Word: longshoremen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...STRIKE: After the failure of last-minute negotiations two weeks ago, 47,000 longshoremen walked off the job, tying up 40 ports. The dockers were demanding an 80% increase in their base wage from $24.60 to $48 a week, plus work rules that would vastly complicate the long overdue modernization of Britain's vital ports. Employers pointed out that dockers had been taking home an average of $86 for five ten-hour days and that overtime and fringes were so tied to the base pay that labor's demands, if met, would increase most British shipping costs...
...Longshoremen in Holland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden, meanwhile, refused to handle Britain-bound cargo, and other dockers seemed likely to follow their example. In Northern Ireland, dockers attacked fishermen who had been running supplies of Irish bacon and eggs into Britain, dumping the goods into harbors and scattering them on beaches. As supplies of bananas, oranges, grapes and vegetables dwindled all over the United Kingdom, prices rose; some meat cost as much as a shilling (12?) a pound more. Dutch and Belgian truck farmers and shippers complained of losing millions of dollars. The government could, of course, use troops...
Next day at Ohio's Kenyon College, where he was graduated in 1948, Palme pleaded for a politics of moderation. "Political action," he said, "must start in the daily lives of the people." As Palme spoke at an alumni reunion, about 80 longshoremen from Cleveland and Toledo chorused, "Go home, go home...
...milled and sang in a massive display of gleeful patriotism and muscular pride. Basking in the ticker-tape approval of cheering office workers crowding high windows in buildings many of DAVID BURNETT them had helped erect beam by beam and load by load, the hardhatted construction workers, teamsters and longshoremen rallied through the streets of Lower Manhattan in probably the biggest pro-Government rally since the Viet Nam War began. With a crude and forceful clarity, they signaled their support of President Nixon's policies in Southeast Asia...
They swaggered through Manhattan streets almost daily-sleeves rolled up, feisty grins on their faces, hoarsely chanting "U.S.A. all the way!" Their ranks were made up of hundreds of beefy construction workers in hardhats of plastic or metal, joined by longshoremen and blue-collar workers from a dozen other trades. Police kept the construction men well apart from spectators. Each time they marched in the financial district, the hardhats were showered with ticker tape, like national heroes...