the "transformation" was not complete. It lingered on, then in its turn went down to defeat before the rising ILA of 1933 and 1934.

By March 1934 the longshoremen were ready for aggressive action. Slack employment, instead of deterring action, only made more acute the grievance voiced by the numerous unemployed and underemployed unionists that favored gangs received too large a share of the work. Both sides were in a fighting mood, the men following militant leaders, the employers confident of victory, and willing to put up with the possible loss of two or three million dollars as not an exorbitant price for crushing the new union. Negotiations proceeded, both sides yielding a bit, but neither conceding enough to avert a strike. The men asked an increase of wages from 85 cents to $1 an hour, and $1.50 an hour for overtime, a coastwide agreement, and union control of the hiring-hall. The last demand was crucial and the issue was clearly joined: the men called it the foundation of their union; the employers declared that it meant union dictation—an infringement on the "right to select employee," and discrimination against competent and faithful non-unionists. Curiously but significantly, the ILA now was seeking a "union shop," which it had protested the preceding October when employers gave force to their "union shop" agreement with the Blue Book union and discharged some ILA men. The employers, similarly, were now resisting a "union shop," when previously they had only too eagerly granted one. How much depends on the kind of union!

Negotiation for a shift in power is peculiarly difficult. Dissatisfied, the men called a strike for March 23, halted it upon request of President Roosevelt, but mediation failing, called it again for May 9. The fight was on in San Francisco and in other ports of the Pacific Coast. Along the three and one-half miles of San Francisco's Embarcadero the corrugated steel doors remained shut. Gates, topped with barbed wire, were closed and boarded. Pickets strolled up and down, passing knots of police, accosting and warning those who looked as though they might take jobs.

THE companies advertised for strike-breakers, and recruited several hundred. These were given steady work at the same hourly rates which the strikers refused, plus $1.50 a day, which was in excess of the cost of board and lodging aboard two ships fitted out for the purpose. Some people inquire incredulously how any man can break strike. Perhaps the answer is not difficult: apart from the few who do it for principle or for love of adventure, they act under the spur of necessity. Many a striker and strikebreaker had this in common: each, with his family, was on relief. Said a college premedical student who worked as a strikebreaker: "I'd rather have salt on my torn body, but God, I have to be a doctor!" His earnings of $150 enable him to return to college. Union pickets sought to deter the strikebreakers with the threats and physical violence often characteristic of American strikes. By July 9, 266 injured persons had been reported by the police; of these 63 percent were strikebreakers and 10 percent were police.

The strike spread first on the side of labor. Partly in sympathy with the longshoremen, but principally to resume actively its long-clouded leadership of the men of its crafts, the International Seamen's Union struck on May 16. The unions of licensed officers followed, May 19 and 21. Meanwhile the truck drivers (under the anachronistic name of the Teamsters' Union) decided that after May 13 they would no longer haul from the docks "hot cargo," i.e., cargo unloaded by strikebreakers. They continued to haul freight from the warehouses, however, if the employers could move it that far. This the employers did by way of the state owned Belt Line Railroad, which operates from the piers to the warehouses. Strikebreakers loaded the cars on the piers, warehousemen unloaded them. To stop this traffic, the longshoremen proceeded to organize the warehousemen into a union to refuse to handle "hot cargo." On June 14 the Teamsters' Union refused to haul "hot freight" anywhere The tactics were effective. The railroads, connected with the piers by the Belt Line over which freight moved to the hinterland and along the coast, gained heavily at the expense of the shipowners, but freight movement from the waterfront to the city was at a standstill. The docks choked with cargo, vessels could not unload, more merchant ships lay at anchor in the Bay than at any time since '49 when sailors deserted en masse to join the rush to the gold fields.

THE widening base of support on the side of labor was countered on the side of capital. On May 20 the president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce rallied to the support of the waterfront employers, declaring, "It is now my duty to warn every business man in this community, that the welfare of business and industry and of the entire public is at stake in the outcome of this crisis." Three weeks later, the Industrial Association, organized in 1921 during a crisis in the building trades, standing for the open shop under the name of the American Plan, and representing the leading industrial, financial, and business interests of the city (including the shipowners) accepted the invitation of the Chamber of Commerce to "open the port." A corporation was formed; it acquired trucks, a warehouse, the fastest speed boat on the Bay, assembled men to drive trucks and work longshore, and took contracts to move freight. With the announcement that, "We are, therefore, commencing operations to restore the streets of San Francisco to its citizens, confident that the Police Department will afford full protection for the full use thereof by unarmed drivers," the Industrial Association began to haul cargo July 3. The strikebreaking drivers were evidently of the adventurous type; in the words of an Association official, "We've got a fine bunch of boys to drive those trucks. They are falling all over themselves to get the jobs."

