One for All

"I hope the decision promotes discussion." This was a classic understatement of what the decision would promote. Mr. Justice Ivan Cleveland Rand of Canada's Supreme Court had just announced a revolutionary arbitration award in the labor dispute at Windsor's sprawling Ford Motor Co. of Canada plant.

Should the C.I.O. auto workers have a closed shop? No, said Justice Rand: "[This] would subject the company's interest in individual employes ... to strife within the union and between them and the union. . . . [It] would deny the individual Canadian the right to seek work independently of . . . any organized group . . . [and] would place his economic life at the mercy . . . of an uncontrolled and here an unmatured group."

Yet the union, Justice Rand conceded, could hardly be blamed for seeking a closed shop. Said he: "I doubt if any circumstance provokes more resentment in a plant than this sharing of the fruits of unionist work and courage by the nonmember. . . . All employes should be required to shoulder their portion of the burden of expense for administering the law of their employment, the union contract. . . . They must take the burden with the benefit."

Therefore, said Justice Rand, all 9,500 Ford employes would have to pay the basic union dues of $1 a month, whether they belonged or not. The company would have to collect the money by checkoff and turn it over to the union.

Other Rand rulings:

P: No strike can be called unless voted by a majority of all employes, non-union as well as union.

P: Any worker striking illegally will be fined $3 a day and will lose one year's seniority for each week he refuses to work.

P: If the union calls an illegal strike or fails to repudiate one, it will lose the checkoff for two to six months.

P: The union must admit anyone who wants to join.

Gain or Obstacle? Labor's first reaction was mostly favorable. Said President Aaron Mosher of the Canadian Congress of Labor: "A good equivalent of the union shop." Elroy Robson, President of the C.C.L. Toronto Labor Congress, said the ruling was "worthy of the wisdom of a Solomon."

The chief dissenter was C. S. Jackson, Canadian President of the C.I.O. Electrical Workers: "[This] cleverly devised formula . . . could mean a setback for genuine union security."

Management, for the most part, kept its thoughts to itself. But one business mouthpiece, Toronto's Financial Post, had an approving word: "A real step toward . . . full and mutually responsible partnership of management, labor and capital."

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