1940: Strikes

The year 1940 was marked by less serious labor disturbances than any twelve-month period in recent times.

The complete record for 1940 is not available. The figures for the first 10 months show that, although the number of strikes was larger than in 1933 and 1934 and, for the full year will probably exceed 1935, their effect on industry was relatively slight because the number of strikers was small and the duration of strikes much briefer than usual. There were no large prolonged stoppages, involving the whole or large parts of an industry, like the automobile and steel strikes of 1936-37, or the coal strike of 1939. Such strikes as did break out were promptly settled before they could be converted into stubborn tugs of war.

The machinery organized by the Defense Advisory Commission had much to do with preserving industrial peace. Soon after his appointment, Sidney Hillman, labor member of the Commission, addressed himself to the problem of preventing and settling strikes in defense industries. The first agency he created, a committee of A. F. of L. and C.I.O. union leaders, he apparently devised for the purpose of placing the responsibility for maintaining peace on the unions themselves. He added to his staff individuals whose function it became to adjust impending trouble before it broke out. At the same time, the United States Conciliation Service, under improved management, sent its representatives to all important centers of disturbance. In the vital shipbuilding industry, Mr. Hillman set up a joint industry, labor, and public commission to handle labor matters, as well as problems of production. And by the end of the year, he had decided to establish throughout the country regional branches of his office to deal with labor troubles on the spot. For the greater part of 1940, these plans and machinery worked and strikes proved to be no serious impediment to defense production.

A more subtle factor no doubt also contributed to this condition. This was the failure of the defense program to show its effects on employment and business until well along in the year. In fact during the last quarter of 1940, when the rate of industrial expansion was rapidly increasing, strikes likewise increased and threw more people out of work. The drive of the C.I.O. for higher wages and union recognition precipitated a strike of considerable proportions in the shops of the Vultee Airplane Company in southern California and threatened additional trouble in that industry. Another strike in one of the plants of the Aluminum Company of America, also concerned with the question of union control, threatened to stop the flow of a vital defense product. But both strikes were quickly settled. Nevertheless, the beginning of extensive and vigorous organizing campaigns by both the C.I.O. and the A. F. of L. made the outlook for peace in the next years less certain.

The fear that strikes and lockouts might increase and cripple defense production produced an extensive public reaction against any stoppages. There was much talk of compulsory arbitration or of some measure which would require a waiting period of at least a month before a strike was called. But these proposals failed to go beyond the stage of discussion and the year ended without action.