ABSTRACT
When words failed to win agreements, Van Arsdale reluctantly but deci-sively used action as the practical solution. As Bertram Powers of the Typographical Union put it: "I think he had an aversion to strikes, didn't like strikes, and certainly could never be called strike-happy or quick on the trigger for strikes. But not that he was afraid of [using] strikes, he just, I guess, felt that a strike was a failure, something had failed at the collective bargaining process that you had to have a strike."J So, while harmony and progress walked hand in hand in the Joint Industry Board (JIB) in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were strikes in other divisions of Local 3.
