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) began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every U.S. West Coast port walked out. It lasted 83 days. Organized by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike, which stopped all work in the major port city for four days, and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.
The result of the strike was the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States. 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.
The 1916 West Coast waterfront strike was the first instance of coastwide organizational unity among West Coast longshore workers. The strike resulted in a massive defeat for the ILA, and employers launched an effort to eliminate the ILA's presence on the waterfront entirely.
In 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 on the West Coast ports were unorganized or represented by company unions. 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.
The Industrial Workers of the World, nicknamed "Wobblies," had attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors and fishermen in the 1920s through their Marine Transport Workers Union. Their largest strike, the 1923 San Pedro Maritime Strike, stalled shipping in that harbor but was crushed by a combination of injunctions, mass arrests and vigilantism by the American Legion. Other Wobbly-led strikes occurred in Seattle in 1919 and Portland in 1922. 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.
The Communist Party had also been active in the area in the late 1920s, seeking to organize all categories of maritime workers into a single union, the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), as part of the drive during the Third Period to create revolutionary unions. The MWIU never made much headway on the West Coast, but it did attract a number of former IWW members and foreign-born militants. Harry Bridges, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States and played an instrumental role in organizing the 1934 strike, was often alleged to be an active member of the Communist party.
Militants published a newspaper, The Waterfront Worker, which focused on longshoremen's most pressing demands: more men on each gang, lighter loads and an independent union. While a number of the individuals in this group were Communist Party members, the group as a whole was independent of the party: although it criticized the International Seamen's Union (ISU) as weak and the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), which had its base on the East Coast, as corrupt, it was not wholly loyal to the MWIU, but emphasized the creation of small groups of activists at each port to serve as the first step in a slow, careful movement to unionize the industry.
Grassroots reform of the ILA locals would gradually marginalize the MWIU. Just as the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act had led to a spontaneous significant rise in union membership among coal miners in 1933, thousands of longshoremen now joined the fledgling ILA locals that reappeared on the West Coast. The MWIU declined as Communist Party activists were absorbed into the ILA.
These newly emboldened workers first went after the "blue book" union, refusing to pay dues to it and tearing up their membership books. The militants who had published "The Waterfront Worker", now known as the "Albion Hall group" after their usual meeting place, continued organizing dock committees that soon began launching slowdowns and other types of job actions in order to win better working conditions. While the official leadership of the ILA remained in the hands of conservatives sent to the West Coast by President Joseph P. Ryan of the ILA, the Albion Hall group started in March, 1934 to press demands for a coastwide contract, a union-run hiring hall and an industry wide waterfront federation. When the conservative ILA leadership negotiated a weak "gentlemen's agreement" with the employers that had been brokered by the mediation board created by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bridges led the membership in rejecting it.
Disputes revolved around the issue of recognition: the union demanded a closed shop, a coastwide contract and a union hiring hall. The employers offered to arbitrate the dispute, but insisted that the union agree to an open shop as a condition of any agreement to arbitrate. The longshoremen rejected the proposal to arbitrate.
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; police fired into the strikers, killing two and injuring many. The killing of Dick Parker created resentment up and down the coast. Daily similar smaller clashes 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.
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 and continued the strike. 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.
Some Teamsters supported the strikers by refusing to handle "hot cargo" – goods which had been unloaded by strikebreakers – although the Teamsters' leadership was not as supportive. By the end of May, Dave Beck, president of the Seattle Teamsters, and Mike Casey, president of those in San Francisco, thought the maritime strike had lasted too long. 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.
Shipping companies, government officials, some union leaders and the press began to raise fears that the strike was the result of communist agitation. This "red scare" also helped ignite a controversy about the New Deal Public Works of Art Project murals that were at the time being completed in San Francisco's Coit Tower (on Telegraph Hill, close to the location of the strike in San Francisco), leading to the postponing of the tower's July 7 opening, and later to the removal of communist symbols from two of the American Social Realism style murals.
After a quiet Fourth of July, the employers' organization, the Industrial Association, tried to open the port of San Francisco 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.