Page Eight

THE B.C.

LUMBER WORKER

December 18, 1944

World Labor Conference In Feb.

ClO Will Welcome
World Labor Unity

LONDON, Dec. 7 — Sid-
ney Hillman, chairman of the
CIO Political Action Com-
mittee today expressed ex-
treme satisfaction with the
progress of the preliminary
world labor conference talks
being held here, His ' opti-
mism was borne out by the
decision of the British Trades
Union Congress to call a press
conference tomorrow announcing
the decisions of the Tripartite
committee, representing U.S.,
Soviet and British labor. In ad-
dition to Hillman, the CIO dele-
gates to the preliminary confer-
ence are United Auto Workers
President R. J, Thomas, Textile
Workers President Emil Rieve

and John Abt, counsel to the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers.

Hillman’s press conference at
TUG headquarters yesterday
was attended by a record number
of British and American corres-
pondents. Discussing the CIO-
PAC, Hillman declared that for
the first time in American his-
tory “there is now a large mass
movement in the U.S. vitally in-
terested in progressive interna-
tional policies and pledged to a
Good Neighbor policy interna-

tionally as opposed to ‘power

politics’” The PAC, he con-|as

tinued, cannot be described as
a “labor pressure group,” add-
ing: é =
“Tt has come to stay in Ameri-
can politics with equal support
from outside the ranks of labor
as within. The ordinary men and
women of America are united on
a three-point program, an all-
out war effort, a peace settle-
ment ensuring no third war, and
jobs for 60,000,000.” Hitting
out at cartels, Hillman stated:
“Although we support free en-
terprise, we have no confidence
in the cartel system. We believe
that international cooperation
must come through respective
governments and not through big
business.” He also denounced the
isolationist politicians and press
in the U.S., describing the recent
election as “a heavy defeat for
America’s own ‘Axis’.”

Asked if American labor could
make an effective contribution to
the world trade union conference
in the absence of the AFL and the
United Mine Workers, Hillman
stated: “The AFL leaders’ de-
cision not to come is against the

interests of the rank-and-file,
who have a-stake in lasting
peace. Labor -has responsibilities
internationally as well as do-
mestically. We haven’t much time
to wait until some people make
up their minds.

Hillman described the USSR
“one of our great allies,” add-
ing that the internal affairs of
the Soviet Union “are their own
affair.” He stated: “We want
to deal with the spokesmen of

the Soviet trade unions on the
basis of achieving maximum in-
ternational cooperation.”

Replying to the recent attack
on him by Congressman J. Par-
nell Thomas of the House Mili-
tary Affairs Commitee, who
stated at a press conference in
London recently that Hillman
was one of the “labor barons”
responsible for: the shell short-
age, Hillman declared: “Thomas
is one of, the-left-overs of the
Dies Committee. This gentleman
would not be taken seriously -in
the U.S. The whole record of
American labor is one of closest
cooperation with the service
chiefs of staff.” Asked if he
agreed with Ebby Edwards, sec-
retary of the British miners’
union who attended the recent
UMW convention, that John L.
Lewis is “the world’s greatest
trade union leader,” Hillman
stated: “His membership turned
him down in 1944 the same as
they did in 1940, and the coal-
fields supported Roosevelt.”

Condemnation of the stand
taken by the American Fed-
eration of Labor in refusing to
take part in a world trade
union conference opening in}
London February 6, was reg-
istered by three unions at last
Tuesday’s Trades and Labor
Council meeting.

In opposing the stand taken
by AFL leaders meeting in New

Orleans late this November,
Lodge 58, Railway Carmen point-
ed out that “the AFL does not
speak for Lodge 58.”

The other unions protesting
were the Fire Fighters and Di-
vision 134, Street Railwaymen,
who classified the action of the
AFL as “undemocratic and un-
Christian and not in the best in-
terests of a permanent and last-
ing peace.”

Despite strong pleas for inter-
national labor unity by two Brit-
ish fraternal delegates present at
the convention, the American
Federation of Labor refused to
attend the world labor conference
scheduled to open in London
|February 6. The AFL made its
decision, according to President

Some AFL Unions
Want to Take Part

ference was called by the British
Trades Union Congress instead
of by the “proper authority,”
the International Federation of
Trades Unions, and because the
CIO and Soviet trade unions will
be attending the’ conference.

Urging AFL attendance at the
London conference, John Brown,
secretary of the British Iron and
Steel Trades Confederation,
stressed that unless the labor
movements of the world “lear
how to act together, we cannot
expect that the governments to
which we try to give a lead will
unanimously pursue a policy of
international accord.”

Arthur Horner, president of
the South Wales Miners’ Feder-
ation and a member of the Brit-
ish Communist -Party’s national
committee, said: “Just as Britain,
the United States and the Soviet
Union are the principal pillars of
world security and international
economic cooperation, so too are
the trade union movements of
these countries decisive. It is not
enough to leave the world prob-
lems for governments alone to

William Green, because the con-

solve.”

Ste date data Sa iq eater ta Satie Sein Sain bee ie n ed ia Sein Sein i eR eR ES

and FRIENDLY SERVICE

MON-MADE CLOTHING:

Che Huh Staff and Management wish you the very

best Christmas and New Year's pou ever had and
we wish to thank your many Hriends in the Lumber
Sudusiry for their patience and understanding ducing
these trying wartime shortages.

Vancouver, B.C.

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