WON BUT NOT ENDED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 18 December 1936, Page 5

WON BUT NOT ENDED

THE LONGSHOREMEN’S STRIKE PACIFIC COAST PRESIDENT’S CLAIM ATLANTIC STRIKERS’ DEMAND (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) NEW YORK, 17th December. Mr Harry Bridges, President of the Pacific Coast Longshoremen’s Union, told 15,000 at a mass meeting that the West Coast strike was won, but it was expected that the leaders would refuse to end it unless the demands of the Atlantic strikers were also granted.

The meeting telegraphed a request to President Roosevelt to have withdrawn the subsidies to lines refusing to meet the demands.

Earlier, Mr Bridges defied Mr Joseph Ryan to remove him from the position of organiser of the longshoremen, to which he was elected by union members. “Ryan has stopped my salary, but he can’t buy me to become his rubber stamp,” he said. Mrs Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labour, conferred with President Roosevelt at Washington in regard to the strike. There was no announcement of the outcome.

After two years of strained relations between Mr Joseph P. Ryan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association, and Mr Harry Bridges, one of the leaders of the Pacific Coast strike, a climax has been reached in a definite break (stated a New York message published yesterday). Following a three-hour conference, Mr Ryan announced the dismissal of Mr Bridges from the position of organiser of the longshoremen, which he has held since May at a salary of 75 dollars a week. Mr Ryan objected to Mr Bridges’s trip east to address striking seamen, and accused him of an attempt to disrupt the Atlantic Coast organisation of longshoremen. He also complained that MiBridges was in close relationship with Communist leaders. Mr Bridges denied the charge. Mr Ryan stated that the dismissal would not affect Mr Bridges’s status as president of the San Francisco branch of the Longshoremen’s Union.