From 1902 up to 1921 the Sailors Union was recognized as a collective bargaining agency by the shipowners, and we had agreements up to 1921. In 1921 the wages, which at that time were the highest ever paid in the American shipping industry, were $90 per month, a dollar an hour overtime, and an 8-hour day. Through the demand of the United States Shipping Board, and also the shipowners at that time, they wanted to cut the wages, which the seamen did not want, and consequently the seamen were locked out on a national scale. This lock-out lasted from the month of May until August 1921. The unions were crippled, and the men went back to the vessels. I wanted to bring that out because we feel that the United States Shipping Board, together with the shipowners, helped to break up the unions in those days. During the lock-out the shipowners on the Pacific coast established what they called the Marine Service Bureau. That was an establishment to ship strike-breakers during the strike. Afterwards, when the lock-out was over, they also reenlisted men for the ships. After the strike was over, many of the men were blacklisted. They could not go back with this service bureau. Any man who wanted to go back to sea had to register through those bureaus in San Francisco and Los Angeles. These bureaus had a very bad influence on the seamen. They drove a lot of bona fide seamen away from the sea, and picked up a lot of bums, who never had gone to sea before, because the policy of the shipowners at that time was not to question the quality of the men, so long as they got the men. That was all they asked for. They set the wages and you took it and liked it. In this Marine Service Bureau in San Francisco at that time, anyone who blew in, regardless of where he came from, or whether he had ever been to sea, could get a job and go to sea as long as he took the wages. Bona fide seamen were, in many cases, blacklisted, especially if they refused to take the shipowner's discharge paper, commonly called the "fink book." The men who conducted these offices for the shipowners at that time were deputized. The unions were crippled. They could not do anything. In 1924 the Sailors Union and the International Seamen's Union attempted, for the first time in history, to use political action. They backed for President Senator La Follette, who had at all times been friendly to the seamen. He was not elected, so that our political efforts ended right then and there. Afterward we attempted, through the Federal courts, to do away with some of the bad conditions at that time in the maritime industry, but we did not get to first base. When the lock-out was called the wages were $90 per month, with a dollar an hour for overtime, and an 8-hour day, but during the time between 1921 and 1934, under the control of the shipowners, the shipowners set the wages and the wages went down. The 8-hour day was a thing of the past. A man worked for long hours without any overtime, and conditions in general became bad. Conditions in the industry generally got bad for the seamen. In 1923 they had a so-called boom, and good times on the Pacific, with plenty of shipping. In fact, they used every ship on the Pacific coast, old or young. Most of them were old, of course. The wages of sailors were not improved at all under this system. The wages of everybody else in the country, up to 1929, were raised, but under those conditions the sailors had nothing to say, due to the fact that they did not have a strong organization to back them up. In those days, considering the class of men who went to sea, as I said before, there were quite a lot of men who were not bona fide seamen. Senator BAILEY. How did the wages paid at that time compare with the wages paid on ships sailing under other registries than ours? Mr. LUNDEBERG. Under other registries. Senator BAILEY. Yes. Mr. LUNDEBERG. The Australian wages were about twice as high as the American wages. The wages on the New Zealand coast were about twice as much as American wages. I came up from Australia in 1923. I was sailing on the Australian coast for 17 pounds 10 shillings a month, and 2 and 6 pence an hour overtime. When I came to the West Coast I sailed for $60 a month. Senator BAILEY. Now that you have made your comparison with Australia, how about the sailings out of England, under the British registry? Mr. LUNDEBERG. I sailed out of England. The last time I sailed out of England my wages were 14 pounds a month, two watches, on a sailing vessel. Senator BAILEY. $70? Mr. LUNDEBERG. No; 14 pounds a month. I forget what the rate of exchange was, but we had 14 pounds a month. That was a fourmasted bark from Liverpool. The CHAIRMAN. What about Holland, Sweden, France, and Italy? How did those wages compare with the American wages? Mr. LUNDEBERG. According to the prices in those countries they compared very favorably, and were probably better than the American wages at that time. It is pretty hard to compare the American wages with those foreign countries at that time. What should be done is to compare the wages of the seamen at that time with the wages of people in industries ashore in America. The period between 1923 and 1929 was a period of good years, according to