1 - American Memory

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It would free this isolated island community from the continuing threat of a
devastating cutting of its lifeline.
It would have the further advantage of giving this proposal a laboratory test
to see how it works and what administrative problems would be involved if
legisaltion providing for partial operation in struck transportation industries
were enacted for the country as a whole. After all, the main objection to lim-
ited partial operation of an industry during an emergency strike Is that the
administration would be too difficult. This would provide the country with a
laboratory or test tube experience with respect to the workability of such a
procedure.
One of the administrative problems of partial operations would be proper
rate setting since unit costs tend to skyrocket when an industry is operating at
only a small fraction of capacity.
Since the key to the partial operations proposal is that operations must be
confined to a small segment of the industry, the primary question is: What
fraction of the airline industry, the longshore industry, or the maritime in-
dustry would be involved if Hawaii were in effect exempted from the strike
through this partial operation procedure? As we shall see, the answer is such
a tiny fraction that it would in no way alter the course of the negotiations.
Airlines.—The ten U.S. trunk carriers operate 1,7.T6 aircraft. Of the eight trunk
carriers serving Hawaii, current schedules call for 41 round trips per day from
the Mainland U.S. to Hawaii. One aircraft can make at least one round trip each
day. These 41 aircraft would constitute less than 2% percent of the fleet.
West Coast Longshore.—-In the course of normal operation in the West Coast
ports, only 3 perent of the total longshore hours worked are devoted to handling
commodities bound to or from Hawaii. Or. out of the current normal work force
of nearly 11,000, only about 300 men would be involved.
West Coast Maritime.—Of the man-days worked by sea-going iiersonnel on
U.S. flagships moving out of West Coast ports, only 7.3 perent are worked on
ships in the Hawaii trade. This ranges from a low of 5.4 percent of staff ofHcers'
man-days to a high of 10 percent of engineers' man-days.
East and Gulf Coast Longshore and Maritime.—We have not been able to ob-
tain figures for the East and Gulf Coasts that are comparable to the above fig-
ures for the West Coast. However, for one sample year for which data are avail-
able (1962) only 2.8 percent of all domestic dry cargo moving in or out of East
Coast and Gulf ports was destined to or arriving from Hawaii. This 2.8 percent
figure Is not comparable to our 7 percent figure for West Coast maritime because
It Is the fraction of domestic oceanborne cargo—not total cargo carried in
American flagships. A figure comparable to our West Coast one would probably
be less than 2 percent. Based on West Coast ratios of maritime to longshore de-
voted to the Hawaiian trade (7 percent maritime to 3 percent longshore), a
comparable figure for the fraction of longshore man-hours that are devoted to
the Hawaii trade in the Bast and Gulf ports would probably be less than 1
percent.
In our opinion, keeping approximately 2% percent of the airlines flying in the
event of a national strike of trunk carriers, or 3 percent of the longshoremen
working In the event of a West Coast dock strike or less than 1 percent in the
event of an East Coast or Gulf dock strike, or some 7 percent of the West Coast
maritime workers on the job in the event of a West Coast maritime strike, or 2
percent in the event of an East Coast or Gulf maritime strike, would not in any
sense remove from either the union or the companies involved any economic
pressures to continue to bargain and to try to reach a settlement. The issue,
dearly, is de minimis.
It is obvious that in this discussion no mention has been made of the problems
Hawaii would face if her own docks were closed by a labor dispute. An integral
part of this proposal would have to be a provision such as is contained in the
Fong bill (S. 640) that would make this proposal applicable if Hawaii is deprived
of essential transportation services, regardless of the locale of the disruption.
Our conclusion therefore is that all interested parties should join hands and
work diligently to persuade the Congress to enact legislation which would pro-
vide for partial operation of the docks, the maritime industry, and the trunk air
carriers serving Hawaii In the event of a strike. Tills partial operation would
consist of maintaining normal service between Hawaii and the Mainland U.S.
This spedal legislation for Hawaii's problems would be in no way incompatible
with other, broader legislation (Proposal B above) In the emergency labor dls-