"Fullest Cooperation1"

A.F. of L. President William Green last week lambasted C.I.O.'s John Lewis for croaking: "If labor isn't given a greater voice in ... [labor] matters, those who direct them should not expect too much cooperation from labor." Promised Mr. Green brightly: "I assure the Government of the United States that it can expect the fullest cooperation from all of the members and officers of the American

Federation of Labor. . . ." Before the week was out, there was a new and bigger A.F. of L. strike on a front where everybody believed that all strikes had been outlawed for the duration of the defense program.

The strikers were machinists in San Francisco shipyards. Month ago, West Coast shipbuilders and union officials had signed a master agreement for the entire West Coast industry pledging no strikes, no lockouts. The striking machinists' local protested that they had not been let into the negotiations for the agreement, therefore were not bound by it. Their demands: $1.15 an hour. (The master agreement provides: $1.12 an hour.) Out with the 1,200 A.F. of L. machinists obligingly went 700 steelworkers belonging to C.I.O. Tied up were $500,000,000 of Navy and Maritime Commission contracts.

Local and national A.F. of L. officers deplored and denounced the walkout, C.I.O. officials looked around for a formula to get their men back to work. As depressed as anyone were officials of OPM, who had proudly fathered the shipbuilding pact on the West Coast, considered it ideal, were in the midst of trying to father others like it in the Great Lakes, the Gulf and the East.

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