The movement of cargo from waterfront to warehouse was little more than a gesture, for effective picketing still prevented movement beyond. But everybody—longshoremen and teamsters, shipowners and Industrial Association, public authorities and the public—accepted it as a test of power. The mayor promised the Industrial Association "adequate police protection during these operations which, of course, is their right" and asked "the people of San Francisco to absent themselves from the vicinity wherein the movement of merchandise is to be conducted." But neither spectators nor pickets would remain away. Cargo moved from waterfront to warehouse, some trucks were dumped and burned, missiles were thrown, clubs wielded, and officers and men injured. On July 5, "lines of battle, as clear cut as any formed on the Western Front, were drawn along San Francisco's waterfront."

The pickets faced the police; this is significant. String pickets usually confront first the strikebreakers or guards hired by the employers. Indeed, in times past San Francisco employers have even boldly proclaimed their readiness directly to meet force with force. In an earlier longshore strike a noted shipowner said: "As long as we continue hauling our men to the receiving hospital . . . we are never going to get anywhere, and I propose, that tomorrow morning, starting in when they compel us to send one ambulance to the receiving hospital, we send two of theirs." But in the strike of 1934 different tactics were employed: "We didn't do as in the old days when we went out and got a lot of ugly-faced toughs." Instead, the maintenance of physical order was left to the police, so that when pickets were beaten it was the police who did it rather than hired thugs. The gain in public sympathy to the employers from such an alignment is obvious. Financially, it also offers advantages to them; as the San Francisco employers pointed out to those in San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles:

The item of guards, cost and boarding, amounting to about $100,000 [in San Pedro], is one which we think should be borne by the city. Here [in San Francisco] the police in ample numbers are supplied without cost, and the only guards employed are those needed on the housing ships. Each company has extra guards or watchmen, the cost being borne by the individual line.

On July 5, then, hundreds of police and some thousands of pickets faced each other. The trucks of the Industrial Association began to move. The pickets were forced back, back, in an extended maneuver covering many blocks. Thousands of commuters from the East Bay jammed the viaduct and the sidewalks; clerks crowded to the windows of office buildings. As police drove strikers and sightseers up Rincon Hill, the pickets hurled bricks, and the police, at the cry of "Let 'em have it," threw tear-gas grenades. Here and there clubbing occurred as men and police clashed. Before the ILA hall fighting was more vicious. Inspectors of police, surrounded by angry strikers seeking to overturn their car, fired. Two men were killed. Police, horses, strikers, and spectators were wounded.

THE men called it "bloody Thursday," and spoke of the "battle of Rincon Hill." They staged a funeral parade down Market Street that contrasted strangely in its awesome quiet and simplicity with the gay banners above, hung in welcome to the convention of Knights Templar. At street intersections the police stepped aside, and like other spectators bared their heads. The funeral made a stirring emotional appeal to the strikers; the public was curious and impressed.

The Governor declared a state of riot. Strike leaders had refused to allow "hot cargo" to move over the State Belt Line "without molestation," so he accepted "the defi of the strikers," and ordered out the National Guard to preserve order and "protect state property." Under the guns of the troops, "hot freight" continued to move from waterfront to warehouse. If the troops allowed traffic to move, their presence aided the employers; if they did not, they would have aided the men by establishing completely effective picketing. We are accustomed to follow the first practice. (The Governor of Minnesota, however, has introduced a notable exception to American procedure by permitting movement only of trucks engaged in essential services or those whose Owners have reached an agreement with the men approved by federal officials.) So the strikers were out-maneuvered, until to the on-looker the waterfront conflict was made to appear a battle of employee striking not against their employers but against the police and beyond them against the public itself. A less obvious effect was to suggest to the strikers that the government was not impartial, but against them. Communists were not slow to point this out to the men, ignoring, of course, government feeding of needy strikers' families and other helpful services.

