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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 2, 11 January 1941, p. 2.
During the closing days of 1917, after various government-sponsored labor boards had been functioning – one covering maritime, another clothing, another for workers employed on War Department orders, another for the Navy Department, etc. – strikes reached such a point that the bosses, through the National Industrial Conference, called frantically for a super-board with complete authority over all workers.
Samuel Gompers responded with complete agreement to this proposal, for he had experienced considerable difficulty in keeping the unions in line. At the very opening of the war he had pledged the government “no strikes in defense industries.” His attitude toward those locals which failed to respect his pledge is best exemplified by the following excerpt from a letter sent a local that disregarded a War Department ukase and struck for higher wages. “... and while you may not agree with our course (cooperation with the boards) the great majority of your brothers have chosen the road and you can not now scab.” To the head of the AFL, it was the striker who was the scab! Actually, of course, the workers had received no opportunity to vote on either the war or the union-busting labor boards.
Once Gompers indicated his agreement with the National Industrial Conference on the question of a superboard, Wilson invited him to confer. Pausing on the White House steps long enough to say, “There is a disposition among officers of the government to deal fairly with labor,” he disappeared through the sacred portals to collaborate in the creation of the most monstrous anti-labor machinery that had ever existed in this country.
A proclamation was issued by Wilson in February 1918, organizing the super board: The National War Labor Board.
The Board was composed of 12 members; five of whom were appointed by Gompers, seven by Wilson. The Gompers’ nominees were as follows: Frank J. Hayes, President, United Mine Workers; William Hutcheson. President, Brotherhood of Carpenters; Thomas J. Savage, member of the board, International Association of Machinists; Victor A. Olander, representative, Seamen’s Union of America; and T.A. Rickert, President, United Garment Workers. The seven boss representatives were headed by the co-chairmen of the Board, ex-President of the United States, William Howard Taft, and Frank P. Walsh. The names of the five industrialists on the board mean little to us now, but their positions in industry at that time is important. They were, respectively, Vice-president, Westinghouse Electric Company; President, Delaware and Hudson Company; President, Root and Van Dervoort Engineering Company; President of Virginia Bridge Company; and President, Lackawanna Bridge Company. According to the 1921 report of the Department of Labor, only one of these five had ever had any dealings whatsoever with organized labor.
So much for the composition of the Board. Now to its philosophy.
The opening paragraph of the Wilson proclamation read:
“The functions of the National War Labor Board shall be to settle by mediation and conciliation, controversies arising between employers and workers in/fields of production necessary for the conduct of the war. or in other fields of national activity, delays and obstructions in which might, in the opinion of the Board, affect detrimentally such production.”
The Board, through this paragraph, was prepared to dragoon every worker in the country, and it did. There was hardly an industry that escaped the Board’s jurisdiction. During the entire history of the NWLB only 50 cases were dismissed because of lack of jurisdiction. And these cases involved luxury consumer goods and affected a very small number of workers.
The opening paragraph was phrased in such a manner as to give labor the impression that all of its disputes with the bosses would receive a hearing. The practice of the Board was, however, to keep the cases that it heard to a minimum and to use its few decisions as precedents to force arbitrary settlements down the workers’ throats in all other disputes.
The Board developed a sleight-of-hand trick that baffled the workers for some time. It was this; a law was enacted Which required the board to reach a decision enforceable by laws only when both parties to a controversy joined in filing an appeal. If only one side appealed to the Board, the Board could hand down only a “recommendation.” With the pressure of the bourgeois press and all other agencies of “public opinion” and the apparatus of the State on their side, it was seldom necessary for the bosses to go to the Board. According to Department of Labor records, 12% of the NWLB cases were complaints of the employers, while the remainder were worker complaints; 36% from those not organized in the AFL and 50% from those that were. In 86% of the cases then, the Board’s decision was merely a recommendation and if the Board found for the workers (as conditions sometimes forced it to), the bosses were at liberty to disregard the decision entirely.
If, on the other hand, the Board was about to find for the boss, on an appeal filed by workers, it was a simple matter to tip him off, let him participate in the appeal by an amendment to the complaint, and thus make the Board’s award binding upon all involved. In other words, when the Board found for the workers it was usually an empty gesture; when it found for the bosses there were bayonets to back up the order.
And what happened to the workers if they (imitating the bosses) took it into their heads to regard the Board’s decisions as only a recommendation? The bayonet was used, of course; but in addition Wilson evolved a new weapon ... starvation! The workers at the Remington Arms plant in Bridgeport, Conn., revolted against a Board decision in 1918 and went out on strike. Within two days they, and the press of the country, received a letter from President Wilson which read, in part;
“I desire that you return to work and abide by the award. If you refuse, each of you will be barred from employment in any war industry in the community in which the strike occurs for a period of one year. During that time the United Slates Employment Service will decline to obtain employment for you in any war industry elsewhere in the United States, as well as under the War and Navy Departments, the Shipping Board, the Railroad Administration and all other Government agencies.”
The second paragraph of Wilson’s proclamation setting up the Board reads: “The National War Labor Board shall appoint subordinate boards to sit in various parts of the country.” During the first few months of its life the Board was swamped with workers’ complaints. Invoking the above paragraph, 50 field examiners – i.e. regular government agents – were assigned to travel about the country to make investigations. The Board then empowered the filed examiners to make awards and itself sat only as an appeal body.
The 1921 report of the Department of Labor reveals that these examiners heard and decided over 10,000 cases in a brief 12 month period. The slim chance the workers had of getting beyond these examiners to the Board itself is revealed by the fact that the Board heard, during its entire existence, only 1,251 cases. In other words, the workers had one chance in ten in getting an examiner’s decision even reviewed by the Board. And if they did beat the 100 to 1 odds, then there was still less than a 50% chance that the Board would reach a decision upon their case; for the records show that the Board made decisions in only 39% (488) of the cases it heard.
There is no adequate record of the thousands of decisions handed down by the field examiners, but we do know the contents of the 488 handed down by the Board itself, and these cases were the important ones ... the ones that established union-busting precedents that the government enforced for the next ten years. These cases will be reviewed and analyzed next week.
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Last updated on 16 November 2020