Word: wsb
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...Policy, which kept an eye on Mobilizer Charles Wilson and was privy to his plans and secrets. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. United Labor Policy Committee walked out on the first Wage Stabilization Board, and stayed out until the board was revamped to make it semi-independent of Wilson. The new WSB had a "balanced" membership of six industry members, six labor members, and six "public" members-the last mostly professional labor arbiters and professors who were acceptable to labor...
...Harry Truman telephoned Phil Murray in Pittsburgh just before Christmas, and asked Murray to hold off. Submit the dispute to the Wage Stabilization Board, said the President, or the Government will step in with a Taft-Hartley injunction against you. After pondering briefly, Murray accepted the WSB, which was, after all, like falling back to a prepared position...
Because Murray had voluntarily postponed the strike, Truman felt himself bound not to invoke the Taft-Hartley law. The argument gained some logic when Murray postponed the strike 80 days while waiting for the WSB decision-an interval which balanced Taft-Hartley's 80-day cooling-off period. (Legally, the argument had no validity at all, as the Supreme Court later pointed out.) But the logic was soon swallowed up in the strange and wonderful performance of the WSB...
...three months, the WSB heard witnesses and deliberated. At the outset, Chairman Nathan Feinsinger, a law professor, was instructed that the board was not to consider the ability of industry to pay wage increases. Once, when Economic Stabilizer Roger Putnam telephoned Feinsinger to find out how things were going, Feinsinger abruptly told Putnam that his question was improper (although Putnam was supposed to be working on the same case). During one last grueling session of the board, Feinsinger fainted dead away. The steelworkers themselves almost fainted with joy when they saw the results. The WSB, over the objections...
...came to do this is a fascinating example of labor's new political skill. This is what happened. During the sessions, both Feinsinger and the "public" members of WSB shied away from the union shop issue. But Feinsinger was under strong pressure to get a majority report and wind up the hearing. The labor members of the WSB knew this and, under the coaching of C.I.O. Counsel Arthur Goldberg, they withheld their support (siding with industry) until Feinsinger put his blessing on the union shop. When Feinsinger was asked at a press conference why the WSB stretched its authority...