The Right To Strike

C.I.O. HEAD INSISTS ON RIGHT TO STRIKE

Labor Should Not Be Asked to Give Up Method of Fighting Wrongs, Murray Says

PLEDGES PEACEFUL MOVES

Award of Defense Contracts to Alleged Wagner Act Violators Is Criticized Anew

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - Philip Murray, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, declared today that labor should not be asked to lay aside the right to strike during the defense emergency for redress of wrongs perpetrated by employers, but he gave a pledge that his organization would do everything possible to adjust disputes by peaceful means.

In the last few days, the metal trades and building trades unions of the American Federation of Labor have announced a o-strike policy on defense projects, stating that they would abide by arbitration in those cases wherein direct negotiation and mediation by government agencies failed.

Mr. Murray's statement today came at a press conference after a meeting of the general executive board of the C.I.O.  He had reiterated his organization's grievances against the award by the government of defense contracts to violators of labor laws.

A reporter inquired whether the C.I.O. would be willing to forego the right to strike during the present period if the newly created central defense organization should side with the labor view and adopt a policy to withhold defense contracts from concerns violating the Wagner act and other labor statutes.

In declining to agree on a ban against strikes at this time, Mr. Murray said that the C.I.O., "operating intelligently and constructively, by the use of reason, logic, and sound judgment." would do everything possible to end disputes before strikes were called.

"We are not prepared and we are not going to yield the right of the workers of the nation to strike to remedy a definite act of injustice," he added.

The C.I.O. president, who is also chairman of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, reiterated previous assertions that the Bethlehem Steel Corporation had received contracts which it could not fill for three years, and that contracts were still being awarded to the Ford Motor Company.  Both organizations, he said, had been held to be Wagner Act violators.  The Steel Workers' plan for maximum utilization of the steel industry by farming out contracts to companies lacking them, he said, would be given to President Roosevelt and the defense authorities in ten days.

Mr. Murray declined to express a definite opinion on the four-man defense set-up in which W. S. Knudsen and Sidney Hillman have coordinate powers with Secretaries Knox and Stimson.

The New York Times

January 9, 1941