The ‘Old Left’ and the union:

The Dispatcher, April 2004
Introduction by Harvey Schwartz

Jack Olsen worked on the San Francisco waterfront in the 1930s. During the next decade he served Local 6 as a business agent and as publicity and education director. Here he highlights the Old Left’s contributions to the ILWU and gives us a rare inside view of how the CP operated within American unions at the time and why and how it was effective in changing the political landscape and inspiring young union idealists. Here he also emphasizes how the CP fought for Black workers before World War II.

In the early 1950s the employers excluded Olsen from warehouse jobs because of his politics. Under severe duress at the time, Local 6 was unable to overcome this, despite the ILWU’s tradition of sheltering victims of discrimination. Olsen found employment as a Typographical Union Local 21 printer. In 1974 he became the first director of Labor Studies at the City College of San Francisco.

Jack Olsen was married to the celebrated author Tillie Olsen. He passed away in 1989. I interviewed him in San Francisco in 1982 under the original ILWU-U.C. Berkeley oral history project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thanks to Oscar Berland and Bill Pieper for their suggestions.

The ‘Old Left’ and the union: JACK OLSEN, activist and educator

Edited by Harvey Schwartz,
Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection

When I was one year old I was brought to the U.S. from Russia, where I was born in 1911. Like most Russian Jewish immigrants of that time, my parents came here to escape the increase of anti-Semitism and oppression in Czarist Russia flowing out of the 1905 Revolution. When that first Russian uprising was defeated, the Czar’s government made the Jews the scapegoat for its problems.

My parents settled in New Jersey, but soon moved to Philadelphia where my father became the recording secretary of the local broom and brush makers’ union. Like many people of his generation, my father was excited by the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was ambivalent, because he was not a revolutionary. But he was pleased that the Czar had been overthrown. He used to say the Russian Revolution showed that working people could become the heads of governments.

Around 1920 we moved to Alden, a little town in upstate New York. My father got involved in the famous Sacco and Vanzetti case. That was my first introduction to radical politics. Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian-born anarchists who were accused of murder in Massachusetts in 1920. They were executed seven years later.

The evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti was so weak that they appeared to be the victims of political persecution. As a high school student in Alden I attended Sacco and Vanzetti meetings through my father’s contacts with radical Jewish workers’ clubs. I used to circulate petitions to free the two men.

In 1928 we came out to Los Angeles. Times were already bad in rural New York, although this was still before the big crash. In ’29, of course, the stock market crash hit and the Great Depression started. That killed whatever personal dreams I had. I’d planned to go to college, but my father was out of work. That’s when I got active in the Communist movement.

I got swept up in the tremendous Communist Party (CP)-led demonstrations that occurred in big cities across the country on March 6, 1930. Those were the first mass demonstrations of the Depression. Through my father I met a number of LA radicals, joined the CP’s Young Communist League (YCL) and set out to make a revolution in the U.S.

For years I’ve been called Olsen, but my real name is Olshansky. That’s because the L.A. Police Department’s “Red Squad” changed  my  name on March 6. Another YCL kid and I were walking to the unemployed demonstration in L.A. We had cardboard banners underneath our shirts. The police spotted the bulges and arrested us.

Captain William F. (“Red”) Hynes, who headed the Red Squad and became infamous in history, said to me, ”What’s a nice kid like you doing associating with these Reds?” I stammered, “I got a right to be here.” He asked, “What’s your name?” I mumbled, “Olshansky.” He said, “Did you say Olsen?” I answered, “Yeah.” Then the kid with me poked me in the ribs. So that’s how I got the name Olsen.

The only job I got in LA was shipping clerk at a Woolworth’s store. I made $15 for a six-day week, 10 hours a day, and the job only lasted through Christmas. I decided I couldn’t help my parents in L.A. I figured I might as well see if I could do better someplace else. So in 1930 I took off and came up to San Francisco.

I liked the kind of people I met in the Communist movement up here. The L.A. movement I knew was concentrated in the Jewish enclave at Boyle Heights. The people there had come from big cities like New York and Chicago, and I was a country boy. I felt more at home with the seamen and the unemployed kids I met in San Francisco. Since I was fairly well dressed, which counted then, I managed to pick up odd jobs. I worked a little as a dishwasher and truck driver. Sometimes I even got a few days on the waterfront. None of this was enough to make a living, but I did better than most.

In 1932 I was elected state secretary of the YCL by the CP State Committee. I’d like to say this was because I was a brilliant guy, but actually the movement, which was growing, grabbed anybody who was energetic and willing. I’m denigrating it a little. I was a bit more vocal than some and had done a little more reading.

