The Bay Area Labor History Workshop (BALHW) was founded in 1980 by Don Watson and Margo McBane. Over the past two decades thousands of people have participated in events that the BALHW sponsored or with which it was associated. We are a community of individuals committed to documenting the history of working people in the San Francisco Bay Area and California – their struggles to organize and their politics; the environment they have fashioned, physically and intellectually; their writings and art; labor folklore, material culture, and other forms of expression. We are workers, activists, academics, archivists and librarians, filmmakers, writers, and students for whom the documentation and celebration of labor is part of the movement’s vital memory and culture.

We hope you find the information on this site useful, and, if you are able, will join us. Upcoming Bay Area events will occasionally be posted on the site, though the heart of the BALHW remains its monthly meetings in people’s homes.

The Bay Area Labor History Workshop arose out of a conversation between Margo McBane and Don Watson in 1980. Don, now a retired member of Ship Clerks Association, ILWU Local 34, recalls, "I had met Margo in the United Farm Worker movement in the mid-1970s. Along with Anne Loftis, we had plunged into agricultural labor history, but we needed a support group to try out our ideas. 

Cesar Chavez speaking in 1972

So we gathered history friends for our first meeting at Margo’s house in June 1980." The BALHW soon moved beyond only agricultural labor history. Today we host presentations on a wide range of subjects: while the history of Bay Area and California labor remains an important focus, the Workshop has hosted presentations by Sweatshop Watch, on labor lore and murals, by filmmakers and multimedia producers. We have an expansive definition of labor history and our mission and are always seeking new ideas and presenters for our monthly meetings.

The heart of the BALHW is the monthly meetings, which are hosted in a friendly atmosphere in people’s homes. The founders wanted to give encouragement to budding labor historians as well as to themselves. They also wanted to keep the BALHW simple: no officers – and to this day the Workshop operates solely through the work of volunteers, not officers, elected or otherwise. In the early years, people came to us who were writing books and researching dissertations, teaching, creating labor history in different ways such as videos, music, or theater. It was in those meetings that our real purpose emerged, and ever since they have functioned as a supportive and constructively critical forum for people’s work. Work that subsequently appeared as books, articles, films, or multimedia found its earliest audience in BALHW meetings.

A key event of the 1980s was the BALHW alliance with the Labor Archives & Research Center (LARC) at San Francisco State University, founded in 1986. LARC quickly established itself as a fulcrum in the effort to preserve the Bay Area’s rich labor history, and the association with the Workshop has proved mutually beneficial. Director Lynn Bonfield and her staff have provided advice, space for formal and informal meetings, and a mailing address for us. In turn, our membership has helped and needs to continue to help the Archives. This means donations of labor and money and material. Success for the Archives enhances the effectiveness of the BALHW. This is a relationship we will continue to nurture.

BALHW has survived through volunteers. Yearly we have found new sets of presenters and hosts. Behind-the-scenes work has helped make this happen. Margo McBane and Don Watson did much of the mailing and telephoning in the beginning, and Tom Larke helped before his premature death. Bob Cherny has been consistently supportive. Carol Cuenod has been a steady, quiet force. More recent helpers have included Susan Goldstein, Lisa Rubens, and Nancy Snyder. However, Jean Pauline, formerly of Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco, deserves the award for volunteering the most. For over a decade she has involved herself in every aspect of the Workshop – her favorite expression is "I’ll do it!" We have been served well in the past. During the next decade, we will need younger volunteers to renew the BALHW tradition. We hope some of them will be inspired by what they read here.

Annual Dinners

The earliest annual dinners were informal gatherings, and most were at the Green Valley Restaurant in the North Beach section of San Francisco. We wanted to thank the people who volunteered their time during the year – planning the monthly meetings, maintaining the membership list, mailing the schedule, collecting dues, doing presentations, hosting meetings in their homes – the myriad things that keep the Workshop functioning and lively. When we moved down the street to the New Pisa Restaurant we began featuring speakers and continued this at the Delancey Street Restaurant and, most recently, John’s Grill. Speakers have included Paul Buhle, Bob Cherny, Sally Miller, Victoria Byerly, Fred Glass, Ottilie Markholt, Brenda Cochrane, Barbara Byrd, Anne Schaefer, Albert Lannon, and Glenna Matthews, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Gene Vrana, and Ken Burt.

Special Events

Beyond the Workshop’s regular schedule of meetings we had some inspiring events.

In 1982, Anne Loftis and Steinbeck biographer Jackson Benson organized a symposium on John Steinbeck and the agricultural labor movement at the home of historian Paul Taylor. Participating were active players from the 1930s such as the premier Cannery and Agricultural Workers Union organizer Pat Chambers; one of the managers of the FSA "Steinbeck camp," Fred Ross; and International Labor Defense leader Elaine Black Yoneda.

In 1988 Karl Yoneda formed a subcommittee of the BALHW to sponsor a book on the life and career of Workshop charter member Elaine Black Yoneda. The Red Angel by Workshop member Vivian McGuckin Raineri was published by International Publishers in 1991. Out of this came the Elaine and Karl Yoneda Award, given annually by the Southwest Labor Studies Association

Archie Green sparked an all-day Waterfront Soundings Conference held at ILWU Local 34 in San Francisco in 1991. The cast included old-timers from the 1930s such as Bill Bailey, Knud "Andy" Andersen, and Shaun Maloney as well as African Americans such as Eugene Lasartamay, "Big Dave" Littleton, and Joe Johnson, onetime secretary-treasurer of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. Many waterfront workers paraded up to Archie Green’s open mike.

Workshop member Henry Anderson led a campaign to place a headstone on the grave of Vincent St. John, one of the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland. It was dedicated June 21, 1992 (Plot 56, Grave 363). [Insert photos]