[4][22][23] In March 2020, the judge reduced the amount to $19 million. Dockworkers, also known as longshoremen and women, are employed by the International Warehouse and Longshore Union (ILWU). They are exposed, as few others are, to the naked market forces of modern capitalism. On the crucial issue of the hiring hall, the Board ruled: The hiring of all longshoremen shall be through hiring halls maintained and operated jointly. But the dispatcher shall be selected by the International Longshoremens Association. Longshoremen were to be dispatched without favoritism or discrimination because of union or non-union membership.. Hourly Rate. San Francisco General Strike of 1934 photographic collections. Tramp-tram-tramp, grave and grim, on they came, there seemed to be no end to the procession, There was no break in the march; there was no halting or hesitation. 1934 West Coast waterfront strike - Wikipedia The history of longshoremen, wrote the late historian E.J. Teamsters in both San Francisco and Oakland voted to strike, over the objections of their leaders, on Sunday, July 8. The Bridges story is well-known. Bonus. San Francisco's Longshoremen's Local 38-79 splits with the ILA and is chartered by the ILWU as Local 1-10. Almost all else was closed. [71] Workers complained that the employers were exploiting them for cheap labor and forcing them to work in unsafe conditions without reasonable safety measures. Bloody Thursday 1934: The Strike that Shook San Francisco and Rocked Share: Previous Joan Jett's Former Residence. [45] The police were wholly absent from the scene. The record at the time was 157 . Then at three oclock, the strikers surged down Mission Street, attempting to seize the waterfront just to the south. "(Ports) No help from Washington: congressional action to rein in the ILWU would face long odds", International Transport Workers' Federation, Seafarers International Union of North America, American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations, International Container Terminal Services, Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, "Small but powerful union is at center of port dispute", "How a feud over two jobs tipped the West Coast longshore union toward bankruptcy", "When S.F. Since the thirties, the waterfronts of the world have been utterly transformed. These were filled with strikebreakers, hired to re-open the port. The same happened in Portland and Seattle. Policemen fired a shotgun into the crowd, striking three men in intersection of Steuart and Mission streets. Several picturesque islandsAlcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Islandare part of the city. The Strike Committee insisted that all the issues be submitted to federal arbitrators, though not because they believed arbitration would win what the longshoremen wanted. Facilities host training sessions for longshore workers, clerks, and casuals in skills necessary to complete jobs in a productive, safe manner. It stood just near the western anchorage of the Bay Bridge, then being framed with great towers of orange steel. [60] A police spokesperson suggested that "maybe the Communists staged the raids themselves for publicity". The base salary for Longshoreman ranges from $67,271 to $82,409 with the average base salary of $74,578. Still, longshoremen are not without resources of their own. About San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of .More, San Francisco, Californiaarea prices were up 4.5% from a year ago, Longshoreman Salary in popular cities: Job Openings for This Role, Based on HR-reported data: a national average with a geographic. San Francisco Steady Skilled Men 196 San Francisco Bay Area Crane Board 198 San Francisco Utility Man/Lift Drivers 198 San Francisco Local 10 Day and Night . They came to see themselves far from the wharf rats of before rather as The Lords of the Docks, proclaiming, immodestly, We are the most militant and organized group of workers the world has ever seen. All this, they did, from the bottom up. Some 130,000 workers had left their jobs; exceptions, as in the 1919 Seattle General Strike, were Milk and Bakery Drivers, and those who maintained medical and hospital services. When striking longshoremen surrounded a San Francisco police car and tried to tip it over, the police shot into the air, and then fired into the crowd, killing Nick Bordoise (originally named Nick Counderakis) and Howard Sperry. The average hourly pay for a Longshoreman is $28.12. With more online, real-time compensation data than any other website, Salary.com helps you determine your exact pay target. San Francisco and its waterfront is a place that welcomes everyone, celebrates diversity, and measures its success by how its services and governance champion equity. [52], The strike lasted four days. A number of former IWW members and other militants, such as Harry Bridges, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States, soon joined the International Longshoremen's Association, when passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 led to an explosion in union membership in the ILA among West Coast longshoremen. 