http://www.laborfest.net/2008/Meister68.htm
1968 : SAN FRANCISCO’S
YEAR OF THE STRIKE
By Dick Meister
“Strike! Strike! Strike!” The cry rang out loud and clear all across San Francisco in 1968. Never has there been a year like it for the city’s unions, never a year with so many strikes.
Strikers shut down the city’s daily newspapers and closed most public schools. Retail clerks walked off the job. So did armored car and truck drivers, machinists, movie theater janitors, garment workers, Kaiser Hospital and telephone company employees, office clerks, longshoremen, and others.
The newspaper strike had been coming since 1965, when the Hearst Corporation joined in a once highly improbable alliance with the De Young family, which had long boasted that its morning Chronicle was “the city’s only home-owned newspaper.” Hearst and De Young killed Hearst’s afternoon News Call-Bulletin and switched Hearst’s morning Examiner into that spot, then formed a company to handle all non-editorial functions of the two papers.
Their goal, of course, was to maximize profits by wiping out competition. But what of the 15 unions that represented the papers’ employees? The contracts of the three largest – the Newspaper Guild, Typographical Union, and Newspaper and Periodical Drivers – were up for re-negotiation in 1968. But first came the much smaller Mailers Union, and, as a management negotiator said, “If we’re a pushover for the Mailers, the three big ones will think it pretty easy. “
Management offered the Mailers only a very small share of the new profits, the Mailers struck to demand more, and the other unions joined their picket lines. The strike was settled two months later with a highly unusual agreement that granted new three-year contracts granting pay and benefit raises to all 15 of the newspaper unions. What’s more, the new contracts would all expire at the same time and thus bring the unions even closer together.
Teachers, who struck city schools under the banner of the American Federation of Teachers, were out for only one day. But their strike – the first teachers strike in West Coast history – forced school officials to grant the teachers’ long-ignored demand for smaller class sizes by hiring 900 new teachers and to make other significant improvements in school operations and teachers’ working conditions. That included creating a formal grievance procedure that helped solve the many work-related problems that teachers faced. Teachers across the county line in Daly City later called a two-day strike of their own for improved pay, benefits and working conditions.
Many of San Francisco’s supermarkets were struck by the Retail Clerks Union at about the same time, and many other markets locked out their clerks in retaliation. The strike-lockout also lasted only one day, but led to negotiations that resulted in substantial pay raises and liberalized fringe benefits and work rules.
Not long afterward, supermarkets, banks, department stores and other firms in San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area ran short of the cash they needed to conduct business because of a brief strike by the Teamster drivers who delivered the money. The drivers wanted more money for themselves -- and they got it.
It took much longer – 5 1/2 months – for Teamster driver-salesmen to end their strike against the companies whose potato chips and other snacks they delivered and sold wholesale to markets and other retail outlets. The walkout forced the companies to close their Northern California plants and virtually cleared stores of the snacks. The strikers got the same raises in pay and commissions as they were offered before walking out, but won longer paid vacations, higher pensions and other benefit improvements.
Teamsters also were involved in what was in effect a union vs. union strike, pitting them against longshoremen in a major dispute over cargo handling. Previously, cargo brought to the docks via Teamster-driven trucks was unloaded by the Teamsters, then loaded onto ships by longshoremen piece by piece. But a new system – “containerization” -- called for the loose cargo to be “stuffed” into containers before delivery and the containers to be taken off the trucks and loaded onto ships by longshoremen.
Teamster pickets demanding that they get the work of unloading the containers from their trucks kept ships from being loaded and their crews from boarding. A court order halted the picketing, and after more than a week, the Teamsters and International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union reached an agreement that gave all loading and unloading work on the docks to ILWU members.
The ILWU was involved in another unusual union vs. union dispute – a strike against the ILWU’s longshore Local 10 by members of the Office and
Professional Employees Union. It was called by the women who worked in the office of the union’s longshore Local 10 over alleged arbitrary treatment by Local 10 Secretary-Treasurer Carl Smith. The strikers were joined on the picket lines by the 50 or so women at all other ILWU offices in the city, including the office where international union president Harry Bridges worked, and by some of the 700 women who worked in other union offices around the city. They had threatened but not carried out a strike of their own to demand improved contracts from their union employers.
