Majority Tool

When the flimsy old National Labor Board under Senator Wagner made no real headway toward settling labor disputes growing out of NRA, President Roosevelt got Congress to set up a new National Labor Relations Board. Outside the jurisdiction of NRA, this new agency was empowered to make decisions and enforce them. To it the President appointed three gentlemen: Edwin Seymour Smith, onetime newshawk, who became Massachusetts Commissioner of Labor & Industries; Harry Alvin Millis, head of the University of Chicago's Economics Department; and, as chairman, an able, energetic young lawyer who happened to be the great grandson of Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Lloyd Kirkham Garrison had stepped fast in his career. From St. Paul's School he went to Harvard, which he left at 20 to enlist in the Navy during the War. In 1919 he returned to Cambridge and in three years he had his law degree. To Manhattan he took his young wife, Ellen Jay. descendant of the first Chief Justice of the U. S., there got a job with the substantial firm of Root, Clark, Buckner & Howland. Four years later he had his own firm. In 1930, after he had helped investigate ambulance-chasing in New York, President Hoover picked him as a likely investigator to root around amid bankruptcy scandals in Federal courts. Ten years after he left Harvard, he found himself acting dean of University of Wisconsin Law School. It was from that post that President Roosevelt called him, aged 35. to Washington to head the Labor Relations Board.

With a clear head on which grows little hair, a good sense of humor which often takes a literary turn despite a fondness for slang in ordinary conversation, an indifference to formality which comes out in slipshod clothes, Chairman Garrison, with his colleagues, has decided in two months more questions than the old Labor Board did in nine. Last week they undertook to decide the biggest and most vexing question of the year for Labor and Industry: What does Section 7 (a) of the Recovery Act mean?

Congress put Section 7 (a) into the law to give Labor a useful tool--the legal right to demand that employers bargain with unions. But Congressmen are not mechanics. They failed to specify exactly what the tool was for, and for the past year it has been little more than a monkey wrench cast into U. S. economic machinery.

The American Federation of Labor grabbed for the wrench and so did some employers, through company unions. First important test case between a company union and an outside union involved the Denver street car employes. General Johnson and Donald Richberg had declared that each union should be entitled to bargain. Bitterly the A. F. of L. op posed this interpretation, contending that with two bargaining groups inside one company neither could be effective. The old National Labor Board upset the NRA ruling, decided that the wrench should be long to the majority group.

In April President Roosevelt staved off a major automobile strike by promulgating NRA's interpretation of the law and ignoring the Labor Board's decision. Ever since, the A. F. of L. has been chafing at this automobile settlement. In a hundred different forms the squabble over the interpretation of Section 7 (a) has contributed to the calling of strikes. Obviously the law had to be made clear: did Section 7 (a) give the majority of a firm's workers the right to bargain for all or did it not? If it did, the minority lost the right of collective bargaining and, from the manufacturers' standpoint, closed shop was just around the corner. If it did not, the tool which Congress handed to Labor was about as useful as a rubber crowbar. <>p>Last week Chairman Garrison and colleagues faced the question without flinching. Perfectly defined was the issue in the case of Houde Engineering Corp. of Buffalo, maker of automobile parts. There was no strike, no grievance at issue, save who should have the right of collective bargaining. For several years Houde workers had had a Welfare & Athletic Association. No charge was made that the company controlled it. But when the Recovery Act was passed the A. F. of L. started a union in the plant. An election was held by the Buffalo Regional Labor Board. Result: 1,105 workers voted for representation by the A. F. of L. union; 674 for representation by their old association; 400-odd did not vote. Question at stake: Should both groups bargain with the company or should the A. F. of L. union have that sole right by virtue of its majority?

The Board decided that the tool Congress handed Labor was in reality a screw-driver and, as such, was to be used to screw down majority labor representation on industry.

Chairman Garrison's Board: "When a person, committee or organization has been designated by the majority of employes in a plant or other appropriate unit for collective bargaining, it is the right of the representative so designated to be treated by the employer as the exclusive bargaining agency of all employes in the unit. . . .

"The rule does not compel employes to join the organizations representing the majority. It does not establish a closed shop, nor necessarily lead to a closed shop; that being a matter for negotiation."

The A. F. of L.: "Labor is gratified indeed. . . ."

The National Association of Manufacturers: "We regard this decision as unwarranted by anything in the National Industrial Recovery Act."

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