LABOR: Reason for Delay

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One day last week an unheralded delegation of visitors slipped in the back door of the White House to talk to Dwight Eisenhower. In the group were New Jersey's H. Alexander Smith, chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, Pennsylvania's Samuel K. McConnell Jr., chairman of the House Labor Committee, Ohio's ailing Robert A. Taft and Secretary of Labor Martin Durkin. On their minds: amendments to the Taft-Hartley law.

The White House conference was the quiet beginning of a new phase in the effort to get some action on the labor law. President Eisenhower told his visitors that he wanted a good law, accept able to both management and labor. That was a mighty big order. For weeks Presidential Counsel Bernard Shanley and Labor Department men have been struggling with technical language, trying to find words to express the Administration's position so neatly that Congress will pass a package White House bill. Unless the Administration's proposed bill is carefully drawn, Congress may start pulling it apart with wholesale changes proposed by left and right.

This attempt to work out a bill that will please or almost please everyone is the chief reason for delay in charting the Administration line on Taft-Hartley changes. The clear prospect this week: there will be no congressional action on the labor law until next year.