HAWAII LONGSHORE DIVISION history

1841 -July, Hawaiian sugar workers on the islands' first plantation at Kōloa, Kaua‘i who were being paid in pasteboard scrip at the rate of 12½ cents a day, conduct Hawai‘i's first strike.

- March 5, Hawaiian Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the Masters & Servants Act of 1850 after a contract laborer from Japan sues for release from his employer, the Hilo Sugar Co. claiming "involuntary servitude" (Hilo Sugar v.

1852 -On January 3, the Thetis arrives with the first 175 Chinese field workers bound to serve for five years at $3 per month.

1853 -After half an hour of deliberation, the Supreme Court of Hawai‘i finds a White landowner not guilty of the beating death his Chinese laborer despite overwhelming testimony to the contrary. [The King v Greenwell]

1857 -September 1, the Hawaiian Mechanics Benefit Union is chartered.

1867 --May, Honolulu Longshoremen strike to raise their wages from $1 to $1.50 a day; they are replaced by scabs.

1868 May 17, The Scioto set sail out of Yokohama for Hawai‘i, carrying 153 Japanese migrants bound for employment on the sugar plantations.

1869 -July, Honolulu Longshoremen strike to raise their wages to $2 a day; again they are replaced by scabs.

1876 -The Sugar Reciprocity Treaty between the United States and Kingdom of Hawai‘i.

1878 -The first Portuguese laborers begin to arrive.

1883 -The Kingdom enacts its first law to limit Chinese immigration.

1885 -On February 8, the first Japanese contract field workers arrive on board the City of Tokio: 676 men; 158 women.

1857 -September 1, the Hawaiian Mechanics Benefit Union is chartered. It was disincorporated in 1893.

By 1902 the longshoremen were loosely affiliated with the American Federation of Labor’s International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). But their ties to national headquarters were weak, and most returned or lost their charters within a few a years.

1905 -September 29 - October 6, Lāhainā, Maui, 1,500 of 2,200 Japanese field hands strike for 15c/day increase.

1907 -February 18, Congress approved amending existing immigration legislation which allowed President Theodore Roosevelt to issue an executive order stopping the migration of Japanese laborers from Hawai‘i and Mexico on Mar.

There'd been a battle back around 1908 when the whole ILA was organized on the West Coast, and the West Coast got autonomy within the ILA International structure.

1909 -May 9 to August 5, the Japanese Higher Wage Association leads the sugar workers strike in ‘Aiea, Waipahu, and throughout O‘ahu, supported by neighbor island Japanese workers.

He calls that union the ILA. His label is actually close to the mark, although technically the Riggers and Stevedores had disaffiliated from the ILA in 1916.

The ILA local up in Tacoma had kept going all the years since 1919.

1921 -Hawaii Education Association, the ancestor of the Hawaii State Teachers Association-NEA is formed.

Many of the surviving strikers are jailed and then deported.see also: UH Center for Oral History's 1924 Filipino Stike Project.

Among the lessons the longshoremen learned from these defeats, to be recalled when they rebuilt their union in 1933, was that any discrimination weakens a union organization.

But under the impetus of the successful 1934 maritime strike, the warehousemen organized.

That unity was embodied in an organization called the Maritime Federation of the Pacific (MFP). Founded in 1935, largely through Bridges’ efforts, the MFP only lasted a few years.

The “march inland’ took on real organizational emphasis in early 1936, and in June the warehousemen held their first coastwise conference to develop a West Coast membership drive.

The warehousemen returned to work on January 5, 1937, but the maritime crafts were still out.

The warehouse employers in San Francisco made a major effort to weaken Local 6's bargaining ability in mid-August 1938 by deliberately locking out Bay Area warehousemen who refused to work on a boxcar loaded by strikebreakers.

Another precedent-setting case occurred when the ILWU loaned its law firm to a besieged union of lettuce workers in Salinas, California in 1939.

1945 -The Territorial Legislature enacts the Hawai‘i Employment Relations Act (now HRS §377), the little Wagner Act" to extend the provisions similar to the National Labor Relations Act to Hawai'i's agricultural workers.

