SETTLEMENT
Continued:

WORK
STOPPAGE
DATA:

MEDIATION
ACTIVITY:

during 1967, by reason of the strike, and no administrative discipline on the part of the Company or their pressing of any charges pending either in civil actions or the Courts. The Company will appear in Court cases, however, if requested. The final tally of the ratification vote was 851 in favor of the settlement and 130 opposed.

Strike began September 30, 1966 idling 2,150 workers. It ended upon the issuance of the TaftHartley injunction December 23, 1966.

Major issue confronting parties was IUD national
effort regarding this company. This prevented
early entry of FMCS into dispute as both parties
were unwilling to meet with FMCS representative.
Comm. Zancanaro assigned initially, and when
Defense impact became apparent, Comm. Preston was
added, creating a panel effort in early November.
The mediators held almost continuous joint and
separate meetings with the parties from this time.
The Deputy Director also became involved with this
dispute, and following the injunction worked closely
with Comm. Zancanaro in resolving the dispute. The
Deputy Director attributed the outstanding perfor-
mance of Comm. Zancanaro as a key factor in guiding
the parties to reach an agreement prior to the
expiration of the injunction. Following the agree-
ment both parties agreed to institute a preventive
mediation program to improve future relations at
the company.

VII-c. (Source: Frank M. Kleiler. In Emergency Disputes and National Policy. New York, N.Y., Harper & Bros., Publishers, 1955, pp. 91-108)

A LEGISLATIVE HISTORY

OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY PROVISIONS

BY FRANK M. KLEILER
National Labor Relations Board

The emergency section of the Taft-Hartley Act grew out of troubled industrial relations in the years immediately preceding 1947. A combination of events produced the most vigorous peacetime effort in the history of the federal government to deal with strikes affecting the public interest. The same events created a flood of state laws dealing with disputes involving public utilities.1 Two days after the surrender of Japan, President Truman issued a statement signalizing the liquidation of the War Labor Board and announcing his intention of calling an industry-labor conference for the purpose of working out methods of minimizing the interruption of production by labor disputes in the reconversion period. The War Labor Disputes Act was still on the books, but its early expiration was anticipated. The WLB officially ceased func

Ten states passed laws in 1947 providing, among other things, for the use of injunctions against public utility strikes. Irving Bernstein, "Recent Legislative Developments Affecting Mediation and Arbitration," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 1 (April 1948), pp. 406-420.

257 Stat. 163 (1943), 50 U.S.C. § 1501-1511. This Act put the powers and duties of the WLB upon a statutory basis, and it required the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a "last offer" vote thirty days after a dispute notice was filed. It also empowered the President to take immediate possession of any plant, mine, or facility in the event of an interruption of production as the result of a strike or other labor disturbance which would impede the war effort.

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tioning on December 31, 1945. A somewhat limited wage stabilization responsibility was assigned to a new board which would not handle disputes.

The President's Industry-Labor Conference failed to agree upon any program for dealing with disputes not settled by collective bargaining and conciliation. Most congressmen had little or no faith that representatives of management and labor could work out their differences in such a way that the public interest would be protected.

The year 1946 broke records in strike statistics. There were more and larger work stoppages than ever before.3

At the start of 1946 the automobile industry was still engaged in tremendous strikes, notably affecting General Motors, which had begun late in 1945. Not having had new cars for several war years, people were paying fantastic black-market prices. As the automobile stoppage ended, a nationwide steel strike began in January 1946, following rejection by industry spokesmen of the recommendations of a presidential fact-finding board. A steel strike threatening a shortage of materials for other industries in the transition from wartime production was hard to take.

A bituminous coal mine strike began on April 2. On May 4 President Truman, through the office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, issued a report terming this strike a "national disaster." The government seized the coal mines on May 22, but production was not resumed until after an agreement was signed on May 29 by the Secretary of the Interior and the United Mine Workers of America to cover the indefinite period of government operation.

In the railroad industry the Railway Labor Act-which had long been proclaimed as a model procedure for dealing with disputes in basic industries-appeared to break down. The government seized the carriers in May after the engineers and trainmen rejected the recommendations of a presidential emergency board. A strike occurred despite seizure, and on May 25 the President appeared

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 4,985 stoppages in 1946, involving 4,600,000 workers and 116,000,000 man-days idle. These figures are higher than comparable figures available for any prior year. When measured by per cent of total employed, however, 1946 did not break the record set in another great postwar strike year, 1919. Workers involved in stoppages in 1919 constituted 20.8 per cent of the labor force, compared with 14.5 per cent in 1946.

before a joint session of Congress seeking emergency legislation that would give him the power to prevent future strikes having widespread effects on the public and the nation's economy.

Great Lakes shipping was tied up by a stoppage in August. In September a strike of unlicensed maritime personnel paralyzed all shipping on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts for over two weeks. Eight days after that strike was settled, a nationwide stoppage of licensed personnel virtually tied up all deep-sea shipping in American ports.

On November 21 the bituminous coal industry, still held by the government, was struck for the second time in the year in the face of a temporary restraining order issued by Justice T. Alan Goldsborough of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On December 3 the court found the union and its president, John L. Lewis, guilty of contempt and ordered the union and Lewis to pay heavy fines. The district court action promptly was appealed to higher courts.

There were many other large, costly strikes. If in those days there were any labor relations experts entertaining the view that "national emergency" disputes were few and far between, they were notably inarticulate; but opinions on what to do with labor disputes were a dime a dozen. A new and large crop of labor experts had emerged from the recently deceased tripartite national and regional war labor boards. Management and labor representatives exhibited more vigor than usual in pressing for partisan advantages. Labor spokesmen, however, were on the defensive. Management advocated legislation intended mainly to control and restrict unions in the "public interest.”

While the strikes were proceeding with unabated fury, Congress was trying to legislate on labor problems. The House had already passed the Case bill (H.R. 4908) when the President addressed the joint session of Congress on May 25 in connection with the railroad strike. Following the President's address the Senate passed the Case bill, declining to give the President the kind of legislation

United States v. United Mine Workers of America, Civil No. 37764 (DC, D. of C., Nov. 18, 1946), 11 CCH Labor Cases ¶ 63,438.

8

Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 92:1 (February 7, 1946), pp. 1067-1070.