LABOR: Steel Race

Last week President Roosevelt and William Green ran an exciting relay race against a strike in the steel industry. The start was in Pittsburgh where the president of the American Federation of Labor went to try to persuade the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers to call off its strike plans. The finish was in Washington where President Roosevelt flashed across the Congressional adjournment deadline a winner with a new law to combat strikes in any industry. By the time Mr. Green reached the starting post Amalgamated was already in convention to vote the strike and nearby steel companies were putting up barbed wire, importing carloads .of cots for workers to sleep in their plants, hiring guards, laying in supplies of tear gas and rifles. On the side of peace and Mr. Green were Michael Francis Tighe, 72-year-old president of the Amalgamated, and one fact: smart Amalgamated members were far from confident of winning a strike. At most they claimed only 100,000 members out of 430,000 steel employes. Not famed for energy or decisiveness, President Green went before the 188 Amalgamated delegates in the Elks’ Auditorium and outdid himself. Said he: “I come as a miner speaking to steel workers. … I know what it is to go starving, what it is to go through 18 months of strike and to taste the bitter dregs of defeat. “I don’t want you to risk a conflict when the odds are against us. It would set us back and we cannot afford to be set back. It is better at this time to observe the weight of sound judgment rather than the dictates of feeling. There is no more domineering, autocratic, dictorial and reprehensible group than those who represent the steel corporations of this country.” Mr. Green proposed the appointment by President Roosevelt of an impartial board of three: 1) to investigate grievances and arrange for collective bargaining conferences with employers; 2) to hold workers’ elections to determine what organization will represent what workers—the majority-organization to represent all. The strike, he said, should be indefinitely postponed and, if the steel industry accepted these terms, canceled. With unwonted vigor Mr. Green turned on the delegates and declared: “I insist upon your acting favorably upon this proposition.” They did—with only a murmur of dissent. Highly pleased, Messrs. Green and Tighe entrained for Washington to put the union’s offer to Madam Secretary Perkins and the President. Said Mr. Tighe: “We are not going to be sold out by Roosevelt and we know it.” Meanwhile in Washington President Roosevelt was giving up, for the last time, any hope of putting through the comprehensive Labor Disputes Bill by New York’s Senator Wagner before the end of the session. Possible passage of that measure had served the President well as a threat to bring balky employes to quick terms. But with Congress soon out of Washington the Administration felt the need of something stronger than a threat to deal with the strikes which were bound to develop during the summer and autumn. Therefore the President had drafted a substitute measure, general enough to get through Congress quickly, specific enough to be of some real value. The substitute took the form of an amendment to the Recovery Act and by no coincidence closely paralleled the Green settlement in Pittsburgh. The President was authorized to appoint labor boards : i) to investigate facts of disputes growing out of the collective bargaining clause of the Recovery Act; 2) to hold employe elections “when it shall appear in the public interest”; 3) to subpoena documents and witnesses; 4) to issue orders and regulations, disobedience of which would subject any personto a $1,000 fine or a year in jail. Day before the steel strike was due to break and Congress to adjourn, the measure was introduced in House and Senate. Only serious opposition came from Progressives who wanted the Wagner bill. They were placated by a declaration that the amendment was not to be construed as denying Labor’s right to strike. House and Senate quickly voted aye and the Green-Roosevelt relay race was won handsomely.