TROOPS occupied the waterfront-sentries with steel helmets and gleaming bayonets, machine-gun nests, and motorized roving patrols. Admission to the occupied area was by pass. Guards moved about in the ferry building and forbade commuters to loiter on the viaduct. A pier watchman who obeyed too slowly the sentry's command to halt was bayoneted in the groin; a 19-year-old strikebreaker who inadvertently came within the 50-foot deadline in his speedboat, and an amateur photographer taking movies of guardsmen were shot.

Conceding the futility of trying to stand up against the militia, the strikers' leaders sought other weapons to checkmate the waterfront employers who were now actively aided by the highest financial and industrial leaders of the city. To the strikers, confident and more impassioned than ever, the situation seemed clear: the employers had finally used their last resource—their own strength first, then the police, the Industrial Association, and the militia; now the men must win reinforcements for the final test of power.

From the waterfront through the ranks of organized labor and to the public went the appeal for support of a general strike. it was urged as the:

first and only possible defense-step against the aggression of anti-union employers under the banner of the San Francisco Industrial Association....
When the Industrial Association entered the waterfront controversy, as a third party, as a strikebreaking agency supported by guns and police clubs, labor trouble in the San Francisco Bay Region ceased to be just a dispute between certain labor unions and certain employers over questions relating to their specific industries.

It took on the direct and obvious form of organized warfare on the part of employers federated in the Industrial Association against all labor organizations and the principle of collective bargaining—progressive, unified, massed attack which unless repelled was certain to engulf and eventually destroy more and more labor groups.

Realizatin of this fact has caused the strikes of workers, affiliated in AFofL organizations in industries which at a glance seem to have slight unity of interest with the waterfront unions originally involved in the disturbance. But the campaign of the Industrial Association, with its anti-labor program and leadership, is in reality an attack on all labor organizations, all members of organized labor who seek to retain their legal rights of unified activities.

The right of labor to such organization and collective bargaining has been fought by certain groups of employers ever since America became an industrial nation. It is a right which received a powerful stimulus from President Roosevelt and the New Deal; a right affirmed in clear words in the National Industrial Recovery Act; under which the NRA operates.

It is a right legally granted labor which has been denied in San Francisco.


The sympathy of a large section of the general public was swinging to the side of labor. Even professional and business men said, "I hope they beat the Industrial Association," and "I'm for the longshoremen." The overwhelming show of force was too much, and American spirit was moved to side with the under dog. Besides, the verbatim publication of hearings before the National Longshoremen's Board now gave the public its first opportunity to read and compare adequate statements by all parties to the dispute.

One of the significant aspects of the entire situation was e relation between aggressive strike leaders of the longshoremen, and the more conservative leaders of unions throughout the city. In the ILA, the conservative leaders had already been repudiated one by one. The conservative local president had been deposed; thereafter he sought to weaken the strike by organizing a new union, and announcing that conservative longshoremen were ready to return to work, and that more would do so except for insufficient slice protection and the spell cast over them by communist leadership. And when the international president, Joseph P. Ryan, came out from the East and, together with Pacific Coast union executives, negotiated an agreement with the employers, the members denied the authority of officials to take a binding agreement without referendum, and voted it down. Under Harry Bridges, sincere, militant man of the ranks, whose eleven years on San Francisco's waterfront have not effaced his nasal-cockney Australian accent, a Joint Marine Strike Committee was organized to take over negotiations. The employers called the rejection of the "Ryan agreement" a "repudiation," but clearly the men never had been bound by it, for Ryan negotiated it with neither authority nor sufficient knowledge of the temper the men and their local leaders.

As the cry for a general strike sounded, the gulf between the aroused members of the ILA and the Teamsters, on the one hand and the conservative leaders of the San Francisco labor movement and their followers on the other, became increasingly apparent. Indeed, the course of the general strike itself was determined by this conflict. On July 6, the day after troops occupied the waterfront, the Labor Council appointed a strike strategy committee of seven to "investigate." But if the business agents at the Labor Temple were calm and cautious, the rank and file of a number of unions were eager for action. "Bloody Thursday" and the ensuing funeral had dramatized the struggle to all labor. The Teamsters voted 1220 to 271 for a complete walkout in San Francisco; said Michael Casey, their "responsible," conservative officer:

I warned them that it was strictly against the rules of the brotherhood and that they will undoubtedly lose all strike benefits . . . but nothing on earth could have prevented that vote. In all my thirty years of leading these men, I have never seen them so worked up, so determined to walk out.

