National Reports

...He preferred young Franklin Roosevelt, who, as it turned out, went down to ignominious defeat when nominated for state Attorney General...

...Quill might be much more intelligent and sensitive, and yet his almost irresponsible power would still be a peril to justice...

...A system-wide strike would have cost infinitely more...

...The size of the vote was telling evidence of the extent to which Quill's prestige had slipped...

...In a previous bargaining election, he got some 25,000 transit workers to turn out...

...The terms followed the usual pattern, providing for an "across-the-board" increase of 15 cents an hour in the first year...

...It has burned its fingers with wire-tapping and will have to stand the consequences...

...World-Telegram and Sun, with no person mentioned by name...

...Quill is not the sort who can compose differences on a basis of good will...

...The strike of the motormen on the eve of contract negotiations showed an even more serious fault in the geologic formation Quill had cast over his union...

...But Governor, Mayor, press and citizens should realize that we are facing in embryo one of the major problems of justice in a technical society...

...The latter felt themselves progressively worsted by across-the-board increases in which their skill (and, incidentally, the short tenure of their high wages, by reason of health requirements which few men can meet after their mid-50s) was not adequately rewarded...

...Mayor Robert F. Wagner was right in calling attention to the report of his special commission, which had recommended a single bargaining unit for the subways...

...All are represented and their interests are accommodated in contract negotiations without violence to the industrial character of the Amalgamated union...

...It was the problem of the relation of the big industrial union, with its unskilled labor, engulfing a craft union with its skilled labor...

...The Transit Authority, under its chairman, Charles L. Patterson, did a superb job of railroading under trying circumstances, but played up to Quill in labor relations—to the extent of spying on dissident groups which oppose Quill...

...But the Mayor and the city's newspapers (with the exception of the Post) were certainly unwise to cover up the real problem of justice which emerged in the motormen's strike...

...Allies in the state CIO tried to dismiss antagonism to Quill as an outcropping of differences between craft and industrial unionism...

...Happy times may be ahead, but Mike Quill is not likely to enjoy them...

...The officers and executive board of the New York Newspaper Guild immediately demanded a retraction and apology...

...He knows that, to the extent that he had to grant concessions to motor-men, signalmen and other such groups, his own power within the TWU would be diminished...

...The merger of the local CIO and AFL councils is on foot, and he will have to be written off as an in-law in the prospective marriage...

...Let it be admitted that big business is much more adept at this discriminate justice than are the unions, with their equalitarian ideology and their political interest in big bargaining units...

...It is certainly wrong to turn this responsibility over to any agency which does not also have the responsibility of balancing the Transit Authority's budget...

...For instance, bus drivers have thrown him out when he showed up at their terminals to harangue them into submission...

...Chief Counsel Robert F. Kennedy responded that there was nothing he could see to investigate...

...Tension mounted, but insiders knew that neither Quill nor the city could afford a strike...

...The Guild pointed out that Raskin "has long been regarded as an honest, fair and objective reporter for his paper," a commendation that was endorsed by everyone acquainted with this altogether superior newspaperman and human being...

...If liberal-minded statesmen do not come to terms with this issue, the community will not only be tempted to follow the reactionaries who would try to lame union power, but it will sooner or later be subjected to other strikes by desperate craftsmen...

...In addition to the question of justice, it is precisely these skilled craftsmen, whose services are so essential to a public utility, who are bound to make the dependence of the community upon their skills obvious in some dramatic and catastrophic way, particularly if the community and the politicians deliver their fate to the whims of a single man of power such as Mike Quill...

...In the judgment of those acquainted with New York labor, Quill will not get away with this obscenity...

...For we are living in an age in which both big business and big labor have become satrapies with quasi-sovereign authority, almost as far-reaching as the authority of the old feudal lords...

...This foray into character assassination left the entire labor community aghast...

...Discriminate Justice in Technical Society By Reinhold Niebuhr While right minded liberals had not yet adjusted themselves to the horrendous fact that the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa might defy both the united labor movement and the Federal Government, New Yorkers became conscious of another problem of justice in the labor field through the Christmas strike of the subway motormen and the subsequent new contract granted to Mike Quill and the Transport Workers Union under the threat of another strike...

...They intend to pass a bill in the Republican-controlled State Legislature to take labor relations away from the Transit Authority...

...That is whether it is possible, under the pressure of bigness, to grant discriminate justice to men of special skill and men who work under special hazards...

...The imminent expiration of the old contract supplied him with the opportunity...

...The new contract, a very good one, cut Quill's demands in half, and then cut it some more by stretching the raises over two years...

...The internal cleavage had resulted in several eruptions before...

...Yet it is a curious sort of "splinter" that manages to keep two-thirds of the potential membership from expressing a preference for the TWU after a hectic campaign to bring them to the polls...

...The very strike proved that it would not be tolerable for the subways to be at the mercy of a half dozen unions...

...But even the UAW faced an incipient rebellion of the skilled workers two years ago and adjusted its procedures to give the craftsmen a sense of greater justice...

...He needed something dramatic to replenish his stock in trade as defender of the downtrodden...

...Quill's union secured these favorable terms despite the fact that many of the union members were disaffected by his leadership and, under the motormen's prompting, boycotted the bargaining election...

...If that happens, it will be up to Governor Aver-ell Harriman to sign or veto...

...and the N.Y...

...The fact is that we have reached a state of development in technical society in which the old liberalism, concerned with individual rights vis-a-vis the Government, is almost as irrelevant as the old conservatism which thought that the "free market" guaranteed both rights and justice...

