Perkins: Steel pay revision poses real problem
Bosses back Roosevelt on policy, unions oppose him – everything hangs fire
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Here is an apparently cockeyed situation: Industrialists who are going to vote against Mr. Roosevelt will be arguing here this week for maintenance of one of the President’s important policies against the attacks of his political friends in the labor unions.
The policy concerned is the one intended to hold wages to the Little Steel formula. The labor leaders, with constituencies in the millions, have been trying to break this yardstick ever since it was established by the War Labor Board in July 1942. They are now moving in for “the kill,” in the closing weeks of a campaign in which the only man who can change it is a candidate for reelection.
There is more to the cockeyed character of the situation.
The industrialists defending a Roosevelt policy against the President’s labor friends are mostly Republicans, and this year’s platform of their party condemns “the freezing of wage rates at arbitrary levels.”
What a setup
Philip Murray, president of the CIO, which has a Political Action Committee campaigning for Mr. Roosevelt, complained in a WLB hearing over delays in the disposition of the case initiated by the CIO United Steel Workers in December of last year. He said that “delays, postponements, briefs and briefs, repetition and repetition, have been the order of the day.”
Mr. Murray made his statements in presenting the union’s case before WLB hearings on modification of the “Little Steel” wage formula; AFL gave their arguments for wage raises yesterday and industry presents its opposing case tomorrow.
Mr. Murray’s mention of possible war-end changes in the stabilization program was a reference to an assertion by WLB Chairman William H. Davis that the end of the war in Europe was “certain” to bring changes in the nation’s wage policy.
Would reverse OPA study
Mr. Murray said that in arguing the case for steel wage raises, he would “take the liberty of making public” an OPA study of the steel case which Price Chief Chester Bowles has termed “preliminary and confidential.”
Stating that the steel industry had requested a general price increase of 10 percent, Mr. Murray said the OPA study concluded that:
There is at the present time no ground for an overall increase in the price of steel, and even in the event that the wage increase requested by the union were granted in full, the case for a price increase would not be persuasive.
Great advances made
Harold J. Ruttenberg, research director of the union, departed from the familiar cost-of-living argument to urge raises to allow wages to “catch up with the constantly rising productivity of American industry.” In the past two years, he said, the steel industry has made technological advances so great that production increased seven percent while manpower was reduced by 12½ percent.
Governor Dewey, campaigning against Mr. Roosevelt, and opposed vigorously by the CIO Political Action Committee, said in his labor speech at Seattle:
This policy of delay, delay and more delay serves only the New Deal and its political ends, It puts the leaders of labor on the spot. It makes them come hat in hand to the White House. It makes political loyalty the test of a man getting his rights.
An important decision
Thus, Mr. Murray and colleagues agree with Governor Dewey on the delay subject, but won’t vote for him. The industrialists agree with President Roosevelt on maintenance of the stabilization policy, but won’t vote for him!
Political implications of highest voltage are involved. Mr. Roosevelt, through acts of his own and of Congress, has come into position where he can order a raise for several million workers.
Nothing like this ever has been known in American politics. What Mr. Roosevelt does about it may turn out to be an important chapter in this country’s political history.
Mr. Murray, before the War Labor Board, emphasized that the steel union had not been responsible for delaying the dynamic wage question until the presidential campaign. He pointed out that since the War Labor Board assumed jurisdiction of the wage dispute last February, his union had used only 3½ days for its testimony. The union also used a week while its officers were at their convention, and the balance of the seven months was charged to the steel companies and the procedures of the War Labor Board.
Was it planned?
Mr. Roosevelt can make a decision just before election, but according to the evidence there is no proof that anybody planned it that way.
Mr. Murray hopes for presidential action before election, according to his statement:
I raise the question whether we are going to obtain a decision quickly and on the merits of the case; or whether this case is going to be treated as a political pawn, kicked around hither and yon, because courage is lacking to determine the issue.
George Meany, secretary of the American Federation of Labor, conducted a long list of AFL officials to the witness stand against the Little Steel Formula. He ended by saying, “We are asking this board for a chance for the workers of this country to enter a high-wage economy after the war.”
After the war, it is presumed that workers will go back to the 40-hour week, with no allowance for the overtime pay that now boosts their incomes, unless hourly wage rates are raised in the meantime – a problem for either Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Dewey.
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