THE MARCH INLAND
Ray Duarte, Paul Heide, & Joe LynchThe Dispatcher, July 20, 1995 Edited by Harvey Schwartz
While Ray Duarte and his brother were learning to be effective unionists, Paul Heide and his brother Ray were becoming seasoned East Bay organizers. The Heides soon learned that recognition and a contract didn’t always come easy. Paul Heide, a man of great courage, was often just one step ahead of a notorious anti-union Oakland police squad. His testimony here reveals something of the dedication and self-sacrifice that it took to build the ILWU. Joe Lynch, another veteran of the 1930s who, like Paul Heide, served Local 6 long and well as an officer, saw the early organizing campaign in San Francisco. Here he remembers the unionization of his warehouse as well as the scope of the union’s uptown expansion, which the organizers called “the march inland.”
RAY DUARTE
‘Western States is gonna sign; we might as well all sign together!’
In the first part of 1935, my brother Chili got me a job at Haas Bros., a grocery wholesale house where he worked. In the latter part of ’35 the union came in and started organizing. We signed applications in ’35 and got initiated in ’36.
When longshore work started after the ’34 strike, they started the terminal group up in Oakland, which was the beginning of the Local 6 division. The first group of house they started organizing were the grocery house.
When we organized, all these grocery warehouses were in the same area. Maybe that was one of the reasons they figured they could organize them the fastest. The company found out about that; naturally they’re going to try to keep organization out. They immediately raised everybody. I had already got one salary increase from $55 to $75 a month. And man, they raised it to $100 a month, which was a lot of money in them day. But it didn’t work because we knew the other benefit that we were asking for. We had no overtime. If we had to take inventory on a Saturday or Sunday, you’d come in but you didn’t get paid for it. You were just under their thumb. If you made the wrong move, if they didn’t like the way you looked….
There must have been some discussion that the ILA—before 1937 the ILWU was part of the ILA, and we were Local 38-44, ILA—was interested in getting these inland grocery houses organized. That’s where the first little light started showing that somebody was interested in organizing, although we had been talking about it in very hushed tones since the ’34 strike was on. We were labor-minded to begin with and we figured somewhere along the line we’re going to get involved.
We used to go next door to Western State Grocery to use the trash incinerator. One day I was there with Ray Fisher. We knocked on the door, and the guy opened it up. He says, “Hey, when are you guys going to get organized? There was some guy out in front here this morning and quite a few of the guys signed up over here in Western States.” Ray Fisher says “Yeah, I saw that guy out there; he talked to me too. He said he was going to come over and see us later on.” So I says, “What do you mean, later on today? During the morning or at night?” Ray says, “He said he’d come over and see us.” So we waited around, and that afternoon we all went out and sat in the car, and nobody came by.
The next morning we came to work and Ray Fisher comes in. He whispers, “Come here, I wanna show you guys something. That guy was out there, that business agent Ray Heide, and he gave me these applications; you guys gonna sign?” We says, ‘Well, what the hell, Western States is gonna sign; we might as well all sign together. If they get ’em all together, they’ll present it all at one time and we ain’t got nothing to worry about. Let’s sign the damn thing!”
After we got organized Chili and I were quite active. The various parts of the local were coming together. The East Bay set-up was Bob Moore, the Heide brothers, and Vincent Sharkey; they were mostly the organizers. Chili and I were real interested in everything that was going on. We went to every kind of meeting they called. If it was just a little get-together meeting, we went. If it was a meeting of the whole group, we went—to learn. We never participated because we hadn’t been initiated yet. But after we got initiated we found out, “Hey, now we can participate.” We run for offices: Chili made the executive board and I made the investigating and the grievance committee the first year we were in.
PAUL HEIDE
‘The police wanted me out there so they could work me over.’
