Word: seatrain
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...side of Havana's crowded harbor, the, massive crane that unloads the Seatrain stood stark and still. The Seatrain itself, a seagoing ferry that brings 105 loaded U.S. freight cars to Cuba weekly and returns them packed with Cuban freight, languished at its home berth in New Orleans. Cuba's belligerent dock workers, backed by the compliant Grau San Martin Government, had decided that the Seatrain was cutting them out of jobs...
Since the Seatrain started operating in 1929 the dock workers had watched with anger and frustration as the great crane plucked loaded cars from its hold and set them on the railroad tracks bound for Cuba's warehouses. Their countermove was a demand on Seatrain Lines, Inc. to hire one-third more stevedores and let them load and unload each car at Havana ("for customs inspection"). Result: by last week the Seatrain had stopped running...
...Boss. There was not much doubt along the dockfront's rough-&-tumble Calle Desamparados about who called the play that shut down the Seatrain. Boss Arcelio Iglesias, Cuba's No. 4 Communist, had knit 9.000 dock wallopers into a powerful Maritime Federation that usually got what it wanted. With many more hands than jobs they contrived to shorten hours, specialize functions, make work. Their weapon: the slowdown...
...years, the dockers had run pay levels up 100% and employers charged their efficiency had dropped 70 to 80%. The workers took time off to parade past the presidential palace every time employers hesitated. Some Seatrain workers took home $29 a day. Although they averaged only a few days' work a month, they got more than customs inspectors...