WLB Crackdown

The strengthened, revitalized War Labor Board (TIME, Aug. 30) continued to crack down impartially on labor and management last week.

> Faced with a major strike, WLB moved swiftly to invoke its new authority to cripple a recalcitrant union. At the Johnsville, Pa. plant of Brewster Aeronautical Corp., 4,000 workers walked out. Reason; four plant guards, members of both Coast Guard Reserve and the C.I.O. Auto Workers Union, were arrested by the Coast Guard for failure to perform their duties.

WLB promptly ordered the "unconditional return" of all strikers. The Johnsville strikers did not obey. But when local U.A.W. leaders tried to spread the strike to Brewster plants at Long Island City, N.Y. and Newark, N.J., they found WLB's threat effective. Workers from the two Long Island City plants meeting in New York's Queensboro Arena, turned down an immediate strike call, voted instead to abide by the law calling for a 30-day cooling-off period. Next day, the Johnsville strikers went back, with nothing to show for their walkout except four days' lost production on Corsair fighter planes for the Navy.

> Feeling its oats, WLB landed another body blow on John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers. It flatly refused to approve a U.M.W. contract with Illinois coal operators, which would have given the miners $1.25 a day in "portal-to-portal" pay. Ruled WLB: this was obviously a hidden wage increase. To get portal-to-portal pay, John L. must now go to the courts.

> Most troublesome small-fry employer to defy WLB has been Brooklyn's Bernard Moran, owner of the Atlantic Basin Iron Works (TIME, July 26). For three months, tough, sullen Bernard Moran had stubbornly resisted WLB's order to sign a union security contract (maintenance-of-membership) with the C.I.O. Marine & Shipbuilding Workers Union. Last week, after a hearing at which doughy Bernard Moran breathed fire and brimstone, WLB ordered his yard seized by the Government.

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