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The Public Interest in Emergency Labor Disputes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Robert B. Dishman
Robert B. Dishman
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
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Type
Short Articles and Memoranda
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 1951 , pp. 1100 - 1114
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1951

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References

1 “Strengthening and Enforcement of Antitrust Laws,” Message to Congress, April 29, 1938. Reprinted as S. Doc. 173, 75th Cong., 3rd sess. (1938), p. 1.

2 The most recent classification of industries according to the degree to which control is concentrated in a few corporations is to be found in the Annual Report of the Federal Trade Commission for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1949 (Washington, 1949), pp. 15–18Google Scholar.

3 For evidence that Big Steel and its subsidiaries have on occasion discriminated against independent fabricators, see the testimony before the Celler Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power on April 20–21, 1950. Hearings before the Subcommittee … of the Committee on the Judiciary, Serial No. 14, Pt. 4A (Steel), U. S. House of Representatives, 81st Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, 1950), pp. 283–356Google Scholar.

4 For the methods by which labor unions, particularly the United Mine Workers of America, have used their economic power oppressively, see the Hearings before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, on The Economic Power of Labor Organizations, 81st Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, 1949)Google Scholar, and the report of this committee, S. Rept. 1234, 81st Cong., 2nd sesa. (Washington, 1950).

5 Lippmann, Walter, The Phantom Public (New York, 1925), pp. 77, 119, 125Google Scholar.

6 Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago, 1946), pp. 15–16, 137Google Scholar.

7 “Compulsory Arbitration in the Railroad Engineers' Award,” American Federationist, Vol. 20, pp. 22, 25 (Jan., 1913)Google Scholar.

8 Cohen, Morris R., The Faith of a Liberal (New York, 1946), p. 5Google Scholar.

9 Wechsler, James A., Labor Baron: A Portrait of John L. Lewis (New York, 1944), p. 9Google Scholar.

10 In the “Foreword” to Coleman, McAlister, Men and Coal (New York, 1943), p. xvGoogle Scholar.

11 New York Herald, July 20, 1877, p. 4Google Scholar.

12 Congressional Record, Vol. 48, pt. 2, p. 1661 (Feb. 2, 1912)Google Scholar.

13 The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Comp. Samuel I. Rosenman, Vol. 6: The Constitution Prevails, 1937 (New York, 1941), p. 325Google Scholar.

14 Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 136,160 (Sec. 305).

15 See United States v. United Mine Workers of America, 330 U. S. 258, 284–289 (1947).

16 “Strikes and the Public Interest,” Yale Review, Vol. 35, p. 211 (Winter, 1946)Google Scholar.

17 See the Hearings before the Subcommittee on Railway Labor Act Amendments of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare … on S. 3463, U. S. Senate, 81st Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, 1950), passimGoogle Scholar.

18 Congressional Record, Vol. 64, pt. 1, p. 214 (Dec. 8, 1922)Google Scholar.

19 Morrissey, P. H., dissenting, in Report of the Board of Arbitration in the Matter of the Controversy between the Eastern Railroads and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (1912), p. 122Google Scholar.

20 44 Stat. 577, as amended by 48 Stat. 1185 (1934) and 49 Stat. 1189 (1936).

21 Railway management is never free, of course, to suspend service without permission of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

22 61 Stat. 136.

23 See Tenth Annual Report of the National Mediation Board for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1944 (Washington, 1944), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 1–2. See also Transcript of Proceedings of the National Railway Labor Panel Emergency Board Appointed May 31, 1943, pp. 1512–1513.

25 See the New York Times, December 31, 1943, p. 8; ibid., January 4, 1944, p. 13.

26 On this point, see the criticisms of Director Cyrus S. Ching in both the First and the Second Annual Report of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, for 1948 and 1949, respectively (Washington, 1949, 1950), pp. 55–58Google Scholar and pp. 5–8, respectively.

27 See the Report to the President of the United States on the Labor Dispute in the Basic Steel Industry, by the Steel Industry Board Appointed by the President July 15, 1949 (Washington, 1949), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

28 See the Annual Report of the United States Board of Mediation for 1931, pp. 19–28Google Scholar; for 1932, pp. 36–42; and for 1934, p. 1.

29 The Hudson and Manhattan (May 30–June 22, 1946); the Southern Pacific (July 21, 1947); and the Wabash (March 15–23, 1949). See the Twelfth Annual Report of the National Mediation Board (Washington, 1946), pp. 3, 50–51Google Scholar; Fourteenth Annual Report (1948), pp. 2–3, 45Google Scholar; and Fifteenth Annual Report (1949), pp. 3, 47–48Google Scholar.

30 Fifteenth Annual Report of the National Mediation Board (1949), pp. 3, 45–46Google Scholar.

31 These disputes are reported by the National Mediation Board in the Twelfth Annual Report (1946), pp. 1–2, 46–47Google Scholar, the Fourteenth Annual Report (1948), pp. 1–2, 49–50Google Scholar, and the Sixteenth Annual Report (1950), pp. 63–64Google Scholar. The other nation-wide disputes in which one or more unions rejected the recommendations of an emergency board are: the 1941 wage case, involving practically all railway employees; the two parallel but separate wage disputes in 1943, involving the operating and non-operating employees; the Diesel engine disputes of 1943 and 1950, the latter of which culminated in a five-day strike by firemen against four major trunk lines; and the separate movements launched in 1950 by the switchmen's union acting alone and by the conductors and trainmen acting in concert to win a forty-hour week for yard employees, both of which culminated in the strike emergency referred to above.

