Federal Intervention in Labor Disputes

Report Outline
The Outlook for Industrial Conflict
Strike Interventions Under Roosevelt
National Labor Boards Under the New Deal
Special Focus

The Outlook for Industrial Conflict

Labor unrest, stimulated by reports of rising business profits and made articulate in competitive organizing drives by the Committee for Industrial Organization and the American Federation of Labor, promises in the immediate future to result in a large increase in industrial disputes.

Labor controversies have been more widespread during the last three years than at any time since the war-armistice period and government intervention to head off strikes threatening interruption to the recovery program has been practiced on a scale unmatched since the war years. Through direct negotiation under the personal direction of the President, and by other means, the administration has succeeded to date in removing most of the threats of serious strikes, or in hastening adjustments where strikes have taken place. Developments of the coming months may call, however, for even more frequent, and more forceful, interference in labor disputes than has so far occurred under the Roosevelt administration.

Seasonal and Cyclical Trends in Labor Disputes

Labor disturbances in the United States have shown both a seasonal and cyclical pattern over a long period of years. Figures of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, indicate that the largest numbers of strikes are to be expected at the opening and the close of the summer season. Peaks in numbers of strikes, and in man-days lost in strikes, are likely to be reached in May and in August-September.