Strikes

Well into its second month, a general strike continued last week to paralyze the Nash automobile plants at Kenosha and Racine, Wis. For the second time in a fortnight, differences between representatives of the 4,600 workers and their employers were patched up, only to be renewed again. Nash workers, their pay difficulties straightened out, again raised the issue that they could not go back to work until Seaman Body Corp. (manufacturers of Nash bodies) settled with its workers. In the Detroit area, a strike threatened by the Mechanics Educational Society (tool & die makers) was called. More than 3,000 tool & die men walked out of 100 small job shops which would not grant their demands for a 20% wage increase, 7-hr. day, 35-hr. week. Last autumn the tool & die makers crippled the entire automotive industry with their strike. But the efficacy of their new walk-out was minimized by the fact that their season's peak is past. As Detroit motor plants roared toward the close of a 400,000-car month, A. F. of L. leaders gnashed their teeth with the realization that their advantage over the employers was slipping. Soon their talk of an industry-wide walkout would lose its bite. Easy-going Dr. Leo Wolman's Automobile Labor Board, appointed by the President to settle the industry's collective bargaining problem, infuriated the labor organizers by giving them no pat decision to reject or accept. The Board, however, did begin a careful survey of the union status (company or A. F. of L.) of thousands of automobile workers to determine accurately the question of representational apportionment in individual motor plants. In disgust, Fisher Body employes in St. Louis chucked their A. F. of L. charter, decided to "go it alone." And some observers sensed in the Labor Board's refusal to be stampeded by A. F. of L. pressure a perceptible cooling of the Administration toward the organization, too. In Camden, N. J., two great strike meetings were held. The 2,900 men who had walked out of New York Shipbuilding Co.'s yards refused to go back unless their employers gave them a 25% raise and a closed shop guarantee. Until Campbell Soup Co. promised to abolish its company union, grant 1929 wage levels (30% to 40% higher than they were getting), 1,000 soupmakers pledged themselves to stay on strike. In Baltimore 2,300 airplane workers threatened to walk out of the Glenn L. Martin plant unless a 25% increase was promptly granted.

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