Even as these developments began to break out, on the morning of August 8, the National Longshoremen's Board, O. K. Cushing presiding, opened formal arbitration hearings on the disputed issues in the longshore strike. On October 12, after some two months of hearings in the four major ports, scores of witnesses, thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits, it handed down its award. Its formula for governing labor relations on the docks opened new per- spectives for the longshoremen and their employers, even while attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. It fell short of the longshoremen's pre-strike demands, as it did of the employers' propos- als. It borrowed generously from earlier unsuccessful attempts to write an agreement and from the innumerable suggestions and proposals that had been bruited about. Its final prescription, though, was of its own compounding. It proposed the machinery for a working relationship, but it also planted contradictions that could-and did-give rise to seemingly interminable disputes.

On what had been the most bitterly contested issue, the award called for jointly operated hiring halls in each of the major ports. Employers originally had insisted on controlling the halls; the ILA had insisted on union control. The board cut the knot by requiring joint control, but allowing the union to select the job dispatcher, who would be required to dispatch all longshoremen "without favoritism or discrimination, regardless of union or non-union mem- bership." (Ironically, this particular proposal had first been publicly suggested by the ILA's totally discredited national president, Joe Ryan.)