Transport Workers' Strike

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Transport Workers' Strike

Worldwide 1911

Synopsis

On 14 June 1911 dockworkers in Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the East Coast of the United States went on strike. It was probably the first internationally organized strike. In Britain it developed into a general strike of transport workers. The demands and the tactics of the trade unions that participated in the strike differed from country to country and sometimes from port to port. In addition to two general demands, the participants made diverse local demands. The various unions conducted decentralized negotiations, which contributed to the disparate course of the conflict and its resolution. In some cases it ended within a few days; in others it continued for a matter of months. Due in part to increasingly favorable economic conditions, in most cases the conflict ended in triumph for the strikers.

Timeline

1891: Construction of Trans-Siberian Railway begins. Meanwhile, crop failures across Russia lead to widespread starvation.
1896: First modern Olympic Games held in Athens.
1901: U.S. President William McKinley is assassinated by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.
1904: Beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, which lasts into 1905 and results in a resounding Japanese victory. In Russia the war is followed by the Revolution of 1905, which marks the beginning of the end of czarist rule; meanwhile, Japan is poised to become the first major non-Western power of modern times.
1911: Turkish-Italian War sees the first use of aircraft as an offensive weapon. Italian victory results in the annexation of Libya.
1911: In China revolutionary forces led by Sun Yat-sen bring an end to more than 2,100 years of imperial rule.
1911: Revolution in Mexico, begun the year before, continues with the replacement of the corrupt Porfirio Diaz, president since 1877, by Francisco Madero.
1911: Ernest Rutherford at the University of Manchester correctly posits that the atom contains a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. (Discovery of the protons that give the nucleus its positive charge, and of the neutrons that, along with protons, contribute to its mass, still lies in the future.)
1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team of four other Norwegians are the first men to reach the South Pole, on 14 December. A month later, a group of British explorers led by Robert F. Scott will reach the Pole, only to die of starvation soon afterward.
1915: A German submarine sinks the Lusitania, killing 1,195, including 128 U.S. citizens. Theretofore, many Americans had been sympathetic toward Germany, but the incident begins to turn the tide of U.S. sentiment toward the Allies.
1919: Formation of the Third International (Comintern), whereby the Bolshevik government of Russia establishes its control over communist movements worldwide.
1919: Treaty of Versailles signed by the Allies and Germany but rejected by the U.S. Senate. This is due in part to rancor between President Woodrow Wilson and Republican Senate leaders, and in part to concerns over Wilson's plan to commit the United States to the newly established League of Nations and other international duties. Not until 1921 will Congress formally end U.S. participation in the war, but it will never agree to join the league.

Event and Its Context

By the end of the nineteenth century, the labor market for seamen was already international in scope. North Americans, Britons, Continental Europeans, Indians, and sailors of other nationalities worked alongside one another on ships sailing the North Atlantic. The trade unions in the individual countries could respond in two ways: by trying to exclude foreigners from those ships registered in their country, or by trying to recruit those foreigners as union members. The first option was problematic because it was in the interests of the powerful ship owners to have a multinational labor force because it was easier to discipline and could be used to keep wages low. Seamen's unions often opted for the second approach. This was true of the seamen's union of the world's largest maritime nation at the time, Great Britain. The National Seamen's and Firemen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland (NSFU) was founded in 1887 under the leadership of Havelock Wilson. Initially, the NSFU attempted to exclude foreigners, but within a few years it had changed its policy. Later, Wilson wrote, "There was once upon a time when I was foolish enough to believe that the foreigners were the great curse of the British seamen. I have got past that stage many, many years ago, and I believe that a foreigner has equally as much right to live in the world as a Britisher. The only point is that I want that foreigner not to under-sell my labour and I want him to be as competent to do the work as I would do it myself."

Starting in 1890 the NSFU opened branches or agencies in other ports, including Copenhagen, Hamburg, New York, and Rotterdam. In 1896, when the high cost of maintaining such an extensive network became clear, Wilson took the initiative to establish the International Federation of Ship, Dock and River Workers, which in turn became the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) in 1898. The ITF's main objective was to promote the development of trade unions in all ports, and thereby continue the international work of the NSFU on a larger scale. This task was made easier because, independently of the ITF, dockers and longshoremen in many ports began to organize themselves during this period. Establishment of international federations was not restricted to employees; employers did the same. At the end of 1909 ship owners from Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and Scandinavia founded the International Shipping Federation (ISF), the main objective of which was to undermine the seamen's unions. Within the ISF, British ship owners, represented by the Shipping Federation, were the most dominant force.

The cooperation engendered between transport workers in the North Atlantic region on the one hand and many of their employers on the other formed the backdrop to the international strike of 1911. The idea of an international seamen's strike had been around for many years, but plans really only began to take shape when Havelock Wilson and his colleague from the United States, Andrew Furuseth of the International Seamen's Union, raised the matter at the ITF congress in Copenhagen in August 1910. The economic recession of 1908-1909 had ended and unemployment was beginning to decline again. The upturn in the economic cycle strengthened the negotiating position of the transport workers. The Dutch and the Belgians were sympathetic to an international strike, but the Germans and the Austrians believed that their unions were still too weak to undertake successfully such a venture. Those who supported the strike action convened in Antwerp on 14 March 1911; seamen's unions from Belgium, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden attended. Attendees set up an international committee with Wilson as chairman. They proffered two general demands: an end to the "demeaning" practice of medical examinations performed by doctors employed by the ship owners, and improved quarters aboard ships. The participants agreed that negotiations in any one country would be terminated if they discovered that strikebreakers from that country were being used elsewhere. The international employers' organization was issued an ultimatum.

