RED "PHANTOM" FLEET SAILS UNDER PANAMA FLAG; BOYCOTT WAR LOOMS
BEICHMAN, ARNOLD
RED "PHANTOM" FLEET SAILS UNDER PANAMA FLAG; BOYCOTT WAR LOOMS By ARNOLD BEICHMAN a LONG THE WORLD'S SHIPPING LANES, along little traversed seas and oceans, there roam today several hundred...
...One list showed that 844 ships (2400,000 gross lorn) were owned by 384 companies...
...Other* do a fin* coastwise business...
...Panama is represented only by an honorary Consul...
...even more relevantly, would be a major coup against the Soviet Union...
...It did a magnificent job against the Nazis, sabotaging transportation and supplying vital intelligence information to the Allied Nations...
...The vast majority of owners of ships under the Panamanian Hag seem to live outside that country, being represented in Panama by an agent...
...li there's a friend of his in the house, he ought to tell Senator Joe McCarthy...
...Almost the entire responsibility for securing compliance (with Panamanian laws) lies with the Panamanian Consular Service, and so far the number of career Consuls has been comparatively small...
...Soma of these ships are nominally owned by AiWcin...
...The issue has' now to be settled on a purely industrial basis...
...BOYCOTT WAR LOOMS By ARNOLD BEICHMAN a LONG THE WORLD'S SHIPPING LANES, along little traversed seas and oceans, there roam today several hundred merchant ships, big and little, filthy tramp steamers, dangerous to life and lading, which fly under a red and light blue flag with two stars...
...It is a known fact, substantiated by ITF executives, that these ships are manned by Communists of some rank in the Cominform hierarchy...
...The real dirty story has yet to be told—how U. S. shipowners seeking to beat the decent wage system, the decent working conditions won by our maritime unions, have transferred to Panama and are reaping exorbitant profit...
...2) there were major defects...
...Thp ITF never joined and its leader?, ancient combattants like J. R. Oldenbroek, now secretary - general of the new International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and Omer Bccu, ITF secretary-general, have been conducting their pro-democratic, antiStalinist war against the Panamanian registry fraud, with little results thus far...
...Orders had coma from she Comintern to get these CP sailors" aboard ship no matter what...
...It might even.help unerrj: loyed seamen get jobs...
...Wages and other conditions of employment on Panamanian ships an frequently below international or good' national standards...
...Date—sometime after April 17 when the ITF's Seafarers section meets in Amsterdam to take some action...
...this, of course, is duo to the Panamanian scandal but Iota of it is...
...Panama's labor code has no regulations concerning crew accommodations, manning1 requirements, hours of work and overtime in sea transport, food on shipboard, inspection of seafarers' working conditions...
...The International Transportworkers' Federation, to which 5,500,000 workers belong,is an old hand at fighting totalitarianism...
...It's war on the waterfront and democratic seamen and longshoremen are going to do battle against Soviet scabs...
...It is the flag of the Republic of Panana...
...There were nearly^JOO ships tor which no information as to former ownership was given...
...Whom they really belong to, what cargo they are carrying, where they're headed for and from what port they've come and when they'll ever be seen again and who's on the passenger list and where they get their orders, no one knows, except the Kremlin...
...THE ITF, COMstttlttO that ample opportunity has been provided for the Panamanian government to show whether it was capable of solving, a problem primarily of an industrial nature raised by the use of the country's flag by foreign shipowners, has now come to the conclusion that no useful purpose ean be served by relying on that country's intervention...
...The democratic international labor movement has been alerted to the imminent boycott against these phantoms of the sea...
...The cold war is hotting up...
...This is the fleet of the scabs and the hacks, the businessmen lusting after profits and the Communists dedicated to sedition, which is being fought on on the docks and the wharves, with little or no help from any democratic government, by the International Transportworkers' Federation...
...It is under this gaudy banner with its four red-blue-white rectangles thai the Soviet Union has been able to penetrate deeply and vitally into the world's merchant mar ne, to re-establish its quondam famed courier service into every port of the world, to caplure quietly and without » blow ?.n important chunk of the world's merchant marina, and to toaa out of joba thousands of seamen from Hamburg to New York, from Marseilles to San Francisco...
...3) they failed to comply with Lloyd's rules for registry...
...A special committee set up by the International Labor Organization has done a first-hand investigation of conditions aboard these Panamanian ships...
...To illustrate what this cabal means— a few months ago the democratic maritime unions in Italy were negotiating with Italian shipowners operating under the Pasta manias* flag Right In the ¦ ¦ 1» w »"^^^^~^^^"^swss^L.ssssssssysjssw . -WTW^SJWWW . ^ middle, the shipowners suddenly signed with an Italian CP-controlled seamen's union—at 50 percent tetf u>«0«i...
...The committee's erpert visited ships in ports all over England, Western Europe, North Africa and the U. S. Tha committee's list showed there were 740 Panamanian ships with a .otai 3.22S.OO0 gross tonnage...
...Of the 644, only 423 could be traced and the date of construction checked in Lloyd's Register...
...These are phantom ships...
...Somebody ought to tell a lean and headline-hungry Senator or Representative that here indeed is a scandal which, if investigated, would reap a fat, juicy .ecture tour tor the probing Congressman and...
...Franch, Italian, Swias firms which make • nice profit dealing wish Soviet dummy companies...
...Yet it managed to maintain its freedom from the Stalinist World Federation of Trade Unions when several free trade union organizations, deluded into believing that heroism at Stalinprad meant penance at Canossa, happily joined with the Soviet slave labor organizations...
...Says the ITF commenting on the ILO's investigation: "Apparently, the situation of Pas*, a ma with regard to it* ¦osrohsnl marine la peculiar and exceptional, since Use vast majority of tha ships which constitute its fleet do not go to Panama for registration, nor do they normally trade to and from pots In that country > "Consequently, there Is no opportunity for the port Inspectorate or any other authority in Panama to inspect a vessel on registration or at intervals thereafter, or to bo satisfied as to conditions on board ships of Panamanian registration...
...Next step--a boycott against owners of ships flying the Panamanian flag...
...Not all of...
...In a very large number of ports...
...It's going to mean that when one of these ships hits an ITFbacked port, there will be a problem of unloading...
...By way of another illustration, the latest NMU figures show N percent unemployment among the membership...
...On virtually every ship of Panamanian ragliiry, there is a commissar, one at several, who runs the crew, tome of these ships are directly under Soviet control and make their run from Polish ports around the Channel and through Gibraltar to Bulgarian porta loaded to the gunnels with munitions...
...ITF officials reasonably suspect that there are a good number of steamers which just fly the Panamanian flag and haven't even bothered to^egister with the government...
...You don't use trains because there aren't enough freight ears to go •found far such hug* loads...
...These quasi-piratical barks are, they believe, Soviet owned and controlled...
...That's the last ITF manifesto, a signal that war on the waterfront against the hacks and scabs is to begin after tWo'years of waiting...
...THE COMMITTEE FOUND that in some cases ships listed in the Panama registry were not up to Lloyd's register lassificBtion standards because (1) equipment was deficient...
...When the boycott comes —and it should with no further delay regardless of governmental pressure — it will be led here in America by the maritime organizations spearheaded by the Seafarers' International Union (AFL) and the National Maritime Union (CIO) against industrial and communist reaction...
...These phantom ships, whose comings and goings are unannounced, whose radio operators use a strange code, which sail from dark to dark, fly a pennant which has come to have the same meaning as the Skull and crossbones, the hammer and the sickle...
Vol. 33 • April 1950 • No. 15
