Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend by Robert Cherny

University of Illinois Press, 2023

In his new biography of Harry Bridges, Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, author Robert Cherny paints a multi-hued portrait of a giant in the American Labor Movement, one whose name brings lumps to throats or raises hackles, depending on who you ask. Bridges was a longstanding maritime wage earner, working both on shore and on the sea who devoted his life to organizing the men who toiled alongside him for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and, later, for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). During that time (as Cherny’s subtitle correctly indicates) he acquired a legendary status in the union world, representing for his partisans a rank-and-file, militant, democratic unionism and for his opponents a dangerous communist-inflected radicalism.

Bridges was born in 1901 in Melbourne, Australia to a landlord family (ironically) and grew up in the midst of the enormous upheavals brought on by the Commonwealth’s involvement with World War I. Some “Ozzies” were marching off to war to serve as part of the ANZAC (many coming home “legless, armless, blind… insane” [And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda] or not returning at all), some participating in anti-war demonstrations, and many taking part in the “Great Strike” convulsing the continent in 1917. Inspired by the militancy on display, young Bridges became a merchant mariner, organizing for the International Workers of the World (among others) at the same time.

Eventually the young union militant would come ashore in San Francisco. He would work various jobs in his twenties, returning to being a dockworker after having started a family. He helped organize on behalf of the ILA, a union he was highly critical of for its alleged “top down” nature but preferred to the tender mercies of a non-union shop. In 1934, Bridges distinguished himself as a rank-and-file leader within the ILA as a member of the union’s strike committee during the West Coast dockworkers strike in May of that year, helped by an “…ability to verbalize their yearnings and concretize their goal”. The strike widened to non-maritime workers, nearly shutting down the city of San Francisco and ending in a definitive victory for Labor. After having gained the loyalty of many Longshoremen through his handling of the Strike and of membership concerns in its wake, Bridges and his allies in leadership would split the Pacific Coast District from the ILA and form the ILWU. Bridges had chafed under the leadership of the ILA, particularly the Administration of Joe Ryan (a former stevedore from the East Coast) calling it “a lousy, rotten, racketeering organization”. He also disliked the disregard the leadership had for the concerns of the membership resulting from a lack of dialogue and internal union democracy.

For the next forty years, Bridges headed the leadership of the ILWU, consistently bargaining for wage increases and more robust benefits for the membership. Cherny gives credit to Bridges both for his respect for internal union democracy and his strength vis-a-vis negotiations with management but is also not afraid of criticizing the union president for some follies as well.
In particular, the author details the struggle of “B men” in the ILWU. In the early 1960s and onwards, members of the union were classified as “A men” and “B men,” the former received better wages and benefits with each contract negotiation while the latter had much more diminished rights on the shopfloor, little job security, and typically did the most labor intensive tasks on the docks or in the ships’ hold. Herman Benson, co-founder of the Association for Union Democracy, took up their cause contemporaneously, covering the struggles of these marginalized workers in the pages of Union Democracy in Action #13. Not only were the “B men” discriminated against on the job, when some among them tried to seek recourse with the union, their efforts were squashed and the offending workers purged; “…it became clear that the International was preparing a list of those whom it proposed to drive out of the industry. It was no longer a matter of promoting some; it was a matter of discharging others without warning,” said Benson. In response, the retaliated against workers formed their own rank-and-file group called the Longshore Jobs Defense Committee which advocated on behalf of the B men contra both the leadership of the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association, their efforts even gaining the endorsement of the Workers Defense League.

Irving Howe, editor of the magazine Dissent and longtime ally of AUD, traced some of Bridges’ more autocratic tendencies even further back in his book, The American Communist Party: A Critical History 1919-1957 (co-authored with Lewis Coser). Howe recounts how, in the late 1930s, “…the Bridges machine systematically knifed away at all opposition tendencies and openly kept violating the principles of union democracy.” For instance, in January 1938, Local 34 of the United Office and Professional Workers Union elected a reformist slate to its leadership and was swiftly penalized by Harry Bridges himself: “In May, Bridges appeared at a Local 34 meeting with four “affidavits” charging the Local 34 leaders with being agents of the San Francisco Industrial Association and of the AFL…Early in May the San Francisco CIO Council, dominated by Bridges, recommended the dismemberment of Local 34.”

Harry Bridges retired in 1977, after four decades as leader of the ILWU. His legacy still looms large in the American Labor movement and his name graces buildings, schools, and even a play as testament to that fact. As for his record on union democracy, at his best Harry Bridges was a union leader who could empathize with his membership and use their concerns and aspirations as a North Star by which to guide his stance towards management. At his worst, Bridges could not avoid some of the attitudes all too common among union officers and his mistakes are to be a moral object lesson for all allies of union democracy.