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Solidarity forever! The lives of retired longshoremen

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Solidarity forever! The lives of retired longshoremen

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Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. U M I films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UM I a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these w ill be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact U M I directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M l 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SOLIDARITY FOREVER! THE LIVES OF RETIRED LONGSHOREMEN by Pilar Angela Wright A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY) August 1999 Copyright 1999 Pilar Angela Wright R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1397646 UMI UMI Microform 1397646 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UNIVERSITY O F SO U T H E R N CALIFORNIA THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY RANK LOS ANOCLES. CALIFORNIA ( 0 0 0 7 This thesis, written by Pilar Angela Wright under the direction of hjar — Thesis Committee, and approved by all its members, has been pre sented to and accepted by the Dean of The Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts D a te „ J * ± Z .J J L t.J J ll THESIS COMMITTEE R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. S o l id a r it y Fo r e v e r ! The Lives o f Retired Longshoremen A <tr BY P i l a r A n g e l a W r i g h t A Thesis Presented to the F a c u l t y o f t h e G r a d u a t e S c h o o l U n i v e r s i t y o f S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree M a s t e r o f A r t s • V i s u a l A n t h r o p o l o g y August, 1999 ©1999. Pilar Angela Wright R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedicated to my father, Lewis Wright, his fellow workers, and to those who have set the table for us all. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s Thesis Abstract vi In t r o d u c t i o n Personal Background 2 My Anthropological Perspective 4 Project History and Methodology 6 Organization of This Essay 10 The Men 1 1 Photographs 13 T h e P a s t Longshore Historical Time Line 15 Personal Life Histories 18 Edward Thayne 20 ArtKaunisto 21 Corky Wilson 22 Leonard Miller 24 Lou Loveridge 25 Ray Singer 26 Longshore History 27 Round Table: Working Conditions Prior to 1934 29 Round Table: The 1934 Strike 33 R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V T h e P r e s e n t The Pensioners Group 45 Regular Activities 46 Pensioners’ Newsletter 48 PCPA Convention Policies 51 The Pensioners 54 Edward Thayne 54 Leonard Miller 56 Lou Loveridge 56 Ray Singer 58 Round Table: Why We Are Active 61 Round Table: Words of Wisdom 64 C o n c l u s i o n Conclusion 70 Final Advice 73 Bibliography 75 R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. T h e s i s A b s t r a c t This thesis is an account of the lives of retired longshoremen in the Los Angeles harbor. Oral history transcriptions reveal working conditions on the waterfront in the 1920s, the 1934 maritime strike, and the formation of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU). This thesis focuses on the values, beliefs, and sentiments these men acquired and continue to act on through their retirement. Forming pensioner organizations, these senior citizens regularly attend meetings and events, learning about and acting on issues related to the ILWU, and working people worldwide. They are continuing a struggle for worker and community solidarity, which they started in the 1920s and believe is still necessary today. An ethnographic video accompanies this thesis and is available through USC, Department of Anthropology. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 In t r o d u c t i o n R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 PERSONAL BACKGROUND M. N. Srinivas (as cited in Myerhoff, 1978: ix) describes a process an anthropologist may go through that closely reflects a similar pathway I have taken in my life, and which has led me to this essay. This process is what Srinivas calls being “thrice bom.” The first birth is that of the natural birth into one’s own family and community. The second birth occurs as the anthropologist enters into a new community to do fieldwork and make the exotic become familiar. The third birth is a less commonly celebrated awakening that takes place upon the anthropologist’s return to his or her place of origin only to have new eyes and to now see the familiar as exotic. This is what has happened to me. I was bom into a pro-union family of longshore workers. My grandfather had moved to San Pedro, California when he was a child because his family were fishermen and the industry here was very prosperous at the time. He eventually became a longshoreman, and most of his sons followed suit. My father was the most active unionist of the family. When I was bom, my dad had us kids wearing t-shirts and hats that had “ILWU” printed on them, and we would go to large events that I would later learn were union demonstrations and “Bloody Thursday Picnics.” One time we went to a birthday party of an old man named Harry Bridges with whom I was forced to shake hands. It was my dad’s idea that by having us wear the union logo and attend union events, we would somehow see what he saw as important, and thus we would follow in his path as he had followed that of his own father. His plan was not as successful as he had hoped. We were children, and unionism was not high on our list of interests. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 When I became of working age, my father attempted to convince me that I should apply for a longshoring job. They were just admitting women into the union at that time and everyone in my family was working on the waterfront, including my step-mother, my aunt, and many of my older cousins. But being more interested in photography and going to college, the idea of working on the waterfront was an insult to me. Why would I choose to break my back for a paycheck? I didn’t care how much my dad told me I could make, I was not about to do hard manual labor in place of doing art. So I went off to college in Oregon to be “bom again.” In college I had the opportunity to study overseas for six months in Ecuador and then travel for two months throughout most of South America. The experience was very eye-opening, and in Srinivas’ anthropological terms it was my “second birth.” When I returned to course work in Oregon, I combined my earlier interest in photography with my new-found interest in learning about other cultures. I self-designed a Visual Anthropology major, and then applied to the graduate program at the University of Southern California. I applied three years in a row and was denied each time. Before I applied for the fourth time, my father, who was just as stubborn as I, and had continued to try unsuccessfully to persuade me to take up the “secure” job of longshoring, made a suggestion that finally hit home. He had recently joined a labor education organization which was looking for someone to conduct a videotaped oral history project of International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) retirees. Maybe it was because I was tired of selling coffee as a post-college job and missed my family that I finally decided to agree with my father and I returned home. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 Although I had come from a three generation ILWU family, I had never paid close attention to their work or union. Conducting the oral history project, I was starting from scratch by asking questions and reading books that explained basic elements of the San Pedro waterfront life, for example, what a jitney driver was and what AFL-CIO stood for. This was the next phase cf becoming “thrice bom.” What once had been all around me and even on my clothing, was now new to me as I began discovering interesting elements of the history and culture of my own community. It might have been this first career-related job that made me look more promising to USC because they finally accepted my fourth application. Throughout my three years at USC, I kept my focus on the longshore community and its retirees. Basically I had fallen in love with the retirees, their stories, their integrity, and their charm, but I also continued my study with them because I knew “who set the table” for me. I knew the union had provided my grandfather with a good living and a secure retirement, had allowed my father to send his daughter to college, and had now given that same daughter a start in her career. With this knowledge, I believed I owed it to the union and its founders to give something back, to use my education to compile their stories and amplify their voices. M y A n t h r o p o l o g i c a l P e r s p e c t i v e This project is deeply rooted in two distinct anthropological ideas. First, I believe it is important to “study” one’s own people, as I have described above. When I tell people I study anthropology, they always ask me where I will go to do my fieldwork. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 Drawing on stereotypical definitions of anthropology, I tell them I do my research here in San Pedro, and that the ILWU retirees are my “tribe.” In the 1970s anthropology made a great turn inwards to address the “us” rather than the “them.” Personally, I do not feel the drive to go to other places and intrude, only to leave “them” and come back with information for "us.” My work is done far more effectively if I have some roots, and therefore a personal stake in the subject matter which I am researching. Compassion for one’s own group can allow for far more revealing and useable “data” than an outsider, who is simply intrigued by the strange customs of an exotic group. Granted, there is a balance of “objectivity” that is always helpful when identifying and interpreting cultural information. This is most typically found from an outsider’s or etic point of view. However this balance of objectivity can also be achieved by an insider, if, as in my case, that insider has spent a great deal of time outside the community’s boundaries. The second anthropological idea that motivates this study is that anthropology is worthless if it is not able to directly help those being studied. The information in this report is of urgent need for the continuation of a strong democratic union on the waterfront and hopefully can be beneficial to other workers in this country, both unionized and non-unionized. But this is not information only I deem as important and urgent. The information I will present here is what the longshore community itself has asked me to present. It is knowledge that longshoremen wish to be passed on to current and future community members in hopes that lessons learned by the “old-time rank and filers” will continue to be incorporated into securing a stable future for workers and their community. There are many members of the waterfront community who see the current R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 relationship between union members and employers as a major regression from what the retirees had fought so hard to overcome. Although the details of this current situation will not be the focus of this essay, it is an underlying reason for collecting and presenting the retirees’ life stories and perspectives. Anthropology which intends to politically assist the community studied, is traditionally separated from academic anthropology and catagorized into '‘applied” anthropology or “advocacy” anthropology. I believe this categorization only marginalizes the process of using anthropological information for the social betterment of the subjects. Instead, this process should be applied to all categories of anthropology as it adds a more current and urgent purpose to a discipline that is in dire need of a face lift if it is to continue on the university level. I see no such dichotomy in my work. Anthropology has always been political and I encourage others to incorporate political battles in their pursuit of the study of man. P r o j e c t H is t o r y a n d M e t h o d o l o g y In March of 1995 I began work for the Harry Bridges Institute (HBI), a non-profit organization which develops projects promoting labor education and the labor community. In the first year, I conducted a videotaped oral history project of retired ILWU members along the West Coast. The goals of the project were simply to record the retirees’ memories, experiences, and opinions of longshoring and the ILWU. Unfortunately I had no prior labor history education, so this was my first serious introduction to the subject. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7 Entrance and acceptance into this arena came quite easily due to the fact that the main organizers of the HBI were ILWU members, and I was seen as the third generation in the ILWU without having worked on the waterfront. Having a grandfather that many old-timers knew was very beneficial. One reservation most retirees shared when I asked them to be interviewed was that they believed they had nothing to offer regarding the history of longshoring and the union because they were only “rank-and-filers.” They knew that they could not remember all of the historical names, places, and dates and therefore I would be “better off finding information in a book or interviewing a union official.” I always responded that it was not the names, places and dates that I was looking for, so much as their memories, experiences, feelings, and opinions. I also added that I was specifically looking for rank-and-filers’ points of view and not exclusively union officials because I was following the union’s philosophy that it is the rank and file who built and run the union. They quickly agreed, and after one to two hours of talking they were quite surprised that they had so much to say. After the first year of conducting, transcribing, editing, and beginning the distribution of the interviews into local schools, I took the project to an academic level. For the next three years I incorporated my work with the retirees into my graduate Anthropology studies at USC. Choosing the retirees and their occupational behaviors and attitudes as my theme worked well, since they were a very cohesive and identifiable sub culture in San Pedro. San Pedro residents have deep generational roots, centering on similar life experiences revolving around the harbor. This helped defined the geographical and cultural boundaries of my study. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8 The interviews for this project were conducted in two ways, individual and group. The individual interviews, took place in the retiree’s home or the union hall, and were semi- formal, semi-structured, allowing room for open-ended questions and answers. The subject of the interviews focused on the interviewee’s personal life history and experiences with the ILWU and longshoring. Group interviews, or “Round Tables,” were conducted at lunch or breakfast gatherings after different pensioner meetings. These were informal interviews with minimal structure, asking broad-ranging questions and allowing participants to react freely. I attended most of the retirees’ monthly and yearly meetings, events and conventions in addition to those of the “active” union members (the retirees’ expression for those still employed on the docks), which some retirees also attended. Living in the harbor area, and being part of the union family, I was always updated on current labor community events and struggles. I continued to videotape most interactions I had with the labor community and the retirees. My participation and observation methods gave me first-hand knowledge of the depth and variety of activities which these retirees experienced. Now in an academic setting it was much easier to acquaint myself with labor studies, specifically maritime studies, and to gain a wider perspective on the many issues my subjects addressed. My research at USC began to focus more narrowly on what I was most astonished by: the retirees’ continued activism. Again, I found myself unaware of entire aspects of retirement. I had preconceived notions which I believe are quite widespread, and I now find are quite incomplete. Somewhere in my life I formed the idea that retirement means doing nothing-ever again. One worked hard, retired, and relaxed-away from the rest of society, R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9 eventually put away in an “old people’s home,” waiting to die. O f course this is a basic misconception of the elderly, but it was an issue that I had never examined until now. When beginning my research with the retirees, I was truly amazed at the level of participation of these men in organized activities of all kinds. However, the types of activities they are involved in are far more impressive than the quantity. They are not simply keeping busy nor providing helpful assistance. Instead, they are men who go against the capitalistic values that require each man to pull himself up by his own bootstraps and climb the corporate ladder of success. In contrast to this, the pensioners, as they call themselves, live out a philosophy of solidarity that sometimes has been considered “anti-American,” especially during the McCarthy era, and yet has always supported the rights of basic working people. Even within their own union today, some of their actions and opinions conflict with newer members who are trying to get ahead, even at the expense of their co workers. The pensioners are activist retirees, continuing a struggle they started early in their working careers, a struggle they believe is central to all people: to gain a decent and secure job— the main source of economic independence and personal dignity. Ironically, to achieve personal independence, they believe the crucial element is solidarity. It is easy for me to understand why unity with others for a common good was necessary earlier in the pensioners lives, especially during the Depression era. But now in the 1990s, reaping the fruits of their labor, and apparently set for the rest of their lives with stable retirement benefits, I could not understand why they continue the “great struggle.” Answering this question and learning R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 about these men’s lifetime commitment to unity has been a central focus of my three year studies at USC and the results are here in the following pages.1 O r g a n i z a t i o n o f t h i s e s s a y There are two parts to this essay: The Past and The Present. I originally wanted the main focus to be on the current activities of the retirees’ pension group; the reasons why they remain active; and their opinions on related topics. However, to fully understand these men, I found it important to understand their journey, which is one of the main reasons they are active today. I begin the body of this essay with a discussion of one particular part of their journey, the 1934 strike which marked a crucial turning point in maritime workers’ history. The historical component of this essay will describe the early life histories of six individuals leading up to their beginning work on the waterfront. This is followed by the Round Table group discussion regarding the poor working conditions that led up to the 1934 strike, the strike itself, and ILWU leader, Harry Bridges. Other major historical aspects of West Coast longshoring, such as other strikes, “red baiting,” mechanization, race relations, and women entering the workforce are not represented here, due mainly to the constraints of time, but more specifically to keep a strong focus on the key turning point: the 1934 strike. It is important to remember this is not a factual historical essay, 'An ethnographic documentary accompanies this thesis as part of the requirements for a Masters degree in Visual Anthropology. This video is available from the USC Center for Visual Anthropology. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. like Bernstein (1970), Larrowe (1977), Nelson (1988), Markholt (1998), Quin (1949), but instead, a collection of personal memories, and more important, personal sentiment attached to historical events. I hope to highlight how these men feel about what happened in their lives, to investigate their passions, values and beliefs. The second element of this essay, The Present, depicts the pension group, its formal components and its individual members. From this information, the various activities and continued commitment to unionism is very evident. Their regular activities, newsletter articles, convention policies, personal involvements, opinions and sentiments on the union today, reveal the retirees continued militant activism. The six men I highlight in this essay are some of the oldest pensioners and are part of the core group of about 15 members— those most active, with regular attendance at all pensioner meetings and events. All six are introduced in the Personal Life Histories section, but in The Pensioners section, only four of the six pensioners provide information on their retirement activities. In the Round Table discussions, other active pensioners are brought in to participate, but were not interviewed individually. THE M e n Edward Thayne, “Ed” or “Eddie,” is the oldest pensioner of the active core at age 95. We have a very close relationship. I have interviewed him many times and followed him around everywhere over the past four years. He is a natural film star, with quick wit and plenty of charm. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 Art Kaunisto is a medium built man in his early 80s. He has an active sense of humor with plenty of “old school” one-liners up his sleeve. Art is very passionate about his unionism, able to “say it like it is” with plenty of fire to back up his point of view. Corky Wilson, a very tall and lanky man, is the other clown of the group, always quick to throw a humorous spin on any conversation. Corky is the most active and popular alumni of San Pedro High School, always selling raffle tickets and raising funds for the school’s different programs. Leonard Miller is a bit more subdued than the others, but just as faithful in attendance to all pensioner activities. Ray Singer is a true friend of mine. He is a very large man and disguises his age well by all of the physical activities I see him do. He is always willing to offer help organizing different events, even with the most mundane duties. He provides the coffee, uses his station wagon (and his back) to load and unload such things as generators and street barricades, and is always there for set-up and clean-up duties. Lou Loveridge is the President of the pensioner’s group, with all of the qualities necessary for being in the forefront. He delivers fierce and fiery speeches, filled with aggressive militancy, always aware and critical of how labor is treated worldwide. Although he is teased when he steps up to the microphone at a meeting— “Keep it short, Lou!’’--his vocal chords express what all other pensioners feel in their hearts and minds. The following pages represent a truly collaborative labor of love between myself and the ILWU pensioners. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. S o u t h e r n C a l i f o r n i a P e n s i o n e r s G r o u p 13 E d T h a y n e ART KAUNISTO R ay S i n g e r Ma c R a b j o h n C o r k y W i l s o n J o e G r a s s i T o p t w o r o w s p h o t o g r a p h y b y S l o b o d a n D i m i t r o v . B o t t o m r o w p h o t o g r a p h y b y C l a u d i o C a m b o n . R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. h i s t o r y “Little stones that stick with you all your life ’ R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15 L o n g s h o r e H i s t o r i c a l T im e L ine The following historical information is derived from the excellent and thorough historical publication of Ottlie Markholt, Maritime Solidarity (1998). 1902— Longshoremen in West Coast ports affiliate with American Federation of Labor’s (AFL) International Longshore Association (ILA). 1910- Pacific Coast District of ILA set up to give West Coast locals autonomy from the International and to aid in the jurisdictional fight against the seamen’s unions. 1916— First coastwise West Coast longshore strike defeated. 1919— San Francisco longshore strike defeated and their union closed down only to be reopened as a company union, known as the Longshoremen’s Association, or more commonly, the “Blue Book.” 1920— Seattle longshore strike defeated. 1921— Seamen strike nationwide but are defeated by the teaming of shipowners and the U.S. government. 1922— Portland longshore strike defeated. 1923— San Pedro longshore strike defeated. 1920s— Employers gain control of all longshore hiring halls. 1934 Strike-84 days, 6 striker casualties. May 9— Official declaration of coastwise ILA strike. May 15— Two strikers killed while raiding scab camp in Wilmington, CA. May 23— 150-200 strikers stop a train of 150 scab workers from Los Angeles and demand their immediate return. All but 17 return to LA with their fares paid by the strikers. June 16— Agreement made by Ryan, ILA International President and employers ignoring the seamen’s struggle and their supposed unification. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16 June 17— longshore locals vote against agreement until seamen unions are included and recognized. Mid-June— In San Francisco, 7,000 AFL strikers were made up of: 3,000 longshoremen, 3,000 unlicensed seamen, 459 masters, mates and pilots, between 94 and 125 machinists, between 97 and 110 boiler makers, and 300 ship clerks, besides 500 unaffiliated marine engineers. June 19— In San Pedro, small handmade bombs found next to the Texaco oil reservoir. June 23— In San Pedro, 300 strikers armed with rocks, clubs, and pipe fight with police at Berth 90. June 24— Eleven seamen arrested for attempting to attack scab workers. June 26— President Roosevelt appointed the National Longshoremen’s Board to attempt a settlement. July 5— California Governor Merriam calls out National Guard in San Francisco to protect state-owned railroad. 2 killed, 109 injured, mostly strikers. July 8— San Francisco Labor Council’s Strike Strategy Committee announces: “We mean to give the shipowners and the National Longshoremen’s Board every chance to settle this crisis peacefully and we want to act reasonably and not violently. But we do not intend to yield one inch of the ground to which these men are justly entitled, and if their rights are overlooked we are ready to unleash the full strength of organized labor in San Francisco.” July 9— In San Francisco, mass funeral held for Howard S. Sperry and Nickolas Bordoise followed by a procession up Market Street of more than 15,000 men and women. July 12-16— San Francisco General strike. July 13— In Wilmington, 300 strikers and scabs battled. 10 strikers were arrested and one scab for threatening strikers with a gun. More unlicensed guns were found in the cars of scabs. July 31— Strike ends, workers victorious R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17 1936— Nonviolent longshore strike lasts 99 days and ends in victory. 1937-All West Coast ports (except Tacoma WA), vote to leave conservative AFL’s ILA and join more inclusive Congress of Industrial Organizations forming the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union 1946, 1948— Two more successful longshore strikes put an end to the Waterfront Employers Association, replaced by a more union-tolerating employer’s association, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) I960— Modernization and Mechanization Agreement (M&M) between ILWU and PMA allow for the mechanization of the waterfront, thus the reduction of unnecessary labor, and in return no worker would be laid off, but instead given early retirement incentives, and a promise to share in increased profits through increased wages and benefits. 1971— Most recent Longshore strike led by new generation of union members not satisfied with M&M agreement and opposed to employers allowing men to work “steady” with the same company everyday instead of receiving work from the union dispatch hall. Outcome of strike was not as progressive as past strikes, men were allowed to go “steady,” however, the “Pay Guarantee Plan” was put into affect insuring an annual income regardless of availability of work. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 PERSONAL LIFE HISTORIES The following life histories are introductions to six pensioners I collected through videotaped interviews. All had moved to San Pedro from other parts of the country and Art moved here from Canada. Although there are many Mexican-American and African- American pensioners, all of the men I focused on in this essay are of European decent. Ed, Art, and Corky are the oldest pensioners and long time residents of San Pedro, having moved here between 1919 and 1922. Ed was the earliest to start working on the waterfront in 1924, and Art soon followed in 1930. They worked under non-union conditions and were veterans of the 1934 strike. Corky was not longshoring during this time, but was working nearby selling newspapers on the waterfront, and so was very familiar with the longshoremen and their conditions. Leonard was living in Seattle, Washington during the ‘34 strike. His father was a longshoreman and so he had a unique perspective of the struggle from a child’s point of view. Lou did not start on the waterfront until 1942, but his family all worked on the docks so he was always immersed in the longshore community. Ray is the only “Johnny- come-lately,” moving to San Pedro in 1942 and starting on the waterfront in 1945, but was always aware of struggle and worked many labor intensive jobs. The main theme that runs through all of these men’s early histories is their experiences with struggle. Most came from families with little economic stability which in turn caused the families to move from town to town, looking for work. Some men had early experiences with union philosophy, some were introduced to it later in life. But all grew up understanding from their families the basic elements of solidarity. Strong, united R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 family structure provided these men with early lessons in the benefits of sticking together. If some family members ventured away from home, and if they found better conditions elsewhere, such as in San Pedro, they informed the rest of the family, and provided them with connections and support upon their arrival. These family lessons in working together were to be the foundation for the pensioners later actions as adults. This sense of family extended into the community of San Pedro at a time when many families were in similar difficult economic situations. In a small town atmosphere, where everyone grew up knowing everyone, bonds grew which could not be created otherwise. There was great ethnic diversity in San Pedro: Yugoslavs, Italians, Portuguese, Japanese, Swedes, Norwegians, Finns and Mexicans. However they all found their commonality from the town’s central pulse: the waterfront. With many different jobs related to the waterfront, the town shared a livelihood that, at that time, was the best any place could offer. Geography also added to the close community ties. San Pedro is located on a peninsula where, even to this day, no outside traffic passes through without the town or the port as its main destination. This strong sense of community and solidarity was imparted to these men from a very early age. In addition to learning the power of solidarity, these men also saw their families demonstrate a strong work ethic. At a time when putting food on the table took all of a family’s energy, these men grew up knowing the importance of a hard days work, preparing them for the difficult careers that lay before them. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 0 E d w a r d T h a y n e I was bom in 1904 in Washington, Utah. A little community, approximately 300 people. A little Mormon community. You can put that in there, a Mormon community, because there was no one else in there except Mormons. My grandmother came out here from Scotland, that was before my time, with six children. My grandfather had died and his two brothers were coming out to this country so they made sure my grandmother and her six children stayed together and got to Utah. The head of the Mormon church in Salt Lake City interviewed my grandmother and said, “You go to Washington [Utah] where there is a cotton and woolen mill and you can get employment and raise your six kids.” He was like a dictator there [Brigham Young]. He placed people. Do you know what year she came over? I think it was around 1860, ‘58 or ‘60. They worked for what they called factory pay, kind of like a token or script. A lot of it would work in the stores, or where ever they gave it to you. My dad was the next to the youngest in his family. He settled there and married my mother who was a school teacher. Eighth grade was all they had. She could read and write, my dad couldn’t. He just got to the third grade he told me. But you are just learning how to make things in the third grade! Then he had to get a job herding sheep and cattle and work for your eats. Well, I was bom in June 22, 1904. There was seven of us kids, four boys and three girls in my family. I grew up there, attended school until I got out of the eighth grade. Then I rode a horse five miles to St. George where they had a high school, and they had a college. I didn’t go to college, but I went to high school. Was that normal for kids your age, at that time, to go to high school? My mother insisted on it. I was normal— you done as your mother told you. Were other kids finishing high school? No, no. Kids wouldn’t even go near a high school. Like my dad, they would get to the third or fourth grade and they would say, “Hell, I’m not going to go up there to school, they don’t teach you anything anyways.” So they would just go to work in the mines, or on the roads, or on farms. But you stayed with the school system? Yes. Did you like it? Well, no I didn’t. I wanted to be out. My dad had a ranch 90 miles out in what they called the Arizona strip, a homestead ranch of 640 acres which is one section of land. He had sheep, horses, cattle, goats— whatever we could raise. In the summer time, when there was no school, I could go with him a lot. Go out to a ranch in Arizona where we had a few cattle and horses. I loved to go out and spend my time in the hills— get away from things. That’s why I didn’t want to go to church much. I wanted to be out with my dad in the hills. Anyways, I stayed there until I was about 18 or 19, somewhere in there. I had to be old enough to do a man’s work. I went over to Pioche, Nevada. Little mining town there-lead and silver. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21 Why did you decide to come to California? To get a job that would pay money. [Ed herded sheep for a while but, as was typical then, the pay was in the form of trade, such as produce or hay, but not with money.] I had two brothers and a sister living in CA, Southwest LA. What brought them to LA? To look for work. My oldest sister married a fellow there and they came out here. My two brothers were longshoremen in WWI. And they were stationed in Camp Kearney San Diego. The San Diego port was so shallow that they couldn’t bring boats in because they hadn’t been dredged deep. So they brought them up here to San Pedro. When the war was over they were released and they came back home to Utah and worked in the mines. They didn’t like that and they said, “You work here and you don’t get any money! You know we can go back to California and make money. Go back to San Pedro and unload ships. We know the bosses there now because they worked for the army.” So they came down here in ‘21 or ‘22, to the waterfront in San Pedro. They got a job, they liked it and stayed there. They told my mother, “When Ed gets old enough, get him to California, we’ll get him a job.” So that’s how we came here. And that’s exactly how I got my job. I came down in ‘23 and they said don’t come down now because of the strike. It was a Wobbly strike and they were trying to make a union. And of course the employers, if they didn’t like it, which they didn’t, they called you a Communist or a Wobblie. The longshoremen lost the strike. I wasn’t working, my two brothers were. They lost it and had to take strictly company rule. So I got a job in a Safeway store in Los Angeles, then I got a job driving horses delivering milk because I knew how to ride horses. I didn’t know what a car was. There was a big creamery opened up on Slauson Ave. and Western Ave. in LA: Crescent Creamery. I had three head of horses assigned to me. They had them saddled, harnessed, loaded with milk at three in the morning when I got there. I delivered all over Southwest LA. I stayed there a year. I think it was 1924, I’d been working up at a furniture factory and they laid me off. I was driving a truck at 50 cents an hour. I used to go visit my brothers on the docks. They were making 80 cents an hour. My brothers told me, they said “Ed, we think we can get you a job now.” A r t K a u n i s t o I was bom in Colbolt, Ontario Canada, 1913, July 22. I’m a little ancient. How did you come to live in California, straight? No see my dad worked in the mines, he was miner, and something happened in Canada, I don’t know if it was a strike or he wouldn’t go to strike or what-the-hell-ever it was, so we came to Arizona where the mines were still working. He wasn’t in the mines there very long and they had another strike there in 1917, in Miami, Arizona. So we stuck around a little while and then we finally came to San Pedro in 1919. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 2 Was there a union in Miami Arizona? They did have a union there, but they broke it when they had the strike, so we had to leave. It was just myself and my mom and dad. We lived in Miami Inspiration Mining Company’s camps up on the hill. That was about three miles out of town. So when he wouldn’t go to work, we got booted out of there, see, on account of the strike. They were going to starve you out or freeze you out or something. That was typical of them. So why do you think you came to California? I don’t know what my dad’s reason was for that. There was a lot of Finns in Pedro at that time. A hell of a lot of Finns. A lot of them were longshoring. So he came here and he went longshoring until he died. That was before the ‘34 strike. He died in ‘29, if I’m not mistaken. In school I got As all the time. No problem. I was good at math and history. Man I was a whiz. In them days you had shop math and that was just mostly formulas. Hell, they stuck to me like glue. Algebra and stuff like that, they could give to the birds. I didn’t want no part of that because I didn’t think I would ever have any use for it~which I never did. Sometimes you might, but as a rule, no. So you graduated from Pedro High? No, I quit-uated. The first job I ever got longshoring I got paid 50 cents an hour for pick up. In 1930 or ‘31. I was just an extra hire hand, only a permit man— green card they called it. Green card was the original permit man now [casual worker]. You would get the work when ever they need you. Extra. We did pretty good with it. But see I used to work under my dad’s book, like you got your union book, you had the same thing, a fink hall book with your name. But see I was using my dad’s alter he passed away. The card stated when he was registered, and all that junk. I would get a few hours here a few hours there— till finally Kelly caught me. He said “Let me see you book, son.” And I did like a damn fool and he just tore it right in half. That was the end of that [laughs]. I finally got my full book early in 1935. We still had the hall between 5th and 6th across from the Globe theater. C o r k y W i l s o n I was bom in Coming, Iowa in 1912.1 lived there for four years. My folks were farmers. And then we moved to Illinois, farmers there for three years. Then my father went to work in Joliet, Illinois in a lumberyard for a year. Then we came out to California because we had relatives out here. But the trip took us a long time. We went broke a couple of times and we stopped a week here, a month there, took us about 8 months to get out here, but we finally got out here-1922. