United Automobile Worker

GRANDDADDY OF COMPANY UNIONS ORDERED TO LAY DOWN AND DIE

John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s Employee Representation Plan, the granddaddy of company unions in America, was ordered by the labor board to get out of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. mines.

The company union had trimmed its whiskers and rouged its cheeks to fool the labor board after the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act, but the camouflage didn't work.

The company was also directed to bargain collectively with the Intl. Union of Mine Mill & Smelter Workers (CIO) as the exclusive representative of employees at the Sunrise, Wyo. iron mine and to cease unfair labor practices.

The board found that the Rockefeller plan in operation at the company's mines at Sunrise and at its steel mill in Pueblo, Colo. were hangovers from the bloody Ludlow Massacre in 1914. At that time company police and national guardsmen set fire to the tents of striking miners and shot at them as they fled the burning tents.

"The board found that the plan was inaugurated by the company as a 'safety valve' to give the employees an opportunity to voice grievances but through a 'form of organization which was such as to insure complete domination and control by the company and to render the organization incapable of functioning as a real bargaining agency for the employees."

The board's announcement of its order said.

The company contended that alterations made in the plan after the labor act was upheld by the Supreme Court, made the company union legal.

"Clearly," the board said, "the imprint upon the plan and the employees representation organization of more than 20 years' history as an employer-dominated labor organization was not removed in 1937 by such legerdemain."