Strike Bakers

An old-line corporation with a reputation for tight-lipped accounting is National Biscuit Co., world's largest ("Uneeda") bakers of cookies and crackers. In the 37 years of its history it has never missed a dividend; last year made $11,598,000. On its board sit such conservative stalwarts as President Jackson Eli Reynolds of Manhattan's First National Bank and onetime Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Livingston Mills. The last person you would expect to see at its annual meetings would be a stocky, blue-eyed, personable young labor leader with a fistful of proxies from striking but stockholding employes.

Yet last week in Manhattan William Aloysius Galvin, 27, founder-president of the Inside Bakery Workers Federal Labor Union No. 19585, uprose to present his case to the startled Uneeda stockholders. In a thoroughly dignified manner, he asked them to consider the loss of business and good will the strike was causing. The whole affair was unfortunate, he declared, because neither the strikers nor the owners wanted the company to suffer.

When a stockholder urged the management to reply, President Roy E. Tomlinson snapped: "This is not the tribunal for discussing the matter." So far Uneeda has refused to arbitrate the dispute on the ground that the strike was a bald breach of contract. Nevertheless, the union has shunted the case to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, where it is now pending.

An involved squabble over the question of "equal pay for equal work" (as differentiated from wage scales based on merit or length of service), the disagreement originated in Uneeda's Philadelphia plant last January with the workers also charging breach of contract. President Calvin's 3,000 Manhattan workers struck sympathetically, followed by truck drivers. Within a few days the Newark, N. J. Cake Bakery, the Atlanta Bakery and the York, Pa. Pretzel Factory suffered walkouts. Director Ogden Mills's house at No. 2 East 69th Street was picketed.* Currently both sides are accusing each other of thuggery, intimidation and general foul play.

* Last week Mr. Mills was ticketed for speeding through Palo Alto, Calif. at 33 m.p.h. to keep an appointment with Herbert Hoover.

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