The San Francisco General Strike

Abstract

IN MID-JULY, approximately ioo,ooo trade unionists of the San Francisco Bay region staged for four days the most extensive general strike ever to occur in the United States. To students of international relations in the Pacific area, this casts California labor in a somewhat unfamiliar role. The agitation against Chinese immigration in the 'seventies, which gained power when Chinese rose to be employers competing against American employers; the cries against the incoming Japanese, who offered stiff competition to both laborers and farmers; the efforts to ban immigration of Mexicans and Filipinos-these are the activities for which organized labor on the American Pacific Coast, and especially in California, is best known over the rim of the Pacific. But this general strike, too, is linked closely with the traditions of California labor. For the original and enduring issue in the longshoremen's strike, out of which the general strike developed, has also been the central issue in the major labor conflicts of San Francisco for nearly half a century, many of which, like the present one, have centered about the waterfront. On May 9, I934, the longshoremen of San Francisco and other Pacific Coast ports went on strike. Various demands were made, but the principal issue in San Francisco, which was the main focus of the conflict, was whether or not of the hiring should be transferred from the Waterfront Employers' Union to the International Longshoremen's Association (I. L. A.), affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. This same issue was at stake in the first conflict between another maritime union and the first shipowner's association in San Francisco. As early as i886 the Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast had established a hiring hall to break union control. The men struck, proposed joint control of the shipping office, were refused, ( 27I >