Earthquake at Douglas

Aircraftmaker Donald Douglas sat down at a long walnut desk in his Santa Monica plant and squiggled his name to a sheaf of papers. Fot the president of Douglas Aircraft, the action was a major milestone.

The man who had long prided himself on running the biggest open shop in the world had signed his first contract with the mighty U.A.W.-C.I.O. Afterwards, in his private dining room, he fed poached eggs on corned beef hash to the union signers.

But the squiggle was only one quiver on the seismograph of the labor earthquake shaking the Douglas empire last week. Other contracts were in the offing. In the huge Douglas Long Beach plant, 84% of the 23,000 employes voted in an NLRB election for representation by either the U.A.W. or the A.F. of L. Machinists. As neither received a majority, a run-off election will be held this week (U.A.W. is expected to win). Another NLRB election will be held in the Santa Monica plant, biggest in the empire, for 34,000 eligible workers. This one is not in the union bag; best guess is that either the A.F. of L. or C.I.O. will have to face a run-off election against the "no-union" voters.

President Douglas, famed as an anti-union employer, bore all this philosophically. Commented one top unionist: "I think he's pretty cool but . . . he'll not be a diehard. I think we'll find him very fair." The pottery skunk on Douglas' desk, at which he used to point when speaking of unions (TIME, Nov. 22), has been chucked into a basket, along with other trinkets, while his office is being remodeled.

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