State secretary was supposed to be a full-time job. The YCL made a distinction between full-timers and everybody else by saying, “You’re a paid functionary.” I was entitled to $5 a week, but the stipulation was that I had to raise the $5 myself! Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t.

My primary concern as state secretary was building the organization-putting out handbills, holding street meetings, conducting campaigns. There were nine or 10 places around San Francisco where all kinds of radicals and even the Salvation Army held regular street meetings. Depending on how loud a voice you had, how good you were, and what  the issue was, you’d get 500, 600, 700 unemployed people standing around to hear you. We’d always pass the hat. If there was anything left after you paid for leaflets you had some money to work with.

The whole thrust of the Communist movement, of course, was in its claim to be the party of the working class. The idea was to provide leadership. Because there was a long history of militancy among longshoremen and seamen, the CP focused much of its energy on the waterfront. You were ashamed of yourself if you didn’t hold at least one street meeting on the waterfront every month, if not every week.

When the 1934 strike came along it was the big thing in every radical’s life. My role was outside support. Whatever we could do as an organization, we did. We went out on the picket lines and helped around the soup kitchen. After the strike, the CP encouraged people like me to get more active in the unions.

Lots of young radicals – many of them Communists, not all of them – got swept up in the feeling that there was a need for union organization. Quite a few helped carry through the longshore union’s “march inland” in warehousing. Some became ILWU leaders. These people came out of a sense of idealism. The new unions systematized hiring, too, and that made it easier for young radicals to get in.

In 1936, when I was 25, I felt I was getting too old for YCL youth activities. I joined the regular CP and decided to see what full-time work I could get. I’d already done quite a bit of casual waterfront work. I recall pushing a hand truck loaded with five or six sacks of coffee that weighed 110 to 120 pounds each. The docks were not well maintained, and you were always hitting ruts and bumps. You’d tear your guts up trying to keep the load from getting dumped. By this time I knew my way around the warehouse local hiring hall. I got dispatched to a job at U.S. Steel stayed a year and got my book as a full union member. In late 1937 or ‘38 U.S. Steel moved off the waterfront. I decided to switch jobs and got on at Merchants Ice and Cold Storage. Merchants was hard physical work, but I was young and didn’t mind. What I also didn’t mind was working in the freezers, which used to bother a lot of guys so much they wouldn’t take job in the ice houses.

In those days the CP set up Party clubs on an industry-by-industry basis. There were warehousemen’s, seamen’s and longshoremen’s clubs. Each club had its own officers and its own delegate to the CP county committee, a literature agent and an education director. In warehouse we had clubs on both sides of San Francisco Bay. They used to meet and first take up political issues like the anti-fascist cause in the Spanish Civil War, the current election campaign or an ongoing legal defense case.

Second, there was always discussion of functioning in the union. Did we have the strength to introduce a resolution? What should demands be when our union contracts expired? The Communist groups always considered the question of union leadership. Should any of our people run for a particular spot, like negotiating committee or executive board member? Who should we support for office, whether a Communist or not?

These preliminary discussions were a tremendous help to us when we went to our union meetings. In effect each club functioned as a Communist caucus.

To get things done we tried to get official backing. In the ILWU, which preached democratic unionism, the officers were relatively easy to get access to. Generally there were three or four CP members who were liaisons. We’d go see the president of Local 6, the business agent and the stewards to try to line up support.

There was always strategy to consider. Could we get a resolution that would ultimately go before a general union meeting introduced through the executive board? Could we get one of the officers to sign it so it didn’t come just from the Communists? We might draft the resolution so it suited the officials. When it came time for the union meeting, our guys lined up on the floor behind the microphones to speak for the resolution. Or somebody on the officers’ platform would speak for it. There were varying approaches.

The ILWU consistently took positions that were left of where other unions stood. I think the Communist clubs made a difference here. The presence of Communists helped put Local 6 miles ahead of the rest of the labor movement in things like opening up to Black members even before World War II. But we also had to think about our limits. For example, had a Communist club come to a meeting and said, “We want an endorsement of the Soviet Union,” we would have had our ass ripped off.

I joined the Local 6 Publicity Committee, helped with a big organizing drive at the Lathrop army depot near Stockton in the late 1930s, spoke out at union meetings all the time and got the reputation of being a red-hot. During the major 1938 warehouse lockout in San Francisco I was down at the union hall and out on the picket lines every chance I got. Several CP people felt I ought to bid for leadership. The guys in the ice houses were pressuring me to run too. So in 1939 I ran for business agent and got elected. I took office in 1940.

The first arbitration I had was against the Paris Beauty Supply Company of San Francisco. We’d dispatched a young Black woman and a young Black guy to the place. The employer was a southerner. He didn’t want to keep them. His excuse was, “I’ve got nothing against Black folks. Why, if I could afford to build them separate toilets, I’d be glad to have them working here.”

