GENERAL STRIKE

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 July 1934, Page 7

GENERAL STRIKE

’FRISCO BAY DEVELOPMENTS

SUPPORT FOR WATERSIDERS I'BY CABLE —PBEBB ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] SAN FRANCISCO, July 13. Further threats of a general strike in the San Francisco Bay district came late on Thursday, when twentyfive hundred Union taxi-cab drivers and chauffeurs and fifteen, hundred retail butchers voted to strike on Friday, and one hundred and seventy wholesale butchers also walked out. Four thousand lorry operators walked out and immediately started a campaign for effective picketing which virtually tied up the movement of goods throughout the city. Troops are still maintaining order on the waterfront, but many lorries have elsewhere been turned over am? wrecked, their drivers being severely beaten.

A general strike of the Atys two hundred unions by early next week appears to be inevitable. Martial law is expected, and the display and sale of revolvers and' other arms has been banned. FOOD SHORTAGE SERIOUS. (Recd. July 14, 10.30 a.m.) SAN FRANCISCO, July 13. Housewives and men in the street felt the Pacific Coast maritime strike to-day, as an increasing number of labour unions joined the movement toward a general strike in the San Francisco Bay area. Shortages of food, gasoline and fuel became an actual threat. With the move toward a general strike gaining headway in Portland (Oregon), and rumblings of a similar movement heard at Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Strategy Committee has called a meeting of all unions at which a general strike is expected to be demanded. Nearly 100,000 workers at San Francisco and the trans-bay cities of Oakland. Berkley and Alameda have pledged themselves to walk out in sympathy with the 28,000 maritime workers if the Strategy Committee says the word.

Twenty-five hundred taxicab drivers and chauffeurs walked out at 5 a.m. today, bringing to 6400 the number who have already joined in the protest for an immediate settlement of the water-’ front strike. Nearly 5000 more butchers, laundrymen and retail deliverymen will join them on Saturday night. The present situation, in which the City Health Officer said the very health of the city is in danger, gave residents an inkling of what a general strike would be like. With garden trucks being halted outside the city, wholesale merchants said that San Francisco’s fresh fruit and vegetable supply would be exhausted by Saturday night. There is sufficient meat on hand to last five days. Snipers’ bullets fired at the National Guard, which patrolled the San Francisco waterfront, resulted in one man being wounded.

MARIPOSA AT AUCKLAND.

AUCKLAND, July 13

Although the Mariposa was declared “black” by the Auckland waterside workers, no trouble Was experienced in discharging her cargo. There was no response to a call for wharf labour, and the cargo was handled by the liner's volunteer crew, as it was in the case of the Mon-

terey on her inward and outward visits to Auckland on her last voyage.

When the Mariposa arrived at Los Angeles on her last northward voyage, her crew and stewards walked ashore to join those from the other vessels who had struck in sympathy with the Pacific Coast longshoremen. No difficulty was experienced in signing on men to take their places. Some of them were college boys with no previous experience of seafaring, but the officers said the volunteer crew had worked well in spite of some cases of seasickness early in the voyage. The passengers, too, had

nothing but praise for the service given by the stewards. The same precautions were taken in loading the Mariposa at Los Angeles as were observed in the case of the Monterey a month earlier. The entrances to the wharves were guarded by armed police and non-union wharf labourers, known as “strike breakers,” who were transported to and from work in fast launches.

The Mariposa left some time before the recent outbreak of violence in San Francisco, but the passengers and officers said the situation in all of the Pacific Coast ports had been exceptionally tense before their departure. The passengers had no difficulty in boarding the liner. They were taken from San Francisco to Los Angeles by a special train, from which they stepped practically straight on to the ship. One passenger said that 170 vessels were lying idle in San Francisco harbour being held up by the strike.

SYDNEY DECISION.

SYDNEY. July 13.

By a majority of five to two, the Waterside Workers’ Federation to-day decided against any hold-up of vessels from the American Pacific Coast, ports. Thus the Mariposa, when she arrives on Monday will be worked, despite an attempt by a section of the members to have that ship declared “black.”