Soldiers' Pay

In Brooklyn Federal Court, a veteran named Abraham Fishgold, 28, last week won a suit for $94.60 in back pay. Thereby, he lit the fuse of an explosive problem in management-labor relations. The problem: "super-seniority" -- meaning that an honorably discharged veteran is entitled to his old job, or a similar one, with his old company for at least a year, even though it means firing an employe with greater seniority. Thus, when Welder Fishgold was laid off from Brooklyn's Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corp. for ten days, while nonveterans with more seniority were kept on (TIME, June 18), Selective Service backed him in the first court test of super-seniority.

Less Competition. Selective Service won hands down. Said the court, in awarding Fishgold back pay for the time laid off: "Congress had in mind [the re-employment clause in the Selective Service Act] that the returning veteran should have one year to rehabilitate himself . . . free of competition with fellow employes. The veteran . . . shall be employed . . . even if it means that a non-veteran will not work." The Selective Service Act, it added, abrogates any security clauses in union contracts.

But Fishgold's own union, the C.I.O.'s Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers of America, promptly protested that Congress had meant no such thing, planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If this version of super-seniority is carried out, the Union predicted, employes in many a shipyard and U.S. plant, including World War I veterans, will have to be fired to make way for veterans. Example: the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester, Pa. has 19,000 former employes in service. Yet cutbacks have shrunk its payroll down to only 7,000 workers, some with 20 years' seniority.

More Light. There was little doubt, said unionists, that the question of veterans' rights was a "mess." Nor were employers, wide open to lawsuits, from both unions and veterans, better off. What was needed, they all agreed, was clarification of the Selective Service Act by Congress before its ambiguities set unions brawling with job-hunting veterans.

Said a sensible spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "Soldiers don't want any special privileges. They don't want to hold their jobs while persons with long experience, possibly World War I veterans, are laid off. We want a fair break, but nothing unreasonable. Congress must act quickly."

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