More worries for New Deal –
Perkins: Two labor agencies draw fire of Roosevelt backers
‘Wishy-washy’ action of WLB on wage issue and NLRB ‘favoritism’ both assailed
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
Two federal labor agencies are under outspoken criticism today from union leaders, some of whom are in the front of the fourth-term drive for President Roosevelt.
The War Labor Board is in the line of fire because of the amount of time taken by its public members in completing a report of the relationship between prices and wages – leading up to a decision by President Roosevelt on whether the Little Steel wage formula should be broken.
The National Labor Relations Board is criticized by American Federation of Labor spokesmen for a decision announced Tuesday which apparently ignored precedents and favored the CIO in the question of how employees of the merged Western Union and Postal Telegraph systems should be organized.
Roosevelt ‘on spot’
The WLB’s partial report on the wage-price situation, already hit by the CIO, was described by George Meany, secretary-treasurer of the AFL, as “wishy-washy, lacking any recommendations whatever, put up in such a way that the President will be able to find support in it for anything he wants to do – whether to turn down the wage demand or change the formula in any one of several different ways.”
And who put the President on the spot in this matter? It was the War Labor Board, with the labor members dissenting. It was the Board’s plain duty to make some kind of a recommendation, either for or against. Instead, and after more than 10 months of involved procedure, the public members plan to do something that could be accomplished just as well by one of the panel reports already available.
Complain of delays
Chairman William H. Davis of WLB admitted that his qualified plans to get the wage case out of his agency and to the White House by Nov. 1 had been abandoned.
R. J. Thomas, president of the CIO United Auto Workers and like Mr. Meany a labor member of WLB, showed disappointment at the way things were going, and it was learned that Mr. Davis had received two telegrams from Philip Murray, president of the CIO, complaining in vigorous language against the Board’s delays.
The Murray telegrams were of such a nature that Mr. Davis declined to make them public. And it was learned that after the telegrams were dispatched CIO leaders telephoned Mr. Davis, asking that the messages not be given to the press.
Political maneuver?
This latter procedure was regarded as part of the political maneuverings in the wage case.
The CIO leaders worked strenuously until a week ago to get the wage case on the President’s desk in time for a decision before election, but they are reported to have been advised that these activities were likely to cost Mr. Roosevelt votes.
Criticism of the NLRB’s decision in the Western Union case was augmented by Mr. Meany and Joseph A. Padway, counsel for the AFL. The latter alleged “undue CIO influence in the National Labor Relations Board,” resulting in a decision favoring the CIO on the same set of facts that had previously produced a different decision.