Ike Again
UrgedtoAct
On Steel
By Gene Zack
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has renewed labor's urgent pleas
that Pres. Eisenhower break the
deadlocked steel negotiations by
allowing members of a Taft-
Hartley Board of Inquiry to make
public their "personal views on
a formula for settlement."
There was no immediate White
House reaction to the proposal,
which Meany said might avert "fur-
ther strife" when an 80-day injunc-
tion against the Steelworkers ex-
pires Jan. 26.
In the past the Administration
has indicated it would be receptive
to such a move only if requested
to intervene by both steel manage-
ment and labor. The union has
accepted, but the peace efforts were
torpedoed by industry's repeated re-
fusal to submit to any form of pub-
lic fact-finding.
With less than four weeks of the
injunction period remaining, there
were these other developments:
• The Board of Inquiry recon-
vened to hear management spell
out the terms of its so-called "last
offer" — a work -rule -gutting pro-
posal rejected unanimously by the
union's Wage Policy Committee
two months ago. The National
Labor Relations Board will poll the
500,000 USWA members on the
offer Jan. 1 1-13 as T-H requires.
• In the absence of White
House acceptance of the Meany
proposal, Board Chairman George
W. Taylor said the panel saw "no
possibility of settlement," and
would confine its activities to its
"statutory obligation" of certifying
the "last offer" to the White House.
• USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald forecast overwhelming
rank-and-file rejection of the indus-
try offer, pointing to an unofficial
poll being conducted by the union
in which more than 95 percent of
100,000 ballots counted to date
"are against acceptance of the com-
pany offer."
• McDonald warned against
any assumptions as to what course
of action the union might take
when steelworkers regain their
freedom after the injunction runs
out. The Wage Policy Committee
and the USWA executive board, he
said, will make their decision "when
the time comes."
"The Taft-Hartley Act can tell
us when not to strike," McDonald
said. "It cannot tell us when we
will strike — or whom."
• USWA Gen. Counsel Arthur
J. Goldberg filed a petition in U.S.
District Court in Pittsburgh to com-
pel steel companies to pay workers
(Continued on Page 2)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, January 2, 1960
No. 1
'60 Election to Dominate
New Session of Congress
Labor Asks Action
On Key Measures
GUNS CONFISCATED from non-union workers entering Wilson
& Co. meat packing plant in Albert Lea, Minn., are examined by
Freeborn County Sheriff Everett Stovern. Plant, closed more than
two weeks by martial law imposed by Gov. Orville L. Freeman
(D), was reopened under federal court order. Nine non-union
workers were jailed for carrying the firearms, later released on a
technicality. Negotiations have been resumed at Chicago.
Warned on Provocations:
Negotiators Seek
Wilson Settlement
Chicago — The strike of more than 5,000 Packinghouse Workers
against Wilson & Co. turned into the New Year with the morale of
the workers high.
Negotiations were resumed at the suggestion of the Federal Medi-
ation Service after a three-man federal court overruled Minnesota
Gov. Orville L. Freeman's use of^
the National Guard to close Wil
son's plant in Albert Lea, Minn.
Some troops were retained in the
city and observers saw vindication
Slowdown in Growth
Laid to Ike's Policies
The Eisenhower Administration's economic policies "have been
the major cause for the slowdown" in the nation's growth, a staff
report of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee declared.
The report, prepared for consideration by the committee and
reflecting only the views of the staff members, said:
"The present set of policy tools,
applied with the objective of keep
mg prices stable," is responsible
for the slowdown in growth. The
term "policy tools" applies to the
Administration's economic policies,
and a prime objective of these
policies has been to attain a stable
price level.
The staff report declares that
"the amount of growth that was
surrendered, for what at best
was a small gain toward stabiliz-
ing the price level, was very
large."
The study says that the inflation
of 1956 and 1957 was caused by a
"spectacular" capital goods boom
of 1955 which was not matched by
a rise in demand, so that business-
men found themselves faced with
increases in overhead costs which
raised unit costs and prices.
Market power of firms which ac-
count for the bulk of sales in some
industries — administered pricing —
"appears to have added substan-
tially to the inflation," says the
study, with some industries passing
on higher unit overhead costs in
the face of falling demand and the
failure of prices to fall during the
recession.
The price of services rose sub-
stantially to add to inflationary
pressures, the study found, with
no single explanation holding for
(Continued on Page 7)
of Freeman's position when a
search of strikebreaker-driven cars
for weapons led to the arrest of
nine strikebreakers. These were
later released on a technicality.
Wilson management has taken
the position in negotiations that it
will not discuss strike settlement
terms until the union agrees to its
contract proposals.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein
went to Albert Lea on the eve of
the lifting of martial law and ad-
dressed an overflow membership
meeting to urge restraint.
"I have urged and I urge again
today," Helstein said, "that the
Wilson employes and their fami-
lies and friends in Albert Lea
recognize that violence, however
strong the provocation, plays into
the hands of a company like this,
and may even be the purpose of
the provocation.
"It is possible that now, as in the
past, company spokesmen may is-
sue provocative and inflammatory
declarations. I hope the Wilson
employes will demonstrate their
discipline and restraint and refuse
to be intimidated or provoked."
The strike began Nov. 3 and in-
volves plants in Albert Lea, Cedar
Rapids, Iowa; Kansas City, Kan.;*
Memphis, Tenn.; ©maha, Neb., and
Los Angeles-. '
By Willard Shelton
The second session of the 86th Congress opens Jan. 6 for what is
expected to be a short and turbulent preliminary to the party nomi-
nating conventions in a presidential year.
The Republicans enter the session with Vice Pres. Nixon re-
lieved of competition from Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York^
apparently assured of the GOP^
nomination for the White House.
The massive power of Pres. Eisen-
hower's veto of Democratic domes-
tic programs remains a major fac-
tor in Republican calculations for
the coming campaign.
The Democrats, nominally the
majority party and nominally in
control of both House and Senate,
face a highly unsettled presidential
nomination race and a difficult
struggle to write an affirmative leg-
islative record on schools, health
programs, depressed areas, civil
rights, minimum wages, unemploy-
ment insurance and possible labor
legislation arising from the steel
strike -or as an aftermath of the
1959 Landrum-Griffin Act.
In these fields, action in the first
session of the 86th Congress was
effectively controlled by a Republi-
can-Southern Democratic coalition
that dominated the legislature with
the backing of the White House.
The AFL-CIO has proposed a
sweeping two-pronged legislative
program geared to winning enact-
ment in 1960 of "enlightened
public-interest legislation-' and to
blocking further "unfair, restric-
tive" labor legislation. '
The Democratic national con-
vention opens in Los Angeles on
July 11, the Republican convention
two weeks later in Chicago. Con-
gress is expected to adjourn prior
to the political conclaves.
Eisenhower is scheduled to set
the keynote for his eighth and last
year in office in his State of the
(Continued on Page 8)
Kerr Heads Armour
Study of Job Changes
Chicago — A program developed by two AFL-CIO unions and
Armour & Co. to deal with problems arising out of automation
and technological changes in the meatpacking industry has been
officially launched with the selection of University of California
Pres. Clark Kerr as impartial chairman of the new Automation
Fund Committee. ® :
Union Dues
Hit by New
Tax Ruling
For the first time in half a
century the Internal Revenue
Service has imposed limitations
on income tax deductions of un-
ion dues through adoption of
new regulations denounced by
the AFL-CIO as "absurd" and
"administratively unworkable,"
and an infringement on union
activities.
At the same time that it withdrew
the tax deductibility on tha^por-
tion" of union dues used for legis-
lative activity, the IRS eased re-
strictions on corporation expendi-
tures for "philosophic advertising"
that could influence the political
thinking of the nation.
Described as 'Clarification'
The IRS described the new regu-
lations as a "clarification" of its
rules on the deductibility of ex-
penses for lobbying, legislative ac-
tivity and political action — items
which an individual or a corpora-
tion cannot list as legitimate deduc-
tions for income tax purposes.
One section of the new "clarifi-
cation" regulations declares:
'Dues and other payments to
(Continued on Page 8)
Kerr, a nationally-known arbitra-
tor, was chosen by the eight other
members of the joint committee —
two each representing the Meat
Cutters and the Packinghouse
Workers and four Armour officials.
Contracts negotiated with the two
unions last August provide for com-
pany contributions of up to $500,-
000 to be used to study problems
arising out of modernization pro-
grams, for retraining employes and
for promoting employment oppor-
tunities elsewhere in the company
for workers displaced by techno-
logical changes.
In agreeing to head' the commit-
tee, Kerr declared:
"This demonstration of team-
work between Armour & Co.
and the two unions representing
its employes is a fine example
for management and labor
throughout the country, for it is
a joint effort to solve an inev-
itable problem — the effect of
scientific progress on both in-
dustry and on its workers, and
on the general public, for the
good of all.**
Declaring that "enlightened man-
agement and enlightened labor
unions can provide one of our
greatest protections for our system
of life," Kerr said "management
and labor must find a way to get
together to overcome obstacles in
the best interests of the nation."
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
The Only Answer
Steel Union to Complain
To FTC on Industry Ads
The Steelworkers will file a formal complaint with the Federal
Trade Commission charging the steel industry with "false and
fraudulent advertising" in connection with steel contract negotia-
tions, USWA Gen. Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg has announced.
Goldberg disclosed the union's plans during testimony before
a presidential Board of Inquiry. ^
He assailed two advertisements in
the industry's multi-million-dollar
propaganda barrage that deal with
alleged "typical examples" of how
the USWA is blocking manage-
ment's efforts to "improve effi-
ciency." The facts, Goldberg told
the board, were not accurately or
completely presented.
The first case was given by the
industry in this fashion:
First Case Knocked Down
"During World War II bus serv-
ice was sharply curtailed. To help
yth«*employes of one department in
| a steel mill, management agreed to
let them quit work a quarter of an
hour early to wash up and catch
their buses. This established a local
working condition.
"Although the war is long since
over and normal bus service re-
stored, the union insists that the
early quit time is an established
local working condition and must
be continued."
Goldberg said that Hill & Knowl-
ton, the Madison Ave. public re-
lations firm which prepares the in-
dustry's ads, identified the case as
one involving the Indiana Harbor
plant of Youngstewn Sheet & Tube
Co.
He said a check of the records
showed that the company has
never in fact requested elimina-
tion of the washup time.
A company official, Goldberg
continued, says he posed the ques-
tion mildly in 1950— at a time when
3.5 Million Jobless
Seen at End of ,'60
The year 1960 will be an-
other "hat-eating year" for
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
with unemployment expected
to remain above 3 million,
according to a forecast by 58
of the nation's top-level econ-
omists.
Business writer J. A. Liv r
ingston, in a syndicated news-
paper column, says the 58
economists predict unemploy-
ment of 3.5 million in De-
cember 1960. This means
the rate of unemployment at
the end of the new year will
be 5 percent or higher.
Livingston's forecasters see
a slight drop from the 3.7
million in November but no
expectancy of a drop below 3
million.
the contract permitted unilateral
company action in the abolition of
past practices— but concedes that
he never pressed it.
The industry ads described the
second "typical example" this way:
"A seven-man crew was em-
ployed on a particular furnace in
one of the steel companies. After
studying the workload of this crew,
the company transferred two of
these seven men to other jobs, leav-
ing five men to run the furnace.
Even then, none of these five men
had to perform as much as four
hours a day of actual work, al-
though each put in eight hours and
was paid for eight hours. More-
over all five men now received in-
centive pay they had not enjoyed
before.
"Thus, no one was thrown out of
work, no one was overworked, ev-
eryone benefited and two unneces-
sary jobs were eliminated. But the
union objected, a grievance was
filed and the arbitrator held that
this change was in violation of the
contract. The seven-man crew had
to be restored simply because the
use of seven men on this furnace
had become an established local
working condition."
In checking the case — which in-
volved the National Tube Div. of
U.S. Steel — Goldberg said the facts
which the company "forgot to
print" were these:
The number of workers on the
furnace ran as high as 14 before
the war but this was leveled off at
eight men during World War II.
After the war, when the company
reduced the force to seven, the un-
ion filed a grievance and then, in
discussions with management,
found merit in the elimination of
one man. 'The USWA agreed to
withdraw the grievance and nego-
tiated a written settlement with the
company on the seven-man crew.
Six months later, Goldberg
told the Board of Inquiry, the
company on its own initiative
reduced the crew to five men and
instituted the incentive system.
When the arbitrator directed the
company to restore the crew to
seven men, he made it plain that
the company had the right to
withdraw the incentive pay.
Subsequently, the USWA attor-
ney said, the union made a second
settlement with the company, which
is still in effect, in which the union
agreed to a six-man crew and the
company agreed to reinstitute the
incentive program.
Meany Renews Plea to Ike
To Act in Steel Stalemate
(Continued from Page 1)
a 4-cent-an-hour cost-of-living hike
due early in January under the
terms of the old contracts ordered
by Judge Herbert P. Sorg to remain
in force during the injunction
period.
Retroactivity Asked
The union also asked that con-
tract improvements be ordered ret-
roactive to Nov. 7 when the mills
reopened under the injunction.
Sorg set Jan. 4 for a hearing on the
petition.
Unable to appear before the
board because of a cold which
confined him to His home, Meany
sent a statement — dread into the
record by McDonald — in which
he declared that recommenda-
tions by the three members
"would help every American in
making up his mind on the is-
sues involved," and could head
off "further strife."
The USWA, he said, "has, times
without number, proposed to sub-
mit its case to a public review body
. . . and let that body state pub-
licly its opinion as to the Tightness
or wrongness of the union's case
and to recommend an area of
agreement. It has further guaran-
teed to negotiate a settlement with-
in the framework of such a recom-
mendation."
Meany said that from his own
experience, he judged this to be
"the action of individuals who are
deeply concerned with the public
welfare," and of a union which is
"not afraid to air its case publicly
and to let the public, through such
a board, render judgment." He
added pointedly:
"The steel companies have re-
fused every such proposal. It is
not my intention to impugn their
motives. The facts speak for them-
selves."
All-Out Support Pledged Union
Meany's statement warned that if
management forces a resumption of
the strike, the USWA will be but-
tressed by the all-out support of
the AFL CIO's 13.5 million mem-
bers — "no matter how long the dis-
pute, no matter how great the cost,
no matter how tough the battle
becomes."
He described the USWA struggle
as one "virtually without precedent
in the economic life of our coun-
try." The AFL-CIO, he said, views
the steel battle as "one phase of an
overall attack on the trade union
movement," adding that the USWA
members, in "fighting to preserve
the worker protections they have
achieved during the past 20 years,"
are waging "the battle of all Ameri-
can trade unionists."
Pledging labor's "complete,
wholehearted and enthusiastic
support" of the USWA, Meany
said that backing "was made
abundantly clear by the un-
precedented action" of the AFL-
CIO General Board which voted
in September to establish a Steel-
workers Defense Fund keyed to
contributions of an hour's pay
per member per month.
Since then, he said, labor has
responded with "substantial finan-
cial aid" in "virtually every town in
the U.S."
Both Meany and McDonald, em-
phasized the success of USWA ne-
gotiations which, in the past two
months, have produced contracts
with Kaiser Steel Corp., several
smaller steel firms, and the entire
copper, can and aluminum indus-
tries.
Inflation Claims Destroyed
These contracts, Meany said,
"destroy . . . the steel companies'
contention that the union's propo-
sals are inflationary and that the
present work rules must be scrapped
in the interest of greater profits."
He continued:
"No one can convince me that
the management of these companies
which have signed agreements are
less concerned with inflation than
the steel officials here; or that they
are soft-headed businessmen who
do not understand the meaning of
these contracts; or that they are not
every bit as concerned with the wel-
fare and future profits of their
shareholders. ^ .
". . . The difference is that the
companies and industries that have
signed have no intention of trying
to weaken and if possible destroy
this union."
McDonald told the board that,
in the negotiation of aluminum,
copper and can contracts, the
Canada's Price Spread
Probe Hits Food Chains
Ottawa, Ont. — Major food chain stores have used their "fantastic
profits" of the last decade to expand business instead of passing
lower costs on to the consumer in the form of price cuts, according
to the report of a Royal Commission on Price Spreads.
The commission was set up by an order-in-council on Dec. 10,
1957, and included among its mem-
bers Clive Kidd, research director
of the Steelworkers. It was directed
to inquire into the widening gap
between the .prices paid farmers
and the prices paid by consumers.
Its report, couched in official
language, showed that from 1949
to 1957 farm prices were virtu-
ally unchanged, the prices paid
by consumers jumped 20 percent
and the cost of marketing rose
84 percent.
The commission asserted that
major retailers have abandoned
competition in prices for competi-
tion in services, such as parking
lots, large bright stores, and "con-
tests, giveaways and gimmicks."
It recommended a permanent
Council on Prices, Productivity and
Income to protect the shopper;
higher excess profits taxes; a limi-
tation if necessary on spending for
' gimmicks and giveaways;" regular
investigation by the Combines In-
vestigation Commission into buying
and selling practices; and annual
publication of the financial state-
ments of iood companies.
work rules "didn't involve one
second of discussion." These in-
dustries agreed to continue on-
the-job protections for their em-
ployes.
McDonald also charged that the
steel companies "are out to destroy
the effectiveness of the United Steel-
workers of America as the reprer
sentative of the workers in the
industry."
Propaganda Drive Hit
He said that a multi-million-
dollar propaganda drive by the in-
dustry — in which the nation is
being flooded with newspaper ads
and colorful brochures on the so-
called "last offer" — is part of a
"vain" hope by management that
it "can deceive the workers into
voting against their union."
"They have set their propaganda
wheels in motion in their foolish at-
tempt to obtain a vote of no-confi-
dence in the union from the steel
workers," he continued, "and they
cannot permit a settlement, or even
good-faith bargaining, to interfere
with their election campaign."
Referring to Meany's proposal,
McDonald said that steel companies
"want no impartial inquiry into the
issues, they want no recommenda-
tions as to what the true public in-
terest is." That, he said, is the
reason why there has been no prog-
ress since the start of steel negotia-
tions last May.
"We are unable to find a way of
reaching agreement with employers
who are determined that there shall
be no agreement," the USWA presi-
dent told the board.
Gov. Clauson
Of Maine Dies
At Age 64
Augusta, Me. — Democratic Gov.
Clinton A. Clauson, first chief ex-
ecutive in this state to be elected
to a four-year term, died of a heart
attack Dec. 30.
The 64-year-old governor, elect-
ed in a Democratic sweep in 1958,
will be succeeded in the governor's
mansion by Republican John H.
Reed, president of the Maine Sen-
ate, since this state has no lieuten-
ant governor.
Under the Maine constitution,
Reed will serve only until January
1961, despite the fact that Clau-
son's term was to have run until
1963. The constitution provides
that a new governor must be elect-
ed in the biennial election next No-
vember.
Clauson's death and his succes-
sion by a Republican reduces the
number of governorships held by
Democrats to 34.
U.S. Still in World Market
Despite Business Moans
Commerce Dept. reports on imports and exports have tor-
pedoed "insidious" management propaganda that high wage
levels for American workers are pricing U.S.-made goods out
of the world market, Dir. Albert Whitehouse of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept. has charged.
Whitehouse accused steel management, in particular, of in-
dulging in "shameless scare propaganda" in the current steel
negotiations by warning that "foreign steelworkers . • • would
do their U.S. counterparts out of jobs."
The Commerce Dept., said the IUD director, has made a
"mockery" of the steel claims by reporting that the demand
for U.S. steel in world markets has recovered from the "de-
pressed levels of 1958," which resulted from the recession,
and has forecast a revival of steel exports "once the effects of
the strike are eliminated."
The same propaganda theme — that U.S. workers were
pricing themselves out of jobs — has been picked up by other
industries, Whitehouse said. He described this as a "fantastic
hoax," since the government agency reported that the actual
volume of exports has exceeded imports every year for the
past decade.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
41 'Cent Package:
Gulf Pact Completes
ILA Contract Sweep
The Longshoremen have completed their clean sweep of 1959
contract negotiations for 84,000 ILA members in ports all the way
from Portland, Me., to Galveston, Tex.
The successful end to bargaining sessions came when 24,000
ILA members won agreement from Gulf Coast water front em-
ployers on a new three-year con
Page Three
T
tract containing the same 41 -cent
hourly economic package gained
earlier by 60,000 dock workers in
Atlantic Coast ports.
Settlement was reached with
holdout employers in Galveston and
Houston, Tex., and in Mobile, Ala.,
24 hours after the union scored a
dramatic breakthrough in zero-hour
negotiations with employers in New
Orleans. Agreement came just
three days before a Taft-Hartley in-
junction was scheduled to expire
Dec. 27.
The southern employers signed
the master agreement only after
ILA members, by a resounding
20-1 margin, had voted to re-
ject a 2 2 -cent hourly wage pack-
age billed by management as its
"last offer." The balloting con-
ducted by the National Labor
Relations Board was the last step
m T-H machinery before dis-
solution of the injunction.
The three-year settlement, nego-
tiated by ILA Pres. Capt William
V. Bradley in a series of confer-
ences in the southern ports, gives
dock workers a 12-cent hourly hike
retroactive to Oct. 1, plus an addi-
tional 5-cent boost in each of the
remaining two ^ears of the contract.
Another 19 cents an hour will go
to the union's welfare and pension
funds.
When the final 5-cent raise is
reached, ILA members in Atlantic
ports will receive $3.02 an hour
and the southern wage will be
$2.86, reflecting a traditional differ-
entiair
The question of crew sizes — an
important consideration in Atlantic
ports — did not crop up ki Gulf
Coast negotiations because automa-
tion has not yet arrived on the
southern docks.
This problem was resolved in the
East Coast ports by an agreement
to maintain the 20-man work
crews in handling cargo containers,
coupled with a premium to com-
pensate ILA members for wages
lost where the containers are loaded
away from the docks.
Meat Cutters Ask Ban
On Alien Strikebreakers
The Meat Cutters have taken to Federal District Court in Wash-
ington, D. C, a plea that Mexicans be barred from crossing the
border daily to work at the strikebound Peyton Packing Co. plant
in El Paso, Tex.
The union requested a court order to force Atty.-Gen. William P.
Rogers and Immigration Commis-'^
sioner Joseph M. Swing to stop
some 150 to 250 aliens from com-
muting daily between Juarez, Mex.,
and the Peyton plant
The Meat Cutters referred the
court to the finding made last Octo-
ber by Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-
ell that "the admission of any aliens
to the United States for employ-
ment at the Peyton Packing Co. at
El Paso, Tex., during the strike now
in progress will adversely affect the
wages and working conditions of
workers in the United States simi-
larly situated."
Rogers and Swing interpreted this
to apply only to new applications
for work permits specifying a job
offer at Peyton, the union charged,
thus leaving untouched alien strike-
breakers already working there.
The union seeks to have each
alien crossing the border viewed
as a "new entrant," thus making
the Mitchell ruling apply against
the strikebreakers.
In the petition, the Meat Cutters
listed the names and many of the
Juarez addresses of some 90 of the
commuting strikebreakers.
The union said the test case could
affect an estimated 50,000 to 100,-
000 Mexican commuters who, it
charged, are used to maintain low
wages in border cities.
The Meat Cutters won a Na-
tional Labor Relations Board elec-
tion at the Peyton plant in Septem-
ber 1958. Management refused to
bargain and discriminated against
union members, the union charges,
and on Mar. 2, 1959, about 250
workers finally struck.
In a case now pending be-
fore the NLRB, a trial examiner
made sweeping recommendations
that Peyton be held guilty of "inter-
fering with, restraining and coerc-
ing employes" in violation of their
right to'organize freely and bargain
collectively.
ARTIST'S SKETCH portrays the medical center being built by the Longshoremen and the New York
Shipping Association on its site at 17th St. and the Avenue of the Americas.
Ending of Lamb Grading
Protested by Meat Cutters
The Meat Cutters have protested Agriculture Sec. Ezra
Taft Benson's suspension of lamb grading and urged that he
reverse his order "so that consumer interests will not be
sacrificed."
In a letter to Benson, Meat Cutters' Pres. Thomas J. Lloyd
and Sec.-Treas. Patrick E. Gorman pointed out that grading
is an 'important aid to the housewife in determining what
quality meat she is getting for her money
The reason given for the suspension, they noted, was that
"various segments of industry could not agree on standards
for grading. Nowhere in the release is there any indication
that consumer interests were considered in the decision."
If the industry could not agree on new standards, the union
leaders told Benson, present standards should have been
maintained or new "effective and meaningful" standards meet-
ing the objective of fairness should have been raised.
NMU Gains
4.5% Hike
On Reopener
New York — Some 25,000 mem
bers of the Maritime Union em
ployed by 36 passenger and dry
cargo steamship companies operat-
ing out of Atlantic and Gulf ports
received a 4.5 percent wage in
crease effective Jan. 1.
The pay hike also applies to over-
time and will mean an increase of
about $26 a month for able sea-
men, the union said. Union records
show that ABs, who have been get-
ting $353.27 a month for a 40-hour
week, work about 90 hours over-
time a month, and indicate that
their average earnings will rise from
$650 to $675 a month.
The agreement was reached un-
der a wage-reopening clause in the
contract between the NMU and the
companies represented by the
American Merchant Marine Insti-
tute.
Although no date has been set,
wage reopening talks will begin
soon between the NMU and 39
tanker operators with 207 ships
manned by about 10,000 union
members. Also due soon is bar-
gaining between the union and six
collier operators employing 1,000
NMU members.
TV A Raises
Pay of 8,357
By 4.4 Percent
Knoxville, Tenn. — Some 8,357
employes of the Tennessee Valley
Authority will receive pay increases
averaging 4.4 percent under a new
agreement between TVA manage-
ment and the Tennessee Valley
Trades & Labor Council.
TVA Gen. Manager A. J. Wag-
ner pointed out that under its basic
authorization law TVA must pay
the prevailing rates of pay for simi-
lar work in the vicinity.
He said the new rates reflect
increases negotiated privately
between unions and employers
in the region in the past 12
months.
The new rates for 3,718 hourly-
paid construction workers range
from $1.95 for laborers to. $3.80
for bricklayers. The 4,639 operat-
ing, and maintenance employes paid
on an annual rate will receive in-
creases of $245 for metal trades
journeymen, $235 for carpenters
and $195 for laborers.
IBEW Aide Co-Head
Of Apprentice Meet
San Francisco — A joint labor-
management committee has elected
Webb Green, president of Los
Angeles Local 11, Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers, as chairman
of the California Conference on
Apprenticeship to be held here in
May.
'Runaway' Organization
Hurt by Greek Union
New York — The Pan-Hellenic Seamen's Federation (Greek) is
"doing a job of union-busting" in the campaign of the Intl. Trans-
portworkers Federation to give the crews of ships owned in the
United States the benefits of union organization and contracts, Pres.
Joseph Curran of the Maritime Union has charged.
Curran's stand was given in a'^~
signed article in his union's official
publication, the Pilot, on the re-
cent meeting of the 1TF Fair Prac-
tices Committee in Antwerp, Bel-
gium. The 1TF previously had
given American unions jurisdiction
over "runaway" ships owned in
the U.S. — often by operators of
Greek birth or descent — and regis-
tered under one of the "flags of
convenience."
"The Greek union had been
going on the mistaken notion
that as long as the owners were
of Greek ancestry and so long
as they were, willing to hire
Greek crews," Curran wrote,
"their union would sign agree-
ments with them.
"The American maritime unions,
at previous meetings, had made it
quite clear that it was our inten-
tion to oppose the continued or-
ganization and signing of collective
agreements by the Greek union
with companies which were clearly
American in their operations and
whose ships were runaways from
the American flag."
Curran pointed out that the 1TF
resolution gave jurisdiction over
ships in international trade to un-
ions of countries in which "actual
economic control" is vested. The
Greek union, he contended, con-
tinued to "make deals with run-
away shipowners, regardless of
what country the ownership and
control of the ship is in, merely on
the basis of Greek ancestry."
"The agreements made by the
Green union with what actually
are American companies," he
continued, "can only hinder us
and the ITF in efforts to protect
the standards and security of
seamen."
Curran and Pres. Paul Hall of
the Seafarers are the co-chairmen
of the new jointly-sponsored un-
ion, the Intl. Maritime Worker*
Union, which was set up to or-
ganize among the crews of "run-
away" ships.
They told the Antwerp meeting
that a check of 57 of the nearly
250 ships the Greek union
claimed jurisdiction over shows* at
least 42 are "clearly" vessels that
have "run away" from the Ameri-
can flag and are within the juris-
diction of U.S. unions.
They also submitted a list of
more than 700 ships over which
the U.S. government claims "effec-
tive control." The classification,
they said, determines that the "ac-
tual ownership" of specific ships
lies in this country.
ACWA to Ask First
Pay Hike Since '36
New York — The Clothing Workers will seek the first general
wage increase in four years for some 125,000 members employed
in the men's clothing industry when negotiations open up about
Feb. 1.
ACWA Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky said the union will seek a
package boost of 25 cents an hour,'*
which he called "entirely reason-
able" in view of the industry's sound
condition. Part of the package
would go in a direct increase of the
present average wage of $2.12 an
hour. The remainder, he said, will
be sought for improvements in
health, hospitalization and pension
programs and to institute a sever-
ance pay plan. •
Workers in the industry re-
ceived their last pay increase, of
12.5 cents an hour, in 1956—
the only wage raise they have
received in seven years.
The union for years has tempered
its bargaining demands to the con-
dition of the industry and has not
sought wage increases when it felt
higher production costs would cut
into sales.
Potofsky said the wage demand
will be pressed this year because of
increased productivity in the indus-
try, the market prospects, a short-
age of labor in most branches of
the trade, and the higher cost of liv-
ing for the workers. Some 125,000
employes, he said, are now pro-
ducing as much men's clothing as
1.50,000 workers did in the period
immediately following World War
II.
Third Convention
Proceedings on Sale
Bound copies of the printed
proceedings of the AFL-
CIO's third constitutional
convention held in San Fran-
cisco in September are now
available from the AFL-CIO.
The proceedings can be
ordered from the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Publications, 815
Sixteenth Street, N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C, for $2
for the two-volume set.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
Brainwashing Fails
THE STEEL INDUSTRY'S costly and misleading campaign to
persuade the Steelworkers to accept its completely unjustified
and substandard "last offer" is doomed to failure.
The brainwashing campaign will fail because it is based on a
hoary and ancient falsehood that trade union leaders engaged in
collective bargaining do not represent the wishes and desires of
their members.
This "labor bosses" theory — resurrected from the grave of the
Smith-Connally Act wartime strike votes, the Taft-Hartley Act
union-shop votes and the "last offer" balloting under the national
emergency section of Taft-Hartley — has been so thoroughly dis-
credited that its introduction in the steel strike exposes the neander-
thal approach of steel management,
The postcard balloting being conducted by the Steelworkers
shows clearly that the determination of the half million Steel-
workers that kept them on the picket lines for five months of
payless paydays is unshaken; that they believe in the justice of
their cause and that the steel industry's offer is in fact a last insult.
The southern ports dock strike proved forcibly that manage-
ment's "last offer" under the Taft-Hartley procedure is almost in*
evitably unacceptable. The dock management, faced with a 20-
to-i vote against the offer, then decided the time had come to
talk contract in earnest, and a settlement was achieved quickly.
Having rejected all other proposals for settling the steel strike,
the deluge of "no" ballots certain to bury the steel industry's offer
may help bring the industry to its bargaining senses and bring a
sincere effort to find the basis for a fair and equitable settlement
rather than continuation of a phony propaganda campaign based
on a shattered falsehood.
* * *
IN SHARP CONTRAST to the steel holdouts' attempt to de-
stroy the Steelworkers union is the enlightened, modern approach
exemplified by the Kaiser and Armour agreements creating special
committees to resolve difficult problems stemming from automa-
tion and technological change.
A nine-man committee, three from the union, three from man-
agement and three labor relations experts — George W. Taylor,
David Cole and John Dunlop — will seek to resolve problems arising
between the USWA and Kaiser Steel in terms of equitably sharing
the results of new technology between management, the workers
and the public.
A similar nine-man committee of four unionists, four manage-
ment men and industrial relations expert Clark Kerr will make
recommendations on how to set up the special automation fund
in the Armour contract, that technological progress can be achieved
and shared fairly by all groups involved.
This is a pattern of labor-management relations far removed
from the "labor bosses" theme dominating the steel dispute or
the gratuitous insults hurled at rail workers by a railroad industry
intent on weakening the effectiveness of some of the oldest unions
in America.
The example of labor relations at Kaiser and Armour holds out
real promise for the new decade of the Sixties, the promise of in-
dustrial peace and plenty equitably shared.
This promise can be fulfilled when steel and railroads and other
industries in the union-Wrecking campaign fully comprehend that
we are living in the second half of the Twentieth Century — not
the Nineteenth.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, January 2, 1960
No. 1
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Reception Committee
DRAWN F(3C THE
AFL-CIO news
How to Do it Yourself:
Defense Against Gyp Schemes
Outlined for the Consumer
The following is excerpted from an address,
"Direct Selling Practices/' by Daniel J. Murphy,
assistant director of the Bureau of Litigation of
the Federal Trade Commission, at the FTC's
recent Conference on Public Deception.
THERE IS IN REALITY a contest between
the salesman and his advertising, oral and
written, on one side, and the household consumer
on the other. But it is a one-sided contest.
Business plans the organized strategy and con-
ducts the well-thought-out sales campaigns.
The consumer, on the other hand, is unor-
ganized and often apathetic about the abuses
heaped upon him. It is to protect this huge
ill-informed consumer army that federal regu-
lations have been developed.
Watch out for the salesman who calls himself
some fancy name, other than a salesman, and tells
you that you have been selected to purchase new
and revolutionary cooking utensils that will pro-
tect your health, save you on fuel and food bills,
and that such utensils will come to you directly
from the factory.
Be alert to the salesman claiming to be a repre-
sentative of the city government or some civic
organization who claims his only desire is to make
a fire prevention talk or demonstration but whose
real purpose is to sell fire alarm systems. He in-
forms you your home has been especially selected
for demonstration purposes. Once in the home,
he exhibits newspaper clippings and^horror pic-
tures of fire fatalities calculated to arouse parental
emotions and representing this is what the pros-
pective purchaser may expect if he does not pur-
chase the product.
DONT BE CONVINCED by the salesman
who claims your home has been selected as a
model or demonstration home to advertise and
sell his products, whether it is siding material, a
fancy roof job, an additional porch, a carport, etc.,
and that you will receive a special price and com-
missions or fees on other sales made in your
vicinity.
Be very careful about signing contracts and
promissory notes on purchasing products sold
from door-to-door. Sometimes it is represented
that you are signing documents for credit check-
ing when in fact you are signing promissory notes,
sometimes in blank, or other evidence of debt.
These negotiable promissory notes are sub-
sequently transferred to bona fide purchasers for
v alue without notice who then demand payment
free from the agreements and obligations existing
between the seller and the buyer.
Be on guard against representatives of fur-
nace manufacturers whose sales crews mas-
querade as city or utility inspectors and under
the guise of a safety campaign deliberately
sabotage a householder's furnace in order to
make a sale of a new furnace or extensive re-
pairs on the old one. Many times the sales-*
men would dismantle a furnace and then refuse
to reassemble the unit, misrepresenting that
such a service would involve great danger of
fire, explosion or asphyxiation of the house-
holder and her family.
The encyclopedia salesman is a frequent caller.
Don't be persuaded by representations that his
books are the most authoritative, most complete,
contain more articles, or are the official reference
work of government departments, educational in-
stitutions or public libraries. Don't be misled by
the production of a letter from sonny's teacher
which indicates the purchase of the encyclopedia
is necessary for sonny's education — a little payola
may be involved.
Don't be taken in by the phony promotional
telephone quiz. Your phone may ring and after
the preliminary representations you may be asked
a very elementary question, such as, ' Who was
buried in Grant's tomb?". After exercising your
profound erudition, you are advised you have
won a' contest and will be entitled to a very
special deal. These promotional schemes are not
bona fide quizzes or contests, but are merely
gimmicks to sell merchandise.
Be on guard for the distributors of photograph
albums, certificates for enlargement of snapshots
or negatives of snapshots who want to beautify
and color frame Johnny's picture or make a hand-
some enlargement in oil painted by an artist, simi-
lar to the sample displayed. This salesman fails
to disclose to customers at the time the enlarge-
ments are ordered that the finished enlargement,
when delivered, will be so shaped that it can be
used only in specially designed odd-styled frames
that cannot be obtained in stores accessible to the
purchasing public and that it will be difficult, if not
impossible, to obtain frames to properly fit the
enlargements from any source other than the sales-
man's company.
My final admonition — always read the fine
print and be skeptical of the fast-talking salesman
who offers j^qu a special deal.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
Pa*« Fivm
IT'S YOU*
WASHIN GTON
GOV. ROCKEFELLER has raised issues likely to remain a
major factor in the 1960 presidential race despite his sudden with-
drawal from a contest with Vice Pres. Nixon for the Republican
nomination. The able and attractive governor of New York was
courteous and unembittered in his statement announcing his in-
tentions but he was also extremely frank.
Hi> travels around the country, he said, had "made it clear to
me . . . that the great majority of those who will control the
Republican convention stand opposed to any contest for the
nomination."
The "great majority of those who will control the convention**
obviously includes the professional GOP officeholders and the
state chairmen and national committeemen who dominate the
selection of delegates. It presumably also includes the White
House, now a vast organization with connections in every state
and with possession of a Chief Executive who will be running a
"peace crusade" for a large part of the campaign period.
It has been clear on Rockefeller's trips through the country,
particularly in the Midwest, that he was facing something of a
freeze-out from the party professionals.
He could scarcely avoid the conclusion that only the most "mas-
sive struggle" on his part could upset the Nixon bandwagon. He
did not choose to make that struggle.
* * *
EQUALLY SIGNIFICANT was Rockefeller's candid statement
that he was "seriously concerned about the future vigor and pur-
pose^ of his party — and it is here that his declaration seems cer-
tain to play a continuing part in the election campaign clear until
November.
Out in the field, the governor had already indicated clear reser-
vations about the vitality and competence of Mr. Eisenhower's
budget-dominated Administration. Some doubts on which he
touched lightly were stated very emphatically in a whole series of
expert reports from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
These reports included sharp criticisms of national policies
that subordinated national defense to budget considerations and
failed to stimulate a swift and purposeful expansion of the
economy.
In his statement he reiterated his doubts. No other meaning
could be attached to his phrases about 'invigorating" the Republi-
can Party and "clarifying its purposes," about the dangers of try-
ing to meet the challenges of our age "with the devices and pro-
grams of the past."
He would not accept a vice presidential nomination — and he
must have been thinking of Nixon as the presidential* candidate —
because "this would clearly run counter to all the considerations
inspiring" his withdrawal from a contest with Nixon.
* * *
ROCKEFELLER'S DOUBTS about the wisdom of the Eisen-
hower Administration's major policies, indeed, may have put him
in an untenable position to seek his party's nomination as the
President's successor.
He could not create issues separating him from Nixon without
appearing to attack Eisenhower directly. Yet the Republican
nominee cannot fail to run on the record of Eisenhower's years.
As an honorable man, with apparently very deep beliefs about
the obligations of public service, he could not choose to keep silent
on issues about which he maintained convictions.
Rockefeller's supporters may well be correct in seeing for him a
future role of great importance to the nation. The leadership he
gives his party in New York and the influence he seeks to exert
elsewhere will be watched with profound interest.
And the presidential race, when the nominees of the parties are
selected next July, will be illuminating only if it centers precisely
on the issues he has emphasized as of major importance — the role
of the United States at a time when the future holds much of both
hope and menace.
SEN. ESTES KEFAUVER (D-Tenn.), left, chairman of the sub-
committee investigating the drug industry, declared that hearings
so far held show that profits are about twice what they are in
average industries. Sen. Alexander Wiley (R-Wis.), right, ranking
GOP subcommittee member, said also on Washington Reports to
the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program, that the sub-
committee plans to investigate antibiotics, vitamins and tranquilizers.
Everybody Else Cooperates :
Doctor Group Boycotts Labor's
Mass Polio Inoculation Drive
Anderson, Ind. — The Madison County Medical Society has boycotted — and thus far blocked — a
labor-sponsored mass polio inoculation drive in this county where four children were stricken with
paralytic polio in 1959.
Initiated by the Community Services Committee of the Madison County AFL-CIO, the cam-
paign drew county-wide backing from such organizations as the Chamber of Commerce and Junior
Chamber, Red Cross, National^*
Foundation, American Legion, and
Madison County Civil Defense
The doctors' group — the only or-
ganization in the county to oppose
the drive to make Salk vaccine
available to the public at a nominal
cost — suddenly refused to provide
the medical personnel for the pro-
gram. It has never spelled out its
reason.
The doctors have refused pleas
from State Health Commissioner
Dr. A. C. Offut and the Anderson
Council of Social Agencies to
reconsider their decision, and
have persisted in their opposition
despite the fact that die Indiana
State Medical Society has ap-
proved mass polio vaccine drives.
The local program was proposed
in September, on the heels of a
successful campaign conducted by
the AFL-CIO Community Services
Committee in Evansviile, in which
26,000 persons received immuniza-
tion against the disease.
To the accompaniment of en-
thusiastic support from Anderson's
two daily newspapers, the program
quickly gained momentum and
within a matter of weeks was trans-
formed into a community-wide
effort, highlighted by these develop-
ments:
• A local banker agreed to head
the finance committee and con-
tacted township trustees to insure
free vaccinations for indigent fami-
lies.
• The Junior Chamber of Com-
merce secured the cooperation of a
local drug firm, which agreed to
furnish and store the vaccine and
other supplies, and to supply the
Salk vaccine at a cost of approxi-
mately 60 cents a shot.
• The police chief agreed to
oversee a special transportation
division throughout the county for
shuttling families to and from a
central location.
• The civil defense unit an-
nounced it would set up a massive
radio communication system to
Washington Reports:
300th PINT OF BLOOD since 1929 is donated to Red Cross blood
program by Leo Polk (center}, business representative for Clothing
Workers in Detroit. Of the 300 pints of blood donater by the 51-
year-old unionist, 154 were given since the start of World War II.
With ACWA business representative are Mrs. William J. Turner
(left), volunteer chairman of Detroit's Red Cross blood program,
and Dr. Harold Raynor, the blood bank's medical director.
keep in constant contact with the
volunteer drivers.
• Members of the Communica-
tions Workers offered their time,
and the telephone company offered
equipment, for special telephone
circuits to the inoculation center.
• A transit company agreed to
run free busses from communities
20 miles away.
• Representatives of the Red
Cross and the local chapter of the
polio foundation accepted respon-
sibility for registration and set up
pre-registration booths in all banks.
• Auto Workers Local 662 vol-
unteered its huge gymnasium-audi-
torium and clubrooms as the im-
munization center.
• The Madison County Council
of American Legion Posts offered
to provide entertainment so that
families would have diversion while
waiting for the inoculations.
• A union-sponsored survey of
major industrial plants in Anderson
revealed that at least 1 1 ,000 people
wanted the shots. Of this number
6,600 had not received even their
first polio inoculation.
Despite the overwhelming com-
munity acceptance, the medical so-
ciety notified 100 civic leaders
heading up the polio program that
the doctors had voted against par-
ticipating.
Undaunted, the organization has
now turned to Dr. LeRoy Burney,
U. S. Surgeon-General, the Ameri-
can Medical Association,' and the
National Foundation requesting
their help in securing doctors to
carry out the program that every-
one in Anderson— except the medi-
cal society — wants.
Public Demand Led to Senate Probe
Of Drug Industry, Kefauver Says
PUBLIC DEMAND led to congressional in-
vestigation of the drug industry, Sen. Estes
Kefauver (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Anti-
Monopoly subcommittee, declared on Washing-
ton Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public serv-
ice program, heard on 300 radio stations:
"We received more letters from people com-
plaining about the high costs of drugs and de-
manding an investigation than we got on any
other subject," he declared.
"The hearings have shown that a good many
of the needy folks in America are unable to
afford the drugs," Sen. Alexander Wiley (R-Wis.)
ranking GOP member of the subcommittee, as-
serted on the same program.
Wiley said that the subcommittee is expected
to go into the whole field of drugs. First hear-
ings were only on drugs needed by people
suffering from arthritis. He said the subcom-
mittee may next investigate antibiotics, vita-
mins and tranquilizers.
Both stressed the fact that the big drug com-
panies influenced doctors to prescribe the drugs
they made, using specific trade names.
"It should be pointed out that all these have
to meet U.S. Pharmacopoeia standards," Kefauver
said. "I think one of the problems is to bring
about confidence on the part of the physician
that he can prescribe safely by a generic name.
Then the patient can get lower-priced drugs."
Kefauver said that the hearings had disclosed
that the ethical drug industry which sells its prod-
ucts only through prescription, "is the highest
profit industry in the U.S. The profits run on
net worth at about 22 percent per annum after
taxes. The average for all manufacturing indus-
try is 11 percent/'
Radio Series Starts
The first in the 1960 series of Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service educational program, has been heard
on 300 radio stations all over the nation.
The program was broadcast on 260 stations
last year, and 200 the previous year.
Check your local station for the time
Washington Reports may be heard. If the
program is not on one of your local stations, ,
contact AFL-CIO Radio, Washington 6,
D. C.
Members of Congress from both parties
will be interviewed each week on major is-,
sues before Congress.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, I960
Catholic Economists Brand
R- T- W 'Unjust, Immoral 9
Laws which outlaw the union shop were described as "unjust and immoral" by speakers at the 18th
annual meeting of the Catholic Economic ^Association.
Rev. Jerome L. Toner, O.S.B., president of the association and dean of industrial relations at St
Martin's College, wound up a two-day discussion of so-called "right-to-work" laws by declaring that
"natural law, moral order and the common good demand and command that 4 free riders' support and
join the union that represents'^
them."
SUPPORT FOR STEELWORKERS' Defense Fund was urged by
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler in address to financial
officers of 80 affiliates attending special session of AFL-CIO Con-
ference of Secretary-Treasurers. Here Schnitzler, right, confers
with Toney Gallo, secretary-treasurer of Cement Workers and chair-
man of conference. *
Recession Could Ruin
15 State UC Programs
Ann Arbor, Mich. — Unemployment compensation programs in
15 key industrial states face the grim prospect of being unable to
weather another business recession in 1961 or 1962, a University P^Jj? ^^ETg?™!™*
of Michigan economist has warned.
Prof. William Haber, a member and former chairman of the
Federal Advisory Council on Em-^
ployment Security, called for a
In papers presented to the con-
ference, a . group of prominent
economists — both clergy and lay-
were in general agreement that
"right-to^work" laws hamper col-
lective bargaining, limit the free-
dom of employers as well as unions,
and lead to industrial strife rather
than labor-management coopera-
tion. ,
"A paper presented by a man-
agement consultant, George R.
Donahue, described "right-to-
work" laws as "a product of neg-
ative thinking through which
employers delude themselves into
believing that in a modern com-
plex society they can . • . return
to unregulated individualism."
He pointed out that only 600 of
.some 600,000 new employes hired
by General Motors between 1950
and 1955 under a modified union
shop contract had exercised their
right to resign from the union.
Donahue suggested that employ-
ers concern themselves with "devel-
oping a concept of a community
of labor, democratically partici-
"yigorous reappraisal" of the en-
tire unemployment insurance sys-
tem to prevent such a disaster.
The 15 states — which account
for more than 40 percent of all
the workers in the nation cover-
ed by jobless insurance — are
Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware,
Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Mich-
igan, Minnesota, New Jersey,
Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, Tennessee and
West Virginia.
Haber, addressing a social secur-
ity conference sponsored jointly by
the University of Michigan, Michi-
gan State University, and Wayne
State University, said there is an
"urgent need ... to enact basic
improvements in the federal-state
unemployment insurance system
before another recession." He ad-
ded that "it would be naive to
Court Upholds
Conviction of
'Jimmy' James
Chicago— The U.S. Court of Ap-
peals, here has upheld the convic-
tion of Eugene C. (Jimmy) James
for evading $562,982 in income
taxes during a four-year period in
which he was secretary-treasurer of
the Laundry Workers — a union ex-
pelled from the AFL-CIO.
The three-judge court, in a unan-
imous decision, rejected James' de-
fense that the money on which he
didn't pay taxes was not subject to
income taxes because he had em-
bezzled it from the union's health
and welfare fund. The court de-
clared that "an unlawful gain, as
well as a lawful one, constitutes
taxable income . . ."
James was sentenced last May 11
to three years in prison on the tax
evasion charge. He has been free
on bond pending appeal and his at-
torneys indicated that he will carry
his appeal to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
Meanwhile, New Jersey is seek-
ing to extradite James to face state
charges of embezzlement fr.om the
health and welfare fund. James,
has been fighting extradition anu 4
currently is appealing the extradi-
tion order to the Illinois State Su-
preme Court.
assume" that the nation is immune
from an economic setback.
He called for these improve-
ments in the jobless pay system:
• Provision of at least 26 weeks
of unemployment insurance bene-
fits for all workers covered by the
program.
• Extension of benefits for em-
ployes with long, stable employ-
ment records on a "sliding scale"
to as much as 52 weeks.
• Payment of public assistance
to wage earners who exhaust un-
employment insurance benefits
without finding work. t
• Creation of a federal re-in-
surance program to help heavily
industrialized states deal with un-
usually high unemployment insur-
ance costs during national reces-
sions.
In many states, Haber said, un-
employment insurance reserve
funds have been "severely reduced"
as a result of the 1957-58 recession.
"The persistence of unemploy-*
ment at an abnormally high rate
of well over 5 percent of the labor
force is further reducing reserves
and creating financial problems for
the present re-insurance program,"
he declared.
Long-term unemployment af-
fected more people in 1958-59
than in previous post-war reces-
sions and recovery periods.
Nearly 750,000 wage earners
have been out of work for 15
weeks or more. Over 400,000
have been jobless for more than
six months.
"Our present legislation," Haber
continued, "is not adequate to deal
with long-term unemployment, nor
can unemployment insurance be
the sole means of dealing with all
kinds of joblessness."
Carter Will Edit
Brewery Worker
Cincinnati — Jim Carter, for the
past decade an associate editor of
he Railway Clerk, has been named
editor of the Brewery Worker ef-
fective Jan. 1.
The Brewery Worker and the
Railway Clerk are the official publi-
cations of their respective unions.
Carter will succeed Emil Bein-
ecke, editor of the Brewery Worker
for the past 21 years.
workers, leading to a just wage, a
continuous relationship in the
everyday life of the factory and a
sharing in the just rewards of their
joint productivity."
Rev. Leo C. Brown, S. J., of St.
Louis University, while describing
"work" laws as "ill-advised," ex-
pressed the view that the impor-
tance of the issue has been "grossly
exaggerated." He said that, except
in fields where turnover is unusu-
ally high, unions which are strong
enough to negotiate a union shop
"can survive without a union shop."
He was answered by Brother
Cornelius Justin, F.S.C., of Man-
hattan College, who told the confer-
ence that "the tragedy of 'right-to-
work' laws is that it is the workers
who most need unions because of
low wages, racial discrimination
and poor working conditions who
have been most battered by these
laws."
Citing heavy losses in member-
ship and plants under contract by
the textile and hosiery workers in
states which have outlawed the un-
ion shop, he warned that 4i right-to-
work" laws might become the "um-
brella" which protects racket ele-
ments in the garment industry.
Brother Justin pointed out that
the "zealous people so anxious to
'protect' the rights of workers"
through R-T-W laws have shown
"no interest in minimum wage
laws, child labor legislation, de-
cent workmen's compensation or
unemployment benefits."
Father Toner, in his presiden-
tial address to the luncheon con-
cluding the conference, charged
that "work" laws "legalize and pro-
tect the disenfranchised deserters
of democracy." He said the worker
who does not join the union which
bargains for him "deserts" the
principles of democracy.
Weaken Unions
Discussing the effect of "work"
laws on unions, Father Toner said
they have been "successful" in their
objective to weaken unions.
"Not even time can tell how
much unions have been weakened
because no one will ever know how
they would have grown, developed
and improved if there had been no
R-T-W' laws," he said.
Strong and responsible unions,
he concluded, are "absolutely neces-
sary to increase profits, advance
the welfare of all workers, pro-
mote the common good, increase .
justice and preserve and perfect
our free enterprise, democratic way
of life."
Vermont Group Girds
To Battle R-T-W Drive
Burlington, Vt. — Religious and political leaders have joined
forces here to establish the Vermont Council for Industrial Peace
to oppose efforts of right-wing forces to saddle a so-called "right-
to-work' law on labor-management- relations in this state.
Among the founders of the committee are Bishop Robert F.
Joyce of the Roman Catholic Dio-$*
eese of Burlington; Bishop Vedder
Van Dyck of the Vermont Epis-
copal Diocese; Rabbi Max B. Wall
of Burlington; and Lt. Gov. Robert
S. Babcock.
'The major purpose of this
committee," the council said in a
ACWA Sponsors New
Co-op Housing Project
New York — The Clothing Workers will undertake sponsorship of
the Warbasse cooperative housing project facing the Atlantic Ocean
in Brooklyn, Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky and Vice Pres. Louis Hollan-
der announced here.
To be known as Amalgamated Town, it will provide apartments
for some 2,300 families at an aver-^
age rental of about $23 per room
per month. A revised plan, just
approved by the city's Board of
Estimate, requires further ap-
proval by the City Planning Com-
mission.
The project was initiated by
the United Housing Foundation.
The three years required for ap-
proval was cited by UHF Pres.
Abraham £. Kazan at the recent
UHF annual meeting as an ex-
ample of how bureaucracy and
red tape are needlessly blocking
construction of co-op housing.
The ACW's sponsorship of the
project makes it the union's fourth
major housing venture in New
York. In 1927 it sponsored the
country's first low-cost housing co-
op under the Limited Dividend
Companies', the 1,145-unit Amal-
gamated Housing Housing Corp.
facing Van Cortlandt Park. Three
years later it sponsored Amalga-
mated Dwellings, with 236 units
on Manhattan's Lower East Side,
and after World War II built the
807-unit Hillman Houses on the
East Side near the East River.
"This development gives us the
opportunity to round out our hous-
ing program begun more than 30
years ago," said Potofsky. "The
Amalgamated and the UHF have
decisively demonstrated that low-
cost cooperative developments,
sponsored by the labor movement,
built soundly and managed wisely,
have done and can do more to fill
the demand for low-income and
middle-income housing than any
other agency or institution.
In his report to the annual
meeting, Kazan disclosed that
UHF had set up a fund to pro-
vide long-term loans to families
which can pay about 50 percent
of the required equity.
UHF also reported that the 1,-
728-unit Seward Park project
would be completed next spring
and the 2,820-unit Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers' Houses (Penn Sta-
tion South) would start next sum-
mer. ~
Future plans for four projects
totaling 10,700 ' units will cost
about $150 million, UHF added.
Joining other union officials on
the UHF board of* directors were
•Jack Sheinkman of the Clothing
Workers and Pres. David Sullivan
of Building Service Employes' Lo-
cal 32-B.
Textile Local Creates
College Scholarship
Herrin, 111. — The 300-member
Local 1374 of the Textile Workers
Union of America has created a
scholarship at Southern Illinois
University for sons and daughters
of the membership.
The local, which represents
workers at the Allen Industries
here, voted $1,000 for a one-year
scholarship to the SIU Foundation.
formal statement of organization,
"is to oppose laws which would
make the union shop illegal.
"We believe the union shop is
beneficial to the process of col-
lective bargaining, to employers
and employes.
"However, we do not take the
liberty even to recommend that
employers and unions negotiate
union shop agreements. We
simply maintain that employers
and employes be left free to ne-
gotiate on this matter under a
free system of collective bargain-
ing in a free society."
The Vermont council will work
closely with the National Council
for Industrial Peace, headed by
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt and former
Sen. Herbert H. Lehman (D-N. Y.),
which last year mobilized public
support to defeat compulsory open-
shop legislation in five out of six
states where it appeared on the
ballot.
ITF Executive
Names Curran
To Top Body
The Intl. Transport workers Fed-
eration has named Joseph Curran,
president of the Maritime Union,
to membership on its executive
committee as part of a drive to
coordinate organizing activities
among ''runaway" ships.
Curran is the first representative
of American seamen to serve on
the top governing body of the anti-
Communist transport federation,
which represents 6.5 million mem-
bers of 210 land, sea and air un-
ions in 66 countries outside the
Iron Curtain.
Curran was nominated for the
post by Paul Hall, president of the
Seafarers. *
There is one other U.S. repre-
sentative on the ITF executive
committee — A. E. Lyon, secretary-
treasurer of the Railway Labor Exr
ecutives Association.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
Page Sevea
Economic Review Warns:
Lag in Growth Rate
Portent of Trouble
"America needs a much faster rate of economic growth than in
the past six years" or the nation will face increasing troubles at
home and abroad, the AFL-CIO has warned.
The national economy has been in "a shocking state of stagnation"
since 1953, declared Labor's Economic Revtew, a monthly publica-
tion of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Re
search. Pres. Eisenhower took office
on Jan. 20, 1953.
"The goal of America's economic
policy should be an average yearly
growth of total national production
of about 5 percent a year — ap-
proximately twice the pace of the
past 6 years," the Review said.
The step-up in fhe growth rate
is needed, the Review added, "to
provide the extra margin for ade-
quate national defense, public
services for a growing popula-
tion, social and economic adjust-
ments to automation and rapid
technological change, the elimi-
nation of poverty in the U.S. and
economic and technical aid for
the less-developed uncommitted
nations of Asia, Africa and Latin
America."
The publication proposed a series
of actions designed to speed up
economic growth. These included:
• "Balanced growth of 5 per-
cent a year and full employment
should be established as the goal of
national economic policy."
• The Federal Reserve Act
should be amended to include con-
sumer, small business and labor
representation in the federal bank-
ing system and to end the Adminis-
tration's tight-money and high-
interest rate policies.
• The tax structure should be
overhauled, closing loopholes of
privilege for wealthy families and
corporations and reducing the bur-
den on low- ana* middle-income
families.
• A better balance should be
sought between the economy's abil-
ity to produce and to consume,
chiefly through improved wages and
salaries and special measures such
as federal wage-hour coverage for
millions more workers and a $1.25-
an-hour minimum.
In addition, the publication pro-
Boggs to Train
Foreign Unionists
Emanuel Boggs, a former vice
president of the United Textile
Workers, has been named assistant
director of the foreign trade union
. training program of American Uni-
versity's School of International
Service.
The program is a new service of
the university which, under con-
tract with the U.S. Dept. of Labor
and the Intl. Cooperation Admin-
istration, provides training in the
democratic) practices of American
unions for foreign trade union
leaders.
While with the UTW, Boggs su-
pervised union activities in the
Virginia-North Carolina area. From
1947 .to 1952, he served as an
international representative of the
Textile Workers Union of America.
posed affirmative action to provide
an adequate national defense, fed-
eral aid for distressed areas, a fed-
eral program to meet urban prob-
lems, improvements in the jobless
pay system and the social security
system, standby anti-recession
measures, economic and technical
aid for less-developed areas, and a
steadily-reduced workweek.
• A comprehensive analysis of
the price structure was asked with
attention focused on administered-
price areas and low-productivity
parts of the economy.
In describing the economic slow-
down as "dangerous," the Review
declared:
"Government policies have con-
tributed to two recessions, rising
so-called 'normal* unemployment
and a shocking slowdown of eco-
nomic growth between 1953 and
1959.
"Total national production,
which rose by an average yearly
rate of 4.6 percent in 1947-53 has
been cut almost in half, to an aver-
age annual pace of 2.5 percent in
1953-59."
Since the nation's population has
continued to grow by about 1.8
percent a year, the cutback means
real national production per capita
has slowed to an average annual
increase of seven-tenths of 1 per-
cent in the past six years compared
to the 2.8 percent annual rise in
the six years previous, the Review
added.
"This rate of economic growth
in the United States has been slower
than in almost every other indus-
trial country in the world and
merely about one-third the pace
achieved by the Soviet Union,
whose total production of all goods
and services has increased about
7 percent a year in recent years,"
it said.
The Review said "a shocking
state of stagnation has character-
ized the performance of the na-
tional economy in recent years."
Pinning the blame, it added:
"The government's fight against
creeping price increases, with the
weapons of economy-wide restric-
tive economic policies — such as
tight money, high interest rates and
attempts to balance the federal
budget at relatively low levels of
output and incomes — has contrib-
uted to cutting the pace of national
economic progress almost in half."
This, said the Review, has been
the cost: a trend toward relative
economic and military weakness
compared to the Soviet Union;
"normal" unemployment of 5.5
percent in 1959 compared to 3.1
percent for 1951-53; idle plants
and machines; starved public serv-
ices; higher industrial prices; a loss
in government revenues and
troubled labor-management rela-
tions.
LARGEST GREETING CARD ever handled by the Detroit post
office brought the best wishes of more than 300 postal workers to
James H. Rademacher, Jr., president of the local branch of the
Letter Carriers. Arthur Wolin, left, and Edward A. Gollmus, right,
present the 3 -feet high, 4-feet long greeting to Rademacher. It
came enclosed in a custom-made envelope, carrying 100 penny
stamps.
Slowdown in Economy
Laid to Ike 's Policies
(Continued from Page 1)
the diverse group of items in this
category.
The study proposed policies to
"reconcile economic growth at
levels close to our potential with
reasonable stability in the price
level" with the following objectives
in mind:
• Reducing the instability in
the economic system because it
adds to inflation and retards
growth.
• Taking "beginning steps" to-
ward making the private organiza-
tions which exercise market power
"more responsive to the public in-
terest."
• Increasing the supply of serv-
ices by the federal government,
services "which threaten to con-
tinue increasing in price for a long
time to come."
To achieve economic growth the
staff study proposed a growth in
demand; federal aid to education
"to assure that our entire labor
force develops its potential fully;"
Labor News Unit
Formed in Indiana
Indianapolis, Ind. — About 50
labor editors organized the Indiana
Labor Press Conference at a meet-
ing at the University of Indiana
branch here.
They adopted a constitution and
bylaws for the organization, which
will operate as part of the Indiana
AFL-CIO, and authorized Dallas
Sells, president of the state body,
to appoint temporary officers who
will serve until another meeting
next spring. George Guernsey,
AFL-CIO assistant director of edu-
cation, attended the organization
meeting.
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
550
1947 '48' '49 '50
Source; Council of Economic Advisors
300
'58 '59 *
* AFL-CIO estimate
improvement in the institutions of
collective bargaining to strengthen
the processes "which facilitate the
introduction of new techniques into
American industry and which as-
sure that the social cost of techno-
logical change are borne equi-
tably;" and continued high support
for research and development ac-
tivities.
Job Handbook
Shows Shifts
In Old Pattern
The 1960s will bring a rapid
growth in white-collar jobs, a mod-
erately rapid rise in service and
skilled workers, a slower growth in
semi-skilled work and little change
in unskilled jobs, according to the
Labor Dept.'s new job guide.
"Factory workers will decline
absolutely as well as proportion-
ately," said Ewan Clagiie, commis-
sioner of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, as the guide was released
at a press conference.
The new 800-page edition of-
the Occupational Outlook Hand-
book reviews job opportunities
in 600 different occupations
found in 30 major industries.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
said the handbook makes it clear
"the coming labor force of this
country is going to change dramati-
cally."
The handbook describes, by oc-
cupation, the job outlook, the na-
ture of the work, qualifications
needed, working conditions and
earnings.
It includes new and fast-grow-
ing occupations such as missile
and spacecraft jobs, program-
ing for electronic "brains" and
technical jobs allied to the work
of engineers and scientists.
The handbook said the coming
decade also will see a continuing
decline in the number of farmers
and farm laborers.
Job counselors and young people
are expected to be its chief users.
The Handbook, available from
the Superintendent of Documents,
Washington 25, D. C, costs $4.25.
It will be reprinted as a series of
89 pamphlets early in 1960.
Business Tax Favors
Seen Recession Cause
A reduction in the corporate tax rate to spur capital goods in-
vestment without increasing consumer purchasing power could lead
to "frequently recurring and possibly steeper recessions" in the fu-
ture, an AFL-CIO economist declared.
Nathaniel Goldfinger, assistant director of research for the
AFL-CIO, told the House Ways^
& Means Committee that "top
priority in a much-needed revision
of the federal tax structure should
be given to eliminating loopholes
of special tax privileges for upper-
income families" and to reducing
the tax burden on low and middle-
income families.
The big job now is to increase
the demand for goods and serv-
ices and "not to stimulate a
steeper rise in new plant and
equipment that would probably
be followed by a steep decline
of national economic activities,"
Goldfinger told the committee.
Evidence indicates that the flow
of cash to corporations will be
sufficient to finance as much as 90
to 95 percent of rising capital
goods outlays in the years imme-
diately ahead, he said, with about
two-thirds of these funds coming
from depreciation allowances.
Immediate reduction of the cor-
porate income tax rate, he declared,
is not needed to provide a faster
rate of economic growth. If the
pace of economic growth is to be
stepped up to an annual average
of about 5 percent a year, said
Goldfinger, the four-year recur-
rence of recessions must be elimi-
nated or "substantially minimized."
A step-up in the rate of capital
investment at present, he said,
'would , probably lead to steeper
capital goods . booms and deeper
recessions. . . . This is not the
road to a more rapid rate of eco-
nomic growth — it could be, in the
second half of the Twentieth Cen-
tury, the road to disastrous conse-
quences."
4 Unions Win
At Paper Mill
In N. Carolina
Plymouth, N. C— Four AFL-
CIO unions, operating as two sep-
arate bargaining units, won a Na-
tional Labor Relations Board elec-
tion by a one-sided vote of 737 to
2 after two decades of bargaining
relationships with the North Caro-
lina Pulp Co. here.
The company is connected with
the Weyerhaeuser timber and paper
interests, The election was held on
management ^petition in order to
define the bargaining units follow-
ing a dispute with the unions over
the status of several so-called "su-
pervisory" employes.
Involved in the vote were the
Pulp, Sulphite & Paper Mill
Workers, Papermakers and Pa-
perworkers, Operating Engineers
and Intl. Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers,
The company's pulp mill, the
original operation, was organized
during a joint campaign in 1937.
Organization of a paper mill was
accomplished when it went into op-
eration in 1940.
Management recognized the un-
ions without the formality of an
NLRB election, and over the past
20 years has bargained with the
1BEW on behalf of maintenance
electricians and with the other
three unions as a separate unit cov-
ering all production and other main-
tenance operations.
National
Production
Deficit
GROSS
NATIONAL
PRODUCT
IN 1958
DOLLARS
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1960
'60 Election Key as Congress Reopens
Labor Asks Action on
Unfinished Business
(Continued from Page 1)
Union message on Jan. 7. He is
expected to follow quickly with the
annual Budget Message and his
Economic Report and to add spe-
cial messages dealing with various
foreign and domestic issues includ-
ing space programs, in which the
American lag behind the Soviet
Union is considered politically and
m , tarily hazardous.
The first major drive of the
Democratic leadership is reported
to be aimed at a school aid bill,
with the hope of clearing this long-
controversial issue before a pos-
sibly disruptive battle on civil
rights is faced in mid-February.
The House Education Commit-
tee and a Senate subcommittee
have cleared different school - aid
bills as compromises from the Mur-
ray-Metcalf $11.4 billion bill en-
dorsed last year by the AFL-CIO.
Efforts have been made since ad-
journment of the first session last
September to compromise differ-
ences with the Eisenhower Admin-
istration so as to avert a 1960 veto.
The President's emphasis on bud-
get-balancing and his distaste for
federal programs designed to meet
once-local issues have blocked di-
rect federal assistance to hard-
pressed schools for the past seven
years.
The inevitable civil rights debate
in February may split the Demo-
cratic party.
The 1957 "right-to-vote" act, de-
scribed as a "meaningful" measure
and the first civil rights bill passed
since Civil War "reconstruction"
days, has been partially frustrated
in application. The Supreme Court
has agreed to review a case testing
the powers of the Civil Rights Com-
mission to implement the law.
Both liberal Democrats and
the Eisenhower Administration
have proposed more extensive
measures now pending in com-
mittee. The 1957 act cleared the
Senate without provoking a
southern Democratic filibuster
but the fate of additional meas-
ures is uncertain.
The Forand bill, to provide hos-
pital and health benefits to social
security beneficiaries, is expected to
come up in the tax-writing House
Ways and Means Committee.
Eisenhower's secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare, Arthur S.
Flemming, is reported to have
urged "liberalization" of social se-
curity on the White House.
Minimum wage bills and meas-
ures to improve insurance payments
to the jobless are likely to reach the
floor of one or both houses of Con-
gress. The Senate-passed depressed-
areas bill, comparable to the meas-
ure vetoed by Eisenhower in 1958,
may be forced out of the House
Rules Committee, where it is now
blocked by the coalition of Repub-
licans* and conservative southern
Democrats.
On all these issues as well as in
dealing with Eisenhower's "peace
crusade," involving world tours and
upcoming "summit" meetings' with
Soviet leaders, the presidential elec-
tion of next November will be a
major consideration.
Way Cleared for Nixon
Rockefeller's unexpected with-
drawal from the Republican race,
which the New York governor at-
tributed to the opposition of GOP
"leaders," left Nixon at least tem-
porarily an unchallenged path to
the GOP nomination. Democrats
promptly charged that Nixon was
"boss-chosen."
On the Democratic side, the Sen-
ate on the eve of the 1960 race
held at least four major candidates
— Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.),
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (Minn.),
Sen. Stuart Symington (Mo.) and
the party's floor leader, Sen. Lyn-
don Johnson (Tex.).
Humphrey formally announced
his candidacy Dec. 30, declaring
he would enter primary contests in
Wisconsin, Oregon, South Dakota
and the District of Columbia. He
conceded his quest for the nomi-
nation would be "an uphill fight."
Sources close to Kennedy indicated
an announcement from the Mas-
sachusetts senator would be forth-
coming Jan. 2.
In addition, Adlai E. Stevenson
remained a strong although per-
sistently "non - active" candidate.
The 1952 and 1956 Democratic
nominee, who won his second nom-
ination over the public opposition
of former Pres. Harry S. Truman,
is considered to have substantial
residual if not active support in
many states.
New Income Tax Rule
Cuts Dues Exemption
(Continued from Page 1)
an organization, such as a labor
union or a trade association, are
deductible in full unless a sub-
stantial part of the organization's
activities is lobbying." •
The regulation adds that if a
"substantial" part of an organiza-
tion's activities consists of political
or lobbying activity, a union mem-
ber will be permitted to deduct his
dues "only for such portion of such
dues and other payments as the tax-
payer can clearly establish as at-
tributable" to non-political activity.
Under previous income tax rules,
a union member was permitted to
deduct the full amount of his dues
and assessments paid to a union.
Since 1909, the AFL-CIO
told the IRS at hearings prior to
adoption of the new regulations,
Congress has specifically ex-
empted labor unions from income
taxes. "This exemption," the
federation pointed out, "has
been a complete exemption and
is not conditioned upon, or in
any manner tied to, the absten-
tion from political or legislative
activity.
"It is therefore not a proper con-
cern of the Internal Revenue Serv-
ice whether or to what extent labor
unions engage in legislative or po-
litical activities. To the extent that
Congress has deemed it desirable to
restrict union activities it has done
so directly ..."
The AFL-CIO was also sharply
critical of the relaxation of regula-
tions on business activity, which the
IRS granted by declaring that ads
which presented views on eco-
nomic, financial, social or other
subjects were exempt as long as
they did not relate to a specific
measure up for legislative consid-
eration.
This change, said the AFL-
CIO brief filed with the JRS,
"will let loose upon the general
public an avalanche of philo-
sophic advertising whose only
purpose will be to influence the
legislative and political thinking
of the general public." In addi-
tion, the federation asserted, it
will "unquestionably cost the
IRS more revenue dollars in a
year" than will be brought in
through the union dues regula-
tion over a period of several
years.
NATION'S UNEMPLOYED are prime targets for phony "work-at-home" schemes and misleading
job listings by employment agencies, AFL-CIO Research Dir. Stanley Ruttenberg told Conference on
Public Deception sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. Ruttenberg is shown addressing rep-
resentatives of participating civic, consumer, labor, farm and business organizations.
Unions Face
New Attacks,
IUD Warned
Philadelphia — The trade union
movement will probably face a
drive for even more repressive la-
bor legislation during the coming
session of Congress, AFL-CIO
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemil-
ler warned a legislative conference
sponsored here by the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept.
Some 35 legislative representa-
tives of 17 international unions at-
tended the meeting, over which
IUD Dir. Al Whitehouse presided.
In discussing plans for the com-
ing congressional session, Biemiller
warned against regarding the House
as "liberal" in make-up.
William Phillips, administra-
tive aide to Rep. George M.
Rhodes (D-Pa.) and staff direc-
tor of the Democratic House
Study Committee, said that lib-
eral representatives hope to con-
centrate on work, rather than
the issuing of statements, during
the coming session.
Kenneth Meiklejohn, IUD legis-
lative consultant, reported on pos-
sible amendments to the Taft-
Hartley Act. Ralph Showalter of
the Auto Workers outlined the role
of the union legislative representa-
tive. William Allen of the Rubber
Workers told how the IUD can
help implement the AFL-CIO leg-
islative program. Al Barkan, as-
sistant director of COPE, told of
the impact of congressional actions
on elections.
Several speakers discussed the
legislative outlook generally.
Among them were Legislative Rep.
Kenneth Peterson of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, civil
rights; AFL-CIO Social Security
Dir. Nelson Cruikshank, AFL-CIO
Legislative Rep. Hy Bookbinder-
and IUD Social Security Dir.
Leonard Lesser, social security;
Sol Barkin, research director of
the Textile Workers Union of
America, area redevelopment; IUD
Education Dir. Russell Allen, edu-
cation, and TWUA Legislative Dir.
John Edelman, minimum wage.
Histadrut, U.S. Union
Co-Sponsor Stadium
New York— The new $250,000
sports stadium to be erected in
Nazareth and named for AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany is being jointly
co-sponsored by Histadrut — the Is-
raeli Federation of Labor — and
Pocketbook Workers Local 1.
The co-sponsorship of the proj-
ect was noted by J. Avrech, Hista-
drut representative in the U.S.,
who spoke at a dinner here given
by Local 1 at which a copy of the
plaque that will mark the sports
stadium was presented to Meany.
FTC Consumer Parley
Groups Seek New Role
The Federal Trade Commission can expect continued support —
and prodding — from consumer groups which participated m its
recent experimental Conference on Public Deception.
Many delegates agreed to meet again, probably in mid-February,
and consider setting up a citizens' committee to work with the FTC
in stamping out fraudulent and de" J
"the philosophy that the consumer
cannot make wise choices for him-
self without government per-
suasion."
Earlier Kintner had declared that
"we at the commission believe that
the combination of hard-hitting en-
forcement plus the encouragement
of public skepticism toward spuri-
ous bargains will go far toward
achieving an honest market place."
09-s-i
ceptive sales schemes and to seek
additional legislation where needed.
FTC Chairman Earl W. Kint-
ner told the delegates that there
were no plans for an official
consumers' advisory group to
the agency but that he would
welcome the views of consumer
and other interested organiza-
tions. The conference, he said,
was called to enlist the help of
voluntary organizations in edu-
cating the public to the "trick-
ery that besets them" in the mar-
ket place.
At least a hint of Administration
doubts about the desirability of the
FTC's attempt to bring its cam-
paign against deceptive advertising
and selling directly to the public
was given by Raymond J. Saulnier,
chairman of the President's Coun-
cil of Economic Advisers.
Saulnier startled the delegates by
declaring, in an address to the open-
ing session that he disagrees with
Former Members Rap
FCC Failure on Duties
Two former Federal Communications Commission members have
sharply criticized the FCC for having failed in its responsibility to
compel radio and television broadcasters to operate in the public
interest.
Former Chairman James La wrence Fly and former Com-
missioner Clifford J. Durr ex-^T^
pressed their views in a special re-
port issued by the Fund for the
Republic. They were joined in their
criticism of the FCC by Benedict
P. Cottone, former commission
general counsel.
Defending the government agen-
cy was Rosel Hyde, a present FCC
member, who contended the pub-
lic is laboring under a "misunder-
standing" about what the commis-
sion can do.
Fly accused the "dominant
advertisers, through their agen-
cies," of exerting "tremendous
power over programming," and
declared that the networks have
been "forced to yield a lot of
control" to these sponsors for
"economic considerations."
Durr charged that the FCC has
not effectively checked the per-
formance of stations against the
promises made by operators at the
time they applied for licenses. As
a result, he said, any relationship
oeiween promises and performance
is "coincidental." He added that
"the man who gets the station is
often the man who is willing to
stretch the truth the farthest."
Durr referred to unfulfilled
promises about the time that would
be made available for public serv-
ice programs, including equal time
for discussion of questions of ma*-
jor interest.
Cottone's criticism pointed up
the fact that in its 25-year his-
tory, the commission has re-
voked only three broadcasting
licenses — in circumstances in-
volving "flagrant" violations. The
reluctance to move against sta-
tions, he said, reflects the atti-
tude of the entire broadcasting
industry, which has "opposed
any examination of program-
ming."
In defense of the agency on
which he currently serves, Hyde
said the public "may be expecting
things from us" which the com-
mission cannot do in the light of
"the law and its limitations."
Smashing Victory in Steel !
Union Win s on Rules & Pay
-<s>
Vol. y
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Saturday, January 9, 1960 i7«*^»i7 2
Second Clan Pottage Paid at Washington, D. C.
JUBILANT STEEL WORKERS mob USWA Pres. David J. McDonald at Buffalo rally celebrat-
ing settlement of marathon steel negotiations. Steel peace terms gave union sweeping victory on
both work rules and economic front. Buffalo meeting had been slated to show workers' determi-
nation to reject industry's so-called 'last offer" under Taft-Hartley injunction, was turned into vic-
tory rally after word of new contract agreement.
Second Session Opens:
Civil Rights Battle
Looms in Congress
By Willard Shelton
The civil rights issue was scheduled as the first major subject
for action as the second session of the 86th Congress convened in
an atmosphere heavy with the excitement of a presidential election
year.
Major conflicts also were expected on school aid, social security,
depressed areas, minimum wages, ^
fiscal and monetary policy, mutual
security and farm legislation.
A group of House Democratic
liberals, numbering more than 100
members, adopted a seven - point
legislative program and offered co-
operation and assistance to the par-
ty leadership in producing its en-
actment.
Settlement of the steel strike
by the Steelworkers' smashing
victory made major new labor
legislation unlikely. The desire
of Congress to adjourn early, in
time for the Democratic nomi-
nating convention opening July
11, may cause the shelving of
most proposals.
Faced with an immediate warn-
(Continued on page 4)
Labor to Spell Out
Program for America
An intensive drive for congressional enactment of "a positive
program for America" will be launched by the AFL-CIO at a three-
day legislative conference opening in Washington Jan. 11.
More than 600 officers of national and international unions, state
bodies and larger city central bodies are expected to attend the
sessions at the Willard Hotel. ^
The conference will be opened
.by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
who will outline the wide-ranging
program of "enlightened public-
interest legislation'' recommended
by the federation s third constitu-
tional convention in San Francisco
in September 1959.
Also scheduled to appear on
the program on Monday morning
were House Majority Leader
John W. McCormack (D-Mass.)
and Minority Leader Charles A.
Halleck (R-Ind.), who will brief
delegates on the legislative pro-
grams of their respective parties
during the second session of the
86th Congress.
On Monday afternoon, delegates
will attend seven regional sessions
to hear talks by members of Con-
(Continued on page 4)
Ike's Major
Goals Peace,
Tight Budget
Pres. Eisenhower, in his eighth
and last State of the Union mes-
sage, told the 86th Congress that
his last 12 months in office will
be devoted to the building of
peace and a continuation of the
budget-balancing efforts that have
marked his Administration.
Much of the Administration
program remains to be spelled
out in the coming Budget Message,
the Economic Report and an ex-
pected series of special messages.
The President made it plain he
would not make increases in the
Administration's proposals in the
social welfare field.
Faced for the sixth successive
year with a Congress controlled by
the opposition party — longer than
any other President in history — Ei-
senhower expressed the hope that
there would be no "wrangling" be-
tween the Legislative and Execu-
tive Departments during the coming
year.
The first session of the 86th Con-
gress in 1959 was marked by the
sharpest clashes between Eisenhow-
er and legislators since he took of-
fice. The President increasingly
used his veto power, or threats of
vetoes, to block social legislation
which went beyond Administration
requests.
Balanced Budget
The President said that he would
introduce a balanced $79.8 billion
budget for fiscal 1961. At the same
time he disclosed the nation would
wind up fiscal 1960 with a $200
million surplus "despite the unset-
(Continued on page 4)
New Pact Climaxes
6-Month Struggle
By Gene Zack
The Steelworkers — scoring a sweeping victory on both work rules
and economic issues despite the most intensive management on-
slaught in modern times — have reached agreement with the na-
tion's giant steel producers on a new contract.
The agreement climaxed the longest steel dispute in the nation's
history.
The 30-month agreement preserves on-the-job rights contained
in previous contracts; gives 500,000 USWA members an economic
package estimated by the industry at 41.34 cents an hour; provides
for a fully non-contributory insurance program; and guarantees each
retiring worker a $1,500 lump-sum payment in addition to his
regular pension.
USWA Pres. David J. McDonald jubilantly hailed the agreement
which, he said, leaves the union "sound, safe and secure" and as-
sures "peace, prosperity and lasting happiness" for the long-
embattled steel workers.
Wage-Policy Group Thunders Approval,
The union's 171-memher Wage Policy. Committee, thundering
approval of the pact, said that on the key issue of work rules the
USWA "emerged completely victorious" — a victory, it added, which
was won "not only for the Steelworkers but for all of American
labor."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany called the agreement proof that
"collective bargaining still works," and attributed the union's vic-
tory to the fact that officers and members "stood together in the
face of tremendous odds in the very best traditions of the trade
union movement."
Paving the way for peace were settlements previously gained by
the USWA in free collective bargaining late in 1959 with Kaiser
Steel Corp., and the aluminum, can and copper industries. These
agreements set the pattern for the final steel contract.
The settlement was announced at a precedent-setting press con-
ference by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, who credited Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon with having brought about the agreement after
repeated "mediation discussions" with both sides. Mitchell said
the Vice President made "a recommendation for settlement" which
was "accepted voluntarily by both parties."
Flanking Mitchell as he faced reporters and newsreel cameramen
in a crowded conference room at Washington's Sheraton-Carlton
Hotel were McDonald and U.S. Steel's R. Conrad Cooper, chief
negotiator for the industry.
No Immediate Price Hike Seen
There were strong indications that steel prices would not be im-
mediately raised, despite management propaganda throughout the
marathon negotiations that anything more than its "last offer" — 40
percent below the final settlement — would be "inflationary."
The settlement — on the 58th day of a Taft-Hartley injunction
which halted the USWA's record 116-day strike last November —
came as the National Labor Relations Board was preparing to poll
the half-million steelworkers on managements so-called "last offer,"
which would have gutted the work rules and given workers only 24
cents an hour spread over three years.
An unoilieial tabulation by the union indicated that 95 percent of
the workers would turn down the industry proposal. Mitchell in
(Continued on Page 3)
Meany Renews Call for
Industrial Peace Meet
In the wake of the steel strike settlement, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany called anew for a White House conference of labor and man-
agement leaders to work on "guidelines" for industrial peace.
The idea of a top-level meeting, originally proposed by Meany
in a letter to Pres. Eisenhower last November, received strong
endorsement from Eisenhower in§>
his State of the Union Message to
the opening of the second session
of the 86th Congress.
Eisenhower, who asked Congress
for new labor legislation in I960,
said that as consequence of the
long steel strike he intends "to
encourage regular discussions be-
tween management and labor out-
side ,the bargaining table."
In a statement hailing the steel
agreement, reached only after the
longest steel shutdown in the na-
tion's history, Meany declared;
"It (the settlement) demon-
strates the need for management
and labor developing guidelines
for just and harmonious labor-
management relations to avoid
a repetition of strife as long and
costly as this* struggle."
Labor and management in
America, the AFL-CIO president
continued, "have more in common
than we have in conflict — a fact
all too often overlooked."
Meany said the broad areas of
(Continued on Page 3)
jPage Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JAM \RY 9, 1960
PARTICIPATION IN U.S. trade fairs abroad won special Labor Dept. awards for three trade union-
ists. Shown at presentation ceremonies are (left to right) John E. Cullerton, president of Hotel
Service Workers Local 593; Henry Wiens, Labor Dept.'s deputy assistant secretary for international
affairs, who presented awards; Miss Lisbeth Bamberger, AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security; Joaquin
A. Bazan, chief of the Division of Intl. Trade Fairs; Harry H. Pollak, AFL-CIO international repre-
sentative; and Thomas M. Holleran, chief of the Labor Dept.'s .trade union programs. Cullerton
and Pollak attended U.S. exhibition in Madras, Miss Bamberger attended trade fair in East Berlin.
Hardships of 116-Day Steel Strike
Eased by Support of All Unions
The courage and determination of half a mil-
lion Steelworkers, backed by the full strength of
united labor, provided the margin of victory in the
union's marathon struggle for economic and on-
the-job justice.
For 116 days USWA members and their fami-
lies tightened their belts and faced the hardships
resulting from wages lost during the longest steel
strike in the nation's history — an industry-forced
shutdown which stretched from July to November.
And as a Taft-Hartley injunction neared its
Jan. 26 expiration date, they stood ready to make
it plain again that they would never submit to
industry's efforts to scuttle work-rule safeguards,
deny workers a fair share of the wealth they help
produce, and turn the Steelworkers — in the
USWA's own phrase — into a "company union."
Insulating them against the full economic
impact of the strike was a broadly-based pro-
gram to provide any assistance needed to head
off disaster.
Undergirding the USWA's own efforts at all
levels of the union, the labor movement mobilized
its support by creating an unprecedented nation-
wide defense fund. Established by the unanimous
vote of the AFL-CIO General Board — compris-
ing the top officers of all affiliates — the fund was
geared to contributions of an hour's pay per
month from each of the 13.5 million AFL-CIO
members.
Into this fund, and through direct contributions
at the local level, affiliates and rank-and-file un-
ionists poured millions of dollars to support the
Steelworkers in a dramatic demonstration of
labor's acknowledgment that the USWA, as AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany had declared, was wag-
ing "the struggle of the entire labor movement."
The stories of USWA families who were fed,
clothed and housed through this determined
trade union undertaking are legion:
• A Steelworker in Birmingham, Ala., who
had worked only eight days in the previous year
because of recession-induced layoffs, received
costly medical assistance for his blind, spastic
child as well as food, drugs and help with his
utility bills and mortgage payments.
• A Sharon, Pa., father of four, who was
stricken with infantile paralysis in the third week
of the strike, has been saved from eviction from
his house trailer, along with his family, when
back payments were made by the union. • - <
• For a USWA member in South Bend, Ind.,
his eight children were supplied with urgently-
needed shoes so they could attend school when
it reopened in the fall, and in addition, received
food and clothing assistance to safeguard the chil-
dren from hardship.
• A Youngstown, O., father of five, declared
ineligible for county welfare because he had been
moved to the Ohio community by his company
only four months before the strike, received hun-
dreds of dollars worth of food and rent, plus an
additional $100 to help return to Kentucky the
body of a brother who died during the strike.
In city after city, the common denominator
linking these stories was the determination of the
USWA that its members and their families —
already sacrificing so much in their fight for dig-
nity on the job and economic justice in their
pay envelopes — should survive the industry-
forced strike without total disaster.
Through these efforts, the union was able
to claim not a single eviction, not a single fore-
closure, not a single case of a family going
without food, shelter, heat or utilities among
the 500,000 members who endured the four-
month shutdown before being forced back to
the mills by the Taft-Hartley injunction.
In a statement hailing the settlement achieved
through the collective bargaining process, Meany
paid special tribute to the solidarity of the Steel-
workers during the protracted struggle.
"The officers and members of the United Steel-
workers of America," Meany declared, "merit the
congratulations of all trade unionists.
"They stood together in the face of tremendous
odds in the very best traditions of the trade union
movement.
"That's why they won."
Steel Union Contract
Gains Spelled Out
Here are the highlights of the 30-month contract won by
the Steelworkers in negotiations with the basic steel industry:
WAGES — There is no direct wage increase the first year,
but the change to a non-contributory insurance program (de-
scribed below) will give workers an immediate 7-cent hourly
increase in take-home pay.
Effective Dec. 1, I960, and again on Oct. 1, 1961, workers
will receive a basic 7-cent increase. In addition, the contract
provides for a 0.2-cent-per-hour hike in each job classifica-
tion with the first raise, and a 0.1-cent-per-hour hike with
the second. Including the impact on incentives this will mean
a 9.4-cent rise at the end of this year and 8.6 cents in the
fall of 1961.
COST-OF-LIVING — The existing 1 7-cent hourly cost-of-
living adjustment is continued in effect, and workers can re-
ceive up to 6 cents an hour more over the life of the contract,
depending on movement of the Labor Dept/s Consumer Price
Index.
WORK RULES — Present clauses in the agreements dealing
with local working conditions are retained intact. Three addi-
tions have been made:
1. Settlement of a grievance prior to arbitration shall not
constitute a precedent in the settlement of other grievances.
2. "Each party shall as a matter of policy encourage the
prompt settlement of problems in this area by mutual agree-
ment at the local level."
3. A joint committee, headed by a neutral chairman, will
be created in each company to study local working conditions
and to make recommendations before Nov. 30, 1960.
HUMAN RELATIONS RESEARCH COMMITTEE— A
joint committee will be set up to recommend "guides for the
determination of equitable wage and benefit adjustment," and
to study job classifications, wage incentives, seniority, medical
care and other overall problems.
INSURANCE — In addition to making the insurance pro-
gram non-contributory, the contract improves it by lifting the
scale of life insurance to a maximum of $6,500 per employe,
raising the maximum weekly sickness and accident benefit to
$68, and continuing company contributions for an employe
for six months after layoff.
PENSIONS — The settlement establishes a special retirement
payment equal to 13 weeks of pay — estimated at $1,500 — in
addition to the monthly pension.
Pension benefits are increased to $2.50 per month for each
year of service prior to Jan. 1, 1960, and $2.60 for each year
thereafter, and the limitation on the years of service credited
towards pensions is raised from 30 to 35 years. In addition,
full retirement pensions will be paid employes 55 or over
with 20 years of service who lose their jobs because of perma-
nent shutdown, layoff or sickness.
Present retirees receive an immediate $5 pension hike.
SUPPLEMENTAL UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS — The
present SUB program is renewed on the same basis as before,
with the companies putting in 3 cents an hour plus I.O.U.'s of
another 2 cents an hour. This restores the contingent liability
— composed of industry's I.O.U.'s paid in over recent years — •
which the industry had canceled July 14.
UNION SECURITY— The union shop is continued under
the new contract, and in all "right-to-work" states (except
Alabama, where the agency shop is also outlawed), all workers
will be required as a condition of employment to pay a service
charge to the CiSWA each month toward the administration
of the contract and the representation of the union. The serv-
ice charge for the first month will equal the union s initiation
fee, monthly dues and any assessment, and the charge there-
alter will be the same as the regular dues and assessments.
SENIORITY — A worker absent because of layoff or physi-
cal disability will retain his seniority for at least five years,
instead of the previous two-year limit. *
ROAD TO PEACE IN STEEL INDUSTRY was paved by earlier settlements ham-
mered out by Steelworkers in free collective bargaining with other segments of
metal industry. Picture at left marks signing of three-year aluminum contract:
(left to right) Frank Weikel, Reynolds Metals Co.; William H. Dayis, Aluminum
Co. of America; USWA Gen. Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg; Walter Farrel, Kaiser
Aluminum; and USWA Vice Pres. Howard R. Hague. Center picture shows Kaiser
Steel Chairman Edgar F. Kaiser (left) and USWA Pres. David J. McDonald sealing
historic settlement which cracked solid steel industry front before Taft-Hartley
injunction. In picture at right, signatures are affixed to contract for can industry.
Seated (left to right) are USWA Dist. 30 Dir. James Robb; McDonald; and Warren
Lake of Continental Can Co. Standing (same order) are Al Whitehouse, director
of USWA Dist. 25, and E. T. Klas^en of American Can Co.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Pa^e Three
Steel Union Scores Smashing Victory
Working Rules Kept,
Fringe Benefits Hiked
(Continued from Page 1)
effect confirmed the accuracy of the USWA poll when he told re-
porters "statistics" gathered by the Administration supported the
belief "that inevitably the employers' last offer would be rejected
by a considerable majority."
Expectations that the settlement would not lead to a price increase
were bolstered by both Nixon's office and Mitchell, despite the fact
that industry leaders were reluctant to talk about the possibility of
a new round of steel price hikes which, in the past, have touched off
a general inflationary spiral.
Mitchell, who described the settlement as "fair and equitable,"
told reporters "it is my belief that steel companies will not need to
increase prices immediately."
Herbert Klein, Nixon's press secretary, told reporters that the
Vice President "would not have proposed any settlement that would
be to a large degree inflationary."
Roger M . Blough, chairman of the board of U.S. Steel Corp,
and regarded as the man who calls the shots for the industry both
in contract negotiations and in the area of prices, issued a state-
ment which said in part:
"So far as our company is concerned, it proposes to continue the
general level of its prices for the immediate future."
Joseph L. Block, chairman of the Inland Steel Co., seventh largest
in the industry, quickly followed suit with a declaration that Inland
"has no present plans to change its prices."
In announcing the settlement, after a 22-hour negotiating session
in a Washington office building, Mitchell detailed Nixon's role in
bringing about the compromise.
The Vice President, he said, began his private talks with both
industry and union leaders in his home in December, shortly after
Pres. Eisenhower left on his 11-nation goodwill tour of Europe, Asia
and the Middle East. In previous months, the Vice President re-
portedly had met separately with both parties, but made no move
to bring them together in joint sessions.
