Dockers Reject Pay Cut as Pickets Swell
Striking longshoremen on Thursday rejected a new offer of across-the-board wage cuts for approximately 7,000 dockworkers at four mid-Atlantic ports, as picketing swelled in a walkout idling much of the East Coast waterfront.
The International Longshoremen’s Assn. said it intended to resume talks today in New York with shipping and stevedore companies in the New York, New Jersey and Boston areas.
Union officials said agreements were near in all but the four ports belonging to the Council of North Atlantic Shipping Assns.
That, plus new refusals by longshoremen at some south Atlantic and Gulf ports to handle cargo diverted from mid-Atlantic docks, indicated that the union was moving to isolate the strike to ports that are members of the shipping council.
Between 25,000 and 30,000 longshoremen struck 11 ports between Hampton Roads, Va., and the Canadian border after the shipping council companies refused to back down on a demand for $3-per-hour wage cuts for handlers of non-containerized cargo.
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