Union Labor Party (California)
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Union Labor Party
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| Leaders |
Eugene Schmitz, Charles Boxton, Patrick H. McCarthy |
| Founded | 1901 |
| Dissolved | 1912 |
| Headquarters | San Francisco |
| Ideology |
Nativism Labor rights Open shop politics |
The Union Labor Party was a San Francisco, California working class political party of the first decade of the 20th century. The organization, which endorsed the doctrine of nativism, rose to prominence in both the labor movement and urban politics in the years after 1901, electing its nominee as Mayor of San Francisco in 1909.
During the first decade of the 20th century, employers across America made effective use of judicial injunctions to prohibit trade unions from engaging in strikes to win recognition for themselves and wage-and-hour gains for their members. This so-called "open shop drive" put organized labor, concentrated in an array of local and international craft unions joined under the umbrella of the American Federation of Labor on the defensive.
In San Francisco, one of the most heavily unionized cities in the country, matters came to a head in the summer of 1901 when a local employers' association, the Draymen's Association, locked out the city's unionized teamsters on July 21. The lockout spread to the entire waterfront, which saw the city's transportation essentially shut down.
Strikebreakers were imported by the employers, who were met by force, leading to calls by the employers for police assistance. When police were deployed by the Chief of Police, the city's 14 maritime unions joined together in the City Front Federation and voted to initiate a mass sympathy strike in support of the locked out teamsters, rather than see the teamsters' union crushed. Some 16,000 longshoremen, clerks, packers, and warehouse workers joined the work stoppage, thereby increasing the volatility of the situation.
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