The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1946-06-11
Very Truly Yours
BY SENATOR CLAUDE PEPPER

NOW that the situation is IN
hand, let further legislation on
the subject of industrial strife
await the report of Joint Sen
ate and House Investigating Com
mittee going into the real causes
of conflict between management
and labor. Meanwhile, if the
President We're to follow such
course he should, undoubtedly,
as some of us have urged, call a
production conference and seek
an agreement between manage
ment and labor that there would
be true cooperation each with the
other and both with the govern
ment so as to give the country
maximum production for the next
six months. This is the course ]
have advocated and / hope the
President will follow it. Man.
agement, labor and government
have all been at fault in bringing
on the crisis which we have just
passed through. / hope we have
all learned a lesson in the ne
cessity for cooperation in the pub
lie interest.
Labor has been principally
blamed for the trouble but it
should not bear all the fault.
During the war wages were
held up to meet increased cost of
living largely by overtime pay
which workers got. When the
war ended, overtime ended. That
meant workers had a very severe
cut in the amount of money they
took home at the end of the
week. But prices instead of de-
climbed higher as Con-
gresS removed one control after
another in response to pressure
groups. There was a manage
ment-labor conference last fall
but it failed because management
refused to consider any wage per
hour increases to keep the work
ers' total income from being cut
by reduced working hours. The
had not formulated a
policy for allowing any wage in
creases. Meanwhile, a group of
big business executives met in
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New
York and determined to put up a
common front against any wage
increases per hour for labor. BUSH
ness had been assured by the So
called carry forward - carry
back" tax law passed by the Con-
gress that if it made less money
in the two years after the war
than it made during the war, or
if it suffered loss, it could draw
back enough of the excess profits
it paid in during the war to the
government to make up for its
reduced earnings or its loss. The
Congress never gave, the working
man, who paid high taxes during
he war and who should lose his
Job after the war or get a less
wage, any such benefit. l4
But labor, facing reduced take
home pay and steadily increasing
living costs and meeting an or
ganized rebuff by business,
struck.
The President then appointed
fact-finding committees to try to
find the truth about the disputes.
Generally, big business refused to
cooperate with the Presidents
fact-finding Committee. When
the fact-finding committees fin
ally recommended wage increas-
as and the President made these
recommendations his own recon-
mendations, big business refused
to comply with the Presidents
request. In the automobile, steel,
oil, farm machinery, electric and
meat packing industries, big bust
ness defied the President. Labor,
further concessions, fin
ally settled.
In the mine strike, the mine OPP
orators refused to discuss a health
and welfare fund with the min
ars. In the case of the railroad
strike, railroad management posi-
lively refused to consider rule
change for the engineers and the
trainmen in spite of the fact that
they hadn't had rule changes in
twenty-five years. All the eff
forts of government mediators
failed to get these industries to
offer concessions to labor.
Finally, miners and railroad
men struck. The government
should have taken over the mines
Immediately and negotiated a
contract fixing wages and work
ing conditions OF the miners while
the mines were operated by the
government. That's what the
government finally did. That
would have kept the mines run
ming without the public suffering
any inconvenience. The govern
ment never offered to negotiate
with the railroad workers as to
the terms of their work for the
government. At noon, before the
President spoke to the Congress
on May 25th, the railroad work
ars begged the President to let
them go back to work upon the
terms recommended by the Presi-
dents own emergency board, any
further wage increase to be left
L 4 i