LABOR: Builders’ Peace

Every year 900,000 U. S. artisans, mostly unionized, put together about seven billion dollars worth of buildings. Because of new construction methods, every year they lose some of their wages, builders lose some of their $7,000,000,000, through jurisdictional strikes between trade unions. Thus, many a job has been delayed while plasterers and cement workers argued as to where floors stopped and walls began; while carpenters challenged the right of metal workers to put up metallic window and door frames; while ordinary laborers denied to carpenters the privilege of tearing down their own temporary scaffoldings.

To provide against such delays and losses in future, the National Building Trades Employers’ Association last week met the executive board of the Building Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor at Tampa, Fla. To the meeting President Hoover, vitally interested in expanding construction as an antidote for the stockmarket crash, sent a message: “To find a method for the amicable settlement of jurisdictional disputes is indeed one of the most important. questions in our labor relations. It is capable of solution. . . . I am indeed glad to wish success to your endeavors.”

Optimistic was David Templeton Riffle of Pittsburgh, President of the Employers’ Association. Said he: “We will be able to agree upon something that will be a blessing to the industry.” Exulted William Joseph McSorley, retiring president of the building trades department: “The situation looks good to me.”

When the meeting opened no plan had been announced. It seemed likely that local or regional boards of arbitration would be set up to settle disputes between the different building unions without delaying construction, that an ultimate supreme-court-of-claims would be formed to hear appeals.