Businessmen and Strikes

After a long silence business last week spoke -- and spoke a surprising mouthful --about the big question of whether labor has a right to strike during the defense program. Loudest wranglers on the subject have been labor-baiting Congressmen, exploding spasmodically with anti-strike proposals. Typical was the bill proposed by Chairman Vinson, of the House Naval Affairs Committee, which would discourage unionism by prohibiting the closed shop in defense plants, clamp a "cooling-off" period on disputes.

Quite a different tone had the voice of business issuing from the Committee on Manufacture of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. In a report over which Chairman Clifford S. Anderson of the Norton Manufacturing Co. (grinding wheels) of Worcester, Mass., and 19 colleagues had pondered for a week, the committee announced:

"The National Chamber believes that anti-strike laws will prove ineffective and that they will deny fundamental rights to our citizens."

Said the committee's cool and temperate report: "Despite the occurrence of isolated instances of labor disagreements which appear to have received undue prominence in the press, there is every evidence of an increasing determination on the part of both management and workers to develop voluntary methods for the adjustment of labor difficulties and thus to prevent production stoppage."

If the Chamber adopts its committee's report, it will have reversed its traditional position, which has been violently opposed to New Deal labor legislation. At week's end, only one out of 6,500 corporation members had criticized the report.

Other less hopeful signs of management-labor relations:

> Most serious stoppage in defense-industry plants last week was at Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. in Milwaukee, where there has been friction for many years. Fortnight ago, C. I. O. United Auto Workers walked out, tied up an estimated $26,000,000 in defense orders (turbines, shafts, pumps, gun parts). At week's end, the workers were still out, demanding that the company grant a closed shop, higher wages, rehire 1,000 men laid off and pay for time lost in the strike.

> At International Harvester Co.'s Chicago plant, a strike of 6,500 C. I. O. employes delayed work on several million dollars' worth of Army tractors. Union leaders, charging that the company was holding up settlement by "endless conferences," demanded a 75-c--an-hour minimum wage rate for men; for women, 65-c-.

> A. F. of L.'s President William Green announced his intention of seeking a bargaining contract with Ford Motor Co., where C. I. O. has long fought for recognition.

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