The Portland General Strike of 1946: Week 1
On Monday, July 15, 1946, nearly 150 unionized Portland Public Works Department workers launched what would become the largest strike in Portland’s history. For weeks, the members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 946 had been trying to negotiate with the city for union recognition and wage increases to keep up with soaring inflation. But Portland City Manager James E. Barlow coldly brushed them off.
“I’ll talk to any of the employees, individually or in a group, but I will not confer with them as a union,” sniffed Barlow to reporters. He warned that “if any of the workers walk out, they’re through." The comment drew scoffs from union officials.
“They may be through in Barlow’s mind, but these men have protection under the Wagner Act,” AFSCME 936 President Francis D. Pride told reporters.
The PWD workers defiantly marched to City Hall waving signs reading “PWD men have to live too,” “Barlow defies union,” and “Barlow gets his, we want ours.” By mid-afternoon, all of the PWD employees except 12 foremen had walked out from the city proper to Peak’s Island where eight workers joined the strike.
The Portland General Strike came amid a massive national post-war strike wave involving five million workers across several industries, about 10 percent of the entire American workforce. Workers shut down entire industries, including communications (142,000 telephone workers); electrical manufacturing (174,000 workers); meatpacking (93,000 workers); steel (750,000 workers); bituminous coal (340,000 miners in April and 335,000 in November); railroads (350,000 locomotive engineers and trainmen); and shipping (142,000 licensed and 132,000 unlicensed maritime workers). They were the largest strikes in American labor history. Even public employees had been growing militant as 30,000 to 50,000 workers staged a one-day general strike in Rochester, NY to support 489 municipal public works and sanitation employees who had been abruptly fired by city leadership for forming a union.
During World War II, the National War Board directed unions to maintain labor discipline and avoid strikes in exchange for the closed shop. This meant that unions could negotiate union security clauses to ensure the company only hired union members. But as 10 million soldiers returned home and the wartime economy transitioned to peace time, inflation skyrocketed to 14 percent in 1946. In Maine, railway workers, Poland Spring workers, Southern Maine bus drivers and Bangor Public Works employees all walked off the job to demand better wages and working conditions. Even a young inmate at Maine State Prison in Thomason attempted to wage a sit-down strike before he was thrown in solitary confinement.
In Portland, street sweepers, mechanics, truck drivers and heavy equipment operators all went out on strike. Pride noted that only four laborers, one truck driver and two helpers were “still holding out” against the strike. The only union men working during the strike were watchmen at the garage who were deemed essential to protect property. Highway construction and street cleaning ceased as workers manned 16 pickets around the city garage.
Building trades union members contracted to work on city projects also left their jobs in solidarity with their PWD brothers. Work ceased on the new $170,000 City Garage and a chlorinator at the outlet to the Quebec Street sewer, designed to cut down pollution of the East End beach. The city “lost” more than 200 cases of soap when union workers who had just unloaded the boxes at City Hall learned of the strike and loaded the soap back on the truck. At the end of the day, Pride declared the first day of the strike was “100 percent effective” and was in no hurry to start negotiations again.
“We plan to wait them out,” he said.
“We haven’t any employees left to negotiate with,” Barlow retorted defiantly. “We haven’t fired them. They quit. I am not going to be placed in a situation whereby I’ve got to run to some union official any time I want to have something done in the Public Works Department.”
Besides, Barlow sneered, the strike might help the city’s budget problems “because at the rate of spending we were following, the department’s budget would not last the year out.” Barlow claimed the PWD employees were already “the most favored of any municipal group” and had made wage gains far above those granted to other departments since they were being paid 48 hours a week while only working 44. He further argued that PWD employees commanded time and a half pay for overtime and night work and received full pay on rainy days when outdoor work was not feasible.
“Since I have come to Portland, laborers in the Public Works Department have received numerous increases,” Barlow said.
He pointed out that his fiscal conservatism wasn’t just restricted to the staff under his command. During the lean years of the Great Depression, both Barlow and city employees took a 20 percent pay cut, but the city manager still refused to restore 10 percent of his salary even as the economy improved. He was hired at $10,000 a year in 1928 and was still receiving $9,000 in 1946. In response to the workers’ slogan “Barlow gets his, we want ours,” the city manager suggested, “If the union wants to take the same 10 percent cut in pay that I’ve had since 1929, I’ll be glad to oblige them.”
City Manager Barlow could have taken a 50 percent cut in pay “and still have been overpaid for the services he rendered the city,” union secretary Artur V. Fuessel responded. “Every filling station and garage is doing a rushing business fixing tires broken by the holes in the streets...We could well afford to take a cut if we were paid at the same rate as he."
“If the truth were known, I think you’d find there isn’t a thing in the contract the City Manager will agree to,” Portland Central Union President Horace E. Howe told the Press Herald. He complained that the City Council and the city manager had made no honest attempt to address the workers’ grievances, but that “they looked after the policemen and firemen.”
