a oan ened manner

ClO MIAMI CONVENTION ~

30) with wage negotia-
a. in 1968 covering sev-
7 members, the AFL-
; Constitutional Conven-
200 delegates are turning
to any Washington
Seeking curbs on mem-
demands for substantial
Mtreases, President John-
Blea for wage restraints
+ 8 Cold reception from
Kaders whom newsmen
0 here.
7 Abel, president of the
© Steel Workers Union,
Xecutive board in a spe-
‘Sion, rejected any no-
pledge or arbitration in
_ Rg negotiations covering
“nillion workers, said he
j..cel there was any jus-
/! for restraint in wage
oS,
i, Pointed to the enormous
wand dividends of industry
Vt profits after payment
i. Skyrocketed 7414 per-
tWeen 1960 and the first
967, while wages in the
Peridd increased 54 per-
Sekly take home pay of
ieee factory worker, with
“Pendents, increased only
ub and in terms of buy-
Wer merely 11 percent.
pensation per hour for
' Mcreased only 2.6 per-
4,Y€ar, while the real vol-
ieputput per man-hour rose
wctly rate of 3.6 percent,
there was no effort to
" these profits or divi-
8nd asked why labor
be asked to limit its de-
'n 1968.

88 a pretty pious non-
ed Jerry Wurf, presi-
the State, County and

| fin here in the plush ball-
| Moms of the Gold Coast,
 SL-CIO president George
|4, Oils to put the
Member labor organi-
he heads, on record

€rica’s growing peace
®nt and those in the labor
Who favor peace. He

Sm the 7th. Constitu-
— a mandate

Suld support the Presi-
the very difficult task
has under his Constitu-
Ybligations as President
hited States.”

Ister his “leave it to the
t” line, Meany lumps
, and doves together,
§ that “escalation of this
‘ld mean World’ War III
drawal of the Ameri-
Tes would eventually
Orld War III.”
Ut admitting that elec-
cks in 1966 were a
the pro-war policies of
those who backed him,
Nt down to defeat in the
Meonal and State elect-
thy told the delegates
“Port that the 1966 elec-
a a catastrophe and re-
1 firming up the GOP-
t coalition.

“fates that anyone who
Yndon Johnson is la-
hemes. He asks the dele-

fe what is the main

Nswer to 1968 is to warn -

Municipal Workers Union, in
answer to President Johnson’s
call for restraint on wages in
forthcoming negotiations. “TI cer-
tainly would have been impress-
ed if Johnson had twisted the
arm of the steel companies.”

P. L. Siemuller, president of
the International Association of
Machinists and Aerospace Work-
ers, declared that rise of produc-
tivity, cost of living would be
a real consideration in negotia-
tions next summer affecting
250,000 aerospace IAofM mem-
bers. He said that aerospace had
always followed auto wage talks
and results closely and would
do so again. The UAW’s vice-
president, Leonard Woodcock,
in charge of aerospace for that
uhion, has said he would be
seeking substantial wage in-
creases from the aircraft com-
panies in 1968.

Some 400,000 telephone work-
ers, members of the,Communica-
tions Workers, are also going

into negotiations early in 1968 ©

(February with Western Electric
Company being the kickoff.)
Joseph Beirne, president of
CWA-AFL-CIO also told news-
men that technological improve-
ments had kept costs down in
the phone industry so that cus-
tomary employers claims that
wage increases result in price
increases will not apply.

So far George Meany, presid-
ing at the convention has had
no comment on the President’s
appeal for wage and price re-
straints. However, the second
section of the Executive Coun-
cil’s report on the National
Economy had this to say:

“If the President determines

cause of labor’s difficulties and
replies, “the major cause of our
difficulty is the situation that
has developed in regard to Viet-
nam.”

Meany told the delegates that
1968 is going to be a fight, and
placed it as an attack on what
labor stands for, without men-
tioning what the fight is going
to be about, the candidates, the
issues, except his repeated de-
clarations for Johnson.

