A Day in June

Like the big bass drum at the end of a parade, the nation's first amalgamation of maritime unions boomed closer to its first strike day, June 15.

Already, U.S. ports, bays and rivers were cluttered with idle merchant ships. Three weeks before the strike deadline, negotiations between private operators and the seven unions (six C.I.O. and one independent) comprising the new Committee for Maritime Unity, had stalled. Once again, government was in the middle.

The C.M.U., spearheaded by the National Maritime Union's Joe Curran and Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, had made its wants plain. In the main, they were: 1) a 22-c--an-hour raise for the lowest ratings, and graduated raises up to 35-c- for longshoremen and skilled ratings--an average hike of 30%; 2) a 40-hour week and an eight-hour day; 3) $1.25 to $1.75 an hour in overtime pay; 4) retroactivity to Oct. 1, 1945. When the operators winced, the left-of-left C.M.U. pointed out that its able and ordinary seamen were working some 60 hours a week and trying to support families on an average monthly wage of $138. Despite bunk and board while working, this was far below the average wage of most U.S. shore workers.

During port layovers, which take up a quarter of a seaman's working time, they get no compensation at all. Nor are they eligible for unemployment insurance, or the benefits almost all U.S. workers get under the Wage & Hour law.

Unmoved, round-faced Frank J. Taylor, chief negotiator for the 39 lines using some 2,400 War Shipping Administration bottoms,* declared flatly that the operators could not pay. The demands, said he, would raise costs to such an exaggerated point that the U.S. Merchant Marine could not compete with foreign shipping --particularly that of Britain and the Scandinavian countries.

The Shillelagh. For once, the Government had a big shillelagh it could and, apparently, would use to break the strike and keep U.S. transport moving. At his press conference, Harry Truman's thin lips tightened when a reporter asked what he intended to do on June 15. He said he would use the Navy, War Shipping, the Army and the Coast Guard; nothing would be spared to keep the ships going.

While the President squared off, there were hoots from the sidelines. Big, bluff Joe Ryan, president of the A.F.L.'s International Longshoremen's Association and bitter-end foe of Joe Curran, roared: "A strike to turn the U.S. shipping industry over to Russia."

Perhaps even louder were the reactions from the would-be strikers. At week's end, Bridges and Curran--who follow the Communist line more often than not--fired a telegram to the World Federation of Trade Unions in Paris, asking that longshoremen in all world ports refuse to unload U.S. Government-operated ships--except troop and relief ships cleared by the C.M.U. In New York, N.M.U. Port Agent Joe Stack sounded the battle cry: "President Truman will break the strike over our dead bodies."

* Only 700 U.S. merchant ships are now privately owned.

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