Longshoremen Strike Against Wage Cuts
Striking dockworkers faced off against non-union labor hired by the Pacific Coast Steamship Company to unload cargo at drastically reduced pay.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Trouble with the longshoremen did not materialize at the waterfront yesterday, and the Pacific Coast Steamship Company had its freight handled by non-union men working on a schedule of 40 cents per hour. A large crowd of longshoremen remained, using all legitimate means to persuade men not to work in their places. The steamer Umatilla arrived at 5:30 a.m., and at 10 o'clock, hundreds of people congregated in front of the warehouses, only to find the wharf closed. W. M. Davis, the stevedore of the company, had hoped to enlist many more men than the company needed, but by 10 o'clock, not one of them was in sight. On the office bulletin board was written in big letters, 'Men Wanted,' but it took a good deal of nerve for a man to elbow his way through the crowd. Gradually, however, they came in, and the company secured all the men needed to discharge the Umatilla's cargo. Most of those who braved the jeers of the crowd and applied for work were men long out of work, some with families. One man, his face as white as a sheet, said excitedly at the door, 'I want work.' He said he was afraid of the men on the outside, but his family was in need and he must do something. The company had not only reduced wages from 60 to 40 cents an hour but insists on employing its own foreman, doing away with the longshoreman timekeeper and the union's rotation system.
“It took a good deal of nerve for a man to elbow his way through the crowd to the door and ask for work.”
This 1894 struggle over the right to set wages and control the 'gang' rotation system mirrors modern debates about gig labor and independent contracting. Then, as now, the threat of economic precarity was used to pit workers against one another during labor actions.
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