Bayonne Refinery Strike (1916)

Sun Oct 08, 1916

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Image: An 1891 illustration of Tidewater Petroleum facilities in Bayonne, New Jersey

✱There is at least one government source that claims the strike took place on October 3rd, however this event entry uses the date provided by historian Tom McDonough

On this day in 1916, thousands of Standard Oil workers went on strike, demanding higher wages. They faced fierce opposition from law enforcement - over just ten days, four people were killed and eighty-six were wounded.

The Bayonne Refinery Strikes of 1915-1916 were labor actions of refinery workers in Bayonne, New Jersey, mostly Polish-Americans, who struck against Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil and Tidewater Petroleum plants.

On October 8th, 1916, thousands of Standard Oil workers went on strike, demanding higher wages. The strikers faced fierce opposition from law enforcement, and the labor action became violent. In the course of the ten-day strike, 4 people were killed and 86 were wounded.

According to communist journalist John Reed (an eyewitness to the strike action), this was the first time in an industrial dispute where police announced that their explicit objective was to break the strike.

Multiple journalists in Bayonne criticized mainstream press as portraying the strikers and protesters as more violent than they actually were; according to Reed and others, the violence was initiated by police themselves.