Archives West Finding Aid

The first pensions dispensed to retiring longshore workers, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, were issued in July 1952. Soon after retiring, many of this first wave of ILWU pensioners organized into regional clubs on the West Coast. At first, they served mainly as fraternal organizations for retired ILWU members and partners to socialize. Soon, however, the activist culture of the ILWU became evident and the clubs began to take action on senior citizens' issues, labor problems and matters relating to the ILWU locals from which they retired. In 1968 those regional ILWU pensioner clubs formed the coastwide Pacific Coast Pensioners Association, calling an organizing convention in September of 1968 with the goal of founding a fraternal organization of ILWU pensioners that would allow them to act with unity as an advocacy as well as a social organization, their official motto becoming "Retired from the Job But Not From the Struggle". The PCPA holds an annual convention at a port on the West Coast, with the location changing every year. They also have the unusual position within union retiree organizations of having a member on the ILWU's contract negotiation team during the collective bargaining process to ensure the concerns of retired members are addressed. https://www.ilwu.org/why-the-pacific-coast-pensioners-association/