James O. Morris

How to Cope with COPE: The Political Operations of Organized Labor.

emergencies? Is it possible to legislate such strikes out of existence? This brings us to the point at which the Task Force came in. The Report lists practical considerations which make it difficult o enact general legislation curtailing strikes against the public interest. The Task Force recommends the creation of a Public Interest Disputes Commission, which would develop special procedures for resolving disputes in industries prone to conflicts affecting the public interest and for handling actual disputes. Among the procedures the Commission might consider are conciliation and mediation, nonbinding arbitration, voluntary binding arbitration, involvement itself in the bargaining process, special industrial inquiries, postponement of work stoppages, and special bargaining or consultation. It could also, on governmental request, recommend procedures for ending strikes which may break out such as seizure of the firm, trusteeship, compulsory arbitration, or anything else. The government could then act in the political arena. The Task Force feels that the decision about how and when to end a strike should be sanctioned by an Act of Parliament and not merely be made by the Cabinet. Thus, in effect what the Woods Report is saying about this most urgent problem is that the final decision to end a public-interest strike should rest with the elected representatives of the people. This recommendation has the great advantage of providing flexibility for government action while keeping the parties of interest sufficiently uncertain (and, hopefully, worried) about what may happen to them to encourage them to arrive at a voluntary settlement. The Report itself, containing an analysis of the current Canadian industrialrelations scene as well as recommendations, will make an invaluable textbook and addition to the literature in this field. Backed up by the accompanying research reports, the Woods diagnoses and prescriptions will receive respectful attention. The public airing given the Report so far attests to this. It is currently being studied by Canadas Department of Labour staff prior to legislative recommendations. Note has been taken of comments from supporters and critics. If the Minister of Labour rejects the Woods Report recommendations, he will be under fire to produce workable substitutes. There seems to be no lessening in public-interest disputes on the horizon for 1970 in Canada.

The AFL in the 1920's: A Strategy of Defense

It is well known that the total membership of American Federation of Labor unions plummeted from 4,093,000 members in 1920 to but 2,745,300 members in 1930. Nor is there any dearth of analyses of this membership catastrophe. Independent researchers have probed the economic, social, and political milieu of the time and have listed several obstacles to a growing, virile unionism in the 1920s. Among the obstacles listed are: (1) the substantial increase in real wages which workingmen enjoyed; (2) unprecedented employer hostility to unionism (in such forms as resort to strikebreaking, use of yellow-dog contracts, formation of company unions, and the development of schemes of welfare capitalism); (3) adverse court decisions, injunctions, and few laws favorable to labor; (4) the antiradical hysteria which swept the United States after World War I; (5) technological changes and shifts in industrial location; (6) and the policies and leadership of the AFL itself. There has not, however, been any over-all description and evaluation of the variety of policies and alignments devised by the AFL national office and individual labor leaders in a fruitless effort to create an atmosphere more friendly to unionism and membership expansion. It is hoped that this article at least partially satisfies this need. (Authors abstract courtesy EBSCO.)