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23 At the time when you got maybe 18-21,000 people in Wilmington, San Pedro and Lomita, that was the most people we had at that time in this town. The town was real small. You didn’t have any places like this. This was all fields, Japanese fields, raised tomatoes on the other side. I went to Leland Street School before they had a school there. They had a playground where they were going to build Leland Street Grammar School, but I went in the church right across the street which is still there on 22nd Street. Later we moved further downtown where all of the fishermen lived. Slavonians and Italians. We lived on 14th Street so I went to school with all those kids that their families had just started coming over because the fishing industry was just starting real strong then. I got to know a lot of people around there. I went to school with a lot of those people’s brothers that had something to do with waterfront at that time, like Carl Burbrigde, or Howard was the one I knew. I carried newspapers on roller skates in San Pedro when I was going to grammar school. And then I began selling newspapers on the waterfront, in Wilmington. And then the Catalina Terminal was in operation to go to Catalina and they had two ships that would take passengers over. Well I used to sell newspapers there and I made a mint of money in those days. That was in ‘24, ‘25, ‘26. Then I would carry baggage also on ships that came from Hawaii before Hawaii belonged to the United States. I used to go out in a little boat with 3-400 newspapers— and that was when you had nothing but the radio, so you sold a lot of newspapers. People down playing in Hawaii, they came back, wanted to know the news. 3-400 passengers, they would all buy newspapers. Never, never would get a nickel for them. I would get any where from two bits to a dollar, and that was big money! And then I found out I could carry baggage there, to their cars, the people that was meeting them. Now on a Friday morning— that happened every Friday— I was making more money than these waterfront workers were at that time because their pay was awful small. Like I said I was pretty well known. A lot of the guys that I went to school with, their sons, the fathers were bosses, and they would ask me if I would go carry bananas or something like that for them. Well not unless I was real busy because we didn’t have boxes yet. They were big stems they had animals in them [laughs]. They had snakes, spiders, and everything, but not too much because they wouldn’t allow them if they come in here. But I would get a job there once in a while, but I didn’t want no part of it because I knew one day in my life I would have to make a living somewhere, cannery, waterfront, or go to sea. That’s the only thing you had to look up for in those days in this town. Eventually they wanted me to come and join the union. And I said no. “When my time comes,” I says. “I’m making big money. I’m making almost as much in a month as you guys will in 6 months. I would be awful silly to give that up.” This was when I was about ready to— I didn’t know which way to go, whether to start going longshoring or not. But there was a good friend of mine, R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24 Bill Lawrence. I used to go to the dances with him and his wife. He was a big wheel down here. Of the pensioners, he was the first president of the coast of the pensioners when we first started. He was a personal friend of mine. He said to me one day, “Corky, your going to have to come to work now,” he says. “I can get you in right now.” But I said, “I don’t want to be a longshoreman yet.” He says, “Well you think it over.” It was on my birthday. I figured, what the heck, I’m an old man. I think I was 22,23 years old that night, 1935, and I said I’ve been a newsboy all my life. Its about time I go out and earn a living, at least it would be unionized. I went to work that night. I learned pretty quick what it was all about. And knowing people and not being lazy or anything, I became what they call a good longshoreman. I’m not bragging, but I was just one of the many that done what they were told to do, and watched out-safety first, and stuff, because that’s why those people had a strike, because safety first was obsolete. They wouldn’t even let you think you could do something on your own if it were safer. They would fire you, period. They don’t need you. L e o n a r d M i l l e r I was bom in Seattle Washington, 1921. I graduated from Seattle High School in 1940. What did you like to study? I really enjoyed history. I got my best grades in history. But I really liked to play ball. I played basketball, football, softball. What aspirations did you have for your life at that time? Well my aspirations were in the year book. It said I always wanted to remain a “polecat.” That was the designated name for our intermural team. A polecat is another name for a skunk. So that’s what I wrote. I didn’t have too many dreams then. What were times like back then? Pretty tough. It was height of the depression years in high school, from 1936 to 40, towards the end there they were starting to get the war up, starting to get prepared. It was hard to get jobs for married men. A lot were out of work or working with government jobs, WPA [Works Progress Administration] and CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]. What about your family? Well my father was longshoring, maybe 1-2 days a week, doing a lot of jigsaw puzzles. He also had a secondary job reading water meters, which I made the route with him a couple of times, he was making a little bit more money there. I know a couple of times wr e had to go down there and get brown bags of beans, because his income just didn’t meet it. When did he start longshoring? Well he actually started indirectly working for Fisher Flower Mills in Seattle. The plant was on the water and apparently he helped load ships for the company itself. I don’t know if it was union or not. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25 Even though it was still the depression, it seemed we didn’t do without a lot of things, even on the Fourth of July we had our fireworks. My dad would give us a couple of bucks— you could buy a lot of fireworks for a couple of dollars: sky rockets and roman candles, and big fire crackers. I remember my dad’s uncle came down one time and they were smoking cigars and they were lighting these big cannon crackers with their cigars in their mouth. I thought then, that was a dangerous thing to do. But somehow, we always got by during the Depression. For example, for food, we had a garden out back. We had all the beets, carrots, cucumbers. My dad did have money from somewhere because he paid me a nickel for keeping the cucumbers watered. And it only took, two of us could go to the movies for 15 cents, pal-night, so I’d get a nickel, my partner, my friend would get a nickel and we had to worry about where the other nickel would come from. They were double features. LO U LO VERIDG E I was bom in November 13, 1923 in rural Jefferson, South Dakota. I was one of nine children, the youngest of the boys. One child was deceased. Myself and my three brothers worked on the waterfront. What did your family do? My dad was a salesman in his early days. But he got ill and didn’t work very much and most of the time we were on relief. My family was poor all their lives. We relied on gardening and raising chickens, etc., and that’s how we got by. We moved from South Dakota to Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, which was only 40-50 miles from where 1 was bom. We lived there for a while. I went to grammar school there. My sisters and my one brother had moved out to California and they wrote us and asked us to move out here. They lived in Wilmington at the time. My sisters’ husbands were longshoremen, and my brother was a longshoreman at the time. My family came to California in 1936. I went to school and graduated from Banning high school in Wilmington in 1942. While I was going to school I worked extra on the docks. I had a Nine- dash number--a Coast Guard permit. I also worked at the Richfield service station in Wilmington. My whole family has been in the union all these years. I’ve got nephews still on the waterfront. We all had everything in common in our concept of the union. My whole family believed in the ILWU and specifically Harry Bridges. It was kind of pounded into me— not pounded, but I was knowledgeable— when I was young, that this was Harry Bridges’ union, and how it came about and the history of the 1934 strike. My family was always union, all their life, since I was old enough to realize what the score was. I always respected the union, and the history of the ILWU, and specifically Harry Bridges. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26 R a y S i n g e r I was bom in Seattle, Washington, June 17,1913. How long did you live in Seattle? I didn’t. We moved to Prairie where I lived till I was 15 years old. What did your parents do there? My father was a school teacher and my mother was a housewife. What was it like in Prairie, Washington? It was an action town. One grocery store, a whistle stop on Northern Pacific Railroad between Bellingham and Seattle. But the woods were full of action: logging, saw milling, single milling, you name it. In the summer I was 15 and I worked at a single mill in Prairie. Punch bolts, single bolts and the mill pond. That was a gravy job. You would punch the conveyer full of bolts and just as fast as you could cram them in there with the pike pole. Then you would sit down for about 15 minutes and read a pulp magazine. Some Western shoot-em-up story, something like that. We left there in the summer of 1928 and moved to Silver City, New Mexico. Ray graduated from the Military Institute in Roswald, New Mexico in 1930 before he turned 17. He worked as a Western Union messenger, then at a wrecking yard. He worked in a gold mine and a lead mine, built roads for the forest service, and then left New Mexico for West Texas to work in an oil refinery. Ray finally came to California in 1942 after reading newspaper ads for shipbuilding jobs. Towards the end of WWII, the shipyards began slowing down and laying off personnel. In March of 1945 Ray began longshoring. I wanted to come longshoring. I had been working with longshoremen all the time I had been in the shipyard and they told me stories about longshoring, about the pranks they pulled, and I come to the conclusion that it was as good a job as you could get, for year-round work and in good times and bad times. There is always a living there on the waterfront. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27 L o n g s h o r e H is t o r y More commonly described worldwide as dockworkers, longshoremen load and unload cargo from ships. The term used on the West Coast, “longshoremen,” came from a time when men would look for work by waiting on the docks, or “along-the-shore.” Men who sought work “along the shore” thus became “longshoremen.” In the 1920s and ‘30s, longshoring was a difficult and intensive operation. Men dreaded loading and unloading cargo such as rotting cow hides, heavy banana stocks, and any bulk cargo-copra and black sand, to name a few. Safety measures such as the up keep of facilities and equipment, providing protective wear, and maintaining a safe load limit and work pace, were not priorities on the employer’s agenda. With or without a union, longshoring was extremely dangerous, but not nearly as damaging as the inhumane treatment workers received from their employers as described in the following interviews. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), situated on the East Coast and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), had loosely organized the entire West Coast by 1902. Unionized longshoremen participated in many struggles, attempting to gain better working conditions, wages, hours, and most importantly, the control of the hiring hall. From 1916 to 1923, ports up and down the coast organized strikes, but were all defeated by waterfront employers using government assistance to break the ILA. The 1923 strike in San Pedro was one of the last major strikes of the decade and was also defeated. The Waterfront Employers Association was an employer- run “union,” described by longshoremen as the “fink hall” or the “blue-book union” (because of the color of their work identification books which under the ILA were dark R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28 red). The employers were in control of all hiring and would continue their poor and unfair treatment of waterfront workers up until 1934. The famous “shape up” hiring practice is a prime example of how employers controlled not only the physical elements of worker’s labor, but their sense of self-worth as well. As described by the men themselves, employers controlled workers using many tactics, such as “black balling,” “kick backs,” over-extended hours, and wage cuts. These abuses of power were definitely damaging to worker’s pocketbooks and their families’ dinner table. However, more detrimental was the way in which the employers’ inhumane treatment made workers feel worthless and expendable. With the constant reminder that they held no importance in the eyes of their employers, their morale sank lower and lower, until some were willing to step on each other to get a small piece of the employers’ inflated profits. These sentiments, clearly demonstrated in the following comments, were to set the stage for an organizing campaign which was to change the entire history of the docks. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29 R o u n d T a b le : W o r k i n g C o n d i t i o n s P r io r t o 1 9 3 4 "You had to be on your toes all the time and act as a gentleman as much as you could, even though you were pushed around like a dog. ” HIRING P r a c t i c e s : “ They were as crooked as a dog s hind leg " Ed Thayne— The hiring was terrible. You had to go down where the ships were, they called it prospecting. Each company would send a boss to pick the men and they would come and stand up on a chair or a stool or something and would say, “I need men.” Joe Grassi— They called it the shape up, in other words, you, you, you [pointing]. ET— The minute the boss would come out, you would hold your hand out and let him know you were ready to go to work. If he liked you he would pick you. If he didn't he would walk past you like he didn’t see you and pick someone else. They called it a “black ball.” If somebody did something the boss didn’t like that day, or any other day, and he had it in for them, he would tell the other companies, don’t hire this fellow or that fellow, because he is a trouble-maker. Stuff like that. Or if someone got hurt: he’s prone to being hurt, we don’t want him around here. There were a lot of good people set on the sideline at all times because some individuals in there did not want them. Corky Wilson--The ones that had steady jobs were good, but the ones that didn’t do what the bosses told them to do, they would get black balled and they couldn’t work anywhere on the waterfront. And the same thing if you were a seaman. If you came in and had a good recommendation you were all right. If you didn’t, if you got fired, you didn’t go to sea anymore. They saw to all of that. This is what the [1934] strike was all about. ET— That’s why when you came here, you didn’t dare talk about unions. You didn’t dare talk around a group of men because you always had a few stool pigeons to run back and try and undermine you to get your job. They would turn your name in to the companies: “This guy, so and so, is a trouble maker and wants to start a union.” Pilar Wright— Was it a fair hiring practice? ET— Oh, there was nothing fair about it. Like I said, if a boss says “I want this man,” he will have them. They were all company men, even the bosses were company men. The company picked them. Each company had steady bosses. PW— And what did the workers have to do to get picked? ET— If the boss liked you, he’d get you picked. Art Kaunisto-See a lot of these people were paying off to get a job! That’s no R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 lie. They would say, “Hey, can I sleep with your wife?” Any god damn thing. They were as crooked as a dogs hind leg. They would say, “Okay, 10, 15%, I’ll give you a job, you can work over at Lukenbach,” where ever it happened to be. ET— Oh, they had it every way here. Come up to my house. See my wife while I’m working. Pete Grassi— I used to bring a gallon of wine every now and then. Because you could make wine in California all you want with a $2 permit. You were only supposed to make 200 gallons, but what the hell! They never stopped you! PW— And so you paid off the boss to get a job with a jug o f wine? PG— Yeah! A jug of wine! [laughs] That’s right! I’m not throwing you any bullshit! AK— It wasn’t good for the working man. It was lousy. If you wanted to work, that was it. And at that time, longshoring was just about as good a job as any paying, as anything else. Of course they drove you like a mule. They had these big hot shot bosses, they didn’t care: “Break your back, but don’t bother me! Lets get the work done!” U n s a f e W o r k i n g C o n d i t i o n s : " 'You get hurt, fine, we 1 1 replace you ’ ” Pilar Wright—What were the working conditions like before 1934? Ed Thayne— The ship men, when they went aboard the ship, had to rig all that gear by hand. Wasn’t nothing electric. You pulled all your guys [wires] out, and your wires, and cables, you did everything by hand. It wasn’t by electricity, that just came the past few years. You picked all those big hatch boards up and piled ‘em and took the beams out and piled them. You might be two or three hours before you got down to the cargo. At that time they would have one dock boss and he would have 8 or 10 gangs maybe on the floor. And he would place the men, “You take care of this hatch.” And we knew what to use for different cargo, tall glass, marble. We had no jitneys then. It was all hand-pull. When I first came out here, most outfits didn’t even have tractors. You pulled it by hand. You landed the load yourself. Two men would take a four wheeler and a board. We would get out under the hatch that was working and then we would pull it in the warehouse and the checker would be there to tell you to put it over there. We would unload it and go back and get another load. A rt Kaunisto— We used to work hard. You get these guys today and tell them they got to work 200 pound bags of “sodi-ash” [sodium bicarbonate]-oh no not me I’ll call a “reap” [replacement worker]. Anything a little work involved, I’ll call a reap. They don’t work hides any more. We used to work those god damn hides. That was the most miserable job there ever was. You could wear aprons R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 and boots and it still didn’t do you any good. You stunk like the hides when you got home. It took you days to get the smell off of you. ET— Oh yeah, we worked hides, dirty hides, covered with maggots in box cars. Stinking rotten. You go in there and pick ‘em up. One night it was dark and I was working a job for Banning Company. This Slim Hancock, an old finky boss from Houston, said “Get in that car of hides and get ‘em out.” I said “Where are the lights?” He said, “You don’t look at ‘em, you son-of-a-bitch, you pick ‘em up.” Those were exactly the words he used. I always hold it against him. You would pick them up and build a load with them, about 30 or 40 on each board. If you put any more you’d fall through the box car. The hide cars were rotten cars, they had no plates inside them box cars, in them days. There would be holes in them. And you go out there and work them at night, and I did them at night, and I was covered in slime. Top to bottom in juice. Your shoes, your clothes. You don’t get 10 cents extra. You don’t even get a thank you when you’re through. “Go on home, you bastard, and if I have a job for you tomorrow, I’ll put you to work.” Corky Wilson— I watched them guys, they got hurt a lot. People got hurt because they had to do things that weren’t safe. The boss tell you to do it anyways. Well, you do it. You get hurt, “Fine, we’U replace you.” Those guys out there would wait sometimes all night long to get an hours pay if some guy got hurt. ET— If you broke a toe they would say, “Cut the shoe and keep working.” The one on my left foot is a stupid longshoremen that wanted to be a superintendent, then threw a piece of pipe off and it hit my foot. Now I don’t have a toe. AK— There were some miserable jobs years ago. Shoveling black sand. It was hard work to shovel black sand. Copra- that’s where I started with these guys is shoveling copra. It stunk like a billy goat. ET— You had to be on your toes all the time and act as a gentleman as much as you could, even though you were pushed around like a dog. H o u r s Pilar Wright— What were your hours like back then— how long would you work? A rt Kaunisto— When ever you finish the ship! Christ, I was on one ship for three days! PW— Any breaks? AK— When ever they felt it was convenient. There was no four hours and then eat and four hours and eat. Of course I didn’t have much of that. I was just a punk kid. But I could hear my old man grumble about it. Hours didn’t mean nothing. You were supposed to be like a piece of steel— take anything, you know. That was horrible. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 Ed Thayne— The standard day was 8-5, but if a ship was out they told you to stay till midnight or all night. They didn’t ask you, they told you. They said, “That ship’s going to sail and you’re going to stay and finish the job.” One time I was on a job and I worked 32 hours without stopping. “Have to finish the job,” the boss would say. PW— How did you feel about thatl ET--I felt pretty bad. I didn’t like that. That’s one of the reasons for going on strike, things like that, and firing you illegally. And because I knew from watching, what they were doing, and cutting your wages and making you work bad stuff that should have had a penalty [pay]. We had some penalty cargo that was penalty because it was too dirty and stinking, you know. And it got so they wouldn’t even pay us penalty time on anything. W a g e s Ed Thayne— Things had deteriorated so much after the ‘23 and ‘24 strike. They cut the wages on us three or four times, cut us down to 50 cents an hour for car loading. People ask me, “Ed, why did you go on strike?” I tell them, well, when you are making a $1.20 an hour overtime and they take that away from you-they put that in the LA papers: “Longshoremen Accept a Cut” and it went down to 50 cents an hour for all dock work. I got caught in a lot of that, and I had to work it. And I was hurt. I would work over twice as long on any job to make as much money as I had before, a $1.20. I was mad! I was hurt! They just told you, “Well next week you get 50 cents an hour.” And that’s what they paid you. And you had no recourse. If you don’t like it, then stay home. And you can’t make any money sitting at home, only now. So we had no choice. P o l i t i c a l C o e r c i o n Ed Thayne— Another instance in 1932, the bosses came to us, “Fellows, if you don’t vote Republican, you wont have a job when this election is over. You can’t vote Herbert Hoover out and put another man in because you’re not going to have a job. We’ll just close up.” I knew that was propaganda and lies. And I hated that. One thing my dad told me when I was a young fellow, “God hates liars. Don’t ever be one.” Another thing my father told me when I was about 16 years old, he said “Son, don’t ever go Republican because all they’re for is big money.” And my father, a poor immigrant from Scotland without an education told me that. He said working men have to go democratic. And I’m a democrat 100%. Little stories that stick with you all your life. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. R o u n d T a b l e : T h e 1 9 3 4 S t r ik e ‘“ Come on fellows, you got to get organized and stick together’” 33 E a r l y O r g a n i z i n g a n d H a r r y B r i d g e s As in most non-union working environments in the US in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, organizing had to be done in secret because unionizing was cause for being fired. But this was the least of the ILA men’s concerns with respect to organizing San Pedro longshoremen. First of all, most workers had never heard of some of the benefits that were being dangled in front of them by organizers such as better safety conditions, wages and hours. Disbelief and distrust ran rampant in the LA port, especially towards the port north of them, headed by Australian-bom, Harry Bridges. Although the animosity between San Pedro and San Francisco has never been completely resolved, a “bridge” of higher common ground was built over their differences, specifically supplied by the charm and patience of their Australian leader. San Pedro rank and filers experienced a transformation, acquiring new belief through the struggles surrounding the 1934 strike. As can be ascertained from the dialogue later regarding Bridges and communism, the ability to have differences between and criticisms of each other and their leaders while still retaining a unified organization only added to the longevity and strong democratic character of the longshoremen’s union. Pilar Wright— How did the strike start here in San Pedro? E d T h a y n e —In ‘32, ‘33, Harry Bridges had his henchmen down here from Frisco. AFL men. I didn’t know they were organizers at first. They would come R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 down here and try and get one on each job so he could talk to us. We would go out to work and there would be guys talking when we were eating lunch and they would say, “You know if we had a union here, we would be a lot better off. We could make more money, better time, be safer.” And they were all good talkers and they were good union men. They wanted to see this. And they would get into the hatch and they would start talking about what could happen if we had a union. “You wouldn’t be shoved around like you are now, you wouldn’t be taking the dirt. You’d have a water can to drink out of. And you’d have cups, and you’d have protective clothing.” They all came with the same song. “Come on fellows, you got to get organized and stick together. We’ve gotta have a union— its the only way to go.” Well, we talked, the guys I worked with, “Well, what do you think?” It was getting stronger all the time. When you told them you believed them and you were ready to go in the union, they had a little man there that would take your dollar and make a receipt, give you a card that you were a union man, AFL. They said, “Don’t show it to any of your regular men here, don’t let the superintendent or the bosses know your in or they’ll fire you if they can. Don’t tell anyone that your a union man.” PW— And what were people's reaction to Bridges and his people when they came to town? ET— Well we really didn’t know what they were. But we did not buy it, at first. It sounded too good to be true. I wanted the help. I needed it bad. But to swallow some of the things that we have now, and tell us that we were going to get it, I couldn’t believe it. Pete Grassi— This was the port he figured that if they got organized, the rest of the coast is in his pocket. ET— See he was from Frisco, and there was an amazing amount of animosity amongst the men down here. We had a meeting out at Wilmington Bowl, the old fight arena in East Wilmington, and they booed Harry so bad that I was ashamed at ourselves booing him. They told him several times, “Harry, go back to Frisco and tell it to your men up there. We don’t like that bullshit.” But I’ll tell you about Harry, he didn’t back down from any man. When we booed him, laughed and hollered at him, he’d shut up and walk off and stand there until the men quit hollering and then he’d come back and he straightened everyone of us out. He said, “This isn’t bull shit fellows. This is the real stuff. I have contacts and I can get you anything I’m promising and more too.” He promised us over time. He did. He got it for us. He promised us medical, which we’ve got. And vacations. You couldn’t take a vacation in those days, unless the boss told you you could take a vacation. And he did it. How he done it, I don’t know. I never could dream it. But to me, he was my savior. Joe Grassi— You could here a pin drop when Bridges spoke. Leonard Miller— Before he got through, we were a bunch of beaten little puppies. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 ET— We may not believe it, but he put us in our place in a nice way. Harry had a way with him like no other man in my life. PG— Oh, man, he took control. That’s no baloney. Corky Wilson— I knew him by meeting him a few times. But there were a lot of things I didn’t like about him, but then again, there is not a labor leader as strong as he was, or done as much for a union. The things he done and said he was going to do, he did it! Like pensions. When I heard about that— I think it was right after the war— I believe they were talking about paid vacations, pension, I couldn’t believe it. I said those guys are smoking weed or something. Nobody’s going to give you that. But, I had to eat my words. And I’m glad it happened! Look at what they’re getting today! A president of a bank don’t get that much. ET— But we didn’t believe him at first because the waterfront superintendents and all the steamship officials would say, “You don’t want any god damn union. Bunch of Commies, bunch of Commies. We can’t put up with them in this country.” PW— What did you think o f that? ET— Well, I had mixed feelings. Uh, were they right or were they wrong? Well I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know. What do you say, I was a stupid Mormon boy trying to make a living [laughs]. But I listened to Harry. And I’m god damn glad I did. Or I wouldn’t have had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of if it hadn’t have been for our strike and Harry Bridges. Because they were bleeding us to death. I mean this is the way things worked. Art Kaunisto— Well I had my arguments with him also, but he done a good job for the waterfront. I had a lot of fights with him about things that I thought was deadly wrong for us, but he finally won out, but that don’t make him a bad guy. He just had more bull! He could sling that bullarki a little better than I could. He was a hell of a speaker. He was sharp. He didn’t let no grass grow. There was a few things he let slip by, I don’t know if there was a purpose for it, I don’t know. There might have been a reason he done some of these things— to give into the employer a little bit here and there. Maybe on the other side, he said, “You give me this.” He was shrewd, that I know. He didn’t go to school to eat his lunch, I’ll guarantee you. JG — Another thing about Bridges— he didn’t get rich. In fact, Ryan [ILA International President, East Coast], all those other labor leaders, like from the coal unions, they are all wealthy. Bridges never was a wealthy man. If he traveled, he traveled third class. He never traveled first class. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 B r i d g e s v s . R y a n “ ‘You run the West Coast, and we '1 1 take care o f the East Coast!"’ Joe Grassi— Ryan was out here in the West Coast in ‘33. He had the ILA here. When Bridges wanted to go on strike, he didn’t want to go on strike out here because he was with the employers. Bridges said no way so they kicked Ryan out and he went back East. Pilar W right- So what did Bridges believe in? Leonard Miller— The hiring hail, numero uno. JG— Equal work. LM— Ryan didn’t want a hiring hall because he couldn’t get graft money out of it [secret money paid to the union by the employers]. He got the employers to give the workers a higher wage, but Bridges said that isn’t enough. Wages are not important. We want fair-square abilities to get work. Ed Thayne— The one thing I remember during the ‘34 strike, our union— I don’t remember who was in there, maybe Johnny Mitchell-they sent a letter to Ryan on the East Coast, about a certain ship that was loaded by scab labor here in the harbor. It said, “Ryan, don’t unload that ship.” Ryan sent a letter back, to the effect— “You run your West Coast, we take care of the East Coast, and we’ll unload any ship that comes here. Scab loaded or what. You run West Coast there and we’ll run our coast here!” PW— What did you think o f that? ET— Well we didn’t like 'em and that’s why we quit ‘em. That’s why we quit the AFL. JG— No cooperation, see. If they would have cooperated with us, it would have made the union stronger. F i r s t D a y o f S t r i k e " I’ ll be there if they shoot me or what ever happens, I'll be amongst them. " Pilar Wright— So how did the strike get going here in San Pedro? Ed Thayne— Well I was working steady for Banning Company the first day I remembered it was coming-on the American President Line ship down at [berth] 154. And I was driving jitney then. They had a boss that had stayed and finked there in 1923 [strike] by the name of Bill Evans. He was the dock boss and he was a son-of-bitch, a real slave driver. And he came down and said, “Well fellows, what are you going to do tomorrow?” “We’re going on strike!” I said, “Bill, I belong to the union and I’m going out with the union what ever happens.” Two other guys were standing there, by the hatch, “Well Bill, I’ll be here at 8 in the morning to help you out.” They were the ones that were going to R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 fink! We had a big stop work meeting, we met in San Pedro, I think it was on the comer o f... Pete Grassi—.. .10th and Myler. ET— Well Pete, there was one out this way where we had a meeting on the sight where they dispatch. 6th and... PG— Across the street, there was a dance hall there. ET— Well anyways, there was a building we had rented close to the first hiring hall we ever had. Tell all you people to come down. Even those guys that said, “You’ll see me in the morning,” they came and showed up and listened. So we stool pigeoned on 'em a little, I guess you’d call it. Because it hurt me to the core when Skipper and those other two others said, “Well Bill you can depend on me, we’ll be here to work for you in the morning.” So we told the dock gang, which is what we called the Big Four, the Clark brothers. We told them, “This guy here, Skipper, he said ‘I’ll be down here in the morning’ and he is here at the meeting taking it all in like a stool pigeon would.” So they went to him, the dock gang, and they told him, “Skip,”— maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the name because he did stay out after he got scared— and they went to him and said, “Skip, you better not be there in the morning as you promised Bill Evans, or you’ll be floating in the bay. We’re going to see that you float. Because shit floats and that’s where you’ll be.” And he never went down there. I put the finger on him, but I thought he needed it. He wouldn’t pay any attention to me. He was one of those big guys who thought, whatever I say will be big with the boss, so he told him, “I’ll be here, you can count on me.” And there were others. PG— Hell yes. Plenty of ‘em. ET— The companies tried to keep every employee they could. They come around and begged us to stay. PW— How would they do that? ET— The boss would come up and tell you, and the superintendent would come down on the job and say, “Ed, you got a good job here working steady. You would sort of solidify that job by staying and helping us during the ‘34 strike. We’re helping you now, you would help us if you didn’t go out on strike.” I just said, “Well no, I’m a union man, and I believe we need a union and I’m going to be out regardless of where it goes. I’ll be there if they shoot me or what ever happens, I’ll be amongst them.” And that’s all I could tell them. I’m a union man. In fact I was black balled once or twice after the ‘34 strike by Bill Ellis and Bill Evans just because I had told ‘em, “I’m not going to work with you finky bastards.” But that’s the way we done it— is solidarity. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 S a n P e d r o C o m m u n i t y S t r i k e S u p p o r t “They wanted to see things better” Pilar Wright— How did the community respond to your strike? Ed Thayne— Well the time was all for you. 100%. Roosevelt even sent out a soup kitchen, and groceries for the strikers, and the union dispersed it to us fellows. I got a wife and myself, give me a bag of groceries every week. He knew we were being down trodden, stomped on, without jobs. We had the worst depression in the world. On 16th Street they had an empty lot there and we put a tent up and a bunch of the longshoremen went up there, and they had stoves and they had food there everyday for you if you wanted it. Called it the soup kitchen. We had fellows that went out all over these Palos Verdes hills and got tomato, and fruit, anything. Tell them the men are on strike and they would donate it for us. Any store in Wilmington and Pedro give you credit, because they knew we were down trodden. Even my barber, I introduced you to him the other day, in ‘34 he gave me free haircuts, his name was Ure. We called him Wimpy. PW—Why do you think these business owners did this for you? ET-Because they thought we should get more. We knew during the times of the Depression, you didn’t have money to pay for groceries. They wanted to see things better. And they got them things better. Pete Grassi— They used to give every Saturday, bags of food, you know potatoes, food, and they had a place where you went and picked it up, all that to help you out. They really did. Because, what the hell, I’ll say 60-70% of them were workers from the area. Like the fish canneries and all that. And you could go over there and get a job in the canneries, and they would even give you a job if you wanted. But guys were like, what the hell, for 30 cents an hour, no. I’m going to get by on the soup kitchen. ET-W e had people down here on every theater-there was two theaters in Wilmington— you got a strike ticket, come up and present it and go to the show, here in Wilmington. San Pedro, same thing. There were places would feed us and other places that would buy us gas for picket duty on the cars. And they would run us credit for as long as the strike lasted. And you could go buy groceries— in fact any grocery store, particularly the independents, and not pay a dime. You just sign a card that you would pay them when you got back to work. S T O P P IN G TH E S c a b s “That's our Job! ” The longshoremen viewed their jobs as their own. No matter how desperate another may be for work, it was wrong to step on the backs of strikers and take their jobs because of an employer’s sweet but empty promises. A “scab” is a strikebreaker and is R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 used by the pensioners interchangeably with “fink,” although fink has other meanings on the waterfront. Fink also represents someone who “stool pigeons” or tells the employer of a worker’s secret intentions. “Fink” used in such terms as “fink hall” or a “fink book,” can also be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing--an employer organizing a mock worker’s union. Further discussion on this matter can be found in Archie Green’s work (1993). Pilar Wright— Well the ports were still open during the strike. So there were a lot o f people who were scabs. Did they come from San Pedro? Ed Thayne— No, they brought them down on the PE [ Pacific Electric rail line] Depot. I’ve done picket duty up on the PE Depot on Avalon Blvd. in Wilmington. Pete Grassi— They ran them out of the state. ET— When we saw a bunch of men getting out, heading down, we’d head ‘em off and talk to them like a brother! Ask them, “Please don’t go down there and try and take our jobs, because you’re going to get in trouble if you do! That’s our job! You’re trying to go down there and take it for the famous good money. I don’t know what they’re paying you, but we didn’t get good money, that’s why we’re out here on strike. Now you guys shouldn’t go down there and take our jobs.” They had a whole bunch of men all over the harbor. And if we didn’t get them at the PE Depot, down there at the dock there is another bunch of men that would step out and head ‘em off. They told ‘em, “You’re going to be in a lot of trouble if I let you go and you go down there and take these men’s job. They’re just paying you this extra money because they are on strike. They’re trying to get you to go down there as finks! Please don’t go down there and take our jobs!” And we stopped a lot of them. And a lot of them got stopped when they decided to go home and see their wives. We had to get crews with cars that chased them and stopped ‘em down, and a few of them had to have a little work done on them. We had the men that could do it. PG— Yeah, we had some big tough guys. ET— We had some ex-fighters and football players that were pretty rough boys. They meant it when they told you, “Don’t go down there.” You better not say, “Well, I’m going anyway,” because that’s when the war started. A rt Kaunisto— Sometimes I had to come in on the PE [train] once in a while, and they would stop you when you would come off the PE. They asked you where you were going, that you wasn’t a fink! Every time I would come in they would say, “Hey, where the hell are you going?” I would say, “No, I’m not going there to go to work.” Finally they gave me some kind of recognition, a card. A lot of these guys didn’t know what the questions were and they got the hell beat out of them. They would say, “There’s a ship I’m going on.” And that was R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 doomsday for them. I knew a lot of kids and I went to school with those that were longshoring, I knew a lot of them down there. I didn’t have a lot of problems. But a lot of guys, if he was a total stranger, he would have a hell of a time. Leonard Miller— I was only a kid at the time, but my dad would tell us the worst word in the vocabulary is scab. He said that’s the lowest person you could ever think of. And he wasn’t too happy with the police always being on the side of the employer on this, but there wasn’t too much we could do. You couldn’t stand up against guns and gas. One time my dad got gassed. The police were naturally on the side of the employer. The strikers were probably told to remove themselves from the premises of the property owner. And they just didn’t want to go, so the police gassed them. And he got involved with a few scabs and beat them up and that didn’t go to well with the police either. My dad was a small man, but he was a feisty little fighter. There was couple of times he and his partner got in fights and my dad got his ribs broken by his partner. They liked to fight. PW— As a child did you ever think that maybe if your father went back to work and got some money, it would be better than nothing? LM— No, because I knew his friends and they all thought the same way. They said we’ve got to fight this through. T H E C A S U A L T IE S "They just shot another Longie ” From May 15 to July 5, 1934, six men were killed supporting the strike from Seattle to San Pedro, and many others brutally beaten. “Bloody Thursday” is the ILWU’s annual commemoration of these casualties. All West Coast ports shut down every July 5 to mourn the deaths and celebrate the victories that came from the 1934 strike. In San Pedro two men were killed, John Knudson and Dickie Parker, in a raid on a camp which housed strikebreakers. Knudson was from the Marines Cooks and Stewards Union. Dickie Parker had not yet officially become an ILA member but was participating in the R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 strike in the hopes of becoming a member after the strike. Parker was well known among longshoremen: Corky W ilson- One of my best friends got killed during the strike, was never in the union, Dickie Parker. I went to school with him. I knew all about him. And he wasn’t even in the union yet. He was signed in doing picket duty so if the strike was over he would be a member. He had an older brother that was a wino when he was about 22, 23 years old, that’s probably how he got to sign up during the ‘34 strike to become a longshoreman. But poor devil, never got it. He got a bullet instead. But he was one of the two that got killed down here in this raid. Art Kaunisto— I went to Pedro High School with Dickie Parker also. When the strike started, he got killed, he got shot. They were going after the finks that were working the ships. That was between [berth] 146-147, that’s where they had the gate across there. They snuck in there one time and they got shot. I don’t know if it was the guards or who the hell it ever was, nobody ever knew. There was never any question about it either. “Here’s a corpse, take him away.” Dickie Parker. He was about my age, maybe a year younger. You didn’t have anything to say, they got these god damn armed guards, you can’t say nothing. The company they didn’t care less. They just shot another longie, that’s good for them! Its horrible. There was nothing said about it that I ever heard. H a r r y B r i d g e s a n d C o m m u n i s m “ 7 don’ t belong to any organization except the Longshoremen's Union During the period between 1934-1955, Harry Bridges was taken to trial many times in an attempt to deport him back to Australia for being a Communist. This accusation was never proved, and Bridges remains the only person in the U.S. to ever be officially declared not a Communist by the Supreme Court. In this discussion, sentiments are expressed related to this very complicated issue regarding communism in longshore history (see Kimeldorf, 1988; Larrowe, 1977; R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 Markholt, 1998). The focus here is to show how these men stayed united during a controversy that had the potential of dividing and destroying their unity. How much influence and control the Communist Party had over the ILWU has never completely been resolved, as can be seen in the disagreement over the facts below. However, even with different points of view within the ILWU, ranging from hating communism to tolerance to Party membership, the sentiments remained solid that union membership took priority over Party membership. This is evident in the retirees’ following discussion about communism and Harry Bridges. Ed Thayne- They tried so hard to get rid of Bridges. They put out propaganda that he was a Communist and get rid of him. Communism was a bad word to us. They told the employers that he was a Communist. Joe Grassi— Oh yeah. They spent a fortune trying to deport him. Leonard Miller— That was Ryan’s favorite words. ET— We were all Commies out here on the West Coast. We had even been told by labor leaders down here and company leaders, steamship employers, that Harry Bridges was a Communist. We had been reading about it in the paper~the trials, they had to convict him as a Communist. So Francis Fetcher said, “Brother Bridges, can I ask you a question, and I hope you can answer it right for me, I’m a secretary here at the hall and people come in here and say that man, nobody vote for him, we got to do things for our selves, don’t listen to him, because he is a Communist.” He said, “Harry, I don’t like Communists and none of us do.” And Harry said, “Well Francis,” I don’t know it word for word, but he said, “Francis, I never ask anyone what their political feelings are for voting, but I’ll tell you, I don’t belong to any organization except the longshoremen’s union. That’s all I belong to and that’s all I am is a union man. I do not belong to any Communism, I haven’t been to any meetings, and all this stuff that your hearing is propaganda. They’re lying.” “Well all right then.” There was a few of us fellows sitting down and oh, we all got up and [claps hands] give him a big hand. In fact I went right up on stage and said, “Harry, I’m proud of what you said because I believe what you say.” “I’m telling you the truth.” So we left him that night, and we said, go ahead and do what you want to, we’re behind you. Art Kaunisto-Yeah, they accused him, but they couldn’t prove it. But I see it a bit different. At heart he may have been a Commie, but that had nothing to do with it. He attended their meetings, he liked the way they helped him and stuff like that. It didn’t bother me. We had our conditions, and what the Commies had R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 was their own. They didn’t control or run us. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t care. A lot of people resented it. I couldn’t understand why. You got the [union contract] book in front of you, tells you what you can do and what you can’t do. What the hell, the Commies couldn’t do nothing about it. They could lell you a lot of things but doing it is a different story. Much happened in longshore history over the next sixty years after the 1934 strike. As shown in the Longshore Historical Time Line, battles continued to be waged on many fronts. Within the labor movement itself, the ILWU struggled to find a place for its unique trade unionism among the more traditional, elitist craft unions. A few more strikes were won against the employers, proving the solid strength of the ILWU rank and file members. In the 1960s, the most visible change in longshoring came with mechanization, affecting workers both positively and negatively. But through it all, the ILWU has tried to remain true to its founding democratic principals. Today, the port of Los Angeles, combined with Long Beach, is one of the world’s most productive ports for global trade. Harry Bridges, voted ILWU International President from its inception until 1977, sums it up best in the following remarks he made in 1984 on the union’s 50th anniversary: Fifty years later, what was it really all about? First of all it was about power. We showed the world that when working people get together and stick together there’s little they can’t do. Second, it was about democracy. We said that the rank and file had the right to decide, and if you gave them the facts, they’d make the right decision. Finally, it was about human dignity. We forced the employers to treat us as equals, to sit down and talk to us about the work we do, how we do it, and what we get paid for it. But, I believe that the principles for which we fought in 1934 are still true and still useful. Whether your job is pushing a four- wheeler or programming a computer, I don’t know of any way for working people to win basic economic justice and dignity except by being organized into a solid, democratic union. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. T h e P r e s e n t “I sure as hell want to keep the union going! ’ R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 T h e P e n s i o n e r s G r o u p In July of 1952 the ILWU successfully negotiated the first pension plan for its retiring members. At the age of 59, workers could retire and receive a pension, originally $100 a month, and today averaging $950-$ 1600 a month. Calling themselves “pensioners,” retired union members began forming pensioner groups up and down the West Coast in order “to provide a place and an opportunity for ILWU retirees and their wives to visit and keep alive a satisfying work and fraternal relationship going back many years” (PCPA brochure). The groups soon became more than this as they developed an action-orientation, confronting issues relating to their retirement, labor in general, and current events in their community and throughout the world. There are 15 pensioner groups currently in the ILWU from Alaska to San Diego, California. The Pacific Coast Pensioners Association (PCPA) is a coastwide umbrella organization which holds a convention annually in September, bringing together delegates from all pension groups to decide on policies and actions. To become a member of a pensioner group the main criterion is to be an ILWU retiree and pay dues. For the Southern California Pensioners, dues are $12 annually. Not all retired members of the ILWU are part of the pensioners’ group. Of the 9,200 total Southern California ILWU retirees, 3,500 are dues-paying members of the S. C. Pensioners. About a third of the membership attend the monthly general membership meetings, and a core group of about 15 members regularly attend the variety of meetings described below. The pensioners conduct all their meetings in the ILWU Memorial Hall on “C” Street in Wilmington, California, where their office is housed. Most members I worked R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 with are part of a geographically-based community, living in the working-class Los Angeles harbor area which includes San Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City, Torrance, and Lomita. R e g u l a r A c t i v i t i e s Every first Wednesday of each month, pensioners gather for their general membership meeting at the Memorial Hall to be updated on current issues and to vote on group policies and actions. Every second Wednesday the 15 members of the pensioners’ executive board meet to discuss their business affairs, group policies and actions. They make recommendations, approving or disapproving policies and actions, which are then taken to the next general membership meeting for a final vote. Periodically, there are also Trustee meetings in conjunction with the executive board meetings. Every third Wednesday, willing pensioners meet at six o’clock in the morning to help fold, seal, address, and organize into zip codes, the 3,500 copies of the monthly pensioner newsletter. On the fourth Wednesday of each month, representative pensioners with full voting status attend the ILWU Southern California District Council meetings where representatives from all active ILWU locals in the area meet to make decisions on official ILWU policies and actions regarding political and community issues. The pensioners also have official representation at the active workers’ conventions which meet once every three years. Although they do not have voting privileges, they can address the convention floor and voice their opinions. Annually the R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 pensioners have their PCPA convention, hosted by a different group each year, with an average attendance of 200 pensioner delegates. The PCPA has an executive board with members representing all pensioners’ groups and meets four times a year. In addition to these regular meetings of the pensioners’ group, members are part of other labor and community organizations and committees, such as the Harry Bridges Institute (HBI). The HBI board of directors is comprised of 50% pensioners from up and down the West Coast, and meets four times a year. In the Southern California area, there is an active group of pensioners who volunteer their time with HBI projects and events continuously throughout the year. I attended at least one of all the pensioners’ group meetings, some more regularly, during my research. The above is not a complete list of the pensioners’ activities because individual pensioners are involved in a variety of other union, community, and social affairs. For example, there are different sub-committees in the group that deal with such things as weekly hospital visits and working with the active union membership. Others donate their time and money to charity groups, especially to children, supporting high school sports, and other community associations. Members are connected to other labor and senior organizations, for example the Federation of Retired Union Members and the Congress of Seniors. Pensioners also have their own individual interests and involvements with senior social groups and many miscellaneous clubs and organizations, and of course make time for leisure and family. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 P e n s i o n e r s * N e w s l e t t e r An initial introduction to the pensioners’ activities, concerns, and points of view can be found in their printed literature. I reviewed the Southern California Pensioners’ newsletters dating from January 1988 through February 1997. The bulk of the articles are divided in two major parts: the President’s Report and the Secretary’s Report. Many political cartoons are scattered around, there are no advertisements, and the newsletters are mailed out under non-profit status. The President’s Report briefly discusses different topics ranging from national political and economic issues to upcoming labor conventions and changes in newly negotiated pensions. The style is very informal and personal. The following is an introduction to an article regarding how the deregulation of industries and companies have hurt workers and consumers: OH YEAH!!! THINGS ARE BETTER!!! - - - THE DOLLAR BUYS LESS! - - - THE PRICES ARE GOING UP! - - - GOT A RAISE IN SOCIAL SECURITY - - -BUT! GOT A RAISE ON COST OF MEDICARE - - - ONE WASHES OUT THE OTHER!!! OH YES!!! DEREGULATION has done much!!! (Jan. 1988) This aggressive writing style and sarcastic spirit in this quote suggests a high level of concern for the American public and knowledge of national issues. The Secretary’s Report is shorter and with the exception of past Secretary Pete Grassi’s reports, it is devoid of commentary. The report lists the names of those making donations to the pensioner group in the past month, those recently deceased, and new members. Some of the donations are printed in memory of an individual or with other dedications: “ ... in memory of ALL LONGSHOREMEN THAT HAVE GONE TO R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 THE GREAT BEYOND,” or Ed Thayne’s December 1996 donation, . in memory of MY BROTHERS AND ALL THOSE GONE BEFORE AND HARRY BRIDGES OUR SAVIOR ON THE WATERFRONT.” Religiously dedicated, the pensioners bestow cult status on Harry Bridges, and continue to see their past co-workers as family. They are respectful, even reverent toward “those gone before.” In reviewing the newsletters, I made a list of the different article topics in the newsletter that did not pertain only to longshore retirees. I was attempting to discover what issues were important to the pensioners, for instance, current union activities and community affairs. I located some 43 issues, categorized them into the following eight main topics, tracking frequency, and cited examples of specific headlines and subjects: 1) National senior issues: 2 (National Council of Seniors report; “Privatizing Social Security bad idea”) 2) Active ILWU issues: 5 (ILWU convention, contract negotiation, and demonstration reports) 3) National and state political issues: 13 (CIA involvements; against NAFTA, GATT; presidential elections and candidate profiles; minimum wage; remember to vote; welfare) 4) Labor politics: 5 (Labor Party convention reports; against Right-to-work legislation; state senator letter drive-right to strike; information on other industry boycotts and strikes) 5) General community issues: 7 (improvement of bus transportation; local blood drive; earthquake relief goods; disastrous fires; Christmas parade; High school football team champions) 6) Labor community issues: 7 (political cartoons; Labor Day parade; HBI updates; Bridges Birthday celebration; Bloody Thursday picnic; Cesar Chavez’ death; formation of U. of Washington Harry Bridges Labor Studies Chair) R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 7) Global issues: 4 (Japanese politicians and business leaders; plea to cease fire with Gulf War; Aid package to Israel; “Imelda Marcos- poor little rich girl”) Pensioners are concerned with labor struggles in other industries as well as their own. A paragraph in the President’s Report details a protest march by a Boston hotel’s union janitors against their employer. This resulted in the overturn of an order that they must scrub bathroom floors on their knees. The ILWU pensioners feel it is the union that provides workers not only with living wages but with personal dignity: If those employees had not belonged to a UNION the results would have been different — they would still be on their knees — However! — THEY WERE UNION WORKERS!!!.. .