Bridges Harry

BRIDGES, HARRY (1901–1990). Because he and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) usually stood on the left of the American labor movement, Harry Bridges spent nearly twenty years under threat of deportation, and the ILWU was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). After 1960, however, Bridges gained broad-based acclaim as a labor leader.

Born Alfred Renton Bryant Bridges in Kensington, Australia, Bridges rejected the white-collar career planned by his middle-class parents. He went to sea in 1917, shipping from American ports after 1920. Exposure to Australian socialism and his seafaring experiences produced a brief affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World in the early 1920s. In 1922 he began to work as a longshoreman in San Francisco.

In 1933 San Francisco longshoremen formed a local of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). Bridges worked closely with Communist Party members to develop a militant longshore union with strong rank-and-file control. During the maritime and general strikes of 1934, he rose rapidly to leadership in the San Francisco local and the West Coast ILA. In 1937 Bridges led the West Coast ILA into the CIO as the ILWU; he became ILWU president and CIO regional director. Activism exacted a toll; Bridges developed severe ulcers, and his first marriage disintegrated.

From 1934 onward, business leaders, the press, and elected officials labeled Bridges a Red and urged deportation. He denied Party membership but openly supported many Party positions. In 1939 a hearing produced no grounds for deportation, leading Congress to adopt new criteria. A second hearing went against Bridges. The Supreme Court reversed that decision, and Bridges became a citizen in 1945.

During World War II, Bridges opposed strikes but refused to compromise on conditions. After the war, he came under renewed attack for his political views. In 1949 Bridges was charged with lying on his naturalization papers regarding Communist affiliations. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1955; federal attorneys filed new charges, but they were quickly dismissed.

In the 1950s Bridges concluded that mechanization of longshore work was inevitable; he led negotiations that produced the Mechanization and Modernization Agreement (M&M) in 1960. The ILWU accepted increased use of machinery on the docks; employers agreed to generous pensions; no layoffs, and guaranteed pay. Fortune called Bridges “the union leader who did best” for his members in 1960. A few ILWU members, especially Communists, criticized the M&M for reducing the size and hence the political clout of the ILWU, producing a brief rift between Bridges and the Party.

His continued admiration for the Soviet Union notwithstanding, Bridges came increasingly to be hailed as a “labor statesman” and was appointed to a city Charter Revision Commission in 1968 and to the San Francisco Port Commission in 1970. He retired as ILWU president in 1977. In 1988 Bridges gave his blessing to ILWU affiliation with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

As ILWU president, Bridges never accepted a salary higher than the best-paid longshoremen and eschewed perquisites that were routine among some union leaders. In retirement, Bridges stood somewhere between living legend and mythological hero, but accolades always brought his standard response: all honors properly belong to the rank and file. Upon Bridge’s death in 1990, pensioners in the Pacific Northwest launched a fund-raising drive that, by 1992, had raised more than a million dollars to endow a Harry Bridges Chair at the University of Washington. In 1992 researchers in the recently opened Comintern archives announced that they had found a document indicating that Bridges was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1936, but Bridges loyalists disputed the validity of the document, and his reputation rose in the aftermath. In 1992, the University of Washington dedicated the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies in his honor. In 2001, on the occasion of his one-hundredth birthday, California Governor Gray Davis declared “Harry Bridges Day.”

Afrasiabi, Peter. Burning Bridges: America’s 20-Year Crusade to Deport Harry Bridges. Thirlmere, England: Thirlmere Books, 2017.

Cherny, Robert W. “The Making of a Labor Radical: Harry Bridges, 1901–1934.” Pacific Historical Review 64 (1995).

Kutler, Stanley I. “‘If at first …’: The Trials of Harry Bridges” In The American Inquisition: Justice and Injustice in the Cold War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

Larrowe, Charles P. Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall of Radical Labor in the United States. New York: Lawrence Hill, 1972.

Schwartz, Harvey. “Harry Bridges and the Scholars: Looking at History’s Verdict.” California History 59 (spring 1980).

Harry Bridges: His Life and Legacy. Waterfront Workers Legacy Project. Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. University of Washington. http://depts.washington.edu/dock/Harry_Bridges_intro.shtml

Ward, Estolv E. Harry Bridges on Trial. New York: Modern Age Books, 1940.