Memorandum on Stabilization Agreements

1. On the operation of stabilization plans, see especially Clarence M. Mitchell Jr.’s memorandum of 4/13/43, and other texts of 4/5, 5/4/43, 4/28, and 9/25/44. Because such plans initially failed to include nondiscrimination provisions, agreements with discriminatory and segregated unions holding closed shop contracts raised substantial barriers for black workers in the defense industry.

Until the creation of the FEPC, the federal government did little to end the AFL’s policy of racial discrimination. Those problems worsened late in 1941 when the OPM entered into a stabilization agreement with the AFL’s Building and Construction Trades Department that covered eight hundred thousand workers. Intended to prevent labor disputes and obtain union cooperation, it set wage and hour standards and sought to prevent work stoppages and to stabilize labor relations in other ways to accelerate the construction of defense plants. The problem was that in return the OPM gave the AFL a virtual monopoly over the construction industry. Subsequently, similar regional agreements were made with the Metal Trades Councils of the AFL, which covered shipyards and aircraft plants. Robert C. Weaver explained, “Where in such instances, there was a conflict between the operation of these agreements and the announced policy of non-discrimination, OPM supported the stabilization pacts.” See the headnote on the FEPC and Unions; Weaver, Negro Labor: A National Problem 35–37, 133–34; Andrew E. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-46 33.