Boycott at G.E.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has supported so many boycotts by member unions against employers that last summer President George Meany made a little joke about it. A loyal unionist's ultimate treason, he said, would be to eat grapes while flying over West Virginia in a National Airlines plane burning Shell gasoline. At that time, for various reasons, unions were battling against National, Shell, the growers of California table grapes and the state of West Virginia. But the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had never organized a boycott on its own--until last week. Then, on the first day of the Christmas shopping season, the Federation urged local unions to post pickets at entrances to department stores across the U.S. The unionists were to distribute handbills urging shoppers not to buy products made by General Electric.

The reason, of course, was the six-week-old strike against G.E. Whether the boycott will force the company to budge remains to be seen. Union boycotts generally have been ineffective. Indeed, at the scheduled start of the G.E. boycott on the day after Thanksgiving, no pickets showed up in major cities, though the unions promise that there will be many this week. Its determination is a sign of the growing bitterness in U.S. labor relations. Union men, whose pay raises in the past few years have barely kept pace with price boosts, increasingly feel that corporations and the Government are taking advantage of them by urging the acceptance of moderate wage hikes as part of the fight against inflation.

In the middle of this week, the U.S. could face the worst labor trouble of the year: a strike by 15 shop unions against the major railroads. The indications last week were that a settlement would be reached in time to prevent the walkout. If the strike occurs, however, President Nixon will probably have to break his pledge to keep hands off union disputes and request special legislation to settle the walkout. Whatever the outcome, the U.S. has reason to be uneasy. Unions will have to negotiate new contracts for some 4,000,000 workers next year--in what seems certain to be a climate of business slowdown, profit pinch and continued price boosts. That is about the worst imaginable climate for labor peace.

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