LABOR: Union Buster

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Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. . . .

So reads the heart of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which was passed by Congress in 1890 to bust trusts. After 49 years U. S. employers are finding that it may perhaps be used to bust unions. Following the lead of Philadelphia's Apex Hosiery Co., last week Tom Girdler's Republic Steel Corp. sued John Lewis, C. I. O. and its steel unions and nearly 700 individual strikers for $7,500,000 under the Sherman Act and the related Clayton Act of 1914.

Republic claimed that during the 1937 Little Steel strike its plants in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and elsewhere had lost $2,500,000 because C. I. O. pickets ("armed mobs") had menaced employes, caused suspension of mails, obstructed railroads and highways from its plants, restrained interstate and foreign trade. Under the Clayton Act, triple indemnity plus costs is payable. It was no coincidence that Republic's suit followed by one week C. I. O.'s plea to the Labor Board for $7,500,000 in back pay for time lost by employes after their reinstatement had been ordered, but a fast play to even the score.

Few suits like Republic's have been brought against Labor, partly because many employers are so ignorant as to believe that unions are not "responsible," not liable to suit. Other reasons: litigation is slow, costly, uncertain; employers sometimes prefer to try to break unions before they have acquired the power to restrain trade. Anti-union employers got their great awakening only last April when Apex won its verdict for $711,000 in triple damages against Branch 1 of C. I. O.'s American Federation of Hosiery Workers (TIME, April 10). The Apex strike was a sitdown, which the U. S. Supreme Court has declared illegal. If suits like Tom Girdler's can extend the anti-trust laws to cover other strikes (which are legal in principle) Labor will have suffered a blow, all but undoing such pro-Labor legislation as the Wagner Act. Last week in appealing the Apex verdict, a union attorney announced that the U. S. Department of Justice has agreed to intervene on Labor's side. And John Lewis last fortnight set up a committee to work for specific exemption of unions from anti-trust litigation.