LABOR: Let ‘Em Eat Cake

New York City and its suburbs last week saw the A.F.L.’s Teamsters Union in action, and it was not a pretty sight. For months, four of the union’s locals had been dickering unsuccessfully with 16 large city bakeries for higher pay and a five-day week. Then 4,000 bakery truck drivers marched out. The strike cut off 80% of the wrapped white bread delivered to the city and its suburbs, but it did not affect the smaller independent bakeries, which went on delivering bread. So the strike did not pinch the public much, and that made the teamsters angry.

Soon, though the independent drivers themselves are members of the Teamsters Union, roving goon squads formed menacingly around the nonstriking bakeries, blocked off the highways and bridges leading out of town. Bricks were heaved through windshields, drivers slapped and pummeled, tires punctured, ignition systems ripped out, sugar poured into gas tanks. Drivers from bakeries not involved in the strike were forced off the road; one lost $480 in receipts, others watched helplessly while their loads of bread, pies and cakes were trampled, fouled with chemicals, strewn along the streets. At one bakery, 100 shouting pickets kept 45 trucks from moving. By week’s end many of the nonstriking drivers had decided to stay at home, independent bakeries had stopped deliveries, and New York City and its suburbs were out of bread. All that federal mediators could report was no progress.