Balance of Power

Coming just at the time when the conduct of labor and management indicates that these two groups have developed a modicum of responsibility extending beyond their own pocket-lining, the Hartley bill, passed by the House and awaiting Senate action, threatens to annul whatever facility in the art of resolving labor disputes has been acquired in the last decade. Opponents have charged that the bill is the product of spite and rancour. But even if it was framed with the best motives, the fact that it issued from a committee whose chairman was so interested in labor affairs that he attended exactly six Labor Committee meetings in ten years, plus the admission that corporation lawyers "sat in" and "made suggestions" when the bill was being written, indicate that the bill was not drafted by men who were familiar with both facets of the labor-management problem.

The Hartley bill proposes to return the injunction as an anti-strike weapon, to outlaw industry-wide bargaining, the closed shop, the check-off of union dues, and to permit the union shop only with the employer's blessing. These and other measures are considered necessary to trim labor's "monopoly." This line of argument overlooks the fact that while organized labor trebled its ranks under the protection of the Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia acts, violence and extra-legal actions have been dropped from the arsenals of those unions that can approach the conference table with bargaining power approximately equal to that of management.

The nationwide strike deemed necessary by the telephone workers, contrasted with the satisfactory contracts concluded in the steel and automobile industries, is a timely illustration of the fact that a strong management and a strong union hesitate to tangle, and will employ attrition only when other measures fail to secure accord; while if one party is materially weaker, it must use every weapon at its command to gain a fair contract. Congress could make no sadder error than to become impatient and destroy the balance that labor and management seem to have hit upon after years of trial and error.