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From New Militant, Vol. II No. 16, 25 April 1936, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
An intense struggle of wide ramifications, precipitated by the opulent national shipping companies and waterfront employers associations, and involving issues of life or death to the Pacific Coast maritime unions, has come to an end by joint agreement. The unions found themselves compelled to make a retreat; but the shipping companies were frustrated in their openly avowed aims to overturn the present militant leadership, which was to be only a preliminary to the complete smashing of the unions. One may be sure, however, that these waterfront employers have not at all abandoned their aims. They are biding their time for a new opportunity. This epic struggle has come to an end only for the time being.
It was long protracted, bitterly contested, at times smoldering,
then out in the open and finally coming to a head during the last
couple of weeks. Its wide ramifications involves many seemingly side
issues which are nevertheless all interwoven to form one of the
intense dramas so typical of the American labor movement. Leaving
aside for the moment the great San Francisco general strike, which
constitutes the background for the more recent events, it is
necessary to mention only such outstanding questions as:
Firstly: the hearings now taking place before Secretary of the Department of Commerce Roper and Secretary of the Dept. of Labor, Perkins, on the case of the sailors from the Panama Pacific liner California, whom Secretary Roper charged with insubordination and mutiny when they struck for their demands.
Secondly: the case of a crew refusing to man the freighter Oregon at Los Angeles because it was laden with aviation gasoline destined for Italian Somaliland.
Thirdly: the organization of the Maritime Federation on the Pacific Coast, uniting all the maritime unions in common action and inspiring to a solidarity hitherto unknown. An organization justly feared by the shipping companies and whose example spread to the Gulf ports resulting in the setting up of a similar federation there.
Fourthly: the question of wages and working conditions established in the Pacific Coast ports, superior to those prevailing on the waterfronts anywhere else in the country. And most important in this connection, the union control of manning the ships and handling the cargo through joint “hiring halls”, these representing the gains that resulted from the San Francisco general strike, enforced by the vigilance of an active leadership and by the unparalleled militancy of the rank and file.
Fifthly, and lastly, we have here a case of the most vicious, the
most sinister and the most rotten connivance of corrupted high paid
national officials with the shipping companies, sometimes using
government agents as intermediaries, the former operating by the
methods of circumventing strikes, threatening expulsions and actual
expulsions of whole locals, herding scabs to man ships in Eastern
ports and giving them union cards in order to help break the courage,
the militancy and the very existence of the Pacific Coast unions.
In these most recent events the San Francisco longshoremen’s local 38-79, of which Harry Bridges is president, became the direct target. The Grace Company liner Santa Rosa had been picketed in New York for failure to comply with union conditions but it secured, with the help of the top union officials, a crew from the Great Lakes which was spuriously supplied with union cards. Arriving at San Pedro it was again picketed by the Maritime Federation and subsequently diverted to the San Francisco port, which the avowed threat of the employers “to force a showdown.” The longshoremen’s union considered the Santa Rosa as carrying “hot cargo,” and, therefore, not to be unloaded, and insisted on an examination of the crew’s union cards.
Immediately the Waterfront Employers’ Association countered
by breaking off relations with local 38-79. The opportunity the
bosses had waited for had come. All members of the Employers
Association were advised not to order any men through the hiring
halls. These hiring halls were made the center of the attack. Through
them the unions were able to regulate the hiring of crews so that
each received its proper share of the work available and the unions
were also enabled to prevent any effective blacklisting by the
employers. Naturally, such an institution became a thorn in the sides
of the latter and they were determined to move heaven and earth to
have it smashed.
So far, however, this attempt has failed. All the carefully laid plans and all the dastardly connivance of the reactionary national officials with the employers could not break the maritime unions on the Pacific Coast. In the most splendid manner they all rallied to make common cause against the combined attack. The Central Labor Councils of Seattle, of San Francisco and smaller cities voted full support to the longshoremen, even local reactionaries did not dare oppose it. The Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast voted full support as did numerous local unions up and down the coast. Still the longshoremen’s union had to make a retreat and consent to a stipulation being written into the agreement signed before the federal administrator, Judge M.C. Sloss, by which it gives up its right to job action and pledges itself to handle “hot cargo” while disputes are referred to the judge for settlement. This is a serious retreat and it calls to mind the fact that Harry Bridges has once before caused strained relations with the other maritime unions when advising them to refrain from “job action.”
