Pulaski Skyway - Labor Issues

Labor Issues

The construction of the Pulaski Skyway ended up causing a dispute between Mayor of Jersey City Frank Hague, who ran a statewide political machine, and Theodore M. Brandle, a "labor czar" allied with Hague. Brandle and Hague had become friends through Hague's efforts to get the approval of unions. Brandle helped organize the Branleygran Company, a construction bond underwriter, which Hague channeled construction projects towards. During the mid-1920s redevelopment of Journal Square, Brandle's Labor National Bank, founded in June 1926, acquired a new 15-story headquarters, the Labor Bank Building. Essentially Brandle controlled any construction projects in northern New Jersey, and any strikes he might call would be backed by Hague's police.

The relationship between Hague and Brandle started to go bad in late 1931, during the construction of the Jersey City Medical Center, an important project to Hague. Leo Brennan, a contractor approved by Hague without consulting Brandle, who was building a backup power station for the hospital, refused to work with Brandle's card-file system, by which he kept track of union members and blacklisted those whom he disliked. The annoyed Brandle called a strike, but Brennan's workers refused; the police shut down the site after a brawl, but Brennan got court approval to continue. To placate Brandle, who threatened a strike that would stop all construction work on the center, Hague paid off Brennan and hired another contractor that Brandle had approved.

For the construction of the Pulaski Skyway, which began in April 1930, Hague chose four members of the National Erectors' Association, an organization of "open shop" (anti-union) steel contractors. Performance bonds were paid in cash, bypassing Branleygran, and the companies hired the Foster Industrial and Detective Agency to guard the site against Brandle's threat to "unionize this job or else". Brandle organized picket lines of loyal union men, and the two sides frequently fought in the streets or in the work area. Brandle's sole victory was a five-day stoppage in July 1931 by 165 non-union workers, who were interested in higher pay and afraid of the ongoing fights, but decided against joining the union. During the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee hearings, it was discovered that, in order to save about $50,000 in salary, the American Bridge Company, one of the four contractors, spent almost $300,000 on keeping its "open shop".

The first casualty of the labor battle was a picketer, shot and temporarily paralyzed by a perimeter guard on November 14, 1931 for throwing stones at workers. Several months later, on February 27, 1932, a car carrying six workers to the construction site was surrounded by union men, who began to beat them with iron bars. One of the workers, William T. Harrison, was dead by the next morning; Hague broke all ties with Brandle and ordered the police to "wage relentless war against the Brandle gang-rioters". In April 1932, 21 ironworkers were indicted as suspects in the Harrison murder. The trial was held on December 6, 1932, two weeks after the completion of the skyway. Every defendant was found not guilty, since county prosecutor John Drewen was unable to place any of them at the scene of the crime, and witnesses and defendants testified that they had been forced under torture or the threat of prosecution to sign affidavits and confessions. In addition to the death of William T. Harrison, 14 lives were claimed by work-related accidents during construction.

Hague refused to allow Brandle and the unions to win, and began to force unions to foreclose through his control of the courts. On the public side, Hague attacked the "labor racketeers" with words, and the local newspapers gladly went along. In 1937 and 1938, Hague turned Jersey City into a police state to fight the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was trying to inform workers of their rights under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. Socialist Norman Thomas was prevented from speaking in Jersey City and Newark by Hague and his friends. This and other similar cases turned the national spotlight on Hague, and he was attacked by the New Yorker and Life in early 1938. Finally, in 1947, Governor Alfred E. Driscoll cut off Hague's judicial power, and the mayor retired.