Let's Face the Strike Issue

Abstract

S TRIKE PUBLICITY has passed from freshness to repetition, and if at this stage neither contestant has made explicit what is really at issue, we must conclude that both are unwilling to do so. Nor has this omission been remedied by their outside apologists or by interested government spokesmen. In his presentation of the automobile workers' case, Mr. Walter Reuther came encouragingly close to the main point when he linked wage demands with prices and profits; and employers, in their spontaneous resistance to any such linking, demonstrated their appreciation of what was at stake. But the central issue, being as revolutionary as it is simple, deserves an open appraisal unobscured by secondary controversies. There will be general agreement that throughout the growth of capitalism, owners of capital have been the makers of business enterprise decisions. The breakdown of the feudal system and the establishment of a free labor market, with workers separated from the means of production, made the individual worker dependent upon the invitation and terms of the employer. This is merely to recognize that, given an unrestricted free labor market, which in practice has meant a reservoir of unemployed containing replacements for workers unwilling to accept the terms of employers, the worker's position has been that of a dependent and in its major aspects beyond his control. And only the requirements of competition, the conscience of employers, the intercession of government, and the organized efforts of the workers themselves, have intervened to ameliorate the working conditions which might conceivably result from complete worker dependence and employer dominance. So clear is the historical development of this employer dominance in worker-employer relations, and so obvious is it as a simple matter of fact, that workers and employers alike accept it as more or less natural. And executives of business enterprise, thinking perhaps unconsciously in terms that were accepted but not necessarily applicable even when management was closely connected with ownership, actually speak of the rights of management in this sense of their being somehow inherent in