The Maritime Unions Look Ahead

by RUSSELL BOOKEIOUT

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PEACE will bring many things to the maritime workers, but we do not expect it to bring monotony. The peace we want will be a period in which to continue our upward climb under democracy, and upward climbs are necessarily replete with stress and struggle. As Americans, we know that democratic freedom is ours and our children’s to have and to hold — but only to have if we can hold it! We intend as American maritime workers to hold it for the betterment of ourselves, our industry, and our nation.

Recently periodicals have published opinions from industrialists on the use of light metals in the postwar world. Airplane manufacturers have been quoted about the expansion of air travel. Bankers have extolled the blessings of capitalism. But we in the maritime unions wonder if the expansion of democracy in the industrial world will accompany the promised expansion of industry. For it is our belief that only by such growth can our democratic capitalism expand upward sufficiently to compete against totalitarianism from the extreme right or from the extreme left.

Industrial democracy, defined briefly, is the application of the collective knowledge of the workers in the growth of their industry. It is the right of the people to a voice and a vote in the councils of industry, on the proper functioning of which their lives depend. It removes from the dusty pages of sedative bromides the ancient statement that “workers are the partners of employers” and makes it a working reality, with the “partners” exercising the rights of partners. It is very unfortunate that democratization of industry is most often brought into being only by costly, sometimes bloody, strikes. However, political democracy had to be won by similar means, and today we find that it can only be retained by frightful war.

Unions were created only because the right of workers to a voice in industry had to be forcibly established. It is the hope of union members that the unions will evolve into constructive agencies within industry, and that the collective knowledge of their members may be devoted entirely to improving the industries to the mutual benefit of all.

This industrial democracy is a pattern of thinking necessary for the peaceful collaboration of the different groups within industry. The kind of democracy I mean is as indispensable in business as it is in polities — an acceptance that the will of the people shall be the law of the land. Without it there can be only repressive warfare between competing groups. With it, government is established. In the West Coast maritime circles and among the East Coast and Gulf seamen such worker participation has been established. We consider its retention and its development after the war our first and most important task.

Ironically enough, its retention is threatened not by the shipping operators, who have found it far from an unmixed evil, but by fascist-minded superpatriots from inland states. Some of these are basically against democracy wherever found, while many others are as misinformed about the Americans they live among as George III of England ever was about the colonists.

The acid test of our democratic maritime policies and of the systems they established is their wartime value. The proper use of every man, every minute, and every bit of material decides our survival as a democratic nation and the survival of democracy in the world. By this test judge us, for past performance and for the reliability of our post-war plans for America.

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THE pre-war development; of maritime democracy literally lifted our members from charity-needing dwellers in the slums to full employment and respectable homes of our own.

Our greatest pride is that, during this war, union maritime policies have proved of great value for all Americans. The merchant seamen, because of their outstanding disregard of danger, merit first mention. They numbered at the beginning of the war about a hundred thousand men — a number which has since increased greatly. During the first two years of the war the merchant seamen suffered proportionately four times more casualties in combat with the Axis forces than the armed services did. The prewar equalization of social conditions at sea with those enjoyed by Americans on land had built up the greatest reserve of experienced, highly trained seamen that our nation ever has had. From that pool came the petty officers, engineers, mates, and captains without which the thousands of sea craft built in our expanded shipyards would have been useless. When supplies and troops were badly needed overseas in the crucial days after Pearl Harbor, the merchant seamen took them through to England, Murmansk, and Australia, often without Navy escort, or sank with them under submarineinfested seas.

The United States Senate’s Kilgore Subcommittee on War Mobilization reported on October 7,1943: —

“The men who man our ships are doing a magnificent job. The crews arc efficient and their morale is high. Adequate numbers of seamen have volunteered or have been recruited so that ships sail fully manned and with only negligible delays. The number of seamen on American ships has nearly doubled in the past year. There have been no strikes. Discipline has been excellent in spite of difficult living and working conditions imposed by wartime operations. Despite high casualties from enemy attack, labor turnover has been lower than in war industries ashore. American seamen have delivered the goods.

“The important maritime unions have supported the war vigorously. They have recruited men, operated training schools, maintained discipline at sea, and without exception lived up to their no-strike pledge. Several Congress of Industrial Organization unions presented last year a program for the better use of merchant shipping. Many of these suggestions have been adopted.