Industry Warned
In the December talks, Mitchell said, he and the Vice President
warned industry executives of their feeling that the workers would
vote rejection of the so-called "last offer." Once the industry pro-
posal was turned down, the Secretary said, steel management was
told "the possibility of a negotiated settlement could only be
achieved at a fairly high price."
Mitchell, who said Nixon's "influence, leadership and prestige
were "significant factors" in the December meetings, told reporters
that "without the Vice President we would not have had
settlement."
McDonald commended Eisenhower, Nixon and Mitchell for their
joint efforts at bringing about the settlement, and Cooper echoed
this praise.
Mitchell, addressing the victory session of the Wage Policy Com
mittee 24 hours after the settlement was reached, was cheered as
he lauded the union's leadership and the determination of USWA
members during the long struggle.
The settlement, he said, demonstrated that steel workers will
fight for what they think is right.
"I know you can be secure under the terms of this contract,"
Mitchell told the policy committee.
The Administration's intervention came at the eleventh hour.
Negotiations began last April, and were preceded by an industry
propaganda barrage charging the union with seeking an "inflation-
ary" settlement, raising the threat of "foreign competition," and ac-
cusing steel workers of "featherbedding."
Repeated USWA appeals to the White House to name public
fact-finders to assess the conflicting positions of both sides were
met by a "hands-off" attitude by Eisenhower, who told reporters
several times that the "f acts" were "well known" by the American
people.
At Eisenhower's request, the union extended its steel contracts
for two weeks past their July 1 expiration date in an effort to reach
agreement with the industry. When talks collapsed, the 500,000
USWA members walked off the job.
Industry Rejected Factfinding
In September, Eisenhower agreed with a suggestion by Meany that
public fact finders be named to stake out the area for settlement, but
conditioned his action on approval by both labor and management
to such a procedure. The USWA promptly accepted the plan but
it was rejected by industry leaders who resisted all efforts at public
disclosure of the facts.
In October, declaring that the protracted strike threatened the
national health and safety, the Administration obtained an 80-day
injunction under the Taft-Hartley Act. The injunction did not go
into effect until Nov. 7 because of delays occasioned by union ap-
peals to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of
the injunction and the Administration's "national emergency"
claims.
The injunction was scheduled to run out Jan. 26, when the union
would have been free to resume its strike.
FORMAL SIGNING of memorandum of agreement between Steelworkers and basic steel industry
is witnessed by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell who, with Vice Pres. Nixon, helped produce settle-
ment. Seated, left to right, are U.S. Steel's R. Conrad Cooper, chief industry spokesman in bargaining
sessions; USWA Pres. David J. McDonald; USWA Gen. Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg. In background
are members of union's Wage Policy Committee, which had just voted approval of the pact.
Meany Again Urges White House
Conference on Industrial Peace
(Continued from Page 1)
agreement "could be emphasized*
and guidelines could well be de-
veloped at the kind of White House
labor-management conference Pres.
Eisenhower is now considering."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, to
whom Eisenhower assigned the ta.>k
of exploring the proposal with
Meany and "representative" man-
agement officials, has expressed
cautious optimism on the pros-
pects of holding the conference
"in the early part of the year" —
probably February or March.
The secretary recently declared
he had held private conversations
with the AFL-CIO president and
"with some of the management
groups and some management peo-
ple." It was assumed the latter in-
cluded representatives of the Na-
tional Association of Manufacturers
and the U.S. Chamber of Com-
merce.
Four Areas Covered
These exploratory talks, Mitchell
told reporters, covered four broad
areas — the "possibility of such a
conference," the subjects to be dis-
cussed, the location of the talks,
and the time.
In disclosing progress in these
initial meetings, Mitchell said he
hoped "as an individual, that such
a conference will be forthcoming."
Meany had urged Eisenhower to
summon both sides to top-level
talks, citing the marathon steel
shutdown, the burgeoning Soviet
economic challenge, and threats
from some political leaders of gov-
ernment intervention in bargaining.
At that time, he warned that the
nation "must avoid drifting by
statute into rigid and arbitrary rules
for collective bargaining," and de-
clared that such a drift "can only
lead to a serious weakening of the
underpinnings of our whole demo-
cratic way of life."
He told the President that the
conference could "bring greater
stability to our entire economy
and new vitality to free and vol-
untary responsible collective bar-
gaining which is indispensable to
the health and progress of our
democracy."
In reply, Eisenhower noted that
Mitchell has repeatedly urged "that
labor and management meet fre-
quently to talk over common prob-
lems having to do with improving
the health and efficiency of the in-
dustries and companies with which
they are concerned."
Since the proposal was first ad-
vanced, the plan has drawn gen-
erally favorable comment from
Chamber Pres. Erwin D. Canham,
who declared his management
group would "gladly cooperate,"
and from NAM Executive Vice
President Charles R. Sligh, Jr., who
praised Meany as "an advocate of
peace and goodwill."
The National Council for In-
dustrial Peace — a non-partisan
group headed by Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt and former Sen. Herbert
H. Lehman (D-N.Y.)— has called
the plan for the White House con-
ference "a statesmanlike approach
to the current wave of bitterness
which has marked labor-manage-
ment negotiations during recent
months."
Meany's plea that the steel
settlement become the jumping-
off point for a unified effort to
restore industrial peace was
echoed by other union leaders.
Jacob S. Potofsky, an AFL-CIO
vice president and president of the
Clothing Workers, expressed the
hope that Pres. Eisenhower would
summon top leaders of both sides
to an early White House confer-
ence that could, he said, lead to a
new era of constructive industrial
relations.
Communications Workers Pres.
Joseph A. Beirne, also an AFL-CIO
vice president, said Meany's pro-
posal is the "proper starting point"
for a joint effort to "stimulate the
search all men of good will must
make for the solution of industrial
disputes." He called on Eisenhower
to "move quickly toward putting
the plans for such a conference in
shape."
At the same time, Beirne con-
gratulated USWA members for
"the unity with which they backed
up their leadership through the
dark hours of the long strike."
The victory they achieved, he
added, was "won not only for
themselves but for the entire labor
movement."
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. James B.
Carey, president of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, said,
the Steelworkers won "a history-
making victory over an infamous
attempt at union-busting," said the
industry "flagrantly" forced the
dispute on the union because it was
certain that the Taft-Hartley in-
junction would be used "on indus-
try's behalf."
Gray Hails Agreement
Pres. Richard J. Gray of the
AFL-CIO Building & Construction
Trades Dept. said the steel settle-
ment "demonstrated to the world
that free collective bargaining still
works in one of the basic industries
which. affects our entire economy."
The prolonged dispute pointed
up the need, he maintained, for
"better understanding between
labor and management" and the ^
importance of eliminating "the
causes of such long and bitter
struggles" in the future.
Gray said the 3 million members
of unions affiliated with the depart-
ment "stand ready to support and
participate" in the White House
conference proposed by Meany in
labor's quest for industrial stability.
Joint Study
Group Named
At Kaiser *
. Los Angeles — The Steelworkers
and Kaiser Steel Corp., have an-
nounced formation of a joint six-
man committee to study problems
resulting from automation, techno-
logical change and local working
conditions.
The plan for such a committee
was embodied in the historic settle-
ment which the USWA negotiated
with Kaiser in free collective bar-
gaining in November. The pact
called for joint approach to work
rule problems and another study of
the best way to share economic
gains among workers, stockholders
and the public.
USWA Dist. Dir. Charles J.
Smith and Kaiser Pres. Jack L.
Ashby announced the appointment
of unionists Anthony Manguso,
Stan Adams and Ronald Bitonti
and company representatives
Charles M. Health, Robert W.
Likins and Reynold C. MacDonald
to the work rules committee.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
A
positive
Labor to Spell Out
Program for America
(Continued from Page 1)
gress from their respective areas
on the general topic of how con-
gressmen and labor can cooperate
to achieve passage of key legisla-
tion.
The Tuesday morning session
will be given over to conferences
on civil rights, area redevelopment,
minimum wage and improvements
in the social security program, in-
cluding the Forand bill to provide
medical care for the nation's re-
tired workers. The Tuesday after-
noon -and Wednesday morning ses-
sions will be devoted to visits by
trade union delegations to senators
and congressmen.
The conference will close
Wednesday afternoon with an
address by AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler and re-
ports from delegations on con-
tacts on Capitol Hill with ref-
erence to labor's legislative goals.
In issuing the call to the confer-
ence, the federation pointed out
that the current session of Con-
gress will be short because of the
midyear nominating conventions of
both major parties for the fall
presidential - campaign.
For this reason, the call said,
"it is not expected that the Con-
gress ' will be meeting after g the
Fourth of July. That means no
time can be lost if the 86th Con-
gress is to enact the program of
progressive legislation that the na-
tion urgently needs."
Welfare Advisors Urge
Shakeup in Public Aid
An Advisory Council on Public Assistance has proposed to Con-
gress a series of sweeping changes aimed at modernizing the nation's
public assistance system.
The chief recommendations were expansion of federal grants to
enable states to help the financially needy and to maintain the
federal share at 50 to 60 percent^
because of "the magnitude of the
unmet need."
Some 20 recommendations were
included in the repdrt filed with
Congress and with Health, Educa-
tion & Welfare Sec. Arthur S.
Flemming. The 12-memt>er group
was set up by Congress solely for
a one-year review and analysis.
The council's proposals pre-
sumably will spark a political
battle. The council's appoint-
ment represented Democratic in-
itiative; Flemming is on record
in support of several of its pro-
posals but an Eisenhower veto
threat in 1958 forced a cut of
$91 million in public aid grants.
Assistance programs are run by
59 state agencies and 3,000 local
agencies at an annual cost of about
$3.5 billion. The federal govern-
ment now pays about 52 percent
of the cost. Federal funds are pro-
vided for four programs affecting
a total of 7 million people: the
aged; the needy blind; dependent
children and the totally and per-
manently disabled age 50 and over.
The following recommendations
were among the more significant,
according to Mrs. Katherine Pollak
Ellickson, assistant director of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security,
who served on the council:
• Extension of coverage. The
Social Security Act should be
amended to include federal grants
to encourage states to provide aid
"to financially needy persons re-
gardless of the .cause of neeti (in-
cluding, for example, the unem-
ployed, the underemployed and the
less seriously disabled)."
• Options for states. States
should have the free choice of set-
ting up a single category which
would include all the needy pro-
grams or of variations, with the
new general assistance group to be
included either way.
• Federal share. For the pres-
ent, the federal share of public as-
sistance, including general assist-
ance, should stay at 50-60 percent.
• Adequacy of assistance. The
council said there is great variation
among states on what constitutes
"adequacy" and, while less than
half meet their own standards, "the
rest do not." Payments are often
"very low" and "too often poverty
is perpetuated," the report said.
It urged federal leadership in
developing up-to-date budget guides
for state use and proposed federal-
state-local efforts toward adequate
aid levels.
• Adequacy of medical care.
"Low income and poor health work
in a vicious circle," the advisory
group said in noting that families
have been forced on relief by long
illness and heavy medical bills.
• Residence requirements.
Since most states now have resi-
dence requirements which prevent
many needy persons from securing
help, federal funds should go only
to those programs which impose no
residence requirements on other-
wise eligible people.
• Social insurance. Bolstering
of social insurance programs is a
key public policy and can reduce
the need for public assistance, the
advisory group pointed out.
Legislative Battles Loom as
Congress Begins 2nd Session
(Continued from page 1)
ing from Pres. Eisenhower that he
would continue to oppose — and
presumably to veto — social and
welfare programs involving what
he terms excessive federal expendi-
tures, the Democratic leaders prom-
ised "responsibility" and said that
the session would be "productive."
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.) and Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon Johnson (D-Tex.) gave no
indication that they expected to be
able to gather the two-thirds ma-
jority in each house required to
overcome vetoes or threatened
vetoes that could play a major part
in the shaping of legislation.
The Democratic majority in the
Senate remains 65 to 35 and in the
House now "stands at 280 to 152,
with five vacancies'. A Republi-
can, Rep. John Kyi, won a special
election in Iowa's 4th District last
month to replace a Democrat chos-
en in 1958.
Effective control of the 1959 ses-
sion was held by a bipartisan House
coalition of conservative Republi-
can and conservative southern
Democrats under GOP Floor Lead-
er Charles A. Halleck (Ind.) and
Rep. Howard Smith (D-Va.),
chairman of the powerful Rules
Committee.
Action on a civil rights bill
was indicated when Rayburn, in
his opening press conference of
the session, gave a green light
to a parliamentary move to force
a civil rights measure already
cleared by the Judiciary Commit-
tee out of the hands of Smith's
Rules Committee, where it has
been bottled up.
Johnson made a commitment
last year to bring up civil rights in
the Senate at an early date this ses-
sion. He told reporters Jan. 6 that
it was "obvious" that Congress
would take up and act on a civil
rights measure this year.
Rayburn in effect gave tacit ap-
proval to a discharge petition, al-
ready reported signed by about
120 members, to take the civil
rights bill away from the Rules
Committee. The signatures of a
majority of the members, 217, are
needed to force it to the floor.
The Judiciary Committee's meas-
ure is a compromise bill, backed
by the Administration, that would
require preservation of state voting
records and authorizing Justice
Dept. inspection. It would also
make it a federal crime to cross
state lines to avoid prosecution for
bombing or burning school or
church buildings and to interfere by
violence or threats with federal
court school desegregation orders.
Efforts are expected to add a
provision of federal voting regis-
trars in cases of discrimination
against classes of voters and an-
other provision giving affirmative
approval to school desegregation.
Both are opposed by the Eisen-
hower Administration, although
the federal registrars plan was
proposed by the Civil Rights
Commission appointed by the
President.
Johnson may have his own civil
rights program in the Senate* as he
did in 1957, when the "right-to-
vote" law was pushed through
without provoking a southern fili-
buster. Sen. Herman Talmadge
(D-Ga.) recently said he doubted
that the southern bloc could kill
legislation by filibuster tactics but
promised a hard fight to block "ex-
treme*' proposals.
Here is the outlook in other
fields:
MINIMUM WAGE— Sen. John
F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will seek
early action by the Senate Labor
Committee on a bill, already ap-
proved by the subcommittee he
heads, to raise the minimum to
$1.25 an hour from the existing
$1, and to expand coverage to mil-
lions not now protected.
SOCIAL SECURITY — Addi-
tional hearings on the Forand bill,
to provide hospital and surgical
benefits to social security benefi-
ciaries, are likely in the House
Ways & Means Committee, and the
measure may be scheduled for ac-
tion by the leadership. The Ad-
ministration is opposed.
SCHOOL AID— A. $4.4 billion
four-year federal aid program,
cleared by the House Education
Committee, is pigeonholed in the
Rules Committee. A Senate sub-
committee has approved a $1 bil-
lion two-year program for school
construction.
DEPRESSED AREAS — The
Senate-passed Douglas-Cooper bill,
approved by House Banking Com-
mittee, also is halted in the Rules
Committee, with no indication of
when action may be expected. Ei-
senhower opposes the measure.
UNEMPLOYMENT COMPEN-
SATION— The House Ways &
Means Committee is closely split
on the issue of federal minimum
standards, and the Administration
is opposed.
TAXES AND MONETARY
POLICY— The Ways & Means
Committee is expected again to re-
ject the Administration request for
a rise in the 4.25 percent ceiling
on long-term government bonds.
Little action is anticipated on taxes,
although an effort is certain to close
loopholes for corporations, oil-and-
gas firms and other favored groups
and to reduce some excise levies.
FARM POLICY — Total dis-
agreement is anticipated between
Democrats, who have comprehen-
sive new programs of their own,
and the Administration that is re-
peating its requests for a reduction
of support levels.
Peace, Balanced Budget
Ike's Main Goals in '60
(Continued from Page 1)
tling influences of the recent steel
strike."
(The Federal Reserve Board
disclosed the apparent source of
the surplus with the announcement
that it had decided the 12 Federal
Reserve banks should put all of
their last year's earnings — $266
million — back into the Treasury.)
With the steel strike settled,
the President proposed no new
labor legislation as had been
hinted by Administration sources.
Instead he promised to "encour-
age regular discussions between
management and labor outside'
the bargaining table" — a move
proposed to him two months ago
by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, who called for a top-
level White House conference to
promote industrial harmony.
A major part of the 7,200-word
report was given over to the in-
ternational situation. The^Presi-
dent expressed cautious optimism
that Russia's recent behavior might
make for "a somewhat less strained
period" in world » relationships, but
added that Soviet words must be
"tested by actions."
Nowhere did the President re-
fer to legislation on raising the
minimum wage and extending its
coverage; enactment of federal
standards, which the states must
follow, on the amount and dura-
tion of unemployment compensa-
tion benefits; improvement of the
social security system, including
passage of the Forand bill to
provide medical and hospital care
for the aged; the Senate-passed
depressed areas bill now held up
in the House Rules Committee;
housing legislation; development
of the nation's natural resources;
or modernization of the present
tax structure.
Here are highlights of the mes-
sage which Eisenhower read to the
joint session:
LABOR — Expressed gratifica-
tion at the steel strike settlement
and the announcement of several
major steel producers that they plan
no immediate price increases. "The
national interest," he said, "de-
mands that . . . both management
and labor make every possible ef-
fort to increase efficiency and pro-
ductivity in the manufacture of
steel so that price increases can be
avoided."
FARM — Called present farm leg-
islation "woefully out-of-date, in-
effective and expensive" and urged
legislation that will* "gear produc-
tion more closely to markets, make
costly surpluses more manageable,
provide greater freedom in farm
operations, and steadily achieve in-
creased net farm incomes." 4
INFLATION— Urged "restraint
in expenditure" and approval of
higher interest rates on long-term
government bonds. He declared
that the "unwillingness of Congress
to remove archaic restrictions" in
this area has hampered the Admin-
istration's "management of the
huge public debt" and said "re-
moval of this roadblock has high
priority in my legislative recom-
mendations."
CIVIL RIGHTS— Urged enact-
ment of "right-to-vote" legislation
but made no mention of proposals
for the creation of federal regis-
trars to insure voting rights.
LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS —
Conceded that metropolitan areas
must cope with "staggering" prob-
lems but opposed the idea of fed-
eral funds to help meet them,
SCHOOLS— Acknowledged the
need for modern schools and ade-
quately compensated teachers, but
again opposed either "the swift ad-
ministration of a federal hypoder-
mic or sustained financial trans-
fusion."
DEFENSE — With the major
share of the budget going for de-
fense purposes, the President
pledged no weakening of the na-
tion's military posture and said
America possesses "an enormous
defense power."
SPACE — Expenditures will be
"practically doubled" over last
year, he said.
FOREIGN AID— Declared there
is an "immediate need" for all in-
dustrial countries of the free world
to cooperate in helping to lift "the
scourge of poverty from less for-
tunate nations." The desire for
a better life held by the people of
the uncommitted and newly emerg-
ing nations, he said, "must not be
frustrated by withholding from
them necessary technical and in-
vestment assistance."
On the important issue of world
peace, Eisenhower told Congress:
"With both sides of this divided
world in possession of unbeliev-
ably destructive weapons, mankind
approaches a state where mutual
annihilation becomes a possibility.
No other fact of today's world
equals this in importance — it colors
everything we say, plan, and do.
"My deep concern in the next
12 months, .before my successor
takes office, is with our . . . duty
to our own and to other nations
. . . I shall devote my full energies
to the tasks at hand, whether these
involve travel for promoting greater
world understanding, negotiations
to reduce international discord, or
constant discussions and communi-
cations with the Congress and the
American people on issues both
domestic and foreign."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, I960
Pa«e Five
Tasks for 86th Congress, 2nd Session
The 2nd session of the 36tli Congress opened Jan, 6. Here is a report on the status of AFL-CtO-sup ported legislation at the time
Congress reconvened.
ISSUE
MINIMUM WAGE: Present $1 wage floor is inadequate,
millions of workers are not protected.
AREA REDEVELOPMENT: Areas of chronic unemploy-
ment create a national problem.
EDUCATION: Inability of states to finance school con-
struction and operation is injuring quality of U.S. edu-
cation.
UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION: State system
benefits are too low, duration of assistance too short, dis-
qualifications unfair.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Adequate health care for retired
workers, widows and dependent children is lacking.
HOUSING: Shortage oi low-income and middle-income
housing persists; action is needed to expand programs to
fight urban decay.
NATURAL RESOURCES: Conservation and development
of natural resources is a continuing national need.
TAXES: Loopholes in federal income tax law give unfair
advantage to certain taxpayers, discriminate against low
and middle-income taxpayers. \
ECONOMIC GROWTH: Administration's tight-money
policy held to be a barrier to healthy economic expansion.
GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS: Base wages set by Davis-
Bacon Act on construction paid for with federal funds, and
by Walsh-Healey Act on other public contracts, do not
include fringe benefits in determining prevailing wage.
CIVIL RIGHTS: Protection of the rights of all citizens
regardless of race, creed or color.
FARM PROBLEMS: Farm income has failed to keep pace
with the rest of the economy; small farmers are particu-
larly hard pressed.
LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS: Implementation of Employ-
ment Act requires federal loans for municipalities for
construction of public works.
ATOMIC ENERGY: U.S. lags behind other world powers
in practical development of peaceful uses of atomic
energy, particularly for production of electric power.
SUPREME COURT: Efforts continue to limit Supreme
Court jurisdiction, change the interpretation of federal
legislation.
MUTUAL SECURITY: Program for technical assistance,
economic and military aid to other countries held best
carried out through placing Development Loan Fund on
long-term basis.
IMMIGRATION: McCarran-Walter Act severely restricts
admission of deserving aliens and is discriminatory.
NATIONAL DEFENSE: Adequacy of America's defense
has been threatened by failure of Administration to move
quickly to close space and missiles gap with Russia.
RADIATION HAZARDS: Safety standards and federal
workmen's compensation standards needed for atomic
energy workers.
FEDERAL AID TO MEDICAL EDUCATION: Existing
shortage of physicians is becoming increasingly acute;
medical schools must be encouraged to educate more
doctors.
AID TO COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH PLANS: Wider
spread development of such plans has been hampered by
difficulties in obtaining necessary facilities.
AFL-CIO POSITION
Adoption urged of Kennedy-Roosevelt bills (S. 1046, H.R.
4488) extending coverage to millions and raising the mini-
mum to $1.25 an hour.
Endorses Douglas-Cooper bill (S. 722) authorizing $390
million in loans and grants to rehabilitate depressed areas.
Action urged along lines of Murray-Metcalf bills (S. 2,
H.R. 22), providing grants rising to $4.7 billion annually
for school construction and teachers' salaries.
Passage urged of Karsten-Machrowicz-Kennedy-Case-Mc-
Carthy bill (H.R. 3547, S. 791) setting federal standards of
50 percent of worker's average earnings, not to exceed
two-thirds of average state wage, for 39-week period and
inclusion of millions not currently protected.
Urges approval of Forand bill (H.R. 4700) which would
provide basic health care for all Social Security recipients,
plus broadening of public assistance program to include
the general needy. ^
Action asked to "complete the legislation needed" to as-
sure adequate level of housing' at prices Americans can
afford — including appropriate levels of public housing,
middle-income housing, housing for elderly.
Proper development of natural resources called for, in-
cluding multi-river projects for great river basins.
Asks overhaul of "present inequitable tax structure" by
eliminating loopholes enjoyed by business and the wealthy,
increasing personal exemptions, eliminating excise taxes.
Calls for reorganization of the Federal Reserve Board and
for "greater coordination of monetary with other economic
policies" to achieve a higher rate of economic growth.
Modernization of both laws asked "so that federal moneys
will not be used to undermine the hard-won gains of or-
ganized labor in wages and related benefits."
Enactment urged of "meaningful" civil rights legislation
to assure "equal treatment before the law" of all Americans.
Legislation requested to provide working farm families
"their full equity in the American economy."
Action called for on "community facilities" program of
low-interest rate loans to municipalities.
"More vigorous" development of atomic energy for peace-
ful uses urged.
Opposes efforts to limit court, especially H.R. 3 which
would severely restrict court's power to interpret federal
law.
Historic support for program reaffirmed; adequate De-
velopment Loan Fund to help underdeveloped areas build
basic facilities strongly supported.
Supports measures to abolish national origins system, admit
250,000 immigrants annually.
Urges strengthening of capacity and readiness to deter
aggression by giving top priority to developing American
capacity in outer space technology and ballistic weapons.
Urges enactment of federal legislation for protection of
workers in atomic energy installations*
Supports measures to provide grants to schools training
medical and related personnel.
Supports federal loans for construction of facilities for
consumer-sponsored direct service health p*.^.
ACTION IN 1959 SESSION
Senate Labor subcommittee reported bill with modifica-
tions to full committee; no action in House.
i
Senate passed bill; similar measure reported by House
Banking Committee was pigeonholed in House Rules Com-
mittee.
House Education Committee reported revised bill pro-
viding $1.1 billion for each of four years; Senate subcom-
mittee approved McNamara bill (S. 8) calling for $1 billion
two-year program for construction only.
House Ways and Means Committee held comprehensive
hearings, but only action was extension of temporary
measure now expired.
Initial hearings held by House Ways and Means Committee,
additional hearings due this year. (Action must originate
in House since social security is a tax measure.)
After two Eisenhower vetoes, Congress passed watered-
down, $1 billion version which the President accepted.
TVA self-financing bill passed by Congress and signed by
President constituted only action in this field.
Bill passed for taxation of life insurance companies; House
passed bill cutting cabaret taxes but Senate did not act.
No action on other needs.
Eisenhower asked for hike in interest rate on long-term
government bonds but was rebuffed by Congress. White
House expected to renew plea.
No action by either house.
Extension of Civil Rights Commission only action taken
in this field; Senate leaders promised opportunity for
broader action in February 1960.
Agriculture Sec. Benson's insistence on cutting price sup-
port program led to congressional stalemate on aid to farm
families. Two bills were killed by White House vetoes.
Congress cleared major program calling for grants for
sewage disposal systems but final action was delayed to
prevent pocket veto. No action on broader question of
loans for full range of local public works.
Appropriations for current fiscal year did not include any
broad expansion of power program.
H.R. 3 passed by House; Senate Judiciary Committee
hearings concluded, but no further action taken.
Appropriations cut to $3.2 billion from President's $3.9
billion request; expansion of Loan Fund beaten when
Administration strongly opposed it.
No significant action in either house.
Administration's budget-balancing drive led to inadequate
budget requests for space and missiles program.
Atomic Energy Commission authorized to enter hazard
pacts with states but no federal standards written into
law.
No action by either house.
No action by either house.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Victory in Steel
THE 500,000 men and women employed in the basic steel in-
dustry have won a tremendous victory for themselves and the
entire American labor movement.
The steel strike was labor's strike. It was a strike to preserve
the American trade union movement from a massive destructive
assault by major elements of big business. It was a strike to con-
tinue the never-ending battle to win for the workers a fair share
of the wealth they help produce.
The Steelworkers' complete victory should give pause to the
railroads and other segments of the big business campaign to
emasculate unions. The trade union movement is just as deter-
mined that the rail workers and the other unions facing negotia-
tions in 1960 will remain strong and effective and emerge
victorious.
The steel settlement opens the way for a lasting period of indus-
trial peace if the business and industrial elements intent on waging
anti-union campaigns shelve their weapons and sit down with labor
to work out a framework for just and reasonable relationships.
The AFL-CIO has advocated this course and called on Pres.
Eisenhower to implement it with a national conference to create
the atmosphere for industrial peace. Such a conference could
avert a new round of industry-forced strikes.
Frauds Laid at Rest
THE STEELWORKERS' VICTORY has destroyed two propa-
ganda positions that big business has used as key weapons in its
fight to weaken unions.
The "labor bosses" distortion that union members do not support
the positions of their leaders in collective bargaining— on which the
steel industry pegged its "last offer" campaign — fell apart when it
became apparent that over 95 percent of the steel workers would
vote "no" on the industry offer. This had a decisive effect on the
settlement prior to the vote.
The "strikers always lose" propaganda line also was exposed as
fraudulent. The union not only won conclusively on every point
in dispute but nailed down a contract agreement to pay each steel
worker on retirement a lump sum cash payment ranging from
$1,300 to $1,500.
This is money in the bank for every worker In the mills, money
that substantially makes up any wage loss during the strike with-
out considering the improvements in insurance, pensions and
wages and the complete rout of the industry's efforts to destroy
job rights won in 20 years of struggle.
Challenge to Democrats
THE SECOND SESSION of the 86th Congress is essentially a
challenge to the Democratic Party to build a record for the 1960
presidential election.
The first session produced little in the way of important legisla-
tion in the critical areas of minimum wages, health care for the
aged, aid to distressed areas, federal aid for education, a better
unemployment system and civil rights.
The Democrats, in nominal control, are under strong pressure
to produce progressive legislation in these and other areas to
strengthen their bid to take the White House in November.
The Republican record, as contained in Pres. Eisenhower's pro-
gram since 1956, has been well established and will be the basis
for the party's 1960 campaign.
The Democratic record is still to be written.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary -Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton -
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. ReUther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional a-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, January 9 f 1960
No. 2
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
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AFL-CIO NEW3
AFL-CIO Plaque in Headquarters:
Malayan Plantation Workers
of Democracy
By Arnold Beichman
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYA— On the sec-
ond floor of the handsome, three-story
headquarters of the National Union of Plantation
Workers (NUPW) N there is a bronze plaque
which reads:
"The AFL-CIO salutes the National Union
of Plantation Workers for its successful and
constructive efforts to improve social and eco-
nomic conditions through democratic trade
unionism."
The plaque was presented to the NUPW at
the- building's formal dedication one day before
Malaya became an independent country. But
years before that, this skillfully-led plantation
union had demonstrated a vigor and independence
which has made its name a byword in Asian
trade unionism.
Within the Malayan Trades Union Council,
an affiliate of the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, the plantation union, led by Gen.
Sec. P. P. Narayanan, a 37-year-old immigrant
from South India, is outstanding because of its
democratic base, its financial strength, its sound
organizational methods and its successful oppo-
sition to totalitarian infiltration.
What makes the NUPW with its 180,000
members unique in this part of the world has
been its insistence on combatting the evil of
racial and cultural separatism which plagues
labor movements in other parts of Asia and
Africa.
This land of 6.6 million people is divided into
three major racial groups — 49 percent indigenous
Malays, 36 percent Chinese and 12 percent
Indians. Most of the work-force is employed on
rubber plantations and tin mines or in the civil
service.
EACH GROUP not only has its own language
but the Chinese have different dialects. The result
is that most union officials must know at least
two or three languages, including English which
necessarily - is the most common instrument of
communication. Narayanan, for example, speaks
English fluently, his own Tamil language and
Malay as well.
Union meetings are conducted in one of four
languages with interpreters standing by to do con-
secutive translations. Meetings obviously can last
for hours and hours. The union bi-weekly maga-
zine is printed on its union-owned presses in
Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English.
Because of this racial problem, the parent
MTUC and the NUPW eschew partisan political
activity. When the first parliamentary elections
took place, trade union officials quite conspicu-
ously stayed as far away from speech-making as
possible. They endorsed no candidates or parties
although most of them belong to the Malayan
Labor Party, a socialist organization.
Union officials are barred from running for
office or from openly supporting a political party.
They can be politicians or union officials, but
not both. Of course, no powerful institution like
the NUPW can, realistically, stay out of politics
so that there is much behind-the-scenes activity.
But with pro-Chinese parties, pro-Moslem parties
and pro-Hindu parties and interracial parties, it
would be suicide for unions with multi-racial
memberships to become mere political adjuncts.
National union officials are elected by a mail
referendum. Members who want to run for local,
or estate, union offices must have been employed
on the same estate for two consecutive years."
A reason for this provision is that in two years,
it is possible to uncover whether a candidate be-
lieves in democratic unionism or is a crypto-
Communist.
FINANCES ARE CONTROLLED centrally
and dues collections which come from all parts
of the country's plantations are deposited within
a week of receipt. The NUPW also has an edu-
cation department, and a research division and
is now thinking of building schools, hospitals and
old-age homes and establishing university scholar-
ships for v children of members. In the back of
Narayanan's agile mind is an idea for buying
and operating a union-owned rubber estate as a
"model" for the industry.
Malaya still has a Communist problem — the
existence of several hundred jungle terrorists who
make travel in some parts dangerous, fiut that
problem is under control.
The NUPW's real crisis is still to be solved —
whether racial, religious and cultural differences
can be kept out of union politics, whether the
union's democratic structure can be perverted by
racialist demagogues. The MTUC and the NUPW
both have had excellent beginnings thanks to
ICFTU aid and two able British trade unionists,
John Brazier and Tom Bavin.
With 'such a foundation, Malayan labor leaders
have reasonable justification for optimism about
the future.
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON. D. C. JVM ARY 9. 1960
Page Seve«
'Dividends' Growing:
Survey Shows Union Dues
Buy Many Varied Benefits
W H\T DOES A UNION CARD represent?
V Higher wages? Better working conditions?
Job security? Dignity as an individual? All of
these, yes, but other dividends of membership
in a union are growing at an accelerated rate
these days.
The expansion of these dividends is getting
more and more attention from business publica-
tions and state industrial relations departments
because these dividends are providing new allure
and new brightness and new advantages for be-
longing to a union.
Not too long ago the U.S. Dept. of Labor re-
vealed that workers in unionized places tend to
earn at least 8 percent more than those in com-
parable occupations. Union-won working con-
ditions and fringe benefits, too, invariably excel.
The so-called hidden gains of union member-
ship — which overlap into the area of fringe bene-
fits — cover a wide range from health clinics to
legal advice, to education, to housing and so on.
They help to stretch the union-earned dollar in
many ways to provide the better life.
It is generally agreed that these benefits can
be placed in the nine major categories:
HEALTH CLINICS — There arc more than 60
major union clinics throughout the country, most
of which provide care for the union member and
his family. 'For the most part they are employer-
financed as a result of collective bargaining but
still union-administered.
The emphasis in these plans is on preventative
medicine. They operate out-patient clinics on
the group medicine principle.
The Mine Workers have pioneered in building
a chain of 10 modern hospitals for UMW mem-
bers and their families. Some clinics have estab-
lished their own drug stores to provide prescrip-
tions to members at nominal rates. Blood banks
and eye centers are also growing. f
A drive to expand the entire union health pro-
gram is being headed by the Group Health As-
sociation of America.
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY— Closely aligned
with the health program is the industrial safety
campaign. This takes two approaches. One is
sounder protections for the worker on the job.
Frequently unions have their own safety tech-
nicians and experts. The second approach is the
care and rehabilitation of the injured worker. Un-
ion legal talent also presses for workmen's com-
pensation.
Unions have taken a major role in the Na-
tional Safety Council and a special labor division
of the council headed by Vice Pres. P. L. (Roy)
Siemiller of the Machinists is working for safety
on and off the job.
RETIREMENT AID — Union-won pensions
have been accepted as the standard in the in-
dustrial world, but in recent years unions have
not accepted pension programs, even the best,
as the final answer to the problems of our aged.
For one, unions are now taking steps to con-
dition workers for retirement when it comes.
They approach the problem in a number of ways.
The Auto Workers have named a full-time re-
tirement director and the as well as many
other unions, is setting aside space for retirees at
union headquarters with planned programs.
Some unions, such as the Typographical
Workers, the Carpenters and the Printing Press-
men, have homes for retired members. The Up-
holsterers recently established a Florida colony
for its retirees.
COOPERATIVE HOUSING— Many union
members are enjoying modern, spacious low-cost
housing built by their union. Particularly note-
worthy are the garment union projects in New
York.
With profits eliminated, union housing pro-
vides construction, design, layout and community
facilities usually superior to comparable com-
mercial development. One union cooperative, for
example, estimates that a family occupying a
four-room unit saves $52 a month compared to
rentals in similar quarters operated by realtors;
for 1,600 families in this union project, annual
savings top $700.
CREDIT UNIONS — Organized labor has al-
ways supported credit unions as a means o£ aid-
ing workers who need to borrow. It serves to
help break the grip of loan sharks who charge
outrageous interest rates, pushing many deeply
into debt.
Today there are about 4,700 worker credit
unions either on an areawide basis directly spon-
sored by local unions or within a given plant.
These credit unions usually are housed right in
union headquarters.
LEGAL AND SOCIAL COUNSELING—
Most unions have lawyers on a retainer basis to
provide free legal assistance to union members.
This aid is not only on such job-related problems
as workmen's compensation, unemployment in-
surance, social security and employe rights but
on personal affairs such as domestic relations and
landlord-tenant disputes.
Take the % case of Local 1, Building Service
Employes, in Chicago. It has 8,500 members
and has four full-time lawyers to aid in real estate
transactions and income tax and insurance mat-
. ters.
In the field of social counseling, union-trained
community service workers advise members of
services available to them from public and private
social agencies. Then they assist them in their
contacts with the agencies. It may involve any-
thing from a day nursery for the children to
citizenship papers.-
CONSUMER SERVICES— The average con-
sumer in this day and age is frequently caught
in "booby traps" set by shady businessmen. The
union member need not be such a victim.
Many unions operate union-counseling services
to teach members how to obtain the most for
their money.
Many unions have organized buying clubs to
provide centralized purchases at reduced costs to
the consumer. In Akron, O., the Rubber Workers
have a successful cooperative supermarket. In
New York, Dist. 65, Wholesale, Retail & Dept.
Store Workers, operates a union retail coopera-
tive and sells about 1000 items at cost. It does
an annual volume of $1.5 million with annual
savings to members estimated at $500,000 a year.
The UAW sells toys at a discount rate in Detroit.
And so the story goes.
RECREATION— Many unions today offer
planned and coordinated vacation and recreation
programs for members and their families. It may
be a Labor Day picnic, a summer camp for
children, swimming, organized sports such as
baseball, basketball or bowling. Some unions
operate recreation centers for young people as
well as union members.
The Ladies' Garment Workers have the fabu-
lous Unity House in the Pocono Mountains where
a member can take his family to enjoy the facili-
ties of the wealthy for a fraction of the cost. The
Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers have a similar
camp on Lake Ontario; the Clothing Workers
have their recreation center on a Pennsylvania
estate; the Upholsterers have a Florida resort.
CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT— Unions
have always been concerned with the development
of the whole individual. That is why they work
extensively in cultural pursuits.
Union education programs, for example, now
take up a sizable portion of many local and
international union budgets. Members frequently
are provided with weekend institutes and other
schools lasting one or two weeks or longer.
Organized labor is donating more than $500,-
000 a year for scholarships to colleges and uni-
versities. The money comes from 26 interna-
tional unions and their locals, 16 state bodies,
27 local labor bodies and the AFL-CIO itself.
A total of $1 million each year is contributed by
unions to educational bodies.
In addition, many craft unions train their own
members with the cooperation of management
through apprenticeship programs. Courses help
workers to be upgraded and promoted, too.
It's impossible to record all of trade unionism's
hidden advantages or to single out many unusual
benefits. The Seafarers, for example, pay $200 to
members for each new child plus a $25 U. S.
Savings Bond gift to the baby itself.
In sum total, it doesn't cost to join a union —
it pays, and pays handsomely. (PAIJ
WASHINGTON
WiMwid&ieeien
A FRESH ELEMENT is present in the second session of the
86th Congress — the self-styled Democratic Study Group, made, up
of something more than 100 House members who hope to help
produce an affirmative legislative record in the six short months
before adjournment is forced by the presidential nominating
conventions.
The group is not new, in the strict sense. It has existed tor
several years on what was correctly described as an "informal''
basis. It has included northern and western Democratic liberals
and in the past one of the chief leaders was Eugene J. McCarthy
of Minnesota, who is now in the Senate.
The fresh element is that the group has now adopted a formal
organization and has set up machinery to study legislation, to
communicate ideas and to work together consistently to advance
the policy and programs in which the group believes.
There is nothing secret about the operation. A press release
informed reporters that the group had held "several meetings just
before adjournment" of the first session last September and that
additional meetings, to work out a program of action, would be
held early in the new session.
The "informal cooperation" of the past, the press release said,
"fell short of fulfilling our needs/' A decision Was made to create
a staff and a formal organization to produce facts and reports and
to maintain liaison.
The press release was issued over the names of Rep. Lee Met-
calf (D-Mont.), as temporary chairman and Rep. Frank Thompson
(D-N. J.) as temporary secretary. Metcalf is a highly respected
House member of medium seniority, Thompson a rising younger
member, and the bona fides of both are solid. *
The Study Group announced, on the first day of the new session,
a specific seven-point legislative program. It wants action on civil
rights and a federal school-aid bill, a depressed areas bill and an
improved minimum wage system. It wants improvement of the
social security system to provide medical care for beneficiaries, and
better housing and farm programs.
* * *
THERE IS NOTHING in this program that would frighten the
delegates to the last Democratic convention. The convention wrote
a platform that included all of these objectives.
The fact is, however, that nothing decisive happened in any
of the areas last year, despite the topheav y Democratic majorities
in Congress, except in housing. A "third-try" housing bill was
accepted by Pres. Eisenhower after vetoes of two earlier
measures.
The further fact is that some of the measures the Study Group
emphasizes didn't even get to a vote last session.
The Senate passed a depressed-areas bill by a three-vote margin
but the House Rules Committee bottled it up. The bill on medical
payments for social security beneficiaries didn't get out of the
Ways and Means Committee. A Senate subcommittee acted on
minimum wages but that was the extent of progress. Other bills
were blocked either by Eisenhower vetoes or by the operation of
the Dixiecrat-Republican coalition that commanded the House.
* * *
THIS REPUBLICAN-DIXIECRAT coalition will be a challenge
to the Democratic congressional leadership again in 1960.
It would be absurd to suggest that the Democratic Study Group
by itself has the strength to overcome the coalition. Its members
include those who have tried and failed in the past to match forces
with the coalition janizaries, Republican Floor Leader Charles A.
Halleck (Ind.) and Rep. Howard Smith (D-Va.), chairman of the
Rules Committee.
The Study Group nevertheless gives the leadership a solid
nucleus of backing for national Democratic programs whenever
these programs can be jackknifed to the floor.
It gives the leadership something to work from and with and
provides an instrumentality with the very substantial asset of genu-
ine attachment to the Democratic Party's nationally proclaimed
platform and programs.
CONSTRUCTION has been completed on new $3.5 million, nine-
story international headquarters building for Communications
Workers in Washington, D. C. CWA's international offices occupy
four lloors in building, with remainder leased as offices and stores.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
How to Buy:
Unions Study Legal
Aid for Membership
By Sidney Margolius
LABOR UNIONS, which pioneered prepaid medical care for work
' ing families, now are investigating the possibility of providing
prepaid legal care. Los Angeles hotel and restaurant unions re
cently surveyed members' legal problems and are exploring ways
to make available legal aid on a prepaid basis. Other local unions
have developed a number of methods of providing such help. The
AFL-CIO Community Services Ac-
tivities also is surveying the various
ways unions and other civic organi-
zations provide legal help for
members as part of the CSA con-
sumer-guidance program.
Many of the financial scrapes
working families get into would be
avoided if they could afford to con-
sult a lawyer first. No businessman
ever signs a contract without having
a lawyer read it first. No moderate-
income family ever does have a
lawyer read a contract, except in
rare instances.
Many consumer frauds in the sale
of cars, home repairs, furniture and
other goods and services have their roots in tricky contracts. Many
consumers don't even read contracts themselves before signing.
Even when they do, the legal language is hard to understand.
Just as group health insurance pays your medical bill if you get
sick, the Los Angeles plan would "insure" wage-earners against
legal expenses. Workers and their employers would contribute to
a fund. Then a family would get legal help when* needed without
further cost or payment of only a. modest fee.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT values of such a group
legal plan is that it could provide "preventative" legal care, just as
the checkups provided by group medical plans help prevent small
illnesses from becoming serious ones.
One problem is that a legal-care plan may face the same op-
position from bar associations, that group medical plans got from
the American Medical Association for many years. However, a
number of individual lawyers have announced approval of the
legal-care proposal.
Without a legal care plan, it's doubly important to watch con-
tracts closely. Here are tips On some tricks you need to guard
against:
• Most installment purchase contracts are turned over by the
dealer to a bank or finance company. Do you have written assur-
ance from the dealer that he will make good on the guarantee or
replace the merchandise if it is defective? You also need to read
the guarantee itself carefully.
• Add-on contracts are a special problem in the installment
furniture business. The new purchase is added on to the old con-
tract. This means you can lose goods all or mostly paid for if you
default on the most recent purchase.
• Beware referral schemes which promise you a bonus if you
send in names of other prospects for such goods as garbage dis-
posers or fire alarm systems. You've got to pay whether you get
the promised bonuses or not.
• Beware signing so-called "receipts" which canvassers selling
jewelry or watches on "approval" may offer. These often are ac-
tually purchase contracts which include an assignment of your wages
if you fail to pay or try to return the merchandise.
• Don't sign an FHA completion certificate for a home-repair
job until the job actually has been completed to your approval.
• Look for the wage assignment in installment contracts. It
may be hard to escape a garnishee if an assignment is included, as
it often is. Sometimes a wage assignment may be palmed off on you
at the bottom page of the contract you sign.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius
Morgan Says:
Emotional Maturity of Mankind
A Bright Hope for New Year
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. y EST.)
OUTSIDE OF the morning-after malady of
throbbing head and flannel tongue, one of
the world's major afflictions, I strongly suspect,
is emotional. Like a jealous lover, nations find
i" difficult, sometimes impossible, to control their
feelings. Scratch a crisis almost anywhere and
the hot blood of human
passion flows.
Cuba today should be
jubilantly celebrating the
first anniversary of the
overthrow of the Batista
dictatorship, and looking
ahead to a steadier future
of freedom and promise.
Instead this , unhappy
Caribbean island is throb-
bing with uncertainty and
fear under the wildly dan-
gerous impulsiveness of a nervous, vindictive and
immature young man named Castro. His revolu-
tionary regime, once so brave and" bright with
expectation, will fail tragically unless he can
tame its savage, suspicious animal-like emotions
Vandercook Says:
Morgan
and channel them into the energy of construct ive-
ness.
IF WE CANNOT LEARN from experience, if
we cannot apply the harness of reason to the im-
pulses of emotion then we deserve no better fate.
But I think we may be learning slowly, I believe
we may be maturing ever so slightly.
Which brings me to the annual ritual of re-
versing the commercial. Astonishingly enough,
to me at least, this is the fifth anniversary of
these broadcasts. Too often, I'm afraid, I have
carted to this corner expressions more emo-
tional than reasoned. But for the privilege of
that indulgence I have, proudly, to thank the
broad-mindedness of my sponsor, the AFL-
CIO, and the long-suffering tolerance of my
network, the American Broadcasting Co.
However pretentious these remarks may sound,
they are made with mingled sincerity and sadness
—sincerity mobilized by gratitude to the people of
organized labor for the rare opportunity of being
able to report and speak my mind and make my
own mistakes of fact and judgment without cen-
sorship; and sadnes that such an opportunity is
so rare particularly at a time when American
journalism, electronic and otherwise, should be
one of the most dynamic, thoughtfully searching
forces in our society and is not.
'Complacent Melancholy' Sets
Mood of 1960 for Americans
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of John W. Vandercook, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to
Vandercook over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 10 p. m. f EST.)
WE AMERICANS are beginning a New Year
and a new decade in what can perhaps best
be described as a mood of complacent melan-
choly. Outside, we appear to be as bland and
smooth as butter. Inside, we are a mite con-
fused. The endless good tidings which are issued
from Washington and by
the ad-men partly per-
suade us that everything
is simply wonderful.
Yet, I think, enough
survives of our traditional
American common sense,
even after its erosion by
the appalling let-down in
our educational standards
and the inanity of much
of what we accept as "en-
tertainment," to convince
us that some of the cream on the bun of our
self-congratulation is the least bit sour.
WE ARE ASSURED, for example, that all of
us are rolling in wealth. If you and I don't feel
that we are in exactly that condition, then that
is a fact we had best keep to ourselves. Any little
Washington Reports:
Vandercook
nagging need for dollars or for shiney merchandise
can easily be met by going into debt.
In the career of Dwight D. Eisenhower we
have witnessed the growth of a great myth, not
of a great President. It's a difference which is
not entirely reassuring. The fearful prospect
of another great war does seem to have receded.
If now our apprehension is less, it'is not be-
cause our defenses are in better order. They are
not. It isn't because our weapons are superior
to those of our Red rivals, for they aren't. Nor,
certainly, is it because of any freshness or inven-
tion in our foreign policies, for they have remained
substantially, unchanged for seven years. Such
assurance of peace as we do have is rather the
gift of a Russian dictator who has decided that
keeping mankind's nerves quivering has done the
Communist cause no good.
THIS IS AN ELECTION YEAR. The great
eiderdown quilt of complacency under which the
Administration has invited us to crawl has almost
convinced us that there are no "real issues."
If we are not to lose one of the great sources
of our strength, we must disabuse ourselves of that
nonsensical, that narcotic, belief. If ever there
have been issues worth debating, we may be sure
they are still with us. For rarely has an Ameri-
can government had a record of less positive ac-
complishment than has our's during these past
years.
Rival Senate Whips Spell Out
Main Issues Before Congress
PRES. EISENHOWER will find it harder to make his vetoes stick
in the current session of Congress, Sen. Mike Mansfield (Mont.),
left, Democratic whip, declared on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service radio program. Sen. Thomas H.
Kuchel (Calif,), at right, the Republican whip, predicted a filibuster
on civil rights but eventual passage of legislation.
SEN. MIKE MANSFIELD (Mont), Demo-
cratic whip, and Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel
(Calif.), Republican whip, agreed that major is-
sues before the second session of the 86th Con-
gress will be civil rights, disarmament, federal aid
to education and an increase in the minimum
wage.
They were interviewed on Washington Reports
to the People, AFL-CIO public service program
heard on 300 radio stations. Both said there will
be so much urgent business that Congress may
have to recess for the national conventions and
reconvene later.
Kuchel stressed civil rights legislation as ur-
gently needed. He said he hoped this will include
"legislation to preserve voting records in all states,
to give the attorney general more enforcement
powers to guarantee the civil rights of all Ameri-
cans, and legislation to provide that where anyone
conspires to destroy a public building, whether
church, synagogue, courthouse or school, that this
constitute a federal crime."
Mansfield said he thinks "the President is going
to find it more difficult to veto measures this com-
ing session and get away with it because with an
election coming up there will be more togetherness
as far as the Democrats are concerned."
He charged that the Administration has falsely
tried to charge the Democrats with "spending."
"In every single year that Pres. Eisenhower has
been in office," he declared, "Congress has re-
duced his budget requests so that the total reduc-
tion amounts to about $13 billion over the past
seven years.
"Insofar as defense spending is concerned, the
President has not asked for enough. We will very
likely this year, as we have in the past, raise the
amount for defense over what he has requested."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Page Nine
HAW Gives $25,000:
Labor Ups Backing
For Wilson Strikers
Chicago — Organized labor is stepping up its support of the Pack-
inghouse Workers nine-week strike against Wilson & Co., the na-
tion's third largest meat packer.
Nationally known labor figures have addressed membership meet-
ings of striking locals. Auto Workers Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey spoke
to an overflow meeting in Albert"^
Lea, Minn., and Pres. James B.
Carey of the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers, was heard by a
mass meeting in Cedar Rapids, la.
Sec.-Treas. Thomas M. McCor-
mick of the Oil Workers is sched-
uled to speak to a meeting in
Kansas City and appearances by
other key union figures are being
arranged.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein
acknowledged receipt of a $25,-
000 donation to the Wilson
strike fund by the Auto Workers
and there were indications that
additional financial support
would be coming from other
unions.
An unusual device in attempted
union-busting, a union for strike-
breakers, has been introduced to
the Wilson situation. Petitions for
certification as collective bargain-
ing agency at some Wilson plants
have been filed by the National
Brotherhood of Packinghouse
Workers, an unaffiliated group with
a membership of fewer than 10,-
000 in the industry.
UPWA officials characterized the
activity of the unaffiliated group as
"company-inspired'' and noted that
signatures on the petitions could
only be those of strikebreakers re-
cruited by Wilson from every sec-
tion of the country. License tags
from as many as 22 states have
been counted driving into some
struck Wilson plants.
Few Members Returned
A negligible^ number of UPWA
members have returned to work.
Officers of the unaffiliated union
have claimed to Wilson manage-
ment that they represent a major-
ity of current employes and have
said that discharge of any of their
members as a part of the strike
settlement would be argued as an
unfair labor practice.
Wilson Pres. James D. Cooney
used this intervention to reject ar-
bitration of all unresolved issues
suggested by four Democratic gov-
ernors of states in which struck
plants are located.
Helstein pointed out that the
newest gimmick at strikebreaking
was a threat to much of organized
labor.
It would be possible, Helstein
said, for a company to invite in
an unaffiliated union at any time
during a strike and to have this
group give membership cards to
the strikebreakers. In an election,
under the Land rum-Griffin Act,
both strikers and so-called "re-
placements" would be permitted
to ballot for their choice of a
bargaining agent.
Governor Orville L. Freeman
(Minn.), Edmund G. Brown
(Calif.), Herschel C. Loveless
(la.) and Ralph Brooks (Neb.),
wired Helstein and Cooney urging
arbitration of unsettled items in
the stalemate. They said this
would "permit full production to
resume for the benefit of all parties
and the public."
Helstein immediately told the
governors that he would accept ar-
bitration as "a last, necessary step"
although he would prefer "a gen-
uine meeting of the minds at the
bargaining table."
Company Stalls
He noted that Wilson had never
been asked for conditions different
from 1 those already granted by
every other major meat packer.
Wilson, he added, had "failed and
refused to make their position
known on many of the items balk-
ing a contract and strike settle-
ment."
Cooney turned down the gover-
nors* offer and said that he con-
sidered reinstatement of strikers
and other issues 4 'not appropriate
for arbitration."
He contended that it would be
an unfair labor practice for him
to discharge the strikebreakers cur-
rently on his payroll.
Keyserling Sees Danger
In Economic Stagnation
A leading economist has warned that periodic recessions and
economic stagnation are in store for the nation unless the United
States gets tk the right kind of leadership, which I don't think weVe
got now."
Leon H. Keyserling, president of the Conference on Economic
Progress and chairman of former p
Pres. Truman's Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers, told a nationwide
radio audience that full employ-
ment and economic growth must
be achieved to meet the Soviet
challenge and domestic needs.
Keyserling was interviewed on
the AFL-CIO public service radio
program, As We See It, heard over
the American Broadcasting Co.
network.
Idle workers and idle plant ca-
pacity must be used to meet "a
tremendous range of unmet needs,"
Keyserling declared. He said wages
"have not risen fast enough ... to
provide the consumption on the
part of wage earners that would
help us to keep our resources fully
employed."
Manpower and technological re-
sources being wasted, Keyserling
said, could be used to:
• Raise living standards, par-
ticularly for low-income families.
• Provide better protection for
the old.
• Provide schools, health serv-
ices and fundamental resource de-
velopment.
• Meet national defense needs.
"If military strength is a deterrent
force, we can't afford to have a
pistol that won't go off, or to have
a pistol that has a range of only
200 yards when our adversary has
a pistol that has a range of 400
yards."
If economic growth can be main-
tained, Keyserling declared, the
nation's social needs can be met
without general tax increases be-
cause an expanding economy will
produce greater tax revenue. He
added that closing tax loopholes
would permit higher exemptions on
low income taxes and thus further
stimulate consuming power.
"The kind of inflation we've had
in recent years," Keyserling as-
serted, "is the high cost resulting
from too much unemployment,
from too much idle plant and the
behavior of big monopolistic price
fixers who raise their prices when
their plants are only 60 to 70 per-
cent employed.
'They try to make up for a low
level of sales and production by
charging higher and higher prices."
—t'lioto by C. B. Maley
CHRISTMAS DAY STORY of striking Oil, Chemical & Atomic
Workers at Amoco refinery in Texas City, Tex., is covered by
Houston television cameras and reporters. The strike, also in
progress at other Amoco operations, was in its 175th day.
Transport Workers
Get 36-Cent Package
New York — Last-minute settlements providing wage and fringe
benefits worth at least 36 cents an hour over a two-year period have
averted a scheduled strike by 37,000 subway and bus workers here.
The agreement reached by the Transport Workers in New Year's
Eve negotiations with the city-owned subway and surface transit
lines paved the way for a pact with^
seven private bus companies
reached an hour before a 5 a. m.
strike deadline.
The City Hall talks with the
Transit Authority were spurred by
recommendations of a special
mediation panel headed by Mrs.
Anna Rosenberg, veteran mediator
and former assistant defense secre-
tary.
The agreement provides an
immediate raise of 18 to 25 cents
an hour and second-year in-
creases, in two stages, which will
add another 8 to 11 cents to
wage rates. A separate fund was
Strike-Lost
Time in 1959
Most Since '46
Lost working time due to strikes
during 1959 reached the highest
level since 1946, the Labor Dept.
has reported.
The report said the 116-day steel
strike accounted for about three-
fifths of the 68 million man-days
lost.
'The total of man-days lost in
1959 amounted to about seven-
tenths of 1 percent of the estimated
working time of all workers in non-
farm establishments (excluding
government)," the report said.
'This percentage was about three
times the 1958 figure. Although
it was the highest yearly rate ex-
cept for 1946, it was only half the
level for that year."
For 1959, there were 3,900
stoppages beginning in the year
involving 1,850,000 workers. The
average time lost was 37.2 man-
days per striking worker.
The Labor Dept. press release
pointed out that the steel strike was
"the largest stoppage in terms of
size and duration in this country's
history."
Rep. Simpson Dies;
Old Guard Leader
Rep.. Richard M. Simpson of
Pennsylvania's 18th Dist., chairman
of the National Republican Con-
gressional Committee and ranking
minority member of the House
Ways and Means Committee, died
in the Bethesda, Md., Naval Hos-
pital following a brain operation.
He was 59.
A member of the House for 22
years, he was regarded as a top
GOP expert on legislation concern-
ing taxes and foreign trade, and
was an advocate of high tariffs.
set up to eliminate inequities in
skilled-trades rates. Improved
health and welfare benefits bring
the estimated value of the pack-
age to 40 cents.
TWU Pres. Michael J. Quill
hailed the settlement and told
newsmen that transit workers "are
among the happiest" that a strike
was averted.
Talks between TWU and seven
private bus operators resulted in
quick agreement giving 8,000
workers a 36-cent package, includ-
ing wage increases of 22 cents an
hour over the contract period.
New York Mayor Robert F.
Wagner declared that the city's 15-
cent subway and bus fare would
not % be increased during the period
of the contract. To aid the settle-
ment, the city eased the Transit
Authority's financial problems by
agreeing to pay for the authority's
police force and indicated that it
will compensate private bus lines
for their part in the cut-rate school
fare program.
The Transit Authority also
agreed to a similar package cover-
ing 1,700 bus operators represented
by the Street & Electric Railway
Employes.
BRT Opens
31st Parley
In Cleveland
Cleveland — Merger of the na-
tion's two largest railroad operat-
ing brotherhoods — the Railroad
Trainmen and the Locomotive Fire-,
men & Enginemen — was proposed
here as the Trainmen opened a
special convention to elect officers
and make constitutional changes
necessitated by the Landrum-Grif.-
fin Act.
The merger proposal was ad-
vanced by H. E. Gilbert, president
of the 87,000-member BLF&E, in
an address to the 1,124 delegates
representing the Trainmen's 200,-
000 members.
A five-man committee was
named by BRT Pres. W. P. Ken-
nedy to study the proposal and
report back to the convention,
the union's 31st, before it ad-
journs. The convention may last
a month or more.
Named chairman of the study
group was J. E. Stultz, Logansport,
Ind. Other members include A. L.
Ford of Anderlin, N. D.; D. A.
McDonald of Fairfield, Ala.; G. I.
Winn, Jr., of Manchester, Ga.; and
H. J. LeBlanc of Monkton, New
Brunswick.
Gilbert has long advocated cre-
ation of a single union of operat-
ing and service employes in the
railroad industry. Three times in
recent years he urged merger of the
BLF&E with the unaffiliated Loco-
motive Engineers, but the latter
group has turned down the plan.
Although the convention was
called as a special session, possibly
limited to the election of officers
and the constitutional changes,
delegates voted by a narrow margin
to open the conclave to any legiti-
mate union business.
Ahead of the delegates was a
possible political contest involving
the presidency and other posts of
leadership.
Kennedy, who has held the top
position since 1-949 and was re-
elected at the brotherhood's 1954
convention, has announced that he
will seek another term.
In his speech to the conven-
tion, Gilbert charged that rail
management seeks to eliminate
350,000 jobs through contract
demands served on operating un-
ions. He said this represents "a
threat to the national security,"
and charged that the carriers*
outcries about "fearlierbedding"
are being used to hide this fact.
Gilbert accused management of
asking railroad workers "to give up
12 years of wage increases and 50
years of work-rule protection."
Singer Co. Zig-Zags
Into Conspiracy Charge
New York — The Justice Dept. has accused the Singer Manufac-
turing Co. of conspiring with two European firms to sew up the
United States market for the newest type of household sewing ma-
chine through a patent deal.
The anti-trust complaint, a civil actioji filed in U.S. District Court
here, alleges that the Singer com- 3^ -
pany — which already "completely
dominates" the domestic manufac-
ture and sale of "zig-zag" sewing
machines — has teamed up with an
Italian and a Swiss manufacturer
to control the market for sup-
posedly-competing imported ma-
chines.
Named co-conspirators with
Singer in the complaint are the
Fritz Gegauf firm in Switzerland
and the Arnaldo Vigorelli firm in
Italy. The Swiss firm, the Justice
Dept. said, agreed to assign its
patent rights to Singer. These
rights, along with patents held by
Singer, would then be used to
freeze out Japanese imports.
The three companies would then
determine which European manu-
facturers would be permitted to ex-
port automatic sewing machines to
the United States, the charge con-
The automatic zig-zag ma-
chines, which enable the operator
to switch from straight to fancy
stitches without cumbersome at-
tachments, account for a "grow-
ing segment" of the sewing ma-
chine market, the government
stated. In 1958, Singer sold more
zig-zag machines than any other
type of household sewing ma-
chines. It accounted for two-
thirds of the sales in the United
States, its sole competition com-
ing from foreign imports.
The Justice Dept. told the court
that the patent agreement has "de-
prived consumers of the opportun-
ity of purchasing these machines in
a free and competitive market." It
asked the court to dissolve the
agreements and issue orders estab-
lishing free competition in the
field.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Economic Outlook Says:
FRB , Administration
Hit on Tight Money
T£e AFL-CIO has lashed the Eisenhower Administration and the
Federal Reserve Board for bringing about "one of the tightest credit
squeezes most Americans have ever seen" and checking the growth
of the nation's economy.
Economic Trends and Outlook, monthly publication of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Research, pointed &~
BRICKLAYERS' LOCAL 34 in New York City recently celebrated golden jubilee at a dinner. Left to
right are: Bricklayers' Treas. Thomas F. Murphy; Pres. H'arry C. Bates; Local 34 Pres. James
McEntegart; Francis Cardinal Spellman; Local 34 Sec. James F. Brodie; Mayor Robert F. Wagner
Dinner Committee Chairman Peter Doyle; Local 34 Business Rep. Vincent Dee.
Self -Financing Helps TVA Meet
Fast-Growing Demand for Power
Labor-backed self-financing for the Tennessee Valley Authority, enacted by Congress last summer,
will permit the expansion of generating facilities to meet demands in the power-hungry area it serves
for the next several years, the TVA said in its annual report for the 1959 fiscal year.
Already the average residential consumer in the TVA region uses nearly 8,000 kilowatt hours a
year — a level the industry does not expect the rest of the country to reach until 1975.
"With the many new uses o^
electricity that develop each year,"
the report said, "and with the
sharply increasing use for air con-
ditioning and heating, an average
annual use of 20,000 kilowatt hours
per customer in the Valley region is
not many years off."
The report also covered other
phases of TVA concern including
navigation improvements, flood
control, land and water use, water
supply and reforestation.
In addition it denied "loosely
made charges" that its low-cost
power has "pirated" companies and
plants from other areas.
"During the 19 years from
1940 through 1958," it said on
the basis of a survey, "25 firms
ceased operations in areas out-
side the TVA region and re-
Rockefeller Proposes
State Minimum Wage
Albany, N. Y. — Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) has proposed a
statewide minimum wage law and modest improvements in unem
ployment, workmen's compensation and disability benefits in his an
nual message to the New York State Legislature.
Rockefeller called on the Republican-controlled legislature to
enact this year: •§>
officers during a conference with
• A statutory minimum wage of
$1 an hour to supplement and serve
as a floor under New York's pres-
ent wage board system which estab-
lishes separate minimums for vari-
ous industries. He also proposed
extended coverage.
• A $5 increase in maximum
weekly benefits under the unem-
ployment, disability and workmen's
compensation laws. These maxi-
mums, now $45, would go to $50.
• A new provision permitting
workers displaced by automation to
receive jobless benefits while they
are retraining for other occupa-
tions.
The areas of improvement pro-
posed by the governor are among
those urged by State AFL-CIO
Concert Scheduled
As Green Memorial
More than 3,800 elemen-
tary school children in the
District of Columbia area
will be guests of organized
labor at a special children's
concert to be given Jan. 13
by the National Symphony
Orchestra.
The program, to be staged
in famed Constitution Hall, is
made possible by a grant
from the William Green Me-
morial Fund, established to
perpetuate the memory of the
late president of the former
AFL. AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
William C. Doherty wffl be
the federation's official repre-
sentative at the concert.
Rockefeller in November. The spe-
cific increases recommended fall
considerably below New York
labor's legislative program.
One feature of the minimum
wage proposal which matched
labor's recommendations is the
extension of coverage to workers
at voluntary non-profit hospitals.
The $l-an-hour minimum the
governor proposed compares with
$i.50 an hour which the State
AFL-CIO had said was justified by
the cost of living and was "essen-
tial for the protection of the work-
ing people of this state."
The state labor leaders had told
Rockefeller that "at the very least
the state law should provide for
the automatic adjustment of the
state minimum" to conform with
increases in the federal . minimum
wage.
While labor will press for a
higher minimum, business and
industry groups have served no-
tice that they are opposed to any
statutory minimum wage.
The Commerce & Industry Asso-
ciation has protested that a state-
wide minimum would "price
workers out of their jobs and
plants out of the state in some
industries and enhance the com-
petitive advantage of other states
having no such legal wage floors."
In the area of unemployment
and workmen's compensation,
Rockefeller again steered a course
between business opposition to any
improvement and labor's proposal
to set maximum benefits at two-
thirds of the average state wage.
located here. They represented
employment of 3,800 people.
"During the same period, 9
firms representing an employ-
ment of 2,000 persons left the
TVA region for locations else-
where.
"The net gain of 16 plants
and 1,800 employes was negligi-
ble in the total growth of indus-
try in the region, where the num-
ber of workers in manufacturing
plants, according to census fig-
ures, increased from 175,000 to
nearly 290,000 between 1939
and 1954."
The meaning of TVA's growth,
according to the report, is that for
"some years to come" TVA will
have to add 1 million kilowatts of
generating power annually to keep
pace with demand.
Recognizing that advance plan-
ning is necessary because of the
time required for construction of
facilities, the TVA made tentative
expansion plan9 in advance of con-
gressional authorization of bonds.
Once Congress acted* orders were
placed for two steam-electric gen-
eration units — one of 600,000 kil-
lo watts capacity, largest in the
world, to be built on the Green
River at Paradise, Ky., and the
other of 500,000 kilowatts capacity
to be constructed on a site still to
be selected.
Salvatore Ninfo,
ILG Pioneer, Dies
New York — Salvatore Ninfo, a
pioneer leader in garment organiza-
tion, a vice president of the Ladies'
Garment Workers from 1915 to
1956, and a spearhead of unionism
among Italian immigrants in a wide
variety of trades, died in a Yonk-
ers, N. Y., hospital after a long ill-
ness. He was 76.
He came to this country from
his native Sicily in 1899 at the age
of 16 and worked so effectively for
the ILGWU that the late Pres.
Samuel Gompers of the former
AFL borrowed him to organize
among newly-arrived Italian work-
ers in New York, Philadelphia and
Boston.
He was a leader in the waist-
makers' and cloakmakers' strikes
here in 1909 and held many offices
in the international union and its
locals, including the acting presi-
dency for a short time in 1921. He
was elected a member of the New
York City Council on the Ameri-
can Labor Party ticket in 1937 and
served through 1943.
out that interest rates reached the
highest levels in over a generation
during 1959 and are expected to be
even higher in early 1960.
"That means America's acute
housing shortage will worsen and
construction employment will be
affected," the AFL-CIO said, quot
ing experts as seeing a 10 percent
decline in housing starts this year.
"The consumer is paying more
for new cars, refrigerators, etc.,
as interest rates mount . . .
the publication commented, add-
ing:
"State and local governments
are paying higher debt costs or
putting off necessary projects. • • •
"Federal government debt
costs are higher than ever and
interest rates continue to inflate
the cost of the national debt. In-
terest costs for 1959-60 are esti-
mated at over $8 billion, up
about a billion dollars or about
11 percent in the three years
since 1956-57."
The AFL-CIO noted that home
builders have said interest charges
on mortgages rose about 1 percent
from 1958 to 1959, making annual
mortgage payments an average of
$110 higher.
"Much of the reason for this
credit squeeze is a conscious effort
to tighten the money supply — a
wrongheaded use of monetary
weapons by the Federal Reserve
Board," the AFL-CIO said.
Most Effective
The publication observed that
the money supply is not the only
economic factor affecting the econ-
omy, but added that the FRB's
power is the single most effective
way to influence the money supply.
The board influences this area
through interest rates it charges
member banks for borrowing
funds, through the ratio it requires
of bank reserves to loans and
through purchase and sale of gov-
ernment securities. The money
supply includes the coins and bills
in circulation as well as the money
in demand deposits, that is, in
checking accounts in banks.
The AFL-CIO pointed out that
the money supply as a percentage
of the gross national product
dropped steadily as the nation re-
converted from war to peace, to
a level of about 35 percent in the
early 1950's.
"As the Eisenhower Administra-
tion began to make its presence
felt, however, as the inflation-
preachers scared America out of
more and more growth, the money
supply as a percent of gross na-
tional product, declined from about
34 percent in early 1955 to a level
of 29 percent in the first two quar-
ters of 1959," it added.
The reason, the AFL-CIO said,
is that every time the economy
starts to move forward rapidly, the
reserve board and the Administra-
tion decide that inflation might start
speeding and so "put on tight-
money brakes."
The AFL-CIO publication
pointed out that in 1953-54 and
1957-58, recession followed
money-tightening and that "in-
flation" or price increases oc-
curred regardless of the board's
action.
It referred to the view of William
McChesney Martin, chairman of
the FRB board of governors, be-
fore Congress last summer.
Martin said then that the board
should not support "an undue ex-
pansion of bank credit and money"
in the face of "developing high-
level prosperity and the potential
threat of an inflationary boom."
For a nation emerging from the
staggering 1958 recession," the
AFL-CIO said, a rapid increase in
money and credit to create more
jobs, homes and a higher standard
of living need not be "undue."
Concern Misplaced
Not only has the board shown
more concern over growth as "an
engine of inflation" than for its
beneficial effects — "it has been
quite satisfied with unsatisfactory
growth rates," the AFL-CIO
charged.
*The nation's economic growth
has been "too slow" in recent years,
the AFL-CIO said, pointing out
that even conservative estimates put
growth needs at 5 percent annually
simply to maintain living standards.
IAM Tells Johnson of
Sharp 's Union Busting
Houston, Tex. — Locked-out Machinists at the Mission Mfg. Co.
here have questioned whether a background of union-battling quali-
fies Dudley C. Sharp, Sr., for promotion to Secretary of the Air
Force.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson — a fellow
Texan — the IAM members ask'^~
that the Senate "consider" Sharp's
participation in the union-busting
activities of the company in which
he is a principal owner before act-
ing on confirmation of his promo-
tion from under secretary to sec-
retary.
Business Rep. A. T. Adams of
IAM Lodge 12 told Johnson that
the union officers had twice written
to Pres. Eisenhower complaining
that Sharp had actively participated
in strikebreaking efforts, including
having himself photographed doing
the work of a striking employe in
an effort to drum up business for
the company.
The union members, who had
struck July 13, 1959, voted last
September to end their strike but
the company locked them out
and filled their jobs with strike-
breakers.
An Eisenhower aide replied to
the first letter, advising the union
members to take their protest to
the National Labor Relation*
Board.
In a follow-up letter, to which
the union has not received a reply,
the officers told the President that
they had done just that.
The NLRB general counsel, they
informed Eisenhower, had issued
a complaint charging the company,
which makes oil equipment, with:
• Refusal to bargain in good
faith.
• Discrimination against work-
ers because of their union mem-
bership.
• Firing 210 IAM members
during the course of the strike.
The NLRB regional office has
set Jan. 26 for a hearing on the
complaint.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Page Eleves
Acts 'Not Consistent 9 With Policy:
FCC Lashes 2 TV Stations
For Anti-Labor Broadcasts
The Federal Communications Commission has sharply rebuked the Metropolitan Broadcasting
Corp. for the use of its television facilities in programs to discredit the trade union movement.
The commission's reprimand involved two Metropolitan stations — WTTG-TV in Washington and
WNEW-TV in New York — and stemmed from formal complaints filed by AFL-CIO Associate Gen.
Counsel Thomas E. Harris.
The FCC listed these activities 1 ^
of the MBC affiliates as being "not
consistent" with commission policy
as regards "editorializing" by broad-
casters:
• During McClellan special
Senate committee hearings involv-
ing the Auto Workers and Kohler
Co., WTTG furnished free films of
selected portions of the investiga-
tion to 27 television stations, with-
out informing them that the films
were paid for by the National As-
sociation of Manfacturers.
• On the eve of congressional
action on controversial labor legis-
lation, both stations telecast a pro-
gram supporting the restrictive
Landrum-Grinin bill. The AFL-
CIO assailed this as a "one-sided
presentation" and a "perversion of
the public service concept."
The commissions complaint
against WTTG's role in connection
with the Kohler hearings noted that
the station, working with NAM
representatives, sent 102 telegrams
to stations in different markets of-
fering to sell the film summaries.
The offers, said the FCC "were
made at the suggestion and request
of the NAM" and the cbst of the
telegrams "was divided between
NAM and WTTG" although the
wires significantly made no men-
tion of the role of the industry
front group.
When not a single station ac-
cepted the offer to sell the films,
the commission complain? contin-
ued, "arrangements were made by
NAM to have said summaries made
available free of charge to interested
stations." Again, the FCC noted
"no information was given by
WTTG . . . during any transmittal
to any of the stations receiving said
summaries that they were being
supplied by NAM."
The FCC called VVTTG's fail-
ure to identify the NAM's active
participation in supplying the
free films "a serious omission,"
in view of the fact that federal
regulations require broadcasters
to identify any direct or indirect
sponsor of telecasts.
The second charge involved ;
televised interview with Senators
John L. McClellan (D-Ark.) and
Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C), both
supporters of harsh legislation.
The AFL-CIO had said the timing
of the program made it impossible
for supporters of more moderate
legislation to ask for equal time to
talk on a bill which would have
met the problem of labor corrup-
tion "without undeservedly restrict
ing the legitimate functions" of
unions.
Company's 'Defense*
Metropolitan's defense, entered
by MBC Gen. Counsel Robert A
Dreyer, declared that "at no time'
did the AFL-CIO ask "for an op-
portunity to present the other side
of the case — if there is another
side to labor corruption."
Harris, in reply, assailed the
broadcaster s "cynicism," declaring
that the issue was "not the pros or
cons of labor corruption, but the
highly controversial issue of which
Financial Report Items
Protested by AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO has taken strong exception to a Labor Dept. in-
struction covering the union financial report required by the Lan
drum-Griffin Act.
The AFL-CIO protested that the instruction might be interpreted
to require an itemized breakdown of legitimate expenses incurred
by officers or employes and paid^
directly by the union.
If the Labor Dept. instruction
is interpreted broadly — and ex-
penditures for hotels, air travel
and stamps are to be itemized —
the AFL-CIO contends that the
rule is contrary to the law's lan-
guage, violates \he legislative in-
tent, would serve no useful pur-
pose and would burden unions
unduly.
In a 13-page comment, the AFL-
CIO asked the Labor Dept. to re-
vise the reporting forms "to make
it clear that they call for the list-
ing .. . only of (1) reimbursed
expenses and (2) any personal ex-
penses paid by the union, whether
reimbursed or paid directly, to-
gether with any other disguised
salary items, and that they do not
call for the allocation among offi-
cers and employes of union ex
penses paid directly by the union.'
The department's new Bureau of
Labor-Management Reports re-
cently issued both long and short
reporting forms required to be filed
by some 77,000 unions within 90
days after the close of their fiscal
year.
The AFL-CIO took issue with
the instruction covering Schedule
F in the long form and Item 11 in
the short form.
"Non-reimbursed union expenses
are not disbursements to an officer
or employe, either directly or in-
directly; they are disbursements to
an airline or hotel or stationery
store," the AFL-CIO pointed out.
Kentucky Garnishee Law
Exempts Oxen, Not Wages
Louisville, Ky. — Describing this state's garnishment law as
"outdated and obsolete," the Executive Council of the Ken-
tucky State AFL-CIO has called on the 1960 session of the
legislature to bring the statute up to 20th century standards.
The state labor body criticized the law as so outmoded
that it provides no exemption at all for salary or wages earned
by working people.
Instead, said the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, the law — writ-
ten nearly a century ago — provides such obsolete exemptions
from garnishment as the following:
Two work beasts or a yoke of oxen; two plows; one loom and
spinning wheel; two saddles; two bridles; $100 worth of poul-
try; 10 head of sheep; and provender suitable for livestock.
pending proposals Congress should
enact."
The commission found that in the
interview conducted by newsman
Matthew Warren, "both the ques-
tions and answers lent support to
the advisability of the Congress
enacting one labor bill as against
the other," and that neither WTTG
or WNEW ever broadcast any pro-
gram "presenting a viewpoint favor-
able to any other labor bill then
pending before Congress."
Defense Dismissed
The FCC dismissed Metropoli
tan's defense — that the AFL-CIO
had never sought equal time — by
declaring that this was a violation
of the "fair presentation" policy
endorsed by Congress and the com
mission. It cited a policy reiterated
many times by the commission
which declared:
"We do not believe . . . that the
licensee's obligations to serve the
public interest can be met merely
through the adoption of a general
policy of not refusing to broadcast
opposing viws where a demand is
made . . . for broadcast time.
"If, as we believe to be the
case, the public interest is best
served in a democracy through
the ability of the people to hear
expositions of the various posi-
tions taken by responsible groups
and individuals on particular
topics and to choose between
them, it is evident that broadcast
licensees have an affirmative duty
generally to encourage and im-
plement the broadcast of all sides
of controversial public issues . . .
over and above their obligation
to make available on demand
opportunities for the expression
of opposing views.
"It is clear that any approxima-
tion of fairness in the presentation
of any controversy will be difficult
if not impossible of achievement
unless the licensee plays a conscious
and positive role in bringing about
balanced presentation of the op-
posing viewpoints."
Summing up the findings against
the two Metropolitan stations the
FCC said the facts indicate that
the actions were "not consistent"
with policies on the presentation of
controversial issues.
It called on MBC to make cer-
tain that "the future operations of
all your stations . . . will be guided
by the views" set forth in the offi-
cial reprimand.
Parley to Air Ills
Of Puerto Ricans
New York — Representatives of
labor, social agencies and Puerto
Rican groups will meet Jan. 15 at
Hotel Commodore here to explore
the social welfare needs of Puerto
Rican citizens.
The day-long conference, spon-
sored by the AFL-CIO Community
Service Activities, will probe six
specific areas: public welfare, fam-
ly and child care, youth, recreation
and leisure time, housing, medical
and hospital care, and consumer
problems.
Fernando Sierra Berdecia, sec-
retary of labor for the Common-
wealth of Puerto Rico, will repre-
sent Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Munoz
Marin at the conference. CSA Dir.
Leo Perl is said Marin has notified
him that "the Commonwealth gov-
ernment is deeply interested in the
objectives of your conference. We
sincerely believe that such coopera-
tive action can unfold great possi-
bilities. Let me compliment you
for your fine initiative and wish
you a most successful conference."
BRIGHTENING HOLIDAY SEASON for 400 children of striking
members of Textile Workers Union at Harriet-Henderson Cotton
Mills, Henderson, N. C, Los Angeles Union Label Council sent 21
cartons of union-made toys in time for Christmas. Shown packag-
ing toys is Charles Hamner (right), of Mailers Union, while Union
Label Council Sec.-Treas. W. J. Bassett looks on. Toys were pur-
chased from Mattel, Inc., under contract with Rubber Workers, and
Knickerbocker Toy, under contract with Machinists.
L-G Act Held No Bar
To Charity Donations
New York — The Landrum-Griffin Act does not forbid union do-
nations to charitable organizations, providing certain procedures are
followed, it was announced here by an AFL-CIO spokesman.
Leo Pedis, AFL-CIO Community Service Activities director, said
his office has been notified to this effect by the AFL-CIO Legal
Dept. following inquiries froiri^
union groups who felt the new law
might seriously hamper their vol-
untary health and welfare work in
local communities.
Quoting AFL-CIO General
Counsel J. Albert Woll, Perlis
said the trade unions may prop-
erly contribute to charitable or-
ganizations and similar public
welfare agencies "as long as
union officials making such con-
tributions out of union funds are
acting pursuant to the organiza-
tion's constitution and by-laws or
pursuant to a resolution adopted
thereunder by the Executive
Board or other appropriate gov-
erning body of the organization."
Perlis explained: "While the new
labor-management act is harmful
to many areas of legitimate trade
union activity, we cannot allow it
to prevent unions from carrying
out their programs of community
service." He stressed that union
groups should exercise care that
their constitutions and by-laws spell
out specifically the purposes for
which funds may be contributed
and the procedures to be followed
in authorizing disbursements.
The Community Services direc-
tor said the official interpretation
from Woll referred to a statement
made on the Senate floor by Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and a
press release issued Dec. 10, 1959,
by Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell.
No Limitation
Kennedy, discussing the fiduci-
ary responsibility imposed on union
officials, stated: "The bill does not
limit in any way the purposes for
which the funds of a labor organ-
ization may be expended or the in-
vestments which can be made.
Such decisions should be made by
the members in accordance with
the constitution and by-laws of
their union. . . . The problems with
which labor organizations are ac-
customed to deal are not limited to
bread-and-butter unionism or to
organization and collective bargain-
ing alone, but encompass a broad
spectrum of social objectives as
the union may determine."
The Dept. of Labor press release
declared: "Sec. Mitchell also said
that he has received several letters
from reputable charities indicating
that some labor organizations may
be withholding customary dona-
tions apparently because of an er-
roneous belief that the new law
forbids such donations. This be-
lief probably stems from a mis-
understanding of the provisions
dealing with fiduciary responsibil-
ities of officers of labor organiza-
tions."
The release continued: "The
Secretary pointed out that this
section of the law (Sec. 501) does
not restrict the right of a labor
organization to contribute to
whatever charities the members
choose to assist. AH expendi-
tures must, of course, be made in
accordance with the particular
organization's constitution and
by-laws, the Secretary said."
Bargaining
Rights Asked
For Hospitals
New York — More than 200
prominent New Yorkers have urged
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and the
state legislature to provide collec-
tive bargaining rights and the
protection of unemployment and
disability benefits for 115,000 non-
medical workers in voluntary, non-
profit hospitals.
Among the signers of the state-
ment, which called for "first-class
citizenship rights" for hospital
workers, were 56 members of the
legislature, 13 congressmen and six
New York City councilmen.
Thirty-four*religious leaders, in-
cluding ministers, priests and
rabbis, signed the statement. It
was made public by Local 1199 of
the Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store
Union, which struck seven New
York City hospitals for 46 days last
spring to win partial union recog-
nition.
The community leaders, in-
cluding Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt,
pointed out that the "low wages
and poor working conditions"
prevailing in the hospitals com-
pel workers to live in slums, to
seek supplementary relief assist-
ance from city and state welfare
agencies and pose a threat to
"the health of the entire com-
munity."
Protesting the exemption of hos-
pital employes from state labor and
social laws, the signers called for
"prompt action to extend to hos-
pital workers the rights enjoyed by
other workers and thus end
their present status of second-class
citizenship."
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1960
Portland Papers Out to Crush Unions
Strikebreakers Paid
Up to $300 Weekly
and seniority for
Portland, Ore. — The two-month-old strike of the Stereotypers
against Portland's daily newspapers, focusing national attention in
the newspaper industry on the show-down struggle here, is forcing
unions in the field to consider major new tactics.
As the strike drags on, it has become more apparent that manage-
ments of the Oregonian and the'^
Oregon Journal aim at nothing less
than crushing all the newspaper un-
ions involved in the dispute.
The Stereotypers struck Nov.
10 after failing to make any head-
way in negotiating a new contract.
Their old agreement with the two
papers expired Sept. 15. The pub-
lishers refused to discuss wages or
any other contract matters unless
the union agreed first to three de-
mands:
• That a German-built auto-
mated metal plate-casting machine,
which the Oregonian says it pro-
posed to buy, be operated by one
man. Present equipment is op-
erated by four men. The German
machine is untested in this country
and has not even been seen by the
stereotypers.
• That foremen not be required
to belong to the union. They have
been in all past contracts. Foremen
work alongside other men, perform
the same duties.
• That the union give up its
right to provide substitutes.
All other unions in the two
plants — printers, pressman, en-
gravers, mailers, paperhandlers
and Newspaper Guild of report-
ers, editors and photographers —
observed the picket lines. But
the publishers imported strike-
breakers, chiefly from the South,
and began immediately to pub-
lish a joint product in the Ore-
gonian plant. Some of the im-
ports have been identified as
veterans of such strikebreaking
operations as Lima, O., Haver-
hill, Mass., Miami, Fla., Reno,
Nev., and Oklahoma City.
The job pirates receive premium
pay — up to more than $300
weekly — and are quartered at the
publishers' expense in a nearby
hotel. Management also picks up
food and bar tabs.
Husband and wife teams are
frequent among the strikebreakers.
The women operate teletypesetter
machines, on which news copy is
translated into perforated tape,
which in turn is fed through auto-
mated linotype machines. The pub-
lishers were caught early in the
strike working some of the women
12 hours a day, 72 hours a week,
in flagrant violation of state law
which fixes a maximum 44-hour
week for women.
A public hearing on importation
of strikebreakers and its impact on
labor-management relations in Ore-
gon was scheduled for Jan. 9 by
an interim committee of the state
legislature.
Lavish Outlays
Lavish outlays for recruiting and
paying strikebreakers and setting
up a training school for new ones
at the Journal plant are made pos-
sible by payments from a publish-
ers' strike insurance plan.
Each management can collect up
to $10,000 -daily over a 50-day
period for a combined total of
$1,000,000.
The Stereotypers have offered
compromises on each of the three
management demands — compro-
mises which formed the basis of
peaceful settlement of the same is-
sues at Detroit. But the publishers
have refused to consider them and
instead have come up with five new
demands:
• An open shop.
• Re-examination of manning
agreements on all other stereotyp-
ing equipment.
• A five-hour increase in the
workweek at no increase in pay.
Priority
strikebreakers.
• A no-strike clause.
Gov. Mark O. Hatfield (R.), suc-
cessful last year in mediating other
labor disputes, offered his services
but the publishers refused them.
Sen. Richard L. Neuberger (D)
proposed a citizens' fact-finding
panel to study the strike and drew
a similar curt rejection from the
publishers. The unions had wel-
comed both proposals.
Unfair labor practice charges
have been filed by the Stereo-
typers on the basis of use of
strike insurance funds to import
and train strikebreakers, and by
the web pressmen based on the
publishers 9 refusal to bargain in
good faith.
The Pressmen's contract expired
Dec. 31. Four days earlier, man-
agement notified the local its mem-
bers were no longer employes.
With expiration of the contract, the
pressmen and the affiliated paper
handlers voted to strike and joined
other crafts on the picket line.
New Paper Possible
To get their story before the
public, the unions have turned to
radio, TV and handbills. A special
edition of 300,000 copies of the
Oregon Labor Press, devoted en-
tirely to the strike, was mailed out
to all residences in the Portland
area. Now Portland's labor move-
ment is taking steps to start a third
daily newspaper in the city. Busi-
ness agents and secretaries of un-
ions in the area have voted support
for such a paper, to be financed by
sale of stock.
International officers of news-
paper unions will hold a "summit
meeting" in Portland this month to
discuss financing for the venture.
A committee of newspaper un-
ion representatives is preparing
cost estimates, locating publish-
ing facilities and determining
staff requirements for the pro-
posed new paper, tentatively
named the Portland Daily News.
Union members have launched a
house-to-house canvass to measure
public interest in such a paper and
to press, at the same time, a cam-
paign to persuade those still taking
the combined Oregonian-Journal to
cancel their subscriptions. Cancel-
lations already are estimated to
have reached 100,000.
"HAPPIEST PICKET LINE" is what Bob Schults, president of the Portland Newspaper Guild,
called this demonstration of 300 newspaper employes and their families outside the Oregonian's
struck plant. Supported by a five-piece band, the demonstrators sang Christmas carols for an hour
on the 43rd da^y of the city's longest and most bitter newspaper strike.
TWUA Plans Appeal to NLRB
On Ruling in Darlington Mill Case
The Textile Workers Union of America will ask the National Labor Relations Board to over-
rule a trial examiner's decision absolving the Deering, Milliken & Co. textile empire from respon-
sibility for the unfair labor practices of the Darlington Mfg. Co. — the South Carolina cotton mill
which closed its doors in October 1956 rather than bargain with the union chosen by its workers
in an NLRB election.
Five hundred Darlington em-£ —
ployes lost their jobs in what was
widely regarded as a move to in-
timidate southern textile workers
and block union organization.
At issue in three years of hear-
ings has been the question of
whether Deering, Milliken & Co.
could be required to compensate
the Darlington workers for their
loss of wages and offer them jobs
in other Deering, Milliken mills.
NLRB Trial Examiner Lloyd
Buchanan ruled there was insuffi-
cient evidence that Deering, Mil-
liken & Co. controlled the labor
relations policies of the Darling-
ton Mills despite the fact that
Roger Milliken was the president
of both companies, despite the
common ownership of the two
firms by the Milliken family and
despite the fact that the majority
of the directors of the Darlington
corporation are also officers of
Deering, Milliken & Co.
Earlier Buchanan had dismissed
the NLRB general counsel's com-
plaint against Roger Milliken per-
sonally. An appeal is pending
before the NLRB.
If Buchanan's findings should be
upheld by the NLRB, any back-pay
remedy for the Darlington workers
would be limited to funds obtained
from the liquidation of the Darling-
ton mill which have been frozen
by court order.
In a statement commenting on
the trial examiner's decision, the
TWUA declared that "under the
NLRB's own rules and past prac-
tices it is outrageous and illegal
to deliberately and pointedly
keep out of this case the respon-
sible persons and the responsible
corporation."
"Roger Milliken forced the de-
cision to liquidate the Darlington
subsidiary," the TWUA declared,
"simply to evade an obligation to
bargain with the union. The Deer-
ing, Milliken corporation which
Roger Milliken controls — a wealthy
and powerful chain — could find
other jobs for the hundreds of Dar-
lington workers, many of whom are
still without employment. "
09-6-1
FTC Tells 'Spotlight 9
To Halt Ad Practices
The Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on the Spot-
light, a self-styled New York "labor paper," ordering its publisher
to cease "misrepresenting that it is the nationally circulated official
publication" of the AFL-CIO.
The FTC also directed Publisher Ernest Mark High to stop
"printing unauthorized advertise- 3^-
PROFESSIONAL SCAB William (Beano) Glover, a printer, shows
up for early-morning shift at strike-bound Portland, Ore., Orego-
nian, with his wife Justine, left, and Patsy Moore, also strikebreakers.
Glover is a veteran of union-breaking operations at Zanesville, O.;
Ypsilanti, Mich.; Haverhill, Mass.; Houston, Tex.; and Westchester
County, N. Y.
ments" and then billing firms for
these ads.
Accompanying the order was a
sharply worded opinion by Commis-
sioner William C. Kern who assailed
the "shabby" practices of the Spot-
light's advertising solicitors.
The record, Kern said, was re-
plete with testimony that adver-
tisers were told they could "pur-
chase labor's good will" by buying
ads, "the clear implication being
that otherwise the whiplash of la-
bor's ill will might be incurred."
As further evidence, Kern cited
a brief filed by High's lawyer which
declared "it is demonstrable . . .
that it is desirable for businessmen
to acquire the good will of organ-
ized labor." The brief said the
"primary benefit" of ads placed in
the Spotlight was that businessmen
gained "a reputation as a friend of
labor."
Kern, bluntly rejecting this con-
tention, declared:
"We cannot but wonder at
this argument; it seems to indi-
cate, first, that one can buy
friendship, and second, that la-
bor's friendship is for sale. We
prefer to believe that both of
these conclusions are false."
The commissioner pointed out
that, in any event, the Spotlight
"did not even deliver the doubtful
advantage promised," since it "was
not the nationally distributed pub-
lication of a great federation of
trade unions, as prospects were
given to believe," but rather was
circulated to a 'relatively small
audience" in the New York area.
The FCC was aided in its
probe of High's activities by the
Intl. Labor Press Association,
representative of the legitimate
newspapers published by AFL-
CIO affiliates. The ILPA s Code
of Ethical Practices expressly
prohibits advertising solicitation
based on allegations that such
ads will buy labor friendship.
Also assisting in the investigation
was the State, County & Municipal
Employes which terminated its re-
lations with the Spotlight last year
because of union dissatisfaction
with its solicitation methods.
