National Affairs: Moonshine & Camouflage

Last week all was beauty, bustle and boom at the National Automobile Show in Manhattan (TIME, Oct. 16). But at the automobile capital, Detroit, there was trouble and promise of more to come.

Out in the open at last was the explosive issue which has underlain most of the fighting between Labor and the motormakers since C. I. O. moved into the industry two years ago. The issue: whether autoworkers or their bosses shall decide how fast production lines move, i.e., how many cars and parts are produced in a given time. Speedy, timed, mass production is what makes motor cars cheap and plentiful in the U. S. So the battle in Detroit was of as much interest to automobile buyers as to the motormakers, their 380,000 workers, and the furnishers of steel, rubber, plate glass, etc., etc., who pine or prosper with their biggest consumer.

The battle began at Chrysler Corp.’s Dodge plant in Hamtramck, a Detroit suburb noted for its putrescent politics and its high proportion (90%) of Polish-Americans. As 1940 Dodges took shape on the assembly lines, company inspectors time & again had to halt the production flow to check up on botched work, missing parts. Harassed Dodge bosses were up against a new flowering of an old technique—the slowdown. After Dodge fired 64 union sloths, then refused to reinstate them, every second unit slid untouched past key workers. Union girls refused to touch De Soto arm rests on a parts assembly line—because, said the management, girls further up the line had not paid union dues. By management orders, Dodge shut down. At week’s end, all Chrysler Corp. plants in the Detroit area were closed or closing. Idle: 50,000.

Helping Chrysler explain its dilemma to the public was James Lee, a son of the late, famed Press Agent Ivy Lee (whom Laborites still remember as “Poison Ivy”). To the press and to dealers facing a shortage of cars at the start of their new season, Chrysler’s President K. T. Keller sent a letter: “We are getting practically no production from any of our Detroit plants. . . . You cannot run a business on a sound basis and produce quality automobiles if men . . . take into their own hands the running of the plants.” To bulbous, loud Richard Frankensteen of C. I. O.’s United Automobile Workers, Chrysler’s Vice President Herman Weckler also addressed an open letter: “What you are doing is the old camouflage, Frankensteen, and you know it. . . .Now you want a new contract and we are willing to negotiate with you. So bring in your negotiating committee and your demands and let’s get down to business. We are ready again to make a fair contract but not to let you run our plants.”

“Moonshine!” roared Mr. Frankensteen. “We are not trying to run your plants, and you know it. We are insisting only that in your operation of the plants you shall not treat your employes as just some more machinery to be used, burnt up and then thrown on the scrap heap.”

As Michigan law requires, Mr. Frankensteen filed five-day notice of intent to call formal strikes in all Chrysler plants. With this club bulging his pocket, he then accepted Mr. Weckler’s invitation to negotiate a new contract (the old one expired Sept. 30).

Non-union Ford Motor Co., still resisting an NLRB order to cease opposition to C. I. O., reinstated 23 discharged unionists, as the Board had ordered—but said it was obeying the law of increasing production rather than the Wagner Act. Recovered from the factional strife which nearly destroyed the union last year, C. I. O.’s U. A. W. was in fettle for a drag-out fight with Chrysler. After that, great G. M. also might be called on to let its workers slowdown by agreement, or see them slowdown by conspiracy on the assembly line.