In the first of these two cases the union threatened to call a strike against the company if it tried to install a job-evaluation plan ordered by a statutory board of arbitration. The Governor avoided this threat by continuing State operation. There were about 10 other stoppages in the period before the act was amended to include penalties, but the man-days lost, except for the telephone strike, were quite insignificant. With reference to the first 3 years of the operation of the New Jersey law, Miss MacDonald concluded that the consumers did actually benefit by continuous service, even where a short stoppage occurred. She observes, however, that the threat of a strike was necessary to bring the arbitration machinery into play and was by no means a clear indication that a strike would have resulted if the arbitration machinery had not been available.

The law has been invoked only seven times in Pennsylvania, in only three of which did the parties wait for an arbitration award before the dispute was terminated. The opinion is advanced by France and Lester on the basis of interviews and investigation that the act apparently prevented strikes which would have occurred other wise and that continuity of operations resulted in part, at least, from the establishment of these penalties.

In the other States, the material at hand is too sparse for any gen eralization to be made, except that stoppages have generally been avoided in industries where they are never very common.

Officially and on the record, the representatives of both labor and management still generally oppose the continuation of the compulsory arbitration laws under which they must function. In States where compulsory arbitration of utility disputes is in force, the representa tives of the parties tend each to believe that it operates to the advan tage of the other and militates against effective collective bargaining. While enthusiasm for compulsory arbitration of disputes in public utilities is thus restrained, a growing number of observers seem to think that one form or another of compulsory settlement-that is settlement without work stoppages-will have to be supported in situations where the national health and safety are directly jeopard ized by a work stoppage. This support is developing despite the known inadequacies of compulsory arbitration and its adverse effects on genuine bargaining by the parties. The maintenance of unhindered collective bargaining in the preponderant sector of the economy where there would be no interference with the freedom to strike lock-out gives some assurance that the results of free bargaining would continue greatly to influence, if not actually to determine, the arbitration awards. It has been observed that many settlements have finally bee made after prolonged strikes which were not markedly different from fact-finding proposals made before the stoppage occurred. Where other devices, like seizure and injunction, were used to gain continued production, these added nothing substantial to the final settlement and as a practical matter only put off the time of settlement.

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An imposed decision is of course not as acceptable as one which has been worked out by the parties as the best they could do under all the circumstances. While they may not really like all the terms of the agreement they finally sign, any more than they may like a decision of an arbitrator, they are conscious that in a voluntary agreement they have participated to the full extent of their power, and they know what the decision will be when they have agreed to it. They might be

I to able to obtain a quid pro quo for something surrendered in direct negoon tiation; but in arbitration they have no way of knowing whether the oiled decision will give them the results which they might have been able other to obtain. And if a Government board must decide all the disputes eralt which the parties do not resolve or settle, the feeling that they are iter being subject to arbitrary decisions will grow. This could eventually thegreatly weaken the forces of compromise and accommodation which is at the center of collective bargaining and make it necessary for the arbitrator to settle not just one or two points remaining in disagreement but all the multifarious provisions of a union contract. This is what is meant by the frequent assertions of representatives of both ri unions and managements that compulsory arbitration substitutes Government dictation for free collective bargaining.

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To remove some of the odium against compulsion, it has been suggested that the Government not set up a definite arbitration board or procedure, but that it simply make it mandatory for certain industries whose continuous operation is essential to the national health and safety to submit specific issues of their dispute to arbitration which at they have not settled by themselves. The alternative would be unspecified Government intervention for which the parties cannot prefr pare. Under such a program the parties would be encouraged to bargain out all their differences and to submit only definite and limited matters to an arbitrator of their own choosing and under their own instruction.

The greater use of voluntary arbitration to settle issues in emergency disputes would be a form of settlement within the broad confines of collective bargaining itself. It means that agreement is not far off, since there is agreement on what is to be considered in resolving the remaining issues and perhaps even on how they are to be considered. Everyone would agree that such submission to arbitrate would be preferable to a compulsory settlement of open-end disputes which is envisaged under compulsory arbitration statutes. But if voluntary arbitration is required by law, would it not take on the characteristics of compulsory arbitration after all?

