Transferred collection (formerly held by the Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California Berkeley) of case files donated by leading labor arbitrators. The Labor Archives has retained arbitration case material relevant to industrial relations in Northern California. Two industries, the west coast longshore industry and the San Francisco hotel industry, are especially well represented. The collection includes the full transcript of the National Longshoremen's Board hearings on the Pacific Coast Maritime Strike of 1934.

Arbitrations of two industries, the west coast longshore industry and the San Francisco hotel industry, stand out in providing historical value to students of labor history and industrial relations. The Pacific Coast Maritime Strike and San Francisco General Strike of 1934 established the National Longshoremen’s Board (NLB) to conduct hearings and rule on all issues of the strike. The longshore industry is clearly defined in the full transcript of the NLB hearings and its award of October 12, 1934. The collection also includes subsequent longshore arbitration awards up to 1946. (Boxes 18 - 21) These awards established the rules and defined the work of longshoremen, ship clerks and walking bosses. Also included are arbitrations which ruled on longshoremen’s use of economic action to affect political action such as their refusal to load scrap iron bound for Japan in 1939 in protest of Japan’s aggressive was and invasion of China.

The arbitrations for the San Francisco hotel industry and the many unions of its employees start in 1937, the year which re-established union recognition by that industry. Negotiations began in 1936 and culminated after a three-month strike from May to July of 1937 when unresolved issues were referred to an arbitration board. The collection has arbitrations from 1937 to 1947. Briefs and transcripts include the history of each union and exhibits have job descriptions, wages and working conditions for all workers in the industry. (Boxes 30 - 39)

Other arbitrations of historical interest deal with labor relations during World War II (Boxes 1, 3, 6), seamen’s unions which in the post-World War II period, formed the Committee for Maritime Unity (Boxes 12 - 15), PGE workers whose union leader’s testimony offers a history of union organization within that industry (Box 29), and arbitrations which settled a 1939 strike of Warehouse Union, ILWU Local 6 and set the contract patterns for that and other unionized industries in the San Francisco Bay Area (Boxes 24 - 27).