Harry Bridges (28 July 1901 – 30 March 1990) was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several Pacific Coast chapters of the ILA to form a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), expanding its ranks to include thousands of additional warehouse workers. He served as ILWU president for the next 40 years.
Bridges rose to national fame as a key figure in the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike. He was designated a subversive alien by the U.S. government, with the goal of deporting him, but it was never achieved. He became an American citizen in 1945. He was then convicted by a federal jury for having lied about his Communist Party membership when applying for naturalization; however, the perjury conviction was overturned in 1953 by the Supreme Court because the original indictment against Bridges occurred outside the statute of limitations.
His power as a union president was diminished in 1950 when the CIO expelled the ILWU as part of a purge of alleged Communist influence, but Bridges continued to be re-elected by ILWU membership and remained influential until his retirement in 1977.
Background
Bridges was born Alfred Renton Bryant Bridges in Kensington, Victoria, Australia. His father, Alfred Earnest Bridges, was a successful suburban realtor, and his mother, Julia ( Dorgan) Bridges, was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent.
Career
Bridges went to sea at age 16 as a merchant seaman and joined the Australian sailors' union. Inspired by the works of Jack London, Bridges "gravitated toward sailing and socialism."
In 1921, Bridges joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), participating in an unsuccessful nationwide seamen's strike. He soon dropped out of the IWW with doubts about its effectiveness, but his early experiences in the IWW and in Australian unions influenced his belief that rank-and-file workers required "a militant, class-conscious organization".
In 1922, Bridges left the sea for longshore work in San Francisco. By that time, the shipowners had created a company union, known as the Blue Book. This occurred in the aftermath of a failed 1919 strike that had all but destroyed the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) local in San Francisco.
Albion Hall group
right|thumb|upright=1.2|Central figure representing Bridges, from [[Anton Refregier's 1948 murals at the Rincon Center (formerly the Rincon Annex Post Office)]]
In 1933, the ILA sought to reestablish itself on the West Coast, chartering a new local in San Francisco. With the passage that year of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)—which contained encouraging but unenforceable provisions declaring that workers had the right to organize unions of their own choice—thousands of longshoremen joined the new ILA local.
At the time, Bridges was a member of a circle of longshoremen referred to as the "Albion Hall group", named for their meeting place. It attracted workers from a variety of backgrounds—Communist Party USA (CPUSA) members who were trying to organize all longshoremen; sailors and other maritime workers; former IWW members, and others with no clearly defined politics—into the Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), as a revolutionary, industry-wide alternative to the ILA and American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions.
The Albion Hall group had acquired some influence on the docks through its publication, the Waterfront Worker, a mimeographed sheet sold for a penny that published articles written by longshoremen and seamen, almost always under pseudonyms. These articles focused on workers' day-to-day concerns: the pace of work, the weight of loads, abusive bosses, and unsafe conditions. While the first editions were published in the apartment of an MWIU member on a second-hand mimeograph machine, the paper remained independent of both the CPUSA and the MWIU. The group stressed the self-help tactics of syndicalism, urging workers to organize by taking part in strikes and slowdowns, rather than depending on governmental assistance under the NIRA. It also campaigned for membership participation in the new ILA local, which had not bothered to hold any membership meetings. Eventually, the group laid the groundwork for organizing on a coastwide basis, meeting with activists from Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, and building a federation of all of the different unions that represented maritime workers.
Under Bridges' leadership, the Albion Hall group organized a successful 5-day strike in October 1933 to force Matson Navigation Company to reinstate four longshoremen it had fired for wearing ILA buttons on the job. Longshoremen at other ports threatened to refuse to handle Matson cargo unless the company rehired the four men.
1934 West Coast Longshore Strike
thumb|right|upright=0.8|Bridges during the strike, July 9, 1934
Early in 1934, Bridges and the Albion Hall group, along with militants in other ports, started planning a coast-wide strike. The Roosevelt administration tried to head off the strike by appointing a mediation board to oversee negotiations, but neither side accepted its proposed compromise. Bridges was elected chairman of the strike committee. The strike began on 9 May. While the elected local officers were the nominal leaders of the strike at its outset, Bridges led the planning of the strike along with his friend Sam Kagel. They recruited rank-and-file opposition to the two proposed contracts that the leadership negotiated and the membership rejected during the strike, and the dealings with other unions during related events.
A four-day San Francisco General strike took place after "Bloody Thursday" on 5 July, when police aided the Waterfront Employers Association in trucking cargo from the pierheads to the warehouses through the union's picket line. Scores of strikers were beaten or wounded by gunfire during the battle. During a coordinated raid on the union mess hall at the corner of Steuart and Mission, San Francisco Police shot and killed Howard Sperry, a striking sailor, and Nicholas Bordoise (aka George Counderakis), a member of the cooks' union and a strike sympathizer helping out at the mess hall. Scores of other men were wounded by police gunfire as well, including a number of bystanders, as the ensuing battle quickly spilled into the nearby downtown area.
Bridges became the chief spokesperson for the union in negotiations after workers rejected the second agreement negotiated by the old leadership in June. Bridges did not control the strike: over his strong objections, the ILA membership voted to accept arbitration to end the strike. Similarly, in 1935, Bridges' opposition did not stop the ILA leadership from extending the union's contract with the employers, rather than striking in solidarity with the seamen.
Growth and independence
thumb|left|Bridges shaking hands with fellow "Red" labor leader [[Charles S. Zimmerman 1930s]]
Bridges was elected president of the San Francisco local in 1934 and president of the Pacific Coast District of the ILA (known as the ILA-PCD) in 1936. During this period, the longshoremen's union began organizing warehouses, both in the ports and those at a distance that received the goods which the longshoremen handled. As Bridges explained it, his union was "not going to stay on the waterfront" but rather was "going inland". By joining forces with warehousemen, the ILA-PCD could control multiple phases of the transport and distribution of freight: shipping, storing, and selling. The West Coast-based Industrial Association of employers watched this development with fury: