Imperial Valley press., 1942-06-02
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison

c. E. Randall of Chicago, vice
president of Inland Steel and one
of the most outSpoken critics OF
the union maintenance" alias
closed shop issue which the. War
Labor Board will get around to de-
Gliding one of these days, has re-
vealed a formula for making Ii
berals into bourbons. There isn't
any particular trick to it-just a
matter of letting Nature take its
course after exposing under given
conditions the individuals to be
converted. In the case of Inland
Steel. it has worked something like
this:
This company. like many
others. tries to find bright
yonng men and let them grow
up i'm the industry. College
graduating classes form one of
the com m n est recruiting
grounds, and there young en-
gineers, chemists. and students
of economics and business ad-
m5nistration are hired and Civ
en- chance to show what they
have got. ... 80.
These youngsters come out of
college full of ideals, sociology, Ii
beralism and all the new thought
about the rights of labor to Or
ganize, bargain collectively and as
sert it's rigths. So far SO good, and
harboring these ideas apparently
doesn't disIualify young graduate
from being hired, even by Inland
Steel.
The boy goes to work and, being
interested in such matters, he
runs into union practices. First off
is the grievance committee proce-
dure. 1t is admitted by a good many
employers that three-fourths of
the bellyacheS which come up in
daily. weekly or monthly grievance
meetings are justified, particularly
in expansive times like these when
men are shifted to new jobs, when
the pressure is on for more and
more production, when foremen and
junior supervisory officials are in
experienced, and when all the tre
mendous trifles of big plant opera
ton constantly have to be re-
adjusted. They're all to be expect
ed and they're taken. Thousands
of one-man or one-crew work stop
pages, sit-doWnS or strikes come
along, last for two minutes or two
hours, are adjusted, and no one
thinks anything about them.
Then one day there comes a un-
ion dues picketing. A committee"
from union headquarters will stand
outside the plant gate, and as the
men file by, the ones who haven't
joined the union and can't show a
card are stopped, led over to a car
or down the alley and persuaded.
Those who don't sign up are not
permitted to 60 to work.
MAY MEAN TROUBLE
1t is perhaps natural that argu-
ments of this kind lead to scuffles,
and ScuffleS lead to Strong-arm
tactics and strong-arm tactics lead
to violence. Men driving to work
have had their car windows and
headlights smashed, their tenders
caved in, their auto overturned and
dumped in the ditch. In the War
Labor Board hearings on the In
land Steel case, there are some
pretty sad pages of testimony from
workers who have been beaten up
in dues picketing parties and the
records OF the company give evi-
dence of how production has been
stopped b. not having sufficient
crews to operate certain units on
dues picketing days.
But to get back to the young
engineers. When these young
sters with all their theories go
through just one dues picketing
line, says Randall, it makes
them b0urbOns overnight. And
these are the men who, 10 or 20
years hence, will be the Operat-
ing brains that run the com
pany.
Not enough has been told, thinks
Randall about this dues piCketing
business and its corollary the af-
ter-work calls which the commit
tee makes at the homes of the
employees, who are called out on
the porch and persuaded These
are the chapters of the open shop
VS. the union shop argument that
don't make pretty reading.
ANOTHER SIDE
There is of course the other side
OF the story, which Mr. Randall
and the bourbon boys probably
wouldn't agree to, but which in
fairness should be stated neverthe-
less. A good many Workmen like to
ride on the coattails of a union,
taking advantage of whatever bene-
fits it secures in the way of i'm
proved wages and working condi-
tions, without contributing any
thing toward organization support
All these organizations have
their troubles in just keeping
alive. That's why they want
union maintenance, which is
simply smart press agentry and
nomenclature for what used to
be called the closed shop. And
the unions don't overlook a bet,
either, i'm pointing out that if
the union shop principle were
adopted, dues picketing and
their attendant evils would au-
tOmaticaliy be eliminated.
That's just one side OF the big
issue which the War Labor Board
de- linn ttfifh