Toledo Union Journal

Time for Plain Talk

By Tom Burke

Vice-President

Local 12,

UAW-CIO

Spicer has been closed down since last Thursday morning.

As in all affairs of this kind rumors and rumors are rife.

In this article I will attempt to set forth all the facts of the case.

Of course attempts are always made in situations of this kind to place the blame on organized labor.

However, I would like to point out that as early as last March, two months before V-E Day, news services and confidential information services for management and investors were predicting a wave of strikes this summer. How did they know six months beforehand that strikes would occur unless management intended to promote them?

The promotion of these strikes is designed to accomplish two things. First it is the fond hope of management that organized labor will lose public support. Toward this end management has used every publicity agency at its command to try to tear down the job that labor has done in this war. Huge headlines have proclaimed to all and sundry the supposedly unpatriotic actions of workers in stopping work in wartime. On the positive side they have run large and expensive advertisements extolling their own virtues as super patriots.

They have...
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...deliberately tried to separate the service man from his folks at home who were working to produce the materials of war.

The second objective of strike promotion by management is a follow thru from the first. By breaking down unions they hope to obtain a lower unit labor cost. The high unit labor cost is a creature largely of their own making. As long as there was only one customer for their goods and their productive facilities were at a premium, the piling on of costs resulted in higher profits. Now that they are faced with competitive market conditions they are struggling to bring down these unit costs so as to gain and maintain a place in competitive business. They have decided that the best way to accomplish this end is to use the sledge hammer instead of seeking co-operation.

The present Spicer situation is a very good example of management trying to reach these two goals. Lucille Bowes of the accounting department was discharged for "tardiness" It is peculiar, to say the least that Miss Bowes, is the only worker in the accounting department that the management is sure is a union member. How did they know that? Elementary, my dear Watson. Miss Bowes filed a couple of grievances and the union went to bat on them. To think that any worker in the accounting department (say that name on bended knee, pal) would have the audacity to have a grievance much less file one is lese majeste of the worst type. After all this is the citadel of the dough pile, the inner throne room of company policy. To have a worker file a grievance against the Melicks is intolerable to the Melicks Therefore. the worker who did it got the pitch.

You see the Union won a collective bargaining election in May. 1944. in the Spicer office. Negotiations on the contract were opened in July of that year. After no agreement was reached the contract was certified to the War Labor Board as a dispute about seven months ago. The extreme speedy action of the board has resulted in no settlement to date. (In peacetime the average contract is signed, sealed and delivered in thirty to sixty days.)

There is no doubt that the real reason Miss Bowes was fired is the fact that she is a member of the Union because other people in, the same department who ride the same Eleanor Avenue bus are late just as often or oftener than Miss Bowes. Miss Bowes is not a new employee of this company as has been inferred. She has been there almost two years, and in that time the company could find nothing wrong with her work.

Union officers cannot authorize this or any other strike or work stoppage because the membership has voted by referendum to retain the no-strike pledge. However, management keeps piling indignities on workers until the breaking point is reached. When they do this and the workers can stand no more and strike, management hopes to divorce the workers from the Union by forcing them to violate the rules that these workers themselves have made.

The final result is- this, folks: management asked for it. Management promoted it. Management has it now. This is the most complete shut-down I have ever seen. Sooner or later they are going to have to sit down at the conference table. So far they have refused to do so unless the people go back to work. The workers so far have said to management. "You have made the situation, it's your baby".

Up until last night (Monday), the War Labor Board has said, "Thanks for calling and letting us know that something happened." Last night the WLB ordered the people back to work, instructing them to follow the procedure of a contract that does not exist because the WLB has not seen fit to dynamite it loose.

This is where we stand as of Tuesday morning, July 10, 1945 A. D.