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Inventory of the Peter Comacho Papers, 1904-1959
1989/085
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Title: Peter Comacho Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1904-1959
Accession number: 1989/085
Creator:
Comacho, Peter
Extent: .25 cubic feet
Repository:
San Francisco State University. Labor Archives & Research Center
San Francisco, California 94132
Shelf location: For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the Center's online catalog.
Language:
English.
Collection is open for research.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Labor Archives & Research Center. All requests for
permission to publish or quote from materials must be submitted in writing
to the Director of the Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf
of the Labor Archives & Research Center as the owner of the physical items and is not intended
to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be
obtained by the reader.
[Identification of item], Peter Comacho Papers, 1989/085, Labor Archives & Research Center,
San Francisco State University.
These records--pertaining to International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 85, of San Francisco,
California--were donated by Peter Comacho in 1989. The collection was processed in spring 1999
by Joshua Paddison.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 85 of San Francisco was founded in August 1900,
with an initial membership of thirty-five men. The teamsters organized in response to the
appearance of the Draymen's Association, an alliance of San Francisco team-owners, which had
been founded in January of that year.
1
Prior to the formation of the union, San Francisco teamsters
toiled under conditions the
Labor Clarion described as "among the most slavish in the west." The
average work day was from 5 a.m. to after 8 p.m., and "there was no such thing as regulation of
hours, or working men in shifts. The problem of the employer was to get as much work as he
could out of the flesh and blood of his hired men; the problem of the teamsters was to keep alive."
2
The union was put to an immediate test: On Labor Day, 1900, the large draying firm McNab &
Smith fired three teamsters who belonged to the new union. About one hundred of the firm's other
drivers promptly went on strike, and the three men were reinstated the next day. This impressive
flexing of union muscle convinced more than 1,300 teamsters to apply for membership at the next
union meeting.
3
On October 1, 1900, Teamsters Local 85 entered into an agreement with the Draymen's
Association that established a higher, standard daily wage; a twelve-hour work day; and
guaranteed overtime pay for work on Sundays, holidays, or after 6 p.m. The contract also included
a stipulation that the Draymen's Association would employ only members of the union, and that
the union would work only for employers affiliated with the Draymen's Association. This
strengthened the power of both the union and the association.
4
Teamsters Local 85 was led by two powerful men who would loom large over San Francisco
organized labor for more than three decades: Michael "Bloody Mike" Casey (1857-1937) and John
P. McLaughlin (1873-1949). Born in Ireland, Casey--a charter member of Local 85 and its first
business agent--served as the union's president for more than thirty years. In 1904 he was elected
one of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' (IBT) seven regional vice presidents and the
chief IBT representative and organizer for the entire United States west of Chicago. McLaughlin,
like Casey a charter member of Local 85, acted as its secretary for nearly fifty years. He also
served as State Labor Commissioner, administrator of the first Workmen's Compensation Act,
Collector of Internal Revenue, and member of the Public Utilities Commission.
5
In April 1901, the Draymen's Association joined forces with a variety of San Francisco wholesale
merchants, manufacturers, and retail merchants in a powerful new employer's union, the
Employers' and Manufacturers' Association. Casey later claimed that the Association was formed
due to a picnic--whenever the men of Teamsters 85 took a day off for a union picnic, business in
San Francisco ground to a halt. "This so shocked the Chamber of Commerce and the powers that
be in the economic world that they determined this was a dangerous thing and that the teamsters'
union ought to be destroyed," declared Casey.
6
In fact, the Employers' and Manufacturers' Association collected a $250,000 war chest to combat
unionism and managed to put down several small strikes in May and June, 1901. But in July, when
members of Teamsters 85 were ordered by the Draymen's Association to haul luggage for a
nonunion company, Casey led more than 2,500 teamsters on a strike. On July 30 between 10,000
and 16,000 sailors, firemen, and longshoremen who were affiliated with the City Front Federation
joined the teamsters in a sympathy strike throughout the Bay Area. "Not until 1934, at another
time of crisis for San Francisco labor, did teamsters, longshoremen, and seamen unite once more in
effective battle against employers," notes one historian.
7
The strike ended only after Governor Henry T. Gage stepped in on October 2 and announced that
he was declaring "the teamsters' strike and all collateral and sympathetic strikes or lockouts
originating from the teamsters' strike at an end." The exact terms of the settlement were never
revealed, but the strike demonstrated the power and solidarity of San Francisco labor, helped
launch the Union Labor Party, triggered the dissolution of the Employers' and Manufacturers'
Association, and vindicated the teamsters' right to organize and bargain collectively.
