Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU (review)

Recalling his experiences in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Cleophas Williams, the first African American President of Local 10, says, “This union was the greatest thing in my life, other than my family” (51).

Williams’ oral history is one of many in Harvey Schwartz’s Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU that details the pride its members feel in their union. An anthology of interview excerpts, the book highlights the union’s organizing and founding in the 1934 Pacific Coast waterfront strikes, working conditions for its members, and the building of a strong democratic union. The first-hand narratives create “a broad picture of what the ILWU has meant to a generation of workers” (4). Drawing on the voices of leaders and the rank-and-file, Solidarity Stories is a remarkable study of the ILWU’s history, democratic unionism, solidarity, struggle for dignity on the job, and commitment to racial equality.

Although Schwartz begins and ends his anthology with Harry Bridges, ILWU International President from 1937 to 1977, the core of the book is its accounts of the union’s history from the rank-and-file and local union leaders. Bridges stresses “In office, I always felt that the ones that direct everything are the rank and file . . . The rank and file is the power of the union, see?” (31). Solidarity Stories has six chapters that focus on the regions and industries where the union has organized and roughly follows the union’s history. Schwartz begins in the San Francisco Bay Area with the 1934 Waterfront Strike and follows with longshore work in Los Angeles and Long Beach. The recollections of the union’s history then turn to the Pacific Northwest and Canada, warehouse and cotton industries in California, and agriculture in Hawaii. The concluding chapter examines the role of the old left “in shaping the union’s inclusive, progressive agenda” (274). Although Schwartz notes that the ILWU has unique attributes and “an uncommon ability to overcome adversity,” he argues that “the testimonies in this book re-create the world of millions of American union members who were witnesses, activists, or leaders during organized labor’s mid-twentieth-century heyday” (5).

One of the themes linking the interviews in Solidarity Stories is a strong connection with the union’s history. Members from many regions say that “Being in the union was a big education” (80, 271). Others describe how they “soaked up [unionism] like a sponge” from the 1930s generation (53). It becomes evident that the union’s history is not simply the past. Ah Quon McElrath, a pioneer unionist in Hawaii who served as a social worker in Local 142, says, “By learning our past, we can develop new ways to enhance our personal lives as well as the collective lives of working people” (269). The oral histories in Solidarity Stories add to the literature on the ILWU (and labor history in general) because they illuminate members’ complex and meaningful accounts of the union’s history.

Work and unionism are at the center of Solidarity Stories. Interviewees describe back-breaking, dangerous labor, and paying kickbacks, in the days before the union, just to work on the waterfront. Being organized created a sense of dignity, what one member describes as “you can treat me as a man, not as a damn dog” (184). After organizing in the 1930s, the ILWU bargained for better working conditions, especially health and safety, and won a hiring hall where the union dispatched workers. The interviews show that the ILWU never ceased its struggle at the point of production and efforts to win good contracts and member protections. In the 1980s, for example, the ILWU helped to create the intermodal (shipping, rail, and trucking) yard in Tacoma, Washington (137–38). They likewise demonstrate the vibrancy of the union’s culture of “doing the right thing,” even as specific issues, such as modernization and containerization, pose new challenges.

Although...