Word: longshoremen
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When the Pay Board in March cut back the wage increase that West Coast dock workers had won, four of the five labor members stomped off the board, and the dockers threatened to strike. Last week the board took on the East and Gulf Coast longshoremen. It ordered slashes, reducing the first-year increase from 70? to 55?. Labor chiefs were quiet, and there was little strike talk among the rank and file. Said Anthony Piccavillo, a checker on Manhattan's East River: "We should have gotten the full raise, but I wouldn't want to strike...
Dock workers say that they have had their fill of picket lines. Harry Bridges' West Coast longshoremen were out for 134 days before signing their contract; Thomas Gleason's East Coast and Gulf dockers were idle for eight weeks. Though no group won all it wanted, the approved wage raises averaged 12%, far more than the 5.5% that the Pay Board normally allows. The board permitted the outsized gain partly to avoid a strike, and partly because the dockers pledged to raise productivity by changing work rules...
...first" basis, is concentrating its inspectors on the policing of industries that have extremely high accident rates: longshoring, roofing and sheet metal, meat packing, mobile-home manufacturing and lumber and wood producing. Indeed, accidents are so common on the docks that, on the average, one out of every eight longshoremen a year suffers at least a temporarily disabling injury...
Meanwhile, Judge George Boldt's Pay Board thumbed down a 20.9% first-year raise for West Coast longshoremen. The board voted instead to allow a 14.9% increase, generous by almost any standard. The move represented the first time that the board had refused any sizable demand from a union with the clout to inflict serious damage on the economy by striking. The board did reduce an aerospace workers' contract increase from 12% to 8% earlier this year, but that industry was already so weak that the workers were not likely to risk walking...
...longshoremen's contract had ended a devastating 134-day strike last month against the shipping companies. The contract called for first-year increases of 16% in pay and 4.9% in fringes. The Pay Board allowed all the fringes but cut the wage increase to 10%. Though board rules permit a maximum combined increase of 8.9% in most cases, a board staff report suggested that the dock workers' increased productivity might merit them an exception to the rules. West Coast longshoremen have shown a huge 134% increase in output per man-hour over the past decade. Said Harry Bridges...