Revolt on the Docks

New York's noisy, brawling waterfront was choked to a Sunday hush. Loading platforms were deserted. Scarcely a truck rattled along the dockside streets. Only an occasional vessel moved in the greatest port in the world, paralyzed at week's end by a strike of A.F.L. longshoremen.*

The strike had taken everyone by surprise, including Joseph P. Ryan, bulky and archaic president of the International Longshoremen's Association. Early in the week Ryan had confidently ended four months of negotiations with the operators by accepting an offer of a 10-c- boost on regular wages to $1.85 an hour, on overtime to $2.77 1/2 an hour. Then some of Ryan's locals rejected the deal. They demanded a 25-c- boost, to make up for their irregular hours, and improvements in their rugged working conditions. The locals went out on a wildcat strike which spread rapidly--to Philadelphia, to Boston, to Wilmington.

Though the strike, by delaying Marshall Plan shipments, fitted into Communist strategy, Communism was not an issue. Leadership was. Last week's rebellion was touched off by Joe Ryan's old, ambitious rival, John J. Sampson, boss of an I.L.A. local, who had led another wildcat strike in 1945. Cried Sampson: "Our fellows' demands are simple. They want eight hours work, eight hours play and eight hours sleep, and they want at least $16 a day to do it with."

This was a direct challenge to Joe Ryan, who has ruled as king of the dockworkers for 21 years. With a $20,000-a-year job to protect, Joe took one look at his boys walking off, hastily forgot the agreement he had made and declared the strike official.

This week, New York's Mayor William O'Dwyer flew home from his vacation in California to be on hand for any emergency. It was the fifth time the mayor had had a holiday cut short--four times by strikes, once by a snow storm. He returned to find the whole East Coast shut down from Maine to Virginia. With the West Coast in the eleventh week of its longshore strike, the only U.S. ocean traffic with the rest of the world was through a few ports in the South and the Gulf.

There was some hope that West Coast waterfront employers and longshoremen would find a compromise to end the Pacific tie-up. Operators had sworn by the Great Horn Spoon that they would not negotiate with Harry ("The Nose") Bridges. But last week they sat down with him. The face-saving device was to bring in C.I.O. officials, who solemnly indicated they would stand behind any Bridges contract. The Nose was prepared to make the operators pay through the nose. They had offered him a 10-c- boost. He set his sights at 15-c-. Bridges told the operators blandly: "We can't settle for less now. If we did the membership would fire us."

* The British Mauretania was ordered to put into Halifax, where it unloaded the Wright brothers' old Kitty Hawk plane, being transferred from London's Science Museum to enshrinement in Washington's Smithsonian Institution. Passengers from the Mauretania and other ships diverted to Halifax rode to New York by train. Passengers on the few ships which docked in New York lugged their own luggage. This week Halifax longshoremen refused to work ships diverted from U.S. ports.

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