Man at Work

The customers at the Fort Shelby Hotel bar in Detroit recognized an old face. James Francis Dewey, looking like a billiken in a black Homburg hat, was back in town, this time to settle the General Motors fight.

For many years--ever since "Puddler Jim" Davis took Dewey into the Labor Department--he has been bouncing back & forth between Washington, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, spreading balm. A onetime railroad telegrapher, 59-year-old Jim Dewey has become the government's ace mediator. His methods are simple: get 'em together, keep 'em cool, let 'em talk.

Last week he got them together on the fifth floor of the General Motors building. There the bosses of G.M. and the United Auto workers stubbornly fought over the wage and contract issues which have kept the company tied up twelve weeks, at a loss of more than $100,000,000 in wages. Dewey sat in their midst, slouched in his. chair, drumming the table and nodding his grey-thatched head.

Tempers flared. Dewey sat up and pulled from his pocket a pair of toy Scotty dogs, which he placed on the conference table. Magnetized, they sprang together. Everybody laughed and Dewey slouched back. When sparks began to fly again, he broke in with a dirty story.

Everybody Sing. When the union leaders looked mad enough to walk out, Dewey wondered out loud and apropos nothing: did they know where one of their leading union songs had come from? No? Well, on a trip to the South he once heard Negroes sing a spiritual, Jesus Is Our Leader. Later he told John L. Lewis about it and soon Lewis' miners were singing, "Lewis is our leader." The U.A.W. changed it to "Thomas" (for beefy R. J. Thomas, their president).

The U.A.W. statesmen around the conference table burst into song: "Thomas is our leader, we shall not be moved. . . ." Patient, hard-working Jim Dewey hoped they could be moved just a little.

Mr. Thomas was moved at week's end when G.M. electrical workers abruptly ended their strike, affecting 25,000 employes at G.M. plants in Ohio and New York, a handful in Detroit. The C.I.O. electrical workers had secretly settled for an 18 1/2-c--an-hour wage boost. (The auto workers are demanding 19 1/2-c-.) The settlement left Thomas "terribly shocked." Said he: "It put us in an awful spot, since G.M. now will come to us insisting that we settle on the same terms."

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