AFL—CIO_ MIAMI CONVENTION

War backing challenged —

; - By WILLIAM ALLAN

“ag challenge was made here
to the AFL-CIO’s top
, , . leadership all-out backing
of the Vietnam war, by Charles
6an, president of the Ameri-
Can Federation of Teachers
| Union, who called for the Fede-
 Tation remaining neutral on the
| War,
D gppelegate A. Toffoli, Colorado
State Federation of Labor rose
' also in opposition to the Federa-
) tion resolution backing the Viet-
| nam war and read into the offi-
2 Cial proceedings the statement
- Of policy adopted by 523 labor
4 People in Chicago, Nov. 11-12,
: Aeute under the auspices of
f © Labor Leadership Assembly
Or Peace,
e The Teachers Union motion
| {Or neutrality was also backed
delegate Lon Davis, Retail
: oa Wholesale who said... “I
| believe the war is a tragic mis-
; an I believe that this great
) oor movement’ of ours in sup-
/ Porting this resolution (the Fede-
‘fation one, backing the war) is
- Moving away from the road of
Progress. We cannot see that
i War is either for freedom
/or democracy when the former
:. oH 2 leader in South Vietnam
former No. 1 leader in South
2 Vietnam had more in common
e With Hitler than they did with
d Jeffersonian democracy in the
United States’, myth

-

je OY WILKINS, executive di-

fore 1200 delegates to the
Constitutional Convention
Hof the AFL-CIO,' of whom not
ee than 10 were Negro, and
t the, delegates with hard facts
lat “the rate of progress has
€n far too slow” in bringing
€gro into the ranks of or-
meee labor, especially the
illed sections,
- lay the record on your lap,”
le Said, “Cleveland is an exam-
Of what is happening nation-
®, that after 11 years of
ee with the International
i. aed of Electrical Work-
ve Ncluding suits and sit-ins,
fe two Negroes have been ad-
ted to the local there.”

- Newark, N.J. he said, not

& to any of the five iron-
Workers locals despite a hard-
: t agreement reached last
Sas New construction in New-
“1.2, Will be on the edge of the
: eto next year.
@ Vilkins asked “what will the
Ms of Negroes be in New-
When they learn that many
af jobs will be closed to
'€m,”?
é He returned to talk of Cleve-
raft Saying, “the five major
~ Unions there, according to
ise oaled by the U.S. Com-
Sion on Civil Rights, had ex-
_four Negro apprentices.
ay certainly in the words of
te ‘S. Supreme Court, delibe-
Speed.”
He quoted from the August,
en Teport of the U.S. Depart-
Bs t of Labor entitled, “Man-
. Automation, , Research
adi

fe St yeye tp

rector, NAACP, stood be- -

hgle Negro has been admit- |

taken

het yROo

Ee a
IDEA

Delegate Davis said he saw no
indication that a _ substantial
section of the Vietnam people
were for the war and that he
felt for the AFL-CIO convention
to back a resolution supporting
the war in Vietnam would give
the Administration (in Washing-
ton) “an illusion that this con-
vention is united on behalf
of this policy . . . the facts will
show, when the voting is done,
that this nation is divided. Un-
less there is a basic change in
this approach, we stand in dan-
ger of losing politically in the
next election — if you do not
appreciate the substantial divi-
sion in our ranks on this issue.”

Delegate Davis continued, “‘At
least in my union where poor
workers are involved, just re-
cently organized hospital work-
ers, they would like to see the
wealth and images of our nation
confirmed to dealing with the
. .. problems of our country.
We welcome here the report, the
appropriation of one billion
seven. hundred million to deal
with the issue of the poor. How-
ever we spend that in 20 days in
Vietnam. What we spend on the
entire poverty program is being
blown to bits in 20 days in South
and North Vietnam, for what ef-
forts at least we cannot under-
stand, for what purpose our
members cannot understand.”

Delegate A. Toffoli said- he

Monograph No. 6” containing
this significant sentence:

“Indeed the 1960 census
showed only 2,191 Negro ap-
prentices in all the trades
throughout the country. That
figure was one more than had
been recorded in the 1950 cen-
sus 10 years ago.”

