MikeDunnAuthorToday in Labor History April 13, 1890: Ben Fletcher was born in Philadelphia. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913. Ben Fletcher and the IWW Dockers struck in Philadelphia on May 13, 1913. 10,000 Wobblies participated. They were protesting poor wages and dangerous working conditions. By May 28, they had won a ten-hour workday and time-and-a-half pay for overtime. However, the strike also launched one of the most successful anti-racist, anti-capitalist unions in the country: IWW Local 8. At the time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. The employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. Fletcher organized them all into a single IWW local.
After the 1913 strike, Fletcher traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. By 1916, thanks in large part to his organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color. In 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years. After the trial, he told fellow defendant Big Bill Haywood: "The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language." When Hayward replied, "How is that, Ben?" Fletcher said: ‘His sentences are much too long.’”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #strike #racism #benfletcher #philadelphia #longshore #dockers #prison #BlackMastodon
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