NY-MTP-19510311 MEET THE PRESS Walter Reuther AS

NBC ID: AR4AUU0D50 | Production Unit: Meet the Press | Media Type: Aired Show | Media ID: NY-MTP-19510311 | Air Date(s): 03/11/1951 | Event Date(s): 03/11/1951

Transcript

Event Date(s): 03/11/1951 | Event Location(s): Washington, District of Columbia, United States | Description: NY-MTP-19510311 MEET THE PRESS Walter Reuther AS Date: March 11, 1951 GUEST: Walter Reuther TRANSCRIPT: MEET THE PRESS SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 1951 WNBT NEW YORK 4:00 PM THE ANNOUNCER: REVERE COPPER AND BRASS INCORPORATED, founded by Paul Revere in 1801, fabricators of copper, copper alloys, and aluminum alloys for home and industry, and makers of the famous REVEREWARE, presents MEET THE PRESS. Our guest of the afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, will be MR. WALTER REUTHER, President of the United Automobile Workers and a member of the United Labor Committee, who took a leading part in the dispute with CHARLES E. WILSON, Mobilization Chief, over the role of labor in the mobilization effort. But before we MEET THE PRESS, (COMMERCIAL) THE ANNOUNCER: And, now, ladies and gentlemen, MEET THE PRESS. Ready for todays unrehearsed, spontaneous press conference are four of Americas top reporters. Please remember that their questions do not necessarily reveal their point of view. It is their way of getting a story for you. And now meet Mr. Marshall McNeil of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers; Mrs. May Craig of the Portland, Maine, Press-Herald; Mr. Joseph Loftus of the New York Times; Mr. Lawrence Spivak of Mercury Publications, a regular member of the MEET THE PRESS panel. Finally, Miss Martha Rountree, moderator of MEET THE PRESS. ROUNTREE: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, members of the press panel, and Mr. Reuther. Who would like the first question? Mr. Spivak. SPIVAK: Mr. Reuther, do you think labor has been helped or hurt by your walkout? REUTHER: I think the important thing is not whether labor has been helped or hurt. I think the important thing is how can we get on with the mobilization of America. Thats the important question. SPIVAK: But the question I asked, Mr. Reuther, was do you think that labor has been helped or hurt by your walkout? REUTHER: Well, in judging from the mail that I have been getting from the field, from people in labor and outside of labor, I think that theres a great appreciation of the fact that labor is really not fighting its battle but the battle of all the American people. When we fight for effective price control, for rent control, for a fair tax program, were really not fighting labors battle; we are fighting the battle of all the people in America who want and need these things. SPIVAK: There are nine members of that Wage Stabilization Board, and six members voted the other way. Why do you think that if three of you voted one way that you are fighting for all the public? Dont they represent the public as well as you? REUTHER: I think the fact ought to be made clear that the wage policy that came out of the Wage Stabilization Board, which was voted by the industry and the public members, was not the product of give-and-take inside of the Board. There were some deals out in the back room, and we all know that in the morning of the day the Wage Stabilization Board order came out, they were talking about a nine percent formula, and in the evening they changed it to ten percent. Now, there were all kinds of deals and those deals were made in the back room in the absence of the labor members. We believe that if youre really going to talk about working out a sound a workable and just wage stabilization program, which labor is prepared to accept, then the first step must be to really get effective price control. To talk about wage stabilization with prices skyrocketing is like trying to put the cart before the horse. Youve got to do first things first. SPIVAK: Well, Mr. Reuther, may I then come back to this other question: do you think that labor has helped or hurt the mobilization effort by your walkout? REUTHER: I think that what labor did at this time in the long pull will help the mobilization effort because we can get our house in order and we can begin to mobilize and the productive power and the spiritual strength of America from the start. If we had waited and this thing had bogged down when we were in the middle of the program, it could have done irreparable damage. SPIVAK: Does that mean you are ready to go back? REUTHER: Were ready to go back if and when they work out the basic policy questions, which are involved. SPIVAK: Does that mean go back on your terms since you would write the basic policy on the basis of compromise? REUTHER: It means going back on the basis of terms and basic policy that meet the need of the American people and meet the needs of our Nation in this time of crisis. We take the position that whats good for America is also good for labor. CRAIG: Well, Mr. Reuther, if everybody walked out on the mobilization effort, we wouldnt get anything done, would we? REUTHER: Well, no one is suggesting that. For example, I was designated to service on a five-man policy committee in the National Production Authority. When I resigned ten days ago, I received a letter from Mr. Harrison, who is director of that agency, saying he hoped that I could be back with him very shortly when, as a matter of fact, I never was invited to one single meeting. Now, how can you walk out on something when you never even have been invited in? CRAIG: Well, sir, I thought that you all resigned from