FORD WARNED

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 153, 25 March 1937, Page 11

FORD WARNED

C. 1.0. to Unionise His Plants PARADE IN DETROIT Threat to Turn Courts Wrong - Side Up MOTOR WORKERS’ RIGHTb By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received March 24, 7.35 p.m.) Detroit, March 24. Nearly 100,000 motor workers and sympathisers held an orderly meeting in Detroit Square. Mr. Homer Martin, president of the United Automobile Workers of America, was cheered when he warned Mr. Henry Ford that the Committee for Industrial Organisation intends to unionise his plants, and said that Mr. Ford could not prevent it.

Another speaker, Mr. Frank Martel, president of the Detroit branch of the union, threatened that unless the rights of labour were respected by the City Hall, police headquarters and the courts they would be turned wrong side up. Mr. Henry Ford, denying recently a report that he is prepared to shut his plants for three years in the event of a strike, said: “We are not shutting down. We intend operating to the last man. We stand to our position.” He advised the workers to shun the unions. Those who joined would be like the turkey. They would get it in the neck eventually. The chairman of the Committee for Industrial Organisation, Mr. John L. Lewis, and the chairman of the board of directors of the Chrysler Motor Corporation, Mr. Walter Chrysler, have agreed to confer with the Governor of Michigan, Mr. F. Murphy, to-day on the strike situation.

Mt. F. Couzens, mayor of Detroit, has lessened fears of a general strike by ordering the police not to interfere with the sit-down strikers in small plants.

THIRTY-HOUR WEEK

Industry Not Ready For K Detroit, February 25. General Motors Corporation officials informed union representatives to-day that the automobile industry was not “ready for” the thirty-hour work week. The shorter schedule of work, five days of six hours each, was one of the objectives of the United Automobile Workers of America in the recent strikes in General Motors plants. Conferees of the corporation and union are seeking to compose issues left unsettled in the peace agreement that ended the strikes on February 11. Mr. C. E. Wilson, vice-president heading the General Motors negotiators, said they discussed “the theory of the thirty-hour week” to-day. He added : “I don’t think the country is ready for it yet, nor is the industry ready for it, and I don’t think anyone who really thinks about it is in favour of it right now.” As the sixteenth meeting of the conferees ended late to-day, Mr. Wilson was asked if they had finished discussion of the thirty-hour week. “As far as I am concerned,” he answered. Mr. Wyndham Mortimer, first vicepresident leading the union delegation, told news men that “as far as I am concerned we’ll take it up again tomorrow morning.” “Five years from now we may take it up again,” Mr. Wilson replied. Earlier to-day Mr. Mortimer had shrugged his shoulders when asked if the union expected to attain the shorter working week in the present conferences.

During the strikes Mr. Homer Martin, U.A.W.A. president, described the union’s demand as "an endeavour to shorten the hours to a working day which will enable the automobile worker to enjoy his wife, his children, and his leisure time.”

Only two other questions, charges of discrimination against union workers, and the union demand for minimum wage rates “commensurate with an American standard of living,” remain on the conference programme.