Labor: Dead Days on the Docks

FROM San Diego to Seattle, the giant cargo ships bobbed idly in outer harbors, their flags announcing origins as distant as Japan and the Soviet Union. Inside their holds lay cargo amounting to hundreds of thousands of tons, some of it already spoiled, consigned to destinations all over the U.S. In all, some 150 freighters have been rendered a Pacific mothball fleet by a strike of 15,000 West Coast dock workers. Last week the walkout moved into its third month, and there seemed little hope of an early settlement. "It takes a month to get everything shut up tight," says Union President Harry Bridges, who last led his men to the picket lines in 1948. "Then you've got a good strike."

President Nixon so far has not judged the shipping tie-up a national emergency; if he did so, he could send the men back to work during a 90-day cooling-off period. Members of Bridges' International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (I.L.W.U.) have continued to unload passenger ships and move both war materiel bound for Viet Nam and relief supplies for East Pakistan. Even so, the strike has already caused delays and inconvenience for millions of U.S. businessmen and their customers-and taken a heavy financial toll of many of them. Shipowners lose as much as $10,000 a day for each idle vessel. In California alone, the cost of the strike has exceeded $1 billion.

No Beans. U.S. farmers, who rely increasingly on foreign customers to absorb their rich harvests, have been particularly hard hit. Grain elevators in California and the Northwest have been stuffed to overflowing with wheat and other products awaiting shipment. In Washington, 15 million bushels of wheat have been dumped, creating mountains on the ground, and some California growers will soon be forced to plow their crops under. "It's already too late," says Lee Adler, an official of the California Grain and Feed Growers Association. "Our Japanese customers have turned to Australia and South America. Some of them won't ever come back."

Like the wage-price freeze, the strike has caught many people in an unexpected and vulnerable position. Says Charles Nevil, whose Los Angeles import-export firm deals in swimming pools: "I have paid for a lot of equipment, and now I have to pay storage charges to the Port of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, I've had cancellations on some orders." But while import-export firms bear the brunt of the strike, its effects reach far down into the U.S. economy. "We had one good order from Japan for electrical goods made by a St. Louis firm," says San Francisco Exporter James Baker. "Now the Japanese have found a substitute company in Korea." The nearly complete shutdown of 24 ports has also forced the layoff of thousands of truckers, customs inspectors and train workmen.

The strike has brought special hardships to the nation's two outlying states. In Hawaii, which depends on the mainland for most of its food and other consumer items, the prices of some perishable goods have risen sharply. In addition, sugar refiners are searching desperately for space to store 100,000 tons of raw sugar that is currently being produced. Alaskan building contractors who were caught short of supplies by the strike sometimes lost a whole year's work; the construction season there lasts only three months.

All inbound goods stranded as of Aug. 15 were declared last week exempt from the new 10% surtax on imports. They included large shipments of foreign cars and Christmas supplies of everything from toys to tree ornaments, which dealers can now sell at prefreeze prices. Even so, the main worry is about dwindling inventories. "Some of our dealers are faced with taking on a second line of products like lawnmowers or tractors," says Datsun Distributor Karl Henning. "You can't keep the store open without any beans on the shelf."

Hogs for Stud. Businessmen have coped as best they could, often by paying premium rates for shipping their orders by air. Air cargo companies, which had suffered from the overall airlines malaise (see story, page 80), were doing record business, transporting loads that included heavy machinery, transistor radios, beer, and even hogs for stud. The only alternative for importers was to find a port just outside the U.S., where goods could be off-loaded and shipped by train or truck to their destinations. Ship captains are permitted to drop cargoes at any "port of convenience" in the event of a strike. Many have decided to do just that, thereby considerably changing life around Vancouver, B.C., and Ensenada, Mexico-ports just across the Western U.S. borders.

Traffic in Vancouver's modestly equipped harbor has doubled, causing major delays for unhappy Canadian shippers. In the sleepy resort town of Ensenada, the scene is even more hectic. Dozens of ships wait in line as long as three weeks for one of three berths, where Mexican laborers sometimes work 36-hour shifts to unload them. Since the strike began, Ensenada crews have loaded or unloaded 64 ships, more than they normally see in a year. Much of the cargo is simply moved to vacant lots until it can be hauled to the U.S. Some 3,700 Volkswagens sit bumper to bumper atop a cliff overlooking the sea. Though all manual labor must be performed by Mexicans-a union rule that now helps Ensenadans earn a total of $40,000 a day-U.S. firms have sent dozens of representatives to oversee the operation. Says Captain D.W. Cowan of Prudential-Grace Lines' San Francisco office: "We have enough people to set up our own steamship agency."

Shrinking Base. They may be there for quite a while. The major issue of the strike is neither wages nor benefits -though the union wants hefty increases in both-but a jurisdictional dispute with another union. At stake is the job of "stuffing and unstuffing" containers near the dock, an operation that increasingly is being handled by Teamster employees of freight-forwarding companies. San Francisco Teamster Boss Joseph Diviny has notified freight firms that his union has "no intention of giving up the work" and calls Bridges' claim that all dock labor belongs to longshoremen "a lot of baloney." The Teamsters recently agreed to settle the dispute by mediation, but so far the longshoremen have shown no inclination to follow suit. The issue is vitally important to them because of the shrinking base of stevedore jobs caused by containerization. A 30-ton prepacked container can be hoisted onto a ship by three longshoremen in about two minutes; it used to take a gang of 18 men an hour to load the same amount of cargo.

Bridges, who plans to retire before the next contract is negotiated, is nonetheless under tremendous pressure from younger members to hold out firmly against any work-rule changes that would further reduce longshoremen's jobs. The West Coast strike could turn into the first nationwide shipping stoppage in U.S. history. Contracts covering 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen's Association, the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico counterpart of Bridges' I.L.W.U., expire Sept. 30. Union negotiators are demanding a guaranteed annual wage-an innovation in the seasonal shipping business that employers are hardly eager to grant. Nevertheless, says I.L.A. Boss Thomas W. Gleason, his members are prepared to wait "until hell freezes over" to get it.

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