the committee that you were on, and what I am asking you in that everybody quit, we wouldnt get anything done. REUTHER: I quite agree, but the question is you see, I think we need unit in America. I think we need national unity more now than ever before because if we are going to mobilize the forces of freedom to fight against the forces of Communist tyranny, then weve got to have unity. But the question is how do you get unity? Do you get it by arbitrary dictation from the top? I believe you get it by trying to find the basis upon which free people can cooperate, upon which they can all participate, each contributing what they can to the total national strength of our Nation. We are prepared to participate on that basis. We dont want a monopoly, but we insist that no other group in America have a monopoly. We dont believe in supermen even though they may come from industry. CRAIG: But, Mr. Reuther, you still didnt answer me. Why, if you have a right to walk out, and none of the rest do if they all walked out, too, how would we get on with the effort? Why didnt you stay in and work inside? REUTHER: If I am to be clearly understood, with respect to the Production Authority we did not walk out. We were no set up comparable to the committee that functioned during the last war. I served during the last war on the National Manpower Commission on which there was management, labor, agriculture, and the public. Such a committee was set up this time. It was abolished so we didnt walk out of that. They pulled the rug out from under us, and thats true in one defense agency after another. We didnt walk out of these agencies. We didnt even get in the front door. LOFTUS: In these deals you speak of, Mr. Reuther, on the wage policy, who took part? REUTHER: I dont know, but the labor members of the Wage Stabilization Board when they reported to us told us there was a nine percent formula, which was embodied in the public members recommendation. That was juggled, and when they went back in the even it was ten percent. Now, we dont know who was meeting in what back room, but we know the deal was being made in some back room because the labor members were not in that room and were not participating in the formulation of the wage policy. LOFTUS: Well, if it went from nine percent to ten percent, doesnt that look like maybe labor was in on the deal? REUTHER: No, because I think what they were doing, they figured out nine percent because they thought nine percent would take care of the escalator clauses in the auto industry and electrical industry. When they found that wasnt so, they juggled it up to ten percent. When Eric Johnston found that ten percent wouldnt even take care of it, he had to relax. I say thats not the way you formulate a sound, workable, just, long-range labor policy. You got to sit down and really rationalize this thing through and begin to figure out what has to be done. And they didnt do that. They put the thing together with shoestrings and baling wire, and you cant make it work on that kind of basis. MC NEIL: Mr. Reuther, can you name the bird under your saddle? Is it Wilson or Truman? REUTHER: This is not a matter of personalities. This is a matter of basic and fundamental policy questions the question of price control, the question of rent control, the question of credit control. MC NEIL: Yes, but there is one man in a charge of all that. Thats Wilson. REUTHER: The point is that we feel Mr. Wilson has not met his responsibilities. We believe that he is being arbitrary. For example, on the question of price control Mr. Wilson cannot escape the responsibility he has in that field and yet to date, even though everyone in this country knows that price control is not working, that prices are sky-rocketing, to date Mr. Wilson has said not one word about the need of trying to get a stronger law. That price control law was so weak and so anemic that Mr. DiSalle the first thing he does every morning when he gets into his office is get the price control bill out and give it a blood transfusion to keep it going. Thats how weak it is. Yet, Mr. Wilson hasnt done one thing to fight to get a decent adequate law. MC NEIL: Why arent you taking your complaint directly to the White House? There is the man that hired Wilson. REUTHER: We have been in the White House. MC NEIL: Well, some think that what you done is to quit the Truman Administration. If organized labor separates from the Democrats, politically, where could it go, Mr. Reuther? REUTHER: Well, labor must make that decision before 1952. I dont think thats what we are talking about. I think what we are talking about is how we can really get our mobilization effort on the main track by doing what must be done to protect the people and by doing what must be done to mobilize our strength. It isnt a personal fight. I say that if Mr. Wilson quite tomorrow and they put somebody else in his place, someone who is friendly to labor, and they didnt change the basic policy, we would still make the same fight because its not a fight over people its a fight over principles. MC NEIL: You mentioned 52. I wanted to ask you about that. If you can say that organized labor moved as a body in such even-numbered years, would you think theyd be for Taft or Eisenhower or Truman or Chief Justice Vinson or who? REUTHER: Labor will make that decision when the time is appropriate. MC NEIL: What about yourself, sir? REUTHER: As far as labor is concerned, certainly the section of labor that I am affiliated with, we are not tailed to any political party. We dont belong to any group of politicians in Washington. We are independent, and we will make independent judgment when the time comes. MC NEIL: Mr. Reuther, another thing I wanted to ask you about that: some of these men from business who have gone into the mobilization program or many of them Wilson among them have quite their jobs with their companies. But I dont believe any people on labors side have quit their jobs with unions when they have come into these advisory or administrative jobs. Why is that, sir? REUTHER: Well, to begin with, labor is not getting comparable jobs; and, secondly, Mr. Clay hasnt resigned from Continental Can, and Mr. Weinberg hasnt resigned from his New York brokerage firm, and dozens of other business executives havent, plus the fact that they have very convenient arrangements for example, they can make arrangements for leaves of absence. They dont sell their stocks. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars in stocks in these companies, and they still maintain their interests there. That kind of an arrangement is not possible in labor, and thats the fundamental difference. MC NEIL: This has been called a strike by labor. Do you call it that? REUTHER: No, this is a lockout. How can you say that I am on strike when I was designated as a member of a five-man committee in the National Production Authority and I was on that committee for better than two and a half months and never got invited to one meeting? Now, how can you say I am on strike? They just locked the door. I never even got in. SPIVAK: Mr. Reuther, we are playing a game of semantics. You were just one, but there were thirteen of you. Were you all locked out or did the rest of you walk out? REUTHER: There was never a meeting called of the labor advisory committee to the National Production Authority. No one ever got called to a single meeting of that committee. How can you say we are on strike in that agency when we never even functioned to begin with? SPIVAK: I know, but Mr. Reuther, lets stick to one specific thing, the Wage Stabilization Board. Were you locked out of the Wage Stabilization Board or did you walk out? REUTHER: In the case of the Wage Stabilization Board you can say honestly that we walked out. That is not true of the other agencies. SPIVAK: You say you, yourself, were locked out? REUTHER: Thats correct. SPIVAK: But there were thirteen of you altogether. There were nine more outside of the three on the Wage Stabilization Board. Were they all locked out? REUTHER: To my knowledge, the only agency that began to function was the joint labor-management committee in the Department of Labor dealing with the manpower problem. They had held several meetings and that committee was practically abolished when Mr. Wilson took over the manpower functions. SPIVAK: Mr. Reuther, over and over again you and other labor leaders keep saying that you speak for the plain people of American. By what authority do you speak for the plain people of America? REUTHER: Well, we believe that when we fight for effective price control, to really have a law that begins to fill back the cost of living and then control it, we think were reflecting the desires and the needs of the great majority of the American people. We think when we fight for a tax law that begins to place the burden of the cost of defending freedom upon all people based upon their ability to pay, we think we are fighting the battle of the average American. SPIVAK: And you think that in a democracy at a time of war when some of our sons are in Korea that when you walk out the way you did, that you are speaking for the plain people of America whose sons are in Korea and who are being drafted? You think by that kind of arbitration labor does itself good and speaks for the plain people? REUTHER: I think when you fight for effective price control to keep the profiteers and the speculators and do you know how much profit was made in 1950? Forty-eight billion dollars. The General Motors Corporation SPIVAK: You keep getting away from the issue, Mr. Reuther. REUTHER: No, I am getting back to the issue. I say when you fight against profiteering and speculation, when you fight for effective price control, for a fair tax law, for rent control, for those kinds of things, you are fighting to strengthen America, not to weaken it. And you are fighting also What about the G.I. who leaves his children back here with a wife? Doesnt skyrocketing prices affect her? Doesnt the lack of rent control affect their welfare? So we are fighting for those things because it helps all America. SPIVAK: Did you admit a moment ago that when you walked out of the war mobilization effort you hurt the war mobilization effort? You know you did. REUTHER: Will you tell me how I hurt the war mobilization effort? In the production authority I couldnt even get into a meeting. The point is we just served notice that this thing is wrong and something ought to be done to correct it. Now, you see, fundamentally thats the difference between a free society and a society which is not free. In democracy when things are wrong, the people have a right to protest so it can be corrected. Under Joe Stalin you cant do that. SPIVAK: I know, but there is a way of protesting. Are you saying that if a majority of Congress votes one way, then the rest of those who dont get their way have a right to walk out in a democracy? Are you saying that, Mr. Reuther? REUTHER: This is not a matter of Congress. SPIVAK: There were six people in that Wage Stabilization Board who voted one way and three members of labor who vote the other way, and the three members of labor walked out. Never mind the rightness or wrongness of your