Oakland General Strike was nation's last in 1946

Oakland General Strike was nation's last in 1946
http://www.montereyherald.com/general-news/20150301/allen-oakland-genera...
By Annalee Allen Oakland Tribune Correspondent
POSTED: 03/01/15, 12:09 AM PST |0 COMMENTS
In honor of International Women's Day on Sunday, March 8, Oakland Urban Paths and the Oakland Tours Program are co-sponsoring a free Women's History Tour in downtown Oakland. The tour begins at 10 a.m. on the steps of City Hall and will feature local women of note, such as writer Gertrude Stein, dancer Isadora Duncan, architect Julia Morgan, and journalist and civil rights advocate Delilah Beasley.

At the conclusion of the walk through downtown, tour participants will be invited to step into the landmark Camron-Stanford House near Lake Merritt, to view a special exhibit about one of California's oldest women's organizations, the Ebell Society, founded in 1878 and still going strong today.

According to the history files, International Women's Day first emerged from the labor movements at the turn of the 20th century in North America and across Europe. The first National Women's Day was observed in 1909 in the year following a garment workers' strike in New York, where women protested against harsh working conditions.

Advertisement
A meeting held in Copenhagen in 1910 by the International Socialist Party established a Women's Day to honor the movement for women's rights and to build support for achieving universal suffrage for women. Historic accounts reveal more than 100 women from 17 countries at that conference unanimously approved the concept. Since then, more global women's conferences have been held, helping to make the commemoration a rallying point to build support for women's rights and participation in the political and economic arenas around the world.

March 8th became the official annual day of celebration forty years ago in 1975, during the United Nations' year of the woman.

Locally, a significant event occurred nearly 70 years ago when female retail clerks working for downtown department stores in the late fall of 1946, decided to try to unionize. Locked out by management, they called upon other workers to strike in support. General strikes are illegal today, but back in 1946 it was still a legal labor action, history files tell us. More than 130,000 union members walked off their jobs to protest the anti-union actions taken by local police at the behest of Oakland's City Council against the female clerks. Thousands more honored their picket lines, and for three days, no buses or streetcars or taxis ran in Alameda County. Construction projects shut down, the shipyards were idle and most gas stations were closed.

Teamster pickets kept trucks from entering the county and most grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and movie theaters were closed. Nearly all commerce in the East Bay came to a halt when the members of 142 unions struck in solidarity with the women clerks.

History files reveal that the Oakland General Strike of 1946 was the nation's last "sympathy" strike. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 by Congress put an end to that union tactic.

A plaque on the wall of the Rotunda Building (formerly Kahn's Department Store) in downtown Oakland, commemorating the women retail clerks actions for the right to organize a union is stop No. 1 on Sunday's Women's History Tour.

For more information about the Women's History Tour, go to www.oaklandurbanpaths.org, or leave a message on the Oakland Tours Program hotline, 510 238-3234. Reservations are recommended.

There are links to additional information on the 1946 general strike at https://oaklandwiki.org/1946Oakland General Strike.

Contact Annalee Allen at ldmksldy@aol.com