Changed Outlook

The mood of the nation had changed. When the House passed its drastic labor bill three weeks ago, the nation still feared another wrenching series of strikes in the 1946 pattern. But now the prospects for industrial peace were better than at any time since the war. The Senate, facing its own labor bill last week, considered the outlook.

Across the nation strikes flickered here & there. But they were mostly the normal sparks from clashing industrial gears: 16,500 building-trades workers in Detroit; 14,000 employees at Inland Steel; 7,500 cement workers in the northeastern states. The only major strike was the month-old walkout of 340,000 telephone workers, who seemed on the verge of coming to terms this week.

New Tack. With the sense of crisis gone, maneuvering in the Senate took a new tack. Senator Bob Taft wanted a tough, omnibus bill he could dump as a single package on Harry Truman's desk. If the President vetoed it, that would be all right with Bob Taft. He knew what he wanted and he was all for putting Harry Truman on the spot. Meanwhile, Democrats moved heaven & earth to have the bill split up, and thus give the President a chance to sit squarely on the fence. Truman could then court labor's support by killing the harshest proposals, try to win public support by approving the mildest.

But there were some Republicans who saw no good in a needlessly punitive bill and no political gain in unnecessarily antagonizing labor. This group was not only composed of such G.O.P. mavericks as Oregon's Morse, Vermont's Aiken and New Hampshire's Tobey. It included such men as New York's Irving Ives, a labor relations expert and skilled parliamentary debater; Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.; New Jersey's H. Alexander Smith; and the co-leader of the Senate, Arthur Vandenberg. They took a second look at the bill now under consideration on the Senate floor. As Taft had said, it was no milk-toast affair.

Hot Fight. But Bob Taft was determined to restore four provisions stricken out in the Senate Labor Committee by a coalition led by Senator Ives. As the debate got under way, Minnesota's Joe Ball offered the first: making it an unfair labor practice, for unions as well as for employers, to coerce or interfere with an employee's selection of a bargaining agent.

Bob Taft had won his fight to keep an omnibus bill. Despite wolf cries of "veto" from Wayne Morse and Minority Leader Alben Barkley, he also put over the Ball amendment. But before the Senate approved it (60 to 28), it deleted the word "interfere," making the provision less restrictive than similar rules for employers.

Bob Taft could read the signs. He still hoped to tighten the bill with amendments restricting industrywide bargaining and requiring all union welfare funds (such as the U.M.W.'s) to be administered by employers as well as union officials. But he had backed down on his amendment allowing employers to go directly to a federal court for injunctions, instead of through the NLRB.

The Senate hoped to reach a final vote on the bill this week. Its actions to date seemed to indicate that nothing so strong as the House's Hartley bill would reach the President's desk.

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