Los Angeles streetcar strike of 1919

Henry E. Huntington was a notorious anti-labor businessman. His distaste of unions ran so deep that Huntington joined alliance with multiple labor opponents to ensure that unions would remain subdued. Huntington shared like-minded ideas with the likes of David M. Parry, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and Harrison Gray Otis, owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. The National Association of Manufacturers was established in 1895 and had originally promoted trade and commerce, but by 1903 it began to side with anti-strike and anti-union ideologies. Huntington and Parry worked together to demand legislation for making boycotting illegal and protecting strikebreakers and nonunion workers. Otis had been working to ensure that his publication aligned with anti-unionism policies since the 1880s. He framed supporters of unions in a highly negative light and claimed that strikers were deserters who should not be allowed into the Los Angeles community. Otis utilized the Los Angeles Times to share the ideas of men of power that union men could not be trusted and that labor leaders sought to undermine and destroy companies. Huntington’s involvement went beyond sharing ideas with powerful men. He supported and funded organizations that supported companies that fell victim to unions and strikes. He battled labor movements locally alongside the Los Angeles Merchants and Manufacturers Association as well as the Citizens' Alliance. The Merchants’ and Manufacturers Association (M&M) was founded in the 1890s to work with emerging businesses to encourage mediation between employers and its workers. After a union-organized strike against the Los Angeles Times in 1902, M&M shifted its platform and began to publicly attack organized labor. The Los Angeles Citizens' Alliance (LACA) was founded in Los Angeles in 1904 and was over six thousand people strong. Members could participate so long as they did not participate in any labor unions. Huntington heavily sent his support to LACA by both joining and financially backing the organization. LACA ensured the safety of its companies from unions and boycotts by providing its members one dollar per day for each worker that walked off from a strike. == Pacific Electric vs. organized labor ==

1901–1903 Huntington faced his first encounter with labor in Los Angeles in 1901 when the Los Angeles Railway's platform men—and motormen—demanded that their hourly wages be increased from twenty to twenty-two and a half cents per hour. In June the employees accepted the company's counterproposal of a progressive wage scale based on seniority men with under four years experience would be paid twenty cents per hour, those with four years twenty-one cents, and those with five or more years at the Los Angeles Railway twenty-two cents per hour. This created a huge setback for union unity. Instead of working for a common cause, each worker sought to work towards personal gain. This dilemma increased once Huntington threatened to fire anyone who joined a union. An effort was made by the Los Angeles Council of Labor in 1901 and 1902 to amalgamate the streetcar workers in the Los Angeles Basin. Huntington trampled the attempts of the council with threats of firing employees caught joining the cause. Organizers from San Francisco came to Los Angeles and organized the Local No. 203 of the Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees in 1903 despite Huntington’s work against unions in years prior. The new local gained steam and quickly accumulated over 200 in membership. Previously dismissed employees attempted to call up strikes on two separate occasions in March and April, but Huntington did not tolerate any of it. Managers were ordered to fire employees that participated or sympathized with the strike and police force were used against employees attempting to march out. Huntington rewarded employees that chose to stay loyal to the company with a ten percent wage increase. The following labor clash in April 1903 known as the Pacific Electric Railway Strike of 1903 was caused by the unrest of racial divides in labor practices. The Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees decided to assist the Mexican laborers working in the Huntington construction gangs to organize their own union. Mexican laborers were hired to lay track in the southwest because their low wage rate, $1.00 to $1.25 for a ten-hour day, was significantly less than other minorities, such as the Chinese, who collected up to $1.75 per day for the same work. In 1919 the streetcar unions petitioned the National War Labor Board again for union recognition and were denied a second time, resulting in violent resistance. The Mexican tracklayers walked out in solidarity, strikers greased streetcar wheels, trolleys were overturned from their tracks, and a riot broke out on August 20 in downtown Los Angeles. Ultimately, railway workers walked away with a pay increase and the Los Angeles Railway management continued its open-shop policies. Wartime politics would greatly impede organized labor activity in the coming years. ==See also==