LABOR: Work or Starve?

Will skilled union workers starve to protect the wage scales which Labor has struggled 50 years to build? That question was put to a test in New York City last week when some 2,000 union bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, lathers on Federal relief jobs walked out on strike against WPA’s “security wages.”

The strikers had no immediate prospect of personal gain. On the contrary, they walked out on a 50% raise in pay. Under the old FERA set-up a skilled laborer got $60 per month, worked just long enough to earn it at prevailing (i. e. union) wages. Under the new WPA setup, to which New York City relief jobs were shifted last week, the tradesman gets up to $93.50 per month, but must work at least 120 hr. for it. That means an hourly wage well below the prevailing rate.

Fierce was Labor’s unsuccessful fight to put the principle of “prevailing wages” into the Work Relief Bill. Mortal is Labor’s fear that if it takes less than union pay from the Government, private employers will use that precedent to smash its whole wage system. Hence New York’s Central Trades & Labor Council was able to call union men off their WPA jobs last week, get them to make a quixotic gesture of Labor solidarity.

New York’s Federal Relief Administrator Hugh S. Johnson argued himself hoarse trying to convince the unionists that “security wages” would not sap private wages. He offered figures to prove that by working steadily for the Government at security wages they would make more than building tradesmen had averaged on sporadic private jobs for the past five years. He pleaded that the Government could not afford to pay any more. He begged, “Don’t do it, boys!” Finally he turned to threats, ordered strikers to be back on their jobs this week or else be dropped from relief rolls.

Since FERA has consistently refused to discriminate against private strikers, New York’s relief strikers pooh-poohed General Johnson’s talk, expected to live on home relief. But in Washington, WPAdministrator Harry Hopkins surprised them by promising that whatever home relief they got would be from states or cities because the Federal Government would not contribute a cent to their support. Snapped he: “There is no such thing as a strike on a relief job.”

Next day President Roosevelt backed him up, explaining that the so-called strikers were really just men “who had returned to their homes.”

“That means work or starve,” cried the president of New York State Federation of Labor. “Do they think we will bow to anything like that?” But bow most of the strikers did. All but some 650 went back to work this week.