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, January 16, 1960
No. 3
Vote Program for America,
Labor Rally Asks Congress
Swift Action Urged
In 12 Major Areas
FINISH THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS before adjourning for the i960 political campaign was
the plea AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany directed to the 86th Congress in his keynote address to
AFL-CIO Legislative Conference. Behind him as he spoke was a huge banner spelling out the 12
points in labor's "Positive Program for America" presented to lawmakers.
Senate Set for Early Ballot
On 'Clean Elections' Measure
The Senate moved toward an early vote on legislation to control campaign contributions as the
first major action of the election-oriented second session of the 86th Congress.
Scheduling of the debate on a so-called "clean elections 1 ' bill introduced by Sen. Thomas C. Hen-
nings (D-Mo.) came on the heels of these developments:
• House Minority Leader Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.) declined to, join in a drive to bring civil
rights legislation to the floor. This^
brought charges from northern
Democrats that the Republicans
were continuing a "political payoff"
to southern Democrats in exchange
for the votes which helped put
across the Landrum-Griffin bill last
year.
• Pres. Eisenhower renewed his
demand that Congress repeal the in-
terest limit on long-term govern-
ment bonds, declaring it is "impera-
tive" that this "restrictive ceiling be
removed."
• Senate Democrats, after a
challenge to Majority Leader Lyn-
don B. Johnson (D-Tex.) on the
operation of the Democratic Policy
Committee and Steering Commit-
tee, reconfirmed Johnson in his
leadership role. They agreed to
change the committee names to re-
flect more accurately their func-
tions. The Policy Committee .mere-
ly clears legislation for floor action,
and the Steering Committee mainly
fiils vacancies on standing commit-
tees.
The Hennings "clean election"
Essay Victors Labor
Guests in Washington
Leaders of AFL-CIO state central labor bodies have voted
unanimously to award a trip to Washington to each state winner
of the annual high school essay contest sponsored by the Presi-
dent's Committee on Employment of the Physically Handicapped.
The state AFL-CIO leaders, holding a three-day session in the
organization's national headquar-^
ters, acted on the recommendation
of AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
arid Gordon M. Freeman, president
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers and vice chairman
of the President's committee.
Eleventh and 12th grade students
in -public, private and parochial
schools in 44 states took part in
the contest last year, Freeman told
the session. Five national winners,
chosen from among the state win-
ners, are regularly brought to the
capital to receive their prizes from
the President.
Last year the Oklahoma AFL-
CIO paid for a Washington trip for
the winner in that state, Freeman
noted. As a result of today's ac-
tion, other states will follow suit.
The AFL-CIO action was im-
mediately hailed by other leaders
{Continued on Page 9)
measure is aimed at raising the
ceiling now imposed on campaign
expenditures but would require
more detailed reporting of money
spent on elections.
One section would require a can-
didate, 10 days before an election,
to file a list of all organizations
known to be backing him. The
same report would permit a candi-
date to accept openly or disavow
publicly the support of various
groups.
The first test was scheduled to
come on an amendment which
would make the spending ceiling
applicable to primary as well as
general elections. Primaries cur-
rently are exempt from expendi-
ture limits. If passed, the amend-
ment would have a major impact
on primaries in southern states
— where, because of a virtual
one-party system, victory in a
primary is tantamount to elec-
tion.
With a civil rights measure
stalled in the powerful, conserva-
tive-dominated House Rules Com-
mittee, efforts were being made to
secure 219 signatures on a discharge
petition which would bypass the
committee and bring the bill to a
vote of the full body.
This drive was blunted by Hal-
leck's refusal to encourage Repub-
licans to sign the petition, despite
Eisenhower's plea in his State of the
(Continued oh Page 12)
The AFL-CIO has launched an all-out offensive to win con-
gressional enactment of a broad legislative program designed to
invigorate the economy, provide "minimum social protections,"
insure meaningful civil rights safeguards, and strengthen the nation's
military posture.
More than 600 delegates to the AFL-CIO Legislative Conference
in Washington pledged intensive activity at the grass-roots level to
mobilize support for a 12-point "Positive Program for America."
In three days of sessions, dele-'^~
gates representing national and in-
ternational unions, state bodies and
larger city central bodies, heard:
• AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
call on the election-conscious 86th
Congress to "finish its unfinished
business before adjourning for the
1960 political campaign," and assail
the Administration's "tight-money"
policy.
• Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler warn that "we have
many more friends when we talk
with them than we do when they
are recording the votes," and call
for "intensive effort" at the local
level to let congressmen know how
the people feel about key legisla-
tion.
• Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther
commend the conference as "only
a beginning" of the program labor
must carry out "in this year of de-
cision." Labor, he said, "must go
on the offensive" during the short
congressional session "to fight for
the things we believe in."
• House Majority Leader John
W. McCormack (D-Mass.) urge
Republicans in Congress to be-
come "a party of responsibility, not
a party of blind opposition," and
to give the necessary votes — essen-
tially one vote on each of several
issues in the powerful House Rules
Committee — to bring pending leg-
islation to the floor.
• Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.),
(Continued on Page 3)
Crucial L-G
Votes Cited
By Meany
Three roll calls in the Senate
and one roll call in the House
provide the record by which labor
"can accurately rate its friends
and enemies" on passage of the
Landrum-Griffin Act, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany told the fed-
eration's Legislative Conference.
In the House, the key vote
came on Aug. 13 on the roll call
by which the Landrum-Griffin sub-
stitute was adopted, 229 to 201.
In the Senate, the key votes were
three roll calls on amendments of-
fered by Sen. John L. McClellan
(D-Ark.). These included:
• Adoption of the so-called "bill
of rights for union members," Apr.
22, approved 47 to 46.
• Tabling of Apr. 22 motion to
reconsider and reverse this action,
on which the Senate split 45 to 45
and Vice Pres. Nixon broke the tie
and "insured the anti-labor charac-
ter of the legislation."
• Defeat of a McClellan amend-
ment to "outlaw all secondary tx>y-
(Continued on Page 4)
Goldberg Raps WFTU
Fake 'Freedom' Blast
Steelworkers General Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg has suggested
that the Communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions
wash the stains of slave labor from its hands before complaining
to the Intl. Labor Organization that the United States violated the
ILO principles of "freedom of association" by using the Taft-
Hartley injunction in the steel &
strike.
Goldberg, in a letter to ILO Dir.
Gen. David A. Morse,, pointed out
that American steelworkers struck
for 116 days and would have struck
again on Jan. 26 if they hadn't
won their strike.
Workers behind the Iron Curtain,
for whom the WFTU claims to
speak, "may not even think of a
one-day strike," Goldberg pointed
out.
He proposed that the BLO
"devote its attention to the much
more flagrant and much more
persistent denial of workers'
rights practiced as a matter of
course in the countries under
Communist dictatorship where
the World Federation of Trade
Unions has the preferred status
of a super-company union."
While making clear labor's op-
(Continued on Page 12)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
Delegates Meet With Leaders:
Congress Given Highlights of
Labor's 'Program for America'
ALL GIANT STEELMAKERS have now signed full contracts with
Steelworkers implementing terms contained in memorandum of
agreement ending marathon dispute. Here USWA negotiating team
is shown with union's top officers — Pres. David J. McDonald, Vice
Pres. Howard Hague, and Sec.-Treas. I. W. Abel — at signing with
one of 11 major producers.
11 Big Steel Firms
Sign New Contracts
Representatives of the Steelworkers and 1 1 major steel producers
have formally signed new 30-month contracts implementing the
Jan. 4 memorandum of agreement which ended the longest major
labor dispute in the nation's history.
Scores of other USWA negotiating teams, meanwhile, continued
with smaller steel firms ^
sessions
across the country, working out
local issues and adapting the master
agreement to fit individual com-
pany situations.
The settlement preserved on-the-
job rights for 500,000 USWA
members; gave them an economic
package estimated by the industry
to cost 41.34 cents an hour; pro-
vided for a fully non-contributory
insurance program; and guaran-
teed each retiring worker a $1,500
lump-sum payment in addition to
his regular pension.
In the wake of the agreement,
. AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald emphasized that the vic-
tory was achieved by the com-
bined efforts of the Steelworkers
and the entire trade union move-
ment.
Addressing the AFL-CIO Legis-
Buyer Views
Dim Optimism
For Good '60
Consumer sentiment to purchase
new cars, appliances and other
products "must improve consider-
ably during the next few months
if 1960 is to be a really good year"
for durable goods, the Survey Re-
search Center of the University of
Michigan reports.
The findings are based on a sur-
vey during October and November,
which found that the steel strike
had spread uneasiness and caution
among consumers. But aside from
the steel dispute, said the survey,
"the recovery in sentiment from
the 1958 recession was slower than
the recovery from the 1953-54 re-
cession."
In 1954, the survey noted, a
sharp upsurge in optimism stimu-
lated consumer demand. In No-
vember 1959 consumer expecta-
tions were not "sufficiently buoy*
ant" to provide the buying push in
line with the rising level of spend-
ing indicated by income trends.
Other factors giving rise, to un-
certainty among consumers are ris-
ing interest rates and uneasiness
over inflation. The high-interest-
rate concern is reflected in a drop
in the number of families planning
to purchase homes in I960, the
survey said.
lative Conference, Meany took
note of press, radio and television
reports which contained "a lot of
discussion as to who settled the
steel strike." He told the 600
delegates:
"I have no great interest in who
settled it, except to say there seems
to be some relation between this
verbal exchange . . . and the fact
that this is Leap Year. I can tell
you who won the steel strike. The
Steelworkers won, and the entire
labor movement won."
Meany said victory was achieved
by 'the solid front, the stability of
this union, the determination not
to be destroyed" by industry's mas-
sive drive to "wipe out the work
rules that have been achieved over
many years of collective bargain-
ing."
Another major factor, Meany
said, was the support given by the
13.5 million members of the fed-
eration to the Steelworkers De-
fense Fund established by the
AFL-CIO General Board in Sep-
tember. "More than $5 million
was collected," he declared, and
"perhaps millions (of dollars) were
in the pipelines on the way from
local unions" at the time of the
settlement.
McDonald told the same con-
ference that the settlement was
achieved *by the men and
women of the Steelworkers and
the men and women of the en-
tire AFL-CIO." He expressed
the USWA's gratitude for the
outpouring of funds and said
that during the 116-day strike
"not a single Steelworker went
hungry."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell,
in an address to the Economic
Club of Detroit, said that if man-
agement and labor "mutually seek
. . . to increase the rate of pro-
ductivity in the steel industry,"
statements by industry leaders "that
there will be no price increase at
present will be good for some time
to come."
Mitchell declared that "certainly
no one can predict price stability
indefinitely because other cost fac-
tors than wages enter into the de-
termination of price policy."
The steel wage settlement, he
said, "is in line with others nego-
tiated this year, and thus cannot
set off a wage pattern with highly
inflationary effects, as has hap-
pened sometimes in the past."
Here are the highlights of labor's broad-
ranging "Program for America," outlined to con-
gressional leaders by delegates from across the
nation during the three-day AFL-CIO Legislative
Conference in Washington:
MINIMUM WAGE — Supported Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt bill which would provide "long
overdue" action by raising the minimum wage
from its present $1 level to $1.25 and broadeniijg
: it to protect millions in retail and wholesale trade,
large hotels and laundries, construction and other
services.
Lack of coverage means that "these workers
are paid pitifully low wages or are worked ex-
cessive hours without overtime pay. State laws
have failed to provide adequate protection."
DEPRESSED AREAS— Over 100 communi-
ties "have been officially declared to be economi-
cally sick." They are victims of raw material
exhaustions, technological change, shifting prod-
uct demand, changes in government programs.
Since each area has been affected by trends in
the national economy "it is the responsibility of
the whole nation to help," solve their problems.
"This responsibility has been recognized by
everybody, but to date nothing has been accom-
plished." In 1959 the Senate passed the Douglas-
Cooper bill which, "while not going as far as the
AFL-CIO would dike," would authorize $390 mil-
lion in loans and grants to rehabilitate depressed
areas. A similar bill, with somewhat reduced
financial support, was reported by the House
Banking and Currency Committee but is now
stalled in the powerful Rules Committee.
"If the House passes this bill, agreement in
conference should be possible. The only obstacle
remaining would be a possible presidential veto."
In 1958, Eisenhower vetoed a similar measure.
CIVIL RIGHTS — "Progress in assuring equal
rights has been painfully slow . . . Congress
must act decisively to extend civil rights to all
Americans."
Action is needed to give the federal government
the right to institute court action on behalf of
persons denied rights guaranteed by the Consti-
tution. Technical and financial assistance should
be provided to schools seeking to abide by the
historic Supreme Court school desegregation deci-
sion. Federal registrars should be designated in
districts where persons are improperly denied the
right to register and vote.
"Action on these and other civil rights meas-
ures may again be thwarted by a coalition of
southern Democrats and conservative Republi-
cans. It is necessary that the people speak out
boldly . . ." for meaningful legislation.
SOCIAL SECURITY— Started 25 years ago,
the social security system "has done much to
bring dignity to the twilight years of Americans,"
but the need for constant improvement calls for
action to provide health and related benefits for
the aged, widows and orphans.
The Forand bill "would utilize the social se-
curity system to provide needed benefits" such
as provision for payment for 60 days of hospital
care, for skilled nursing home care and for sur-
gical services. To keep the system sound and
provide adequate benefits, contribution rates for
both workers and employers should be raised to
meet the extra costs of health benefits.
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE— Since the
states "have failed to do a satisfactory job" in
protecting the jobless, the federal government
should establish a system of minimum standards
which all states must follow.
Passage of Karsten-Machrowicz-Kennedy-Case-
McCarthy bill would raise weekly benefits to at
least half the individual's regular wage, not to
exceed two-thirds of the state's average weekly
wage, for a 39-week period. In addition it would
extend coverage, provide better financing alterna-
tives, and help states experiencing particularly
high rates of unemployment.
EDUCATION — The nation faces an "educa-
tion crisis" in which it is short close to 150,000
classrooms, by conservative estimates, and in
which teacher salaries are "so much lower than
comparable jobs in society that not enough
teachers can be attracted or retained."
The conference supported the Murray-Metcalf
bill, as revised by the House Education Commit-
tee, providing $25 for each school-age child to
each state every year for a four-year period. The
money would be available for either school con-
struction or teacher salaries.
"Education is traditionally, and properly, a
state function. But the states simply do not have
the financial resources to meet the growing crisis.
Just as we have provided federal grants for land-
grant colleges, vocational education, GI educa-
tion, federally impacted areas, and defense edu-
cation scholarships — without federal interference
— we must now provide federal aid to school
construction and to improvements in teachers'
salaries."
HOUSING — Fifteen million American families
are still ill-housed. To eliminate this situation will
require 2.25 million new housing units a year for
35 years, as compared with present rate of 1
million a year or less. During the last few years
the Administration's opposition to basic improve-
ments has forced acceptance of inadequate hous-
ing bills.
Congress in 1960 should enact "a comprehen-
sive housing bill" which would provide at least
200,000 low-cost public housing units annually;
make available low-interest, long-term loans for
middle-income housing; provide special housing
for the elderly; assure non-discrimination; provide
at least $1 billion a year for 10 years for expanded
slum clearance and urban redevelopment; and
encourage cooperative and moderate-priced rental
housing, especially for migrant farm workers.
ECONOMIC GROWTH— The Administra-
tion's policy of tight money and high interest
rates has "contributed to two recessions" and
caused a "shocking slowdown of economic
growth."
Congress should "put a brake on rising interest
rates by repulsing" Administration requests for
higher interest rates on long-term government
bonds, and should reorganize the Federal Reserve
Board to give consumers, small business and
labor representation.
LABOR STANDARDS— The Davis-Bacon
Act which affects public construction should be
broadened to include all non-farm construction
involving federal financing or where federal in-
surance or loan guarantees are used. In addition,
contractors should be required to honor prevail-
ing fringe benefits as well as wages.
The Walsh-Healey Act should be amended to
eliminate undue delays in minimum wage deter-
mination procedures, to require adherence to
fringe benefit standards, and to require at least
biennial wage reviews.
TAXES — The principle of "ability to pay" on
which the tax system is based "has been eroded
over the years by a combination of low personal
exemptions, a steep rate of taxation in the first
bracket, the operation of the withholding system,
and the many tax escape provisions that favor the
rich."
The AFL-CIO called for a "major overhaul"
to include a substantial increase in the $600 indi-
vidual exemption; closing loopholes now enjoyed
by upper-income groups; eliminating tax burdens
of workers on contributions to public retirement
funds; reducing or eliminating the unprogressive
excise taxes; and helping states adopt progressive
tax systems.
NATURAL RESOURCES— Congress "took a
backward step" in 1959 when it gave the states
regulation authority over health and safety pro-
grams in nuclear operations. Labor will work
for establishment of nationwide uniform standards
as the only reliable system for safeguarding work-
ers exposed to radiation.
"Bold steps" are needed to move the nation's
atomic power program rapidly toward the pro-
duction of power at costs comparable with other
sources, with a full-scale federal demonstration
nuclear power program "the necessary first step."
FARM PROBLEMS — Legislation called for to
"help secure a just return and a better life for
Americans who work in agriculture," including
the gearing of price supports, where possible, to
the family farm; expansion of the school lunch
program; extensive use of agricultural surpluses
"in the battle for peace and freedom overseas;"
and providing minimum wage and unemployment
insurance to workers on the large corporate farms,
with special emphasis on aid to migratory workers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
Page Three
Labor Rally Stirs 'Grass-Roots' Action
Bolster Economy, Secure Rights,
Election- Year Congress Urged
(Continued from Page 1)
pinch-hitting for absent Minority
Leader Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.),
declare that the problems which
concern labor can be solved "with-
in the framework of a balanced
budget" — key plank in Pres. Eisen-
hower's legislative proposals since
he took office seven years ago.
• Meany declare that settlement
of the steel strike may have blunted
efforts by a coalition of reactionary
Republicans and Southern Demo-
crats to "impose new curbs on the
trade union movement." This same
coalition, Meany said, entered into
a "cynical political deal" to put
over the Landrum-Griffin bill last
year. (For Meany's analysis of the
key votes on L-G, see story, Page
1.)
Congressional leaders were
urged to redeem last year's
pledge to call up for a vote this
month an amendment to L-G to
permit "situs picketing" in the
building trades. The amendment
would permit picketing on the
site of a construction job without
subjecting unionists to secondary
boycott penalties. The building
trades, Meany said, "are entitled
to prompt relief from a harsh
and discriminatory situation."
During the three-day conference,
delegates in seven regional sessions
huddled with senators and repre-
sentatives from their respective
areas to discuss plans for achieving
key legislation. They also held con-
ferences on such specific subjects
as civil rights, area redevelopment,
minimum wage, and social security
improvements, including the Forand
bill to provide medical care for the
nation's retired workers.
The delegates spent one day on
Capitol Hill, visiting their legisla-
tors in the Senate and House Office
Buildings and urging action on
labor's program of domestic legis-
lation.
In his keynote address, Meany
declared the nation "faces an
enormous and growing deficit"
in defense, education, housing,
urban renewal, industrial expan-
sion, social security, modern
roads, airports and community
facilities, and warned that Con-
gress "cannot further postpone or
ignore" these needs without dam-
aging the public interest.
When congressmen return home
to run for re-election, they "can-
not face the voters with empty
hands," Meany declared. "They
must show some constructive ac-
complishments. If we do our job
of convincing the members of Con-
gress that our program is worth-
while, we can still achieve substan-
tial results before adjournment."
Labor's legislative conference, he
said, "serves notice on the members
of Congress that the working men
and women of America are keep-
ing a close and careful watch on
their actions and voting records.
*Tt serves notice that labor is not
satisfied with the state of the nation.
"It serves notice that we . . .
are growing increasingly impa-
tient with frustrating delays, with
the lack of constructive achieve-
ment and with the unbroken rec-
ord of broken promises."
Meany reminded delegates that
a new Congress will take office a
year from now, "the 87th Congress
will be what we, the voters of this
country, make it," he declared,
adding:
"If we sit on our hands in the
coming campaign, the new Con-
gress will serve us worse than the
present one. But if we get our
people to register and vote, if we
pinpoint the issues and the voting
records effectively, we can get a
government that places human
needs above the demands of big
business."
The AFL-CIO president said the
"main obstacles" thus far to enact-
ment of programs to meet the needs
of the American people "have been
financial timidity and political cow-
ardice," and classified this opposi-
tion as "sheer defeatism."
Tight Money Hurting U.S.
"It is not enough," he said, "to
warn about inflation, to talk about
the need of a balanced budget and
to impose a tight-money policy.
Clearly, that tight-money policy is
hurting America.
"It is hurting every family that
needs a new home or car or any
other product customarily pur-
chased on credit. It is hurting busi-
ness growth by making borrowed
money too expensive. It is even
hurting the Treasury of the United
States through excessive interest
rates.
"Instead of curbing inflation, the
tight-money policy is aggravating
it."
The positive program of the-con-
ference, he declared, "is not, strictly
speaking, a labor program." Meany
said the legislative goals will aid
industry as well as labor, farmers
as well as factory workers, non-
union employes as well as union
members.
In the field of labor legislation,
Meany warned that with a coali-
tion of reactionary Republicans
and southern Democrats in ef-
fective control of Congress, un-
ionists can expect "no basic
improvement" this year in the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
"On the contrary," he told dele-
gates, "we may have to fight a last-
ditch battle to prevent the passage
of even more restrictive laws.
"The reactionary forces of Amer-
ica have tasted blood. They are
determined to impose new curbs on
the trade union movement. They
must be stopped."
Settlement of the 116-day indus-
try-forced steel shutdown — longest
major strike in the nation's history
— "has taken most of the heat out
New Pamphlet Details
Congressional Goals
The AFL-CIO spelled out its goals for the second session of
the 86th Congress in a new pamphlet, "A Positive Program
for America," unveiled at the three-day AFL-CIO Legislative
Conference in Washington.
The publication details the 12 major areas in which legis-
lation is needed "to meet the long-neglected needs" of the
American people. The pamphlet points to the "heavy inven-
tory" of progressive legislation left by Congress last year, and
urges trade unionists to let members of Congress "know how
you feel" on these vital issues.
Copies of "A Positive Program for America/ 5 publication
No. 104, can be obtained: Single copies free; up to 100 copies,
10 cents each; 1,000 for $65, through the AFL-CIO Dept of
Publications, 815 16th St., N. W., Washington 6, D. C.
of this drive" for further legislative
assaults on labor, Meany continued.
With the Steelworkers victorious,
he said, it will be possible for Con-
gress to examine the facts "in a
calmer atmosphere" and to realize
that some of the proposed cures —
such as anti-trust legislation cover-
jrig unions, the end to industrywide
or even companywide bargaining,
compulsory arbitration, "or other
equally obnoxious devices" — would
"prove worse than the disease" of
a protracted labor dispute.
Trade unionists' ultimate goal,
Meany said, is the establishment of
a code of labor law "fair to the
workers and employers of our coun-
try alike, while assuring high ethi-
cal standards and responsibility to
the public interest."
Schnitzler told the conference to
"demonstrate that we can use our
great organizing abilities" to sup-
port labor's program "which will
guarantee the forward social prog-
ress of the nation."
Most of the important social
legislation on the statute books, he
said, was written "at a time when
labor didn't have over 1 million
members." These successes were
achieved, despite the "same oppo-
sition we face today," because la-
bor was able to "arouse the public
behind our program."
"We are equal to repeating
those successes," he said. "We
never had as many trained, quali-
fied, determined and dedicated
unionists; our resources were
never at their present heights.
We have all of the tools to do
the job — what we need now is
to create the will to do it,"
Reuther, a member of the AFL-
CIO Executive Council and presi-
dent of the Auto Workers, said
that since labor's program is geared
to meeting the broad basic needs
of the American people "we must
get down to the people a clearer
picture of the importance" of these
measures so that the "Madison
Ave. hucksters won't be able to
distort the image of what we stand
for."
What is needed, said Reuther, is
"an intensive grass-roots neighbor-
hood job" of "getting the truth to
the people" so that the legislative
program will be enacted.
"The time has come," Reuther
said, "to roll up our sleeves and
get to work."
Spark Community Interest
Delegates wound up the confer-
ence with a pledge to work for
aroused public sentiment back
home by sparking community in-
terest in the broad-ranging labor
program.
As a first step, they agreed to
make the widest possible distri-
bution of the new AFL-CIO
pamphlet, "A Positive Program
for America," publication No.
104, which details the 12 major
goals of organized labor in the
legislative arena.
This, they indicated, will be fol-
lowed up by home-town meetings
to explain in greater detail the
need for legislative action coupled
with frequent contacts with sena-
tors and congressmen, both in
Washington and on their visits
Tack home, to impress on them the
grass-roots sentiment for action.
Main key to the program will be
letter-writing campaigns that will
make it possible for rank-and-file
voters to acquaint congressmen
with the views of the people who
sent them to Congress. This, dele-
gates said, is essential to offset the
effects of the propaganda barrage
conducted by big business front
groups opposed to liberal social
programs.
CAPITOL HILL huddles were part of AFL-CIO Legislative Con-
ference. In top photo, group with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon
B. Johnson (D-Tex.); at bottom, confers with House Speaker Sam
Rayburn (D-Tex.).
McCormack Challenges
GOP to Produce Votes
House Republicans have been challenged by Majority Leader
John W. McCormack (D-Mass.) to act "responsibly" in helping to
bring civil rights legislation to the floor for a vote.
Addressing the AFL-CIO Legislative Conference in Washington,
McCormack said the measure has been bottled up in the House
Rules Committee by a conservative^
coalition of four Republicans and
four southern Democrats.
Pointedly reminding GOP mem-
bers that Pres. Eisenhower called
for civil rights action in his State
of the Union message, McCormack
urged them to supply the three
votes which, combined with the
votes of four liberal Democrats,
would break the Rules Committee
blockade.
On other key legislation — min-
imum wage, area redevelopment,
housing, school construction and
water pollution — McCormack
said only one GOP vote on the
Rules Committee in combination
with six "sure" Democratic votes
would bring these measures to a
vote of the full House. Two Re-
publican votes on the Ways and
Means Committee are needed to
break a deadlock over unemploy-
ment compensation standards,
he said.
"Is that asking too much of the
Republicans?" McCormack asked.
Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich),
who addressed the conference in
place of Minority Leader Charles
A. Halleck (R-Ind.), devoted much
of his talk to the thesis that labor
leaders have "cast their lot 100 per-
cent with the Democratic Party."
Ford made no commitment on
specifics of the AFL-CIO legislative
program. Other groups, he said,
would advance suggestions of their
own and "from this melting pot of
ideas will come solutions to the
problems that need solution."
Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.),
told one of the area conferences
that the minimum wage should be
increased this year "to insure that
millions of low-income families can
purchase the necessities of modern-
day life." He declared that such a
move would give impetus to the
growth of the economy to a $500
billion annual rate.
Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-
Ky.) said the steel strike settlement
had postponed, rather than solved,
the basic problem of long and cost-
ly strikes and indicated that Con-
gress, labor and management must
seek to prevent a repetition of such
disputes.
Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.)
expressed the hope that Congress
would "make a start in this session"
on meeting the myriad problems of
the aged by enacting the Forand bill
to provide medical and hospital
care for social security recipients.
Republican Sen. Jacob K. Javits
(N.Y.) expressed support of labor's
total program, although he indi-
cated reservations on farm propos-
als that would extend price sup-
ports. Javits conceded that legis-
lation that would have a "signifi-
cant effect" on the budget faced
the threat of Eisenhower vetoes.
Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel (R-
Calif.) called for closer cooperation
between organized labor and legis-
lators on major issues, and stressed
the importance of labor taking the
facts on legislation to the public.
Rep. Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.) told
delegates of the efforts of the Demo-
cratic Study Group, an organiza-
tion of about 100 liberal congress-
men, and asked labor to encourage
additional House members to take
part in its activities. He outlined
the group's eight-point program,
which parallels a major portion of
the AFL-CIO legislative proposal.
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
N. J.), said Congress should not
be "inhibited" by what it thinks
Eisenhower might do in the way
of vetoing legislation. "We must
do what we think is right," he
said, "and not anticipate a veto."
Rep. Torbert H. Macdonald
(D-Mass.) called for a major
overhaul of the nation's tax sys-
tem, and pointed out that the
27.5 percent depletion allowance
granted oil producers is one of
the "big tax loopholes" that must
be closed.
Rep. James G. Fulton (R-Pa.)
called for increased cooperation be-
tween labor and legislators, and ex-
pressed the hope that unionists
would "keep us informed" as to
where they stand on legislation.
Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Yex.) said
the Congress has had to "fight like
a tiger" to keep the Administration
"moving at all" in the development
of natural resources.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
BRIGHT-EYED children of striking Textile Workers Union of
America members at Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills, Henderson,
N. C, grin broadly as they open holiday presents donated by north-
ern TWUA carpet locals. Over 1,100 unionists have been on strike
more than a year to resist management efforts to crush union.
Key Roll Calls on L-G
Bill Cited byMeany
(Continued from Page 1)
cotts," beaten Apr. 24 by a 50 to
41 vote.
j| "It is on these roll calls — and
these alone — that the labor
movement can accurately rate its
friends and enemies" on the la-
bor bill issue of 19£9, Meany
declared.
The federation president ruled
out any test relating to the roll calls
on final passage of the compromised
bill that emerged from the Senate
House conference committee, de
daring that at this point, labor and
its friends in Congress had only a
choice of "two evils."
'Set Record Straight 9
Meany made his statements to
"set the record straight" and to
clear up "a considerable amount of
misunderstanding" about the way
the Landrum-Griffin Act came into
existence "and about the position
taken on crucial votes by certain
members of Congress whom we
rightfully regard as friends of la-
bor."
In a detailed review of the legis-
lative history of the law, Meany
pointed out that an "emergency"
confronted labor last August when
the House and Senate had com-
pleted action on their two separate
bills.
The Senate bill had been trans-
formed by approval of the McClel-
lan "bill of rights" amendment into
an "unacceptable" measure which
"no trade union official could con-
ceivably support."
The House Landrum-Griffin bill,
on the other hand, "was viciously
anti-labor."
Both measures had been sent to
the conference committee.
"The Executive Council,"
Meany said, "decided that the
labor movement had an obliga-
tion to its members to work
through the conference commit-
tee for the elimination of as
many of the anti-labor provisions
of the Landrum-Griffin bill as
possible."
The Liberal Senate Democrats on
the conference committee, Meany
said, "worked tirelessly to get rid
of some of the more obvious injus-
tices" and they were "partially suc-
cessful."
He named these liberal Demo-
cratic conferees as Senators Pat
McNamara (Mich.), John F. Ken-
nedy (Mass.), Wayne Morse
(Ore.) and Jennings Randolph
(W. Va.).
They did this under an "open (
threat" that the Senate would "call
up and pass the Landrum-Griffin
bill in its original form unjess a
compromise was reached," he said,
and in the face of this "virtual
sabotage," a number of "improve-
ments" were made in the measure.
Choice of Two Evils
It was at this point, he continued,
that "the trade union movement
was faced with a choice of two
evils."
The first evil, the conference bill,
"unquestionably made the Taft-
Hartley Act worse."
"The second and far greater evil
would be to work for rejection of
the conference bill and thus insure
passage of the Landrum-Griffin bill
which was infinitely worse than
Taft-Hartley," he said.
"We had to accept the lesser of
the two evils.
"Our legislative representa-
tives informed the members of
Congress that labor could not in
good conscience urge its friends
to vote against the conference re-
port, even though we considered
it damaging to labor."
Meany pointed out that the Lan-
drum-Griffin bill was approved by
the House only as a result of a
"cynical political deal" by which
"Republicans agreed to kill civil
rights legislation in exchange for
southern Democratic votes" for
Landrum-Griffin.
'Deal' Put Over Bill
The measure "seemed doomed
to defeat" as "extreme," he re-
minded the delegates, in debate and
voting that were "hectic and con-
fusing" and despite a barrage of
high-powered lobbying from "em-
ployer organizations and extreme
right-wing groups." It was passed
solely as a result of the GOP-
southern Democratic "deal."
The original bill from the Sen-
ate Labor Committee, he said,
would have been acceptable to
labor with a few modifications,
but this was "transformed on the
floor" by the McCIellan "bill of
rights."
It is because of all these circum-
stances and the later "emergency,"
ho said, that the House vote on
Landrum-Griffin and the Senate roll
calls on the "bill of rights" and sec-
ondary boycott amendments — "and
these alone" — were labeled as the
important and significant" votes
which provide the record on "the
true caliber of labors friends and
enemies on this vital issue."
Full Text of Meany Statement
On '59 Landrum-Griffin Votes
Herewith is the text of AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany* s statement to the federation s
Legislative Conference on the significant roll call
votes on the Landrum-Griffin Act by which
labor can identify its friends in the House and
the Senate:
A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT of misunder-
standing has developed in the ranks of labor
about the new Labor-Management Reporting and
Disclosure Act — about the way in which it was
adopted and about the position taken on crucial,
votes by certain members of Congress whom we
rightfully regard as friends of labor.
To set the record straight, it will be necessary
to review the history of this legislation.
The position of the AFL-CIO was made clear
time and time again. We said we were in favor of
legislation which would get at the crooks and we
were opposed to legislation which would injure
legitimate unions in the exercise of their legitimate
trade union functions.
The Senate Committee on Labor and Public
Welfare reported out a measure which, with a few
modifications, would have been acceptable to the
trade union movement. It would have provided
for restrictions upon corrupt practices which we
believed to be necessary and desirable.
But that bill was transformed on the floor
of the Senate into a measure which no trade
union official could conceivably support.' The
transformation was brought about by the adop-
tion of dangerous amendments which we fought
against desperately but in vain.
The woTst of these were introduced by Sen.
McCIellan and deceitfully entitled a "Bill of
Rights for Union Members." It was adopted by
a vote of 47 to 46 and cemented into the bill in a
parliamentary maneuver during which Vice Pres.
Nixon broke a 45 to 45 tie and insured the anti-
labor character of the legislation.
Another McCIellan amendment seeking to out-
law secondary boycotts was defeated (51 to 41).
These are the roll-call votes in the Senate which
are important and significant to the trade union
movement. It is on these roll-calls — and these
alone — that the labor movement can accurately
rate its friends and enemies in the Senate on this
issue.
The measure then went to the House of Rep-
resentatives, where at first the chances of elim-
inating the obnoxious amendments to the Senate
bill appeared promising. However, after pro-
longed hearings and debate, the House Education
and Labor Committee reported out an unsatis-
factory measure which we were forced to oppose.
Two other measures were put before the House
of Representatives — one acceptable to labor (the
Shelley bill) and the other completely repugnant
to labor (the Landrum-Griffin bill).
The debate and the voting on the House floor
were hectic and confusing. Employer organiza-
tions and extreme right-wing groups launched an
unprecedented and high-powered lobbying drive
for the Landrum-Griffin bill. That measure was
so extreme that it seemed doomed to defeat until
the coalition of reactionary northern Republicans
and equally reactionary Democrats from the
South was suddenly revived to support it.
These groups entered into a cynical political
deal under which the Republicans agreed to kill
civil rights legislation for that session in exchange
for southern Democratic votes in favor of the
Landrum-Griffin bill. The test came on Aug. 13
and the Landrum-Griffin bill was passsed by a
vote of 229 to 201.
It was that vote and that vote alone which pro-
vides the record of the true caliber of labor's
friends and enemies on this vital labor issue in
the House of Representatives.
The Executive Council of the AFL-CIO, meet-
ing at Unity House five days later, gave long and
careful consideration to the emergency facing the
trade union movement at that hour. The Senate
bill was unacceptable. The House-adopted Lan-
drum-Griffin bill was viciously anti-labor. Both
measures had gone to a joint conference commit-
tee of the House and Senate.
The Executive Council decided that the
labor movement had an obligation to its mem-
bers to work through the conference commit-
tee for the elimination of as many of the anti-
labor provisions of the Landrum-Griffin bill as
possible. Our legislative representatives in
Washington were so instructed, and they acted
accordingly.
In the ensuing weeks, the liberal Democratic
majority of the Senate Conference Committee
(composed of Senators Kennedy, McNamara,
Morse and Randolph) worked tirelessly to get rid
of some of the more obvious injustices of the Lan-
drum-Griffin bill. They were handicapped by the
open threat to call up and pass the Landrum-
Griffin bill in its original form in the Senate unless
a compromise was reached. In spite of this vir-
tual sabotage, the Senate conferees were partially
successful and did make a number of improve-
ments in the conference report which was finally
adopted.
At this point, the trade union movement was
faced with a choice between two evils.
The first evil was the conference bill, which
unquestionably made the Taft-Hartley Act
worse than it was originally.
The second and far greater evil would be to
work for the rejection of the conference bill and
thus insure passage of the Landrum-Griflin bill,
which was infinitely worse than Taft-Hartley.
Under these circumstances, our legislative rep-
resentatives informed the members of Congress
that labor could not in good conscience urge its
friends to vote against the conference report, even
though we considered it damaging to labor. In
other words, we had to accept the lesser of the
two evils.
What I have just told you is exactly in accord
with the report which the AFL-CIO convention
in San Francisco adopted unanimously. The key
roll-call votes I have described are the very
same ones which the convention ordered distrib-
uted to all AFL-CIO members.
Who 'Settled' Strike Unimportant,
Steelworkers Won, Meany Says
Herewith are excerpts from Pres. Meany' s re-
marks to the AFL-CIO Legislative Conference on
* 'settlement' 'of the steel strike and who "won it.
1 NOTICE there's still quite a lot of discussion
as to who settled the steel strike. I have no
great interest, except to say there seems to be
some relation between this verbal exchange and
the fact that this is Leap Year. I can tell you who
won the steel strike. The Steelworkers won, and
the entire labor movement won.
. . . More than a year ago, a small group of
very powerful financial people got together and
decided that they were going to give this union
a working over.
This small group decided that through the
medium of high-powered advertising, through the
use of the Madison Avenue machinery which can
make or break political candidates, can make
laws, put laws on the statute books, who mold
public opinion any way they like, that this group
from Wall Street decided that Madison Avenue
was all that they needed, plus perhaps a few
friends here in Washington.
They made up their mind that they were
going to wipe out the work rules that have
been achieved over many years of collective
bargaining. And the significance of this to the
entire labor movement was that if they can wipe
out the work rules — and the work rules are the
very guts of a trade union — if they can do this
with one big union, they can do it with almost
any union.
The Steelworkers decided that they were not
going to lose their union, they were not going to
be destroyed, and they put up a solid front. They
didn't give, because this was a matter of high
principle. This was more than a question of wages,
though wages are always important. The instru-
mentality by which the worker achieves a fair
share of that which is produced — that instrumen-
tality of the trade union — is much more important
than wages.
So when the settlement was made (and I say it
was a victory for the Steelworkers), it was of great
significance to the entire labor movement. The
solid front, the stability of this union, the deter-
mination not to be destroyed, was the major factor
in the steel settlement despite what anyone else
has done.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
Page Five
Meeting Implements Legislative Drive
"POSITIVE PROGRAM FOR AMERICA" was implemented by
600 delegates to AFL-CIO Legislative Conference, shown at open-
ing session in Washington, who pledged grass-roots drive to win
enactment of legislative goals.
NEW AFL-CIO PAMPHLET detailing 12-point legislative pro-
gram is displayed to delegates by Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Bie-
miller. Pamphlet highlights need for letter-writing campaign to
win passage of measure backed by organized labor.
LETTER-WRITING CAMPAIGN in behalf of Forand Bill will be
aided by writing centers such as this one displayed at legislative
session. Union-sponsored centers contain information on bill,
writing material, to ease things for letter-writers.
PRINCIPAL SPEAKERS at conference included representatives of both parties,
shown with AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany. At left is House Majority Leader
John W. McCormack (D-Mass.), at right Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.), who sub-
stituted for Minority Leader Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.).
DETAILS OF LEGISLATION are discussed during conference by top leaders
of AFL-CIO. Left to right are: Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler and Vice Presi-
dents Joseph D. Keenan, secretary of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
and David J. McDonald, president of the Steelwbrkers.
DELEGATES FROM ALL 50 STATES attended three-day conference in Wash-
ington. Some of early arrivals are shown registering at Willard Hotel, where they
received special legislative kits including fact sheets on key measures and new
pamphlet on labor goals in crucial year.
Pa*« Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C. ? SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
A Program for All
HPHE AFL-CIO's legislative program for the election-year session
A of the 86th Congress is a program free of narrow self-interest,
a program dedicated to advancing the general welfare of all Ameri
cans whether or not they are members of unions.
It is based on the proven truth that no group can prosper if
the nation suffers, that economic freedom and social justice must
be firmly established and extended if democratic America is to
remain free and strong.
There is one element of self-interest in the program as adopted
by the AFL-CIO convention and presented now to the legislative
conference — for as all Americans prosper and attain decent living
standards and dignity and security, the members of unions also
will prosper.
But there is not one plank- which the AFL-CIO is seeking at this
session of Congress that would benefit union members selfishly or
alone. Look at the objectives:
RAISE AND EXTEND THE MINIMUM WAGE— practically
all union members are either covered by the wage-and-hour law or
earn more than the present minimum of $1 an hour.
AID DEPRESSED AREAS — curing pockets of chronic unem-
ployment will give jobs to workers in the stricken areas, not only
union workers, and restore economic health to the entire nation.
GUARANTEE CIVIL RIGHTS— a decent education and full
voting rights, denied to millions of Americans because of the color
of their skins or their religion, are rights that must be guaranteed
all Americans. The union member of a minority group is gen
erally ahead of the non-unionist in this area.
SECURE HEALTH BENEFITS FOR THE AGED— expansion
of the social security system to achieve this needed service will be
an invaluable aid to millions who never saw a union card.
And there are others: improving unemployment insurance for
all workers; supporting America's schools to educate the children
of all Americans; providing decent homes for all, union and non
union members alike; promoting economic growth so that all can
live ^ little better; protecting labor standards for all who work on
government contracts whether under union contract or not; over-
hauling the tax system so that all taxpayers may secure a measure
of justice and equity; developing America's resources for use by,
all citizens; protecting farm families and farm workers.
An effectively controlled disarmament system, a strong national
defense, aid to underdeveloped nations, humanized immigration
policies; protection for consumers; recognition for government
workers — where is the so-called narrow self-interest of the "labor
monopoly," the "labor bosses?"
The AFL-CIO's "Positive Program for America" is a program
to promote the general welfare in the tradition of the men who
wrote the Constitution. Since its earliest days, organized labor
in America has dedicated itself to this end.
Unions have played a major and significant role in securing free
public education, in expanding the right to vote, in protecting civil
liberties and in pioneering many social welfare programs.
In 1960 the job is still the same and American unions are in
the forefront of the struggle to make a living reality of the promise
of American life.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Sqhoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love Davitf-L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W,
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckm aster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curjan
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Vol. V
Saturday, January 16, 1960
No. 3
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
From the Grass Roots
si
jilt
AFlrClO'S
foRAM6*IC*
.98
*9H
'A Positive Program for America:'
Legislative Goals of AFL-CIO
Promote the 'General Welfare'
The AFL-CIO's legislative goals for 1960 are
set forth in a new AFL-CIO pamphlet "A Posi-
tive Program for America/' The following is
excerpted from that pamphlet.
rpHE PREAMBLE to the Constitution of the
United States sets forth six objectives. One
of them has always had major significance for
the labor movement:
'To promote the general welfare."
What distinguishes the labor movement from
the "special interest" lobbies in Washington and
the state capitals is our concern for the "genefal
welfare" of our nation and all its people, rather
than the interests of union members alone.
It is in that tradition that the issues set forth
in this pamphlet are presented and discussed.
By the end of this year our national produc-
tion will be at a rate of $500 billion a year— half
a trillion dollars, the greatest productive achieve-
ment in the world's history.
But we must not be dazzled by this statistic.
This apparently impressive figure is too small.
Since 1953 our national economy's growth has
barely kept pace with the increase in our popu-
lation. It has grown too slowly to meet the long-
neglected needs of our own people; and it has
been at a snail's pace compared to the surging
growth of the Soviet Union, which threatens to
match our industrial power in a decade.
LET US REMEMBER that our strength at
home has a direct bearing on our strength in the
world arena, where the fate of. human freedom
is at stake.
Without prompt and positive action, more than
10 million American families will live through
1960 in poverty — not poverty in terms of the
most backward areas of the world, perhaps, but
real poverty in the context of the American way
of life.
And this is only the most dramatic indication
of the task ahead. Consider these related facts:
• Millions of Americans are living in slums
or near-slums, in decaying neighborhoods or
beleaguered cities.
• Millions of boys and girls are being de-
prived of a good education because of the in-
adequacies of our school system.
• Millions of older citizens are unable to
meet rising medical costs or find suitable living
quarters they can afford.
• Miffi n of workers are paid the obsolete
minimum wage of $1 an hour — and millions
more are denied even this much protection*
• Millions who lost their jobs to industrial
automation or migration, through no fault of
their own, have exhausted their unemployment
insurance.
• Millions of small farmers and farm la-
borers are finding it increasingly hard to main-
tain bare subsistence*
• Millions of our citizens are denied decent
housing, good schooling and equal job oppor-
tunities because of the color of their skin.
These shortcomings are more bitter because
their cures lie close at hand. Well-considered
remedies for everyone of them have been devised,
but: Congress failed to act in 1959.
Measures that can and should be enacted this
year are listed in this pamphlet. Not one of these
proposals is new or revolutionary; every one of
them is essential.
Yet these are not the only essentials "to pro-
mote the general welfare." In addition to the
measures treated in detail in the following pages,
the AFL-CIO has a deep concern with a wide
range of other problems. For example:
• We want an effectively-controlled disarm-
ament system; but meanwhile, we must not
begrudge a single dollar to keep our defenses
strong and to restore our space science to
international leadership.
• We must improve and strengthen our
efforts to help underdeveloped nations to help
themselves toward economic well-being.
• We must revise our immigration policies
to restore our historic concern for the victims
of oppression, and our humane regard for
individual suffering.
• We must move decisively against the
moral decay represented by "payola," false
advertising and TV frauds, to the end that the
consumer once again be protected from those
_ who subvert mediums of mass communications.
The 86th Congress will be substantially the
same this year as it was last year. If there's
going to be a different record, you will have to
be heard.
Issue by issue, week by week, you and your
friends and your neighbors have got to let these
men in Congress know how you feel.
Let them cornit people, not property; men, not
money.
Working together, with all those who share
our dream of a better America and a free world,
we can't be beau
AM, CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, l>. C, SATURDAY, JAM ARY 16, 1960
Page Sevea
Morgan Says:
Virus of German Anti-Semitism
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen
to Morgan over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 10 p. tnl, EST.)
THE VIRUS OF HATRED has never been
completely isolated. TDespite preventive meas-
ures, the human frame remains susceptible to it
and every once in a while there is an outbreak of
epidemic proportions. We are faced with one
now in the sickness of anti-Semitism which has
spread suddenly around
the world after the dese-
cration of a Jewish syna-
gogue at Christmas-time
in Cologne, Germany.
There are indications
that the Adenauer gov-
ernment regrets its hasti-
ness in implying that these
outrages stemmed from a
Communist conspiracy in
a purported attempt to em-
barrass West Germany.
Not that the Communists are not capable of such
tactics; for that matter, they are not unfamiliar
with them in the Soviet Union where anti-Semitism
is still cruelly if sometimes subtly practiced. But
these germs of hatred don't need a plot to hatch
them; they spawn in a slough of ignorance and
Vandercook Says:
Morgan
despond and are carried, as if by ill winds, to far
places.
The Bonn regime's impulsiveness in trying to
cast all the blame on the Communists — who may
well have had a hand in some of- the episodes
reflected the unfortunate fact that it has dealt
only superficially with the problem. The Ade-
nauer government has taken a correct attitude
toward the Jews, has taken steps to atone for
Nazi crimes, paid some reparations for war dam-
age, outlawed Nazism and anti-Semitism.
But West Germany has never quite been able
to bring itself to face the monumental savagery
of Hitler. As, one dispatch from Bonn put it,
the tendency has been "to bury rather than
stamp out what the Nazis taught.' 9
Americans, of course, are in no position to
comment with smug impunity on the recent rash
of some 40 anti-Semitic acts in Germany or similar
incidents in a dozen other lands.
REMEMBER the synagogue bombings of a
year and a half ago? Even white supremacists de-
nounced them. Outraged public opinion checked
them. Legislation was swiftly drafted to cope
with them. But that legislation, together with
other proposals to protect and fortify civil rights,
lies in a congressional pigeonhole. And after two
trials stemming from the blasting of the Jewish
Temple in Atlanta nobody was convicted and
charges were dismissed.
The problem, however, has not been dismissed.
'Exhilarating' Campaign Seen
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of John W. Vandercook, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen
to Vandercook over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 10 p. m., EST.)
ONE OF THE GREAT events of life of the
U.S. is the quadrennial presidential race.
What makes it so great — and so supremely useful
— an institution is that it
is the one political occa-
sion in which all of the
people participate. Elec-
tion years should provide
an outlet for the emotions
as well as for political
opinions.
Where there is no en-
thusiasm, democracy's in
danger. When people
cease to care, we're in real
Vandercook trouble. Yet there's no
reason to think that this election campaign should
not be at least as exhilarating as its predecessors.
The Republican party finds itself in the unenvi-
able position of having only one possible candi-
date for president. In the whole wide world of
GOP politics, of finance and of business, it turns
out that there is just one man who can now be
seriously considered for the Big Job. And that
man, it so happens, is the Vice President, the
holder of the office that for 150 years has been
regarded as the terminus of f a political dead end
street.
Mr. Richard Nixon's situation in that job,
Washington Reports:
we are reminded, has been "different." It has
been different. Mr. Nixon has been enabled to
loom larger on the political horizon that have
his predecessors because Mr. Eisenhower, for
reasons of health, golf and travel, has been so
often absent from his post of duty. Perhaps,
on election day, that will make a difference. If
• so, Nixon would be the first Vice President in
more than a century to be directly elevated to
the presidency by the voters.
In terms of political tradition, the Democrats
are also confronted by a peculiar situation.
Notoriously, the Senate — for reasons so ob-
scure that I've never heard anyone try to explain
them — has been held to be the worst possible
jumping off place for the presidency. In our own
century, that long jump has been made only by
Warren Harding. As of this moment, no less
than four more or less avowed seekers for the
Democratic nomination are in the Senate.' Ken-
nedy, Humphrey, Symington and Johnson.
IN ANY CASE, the large question in the
minds of politicians of both parties is "Can Nixon
be beaten?" By every indication there are many,
many more Democratic voters than there are
Republicans.
With the oddly exceptional figure of Dwight
D. Eisenhower absent from the contest the query
is will the American people go on splitting their
tickets and voting for a Democratic Congress and
a GOP President? Or, will they return to the
more familiar practice of voting for a President
and a Congress of the same party? In that case,
Mr. Nixon would have to run very much harder
than, at present, he seems to think is necessary.
Rival House Leaders at Odds
On Finishing Work by July 11
REP. JOHN McCORMACK (D-Mass.), ma-
jority leader in the House, and Rep. Charles
Halieck (R-lnd.), minority leader, differed on the
chances of the Congress finishing its work before
the Democratic national convention July 11, as
they were interviewed on Washington Reports to
the People, AFL-CIO public service' program,
heard on 300 radio stations.
McCormack named the main items of unfin-
ished business, said that it will be hard to take
care of all of them.
"We are going to make every effort to try to
do it," he said, "but it is only a possibility."
Halieck said he couldn't see why, "with the
committees all organized and our job immedi-
ately before us, we can't get going and in six
months do all that needs to be done."
McCormack said Congress must act on civil
rights, housing, farm legislation, aid to educa-
tion appropriations, social security, the mini-
mum wage, the interest rate on long-term
bonds, the debt ceiling, water pollution, ex-
tension of corporate and excise taxes, depressed
areas, the facilities bill.
Both expect a civil rights bill to pass the House.
Halieck added: "As to what happens in the
Senate, I wouldn't claim to be an expert."
McCormack said he felt there was a good
chance that a school construction bill will pass
the House. Halieck said, however, that the com-
mittee bill, referred to by McCormack, wouldn't
pass.
"A broader bill, a more expensive bill, than
the Administration has in mind, is simply not
acceptable," he declared.
"There's a 'good chance' of increasing the mini-
.mum wage," McCormack said.
"Extending the coverage is going to be more
difficult."
WASHINGTON
REP. CHARLES A. HALLECK (Ind.). the House Republican
floor leader, claims that the GOP has no responsibility for pushing
through a civil rights bill despite Pres. Eisenhower's State of the
Union message requesting such a measure. He points to the eight-
to-four Democratic majority on the House Rules Committee, where
the Judiciary Committee bill is bottled up, and asks if this isn't a
big enough margin to let the Democrats run things.
This uncandid remark is based on a pretense that there are
only two parties in the House — that we have, in fact, a two-party
system in this country. We don't, except for the purpose of
presidential elections.
In the House Rules Committee, we have a three-party system,
and the division of membership at the present time, and nearly
always, accurately reflects the relative power of the blocs.
There are four northern Democrats, four southern Democrats and
four Republicans. Two of the southern Democrats— Chairman
Howard Smith (Va.) and Rep. William M. Colmer (Miss.) — are
almost constantly iri total agreement with Old Guard Republicans
on all economic and social matters, and the four Republicans on
the committee are responsive to Halleck's Old Guard leadership.
This has interesting results, familiar to thos£ who would like to
see mild progress in labor, housing, social security and school leg-
islation. The two conservative southern Democrats and the four
Republicans can keep legislation from reaching the floor by their
six powerful votes.
* * *
ON THE ISSUE OF CIVIL RIGHTS, of course, all four south-
ern Democrats tend to stick together. This means that under the
"three-party" system on the committee, the Republicans would have
to furnish at least three of their four votes .in juncture with the
four northern Democrats to get the Judiciary Committee bill to
the floor.
The committee can be bypassed by a discharge petition, signed
by 217 members of the House. This would require some 50 or 60
Republican signatures, however, and until now there are only about
20. GOP leaders who prefer not to be named have told reporters
that they "doubt" enough Republicans can be induced to sign.
Halieck commands well-disciplined troops among the shrunken
ranks of House Republicans. When he refuses to encourage
either a discharge petition or the transfer of Republican votes on
the Rules Committee, he is personally blocking the civil rights
bill.
It remains to be seen whether he will block it for the entire
session in a continued payoff to the southern Democrats for their
"deal" last year on the Landrum-Griffin bill.
* * *
THE CALCULATED proficiency with which the three-party
system is maintained on the Rules Committee commands admira-
tion as an example of the practical politics learned by Halieck in
the jungle warfare of Indiana Republicanism.
Suppose the GOP should win the House next year and gain
an eight-to-four margin on the committee. The four Democrats
left would be two southerners and two northerners — again exactly
in balance.
The new Republicans, one may safely anticipate, would be over-
whelmingly Old Guard. Under the former GOP leadership of
Joseph Martin (Mass.), slight representation was sometimes given
moderately liberal Republicans. But when then Rep. Hugh Scott
of Pennsylvania was elected to the Senate in 1958, thus creating a
Rules Committee vacancy, Halieck filled the place with Rep. Hamer
H. Budge (Ida.), a right-wing conservative.
Northern Democrats never get more than half their party's quota.
The only deviation from equal representation is when the southern
Democrats have more than half — as in the 83rd Congress, when
three of the four Democratic minority members were southerners.
SECOND SESSION of the 86th Congress faces a mountain of
unfinished business, according to Democratic Leader John W.
McCormack (Mass.), at left. Republican Leader Charles Halieck
(Ind.), also on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program, said "all that needs to be done can be done
in six months."
Page Elglit
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, I960
How to Buy:
'Medical Quackery'
Being Spread by TV
HPHERE'S NO DOUBT TV has played an important part in the
-■■ spread of medical quackery. One leading advertising man, when
he retired, deplored what he politely called 4fc bad taste" in adver-
tising which "seems to have blossomed concurrently with TV."
The misleading nature of the TV commercials showing one
aspirin dissolving quicker, and giving "faster relief" than others,
has just been criticized by an article
in the New York County Medical
Society's magazine. If one type or
brand takes only one second to dis-
solve, and another as much as four,
there's no practical difference.
TV ads can be especially mislead-
ing because they are dramatic, can
show pseudo-scientific demonstra-
tions, can rig demonstrations, and
can "doctor" products to make them
look better. TV commercials present
actors who convincingly talk like doc-
tors, dentists and scientists. Gen-
eral Motors and Libbey-Owens-Ford
could claim in other ads that the
view through their car windows is
clearer. In TV commercials they were able to "prove" it. But, the
Federal Trade Commission says, they first rolled down the windows
before showing the "clearer" view.
Other advertisers have been reported using shaving cream in-
stead of icing to make their Gakes look better, salt tablets to make
their beer foamier; hot wine in the cup instead of the coffee they're
actually selling, and bleach, not cleansing powder, under the sponge
that wipes away the hard-to-clean spot.
Nor is anything more convincing than, the announcer protected
by an "invisible shield" in the TV commercial for Colgate's Gardol.
The combination of sight and sound on TV has proved to be
almost hypnotic in its power to persuade. Dr. Arthur Shapiro, a
professor of medicine at the State University of New York and a
founder of the Institute for Research in Hypnosis, has said that "the
smoking habit is being established and re-established all the time
in advertisements everywhere. . . . The man selling cigarettes on
television is a spellbinder. His spiel is repetitious, suggestive,
monotonous, soothing, reassuring."
More evidence of the power of TV ads has come from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its price checkers have reported
greatly-increased consumption of deodorants, nail polish, lipstick
and other toiletries which they attributed to heavy TV advertising.
Nor can the public be satisfied if some of the medical products
sold through TV and other advertising media are not actually
harmful and "may even give temporary relief." It's harmful to the
pocketbook to pay $3 for an "arthritis medicine" which is basically
aspirin. The aspirin itself is available for as little as 15 cents for
a bottle of 100.
Even some advertising men themselves are getting critical of the
misleading claims currently being made — not only in TV ads, of
course. Fairfax Cone, of the big Foote, Cone & Belding advertising
agency, recently said that "newspapers, magazines, TV and radio
could clean up advertising with the next deadlines simply by
demanding proof of claims."
Cone asks: "How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in
nicotine; how can three different headache remedies all work
fastest?"
The TV industry can stop the criticism of its ads quickly enough
by doing just what Cone advises.
A SPOKESMAN for television challenges this department's
recent report that TV advertising has become the No. 1 deceiver
of the buying public. In effect, says Louis Hausman, director of
the Television Information Office of the National Association of
Broadcasters, this is an unfair charge; other forms of advertising
such as newspapers carry the same misleading claims for which
we criticized TV.
Hausman should have a chance to tell his side. But there is
growing evidence that false TV ads have been most effective in
misleading many families into unnecessary expenditures, especially
for patent medicines, cosmetics and toiletries.
Hausman writes: "The Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation
report to which you referred . . . made it clear that 'all forms of
media were used extensively.'
"Your comments make no distinction between advertisements
for products or services which the report describes as 'not harmful
in themselves, and may even give temporary relief and 'those which
are worthless and may be harmful, and for which patently false and
misleading claims are made.'
"You quote Dr. Hillenbrand of the American Dental Association
as saying that television toothpaste commercials are rigged and
misleading. He did say this but he went on to say 'unsupported
advertising claims continue to give television viewers as well as
readers a false sense of security.' No one can defend misleading
advertising. But it is important to remember that advertising claims
are not materially changed from one medium to another. The same
claims are employed as copy themes in all media which are used.
If, in fact, they are false and misleading, they are equally so in all
media. "
It's true that newspapers and other media also publish misleading
ads. But the Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation survey did show
that of the arthritis sufferers who had bought falsely-advertised
products, 25 percent did so because of TV, 21 percent through
newspaper ads, 15 through magazines, 10 through radio.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
Keyseriing Croup Says:
Economic Growth Rate of 5%
Key to Action on Human Needs
An economic growth rate of 5 percent a year
coupled with an expanded federal budget can
meet the nation's neglected human needs in the
next five years.
That's the conclusion of a new study by
the Conference on Economic Progress entitled
"The Federal Budget, and the 'General Welfare.' "
Issued a week before Pres. Eisenhower is sched-
uled to unveil the federal budget for fiscal 1961
— a budget which the President indicated in his
State of the Union message would be sharply
limited in the social welfare field — the study
declared that: ,
The federal budget could be increased by
about $24 billion in the next four years and
still be a smaller percentage of total national
production if the economy is restored to
full production and full employment and a
growth rate of 5 percent is maintained.
In the 76-page booklet, the CEP, composed
of business, labor and farm leaders and directed,
by Leon Keyserling, chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisers under former Pres. Truman,
spells out how this goal can be achieved.
While progress toward the goal requires vigor- »
ous and sustained efforts by private and public
groups "the federal government must take the
lead and largely through the federal budget," the
study says. It adds:
'The federal budget determines our national
priorities; it is^the most important tool for identi-
fying and helping to accomplish our greatest pur-
poses as a nation. If the federal budget falls
down on its tasks, others cannot fully rise to
theirs."
The study seeks to dispel the confusions that
have grown up around national objectives and
budget policy. These, say the authors, fall into
four categories:
• The proposal to meet public needs by a
forced shift from production of private goods to
production of public goods rather than relying
mainly on overall economic growth. This posi-
tion is economically wrong, says the study, be-
cause "the volume of private poverty in our midst
is no less challenging than the starvation of public
services" and because the new technology requires
"an immense growth" in production to avoid
chronic mass unemployment.
• The proposal to postpone essential pro-
grams until a few years of high economic growth
enable us "to afford" them. The very low growth
rate since the Korean war stems from inadequate
outlays in both the private and public sectors,
says the study.
• The proposal for higher rates of taxation
and greater sacrifices. Existing tax rates will
generate enough public revenue if the economy
grows as it should, not at the low rate of the past
few years.
• The proposal to hold the line on the budget
in terms of its size relative to the total national
economy. The budget-balancers are formulating
an approach in which the budget is too small in
terms of needed programs and large in terms of
an economy that is not expanding rapidly enough,
the study says.
The study concentrates on five welfare pro-
grams:
EDUCATION: A five-year program is designed
DECLINING ROLE OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET
1954-1960
BUDGET OUTLAYS AS PERCENT OF TOTAL NATIONAL PRODUCTION
md International \
* Fiscal I960 be»«d on Fcdircl Bjs;*' pfchM si of Odootr 1959.
ECONOMIC GROWTH NEEDED
FOR ECONOMIC HEALTH
Growth In Number
Wonting Work
Needed Growth in
Total Notionol Production
PRODUCTION HAS LAGGED
Billions Of 1958 Oollors
690
600
460
400
550
Needed Growth in Total
Production.
\
Actual Production
I \
1959
(ttO
1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958
UNEMPLOYMENT REMAINS HIGH
True Level of Unemployment
Millions of Workers
6.2
True Unemployment
: :.2 ^.... Full-Time Equivalent
of Port -Time
Unemployment
Full-Time
Unemployment
1953 195? 1958
•l«59 «it;mcfe4 oftboilt of octud figures for ffrtl ten wonfhs.
to add half a million more classrooms and almost
a half-million teachers with average teacher sal-
aries rising from about $5,100 to $7,500. Pro-
posed federal budget outlays for education would
rise from an estimated $549 million in fiscal 1960
to about $2.2 billion in calendar 1961 and about
$5 billion in calendar 1964.
HEALTH: An immediate expansion of the
social security system is urged to provide health
insurance for the aged and gradual development
of much wider health protection by the mid-
1960s. Federal budget outlays for all health
purposes, estimated at $823 million in fiscal 1960,
are proposed at $1.2 billion in calendar 1961 and
$3.3 billion by 1964.
SENIOR CITIZENS: Average monthly retire-
ment benefits under OASDI would be lifted from
the August 1959 level of $72.46 for a retired
worker to about twice this level by mid-1960s,
with increases also in public assistance.
THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE DIS-
ABLED: By the mid-1960s the average weekly
unemployment compensation benefit would be
lifted to $50 a week or about half the projected
weekly wage in that year, and this improved pro-
tection would be extended to many more people.
It is also proposed that programs be established
to cover loss of wages due to illness and that
federal legislation establish standards to promote
improvements in coverage and benefits with re-
spect to workmen's 'compensation.
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE: Additional federal as-
sistance to state programs would expand aid for
the elderly and also for dependent children, the
blind, and the permanently and totally disabled,
and a federal contribution would be made to state
programs for general public assistance. Federal
outlays would be lifted from an estimated $2
billion in fiscal 1960 to $2.6 billion in calendar
1961 and $3.2 billion in 1964.
The total federal budget, the study declares,
would rise from $78.9 billion for fiscal 1960 to
$89.5 billion in calendar 1961 and $102.4 billion
in 1964.
"With the rate of overall economic growth pro-
jected in this study, however, the federal budget
would decline from 17.2 percent of our total
national production during the calendar years
1953-59' to only 16.1 percent by calendar 1964,
and the national debt as a percent of our national
production would fall from 66.7 percent during
the calendar years 1953-59 to 45.8 percent by
calendar 1964," the study explains.
The CEP has on its national committee AFL-
CIO Vice Presidents Walter P. Reuther, Al J,
Hayes and O. A. Knight.
Copies of the study are available from CEP at
1001 Connecticut Ave., N. W., Washington, D.
at 50 cents each.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
Page NiiH
Novik Assails FCC:
Kenin Hits Radio, TV
For Choking Culture
Pres. Herman D. Kenin of the Musicians has called on the
Federal Communications Commission to deny licenses to broad-
casters who are "progressively choking off American culture" by
misusing "the priceless monopoly of the airwaves."
Kenin, spokesman for 265,000 musicians, was one of a parade
of witnesses who warned the FCC^
that failure to set and enforce pub-
lic-service and public-interest stand-
ards has resulted in domination of
broadcasting by advertisers and sta-
tion owners whose only concern is
with making the biggest profit at
the lowest cost.
"Broadcasting was not created
solely as a vehicle for advertising,"
M. S. Novik, a radio consultant
specializing in public service pro-
grams, told the FCC at hearings
arising out of exposures of corrup-
tion and deception in radio and
television.
He warned that "a great medium
of communication" has been turned
into "a jukebox with a bulletin
board."
Kenin cited the "callous banish-
ment of The Voice of Firestone
. . . solely because a rare interval
Raps
Trade Paper
FCC on
Slow Rebuke
The influential magazine Broad-
casting was sharply critical of the
Federal Communications Commis-
sion for its long delay in acting on
an AFL-CIO charge that the Met-
ropolitan Broadcasting Co. used its
facilities to discredit the labor
movement.
The magazine's reaction to the
stalling was given to the FCC by
M. S. Novik, New York radio con-
sultant at hearings on allegations
of unethical practices;
The AFL-CIO complaint was
based on two incidents. In January
1959 Metropolitan's station WTTG-
TV, Washington, gave free films of
selected parts of the McClellan spe-
cial Senate committee hearings on
the Auto Workers strike at the
Kohler Co. to 27 TV stations with-
out explaining the National As-
sociation of Manufacturers paid for
them. The following August WTTG
and WNEW-TV, New York, tele-
cast a program supporting the Lan-
drum-Griffin bill without affording
equal time to opponents. The FCC
reprimand came early this year, ap-
parently at renewal time.
Novik cited to the FCC a Broad-
casting magazine article which
maintained that "the time to rebuke,
if it is warranted, is when the inci-
dent or the protest occurs." If it
comes only at renewal time, the
article continued, "it may be three
years before it is announced" — a
period during which the industry
has no FCC opinion as a "guide-
post."
of cultural music might lower net-
work income on adjoining pro-
grams" as an example of the broad-
casting industry's "insensitive, dol-
lar-dominated attitude toward live
music."
A survey of 537 local radio
and television stations iri^l states
and the District of Columbia
show that 502 of them do not
employ a single musician, even
on a casual or part-time basis,
He said the FCC's policy in giv-
ing "great weight to local live pro-
gramming" in considering applica-
tions for licensing of radio and tele-
vision stations has become "an
empty, mocking formality . . . be-
cause the commission has not can-
celled the licenses of those who
brake their promises."
Warning that lack of employ-
ment opportunities for American
musicians threaten to turn the
United States into "a culturally
sterile nation, totally passive in our
relation to the arts," Kenin cited
the use of television "background
music" obtained from cutting up
sound tracks of old European
movies.
Parallel developments in the
field of news coverage were
traced by Novik, who said even
radio stations which once prided
themselves on diversified and
public interest programs have
"capitulated" and made broad-
casting "solely a vehicle for ad-
vertising."
Novik, who is radio consultant
for the AFL-CIO, said when broad-
casters discovered that "all they
needed were records and disc jock-
eys . . . station news staffs went out
and five - minute summaries were
clipped off the national news serv-
ice wires. Teletypes took the place
of competent newsmen and com-
mentators at the station."
Declaring that the Communica-
tions Act "was designed to encour-
age, not discourage, political dis-
cussion on the air," Novik proposed
that:
• The FCC require all broad-
casting stations to make time avail-
able, at regular commercial rates,
to candidates for a month prior to
Election Day and for a week prior
to primaries, plus "a reasonable
amount of time on a public service
basis for the discussion of political
issues by candidates or qualified
parties."
• A "re - examination" by the
FCC of political broadcasting rules
and practices, including public
hearings at which interested groups
could make recommendations.
Master Great Lakes
Agreement Goal of ILA
Buffalo, N. Y.- — The Intl. Longshoremen's Association will make
an all-out effort this year to negotiate a master agreement covering
up to 10,000 dock workers in 30 ports on the Great Lakes.
This plan was disclosed here by Capt. William V. Bradley,
president of the 100,000-member union. Bradley, making his first
appearance here since the merger
of the ILA and Intl. Brotherhood
of Longshoremen last fall, officiated
at the election and installation of
officers of the Buffalo Joint Coun-
cil of Longshoremen.
The union's objective, Bradley
explained, is to have one labor con-
tract providing for uniform wages,
hours, health and welfare benefits
and pensions for general cargo
workers in all Lakes' ports from
Duluth, "Minn., to Cornwall, Ont.
He added that he believed the un-
ion's goals could be achieved "with-
out strikes."
Bradley said the ILA's execu-
tive council will meet with lead-
ers of the Great Lakes Dist.
within a month to work out a
plan for the master agreement.
A preliminary meeting of repre-
sentatives of all general cargo
locals in major Lakes ports will
be held Jan. 19 in Chicago to
prepare for the session with the
ILA executive council.
Patrick J. Sullivan of Buffalo,
district secretary-treasurer, said the
wage rates for general cargo han-
dlers in Great Lakes ports now vary
from a high of $2.55 an hour in
Buffalo to a low of $1.78 an hour
at another port which he declined
to name.
"That 77-cent differential must
be wiped out this year," Sullivan
asserted. "The only way the St
Lawrence Seaway can bring bene-
fits to the dock workers is by re-
moving the 'dog-eat-dog' competi-
tion on labor rates between the var-
ious ports."
Once there are uniform rates
and benefits, Sullivan explained,
the ports can compete on the
basis of location, service and effi-
ciency.
David M. Connors, an ILA vice
president, and Sullivan were re-
elected president and secretary-
treasurer, respectively, of the Buf-
falo Joint Council of Longshore-
men.
OCAW Wins Settlement
At Amoco After 191 Days
Denver, Colo. — It's two down and one to go in the long strike
of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers against Standard Oil Co.
of Indiana and its subsidiary, American Oil Co.
Last July, OCAW struck three plants of the company — one op-
erated by the parent company at Sugar Creek, Mo., and two op-
erated by American Oil at El^
Dorado, Ark., and Texas City, Tex.
In November, terms were
reached at El Dorado. On Jan. 7,
agreement was reached at Texas
City after 191 days of strike.
In both situations, the strikers
returned to work united after hav-
ing unanimously ratified new con-
tracts. Key issue on all three strike
fronts has been contract language
limiting the company on unreason-
able changes in job assignments.
At Sugar Creek, 700 OCAW
members remain on strike against
Standard of Indiana. They
rounded out six months on the
bricks on Jan. 8
OCAW continues to solicit finan-
cial and moral support for its
strikers at Texas City, as well as
for 600 members of the union who
have been on strike against Johns-
Manville at Marrero, La., since
last July 1. These and other strikes
engaged in during the past year
have caused a heavy drain on the
union's strike defense funds.
TOP OFFICERS OF AFL-CIO state organizations held a three-day meeting in Washington to discuss
organizational, legislative and administrative problems with federation officers and staff. The sessions
stressed the need for closer coordination between the state bodies and the national organization.
»$> —
Labor Gives
Capital Trips
In Contest
(Continued from Page 1)
of the President's committee.
Gen. Melvin J. Maas, chairman
of the President's committee, said:
"The generous act by the AFL-
CIO in providing transportation
and living costs to Washington
for the President's Committee
Annual Meeting for the first prize
winners in each state participat-
ing in the national essay contest
will give new and increased in-
centive to 11th and 12th grade
students all over the country.
"The employers and employes of
tomorrow and their families are
well versed in the virtue of hiring
the handicapped, once they have
entered the contest. I am sure the
wonderful gesture by the AFL-CIO
will be directly responsible for de-
veloping an even more favorable
climate of opinion toward the hand-
icapped among the employers of
America."
Mrs. Grace Nicholas, adminis-
trative assistant to the president
of the General Federation of Wom-
en's Clubs and chairman of the
national essay contest, said that for
more than a decade, "This contest
has been one of the most effective
means of promoting employment
of the handicapped.
"The action of the AFL-CIO,
making it possible for all state
winners to come to Washington,
will be an added incentive to
students in the public and paro-
chial schools to participate and
will be a real inspiration to the
members of the state and local
committees on employment of
the handicapped," she added.
Davis Defeats
R-T-W Backer
In Louisiana
Baton Rouge, La. — Former Gov.
Jimmie H. Davis won the Demo-
cratic nomination for governor of
Louisiana in the Jan. 9 runoff pri-
mary against Mayor deLesseps S.
Morrison of New Orleans, who ad-
vocated a state "right -to -work"
law. Nearly complete unofficial re-
turns gave Davis 485,742 votes to
414,163 for Morrison.
Morrison was backed heavily by
the unaffiliated Teamsters. The
AFL-CIO publicly endorsed Davis.
The Democratic nomination for
governor in Louisiana is generally
considered equivalent to election.
In the general election next April,
Davis will face a "States' Rights"
candidate, Cye Courtney, and a for-
mer Democrat, Francis Graven-
berg, chosen by the Republican
State Committee as GOP nominee.
Louisiana in 1956 repealed the
"work" law adopted just two years
earlier. Jt is only the southern
state where a repeal effort by labor
has been successful.
Benson Policies Hurt
Consumers, Union Says
The suspension of lamb grading is an example of how. the con-
sumer has taken a backseat to industry in the policies of the Dept.
of Agriculture, the Meat Cutters charged before a congressional
committee.
The Meat Cutters asked the House Agriculture Committee to
ensure that lamb grading was con-^ -
tinued and "to make the Depart-
ment's top officials understand that
the welfare of the millions of con-
sumers must be considered para-
mount in policy making and de-
cision making."
Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft Ben-
son ordered a year's suspension of
lamb grading effective Jan. 4 but
postponed it when the House group
decided to look into the issue.
The union told the committee
it was "amazed" when Benson
announced the suspension on
grounds that industry groups
could not agree on standards.
"Consumers, apparently, were
outsiders," the union declared,
adding:
"The suspension of lamb grad-
ing would be a step backward in
aid to the consumer. It could also
be used as an opening wedge
against other consumer-beneficial
grading programs, as beef-grading
and poultry-grading.
"This step backward should
not be permitted," the union
added. "Consumer-protective
and consumer-assisting programs
should be strengthened and in-
creased rather than cut back."
The union explained that meat
grading, including lamb grading,
"aids the housewife in determining
the quality of the meat she buys.'*
It is vital, the union went on,
that the consumer have the choice
of varying qualities. It is this in-
terest which should be paramount
even as the grades are fair and
objective to the producer and the
packer, the union said.
Pilots Back Study
Of Airport Safety
The Air Line Pilots have
joined with American Air-
lines and several other firms
in the aviation industry to
sponsor an independent study
in air safety.
ALPA Pres. C. N. Sayen
said the study, called "Jour-
ney's End," will seek to pin-
point the causes of "an in-
creasing incidence of aircraft
crashes at or near airports."
The Flight Safety Founda-
tion, which will conduct the
survey, will seek to analyze
airport approach accidents
throughout the world.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
AFL-CIO Calendar
Of '60 Conventions
Herewith is a list of conventions scheduled this year by national
and international unions and by AFL-CIO departments and state
bodies. Changes and additions will be reported:
DATE
Jan. 4
March
Mar. 24-26
Apr. 11
Apr. 18
Apr.-20-23
Apr. 25-27
Apr. 25-29
Apr. 25-29
Apr. 25-29
May
May
May
May 2
May 2-6
May 3
May 9-13
May 16-21
May 18-20
May 19-21
May 23-26 -
May 30- June 3
May 30-June 4
June 6-9
June 6-9
June 7-9
June 9-11
June 13-15
June 13-17
June 13-24
June 19-24
June 23-25
June 27-July 1
June 27-July 1
July
July 18-22
July 28-30
August
August
Aug. 1-5
Aug. 9-11
Aug. 15
Aug. 15-19
Aug. 15-20
Aug. 20-26
Aug. 21-27
Aug. 22-26
Aug. 22-27
Aug. 28-Sept. 3
Aug. 29-31
Aug. 29-31
Aug. 29-31
Aug. 29-31
Aug. 29-Sept. 1
Aug. 29-Sept. 1
September
Sept. 6-9
Sept. 6-10
Sept. 6-16
Sept. 12
Sept. 12-16
Sept. 12-16
Sept. 12-16
Sept. 19
Sept. 19
Sept. 19-23
Sept. 19-23
Sept. 19-24
Sept. 26-28
Sept. 26-29
October
October
October
October
October
Oct. 2-7
Oct. 3
Oct. 5
Oct. 10
Oct. 10-12
Oct. 13-15
Oct. 17-22
Oct. 21-22
Oct. 24-28
Oct. 24-28
November
ORGANIZATION
Railroad Trainmen
North Carolina
South Carolina
Operating Engineers
Railroad Employes' Dept.
Louisiana
Mississippi
Canadian Labor Congress
Distillery Workers
State, County & Municipal
Doll & Toy Workers
Ladies' Garment Workers
Marine Engineers
Building Service Employes
Furniture Workers
Arizona
Masters, Mates & Pilots
Plate Printers
Georgia
Colorado
Packinghouse Workers
Clothing Workers
Textile Workers Union of
America
Michigan
Musicians
Ohio
South Dakota
Idaho
Communications Workers
Railroad Telegraphers
Leather Goods
Maine
Meat Cutters
Newspaper Guild
Glass & Ceramic Workers
Bookbinders
Kansas
Iowa
Special Delivery Messengers
Oregon
Women's Intl. Union Label
California
Teachers
Photo Engravers
Typographical Union
Letter Carriers
Technical Engineers
Post Office Clerks
Fire Fighters
Connecticut
New York
Postal Transport
Virginia
Government Employes
Post Office Motor Vehicle
Employes
Nevada
Indiana
Grain Millers
Machinists
Tobacco Workers
Bricklayers
Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers
Stereotypers
Bill Posters
Steelworkers
Chemical Workers
Rubber Workers
Papermakers & Paper-
workers
Missouri
Minnesota
Air Line Dispatchers
Alabama
Cigarmakers
Marine & Shipbuilding
Maritime Union
Railway Patrolmen
Roofers
Massachusetts
Illinois
Nebraska
Utility Workers
Cement Workers
Railway Supervisors
Bridge, Iron Workers
United Textile Workers
Arkansas
PLACE
Cleveland, O.
Raleigh, N. C.
Miami Beach, Fla.
Chicago, 111.
Baton Rouge, La.
Vicksburg, Miss.
Montreal, Que.
Miami Beach, Fla.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Chicago, 111.
Atlantic City, N. J.
Denver, Colo.
New York, N. Y.
Chicago, 111.
Prescott, Ariz.
Galveston, Tex.
New York, N. Y.
Atlanta, Ga.
Denver, Colo.
Chicago, 111.
Miami Beach, Fla.
Chicago, 111.
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Las Vegas, Nev.
Columbus, O.
Aberdeen, S. D.
Idaho Falls, Ida.
St. Louis, Mo.
Chicago, 111.
Atlantic City, N. J.
Portland, Me.
Atlantic City, N. J.
Chicago, 111.
New York, N 1 . Y.
Chicago, 111.
Kansas City, Kan.
Sioux City, la.
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Baker, Ore.
Pocatello, Ida.
Sacramento, Calif.
Dayton, O.
Louisville, Ky.
Denver, Colo.
Cincinnati, O.
Toronto, Ont.
St. Louis, Mo.
Buffalo, N. Y.
Hartford, Conn.
New York, N. Y.
Springfield, 111.
Roanoke, Va.
Cincinnati, O.
Detroit, Mich.
Las Vegas, Nev.
Indianapolis, Ind.
Denver, Colo.
St. Louis, Mo.
Montreal, Que.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Miami Beach, Fla.
Miami, Fla.
Boston, Mass.
Atlantic City, N. J.
Atlantic City, N. J.
St. Louis, Mo.
Washington, D. C.
Kansas City, Mo.
St. Paul, Minn.
New York, N. Y.
New York, N. Y.
New York, N. Y.
Chicago, 111.
St. Louis, Mo.
Boston, Mass.
Springfield, 111.
Grand Island, Neb.
Washington, D. C.
Dallas, Tex.
Chicago, 111.
Washington, D. C.
Miami Beach, Fla.
Little Rock, Ark.
a
SHANNON WALL
Executive director of new Intl.
Maritime Workers Union, set up
to bring union benefits to crews of
"runaway" ships owned in U.S. but
flying flags of other nations.
ICFTU Move
On Boycott
Stirs Trujillo
Brussels — The threat of a boy-
cott of the Dominican Republic by
the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions has stirred up an
alarmed response from the dictator-
ship headed by Gen. Rafael Tru-
jillo, which for years has deprived
workers of their fundamental
rights.
The ICFTU's recent sixth con-
gress here instructed Gen. Sec. J. H.
Oldenbroek to explore methods of
fighting Trujillo, including a boy-
cott, in cooperation with affiliates
and the international trade secre-
tariats.
As a result, Salvador E. Paradas,
the Trujillo government's perma-
nent diplomatic representative in
Geneva, visited the ICFTU office
in Geneva and pledged he would
insist on "positive and concrete ac-
tion" that would remove the reasons
for labor criticism of the regime.
Soon after, Washington Guare-
no Marte, puppet secretary of
the government-dominated Con-
federation of Workers, came to
ICFTU headquarters here with
a proposal that still another fact-
finding mission — -the third — be
sent to the Dominican Republic.
The previous ICFTU missions
were given promises that were not
followed by action. The last, which
made its investigation in 1957, was
composed of Daniel Benedict, then
attached to the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Intl. Affairs and now with ORIT,
and Raul Valdivia Perez of the
Confederation of Cuban Workers.
It reported that freedom of asso-
ciation and collective bargaining
did "not exist," but forced labor
did.
Negotiations Continue:
3 Union Officials
Aid Wilson Strikers
Chicago — Negotiations to end the 11 -week strike of more than
5,000 Packinghouse Workers against Wilson & Co. in six states are
continuing here without notable signs of progress.
The mounting support of the labor movement brought renewed
spirit to the strikers in several areas as nationally known trade
union figures addressed enthusias-^"
tic membership meetings.
In Albert Lea, Minn., Auto
Workers Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey
promised members of Local 6 that
a $25,000 strike donation from
the UAW would be repeated if the
dispute continued past the middle
of January.
At Cedar Rapids, la., Pres. James
B. Carey, of the Electrical, Radio
& Machine Workers, presented Lo-
cal 3 officers with a $5,000 check
from the IUE and a $25,000 gift
from the AFL-CIO Industrial Un-
ion Dept..
Oil Workers Sec.-Treas. T. M.
McCormick addressed a meeting of
UPWA Local 20 in Kansas City,
Kans., pledging the support of labor
and reported on the.OCAW's six-
month strike against Standard Oil
Co., (Ind.), at nearby Sugar Creek,
Vice Pres. Joseph Childs of the
Rubber Workers is scheduled to
address a UPWA local meeting
Jan. 20 in Omaha, Neb.
Mazey praised the action of
Minnesota's Gov. Orville L.
Freeman (D) in mustering the
Awner, Ryder
Appointed to
ACWA Posts
New York — The Amalgamated
Clothing Workers have reorganized
the public relations and editorial
departments and named Max Aw-
ner to head the combined opera-
tions as publicity director.
Awner, assistant editor and editor
of the Colorado Labor Advocate
for 11 years, also served as public
information officer of the Colorado
Dept. of Employment and spent
one year on a Fulbright grant study-
ing labor education in Denmark.
He has written numerous articles
on labor and related subjects for
national magazines and the labor
press.
George Ryder, a member of the
staff of the Advance, the ACWA
publication, has been named man-
aging editor of the paper.
Prior to the combined operation
C. Edmund Fisher served as editor
of the Advance and Richard Roh-
man as director of publicity.
'CurtisDoctrine 9 Company
Told to Quit Price Fakes
Curtis Brothers, Inc., a Washington, D. C, furniture store
whose union-busting tactics kicked off a key court battle on
picketing rights, has been ordered by the Federal Trade Com-
mission to stop using fake prices to mislead customers into
thinking they are getting bargains.
The FTC upheld a hearing examiner's findings that the firm
used "false, misleading and deceptive statements in their ad-
vertisements." Claimed price cuts, the agency said, were either
non-existent or greatly overstated. The company was ordered
to "cease and desist" its misrepresentation.
Curtis Brothers earlier had sought through the National
Labor Relations Board to force striking employes to stop
picketing after their union, a local of the Teamsters, had been
decertified in a Taft-Hartley Act election in which only strike-
breakers were allowed to vote.
The NLRB, in a precedent-setting decision, upheld the
company's claim that the continued peaceful picketing was an
unfair labor practice. The board held that it might "coerce"
the strikebreakers economically.
This ruling, which became known as the "Curtis Doctrine,"
was struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia, which held that the Taft-Hartley Act did not
forbid the peaceful picketing. The Supreme Court has agreed
to hear a government appeal in this and to hear two other
somewhat parallel cases.
National Guard to close the
struck Wilson plant in Albert
Lea. Freeman's act, he said,
brought "sanity in this situation.* 9
"Most U.S. managements," Ma-
zey continued, "still have not ac-
cepted unions as part of the Amer-
ican way of life. They regard un-
ions like a case of smallpox — they
want to live with it only until they
get rid of it."
Carey told his Cedar Rapids au-
dience there were striking parallels
between Wilson's Pres. James D.
Cooney and. the late steel - baron,
Judge Elbert Gary.
"Gary,"- he noted, "considered
trade unions as something worse
than un-American. He hired strike-
breakers, looked the other way
when violence occurred and stead-
fastly refused all union offers to
mediate their differences."
Cooney, a former Iowa jurist,
Carey said, is a man "who must
each morning put his shoes on
backward and walk proudly into
the past." It has been 25 years
since the "yellow dog" contract
was outlawed but Cooney tried
to saddle Wilson workers with
such an agreement last October.
"Here is a man who forced a
strike, hired scabs, attempted to re-
open his plants and is now — once
again — trying to foster his own
phony, independent union."
Noting that wages were not an
issue in the Wilson strike, Mc-
Cormick said the current pattern of
management is to battle unions on
working conditions and rules.
"This happened in steel, in oil
and it is happening in packing
houses," the OCWA official said.
"The people are learning some
lessons about the Wilson company
from this strike and the success of
your 'don't buy' campaign. They
are learning that if Wilson can't
be trusted to treat its employes de-
cently, they can't be trusted to make
a worthy product with scabs and
strikebreakers."
Postal Union
Votes Unity
With Carriers
The board of directors of the
Postal Transport Association has
voted unanimously to recommend
merger with the Letter Carriers and
has authorized NPTA Pres. Paul
A. Nagle, to reconvene the union'*
1958 convention to act on the pro-
posal.
Specific terms of the merger are
scheduled to be developed at forth-
coming meetings between officers
of the 25,000-member Postal Trans-
port union and the 1 25,000-mem-
ber Letter Carrier organization,
headed by Pres. William C. Do-
herty.
The two unions are among the
oldest organizations of government
employes. The Letter Carriers were
founded in 1889. The Postal Trans-
port union, originally the Railway
Mail Association, dates from 1891.
It played a key role in the early
battles for the right of government
workers to organize.
NPTA officials said the pro-
cedure of reconvening the 1958
convention was authorized since
the convention remains the top gov-
erning body of the union until the
next regular convention, scheduled
to be held this August at Spring-
field, 111. The same month, the
Letter Carriers will hold their con-
vention at Cincinnati, O.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
Page Elevea
United Front Formalized:
Newspaper Unions in Portland
Pledge Pacts for All— or None
Portland, Ore. — Representatives of international unions whose locals have been battling savage
union-busting tactics of the Oregon Journal and the Oregonian have agreed that "no union will return
to work until settlements are reached with all of the unions."
Officers and international representatives of the Stereotypers, Newspaper Guild, Pressmen, Typo-
graphical Union, Photo Engravers and the unaffiliated Teamsters declared they "do not intend to
permit local unions to be destroyed^
by a giant newspaper chain and
its Portland satellite."
The Oregonian is owned by Sam-
uel I. Newhouse of New York,
whose empire includes 14 news-
papers, nine magazines and nine
radio and TV stations. The Ore-
gonian has been publishing a joint
paper with the Oregon Journal,
using imported strikebreakers.
Union members employed by the
two papers have been respecting
the picket lines of the Stereotypers,
who struck Nov. 10 after rejecting
management proposals to seriously
weaken their contract. Meanwhile
contracts of the other mechanical
unions have expired.
The statement by the union rep-
resentatives declared:
''Striking employes will return
to Work without fear of reprisal
or discrimination. The unions
agree that all contracts must have
a common expiration date. All
contracts must contain a clause
allowing all unions to respect
picket lines at the newspaper
plants."
The joint newspaper dismissed
the unions' statement as "negotia-
tion by ultimatum."
Meanwhile, the imported-strike-
breakers issue was aired at a public
hearing of the state legislature's
interim committee on labor-man-
agement relations.
Unionists Aroused
More than 200 newspaper union
members packed Uhe committee
hearing room in the state capitol
at Salem, 50 icy miles away, to hear
labor offer evidence and argue the
need for remedial legislation.
George Brown, director of politi-
cal education for the Oregon AFL-
CIO warned that if "this precedent
is allowed to continue and is ac-
cepted as common practice in labor-
management relations, it can spread
to every industry in the state/'
"There seems to be evidence that
strikebreakers were in Portland on
a stand-by basis even before the
strike was called," he said.
A witness was Gerald E. Gish of
Cleveland, a Typographical Union
member employed on the Cleve-
land, O., Plain Dealer, who testified
he had once been a professional
strikebreaker, connected with the
Bloor Schleppey and Shirley Klein
newspaper strikebreaking organiza-
tions. "
Gish outlined his career in 1955
57 from his recruitment by Okla-
homa City publishers two months
before a strike there until he broke
with the Klien group and helped
the ITU organize strikebreakers at
Glen Cove, Long Island, N. Y.
Strikes Provoked?
In a hour-long appearance be
fore the committee, Gish testified:
• Strikebreakers usually draw
premium wages and extensive over-
time, plus eating allowances and
hotel bills. Transportation is usually
paid as well. Gish's top weekly
check was $675 at Zanesville, O.
• Strikebreakers know in ad-
vance where strikes will occur, and
he was among strikebreakers
brought into Westchester County,
N. Y., and kept on a stand-by
basis before an ITU strike against
the Macy chain of papers there
When for a time it appeared the
ITU would not strike there, Gish
quoted Shirley Klein as saying
"We'll have to provoke it."
• Strikebreaking organizations
know in advance the plant layouts
at the newspapers which will call
on their services, and assignments
of key strikebreakers are pr^-de-
termined.
Gish identified names or pic-
tures of at least 15 strikebreakers
Urban League Marks
Half-Century of Service
New York — Fifty years ago a small group of men and women
founded an organization dedicated to the improvement of inter-
racial relations in the United States with particular emphasis on
social and economic problems of \Negroes migrating from the rural
South to the industrial North.
Today, the National Urban'^
League, as it is called, is a flourish
ing institution whose contributions
to the betterment of race relations
by practical programs have fre-
quently and deliberately been un-
publicized.
In signalizing the 50th anniver-
sary of the league, Pres. Eisen-
hower wrote Theodore W. Kheel,
league President, a congratulatory
letter stating that in championing
the "cause of equal opportunity,"
the Urban League '"renders a splen-
did service to our people and to the
hope of freedom around the world."
The basic aim, said Lester B.
Granger, the League's executive
director, is to see to it that in
the next decade "we can close
up shop because our fight has
been successful."
Over the next 10 years, he ex-
pects, a million Negroes will move
northward from the South as they
seek equal opportunity for them-,
selves and their families. This, he
warned, will produce tensions as
they move into white residential
areas, a problem with which the
league will necessarily deal. One-
immediate concern will be to fight
for more public housing.
Another problem of the next
decade will be to help Negro mi-
grants to industrial centers with re-
training in essential skills to help
upgrade them into better jobs and
thus raise incomes and living
standards.
The league's first anniversary
project was publication of a special
supplement in the New York Times
of Jan. 17 dealing with race re-
lations and the Urban League story
during its 50 years.
Another program highlight is
a contest called "America's
JVfany Faces," designed to bring
together a collection of photo-
graphs portraying the nation's
multi-racial heritage. The con-
test, which opens Feb. 1 and
ends May 31, is directed by Ed-
ward Steichen, photography di-
rector of the Museum of Modern
Art.
