Maintenance of Membership: A Study in Administrative Statesmanship

Abstract

As we look back now, 1941 appears to have been a year of indecision. Still vivid in our minds is the Great Debate over foreign policy, conducted at a time when we were waging undeclared and unadmitted war. Hardly less acute was another issue that split America: What about labor's rights in time of crisis? During an emergency period should the status of trade unions be frozen for the duration, or did a fight by democracies against fascism involve vesting labor with new rights and duties? This profound and philosophical question was not for academicians and pundits alone. Involving the central issue of union security, it was reflected in bitter labormanagement hostility during 1941. By the time of Pearl Harbor this single issue had halted construction of warships at a great East Coast shipbuilding center, had caused a 76-day strike at Allis Chalmers, had thrown 150,000 coal miners out of work, had forced governmental seizure of several defense plants, had broken up the nation's chief mediation agency.