Evening star., 1934-06-14
REVISED LABOR
MEASURE SOUGHT
National Adjustment Board
Proposal May End Wag.
ner Bill Fight.
BY DAVID LAWRENCE.

Eleventh. hour efforts to patch ur
the labor situation and send Congress
home may succeed.
With the steel strike in the back
ground and dozens of other incipient
controversies of Nationwide impor-
tance, Congress can hardly adjourn
and leave the President to fight the
labor situation alone. especially since
the drastic powers of licensing indus
try under the N. r. A. will lapse on
Saturday of this week.
The plan to work out a compro-
mise bill wholly different from the
first and second versions of the Wag-
ner bill and providing for concilia-
ton rather than compulsion will be
accepted unhesitatingly, provided that
is all the bill really contains.
Remembering however, the Ian
guage of the now-famous section IA
of the national industrial recovery
act. relative to collective bargaining
it will be necessary to examine the
new proposals word for word to see
whether they are what they purport
to be. The text of the proposed bill
has not yet been revealed.
Board to Hear Disputes.
The latest information is that q
National adjustment board would ot
created to hear disputes in all indus
trial troubles of a major character
which cannot be handled by local
boards and that it would be optional
with the national board whether the
majority representatives of labor
would bind the minority or whether
majority and minority would be given
representation on workers council
somewhat along the line of the set
tlement now in force in the automo-
bile industry, following the threat oi
a general strike last March.
The important point at issue Is
whether the majority can bind the
minority in a plant or industry
wherever the election may be or what
ever the unit used for the balloting
1t is not believed that the recommen-
dation of the National Adjustment
Board would in any sense be manda-
tory. Instead, the report would be
filed for public consumption and the
employers and the employees would
be left free to reject the form of col
lective bargaining which the National
Adjustment Board had proposed af-
ter full hearing and investigation.
The gain to labor in such scheme
obviously is that a Government tribu-
nal might be ranged on their side in
a dispute involving the closed shop
and the public would be asked to be-
lieve that the Federal Government
thought the employer in question was
not conforming to the spirit Of COL
lective bargaining as it has come to
be known under the national indus
trial recovery act.
Democrats Would Have Votes.
Employer interests are not likely to
accept the proposal whereby a Gov
ernment board can rule out the
minority, but the Democrats would
have the votes to put such measure
through. Presumably, presidential in
f1uence would be exerted over the
National Adjustment Board to pre-
serve the terms of the settlement ir
the automobile industry, though there
would be nothing to prevent a ma.
tional board from disregarding what
the President had agreed to before
The evolution of these national
conciliation tribunals over a long
period of time has been one of grad
ual conveyance toward presidential
mediation, but the element Of COM
pulsion which makes the parties &C.
cept arbitration has been lacking, and
the only new point is that the recov-
cry act does make collective bargain
ing legal right and penalties those
who would refuse to permit it to be
exercised. Whether this clause can be
more explicitly applied by means of g
national labor board, which shall, in
effect, hear all disputes under the COL
lective bargaining clause, is the ques-
ton of the hour
The Republicans are eager to see
Congress adjourned. but on a funda-
mental matter of this type they woulc
f1libuster and prolong the debate un.
less the bill is free from features that
are Objectionable to employers gener-
ally. For the Republicans are plan.
ming to make an issue of the one
sided handling Of labor problems here
and the consequent loss to the worker
of millions of dollars of income
through unnecessary industrial war
fare.
Copyright, 1934l