The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-06-06

WV BGt bAgAAA HAAd apropos of this, 1t might be mem toned that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BIS in the Department of Labor, has but recently been able to release It's study of strikes in l040. Just what is to be gained by this compilation is something that will have to be left to you, It does show us where we have been and it may show Us where we're going.
 There were slightly more than 2,b00 strikes in 1040 in which about 677,000 workers were involved and 6,700,000 f1an-days of labor were lost Comparing that with the aver- age of the previous five years it's not so bad, for the 194o figures are l2 per cent under in number of strikes; they involved only 5i per cent as many workers and there was only 70 per cent as much time lost The average 1o40 strike though tied Up 230 men for eleven and a half days, or 2646 man-dayS of labor lost, Or, taking the length of strike with out reference to the number of workers, the average for lo40 was three weeks.
 The interesting thing to do is to go on from there and see what the strikes were for and what they &C., complished. As to the causes of strikes, one surprising sldelight is that of the 2,600 strikes in 1040, lS4l were A. r. of L. and 680 were 0. l. O. Seventy-seven strikes were of the now generally condemned jurls- dictional variety.
 RECOGNITION
 THE ISSUE
 The difficulty of classifying strikes according to cause is primarily the problem of strikes involving two or more Issues, but tabulating as care. fully as 1t could BLS comes forth with the conclusion that half of tts l040 strikes were primarily over is- sues Of union recognition. You can attribute that to the Wagner act or not, aS you choose. Wage and hour Issues accounted for 90 per cent of the strikes and the remaining 20 per cent were over miscellaneous griev- ai1ceS.
 With that very general picture of strike causes, take 6 look ct what the strikes accompliShed-What they got the workers involved. To get at this, the bureau clAssifies according to apparent results at the end of the work stoppage. That isn't al- ways the final outcome of q strike, for if strike won forces on ef1- ployer out of business or forces him to move to another community, that is q loss. On the other hand, . lost strike which makes on employer realize he must improve working conditions Is really victory for la- Dor.
 As ct the end of the strikes, how. ever, ELS finds that only 27 per cent of oil the workers involved in strikes ending in i040 won subStan. tialiy all of their demands. Com promises or partial gains were ob. tained by 66 per cent while Q per cent gained little or nothing. Of teh rest, some c per cent were juris- dictional strikes which settled no. thing and ? per cent were unre- ported.
 Tn general, q larger proportion Of short strikes were more successful from the workers point of view than the long strikes. More than 40 per cent Of strikes lasting less than two weeks resulted in gains for teh workers, whereas less than fourth of the strikes lasting longer than two months resulted in subs Btantial gains There were, by tie way, 526 strikes lasting more than Q month.
 TREND ISN'T
 PROMISING
 Government officials or govern. ment boards had to sit in on settle. ment of nearly 43 per cent of the strikes - l006 strikes out of the total of 2,500 - and that number was practically equal to the strikes that were settled by direct nego- tiation between workers and em- employers. This is important be- cause 1t indicates the growing work of Department Of Labor's Conciliau ton Service under Dr. John Steel man.
 What usually happened was that labor and management tried their hand at settlement by direct nego- tiation. When these direct methods begged down, Cancellation Service was called in. It is this which ac- counts for the fact that the strikes settled by government mediation were the larger and longer strikes which involved almost 60 per cent of workers in all strikes.
 All these figures are of course just more prune and seed statistics un- less they can be used in a study of the present strike picture and to see what help they give to a solution of defense industry disturbances. The difhculty in fitting general strike statistics over the defense industry picture is apparent, for in 1940 the defense industries were just getting under way. BIS has nade a separate study, trying to segregate the defense strikes in II principal industries, employing D. 100000 workers. One out of every 1T of these workers was on strike at some time during the year in a to- tai of 252 strikes.
 That is 8 none too promising trend.