Revolt Against a System

The world's greatest seaport lay 90% idle last week, New York's usual chorus of hooting ships reduced to an occasional lonely wail.

Immediate events leading to this paralysis began Oct. 11, when Joe Ryan, burly boss of the International Longshoremen's Association (A.F.L.), made a happy announcement: the union had voted, 2-1, to ratify a new two-year contract. That certainly didn't sound as if a strike was coming, but that was just what it meant on the New York waterfront.

A Union Divided. Time after time since World War II, a substantial number of men who load and unload ships have left the docks because they did not agree with Labor Boss Ryan, who in 1943 managed to get himself elected president of the union for life, at $20,000 a year. Four days after his Oct. 11 announcement that the contract had been ratified, longshoremen began to walk off the job. Gene Sampson, who heads one of the 32 New York-area locals, became their spokesman, as he had in previous revolts. The strikers, Sampson said, were dissatisfied with the pay rate and other provisions in the new contract, did not recognize it as binding, thought the vote run by Ryan was unfair, and wanted negotiations reopened.

The new contract was the occasion for the-strike, not the cause. Longshoremen had seized an opportunity to revolt against the whole racket-ridden system which surrounds them: the humiliating daily "shape-up" at which they line up for jobs, the gangsters, chiselers and thieves who infest the waterfront as work gang leaders and hiring bosses, forcing longshoremen to pay for the right to work. For years this situation has been tolerated by Union President Ryan, by the New York Shipping Association, which represents the management of 161 steamship lines and other port industries, and by the New York police. Now the strikers, with no definite aims in view, were expressing a deep-seated protest.

Costliest Ever. It became the costliest strike in the port's history. By the end of last week, estimates of its toll included $1 billion worth of cargo tied up, financial losses of $40 million, 90% of the 35,000 New York longshoremen off the job, 135 piers idle and 120 ships tied up.

Ryan pleaded with the strikers to go back to work, but got no results. An appeal by President Truman had no more effect than Ryan's.

The strikers were broke and glum and searching for a face-saving way to get back on the job. While more pay and other contract improvements would bring them back to work now, there will be no substantial peace on the waterfront until the rackets and racketeers are cleaned out.

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