Word: longshoremens
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...C.M.U., spearheaded by the National Maritime Union's Joe Curran and Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, had made its wants plain. In the main, they were: 1) a 22?-an-hour raise for the lowest ratings, and graduated raises up to 35? for longshoremen and skilled ratings-an average hike of 30%; 2) a 40-hour week and an eight-hour day; 3) $1.25 to $1.75 an hour in overtime pay; 4) retroactivity to Oct. 1, 1945. When the operators winced, the left-of-left C.M.U. pointed out that its able...
While the President squared off, there were hoots from the sidelines. Big, bluff Joe Ryan, president of the A.F.L.'s International Longshoremen's Association and bitter-end foe of Joe Curran, roared: "A strike to turn the U.S. shipping industry over to Russia...
Perhaps even louder were the reactions from the would-be strikers. At week's end, Bridges and Curran-who follow the Communist line more often than not-fired a telegram to the World Federation of Trade Unions in Paris, asking that longshoremen in all world ports refuse to unload U.S. Government-operated ships-except troop and relief ships cleared by the C.M.U. In New York, N.M.U. Port Agent Joe Stack sounded the battle cry: "President Truman will break the strike over our dead bodies...
Apparently the owners were confident that they could break the strike. The union, counting on its own strength and anticipated sympathy strikes from longshoremen and ocean seamen, was equally sure of itself. But what worried plain citizens was that every available ship was needed to haul next winter's coal from the U.S. Each wasted day meant cold homes for next winter...
Where cargoes and crews were available, loading and unloading were often slowed down by featherbedding practices of the stevedores of the International Longshoremen's Association, A.F.L. One shipowner estimated that the average loading rate had dropped from 30 to 13 tons per gang per hour...