Longshoreman's Strike of 1916

When the ILA District 38 Convention met in Seattle on May 1, 1916, delegates expressed unanimous dissatisfaction with the status of negotiations with employers on the closed shop, coastwide standard wages and practices, and the Vancouver lockout. Delegates pointed out that shipping and stevedore company profits were escalating because of the European war and the opening of the Panama Canal to commercial traffic during August 1915.

The men did not understand why they, too, should not participate in the good economic times. A majority of the delegates voted to strike on June 1, giving the employers only a 30-day notice, though most of the negotiated contracts called for a 60-day notice. Paddy Morris described the situation; We pleaded with them (the delegates), but it was of no avail. Then, when we found that they were bound to call the strike for the first of June, violating the agreement, I said to them: 'If you are determined to do that, don't give the employers any notice; if you are going to break it, break it right and strike from the floor of this convention.

The convention did not heed Paddy Morris' advice. Delegates voted to strike on June 1, 1916, if the employers did not accept a coastwide closed shop and increase wages to 55 cents an hour and $1 an hour for overtime for general cargo, 60cents and $1 for lumber handlers, and 40cents and 60cents for warehousemen, all based on a nine hour working day An effort was made to enlist the support of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, but the sailors turned the longshoremen down flat.

Thus, after years of fruitless negotiations with employers, 43 West Coast ILA locals were determined to hang the hook and strike together. Unlike regional strikes in previous eras, this time 12,500 longshoremen prepared to strike from Bellingham to San Diego. Included were 1,100 in Tacoma, 2,000 in Seattle, 2,000 in Portland, 4,600 in San Francisco and 1,200 in San Pedro. Also joining with the large ILA locals were smaller unions such as Bellingham, Grays Harbor, Willapa Bay, Astoria, Coos Bay, Eureka, and San Diego.

As expected, most employers refused the Pacific Coast longshoremen's demands. Therefore, the strike started at 6 a.m. on June 1, 1916, at  West Coast ports. U.S. Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson appealed to the men to return to work and allow the Department of Labor to mediate. Wilson also urged employers to refrain from using strikebreakers pending the outcome of a mediation conference.

On June 7, meetings began at San Francisco between the ILA District Executive Board and the Executive Committee of the Waterfront Employers' Union, with Federal Mediator Henry White also participating. After intensive negotiations, a truce was agreed to at 2 a.m. June 9, whereby longshoremen agreed to resume work immediately at the scale of wages and improved working conditions submitted by the ILA to employers on May 1, 1916.

The strikers returned to work on June 9 at San Francisco and other ports on the West Coast. The strike seemed to be settled in favor of the ILA longshoremen. Then on June 16, 1916, an Oakland ILA longshoreman, Lewis A. Morey was shot and killed by a scab lumber handler, and two days later Thomas Olsen, another ILA man, was shot in the back and died immediately.

On June 20 the ILA Executive Board called upon the employers to live up to the terms of the agreement by discharging and dispersing all strikebreakers in their employ by June 21, 1916, at 5 p. m., or the strike would resume. The employers disputed that the June 9 agreement called for the discharge of so-called strike breakers and listed incidents they believed violated the truce.

True to their word, the San Francisco Riggers and Stevedores Union struck again on June 21, and the next morning the remaining ILA locals on the West Coast also walked out. Picket lines were posted by the unions, and the employers responded by hiring scabs to replace ILA men. Sporadic violence erupted in San Francisco, Seattle, and Tacoma as imported scabs began to work vessels. Within a month, West Coast trade was in shambles.

Loaded ships, as many as fifty in the Puget Sound area, were still at anchor in the bays, and on the docks goods were piled helter-skelter. The Mediation and Conciliation Service of the Department of Labor tried to get the two sides together again, but without success. By June 26, 1916, there were nine ships waiting to be unloaded in Commencement Bay and tons of cargo on the docks ready to be stowed aboard the ships. The Tacoma Employers' Association decided it was time to call on the community for support. Their spokesman announced to the Tacoma Daily Ledger;

"We hereby call upon all of the business men and others interested in the enterprise of this community to join us in a solemn pledge that from this day on the open shop shall prevail in this community even if it be necessary to close all of our manufacturing industries, our lumber mills, flouring mills and shipping interests."