Union after union voted to strike or (about half of them) to abide by the decision of the General Strike Committee formed by appointment of President Vandeleur of the Labor Council as the labor directorate of the strike. In vain their leaders urged arbitration and warned against a general strike. "All right, boys, I'm with you," said one, and later he told a friend, "It was an avalanche. I saw it coming, so I ran ahead before it crushed me."

The employers agreed now to arbitrate all issues with the longshoremen, and to bargain (but not to arbitrate) with elected representatives of the seafaring crafts. The longshoremen remained adamant; they would not arbitrate "control of the hiring-hall," and they would not settle unless the seafaring crafts were guaranteed a satisfactory settlement. And now the men were marching out. On July 12 the truck drivers ceased work; gasoline trucks could make no deliveries and taxis were driven back to their garages. Butchers, ship boilermakers, machinists, welders, and laundry workers followed. The building-trades, cleaners, cooks and waiters, barbers, auto mechanics, cleaners and dyers, streetcar men, and many others waited only the call of the General Strike Committee. In the East Bay similar stands were taken by excited unionists.

The National Longshoremen's Board worked furiously for a settlement. The striking teamsters allowed only emergency trucks to operate in the city. Fire trucks, police cars, hospital services, scavengers were unmolested; other essential-service trucks required union permits. A ring of teamsters' pickets began to turn back food trucks bound for the Bay cities. Still people were asking: "Is there going to be a general strike?" Vandeleur as head of the General Strike Committee replied: "Do you fellows have to see a haystack before you can see which way the straws are blowing?"

Grocery stores were jammed. As the contagion spread, more and more people rushed to the stores to stock up. In the more affluent districts vegetables soon were "picked over" and gaps appeared on grocers' shelves. Canned goods sold rapidly, but stocks were large. With meat no longer obtainable, an inspired advertisement announced "X-brand tuna, an ideal meat substitute . . . can be served in countless ways." In the poorer districts trade was brisk, but slower than elsewhere; there were no funds for large purchases. The Knights Templar terminated their convention and left the city while teamsters would still haul their baggage.

By Saturday night, July 14, a general strike seemed inevitable. Said Michael Casey: "Logic has all gone out of the window! This thing is being ruled now by passion and hatred." But now the leaders were well ahead of the prodding followers, and they guided the action. The general strike was timed for 8 o'clock Monday morning in San Francisco, and Tuesday in the East Bay. But the militant unionists were not in control. Harry Bridges was defeated for the vice-presidency of the meeting formed by delegates from every union in San Francisco, and he was smothered as the only maritime representative on the appointed General Strike Committee of twenty-five.

Monday morning no streetcars ran. The streets were filled with pedestrians. Autos were left at home to conserve gasoline. A holiday mood was in the air. Two thousand more soldiers entered the city; armored tanks appeared on the waterfront. There was practically no violence. Long lines of people waited their turn for meals before nineteen restaurants officially opened by the strike committee.

But already the strike, which was general but never complete, was being checked. From within, the strike leaders decided the first day that the municipal carmen should return. The next day food trucks were given free passage by the pickets. More restaurants were opened by union permit, then all restaurants. Soon the embargo on gasoline trucks was lifted, and finally on July 19, the general strike was called off at the close of its fourth day. The General Strike Committee urged arbitration of all issues by all unions and employers party to the original dispute, and the National Longshoremen's Board announced a closely similar position.

FROM without, press and public officials were declaring the general strike a labor "dictatorship" and "insurrection," a strike against the public. "Strike bred in Moscow AFL avers," "Citizens open food, gas sales in spite of unions; Bridges admits defeat of plot to starve city into surrender," declared the headlines. Said Mayor Rossi "In the presence of a general strike nothing can be accomplished. That strike must be ended." Oil trucks were operated under armed guard; union "permits" were indignantly refused, by interests which, only a few years earlier had supported the Industrial Association's "permit" system which compelled the "open shop" in the building trades. But now they said, "Are we going to recognize another government or our own?" Guardsmen stripped the permit signs from cars which entered the occupied zone, and some, over-zealous, even took union badges from the strikers. "Imagine permits!" said an oil man, "I see red every time I see one those signs. What a fizzle! What have they gained? Nothing but the hatred of the public. I like what General Johnson said; nothing but civil war, insurrection... general strike!" The sympathy of the public was turning away from the strikers as their inconvenience grew. "They were trying to set up another city government of their own. They found that our sympathy was gone when we couldn't get our carrots," said a professional man. "The longshoremen should have endured almost anything rather than let people go hungry and cause anything like a general strike"; "Working people can't be trusted," said middle-class housewives. Many rank and file unionists, too, like a Key Route conductor were

glad that it ended the way it did. It might have been worse. If it had lasted longer the company would have ordered us back to work and then we would have been called "scabs" or we'd have lost a year's pension rights. A general strike? That's socialistic. The AFofL don't believe in that. We had nothing to do with the making of it, yet we were brought into it. We lost three days' wages and are paying for it yet.
Such men, and those who genuinely doubted the tactical wisdom of a general strike of indefinite duration, were the support of the conservative leaders