“American seamen are heroes. Thousands have died under bombardment and torpedo attack. They and their organizations, particularly the National Maritime Union, have acquitted themselves with honor. The appreciation of the American people is theirs.”

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THE Kilgore subcommittee, while giving high praise to the West Coast longshore manpower-control system established by the unions during the middle thirties through nationally publicized strikes, devoted several pages to categorical condemnation of the East Coast’s retention of the inefficient, socially deplorable “shape-up” system of longshore labor. This is the system discarded by the West Coast. Under it a thousand men crowd about the various pierheads daily so that perhaps six hundred can be picked for work that day; the remainder loiter around until the next “shape-up” without work or money.

“Except on the West Coast, longshore labor is still completely casual,” states the Kilgore report. “Men are hired each day by the traditional ‘shapeup’ system, and their tenure is by the hour. There is no mechanism by which men who ‘shape’ at one pier, but are not hired, are shifted to another pier. There are ‘shortages’ at some piers while at others men are turned away. The ‘ shape-up ‘ system of hiring is wasteful, and inefficient; it has been condemned for over 30 years; it should be tolerated no longer. “. . . labor is much more fully utilized on the West Coast than on the East Coast. There are, for example, more than three times as many longshoremen in New York as in San Francisco, while the tonnage handled in New York is nowhere near triple the San Francisco tonnage.”

The wartime control of manpower on the West Coast docks wais planned, sponsored, and actively supported by the longshoremen’s union. It is based on our regular rotary, hiring-hall system. After many months of delay this plan was accepted by the War Shipping Administration; and the Pacific Coast Maritime Industry Board, a tripartite board of ship operators, union representatives, and the WSA, began to guide stevedoring operations. All longshoremen are registered. All manpower registered is pooled by harbor, district, and for the entire coast. In each harbor area, men are dispatched as needed from a centralized hiring hall to all the ships and docks in the area. Rules approved by the joint board govern every phase of the work. Ships that must sail first have first call on longshoremen even to the extent of removing gangs from some lowpriority ships they are loading, and transferring them where needed at any hour of the day or night. Discipline is enforced by the union grievance committee — and it is discipline, not whitewash. Whenever they are needed, new rules and adjustments are made and enforced by the joint board. Several thousand men are dispatched daily to work by radio, in addition to the hundreds sent directly from the hiring hall.

Up to the present time, no ship has missed a convoy, no sabotage of ship or cargo has occurred, record loading of ships with emergency sailing orders has been done repeatedly. In spite of the heavy influx of green men to handle the increasing flow of cargo, the amount handled per man per month has steadily increased.

This is a sketchy record of what democracy in industry has done for one of the most vital of war industries. That record has been pronounced good by all government committees, agencies, generals, and admirals who have investigated it or depended on it for delivery of war goods to the fighting fronts. The next question — and it is one that all Americans have the right to ask — is, “Where do the maritime unions go from here?”

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BRIEFLY we intend to use whatever influence and directive power we have for the improvement of the industry on which we depend for a living. This concern extends beyond the usual questions of wages, hours, and working conditions. It includes the entire field of maritime procedure affecting the American merchant marine, and that is just about as world-embracing as the oceans. In the past, financiers, shipping company officials, and politicians considered this their exclusive right, field, and fiscal jam pot.

I his war has proved again that without an adequate merchant marine our armed forces and the country they guard are helpless. It has also proved that, given the ships, the American maritime workers can and will deliver the goods, regardless of torpedoes, aerial bombs, and ghastly life-in-death days afloat on life rafts. In the post-war world these considerations and these alone should govern our maritime policy. There must be maintained sufficient fast, ultra-modern merchant ships which are capable of carrying our commerce in peace and our war supplies during war. There must be enough experienced seamen to man the fleet in peace or war. There must be modern shore installations and trained personnel to care for the ships and the goods they move.

There is no place in post-war shipping for financial speculation or excessive profits or for policies dictated by consideration of either. There is no place for the legalized looting that after the last war ran private fortunes from almost nothing to seven figures and our merchant marine onto the mudflats. Without a doubt the government will have to continue both direction and financial assistance after the war. We in the unions shall insist on a constant modernization of an adequate fleet, and we shall want the subsidies granted to be for merchant ships — and not for somebody’s private yacht.

