Manifesto

Organized labor struck against the mobilization program last week. At a sullen, midnight meeting of the Wage Stabilization Board, outvoted, unable to get their demands, labor's three WSB delegates went into an elaborate huff and quit the board. By their drastic action, taken with apparent disregard for the consequences, labor's bosses brought half of the Administration's price-wage machinery to a standstill, confronted War Mobilizer Charles Wilson with a war in his own backyard, imperiled the nation's whole economy.

As they walked out, union bosses served the Administration with an angry manifesto: "Virtually the entire defense mobilization program has been entrusted to the hands of a few men recruited from Big Business, who believe they have a monopoly on experience, good ideas and patriotism . . . Let no one doubt that labor is willing to bear its share of sacrifice. But we cannot bear the whole load. We cannot be a party to any program so adverse to the interests of the plain people."

"A Cynical Hoax." Labor's manifesto made it plain that the argument over wage controls was only the climax of "a whole series of shocking developments which we find insupportable." Ever since mobilization began to take shape, labor's nose had been out of joint. The price program was "a cynical hoax"; the wage program was "inflexible, inequitable and unworkable"; the tax program bore down on the working man, favored corporations and the rich.

So argued the labor bosses. They had an accumulation of other resentments: the President's recent attack on the railway brotherhood chieftains; the fact that Labor Secretary Maurice Tobin, labor's great & good friend, had been denied a position of more influence. They were bitter over the fact that John L. Lewis had pried loose a 20% wage boost for his miners. But above all, the bosses of Big Labor resented being left out of the top policy-making jobs in the defense program, while bosses from Big Business run the show. Big Labor knows very well that a $140 billion mobilization program is bound to have far-reaching political and economic effects.

Labor, barred from strategic positions in a major production drive, was determined to reach for power before it was too late. Labor's bosses--A.F.L., C.I.O. and railway unions, gathered under a jerry-built roof called the United Labor Policy Committee--had picked the wage board as the arena for the showdown fight.

Under the Dove. Ironically, Cyrus Ching, Washington's hulking, pipe-smoking dove of peace, on leave from his Federal Mediator job, had to preside over the blowup. In his new, uneasy seat of chairman of WSB, Ching had announced the wage freeze, hastening to add that it was only temporary; some formula for thawing it out would soon be devised. His tripartite board had set to work. They were still working last week when Economic Stabilizer Eric Johnston ordered them to reach a decision by week's end.

The board's three industrial members (Reuben Robertson Jr., president of Champion Paper & Fibre Co.; J. Ward Keener, vice president of B. F. Goodrich; Henry Arthur, manager of commercial research at Swift & Co.) were for permitting an 8% rise over wages in effect on Jan. 15, 1950. Such fringe benefits as pensions and production raises would be included in the 8%. A firm cutoff in wage boosts had to be made somewhere, or the whole anti-inflation program would come unhinged. Ching and the other two public members (Clark Kerr and John Dunlop, both economics professors and veterans of Government mediation and fact-finding boards) succeeded in persuading the industrial members to agree to 10%. The industrial members even agreed to a promise that WSB would review wages again in the spring.

But the three labor members (Emil Rieve of the C.I.O. textile workers, Elmer Walker of the A.F.L. machinists, Harry Bates of the A.F.L. bricklayers) demanded a 12% ceiling--not including fringe benefits--and nothing less. The U.L.P.C., watching from a nearby headquarters, ordered its stalking horses on WSB to hold fast.

They held fast through a final night-time meeting until Ching put the matter to a vote. The vote was 6 to 3. The three defeated labor members burst from the meeting proclaiming: "We are withdrawing from the WSB."

This was the cue the U.L.P.C. awaited. The next day it issued its long, wrathful statement. Labor's manifesto served notice on Wilson and Harry Truman: grant organized labor more power--or else.

Neither by Wig-Wag nor Smoke. John L. Lewis, who loves nothing so much as an uproar, composed his face in a lugubrious cast. "All American workers," he said piously, are entitled to as big a raise as he had got for his miners. "To restrict American labor to a miserable 10% increase ... is an unwise, arbitrary action ... destructive . . . disrupting to the productive economy."

The U.L.P.C. and Mobilizer Wilson stared at each other across a no-man's land. What the manifesto's implied or else could mean was soon made apparent. Emil Rieve immediately cleared out of Washington, headed for New York to take charge of a strike in 160 textile mills. 70,000 woolen workers walked off their jobs. The autoworkers considered that a wage formula which did not allow a cost-of-living clause in their contracts left them free to walk out. The WSB fight would make it harder than ever to reach an agreement on the still-unsettled railroad wage fight.

At week's end, trying to be conciliatory, Wilson offered to make a labor man a top-level assistant in his office. An aide declared that Wilson had previously made such an offer with the proviso that the man give the job his full time, but Labor had turned a cold shoulder. A labor spokesman said in effect that Wilson was a liar, no such offer had been made "by personal conversation, mail, telephone, telegram, wigwag or smoke signal."

This week four chiefs of the U.L.P.C. trooped to the White House, and in a long session spelled out their complaints to Harry Truman. They emerged saying little, but breathing mild confidence. They told reporters that the President had lent a sympathetic ear. What did labor intend to do next? Said one of the conferees, jerking his head towards the President's office: "It all depends on what happens now."

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