As election draws near –
Perkins: CIO still unable to win promise of pay boost
And may have to back Roosevelt without one
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
The election is four weeks from today and it looks as if the CIO supports of President Roosevelt will have to vote for him without official assurance that he is going to order a pay raise for them.
This, despite efforts of Philip Murray, head of the CIO, to get a War Labor Board recommendation for breaking the Little Steel wage formula on the President’s desk by next Monday, and despite a statement today by R. J. Thomas, president of the CIO Auto Workers, that he will do all he can to see that the President will have three weeks in which to make the final decision that would please the unionists, but might antagonize other sections of the electorate. Inflation possibilities are involved.
Roosevelt commitment denied
There’s a story going around that Mr. Roosevelt told union leaders who called on him 10 days ago that the question would have to go over until after election, that there would be no political advantage in unsettling wartime wage policies just before the election and the wage action might produce charges he was attempting to buy votes with other people’s money.
Mr. Thomas said the story “isn’t true.” He was one of the labor leaders in the White House conference. Mr. Thomas has a reputation for straight-shooting and no doubletalk. And all other evidence indicates that the President made no commitment on either side of the question.
Won’t promise early action
William H. Davis, chairman of the War Labor Board, said he could not guarantee a Board decision next week – “I don’t like deadlines. I never said it would be decided by next week.”
A labor spokesman pointed out that any recommendation for a change in wage policies would have to go through the Office of Price Administration, to the Director of Economic Stabilization and the Office of War Mobilization before it reached the President.
Mr. Davis admitted that “would take considerable time.” He also said that the problem he was trying to impress on the other members of the Board was whether “if wages go up the wage-earner will get anything out of it or will prices go up at the same time so that everybody will lose.”