Seattle Streetcar Strike Paralyzes City Transit
After the street railway company rejected arbitration, union workers walked off the job, leading to armed scabs and threats of a city-wide sympathetic strike.
Seattle, Sept. 9. As the result of the street railway company's refusal to submit its differences with its employees to arbitration yesterday, the union men went on a strike at 1 o'clock this morning. The company has about half its cars running because it organized about 200 secessionists from the union last week who now operate the cars. Efforts will be made by the union to tie up the service by a sympathetic strike of line-men of the power company serving the street railway company and by a miners' strike at Renton, where the company gets fuel. Two men greased the track on the grade along Green Lake this morning. A new non-union motorman and conductor chased the culprits several blocks with revolvers but did not fire. Another new crew ran off the track and smashed up a mail wagon. The strike-breakers all carry guns. The company will recognize the new organization as long as it does not affiliate with any labor union, giving it the same wages demanded by the old union. The strikers have assurance that every labor organization in the city will join in a sympathetic general strike if called on to do so.
“The strike-breakers all carry guns.”
The 1903 Seattle streetcar strike highlights the volatility of early 20th-century labor relations in Washington, where transit companies aggressively employed 'secessionist' non-union workers to bust collective bargaining. Today, the tension over transit labor and the reliance on public utilities mirrors current debates in Washington regarding the power of organized labor in an era of gig-economy disruption.
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