The annual convention, to be
called the Golden 50th Conference,
will be held in New York City dur-
ing September with more than
.1,100 delegates and visitors. Em-
ployment, housing, vocational guid-
ance, health and welfare affecting
the Negro population will be major
areas of discussion*
now on the Portland scene as peo-
ple he had known in other similar
operations. His experience as a
strikebreaker included work in
Oklahoma City, Zanesville, O.,
Grand Junction, Colo., Levittown,
Pa., and Westchester County, N. Y.
The publishers were represented
at the hearing by two attorneys,
who contended state legislation on
the subject would be unconstitu-
tional because it would be discrimi-
natory against certain industries
and because the federal govern-
ment had preempted the field.
Management also denied that
strikebreakers had been brought in
on a stand-by basis, that publishers
had used the services of the
Schleppey-Klein organization or
any such group and that premium
wages were paid the strikebreak-
ers.
On another front, James T.
Marr, executive-secretary of the
Oregon AFL-CIO, reported arti-
cles of incorporation have been
drawn up for a third daily news-
paper for Portland. Preliminary
work has been launched, he said,
on details of a stock sale cam-
paign by which the publication,
tentatively named the Portland
Daily News, will be financed.
Knight Going
With Ike on
Latin Journey
Pres. O. A. Knight of the Oil,
Chemical & Atomic Workers, a
vice president of the AFL-CIO and
chairman, of the federation's Inter-
American Affairs Committee, will
be a member of Pres. Eisenhower's
official party on the President's
forthcoming goodwill tour of South
America.
The President announced that all
members of his new Advisory Com-
mittee on Inter-American Affairs
would accompany him. Knight is
a member of that committee, which
was established last November in
an attempt to seek solutions to the
increasing problems of the United
States in Latin-American relations.
He is the only labor representative
on the group, other members com
ing from business, educational or
diplomatic backgrounds.
Knight has paid particular at-
tention to Latin-American affairs
for the past 15 years. He has
attended many labor conventions
in countries south of the Rio
Grande. He accompanied AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany on his
goodwill tour of South American
countries two years ago and at-
tended the inauguration of Pres.
Romulo Betancourt of Venezu-
ela last year at Betancourt's
personal invitation.
He is known by scores of people
in a dozen countries of Central and
South America, ranging from presi-
dents and cabinet ministers to rank-
and-file oil field workers in the back
country of Colombia and' Vene-
zuela.
Shoe Chain Clerks
Pick Union in Vote
Los Angeles — The Retail Clerks
have won a National Labor Rela-
tions Board representation election
covering 41 Hudson Shoe Stores
spread over the area between San
Diego and San Luis Obispo.
The vote was conducted by mail
and included eight RCIA locals, the
tally being 39 to 7 for no union.
More in Common Than in Conflict
URAWf* FOR THS
AFL-CIO NEWS
NLRB Moves Faster
On Unfair Practices
The General Counsel's office of the National Labor Relations
Board has reported that the average age of unfair labor practice
cases in which complaints were issued has been cut to 57 days
from the 127 days of a year ago.
Gen. Counsel Stuart Rothman said he feels "progress is being
made" in reducing delays and clear-'^
ing up the backlog of cases.
The AFL-CIO convention last
September sharply criticized the
NLRB for allowing the backlog of
unfair labor practice and repre-
sentation cases to rise by 2,000
over the year to 7,733 cases for
March 1959.
A secret board-financed study by
a private management consulting
firm leaked out last year. It scored
delays and conflicts it said were
both built into and tolerated by the
NLRB and it inspired calls by Rep.
Roman Pucinski (D-Ill.) and others
for an investigation.
Against this background,
Rothman reported the reduction
in processing time for unfair la-
bor practice cases. He also said
cases under preliminary inquiry
were reduced from 2,492 cases
and an average age of 50 days a
year ago to 1,061 cases and an
average age of 23 days for today.
For 1958, Rothman said, 672
complaints with an average age of
138 days were issued; through No-
vember 1959, a total of 1,119 com-
plaints averaged 72 days.
NLRB Staff Proposes
To Restrict Appeals
A National Labor Relations Board staff committee has recom-
mended limiting the number and complexity of appeals from trial
examiner's decisions in unfair labor practice cases.
NLRB Member Joseph A. Jenkins, who headed the staff study,
said a "spectacular increase" in the number of cases coming to the
board has prevented the NLRB 1 ^
from giving proper consideration
to important policy-setting cases.
He said the board received 506 con-
tested unfair labor practice cases
in 1959 compared with 323 during
1958 and 273 in 1957.
To speed the decision-making
process — which now takes an aver-
age of more than 400 days — and
to ease the workload of the five-
member board, the committee pro
posed to:
• Limit appeals from trial ex-
aminers' decisions to cases which
might set a precedent, where the
precedent is not clear, where the
trial examiner's factual findings are
clearly in error, and special situ-
ations.
• Require appeals to the NLRB
to pinpoint the specific points be-
ing appealed, thus making it un-
necessary for the board to review
the entire record in the case.
• Give trial examiners "greater
authority to dismiss unfair labor
practice cases where the moving
parties decline to bring the matters
at issue into clear focus."
• Confine representation of par-
ties in cases before the NLRB to
lawyers or to officials of unions or
of companies. At present there is
no restriction on who may represent
parties in NLRB cases.
Jenkins said the proposals are be-
ing submitted for comment to "var-
ious professional practitioners in the
field of labor law" before being for-
mally submitted to the board for
approval.
He asserted that the NLRB has
the right to limit by rules trie na-
ture and type of appeals from
decisions of trial examiners if the
examiner's recommendations are
considered an "initial decision"
within the meaning of the Adminis-
trative Procedure Act — a technical
legal point which he indicated has
never been specifically resolved.
IAM Member
Quebec Premier
Quebec, Que. — Labor Minister
Antonio Barrette, a card-carrying
member of the Machinists, has been
sworn in as premier of Quebec, the
first trade unionist to hold that
office.
Barrette quit school at 14 to take
a job as a railroad messenger boy
at 5 cents an hour and joined the
IAM upon advancing to the shops.
A member of the National Union
(Conservative) party, he is usually
regarded as a friend of labor and
frequently was at odds on labor
matters with the late Maurice Du-
plessis, long-time party leader and
provincial premier under whom he
served for 15 years.
He succeeds Premier Paul Sauve,
who died less than four months
after following Duplessis in the top
provincial office.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1960
'Clean Elections' Bill
Vote Due in Senate
(Continued from Page 1)
Union Message, for civil rights ac-
tion this session. The GOP leader
said he himself would not sign the
petition "as a matter of principle."
The political breakdown in the
House Rules Committee is eight
Democrats and four Republicans.
However, the four Republicans and
four southern Democrats have
joined forces to block committee
clearance of the measure.
Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.),
chairman of the Judiciary Com-
mittee which cleared the bill last
August, raised the charge of
"political payoff." He referred to
liberals' charges last year of a
"deal" in which the GOP ob-
tained southern Democratic votes
for the harsh labor bill in return
for allegedly helping blockade
action on civil rights.
The challenge to Johnson's lead-
ership was turned back by a vote
of 51-12 in a conference of Senate
Democrats. It came on a motion
of Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) to
expand the size and power of the
Policy Committee and to take away
from Johnson the right to appoint
members. The Gore motion -was
aimed at giving the committee the
right to spell out policy for the ma-
jority party, subject to approval of
a caucus of Democrats in the upper
house.
In another move, the conference
by a 51-11 vote reconfirmed John-
son's power to name members to
the Democratic Steering Commit-
tee.
Following the caucus, John-
son said the Policy Committee
would probably be named the
"Scheduling Committee," and
that a new title would be given
the Steering Committee to indi-
cate it merely fills committee
posts.
Eisenhower's plea that Congress
remove entirely the present 4.25
percent interest ceiling on govern-
ment bonds renewed a dispute
which highlighted the 1959 session.
The Democratic-controlled Con-
gress last year rebuffed the Presi-
dent on this issue, contending the
Administration's high-interest rate
policies were a barrier to healthy
expansion of the national economy.
Goldberg Raps WFTU
Fake 'Freedom' Blast
(Continued from Page 1)
position to provisions of the Taft-
Hartley Act, Goldberg emphasized
that the union "not only had our
day in court, but had three weeks
in court" to argue against the in-
junction. He pointed out that the
union's position had been supported
by minority opinions of justices on
the Circuit Court of Appeals and
the U.S. Supreme Court.
During the period of court con-
sideration, Goldberg wrote, "our
independent judiciary restrained the
action of the Chief Executive, in
spite of his repeated insistence that
an emergency requiring immediate
measures existed."
Recalls Hungary
Reminding the ILO of "the brutal
suppression of the strikes at Pozan
and in Hungary," Goldberg de-
clared :
"We all know that no judge in
any Communist country would dare
disagree with the publicly expressed
view of the dictator. We have seen
that workers in such countries are
not even allowed to have unions of
their own choosing, much less per-
mitted to strike ... No right to
justice, no power to defend their
dignity or living standards is per-
mitted the workers in whose name
the WFTU claims to speak."
Declaring that "the WFTU
does not come before you with
clean hands," Goldberg said the
Communist federation "would be
better advised to consider the
beam in its own eye, rather than
beholding the mote in another's
eye."
The "freedom of association"
convention, which the WFTU in-
voked in filing its complaint is a
voluntary agreement banning re-
strictions on the right of workers or
employers to form free organiza-
tions.
Declaring that the steel settle-
ment "is a good one, fully justify-
ing the sacrifice we made to obtain
it," Goldberg pointed out that "the
knowledge that we were not only at
liberty to strike again, but actually
intended to, was a potent factor in
inducing the employer to come to
terms with us."
Wagner Gets Party
A id in Pay Floor Fight
New York — Mayor Robert F. Wagner (D) has been promised
strong backing from state Democratic leaders for a drive to wipe
out sweatshops and protect the city's industries from low-wage
competition through increases in both the federal and state mini-
mum wage.
The state Democratic committee^
served notice that a key point in
the parly's legislative program this
year will be to raise the $ 1 an hour
state minimum proposed by Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) to
$1.25. The Democrats will also ask
the state legislature to memorialize
Congress to raise the federal mini-
mum wage to $1.25 an hour "grad-
ually rising to $1.50."
Wagner earlier said the New
York City Council will be asked
formally to request both the leg-
islature and Congress to enact a
$1.25 minimum wage as part of
a program aimed at curbing the
exploitation of Negroes, Puerto
Ricans and other low-paid work-
ers in the city. Surveys have
shown that New York rates next
to last in factory pay averages
among cities with populations of
more than 100,000.
In other areas of social legisla-
tion, the state Democratic leaders
said they will seek major improve-
ments in unemployment insurance,
including lifting the 26-week ceiling
on duration of benefits and raising
the taxable wage base from the
present limit of $3,000 to $4,800
for each employe to finance more
adequate benefits. They said they
will also seek elimination of the ex-
perience rating provision of the fed
eral law, under which many large
employers have received rebates of
most of their unemployment insur
ance taxes.
Strong opposition from Republi-
cans, who control the legislature,
was indicated in a statement by
GOP State Chairman L. Judson
Morhouse who called the Demo
cratic program "pie-in-the-sky pro
posals which would drive business
and jobs out of New York state.
EAST MET WEST as Alfredo Punzalan, center, president of the bus section of the Philippine
Association of Free Labor Unions, attended a meeting of Div. 241, Street & Electric Railway
Employes, Chicago. A statistician, he is shown here with Benjamin J. Tausch, left, a statement
man with the claim adjustment department of the Chicago Transit Authority, and William P. Devereux,
a CTA schedule-maker, both Div. 241 board members. Punzalan is in the U.S. under the auspices of
the Intl. Cooperation Administration to study collective bargaining practices of motor carriers.
Two Raddock Brothers Convicted,
$35,000 Fine Hits Fake 'Courier'
Philadelphia — Maxwell C. and Bert Raddock, owners and operators of a self-styled "labor paper,**
the Trade Union Courier, were convicted of criminal contempt of the U.S. Court of Appeals in a
decision handed down here Jan. 11 by Justices Herbert F. Goodrich, Harry E. Kalodner and Austin
L. Staley.
They were found guilty of violating a Federal Trade Commission order and an appeals court injunc-
tion telling them to cease soliciting^
advertising by claiming representa-
tion of or affiliation with the AFL-
CIO.
The Trade Union Courier itself
also was found guilty and was fined
$35,000 "to be paid within 15 days"
notwithstanding a courtroom^ plea
of "insolvency."
Maxwell C. and Bert Raddock
face possible fines and imprison-
ment for terms within the discre-
tion of the court. Sentence was
delayed pending a report by proba-
tion authorities.
Brother Acquitted
A third brother, Charles, was
acquitted, the court finding he was
occupied solely with editorial func-
tions of the Trade Union Courier
and had no wilful knowledge of the
advertising or business methods of
the operation.
The AFL-CIO for years has
denounced the Trade Union
Courier as a bogus "labor paper"
practicing fraud in its advertising
solicitations. The FTC order di-
rected the publication to cease
misrepresentations about its af-
filiation and to halt attempts to
force payment for advertisements
businessmen did not order.
The Intl. Labor Press Associa-
tion, composed of editors of legiti-
mate papers and magazines pub-
lished by the AFL-CIO and its af-
filiates, worked closely with FTC
lawyers and federal attorneys in
prosecuting charges against the
Raddocks and the Courier, which
is published in New York.
The court's decision cited the
original cease-and-desist order is-
sued by the FTC June 30, 1955,
and the court's own injunction of
May 19, 1956. ;
"Violations," Judge Goodrich de-
Meat Cutters
Win Poultry Plant
Noel, Mo. — Employes of the Ed-
ward Aaron poultry plant here have
voted overwhelmingly for the Meat
Cutters in a National Labor Rela-
tions Board representation election.
The NLRB ordered the vote after
ruling that a contract with the com-
pany claimed by the Teamsters —
signed before the plant began op-
erations last spring — was not bind-
ing.
Workers cast 126 votes for Local
425 of the Meat Cutters to 3 1 votes
for the Teamsters and one vote for
no union.
clared in his opinion, "have oc-
curred.
"Advertising solicitors for the
corporation have represented that
the paper for whom they worked
either represented the [AFL-CIO]
or was affiliated with it. The so-
licitors have likewise placed adver-
tisements without the consent of
the persons whose names appeared
as the advertisers and have billed
the alleged customers for unauthor-
ized advertisements.
"The defendants say that even
if some of these violations occurred,
they did not consent thereto nor had
they knowledge thereof and that
wilfujpess on their part is necessary
to constitute them guilty of crimi-
nal contempt.
"The court finds that Maxwell
Raddock and Bert Raddock, as cor-
poration president and treasurer,
respectively, and Bert Raddock as
general manager, either knew of
the violations committed by the
advertising solicitors 6r shut their
eyes to what they feared they would
learn if investigations were made.
Either one constitutes intentional
violation."
The fine was imposed on the
corporation despite its insolvency
claimed by Seymour Waldman, de-
fense attorney.
He told the court the Trade
Union Courier's latest financial
statement showed a deficit in net
worth of $56,000, with assets of
$86,000 and current liabilities of
$111,000. '
He also said that disclaimers of
representation of the AFL-CIO not
09-&1-I
only would be published in the
Trade Union Courier but also
would appear on all bills.
"Any fine would jeopardize the
jobs of the employes who have not
been paid for four weeks," he
declared.
Editor of Racket Paper
Gets Prison Sentence
New York — Richard Koota, operator of the Intl. Labor Record,
a so-called "labor paper," was sentenced to six months in the New
York City Penitentiary following his conviction on a charge of
soliciting under false pretenses.
Sentence was passed by Judge Mitchell D. Schweitzer in General
Sessions Court. Koota was accused^
of falsely claiming AFL-CIO en-
dorsement of his publication in
boiler-room telephone solicitation
of advertising from employers in
all parts of the country. Murray
Kaplow, also a defendant, was
found guilty and given a suspended
sentence. A third defendant still
awaits trial.
Koota's misrepresentation of
his paper as a legitimate labor
publication was taken to Dist.
Atty. Frank Hogan by the Intl.
Labor Press Association, made
up of labor editors whose papers
are owned or properly endorsed
by the AFL-CIO and its affili-
ates.
Hogan turned the case over to
his Rackets Bureau, " which , ob-
tained the conviction with the aid
of wire taps and recordings legal
under New York State law. Dur-
ing the investigation, AFL-CIO
Public Relations Dir. Albert J.
Zack testified before the grand jury
that the Intl. Labor Record had no
connection with organized labor.
Koota formerly was associated
with the Trade Union Courier and
the American Labor Review, also
phony labor papers. The Courier
was just fined $35,000 and two of
its officers were convicted of crim-
inal contempt by the U.S. Court
of Appeals in Philadelphia for vio-
lating a Federal Trade Commission
order and an appeals court injunc-
tion to cease claiming AFL-CIO
affiliation or representation while
soliciting advertising.
. Two years ago, six men were
convicted in a similar case against
the American Labor Review.
Bloc Seeks
Anti-Union
ElectionBill
A bipartisan Senate coalition
has strengthened a pending "clean
elections" bill in two major areas,
but a southern Democratic-con-
servative Republican bloc has
raised the threat that it would
saddle the measure with harsh
curbs on labor's political activ-
ities.
The measure, introduced by Sen.
Thomas C. Hennings, Jr. (D-Mo.),
is aimed at raising the ceiling now
imposed on expenditures in con-
gressional campaigns and to require
more detailed reporting of contri-
butions and expenditures.
In the first major action of the
current session, the Senate amended
the bill to extend the reporting re-
quirement to local and state polit-
ical committees to cover primaries
as well as general elections.
Ahead lay the threat, raised
during floor debate by Sen. Carl
T. Curtis (R-Neb.), to introduce
amendments effectively barring
political education by unions with
union shop contracts, and broad-
ening the definition of "contribu-
tion" to include the services of
union employes in election cam-
paigns.
Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S. C.)
offered an amendment that would
penalize unions found guilty of vio-
lating election laws by cancelling
their rights to representation before
the National Labor Relations
Board, subjecting them to anti-trust
prosecution, and doubling the crim-
inal penalties contained in the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
Meanwhile, the election - year
86th Congress stepped up its tempo
with these other developments:
• House Speaker Sam Rayburn
(D-Tex.) predicted Congress would
boost the $1 minimum wage and
extend coverage, but did not indi-
cate whether the new minimum
would hit the $1.25 level sought by
the AFL-CIO. Pres. Eisenhower's
Budget Message called for exten-
sion of the law to more workers,
but made no mention of raising the
wage floor.
• Compromise efforts were un-
der way in the House to raise the
interest rate on long-term govern-
ment bonds from the present 4.25
percent level to perhaps 4.5 per-
cent. Eisenhower had asked that
the ceiling be removed entirely as
part of his Administration's "tight-
money" policies.
• Early Senate action seemed
probable on a federal aid-to-educa-
tion measure following a meeting
of the Democratic majority to dis-
cuss school legislation. A Senate
subcommittee has already approved
a bill introduced by Sen. Pat Mc-
(Continued on Page 3)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, January 23, 1960
No. 4
Ike Budget Curbs Welfare,
Pushes Tight-Money Plan
Where it comes from^.^
The
TAX DOLLAR
FISCAL YEAR 19S1 ESTIMATE
Executive Ofiice ot the President
ADMINISTRATION FORECASTS of how funds for fiscal 1961
budget will be allocated and where they will come from are shown
in the above chart. Estimates of a $4.2 billion surplus for "debt
retirement" are based on Pres. Eisenhower's request for new postal
rates and higher gasoline and aviation fuel taxes, which Democrats
and ranking Republicans say are not likely to pass.
ISLRB Separation Rule Upset:
High Court Orders
Back Pay in Firings
The Supreme Court has knocked out a lower court decision deny-
ing back wages to workers fired by an employer in retaliation for
a complaint to the Labor Dept. that he had previously violated the
wage-hour law by underpaying them.
In another case the court in effect overruled the National Labor
Relations Board on a question of ^
whether craft unions will be sepa-
rated out of over-all bargaining
units in highly integrated indus-
tries with a history of over-all con-
tracts.
In the back-wage case, the court
split six to three in holding that
workers wrongfully discharged for
seeking to obtain wages required
by the Fair Labor Standards Act
are entitled not only to reinstate-
ment in their jobs but also for lost
wages during the time they were
illegally denied employment.
Letter-Writing Campaign
Urged for Forand Bill
The AFL-CIO has called for an intensive letter-writing
campaign in favor of the Forand bill as the House Ways and
Means Committee scheduled a major test on the measure for
early March.
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller said trade unionists
have only six weeks in which to write committee members
and register their support of the measure before the commit-
tee meets in executive session to decide whether to report the
bill for a vote by the entire House.
The measure — a key plank in labor's 1960 legislative pro-
gram — would expand the social security system to provide
medical and hospital care for the nation's senior citizens.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, there was evidence of grow-
ing support for the bill, including support from some
Republicans. Addressing the recent AFL-CIO Legislative
Conference, Rep. Alvin E. O'Konski (R-Wis.) called for its
speedy passage.
Although opponents charge the added coverage would
"break the treasury," O'Konski said, "experts estimate it
would require only one-fourth of 1 per cent additional con-
tributions by employers and employes.'
In its opinion written by Jus-
tice John M. Harlan, the court
majority said that unless he could
recover back wages quickly, a
worker would be confronted
"with little more than a Hobson's
choice" in deciding whether to
take the risk of being fired for
complaining that his employer
was illegally paying him less than
the wage-hour law required.
The minority, Harlan said, would
leave the worker in a position of
having to file a lawsuit individually
and depend on the slow processes of
individual trials to determine what,
if anything, he would be awarded
in damages for his illegal discharge.
This is not the position in which
Congress intended to leave workers
when it authorized the Secretary of
Labor to file suits to enforce the
rights* of workers illegally under-
paid in violation of the Fair Labor
Standards Act, Harlan indicated.
The courts have jurisdiction in
equity, he held, not only to order
reimbursement of employes for loss
of income because of underpay-
ment, but also to order both re-
instatement and further lost wages
when an employer wrongfully re-
taliates by discharging them.
To rule otherwise, Harlan said,
would allow a situation in which an
employe "considering an attempt to
obtain his just wage deserts" might
decide that he did not dare take the
risk considering "the prospect of
discharge and the total loss of
wages for an indeterminate period."
The second case in effect over-
ruled a 1954 decision of the
(Continued on Page 10)
Congress Doubts
'Surplus 9 Forecast
By Gene Zack
Pres. Eisenhower has sent Congress a record peacetime budget
of $79.8 billion for fiscal 1961 — but demanded continued curtail-
ment of social and welfare programs, coupled with extension of
the Administration's "tight-money" policies, as the price of financial
"responsibility."
Although he envisioned a sharps 1 ■
increase in personal incomes and
corporate profits in 1960, the budg-
et actually calls for spending a
smaller share of the gross national
product on government service
than has been the case in recent
years.
On the basis of Administration
estimates of a $510 billion GNP
in calendar 1960, the spending
figures out to 18 percent of the
national income. This compares
with 19 percent for the current
fiscal year, and a 20 percent level
for the years since Eisenhower
entered the White House.
Forecasting receipts of $84 bil-
lion, Eisenhower predicate^ his
anticipation of a $4.2 billion sur-
plus on approval of Administration
demands for increased gasoline
taxes, a further postal rate hike,
higher levies on aviation fuels, and
deferment of the telephone tax re-
peal and the transportation tax cut
scheduled to take effect June 30.
Widespread doubt was ex-
pressed by both Republicans and
Democrats that Congress would
enact the higher taxes, most of
which have been asked by the
President in the past. Failure to
provide the new levies would
leave Eisenhower's anticipated
$4.2 billion surplus largely il-
lusory.
The President raised the veiled
threat that he would again exer-
cise his veto power freely if Con-
gress votes social welfare programs
that go beyond his modest recorrr-
(Continued on Page 12)
Ike Again
Asks Boost
In Interest
By Saul Miller
Pres. Eisenhower has told
Congress that the nation's eco-
nomic health depends on a budget
surplus of $4.2 billion to help
lower interest rates and legisla-
tion that would allow interest
rates on long-term government
bonds to rise.
These, plus congressional ap-
proval of his $79.8 billion budg-
et, the President said in his Eco-
nomic Report, are the "three ele-
ments" which "stand out in the
government's program" for realiz-
ing the objectives of the Employ-
ment Act of 1946.
The President contended that
the budget surplus he anticipates
"would help keep interest rates
lower than otherwise," and that
eliminating the 4.25 percent inter-
est rate ceiling on government »
bonds running for longer than
five years would allow financing
the national debt "as economically
as possible."
The AFL-CIO has opposed lift-
ing this ceiling to keep interest
(Continued on Page 12)
Trainmen Vote To End
Race Bar in Basic Law
Cleveland — The Railroad Trainmen have eliminated a racial
discrimination clause from their constitution, carrying out a pledge
made to the AFL-CIO convention last September.
Despite the existence of a 65-year-old provision restricting mem-
bership to "white males," the union in fact has more than 1,000
Negro members. : — ; 1
gratulations"
The 1,100 delegates to the Train-
men's special convention here
voted to strike the phrase "white
males" from the brotherhood's
organic law.
BRT Pres. W. P. Kennedy no-
tified AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany of the union's action in
a wire declaring that the conven-
tion has "accorded me the honor
of overwhelmingly eliminating
the discriminatory provision in
our constitution."
Meany, who had earlier request-
ed Kennedy to bring the issue be-
fore the convention, replied with
a telegram extending "sincere con-
to the union. He
declared:
"True trade union brotherhood
knows no racial distinction — a fact
which the . . . Railroad Trainmen
have now underscored. The trade
union movement cannot — and will
not— rest until the civil rights bat-
tle has been won and the Brother-
hood has scored a significant vic-
tory in this campaign."
The action also was hailed as "a
great victory for democracy" in *
joint statement by J. Carlton Yel-
dell, labor relations secretary of
the Urban League, and Harry
Fleischman, director of the Amer-
(Continued on Page 9)
Page Two
AFL-CiO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Civil Rights
Advisors for
South Meet
The AFL-CIO Southern Advi-
sory Committee on Civil Rights
held its second meeting in Louis-
ville, Ky., in January • under the
chairmanship of Stanton E. Smith,
president of the Tennessee State
AFL-CIO.
Attending were executive officers
of the AFL-CIO state bodies in
Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky,
Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas
and Virginia.
Taking part in the meeting were
the stalls of the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Civil Rights and the Dept. of
Education. Regional representa-
tives of the Dept. of Organization
and the Committee on Political
Education also were in attendance
along with several southern regional
directors of international unions.
Aim to Further Rights
The purpose of the advisory
committee is to advise the national
AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee
and the AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil
Rights on the practical ways and
means of furthering the federa-
tion's civil rights program in the
region. x
The AFL-CIO Civil Rights Com-
mittee at an earlier meeting in
Washington recommended forma-
tion of a similar regional advisory
committee for the Midwest, con-
sisting of state representatives from
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, In-
diana, Michigan and Ohio.
J* B. Fitzgerald of
IATSE Dies at 70
Cleveland, O.— John B. Fitz-
gerald, 70, an international repre-
sentative for the Theatrical Stage
Employes since 1942, died recently
of a heart ailment.
A member of Cleveland Stage
Employes' Local 27 since 1912, he
became the local's business agent
three years later and had been its
president since 1929. He also was
president of Cleveland Studio Me-
chanics' Local 209.
Fitzgerald, a former legislative
agent of the Cleveland Federation
of Labor, was active with the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board in
this area during the early days of
the Roosevelt Administration.
MEMBERS, UJbJblCEKS and staffers of unions throughout Con-
necticut joined striking members of Office Employes Local 329 in
a demonstration of unity at headquarters of the Knights of Colum-
bus of New Haven. Some 350 members of the local walked out in
October in an effort to gain a new contract protecting workers from
a management demand for the unilateral right to take jobs out of
the bargaining unit.
Meany White House
Parley Plan Grows
The Administration views a forthcoming White House confer-
ence of top labor and management leaders, proposed by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, as the first step in a series of meetings aimed
at reducing industrial tensions, Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has
declared.
Mitchell v told a Jan. 14 press^
conference that final arrangements
for the top level meeting will be
made "in the near future," and in-
dicated the White House confer-
ence probably would take place in
late February or early March.
Meany advocated the meeting
last November, when he wrote
to Pres. Eisenhower urging a
session that could "'consider and
develop guiding lines for just and
harmonious labor-management
relations."
The President, who assigned to
Mitchell the task of exploring the
proposal with Meany and "repre-
sentative" management officials,
gave the conference strong en-
dorsement in his State of the Union
Message. Eisenhower said that, in
his last year in office, he would
31 Sign with USWA,
Vote Set for 7 Plants
The Steelworkers and 31 iron-ore mining companies have signed
new contracts patterned after the master agreement reached with
the major steel producers, and negotiations are moving forward
with 50 other smaller steel makers and fabricators.
Meanwhile, still operating under the Taft-Hartley injunction ma-
chinery set in motion prior to the'^
basic steel settlement, the National
Labor Relations Board was set to
conduct balloting among 14,000
USWA members on the so-called
'"last offer" of seven steel firms.
The balloting was made nec-
essary by technical complications
in efforts to adapt the master
agreement to the particular situa-
tions of the smaller companies.
Most of the firms which have
not yet signed have formally
withdrawn their "final offers" to
make the NLRB voting unneces-
sary.
The labor board scheduled elec-
tions Jan. 21-23 at Pittsburgh Steel
Co. plants at Monesson and Al-
lensport, Pa., Worcester, Mass.,
Los Angeles, Calif., and Akron
and Warren, O.; Joseph T. Ryer-
soa & Sons plants at Carnegie, Pa.,
Boston, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Mil-
waukee and Houston; Moultrop
Steel Products Co., Beaver Falls,
Pa.; Pittsburgh Tube Co., Monaca,
Pa.; McLouth Steel Co., Detroit;
Acme Steel Co., Chicago; and the
North Range Mining Co. mines in
Minnesota and Michigan.
With contracts still to be signed
with the smaller companies, the
USWA renewed a petition to U.S.
Circuit Court Judge Herbert P.
Sorg in Pittsburgh to compel these
firms to pay an immediate 4-cent
cost-of-living wage increase to un-
ionists working under the terms of
a T-H injunction which expires
Jan. 26.
At the time Sorg issued the in-
junction to halt the nationwide
steel strike, he ordered the industry
and USWA to operate under the
previous contract, containing a
cost-of-living clause which would
have given workers a 4-cent hike
Jan. 1 on the basis of the rise in
the Consumer Price Index.
Sorg took the union petition un-
der advisement. At the same time
he agreed to a move*by the USWA
to release from the terms of the
injunction those companies which
had already reached contract agree-
ment with the union.
"encourage regular discussions be-
tween management and labor out-
side the bargaining table."
Mitchell told reporters that the
Administration's "concept of these
conferences is twofold." The White
House meeting suggested by Meany,
he said, would be for the overall
purpose of improving collective
bargaining. Mitchell described this
as a "worthwhile" goal.
The secretary said this should
be followed by "conferences on
industry levels, where employer
representatives and labor repre-
sentatives can sit down, outside
the bargaining table, and talk
about common problems in the
industry."
Mitchell said he hoped these lat-
ter conferences would be "initiated
by industry and labor," but pledged
his department's assistance if need-
ed in bringing them about.
Labor representatives at the
White House conference, he added,
would be Meany "and whomever
he selects from the AFL-CIO."
Management representatives have
not yet been chosen. Earlier, the
Labor Dept. had disclosed that the
secretary met with officials from
management ranks. It was not
publicly disclosed whether this in-
cluded the National Association
of Manufacturers and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce.
"Enthusiastic support" for
Meany's labor-management propo-
sal was voiced by the executive
board of the Communications
Workers. Acting in Washington at
its quarterly policy meeting, the
CWA board called for action in
setting up such a conference "as
soon as possible, certainly no later
than Spring 1960."
Peterson Going
To Indian Parley
Eric Peterson, who retired re-
cently as secretary-treasurer of the
Machinists, will represent the AFL-
CIO at the convention of the In-
dia National Trade Unon Con-
gress, to be held Feb. 21-22 in
Hyderabad.
He also has been named by Sec.
of Labor James P. Mitchell as a
representative at the U.S. Small
Industries Exhibition scheduled to
run throughout February in Bom-
bay.
Report for December:
Joblessness Dips,
Employment Static
The industrial pickup following resumption of steel production
helped cause unemployment to fall by 93,000 to 3,577,000 as of
mid-December, according to the Labor Dept.'s monthly report on
the job situation.
However, joblessness remained at a level exceeded only twice in
postwar years — by 3,719,000 in De-^
cember 1949 and 4,108,000 in De-
cember 1958, both recession years.
The slight decline in unemploy-
ment caused the key seasonally ad-
justed rate of unemployment to
move down to 5.2 percent from the
5.6 percent of mid-November.
The only higher rates of un-
employment for postwar Decem-
bers were in the recession years
of 1949 (6.8 percent) and 1958"
(6.1 percent). The 5.2 percent of
last month compares to 4.1 per-
cent for pre-recession December
1956.
Unemployment is expected to rise
to 4.1 million for January and Feb-
ruary, falling to about 3.5 million
by spring, if only seasonal factors
occur, according to Seymour Wolf-
bein, deputy assistant secretary of
labor.
The total employed in mid-De-
cember held steady at 65.7 million
and this, with the slight decline in
the jobless, was a counter-seasonal
change. Usually, jobs drop and un-
employment rises in December.
The Labor Dept. viewed the job
situation as "a marked improve-
ment in December as the economy
rebounded from the effects of the
steel strike." The recall of 146,000
auto workers furloughed by jteel
shortages was cited as the chief
factor.
The Federal Reserve Board,
meanwhile, reported a sharp up-
swing of 5.75 percent in December
production. The production index
rose to 165, just under last spring's
record 166, and compares to the
1947-49 base of 100.
The Labor Dept. report provided
some perspective with this "year-
end review" of 1959 average fig-
ures:
"Unemployment, at 3.8 million
or 5.5 percent of the civilian labor
force, was about mid-way between
the level of the recession year of
1958 and the pre-recession period
of 1955-57.
"Long-term unemployment
(those out of work 15 weeks or
longer) averaged 1 million in 1959,
compared with 1.5 million in 1958
but only 600,000 in 1957."
The long-term unemployed to-
taled 800,000 in December com-
pared to 1.3 million in the reces-
sion of December 1958, Wolf-
be in noted. He said this ac-
counted for the 500,000 drop in
the over-the-year change from
the 4.1 million jobless in Decem-
ber 1958 to 3.6 million last
month.
But, he added, the long-term un-
employed group would now begin
a seasonal increase.
"About 400,000 of the long-term
unemployed had been out of work
for over six months, half the num-
ber of a year ago but almost twice
as many as in December 1956," the
report said.
"A disproportionately high num-
ber of the long-term unemployed
were Negroes and persons over 45
years of age."
Married men made up about one-
third of both the total jobless and
the long-term unemployed groups,
the report noted. Single men had a
12 percent jobless rate, "reflecting
the problems of youth in their
search for satisfactory job oppor-
tunities."
Total employment as of mid-
December remained virtually un-
changed at 65.7 million, a record
for the month, according to the
report.
Factory employment rose by
152,000 to a total 16,398,000, a
slightly counter-seasonal movement
The factory workweek increased by
36 minutes to an average 40 hours
30 minutes.
Average weekly earnings were
boosted by $2.55 to a total of
$91.53, reflecting the factors of
overtime pay in longer workweek
and the return of high-wage steel
and auto workers.
Aside from the changes due to
the resumption of steel production,
the usual seasonal factors were
present, the report said.
Some 550,000 were added in re-
tail trade for the pre-holiday sea-
son; some 300,000 workers were
temporarily added to the postal
service; but jobs in the construction
industry declined by 175,000 due to
the weather.
Productivity Report
Held Disappointment
The Labor Dept.'s long-awaited report on productivity increases
is a "great disappointment" because it "virtually denies" the impor-
tance of output trends in recent years, the AFL-CIO has declared.
In a letter to Ewan Clague, commissioner of labor statistics, AFL-
CIO Research Dir. Stanley H. Ruttenberg said that the final version
of the report "is all the more dis-^"
appointing because the earlier
drafts gave promise of a much
more significant report."
The report, prepared by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics and
entitled "Trends in Output per
Man-hour in the Private Econ-
omy, 1909-1958," states that the
annual rate of increase in pro-
ductivity between 1947 and 1958
varied between 3.1 percent and
3.5 percent.
The report notes that there were
three major periods of acceleration
of productivity in the period
studied — the first about 1919, the
second about 1939 and the third
in 194>:
Ruttenberg wrote Clague that
the final draft of the report omits
any significant evaluation of the
data "which could have made a
significant conuibuiion lo funda-
mental knowledge about the way
our economy works."
^What emerges, he said, is "a
jumble of data and mathematical
curves based on such data with no
real attempt to draw significant or
meaningful conclusions from the
data."
"As you know," Ruttenberg
continued in his letter, "earlier
drafts of this report came to the
straightforward conclusion that
there has been a long term up-
ward trend in the rate of produc-
tivity advance. It is our best
judgment that this conclusion
was amply justified by the avail-
able data."
The BLS report contains one
statement that "the average annual
increase in output per man-hour
for the total private economy for
the postwar period of 1947-58 was
higher than that for the long-term
period of 1909-58."
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON. D. C SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Page Tkre«
Federal Registrars Urged ;
Labor Asks U. S. Safeguard
Vote Right in 'Any 9 Election
Declaring that constitutional amendments have broadened the right of Congress "to regulate state
and presidential elections" as well as balloting for congressional scats, the AFL-CIO has urged enact-
ment of legislation to permit federal intervention tk in any election" to protect voters' rights.
AFL-CIO Associate Gen. Counsel Thomas E. Harris, in a prepared statement urged creation of
a federal election commission to register voters denied this right by local authorities. The commis-
sion would also be empowered to'^
conduct federally-supervised elec-
tions if it determines that other-
wise "qualified voters are likely to
be denied their right to cast their
votes and have them fairly
counted."
The statement was prepared for
the Senate Rules Committee headed
by Sen. Thomas C. Hennings, Jr,
(D-Mo.)* Meanwhile, moves were
made on both sides of Capitol Hill
to bring meaningful civil rights leg-
islation to a vote this session.
House Showdown Near
In the House, liberals neared a
showdown in their drive to secure
219 signatures on a discharge peti
tion which would bypass the con-
servative-dominated House Rules
Committee to bring a civil rights
measure to the floor. Some 180
Hou« - members — including almost
all Northern Democrats and about
35 Republicans — already have
signed the petition.
The discharge movement was
slowed when Minority Leader
Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.) de
clined to encourage Republican sig-
natures despite Pres. Eisenhowers
plea in his State of the Union and
Budget messages for civil rights
action this session
Halleck said the responsibility for
bringing the measure to the floor
lay with the majority party. The
powerful House Rules Committee is
composed of four northern Demo-
crats, four southern Democrats and
four conservative Republicans. The
southern Democrats and the Repub-
licans thus far have blocked report-
ing of the measure.
Senate debate on civil rights is
due to begin about Feb. 15.
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
in his prepared statement that a
CWA Local
'Blood' Kin
To Ailing Tot
Miami, Fla. — Members of the
Communications Workers here
have become "blood brothers" to
a two-year-old boy to insure a con-
tinuous donation of blood to keep
him alive.
The youngster befriended by
members of CWA Local 3107 is
little Paul G. David, who suffers
from hemophilia — a rare disease in
which the blood does not coagulate
normally. As a result, the child
could bleed to death from the
slightest injury unless he is given
whole blood immediately.
Paul's plight was first brought
to the local's attention by one of
its members — Mrs. George Klele,
a telephone clerk and friend of the
David family. She told fellow un-
ionists that the family had spent
more than $1,400 for transfusions
in the first 20 months of the boy's
life.
JThe vote to "adopt" Paul as a
"blood brother" of Local 3107 was
unanimous. In the first drive, 97
pints were donated to replace the
blood received from the hospital
blood bank. Since then, Paul has
been hospitalized five times after
minor injuries and has received 26
additional pints of blood from the
CWA members.
A union spokesman described
the "blood brother" program as
another example of the Com-
munity Service Activities of CWA
members.
federal elections commission
should be empowered to act "in
any election," as well as in con-
gressional elections, as proposed
in a measure introduced by Sen.
Philip A. Hart (D-Mich.). Har-
ris asked that the Hart measure
be improved, declaring that
"elections for local political offi-
cers are, from the immediate
standpoint of the voters, likely
to be more significant than those
for federal office."
If the Hart measure is rejected,
Harris, said, the committee should
approve a bill along the lines of
legislation proposed by Senators
Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.)
and Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.).
These bills would permit presi-
dential appointment of temporary
voting registrars in national elec-
tions to protect citizens denied vot-
ing rights because of race or color.
This is in line with a suggestion
from the President's Civil Rights
Commission, which would have
temporary registrars drawn from
existing federal officers or employes
in the area from which complaints
are received, to forestall charges
that "carpetbaggers" were being
imported from the North to over-
see southern elections.
The President's commission
backed legislation which would per-
mit the temporary registrars to serve
"only until local officials are pre-
pared to register voters without dis-
crimination."
Eisenhower declined to state if
he supported his commission's rec
ommendation on registrars. He told
his Jan. 13 press conference, "I
don't even know whether it is con-
stitutional."
Conservatives Threaten
Anti-Union Election Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
Namara (D-Mich.) calling for a
$1 billion two-year program for
school construction. In the House,
the Education Committee has re-
vised the Murray-Mctcalf bill to
provide $1.1 billion for each of
four years for both school construc-
tion and higher teacher salaries.
• Leaders of both parties ruled
out any general tax cuts this year
despite Eisenhower's forecast of a
possible $4.2 billion surplus. How-
ever, the House Ways & Means
Committee voted tentatively to pro-
vide tax relief for American busi-
nessmen operating abroad. Their
measure, similar to one opposed by
the AFL-CIO last year, went be-
yond Eisenhower's request to ease
taxes for firms investing in under-
developed countries.
Much of the Senate debate over
the Hennings "clean election" bill
centered on charges by southern
Democrats that federal regulation
of primary elections would be an
invasion of "states' rights" and a
violation of the Constitution.
Application of spending limits
and reporting requirements to pri-
maries would have a major impact
on political activities in the South,
where the virtual one-party system
means that victory in a Democratic
primary is usually equivalent to
election.
Supporters of the measure
pointed to a 20-year-old Supreme
Court ruling upholding the con-
viction of Louisiana election
commissioners for altering pri-
mary ballots as proof that the
federal government has the right
to require honest procedures in
federal primaries as well as gen-
eral elections.
The amendment including pri-
maries was passed by a vote of 50
to 39 in the first rollcall of the year,
with Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.) and Minority
Leader Everett M. Dirksen (R-Ill.)
voting against it. In the 53-37
rollcall vote on applying the report-
ing provisions to local and state
committees, Dirksen was recorded
against the measure and Johnson
in favor.
Under the latter amendment,
committees collecting or spending
more than $2,500 for a candidate
for federal office must file a report
on their financial activities. Hen-
nings, sponsor of the amendment,
said it would close a "loophole"
which permits "untold sums" to go
unreported and "escape scrutiny."
Florida Retail Clerks
Win Food Chain Vote
The Retail Clerks have won bargaining rights at 14 Food Fair
stores on the Florida Gulf Coast in the face of a bitter anti-union
campaign carried on by the company, one of the nation's major
supermarket chains.
Employes in seven cities voted 205 to 130 for RCIA representa-
tion in a National Labor Relations'^
Board election. The vote covered
four stores in St. Petersburg, three
in Tampa, two each in Clearwater
and Sarasota, and one store each
in Bradenton, Fort Myers and
Largo.
Two RCIA officials — Vice Pres.
Peter Hall and Intl. Rep. Harry J.
Carter — were arrested on company
complaint during the election cam-
paign while checking posted no-
tices of NLRB elections on store
premises. They were charged with
criminal trespass and posted bail
of $100 and $50, respectively.
"Every tactic in the book plus
some we never heard about was
used against us," declared Intl.
Rep. W. J. HolUnger, Jr., who
beaded the organizing drive.
A key to the election victory —
a reversal of a union defeat two
years ago — was the successful ne-
gotiation of a first contract with
the recently-organized Food Fair
stores at Jacksonville. Employes
there won a reduction in the work
week from 48 hours to 40 hours,
pay increases of up to 61 cents an
hour for lowest-paid workers, and
improvements in vacations and
fringe benefits.
The Food Fair victory gave im-
petus to a major organizing drive
the Retail Clerks are conducting
throughout Florida. The union al-
ready has sizeable locals at Jack-
sonville, Miami, Daytona Beach
and Tampa,
Job and Pay Security Top
GE, Westinghouse Goals
Job security and income security rank first in the collective
bargaining desires of General Electric and Westinghouse em-
ployes, according to a preliminary tabulation of some 23,000
preference ballots cast by members of five AFL-CIO unions.
In the voting conducted by the GE- Westinghouse Confer-
ence of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept., about 60 per-
cent of the ballots have come from General Electric employes
and the balance from Westinghouse workers.
Other items ranking high in the balloting on collective
bargaining issues include increased pensions; improved insur-
ance, health and welfare benefits; full union shop; a general
wage increase; and improved vacations.
The IUD conference is composed of the following unions
which have bargaining rights with the two firms: Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers; Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers; Machinists; Auto Workers; and Technical Engineers.
Wilson Seeks Strike
End by Ousting 2,400
Chicago — A proposal by Wilson & Co., the nation's third largest
meat packer, to end the 12-week strike of the Packinghouse Work-
ers by denying jobs te 2,400 strikers was termed "insulting and
fantastic" by UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein.
About 5,500 UPWA members have been on strike against seven
Wilson plants in six states since^
Nov. 3.
The company proposed that the
strike be ended without a collec
tive bargaining agreement and with
re-employment rights denied to be
tween 2,000 and 2,400 workers
who, management says, have been
either permanently replaced or
have been guilty of illegal or un
protected acts.
Helstein told Wilson officials
their proposal made it "crystal
clear that your purpose all along
has been the destruction of the
union of your employes." He
added that the company plan
"could not be accepted by any
self-respecting group of people
and indicates your continuing
disregard of your legal obligation
to bargain in good faith."
Wilson has told the union that it
"doubts the propriety" of continu-
ing talks toward signing a collective
bargaining agreement. The com-
pany has recognized the claim of
the National Brotherhood of Pack-
inghouse Workers, a small, unaffil-
iated union, that it now represents
a majority of present Wilson work-
ers.
UPWA officials noted that the
NBPW had no membership in any
Wilson plant until mid-December.
Since then it has filed representa-
tion petitions at all but one Wilson
plant.
"The record would have to be
searched long and hard," the un-
ion said, "to find another in-
stance of a union being formed
among the strike-breakers for the
sole purpose of destroying a
legitimate union."
Helstein pointed out that the
new tactic employed by Wilson to
break UPWA at its plants pre-
sented a threat to many other un-
ions if it was allowed to go un-
challenged. He stressed that there
was a greater need than ever for
moral and financial support from
other AFL-CIO affiliates.
NLRB Refuses
Hospital Case
A Brooklyn, N. Y., hospital has
lost its bid to use the Landrum-
Griffin Act to halt organizational
picketing by a local of the Building
Service Employes and to force an
"expedited" representation election.
In a unanimous decision, the
National Labor Relations Board
rejected a petition by the Flatbush
General Hospital and declined to
assert jurisdiction over private,
profit-making hospitals. Such hos-
pitals, the NLRB declared, "are
essentially local in nature." The
board pointed out that states are
required to assume jurisdiction in
areas declined by the NLRB.
New CWA
Headquarters
Completed
Construction has been completed
on the new $3.5-million, nine-
story international headquarters of
the Communications Workers in
downtown Washington.
The union's international offices
occupy the top three floors of the
new structure, where officers, staff
and clerical workers are located,
as well as the ground floor where
mailing, duplicating and storage
facilities are provided. A total of
120 CWA workers occupy the new
quarters.
The remaining five floors of the
building are leased as offices and
stores, with CWA's Dist. 2 using
one of the offices in the building
as its headquarters.
The building is being financed
on a three-year purchase plan,
with the CWA making a $500,000
down payment with the balance to
be paSd at the rate of $1 million
a year.
The union held two separate
open house celebrations during
January. The first, on Jan. il,
was for CWA staff members and
their families. On Jan. 13 the un-
ion played host to representatives
of other unions and government
officials. The open house included
a tour of the CWA offices and de-
partments.
Radio-TV Directors
End Affiliation
The Radio & Television Direc-
tors Guild has terminated its affil-
iation with the AFL-CIO as a re-
sult of merger with the Screen Di-
rectors Guild, Inc., an unaffiliated
California organization.
The former federation affiliate,
with a membership of 800, was
chartered by the former AFL in
March 1950.
The agreement to merge with
the Screen Directors Guild con-
tained a provision that the result-
ing organization would be unaffil-
iated, Newman H. Burnett, execu-
tive secretary of R&TDG's New
York office wrote AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany.
The union said it intended "to
continue our present mutually ben-
eficial relationships with other
AFL-CIO unions in the entertain-
ment industry."
The disaffiliation, effective Jan.
1, 1960, brings the total number
of affiliated national and interna-
tional unions to 134.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Delegates Press 'Program for America'
CAPITOL HILL contacts form part of labor's
drive to win enactment of "Positive Program for
America" outlined at AFL-CIO Legislative Con-
ference. Here conference delegate confers with
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.) at right to ask
for support of 12-point legislative program.
LABOR REPRESENTATIVES in one special session huddle to discuss Forand
bill to provide medical care for social security recipients. Arrayed along wall are
I suggested posters for stimulating grass-roots letter-writing campaign to let con-
gressmen know how voters feel about this legislation.
NEED FOR ACTION to rehabilitate depressed areas is emphasized by Solomon
Barkin of Textile Workers Union of America at one of four special meetings held
in connection with AFL-CIO Legislative Conference. More than 600 trade union-
ists from across the nation attended the three-day intensive session kicking off
labor's drive for action before Congress adjourns in July.
DELEGATES from western states hear legislators' views on pend-
ing legislation during regional conference which marked three-day
meeting. At table (left to right) are Industrial Union Dept. Legis-
lative Rep. Esther Peterson; Senate Minority Whip Thomas H.
Kuchel (R-Calif.); Rep. Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.); and Robert Con-
nerton of the Laborers.
ENACTMENT OF MINIMUM WAGE legislation, need for White DINNER SPONSORED by AFL-CIO Minimum Wage Committee drew as speakers two of three
House conference to ease industrial tensions, were urged by Sen. sponsors of key legislation backed by labor. Left to right are Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Stuart Symington (D-Mo.), at right, shown with AFL-CIO Legis- AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller, and Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.). Co-sponsor-
lative Rep. Jack Curran at one of seven regional conferences. ing legislation with Kennedy and Roosevelt is Sea. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.j.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Page Five
I960 Fact Sheet on Congress— No. 1:
'Unholy Alliance' Blocks
New, Strong Legislation Needed
To Protect All U.S Citizens
By John Beidier
Few issues in America have needed positive action for so long and received ,so little of it as civil
rights legislation.
This has not been for lack of trying. Repeatedly, especially in recent years, liberals in Congress
have sparked efforts to pass legislation guaranteeing federal protection of the civil rights of all
citizens.
All such attempts failed, however, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first
federal civil rights measure to become law in 82 years. But unfortunately its strongest teeth were
pulled before passage.
In general, the major block to passage of constructive civil rights legislation has been the Senate
filibuster or threat of one. In the last 25 years filibusters have prevented passage of anti-lynching,
anti-poll tax, and Fair Employment'^ — *
Practices Commission bills.
Civil Rights Bill
But in recent years public aware-
ness of the need to enforce civil
rights has grown considerably.
Hate bombing and other violence
against Negroes since the Supreme
Court's 1954 school desegregation
decision have served to strengthen
the hand of civil rights advocates
in Congress.
Filibuster Strength Waning
The strength of the Old South
filibusters is waning. When the
Civil Rights Act passed the Senate
in 1957 by a vote of 72 to 18, five
senators from three of the original
Confederate States voted for the
bill; only 17 opposed it.
The strength of the hard-core
South has been further diminished
with the admission of Alaska and
Hawaii to full statehood. Each of
these has sent two new senators to
Washington, bringing the Senate's
membership to an even 100 and
increasing the strength of the pro-
civil rights forces.
But even with these improved
conditions, diehard opponents of
civil rights legislation can mount
a powerful filibuster which only the
most determined majority can over-
come.
Under Senate rules, two-thirds of
the senators present must vote to
close debate. In addition each sen-
ator may speak for one hour on
each pending amendment and on
the bill itself. As a practical mat-
ter, a filibuster can last four to six
weeks even if the two-thirds vote
is reached.
The 1957 Provisions
The 1957 Civil Rights Act:
1 — Created a six-member Civil
Rights Commission to study cases
in which citizens had been denied
the right to vote on account of
race, religion or national origin,
and to appraise laws and govern-
mental policies relating to the con-
stitutional guarantee of equal pro-
tection of the laws.
2 — Permitted the federal gov-
ernment to seek an injunction in
federal courts to prevent depriva-
tion of the right to vote.
Get the Facts
On Key Issues
The AFL-CIO News is
publishing on this page the
first of a new series of Fact
Sheets on Congress providing
background information on
basic issues coming before
the second session of the
86th Congress.
The series, prepared by
John Beidier of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation, is
designed to give the legisla-
tive history of the issue, the
various forces involved pro
and con and the general na-
ture of bills introduced.
Reprints of the fact sheet
series will be available from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Leg-
islation, 815 16th Street
N. W., Washington 6, D. C.
3 — Provided criminal penalties
for contempt of a court injunction,
and a jury trial in case the sen-
tence upon conviction of contempt
exceeded $300 or 45 days in jail.
As passed by the House, the bill
authorized the federal government
to seek injunctions against viola-
tions of all civil rights granted by
the 14th Amendment to the Con-
stitution. The bill also permitted
punishment for contempt (viola-
tion of the injunction) by the fed-
eral judge without a jury trial, the
standard and usual way in which
contempt is punished.
Although civil rights supporters,
including the AFL-CIO, had advo-
cated the inclusion of both these
provisions in the bill, the Senate
restricted the injunctive power to
voting cases and provided for jury
trials in certain cases.
The result was a much weakened
bill.
In the more than two years
since the passage of the Civil
Rights Act it has become clear
that further legislation is essen-
tial if the civil rights of all citi-
zens are to be meaningfully pro-
Five-Point Program
Backed by AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO civil rights program calls for:
• Clearly stated congressional support for school desegre-
gation decisions.
• Authority for the attorney general to institute law suits
to obtain compliance with such decisions (similar to Part III
deleted from 1957 act).
• Technical and financial assistance for school facilities
and operations to facilitate desegregation and where states
withhold funds.
• Federal legislation aimed at preventing hate bombings
and other violence, and at apprehending those guilty for such
actions.
• Enactment of the President's Civil Rights Commission's
proposal that federally designated officials act as registrars in
districts where persons are improperly denied registration by
local officials.
tected. Although some voting
cases are now pending before
federal .courts, and although fed-
eral court orders have sought to
protect the rights of some Ne-
groes who have been denied the
right to vote, the Civil Rights
Commission has found that there
is still widespread violation of
this right and has called for new
legislation to protect it.
In 1959, at the beginning of the
86th Congress, the Administration
made some- new civil rights pro-
posals, but did not include the es-
sential "Part III," on injunction
and contempt proceedings, which
had been eliminated from the 1957
act.
New Administration Bill
The Administration bill would:
1 — Make interference with a
federal court desegregation order
a federal crime.
2 — Make it a federal crime to
cross state lines to avoid prosecu-
tion for bombing a school or a
church.
3 — Give the Justice Dept. the
right to inspect and require the
preservation of voting records.
4 — Extend the life of the Civil
Rights Commission.
5 — Give statutory authority to
the President's Committee on Gov-
ernment Contracts, which tries to
eliminate discrimination by private
employers on government con-
tracts.
6 — Provide limited technical and
financial aid to school districts fac-
ing desegregation problems.
7 — Provide emergency schooling
for children of members of the
armed forces if public schools are
closed by desegregation problems.
Douglas-Celler Bill
This relatively mild proposal was
met by a bipartisan liberal bill, the
Douglas-Celler bill (S. 810, H. R.
3147) which, while including some
of the objectives of the Adminis-
tration bill, also:
1 — For the first time, provides
specific congressional endorse-
ment of the Supreme Court
school desegregation decisions.
2 — Authorizes the federal gov-
ernment to develop and enforce
school desegregation plans.
3— Restores the discarded
"Part m" of the 1957 act au-
thorizing the attorney-general to
prevent violation of civil rights
generally.
Hearings were held during 1959
before both House and Senate
Judiciary Committees on these and
a variety of other civil rights
measures.
AFL-CIO Backs Strong Bill
The AFL-CIO, the National As-
sociation for the Advancement of
Colored People, and various reli-
gious and veterans groups testified
in favor of strong legislation, as
did Democratic and Republican
congressmen from northern states.
Opposition testimony was gen-
erally limited to southern spokes-
men. The Administration and the
bulk of Republican testimony sup-
ported the moderate Administra-
tion bill.
A House Judiciary subcommit-
'Enforce the Law or I Will'
tee concluded 17 days of hearings
on May 1, * 1959, after which it
approved and sent to the full com-
mittee an amended version of the
Douglas-Celler bill.
When the bill came to the full
committee for consideration,
however, a political wrangle de-
veloped. The committee deleted
important sections, including the
"Part III" authority to protect
civil rights generally, authoriza-
tion for federal technical and
financial aid to school districts
facing desegregation, and the
policy statement supporting the
Supreme Court's school desegre-
gation decisions.
Judiciary Committee Chairman
Emanuel Celler (D-N. Y.), co-
author of the liberal bill, charged
an "unholy alliance" of Republi-
cans and southern Democrats with
responsibility for gutting the sub-
committee measure.
Even this limited measure, how-
ever, was pigeonholed by the House
Rules Committee, traditional grave-
yard of liberal legislation. This
committee usually must grant a
"rule" fixing time for debate be-
fore a major bill can go to the
House floor for action. The exist-
ing machinery for circumventing
it is cumbersome and time-consum-
ing.
Celler quickly started one pro-
cedure for avoiding the Rules Com-
mittee — he filed a discharge peti-
tion. This requires the signatures
of 219 House members to bring a
bill to the floor* By the middle of
January 1960 it was reported that
about four-fifths of the needed sig-
natures were on the petition.
Quick Action Sought
Liberals hoped for quick action
and promised attempts to strength-
en the bill on the House floor.
Senate debate on civil rights was
delayed during the last days of
the first session when Congress
passed a rider to an appropriations
bill extending the life of the Civil
Rights Commission. The delay was
agreed to when Majority Leader
Lyndon Johnson (D-Tex.) and Mi-
nority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-
111.) both promised that debate on
a major civil rights measure would
begin no later than Feb. 15, 1960.
One major problem in the
Senate, however, is that the Ju-
diciary Committee has not, and
because of a strong southern
bloc probably will not, report
a bill.' During 1959 the Con-
stitutional Rights subcommittee
held hearings over a two-month
period. It finally reported to the
full committee a measure which
would require nothing more than
preservation of voting records,
plus the already-approved exten-
sion of the Civil Rights Com-
mission.
The situation is thus similar to
*the one which existed in 1957 f ^
when the Senate passed a bill that
had not been approved by the Sen-
ate Judiciary Committee.
In that year the House acted
first, passing a bill and sending it
to the Senate. An objection was
made to referring the bill to the
Judiciary Committee. Sen. Richard
Russell (D-Ga.) then raised a point
of order against the objection, but
the Senate rejected his point on a
roll call vote, 39 to 45. This move
had the effect of permitting the
leadership to call up the bill for
consideration at any time.
Whether this method can be used
this year depends on the speed of
House action. Two alternatives
would be to discharge the Senate
Judiciary Committee from further
consideration of the bill or to tack
civil rights legislation as a rider on
a non-related bill (the Senate has
no rule of germaneness).
Federal Registrars Bill
Another issue involves the rec-
ommendation of the Civil Rights
Commission for a system of fed-
eral voting registrars. Because the
1957 act has not been effective in
guaranteeing Negroes their voting
rights, the commission has urged
Congress to provide for federal
registrars to register voters in areas
where local registrars avoid their
duty.
Bills to carry out this recom-
mendation have been referred to
the Senate Rules Committee, which
is not dominated by southerners. If
a bill could be reported by this
committee, it could become a ve-
hicle for adding broader civil rights
amendments.
Whatever the method, strong
civil rights legislation is a must for
Congress in 1960.
Union-Busters
Rnti-Negro Too
AFL - CIO Pres. George
Meany on civil rights:
"It is no mere coincidence
that the last anti-Negro
stronghold in America is like-
wise the last anti-union
stronghold. . . . Thus, labor
and the Negroes not only have
common cause — we have
common enemies as well.
Those enemies are aligned
against human progress. . . .
They are working, perhaps
without realizing it, to weak-
en and stultify their country.
Their program is for all prac-
tical purposes un-American."
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
A Gimmick in Ike** Budget
THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION has come up with a
new "merchandising" gimmick this year to distract attention
from its tragically inadequate budget,
The gimmick involves a presumed budgetary surplus for fiscal
1961 of some $4.2 billion which is to be used to reduce the national
debt. The President has said that the growth of the debt must
stop and that this budget is a step in that direction.
A look at the record, however, shows plainly that he is after
the wrong problem. It's not the growth of the national debt that
will saddle American taxpayers with a bill of $9.5 billion in fiscal
1961 for interest payments. It's the Administration's premedi-
tated policy of raising year by year the cost of borrowing money.
In 1947. the national debt was close to its wartime high of $258
billion. The government paid $4.9 billion in interest on this debt.
In fiscal 1961 the President estimates the national debt will be
$280 billion — based on his presumed budget surplus — and the cost
of carrying that debt will be $9.5 billion.
This means that while the amount of the national debt has in-
creased about 8.5 percent since 1947 the cost to American tax-
payers of carrying that debt has risen 94 percent.
THE PRESIDENT'S CONCERN should be with the fact that
his Administration has caused the cost of the national debt to almost
double over 13 years, ago.
The $9.5 billion debt cost figure in the new budget is the second
largest item, topped only by defense expenditures. It will take
almost $12 out of "every $100 in taxes in the next 18 months.
And who gets the niajor share of that $9.5 billion? The per-
sons who own high-interest yielding government securities — the
banks, the investment firms, those with enough funds to take ad-
vantage of the record-shattering high interest rates promoted by
the Eisenhower Administration.
In effect the policy results in taxing the many to reward the few
who benefit from the higher and higher cost of lending money.
When the Eisenhower Administration took office it was com-
mitted to reducing the national budget. It has failed in this ob-
jective and a major factor leading to that failure has been the
steadily increasing cost of paying for the national debt.
BUT THIS IS MORE than a political failure. The future of the
nation's economy is tied up with this tight-money, high-interest rate
policy which has a depressing effect on national growth.
To call attention, as the President has done, to the size of the
national debt and leave the clear impression that it is skyrocket-
ing is at the least misleading; it is a smaller percentage of the
total national production of goods and services than at any time
in the last decade.
To use a budget surplus gimmick in an attempt to divert atten-
tion from the tremendous upsurge in the cost of carrying the na-
tional debt is to deceive the American people.
The Disease of Bigotry
THE DISEASE of anti-seniitism that took over 6 million lives
during the Hitler years has erupted again in a somewhat milder
form", aided and abetted by hooligans and delinquents.
In the Hitler years, labor took the lead in the fight to stamp out
this vicious social disease and has been on the warpath ever since
against any and all forms of bigotry. This new outbreak will receive
the same treatment from the trade union movement. It cannot be
tolerated.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MaeGowan
Wm. JL McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J, McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, January 23, 1960
No. 4
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers, tor any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO
Glutton
MEWS
'Paying Through the Nose':
Sales Taxes Hit Poor, Protect
Wealthy, Cut Purchasing Power
EVER SINCE the Eisenhower Administration
took office in 1953 it has sought, in one way
or another, to throw many federal services and
functions back to the states.
Today we are witnessing many states in dire
financial straits. In turn, this has imposed great
burdens on the cities and towns. Both the states
and the localities are logically seeking new sources
of revenues to meet their growing obligations.
There are a number of ways in which these new
funds can be raised. One is through income taxes.
Another through corporation taxes. Still another
through property taxes. In some instances there
are payroll taxes or perhaps luxury taxes. There
are other ways, too.
Sales Tax in Demand
The demand we hear most, however, is for a
sales tax.
Sales taxes usually take one or two forms.
One is a general retail sales tax. This has been
proposed in Wisconsin, Michigan and Virginia,
for example. In Virginia, Gov. Lindsay Almond
would even charge a tax on food and drugs.
The retail tax is paid directly by the consumer
to the retailer.
Another form of sales tax is the general manu-
facturers' sales tax. When this tax is imposed at
the retail level the consumer is unaware that he is
paying the tax. The manufacturers' tax becomes a
hidden consumption tax because the consumer
pays the higher price, without knowing it is higher,
as a result of the tax.
One of the more dangerous gimmicks in the
manufacturers' tax is that of pyramiding. This
means that a 5 percent manufacturers' sales tax
may be increased to 6 percent or more by the
wholesaler and retailer adding the markup tax.
The Customer Pays
Experience with this tax has been that every
business group that handles a product uses the tax
angle to increase its share of the take. And it is
the consumer who pays.-
We are told that the sales tax is an easy way of
raising revenue. This, partly, explains its allure.
Boom or bust, rain or shine, the taxes come in.
lair or equitable tax
insofar as each person pays to the support of the
government. And, according to their line of argu-
ment, even the poorest person can afford this tax.
Why, you can even collect sales taxes from persons
on relief!
Much is made of the fact that everyone should
pay for the support of the government. This ex-
plains a move in recent years to lower the mini-
mum income on which individuals pay income
taxes. Little consideration is given to the fact that
every product one buys or every service one uses
includes countless hidden taxes.
Let's use bread as an example. If a 1-cent
sales tax is placed on a loaf of bread it means
comparatively little to those who earn $10,000
a year or more. However, it is a great burden
for many families. There are already many
taxes on bread; recent estimates say there are 58
hidden taxes on a loaf. This is paying one's
share of government support through the nose.
Sales taxes are called both unfair and regres-
sive. This means that individuals in the lower in-
come brackets pay more proportionately than
wealthy taxpayers because a greater percentage of
their income goes for the necessities of life.
When an effort is made to pass a sales tax it
might be well to look for the reasons. Sometimes
it is to block new taxes on businesses or higher
income groups. Sometimes it is part of a drive to
reduce taxes on these groups.
Purchasing Power Drops
We hear the argument that the tax burden on
the higher income groups should be lightened to
encourage business investment. On the other hand,
to increase the burden on the lower income groups
would reduce purchasing power and have a serious
impact on the economy.
The sales tax argument, just as all national and
state arguments on taxes, comes down to the basic
question: Will the cost of government be paid by
those most able to meet such obligations?
If our basic concern is the people themselves,
then a sales tax is the worst possible means avail-
able to the states and localities for raising badly
needed revenues. (Public Affairs Institute — Wash-
ington Window.]
r
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C. f SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, I960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Mood of the Budget Is Wrong
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network .Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
THE TROUBLE with the Administration's
1961 budget, it seems to me, lies less in the
specific size of various item totals than in the
questionable security it reflects because of a failure
to strike a balance more important than book-
keeping figures, a balance with reality.
The President says this
is all we can afford. His
critics complain we can-
not afford so little, not be-
cause sheer spending is
going to buy us the future
but because we need to be
goaded to bigger goals. It
is the mood, more than the
mathematics of this docu-
ment, which is wrong.
This is going to be the
decade of greatest chal-
lenge, the keenest compe-
tition, from Khrushchev and Co. in non-military
fields and the Administration's message does not
exhort us to raise our sights, instead warns us, in
effect, to keep them low. At least that is the in-
terpretation invited by Treasury Sec. Anderson's
refusal to bring the government's influence more
positively to bear on the country's rate of eco-
nomic growth. He shrinks from this on the theory
that a free enterprise system should be largely left
alone to determine its own rate of growth.
But this reasoning ignores two towering facts:
The staggering industrial progress of the Soviet
Union and the necessity which that progress
poses of greater activity, greater efficiency,
greater purpose from our economic pattern. The
Morgan
government's role here must be one of guidance
and encouragement.
As the New Republic currently observes "There
is room in a balanced budget for the encourage-
ment of growth if there is a willingness to make
necessary revisions in our tax structure and mone-
tary policies; and if there is the courage and in-
telligence to make sense of the defense budget."
But on all these points the Eisenhower Admini-
stration is found wanting.
MEANWHILE Khrushchev's own state of the
union speech to the Supreme Soviet provides some
sobering material to ponder. Here is a sample:
Between 1953 and 1959 "gross industrial pro-
duction increased 90 percent in the USSR and
11 percent in the U.S. Per capita production in-
creased 71 percent in the USSR and 0.3 percent
in the U.S. Russian iron production up 57 per-
cent, American 16 percent; steel up 57 percent,
U.S. down 16 percent; coal, up 58 percent, U.S.
down 12 percent. Oil up 145 percent, U.S. up
9 percent; power up 97 percent, U.S. 56 percent."
These figures sound more dramatic than they
are, of course, because the Soviets have so far to
travel before they reach our high levels of pro-
duction. For example, our estimated 1960 steel
output is 130 million tons, about double the
Russian figure.
But already they are turning out, in actual
numbers, more engineers than we are. Already
they have shot the Soviet colors to the moon
and have penetrated outer space millions of
miles farther than we have. Already, by Khrush-
chev's calculations, there are nearly four times
as many students in Soviet colleges and univer-
sities as there are in Britain, France, West Ger-
many and Italy put together.
These achievements in themselves are not de-
cisive but the collective momentum may generate
more thrust than any rocket or, more importantly,
than any Eisenhower Administration budget.
§TS YOUR
WASfttNGTON
Senate Unemployment Probers Told:
Job Discrimination Affects All
WHEN A NEGRO holding a bachelor's de-
gree or a master's has to take a job as a
porter, "it affects me, and it affects everyone else,"
J. Harvey Kerns, director of the Urban League of
Greater New Orleans, told the Special Senate
Committee on Unemployment in New Orleans.
Kerns, whose recorded testimony was broad-
cast on "As We See It," AFL-CIO public service
program on the ABC radio network, said:
"The by-products of unemployment and under-
employment of Negroes in New Orleans affect
adversely not only the Negroes but the whole
community as well."
Kerns said that six out of 10 college-educated
Negro youth leave New Orleans and go to other
communities. The discriminatory pattern in the
South, he declared, adds to community costs in
health, delinquency, crime and family problems.
Washington Reports:
"To make a serious situation worse, organ-
ized reactionaries in New Orleans by threats,
intimidations, and other means have discour-
aged employers who are willing to advance
equal opportunity for Negroes," he asserted.
Rev. Louis Twomey, director of the Institute
of Industrial Relations at Loyola University, New
Orleans, testified:
"WE'RE NEVER GOING to settle our prob-
lems (of unemployment in the South) until we
quit making the kind of use of our manpower
which can neither stand up under democratic nor
Christian scrutiny.
"Is this the image of America," he asked, "that
will win friends and influence people among the
hundreds of millions of people in other lands
who share the kinship of color or status with the
downtrodden racial groups among us?"
Civil Rights Bill Seen Passing
House-If It Ever Gets to Floor
7h
REP. EMANUEL CELLER (D-N. Y.), chair-
man of the House Judiciary Committee, and
Rep. John V. Lindsay (R-N. Y.) f a member of
the committee, agree that the civil rights bill, now
locked in the House Rules Committee, will pass
if it ever gets to the floor. They disagree on the
blame for the current deadlock.
Celler said 200 Democrats would vote for the
bill. Lindsay estimated that all but 10 or 12 of
the 152 Republicans would also favor it.
Celler said on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service, program heard
on 300 radio stations, that 170-odd names — out
of a needed 219 — have been signed to a petition
to get the bill out of the Rules Committee.
Such a petition would not be necessary, he
said, if the four Republicans on that committee
would join with the four liberal Democrats and
vote the bill out. Or the petition would quickly
get the needed signatures if Republican Leader
Charles A. Halleck (Ind.) would ask Republi-
cans to sign.
Lindsay, who has signed the petition and urged
other Republicans to join him, blamed the Demo-
cratic leadership for not persuading southern
Democrats on the committee to join northern
Democrats in voting the bill out.
"THE DISCHARGE petition," he charged,
"in effect means that we have lost all confidence
in the leadership."
Lindsay proposed that a special so-called
"calendar" procedure be used to get the bill out
of committee. Celler objected that a southern
filibuster might block^it. The Southerners also
could absent themselves, he said, "and, if Re-
publicans like Halleck are still disposed not to
get the bill through, they also could absent them-
seves, and we wouldn't have a quorum."
Lindsay said: "Perhaps the thing to do would
be to ask for another (Rules Committee) hear-
ing and then we'll all go up there to see exactly
what can be done."
Celler defended the discharge-petition ap-
proach by pointing out that the Rules Committee
is presided over by Judge (Rep. Howard W.)
Smith (D-Va.) "who says in effect that he
wouldn't give a rule over his dead body."
THE FIRST TWO WEEKS of Congress revealed an election-
year restiveness but did not provide answers on the eventual shape
of legislation.
There will be action toward a minimum wage bill, but there is
no sign yet whether the Administration will permit Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell to broaden the extremely limited nature of the
program the Administration was willing to endorse in 1957, 1958
and 1959.
There will be a new effort to pass a school-aid bill, but the Ad-
ministration has not thus far told anyone that Pres. Eisenhower
will not veto any Democratic bill bearing actual school grants
rather than a loan-guarantee label. The Eisenhower bill would
build a few schools — not enough— and pass the possible cost on
to future years of taxpayers to keep the Administration's own
budget in balance. Mostly it just wouldn't build schools.
Arthur S. Flemming, the secretary of health, education and wel-
fare, isn't publicly in favor of the Forand bill to provide medical
payments to social security beneficiaries but he acknowledges that
he hasn't yet thought of a practical alternative to meet the unchal-
lenged need of retired people for a means of paying their hospital
and physicians' bills.
The same situation prevails on many other issues — housing,
civil rights, depressed areas, the needs of cities for slum clear-
ance and urban renewals. Mr. Eisenhower's series of annual
messages, on the budget and the economic situation and the State
of the Union, suggested that he would continue to oppose with
vetoes, or the threat of vetoes, any legislation his budget-minded
advisers dislike, or that he considers "extreme."
The mood of the majority Democrats, in deciding whether and
how to challenge the vetoes, remained uncertain. Some tests,
obviously, will come soon.
* * *
A FEW NEWSPAPER editorials and columnists, including Wal-
ter Lippmann, made a stronger and more specific analysis of the
Eisenhower eighth-year budget and governmental ideas than organ-
ized Democrats managed to. mount.
They made- the point that in the face of social lags at home
and Administration-acknowledged Soviet superiority in missile
and space programs, Mr. Eisenhower wants to cut our budget in
relation to our means.
The way to measure our means is through what the economists
call the Gross National Product — the total value of goods and serv-
ices produced by our people in a given year. The President said
in his Budget Message that the Gross National Product next year
would rise to $510 billion — an almost incredible figure when former
Pres. Harry S. Truman, a decade ago, predicted it.
Mr. Eisenhower seems to think that this puts us on the brink
of fiscal disaster. He proposes that we meet the national and
social needs of our times by slashing the percentage of Gross
National Product we devote to public purposes.
* * *
ADMINISTRATION SPOKESMEN used to argue that our de-
ficiencies in missile programs were Mr. Truman's fault — that we
lagged behind the Soviet Union because Mr. Truman as president
hadn't started such programs soon enough.
But in news conferences and in testimony before Congress, three
statements have now been added:
Defense Sec. Thomas S. Gates, Jr., acknowledges that the
Soviets have a "capability 9 ' of outproducing us three to one in
intercontinental missiles but that we think their "intentions' 5 are
not to do this; therefore we don't have to step up our own pro-
grams to increase our "capability" beyond Eisenhower recom-
mendations.
Army Sec. Wilber M. Brucker admits that our conventional
ground forces for "brush-fire" wars are "marginal" in relation to
the "vastly superior numbers and often superbly equipped forces
of the Communist world."
Undersec. of State Livingston T. Merchant said this government
"clearly concedes" Soviet superiority in space exploration.
After seven full years of the Eisenhower Administration, can it
still all be Truman's fault?
REP. EMANUEL CELLER (D-N. Y.), left, and Rep. John V.
Lindsay (R-N. Y.) agreed that the House will pass a Civil Right*
bill in the present session if the measure can be pried from the
House Rules Committee. They were interviewed on Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
U. S. Employe Unionism 77 Years Old
Civil Service Law's
Anniversary Marked
By Dave Perlman
Government employes marked one of their two red-letter anni-
versaries on Jan. 16 — the commemoration of the Civil Service Act
of 1883. This victory for the reformers of 77 years ago signaled the
downfall of the spoils system and — although no one realized it at
the time — the genesis of trade unionism in the federal service.
The other red-letter date on the^
calendar of postal and federal un-
ions came 29 years later — on Aug.
24, 1912— when the Lloyd-La Fol-
lette Act established the right of
government workers to organize
and to petition Congress.
Between those two dates was a
little-known era in American his-
tory when the United States govern-
ment aped the most vicious union-
busting tactics of American indus-
try in an unsuccessful effort to snuff
out the spark of trade unionism
among its employes.
During a generation of strug-
gle and conflict, scores of pioneer
union leaders in the povernment
service lost their jobs, hundreds
were demoted, spies were sent to
report the names of those attend-
ing union meetings and super-
visors desperately tried to herd
employes into company unions.
But there would have been no
spark of trade unionism to be
fanned if the American people had
not rebelled against the corruption
of the spoils system and the whole-
sale firings of government workers
with every change of administra-
tion.
Spoils System Blatant
So blatant was the spoils system
that few eyebrows were raised and
no congressional investigation was
launched when advertisements such
as these appeared daily in the classi-
fied sections of Washington news-
papers:
A RELIABLE GENTLEMAN
will furnish the best political papers
and will pay $150 to anyone who
will help him secure a position of
any kind in Washington.
WANTED— By a lady, a situ-
ation in a government department.
Will pay $25 cash and 10 percent
of salary as long as retained.
It took the assassination of Pres.
Garfield by a disappointed job-
seeker to shake the nation out of its
complacency and elect a Congress
pledged to reform.
The postal service and the big
industrial establishments such as
the navy yards and the Govern-
ment Printing Office were the
birthplace of unionism in the
civil service.
UAW-Won
Pensions Paid
To 115,200
Detroit — Marking a decade since
the historic pension breakthrough
in the Ford negotitions, the Auto
Workers reported that 115,200
members in the auto industry thus
far have retired on company-paid
pensions averaging $60 a month.
Of the retirees in the auto, agri
cultural implement, aircraft and
feeder plant industries, a total of
94,600 are living. The monthly
rate of retirement is almost 1,000
the UAW said.
In its year-end report, the UAW
Social Security Dept. said company-
paid pensions total nearly $6 mil-
lion monthly to members on nor-
mal, early and disability retirement
The UAW said that before the
1949 Ford negotiations, the indus
trial worker could expect only $39
a month in federal social security
for himself and his wife.
The average UAW retiree to-
day has 25 years of credited serv-
ice which entitles him to $60
monthly from the union-won
pension fund*
In the blue-collar installations,
unionism developed as a natural
parallel to the growth of trade un-
ions in private industry. Craftsmen
carried their union cards with them
when they went to work for Uncle
Sam.
In the post offices, on the other
hand, unionism had to start from
scratch. Local groups sprang up,
born of spontaneous revolt against
long hours, low pay and unhealthy
working conditions. Some of these
organizations fell by the wayside,
their leaders fired, their active mem-
bers transferred to the most unde-
sirable and isolated assignments.
But phoenix-like, new militant
groups would arise from the ashes
to carry on the fight.
Savage Retaliation
From the first, the Post Office
Dept. wielded savage retaliation on
those who saw the postal worker as
a part of the labor movement gain-
ing strength from affiliation.
The New York City postmaster,
in a swoop, suspended 150 letter
carriers whom his spies had identi-
fied as active members of the
Knights of Labor. When the
Knights faded from the scene, it
was the American Federation of
Labor which bore the brunt of de-
partmental opposition.
National organizations of postal
workers began as loose confedera-
tions of local unions seeking com-
mon legislative goals. One of the
earliest, the Letter Carriers, won its
spurs by a successful court chal-
length to the attempt of the Post
Office Dept. to evade an eight-hour
law enacted by Congress largely
through the influence of the Knights
of Labor.
$3.5 Million Windfall
The union's test case, eventually
upheld by the Supreme Court in
1893, brought a $3.5 million back
pay windfall to the nation's mail-
men.
Among the postal clerks, whose
work kept them continuously under
the watchful eyes of management,
it 'took several false starts before
enduring organization could be suc-
cessful at the national level.
When management was able to
get control of an organization,
either through infiltration or buying
out the leadership, supervisors
would exert pressure on workers to
join the docile association rather
than a more militant union.
"Employes of the government
shall neither directly or indirect-
ly, through associations, make
any attempt to have their rate of
compensation increased," read
one of a long series of "gag or-
ders" which sought to keep un-
ions from taking their grievances
to Congress.
It was the Chicago postal clerks
who first saw the value of affiliation
with the rising AFL. The Chicago
group received an AFL federal
charter in 1900 and actively sought
to bring postal groups in other cities
into affiliation. The affiliated Na
tional Federation of Post Office
Clerks, chartered in 1910, gradually
became the dominant organization
of clerks even though it bore the
brunt of management's most bitter
opposition.
In the Alice in Wonderland world
of the Post Office Dept.'s labor re-
lations policy, the department's
chief inspector in 1911 submitted a
memo to the postmaster general
warning against the growing power
of the AFL, which he described in
THIS WAS THE SCENE in the Senate caucus room as government workers from all parts of the
nation came to give first-hand testimony on the need for a union recognition law. Hearing was held
during Government Employes Council legislative conference in 1956.
the following cloak-and-dagger lan-
guage:
"This organization, before grant-
ing admission to applicants for
membership, requires a secret oath
. . . all organizations affiliating with
it pay tribute to the central organi-
zation ... its operations are veiled
in mystery and reach out to every,
corner of the country."
The president of the Chicago
clerks was fired on charges that he
"sought through the American Fed-
eration of Labor to influence legis-
lation for post office clerks" and
that he "furnished information to
the press reflecting on the adminis-
tration of the post office at Chi-
cago."
The latter charge stemmed
from the smuggling into the post
office of four members of the
Illinois State Commission on Oc-
cupational Diseases who reported
with horror the unhealthy condi-
tions under which the men
worked — the choking dust, lack
of ventilation and absence of
sanitary facilities.
As bad or worse were conditions
in the railway mail service, brought
to a shocked public through the
Harpoon, a publication launched by
Urban A. Walter, a clerk on leave
without pay to recover from tu-
berculosis contracted at work.
Public opinion swung on the side
of the AFL's campaign to get Con-
gress to protect the right of postal
workers to organize and in 1912,
over the combined opposition of the
Post Office Dept. and the National
Association of Manufacturers, the
Lloyd-La Follette Act was passed.
It provided:
• No person could be fired with-
out written charges and an oppor-
tunity to answer them.
• Membership in organizations
seeking improvements in wages,
hours and working conditions
would not be cause for dismissal or
demotion.
• The right of individuals and
organizations to petition Congress
or to furnish information to mem-
bers of Congress could not be
denied.
Abuses Continued
This "magna carta" of govern-
ment unions did not halt abuses in
the postal service or anti-union ac-
tivity of management. In fact, con-
ditions temporarily got worse under
Pres. Wilson's economy-dominated
Postmaster Gen. Albert S. Burle-
son.
But with the door to organization
and access to Congress guaranteed
by law, the union movement grew
stronger under attack and closed
ranks. By 1917, nearly all of the
principal postal unions had affili-
ated with the AFL.
The wave of affiliation opened a
new field of government unions —
among employes in the other de-
partments. The AFL chartered the
National Federation of Federal
Employes which gave birth, after a
1932 schism over jurisdiction, to
the American Federation of Gov-
ernment Employes, now the domi-
nant union in the non-postal field.
Principle Now Accepted
Official government attitudes
gradually switched from opposition
to unionism to tolerance and then
to acceptance of the principle that
unions are a vehicle for improving
employe-management relations. But
it was a policy tinged with pater-
nalism and subject to widely dif-
fering interpretations.
Having won the right to or-
ganize, a growing segment of
government workers began to
look to the development of col-
lective bargaining machinery as
the next logical step.
Within the government itself,
there was evidence that this was not
an unrealistic goal.
The Tennessee Valley Authority,
freed by Congress from most of the
red tape involved in the civil serv-
ice, has long engaged in full-fledged
collective bargaining with its strong-
ly unionized workers.
The Interior Dept. has written
contracts with unions on the Alas-
ka Railroad and the Bonneville
Power Administration.
Separate legislation has given the
printing crafts bargaining rights at
the Government Printing Office.
In the companion area of state
and city government, the State,
County & Municipal Employes and
other unions have negotiated exclu-
sive bargaining rights, dues check-
off and other basic union safe-
guards.
The Government Employes Coun-
cil has made one of its key legisla-
tive goals the amendment of the
Lloyd-La Follette Act to require
government agencies to consult with
unions representing their workers —
as a matter of law rather than as a
policy subject to change.
One of the most aggressive of the
blue collar unions in the govern-
ment — Dist. 44 of the Machinists —
has sharply challenged the view
that government employes are dif-
ferent from other workers.
Benevolent Despotism
Addressing an AFGE institute in
Washington, Dist. 44 Pres. Wil-
liam H. Ryan declared:
"Inside the federal govern-
ment, we live under what
amounts to a benevolent des-
potism rather than under indus-
trial democracy. • • . The example
of one vast benevolent despotism
successfully getting away with an
archaic form of industrial gov-
ernment is a continual invitation
to all other employers in the na-
tion to try to emulate the example
of the national government.
"Both for ourselves and for the
labor movement as a whole, we
should dedicate ourselves to the
task of winning the right to bargain,
to get labbr contracts and to have
impartial arbitration."
Booklet Available on
Rights Under FEP
"Do you know your rights as an American worker?**
This question opens a new AFL-CIO booklet entitled "Your
Rights Under Fair Employment Practice Laws."
For any worker in <}oubt as to his rights, the booklet explains
that 18 states have laws against discrimination on most jobs and
every part of the nation is covered'^
by federal executive orders forbid-
ding discrimination on some jobs.
All told, these state and federal
measures assure fair employment
practices to nearly half the nation's
citizens.
But there is no legal protec-
tion for the worker who is not
in a plant with a government
contract and who is not covered
by a local or state FEP law, the
booklet says, adding:
"That is why national legisla-
tion to guarantee fair employ-
ment is a must for all workers in
the United States."
The 32-page booklet, No. 23A,
is available at 15 cents per copy
and $8.50 per hundred from the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Publications,
815 16th St., Washington 6, D. C.
The booklet begins by citing an
example of discrimination from a
job application which asks the job-
seeker's race, religion and father's
place of birth.
The booklet goes on to describe
the protection afforded by federal
and state FEP measures and the
common procedure followed in
filing a complaint.
Also included is a state-by-state
summary of FEP laws in 18 states
which have them. In two states —
Indiana and Kansas — there is no
provision for enforcement.
Job applicants and employes en-
joy more effective protection in
Alaska, California, Colorado, Con-
necticut, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mex-
ico, New York, Ohio, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wash-
ington and Wisconsin.
Under these state laws, private
employers are forbidden to dis-
criminate in hiring, firing, up-
grading or working conditions.
Unions are barred from with-
holding the rights and privileges
of membership.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Page Nina
Action in 3 Areas :
Program For Puerto Ricans
Spelled Out by Schnitzler
By Don Gregory
New York— Organized labor has unveiled a three-step program backed by the full strength of the
AFL-CIO to attain better working and living conditions for Puerto Ricans.
Addressing a day-long conference here on the social welfare problems of Puerto Ricans, AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler said the drive will center'on "aggressive collective bargaining," leg-
islative action and close coordination with social agencies.
Schnitzler told more than 200*f
representatives of labor, social
agencies and Puerto Rican groups
that "economic advancement is the
first and most important step in
rehabilitating the underprivileged."
In this connection he said the New
York Central Trades Council,
through Pres. Harry Van Arsdale,
Jr., has "declared war on the racket
organizations which have grossly
misrepresented thousands" of Puer-
to Rican workers.
"At the same time," he con-
tinued, "through more aggressive
collective bargaining, the legiti-
mate trade unions are now mak-
ing definite progress toward at-
taining for the majority of or-
ganized Puerto Rican workers
the higher wages and improved
working conditions to which they
are entitled."
In the field of legislative action,
he said, labor is exerting its efforts
at the national and local levels in
the fight for more and better
schools; decent, low-cost housing;
higher standards of social security,
unemployment and medical care;
and the extension of full civil
rights.
Fernando Sierra Berdecia, secre-
tary of labor for the Common-
wealth of Puerto Rico, told dele-
gates to the day-long session that
"trade unions today must be more
than mechanisms to bargain for
higher wages and shorter hours, or
for medical and pension benefits."
'They must serve as an exten-
sion of the family unit," he de-
clared. 'They must be a force
for preserving and recreating a
sense of community spirit.
"The AFL-CIO is performing
this role in an outstanding manner
in the world."
Leo Perlis, director of AFL-
Trainmen Vote To End
Race Bar in Basic Law
(Continued from Page I)
ican Jewish Committee's Labor
Service.
"It proves once again that labor
is determined to remain in the fore-
front of civic organizations work-
ing for equality," they said. 'The
action vindicates Pres. Meany, who
at the AFL-CIO convention last
September opposed expulsion of the
Trainmen, but instead urged con-
tinued pressure to erase its racial
ban. The Trainmen's convention
fully redeemed the pledge to re-
move the color ban made by its
president when the brotherhood
became affiliated with the AFL-
CIO."
Industry Goaded
The statement urged industry "to
match labor's outstanding record"
in civil rights promotion.
In an interview over radio sta-
tion WLIB in New York, Meany
said he felt the action "will have an
effect on some of our other situa-
tions that have been difficult."
"So far as I am concerned, the
fight against the unjust discrimina-
tion against Negroes in employ-
ment, in membership in a union
and in their status on the job will
and must go on," he said.
At the 1959 AFL-CIO conven-
tion in San Francisco, delegates
had directed the federation's Exec-
utive Council to seek compliance
"at the earliest possible date" by
the BRT and the Locomotive Fire-
men & Enginemen with the anti-
discrimination provisions of the
AFL-CIO constitution.
The convention action was in
the form of a modification of a
resolution directing expulsion of
2 Unions Given
Merger Report
A study of the practicability of
merger of two AFL-CIO entertain-
ment unions — the Screen Actors
and the Television & Radio Artists
— has been completed by labor
mediator David L. Cole.
In a 94-page report to merger
committees of the two unions,
Cole recommended methods for
amalgamation and offered alterna-
tive working arrangements short of
merger.
the two unions unless they elimi-
nated the color bar from their con-
stitutions within six months.
The way was opened for action
on this issue when delegates to
special BRT convention, called to
make changes required by the Lan-
drum-Grifiin Act, voted to open
the agenda to all union business.
In other action, the delegates:
• Voted to reduce the compul-
sory retirement age for grand
lodge officers from the present 70
years by gradual steps to age 65
by 1965.
• Rejected, in a secret ballot
vote, a proposal to put into effect
immediately an age limit of 65.
If passed, the effect would have
been to bar Kennedy, who is 67,
from running for re-election.
• Voted to designate the un-
ion's assistant president, an elected
orhical, as successor to the presi-
det in case of a vacancy. Pre-
viously vacancies were filled by the
executive board.
Retirement Resolution
The accepted resolution on re-
tirement provides that officers who
reach the age of 70 during 1961
must retire by the last day of that
year. Retirement will be compul-
sory on the last day of the year for
those who reach 69 in 1962, 68 in
1963, 67 in 1964 and 65 in 1965.
Still ahead of the delegates
are the elections of officers and
a committee report on a pro-
posal to merge the 200,000-
member BRT with the 87,000-
member BLF&E.
The merger proposal was made
to the convention by BLF&E Pres.
H. E. Gilbert. Kennedy named a
five-man committee to study it.
Railroad management's proposed
wage cut and work rule demands
in current negotiations were sharp-
ly denounced at the convention.
BRT Sec.-Treas. William J.
Weil predicted "trouble" for rail
managements if they offer railroad
workers less than the settlement
reached in the steel industry.
He asserted that 100,000 rail-
road jobs were lost from 1955 to
1957, while 190 new officials were
named to top jobs and manage-
ment salary increases totaled $21.8
million.
CIO Community Service Activi-
ties — labor's operating arm in
the social welfare field — listed
conference objectives as the de-
lopment of "practical programs
of community service" and
"more effective day-to-day activ-
ities on behalf of our Puerto
Rican fellow citizens."
Perlis also struck out at legisla-
tion pending in Albany which calls
for residency and disclosure re-
quirements for public welfare re-
cipients.
Schnitzler praised social agencies
for the fact that their work "is
immediate and . . . produces con-
crete and visible results," and de-
clared:
"The labor movement is more
determined than ever before to end
the last remaining pockets of ex-
ploitation of human beings, to wipe
out slums, and to make all America
a model community."
He lauded national and interna-
tional unions for their work among
beleaguered minorities and singled
out the Ladies' Garment Workers,
who currently are financing an ex-
tensive low-cost housing project in
Puerto Rico.
Discussion groups during the
conference recommended:
• Support for a higher mini-
mum wage to reduce relief costs.
• Establishment of social serv-
ice departments in local unions.
