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HISTORY FOCUS: •PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC •SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT •SIERRA PACIFIC POWER

The Early Years (continued)

3. ONE BIG UNION: THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

Even with their leadership structure smashed by government raids, the Industrial Workers of the World (known as “Wobblies”) continued to press for industrial unionism under the banner of “One Big Union of All the Workers.” One Wobbly stronghold was the lumberindustry of the Pacific Northwest. In 1931 the IWW picked up a new recruit—a lad from Modesto, California named L. L. “Mitch” Mitchell:

“I was only about fifteen years old at the time. I went to work in the woods up above Fresno at Shaver Lake, Sugar Pine Lumber Company, and that’s where I got indoctrinated into the union. They had the IWW there. That’s where I really learned what union power was. This old guy I used to work with—he was funny—he would say, ‘You know, Mitch, there’s no way in the world that those bosses are going to hear you with that mill running. We’ve got to shut it down.’ And that was what they’d do. If that didn’t work, then they’d burn it down.

“The IWW wouldn’t have a contract; that meant you were bound to something. So they wouldn’t sign a contract. Their way of getting things was job action. You asked for something. If you didn’t get it, you quit work. It was just that simple. When they got enough of what they wanted, they’d go back to work again. It happened almost daily. If the grub was no good, you don’t work the next day. If the beds are no good, you don’t work the next day. You know, just until they get new beds.

“Their own strength was the thing,” Mitchell continues. “You can one guy, the whole job walked off. They were united. And of course you’ve got to remember that loggers may log in Washington, they may log here, they may log in Canada. They were a real fraternity. They knew each other and they all had names like ‘Three-fingered Jack’ and ‘Broken-toed John’. There was a camaraderie that you don’t have now.”

The IWW believed that since workers were the ones who produced the nation’s wealth, they ought to be the ones to run the show. Unlike the American Federation of Labor, which believed that union membership should be restricted to skilled craftsmen, the Wobblies sought to organize all workers—skilled and unskilled alike.

The IWW was launched in 1905 by some of the nation’s most famous labor activists: Mary “Mother” Jones, Eugene Debs, William “Big Bill” Haywood, and Lucy Parsons, widow of one of the Haymarket martyrs. But much of the working class wasn’t yet ready for the IWW message of radical industrial democracy. That, coupled with the violent crackdown by federal agents, state militia and company goon squads, doomed the Wobbly dream of “One Big Union” of all the workers.

As a result, unions during the 1920s continued to be organized largely along craft lines, while workers in the industrial sector were left to fend for themselves. But even as the Wobblies disappeared from the national scene in the 1930s, their message of industrial unionism took on fresh appeal to American workers as the nation sank deep into the Great Depression.
4. THE NEW DEAL AND THE CIO

In 1933, the Utility Gas & Electric Employees, an independent union, began organizing on PG&E property. It was the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as president, promising Americans a “New Deal.”

And a new deal was certainly needed. Four years of economic depression following the 1929 stock market crash left America’s working class in a wretched state. Unemployment in the first few months of the crash increased almost ten-fold, from 492,000 to over 4.5 million in March of 1930. By March of 1933, unemployment had reached 15 million, approximately one-third of the workforce.

The National Industrial Recovery Act, passed shortly after Roosevelt took office in 1933, was a beacon in the darkness for the nation’s dispirited working class. Section 7a of the NIRA provided, for the first time, a legal basis for union organizing. However, the craft-oriented American Federation of Labor continued to resist calls that it begin organizing workers on an industrial basis.

Nonetheless, local unions of industrial workers in 1933 began to spring up seemingly out of nowhere. Among them: the Utility Gas & Electric Employees at PG&E, the first union activity on PG&E property since 1921.

Anger over the catastrophic depression—and hope that workers themselves could do something about it—proved to be a combustible mix. Labor activity escalated in 1934. Massive strikes hit Toledo, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. A Longshoreman’s strike in San Francisco during the spring turned into a General Strike in July after two workers were killed by police in a day of fierce rioting remembered still as Bloody Thursday.


Franklin Roosevelt signed many important reforms into law during his celebrated "New Deal" administration, including the National Labor Relations Act. Here he is shown signing the law creating the Social Security system.

In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (the “Wagner Act”), which provided for union representation elections and created the National Labor Relations Board to administer labor laws. But still the AFL offered no plan for organizing industrial workers.

Finally, in late 1935, industrial labor agitation found a national leader when John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers called together like-minded labor leaders to form the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of 1936, the CIO was pitted against the citadel of corporate capitalism, General Motors. Thousands of Michigan autoworkers staged sit-down strikes for union recognition. Lewis played a pivotal role in bringing General Motors to the bargaining table in February 1937. Less than a month later, another corporate giant, US Steel, came to the table to sign a contract with the CIO’s Steel Workers Organizing Committee. These well-publicized victories fired the imagination of America’s working class, prompting a wave of sit-down strikes.

It was in this highly-charged atmosphere that the Utility Gas & Electric Employees union at PG&E proceeded to affiliate with the United Electrical and Radio Workers (UE)—a militant national industrial union—and petitioned the National Labor Relations Board in April for a union representation election on the PG&E system. Assigned to assist their effort was the West Coast representative for the CIO: Harry Bridges, leader of the 1934 Longshoremen strike. For many PG&E workers it must have seemed that a union—at long last—was at hand.