Public Employee Press

Book Video
The huge 1934 strike that shut down San Francisco

In 1934 San Francisco dockworkers had it so bad that they were called wharf rats. Pay was abysmal, hours long, loads heavy and accidents just waiting to happen for those who could pay off a supervisor to get a day's work. If you talked union you were blacklisted on all Pacific Coast docks. But all that changed after the general strike of 1934.

The video "Bloody Thursday" uses actors and archival film footage to show us the coast-wide dockworkers' strike led by Australian immigrant worker Harry Bridges, who recognized the need to unite black and white workers.

Port bosses called in scabs and police, who used guns and tear gas against the strikers' rocks and clubs.

When two workers were shot in the back and killed July 5, "Bloody Thursday," mourners formed a silent procession of 15,000 longshore workers and 50,000 supporters.

The governor called in the National Guard, which set up machine gun nests, but, 64 other unions started sympathy walkouts, creating a general strike that shut down the city. Only then did the employers relent and sign a contract providing decent wages and working conditions and ceding control over hiring to the union, which became the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Three victorious massive strikes in 1934 gave a tremendous boost to the labor movement and laid the groundwork for the sit-down strikes of 1936-37.

General strikes in this country go back to the1886 nationwide strike for the 8-hour day and blossomed in the post-World War II strike wave, but they virtually disappeared after the passage of the repressive Taft Hartley Act in 1947. They were all but forgotten until Occupy Wall Street began talking up the idea last year.

"Bloody Thursday" and other materials on general strikes are available for loan at the Education Fund Library in Room 211 at DC 37.

—Ken Nash