issues. Why didnt you stay in and fight the battle out? REUTHER: Because I tried to say before that what was happening was they were not battling it out in the conference room with the Wage Stabilization Board? They were cutting deals in the back room. Why didnt the labor members know why, the reasons and all that; the logic and the economics behind the change from the 9 to the 10 percent? Why werent they there when that was changed? Why was it done behind their backs? That isnt the democratic process. Thats cutting deals, and you cant win this fight we are in by cutting deals. You can only win it if you sit down on the basis of fairness and equity and justice, work out how you mobilize a free people. You are fighting this for keeps. LOFTUS: Mr. Reuther, can you have effective price control without wage control? REUTHER: We believe that wage stabilization is necessary if we are going to get inflation under control. And we are in favor of wage stabilization. But we say that the firsts step has to be effective price control. LOFTUS: Would the labor members of the wage board have voted for any wage limitation, any formula? I mean a realistic formula? REUTHER: Well, no fixed formula, because we take the position that certainly until the cost of living has gotten under control, then there has to be cost of living adjustments because otherwise you are asking the workers to carry the burden of inflation. We also believe that the question of inequities has to be worked out. We believe the question of a dispute section of the board has to be worked out in those kinds of matters. We are in favor of wage stabilization because we know you have to stabilize every aspect of our economy. We dont want to stabilize the other fellow and not ourselves. But we insist that we are not going to be stabilized until everybody is stabilized, including prices. LOFTUS: Mr. Reuther, all these statements of the United Labor Policy Committee have changed the mobilization effort is dominated by businessmen. Didnt businessmen hold those jobs in World War II, all the key jobs? REUTHER: Well, there is a great difference between what is happening now and what happened the last time. To begin with, Mr. Knudson and Mr. Hillman were in there on an equal term before, and at least we got started on the best basis. Secondly, the War Labor Board was set up. It had a dispute board right from the start. Thats one of the big fights over there right now. The industry people wont agree to a dispute section, but that was in the War Labor Board. We had a manpower commission. One man didnt decide what was going to happen to manpower. No single man in America, I dont care how much wisdom he may think he possesses, can make these fundamental decisions. We had a joint committee labor, management, farmers; all were sitting there working them out. We had that the last time. We had a much fairer tax program the last time than we have now. I mean, right now a family of $5,000 a year is paying the same taxes that they paid the last time, but a family of $500,000 is currently paying $40,000 less in taxes. You dont mobilize people on that kind of an unfair, unjust basis. LOFTUS: Arent you asking that one man be in charge of manpower, your man, the Secretary of Labor? REUTHER: Oh, no. Oh, we are LOFTUS: Thats what Mr. Wilson REUTHER: Mr. Wilson is falsifying the facts when he says that. What we have said was that we would not go along with Mr. Wilson running the manpower show. We are in favor of a labor-management-farmer commission, in which everyone in our society is represented, because we believe all of those groups together polling their collective wisdom can do a much better job than one man.LOFTUS: Hasnt he put Doctor Fleming in charge of manpower? REUTHER: Manpower is under Mr. Wilson. Thats what is wrong. It ought to be under a commission. MC NEIL: You said that you favor wage control. Did I understand you to say that if there was adequate price control? REUTHER: I said that we were in favor of wage stabilization, but the first step had to be effective price control.MC NEIL: Yes, and then you said Mike DiSalle has to give this bill a shot of plasma every morning. The bill in your opinion isnt worth much. Now, do you think there is going to have to be a new price control bill before this thing will get going? REUTHER: I think that definitely we are going to have to have a new price control bill or this country is in very serious trouble. MC NEIL: Does that mean labor doesnt come back into this thing until Congress passes a new and what you regard as stronger price control bill? REUTHER: Not necessarily. I think it means that the Administration are the people in the key mobilization agencies. Are they going to make a fight for those things? Are they going to really fight to try to get the kind of effective price legislation we need? MC NEIL: Do you think that what you would call effective price control is not possible under existing law? REUTHER: Thats right. Its not impossible. Mr. DiSalle says that between now and July prices are going up 5 or 6 percent more. Now, what does that mean? For every 1 percent prices go up, the cost of living, it costs the American people two billion dollars. MC NEIL: You are smart about those things. What chance do you think there is for the passage of a new and stronger price control bill in this Congress at this time? REUTHER: I believe frankly that if Mr. Wilson and Mr. Johnston, President Truman, Mr. DiSalle, and the labor groups and all the people of America who really believe in effective price control get in there and pitch, we can get the kind of bill with