Rank-and-file publications and organizing displaced company-run unions before the 1934 strike

Evidence

In 1932, an anonymous group began producing and distributing a paper called The Waterfront Worker from an unknown location. Self-described “rank-and-file journalist” Mike Quin writes that “it merely said what every longshoreman had long known to be a fact, and put into frank language the resentment that was smoldering in every dock worker’s heart.” A scrappy publication, it was soon circulating a few thousand copies. Then, in 1933, the National Industrial Recovery Act guaranteed the right to join a trade union and engage in collective bargaining, and many of the longshoremen left their largely useless company-run unions to join the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA). They began organizing a new political body consisting of actual dockworkers instead of salaried union officials. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 285

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier interest in trade institutions and worker self-organization (law merchant, extralegal contracting). — connects to: Rank-and-file shop committees turned strikes into organs of workers’ control — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 475; Mass democratic association historically depended on newspapers to coordinate collective action — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 734