Seattle Longshoremen Fight to Save Their Union
Workers speak out against a Pacific Coast Steamship Company lockout intended to dismantle their collective bargaining power.
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.
In answer to the numerous articles that have appeared in the press of this city regarding the strike of longshoremen, we wish to state our side of the trouble. The principal articles in the communication sent by the company for the union to accept were as follows: that the men stop smoking on the company's property; that we do away with our president and the rotary list; and allow the officers of the steamship company to pick whomsoever they pleased at 40 cents an hour, thus at one blow whipping the union out of existence. Of course 40 cents an hour seems quite a sum for laborers in these hard times, but when it is taken into consideration that the members have not averaged $1.50 per week and must attend to the work night or day, the sum of 50 cents dwindles down to a mere pittance. In regard to doing away with the president, if the ship's officer puts on the men, he naturally would not know a union man from any other, and he would neither have the time nor the inclination to find out, so you see by this we might as well disband at once.
“Of course 40 cents an hour seems quite a sum for laborers in these hard times, but when it is taken into consideration that the members have not averaged $1.50 per week... the sum dwindles down to a mere pittance.”
Labor disputes over wages and the 'gig-ification' of scheduling echo Seattle’s long history of waterfront conflict. The union's fear that direct employer hiring would destroy their ability to organize remains a central theme in modern labor debates.
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