Fordism v. Unionism

Most spectacular case before the overworked National Labor Relations Board at the moment is Ford Motor Co., charged with violating Labor's Magna Carta, the Wagner Act. Filed after the "Battle of the Overpass" when Richard Frankensteen and other United Automobile Workers were set upon and beaten up as they attempted to distribute union literature at the gate of Ford's vast River Rouge plant (TIME, June 7). the Labor Board's complaint accuses Henry Ford of virtually every unfair labor practice covered by the law. The answer to the complaint was signed not by President Edsel Ford or any other officer of the company but by Harry H. Bennett, personnel director and head of the Ford police, better known as "Ford service men." Though the Ford answer denied both the charges and the Labor Board's jurisdiction over workers employed in local manufacture--thus laying the foundation for a probable Supreme Court challenge--the Labor Board's case was largely concerned with the activity of Harry Bennett's service men, a number of whom have been indicted for their work at the overpass.

Few weeks ago U. A. W. announced another attempt to pass out literature at the Rouge plant but the plan was suddenly abandoned. Newshawks and photographers had risen at dawn to be on hand. When nothing happened Harry Bennett invited them in for breakfast in the Administration Building, where Ford executives lunch each day. Henry Ford had apparently decided he needed the Press on his side.* After the Battle of the Overpass, Mr. Bennett's service men had ripped notebooks from reporters' hands, confiscated films, chased one photographer for five miles until he took refuge in a police station. No less than ten of the 30 guests at Mr. Bennett's breakfast had subpoenas to testify against Ford at the Labor Board hearings.

Unsoftened by Mr. Bennett's hospitality the reporters and cameramen proved the Labor Board's best witnesses. Opening his hearings in Detroit three weeks ago, the Labor Board trial examiner, John T. Lindsay, confined the early sessions to the Battle of the Overpass, though Louis J. Colombo, the Ford lawyer, protested that that was a matter for local officials, not the Labor Board. Mr. Colombo, senior partner of Detroit's Colombo, Colombo & Colombo, is often compared in voice, ability and courtroom manner to another famed lawyer of Italian extraction, Manhattan's Ferdinand Pecora. During the hearings Lawyer Colombo was irritated by the fact the witness frequently testified that some Ford service men looked like Italian gangsters. "Without saying anything derogatory of the Italian race, what term would you apply to some of the men you saw around Gate No. 4 of the Ford plant that day?" asked a sly Labor Board lawyer. The witness, a photographer named Arnold Freeman, promptly replied: "Dago hoodlums."

Lawyer Colombo tried to get back at the photographer by showing that he belonged to the Newspaper Guild, asked if he were a communist. U. A. W.'s Lawyer Maurice Sugar ended that line of questioning by having the witness testify that he worked for the Detroit Times, a Hearst-paper.

Then the Labor Board started to draw from a long procession of onetime Ford employes their story of Fordism v. Unionism. In as well as out of the River Rouge plant, Mr. Bennett's service men were the villains. They could be spotted, said the witness, by their broken noses, cauliflower ears and the fact that they never worked, only watched. One of their jobs was to enforce Ford's rigid rule against talking on the job. Another was to see that the men maintained their pace. Witness after witness told how he had been suddenly taken from an assembly line by two service men, marched off for his pay and escorted to the gate, with no explanation except his own--that he just joined the U. A. W., refused to join the Brotherhood of Ford Employes or refused to sign a vote of "complete confidence in the policies of Henry Ford."

Fred Nygard, an experienced crane operator, related how he joined the union last April. A few days later he took two application cards to work with him in his cap. While mopping his brow, the cards fluttered down 40 ft. from his crane to the floor. One he managed to retrieve but the other was picked up by a fellow worker. Five days later the foreman fired him, saying: "I guess you don't want to work here."

P: A by-play to this Federal hearing, nonetheless a significant feature of labor-law-employer relations, developed in Detroit last week when Common Pleas Judge Ralph W. Liddy ordered eight Ford "service" men held for trial for assault and battery during the Battle of the overpass. Included was Harry Bennett's subhead of the Ford service department Everett Moore. None sent to trial was Italian.

*Immediately after the Bennet breakfast, Henry Ford announced that while his minimum wage is $6 per day, the average for all Ford workers was $7.50 per day.

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