LABOR: Male Call

Somehow, the late U.S. strike wave had missed the 65 Great Lakes shipping companies which form one of the nation’s key transport links. Last week, the C.I.O.’s National Maritime Union was busy remedying the oversight.

Just where the strike stood, nobody quite knew. From his emergency headquarters in Detroit, burly, bent-nosed N.M.U. President Joe Curran predicted that the N.M.U. drive for a 40-hour-week, pay boosts and a Union hiring hall would paralyze lake shipping in 10 days. His early count of 105 ships and 4,000 men idle differed sharply, however, from a press survey (56 ships idle).

Whatever the count, it was evident at week’s end that Curran & Co. could make a damaging cut in the vital flow of iron ore, coal and limestone to U.S. producers who must overstock before the Lakes freeze. The 70 ships manned by members of the A.F.L.’s Seafarer’s International Union sailed as usual—despite one furious fist fight with N.M.U. picketers. But more & more freighters owned by the 24 operators with whom neither the N.M.U. nor the S.I.U. have contracts were tied up in sympathy strikes by their crews as they came to port. This was precisely what Joe Curran hoped for.

The N.M.U., which is required to give a 30-day strike notice, had jumped the gun by eight days on operators of Great Lakes tankers—much to the discomfiture of other C.I.O. leaders who want to keep the strike threat as a Sunday punch against rising prices. Shipboard conditions for the N.M.U.’s 1,100 lakemen could hardly explain the haste. And the pay ranging from $150 a month for freighter deckhands to $310 for chief stewards on tankers, is good, considering the fact that seamen get meals and bunk. What Joe Curran was really engaged in was an all-out membership drive.

Some 8,000 Great Lakes seamen are still unorganized. It was to them that the vocal and energetic N.M.U. was trying to beat the S.I.U. last week. But no matter who won the race, U.S. production, which has yet to finish in the money in any intra-union or labor-management sweepstakes so far, would lose again.