"For more than a month past we have offered to accede to almost every demand made by the longshoremen who have tied up and are destroying the industry of this country in open violation of their agreement. They not only refuse to carry out their agreement, but they persist in blocking the industries of this country and are demanding wages and conditions that such industries cannot pay and live."

Violence on the Tacoma Waterfront

The following day June 27, about 250 Tacoma strikers stormed the Sperry dock where the Grace liner Santa Cruz was scheduled to be loaded by strikebreakers. The strikers, scabs, and armed guards exchanged about 50 gunshots with each other. Johnny Now, a twenty-four year old member of Tacoma Local 38-3, was seriously wounded in the melee. He later recalled the incident, I was fighting with two strikebreakers when I saw this fellow with a gun aimed at me. He looked at me for several moments and then pulled the trigger I never saw him again.

The fight on the Santa Cruz was over before regular police arrived. Three armed guards were arrested for carrying concealed weapons, and police also disarmed both strikers and scabs. After conferring with the Tacoma ILA Strike Committee, Governor Ernest Lister refused to call out the state militia, declaring that the local police were adequate to maintain order. Though the union disclaimed responsibility for the Santa Cruz incident, Sperry Mills and the Grace Line were granted injunctions prohibiting picketing around their piers.

Despite the injunction, beatings of Tacoma longshoremen and strikebreakers continued as the two sides fought each other on the docks. On July 12 James Costello, a member of the strike committee, was knifed when he tried to persuade two men not to scab at the Northern Pacific and Milwaukee railroad docks. The railroad companies immediately obtained court injunctions restraining the union from picketing or interfering with their employees. The Milwaukee then imported 100 blacks from the East and the South to work cargo on and off ships.

On July 15 strikers gathered at Eleventh and Pacific, where Alexander Laidlaw, a striker, was mortally wounded by a Milwaukee guard who fired into the crowd of longshoremen. Grand jurors later decided Laidlaw was killed by a stray bullet fired in self-defense. Thousands marched in Laidlaw's funeral procession, and several unions declared a half-day of mourning for the slain longshoreman.

Two days after the Milwaukee dock killing, another striker, Sam James, was severely wounded and a strikebreaker, Rangval Lienann, was killed when strikers attacked scabs going to the Milwaukee piers. Commissioner of Public Safety Francis Pettit and Sheriff Robert Longmire notified the union that no further picketing would be permitted and no crowds allowed to congregate on the docks. Governor Teats presided at a mass meeting of 1,500 strike sympathizers at Wright Park the next day. Teats described the situation as greed versus humanity.

At the same time violence erupted on the Tacoma waterfront, federal mediators brought together waterfront employers and representatives of the San Francisco Riggers and Stevedores Union. On July 13, 1916, the Bay City local accepted the owners' proposal. The ILA District Negotiating Committee agreed to submit the latest employer offer to all ILA locals for a membership vote.

The new management proposal did not include a coastwide closed shop nor standard wages and working conditions. Moreover, employers stipulated in their offer that wages and working conditions in effect on May 31, 1916, must prevail while a joint employer-longshoremen committee worked out a new agreement. Though San Francisco, Portland, Astoria, Eureka, and San Diego voted in favor of management's latest offer, there was not a single vote of acceptance cast in Seattle or Tacoma.

Altogether 1604 Seattleites and 759 Tacomans unanimously rejected the employers' proposal. On July 19, 1916, San Francisco longshoremen returned to work, while both Seattle and Tacoma reiterated their decision to reject the compromise and continue the strike. The decision of the San Franciscans angered the Puget Sound longshoremen, who claimed they had been sold out. Tom Green, retired Rothschild foreman, recalled his father's account of the strike;

"We got sold out by San Francisco in that 1916 strike. See, they were out on strike for about three or three-and-a-half months and then they put together some kind of agreement and they voted on it, but they voted it down for some reason I can't tell you so they went back out on strike again and they were out for another month-and-a-half or so. Then, lo and behold, what did their brothers down in San Francisco do but agree to go back to work. We were left holding the sack here."

