Labor: Strike for a Scalp

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U.S. docks from Maine to Texas lay idle. In New York 52 ships slept in their berths, while another 17 lolled at anchor off the deserted piers. New Orleans estimated that up to $3,000,000 a day was being drained from the city's economy. U.S. railroads suspended all shipments to the ports, where some 19,000 freight cars were already jammed up. It was an all too familiar story: the International Longshoremen's Association had gone on strike again.

The union wants stevedore gangs to continue to consist of an unalterable 20 men; but automation has brought some measure of progress even to the backward U.S. shipping industry, and shipowners now demand that the minimum size of a gang be reduced to 17. Even though many union leaders privately concede that some stevedores are being paid handsomely ($3.02 per hour) for standing around doing nothing, the union officially insists that "jobs are not negotiable."

On that basis the union went on strike last October, and President Kennedy invoked the Taft-Hartley provision for an 80-day cooling-off period. That period was over: the union had simply refused to discuss any sort of work-gang reduction. And so some 60,000 longshoremen once more walked off their jobs.

The strike's mastermind is I.L.A. Executive Vice President and Chief Negotiator Thomas W. ("Teddy") Gleason, 62. Gleason was a cargo checker, about the cushiest job on the piers. He never swung a baling hook in his life, and he even wears French cuffs. But he is a skilled union politician who is aiming to take over as soon as possible from the I.L.A.'s lethargic President William V. Bradley, and for that effort he would dearly love to display a fresh ship lines' scalp.

Gleason wildly cries that the shipping strike, as well as recent walkouts in the missile, newspaper and commercial air industries, was "prearranged by the National Association of Manufacturers and other business groups to embarrass the President." Says he: "It has taken years and all sorts of fights to get one fireman out of a diesel cab and one flight engineer out of a cockpit, and they haven't done it yet. And these operators think they can throw men from our work gangs just like that."

If the strike continues, the Administration may ask Congress for emergency legislation. A more likely basis for solution: a proposal by Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz to negotiate other outstanding issues, such as wages and fringe benefits, separately, while gang reduction would be put up to a union-management study committee. Both sides have agreed to the plan. But the union insists that the study go on for three years—and that the result not be binding. The shipowners boggle at this, argue that the committee should report its findings within one year.