Knudsen on Labor

While national attention was focused on the annual Automobile Show in Manhattan last week, a ranking U. S. automobile tycoon rose in Boston to speak his mind. Said President William S. Knudsen of General Motors at a dinner of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts: "Our standard of living has been obtained by narrowing the gulf between Capital and Labor. To widen it will unquestionably tend to lower the standard of living instead of raising it....

"I think I ought to say something here about the fundamentals underlying the union movement. . . . Men will band together on the basis of craft, and with some sense, the idea being hundreds of years old. To hold that machine operators cannot be organized on the same basis is due to ignorance of the job itself. From the standpoint of organizing it is expedient and lucrative, but to say that a toolmaker or first-class grinder should concern himself with the plight of his union brother who is pushing a truck is taking a pretty general viewpoint. This is one of the dangers of the industrial union as far as strikes are concerned.

"A strike binds everybody in the shop to take up the dispute of somebody they are not at all interested in, with the result that union officials have to hastily dig up enough grievances for everybody. ... It also is dangerous to the union because the worker is generally hard-headed enough to size up the dispute from his own standpoint and objects to losing time if he gains nothing thereby. . . The economic weapon, which in this case is placed in the hands of an individual wholly incapable of even figuring the extent of its magnitude or the possible result of a shutdown, makes, to my mind, the strongest argument for discipline and responsibility of unions, even if it has to be done by law. . . .

"I do not want ever to be in a position of criticizing our Administration, but I do think that all this hue & cry about collective bargaining could have been considerably less expensive if some ground rules had been set up. As it was, the early stages of the conflict resembled very much a ball game without an umpire and with everybody in the grandstands hollering advice. . . ." Four days later in Detroit, President Homer Martin of C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers shot back: "Mr. Knudsen's preference for craft unions might be explained by the fact that industrial unions seem to be a little too effective. . . . What evidence of responsibility are employers going to show to guarantee continuity of production to protect the income for their employes? Either the manufacturers must keep their workers on the payrolls or be charged with responsibility for putting them on the relief rolls."

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