After WLB refuses to act –
Perkins: Labor puts heat on Roosevelt for raise
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Union leaders, fighting for a pay-raise order before election, started work today to get the explosive campaign issue into the White House by the end of next week.
The labor members of the War Labor Board are engineering this move, after roundly condemning the public members of that agency for “inexcusable dereliction of duty,” “timidity, contradictions and doubletalk,” “a clear surrender of the Board’s commitment to exercise its judgment,” and “an admission by the public members that they are not competent to perform their duties.”
This upheaval came yesterday after the Board’s public and management members had turned down an American Federation of Labor proposal for a recommendation to the President that he revise the Little Steel formula upward and allow its general application without submission to WLB; and after the same groups of members, with the labor quartet in opposition, had decided it will merely submit a factual report to the President, and will make no “recommendations for action one way or the other with regard to the Little Steel formula.”
Not ‘sufficiently informed’
The WLB said:
The Board is not sufficiently informed as to the possible effects of a modification of the Little Steel formula on the price structure and on the national economy generally to warrant assurance that any modification could be made consistent with the stabilization needs of the country and with the provisions of the Stabilization Act of Oct. 2, 1942.
The labor members immediately went into a huddle and issued their sizzling statement.
Talking to reporters, George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL, declared, “we hope the President will make his decision without regard to the War Labor Board.”
Emil Rieve, president of the CIO Textile Workers, added:
We will make our recommendation added without going through the Board or the Director of Economic Stabilization or any other agency – direct to the President.
Murray scores politics
R. J. Thomas, president of the CIO United Auto Workers, observed:
And it will be on the President’s desk by the end of next week – maybe considerably before then.
The importance of these statements is that most of the CIO and some of the AFL are backing Mr. Roosevelt for reelection to a fourth term. Philip Murray, head of the CIO, has protested the wage issue being made “a football of politics,” and in almost the same paragraph has insisted that the War Labor Board should get the question to the President not later than next Monday.
Thus “the heat” is increased on Mr. Roosevelt.
Nothing like this has ever faced a President running for reelection, for the reason that never before has there been a system of wage control running up to a climax just before the voters go to the polls.
Could have been averted
The climax could have been averted if the War Labor Boards labor members had been agreeable to going along with the Board’s policy of exhaustive inquiry, probably meaning a delay of several weeks more in proceedings now a year old.
But they were not agreeable, and thus some of the President’s strongest supporters plan to put up to him two weeks before Nov. 7 a decision of such importance that it might swing the election. If he turns down or defers the labor plea, he may lose support in quarters that have been regarded as strong for him; if he grants the plea, without insisting upon the routine processes, the Republicans will charge him with buying the election – and may influence a lot of conservative middle-of-the-roaders.