16-23, 29-30.; 3 Francis, Labor on the San Francisco waterfront, pp. On the Friday, the Central Labor Council, having resisted stubbornly for so long, finally met to consider the general strike. The novelist Charles Norris (the brother of writer Frank Norris, The Octopus, A California Story) described the funeral procession: It was a spectacular and stirring sight, as thousands of men and women, to the solemn cadences of Beethovens dirge, silently followed the dead and the attendant trucks piled high with wreaths and floral tributes With measured step the vast procession of mourners marched up the main artery of the city, Side-walks were lined with women, children, and sober-faced men of every walk of life. The first, the best hope for an early finish was to be found, then, not amongst the employers. How to Become a Longshoreman | Salary.com Read more from Wikipedia. Contact Info ILWU Local 63 There was little to celebrate. This was an ancient system. and they founded a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union ILWU) and affiliated with the industrial unions in the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The employer's group, the Industrial Association, had agents riding with the police. When the longshoremen tried to get past the dock's gates, they were ambushed by guards. Bridges would become president of the San Francisco ILA in 1935; he helped lead the West Coast longshoremen into the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 1937, became its first president as well as West Coast chairman of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The general strike and its aftermath raise many issues for the historian: what were its origins? )^Hawley, Andrew, Avid Collector Seeks . The employers, increasingly desperate, were led by the Industrial Association, a San Francisco equivalent of the National Association of Manufacturers, then leading the battle to maintain the open shop: The United States is an Open Shop Country. They were joined by the like-minded of the Pacific Northwest, as well as those from LA where the authorities were determined that Los Angeles remain an anti-union citadel. [5] 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. Joe Ryan, ILA President for Life supported it, even after World War II. The Caucus then elects from among its number a negotiating committee of rank-and-file longshore workers who remain in San Francisco during the course of negotiations. Still, the widespread police campaign of terror and the rise in vigilantism had taken its toll. [41], As strikers carried wounded picketers into the ILA union hall police fired on the hall and lobbed tear gas canisters at nearby hotels. [76] The ILWU has frequently stopped work for political protests against, among other things, Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, fascist intervention in Spain's civil war, South Africa's system of apartheid and the Iraq War. $240 - $5k. In San Francisco, the shippers best hopes, however fanciful, were dashed on May 13 when city truck drivers voted unanimously not to work on the docks, this despite the opposition of their leaders. The International Longshoremen's Association is the largest union of maritime workers in North America, representing upwards of 70,000 longshoremen on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Great Lakes, major U.S. rivers, Puerto Rico and Eastern Canada A Rich History [15][73], Sam Kagel, the last surviving member of the original union steering committee, died on May 21, 2007 at the age of 98. "You get full . The ILWU later faced similar challenges from women, who found it even harder to enter the industry and the union. Police arrived to remove the flowers and drive off the picketers minutes later. Coal miners returned to the United Mine Workers in such numbers as scarcely could be counted. West Coast dockworkers, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), face a contract battle this year amid supply chain issues related to the ongoing COVID-19 . Many considered it a defeat. [42] Similarly, federal soldiers of the United States Army stationed at the Presidio were placed on alert. Some of its shacks were remnants of the 1906 earthquake. $979 - $23k. [29] They encouraged the strikers to take what they could get from the employers and threatened to use Teamsters as strikebreakers if the ILA did not return to work. The press, hysterical, denounced the strikers as vultures who fed upon the plight of the poor city. Those it did not win outright it gained through hundreds of job actions after the strikers returned to work, as the union gradually wrested control over the pace of work and the employer's power to hire and fire from the shipping and stevedoring companies through the mechanism of hiring halls. When 500 strikers attacked and tried to set fire to a ship housing strikebreakers in San Pedro, police unsuccessfully tried to stop them with tear gas, then shot into the crowd, killing strikers Dick Parker and John Knudsen. Frank Ponce De Leon, Coast Committeeman The picketers pulled back, unwilling to take on armed soldiers in an uneven fight, and trucks and trains began moving without interference. Our Customers are organizations such as federal, state, local, tribal, or other municipal government agencies (including administrative agencies, departments, and offices thereof), private businesses, and educational institutions (including without limitation K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and vocational schools), who use our Services to evaluate job . Yet, that very day longshoremen and their supporters clashed with police on the Embarcadero. Since longshoremen were prepared to walk out if an employer did not hire a worker dispatched from the hall, the ILA soon controlled hiring on the docks. These are well beyond the scope of this brief celebration of the strike and the longshoremen who led it. In early February of 2020, ILWU workers were first exposed to COVID-19 through work at cruise terminals on the West Coast. [67] Longshoremen also began dictating other terms, fining members who worked more than the ceiling of 120 hours per month, filing charges against a gang boss for "slandering colored brothers" and forcing employers to fire strikebreakers. On May 15, for the first time in history, not a single freighter sailed from a Pacific Coast Port. 