The local put on a lot of pressure against that sort of thing in 1939-1940 and the Communists made an extra effort issue of it. You can point to many things about the Communist movement that aren’t so honorable , but its early insistence on racial equality and its idea that Blacks and Whites should unite was one of the most honorable things it did.

I went into the Army in 1944, during World War II, and got discharged in late 1945. The next year the union asked me to become the full-time director of the Local 6 Education and Publicity Department. In 1946 the local had the money for such a program. It had 15,000 members. I’d helped develop the Local 6 publications and done other publicity work before I went into the Army. This was right up my alley.

As Director I was in charge of our monthly Local 6 Bulletin, got out press releases and strike publicity, had each division put out its own mimeographed publication, and set up classes, theater groups, sports teams and social activities. This was a job that could have taken two or three more people, but I got a lot of rank-and file help. By 1948 we had 18,000 members. We were a thriving, jumping local. I worked my ass off, but it was an exciting, fun time.

I was still active in the CP. I don’t think I would have gotten the publicity and education job without Party support. The CP was then a pretty powerful influence in Local 6. People used to come to it for election campaign support who were not even members, knowing full well that the 150 or so Communists here in San Francisco played a real role in who got elected. CP support was something everybody went after, including people who were in opposition to the Party.

There was an awful lot of support for the Left in the union up through the Henry Wallace Progressive Party campaign for the American presidency in 1948. The Communists supported Wallace, who ran on a platform that opposed the coming of the Cold War. The Wallace campaign generated a lot of broad enthusiasm in Local 6. We had a committee of 200 and they weren’t all Communists. Unfortunately, the support for Wallace disappeared when election day came.

On the heels of the election came the long and costly 1949 Local 6 warehouse strike that had mixed results. The next year Dave Beck, the Teamsters Union president, poured a million dollars into a raid on the local. He was able to lure away some of our business agents and dispatchers. They went on his payroll and led the attack against us, saying we were unpatriotic. Basically the attack was straight red-baiting.

At the beginning of the Teamster raid the guys who went to work for Beck were still not out in the open. They would come to our meetings, which became very stormy, and say that the local should get rid of the Commies. Ironically, some of those guys had supported Wallace earlier on. Of course, because I was a Communist and made no bones about it, and because I was handling publicity and education, I was one of their main targets. To defend against this, the local leadership suggested that I resign, and I did. The local was beginning to have financial problems anyway. But that was only the beginning. Shortly thereafter these guys, who were still an internal Local 6 group, put out an election handbill. I took it to a typewriter expert who proved that it was typed in the Teamsters Local 860 office. That brought the whole thing out into the open. These guys also put out a leaflet that said, “Who is Olshansky?” It implied that I was a Russian agent of Stalin.

When the crisis came the Black membership of the local was solidly at our side. They knew the job the ILWU had done in opening up to them. Young people like LeRoy King and Curtis McClain came to the forefront. We put LeRoy on as an organizer to try to beat the attack back. When the actual raid started the internal Local 6 group took a hike and established Teamsters Local 12. Then came the campaign to save our houses from being taken over by them.

Immediately after the raid started the Local 6 officers told me, “Get your ass back on the job. We need publicity.” We conducted an intensive campaign against the raid with posters and weekly bulletins. In the last analysis the Teamsters were only able to take away 250 San Francisco members. But it was a very turbulent period and when the whole thing was finished, the local was broke. We had to do away with the Publicity and Education Department.

I went back to work after that, but I had a hell of a time getting jobs. I’d walk into a shop and they’d say, “Olsen, we’re glad to have you.” But there was a rule that an employer could lay you off anytime in your first 90 days. So 24 hours later I’d get laid off. [During the McCarthy era in the early 1950s employers routinely banned political dissidents.] This was also the beginning of the closing of various shops. I couldn’t make a living. I had to find work outside of Local 6.

About 1951, ’52, I left the CP. I felt the Party had lost its viability as an American working-class force. There was an exodus from the ILWU Party clubs too. This was the period of the start of the disintegration of the entire American Communist movement. It was unable to react properly to events or to provide leadership.

But in the beginning the Communists in the ILWU had been a part of the building of the union, and they had been accepted. They influenced people on the leadership and the union meeting level. Down through the years, too, the ILWU has been a refuge for radicals who were run out of every place else. As a result of the policy of the ILWU to protect everybody regardless of political affiliation, many were able to get work, to stay, and to influence the membership.

Thus the Communists had enough of a presence and enough personal contact to talk to the other workers and bring up issues in the warehouses and shops. They set a tone and they got a lot of support from workers on the job. To me, that’s the key to why the ILWU was always a radical organization.