BNY-IUMSWA

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The IUMSWA
    Background
    Organizing in the Navy Yards
    Local 21
    The End of Local 21
Background
A group of workers at the New York Ship Corporation in Camden, New Jersey, organized the first local of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America in 1933. From its beginning an industrial union, by 1942 it had grown to cover a large number of the private shipyards on the East and Gulf coasts. Its record on the West coast was more mixed, where the AFL was able to sign up most of the emergency shipyards that were set up as war loomed. Even though private shipyards had lost their union presence in the great open shop drive of the early 1920s, the AFL refused to recognize the new union's trans-jurisdictional claims and the IUMSWA [often called the IU] went its independent way until it joined the newly-organized CIO in 1936. It expanded spectacularly during the world war to about 250,000 members, but afterward it slowly lost ground to internal bickering, to red-baiting, to some perhaps poor merger decisions with other unions, to AFL competition, and to the retrenchment in American military and commercial shipbuilding in general, until finally a small rump merged with the machinists' union in 1988. For a large CIO union in a major war industry, there is surprisingly little written about it, nor has its history been appropriately incorporated into CIO histories. Certainly, the massive 1934 walkout in Camden that finally established the union should rank as another of the premier “eruptions” of that year that are chronicled by Irving Bernstein in his Turbulent Years. [On the IUMSWA's history see: IUMSWA, “Book of Facts for Shipyard Workers: Story of the Rise of the IUMSWA,” Camden, 1935; David Palmer, “Organizing the Shipyards: Unionization at New York Ship, Federal Ship, and Fore River, 1898-1945,” Ph.D., Brandeis University, 1990; David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy in Three Northeast Ports, 1933-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Bernard Matthew Mergen, “A History of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, 1933-1951,” Ph.D. diss, U. of Pennsylvania, 1968; “IUMSWA,” Encyclopedia of Labor Unions, Gary M Fink, editor-in-chief, (Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1977); “Guide to the Archives of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America,” Historical Manuscripts and Archives Department, University of Maryland at College Park, 1990. See http://www.iamawdl4.org, for the union's successor organization. The October 1937 issue of the union's newpaper, The Shipyard Worker, gives a brief chronology of its history to date. The IUMSWA is barely mentioned in two standard histories of the CIO: Irving Bernsteing, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1971), and Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).]
By April 1937 the union had three locals, 12, 13, and 14, in the Port of New York, and and claimed that it had raised wages in some building and repair yards by ten cents to $.98 per hour. At the beginning of the summer of 1937 the IU called a strike in all the yards it was active in, seeking a blanket agreement, and its newspaper reported that 15,000 in 18 shipyards responded to the call. But the strike was poorly planned and by August it had failed as the private yards brought in large numbers of strikebreakers, and the Longshoremen and the MTD signed agreements with some of the yards. The locals went back to work pending NLRB hearings on their appeals for recognition. [TSW, April 1937; June 1937; August 1937; October 1937; Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards; “Organizing the Shipyards”; Mergen, "History of the IUMSWA."] It is not too surprising therefore to know that bad blood existed among the shipbuilding unions of the two federations.
The IUMSWA presented its general ideology in a series of articles and editorials in its paper. Craftsmen were vanishing in the United States because of new technology and the AFL had failed to recognize it was an obsolete caste system. It could not possibly expect that the majority of Americans workers would follow its obvious descent into oblivion. The NRA code hearings of a few years earlier had shown [private] shipyard labor to be the work of mostly semi-skilled and skilled labor, and even a quick survey of shipyards in the mid-1930s would show the shops and ways filled with workers new to shipyard labor. “Hands and helpers” with the assistance of a few technicians and leaders built contemporary American ships. AFL unions were simply irrelevant to most mass-production industries. Henry Ford boasted that only one per cent of his workers [those typically eligible for AFL membership] needed training of one year or more to work in his plants, while 79 per cent needed under one week or even under one day to acquire the necessary experience. The union took its industrial mandate seriously; for instance, in May 1937 it rejected the offer of the IAMW's Boston local to merge with it, saying it would have to disband and its welders join solely as members of the IU. [SW, November 1936; January 1937; March 1937; May 1937.]
The IU took every opportunity, trivial or serious, to set itself apart from the trade unions. In one article in its paper a writer thought it improper that an IAM representative who had worked diligently to have one of the two recent battleships assigned to the Brooklyn yard was later treated by the local Democratic club to a dinner, vacation and a new suit. Another position that the union took was more problematic in terms of its lure for the average navy yard worker. This was their insistence, as one writer put it in 1938 that shipbuilding was now a mass-production industry and that the skilled shipworker was passing away. To make his point he, oddly, gave as examples skills more associated with the wooden navy such as carpenters, joiners, caulkers, and riggers, seeming to suggest that by contrast the steel-ship workforce was not as skilled. He claimed that modern ships were assembled by architects, engineers, draftsmen, technicians, and only a “few” skilled mechanics; the large majority of the workforce was composed of semi-skilled helpers and laborers. Such an assertion simply was not true, even in the private shipyards, and, as David Palmer has shown in his study of the IUMSWA, did not mesh with the skilled identity of many of the union's foremost supporters. But the paper also brought up another, more substantive complaint that it and the UFW would make one of the keystones of their attack on the trades: their allowing supervisory personnel to maintain union membership. [SW, November 1937; February 1938. See the earlier citations on Palmer.]
The union did attempt in practical terms to implement its ideology where it could. In October 1939 the newspaper published the new rates at New York Shipbuilding. The company still maintained three grades in the trades but now had fewer classifications. Three especially skilled trades, the patternmakers, coppersmiths, and loftsmen had their own rates, with maximums of $1.113, $1.219, and $1.18 per hour. There was one basic classification, with three grades, for all the other trade jobs. The top rate for skilled workers was $.924, for semi-skilled .746, and the unskilled had only one rate, paid at .612 per hour. They had established minimum base pays for piecework and incentive work. [SW, October 1939.]
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Organizing in the Navy Yards
Initially, the IUMSWA held the higher wages, paid vacations and sick days, and pensions of the navy yards as a goal for its organizing in private shipyards. But it did not take too long for the union to set its sights on the government yards themselves as organizing opportunities. In covering the launch of the Brooklyn [30 November 1936] at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the paper editorialized that it was a “disgrace” that the ship named after the borough had been built under such “unfair conditions.” AFL craft divisions and the existence of company unions, i.e., the shop committees, had weakened the government workers' strength. To remedy this poor situation the Union would organize all the shipyards, private or public. [SW, August 1936; December 1936.]
Over the next few months the IU began organizing campaigns at the navy yards at Mare Island, Boston, Norfolk, and Puget Sound. The union awarded charters to the first two locals May, and to the third in August. The union's paper reported active opposition from AFL unions. For example, at a Norfolk meeting a boilermaker attempted to red-bait them and suggested that they should be organizing Newport News across the bay instead, and at their initial meeting at Puget Sound local trade unionists had tried to disrupt it. [SW, April 1937; May 1937; May 1937; May 1937; July 1937; July 1937; August 1937.]
In March 1937 the union announced an organizing drive at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the only shipyard in that region without a contract or a drive underway. The union said its ultimate goal was to stabilize shipyard labor in the Delaware valley so that work could be staggered among all the shipyards so that its workers would not suffer from slack times in any one yard. In April it chartered Local 17 for the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The local canvassed the workers among the various shops and compiled a list of grievances to be the basis of “negotiations.” Their demands were not new ones for navy yard workers: one grade only for mechanics; seniority lists instead of efficiency lists; qualified helpers to be given first chance at open mechanic jobs; annual automatic promotions; and, they denounced down-rating. They also wanted optional retirement at age 50, if a worker had 25 years of service, and mandatory retirement at 30 years. [SW, March 1937; April 1937; April 1937; April 1937. Note: it was shortly after this that the Navy Department announced its experiment with the shop committee system at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.]
