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members of its Port Organizing Committee (POC) aboard. The POC found "the
most miserable conditions ever seen aboard an American ship." The crew was
ready to quit. The POC, however, managed to persuade all but nine crew members
to stay aboard, and the MWIU managed to get nine union members hired in their
stead. The POC then held a series of small meetings with key crew members,
culminating in a meeting ashore for the whole crew with the POC to ratify demands
and elect a strike committee. The following night a meeting for the entire crew was
held on the ship to lay final plans and make tactical assignments. The strike was set
for the next day.
At 8 a.m. the next morning, the strike committee, accompanied by one POC
member, presented the captain with its demands which he "flatly refused," and the
strike was on. The crew immediately divided into groups and stationed themselves
at predetermined locations around the ship, the steam was shut off, and delegates
approached the ship's officers who reportedly agreed to support the strike.
Simultaneously, a leaflet was issued to the ILA longshoremen working the ship
explaining the struggle, and the crew and POC members discussed the situation
with them. The longshoremen walked off their jobs in solidarity. "About ten
minutes after the strike was called," a meeting was held in an adjacent intersection
to rally the unemployed, and a picket line of a reported 150 seamen and
unemployed was set up on the dock. An announcement of the strike was chalked
on the side of the ship, and delegations visited other ships to attempt to spread the
strike (with, however, little success).
The counter attack followed: the police drove the crew off the ship (crew
members managed to drop both anchors before being evicted) and drove the picket
line off the dock. Picketing was reestablished at the gate to the dock, coffee and
food was passed out to the picketers, and details of pickets "were put around every
shipping crimp in town, as well as around the Anchorage," a local seaman's shelter.
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