LABOR: Around the Table

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One place where industry and unions will have a good chance to start working out their own problems (see BUSINESS) is the Government-sponsored but by no means Government-controlled Management-Labor Conference in Washington next week.

Sitting in on the discussions will be nine industrialists chosen by the National Association of Manufacturers, nine chosen by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, eight delegates from A.F. of L., eight from C.I.O., one each from the United Mine Workers and Railroad Brotherhoods. Their chairman, chosen by mutual consent, will be North Carolina's Judge Walter Parker Stacy, a sober and fair-minded arbiter of many a past labor dispute.

No one expects the conference, which will bring together doughty fighters from both sides, to wash down all management-labor problems in a glowing exchange of toasts between John L. Lewis and N.A.M. President Ira Mosher. The agenda committee, aware of the gulf which must be bridged, hopes to confine discussions to such procedural questions as collective bargaining and jurisdictional disputes, to avoid such knotty snarls as the wage-price puzzle.

Yet the conference may well get a few misunderstandings straightened out, may also point the way to solving more difficult ones. It will be a test of good faith on both sides of the table.