Undoubtedly there will be a great splutter about the sacredness of private enterprise in shipping. The unions have no objection to, and even approve of, private operation of shipping as long as it is consistent with true and proper operation of shipping and is not a subterfuge to loot the public’s property. We recognize that the temptation will be strong, for never have the stakes been greater. The American people through government outlay in shipyards, ships, and port facilities will have invested by the end of the war about 12 billion dollars in our merchant marine—an amount equal to three fourths of the capital in American railroads. Also through past subsidies the government has furnished a large share of the funds classed now as under private management.

In effect the capital in maritime circles is now almost entirely furnished by citizen stockholders of the government of the United States of America. The actual operation of the ships is by men who belong to unions. On the ships, every man from the captain down belongs to one of the sea unions, and on the beach many superintendents, practically every walking boss, all gang bosses, and all the longshoremen are union members. So are the clerks, checkers, most of the supercargoes, and a majority of the office forces. The government is taking the risk of capital loss. The workers are taking the physical risk of injury and death at sea and on the docks, and the war toll is heavy on both. We do not intend, after all this, to sit quietly by while speculators and politicians use our merchant marine as chips for poker.

There may be derisive remarks about the ability of the horny-handed sons of Noah who come ashore and expect to outtalk big business and smart lawyers. People are accustomed to think of labor union policies as built out of cigar smoke by men who educationally never got beyond the first grade. In the CIO maritime unions alone there are in normal times considerably more than a hundred thousand people. Their knowledge of what is or is not happening in shipping circles cannot be surpassed. There are enough leaders from their ranks to assemble, analyze, and use this knowledge. Aiding them are college-trained statisticians and research staffs paid from union dues. When war began so suddenly, the CIO research bureaus were able to furnish the government with vital information about American ships and personnel that even its bureaus had not compiled. We also have, both from our own ranks and hired from other fields, writers, public relations counselors, and men familiar with government procedure.

We recognize that unaided we can do little, but consider the 130 million citizen stockholders in the United States merchant marine! We have the means to furnish them with complete information about any phase of shipping and about the purpose of any projected policy; and we can say what the anticipated result of that policy will be. Some influence we can bring to bear on most issues; some issues we may sponsor. In the main we shall depend on being the people most vitally affected and experienced in maritime matters, and shall continually lay our knowledge and our conclusions in the most effective way before the public and the government.

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SOME issues depend on international factors which are far beyond our control, and perhaps even beyond the control of our government. These include international trade and trade agreements, monetary values, tariffs, government or free-trade procedure, international steamship company agreements, lobbying of pressure groups for or against certain trade routes or goods, disposal of the war shipping fleets, subsidies, and ownership of ships. All of these will affect us. All will receive our attention as they develop, but it is unlikely that all will be settled as we wish. In such cases we shall take appropriate action and continue the struggle.

Specific problems that are receiving our attention now, and which will become even more pressing after the war, include first of all the proper care for seamen injured during combat with Axis raiders on our shipping. These men performed as heroic a role in defeating the enemy as their brothers in the armed services. They suffered as much when the flaming oil from their tankers covered the seas into which they were thrown. They bled from the hot steel of the Axis guns and froze in the icy waters off Murmansk. They are entitled, when injured, to the same future care and the same rehabilitation as are men of the armed services they fought beside.

Yet one wonders at times, after reading the newspapers, whether these seamen who have died by thousands under Axis gunfire were, after all, the kind of people we consider real Americans. Critics have used as a smear the difference in pay between Navy sailors and Merchant Marine sailors. But any comparison bet ween civilian and military pay rates should include all civilian groups. It should include the personnel of all companies who furnish metal for the ships, build them, operate them, and manufacture the guns and cargo. It should also include the butcher, the baker, the banker.

We must remember that, until very recently, both services were manned entirely by volunteers. And although I am in daily contact with scores of both Navy and Merchant Marine sailors, I have yet to hear a Navy man protest that a Merchant seaman was overpaid for the work he does.

