1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike

The 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike was a labor action of the splinter union "Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast" lasting from October 31, 1936 to January 21, 1937. The strike's main effects were felt in Houston and Galveston.

The Gulf Coast strike was parallel to a similar West Coast maritime strike, called almost simultaneously. Both strikes were catalysts for the formation of the National Maritime Union under union leader Joseph Curran.

In Houston, New Orleans, and other major docks along the Gulf Coast, strikes and other labor conflict had been a regular annual occurrence through the 1930s. In July 1934 three black longshoremen had been shot to death in a firefight on the Houston docks during a strike. In 1935 longshoremen along the entire coast had struck from October 1 through November 27 to little avail except for fourteen more killings.

Nationally, maritime workers had suffered declining wages and increasingly untenable working conditions under the leadership of the International Seamen's Union; the ISU was perceived as corrupt and inefficient. One response was increasing numbers of wildcat strikes. In March 1936 Joseph Curran led a spontaneous four-day work stoppage on the docked SS California in San Pedro, California, attracting personal attention and a degree of support from U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins.

Also by March 1936, seamen and longshoremen of the Gulf Coast port cities had organized themselves as the "Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast". In a New Orleans conference they named Wobbly Gilbert Mers of Corpus Christi as leader. This rejection of the ISU set the stage for union vs. union street tension, and a long list of beatings and violent incidents, through the entire year.

By his own description, in a letter to West Coast leader Harry Bridges, the biggest challenge facing Mers as head of this new organization was maintaining union solidarity across racial lines. Purportedly, a ban against black dockworkers in the ports of Brownsville and Port Isabel dated back to the Brownsville Affair of 1906. Nevertheless, another inspiration for the impending action was a small strike of black stewards on the SS Seminole of the Clyde-Mallory lines, who'd refused to work in Galveston on June 13th, and upon returning to New York prevented all the company's liners from sailing.

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