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Show News1 By PaulMallonJ Keleused by Western Newspaper Union. THREATENED VETO POWER ON LABOR LEGISLATION WASHINGTON, D. C.-WNU.-Confidential canvassers have found congress in almost total disagreement disagree-ment as to what will be done about strikes and the unions. Twenty of the men, best placed tn know pave 20 differing private predictions. Many said from the first that the steel strike would be settled, then autos, then the big others; whereupon interest inter-est would die, while congress argued without a decision until after their election next No- vember. Pres. Truman Others did not believe be-lieve congress could longer duck the problem and expected various union-curbing enactments. But Mr. i Truman had told his leaders pri- I vately he would veto anything which j might be called an anti-union law. , Surely nothing opposed by the j unions could get two-thirds ma- jority necessary to pass over such a veto. The confused and confusing predictions, in the last analysis, therefore, appeared to add up to just about the same total nothing, or little-or-noth-ing. A nice neat hole in the wall is quite evidently being dug, through which all may escape. A commentator commenta-tor or two started it with toothpicks, but behind them some congressmen are ready with drills. FACT-FINDING WITHOUT POWER OR TEETH This is a proposal to cut the Tru-! Tru-! man fact-finding bill down to factfinding fact-finding alone. It would be stripped of its power of subpoena, to which General Motors objects, and the cooling-off period of 30 days before strikes, to which the union objects. ! Just pass a law letting the President , appoint commissions to find facts. The only trouble about this es-caop es-caop Is too manv DeoDle can see the hole. It might be better to go brazenly brazen-ly out the window, or keep arguing interminably In hopes everyone will forget about the whole matter. Such legislation legisla-tion simply proposes pro-poses what already has been done. Hillman Without legislation Mr. Truman has established precisely that kind of fact-finding. General Motors walked out on It The question raised by such a permanent fact-finding law is: Would anyone ever show up for the hearings? To handle tht problem hat way would be like waving back a windstorm with a feather. If congressional leaders try to push their boys through this hole there will of course be trouble. The labor committees of both houses are closely controlled by the unions. Nothing can escape them which is opposed by the unions, or nothing ever has. On the open senate and house floors, however, their bill would be open to amendment by the attachment of every possible solution every congressman has proposed. The problem of Mr. Truman's leaders will then be to prevent any important action, and they are likely to wind up with conflicting bills from the two houses. Certainly anyone looking for solutions solu-tions from congress must wear long range glasses, and anyone looking toward consideration of the funda- mentals of the problem will have to look hard. The plain fundamentals are these: ; ENTIRE NATION CAN j BE STRIKE BOUND The unions have developed their 1 strike technique to the point where they can tie up the nation any j night. A simultaneous strike in telephones, tele-phones, telegraph and radio alone would nearly do it. Add electrical power - house workers, and you can see what four unions could do to the country. coun-try. Add not the big railroads but the teamsters who merely handle all freight in the cities, the elevator operators and bus drivers, and you have the ohliter-ative ohliter-ative possibilities of a general strike from only a few unions. I have mentioned only a tew of the strikes which have already been called. In this campaign the unions, by rather clever timing of local strikes to keep pressure on the White House (first buses, then telephones with-I with-I out real issue in either), and by preliminary and bolstering strikes in other cities, have used their new power to get an i nprecedented wage increase which will average above 18 per cent, a figure representing repre-senting just about what they expect-ed expect-ed to get from their demand fot 30 per cent. |