International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union
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|
| Founded | August 11, 1937 |
|---|---|
| 94-0577594 | |
| Legal status | 501(c)(5) labor organization |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
|
Members
|
33,270 (2014) |
| Robert McEllrath | |
| Subsidiaries | International Longshore & Warehouse, Pacific Longshoremen's Memorial Association |
| Affiliations | Canadian Labour Congress |
|
Revenue (2014)
|
$7,380,493 |
| Expenses (2014) | $5,980,052 |
|
Employees (2014)
|
33 |
| Mission | To unionize workers. |
| Website | ilwu |
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and Alaska, and in British Columbia, Canada. It also represents hotel workers in Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska, warehouse workers throughout the West and bookstore workers in Portland, Oregon. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a 3-month-long strike that culminated in a 4-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO on August 30, 2013. In 2014, the San Francisco Chronicle described the ILWU as "the aristocrat of the working class; a top member can earn over well over [sic] $100,000 a year with excellent benefits", with vacancies receiving thousands or sometimes even tens of thousands of applications.
Longshoremen on the west coast ports had either been unorganized or represented by company unions since the years immediately after World War I, when the shipping companies and stevedoring firms had imposed the open shop after a series of failed strikes. Longshoremen in San Francisco, then the major port on the coast, were required to go through a hiring hall operated by a company union, known as the "blue book" system for the color of the union's membership book.
The Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist Party had both attempted to organize longshoremen, sailors and fishermen in the 1920s. The Communist Party's union never made much headway on the West Coast, but did attract a number of former IWW members and other militants, such as Harry Bridges, an Australian-born sailor who became a longshoreman after coming to the United States. Those activists soon joined the International Longshoremen's Association, despite their reservations about its reputation for corruption and lack of militancy, when passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 led to an explosion in union membership in the ILA among West Coast longshoremen.
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