Evening star., 1945-08-05
Divided Economy Poses
Serious Labor Problem
Strife and Unrest Grow as Nation Seeks to Produce
for Japanese War and Convert to Civilian
Goods at Same Time
By Joseph HanIon

Basic conditions for period OF sharply
mounting industrial strife are taking
shape in the United States, Secretary
of Labor Lewis B. Schwellenbach be-
lieves His maximum hope is that he
can revitalize the Labor Department in
time to moderate the conflict. He has
no idea that it can be wholly avoided.
Strikes have doubled since victory in
Europe, and the tensions provoking them
have not abated. A strike is settled
here, and a new one breaks out there.
In recent weeks the daily total of work.
ers out on major strikes throughout the
country has ranged between $4,000 and
100000.
The Johnston Murray Green labor
management charter, heralded only
three months ago as an historic step
in bringing about practical partner
ship to eliminate conflict between labor
and management and so achieve high
levels of employment and production
is wrecked as the Hesperus. 1t was
sunk by the Scylla and Charybdis of
the National Manufacturers Association
and the Building Trades Department of
the American Federation of Labor.
Collective bargaining, in the atmos-
phere of tension which followed partial
victory and the first steps toward an
uncertain reconversion, is failing in
creasingly to adjust differences, OF
the various governmental devices for
settlement of controversies only plant
seizure seems to be truly effective. This
measure, always distasteful to manage
ment, has become less and less accept
able to labor. Unions have found
through experience that it may operate
to deprive them of some advantages
won through negotiations with private
management.
Divided Victory Causes Trouble.
II had assumed" Schwellenbach de-
clared, that the troubles of reconversion
would be eased if one war stopped be-
fore the other but now I'm beginning
to doubt that is SO.
The people who have had their hours
cut back or their take-home pay re-
production see their neighbors still work.
ing in war plants at war wages. Or
take two families from Iowa who went
out to work in the shipyards at Van
couver. Smith is still there, but Jones
has gone back to steady peacetlme
job, and Smith starts telling himself
that Jones is getting the jump on him.
Factors such as these, along with the
fear of unemployment as war produc-
ton is cut back, Schwellenbach indi-
Gated, are important underlying causes
of strikes caused, ostensibly by other
reasons.
Until the defeat of Japan, Schwellen-
bach pointed out we must maintain two
economieS-a wartime economy for that
portion of our industrial machine de-
voted to production for the Pacific war,
and a peacetime economy in those in
dustries no longer necessary for war. In
this situation he does not wonder that
many workers have ''the jitters"
Workers are not alone in this feeling
of apprehension which underlies the
current epidemic of labor disputes. The
powerful National Association of Manu-
facturers was the first to turn against
the labor management charter so hope
fully put forward by Eric Johnston,
president of the United States Chamber
of Commerce; william Green, president
of the American Federation OF Labor,
and Philip Murray, president of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
MANS directors permitted only its
half-hearted participation in the SeS-
sions which led to drafting of the
charter, and then refused to sign 1t on
the ground that Its antiquities and
omissions might intensity rather than
eliminate misunderstanding between
management and labor"
The charter, like the United Nations
Charter of San Francisco, is no more
than a broad statement of general prin-
ciples. NAM President Ira Mosher said
the Johnston Murray Green charter
was only a statement of generalitieS on
which there was already wide agree
ment He wanted to know what was
cipleS, or generalities, work.
AFL Modifies Approval.
Murray said the document would stand
or fall by the work of the committee
which was to be named to implement
it-a committee which was to have
consisted of representatives of manage
ment, the AFL and the CIO. But there
will be no such committee.
Although the AFL Executive Board
ratified the charter, it became known
later that it did so with a reservation
insisted on by it's building trades de-
partment - that AFL representatives
would not sit on the committee for
implementation with representatives of
a dual organization, that is, with the
CIO.
Above all other factors the one ele-
ment which influenced the AFL build
ings trades in this course was the pros
pect of a postwar prefabricated housing
industry. The CIO, organized as it is
in mass production industries, is look
ing forward to sharing in the vast de-
velopment of prefabricated housing ex-
pected after the war. Walter Reuther,
the CIO leader, has already discussed
such projects with Henry Kaiser. and
use of the abandoned Willow Run
bomber plant for housing manufacture
has been considered.
AFL's tightly knit building trades
unions, formed by skilled hand crafts
men who represent the elite of organized
labor, may be expected to resist with
every means at their disposal the de-