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The 1935 Pacific Northwest lumber strike was an industry-wide labor strike organized by the Northwest Council of Sawmill and Timber Workers’ Union (STWU). The strike lasted for more than three and a half months and paralyzed much of the lumber industry in Northern California, Oregon and Washington State. Although the striking workers only achieved part of their demands, the repercussions of the long and often violent strike were felt for decades. Over the next several years, a newly radicalized and militant generation of lumber workers would go on to spark several more industry-wide strikes. ==Background== The 1935 lumber strike had its roots in the rapidly changing political and economic circumstances of the Great Depression. Beginning with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the first few years of the 1930s witnessed staggering economic decline and widespread unemployment. Workers from every industry suffered, including those in the lumber industry, who were subjected to declining wages, longer hours and employer oppression.〔http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/encyclopedia/timber_strike_intro.shtml〕 The collapse of the national economy led to a decline in home building and other construction, leaving the logging companies without a market for their lumber. The once highly profitable Pacific Northwest logging companies found themselves in desperate straits. In 1932, seeing the deepening national economic crisis, the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt began to implement a series of economic reforms as part of his New Deal to pull the American people out of economic depression. In August 1933, Roosevelt’s enacted the National Recovery Administration (NRA) Lumber Code. This was a program designed to set prices for lumber products as well as set new rules mandating a forty-hour workweek and 42.5 cents/hour minimum wage for West Coast logger.〔 This, coupled with other pro-labor legislation of the Roosevelt Administration, emboldened lumber workers to push for union recognition and collective bargaining rights. Parallel to the efforts of the federal government were the union organizing efforts of both the American Labor Federation (AFL) and the radical Communist Party. In July 1933, one month before the NRA Lumber Code took effect, the AFL had organized the Northwest Council of the Sawmill and Timber Workers Union (STWU) to act as a union for all Pacific Northwest lumber workers.〔 Though primarily a conservative, craft-oriented union, the Sawmill and Timber Workers Union contained many Communist and militant elements within its ranks. For their part, the Communist Party USA had been successfully building support among many lumber workers and staging wildcat strikes at lumber mills throughout the region as early as 1930. Employers feared that “ a conflict with labor would bring on a revolutionary situation”.〔 This “revolutionary situation” came to a head at a meeting of the STWU on March 23, 1935 in Aberdeen, WA. Encouraged, but unsatisfied with changes enacted under recent NRA lumber code, the union made demands for a “six hour day, five day work-week, 75 cents/hour minimum wage, seniority system, paid holidays, and that the STWU be the sole collective bargaining agent for timber workers”. They also declared that if these demands were not meet by the employers, the STWU would call for an industry wide strike on May 6 of that year.〔 The stage was set for what would become known as the Great Lumber Strike of 1935. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pacific Northwest lumber strike」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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