LABOR: Decision Against Kohler

The National Labor Relations Board handed down a historic ruling last week in the longest—and one of the bitterest—major strikes in U.S. labor history. It found Wisconsin’s Kohler Co., the nation’s third biggest maker of plumbing fixtures, guilty of prolonging a six-year strike against the company by the United Auto Workers. The NLRB found Kohler guilty of unfair labor practices, ordered it to rehire the 1,700 workers discharged after the United Auto Workers called them out on strike—even if it means firing some of the 2,500 nonunion workers that Kohler recruited to break the strike. The union called the decision a victory over “the medieval attitude of Kohler toward its employees.” Kohler officials at once filed an appeal in federal court in Chicago.