[Janitors received proper cleaning tools] TO INSURE THAT WORK WOULD BE CARRIED ON WITH DIGNITY!!! (Jan. 1988) Pensioners also continue to be interested and involved with current ILWU issues. Recently, the union was in conflict with an employer ignoring jurisdiction rules and not allowing workers to return to their job. This employer unlawfully hired armed security and assaulted workers with powered water hoses. Until a court order was issued against the employer, union workers picketed outside the shipyard. The pensioner president reports: I observed the demonstration and pickets one day and they all appeared to be solid and united regarding the Union Position. . . I have advised the Union that we offer our support and any help that we may be able to provide. (Feb. 1997) Pensioners are kept up to date with global affairs such as the information about the Iran/Iraq war: “During the last 12 months IRAQ who is at war with IRAN has captured about 150 ARMY IRANIAN TANKS AND SOLD THEM BACK TO IRAN!!!” R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 (Jan. 1988). Another global issue of pensioner concern deals with American Vietnamese children and as the pensioners see it, the denial of human rights: For years the Government has been allowing just about every one to enter the United States EXCEPT AMARASIANS - - -CHILDREN FATHERED by American Soldiers during the VIET-NAM WAR!!! VIET-NAM CULTURE regards these children as OUTCASTS!. . . A solid program is now on the way to bring them here- - - IT’S ABOUT TIME AMERICA!!! TALK ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS - - - WHAT TOOK SO LONG? (Jan. 1988) From these topics and quotes, it can be seen that the pensioners have many interests outside their own personal lives. They are concerned with learning about other struggles and triumphs, and they can be aggressive in their opinions. These are all characteristics of their strong union philosophy that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” P C P A CONVENTION POLICIES Another area where I found documentation of group sentiment towards labor and social issues was in the convention policies the pensioners adopt at the coastwide level. At the annual Pacific Coast Pensioners Association, all 15 pensioners’ groups send delegates to debate and make decisions on policies and actions. I found the different types of resolutions passed by the convention to reflect an awareness and sense of concern for issues relating to other workers’ struggles and world issues in general. From the pensioners’ own literature, I found these same sentiments in their own words: From the very first PCPA convention, ILWU retiree delegates have consistently adopted policies for world peace and social justice everywhere, for national health care, pension protection, unity and solidarity with the rank- R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 and-file, other union and retirees at the ballot box and on the picket lines, and much more. (PCPA Brochure) I researched a list of adopted policies of the PCPA conventions, from 1969 through 1991. Of these polices, I named 40 different issues, categorized them into seven main topics, included their frequency of occurrence and gave examples of the issues: 1. Government: 8 (support tax reform; oppose police state measures; oppose flat tax; support right to petition; endorse civil rights bill; oppose “fast track” trade agreement) 2. Anti-War: 8 (end Viet Nam war; oppose neutron bomb; reparations for Japanese- Americans and Alaska Aleuts wrongly imprisoned in WWII; support nuclear freeze; oppose Star Wars; peace in the Middle East) 3. Labor politics: 10 (support union retiree political action; oppose anti-picketing amendments; support farmer-labor unity; support South African labor; support Greyhound strike; support federal anti-scab legislation; support piston mine workers strike) 4. Unemployment: 4 (Full employment legislation; support plant closure legislation; extend unemployment benefits; massive public works program for unemployed at union wages) 5. Labor community: 2 (build ILWU retiree clubs, other union retiree clubs, National and State Senior Council; establish Harry Bridges Chair and Labor Studies at UW) 6. Women’s rights: 2 (Support for ERA; Support Women’s reproductive choice) 7. Active ILWU: 3 (support Longshore strike) The pensioners heavily debate these issues, speaking, or sometimes yelling, their opinions on the convention floor. The policies on which they decide are then taken back to their individual groups and are reported to their general membership meeting. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 Decisions are made by the membership as how to best carry out those policies within their local pensioner group. Their own words express their level of commitment: The work of ILWU pensioners is NOT over when the PCPA convention adjourns. The delegates return to their local clubs and areas to make every effort to implement the policies adopted. And they continue working for the mutual benefit of their members and the active workforce in the district councils and with other senior organizations. Their ILWU commitment is a life long one. (PCPA document) At the 1977 PCPA convention, the ILWU International President, Harry Bridges, made a speech regarding the power retired members of the union have in the labor movement and a need to further organize seniors to be active with the union cause: Our culture in the United States is pretty cruel when it comes to the handling of older citizens. We must find a way to get them organized so that they will have a greater voice in the social life and advancement of our country than they have had heretofore. Now is the time to try to put together and help out in developing the political power of older groups. (PCPA document) It is with these words of encouragement from their respected leader, pensioners continue their union activism long after they retire. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 T h e P e n s i o n e r s The following are excerpts from interviews, first paying individual attention to four pensioners regarding when they retired, how they became involved with the pension club, what they do and their personal reasons for being active. Then entering a “Round Table” discussion, the retirees focus on why they remain active. This is followed by another Round Table discussion with open-ended comments from the pensioners regarding the union today and its future. E d T h a y n e Ed Thayne— I retired in 1957 Pilar Wright— How did you become active with the Pensioners? ET— Well, I just went down there, they had a sick committee, Joe Bear was in charge of it. He said, “Come on Eddie, be a pallbearer, there’s a gang of us.” He would call every time someone would die. Sometimes two or three would die in a day. We would go and carry the body to the grave. We didn’t get any money for that. Then A 1 Langley was in charge of the voting for the longshoremen. He said, “Ed, you’re off, why not come down and help us with the elections.” I said sure, paid you a little money. So I took that for a good 20 years. When I turned 80 years old, I told the man running the elections at the time, Nick Zuvela, I told him, “You have a lot of young fellows running this, I don’t need it. Why don’t you break some of those young fellows in.” I go down and help on the bulletin. I still do that. I go down once a month and help put out the bulletin for the retirees. I do that just to get out. We go down there and have a donut, and coffee, and get the bulletin prepared. Then the first Wednesday in every month we have a retirement meeting. The lady’s auxiliary has two or three women that come down there and make sandwiches, a little salad, cookies or cake. Pots of coffee. I enjoy going down there and getting a meal too. A lot of those women are retired, their husbands died and they come and help out. They treat us right. I also go to conventions, I don’t play an active part, but I’m there. I like to see what’s going on. I go visit the sick. Longshore friends of mine that are sick in the hospital, I go visit them. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 Ray Singer— He goes to Laughlin sometimes and visits the slots. PW— What other activities do you do? ET— Well senior citizens groups, I’ve joined three. Banning Manor, in Wilmington, the old Banning park. One is called Harbor Lights in Harbor City at the Harbor City park. The other is called San Pedro Ninth Street Seniors. PW— How come you go to so many places? I’ve got friends there. RS— He’s after the widows! ET-[Laughs] Well, Ray said it. RS— I think he's taking care of a whole bunch of them. Let me correct that— they’re after him! PW— What about politics— do you ever get involved in anything political in the community? E T - No I don’t. I’ll tell you, maybe I’m wrong, but you got so many people like [L.A. City Councilman] Svomich that want to be a politician. They want to be so bad, they’d cut your throat to get in there. I got up here about Proposition 13 [property tax freeze]. I would walk up and down my neighborhood, knock on doors. I do little things like that, I don’t mind doing. But as far as going out to listen to these politicians talk, I stay away from them. I would rather talk to union men, people that are believing in labor. PW— As a retired person, how come you don 't feel that you have done your part already and that it is time for you to relax? E T - I enjoy it! I go down there to the meetings, I got friends, fellows that worked under me. I enjoy them. They’re friends. Friends that you make working as a union man, they’re you friends forever. RS— He might look at it the way I do. I look at it as a form of pay back for what the union has done for me. E T - Well that’s right. The union has done it, and they’re still doing it. Getting us a raise on every contract they have. I go to conventions, I don’t play an active part, but I’m there. And Harry Bridges being the man who got it for us, I don’t want to let him down for what he done for me. PW— Did you ever hold an officer position with the pensioners? ET— No. You got a lot of fellows there that want to be officers. I never wanted to be an officer. I wanted to be a worker. That’s what I wanted to be all my life. That’s what I am. I’m not really busy. I come in here [living room] and lay down like this. Kick this up, [reclines in chair, makes snoring noises]. I think you got to keep a little busy. Because you would get tired just sitting here all day. I would too. I have. But we got a lot of men that don’t go out at all. They won’t go to meetings. When they retire, they retire. But I don’t like that. I like to know what’s going on. I am interested. That’s my bread and butter. I’m interested in what we get in the conventions and what we could do. We wouldn’t have conventions if no one was interested. We have a lot of fun. Its a good thing. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 L e o n a r d M i l l e r I retired in 1984.1 remember the year because that was when the Olympics were here. I retired, so I got to see a couple of the events. Well from about ‘84 to about ‘87 was great years. Then my wife starting to get sickly. From there on she had a stroke, at least once. She was in and out of the hospital. I had to stick around her quite a bit. I was afraid to leave her home alone. Anyway, after she passed away in ‘93, August, I was home alone, but my grandson was staying with me, thank god. How was that change in your life? Terrible. Without having her. I’m still hurting from it. Anyways, I started, well, I’m going to get out of the house now, so I started coming down to the pension club. Before, prior to that, I had only come to once every three meetings. And then after that, I started making a point of coming to every meeting. Then one day, Mac Rabjohn saw me one day and he must have been checking on me, seeing that I had been at every meeting, and he said, “Hey Leonard, we need some new blood here, how about you coming to the Executive Board.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.” So I went in there. From there, I became a Trustee, and then I got in on the newspaper, and then one day we were sitting in on an Executive Board meeting and Chicky Dillon said, “Hey Leonard, you want to be on the election committee?” I didn’t know that you got reimbursed. I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” He said, “Get the morning shift— that’s the best one.” Well I don’t know why he said that, because he has always been on the afternoon one. But I was used to getting up early in the morning. My day started out at five with treating my wife with her medicine and then I would go for a walk, and then make her breakfast. So by 6:301 had already put in an hour and a half of various chores, so the early morning one is no problem on the election board. Anyway, let’s see, trustee, executive board, newspaper, election board, and now I’m on the, helping Art Almeida on the education. I went over to the casual hall [dispatch hall for non-registered extra workers] and passed out a paper [explaining the history and the meaning of] the dispatch hall. Is it worth your time? Well I made a commitment to be on that deal and I’m trying to do something. Lou LO VERIDG E In 1988 I decided I didn’t want to work, I wanted to enjoy my retirement, and pension and welfare benefits. And I’ve been happy ever since. I’ve enjoyed my retirement. I can come and go as I please, except involved with the pensioners. I am president of the Southern California group, besides Coastwise First Vice President [of the Pacific Coast Pensioners Association]. I have a certain amount R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 of obligations and things I have to do all the time. We have a regular meeting first Wednesday of the month, then we have an Executive Board meeting the third Wednesday of the month, then we put our newsletter out once a month, then we have our trustee meetings. When we’re involved in annual dinners, conventions, that all takes time. But then we also have the pensioners that participate in it also, all of them. We really have a good pensioners’ group. This morning they were down here with me for our pensioners’ newsletter, mailing, the sorting, labels, and all that. They come down here on their own, 7 o’clock in the morning. The executive board meeting is down here once a month, 1:00, then the regular meetings, they’re involved in everything. Why do the other pensioners come down to help? They enjoy being here. They enjoy talking with people they work with on the waterfront. They want to contribute, help out as much as they can. Not only for us pensioners, the wives and widows, but for the union--if there is anything they can do. The pensioner’s constitution spells that out. Although we’re retired, we are still active. We are retired, but we are still involved in seeing that this union continues to go on and any advice and help that we can give. I’ve tried to sit in with the officers of the local, tried to offer my advice. And going to caucuses, I try to do the same thing. Although I can’t vote, I try to offer my advice, what I know. How are you received? Well, I never have any problems. I’ve appeared at Local 13's meetings in the past few months, talking about the upcoming negotiations in 1999. The possibilities that they may have some problems if they are not united and I talked to them about pension and welfare, and I got a standing ovation from the active workforce. And they respect me--my past work of being a president of the union. In my opinion I am respected by the ranks, even if I don’t know them all, but they respect me, come up to me and shake my hand and thank me for coming along. And I appreciate that. 1 feel like I’ve done something in my life to contribute to the working class, my fellow workers, the union, etc. Well, I hope I have. I love doing this. If I didn’t do this, I don’t know what I’d be doing. This has been my life. All my years has been with the union. And now that I’m retired, with the pensioners. And I make time for my family, besides that you know. I was never one to socialize outside the family much. Since I’ve gotten older and being with the pensioners, I don’t have time for everything. But I do have time to take vacations. I have time for my family--my daughters, my grand children— that’s a big part of my life today. That keeps me going. I don’t know, just keep going, you know. Like some of the rest of my pensioners, some of them have been here before I was. They’ve been down here, taking care of the farm. Then I came along and got involved with them some more. Till such time that I can’t move, I’ll be here [laughs]. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 R a y S i n g e r You might say I retired in ‘75 and joined the local pensioners’ club that year, started attending meetings. I joined and paid dues and I went to meetings. But I wasn’t interested in executive board, or going to conventions. Then as the years went by, the meetings were pretty good under Nate DiBiasi. They have been very good under Lou [Loveridge]. Lou’s a good leader. After going to Bloody Thursday picnics a few times, then when the HBI come out, I got a little bit interested there. And finally I decided to go to a [Pacific Coast Pensioner’s Association] convention for the first time in 1995. It was in Sacramento. I hadn’t flown since 1936 [laughs]! Riding up there on Southwest [airlines] was a real trip, I’ll tell you. And I guess it just sort of snowballed— it grew from then. The next year I go to Tacoma [location of 1996 PCPA convention]. Tell me about the first one you went to in Sacramento? What did you think o f it? I liked it. What did you like about it? Well the comradery I’ll say. Meeting people I’d heard about for years and years and never saw them. I met them for the first time. Like, umm, you know who I’m talking about, from Portland. Jesse Stranahan and his wife. And her story about the lawsuit with Fred Meyer. That was rather amusing. I had heard about Gene Bailey from Coos Bay [Oregon]. God, I had heard about Gene Bailey for, I think, about 40 years. It was very interesting. A lot of things about that convention. I could go on for hours. Well, that is the point o f this. And then Mac Rabjohn bugged me to come on the executive board, and the next thing you know I’m Second Vice President. I don’t think I was elected. I think it was just thrown on my shoulders. We have one executive board meeting a month, and one general membership meeting a month. Then Mac manipulates around and I’m on the election board, that’s all right. And I help assemble the bulletin. What do you do with the Harry Bridges Institute? We are trying to educate the younger generation about labor issues. I think the purpose is to bring into the schools the real raw facts of the union, how it was formed, how it progressed, what it accomplished over the years, union wages, what union’s presence does for a community. How there must be a considerable more money in a community for a union town than a non-union town. Certainly more than in a right-to-work state. What other activities are you involved with? I am a member of the Southern California District Council. What's that? Its a coalition of all the ILWU locals in this area, 26,63, 94,13. And what is your role there? Its pretty much political. Trying to get through to these politicians from a union stand point. Trying to make sure we get the right people elected, if we can be a force behind it. And why are you involved with that? Well there again, I think I was asked to. See Ruben [Negrete] used to be our representatives from the pensioners, but R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 after he died I don’t think we had anybody. Unless Lou went. What do you think o f the meetings? The last meeting was terrific. There was 1 1 people there that were very strong militant union people. But before that, attendance had been pretty poor. Then all of a sudden, the last meeting, almost everybody shows up. You seem to have regular attendance with all the meetings and functions I see you at. Well if you are going to be at all valuable to an organization you got to be in more constant attendance. If you go when ever you feel like it, don’t do much for you or the organization . What makes you want to take time out o f your retirement? Well to be quite frank about it, when Brian McWilliams got elected to [ILWU] International President, and I began to read certain articles in the Dispatcher [official ILWU newspaper], I was appalled. I could not believe what I was reading. I didn’t like what was happening at the International level. It wasn’t just because of him, it was things all up and down the coast. Remember in February of 1995, they had a one-day caucus up there [in San Francisco] to straighten up internal problems on the coast, emanating from the International. As a result, they kicked it around too much the first day, it went into a second day, and they didn’t settle anything then. Were you there? Yes. Why did you go? Because I wanted to hear what happened. I didn’t want to hear it second hand. I was that interested. I found out some pretty important stuff. The bottom line for my money is the employers are going around the world, doing a number on labor, in all the foreign ports, that when they get them people beat down to a nub, they’ll come back here and take us on, on the West Coast. They’re already working on it. But when you say “us ”, you don't mean you, do you? I mean ILWU. But they ’ re not coming back for you, you ’ re retired. So how come you ’ re going to these meetings? Somebody’s gotta go. Somebody’s gotta do it. Its a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it [laughs]. But you are retired! I don’t give a damn [laughs]. So what. Don ’ tyou have time now to do your own things, take care o f your own life? Put that work aside? Well I have some of my own life. Like I told them one day in the executive board room, I didn’t devote all my time to the union while I was working and I’m not going to devote all my time when I’m retired. And with that I left for Murphy’s. That’s where my long lost love lives. And after the bulletin, on the 12th, I’ll be leaving for Murphy’s again. Going there balances my life out. But on the other hand, you are still concerned about labor. Oh yes. Because the pension funds have gotten to be too big, too rich. Wall Street wants to get their hooks in it so bad they can taste it. And while our pension plan is pretty much guaranteed, there are no guarantees in this life. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 None whatsoever. Except death and taxes. People like me, people before me that built this union, as far as I’m concerned, its up to us to see that it hangs together. That’ s a big responsibility. What about the people that are in their now? Why don t you just leave the work fo r them to do? The pensioners are the ones that will hold this union together, in the end, before its over with. Mark my word. How? I don’t know. They’ll find a way [laughs]. Who are these pensioners you are talking about? All people who have retired, or a select group o f them? No, it would be a real select group of old timers that are dying off like flies. They were the most militant. They had the hardest job in their day and time of forming this union. And its never left them. They still got it. You understand? Those ideas? What about you? It ain’t left me, I got news for you. Do you have any specific things that haven't left you, specific ideas, philosophies you hold? Lets face it. When people are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, or are being paid to do, its time someone spoke up and straightened them out. That’s where my concern lies. Too many people say, “We retired, we’re out of it, we don’t have anything to do with it.” I guess if that’s the way they want to feel about it, let them. But I got news for you— not me! What do you think the current membership should be doing? Organizing every Tom, Dick and Harry you can find. Everywhere. Organize, organize, organize. It costs money and it takes time. Too many people are not interested anymore. We have the most anti-labor governor we’ve had in years, Governor Wilson. He wants to get rid of the overtime after 8 hours, because he’s playing into the employer’s hands. He’s a big business man. He’s more favorable to big business than labor. Hell, without labor, big business wouldn’t be anything. Of course maybe some day they will have enough robots and machines they won’t need any human beings. On the other hand, who’s going to buy the product? Is a robot going to buy from them to? I don’t think so. I feel like the way things are going, we are not going to last. It won’t be because we’re not trying, it will be because they overwhelm us. When I say “them” I mean the government. They are passing anti-union legislation up there every year. Has been for sometime and its getting worse. And the aim is to crush organized labor, that’s all there is to it. That’s in the back of their mind. They don’t want anything but. They want to go backwards in time at least 100 years. If they deny it, they are lying. Other thinking people will say the same thing, and verify what I am saying. So, in order to prolong it, and maybe stop it, we’ve got to keep fighting. That’s it, the bottom line. And you personally? Yep, that’s right. And everybody else that will go along with me [laughs]. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. R o u n d t a b l e : W h y w e a r e a c t iv e “ Just trying to do our part" 61 Pilar Wright—Why are you all still active? Lou Loveridge-We enjoy doing it. Besides that, once we retire doesn’t mean we give up on looking out for the wages, benefits, pensions, for the pensioners. We are just trying to do our part, that’s all. PW—When do you need a rest? LL— Well [laughs], once we get to where physically we are not able to come down and do this any more [laughs]. I don’t know. We got the same group active all the time. I’ll tell you the truth. You ask Chick here, we all enjoy coming down here and getting together. Chick Dillon— Oh yeah. LL— Lets see, three times a month we’re down here, besides the executive board, the trustees. These kinds of things keeps us going. We enjoy doing it. CD— The newsletters, we send them out to people in other states, then you get a thank you, a phone call from them, they appreciate it. We’re retired, but we’re not retired from getting up at 8:00 in the morning. We’re not retired from the hall, or the business. PW— Why do you belong to the pension club? Joe Grassi— To see each other. Friends. I always go to see people I haven’t seen in years. Ed Thayne— And I want to know what’s going on. PW— What kind o f things do you want to know about? E T - The labor. What kind of things they’re doing up and down the coast and everywhere else. If there is any conflict that comes, our president will pick it up and they have communications up and down the coast, and we all know what’s going on and if someone is trying to break the union or scab— which they are. So we are trying to see what is going on. PW— What about you Leonard? Leonard M iller- Well for the friendship. I’m sorry to say more of my friends are going every month. That dam board [bulletin board listing names of recently deceased members] out there is always got 2 or 3 guys I know. And we are not getting the guys to replace them. We did get a few good ones in. A 1 Perisho has been in about 2 years now— he’s a jewel. PW— What about you Mac? Why do you go? Mac Rabjohn— Some place to go to get away from home [laughter]. I visit longshoremen and retirees in the hospital every week, they’re at Kaiser [hospital]. As a volunteer. PW— How come you are still working with labor, the union? How come you 're R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 not, doing relaxing things? CD— The union comes number one, actually. PW— Still for you? CD— Certainly, without it, we wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t be gettin’ no pension. We would still be working on the docks. We wouldn’t have no job on the docks. PW— But isn'(it the job o f the active members to keep fighting for you? LL— Yeah, but we participate, though. We have a voice, but no vote. We have our meetings, our conventions. We have a lot of influence and input with the active workforce and the International. We just want to do it, keep going, protect what we got. CD— If you need anything from the pensioners, they will be right there for the union— pickets, things like that. PW—You guys show up to the active member’ s strikes? LL— Any time we’re needed, if we know about it. And other unions as well. I’ve been on picket lines for the farm workers in my early days, and the Teamsters, and for the Atomic, Oil and Chemical Workers, anybody who needed support, if they were union people or union brothers, we always tried to support them. Local 13 always has. We also visit our injured and sick people in the hospital, convalescent homes. But we just keep active because we like it, that’s all. PW— How about you guys? Why do you come down here? Zeke Penck— Its our way of contributing to the union cause. The union was so good to us all down through the years. Its a form of volunteering. Leonard Miller— I enjoy seeing some of the guys that I still worked with. ZP— They’re still around. Lm— They’re still around. Mac Rabjohn— I come down for my own personal satisfaction. Having worked and been on the waterfront 53 years, its like, when you come down and see the fellows that are working, it brings you back quite a few years. And I love it. PW— A lot o f the pensioners are not as involved as you guys. LM— No, a lot of them don’t come to the meetings. Of course a lot of them are scattered all over the country. Two guys in Mexico, now. PW—Why do you think your different? Joe Grassi— We’re not. ET— We appreciate what this union done for us and we don’t want to give it up! JG — There’s a lot of guys who I worked with that retired who say I don’t want nothing to do with the hall. They retired they said, I don’t want nothing to do with the waterfront. ET— That’s right, and I’ll name one of them if you wanna hear it-Rod Gomes. He had a ship gang. And his brother was a retired baseball player. A good one, Gene. I met him, he said “Ed, how are things down at the hall?” I said, “Well why don’t you come on down and find out!” He said, “Well what are we going R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 to get on our next contract?” I said “Well why don’t you come down and find out!” That’s why I go to the meetings. To hear what’s going on--the internal affairs. He said, [uses character voice] “I worked with enough of those goddamn bums, I don’t ever want to see them anymore! I don’t want to see them anymore, I’m retired and I got pensioned off!” Well he’s died since then but that was the attitude of him. He was a sour puss. I think if a retiree is living here, he should attend the meetings, do any jobs he is capable of doing, and not expect pay for it. Just go down there as a token of your appreciation for what the union has done for you. If your not living here, say hundreds of miles away, be sure to send your dues in, read the bulletin, and if they need you over here for something, help them out. LM — There’s a lot of guys only interested in what they are going to get out of it. Like what are we going to get out of this contract. They don’t want to put anything in, and they don’t want to go down and learn first hand what’s going on, they got to ask Eddie and me. ET— All they’re interested in is their pension, but we are interested in every thing. LM— We’re interested in keeping our union going as long as I can think of in the future. PW— You want that? LM— I sure as hell want to keep the union going! PW— Why, if you are no longer working? JG — He’s still part of it! LM— Because, I hate to see the day when we don’t have any unions in this country. ET— They made this for us. PW— So its not just about getting money. ET— No. Its love- its brotherly love and friendship o f your friends. I’m proud of all these fellows that went out on the strike with me and are working with me. And I like to see them. I like to see that they’re doing right. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 :: W O R D S O F WISDOM “ All for one and one for all. That's unionism. U n i o n p h i l o s o p h y Pilar W right- What is the philosophy o f the union? Leonard Miller— Solidarity. Stick together. Respect other unions. For years we used to, when we were short of men we would bring in guys that were striking under other unions, and take care of them. That’s why we have a pretty good standing with all other unions. Like in ‘34 they ended up with a general strike because of what we started. The whole city of San Francisco was shut down. Ray Singer— There’s an old slogan: all for one and one for all. That’s unionism. PW— What does “ an injury to one is an injury ” to all mean? L M - It means if one guy gets the bad end of a decision by the employers, we all hurt at the same time. Ed Thayne— The brotherhood, the friendship, is one of the greatest things on earth, I believe. I love it. I love to come down here, see you fellows. Lou Loveridge— I can say this, as far as I’m concerned, all my life I’ve been of the opinion, a lot of people don’t understand unions. They think unions is just taking money off of the worker, and that unions are corrupt. That’s not the case. Any union at all is better than no union whatsoever. And I continue to tell people this: as an individual, talking to an employer, you have no strength, no power whatsoever. Unless you have some guarantee contract, and some people that represent you at LRC [Labor Relations Committee] meetings, and negotiations and a contract, your dead. An individual does not have the power like a group does, like us up and down the whole coast— everybody together. A lot of people just don’t understand. And I’ll say this, I’ve told the younger people this: the most democratic, most honest, true union that I know in this world is the ILWU. I know I’m a little prejudice [laughs]. ET— Believing in the union is the big thing with me. Because I wouldn’t have had a thing if I hadn’t of belonged to that union. If I would have stayed down on the waterfront and let the employer run it for me, I wouldn’t have had a thing. I have my glasses, my teeth, my hearing aids. I have my doctor bills paid... R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 U n i o n T o d a y : c o n t a c t = c o m r a d e r i e = d e m o c r a c y Pilar Wright— How do you see the union today? Joe Grassi— With all the people going steady for companies, a lot of longies don’t know each other. When we worked, we worked out of the dispatch hall. Everybody gets to know each other, you know, you see these guys one time or another. You work the ships all the time. PW— How does that affect the union? Leonard Miller— The comraderie is gone. Before mechanization you had a lot of guys that got to know each other, because you were getting different men out of the hall working at different companies, which you still do in a way. But it was a lot more closeness of the individual persons because even if you weren’t in a gang, you were in the hall, and you were dealing with these guys, talking to ‘em in the hall there. Everyday, almost all the time you were working with different guys. You got to know them, buddied around with them. The comraderie we had then is completely lacking now. Now days, you don’t have the same guys you’re working with or getting to know like we did. Like when I was on the hold board [used to dispatch jobs related to unloading the hold of a ship], I’d say I knew 3/4 of the guys on the day hold board. I’d worked with them some time or another. But now, a guy goes out driving a UTR [semi-tractor trailer] and he would be lucky if he knows the guy ahead of him or behind him. He might know the clerk, and the signal man. PW—What does that mean— for the men to know each other? LM— It gets your union solid, because your talking about a lot of things on issues and beefs, and your learning a little bit more. Whereas when you’re an individual and you’re out there driving a UTR, you’re not talking or discussing things. During the work period, maybe before you go on the job or after you finish up, but you just don’t have the communication anymore between people. PW— What were some o f the things you were talking about? LM~We were talking about, well a lot about somebody getting hurt. That was quite frequent, I think even more when we were having bulk cargo than now. Usually when someone gets hurt now-a-days, its not hurt, you get killed right away. But we had a lot of guys with broken legs, I was one that broke a leg, broke a toe, had back injuries. But we talked about injuries, we talked about beefs on the job. We compared bosses sometimes, one was a-well I don’t want to say it— and the other was a pretty good guy to work for. Ray Singer— And now they are trying to do the union elections by mail. But when you are balloting by mail, you are automatically keeping the union man away from his union hall. It’s the same thing as dues check-off. I was against that, because you don’t have to come down to the hall to pay your dues, the employer takes it out of his check. PW— What does coming down to the hall mean? RS-Well, the less contact you have with your hall, the less contact you have R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 with your union. PW— And what happens then? RS— You can’t get