It should be clearly understood, however, that the Pacific Coast unions were compelled to make this retreat essentially because of the conniving treachery between the employers and such officials as Joseph P. Ryan of the International Longshoremen’s Union and Victor Olander, Paul Scharrenberg and Andrew Furuseth of the International Sailor’s Union. The maritime unions of the Pacific Coast have attained an advanced position by their militant methods of struggle as well as in regard to conditions gained. For these reasons they had to bear the brunt of the attack and bear it alone. And it is a foregone conclusion that for them to maintain this position it is necessary that the maritime unions, particularly in the East, be similarly organized and establish a far greater degree of cohesion and solidarity.
The dramatic events of this protracted Pacific Coast struggle can
best be understood when related in chronological order. At the same
time each one of them contain lessons necessary for militant
unionists to assimilate if they are to be on guard in future events.
In practically every instance we see reflected the conflict between
the old school of corrupted trade union leadership and the newly
awakened rank and file militancy. But in its broader implications, it
is the conflict of the capitalist owners of industry and their labor
lieutenants pitted against an advanced section of the working
class.
Out of the San Francisco general strike grew the special award of
the National Longshoremen’s Board providing for the present
working conditions on the waterfront. The longshoremen gained the
six-hour day with a wage scale of 95 cents per hour and $1.40 for
overtime. Subsequently all other maritime workers made gains. The
sailors established a wage scale of $62.50 per month, the stewards
$50.00 per month which compares to the lower rate on the East Coast
of $57.50 and $45.00 for these two crafts respectively. According to
the new award all cases of dispute were to be handled by the local
Labor Relations Committee, and in the event of disagreement to be
referred to Judge Sloss for arbitration. One of the important and at
the same time one of the most bitterly contested gains for the
workers, contained in this award, was the provision for all hiring of
crews to take place through “hiring halls” jointly
operated. Through this medium the unions were able to exercise almost
complete control over hiring and firing of crews. Of course, it
should be remembered, that all of these gains were made only after a
whole series of struggles consciously aimed at an immediate goal.
Following up these gains the unions further strengthened their position enormously by organizing the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast, embracing all of the maritime unions and counting a total of 35,000 members. Ordinarily there would not be anything startling for A.F. of L. unions of related crafts within one industry to combine in the establishment of a federation. This has been a long established practice by the various departments already in existence, comprising the building trades, the metal trades, the printing trades and others. But after the lessons of the general strike, which had brought forward a determined leadership in the local maritime unions, and in fear of a rising tide of militancy, the top bureaucrats took an entirely different view of the matter.
The newly gained cohesiveness made the workers conscious of their organized power which they did not hesitate to use. Ships with non-union crews, or with cargo loaded anywhere by scabs, found difficulties in every Pacific port. While the federation is in no sense as fully effective as an industrial union it did inculcate a high degree of solidarity and unity of action all along the coast. Even as a mere step in that direction it became a splendid tribute to the idea of industrial unionism. From the point of view of the employers this situation appeared ever more desperate. The business revival began to make its way; profits showed new and excellent prospects, buttressed by the enormous government ship subsidies, and lo and behold, the workers on the waterfronts and on the ships insisted, through their unions, upon their modest share as specified by the federal award. They insisted on union control of working conditions. The maritime unions had become a powerful force.
Following their acceptance of the federal award the employers confined themselves to guerilla warfare, but only in preparation for their day of the general offensive. This assumed varied forms. In one instance sailors were commanded to unload steam schooners at a [line of type repeated and line missing – Note by ETOL] to circumvent the longshoremen’s scale of 95 cents an hour. The sailors refused, so the employers had to hire longshoremen, but they would subsequently tie up the schooners, leaving them lying idle in the ports; first dozens of them, later scores. Petty violations of the provisions of the award were common occurrences. Ships carrying “hot cargo” called at the ports right along while a hue and cry went up against the workers’ refusal to unload them. But in all these situations the workers also learned how to resort to a special kind of job action through what was popularly called “quickie” strikes. They met the strategy of guerilla warfare rather effectively.