A few weeks after they began their campaign in Philadelphia the Shipworkers commenced a drive at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and shortly thereafter reported good news. Organizer Charles Purkis told the 200 who attended the first organizational meeting that the AFL was incapable of resolving their problems and that the IU would thenceforth have weekly meetings at their headquarters on Sands Street to discuss plans for organizing in the Yard. The paper said that 80 signed up at that meeting, joining 400 BNY workers who had already signed on with Local 13. [SW, March 1937; April 1937.] At the second meeting some metal-trades-union members allegedly trashed John Frey, and Robert McFeaney, head of the IAMW local, railed against the AFL. The organizers spoke of preparing for “collective bargaining” with the Yard as well as preparing to present charges to the National Labor Board. [SW, April 1937; May 1937.]
On 19 May 1937 the IU chartered BNY Local 21, and it declared it would attack the down-rating problem, especially in Connors's Shipfitters shop. It was well known in the Yard that the Master made it a practice to let maximum-rated mechanics go and then offer them their jobs back at the minimum rate. Plus, the local's mere existence gave them a brand-new grievance to fight: discrimination against their members. And like their colleagues in Philadelphia they made the most publicly out of securing the same rights as other labor organizations at the Yard, such as posting on bulletin boards. On the whole they expressed great optimism. [SW, May 1937; May 1937; June 1937. On the IU's early activities in the PNY, see: SW, May 1937; May 1937; June 1937; June 1937.]
Near the end of June 1937 the union organized a joint conference of the three chartered locals in the northeast. Twenty-six delegates met on 26 June and drafted a list of 14 demands. One of their major complaints was the Navy's seeming disregard for civil service regulations, which they otherwise considered on “the whole fair.” They set out to remedy such mundane issues such as paying more to painters who used spray equipment, ensuring that drillers would receive parity in pay with machinists, and that workers should be paid for time lost to inclement weather. They also opposed counting work and piece work, and wanted the shop committee system abolished. The delegates said they would push this agenda in Congress and would ask to meet with the Secretary of the Navy to discuss wages and the balanced shop concept. The IU formally chartered the Navy Yard Joint Council in November 1937, at a meeting attended by delegates from Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Boston, who divided the top three positions among themselves. Ridding the yards of multiple grades and the shop committees was one of their major goals. [SW, June 1937; July 1937; July 1937; August 1937; November 1937]
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Local 21
Local 21 first appears the BNY archives in June 1937 when the IU's Secretary-Treasurer, Philip H. Van Gelder, wrote to the Manager to ask permission to post the local's notices on shop bulletin boards. He received the customary reply that all organizations could post to the public bulleting boards provided that the notice was simple, contained no propaganda, was written on letter-size paper, that it could only be posted and removed outside of work hours, and be allowed to be put up only on the boards of shops where the group had a reasonable number of members. [Letter, Van Gelder, Secretary-Treasurer, IUMSWA, to Captain Dunn, June 1937; Reply, from the Manager, with bcc note to the Shop Superintendent, June 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
The local hit the ground running. Within two weeks of the above correspondence, Wilson Long, a machinist in Ordnance, requested information from the Shop Superintendent as to how shop committeemen would be recognized and if their stewards could collect dues on the grounds as did AFL representatives. The Commandant replied that only shop committee people could meet on government time, and that while other groups could meet with management, they could not do so on work time and they could only speak for their members. Unions could collect dues in the Yard but, again, not on work time. By early July the local sent their list of stewards to management, submitting names from a variety of shops and occupations: drillers, machinists, chippers, riveters, laborers, riggers, sail loft, pipefitters, welders, sheetmetal, and painters. [Memo, Wilson Long, Machinist, Ordnance Division, representing navy yard employee members of CIO, to Lt. Commander Redington, Superintendent, June 1937; Reply, from Commandant, June 1937; Memo, Executive Board, IUMSWA, BNY Local No. 21, to Commandant, July 1937; Reply, from Commandant. Both in RG181; NA-NY.]
