The Great Sugar Strike

Long, lean Harry Bridges had Hawaii tied up like a cat's cradle. Sitting in his San Francisco waterfront office 2,400 miles away, he could chuckle as Hawaii's "Big Five"--the five companies* -c-which control most of the island's basic crops and business--fretted and fumed. Two strikes had done it.

The first was the U.S. maritime strike. The second was the great sugar strike. Here Bridges had copied one of crafty old John L. Lewis' tricks. Just as John L. had expanded his Mine Workers by taking farmers, railroaders, etc. in his U.M.W. District 50, so Harry had organized Hawaii's sugar workers into his C.I.O. International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union. Then they had struck.

Now Hawaii's rustling canebrakes had been deserted for eight weeks. No water flowed through the irrigation ditches; row after row of parched cane withered and died.

Only one ship from the U.S. had docked in Honolulu in six weeks. Foodstuffs were dangerously, low (90% are imported); little businesses were closing down, bigger businesses were laying off employes. The loss of $5,000,000 in wages by about 28,000 sugar workers was a crippling blow.

The vise which Harry Bridges had screwed on Hawaii brought the island face to face with the hard facts of modern U.S. industrial-labor power plays. Sharp-nosed Harry Bridges had already taken temporary command of the islands' economy. If he could win a closed union shop for the sugar workers and make it stick, it would be a long step toward organization of the islands' workers--and that would be a long step toward domination of its economic and political life.

Sweeten the Pot. He had worked slowly and shrewdly. For the last eleven years his I.L.W.U. organizers had lined up Honolulu's waterfront workers, spread their grip into the sugar and pineapple fields, canneries and many other enterprises.

By last year Bridges was ready to demand a contract for the sugar workers, who had always been at or near the bottom of the economic pile. Imported by the thousands as indentured laborers from China, Japan, Portugal, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, they had once lived in virtual peonage.

The I.L.W.U. got the sugar workers a contract providing minim urns of 41-c-to 43 1/2-c-an hour (up from 26 1/2-c-), plus perquisites such as company housing and medical care. This year the I.L.W.U., strong and cOnifident, asked for much more sweetening: 1) a 65-c- minimum; 2) joint company-union administration of perquisites; 3) a 40-hour week; 4) the union shop. That was too much for the planters; for weeks negotiations have been stalemated.

Ace in the 'Hole. Last week the strikers got a new wage offer from the sugar planters. Its essence: 1) abandonment of the perquisites system in favor of a set of fixed charges for rents, medical treatment, etc.; 2) an hourly wage increase of 26 1/2-c- to 31 1/2-c-.

But the planters would not budge on the biggest point: the union shop. To the Big Five the union shop seemed like Harry Bridges' gambit to usurp the powers of management.

The tycoons, who had run the islands for generations as their closed corporation, fought stubbornly and bitterly. One of the Big Five's newspapers, Honolulu's Advertiser, cried: "Power, not wages for their followers, is what these men want; power to strangle Hawaii whenever it suits their purpose to do so by shutting down its industries, cutting its lifeline from seaborne traffic."

No one doubted that Bridges was prepared to make his play for power.

-Alexander & Baldwin Ltd.; C. Brewer & Co.; Castle & Cooke Ltd.; Theo. H. Davies & Co., Ltd.; American Factors Ltd. They are crop marketers, shippers, agents for the 'planters.

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