Briggs and Bats

A union vice president was shot in the leg. Two union men had been stabbed. Another was beaten, later hounded into a cellar whence police rescued him. Carloads of union men drove up to a union picketline, attacked the picketers with baseball bats. Other union rovers toured the city, on the lookout for rival union men.

These goings-on in Detroit last week were in connection with a strike against big, rich Briggs Manufacturing Co., which makes automobile bodies for Chryslers, Plymouths, Dodges, De Sotos, Packards, Lincolns. Because of the strike Chrysler Corp. had to close ten of its plants in Michigan and Indiana, the Lincoln (Ford) plant was closed in Detroit and 70,000 employes were idle, including those of parts suppliers dependent upon the automakers.

The notable circumstance about all this was that the men who were shot, beaten, hunted were subjected to that treatment not by an angry management but by fellow-unionists. The strikers belonged to C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers of America. Homer Martin's recently independent United Automobile Workers wished to horn in on the Briggs negotiations, horn out C. I. O. Homer Martin's men got the worst of it in the negotiations although C. I. O.'s union suffered most of the casualties at the hands of his goons in the street fights.

Last week U. S. Conciliator James F. Dewey with the help of Ford's Harry Bennett, whose company is a Briggs customer, got hitherto stubborn Briggs executives into a more cooperative frame of mind. Able, amiable Mr. Dewey then succeeded in settling most of the specific grievances which had caused the strike.

But it did not end. The Briggs local's smart little Vice President Emil Mazey popped out a demand for the same sort of union shop guarantee which John Lewis won for his coal miners last month.

Briggs's President William P. Brown declared that he would not require all his 15,000 employes to be in the union. Nevertheless he was willing to discuss exclusive recognition of Mr. Mazey's local as a compromise. This he and Mr. Mazey proceeded to do this week, postponing the union shop issue until bodies again are flowing to Chrysler, Ford, et al. Meantime Mr. Martin, having been squeezed out at Briggs, announced that 66,768 fellow secessionists from C. I. O. had voted to affiliate with A. F. of L. His figure was almost as surprising as his war on other unionists. If he actually has that many followers he may give trouble aplenty to C. I. O. and to automakers caught in jurisdictional wars between the dual unions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.