Word: seamens
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...nation's ports, the strike of A.F.L. Masters, Mates and Pilots and C.I.O. Marine Engineers left most of the nation's ships just as dead in the water as they were five weeks ago when lower-crust seamen struck. Wages were not an issue; shipowners were willing to settle for boosts which would give some merchant marine captains well over $600 a month. The dispute was over the West Coast shipowners' refusal to give union members preference in hiring. While negotiators argued in Washington, ship captains in Manhattan argued among themselves, fought a battle of bottles, knives...
...immobilized the nation's merchant fleet for 17 days (TIME, Sept. 23) ended last week. James L. Fly, onetime head of the Federal Communications Commission, acting as arbitrator, engineered this settlement of the complex wage dispute: ship owners would pay the unions exactly what they had demanded. Seamen, placated, went back to work. The ships moved again...
C.I.O.'s National Maritime Union had started it. N.M.U. demanded a $17.50 a month wage boost, which the Government approved. Then rival A.F.L. seamen demanded $22.50-$27.50 boosts. The Wage Stabilization Board, believing that its duty was to hold the wage line, tried to limit A.F.L. to the C.I.O increase. Warned brilliant, 34-year-old Willard Wirtz, onetime law teacher, ardent puzzle fan and chief of WSB: this is a "stepladder" approach to further demands which would mean the end of Harry Truman's badly bent stabilization program...
That was almost WSB's last gurgle as A.F.L. seamen walked off their jobs a fortnight ago. The Administration's problem was how to give them what they wanted, get them back to work and still not make WSB look too silly. The man of the hour turned out to be Labor Secretary Lew Schwellenbach, who crawled into the musty archives of Government precedents and came out with a nugget...
...Breakoff. But that did not end it. Just as WSB had predicted, as A.F.L. seamen walked off the picket lines, N.M.U. seamen-who had honored the A.F.L. strike-rushed in. A.F.L. yelled wrathfully and in some cases A.F.L. longshoremen crossed the rival lines. But Joe Curran's N.M.U., repudiating its two-month-old contract, understandably demanded just as much as A.F.L...