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Show by JameS Preston - Another stop-gap method of handling strikes from Washington is in t he making. It probably will come in the form of a Presidential order creating a new Defense Labor La-bor board. .Many Washington observers, Including In-cluding congressional students of the situation, are fearful that whatever happens in this direction will be only a treatment of the ailment ail-ment rather than the cure. These legislators point out that the public,, and apparently even the president, have been sold the belief be-lief that the defense strike situa- la means of stopping probable Congressional Con-gressional legislation. For any board that Is created by executive order can be disbanded the same way; any law that passed congress con-gress would have to be repealed by another law. The Iaborites don't want any laws. They are operating now un-ider un-ider a basic statute, the Wagner I Act, which says that only the em-' em-' ployer not the union can sin. They have more privileges than ever before, and less responsibilities. responsibili-ties. The Iaborites are pretty smart, too. The heat was taken off the National Labor Relation board because be-cause a reorganization was presented pre-sented as a "purge." The "purge" followed an investigation by a special house committee which disclosed many Questionable if not obviously wrong things about the board and some of its officials. But many of the "purgees" are landing in other government jobs. One has just been appointed as an assistant counsel to the top ' defense de-fense agency, the OPM. And while it has not yet been made public, the labor board has given pay raises to more than a dozen of its subordinate officials who were called before the con- and a depressing one: Sell the public on the idea that everything your particular circle does is all right, and don't worry too much about the national welfare. gressional committee last year to explain some of their arbitrary and irregular actions. It's a somewhat familiar story tion isn't bad because only l-400th of working time was lost last month in labor disputes. That, of course, doesn't present pre-sent a true picture. It is possible for a small rivet plant to be closed by a strike without making much difference in total working hours lost by labor disputes. One reason is that if an airplane factory has to slow production or close down because of the absence of rivets, that is charged officially to "material "ma-terial shortage" or something else besides a labor dispute. Actually, of course, airplane production is impeded by the strike. But official figures don't reflect that fact. What some officials point to as a much better illustration is figures fig-ures showing the number of labor disputes 'to which the U. S. Conciliation Con-ciliation Service is having to assign as-sign mediators. Last September, the Conciliation service assigned men to an average aver-age of 54 new labor disputes each week. In January, that average rose to 68 a week. And in February, Febru-ary, the average was 82 new labor disputes each week. All. of these, of course, did not result in strikes, because the Conciliation Con-ciliation service was unable to settle set-tle many disputes. But the figures fig-ures certainly show a threatening rise in the weekly totals. The first week in March, U. S. Conciliators were assigned to 83 disputes, one more than the February weekly average. Some of these disputes drag on for weeks. And nearly all have a vital effect upon defense production. pro-duction. What many legislators fear is that when the new Defense Labor board (or whatever it is called) is created, the public will sit back contentedly and say: "Well, that's that; no more strikes." It is known that many labor agitators agi-tators expect that to happen, too. They want the board created as |