This chapter in Stan Weir's Singlejack Solidarity tells the history of how, from the victory in the 1934 General Strike through the first Mechanization & Modernization (M&M) Agreement in 1961, longshore workers in San Francisco had 27 years of near-total control of the labor process on the waterfront in the "largest, longest, and most successful formal experiment in workers' control ever conducted in the United States."
This article by Richard Boyden is the most comprehensive account of the 1946 Oakland General Strike. It relies extensively on first-hand sources, such as Boyden's good friend and comrade Stan Weir. Additionally, it shows the continuity between the San Francisco General Strike in 1934 that shut Oakland down completely too and the sequel 12 years later. Teamster piecard Dave Beck, in trying to kill the strike, put it best: “I say this damn general strike is nothing but a revolution. It isn’t labor tactics. It’s revolutionary tactics.”
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Who’s Who in the Midwest and
Who’s Who in America. Davis is also candid about joining the Communist Party USA, a white-led party whose members took a loyalty oath to defend the all-white Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Davis joined the Party after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, a time when many others left, never to return. In 1948, the Party shipped Davis from Chicago to Hawaii, not yet a state and a target of Stalin’s post-war expansionism. Frank wrote for
Honolulu Record, a publication backed by the CPUSA and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, headed by Harry Bridges, another Communist and Soviet agent. The CPUSA organization in the islands was formidable but lost the battle when Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959. The Party kept Frank on location, a decision of great significance.