things done. No quorum at the meetings. This has been going on for years. They have to have stop work meetings in order to conduct meetings. And they either come, or they pay. They pay a non-attendance ftne- which is nothing. As far as I’m concerned it ought to be $50 or $100 for every non-attendance fine. But it will never happen because the membership will not vote themselves a fine like that. LM— Its true, they can’t get guys to go to meetings. PW— Why did you guys go to the meetings? LM-- Well for one, the ten dollars hurt in those days [laughter]. But we wanted to know what was going on. There were a lot of issues that were very important. We had a lot of good arguments there in that Local 13 hall. ET— That’s right. LM— And a lot of good speakers and intelligent guys. Joe Grassi— Maybe you never heard of him, but they had a president named Bill Lawrence. They called him the “Man with the Silver Tongue.” When the meeting got out of hand, he would get up there and talk. He had a strong voice, everyone would listen and he would straighten everything out. Lou Loveridge— And I’ve seen it so many times, even with the leadership of this union, Harry Bridges, some of the other guys that would come to the meetings, they would be booed when they came here. But by the time they left they building, there was applause for them. Rank and file members can get up and criticize and voice their opinion and differences of what the leadership had done, but that didn’t kick them out of the union, no penalties to them. They had a right to speak. That’s the way I’ve always been. And as far as I’m concerned, when I was president of the local, the executive board and the ranks, if they didn’t like something I was doing, they wanted to voice their opinion, that was their right and I’ve always believed in that. Its a team effort in my opinion. We are all brothers as far as I’m concerned. When I went to the coastwide conventions when I was an active member, I met some wonderful people. And where they had problems and we had problems, we met and ironed them out together. Unity and solidarity all the way. We worked as a team. That’s why we were pretty successful I believe. JG— Today they’re not interested in union. All they are interested in is working. ET— Just a paycheck. LM— The other day we were coming out of the executive board meeting and they were just indoctrinating a new group of guys into the union. I was standing over there and I heard two guys walking out of their indoctrination class and one guy said, “God damn it, now we got to go to meetings and pay dues.” And I thought, boy, what kind of people are we getting into the union. We are not getting union people! ET— And everyone makes their own deal. The company loves to make deals R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 with the crane operators and the people that are working there. They love that. And its the phoney superintendent that they hire that do it. And they were men that came in and worked up from the ground rules, and get in there, “now that I’m a boss,” they figure they are 50% or 100% higher than the average man. To me, making a foreman out of you don’t make you a damn bit better then the man that you’re working partners with. Now that’s my opinion. I’m no better than anyone I worked with. O u r G r e e d , T h e i r G r e e d Pilar Wright— What do you think o f the new workers today? Leonard Miller— I’m afraid they’re like the employers. They are getting too damn greedy. One of my pet peeves is doubling up. Its when you’ve worked a night shift and go back on the day shift, you know your job’s been pretty easy and your not working all night. They couldn’t have done that when we were working in the hole [hold of the ship]. When you went home after, well nine hours when I first started, when you worked the day, loading up cotton, discharging rubber, or handling bananas, after eight hours, you were ready to go home. Joe Grassi— You couldn’t work two shifts then anyways. LM— Yeah, that was a rule then. They wouldn’t let you. If you worked the day shift, you couldn’t work the night shift, if you didn’t get out. PW— What are these guys thinking? LM -They’re trying to all be millionaires. JG — Do you like to work double shifts? P W - No. JG — Alright. Ed Thayne— Don’t do it. Don’t ever do it. One shift, [kisses hand and waves it in a “good-bye” gesture], let the other person take it. Leonard M iller- If we didn’t double up, we could get more guys in, book members, paying dues, have more strength. You double up, you’re leaving one guy without a job. Its a mistake their making. If we are running short of men on the job, hire some more. PW— Why should you care? JG— Don’t you like to see people working? You don’t like to see unemployed people. The more working, the more you’re helping the economy and everything else. E T - Its your job too! PW— But if you have a job. why do you care i f someone else does? J G - Why not? ET— They’re your brother. LM— Next time, he’ll take care of you. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 ET— They’re brothers. I call us all brothers, we’re all brother union men. That’s my opinion. We are all brothers! Under the skin! PW— How do you feel about the future o f the union? LM— I’m a little bit concerned about this coming contract [1999]. I think the companies are making a lot of money and I don’t think they are going to be too, uh, I think Miniaci [CEO of employer’s Pacific Maritime Association (PMA)] is tough, he broke unions back East, and now he’s after us. He’s already calling us thugs, and we do have some thugs, everybody’s got their bad apples and we got our share too. But I am worried, but I still think in a way, we are going to maintain. Actually its kind of 50/50 right now that we’re going to have a strike. I think the guys now, our greed and their greed are going to clash. And our greed might not want to go on strike either. Some of these guys are making $100,000 a year. You think they want to give up on that? And the ship owners and the PMA are making millions of dollars a year. Its kind of hard to kill a golden goose and a strike would probably have a lot to do with that. Lou Loveridge— Now on the other hand, I honestly believe those people that have come in this industry in the last 20 years, through the casual hall, that they understand the value of what they’ve got on the waterfront. I believe these people, although they are not involved with the union, and they don’t understand the history and the background of the union, I really believe they understand the value of this union and of their job. I’m confidant that if there are any problems in the up coming negotiations, all those new people will be right there. They will respect the picket lines and they will be there to support the union and protect their job. As common sense would tell me that a worker that’s on the waterfront today that’s making good wages and benefits that he didn’t have before, that if there’s a challenge to it, he’s going to want to support his job and his union. I honestly believe that. LM— We’re trying our best to train the kids. I know my grandson is indoctrinated pretty well, but he says, “I sure liked the union in 1984 a lot better than I do now. It was just the personnel involved.” I said, “Well, Ricky, its got down to greed.” That is the thing that is going to kill us, is going to kill a lot of things in this country is the word greed. The company is making plenty of money and they’re still laying off people. One of the most disgusting sights I ever saw is the day after the telephone company laid off20,000 people, and I watched the stock market at the end of the day, and boy, everybody was just happy as hell because the stock market gone up, basically because people were laid off. I said boy if that isn’t a sight to see. I don’t know, and going overseas to make stuff that our people are too expensive to hire-its all about greed. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 69 C o n c l u s i o n “If you can make improvements, make them! But don 7 loose any o f the good things we have! ” R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. C o n c l u s i o n 70 The past four years I have spent with the pensioners have been very educational for me. I have learned much about an age group that at one time was pretty much faceless. The retirees introduced me to a time in life that no one around me had ever talked about. Turning 40 was the “big” age of discussion I frequently overheard, but never anything about being 80 or 95 years old. In addition to longevity having a more common presence in my life, I was most impressed by seeing what it is possible to accomplish in one’s “later years.” But all of these revelations were only side notes to the more important education these retirees gave me. Having grown up in the 1980s, dominated by Republican administrations hostile to the average working person, I learned that the American dream was about doing it yourself, rising above the rest and trying to achieve the most dollar profit possible. My father had always tried to teach me about the abuses of government and big business against people with less resources, and how to fight against their wrong doings through social activism and unity. No matter how much he insisted on my participation in actions demanding social justice, it took leaving home and returning to leam my father’s message. What did I leam? The power of solidarity. It was not a message that was told to me, or one that I read in a book. Instead it was shown to me through example, and directly from the source. The education I have gained from these pensioners has come from their direct experience in life. No others have first hand knowledge of what work is R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 like without having organized bargaining power. It takes direct personal experiences to know the benefits that conies from having control of one’s own labor and in turn, a dignity and self-respect that cannot be bought. The pensioners know what it is like to have nothing, and they know what it is like to have a union. They also know the struggles involved to keep what they have gained. This knowledge must be passed on to future generations, and as was the case for me, learning from example is very effective. There is no better example than from those who have fully incorporated the ideals of solidarity into the totality of their lives. I have tried in this document to provide a slice of these experiences and lessons in the pensioners’ own words. There remains to be discussed a final question I raised in the beginning of my research: why are the pensioners so active? This has been dealt with throughout this paper. Most obviously, it is because of their life experiences. Having grown up in a difficult time nationwide, the men learned at an early age the lessons of unity from their families and communities. Their experiences with union organizing brought these earlier lessons to maturity, as they bonded with others in a similar situation and fought battles to rise to a decent, respectable living standard all could share. As with soldiers in war, such bonds are long lasting. The pensioners show a similar phenomenon by staying close to those with whom they fought in battle, side-by-side. The pensioners have also stayed close to the philosophies that guided them through their battles. Following this logic, it is understandable why they would continue to stick to such a way of life. However, I do not think that the impact of battle— one’s allies and the beliefs that carried them through the wars-alone explains why they R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 continue their activism. It is important to see that the particular belief they followed is more the reason for their commitment than solely their experiences with that belief. The pensioners truly understand that solidarity is an all encompassing philosophy with the power to guide individuals collectively through all of life’s hurdles. They follow this philosophy religiously, and to some, it is on the same level as religion. Today, there are constant threats that attack the average working person worldwide— downsizing, relocating, and inhumane Third World labor practices. Dockworkers across the world, in Mexico, England, and Australia, most recently, find themselves replaced by machines, their unions destroyed, and when they protest, they are “locked out” from all employment. In the ‘20s this was known as being black balled. A full circle. Maybe the pensioners see more reason now then ever to stay involved for as long as they are physically able. They feel they must fight to keep what they built, and hope that the new generation will follow suit. Although much of what I learned from the pensioners might not be easily transferable to my generation and those in the future, it is important to see the merit in their experiences, actions, and values. I believe we can and must carry them on into the future. As this thesis goes to print, four voices presented here have passed on: Pete Grassi, his younger brother Joe Grassi, Art Kaunisto and Ray Singer. But on a note of optimism, Ed Thayne just turned 95 this summer and the ILWU sang “Happy Birthday” to him at their annual Bloody Thursday picnic. With tears in his eyes I had rarely seen, he thanked everyone and told the members that they must hold on to the things they have and keep fighting the battle. A young longshoreman came up to Ed afterwards and told R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 him that what he said had really affected him, and tears came to both of their eyes. This is the image with which I conclude my words. F i n a l A d v i c e Pilar Wright— What advice would you have for the workers today? Leonard Miller— I’d say quit being so greedy and do the job. And don’t let the narcotics and the booze interfere with your ability to work right, and safely. Ed Thayne— We had a rule in there once that said, '‘safety supersedes everything.” We had men that would go aboard before they had safety nets under them and say, “Come on,” superintendent would say, “Ah, come on, you don’t need safety nets. Come on aboard the ship and work!” Remember? A lot of people got killed going onto the ships. LM— I saw the gang-ways collapse. E T - That’s right. I may be wrong but the employers don’t like having to pay me to get my teeth fixed. They don’t like buying me glasses. They don’t like paying me a pension. They weren’t happy. They would do anything underhandedly to get control of the waterfront without unions. And I believe that is one of the things they are working for very hard. And I’m afraid. I hope we have enough strong, real men with jobs that they will prevent it. That they will stick together. They need to keep all those improvements that we got through the perseverance of Harry Bridges and our union brothers in mind. And never loose sight of the fact that we got them for you! And keep them! And if you can make any improvements, make them! But don’t loose any of the good things we have. Lou Loveridge— My advice to them is to attend their meetings, do their jobs, keep their noses clean on the job. I’ve always believed, as a working man, you do your job, get paid for what you do. You take care of your job. I’ve always believed that. When you go to negotiate a contract and you get paid wages and benefits, its your responsibility to perform your job. I never did shirk. When I had a job to do, I did it. ET— Pete [Grassi] and I went down there a few times and told [the newer workers] about the benefits of the union. And don’t lose site of Harry Bridges and this union, whatever you do. Stick with it, whatever you do. And don’t do what some outsider or superintendent says. Pay no attention to what they say, just do what you think is right, and follow your leader and live up to the old book of rules that we have. And I think right today, they should have a book of rules for every man that comes in this union. But I’m not running it now. I’m a has-been. I believe that now. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 A rt Kaunisto— My advice to the new guys would be to say: “Do you believe in the union? Do you believe in it?!! Would you fight for it?! If you don’t want to fight for it, leave now! Either believe in it or get out!” Anything else? PW— No, that sums it up pretty good. Well, thank you all very much. ET— Well, its been nice to be with you. I appreciate it because there aren’t many people that will listen to what I say. LM— Did we finish it off? I didn’t know I could talk that much! I didn’t do any bragging did I? Erase it if I bragged about anything! Oh, no, I don’t think I bragged about too much. Joe Grassi— Are you going to splice this up and cut a lot of stuff out? LM— Oh, naturally. JG — Please do. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. B i b l i o g r a p h y 75 Applebaum, Herbert, ed. 1984. Work in Market and Industrial Societies. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bernstein, Irving. 1970. The Turbulent Years: A History o f the American Worker 1933-1941. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation o f Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press. Brody, David. 1980. Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle. New York: Oxford University Press. DiFazio, William. 1985. Longshoremen: Community and Resistance on the Brooklyn Waterfront. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey Publishers, Inc. Edwards, Richard. 1979. Contested Terrain: The Transformation o f the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Green, Archie. 1993. Wobblies, Pile Butts and Other Heros: Labor Explorations. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1996. Calfs Head and Union Tale: Labor Yarns at Work and Play. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kimeldorf, Howard Alex. 1988. Reds or Rackets? The Making o f Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront. Berkeley: University of California Press. Larrowe, Charles. 1977. Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall o f a Labor Leader. New York: L. Hill. Markholt, Ottilie. 1998. Maritime Solidarity: Pacific Coast Unionism 1929-1938. Tacoma, Washington: Pacific Coast Maritime History Committee. Myerhoff, Barbara. 1978. Number Our Days. New York: E. P. Dutton. Nelson, Bruce. 1988. Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Pacific Coast Pensioners Association Brochure September 6,1992 R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 Pilcher, William W. 1972. The Portland Longshoremen: A Dispersed Urban Community. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Southern California Pensioner’s Newsletter, Wilmington, California. 1988-1997. Wellman, David. 1995. The Union Makes Us Strong: Radical Unionism on the San Francisco Waterfront. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. Quin, Mike. 1949. The Big Strike. Olema, California: Olema Publishing Company. R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Wright, Pilar Angela (author)

Core Title Solidarity forever! The lives of retired longshoremen

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Visual Anthropology

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag anthropology, cultural,Gerontology,OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, individual and family studies,sociology, industrial and labor relations

Language English

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-32192

Unique identifier UC11342309

Identifier 1397646.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-32192 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1397646.pdf

Dmrecord 32192

Document Type Thesis

Rights Wright, Pilar Angela

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA