Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

all about it and told you, they don't think you really know. But if they tell you, they think you know. You do that first and then you hear what the other side has to say. This is a standard technique. Every mediator does this. It's the A B C. You listen to the employers and you listen to them equally sympathetically. They have their problems too.

Then you raise some of the questions that the men raised with you to see what they think about this and what they think about that. “What do you think about this problem?” and “What can you do about that problem?” You finally wring from them - at least I did and you usually do - a minimum number of things that they might do. They don't promise, but they could consider them. They would not raise wages as the result of a strike - certainly not. That would just encourage strikes. They wouldn't hear to raising wages. When you said, “No copper company in the United States pays as low wages,” they said that wasn't true. They set out to try and prove it. They proved that some of them paid very high wages for certain kinds of work, but not for the rank and file work.

You argue about those things and you find out in your own mind what the breaking spots are, on what spots they're soft - the places in the whole pattern of demands and request where the employers themselves think that something could be





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help