LABOR: Union Shop by U.S. Order?

The U.S. Wage Stabilization Board will soon make a recommendation that may profoundly affect all U.S. labor. Up before the board are three major disputes, involving steel, aluminum and aircraft workers; in each instance, the unions are demanding the union shop.

The Taft-Hartley law, which bans the closed shop, permits the union shop wherever a majority of workers votes for it. Under a union-shop contract, the worker must become a union member within a specified period (usually 30 to 60 days) after being hired or after the contract is signed; his union dues are usually deducted from his wages (checkoff); but, in any case, refusal to join the union or failure to pay dues means that the employer is required to fire him.

Last week the Wage Stabilization Board was handed a pregnant precedent: another high governmental agency recommended the union shop for an entire industry. The case involved the nation's railroads and the 17 unions representing non-operating workers (office, shop and track hands). The recommendation was sent to President Truman by a specially created Emergency Board.

The board's three members (New Jersey Arbitrator David L. Cole, New York Labor Consultant Aaron Horvitz, California Professor George E. Osborne) unanimously agreed that: 1) Congress has okayed the principle of the union shop; 2) the union shop now covers at least 3,900,000 U.S. workers; 3) unions are right in arguing that non-union workers who enjoy union-gained benefits are "free riders . . . unjustly enriched."

The railroads are not legally required to accept the Emergency Board's findings, and some clenched their legal knuckles. Donald R. Richberg, once a New Dealer but now a lawyer for Southeastern railroads, denounced the board's findings as "intolerable" and a threat to "free institutions." But the country's big union leaders smacked their lips. Said one C.I.O. man in tones of conscious piety: "It would be discriminatory to recommend the union shop for one industry and not for others."

Would Government policy on the union shop become a political issue? Perhaps it would—but perhaps it would be postponed until after Election Day.