Evening star., 1947-01-04
Labor
Continued From First Page

| a pounding from those in the Re-
publican-dominated Congress who
want to change it.
Senator Taft, Republican, of Ohio,
who will be chairman of the Senate
Labor Committee, agrees with Sen
ator Wagner that there should be
no antistrike laws or compulsory
arbitration, but demands changes
in the act to "equalize" protection
of unions and employers.
The minimum wage law must be
revised, the Ohio Senator asserted
in radio address last night, land
something done to eliminate the
windfall claims resulting from the
Supreme Court opinions on portal
to-portal pay
Representative Hartley, Repub-
lican, of New Jersey, chairman of
the House Labor Committee, said
emphatically to reporter today the
law must be revised.
Act Is Outlined.
The Wagner Act-officially the
National Labor Relations Act
encourages workers to organize.
gives them freedom to bargain
through representatives of their
own choosing and empowers the
National Labor Relations Board to
stop employers from engaging in
| unfair labor practices"
Senator Taft, Representative
Hartley, and other Republican lead
ers, as well as Democrats like Rep
resentative Smith, Democrat, of
Virginia, say they want to keep
collective bargaining, but that
unions bow have the advantage
Unions deny this.
Senator Wagner contended the act
"has largely eliminated industrial
strife over union recognition, dis
elimination and collective bargain
ing, with its attendant bitterness
and violence"
He said the Bureau of Labor Sta
tistics has found that those issues
caused less than 4 per cent of the
time lost in important strikes during
the IL months following the end of
the war.
Idleness Causes Cited.
Disputes over wages, hours. and
other working conditions caused al
most 80 per cent of the idleness,
Senator Wagner said. si$ {sts
| Those facts, he declared, show
that the way toward industrial peace
is to strengthen collective bargain
ing so settlements will increasingly
be found through agreement by the
parties"
The mediation board he seeks
would operate within the Labor
Department. 1t would encourage
labor and management to come
to terms in the early stages of dis
putes. If efforts failed, the board
would try to persuade the parties
to submit their dispute to voluntary
arbitration. That is. to let third
party make the decision.
New Policy Proposed.
The drive to change the labor
laws began officially in the House
yesterday when:
/. Representative Smith proposed
new labor policy for the Nation.
2. Representative Hartley, bitterly
opposed by the CIO in the Novem-
ber elections, decided to accept
Craftsmanship of the House Labor
Committee.
8. Five House Republicans intro
duced identical bills to prevent
strikes which affect the public health
or safety-including coal strikes.
They call this the A-C-3H proposal
because their names are Represen-
tatives Auchincloss of New York,
Case of New Jersey, Hale of Maine,
Herter of Massachusetts, and Hesel-,
ton of Massachusetts,.
| Senators will start introducing
their labor proposals later.
Representative Smith introduced a
whopping big bill that would rewrite
the Wagner Act.
His measure says the Nations
policy is To bring about the equality
of labor and industry in collective
bargaining, subject to the following
duty:
mot to seriously interfere with
the normal flow of interstate COM
merce, or with the continuous oper-
alton of those industries and IA
cilities upon which the economic
life and general welfare of the Ma
ton is dependent
The bill would make it an unfair
labor practice" to interrupt public
utility or "any plant, mine or facil-