Civil Rights,
Labor/Employment
Aug. 8, 2023
San Francisco's 1934 general strike: The fall and rise of organized labor
During the early 1900s, sporadic violence had erupted between west coast shipping companies and longshoremen, but the companies prevailed in each case. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department and vigilantes from the American Legion and Ku Klux Klan crushed an attempted 1923 strike at San Pedro.
John S. Caragozian
Email: caragozian@gmail.com
John is a Los Angeles-based lawyer and sits on the Board of the California Supreme Court Historical Society. He welcomes ideas for future monthly columns on California's legal history at caragozian@gmail.com.
The port of San Francisco used to be the economic engine for the Bay Area and beyond. Through the 1930s, San Francisco’s 82 docks could handle 250 ships per day, accounting for 80% of U.S. Pacific maritime cargo.
During this pre-container era, cargo handling at ports was labor intensive, requiring thousands of longshoremen (and, in those days, they were all men) for the heavy manual work of loading and unloading ships and thousands of truc...
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