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 union's membership book. [64] In Piedmont, an upscale community surrounded by Oakland on all sides, the chief of police prepared for a reported attack by strikers on the homes of wealthy ship-owners. He died in San Francisco in 1983.. Perry writes, "For a couple of hundred people it . Box 839, Moorpark, CA 93020. Salary range for a Longshoreman $53,657 to $65,734 View average salary for the United States Adjust salary by state Average salary for Longshoreman jobs Read more related jobs [15], Events soon made the MWIU wholly irrelevant. A crowd did show up. The longshoremen's contract expired July 1 and the ports have been operating on the basis of day-to-day contract extensions ever since. Winners of longshore lottery drawing know they haven't hit jackpot And also for the working classes of San Francisco. Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library, Bloody Thursday 1934: The Strike that Shook San Francisco and Rocked the Pacific Coast. The Trips Festival on January 2123, 1966 was the most attended and advertised of the early Acid Tests. A union committee decided: electrical workers who supplied light and power were also exempted, as were ferry crews on the Bay. Here is the list provided by the governor's office on who is deemed essential. [48], San Francisco Mayor Angelo Rossi declared a state of emergency. Careers | SF Port Hours passed and still the column moved onward, A great hush lay over the line of march, broken only by the rhythmic tread of trudging feet. On the docks, conditions were crude, the longshoremans work changed little one generation to the next; cargo, no matter how rough, was loaded and unloaded essentially by hand, by gangs of men who relied chiefly on physical strength and skill and cooperation. On August 21, the Piraeus docked at a different terminal, where two dozen longshoremen unloaded the cargo overnight. The Northwest Seaport Alliance, Danny Wan, Executive DirectorPort of Oakland, Curtis Robinhold, Executive DirectorPort of Portland, Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress, COVID-19 Pandemic, a Year of Record Highs and Devastating Lows. [75], 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. Victory. The young Harry Bridges (16), son of an Australian real estate broker, had left home and gone to sea, inspired in part by reading the stories of Jack London, and there became a union man. [10], The ILWU disaffiliated from the AFLCIO on August 30, 2013, accusing the AFLCIO of unwillingness to punish other unions when their members crossed ILWU picket lines and over federal legislative policy issues.[11]. [61], General Hugh S. Johnson, then head of the National Recovery Administration, gave a speech urging responsible labor leaders to "run these subversive influences out from its ranks like rats". It was established in 1937, after the historic 1934 General Strike and after voting to disaffiliate from the International Longshoremens Association (ILA). In the first days of the strike, four hundred Oakland longshoremen had stormed the citys piers, driving out police and strikebreakers. TheCoast Committee chairs and administersthe Longshore Division Caucus. Local activities included a police raid . He is a Fellow at UC Berkeley, Director of the Mendocino Institute and associated with the Bay Area gathering, Retort. Casuals. Port of LA Dock Workers Make $100K+, Work With Huge Robots Longshoreman Salary in San Francisco, California | Salary.com The hiring boss, the petty dictator on the dock, would stand before them; he could take any man he wanted, reject anyone he pleased. Still, the ship must sail on time; they clung tenaciously to the system, casual labor and the shape-up. 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. [39], Under orders from California Governor Frank Merriam, the California National Guard moved in that evening to patrol the waterfront. Longshoremen's Hall, San Francisco, CA 1. 1935 ILA charters Puget Sound Walking Bosses as Local 38-114. And, they occupy, still, a strategic, highly sensitive position in the worlds commerce, a link in a multinational chain that promises its customers not just transportation, but fast, on time delivery. The long, strange trip of Longshoremen's Hall - San Francisco Chronicle The complete list of California's essential workers - KTVU FOX 2 He is the author ofLabors Civil War in California, (PM Press, 2012 (second edition, revised and expanded), editor of Waterfront Workers, New Perspectives on Race and Class (Illinois, 1998), His latest book is a collection of the writings of Edward Thompson, E.P. Los Angeles,San Diego,San Jose, Learn more about: Compensation Packages, . February 1, 2012. The San Francisco General Strike of 1934, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations.