"Nothing Serious"

A crisis on the labor front--the gravest since the defense program began--had the Office of Production Management scared stiff last week.

Outside Bethlehem Steel Co.'s Lackawanna plant, in freezing weather, Polish, Negro and native-born steelworkers angrily marched in a picket line, on strike. Inside, one by one, open-hearth furnaces shut down, production dwindled, came almost to a standstill.

What scared OPM was that the strike might spread from Buffalo to other Bethlehem plants--Pottstown, Lebanon, Johnstown, the big parent plant at Bethlehem itself. In danger of disruption or complete stoppage was work on a $1,500,000,000 Government contract.

Two weeks before, Knudsenhillman, OPM's doubleheaded boss, had tried and signally failed to untangle the Allis-Chalmers strike (TIME, March 3). Knudsenhillman took another deep breath, summoned Bethlehem spokesmen and union heads to Washington. While striking workers fought with Buffalo police, William Knudsen and Sidney Hillman labored for peace.

Grace Under Pressure. Bethlehem, under President Eugene Grace, had doggedly resisted C. I. O.'s Steel Workers Organizing Committee from the start. Doggedly, Bethlehem spokesmen rejected S. W. O. C.'s terms for ending the Lackawanna strike. The terms: 1) reinstatement of workers who had been fired over a wage dispute; 2) an immediate conference between management and the union to discuss grievances; 3) an election at the plant to determine a bargaining agent and a promise from the company to sit down and bargain. When the company threatened to demand that the militia be called out, Knudsen leaned across the table, shook a long finger, declared: "That would be pure murder." Hour after hour the conferees wrestled and wrangled.

Near midnight, Knudsenhillman called newsmen to Knudsen's office, in weary triumph announced the terms of a truce. The union's first two demands would be met. As for an election, OPM and NLRB would explore the possibilities. Heavy with fatigue, arm-in-arm, Knudsenhillman shuffled home.

At the Lackawanna plant, workers accepted the terms with a whoop, convinced that the settlement was a triumph for S. W. O. C. Said Van A. Bittner, regional director and chief organizer of the strike: "This is . . . the first time on a large scale that our union has been able to get any sort of agreement from Bethlehem. . . .'' No one believed that Bethlehem had surrendered, but it was a notable truce. And for the time at least, Knudsenhillman had averted what might have been a bloody and disastrous battle on the defense industry's most vital front. Thirty-nine hours after the strike began, steel was beginning to roll again in Lackawanna.

"Not Distressed." Knudsenhillman still had troubles to worry about. Scarcely had OPM mopped its brow when word came that a fourth International Harvester plant, the big Chicago McCormick Works, had shut down. And at week's end the Allis-Chalmers dispute was still a mare's-nest. Trouble bubbled anew at Ford, where C. I. O.'s Auto Workers' union gave formal notice (as required by Michigan law) of intent to strike at the Lincoln plant, at Highland Park, at gigantic River Rouge. What worried Knudsen as much as anything was the howl, getting louder & louder, for legislative action to prevent strikes.

Knudsen, who had expressed his opposition to anti-strike legislation, gave the House Judiciary Committee his plan for watering down heated disputes before they reached the strike stage. His plan: if efforts of the Conciliation Service failed, 60% of all employes at a defense plant must approve the strike at a secret ballot, and notice must then be given of intent to strike; Government officials would investigate and report within ten days; the strike must be deferred until 30 days after the report.

All Knudsenhillman hoped was that the U. S. would keep its shirt on. Breathed the doubleheaded boss of OPM: "We are not distressed by the situation. There is nothing serious. What we are doing is working out, and working out well."

The Labor Division of the National Defense Advisory Commission reported last week that four times as much time had been lost as the result of industrial accidents (over which the country raised no cries) as had been lost by strikes. John R. Steelman, director of the U. S. Conciliation Service, reported that 95% of threatened strikes in 1940 had been successfully settled. From San Francisco, scene of bloody labor wars in the past, came a report of only 20 strikes in 1940, fewest days lost in strikes since records have been kept.

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