Others have suggested that employees in the industries where the right to strike is restrained by the substitution of an arbitration decision be given a special status which would assure them of treatment at least as good as that obtained by the most effective collective bargaining. Under the compulsory arbitration laws in the few States which have them, boards are required to take into consideration the wages and working conditions prevailing in other industries and utilities for the different occupations. However, no State has made provision that any additional compensation shall be paid or higher standards be maintained for workers in those industries where the right to strike is restrained. All that such workers now have is the assurance that their demands will be heard and adjudged by a board of arbitration which takes historical relations and prevailing practices into account. They would not, however, be pioneers in obtaining better terms than have been obtained in industry generally. Under this proposal their conditions would be periodically reviewed with the intention of rewarding them above the standards maintained in industries where the right to strike is unrestrained.

A variant of compulsory arbitration has been suggested as a feasible method of continuing production and service in industries essential to

the health and safety of the Nation by Professor Slichter. As this proposal is based on a careful consideration of the methods previously employed and their shortcomings, it is presented for consideration as a modified form of compulsory arbitration.

Under the Slichter proposal the Government would have authority to declare an emergency and to require the parties to maintain the status quo for 30 days after negotiations have broken down, with the possibility of reasonable extension. During this period the parties should be required to show why they should not submit their dispute to arbitration. It is felt that the show-cause hearing on the refusal of arbitration would stimulate the parties to settle their differences by bargaining or by voluntary arbitration.

If a show-cause hearing on the reasons for refusal to arbitrate seemed inappropriate or if it failed to produce an agreement to arbitrate, an emergency board would be appointed by a nonpolitical officer of the Government from a panel of arbitrators selected in advance by representatives of labor and management.

If one party or both reject the recommendations of the emergency board, the President would be authorized to require the parties to try out the recommendations for a period of 6 months, unless they agree to different terms. This would be the basis on which production would continue. The employer would be required to maintain the wages and working conditions recommended by the emergency board and would be forbidden to enforce other wages and conditions by a lockout or to concede other wages and conditions in order to end a strike. Any employee not satisfied with these terms could quit his job, but interference with persons willing to work on these terms would be forbidden.

During the 6-month period of an enforced settlement, the parties would be expected to start new collective-bargaining proceedings to determine what wages and working conditions would be put into effect at the end of the 6-month period. If they are satisfied in practice with the enforced decision, they might choose to continue it, or they could work out something more acceptable. Professor Slichter does not appear to contemplate that there might be no agreement at the end of the 6 months of the arbitrated contract. If disagreement persists, de cisions of arbitrators continue to determine wages and conditions of employment for short periods during which the basis of disagreement is reviewed in the light of the developing situation.

LIMITATIONS ON THE SCALE OF BARGAINING

This section deals with the problems involved in attempting to avert national emergency strikes by the device of limiting the size of the bargaining contestants and the scale of their operations. It does not deal with the question of the economic power of labor organizations or with the economic aspects and effects of industry-wide or association bargaining.

It is argued that if it were made illegal to bargain in units which are so large as to include substantially the entire output of an industry, we would still have fair collective bargaining, but we would avoid any possibility of interruptions in production and service on a scale which would endanger the national health and safety. Stoppages endanger ing the Nation would be averted by assuring that at no time could pro

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chter, duction be stopped in which more than a small or limited proportion methods of the total output is produced. Then the remaining production in or cons the numerous plants not struck would be available to the public. Indeed the stepped-up production of the unstruck plants would serve as pressure on the management and employees of struck plants to come to terms. Anyway, it is argued, even if such plants were out of duction, the adverse effects would be limited to the participants and eriod perhaps some others indirectly affected; but this could never imperil mit the the national health or safety. The emergency is created by the nearly total stoppage of production of an entire industry which transforms eird a private dispute into a public peril. The way to avoid such emergency and to preserve the freedom of the parties to strike or lock-out is usal to to limit possible stoppages to a small segment of any industry-a single reen plant, company, or market area.

