“Samples” Made In Japan?

7-18-67 [handwritten date]

A court injunction has been issued restraining UniRoyal, Inc. from resuming production of footwear at its strike-bound Naugatuck plant, thus enforcing an agreement between the company and the United Rubber Workers union which was signed before the current strike began.

The court has found for the union in this instance, partially on the ground that failure to restrain the company from resuming production would mean the loss of all confidence in the union . . . “its effectiveness as a bargaining unit will be destroyed and its control over its members will be lost, as well as any hope of restraining its members from acts of violence.”

The company cannot, as a result of the decision, produce samples of its new line of footwear for distribution through salesmen to potential buyers—which raises an interesting question.

If salesman cannot deliver samples, they will have nothing to sell. With nothing to sell, they are not going to be taking any orders. Without any orders, there isn’t going to be much work for the members of the United Rubber Workers when and if they finally get back to their jobs. It strikes us that this, too, might have a detrimental effect on the future of the union. A bargaining unit can be destroyed in more ways than one.

Has anyone on either side of the UniRoyal impasse attempted to reach a compromise on this matter of sample shoes? If the union will not allow the company to use supervisory help to produce the samples, might it not be logical for the URW to suggest that on a seniority basis a certain number of production workers would be allowed back to work to produce the vital samples?

From the company point of view, wouldn’t it be better to produce the samples now under any agreeable arrangement than to have no samples at all?

It would be of mutual benefit to both company and union if some arrangement could be worked out on this matter, without in any way affecting other issues in the current impasse.

Of course, UniRoyal could always go out into the open market and pick up “samples” with that “Made in Japan” label on them. There’s no shortage of those around.

After all, it’s generally accepted that the Japanese are pretty clever at copying American-made products of all kinds. Why not reverse the process?