© 2009 Baric Media Entertainment, Redtail Media, KOCE-TV Foundation
THE STORY OF BLOODY THURSDAY (continued)
In 1933, newly elected president Franklin Roosevelt signed a law called the National Recovery Act. One of the amendments of the law gave workers the right to organize and join a union of their choosing. And so later that year, when four workers were fired for wearing union buttons, the longshoremen protested and won an arbitration hearing. This paved the way for the men to leave the Blue Book Union and join the ILA, an East Coast dockworkers union. However the ILA didn’t exactly turn out to be a bed of roses either. “Even though Bridges knew that being in the ILA was better than no union, he understood their limitations. They called the ILA head Joe Ryan ‘Judas Joe’ because he was always selling out,” stated Arian.
ILA president Joe Ryan and Bill Lewis, his appointee to head the West Coast, were consistently reaching agreements with the employers without consulting the membership first and then returning empty handed when the rank and file would reject the deal. Vrana explained, “There were West Coast traditions that were democratic and opposed bureaucratic control. The local union affairs were being dictated by Ryan from New York. It was very top down and not rank and file driven.”
Ryan constantly had to wipe egg off his face because the deals he swore had been made on behalf of the men -- were then rejected by the men. This dynamic provided ammunition to the media who were only too happy to brand the dockworkers as radicals and communists that didn’t want an agreement with the ship owners. Fearful of unionization efforts at their own papers, major publishers tripped over themselves to see who could slam the longshoremen the hardest. Red baiting was the favorite tactic of the day with banner headlines screaming things about Soviets on the waterfront.
“There were communists and radicals that played a role,” acknowledged Arian, “but nine out of ten people in the union weren’t affiliated with them. Around the nation everyone thought the communists were taking over, which was never true.” “They would just slam them,” added Perisho. It was never about the conditions the guys faced on the waterfront. It was just, ‘they’re a bunch of radicals,’ never about the conditions.”
As the longshoremen entered into their strike, they were faced with a seemingly insurmountable foe. Vrana explained, “The ship owners played a big role in city politics and they used all of their political capital during the strike. The men were going up against an array of political power, police, industrial associations, and the media.”
On May 9, 1934 the dockworkers went on strike up and down the West Coast. In the Los Angeles Harbor ship owners were quick to hire strikebreakers, called scabs or finks by the union men. “There was great concern regarding the strikebreakers. The men thought these guys are taking food from us,” said Schwartz. “We’d see a group of finks heading down here and we’d head them off and talk to them like brothers. We’d say, ‘please don’t go down there and try to take our jobs because we need these jobs,’” stated Thayne, but he also acknowledged the men’s readiness to fight if the pleading didn’t work. “A few had to have some work done on them and we had the men that could do it.”