Only the Danish ship owners reached a settlement. They made several significant concessions in exchange for an eight-year collective agreement on pay and conditions. The ISF declined to respond. With the date having been secretly agreed upon as of 1 May, the strike began on 14 June 1911 in Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. U.S. seamen were not represented on the strike committee, but nonetheless they organized a number of strikes in Atlantic ports. The demands and the tactics of the unions differed from country to country and sometimes from port to port. In addition to the two general demands, the unions made several local demands. Decentralized negotiations produced different resolutions in different locales.

In the United States, both Furuseth and Wilson had tried to canvass support, but backing for the strike was disappointing. By 15 June news of the strike in Europe had filtered through to East Coast ports. In the days that followed, strikes began at a number of shipping lines (including Morgan, Clyde, Mallory, Old Dominion, and Savannah), most of which ended in victory for the strikers within two weeks. The demands of the U.S. unions tended to be somewhat racist in character, unlike those of the British NSFU; U.S. unions wanted to exclude foreigners (especially blacks and the Chinese) rather than force them to become members.

In Antwerp, Belgium, a defense committee was set up several days before the strike began. Several organizations joined the committee, including the national trade-union confederation, the national Labor Party, and several local unions. The number of strikers increased steadily, and by 21 June it had reached 600, including 200 foreigners. On 22 June, English ship owners made a series of concessions that were also favorable to Belgian seamen, and the unions lifted the strike against English shipping lines. However, the strike against the recalcitrant Belgian ship owners turned increasingly bitter. On 27 June the longshoremen announced that they would begin a sympathy strike if employers did not concede to the seamen's demands within 48 hours. The ship owners' organization relented (only one major line, the Red Star Line, was not a member). The strikers achieved several successes, including agreement on the length of the working day and the establishment of a municipal labor exchange in an effort to end the activities of subcontractors (known as "crimps").

In the Netherlands strikes broke out in the two largest ports, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. A social-democratic trade union represented Rotterdam's seamen; their brethren in Amsterdam had a syndicalist union. The two unions were hostile toward one another and so failed to coordinate their protests. On 11 July the Rotterdam union reached a settlement with the employers that recognized the union and granted a wage increase to 2,300 out of the 3,000 seamen on condition that they would make no further wage demands for the next three years. In Amsterdam the number of seamen participating in the strike continued to increase, from 200 on 14 June to 1,500 by 18 July. The longshoremen began to join the strikers on 22 June, but to no avail. The large numbers of strikebreakers imported from outside Amsterdam (and from Germany) and the repressive measures by the police and army created major difficulties for the strikers. On 26 July the longshoremen withdrew their support, and on 9 August the seamen too were forced to accept defeat.

The strike in Britain was the largest and most complex. The seaman, as in the other countries, were the first to join. On 14 June they held public meetings in London, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, Hull, Glasgow, Grimsby, Dublin, and Manchester. The NSFU handed out flags bearing the text, "War Is Now Declared: Seamen Strike Hard and Strike for Liberty on 14th June 1911." A wave of protests spread across the country, and more and more crews left their ships. The longshoremen were quick to join. On 16 June longshoremen in Goole, Glasgow, Southampton, and Newcastle threw in their lot with the seamen, followed on 19 June by those in Hull, and on 20 June by those in Manchester and Liverpool. The support of the longshoremen was a factor in the 28 June decision of the recently founded National Transport Workers' Federation to back the seamen. On 17 August railway workers in many parts of the country walked out to protest long hours and low wages. The strike spread to other occupations. In some cases, even though their own demands had been conceded, workers continued to strike in solidarity with those from other trades who had joined the strike later and had so far failed to achieve their aims. As a whole, the wave of strikes made an uncoordinated impression. Many protests and negotiations had a local character. Sometimes, the conflict finished in one city before it had even peaked in another. The degree of repression shown by the authorities also differed from city to city. In many towns police and troops intervened, most savagely in Liverpool on 13 August ("Bloody Sunday"), when a brutal attack on demonstrators by police and mounted troops left 350 people injured. The strike eventually ended on 24 August. Apart from the railway workers, most of the strike participants achieved significant concessions, which ranged from wage increases and the abolition of the "ticket" (a certificate of good conduct for sailors) to union recognition.

Key Players

Furuseth, Andrew (1854-1938): Merchant seaman, born in Norway; president of the North American International Seamen's Union from 1908 until his death.

Wilson, Joseph Havelock (1858-1929): Founder of the National Amalgamated Sailors' and Firemen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1887. Wilson was several times a liberal labor Member of Parliament. He opposed the British General Strike of 1926.