SAN FRANCISCO STRIKE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21853, 16 July 1934, Page 8

SAN FRANCISCO STRIKE

Labour unrest is sweeping like a prairie fire through San Francisco where a general strike that may extend to other ports on the Pacific Coast is expected. Already San Francisco is more or less isolated. The transport industry is practically paralysed. The forces of order, although in full control along the waterfront, have not been adequate to prevent the holding up of food supplies by violent action against lorry drivers. It is hardly conceivable that the precise originating causes of the trouble are having much influence with the unions now affected. This usually is the case in sympathy strikes. Day by day developments provide their own fresh grievances and their own special incentives for new bodies of men. The strike began with the longshoremen some two months ago over a proposal of the employers to establish at their own expense hiring halls at each port. The function of the halls \tfas to be confined to the registration and hiring of men, the employers affirming their right to select men under a general rule that there should be no discrimination against any man because of membership or non-member-ship of a labour union. To this the strike'committee replied that with hiring halls controlled and paid for by the employers the conditions of work would bo worse than ever, and declined to accord the employers "the privilege of hiring whomsoever they pleased." Since then there have been suggestions of a movement to form a new union to widen the breach. At this distance it is impossible to follow all the crosscurrents that have confused the industrial sea. What gives cause for serious reflection abroad is that this alarming situation should arise when the New Deal was supposed to be safely launched. Its main object was to give codes to industry with a view to raising prices and wages. That labour is restive has been shown hv disturbances of a comparatively minor character. Now a great city may be the scene of a struggle of unparalleled dimensions. Doubtless international revolutionary influences are making the most of the situation, but there seems to be in it a challenge to Washington and the N.R.A. So vast a sympathy strike would surely not develop if labour generally had confidence that the codes would work out for mutual advantage. It is to be hoped that 1 San Francisco will be saved from imminent perils, but if the cause is as deep as it appears to be, the planners may still have their worst problems to solve.