Marxists’ Internet Archive: ETOL Home Page: Trotskyist Writers Section: Farrel Dobbs
Source: Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 34, 24 August 1940, p. 2.
Transcription & Mark-up: Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Congressman Martin Dies announces from Los Angeles that he has “uncovered a plot to bring about a general strike in Southern California aircraft factories.” His statement comes on the heels of the decision by the St. Louis convention of the United Auto Workers (CIO) to launch a large-scale organization drive in the aircraft industry.
The aircraft CORPORATIONS have been conducting a general strike against the acceptance of government contracts for airplane construction. They demand tax credits to assure themselves of super-profits from the armament program. Dies isn’t the least bit worried up about this open-fisted grab by the Corporations, but he is always quick to suspicion “subversive activity” among the workers.
He has found seven finks in the plants who describe “the (strike) scheme as having a double objective – crippling the national defense program and hindering American aid to Britain.” The political “friends” of the CIO (Dies is only the first to speak) are thus preparing to give heavy support to the aircraft corporations in their opposition to the union’s campaign.
The UAW leaders will have to muster more guts than they have displayed in the Ford campaign if the organization drive in the aircraft industry is to succeed.
The FBI already has many acres of finger-print files in Washington. They have long conducted an “educational campaign” to obtain prints wherever and whenever they could. Lately, this campaign has been vigorously intensified and it is beginning to bear more fruit.
WPA employees working in Army and Navy posts and on “other national defense projects” must have their prints taken. Forty WPA workers on a New York City-sponsored project to “prepare for any war emergency that. may confront the city” have also been finger-printed.
The New York City police department has laid down new regulations requiring the finger-printing of night club employees. The unions are fighting this order.
Representative Massingale of Oklahoma made a slip of the tongue in the House debate on the National Guard bill. He told how the chambers of commerce in Oklahoma had urged enlistment by high school students and that the National Guard in many instances furnished the best social entertainment for youth. He added that the students also wanted a little spending money. Since they had enlisted only to have a good time socially and to get a little pocket money, Massingale felt that it was unfair to send them into military service outside the United States.
The good Congressman failed to inform his constituents that most of these boys did not know when they enlisted that they would be used as scab-herders, as they were recently when the oil workers went on strike. It seems that he doesn’t think it unfair to ask the boys to do a little strikebreaking now and then in return for social entertainment and a bit of spending money.
AFL President Green, appearing before the Senate Labor Committee to testify on the bill to revise the National Labor Relations Act, altered the stand be previously took before the House Committee regarding some of the provisions. The Senate Committee reports Green now says that he acquiesced in the amendments while they were in the House with the idea that those unacceptable to the AFL could be altered in the Senate.
If this is the case, it must be said that Green is guilty of criminal negligence toward his duties as a representative of the AFL workers. The workers get little enough consideration from Congress under the best of circumstances. When all Green’s criticisms of the amendments past and present, are added up, he still hasn’t got much of a position. The AFL has been so anxious to strike a blow at the CIO through amendments to the National Labor Relations Act that they have blinded themselves to the dangers of the situation they are creating. The National Association of Manufacturers is stepping in with the idea of emasculating the Act in such a way that the amendments will prove a boomerang against the AFL as well as an injury to the CIO.
But even taking the AFL program for what it is worth, this action by Green means that he abandoned an important field of battle without firing a shot and thus weakened the fighting power of the AFL on this question by more than 50%.
We aren’t convinced that Green told the whole story when he gave the Senate Committee this reason for his change in attitude. It has the earmarks of part of a horse- trade with Sidney Hillman, CIO vice president, who is rapidly drifting into open conflict with John L. Lewis. A second factor is the report that Hillman as the “labor coordinating expert” on the National Defense Committee, has arranged for the AFL to have jurisdiction over construction work under the armament program. Hillman has denied this report, but the AFL continues to insist that it is a fact.
If the AFL-Hillman horse-trade is a reality it will introduce a series of new factors into the question of AFL-CIO unity.
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Last updated: 22 May 2020