32 This was made unmistakably clear by David B. Robertson, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, in his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Railway Labor Act Amendments on June 7, 1950, in justification of his union's strike against four major carriers, then in its twelfth day:

“Senator Donnell. What was the reason, Mr. Robertson, that it was not called over the entire United States as had been authorized by the action taken by the membership? “Mr. Robertson. Well, our experience showed that a Nation-wide strike is more or less impractical. That was our conclusion after the 1948 experience.

“Senator Donnell. Why do you think a Nation-wide strike is impractical?

“Mr. Robertson. Well, it is too unwieldy in the first place, and in the second place the Government has interfered in these Nation-wide strikes to the point where you are not permitted to handle a Nation-wide strike.

“Senator Donnell. In other words, that second point to which you refer, the action of the Government in regard to Nation-wide strikes, was one of the very important considerations in determining that this strike should be made applicable to only these four systems; is that correct?

“Mr. Robertson. Yes, sir.

“Senator Donnell. YOU thought that it would be the best policy for the reasons you have indicated, to confine this strike to four railroads rather than to make it Nation-wide. In that way you thought you would be freer from the likelihood of Government interference; that is correct, is it not?

“Me. Robertson. Oh. Yes, there is no question about that.” (Hearings before the Subcommittee … of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare … on S. 3463, pp. 255–256, 258.)

33 See both the Report and the Supplementary Report to the President by the Emergency Board Appointed September 10, 1941 (Washington, 1941)Google Scholar.

34 See Transcript of Proceedings of the National Railway Labor Panel [“Non-op”] Emergency Board Appointed February 20, 1943, Bk. III, pp. 2768–2769, 2983, 2988, 3041–3042, and Transcript of Proceedings of the National Labor Railway Panel [“Op”] Emergency Board Appointed May 31, 1943, pp. 1517–1519.

35 See Slichter, Sumner, “The Great Question in Industrial Relations,” New York Times Magazine, April 27, 1947, pp. 5 ffGoogle Scholar.

36 See his article, “To End Strikes in Essential Industries,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 12, 1947, pp. 7 ff.Google Scholar, and hie letter to Senator Donnell, printed in Hearings before the Subcommittee … of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare … on S. 3463, p. 136.

37 In Dorchy v. Kansas, 272 U. S. 306, 311 (1926).

38 Sooner or later, most of the state laws banning utility strikes and requiring arbitration of labor disputes have been contested in the courts. The pioneer Kansas Industrial Relations Act of 1920 was declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in Wolff Packing Co. v. Court of Industrial Relations, 267 U. S. 552 (1925), insofar as it applied to processors of food products. The Michigan law was declared invalid by the State Supreme Court in 1948, and repealed in 1949. Most recently, the U. S. Supreme Court has held the Wisconsin Public Utilities Anti-Strike Law of 1947 invalid on the ground that the state had denied entirely a federally guaranteed right which Congress itself had restricted only to a limited extent in the Taft-Hartley Act. See Amalgamated Association of Street, Electric Railway & Motor Coach Employees of America, Division 998 et al, v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 340 U. S. 383 (1951). For purposes of determining the validity of stat anti-strike laws it does not matter, apparently, whether the industry “affecting” commerce is a national manufacturing concern or a local public utility. In either case, the Court ruled, Congress has occupied the field and closed it to concurrent regulation by the states. Finally a few weeks after the Wisconsin decision, and on its authority, the Missouri Attorney General ruled the Missouri law invalid. This leaves seven states with anti-strike or compulsory arbitration laws of doubtful validity: Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

39 Some of the states with compulsory arbitration laws, it is true, direct their arbitral tribunals to take into consideration the wages, hours, and working conditions prevailing in the other industries and utilities, both inside and outside the state, which make use of the same or comparable skills and require a comparable expenditure of energy and effort. In New Jersey, for example, this formula (including several other standards) has frequently led to the award of wage increases “as good as, or better than, those obtained through private negotiation,” and in some industries even higher than the wage increases won by workers doing similar work in industries where they were free to strike. See France, Robert R. and Lester, Richard A., Compulsory Arbitration of Utility Disputes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (Princeton, 1951), pp. 23–25Google Scholar. Yet even in New Jersey, according to this same report, comparable skills are not always available within the state to serve as a rough guide; and, in any event, the standards prescribed have led to conflicting results in some cases (ibid., p. 25).

In Pennsylvania the standards prescribed are actually so restrictive as to limit wage increases and other gains to those already won by other workers, some of them not unionized, who are also forbidden to strike. In one case the arbitration board awarded a wage increase one cent less than the company had offered to pay in the official “best offer” vote conducted by the State Labor Relations Board (ibid., pp. 66–69).

40 “To End Strikes in Essential Industries,” loc. cit., p. 54.

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