teeth in it that we need out of Congress, because the politicians over on Capitol Hill will not defy the American people if they start marching. The trouble is, there is so much confusion in America that the people dont know really whats the trouble. SPIVAK: Dont you have to get on the ball ground to pitch? REUTHER: Well, the pint is I have just tried to say, I am interested in production. I am trying to pitch on the production ball ground for a long time. You tell me how you can pitch when they dont let you in the ballpark. CRAIG: Well, Mr. Reuther, you speak of talking for all the people and for price control, but it seems to me that the real reason for your walkout was it not, was because you couldnt get the wage levels that you wanted and the fringe benefits. Was that not so? Did you not say that? REUTHER: That is not true. I mean, we have made it very clear that the real guts of the wage problem is a lack of effective price control. Now, the workers I represent a million of them got a wage adjustment last week. It wasnt really a wage increase. It was a wage adjustment. They got another wooden nickel. It couldnt buy anything. But I could say, well we are taking care of it. Thats only part of the problem. I am interested in the tax question. I am interested in all these other things. CRAIG: Could I just get in there because there was a little sequence I wanted to ask you? Every time you raise union wages, do you not thereby raise prices? REUTHER: Well, the point is that wages are trailing behind prices. CRAIG: Yes, but would you mind, isnt that true? REUTHER: No, that isnt necessarily true. CRAIG: It may not be necessarily true but it happens, doesnt it? Isnt it the great factor in prices? REUTHER: But if you control the price of things and labor then doesnt have to face the ever-increasing cost of living, then you take the pressure off of the need for demanding increases. In our General Motors contract, for example, in the same basic contract that covers a million workers in a union that I represent, we have said and I say now we got five cents in September, cost of living adjustment. Didnt mean a thing. Wont buy a pennys worth of goods. We got three cents in September; we got five cents last week. I have said and I say now that every GM worker would be better off if the price could be rolled back and he would lose that thirteen cents. CRAIG: Yes, sir, I get a little bit confused of these details but I would like to have you tell me, is it not true every time union labor gets another big raise, that it raises prices? REUTHER: That is not true. CRAIG: Leaving the masses of workers without any wage raise and yet paying the prices? REUTHER: Well, I am for giving all workers a fair deal. I am not just fighting for the fellow that I represent because they pay dues to my union. We got, and I think this is a specific answer to your question; in General Motors 19 cents an hour increase in June and General Motors did not raise prices. We got another nickel in September and General Motors did not raise prices. Now, if what you say is true, that every time a wage increase is granted prices have to go up, then why didnt General Motors increase their prices? CRAIG: Is it not true that usually when there is a big raise for union labor that you do get price rises? REUTHER: Well, thats only because sometimes the companies are so hungry for bigger earnings. CRAIG: Isnt it true, isnt it so? REUTHER: It happens but it need not happen; it need not happen; because industry out of its fabulous profits can absorb these wage increases in many cases. And I think if you will look back to 1946 we fought a strike with the General Motors Corporation around that very principle. We said we wanted a wage increase without a price increase, and we said if the facts prove that General Motors Corporation cannot pay our increase without a price increase, we will withdraw our wage demands. CRAIG: Can I get in one last question because this is what Ive been trying to lead up to: That your real row with the mobilizer, Mr. Wilson, in that he is the boy thats going -- ROUNTREE: I am sorry, Mrs. Craig, I am going to break in and make everyone very unhappy because there wont be time for Mr. Reuther to answer that. Our time is up. Thank you Mr. Reuther for being with us. This concludes our latest edition of Meet the Press. And now a word about next weeks guest. THE ANNOUNCER: Next week, REVERE COPPER AND BRASS INCORPORATED will again present Americas press conference of the air, Meet the Press. Be sure to join us then when our guest will be Sean McGrabe, Foreign Minister of Ireland.

RESTRICTED ASSET
This video is part of our Analogue Archive, which means it isn’t stored on our website. Accessing the content may take some time and may be subject to additional fees. Approvals and clearances are based on the intended use.
Please contact us to tell us about your project or to request a preview.

DETAILS

Restrictions:
NO ADVERTISING OR CORPORATE USE WITHOUT PRIOR APPROVAL. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL GETTY IMAGES REPRESENTATIVE. May not be used as a complete program or used sequentially with other NBC News Archives clips. Additional NBC News Archives restrictions apply – see Section 3(g) of applicable Getty Images license agreement.
Credit:
NBC News Archives
Editorial #:
1273106206
Collection:
NBC News Archives Offline
Transmission date:
11 March, 1951
Upload date:
Licence type:
Rights-ready
Release info:
Not released. More information
Location:
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Source:
NBC News Archives Offline
Object name:
AR4AUU0D50