Labor Unions and the Government
By L. A. S.
The question whether the laws of labor unions shall be held superior to the laws of Congress has come up for settlement at the seat of the national government. Recently a foreman in the government printing office was dismissed by Public Printer Palmer because he was not a member in good standing of the book binders’ union. He took his case to President Roosevelt, and the president has reinstated him. The labor unions have for some years been accustomed to control the employment of labor in the government printing office, and it had come to be taken for granted that a word from them was sufficient to insure the discharge from the government employ of any person not to their liking. President Roosevelt, however, evidently conceives that the civil service is regulated by a higher law than the dictum of labor unions, and has given expression to this fact by setting the labor union mandate aside. “President Roosevelt’s attitude, that the laws of the United States are superior to the laws of labor unions,” says a Washington dispatch, “has somewhat surprised many members of the unions.” The country has become accustomed to contests between union labor and individual capitalists or private corporations, but a struggle between union labor and the government is a new thing in the United States. Yet such a contest is bound to come, for the unions will encroach more and more on the prerogatives of the government until the point is reached where the question of supremacy between them must be settled. Few strikes have occurred as yet in the government printing office, but it is stated on authority that “it has required all the ingenuity and diplomacy of the public printer to prevent them.” A strike of serious magnitude is contemplated now, and will probably occur unless President Roosevelt consents to the redischarge of the foreman in question;6for the labor unions have not by any means accepted the president’s action as a ready settlement of the matter. They are determined that the affair shall be settled according to their wishes. The serious nature of a great strike when it occurs in a department of the government will be readily perceived. The plants of private corporations may be shut down indefinitely without serious inconvenience to the public; even a serious curtailment of the output from the coal mines can be endured. But not so with the government. Its departments must go on, or general derangement of business, and anarchy, will quickly follow. What would happen if, for example, a strike should for a long time suspend operations in the bureau of engraving and printing, where the money of the government and the postage stamps are issued? Yet it is in the power of the unions to shut down this department of the government. With reference to the present situation a member of the president’s cabinet is quoted as saying: “Owing to the attitude of labor, it was deemed best that the president should make it plain that the national laws must govern. . . . Lately there has been a disposition on their part to interfere with the affairs of certain departments, and if this tendency is not checked, the government probably would be handicapped.” And a very serious handicap it would be, he might truthfully have added. When labor unions can dictate the employment of labor in the departments of the government, they will have gone a long way toward running those departments, and thus of running the government. A moment’s thought will show that this must be so. We shall then have in the place of a popular government, a government by labor unions. At the least calculation these unions will exert an influence upon the government tremendously out of proportion to what the system of popular government entitles them; for they will interfere directly with the working of its departments, in addition to what each member of the unions can do by his vote, and what the unions can do by their influence in politics. Such an undue influence will be against free government, and subversive of it. The government will not, of course, feel that it can tolerate a suspension of business in any of its departments through a strike of its employees, and it will adopt stringent measures to terminate such a strike when one occurs. Either the demands of the strikers will be quickly acceded to, or their places will be filled and work resumed at any cost. It is not anticipated, of course, that there will be serious trouble; it is not anticipated that the labor unions will be likely to ask better terms of the government than the liberal ones its employees already obtain. But it is human nature to ask more and more, and never to feel that the compensation received is quite enough; and we may expect that this quality will be made as evident in the future as it has been in the past. Experience shows that the more power an organization has to enforce its demands, the greater its demands will be. The Washington telegram referred to states that “the union will present a strong appeal to the president to rescind his order and dismiss Miller [the obnoxious foreman]. The understanding is that if the president does not pursue the course which the union feels he will, it will then be for the bookbinders to decide whether they will go on strike or not.” Just now, “the advisability and practicability of a strike at the government printing office is seriously questioned, in view of its far-reaching effects.” This is one of the things which is today causing “distress of nations, with perplexity.” L. A. S.