New Tack

There was a time when the C.I.O.'s highhanded, Red-tinted National Maritime Union could & would tie up a ship at the drop of a seaman's swab. Last week, when the United States Lines' S.S. America docked in New York with a sizzling labor dispute aboard, company officials prepared for the worst. The union's delegate, a wiry, intense ship's electrician named Walter Avellar, had served an ultimatum: either the company fired Chief Crew Steward W. S. McDonald and reinstated two seamen, or the ship would not sail. Roared grim-jawed, grim-tempered Commodore Harry Manning: "They can tie this ship up until hell freezes over, as far as I am concerned. The time has come to find out who runs the ship, the delegate-commissar or the captain."

But times had changed in the N.M.U. President Joe Curran, who has given many a Communist "commissar" the heave ho in recent months, declared flatly: "No one is authorized by this union to say a vessel will not sail." He added sternly: "We will settle this beef in the usual manner --through the grievance machinery." The crew backed him up. At a meeting on board the ship they voted overwhelmingly to disown Avellar's ultimatum.

Company officials were astonished and delighted. The N.M.U. 's left-wingers were glum. Was Avellar a Communist? Said Avellar: "That's not relevant."

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