On Strike, Shut it Down, San Francisco is Union Town

The Labor Archives and Research Center (LARC) at San Francisco State University will be a host site for the San Francisco Archives Crawl 2019. LARC documents the history of the Bay Area’s working people and unions.  Established in 1985 through a collaborative effort of historians, labor leaders and academics, the Archives preserves and promotes the region’s rich working class history.  

The intersection of race and gender with the struggle for economic justice is represented throughout the collection. Records in the Archives include material from unions representing hotel and restaurant workers; early garment worker organizing; workers in the longshore, trucking and warehouse industries; service employees in healthcare and the public sector; faculty and staff in higher education; construction trades; retail and grocery workers; newspaper and printing trades; clerical workers; and exotic dancers. LARC also holds material from labor-related organizations such as the depression-era Maritime Federation of the Pacific; California Labor School (cultural hub for the Bay Area’s progressive and labor communities during the 1940s-1950s); Committee for Support of International Trade Union Rights (solidarity efforts related to ending apartheid and the wars in Central America); the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board; Northern California Conference of the United Church of Christ (United Farm Worker organizing support); San Francisco chapter of the Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; and feminist labor groups Union W.A.G.E. and Tradeswomen.

The Labor Archives also has over 10,000 photographs, several thousand union and social movement posters, buttons and badges, as well as early 20^th century union banners. LARC’s oral history project contains dozens of interviews documenting Golden Gate Bridge workers, LGBT labor activists, 2004 strike/lockout of UNITE HERE Local 2 hotel workers, faculty leaders of the 1968-1969 San Francisco State Strike, women breaking the gender line in non-traditional work, and Bay Area union and civil rights leaders.

Sneek Preview 

The theme of this year’s Archives Crawl is California History in 10 Objects.  Two of the artifacts you will get to see are:

Fred Dummatzen Scrapbook. This scrapbook is a compelling personal look into the construction of one of the world’s most iconic landmarks and the human cost of construction before the advent of worker safety laws.  Fred Dummatzen was a member of Laborer’s Union No. 261 and was one of ten men killed in an accident on February 17, 1937. The album, which was partially compiled after Dummatzen's death, includes snapshots taken by Dummatzen and his fellow workers of the bridge under construction, offering an intimate window into male worker culture. There are also clippings, photographs and poems in honor of Dummatzen and a heartbreaking image of Fred’s parents holding a news article about the accident. Fred’s family donated the scrapbook during the Golden Gate Bridge 50^th anniversary celebrations held by LARC in 1987.

Sue Ko Lee Scrapbook. Like the Dummatzen album, the Sue Ko Lee scrapbook offers a compelling personal story, this one focused on the fight against runaway sweatshops and the exploitation of immigrant women workers.  In 1938, Sue Ko Lee and her co-workers at the National Dollar Store factory organized the Chinese Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 361. Protesting low wages, they went on strike for 105 days and eventually won a good contract. A year later the company closed the factory rather than be unionized. Despite this loss, the strike was critical in helping to break down racial barriers in San Francisco. After the factory shut down, the union helped find the workers jobs outside of Chinatown, in what had previously been white-only shops. The strike also led to Chinese workers taking leadership roles in the union – Sue Ko Lee became a business agent then secretary of the union local.  Her scrapbook was donated through the help of author Judy Yung, whose publications on Chinese women in San Francisco Unbound Voices and Unbound Feet feature chapters on the strike. The scrapbook contains photographs, newspaper clippings, and bulletins featuring lovely hand-drawn illustrations.

Come join us for the San Francisco Archives Crawl and learn more about the City’s radical labor history!