This story aired in the September 01, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Over the years, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, or ILWU, has thrown their weight behind many causes. Like in 2020, they shut down the ports entirely, to support the Black Lives Matter movement and protest the police murder of George Floyd.
The ILWU is a powerful organizing force in the Bay Area. And the union actually got its start with a massive general strike and a deadly run-in with police over 90 years ago, right here in San Francisco.
And just in time for Labor Day, we’re bringing you this latest episode of The Public Works series. We dive into the history of the ILWU and a radical labor leader who isn’t a household name today.
Click the button above to listen.
There are several places in San Francisco to find reminders of this history: mural-sculpture and plaque at Mission & Steuart Streets; Rincon Annex mural (with its own complicated history) on Mission between Steuart & Spear Streets; sidewalk mural in front of the ILWU Local 10 Hiring Hall at Beach & Mason Streets. The narrow area in between Embarcadero Plaza and the Ferry Building is officially named Harry Bridges Plaza, though there’s no marker to let people know.
Story Transcript:
Sound of people talking in a crowd
ILWU MEMBER: ILWU! ILWU!
ANOTHER ILWU MEMBER: Let’s go!
REPORTER: It’s San Francisco’s May Day March — a big event for labor groups that happens every year on International Workers Day. At Embarcadero Plaza, there are clusters of union members in matching T-shirts standing behind banners.
And this year, they’re joined by activists calling for a general strike: no work, no school, no shopping. People hold signs that say everything from “Workers over Billionaires” to “General Strike: Stand up to Trump.”
The plan is to march together down Market Street. And the ILWU has been chosen to lead the celebration.
Up front, two barrel-chested guys carry a red banner with the union’s slogan in all caps, “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All.”
And at the very head of the line is the ILWU drill team.
Sound of boots tapping on the street
DRILL TEAM MEMBERS (singing): Step to the left, step to the right, line up drill team, make it tight. Make it tight. Make it tight.
REPORTER: The five members of the team are wearing matching white caps, black jackets decorated with pins and buttons, and black boots with taps to amplify their steps.
Sabrina Giles is a drill team captain.
SABRINA GILES: We are proud to be here today participating in fighting for our rights in our community and our country.
REPORTER: You guys do this a lot, right?
REPORTER: Renee Sharp, another drill team member, says absolutely.
RENEE SHARP: We come out to rallies, civil right movements, worker right movements, and our union is known to back up marginalized communities and stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves.
REPORTER: ILWU members are longshore and warehouse workers, who help transport goods that come in and out of the port. Giles says that plus organizing can be a lot.
GILES: Oh, yeah. Mixing it in with unloading and loading cargo and family life. You know how it is. Everything can keep you very, very busy. We're trying to find balance, but we gotta do what we gotta do together. It's the only way we’re gonna win, together. Yeah. Working together.
Sound of crowd of people talking
ILWU MEMBER: We’re doing a play.
ILWU MEMBER: Oh, we’re doing a play? I want to be in the play!
REPORTER: While everyone is waiting for the march to start, ILWU members gather in front of a vinyl backdrop. One steps forward with a megaphone.
PLAY NARRATOR: Can I get your attention? This is the ballad of Harry Bridges. Okay. Let me tell you of a sailor, Harry Bridges is his name. An honest union leader who the bosses tried to frame.
REPORTER: Harry Bridges was the very first president of the ILWU, in the 1930s. As the narrator reads, other union members step up to act out the history.
NARRATOR: When up spoke Harry Bridges, us workers got to get wise. Our wives and kids will starve to death if we don't get organized.
Sound of cheers
PETE SEEGER (singing): You've got to pay a livin’ wage or we're gonna take a walk. They told it to the bosses, but the bosses wouldn't talk.
REPORTER: The words of this play come from a song by the folk group The Almanac Singers, written in the 1940s.
SEEGER (singing): They said, “There's only one way left to get that contract signed.” And all around the waterfront they threw their picket line. They called it Bloody Thursday, the fifth day of July, For a hundred men were wounded and two were left to die …
REPORTER: It’s an epic story. And it all started right here in San Francisco, across from the Ferry Building, about a hundred years ago.
Sound of Ferry Building clock bell tolling, followed by a street car bell.
REPORTER: Back then, the Embarcadero looked very different.
ROBERT CHERNY: What would've been here then is not all of these little kiosks selling tchotchkes to tourists.
REPORTER: Robert Cherny is professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State, and author of the book, Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend. He agreed to meet me here at Embarcadero Plaza — which he says was a very work-oriented waterfront then.
