Strike on Wheels

When members of Harry Bridges' C.I.O. Warehousemen's Union refused to unload a freight car which had been packed with school supplies at a struck F. W. Woolworth Co. warehouse last fortnight their employers fired them, shut down. The hot Woolworth car soon visited, and shut, 35 more union warehouses (TIME. Aug. 29). Last week it continued its journeys, accompanied by pickets, chalked with signs RED HOT SCAB CAR, TWO MORE STOPS AND WE'LL ALL BE OUT, etc. By week's end more than half of the 180 warehouses in the San Francisco Bay area were closed, some 2,500 of the 8,000 Bridges Warehousemen were out of work and the hot car, having traveled over 220 miles, had become a major pawn in San Francisco's ever smoldering labor war.

Since the car was sent to grocery and liquor warehouses with no interest in Woolworth paper & pencils, the union accused the Association of San Francisco Distributors of fomenting trouble. The Association retorted that it was seeking a showdown on "quickie" and sympathetic strikes before renewing a number of expired union contracts, had adopted the hot car to see how union-members would behave. Exulted a Distributors' spokesman: "We are now in a position to enforce our right of collective bargaining and we don't intend to give it up."

Taking heart, 27 department store operators got together to squelch union demands for a 35-hour week. Negotiations also stalled between unions and chain grocery store operators on the same issue. When the potent Waterfront Employers Association indicated it would adopt a strong line when its members' contracts with C.I.O. longshoremen expire September 30, gloomy San Franciscans (already faced with a shortage of drugs and liquor by the warehouse shutdown) began reminiscing about the 1934 General Strike.

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