Wilkins told how the Brother-
hood of Railway and Steamship
Clerks, which operated. segre-
gated. locals in northern as well
as southern cities, have changed
all that now. They abolished
several segregated local lodges,
but they did this by reclassify-
ing the traditional Negro job
classifications and declaring
them to be within the jurisdic-
tion of the white locals, in prac-
tice this meant that Negro freight
handlers were replaced by less
senior white workers who had
been in the all-white baggage
clerks seniority line.

Wilkins commented bitterly,
“in other words, we will abolish
the segregated local but now
everybody’s seniority will count,
and the whites who had senior-
ity over here in their separate
local have more than Negroes
that have been abolished and
in, and they have no
seniority in the white local, and
therefore the jobs are out.”

' The Brotherhood of Locomo-
tive Firemen — removed a Ne-
gro exclusion clause from its
constitution in 1964, after a rail-
road ‘work rules’ arbitration had
made it virtually certain that
few if any, additional firemen
would ever be hired on Ameri-
can railroads, said Wilkins.

to Iho. nolisse
coisglsbd esw

i Gites

reves 2nWw

230

Sintiv

was privileged to attend the con-
vention two years ago in San
Francisco and speak for two
minutes “following Brother Ma-
zey’s wonderful speech, and I’m
very dissappointed he is not here
today to speak.” |

“We had at this conference
(Chicago, SANE Peace meeting
of unionists, Nov. 11-12) several
very fine speakers that some of
you are very well acquainted
with; Senator Eugene McCarthy
(boos) profesor John Galbraith
(boos). Surely there must be
someone here who has some
respect for people of this cali-
bre”. He then said he wanted
to read the statement of policy
adopted by the 500 odd union-
ists in Chicago, but a chorus of
“no’s” greeted him. President
George Meany, presiding said,
“the speaker has the floor and he
can put it into the record if he
wants to.” Delegate Toffoli then
proceeded to read the Chicago
policy statement into the official
convention record, where it ap-
peared the following day.

Meany then turned loose the
sabre rattlers from his own
ranks who ranted, roared,
screamed and threatened, brag-
ged about their deeds. First
came James Suffridge, Retail
Clerks, an heir apparent to
Meany’s throne who wanted the
delegates to make backing the
resolution on Vietnam, backing

Discrimination he charged con-
tinues, a decade after the AFL-
CIO merger in paper and pulp
manufacturing, chemicals, oil
refining, skilled metal trades and
others, he said. He then read the
roll-call of Cleveland locals who
besides the IBEW, Local 38,
who with a total membership of
1,258 had two Negro members;
Ironworkers Union, Local 17,
with a total membership of
1,786 had no Negro members;
Plumbers, Local 55, with a mem-
bership of 1,482 had three Ne-
gro members.

Pipefitter, Local 36, member-
ship 1,319 had one Negro mem-
ber; Sheet Metal Workers Union,
Local 65, membership 1,077 had
46 members.

Recent data, he said, from the
Census Bureau say there are
more Negroes in the San Fran-
cisco-Oakland East Bay area
than there are in Birmingham,
Alabama. The rate of long term
unemployment among Negro
males in Oakland exceeds the
general rate of unemployment
for the entire nation during the
great depression of the 1930's.
In every survey of the national
scene, Oakland is listed as a
“powder keg” city. But the Nov-
ember, 1967, report of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights de-
tails the exclusion of Negroes in
union controlled. employment in
the federally financed Bay Area
Rapid Transit System (BART)
construction which will employ
8,000 people at peak construc-
tion time. This is a one billion
dollar project. The ‘Office of
Federal Contract Compliance re-
ports that as of May,

PRS As VN dt Jada if

1967, there.

MSG OFS ad bouwps ai sons Jee

the Johnson Administration; Joe
Curran, posibly one of the most
frenetic anti-Communists in this
convention, who yelled his way
through three solid pages of the
convention proceedings; Mike
Quill, the late president of the
Transport Workers Union, must
‘have turned over in disgust
listening to TWU delegate Kal-
lin; shocking to many of the de-
legates was the boast of dele-
gate Harry R. Hasselgren, Long-
shoremen who boasted, “we kept
our muscles in shape all week-
end in New York and we took
care of those fellows who were
burning their draft cards this
past weekend in New York.

