Summary

No significant change occurred in the general level of strike activity in 1948. As compared with the preceding year, the number of work stoppages (3,419) declined about 7 percent. Approximately 1,960,000 workers were involved in stoppages, with a recorded idleness of 34,100,000 man-days. These totals were slightly less than the corresponding totals for 1947.

As in other recent years, wages and related fringe benefits were a major controversial issue and accounted for more than half of the stoppages. Union representation rights, the union shop and hiring hall, and allied issues, some stemming directly or indirectly from application of various provisions of the Labor Management Relations Act, featured other controversies.

Average duration of stoppages declined to 21.8 calendar days in 1948, from 25.6 calendar days in 1947.

Trend Comparisons

Trend comparisons in strike statistics are difficult: no two periods are strictly comparable, because of the complex and changing factors that shape the course of labor-management relations. A host of economic forces-production trends, profits, prices, and worker purchasing power, to cite but a few-are at work upon an even more unpredictable human element. Strong convictions, bitter prejudices, and sudden bursts of temper occasionally outweigh economic realities. Also present are the influences of Federal and State governmental policies as interpreted by administrative agencies and by courts.

Comparison of trends following World War II with those after World War I showed generally

1 All known work stoppages arising out of labor-management disputes, involving six or more workers, and continuing as long as a full day or shift, are included in reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Figures on "workers involved" and "man-days idle" cover all workers made idle for as long as one shift in establishments directly involved in a stoppage. They do not measure the indirect or secondary effects on other establishments or industries whose employees are made idle as a result of material or service shortages.

1 The exact number of workers involved in some strikes which occurred during the period 1916 to 1926 is not known. The missing information is for the smaller disputes, however, and it is believed that the totals here given are approximate.

2 "Total employed workers" as used here refers to all workers except those in occupations and professions in which there is little if any union organization or in which strikes rarely, if ever, occur. In most industries it includes all wage and salary workers except those in executive, managerial, or high supervisory positions or those performing professional work the nature of which makes union organization or group action impracticable. It excludes all self-employed, domestic workers, agricultural wage workers on farms employing less than 6, all Federal and State government employees, and officials (both elected and appointed) in local governments.

3 Estimated working time was computed for purposes of this table by multiplying the average number of employed workers each year by the prevailing number of days worked per employee in that year.

• Not available.

ing World War I, the number of strikes in the third postwar year (1948) was about a third below the immediate postwar peak. The number of workers involved and the time lost, as in the former period, had declined still further.

Over the 18-month period-July 1947 to December 1948-during which the Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act had been in effect, strike activity averaged substantially less than in the period immediately following VJ-day. It averaged higher than in the more normal prewar period of 1935-39, however, in terms of number of strikes, number of workers involved, and time lost. (See chart 1.)

Review of the Year

Employment reached record levels in 1948. Workers' money wages were high, as were employers' profits. Under these circumstances some employers quickly reached agreement with their workers' representatives rather than risk interruptions of output during a seller's market. Others advocated a withholding of wage increases accompanied by modest price reductions as a means of checking inflation. Among the unions, long-term contractual commitments, no-strike clauses, and apprehension over incurring financial suits or strains on the union treasury served as strike deterrents.

No statistical process can fully and accurately interpret or record these involved motives-some simple in character, others intricate. The play of forces at times brought the parties together, and at other times put them at loggerheads. For example, the General Motors Corp. and the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Workers (CIO) on the brink of a strike reached a settlement; concurrently, the same union and the Chrysler Corp. failed to agree, causing the plants to be idle for over 2 weeks. A dispute over administration of a pension fund in the bituminous-coal industry caused a 40-day stoppage; 2 months later the commercial operators and the United Mine Workers (Ind.) reached an agreement on a new contract without any suspension of work. But the management of the so-called "captive" mines would not accept the same terms with regard to the union shop, and a strike ensued.

Injunctions and cooling-off periods, prescribed by the Labor Management Relations Act, failed to stem stoppages in maritime and longshore