The strike against Local 10 was quickly settled -- but not before a bit of role confusion. The pickets were labor, of course. But what of the labor leaders inside the buildings they were picketing? They were management. And there were the longshoremen who had to go inside to get their work assignments. They did what longshoremen almost never do. They crossed a picket line.
Longshoremen, warehousemen and many other workers throughout the city and elsewhere stayed off the job on April 9, but not because of labor-management conflict. They were honoring the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., whose funeral was held that day in Atlanta. Longshoremen, who had previously made King an honorary ILWU member, closed the port of San Francisco and all other West Coast ports. Mail delivery was curtailed, as was Municipal Railway service. Hundreds of offices, both government and private, were closed, and work in a wide variety of other locations was
noticeably slowed, if not halted.
Machinists called one of the longest strikes of 1968 – a seven-week walkout that idled 20,000 of the machinists and other workers who made everything from fire hydrants to complex electronic equipment at the area’s
manufacturing sites. The strike shut down more than 100 factories and shops in San Francisco, the East Bay and on the Peninsula.
The strike settlement, reached with the help of federal mediators, granted strikers virtually all they had demanded – and they had demanded a lot. Most workers got pay raises of more than 20 percent, plus a guarantee of future raises to match increases in the cost-of-living. They also won an employer-financed dental plan, improved sick leave provisions, longer paid vacations and better pensions.
A strike and lockout by janitors at more than 200 movie theaters in the city and elsewhere in Northern California kept the janitors out for twice as long as the machinists. But they ended up with far less than they had demanded. Most of the theaters remained open, with assistant managers handling clean-up duties. Worse, projectionists crossed the janitors’ picket lines on orders from national Projectionist Union officers who said their contract with the theaters prohibited them from honoring other unions’ picket lines. Several local unions objected strongly to the Projectionist Union stand and demanded the union’s expulsion from local AFL-CIO bodies.
Janitors also called a brief strike and mounted picket lines that kept officials and employees of the San Francisco Labor Council from entering their offices in the old Labor Temple at Sixteenth and Capp Streets. The strike was called to demand a contract from a firm that had just bought the 54-year-old building from the Labor Council, which soon moved its offices elsewhere.
A landmark strike – the first in the long history of Chinatown -- was even less successful than the theater janitors’ walkout. Waged for several months by garment workers at a small Chinatown shop, the strike was the first step in a union drive to organize the district’s largely non-union businesses. It ended in a complete union defeat.
Two months into the strike, the struck employer abandoned the shop and shifted operations to a larger shop outside Chinatown. Strikers took jobs elsewhere, and that was that for the strike – and, in effect, the end of the drive to unionize Chinatown.
Leaders of the San Francisco Labor Council had pledged at the start of the strike to join in a coordinated drive to bring union wages and conditions – if not outright unionization -to all of Chinatown. But they hit the same major hurdle that had stopped most individual unions in the past: The isolation of Chinatown’s workers. They hit a formidable self-imposed hurdle, too: The all-out drive pledged by all of the city’s unions never materialized. The 1968 strikes were generally peaceful, with the noticeable exception of a week-long walkout by the Kaiser Foundation’s hospital workers in the city and elsewhere in Northern California. It involved some 3400 kitchen helpers, porters, maids, orderlies, licensed vocational nurses, pharmacists, clerical workers and X-ray and lab technicians, many of them women and minorities, at Kaiser’s 25 hospitals and clinics.
Pickets clashed with police who attempted to enforce court orders limiting their numbers that were issued in response to widespread picket line violence, some of it by pickets against police and non-strikers, some by police against pickets. Pickets also blocked or tried to block delivery trucks, patients and others from entering the hospitals, sometimes violently, always with shouted angry words. Doctors, registered nurses and others took over most of the strikers’ duties and kept the hospitals operating on a limited basis.