- He has kind words for the em-
ployers whom he credits with

having good relations with labor,

giving good contracts and not
opposing labor’s organizing ef-
forts. No angry word seeps in
here against Big Business, anti-

- labor legislation filling Congres-

sional hoppers, state legislatures.

He told the delegates they -
should go back home and brag .
about the Kennedy-Johnson re--

cord, that it represents progress;
Medicare, Federal Aid to Edu-
cation, Civil Rights Act of 1964,
anti-poverty legislation, Social
Security and minimum wage.

To read Meany’s report you
wouldn’t know that 35,000,000
Americans go to bed hungry
every night, that over 4,000,000
are jobless and one third of the
jobless are Negroes.

Speaking before the Building
Trades Department — sessions
Meany was forced to reply to
mounting criticism and exposure
of discrimination in the building
trades. Regarding opening the

that there is a national emergen-
cy to warrant extraordinary sta-
bilization measures with even-
handed restraints on all costs,
prices, profits, dividends, corpo-
rate executive compensation, as
well as employee’s wages and
salaries—he will have the sup-
port of\the AFL-CIO.”

’ Secretary of Labor Willard
Wirtz,
tion when asked if thé govern-
ment was\considering wage and
price control, said, “we are not
even in the ball park as far as
consideration of controls on
wages and prices are concern-
ed.” If Wirtz had even proposed
this in his speech here, the flak
against him would have been
resounding. He spent a full day
lobbying here with all the top
AFL-CIO officials going into ne-
gotiations in 1968. It was obvi-
ous he was not helping them to
work out demands for substan-
tial wage increases, cost of liv-
ing clauses, big fringe improve-
ments, as is the case of the steel
workers.

Leaders of the
unions here have before them
reports from the AFL-CIO Re-
search Departments that show
industrial production has shot up
from an average yearly rate of
2.5 percent in the period of 1953-
1960 to 5.7 percent between 1960
and the. first half of 1967, while
in the same period wages show-
ed an average rise of 3.4 percent.

During those six and one half
years, part of the buying power
of wage gains was washed out
by the rise of living costs, The
Consumer Price Index increased
at an average yearly rate of 1.7
percent, but 5 percent in the

| Meany continues with

doors to Negro workers, he re-
peated the hoary lie “that for
many years you had no appli-
cants. My union is one of them.
I lived in a city that had a tre-
mendous population. We never
had a Negro applicant. Oh, there
were Negro shops, but they were
in a class with other non-union
shops. And we didn’t bother
them and they didn’t bother us.”

Meany was considerably irked
at government regulations under
the Civil Rights Act, and in
many states that under the pres-
sure of the Negro rebellions in
American cities, have been beef-
ed up to stop the flagrant bar-
ring of Negro youth from the
skilled trades. This he termed
“was as if you had a criminal
standing at the bar.” To Meany,
the rank discrimination of the
Building Trades, condoned by
him, is‘ not a criminal act. He
told the delegates the AFL-CIO
will follow only the AFL-CIO
policy of non-discrimination and
we won’t lower our standards.
This was the cue to the Building
Trades delegates to continue as
they have been doing — which
with few exceptions means keep-
ing out Negroes, and others, such
as Puerto-Ricans and Mexican-
Americans. :

In a boost for the free enter-
prise system, Meany told labor
newsmen attending the conven-
tion of the International Labor
Press Association that “you don’t
see a worker at any level who

industrial ©

Wage restraint proposal rejected

By WILLIAM ALLAN

first half of 1967.

The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil reports show labor costs de-
clining as much as 3.3 percent
in the most recent period while
produdction rose faster than
wages, salaries or fringe bene-
fits.

In the first half of 1967, pro-
duction in manufacturing was
more than 70 percent greater
than in 1953, but the number
of factory workers was not
greater. The UAW declares that

almost 40 percent more produc-

tion is being put out with 25
percent less workers. On rail-
roads jobs declined by 600,000
between 1953 and the first half
of 1967, and in mining fell 240,-
000. In agriculture almost 2.4
million left the farms for the
cities looking for work.