8
(Unfortunately, no records pertaining to the 1901 strike appear in this collection.)
Also in 1901, Teamsters Local 85 joined with Oakland's Local 70 and other Bay Area Teamsters
locals in organizing a central organization called the Team Drivers Joint Executive Council. After
the 1906 earthquake and fire, the Team Drivers Joint Executive Council was reorganized as San
Francisco Bay Area Joint Council 7, with Local 85 as its most influential member.
9
Of the four western Teamsters Joint Councils, San Francisco Bay Area Joint Council 7 was,
according to one historian, "by far the largest, most powerful, and unquestionably the most
conservative."
10
In fact, by the 1920s and 1930s San Francisco's Teamsters Local 85 was "so
large, wealthy, well-established, and secure in its position" that it resisted organizing California's
plentiful highway truckers, a move Teamsters locals in Seattle and Oakland eagerly embraced in
the mid-1930s. Casey finally bowed to IBT pressure in 1935 and helped launch the Bay Area
Highway Organizing Drive, later followed by the Highway Drivers Council of California.
11
During the San Francisco maritime and general strike of July 1934, strike leader Harry Bridges
appealed to the members of Teamsters 85 to join his longshoremen in a sympathy strike. Said Mike
Casey: "In all my thirty years of leading these men, I have never seen them so worked up, so
determined to walk out. I don't believe any power on earth can prevent them going on strike
unless the maritime strike is settled...."
12
In fact, on July 11, the Teamsters overwhelming voted in
favor of the sympathy strike, considerably strengthening the longshoremen's position.
13
Mike Casey died in 1937, and John P. McLaughlin took over as IBT vice president. That same
year, Local 85 joined approximately 150 other Teamster locals in eleven western states to form the
Western Conference of Teamsters, led by Seattle Teamster Dave Beck. The creation of this multi-
jurisdictional regional body, unprecedented in Teamster history, significantly shifted the balance of
Teamster power westward; Beck himself rose to become president of the IBT in 1952.
14
1Robert Edward Lee Knight,
Industrial Relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1900-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 58
2
Labor Clarion 4 September 1908: 14
3Robert M. Robinson, "San Francisco Teamsters at the Turn of the Century,"
California Historical Society Quarterly 35 (1956): 62
4Robinson, "San Francisco Teamsters," 63; Knight, 59-60
550
th Anniversary Celebration program, 25 November 1950, LARC, Peter Comacho Papers; Donald Garnel,
The Rise of Teamster Power in the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 48, 51
6Donald F. Selvin,
A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes in San Francisco (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 23
7Knight, 95
8See Ira B. Cross,
A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935), 237-247; David F. Selvin,
Sky Full of Storm: A Brief History of California Labor (Berkeley: Center for Labor Research and Education, 1966), 21-26; Robinson, "San Francisco Teamsters," 145-152
9Robert M. Robinson, "A History of the Teamsters in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1850-1950" (Ph.D. dissertation, University
of California at Berkeley, 1951), 181; Garnel, 49-51
10Garnel, 54
11Garnel, 101-116
12Selvin,
A Terrible Anger, 158
13Selvin,
A Terrible Anger, 165
14Robinson, "A History of the Teamsters," 298; Garnel, 200.
The papers of Peter Comacho contains one series: Teamsters Local 85.
The oldest items in the collection are canceled checks from 1904 to 1906. Other early material
includes general meeting minutes from 1907 to 1910, executive board minutes from 1908 to 1910,
and contract rules and regulations with the Draymen's Association from 1902 and 1906.
The most recent items in the collection are contract rules and regulations with San Francisco
House Movers, Inc., and the Draymen's Association from the late 1950s.
Included in the collection is a program from Teamsters Local 85's "50
th Anniversary
Celebration,"held at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium on November 25, 1950. It includes a brief
history of Teamsters Local 85, biographies of several of its past and present officers, and
description of the festivities (which included singing, dancing, music from the Walt Roesner
Orchestra, a "knockabout comedy act," "musical novelty" by Harry "Woo Woo" Stevens, and a
"Teamsters Special Surprise" by The Three Rio Brothers).
The following material has been removed from the files and relocated to the LARC book
collection:
- Charter of the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco: Bender-Chaquette Company, 1907. "J. P. M'Laughlin" embossed on the front cover.
Title: International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 85 collection,
Identifier/Call Number: accession number 1991/048.