The Way Things Are Going

For years the hard-muscled members of the East Coast's International Longshoremen's Association have grumbled at the highhanded, well-manicured leadership of bulky, redheaded Joseph Patrick Ryan. On Oct. 1, when 30,000 stevedores walked off the job in New York City, they revolted. Led by Eugene Sampson, business agent for Manhattan's largest local, 791, the rebels had balked at a Ryan-negotiated contract which gave them a 10-c--an-hour pay increase and a week's paid vacation. Reason: it ignored their demands for smaller sling loads, larger working crews and a guarantee of at least four hours per job. Also, the strikers objected to Ryan on general principles.

Troopships, some of them unloaded by Army officers and G.I.s, soon began sailing to Europe weighted with ballast. Their intended cargoes included thousands of tons of perishable food for U.S. troops overseas and for starving Europeans.

Finally, Sampson made his peace with Joe Ryan. The end of the strike was proclaimed. But it did not end. Next day only 2,000 longshoremen went back to work. The rest had a new leader. He was William E. Warren, a 32-year-old newcomer to the I.L.A., and by the excited account of the Ryan crowd, a man who thought the A.F. of L. longshoremen could get a lot more out of life by joining the C.I.O. and Australian-born Harry Bridges' West Coast stevedores.

When newly naturalized Harry Bridges turned up in Manhattan, the stage setting was about complete. Other shipyard workers and seamen (also members of the C.I.O.) refused to work with "phony"--i.e., nonstriking stevedores.

Smart, long-nosed Harry Bridges was moving into the New York area, but Joe Ryan had no intention of moving out. The nation--and thousands of U.S. troops in Europe--waited while they squared off.

'"Awfully Tired." The nation was just as bewildered at the walkout of 200,000 members of John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers. Steel mills in Western Pennsylvania were cutting down production; some would close because of the fuel shortage and union men would lose their jobs.

But Labor Giant Lewis held hard to his demand that coal operators discuss his claims for jurisdiction over a handful of supervisory employes. The operators refused, holding that they were management folk and not rank-&-file workers.

Feckless Secretary Schwellenbach admitted, "I'm getting awfully tired," but added wistfully that he was still hopeful of an "early solution."

And Hollywood. There was a little more hope for an early end to the seven-month-old movie strike, which also had nothing directly to do with wages. Hope rose in a week in which more than 300 pickets were arrested, many noses bloodied and a few people seriously hurt.

The National Labor Relations Board had finally counted the ballots of 100 set designers, over whose status the strike of 6,000 movie workers had started last March. A relatively new, leftish A.F. of L. outfit, the Conference of Studio Unions, which had called the walkout in the first place, had won. Producers conceded the C.S.U. victory, and got set for negotiations.

The old-line International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employes, which had also claimed the set designers, merely glowered. But, quietly and unofficially, its leaders had previously threatened that they could close every studio in Hollywood and every motion picture theater in the country--presumably if they did not like the way things were going. The way things were going, it could be.

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