Word: longshoremens
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Sirs: Your map (TIME, July 16) illustrating the San Francisco longshoremen strike was both interesting and instructive. Like previous TIME maps, it had a uniqueness which I associate with TIME alone. Imagine my surprise when I saw what I am sure must have been an identical map in yesterday morning's edition of the Philadelphia Record. Further, I caught a glimpse of the same map in the Camden paper which Record's publisher also publishes. . . . So far as I could tell the source was not given...
...police, nor Mayor Rossi, nor the citizens, nor the newspapers. The man who had a half-Nelson on San Francisco was an Australian Communist named Harry Bridges. Chairman of the joint committee of maritime workers and chairman of the strike committee, he had organized the bloody, nine-week-old longshoremen's strike which had finally detonated the general strike. Organizing his own body of strike police, Chairman Bridges declared against violence, prepared to set up a food distribution system from central markets whither householders might go afoot. "If the people can't get food," he said, "the maritime workers...
Evolution. In the early stages of the longshoremen's strike there was just one big issue between employers and unions: Who should control the "hiring halls?" No insignificant issue was this to unions or employers because longshoremen are frequently hired and laid off. Therefore whichever side makes up the waiting lists...
...unions?seamen, pilots, cooks and stewards?jumped into the fray with demands of their own for pay, hours, union recognition. Hot-headed strike leaders welcomed alliance with open arms, for it gave them an opportunity to shake a bigger stick. When Joseph P. Ryan, national president of the International Longshoremen's Association, tried to negotiate a settlement on the basis of non-partisan control of the hiring halls, Leader Bridges and his embattled followers turned down the agreement because it did not provide for their allies. Their determination to win unconditional victory upon all fronts blocked all subsequent attempts...
...There are three elements which are preventing the settlement of the strike. One is that the Communist Party, led by Harry Bridges, is in control of the San Francisco situation. Secondly, our longshoremen . . . have had foisted on their shoulders a group of other marine craft, who did not have nerve enough to go on strike wIth the longshoremen. The third reason is that the employers have delegated their case to a small committee . . . dominated by the Industrial Association of San Francisco...