Kaiser was under great pressure from its biggest customers – Northern California’s unions. Among other steps, the unions threatened to at least temporarily halt the millions of dollars in payments put into Kaiser health plans by employers and union members that paid for the members’ medical care.
But Edgar J. Kaiser, the unorthodox founder and chairman of Kaiser Industries, said it was not those pressures, but primarily the spread of violence on the picket lines that caused him to step in and personally arrange for union-employer peace talks. An agreement was reached with the help of state conciliators during a weekend of nearly non-stop negotiations. The two-year contract guaranteed workers the best pay and the best benefits of virtually any medical workers in the Bay Area and set up grievance machinery to handle the complaints of overwork that had in large part prompted the strike.
It once was a maxim that you didn’t strike unless you could close down the boss’ business. But it wasn’t anymore, as was shown by the Kaiser strike and even more clearly shown by the 1968 strike of the Communications Workers Union against the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and several closely associated companies in San Francisco and across the country.
The strike was patterned to fit a new era in which companies may have machines that can keep them operating, strike or no strike. Which is just what the telephone company had – automatic dialing equipment. The Communications Workers countered by, in effect, adopting the techniques of its employer opposites,.
The union waged a massive advertising campaign to try to sway the companies’ customers and the government officials who regulated the companies, and put together a highly rated staff of experts to help in bargaining. They union meanwhile urged the public to make as many phone calls as possible, particularly operator-assisted calls, and otherwise put the greatest possible strain on the non-union help and machines that kept the struck companies going.
It took almost three weeks, but strikers won a contract that raised pay by almost 20 percent over the next three years. Strikers in San Francisco nevertheless temporarily balked at returning to work because the votes on the contract in their Pacific Telephone Division, though favorable, were cast by less than half of the division employees. The San Francisco workers continued picketing after the vote, but were ordered back to work by national union officials.
1968 wound up with demonstrations and picketing throughout the city in support of the farmworkers’ grape boycott, the beginning of a student strike at San Francisco State College and a dispute over the pay, benefits, workloads and rights of faculty members at the college. That dispute soon erupted into the first major strike of 1969, another year with many strikes -- though fewer than in the truly extraordinary year that preceded it.
http://www.dickmeister.com/id6.html
tdickmeister@earthlink.net
Friday, October 17, 2008
2008 Japan Laborfesta
Labor Film Festival Japan 2008/09/20
Labor Film Festival 2008
September 20 (Saturday) All water Hall Hall (Tokyo aqueduct)
Fee (season tickets to freedom of access)
General: 1,500 yen Adv: 1,200 yen (reservation phone messages)
* Unemployed引予about 200 yen each student working poor Japanese embassy REIBANETTO TEL03-3530-8590
labor-staff@labornetjp.org
Reservations page e-mail here.
TEL03-3530-8588 or mgg01231@nifty.ne.jp
Program
Doors open 10.00
10.30 "蟹工船" Akira Yamamura 1953, 109 minutes prewar蟹工船the sea sweatshop said. The workers are collected from all over the country, suffered from severe labor involved Deray, finally stood up. Kobayashi多喜二the original movie that works. Commentary: Akira Matsumoto =
12.30 lunch break
13.15: "This evening, the train will run," Nicholas TOUOTTSO 2004 Argentina Argentina's 110 minutes a small railroad town. Write a wave of privatization, one day, the route is abolished by the Directive. The company out on a walk the streets pair of 5-by-step railroad worker's family movies.April 1908, the nation's first public.
15.25 "人らしくlive -国労Winter's Tale" video press 2001, 100 minutes said that the origin of modern corporate restructuring, privatization of Japan National Railways. Lawless railroad workers losing jobs to the family for 15 years TATAKAI continued hardship. Theatrical in 2001, 300 locations nationwide screenings overseas movement of the seven countries to spread.
