Selekman Urges Mature Business Union Leadership

Labor and business leaders must show "emotional maturity" if United States industrial relations are to develop properly, Benjamin M. Selekman, Kirstein Professor of Labor Relations asserted yesterday.

In a new book, "Labor Relations and Human Relations," (McGraw-Hill), Professor Selekman observes that both sides face " a test of the most exacting kind" in the days ahead "because the very stresses that make maturity essential also make it difficult."

Collective bargaining, for instance, makes great demands on leadership, because it is "formidably complex ... a wound-up coil of dynamic forces, reaching from the individual worker and manager to the broadest-based social developments and back again."

Unions Must Use Caution

As to unions, Professor Selekman asks that they modify the language they inherited from the struggle for recognition, and also that they be careful in their approach to discriminate between individual companies in each industry.

On the side of business management, he sees a need for leaders who consider the workers feelings and emotions as much a part of the industrial process as machinery and money.