Meany then recognized the

Chair (himself) who centered a

major part of his remarks seek-
ing to downgrade the signifi-
cance of the recent Labor Con-
ference on peace in Chicago.

Meany continued his down-
grading of the Chicago meeting
of trade unionists for peace...
“so don’t let anyone tell you the
meeting was representative of
the trade union movement. That
meeting was planned in Hanoi
by a special committee that went
there. And I read the Sunday
Worker — I used to read the
Daily Worker, but that is no
more, I read the Sunday Worker
and I tell you I have seen that
resolution, every term. of it,
every line of it in the Sunday

~ Negroes demand equal jobs

was not a single Negro among

the 106 electricians, ironworkers ~

and plumbers engaged on BART
construction.

AFL-CIO President George
Meany, who likes to refer to the
AFL-CIO “as the house of labor,
with many mansions” sat up
straight when Roy Wilkins said:

... “I would like to say that
I lay this record in your lap be-
cause the errant children of the
AFL-CIO, the International
Unions and their locals, are your
children, they have thus far
chosen to ignore the resolutions
of convention . . . but the Negro
citizen and the Negro children
of this country are determined
that employment doors shall be
opened .. . the debating, back-
ing and. filling days are over,”
concluded Wilkins.

Meany responded with the
usual promises that the AFL-
CIO leaders will “continue to
apply themselves to this prob-
lem.” He then repeated what he
told the Building Trades Depart-
ment sessions a few days before
“that some unions were having
trouble finding Negroes who can
qualify as apprentices.”

It was as if Meany didn’t
know that exams call for a
knowledge necessary for a
high school graduate and many
Negro youth can’t afford to stay
that long, because of poverty,
need for another breadwinner.
Also the UAW some time ago
complained the standards were
needlessly too high. The auto
workers have schools going to
help youngsters get additional
coaching to pass exams, but not
Meany’s boys.

f
+ 7% was
S219VID dove TSsode

Worker two weeks before the
meeting was held in Chicago.”

The amendment of Chas. Co-
gen of the AFT, was then voted
on to havé the Federation be
neutral, and it received 10 votes.
Then the resolution in support
of the war in Vietnam passed
with ten voting against.

Later in the pressroom, report-
ers asked this -reporter about
Meany’s claim of the Sunday
Worker carrying the policy
statement of the Chicago trade
unionists for peace meeting, two
weeks before. We replied, it was
carried one week after the con-
ference.

The impact of the Chicago
peace conference was felt here
and Meany’s special emphasis
and redbaiting attack was of
course to shoot it down, firstly
that it did not represent labor
and it was all a “plot” hatched
“in Hanoi.” . :

Meany’s accusation was de-
nied by Emil Mazey, UAW sec-
retary treasurer, reached in‘ De-
troit by telephone by reporters.
He said that the charges were
“libelous and slanderous and
just the kind of a statement you
might expect from a senile old
man.”

CONTEMPT
Contemp?, my lord!
You wha signed the writ
without regard for right or
wrong,

on prison walls.

For all your precedents
you have not cited this.
Your measured words
uphold

not right, but privilege.

ry tee
our ity was apparent
in those years ;

you set your sordid stages

for divorce,

nor did the majesty of law
recoil at farce.

se ose

or the trafficker in

His victims served vat

his prison terms.

They all contributed

to me career

no less than to the campaign
funds,

the measure of your eminence

that set you in authority

to sit in judgement

on your fellow men.

Contempt, my lord!

The right of which I speak
was not wrested

from the tyranny of wealth
to moulder in corroded minds
that only fear the wrath
from which it sprang.

To live, it see

The right must still be writ
on prison walls

by those who hold you

in contempt, my lord.

—by Harold Griffin’

HimiDe: Qae Sane
JANUARY 5; 1968—PACIFICTRIBUNES+R8age'5
JANUARY 5, 1968—PACIFIC IRIBUNE—Page