The local then got down to the nitty-gritty by filing a complaint on behalf of the drillers, the trade that cut the majority of holes needed to construct a ship. They said that the Yard had recently limited the drillers to cutting holes only 3/8 inch in size or larger, leaving the smaller ones to be punched out by whatever trade may have the need to do so. Such a policy tended to increase drillers layoffs as a ship approached about three-quarters completion as the holes remaining to be cut were the smaller ones of finishing trades, such as the sheetmetal workers. The drillers also charged that they had to “bolt-up” their own holes instead of having bolters do it and that until recent years they had helpers to assist them with heavy work. Long said that in the Boston and Philadelphia navy yards the drillers used helpers. [Memo, Long, representing navy yard employees, members of CIO, July 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
The Commandant had answers on each point. Hole-drilling was distributed among the trades according to the immediate needs of production, and was “based on past agreements, [the] capability of the various trades to do the work and economy to the government.” The Navy had abolished the trade of “bolter-up” in 1926, and had since paired drillers to perform what was considered the “incidental” work of using the drilling machines to tighten the bolts. Past experience in using helpers had proved unsatisfactory and drillers themselves had complained about them in the past. If a drilling job seemed dangerous, difficult or heavy, a second driller was assigned to aid the first. Upon investigation he had found that Philadelphia did not use helpers and Boston only in special cases of very heavy or dangerous work. So, while he appreciated the spirit of the original letter, the Commandant said the Yard would keep to its present procedure. [Memo, J.J. Redington, to Commander Richey, July 1937; Letter, Commandant, to Long, August 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
In September 1937, the union began one of its major campaigns: to forbid supervisors holding membership in their respective AFL unions. It was a particularly interesting topic for organizing for in effect it meant that the union would be asking that management, in this case the Navy Department, do its work for it, as obviously the IU had no ability to force the AFL unions to make such a change. The local's secretary, Benjamin Raphael, a BNY employee since 1931, laid out the union's argument, using the Ordnance shop, where the Master and several supervisors belonged to the IAM, as his example. This Master was “well placed” in the machinists' union and because of this, machinists tended to be reluctant about complaining about working conditions in union meetings as their boss may well be sitting among them. And the Ordnance Shop did have its share of grievances. On a hot day during the previous July, the Master had forbidden his force to leave when the rest of the Yard's workforce was excused. He had required his workers to present a personal letter along with a doctor's note in order to apply for sick leave--unlike other shops, and he lectured wives calling in to report their husbands ill. He reserved to himself alone the right to grant short periods of leave with pay, and he talked up the AFL and disparaged the CIO in personal conversations in his office. For a shop's labor organization to be dominated by shop management was “incompatible” to the best interests of all, and in effect made it a company union, outlawed by the Wagner Act. Naval management should immediately relieve this “detrimental influence to the service.” [Letter, Benjamin Raphael, Secretary, IUMSWA Local 21, to Commandant, September 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
In internal correspondence, J.C. Punger, the Ordnance Master, admitted he belonged to the IAM but that he had not been active in it for over a year, and as far as he knew only one of his leadingmen was an active member. He had been on leave in July but now upon investigation had found that the senior Quarterman had indeed permitted the shop's workers to take one-half day off as leave because of the heat but that one supervisor and fourteen workers had stayed at work on their own. The shop had initially requested a written form for the then newly-acquired sick leave [granted to the trades in 1936], but since the preceding February it had allowed the workers to request them verbally and no one was denied if he applied properly. The charges of being rude or overbearing on the telephone was flatly denied.   Leave in general was granted with little difficulty so long as overall production was not hindered. Finally, the Master denied that he or his supervisors were prejudiced as to their workers' labor affiliations, although he did feel that harmony should prevail in the shop. [Memo, Captain Dunn, to J.C. Punger, Master Mechanic, Ordnance, September 1937; Reply from Punger, September 1937; Letter, Commandant Woodward, to the ASN (SED), October 1937; RG181; NA-NY.]
The ASN read through a copy of the correspondence and instructed the Commandant to reply to the union on the issues raised. He told Admiral Woodward that while he would support the commandant's arguments, that he and Yard management must adhere to the terms of the letter forbidding discrimination for labor affiliation that the Department had just issued on 20 September. In his reply to Local 21 the Commandant said that internal union business was not the Department's concern and that supervisors were not allowed to discriminate among their workers on the basis of their particular union membership. [Letter, Commandant, to Executive Board, IUMSWA, Local 21, October 1937; Letter, ASN(SED), to Commandant, Navy Yard, NY, October 1937; Letter, Commandant, to IUMSWA, Local 21, November 1937. All in RG181; NA-NY.]
