Trade Union Notes (21 December 1940) (original) (raw)

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Farrell Dobbs

(21 December 1940)

Source: Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 51, 21 December 1940, p. 2..
Transcription & Mark-up: Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

Strikes Are “Treason” – But Not Layoffs

About l,800 men have been laid off for over two months at the Boeing aircraft plant in Seattle and are not expected to be reernployed until after January 1st. The reason given is “lack of parts,” but the union (A.F.L.) claims that the company is subcontracting parts to other aircraft outfits because it can make more money that way. Hence there is a virtual stoppage of production in this Seattle plant.

When the Vultee workers went on strike, the bosses’ daily press, and the bosses’ stooges in Congress howled “Treason.” But nothing is said about the present situation al Boeing.

* * *

SWOC Dues Slump; Some Reasons Why

Plans are being made by the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, CIO, to present new demands to U.S. Steel. At a recent conference of the SWOC directors, the following general terms were mentioned: increased wages and abolition of wage. differentials, an improved seniority system and vacation plan, and an improved dues collection system.

The October dues report was the highest in the history of the SWOC. However, there was a noticeable slump in the November dues payments. One reason for that was Lewis’s pro-Willkie speech. But not the only reason.

Iron Age, official publication of the steel, bosses, reports “voluntary” wage increases among some of the smaller companies in the industry. “In other sections of the metal, working industry,” notes Iron Age, “wage controversies have come to the forefront, resulting in strikes in some instances.”

One such instance, which thePittsburgh Pressbemoaned as, “marring a three year record of contractual relations,” occurred last month in the Crucible Steel (Corporation at Midland, Pennsylvania. 4,500 workers walked out of the Crucible plant in protest against company stalling in the settlement of grievances, some of which dated back four months and more. The Workers complained of a speed-up system, “under which, a man hardly, had time for lunch.” Clinton S. Golden, Regional SWOC Director, urged that the “unauthorized” strike be called off. Under pressure from the SWOC officialdom, the workers voted, 52% to 48%, to go back to work without having their grievances settled.

About a week later, Golden spoke before a gathering of bosses at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The occasion was a dinner in connection with a conference on “management.” In his speech Golden said that “Labor leadership” today has changed its early concept of “fight the management.”

* * *

Boom for the Bosses But Not for Workers

The CIO Economic Outlook has issued a graphic chart of Prosperity and Unemployment based on statistics compiled, by the various governmental bureaus and by the CIO itself. It shows the Federal Reserve Board index of industrial production for October 1940 at an all-time high of 127. This is almost 18% above the 1929 level.

In contrast to this boom for the bosses, we find that while 92% of all workers were employed in 1929, only about 83% of all workers were employed in October 1940. This decline in employment becomes even more significant when it is realized that the total working population has been increasing at the rate of 500,000 to 600,000 a year.

This pronounced decrease in percentage, of all workers employed. reflects the effect which technological change has had on the workers, under capitalist “management” and capitalist “planning.” Fewer workers are producing more goods to further swell the super-profits of the bosses and, at the same time, plunge millions of workers into the dismal swamp of unemployment.

Stalinists Vote to Bar Reds as Union Members

The National Convention of the CIO adopted a resolution condemning communism. However, this resolution also contains the statement: “There is room for us all in this great movement,” thus indicating that no wholesale campaign of red-bailing was intended.

Acting on the report of its convention delegate, the CIO Industrial Council in Pittsburgh went a step further and passed a resolution banning from membership those whose ideas are “inimical to the American system.” Anthony A. Federoff, the Council delegate to the CIO convention, called upon the local central body delegates to “exercise their influence in their own unions to the end that these unions shall write into their constitutions regulations barring such persons from membership.”

Just as they voted to condemn communism at the CIO national convention, the Stalinists voted for the red-baiting resolution in the Pittsburgh Council.

Dangerous Increase in Length of Working Week

The Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a compilation of average weekly hours worked in some of the basic industries for October 1940. They are as follows: engines, 44.4,; automobiles, 41.3; shipping, 41.7; aluminum, 41.4; blast furnaces, steel works and rolling mills, 38.8; machine tools, 4.4.1; aircraft, 44.3; electrical machinery, 41.3.

With the present trend of weekly hours worked rising above the 40 hour level and with nine to 10 million workers still looking for jobs, the bosses are howling for a further lengthening of the work week. And they have the full backing of the admirals and the generals.

The bosses seek to avoid yielding up any part of their war profits to the workers through increased pay rates for more workers under a shorter work week. Therefore, they brazenly advocate longer hours of work at prevailing, or preferably lower, hourly rates of pay. They also want a permanent army of unemployed to provide a “favorable” labor market, i.e., to pit the workers against one another in the competition for jobs.

The slogans for a 30-hour week, at 40-hours pay in auto, and for a six-hour day at eight-hours pay in steel indicate the course which the trade union workers must take in their fight to raise their standards of living and combat the evils of unemployment.

* * *

AFL Top Leaders Crawl on Their Bellies

Emphasizing that the AFL convention at New Orleans pledged “full and sincere support of the defense program, even if such support entailed strict self-discipline and important sacrifices,” the AFL Weekly News Service makes a big point of the fact that “the two strikes affecting the defense program involved CIO unions and that there has not been a single strike by any American Federation of Labor union which has impeded the government’s preparedness efforts.”

“However, the CIO Vultee strike on the West Coast, which Attorney General Jackson attributed partly to Communist machinations, and other similar developments in the CIO camp,” the statement continues, “have given anti-labor groups an excuse to pounce on all of organized labor with unrestrained attacks.”

No clearer example is needed to illustrate the cowardly type of leadership the AFL workers will get from their top officials in the coming period of rabid anti-union activity on the part of the bosses and their government. Subordinate yourselves completely to the war program; don’t provoke the bosses or they might get tough – that is the advice which the AFL officialdom is giving to the rank and file.

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