A Car With a Union Label

Hell froze over last week in Detroit. Henry Ford's director of personnel, Harry Bennett, predicted three months ago: "We will bargain until hell freezes over, but they [C.I.O.'s United Automobile Workers] won't get anything." Mr. Bennett was talking about a union contract. Last week, Mr. Bennett signed his name to a document that gave U.A.W. not only all it asked for but just about everything a union man dreams about:

1) A union shop for all Ford plants in the U.S., covering some 120,000 employes. (A "union shop" agreement permits the hiring of non-union men but requires them to join afterwards.)

2) The "checkoff" system (by which the company deducts union dues from wages, hands the dues over to the union treasury).

3) A wage scale equal to any in the industry.

4) A grievance system, under shop stewards and grievance committees without appeal board, on which company and union have equal representation.

Ford Motor Co. also promised to wipe out the strong-arm Ford service squad, used in the past to enforce discipline, break union assaults on Ford's anti-union citadel.

Ford cars will have the right to carry the union label.

In signing this contract, Ford not only reversed its labor policy but outdid both General Motors and Chrysler, neither of which has granted union shops. Said Edsel Ford: "No half measures will be effective. ... So we have decided to go the whole way." One thing was certain: the most important member of the "we" was 77-year-old Henry Ford. There were many conflicting theories about what had moved him:

>Henry Ford has always regarded himself as labor's friend, wanted to maintain the reputation.

>He was weary of hearing labor leaders demand more responsibility, decided to take them up on it.

>He had finally become convinced that the U.A.W. leadership was "patriotic and responsible."

>Long convinced that the union policy of his competitors was inspired chiefly by their desire to embarrass him, he had seen an opportunity to pay them back, and seized it.

At any rate, Henry Ford had once more shown the world that he never does things by halves.

Happy over a contract that virtually sewed up the whole motor industry, exultant over Mr. Ford's whole-hog capitulation, U.A.W. officials declared: "Agreement by the Ford Motor Co. to establish a union shop sets a pattern for the industry which, we believe, will be universally adopted before the end of another year."

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