More and Better Strikes

A score of workers of General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. went to Manhattan last week to see an educational film. From both companies the United Electrical & Rad101 Workers' Union is about to demand concessions. The film was taken by strikers inside the Exide Battery plant in Philadelphia during a six-week sit-down early this year. It showed strikers preparing food, barbering each other, giving musical entertainments, sweeping and cleaning, doing setting-up exercises. Purpose of the showing was to teach prospective strikers the most up-to-date and improved sit-down technique.

Only major flaw in the Electrical Workers' film was that it was already outdated.

To see really up-to-date sit-down technique the incipient strikers should have been shipped last week to Detroit to the plants of Motormaker Walter P. Chrysler.

Following the rejection by Chrysler Corp.

of the United Automobile Workers' de mand for recognition as sole bargaining agent for all Chrysler employes, Richard T. Frankensteen, chief automobile union organizer in Detroit, telephoned a code phrase "My hand is up" to his lieutenants in the factories and within two hours all Chrysler plants in Detroit were shut tight (TIME, March 15).

In four important respects Chrysler's labor troubles differed from the General Motors situation two months earlier, to wit: 1) Chrysler's negotiations began before the sitdown.

2) Chrysler was no scab-shop. Union leaders had said during the General Motors strike that Chrysler had been the most friendly toward the union of the "Big Three" motor makers.

3) The union claimed (and Chrysler did not try to refute it) the support of a substantial majority of the company workers, which it had not claimed at General Motors. Specifically the union asserted that in January the workers had elected 103 union men of 120 chosen as representatives on employe shop councils.

4) Several shop councils having voted appreciation of Chrysler's wage raise a month ago, the union made no wage or hour demands as it did from G. M. The one big issue was "sole recognition."

As soon as the sit-down began the "improved sit-down technique" became evident. Strikers escorted non-union workers to the gates and firmly put them out. Company guards were ousted from the premises. At the end of the first day the greater part of the strikers were sent home so as to simplify the feeding problem. About 7,500 men remained in the shops, the greatest number, 2,400, in the big Dodge plant which ordinarily employs 25,000. Meantime negotiations had been going on in the executive offices at the Highland Park plant. Day after the sit-down began, when K. T. Keller, president of the company, and Vice President Herman Weckler drove up to the offices, the gates were closed and pickets kept them from entering. They retired to downtown Detroit. When Adolph Germer, C.I.O. representative, and Organizer Frankensteen arrived at the Chrysler plant for scheduled negotiations they telephoned downtown to Mr. Weckler to say it was all a mistake. The company officers would be admitted to their plant offices if they came back.

Next day the Chrysler officials were passed through the picket lines to continue negotiations but they were not satisfied with this arrangement. They applied to Judge Allan Campbell for an injunction against the sit-downers, charging 70 union leaders, from John L. Lewis down to "John Doe, Richard Roe and Mary Roe," with conspiracy to seize company property. Specifically, B. Edwin Hutchinson, chairman of Chrysler's Finance Committee, declared that the passes given to his office force to enter the offices were unsatisfactory, that automobiles of executives were searched by pickets, that company badges of non-union employes had been taken by strikers, that other non-union men had been edged out of line at the cashiers' windows so that they could not draw their pay, that the entire office force of Plymouth Motor Corp., including its President Daniel Stonewall Eddins, had been thrown out of their offices during working hours.

In retaliation for the company's petition for an injunction, the union then carried its sit-down technique one step further, took full possession of the offices, refused to let officials enter at all and prevented the delivery or dispatch of company mail. Only thing the strikers did not seize was the company's officials themselves. These announced that they would attend to as terms." At least 500,000 Britons should now be rushed out as new farmers onto the Kingdom's land as a rearmament measure, according to Mr. Lloyd George last week, but Mr. Chamberlain's plan is to increase food imports, store war reserves of food in immense new British warehouses.

No match in debate for any of the better speakers in the House, the 68-year-old Chancellor of the Exchequer simply got to his feet and stubbornly told 74-year-old Mr. Lloyd George by implication to shut up and retire to the British has-beens' corner in these elegant, indirect and almost-insulting words: "My right honorable friend [Lloyd George] has found the secret foi perpetual youth, and therefore nobody expects him to play the part of an elder statesman! He has always advocated bold measures. He thinks I am a hard case, but he has not yet convinced me that the remedy he brings forward is the correct one." In suave English political life such words are a slap in the face, and friends of Mr. Chamberlain were in mounting fear last week lest he take the same hobnailed line as Prime Minister, an English job in which suavity is requisite.

Chief rival of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to succeed Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister is the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir Samuel Hoare, who last week scored heavy personal and political gains with a speech on naval and air defense which caught the warm approval of the House, recalled that Sir Samuel not many years ago was Secretary for Air and today is promoting close co-operation between these two fighting services, previously too often on quarrelsome terms.

The British Navy is in course of receiving $525,000,000 this year--more than the total of Army, Navy and Air Force expenditures in 1931, a normal post-War year--and Sir Samuel revealed that by the end of 1937 Britain will have under construction 148 warships, including 26 of the most formidable battle power and size: namely, five capital ships; four aircraft carriers; and 17 cruisers. Next the First Lord gave a cue to numerous M. P.'s who joined in echoing his keynote of pleasure that the U. S. seems about to start naval building at the same furious tempo as Britain. All hands approved more naval might for the two great Anglo-Saxon democracies and ebullient Winston Churchill crowed: "I find a strong sense of reassurance stealing over me!" For His Majesty's Loyal Opposition mild Laborite Albert V. Alexander, one-time First Lord, darkly acquiesced: "I agree that we have no cause to worry about the increase in the United States fleet if only we and the United States are to be considered. But isn't it true that for every ship the United States lays down because of the increased British program we may expect a similar provision to be made by the Japanese?" Echo was left to answer Mr. Alexander, and First Lord Sir Samuel delivered as the major portion of his speech a heavy-hitting reminder that the days in which members of His Majesty's Government used to wring their hands--as when Mr. Baldwin publicly voiced his wish that the bombing airplane had never been invented --are now over. Summoning the Empire not to "linger too morbidly on our own possible weaknesses," Sir Samuel cried: "The right strategy and tactics for the Navy, just as for the Air Force, are offensive rather than defensive!" Admittedly recruiting is Britain's toughest rearmament problem, because British tradition is against conscription, and be cause many a Briton, rather than enlist, thinks he prefers to sit at home drawing the British dole. War Secretary Duff Cooper is inclined to grouse and complain about this, but the Navy's First Lord confidently announced last week: "When the ships are built we shall have the men to man them!" Without directly explaining why he is so sure he will have plenty of British seamen when he wants them, Sir Samuel made a strong indirect recruitment plea by pointing out that, in case of an air raid, just about the safest place in the world is going to be inside the armor plate of a British warship with its anti-aircraft batteries spewing curtains of fire aloft and the British Royal Air Force battling to discourage enemy bombers.

Backing up this logical reason for en listing in the British Navy and strongly seconding Sir Samuel Hoare, Mr. Winston Churchill chimed in: "There seems to be one clear fact in the whole eight months of the Spanish Civil War, and that is that no warship has been seriously hurt at sea from the air. That is a very solemn fact.

The insurgent cruisers have been cruising off the coast of Spain for months on end within five minutes' flight of 100 or 150 Russian airplanes, and yet they have not been hurt or injured."

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