MOBILIZATION: Second Ultimatum

Early in the week, arrayed under the flag of the United Labor Policy Committee, the bosses of C.I.O., A.F.L., the machinist and the railroad unions marched to the office of Mobilizer Charles Wilson. They were as full of beefs as a Chicago stockyard, and bellowing just as loudly.

They were the men who had ordered a boycott of the Wage Stabilization Board a fortnight ago when three of their colleagues had been outvoted on a 10% wage-boost formula (TIME, Feb. 26). They were confronted by a stubborn, wrathful Wilson, who had already agreed that Stabilizer Eric Johnston should sign the formula and make ft law. For 2½ hours the men of the U.L.P.C. argued, mostly in billingsgate; a neutral observer described labor’s bosses as behaving “like six-year-olds.” Chiefly —and raucously—they demanded more say in the whole mobilization program. Particularly, they wanted more union control over U.S. manpower.

They finally stormed out, to meet the next morning in the machinists’ headquarters. There, for the second time in a fortnight, they composed an ultimatum from labor to the U.S. Government.

“No Window-Dressing.” They set forth their dissatisfaction with almost every angle of the mobilization program, including the wage formula, which they called “unfair, unworkable and unjust,” and the price policy, which they called “legalized robbery.” (Even as they were voicing their outrage, Price Stabilizer Michael Di Salle was gingerly taking some 200,000 items out of the freeze and substituting a new system of controls—see BUSINESS.)

But organized labor’s main target was General Electric’s ex-President Wilson. The bosses denounced Wilson for his “arrogant seizure of control over manpower,” for “his equally arrogant refusal” to listen to labor’s pleas. They wanted manpower controls under their always accommodating friend, Labor Secretary Tobin. They charged that no American “may feel safe that the big business clique in control of the [Office of Defense Mobilization] may not suddenly seek to achieve a compulsory draft of the nation’s workers.”

They charged that Wilson “considers the mobilization program his private preserve,” and that his office is staffed “exclusively with men from the executive offices of big business.” Wilson, they declared, would accept “window-dressing, supplied by labor, to cover the back-room activities of the leaders of industry who staff the ODM.” But, said the bosses, “he will get no such window-dressing” from organized labor. And with a self-righteous assertion that “we of the U.L.P.C. have voiced these criticisms not to impair our defense program but to improve it,” they resigned en masse from all the advisory Government positions they had held.

Thirteen labor bosses, including C.I.O.’s Phil Murray, James Carey, Walter Reuther, A.F.L.’s William Green, George Meany and Dan Tracy, walked out of the mobilization program. They were admittedly acting mainly for dramatic effect. “In no other way,” said labor, “can we effectively impress upon the American people the great wrongs being perpetrated.” The only labor leader left in an advisory capacity: John L. Lewis, quietly smirking and, like Tar-Baby, saying nothin’.

New Ho!e in the Ceiling. The bosses were not placated when Eric Johnston, turning his eyes heavenward, announced he would re-examine the wage formula, which had precipitated the whole fight. Its 10% ceiling was already shredded with exemptions for fringe benefits, incentive payments, adjustment of inequities. Johnston punched out a new hole. He exempted cost-of-living wage boosts so long as they were in contracts signed before Jan. 25, the day of the Big Wage Freeze.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced encouragingly next day that the cost-of-living index had risen 1.5% between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15—thus 2,700,000 workers, mostly in the automobile and electrical industries, would get increases up to 5/ an hour. But no wage or price formula would get at the real reason for organized labor’s onslaught. The ultimatum made that clear. The U.L.P.C. wanted a hand on the controls, not just a place at the navigator’s table. The U.L.P.C. wanted to strike down the one-man rule of the ODM, and in the end—although no labor leader had said it publicly—liquidate ODM Boss Charlie Wilson.

Tough Charlie Wilson was in no mood to accommodate the labor leaders. Neither, for that matter, was Wilson’s boss, Harry Truman. With diplomatic disregard for the facts of the case, he said he thought that labor’s walkout was more of a disagreement than a strike. And he expected, he told his press conference, that everything would work out all right—in one week, two weeks, three months, depending on developments. It was a soft answer, but it was likely to turn away no wrath. Labor was in no mood for soft answers.