On May 1, the City finally also granted the firefighters’ long-sought demand for two shifts and were working on a new paid sick policy for Local 740 members.
A History of Labor Struggles with the City
Municipal employees had a turbulent relationship with Barlow for years and it wasn’t the first time the PWD workers struck the city. In 1941, they walked out and won a raise of 55 cents an hour to $4.40 a day or $28.40 a week. In addition, they were allowed to work Saturday afternoons for which they were paid time and a half. The city also agreed to pay the workers time and a half for night work on snow removal. In 1942, the PWD workers won another modest raise.
By the summer of 1945, the workers were dissatisfied with management decisions and fearful of postwar wage cuts so they decided to organize their union with AFSCME. Throughout that fall, the PWD workers fought to equalize take-home pay with the additional compensation they had received with overtime. Facing stiff resistance from Barlow and the City Council to their demands, the union dug up a 1937 ordinance calling for Saturday afternoon off with straight-time pay, except in emergency. At receiving this news, the Council ordered City Manager James E. Barlow to cease paying the time and a-half for Saturday afternoons and follow the ordinance. That move actually gave the workers a slight cut in pay of more than $1 a week, but they demanded it because they worried that Saturday afternoon work would be abolished anyway as returning veterans would grow the labor supply at the end of the war.
A joint committee of workers and city officials also developed a merit rating card system in an effort to address rampant favoritism in layoffs and giving promotions. At the request of the union, Barlow gave 30 laborers permanent status with full-time pay, vacation and pension privileges enjoyed by other municipal workers in January, 1946. The union also pressured the city to replace a road superintendent who had treated them poorly for many years.
In March, 1946, Local 946 formally requested a 20 percent wage increase, an eight-hour day, double time for holidays and sick leave benefits. In addition, they asked for full union recognition, a closed shop, a shop steward system, preference for hiring union independent contractors, seniority rights and other union security provisions. The workers also filed grievances over Saturday afternoon work. The PWD workers argued that they should be paid the same as private sector employees for similar work.
Barlow countered that city employees enjoyed benefits that private sector workers didn’t. Truck drivers, for instance, worked 54 hours a week before they got overtime pay, he argued. Many of them only got one week vacation, compared to two weeks for city employees, he said. In addition, he argued that the permanent city employees had a pension, a benefit that few private sector workers had.
City Manager Barlow declared that the union’s proposal was “impossible” because the pay increases would cause the PWD payroll to rise to $1,700 a week (about $28,773 in today’s dollars), or $500,000 a year, and cause the tax rate to go up by $6 ($108 in today’s money). Barlow further argued that the city had no legal obligation to enter into a contract with a labor union since municipal employees weren’t explicitly covered by the National Labor Relation Act. The following day, Barlow openly challenged the PWD workers to go out on strike.
“They’ve threatened to strike so many times in the last few months… that the only thing to do is let them go ahead,” the City Manager declared to the Press Herald. He added that the union “threw down the gauntlet” when it gave him only two days for an answer to their contract proposals. Barlow said that the public is so hostile to strikes that he would have “no trouble” in passing a bill through the legislature to crack down on unions.
“It wouldn’t be any trouble at all in Maine,” he warned.
Barlow said that if the workers did choose to strike, he would simply hire private scab contractors to complete any public works projects.
“The streets would go a little dirty. Some of the holes in the streets would go unpatched,” he predicted “But the public would soon get fed up at the inconveniences that would be caused by a strike."
Portland Central Union President Horace E. Howe acknowledged that the PWD employees had received “some meager increases,” but not enough to allow them a decent standard of living. They were allowed time and one-half for Saturday afternoons, but that had since been “taken away,” giving them two hours less pay than before, he argued.
“Government statistics show that anyone not receiving at least a 33 1/3 percent increase in pay since 1941 has not kept pace with the cost of living. This increase does not permit setting aside anything for a rainy day or family emergencies, but only a getting-by wage, and the cost of living is going higher, let there be no doubt about that.”
Meanwhile, Governor Hildreth informed Howe that he would not use his power to request the State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration to mediate in the dispute. Attorneys on both sides differed in their interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act and whether any state agency had the authority to intervene in a municipal labor dispute. The union’s attorney Walter M. Tapley, Jr. argued that employees had the right to ask the board to mediate and arbitrate the dispute if both sides agreed to comply with the decision. Phillip T. Place of South Portland, secretary of the State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, tried to get the city of Portland to arbitrate the dispute, but Barlow flatly refused.
“We don’t recognize the union,” he told reporters. “The city is not governed by the National Labor Relations Board.”
In a blatant effort to divide city employees, Barlow said he would not take up other petitions for higher pay from City Hospital nurses, police and firefighters until the PWD dispute was resolved. He had the full backing of the conservative Portland City Council, which gave the city manager full reign to handle a strike. Council Chairman Helen C. Frost made it clear that the Council would not recognize the union.