CHERNY: Bars, tattoo parlors, places that sold clothing for longshoremen and seamen.
Sound of street car on tracks
REPORTER: The tracks in front of the Ferry Building weren’t for streetcars. They were for freight trains that carried cargo to and from the piers and the warehouses south of Market. Thousands of ships brought in things like raw sugar from Hawaii and cotton from Egypt.
And this is where dock workers came every morning in the hopes of getting hired for the day.
CHERNY: And so this was called the shape-up, and there'd be a couple of thousand men who would show up here at 7:00 a.m. and wait for one of the gang bosses to come around. The gang bosses were like foremen. They'd come around here and get the members of their work gang for the day.
Sound of cars driving on Embarcadero
REPORTER: The shape-up meant that workers never knew if they would have a job from one day to the next, and if they were chosen, there was no limit on the number of hours they’d be expected to work.
CHERNY: Some gang bosses exploited the situation by expecting men to give them a kickback of some sort or even to do work for them, paint their house or something.
REPORTER: The labor union was controlled by the companies, which meant workers didn’t have a lot of power.
So things were already tough for workers, and then the Great Depression hit. Unemployment rose to almost 25 percent, and people went hungry. Since jobs were scarce, it seemed like a lot of workers just had to take what they could get.
But change was coming from Washington.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (archival tape): I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people! (crowd cheers)
CHERNY: The new administration in Washington headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, was putting through just a river of legislation that came to be called the New Deal.
REPORTER: One small piece of that legislation gave workers the right to organize into unions.
CHERNY: The idea that the federal government was endorsing unionization really took hold.
REPORTER: Across the country, workers in all kinds of industries joined unions. But even if they felt empowered by the government’s support, the companies still refused to negotiate. And that led to a wave of strikes in 1934 — truck drivers in Minneapolis, textile workers in Alabama … and dockworkers on the West Coast.
CHERNY: So there was a strike that began in early May of 1934 to close down all the ports on the Pacific Coast.
REPORTER: Harry Bridges emerged as the leader of the strike. He had come to San Francisco from Australia as a sailor and started working as a longshoreman, so he was well known on the docks. And he wasn’t afraid to push for big changes.
He borrowed a slogan from the Industrial Workers of the World: “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All” — meaning the power of labor came from solidarity.
He organized workers up and down the west coast. There were picket lines from San Diego to Bellingham.
He built solidarity across workers in different jobs, from the crews on the ships to the truckers who hauled cargo from the ports. That shut down the entire supply chain.
And he pushed for racial solidarity. Because most unions back then didn’t allow Black workers to join.
CHERNY: What this meant in practice was that companies would bring in Black people as strike breakers. And what Harry did, he put through a measure saying no racial discrimination in this local.
REPORTER: All of that solidarity strengthened the strike. It went on for months, and shut down the region’s economy. Staples like flour and coffee weren’t coming in, and produce from the Central Valley couldn’t get out.
By early July, the shipping companies were desperate. They brought in strike breakers, and city officials pledged to send “every available police officer in San Francisco,” armed with tear gas and guns.
CHERNY: And then July 5th was a day of just massive confrontation.
Sound of car traffic from street
CHERNY: As we come to Mission Street down here …
REPORTER: Bob Cherny and I walk about a block from Embarcadero Plaza
REPORTER: So, explain where we are.
CHERNY: Right. We are now at the intersection of Steuart and Mission Streets.
REPORTER: Thousands of striking workers assembled in front of the piers down the block from here, trying to stop the port from re-opening.
CHERNY: The police eventually started driving them away, trying to get them away from the waterfront entirely, and to herd them into this block. And at one point that afternoon, a police car came up and stopped just short of the intersection. And apparently a plainclothes police officer got out, well armed, and said something to the strikers, and they responded in kind. And then according to one version, somebody threw a rock at the policeman, and he started firing.
Sound of dramatic music from newsreel
CHERNY: And he was not the only policeman who was firing live ammunition.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER (archival tape): Efforts of business interests to forcibly open the strike-paralyzed Port of San Francisco fail. Open warfare rages through the streets of the city as 3,000 union pickets battle 700 police. Guns, tear gas, clubs, and fists bring injuries to more than 80 persons and cause the death of two.
Sound of present-day city street traffic
REPORTER: It happened right across from where Cherny and I are standing on Mission Street. Hundreds of striking workers were injured and arrested. And two men were killed.
The governor immediately called in military back-up, which arrived within a few hours.
CHERNY: So by late in the day on July 5th, the National Guard was taking up positions all up and down the waterfront with tanks and machine guns and snipers on top of the piers, and machine gun nests at major intersections.
