A Strike Lesson

After a desperate appeal by Defense Mobilizer Charles Wilson, the striking trainmen are slowly trickling back to work. But although the strike has petered out, it raises a major problem for labor legislation--when can a union be defied the right to strike?

It is clear that the country cannot tolerate a nation-wide paralysis like this. Not only did it prevent railroad men from working, but many industries dependent on supply by rail had to lay off workers and shut down. At a time when the nation is fighting a war and striving to build up essential industries, a railroad strike represents a major catastrophe. As Wilson put it, Communist saboteurs could not have been more effective.

As the railroad strike shows, a permanent solution to this problem cannot lie in court injunctions and patriotic appeals. The dispute dated back to September 1949 when operating trainmen requested a 40-hour week with the same 48-hour pay. For two years mediation boards and wildcat strikes followed each other with clock-like regularity. Last August the government seized the railroads, strikes broke out again in December, and President Truman had to appeal to the strikers to get the Christmas mails moving. Court injunctions were issued but these have little effect in "unauthorized" strikes where the union disclaims responsibility. When the current "illness" plagued railway workers, Wilson literally told them that they had no right to strike. Does this mean that workers in essential industries are to be deprived of their biggest bargaining power? The answer must be yes, when their strike endangers national security.

The problem, therefore, is to protect labor's rights while abridging their strike power. One solution might be for the President to use his emergency powers to order men back to work. This drastic action might end a strike, but like court orders and dramatic appeals, it cannot provide a basis for settling disputes in basic industries. What is needed is are form of arbitration machinery combined with more effective laws against unauthorized strikes. Appointments to mediation boards and labor law enforcement agencies should be non-political, a requirement that Truman has sometimes ignored. Amendments to the existing labor legislation should cover such loopholes as the "sickness' ruse. And unions denied the right to strike must be assured that management will also be curbed from taking advantage of labor's inability to use its most effective weapon.

The problem is one that will be with us until the question of war is settled. While we cannot allow paralysis of the nation's economy by strikes in essential industries, neither can we allow suppression of labor's bargaining power. Adequate machinery must be established that will protect both labor and the nation.