One Hundred and Fifty Years After General Strike, Bay Area Workers Still Fighting for Justice

David Bacon @ Truthout - In the 150-year history of workers in the San Francisco Bay Area, the watershed event was one that happened 70 years ago - the San Francisco general strike. That year, sailors, longshoremen, and other maritime workers shut down all the ports on the West Coast, trying to form a union and end favoritism, low wages and grueling 10- and 12-hour days. Ship owners deployed tanks and guns on the waterfront and tried to break the strike.

At the peak of this bitter labor war, police fired into crowds of strikers, killing two union activists. Read more.