At this point in the strike, wages and working conditions were not the crucial issue. It was the closed shop which Puget Sound employers were determined to avoid, and which the men were firmly intent upon achieving. With 600 scabs working on the Tacoma docks, 0. C. Nelson, manager of the Employers' Association announced on July 22, The employers are entirely satisfied with the results they are now obtaining and in no event will ever concede the closed shop.

Nelson added; "If the longshoremen who went out wish to return to work they will do so under the old scale. There will be no mediation, no settlement and no recognition of the union."

The strike resumed and feelings once again reached the boiling point. The lumber companies seized the initiative and declared their docks open shop. The lumber owners then formed Puget Sound Stevedoring, which began hiring non-union workers. The other stevedoring contractors, including International Stevedoring, the successor of McCabe and Hamilton, also agreed not to use union men. Only Rothschild chose not to join the open-shop companies.

Rothschild's refusal stiffed the wrath of other stevedoring companies and mill owners, but Rothschild held to its position of hiring union men throughout the remainder of the strike. Whatever Rothschild's reasons for continuing as a union shop, its action saved the lumber handlers of Old Town from total destruction as a union. Rothschild formally agreed to the union's demand of a closed shop during July 1916, and the lumber handlers returned to work Rothschild's ships.

In New Town, however, International Stevedoring was successful in busting the union. Strikebreakers and new men appeared on the docks to replace union workers, and the union could do nothing about the situation. For an practical purposes the strike was over and the employers had won a major victory.

Emergence of "Fink Halls"

The 1916 strike was a crushing defeat for longshoremen. Working together, stevedoring firms and sawmill owners busted the union from Seattle to San Diego. All ILA locals, except for Old Town, lost control of jobs on the docks. In every port the employers gloated over their victory and then mounted a well-organized campaign to drive what was left of the unions into total oblivion.

The bosses almost succeeded. West Coast steamship companies, general cargo stevedores, and sawmill owners adopted and rigorously maintained a non-union hiring policy The general cargo industry established employer-owned and managed hiring halls, which came to be known as fink halls.

Officially known as the Waterfront Employers' Hiring Hall, the Tacoma fink hall was housed in a building near the corner of Eleventh Street and "A." Except for Rothschild, WEU included AFL companies involved in the shipping industry and their strength was based not only on the number of members, but also on their ability to maintain a united front toward waterfront workers.

One of the first actions of WEU after the strike was to hire Harvey Wells, a man experienced in breaking strikes by lumber workers, to administer the fink hall. A derby hat and a sawed-off shotgun were Wells' badges of office. Since Wells did not know who were ILA men and who were not, a dispatch card with a special code punched into the card was given each man seeking work. The card listed the man's name and address, and in numbered squares around the edges of the card punches indicated:,

(l) Whether the longshoreman was a member of the union; 

(2) If he had participated in the 1916 strike; or

(3) Whether he had been a strikebreaker. When a man came into the hiring hall looking for work or reported to a foreman on a dock, he was required to show this card.

The rustling card became a bitter reminder to longshoremen of their defeat. The employers' policy forbade hiring more than 50% union men at one time. The WEU denied that this was discrimination. Tom Green remembered his father's story of the 1916 Tacoma fink hall well; 

"The strikebreakers lined up on one side of the hall ... union men lined up on the other side and they took two for one, two strikebreakers' gangs, one union gang. But these men, they were great union men and they very soon convinced the employer that the strikebreaker was the wrong kind of labor They just went out and busted their tails and outworked them. They kind of fiddled along and fiddled along and these strikebreakers kept leaving, going elsewhere."

There was an awful lot of pressure on a strikebreaker once a strike is over One that stays, nobody ever forgets him, he's not adopted into the clan. So ultimately they got to the point that it got to be a two for one advantage-two union for one scab going.

Many longshoremen simply left the docks after 1916. Some, like Johnny Now and Paddy Morris, were blacklisted by the employers. Now assumed a new name and went to work on the Seattle docks where he hoped to work without being recognized by the WEU Morris went to work in the shipyards. The majority of the union longshoremen who left the Tacoma docks followed Morris to the shipyards or joined the US. Army.