The Mayor "officially" announced the end of the general strike, saying, "I congratulate the real leaders of organized labor on their decision. San Francisco has stamped out without bargains or compromise any attempt to import into its life the very real danger of revolt."

The maritime strike went on to its conclusion. The fate of the longshoremen's strike hung on the teamsters whose position was strategic. What would they do? Delay, refusal to admit Bridges to the Teamsters' Hall, then the vote. The teamsters would go back to work "unconditionally." The last prop was pulled, and the longshoremen reluctantly, if overwhelmingly, voted to return to work. The strike was over.

The newspapers brought pressure on the employers to arbitrate with all crafts. They accepted, and the role of the national government as mediator at last became that of arbitrator.

To the employers, forestalling a victorious general strike meant victory for themselves. In 1893 San Francisco employers after a series of crushing victories over labor had exulted:

The Manufacturers' and Employers' Association can look with complacency upon its work during the last two years. One after another the unions have been taught a salutary lesson until out of the horde of unions only one or two are left of any strength. This association has taken hold of the shipowners' struggle and it is only a question of time when the Sailors' Union will have gone the way of the rest. It is of most vital importance that this good work should go on. Trade unionism among workmen is like tares in the field of wheat. The word and the act should be placed among the things prohibited by law.

One of the leading capitalists of San Francisco, according to a quotation appearing in a New York paper, evidently thought in 1934 very much in the terms of the victory of '93:

This strike is the best thing that ever happened to San Francisco. It's costing us money, certainly. We have lost millions on the waterfront in the last few months. But it's a good investment, a marvelous investment. It's solving the labor problem for years to come, perhaps forever.
Mark my words. When this nonsense is out of the way and the 'men have been driven back to their jobs, we won't have to worry about them any more. They'll have learned their lesson. Not only do I believe we'll never have another general strike but I don't think we'll have a strike of any kind in San Francisco during this generation. Labor is licked.


IN order to mobilize support for the employers, it was declared early in the strike that the longshoremen were "led by a radical and communistic group . . . whose objective is to create civil disturbance, not only in the waterfront trades, but in all other trades." As the strike proceeded, and especially when the general strike was declared, the press and public officials broke into a torrential attack upon "reds" and "subversive influences" among the strikers. Even the conservative Ryan, whose agreement was upset by Bridges and his followers, supported the employers in the charge that "the Communist Party, led by Harry Bridges, is in control of the San Francisco situation," although a local committee of conservative labor leaders denied that Bridges and his committeemen were "reds." The Communists, indeed, were active in San Francisco, as they are elsewhere; they followed a twofold policy: to "bore from within" the conservative trade unions; to form a "dual" union, the Marine Workers' Industrial Union. The first tactic met with considerable success, the second with comparatively little. They advertised widely their asserted influence in San Francisco. Whether Bridges is or is not a Communist is extremely difficult to prove; certainly neither the maritime strike nor the general strike were basically "communist strikes." The central issue of the longshoremen's strike was an old one; the position of the parties was not greatly different than in numerous earlier conflicts stretching back a half century. In 1893 the agent of the employers called the striking Sailors' Union of Andrew Furuseth an "anarchistic society." In 1934 the presence of Communists on the scene, and such influence as they exerted on men and on tactics, were seized upon to defeat aggressive, but essentially orthodox unions and unionists.

