LABOR: Fraternal Bucking

United Automobile Workers’ Homer Martin and C. I. O.’s JohnL. Lewis, who disagree about many matters, long have understood that factionalism rampant in the U. A. W. A. was harming the whole industrial union movement. Outlaw sit-downs, repudiations of his authority, and kindred manifestations of factional trouble were blamed by Mr. Martin upon Communist careerists and others in his union who, according to him, raised hell for the hell of it. In large part, Mr. Lewis blamed Mr. Martin, who according to the C. I. O. chairman should have displayed more administrative fortitude, a quality which Mr. Lewis abundantly possesses and, on occasion, brutally uses.

Mr. Lewis (and everybody else in the country) has lately watched circumstances affirm his conviction that President Martin would have to get tough or get out of U. A. W. A. A treasury depleted by unemployment and unpaid dues; a new outbreak of outlaw strikes in General Motors, several parts plants; the tactical weaknesses inherent for any union in a period of widespread layoffs; substantial concessions to management in contract renewals; a recent and violent intra-union factional flareup—all this impelled Mr. Martin to seek out unionism’s new Great Father in Washington.

Mr. Lewis apparently gave Mr. Martin a great bucking up, and last week, at a meeting of U. A. W. A.’s sorely riven executive board in Detroit, two “fraternal observers” delegated by Mr. Lewis were on hand. Pointedly informed that the situation had been “discussed” with Mr. Lewis’ observers, the board acknowledged that “unauthorized stoppages of work and strikes have resulted in the breaking of contracts with employers and the unemployment of thousands of workers.” It also decreed that leaders or abettors of outlaw strikes may be suspended or expelled from the union. But lest congenitally independent U. A. W. A. members suspect a sellout, it pledged that “should the management attempt wage cuts, the impairing of working conditions, or the refusal to settle legitimate grievances . . . the International Union will not hesitate to authorize strike action.”

Vested with more authority than he has ever held before, given a mighty club over factionalists who a week previously had hoped to ease him out, confident Mr. Martin promptly began to squelch insubordinate subordinates, to assure automakers that neither they nor rambunctious unionists should expect to get away with anything. Meantime he had become deeper in Mr. Lewis’ debt than any other big man in the labor movement.