Business: Labor: Dead Days on the Docks

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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.