Boards for Clubs

The Toledo Auto-Lite strike and the Minneapolis truck strike were fought with clubs. The other strikes of 1934 are to be fought with boards. Under his new authority President Roosevelt last week began replacing the old National Labor Board with new and smaller agencies to ease the tension on the industrial front. The first board created was for the biggest current strike; the second was for what threatened to be an even bigger strike.

Docks. The first labor board's job was to settle the seven-week-old strike of Pacific Coast longshoremen, which from San Francisco to Seattle had tied up 175 vessels, stopped practically all freight shipments and most passenger sailings from all coast ports except Los Angeles, piled up an estimated $50,000,000 of unmovable freight on San Francisco docks alone. More important than the board's powers was its personnel. Of its three members, one was Edward F. McGrady, Secretary of Labor Perkins' assistant and a strong union man whom she had already sent to San Francisco. Another was 0. K. ("Okay") Cushing, San Francisco attorney with liberal labor views. The third, who gave the board its most distinctive flavor, was the Most Rev. Edward J. Hanna, 73-year-old Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco and advocate of most liberal labor proposals.

Last week as soon as appointed they promptly sat down with Mr. McGrady to earn their fee. Their first plea was for a 24-hour armistice between shippers and strikers. It came at a crucial moment, just as San Francisco businessmen threatened to send in strike breakers and open the port. If the port were opened by such forcible methods everyone knew it would be a signal for riot and bloodshed. The board found just one big point still in dispute: Should employers or the union run the "hiring halls," where will be drawn up the lists from which stevedores are to be engaged?

To the aid of Archbishop Hanna and the board went octogenarian Andrew Furuseth who has lived on San Francisco's Embarcadero for more than 40 years, organized seamen, fought their battles and now heads the International Seamen's Union of America. He pleaded with strikers: "With confidence and justice we can settle this strike within 24 hours and without bloodshed. Men, let's get together while there is still time. The only thing in the way of peace now is distrust, one group of the other."

Steel. More far-reaching was the President's action in naming a "National Steel Labor Relations Board." Both employers and labor had proposed naming a board to handle questions of collective bargaining. Therefore the board was not named to make a settlement but to be the settlement. It was given power to investigate charges made under the Recovery Act's collective bargaining clause, to mediate, to arrange for collective bargaining conferences, to arbitrate if requested and, most important, to hold employe elections whenever it sees fit and have access to payrolls in order to conduct elections.

Thus the Steel Labor Board becomes not a temporary but a permanent body, will exist until "in the opinion of the President" it has completed its duties. As a permanent body it makes rules and regulations, has power to hire employes and spend the Government's money.

To carry out this program the President appointed three experienced open-minded labor mediators. They were: 1) Rear Admiral Henry A. Wiley, U. S. N., Retired, who has acted as an arbitrator in railway labor disputes on the Denver & Rio Grande Western and the Delaware & Hudson. 2) Chief Justice Walter P. Stacy of the North Carolina Supreme Court, 18 years on the bench, arbitrator in many an industrial strike, including five big railroad cases. 3) James Mullenbach of Chicago who for 22 years has been chairman of the joint trade board of Hart, Schaffner & Marx and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, who has lately served General Johnson as labor arbitrator for the clothing industry in Chicago and Secretary Ickes as a member of the Oil Labor Policy Board.

Day after its creation the Steel Board sat down with Madam Perkins to consider its job. It was spared by the President's order the job of deciding on the chief point at issue. The steel masters had emphatically refused to consider "closed shop." The union had insisted that if elections showed it had a majority in any plant it should represent all that plant's employes--a right which the steel masters regarded as the next thing to closed shop. The President's order settled the question: ". . . The person, persons or organization certified as the choice of the majority of those voting shall be accepted as the representative or representatives of said employes for the purpose of collective bargaining, without thereby denying to any individual employe or group of employes the right to present grievances, to confer with their employers or otherwise to associate themselves and act for mutual aid or protection."

The first half of this declaration practically granted the union's demand. The second half made the first half meaningless, left steel labor without closed shop, without power to oust company unions.

Labor and Steel withheld comments in order to object later if they do not like the board's proceedings. But one thing was certain: the strike was off.

New National, As a final step, the President delivered a coup de grace to the old National Labor Board, and created a new National Labor Relations Board to take its place. To this tip-top agency with review powers he appointed three liberals: Lloyd Kirkham Garrison, ruddy-cheeked great grandson of the late great abolitionist and acting dean of the Wisconsin Law School; Harry Alvin Millis, head of the University of Chicago's Economics Department, member of the Chicago Regional Labor Board and of the Social Science Research Council; Edwin S. Smith, Massachusetts Commissioner of Labor and onetime worker in the Russell Sage Foundation's industrial relations division.

To these three men the President gave $10,000 per year full-time jobs, turned over machinery and funds of the old Labor Board. They will supervise all labor settlements. Unlike the old board the new one will have no connection with NRA, but will work under Madam Secretary Perkins. However, the President gave it supreme authority: "Persons and agencies in the executive branch of the Government shall not disturb the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. . . . This rule is of universal application and includes within its scope all permanent and emergency governmental agencies."

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