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The Settlement of Labor Disputes in Industries Affected with a National Interest

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The Settlement of Labor Disputes in Industries Affected with a National Interest The Catholic Lawyer Volume 9 Number 4 Volume 9, Autumn 1963, Number 4 Article 4 The Settlement of Labor Disputes in Industries Affected with a National Interest James J. Graham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Labor and Employment Law Commons, and the Legislation Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SETTLEMENT OF LABOR DISPUTES IN INDUSTRIES AFFECTED WITH A NATIONAL INTEREST JAMES J. GRAHAM* W HAT TO DO after the eighty-day "cooling-off" period? Congress left this question unanswered when it added emergency dispute pro- visions to the National Labor Relations Act in 1947,1 and since then much of the debate about the legislation has focused on this aspect of the problem of satisfying the public needs during labor disputes in industries affected with a national interest. However, in the opinion of this observer, a more accurate or complete description of the problem should also make reference to the prevention of emergency disputes ab initio by removing the underlying causes of such conflicts. The legislation has not been amended since its enactment, but periodic labor disturbances, such as the recent resumption of the Atlantic-Gulf Coast longshoremen's strike following the expiration of the injunction procured at the behest of President Kennedy, dramatically illustrate the problem and, at the same time, tend to provoke re-appraisals of the effi- cacy of the current legislation. Surprisingly enough, in an area as volatile and charged with partisan and political considerations as labor-management relations there is a fair amount of agreement among both neutrals and participants on basic * A.B., Fordham University; LL.B., St. John's University; LL.M., New York Uni- versity. I National Emergency Provisions of the Labor-Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 155, 156 (1947), 29 U.S.C. §§176-180 (1958). The statute permits the President to appoint a board to inquire into the issues in- volved in a labor dispute which, in his opinion, may "imperil the national health or safety." Upon receiving the board's report, the President may direct the Attorney General to petition an appropriate United States district court for an injunction restraining the work stoppage. The injunction granted by the court may last eighty days at most, after which period the work stoppage may recommence. The Act also requires the National Labor Relations Board to poll the affected em- ployees during the fifteen days prior to the expiration of the injunction, to determine if the "final offer of settlement made by their employer" is acceptable to them. 9 CATHOLIC LAWYER, AUTUMN 1963 principles to be applied to emergency dis- constitute an important and integral part. pute legislation. These principles may be This calls for improved private and public summarized roughly as follows: procedures and techniques, and above all, 1. The American system of collective for an increased measure of maturity ... " bargaining for the most part has succeeded Accordingly, the report places great in maintaining industrial peace; hence, stress on measures which, though voluntary, 2. The federal government should inter- seem designed to encourage greater accept- vene actively in labor disputes only in those ance of the concept that the public has a rare instances when the national health and real interest in major negotiations. For safety is truly endangered. example, negotiators should employ the 3. On such occasions, the enabling leg- services of third parties for mediation, rec- islation should permit the President some ommendations, or for the arbitration of flexibility in his choice of procedures to be disputed items. Labor and management employed. should experiment more freely with tech- 4. Greater emphasis should be placed on niques of fact-finding by jointly-appointed the resolution of disputed matters on a con- experts or by personnel drawn from their tinuing basis during the term of the collec- own staffs. The report urges negotiators to tive bargaining agreement; and finally, exchange freely data necessary for intelli- 5. Congress should permit the states to gent negotiations and to make joint requests assert jurisdiction over those labor disputes for such information to the appropriate gov- presently subject to federal pre-emption, ernment agencies such as the Bureau of the impact of which, however, is primarily Labor Statistics of the United States Depart- local. ment of Labor. In the light of these principles the The President's Advisory Committee also proposed amendment to the NLRA that noted its approval of a proposed plan by the deserves most serious consideration is con- Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service tained in a report entitled Free and Re- to make greater use of panels of mediators, sponsible Collective