LaborFest this year is commemorating the 90th anniversary of the historic San Francisco General Strike and the West Coast Maritime Strike in 1934. This strike not only won a union hiring hall for the longshore workers but also led to hundreds of thousands of workers joining unions not just San Francisco but in Northern California. Another general strike as well took place by Teamsters in Minneapolis in the same year that was successful in organizing thousands of Teamsters.

The last general strike in the US was in 1946 when workers in Oakland went on strike to support 400 striking women department workers at Hastings & Kahn. This rich history will be an important part of LaborFest in walks and education programs.

Today with workers trying to organize at Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Google, and many other companies, the right of working people to have a union is still an ongoing struggle. Workers like the IBU ILWU Alcatraz workers and Starbuck’s workers have voted for a union and are still fighting for a contract against bosses that will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for union busting lawyers rather than accepting the right of workers to join a union.

LaborFest will be covering these events and looking at the danger of AI and robotics to all working people.  Some studies have said that 350 million workers may lose their jobs worldwide, and in San Francisco, the center of AI, tens of billions of dollars are being invested to develop this technology to eliminate workers from all areas of work from healthcare, construction, logistics, education and public services and even technology workers. Instead of AI benefiting working people, it is threatening to marginalize and destroy our lives under a system that is based only on profit for these billionaires.

Many of these tech barons are not only seeking to destroy our jobs, but also want to get rid of our democratic institutions and democratic media so they can fully implement deregulation, privatization, and the destruction of all labor.

This year, we will be having our annual LaborFest maritime boat trip with musicians, historians and unionists who will talk about their struggles and how we can support them. We will learn about our history and the struggles, and voices of working people. Please let us know about these events so we can get the word out.

Please join us at our events and attend our annual boat trip on July 28.

Solidarity Has No Borders
See You On The Picket Lines

LaborFest Organizing Committee
LaborFest
P. O. Box 40983
San Francisco 94140
(415) 642-8066
laborfest@laborfest.net
www.laborfest.net