July 19 General Strike

On this day in labor history, the year was 1934.

That was the day San Francisco’s Central Labor Council voted narrowly to end the general strike, then in its fourth day.

It had been one of three historic strikes that turned the tide towards industrial organizing in the 1930s.

It emerged as part of the ongoing longshoreman’s strike, which started in May.

The decision was controversial.

Longshoremen and seamen raged that leadership of the strike had been torn from them by more conservative elements.

As author of Workers on the Waterfront, Bruce Nelson puts it, “after two and a half months on strike, literally thousands of arrests, at least six deaths and hundreds of serious injuries, the men and their families were holding the line.

But their allies were gradually cutting the ties of solidarity that had been the strike’s lifeblood.”

The shipping bosses forced a vote for arbitration from the longshoremen, and without the seamen.

As Nelson notes, this served to drive a wedge between the two unions, creating a rift that would only deepen.

The two would continue to strike until the end of July.

But the strike left longshoremen emboldened.

They pushed back on the job, driving off scabs and establishing work rules and conditions ahead of the arbitrator’s ruling, which came in October.

The hiring hall was finally established.

While it was decided that the union and the shipping bosses would rule the hall jointly, the union controlled the position of dispatcher.

This meant the union determined hiring, which put an end to the despised ‘shape-up.’

The award also mandated wage raises and a coast-wide contract.

It would serve as a catalyst for the founding of the ILWU three years later.