John Lewis Moves Again

"If I had a yellow dog I'd hate to have his standard of living fixed by this man Davis and the men who do his dirty work for him. . . . [Davis is] a rapacious, predatory Park Avenue lawyer on the loose in Washington against the American worker."

Thus, on recent occasions, John L. Lewis has bludgeoned Chairman William Hammett Davis and his War Labor Board members. The rest of the time Lewis has contemptuously refused to recognize WLB's existence.

Last week Lewis wrote the "predatory Park Avenue lawyer" a letter. It began "The Honorable William H. Davis, Dear Sir" and it ended "Yours respectfully." In between, John Lewis cooed his willingness to appear before the Board at any time it named.

John Is Nimble. Day before he wrote the letter, John Lewis had signed a contract with the Illinois operators which gives about 30,000 miners portal-to-portal pay, an overall increase of three dollars a day (from $45.50 for a five-day week to $63.50 for a six-day week). The increase was worked out by a maze of formulas TIME, August 2, 1943 which does not touch the basic hourly rate and therefore permits Lewis to argue that the contract does not violate the Little Steel formula.

WLB, which trusts no one named John L. Lewis, promptly, warily set the hearing which will search out any basic wage increase lurking in the maze.

John Is Quick. Lewis' recognition of the Board was a strategic retreat, not a surrender. Immediately after the Illinois contract was signed, Lewis' stooges, the policy committee of the United Mine Workers, called upon all other operators to settle on the same terms. The Appalachian owners answered with a blistering attack on WLB. How could they respect the Board, they stormed, if it did not enforce its directive ordering Lewis to sign a contract immediately and without portal-to-portal provisions?

John Jumps Over. Settlement of the coal situation on the Illinois terms would give Lewis a thumping victory, not only for his miners but also against WLB. The Little Steel formula might continue to stand as a fac,ade of Administration anti-inflation policy, but the real working mechanism would be the Illinois formula, which puts more money in the pockets of the workers without raising their hourly rate. (Already, in Chicago, packinghouse workers are preparing to ask slaughterhouse portal-to-portal pay, for time spent putting on work clothes and sharpening knives in the morning; for time spent washing off blood in company showers in the evening.) Success of the Illinois formula would take Lewis a long way in his comeback, a long way toward becoming again the leader of all disgruntled labor in the U.S.

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