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An effort to limit the size of bargaining units was made in the Hartley bill in the House in the Eightieth Congress. The purpose of this provision, which was not carried either in the House or the the Senate, was to limit a bargaining agent typically to a single employer by forbidding the National Labor Relations Board to certify one union as the bargaining agent for the workers employed by two or more competing employers. Employees of competing employers would have been permitted to have had a common bargaining agent only if the bargaining agent represented less than 100 employees of each employer and the plants of the competing employers were less than 50 miles apart. The purpose of the exception was to permit multiemployer bargaining in areas and communities where small industries and services abound. For industry in general and for the great bulk of manufacturing establishments, mines, utilities, and services engaged in interstate commerce, a union of employees in a plant or company would have to be independent of control by the national union. Unions which represented employees of competing employers would not be prevented from affiliating with national organizations or federations; but, with respect to collective bargaining or concerted activities and strikes to enforce demands, each local would be required to stand on its own. The national union would be shorn of all power to control the bargaining of locals, to set standards, or to require approval for local union action. Central direction or approval of local union action could not be sought directly or indirectly. Except for the exceptions noted in firms employing fewer than 100 employees and located within a radius of 50 miles, the single employer unit or the single large company of whatever number of plants would have become the largest unit permitted for collective-bargaining purposes. Since not even two competing employers could be struck at the same time, as it would be an unfair practice for their respective local unions to so contrive, a stoppage in the production of any substantial part of an industry would be thus prevented, except, of course, to the extent that a particular company produced a substantial part of the output of an industry.

While nothing was said in the Wagner Act about any particular form or scale of bargaining, the Taft-Hartley Act makes it an unfair practice for unions to coerce employers in selecting their bargaining agents, thus seeming to support the choice of a single representative by competitive employers in an industry. There has been no governmental interference with the different bargaining forms which the

EMERGENCY DISPUTES SETTLEMENT

parties developed for themselves in their negotiations. The determined for themselves whether they would bargain on basis, or on an individual plant, company-wide, or multis basis. The freedom in selecting the form of collective barga made possible the development of the variety of bargaining pro and structures which exists today.

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As of 1950, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that workers covered by agreements, 67 percent were in singlebargaining units (28 percent in single-plant units and 30 per multiplant units); while 33 percent were in multiemployer percent in local multiemployer units, 6 percent in multiemp gional units, and 4 percent in Nation-wide multiemployers There were marked geographical differences in the prevalence ferent forms of bargaining and also differences depending on t of industry. Multiemployer bargaining predominated in T printing, and publishing, apparel, coal and other mining, tra tion of various kinds, service trades and miscellaneous nou turing. The Bureau's recurring studies show that the trend multiemployer bargaining units is increasing.

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But even the combined aggregate of multiplant and multie bargaining does not represent the full extent to which unio been able to obtain uniform terms for their membership in the categories of work regardless of where they are employed. Bag device of the wage-leader principle or pattern bargaining such industries as steel, automobiles, and meat packing, and use of a form contract in trucking and numerous smaller inde the principle of uniformity is promoted on a greatly extended It is inevitable that unions will make similar demands on the plants of a single company and on competing companies in an try. They have done so all the time, and as union agreements come to cover the greater portion of more and more industries, 20 The determination of wages and working conditions in this ard conditions of employment have come to prevail in each ind whether or not a formalized pattern of bargaining has been fol industry-wide bargaining, in which an entire industry and all workers in it participate in the negotiations through their resp

representatives.

Much of the criticism of multiemployer bargaining thus se be a criticism of the broad results of trade-unionism in establ standard conditions over industries in the same general p market. Before the passage of the Wagner Act and for a while th after, many employers argued that they were willing to deal with resentatives of their own workers but that they saw all sorts of chief in having to deal with outsiders not employed by them. 1 argued that such outsiders would be uninformed about the spe problems of the locality and plant where their particular workers w employed and that unions would sometimes be more interested in for effective collective bargaining not only because independen areas. Union spokesmen argued that "outside" unions were neces the employee representative from the employer was a sine q genuine bargaining, but also because "union conditions" could rem

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