All the time the employers prepared for the showdown. The local Chambers of Commerce, the Hearst press and the radio loud speakers blared out their shouts for a showdown while an important part of the plans were concocted right in the international union offices.
Joseph P. Ryan, the president of the I.L.A., had bungled things
for the bureaucrats during the coastwide strike when he failed to
carry a single vote for his outrageous settlement proposals. He was
already badly discredited on the Pacific Coast. So the gentlemen
receiving the high salaries in the sailors’ union, Paul
Scharrenberg and Victor Olander, came to the rescue of the employers
when help from these labor lieutenants was needed the most. Paul
Scharrenberg. who was often denounced by Tom Mooney as one of his
jailers, had himself been expelled from the sailors’ union of
the Pacific because of his treacherous activities during the tanker
strike. Victor Olander, one of the left-overs of the old Gompers’
regime, required a good deal of his training in the kind of politics
where an opponent is never met openly until all the traps are
securely set. At the I.S.U. convention in January, when serious
disputes on the Pacific Coast were in a deadlock, these two gentlemen
appeared to administer their blow.
The sailors’ union of the Pacific Coast was indicted for having refused to unload the steam schooners at 29 cents an hour, for having combined with other unions in the Maritime Federation and for having taken into its ranks members of the dissolved Marine Workers Industrial Union. The sailors’ union on the Pacific Coast was expelled and its funds tied up in court litigation. What was the purpose of this action? Here we will let the New York Times, which carries “all the news fit to print,” give the answer. In its issue of January 31, George P. West reported from San Francisco on the “staggering blow to the hitherto victorious maritime unions” by the charter revocation. He added:
“Shipowners are jubilant as they abandon carefully laid plans to lay up all ships early in February and thereby lockout sailors and longshoremen as a final desperate expedient in combatting the militant leadership of Harry Bridges and his allies. Instead they now announce they will wait until the I.S.U. has organized a new Pacific Coast unit.
“If the local leadership refuses to recognize the
new union and work cargo the responsibility will be transferred to
the men and the issue fought out as a strike instead of a lockout.”
Matters did not work out entirely in this fashion, and chiefly because of the fact that the bureaucrats of the I.S.U. failed in their nefarious scheme. They did not rally any of the sailors on the Pacific Coast to their banner. It turned out to be as stated by Earl King, one of the leaders of the Maritime Federation: “They’ve got the charter, we’ve got the men.” The Maritime Federation stood its ground and remained solid so the employers had to change their strategy and move for the showdown precipitated by themselves when they broke off relations with longshoremen’s local 38-79 on April 14.
This long protracted struggle is now settled – at least for
the time being. The shipping companies and the waterfront employers
have once again experienced the power of labor when well organized
and given militant leadership. They have also experienced a new
lesson, namely that they cannot entirely depend upon the top
bureaucrats, be they ever so corrupted, once the rank and file
workers have become conscious of the despicable role these
individuals play. To the workers it should have become increasingly
clear that real gains are made only through conscious struggle and
when their organizations are made a means for this purpose.
But the retreat embodied in the present agreement leaves the Pacific Coast maritime unions in a weakened position. The pledge to handle “hot cargo” can become extremely dangerous and can easily serve as a treacherous means toward the breaking up of the solidarity and the organization attained, not only on the Pacific Coast, but elsewhere. Under no conditions can the unions afford to agree to handle “hot cargo” of the kind that is actually loaded by scabs under the conditions of a strike in other ports. That would mean the giving up of the very right to an organization.
But, as stated at the outset in this article, the key to the problem remains the organization for common action in all the ports in the country. The establishment of the Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast district embracing about 10,000 maritime workers is one important step in this direction. When followed up on the Eastern coast, regardless of the opposition of the reactionary bureaucrats, the retreat made can again be turned into a new advance.
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