The Pen Is Mightier

The men were not working--but they looked as busy as beavers.

After reporting for work as usual one day last week, employees of Houston's Crown Central Petroleum Corp. refinery settled down to hours of writing and rewriting lists of "grievances" against the company. It was a new sit-down technique. Explained cocky Arthur Hajecate, secretary-treasurer of the Houston local of the C.I.O.'s Oil Workers International Union: there is a loophole in the Taft-Hartley Act which permits employees to compose their gripes on company time.

By day's end, the outburst of penmanship had brought the refinery to a virtual standstill and produced 1,200 grievances. Only one appeared legitimate; a worker complained that his section of the plant was not properly ventilated. Others urged that the refinery negotiator be dumped in the nearby Houston Ship Channel, that the company provide workers with an on-the-job burlesque show; a third said that he got his pants wet from dew on weeds outside the refinery. Protesting that the union was pulling an illegal version of the sit-down strike, Crown Petroleum closed down the entire refinery for safety reasons. Later, the company offered to resume operations and make some concessions to the union. The workers decided to grieve a while longer before letting the management know.

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