Union men have long lamented that 70-year-old Harry Bridges, once an especially hot labor firebrand, has mellowed with the years. Such talk will probably not be heard much after this week when, as Bridges expects, his 15,000 West Coast longshoremen at 24 ports vote to accept a 34% raise and end the nation's longest dock strike.
Bridges probably would have kept the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union out even longer had the 18-week dispute not brought the Nixon Administration and Congress to the brink of tough antistrike legislation. Last fall Nixon invoked the...
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