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Strikes Under the New Deal

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Strikes Under the New Deal STRIKES UNDER THE NEW DEAL By MAURICE GOLDBLOOM JOHN HERLING JOEL SEIDMAN ELIZABETH YARD lntrodu.ction by JOSEPH SCHLOSSBERG o Published by LEA GUE FOR IND US TR I.A L D E M 0 C R A C Y 112 East 19th Street, New York City CONTENTS PAGE Foreword 3 Introduction 5 The Position of Labor Prior to N. 1. R. A. 6 Enactment of the N. 1. R A. 7 Hours, Wages and Codes 10 The Strike Wave of 1933 12 Attempts to Restrict the Right to Strike 15 Employers' Efforts to Modify Section 7a . 16 The National Labor Board . 19 Wages, Prices and Union Organization, 1933 23 The Strike Wave of #1934-5 25 Industrial Relations Boards 29 The National Labor Relations Board.... ......... 32 The Schechter Decision and the New Labor Board 35 Causes of Srikes Under the New Deal. ...... 36 The Toledo Strike 40 The San Francisco General Strike .... 44 The Minneapolis Truckers' Strike 52 The Nation-wide Textile Strike 56 Agricultural Strikes 63 Appraisal of Strikes under the New Deal 66 Footnotes 69 Bibliography . 70 a~ 438 FOREWORD ITH the Roosevelt administration enlightened champions of W capitalism realized the need of taking energetic measures in order to stabilize capitalism. The National Industrial Recovery Act was one of the most important measures. The chief objective of the N. I. R. A. was to enable the private profit-producing machinery to function. With that end in view, business was relieved of the restraints of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Monopoly was made legally permissible under the cloak of "fair competition." Employers were required to organize for col­ lective action, whereas workers were merely given the right to organize. Only organized employers, not individual employers, could write codes. And only employers could write codes; workers could not. Workers, if organized, could offer criticism or amend­ ments to the codes written by their employers. Unorganized work­ ers were unable to make themselves heard. Labor received repre­ sentation on the first few code authorities only. At first the American Federation of Labor was enthusiastic about the N. R. A., feeling that it held distinct advantages for the work­ ers. The effect upon many workers was to make them more favor­ ably disposed to organization. Although many workers also thought that, since the government was looking after labor, unions were unnecessary, the favorable effect upon large numbers of workers was a great gain for the labor movement. The strong unions derived positive benefits. Workers who had the courage to organize and fight obtained better labor conditions in the codes, and used their own power to enforce those provisions. The needle trade organiza­ tions are outstanding examples. The International Ladies' Gar­ ment Workers' Union succeeded in getting a 35-hour week, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, a 36-hour week. Those standards were maintained by the unions even after the Supreme Court decision against the N. I. R. A. Unfortunately, only a small proportion of American workers are organized power­ fully enough to wrest such concessions from employers. In spite of these advantages, the American Federation of Labor had serious grievances against the N. R. A. For some reason Roose- velt chose to place a soldier at the head of this colossal economic experiment. General Johnson's tactics, perhaps militarily correct, were the worst from any other point of view. At the 1935 conven­ tion of the American Federation of Labor, he threatened the labor movement with destruction if strikes did not cease. In a public speech in New' York in 1934, he attacked the textile strike at a time when National Guardsmen were shooting strikers. In San Fran­ cisc'O, likew,ise, he attacked the strikers. The serious setbacks suf­ fered by labor included the encouragement of company unionism in the automobile industry; the -disillusionment in the steel in­ dustry, and the tragic outcome of the textile strike. The N~ I. R. A. has been characterized as a "revolution" by extreme enthusiasts in praise of it and by extreme foes in critcism. It was not a revolution, for power was not transferred from one economic or social class to another. Under the N.I.R.A., as before, the capitalist class owned our industries and dominated our lives. The N. I. R. A. tried to rescue capitalism from its own mess and make it stronger. In the past the bourgeoisie used the power of the state to regulate wages and other working conditions in order to build up capitalism; this time an attempt was made to regulate working conditions in order to save capitalism. Many in the cap­ italist class did not appreciate this vital fact. The experience of labor under the N. R. A. supplies another _strong argument in favor of the development in America of a powerful labor party. The history of the N. R. A. is a