S OME 14 and one-third

million workers are to-
day working under collec-
tive bargaining contracts.
according to the latest—sur-
vey of the United States
Bureau of Labor Statistics. If
we add the federal, municipal,
and other’ unionized workers
not under contracts, and deduct
those not in legitimate unions,
we get a figure not very far be-
low this one as the actual un-
ion membership in the country.
This compares to a union
membership of a little over
four million in 1920, the short-
lived high point in the period
after World War I.
How will this army stand up
when the storm of layoffs hits

“ war industries? How is it pre-

pared to meet the open shop
and wage-cut drive that reac-
tion hopes to unleash before
long?

For a long time students of
labor and trends among the
workers drew answers to such
questions from the John R.
Commons school of American
labo: history. This view holds
that in periods of unemploy-
ment, interest shifts from un-
ions ard economic questions -to
politics. With rise of employ-
ment the barometer is supposed
to show a shift to economics.

@:

HIS measure of labor trends

has been knocked around a
great deal in recent years. The
‘prosperity beom” of the twen-
ties saw organized  labor’s
strength drop to a disastrous
low in membership—and politi-
cally. The 1926-37 period, with

some 10 miljion jobless, saw
America’s greatest union or-

ganizing and political upsurge,
while 1944, with full employ-
ment, saw the highest point in
both union strength and poli-
tical activity.

The common view that has so
Jong been accepted among writ-
ers of laber history, is drawn
mainly out of the period when
organized labor was. small,
legisiative protection was prac-
tically non existent and when
anti-labor hostility was gener-
al. “Spontaneity”. was then
more characteristic of the
moeds ayracng workers than or-
ganized guidance and a tradi-
tional policy.

The labor movement of to-
day, with the most decisive part
of the working class in its
ranks, is an active, organized
force that is able to determine
events. With all its faults and
wealmesses, it is the best drill-
ed part of our people and is no
longer a tudderless ship.

Responsible labor leaders,
therefore, cannot view the fu-
ture with the eyes of a weather
man. They should realize that
they commard forees that are
capable cf overcoming and con-
quering great obstacles and
bringing about great changes.

It is not a secret that some
old line narrow-visioned labor
leaders, take as imevitable a
great drop in union member-
ship and mass unemployment.
Some of them, hard-bitten anti-
CIO elements, even look long-
ing:y to such days.

Back in the days when or-
ganized lahor was a third of its
present strength, the cloud of
unemployment and wage cuts
often caused a paralysis among
workers. Cenrfidence in unions
was not 3sscrong. The tendency
was to avce:d open association
with unions for fear of being
among tne first to be laid off.

+

Time To Take The Initiative

Today, while we are not yet
in the heuvy layoff stage, there
is ample evidence that workers,
far from running away, tend to
embrace unions more tightly.
They look upon unions as their
main protection.

This is shown, first, by the
continued high rate of new
membership flow into open-door
unions. :

Secondly, by the fact that pe-
riods allowing resignation from
unions under maintenance
clauses, have been provided re-
cently in industries affecting
millions cf union workers, but
those workers who chose to
quit were an infinitesmal frac-
tion.

Thirdly, the National Labor
Relations Board is kept very
busy conducting collective. bar-
gaining: elections as a high rate
of unionization of plants con-
tinues. The NLRB polled: 547,-
000 workers on a union choice
during March, April and May.

Some of the latest statistics
on the picture in the United
Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers (CIO) are interesting.
The number of workers covered
by its contracts continues stead-

ily at approximately 750,000..,

The intake of new members for
the quarter ending last month
was some 45,000 compared with
about 40,000 in the previous
quarter. The union won some
50 elections, covering about
15,000 workers compared to 40
elections affecting some 12,000
workers in the earlier quarter.

Those figures are only a pre-°

liminary estimate by the un-
ion’s spokesmen, but they also
show that the month of May
revealed a higher rate than the
earlier months.

_ Getting down to cases, the
UE’s experience is even more
impressive. The six to one ma-
jority for the union among

Philadelphia General Electric’s-

1,000 whitecollar salaried em-
ployees was one of the UE vic-
tories late in May. Addition of
two more plants of the Sylvania
Corp., two of the big Western
Electric chain and several more
of General Electric, are among
the other victories of recent
weeks The Clifford Mfg. Co. at
Boston, employing 1,200 was
organized within a few weeks.
Now the union is ready for an
election at RCA’s Harrison,
N.J., plant and is pressing for
it.

