Conflict in Camden

Same hour, same day as the Democratic National Convention opened in Philadelphia last month, 9,000 members of the United Electrical and Radio Workers of America went on strike at RCA Manufacturing Co.'s plant at Camden, N. J. Official demands of this potent industrial union were a closed shop, abolition of RCA's company union, a 20% wage increase. Real objectives were recognition by RCA of the union as sole collective bargaining agency within the plant, the same working conditions accorded employes of the nearby Philco Radio and Television Corp. factory.

Unable to patch up the trouble with RCA was Chairman John L. Lewis of the Committee for Industrial Organization. Equally ineffectual was General Hugh S. Johnson, engaged by RCA as mediator. At first the strike was marked by nothing more violent than United Workers cheering pickets on with Sousa marches blared through a loudspeaker. RCA retaliated by playing raucous Victor records from a loudspeaker atop its plant. Music failed as a pacifier, however, when RCA began employing strikebreakers. Pickets jabbed girl employes with pins, hurled eggs filled with paint. From the factory non-strikers heaved back red pepper, hot metal, light bulbs loaded with ammonia.

Two weeks ago the first mass fighting occurred. Camden's five City Commissioners did nothing except order the RCA loudspeaker silenced because it disturbed them at City Hall five blocks away. Less irresolute, New Jersey's Supreme Court Justice Frank T. Lloyd called attention of the Grand Jury to a "serious situation." Police began to use their clubs.

Last week the Camden lid blew off to make real news. In its "final statement," RCA demanded that the strike cease, refused to recognize John Lewis' United Workers as the sole bargaining agency even if a Labor Relations Board poll should show it to represent a majority of RCA's plant employes. One afternoon last week a crowd of 3,000. including 1,000 Philco and N. Y. Shipbuilding Corp. sympathizers, went after RCA employes as they filed out of the plant. Bricks, stones and clubs flew freely in a two-hour pitched battle (see cuts). Next day another skirmish of equal fury took place. Sitting as a committing magistrate, Justice Lloyd held 121 strikers and sympathizers in the prohibitive bail of $615,500. Public sympathy, at first with RCA, veered to the strikers.

This week the National Labor Relations Board cited RCA for fostering and assisting its Employes Committee in violation of company union regulations of the National Labor Relations Act. called a hearing to decide the collective bargaining agency for workers.

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