LABOR: Tread Softly

Organized labor took a long look at the election returns and knew definitely that an era had passed. The days of running to Washington for almost anything it wanted were over. The assurance of being bailed out by Government when it got into trouble was gone.

Labor assessed the damage. It had lost almost all of its stalwarts in the House—Washington’s Hugh de Lacey, West Virginia’s Matt Neeley, Michigan’s Frank Hook, Pennsylvania’s Mike Bradley and John Sheridan. Gone from the Senate would be such labor 100-percenters as Pennsylvania’s Joe Guffey, Utah’s Abe Murdock, Delaware’s James Tunnell, Washington’s Hugh Mitchell.

Moreover, three states—Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota—had voted constitutional amendments to bar the closed shop. Labor-strong Massachusetts had approved a “union responsibility” referendum, requiring unions to make public financial reports of dues, officers’ salaries, fees, etc. The public’s attitude was unmistakable: it had had enough of labor recklessness and abuses of its rights, and enough of inflation-puffing strikes. It had, in effect, voted out a pro-labor Government and voted in one which it hoped would hold labor as responsible as management.

Labor looked at the new Congress and shuddered. Would its old foes now translate the Republican sweep as a mandate for restriction of unions? One answer came in a hurry. Minnesota’s Senator Joe Ball said he would introduce a bill to outlaw the closed shop, which he called “the most illiberal thing in our industrial picture.” He and many other Republicans were on record for revision of the Wagner Act, to equalize employers’ rights with union rights.

It was a time for Republicans as well as labor leaders to assess the future. Oregon’s onetime member of WLB, Senator Wayne L. Morse, sounded a go-slow cry to his fellow Republicans who might want to hit the anti-union warpath. He reminded them that hundreds of thousands of union workers and their families had obviously voted for the G.O.P., many of them for the first time; in effect they had given the Republican Party a two-year period of probation. With its warriors pointed to 1948, the G.O.P. leadership would think twice before leading them into a scalping raid at this point.

Labor had to think only once. Its probation had already started. Its smart leaders well knew that any widespread renewal of strikes or outburst of “abuses” would pass ammunition to its enemies in Congress. No union leader would say it, but labor’s strategy over the next few months was to tread softly until it was clear how the other fellow might use his big stick.