Talks with UE local leaders
in New York.confirm the trend.
They cite cases of delegations
coming to the union from shops
that were never touched by or-
ganizers, to ask admission. The
uppermost demand these self-
organized workers put forward
is job security and seniority.
Wages is often secondary to

_this issue.

The main cutbacks have not
yet hit the UE, but layoffs have
been disturbing the thoughts
and sleep of the membership
for a long time. The workers
are definitely not cooling to the
union.

The UE probably indicates
the picture generally. Scatter-
ed reports in the latest issue of
Steel Labor, organ of the Uni-
ted Steelworkers of America,
show election victories at many
steel and aluminum plants in
southern and northern states.

PAGE 12 — P.A. MAGAZINE SECTION

In every field where even a2
mild organizing effort is made,
success is amply shown. ;

It takes no extraordinary V1-
sion to realize that the field is
as ripe for trade union organ-
ization as it ever was.

What does this mean?

1. Labor has the possibility of
heading off the threat of an
open shop drive, wage cuts and
a company union wave.

2. Unions can fortify them-
selves against a loss and ad-
yance further.

3. The higher purchasing
power workers achieved during
the war can be safeguarded.
Thereby, the base for a high-
employment ecomomy, too, can
be strengthened.

4. Labor can maintain its
powerful influence on the coun-
try’s political situation and
upon issues affecting reconver-
sion and full employment.

5. Those who are planning a
drive against labor at home so
as to have a free hand in im-
perialist policies abroad, can be
defeated.

6. Labor’s great independent
strength can also be powerful
encouragement to other sections
“6. the ‘people for progressive
policie:..

What isthe other alterna-
tive?

We need only look ‘batk to our
history immediately after
World War I, and the program
that the National Association
of Manufacturers, the Auto-
motive Council and other reac-
tionary groups are pressing for
today, is vividly revealed.

William Z. Foster was alone
of all labor leaders of that day
to recognize that if labor did
not take the offensive the open
shoppers would. He undertook
to give impetus to such an of-
fensive through the organiza-
tion of the steel workers. With
only paper promises of support
from-AFL leaders and only a
tiny fraction of the pledged fi-
nancial aid, he achieved the
Herculean task which culmin-
ated in the great 1919 steel
strike of. 400,000 workers.

e

THE open shoppers saw the

significance of that move-
ment even: if the AFL’s leaders
didn’t. They marshalled all re-
sources to smash the strike at
all costs. Their determination
to do so was stimulated by the
fact that union ranks grew on
the crest of postwar labor mili,
tancy. The AFL reached its
high water mark of 4,078,000 in

1920. Long past the cutback pe- '

riod workers continued to flow
into unions, seeking protection.
Their disappointment in labor
leadership, and returned veter-
ans whose hostility to labor was
well built up, furnished the fa-
vorable ground for
shop drive that followed. With-
in two-years the AFL lost a
third of its membership. Wage
slashes swept to the mine, rail-
road, textile, maritime workers
and then through every indus-
try.

On the wave of the hysteria

came anti-labor laws. Company

unionism, born at John OD.
Rockefeller mines in 1914, soon
reached a membership equal to
the AFL’s. Competing with
“Golden Rule” paternalism, un-

the open:

By Geerge Morris

ions prostrated themselves be-
fore industrialists with a pledge
to be as harmless as company
unions. The B. & O. plans out-
lawing strikes, cropped up.

Blending with this retreat of
labor, was the illusion that the
phoney, prosperity, built mainly
on a postwar delayed purchas-
ing boom and speculative in-

vestment, would go on indefin- -

itely. A “higher strategy of
labor” concept developed among
the labor bureaucrats. Struggle
and strikes became the “law of
the jungle’; cooperation with
employers became the path
from then on; labor was urged
to go into banking so its re-
sources would some day be-
come great enough to control
the stock market. Employe
stock ownership swept to mil-
lions. As the workers were
lulled into a false sense of se-
curity, some 150 labor banks,
grew up. d

Even progressives, including -
a large section of the Commu-
nists then led by Jay Lovestone,
were corrupted by the period.
They pointed to our ‘“bourgoisi-

fied” working class and the “fu-

tility” of trying to win it for
militant struggle. They, too,
thought that our prosperity
would be indefinite and that all
signs indicated an invincible
American capitalism. America
was an “exception” to the crisis-
threatened world. The science
of MarxismLeninism didn’t ap-
pear applicable here.

