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Another extension of the ILA’s influence came with the “March Inland.” Longshore union leaders understood that to protect its wharf jurisdiction they had to organize the warehouses lining the waterfront and in nearby industrial districts. In the Bay Area Local 6 soon boasted nearly nine thousand me…

In May 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional, due to its failure to define “fair competition.” The labor movement was not sorry to see it go, because of the act’s support for company unions and lack of enforcement authority.

But rules to resolve worker-employer conflict …

On October 12, the federal arbitrators unveiled their decision. The longshoremen were granted nearly everything they wanted: a thirty-hour week, six-hour day, coast-wide bargaining, and ninety-five cents per hour (they had asked for one dollar). On the critical issue of the hiring hall, the arbitra…

Bill Rutter recalled that on the first day after the strike, his gang of longshoremen decided they would only take fifteen sacks of barley per sling load, instead of the usual twenty. They informed the bosses of their decision, much as construction trade workers had done in San Francisco a quarter …

The sailors knew that without the longshoremen they had no choice but to return to work. Old Andrew Furuseth, however, had the last word. As a final gesture of defiance against the waterfront employers, he proposed a symbolic action: “We are going to build a fire. Alongside that fire we will have a…