The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil report reveals that between
1940 and 1967 about 4 million
Negroes moved from the South
—primarily rural areas—to the
cities of the North and West. In
1960 about 40 percent to nearly
50 percent of the Negro popula-
tion of 10 major northern and
western cities was born in the
South.

The report declares that al-
most 1.5 million Negroes left
the South in 1950-1960, follow-
ing a similar migration of 1.6
million Negroes in the wartime

. decade. This migration is contin-
uing at about that rate in the
1960s. For the country as a
whole, the proportion of Negroes
in city populations rose from
less than 10 percent in 1940 to
over 20 percent in 1965. In nor-
thern and western cities the rise
was greater.

The AFL-CIO Executive offic: °
ers report continues and ees
that the migrants, which incldd-
ed Mexican-Americans and Puer-
to Ricans, were met with dis-
criminatory practices, lack of
housing, and the impact of auto-
mation on job opportunities for
uneducated, unskilled workers.
They say nothing about the
many sections of American labor
that barred these workers from
joining certain unions, learning
skills, becoming apprentices, or
being paid equal wages for equal
work — or the absence of any
campaign to bring them especial-
ly into labor’s ranks.

- The rebellions across the Unit-
ed States in the last two years
of the Negro people have forced
the AFL-CIO leadership here to
publish three full pages in their
report, listing how ghetto resi-
dents are discriminated against,
the deadly conditions under
which they live in slum housing,
the massive unemployment, the
urban removal which is really
Negro removal, lack of schools
or youth training.

They propose one million pub-
lic service jobs for the unem-
ployed (they admit there are
four million jobless in U.S.) to
be paid for by $4 billion in a
federal program; two and a half
million new housing units each
year for the next two decades, |
with public housing through new
and rehabilitated low-rent homes
for the 20 percent of city fami-
lies whose incomes are below
a decent living standard, with
200,000 low-rent houses for each
of the next two years and 500,-
000 a year thereafter.

Cold War line

doesn’t have a car that he is
able to drive, his wife has a
washing machine, and all of
those things come from the
strength of the American econo-
my.

As you listen to Meany. here,
in these posh hotels where rooms
are $60 a day for many, $20 for
some, you are listening to a vast
coverup of what’s really happen-
ing in America and the. world.

The Executive Council report
to the convention however takes
a more realistic look at what’s
happening.

e Corporate profits after tax-
es payment skyrocketed 7414
percent.

e Dividend payments to stock-
holders soared almost 6944 per-
cent.

e Total wage and salary pay-
ments to all employees in the
entire economy increased only
54 percent.

e Total after tax - personal
income to all persons in the en-
tire economy rose merely 53 per-
cent.

e Weekly after tax take home
pay of an average factory work-
er with three dependents, in-
creased only 24 percent—and in
terms of buying power, merely
11 percent.

e Real compensation per hour
from 1960 through 1966 increas-
ed only 2.6 percent, while out-
put per man-hour rose at a year-
ly rate of 3.6 percent. The Exe-
cutive Council then adds the

wage earners haven’t received a
fair share.

Yet in the report of President
Meany, which accompanies these
economic acts, he declares that
American society is immeasur-
ably better than it has ever been
béfore. Better for whom? He
then admits that millions of
Americans do not share in the
continuing affluence and _ first
class citizenship remains only a
dream to millions.

Meany maintains through his
report that you can spend to
win the war in Vietnam and
don’t have to cut funds for social
expenditures, though it’s hap-
pening every day.

But that anyone should work
to end the war in Vietnam, that
the $70-odd billion a year spent
for war, should be transferred
to peacetime needs, one needs
not look in Meany’s report, or
the Executive Council’s millions
of words of reports for such an
answer.

Deep in the belly of Meany’s
report you'll find there is a do-
mestic crisis in America, pover-
ty, slums, low wages, unemploy-
ment, lack of schools for the
poor, growing crisis in Ameri-
can agriculture, but his diagno-
sis is, ‘its the responsibility of
Congress”. Never the war in
Vietnam, the huge armament ex-
penditures, the millions spent to
subjugate nations shaking off the

grip of imperialism.

DECEMBER 22, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 7