Like the big bass drum at the end of a parade, the nation's first amalgamation of maritime unions boomed closer to its first strike day, June 15.
Already, U.S. ports, bays and rivers were cluttered with idle merchant ships. Three weeks before the strike deadline, negotiations between private operators and the seven unions (six C.I.O. and one independent) comprising the new Committee for Maritime Unity, had stalled. Once again, government was in the middle.
The C.M.U., spearheaded by the National Maritime Union's Joe Curran and Harry Bridges of the International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, had made its wants plain....
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