On the Shoals
Not only Congressmen but labor's advocates last week denounced the San Francisco shipyard strike (TIME, May 19). When even Madam Perkins held up her hands in horror, it became 1941's most unpopular walkout.
Fact of the matter was that the dispute had grown progressively worse with mishandling. Month ago, OPM officials thought they had ended disputes in Pacific shipbuilding when they got shipyards and A.F. of L. international officers and metal-trades councils: 1) to agree to a standard wage scale, 2) to outlaw strikes and lockouts for two years. Bethlehem Steel, which operates the largest two yards in the area, although it put the terms of the agreement into effect, declined to sign. So did A.F. of L. machinists, who denied the right of their international officers to sign for them. The fine "master agreement" appeared a great success except for the fact that bungling Government officials had forgotten to get signatures on the line.
The machinists, having meanwhile struck and won an hourly wage of $1.15 in other San Francisco machine shops, moved against the shipyards, demanding the same rate. The shipyards logically argued that they had agreed in the master pact to pay $1.12 and could not pay more if they wanted to, without violating their contract with OPM. But the machinists particularly wanted to force Bethlehem to sign the master agreement. They struck. Out with them went C.I.O. machinists from the other side of the Bay. Picket lines stopped other, nonstriking craftsmen, and eleven Bay yards were tight shut.
Against the machinists' insecure but stubbornly held position State and Federal officials and international officers of the A.F. of L. charged with dirty looks and flying words. Most violent word hurler was pontifical John P. Frey, president of the A.F. of L. metal-trades department, who stormed: "If necessary I'll lead [nonstriking craftsmen] through the picket line myself to bust this strike." Back of the San Francisco machinists' sullen defiance was a tradition of autonomy, the conviction that they had the right to act without interference from the parent body. Mr. Frey's threatening attitude just made matters worse.
While California's Governor Olson held conference and OPM's Eli Leslie Oliver looked around for a formula by which unhappy machinists could back down without losing face, and a Senate Committee investigating the defense program threatened to call disputants to Washington, West Coast Communists slyly sprinkled salt in wounds, did what they could to prolong the ruckus. Still stranded on this labor shoal at week's end were a total $500,000,000 worth of Navy contracts (27 destroyers, four cruisers, 43 auxiliaries) and a Maritime Commission program of 74 freighters and three passenger-cargo ships.
Old Wrangle. On top of a month-long strike that had already hurt the steel industry enough, another strike in soft coal was halted just as it was about to pop. The Mediation Board's Davis & Teagle jumped in, got disputants back into conference, but if no solution is reached this week, the Mediation Board will in all likelihood lay bare its own facts and figures on the controversial coal business, for the public to read and judge.
Good news was the end of the dispute at General Motors Corp. In time's nick, as a strike exploded prematurely in five G.M. plants, threatened to sweep through the other 56, the Mediation Board's William Hammatt Davis & colleagues managed a compromise. The corporation, which had stoutly maintained its inability to pay more than a 3-c- wage increase, settled at10-c-. The union retreated from a closed-shop demand.
On other industrial defense fronts: > Several hours after the C.I.O. victory at General Motors, Ford Motor Co. announced voluntary wage increases totaling $6,000,000 (5-c--to-15-c- an hour). This week Ford employes at the Lincoln and River Rouge plants will vote in an NLRB election to decide whether they want C.I.O., A.F. of L. or no union at all to bargain for them.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.