Power of Persuasion

John L. Lewis, whose life has been one long noisy scrap, reached his 70th birthday this week, bellowing and posturing through the toughest scrap of his life. He had been unable to wring concessions from a group of coal operators as stubborn and tough as he. Their quarrel threatened to bring the country's economy to its knees.

The Government ordered the railroads to cut services. Cities around the U.S. worried about heat & light. The steel industry had reason to fear a complete shutdown. With 370,000 miners out on strike, the nation was down to a meager two-week supply of soft coal. Much as he disliked it, Harry Truman finally had to invoke the Taft-Hartley law.*

No Privileges, No Contract. In a federal court in Washington Judge Richmond Keech slapped an injunction on Lewis, ordered him not to ask for certain arbitrary privileges in a coal contract until the NLRB could decide whether such demands were unfair labor practices under the Taft-Hartley law. Lewis hadn't specifically made such demands, but for more than eight months negotiations had been stalemated because everyone knew that Lewis wouldn't sign unless he got them. The privileges were: an illegal union shop; limiting of the miners' welfare fund to members of the U.M.W.; a clause saying that miners would work only if "willing & able," and a provision giving Lewis the right to shut down the industry for "memorial periods" whenever he liked.

Then Lewis was ordered to appear before a Taft-Hartley fact-finding board which Harry Truman, in the shadow of the crisis, had reluctantly appointed. The board asked Lewis and the coal operators to sit down and give them a sample of their bargaining. In a room in the Labor Department, at a crowded open hearing, Lewis and Pittsburgh-Consolidation's President George Love promptly obliged.

"But Yes, But Yes." Energetic, plain-spoken George Love--who took over two faltering coal mines in 1945 and built them into the world's biggest commercial producer--opened up by quoting what he said Lewis had said to the operators: "You have the mines; I hold the men in the palm of my hand. How much am I bid?"

Lewis shook his shaggy mane and roared: "That is a dirty, deliberate, infamous lie ... I say it to you, George Love. You are a liar by the clock."

Factfinder Chairman David L. Cole restored some order. Love, who has managed to hold the operators in a solid front of opposition to Lewis, went on to argue that the industry would not bargain on illegal demands, that, furthermore, "the union never presented us with any issues."

Said Lewis scornfully: "We knew the operators had no intention of making a ... bargaining agreement because ... they believed they only had to refuse until they got themselves a yellow-dog injunction under this damnable Taft-Hartley Act."

Did Lewis really mean it when he said he would negotiate any issue?

"But yes, but yes, but yes, sir," purred Lewis. "I don't suggest that the Mine Workers will immediately become half-witted the minute the operators throw some absurd thing on the table, but we will analyze it with them. It is negotiable if they are strong enough to persuade us."

"All Appropriate Action." At week's end, the fact-finders reported back to the President. "The parties concerned," they said, "have been more concerned with gaining tactical advantages," than with making a contract. There was nothing left for Harry Truman to do but use the ultimate weapon of Taft-Hartley, which he has often denounced as heatedly as Lewis has. An Assistant Attorney General went to Judge Keech. The judge ordered Lewis to order his miners back to work, issued a ten-day restraining order against the walkout.

Lewis went through the motions of doing as he was told. He blandly wired his district presidents that he had "no alternative" but to tell them "to take all appropriate action" to see that "the instructions of the court are carried out" and that all the miners "cease said strike." Thus he hoped to save himself from another whopping fine for contempt of court ($1,420,000 for him and the U.M.W. in 1948 in similar circumstances).

Plastered as he was with injunctions, septuagenarian John Lewis was far from licked. If anything, he might be in an even better bargaining position. To no one's surprise, defiance swept through the coal fields. In Pennsylvania and West Virginia, miners shouted: "To hell with them . . ." "We won't go back ..." "They can't mine coal with an injunction."

With his tongue in his cheek and the situation made to order, Lewis invited the operators to meet with him again and see now who had the strength to do the persuading.

* In spite of his protestations of undying determination to get rid of the Taft-Hartley law as a wicked piece of legislation, since it became effective in 1947 President Truman has invoked it eight times in the following industries: atomic energy at Oak Ridge (March '48); meat packing (March '48); long lines telephone (May '48); maritime (June '48); longshore (Aug. '48); coal (March and June '48 and Feb. '50).

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