While San Diego may be enjoying smooth labor relations today, most activists interviewed for this article agree that it has not always been so. In fact, most acknowledge that the city has had a reputation for being less than friendly to labor. But how that reputation came about in the first place, and when it began to turn around, is much less clear. What is clear is that the currently overall sunny atmosphere for local labor relations has been downright stormy at times.

It may date back to San Diego’s most infamous anti-labor episode, which erupted in the first months of 1912. A Free Speech League formed to protest a new city ordinance banning street meetings Downtown. Kevin Starr, California's state historian, says that league included "mainstream AFL trade unionists, Socialists, single-taxers, suffragettes, anarchists, atheists, religious groups" and the local chapter of the International Workers of the World, or "Wobblies." Their ranks were swelled by 5,000 when more IWW members marched into town to take up their cause.

San Diego’s business and political establishment reacted with force. After a week of pro-free speech marches by the union-dominated protesters, 150 people were in jail. In order to intercept any more visitors with protest on their minds, especially any Wobblies, armed guards patrolled the county line, and vigilantes monitored the one railroad route into town.

As more union members and others were arrested and the jail filled, prisoners were sent to a corral in Sorrento Valley, beyond the outskirts of town. One recalled their ordeal: "They marched us to the county line where we were forced to kiss the flag and then run a gauntlet of 106 men, every one of which was striking at us hard as they could with their pick-axe handles."

Not one man escaped serious injury.

Back in town, police went after demonstrators outside the city jail with fire hoses. After a month of demonstrations, the strife in San Diego was on the front page of every newspaper in America. Few other cities had turned so violently on labor protesters. Starr says the city's ruling oligarchy realized it had pushed the issue too far. (Starr's account of the anti-IWW chapter is contained in his 1996 book, "Endangered Dreams.")

The city's current generation of labor leaders date San Diego’s reputation to more recent events. Al Shur, business manager of IBEW Local 569, says that local labor relations were downright amiable until about 20 years ago, when San Diego experienced one of its periodic booms.

He asserts that a national anti-union building contractors' organization, known as the Associated Building Contractors, targeted San Diego for squeezing union influence.

ABC had a lot of success for a while he says. Jim Westfall of the San Diego Electrical Training Trust continues Shur's story, adding that after a few years of bad experience with nonunion electricians, the National Electrical Contractors Association and the IBEW began the apprenticeship training program which thrives today.

The United Domestic Workers of America/AFSCME is one of the few unions headquartered in San Diego. UDW's Fahari Jeffers is one who thinks the town's reputation arises from its overall conservative character, plus its historical status as military-dominated, and as home to many retirees.

"This is not a combination which is typically associated with a lot of labor activity," she observes. However, she says, the climate also has not led to strong polarization in management and labor. "Sometimes it is in places where activism is not strong on either side that new things can take place, because there is no critical mass on either side to prevent it."

This is what happened at the birth of the UDW, she says, and the fledgling union got a lot of support from many sectors of the community. In fact, future mayor Susan Golding attended the union's first convention in 1981. "I guess we just got organized under the radar," Jeffers says.

Jerry Butkiewicz, head of the Central Labor Council, takes a more partisan view of local labor history.

"I really have no idea how San Diego’s reputation got started because it happened long before I was involved in the labor movement," he says.

However, Butkiewicz blames former mayor Pete Wilson for chilling the local labor climate with his efforts to revoke the prevailing wage requirements in city-funded projects.

"It didn’t save taxpayers money. The contractors just paid their employees less and pocketed the difference," he asserts. "The wisdom of that strategy has to come into question when we see whole groups of working people unable to buy cars, afford homes, or buy other local goods."

— Joanne Gribble