James J. Healy Works to Avert Stevedore Strike

A Harvard professor who helped end a 39-day longshoremen's strike 20 months ago is hard at work in New York City trying to avert a similar walkout.

Along with two other members of a Federal mediation panel, James J. Healy, professor of Industrial Relations, has been meeting since Aug. 12 with representatives of the International Longshoremen's Association and the New York Shipping Association. Negotiations are now going on around the clock in an effort to reach agreement before 12:01 a.m. Thursday, the strike deadline.

A strike by the 60,000 dockworkers would tie up ports along the Eastern and Gulf coasts, idling 500 ships and 20,000 seamen.

In the event of a strike, it is thought that President Johnson will seek an 80-day injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act. Two years ago, when the last contract expired, President Kennedy asked for and was granted an injunction. After the injunction ran out he appointed Healy to a three-man Federal board to help end the strike.

BULLETIN

The International Longshoremen's Association early this morning rejected the recommendations drawn up by the panel of which Healy is a member. The New York Shipping Association had accepted the proposals.

The same panel, with its chairman, Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), replaced by Assistant Secretary of Labor James J. Reynolds, is seeking to avert a new strike. The third member of the panel is Theodore W. Kheel, a New York lawyer and arbitrator.

In its simplest terms, the current dispute pits Man against Machine. Management representatives claim, and a Labor Department study confirms, that new technology has made the traditional 20-man dock crew unnecessary. Management wants a reduction of six in the crew size; the union wants no reduction.

To resolve the conflict, the panel recommended Friday that the work crews gradually be reduced to 17, beginning April 1, 1966. But is also asked management to guarantee its regular workers an annual wage of 75 per cent of a long-shoreman's annual gross earnings as averaged over 1963, 1964, and 1965.

Negotiations now revolve about this proposal and the others included in the panel's 22-page written report.

In a 54-page study of longshore practices in New York, the Labor Department said this summer that reduction of the working force was essential, but that "while management must be permitted to introduce new technology and reap its benefits through better manpower utilization, the protection afforded to disadvantaged employees... must be both equitable and substantial."

The Department suggested that through less use of "casual" dockworkers (men working in the industry under 700 hours a year), job security for those more firmly attached to the labor force would be increased.