NOT only was this accomplished, but creating an hysteria the like of which California had not witnessed since the war, employers and industrial leaders, the press, and officials fostered thereby an attack against "reds" which has spread over the Bay region and beyond. Labor was importuned to "run subversive influences from its ranks like rats," and some union laborers did physically attack Communists, although not in most of the cases where it was attributed to them. Police and vigilantes raided communist "lairs," and arrested "reds," characterized by the approving press as "alley spawn." Vigilante committees were rapidly organized; business men, professors, and other staid citizens armed with pick handles and other weapons patrolled cities of the East Bay while more halls were raided and bricks with warnings attached were thrown through windows of homes. A protecting picket line was thrown around fashionable Piedmont; a librarian was ordered by resolution to submit for destruction a list of books "praising the virtues and advantages of Communism." A student editor urged that "student vigilantes must quell student radicals," opening his editorial with Voltaire's famous statement: "I may disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it." The tactical theory of the vigilantes was explained by a member: "If you shoot the reds, then they become heroes, but they don't like it so well if you work them over with pick handles."

The farmers of California have been organizing vigilante groups and prodding officials to action for months. In the wake of the general strike came the opportunity to arrest communist leaders of farm strikes on charges of vagrancy and criminal syndicalism under cover of hysteria, for the criminal syndicalism laws work most effectively when fear is abroad. A warning scaffold appeared in rural Hayward where fruit pickers had struck in sympathy with the longshoremen.

The most significant aspect of the general strike, perhaps, is the fact that officials, business men, and other conservative citizens have been so effectively agitated, that they are convinced of the immediate necessity, and of the suitability of storm-troop tactics to "save America," and "democratic government, including civil liberties such as freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and trial by jury." Few audible voices have been raised in protest-the victims first, of course, then a judge, and later a couple of editors;—for the harvests seem less prone to interruption, industries less exposed to "demoralization" when strike leaders are in jail.

*Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History-The Struggle For Women's Suffrage And The Trade Unions In 19th Century America

Click On Title To Link To Timeline For Women's Rights In America. As noted below this is just a sketch for now. There is much more to do in connecting women with the early trade union movement and the struggle for the vote.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

***Labor's Untold Story-The Futility Of Individual Anarchist Action- Alexander Berkman And The Homestead Strike Of 1892

Click on title to link to the Alexander Berkman Archives.

Markin comment:

For those not familiar with this heroic, if foolhardy, anarchist and long time companion of the anarchist lecturer Emma Goldman (whose biography has been reviewed in this space)he attempted to murder one Henry Frick, capitalist, and evil genius of the now famous and, for labor, unsuccessful Homestead Steel strike of 1892. That defeat, by the way, left the steel industry unorganized for the next forty or so years. Take that as a lesson as well as the futility of heroic , or otherwise, individual actions to turn the tide of history. Mass action is the key. So, let's get organized.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History-The National Labor Reform Party And The Struggle Against Capitalist Parties In 19th Cetury America

Click On Title TO Link To Wikipedia Entry For The National Labor Union, The Precursor Of The National Labor Reform Party.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Memory Of 19th Century Labor Organizer Ignatius Donnelly

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Ignatius Donnelly.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor Day Scorecard- 2009-RIP

Click on title to link to UE site for information about one of the few highlights of the last year in labor- the Republic Window workers sit-in staged in order to get what they were owed from a company going out of business.

Markin comment:

Keep that sit-in idea in mind for the future. Otherwise, given the severe depression-like economic situation, including massive lay-offs in all branches of industry the labor situation over the last year has made that RIP in this entry's headline is more than a little too real. The class struggle continues but, hell, we are, and have, taken it on the chin for far too long. We must preserve the working class, at least long enough to struggle for a society that will get rid of classes, in the face of these economic efforts to turn it to dust. That said- follow Joe Hill's advice. "Don't Mourn, Organize!".

The only other newsworthy labor struggle, although it now seems in the far distant past, was the hard fought Boeing strike in the late Fall of 2008. Some information on that struggle is posted below.

Commentary

October 20, 2008

Here is a little update (as of October 10) on the situation with the Boeing strikers from "Workers Vanguard". With the presidential campaign sucking all of the air out of the political universe this important strike is getting short shrift by the major media. I also have listened to a more recent interview with striking workers whose spirits are still high and who fully expect to continue on the lines until Christmas or later, if they have to. The call for a total shutdown of Boeing, creation of one company-wide union and more acts of solidarity on the lines by other unions are called for now. Again, Victory to the Boeing Strikers!

****

IAM Boeing Strikers Hold Firm

OCTOBER 6—Against the backdrop of the financial meltdown on Wall Street, the monthlong strike by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) against Boeing has rippled across the globe. Already the aerospace giant has missed delivery of more than 30 commercial aircraft, forcing airlines internationally to postpone the launch of new service. Many of its thousands of parts suppliers, some as far away as Japan, have slowed or stopped production. With Boeing the nation’s largest exporter, the effects of the strike could be felt well beyond the aerospace industry.

