Revolution in Bayonne

The trouble started when the management ordered employes to put on a green button when they left their work benches to go to the toilet. Practically all the workers were young; about 100 were girls. Walking around with green buttons that everybody understood embarrassed them.

First they tried to get the union to do something about it. The union was an old-line A.F. of L. electrical workers local and did not take the complaint very seriously. When it finally did file a protest the management was just as slow and paid no particular attention.

There were other little grievances that the union failed to get fixed up and, one thing leading to another, the workers didn't have much confidence in it. Very few of them had any union experience.

Two years ago most of them were grocery clerks, milk wagon drivers, pantrymen, waitresses. They started working for General Cable because they thought they would make big money quick. Such was the story which Reporter Maureen McKernan of the New York Post dug up last week after a strike broke in General Cable's plant at Bayonne, N J.

The workers at Bayonne actually made more money than most of them ever made in their lives -- an average of $46.25 for the men and $30.72 for the women, according to WLB. But still they were disappointed that they weren't making still bigger money. They got sore when WLB turned down their demand for a 10-c--an-hour increase on the grounds that they were making plenty already and that their pay had already been upped more than 15% since Jan. 1, 1941. Against advice of older workers and the International Brotherhood, they voted an outlaw strike--the first ever called against a WLB decision.

President Roosevelt, who had waited weeks before intervening in the Federal Shipbuilding dispute at Kearny or the Air Associates dispute at Bendix, waited only three days before he ordered the Navy to take over General Cable's Bayonne plant. The strikers cheered loudly and said this was just what they wanted.

They telegraphed the President that they were "loyal and patriotic American citizens" dedicated to the defeat of the Axis.

That afternoon the plant opened up again as if nothing had happened. Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen, who did a swell job restoring morale at Federal Shipbuilding, was in charge. His first step was to tell the workers that as long as the Navy was there they might not get even the 3-c--an-hour nightwork bonus WLB had approved. The workers took this in good part. Michael Patrakian, the young strike leader, said: "We are all damn glad it happened. We are all sailors now. We wanted the Navy to take over [instead of an unfair management]. We know Uncle Sam will treat us right. . . ."

Three days later Secretary Knox answered the strikers:

"The best evidence of the loyalty and patriotism of American citizens is their acceptance of established American institutions. The War Labor Board was created to insure uninterrupted production and to solve labor disputes. . . .

"It was prevented from doing so in the General Cable Corp. case by the employes' ill-advised defiance. . . . Such action is a dangerous threat to the success of our national effort in this critical emergency. . . . The Navy has too much fighting to do to be managing plants."

As a strike it was all small potatoes--about 700 youngsters who liked neither union nor management took direct action to make a good thing for themselves out of the war effort. But it gave an almost terrifying glimpse of the divided purposes and lack of confidence between workers and management in a nation at war.

Five years ago labor leaders were doing their best to stir up discontent. Today that condition is reversed and almost every responsible labor leader knows he sits on a lid. The situation is so serious that the President has asked his No. 1 trouble shooter, Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, to suggest a plan for restoring mutual confidence before the pressure for wage increases blows price control sky high.

Labor as a whole does not realize that heavy war taxes have already frozen the profits of most businesses below the prewar level. It does not realize that heavier individual surtaxes have cut into the spendable income of management to a point where many executives are going into debt to meet their current expenses. Management on its side is growing increasingly bitter over the refusal of Congress to impose any appreciable tax on the $35,000,000,000 increase in the earnings of labor since 1939. The wind has been sown, and Judge Rosenman has a man-sized job ahead of him if labor and management and the whole war effort are not all to reap the whirlwind.

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