Changes Wanted

When businessmen last winter asked to have the Wagner Labor Act amended by Congress, they were in effect laughed out of the Capitol. Politically speaking, the amendment of the act was an impossibility without Labor's consent. Last week, businessmen and unions received noteworthy news: the amendment of the Act is no longer impossible.

This news was promulgated at a convention of A. F. of L.'s Glass Bottle Blowers' Association in Atlantic City. There, A. F. of L.'s William Green, blowing a bottleful of keynote speech, disclosed that A. F. of L.'s Executive Council had at last made a choice between: 1) putting up with a continuing series of NLRB decisions against Federation unions; 2) asking Congress to amend the Wagner Act in A. F. of L.'s behalf. Aware that the latter step might open the way to amendments in the interest of employers, the council hitherto had said much, done nothing about its conviction that NLRB favors C. I. O. unions. Last week Spokesman Green, recalling that the Wagner Act was passed before John L. Lewis set up C. I. O., declared:

"The A. F. of L. is wholly and fully responsible for . . . this act. . . . No loud-mouthed representative of a dual labor movement can claim any of the credit. But we regret that the act has been applied in many instances in a way we never dreamed of. ... [The Federation will] mobilize its political strength in a determined effort to amend that law, so that it shall become the real act that was sponsored and approved by the Federation."

Mr. Green and his council are solely interested in amending the Act so that NLRB no longer will have sufficient power of discretion to rule for C. I. O. over A. F. of L. How to do this without wrecking the Wagner Act has not yet been determined, but A. F. of L. Counsel Joseph A. Padway is trying to draft a suitable amendment.

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