Dunces Capped

A cub among the lately lionized workers of the U. S. is the white-collar man. Because organized Labor long accepted his view that he was not of the overalled proletariat, he could, even two years ago, hardly have found a union had he wanted to. Since then C.I.O's top white-collar union, United Office & Professional Workers of America has boomed from 6.000 to 45,000 members.

Last year C.I.O. began to organize Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Along with great Metropolitan, the union also took on the others of the Big Three in industrial insurance. Prudential and John Hancock, set out to enroll the companies' 53,000 industrial agents, whose principal duty is to trudge from house to house, peddling small policies and collecting 10-c- 25-c-, or 50-c- a week from a clientele too poor or too feckless to pay by the year.

The union heads chose industrial insurance rather than ordinary life, fire, etc., because they thought industrial agents would have more grievances, would be more amenable to union advances. The agents shortly verified this premise. In affidavits submitted to NLRB and New York State Labor Relations Board, in testimony before a New York legislative committee, they declared themselves to be pitifully chivvied, hounded into hounding impoverished clients. A Metropolitan agent in New York City, Benjamin Klein, testified that his district manager punished him for lagging sales by making him don a dunce cap inscribed, "I am lousy, I am a louse," required 456 assembled agents to boo him. Scores of others swore that similar stimulants were commonly used by the three companies, complained particularly that agents were penalized for unavoidable lapses in old policies, finally induced the New York and Massachusetts Legislatures to curb that practice.

In Eastern cities where the drive was concentrated, recruits swarmed into the U.O.P.W.'s Industrial Insurance Agents Union. Last November, Metropolitan's President Leroy A. Lincoln reminded his agents of what the company had done for them, strongly indicated that in a pinch Metropolitan could get along without most of them. Last February, Mr. Lincoln declared he would never truckle to any organization which did not represent his 29,000,000 policyholders. On a fairly peaceful basis with Prudential, I.I.A.U. filed a complaint against Metropolitan with the New York State Labor Relations Board, against John Hancock with NLRB.

In the Metropolitan's Greater New

York area, the union last April won a State board election by a majority of 36 votes in 2,520, was then certified as bargaining agent. Metropolitan's famed Attorney Samuel Seabury asked New York Supreme Court Justice Aron Steuer to set aside the order. Grounds: the State Labor Relations act is unconstitutional; in any event it does not cover insurance agents; "The only Constitutional sanction for [union recognition by State decree] is to be found in the Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Russia." Last week Justice Steuer turned down Mr. Seabury, upheld I.I.A.U.'s half-blind, brusquely able Attorney Louis B. Boudin, ordered Metropolitan to bargain. Sole comfort for Metropolitan was in Justice Steuer's stipulation that agents who prefer to bargain individually may still do so.

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