LABOR: Double Assault

Labor, facing the Taft-Hartley Act, reacted swiftly. John Lewis' coal miners struck back with a sweeping wildcat strike through the nation's coal fields. In his cocked fist Lewis held the threat of a full-scale strike. The rest of the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. mobilized in an effort to destroy the new law, by constitutional and more peaceful means, in the courts.

The miners had acted within an hour after the Senate voted the bill into law over the President's veto. At the grimy tipples from Pennsylvania to Alabama, they threw down their tools and stalked off the job, cursing the Congress. They had a slogan: "If they want coal, let the Senators go out and dig it."

Within four days, 250,000 had left the pits. This week the whole 400,000 of them were out on a ten-day vacation authorized by last year's Krug-Lewis agreement.

Rumbled Threat. Would they be back at the end of the vacation, on July 8? At week's end, Lewis met with U.S. Steel's Ben Fairless and Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal's George Humphrey. Reportedly Fairless and Humphrey had offered wage increases up to $13.05 for an eight-hour day. It worked out to around a 35¢-an-hour wage boost, more than twice the 1947 pattern. But there was no assurance that Lewis would accept.

He was in a position to defy Congress and make his assault on the new law by crippling the nation's economy. But the Taft-Hartley law apparently could not touch him. With the end of the Smith-Connally Act and the return of the mines to private owners, the miners argue, they would have neither contract nor employer. Until Lewis signed a new contract, the miners would simply be men who had just decided not to work for a while.

Lewis rumbled his threat: "There is not any reason why American working men should permit vigilantes [i.e., the Congress] to trample down their liberties and the American way of life. . . . It is going to require a lot of courage and a lot of action to forestall the enslavement of the N.A.M.-Taft-Hartley bill. Those whose wishbone is where their spinal column ought to be will fall by the wayside."

First Shot. The C.I.O. and A.F.L., working separately but on parallel tracks, opened their legal campaign. There was ample precedent for such tactics. All important laws get their court tests, and labor laws get the most stringent tests of all. In 1936, management blasted away at the Wagner Act with 83 test suits in the first ten months of the law.

The first legal shot was fired. To test the section prohibiting political action in union papers which are supported by members' dues, labor's press published the congressional voting record on the bill. The C.I.O. hoped it would be prosecuted. In Washington, A.F.L. and C.I.O officials met to map further strategy. Phil Murray sat down with the lawyers of his C.I.O. unions. The A.F.L.'s General Counsel Joe Padway and some 100 A.F.L lawyers went over the law's text word by word.