Bayonne refinery strikes of 1915–1916

Initially about 1200 workers walked out, including 900 coopers, when their demands for increased pay and tolerable working conditions were ignored.

[4] Plant general manager George B. Gifford ordered 250 men from the professional strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff.

After several days of lawlessness, significant arson damage, at least five strikers killed altogether, and at least five more seriously wounded, Sheriff Eugene Francis Kinkead and federal labor mediators restored order after James Fairman Fielder, the Governor of New Jersey refused to call out the New Jersey National Guard.

Local officials also arrested the Industrial Workers of the World agitator Frank Tannenbaum, who had tried to insert himself as a spokesperson for the strikers, and banned the sale of the socialist newspaper, the New York Call.

Following the strike John D. Rockefeller Jr. decided to no longer rely on an exclusively critical stance towards labor — "Whenever it shows its head, hit it" — and overhaul company policy.