PACIFIC COAST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 239, 9 October 1936, Page 7

PACIFIC COAST

SHIPPING TROUBLE EFFORT TO SETTLE IT MEN WANT PRESSURE EXERTED I I | [By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) i Received Oct. 8, 6.32 p.m. WASHINGTON, Oct. 7. I In an effort to settle the Pacific ; shipping deadlock, Mr Edward McI Grady, Assistant-Secretary of Labour, will confer with the Maritime Commission to-morrow. He will leave by air for the Pacific Coast to present the Commission’s views. It was said that the Commission, which was headed by Rear-Admiral Wiley, would probably offer services without pressure on owners and sailors. Mr Harry Lunenberg, head of the Sailors’ Union in the Pacific to-day presented an organisation demana that the Commission exert pressure on shipowners, who. he said, “received millions of subsidies and refused to discuss wages, hours and conditions.” However, it is pointed out, three joint conferences between owners and sailors have been held during th* past sixty days. A cable message from Washington published under date of September 30 stated that the Maritime Commission pleaded with the owners and the unions in an endeavour to avert the threatened immobilisation of Pacific Coast shipping. This would affect 37,000 men whose union contracts will expire early to-morrow. The commission sent a telegram to Harry Bridges, the San Francisco Labour leader, as the key man, asking him to accept a 60-days’ extension of the present agreement. In the meantime, a strike occurred in New York as a result of a dispute within the seamen’s union. The trans-Atlantic liner President Roosevelt was prevented from sailing. Later information was to the effect that a 15 days’ truce was virtually assured in the dispute.