Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
The bloody shirt
“THIS BLOOD is on your hands, Joe!”
That exclamation was shouted at Portland Mayor Joe Carson by strike leader
Matt Meehan as he threw a blood-soaked shirt on Carson’s desk at City Hall on
July 11,1934.
The shirt belonged to one of four striking longshoremen who were wounded
that day by the police in a fusillade of gunfire at Terminal 4 in North Portland.
THE STRIKE on Portland’s docks was part of a waterfront walkout at West
Coast Ports in July 1934. The number of workers involved is reported in a recent
two-page feature on California labor history in the Los Angeles Firefighter. The
award-winning union newspaper said: “In 1934, 15,000 longshoremen along the
West Coast struck when the owners refused to recognize their union or negotiate
a contract.
“Soon, some 6,000 members of the seafaring unions joined the strike.”
Portland unionists held Mayor Carson responsible for the police chief order-
ing his men to shoot at the strikers. Carson was acting at the behest of waterfront
employers and other business leaders who were determined to keep the Portland
longshoremen from unionizing under the banner of the International Longshore
Association, which represented stevedores at ports on the East Coast. In the af-
termath of the bloodshed at Terminal 4, the police chief was fired and Carson
failed to achieve his ambition to occupy the governor’s chair in the state Capitol
in Salem. The wounding of strikers in Portland occurred on Wednesday, July 11,
a day that was sometimes called “Bloody Wednesday.” It followed by six days the
killings of two strikers and the wounding of 109 strikers in a battle with police
and strikebreakers in San Francisco on Thursday, July 5, a day that became
known as “Bloody Thursday” and also “Bloody July 5.”
MATT MEEHAN was 37 years old when he confronted the mayor but had
already been a workingman for 23 years. He had started working at age 14 in a
textile mill in his native state of Rhode Island. At age 18 he ran away to sea as a
member of the Sailors Union. He traveled the world in the Merchant Marine un-
til 1928 when his ship docked on the Columbia River at Portland. Looking at the
Rose City, he decided to leave the sea for a job on the docks, where he became a
stevedore — a longshoreman.
In its account of the 1934 dock strike, The Los Angeles Firefighter reported
that after Bloody Thursday, the California governor sent in the National Guard.
“Soon, 25,000 workers participated in a silent funeral march up Market Street.
This display of solidarity led to a four-day general strike that involved over
100,000 workers, with the endorsement of 63 unions,” the union newspaper re-
ported.
WITHIN DAYS of the Terminal 4 shootings, Democratic President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt sent U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-NY) to Portland to as-
sess the situation. However, the auto Wagner was riding in was fired upon, but he
was not hit. In his book, The Portland Red Guide, historian Michael Munk said:
“Although the incident was presumed a mistake, this time the fault was in the
hands of the special police.” Sen. Wagner was a leader in the enactment by Con-
gress of pro-worker and pro-union legislation in the 1930s.
Munk said that after Wagner was here, “The strike ended in victory for the
longshoremen a few days later and led to the formation of today’s ILWU.”
THE INTERNATIONAL Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union —
to represent Pacific Coast workers — was formed in a 1937 convention in Ab-
erdeen, Washington.
Harry Bridges of San Francisco sparked the formation of ILWU and served as
its president until retiring in 1997 at age 76. Bridges had led the San Francisco
local out of the ILA, based in New York, because its leadership opposed the 1934
strike at Pacific Coast ports. When the ILWU was formally organized at the Ab-
erdeen convention, Matt Meehan was elected as its first secretary-treasurer.
Within a short time, Bridges led the ILWU out of the American Federation of La-
bor and into the newly-formed Congress of Industrial Organizations. More re-
Maintenance workers ratify new pact
with Portland Schools by one vote
By a vote of 40 to 39, maintenance
and construction workers on Aug. 29
ratified a new four-year contract at
Portland Public Schools.
The unit of roughly 100 trades
workers from more than a dozen dif-
ferent unions bargain jointly as the
District Council of Unions (DCU).
The maintenance and construction
crew had been working under a man-
agement-implemented contract since
June 11. That contract contained no
wage increases and higher out-of-
pocket health insurance costs; it elimi-
nated retiree health insurance alto-
gether, stripped workers of two
holidays, and it had no expiration date.
In April, DCU members rejected
the district’s implemented proposal by
a margin of 80 percent, and by a simi-
lar margin authorized a strike — the
first such authorization in DCU his-
tory. After a failed attempt at media-
tion and a 30-day “cooling off” period,
the district implemented its own terms.
As union officials pondered their
next step, some of the workers at-
tended a July 9 school board meeting
to let school officials know what was
b h
m k
happening.
“We got some help from some
school board members to break
through this mess,” said Jerry Moss,
chief spokesman for the DCU and a
business rep for Plumbers and Fitters
Local 290. “The school board pushed
the district to talk to us and to come up
with something reasonable,” he said.
Before the implemented contract,
DCU members were working under a
contract that expired Jan. 1, 2006. That
contract had also been unilaterally im-
plemented by the school district and
contained no wage increases.
“Our people haven’t had a raise in a
long, long time,” Moss said.
Following the contract implementa-
tion June 11, Moss said discussions
were held “off line.” The two sides
came up with a package that members
narrowly accepted. Had they rejected
the contract, a 10-day notice to strike
would have moved forward.
The four-year contract provides all
DCU members a lump-sum payment
of $1,000 in October 2007 and an-
other check for $1,120 in January
2008.
Bennett Hartman
Morris & Kaplan, llp
Attorneys at Law
Oregon’s Full Service Union Law Firm
Representing Workers Since 1960
Serious Injury and Death Cases
• Construction Injuries
• Automobile Accidents
• Medical, Dental, and Legal Malpractice
• Bicycle and Motorcycle Accidents
• Pedestrian Accidents
• Premises Liability (injuries on premises)
• Workers’ Compensation Injuries
• Social Security Claims
Wages will increase 1 percent in
January 2009 and 2 percent in January
2010. Pay scales range from $18 to
about $30 an hour, depending on the
craft.
Employer-paid health insurance
premiums will be capped at $779 a
month, which means that out-of-
pocket costs could increase, depending
on which health plan a worker
chooses. The previous cap was $764.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day was
added as a holiday.
The biggest takeaway, Moss said,
was elimination of the employer-paid
retiree health insurance plan. That will
sunset on June 30, 2014.
DCU members with 15 years’ serv-
ice can retire at age 60 and be covered
under the school district’s health insur-
ance plan for five years — or until they
become eligible for Medicare.
Moss estimates that one-third of the
maintenance crew will retire in the
next two years. A skilled workforce
that once numbered 400 to 500 mem-
bers, it’s now a skeleton crew em-
ployed primarily to do emergency re-
pairs.
The DCU is comprised of Plumb-
ers and Fitters Local 290, Teamsters,
Machinists District Lodge 24, Sheet
Metal Workers Local 16, Electrical
Workers Local 48, Glaziers Local 740.
Laborers Local 296, Cement Masons
Local 555, Bricklayers Local 1,
Painters Local 10, Floor Coverers Lo-
cal 1236, Roofers Local 49, Plasterers
Local 82 and Carpenters.
Two unions that used to belong to
the DCU left last year and are bargain-
ing separately. Amalgamated Transit
Union Local 757, which represents
about 85 school bus drivers, says the
school district is dragging its feet with
them. A sub-group of members of the
Portland Federation of Teachers and
Classified Employees Local 111 repre-
senting campus monitors, occupational
and physical therapists and community
agents, was transferred into the main
PFTCE contract, which at presstime
appeared to be headed for mediation.
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
SEPTEMBER 21, 2007