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The union commenced the "March Inland", in which it organized the many warehouses that received the goods that longshoremen handled, both in the ports themselves and further removed from them, shortly after the successful conclusion of the 1934 strike. The union eventually organized warehouses throughout the United States. This "March Inland" was crucial in improving the working conditions and quality of life with each union it assimilated. For example, the Weighers' and Warehousemens' Union was one such union based in Oakland, California that became apart of the ILWU, and prior to the assimilation "warehouse workers suffered low wages, high job insecurity and frequent speed-ups." Happening during the Great Depression, this March Inland helped many workers without much power to have greater control in their working environments because they were now part of a greater and more powerful entity.

The union also led efforts to form Maritime Federation of the Pacific, which brought all of the maritime unions together for common action. That federation helped the sailors union win the same sort of contract after a long strike in 1936 that the ILA had achieved in 1934. Rivalries between the two unions, however, soon broke the federation apart.

The ILWU also established strong unions on the docks in Hawaii during this time. In the next decade, despite the concerted opposition of the employers, the military and most of the political establishment, it also organized sugar and pineapple workers there. The ILWU's work changed the political climate in Hawaii, confronting the hold on power that the Big Five had exercised for half a century.

The ILWU backed the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union (CAWIU), a communist controlled union headquartered in San Jose. CAWIU had considerable success organizing farm and cannery workers in the Santa Clara Valley and elsewhere in California until it was suppressed in 1934 by the state of California following sustained attacks by business, political and reactionary forces which, in San Jose, resulted in an atmosphere of terror.[5]