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Show Peace and Banishment of Strikes , Record of Toledo Industrial Board : , K L v Scenes of ttnke violence like that thown above are things of the past in loledo, () since the Toledo Industrial leace Board began to function fire years ago in Ming "horse-sense" to ad-lust ad-lust difficulties between labor and employers. em-ployers. Thousands of dollars have been saved to leorhers, employers and the city as a result. Edward A. Mo ill' lTmT assistant secretary -f labor, who helped Toledo business men and labor representatives form the board in 193S. March, 1935; and Toledo Edison company, June, 1935) had left the city exhausted, emotionally and industrially. in-dustrially. Solid Support. Toledo's three newspapers gave solid support to the plan. Cautiously, Cautious-ly, each side watching the other from the sides of their eyes, the first meeting was held. McGrady GCALLAWAY "ft McGRADY, t secretary of 'on his way to To-. To-. The time was ;re was a strike in there. McGrady it seemed ,e was always a progress in Toledo; i he was spending er part of his career L back and forth "that city and Wash-To Wash-To a sreat many 3 Toledo the same ere beginning to be cjrial wangling had be-' be-' labor and industry had -ost literal armed camps t of the city was on the i from Boston to San Di-en Di-en had been left dead In rects, hundreds had been ilhtin'g and hatreds were sed that forecast trouble io come. ae, after the Immediate t band had been settled, ijy wired his Washington ;e wouldn't be home right hi itaying over in To-, To-, boot of getting to the t recurrent trouble and necessity of his constant lo Toledo. McGrady had in mind neemed to be nobody's concern if the city's in-. in-. Jowed smoothly or was with disruption. During ieo i potential industrial forming, and might most jjusted, no one did any-it any-it The situation was al-1 al-1 Even when some of id bitter strikes were in iere was no agency at : the city's life back to ird Is Impressive. ridy sought to change all well he succeeded is ae figures released for day. In the last five :7 of Toledo has assist-165 assist-165 potential strikes, 1224 employees were included in-cluded in this were 52 tiich a strike definitely led. jd the city government settling, peacefully and slikes in which the com-small com-small number of 5,617 em-fired. em-fired. Some of these ere called without the of the city administra- in spite of efforts to t idtj assisted in settling t In which 100 men were ud It looked in on 42 otb-I otb-I representing 2,874 em-It em-It lor various reasons was i contribute toward a set-firtually set-firtually all of the latter, wntually were settled by directly involved, without Intervention, d total: n handled; 41,478 em-dived. em-dived. loae. ages and potential ers, stockholders: Mil- Cost to the city, $8,450. "If Toledo can do that, why can't any other city?" is a question sometimes some-times asked and also, "Has Toledo To-ledo discovered any secret technique In averting industrial disputes?" Model for Others. The answers, respectively, are that any other community can do likewise, and that Toledo has not discovered any method of "passing miracles" but rather has applied old-fashioned, garden-variety horse-sense horse-sense to differences between men and management. Briefly Mr. McGrady set up on that final visit to Toledo, back in 1935, what is known as the Toledo industrial indus-trial peace board. It includes five men from the ranks of management, five from labor, and one full-time director. These 10 since have added eight others to their ranks, attorneys, attor-neys, judges and clergymen to represent rep-resent the public. The board is an integral part of the city government, but it has no authority to "crack down" on anyone. any-one. It issues no "publicity releases." re-leases." It cannot vote on who is right or who is wrong. It does not even express such opinions publicly. Mr. McGrady set up the first board himself. He went to the Chamber of Commerce and he thumped the table. There was a great deal of reluctance. There was a lot of honest hon-est skepticism. But he got a promise prom-ise of co-operation. Then he went before the Toledo Central Labor union. Strangely enough he met the same reaction. "You need not fear such a board," said Mr. McGrady. "It will not interfere inter-fere in any way with your right to strike. Co-operation by labor and management with such a board will be entirely voluntary. What have you to lose by trying?" The answer was that no one had anything to lose by trying. The two critical disputes involving thousands and thousands of men (Chevrolet Toledo division. General Motors, presided ana did most of the speaking. speak-ing. He promised to assign to the board as its full-time director Leo S. Harding, a federal mediator. The functions of the board were outlined and it was decided to go ahead, although every one of the men at that first meeting since has confessed that he agreed with a great deal of suspicion. But during the following six months the board assisted in settling set-tling seven disputes without loss of a single day of work. Five 'strikes that already were showing signs of being long drawn out struggles were settled. There was no street fighting. No one was hurt The vast Toledo industrial in-dustrial area was working full blast. Payrolls and production were on schedule. Workers had money to spend. Merchants were pleased. The people of Toledo also began to sit up and realize that something some-thing new had arrived on the scene. Much to the surprise even of the board members, they too were finding find-ing their suspicions of each other allayed; confidence and reason were taking. the place of animosity. If a labor situation became menacing, men-acing, the director of the Toledo Industrial Peace board offered his services to both sides. He sought a fair compromise and offered it for consideration. But he never ordered any side to do anything. If the situation reached such a spot where the director felt he was not making progress, the entire board was called into session. The ' board offered its services, at times it even offered suggestions. While it never voted on whether a question was right or wrong, the important element was that within the city, at least there was an agency charged with the task of keeping industry running and dissipating disputes De-fore De-fore they reached the troublesome stage. Public Prestige. In March, 1936, Harding was recalled re-called to Washington, but the Toledo city council decided the board was desirable, and decided to continue it as a regular part of municipal government with a paid director. On the recommendation of McGrady, Mc-Grady, board members engaged a newspaper man, Edmund Ruffin, as director. Ruffin had covered all of the previous strikes. After being director for more than . four years, Ruffin says he has no cut and dried procedure in approaching ap-proaching or working out disputes. "I know many industrialists and labor officials, and I try to keep informed in-formed as to what is going on in the way of organization programs, negotiating of new and succeeding agreements," Ruffin explained. "If I hear of a deadlock, I may offer my services to both parties, or one or the other may call me. "After I get into a dispute, I listen lis-ten to an outline of viewpoint by each group, usually in a joint meeting. meet-ing. After that I throw in general cneeestions as may come to mind. or may offer some specific procedure proce-dure to which all may agree. Various offices in Toledo have received re-ceived hundreds of inquiries as to how the Toledo board was established, estab-lished, how it operates and what it has accomplished. These offices include the Toledo Chamber of Commerce, which has given quiet support to the board; tho headquarters of the various labor organizations, hich, from the start have indicated their endorsement by co-operating; and also a group known as Toledo Associates, an organization or-ganization of men whose chief purpose pur-pose is to publicize Toledo's true industrial in-dustrial picture. |