Euphemism of Postponement

Last year Lyndon Johnson promised a program to protect the nation from large-scale crippling strikes. He has yet to propose such legislation. Last week, faced with one of the nation's recurring rail crises, he pledged at a press conference to propose a workable formula that would exclude compulsory arbitration so hated by labor. Next day the President produced a plan that would astutely avert a strike--without eliminating compulsory arbitration.

It fell to Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz to produce a salable euphemism. With bureaucratic finesse, he described the new plan as "mediation to finality." The term did not mollify A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, who promised "vigorous" opposition.

Whatever its label and regardless of Meany's stance, the measure that Johnson sent to Congress has a good chance of enactment. Yet his proposal was only another Band-Aid for another crisis. A strike by 137,000 members of six shop-craft unions has already been delayed three times by Government fiat,* and the wage dispute has been picked over by two separate mediation panels. Johnson's latest formula would deep-freeze the deadlock for another 90 days, while a new five-man mediation board sought a settlement. If there were no voluntary agreement by the end of that period, the outside mediators would dictate terms binding on both sides until January 1969. Then--after the next presidential election--the enforced truce could well be derailed once again.

One way to avoid such perennial disruptions--in railroads as well as other crucial industries--would be for Johnson to act on his broader promise to propose legislative safeguards against any strike that jeopardized the national welfare. He has failed to do so, presumably for fear of offending big labor. But neither Congress nor the country is in any mood to tolerate a walkout as damaging as last year's airlines strike. Perhaps sensing this, Johnson said last week that he was renewing his "search for a just and general solution to emergency strike or lockout problems." By the White House clock, the best time for such action seems to be uncomfortably far off.

* Sixty days under the Railway Labor Act, 20 days more under special legislation and an additional 47 days, to June 19, under an emergency measure enacted last week.

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