Crippling Dock Strike Continues

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31255, 30 December 1966, Page 9

Crippling Dock Strike Continues

(N.Z. P. A. -Reuter— Copyright) SAIGON, December 29. The crippling strike of Vietnamese dockers at Saigon entered its fourth day with union leaders again threatening to extend the stoppage to a general strike of public utilities if the dispute was not settled.

For the second successive day there were no formal negotiations between trade union leaders, Government officials and United States Embassy authorities. But American and union spokesmen said informal talks were going on. Last night the Saigon Council of Labour—a 119 union body claiming a membership of 50,000 workers, including the dockers—held an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.

A council spokesman said today the meeting of representatives from 80 unions was still ready to call a general strike, to include electricity, water, and transport workers,

if the port dispute was not settled today. The port strike, which began on Monday, was called

by unions in sympathy with other Vietnamese dockers laid off from the new American military port just outside the capital, and replaced by specialised American soldiers. The strike has paralysed the congested commercial port and left 5000 dockers and thousands of other port workers idle.

Vietnamese picket squads today beat up about a dozen men trying to go through the main gate of the strikebound port.

Vietnamese labour leaders said that they had guards on the gates and would “punish” any other Vietnamese workers who tried to get on to the docks before the dispute was settled.

American troops today continued their unloading of ships carrying vital American military cargo.

Appeal in Russia.—Buel Ray Wortham, a 25-year-old American, appealed to the Russian Supreme Court today against a three-year sentence for theft and currency speculation. Wortham, from North Little Rock, was convicted last Wednesday of changing dollars and Finnish marks on the black market and of stealing a statue of a bear from a Leningrad Hotel.—Moscow, December 28.