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APRIL-MAY, 1978

THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

The Bill proposed the suspension of
the forty hour week, to outlaw the
closed shop and union security clauses,
where the employer had a defense con-
tract, and to limit the profits on larger
defense contracts to six percent. The last
item was added in an attempt to quell
some of the outrage expressed by the
labour movement at the. anti-union con-
tent of the proposed legislation.

THE “CLOSED SHOP”

In reference to the closed shop the
Smith-Vinson Bill declared... “it is the
policy of the United States that it is the
inherent and inalienable right of
American citizens to work at any lawful
occupation without being required to
maintain membership in or pay tribute to
any person, association or organization.”

The day after the Bill was introduced
to Congress President Roosevelt told re-
porters at a press conference that the
war production effort was moving along
quite well. He also explained to the re-
porters that there was in fact no law
limiting the number of hours that a
worker could work. He confirmed that
most defense production plants were in
fact working more than forty hours a
week, and those that were working less,
were not being held up by any legislation
regarding hours of work, but were slow
because they were having difficulty ob-
taining raw materials.

LABOUR MORALE

Besides the president’s statement to
reporters, other politicians and senior
civil servants were saying virtually the
same thing. Donald Nelson, the Chair-
man of the War Production Board, ‘told
House Committees that there was no
law limiting the number of hours that
workers could work. He also said that
the closed shop was working well and
seemed to be satisfactory to both the
unions and management. Nelson added
that making the closed shop illegal, as
was proposed by the Smith-Vinson Bill,
“would very likely have a bad effect on
labour morale and on fabour relations

and ultimately on war production itself.”
Naturally the employer groups were all —

for the Smith-Vinson legislation and
once again began to mobilize an effec-
tive propaganda campaign to influence
the politicians to vote for the Bill. This
time however, more than just the major
employer groups from specific industries
became involved.

The leadership of the Junior Chambers
of Commerce urged their affiliates to
lobby politicians to outlaw the closed
shop and forty hour week for the dura-
tion of war, again playing on the patriot-
ism of both the politicians and the
people.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce went
further than the Junior organization
urging the removal of all sanctions of

the cl ed shop from the Labour Code,

the repeal of the Wages and Hours Act,
and the Walsh-Healey Act, an act which
governed the hours and wages on gov-
ernment contracts.

Although prevalent throughout the

states the anti-labour effort was cen-
tered primarily in the southern and .

southeastern states.

By the time the hearings on Smith-
Vinson got underway a fairly effective
propaganda machine was set up and
running at full speed. The campaign was
set up by the Southern States Industrial
Council, the Junior Chambers of Com-
merce and the U.S. Chamber of Com-
‘merce. In addition the movement against
the forty hour week and the closed shop
gained support from the right wing
southern newspapers and_ radio.
Labour's long time enemy, the National
Manufacturers’ Association, was also
heavily involved.

PUBLIC MEDIA

Other groups which had supported an
end to the closed shop for years, but that
had remained less prominent in terms of
the public media, also came forward and
made their views known during the
Smith-Vinson hearings. The most
Significant of these organizations was
the American Farm Bureau Federation
(AFBF). The AFBF had supported a bill to
end the forty hour week as early as
December 1941. The AFBF is_ also
significant in that it would play a major
role later in the Right to Work drive in
Florida. A good portion of the financing
for the campaign came from Texan Oil
Companies.

The AFBF and other farm groups told
the President’s Labour Industries Con-
ference that, “The right to work is as
sacred as the right to strike.” Now ob-
viously none of the organizations in-
volved in supporting the Smith-Vinson
legislation thought for a minute that the
right to strike by working people, as set

out in the Wagner Act, was anything

even close to being sacred. Such
hypocrisy must have been a little hard to
take, but nonetheless it gave the propa-
ganda a certain amount of credibility.

BILL DEFEATED

In spite of the large propaganda effort
the Smith-Vinson bill failed to pass.

Even though the legislation had the sup-

port of the largest and most powerful
employer organizations in the United
States it could not get the acceptance of
the nation’s law makers. In fact the bill
failed narrowly by a vote of 13-12 in the
Naval Affairs Committee. Ironically con-

gressman Smith was the chairman of.

that committee. The employers saw the
defeat of Smith-Vinson as a setback, but
did not for one minute consider giving up
the effort to end the closed shop.

It is quite obvious that those employer
groups who supported the end of the

closed shop following the enactment of
the Wagner Act in 1935 had only one
thing in mind, to cripple the labour
movement and prevent it from bar-
gaining for closed shop agreements. In
order to accomplish this the employers
had to find some way of getting rid of
either the right to bargain collectively,
which the Wagner Act provided the
unions, or find some method of having
the unions stopped from negotiating
union security clauses into their agree-
ments.

Undoubtedly the employers would like
to have seen an end to right of unions to
organize and bargain collectively. Short
of this, they felt the unions could be ef-
fectively hampered if just the right to
union security were removed.

The hypocrisy of trying to tie the
patriotic emotions of the American
people to the closed shop issue during a
time of war was morally reprehensible.
The fact of the matter was that em-
ployers, for their own selfish and profit
motivated reasons, wanted to get rid of
the workers’ right to have a union. Most
of these employers who called for the
end of the forty hour week and the
closed shop “until the end of war” knew
full well that once the legislation was on
the books it would be more difficult to
get rid of and would probably survive
any attempt by working people and their
unions to have the legislation changed.

FEDERAL BATTLE

Following the defeat of the Smith-
Vinson Bill in Washington the attack on
the forty hour week and closed shop
subsided. Although it was not dead,
most employers realized that it would be
a while before another concerted effort
could be mounted that had any chance
of succeeding.

At the same time the Federal battle
was going on, an ambitious Attorney
General in Florida had been trying to -
introduce legislation that would outlaw
the closed shop in that state. As early as
1941 Attorney General Tom Watson had
introduced such a bill. His attempt failed
but the testimony regarding the bill
which was heard before the State’s
House Labour Committee did keep the
closed shop issue before the people.

After failing to get his legislation out
of the House Labour Committee Watson
tried another angle on having the closed
shop outlawed. In August of 1942 he
filed suit against the Tampa Shipbuilding
Corporation. The suit alleged that the
company, in a collective agreement with
fourteen AFL affiliated unions, in fact set
up a labour monopoly because of the
union security clause contained in the
agreement. The suit said that the agree-
ment by the employer to hire only those
members in good standing of the Tampa’
Metal Trades Unions was against public
policy. Watson filed a similar suit against
a Jacksonville company.

TO BE CONTINUED