75 years since the San Francisco general strike

On May 9, 1934, San Francisco longshoremen went out on strike against West Coast ship owners, igniting a movement of 35,000 maritime workers of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) that shut down 2,000 miles of Pacific coastline from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego, California.

Driven by the determination and militancy of the rank and file, this 83-day struggle defied the employers’ Industrial Association of San Francisco, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s federal mediators, the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) union leadership, and culminated in the San Francisco general strike.

The San Francisco strike combined with two other momentous labor struggles in 1934 to alter the American political landscape — the Toledo Auto-Lite strike led by socialists in the American Workers Party, and the Minneapolis truck drivers strike led by Trotskyists in the Communist League of America. These three strikes — which were, in essence, rebellions not only against business interests but also against the business unionism of the AFL — paved the way for the pivotal victories of Detroit auto workers in sit-down strikes led by socialist-minded workers in 1937 and the formation of the mass industrial unions in the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations.)





...The San Francisco Labor Council voted on July 14 to “support” the call for a general strike. From July 16 to July 20, the city was shut down as 130,000 workers—including teamster drivers, streetcar men, construction workers and restaurant employees—walked off the job. Workers virtually controlled the city for two days. Many small businesses closed down in support. The nearby cities of Oakland and Berkeley were also at a standstill.

Meanwhile, 4,500 heavily armed National Guard troops were deployed throughout the city. Big business, the newspapers and government officials condemned the longshoremen as dangerous radicals and advocates of violence. National Recovery Administration (NRA) chief, General Hugh Johnson, declared the strike “a bloody insurrection” and called on “responsible” labor organizations to “run these subversive influences out from its ranks like rats...”



Silent funeral march of 40,000 for slain workers Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/sf34-s18.shtml

nation that is too easily forgotten.

Meanwhile, in some European country like France this would be just another ordinary "grève." That's right, they still do it. We should really give it a try again.

And since they control the narrative of history, it's difficult to remember (without sounding too much like that nitwit Glenn Beck) that We the People hold tremendous power and exercise tremendous influence. When we want to. It's very important for capital to keep society atomized, to keep people away from each other, isolated and fragmented. The best weapon they’ve got is one they use a lot: Convince people that what’s being taken away from them is being given to someone undeserving, and that undeserving person is their neighbor or their friend or their family member. Things indeed are being taken away from people, and it is indeed being distributed to someone who doesn’t deserve it. But the recipients aren’t our neighbors, friends or family members, but overrich fat cats who have been bleeding the workers white for decades.

Why is it not at the University of California, Berkeley?

Because, in 1934, Cal frat boys and the Cal football team SCABBED in that strike.

Thought that was a good bit of history to reference in this thread.

And this is a great story of labor winning. The question I always have with WSWS stuff is what the hell do we DO in the here and now, though. Curious as to how you think this helps us today other than "the myth of the general strike." Not snarking or trolling, just asking for your opinion.

designed to take money from the gullible and privatize it for the executives of the business.

With their virulent anti-union propaganda they are hardly a reliable source for labor history.

You cannot, so we must suffer blathering innuendo for another day. If you dared show a modicum of reading comprehension, which I know does not suit your purpose, you would admit that WSWS's bile is reserved for the bought-out, utterly corrupted leadership of unions like the UAW, bile well deserved. If the leadership of the big unions was so great why has union membership shrunk so much? They should have been striking when the out-sourcing started, instead they were in bed with management.

Seriously, it's actually challenging for them to write this kind of stuff, because the density of lies is so high. It's actually kind of impressive in a lunatic kind of way.



So what this paragraph doesn't tell us is that the ILA, the union that called the strike was an AFL union. WSWS has to demonize the actual functioning unions in everything they write, because they are an anti-union organization. So they make it sound as though this is a wild cat strike in opposition to the union leadership, when in fact, it was a strike by an AFL union.

It also blames FDR's administration for being on the wrong side. What it doesn't say is that the ILA was able to expand from the east coast to organize the dockworkers of San Francisco only because FDR's administration had passed the National Labor Relations Act, which made it much easier for unions to organize, forced employers to recognize unions after an election, and limited the old legal tricks against strikes like injunctions. As a result of the actions of FDR, unionization spread like wildfire across the country, including to the port of San Francisco. Of course the NLRB tried to mediate because that was their new function under the NLRA.

Who wants to take on the next set of lies? Anyone? Anyone?

:rofl:

Apples & oranges. But that is irrelevant to your propaganda line.


Taft-Hartley change everything. Yes, NLRA was helpful, but remember that it was forced upon FDR by the militancy of the unions in those times and that once that militancy was snuffed out by T-H, part of the Red Scare, the decline of unionism was begun. Only a little a first, but snowballing until we reached this dismal state of 7% membership.

and suggests that the strike was done against the wishes of the AFL, when in fact the union that called the strike was an AFL union.

That was then; that also was then.

:rofl:

The article is dishonest.

"In the second half of 1933, over 95 percent of San Francisco dockworkers joined the AFL’s newly revived ILA Local 38-79...

In early March 1934, the ILA, under immense rank-and-file pressure, issued a demand that the shape up be abolished...

After the police brutality of Bloody Thursday, the Joint Marine Strike Committee called for a general strike and scores of Bay Area union members voted their support against the wishes of the AFL leadership...."