• Higher salaries and expanded
staffs for public welfare depart-
ments.
• Expansion of union counsel-
ling services.
• Elimination of residency re-
quirements for public assistance.
• Cooperation by governmental
and voluntary agencies to reunite
separated Puerto Rican families.
• Use of union halls as meet-
ing places for Puerto Ricans.
• Construction of more public
housing for lower income groups.
• Enactment of improved health
legislation, notably the Forand
bill.
• Creation of a public con-
sumer agency to protect the inter-
ests of buyers.
Hatters Win
NLRB Vote
At 'Runaway'
Longview, Tex. — The Hatters
have won bargaining rights at a
runaway shop here, scoring what
the union hailed as "a break-
through for union labor."
In a sharply contested National
Labor Relations Board election,
workers at the Byer-Rolnick plant
here voted 83-56 for union repre-
sentation. The plant manufactures
hat shapes which are finished at
another company plant in the near-
by town of Garland, where an or-
ganizational campaign is currently
under way.
The company, fourth largest
in the industry, operated under a
union contract in Newark, N. J.,
until 1956, when it "ran away"
to Texas,
Reporting on the campaign and
on earlier progress in organizing
hat and millinery firms in Texas,
Hatters Pres. Alex Rose declared:
"Our experience has shown that
opposition to trade unionism in
Texas and other parts of the South
. . . is artificially contrived and
can be broken down."
PUERTO RICAN PARLEY in New York City saw AFL-CIO Sec.-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler, left, exchange greetings with Puerto
Rican Sec. of Labor Fernando Sierra Berdecia. The day-long con-
ference was attended by more than 200 representatives of labor,
social welfare and Puerto Rican groups.
4 Puerto Rican Girls
Win 1 0% Hike for 5, 000
New York — Four attractive young members of the Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers who flew here from Puerto Rico to help negotiate
a new contract for the island's corset and brassiere industry have
returned with a 10 percent wage increase for 5,000 fellow-workers.
The agreement was reached after intensive negotiations with rep-
resentatives of the Puerto Rican'^
Corset & Brassiere Association. It
provides for a 6-cent-an-hour in-
crease in the old minimum wage of
85 cents, with the remainder of
the package going into an assort-
ment of employer-paid fringe bene-
fits that includes the island's first
severance pay fund for use in case
a firm goes out of business.
The union delegation from
Puerto Rico was headed by Mrs.
Marguerita Cartagna, president of
Local 600, and included Isabel
Isaac, Guadalup Pena and Lolita
Toro. Among other gains was a
management commitment to put
the union / label on all corsets and
brassieres made in union shops.
BLGWU Pres. David Dubin-
sky hailed the wage increase par-
ticularly because it narrowed the
spread between rates in Puerto
Rico and the mainland. The
union recently signed a contract
giving 7,600 corset and brassiere
workers in the New York area a
pay boost of 6 percent. The
minimum here is $1.25 an hour.
He also welcomed the raise in
living standards of Puerto Rican
workers "in a way that will enable
them to enjoy more of the good
things of life, make their own is-
land more prosperous arid also
avert any unfair competition with
mainland workers and manufac-
turers."
Melvin Kleeblatt, counsel for the
employers 1 association, said the
"very liberal" contract terms were
justified by Puerto Rico's impor-
tance as a production center.
Court Upholds Ouster
Of R-TW Supporters
Los Angeles— A Superior Court judge here has upheld the right
of a labor union to expel members for disloyalty to the organization.
The decision was handed down by Judge Jesse Frampton in the
cases of Cecil C. Mitchell and John Mulgrew, expelled by Ma-
chinists Lodge 727 for publicly supporting the so-called "right-to-
work" referendum on the 1958^
on
ballot in California.
The two men retained their
jobs at Lockheed Aircraft Their
right to continue to work for the
aircraft firm was never an issue.
The case was concerned solely
with their expulsion from the
union.
Attorneys for Mitchell and Mul-
grew, who had sought reinstate-
ment plus damages totaling $171,-
500, announced they would appeal
the ruling.
Following a two-day trial, Judge
Frampton held that:
• The union is justified in re-
garding compulsory open-shop leg-
islation as a serious threat to its
"strength and existence," pointing
out that the California Supreme
Court had previously ruled this
was a "reasonable" view for a un-
ion to take.
• Any member publicly advo-
cating "right-to-work" legislation
when he knows his union is op-
posed to such laws is guilty of con-
duct unbecoming a member and
of disloyalty to his union, and thus
subject to expulsion.
During the 1958 election cam-
paign, Mitchell and Mulgrew ap-
peared on television and at public
meetings to champion "work 1 * pro-
posals. A trial committee from
the lodge expelled them, and the
expulsion was ratified by a secret
ballot of Lodge 727 members.
The legal expenses of the
ousted IAM members were re-
portedly paid by the Committee
for Voluntary Unionism, Cali-
fornia affiliate of the National
"Right-to-Work" Committee.
The Los Angeles Mirror-News,
quoting a reliable source, reported
that former Sen. William F. Know-
land — Republican gubernatorial
candidate who went down to defeat
in 1958 along with the "work" is-
sue he espoused — had contributed
$2,500 to help pay expenses in the
suit against the IAM.
Meany Named Judge
In Script Contest
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
is one of 13 prominent Americans
who have been named national
judges in the annual Voice of
Democracy broadcast scriptwriting
contest for high school students.
High school students compete
for a college scholarship by writ-
ing and delivering five-minute
scripts on the theme, "I Speak for
Democracy."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Neighbors on the Job:
Americans at Work
TV Series Continues
The AFL-CIO is continuing for another year its weekly 15-minute
film series for public service television broadcasting, it has an-
nounced.
The series, entitled "Americans at Work," is currently appearing
on more than 100 TV stations from coast to coast. Fifty-seven
episodes have been completed and^;
others are in preparation.
FOUR VETERAN MEMBERS of the Ladies' Garment Workers retire with union-won pensions
after a combined total of 112 years' service at the Press Dress & Uniform Co., Hummelstown, Pa.
Left to right are ILGWU Dist. Mgr. Martin Morand, Sarah Weaver, Ida Moretz, Minerva Wadlinger
and Ethel Thomas.
Hartnett Urges 'Watchdog' Group
To Wipe Out Sweatshop, Ghiseler
Lynn, Mass. — The Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers have proposed that Congress establish
a permanent "watchdog" committee on unemployment to wipe out "the sweatshopper and the
chiseler."
"America should be an indivisible country," IUE Sec.-Treas. Al Hartnett told the Special Senate
Committee on Unemployment Problems at a hearing here.
"It should be a country in which'^
the sort of economic logrolling
which pits section against section
in a frenzy of competition to cut
standards and lower wages should
be barred forever."
Hartnett scorched General Elec-
tric for what he labeled a "progres-
sive desertion" of Lynn. He pro-
posed a wide-ranging program of
federal legislation for "handling
TWUA Asks
Textile Study
Continuation
New York— The Textile Work-
ers Union of America has urged
Pres. Eisenhower to give permanent
status to the Interagency Committee
on Textiles, set up within the Com-
merce Dept. last May to help solve.
the industry's chronic ills.
TWUA Pres. William Pollock, in
a letter to the President, said the
union is "considerably disturbed"
by rumors the committee will be
dissolved after filing a report with
the White House in the near future.
"It would be tragic," Pollock
wrote, "to cut short the life of a
committee whose work offers so
much potential good to the textile
industry, to the hundreds of com-
munities which depend upon it eco-
nomically, and to the hundreds of
thousands of workers who earn
their livelihood in its employ.
"Most textile problems are basic
and long-range in character. They
cannot be overcome through piece-
meal remedies or through sporadic
attempts at a cure."
Rutgers Parley Set
On U.S. Stake in ILO
New Brunswick, N. J. — A one-
day conference on the stake of the
United States in the Intl. Labor
Organization will be held Jan. 28
at the Rutgers University Institute
of Management & Labor Relations
with representatives of labor, man-
agement and government on the
program.
The speakers will include Rudy
Faupl, U.S. worker delegate to the
ILO and a member of the ILO
Governing Body, and George C.
Lodge, assistant secretary of state
for international affairs.
national problems on a national
basis."
The special committee headed
by Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy (D-
Minn.) is an outgrowth of a de-
mand for action by the unem-
ployment conference sponsored in
April 1959 by the AFL-CIO.
The McCarthy group has held
27 days of hearings in 12 states
and in the nation's capital. It will
report its findings by Jan. 31.
In addition to urging a standing
committee on unemployment,
Hartnett appealed for these actions
among others: repeal of Taft-Hart-
ley 's Sec. 14(b), which permits so-
called "right-to-work" laws; a
$1.25 federal minimum wage and
wider coverage; better placing of
defense contracts; a ban on em-
ployer-backed racist propaganda in
union campaigns.
Hartnett said the economic
dangers facing the people of
Lynn and of New England
"come not so much from foreign
shores as they do from within
our national borders."
It is "a domestic threat posed
by corporations operating in other
sections of the country where
sweatshops, discrimination, inse-
curity and human indignity com-
bine in an explosive economic and
social mixture."
Within the electrical industry,
Hartnett said, "the powerful Gen-
eral Electric Co." has demonstrated
a disregard for its employes and
their communities.
He emphasized that "in 1960,
America cannot preserve its eco-
nomic health so long as our coun-
try is half low-wage and half high-
wage."
The answer, he said, is to
raise the standards of those "who
are the prey of great corpora-
tions seeking cheap labor."
He quoted a local GE official
as saying the state has a "bad
business climate." This attitude
and the official's "arrogance" in
refusing to cooperate with the city
and the union in attacking prob-
lems was combined with GE's
quest for tax exemptions and re-
duced labor and welfare stand-
ardsi he added.
Hartnett pointed out that em-
ployment in the Lynn bargaining
unit represented by IUE totaled
18,500 in 1953. Today, he said,
it is down to about 10,300.
Hartnett said GE's apparent mo-
tive was to evade any cooperation
with the union and to seek out
low-wage areas.
"Our economic system operates
on a national basis," he concluded.
". . . We cannot evade the idea
that the solution to these big eco-
nomic and social problems must
be sought nationally."
"We are very gratified with the
public acceptance of these films and
the praise they have received from
newspaper critics and station pro-
gram directors," said AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler in
announcing the continuation.
"By showing the infinite variety
of skills that keep our productive
economy going, we feel we are
making a positive contribution to
public education. Yet, as viewers
will testify, there is no 'classroom'
atmosphere about the programs;
they are fascinating to everyone
who has a trace of the 'sidewalk
superintendent' in his makeup."
The first films covered such
varied fields as cigar making,
auto production, shipbuilding,
textile weaving, glass blowing,
bookbinding, plumbing and
newspaper publication. Mem-
bers of some 60 AFL-CIO un-
ions have "acted" in the series
by doing their regular jobs be-
fore the camera.
"We are also pleased to have had
the cooperation of many of the
nation's biggest employers, and a
great many smaller ones as well,"
Schnitzler said. 'The films are also
being shown on the 28 overseas
stations of the Armed Forces TV
Network and the U.S. Information
Agency is engaged in worldwide
distribution of the series with the
commentary translated into various
languages."
Here is a Jist of the films already
completed and available for TV
use in the "Americans at Work"
series:
Press
Glass
Plumbers
Bakers
Potters
Bookbinders
Shoe Makers
Paper Workers
Auto Workers
Machinists
Ladies' Garment Workers
Subway Workers
Letter Carriers
Railroad Passenger Workers
Rubber Workers
Railroad Freight Workers
Hotel & Restaurant Workers
Meat Cutters
Streetcar & Bus Workers
Government Workers
Firefighters
Brewery Workers
Teachers
Building Services
Railroad Maintenance Workers
Postal Workers
Men's Clothing Workers
Communications Workers
Hat and Cap Workers
Doll Workers
Cigar Makers
Oil Refinery Workers
Retail Clerks
Barbers and Beauticians
Cigarette Workers
Telephone Linemen
Woodworkers
Movie Makers
Maritime Workers
Missile Builders
Pharmaceuticals
Seabees
Aircraft Machinists
Agricultural Implement Workers
Shipbuilders
Structural Iron Workers
Ceramic Tile Workers
Upholstery Workers
Electrical Instrument Workers
Television Workers
Musicians
Textile Workers
Public Employees
Synthetic Fibers
Space Suits
Cement Workers
Industrial Rubber Workers
Foreign Unions Back
Screen Guild in Dispute
Hollywood — Actors' unions in Great Britain and Mexico have
pledged they will fight any effort by American motion picture pro-
ducers to produce "runaway" ,61ms in their countries in the event
the Screen Actors Guild is forced to strike JaiL 31.
SAG is currently in negotiations with the industry's eight major
studios here on contracts affecting
Supreme Court Orders
Back Pay in Firings
(Continued from Page 1)
NLRB that only in four indus-
tries — basic steel, basic alumi-
num, wet milling and lumber —
would it apply the doctrine that
craft unions cannot be separated
from over-all bargaining units
with a history of such bargaining
when the industry is highly in-
tegrated.
A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
declined to enforce an NLRB order
giving effect to this policy and the
Supreme Court left the appellate
court decision standing by refus-
ing review.
The Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers sought bargaining
rights for a group of craftsmen at
the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., with
which the Glass & Ceramics Work-
ers had a contract for an over-all
unit, and the board ordered the
company to bargain with the IBEW
unit.
The company argued in the ap-
pellate court that the glass industry
is basic and highly integrated and
that a long-time history of over-all
bargaining existed. It charged that
the board policy in refusing to con-
sider these factors — but applying
them in the case of basic steel, alu-
minum, lumber and wet milling —
was discriminatory.
The appellate court agreed and
refused to issue a compliance order
requiring the company to accept the
NLRB decision.
14,000 actors. The union is seek-
ing pension and health and welfare
plans paid by the producers, plus
establishment of a formula for
compensating actors for television
showing of films originally destined
for theater exhibition.
Support for SAG came from
British Actors' Equity and the
National Association of Actors
of the Mexican Republic. At the
same time, the Intl. Federation
of Actors instructed its secre-
tariat to notify actors 9 unions in
all countries of the possibility
that American studios would at-
tempt "runaway" film production
and to urge them to withhold
their services.
The expiring SAG contract pro-
vides that on theatrical pictures
produced after Aug. 1, 1948, the
union will have the right to strike
if it is unable to reach agreement
with producers on payments for
television showings. A union
spokesman said that this has led
to protracted negotiations each time
old films are sold to TV stations
or networks.
The heads of the major studios,
meeting here jointly with SAG ne-
gotiators for the first time in the
history of film contract talks, have
called for an end to this arrange-
ment and the cancellation of any
further payment of television rights
to actors.
"The producers want to turn
the clock back 12 years," SAG
charged, pointing out that since
1948 contracts have provided
this protection and the union has
collected large sums of money
for its members.
Hotel Family Fund
Names Medical Chief
New York—The appointment of
Dr. Joseph M. Pisani as medical
director of the Union Family Med-
ical Fund of the Hotel Industry of
New York City, effective Feb. 1,
has been announced by the board
ol trustees.
The fund was created in collec-
tive bargaining by the AFL-CIO
Hotel Trades Council and the
Hotel Association to provide medi-
cal, specialist and surgical care to
an estimated 46,000 dependents of
35,000 unionized hotel workers
who themselves have been pro-
tected by a similar plan since 1950.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1^60
Page Eleven
Hospital, School, Sewage Plans Hit:
HEW 'Advance 9 Claimed,
3 Programs Heavily Cut
By Robert B. Cooney
Health. Education and Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming has described the new HEW budget,
which heavily cuts some programs, as "a very decided forward movement" and also one which met
Pres. Eisenhower's aim to defend ''fiscal integrity" and "combat inflation."
Except for two or three areas, Flemming told a press briefing, "every single item represents a
forward advance." He said he recognized there were people who felt the advance should be greater.
The areas heavily cut were in'^
federai grants for schools in fed
erally-affected districts, hospital
construction and sewage disposal
projects. Improvements in other
programs were minor compared to
the legislative proposals supported
by the AFL-CIO.
Sen. Lister Hill (D-Ala.), a rank-
ing member of the Senate Appro-
priations Committee, reacted sharp-
ly to the proposed hospital con-
struction slash, said it was "crip-
pling" and pledged to restore those
funds and most of another $100
million in cuts.
Neither the budget nor Flem-
ming revealed any specific pro-
posals for improving the social se-
curity system or the public assist-
ance system.
The President spoke of con-
tinual review in his budget mes-
sage and Flemming said im-
provements are being considered.
On the labor-backed Forand bill,
which would extend medical care
to social security beneficiaries,
Flemming said he "can't go be-
yond" his reported statement
that he has as yet found no
feasible alternative.
Flemming's emphasis on a "for-
ward" budget came after he was
asked how much it was shaped in
the name of "fiscal integrity" and
fighting "inflation," and how much
it was matched against such na-
tional problems as the classroom
shortage, health care for the aged
and aid for welfare programs.
For fiscal 1961, which begins
July 1, Eisenhower asked a total
of $3.4 billion for HEW, slightly
higher than for the current year.
Last January, Eisenhower request-
ed $3.2 billion for HEW and Con-
gress voted nearly $3.5 billion.
On school construction, Eisen-
hower repeated his support of the
pending Administration bill. It
provides a so-called "pay later"
bond plan costing an estimated $5
million for 1961 and compares to a
compromise $500 million Demo-
cratic school .construction bill in
the Senate.
School Program 'Tapering OfP
In asking for a cut of about one-
fourth in federal grants for schools
in federally-affected areas, Eisen-
hower said this program should be
tapered off because the impacted
areas have become stabilized since
the aid began in 1950. The cut
totals $54 million.
Eisenhower again asked $20 mil-
High Court to Get
Henderson Appeals
The Textile Workers Union of America plans to carry to the U.S.
Supreme Court its fight to free eight officers and members handed
long prison terms in connection with the 14-month-old strike against
the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills, Henderson, N. C.
The convictions and prison sentences of the eight unionists — for
allegedly participating in a con-^
spiracy to dynamite two mill build-
ings and a power substation — were
upheld Jan. 14 by the North Caro-
lina Supreme Court. The "bomb-
ings" never actually took place.
Union attorneys immediately
asked for a stay to allow an appeal
to the nation's highest court, and a
decision was expected shortly from
the state bench.
In New York, TWUA Pres.
William H. Pollock characterized
affirmation of the convictions as
"a grave miscarriage of justice. "
He said the appeal to the high
court will be based pn the belief
that "substantial errors have been
made by both the trial court and
the appeals court."
The State Supreme Court was
unanimous in affirming the convic-
tions of seven of the men. In the
case of TWUA Vice Pres. and Reg.
Dir. Boyd E. Payton, Associate Jus-
tice William H. Bobbitt dissented,
declaring that "the evidence . . .is
insufficient to support the verdict."
Payton and two other TWUA
staff members — Intl. Representa-
tives Lawrence Gore and Charles
Auslander — drew the stiffest penal-
ties. Following their conviction in
Henderson last July, they were sen-
tenced to from six to 10 years in
prison.
Sentences of from five to seven
years went to Vice Pres. Johnnie
Martin of TWUA Local 578, and
rank-and-file mmebers Calvin Ray
Pegram, Warren Walker and Rob-
ert Edward Abbott. A two- to
three-year prison term was imposed
on Malcom Jarrell.
All eight currently are free on
bail ranging from $10,000 to
$25,000.
Pollock said the men were con-
victed and sentenced "for 'conspir-
acy ■ to commit crimes which never
occurred, and which were hatched
by the mind of an anti-union ex-
convict in the hire of the State
Bureau of Investigation."
He referred to the fact that the
state's case hinged on the testimony
of Harold E. Aaron, who claimed
he had been approached by the de-
fendants and asked to help in the
alleged dynamiting.
At the time of the convictions
last year, Pollock assailed Aaron
as "a man convicted of assault
with a deadly weapon, stealing a
police car and impersonating an
officer of the law, and whose rec-
ord shows several arrests for
drunkenness." During the trial,
Aaron admitted he had once
brought an unfair labor practice
charge against the TWUA for
failing to arbitrate his dismissal
from a job in Leaksville, N. C.
The strike began Nov. 17, 1958,
when union offers to renew the old
contract without change were coun-
tered by management insistence on
eliminating a 14-year-old arbitra-
tion clause and the insertion of a
stringent no-strike provision.
In February 1959 the company
reopened the mills after Gov..
Luther H. Hodges (D) sent in a
detachment of 40 members of
the State Highway Patrol to pro-
tect strikebreakers entering and
leaving the plant.
Two months -later, Hodges
worked out a settlement between
the parties, but the pact was re-
pudiated by mill owner John D.
Cooper 48 hours later when he told
all but a handful of the 1,100
strikers that they had been "perma-
nently replaced" by strikebreakers.
In the wake of incidents which
flared on the picket line, Hodges
withdrew the highway patrolmen
and replaced them with a company
of 400 members of the National
Guard who remained in the strife-
ridden community for more than
six months.
lion in grants for construction of
sewage disposal facilities. This
was a cutback from the $45 million
Congress appropriated last year.
Eisenhower said the program
should be a state and local respon-
sibility. The House has voted $100
million a year for 10 years and the
Senate $80 million for sewage dis-
posal grants and the total is now
being compromised.
Eisenhower asked for a cut of
$60 million in hospital construc-
tion grants. He said the amount
asked would assure that new
hospitals would keep pace with
population growth, replace obso-
lete beds and reduce the back-
log.
When a reporter asked if this
meant the Hill-Burton hospital
building program was on the
"downgrade," Flemming replied
that it did mean expenditures for
1962 "would be down/*
These were the highlights of the
HEW budget:
• An increase of 17.6 percent,
to a total $18.2 million, was re-
quested to enable the Food & Drug
Administration "to provide greater
protection for the consumer against
harmful, unclean and misrepre-
sented foods, drugs and cosmetics."
• An increase of 7.8 percent,
to a total $71 million, was sought
to expand the program of voca-
tional rehabilitation of the dis-
abled. In 1954, nearly 56,000 per-
sons were rehabilitated; for fiscal
1961, a goal is set to rehabilitate
93,000 disabled.
• An increase of $2 million, to
a total $48.5 million, was asked
for grants-in-aid programs provid-
ing health and welfare aid for
mothers and children in need,
crippled children and dependent
children.
• Since over $2 billion in fed-
eral funds, or more than three-
fifths of the HEW budget, is spent
on assistance for the needy, a re-
quest was made for $700,000 to
conduct cooperative research into
the causes of dependency and ways
to reduce it.
• The budget asked $400 mil-
lion for the National Institutes of
Health, the same total as last year
but one which allows expansion of
medical research.
• An increase of over 35 per-
cent, to $23 million, was asked for
control of air and water pollution
and radiation protection.
• An increase of $11 million,
to a total $171 million, was asked
for programs under the National
Defense Education Act.
The budget noted a shift in em-
phasis from training for traditional
vocational skills to training for
highly-skilled technician occupa-
tions.
In line with this, $9 million was
asked for vocational education un-
der the Defense Education Act, a
total which was increased by $2
million transferred from the regu-
lar vocational education program.
Thus, the latter went down to $39
million.
CORRECTION
The convention calendar printed
in last week's edition of the AFL-
CIO News erroneously listed a
meeting of the Ladies' Garment
Workers in Atlantic City for the
coming May.
The ILGWU has its conventions
every three years and met last year.
The next convention is scheduled
for Atlantic City in May 1962.
RAIL INDUSTRY has repaid loyalty of its workers by hiring ad-
vertising agencies to attack them as "no-good bums," Pres. George
M. Harrison of the Railway Clerks declared at joint installation of
local officers in the Chicago area. He said management propaganda
campaign is "seriously injuring" morale of railroad workers.
Rail Workers Rally
Against Carrier. Attack
Milwaukee, Wis. — The railroad industry's "featherbedding"
charges are concocted "out of the same Madison Avenue hot air"
as the steel industry's futile attack on work rules, a union leader
told 1,000 rail workers who plowed through a 9-inch snowstorm
to attend a mass rally here.
Assistant Pres. S. C. Phillips of&
the Locomotive Firemen & En
ginemen, principal speaker at the
rally sponsored by 23 rail brother-
hoods and maintenance crafts,
challenged railroad management to
drop its "vicious and misleading"
propaganda campaign and get down
to serious collective bargaining.
Meanwhile in Washington, where
the Railway Labor Executives' As-
sociation held a four-day meeting,
RLEA Chairman G. E. Leighty
told a news conference that the
steel settlement in effect pulled the
rug out from under the railroad
industry. He said the agreement
improves the chances of negotiat-
ing a rail settlement without a
strike.
Labor's victory in steel,
Leighty said, "should be an in-
dication to railroad management
that neither American labor nor
the American public in general
will ever permit a return to the
jungle days of railroad operation
when management alone was the
sole judge of what constituted
proper and safe working condi-
tions."
g
The rally, one of a series to
demonstrate rail labor's solidarity
in principal railroad centers
throughout the nation, brought
pledges of support from civic lead-
ers and the state's labor movement.
The rally heard:
• State AFL-CIO Pres. George
A. Haberman, who promised the
"united moral and financial sup-
port" of Wisconsin labor to the
railroad workers, and their unions.
'This is not your fight alone. This
fight belongs to all of labor. We
must stand side by side."
• Lt. Gov. Philleo Nash (D),
who compared the use of the mis-
leading term "featherbedding" to
the equally misleading phrase
"right-to-work," both used by
anti-labor propagandists. He point-
ed out that attacks on railroad
workers come at a time when their
productivity "has reached an all-
time high, exceeding that of all
other industries."
• Mayor Frank P. Zeidler of
Milwaukee, who blasted "wholesale
abandonments" of passenger serv-
ice and urged federal assistance for
needed commuter facilities. Zeid-
ler said rail management is "mak-
ing a big mistake in attacking rail-
way labor."
• Miles McMillan, associate
editor of the Capital Times of
Madison, Wis., who' said the big
advertising agencies responsible for
"the gigantic hoaxes perpetrated on
television and radio" are behind
the anti-union propaganda.
Phillips, in a detailed refutation
of management claims, told the
rally that the railroads were serv-
ing up the same charges 40 years
ago when he 'first went to work in
the industry. The only difference,
he said, was that then they "used
less expensive means" to air their
propaganda.
"It was the railroad brother-
hoods that fought for and helped
bring about every safety regula-
tion and device we now take for
granted. . . . Labor's efforts to
improve railroad safety have al-
ways been bitterly opposed by
railroad management at every
turn," Phillips declared.
A telegram from Leighty, read
to the meeting by Vice Pres. Glen
B. Goble of the Railway Clerks
who presided, declared the rail un-
ions are "united solidly" in current
negotiations.
He declared: "In this fight, we
regard a threat to any one of our
crafts as a threat to all, and we are
determined to defeat any effort by
management to divide us by set-
ting any one group of workers
against any other."
Tom Kennedy
Mine Union's
New Chieftain
Thomas Kennedy, for 60 years
a member of the Mine Workers,
unaffiliated, has become the un-
ion's tenth president, succeeding
John L. Lewis, who retired effec-
tive Jan. 14 in line with his previ-
ously announced intention.
Kennedy's first act as president
was to nominate as his successor
as vice president W. A. ("Tony")
Boyle, previously an executive
board member and assistant to
Lewis. Boyle was unanimously
elected by the executive board.
The board created the new post
of president emeritus and named
Lewis to that honorary position.
Kennedy said that "the policies
enunciated" by Lewis for the union
'will be the policies of this organ-
ization for many years to come."
Pa&e TVelv©
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1960
Ike Curbs Welfare, Seeks Tax Boosts
Democrats, Republicans Doubt
Forecast of Big Budget Surplus
*
(Continued from Page 1)
mcndations, and expressed open
opposition to any tax cuts.
Although the lion's share of -the
new budget will again go for de-
fense, Eisenhower pegged spending
at the current level of $40.5 biHion.
He proposed elimination of five
bomber wings and 10 percent
slashes in the strength of the Na-
tional Guard and Army Reserves,
earmarking the savings for missile
development in an effort to close
the gap created by Soviet achieve-
ments.
He virtually doubled expendi-
tures for non-military space proj-
ects — from the present level of
$325 million to a new high of\$600
million — also in response to Rus-
sian advances in outer space ex-
ploration.
For mutual defense, the Presi-
dent laid before Congress a $3.45
billion spending program, un-
changed from current levels. At
the same time, he asked for nearly
$4.2 billion in new mutual security
authorizations, explaining that he
needs the authority because pro-
curement must be started in fiscal
1961 to provide necessary deliv-
eries in future years.
On the domestic front, he called
for a "hold-the-line" approach in
most areas plus cutbacks of such
programs as aid to federally-im-
pacted areas, hospital construction
grants and sewage control.
The budget did contain, how-
ever, an election-year reversal of
an Administration policy of op-
position to new starts on public
works programs. The President
recommended 42 new projects
which will require $38 million
in 1961 and will cost a total of
$496 million when completed.
In 1959, Eisenhower vetoed a
public works bill because it con-
tained new projects in defiance of
his budget-balancing policies. For
the. first time since he took office,
Eisenhower was rebuffed by Con-
gress which repassed the measure.
The recommendation of 42 new
public works starts drew from the
Democratic Advisory Council a
charge that the new budget was a
"political instrument" designed to
help Vice Pres. Nixon in his bid
for the presidency. The projects,
said the council, will provide "a
series of ground-breaking cere-
monies for Richard Nixon's cam-,
paign tours."
The President dwelt in consider-
able detail on the need for what
he termed fiscal "responsibility,"
equating this with removal of the
interest ceiling on long-term gov-
ernment securities, an increase in
the interest rates on veterans and
military housing loans, a hold-
down in expenditures for social
welfare programs and his tax pro-
gram.
He ruled out any Administration
move for tax cuts in this election
year — his last year in office. In-
stead, he left it to "the next Ad-
ministration and the next Congress"
to determine if there should be
any "lightening (of) the tax bur-
den."
Here's how the budget shapes up
in key areas:
HOUSING — No recommenda-
tions for public housing, middle-
income housing or housing for the
elderly; no added funds for urban
renewal; termination of the college
housing program; an end to the GI
housing ^program; "flexibility" in
maximum interest rates under the
VA and FHA mortgage insurance
programs.
LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS—
Authority of Housing & Home
Finance Agency to borrow $100
million from the Treasury for
loans to finance needed public fa-
cilities will be exhausted early in
Land rum-Griffin
Pushes up Budget
The Landrum-Griffin Act
will cost the taxpayers $8.1
million to administer in fiscal
1961, plus $1.7 million more
for the current fiscal year,
according to . Pres. Eisen-
hower's Budget Message.
The Administration asked
these sums for the National
Labor Relations Board and
for the Labor Dept.'s new
Bureau of Labor-Manage-
ment Reports.
In his message to Congress,
Eisenhower praised last year's
passage of L-G, terming it
"much-needed legislation de-
signed to protect workers and
the public from racketeering,
corruption and abuse of
democratic processes which
had been disclosed in the af-
fairs of a few labor unions."
1961, and Administration asked an
additional $20 million to meet ap-
plications for the balance of fiscal
1961 plus legislation "to authorize
the provision in annual appropria-
tion acts of this amount and such
future increases as may be neces-
sary."
AREA REDEVELOPMENT—
$57 million "primarily for loans
and grants" to aid areas of chronic
unemployment. This is far below
the Senate-passed Douglas-Cooper
bill authorizing $390 million in
loans and grants to rehabilitate de-
pressed areas. A similar measure
was reported by the House Bank-
ing Committee last year but is
bottled up in the Rules Committee.
FARM PROBLEMS— The Pres-
ident budgeted $5.6 billion for the
Agriculture Dept. and called for
"urgently needed" legislation to cut
farm price supports. "The longer
unrealistic price supports are re-
tained, the more difficult it will be
to make the adjustments in produc-
tion needed to permit relaxation of
government controls over farm op-
erations."
NATURAL RESOURCES— In
addition to the starts on new flood
control, navigation and power proj-
ects, the Administration recom-
mended construction by the Ten-
nessee Valley Authority of three
long-sought projects. Eisenhower
proposed $8.1 million for this pur-
pose — half frofn congressional ap-
propriations and half from TVA's
new self-financing bonds.
EDUCATION— Eisenhower re-
newed last years proposal for
authorization of federal advances
to local school districts to pay up
to half the debt service on $3 bil-
lion in bonds to be issued in the
next five years for school construc-
tion. He proposed a $54 million
cut in funds to aid school districts
where enrollment has been swollen
by location of federal installations.
MINIMUM WAGE— The Pres-
ident indicated he would ask Con-
gress to extend protection of the
Fair Labor Standards Act to an
undisclosed number of workers not
now covered, but made no refer-
ence to the Kennedy-Morse-Roose-
velt bill which would not only
cover 10 million more but also
raise the minimum wage to $1.25.
UNEMPLOYMENT COMPEN-
SATION— Called for wider cov-
erage of workers under jobless in-
surance plan, but did not mention
proposals before Congress to set
federal standards, below which
states could not fall, covering the
amount and duration of benefits.
PUBLIC HEALTH— Asked for
$400 million for the National In-
stitutes of Health, the same figure
Congress appropriated last year de-
spite the fact that at that time
Eisenhower recommended only
$294 million. Urged that the NIH
program be administered "so that
medical manpower is not unduly
diverted from other pressing needs
and that federal funds are not sub-
stituted for funds from private
sources."
EMPLOYMENT— Made no
mention of the nation's 3.6 mil-
lion jobless, representing 5.2 per-
cent of the working force in De-
cember, but asked that the Em-
ployment Act of 1946 be amended
"to make reasonable price stability
an explicit goal of federal eco-
nomic policy, coordinate with the
goals of maximum production,
employment and purchasing power
now specified in that Act."
GOVERNMENT EMPLOYES
— Opposed a general pay raise as
"unwarranted" and called for a re-
view and coordination of the many
pay plans now in existence as "the
most effective means of removing
inequities" in government wage
scales.
CIVIL RIGHTS — Called for
enactment of the Administration s
six-point civil rights program, but
made no mention of a proposal
which came from the Civil Rights
Commission to appoint federal vot-
ing registrars to insure minority
rights at the polls.
Booklet Gives Testimony
Of Doctors on Forand Bill
Excerpts from testimony by 10 leading physicians in support
of the Forand bill — which would provide medical and hospital
aid for social security recipients — are contained in a new
pamphlet published by the AFL-CIO.
The booklet, ^Doctors and the Forand Bill," contains quotes
taken from the transcript of hearings before the House Ways
and Means Committee. In the foreword, the AFL-CIO notes
that these doctors "dared to speak out" despite the fact that
"the voice of the medical profession has been raised so con-
sistently with the voices of big business and the commercial
insurance industry" against each new form of social insurance.
Single copies of "Doctors and the Forand Bill," publication
No. 103, are free. The bulk price is $3 per hundred or $25
per thousand. They may be obtained through the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Publications, 815 16th St., N.W., Washington 6, D. C.
Pay Raise Parley Set
By Federal Employes
The AFL-CIO Government Employes Council has launched an
all-out drive for a federal pay raise which Pres. Eisenhower told
Congress, in his Budget Message, would be "unwarranted."
The GEC picked the week of Apr. 4 for a national legislative
conference in Washington to be attended by more than 5,000
delegates from affiliated unions of
government workers. The delegates
will meet with congressmen and
senators from their districts to urge
passage of the GECs pay proposal
— increases averaging more than
12 percent for postal and classified
employes.
Eisenhower's proposal for a
study leading to an overhaul and
coordination of the several dif-
ferent government salary systems
was rejected by union leaders as
a "stalling device" which Con-
gress has repeatedly turned
down. The GEC declared its
pay proposals were in line with
the steel strike settlement in
which top Administration offi-
cials participated.
Included in the unions' legisla-
tive package is a provision for a
joint congressional committee on
pay to make an annual review of
government salaries with the aim
of reducing the time lag between
pay adjustments for salaried em-
ployes.
Blue-Collar Rate Adjusted
Government blue-collar workers
already have their pay adjusted
each year through wage board pro-
cedures, geared to prevailing rates
in private industry.
From Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon Johnson (Tex.), meanwhile,
came a pledge of "a fair shake" for
federal workers.
Johnson told 500 members of
the Government Employes, at a
banquet marking the 77th anniver-
sary of the Civil Service Act, that
Congress has "an obligation to lean
over backward to be fair'* to fed-
eral workers since they do not
have the right to use economic pres-
sure to win their demands.
The Administration's opposition
to a pay raise kept unbroken its
seven-year record of resistance to
salary increases for government
employes. The two pay bills en-
acted during Eisenhower's terms
of office— in 1955 and in 1958—
were watered-down versions of
more generous increases voted by
Congress but vetoed by the Presi-
dent
Economic Report Renews Anti-Inflation Theme
(Continued from Page 1)
rates from moving even higher.
An end to the ceiling would bring,
according to economists, a rise in
long-term bond interest rates to at
least 4.5 percent.
The President also recommended
increasing the interest rates on Vet-
erans Administration and Armed
Service housing loans to bring
these into line with the current
FHA rate, previously forced up.
The President's report reviewed
economic developments in 1959
and his legislative proposals for
1960 as presented to Congress in
his Budget Message. The 243-page
document also contained a report
by the President's Council of Eco-
nomic Advisors and a series of
detailed statistical tables.
The President declared mat
"at the present time, the federal
government could make its great-
est contribution to inflation-free
economic growth through finan-
cial policies that help create an
environment favorable to the ex-
ercise of maximum private initia-
tive.
*The major step in creating
such an environment would be the
achievement of the recommended
budget surplus for debt retirement
in the fiscal year 1961. The ef-
fectiveness of this policy would be
heightened by removal of the in-
terest rate limitations that cur-
rently inhibit the non-inflationary
management of the federal debt."
The report had some advice for
consumers, business and labor. The
President urged consumers to spend
"wisely" and exercise care in shop-
ping for "prjee and quality" so that
they can "exert a restraining influ-
ence on the cost of living."
He urged industry to adopt pric-
ing policies "that favor the expan-
sion of markets" and to allocate
a greater share of funds to research
and development.
Labor leaders were urged to
foster "arrangements favorable
to higher labor productivity."
The President repeated his
nianj previous statements that
wage increases should not "ex-
ceed sustainable rates of im-
provement in national produc-
tivity."
Admitting that "hourly rates of
pay and related labor benefits can,
of course, be increased without
jeopardizing price stability," the
President added that "improve-
ments in compensation rates must,
on the average, remain within the
limits of general productivity gains
if reasonable stability of prices is
to be achieved and maintained."
Price reductions warranted by
"especially rapid productivity gains
must be a normal and frequent
feature of our economy," he said.
The report discounted the un-
yielding chronic rate of unemploy-
ment, declaring that "in general,
unemployment rates in the U.S.
have not been high for an economy
which allows and experiences con-
siderable labor mobility and job
change, but they can and should be
lower."
It recommended "better school-
ing and improved counseling serv-
ices" to train persons with inade-
quate skills and called for "con-
structive measures" to aid depressed
areas.
Taking note of the sharp in-
crease in the. number of persons
expected to enter the labor force
during the 1960s, the President
admitted that the economy will
have to supply additional job
openings "at a rate twice that
required in the 1950s."
In its report to the President, the
Council of Economic Advisors said
that unemployment in 1959 aver-
aged 3.8 million or 5.5 percent of
the civilian labor force. This is
the highest rate of unemployment
for a non-recession period since
the end of World War 11.
The President hit the inflation
theme throughout the report and
repeated his request of last year
that the Congress amend the Em-
ployment .Act of 1946 to "make
reasonable price stability an explicit
goal of national economic policy . . .
to express more firmly our national
determination to curb inflation."
AFL-CIO Blasts Ike's 'Stagnant' Policies
Rapped As
Failing To
Meet Need
In a blistering attack on the
Administration's policies, the
AFL-CIO Economic Policy Com-
mittee has charged that Pres.
Eisenhower's 1960 Economic Re-
port and Budget Message again
fails to grapple with major prob-
lems, including high-level unem-
ployment and idle productive
capacity.
"We urge the Congress to reject
the Administration's dangerous poli-
cies of ignoring national needs and
curbing economic progress," the
committee said.
What America needs, the com-
mittee added, is not a continuation
of restrictive policies which it
charged brought two recessions and
economic stagnation in seven years,
but positive government efforts to
achieve a full-production, full-em-
ployment economy.
The EPC, headed by AFL-CIO
Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther, pres-
ident of the Auto Workers, charged
in an analysis of the Eisenhower
proposals:
'The two messages fail to
grapple with the fundamental
problem facing the American
economy, namely, that a full year
after the end of the recession, 5
percent of the labor force is still
unemployed and almost one-fifth
of the nation's productive capac-
ity still lies idle."
The President's messages are not
a promise of faith in America's ca-
pabilities, the committee added, but
"are a promise, rather, of continu-
ing stagnation."
The statement noted that Eisen-
hower set forth three basic eco-
nomic objectives for 1960: adop-
tion of his budget; use of the sur-
plus to reduce the national debt;
and removal of the interest ceiling
on long-term government bonds.
All three aims, the committee
pointed out, are designed to stem
a "phantom" inflation instead of
designed "to use all practical
means to . . . foster and promote
• . . maximum employment, pro-
duction and purchasing power"
as stated in the Employment Act
of 1946.
"Maximum employment, produc-
tion and purchasing power cannot
be obtained," the committee de-
clared, "by squeezing the economic
system and slamming on the brakes
to stop economic growth as is pro-
posed in both the Economic Report
and the Budget Message."
"Economic Slowdown"
The success of Eisenhower's eco-
nomic program "can mean only an
economic slowdown," the commit-
tee warned, adding:
"The present inventory build-up
will ease after mid-year. The dan-
(Con tinned on Page 12)
Vol. v
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, January 30, 1960
No. 5
Labor Faces Hard Battles
In Rural-Run Legislatures
70TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION of A. Philip Randolph, an AFL-CIO vice president and presi-
dent of the Sleeping Car Porters, brought messages from Pres. Eisenhower and AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany and participation by distinguished speakers. Shown left to right are: Sec.-Treas.
Ashley L. Totten of Sleeping Car Porters; Mrs. Chrystal Bird Fauset, former Pennsylvania state
legislator; Dr. Martin Luther King, who led Montgomery, Ala., segregated bus boycott; Randolph;
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt; the Rev. David N. Licorish; Pres. Harry Van Arsdale of the New York
City AFL-CIO, who presided. (See story, Page 4.)
Rules Unit Still Balks :
Administrationjoins
Voting-Rights Drive
By Gene Zack
The drive for effective civil rights legislation — a key issue facing
the election-year 86th Congress — rnoved forward as the Eisenhower
Administration belatedly endorsed the principle that federal officers
should safeguard voting rights.
At the same time, House liberals stepped up their drive to bring a
civil rights measure to the floor.'^
They renewed their challenge to Re
publicans to join in signing a dis-
charge petition that would bypass
the conservative-dominated Rules
Committee which has blockaded the
bill.
To date, 190 signatures have
been obtained on the petition — 29
Half-Speed Economy
Laid to GOP Policies
The Senate-House Economic Committee, in an unusually vig-
orous report, has charged the American economy has been running
at half-speed under the Eisenhower Administration.
In the last six years, the report noted, there was "more unem-
ployment than usual in so-called good times." It added that "sharp
have cost us billions'^
recessions
of dollars of output and wide-
spread unemployment."
The attack on the Eisenhower
economic policies, filed by Demo-
cratic members, drew from the
Republican minority the retort that
the report was "needlessly parti-
san," "unbalanced and evasive" and
"inconsistent."
The majority, headed by Chair-
man Paul H. Douglas (D-I1L), is-
sued the 156-page report on jobs,
growth and prices after 10 months
of hearings.
The Douglas group bluntly
called for growth-fostering poli-
cies that would enable the econ-
omy to grow at a rate of about
4.5 percent over the next 15
years "in sharp contrast to the
rate of 2.3 percent of the last
6 years."
Had the nation's output since the
(Continued on Page 12)
short of the number required to
bring out the bill. These include
158 Democrats — virtually all of the
non-southern members of the party.
The Republicans, despite Eisen-
howers State of the Union plea for
civil rights legislation, are reported
to have mustered only 32 signa-
tures to date.
In other action on Capitol Hill:
• The Senate was set for early
debate on a $1 billion, two-year
school construction bill. Sen.
Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.) and 22
other northern liberals formally in-
troduced an amendment that would
remove the two-year limit, provide
for grants of $1.1 billion a year,
and permit schools to use federal
aid either for construction or for
teachers' salaries or both.
• By a vote of 59 to 22, the
Senate passed and sent to the
House the so-called "clean elec-
tions'' bill, first meaningful im-
provement of the Corrupt Prac-
tices Act in 35 years.
• The House opened hearings
on an emergency $1 billion hous-
ing bill designed to end the contin-
ued downturn in middle-income
housing starts which the AFL-CIO
(Continued on Page 11)
End of BRT
Color Bar
Wins Praise
Leaders in the nationwide fight
for civil rights have voiced high
praise of the 200,000-member
Railroad Trainmen for eliminat-
ing a racial discrimination clause
from the union's constitution.
They gave major credit to the
position taken by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany calling on unions
to wipe out the last pockets of dis-
crimination within the labor move-
ment.
The BRT's convention in Cleve-
land, in voting to strike out a 65-
year-old provision restricting mem-
bership to "white males," was ful-
filling a pledge which the union
made to the AFL-CIO convention
last September.
Here is what civil rights leaders
had to say on the BRT action, in
interviews over Radio Station
WL1B in New York:
• A. Philip Randolph, president
of the Sleeping Car Porters and an
AFL-CIO vice president, called the
action "timely, proper and sound,"'
and said the move was "largely due
to the firm stand" which Meany
took "in insisting that the Train-
men's convention go on record in
eliminating the color bar."
• Roy Wilkins, secretary of the
National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People, said
the constitutional change "affirms
the American principle of equal op-
portunity for all," and added that
Meany "deserves congratulations"
for his efforts "to secure the elim-
ination of restrictions based upon
(Continued on Page 4)
Some State
Bodies See
Mild Gains
By Dave Perlman
Labor faces its usual hard bat-
tle in the state capitals this year
to defeat a rash of sales tax pro-
posals and to win from rural-
dominated legislatures improve-
ments in unemployment and
workmen's compensation, mini-
mum wage protection and a
broad range of social legislation
advanced by State AFL-CIO
councils.
-in at least two states — Delaware
and Vermont — there is a substan-
tial threat of so-called "right-to-
work" laws.
Emergency measures to provide
jobs and food for long-term unem-
ployed hold the spotlight in de-
pression-plagued West Virginia.
In two New England states —
Massachusetts and Rhode Island-
legislation to block the importation
of professional strikebreakers is
high on labor's program.
An AFL-CIO News survey of
the 25 states whose legislatures
meet this year brought few pre-
dictions of sweeping gains from
state labor leaders. There are
expectations of moderate im-
provements in social programs,
coupled with fears that already
regressive tax policies "would be
worsened by adding or raising
sales taxes and other consumer
levies.
The number of legislative ses-
sions is an off-year record for the
nation, although about a third of
the legislatures — including Califor-
nia and Pennsylvania — are limited
this year to budget matters.
Here are some highlights:
ALASKA— Declaring that the
present unemployment compensa-
tion law has "failed to provide an
adequate cushion" for recessions,
(Continued on Page 12)
'Seizure' Law
Ruling Denied
By High Court
The Supreme Court has re-
fused to rule on an appeal from
Missouri labor attacking the va-
lidity of that state's King-Thomp-
son Act, which allows the gover-
nor to "seize" public utilities in
labor disputes and force the
workers back to work without a
contract.
In a 6 to 3 decision, the court
held that a 1956 "seizure" case,
under which workers had been en-
joined from striking, no longer pre-
sented a judicial issue since the
(Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO IVEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
COMMUNITY SUPPORT for a higher federal minimum wage, covering more workers, is demon-
strated at meeting sponsored by the Newburgh, N. Y., AFL-CIO. Left to right are: Orange County
Democratic Chairman John Stillman; Pres. Norman Zukowsky of the Pocketbook Workers; Mayor
William Ryan; Rev. William Burton, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church; Irving Astrow, manager
of Ladies' Garment Workers Local 165 and legislative chairman of the City AFL-CIO; State Sen.
Clinton Dominick (R) and Pres. Bob Hatfield of the Newburgh AFL-CIO.
Living Costs Dipped
Slightly in December
Living costs declined by one-tenth of 1 percent in December to
125.5 percent of the 1947-49 average, according to the Labor
Dept.'s monthly report.
It was the first decline, after three successive rises. Goods and
services which cost $1 in 1947-49 now cost nearly $1.26.
A total of 575,000 workers will'f
receive cost of living wage in-
creases even though the consumer
price index dropped slightly. This
is because of their position on the
index ladder and the total rise
across a period of months.
Some 330,000 workers in the
electrical equipment industry, in-
cluding General Electric and West
Coast aircraft firms, will get a 1-
cent an hour boost in a quarterly
adjustment. Some 230,000, mostly
in trucking, will get a hike of 2
cents in a semi-annual adjustment.
After a year of virtual stability,
the cost of living started an up-
ward trend in May 1959. As
the year ended, the 125.5 level
represented a jump of 1.5 per-
cent over December 1958.
However, because of the early
1959 stability, the 1959 annual av-
erage CPI amounted to 124.6, an
increase of 0.9 percent oyer the
1958 average.
The Labor Dept. described the
increase as the smallest annual rise
in the past four years and "well
below" most postwar years.
The slight drop in Decehiber
was attributed to end-of-season ap-
parel sales, seasonally lower prices
for meat and the discounting of
1959 cars as the new models
reached the market.
Prices for services continued to
Pamphlet Offered
On Public Libraries
Any union official who
thinks a public library is
merely a storehouse for dic-
tionaries and encyclopedias
can learn it's a lot more by
reading "Your Library Can
Serve Your Union," a new
pamphlet available from the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Educa-
tion.
The booklet is a reprint of
two articles which originally
appeared in the department's
publication, Education News
& Views. It outlines facili-
ties the usual library can of-
fer unions and the availabil-
ity of contract and bargaining
data and relates how five pub-
lic libraries prepared Labor
Day exhibits.
Single copies may be ob-
tained without charge from
the department at 815 Six-
teenth St., N.W., Washington
6, D.C.; 2 to 99 copies 5 cents
each: 100 or more copies 4
cents each.
climb, the report added.
A companion report showed that
the average buying power of fac-
tory workers increased more than
2.5 percent between November and
December as the economy "re-
bounded" from effects of the steel
strike.
The rise was credited to the
slight dip in consumer prices and
the boost in after-tax income.
The rise in earnings resulted
from longer workweeks and over-
time rates as various industries
attempted to make up for lost
time and it reflected the return
of high-wage steel and auto
workers, the department said.
The spendable earnings, after
deduction of federal income and
social security taxes, amounted to
an all-time high of $82 per week
for a factory worker with three de-
pendents and $74.43 for a worker
with no dependents.
Labor Protest
On L-G Report
Turned Down
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, re-
jecting an AFL-CIO objection, has
interpreted the Landrum-Griffin
Act as requiring the listing of non-
reimbursed expenses on union fi-
nancial reports.
The AFL-CIO had protested
that, if reports had to itemize ex-
penditures for hotels, air travel and
stamps — bills often paid directly
by unions through credit cards or
other arrangements — then the in-
terpretation would be so broad as
to be contrary to the law's language
and the intent of Congress.
The AFL-CIO also said it would
be unnecessary and burdensome.
Mitchell, in clarifying an earlier
interpretation, ruled that the law
requires the financial reports to
show disbursements made on be-
half of each officer or employe
through prepayment or credit cards
or other credit arrangements.
The breakdown of non-reim-
bursed expenditures for fiscal years
beginning prior to Jan. 1, 1960, he
said, is not required.
In a development related to the
Labor Dept.'s duties under the new
law, Mitchell announced the assign-
ment of a minimum of three com-
pliance officers in each of 22 cities
throughout the nation. The officers
are under the new Bureau of La-
bor-Management Reports.
Rep. Barden to
Retire at End
Of Session
Rep. Graham Barden (D-N. C),
chairman of the House Education
and Labor Committee and a power-
ful anti-labor, anti-school aid figure
for two decades, has announced an
"irrevocable" decision to retire from
Congress at the end of this session.
Slated to succeed him as com-
mittee chairman if the Democrats
retain control of the House in the
November election is Rep. Adam
Clayton Powell (D-N. Y.), second-
ranking to Barden under the sen-
iority system.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn
(D-Tex.) swiftly quelled specula-
tion that Powell might be by-
passed in regard to school bills
by "splitting" the committee into
separate units on education and
labor, with the New York con-
gressman assigned to labor. Pow-
ell has frequently sponsored civil
rights amendments to federal
school-aid measures. He would
be the second Negro in history
to head a House standing com-
mittee.
Barden, who is in his twenty-
sixth year in the House, said that
he desired to spend his time with
his family and friends in North
Carolina.
He helped block a school-aid
bill passed by the Senate a decade
ago and has long used committee
processes to slow action on other
education and minimum wage
measures. He helped defeat the
Kennedy-Ives bill of 1958 as "too
mild" and helped push through the
harsher^ Landrum-Griflin Act last
year.
Ike's Budget
Held Peril to
Poultry Law
The Meat Cutters have charged
that the Administration is failing
to make plans to carry out fully the
provisions of the Poultry Products
Inspection Act and has warned that
Pres. Eisenhower's "budget neurosis
will endanger consumer health pro-
tection."
Meat Cutters' Pres. Thomas J.
Lloyd and Sec.-Treas. Patrick E.
Gorman pointed out that the law
calls for inspection of poultry at
the time of slaughter and another
inspection "to guarantee against
spoilage and adulteration" if poul-
try is later processed into such prod-
ucts as chicken pies and soups.
The Eisenhower budget for fiscal
1961, the officers of the 375,000-
member union charged, asks ap-
propriations for inspection at the
time of slaughter, but does not pro-
vide money for inspection in fur-
ther processing.
25 Years of Progress :
Labor Gains Traced
In Economic Review
A quarter-century of progress through collective bargaining has
brought gains to workers, industry and the nation as a whole, but
it has failed to end the resistance of those who refuse to accept the
extension of democracy to the factory and shop.
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the National Labor Rela-
tions Act, the Research Dept. of^
the AFL-CIO has devoted an entire
issue of its monthly publication,
Labor's. Economic Review, to a
survey of "Collective Bargaining in
America."
There was, the Review points out,
collective bargaining before the pas-
sage of the Wagner Act in 1935.
But the dramatic growth in union
membership and effectiveness came
after Congress declared it to be "the
policy of the United States" to en-
courage collective bargaining — and
set up machinery to enforce this
policy.
Many employers and employ-
er groups stood on their claimed
prerogatives and denied the right
of unions to have any say about
working conditions, firing, lay-
offs or grievance procedures, the
publication notes.
Today there are proposals to
split up unions, ban industrywide
negotiations or interpose govern-
mental review of wage agree-
ments as a "third force" at the
bargaining table, it continues.
To refute these attacks — open
and veiled — on collective bargain-
ing, the .Research Dept. has traced
the changes in the living standard
and economic vitality of the nation
directly attributable to collective
bargaining.
Labor's Economic Review cites:
• Job and income security
through provisions such as seniority
rights in layoffs, negotiated health
insurance programs, supplemental
unemployment compensation and
pension plans. These union-won
gains have spurred constant im-
provements in social legislation.
• Greater leisure time through
vacations with pay — up to four
weeks in a growing number of
union contracts — and more holi-
days, in addition to reduction in
the work week.
• Stability in day-to-day
employe - management relations
through orderly procedures for set-
tling grievances without interrup-
tion of production.
• Stimulation of the economy
through increased purchasing pow-
er which has enabled workers to
buy the products of American in-
dustry.
• The spur to technological ad-
vances by managements seeking to
meet higher wage costs through
greater efficiency.
Tackling, one by one, the argu-
ments of those who seek to curtail
the effectiveness of unions at the
bargaining table, the research pub-
lication cites the-tremendous variety
of collective bargaining agreements
in the United States— 125,000 sep-
arate labor-management contracts.
Pacts Analyzed
The number of workers covered
by each contract, the decision as to
whether an agreement is to be local,
regional or national, the publication
points out, is largely determined by
the nature of the industry. "Larger
agreements are most prevalent in
those sections of American indus-
try where organization on the man-
age ment side has also developed
into large units," it says.
"Unions will oppose any effort
in peacetime to impose govern-
mental authority to negate the
results of wage settlements ar-
rived at through collective bar-
gaining," the AFL-CIO publica-
tion states.
Government's role, it emphasizes,
should be directed at making the
parties concerned more aware of
the relation between their individual
bargaining and the economy as a
whole.
Warning that "there is always
the temptation to invite govern-
ment tinkering in an effort to gain
some advantage," the Research
Dept. publication declares:
"Any such advantage, for labor,
for industry, or for other parts of
the economy, would be short-run or
illusory and would not be worth
the price paid in terms of values
lost as a result of curtailing the
fundamentally free and ^adaptable
bargaining process, no matter how
frustrating that process may seem
at times."
Shipbuilders Walk Out
At 8 Bethlehem Yards
New York — After working for nearly six months without a con-
tract, 17,000 members of the Shipbuilders have struck eight East
Coast shipyards of the Bethlehem Steel Co. in a battle to prevent
management from retaining harsh work-rule changes unilaterally im-
posed during negotiations.
The walkout which began atf^r
three yards on Jan. 22 spread six
days later to the other Bethlehem
installations. The shutdown affects
all of the company's shipbuilding
and repair operations from East
Boston, Mass., to Sparrows Point,
Md.
IUMSWA Pres. John J. Grogan
said the walkout, authorized by an
overwhelming vote of the member-
ship last July, came because of the
company's continued refusal to bar-
gain in good faith.
The National Labor Relations
Board has issued a formal com-
plaint against Bethlehem charg-
ing that the company's refusal to
discuss substantive contractual
matters and its withdrawal of
benefits provided in the old con-
tract constituted unfair labor
practices. A hearing will be held
here Feb. 8.
Bethlehem's one-sided rewriting
of long-established work rules oc-
curred last July 31— the date the
previous contract expired. The un-
ion charged these unilateral changes
deprive workers of their seniority
rights in layoffs and recall, permit
the company to make new work
assignments without regard to skill,
reduce wages, discontinue griev-
ance procedures, and '"make a
shambles" of contractual relations.
Before the company instituted
the work-rule changes, it turned
down a union offer to extend the
old contract without change pend-
ing negotiation of a new agreement.
Bethlehem also rejected a union
proposal that the matters in dispute
be submitted to arbitration.
The AFL-CIO convention in
San Francisco last September re-
affirmed labor's support of the
embattled Shipbuilders, and de-
clared that Bethlehem's unilater-
al contract changes imposed
"onerous terms of employment* 9
on the 17,000 workers.
The convention called on the
House Armed Services Committee
to conduct a fact finding investiga-
tion of the situation.
ACTUCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30. I960
Page Three
With Deepest Gratitude:
Steelworkers Defense Fund
To Return Contributions
All of the money contributed by rank-and-file unionists and union treasuries to the Steelworkers
Defense Fund will be repaid because of a decision by the USWA lo "absorb the entire cost of the
strike," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has announced.
In a letter to the officers of national and international unions, state and local central bodies, and
direcdy affiliated local unions, Meany said that the action of the USWA is "in keeping with the
tradition of the Steelworkers amf* ^ M ha<| ^ great ft ^^ir
the trade union movement."'
Meany expressed his gratitude
for the generous response to the
defense fund — created by the unan-
imous vote of the AFL-CIO Gen-
eral Board in September 1959.
Labor, he said, offered its fi-
nancial support of the then-em-
battled USWA "cheerfully and
with no thought of any return
except to win the battle in which
should give us all a deep sense
of satisfaction that the act of giv-
ing helped to make the gifts un-
necessary."
The federation president said
that funds channeled by affiliates
through the AFL-CIO will be re-
turned to the organizations, which
in turn will handle return of con-
tributions made by individuals.
Meany pointed out that the na-
L-G Act Used Against
Stork Club Strikers
New York— After three years of futile efforts to get management
of the Stork Club to bargain in good faith, 100 members of two
Hotel & Restaurant Employes locals face the threat that their
picketing of one of the gay haunts of cafe society may be halted by
the Landrum-Griffin Act.
The National Labor Relations
Board has asked U.S. District
Court here to issue an injunction
barring further picketing by mem-
bers of Dining Room Employes
Local 1 and Chefs, Cooks, Pastry
Cooks and Assistants Local 89.
The two unions struck the
swank night club Jan. 9, 1957
after owner Sherman Billingsley
refused to sign a contract giving
them equitable wages, the 40-
hour week and job security.
In seeking the injunction, NLRB
Gen. Counsel Stuart Rothman
charged that the two locals are
violating the Landrum-Griffin pro-
vision which bans recognition or
organizational picketing at the end
of a 30-day period, unless the un-
ion has petitioned the labor board
for an election.
The court heard arguments on
the injunction Jan. 25, and gave
both sides until Feb. 1 to file sup-
plementary briefs.
The injunction move is the latest
step in three years of legal maneu-
vering by Billingsley and his law-
yer, Roy M. Cohn — one-time close
associate of the late Sen. Joseph R.
McCarthy (R-Wis.)— that' has ef-
fectively denied the union recourse
to either the NLRB or the New
York State Labor Board.
When the strike began, the locals
filed charges with the SLRB ac-
cusing the Stork Club of a long
list of unfair labor practices. The
employer countered with a petition
that the board determine what bar-
gaining representatives, if any,
Stork Club employes preferred.
Six months of hearings followed,
during which the board piled up
nearly 2,000 pages of testimony.
SLRB Chairman Jay Kramer later
pointed out that Billingsley never
refuted union charges that he:
• Persistently refused to bar-
gain collectively.
• Unlawfully discharged five
employes because they "joined or
assisted Locals 89 and 1."
• "Interfered with, restrained
and coerced" employes.
• Offered wage increases as in-
ducements to discourage union
membership.
• "Threatened and warned"
employes he would not recognize
or bargain collectively with the
union.
• "Threatened employes with
economic reprisals" because of
their union activities.
• "Threatened to go out of
business" unless employes refrained
from joining the union.
• "Assaulted employes and au-
thorized, instigated or condoned
acts of violence toward them.**
Instead of addressing itself to
the union charges, the Stork Club,
which earlier had acknowledged
the state board's jurisdiction, sud-
denly shifted its position and con-
tended the SLRB had no authority.
Kramer said Billingsley's
change of position came only
after "any possible resort by the
unions to the NLRB" on all of
the unfair labor charges except
the continuing refusal to bargain
"was barred by the six-month
statute of limitations" in the
Taft-Hartley Act.
A trial examiner held hearings
which stretched out over another
year before upholding Billingsley's
contention that the NLRB had ju-
risdiction. The state board con-
curred in his finding and dismissed
the case, leaving the two locals
with no recourse to either state or
local authorities.
FilmNegotiatorsAgree
To Contract Extension
Hollywood — The threat of a shutdown of motion picture studios
producing films for theater showing was eased temporarily as the
Screen Actors Guild and eight major producers agreed to an
indefinite extension of contracts due to expire Jan. 31.
Meanwhile, SAG's board of directors voted unanimously to put
into motion machinery for a mail'^
ballot among its 14,000 members
that would authorize the calling of
a strike if contract talks fail to
achieve agreement.
The ballots will be accompanied
by a union "white paper" explain-
ing the issues involved in negotia-
tions with the Association of Mo-
tion Picture Producers which rep-
resents the big studios. Under the
SAG constitution, 75 percent of
those voting must favor a strike to
make any walkout authorization ef-
fective. Polling of the 14,000 mem-
bers is expected to take about three
weeks.
Key issue in the negotiations
is a union demand that actors
receive additional compensation
when theatrical films made after
Aug. 1, 1948 are sold to tele-
vision. The union is also seeking
an industrywide welfare and pen-
sion fund, paid for by employer
contributions of 5 percent of the
total actors' payroll.
tion's longest steel sUike ended in
"a historic victory for the Steel-
workers, who stood united in the
face of tremendous odds, and a
sweeping victory for the entire la-
bor movement over the most for-
midable attack launched against us
in years."
The 13.5 million members of the
AFL-CIO, Meany said, can be
proud of their role in the USWA
triumph, through their support of
the defense fund which was de-
signed to undergird the Steelwork-
ers' own efforts to keep strikers and
their families from feeling the full
economic effects of the long indus-
try-forced shutdown.
Demonstration of Solidarity
"Your generous response to this
unprecedented undertaking by the
AFL-CIO was a moving demon-
stration of the solidarity and vital-
ity of our cause," Meany wrote.
"It was an eloquent answer to
those cynics who disparage the
strength of the trade union spirit
and its place in the hearts of our
members, and I am sure this re-
sponse played an important psy-
chological part in the outcome."
The AFL-CIO president noted
that USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald had announced that the
Steelworkers are "able to and will
absorb the entire cost of the strike.
While expressing the deepest grati-
tude for the funds you contributed,
Pres. McDonald and his associates
feel that their own organization in
view of the settlement, can and
should make full repayment despite
the staggering costs to that union's
treasury."
More than $5 million had been
contributed to the Steelworkers'
cause, and another several million
dollars was in the pipelines at the
time of the steel settlement.
'Seizure' Law
Ruling Denied
By High Court
(Continued from Page 1)
strike was ended, the injunction
dissolved and new contracts had
been signed.
The effect is to leave labor in
states with utility "seizure" laws
lacking final guidance on wheth-
er such laws can be validly en-
forced against workers in similar
cases.
The court minority argued that
the King - Thompson Act should
have been declared invalid as in
conflict with federal labor law.
Justice Hugo L. Black, for the dis-
senters, pointed out that in a com-
panion case the strikers were still
liable to fines and loss of seniority
for striking after the governor
"seized" the Missouri utility.
Later Review 'Possible*
The majority in an opinion *by
Judge Potter Stewart held that the
case was moot because it presented
"no actual matters in controversy."
If the strikers were later subjected
to fines and other punishment un-
der the case, he said, they could
seek federal court review at the
time.
The Supreme Court years ago
upset a Wisconsin law prohibiting
strikes in public utilities. The King-
Thompson Act adds a new element,
however, in that it purports to place
utility strikers in the position of
"state employes" after a "seizure."
The Taft-Hartley Act specifically
disclaims any protection of strikes
by public employes.
WINDUP OF THE STEEL STRIKE comes as "last-offer" ballots,
in which members of Steelworkers rejected contract offer of Pitts-
burgh Steel Co. by a 2-1 vote, are counted by National Labor
Relations Board workers at Pittsburgh regional office. Following
overwhelming rejection, company and union agreed to extension
of contract pending negotiations to avert new walkout by 6,000
USWA members.
Steel Gains Extended
To White Collar Staffs
The Steelworkers have signed contracts with the nation's major
steel producers giving office and technical workers pay increases and
other benefits equal to those won earlier in a master pact nego-
tiated for 500,000 production and maintenance workers.
The new 30-month agreements with the "Big Eleven" give sal-
aried workers a minimum biweekly^
general increase of $5.60 plus an in-
crement of 40 cents for each job
classification on Dec. 1. 1960, and
again on Oct. 1, 1961.
Same as 7c Hike
A USWA spokesman said this
was the same as the 7-cent hourly
increases, plus job increments,
which production workers will re-
ceive on those dates, "translated
into salary rather than hourly wage
terms."
All other terms of the master
settlement ending the longest
steel dispute in history were in-
cluded in the contracts for sal-
aried workers, including pension
and Supplemental Unemploy-
ment Benefit improvements,
company-paid life insurance and
improved hospital and medical
benefits.
Meanwhile, the USWA was nego-
tiating with a few smaller steel mak-
ers who still have not reached
agreement with local bargaining
teams. Holding up signings, the
union said, were various local, non-
economic issues.
The National Labor Relations
Board, operating under the Taft-
Hartley injunction which was dis-
solved Jan. 26 by Federal Judge
Herbert P. Sorg in Pittsburgh, con-
ducted routine "last offer" balloting
among 14,000 USWA members at
seven steel firms.
In the balloting, the steel workers
voted by a better than two-to-one
majority to reject the so-called "fi-
nal offers." Most of the smaller
firms which had not yet signed for-
mally withdrew these offers, making
NLRB voting at those plants un-
necessary.
Following rejection of the of-
fers, the USWA agreed to a con-
tract extension with Pittsburgh
Steel Co. for its plants at Mones-
son and Allensport, Pa., Worces-
ter, Mass., Los Angeles, Calif,
and Akron and Warren, O. The
company is the largest of the
holdout firms.
Wildcat strikes broke out at two
other firms which still had not
signed — McLouth Steel Co. in De-
troit and Acme Steel Co. in Chi-
cago. The Acme walkout ended
24 hours later when USWA offi-
cials ordered the men back to the
plant in order not to prejudice ne-
gotiations. As the AFL-CIO News
went to press, efforts were being
made by the union to end the Mc-
Louth work stoppage.
Cost-of-Living Ordered
Before dissolving the injunction,
Sorg ruled that firms which have
not reached agreement with the
USWA must pay workers a 4-cent
hourly cost-of-living hike which be-
came effective Jan. 1 under the old
agreements the court ruled re-
mained in effect during the injunc-
tion period.
IUE Offers
$300,000 for
Defense Plan
The Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers have offered $300,000 as
a start toward a union defense fund
for aid to participating unions in
"nationally significant" strikes.
The proposal, announced at a
news conference by IUE Pres.
James B. Carey, was approved by
the union's executive board at a
meeting in Washington. The total
would be made up of $100,000
from the IUE defense fund and
$200,000, subject to approval by
contributors, donated previously by
IUE locals and staff to the Steel-
workers. The latter money is
scheduled to be returned by the
USWA.
The IUE suggested that the pro-
posed defense fund be administered
by a committee of the AFL-CIO
and the federation's Industrial Un-
ion Dept. Carey said that the pro-
posal included replenishment of the
fund on the basis of $1 per mem-
ber per year for participating
unions.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
TWO LABOR VETERANS were honored at the annual award luncheon of the New York chapter
of the League for Industrial Democracy — Joseph Schlossberg (left), secretary-treasurer-emeritus of
the Clothing Workers, and Mark Starr (center), education director of the Ladies' Garment Workers.
Shown with them are ACW Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky (second from left); Pres Harry W. Laidler of
the New York LID chapter, and ILGWU Sec.-Treas. Louis Stulberg (right).
Union Election Victories Turned
Into Paper Triumphs by NLRB
The National Labor Relations Board has converted two hard-won union representation victories
into paper triumphs.
There were split opinions on key points in the cases and, in one, the minority commented the union
in effect was being punished for its victory.
One case involved Building Service Employes Local 245 and the Brown-Dunkin Department Store
in Tulsa, Okla.
The union in 1957 won an elec-
tion to represent the store's porters,
maids and elevator operators. The
store immediately fired the work-
ers and farmed out the services to
a private firm which employed the
old employes at higher pay but ig-
nored the union.
The board unanimously found
the company guilty of an unfair
labor practice on grounds it hired
out the services to avoid bargain-
ing. Ordinarily, the NLRB would
order the employer to reinstate the
workers and bargain with thei* un-
ion.
But in Brown-Dunkin, a three-
member majority of Chairman
Boyd Leedom and Members
Philip Ray Rodgers and Stephen
Bean said the workers had
gained higher wages through the
change of firms.
The majority said that, in the
workers' interest, it would order
Brown-Dunkin to resume its old
service and bargain with the union
only if a majority of employes ac-
cepted reinstatement.
Air Line Pilots Blame
Crashes on U.S. Apathy
Inadequate airports, lack of modern navigation aids and a bureau-
cratic-minded regulatory agency have been cited as major safety
hazards by Pres. C. N. Sayen of the Air Line Pilots in testimony
before a Senate subcommittee.
Sayen told the aviation subcommittee, headed by Sen. A. S. Mike
Monroney (D-Okla.) that the "desk-*
bound" Federal Aviation Agency
had "failed to come to grips with
basic air safety problems."
The Senate hearings came
against a backdrop of airline
crashes which moved the issue
of air safety into the national
spotlight. The subcommittee also
plans early hearings on problems
of air traffic control and on the
controversial FAA rule seeking
to force pilots to retire at age 60.
The Air Line Pilots, in addition
to asking Congress to block the age
restriction, have filed a suit chal-
lenging the rule in U.S. district
court in southern New York.
Flanked by 10 veteran pilots,
Sayen declared:
"In our opinion, no single cate-
gory of preventable accidents has
caused so much loss of life, injury,
delay and substandard air service
as the continued lack of known
landing aids and airport safety
standards."
Over-legalistic interpretations of
rules by the Federal Aviatibn Agen-
cy and the use of inexperienced in-
spectors to enforce these rules, Say-
en declared, "only prove that you
can be killed legally."
Sayen cited the case of an ex-
perienced pilot who, he told the
subcommittee, was "grounded
for refusing to crackup."
At a critical point during the
takeoff of a jet plane loaded with
125 passengers, there was an en-
gine failure.
'^'Employing sound judgment,"
Sayen added, "the pilot elected to
continue his takeoff, successfully
did so, and the engine was restarted
in the air. In our opinion, had he
elected to discontinue the takeoff
and attempt to stop on the runway
in question, the aircraft and its oc-
cupants would probably have been
destroyed."
The scheduled flight was success-
fully completed. Nevertheless, an
FAA agent flying his first check
flight on that type of aircraft, Sayen
related, ordered the pilot grounded,
and intervention by both the union
and the airline was needed to get
the order rescinded.
Sayen reminded the subcommit-
tee that after a series of air disas-
ters in 1952, former Pres. Harry S.
Truman had appointed a board
headed by James H. Doolittle which
came up with specific proposals for
airport building and safety facilities.
"Unfortunately," he added, "little
attention has been paid to many
of the recommendations to correct
hazards existing eight years ago."
Sayen called for "a major effort
to improve airport and terminal fa-
cilities without delay."
He called for improved naviga-
tion, communication, traffic separa-
tion, visual and landing aids such
as approach and runway lighting
in the airport area as well as longer
runways, improved fire-fighting fa-
cilities and proper zoning in the
neighborhoods adjacent to the air-
ports.
The majority argued this was
preferable to "giving the union the
power to forego such benefits and
accept the detriment of lower
wages upon returning to the em-
ploy" of Brown-Dunkin.
The minority of Joseph A.
Jenkins and John H. Fanning
sharply disagreed. They pointed
out the company was clearly guilty
of avoiding its statutory obligations
and yet the union in effect was
being punished by having to re-
establish its majority.
The second case involved the
Molders' Union and Barbers Iron
Foundry in Bridgeton, N. J.
The Molders won an election
at the plant on Nov. 13, 1957,
and were certified Nov. 21. The
owners retaliated with a "tem-
porary" lockout from Nov. 21
to Nov. 25 and permanently
shut down the plant Nov. 27.
The board unanimously decided
the "temporary" lockout was il-
legal and ordered back pay for the
four days. On the permanent shut-
down the board split on the law
and the remedy.
Leedom and Bean called the sec-
ond shutdown also illegal but re-
fused back pay.
They reasoned that the workers
could not have earned any wages
after the shutdown, so are not en-
titled to reimbursement. Rodgers
said nothing in Taft-Hartley limits
the employer's right to go out of
business whenever and however he
chooses and agreed on no back
pay.
Jenkins and Fanning agreed that
both the temporary lockout and the
permanent shutdown were illegal
and the workers should be reim-
bursed.
They argued that since the op-
erating partner of the plant died
about seven months after the shut-
down, and it is conceded the plant
would not have continued after his
death, workers should have been
awarded back pay limited to that
period.
The order ruling out back pay
after the shutdown dismissed the
proposal of NLRB Gen. Counsel
Stuart Rothman that a remedy be
fashioned to provide back pay for
a fixed period or indefinitely until
workers obtained "substantially
equivalent employment elsewhere."
A majority, excluding only
Rodgers, then agreed that if the
plant is ever reopened, the em-
ployer must bargain with the un-
ion and set up a preferential hiring
list for the unfairly fired workers.
'You Have Strengthened Many:
Randolph Honored
On 70th Birthday
New York — Political leaders from both major parties and officials
of organized labor joined with 3,000 persons who jammed Carnegie
Hall here in paying tribute to AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A. Philip Ran-
dolph, president of the Sleeping Car Porters, on his 70th birthday.
New York police estimated that an additional 3,000 people had
to be turned away from the cere-^
monies honoring the veteran labor
leader and civil rights fighter.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
in a telegram of congratulations,
said Randolph has been "a cham-
pion of the cause of civil rights and
has won ior himself a reputation
for sincerity and effectiveness."
No better birthday gift for
Randolph "could be imagined,"
Meany's wire continued, "than
Victory in this year's battle on
Capitol Hill for an effective, en-
forceable and meaningful civil
rights bill. That's the goal of
the AFL-CIO."
Pres. Eisenhower also sent a mes-
sage in which he praised Randolph
"because over the years, inspired
by the highest ideals of American
democracy, you have strengthened
the lives of many."
"Our progress has been especially
good in recent years, but there is
more to do," Eisenhower's message
continued. "In this great unfin-
ished business your spirit and abili-
ty provide a major resource to your
fellow men."
Among the speakers at the birth-
day celebration were Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt, widow of the late Pres.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and herself
a fighter in the civil rights field;
Senators Hubert H. Humphrey (D-
Minn.) and Jacob K. Javits (R-
N. Y.); former Gov. Averell Harri-
man (D-N. Y.); Rep. Adam Clay-
ton Powell (D-N. Y.); Roy Wilkins,
secretary of the National Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Col-
ored People; and Socialist leader
Norman Thomas.
In his address, Randolph an-
nounced that he would call for a
march on the Republican and Dem-
ocratic national conventions this
year to present "concrete demands
and just grievances of the Negro
people."
"Such a project, the first of its
kind in American political his-
tory," he said, "will mobilize the
power and resistance within the
people and will demonstrate that
the Negro is aware that he holds
the balance of power in many key
states.**
. Javits said that, to be "effective,**
civil rights legislation must give the
Attorney-General the right to sue
in the courts to enforce desegrega-
tion in the public schools. He said
a minimum bill must also establish
federal registrars to ensure the
right of Negroes to vote in south-
ern states, and must include anti-
lynching and anti-poll tax protec-
tions.
Humphrey called for "no com-
promise, no sell-out, no retreat —
full speed ahead" in the battle to
insure equal justice.
Powell, who will be chairman of
the House Labor and Education
Committee in 1961 if the next Con-
gress is controlled by the Demo-
crats, charged that discriminatory
practices still exist in some unions
with the result that Negroes are
barred from membership.
Civil Rights Leaders Hail
End of Trainmen's Bar
(Continued from Page 1)
race from the organized labor
movement. "
• Lester Granger, director of
the National Urban League, said
the BRT decision was "a step for-
ward for the union" and a "heart-
ening example" of the responsible
leadership given by Meany.
Randolph, a leader in labor's
long fight for civil rights and a
key figure in the San Francisco
convention debate on the issue
of discrimination within the trade
union movement, said the BRT
had taken a "very encouraging
step ... in meeting this issue
squarely and forthrightly."
Randolph declared that the BRT
move "will no doubt stimulate
comparable action on the part of
the Firemen and Enginemen. This
union has a color bar also." He
expressed the hope that the Train-
men's constitutional move "will, no
doubt, have some effect in develop-
ing a breakthrough on this whole
question of discrimination and seg-
regation in the organized labor
movement."
Wilkins said the BRT's decision
to remove the word "white" from
its constitution "will open a way
to union membership by qualified
workers, irrespective of race."
The NAACP, he said, has sent
a telegram of congratulations to
BRT Pres. W. P. Kennedy "in
which we expressed the hope
that its action would stimulate
other railroad brotherhoods to
take similar action."
Wilkins said "it is to be hoped
that additional effects of Meany's
persistence" in fighting race restric-
tions within the labor movement
"will appear in connection with the
action of other powerful unions in
the future."
Granger called the BRT move a
victory for Randolph in his 25-
year-fight for racial equality, but
cautioned that the Trainmen's ac-
tion "by itself does not change any-
thing ... it sets the stage for a
change.**
He* called it a "fulfillment of
a pledge 9 ' which Meany made to
the Urban League's Equal Op-
portunity Day dinner last fall,
and added "we are heartened by
the development."
Commenting on possible futur*
effects, Granger expressed the hope
that "other barriers" which exist
in the "everyday practice levels" of
local unions also will come down.
He said he referred to the need for
support of Negro trainmen seeking
promotions.
Trainmen
Set to Pick
Top Officers
Cleveland — The 1,100 delegates
to the 61st convention of the Rail-
road Trainmen completed the job
of rewriting their constitution and
were prepared to hear reports of
committees and grand lodge officers
before their elections.
A contest was in sight with Pres.
W. P. Kennedy seeking reelection,
opposed by Sec.-Treas. William J.
Weil/ Should Kennedy be elected,
he will retire in two years under
earlier convention action.
The assistant to the president,
vice president and secretary-treas-
urer also will be elected.
Weil announced his candidacy
Jan. 25 at a dinner given in his
honor by California delegates.
AFLrClO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
Page Fiy
1960 Fact Sheet on Congress— No. 2:
Schools' Plight Grows as Congre;
Ike Blows Hot, Cold,
Tepid on Federal Aid
S
ags
By John Beidler
For more than a decade congressional liberals, teachers, the
labor movement and other groups have sought a broad program
of federal aid to education. For more than a decade their intensive
efforts have been frustrated.
The reason federal aid is necessary is quite simple: the states
and local school districts cannot do the job.
In the 13 years since World War II, public school enrollment
increased by nearly 50 percent. At the same time that this burden
was being put on public school systems, costs of new construction
also increased substantially.
The states and local school dis-^
tricts have made heroic efforts to
keep up with these new demands.
They have built new classrooms at
a greater rate than ever before in
history.
While doing so, however, local
and state debt in the last 10 years
has increased by nearly 200 per-
cent. Many localities have reached
their legal debt limit and can bor-
row no more for needed new
schools.
The existing classroom short-
age today has been estimated at
132,400. The only way any sub-
stantial progress can be made in
reducing it is through federal
aid.
At the same time that the burst-
ing school population has strained
local treasuries for new classroom
space and additional teachers, rapid
scientific advances and technologi-
cal change have increased the need
for a higher quality of education.
The Soviet guided missile and
satellite program has proven that
there is serious competition between
the American and Soviet education-
al systems, and that our freedom
depends upon good schools.
Underpaid Teachers
To improve the quality of Amer-
ican education means that we must
acquire and keep good teachers.
Unfortunately, we do not pay
our teachers well. Average wages
for all teachers in the United States,
including those who have worked
for many years, is only $4,800 per
year.
Such wages are substantially low-
er than those in most other occupa-
tions requiring a college education.
Clearly, present wage scales provide
little incentive for competent per-
sons to enter the profession.
Every year, many of the best-
qualified teachers leave for better-
paying jobs in other fields. Teach-
ers' salaries should be substantially
increased. But as the states and
localities cannot erase the classroom
shortage, so also are they unable to
raise teachers' salaries to an ade-
quate level.
Only the federal government,
with its broad taxing powers, can
do the job.
The primary argument presented
Get the Facts
On Key Issues
The AFL-CIO News is
publishing on this page the
second of a new series of
Fact Sheets on Congress pro-
viding background informa-
tion on basic issues coming
before the second session of
the 86th Congress.
The series, prepared by
John Beidier of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation, is
designed to give the legisla-
tive history of the issue, the
various forces involved pro
and con and the general na-
ture of bills introduced.
Reprints of the fact sheet
series will be available from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legis-
lation, 815 16th Street N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C.
by opponents to federal aid to edu-
cation is that federal aid will result
in federal control. They say that
when federal money goes into local
school districts, it will be closely
followed by federal regulations on
teaching standards, textbooks and
other aspects of the public school
system.
There is no substance to this
argument.
For more than 10 years the
federal government has made
money grants to hundreds of
school districts throughout the
nation whose problems have been
increased greatly by federal ac-
tivities — air bases, army camps,
etc.
Although these funds have
been used for every kind of
school activity, including pur-
chase of textbooks and teachers'
salaries, at no time has anyone
been able to show any element
of federal control whatsoever.
The real basis for opposition to
federal aid to education is not the
threat of federal control, but the
fact that the federal program would
cost businesses and higher-income
groups more than state and local
school programs.
The federal government imposes
taxes, primarily, according to abil-
ity to pay. State and local taxes,
however, are heavier on low-income
groups than on higher-income
groups and businesses.
The first. post-war attempt to pass
federal aid legislation brought sup-
port from widely divergent points
of view. In both 1948 and 1949,
when the Senate passed aid bills by
overwhelming margins, the drive
was sparked by liberal Senators
James E. Murray (D-Mont.) and
Lister Hill (D-Ala.), southern con-
servative Sen. Allen G. Ellender
(D-La.) and the Senates "Mr. Re-
publican,"' the late Robert A. Taft
(R-O.).
Never Reached Floor
In neither year, however, did the
legislation reach the floor of the
House.
Under the Eisenhower Adminis-
trations, the American public has
been treated to some amazing zig-
zags in legislative policy on the
education issue.
The first Eisenhower proposal
came in 1955, when the Presi-
dent urged Congress to pass a
bill which would have given
about $65 million in grants. The
measure also called for federal
aid to support the sale of bonds
by local school districts.
The latter provision was im-
mediately tagged a "bankers'
bill," because banks would have
benefitted most.
Democrats in Congress in 1956
brought to the House floor an alter-
native proposal. It called for $1.6
billion in grants. The pressure for
school aid increased to the point
where the Administration junked
its 195^ program and advocated a
$4.25 billion grant program spread
over five years.
Opponents of federal aid em-
ployed a cynical maneuver to de-
feat the Democratic bill in 1956.
Ren. Adam Clayton Powell (D-
N. Y.) offered an ameadtafcnt to
AFL-CfO NEWS
'Nope, We Can't Afford It'
bar aid to racially segregated
schools, which was adopted.
When the vote came on the bill
itself, united southern opposition
was assured. The bill was defeated,
225 to 194. Ninety-six Republicans
who had voted for the Powell
amendment voted to kill the bill
itself.
In 1957, the fight was renewed.
Democrats called for a $3.6 billion,
six-year program of grants for
school construction. The Adminis-
tration wanted a $1.3 billion, four-
year program.
But before the bill was reported
to the House floor, the Democrats
made a substantial compromise. In
committee, it was cut to $1.5 billion
over five years.
Opponents of the measure
moved to kill it in the same way
as the year before. A New York
Republican, Rep. Stuyvesant
Wainright, who had voted
against the 1956 bill and was to
vote to kill the 1957 measure,
offered a Powell-type amend-
ment. It was adopted.
Faced with a certain repeat of
their 1956 defeat, the liberal
Democrats hastily agreed to drop
their compromise bill and to sup-
port the President's bill, word for
word.
Before they could act, how-
ever, the House Republican lead-
er conferred briefly with the
leader of the conservative south-
ern Democrats. The latter rose
and moved to strike the enact-
ing clause from the bill, a move
to kill it.
The motion carried*, 208 to
203, and the bill was dead.
Throughout the House debate,
backers of school aid had waited
in vain for some support from the
President. It was not forthcoming.
Had he really wanted a school bill,
Pres. Eisenhower would have had
to change only three of the 111
Republican votes against the bill.
He had made no effort to do so.
In 1959, the President junked
his prior requests for a federal grant
program and returned to the basic
proposals of his 1955 bill: aid to
school districts in issuing bonds for
school construction.
The proposal met with congres-
sional opposition. The bill did
nothing, the liberals said, to meet
the basic problem: no money.
Two Democratic Bills
Two. Democratic bills did receive
widespread support. The first, S.
2 and H. R. 22, was introduced by
Murray and Rep. Lee Metcalf
(D-Mont.). As introduced, the
Murray-Metcalf bill would have es-
tablished a permanent program of
federal aid to education.
In the first year, the bill would
have authorized grants of $25 per
school-age child or about $1.1 bil-
lion. This would have been in-
creased annually until the fourth
year, when the outlay would have
been $100 per child annually, or
about $4.4 billion, and would have
continued at this level thereafter.
Under the Murray-Metcalf bill,
the grants could be used for school
construction or for teachers' salaries
or both.
The General Education subcom-
mittee of the House Education and
Labor Committee held hearings
early in 1959 on the various pro-
posals. Strong AFL-CIO support
was given to the Murray-Metcalf
bill.
Subsequently, the subcommittee
and the full committee favorably
reported a cut-down version of the
Murray-Metcalf bill.
To date, the conservative south-
ern-Republican coalition on the
Rules Committee has prevented fur-
ther action.
On the Senate side, hearings
were held by the Education sub-
committee of the Committee on
Labor and Public Welfare from
Feb. 4 until Apr. 15, but further
action was delayed until late in
the session.
Finally, on Sept. 12, the full
committee reported S. 8, a bill orig-
inally introduced by Sen. Pat Mc-
Namara (D-Mich.). The McNa-
mara bill authorizes grants of $500
million for each of two years. The
grants could be used only for
school construction.
The Senate plans to consider S. 8
as an early order of business.
House action, even in the unlikely
event that the Rules Committee
should report H. R. 22, will prob-
ably wait upon Senate action.
Major Provisions
Of Education Bills
These are the contents of two major bills:
S. 8, as reported from committee, authorizes:
• $500 million in matching grants to the states for school
construction only.
• Use of grants limited to school construction.
• Grants equalling from one-third to two-thirds of the cost
of the school, depending on the state's income per child.
H.R. 22, the AFL-CIO-supported Murray-Metcalf bill as
revised and reported from committee in the House, provides:
• $1.1 billion in grants for each of four years.
• Use of grants for either school construction or teachers 9
salaries.
• Reduction in grants for a state during the last two years
of the program if its "school effort index-' fell below the na-
tional average.
Pagr Six
AFT -CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
A Program of Retreat
HPHE EISENHOWER Administration's answer to the complex of
problems facing America as it enters the 1960s is a budget
surplus, a tight-money policy and a negative, don't-rock-the-boat
type of budget.
if we raise gasoline taxes and postal rates and spend our pennies
wisely, says the Administration, we'll have "peace and prosperity"
forevermore.
The Soviet challenge to our leadership of the free world is an
overrated threat, says the Administration's defense budget. There's
no need to improve the nation's defense posture — what was spent
last year is good enough.
It would be^ nice to have some economic growth, says the
Economic Report, but inflation is still the villain, and the big
job is to keep the dollar sound for those who haven't enough
dollars to maintain an American standard of living.
Stand pat, keep an eye on the cost of money, don't worry about
schools or housing, health care for the aged, or the 5 percent rate
of unemployment and everything will turn out for the best.
This is the Administration program for America for the next
year, a shallow program based on a complacency that could lead
to a second-rate nation.
The underlying theme of the Administration's program is that
the nation cannot afford a well-rounded, modern and comprehen-
sive national security program; that we cannot afford public service
and welfare programs geared to the needs of a growing nation.
The facts belie this. Government programs designed to meet
America's needs are accurately measured not in total dollars
but in terms of their relationship to the total value of all goods
and services produced in the nation — the gross national product.
In the past seven years the federal budget has averaged about
20 percent of this total. The President's latest budget cuts this to
18 percent.
America not only can afford to meet its needs, it cannot afford
not to meet them. To stand pat at this moment in history is to go
backward, to weaken our leadership of the free world and to expose
the nation to the possibility of serious economic ills.
Plugging the Loopholes
FOR THE FIRST TIME in 35 years Congress is giving serious
consideration to plugging the loopholes in the nation's election
l aws — loopholes that allow millions of dollars spent to win a major
office to go unreported.
Since 1925 all manner of schemes have been concocted and
techniques perfected to avoid. the Corrupt Practices Act because
of the unrealistic spending limits set by that act and because many
big campaign contributors are anxious to disguise or hide the size
and extent of their political operations.
The bill passed by the Senate moves toward correcting some '
of these practices. It requires more thorough and detailed re-
porting from all campaign sources; it raises contribution limits
in line wfth today's cost of campaigning; and it extends the
reporting requirement to primary elections.
There are indications that the House of Representatives is not
favorably disposed toward the Senate-passed measure despite a
$10,000 boost in the spending ceiling for a House candidate from
$2,500 to $12,500.
The Senate-passed bill is an honest attempt to plug the loop-
holes in current election laws and to provide the voters with essen-
tial information. The House has a basic responsibility — to take
up and pass the bill and send it to the White House.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey Wm. C. Doherty
Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge -Joseph Curran
A. J. Hayes Joseph D. Keenan
Jacob S. Potofsky A. Philip Randolph
Lee W. Minton Joseph A. Beirne
O. A. Knight Karl F. Feller
Peter T. Schoemann
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffrage
Paul L Phillips
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee; George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
Ad. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor; Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, January 30, 1960
No. 5
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Try the 'Economy Size'
AFL-CIO Position Defended:
Labor's Refusal To Swap Visits
With Soviets Based on Morality
The following is excerpted from an article ap-
pearing in the Jan. 18 issue of the New Leader
by Arnold Beichman entitled ' U.S.-USSR Labor
Exchange?"
DURING THE LAST WAR, two Polish Jewish
Socialists were executed by Stalin on the
charge that they were Nazi spies. They were
Henryk Ehrlich and Victor Alter. To his ever-
lasting honor, David Dubinsky, president of the
Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, announced he
was calling a protest meeting at Carnegie Hall and
that he expected everybody to be there. It is no
secret that there was fantastic official high-level
pressure brought to bear on Dubinsky to call off
the meeting.. Russia was our ally; it was engaged
in a death-struggle with Germany; it was bad
propaganda for - "our" side. Dubinsky let it be
known that if he were the only one in attendance^
he'd be in Carnegie Hall to cry murder.
It turned out that there was quite an audience
to protest this example of Stalinist brutality.
There was a government policy, fully supported
by the labor movement, to stand with Russia
in prosecuting the war. But the policy was
nugatory as far as the moral obligations of the
labor movement itself was concerned — to speak
out against flagrant injustice.
