National Affairs: To Replace Taft-Hartley

Up until Labor Day it was not so much what Adlai Stevenson said as the way he said it. At Detroit this week the Democratic candidate formally opened his campaign with a speech that contained more meat than sauce. He stepped briskly into the hot fight over the Taft-Hartley law, demanded its repeal and called for a new law based on “five general principles.”

One: “The law must accept labor unions … as the responsible representatives of their members’ interests.” He noted with approval that Congress last year repealed the provision for Government-run votes among employees before a union shop could be granted. But “the Act still prohibits other forms of union security” because “Congress arbitrarily said ‘we know better than unions what is good for employees.’ The result could have been predicted. Today several thousand employers and several million employees are operating under bootleg agreements in flagrant violation of the statute.” Although Stevenson did not name it, the prohibited form of union security which is now widely bootlegged is the closed shop. The Truman Administration has made little or no effort to check this “flagrant violation” and apparently Stevenson wants to deal with the violation by making the closed shop legal again.

Two: “Labor unions must conform to standards of fair conduct and equal protection in the exercise of their stewardship.” Stevenson said that a few unions have discriminated against employees on the basis of color or for other improper reasons. “That’s not democracy. Unions which are given powers by the Government should be open to all on equal terms.”

Three: “A new Federal labor law must outlaw unfair bargaining practices by employers and unions.” Stevenson noted that “unions have protested vigorously against” Taft-Hartley’s ban on unfair union practices as compared to the Wagner Act, which forbade only unfair employer practices. ‘In principle. Stevenson seemed to prefer Taft-Hartley on this point. “It is only common sense . . . that we must forbid . . . jurisdictional strikes, and strikes or boycotts attempting to force an employer to deal with one union when another has been certified as the representative of his employees.” Taft-Hartley’s provisions on this point, however, need complete rewriting.

Four: “Rejection of the labor injunction . . . that tyrannical power to have men and women ordered back to work in smothered silence.”

Five: “New methods must be found for settling national emergency disputes’. . . The right to bargain collectively does not include the right to stop the national economy.” Stevenson said that he had “no miracle-drug solution for this problem.”

Candidate Stevenson made four other Labor Day talks. Excerpts:

At Grand Rapids. “The Republican Party is hopelessly divided over foreign policy … I don’t envy . . . [Eisenhower’s] impossible dilemma as a result of the conflict in the party he now heads.”

At Hamtramck. Stevenson told a Polish-American audience that Eisenhower’s American Legion speech had “aroused speculation here and abroad that if he were elected, some reckless action might ensue in an attempt to liberate the peoples of Eastern Europe from Soviet tyranny.” Stevenson tore into this straw man, saying that the Soviet grip “upon your friends and relatives cannot be loosened by loose talk or idle threats [or] by starting a war which would lead to untold suffering.” Toward the end of his speech. Stevenson said that he did not interpret Eisenhower’s words in this warlike way but rather as an endorsement of Democratic foreign policy.

At Pontiac. “I am not going to talk to you about anything in this damned rain.” (The crowd cheered.)

At Flint. “I have never worked so hard on Labor Day before.”