Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Right to Disagree. Labor's monumental decorum was marred only momentarily, when two dozen student pickets infiltrated the meeting to protest against the war in Viet Nam, while Dean Rusk was defending U.S. policy before the convention. George Meany, like any true hero of the barricades, stumped over to the podium and growled: "Will the sergeant at arms remove those kookies from the gallery...
Emil Mazey, liberal secretary-treasurer of the Auto Workers, later chided Meany "for a vulgar display of intolerance" in ejecting the Vietniks. "The most precious freedom that we have is the freedom of dissent," said Mazey. "The labor movement has been the victim of people trying to silence our right of expression, and we have to take the lead and demonstrate and fight for the right of people to disagree, whether it is on Viet Nam or any other subject matter." Meany, whose life in the labor movement has left him with little patience for philosophers, retorted that the demonstrators...
...when labor and management tend to reason rather than wrangle, the United Auto Workers' Local 833 and Wisconsin's Kohler Co. remained locked in a mastodontic duel for more years than most Americans care to remember. The longest major labor dispute in U.S. history, the Kohler strike began in April 1954, when workers at the plumbing-fixtures plant stormed out in a disagreement with the family-owned firm over a series of union demands for higher wages and fringe benefits. After a two-month closure, the factory resumed production with nonunion labor, touching off six years of intermittent...
...National Labor Relations Board ruled that Kohler had refused to bargain in good faith after the strike began, ordered it to reinstate 1,700 workers who were still out. Even so, it was two more years before management and labor could agree on a contract. Since then they have been acrimoniously deadlocked over the question of company compensation for the strikers, who had drawn some $12 million from the U.A.W. in strike benefits...
...company will also fork over $1.5 million in pension-fund contributions. The settlement, tied to a new one-year contract, was sealed by U.A.W. Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey and Kohler Vice President Lyman C. Conger with a handshake. Despite the most extensive boycott campaign ever mounted by organized labor, the effect of the long dispute on the company was hardly shattering; Kohler today is still a leader in the industry, ranks third nationwide in annual sales...