Filipino Cannery Workers Waiting to Be Dispatched to Ward’s Cove, AK

Wing Luke Museum Collection 2003.200.077

In 1933, Filipinos organized a Seattle-based cannery union to fight for improved wages and better working conditions. These Alaskeros worked in the Alaska salmon canneries each summer and in the harvest fields of Washington, Oregon, and California in the other seasons. The union was later known as Local 37 of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Pictured here are union members awaiting dispatch to the Wards Cove Cannery in Alaska several decades after the union first formed, c. 1970s. 

Photo Credit: John Stamets.