LABOR: Toothful Proposals

Of all the issues that burned through last November's election campaign, the need for strong labor legislation was one of the hottest. Both parties agreed that new safeguards for union members were needed; that fact had been proved during the long McClellan Committee hearings that uncovered widespread union racketeering. Still, when New York's Republican Senator Irving Ives, since retired, and Massachusetts' Democratic Senator John Kennedy submitted a new A.F.L.-C.I.O.-approved labor bill in the last session, it was beaten down, both by a majority of Republicans, who wanted a stronger law, and by some Democrats who thought that it was too strong. This week, Republican Labor Secretary James Mitchell got set to send to the Congress a bill with teeth far sharper than those of Kennedy-Ives. Key proposals: ¶ Protection against blackmail picketing, a favorite hoodlum device for forcing shop owners to recognize a union even though the employees have shown no interest in organizing.

¶ Greater powers for the Labor Department, which, under the present law, receives pension and welfare reports from unions but has no power to enforce accuracy and accountability. The Administration package would also permit individual union members to go to court to hold any leader personally responsible for misuse of union funds.

¶ Prohibition of secondary boycotts except in cases where struck work is normally farmed out to other shops. So far-reaching are the Administration proposals that Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater has agreed to introduce the bill in the Senate. As the Senate's sternest critic of labor, Barry Goldwater is hated by union leaders, who can be expected to put up a fierce enough fight against any labor legislation bearing his name to make the battle over 1947's Taft-Hartley Law seem like a quiet game of spin-the-bottle.