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

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

strike. If you don't want to work, you don't have to work. Even the most archaic and backward and reactionary employers will admit the right of a man not to work if he doesn't want to. No one can make him. That's, of course, the principal tool that the unions have used in the past, although I hope that it's modifying, and that by agreement between employers and workers, without the Government's participation, there will be a more healthy and practical way of settling the disputes.”

Then we discussed to some extent the role of the Government in intervening between employers and workers, and when it should and when it shouldn't. That's all quite theoretical, but we discussed it. He stayed a long, long time. We spent most of the afternoon, and he was as easy and amiable as he could possibly be. He was explaining to me how it was so difficult, you see, and why it was so difficult for the Russians to take part in the I.L.O. and to support the I.L.O. He said, “It is my impression that Russian will offer no objections to the I.L.O. being established, but it will be out of the question for Russia to be a member of the I.L.O. and to take part in it because of this difficulty of labor and employer representation. The employer representation is the same thing exactly, you see. The Government is the whole thing.”

He asked me if the I.L.O. would seat an employer delegation appointed by the Government from the Government's





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