The San Francisco General Strike

Seventy-five years ago this May workers of Depression-era San Francisco, fed up with low wages, intolerable conditions and organized violence against them, flexed their muscles and staged a four-day general strike. The General Strike of '34 ushered in an age of prosperity for working people in San Francisco and spurred passage of the Wagner Act that, in 1935, extended the gains across the nation. The history of this bold action should not be forgotten. You can see yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle article on it here.

Action began with the longshoremen. In those days men simply showed up before the crack of dawn every day to try to get hired in a desperate exercise called the "shapeup." No one knew how many hours he would get or how much he would be paid for them. Often it meant 16-hour days for starvation wages. An Australian immigrant and 13-year dockworker named Harry Bridges patiently coordinated with longshore workers all along the Pacific Coast. In May, 1934 40,000 longshoremen went on strike and shut down every West Coast port. Police and paid company enforcers responded with savage violence, and "sent hundreds of strikers and sympathizers to hospital emergency rooms."

The brutality culminated on July 5, "Bloody Thursday," when police bullets killed two strikers outside the Longshoremen's Union Hall on Stueart Street. The two men lay in state before being led through the city at the head of a massive and disciplined silent parade that finally galvanized the city's working people and gained the support of the middle class. A four-day general strike of practically the entire work force paralyzed the city's economy, demonstrated what the united power of the workers could do, and struck terror into the hearts of the Titans of Nob Hill. "After this display of determined collective power, the maritime workers gained union recognition, substantial increases in wages and control over their hiring halls."

The San Francisco example set off similar movements across the nation in such places as Minneapolis-St. Paul, Toledo, and throughout the Carolinas textile industry. Workers were killed in every one of these challenges to employers, who time and again resorted to armed thugs to attempt to enforce control over the workers. Chaos and bloodshed made it obvious that peaceful procedures needed to be devised to settle labor disputes. The very next year congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) that guaranteed the right to organize and set up the ground rules for collective bargaining. The San Francisco General Strike "was cited as Exhibit A" in this great advance for American wage earners.

It began the process of strong union representation that resulted in the economic and political power that transformed America's blue collar workers into the foundation of the prosperous middle class of homeowners that propelled U.S. living standards to the pinnacle of the world by mid-century. This month, the 75th anniversary of these seminal events, it should be remembered not only that many died for these gains but that the stringent efforts of the past thirty years to discredit and limit the effectiveness of the labor movement have coincided with stagnation and indeed a reduction in the national standard of living for all but the top few percent of the American people. This points up a consistent theme. Rights are not granted from on high. They must be won, often at a terrible price. And they must be defended, or eventually they are lost.