Making it Work in Southern California, ILWU Local 26, 1936-1950

Edited by Harvey Schwartz

PAUL HEIDE

‘We went down there with a kitty of $20,000.’

In May 1937 the old Pacific Coast District, ILA-AFL—we became the ILWU-CIO a few months later—sent Bob Robertson, Ralph Dawson, and me to Los Angeles as district warehouse organizers. We had helped unionize all the inland houses in the San Francisco Bay Area The LA warehouse local ILA 38-134—it became Local 26, ILWU in September—had organized most of LA’s drug warehouses since its chartering in October 1936, but there was still a lot more to be done.

We went down there with a kitty of $20,000: $10,000 had been put up by the Bay Area warehousemen and $10,000 was matched by the district to hire additional organizers. We had some volunteer organizers and we hired a number from the L.A port’s longshore local, including L.B. Thomas, Elmer Mevert and Don Cox.

We had organizing meetings almost every night of the week. Anybody could come from any of the houses. We’d be at the office about eight o’clock in the morning. The workday would last until ten or eleven o’clock at night, after we were through with the organizational meetings. We had 4,000 workers signed up until the Teamsters started raiding us. Then we lost several places.

We had cards made for different industries we had organized in the Bay Area. We’d put down the conditions we had there. Then we’d drive down the street in the L.A. industrial area. There would be three on a crew. One organizer would drive and the other two would hop off the car and go right through a plant before the managers had a chance to stop us. In the plant we’d pass out our cards. Sometimes we were right ahead of the superintendent or some stooge who’d be chasing us out.

LOU SHERMAN

‘The Teamsters clamped down.’’

In the mid-1930s, when I was in the Teamsters, a guy named Loyd Seeliger and I organized a dissident movement in Local 208, the general truck drivers’ local in L.A. The Teamster International moved in and took away our autonomy. They threw out the officers and appointed international representatives. Loyd and I were on the Teamster shit list then. We were charged with being subversives, reds.

In 1937 the warehouse organizing committee—Robertson, Heide and some of the other guys—hired Loyd and myself to try to develop the Teamster rank and file movement to counter the Teamster raids. It didn’t last. The Teamsters clamped down. At this point the committee decided to keep us on as organizers. After about three weeks they decided to cut back. I went to work for Brunswig Drug, a place our L.A. warehouse local had already organized, and stayed there for two and a half years. But they decided to keep Loyd as an organizer. He was one of the best.

LOYD SEELIGER

‘They’d come in and try to take over.’

I was born in 1906, left home when I was 13 and went to work for a contractor out of Riggins, Idaho. The IWWs, the Industrial Workers of the World, was strong then. They was in all the construction work and logging camps. I learned from the old Wobblies about job action. That meant a surprise attack—a quickie strike—on the employer.

Later I worked on the waterfront at San Pedro, not very long. I come into L.A. because it was the Depression and you couldn’t get a job. Maybe you got one day off the waterfront. L.A. was nearly an unorganized town when I come here. You talked about a union and you was a real rebel.

In 1937 the warehouse organizing committee hired Lou Sherman and me—we’d been thrown out of the Teamsters, and they’d heard about it—and we started organizing warehouses in L.A. The union organized the drugs and the mills first, and a big hardware house. All this time we were fighting the Teamsters. They’d come in and try to take over through the boss who’d say to the workers, “You’re supposed to be organized. Join this union, don’t join that red organization.” They said we was communists.

Organizing at California Mill I’d wait outside and let the workers come out. Then I’d collar one or two of ’em. I’d ask them why they didn’t join the union. They’d say, “We’d organize, but they’ll fire us.” I’d say, “We’ll keep it a secret.” I’d take a guy, go home with him, talk to him and his wife, maybe for two hours. I’d convince them that the union movement was the only thing—but they had to be quiet until we got enough people organized so they wouldn’t get discharged. So we organized the wives right along with the employees.