17.25 "All消えろ" Jean-Marc in France in 1996 Mutu 15 minutes at the bottom of the French workers work depicting the reality of "May Day 2008 in Chicago," 2008 U.S. REIBABITSU 15 minutes, "Labor a new three-minute video" ( Enjoy surprising event) 10 minutes
The fourth part of the Korean labor movement's Breath
18.30 "We stand in the wind - TONIRU TATAKAI textile union," Lee Hye-run Korea 2006, 105 minutes, "女工"蔑まthe women finally stand up. Union officials kept attacking and excreta of TAE,守り抜いたaspirations. The union's original documentary depicting the 30-year history of Korean democracy movement and light up.
20.30 * Each session closing, producers talk with relevant parties. The fourth part of the song.
Labor Film Festival 2008
September 20 (Saturday) All water Hall Hall (Tokyo aqueduct)
Fee (season tickets to freedom of access)
General: 1,500 yen Adv: 1,200 yen (reservation phone messages)
* Unemployed引予about 200 yen each student working poor Japanese embassy REIBANETTO TEL03-3530-8590
labor-staff@labornetjp.org
Reservations page e-mail here.
TEL03-3530-8588 or mgg01231@nifty.ne.jp
Program
Doors open 10.00
10.30 "蟹工船" Akira Yamamura 1953, 109 minutes prewar蟹工船the sea sweatshop said. The workers are collected from all over the country, suffered from severe labor involved Deray, finally stood up. Kobayashi多喜二the original movie that works. Commentary: Akira Matsumoto =
12.30 lunch break
13.15: "This evening, the train will run," Nicholas TOUOTTSO 2004 Argentina Argentina's 110 minutes a small railroad town. Write a wave of privatization, one day, the route is abolished by the Directive. The company out on a walk the streets pair of 5-by-step railroad worker's family movies.April 1908, the nation's first public.
15.25 "人らしくlive -国労Winter's Tale" video press 2001, 100 minutes said that the origin of modern corporate restructuring, privatization of Japan National Railways. Lawless railroad workers losing jobs to the family for 15 years TATAKAI continued hardship. Theatrical in 2001, 300 locations nationwide screenings overseas movement of the seven countries to spread.
17.25 "All消えろ" Jean-Marc in France in 1996 Mutu 15 minutes at the bottom of the French workers work depicting the reality of "May Day 2008 in Chicago," 2008 U.S. REIBABITSU 15 minutes, "Labor a new three-minute video" ( Enjoy surprising event) 10 minutes
The fourth part of the Korean labor movement's Breath
18.30 "We stand in the wind - TONIRU TATAKAI textile union," Lee Hye-run Korea 2006, 105 minutes, "女工"蔑まthe women finally stand up. Union officials kept attacking and excreta of TAE,守り抜いたaspirations. The union's original documentary depicting the 30-year history of Korean democracy movement and light up.
20.30 * Each session closing, producers talk with relevant parties. The fourth part of the song.
The Worlds Shortest Dispute-Facebook Ends Ban
http://www.johninnit.co.uk/2008/01/24/the-worlds-shortest-dispute/
The world’s shortest dispute.
Yay! Victory! Derek is free again to poke and be poked in his natural habitat! Not a moment too soon either, as it looks like was starting to resort to making his own entertainment.
After a few stern emails saying no appeal against his Facebook ban - Derek Blackadder is back. Out of the blue, an email from a customer services manager, saying they’d reviewed his case after all, and nicely apologising for the inconvenience.
Truth be told, I don’t think this was a conspiracy or intentional on their part, just that they’ve saved on hiring too many customer services staff (to service their multi-millions of users), and so have a policy of just not escalating and reckoning they’ll get 100 new users for every one they lose.
Pity they didn’t escalate before 1,750 unionists protested about it, but hey…
****Much**** thanks to everyone who helped so much with this, and I’m sure Derek will now be kicked out again for adding you all as friends!
And to Eric & the other LabourStarties, natch!
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Online Campaigns, the good book. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “The world’s shortest dispute.”
Geoff Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Maybe it’s some kind of protest against the logging of old growth forests that are then used for chopsticks……………..?
a very public sociologist Says:
February 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is excellent news and shows that pressure can be brought to bare on Facebook.
Now, if only they’d take heed of the thousands who’ve campaigned for the addition of ’socialist’ to political views. I am not an ‘other’, I am red.
The world’s shortest dispute.