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The End of Local 21
The local, however, was quickly to run into difficulties; not with the navy yard but with its own national leadership. On their own initiative the leaders of Local 21 forwarded a copy of this recent correspondence with the Yard management to CIO headquarters and sent a telegram to John Lewis, so as to make them aware that the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a government organization, was sponsoring company unions. They also sent a copy of the various letters to the IU's office in Camden. As might be expected, the national's leadership told the local that while they certainly agreed against foremen holding AFL membership, protocol held that contacts with the CIO must go through their office. Besides, Lewis and the CIO could not be expected to handle every local's problem anyway, and to contact them directly discredited the local and the national union. [Letter, Raphael, Secretary, to van Gelder, October 1937, enclosing letter from IUMSWA, to Commandant, September 1937; Notice, Quartermen and Leadingmen Association, Navy Yard, NY; Letter, Rapheal, to Ralph Hetzel, Secretary to the Chairman, CIO, DC, October 1937. Letter, van Gelder, to Raphael, October 1937. Archives, IUMSWA; U. MD.]
The local's independent attitude may in part be attributed in part to overzealousness, but in large part as the Local's correspondence shows, it was in reaction to what they perceived as neglect by the IU of their problems. In October 1937, Raphael, writing for the Local, criticized the lack of time that IUMSWA organizer Purkis had spent on the navy yard. Since the local's chartering on 12 May he had come by only twice, leaving them with a local whose elected officers “in most cases were total strangers to each other.” The lack of aid in setting up the organization of the local had given the local's treasurer the opportunity to make off with some of their money, although once confronted he claimed he would make good on the funds. The local thought the CIO had a “colossal nerve” to charter a local with apparently no assistance other than to sell them stamps [for dues books], papers and other supplies, and they would make their displeasure known to John Lewis. The local's leadership was not united, though. Independently of this letter, and in secret, Raphael wrote a personal letter to van Gelder to say that as he was the secretary he had to write the letter, but that he was personally opposed to copying Lewis on their internal business. But they did desperately need help and none was forthcoming from Purkis. He hoped that a diplomatic way out of this situation could be arranged. [Letter, Raphael, Secretary, to van Gelder, October 1937; [personal] Letter, Raphael, to van Gelder, October 1937; Archives, IUMSWA.]
Thomas Curry, the local's president, added his thoughts in a letter to the IU, saying that Purkis should resolve the embezzlement problem. The local had started up on a “pay as you go method” and it had since realized it needed to bond those of their officers who handled money. On top of this, having the union demanding that the local pay its bill in full [for the supplies] was a real “sock to the jaw.” The IU should appreciate that the local owed its existence to the dedication of just six to seven men who had been forced to largely go it alone as Purkis claimed that his work with other locals in the region kept him too busy to come by. Unlike the private shipyards, the AFL unions were entrenched in the navy yards; they, local 21, were “holding their own” and no more. [Letter, Thomas Curry, President, Local 21, to van Gelder, October 1937; Archives, IUMSWA.]
There was not much the IU could do. The union was organizing faster than its revenues allowed and it borrowed money from the CIO from time to time to keep afloat. Purkis and the handful of other national organizers were hard put to keep on top of their duties, and the private yards with their ability to return a contract presented a more tempting target than did the navy yards. And in truth, the navy yard locals had produced little to date to attract the IU. Whose fault this was is another question. Early correspondence between Local 21 and the national office shows that in approximately the first three months or so of its existence the local brought in about 200 members. By July 1938, ten months later, Local 21, based on its dues payments, had a monthly average of 134 members, a small fraction of the 6800 employees then at work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. [Mergen, “History of the IUMSWA,” ; Letter, Pres. John Green, to Local 21, Brooklyn, August 1937; Letter, Philip van Gelder, to Secretary, Local 21, September 1937; Letter, van Gelder, to Local 21, IUMSWA, July 1938; Archives, IUMSWA.]
By May 1938 the national had shut down the navy yard joint council. Local 21's leaders, angry over this asked to meet with the union to discuss future plans. Once again, Raphael sent a personal letter to van Gelder saying he had sent this letter under protest and he urged the Secretary to come to their meeting in June, for the local was bitterly split and some were even suggesting secession. Perhaps, Raphael thought, a takeover of the local might be needed. [Letter, Raphael, Secretary, to John Green, May 1938; [personal] Letter, Raphael, to van Gelder, Green, May 1938; Archives, IUMSWA.]