At California Mill we got more than half of ’em organized. We went to the labor board for certification. The employer fired ’em all. So we set up a picket line. We also planned on breaking L.A.’s anti-picketing ordinance. The L.A. Police Department’s “Red Hynes Squad”—named for its anti-labor captain, William F. Hynes—would come down to the picket line and take me to jail. Our lawyer Leo Gallagher, would put a bond up and I’d be released. I think they took me to the police department to book me 11 times in one day.

Finally my case went to the state supreme court and broke the anti-picketing ordinance. At California Mill we won the strike and got a contract. The employer called me. “Come down here,” he said, “I want to talk with you, you s.o.b.” I went to his office and he said “You’ve cost me half a million dollars. I said, “I haven’t cost you nothing. You’ve cost yourself something. Your men need good working conditions and a contract. They haven’t got nothing, no holidays, no vacations of any kind.” Of course, that was before health and welfare come on. So he said, “OK, we’ll sit down.”

I said, “Here’s the contract.” We had it already written out. It had one week’s vacation—if we got a week’s vacation in those days we was doin’ damn good. It had five days of sick leave. It had time and a half for over eight hours and for Saturdays and Sundays—they never had time and a half before. It had a good grievance procedure to be taken up with the stewards.

A little while after the drugs and the mills was organized we went after the L.A. scrap workers. The Teamsters didn’t want the scrap industry then. There were Blacks, Mexicans and Jewish people working in those places. The Teamsters didn’t care about them.

The scrap workers were getting 25 cents an hour, no overtime, no conditions at all. The employers took so much advantage. If they had a lot of work, they’d keep their employees until 9 o’clock at night, straight time. We felt these workers were ripe for organization.

We organized M.F. Berg’ scrap rag place first. There were six guys in there that was very militant. They was so mad at Berg. They wanted to get organized, and they wanted to shut this damn place down if they didn’t get some money. But M.F. Berg knew he’d been gettin’ away with murder. He doubled their wages, put ’em on an eight hour day, and gave ’em time and a half after that. We got a good contract with him.

We took these six guys, made an organizing committee out of their whole house, and organized all the rest of the scrap industry. If those six guys would call all the other M.F. Berg workers, they all went. They’d surround a plant. We wouldn’t let the workers come out until they all signed applications. We’d go from plant to plant. And we doubled their wages.

The M.F. Berg workers were mostly Mexicans and Blacks. I think the six guys was all Mexicans. Sanz was one of the guys, and Diaz. They were wonderful. We had a ball with these guys.

LOU SHERMAN

‘The local went to bat for me.’’

When I was working at Brunswig Drug a couple of years went by with relative peace there until 1940. Then the drug industry went on strike for ten weeks. I was personally involved; my job was to raise money, buy food, and package it for distribution to strikers. When the strike was over, Brunswig fired me.

The local went to bat for me, there was an unfair labor practice charge, and finally the company was willing to throw in the towel and settle. They didn’t want me back, but they were willing to pay several weeks of back pay to get rid of me. As soon as my beef with Brunswig was over I was hired to work for the union again organizing. I organized anything I could put my hands on until the war came and I went into the Army in 1943.

LOYD SEELIGER

‘The local did a pretty good organizing job.’

During World War II, when I was in the Army Longshore Battalion, the drug workers and Berg and our other scrap yards stayed in Local 26. We lost the mills. But after the war the local did a pretty good organizing job. I came home from overseas in 1946 got elected business agent for the port, and organized National Metals there the next year. It had 200 to 300 people at one time. And the local had a hell of a good guy in L.A. by the name of Chet Meske. He went out and organized a lot of different kinds of houses in different industries.

LOU SHERMAN

‘We had an identity of our own.’

After the war I was elected Sect.-Treas. of the local. I held that job for a long time. Around 1950 there were hard times for four or five years. There were new confrontations with the Teamsters, who raided us in L.A. and seized any opportunity to prevent us from expanding. There was adverse publicity given to the ILWU as a result of the constant red­scare then.

We survived and through it all, we were in accord on one thing—we were part of the ILWU with a fine tradition and we were going to make it work in southern California even though we weren’t longshoremen. We always regarded ourselves as independent and equal to the longshoremen—we admired and respected them and we loved them because they were great trade unionists—but we had an identity of our own that we were very proud of.