Management Walks Out

The more outsiders tried to bring them together, the farther apart General Motors arid the strikers of the United Automobile Workers Union strayed. Would fact-finding help? After four weeks of trying, the answer seemed to be no. Would it help for the President to announce that he considered ability to pay a "relevant" issue? The answer seemed to be positively no.

To the President's fact-finding panel went a company statement carefully drawn up by Lawyer Walter Gordon Merritt, long a thorn in labor's side.* His argument: 1) no fact-finding board could do more than guess at a company's ability to pay wages in the future; 2) ability to pay was not a proper standard anyway, since it could only result in forcing some industries or companies to accept "a super-wage" higher than its competitors were paying.

Said Lawyer Merritt: "The issue is not primarily one of wages as between General Motors and its employes. It is an issue of ideology and national policy which really belongs to Congress. . . .

"One big monopoly union, dealing with substantially all production in the industry, asserts as its future policy that it aims to settle the problems of wages, prices and profits for the entire industry around the bargaining table. ... [If this happens] our antitrust laws, which require competition and forbid collusive combinations between labor and management, must fall. . . ."

Broom & Boomerang. Neatly making use of some indiscreet remarks by the Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, Lawyer Merritt took another tack:

"The union declares that occasion might arise where it might be necessary for it to consider whether the company is 'paying the president too much money'--whether the directors 'who aren't doing anything might be getting too much money'--whether 'the engineers ought to be sweeping up the shop instead of designing their products'--whether 'the managerial personnel has gone to seed.' . . .

"To yield to such a demand would mean the end of free enterprise. . . . General Motors does not propose voluntarily to blaze a trail in this direction. If our system ... is to be abandoned, it must be by act of Congress."

Having thus stated management's demurrer to the Walter Reuther case, Lawyer Merritt and the entire G.M. delegation walked out, left the panel and the union to do what fact-finding they could on their own hook. (Chief Fact-Finder Lloyd K. Garrison, visibly angry, pointed out that his panel had not yet asked General Motors for any earnings information and was not even sure that it would.)

As always, Walter Reuther was quick to reply. As often, he sounded more hurt than angry. Said he: "The company ... is not arguing with the union, they are arguing with the panel and . . . with the President of the United States. ... If General Motors doesn't like his policy they will have an opportunity at the next election to elect someone that they do think reflects their kind of economics."

-After 1902's famed Danbury Hatters strike, Lawyer Merritt sued the A.F. of L. hatter's union under the antitrust laws, won the company a judgment of more than $200,000 against 191 union members.

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