Abstract

The ILWU Won't Freeze

U.S. President Richard Nixon's back-to-work summons to all striking unions may have prolonged the West Coast ship tie-up, rather than cut it short. At least Harry Bridges, president of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union suggested this, when, a day ahead of the AFL-CIO resistance statements, Bridges became the first major labor leader to defy the President's freeze plan, charging it put the burden of fighting inflation on the backs of the working people. The federal freeze only complicates ILWU bargaining, Bridges indicated, without erasing the impasse over wages and working conditions which had accrued over five past years and on July 1 closed every Pacific port from Mexico to Canada. Those ships aren't going to sail, he said, unless the men decide they want them to sail.