Montana labor news., 1939-06-15
SEN. NORRIS ASSAILS|
MENACE OF APEX CASE|
As GIRDLER SUES Go

WASHINGTON, D. c. Senator
George w. Norris warning that the
Apex verdict was a travesty on
justice and a blow to all labor was
proved last week by the Republic
Steel Corporations $7,50O,00O suit
against the Congress for Industrial
Organizations.
In letter to Labor's Non-Parti-
san League, the veteran statesman
who has played a leading role in
the writing of labor and industrial
laws for more than two decades, de-
clared that if the Apex decision is
permitted to stand it would mean the
destruction of unions and the nulh-
fication of all laws and DEGREES up
holding the right of workers to
organize for collective bargaining.
His prediction was followed by
the Republic suit filed in the federal
district court at Cleveland on May
%.
Based on the Apex verdict, the
steel suit charged that John L.
Lewis, head Of the CIO, Philip
Murray chairman of the Steel
Workers Organizing Committee, and
700 individual strikers and union
officers in Cleveland, Youngstown,
Warren, Niles, Canton and Massilon,
Ohio had conspired to close its
plants during the Little Steep
strike of 1887.
Under the Clayton Act the suit
asked treble damages for loss Of
business, for the cost Of protecting
property during the strike, for the
asserted abnormal cost of operating
under siege by strikers at Warren,
Niles and some Canton plants, and
for the charges of forced closing of
plants at Cleveland, Youngstown,
Canton, and Massilon.
In his letter, Norris had pointed
out that the right of workers to
strike to enforce their demands is
fundamental and inalienable.
If labor is denied this right, Norris
asserted, unions will have no way
left to preserve their liberties. He
said the decision of the Circuit
Court on the Apex injunction which
had opened the way for the damage
award was not only in direct con-
travention Of the fundamental right
of labor to strike but also was con-
trary to the intent of Congress as
evidenced by the various industrial
laws enacted in the last few years.
He said the Sherman antitrust
act which the court invoked against
Branch 1 was never intended to be
applied to the activities of unions.
The Clayton act, he added, was
enacted for the express purpose of
exempting unions from the provi-
sions Of the antitrust law, and sew
eral Supreme Court decisions further
have clarified the issue.
Yet it was the Clayton act which
Tom Girdler used to demand dam
ages Of the steel workers. The steel
suit was in retaliation against a
claim for $7,5OO,OOO filed by the CIO
with the National Labor Relations
Board for back-pay due some 5000
workers whom the board ruled had
been discharged unjustly and con-
trary to law by the Steel Corpora
ton.
The decision in the steel case was
handed down by the board last year
and the case is now awaiting argu-
ment in the Circuit Court of Appeals
in Philadelphia.
Originally the steel strike had
been called when Little Steel re-
fused to bargain collectively Well
armed in advance of the strike, ac-
cording to evidence produced by
Congressional investigation, the steel
firm used its own guards, as well
as national troops against pickets,
eliminating finally in the 1887
Memorial Day massacre in Chicago