Longshore Workers Commemorate Bloody Thursday

Longshore Workers Commemorate Bloody Thursday

by Mike Hall, Jul 5, 2008

Up and down the West Coast today, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) are commemorating the 74th anniversary of “Bloody Thursday.”

On July 5, 1934, San Francisco police, backed up by the National Guard, opened fire on a group of 2,000 dockworkers, sailors and other maritime workers, killing two and wounding scores of others.

The longshore workers had struck San Francisco and other West Coast ports May 9. They demanded recognition of their union and the ouster of a company union—one that controlled who got work, who didn’t, what workers were paid and what meager benefits, if any, they received for their backbreaking and dangerous work in cargo holds and on the docks. Other maritime workers joined them in solidarity.

Shipowners and port operators brought in strikebreakers and hired thugs in an attempt to keep the ports open and to intimidate and break the strikers’ solidarity. Prior to Bloody Thursday, four strikers had been shot and killed in San Pedro, Calif., and Seattle and Portland., Ore. In San Francisco, police had opened fire on the picket line. But workers remained strong.

Shipowners were determined to reopen the piers and got the backing of local and state officials who dispatched police, the National Guard and armed goons to provoke pitched battles in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and San Pedro. Here’s how Tom Price, ILWU Dispatcher assistant editor, describes the San Francisco scene: