Donald Up

U. S. Senators and candidates for the Senate last week got a letter from A.F. of L. President William Green. Subject: NLRB's Donald Wakefield Smith. Incumbents were informed that A.F. of L. opposes the reappointment of Mr. Smith to the Labor Board. Candidates were pointedly asked to state their positions on the matter before election day. First to respond was New York's John Lord O'Brian, Republican candidate for the Senate, who promised to vote against Donald Wakefield Smith. Said Candidate O'Brian: "Members of every board exercising discretionary or judicial powers should be wholly unbiased, impartial, and independent of outside influence. . . ."

In prominence and legal stature. Donald Wakefield Smith is No. 3 on the three-man Board. At the moment he is No. 1 NLRBeast to the A.F. of L. because the Federation does not like the way he reads the Wagner Act. President Roosevelt has reappointed him over the specific objection of William Green, but he must be reconfirmed by the Senate when it meets. (Chairman J. Warren Madden has two years to serve. Member Edwin Seymour Smith, whom the A.F. of L. dislikes most of all, has three years to go.)

A.F. of L. v. Donald Smith is a facet of Craft v. Industrial unionism. Messrs. Smith & Smith (usually but not always concurring with Chairman Madden) have consistently ruled that in plants where unions have been customarily organized or conducted on an all-inclusive industrial basis, crafts may not chisel out skilled segments and bargain apart from the whole. As the principal sufferer from this literal application of the Wagner Act, A.F. of L. is doing all it can to halt the practice. By no means certain that it can defeat Donald Smith's confirmation, A.F. of L. has excellent precedent for bringing corrective pressure. Franklin Roosevelt did as much to the U. S. Supreme Court, won his point although his Court plan lost.

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