Today, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
been castigated for fulfilling the very same moral
obligations in a new context. Thus, in an editorial
on Dec. 23, the influential Washington Post wrote
that "George Meany is taking a benighted atti-
tude toward the cultural exchange program be-
tween the United States and the Soviet Union."
(Webster's defines "benighted" as "involved in or
due to moral darkness or ignorance.") The reason
for this' contumelious characterization is that a
few weeks ago Meany attacked a State Dept.
cultural agreement with the Soviet Union which
pledged that:.
"Both parties will encourage exchanges as may
be agreed between them of delegations represent-
ing organizations devoted to friendship and cul-
tural ties, labor, trade union, youth and other
non-governmental organizations in the Soviet Un-
ion and the United States for the purpose of ex-
changing experience and knowledge of the cul-
tural and social life of both countries, it being
recognized that the decision to carry out such
exchanges remains a concern of the organizations
themselves."*
Unofficial assurances were given to Meany
while he was in Brussels attending the world con-
gress of the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions that he needn't worry that any pressure
would be imposed upon him or the AFL-CIO to
exchange labor delegations with the Soviet Union
— which, everybody felt, was quite decent of the
State Dept.
WHEN MEANY RETURNED to the U.S., he
attacked the agreement, describing it as "a fraud
on the American people." He challenged the State
Dept. to say why it had yielded to "Soviet pres-
sure" by including trade unions in the agreement
when the Administration knows, he said, "there
are no trade unions in Russia."
The Washington Post argued that if Meany's
no-exchange policy were carried to its logical con-
clusion, "there would be no contact with the USSR
and the dangers of a nuclear explosion would be
correspondingly increased." Meany has on in-
numerable occasions said he favors summit meet-
ings and, in his most recent statement, said
that "government-to-government exchanges are
possible."
It is a fairly shocking concept that liberalism
or progressivism is now to be tested by how
one stands on cultural exchanges. To oppose
trade union exchanges is to be reactionary; to
favor them is to be forward-looking. I cannot
conceive that the Washington Post would de-
nounce Meany for spurning invitations of this
kind from Franco Spain, something he and
"forw ard-looking men of labor" did a year ago.
George Meany is a special case. Were he to
go to Moscow, he would carry with him the mace
of some moral authority, some specific organiza-
tional responsibility. He is spokesman for free
trade unionism, which is necessarily detached
from the vagaries and essential amoralities of a
nation's foreign policy. British Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan and Labor party leader Hugh
Gaitskell can go to see Premier Khrushchev, but
it would astonish me if Sir Vincent Tewson, gen-
eral secretary of the British Trades Union Con-
gress, did.
Was David Dubinsky benighted in 1943, was
he looking'backward when he assembled the ranks
in memory of Ehrlich and Alter? Or was he
serving the cause of freedom? Is George Meany
looking backward when he refuses to consider
trade union exchanges with the men who still hold
Hungary captive, who call Hungary a "dead rat"
in the throat of the democracies?
AFl.aO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D, C, SAM Kim . JAM MS Y .".().
Page Sevea
Vandercook Says:
Ike Prescribes a Tranquilizer
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of John W. Vandercook, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen
to Vandercook over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 10 p. m. f EST.)
AS IS THE CUSTOM, the President has sent
to Congress, on the heels of his four-pound
budget message, a lengthy statement of the pres-
ent — and probable future
— state of the American
economy.
All — we are assured —
is pretty much right with
the world. Although our
defenses, particularly our
guided missiles, may be
somewhat inferior to the
war machine of Russia, we
mustn't let that worry us.
We'll all — forever (if the
President and his advisers
are to be believed) — get richer and richer.
This businessmen's Administration also makes
it clear to us, in those two impressive reports, in
what particulars Pres. Eisenhower expects to be
richer.
He thinks that if our luck holds and we all
behave as he would like us to behave, American
families will be able to buy more and more
things. We will be able, those documents indicate,
to buy even more television sets, more mechanical
Morgan Says:
Vandercook
goodies for our kitchens, more and bigger cars.
It is made quite plain in the budget message
that we cannot expect to be any richer in our
education.
We are not — as a nation, the Eisenhower
budget assures us — to be richer in such funda-
mentals of human lite as housing. In the Presi-
dent's budget message there is no recommendation
for public housing projects.
If the vast, stinking slums which make so many
of our great cities ever more hideous — and dan-
gerous — are to be cleared and replaced with
decent dwellings then, so. far as this Administra-
tion's plans are concerned, that huge task must
be accomplished by the cities themselves.
OUR GR0SS NATIONAL PRODUCT, as the
statisticians call it, will probably go up. The* costs
of government are also going up. But — and this
seems to many a fact of great significance — gov-
ernment disbursements are not going up in the
same proportion as our national income and our
national productive capacity, or, indeed as our
population, are going up.
The Administration is, in fact, going to try —
proportionately — to diminish the services we have
learned to expect.
The President and his party still seem to envi-
sion an ideal society as one in which the fortunate
should be privileged to grow ever more fortunate,
while the less fortunate should be left to their
own inadequate devices.
Secrecy Blurs Public Issues
(This column is excerpted from tlie nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC com-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to
Morgan over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
HP HE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS and the
Eisenhower Administration are locked in a
bitter battle over the issue of our national mili-
tary effectiveness. Some
of the facts have to be
shielded for security rea-
sons but nothing will con-
tribute more to insecurity
than misinformation on
this matter. The Demo-
cratic charge that the Ad-
ministration is not reveal-
ing a true picture of our
military strength relative
to the Soviet Union's gives
Morgan new point to a long strug-
gle over governmental secrecy.
For years two congressional subcommittees,
headed by Rep. John E. Moss of California and
Sen. Thomas C. Hennings, Jr., of Missouri, both
Democrats, have been hammering away in inves-
tigations at alleged abuses of "executive privi-
lege" to conceal facts the Congress and the public
presumably have a right to know. They have
made some but very little progress.
Sen. Hennings, a recognized expert on consti-
tutional law, aired his philosophy on the issue in
the American Bar Association Journal several
months ago. He conceded that, although no-
where does the Constitution expressly empower
Washington Reports:
the President to withhold information from the
people, "such a constitutional power must exist
in certain circumstances."
But, the Senator argued, the "President's power
to withhold information from the public is indeed
an executive 'privilege' — not a right — which has
relatively narrow limits. Self-government can
work effectively only where the people have full
access to information about what their government
is doing."
NOBODY HAD full access to the facts about
what the administration was up to in the Dixon-
Yates case, how such a quasi-judicial body as the
Federal Communications Commission was being
influenced in the award of broadcast licenses or
how Sherman Adams was wielding the consider-
able power of his unofficial office as "assistant
president."
Publicity attending the notorious Goldfine affair
served to bring some of these machinations to
light but the use of unwarranted secrecy does not
seem to have been materially curbed.
The Pentagon is perhaps the worst offender.
The military services have repeatedly invoked
"executive privilege" against Congress.
Now ringed with such phrases as "missile gap,"
"deterrent strength" and "capabilities versus in-
tentions," the whole question of our military
preparedness is up again. Admittedly all the
facts on this one cannot be spread out in full
public view. But the Administration's defensive,
uncommunicative behavior in the past automati-
cally makes suspect its current claims and adds
to its responsibility now to recognize the public's
right to know.
WASHINGTON
Wi££tvid S&eittm.
Sponsors of School Aid Bills
Confident of Senate Approval
A BILL FOR FEDERAL AID for school con-
struction will pass the Senate this year, ac-
cording to Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.) and
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.). The undecided
question is: Which form of federal aid will be de-
cided upon?
Both McNamara and Javits, who have intro-
duced bills, forecast the passage of the measures
they sponsor as they were interviewed on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service program heard on 300 radio stations.
Javits' bill, also sponsored by Sen. John Sher-
man Cooper (R-Ky.), would contribute to the.
•tates up to 50 percent of the cost of principal
and interest on long-term bond issues for school
construction. This is similar to the Administra-
tion measure, except that it also includes a for-
mula by which states which improve teacher sal-
aries would, as Javits put it, "get a better break
in federal contributions. " It would also provide
th^t a school district unable to sell its bonds "for
the first two years" could apply for grants.
THE McNAMARA BILL would provide direct
federal assistance to states for school construction
on a matching basis. Of the Administration bill,
McNamara said:
"Over the years we've had plenty of lip service
from the Administration, but never any real action.
The Administration proposes a highly inadequate
program of helping school districts pay off school
bond issues. I am afraid this will build more
banks than schools/*
LIBERALS IN THE SENATE at almost the last minute took a
necessary step toward preserving the power and authority of the
federal government when they filed a bill to outlaw the poll tax,
as a voting restriction, by simple statute. The poll-tax issue in itself
may be somewhat less important than it used to be, but the method
that Congress adopts to attack any state voting restriction is of the
utmost significance.
In all the long controversy about the voting rights of citizens,
there has been a group that steadfastly claimed that Congress could
proceed against the poll tax only through constitutional amendment
— not by simple statute. Most members of the group have been
spokesmen of the South, but there have been some northern and
western congressmen who argued that the southerners were con-
stitutionally correct. It is not necessary to question the motives of
anyone involved to point out that acceptance of their viewpoint
would have devastating effects on the authority of the national gov-
ernment to vindicate the basic citizenship rights of the people.
The Supreme Court ruled in the Classic decision, two decades
ago, that the right of citizens to have their votes in federal elec-
tions counted honestly and reported correctly was a federal right
which the federal courts could enforce.
It held that state-selected public officials could not deny this right
by wholesale conspiracy and fraud, rig the election and the election
returns, and then say that this was none of the federal government's
business. Convictions of the officials under the ancient federal civil
rights statutes were upheld by the high court. The court applied
this doctrine in a primary election, rather than a general election,
thus giving it great force and sweep in asserting federal power to
uphold the purity of election processes.
* * * ■ •„
WHAT HAPPENS if Congress should accept the opposite doc-
trine — that the control of federal elections, including their manner
and their eligibility rules, is wholly a matter within the exclusive
dominion of the states, and that Congress does not have the power
to strike down what, in its collective judgment, is an unreasonable
and improper rule or improper and discriminatory application of
a rule?
This is the viewpoint argued by those who say Congress cannot
attack the poll tax except through constitutional amendment.
They say that except through the laborious amendment process,
with proposal by two-thirds of each house and ratification by
three-quarters of the states, Congress is helpless to reach out and
aid those who are denied voting rights.
If this be so, then it is hard to see how any valid federal statute
can be passed in the field of elections. Pres. Eisenhower would seem
to have been correct in his original doubts as to the constitutionality
of the proposal for federal voting registrars to enforce the right-to-
vote law of 1957. Atty. Gen. Rogers would seem to be out of line
in his somewhat revised proposal for the appointment of federal
court referees to administer operations of the 1957 act.
* * *
THIS VIEWPOINT manifestly is not acceptable to the great
majority of the American people. It has not been honored in the
House of Representatives which three times has overruled the
narrow "states' rights" argument and has actually passed bills to
outlaw the poll tax by statute. Most Americans believe that in the
processes of time the nation has so matured that the constitution
must be interpreted broadly enough to allow the protection of elec-
tion processes by the federal government.
Yet even recently a proposed anti-poll tax constitutional amend-
ment has been filed in the Senate with heavy sponsorship, and its
approval would be a serious step backward. That is why reasser-
tion of the existing power of Congress to protect voting rights by
simple statute, as proposed in the bill just introduced by a bipartisan
group of liberals, takes on great importance as the Senate moves
toward an expected showdown in mid-February on civil rights
legislation.
CONFIDENCE that federal aid for school construction will pass
the Senate during this session was expressed by Sen. Jacob K. Javits
(R-N.Y.), left, and Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.) on Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Both are authors of schoc* aid bills.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
Green Memorial Fund Brings
Symphony to 3,800 Children
How to Buy:
MORE THAN 3,800 bright-eyed school children attended concert by famed National Symphony
Orchestra in Washington Jan. 13 at program made possible by William Green Memorial Fund of
AFL-CIO. In bottom picture Assistant Conductor Lloyd Geisler, left, and four students are shown
with AFL-CIO Vice Pres. William C. Doherty, the federation's representative for the occasion.!
Brush to Save 'Em
Despite the TV Ads
By Sidney Margolius
THAT CHARMING LITTLE GIRL on television who runs in,
hollering "Look Mom, no cavities", may be even more danger-
ous than Dennis the Menace. If you heed the insinuation that you
too can eliminate cavities just by using a certain, toothpaste, you
could do damage to your family's teeth.
You can get into even greater dental trouble from the pretty TV
housewife, whose family rushes off
without brushing, if you let her per-
suade you to rely on a "toothpaste
for people who can't brush after
every meal."
These are two examples of the
seriously misleading nature of cur-
rent toothpaste advertising, along
with Gardol's "invisible shield"
commercials and the "bacteria-
destroying" message of Stripe.
Toothpaste advertising always has
been one of the worst areas of mis-
leading claims. But current tooth-
paste ads make pseudo-medical
claims that tend actually to wean
people away from reliable methods
•of protecting teeth. These claims now are coupled with the special
power of television commercials to deceive through artful emphasis.
Perhaps worst of all, through TV a greater amount of mis-
leading toothpaste advertising is reaching children and implanting
false ideas in their receptive little heads. At least some grown-
ups have been fooled enough so they now may be skeptical. Kids,
of course, are not able to distinguish false claims.
For example, Dr. Sholem Pearlman of the American Dental
Association has reported this experience:
In several Chicago elementary schools, the association tried out
posters showing a child washing his hands before eating and brush-
ing his teeth after. The children agreed it was a good health prac-
tice to wash hands. But there was much argument about the need
for brushing teeth after eating. The youngsters said that certain
TV characters, "in whom they evidently placed a great deal of
confidence, said that you only have to brush once in the morning
because the toothpaste had something in it that would protect your
teeth all day."
The television industry, through the National Association of
Broadcasters, has protested this department's recent assertion that
TV has become the No. 1 deceiver in advertising. Current tooth-
paste advertising certainly is another piece of evidence that TV
has won leadership in deception. ADA officials also have testified
that in the case of Ipana, the printed ads are modest compared to
some of the TV commercials. On TV the visual emphasis and vocal
presentation exaggerated even further the claims that Ipana routed
the character called "decay germ."
THE SHOCKING THING is that congressional committees have
investigated these misleading toothpaste ads; that the Federal Trade
Commission and the Food & Drug Administration know what's
going on; that the ADA has been trying vainly for months to stop
this kind of advertising. Yet there has been no end to it.
The FDA can't do anything (or doesn't seem to want to try),
since on their packages the toothpaste manufacturers don't make
the same claims as in ads. The FTC, which can control ads, must
go through a long procedure. This lets the advertisers continue
while the FTC gathers evidence and conducts hearings.
On its package Gleem makes no suggestions that it can protect
your teeth all day. Otherwise the labeling is weasel-worded. It says:
"Contains GL-70 . . . Miracle Cleaner and Bacteria Fighter."
What the heck is "Miracle GL-70?" It sounds like a new miracle
drug. The label further explains that "GL-70 is Procter & Gamble's
trademark for the active ingredient, a blend of anionic sulfonates."
And what are "anionic sulfonates?" They're simply synthetic
detergents, something like those you use to wash dishes. So Gleem
has no "miracle" or medical ingredient at all. It merely has syn-
thetic detergents and all toothpastes have detergents of one kind
or another. Despite the implications of the ads, you still have to
brush your teeth after every meal for genuine protection.
The fact that a manufacturer can get away with defining his
"miracle" ingredient with an unfamiliar term as "anionic sul-
fonates' 9 certainly is a loophole in the Food & Drug law, and also
shows the FDA's complaisant attitude towards obscure labeling.
Procter & Gamble is one of those advertisers who don't really
care whether you l buy their brand or Brand X, since they own both.
P & G also makes Crest. This toothpaste does contain a medical
ingredient — stannous fluoride. Other toothpastes also contain fluo-
ride and make strong claims for preventing decay, although Crest
is the most widely and aggressively promoted.
The fluoride toothpastes, of course, are attempting to capitalize
on the fact that fluoridated drinking water does help prevent decay.
But there is no demonstrated proof that fluoride toothpastes have
an equally beneficial effect.
Tests have indicated that Crest did have some beneficial effect
on some children in the first year of use, and little or none the
second year. Thus, this advertiser is not telling the whole story,
and in no case is Crest to be considered a reliable substitute for
thorough brushing after every meal.
There is no substitute for meticulous brushing — with any denti-
frice or merely baking soda and salt — for either adults or kids.
(Cop^rixht l'Jou by Sidney Margolius)
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30. 1960
rage
Nlnl
Can You Afford
To Be 65?
Are you retired/ or near retire-
ment?
Do you have aging parents whose
health and happiness is your
concern?
Do you agree that workers who
have earned ' honorable retire-
ment should be protected from
the crushing costs of illness?
Then you nave a stake in the Forand
bill (HR 4700).
The Forand bill attacks the most tragic
unsolved social welfare problem of our
day — the human and financial disaster
that illness imposes upon the aged.
This problem can no longer be
brushed aside.
THIS CONGRESS must act.
Your Letter May Decide
£ Whether retired workers, now or
later, must seek public relief or
become burdens to their children
when severe illness strikes.
0 Whether those who have earned
the right to independent retire-
ment will lose that right because
of illness.
£ Whether you, in your turn, can
look forward to retirement with*
out fear of illness.
The Forand bill (HR 4700) has been
analyzed, examined and discussed over
a period of several years.
Will Congress vote it into law?
The answer to that question is in your
hands.
Your letters, to your Congressman and
your f wo Senators, will decide the issue.
If YOU tell them that YOU want the
Forand bill, it will pass.
Write — and Write Today!
To Your Congressman:
House Office Building
Washington 25, D, C
To Your Senators;
Senate Office Building
Washington 25, D. C
This Is What Happens Today
Lef s see what a pensioner or a retired
couple can do now to guard against "medical
indigence," as the doctors call it.
Buy private, commercial health in-
surance, says the insurance lobby.
It is true that such insurance is now avail*
able for the 65-plus group. But one fact
stands out:
Where the cost of private insurance is
within reason, the benefits are meager; where
the benefits are adequate, the cost is out of
reach.
This is bound to be true of a plan under
which the aged are insuring themselves. To
be workable, any insurance plan must be
broad enough to include good risks as well
as bad risks — the young as well as the old.
Private insurance can supplement a federal
program; it cannot replace it.
Ask for public assistance, says the
doctors' lobby.
Public assistance is the free care available
to the poverty-stricken through state and fed-
eral funds. It is necessary, it is worthy and
it should be improved. Many doctors, to their
credit, donate heavily of their services to this
work.
But public assistance is public relief. Those
who get it must prove their poverty — often to
the point of taking a pauper's oath. They
must exhaust their savings and in many states
sell their modest possessions — their cars, their
TV sets, even their homes — to become eligible.
Get the children and grandchildren
to pay the bills, say the reactionaries.
Unquestionably there are millions of emer-
gencies solved in this way. But a medical
catastrophe to the parents is in most cases
beyond the means of willing children. At
best, such help is a sorry reward for pension-
ers who have earned their independence.
Clearly, none of these alternatives is ac-
ceptable in a free society of free independent
citizens.
But It Could Be Like This
The Forand bill does not pretend to solve
the whofe problem of medical care for the
aged. It does guard against total disaster.
The bill would:
• Pay in full for 60 days of hospital care
for all persons eligible for old-age and sur-
vivors benefits. (Note that this would include
the dependent children of widows.)
e Meet the costs of combined nursing-
home and hospital care up to 120 days a
year and cover certain surgical expenses.
Social security records would be used to
establish the rights of applicants. The bill
includes standard safeguards as to the quality
of care, negotiation of rates and the freedom
of cooperating institutions from government
interference.
The program would cost about $1 billion a
year at the start. This would be met by a
rise of only a quarter of one percent in social
security taxes on employers and employees,
and % percent on the self-employed. The
most any worker would pay (if he makes
$4,800 or more) would be $12 a year.
The Forand bill puts this program where it
belongs — in the social security system.
Eleven million Americans now
draw social security pensions.
Only about a million of them are
also covered by private pension
plans.
The seldom-reached maximum
federal benefit for a retired
couple is $180 a month; the aver*
age is about $114.
These figures leave no margin
for heavy medical expenses,
which have risen farther and
faster than any other item in our
economy.
While it is true that many of
the retired have some fornpi of
health insurance, a federal study
(1957) exposes its inadequacy.
In that year, of all pensioners who
had medical expenses, only 14
percent of the couples and 9 per-
cent of the single persons drew
any insurance benefits whatever.
Most of the others were faced
with the loss of independence, or
even pauperism.
Copies of this leaflet, reproduced here in fulL are available in reasonable quantities without charge from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Publications, 815 Sixteenth St., N. W\, W ashington 6, D. C.
/X. -
Page Ten
New Approach Urged in
Organizing Technicians
Cambridge, Mass. — Unions can organize successfully among en-
gineers and other professional and technical workers, but they will
have to change their traditional approach, three experts agreed here.
The view was expressed at a four-day Harvard University seminar
sponsored by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept. on "Collective
Bargaining Problems of Profes-'^
FROM 12 SOUTHERN STATES some 70 delegates gathered in Louisville, Ky., to develop stronger
labor education programs. Here is a special meeting of state central body officers. AFL-CIO
Dept. of Education sponsored the two-day conference.
Labor Holds
1st Education
Meet in South
Louisville, Ky. — The first AFL-
CIO Southern Education Confer-
ence has brought 70 delegates from
12 states here for a two-day meet-
ing on plans to develop a stronger
labor education program in the
region.
"The Henderson Strike," a new
sound filmstrip prepared by the
Textile Workers Union of America,
was a feature of the program on
educational films. Subject of the
film is TWUA's 14-month long
strike at the Harriet-Henderson
mills, Henderson, N. C.
Samuel V. Noe, assistant super-
intendent of schools in Louisville,
in a luncheon session speech,
praised labor's role in aiding the
peaceful and successful integration
of the city's public school system.
Jennings Perry, executive direc-
tor of Citizens for TV A, told an-
other luncheon meeting that the
increasing industrialization of the
South would be accompanied by
greater labor influence in southern
political life.
AFL-CIO Education Dir. John
D. Connors presided. John E. Cos-
grove and George T. Guernsey,
assistant directors, also attended.
sional and Technical Workers."
Eight AFL-CIO and two unaffil-
iated unions participated.
Professors Fred Harbison of
Princeton University, S. M. Miller
of Brooklyn College and John Dun-
lop of Harvard said the union ap-
peal to these workers must be flex-
ible enough to allow for the im-
portance of individual status and
advancement.
Factual Emphasis Urged
They also agreed union programs
should emphasize factual and logi-
cal rather than emotional reasons
for organization.
IUD said the major aims of the
seminar were to examine the needs
and characteristics of professional
and technical workers and to dis-
cuss problems of organizing and
effectively representing these work-
ers.
The seminar, said IUD, re-
flected the mounting concern of
industrial unions with the in-
creasing proportion of profes-
sional and technical workers in
the labor force and the accom-
panying decline of production
and maintenance workers.
The IUD said that data present-
ed at the seminar showed that,
where there was one engineer for
every 300 industrial workers at the
turn of the century, today the pro-
portion is one engineer for every
60 industrial workers.
Other figures showed that, from
June 1948 to June 1959, produc-
tion workers in all manufacturing
declined by 9.3 percent.
A special IUD analysis of the
trend revealed the greatest declines
since 1948 occurred in "aircraft and
parts," 12.4 percent; "petroleum re-
finers," 10.5 percent and "chemical
and allied products," 12.1 percent.
In another look at the changing,
nature of the workforce, Harbison
reported on an occupation struc-
ture survey carried out by Prince-
ton among 50 industries over the
1946-56 decade.
A typical situation, he said,
was of one chemical firm which
decreased its production work-
force by four percent while in-
creasing its professional and
scientific employes by 40 percent,
its technicians by 45 percent and
its managerial and administrative
personnel by 35 percent.
Jesse Freidin, a management con-
sultant, argued that unions existed
to serve the "oppressed" and that
professional workers had no need
for them. Others retorted that pro-
fessional workers will have con-
tinuous grievances for which they
can find an answer in unionism.
Unions taking part included the
Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers; United Auto Workers;
Boilermakers; Oil, Chemical and
Atomic Workers; Chemical Work-
ers; State, County and Municipal
Employes; Papermakers and Paper-
workers; Machinists; and two un-
affiliated groups, Sperry Engineers
and Mass. Institute of Technology
Employes.
Reader's Digest Won H Print
Reply To 'Featherbed 9 Slur
The Reader's Digest magazine, which carried a one-sided article
parroting management's charges of "featherbedding" on the rail-
roads in its November, 1959, issue, has refused to publish a reply
from Pres. A. J. Hayes of the Machinists.
The refusal was conveyed in a letter from the editors.
Hayes, a vice president of the ' 5
AFL-CIO, wrote from first-hand
knowledge as a railroad ma-
chinist for many years in de-
claring he was "shocked" at the
bias and inaccuracies in the ar-
ticle.
In a point-by-point rebuttal,
Hayes emphasized:
• Practical railroaders rate the
locomotive firemen, described by
the Reader's Digest article as an
anachronism, as one of the most
valuable safety factors available to
the industry — "in airline parlance,
a combination of co-pilot and flight
engineer."
• Hundreds of brakemen, sup-
posedly in "featherbedding" jobs,
are injured each year in the per-
formance of their duties.
• Freight and passenger traffic
on the railroads is billed on a mile-
age basis, just as mileage is used
as a method of pay computation
for train crews.
• Far from being on the verge
of bankruptcy as a result of "feath-
erbedding" costs, railroads are "the
most profitable" carriers. Railroad
stocks have gone up an average of
400 percent since 1939, consider-
ably more tnan the rise for indus-
trial or utiL-y stocks.
Woodworkers Report :
Labor Dollars Sent
To Striking Loggers
Contributions totaling $218,886 were sent to international head-
quarters of the Woodworkers to support the fight of some 6,000
IWA members against industrial and political feudalism in the
Canadian province of Newfoundland.
A report listing the donations by name and date has been sent
by IWA Sec.-Treas. William Botkin'^
to the AFL-CIO, where it may be
examined. Copies also were sent
to the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept., the Canadian Labor Con-
gress and to all IWA locals, re-
gional councils, executive board
members and trustees.
The report does not cover gifts
made to the CLC, the striking IWA
Local 2-254 at Grand Falls, Nfld.,
or the IWA's Reg. II office in To-
ronto.
The listings show that the
AFL-CIO made contributions of
$50,000 and $5,000 for a total
of $55,000; the IUD gave three
$25,000 gifts totaling $75,000,
and international unions account-
ed for $50,470. The remainder
of the money covered in the re-
port came from locals of three-
score unions and their subordi-
nate bodies, as well as from the
AFL-CIO state and local councils
and many individuals.
The Newfoundland woodsmen
walked out on New Year's Eve a
year ago to enforce demands for
an increase in the basic wage of
$1.05 an hour paid by the British-
controlled Anglo-Newfoundland
Development Co., a cut in their
60-hour week and improved living
conditions in woods camps. A few
days later they were joined by
loggers employed by the Bowater
Co., one of the world's largest paper
companies.
Premier Wars on Union
Premier Joseph Smallwood
promptly began irresponsible as-
saults "upon' ihe IWA " and" turned"
them into political war. He pushed
through the provincial assembly
legislation which rescinded the un-
ion's legal certification as bargain-
ing agent.
He sent Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and provincial
constables into remote strike cen-
ters to "keep peace" where peace
already existed.
Smallwood also prompted forma-
tion of a provincial "union," the
Brotherhood of Newfoundland
Woodworkers, which signed scab
contracts.
Strikers who refused to rescind
their support of the IWA have been
blacklisted and unable to get \* ork
throughout the province.
Contributions Listed
Contributions sent the strikers
through IWA headquarters by in-
ternational unions, as listed by Bot-
kin, follow:
Air Line Dispatchers $20; Boiler
Makers $150; Brewery Workers
$500; Clothing Workers $500; Elec-
trical, Radio & Machine Workers
$2,000; Furniture Workers $100;
Ladies' Garment Workers $2,000;
Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen
$250; Glass & Ceramic Workers
$1,000; Glass Bottle Blowers $500.
Hatters $100; Hotel & Restau-
rant Workers $3,000; Allied Indus-
trial Workers $200; Laundry Work-
ers $50; Letter Carriers $500; Ma-
chinists $1,000; Maintenance of
Way Employes $250; Maritime Un-
ion $1,500; Meat Cutters $500;
Molders $1,000; Musicians $1,000;
Newspaper Guild $500.
Office Employes $200; Paper-
makers & Paperworkers $3,000;
Pulp - Sulphite Workers $10,000;
American Radio Association $200;
Rubber Workers $15,000; United
Shoe Workers $500; Steelworkers
$1,000; Theatrical Stage Employes
$500; Transport Workers $1,500;
UphoisWers $1,000; Utility "Wond-
ers $1,000.
The AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasur-
ers Conference, made up of tho
top financial officers of interna-
tional unions, also gave $500.
The Lithographers contributed
$400 and the Mine-Mill union
$500. Both are unaffiliated.
AFL-CIO Backs Housing Measure,
Flays Ike's 'Tight-Money' Policy
The AFL-CIO has called for swift congressional passage of a $1 billion emergency housing bill
to forestall "the immediate threat of a disastrous decline in housing activity" because of the Admin-
istration's "tight-money" policies.
At the same time, a federation spokesman urged a Housing subcommittee of the House to follow
up the stopgap measure with "comprehensive, forward-looking" housing legislation aimed at achiev-
ing a rate of 2.3 million housing'^
units annually to meet the nation's
needs during the next 15 years.
The emergency bill, . introduced
by Subcommittee Chairman Albert
Rains (D-Ala.), would provide $1
billion for FHA or VA mortgages
on moderate-priced housing. Sec.
Boris Shishkin of the AFL-CIO
Housing Committee endorsed the
bill, declaring it would protect
home buyers against "unreasonable"
charges "over and above already
excessive interest rates."
Accompanying Shishkin as he
testified were AFL-CIO Economist
Bert Seidman, and John W. Edel-
man, national representative of the
Textile Workers Union of America
and a member of the AFL-CIO
Housing Committee.
The subcommittee opened its
hearings in the wake of Pres.
Eisenhower's Budget Message
which carried no recommenda-
tions for public housing, middle-
income housing or housing for
the elderly. The Administration
called instead for an end to the
GI and college housing pro-
grams, and for "flexibility" in
maximum interest rates under
the VA and FHA.
Shishkin told the subcommittee
that the prospects for housing con-
struction are "dismal," with Ad-
ministration spokesmen forecasting
a drop in private housing starts to
1.1 million in 1960. He said the
situation stems from the "disastrous
tight-money policy adamantly pur-
sued by the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration."
"Substantial discounts, which are
simply disguised interest payments,
piled on top of sky-high interest
rates are keeping large numbers of
families out of the housing market,"
the AFL-CIO spokesman declared.
Housing is a bellwether of the
national economy, Shishkin contin-
ued, adding:
"Certainly it would be a tragic
mistake to disregard now the
lesson of the last two recessions.
Therefore, it is essential that
every possible measure be taken
immediately to forestall a down-
turn in home-building not only
to prevent the housing shortage
from becoming worse, but also
to bolster the overall level of
economic activity."
The ingredients of the long-range
housing program advocated by la-
bor, Shishkin told the subcommit-
tee, include:
• A large-scale, low-rent public
housing program "to provide decent
homes for low-income families."
• An effective middle-income
housing program.
• A fully adequate program of
housing for the elderly.
• A federal policy to assure
equal opportunities to obtain decent
homes without regard to race, color,
creed or national origin.
• A greatly expanded slum
clearance and urban redevelopment
program.
• Effective encouragement of
metropolitan planning.
• Encouragement for coopera-
tive and moderate-priced rental
housing.
• Adequate housing for family
farmers and farm workers.
• Requirement of payment of
prevailing wages in any housing
construction involving federal finan-
cial assistance.
Enactment of the Rains bill, he
said, would be the "first . . . vital
step Congress must take to dis-
charge its housing responsibility in
1960."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30 ? 1960
Lavish Profits, Salaries;
Senate Probers Hit
Tranquilizer Firms
The Senate Anti-Trust subcommittee, winding up a week of hear-
ings on administered pricing of tranquilizers, has drawn from reluc-
tant drug industry witnesses an admission of tremendous profits,
lavish salaries and stock options and huge sums spent on promotion
and advertising
The money came from the sale
of pills which, when properly used,
have dramatically enabled thou-
sands of patients in mental hospi-
tals to return home and live nor-
mal lives — if they can afford to
keep up the prescribed medication.
Some questions the subcommit-
tee, headed by Sen. Estes Kefauver
(D-Tenn.), wanted answered — such
as why leading manufacturers of
tranquilizers had quoted identical
U. S. Charges Price
Fix by Drug Firms
New York — The Justice
Dept. has filed an anti-trust
suit against two of the lead-
ing manufacturers of tran-
quilizer drugs — Carter Prod-
ucts, Inc., makers of Mil-
town, and American Home
Products Corp., which makes
an identical product labeled
Equinal under a patent li-
cense from Carter.
The government charged
the two companies with
agreeing to exclude all others
from the manufacture and
sale of the drug and entering
into a price-fixing agreement.
prices in competitive bids to the
government's Military Medical Sup-
ply Agency — didn't get answered.
The attorney for Carter Products,
the firm that makes Miltown tab-
lets, said a federal grand jury in
New York was interested in this
matter tpo and he thought the pub-
licity might have an influence on
the investigation.
In a blistering indictment of the
effects of "swollen profits" in the
drug industry, Executive Dir. Mike
Gorman of the National Commit-
tee Against Mental Illness told the
subcommittee:
' With a full realization of the
seriousness of this charge, I ac-
cuse the pharmaceutical industry
of America of contributing to the
return of thousands of mental
patients to mental hospitals be-
cause of the high price of the
tranquilizing drugs."
Gorman told the subcommittee
the pharmaceutical industry is ap-
parently more concerned with de-
termining whether the "American
housewife prefers a blue bill to a
green pi IP than with basic research,
particularly in areas where big sales
and profits are unlikely.
Gorman accused the drug indus-
try of "thumbing its nose at the
American people" by refusing to
accept available government grants
for research because it would mean
waiving exclusive patent rights. He
said some industry officials had told
him that they would be willing to
get into the government research
program but "they were interna-
tionally controlled and the big brass
in Switzerland was against any in-
volvement."
Subcommittee investigators put
into the record evidence that three
companies which dominate the
tranquilizer market — Carter Prod-
ucts, American Home Products
Corp., and Smith Kline & French
Laboratories — had the highest prof-
it ratio of all major industrial cor-
porations.
In 1958, the net profit of the
three companies after taxes
ranged from 33.1 to 38.2 percent
of net worth.
In testimony before the subcom-
mittee, it was brought out that:
• Thorazine, the leading tran-
quilizer marketed by Smith Kline &
French, waS developed and patent-
ed by a French company and li-
censed to the American firm under
an exclusive rights arrangement.
In France, where the drug was de-
veloped, it is sold at 51 cents per
50 tablets to the druggist and 77
cents at retail. The cost in the
United States is $3.03 wholesale
and $5.05 retail.
• The American company has
so prospered that the purchaser of
225 shares of stock for $9,900 on
Dec. 31, 1948 would now have —
through stock splits — 4,050 shares
worth a total of $244,013 on Dec.
31, 1959. During this period, he
would also have received $20,070
in dividends.
• Henry H. Hoyt, president of
Carter Products, who described his
firm as a "small company," received
in 1957 a stock option which is
worth at recent market price $2.7
million before taxes and a net profit
of $2 million after payment of the
capital gains tax. He has already
exercised more than half of the
option. In addition, Hoyt receives
a $100,000 a year salary.
Election- Year Meets
Scheduled by COPE
The first five in a series of 15 coast-to-coast area conferences of
the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education arc scheduled for
the month of February in Savannah, Ga., Durham, N. C, Nashville,
Tenn., Baton Rouge, La. and Dallas, Tex.
The election-year conferences are designed for officers of local
I unions, local central bodies, build-^ —
ing trades councils and women's
JACK WEINBERGER
Announced Retirement Plans
Weinberger of
Hotel Union
Will Retire
Miami Beach, Fla. — Jack Wein-
berger, secretary-treasurer of the
Hotel & Restaurant Workers since
1954 and a member of the interna-
tional union staff since 1928, has
notified the general executive board
at a meeting here that he will re-
tire to the ^'active reserve" on Apr.
30, the end of the union's fiscal
year.
He made known his "final and
irrevocable" intention in a letter to
the board. Under the union's con-
stitution the board is authorized to
fill such vacancies when they oc-
cur between conventions. Pres. Eel.
S. Miller said a special meeting of
the board to name his successor
will be held during April.
Weinberger came to the United
States as a youth. His first job was
as a bus boy in the swank Mary-
land Club" in Baltimore, Md., in
1902, a post he recalled paid $3
a week for **a 7-day week of un-
limited hours."
He became a waiter and in 1911
joined Waiters Local 30 in San
Francisco to launch a half-century
career of improving working con-
ditions for culinary workers. He
became secretary of his local in
1916 and was active in the Bay
Area labor movement until 1928,
when he became an international
organizer.
After IT years of travelling
"from Salem, Mass., to Salem,
Ore." for the union, he went to
international headquarters in In-
dianapolis, Ind., "to stay six
months to help out" as director of
organization. He has been there
ever since.
Administration Belatedly Joins in
Drive To Safeguard Voting Rights
(Continued from Page 1)
blamed on the Administration's
"tight-money'' policy.
• Sen. John F. Kennedy CD-
Mass.) introduced a measure sim-
ilar in principle to the Forand bill,
backed by the AFL-CIO, to employ
social security machinery for health
insurance for the nation's older citi-
zens. The Kennedy measure dif-
fers in detail.
The Administration's new civil
rights proposals were disclosed by
Attv. Gen. William P. Rogers Jan.
26."
Instead of federal voting reg-
istrars appointed by the Civil
Rights Commission — the propo-
sal advanced by the commission
and endorsed by Democratic lib-
erals — the Administration called
for court-appointed "voting ref-
erees to certify as qualified to
vote at any election all person
found to be qualified" in voting
rights cases brought under the
C ivil Rights Act of 1957.
Significantly, the Administration
proposal placed great emphasis on
"any election," and Rogers said in
a prepared statement that the meas-
ure was designed "to deal with
racial and color discrimination in
elections, both federal and state."
A week earlier, the AFL-CIO
had called for congressional regu-
lation of "state and presidential
elections" as well as in balloting
for congressional seats to protect
voters' rights.
In testimony prepared for the
Senate Rules Committee, AFL-
CIO Associate Gen. Counsel
Thomas E. Harris also proposed
creation of a federal election com-
mission which would conduct elec-
tions as well as registration if it ap-
peared that the right to vote or
have vytes counted would be de-
nied qualified voters.
The Administration bill provides
that procedures would be estab-
lished so that the proposed referees
"would be authorized to attend
elections and make a report as to
whether a person entitled to vote
. . . has been denied that right, or
the right to have his vote counted,"
Rogers said.
In the House, meanwhile, lib-
erals staged a protracted session
to give congressmen an oppor-
tunity to sign the discharge peti-
tion. Signatures can be affixed
only when the House actually is
in session.
In a series of hour-long
speeches. Democrats exhorted their
GOP colleagues to Join in sponsor-
ing the petition which would by-
pass the Rules Committee, where a
coalition of four southern Demo-
crats and four conservative Repub-
licans has thus far refused to clear
civil rights legislation for floor
debate.
In the Senate, where both parties'
leaders have pledged to bring up
civil rights legislation beginning
Feb. 15, the Rules Committee
headed by Sen. Thomas C. Hen-
nings, Jr. (D-Mo.), continued its
hearings on the proposals for vot-
ing registrars.
activities departments, with rank
and file union members also wel-
come.
The participation of women in
political education and action will
be stressed and a portion of the
program set aside for union wives,
The conferences, will deal with
procedures and problems of
COPE's program involving ed-
ucation, communication, registra-
tion, fund raising, candidate ap-
praisal, campaign strategy, get-
ting out the vote and specific
local, district and state problems.
COPE Dir. James L. McDevitt
will lead the headquarters team at-
tending each conference.
The first round of conferences
is scheduled as follows:
Feb. 13-14, DeSoto Hotel, Sa-
vannah, Ga., for Georgia and
Florida.
Feb. 16-17, Washington Duke
Hotel, Durham, N. C, for North
and South Carolina.
Feb. 20-21, Andrew Jackson
Hotel, Nashville, Tenn., tor Ala-
bama, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Feb. '27-28, Bellemont Motor
Hotel, Baton Rouge, La., for Ar-
kansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Feb. 29-Mar. 1, Adolphus Ho-
tel, Dallas, Tex., for New Mexico,
Oklahoma and Texas.
The second round of confer-
ences will take place in March and
cover New England, the mid-At-
lantic states and the Midwest. The
third round beginning the end of
March and running through April,
will center in the upper Midwest,
the farm and Rocky Mountain
states #nd the West Coast. Alaska
and Hawaii are included.
John E. Rooney Dies;
Ex-Head of Plasterers
Cleveland — John E. Rooney, 71, president emeritus of the Plas-
terers and a vice president of the AFL-CIO Building & Construction
Trades Dept., died at Polyclinic Hospital here Jan. 22 after a long
illness.
Rooney, elected president of the Plasterers in 1941, retired in
1958, at which time the union's'^
convention elected him president
emeritus. He was succeeded as
head of the union by the current
president, Edward J. Leonard.
In a telegram to Rooney's wid-
ow, Mrs. Helen Rooney, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler ex-
pressed their condolences on the
death of the veteran union official.
Rooney, they declared, was "a
devoted and dedicated trade union-
ist," who "spent most of his life-
time aiding his fellow men." Their
telegram continued:
"The record of accomplish-
ments of his union stands as a
fine monument to him. We have
lost a good friend and we join
with you in mourning his pass-
ing."
A native of Toronto, Ontario,
Rooney had lived here since 1897.
Following in his father's footsteps,
he became a member of Plasterers'
Local 80 in 1909. He served in
the Army in World War I and, fol-
lowing his discharge as a sergeant,
served Local 80 as business agent
from 1919 to 1929, when he was
appointed an international vice
president.
In 1952 Rooney visited the
Netherlands as labor consultant on
a three-man team organized by the
Technical Assistance Division of
the Mutual Security Agency to
study the building industry in that
country and to make recommenda-
tions which would help increase
productivity in the housing indus-
try.
Lewis Hines,
Veteran Union
Leader, Dies
Lewis G. Hines, who retired in
1958 as AFL-CIO special repre-
sentative after a lifetime of activity
in the labor movement, died of a
heart ailment at his home in Ar-
lington, Va., at the age of 71.
He was the first organization di-
rector of the national AFL and
the first trade unionist to serve as
state secretary of labor and indus-
try in Pennsylvania, a post he held
under forcer Gov. Arthur H. James
(R) from 1939^ to 1942.
He was a special AFL-CIO rep-
resentative when he retired in 1958.
A native of Philadelphia, Hines
went to Rochester, N. Y., as a
young man and joined the Metal
Polishers, Buffers & Platers, in
which he held a card for 48 years.
Blacklisted in Rochester because of
his union activity, he returned to
Pennsylvania as business agent for
his union. He later became a state
mediator.
He also was state director of
the U.S. Unemployment Service in
Pennsylvania and served as AFL
representative in Philadelphia.
When his term as state secretary
of labor and industry in Pennsyl-
vania expired, he returned to na-
tional AFL headquarters as assist-
ant to the late Pres. William Green
until the latter's death in 1953.
AFL-CIO Hails Africans
In Struggle for Freedom
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, in a cabled message to
the Second All-African Peoples' Conference in Tunis, pledged
the AFL-CIO would do all in its power "to speed success of
Algeria and all other peoples in Africa, Europe and elsewhere
still struggling for their national independence/ 9
Meany sent his message to Ahmed Tlili, secretary-general
of the General Federation of Tunisian Workers, who with oth-
er African labor officials is playing a major part in the drive
of the continent toward independence and progress.
The AFL-CIO president said American labor would help
the workers of newly-independent nations secure all aid nec-
essary to build their economies and "genuine free trade unions
— unions free from domination by employers, governments
and political parties/'
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1960
By 59-22 Vote:
Senate Passes Election Bill;
Anti-Labor Riders Dropped
The Senate has passed and sent to the House a "clean elections" bill after a brief and unsuc-
cessful attempt by a coalition of southern Democrats and conservative Republicans to tack on harsh
restrictions on labor political activities.
The vote on the measure, introduced by Sen. Thomas C. Hennings, Jr. (D-Mo.) was 59 to 22,
with 38 Democrats and 21 Republicans voting for the bill and 15 southern Democrats and 7 Repub-
licans opposed.
The bill, first major piece of leg
islation passed by either house dur-
ing the current election-year session
of the 86th Congress and the first
substantive revision of the cam-
paign law in 35 years, woukl raise
the present ceiling on congressional
campaign 'expenditures, impose a
limitation on individual political
contributions, and require more de-
tailed reporting procedures.
The fate of the measure in the
House was left in doubt. The
bill was referred to the House
Administration Committee. Its
chairman, Rep. Omar Burleson
(D-Tex.), called some of its pro-
visions "almost punitive" and a
"clear violation of states 9 rights."
He added that he had no plans
to "rush into hearings."
In the week-long Senate debate,
two major attempts were made
by the right-wing block to saddle
the measure with anti-labor amend-
ments.
The first effort collapsed unex-
pectedly when Sen. Strom Thur-
mond (D-S.C.) withdrew his
amendment that would have penal-
ized unions for violating election
laws by canceling their rights to
National Labor Relations Board
representation, subjecting them to
anti-trust laws, and applying dou-
ble the Landrum-Griffin Act's al-
ready severe criminal penalties.
In the second move, arch-con-
servative Senators Barry Gold-
water (R-Ariz.) and Carl.T. Cur-
tis (R-Neb.) sought to broaden
the requirements for political
committees in order to restrict
the AFL-CIO Committee on Po-
litical Education in its year-
around reporting on voting rec-
ords and its register-and-vote ac-
tivities.
This amendment also was with-
Ike 9 8 Policies Held
Stifling to Growth
(Continued from Page 1)
ger of another recession in 1961,
before America fully recovers from
the ravages of the sharp 1957-58
decline, seems a distinct possibility
as predicted by conservative acad-
emic and business economists."
The President's approach, the
committee said, is a blend of
"penny-pinching" for national de-
fense and public services com-
bined with postal rate and gaso-
line tax increases.
These are the same "self-defeat-
ing" policies which have boosted
the national debt by over $18 bil-
lion since mid- 1953 while the na-
tion's position in defense technology
has slipped and the educational sys-
tem has deteriorated, the AFL-CIO
said.
The second objective of a "$4.2
billion paper surplus" to reduce the
national debt is based on "sweeping
under the rug" the need for com-
prehensive defense and public serv-
ice programs, the AFL-CIO con-
tinued.
Noting that the budget deficits
of 1954, 1955, 1958 and 1959 show
that surpluses cannot be attained
from recurring recessions and low
national income levels, the AFL-
CIO said a responsible policy would
aim— for surpluses through a grow-
ing and balanced full employment
economy.
The third Eisenhower objective
of removing the interest rate ceiling
on long - term government bonds
would eliminate even a limited re-
striction on the Administration's
"pursuit of an ever-tighter money
policy and higher interest rates,"
the committee said.
drawn after senators on both sides
of the aisle warned that acceptance
of the proposal would also inhibit
the operations of the Republican
and Democratic National Commit-
tees.
Extended to Primaries
Two major amendments were
accepted before final passage. One
extended, for the first time, the
law's reporting requirements to in-
clude primary as well as general
elections. The second amendment
closed a 35-year-old loophole in
the law by making local and state
political committees subject to re-
porting regulations.
Minority Leader Everett Mc-
Kinley Dirksen (R-11L), who had
succeeded in amending the measure
so that its provisions will not be
applicable to the 1960 congres-
sional and presidential campaigns,
led the battle against final passage
of the measure.
Here are the major provisions of
the bill:
• The 1925 spending ceilings
imposed on individual candidates
were raised so that campaigners for
the Senate may spend $50,000 in
their own behalf, instead of the
previous $10,000, while congres-
sional candidates may spend $12,-
500 instead of the previous $2,500.
• For the first time, a ceiling
of $10,000 is imposed on the total
an individual can contribute. The
present law limits donors to $5,000
to any one candidate or political
committee, but sets no limits on the
number of candidates or commit-
tees to which $5,000 gifts may be
made.
• The present ceiling of $3 mil-
lion on the spending of national
committees directing presidential
campaigns is raised by a formula
based on 20 cents per vote cast in
any of the three preceding presi-
dential elections. On the basis of
the 1956 presidential totals, this
would result in a ceiling of $12.5
million for each national commit-
tee.
FROM BANDUNG TO WASHINGTON, the emphasis is on rais-
ing Indonesian living standards. Above, U.S. -donated machinery is
demonstrated in shoe factory of Railway Workers' Social Welfare
Organization. In Washington visit sponsored by Railway Labor
Executives' Association, Buntungin K. J. Tambunan, 37-year-old
head of Indonesian Railway Workers Union, explained, success of
union-backed cooperatives.
Joint Economic Group
Flays GOP on Policies
(Continued from Page 1)
Korean war grown at even 3.5 per-
cent, the committee majority said,
total production would have been
$513 billion instead of 1959's $479
billion. This, they said, would have
hiked federal tax revenues by $5
billion to $6 billion. •
The total gain of a 4.5 percent
growth rate over the coming 15
years, the report said, would be
"staggering."
Of a wide range of policy pro-
posals for the future, the majority
report stressed federal aid to edu-
cation. Productivity increases ac-
count for two-thirds of the nation's
higher output and it is plain that
education is crucial to a skilled and
educated work force, the report
added.
"It is possible with proper poli-
cies," the report declared, "to
achieve a high and sustained rate
of economic growth, relatively full
employment, without creeping or
galloping inflation."
The committee sharply criticized
the Administration's efforts to curb
inflation through "tight money**
policies which, it said, retarded
growth in output and in employ-
ment. This policy mistakenly as-
sumed inflation was due to exces-
sive money demand, the report
said.
The report said the Adminis-
tration approach actually caused
inflationary strains, an inflation
fueled further by concentrations
of market power. It proposed
"an expanded and strengthened"
an ti- trust program to reduce "ex-
cessive market power by large
09-08-1
Labor Girds for Battles in State Legislatures
(Continued from Page 1)
the State AFL-CIO is seeking ma-
jor improvements, including basing
maximum benefits on a percentage
of the state's average wages and
extending duration.
Other goals include extension of
the state public school system to
include the first two years of col-
lege,
DELAWARE — A number of
labor-backed bills were passed by
the lower house last year and await
Senate action. These include a
"little Bacon-Davis" prevailing-
wage bill, a proposal to establish
a State Dept. of Labor, and a pack-
age of eight consumer-protection
bills dealing with auto financing,
credit and insurance.
While no 4 'right-to- work" bill
has been formally introduced,
44 R-T-W" forces remain active in
the state and the Delaware Council
for Industrial Peace has launched
an extensive educational program
to* counter their propaganda.
HAWAII— The newesf state, like
so many others, faces demands
from business groups for a general
sales tax. Labor will fight this vig-
orously and at the same time seek
expanded public housing and im-
proved educational facilities.
MARYLAND — A "mild" re-
apportionment proposal is sched-
uled to be submitted to the short
session of the Maryland legislature
and labor will support it. It was
considered unlikely that rural leg-
islators will "vote themselves out
of office" through a major reappor-
tionment of seats. Labor-backed
bills will seek to allow workers
unemployed because of labor dis-
putes to receive jobless benefits.
MASSACHUSETTS — The State
AFL-CIO, which led successful
fights to .defeat a proposed 3 per-
cent sales tax in 1957 and 1959,
will again spearhead resistance to
the proposal. Labor proposes a
graduated state income tax instead.
Heading the State AFL-CIO leg-
islative program is a proposal, pat-
terned on California law, to estab-
lish a sickness and disability fund
similar to unemployment compen-
sation to provide benefits for work-
ers off their job because of illness
or a non-work injury. Other major
proposals include jobless benefits
after the sixth week of a strike,
and a ban on industrial homework
in needle trades,
MAINE — Labor will fight to
block an attempt to remove fire-
fighters from the protection of a
state minimum wage law enacted
only last year.
MICHIGAN— The State AFL-
CIO says the hope for enactment
of major social programs and sound
tax policies is reapportionment of
the state senate. It has brought a
suit in an effort to bring this about.
Under the present apportionment,
permanently "frozen" by a 1952
amendment to the state constitu-
tion, the Republicans hold a 22 to
12 margin even though the Demo-
crats had a decisive majority of the
popular vote.
MISSISSIPPI — Labor's ambi-
tious program includes repeal of
the state poll tax and adoption of
minimum wage and child labor
laws and legal restriction on in-
junctions.
NEW YORK— State labor plans
to seek increases in Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller's announced program
for a $1 state minimum wage and
improved workmen's compensation,
and termed the program "too little
and too late." Unions will also fight
to extend collective bargaining
rights to employes of non-profit
institutions, including hospitals.
NEW JERSEY— Labor supports
proposals by Gov. Robert B. Mey-
ner (D) for a state "little Wagner
Act." Unions also are seeking ex-
panded social services, financed by
an increase in the present low
corporation tax.
RHODE ISLAND— The fore-
cast is for "an uphill fight" to pre-
vent an increase in the present 3
percent sales tax or elimination of
exemptions for food and medicine.
The State AFL-CIO will seek im-
proved workmen's compensation
and wage collection laws.
VIRGINIA — The State AFL-
CIO opposes the governor's pro-
posals for a general sales tax and
will present to the legislature an
alternative tax program. Goals in-
clude repeal of the poll tax, adop-
tion of a state minimum wage,
higher jobless benefits, repeal of the
ban on supplemental unemployment
benefit payments, legalization of
the agency shop and repeal of a
"blank sheet" voter registration law
used to restrict eligible voters.
WEST VIRGINIA— Republican
Gov. Cecil H. Underwood has
proposed to the Democratic-con-
trolled legislature a $12.5 million
emergency public works program
to provide jobs for 4,000 of the
state's "neediest" unemployed. La-
bor seeks also a food stamp plan
to supplement the diet of 250,000
persons now receiving surplus foods
from the federal government. La-
bor opposes a hike in the sales tax
from 2 to 3 percent being proposed
by the governor. The State AFL-
CIO also is asking higher and longer
jobless benefits.
Other states whose legislatures
are in session or scheduled to con
vene this year are: Arizona, Call
fornia, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ver
mont and Wisconsin.
business units."
The committee majority noted
that "strong unions" have con-
tributed to market power inflation,
but rejected the idea of anti-trust
coverage of unions since it would
strike at the existence of union-
ism itself." The answer lies rather
in voluntary restraints through
techniques such as annual labor-
management conferences, price cuts
and standby government fact find-
ing machinery, the report said.
The Republican minority com-
plained that the call for stronger
anti-trust action without a "strong
call for action to counter union
market power" was "inspired by
partisan politics."
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.),
in a separate supplemental opinion,
lined up with the Democrats in op-
posing anti-trust coverage of un-
ions.
The majority report proposed 12
policies, one of which mapped nine
federal programs. The latter dealt
with aid to education, the impact
of automation, aid to depressed
areas, and retraining of technologi-
cally-displaced workers.
The policies called for includ-
ed improved monetary and fiscal
approaches; a revision of priori-
ties in government-aided pro-
grams to emphasize education,
' health and research and cut
down on farm and business sub-
sidies; a reformed tax system;
lower tariffs; a revised farm pol-
icy and improved foreign trade.
Vol. V
I sued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Clan Poetao* Paid at Washington. 0. C
Saturday, February 6, 1960
J7
No. 6
School Aid, Teachers' Pay
Bill Passed by Senate 54-35
Gtes GOP 'Stagnation' ;
Reuther Warns of
Recession in 1961
Assailing the Eisenhower Administration's seven-year record of
"stagnation," the AFL-CIO has warned that the nation faces a
major recession in 1961 if the public is "lulled into the kind of
complacency . . . that permeates" the President's Economic Report.
The vigorous attack on Pres. Eisenhower's "false" policies, built
on a "fear"' of growth, came in a'f-
statement by Vice Pres. Walter P.
Reuther, chairman of the AFL-CIO
Economic Policy Committee, to the
Senate-House Joint Economic Com-
mittee.
. Reuther's testimony, presented
by AFL-CIO Research Dir. Stanley
Ruttenberg, warned that the nation
"is failing to measure up to its
economic opportunities at home
and failing to respond to the eco-
nomic challenge that faces us in
the world."
The EPC chairman said that "at
home we see the paradox of a
great backlog of unmet needs, both
public and private, side by side
with the highest plateau of unem-
ployment during any so-called 're-
covery' year of the postwar period."
• Abroad, he continued, "at a time
when emphasis in the world contest
between freedom and tyranny is
shifting increasingly to the eco-
nomic sphere, the economic might
of the Soviet Union is growing by
leaps and bounds, while our own
economic growth is lagging far be-
hind."
In other testimony presented to
the committee headed by Sen. Paul
H. Douglas (D-UL):
• AFL-CIO Assistant Research
Dir. Peter Henle declared that the
1958 recession "has left the econ-
omy with a higher level of unem-
ployment than either of the two
previous postwar recessions," and
said that despite "optimistic fore-
casts," joblessness this year will
range between 4.7 and 5.2 percent
of the labor force.
• George Oine Smith, an econ-
omist of the F. W. Dodge Corp.,
said housing starts will decline in
1960, adding that "if housing is an
economic indicator, it might be a
bad omen for 1961 unless money
rates ease or government action is
taken."
• G. F. Brandow, agricultural
economist at Pennsylvania State
University, warned that the farm
section of the economy will sag
further this year, with farmers re-
ceiving a "little lower" share of
food prices accompanied by a fur-
ther reduction in the number of
farmers.
Reuther, president of the Auto
Workers, declared in his statement
that the economy is enjoying only
a "limited measure of improve-
ment" from the 1957-58 recession
"which threatens to prove no more
than a lull between two recessions."
He emphasized that another eco-
nomic downturn is "not in any way
inevitable," adding that "economic
conditions are created by men, and
can be shaped by men."
He called for adoption of "dy-
namic, forward-looking programs
which will begin to catch up with
the backlog of our unmet private
and public needs, increase the de-
mand for goods and services, stim-
ulate the growth of our whole econ-
omy . . . and start us moving in the
direction of an era of full produc-
tion, full employment and vibrant
economic health."
In the seven years of the Eisen-
hower Administration, Reuther de-
clared, the economy has "failed to
make any substantial progress." As
a result, he said, 1959's joblessness
was 5.5 percent of the labor force,
compared with 5.9 percent in the
(Continued on Page 11)
SUNDAY PICKET DUTY failed to keep Ted Salvati of Shipbuild-
ers, on strike against Bethlehem Steel Co. shipyard in Quincy, Mass.,
from reading Sunday funnies to his children. Over 17,000 members
of Shipbuilders have been on strike since Jan. 22 against eight
Bethlehem yards on East Coast in dispute over company's unilateral
imposition of harsh work-rule changes.
Appeal to Affiliates:
United Wilson Strike
Aid Asked by Meany
* AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has called on the entire trade un-
ion movement to make sure that 5,000 Packinghouse Workers who
have been on strike against Wilson & Co. since Nov. 3 "are not
starved into submission."
In a letter to all affiliated unions and to state and local central
bodies, Meany denounced the com-'^
pany's continued refusal to bargain
in good faith and its use of "every
despicable device, including import-,
ing strikebreakers, to" destroy the
union."
He called on affiliates for "gen-
erous and prompt" financial help
"which the Wilson strikers need
desperately."
Meany also asked unions and
Support in 'Situs Picketing' Fight
Promised Building Trades Unions
Miami Beach — Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has renewed the Administration^ pledge of support
for legislation which would permit building trades unions to picket on the site of a construction job.
He told a joint session of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Dept. and the Metal
Trades Dept. executive councils that Pres. Eisenhower has supported the kt situs picketing" principle
since 1954.
During last year's debate on the^
Landrum-Griffin Act, Sen. John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) pledged action
early in this session to exempt pick-
eting of a construction site from
L-G's secondary boycott provisions.
A House Labor subcommittee head-
ed by Rep. Carl D. Perkins (D-Ky.)
is expected to begin hearings in the
near future.
Mitchell also told the building
and metal trades leaders, cur-
rently holding meetings here in
advance of the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council session, that the La-
bor Dept. will not use L-G for
any "witch-hunt'' against unions.
In examining reports filed with
the department, he said, "we will
take into account non-willful vio-
lations"' of the law. Declaring that
the department is interested in pros-
ecuting only willful violations, he
said "we will help to straighten out
unions" which have made uninten-
tional errors.
A special program of technical
{Continued on Page 2)
central bodies to "make sure
that every AFL-CIO member
and every member of an AFL-
CIO family knows that Wilson
& Co. products are made by
strikebreakers."
Declaring that the striking Pack-
inghouse Workers "have proven
their trade unionism on the picket
line," Meany said:
"This is the fight of the entire
trade union movement. We cannot
allow anti-union campaigners such
as this to succeed. . . . The union
members must be — and can be —
victorious. It is up to the rest of
us in the AFL-CIO to insure that
victory."
Wilson Refuses Sessions
Meanwhile, Wilson management
continued its refusal to negotiate
with its striking workers, using the
excuse that a small unaffiliated un-
ion now claims to represent the
strikebreakers, almost none of
whom were employed at the plant
at the time of the strike. The
UPWA has denounced as "com-
pany-inspired" the activity of the
National Brotherhood of Packing-
house Workers in "organizing" the
(Continued on Page 3)
Nixon Vote
On Salaries
Overridden
By Gene Zack
The Senate, by a 54-35 vote,
has approved a two-year, $1.8
billion aid-to-education measure,
making federal funds available
for both teachers' salaries and
school construction.
Passage of the Administration-
opposed bill thus overrode an
earlier attempt by Vice Pres.
Nixon to block federal assistance
for teachers' pay. Nixon broke a
tie to defeat the first school bill to
come to a rollcall vote.
Rights Debate Near
The action came as the election-
minded 86th Congress moved into
high gear, with both House and
Senate poised for full-scale civil
rights debate before month's end.
The school bill passage helped clear
the Senate decks, permitting lead-
ers of both parties to redeem last
year's pledge that civil rights action
would begin by Feb. 15 .
In the House, the civi' rights log-
jam appeared brok* n as the conser-
vative-dominated Rules Committee,
bowing to mounting liberal pres-
sures, scheduled hearings as a pre-
lude to bringing a long-stalled mild
measure to the floor.
The hearings, originally set for
Feb. 4, were delayed until after
Feb. 9 to permit the Judiciary Com-
mittee to hold hearings on voting
registrar proposals. It was conceded
by civil rights opponents, however,
(Continued on Page 4)
Beck's Conviction
Upheld on Appeal
Olympia, Wash. — The State
Supreme Court— by a 4-to-4
tie vote — has turned down an
appeal by former Teamsters
Pres. Dave Beck from his
1958 grand larceny convic-
tion.
Beck was sentenced to up
to 15 years in prison after a
Superior Court jury found
him guilty of stealing $1,900
from the sale of a union-
owned Cadillac. Because of
the Supreme Court's tie vote,
Beck's attorneys said they
would move immediately for
a rehearing.
The former IBT head in
addition faces a five-year jail
sentence imposed after his
conviction in 1959 on a fed-
eral income tax evasion
charge. He is also under in-
dictment with two trucking
industry executives, Roy
Fruehauf and Burge Sey-
mour, on Taft-Hartley Act
payoff charges.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
To Foster 'Confidence 9 :
ADiMINISTRATION PLEDGE to support "situs picketing" legis-
lation to free construction unions from Landrum-Griffin penalties
for picketing at construction sites was given by Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell at joint session of executive boards of AFL-CIO
Building Trades Dept. and Metal Trades Dept. in Miami Beach.
Trades Get Support
For 'Situs Picketing 9
(Continued from Page 1)
assistance, he said, will be set up
to help smaller unions meet L-G
requirements "practically and prop-
erly." A small group of these tech-
nicians has now been established in
Washington, and eventually will be
enlarged with the addition of per-
sonnel in regional offices to assist
unions.
Gen. Counsel Stuart Rothman of
the National Labor Relations
Board, who also addressed the joint
meeting, said there has already been
a 150 percent increase in NLRB
court work since the passage of
Landrum-Griffin. He added: "This
may be only the beginning."
At a press conference follow-
ing the session, Mitchell was op-
timistic about a forthcoming
White House conference of top
labor and management leaders,
proposed last fall by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany. Mitchell
expressed the hope that "out of
this meeting will come a series
of industry conferences" similar
to one scheduled in the airline
industry.
Representing management at the
White House conference, he said,
would be "outstanding operating
heads of industry, rather than rep-
resentatives of the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce or the National Asso-
ciation of Manufacturers, as such."
Later, speaking at a luncheon of
the National Coat and Suit Recov-
ery Board sponsored jointly by the
Ladies' Garment Workers and em-
ployers, the secretary hailed the
meeting as evidence of "valuable"
cooperation between labor and
management in the garment indus-
try.
"If they had this same com-
munication in the steel industry,"
Mitchell sai<j, "it is hardly likely
we would have had a 116-day
strike."
He predicted the same kind of
outside-the-bargaining-table cooper-
ation in the autompbile, steel, air-
line and construction industries
"within the next 10 years."
Unemployment Stays
High in 31 Key Areas
There has been virtually no improvement since November in the
job situation in major employment and production areas with "sub-
stantial" unemployment, according to the bimonthly survey of the
Labor Dept.
Of the 149 major areas surveyed, the number of "substantial
labor surplus" areas — that is, with^
6 percent and over jobless — was
reduced from 32 to 31.
This change reflected the re-
sumption of automobile produc-
tion at Flint, Mich. Flint moved
from the 9 percent to 11.9 per-
cent jobless category to the
"moderate unemployment"
group, where the range is 3 per-
cent to 5.9 percent jobless.
The Bureau of Employment Se-
curity summed up its surveys by
saying employment "has improved
substantially since resumption of
Convention Booh
Lists Resolutions
The over 100 policy resoTu-
lutions adopted by the Third
Constitutional Convention of
the AFL-CIO have been pub-
lished in a 209-page book by
the federation.
The complete texts of the
resolutions and the policy
statements are carried under
11 general subject headings.
Copies of the book, AFL-
CIO Publication 3 B, are
available from the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Publications, 815
Sixteenth Street N. W., Wash-
ington 6, D. C, at 50 cents
per copy or $45 for 100.
steel production" last November
and additional improvement is ex-
pected.
The bureau said the 31 major
areas with "substantial" labor sur-
pluses was the lowest such total
since November 1957 and com-
pares to 76 such areas in January
of last year.
Of the total number of "sub-
stantial" labor surplus areas,
there were 23 with 6 percent to
8.9 percent jobless in November,
a figure which dropped to 22 as
of the end of December.
The four areas with 9 percent
to 11.9 percent jobless as of the
end of December were Evansville,
Ind., Atlantic City, N. J., Hunting-
ton-Ashland, W. Va. and the
Wheeling, W. Va.-Steubenville, O.,
area.
The only change in this group
came as seasonal unemployment in
Atlantic City moved that area into
the .higher category and the job
gains in Flint moved that auto
center out of the "substantial sur-
plus" category.
The five areas with unemploy-
ment of 12 percent and over re-
mained the same at the end of
December as at the beginning of
November: Johnstown, Pa., Scran-
^on, Pa., Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton,
Pa., Mayaguez, P. R., and Ponce,
P. fL
Steelworkers Join with Meany
On White House Parley Plan
Top-level public conferences between labor, management and government would help foster in-
creased public "confidence in the system of collective bargaining," the Steelworkers have declared
in a new study of the current climate of industrial relations.
The Administration currently is working on plans for a White House conference along these
lines, following a proposal by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany that Pres. Eisenhower call labor and
management leaders together to^
"consider and develop guiding lines
for just and harmonious labor-man-
agement relations."
In his State of the Union Mes-
sage, Eisenhower strongly endorsed
the proposal, declaring that in his
last year in office he would "en-
courage regular discussions between
management and labor outside the
bargaining table." The initial con-
ference is expected to take place in
late February or early March.
fi A Proper Climate'
The USWA publication — "Col-
lective Bargaining or Monopoly" —
said that a combination of- confer-
ences on both the national and in-
dustry level would foster "a proper
climate for the collective bargain-
ing process."
The union said regular meetings
would familiarize both the public
and the negotiating parties with
"the general conditions of the na-
tional economy," and would ac-
quaint the public with the issues
involved in bargaining.
The USWA, fresh from its rec-
ord-breaking battle with the steel in-
dustry for new contracts covering
500,000 members — a battle in
which management unleashed a
multi- million -dollar propaganda
barrage in an effort to sell its posi-
tion to the public — declared:
"The public would not be un-
aware of the broad issues in-
volved and susceptible to mis-
leading and confusing propagan-
da issued during the negotiation
period. • • •
"It should be unnecessary to
sway the general public to one
side or the other during negotia-
tions. Vague charges of inflation
and featherbedding only tend to
confuse the situation and prevent
considered and practical deci-
sions."
The USWA study quoted Prof.
John T. Dunlop of Harvard Uni-
versity, nationally known arbiter
for the building trades, on the im-
portance of employing the "full
Federation's
Council Meets
On February 8
The AFL-CIO Executive
Council will open its mid-winter
meeting in Miami Beach, Fla.,
Feb. 8 with the legislative and
economic outlook high on the
agenda.
The 29-man body will review
a number of problems referred
to it by the federation's third
convention in San Francisco last
September and is slated to receive
a number of committee reports.
A special J#ve-man committee
studying internal disputes is
scheduled to report to the coun-
cil on a plan for final and bind-
ing arbitration of such differences.
The convention approved in prin-
ciple this method of resolving dis-
putes and directed the council to
develop a detailed plan and pro-
cedures.
Four AFL-CIO departments.
Building Trades, Metal Trades,
Maritime and Union Label, are
holding executive council sessions
before or during the meeting of
the federations council.
potential of the leadership of the
federal government" in the field of
fostering improved industrial har-
mony.
"If the federal' government ex-
pects to influence directly the ideas
of the parties to collective bargain-
ing,'* Dunlop said, ' it must leave
repetitive platitudes and generalities
and meet with labor and manage-
ment representatives regularly to
discuss and to debate in free ex-
change and with detailed statistics
the economic setting and outlook
in which wage and price decisions
are made. . . ."
In proposing the White House
conference, Meany told Eisenhower
there was a "most urgent" need for
some voluntary approach by labor,
management and government to
"avert industrial strife."
Among the factors cited by the
AFL-CIO president were the
116-day steel shutdown and the
need for "reducing the likelihood
of the recurrence of such pro-
longed and costly industrial
strife;*' the "increasing Soviet
economic challenge;" and the fact
that some political leaders had
advanced "basically fallacious
and rather dangerous 9 ' sugges-
tions for new laws that would
mean government intervention in
collective bargaining.
USWA Pres. David J. McDon-
ald, in the preface to the union's
publication, declared:
"We believe that our democratic
trade union movement is one of our
country's bulwarks against totali-
tarian ideology, both of the left and
the right.
"Any attempt to weaken the un-
ion movement, through restrictive
change in our present laws, would
only serve to weaken the cause of
American democracy."
Canada's Cabinet Gets
Union Policy Statement
Ottawa, Ont. — The role of the trade union in the Canadian social
structure was spelled out by the Canadian Labor Congress in its
annual memorandum to the federal government.
The 13,000 word statement departed from the annual custom and
ranged beyond "bread and butter" issues, discussing union activities
in the economic and social fields'^ -
and in a general sense. It was pre-
sented to Prime Minister John Die-
fenbaker and members of the cabi-
net by Pres. Claude Jodoin and a
large CLC delegation.
It struck back at employer prop-
aganda branding unions "irrespon-
sible, indifferent to civil liberties,
corrupt and otherwise inimical to
the public good," charging it con-
ceals "a determination to under-
mine the labor movement."
"Unions play an important and
necessary role," the CLC asserted.
"They are much more than eco-
nomic devices for working people
in their relations with employers,
although this is a fundamental rea-
son for their existence.
"They have added strength to
the democratic structure, have
expanded the area of freedom
within our political democracy
and have made possible the
avoidance of the violent social
conflicts which are characteristic
of countries where workers have
not enjoyed the freedom of asso-
ciation which they have ob-
tained here."
On labor's economic gains the
submission said:
"Higher wages have produced
not only an increased standard of
living for union members but for
others as well. The shorter work-
week has made leisure almost uni-
versally available. The unions'
drive for health and welfare plans
has resulted in millions of Cana-
dians getting the benefit of prepaid
health care at a reasonable cost.
This has undoubtedly been a con-
tributing factor to the introduction
of hospital insurance in every prov-
ince but one; and the same intensive
fhterest of the labor movement in
old age security has played its part
in the awakened interest in the
welfare of our aged."
The CLC also discussed in gen-
eral terms strikes, picketing, anti-
union activities of employer groups
"faithfully echoing their opposite
numbers in the United States," and
the legal status of unions.
In other areas, the CLC recog-
nized the economic situation as
better than a year ago but foresaw
little prospect" that unemployment
would be appreciably less heavy.
It commended the Diefenbaker gov-
ernment for running a budget defi-
cit as an aid in lifting the country
out of the recession, but maintained
the time has come to "relax the
present tight-money policy."
"We are not afraid that an in-
crease in the money supply will
lead to inflation as long as we
have, as we unquestionably have
now, considerable unused re-
sources of plant, equipment and
manpower,' 9 the statement added.
The CLC also called for ex-
panded international trade, partic-
ularly with underdeveloped coun-
tries, and an expanded * social se-
curity, program.
"The CLC has no illusions about
the possibility of getting something
for nothing in social security," the
memorandum explained. "We re-
alize quite well that what Canadi-
ans obtain by way of social benefits
must be paid for through taxation
or contributions of some kind. Our
only contention is that social aid
should go to those who need it and
that taxes should be paid by those
who can best afford them.
Hourly Pay Rises
In Building Trades
Hourly wage rates of union
building trades workers rose an av-
erage of one-half of 1 percent in
the last three months of 1959,
bringing the average scale to $3.54
an hour, according to the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The average increase for all
trades combined was 1.7 cents an
hour, compared with 2.4 cents for
the same period of 1958.
Electricians recorded the greatest
advance for the final quarter of
1959, with an hourly rise of 4.5
cents. Painters were next, with a
1.9-cent increase.
The BLS quarterly survey of
seven major trades in 100 cities
revealed that one-seventh of build-
ing trades workers were receiving
higher pay rates than in the pre-
vious quarter.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Page Thrm
Cleanup of Corruption ;
Big Bakery Drive
Opened on Coast
Los Angeles — The AFL-CIO and its affiliated American Bakery
& Confectionery Workers have launched a major organizing drive
in 10 West Coast cities which are among the last remaining foot-
holds of the bakery union expelled from the federation on findings
of corrupt leadership.
Franz E. Daniel, assistant to'^
AFL-CIO Organization Dir. John
W. Livingston, is directing the joint
campaign which is aimed at bring-
ing nearly 20,000 bakery workers
in California, Oregon and Wash-
ington into the ABC.
Daniel said the decision to launch
a major drive was made after West
Coast leaders of the expelled Bak-
ery & Confectionery Workers were
unable to force the ouster of BCW
Pres. James R. Cross. Removal of
Cross from leadership has been one
of the conditions set by the AFL-
CIO for reunification of bakery
workers.
Declaring that despite "good
intentions," opposition to Cross
within the BCW has proved "fu-
tile," Daniel announced that cam-
paigns have been launched in
Los Angeles, Long Beach, San
Diego, Oakland, Sacramento and
Stockton, Calif.; Seattle, Spokane
and Tacoma, Wash., and Port-
land, Ore. In some of these
cities, ABC locals are already
dominant in the bakery field.
The goal, he said, is to provide
"clean, decent trade unionism for.
West Coast bakery workers."
Los Angeles, where the ousted
union retained bargaining rights
by a majority of only 128 votes
out of nearly 5,000 two years ago,
is considered a key city in' the
campaign.
Active Local Support
-In addition to a staff of AFL-
CIO and ABC organizers, Daniel
said, the campaign in the three-
state area will have the active sup-
port of state, county and city cen-
tral bodies.
Declaring that reform efforts
by BCW members are "doomed
to failure" because of Cross'
dictatorial power" over the un-
ion, Daniel said the "only an-
swer" for the West Coast bakers
"is to support and affiliate with
ABC and the AFL-CIO."
In the two years since the BCW
was expelled by the AFL-CIO, an
estimated 85,500 of the original
132,000 members have joined the
ABC.
CWA Raps Rockefeller
Phone Tax Proposal
The Communications Workers have registered "wholehearted
disapproval" of a plan by New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller
(R) calling for local adoption of a 10 percent telephone excise tax
if and when the federal telephone tax is allowed to expired
In a letter to the New York chief executive, CWA Pres. Joseph
A. Beirne called taxation of long-^
distance phone calls "nothing more
than a sales tax and a very unfair
one."
Congress last year voted to let
the 10 percent federal excise tax
on toll calls expire this coming
June 30. In his Budget Message,
however, Pres. Eisenhower predi-
cated his forecast of a $4.2 billion
surplus in part on extension of the
tax for at least another year.
New York sources indicated
Rockefeller had appealed to the
UAW Officer
Confirmed in
Kansas Post
Topeka, Kan. — Harold L. Smith,
veteran local official of the Auto
Workers at the time of his appoint-
ment by Gov. George Docking (D)
as state commissioner of labor, has
been confirmed by the State Sen-
ate.
The 42-year-old Smith has had a
long history of service to UAW
Local 31, to the international union
and to the community.
During his employment at North
American Aviation Corp., Smith
served as shop steward, head of
the bargaining committee and mem-
ber of the local's executive board.
He also held the offices of trus-
tee, recording secretary, financial
secretary, vice-president and pres-
ident.
In 1955, he was elected to
represent the 10-state Reg. 5
on the UAW's General Motors
negotiating team. He was then
elected vice-chairman of the top
group, which bargained for work-
ers in 130 plants throughout the
nation.
Smith also has been active in
such community activities and
groups as youth athletics, the Sal-
vation Army and the Community
Chest.
White House to allow the tax to
expire on schedule, paving the way
for major cities in New York state
to impose a similar levy in their
search for revenues.
Cites Five Standards
Beirne said the proposal for city
telephone taxes fails to measure up
to these five "standards" of what
constitutes a good levy:
• "It should not imperil busi-
ness opportunities or employment/'
• "It should not single out and
discourage social and/ or economi-
cally desirable services or activi-
ties."
• "It should not be a single tax
on a selected commodity unless it
is socially and economically desira-
ble to discourage use of that com-
modity,"
• "It should be a just tax; that
is, it should not impose upon any
particular group a disproportionate
share of the tax burden."
• "Ability to pay should be a
factor."
Since the telephone excise tax
does not meet any of these stand-
ards, the CWA president wrote
Rockefeller, "it should not be en-
acted by any legislative body mere-
ly for the convenience of securing
additional revenues, regardless of
the need for such monies."
Local Meets COPE
Quota for 1 5th Year
New York— Local 296 of
the United Papermakers &
Paperworkers continues to set
an enviable record in its en-
thusiastic support of the AFL-
CIO Committee on Political
Education.
For the 15th consecutive
year, the local has collected
the equivalent of $1 or more
from each of its members
for labor's voluntary political
fund-raising program.
SOLIDARITY MARCH is staged by 4,000 striking members of Packinghouse Workers Local 6
and union sympathizers in Albert Lea, Minn., where union has been on strike against Wilson & Co.
meat packing plant since Nov. 3. Unionists came from several Minnesota and Iowa communities
to register support of UPWA. Parade started on Albert Lea's main street, ended after unionists
marched past Wilson plant. AFL-CIO has called for full labor support of strikers.
Auto Union
Sets Council
At Chrysler
Detroit — Establishment of a Na-
tional Chrysler Council to co-
ordinate bargaining procedures has
been voted by delegates from Auto
Workers locals that represent em-
ployes at Chrysler Corp. plants in
the U.S. and Canada.
The vote of the 135 delegates
from 27 local unions was an-
nounced by UAW Vice Pres. Nor-
man Matthews, director of the un-
ion's National Chrysler Dept., fol-
lowing a jtwo-day conference here.
Under the new structure, nine
subcouncils were established on >
the basis of mutual occupational
interests, with each group naming
delegates who will serve on the
national council.
The subcouncils include: assem-
bly plants; stamping plants; engine,
axel and transmission plants; parts
and equipment manufacturing;
forge, foundry and miscellaneous
plants; defense plants parts plants;
office and clerical workers; and
engineers and skilled trades.
Labor to Join
President's
Safety Meet
Top-level union officials have
been assigned key roles in the
President's Conference on Occupa-
tional Safety which will bring an
estimated 3,000 delegates to Wash-
ington, D. C, for a three-day ses-
sion, opening Mar. 1.
Delegates to the biennial con-
ference will represent labor, indus-
try, science, education and govern-
ment.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
the chairman, said workshop lead-
ers and panel participants will in-
clude: Pres. James A. Brownlow of
AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept.;
George Brown, assistant to AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany; Machin-
ists Vice Pres. P. L. Siemiller; Car-
penters Vice Pres. John R. Steven-
son; Sec.-Treas. Kenneth J. Kelley
of the Massachusetts State AFL-
CIO; and Safety Dir. Victor E.
Whitehouse of the Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers.
Serving on the Technical Advis-
ory Committee which helped set
up the conference are AFL-CIO
Vice Pres. Richard F. Walsh, chair-
man of the AFL-CIO Committee
on Safety and Occupational Health;
Sec.-Treas. Hunter Wharton of the
Operating Engineers; Safety Dir.
Harry See of the Railway Train-
men; Brownlow and Brown, who
also serves on the conference pro-
gram planning committee.
Meany Calls on Unions
To Aid Wilson Strikers
(Continued from Page 1)
strikebreakers and claiming bar-
gaining rights.
Morale Still High
Despite the hardships of the mid-
winter strike, morale among the
strikers remained high.
In Albert Lea, Minn., scene of
earlier strike violence, nearly 4,000
UPWA members and supporters
gathered for a "solidarity break-
fast'' and paraded through the city
streets. More than 2,000 of the
paraders had come in the pre-dawn
hours from Austin and St. Paul,
Minn., and Hason City, la.
There was good temper and com-
plete order as they marched to the
struck plant and returned. The
plant, normally in operation on
Saturday, had been closed for the
day.
Declaring that the strike issues
have been "distorted by the daily
press," Meany in his letter to AFL-
CIO affiliates cited the union's long
efforts to negotiate a new contract
with the nation's third-biggest meat
packing chain.
He pointed to the fact that Wil-
son employes had worked without
a contract from Sept, 19 until late
in October, when they were locked
out after the company demanded
they sign individual "yellow dog"
contracts governing their working
conditions.
"On Nov. 3 the union struck,
seeking only a contract similar to
others negotiated in the industry,"
Meany pointed out.
Declaring that "every kind of
WD Gives $25,000
To Wilson Strikers
The AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. has sent a gift
of $25,000 to the Packing-
house Workers in support of
the union's strike against
Wilson & Co.
"You may be sure of our
continuing moral and finan-
cial support in this battle with
an unscrupulous and anti-la-
bor company," IUD Sec.-
Treas. James B. Carey wrote
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein.
"Our department will not
stand idly by and watch fel-
low workers suffer at the
hands of a management that
thinks nothing of destroying
the dignity and security of its
employes."
assistance, moral, financial and or-
ganizational is needed," Meany
said:
"Contributions from our na-
tional and international unions
and from their local unions,
from the directly affiliated local
unions of the AFL-CIO, as well
as from every state and local
central body are vital to vic-
tory."
He asked that the strike dona-
tions be sent directly to UPWA
Sec.-Treas. G. R. Hathaway, 609
South Dearborn St., Chicago, 111.
Meany Salutes Histadrut
Marking 40th Anniversary
The "warmest greetings" of the AFL-CIO were sent by Pres.
George Meany to Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, as it held
its 9th convention in Tel Aviv.
In a cable to Gen. Sec. Pinhas Lavon of Histadrut, Meany
expressed U.S. labor's confidence that after 40 years of "courageous,
fruitful dedication to human dignity $>
and freedom for your own nation
and all mankind," the convention
will make decisions contributing
"decisively toward strengthening"
the organization and "enhancing its
role in attaining" goals he listed.
These were:
• "Building the Republic of Is-
rael into a healthy and prosperous
democracy living in peace with all
its neighbors.
• "Speeding the day when all
Middle East nations will cooperate
in promoting peace, democracy and
modern industrial progress and
higher living standards.
• "Inspiring and helping other
Africa-Asia nations that have re-
cently won or are still fighting for
their national independence to
achieve economic development, de-
mocracy and well-being for their
peoples."
T. W. Miller Named
Publicist by NLRB
Thomas W. Miller, Jr., a veteran
newsman, has been appointed di-
rector of information of the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board.
Miller, 42, succeeds Louis G.
Silverberg, who joined the Dept. of
State as Labor Attache of the U.S.
Embassy in Tokyo. Miller for the
past few years has served as infor-
mation director for the Housing
& Home Finance Agency.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
AFL-CIO Raps Administration Inertia:
Federal Natural Resources
Policy Legislation Backed
The AFL-CIO has called on Congress to enact legislation clearly committing the federal government
to conservation, development and utilization of natural resources, charging that the 'Eisenhower Ad-
ministration has been "unwilling" to act in this area.
In testimony prepared for the Senate Interior Committee, Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller said
the 13.5-million-member federation is in "strong support" of the measure which would assert federal
responsibility in the natural re-'^
sources field to meet present and
EVEN BEFORE the official receipt books were out, 89 members
of Oil Workers Local 2-373 at Cody, Wyo., had contributed $101
to COPE's dollar drive. Rejoicing here are, left to right, COPE
Reg. Dir. Walt Gray; OCAW Dist. Dir. B. J. Rickey; Margaret
Thornburgh, director of COPE's western women's activities; and
Bob L. Riegel, local secretary and Wyoming COPE chairman.
the District would have two or
three non-voting delegates in the
House^-the same arrangement
which Hawaii and Alaska enjoyed
before they were granted statehood.
In the House, Rep. Emanuel
Celler (D-N. Y.), chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee, said
he would try to hold hearings
on the proposed amendment.
However, he said he was not
sure there would be enough time
in this year's session, which will
be shortened because of the
Democratic and Republican na-
tional conventions in July.
Chances for House passage were
dimmed by the traditional resent-
ment among congressmen against
having the Senate initiate legisla-
tion affecting the filling of House
vacancies.
Constitutional Poll Tax
Ban Passed by Senate
The Senate has overwhelmingly approved a proposed constitu-
tional amendment that would outlaw the poll tax as a requirement
for voting in federal elections.
The omnibus amendment would also give District of Columbia
residents the right to vote in presidential elections, and would let
governors temporarily fill Housed
vacancies in national emergencies.
The Senate vote was 70-18 — 11
more votes than the two-thirds ma-
jority required for passage of a
constitutional amendment. .
The bill now goes to the House,
where it faces an uncertain fate.
A two-thirds vote is required in
House, followed by ratification by
38 state legislatures, before it can
be incorporated in the Constitution.
The omnibus amendment orig-
inated with a proposal by Sen.
Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) em-
powering governors to appoint
congressmen if a majority of the
House was killed in a nuclear
attack or other major disaster.
Governors are now empowered
to fill Senate vacancies, but
House vacancies can be filled
only by election.
The poll tax repeal was added
to the proposal by Sen. Spessard L,
Holland (D-Fla.) after the Senate,
by a vote of 50 to 37, rejected a
move by Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R
N. Y.) that would have outlawed
the poll tax by simple statute in-
stead of amending the Constitution.
Only five states — Alabama, Arkan-
sas, Mississippi, Virginia and Texas
— still use a poll tax.
The long-sought sufferage for
voteless D. C. residents was pro-
posed by Sen. Kenneth B. Keating
(R-N. Y.) and approved by a 63-25
vote. If adopted, it would give
Washington four or five votes in
the electoral college. In addition,
140,000 Union
Members Get
Labor Paper
Milwaukee, Wis. — By action of
the Milwaukee County Labor Coun
cil, the Milwaukee Labor Press,
official organ of that body, will go
each week to 140,000 union mem
bers of the council, with subscrip-
tions included in the monthly dues
The county-wide central body
was created some months ago by
merger of the former AFL Fed
erated Trades Council and the for-
mer Milwaukee County CIO In
dustrial Union Council.*
Council spokesmen said the pa
per could be expected to play an
important role in the community
affairs. Ray W. Taylor, editor,
pointed out that the new circulation
will make the Milwaukee Labor
Press the second largest home-de
livered paper in Wisconsin.
future "human, economic and na-
tional defense requirements."
The measure, sponsored ,by
Chairman James E. Murray (D-
Mont.) and 29 other senators,
would outline the government's
natural resources role in much the
same manner as the Employment
Act of 1946, after which it is
patterned, commits the government
to working for "maximum employ-
ment, production and purchasing
power."
Biemiller's -testimony was pre-
sented by AFL-CIO Legislative
Rep. John T. Curran. The state-
ment noted that the AFL-CIO
Metal Trades Dept. specifically
associated itself with the testimony.
James B. Carey, secretary-treas-
urer of the AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. and president of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers, also endorsed the conservation
measure. He declared that "our
nation's economic health and its
defensive strength are weakened in
proportion to the reckless depletion
of our natural resources."
Biemiller pointed out that the
AFL-CIO's third constitutional con-
vention in San Francisco last Sep-
tember emphasized "the need to
resume a forward march along the
entire conservation front," and
added:
"Our rapid population growth,
the accelerated utilization of our
resources by a skyrocketing tech-
nology, our international respon-
sibilities to remain an econom-
ically strong leader of the free
world nations, and the formid-
able production challenge of the
Soviet Union, are stark facts of
life. Further indecision, inaction
and irresponsibility at the federal
level are capable of bringing
about the most serious conse-
quences, both domestically and
internationally."
Adoption of the Murray bill, he
said, would put an end to the
"sporadic fashion" in which the
nation has surveyed the resources
situation by reasserting federal
leadership, planning and financing
of projects for developing and con-
serving natural resources.
Biemiller stressed the fact that
"a statement of policy takes us but
part of the way," pointing out that
in the seven years of the Eisen-
hower Administration "it has been
made painfully clear that programs
can be starved out for lack of
appropriations."
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
one means of translating policies
into programs is by ' reorganizing
the "overlapping and duplicating
functions and areas of responsibil-
ity" of federal agencies dealing
with natural resources in order to
develop "a whole program, rather
than the piecemeal, project-by-proj-
ect approach" which has been in
effect in the past seven years.
Carey pointed out that responsi-
bility for various water resources
programs currently is "scattered
through 26 different agencies."
The AFL-CIO has placed pass-
age of the Murray bill high on its
legislative program for this session
of Congress, pointing out that it
contains "four principles in accord
with labor's resources * program":
• It spells out federal leader
ship and responsibility.
• It sets guidelines for "genuine
cooperation" between federal, state
and local governments and labor,
agriculture, business and other
groups "with interests directly fo-
cused on resources conservation."
• It accomplishes for future
generations policies and programs
to meet economic, recreational and
esthetic needs.
• It makes possible "broader
focus, better coordination, and less
duplication and jurisdictional con-
flict among federal agencies."
Labor Urges
Power Funds
For Irrigation
The AFL-CIO has urged Con-
gress to enact legislation which
would make funds available for ir-
rigation development along the
Columbia River basin in the Pacific
Northwest by pooling revenues
from the sale of power by federal
projects along the river.
Legislative Rep. John T. Curran
told a House Interior subcommittee
that passage of bills introduced by
Representatives Al Ullman CD-
Ore.), Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.) and
four other western Congressmen
would aid in "sound fiscal manage-
ment" of the Columbia basin, and
would follow a concept "brilliantly
successful" in the TVA.
The federation spokesman cau-
tioned against any increase in the
wholesale power rate charged by
by the Bonneville Power Admin-
istration. The favorable rate now
in effect, Curran said, "should
not be placed in any jeopardy."
He told the subcommittee that
"vast areas" of Washington, Ore-
gon, Idaho and Montana would be
benefited by making surplus power
revenues available for irrigation.
"These lands," Curran said, "will
provide food and fibre in the future
for the needs of our rapidly ex-
panding population, as well as
create homes and communities
which will add businesses, indus-
tries, jobs and a broader tax base."
School Aid, Teacher Pay Bill Passed by Senate
(Continued from Page*l)
that the measure would reach a
showdown on the floor.
Nixon's effort to kill teachers'
salary aid came on a motion to
reconsider Senate rejection of an
amendment to the $1 billion, two-
year school construction bill in-
troduced by Michigan Democrats
Pat McNamara and Philip A.
Hart.
Sponsored by Sen. Joseph S.
Clark (D-Pa.) and 22 other north-
ern liberals, the amendment would
have provided $1.1 billion in an-
nual grants for an indefinite period
for both salaries and construction.
This was in line with the AFL-CIO-
backed Murray-Metcalf bill ap-
proved by the House Education
Committee but stalled in the power-
ful Rules Committee.
Administration Bill Beaten
The amendment was rejected by
a 44.44 vote. Majority Leader Sen
Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) moved
immediately to reconsider, with
Minority Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (R-Ill.) countering with
motion to table. On the latter
proposal, the Senate again split 44-
44. Nixon broke the tie and killed
reconsideration.
Earlier, the Senate rejected a
narrow substitute, based on Admin-
istration proposals, which would
have provided $100 million a year
for 30 years to help states retire
the service charges on school con-
struction.
