Plant Elections

"General Motors," which means something as near as the newest car on the streets, as far away as a corporation, is the biggest maker of automobiles in the world. It is also a part of U.S. life.

General Motors Corp. is, among other men and things: 386,000 stockholders, who drew $159,497,902 in 1939 dividends (from $1,376,828,337 in net sales); lively, wiry Board Chairman Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., whose 750,000 shares paid him $2,875,000 (in 1937); four Du Ponts--Henry B., Henry F., Lammot, Pierre--who dominate the board; 220,434 workers in no plants, 14 States (Michigan, California, Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Washington), who earned $386,292,203 last year; grey-red, hulky President Signius Wilhelm Poul Knudsen, who has earned $307,200 in a single year (1937); husky, handsome Max Raynes, 27, a Detroit buckaroo who spends his dough (wages last week: $40.79) on clothes and girls, gives his old father $5 a week; Floyd Forbus, 36, of Flint, who made $1,800 last year, $38 last week, to take care of a wife, two children, and his prize-winning dahlia garden.

Last week vast, various General Motors had an election. In 59 of its plants, in eleven States, 128,957 workers voted on whether or not they should have a union (and which union) to bargain for them with their bosses. Six years ago, before the Wagner Act and NLRB, such an election would not have been possible in the U. S. Three years ago, before sitdowns and the slow, arduous lesson in industrial relations which followed, such an election could not have been held in General Motors. Last week, on corporation property, corporation time and with the corporation blessing, 68% of the employes in 48 plants chose the C. I. O. autoworkers' union, 21% preferred a rump A. F. of L. auto union; 11% voted to have no union; 8,494 did not care enough to vote. C. I. O. and G. M. officials, about to sign a new contract, expected to agree as peacefully as G. M. workers had voted.

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