Marxists’ Internet Archive: ETOL Home Page: Trotskyist Writers Section: Farrel Dobbs
Source: Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 33, 17 August 1940, p. 2.
Transcription & Mark-up: Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The city of Buffalo has suspended five repair men on charge of “non-cooperation in the national defense program.” Municipal employees at Niagara Falls are being “mugged” and finger-printed “to forestall possible sabotage.” The National Association of Manufacturers is pressing harder than ever to emasculate the National Labor Relations Act “in the interests of the defense program.”
Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins told the annual convention of the Massachusetts State Federation of Labor that strikes will not hamper the national defense program as they did in 1917 because “labor now has decent working conditions.” Falling right into line with the Madame, the national AFL representative to the convention told the gathering that negotiations must be the process rather than strikes. “Many a legitimate strike,” he said, “will have to be avoided by the self-discipline of labor unions.”
A CIO union in Jamestown. New York, voted to send two of its members into a struck plant to crate 143 airplane struts for shipment at the request of the War Department. A taste demands a meal. The War Department will next claim that the strike itself is “against the interests of the national defenses.”
Boeing aircraft workers, AFL, have just been shunted away from strike action and into the morass of arbitration. Sidney Hillman did the job for the bosses.
Two regional directors of the UAW-CIO rushed into South Bend, Indiana to investigate reports of a slow-down demonstration at the Bendix Aviation Corporation plant. The company demands that the union rid its ranks of “a group of agitators.” UAW secretary-treasurer, George M. Addes, has said that the International officials “will not tolerate such an interference with production.” FBI agents swarmed through the plant, “investigating reports of sabotage.”
The bosses and their government are moving rapidly in their campaign to curb trade union action and force the workers to submit helplessly to war regimentation. The trade union officialdom is making an inglorious retreat in the face of this attack.
What the bosses and their government really have in mind “in the interests of national defense” is made plain by recent dispatches from abroad. Agreements covering working hours and labor conditions in the metal trades in some industrial districts of New Zealand were suspended by government order on August 3. Six days later, a government decree was issued banning all strikes in Northern Ireland for the duration of the war.
The Philippine National Assembly has voted President Quezon authority to prohibit strikes. This latter action occurs on United States territory. Since the Philippine government is a puppet of Washington, that means that Washington is trying this scheme out there.
The Gallup poll has released statistics showing the results of a survey on the question, “Should the government forbid strikes in industries manufacturing material for our national defense?” 83% of the persons questioned in the upper income group are reported as favoring the prohibition of strikes. If anything, this is an understatement of the prevailing opinion in that group. It is also reported, however, that 73% of the persons questioned in the lower income group favored the strike prohibition. We have no way of knowing who was questioned to get this “sample” of public opinion. But we have every reason to doubt its accuracy.
It seems that the peregrinations of the Gallup inquirers led them to the door of three scissors-bills for every trade unionist that they interviewed. Stand up before any group of trade union workers, whether it be a meeting of a local union or a convention of an international union, and ask them this question. They will give you a quick and decisive answer. They do not favor the prohibition of strikes “in the interests of the national defense,” or for any other reason. And there are about ten million organized workers.
The AFL building trades unions have been granted jurisdiction over all construction work under the gigantic armament program. The decision of the National Defense Council was handed down by its “labor coordinator” Sidney Hillman, a vice-president of the CIO. This action is a vital blow to the hopes of the CIO to organize in the construction industry through its United Construction Workers Organizing Committee.
The CIO has made very little headway in the industry and the methods which it employed in its organization efforts were some times not in the best interests of the construction workers. There has been, however, One positive side to the CIO campaign. It brought direct pressure on the AFL Building Trades Department to take a more reasonable attitude toward the question of labor unity.
The AFL Building Trades unions are in the best position to protect the interests of the construction workers in the rapidly expanding building program which can be anticipated in the next period. But this jurisdictional victory can only tend to stiffen the hard-nosed attitude of the AFL building trades craft unionists towards the industrial unions.
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Last updated: 15 November 2020