AMERICAN LABOUR CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23221, 19 June 1937, Page 12

AMERICAN LABOUR CRISIS

A prediction made six months ago by an observer of the strike situation in the United States, that the American industrial world was rushing into a crisis of appalling danger, seems to have been justified by recent events. The creation last year of the C. 1.0., or Committee for Industrial Organisation, by -the United Mine Workers’ leader, Mr John L. Lewis, marked the end of a period during which the trades union movement had been under the control /of the American Federation of Labour. The Federation of Labour had been rigidly opposed to industrial unionism. The C. 1.0. stands uncompromisingly for the nation-wide organisation of all workers, and particularly those in the great industrial plants, and for the replacement of the company union system by unqualified recognition of the right of the workers to bargain collectively with the employers. Under the Labour Relations Act, recently validated by the Supreme Court, the employer is compelled to bargain with the trades unions, and especially is he required to admit the right of a majority of his workers to bargain in the name of all of them. This right, regardless of the court’s sanction, the employers are apparently refusing to concede. They affirm that they are not opposed in principle to unionism or collective bargaining, but they insist that what the C. 1.0. is aiming at is actually control of the plants, and therefore they decline to treat with it. The reply of Mr Lewis has been to commence the organisation, within the reconstituted trades union movement, of the workers in all important industrial plants in the country, a beginning being logically made with those engaged in the production of steel, rubber, automobiles and so on. The largest centres of industrial activity have thus become the battlegrounds of a class struggle that is being waged with everincreasing bitterness. The employers maintain their attitude of unrelenting hostility towards the C. 1.0., while those sections of their employees who support them by adhering to the company union system are finding themselves in conflict with the converts to the newer organisation. Workers in plants are thus divided into opposing camps, with the forces which are endeavouring to preserve order making an unwilling third party in an already complex dispute. The serious stage to which this nationwide. situation has developed is clearly indicated in the latest news messages from Washington and the centres of greatest unrest. It is estimated that 1,300,000 workers—a number equalling the population of New Zealand —are now involved in strikes in eighteen States, while rioting, sometimes attended by fatal consequences, has practically become a daily occurrence. Seventeen shipyards are reported to be idle, and work in industrial plants is said to have been suspended on contracts worth 30,000,000 dollars. It may well be believed that the situation has become one with which no single State is able to cope effectively. The conviction that this is actually the case influenced an appeal to the President by the Governor of Ohio, in which he expressed deep concern over 11 the potential danger to thousands of people from the present situation.” The President has responded by the appointment of a board of mediators. But it is difficult to see that any purely conciliatory course is likely to be successful. Neither Capital nor Labour seems at present to be in the mood for compromise. Yet the alternative appears to be industrial chaos.