Mastodawn

Today in Labor History April 17, 1944: The militant Lodge 68 of the International Association of Machinists (IAM), in San Francisco, began a ban against overtime work. During the ban, which lasted four months, all machinists refused to work more than eight hours per day, and on Sundays. They began this job action in protest of a wage freeze that had been in place throughout World War Two, as high wartime inflation eroded the value of their wages.

Roosevelt’s economic stabilization czar, Fred Vinson, said they had to “stamp out” this example of labor militancy and defiance of the government before it spread across the entire country. The bosses, as well as most of organized labor, including the Communist-oriented ILWU, agreed, and they collaborated to undermine and crush Lodge 68. During World War Two, Lodge 68 had more strikes than all the other unions in the Bay Area combined. Together with Oakland's Local 1304 of the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee, they openly defied the National War Labor Board (NWLB), the FBI, the White House, as well as the CIO, ILWU and Communist Party.

Prior to WWII, the IAM and ILWU had been closely allied. In 1934, IAM members led the call for the San Francisco General Strike after the San Francisco police murdered two striking union members on the waterfront. During WWII, however, the ILWU took a much more collaborationist attitude toward the U.S. government. Harry Bridges felt that defeating Hitler took precedence over working conditions and working-class solidarity at home, and that wartime strikes undermined this goal. One of the loudest voices within the Regional War Labor Board calling for government against the machinists was ILWU vice-president Louis Goldblatt.

In September, 1944, the U.S. Navy took over control of most of the machinery industry in San Francisco and its industrial suburbs, suspending union contracts, grievance procedure, and collective bargaining rights. They fired machinists Martin Joos and Arthur Burke for continuing to do their jobs as union representatives in violation of their suspension of union rights and blacklisted them from other jobs. Just prior to their firing, the FBI interrogated them for violating wartime antistrike legislation. They also revoked ration cards for numerous other IAM members and referred others to the Selective Service for immediate induction into the military. At the same time, FBI agents fanned out through the Bay Area’s working-class communities, interrogating thousands of machinists in their homes. These heavy-handed tactics ultimately ended the overtime ban.

To learn more, see this article from libcom: https://libcom.org/article/class-conscious-machinists-stormy-petrels-west-coast-labor

#workingclass #LaborHistory #FBI #communism #union #strike #ilwu #hitler #fascism #nazis #machinists #solidarity #militancy

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Félicien Breton 🍉 🔻 🌱Apr 15

The Irish republican "tradition’s hardest won insight is this: the legitimacy of a grievance does not depend on the respectability of its expression. Irish diplomats spent thirty years explaining this to British counterparts who insisted there could be no negotiation while the IRA was bombing, that calm discussion could not happen while the law was being broken, that to engage with the grievance was to legitimise the method. Those diplomats were right and the British were wrong. The Good Friday Agreement happened because enough people on both sides eventually accepted that the legitimacy of a grievance had to be addressed on its own terms, regardless of the respectability of its expression. That insight was built in Belfast and Derry, Dundalk and Crossmaglen and the H-Blocks, by people who counted the dead. It is the most important political idea Ireland has given the world in a century, and it belongs to the tradition I write from."

If you are looking for explanation and context for the last week in Irish politics, read this: https://forlouth.medium.com/the-money-is-not-there-b6422f996612

#respectability #militancy #activism #protests #Ireland #Republicans

The Money Is Not There

Three collapses in a weekend the blockade ended — notes on the government, the opposition, and the tradition I write from

Medium

Félicien Breton 🍉 🔻 🌱Apr 11

"The French protests over the killing of Nahel Merzouk have not changed the brutal policing of Black and Arab youth in the banlieues.

"The BRAV-M has not been dismantled. The police Alliance has not had its grip on power broken. The far right still threatens to break through the firewall.

"We can ask why more people aren't doing more, and how do we organize and break through the complacency that defines white American culture.

"I'm not sure I would be looking to Western European neocolonial powers for shining examples though.

"We don't need to look to France or the Netherlands for a resistance blueprint, we have Black and indigenous radical resistance movements here in the US with an unbroken 500+ year history.

"We really need to center whiteness less and learn to develop some humility and solidarity."

Wrote @chadloder on 2026-04-09 at Bluesky

#whiteness #militancy #France #resistance #coloniality