LABOR: George Does It

George Mueller was an obscure Pittsburgh labor leader. But by last week George’s national fame had hatched. He had defied the city and the courts and demonstrated that labor recognizes no exceptions whatever—even the public’s welfare—to its right to strike.

George Mueller, 43, a graduate engineer out of Carnegie Tech, was an employe of the Duquesne Light Co. Nine years ago the Duquesne management encouraged its employes to form an independent union—thus hoping to keep out A.F.L. and C.I.O., which were sniffing at the door. The employes formed their union and subsequently elected talkative, affable, erratic George as their president.

To management’s consternation it discovered that it might have created something just as formidable as A.F.L; or C.I.O. George lost no time proving that it had. He demanded a 35% wage rise for all Duquesne workers. When negotiations dragged, he set a strike deadline. Management’s worst fears were confirmed when George ordered the workers out, and Pittsburgh was paralyzed for 19½ hours.

That strike ended when George obligingly agreed to further discussion. An arbitration board awarded George and the Duquesne employes an 18¢-an-hour wage rise. George was only momentarily satisfied. He wanted a lot more.

Specifically he wanted: another wage boost of 20%; 14 paid holidays a year; triple time for working on holidays; six months free hospitalization every year; $400-a-month retirement pensions after 30 years. When negotiations bogged down, George set another strike deadline.

“Scrap of Paper.” Pittsburgh’s Democratic Mayor David Lawrence, a friend of labor, wrung his hands, took a plague-on-both-your-houses stand. He charged that the Duquesne company was “suffering from a hardening process that a monopoly always suffers,” said the union was “ill-advised.” Then he acted.

He sent City Solicitor Anne X. Alpern to the courts to get an injunction forbidding the strike on the ground that the city’s welfare was involved. One minute before George’s deadline, Judge Walter P. Smart, a Democrat, forbade the strike, ordered top officials of the company’s complicated hierarchy* to sit down with George. But the injunction only postponed the showdown. George called the injunction a mere “scrap of paper,” struck anyhow.

Judge Smart and two fellow judges, both Republicans, held George in contempt of court and sentenced him to a year in jail.

Under the Banner. The legal grounds for Dave Lawrence’s action might have been all right, but they were mined with political bombs. Promptly, Pittsburgh’s A.F.L. and C.I.O. unions, which so far had been cool to George, rallied under the banner of anti-injunction. As George’s union walked out and Pittsburgh’s electric power dwindled, A.F.L. streetcar workers, C.I.O. steel-mill and electrical-parts workers also struck in sympathy.

At this chaotic juncture the Duquesne company offered a 5% rise. George, in his cell, had a change of heart. He apologized to the court and even demanded that he be let out of jail so that he could persuade his union to accept the new proposal. The court agreed. But when George was out of the coop, he immediately maneuvered his union into rejecting any settlement until the court lifted the injunction. The city gave in. The injunction was withdrawn.

Mayor Lawrence might reasonably have expected then that all would be well. But George, on the loose, bussed by his ardent unionists (see cut), denied that he had promised anything. The strike, he declared, would go on.

It was still on at week’s end. Negotiations were deadlocked again. Leaders of A.F.L. and C.I.O., who had won their point about injunctions and now could no longer swallow George, ordered the sympathy-striking members of their unions to go back to work.

Electric power for 1,400,000 people was down to one-third of normal. All but a handful of Pittsburgh’s hundreds of restaurants were shut. Department stores were shut. All but a few office buildings were shut. Water supply in surrounding townships dwindled. Transportation facilities were crippled. Some 100,000 people were out of work. Mayor Lawrence admitted that he could no longer guarantee the continuing health and safety of his city. After their one futile effort, the courts bowed out. And Pittsburgh had found out what happens when you fool with George.

* Parent company of Duquesne is Standard Gas & Electric, a crown colony of the colossal Victor Emanuel empire (see BUSINESS). President and Board Chairman of Standard is Leo T. Crowley, who was Alien Property Custodian under Franklin D. Roosevelt.