...With an exceptionally good contract from the employers in his hand, he started to toot his horn with abandon, sideswiping those members of his union and of the community who harbor the delusion that they are entitled to rights he does not wish to respect...

...Hardly had the negotiations finished when Quill accused A. H. Raskin, labor specialist of the New York Times, of accepting "checks under the table," supposedly in payment for his part in what Quill insisted was a general newspaper conspiracy against the TWU...

...They left the motormen as unsatisfied as they were when they desperately challenged the Quill leadership by a jurisdictional strike which inconvenienced millions...

...He will try to tyrannize dissidents into submission, as before...

...The contract he gained from the Transit Authority, which operates New York's municipally-owned subways and many of its bus lines, came in the nick of time...

...It was much wiser to settle, and the Transit Authority did so...

...Mike Quill, essentially a demagogue, was not interested in these niceties of justice so long as he could muster a majority of the unskilled workers against the dissident minority of the skilled workers...

...Quill tried to bull his way out by demanding an investigation of his charges by the McClellan Committee...

...Even in their present amorphous state, he has had trouble with them...

...The Automobile Workers had faced this same problem and had solved it tolerably well, by allowing the skilled workers special representation in the bargaining committees of the union...

...In addition, some 3 cents an hour are provided for the skilled crafts, and another cents are provided for extra sick leave and added vacation expense...

...It is bound to burst forth again unless Quill, the Transit Authority, or an agency superseding both relieves the pressure...

...The Transit Authority countered with 18 cents an hour and Quill rejected it...

...The settlement was staged with the necessary theatrical effects, a citizens' committee of eminent labor leaders and businessmen serving as the chorus...

...The meager turnout in a bargaining election in which the size of the vote stood as a test of his authority was therefore a setback to Quill...

...The immediate increase is 15 cents an hour...

...Elections in other unions have brought 85 per cent of the membership and more to the polls...

...But, since that third was a majority of those who did vote, Quill became the bargaining agent of all the subway workers and could threaten the city with another catastrophic shutdown unless his terms were met...

...the men's clothing cutters have their own local, as do jacket makers, pants makers and other crafts...

...this time a mere 10,000 of the more than 30,000 subway workers cast ballots...

...Our business is to protect both the individual and the general community against the irresponsible use of this power...

...He presented demands which would have amounted to an increase of 65 cents an hour, $26 a week, for each and every subway worker, and he threatened a strike unless he obtained it...

...The motormen's strike, only partially effective, had cost the city some $2 million...

...And the municipal administration of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, never enamored of Quill, will be able to discount him as a political liability...

...As for the craft aspects of the conflict, many unions accommodate craft interests without violence to the harmony and industrial unity of the whole...

...For Quill is a challenge to a post-individualistic technical community to balance power and make it responsible in the quasi-sovereign satrapies of modern life so that the community will be protected and discriminate, rather than indiscriminate, justice to individuals can be secured...

...Viewed in this light, Quill is a symbol for a problem which is more basic than the problem for which Hoffa is the symbol...

...The Republicans, to all intents and purposes an outcast group among New York City's labor, have been quick to take advantage of public resentment against Quill's brash tactics...

...Quill had suffered severe blows to his self-esteem —first, when the motormen walked out in a protest strike against his domination, and second, when only a third of the potential membership of his union turned up to vote for the TWU as their bargaining agency...

...Others in this imaginary conspiracy were alleged to be the New York Post, with its publisher, Dorothy Schiff, and its editor, James Wechsler...

...The motormen's strike was settled partly by the hope that Republican legislators would pass a bill which would give a state agency, rather than the local Transit Authority, the bargaining rights...

...The motormen and others will try to make him a political liability in New York City, and, unless the labor movement acts quickly to disown him, he will become an embarrassment to labor at large...

...It was thus at a low ebb in his fortunes that Quill approached the negotiations for a new contract...

...The CIO Amalgamated Clothing Workers has always done so...

...Another increase of 10 cents will go into effect in 1959...

...Only a third of the subway workers voted for the Quill union...

...The contract accorded to the Quill union was so favorable that the 15-cent subway fare is guaranteed for only one more year because the money is not in sight for the payment of the labor bill in the contract's second year...

...Quill's real objection to the craft groupings within his union is that they might serve as foci of opposition to his own dictatorship...

...Quill charged the disaffections in his union to the operations of "splinter groups...

...There will be mordant humor in this turn of events, because Quill opposed Harriman's nomination for Governor on the Democratic ticket in 1954...

...Quill will then have to appeal to Governor Harriman for succor...

...If the bill is passed, it will probably be vetoed by Governor Harriman for obvious reasons...

...The total package is 32% cents over the two years...

...NATIONAL REPORTS Mike Quill: The Beginning of the End By J. C. Rich Editor, the "Hatworker" Michael Quill, swashbuckling head of the Transport Workers Union with jurisdiction over New York City's bus and subway workers, got a retread job on his union machine and is now once again all set to ride high, mighty and reckless...

...Raskin, forced to abide by the decision of the Times not to engage in a brawl with someone it considered a mucker, held off a libel suit but asked the McClellan Committee to oblige him with an investigation...

...Similar harmonizations of varying internal groupings are made by other industrial unions, the ILGWU and UAW among them...

...Jurisdictional strikes, particularly on public utilities, are intolerable and the motormen were unwise to engage in one...

...The settlement may supply the Transit Authority with stability on the wage front, but it will do nothing to still the turbulence in the Transport Workers Union...