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| West Coast Waterfront Strike, 1934 |
The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as a number of variations on these names, lasted eighty-three days, triggered by sailors and a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States.
The San Francisco General Strike, along with the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were important catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
More information: Found San Francisco
Longshoremen on the West Coast ports had either been unorganized or represented by company unions since the years immediately after World War I, when the shipping companies and stevedoring firms had imposed the open shop after a series of failed strikes. Longshoremen in San Francisco, then the major port on the coast, were required to go through a hiring hall operated by a company union, known as the blue book system for the color of the membership book.
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| Longshoremen at beginning of 1934 strike |
The Industrial Workers of the World had attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors and fishermen in the 1920s through their Maritime Workers Union. Their largest strike, the 1923 San Pedro Maritime Strike, bottled up shipping in that harbor, but was crushed by a combination of injunctions, mass arrests and vigilantism by the American Legion.
While the IWW was a spent force after that strike, syndicalist thinking remained popular on the docks. Longshoremen and sailors on the West Coast also had contacts with an Australian syndicalist movement that called itself the One Big Union formed after the defeat of a general strike there in 1917.
More information: San Francisco General Strike, 1934 (I) & (II)
The strike began on May 9, 1934, as longshoremen in every West Coast port walked out; sailors joined them several days later. The employers recruited strikebreakers, housing them on moored ships or in walled compounds and bringing them to and from work under police protection. Strikers attacked the stockade housing strikebreakers in San Pedro on May 15; two strikers were shot and killed by the employers' private guards. Similar battles broke out in San Francisco and Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Strikers also succeeded in slowing down or stopping the movement of goods by rail out of the ports.
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| Police use tear gas on the Embarcadero |
The Roosevelt administration tried again to broker a deal to end the strike, but the membership twice rejected the agreements their leadership brought to them. The employers then decided to make a show of force to reopen the port in San Francisco.
On Tuesday, July 3, fights broke out along the Embarcadero in San Francisco between police and strikers while a handful of trucks driven by young businessmen made it through the picket line.
After a quiet Fourth of July the employers' organization, the Industrial Association, tried to open the port even further on Thursday, July 5. As spectators watched from Rincon Hill, the police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd, then followed with a charge by mounted police. Picketers threw the canisters and rocks back at the police, who charged again, sending the picketers into retreat. Each side then refortified and took stock.
The events took a violent turn that afternoon, as hostilities resumed outside of the ILA strike kitchen. Eyewitness accounts differ on the exact events that transpired next. Some witnesses saw a group of strikers first surround a police car and attempt to tip it over, prompting the police to fire shotguns in the air, and then revolvers at the crowd.
More information: San Francisco Museum
Other eyewitness accounts claim that police officers started shooting in the direction of the strikers, provoking strikers to defend themselves. Policemen fired a shotgun into the crowd, striking three men in intersection of Steuart and Mission streets.
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| The Waterfront Strike, 1934 |
One of the men, Howard Sperry, a striking longshoreman, later died of his wounds. Another man, Charles Olsen, was also shot but later recovered from his wounds. A third man, Nick Bordoise who was an out of work member of the cook's union volunteering at the ILA strike kitchen, was shot but managed to make his way around the corner onto Spear Street, where he was found several hours later. Like Sperry, he died at the hospital.
Strikers immediately cordoned off the area where the two picketers had been shot, laying flowers and wreaths around it. Police arrived to remove the flowers and drive off the picketers minutes later. Once the police left, the strikers returned, replaced the flowers and stood guard over the spot. Though Sperry and Bordoise had been shot several blocks apart, this spot became synonymous with the memory of the two slain men and Bloody Thursday.
More information: History Link
The following day, several thousand strikers, families and sympathizers took part in a funeral procession down Market Street, stretching more than a mile and a half, for Nicholas Bordois and Howard Sperry, the two persons killed on Bloody Thursday. The police were wholly absent from the scene. The march made an enormous impact on San Franciscans, making a general strike, which had formerly been the visionary dream of a small group of the most radical workers, became... a practical and realizable objective.
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| The end of the strike on the News |
It was also awarded a contract that applied up and down the West Coast.
The strike also prompted union organizer to organize the Department Store Workers Union and the Retail Clerks Association in San Francisco.
The ILWU continues to recognize Bloody Thursday by shutting down all West Coast ports every July 5 and honoring Nick Bordoise, Howard Sperry and all of the other workers killed by police during the strike.
Riots born out of political issues aren't the same
as those born out of personal greed.
Ross Kemp
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