"In Good Faith"

Colonel Philip Bracken Fleming is a small, good-humored and efficient man who pounds around Washington on steel-capped heels. The colonel, who is 53, a West Point graduate and an Army engineer, loves poker, good company and a moderate amount of good liquor. Logical, simple and direct, he despises ostentation. When he was coordinator of the Resettlement Administration, he got sick of Administrator Rexford Tugwell's bright young men who loved to sit around the conference table waggling their Phi Beta Kappa keys. One day the colonel marched into conference, casually threw back his coat and exposed, on a heavy brass chain, a souvenir hotel key large enough to choke a horse. Last week the colonel scored another point, just as quietly.

Since February 1940, Colonel Fleming has administered the controversial wages & hours act. He has administered it with precise efficiency. Recently the act, which requires industry to pay time and a half for overtime over 40 hours a week, has come under attack. Most notable assailant has been Alfred P. Sloan Jr., chairman of General Motors Corp., who recommended that the "penalty for overtime should be canceled during the emergency to encourage a longer work week." Colonel Fleming, like a good military tactician, waited until he was ready to counterattack. First he got Mr. Sloan's opinions in writing. Then he got a good radio spot. Last week he replied.

Counter-Attack. Said the colonel: "If I found that the overtime penalty was interfering with defense production, I would report my observation to the President just as fast as a sentry reports the presence of the enemy. ... I have found no such thing. Defense industries have not been asking to be relieved of the overtime penalty. ... I have had no complaints from the airplane industry."*

Colonel Fleming countered Mr. Sloan's argument that paying overtime was a step towards inflation, by pointing to General Motors' last annual statement, which showed a total pay roll of $386,000,000, profits of $183,000,000. Said the colonel: "For every dollar paid out in wages and salaries almost 50% was realized in profits. ... I wonder if that old inflation bugaboo looks in the window at businessmen when they are confronted with profits --and scares them just as he does when they are confronted with wage increases. I called it a bugaboo because inflation does not begin until production capacity, through a shortage of machines, raw materials or workers, cannot meet increased demands." He declared, overlooking the fact that there are already serious shortages in several vital industries: "We are a long way from that point." Said the colonel finally: "Labor must be dealt with in good faith if we are to enter this dangerous New Era with national unity."

Crossed Lines. Ideally the rearmament program should be progressing in three neat parallel lines of administration, management, labor. But last week the lines were wavering, crossing, occasionally colliding head on. Congressmen raised longer and louder cries for legislation outlawing strikes in defense industries. The President himself had said: "The nation expects our defense industries to continue operation without interruption by strikes or lockouts." Among the crossed-up lines last week:

> C. I. O. executive council reaffirmed its vow to improve "wages and working conditions for labor," and win for labor its fair share of increased earnings. Set up by the council was a lobby to keep a watchful eye on Congress. Said C. I. O. President Philip Murray: "If foolhardy statesmen believe that they can impose restrictions on working men and women to stop their legitimate efforts to pursue their legal rights, then I say to those so-called statesmen that they are making a great mistake." (In short, C. I. O. labor was not going to give up its right to strike.)

> C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers, determined to break through Henry Ford's old, stout bulwark of antiunionism, still claimed heatedly that 300 men laid off at the River Rouge plant had been fired on account of union activities. Ford maintained that it was a seasonal slump, shooed union officials out of its yard.

> Because U. A. W. officials claimed that management had violated provisions of the grievance procedures, workers voted to strike at the Chevrolet factory in Flint, Mich.

> C. I. O.'s National Maritime Union demanded war-risk compensation of $125 to $250 a month for sailors working ships outside the Western Hemisphere or in ports of the Western Hemisphere controlled by belligerents. Marine workers also demanded a 25% increase in the basic rate of pay. In Congress, Illinois's Everett McKinley Dirksen stormed that N. M. U. was Communist-controlled, declared he would introduce a bill to bring merchant crews under the jurisdiction of the U. S. Navy.

> Still walking a picket line in Bayonne, N. J. at week's end were employes of the struck Babcock & Wilcox Co. plant, which has an $18,000,000 backlog of orders for marine boilers and other equipment for the U. S. Navy. Union demands, which union members assert the management refused to discuss, were for an 8-c- boost in the minimum wage of 57-c- an hour, a 10-c- hourly increase for all other workers, bonuses for workers on the night shifts.

> 5,000 U. A. W. employes of five of Eaton Manufacturing Co.'s plants (four in Michigan, one in Cleveland) got ready to walk out because company officials, the union charged, had not lived up to a recent agreement to reinstate discharged workers. The four Michigan plants are working on defense orders.

But from other quarters came brighter reports. Some lines had straightened out:

> Settled without any stoppage of work was a dispute at the East Farmingdale, L. I. plant of Ranger Engineering Division of Fairchild Engine & Airplane Corp. UAWorkers there receded from original demands, compromised on a new wage scale: 50-c- an hour to start, 55-c- after four months, 60-c- after that.

> Settled were strikes at the International Harvester plants in Indiana, at the Bendix Aviation Corp. plant in Philadelphia.

> Made public by the President was a letter he wrote to Michael Harris of C. I. O.'s Steel Workers Organizing Committee. The President praised Harris for calling off as "unwarranted" a strike at American Car & Foundry, busy with defense contracts. He also praised "as evidence of good faith" the offer of A. C. & F. workers to make up eight hours' back work without overtime pay.

> Brightest report of all came from Government-operated TVA. Due to the "accelerated national defense program," TVA gave 10,000 happy workers a $1,000,000 boost in wages.

* Colonel Fleming confided later that he had first submitted his speech to Defense Director Knudsen. Said Fleming: "Knudsen read it and then he said, 'You're dead right.' "

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