“We will talk with them and, if inclined, we will grant reasonable requests, but there will be no signing of a contract,” Frost told the Press Herald. She said that the Council would not interest itself in the situation “unless we can determine that the city is suffering.”
A staunch fiscal conservative, Frost was the first woman elected to the City Council in 1944. She was re-elected in December, 1945 with a pro-Barlow slate that swept the elections, fending off a pro-labor slate of anti-Barlow candidates. Under the headline “A woman in power,” a 1982 PortlandEvening Express story described how Frost had “crashed the stag party” by getting elected to a council that had previously been like a “private club.” Those who knew Frost described her as an aggressive, informed leader and a tough negotiator.
The Maine State Federation of Labor’s Labor Temple on Exchange Street was bustling with activities as union officials held long morning and afternoon conferences while the Portland Central Union worked on organizing other union members to support the strike. The picket lines were relatively quiet in the first few days of the strike other than a few “well dressed” men who “molested” pickets at City Hall and made a couple attempts to snatch placards from strikers. The men had fled by the time police were called.
The Portland Central Union also began working on setting a strike fund for Local 946. The workers received their last paycheck on Monday and would need financial support if the strike went on for another week. When Barlow was asked if the city would provide relief to strikers’ families, he dismissed the idea as “having the city finance the strike.”
PWD Workers Picket Cole’s Express
Two days into the strike, Horace E. Howe signaled a potential breakthrough. In a radio appearance on WPOR, Howe said that although Barlow refused to meet with the union, City Councilor Gerald A. Cole, owner of the Cole’s Express trucking company, called the union’s proposal “a fair and workable agreement.” Howe claimed he had the conversation with both Cole and Councilor Robert Holbrook, who had been delegated by the Council to come to some agreement with the union. But with the strike grinding into its third day and Barlow still stubbornly refusing to meet with Local 946 leaders, the strikers decided to take the picket directly to Cole’s business.
On Wednesday, July 17, PWD workers tied up Cole’s Express on Plum Street for three hours until Councilor Cole agreed to meet with the workers the following day. Reached for comment, Cole told the Portland Evening Express that he was only expressing his personal opinion that the union’s proposal was “a fair and workable agreement.” Cole had experience with unions as his truckers were organized with Teamsters Local 340.
“What I told Howe was my personal opinion. I was not speaking for the city council.” Cole declared.
AFSCME 946 Local President Francis D. Pride said the workers would still like to meet with Barlow to discuss union recognition, but the city manager remained non-committal about meeting with union leaders. The following day, Cole met with Howe and AFSCME labor rep William V. Ward, who had driven up from Somerville, MA. At the same time, Chairman Helen C. Frost called an emergency meeting to “explore” the strike situation, now in its fourth day. However, Governor Horace A. Hildreth, to whom the union had appealed Thursday for aid in arbitrating the strike, announced the same day that “I am in no position to counteract or override the advice rendered by their (city of Portland) legal counsel.”
But by Friday, Barlow finally consented to a meeting with AFSCME 946 Secretary Arthur A. Fuessel and Local 946 Vice President George A. Martelle after Cole brought four union proposals from a meeting with strike leaders to an emergency session of the City Council. The proposals were:
1) That all men on strike be permitted to all men on strike be permitted to return to their jobs without prejudice or fear of reprisals in the future;
2) that the City Council recognize the right of employees to collective bargaining and to representatives of their own choosing;
3) that the Council set up a tripartite committee, composed of an equal number of representatives of the employees, the City Government and the public, with the latter preferably clergymen; and
4) that if the city recognizes the above mentioned rights, the union will accept a “no strike, no lockout” clause.
The city manager declared that he would only deal with Fuessel as a “former employee of the city,” not as a union official. He also refused to meet with AFSCME international rep William V. Ward.
“The City Manager wants to deal with the employees,” Ward said, “and I’m considered an outsider.” He insisted that the conference with Barlow is not a “collective bargaining” session. “I’m anxious to see these men return to their jobs and settle this thing,” he said, “and am ready to offer my services at any time.”
While Council Chair Frost wouldn’t comment on the proposals, Barlow appeared to remain defiant, telling reporters that the question was “whether the duly constituted city officials will continue to function or be ruled by a super government of labor.”
By Friday evening Barlow was having dinner with Ward at the Eastland Hotel, though Ward clarified they were only meeting as “private citizens.” He said Barlow had “expressed a desire to meet me before I left town” and that the feeling was “mutual.”
As the first week of the strike closed, there was at least a glimmer of hope that it could be resolved. In the meantime, the streets began to pile up with trash as garbage went uncollected. 25 cases of paper towels ended up having to be redirected on Friday after union pickets blocked them from being delivered to City Hall. The workers remained steadfast in their determination to wait out Barlow and the City Council, but it remained to be seen how long the public could tolerate the strike.
Then transit operators staged a “sick out,” tying up 70 buses on the Boston and Maine line, leaving commuters, tourists and shoppers stranded.
Next week: Transit operators tie-up the Boston and Maine Line