Injunction on the Docks

For the third time since he assumed office--and for the second time against the rampaging International Longshoremen's Association--Dwight Eisenhower last week invoked the national-emergency provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike in the interests of the "national health and safety." In three fast-moving days the President 1) ordered a specially convened board of inquiry to look into the facts behind the East and Gulf Coast strike (TIME, Nov. 26) by the I.L.A. against the New York Shipping Association; 2) asked for and got a Federal Court injunction ordering the 60,000 strikers back to their piers from Maine to Texas for a ten-day period; and 3) indicated that if necessary he would ask-for further permission to extend the strike-injunction to the full 80-day "cooling-off" period provided by law.

Reason for the drastic action (as a Justice Department representative explained it to the court in asking for the writ): at a time when the nation and the free world face "the threat of Communist aggression," a continuation of the walkout would do the U.S. "irreparable injury."

At week's end, under orders from I.L.A. President William V. Bradley, longshoremen began to trickle back to the docks. But injunction or not, the devisive issues involved in the strike were likely to be in and out of the courts and before federal mediators for weeks to come. Still to be settled is the union's demand--vigorously opposed by the shipping association on the ground that it can only bargain for shippers in its own area--that the I.L.A. be given a master contract covering all Atlantic and Gulf ports. Beyond that, the I.L.A. and the shippers are still far apart in negotiations over wages, length of contract, etc. Nonetheless, this week some 250-odd ships that had been immobilized by the costly ($20 million a day) dock strike were being loaded and readied to put to sea again.

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