National Labor Board - The Reading Formula and Representational Elections

The Reading Formula and Representational Elections

The NLB's opportunity came when the Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers Union launched an organizing drive in the summer of 1933 in the silk stocking mills around Reading, Pennsylvania. The employers refused to recognize the union, and 10,000 workers went on strike. On August 10, 1933, the NLB mediated a settlement.

Known as the "Reading Formula," the settlement consisted of four parts: (1) That the union call off the strike; (2) That all employees be rehired immediately, without retaliation; (3) That the NLB hold elections in which the workers would vote by secret ballot for their own representatives, and that both parties would negotiate a collective bargaining agreement covering wages, hours and working conditions; and (4) That in the event of any disagreement on any matter, the parties would submit the dispute to the NLB for binding arbitration.

The Reading Formula proved useful in settling large numbers of labor disputes, including strikes in silk mills in Paterson, New Jersey; silk mills in Allentown, Pennsylvania; tool and die factories in Detroit, Michigan; and coal mines in Illinois. In most cases, the union won the election.

But within months, a large number of employers refused to cooperate with the NLB. The NLB relied on enforcement of its orders through the NRA (which only had the power to remove so-called Blue Eagle industrial code approval from a manufacturer) or prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice. These weak enforcement powers encouraged employer resistance. In July 1933, the Weirton Steel Company held a private election rather than submit to one ran and monitored by the NLB. The Budd Manufacturing Company established a company union, then refused to bargain with the AFL affiliate in the plant.