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From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 37, 29 July 1933, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
New York, N.Y. – Four thousand upholsterers were called out last Thursday, July 27th on a general strike of the industry. The call was issued at the Manhattan Lyceum by the Executive Committee of Local 76 of the American Federation of Labor at a strike meeting of over 800 sitting under banners of 42 of the largest shops of greater New York. Demonstrations of enthusiasm and spirit swept the hall at the proposal of the chairman, Brother Alpert, for a general strike in the morning for the basic demands of the 30 hour week and the minimum scale of $1.40 per hour. Irving Plaza, headquarters of the strike, was packed this morning with the first day’s response to the call. Committees were organized to cover every shop in the city down to and including the one and two man shops. Preparations are under way for a kitchen to feed the strikers. All indications point towards a militant and determined fight to unionize the trade.
Caught completely unprepared by the general strike call, the party fraction of the Furniture Workers’ Industrial Union met hastily last night, and without consulting the membership of the union, also called a “general strike” of the four or five shops over which it has “control”. In contrast to the A. F. of L., their demands are for the 40 hour week and for the $1 per hour basic wage. This is the culmination of the weak and confused “united front from below” policy against which the Left wing group has struggled over a period of months.
Two days ago, at a meeting of five shops called by the Industrial Union, the mask of unity behind which the Party bureaucrats had been hiding, was torn from their faces when they answered the demand for merging the rival unions with a “decision” from above that the Industrial Union will be maintained at all costs. For months the rank and file of the trade, led by the Left wing, demanded the reintegration of the Left wing union into the American Federation of Labor and for a united general strike under one banner. We believe that the militancy resulting from a victorious strike would inevitably lead to the growth of Left wing strength in the merged union, towards the re-establishment of the Left wing in the leading positions of influence and control which they held prior to 1929.
The upholsterers are going back to Local 76 (A.F. of L.). They are not going; they are running. They are not running; they are already there.” This is the private opinion of the majority of the Party fraction in the Furniture Workers Industrial Union. The overwhelming response of the workers to the A.F. of L. strike call sustains that opinion. One party member after another, in a meeting with the representatives of the Trade Union Unity Council, Overgaard and Wortis, thus declared that unless unity was achieved with the A.F. of L. in the coming general strike, we would find ourselves six months from now without a rank and file.
Notwithstanding this overwhelming sentiment in the Party fraction, the TUUC representatives put their foot down heavily against any further unity negotiations with the A.F. of L. “betrayers of labor” and ordered that the Industrial Union be maintained at all costs.
The false face of unity behind which the TUUC masqueraded was finally ripped aside at a meeting of five shops held Tuesday July 25th to discuss the question of unity between the two unions. The Stalinists refused to give the floor to the representatives of the Left wing group, this time on the pretext that they were not members of those particular shops called to attend that meeting.
Why was this meeting called? Was it because the Stalinists wanted to hear the opinion of the upholsterers as to whether we should unite with Local 76 or not? No. It was because the workers, tired of being fed on empty and worn-out phrases, began to say that, if the Industrial Union does not join 76 as a body, they themselves, as individuals, would join Local 76.
When the organizer of the Industrial Union, it appears, came to the shops to collect a three dollar strike tax, the workers, who naively thought that they were in the midst of unity negotiations, turned on him suspiciously, and said: “Let us wait until the unity negotiations are over. Perhaps we will have one union, perhaps other arrangements will be made, etc.” Frightened by the fact that the Industrial Union was losing the little influence it had up till now, the organizer asked them to come to a special shop meeting that night to discuss the question.
The sentiment of the workers at the beginning of the meeting was to go into 76 as a body. The Stalinists were frantic. Demagogic speeches rolled off their tongues that would have shamed Tammany politicians and tabloid sob-sisters. Remarks such as: “Are you going to desert us now?”, “I was in jail 26 days for you!”, “I shed blood for you!”, “I was always on the picket line”, etc., etc. filled the air.
The terrified “leaders” again “defeated” the Left wing by denying them the floor, thus preventing an open comparison of policies which they knew could swing the bulk of the membership in favor of unity. By tiring the rank and file with speeches and appeals, in which only the Stalinist point of view was expressed, they finally put through a vote to “strike under the banner of the Industrial Union” in the coming strike.
Do the party leaders think this is an endorsement of their policy of obstructing unity? It was nothing but a vote of sympathy and confidence in those individuals who made the appeals, but in no sense can it be construed as approval for the split policy of the party in the furniture industry. Let them not deceive themselves about their following. The workers in the shops want unity today, in the heat of the strike, even more than before the strike was called. It must be stated here that the Stalinists, with the calling of the general strike, have already lost the golden opportunity to unite the two streams in the movement, the Left and the Right. They will stand convicted, in the eyes of the entire movement, of complicity if not collusion with the reactionary burocrats of the A.F. of L. in preventing the achievement of what lies nearest and dearest in the heart of every furniture worker in the industry: one strong union.
Every shop in the trade, large or small, join the strike.
The Left wing calls upon you to support the general strike and the following demands:
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