everybody, and they probably were good years for people ashore, but they were not for us. Through the system which they had in those days, as I said, we had no way of improving conditions. Our union was pretty weak. Nobody seemed to care. That included the lawmakers in Washington, and also the United States Shipping Board and the shipowners. They did not care whether the seamen lived or died. The CHAIRMAN. What period are you speaking of now? Mr. LUNDEBERG. I am speaking about the period between 1921 and 1934. There were no laws passed to help the conditions of seamen. We had a representative in Washington from time to time, but could never get any satisfaction. Also in those days there were no headlines in the papers about undisciplined inefficient American crews, and so forth. As a matter of fact, in those days I have seen men aboard American ships sailing as able-bodied seamen, in various capacities who were not fit to sail across the river here, let alone going into deep water. But, as I say, due to the fact that the shipowners had everything their own way, they did not care what the man was, so long as he took the wages offered. It is necessary to bring this up, on account of our objection- The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you a question. Where does your organization come in between the C. I. O. and the A. F. of L.? It is not affiliated with either one, is it? Mr. LUNDEBERG. No. Our organization was organized, as I stated, in 1885, for all the seamen on the Pacific coast, the sailors. We are affiliated with the State Federation of Labor of California, Oregon, and Washington, and also seated as delegates in the various labor councils. We are also part of the Maritime Federation of the Pacific coast, which we helped to organize. The CHAIRMAN. Is there rivalry now between your organization and Harry Bridges' organization? Mr. LUNDEBERG. His organization is a part of the C. I. O., as I understand, and we are not. We are not affiliated with the American Federation of Labor on a national scale, so our status on a national scale is independent. Our membership feel that they do not want to be used either by the A. F. of L. or the C. I. O. to fight for power between individuals. The CHAIRMAN. As I understood it, you came in between the two organizations. How does your membership compare with that of the C. I. O.? Mr. LUNDEBERG. That I could not tell you. The CHAIRMAN. Is it less or more? Mr. LUNDEBERG. Ours is a small organization. It has 8,000 members. With regard to the figures of the various organizations, sometimes they say they have so many, and sometimes they say they have less, and we do not know for sure from time to time what their real figures are. We are furnishing men who go to sea as ordinary seamen, able-bodied seamen, boatswains, storekeepers, and quartermasters on all vessels registered on the Pacific coast, deep water, coastwise, the Alaska run, and so forth. The CHAIRMAN. Would you not get further along in your desire to have better conditions and better wages if you all got together on some basis? Mr. LUNDEBERG. I was going to come to that. The CHAIRMAN. All right. Mr. LUNDEBERG. I tried to explain how the conditions were between 1929 and 1934. The CHAIRMAN. What about the conditions now, Mr. Lundeberg? We are not so much interested in the conditions of those days. All of us on this committee think that the sailors were badly housed, badly fed and badly paid. There is no contention about that. But what about the present conditions, and what do we need to do now to make things better? Mr. LUNDEBERG. The past has quite a lot to do with the present. That is why I brought this up. I asked if I might bring it up, and I was told I might. It links up with the present. I was trying to show that nothing was done here in Washington and nothing was done by the shipowners for 13 years. The seamen did not do any thing themselves because they did not have any strong organization. In 1934 conditions got so rotten that they finally woke up to the fact that the only way they could improve conditions was to strike, and every seaman on the Pacific coast walked off his vessel, regardless of whether he belonged to a union or not. The strike lasted for 3 months, and after the strike was over we were told by the Government Labor Board-what they call the Longshoremen's Board, appointed by the President-to go back to the vessels, and they would see that we got an improvement in conditions after a while. The CHAIRMAN. That was in 1934? Mr. LUNDEBERG. After 1934. The Longshoremen's Board was a board of three appointed by the President to settle conditions for the longshoremen after the strike. As you know, there were longshoremen, seamen, mates, and engineers out on strike. After being out on strike for 3 months, we did not gain anything on going back again, but we were promised something. We attempted to negotiate with the shipowners, and did not get very far. The Longshoremen's Board, after quite a bit of pressure being brought on it, in turn appointed an arbitration board of three to settle the seamen's questions. The strike was called off on the 31st of July, 1934, and by the time the arbitration board handed down a decision it was April 1935, a matter of 9 months after the men went out on strike, before they got a decision. In the meantime, while they waited for this arbitration to give them something, they got restless, and it did not look as though they were going to get anything, so they took matters in their own hands, and forced wages up, and changed conditions on the ships gradually from time to time. By the time the decision was handed down by the arbitration board, 9 months after the strike was called off, conditions on the vessels had been improved by the action of the crews. The CHAIRMAN. Is that one reason why you are opposed to title X of this bill, and the mediation and arbitration bills? Mr. LUNDEBERG. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Because of your experience in that matter. Mr. LUNDEBERG. Yes. That is one of the objections we have against the mediation board and arbitration. It was proved conclusively in 1934 that it took this board 9 months to hand down a decision, and when it handed it down, it handed down something that we had already obtained by what you might call strike action, or individual action. After this arbitration award was handed down the seamen were very much dissatisfied with the conditions they had obtained. The CHAIRMAN. In that arbitration did they recommend increases in wages and better conditions? Mr. LUNDEBERG. They set the wages at $62.50 a month. The CHAIRMAN. What had they been immediately before that? Mr. LUNDEBERG. Before the strike on the Pacific coast the wages were from $40 to $50 a month, an average of about $45. The CHAIRMAN. They increased the wages about 50 percent, then? Mr. LUNDEBERG. Yes. We got it ourselves through action while waiting for the decision to be handed down. The seamen themselves forced the shipowners. We said, "If you want us you will have to pay us so much." Naturally, things were booming for the shipowners. They did not like to do it. However, they were forced to. So, by the time the arbitration board handed down its decision, we already had the $62.50, and in certain instances more. Senator THOMAS of Utah. Do you not believe that the fact that an arbitration board was acting was helpful in getting better wages and conditions? Mr. LUNDEBERG. No. The only think that was effective was that when a man refused to go to sea under those conditions, and the shipowners needed seamen, they had to have them, so they boosted the wages. That is the experience we had with arbitration. After the arbitration board handed down the decision in 1935, the men were still dissatisfied because the decision was less than they had then obtained for themselves, and also less than they had asked for when they went out on strike. They asked for $75 a month, and 75 cents an hour overtime, and wanted to abolish all optional free time, as they call it, or "time back." Where a man works at night, for instance, for 4 or 5 hours, they used sometimes to pay him back 4 or 5 hours in the daytime. Most of the time if a man asked for the time back, he got fired. That was what we were after, mainly, and also to do away with the shipowners' hiring hall, which we did abolish. So, there was quite a lot of unrest among the seamen. They did not feel that they had a new deal yet. They still felt that they had part of the "raw deal"; so, in the latter part of the year 1935 we asked the shipowners again to meet with us across the table to raise the wages. However, they declined to deal with us, and nothing came out of it. This condition prevailed up to 1936. In the month of August we sent a formal notice to the shipowners demanding to meet with them across the table to change conditions, raise wages, and so forth. They refused and said, "We will submit all this to arbitration." But the seamen said, in view of the fact that a year before they had had such a bad experience, "Nothing doing. We will not go for arbitration." Naturally the shipowners would go for an arbitration board, after they had established wages more to their liking than to the men's liking. So, the seamen on the Pacific coast took a strike vote, which carried about 99 percent, in a secret referendum ballot, and wanted to go out on strike on the 1st of October, when the agreement expired on the 30th of September. The CHAIRMAN. That was in 1936. Mr. LUNDEBERG. Yes. However, the United States Maritime Commission, which had at that time been newly formed, asked us to de: lay the strike, and also the Department of Labor. The seamen did not want to do it, but through pressure of the other organizations we had to delay it. They asked for 2 months' extension so that they could investigate. The seamen wanted to give them 15 days, but they compromised on 30 days. Meanwhile, during those 30 days, the Maritime Commission came out to the coast, or one of the Commissioners came out to the coast, and he suggested that we delay any and all strike action until such time as he could investigate the conditions in the industry. We asked him how long it would take him to investigate the conditions in the industry, raise the wages, and so forth. He stated that it might take anywhere from 6 months to a year, and we told him, "Nothing doing." We went back to the membership, and the men |