Yay! Victory! Derek is free again to poke and be poked in his natural habitat! Not a moment too soon either, as it looks like was starting to resort to making his own entertainment.
After a few stern emails saying no appeal against his Facebook ban - Derek Blackadder is back. Out of the blue, an email from a customer services manager, saying they’d reviewed his case after all, and nicely apologising for the inconvenience.
Truth be told, I don’t think this was a conspiracy or intentional on their part, just that they’ve saved on hiring too many customer services staff (to service their multi-millions of users), and so have a policy of just not escalating and reckoning they’ll get 100 new users for every one they lose.
Pity they didn’t escalate before 1,750 unionists protested about it, but hey…
****Much**** thanks to everyone who helped so much with this, and I’m sure Derek will now be kicked out again for adding you all as friends!
And to Eric & the other LabourStarties, natch!
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Online Campaigns, the good book. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “The world’s shortest dispute.”
Geoff Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 7:51 am
Maybe it’s some kind of protest against the logging of old growth forests that are then used for chopsticks……………..?
a very public sociologist Says:
February 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
This is excellent news and shows that pressure can be brought to bare on Facebook.
Now, if only they’d take heed of the thousands who’ve campaigned for the addition of ’socialist’ to political views. I am not an ‘other’, I am red.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Black History Month:Musicians Union Local 6 & Earl Watkins
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/05/DDKBUQI1J.DTL
Black History Month: Earl Watkins
Intro: Bay Area arts heroes of black history
Entertainment
imagemap
San Francisco has always been a club town, and in the mid-20th century it was all about jazz. The Say When Club, the Hangover Club, the Blackhawk, the Tin Angel, the Cotton Club, the Gay and Friskie Club ... those and more were headquarters for popular music ranging from Dixieland to big band swing to bebop.
At the center of it all was a gentleman who spoke softly with his voice but whipped up fury on his drum kit: Earl Watkins. Born and raised in San Francisco, he stuck close by the city most of his life, raising a family and mentoring countless musicians. He was a walking encyclopedia of jazz knowledge.
In addition to drumming, Watkins was involved in integrating the San Francisco jazz scene, helping black players get work through Local 6 of the Musician's Union, where he served on the board of directors.
As a youth, Watkins was fascinated by the polyrhythmic drumming style of Gene Krupa, which, with help from teacher John Randolph, he adapted and put to use in groups led by Jimmy Brown, Buddy Collette, Johnny Cooper and others.
After a World War II stint in the Navy, where he played in a band with Vernon Alley, another S.F. native, and Collette, Watkins settled in Berkeley and worked in Oakland haunts like Slim Jenkins and the Swing Club, where in the house band he backed many national jazz and blues acts. By the late '40s he became a mainstay at two of the top San Francisco clubs, Bop City and the Blackhawk.
In 1956 Watkins launched into the big time with a seven-year gig in the band of pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, who at various times had employed Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
In the '60s, with the advent of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll, work for jazz musicians began to diminish. But Watkins kept busy, playing for years in a band at Oakland's Claremont Hotel and getting other gigs here and there.
In recent years, Watkins continued to work with Local 6, and he helped start the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, which is attempting to revive jazz in that neighborhood. In 2003, Congress awarded Watkins a certificate, dubbing him a certified jazz legend.
After Watkins died last summer at 87, Peter Fitzsimmons, executive director of the Jazz Heritage Center, wrote a tribute including these words: "When it was time to identify the San Francisco 'Living Legends of Jazz' for the official Fillmore Heritage Center groundbreaking ceremony ... one call to Earl Watkins was all that was needed. He knew all the players."
Video of Earl Watkins playing with the Muggsy Spanier Band in 1963 is on YouTube at links.sfgate.com/ZCID, where similar clips also can be found.
The Black History Month series of profiles of African Americans from the past runs Monday through Friday through February. For more information, including the Jan. 27 Sunday Datebook coverage of Black History Month, go to sfgate.com/entertainment.
