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Show Battles Expected on Labor Legislation There was nothing unexpected in the President's message mes-sage to Congress on labor legislation. All the requests and recommendations had txen generally anticipated. Even so, the projected program is expected to provoke one of the really big legislative battles of this session. The primary reason for this is the proposal to repeal sestion 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which permits the states to adopt Right-to-Work laws if they so desire. Section Sec-tion 14(b) is very brief, but it has been the center of acrid controversy ever since it went into effect. It reads: "Nothing "Noth-ing in that Act (Taft-Hartley) shall be construed as authorizing auth-orizing the execution or application of agreements requiring requir-ing membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such execution exe-cution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial Law." In other words, in the states making use of 14(b), any worker is free to join or not to join a union, as he pleases. If he decides not to, he can't be discharged for that reason. At the moment, 19 states have adopted the law, and there are active and growing movements favoring it in a number of other states. It has long been a prime target of organized labor. Sentiment is sharply divided in Congress, and cuts squarely across party lines. So, as of this writing, no one can say for sure whether or not this particular presidential pres-idential proposal will be accepted. In other fields, the message asked that the federal minimum wage, now $1.25 an hour be extended to cover some 4.5 million more workers, mainly in service industries, indus-tries, who are now exempt. But the President did not ask for an increase in the minimum at this time. In his words, "The question is not whether the minimum wage should be increased but when and how much. The Congress should consider carefully the effects of higher minimum wage rates on the incomes of those employed, and also on costs and prices and on job opportunities particularly for the flood of teen-agers now entering our labor force." This would indicate that he is concerned as to whether the higher minimum would have an adverse effect on the inexperienced and unskilled. The whole program will be extensively debated. But 14(b) will provide the big fireworks. |