history of the struggles of the workers in that period. All who are interested in the labor move­ ment will welcome this pamphlet, which analyzes the N. R. A. in relation to labor, and presents detailed stories of some of the most significant strikes under the New Deal. Its inforination is basic to an understanding of the problems which confront labor today. A clear understanding of those problems iii essential in the task of building a strong labor movement on both the economic and the political fields. JOSEPH SCHLOSSBERG, General Secretary-Treasurer Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; Member of Board of Directors, League for Industrial Democracy STRIKES UNDER THE NEW DEAL Introduction HE labor movement became front page news following the T enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act on June 16, 1933. Workers who for years had endured the sufferings of poverty flocked into unions, and demanded a share of the benefits of the New Deal. Instead they met <!,enial of their rights by employers, and evasiveness and endless delays from g-overnment officials. Dis­ illusioned by bitter experience, more and more workers placed their relianoe in their own economic might, and a series of militant strikes electrified the country. Gathering momentum in the early months of 1934, the wave of strikes culminated in the three-day general strike in San Francisco in July of that year, and in the nation-wide textile strike fought two months later. The enactment of the N. I. R. A. had helped to create, for the first time in many years, a favorable psychology for the growth of labor organizations. Many unions, among them those of the gar­ ment workers, the miners, and the hosiery workers, launched ag­ gressive organizing campaigns, and recruits by the thousands poured into established unions or formed isolated federal locals in industries in which no national organization existed. In mass production industries, such as steel and automobiles, the growth in union strength was especially marked. Employers met the new situation by denying in practice the rights to organize and bargain collectively guaranteed in Section 7a. They intimidated workers through dismissals for union ac­ tivity. They widely introduced company unions. Chiseling on the wage and hour provisions of codes, in the absence of strong unions, became -an almost universal practice, and one that, for the most part, went unpunished. When, as a last resort, workers struck, the government exerted all possible pressure to get them to return to work. Board after board paraded across the national scene, some­ times seeking merely to persuade workers not to strike, and some­ times rendering decisions favorable to labor, only to have its efforts nullified by the lack of enforcing power. The role of studied im· partiality at first essayed- by the Roosevelt administration soon 5 disappeared, and in its labor actions the government more and more reflected the desires of the employing class. Finally, on May 27, 1935, the United States Supreme Court in the Schechter case held the provisions· of the live poultry code invalid, and the entire structure of the N. R. A. collapsed as. a result. Minimum wages, the right to organize contained in Section 7a, the various labor boards that had been created under the N. I. R. A.-all of these were wiped out by the Supreme Court decision. Assaults upon wage and hour standards began at once, and work­ ers realized as never before that in their own economic power lay the best guarantee of fair treatment. The tremendous resentment aroused in the ranks of labor by the government's failure to enforce 7a and the Supreme Court decision holding the act unconstitutional make it certain that the strikes of 1933-35 are but a prelude to a much greater outbreak of strikes soon to come. THE POSITION OF LABOR PRIOR TO THE N. I. R. A. Little more than a fringe of American labor was organized in the summer of 1933. The dues-paying membership of the American Federation of Labor, which had hovered just under the 3,000,000 mark between 1923 and 1931, sank to 2,500,000 in 1932, and dropped further to 2,100,000 in 1933. The Federation had been lax in its organizing efforts, and conciliatory rather than militant. Un­ willing to adapt its dominant craft structure to modern industrial development, it had made little appeal to the workers in mass pro­ duction industries. It had refused to engage in independent polit­ ical activity, and instead urged workers to reward their political friends and defeat their enemies regardless of party affiliation. Company unions or employe representation plans, started by em­ ployers in an effort to counteract the influence of bona fide unions, existed in the plants of 313 companies in 1932, and claimed a mem­ bership of 1,260,000.' As the crisis deepened, unemployment sharply increased, and the wages of those who remained at work went steadily downward.
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