Final passage came on a sub-
stitute offered by Clark and 33 co-
sponsors. It called for federal
grants to the states of $20 per
pupil per year for a two-year period.
It was virtually the same as a meas-
ure proposed by Sen. Warren Mag-
nuson (D-Wash.), but it spelled out
aid for teachers' salaries more
clearly than did the Magnuson sub-
stitute. The Washington Democrat
yielded to the Clark move and with-
drew his substitute.
Poll Tax Ban Voted
Action on school aid came after
the Senate overwhelmingly ap-
proved a constitutional amendment
to abolish poll taxes, grant District
of Columbia residents voting rights
in presidential elections, and pro-
viding for appointment of congress-
men if a majority of House mem-
bers are killed in a disaster. It
faces an uncertain fate in the
House.
The break in the civil rights
blockade came as House liberals
were within striking distance of
obtaining the 219 signatures need-
ed on a discharge petition which
would have forced the measure out
of committee. It was reported that
158 Democrats — virtually all of
the non-southern members of the
party — plus 36 Republicans had
signed. This was only 25 short of
the goal.
Bolstered by the discharge peti-
tion drive, Rep. Ray J. Madden
(D-Ind.) moved formally that the
bill be reported by the Rules Com-
mittee, where four southern Demo-
crats and four conservative Re-
publicans had bottled up the four-
point civil rights bill since August.
After a closed-door session,
Chairman Howard W. Smith (D-
Va.), a bitter opponent of civil
rights legislation, announced the
committee had voted to hold im-
mediate hearings. No time limit
was set on the length of these hear-
ings, but Smith pledged there
would be no "dilly, dally or delay."
Smith told newsmen he could
"see no reason why" the commit-
tee would not clear the bill and
send it to the House floor this
month. He hinted strongly that
at least three of the committee's
Republicans, apparently heeding
Pres. Eisenhower's State of the
Union plea for civil rights legisla-
tion, were belatedly joining the
committee's four liberal Democrats
in support of the measure.
"It would take seven votes" in
the committee, Smith said, "and it
looks like they have them."
The bill now in the Rules Com-
mittee would:
• Make obstruction of school
desegregation orders a federal
crime.
• Require preservation of vot-
ing records for two years and per-
mit inspection by the Justice Dept.
on written request.
• Make it a federal crime to
cross state lines to avoid prosecu
tion for bombing any building or
vehicle.
• Authorize the government to
provide education facilities for
children of military personnel
where public schools are closed to
avoid integration.
The AFL-CIO has urged that
civil rights legislation be bol-
stered to safeguard voting rights
by having the federal govern-
ment register all persons denied
this right by local authorities and
to supervise elections if it ap-
peared that the right to vote or
have votes counted would be de-
nied qualified voters.
The President's Civil Rights
Commission recommended appoint-
ment of "federal registrars" to ac-
complish this purpose, and Demo-
cratic liberals immediately en-
dorsed the proposal.
Eisenhower at first questioned
the constitutionality of the plan.
Later, however, Atty. Gen. William
P. Rogers advocated court-ap-
pointed "voting referees" who
would "certify as qualified to vote
in any election all persons found to
be qualified" in voting rights cases
brought under the 1957 Civil
Rights Act. They would also re-
port on whether a person "entitled
to vote . . . has been denied that
right, or the right to have his vote
counted."
'Start 9 on School Aid
As the Senate opened debate on
the school-aid bill, McNamara said
passage of the $1 billion construc-
tion measure would be a "mean-
ingful start" toward meeting the
nation's "staggering" classroom
shortage. He emphasized that the
measure carries a clear "assurance
against federal interference.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Page Five
I960 Fact Sheet on Congress— No. 3:
Forand Bill Meets Medical Needs of Aged
Benefits Would Avert
Disasters of Illness
By John Beidler
Protection of older citizens against the human and financial dis-
aster of prolonged illness is the most pressing social welfare problem
in our nation today.
We have, in the past, reached solutions or partial solutions for
many social problems in America.
We have put a floor under wages through the Fair Labor Stand-
ards Act.
We have provided a cushion for old age through the Social
Security Act.
We have established a system of unemployment compensation,
also through the Social Security^
Act.
But for older citizens, living on
small incomes, who suffer lengthy
illnesses, we have done almost noth-
ing.
Eleven million persons now draw
social security pensions. A little
more than a million of them are
also covered by private pension
plans. But the primary federal
social security benefit (on which
Get the Facts
On Key Issues
The AFL-CIO News is
publishing on this page the
third of a new series of Fact
Sheets on Congress providing
background information on
basic issues coming before
the second session of the
86th Congress.
The series, prepared by
John Beidler of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation, is
designed to give the legisla-
tive history of the issue, the
various forces involved pro
and con and the general na-
ture of bills introduced.
Reprints of the fact sheet
series will be available from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legis-
lation, 815 16th Street N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C.
most retirees must rely exclusive-
ly) averages only $73 a month. The
maximum benefit for a retired
couple, which only a small propor-
tion of beneficiaries receive, is but
$180 a month.
Out of these small sums must
come rent, food, clothing and
other necessary expenses. There
is no margin for huge medical
expenses brought on by a slay in
the hospital.
It is estimated that about 40 per-
cent of retired persons have some
form of health insurance. But how
good is this insurance?
A federal government study in
1957 indicated that of all pension-
ers who had medical expenses, only
14 percent of the couples and 9
percent of the single persons drew
any insurance benefits at all.
This tends to prove what the
AFL-CIO and other liberal groups
have asserted time and again: for
retired persons, health insurance
costs are unconscionably high and
benefits paid by these private plans
are unconscionably low.
Frequent Cancellations
Another fault of existing private
plans is that in many cases as soon
as the insured retiree draws some
benefit from his insurance policy,
the company cancels.
What happens to these people,
and to those who have no health
insurance coverage at all, when
major illness strikes?
Savings, which have been pains-
takingly accumulated over the
years to be" used for some modest
comforts during retirement, are
lost.
If all funds are gone, the retired
person may, by proving his pov-
erty, obtain public assistance.
A final alternative, for many, is
to sock the help of children or
other relatives who are still em-
ployed. Unquestionably millions
of these problems are solved in
this way.
But none of these alternatives
is a really acceptable solution to
the problem. The only accept-
able solution is a system to which
each worker contributes, and
from which he draws benefits as
a matter of right with the cost
distributed over his lifetime
rather than depending on private
insurance bought a few years be-
fore retirement.
Such a system is proposed in the
Forand Bill.
The Forand bill, named after its
chief sponsor, Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D-R. I.), provides for extension of
the social security system to pro-
vide hospital and skilled nursing
home care and certain surgical ex-
penses for all social security bene-
ficiaries.
This means, in addition to re-
tired persons, those covered would
include widows with dependent
children and persons who draw
benefits because of total disability.
Under the Forand bill the Secre-
tary of Health, Education and Wel-
fare would administer the plan, as
he does the existing social security
system. Social security records
would be used to determine the
eligibility of individuals for bene-
fits.
Participation Open
Any qualified hospital or skilled
nursing home could participate in
the program. Rates for services
rendered to the eligible sick would
be set by agreement between the
government and the hospital or
nursing home, using the kind of
formulas already well-developed in
many government and private
plans.
The secretary would be author-
ized to use voluntary organizations
to help administer the program. A
special proviso forbids any admin-
istering agency to interfere with
the internal management of par-
ticipating institutions or with the
private practice of medicine.
The cost of the program would
be about $1 billion a year at the
start. This would be met by an
increase of one-fourth of 1 per-
cent in the social security taxes
on employers and employes, and
three-eighths of 1 percent on
self-employed persons. The tax
would apply, as it does now, to
earnings up to $4,800 a year, so
that a worker would, at most,
pay $12 more each year in social
security taxes.
The Forand bill was first intro-
duced in 1957, but failed to receive
any positive consideration by the
85th Congress.
The bill, however, was reintro-
duced in the 86th Congress, and
extensive hearings were held by
the House Ways and Means Com-
mittee in July 1959. A large num-
ber of witnesses appeared before
the committee.
Opposing the bill were:
American Medical Association.
American Dental Association.
American Pharmaceutical Asso-
ciation.
Chamber of Commerce of the
United States.
National Association of Manu-
facturers.
American Farm Bureau Federa-
tion.
Council of State Chambers of
Commerce.
Forand Bill Provisions
Supported by AFL-CIO
The Forand bill, H.R. 4700, provides:
• 60 days of hospitalization in a 12-month period for those
eligible to receive social security benefits.
• 120 days of nursing home care (less the number of days
of any hospitalization) for those eligible to receive social
security benefits.
O Surgical services which are medically required for those
eligible to receive social security benefits.
• An increase in contributions to the social security trust
fund' of one-fourth of 1 percent for employes, one-fourth of
1 percent for employers and three-eighths of 1 percent for
self-employed persons on earnings up to $4,800 a year.
• Free choice of hospitals and nursing homes by the
patient.
• The federal government would exercise no control over
the operation of hospitals or nursing homes, or over the
selection or payment of personnel.
It is estimated that for the first year of operation the cost
of hospital benefits would be $905 million, the cost of skilled
nursing benefits "negligible,"' and the cost of surgical benefits
$80 million.
It is estimated also that the increase in contribution rates
would bring into the social security trust fund about $1 billion
during the first year, enough to pay for the program.
'That's Socialism!'
Copyright The Machinist
Life Insurance Association of
America.
National Association of Life Un-
derwriters.
International Association of Ac-
cident and Health Underwriters.
Most of these groups also op-
posed the original Social Security
Act.
Those who appeared to support
enactment of the Forand bill in-
cluded:
AFL-CIO.
American Nurses' Association.
National Association of Social
Workers.
American Public Welfare Asso-
ciation.
National Consumers League.
National Farmers Union.
Group Health Association of
America.
Council of Golden Ring Clubs
of Senior Citizens.
A number of prominent physi-
cians also supported the bill.
Dr. James P. Dixon, Jr., former
health commissioner in Philadel-
phia, said the use of the OASI ma-
chinery would "minimize pauper-
ism" and would "tend to keep down
the ever-increasing cost of health
care under public assistance and
state hospital aid programs."
The medical directors of four
health centers affiliated with the
Clothing Workers, serving 110,000
members and their spouses, strong-
ly recommended passage of the
Forand bill. They included Dr.
Morris Brand, Dr. William S. Hoff-
man, Dr. Joseph A. Langbord, and
Dr. Julius Schwimmer.
In their testimony they declared:
"We know of no adequate
remedy for the gap in our medi-
cal coverage except an equitable
system of national coverage, paid
for by the worker during his
years of peak earning power.
tk In spite of the American
Medical Association's official at-
titude, many physicians like our-
selves support the principles of
the Forand bill and want it
passed."
Dr. Frank F. Furstenberg, medi-
cal director of Sinai Hospital Out-
Patient Dept. in New York, said "it
does not seem fair'- that the aged
"should have to be pauperized in
order to get medical care," and
added that Forand bill passage
would make this care available as
as a matter of right.
The committee took no decisive
action on the Forand bill after its
hearings. Since the proposal is a
tax measure, the constitution re-
quires that 4he bill originate in the
House. Therefore, proponents of
the Forand bill must secure favor-
able action by the House Ways and
Means Committee.
The committee is expected to
vote on the bill some time in.
March. The AFL-CIO has urged
all those interested in its passage
to request a favorable report by
the House Ways and Means Com-
mittee.
At its San Francisco convention,
the AFL-CIO unanimously ap-
proved a resolution which said in
part:
"We urge the House of Repre-
sentatives to move swiftly to add
federal health benefits for OASDI
(Old Age and Survivors and Dis-
ability Insurance) beneficiaries so
that the Senate likewise will have
time to approve this essential pro-
gram in 1960. The Forand Bill,
H.R. 4700, provides a construc-
tive basis through which the
OASDI trust funds and contribu-
tions can be used to pay the costs
of hospitalization and related types
of health care for the aged and
other beneficiaries.
"Through encouraging prompt
preventive treatment, good quality
of care, and speedy rehabilitation,
a new program along these lines
can remove one of the most serious
causes of insecurity and suffering
among our aged citizens and at the
same time encourage constructive
developments in health care."
None of those who oppose
enactment of the Forand bill
have come to grip with the un-
answerable reality that is the core
of the problem: the lack of med-
ical protection for the aged is
undermining our national goal of
dignified, independent, earned
retirement.
The way to provide this protec-
tion is through the retirement sys-
tem itself.
Prospects for passage of the
Forand bill during the present ses-
sion of the Congress are compli-
cated by the probability that the
session will be a short one so that
members may be free to attend the
national political conventions.
This leaves only five months for
action.
The need for the Forand bill
is clear and urgent Whether
you are retired or near retire-
ment; whether you have aging
parents whose happiness is your
concern; or whether you simply
recognize the social and eco-
nomic importance of this prob-
lem, you can and should help to
meet the need.
Write to your congressman, and
senators, urging them to support
and work for the passage of H.R.
4700, the Forand bill.
Committee List
On Forand Bill
Members of the House
Ways and Means Committee,
which has jurisdiction over
the Forand bill, H.R. 4700
are:
Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.),
chairman; Aime J. Forand
(R. I.), Cecil R. King (Calif.),
Thomas J. O'Brien (111.),
Hale Boggs (La.), Eugene J.
Keogh (N. Y.), Burr P. Har-
rison (Va.), Frank M. Kar-
sten (Mo.), A. Sydney Her-
long, Jr. (Fla.), Frank Ikard
(Texas), T. M. Machrowicz
(Mich.), James B. Frazier, Jr.,
(Tenn.), William J. Green,
Jr. (Pa.), John C. Watts (Ky.),
Lee Metcalf (Mont.), Noah
M. Mason (111.), John W.
Byrnes (Wis.), Howard H.
Baker (Tenn.), Thomas B.
Curtis (Mo.), Victor A. Knox
(Mich.), James B. Utt (Calif.),
Jackson E. Berts (Ohio),
Bruce Alger (Texas), Albert
H. Bosch (N. Y.), John A.
La Fore, Jr. (Pa.).
Pa£« Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
A Time for Decision
FEBRUARY IS A MONTH of decision for the second session of
the 86th Congress. The Administration has presented its severely
limited program. The congressional leaders have reviewed the
status of pending legislation, much of it subjected to exhaustive
hearings at the first session. Now the time has come for action.
The Senate set a good example as it broke the 11-year logjam
on school aid bills and approved a $1.8 billion measure providing
direct federal grants to the states for a two-year program.
Of equal significance, the Senate earlier voted 71 to 18 to reject
the extremely limited Javits-Cooper substitute that was all the Ad-
ministration was willing to offer. The overwhelming vote should
help House leaders pressure the Rules Committee to report out the
school aid bill cleared last year by the Education Committee.
At midmonth the Senate is slated to start debate on a civil rights
bill. The mounting urgency for legislation to plug the loopholes in
the 1957 legislation and extend its scope has finally started action in
the House Rules Committee on a watered-down measure approved
by the House Judiciary Committee at the last session.
In the Administration's oft-used phrase, it's time to substitute
deeds for words, legislation for campaign promises.
The Sales Tax Hacked
THE CLAMORING NEED—Qf-an expanding population for
state and local services is bringing renewed pressure on the
25 state legislatures meeting this year for sales taxes and other
consumer levies that bite deeply into the spendable dollars of
low and moderate-income groups.
Sales taxes in any form are unfair and regressive. They violate
the first principle of taxation — that taxes should be based on the
ability to pay.
This principle is the basis of the income tax — the higher the
income the higher the tax. The sales tax appears to tax all persons
equitably because it is a flat amount or percentage. But these levies
take a much higher percentage of a low-income family's earnings
than from a high-income family.
The answer is to extend the income tax principle to state tax
laws, establishing such laws where they do not exist and graduating
them to yield higher revenues where they are in effect.
The federal government can take a hand tin this* effort. It can
give the states an incentive to adopt and improve their tax laws
by providing a specific tax credit for income taxes paid to states
under laws meeting certain minimum federal standards.
Greed, Inc.
THE CONTRAST between the clinical purity of scientific
achievement and the greed and grubbiness of the marketplace
has been projected vividly for the American people in the Kefauver
committee's hearings on tranquilizer drugs.
The development of tranquilizers as a treatment for mental illness
was a milestone in scientific progress. It made possible treatment of
many cases outside the confines of mental hospitals long notorious
for their "snake pit" conditions.
But as with many scientific achievements the development of
tranquilizers was exploited for unconscionable profits by a hand-
ful of drug firms — not in terms of how this new discovery could
be made available to millions of mentally ill persons at a reason-
able cost but in terms of how much the traffic would bear.
The hearings have exposed the avarice and callousness that too
often plague the American private enterprise system.
'Get Us Out This Time
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. M in ton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keen an
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, February 6, 1960
No. 6
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one u authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'Increase the Incentives:
Employer Delegate Hails ILO
As Forum for Selling America
Oliver F. Burnett, president of the National
Electrical Contractors Association, served as an
employer delegate to the sixth session of the Intl.
Labor Organization in Geneva. His views on the
ILO, reprinted below, appeared in the December
1959 issue of "Qualified Contractor," official pub-
lication of the NEC A, in a signed article entitled
"The ILO Weapon."
THE INTL. LABOR Organization offers Amer-
ica a great opportunity to preserve not only
our free competitive private enterprise system but
also our high standard of living.
This may sound strange to American business
men, who have been suspicious of the ILO. Or-
ganized business has taken part in the ILO with
tongue in cheek because they had an uneasy feel-
ing that the Communists and Socialists would use
it against us. Some of that feeling comes from a
lack of understanding of the ILO and its aims.
Some comes from the defeatist attitude that the
U.S. business man is no match for the Commu-
nists and Socialists at the conference table.
I had the privilege of representing the United
States as an employer delegate to the Sixth Ses-
sion of the ILO at Geneva. As a result I believe
that the ILO affords America a fine contact
with the 79 other participating nations, includ-
ing the USSR. I know that the U.S. business
man can handle himself well against the "pros"
on the other side, and that his views are re-
spected and eagerly sought by those who can
gain the most from them.
The ILO was established under the Treaty of
Versailles to promote peace by exchange of infor-
mation among the nations and give weight to rec-
ommendations of these nations in the field of
social and economic justice for the working man.
The idea was that harmonious international rela-
tions would be advanced by raising the standard
of ail the people who produce goods and services.
What America has to sell is freedom of the
individual. The Communists can produce exceed-
ingly well. But they achieve production by com-
mand. Slavery is inherent in that system. In
America we produce for profit. The only way we
can make a profit is through the workers. We
must make sure that we satisfy the needs of our
workers if they are to produce so we can make
a profit. Our system has greater built-in security
for the worker than any socialist scheme. But it
depends on the profit motive, and here at home
we had better give serious attention to make sure
the climate permits profits.
THE STATEMENT of this American social
and economic philosophy, bluntly put by a busi-
ness man, startled other delegates, most of whom
had Socialist leanings. They look to government
for both opportunity and protection, and they are
disillusioned. When they grasped the meaning of
our way, they became excited and eager to know
more.
The ILO gives us an opportunity to tell them
more. They are receptive to our ideas so long as
we do not try to force our views on them. What
we have is nothing more than an extension of the
concept of individual freedom that sparked the
Renaissance. We have tried it and like it. We
think that if others try it they, too, might like it.
The ILO is developing such practical steps to
equalize working standards throughout the world
as building skill. They avidly sought informa-
tion on our apprenticeship and training methods.
They want to know how to attract young men into
construction.
We tell them that they must increase the
incentives. Here is a practical answer to the
concern of American business with unfair for-
eign competition based on low wages. If the
ILO can cause the wage of a Japanese con-
struction worker to rise from 25 cents an hour
to something like the level in the U.S., the Jap-
anese manufacturer will lose some of the ad-
vantage he has over the U.S. manufacturer
because he will not be able to build new facili-
ties so cheaply.
It seems the time has passed when we can build
a tariff or protection fence around our high living
standard while the rest of the world goes hungry.
The ILO points to another and, surely, better way
— raise the worker standards of the world to ap-
proximate ours so we can have an opportunity to
compete for the benefit of all«
Page Sewn
fc zz&an Says:
Action in Sight on Civil Rights
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts oj Edward P. Morgan, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to
Morgan over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 7 p. ///., EST.)
THE ADMINISTRATION has just thrown
what may turn out to be a very constructive
monkey wrench into the creaking machinery of
civil rights legislation on
Capitol Hill. Atty. Gen.
Rogers* idea to provide
court-appointed referees to
insure Negro voting rights
has already won prelimi-
nary approval from im-
portant liberals in Con-
gress plus a wry and am-
bivalent compliment from
northern Democrats to the
effect that, politically
speaking, it could not have
been more perfectly timed to reflect credit on the
Republican presidential campaign.
On the Senate side, hearings on other related
bills, including a civil rights commission proposal
to create non-judicial registrars to break up local-
level conspiracies against Negro registration, have
been inching along before a subcommittee under
two handicaps: a singular lack of Administration
interest and impetus and the active non-coopera-
tion of Judiciary Committee Chairman Eastland
(D-Miss).
Vandercook Says:
Morgan
In the House, Democrats were on the verge of
making a loud hue-and-cry over the fact that so
few Republicans had signed a petition to discharge
a mild bill locked up in the Rules Committee when
the Attorney General sprang his surprise. "The
timing was fabulous/* commented a key Demo
cratic strategist in the House, Rep. Richard Boi-
ling (Mo.); kk a clever and constructive ploy" by
Vice Pres. Nixon's forces with the objective of in
fluencing minority groups.
Although House Democrats went ahead with
a planned "talkathon" to pressure the Admin-
istration into putting more support behind civil
rights legislation, it appears they already have
it, ironically, in Rogers' new proposal.
It seemed clear that this was Minority Leader
Halleck's way of repaying southern Democrats for
their support on last year's labor reform bill. But
if the Administration is as determined to pass
Rogers' measure as it claims to be, Republican
foot-dragging can be changed to supporting votes
overnight.
THIS MEANS stronger civil rights legislation
may emerge from this session than anybody had
hoped for. Democrats painfully realize that Re
publicans can and will claim the credit and that
the damage of the Halleck-guided-GOP-southern
Democrat coalition will be forgotten in the rush
However the general liberal disposition appears to
be to support the Attorney General's proposal, on
the theory that strengthening Negro voting rights
is more important than who gets the credit.
What Happened to 'Progress?'
(This column is excerpted 'from the nightly
broadcasts of John W. Vandercook, ABC com-
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to
Vandercook over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 10 p, m. y EST.)
THE DEMOCRATS, with ill-concealed de-
light, have made a discovery. Last time
around, they point out, the GOP election cam-
'paign slogan was "Peace,
Prosperity and Progress."
This year, their opponents
chortle, it will merely be
'Peace and Prosperity."
In short, references to
"Progress" have been
dropped.
If that omission was de-
liberate, it is not hard to
understand. For the facts
are as plain as the nose of
the Republican elephant
that the rate of growth of the U.S. during the
Eisenhower Administration has slowed down. The
figures which Pres. Eisenhower and his associates
are most fond of publishing are those which indi-
cate that the U.S. is getting richer. Of course it
is. it would be altogether extraordinary if our
national income and our gross national product
were not rising. The point is — how rapidly? The
answer seems to be that it is not rising as rapidly
as it has in the past; nor nearly so rapidly as it
should.
Vandercook
TYPICALLY, since the late 1920's, the aver-
age yearly increase in the U.S. gross national prod-
uct, in terms of individual per-capita benefits (and
with change in the purchasing power of -the dollar
allowed for) was about 2.5 .percerit. During the
Truman period, that rate climbed to nearly 4 per-
cent. Averaged out over the Eisenhower years,
that figure has now dropped to less than 1 percent.
That slowdown becomes even more disturb-
ing when one learns where the increases in our
wealth have been going. Interest rates during
the GOP years have risen 90 percent. Divi-
dends have gone up 50 percent; the income of
labor 42 percent. But the take of American
farmers has fallen by 34 percent.
Stark figures take on humanity when we dis-
cover how many Americans have signally failed
to benefit from such increases in our wealth as
we have achieved. Right now these categories of
Americans still live in poverty.
POVERTY, be it noted, that is described as the
condition of a family of four with an income of
less than $2,500 a year; or single persons who earn
less than $1,100 a year. In that submerged group
are no less than 55 percent of all of our citizens
who are over 65 years of age; 54 percent of all
U.S. farm families; 7 million in families whose
breadwinner is employed in unskilled labor.
That group has increased — and not decreased
— during the past seven years. That, indeed, is
not "Progress." Nor is it a sign post that points
to "Prosperity" or "Peace."
Washington Reports:
Bill Barring Cancer -Causing
Additives Called Sure To Pass
LEGISLATION to prevent use of cancer-caus-
ing additives in drugs and cosmetics will pass
Congress in this session according to leading Dem-
ocratic and Republican members of the House
Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee,
where the bill is now.
Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Milton
W. Glenn (R-N. J.) stressed the importance of
including an amendment introduced by Rep.
James J. Delaney (D-N. Y.). The Delaney amend-
ment specifically authorizes the Dept. of Health,
Education & Welfare to prohibit use of "cancer-
producing" substances.
Dingell said on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service educational pro-
gram heard on 300 radio stations, that the bill
puts the burden of proving safety upon the manu-
facturer "as the person who would add these sub-
stances."
Glenn noted that under existing law "17 so-
called colors used in lipsticks are under question
and were banned as of Feb. 1 by a directive by
Sec. of Health Flemming." He said that industry
has tried to delay the order until and if the pend-
ing legislation becomes effective.
"While we're talking about amendments, let me
say there will probably be some of the industry
that will want to get amendments into the bill
that, would have to do with procedures, changing
the burden of proof and so on," commented
Glenn.
"I think that's something we have to be care-
ful about. Once we get into a situation where
we have a lot of legal technicalities that may call
for interpretation by the courts, we may get into
a si tuatio n where the bin is not effective."
ITS YOON
WASHINGTON
Wi£ewtd*Sfie£i<ni
THE BURDEN of Vice Pres. Nixon's first I960 campaign speech
was that Mr. Eisenhower has been a wise President, a "strong"
President, a practically unprecedented President — and that as fast
as the Vice President himself gets control of the Republican Party
a lot of things will be done differently.
The Eisenhower record on foreign policy and national security,
Nixon said in his Chicago speech, is one of the proudest — never-,
theless we must submit our policies "to searching month-to-month
re-examination" and "make such readjustments as are necessary."
The Eisenhower record on domestic issues is proud, too, he
said — and then he spoke of "inadequate classrooms, underpaid
teachers and flabby standards" that he called "weaknesses we
must constantly strive to eliminate."
As for Sec. Ezra Taft Benson's farm program, he said Republi-
cans "are thankful" for our agricultural productivity, ''but there is
no higher legislative priority than a complete overhauling of obsolete
farm programs."
He had comparable phrases on progress on civil rights, social
security, depressed areas and labor-management legislation.
James Reston of the New York Times called this "a masterpiece
of political gymnastics" showing that the Vice President "is the
kind of man who can' steer between Scylla and Charybdis and take
both precincts."
* * *
MR. NIXON'S REASON for promising the country a good many
things Mr. Eisenhower has refused is obvious. The Presidents
central principle has been devotion to a budget surplus — and the
influential columnists, commentators and newspaper publishers who
helped put him in office eight years ago have decided that in this
he has been dead wrong.
There is a daily drumfire of criticism on the missile gap, on the
space program, on the dangerous reduction in conventional armed
forces for fighting "brush fire" wars. There is despair about the
President's inability to understand that in schools, health programs
and social legislation generally we are lagging.
Mr. Nixon has no taste whatever for subjecting himself to a
transference of this criticism. His whole effort, on the contrary,
is to persuade the opinion makers that although "sound" and
"basically conservative" he is also somehow more "modern and
"realistic" than the President.
His ttTsk is made easier by the withdrawal of Gov. Nelson Rocke-
feller from the presidential race; he may be expected to make con-
tinual concessions to win the support of liberal Republicans and
independents, since right-wingers have no place else to go, either
in the GOP convention or the general election.
* * *
FOR THE DEMOCRATS, the Nixon approach obviously pre-
sents problems, but a few openings suggest themselves.
They can try to fasten the generally right-wing record of the
Republican Party on him by pointing to the rollcails on exactly
the things he now talks about — action to improve schools, social
security, minimum wages and depressed areas.
They can try to fasten his own record on him — although for seven
years he has seldom been forced to vote, since he is allowed to
vote only in case of Senate ties.
On the last two occasions, he has given them considerable
help: he broke a tie and sealed the McClellan so-called "bill of
rights" into the labor bill, and on Feb. 3, 1960, he broke another
tie in what turned out to be a futile effort to kill the Clark school-
aid amendment increasing federal grants and authorizing states
to use the funds to improve teachers 9 salaries.
CANCER-PRODUCING AGENTS used in color additives for
cosmetics as well as food must be prohibited by law, Rep. John D.
Dingell (D-Mich.), left, and Rep. Milton W. Glenn (R-N. J.)
asserted on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Eiglit
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
How To Buy: 9
Beware Ad Agencies
In Attacks on FTC
By Sidney Margolius
ADVERTISING AGENCIES now are attacking the Federal
Trade Commission because the FTC has launched a campaign
to clean up what it considers deceptive TV commercials.
This challenge is something for you to watch. If the agencies
succeed in discouraging FTC officials by personal attacks on them,
we won't get the intensified policing of TV the FTC recently started.
TV advertising has become a huge
influence on our buying habits. Ad-
vertisers now spend on TV about
$1.5 billion of the approximately
$10 billion they invest each year in
U^/^^S^l" J '" - In recent weeks FTC has issued
these significant complaints against
major advertisers and in some cases
their agencies:
# That real sandpaper was not
used in the TV commercials for
Palmolive Rapid Shave which
showed a razor shaving sandpaper,
nor has "Rapid Shave" the moisten-
ing qualities claimed in actual
shaving use.
• That the filter demonstration for Life cigarettes, showing a
liquid poured into two tubes, doesn't prove that Life's filter absorbs
more tars and nicotine than other cigarette filters, nor has the U.S.
government found the smoke from Life lower in tar and nicotine
as the ads seemed to claim.
• That Pepsodent's TV toothpaste demonstration did not prove
it would remove all tobacco stains.
• That the purportedly inferior foil wrap used in a TV demon-
stration for comparison with Alcoa Wrap aluminum foil was de-
liberately torn.
• That the "flavor buds" shown in a TV ad for Blue Bonnet
margarine were artificial.
Other revealing FTC complaints against big TV advertisers pre-
viously reported here include Libby-Owens-Ford and General Mo-
tors for their demonstration of the view through their car windows
(FTC said they rolled down the windows), and Colgate's "invisible
shield" commercials (FTC said "Gardol" won't put an invisible
shield on your teeth).
First challenge to FTC came from a top official of the big
Donahue & Coe ad agency. He charged that FTC's practice of
announcing its complaints without first consulting "privately"
with the advertisers may be the "most unfair diversion of trade,"
reports business-writer Robert Alden.
Next, Ted Bates & Co., nation's fifth largest ad agency, took full
page ads in leading newspapers publicly to ask FTC Chairman
Earl W. Kintner: "Is imaginative selling against the law?" The
agency warned that the FTC complaint "will be fought out in the
courts".
"It is true that if you apply Palmolive Rapid-Shave — and let it
soak, as you would shave with a tough beard — you can shave sand-
paper," Bates agency's ads declared. It explained that it didn't use
real sandpaper on TV but plexiglass prepared to look like sand-
paper, because "variations between the shaved and unshaved sand-
paper do not register properly through a TV lens."
THE BIG AD AGENCY also suggests that such FTC actions
even may weaken "free enterprise ... a precious thing to all of us."
"The reputation of companies like the Colgate-Palmolive Co. — a
reputation they began to build and guard when Thomas Jefferson
was president — is a large part of free enterprise," Bates declares.
Well, nobody wants to attack Tom Jefferson. All the FTC griped
about were the claims made for the shaving cream.
It's perfectly true that Palmolive Rapid-Shave can shave sand-
paper. We did it although we had to let the cream soak in three
minutes. Then we tried shaving sandpaper with brush-type cream
and with lather from a 15-cent cake of shaving soap and from ordi-
nary bath soap. We were able to shave the sandpaper as well with
all these. Finally we tried shaving sandpaper with plain water.
That worked as well as the Palmolive Rapid-Shave.
Here's our advice:
For the man who wants to shave sandpaper, plain water works
as well as Palmolive Rapid-Shave.
The man who wants to shave his face can save money by using
cake shaving soap.
BATES' DEFENSE of its sandpaper commercial is a diversion
from the real problem of high-pressure TV advertising. The fact
that anything with water in it will loosen sand enough to shave it
off the paper was not mentioned in either the TV commercial or
Bates' challenge to FTC.
Interestingly, Bates made no mention at all in its ad that it pre-
pared the ads for Colgate's Gardol and Life cigarettes also cited
by the FTC as deceptive.
Actually, FTC regulation of TV advertising has been mild
rather than strict U.S. Atty.-Gen. Rogers recently indicated that
FTC has the authority for stricter enforcement of laws against
deceptive advertising, and even could take action against TV sta-
tions as well as the advertisers.
That would really be an effective way to assure the public of trust-
worthy advertising.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
ELECTRONIC BALANCING DEVICES such as this one, which works on crankshafts in an auto
plant, may be expected to put more and more workers on the streets, the study of the Packard shut-
down by the Senate special committee on unemployment problems indicates.
Senate Study Shows Impact
Of Packard Closing on Workers
WHAT HAPPENS to workers with 20 or 30
years seniority when their plant shuts down
permanently or runs away to another area?
The Senate Committee on Unemployment Prob-
lems provides us with the answers in one promi-
nent instance in a case study of Packard Motor
Co. workers in Detroit. The plant shut^ down
in June 1956, after more than a half -century of
operation. Some 4,000 were left on the street.
Finding a newjob became the immediate prob-
lem of the workers. Among those workers who
did not retire from the labor market, two-fifths
went to no more than five places of work to look
for new jobs. Another 30 percent went to six to
15 places. But one out of six went to at least 25
places. Some went to 50 places or more.
At the time of the first interview in the fall of
1957 — before the recession was at its peak — a
total of 48 percent were unemployed for at least
six months. By the next spring and summer, 61
percent had been unemployed for six months or
longer.
The authors, headed by Harold L. Sheppard of
Wayne State University, noted that while skilled
workers hacTa shorter length of unemployment,
it was nevertheless difficult for even this usually
more favored group to keep jobs. Negroes were
the least fortunate in duration of unemployment
and in keeping a job. Workers over 50, too, were
particularly hard hit.
Among those obtaining employment for any
length of time there was an increase in the
number obliged to accept jobs requiring less
skill. When the final series of interviews was
made, no more than three-fifths of the workers
were on jobs requiring skills equal to or higher
than those of the jobs they had held at Packard.
The Big Three of the auto industry — General
Motors, Ford and Chrysler — hired 27 percent of
the white workers at Packard and 23 percent of
the Negro workers. This showed relatively little
racial discrimination by these corporations. There
was discrimination on the part of the Big Three
on the basis of age. Nearly four times as many
workers under 45 were hired, proportionally, as
were hired between the ages of 55 and 64.
Negroes did not fare so well in other areas.
Some 53 percent of those laid off at Packard were
unemployed or had lower classification of jobs in
service-type industries. A total of 39 percent of
the white workers met the same fate.
On the economic side, average hourly wage
rates for employed workers were considerably
less in their new jobs. The lower rate for the
re-employed averaged about $300 a year less.
When you take into consideration the loss of wage
gains made in the auto industry, the decrease is
closer to $700 a year.
None of this includes those workers who were
unemployed for varying periods of time. Un-
employment compensation took up the biggest
slack for them. A total of 56 percent relied solely
on jobless pay. Other kinds of support included
company pension, rental income, social security,
workmen's compensation.
Of particular interest is that only 2 percent of
those unemployed for more than six months indi-
cated they received any help from welfare agen-
cies. They preferred to borrow from their fami-
lies, pick up any odd jobs, go into debt — almost
anything rather than apply for welfare.
Unemployment compensation is considered in
a different light. This is jobless insurance — not
greatly different from any other form of insurance
— which an unemployed worker is entitled to
receive. It is anything but charity.
The laid-off workers thought that the gov-
ernment had tremendous responsibility which
it did not meet. Among the steps that they felt
should have been taken was to channel more
defense contracts, guarantee full employment,
lower taxes, take over plants and run them or
just "find the cause and do something."
From a political standpoint 65 percent of the
workers thought the Democrats could do a better
job while 10 percent thought the Republicans
could. Another 20 percent saw no difference
between parties, and 5 percent didn't know.
On the role of the union, 20 percent thought
the union did a great deal to help the workers, 35
percent said it did all it could and 10 percent said
the union couldn't do anything. A total of 27
percent thought the union could do more.
Some Blame Management
A total of 58 percent of the workers thought
that management did not do all it could to help
and 25 percent said that management did all it
could do to help. The remainder fell in between.
The authors offer these observations:
"A failing enterprise obviously cannot continue
to employ its work force or to provide for it after
closing down. Neither can a union permanently
subsidize it. The responsibility in a society that
values progress and efficiency thus becomes a
social one — although calling it social does not
read employers or unions out of the general com-
munity of those responsible."
Among the recommendations made by the au-
thors were improved unemployment compensa-
tion, particularly for older workers, stress on
training and retraining of workers for new skills,
wider seniority provisions perhaps covering entire
areas, defraying moving expenses, better termina-
tion pay and laws against age discrimination.
"It appears that several law
fees to defend our price-fix
vers have set identical
ing case."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Page Nine
P ublishers Retain Strikebreakers:
News Unions Offer
Dynamiting Reward
Portland, Ore. — The Portland Inter-Union Newspaper Committee,
coordinating the activities of eight unions engaged in the 12-week-
old Portland newspaper strike, has posted a $1,000 reward for in-
formation leading to the apprehension and conviction of persons
involved in the dynamiting of 10 newspaper delivery trucks.
A similar reward was voted by^;
the Portland City Council as local
law enforcement agencies launched
an all-out investigation of the acts
of violence.
The trucks, six of which were
operated by Wymore Transfer Co.
from nearby Oregon City and four
used by Oregon Film Service in
Portland, were torn apart and
burned by the explosions. No one
was injured, but- damage estimates
ran as high as $75,000.
Meanwhile the publishers of
the struck papers turned a cold
shoulder to a fact-finding pro-
posal by Sen. Wayne L. Morse
(D-Ore.), who proposed estab-
lishment of an impartial board
headed by the dean of the Uni-
versity of Oregon's journalism
school with members from jour-
nalism schools across the coun-
try.
Appearing on a telecast in be-
half of the inter-union committee,
Morse said such a fact-finding
group would have the prestige to
influence a settlement of the strike.
The unions involved have con-
sistently voiced acceptance of fact-
finding and mediation proposals, in-
cluding efforts made by the gov-
ernor of Oregon and the mayor
of Portland. The companies have
turned down all such proposals.
In other developments:
• Spokesmen for the struck
newspapers, now being published
as a joint edition, said joint produc-
tion will be continued until man-
agement was able to "train" suffi-
cient strikebreakers to resume sep-
arate publication.
• The Pressmen announced their
intention to appeal refusal of the
NLRB to issue an unfair labor prac-
tice charge based on dismissal no-
tices sent to Pressmen who refused
to cross the Stereotypers picket line
between the start of the strike Nov.
10 and the expiration of the Press-
men's contract Dec. 31.
• The inter-union strike com-
mittee distributed a second special
edition of the Oregon Labor Press,
which described the "hidden issue"
in the strike as the effort of the
publishers to use strike insurance
and imported strikebreakers to de-
stroy unions.
The inter-union committee urged
people to withhold judgment in the
bombing incident, recalling several
previous cases of alleged violence
which proved to be hoaxes. A
statement issued by the committee
repeated the union position of con-
demning violence and said such
incidents only prove harmful to
labor's cause.
An attempt last week by the pub-
lishers to smear the newspaper un-
ions with a "goonism" tag dissolved
in the face of a fraudulent police
report by a strikebreaker. The im-
ported union buster from Oklahoma
had told police he was beaten and
threatened by two men who broke
into his home. Police doubted his
story, obtained his confession that
it was a hoax, and charged him with
filing a false police report. He was
fined $50 and drew a 30-day sus-
pended jail sentence.
The publishers had given Page
1, banner display to the original
story, linking it in headlines to
the newspaper strike. After the
strikebreaker's arrest, they lamely
announced they were "shocked"
by his actions and said he was
fired.
The Oregon State Democratic
Party during its platform conven-
tion in Salem, the state capital,
unanimously adopted a resolution
calling for appointment of "an im-
partial public body" to seek settle-
ment of the strike.
The resolution strongly con-
demned publishers of the Oregonian
and the Oregon Journal for hiring
"professional strikebreakers to work
in plants that are under strike con-
ditions."
Elsewhere on the strike front, a
house-to-house canvass by union
members urging Portlanders to can-
cel their subscriptions to the papers
appeared to be paying dividends.
Latest reports on circulation of the
struck papers indicate Sunday cir-
culation of the Journal may be
down as much as 41 percent and
that the daily circulation of the
combined paper may be off more
than 36 percent.
MONEY TO AID striking Textile Workers Union of America members at Henderson, N. C, and
ICFTU Solidarity Fund was raised by Washington Chapter of Teachers Local 189, which sponsored"
a special concert by Guitarist Charlie Byrd. Left to right are George Guernsey of AFL-CIO Dept.
of Education; Rep. Clement W. Miller (D-Calif.) with daughters Clare and Amy; TWUA Washington
Rep. John Edelman; and Education Dir. Ben Segal of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers.
Guernsey and Segal are members of AFT Local 189.
Closing of Cleveland Newspaper
Throws 827 Workers Out of Jobs
Cleveland — The death of the Cleveland News, 5 5 -year-old afternoon daily and the smallest of
Cleveland's three daily papers, threw 827 newspaper workers out of jobs here.
Employes, who were given no advance notice of the paper's sale and suspension Jan. 23, received
the first word over radio and television and in the morning editions of the rival Scripps-Howard Press,
which bought out the News.
Easing the impact of the shut-'|^
down, severance pay estimated at
$1.5 million is being paid to 250
white-collar employes, thanks to
a provision in the Newspaper Guild
contract.
Almost 130 editorial department
workers will receive severance pay
at the rate of one week's salary
for every six months of service,
under the Guild clause. Manage-
ment also agreed to extend the
Guild-won severance rights to 120
business department employes not
covered by the pact. The hundreds
of other employes were not given
severance.
The contract at the News was
the oldest continuous pact in the
ANG — a contract signed for the
first time Dec. 23, 1933. Editorial
employes at the News helped to
form the ANG and won the cov-
eted designation of Local 1.
Organized labor here moved
quickly to find work for the em-
ployes left jobless when the Press
took over features and a half
dozen editorial staff members,
Work Laws Would Revive / Jungle'
Conditions, Industrialist Warns
A management spokesman, crediting the union shop and collective bargaining with having brought
"stability and industrial peace" to the garment industry, has denounced so-called "right-to-work"
laws as "a colossal fraud" which hurts employers as well as workers.
Bernard Schub, manager of the Connecticut Dress Manufacturers' Association, 'warned that "work"
laws would mean a return to "jungle conditions" in industry. His sharp rebuke to "the reactionary
wing of business" appears in the'^
current issue of the AFL-CIO
American Federationist.
Although the Connecticut legis-
lature has voted down "right-to-
work" proposals by decisive mar-
gins— 150 to 88 in 1957, and 197
to 46 in 1959 — "these reactionaries
keep coming back every two
years," Schub noted.
"Apparently they have the
idea that if you practice a de-
ception long enough and say it
long enough, people will eventu-
ally believe you," he added.
Schub, describing conditions be-
fore the Ladies' Garment Workers
brought "sanity and stability" to
the dress industry, declared:
"Sweatshop conditions existed . . .
factory managers held the whip
hand over all workers ... in some
instances workers had to pay for
drinking water. There were other
instances where workers had to bid
for work when they showed up in
the morning. Those who bid the
lowest got the jobs."
Manufacturers and contractors,
in a savage battle to stay in busi-
ness, could sell their products only
by cutting wages and working con-
ditions to the level of their most
unscrupulous competitor, Schub re-
called.
In contrast, he said, "today,
when a collective bargaining agree-
ment is signed between manage-
ment and labor, there are uniform
wages, hours and working condi-
tions throughout the industry . . .
Competition between manufactur-
ers is where it should be — in style
and value."
As a result, Schub noted, "gar-
ment workers in Connecticut now
are able to own their own homes,
buy automobiles and television sets,
send their kids to college and take
an active part in the civic affairs
of their community.
"The union shop and collec-
tive bargaining have also brought
job security to the worker. He
can no longer be fired at whim.
"In our industry we have the
proof that collective bargaining
provides the true right to work.
"Stabilization of the wage base
has done away with the ruinous
competition of the auction block
and the jungle that was driving the
whole industry to the wall . . .
Collective bargaining has brought
about an almost unmatched era of
peace between management and
labor.
"I am confident the legislature
and people of Connecticut will con-
tinue to recognize and reject the
deceitful elTorts of the National
Association of Manufacturers and
the Chamber of Commerce to un-
dermine the peaceful management-
labor relations which prevail in our
state."
and announced that the News
was out of business.
All 29 members of the Printing
Pressmen were immediately placed
in jobs with other Cleveland papers
or publishing houses. Members of
the Typographical Union continued
working on holdover material at
the News' printing plant.
The Engravers and Stereotypers
unions set up placement bureaus
to help find jobs — either iu Cleve-
land or in other cities — for their
members.
A job-finding bureau was also
established by ANG Local Pres.
John Fisher and Sec. William M.
JDavy, working with News Unit
Chairman Bob Glueck. Within
the first week, 30 news office
employes were placed in jobs
with other Cleveland papers. In-
formation on a score or more of
additional openings across the
country were channeled into the
placement office by the ANG
national office and Guild locals
in key cities.
Cooperating with the union, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer — the city's
third newspaper — ran display and
classified "job wanted" ads free of
charge as a service to ANG mem-
bers.
Among the 100 editorial depart-
ment employes still hunting jobs
was 80-year-old Ed Bang, dean of
U.S! sports writers and a News re-
Unionist Elected
To School Board
Cleveland — Labor here scored a
victory with the election of Walter
L. Davis to the Cleveland School
Board, which directs the education
of 131,000 children.
Davis, who is education director
of Retail Store Employes Local
880 and for 15 years associate edi-
tor of the labor newspaper, Cleve-
land Citizen, won an upset victory
against powerful "machine" oppo-
sition. The post is one of the most
important political offices ever won
by labor here.
In the Ohio election of 1958
Davis directed labor's successful
fight against a "right-to-work" pro-
posal on the ballot.
He attributed his school board
victory largely to the concerted
efforts of the labor movement in
the city to get out the vote for. him.
porter and columnist since 1907.
Sterling Graham, president of
Forest City Publishing Co., blamed
"mounting publishing costs" for
the News' inability to continue in
operation. "Ever since its begin-
ning 55 years ago," he said in
announcing the shutdown, "the
News' fate was to be a third news-
paper in Cleveland."
The Plain-Dealer and the Press
each have daily circulations over
the 300,000 mark. At the time of
its death, the News' circulation was
130,000.
Henderson
Defendants
Win Stays
Raleigh, N. C— The North Car-
olina Supreme Court has stayed
long prison sentences handed eight
officers and members of the Textile
Workers Union of America to per-
mit the unionists to appeal their
conspiracy convictions to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
The TWUA members were con-
victed last year on charges that
they conspired to dynamite two
mill buildings and a power substa-
tion during a strike now in its 14th
month against the Harriet-Hender-
son Cotton Mills in Henderson.
The "bombings" never actually
took place.
Union attorneys said the ap-
peal to the nation's highest court
will be made on the grounds that
the defendants were "deprived
of their liberty without due proc-
ess of law and have been denied
equal protection of the law in
their trials."
Chief Justice J. Wallace Win-
dorne of the North Carolina high
bench announced the court's deci-
sion to grant the stays a week after
the court had upheld the convic-
tions and denied a move for a new
trial.
Defendants are TWUA Vice
Pres. and Reg. Dir. Boyd E. Pay-
ton, TWUA Intl. Representatives
Lawrence Gore and Charles Aus-
lander, Local 578 Vice Pres. John-
nie Martin, and rank-and-file mem-
bers Calvin Ray Pegram, Warren
Walker, Robert Edward Abbott and
Malcolm Jarrell.
All eight currently are free on
bail ranging from $10,000 to
$25,000.
Page Tea
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Maloney Dies;
Led GBBA
For 22 Years
Scranton, Pa. — James Maloney,
president emeritus of the Glass
Bottle Blowers, died here at the
age of 89.
Maloney joined the union in
1890 and led it from an organiza-
tional low in 1924, when the glass
industry suffered from prohibition,
through its organizing success after
the Wagner Act.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler expressed "sincere sorrow" at
the vjws of Maloney's death.
'-Brother Maloney served well
the cause of his fellow workers
and the cause of the entire labor
movement," Meany and Schnitz-
ler said in a message of condo-
lence to Pres. Lee W. Minton.
"Our sympathies are extended
to your union in this hour of
grief."
Minton succeeded Maloney in
1956 after the latter completed 22
years in the top post.
In a move to create a permanent
memorial to Maloney, the Glass
Bottle Blowers' executive board ap-
proved the proposal of a James
Maloney Memorial Scholarship
Fund to benefit children of the
union's members.
Mapped Legislative Drive
After assuming the union's pres-
idency, Maloney mapped a legis-
lative campaign which brought to-
gether the distilling and brewing
industries and the glass container
industry in a joint effort with the
union to win repeal of prohibition.
The few union members still em-
ployed at the time responded with
assessments as high as 20 percent
of their wages to enable the union
to survive.
Maloney also served as treasurer
of Union Labor Life Insurance
Co., which he helped to found.
To Avert New Recession:
CIVIL SERVICE WEEK proclamation commemorating passage
of Civil Service Act of 1883 is signed by Detroit's Mayor Louis C.
Miriani. Interested onlookers are James H. Rademacher (left),
president of Detroit Letter Carriers, and John H. Arble (right),
head of Customs Lodge 176, Government Employes.
'Thefts 9 from Workers
Laid to Employers
Detroit — Auto Workers Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey has urged a Sen-
ate Labor subcommittee to turn the glare of publicity on employers
who have "stolen more than $32 million" from their workers' pay
envelopes through violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Mazey said Labor Dept. figures show that 102,082 workers were
shortchanged $10.1 million by chis-'^
eling employers who paid them less
than $1 an hour between January
1958 and June 1959.
During the same period, he said,
199,163 workers were illegally un-
derpaid a total of $22 million by
employers who paid them less than
the legal minimum for overtime.
In a letter to Subcommittee
UAW Lashes NLRB
In Back-Pay 'Scandal'
Detroit — The Auto Workers have charged the National Labor
Relations Board with failure to enforce back-pay orders — involving
a total of $465,000 — issued several years ago against firms in Detroit
and Milwaukee.
UAW Gen. Counsel Harold Cranefield said one of the cases
involved Knight Morley in Detroit, 4 ^
where the court on June 23, 1958,
upheld a back-pay order covering
$150,000; and Wagner Iron Works
in Milwaukee, where the order to
give workers back wages totaling
$315,000 was approved by the court
Mar. 5, 1956.
In a telegram to NLRB Gen.
Counsel Stuart Rothman, Crane-
field noted that the labor board in
recent months has stepped up its
Emil Starr
Assumes New
Education Post
New York — Emil Starr, educa-
tion director of the Clothing Work-
ers for more than 6 years, has re-
signed to join the staff of the
National Institute of Labor Educa-
tion.
While with the ACWA, he played
a major role in developing the un-
ion's legislative action and voter
registration programs, and simul-
taneously served on the AFL-CIO
Committee on Education.
NILE, with headquarters in
Madison, Wis., was set up as a non-
profit educational organization in
1957 with help from the AFL-CIO
and the Fund for Adult Education.
In his new post, Starr will be sta-
tioned in New York under a NILE
contract with the Intl. Cooperation
Administration to assist in the de-
velopment of residential training
standards for union members from
underdeveloped countries.
activities "in procuring injunc-
tions against labor organizations."
The failure to move with equal
speed against management, the
UAW attorney said, "amounts to
a scandal."
Rothman, who has been general
counsel for the labor board for the
past six months, declined comment
on Cranefield's telegram.
Workers Wrongfully Fired
In the Detroit case, the board
ruled that workers were unlawfully
discharged in October 1953. It or-
dered them reinstated with back
pay on July 12, 1956 and the Court
of Appeals upheld the ruling June
23, 1958.
The NLRB held that 64 Wagner
Iron Works employes were unlaw-
fully discharged in May 1951, is-
suing its back-pay order Apr. 28,
1953 arid its enforcement decree
Mar. 7, 1955. This order was up-
held by the courts a year later.
The UAW attorney was par-
ticularly critical of the NLRB
regional office, declaring that it
was ready several weeks ago to
issue back pay specifications "but
withheld them ... on being in-
formed by (Wagner Iron Works)
that it could not afford to pay out
approximately $315,000."
Cranefield's telegram to Rothman
declared:
"Let us hear no more public
boasting from you about expedition
of board procedures and new ener-
gies in detecting labor racketeering
until you demonstrate some energy
in enforcing a board order against
an employer."
Chairman John F. Kennedy CD-
Mass.), Mazey voiced the "belief
that an even greater amount was
stolen from the pay envelopes of
the workers by unscrupulous,
crooked, racketeering employers
because the Fair Labor Standards
division of the Dept. of Labor has
an inadequate force with which
to investigate possible violations
of the law;"
Declaring that the law should be
revised "to put some teeth into the
penalty section," Mazey called for
immediate hearings "to determine
the full scope and extent of the
violations" of the wage-hour law.
Public Spotlight Urged
"Employers should be subpoe-
naed to appear before your com-
mittee under television cameras, ra-
dio microphones and the full pres-
ence of the press, in exactly the
same manner that labor leaders
were compelled to testify before the
hearings of the McClellan commit-
tee," Mazey wrote Kennedy.
Mazey called for revision of the
mild penalties provided by the Fair
Labor Standards Act, including a
possible jail penalty only after a
second offense and a maximum jail
sentence of six months.
Violations of the wage-hour
law, Mazey said, "should be con-
sidered a felony with a jail sen-
tence of from five to 20 years.
Stealing from the pay envelopes
of helpless workers, in my judg-
ment, is a crime equal to that of
a robber who steals from his vic-
times at the point of a gun." He
also asked removal of the present
two-year statute of limitations.
Mazey added that "a public ex-
posure of business crooks and busi-
ness crooks and business racketeers
would create the public climate
needed to enact necessary amend-
ments to the Fair Labor Standards
Act."
Brewery Workers Win
Ggar Plant Election
Philadelphia — The Brewery
Workers won an important victory
as employes of Consolidated Cigar
Corp. here voted pro-union by a
503 to 306 vote in a National
Labor Relations Board election.
The union conducted a long
campaign of education and training
with speeches and pamphlets in
Polish and Ukranian, the only lan-
guages oi many of the employes.
Subcommittee OKs
Rains Housing Bill
A House Banking subcommittee has approved an Administra-
tion-opposed $1 billion emergency housing bill after hearing testi-
mony that the measure would help loosen the Eisenhower "tight-
money" policies and avert a new recession in 1961.
The bill to provide $1 billion immediately for FHA or VA
mortgages on moderate-priced hous-^
ing, introduced by Subcommittee housing production will drop an
Chairman Albert Rains (D-Ala.),
was approved by a 7-3 vote.
The AFL-CIO has backed the
Rains measure, but has urged that
it be followed immediately with a
broad bill to achieve an annual rate
of 2.3 million new housing units
to meet the home building crisis.
In testimony before the subcom-
mittee:
• Economist Leon Keyserling,
a National Housing Conference
Board member and onetime chair-
man of former Pres. Truman's
Council of Economic Advisors,
warned a new recession "looms
ahead, possibly as early as 1961,"
and said the emergency housing
measure could help "reverse the
prospect" of a business decline.
• Sec.-Treas. James B. Carey
of the AFL-CIO Industrial Un-
ion Dept. charged that the "na-
tion now faces a housing emer-
gency," and said a drop of 200,-
000 housing units this year from
the 1959 rate would throw half
a million workers out of their
jobs. The Administration's "tight-
money" policy, he said, has
"spawned inflation" and is "lead-
ing us directly into a 1961 reces-
sion."
• Martin L. Bartling, president
of the National Association of
Home Builders, said his organiza-
tion would prefer long-range solu-
tions to the problem of easing mort-
gage credit, but that "as a last
resort" it would back the emer-
gency legislation.
• Frank P. Flynn, Jr., repre-
senting the Home Manufacturers
Association, agreed to the need for
a broader program but also en-
dorsed the "stopgap" measure. He
said that "low and medium-cost
estimated 25 percent this year .
if mortgage money for home buyers
at reasonable rates is not available."
No Eisenhower Proposals
The Administration has made no
recommendations for additional
starts in the housing field other
than those authorized by the com-
promise housing bill passed last
year. Instead, Pres. Eisenhower's
Budget Message asked "flexibility"
in maximum VA and FHA interest
rates.
Keyserling told the subcommit-
tee the emergency bill "moves in
the right direction" toward achiev-
ing a goal of about 2 million hous-
ing units annually through 1964
and called for a comprehensive pro-
gram that would achieve this result,
With such a program, the
economist said, the number of
substandard housing units would
be reduced from the 1958 level
of 12.5 million to a low of be-
tween 1 and 2 million by 1965.
Carey, president of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, said
that houses are not being built to-
day because of high interest rates
and lack of mortgage money, add-
ing that responsibility for this situ-
ation can be "placed squarely 5 ' on
the Administration's fiscal policies.
"The rising rate of interest over
the past few years has increased the
cost of a home by $20 a month,"
he declared. "Is this fighting infla-
tion?"
The IUD spokesman emphasized,
that the $1 billion involved in the
emergency measure is not an ex-
penditure of funds by the govern-
ment, pointing out that "all but a
very small fraction of the money
involved" would be repaid.
L-G Picket Injunction
Hits Tennessee Local
The Landrum-Griffin Act's tighter rule on organizational picket-
ing has been invoked as the National Labor Relations Board acted
for the first time to bar union picketing of a "neutral" employer.
Gen. Counsel Stuart Rothman announced a complaint and ap-
plication for a federal court injunction against Local 760 of the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,*^
Knoxville, Tenn.
Rothman's complaint was based
on charges by the Post Sign Co. of
Knoxville that Local 760 violated
Landrum-Griffin by picketing its
customers in order to "compel rec-
ognition" from Post.
L-G's provisions on recogni-
tion or organizational picketing
bar picketing by a union not
certified by the NLRB when
there is no petition for an elec-
tion filed within 30 days. The
board said no such petition was
filed in this case.
The law requires Rothman to
seek an injunction if he issues a
complaint and it was to be applied
for in the U.S. District Court at
Knoxville.
In another "first," Rothman re-
fused to issue a complaint against
a union which engaged in recogni-
tion picketing.
This case involved the unaffili-
ated Teamsters Local 553, the Five-
Boro Fuel Corp. of Jackson
Heights, New York City, and a
so-called union calling itself Amal-
gamated Local 355.
The Teamsters had been recog-
nized as bargaining agent until last
December, but then Five-Boro
switched to the other unit. The
Teamsters began picketing the com-
pany and both sides filed unfair
labor practice charges.
A board investigation revealed
that Five-Boro's recognition of the
self-styled "Amalgamated" was not
legal and Rothman authorized dis-
missal of the company's charge
while refusing to seek an injunction
against the Teamsters' picketing.
The Dept. of Labor, in an-
other action under Landrum-
Griffin, announced it is mailing
out financial reporting forms to
more than 50,000 trade unions.
The reports are required from
unions whose fiscal years end
after Dec. 15, 1959 and are due
within 90 days after the end of
a union's fiscal year.
The Labdr Dept. said the finan-
cial reporting forms are being
mailed directly to unions which
already have filed an organization
information report. Others may ob-
tain the forms from the Labor Dept.
or its field offices.
In a related announcement, Com-
missioner John L. Holcombe of the
Labor Dept.'s new Bureau of La-
bor-Management Reports disclosed
a Public Documents Room has been
set aside where some 50,000 union
reports are now available for in-
spection.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Page Eleve*
Subcommittee Needs 'em:
Tranquilizer Price Ranges
From $6.25 to $100 for 1,000
By Dave Periman
There are drug manufacturers who sell their pharmaceuticals at a reasonable cost, make a modest
profit, and don't pay themselves huge salaries plus generous stock options.
A couple of them testified before the Senate's Anti-Trust subcommittee during its investigation of
administered pricing of tranquilizer drugs.
The only hitch is that these firms are virtually frozen out of the retail prescription market. They
sell their products almost exclu-'^
sively to hospitals and government
al agencies which buy through com
petitive bidding — on the basis of
the drug itself rather than the
brand name.
Myron Panzer, president of the
Panray Corp., Englewood, N. L,
told the subcommittee that his
firm sells resperine — one of the
three major types of tranquilizers
—at $6.25 for 1,000 one-milligram
tablets.
The druggist who buys the iden-
tical product as Serpasil — the trade
name used by Ciba Pharmaceutical
Products — has to pay $100 for the
same amount. But doctor's pre-
scriptions are normally written for
brand name drugs, so companies
which do not employ armies of
detail men to canvass physicians
are largely limited to institutional
sales.
Competitive Bids No Help
Competitive bidding, the com-
mittee and the Justice Dept. dis-
covered, doesn't help the govern-
ment or other large buyers when
the only products available are
protected by patents held by a
favored few big concerns.
On the same day Subcommit-
tee Chairman Estes Kefauver
, (D-Tenn.) was trying to find out
from reluctant company wit-
nesses why prices quoted in
competitive bidding for the mild
tranquilizer "mephrobamate"
were identical "to the thousandth
of a cent," the Justice Dept. was
filing a civil ^uiti-trust suit against
Carter Products, Inc., which
holds the patent on the drug and
markets it under the name Mil-
town, and American Home Prod-
ucts Corp., licensed by Carter to
produce the same product under
its own brand label Equinol.
Kefauver said he was especially
interested since American Home
Products had to pay a royalty to
Carter and therefore presumably
had higher costs.
The only answer came in the
form of analogy to gasoline prices
and an unwillingness to get into
a "price war."
No other companies were li-
censed to make the product and
the two firms would either split
the government order or flip a
coin to see who would get it, a
company official acknowledged.
There was one exception, an
American Home Products spokes-
man told the subcommittee, when
Bargaining Report
Index Available
An index to over 40 sub-
jects covered by the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Research pub-
lication, Collective Bargaining
Report, over the past four
years is now available.
The index lists the years
and months covering 1956-59
in which various subjects re-
lated to collective bargaining
have been discussed. It notes
that much of the material
continues to have reference
value as background long
after publication.
A copy of the index is
available from the Dept. of
Research as are individual
copies of any of the reports
listed in it.
Liverish Carter
Hit by FTC, Too
Carter Products, Inc., re-
cently before the Kefauver
committee on its profits in
tranquilizers, also ran into
Federal Trade Commission
trouble for its advertising of
its best-known non-prescrip-
tion product.
It took 15 years, but the
company lost a fight with the
FTC to continue use of the
brand name, Carter's Little
Liver Pills.
The U.S. Supreme Court
last November refused to re-
view lower court decisions
upholding an FTC order di-
recting the company not to
use the word "liver" because
the pill "has no therapeutic
effect beyond that of an ordi-
nary laxative."
his firm lost a bid because it had
submitted its price in the form of
a stated amount less 2 percent dis-
count for payment within 30 days.
Carter's bid already ( had the dis-
count figured in. The government,
he indicated, had apparently not
realized that the bids were actually
the same and Carter got the order.
The next time round, American
Home Products presented its bid
in less complicated form and
shared the order.
Top Salaries Lush
Testimony before the committee
indicated a contrast between the
two companies in methods of com-
pensating their top officers.
Carter's top-paid officer, Pres.
Henry H. Hoyt, receives a $100,-
000 a year salary, while American
Home Products has two top officers
— Alvin G. Brush, board chairman,
and Walter Silbersack, president —
who make identical salaries of
$126,000. Both also will be entitled
to $25,000-a-year pensions when
they retire, plus additional "de-
ferred payments."
Carter, however, proved more
generous on stock options. Hoyt
received options in 1957 which
are worth at recent prices $2.7
million. In contrast, options granted
to Brush and Silbersack the same
year would only profit them $43,-
750 each.
Brush explained that his com-
pany handed out stock options to
a very large list of company execu-
tives and not just to the top
officials.
In probing into the restrictive
nature of exclusive drug patents,
the subcommittee heard testi-
mony from Paul V. Maney, head
of a small Iowa drug firm, that
Carter had refused him permis-
sion to combine a personally-
developed drug with Miltown to
produce what he considered a
more effective product which
would serve additional medical
uses.
The Kefauver subcommittee,
which has held hearings on corti-
sone derivities as well as tranquil-
izers, has tentatively scheduled its
next round of hearings for Feb. 23.
At that time, the subcommittee
will look into the operations of
the drug industry as a whole. Sched-
uled witnesses include officials of
the Fooft & Drug Administration,
the Federal Trade Commission, the
Pharmaceutical Mfg. Association
and the American Medical Associa-
tion.
'61 Recession Possible,
Reuther Tells Congress
(Continued from Page 1)
recession year of 1949 and 5.6
percent in recession-ridden 1954.
"It is a strange recovery," he
said, "which finds unemployment
almost as high as in previous pe-
riods of recession."
He said the Administration's pol-
icies have "failed miserably" to
maintain economic health because
they have been "based on fear of
growth." Eisenhower, he said, "has
interpreted every expansion of de-
mand as a threat of inflation, some-
thing to be checked and impeded
by federal policies rather than stim-
ulated and encouraged."
The EPC chairman accused the
Administration with having pursued
"blindly, and for the most part
vainly," its "19th century" policies
of balancing the budget at low lev-
els of activity instead of working
for economic growth and resulting
higher government revenues.
This policy, Reuther said, has led
to the "starvation" of the school
system, perpetuation of substandard
incomes, failure to provide ade-
quate health services, denial of de-
cent standards for the elderly and
the continued existence of slums.
"There is a growing fear," he
added, "that it has meant even fail-
ure to achieve those advances . . .
which are essential to our national
security."
The AFL-CIO vice president was
critical of the Administration's
"consistent efforts to restrict the
economic gains" of workers and
its work "to push through Congress
restrictive labor legislation whose
only effect can be to make still
more difficult the efforts of mil-
lions of unorganized workers to
improve their lot through union
organization."
Calling for enactment of a "posi-
tive program for economic growth,"
Reuther told the committee:
"The vast steps forward in sci-
ence and technology which have
been achieved since World War II
could help us to build for the first
time in human history an economy
of true abundance — an economy
whose potential abundance can pro-
vide higher living standards, great-
er opportunity for education, in-
creased meaningful leisure . . . and
at the same time enable us to make
an increasing contribution in the
world struggle against poverty, hun-
ger, ignorance and disease in the
positive fight against Communism.
"We have at hand the physical
means and the technical skill to
make this age-old dream of abun-
dance come true.
"What we have lacked is leader-
ship with the vision to recognize
the possibilities before us, with the
intelligence to free itself from the
concepts which belong to a past
age of scarcity, and with the cour-
age and vigor to map out new pro-
grams appropriate to the needs and
the promise of the new world of
today."
AIDED IN FIGHT for recovery from polio by cooperation between
labor, the National Foundation and the Air Force, Richard J. Davis
of Musicians Local 721 in Tampa, Fla., bids farewell to his wife
before mercy flight to polio hospital in Columbus, O. Attending
Davis, confined to iron lung by disease, is Air Force nurse.
Labor Musters Aid for
Polio-Stricken Unionist
Tampa, Fla. — A polio-stricken trade unionist has been aided in
his grim battle for recovery through the combined efforts of organ-
ized labor, the Air Force and the National Foundation — leader in
the nation's fight against infantile paralysis.
The polio victim is 31-year-old Richard J. Davis, a member of
Musicians Local 721 and a popular^
Tampa orchestra leader, who was
stricken with paralytic polio in mid-
October — four days after his young-
est daughter, Dorothy Karen, 2,
also fell victim to the disease.
Davis, encased in an iron lung
since that time, is now recovering
in a specially-equipped polio hos-
pital in Columbus, O., where he
was flown by special plane in a
project involving the National
Foundation, the Air Force, AFL-
CIO Community Services, and
AFM Local 721.
The trade unionist was first
confined to Tampa General Hos-
pital — from which his daughter,
fully recovered, has since been
released — with the local chapter
of the National Foundation and
Local 721 paying the full cost of
treatment, hospitalization and a
special nurse.
Shortly after the first of the
year, doctors advised that recovery
hinged on Davis receiving the long-
range treatment available only in
a specially-equipped polio hospital.
The Foundation discovered, how-
ever, that all such hospitals in the
Tampa area were filled to capacity.
The unionist's case came to the
attention of I. D. Alexander, Com-
munity Services staff representative
here, as he was attempting to en-
gage an orchestra for a special pro-
gram to raise funds for a mass pro-
gram of free Salk vaccine shots for
Tampa citizens.
Alexander relayed details of
Davis' plight to the national
AFL-CIO Community Service
Activities headquarters in New
York. Within a matter of hours,
IUE's Segal Teaching
In British Guiana
Ben Segal, education director of
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers, is teaching at a training
seminar for British Guiana union
leaders at the .University College of
West Indies, Georgetown, British
Guiana, during the first half of
February.
the national CSA office and the
National Foundation located
space for Davis at the Columbus,
O., hospital.
An Air Force medical team from
the 12th Air Medical Transfer
Group from MacGuire Air Force
Base, N. J., took charge of the
transfer from the Tampa hospital.
Davis, encased in a portable iron
lung, was flown from here to Co-
lumbus in an Air Force hospital
plane.
Physicians estimate it will be at
least a year before the trade union-
ist will be able to return home.
Union Labor
Gives Resort
Atom Shelter
Atlantic City, N. J. — Union con-
struction workers will build a
demonstration civil defense fallout
shelter at the entrance to this re-
sort city's Steel Pier — and they'll
do it for free.
Union building tradesmen in 16
other cities, 9 of them in New Jer-
sey, have already donated their
labor to construct demonstration
shelters. Building supply firms have
donated the materials.
The projects are part of labor's
program of cooperation with the
Office of Civil and Defense Mo-
bilization. Deputy Dir. Michael
F. Smith of the Office of Labor
Participation says the goal is "a
fallout demonstration shelter in
every city and a shelter in every
home."
Cities where local Building Sc
Construction Trades Councils have
already erected shelters are: Brock-
ton, Hyannis and Wilbraham,
Mass.; Rochester, Minn.; White
Plains, N. Y.; Alberquerque, N. M.;
and New Brunswick, Asbury Park,
Chatham Township, Springfield,
Little Falls, Bayonne, Hackensack,
Newton and Camden, N. J.
Demonstration fallout shelters
are also being prepared for the Un-
ion Label Industries Show, to be
held this year in Washington, D. C.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960
Minimum Wage Coverage Urged:
Retail Clerks Set
35-Hour Week Goal
Miami Beach — Twin goals of a 35-hour week in the nation's
stores and extension of Fair Labor Standards Act coverage to the
retail industry, with a boost in the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour,
were set up by the executive board of the Retail Clerks at a meeting
here.
The board called upon all RCTA^
locals to make the shorter work-
week, with no reduction in pay,
a major bargaining demand in this
year's contract negotiations.
In a separate statement, it
urged all' members "to watch
closely the voting records of
their congressmen and senators"
when extension of FLSA cover-
age and an increase in the mini-
mum wage are acted upon.
The board based its 35-hour
week stand on the need of meeting
"the challenge of automation and
rationalization in retailing today,"
recognition "that new job oppor-
tunities must be created" in the in-
dustry, the impressive increase in
productivity in addition to that
achieved by self-service and auto-
mated devices, and the need of the
industry's employes for a better
and fuller life.
Minimize Impact
M It is clear that a reduction of
the standard workweek would help
minimize the serious impact that
rapid mechanization would have in
our industry," the board said.
"Moreover, it is also clear that
increased time for one's self and
one's family is a necessary con-
dition for a rounder, useful and
satisfying life. The fuller develop-
ment of individual capacity, great-
er attention to community obliga-
tions, better education and a gen-
eral improvement in the quality of
life make for higher productivity.
"To achieve this, leisure time
beyond the period of work in the
store is required to give our people
an opportunity for growth and de-
velopment.
"Numerous sociological and
economic studies, as well as ex-
perience itself, have demon-
strated again and again that a
shorter work-week in an ad-
vanced society such as ours en-
hances rather than detracts from
productivity,"
The board called the failure of
Congress to cover the retail indus-
try under the FLSA during the two
decades it has been on the statute
books "a gross denial of elementary
justice" and called on Congress "to
remedy this unreasonable discrimi-
nation" against retail employes.
Retailing, the board maintained,
"is an interstate business" and
hence should be covered by the
FLSA as other industries are.
Arkansas Labor Opens
Minimum Wage Drive
Little Rock, Ark. — Arkansas labor has opened a,drive to secure
50,000 signatures on an initiative petition for a state minimum
wage law to put the issue to a referendum of voters in the No-
vember general election.
In moving to bypass the state legislature, the state AFL-CIO
is repeating a technique which ^
proved successful in 1956 in win-
ning major improvements in the
workmen's compensation law. That
proposal carried every one of the
state's 75 counties.
Although the initiative pro-
Sexton Named
To New Post
With UAW
Detroit — Brendan Sexton, since
1950 education director of the Auto
Workers, has been named to the
union's newly-created post of co-
ordinator of organization.
Sexton will work directly under
the UAW's Intl. Organizational Co-
ordinating Committee made up of
the union's six top officers and
chaired by Pres. Walter P. Reuther.
The committee was set up two
months ago in an organizational
realignment which Reuther said was
designed to "emphasize centralized
coordination . . . and decentralized
field work."
Named as assistant coordinators
under Sexton, with responsibility
for organizing in specified areas,
were Robert Shebal, office and pro-
fessional; Joseph Tuma, aircraft
and missiles; Ralph Robinson, agri-
cultural implement and foundry;
and Joseph Mooney, competitive
shops.
Reuther said that while the
UAW's organizing record in past
years was "very good," under the
new approach "a more effective
job" could be done in meeting or-
ganizing problems.
Sexton was granted a leave of
absence from his educational post
to take on the new assignment.
Succeeding him as education direc-
tor will be Carroll Hutton, Sexton's
assistant for the past two years.
posal is a modest one — starting
with an 80 cents an hour mini-
mum and a 48-hour week the
first year and going to $1 an
hour and 40 hours after the sec-
ond year — strong opposition is
expected from employer groups.
Arkansas' existing minimum
wage law, passed in 1915, applies
only to women. It sets a minimum
wage of only $1.25 a day — approx-
imately 16 cents an hour. That
is for "experienced" workers. For
women with less than six months
experience, the minimum is $1 a
day.
At a State AFL-CIO "kick-off
meeting" here, representatives of
250 affiliated local unions and coun-
cils made plans for the petition
campaign. The state federation is
seeking a $1 Contribution from each
union member to finance the mini-
mum wage drive.
The initiative proposal won early
endorsement from Gov. Orval E.
Faubus (D). He met with State
AFL-CIO Pres. Wayne E. Glenn
and Exec. Sec. V. H. Williams
and signed the first petition.
Upholsterers Back
L-G Key Vote List
Chicago — The AFL-CIO view
that the key actions in Congress on
the new labor law were the House
vote approving the Landrum-Griffin
bill and the Senate votes on the
McClellan "bill of rights" amend-
ment was endorsed by delegates to
the Chicago Area Council of the
Upholsterers at a meeting here.
The delegates, representing 10
locals with more than 15,000 mem-
bers, voiced approval of the AFL-
CIO statement that the "real test
of friendship" of representatives
and senators for labor was the way
they voted on these measures.
GREATEST NUMERICAL INCREASE in membership among the seven regional divisions of the
Retail Clerks won special citation for RCIA Southeast Div. Shown at presentation of trophy in
Miami Beach are: Sec.-Treas. William Maguire; Organizing Director J. T. Housewright of winning
division; Pres. James A. Suffridge; and RCIA Organization Dir. Ben Crossler.
80 Company Lawyers in Court
As Oil Anti-Trust Trial Opens
Tulsa, Okla. — In a federal courtroom here — almost completely filled by defense attorneys — the
Justice Dept. opened its anti-trust case against 29 giant oil companies.
The firms — in effect the oil industry — have been indicted for having conspired to raise prices of
crude oil and gasoline during the Suez crisis of 1956 — and of actually having done so in January
1957 in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
The companies admit they raised'^
their prices at the time Western
Europe looked to the United States
for oil to replace blocked Middle
East sources — but they deny they
conspired to do so.
With each of the accused com-
panies represented by separate
legal staffs — adding up to some
80 defense lawyers — the proceed-
ings are expected to drag on for
several months. U.S. Dist. Judge
Royce H. Savage, who is hearing
the case without a jury, over-
ruled two defense motions for
immediate acquittal during the
opening day proceedings.
Although the possible penalty for
conviction is comparatively small
—a $50,000 fine for each defend-
ant — the companies are spending
many times that amount in fighting
the case. The basic issue, govern-
ment and industry sources agree,
is whether there is genuine com-
petition in the multi-billion dollar
oil industry.
To buttress its case against the
29 firms — including Standard Oil of
New Jersey and four other Standard
Oil companies, Texaco, Sinclair,
Phillips Petroleum, Cities Service
and other big-name companies —
the government has subpoenaed
what has been described as enough
company records and papers to
reach from Tulsa to the Suez Canal.
Four Federal Bureau of Inves-
tigation agents and three tele-
phone company officials are
among the witnesses the Justice
Dept. announced^ will call early
in the trial. The government is
Labor Urges Stiffer
Control of Additives
The AFL-CIO has called for an absolute ban on the use of any
cancer-causing substance to color food, drugs or cosmetics.
Such a provision is contained in a 1958 law dealing with food
additives — chemicals added to preserve, process or flavor food
products. It has become known as the 4t Delaney amendment" for
its original sponsor, Rep. James J.^
Delaney (D-N. Y.).
AFL-CIO Legislative
Rep.
George D. Riley, testifying before
the House Interstate Commerce
Committee, strongly urged that a
general bill on coloring additives,
sponsored by Committee Chairman
Oren Harris (D-Ark.), be substi-
tuted for a bill passed by the Sen-
ate last year. The, Harris bill con-
tains the cancer proviso; the Senate-
passed bill does not.
Terming the cancer clause the
"heart" of the legislation, Riley
urged **that no modification of
the Delaney proviso be consid-
ered or tolerated."
To industry complaints that the
cancer clause is "rigid and harsh,"
Riley replied "it is harsh on the
side of right and provides a defense
against all who wittingly or other-
wise would allow the human sys-
tem to be subject to dire jeopardy."
Riley, in his testimony, praised
the Food and Drug Administration
and Health, Education & Welfare
Sec. Arthur S. Flemming for "the
forthright manner!' in which the
Food and Drug Act of 1958 has
been administered.
The department, which op-
posed the Delaney amendment
two years ago as unnecessary,
now strongly supports its inclu-
sion in the color additives legis-
lation.
While the purpose of the color-
ing bill is to give the Food and Drug
Administration authority to set
maximum tolerances for coloring
ingredients which are found harm-
in small quantities but could be
harmful in large amounts, Flem-
ming told the committee:
"Our advocacy of the anti-cancer
proviso is based on the simple fact
that no one knows how to set a
safe tolerance for substances in hu-
man foods when those substances
are known to cause cancer when
added to the diet of animals."
Citing action taken by the de-
partment to block the sale of con-
taminated cranberries and poultry,
Flemming said the principles of the
Delaney amendment will be fol-
lowed even if Congress should fail
to include it in the color additives
legislation. He strongly urged its
inclusion, however, to give "added
assurance to the consuming public."
The color additive bill also im-
poses on industry the obligation to
prove that additives are safe, in con-
trast to the present requirement
that the government must find them
unsafe to ban their use.
seeking to link a series of long-
distance telephone conversations
among the leading oil company
executives in December 1956 to
the price rise.
At the time of the Suez crisis,
inventories of gasoline and crude
oil were considerably higher than
normal. The government charges
that the Middle East oil crisis pro-
vided an excuse for raising prices
09"9-5
and challenges the industry's claim
that the increases were the result
of free market activity and supply
and demand.
The indictment of the 29 com-
panies was handed down by a fed-
eral grand jury in Alexandria, Va.,
in 1958. The case was transferred
to Tulsa, in the heart of the na-
tion's biggest oil belt, at the request
of the companies.
Can Locals
Analyze Pact
At Continental
Miami Beach, Fla. — Four hun-
dred local union officers, repre-
senting members of the Steelwork-
ers in Continental Can Co. plants
in 16 states and Canada, held a
week-long meeting here to analyze
the new three-year contract signed
with the company in December.
James Robb of Indianapolis, di-
rector of USWA Dist. 30 and chair-
man of the Steelworkers' negotiat-
ing team in contract negotiations
with Continental, said the meet-
ing was designed to evaluate the
contract and "iron out wrinkles"
at the plant operation level.
Top officers of the international
— including Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald, Vice Pres. Howard R.
Hague, Sec.-Treas. 1. W. Abel, and
Gen. Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg
— participated in the series of meet-
ings with delegates from both pro-
duction and maintenance locals and
office and technical worker locals.
ill
*<
' m
Vol. V
I sued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, D. C.
|2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C
Saturday, February 13, 1960
No. 7
Council Maps Labor's Role
For 1960 Presidential Race
U. S. Court
Reverses
NLRB Rule
Philadelphia — The right of a
union to refuse to negotiate with
a "changeling"^ — an officer who
left the union to work for an em-
ployer — has been unanimously
upheld by the U. S. Third Circuit
Court of Appeals.
The court's ruling in a case in-
volving the Ladies' Garment
Workers was a rebuff to the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board,
which had accused the union of an
unfair labor practice for its refusal
to deal with a former officer who
became bargaining agent for the
Slate Belt Apparel Contractors As-
sociation.
Reversing a temporary order
handed down 10 months ago, when
it directed the ILGWU to negotiate
with the "changeling," the court
held that the union was justified in
not dealing with Robert Mickus,
who had for 10 years been an
organizer and business agent for
Local 1 1 1 in Allentown before be-
coming a management representa-
tive.
The court found that the
Pennsylvania contractors' group
"clearly displayed an absence of
fair dealing" in designating the
former ILGWU officer as its bar-
gaining agent. The court added
that the association's offer to bar-
gain with the union "was not
made in good faith."
. More than 5,000 union mem-
bers struck the 121 blouse contrac-
tors represented by the association
(Continued on Page 4)
AFL-CIO Merger
Set in Pennsylvania
Bal Harbour, Fla. — A mer-
ger agreement has been
"wrapped up" between the
Pennsylvania Federation of
Labor and the State Indus-
trial Union Council, AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany an-
nounced here.
Unity action is expected
within the next six weeks in
New Jersey, the one state
where merger of the separate
state central bodies has not
been worked out, the federa-
tion president told a press
conference. If there is no
action the AFL-CIO "may
have to move in, lift their
charters and merge them," he
said.
The Pennsylvania agree-
ment and a new constitution
have been approved by top
officers of both groups and a
unity convention is scheduled
for June 6 in Pittsburgh.
MEMBERS OF AFL-CIO Executive Council pore over heavy
agenda dealing with internal matters, legislative action and labor's
political role during mid-winter council session held at Americana
Hotel in Bal Harbour, Fla.
Long Filibuster Threatened :
Congress Set for
Civil Rights Battle
By Gene Zack
The specter of a weeks'-long southern filibuster was raised in the
Senate as the 86th Congress girded for a major civil rights battle
keyed to proposals for federal safeguards of voting rights coupled
with other protections of minority rights.
The Senate was set for the opening of full-scale debate, redeeming
last year's pledge by the leadership^
of both parties that civil rights "
action would begin Feb. 15. The
House, meanwhile, went into com-
mittee hearings as a prelude to floor
action expected to begin by month's
end.
A strong hint that southern Dem-
ocratic strategy might include a
filibuster came from Sen. Richard
B. Russell (D-Ga.) in an address to
the Georgia legislature.
Bitterly assailing all pending
civil rights proposals, Russell said
the southern bloc "will leave no
stone unturned, no rule of the
Senate, unused, in this battle to
protect states' rights and constitu-
tional government."
Just before the civil rights show-
down, there were these other de-
velopments on Capitol Hill:
• Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.) scheduled a Feb.
15 meeting of the Senate Demo-
cratic Conference to discuss three
major facets of the Administration's
economic policies.
The conference, requested by
Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) and 18
other Democrats, will concentrate
on Pres. Eisenhower's Budget Mes-
sage, recent criticism of Adminis-
tration policies expressed in the
report of the Senate-House 'Eco-
nomic Committee, and White House
demands for a hike in the interest
rate the Treasury pays on long-term
government securities.
• The House by voice vote
passed a bill to permit higher fed-
eral spending to curb water pollu-
tion. The measure would permit
annual outlays at a rate of $90
million instead of the present $50
million to help local communities
build sewage-disposal plants. Ei-
senhower had called for an end to
the program after the current fiscal
year.
• House Minority Leader
Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.) de-
nounced a $1 billion emergency
housing bill approved by a House
Banking subcommittee as a "budg-
et-busting" measure. The measure
would end excessive charges by
lending institutions and make funds
available immediately for moderate-
priced FHA and VA mortgages.
The Senate civil rights debate is
scheduled to open despite the fact
that the Rules Committee . has not
yet reported an elections bill. It has
recently concluded hearings on pro-
posals to have the Civil Rights
Commission appoint federal voting
registrars for federal elections only,
and Administration recommenda-
tions for court-appointed voting ref-
erees for both federal and state
elections. A compromise between
(Continued on Page 12) ^
General Board to
Weigh Nominees
By Saul Miller
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has
mapped a vigorous role for labor in the 1960 political campaign
and has voted to summon the AFL-CIO General Board, composed
of the principal officers of all affiliated unions and departments,
into special session later this year to consider a recommendation
on the presidential race.
The council's statement on 1960 political activities disclosed a
four-point program adopted during the mid-winter session here.
It followed in the wake of a press conference statement by Pres.
George Meany here that "no one in the official family of the
AFL-CIO, including myself, has any inclination to 'sit out' the
1960 presidential campaign."
Declaring "we reject" the idea of "political neutrality," the coun-
cil's policy guidelines asserted that a neutral role for the federation
in the crucial 1960 election campaign would be "a disservice to the
men and women we represent." (See full text of statement, Page 4.)
Meeting 24 hours after the Administrative Committee of the
federation's Committee on Political Education adopted policy recom-
mendations, the Executive Council approved a statement declaring:
• The federation and its state and local bodies will remain out
of primary elections except in one-party states.
• AFL-CIO officers will present labor's views on vital legisla-
tive issues to the platform committees of both major parties in a
drive to win adoption of "liberal and progressive" platforms.
• Following the conventions of both parties, the council will
convene the General Board to weigh the voting records and plat-
form commitments of both parties and the individual records of
presidential and vice presidential candidates. "Based on these
factors," the council said, "the General Board will determine
the AFL-CIO position and its recommendation to its members."
• State central bodies were specifically instructed to refrain
from endorsing slates of delegates pledged to the support of can-
didates for the presidency or vice presidency in either party.
The council said this decision would not infringe upon the rights
of individual union members in the primaries.
In addition to the statement on the political campaign, the
council called on Congress to enact promptly amendments to the
Wage-Hour Act to extend its coverage "to the millions still frozen
out of its protection" and to raise the minimum to at least $1.25.
The council also issued a call for an International Affairs Con-
ference on April 19-20 dealing with the theme, "The Struggle for
Peace and Freedom." The conference is to be attended by officers
of all international unions and state and city central bodies and
will be addressed by recognized, outstanding authorities on various
phases of the international situation.
The council statement setting up the conference said that "our
organization should demonstrate and dramatize — especially at
this crucial moment — its efforts to foster clarification and under-
standing of the critical world situation."
The conference would assure, said the statement, that there would
be a "full contribution by American labor towards the development-
of a sound United States foreign policy in promoting peace and
freedom."
As the AFL-CIO News went to press, the council had before
it a number of additional economic, congressional and international
affairs policy statements.
Prior to the Executive Council action on the political campaign,
the council had voted a 2-cent-per-month assessment effective
Feb. 1 to run for six months for the federation's Special Purposes
Fund; approved a new set of rules for directly affiliated local un-
ions; acted on a number of resolutions referred to it by the 1959
San Francisco convention; and heard a report on organizing from
AFL-CIO Dir. of Organization John W. Livingston.
In a series of press conferences, Meany told reporters that:
• Some members of Congress are "not satisfied" with the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act and are trying to make it "more oppressive."
• Contacts between leaders of labor and management away from
(Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
DURING BREAK in sessions of AFL-CIO Executive Council,
Vice Presidents David Dubinsky (left) and Walter P. R^uther hold
informal huddle. Council's mid-winter session was held in Bal
Harbour, Fla.
Council Asks Probe of
Runaway TV, Music
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has urged
the Senate to approve a resolution by Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.),
for an investigation of the use of imported video tape and canned
music in the U.S.
The council's action at its mid-winter session here came on two
resolutions referred by the AFL-<p
CIO's third constitutional conven-
tion in San Francisco last Septem-
ber. One came from the Musicians
and the other from the Broadcast
Employes and Technicians.
The council endorsed the
Morse proposal, which the Mu-
sicians said would help uncover
such "retrogressive, job-destroy-
ing practices" as the use of cut-
rate canned music in "runaway"
film production abroad.
NABET's resolution, dealing
specifically with the practice of
producing television programs in
foreign countries through the use
of video tape, warned that failure
to check this practice would have
"a serious effect upon the employ-
ment opportunities of a substantial
number" of U.S. workers.
In connection with a convention
resolution calling on the council to
New Rules Set
For Federal
Local Unions
Bal Harbour, Fla.— A new set of
rules governing directly affiliated
local unions has been adopted by
the AFL-CIO Executive Council in-
corporating requirements of the
Landrum-Griffin Act and the ac-
tions of the federation's third con-
vention.
The 474 local unions with ap-
proximately 85,000 members have
until June 1, 1960, to make changes
in their own constitutions and by-
laws to bring them into compliance
with the new rules. However, the
regulations adopted by the council
are effective immediately.
Most of the changes stem from
the new labor law. The new sec-
tions cover local union meetings,
elections, finances, expenditures, re-
version of assets, disciplinary pro-
ceedings and appeals.
The new set of rules declares
"it is required that the constitu-
tion or bylaws of each directly
affiliated local union incorporate
the substances" of these new sec-
tions.
Other changes, in line with con-
vention action, increase the per
capita paid by the locals to the
AFL-CIO from $1 per member per
month to $1.50, increase initiation
fees 50 cents to $2.50, set minimum
dues of $2.50, up 50 cents, and set
aside 15 cents of the per capita
payment for the Defense Fund.
The new regulations also increase
strike benefits $5 a week to $20.
payable for a maximum of 10
weeks.
seek elimination of racial discrimi-
nation clauses in the constitutions
of two affiliates, Pres. George
Meany reported on the action taken
by the Railroad Trainmen last
month when their convention voted
to strike a 65-year-old provision re-
stricting membership to "white
males."
The council instructed the ex-
ecutive officers of the federation
to continue to work with the
leadership of the Locomotive
Firemen & Enginemen to achieve
the same result in order to ful-
fill the AFL-CIO goal of wiping
out remaining pockets of dis-
crimination
Acting on other resolutions re-
ferred by the San Francisco con-
vention, the Executive Council:
• Deferred action on a resolu-
tion urging unions to avoid holding
conventions in so-called "right-to-
work" states.
• Referred to the AFL-CIO
Education Committee a resolution
favoring establishment of a Staff
Training Institute.
• Referred to the executive of-
ficers for further study a proposal
which would require affiliates to set
up constitutional procedures for
disciplining members found guilty
of "scabbing" by accepting non-un-
ion employment.
• Voted non-concurrence in a
proposal to seek a change in the
date of Labor Day from the first
Monday in September to the first
Monday in October.
• Voted non-concurrence in a
resolution calling for establishment
of a daily labor paper.
The board's resolution called for
a systematic counter-offensive by
democratic unions in the 25 coun-
tries represented in ORIT — the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Union's organization in the Amer-
icas.
As part of the "popular front"
technique, ORIT said, the Com-
munists were encouraging a "united
front" conference slated for Ca-
racas, Venezuela, called by the
Venezuelan Confederation of La-
bor to discuss organizational unity
among all Latin American labor
organizations, including those now
outside ORIT.
The ORIT board rejected over-
tures to take part in the meeting,
citing the long-standing ICFTU
policy not to participate in any
formulas for unity of action and
cooperation that include Com-
munist or totalitarian elements.
The meeting took note, without
comment, of the disaffiliation of
the Cuban Labor Congress from
ORIT, and it postponed considera-
tion of a request from a group of
former *CTC leaders to be recog-
nized as the Cuban Labor Federa-
tion "in exile." At the same time
the executive board left the door
open for possible future reaffilia-
tion of the Cuban CTC and the
Venezuelan labor federation.
In reference to the Venezuelan
meeting, Serafino Romualdi, AFL-
CIO Inter-American director, told
a press conference the Communist
elements were fostering the meet-
ing as a means of "freezing out"
to ease Communist in-
of South and Central
Colls for Counter-Offensive :
ORIT Rejects Red Bid for
United Front in Latin America
Miami — Communist attempts to use the "popular front" technique to subvert the free trade unions
of Latin America were exposed and denounced at a meeting here of the executive board of ORIT,
the Inter- American Regional Organization of Workers.
