LABOUR DISPUTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 65, 14 September 1933, Page 11

LABOUR DISPUTES

1 THE HITCH IN THE CODE

Realising that disputes about collective) bargaining, have-been holdmg_up tho completion of the various industrial codes under the .National Recovery Act, President Roosevelt last-month' announced tho appointment of a Mediation Board consisting of a number of leading figures in American life. The task of this board is to prevent strikes and labour disputes from clogging the machinery of recovery.' On tho board are Senator Wagner, Mr. William Green, president of tho American Federation of Labour, Dr. 'Leo Wolman, Professor of Economics at Columbia University and probably the most influential person among the appointees, Mr. John L. Lewis, president of the United Mino Workers, Mr. Walter C. Teagle, president of tho Standard Oil Company of Now Jorsey, Mr. Gerard Swope, president of tho General Electric Company, and Mr. Louis E. Kirsten, goneral manager of William Filene's Sons Company of Boston. ' In appointing this board tho President issued a plea for industrial peace. The appointments followed within twolvo hours the announcement of tho settlement of an ugly strike in the bituminous coalfields of Pennsylvania. This settlement was brought about by tho personal intervention <of General Hugh Johnson, administrator of the N.R.A., at tho request of tho President. Tho setting up.of the board was a recognition of the fact that industrial unrest was a grave threat to the plan and followed upon serious disorders in the coal and tcxtilo industries. STRIKES SPREAD. Tho textile workers complained that tho employers, who were among the first to organise under tho N.R.A., wcro not keeping' tho conditions of the code under which they worked,' and strikes spread through a number of firms. Mediation brought a request for the creation of what would correspond to tho English system of shop stewards, but though the employers' representative on the mediating committee joined in the pica for this courso General Johnson at first refused it. Later the stewards were appointed, however, and tho difficulty was settled, at any rate for the time.

The principal causes of difference between the employers and the administration include the vital question of unions. Some industries have maintained company unions, which the N.B.A. may not permit to continue, though several of tho largest organisations of employers in the country ha\*e asked for them. In tho coalfields tronb'lo began through tho early action of MiI.' Lewis, who was quickly into tho field, sending; out organisers months ago, and tolling tho miners to organise, because no one would bo able to stop them. The total membership of his .unions .is slated to reach 150,000 workers. This work has been based on

tho President's promise of the right of collective bargaining, and labour leaders havo been claiming that many employers havo seized in advance the opportunity to raise prices while not reducing tho hours of labour or increasing wages. ■■';■' ' -' ' ; ■■ ■■-

Through a National Board of Labour Eolations the N.B.A. hopes to maintain control of the country's vast economic system, another national board being created for each industry in turn and the higher authority co-ordinating the work and acting as a sort of court of final appeal. The new Mediation Board has been created for the purpose oi: maintaining pea;co in industry until the ■whole area is codified and working under the new conditions, which it is hoped will be the position by the New Year. So far tho Government, lias tnken up an attitude of. neutrality on tho unionism question. But it seems likely that tho greatest problem which the Administration will havo fo face in tho near future is to administer the Act without taking ono sido or. the other.