This strike, like any labor battle, is a confrontation between the capitalist bosses and the working class. Having raked in $4 billion in the last year alone, Boeing hopes to further jack up its massive profits by forcing a giveback contract on the union with no restrictions on the bosses’ ability to outsource work. Boeing is targeting new-hires, threatening to eliminate their pensions and retiree medical benefits altogether, and similarly wants to cut off survivor benefits. Its wage proposal is grossly inadequate, with more than 4,000 IAM members currently earning less than $30,000 a year because of a tiered wage structure.

But the Machinists remain firmly resolved to stay out and are in a position to win. The aircraft manufacturer had been scurrying to build planes in the face of volatile oil prices, slowing economies and a shakeout among the companies that finance aviation sales. The strike at Boeing points the way toward unleashing the social power of the working class at a time when the economic crisis, including the bipartisan federal bailout of Wall Street, threatens working people with yet another big hit in the pocketbook.

A victorious IAM Boeing strike could reverberate throughout the labor movement. Recognizing the Machinists’ struggle as their own, members of other unions have joined the picket lines, with union pilots at Alaska Airlines refusing to fly a new 737 from Boeing Field to Sea-Tac airport. In marked contrast to the bureaucrats’ plans to keep pickets small, a number of IAM members are putting in extra duty on the picket lines. However, other workers at Boeing are going into the plants. As a result, Boeing has sent out ten planes to customers during the strike, and engineers have continued to prepare the 787 Dreamliner for ground tests. Workers Vanguard supporters were told by Machinists on Seattle-area picket lines that the engineers, whose union is in contract negotiations with Boeing, and Teamsters are “required” by contract to work. The unions should carry out joint negotiations and strike action as a first step to forming one industrial union. “No-strike” contract clauses are examples of earlier sellouts by the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy, which swears off hard class struggle, substituting for it the lie of a partnership between labor and capital. All Boeing workers would be in a stronger position if they followed the union principle: picket lines mean don’t cross!

Many striking workers expressed concerns about outsourcing and job security. The response of the IAM tops has been to try to pit workers here against those overseas through protectionist campaigns to keep “our jobs” in the U.S., which fuel bigotry toward foreign, especially Asian, and immigrant workers. This chauvinist poison also is the stock in trade of the capitalist Democratic Party. As a norm, the capitalists will move to exploit cheaper labor where it is available. What is necessary is a head-on struggle against the bosses. This includes forging a fighting alliance of Boeing workers internationally and launching a serious drive to organize Boeing’s non-union suppliers in the U.S. To unlock labor’s power, there must be a political struggle within the unions for a class-struggle leadership to replace the bureaucrats who chain workers to the Democratic Party. Victory to the IAM Boeing strike!

******

Markin Commentary-On The Ending Of The Boeing Strike

News has come in that the IBM machinists who have been strike against Boeing for the past several weeks have ratified their new contract. Let’s face it, the way we should look at any labor contract settlement short of workers state power is as an armed truce. Whether the contract can be called a victory, a standoff or a defeat depends on the specific circumstances surrounding the contract. From initial appearances this contract looks like at least a standoff, if not a small victory especially on the question of outsourcing. In today’s dismay labor market and with the general economy in a tailspin this is to the good. A favorable combination of Boeing’s backlog of orders for its new line of airplanes, its huge profits and the union rank and file’s willingness to go on strike for an extended period to get a decent contract helped. That willingness to struggle on the union’s part is the key lesson we militants can take away from these proceedings. Of course, as always with any labor contract we come back to that question of the armed truce mentioned above. That will determine the ultimate value of this deal. Forward.

***Untold Story-The Other Side Of The Class War- Allen Pinkerton And His Anti-Labor Detective Agency.

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, at one time a notorious anti-labor private police force for the capitalists, in addition to their public police. Hey, we have to know our friends, but also keep an eye on our enemies who spend over a billion dollars a year to keep unions out of their work places. Right?

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story-The Fight For An Independent Labor Party- The Farmer/Labor/LaFollette Debacle Of 1924

Click on title to link to a 1954 letter to historian Theodore Draper by early American Communist Party leader James P. Cannon (subsequently an American Trotskyist leader)on the communist maneuvering ( I am being kind here) on the labor party question in the mid-1920's.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.