Mr. Avery v. Mr. Roosevelt

Sewell Lee Avery, the 69-year-old board chairman of Montgomery Ward & Co., was bedded down with a cold last week in his apartment on Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. This was the least of his troubles. The biggest was a mile away, at Ward's mammoth mail-order and retail stores along the Chicago River, where the employes were on strike, called out by C.I.O.'s Retail Employes Union.* The union claimed that 4,500 of the 5,500 union-eligible employes had walked out. Nonstriking employes going through picket lines were given the "Chicago cheer" by strikers (see cut). Ward's was mum, but stricken. A.F. of L. teamsters, in sympathy with the strikers, refused to pick up or deliver to the stores. The U.S. Post Office withdrew 30 idling mail clerks who normally handle Ward's outgoing mail-order business, second biggest in the U.S. (Net mail-order sales last year: $254,000,000.)

To Sewell Avery, a strike in his Chicago store was a new thing, but labor trouble was an old story. In 1942 he had balked on a WLB order to sign his contract with the union. He claimed that WLB's "maintenance-of-membership clause" was a sugared-up closed shop (TIME, Nov. 23, 1942.) He gave in only after President Roosevelt twice ordered him to comply. Then when the contract expired last December, Sewell Avery refused to renew it. This time, he claimed that the union no longer represented a majority of the employes. When WLB ordered Montgomery Ward to continue the contract, pending settlement of the issue, Ward's refused.

When WLB failed to crack down, the union, as miffed at WLB as at Ward's, struck. The trouble spread to Ward's Kansas City plant, and threatened to affect Ward's Detroit stores. Hurriedly, WLB appealed, as usual, to President Roosevelt to enforce its order. This time, there came no statement from Chairman Avery, as there had a year and a half ago, that Ward's would "respectfully obey" a Presidential order. Now one Ward official asked blandly: "What power has the President over a retail store?"

* Full name: United Mail Order, Warehouse & Retail Employes Union. Ward's is currently suing the union's publication, Spotlight, for $1,000,000, alleging some 350 libelous stories. Month ago, Ward's $1,000,000 libel suit against McGraw-Hill for a Business Week article stating that Ward's had given a federal conciliator the "runaround" was dismissed by Chicago's Federal Judge John P. Barnes.

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