REPORTER: July 5th became known as “Bloody Thursday” — it’s still commemorated every year. There’s a sculpture and a plaque here now.
Sounds of city street traffic
REPORTER: Do you mind reading it?
CHERNY: Oh, sure. “In memory of Howard Sperry and Nick Bordois, who gave their lives on Bloody Thursday, July 5th, 1934, so that all working people might enjoy a greater measure of dignity and security.”
REPORTER: A few days after Bloody Thursday, tens of thousands of San Franciscans lined Market Street to watch the funeral procession.
Sound of band playing Beethoven’s Funeral March
REPORTER: The union band led the way, playing the Beethoven funeral march, with rows and rows of mourners walking silently behind the coffins. This somber march lasted hours, filling up the entire street from the Ferry Building to Valencia.
But a few days after that, the streets were completely empty.
CHERNY: Things all over the city shut down. Movie theaters,cafes and restaurants. Everywhere there were union workers, and some places there weren't, were shut.
Sound of dramatic music from newsreel
REPORTER: It was a general strike, organized by Harry Bridges and the city’s Labor Council. That feeling of worker solidarity had spread across the whole city.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER (archival tape): These are the first pictures of strike-paralyzed San Francisco in the grip of a general labor tie-up. Streets are deserted as surface cars cease running, and citizens unable to travel remain indoors. Only a few automobiles can operate because most filling stations have exhausted their supplies and can obtain no more gasoline. Motor trucks stand idle where their drivers left them.
CHERNY: The city's leadership panicked, to be blunt. They thought that a communist revolution was right around the corner. It wasn't, but it was something that none of them had ever faced before.
REPORTER: Some politicians in Washington called for the U.S. army to be sent in. But the New Deal administration brought the companies and union together to negotiate instead.
And it worked! The labor council called off the general strike after four days. Through their negotiations, the longshoremen got their demand of a union hiring hall — to replace the corrupt shape-up — and other work improvements.
But for many members, the union was still too conservative — it didn’t allow for solidarity across all workers. So a few years later, a group of longshoremen split off and joined with warehouse workers to create a new union: the ILWU. And its first president was Harry Bridges.
HARRY BRIDGES (archival tape): It's also a union that recognizes that from time to time it's gotta stand up and fight for certain things that might not necessarily only be wages, hours, and conditions — civil liberties, racial equality, and things like that.
REPORTER: Even though the docks have transformed completely since then — with the switch to container ships and the main port moving to Oakland — that spirit of activism has stuck around ever since.
NEWS ANCHOR (archival tape): Thousands of port workers in the Bay Area and across the West Coast are no-shows for their shifts today. They’re protesting the war in Iraq.
RICHARD MEAD, ILWU (archival tape): We’re all here for Oscar Grant, correct?
CLARENCE THOMAS, ILWU (archival tape): We have stopped the movement of international cargo today!
MARINA SECCHITANO, INLANDBOATMEN’S UNION (archival tape): Today the ILWU shuts down its West Coast ports (((joined by many unions around the world))) to protest the tragic murder of George Floyd.
REPORTER: Over the years, the ILWU has shut down the West Coast ports to mourn the assassination of MLK, to protest the war in Iraq, and to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Here in the Bay Area, union members boycotted ships from apartheid South Africa and supported protestors in the Occupy and Free Palestine movements.
They’ve been thanked by social justice icons like Nelson Mandela and Angela Davis.
NELSON MANDELA (archival tape): We salute members of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen Union Local 10 (applause)
ANGELA DAVIS (archival tape): Whenever the ILWU takes a stand, the world feels the reverberations.
REPORTER: It’s like the lessons in solidarity from the 1934 strikes, on repeat, for 90 years.
Because the ILWU’s power to control the ports has supercharged their activism on a global scale.
Journalist Bill Moyers confronted Harry Bridges about the union’s boycotts of cargo from fascist regimes, in an interview in the 1970s.
BILL MOYERS (archival tape): What you’re doing, when you do that, is to interfere with the foreign policy of your country.
BRIDGES (archival tape): Sure as hell are. That’s our job. That’s our privilege. That’s our right. That’s our duty.
Sound of ILWU drill team and May Day marchers on Market Street
Now that I know their history, it makes perfect sense that the ILWU drill team is out in front at the May Day March. Walking down Market Street from the Embarcadero, leading other unions and even a small group calling for a general strike, it feels like an echo that’s still reverberating.
This story was supported in part by the Living New Deal; KALW retains editorial control. You can listen to other episodes of The Public Works series at kalw.org/the-public-works.
