Joint Strike

For 15 years coal miners and coal operators got into bitter arguments which often drifted into bitter strikes whenever a wage contract expired. Last week with a contract due to expire in a fortnight, miners and operators had little argument, agreed amicably. This was in itself a milestone in U. S. labor relations. The fact that their mutual agreement was an agreement to have a strike did not lessen the importance of the innovation.

When President John Llewellyn Lewis of the United Mine Workers was younger he fought many a bitter battle with the operators. At the end of the great strike of 1922 he won a great victory over the soft-coal mineowners, only to find later that, like the victorious Allies of 1918, he had lost more than he had won. For the scale of wages he imposed after the strike ruined that portion of the coal industry that was subject to them and the ruin of the industry ruined the union almost beyond repair.

The coming of the late NRA gave United Mine Workers new life. Meantime Mr. Lewis has grown older and wiser and, because of the ineffectiveness of A. F. of L.'s William Green, has become Labor's leading statesman. No longer does he fight the operators except for calculated advantage. Last week, as he issued orders for a strike of 450,000 coal miners on June 17, he said:

"Every miner wants a new agreement. All that a miner has is his pay check. Failure to make a contract will mean that he no longer would have that income."

This sweet reasonableness was matched by most of the operators. For both sides had learned from NRA that much more was to be got out of the public than could be got out of each other. The operators had seen that if they could keep the price of coal high enough they could pay Mr. Lewis' union workers all that he asked. And Mr. Lewis had seen that if the badly overexpanded coal industry could charge high prices, Labor could demand and get a slice of the profits. Only trouble was that from the standpoint of maintaining coal prices, the Soft Coal Code went to pieces some six months ago. Three weeks ago meeting in Washington miners and operators amicably agreed that: "the operators are in no position to make definite commitments for wages, hours and conditions of employment."

Fortnight ago miners and operators met for a final conference in Washington. Just an hour before they assembled Chief Justice Hughes began to read the Supreme Court's sentence of death on NRA. But already miners and operators alike had begun to seek a new savior. They had picked the bill of Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph F. Guffey to declare bituminous coal a public utility; to set up a Federal Commission to allot coal production; to establish 21 regional marketing agreements to maintain minimum prices, wage and hour schedules for labor; to appropriate $300,000,000 to do these things and to buy up submarginal coal lands; to impose a tax of 3-c- to 9-c- a ton on coal to pay for it all.

Last week at NRA's deathbed Mr. Lewis and the operators agreed that this private NRA-AAA for soft coal was an easy way out for them all. Only objectors were Southern coal operators, traditionally nonunion, low. price sellers who were always dissatisfied with their treatment under NRA. They wanted to continue negotiations to avoid a strike. Last week Mr. Lewis and the Northern operators, who want price-fixing, ganged up. They outvoted the Southerners, 44-to-9, to suspend all negotiations, i.e. have a strike June 17. By this means they figured Congress would be bludgeoned into passing the Guffey bill. A committee of operators finally got busy revising the bill.

Black and White

Newly elected president of White Motor Co. in Cleveland is Robert F. Black. Fortnight ago President Black's 2,500 White workmen went on strike. Prime issue: seniority rights. Promptly Mr. Black shut the White plant, published an advertisement complimenting the strikers on "the peaceful way in which they laid down their tools." Then seeing the strike pickets idle, he bought baseballs, gloves, bats so that they could play ball in a vacant lot. For those who did not play ball he rented a nearby bowling alley. Meanwhile the strikers got out White brooms, White rubbish cans, kept the sidewalks spick & span.

Last week, before the bowling alley could be put in use, the strike had been settled by polite compromise.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.