HEN the 1929 crash came,

prosperity went up the flue,
labor banks faiied and worker-
held stocks and savings evapo-
rated. So also crashed the
theory of “exceptionalism” and
Matthew Woll’s “mgher stra-
tegy of laber.”’ The working
class paid dearly for listening
to the misleaders who detour-
ed it from the class siruggle
road. The decline in AFL mem-
bership continued to the all-
time low of 2,126,000 in 1933,
when unemployed was aboat
17,000,000 and wages were at
starvation levels.

To think that the picture of
the twenties could again be a
perspective is frightening. But
the fact is that our tories in
business and some of the very
labor leaders who misled in the
twenties, are trying ta pull us

_back to those days now.

Both the objective and sub-
jective conditions are today far
more favorable for a movement
to take the initiative away
from reaction. Union member-
ship is four-fold. Its most de-
cisive sections are under pro-
gressive leaders, principally in
the CIO and such more advan-
ced AFL unions as the Machin-
ists. Labor’s prestige and poli-
tical influence is at unprece-
dented high. Many important
laws protecting unions, hours
and wages are on the statute
books. Negroes, women and
other groups whom employers
exploited to divide labor in the
past, today make up a great
section of the labor movement.
Labor’s financial resources and
aecess to means of information,
radio, newspapers, etc., bears
no comparison to the state of
affairs in 1919.

4
|
|

But precisely because
ized labor has broadene
flect so much of Americ:
mon people as a whole,
necessary to discard
thods. A union today i
stitution of the commu
cannot escape the proble
concern its much chang¢
bership. It cannot shut’
to the anti-union prejuc
the millions of ne
brought with them. Nc
escape the sad consequ
disappointment among >
members.

A great section of @.
movement’s leadership :'
sists of 19th Centur
Job monopoly, restricti!
few bare economic ¢
and antipathy to gene:
lic interest or politics is!
gram. The Peglers ex
condition in those unié¢
the racketeering they I
smear all labor organi’

E-have had some il

‘of the streamlined,
popular and vigorous |
win workers, during 1
mark of the CIO’s gr¢i
fore the war. Experie
ing the war has gre
riched our organizing |
The one thing we have.
that must not be forgu
a moment is, that unles;
goes forward it will ;;
cline or open itselfyt
from its foes. This ist)
native before all of Jab:

What do the work.
flowing into unions ex:

Above all they have
the advantages of colec:
gaining. They have s
with all the governm¢|
on wages, and gt
through the Wage-Roi
the union still makes a
ference in the pay env

They: are interested
sort of job security a |
niority system. They e¢
union to be an influen
speed with which the
would turn to civilia
The guaranteed anual)
gan attracts them. 17
that proposals to. rai:
ployment insurance
weekly, the new ext:
cial security bill and
for the Murray Full |
ment Bill rests primar:
ion strength. he hints
Labor Board is now
non-union employers, |
need a WLB.approval -
ever reconversion wagt
‘hey make, is develo: $
another inducement fo |
te organize.

All this adds up ta
Jowng: If the imcor
newy organized wor
com: disappointed in
ions, the kickback wi
rible. Their - bitternes:
most enthusiastically
by open shoppers anc
tive iascists. .They d/|
fore. From this it foll®
labor’s most dangerou:#
today are the old-line }
ers wio are still preg
in the AFL’s high cou §
illusion of an NAM j¢§
they sew, the divis§
maintain in labor rig
jurisdictonal provocat i
are inciting against ¢;
advanced AFL unions.
desire for. a bureaw}
controlléd labor mover }
though it be no largei}
AFL o? 1938, gives 3
role ot handmaiden'
action. ;

SATURDAY, JUL
i

ay