After the war, we want the road of promotion kept open so that any man can start as a wiper in the engine room, as an ordinary seaman on deck, or as a potato peeler in the galley and, if his qualifications merit it, rise to the highest executive position in our industry. An attempt is being made to shortcircuit this basic American right, and by establishment of a Merchant Marine Annapolis Academy allow outsiders to buy their way into every executive position on a ship. We are completely and unalterably opposed to all policies attempting to form castes and keep beginners at the bottom all their lives. This war, if it has demonstrated anything, has proved that executive positions must be filled by qualified, experienced men who know their business, and that only disaster follows when caste lines put authority in incompetent hands.

With the winding up of the war, much of our great fleet of merchant ships will be useless, and the crews out of employment. At present we are not only carrying an unusually large burden of sea commerce in all Allied ships: the American ships are carrying a disproportionate share of that commerce which cannot be maintained during the competitive days of peace. Russia, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Greece, China, and Great Britain will expand their merchant fleets after the war, and furthermore will build modern ships that can travel at eighteen knots more economically than our Liberty ships can travel at ten.

No European merchant ship built in the last dozen years, on which I have worked in San Francisco, has been other than a Diesel motor ship. All American merchant ships that I have worked on have been steamers. Perhaps a dozen of our steamships could compete in pre-war days with the great fleets of Diesel motor ships in speed; none could compete in economical fuel utilization. After the war, the great advance in motorship design will force us into even keener competition. We must keep down the unemployment by building as good and as economically operating ships as our competitors, and we must make provisions for the large numbers of American seamen who will, despite good ships, be forced off the sea through post-war equalization of national merchant fleets. A shipbuilder thrown out of employment by the closing of shipyards will be eligible for unemployment insurance payments, but the seamen who took those ships into combat zones and received lower wages than the average shipbuilder will have to depend on charity until he is readjusted to shore life.

We believe that the maritime unions should assist in adjusting post-war unemployment both by participation in national policies and by sharing the work available under union control. For instance, the CIO longshoremen have greatly expanded the membership of their unions to provide needed labor in the Pacific theater, and also have hundreds of old members serving in the armed forces who will need work after the war ends. The veterans will be reabsorbed with full seniority rights, and all will share equally in the longshore work, as has been our policy since establishment in 1934 of our present rotary, hiring-hall system. There will be only a definite amount of work available, very much less than now, but every member will have an opportunity to perform an equal share of that work with the other members. The hard times as well as the gravy days will be shared by all.

The maritime unions include many trades, and most of them, especially the shipbuilders, will be more adversely affected by the end of the war than either the seamen or longshoremen. For a year or so after the war ends, repair crews of shipbuilders will be busy removing guns and gun mounts from merchant ships and converting them back to peacetime proportions. But practically all new construction will cease, as any one of the numerous shipyards in the country can supply the comparatively few modern-type merchant ships needed to replace the obsolete Liberty ships. Over 90 per cent of the workers in shipyards came from other occupations and areas, and most will return to them when the yards shut down. In fact, withdrawal of shipbuilders from the yards to more permanent jobs in anticipation of the inevitable shutdown has assumed alarming proportions already. Many who came from industrially backward states to the more liberal, climatically superior states on the Pacific Coast will remain here to augment our permanent population and our peacetime problems.

Shipyards are of necessity built for one purpose only, and almost without exception cannot be used for any other purpose, even if the war-expanded facilities in other fields had not provided better accommodations. Some of the machinery which is owned by the government, such as the great cranes, could be moved to the steamship loading docks to aid longshore work. More of the machinery could be absorbed by the navy yards, which will not suffer the almost total cessation of work that the commercial yards will, although they too will have their work forces drastically reduced following peace.

With practically no work to offer their members, and no system of sharing whatever work there is, as the CIO longshoremen do, the shipbuilders’ unions will sink back into placid somnambulism and depend on shoreside, inland work during the immediate future. As in the past, the sea unions, the longshoremen, the fishermen, and the workers in related crafts will do the bulk of maritime work and carry out the progressive policies to which we are committed.

To sum up our post-war plans, the maritime unions will encourage their members to function in all their capacities of maritime workers, American citizens, and home owners. We believe that as long as there are problems to be solved, there is work to be done in a democracy, for it is up to the citizen to see that his industry, his community, and his nation function properly, providing freedom from want, from fear, and from greedy tyranny.