Mutiny on the Bounty

When Congress set up WPA four years ago, friends of union labor saw to it that union hourly wage scales, as prevailing in different sections of the U. S., were provided for skilled workmen. Thus, if union carpenters were getting $1.75 an hour in private employment, carpenters working for WPA got $1.75. Result: to earn the maximum monthly wage of $92.89 allotted to them, they need work only 53 hours a month. The unions' interest in thus preventing Unemployment from breaking the market for their labor was only natural. But WPA's prevailing-wage provision had other effects. Testifying to Congress prior to this year's revision of WPA, Administrator "Pink" Harrington explained:

1) Workers on the same project, earning at different hourly rates, worked different hours. Confusion was inescapable when 53-hour carpenters, for example, had to be teamed with 121-hour common laborers.

2) Skilled workers, having earned their Federal money in a few hours, could secretly work and earn elsewhere during the month (at any wage levels they chose). This aroused jealousy, criticism.

Administrator Harrington asked Congress for a "security wage" up to $96, based on regional living costs and he said, "It is my recommendation that persons employed on projects of the WPA be required to work 130 hours per month and that the earnings of such persons be on a monthly basis . . . that substantially the present national average labor cost [to WPA] be maintained."

Obviously that meant more hours of work for the same pay, and pay-per-hour far below "prevailing" (union) rates for skilled labor. Administrator Harrington argued this would be "an important factor in determining need." WPA jobs, calling for 130 hours of work per month, would become less popular. Incentive to get private employment, and hold it, would be enhanced.

Congress passed Administrator Harrington's law just about the way he wanted it. President Roosevelt signed it without commenting on the 130-hour provision.

Last week, first week of the new law's operation, union labor startled President, Administrator, Congress and taxpayers by a nationwide performance daring and unprecedented; a strike against a law of the land.

In New York City, in Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, WPAsters who belonged to unions--mostly in the building and allied trades, mostly A. F. of L.--walked off their jobs. In some places they quit spontaneously, in most they were called off by their union officials. Twenty thousand, 50,000, 75,000, daily the number of strikers rose throughout the nation. In their own minds, the men were protesting against their longer working hours. Actually, their leaders were trying to coerce Congress by direct action to correct a situation which they thought would provide an argument for employers in private industry (especially building contractors) to depress wages. They regarded their strike as a belated lobby to alter a bill which went through too fast for them to mass forces against it.

Administrator Harrington responded quickly to the insurrection. "I find it difficult to call them strikes," said he. "A strike is called for the purpose of opening up negotiations. Here there is nothing to negotiate. Any executive official is bound by the law. The 130-hour law exists and I can't change it."

He told WPA supervisors everywhere to cut off the rolls any WPA "striker" who did not return to his WPA job in five days.

The issue focused sharply in New York City, where 30,000 of the 32,000 skilled workers on WPA rolls were union men. Thomas A. Murray, president of the Building & Construction Trades Council (A. F. of L.), officially authorized the walkout and declaimed:

"The new WPA bill, jammed through by Congress at the last minute, is one of the most vicious pieces of legislation ever palmed off on the people of this nation. . . . This fight will be fought to a finish."

In Manhattan, District WPAdministrator Brehon Burke Somervell, like his chief in Washington a West Pointer (lieutenant colonel), retorted with equal heat: "You can't strike against relief! It's fantastic!" (Columnist Arthur ("Bugs") Baer cracked: "Mutiny on the bounty.") He threatened arrest for anyone who sought to deprive others of WPA's benefits. He filled gaps in WPA's skilled ranks with qualified applicants from the city's home-relief lists, and by shifting skilled non-unionists from project to project. At the unionists he snorted: "If they'd all quit, we'd be tickled to death."

In Washington, the C. I. 0. (which embraces fewer unions in occupations assisted by WPA) rushed to the support of A. F. of L. with a blast warning Congress to amend the new law. The Workers Alliance, whose membership is largely dependent on WPA, jumped for joy on the sidelines, being for once the prospective beneficiaries, though not the authors, of a revolt in WPA. Violence grew. In Minneapolis a policeman was killed in a row between pickets and nonstriking WPAsters. As skilled unionists walked out, WPA projects came to a halt and unskilled workers were idle willy-nilly.

Brunt of the battle fell, of course, upon A. F. of L.'s President William Green, who had failed to act when the bill was before Congress. He now called a meeting in Washington of all his union presidents to put on belated heat. Cried he: "A vital principle is at stake. The wage standards of organized labor, built up through years of sacrifice, suffering and collective bargaining, are threatened . . . strikes and strikes!"

Senator Murray of Montana, Representatives Bradley of Pennsylvania and Sabath of Illinois, servants equally of organized labor and of the New Deal, dutifully drafted amendments to Colonel Harrington's law as dictated by Labor. Cutest question of the week was whether the President would throw his weight for or against what the New York Times termed "the aristocrats of Relief."

Significance. Fundamental issue raised by the unionists' war on WPA was: what is work-relief? Is it work undertaken by Government to take up slack when private work is lagging? Or is it jobs thought up, invented and financed to occupy idle men, keep alive their working instinct, health and habits, sustain their purchasing power? Into neither of these basic conceptions fits the unions' assumption that work-relief must ensure the pay-scales for which unions have organized and fought, and by which, in fat times, they have profited.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.