On May 9, 1934, the International Labor Association (ILA) called a strike by the longshoremen at all the ports along the West Coast. From Seattle to San Diego goods were not to be unloaded by longshoremen. A few days later the seamen joined the strike. Additionally, the teamsters refused to handle struck goods--anything unloaded by scab labor.
In San Francisco the employers' organization, the Industrial Assocation (IA), hired scabs to unload ships. They were housed on barges or in fenced housing complexes. The strikebreakers were escorted to and from work by local police.
On July 3, several fights broke out between strikers and police and scabs. However, a few trucks were able to make it through the picket lines.
July 4, no goods were moved and the holiday passed quietly.
July 5, the IA attempted to open the port further. That morning, police fired tear gas into the strikers and made an assault on the picket line. Strikers threw the canisters back at police and held the lines.
In the afternoon, picketers surrounded a police car prompting officers to fire shotguns into the air and fire their revolvers into the crowd. A striking sailor, Nicholas Bordois, and strike sympathizer, Howard Sperry, were killed in this attack. Strikers immediately placed flowers and wreaths upon the spot where they were killed. Police moved in to remove the memorials, to which the strikers responded by placing new flowers and wreaths and stood guard over the spot.
Police then fired tear gas at the ILA union hall where the wounded were being housed. Allegedly, a phone call was received at the union hall asking, "Are you ready to arbitrate now?"
The governor of California eventually called in the National Guard to patrol the waterfront overnight.
Several days later, after the funerals of Bordois and Sperry, a general strike was called for San Francisco. In effect the city shut down. Even small businesses closed putting signs in their windows in support of the striking workers. Rumors were workers in Portland threatened to follow suit.
Ultimately, the General Strike Committee agreed to arbitration and the longshoremen did not win all that they sought. But the aftermath of this "bloody Thursday" was such that workers engaged in "quickie strikes" and sympathy strikes. These were no longer the pipe dreams of a radical few and became a reality in many cities.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) recognizes "Bloody Thursday" by shutting down all West Coast ports each year.
A year later President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act. This law acknowledges the inherent inequality in barganing power in employer/employee relations and protects the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively for wages, hours and working conditions.