"in 1937, the dockworkers formally seceded from the AFL and joined the newly formed CIO, taking the name International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). In 1950, during the Red Scare, the CIO executive board expelled the entire ILWU from the labor federation, accusing its leadership, particularly Bridges, of being communist."



Following the strike, the longshoremen left ILA; thus the split in East Coast & West Coast dockworkers' unions. Per the ILA website:

"Communist infiltration of the ILA's Pacific Coast District lead to the unsuccessful 98-day Maritime Strike and consequent departure of Pacific coast longshoremen from the ILA."

http://www.ilaunion.org/history_depression.html

So their leaving the AFL and joining the CIO means ... what?

Moreover, it does not affect the dishonesty of your original post. I'll grant WSWS this -- your excerpt was more dishonest than their article, because at least in their article, way at the bottom, they acknowledged that the union was AFL, while you chose not to include that.

So I'll grant you this: you are even more dishonest than WSWS. It's not all their fault.

"The CIO was born out of a fundamental dispute within the U.S. labor movement over whether and how to organize industrial workers...craft union...industrial union...

While the AFL had always included a number of industrial unions, such as the United Mine Workers and the Brewery Workers, by the 1930s the most dogmatic craft unionists had a strong hold on power within the federation. They used that power to quash any drive toward industrial organizing.

Industrial unionism became even more fierce in the 1930s, when the Great Depression in the United States caused large membership drops...A number of labor leaders, and in particular John L. Lewis of the Mine Workers.. started to press the AFL to change its policies in this area...

While the bureaucratic leadership of the AFL was unable to win strikes, three victorious strikes suddenly exploded onto the scene in 1934. These were the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Trotskyist Communist League of America, the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike led by the Communist Party USA, and the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike led by the American Workers Party...

The AFL did authorize organizing drives in the automobile, rubber and steel industries at its convention in 1934, but gave little financial support or effective leadership to those unions. The AFL’s timidity only succeeded in making it less credible among the workers it was supposedly trying to organize...

The dispute came to a head at the AFL’s convention in Atlantic City in 1935... After some more words, Lewis punched Hutcheson, knocking him to the ground; Lewis then relit his cigar and returned to the rostrum. The incident...helped cement (John L.) Lewis’ image in the public eye as someone willing to fight for workers’ right to organize.

Shortly after the Convention, Lewis called together...International Typographical Union...Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America...ILGWU...United Textile Workers...Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union...Oil Workers Union...Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers to discuss the formation of a new group within the AFL to carry on the fight for industrial organizing.

The creation of the CIO was announced on November 9, 1935.

Whether Lewis always intended to split the AFL over this issue is debatable; at the outset, the CIO presented itself as only a group of unions within the AFL gathered to support industrial unionism, rather than a group opposed to the AFL itself.

The AFL leadership, however, treated the CIO as an enemy from the outset, refusing to deal with it and demanding that it dissolve. The AFL’s opposition to the CIO, however, only increased the stature of the CIO and Lewis in the eyes of those industrial workers keen on organizing and disillusioned with the AFL’s ineffective performance.

Lewis continued to denounce the AFL’s policies while the CIO offered organizing support to workers in the rubber industry who went on strike and formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), in defiance of all of the craft divisions that the AFL had required in past organizing efforts, in 1936; Lee Pressman, affiliated with the far left, became the union's General Counsel...

The AFL continued to fight the CIO, forcing the NLRB to allow skilled trades employees in large industrial facilities the option to choose, in what came to be called "Globe elections," between representation by the CIO or separate representation by AFL craft unions....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Industrial_Organizations

I am very interested in hearing what people think about lessons were learned from this and how they apply to stuff that we can do in the here and now.

1. the loose left wing of the democratic party needs to organize & push bor they won't get diddley.

2. since the grassroots is so outgunned by the power of money (in both parties) & since capital's reach is global, & since nothing much is accomplished if established power doesn't meet countervailing power, new organizing forms are well worth thinking about.

I lived in South Africa for just under 2 years in the late 80s, doing research on land issues, and teaching at a UDF-affiliated independent college. Several times when I was there, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and United Democratic Front called for general strikes, and of course, we all stayed home. In a way SA in the late 80s was similar to the US in the 1930s, so I think my "lessons" from that time help explain the US.

As in the US, in SA, there was a debate between the "workerist" tendencies in the movement and the more theoretical Trotskyite types. In South Africa, the workerists won out in the form of Cosatu's leading role in the movement.

The key to a successful general strike is that most people can't NOT participate. The organization of workers has to be so widespread that even those who are not in a union and wavering about participating, find it easier to strike than to not strike. If the trains and taxis aren't running, if the small shops close, those waverers have no reason to try to get to work.

The way a movement gets to that level of organization is by representing real workers over real worker issues. That means the backbone of the movement is real trade unions -- not anti-union cults, wild-eyed "more radical than thou" types, Trotskyite permanent revolution types, and so on. They are always on the margins in such movements.

Moreover, workerist unions tend to be very, very empirical. They look at facts and figures, and make shrewd calculations. Various whack jobs, such as those who write WSWS, and the useful idiots who spread their lies, tend not to be reality based. If you are not reality based, you cannot make accurate calculations about political strategies.

"in opposition to the union leadership, when in fact, it was a strike by an AFL union"

An AFL union, of course, can strike in opposition to their leadership, and quite frequently did.

"the ILA was able to expand from the east coast to organize the dockworkers of San Francisco only because FDR's administration had passed the National Labor Relations Act"

And MLK had a dream but LBJ is the one who got things done. Right?