Last week in Marseille, the Communist-dominated World-Federation of Trade Unions created an International Union of Seamen and Dockers, with Harry Bridges as its president. Bridges could not accept the new post in person. He is under indictment for perjury in San Francisco (TIME June 6), and the judge thought it unwise to let him leave the country.
When the W.F.T.U. was founded at Paris in 1945, the C.I.O., with which Bridges’ militant International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union is still affiliated, was a member. The A.F.L. was not. Last January the C.I.O., fed up with fighting the Communist line in the W.F.T.U., quit it cold. Representatives of 36 nations met last month in Geneva to set up an anti-Communist international labor organization. The C.I.O. attended—and so did the A.F.L. The new organization will speak for some 42 million anti-Communist trade union members. It will not speak for Harry Bridges.
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