The Soda Pop War

In the midst of the new U.S. wave of strikes, United Auto Workers' President R. J. Thomas spoke harsh words to the thousands of union men who have flouted their union leaders:

"Public opinion has become inflamed against our union. . . . Our union cannot survive if the nation and our soldiers believe that we are obstructing the war effort. Either we set our house in order at once, cease all wildcat strikes, or we face an attack no union can withstand.

"We must restrain ourselves and our hotheaded brothers today. If we do not, there will be no union after the war. Restrictive legislation, worse than anything on the books, will be enacted."

These words, heard by all U.S. labor, had particular pertinence to burly Rolland Jay Thomas' own union. U.A.W., largest union in the U.S. and at times the most ungovernable, was halving wildcat trouble again last week. Seven U.A.W.-organized Chrysler plants (11,700 employes) stopped making guns, plane and truck parts. Basis of the dispute: whether A.F. of L. or C.I.O. truckmen should deliver soda pop to the plants. Unioneer Thomas promptly ousted 15 officers of a U.A.W. local for participating in the "soda pop war," instructed his men to ignore picketlines.

Detroit had need of such toughness. It was the heartland of a new flurry of strikes which extended from the Pacific Northwest lumber industry to a toolmakers' plant in Rhode Island. Detroit itself was almost without bread as the result of a walkout of 1 ,000 bakery drivers. In nearby Saginaw, Mich., 2,800 workers were out in three Chevrolet plants, as a result of a fight over a no-smoking rule. Usually mild Charles Erwin Wilson, president of vast General Motors, said Detroit was approaching "industrial anarchy."

Lips No, Eyes Yes. Others beside R. J. Thomas were worried about the black eye labor was getting from such strike flare-ups. In San Francisco, Harry Bridges, who made a career out of striking until Russia got into the war, and has made a career out of not striking since, offered to pledge his warehousemen's union to no strikes even after war's end.

No other union man went so far. But even in unions involved in strikes, leaders were careful to renew lip service to their "no strike" pledge, although their eyes sometimes gave the go-ahead wink to strikers. The 30.000 men (both A.F. of L. and C.I.O.) who shut down the Pacific Northwest's big lumber industry were not officially striking; they cynically called it "going fishing." And in one of the most costly strikes in the nation, a union took peculiar pride in the fact that its strike was "legal." Youthful (26) Chester Joseph Adamczyck put up posters showing that his 1,900 strikers at Parke, Davis & Co.'s two Detroit plants had complied with the Smith-Connally Act.* But their action halted production of penicillin and blood plasma:

Real or Fancied. All the outbreaks of labor trouble had this obvious fact in common: striking men & women believed their own grievances, real or fancied, more important than continued production. Yet the strike-bound plants were a catalogue of war items: aviation gasoline in St. Louis; guns, plane and truck parts in Detroit; airplane motor parts in Long Island City; steel for tank carriers in Granite City, Ill. And some strikes were for provokingly petty reasons. Sample: 2,000 machinists walked out in Providence, R.I., because a woman had been hired for a man's job.

Union men could say that the number on strike (some 41,000 at week's end) was statistically small in total U.S. man-hours; but this did not show why there should be wartime strikes at all.

*Under the muddled Smith-Connally Act, wartime strikes are legitimate if the union gives 30 days notice. Penalties can be invoked only if the Government seizes the plant.

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