Bargaining and Indus- to raise the professional status of its per- trial Peace2 submitted to the Executive sonnel and, the parties willing, to partici- Branch on May 1, 1962 by the President's pate at an earlier stage in the more difficult Advisory Committee on Labor-Manage- and important negotiations. ment Policy.The Committee's report affirms that collective bargaining, when responsive Industry Councils to the public, or common interest, is an es- With an apparent view towards assuring sential element of economic democracy. a national perspective among labor and However, "the growing complexities of our management leaders, the Committee also own industrial society and the instabilities proposed that periodic conferences be held of the international setting now require that under government auspices, addressed to the parties recognize not only their own in- national and international influences affect- dividual responsibilities but their joint ing economic problems. responsibility to the society of which they Here, the report may be criticized justly for not going far enough. Even if the Com- 250 L.R.R.M. 11 (1962). mittee contemplates separate labor-manage- LABOR DISPUTES ment-government conferences for each one-hundred and ten linotype and teletype- industry, discussions concerning the cold setter operators by at least fifty per cent.5 war, unemployment statistics or foreign The answer then lies in periodic labor- trade may develop a greater concern for the management conferences, preferably with national interest among union and corpo- some government participation, on all rate officials but this will not necessarily re- practicable levels - industry-wide, regional, duce the number of major work stoppages. and/or on the plant level - designed to A supplemental statement by Judge Joseph resolve the precipitating causes of work E. O'Grady, a member of the Board of Pub- stoppages. The late Philip Murray, first lic Accountability 3 appointed to inquire into president of the merged AFL-CIO, pro- the recent shutdown of the New York City posed a so-called Industry Council Plan newspapers, agreed that parties to a labor during the Second World War for each de- dispute may have moral obligations to the fense industry, which would have provided public and should take the public interest for tripartite cooperation and periodic into consideration before deciding upon a meetings for the avowed purpose of increas- course of action which might have a serious ing production, -plant efficiency and of pro- impact upon the public. However, Judge moting industrial harmony. Walter Reuther O'Grady also stated that, "it does not nec- in 1941 proposed a similar plan for the air- essarily follow that these obligations... craft industry. The CIO endorsed Murray's always outweigh in the mind of a union ICP but, for the most part, such overtures leader his obligations in a given situation to were greeted with apathy even in union his members. The same applies to an em- circles.6 Philip Murray reportedly com- ployer's obligations to himself or his stock- plained at that time that the conservatives holders . .- said his plan was communistic and the Com- The temptation to favor self-interest pre- munists said it was papal. sumably will be more acute the further re- Though Murray's concepts of social jus- moved union and management officials are tice admittedly owed much to the influence from participation in the conferences con- of the papal encyclicals, his Industry Coun- templated by the President's Committee, cil Plan actually was timorous compared and, hence, more subject to local pressures. with the "syndicalist" reform proposed by 7 For example, the same issue of the magazine Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno. that published Judge O'Grady's remarks Pope Pius envisioned associations of em- also carried a feature on the "push button" ployer and union representatives in the newspaper of the future. The Los Angeles various industries which would function as Times now has in operation automated quasi-official agencies of the government in printing devices which will utimately reduce all matters of common interest." In addition, that newspaper's present complement of commencing with the chairmanship in the 3 The other members were Judges Harold R. Me- dina and David W. Peck. Their report charged that SId. at 15. the printers' strike was not a "move of last resort" OSee Commonweal, Sept. 2, 1960; Commonweal, but rather "a deliberate design formed by the print- Aug. 14, 1942. ers' representatives as the opening gambit in nego- 7 Pius XI, Quadragesirno Anno (1931), FivE GREAT tiations." Editor and Publisher, Jan. 19, 1963, p. 58. ENCYCLICALS 125 (1939). 4 Id. at 59. s Id. at 150-51. 9 CATHOLIC LAWYER, AUTUMN 1963 1 1930's of the late Father John A. Ryan, lems. " the Department of Social Action of the But enthusiasm for the "continuing con- National Catholic Welfare Conference tact" approach is not restricted to union perennially proposes for America modified leaders.
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