Says Alfred Renton Bridges (every one calls him Harry), for 30 years the controversial boss of West Coast dock workers, in his Australian cockney accent: "If someone wants to get me out of this job, the best way would be to call me a 'labor statesman.' " Yet that, in effect, is what a lot of people who do not want him out of his job are calling him nowadays. Examples:
> Says Eisenhower's Secretary of Labor James Mitchell, who now lives in San Francisco: "Next only to John L. Lewis, Bridges has done the best job in American labor of coming to grips with the problems of automation."
> Says Clark Kerr, president of the University of California and a specialist in labor-management relations: "Anyone who's seen Bridges off and on over the years has to be impressed with the changes that have been made since 1934. In 1934 longshoremen were sort of leftovers from society, men who couldn't find other work. Now they're the aristocrats of labor."
> Says Stanley Powell, president of the Matson shipping line: "I don't know how the guy who sat at this desk 30 years ago felt about Bridges, but I know it was a hell of a lot different from the way I feel. I admire his ability to keep his word and get his union to back him up."
Such tributes stem from the fact that Bridges, far more than most labor leaders, has faced the challenge of automation. In 1960 his International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union reached an agreement with management's Pacific Maritime Association. Under that pact the employers can introduce as many labor-saving machines as they wish — at a price of $5,000,000 a year in retirement and other benefits for Bridges' boys. The agreement is paying off for both shippers and dock workers.
Stinking Copra. Last week a crew of six San Francisco longshoremen finished the nine-day job of unloading 7,000 tons of stinking, oil-laden copra from the Liberty ship Silvana. A tracked vehicle pried the gooey cargo from the holds, hoisted it into a vacuum tube that shot it into a conversion plant. A few years ago 18 men would have worked two weeks to unload the Silvana.
Similarly, it used to take six days to transfer a load of passenger cars off Matson's Hawaiian Motorist; the ship can now dock, unload and be back at sea in seven hours. Where 14-man gangs worked twelve shifts to load cargo containers into a Matson ship, a ten-man gang can now perform the complete loading job in just two shifts.
Under the agreement, Bridges gave up most of his union's featherbedding "work rules"—although not precisely in any spirit of generosity. His longshoremen now get a basic $3.19 an hour for a guaranteed 35 hours a week. The agreement's kitty permits a 25-year man to retire at 62, draw a $220 monthly pension for three years, $115 after that (when Social Security begins). If an I.L.W.U. man works until 65, he gets an additional lump sum of $7,920. If a machine knocks a man out of work, he continues to draw 35 hours of pay a week. The deal is so good that last year the I.L.W.U. had some 25,000 applicants for 2,600 openings.
The shippers have no beef, mainly because they save in dock charges—up to $2,500 a day—when ships turn about faster.