Word: longshoremens
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...Says Clark Kerr, president of the University of California and a specialist in labor-management relations: "Anyone who's seen Bridges off and on over the years has to be impressed with the changes that have been made since 1934. In 1934 longshoremen were sort of leftovers from society, men who couldn't find other work. Now they're the aristocrats of labor...
Such tributes stem from the fact that Bridges, far more than most labor leaders, has faced the challenge of automation. In 1960 his International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reached an agreement with management's Pacific Maritime Association. Under that pact the employers can introduce as many labor-saving machines as they wish - at a price of $5,000,000 a year in retirement and other benefits for Bridges' boys. The agreement is paying off for both shippers and dock workers...
Stinking Copra. Last week a crew of six San Francisco longshoremen finished the nine-day job of unloading 7,000 tons of stinking, oil-laden copra from the Liberty ship Silvana. A tracked vehicle pried the gooey cargo from the holds, hoisted it into a vacuum tube that shot it into a conversion plant. A few years ago 18 men would have worked two weeks to unload the Silvana...
Under the agreement, Bridges gave up most of his union's featherbedding "work rules"-although not precisely in any spirit of generosity. His longshoremen now get a basic $3.19 an hour for a guaranteed 35 hours a week. The agreement's kitty permits a 25-year man to retire at 62, draw a $220 monthly pension for three years, $115 after that (when Social Security begins). If an I.L.W.U. man works until 65, he gets an additional lump sum of $7,920. If a machine knocks a man out of work, he continues to draw 35 hours...
...dock industry, where the longshoremen's prestrike hourly base of $3.02 (plus fringe benefits) put their wages in the top 8% of U.S. hourly workers, the new settlement called for a 39?-an-hour package increase over the next two years -17? more than management offered, 11? less than labor asked. This is roughly a 5% to 6% increase a year, while industry's productivity is increasing only 2% to 3% yearly and longshoreman productivity is actually declining. Meanwhile, the agreement did nothing about the featherbedding "work gang rules" that management claims are holding productivity down. This question...