Tactics: Reason, Humor, and Muscle

The organizing and bargaining tactics employed by San Francisco culinary unionists from the late 1930s to the 1950s represent the apogee of union power and creativity. With the majority of the industry union, many shop owners now voluntarily recognized the union. In 1941 alone, seventy-three restaurant owners sent the LJEB requests for union cards. Evidently, many employers judged the house or bar card announcing their union status essential to a steady flow of customers in union-conscious San Francisco. To promote patronage in unionized eateries, the culinary unions fined members for eating in nonunion restaurants and bought "a steady ad in the [San Francisco] Chronicle advertising the various union labels." They also appointed a committee specifically to devise "ways and means to advertise our Union House Card."^[55]

In some cases, unionization appealed to employers who desired stability in an industry characterized by extreme open entry and a high rate of business failures. Citywide equalization of wage rates protected establishments from cut-throat competitors and chain restaurants that could slash wages and prices in one location until the independent competition capitulated. Employers recognized this function of culinary unionism and on more than one occasion approached the LJEB with names of nonunion houses that should be organized. "We, the undersigned, respectfully request your assistance" began one employer plea to the LJEB. "Attempts have been made to get [unfair] places to join us . . . these attempts have failed completely. We understand that union houses are protected against cut-throats and we wonder why we have been neglected."

Culinary unionists also realized that thorough organization was necessary to protect the competitive position of union houses. In the union campaign to organize tea rooms, for example, all but a few had signed up by the summer of 1939. The union pursued those recalcitrants, insisting

they were "unfair competition for the others." Reasoning along similar lines, the LJEB refused to issue house cards to employee-owned, cooperative enterprises although they met wage scales and working conditions. Their lower prices, the LJEB pointed out, were "a menace" to the union restaurants of the city. From 1937 through the 1950s, when organization among San Francisco restaurants remained close to 100 percent, many employers willingly complied with this system of union-sponsored industry stabilization and cooperation.^[56]

Employers who failed to recognize the good business sense of unionization were asked to justify their refusal before the united board of culinary crafts. If this interrogation proved fruitless, the employer was reprimanded to a higher body: the executive council of the SFLC or a conference of retail and service unions including the Bakery Drivers, Milk Wagon Drivers, Bakers, and other involved parties. When these oral persuasions went unheeded, the restaurant faced increasing pressure through the council's "We Don't Patronize" list. Few employers could withstand the business losses of withdrawn union patronage when approximately one-fifth of San Francisco's entire population belonged to a labor organization. The Duchess Sandwich Company, for instance, explained that they refused to "force unionism" on their employees and declined to recognize the culinary workers. After less than a month on the council's unfair list, the co-owners of the company wrote that "we have given further consideration to your request that we take the initiative in bringing our employees into the Culinary Workers Organization. . . . We will be glad . . . to work out ways of bringing our plant into complete union membership . . . [and] to get away from the penalties which have piled up on us as a result of your putting us on the unfair list."^[57]

When necessary, culinary unionists turned to picketing, creative harassment of shop owners and their clientele, and innovative strike tactics. Traditional strikes, whether by skilled or semiskilled culinary workers, rarely had much impact on businesses that could use family members or find at least one or two temporary replacements. In response, locals often picketed without pulling the crew inside. In these cases, picketing could be successful even if the potential union members working inside were indifferent or hostile to unionism. If picketing persuaded customers to bypass the struck restaurant or halted delivery of supplies, the employer usually relented. With the unity prevailing among San Francisco labor following the 1934 General Strike, culinary unionists experienced few problems stopping deliveries. Influencing customers was a far more difficult proposition.

Mass picketing intimidated prospective customers, but even in the heyday of union rank-and-file activism the LJEB had trouble generating large groups of pickets for so many scattered, isolated locations.^[58] To supplement and reinforce weak picket lines, the San Francisco culinary unions devised masterful public relations techniques. The 1941 department and variety store pickets, for instance, attended the Stanford-UCLA football game and passed out "score cards" asking the captive public to help them "hold that line." Using the extended metaphor of football, the leaflets explained that "when Hi prices and Hi taxes throw their full power against left tackle—that's where the pocketbook is kept—only higher wages can plug the hole, and stop the play."^[59]

Other attention-grabbing devices used by the same strikers in 1938 and again in 1941 included "Don't-Gum-up-the-Works gum" given out up and down Market Street, boats cruising the Bay during the Columbus Day celebration to advise "Do Not Patronize," and costumed picket lines. The costume variations were endless: Halloween pickets, women on skates, and even Kiddie Day picket lines. One picketer engaged a horse and buggy and trotted around San Francisco carrying a large placard that read "this vehicle is from the same era as the Emporium's labor policy." During the 1941 department store strike when a prize was offered for the picketer with the best costume, a young lunch counter striker won with a dress covered entirely with spoons; on her back she carried a sign reading "Local 1100 can dish it out but can the Emporium take it?" The 1938 dimestore strikers called themselves "the million dollar babies from the 5 & 10 cent stores." Carmen Lucia, an organizer for the Capmakers International Union who assisted the strikes, recalled, "I had them dressed up in white bathing suits, beautiful, with red ribbons around them, and [they'd] bring their babies on their shoulders." Strikers' children handed out leaflets reading "Take our mothers off the streets. Little Children Like to Eat."^[60]

A community contingent reinforced the continuous flow of propaganda from the strikers. One group, developed out of the 1938 strike, called itself the Women's Trade Union Committee. Open to union women and wives of union men, the committee, chaired by waitress Frances Stafford, devoted itself to "educating women who have union-earned dollars to spend, as to where and how to spend them." During strikes, the committees escalated their "educational tactics." One devised a tactic called the "button game": shoppers were to go to stores in the busy hours, fill their carts with merchandise, and then demand a clerk wearing the union button. In eating places, supporters relied on somewhat different tactics. Helen Jaye, a San Francisco waitress in the 1930s, recalled one approach: "The people who

came into the cafeteria . . . were members of the ILGWU and they . . . gave him [the owner] the very dickens. I remember a couple of men [took] their trays up to the cash register and just dumped them on the floor."^[61]