The first time I was charged with anything serious was during the 1935 lockout at Santa Cruz Packing Co. in Oakland. We’d just organized the place. Bob Moore and I were arrested and charged with throwing a switch with intent to derail a train. We were acquitted by a jury in Superior Court. The Women’s Auxiliary was organized during that period—at least a small part of it in the East Bay—and they put out leaflets to get people to attend the trial.
During the L.A. Spring Co. strike for recognition in 1936, I got a telephone call to come out right away. I drove out and parked directly across the street from the Oakland plant. It had to be a frame-up. The police wanted me out there so they could work me over. Those were the days when they had an anti-picketing ordinance. They did away with it later. Captain Brown was in charge of the Oakland Police Department’s Eastern Office Division. He hated labor organizers.
Anyway there were two cops in front of the L.A. Spring plant. One of them walked over when I parked. He said, “You can’t park here.” I said “Why not?” He said “Because Captain Brown says so.” I said “Well screw Captain Brown! He took out his club and almost broke my arm, he hit it so hard.
“Get out of the car”, he said. I stepped out and he hit me in the back. I knew he was trying to get me to do something so I could be charged. He said, “What are you coming out here, starting trouble for?” He took his club and punched me in the rib cage. I’d trained as a boxer and I hit him by automatic reflex before I realized it. I punched his teeth and cut a hole right through his lower lip. Then the other cop stepped behind me and hit me over the head, and split my scalp open. I was bleeding all over.
They took me to Highland Hospital and put me in one of those barred rooms. They charged me with resisting arrest and battery. I had a trial in Municipal Court and the jury found me guilty of battery but not guilty of resisting arrest. If you can make those two things fit together—I’ve never been able to understand how they figured that out. I don’t think the judge believed this cop; he sentenced me to 90 days, suspended. So, it really didn’t amount to anything and we won the beef, got the contract, and were satisfied.
JOE LYNCH
‘Organization was just a matter of time after the ’34 strike.’
During the 1934 strike I was very sympathetic. See, I knew all these San Francisco longshoremen. They were Irish and Swedes; they were my buddies. I was playing soccer for the Vikings then, and we had five longshoremen on strike. My dad and I talked about the strike; he was a trade unionist. And the longshoremen in our Mission District neighborhood swore by Harry; they were church-going Catholics, but they didn’t buy this Red shit.
Ralph Dawson came up to our joint, Lipton’s Tea Co., and organized us. It was Christmas week, 1936; we signed up right after New Year’s, 1937. We said, “What took you so long?” We hadn’t the faintest idea what the union was doing; but we knew organization was just a matter of time after the ’34 strike was over and they started moving uptown.
See, the organization took part on a very planned, systematic approach. You had commercial warehouses strung along the waterfront from the Hyde Street pier over to Islais Creek; then you had cold storage warehouses; behind those you had mill, feed, flour, and grain; behind those you had grocery—big grocery, with 1500 people—and that’ the way they organized. Gee, it was terrific. Then came hardware, paper, and the patent drug industry, and then coffee tea, and spice in ’37. Liquor and wine came in ’38. Then it was a mopping up operation after that. By World War II, the union had under contract, either wholly or partially organized, 46 different industries in warehouse, distribution, production, and processing.
Management was very nervous after the ’34 longshore strike. Before the organizers came—before Dawson—our Western Division manager called a meeting. He said it looked like there were going to be union organizers around. “If you guys decide to join a union, it’s all right with us.” he said, “but we’d like an opportunity to pick a union for you.” Well I says, “We want that one on the waterfront!”
Then seven other guys spoke up and said, “We want that one.” The manager asked, “You all go along with what Joe says?” They said, “Yes.” He said “All right, boys, if that’s the way you want it, that’s fine with us. When the organizers come up, send them to me.” I was on the negotiating committee; we signed an agreement in. April 1937. Soon I was elected steward for ILA Local 38-44.
At Lipton’s 15 men had joined ILA 38-44 in January1937; there were also 20 women who were not organized until August or September. After we signed our April agreement they came to me and said they were anxious to get into a union too, so I organized them. These were some of the first women to come into our union.