NATION : Harry Bridges, Legendary West Coast Labor Leader, Dies at 88
Legendary labor leader Harry Bridges, credited with setting the stage for the modern labor movement, died today in San Francisco at the age of 88, a union spokesman said.
Bridges died of emphysema at his San Francisco home, said Danny Beagle, spokesman for the Longshoremen’s Union.
Bridges led the Longshoremen’s Union on the West Coast from 1934 through 1977. He first came to prominence in the dock workers’ walkout that led to a bloody general strike in San Francisco in July, 1934.
The son of a prosperous Australian real estate man, Bridges built the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union into a position of supremacy on West Coast docks.
The crusty West Coast union boss was labeled a Communist by the U.S. government, which repeatedly tried to toss him out of the country. He was once jailed for 20 days as a red conspirator.
“He was really the guy who set in motion the whole reorganization of labor in the 1930s on the West Coast,” said Beagle. “He was a very interesting, powerful person.”
The lean, hawk-faced Bridges plunged San Francisco into the 1934 general strike, considered labor’s greatest battle.
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