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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 3, 18 January 1941, p. 3.
Immediately upon its inception in February 1918 the National War Labor Board enunciated A Declaration of Principles. The best way to analyze the Board’s work is to quote the principles and then show how they were applied.
Principle No. 1. – “There shall he no strikes or lockouts.” There were plenty of lockouts during the war period but the Board only took cognizance of the strikes. There is no record of the Board ever having disciplined a boss for locking out his men. There are plenty of cases where the Board cracked down on the workers for striking.
The first step taken in this direction was the enactment of a rule that provided that once workers in any plant had struck, their case was “outlaw” and could not be heard before the Board. Thereupon, all agencies of the government would mobilize bourgeois public opinion against the workers; if this failed to break the strike, troops were used. If the workers struck after the Board had made a decision, then the case was turned over to the executive branch of the government and the workers involved were barred from all war time employment, which meant 90% of American industry.
The workers at the New Jersey plant of the Wesson Oil Company revolted in the summer of 1918 against working conditions that the Board had failed to correct, and went out on strike. The Board declared the case “outlaw,” and handed the case over to President Wilson. The President threatened, not only to bar the workers from “any war time industry throughout the country.” but also threatened to send them into the front line trenches. AFL President Gompers joined in the threat.
Principle No. 2. – “Labor has the right to organize and bargain collectively.”. The workers in the New England plant of the Madison-Kipp Lubricator Company in 1918 were working 12 hours per day on piece work. However fast they worked, their piece work earnings were always computed in such a manner as to keep their wages at a fraction over 28 cents per hour. Upon announcement by the NWLB that employes were guaranteed the right to collective bargaining, the workers organized and demanded their rights. The boss not only refused to lower hours and raise wages, but he completely refused to bargain collectively. Immediately an appeal was filed with the Board.
After some months a traveling-examiner showed up to hear the case. Conditions were so bad that the examiner was forced to find for the workers, but the boss ignored his decision. Faced with an unyielding boss, the workers appealed the case to the Board itself. After several more months the Board affirmed the right of the workers to bargain collectively, instructed them to again elect a shop committee, and again wait upon the boss for a discussion of their grievances. The boss was admonished to meet with the committee this time. The boss refused to meet the workers this time too, and they again appealed to the Board. Before the Board got around to consider their appeal, the war ended and the Board was dissolved.
226 Board decisions were concerned with the right of collective bargaining and the majority of the case histories parallel the one just cited.
Principle No. 3. “Where union and non-union men and women work side by side the continuance of such conditions shall not be deemed a grievance.” This prohibited tile closed shop and thereby robbed the workers of the backbone of any genuine collective bargaining system.
Principle No. 4, “In fixing wages, hours and conditions of labor, regard should always be had for conditions. prevailing in localities affected.” Through this paragraph the Board justified wage differences between the South and the North, between the organized and the unorganized workers. The Board was dedicated to the status quo, not to reform.
There arose, however, considerable demand for the formulation of a minimum wage scale.
This demand came from labor so frequently and insistently that the Board made a brave announcement that it would set up such wage scales for the defense industries. The howl of the bosses soon changed the Board’s attitude however, and after wrestling with the problem for five months, it announced, “... that for the present the Board of its sections should consider and decide each case involving the principle (living wage) on its particular facts and reserve any definite rule or decision until its judgments have been sufficiently clear to make generalizations safe.” This statement of policy was approved by the Board unanimously!
When the Board announced its abandonment of any minimum wage scale, Gompers was bitterly attacked by the more militant locals of the AFL. His reply was, “In the midst of a war there can be no discussion among those who have guns trained upon them ... therefore, let us defer questions which can be deferred, questions that are likely to divide us in this war.”
Workers were usually awarded about the same wages they were receiving when they filed an appeal. In October 1918 the Board gave a basic hourly wage of 36 cents to the street-car conductors in Memphis, Tenn. One month later it awarded a basic wage of 61 cents to conductors in Butte, Mont. That is, the unorganized southern workers received about what they were already getting before coming to the Board; the workers in highly organized Butte were in a position to force a better award.
There were cases where conditions demanded a change in wage scales and the Board was unable to dodge the responsibility. Such a case was Bethlehem Steel. The Board instructed Bethlehem to raise wages of all common labor and certain categories of skilled labor. Bethlehem took advantage of the red tape surrounding the Board’s procedure and stalled on compliance with the order until after the armistice, then it discharged the workers involved. The Board took the only attitude it could, that Bethlehem owed the discharged workers back pay: the difference between their wage and the one granted by the Board. Bethlehem countered this by claiming that it didn’t know the addresses of its workers and could not notify them by mail of the money due them. Furthermore, Bethlehem said, most of the workers were foreigners and wouldn’t be able to read a letter of notification if they got one. Before this dispute was settled the Board was dissolved by its own vote and the entire case passed into limbo.
The Board did get compliance with wage increase orders from some of the bosses, but this was usually accomplished through a “deal.” For instance: many of the Board’s hearings were devoted to the conditions existing in the various street-railway systems throughout the country. The records reveal that wherever the Board awarded an increase in wages to the workers, an accompanying petition from the Board was submitted to the municipality, asking a change in the laws fixing the rate of fare. The Board’s petitions always explained the hardship imposed upon the boss by the increased wage order and called on the city officials to grant the boss the right to raise fares and pass the cost on to the worker-consumer.
This, then, is how the Board’s five principles were applied to prevent strikes and keep the workers shackled to the machines throughout the war. All the decisions quoted were by unanimous vote of the Board.
And what happened in the 82 cases where at least one “representative” of labor rebelled? The machinery was this: an umpire was chosen by the Board, and his decision was binding upon all parties. If the Board was unable to agree unanimously upon an umpire, then one was chosen by lot from a panel of ten nominated by President Wilson. Thus the final arbiter was always the boss and labor’s representatives could do nothing but maintain the face of national unity by voting, “Ja.” Oh yes, the name that led all others on the panel of ten umpires was that of Henry Ford.
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