Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1950-06-10
Formula for industrial Peace

Labor and management in general should
find 1t profitable to read and digest c. E.
wilson's recent address to the National Press
Club. Certainly, if its ideas were universally
applied to govern employee employer relation
ships, there would be steady decline in indus
trial strife, and the country as whole would
be richly benefited.
For Mr.. Wilson, as president of the giant
General Motors Corporation, has explained in
simple but impressive language some of the
main reasons why his company and the United
Automobile Workers now enjoy a precedent
setting contract whose terms-worked out in a
completely friendly atmosphere-guarantee I'M
interrupted production for the next five years,
during which the employees will receive increas-
ing benefits in the form of wages pensions,
medical insurance etc. The real secret behind
the achievement of this excellent agreement is
that both parties to it negotiated in good faith,
with a mature understanding of each others
problems, and in full accord with six guiding
principles.
Those principles deserve attention through
out the labor management field AS Mr.. Wilson
has outlined them, they are CD that it is logical,
fair and reasonable to maintain the purchasing
power of an hours work in terms of what the
employe must buy in his daily existence (2)
that workmen who are consumers and customers
as we'll as producers, are entitled to share in
the advancing prosperity of the Nation; 90
that science and technology-better tools, i'm
proved methods, the substitution of mechanical
power for human backs-should be exploited to
the full to promote higher living standards for
all; ca that chronological advances-which
many unions still resist-are economically and
socially sound, that the philosophy of feather
bedding is false and that it is erroneous to
believe that machines destroy jobs; 60 that
Insecurity is extremely worrisome and that
corporation should help it's employees to acquire
life insurance, sickness benefits, pensions and
similar safeguards; and 60 that worker and
employer will get more out of cooperation and
peace than out of industrial strife and that the
Nation at large will be strengthened thereby.
All this may seem to add up to little more
than collection of pious platitudes. But at
General Motors because both management and
the JAW have taken them seriously, those
platitudes are definitely working to everybody's
advantage. And they are working that way
because, in Mr.. Wilson's words, the corporation
and the union have recognized the need to
figure out ian American solution for the rela-
tons of labor and industry and not attempt to
adopt the philosophy of class conflict from
Europe, either from the Communists and Social
lists on the one hand or the cartel thinking,
non-compettive reactionaries on the other" In
short, they have recognized that Shotgun bar
gaining as in the coal mining field, can do
nobody any good in the long run.
Perhaps 1t is too much to expect that this
viewpoint will soon become typical of labor and
management everywhere Nevertheless, the
GM-UAW contract-which Mr.. Wilson believes
to be adaptable to smaller businesses-repre-
sents, in spirit and principle at least, formula
for industrial craftsmanship and peace in
America.