Abstract
Robert W. Cherny's new Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend is a landmark publication: exhaustively researched, beautifully written, and comprehensive. Replacing Charles Larrowe's serviceable 1972 biography, Cherny's 478-page volume is now the definitive story of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union founder, 40-year ILWU president, and towering figure in American labor history.
Harry Bridges also provides a working knowledge of the union's core entity, its Longshore Division, from its beginnings in the 1930s through Bridges’ retirement in the 1970s. Broad in its scope, Cherny's volume is comparable to great biographies in American labor history. Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine's John L. Lewis and Nelson Lichtenstein's biography of Walter Reuther come to mind. Cherny's research took him “from Harvard to Honolulu, from Moscow to Melbourne.” He examined countless documents in the ILWU library, Bridges’ papers at San Francisco State University, FBI files, and remote Russian archives.
Harry Bridges contains 18 mostly chronological chapters. Two early ones follow Bridges’ life from his 1901 birth in Melbourne through his youth in Australia, time as a seaman, and coming ashore in San Francisco in 1922. He labored there as a longshoreman during the early years of the Great Depression in appalling nonunion conditions characterized by corrupt hiring practices, dangerous work, inhumane speed-ups, and brutally long shifts.
Three key chapters recount Bridges’ leading role in organizing the Pacific Coast Branch of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), often with the help of Communist Party members, and his critical leadership in the 1934 West Coast maritime and San Francisco general strikes. Cherny describes the events of “Bloody Thursday,” July 5, 1934, when San Francisco police killed two strike supporters and sparked a three-day general strike in protest that helped the longshore workers win hiring hall control and a coastwide contract to prevent their employers from playing ports against each other.
During this early period, under the guidance of Bridges, the union's patented progressive character emerged, featuring support for union democracy, equal access to jobs, and nondiscrimination on the basis of creed, color, or political beliefs. Two chapters trace developments in the six years following 1934, including Bridges’ part in his organization leaving the ILA-AFL and founding the ILWU-CIO in 1937.
Cherny then departs from this chronological story to evaluate Bridges’ early relationship with the Communist Party. Four of the succeeding ten chapters describe the unscrupulous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts between 1934 and 1955 of vigilantes, police agents, reactionary politicians, conservative operatives, and federal authorities to deport the Australian-born Bridges, whom they alleged was a Communist Party member. Regardless of his early party aid, Bridges consistently denied being a party member. After much close scrutiny, Cherny concludes that Bridges always was an independent actor.
Subsequent chapters cover the main currents in Bridges’ and the union's post-World War II experience. These highlight the 1948 longshore strike, which Cherny characterizes as a struggle to retain the union-controlled hiring hall won in 1934 and to preserve Bridges’ position as ILWU President from red-baiting employer attacks; the Mechanization and Modernization (M&M) contracts of 1960 and 1966 that allowed for the peaceful container revolution in waterfront cargo handling; the long 1971 coastwide longshore walkout; and Bridges’ retirement in 1977 and death in 1990.
Among his many observations, Cherny argues that during 1933–1934, Bridges acted as a radical in sanctioning job actions, or quickie strikes, and resisting arbitration. However, after 1935, Bridges began to favor institutionalized arbitration to best enforce the longshore contract. The capstone of this evolution in Bridges’ thinking was a unique arbitration provision in the 1940 contract that provided for the immediate settling of conflicts.
Cherny also explores Bridges’ response to waterfront containerization in depth. Always a pragmatist, Bridges accepted the two 1960s M&M contracts because they protected the jobs of existing longshore workers and offered early retirement inducements while accepting that the waterfront labor force would shrink. Cherny concludes that Bridges gained important concessions here while preparing for the automation that would eventually reach the waterfront anyway.
In addition to these major themes, Harry Bridges covers the forgotten but still important 1936–1937 longshore strike, a rehash of 1934 without the violence, a relatively short 1946 waterfront walkout, and the 1950 “red scare” purge of the ILWU from the CIO.
During his last decade in office, as waterfront work opportunities began to decline, Bridges faced pushback from union members. As Cherny points out, the 134-day 1971–1972 strike was partly brought on by the long-term effects of the M&M contracts. Despite these late-career controversies, Cherny reminds us that when Bridges retired in 1977, he was still widely hailed as the hero of 1934 and his reputation endures.