Black History Month: Earl Watkins
Intro: Bay Area arts heroes of black history
Entertainment
imagemap
San Francisco has always been a club town, and in the mid-20th century it was all about jazz. The Say When Club, the Hangover Club, the Blackhawk, the Tin Angel, the Cotton Club, the Gay and Friskie Club ... those and more were headquarters for popular music ranging from Dixieland to big band swing to bebop.
At the center of it all was a gentleman who spoke softly with his voice but whipped up fury on his drum kit: Earl Watkins. Born and raised in San Francisco, he stuck close by the city most of his life, raising a family and mentoring countless musicians. He was a walking encyclopedia of jazz knowledge.
In addition to drumming, Watkins was involved in integrating the San Francisco jazz scene, helping black players get work through Local 6 of the Musician's Union, where he served on the board of directors.
As a youth, Watkins was fascinated by the polyrhythmic drumming style of Gene Krupa, which, with help from teacher John Randolph, he adapted and put to use in groups led by Jimmy Brown, Buddy Collette, Johnny Cooper and others.
After a World War II stint in the Navy, where he played in a band with Vernon Alley, another S.F. native, and Collette, Watkins settled in Berkeley and worked in Oakland haunts like Slim Jenkins and the Swing Club, where in the house band he backed many national jazz and blues acts. By the late '40s he became a mainstay at two of the top San Francisco clubs, Bop City and the Blackhawk.
In 1956 Watkins launched into the big time with a seven-year gig in the band of pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, who at various times had employed Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.
In the '60s, with the advent of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll, work for jazz musicians began to diminish. But Watkins kept busy, playing for years in a band at Oakland's Claremont Hotel and getting other gigs here and there.
In recent years, Watkins continued to work with Local 6, and he helped start the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, which is attempting to revive jazz in that neighborhood. In 2003, Congress awarded Watkins a certificate, dubbing him a certified jazz legend.
After Watkins died last summer at 87, Peter Fitzsimmons, executive director of the Jazz Heritage Center, wrote a tribute including these words: "When it was time to identify the San Francisco 'Living Legends of Jazz' for the official Fillmore Heritage Center groundbreaking ceremony ... one call to Earl Watkins was all that was needed. He knew all the players."
Video of Earl Watkins playing with the Muggsy Spanier Band in 1963 is on YouTube at links.sfgate.com/ZCID, where similar clips also can be found.
The Black History Month series of profiles of African Americans from the past runs Monday through Friday through February. For more information, including the Jan. 27 Sunday Datebook coverage of Black History Month, go to sfgate.com/entertainment.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
LaborFest Comments
Welcome to LaborFest 2007
One hundred years ago this July, the most violent labor struggle in the history of San Francisco was being waged. Patrick Calhoun, the owner United Railways, had provoked a strike by the Carmen¹s Union in San Francisco. The Carmen’s union was seeking parity with Oakland Carmen and a shorter workday.
In the period leading up to the San Francisco great earthquake, 30% of the working people were unionized making San Francisco the most unionized major city in America. As a result of the 1901 transportation strike, the Union Labor Party had been formed, and a union mayor Eugene Schmitz and a union board of supervisors controlled the city. This made big business people in San Francisco very unhappy, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring private detectives to find corruption among these labor politicians. Unfortunately, they discovered it and used it to hammer the trade unions in the city.
They removed the mayor, his advisor and the entire board of Supervisors, and replaced them mostly with business people interested, of course, in supporting business interests.
The result of this new political situation was that Calhoun was provided with gun permits for his strikebreakers, and he used these imported anti-union thugs to help break the strike and destroy the union. Thirty-one people were killed during the strike, and on Labor Day of that year, a union ironworker was killed when the rail line started before the Labor Day march had ended, and this led to a confrontation.
While the physical violence today in San Francisco and the United States is not on the scale of 1907, workers face a declining standard of living with difficulties of sending their children to college, and getting and keeping healthcare. They also cannot afford to live in San Francisco and this is a serious threat to the political power of organized labor in the city. There is also a war in the Middle East being paid for by working people here in both regions. One hundred years ago another war was taking place in the Philippines to bring “democracy” to the Philippines and over 3 million Philippine people died. This war like many others is a forgotten part of history.
