Wanted: No Panacea

The Administration, which has been firing away merrily at the 80th Congress' labor policy ever since election day, finally met the heavy hitters in the opposition lineup when it took its campaign promises into committee a fortnight ago. The hearings have generated a great deal of heat in dispute over the two encyclopedia labor laws enacted in the past. But there are only two questions now completely adaptable to regulation on a national scale: The security of "national emergency" industries and the closed shop.

The Wagner Act, which was vital in 1935 to guarantee the right of labor to organize, has certainly become an unbalanced law with the growth of union strength; and the Taft-Hartley Law, passed in an aura of bitterness in 1947, has been unsuccessful in its attempt to cover a multitude of labor-management problems by federal legislation. But the closed shop is a basic labor right, and must be guaranteed by federal statute; equally important is protection against stoppages in industries vital to the national welfare. On other items, a single federal law would be too broad to cover the multitudinous complexities of the labor system, but in these two matters action is a matter of public policy.

Essential Industries

Neither unions nor management are happy under the present system of handling "essential" industries, where the constant threat of injunctions tends to nullify collective bargaining. Yet when strict adherence to the principles of pure collective bargaining imperils the national health or safety, open fights cannot be allowed.

A definition of "essential industries" is the first necessity. Presumably these are industries where a stoppage, even for one day, would unbalance our economy: transportation, public utilities, coal, perhaps atomic energy projects. Some solution such as that proposed by Professor Slichter seems the most workable now. He recommends presidential power to call a "show-cause" hearing at which the parties would be required to demonstrate why they objected to the regular workings of NLRB-assisted mediation; then provision for a non-political emergency board to study and recommend a solution; and finally an authorization for the President to require a six-month trial operation period under the emergency board's recommendations.

This would prevent critical stoppages, remove the taint of polities which now rests on the injunction and presidential rulings, and encourage collective bargaining by bringing the parties into the glare of a public show-cause hearing. It would also offer labor and management the chance to learn that although compromises please no one, both sides can live under them, and it might slowly restore faith in the bargaining process.

The Closed Shop

The anti-closed shop provisions of the Taft-Hartley Law have brought the most concerted protests from all levels of labor. Where the Wagner Act put curbs on management, the 1947 law clamped down on labor alone in this most prized of its privileges. Neither statute deals adequately with the closed shop in its present full-grown state. It is a peculiarity of American labor organization which must rather be protected from union abuses than forbidden by law. If unions are to maintain closed shop, they must preserve open membership as regards race, initiation fees, and dues. But the fact remains that forbidding the closed shop cannot be justified in industries where union hiring halls are necessary to handle rotation and seasonal employment, or in consideration of the necessity for demanding more than is wanted where union representatives cannot be sure of solid membership in a plant.

These two problems must rank highest on the Congressional agenda; but there are several others which have been thrown into chaos by the Taft-Hartley Law. The ban on jurisdictional strikes is justified if only on the grounds that nobody gets anything out of them, and that annual plant elections, while not eliminating these strikes, can at least cut them down. But the prohibition of secondary boycotts is a more complex matter: some of these are justified by the necessity for cohesion in the labor movement, while some wreak unfair harm on an employer who may have nothing to do with a dispute in another plant or industry. One thing is clear: if Congress presumes to handle the secondary boycott in a new law, it must define more closely who are the legitimate participants of a bona fide labor dispute.

The requirement that union officers must file non-communist affidavits should be thrown out. It has no part in our framework of labor relations. If a strike is established to be a conspiracy against the government, other laws are sufficient to handle it. Another measure that will need examination is the question of political action by unions: one side argues that such action is an integral part of union policy today, the other that no union member should be required to support a policy he may not agree with.

These relatively minor points-minor compared with the national welfare strikes and closed shop-illustrate the mess that Congress must untangle in the months ahead. The primary need is for action on the big points, and the sooner the pressure groups and politicians stop name-calling and realize that the best they can hope for is a direction of policy towards compromise, the sooner a workable law will be enacted.