The union leadership attempted to meet the navy yard locals' needs by calling for a conference at Camden in June 1938 of the East Coast locals in order to develop a two-and-one-half-month plan for organizing, and by assigning an organizer, selected by the locals, to the government yards. But a few weeks later the Brooklyn and Philadelphia locals sent a revised plan to the national office, requesting that if the national office disagreed with it, then they should refer the matter to the international office in Washington. Annoyed, the union leadership canceled the organizing plan just drawn up and informed the locals that the so-called “international” office was a legislative affairs office, subordinate to the Camden office. [Letter, Green, to Raphael, June 1938; Letter, Raphael, Secretary, to President Green, July 1938; Letter, fvan Gelder, to Raphael, July 1938; All in Archives, IUMSWA.]
Relations between the national and the navy yard locals quickly deteriorated. In early July 1938 van Gelder passed on a rumor to Raphael that the Philadelphia local was about to bolt to the UFW and that the Brooklyn loyalists should be on their guard. In mid-August, Raphael notified van Gelder that at the next local meeting they would vote on a motion to disband, although not until October 1. IU president John Green secretly instructed Raphael to take possession of all monies, paraphernalia, and the charter in case the vote was successful. The motion did indeed pass, on 18 August, but the vote, 17-10, would suggest that the whole affair was something of a tempest in the Yard teapot. As ordered, Raphael appointed a provisionary committee of himself and two others and except for the bank book took possession of the Local's files and paraphernalia and announced that the Local would continue at a new location as soon as one could be found. In his report to Green, Raphael said the hall was “packed” with machinists he had not seen before, under the control of the steward Long and another machinist, Cullen, and this made the voting illegal. However, without a bank account they needed a loan from the union to continue in the short term. [Letter, von Gelder, to Raphael, July 1938; Letter, Green, to Raphael, August 1938; postcard, Raphael, to van Gelder, August 1938; postal telegraph, Raphael, to van Gelder, 18 August 1938; Letter, Raphael, to Green, August 1938; Archives, IUMSWA.]
The secessionists explained their side of the story in a letter to Green. They had numerous grievances. The union had not created a navy yards director and had abandoned its organizing plan for the navy yards. They had a copy of a letter that Green had sent in March to John Brophy, a top CIO leader, saying that he thought the navy yards a slow investment and that other targets were better worth the time and effort. And now they had discovered that they had a spy, Raphael, in their midst. They could only conclude that the national believed that once chartered, it was the local's duty to organize itself so that it could pay for itself. Curry, the ex-president, and the others felt that the IU had a responsibility to develop its locals for a longer period of time and to provide the services to which they were entitled. If they could not or would not do so, they should not have granted charters to the navy yards. They would contact Brophy about their future needs. [Letter, Thomas Curry, Wilson Long, John Healy, to John Green, August 1938; Archives, IUMSWA.]

Green denied that the secessionists had the power to dissolve the local and instead, he suspended Local 21's charter on 17 August 1938, rather than give the secessionists another six weeks to cause harm to the union. The IUMSWA would not give up its jurisdictional claims over the navy yards, and the remaining rump group quickly put out a leaflet to let Yard workers know that the IU was still alive in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But it was not for long. The rebels had taken the local's bank account with them and Raphael's group was broke. By the end of September 1938 Local 21 disappears from the IUMSWA archives. [Letter, Green, to Curry, et al., August 1938; Leaflet, from the Provisional Committee, IUMSWA, BNY Local 21, addressed to Dear Brothers, n.d.; archives, IUMSWA; Mergen, “History of the Industrial Union”; Letter, Raphael, to van Gelder, August 1938; Notice, from the Provisional Committee, Benjamin Raphael, president, n.d.; Letter, Raphael to van Gelder, September 1938; Archives, IUMSWA.]
It had lasted all of fifteen months. Local 21's problems do not appear unique, for by the summer of 1938 all mention of navy yard locals vanishes from the Shipyard Worker without any explanation.

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