LaborFest was created in 1994 to help commemorate not just the San Francisco general strike of 1934, which was successful, but also to recognize the men and women who helped build and rebuild the city after the fires and earthquakes that ravaged our city. They keep the bridges and the buildings, parks, hospitals, schools and city infrastructure going to make this a great city.
The history of the role of working people is vital to understand our present struggles for justice and human rights, and our festival has that as it¹s purpose.
The rebuilding of San Francisco after the quake of 1906 took place quickly in large part because of the skills, talents and organization of organized labor, and the city was rebuilt in the record time of three years. That is testimony to the creativity and productivity of the tens of thousands of workers who made San Francisco come back to life.
Today, labor is again under attack. The effort to bust the ILWU Inland Boatman¹s Union and the Master, Mates and Pilots at Alcatraz Tours uses the weight of the Federal Government and this is a danger not only to maritime labor but also to all working people.
Our festival this year includes events that cover many of these struggles with theater, poetry, film and music and we hope that you can enjoy this rich history and culture that working people have. The festival has also spread to Japan, Korea, Bolivia, Germany, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. Workers of the world unite, ‘you have nothing to lose but your chains’ is a slogan whose relevance has as much meaning today as ever.
One hundred years ago this July, the most violent labor struggle in the history of San Francisco was being waged. Patrick Calhoun, the owner United Railways, had provoked a strike by the Carmen¹s Union in San Francisco. The Carmen’s union was seeking parity with Oakland Carmen and a shorter workday.
In the period leading up to the San Francisco great earthquake, 30% of the working people were unionized making San Francisco the most unionized major city in America. As a result of the 1901 transportation strike, the Union Labor Party had been formed, and a union mayor Eugene Schmitz and a union board of supervisors controlled the city. This made big business people in San Francisco very unhappy, and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring private detectives to find corruption among these labor politicians. Unfortunately, they discovered it and used it to hammer the trade unions in the city.
They removed the mayor, his advisor and the entire board of Supervisors, and replaced them mostly with business people interested, of course, in supporting business interests.
The result of this new political situation was that Calhoun was provided with gun permits for his strikebreakers, and he used these imported anti-union thugs to help break the strike and destroy the union. Thirty-one people were killed during the strike, and on Labor Day of that year, a union ironworker was killed when the rail line started before the Labor Day march had ended, and this led to a confrontation.
While the physical violence today in San Francisco and the United States is not on the scale of 1907, workers face a declining standard of living with difficulties of sending their children to college, and getting and keeping healthcare. They also cannot afford to live in San Francisco and this is a serious threat to the political power of organized labor in the city. There is also a war in the Middle East being paid for by working people here in both regions. One hundred years ago another war was taking place in the Philippines to bring “democracy” to the Philippines and over 3 million Philippine people died. This war like many others is a forgotten part of history.
LaborFest was created in 1994 to help commemorate not just the San Francisco general strike of 1934, which was successful, but also to recognize the men and women who helped build and rebuild the city after the fires and earthquakes that ravaged our city. They keep the bridges and the buildings, parks, hospitals, schools and city infrastructure going to make this a great city.
The history of the role of working people is vital to understand our present struggles for justice and human rights, and our festival has that as it¹s purpose.
The rebuilding of San Francisco after the quake of 1906 took place quickly in large part because of the skills, talents and organization of organized labor, and the city was rebuilt in the record time of three years. That is testimony to the creativity and productivity of the tens of thousands of workers who made San Francisco come back to life.
Today, labor is again under attack. The effort to bust the ILWU Inland Boatman¹s Union and the Master, Mates and Pilots at Alcatraz Tours uses the weight of the Federal Government and this is a danger not only to maritime labor but also to all working people.
Our festival this year includes events that cover many of these struggles with theater, poetry, film and music and we hope that you can enjoy this rich history and culture that working people have. The festival has also spread to Japan, Korea, Bolivia, Germany, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. Workers of the world unite, ‘you have nothing to lose but your chains’ is a slogan whose relevance has as much meaning today as ever.
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