LABOR: Violence on the Picket Line

The milling picket lines, the fire hoses, the club-wielding police wereall reminiscent of the bloody strikes of the 1930s. When the International Union of Electrical Workers struck General Electric last week, the company vowed it would keep its plants open for all employees who wanted to work. Both sides knew the vow could lead to violence. It was not long in coming.

Outside G.E.’s big River Works plant in Lynn, Mass., 200 pickets tried to block cars of nonstrikers from driving into the plant. As police linked arms to force back the pickets to let the cars pass through, the pickets shoved forward, stopped the cars, and growled menacingly: “You are marked men. We’ll remember you.” At G.E.’s Electronics Park plant in Syracuse, 800 pickets battled with 210 police who were trying to escort carloads of nonstrikers into the plant. Result: 15 union men were arrested. Breaking through the lines at a small G.E. lamp plant in Bucyrus (pop. 11,600), Ohio, nonstriking women squealed and wielded umbrellas as pickets stuck them with hatpins.

Close Votes. The militancy on the picket line barely concealed many of the union members’ misgivings about the strike. The union’s local at the Schenectady, N.Y. plant, the largest of G.E.’s 166 factories, at first voted 5,033 to 2,895 not to strike. But after the other I.U.E. locals went out, union officials at Schenectady passed around a petition until enough names were collected to call out I.U.E. workers there too. Soon after the strike began at Schenectady, such violent skirmishes broke out that the mayor declared a state of emergency, asked New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller for state police. It was refused.

The chief reasons why the union was split on the strike were the aggressive labor policy pursued by G.E. and the headstrong, overdetermined tactics of I.U.E. President James Carey. The last time G.E. faced a strike of comparable proportions—in 1946—it closed down its plants, but since then it has hardened its policies. Under Vice President Lemuel R. Boulware, who now serves only as a consultant, G.E. developed a broad policy known through the industry as “Boulwarism,” in which the company makes an unceasing effort to sell itself to the workers. In bargaining, the company first listens to the unions’ demands, then puts all that it is willing to grant in its first contract offer; after that it will make only minor concessions, thus making gains from a strike problematical. The G.E. policy has been so successful that Carey was unsure of the support of his union members two years ago and backed off from calling a strike. He has since changed the I.U.E. constitution to give greater strike authority to a conference board, make it possible to strike with a majority—instead of a two-thirds—vote of the members.

Two Rights. Locrls of the United Auto Workers and the International Association of Machinists accepted the G.E. contract offer, which calls for a 3% raise immediately and a 4% raise in April 1962 plus other benefits. However, the contract does not contain a cost-of-living clause, which the old contract contained and which the I.U.E. demands.

How effective was the strike? The union claimed that almost all of its 70,000 members (out of G.E.’s hourly work force of 110,000) were out, but the company maintained that as many as 5,000 workers, who are represented by the I.U.E., were slipping through the picket lines and reporting for work at the 44 struck plants. By the fifth day of the strike, G.E. said that including supervisory and salaried personnel, it had 33,902 employees in the nine major strikebound plants where 98,390 employees normally work. One thing was sure: not nearly enough workers were getting into the plants to keep the production line moving.

“We will not be budged by a strike,” snapped Chief G.E. Negotiator Philip D. Moore. “We made our proposals. We are going to stand by them.” Although G.E. was disturbed by the violence and was seeking injunctions to bar mass picketing, it refused to close its plants. Says Moore: “We believe a man has a right to strike, but we also believe he has a right to work. Carey has his troubles. A lot of his people aren’t behind him. When they realize they’ve been had, they’ll start coming back to work.”