Board on Ford

After the Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act last April the United Automobile Workers undertook to find out what effect, if any, the decision had had on Henry Ford's attitude toward organized Labor. The rest of the motor industry and most of the steel industry had already capitulated to John L. Lewis' C. I. O. Ford Motor Co. remained as Labor's No. 1 objective. Armed with permits from the City of Dearborn to distribute literature, a U. A. W. group marched to the gate of Ford's River Rouge plant, the world's largest industrial concentration employing more than 80,000 workers, and there last May in the historic ''Battle of the Overpass" received the beatings of their lives. On complaint from the union, the National Labor Relations Board cited Ford Motor Co. for violation of the Wagner Act, and hearings were held a few weeks later in Detroit. Last week in a 22,000-word report, its most-publicized decision to date, the Labor Board announced its verdict: guilty. Ford Motor Co. was ordered to cease & desist from all anti-union activities, including "disseminating among its employes statements or propaganda disparaging or criticizing labor organizations"--a direct crack at Henry Ford.

In weighing the Ford contention that the Battle of the Overpass occurred on company property, the Board noted: "Technical trespass has never been recognized in law as a fortification for extreme brutality. . . . It was clearly unnecessary for the respondent in protecting its property to blackjack and otherwise maltreat defenseless men & women, to break William Merriweather's back, to take Alvin Stickle into the plant proper and there give him a delayed but nevertheless severe beating."

Ford was not listed in Senator La Follette's "bluebook" of labor espionage last week (see above), for Ford is traditionally self-sufficient. Such services are provided by Harry Bennett's service department--"the chief weapon . . . in this fight to prevent self-organization among its employes." The report continued: "This department played the principal role in the savage beatings of May 26. . . . The record leaves no doubt that the Service Department has been vested with the responsibility of maintaining surveillance over Ford employes not only during their work but even when they are outside the plant, and of crushing at its inception, by force if necessary, any signs of union activity. Thus within the respondent's vast River Rouge plant at Dearborn the freedom of self organization guaranteed by the Act has been replaced by a rule of terror and repression. . . ." Going on to picture the service department as sort of the OGPU of the Ford organization, the Board said: "With service men present and interfering with the normal operation of the assembly lines in every department, the River Rouge plant has taken on many aspects of a community in which martial law has been declared and in which a huge military organization, whose voice is final, has been superimposed upon the regular civil authorities."

Reaction of Ford Personnel Head Harry Bennett to the Board's report was instantaneous: "The N. L. R. B. decision sounds like a page out of the United Automobile Worker [union newspaper]. It's not only offensive but ridiculous. Only the employes who work for the Ford Motor Co. can know how ridiculous it is." On the Board's order to reinstate 29 workers with back pay, the Bennett comment was: "They'll have an awful fight over that one. We won't take those men back." On the Board's order to post notice of compliance : "That's against Ford Co. policy."

After last week's decision the next move is up to the Labor Board, which at the expiration of the ten-day grace period will presumably apply to the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an enforcing order, as provided by the Wagner Act. Then Henry Ford can start a legal battle against the Board which he may carry to the Supreme Court if necessary. The company announced at week's end that it would retain able Lawyer Frederick Wood of Manhattan, who contributed to the downfall of NRA as defense counsel in the Schechter ("sick chicken'') case.

Mr. Ford himself had nothing to say last week, nor did Son Edsel, although the arrival of the decision made him three-quarters of an hour late to the Detroit combined performance of the Yale Dramatic Club and Whiffenpoof songsters.* Elated U. A. W. President Homer Martin dashed off a wire to Harry Bennett asking for conference. Said Mr. Martin: "You need not fear a conference of this sort. We do not believe in force or violence, as you evidently do." As translated by reporters into printable English, tough Mr. Bennett's comment was "Phooey!"

*Edsel Ford's Son Henry II is a Yale sophomore.

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