When the CMU opened unprecedented national negotiations in Washington, D.C. on May 30, 1946, a national railroad strike had just been broken.

1947 - July 11 though 15, over 18,000 pineapple workers represented by the ILWU strike, ending in partial defeat of union.

In 1948 there was another major longshore strike.

When the CIO purged its most progressive unions for alleged Communist influence in 1949 and '50, the ILWU and the Bakersfield compressmen's international, the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers (FTA) were among those ousted.

Active cooperation on contract negotiations between ILWU and IBT warehousemen began on a limited basis in 1958 in Northern California under the leadership of the ILWU’s Lou Goldblatt and the IBT’s George Mock.

In 1960, when they agreed to present joint demands, pursue joint negotiations and strike jointly, the cooperation paid off handsomely with vastly improved wages, benefits and conditions.

The ILWU Story: Three Decades of Militant Unionism, Second Edition, Revised to March, 1963.

In 1964, for example, workers at US Borax in Boron, California, who had been in Chemical Workers Local 85, voted to affiliate with the ILWU as Local 30, Mine, Mineral and Processing Workers.

1967 -March 1, employees of the HRT represented by Teamsters Local 996 begin a 67-day strike.

1969 -The various island units of the Hawaii Education Association convene and form the new Hawaii State Teachers Association, excluding school principals and other personnel not to be included in the new bargaining unit determined by state law.

Since the 1971 strike, the Longshore Division has steadily defended and organized its jurisdiction.

1972 -March 1 to April 10, 300 members of IBEW Local 1260 strike Dynalectron Corp. at Barking Sands Pacific Missile Range on Kaua'i.

1974 -shortly after federal law extends bargaining rights to nurses, 477 Registered Nurses in the Hawai‘i Nurses Assn. strike four O‘ahu Hospitals for two weeks in May.

1983 -On June 4, United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 480 strikes the 10 Safeway grocery stores in Hawai'i.

1988 -Three week strike of Hawaiian Cement by members of Teamsters Local 681. - April, The ILWU affiliates with the AFL-CIO.

In 1989 the ILWU was also able to win an important fight against foreign seamen doing ILWU longshore work when the union’s attorneys successfully intervened against Canadian shipowners who tried to use crew members to operate cranes in log loading operations while in Northwest United States ports.

1992 -Teamsters Local 681 struck Hawaiian Cement for 11 days in June.

In 1993 the entire ILWU was forced to fight a major battle with Peavey, a ConAgra subsidiary, when Locals 21 and 40 tackled the grain giant at its grain elevator in Kalama, Washington.

1994 -December, Laborers Union local 368 begins an 18 month boycott of St Francis Hospital for refusing to accept the results of a September 1st representation election for 149 clerks, custodians, laundry and kitchen workers.

And in 1995, a major organizing drive among vessel planners – who determine the load, weight, and balance of a ship’s cargo – was initiated in Southern California by Local 63’s office clericals and marine clerks units, with longshore support from Local 13.

By the end of the 1996, the successful drive – strengthened by new jurisdictional language in the 1996 longshore contract settlement – expanded northward to planners in Northern California, Tacoma, and Seattle.

1998 -October 8, more than 100 workers at Young Laundry & Drycleaning represented by Hawaii Teamsters, Local 996 strike over wage and benefit reductions.

-October 9 to December 24, 2000 hotel workers represented by ILWU strike neighbor island hotels for 75 days.

2001 -At Moloka‘i General Hospital, five registered nurses represented by Hawaii Nurses Assn. strike from May 12 to June 14, unable to improve wages in their contract.

2003 -August 26 through September 28 more than 1,300 O'ahu bus workers represented by Hawaiʻi Teamsters and Allied Workers, Local 996 strike Oahu Transit Services.

2013 -January, workers represented by ILWU, Local 142 overwhelmingly approve their first labor contract with the Pacific Beach Hotel after a strike that dragged on for 10 years despite court rulings & NLRB injunctions over the mass firings, intimidation & other Unfair Labor Practices.