The second world war hung over the Boilermaker delegation during the 17th Consolidated Convention, held in Kansas City Jan. 31 to Feb. 12, 1944. Sometime before the Convention, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed Congressional legislation to institute a wartime “Labor Draft Law.” He likened the bill to a military draft. The bill would affect workers’ ability to decide what jobs to do and how much they’d be paid, usurping worker autonomy and union power.
Roosevelt wanted to place all male workers over the age of 17 under the control of the government’s United States Employment Service. Under his plan, workers would be compelled to take jobs in industries and areas designated by the USES. Those who refused would be “deprived of unemployment compensation benefits” and wouldn’t be able to get a job without a certificate from the USES. Workers who wanted to improve their conditions with a new job would face multiple restrictions. One part of the bill threatened jail time to workers who refused USES assignments.
The bill’s language prevented workers from improving their wages and working conditions during a wartime period when labor was in high demand. During WWII, millions of workers were needed in factories, shipbuilding and the military, creating labor shortages, which forced employers to pay higher wages to hire and retain talent. The bill before Congress would end that.
Delegates at the 17th Consolidated Convention weren’t having it. They saw this proposal for what it was, a blatant attempt to enrich corporations at the expense of workers. The policy Roosevelt wanted to put in place would impose wage controls and freeze workers’ salaries, even if profits rose. Delegates put their displeasure into a resolution and then put it to a vote.
The long, passionate resolution addressing the Labor Draft bill articulated several points, including:
“Whereas, the proposal to draft labor for private profit in private industry is not only repugnant to our ideals of Americanism, but there’s no relation to the principle of drafting men to fight in the armed services and defense of our country, which is without profit to private individuals and is traditional throughout history.
Whereas, we the delegates representing approximately 500,000 working men employed in shipyards, railroad jobs, manufacturing plants and field construction, all of whom are very vital and very necessary to the war effort, have established a record of production and faithfulness to the nation unsurpassed in world history, and
Whereas, this Brotherhood has not sanctioned a single strike since Dec. 7, 1941, and in a few scattered instances where our members reported to work stoppages, as we have in every case, properly and vigorously urged their immediate return to work.”
The membership unanimously voted in favor of the following resolution:
“Resolved that we unequivocably declare that the workers of this nation, from our personal knowledge of the fact, are ready and willing to make any sacrifice which may be necessary to ensure the winning of this war, and to quote from that sacred document—we quote, ‘Our lives, our property and our sacred honor, but we insist upon and demand the right to do these things as a free man and as equals, not as slaves or discredited and unclean persons,’ and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be sent to the President of the United States to all members of both houses of Congress into the labor press into the public press into every local union of this International Brotherhood.”
Because of the strong outpouring of contempt for the bill, from not only the labor movement but from the general population, it failed in Congress. But that didn’t stop Roosevelt. In July 1944, over a year before WWII ended, he used an executive order to achieve the labor controls Congress would not enact.
Even though the resolution didn’t change the outcome, it did show that nearly a century ago, the Boilermakers’ focus was on the welfare of the membership, the unorganized workforce and on securing fair wages for skilled labor, just as it is today.
