That Tricky Trike Strike

Dock stoppage annoys but doesn 't paralyze

What dock strike? Now in its second month and with a good possibility of ending this week, the walkout by longshoremen at container ports from Maine to Texas has so far sent no more than a ripple through the U.S. economy. It has been a strike of a thousand pinpricks--an annoying shortage here, a raised price there. Unlike stoppages in major industries such as coal and steel, which threaten the nation's ability to produce, the dock strike has only slowed or stopped deliveries of hundreds of less-than-vital imported items--Danish hams, French wines, foreign cars and Mickey Mouse Tricky Trikes.

Big retailers are not much affected. Their sizable inventories of imported goods were ordered and delivered long before the strike began and probably are sufficient to meet demand through Christmas. Some importers shifted away from container ships to break-bulk carriers (conventional freighters), which are still being handled by longshoremen. One day last week, New York harbor was filled with 54 freighters--half break-bulk and being unloaded, half containerized and untouched by strikers' hands. Goods are also being shipped in containers through West Coast ports, which are not struck. The increased traffic has taxed facilities there, but sellers have still another trade route: air freight. Pan American's airfreight business via Kennedy Airport was up a third over last October. Prices of some air-freighted goods have risen to cover the added shipping costs: Bloomingdale's, the big Manhattan department store, has tacked 40-c- per Ib. onto the price of cheese flown in from Europe.

Yet any strike wreaks some degree of havoc, and the dock stoppage is no exception. In Chicago, some of the display props for Carson Pirie Scott's two-week promotion of Italian wares never arrived. Gabriel Industries cannot get battery-powered motors for its Erector Sets; Ideal Toy, based in New York City, has laid off some 200 of its 2,500 workers.

Hardest hit is Puerto Rico, which is almost entirely dependent on ocean shipping for its survival. About 80% of shipments to San Juan from Gulf and East Coast ports have been blocked. Fomento, the island's economic development agency, issued a report saying that at the end of the strike's sixth week--about now--67,000 jobs would be threatened, adding to unemployment that already stands at 194,000. At least 60 companies have shut down, and 3 million man-days of work have already been lost.

At the weekend, negotiations resumed between shippers and the International Longshoremen's Association amid signs of an early settlement. Employers made a new wage offer; but the major stumbling block remained container shipping's threat to job security. Teddy Gleason, the I.L.A.'s crusty boss, who turned 77 last week, summoned his 130-man wage-scale committee to the new talks, at New York's Downtown Athletic Club, and there were rumors that the shippers were feeling pressures to enable the walkout to end. Any deal, however, would have to be approved by the rank and file, so containers will not begin moving immediately and the shortages will last a bit longer.

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