LABOR: Struggle for Power

Along 1,200 miles of Detroit streets not a streetcar or bus moved for four days. Industrial plants on the sprawling city’s outskirts, chockablock with defense orders, were slowed down because some employes could not get to work. Traffic was disrupted, accidents increased. Detroiters howled with wrath, but were helpless. They thumbed rides, went to work on roller skates, on bicycles-built-for-two (see cut). A.F. of L. and C.I.O. were fighting for control of the transit workers, and while they fought Detroit got along as best it could.

For almost 20 years A.F. of L. had been entrenched in the city-owned Detroit Street Railway, but it never even tried to organize anyone except the 4,000 operators. Six months ago C.I.O. moved in, soon boasted it had signed up a majority of the D.S.R.’s 1,534 maintenance men and office workers. It began signing up operators too.

Quickly A.F. of L. organized a maintenance men’s union, raced to Mayor Edward Jeffries demanding that it be recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for the operators and that it have exclusive use of carbarn bulletin boards. Actually, A.F. of L. was fighting for survival in Detroit, for a C.I.O. drive had already spread over the auto industry, threatening to rout A.F. of L. completely from the country’s fourth largest city. Mayor Jeffries, maintaining that the city could not legally sign an exclusive bargaining contract, turned down their demands. Neither would he give A.F. of L. exclusive rights to the bulletin boards.

A.F. of L. struck.

Early this week, as pugnacious A.F. of L. teamsters and other brother unions began sidling up to the battle line, as C.I.O. shouted gleefully for a chance to run the busses and end the tie-up, as the city faced the prospect of new strikes and a bloody war, Mayor Jeffries, in time’s nick, won a compromise. A.F. of L. agreed to a system-wide election in the D.S.R. If A.F. of L. won, the mayor promised to grant exclusive bargaining rights and exclusive use of bulletin boards, even though he still questioned the legality of it. Citizens and defense officials took a deep breath of relief.

The outcome of the struggle for power in Detroit was far from decided. But at least it was postponed, and busses and streetcars rolled.