S.L. Weir; Author and Labor Activist

Stanley L. Weir, a longshoreman who became a labor educator after challenging the power of waterfront union leaders, has died at 79.

Weir, who had Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes, died Aug. 6 at his home in Del Mar, six weeks after undergoing surgery to relieve an intestinal blockage.

“Stan had a long, full life,” said longtime friend and fellow longshoreman Reg Theriault. “Through it all, he was a soft-spoken, articulate man who battled almost alone on behalf of a huge fraternity of rank-and-file workers.”

Born in 1921 in Los Angeles, the tall, red-haired activist worked as a seaman, auto worker, Teamster, house painter, grocery clerk, university professor, author and publisher. As co-founder of Singlejack Press in the seaside community of San Pedro, he specialized in publishing fiction and nonfiction books for, about and, in many cases, by working-class men and women.

In a 1983 interview, Weir said Singlejack’s purpose was to provide information to workers on new technologies that affect their lives and how to deal with unions and bosses. The publishing firm, which closed in 1986, also aimed to give them what he called “a mirror, a self-image.”

“Why should literature or any other type of the arts be limited to the upper-middle classes?” Weir asked. “Why should the workers be limited to silently walking through their lifetimes?”

Weir attended Los Angeles City College for one term before transferring to UCLA. After completing one year, he became a cadet on a freighter plying the West Coast.

Later, as a merchant seaman and young union organizer, he was elected a deck delegate but often found himself at odds with union bosses.

His career as a merchant seaman ended in 1945 after Weir, who was white, fought union leaders over the Sailors Union of the Pacific’s policy allowing segregation.

He returned to Los Angeles in 1951 and joined an International Brotherhood of Teamsters local as a laundry wagon driver. Three years later, the union charged him with forging a laundry delivery receipt, an allegation he denied. Not long after that, Weir was discharged from the union after his fellow workers staged a demonstration on his behalf.

In 1959, he became a longshoreman in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was hired as a “B-man,” a class of workers who paid dues to an International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union local but were not granted membership. As a spokesman for his group, Weir lodged grievances against the ILWU and its legendary president, Harry Bridges. When B-men won full union membership in 1963, Weir was expelled along with 82 other activists--many of them African American--who had criticized Bridges’ policies.

Weir and the others filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which turned them down. Seventeen years later, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review their case.

“Nonetheless, their fight brought more union democracy to the front,” Theriault said.

After his expulsion from the ILWU, Weir earned a doctorate at the Union Institute in Cincinnati and was a professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois at Champaign until 1980.

Weir retired in 1987 but continued to write.

“Stan never relaxed; he was always in gear,” said Bob Miles, Weir’s partner at Singlejack.

Weir’s book, “Singlejack Solidarity: Work, Culture and Job-Based Unionism,” is expected to be published next year by University of Minnesota Press.

Weir is survived by his wife of 54 years, Mary Knox Weir; two daughters, Hari Simram Kaur and Laurie Hope Weir; and a grandson, Stefan.

A memorial service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Sept. 9 at Esmeralda’s Bookstore & Garden, 1555 Camino del Mar, Del Mar Plaza, Del Mar, Calif.