The iconic leader of one of America's most powerful unions, Harry Bridges put an indelible stamp on the twentieth century labor movement. Robert Cherny's monumental biography tells the life story of the figure who built the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) into a labor powerhouse that still represents almost 30,000 workers. An Australian immigrant, Bridges worked the Pacific Coast docks. His militant unionism placed him at the center of the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike and spurred him to expand his organizing activities to warehouse laborers and Hawaiian sugar and pineapple workers. Cherny examines the overall effectiveness of Bridges as a union leader and the decisions and traits that made him effective. Cherny also details the price paid by Bridges as the US government repeatedly prosecuted him for his left-wing politics. Drawing on personal interviews with Bridges and years of exhaustive research, Harry Bridges places an extraordinary individual and the ILWU within the epic history of twentieth-century labor radicalism.
Robert W. Cherny is a professor emeritus of history at San Francisco State University. His many books include Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art
Acknowledgments Abbreviations From Australia to the San Francisco Docks, 1901-1922 San Francisco Longshoreman, 1922-1929 San Francisco Longshoremen Organize, 1929-May 9, 1934 The Big Strike, May 9 to July 4, 1934 The Big Strike: Bloody Thursday and After, July 5th to the End of 1934 Pursuing Maritime Unity, October 1934-January 1936 Founding the ILWU, 1936-1940 Harry Bridges and the Communist Party in the 1930s: Evidence from the Russian Archives Deport Bridges! 1934-1941 If at First You Don't Succeed: Deportation, 1940-1945 World War, Labor Peace, 1940-1945 Cold War, Labor War, 1945-1948 Try, Try, Again: Deportation and Expulsion, 1948-1953 The Last Deportation Trial and New Beginnings, 1953-1960 Transforming Longshoring: The M&Ms, 1960-1966 Labor Statesman? 1960-1971 The Longest Strike: Relations with PMA, 1966-1977 Living Legend, 1971-1990 Notes Selected Bibliography Index
"Harry Bridges is little-known, but he was arguably the most important left-leaning union leader in twentieth-century America. Cherny has written the most comprehensive biography of Bridges that exists--or, I imagine, ever will exist."--Peter Cole, author of Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area
