First Blood

Last week, as it has to most businesses, the first strike came to a major U.S. bank, the Brooklyn Trust Co. What touched it off was the discharge of three employees who were members of C.I.O.'s left-wing Financial Employees Guild, which has been trying to organize the bank. (The union claimed that 65% of the employees got $35 a week or less, and even had to buy their own pencils.) As a starter, the union massed about 150 pickets--many from other unions--outside the bank's main office. A number of them got their heads rapped by patrolmen "keeping the entrance free," and were jailed.

Next day the union tried a novel picketing technique. Like many banks, the Brooklyn Trust's doors are adorned by brass handrails. Three women pickets--not bank employees--handcuffed themselves together and linked themselves as a human chain to the door rails, thus blocking the entrance. It took a patrolman with a hacksaw to cut the girls loose. At week's end, the bank said some 50 out of 800 employees were on strike and banking was going on as usual.

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