GOVERNMENT: Union?

It looked and acted just like any other labor union. It boycotted, it picketed, it signed contracts, and it had a long name: Local 36, International Fishermen and Allied Workers of America, C.I.O. But the Justice Department’s antitrust division looked again.

Then it saw that the “union members” seemed more like independent fishermen, their “contracts” (covering $10 million worth of fish a year brought into twelve California ports) had the effect of price-fixing agreements. Under the Norris-LaGuardia Act, a union cannot be prosecuted for conspiring to fix prices. But last week the Government brought suit anyway. Its contention: the C.I.O.’s I.F.A.W.A. is not really a union but a trade organization of small fishermen.