Longshoremen Strike Research Paper

Nicholas Valdez
HST 345
12/1/15
The Longshoremen Strike
All the labor history that was covered in History 345 was all surrounding the East Coast. Large labor strikes plagued the 1880’s up to World War II most of them that I knew were on the East Coast. For my blog topic, I wanted to focus on a labor strike that didn’t surround the East coast and start my focus on the West coast. A strike that struck a lot of foci was during the 1930’s that were the Longshoremen Strike.
Prior to The Longshoremen were seen as the low class and were even called Wharf rats. Even though most people were out of jobs in the 1930’s the wharf had a large influx of workers coming to work at the docks every morning. The owners of the ships were just going to the

This strike consisted of the longshoremen who are the people who work the docks who load and unload ships versus the Shipowners. The Longshoremen wanted better working-conditions, better hours, the recognition of their Union. Things that the National recovery Act was trying to provide. The National recovery act was a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal that tried to provide economic assistance to the people by cutting the length of workdays, and would get rid of unsafe work practices. With the passaging of this legislation, the workers had the right to gather representatives bargain with their bosses.
The Loading and Unloading of cargo from ships were important, considering the cities in which strike took place. The General strike took place in cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Oakland, and Seattle. In cities hit hard from the strike Such as San Francisco because it’s a waterfront city. It wasn’t just the dockworkers, but the seamen, the engineers as well as other unions that helped back them. The strike reached 35,000 people participating in the strike. The strike spread across the west coast from the top to the