A dockworker is a waterfront manual laborer who loads and unloads ships.
Harry Bridges was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several chapters in forming a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), expanding members to workers in warehouses, and led it for the next 40 years. He was prosecuted for his labor organizing and designated as subversive by the U.S. government during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with the goal of deportation. This was never achieved.
The 1934 West Coast waterfront strike lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike, which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.
Gerald Grattan McGeer was a lawyer, populist politician, and monetary reform advocate in the Canadian province of British Columbia. He served as the 22nd Mayor of Vancouver, a Member of the Legislative Assembly in BC, Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party of Canada, and in the Canadian Senate.
The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) is a North American labor union representing longshore workers along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the Gulf Coast, the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and inland waterways; on the West Coast, the dominant union is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The ILA has approximately 200 local affiliates in port cities in these areas.
The Port of Vancouver was a port located in and round Vancouver. It was the largest port in Canada, the largest in the Pacific Northwest, and the largest port on the West Coast of North America by metric tons of total cargo, with 76.5 million metric tons. The port amalgamated with the Fraser River Port Authority and the North Fraser Port Authority in 2008 to form Port Metro Vancouver, which has now adopted the Port of Vancouver name.
Major-General William Wasbrough Foster, CMG, DSO, VD was a noted mountaineer, Conservative Party politician, businessman, and chief constable in British Columbia, Canada, in addition to his distinguished military career. Foster was elected to the BC Legislature in a 1913 byelection. He was defeated for re-election in the 1916, 1924, and 1933 provincial elections.
Relief Camp Workers' Union was a Canadian Great Depression era relief union in which the workers employed in the Canadian government relief camps organized themselves into in the early 1930s. The RCWU was established by the Workers' Unity League and was associated with the Communist Party of Canada. The creation of the union was a direct response to the conditions of the camps and the lack of financial compensation for the work the men provided. The union is best known for helping to organize the On-to-Ottawa Trek during the Great Depression.
The British Columbia Maritime Employers Association is an association representing the interests of member companies in industrial relations on Vancouver's and other British Columbian seaports.
The Vancouver and District Waterfront Association was the union for longshoremen working on Vancouver's waterfront between 1923 and 1935. It was established as a company union by the Shipping Federation of British Columbia after it defeated a strike and broke the local of the International Longshoremen's Association that previously represented the longshoremen.
Bloody Sunday was the conclusion of a month-long "sitdowners' strike" by unemployed men at the main post office in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was Depression-era Vancouver's final violent clash between unemployed protesters and police that provoked widespread criticism of police brutality.
The Waterfront Workers History Project is a program of the University of Washington, which serves to document the history of workers and unions active on the ports, inland waterways, fisheries, canneries, and other waterfront industries of the western United States and Canada, specifically, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia. In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights History Projects, and sponsored by the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, the Project is a collective effort to organize and present historical data covering significant events from 1894 to the current day.
The Mechanization and Modernization (M&M) Agreement of 1960 was an agreement reached by California longshoremen unions: International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), and the Pacific Maritime Association. This agreement applied to workers on the Pacific Coast of the United States, the West Coast of Canada, and Hawaii. The original agreement was contracted for five years and would be in effect until July 1, 1966.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada; on the East Coast, the dominant union is the International Longshoremen's Association. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013.
On July 1, 1971, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) walked out against their employers, represented by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA). The union's goal was to secure employment, wages, and benefits in the face of increased mechanization, shrinking workforce, and the slowing economic climate of the early 1970s. The strike shut down all 56 West coast ports, including those in Canada, and lasted 130 days, the longest strike in the ILWU's history.
The Longshore Strike 1948 was an industrial dispute which took place in 1948 on the west coast of the United States. President of the ILWU at the time was Harry Bridges. The WEA led by Frank P. Foisie were in a conflict, they were unable to come to agreeable terms and with the issues of hiring and the politics of union leadership, longshoremen and marine unions performed a walk out on September 2, 1948.
The strike shut down the United States’ West Coast ports and put a dent in American labor history and a positive change for future longshoremen.
The Portland Waterfront strike of 1922 was a labor strike conducted by the International Longshoremen's Association which took place in Portland, Oregon from late April to late June 1922. The strike was ineffective at closing down the Port of Portland due to strikebreakers, and on June 22 the strike ended with the employers dictating terms.
In the late 1870s, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh communities on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet experienced an increase of physical and economic encroachment from the expansion of neighbouring Vancouver. Faced with urbanization and industrialization around reserve lands, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh traditional economies became increasingly marginalized, while government-imposed laws increasingly restricted Native fishing, hunting, and access to land and waters for subsistence. In response, these communities increasingly turned to participating in the wage-labor economy.
The 1935 Gulf Coast longshoremen's strike was a labor action of the International Longshoremen's Association. Lasting for about ten weeks from October 1, 1935 to mid-December on the Gulf Coast of the United States, the strike was marked by significant violence.
The Portland Longshoremans Benevolent Society was a trade union and benevolent society in Portland, Maine, United States. It existed as an independent organization from its founding in 1880 until it affiliated with the International Longshoremen's Association in 1914. Incorporated in 1880, it was composed of primarily Irish and Irish-American dockworkers who loaded and unloaded ships in the Portland waterfront. The early peak of PLSBS membership occurred in 1899 when the union had 868 members. By 1910, declines in the amount of Canadian grain exported through the port meant decreased membership, which hit 425. Having been defeated in two major strikes, the PLSBS affiliated with the International Longshoremen's Association in early 1914. Similar independent unions had recently joined the ILA in Boston and elsewhere.
