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.
