Activism & Unions on the San Diego Waterfront
By Peter Zschiesche
At this year’s Progressive Labor Summit, a NASSCO union shipyard worker advocated for more union activism. I heard that comment from the audience and it got me thinking. I realized that the San Diego waterfront today is nothing like the waterfront that many veteran union activists knew and were a part of almost 50 years ago.
In the early 1970s San Diego’s waterfront was much more industrial than it is now. Whie the tuna canneries of earlier years were leaving, three large shipyards and the port stretched from near the boundary with National City to the downtown side of the Hilton Hotel at Eighth Avenue. Seaport Village did not exist. Close by the waterfront were industrial shops that supported the shipyards, lumber shops, wholesalers’ warehouses, and other light industry – no Seaport Village, tourists, or upscale shops.
Nearby “downtown” had older office buildings and department stores, plenty of sailor hangouts, lots of SRO’s (single resident occupancy) for low wage workers, remnants of a “red light district” and some gritty blues bars like Crossroads on Market Street. Just north of the old downtown were large factories of the unionized aerospace industry- Solar Turbines, Convair/General Dynamics, and Teledyne Ryan. Blue-collar workers in many unionized companies large and small dominated this bayfront area.
The shipyards, the Port, and many nearby industrial shops were union, including Longshoremen, Machinists, Ironworkers, Carpenters, Electricians, Boilermakers, Painters, Teamsters, and Operating Engineers. There were lots of jobs in the various trades that built and repaired ships, made parts, installed all the things that ships needed to function, and provided services needed by the shipyard industry. The details of the waterfront unions will follow in next week’s The Jumping-Off Place. For now, though, let’s look at the activism in San Diego during these 1970s.
But first – a quick look at the “establishment” they were active against. In the 1970’s San Diego’s political, economic and social power was dominated by conservative white Republicans. They were pro-business and anti-labor and very comfortable with our communities of color being segregated and red-lined into working class neighborhoods like the mostly Latino greater Barrio Logan and nearby “southeast San Diego.” They were pro-war in Vietnam but stood by while cheap jewelry shops downtown cajoled active- duty sailors out of their meager pay before they returned to duty in Vietnam’s war zone.
San Diego had a broad variety of activism back “in the day,” some of which is told in Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See (The New Press, 2003, 2005) by our own local authors, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew, and Jim Miller. Local anti-war activists had different roots in San Diego Communities and had well-established groups at local colleges and universities, including at San Diego City College, the closest college to the waterfront.
Next to the waterfront the Latino community’s struggle for Chicano Park that began in 1970 was already becoming a legend. The Brown Berets were militant and active. Supporters and activists of the new United Farm Workers were well-known in Barrio neighborhoods next to the waterfront. El Sol, El Macreado, and other “alternative” newspapers were on the streets. In the early 70’s the Waterfront Worker newspaper was a voice of shipyard worker activists reporting on poor working conditions, criticizing union leaders, and advocating for more shipyard worker activism/organizing. Later in the 70’s the Workers Viewpoint – a newspaper of the Communist Workers Party - covered militant activists at NASSCO.
Not far from the waterfront in Southeast San Diego, the Black civil rights movement was intersecting with Black Power and Black nationalism (Ron Karenga) to create more militant responses to oppression in our Black neighborhoods. Farther away, the new Women’s Studies Program at San Diego State created interest among young women to enter the non-traditional, higher-skilled blue-collar jobs like the trades that worked in our shipyards.
Closer by, the Peace Resource Center and Peace House on Market Street was an active center of the local anti-war movement. Downtown, the Center for Servicemen’s Rights operated in second floor offices of an older building near Third and G Streets. Beyond those two locations were several other neighborhoods where anti-war activists met and planned for actions in the streets of San Diego. Shipyard workers were not immune to these activist movements. Some were well-connected to centers of activism outside the yards and engaged in union struggles, especially during contract negotiations.
In 1975 this activism within unions exploded into the militant, coordinated joint strike supported by union workers at Solar Turbines on the north side of downtown and Campbell Shipyards where the Hilton Hotel now stands on Harbor Driver and 8th St. Workers from each plant marched to join each other and demonstrate in downtown San Diego. Their purpose was to create greater solidarity and support among all these striking workers.
In August 1980, militant activists and union stewards disrupted a public ship launch ceremony at NASSCO, protesting unsafe working conditions. As a result, 17 shipyard workers were fired and a wildcat strike broke out protesting that company action. When the Ironworkers International Union and the San Diego Building Trades Council refused to authorize the strike, workers voted to return to work. However, the shipyard remained dangerous to lives and limbs of the thousands of workers there in all the trades.
Just a month later, in September1980, two NASSCO workers suffocated to death aboard a ship under construction and what followed was the firing of “The NASSCO 3” – union stewards who were also militant activists In contract negotiations the following year, the seven unions gained the right to form a joint union management safety and health committee that union activists then used to create a coordinated effort to enforce safety standards in the shipyard aggressively.
How this effort worked is the subject of the next part of this history, when the struggle for shipyard safety got a new way to fight.
Peter Zschiesche is a retired Machinist Union member, who served as President and Business Manager in IAM Local 389. He is also the founder of the Employee Rights Center and was elected to the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees, where he served for 16 years. Currently, he is on the Board of the United Taxi Workers of San Diego.