The executive board declared that a proposal for creation of a new Latin American labor organi-
zation is a Communist objective to "achieve the destruction of ORIT and of the free trade union
movement." ® — ■
ences over the matter of the Pana-
manian flag as a symbol to titular
sovereignty in the Canal Zone.
• Reiterated the solidarity of
ORIT with the victims of dictator-
ship in the Dominican Republic
and pledged fullest cooperation in
the campaign to boycott the eco-
nomic activities of the Dominican
der the leadership of the ICFTU.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler represented the AFL-CIO at
the sessions. Board members from
Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Pana-
ma, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Peru,
Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and British
Guiana were present
Gray Resigns
Building Dept.
Presidency
Miami Beach — Richard J. Gray,
73, president of the AFL-CIO
Building and Construction Trades
Dept., has announced to the de-
partment's executive council his res-
ignation from the post he has held
for the past 17 years.
Gray announced his decision to
step down as head of the depart-
ment representing 3 million union-
ists in a letter to BTC executive
the U.S.
filtration
America.
Romualdi warned that the
Communists in Latin America
are trying to take advantage of
the desire for economic inde-
pendence and the feeling that the
time is appropriate to "get some-
thing." The Communists, he
added, are using every subter-
fuge to capitalize on the situa-
tion.
In other actions the ORIT board:
• Appointed Arturo Jauregui
Hurtado of Peru director of organi-
zation, a post he had held up to
1957 when he returned to Peru.
• Accepted the resignation of
ORIT Pres. Ignacio Gonzales
Tellechea of Cuba. A successor
will be selected at the board's next
meeting on the basis of nomina-
tions by affiliated organizations.
Organizing Aid Sought
• Requested additional assist-
ance from the ICFTU Solidarity
Fund for stepped-up efforts to ex-
pand ORIT and combat the Com-
munist infiltration attempts.
• Forwarded recommendations
concerning the western hemisphere
to the ICFTU Ad Hoc Committee
studying reorganization of the
free trade union" movement group
in line with the actions of the re-
cent sixth congress in Brussels.
• Called for implementation of
the principle of equal pay for
equal work in the Panama Canal
Zone area and urged that the U.S.
and Panama resolve their differ-
Meany Raps Proposal
To Hike Interest Rate,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has charged that Administration
demands for higher interest rates on long-term government securi-
ties adds up to asking the taxpayers to be "even more generous to
the banks."
In an editorial in the February issue of the AFL-CIO American
Federationist, Meany said that al-^
though the higher interest rates
"are defended on the grounds that
they help to 'prevent inflation'," the
policy advanced by Pres. Eisen-
hower actually "would again raise
the living costs of every worker."
He charged that the Eisen-
hower proposal "makes no sense
from any standpoint" and urged
that Congress again reject the
higher interest request as it did
in 1959.
The AFL-CIO president said that
Council to Meet Next
In Washington May 3
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The regular spring meeting of the AFL-CIO
Executive Council has been set for May 3 in Washington, D. C.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told reporters that the session
will be held just prior to the opening of the annual Union-Industries
Show, sponsored by the federation's Union Label & Service Trades
Dept., in the same city, and also in f
conjunction with the dedication of
stained-glass windows in memory
Of Samuel Gompers, Philip Murray
and William Green at Washington
National (Protestant Episcopal)
Cathedral. /
The three cathedral windows
were installed late last year. The
Gompers and Green windows
were presented by the William
Green Memorial Fund and the
Murray window by the Philip
Murray Memorial Fund.
Each window adapts a biblical
theme to a phase of the labor
movement's ideals and aspirations.
Murray's is the "Industrial and So-
cial Reform" window; Green's,
"Agricultural and Maritime;" Gom-
per's, "Artisans and Craftsmen."
Worked into each window are the
seals of AFL-CIO unions, 102 in
all.
A full-color brochure describing
the windows is being published by
Washington Cathedral
the Administration's policies in re-
cent years have steadily forced up-
ward interest rates on both public
and private borrowing. He called
this "a dramatic illustration of the
conflict between big business phi-
losophy and the public welfare."
Interest Costs Double
Although the national debt has
gone up less than 9 percent since
1947, Meany wrote in the Federa-
tionist editorial, the amount the
government pays in interest on its
debt has gone up almost 100 per-
cent.
"Most of this extra interest is
paid to banks and investment
companies, right out of the pock-
ets of the taxpayers," he declared.
"Debt charges will take at least
$12 out of every $100 in 1960
taxes*
"Yet that's only the smallest pen-
alty we pay. When the federal gov-
ernment, the safest of investments,
offers bigger interest rates, all
money gets more expensive. The
4 percent mortgage becomes a 6
percent mortgage. The 5 percent
car loan goes to 7 percent or more.
It's the same with business loans.
"Thus we pay more for our
homes, our cars and everything else
we buy on credit. And we pay
more .for what we buy for cash,
too. The manufacturer and the
storekeeper add their higher inter-
est costs to the products they sell."
RICHARD J. GRAY
Resigns as Building Trades Dept
president
council members at the close of
the department's council meeting
here. The letter said:
"It is with regret that I feel com-
pelled to tender my resignation as
president of the department, to be-
come effective Mar. 1, 1960.
"Due to my wife's failing health
and my advanced age, I feel com-
pelled to do this."
A four-man administrative
committee was named to consider
a possible successor. Appointed
to the panel were Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann of the Plumbers &
Pipe Fitters; Pres. Gordon M.
Freeman of the Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers; Sec.-Treas.
Peter Fosco of the Laborers; and
Pres. Maurice A. Hutcheson of
the Carpenters.
The group is actively canvassing
the field in search of a new BTC
president.
Gray became acting president of
the Building & Construction Trades
Dept. in 1943 and three years later
became its permanent president.
His career in the trade union
movement spanned a half century.
Prior to heading the BTC he served
successively as secretary and treas-
urer of the Bricklayers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Page Three
Council Maps Labor's '60 Election Role
General Board Will
Meet on Nominees
(Continued from Page 1)
the collective bargaining table are necessary to industrial peace.
He generally supported Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell's attempts
to implement Meany's call for a top-level labor-management con-
ference, he said, and he was optimistic that the atmosphere for
industrial peace was improving.
• Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., (D-N. Y.) would make a
"terrible" chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee
in light of his record as a district leader in New York City for
stirring up racial disturbances "at the slightest provocation."
Queried on whether the General Board would endorse a candi-
date for the presidency, Meany said following the COPE Adminis-
trative Committee meeting that the recommendations did not specify
that an endorsement would be made. He added, "I am quite sure
we will endorse a candidate. I hope we will."
Meany pointed out that if the General Board were confronted
with a choice between "tweedledum and tweedledee," there possibly
could be no endorsement. He said no one in the COPE meeting
took a position against endorsement of a candidate.
Asked about the last AFL-CIO convention's proposal for a spe-
cial convention to adopt a policy on internal union disputes, Meany
pointed out that no such convention will be held until the Executive
Council adopts a disputes plan. He said that in any case such a
convention would not be concerned with the political campaign.
He made it clear that there was no discussion of presidential
candidates at the COPE meeting. The session was concerned
with discussion of administrative and technical problems of COPE
and with the question of participating in the 1960 campaigns,
he emphasized.
Asked about the growing involvement of business in politics, the
federation president said that business Tias always been behind the
scenes in politics and he is happy "to see them get out in the open."
He said he hoped business activities in politics would have a good
effect, because the more actively business participates, "the people
they employ are also likely to become more interested."
The comment that labor would not "sit out" the 1960 campaign
touched on a story to that effect appearing last month in the Wall
Street Journal. Meany in his press conference said specifically,
"The story has no foundation in fact."
Meany's comments on Landrum-Griflin came at the opening
press conference. He said the act is "very complicated" and has
many more "unfair sections than we realized at the time of passage."
The Depts. of Labor and Justice, he added, have been "very co-
operative" in attempting to work out regulations looking toward rea-
sonable compliance with the law, but some members of Congress
are not satisfied and are working to make the act even more puni-
tive. He said they include the sponsors, Representatives Phil M.
Landrum (D-Ga.) and Robert P. Griffin (R-Mich.), and others
who supported the measure in the House.
Asked if the act did away with the need for the AFL-CIO's
Ethical Practices Committee, Meany said this was not the case and
that "we still have our job to do."
Meany reported that he had held several conferences with Mitchell
to work out Meany's proposal for a top level labor-management
conference which Pres. Eisenhower endorsed in his State of the
Union message.
He added that the President has not yet implemented steps
towards setting up the conference and that Mitchell feels that it
may be mid-March before definite steps are taken.
The AFL-CIO president said that despite the efforts of the
National Association of Manufacturers to "maintain an attitude
of hostility/' he is optimistic that the atmosphere is changing and
that many Industrialists are realizing as a result of the steel strike
that bitter differences between labor and management cannot con-
tinue if America is to remain strong and free.
Meany's comments on Powell came in reply to a query from a
reporter who noted the announcement by Rep. Graham A. Barden
(D-N. C.) that he would not seek re-election meant that Powell
under the seniority system would move up to the chairmanship.
There have been a number of public criticisms of Powell since the
Barden announcement, including a newspaper column by Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt.
The new assessment voted by the council will raise about $1.5
million for the Special Purposes Fund, which is used to finance
special projects approved by the council. These include AFL-CIO
support of the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions' Solidarity
Fund, donations to charitable and community organizations, and
funds to fight "right-to-work" laws and to help organize farm
workers.
A 1-cent per member per month assessment was voted by the
council last February for six months but was not renewed upon
expiration.
Meany told reporters the fund still has a balance of several hun-
dred thousand dollars but it had to be replenished to carry on the
organization's work.
The AFL-CIO, for example, will appropriate $480,000 to the
ICFTU Solidarity Fund this year, and in line with existing practice
will probably earmark portions of that sum for use in Africa and
Latin America.
Meany pointed out also that the council decided to sponsor a
USO overseas show around Easter time in cooperation with the
federation's entertainment unions and that the money, he said,
would come out of this fund.
PRESIDING OVER mid-winter session of AFL-CIO Executive
Council at Bal Harbour, Fla., was 'AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
with the federation's secretary-treasurer, William F. Schnitzler.
Major Industry Attack
Slows Union Growth
Bal Harbour, Fla. — An intensive campaign by industry over the
past four years to prevent unionization in the South and among
white collar workers has limited the growth of the trade union
movement, AFL-CIO Dir. of Organization John W. Livingston
declared here.
Livingston told a press confer- 1 ^
ence that while AFL-CIO unions
have added about 1.1 million mem-
bers since 1956, all of organized
labor today represents a smaller
percentage of potential union
membership than in the years 1952-
55.
The increase in the labor force,
technological unemployment and
automation have dropped the num-
ber of organized workers from 40
percent to 39 percent of the total,
he said. Shortly after merger, he
added, the potential was 42 million
workers; today the figure is 44 mil-
lion.
Livingston summarized for re-
porters a report he made to the
Executive Council in which he
detailed the intensive, often vici-
ous campaign of opposition to
unionization by employers. The
National Association of Manu-
facturers and the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, he declared, are
continually advising employers
Whitehouse
Resigns IUD
Directorship
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Albert
Whitehouse, director of the AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept., has
resigned effective Mar. 1 to return
to his duties as director of Dist. 25
of the Steelworkers.
In a letter to IUD Pres. Walter
P. Reuther, he said that despite
many obstacles to be overcome dur-
ing the past four years, the IUD
"is now firmly established and fill-
ing a much needed and valuable
position of service to the labor
movement."
Whitehouse said he was resign-
ing in order that he might give full
time again to his job with the
Steelworkers. He has held both the
district directorship and the direc-
torship of the IUD since formation
of the department in December
1955.
Reuther said in a letter acknowl-
edging receipt of Whitehouse's res-
on how to block unionization,
with detailed union-busting
plans and case histories of suc-
cessful union-smashing attempts.
Employers today, he said, use
captive-audience techniques, plant
gate literature and other methods
to stymie unions under rulings
handed down by the National
Labor Relations Board in the past
few years.
Livingston said he had recom-
mended stepped-up organization ef-
forts by AFL-CIO affiliates, fur-
ther organizing conferences with
emphasis on local areas and a pos-
sible AFL-CIO General Board
meeting devoted to organizing
problems and plans.
In some area & — retailing and
some service trades — t here has
been good progress lately, he said,
but the Landrum-Griffin Act has
still not had its full impact.
"It's not going to be of any as-
sistance," commented Livingston.
Court Stalls Sioux Falls
On Yellow-Dog Decree
Sioux Falls, S. D. — The^ city commission here has been tem-
porarily enjoined from putting into effect a "yellow-dog", directive
prohibiting employes of three municipal departments from joining
or remaining members of any union.
The city's attempt to outlaw unions in the fire, health and police
departments was challenged in the^
state circuit court by the Fire Fight
ers and the State, County & Mu-
nicipal Employes. Arguing that the
action violated constitutional rights
of employes and — ironically — vio-
lated the state's so-called "right-to-
work" law, the unions obtained a
temporary restraining order. Full-
scale hearings will be held later on
the request for a permanent injunc-
tion.
A strong and long-established '
local union of the Fire Fighters,
one of whose members is an in-
ternational vice president of the
union, and a mushrooming or-
ganizing drive by the AFSCME
in other city departments were
the immediate targets of the res-
olution the commissioners passed
by a 2-to-l vote.
Sec.-Treas. Francis K. McDonald
of the State AFL-CIO, legislative
representative of the city central
body, said the commissioners' ac-
tion aparently also was aimed at
hobbling a highly successful organ-
izing drive by the Teachers. He said
nearly half the city's teachers joined
the AFT during the first months of
the campaign.
The city's labor movement, which
has been actively supporting the
municipal ' organizing campaign,
vigorously protested the resolution
as "the most unrealistic, unfair and
un-American document ever enact-
ed in city hall."
City AFL-CIO officers who ap-
peared before the city commis-
sioners to oppose the resolution
sharply challenged language
which implied that union mem-
bership might "prevent or impede
the rendering of fair and impar-
tial service" and denounced as
"false" the claim that employes
in comparable jobs in other cities
"are generally barred from union
membership."
ALBERT WHITEHOUSE
Resigns as IUD Director
ignation, "You can rightly be proud
of the contribution that you have
made in establishing the IUD."
The IUD Executive Committee
is expected to meet soon to select
a successor.
Whitehouse, whose union service
dates back to 1934 when he be-
came chairman of his local union's
grievance committee at the New-
port Steel Corp., Newport, Ky.,
was elected president of the Ken-
tucky CIO Council in 1941 and
USWA district director the follow-
ing year.
Since 1953, he has served as
chairman of the USWA negotiating
committee for the American Can
Co.
Along with his union interests,
Whitehouse has been active in
church and community activities.
He has served as deacon, elder,
trustee and board chairman of his
local church and has been active
for many years in the National
Council of Churches of Christ in
the U.S.A. He served three years as
a vice president.
Council to Meet on
Cancer Research
Bal Harbour, Fla. — A spe-
cial meeting of members of
the AFL-CIO Executive
Council is scheduled for
Washington at the time of
the next council meeting to
work out plans for labor sup-
port for the proposed Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute on Cancer
Research.
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany said the meeting of
leaders of federation unions
interested in the project will
discuss ways and means of
raising funds for the project.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Council Statement
On 1960 Campaign
Herewith is the full text of the statement adopted Feb. 11
by the AFL-CIO Executive Council on the 1960 political
campaign:
During the 1960 political campaign, the AFL-CIO will
actively support candidates favorable to the principles and
ideals supported by the American labor movement. Political
neutrality would be a disservice to the men and women we
represent and we reject it.
We firmly believe the general public is entitled to know
exactly what role the AFL-CIO plans to play and therefore
this Executive Council adopts the following policy guidelines
for 1960:
"1 The AFL-CIO and its state and local branches will not
• participate in primary elections except in one-party states.
2 The officers of the AFL-CIO will present to the platform
• committees of both major parties labor's views on vital
legislative issues and urge the writing of platforms that are
liberal and progressive.
3 Subsequent to the national conventions of both parties,
• the Executive Council will convene a meeting of the AFL-
CIO General Board for the purpose of weighing the voting
record of the parties, their platform commitments and the in-
dividual record of the candidates for President and Vice Pres-
ident of the United States. Based on those factors, the Gen-
eral Board will determine the AFL-CIO position and its rec-
ommendation to its members.
4 Without infringing upon the rights of individuals, who
• are members of AFL-CIO unions, to support candidates
of their choice in the primaries, state central bodies of the
AFL-CIO, pending the decision of the General 'Board, are
specifically instructed to refrain from endorsing or supporting
slates of delegates pledged to the support of candidates for
the presidential or vice presidential nomination of either party.
Court Reverses NLRB
On 'Changeling' Issue
(Continued from Page 1)
in April 1959 seeking contract im-
provements equivalent to those
negotiated the previous month with
New York jobbers. Negotiations
bogged down over the union's re-
fusal to negotiate with Mickus on
the grounds that a "moral and
ethical issue" was involved in man-
agement's hiring as its negotiator
an ex-unionist who had had access
to "confidential information" in his
years as a union officer.
Brownell at Quarterback
The contractors' association —
represented by Pres. Eisenhower's
former U.S. Atty. -Gen. Herbert
Brownell, Jr. — obtained an NLRB
ruling that the union was guilty of
an unfair practice, and the' court
issued a temporary restraining
order instructing the union to bar-
gain with Mickus.
The association subsequently by-
passed Mickus to negotiate a set-
tlement — patterned along the lines
of the New York contract — directly
with ILGWU Pres. David Dubin-
sky.
In upholding the ILGWU's re-
fusal to deal with Mickus, the court
ruled that while each party has a
right to choose its representatives
"this rule is not absolute or immu-
table." The court cited the fact that
an association official told a union
representative that Mickus had
been employed "because of his
years of familiarity from the in-
side of the union with its strategy,
thinking, working and operations."
The decision pointed out that
this statement "was made taunt-
ingly," and made it "abundantly
clear that any collective bargain-
ing done with Mickus would be
in form only without good faith
negotiating" on management's
side.
Last year, the ILGWU's 30th
convention in Miami Beach
amended its constitution requiring
all full-time paid officers to agree
that they would not act as employer
representatives for a period of
three years after terminating office
in the union.
AFL-CIO President Says :
Letters from Union Families
Can Put Through Forand Bill
Flaying the "shortsighted, selfish medical and big business lobbies" for opposing the Forand
bill, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has urged swift congressional approval of the proposal to
"provide a measure of health security for retired persons."
The "widespread support for the proposal in both political parties," Meany wrote in an editorial
in the February issue of the AFL-CIO American Federationist, "can be turned into reality" if
each of the 13.5 million members?"
STRONG SUPPORT for minimum wage legislation, now awaiting
final action by the Senate Labor Committee, came from union
delegations from New Jersey, New York, Vermont and West Vir-
ginia who called on committee members from their home states.
Here, West Virginia delegates meet with Sen. Jennings Randolph
(D-W. Va.).
of the AFL-CIO writes to his con-
gressman and senators demanding
enactment of the bill.
A key plank in labor's 1960
"Positive Program for America,"
the bill introduced by Rep. Aime
J. Forand (D-R.I.) would expand
the social security system to pro-
vide medical and hospital care for
the nation's senior citizens. It
would be financed by raising the
social security tax on both em-
ployers and workers one-quarter
of 1 percent.
Declaring that 1960 will be a
year of "issues that have waited
far too long for action," Meany
wrote that "none of these serves
a greater individual need than
the Forand bill."
Testimony before the House
Ways and Means Committee, the
editorial continued, "has proved
beyond doubt that a very large
number of retired citizens are
pauperized each year by the heavy
medical costs that are one .of the
hazards of old age.'*
Pensioners Driven on Relief
Meany added that private insur-
ance plans "cannot adequately
protect this high-risk group."
As a result, the AFL-CIO presi-
dent continued, "millions of pen-
sioners who have earned the right
to honorable, independent retire-
ment are forced to seek public
relief or to appeal for help to their
children. This makes a mockery of
the principle of earned retirement,
so proudly enunciated in our social
security system."
The Federationist editorial said
the Forand bill offers "a sound,
low-cost remedy through the social
security system," adding that while
it is "by no means an all-inclusive
medical plan, it would guard
against the long, expensive illnesses
that now are catastrophic in both
human and financial terms."
Forand Bill on Brink
Rallying rank-and-file AFL-CIO
members behind the drive for
passage through an all-out letter-
writing campaign, Meany pointed
out that the Forand bill is among
the measures "closest to decision"
in the 86th Congress with a key
vote scheduled in the Ways &
Means Committee early in March.
The need for an outpouring of
Union Aides
To Meet on
Child Parley
Bal Harbour, Fla. — A special
preliminary meeting of all AFL-
CIO members participating in the
White House Conference on Chil-
dren and Youth will be held in
Washington Mar. 27 to discuss
labor's views on some of the vital
issues to be considered at the na-
tional meeting.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann, federation representa-
tive on the President's committee to
plan the golden anniversary meet-
ing of the Conference on Children
and Youth, told the Executive
Council that at least 20 AFL-CIO
leaders will participate in the con-
ference.
He also announced' that AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany has been
invited to address one of the major
sessions of the conference sched-
uled for Mar. 26-Apr. 2 in Wash-
ington.
About 7,000 persons are ex-
pected to attend.
letters from the American public,
to counteract the high-powered
propaganda of the medical and
big business lobbies, also was
stressed by Dir. Nelson Cruik-
shank of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Social Security, and Legislative
.Rep. Hyman Bookbinder on the
AFL-CIO public service radio
program "As We See It."
"The medical societies and . . .
the usual crowd that doesn't want
any government action is working
very hard to defeat the bill," Book-
binder declared, in urging the mil-
lions of Americans who support
the Forand bill to send letters or
postcards to congressmen urging
favorable consideration of the
measure.
Cruikshank reported that con-
gressmen "are confident that this
bill is popular with the American
people." He added that "riot enough
congressmen have yet heard from
the people back home."
Trainmen Again Elect
Kennedy to Presidency
Cleveland — The 1,100 delegates to the Railroad Trainmen's con-
vention here have re-elected Pres. W. P. Kennedy to the post he has
held since 1949.
In balloting conducted by voting machine, Kennedy defeated
Sec.-Treas. William J. Weil, his only opponent for the presidency,
by a vote of 641 to 464. ® 1
Weil, defeated in successive bids
for three other top posts, and y. W.
Satterwhite, who lost his campaign
for re-election as assistant to the
president, were later elected full-
time vice presidents without oppo-
sition.
Succeeding Satterwhite as assist-
ant to the president, with the right
of succession when Kennedy steps
down in 1962 under a new com-
pulsory retirement program, was
Charles Luma of Dallas, Tex., who
defeated both Satterwhite and Weil
in balloting for the No. 2 spot in
the BRT.
W.E.B. Chase of Livonia, Mich.,
defeated Weil for the secretary-
treasurer's post, and B. W. Fern
successfully turned back Weil's
challenge for the senior vice pres-
idency.
At a victory dinner and dance,
Kennedy was later lauded by
1,500 delegates and guests. He
pledged a continuation of a vigor-
ous program of improvements
for rail workers. Chief speaker
was Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy
(D-Minn.).
Kennedy's retirement in 1962
will come under a formula adopted
earlier by the convention that will
gradually reduce the compulsory
retirement age for grand lodge of-
ficers from the present 70 years to
age 65 by 1965. Under the for-
mula, officers reaching the age of
70 during 1961 must retire by the
last day of that year. Retirement
will be compulsory on the last day
of the year for those reaching 69
in 1962, 68 in 1963, 67 in 1964,
and 65 in 1965.
Other vice presidents chosen by
the convention were R. H. Mc-
Donald of Los Angeles; James An-
derson of Syracuse, N. Y.; Joseph
B. Cahill of Cleveland; S. Vander
Hei of Chicago; L. E. Chester of
Jacksonville, Fla.; Q. C. Gabriel of
East Pittsburgh, Pa.; F. A. Collin
of Ottawa, Ont., and H. F. Sites
of Philadelphia.
Delegates also elected W. G.
McGregor of Calgary, Alberta, as
Canadian legislative representative;
W. L. (Jack) Hill, assistant secre-
tary-treasurer; and Harry See, na-
tional legislative representative.
The convention is expected to
end about Feb. 20.
UAW Demands Time
On NAM's TV Smear
Detroit — The Auto Workers have demanded equal time on six
television stations to answer "biased" films of McClellan commit-
tee hearings into the protracted Kohler strike. The films were
supplied secretly to the stations in February and March 1958 by
the National Association of Manufacturers.
The formal demand was present-^ -
ed the stations by UAW Sec.-Treas.
Emil Mazey in the wake of a sharp
rebuke issued by the Federal Com-
munications Commission against
WTTG-TV in Washington for fail-
ing to identify the NAM's active
role in supplying the free films to
27 stations across the country.
Mazey asked that the union be
given "an equal opportunity at
an early date to present the views
of the UAW with respect to those
matters considered in the biased,
contrived kinescopes produced by
the NAM."
The demand went to WTTG-TV
in Washington; its sister station,
WNEW-TV in New York; and to
Stations KMOT-TV, Minot, N. D.;
KSTP-TV, St. Paul, Minn.; WDAY-
TV, Fargo, N. D.; and KFYR-TV,
Bismarck, N. D. All six stations
were known to have carried the
NAM-supplied films.
The FCC's formal criticism of
the station pointed out that WTTG
first offered to sell the films "at the
suggestion and request of the
NAM" to a total of 102 stations,
and that when there were no ac-
ceptances from the stations "ar-
rangements were made by' the NAM
to have summaries made available
free of charge to interested sta-
tions."
- The commission said the fail-
ure to identify the NAM as the
supplier of the kinescopes consti-
tuted a "serious omission" in view
of the fact that federal regula-
tions require broadcasters to
identify either direct or indirect
sponsors.
At the same time, the FCC rep-
rimanded WTTG and WNEW for
presenting a program in support of
the restrictive Landrum-Griffin bill
on the eve of congressional action.
The AFL-CIO had assailed this as
a "one-sided presentation" and a
"perversion of the public service
concept." The commission ruled
the stations had not given the pub-
lic a "fair presentation."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Page Tivm
1960 Fact Sheet on Congress— No. 4
Far Too Few Covered, Minimum Too Low
Wage-Hour Law, Landmark of v
New Deal Era, Needs Updating
By John Beidler
The Fair Labor Standards Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in 1938, is no longer fair.
There are two major reasons. First, the $1 an hour minimum wage which the law now pre-
scribes is outdated. Second, of some 45 million workers in interstate commerce who could and
should be protected by the law, more than 20 million (almost half) are excluded from its coverage
by exemptions written into the law.
The measure was originally passed during the depression of the 1930s, when New Deal strength
was at its peak. Wages were low and unemployment high.
During the Senate debate, in July of 1937, pay vouchers of Southern shirtworkers were intro-
duced into the record: "Here is one dated July 3, 1937, AV2 days, wages $3.57. Another, July 3,
1937, AV2 days, wages $3.38." ^
Pleading for the passage of the
bill, then Senator Hugo L. Black
(D-Ala.) said to the Senate:
"As we talk today, and as we
pledge allegiance to the principle
that we promised to carry into ef-
fect, and as we continue to exhibit
Get the Facts
On Key Issues
The AFL-CIO News is
publishing on this page the
fourth of a new series of Fact
Sheets on Congress providing
background information on
basic issues coming before
the second session of the
86th Congress.
The series, prepared by
John Beidler of the . AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation, is
designed to give the legisla-
tive history of the issue, the
various forces involved pro
and con and the general na-
ture of bills introduced.
Reprints of the fact sheet
series will be available from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legis-
lation, 815 16th Street N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C.
our undying love and admiration
and fondness for x the little people
who work long hours all over the
nation, 8 million and more of our
people are doing nothing at all.
"Many of these little people
have to go to work in the early
morning hours, so early that they
do not have much time to think
about principle or method or
objective, and they remain at
their labor until the evening
shadows gather. As one of them
wrote me, all they can do is go
to their place of work shortly
after they rise in the morning and
come home from their place of
work and immediately go to
sleep. Work and sleep; sleep and
work."
This original bill established a
44-hour workweek during its first
year of operation, 42 hours the
second year, and 40 hours there
after, with overtime payable for
work beyond those hours. Mini-
mum wages were fixed at 25 cents
an hour the first year, 30 cents for
the next six years, and 40 cents
thereafter.
Attacks Rebuffed
No sooner was the bill passed
than it was subjected to a strong
attack by conservatives charging
that it was unconstitutional. Op
ponents had great hopes that the
Supreme Court would throw out
the new statute. In 1941, how-
ever, the court upheld its constitu-
tionality.
Although the right of the federal
government to enact a statute pro
viding minimum wages and over-
time was thus clearly established,
the question of what the minimum
wage should be, and to what work-
ers it should apply, remains a diffi
cult one.
The minimum wage cannot re-
main the same if the law is to
remain fair. There must be a
constant readjustment to meet
new economic conditions.
For example, the average hourly
earnings in American industry in
1938 were less than 63 cents; in
1949 they were $1.38, and today
they are $2.26. Clearly if the
minimum is to remain realistic it
must be periodically readjusted.
Exemptions Increased
An even more difficult problem,
politically, is coverage of the act.
The law has always exempted
workers in certain industries from
Present Wage Law Held
Intolerable' by Meany
During his appearance before the Senate Labor Subcom-
mittee on May 7, 1959, during which he urged passage of
the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany said:
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you once more
the need for improvement of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
And I want to begin by repeating, with even greater emphasis,
what I have said on previous appearances before this com-
mittee: The issue now before you has passed the stage of being
a subject for study, a subject for philosophical debate. It has
now become a matter of utmost urgency.
This is the third time, in four years, that we have been here
urging a better wage and hour law. Each time, we in the
AFL-CIO have laid before this committee a wide range of
facts supporting the need for a higher minimum wage and for
extension of minimum wage protection to many of those who
are now denied its protection.
In those four years the situation has just grown worse.
What was merely unfair in 1956 has become intolerable
in 1959.
The failure of Congress to take imaginative and courageous
action on this matter has perpetuated the misery of sub-
standard living conditions for millions of our fellow Ameri-
cans. It has weakened our domestic economy and damaged
our prestige — and the prestige of democracy itself — through-
out the world.
These are strong words, but they are justified. The evi-
dence is overwhelming.
its protection. In 1949, when Con-
gress increased the minimum to 75
cents an hour, the Republican-
Dixiecrat coalition forced adoption
of certain concessions from Tru-
man Administration supporters,
each whittling away some of the
benefits provided by the original
statute.
These concessions did not satis-
fy the conservatives, who finally
drove through amendments ex-
cluding 500,000 workers from cov-
erage who had been previously pro-
tected.
The next major attempt to
modernize the act took place in
1955. Labor and other groups
had been urging an increase in
the minimum to $1.25 an hour,
and the Administration finally
recommended an increase to 90
cents.
The Senate Labor Committee
after lengthy hearings approved a
bill raising the minimum to $1.00,
and this measure passed the Senate
by a voice vote.
In the House, the Senate-passed
$1.00 minimum was also recom-
mended by the Labor Committee,
but conservative Republicans and
Southern Democrats again fought
to cut the figure.
Two amendments were offered
— the first to cut the increase to
90 cents, which was beaten, and
the second to provide a sliding
scale, pegging the minimum at 90
cents the first year, and $1.00 the
second year. The second amend-
ment failed on a teller vote by a
tiny margin, 168 to 173, so the $1
minimum became law.
Although the 1955 law repre-
sented a substantial improvement
in the wage, much remained to
be done. Congress had not acted
to extend coverage to those ex-
cluded by the 1949 law or to
those millions of workers who
have never enjoyed the protec-
tion of the act.
With the election of the 85th
Congress in 1957, the AfL-CIO
and other interested groups again
began a campaign to extend cover-
age and to modernize the mini-
mum. These groups supported bills
introduced by Sen. Wayne Morse
(D-Ore.) and the late Rep. Augus-
tine B. Kelley (D-Pa.) to extend
coverage to about 9.6 million ad-
ditional workers.
The Administration belatedly of-
fered an alternative, and much
more limited, proposal. It asked
for extension of coverage to only
about 2.5 million additional work-
ers, and even for this small num-
ber it would have denied the bene-
fits of the law's overtime pro-
visions.
Extensive hearings were held by
subcommittees of the House and
Senate Labor Committees, but no
action followed.
Last year, liberal forces again
began a drive for improvements in
the law, and a Senate Labor sub-
committee held 10 more days of
hearings in May and June.
The Administration again advo-
cated its own limited proposal,
similar to that offered previously,
which would extend coverage to
about 2.5 million additional work-
»*AWH FOR: THE
/\Fk-ClOHEW1f
Two-Trouser Suit
The AFL-CIO supported a bill
sponsored in the Senate by Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and
Sen. Morse, and in the House by
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif .).
The Kennedy -Morse -Roosevelt
bill would increase the minimum
wage ot $1.25 an hour and extend
the coverage of the act to some
7.8 million workers in retail
trade, services, construction and
other industries not now covered.
On July 10, 1959, the Senate
subcommittee reported the Ken-
nedy - Morse - Roosevelt bill, with
some modifications, to the full La-
bor Committee. No further ac-
tion was taken in 1959. The com-
mittee is expected to meet in execu-
tive session shortly to consider the
bill.
On the House side, the Labor
Standards Subcommittee of the La-
bor Committee has scheduled hear-
ings on minimum wage legislation
to begin about March 1.
At its San Francisco convention,
the AFL-CIO said:
"As the Fair Labor Standards
Act stands now, it falls woefully
short of its stated objective of
achieving a *minimum standard of
living necessary for health, effi-
ciency and general well-being of
workers.'
"Millions of workers are still un-
justifiably frozen out of the cover-
age. The act offers them no wage
floor whatever and no limitation
on excessive hours of work. As
for the workers covered, the pres-
ent $1 minimum wage is consider-
ably less than needed to afford a
decent standard of living. These
are the two areas of urgently
needed amendment of the act: ex-
tension of coverage and increase of
the minimum wage. . .
The AFL-CIO also supports leg-
islation to reduce the 40-hour
workweek standard in the present
law to a seven-hour day in a 35-
hour week. Technological change
in recent years has greatly reduced
the manpower needs in manufac-
turing industries. In the future,
more and more goods and services
will be provided by fewer workers
or in fewer hours. The alternative
to cutting workers is cutting hours.
Several bills have been intro-
duced in both Houses to meet this
objective.
Union-Backed Bill Adds
7.8 Million to Coverage
Estimated Number of Workers to Whom Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt Bill Would Extend Coverage of Fair Labor
Standards Act
_ Number who would Number earning
be covered by bill less than $1.25
Type of Employment (thousands) (thousands)
Retail trade 4,150 1,920
Wholesale trade 182 90
"Local retailing" (mfg. &
wholesale) 10 5
Laundries & dry cleaning 170 100
Hotels 241 170
Business services 140 40
Finance, insurance and
real estate 140 30
Miscellaneous services . . 725 500
Construction 1,331 130
Other groups:
Seafood processing 32 15
Newspapers 17 10
Transit 102 10
Small telephone exchanges 43 25
Taxis 58 25
Seamen 100 10
Logging 86 70
Manufacturing & mining 40 20
Transportation & ware-
housing 77 10
All other 186 70
Total 7,830 3,250
Pas* Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. d, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Showdown on Civil Rights
TTkESPITE BROAD non-partisan agreement that legislation is
" urgently needed to assure every citizen his right to register and
vote, a bloc of diehard southern senators is threatening a full-scale
filibuster to block a civil rights bill this year.
Both Republicans and non-southern Democrats have agreed on
the need for legislation to protect and extend Negro voting rights.
The report of the Civil Rights Commission last year contained
overwhelming evidence of the need to wipe out discrimination in
this area.
Northern liberals of both parties have introduced corrective leg-
islation; the Administration has proposed machinery along the same
lines. Only a small sectional group threatens to block quick passage
of critically needed laws.
With such broad agreement on the need for a bill, it should be
an easy matter to dispose of stalling tactics. But whether or not
the pro-civil rights forces can quickly muster the votes to block
or end a filibuster, they must not let the opposition go unchal-
lenged for many, many weeks.
If a good bill passes, including authority for the government to
institute civil suits in school desegregation cases, there will be plenty
of credit for all concerned of whatever party.
Neither party will benefit if the legislation is killed or watered
down beyond recognition.
As the Senate opens its deliberations, hearings continue in House
committees against a background of more than 200 signatures to
discharge the Rules Committee from further consideration of a
civil rights measure and to bring it to the floor for a vote.
The pressure for civil rights legislation is mounting in the
House and may force a relatively quick decision there. This
same pressure must be turned on the Southerners in the Senate
to smash the filibuster.
There is no reason for another day's delay. The right of all
citizens to vote, to attend schools of their choice, to live in dignity
and security, must be meaningfully guaranteed once and for all time.
A Yardstick for Politicians
THE AFL-CIO General Board, when it meets after the Demo-
cratic and Republican national conventions, will apply three
basic yardsticks in deciding which party and candidate are worthy
of support by organized labor.
Up for examination wjll be the respective parties' records in Con-
gress, their national platforms and their candidates. All three will
be measured against the AFL-CIO's own program as presented to
the platform committees of the national political conventions.
The AFL-CIO program is a positive program for America;
it is a broad-ranging program designed to produce a strong, pros-
perous nation with the benefits to be shared by all Americans,
not only union members,
The AFL-CIO will take every necessary step to help secure this
program through legislative and political action. It will not stand
on the sidelines or sit on its political hands while reactionary, anti-
labor elements carry on destructive campaigns.
The year 1960 is a crucial year in determining America's future
and American labor will be actively engaged in helping shape the
decision in November.
Set Me Free
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meanv, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftejy
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, February 13, 1960
No. 7
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations dots not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Afoot*
Turn Oil the Heat:
Jodoin Asks Canadian Industry
To Stop Its Sniping at Unions
The following is excerpted from an address by
Pres. Claude Jodoin of the Canadian Labour
Congress to the Toronto, Ont., Board of Trade.
THIS IS A TIME when there is a need for a
better relationship and a closer understanding
between management and labor. As labor and
management acquire experience in collective bar-
gaining relationships, there tends to be built up
a measure of mutual understanding- — and, one
would hope, a measure of mutual respect. This
has been the story with a number of our older
unions and the employers in their industries. It
has been natural to expect that this same develop-
ment would be found in the relations of other
unions in other industries as the years passed.
There are very definite signs at the moment
that this may not be the present development.
In fact, we may be at a turning point which might
lead us back to the sharp differences and conflict
which we have sometimes known in years gone by.
Your Board of Trade is a very important part
of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce which
is, at the moment, exerting great pressures on
the government in Ottawa for legislation which
we feel is directed at weakening the labor move-
ment, and so the whole process of collective bar-
gaining.
Now there is a real need for deciding very
frankly and very honestly whether or not we
believe in collective bargaining. Those of us
connected with the labor movement sometimes
become weary of statements from outside our
movement which start with the phrase, "Oh,
yes, I believe in unions, but • •
Too often this is the prelude to a discourse
which indicates that there really is no belief in
the principle of employes co-operating and bar-
gaining collectively. Too often there is at least
the inference that the right of workers to bargain-
ing collectively is something that has been forced
upon them, something that they just cannot avoid
and that they will accept, but only to the degree
that is inevitable.
That kind of an attitude does not contribute
to a good relationship.
The efforts being made by the Canadian Cham-
ber of Commerce, and by certain other manage-
ment groups, are directed at having the laws con-
cerning labor and management revised and greatly
extended. I he need for la>** governing the rela-
tions of labor and management is evident. It is
unfortunate, but we have need of such laws. We
have asked for them ourselves.
AT THE SAME TIME, a great volume of
such laws is more likely to hinder than to help
our relationships. We think that many of the
proposals being made are both unreasonable and
unworkable. They are being sold on a basis that
is not sound. There are too many slick phrases
being used. There are comparisons being made
between labor and management which are false
comparisons.
We as labor people have not forgotten that
laws were used not so many years ago in aS effort
to block the simple association of workers into
trade unions. Not enough years have passed for
us to forget that, and it is not surprising that
many of our people feel that laws may once again
be used to deprive workers of their organizations.
It is natural, under these circumstances, that
labor should look with very grave suspicion on a
form of law which would make the trade union
as a whole completely responsible and liable to
legal action for the behavior of a single individual
member over whom the union has no direct con-
trol. I am sure that your board would not like
to be put in that position in relation to every
member on your roster.
This is a time when a constructive approach
is needed. We have suggested to the govern-
ment in Ottawa that it might be a very useful
agent in calling together a conference of man-
agement and labor representatives to explore
the areas of conflict which exist and to seek
methods of overcoming misunderstandings and
building up understanding. There has been no
action on the part of the government and no
indication of any support for such an idea from
the management organizations.
THESE ARE CHALLENGING times and we
are only going to be able to meet the new chal-
lenges effectively by working together. We feel
that some of today's events may lead us in the
opposite direction.
Labor has not been noted for backing away
from a fight, but we feel that we should now have
reached va stage in our society where there is a
more constructive method of dealing with our
differences.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Page Sevea
Morgan Says:
Nixon is Nimble on School Aid
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC com-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to
Morgan over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
VICE PRES. NIXON'S latest footwork on aid
to education is a liberal education in itself.
In the maiden speech supporting his already sealed
bid for the Republican
Ifl presidential nomination,
Nixon warned in Chicago
on Jan. 27 that although
American education was
: | "the best in the world . . .
inadequate classrooms,
underpaid teachers and
flabby standards are weak-
nesses we must constantly
strive to eliminate." His
comments stimulated
hopeful speculation that
he was wigwagging to liberals his preparedness
to go much farther than the tight-fisted fiscal
policy of the Eisenhower Administration allowed
in helping to strengthen the country's schools.
But a week later in Washington, the Vice
President, sticking strictly to the party line, broke
a tie vote and killed a liberal amendment to the
main parcel of education legislation which has
just cleared the Senate.
It would not be fair to conclude from this
single act that Nixon is solidly opposed to im-
proving teachers' salaries or irrevocably against
federal aid to classroom construction. It could
be argued that the amendment he defeated, put
forth by Democratic Sen. Joseph Clark of Penn-
sylvania, was too expensive, calling, as it did,
for $1.1 billion a^year in matching federal funds
to states for building schools or raising teachers*
salaries, without a terminal date. This is sub-
stantially more than the compromise bill pushed
through the Senate next day.
But unless and until he spells out his own
position much more clearly, it would not be
fair either to infer that Nixon is moving any
measurable degree to the left of the Adminis-
tration's narrow proposal to limit federal aid
to $300 million a year for four years in match-
ing funds for school bonds only — no grants,
no assist for salaries.
The Vice President's action so far gives liberal
Washington Reports:
Democrats even more voltage to their charge
that no really adequate, meaningful legislation to
help the schools can be finally passed until the
powerful right wing-Republican-Southern Demo-
cratic congressional coalition is broken. Nixon,
who is now for all practical political purposes the
undisputed leader of the GOP, could break this
coalition. He may.
But unless he does, northern and western
Democrats will continue to object that he cannot
have it both ways — that he cannot follow the
Eisenhower line and still be entitled to claim
any validity for his promises that we must have
bold, far-reaching programs for education, though,
ironically, they fear he may adroitly be able to
make the claim stick just the same.
There are other factors staying the progress
and blighting the chances of education bills,
despite Senate action, the quivering snares of
racial and religious issues foremost among
them. A group of congressional liberals, in-
cluding a handful of Republicans, has been
trying to outflank the tight Administration line
against no federal assistance for faculty pay.
Ironically enough, the Administration school
bond bill, even if it worked with maximum
effect, would allow needy districts to build
only about 75,000 classrooms; the Adminis-
tration's own estimates 'say more than 130,-
000 are needed.
A stumbling block on salaries, however, has
not been just the Budget Bureau but strong, un-
publicized opposition of influential Catholics and
other groups because of the feared effect on paro-
chial schools. Parochial schools have been grow-
ing faster than the number of nuns qualified to
teach and they have had to draw instructors from
lay ranks; higher salaries for public school teach-
ers would boost costs in the teacher pay budgets
of parochial schools. Presumably this and at-
tending problems explain part of the opposition
to the teacher salary item in federal legislation
by such a House liberal as Majority Leader John
McCormack of Massachusetts.
THE BILL the Senate succeeded in passing was
far more liberal than any Administration version
and it included aid for teachers. But the supreme
test will come in the House, traditionally the
graveyard of measures to strengthen education,
that trifling item which those barbarous Russians
are wasting so much time and effort on.
^irs your =
WASHINGTON
Jackson, Saltonstall See Need
For Mobile Missile Step-up
THE MINUTE MAN, a mobile three-stage
intercontinental ballistics missile, is the major
U.S. defense weapon of the future, a Democratic
member of Congress, Sen. Henry M. Jackson
(Wash.), and a Republican, Sen. Leverett Salton-
gtall (Mass.), agreed in an interview on Washing-
ton Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public serv-
ice program heard on more than 300 radio
stations.
The present ICBMs, the Atlas and the Titan,
require fixed bases and "may be excellent targets
for Soviet ICBMs," Jackson said. Strategic Air
Command bases also will be vulnerable, he pointed
out.
Both Jackson and Saltonstall agreed also that
six or seven Polaris missile submarines should be
built, since they also are mobile launching plat-
forms. Jackson said that test firings on the Polaris
are continuing "and by the time we get around to
the appropriations bill" there may be sufficient
proof of their capabilities.
JACKSON SAID the defense budget should be
increased $3 billion. Saltonstall did not agree on
the amount, but thought it likely that the Congress
would increase the defense budget from the Pres-
ident's $41.6 billion. Both said that the U.S. now
has a sufficient deterrent force, but they were
concerned about the U.S. future position.
The United States is now "paying a heavy
price" for having failed to carry out an ade-
quate ballistic missile program, Jackson assert-
. ed. As a result, this country has to increase its
SAC defense. The cost of an air-borne alert,
a constant complement of SAC planes in the air,
Saltonstall said would be $100 million this year
and $1 billion next year.
"We should achieve at the earliest possible date
a virtually invulnerable deterrent," Jackson said.
"By that I mean an ability to retaliate even if the
enemy should hit us in a surprise attack. We are
talking now about weapons that can be fired from
the point of launching to the point of impact in
30 minutes. People can talk about warning sys-
tems, but we can have a 30-minute void and it's
too late. What we need is a retaliatory force that
will survive even if we have no warning."
Saltonstall said that one of the problems is to
decide between the offensive and defense strength
allotments. He said the offensive appeared to
have the edge. As Jackson put it, "Science has
been cruel to the defense. It has been partial to
the offense. In other words, the new weapon sys-
tems make a defense virtually impossible."
THE CIVIL RIGHTS BATTLE opening in the Senate will test
both the strength and integrity of our devotion to democracy and
the effectiveness of the Johnson cloture rule adopted last year.
In sections other than the South, it may be wondered why the
southern Democrats were willing to accept without a filibuster
the 1957 so-called "right-to-vote" law yet now have girded for
what seems likely to be the most bitter and protracted filibuster
in decades.
The fact remains that high emotion is involved. Spokesmen close
to the Southerners say that they felt in 1957 they had mtfde genuine
concessions and did not expect to be confronted with further civil
rights proposals so quickly. Sortie of them are smarting from public
comments by Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-S. C), berating them for
failure to use the filibuster weapon three years ago. Thurmond
ran for the presidency in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket and took four
southern states away from Pres. Truman solely on the civil rights
issue.
* * * ^
WHEN THE LIBERAL Democrats elected in 1958 entered the
Senate, proposals were made for drastic revisions of the Senate
rules providing open and free dfebate. Sen. Lyndon Johnson, a Texan
as well as majority leader, took the lead in tempering the changes.
It was argued that filibusters could be broken, under any rules,
any time public opinion over the country really demanded it and
the Senate majority chose to exercise its own powers. There is
much truth in this: the fundamental reason effective civil rights
legislation has not been passed is that the conscience of the peo-
ple did not express itself with sufficient force and urgency.
It cannot all be blamed on one group; the guilt is general. For
years the cozy coalition of northern Republicans and southern Dem-
ocrats saw the GOP giving just enough votes against cloture to help
the southerners keep filibusters alive.
A great many senators, including northern liberals of both parties,
believe that the Senate's tradition of free speech is a precious herit-
age and they showed themselves reluctant to support the full anti-
filibuster reforms that would have allowed cloture, the shutting off
of debate, after a stated period by simple majority vote.
They accepted the Johnson proposal allowing imposition of
cloture only by two-thirds of the senators present and voting.
That rule is a reversion to earlier provisions, and the truth is
that it did not allow the breaking of filibusters in the past. It
must now be tested under different circumstances.
.-****
THERE WILL BE inevitable partisan contention for "credit"
for whatever civil rights legislation is adopted by Congress; this is
a presidential year. The arithmetical fact is that both northern
and western Democrats and northern Republicans will have t<f
stand up and be counted before the filibuster is broken.
Whatever the emotional feelings of the Southerners, the fact
is that in state after state the local and state officials have not
shown good faith in allowing the implementation of the 1957
"right-to-vote" law. They have actually disfranchised Negroes
who previously voted; they have frustrated investigations by the
Civil Rights Commission by denying registration to Negroes and
then resigning, en masse, to pretend lack of responsibility to
questioning.
The civil rights legislation likely to pass is generally moderate
and minimal; it applies to offenses such as deliberate obstruction
of court orders on school desegregation by force or threats and flight
to avoid prosecution for certain crimes, and moves only, tenderly
toward federal financial aid toward desegregation.
The key is the effort to make the 1957 law significant by creating
machinery through which the registration of citizens can be achieved,
rather than promised. Whether this be through federal registrars
or through court referees, or a combination of two, it must be done.
Long and difficult daily sessions will be required and if in the
end a cloture vote is required, that is what the rule is there for.
• /&r. . . .-. , ...... .
STEP-UP in U.S. defense program is urged by Sen. Henry M.
Jackson (D-Wash.), left, and Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass.) on
Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio
program, heard over more than 300 radio stations.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
How to Buy
Government Grading
Offers Buying Tips
By Sidney Margolius
THERE ARE VALUABLE tips on food buying to be harvested
from the current hassle over grading of lamb. As you may"
have read, the U.S. Agriculture Dept. had planned to suspend grad-
ing of lamb but got so much protest from consumers, independent
packers, wholesalers and retailers that it changed its decision four
times in recent months.
For example, the National Asso-
ciation of State Purchasing Agents
told a congressional committee it
"lives in mortal fear" that the suspen-
sion of lamb grading would be the
first step in weakening or eliminating
all federal grades.
If buying according to grades is
that important to professional buyers,
won't it pay you to learn how to use
grades in your own shopping? Buy-
ing by grade is actually the single
most useful technique at your com-
mand for keeping down family food
bills. There are instances in which
you save half the cost of an item by
buying according to grade rather than
brand name.
For example, this reporter came across two brands of canned
string beans in the same store, both the same grade A quality.
One cost 31 cents, the other 16, merely because the costlier one
had a better-known brand name.
The U.S. grade marks on meat, poultry, eggs, cheese, canned
goods and other foods assure you that you get a specific, uniform
quality no matter what the price or brand name or where you buy.
For example, beef marked "U.S. Choice" has been graded by gov-
ernment experts and meets the standard for this quality no matter
who sells it.
Not only is it vital to balk any attempt to drop food grades, but
to be fully effective they need to be made compulsory instead of
voluntary. Many retailers insist that wholesalers sell to them on
the basis of government grades to make sure that they — the retail-
ers — get the quality they pay for.
BUT SOME OF THE SAME retailers .don't show the grade
when they in turn sell to us. Some of the biggest merely use mean-
ingless brand names. They don't show on the packages whether
the meat is actually "U.S. Choice," "U.S. Good," or what.
If grading is compulsory right down to the retail counter, these
retailers couldn't be that cagey with us. Meanwhile, many stores
do state in their ads and on meat packages what the grade is. As
for the others, you have every right — and it would help immensely
— *to ask the meat-department manager just what grade of meat he's
selling, and to show you the U.S. grade mark.
Here's the technique of using to your advantage what grades are
available:
— Understand, first of all, that the grade has nothing to do with
food value. All grades, whether "Choice" or "Good" beef,
Grade A or Grade B eggs, "Fancy" or "No. 1" apples, all have
the same food value. The higher grades merely have better appear-
ance and more uniform size, and in the case of meat, may be juicier,
and sometimes — not always — more tender.
— The most advantageous way to use grades is to buy according
to intended use. To be labeled "U.S. Grade A," eggs must
have a thick white; a firm, high yolk and delicate flavor. Their
perfect appearance and delicate flavor makes Grade A eggs desir-
able for boiling, poaching and perhaps for frying. Grade B eggs
have a thinner white, and a flatter yolk that may break more easily.
But if you're going to use the eggs for scrambling, in an omelet or
for baking or cooking, it's a waste of money to pay for firm yolk
and extra-delicate flavor.
— When you come right down to it, the evidence indicates that
the cheaper grades generally are your best buy. This includes
beef. The truth is, most people can't tell the difference between
"choice" beef and the cheaper "good" grade even when they eat it.
The grades of beef you usually find in stores are "choice," "good"
and "standard." The "choice" has a thick, firm, white fat cover-
ing and marbling. The "good" grade has little fat but is still rela-
tively tender. The "standard" grade has only a thin covering of
fat, not much juiciness but is still fairly tender. The "commercial"
grade is produced from older cattle and usually requires moist, slow
cooking, as in braising or stewing, for tenderness and full flavor.
Undoubtedly the moderate-price "good" grade is best choice
for most purposes. Many families go for the "choice" name, and
stores promote this grade heavily because it sounds like some-
thing special. But as we've seen, it really doesn't have that much
eating advantage over the "good" grade to warrant paying much
more for it. And you do get more lean meat pound for pound
in the "good" grade.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
For a valuable free pamphlet showing the government
grades for various foods, and suggestions for using them for
different cooking purposes, write to the Office of Information,
U.S. Agriculture Dept., Washington 25, D. C, for a copy of
"Shopper's Guide to U.S. Grades for Food," Home & Garden
Bulletin No. 58.
live it...
support it..
Minnesota Country Editor Explains:
Correspondent Learns
Why 'Scabs' Are Despicable
This editorial is excerpted from the Park
Region Echo of Alexandria, Minn., where it
ran on Jan. 12, 1960. Written by the editor of
that rural newspaper, it comments on strike-
breakers at the Wilson & Co. plant at Albert
Lea, Minn.
ELSEWHERE on this page we published a
letter from a Fergus Falls man who takes
violent exception to our contention that "scabs"
are despicable.
Then he asks: "When card-carrying union men
walk off their jobs voluntarily, is there anything
wrong with having their positions filled by men
who are willing to work?"
You bet there is, Mister. And if you haven't
learned that much at your age, there's little hope
you ever will. There's a moral issue involved here,
and countless ministers, priests and rabbis have
explained it on countless occasions.
Unions are a fact of life, recognized legally,
economically and socially. They were formed
to protect the individual worker from the whims
and fancies of his employer.
No responsible person welcomes a strike — not
the union leader, the workers, the employer or
the public. No responsible person likes or even
condones the violence which sometimes (though
rarely in this era) accompanies a strike.
But the unions have fought long and hard, and
at great sacrifice, to gain the right to strike. And
when the unthinking, the selfish, the misled cross
a picket line to steal jobs at cutthroat prices
away from men who are suffering to win what
they believe are just conditions of employment —
we can only resort to the word despicable.
Give a moment's thought to the ultimate result
of unlimited scabbing. What would happen to
wage standards? What would happen to safe and
healthy conditions of work? What would happen
to job security?
Who would negotiate for these things? Scabs?
How? The moment they started negotiating, they'd
be replaced by other scabs who were willing to
work for even less, than the first group of job
stealers.
Much of the remainder of the Letter to the
Editor constitutes a political diatribe in which the
writer attempts to link the Democratic-Farmer-
Labor party and the Democratic party to union
hoodlumism.
We would like to point out these political facts
of life to the writer:
1. The union which has come in for the great-
est amount of criticism is the Teamsters' Union,
headed once by Dave Beck and now by Jimmy
Hoffa. Both Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa sup-
ported Dwight Eisenhower's candidacy for the
presidency.
2. Former Ohio Sen. (George) Bender was de-
feated in his bid for re-election and then went on
Jimmy Hoffa's payroll. Ex-Sen. Bender is a
Republican.
3. The investigation of the Teamsters' Union
was led by Sen. (John W.) McClellan and Sen.
John Kennedy — both Democrats.
We said scabbing was despicable — and we
repeat it here today. And we are certainly not
ashamed of trying to present the strikers' side
in the Albert Lea story. All too often this story
is never told.
To illustrate this point, let us turn back the
clock some three decades and consider a news-
paper story written by the now-famous Eric Seva-
reid — a story which never saw the light of print
until Sevareid told it in his autobiography, "Not
So Wild A Dream."
It happened during the bloody truckers' strike
in Minneapolis in the early 1930's.
As it happened, some strikers were shot and
the public was led to believe the shooting occurred
when the strikers attacked and were driven off by
company police. The wounded strikers were taken
to a ward in General Hospital and were placed
under police guard.
Sevareid slipped into the hospital, found an
orderly's uniform in a closet, donned the uniform
and gained admittance to the ward. He examined
every striker and found each had been shot in
the back.
He returned to his paper and wrote an article
about the strikers being ambushed. The article
was never printed, and when Sevareid came to
work the following morning, he found a note on
his typewriter informing him that his services were
no longer required.
Times have changed. But still not enough.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Pa°:e Nffi*
Wage Raises forJi,000:
Bottle Blowers Gain
New Container Pact
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The Glass Bottle Blowers and the Glass Con-
tainer Manufacturers Institute have agreed to a two-year contract
calling for a 6.5-to-13.5-cents an hour wage increase the first year
and a,7-to-10-cent range in the second.
The new agreement covers 8,000 union members employed in
the forming department of the na-^"
tion's major glass container plants.
The institute represents 25 com-
panies operating 79 plants which
account for about 95 percent of all
glass container production in the
country.
The contract replaces a three-
year agreement which expires
Mar. 1.
The GBBA will negotiate sep-
arately with the companies for
production and maintenance
workers outside the forming de-
partments. A regional bargain-
ing session is scheduled on the
West Coast.
The new contract was announced
jointly at a press conference here
by GBBA Pres. Lee Minton and
Abner J. Martin, director of labor
relations for the GCMI. Negotia-
tions for a new contract started in
December and agreement was
reached after three weeks of con-
tinuous negotiations.
The system of industrywide bar-
gaining for the skilled workers
covered by the contract has been
used by the industry and the union
since 1902. There never has been
a nationwide strike under this pro-
cedure.
Minton termed the agreement
the "best contract" ever negotiated
with the industry and said that in
addition to wages and other ad-
justments "important progress" has
been made in setting up machinery
for an on-the-job training program
for journeyman operators and an
apprentice training program.
A significant feature of the
contract is an agreement for the
first time on machine classifica-
tion which will mean that opera-
tors manning high-speed bottle-
making machines will be paid a
higher scale to reflect additional
skill and effort.
The basic minimum wage for
operators under the new contract
is $2.29 an hour, up from $2,195.
This base rate is supplemented by
wage incentive programs in effect
in the industry. The $2.29 scale
applies to the lowest-rated . ma-
chines and reaches up to $2.51. In
other skilled classifications the scale
goes to $3.05 per hour.
The contract calls also for an
additional paid holiday — the day
before Christmas — and improve-
ments in vacations and overtime
payments. It provides an increase
in employer insurance contribu-
tions in the second year and im-
provements in the pension pro-
gram covering disability and early
retirement.
The contract was approved by
the union's 74-man conference
committee which has been in con
stant touch with the negotiations.
Board Blocks Raid on
Packers Union at Swift
Denver — The National Labor Relations Board has slapped down
an attempt by the unaffiliated National Brotherhood of Packing-
house Workers to gain a foothold at the Swift Co. plant here
through a front organization claiming to be a craft union.
The NBP\5Lis the self-styled union which has been "organizing"
the strikebreakers at the Wilson &^
Co. meat plants where members of
the AFL-CIO Packinghouse Work-
ers have been on strike for three
months.
It is also, according to the labor
board, the guiding force behind an
organization calling itself the Na-
tional Brotherhood of Engineers,
Firemen & Power Equipment Op-
erators — referred to as the NBE.
This group had petitioned for a
representation election limited to
powerhouse employes at the Swift
plant in Denver, where the Pack-
inghouse Workers hold plantwide
bargaining rights.
In rejecting the petition, the
labor board reaffirmed an earlier
finding that the NBE "was not
an independent, autonomous or-
ganization but was merely a
creature of the National Brother-
hood of Packinghouse Workers."
The labor board traced the
founding of the NBE to a meeting
in the national headquarters of the
NBPW, noted a duplication of top
officers of the two organizations,
and declared:
"We again hold that NBE was
organized as an arm of NBPW for
the purpose of circumventing the
requirement that a labor organiza-
tion seeking to serve powerhouse
employes must be a 'traditional
representative' of such employes."
Farmers Union Assails Ike
For Drop in Farm Incomes
The seven years of the Eisenhower Administration have
been "devastating ones for America's family farmers," during
which net farm income nosedived from $15.3 billion in 1952
to $10.3 billion in 1959, according to a pamphlet published
by the National Farmers Union.
The publication, entitled, "Seven Lean Years," blamed de-
clining farm income on Administration abandonment of
"whole chunks of a good farm program" which put "a floor
under farm prices while adjusting output." The Administra-
tion, it charged, substituted a program aimed at "driving farm
prices downward" by discouraging production.
The NFU said that in the past seven years, farmers 9 net
income dropped 40 percent, and the farmers 9 share of the
consumer dollar has gone down 21 percent. In that same
period, the farm population and the number of family farms
has declined 15 percent, while the total debt of farm families
has risen 32 percent.
HANDSHAKE SEALS agreement on two-year contract providing
wage increases for 8,000 operating employes in glass container in-
dustry. At right is Pres. Lee W. Minton of the Glass Bottle Blow-
ers, at left is A. J. Martin, labor relations director of the Glass
Container Mfg. Institute.
CWA Policymakers
Set Bargaining Goals
New York — Equitable general wage increases, pension improve-
ments, company-paid health insurance and longer vacations have
been set as the 1960 national contract goals of the Communications
Workers.
The union's 58-member national Collective Bargaining Policy
Committee, headed by CWA Pres. 1 ^
Joseph A. Beirne, hammered out
the program at a three-day session
here as the prelude to the forth-
coming round of negotiations in
volving a total of 355,000 union-
ists.
The policy committee also voted
authorization of bargaining for an
improved life insurance program.
The CWA body sets only national
goals. Members of the various
CWA bargaining units determine
in their particular areas which local
items are to be considered as
"critical."
The first cluster of CWA con-
tracts up for renewal in April
and May covers workers em-
ployed by Wisconsin Telephone
Co.; Northwestern Bell Tele-
phone Co. in Iowa, Minnesota,
Nebraska, North Dakota and
South Dakota; Illinois Bell Tele-
phone Co.; Chesapeake and Po-
tomac Telephone Co., Washing-
ton, D. C, Maryland, Virginia
and West Virginia, and the New
Jersey Bell Telephone Co.
The three-day conference here
was devoted to study, discussion
and analysis of the national econ-
omy. Among specialists brought
in to furnish background for the
CWA Executive Board and rank-
and-file members making up the
committee were speakers on health
and hospitalization insurance and
on the recent steel negotiations.
With average hourly earnings
for the telephone industry currently
at a $2.22 level — as compared with
$3.07 in steel, $2.75 in auto and
$2.63 in gas and electric utilities —
the policy committee declared:
"From all indications, and most
recently from the President's Eco-
nomic Report to Congress as well
as his budget message, 1960 prom-
ises to be a year of economic
growth and relative prosperity
throughout the U.S.
"Capital expansion, industrial
profits and dividends and im-
proved technology are expected
to reach record heights. The
same favorable factors are
Laborite Renamed
United Fund Officer
New Haven, Conn. — William P.
Enright, president of the New
Haven Central Labor Council, was
re-elected a vice president of the
United Fund of Greater New
Haven at that organization's an-
nual meeting this month. ,
equally evident in Canada. The
CWA firmly believes that, in or-
der to maintain a proper eco-
nomic balance, American and
Canadian workers must continue
to share in this growth."
Beirne said the 1960 negotiations
will be a "supreme test of whether
we are reaching a new era of ma-
ture collective bargaining'* in the
communications industry.
TWUA Plans
Reopening of
1Q0 Contracts
Boston — Delegates of the Textile
j Workers Union of America have
voted in favor of reopening con-
tracts with nearly 100 primary
woolen and worsted companies in
a push for wage hikes this spring.
The 250 delegates acted in behalf
i of some 23,000 workers under con-
tracts due to be reopened or re-
| newed between Apr. 15 and May 1.
"Woolen and worsted workers
| need a wage increase . . . and are
I entitled to a wage increase," de-
I dared a resolution adopted after i
reports on union and industry con-
ditions.
TWUA Pres. William Pollock
pointed out that the trend is to-
ward new wage increases in all
industries, with pay boosts as-
sured this year in major branches
of the textile industry.
Pollock said workers in synthetic
yarn and carpets and rugs will re-
ceive automatic raises in June under
their "union pact. A wage hike is
set for October for the main sector
of the dyeing, finishing, printing
and plastics industry, he added.
Below Manufacturing Average
As for the woolen and worsted
industry, Pollock stressed that the
average wage is 57 cents an hour
below the manufacturing average.
At the same time, the cost of living
has "inched up approximately 2
percent over what already was an
all-time high a year ago." TWUA
negotiated a 10-cent hike in April
1959.
In a separate statement, Pollock
criticized textile manufacturers for
calling for tariff protection while
they buy raw and semi-finished
goods and textile machinery from
abroad. He said TWUA favors
"regulated imports" for the sake of
the entire industry.
NLRB Details Charges
Against Bethlehem Ship
New York — National Labor Relations Board hearings have
opened here into charges that Bethlehem Steel Co.'s shipbuilding
division was guilty of unfair labor practices on three counts in
contract talks with the Shipbuilders.
The hearings began against the backdrop of a three-week-old
strike of 17,000 union members at^~
eight East Coast shipyards. The
union had worked without a con-
tract from the time the old agree-
ment expired July 31, 1959, until
the walkout began Jan. 22, 1960.
As hearings opened before Trial
Examiner Thomas A. Ricco, NLRB
Atty. Morris A. Solomon charged
that the company:
• From the beginning of nego-
tiations last July engaged only in
"surface bargaining, if bargaining
at all."
• Instead of "good faith" bar-
gaining, negotiated on "a take-it-
or-leave-it basis."
• Put into effect drastic'changes
in seniority, grievance procedures
and work assignments.
The examiner ordered company
officials to produce correspondence
written in July, 1959, to show
whether it warned customers there
might be a strike when the con-
tract expired. At the time the let-
ters allegedly were written the un-
ion had offered to extend the old
agreement pending a settlement.
Bad Faith Charged
Solomon said the letters would
prove the company had "no inten-
tion" of reaching a contract agree-
ment with shipyard workers. In-
stead, he said, Bethlehem entered
negotiations with proposals for
drastic changes in seniority, griev-
ance procedure and work assign-
ment provisions of the previous
contract, and was unwilling to con-
sider any alteration of its proposal
at the bargaining table.
When the contract expired,
these company - demanded
changes were put into effect uni-
laterally, he said, adding that the
change relating to grievance pro-
cedure is a violation of the Na-
tional Labor Relations Act.
The AFL-CIO convention in
San Francisco last September
pledged labor's full support of the
embattled Shipbuilders and flayed
Bethlehem for its unilateral impo-
sition of "onerous terms of em-
ployment" on the 17,000 union-
ists.
Just Goes to Show:
You Can't Trust 'Em
Albany, N. Y. — Railroads
here were accused of repay-
ing their employes for help-
ing to get $15 million in tax
relief for the industry through
the New York Legislature by
using a large chunk of the
tax windfall to finance propa-
ganda attacks on railroad
workers and their work rules.
State AFL-CIO Pres. Har-
old Hanover declared that the
railroads last year got em-
ploye support for the tax bill
by claiming that it was "vital"
to the industry. He said the
"real featherbedding" has
been on the part of manage-
ment, which increased exec-
utive jobs and pay and raised
dividends while sharply cut-
ting the work force.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
PLANS FOR AFL-CIO industrial engineering institutes to be conducted in June at School for
Workers, University of Wisconsin, were discussed at Washington meeting of federation representa-
tives and staff members from six AFL-CIO unions. Conducting the planning session were Peter
Henle, assistant director of AFL-CIO Dept. of Research, and Bertram Gottlieb, AFL-CIO industrial
engineer (second and third from left in foreground).
AFL-CIO Industrial Engineering
Institutes Planned for Wisconsin U.
Representatives of six international unions and members of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research
staff have firmed up plans for the 1960 AFL-CIO Industrial Engineering Institutes to be con-
ducted at the-School for Workers of the University of Wisconsin.
Details were worked out at a day-long session in Washington conducted by AFL-CIO Indus-
trial Engineer Bertram Gottlieb and Assistant Dir. Peter Henle of the federation's Dept. of Re-
search. ^
The institutes, sponsored jointly
by the AFL-CIO and the School
for Workers, will be held at Madi-
son, Wis., the weeks of June 12
and 19. Registration is expected
from full-time union representatives
and members of research and edu-
cation staffs of international unions.
The basic courses in work
measurement and wage determi-
nation will concentrate on time
study and the more recently de-
vised predetermined motion stud-
ies, the pitfalls of job evaluation
and the use of wage surveys.
Advanced institutes will be held
on synthetic work measurement
techniques and the collective bar-
gaining problems raised by indus-
trial engineering practices.
This will mark the second year
that the AFL-CIO has made this
training program available to affili-
ates. Over 30 unionists from 14
international unions participated in
each of two institutes held at Mad-
ison in 1959.
Taking part in planning for the
1960 program were Donald Daniel-
son, research director of the Car-
penters; George S. Hagglund, re-
search assistant of the Pulp-Sulphite
Workers; Richard Humphreys, ed-
ucation and research director of
the Allied Industrial Workers; Wil-
liam Kuhl, assistant research and
education director of the Boiler
Makers; Kermit K. Mead, director
of time study and engineering for
the Auto Workers; Fred Simon,
UAW time study engineer; Edmund
J. Peresluha, grand lodge repre-
sentative of the Machinists; Lewis
D. Van Wess, IAM special repre-
sentative; and Holgate Young, IAM
education associate.
Also joining in the planning ses-
sion were N orris Tibbit of the
School for Workers and Hy Fish,
consulting engineer.
'Startling Changes 9 Forecast
By Labor Dept. Manpower Study
By Robert B. Cooney
America's work force will undergo "startling changes" during the coming decade, with major
shifts in the job and industrial structure, Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell said in releasing a new
manpower study.
The changes ahead will have impact on union organization, employer job policies and young
workers, he predicted.
Mitchell at a press briefing dis-^
cussed the expectation that service
industries will continue to grow
faster than highly-unionized pro-
duction industries and commented
in reply to a question:
"If labor unions are going to
maintain even the current pro-
portion of organized workers to
the total work force, one of the
challenging and biggest jobs the
unions have for the next ten
years would be more strenuous
and greater organizational ac-
tivity."
Deputy Assistant Labor Sec. Sey-
mour Wolfbein, the department's
manpower expert, said that the eco-
nomic and work force projections
figure out to an annual growth rate
of just less than 4 percent. The
growth rate under the Eisenhower
Administration has been 2.3 per-
cent, and the AFL-CIO has repeat-
edly called for plans contemplating
a 5 percent annual increase.
Unemployment ahead, Wolfbein
said, is expected to be at a jobless
level of roughly 3.5 million. The
labor force is expected to grow by
13.5 million to a total 87 million
in 1970.
Effect of Birth Rate
The manpower study said the
expected 10-year impact on em-
ployers follows basically from the
low birthrate of the depression
years and the postwar baby boom.
In the next decade, workers over
45 will rise by 20 percent, the so-
called "prime" workers between 35
and 44 actually will decline; the
25-34 group will rise by 12 percent
and the under-25's will increase by
46 percent.
"These changes," Mitchell said,
"will require a major overhaul
in the employment policies of
many businesses.
"Employers who do not abandon
policies against hiring workers be-
cause of their age or sex or race,
religion or nationality, or because
they may be handicapped in some
way, may have real trouble finding
enough workers in the decade,
ahead."
29 Million Needed
, During the next decade, Mitchell
continued, some 29 million new
workers will be needed to meet the
needs of an expanding economy
and to replace workers who die,
retire or otherwise become unavail-
able for work.
"Our potential is such that, if
we plan well and use our man-
power wisely, we can increase
our standard of living by 25
percent," Mitchell said.
He said it would require a 50
percent increase in the production
of goods and services — to $750 bil-
lion by 1970. This total — called
the Gross National Product — was
$482 billion for the fourth quarter
of 1959.
The change forecast in the oc-
cupational structure will affect most
the younger workers, Mitchell said,
and the biggest growth in job op-
portunities will be in the profes-
sional, managerial, clerical, sales
and skilled worker fields. The study
foresees no change at all among
unskilled workers and a continu-
ing drop among farmers and farm
workers.
Thus, he noted, the trend em-
phasizes education and appren-
ticeship and on-the-job training.
Mitchell said both high school
and college enrollments must in-
crease substantially to meet these
needs.
However, he went on, "it is
shocking to discover that about 7.5
million young persons are expected
to drop out of school before re-
ceiving their high school diplomas
during the 1960V
Mitchell said this points to the
need for better guidance, earlier
counseling and special training.
Four other groups also in need
of special attention, he said, are:
older workers, part-time workers
including working mothers, mi-
nority groups whose talents now
go unused and younger members
of the dwindling farm popula-
tion.
The Labor Dept. study, entitled
"Manpower: Challenge of the
1960's," based its forecasts on three
assumptions: a continuation of
high-level economic activity in line
with goals of the Employment Act
of 1946; continued technological
progress; and the absence of war
or other cataclysmic events or a
depression.
Professor Writes :
Union Contracts
'Civilize 9 the Boss
The simple existence of a union contract produces a "revolu-
tionary" change in the relationship of boss and worker, according
to a new study of industrial discipline.
A union contract means that the first thing to go is the assump-
tion of the authoritarian tradition that "management can do no
wrong," writes Prof. Orme W.^r
Phelps in his new book, "Discipline
and Discharge in the Unionized
Firm."
"Under a union contract," he
adds, "it is perfectly clear that
management can err, and in un-
told thousands of grievance pro-
ceedings management has con-
ceded its error or been forced to
reverse itself by an arbitrator's
ruling."
Phelps' findings are reviewed in
Collective Bargaining Report, bi-
monthjy publication of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Research. The AFL^
CIO said the book is cast primarily
as advice for management, but is
useful for anyone interested in
reasonable disciplinary practices.
'Well Describes Changes*
"The book well describes the
changes which unions have made
to civilize industrial discipline" and
to maintain worker protection, the
AFL-CIO commented.
Phelps put the workers' position
before the widespread rise of un-
ionism in these words:
"Industrial discipline has tra-
ditionally been both severe and
irresponsible" and wielded "sim-
ply as an egregious display of
power. • . ."
"There is little doubt that the
promiscuous use of dismissal is one
of the prime factors in the twen-
tieth-century dissolution of em-
ployer-employe loyalties and the
substitution therefor of employe
self-protection through collective
bargaining."
Phelps went on to say that "un-
ions have been notably successful"
in recent years in bringing man-
agement to exercise its authority
responsibly and under accepted
rules of fair play.
Phelps found that the mere
presence of a union in a plant
was a major contribution in
checking disciplinary abuses.
Even in the few non-union com-
panies with appeals procedures,
the fact of management control
over the final ruling means the
worker has no real protection*
The author found that the union
contract and the typical require-
ment of "just cause" shifts the bur-
den of proof from the worker to
the employer. The worker is now
"presumed innocent until shown to
be guilty. . .
Other protections listed by
Phelps included the union contract
provision of grievance and arbitra-
tion procedures, union aid in ap-
peals, and the spelling out of for-
mal steps to ensure fair play.
Phelps also found that unions
play a major role in shaping penal-
ties to fit the misbehavior and
checking management's past reli-
ance on the "supreme" penalty of
dismissal.
He then laid down a series of
broad rules which unions developed
out of long experience to guide
them in winning fair play for
workers.
Weinheimer
Remains With
Hotel Workers
Cincinnati; — Jack Weinberger has
announced reconsideration of his
plan to retire as secretary-treasurer
of the Hotel & Restaurant Workers
effective Apr. 30.
Weinberger, who has held the
post for six years and who has been
a member of the international un-
ion staff since 1928, had notified
the union's general executive board
meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., of
his "final and irrevocable" inten-
tion to retire at the end of the un-
ion's fiscal year.
In a statement issued here, Wein-
berger said his physician felt it
would be better to "taper off in-
stead of ending abruptly an active
and busy career of almost 60
years." As a result, Weinberger
said, "I shall remain at my post for
the time being, cutting down a lit-
tle of the load as we go along."
CLC Turns Down
Mine-Mill Union
Ottawa, Ont. — The Executive
Council of the Canadian ^Labor
Congress has rejected the request
of the Mine, Mill & Smelter Work-
ers for affiliation.
In a letter to Nets Thibault,
president of Mine-Mill's Canadian
sector, CLC Pres. Claude Jodoin
wrote that the application was re-
jected because it was accompanied
by conditions which might conflict
with the CLC constitution, and that
the union is not eligible because
of the anti-Communist provisions
of the CLC constitution.
Mine-Mill is regarded as Com-
munist-dominated. Once affiliated
with the former CIO, it was ex-
pelled by that federation in 1950.
ARBITRATION OF DISCHARGES
59%
HRCCNT
OF CASES
PENALTY
REDUCED
PENALTY
REVOKED
MANAGEMENT
SUSTAINED
MANAGEMENT
0VERULED
A study of arbitration decisions In diichorge eases fine?* 1hof onTont succeeded in 59%
ef the cases In gelling a ruling that discharge was unwarranted or too severe a penal)/.
The study, by Prof. J. Fred Holly, covered 1,055 arbitrations of discharges reported in tht
UNA Labor" Arbitration Reports from Jon. 1942 Jo Mar. 1956*
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
Page Eleven
Hit Regulators in TV Scandals:
House Probers Ask
Tough Gyp Ad Law
A congressional investigating committee, assailing the "passive
role" of federal regulatory agencies in the face of radio and televi-
sion scandals, has proposed tough new legislation providing crim-
inal penalties for sponsors, advertising agencies and broadcasters
engaging in deceitful tactics.
In an interim report, the House 'f
Legislative Oversight subcommittee
denounced the broadcasting in-
dustry for having "abdicated con-
trol to advertisers" and said the
Federal Communications Commis-
sion and the Federal Trade Com-
mission have failed to use their
authority to police the airwaves.
The subcommittee proposals,
dealing largely with abuses arising
out of advertising domination of
the industry did not deal in detail
with alleged neglect by broadcast-
ers of their role in providing a
forum for political debates and pub-
lic information.
M. S. Novik, AFL-CIO radio
consultant, last month took the
FCC to task for failing to "en-
courage 9 ' political discussions on
the air. Novik said broadcasters
should set aside "a reasonable
AEC Assailed
On Accident at
Atomic Plant
Accusing the Atomic Energy
Commission of attempting to mini-
mize a serious radiation accident
at Oak Ridge, Tenn., Pres. Walter
P. Reuther of the AFL-CIO Indus-
trial Union Dept. has asked another
government agency to provide "an
unbiased, impartial source of in-
formation upon which the public
and the workers in the industry can
rely."
Reuther addressed his request to
the Federal Radiation Council, an
advisory group made up of heads
of major government departments
with an interest in radiation health
and safety problems. Health, Edu-
cation & Welfare Sec. Arthur Flem-
ming is chairman of the council.
In a letter to Flemming, Reuther
declared "we have relied too long
upon the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion exclusively for information re-
garding mistakes or accidents in the
plants which it administers."
He pointed out that the AEC
originally described the serious
Oak Ridge accident as a "small
explosion." As a result, Reuther
said, it was not at the time re-
ported in the press nor known to
workers employed in similar in-
stallations elsewhere.
"Efforts to seek full information
in order to help develop policy to
prevent repetition of this type of
accident," Reuther declared, "re-
vealed the fact that neither Con-
gress nor the agencies affiliated to
the Federal Radiation Council had
been advised of the seriousness of
this accident nor of the steps neces-
sary to prevent its repetition."
The Federal Radiation Council,
Reuther said, should establish pro-
cedures to furnish "the full facts
regarding any accidental release of
radiation in the atomic energy in-
dustry."
Neiv Publications
List Now Available
A newly-revised listing of
AFL-CIO publications is now
available. It includes titles,
brief descriptions and prices
of pamphlets, leaflets and
other publications, along with
an order blank.
Copies of the leaflet are
available free from the Dept.
of Publications, AFL-CIO,
815 16th St., N. W? Wash-
ington 6, D. C.
amount" of free time "for the
discussion of political issues" and
should require stations to make
time available at regular com-
mercial rates for political broad-
casts before elections. He also
criticized a decline in news pro-
grams.
The subcommittee, headed by
Rep. Oren Harris (D-Ark.), issued
its recommendations as it plunged
into a new round of hearings —
dealing with so-called "payola" to
disc jockeys. The interim report
was based on hearings held last fall
at which some 50 witnesses, includ-
ing Charles Van Doren, told of
"rigging" of network quiz shows.
The record of the hearings, the
subcommittee declared, "shows how
far certain advertisers, producers
and others will go to wring the last
dollar of profit out of the privilege
of using the airways."
Rejecting the broadcasting in-
dustry's plea to be allowed "to clean
their own house by self-regulation,"
the subcommittee recommended
legislation to:
• Make it a criminal offense to
rig quiz shows or contests.
• Empower the FCC to suspend
radio and television station licenses
after a previous warning that the
station has not served the public
interest.
• Require radio and television
networks to be licensed by the
FCC, with renewal of licenses at
three-year intervals "conditioned
upon a determination by the FCC
after a hearing that . . . renewal is
in the public interest."
Under this provision, "guidelines
as to what constitutes the public
interest" would be written into the
law. Among these guidelines, the
subcommittee said, should be a
prohibition against "surrendering
control of material to be broadcast 1 '
to an advertiser, advertising agency
or producer.
• Require public announcement
of undercover payments for adver-
tising plugs for any "third parties"
on sponsored programs and provide
criminal penalties for violations.
• Prohibit "pay-offs" by which
an applicant for a radio or televi-
sion license induces a competing
applicant to drop his application
and provide for public hearings on
station applications in the commu-
nities in which the station will be
located. At present, interested par-
ties must come to Washington,
D. C, to be heard.
• Require public hearings be-
fore approval of the transfer of
licenses.
The subcommittee also called for
changes in the Federal Trade Com-
mission Act to permit the FTC to
seek temporary injunctions against
all types of deceptive advertising
pending completion of its investi-
gations. At present the FTC can
obtain temporary restraining orders
only for false advertisements of
food, drugs, devices and cosmetics.
Criminal penalties for false adver-
tising, the subcommittee said,
should be extended to networks,
broadcasting stations and advertis-
ing agencies.
Rebuking the regulatory agencies
for sitting "idly by," the Harris
subcommittee said the FCC should
use its administrative authority "to
monitor programs ... to the extent
necessary to determine whether the
program balance is in the public
interest." The FCC also was asked
to require stations to make and
retain for at least 30 days tape
recordings of all interview-type
programs.
STRIKE SANCTION granted by executive board of Hotel and Restaurant Workers helped Local
104 win deadlocked contract talks with Hotel Floridian in Tampa. NLRB election last fall which
preceded negotiations was first ordered in hotel "industry since Supreme Court directed labor board
to take hotel cases. Local 104's Sec.-Treas. Manuel Quesada (standing) is shown explaining case to
executive board at Miami Beach session.
Management
L-G Reports
Still to Come
The Labor Dept.'s "goldfish
bowl" of reports required by the
Landrum-Griffin Act will be fully
stocked after final approval of a
rare species — the employer report-
ing form.
The Public Documents Room of
the new. Bureau of Labor-Manage-
ment Reports now has on file:
49,896 union organization reports;
over 87Q financial reports from un-
ions whose fiscal years ended be-
tween Sept. 14 and Dec. 14; and
533 union trusteeship reports.
Financial reporting forms have
been sent to the 50,000 unions
which filed organization reports,
and completed reports, are due
from all unions within 90 days
after the end of their fiscal year.
There are 18 reports on file
from labor relations consultants.
From management, reports are
still to come.
The employer reporting form,
now open for comment before final
approval, is expected to produce a
relatively small number of returns
because of the specialized nature of
the information required.
The employer must report cer-
tain types of financial transactions
involving employes, unions, union
agents, consultants and others.
Other key types of employer pay-
ments in the employe relations area
are exempt from reporting.
Seven Million
Got Pay Hikes
During 1959
Some 7 million workers covered
by major collective bargaining
contracts received wage hikes either
negotiated or put into effect during
1959, according to a Labor Dept.
report.
The report covers contracts af-
fecting 1,000 or more workers in
major industries. However, it ex-
cludes construction, service trades,
finance and government. In the
first nine months of 1959, con-
struction wage rates rose an av-
erage of 14 cents an hour.
Increases for 3 million in the
"union contract" category were
negotiated during the year, 2.3
million received deferred in-
creases under long-term pacts
and 1.9 million workers received
raises under cost-of-living esca-
lator adjustments.
The most common increase was
"concentrated at 9 but less than 10
cents."
In both 1957 and 1958, the re-
port added, about half the workers
received increases averaging 12
cents an hour or more. The smaller
1959 increase wa§. attributed in
part to the relative stability of the
consumer price index early in the
year.
Contract Gains Climax
Florida Hotel Victory
Tampa, Fla. — The Hotel & Restaurant Workers have won a
contract with the Hotel Floridian here as a climax to the first elec-
tion in the hotel industry since the Supreme Court ordered the
National Labor Relations Board to drop its refusal to consider the
hotel cases.
Victory by Local 104 came four^
days after Jhe union's international
executive board, meeting in Miami
Beach, granted strike sanction to
the 135 employes of the hotel.
Faced with the prospect of a
walkout, the hotel management
agreed to a one-year contract
granting employes a $2.50-a-week
across-the-board wage increase; a
fully-paid health insurance plan;
and paid vacations of one week
after a year's service, and two
weeks' vacation after three years'
service.
Agreement on a new contract
came six months after the Flori-
dian's employes voted 106 to 24
in favor of the Hotel and Res-
taurant Workers. It was the first
representation election conducted
by the NLRB since the Supreme
Courf, in December 1958, struck
down the board's blanket refusal
to take hotel cases.
Negotiations which began in
October 1959 failed to produce
any agreement, and intervention of
the U.S. Mediation and Concilia-
tion Service two months ago also
proved fruitless.
Local Pres. Manuel Roboldo and
Sec.-Treas. Manuel Quesada ap-
peared before the international ex-
ecutive board, meeting in Miami
Beach early this month, to explain
the deadlock in negotiations.
The executive board's approval
of strike action, the local's officers
declared, was a major factor in
reaching agreement with the Florid-
ian.
Carey Denounces GE
For TV 'Censorship 9
Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers has asked Congress to investigate "censorship" of television and
radio program^ by big business with a possible view of requiring the
broadcasting industry to devote a specified percentage of its broad-
casting time to non-commercial public service programs.
Carey specifically charged Gen-^
eral Electric Co. with political cen '
sorship recently in ordering a con-
troversial sequence dealing with
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon com-
pletely deleted from a nation-wide
network telecast viewed by 60 mil-
lion persons.
"Widespread corruption in the
radio and television industry dis-
closed by congressional revelations
in the payola scandal," said Carey,
"has given the nation a dismaying
picture of moral and ethical irre-
sponsibility in a vital area of Amer-
ican business.
"This corruption is all the more
disturbing because it involves mass
communication systems which all
thinking citizens hoped would de-
velop into media of news reporting,
entertainment and education oper-
ated with unimpeachable integrity."
He said "an appalling example of
political censorship" occurred less
than two weeks ago in a nationwide
television spectacular titled The
Fabulous Fifties and viewed by an
estimated 60 million Americans.
This two-hour program, costing ap-
proximately $800,000, was pro-
duced by General Electric and pur-
ported to be a review of the his-
toric events of the past decade.
Consequently, it included virtually
all the important news happenings
of the 1950's.
"One important historical se-
quence, however, was completely
censored out of the final script at
the insistence of General Elec-
tric," Carey declared. "This was
Richard Nixon's 1952 TV broad-
cast attempting to explain and
justify the Nixon slush fund pro-
vided by California businessmen.
GE executives personally de-
manded that the episode be de-
leted from the program, thus
perverting the history of the
1950's by private censorship.
"General Electric's motives in
this autocratic action were unmis-
takably political. This was veri-
^fied by the New York Post which
quoted a member of the production
staff for the program as saying: 'GE
is doing the show at tremendous
expense in the interest of good will.
After all, Nixon might be the next
President.' The New York Times
declared that the GE censorship
was *a childish maneuver'."
Carey added: "We deplore the in-
creasing surrender of radio and
television time to complete com-
mercialization with the result that
less and less time is left for public
service programs, discussion of cur-
rent issues, panels, debates and
similar education features."
Congress should restudy the fed-
eral communications laws and in-
quire into the feasibility of requir-
ing all radio and television stations
to devote a defined and specific per-
centage of all broadcast time to the
production of public service pro-
grams, he said.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1960
To Break Rules Bottleneck :
House Unit Makes Drastic
Cuts in Aid-to-Schools Bill
A House Education subcommittee has reopened a drive to get a school-aid bill to the floor by
drastically scaling down its terms in an effort to get it through a hostile Rules Committee.
In the wake of Senate approval of a $1.8 billion bill for construction grants and teachers' sal-
aries, the House subcommittee tentatively approved a measure by Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr.,
(D-N. J.) for $325 million a year for three years for school construction alone,
Was deferred
A formal vote Was deferred by
the subcommittee, headed by Rep.
Cleveland Bailey (D-W. Va.), until
at least Feb. 16.
The Bailey unit last year got full
Education Committee approval for
a $4.4 billion measure providing
both construction funds and aid
for teachers' salaries. This bill,
backed by the AFL-CIO, has been
halted in the Rules Committee.
The Thompson measure is vir-
tually the same as an Adminis-
tration bill introduced in 1957
and defeated by a scant five-vote
margin. Pres. Eisenhower aban-
doned the measure in favor of
modest federal aid to school dis-
tricts in paying interest charges
on school construction bonds.
Thompson conceded that teacher-
s-
salary provisions were omitted from
his measure to enhance its chances
of being cleared by the Rules Com-
mittee. He said he would "wel-
come" efforts to add such provisions
to the bill once it reaches the floor.
The measure would not require
states to match federal school con-
struction contributions during the
first two years. In the third year,
however, states would be required
to put up funds on a 50-50 basis.
After passage of the Senate bill,
51-34, Republicans openly raised
the threat that Pres. Eisenhower
would veto the measure. The Ad-
ministration's 1960 recommenda-
tions — the same as those put forth
a year ago — would provide only
$100 million a year for 30 years
to help states retire the service
Ike Appoints Meany to
Group Studying Goals
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has been appointed by Pres.
Eisenhower to a long-term Commission on National Goals which
the White House first proposed more than a year ago.
The President expressed the hope that the 11 -man commission
would "develop a broad outline of coordinated national policies
and programs for the next decade |>
and longer." He called on the
study group to "identify the great
issues of our generation and de-
scribe our objectives in these vari-
ous areas."
Named as chairman of the group
was Henry Wriston, former presi-
dent of Brown University. Vice
chairman will be Frank Pace,
board chairman of General Dy-
namics Corp. and former Secretary
of the Army in the Truman Ad-
ministration.
In a memorandum to the com-
mission, whose work will be
financed from private funds,
Eisenhower emphasized a desire
"that the inquiry be conducted
free of any direct connection
with me or other portions of the
federal government."
Named to the committee besides
Meany were James Killian, presi-
dent of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology; Red Cross Pres. Gen.
Alfred M. Gruenther; University
of California Pres. Clark Kerr; re-
tired Judge Learned Hand; Erwin
D. Canham, president of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and editor
in chief of the Christian Science
Monitor; former Virginia Gov.
Colgate Darden; former Harvard
University Pres. James Conant,
one-time ambassador to West Ger-
many; and Crawford Greenewalt,
president of E. I. du Pont de Ne-
mours & Co., Inc.
Filibuster Threatened
In Civil Rights Fight
(Continued from Page 1)
the two plans has been suggested.
Minority Leader Everett Mc-
Kinley Dirksen (R-Bl.) served no-
tice he would introduce a seven-
point Administration program as
a package amendment to what-
ever civil rights measure reaches
the floor.
Besides the federal voting referee
plan, the package, introduced by
Dirksen and 23 other Republicans,
• Make it a crime to use force
or threats to obstruct court deci-
sions on school desegregation.
• Permit federal pursuit across
state lines of persons suspected of
bombing schools or churches.
• Make available limited fed-
eral aid to communities in planning
for orderly school desegregation.
• Provide aid for schooling of
servicemen's children in areas where
William Rowe Dies;
Veteran Organizer
Pinellas Park, Fla. — William
Rowe, Sr., veteran organizer who
worked out of the AFL-CIO Reg.
VII office in Atlanta, Ga., died of
cancer after a long illness.
A pioneer member of Auto
Workers Local 868 in Atlanta,
where he was born, he joined the
organizing staff of the former CIO
in 1946 and continued with the
AFL-CIO at the time of the merger.
schools have been closed because
of desegregation orders.
• Require preservation of voting
records- in federal elections.
• Write into law as a permanent
body the President's Committee on
Equal Job Opportunities, now head-
ed by Vice Pres. Nixon. There are
indications Nixon w^ould step out
of the chairmanship if the commit-
tee is given permanent status.
In the House, progress of a civil
rights bill was slowed by the Ad-
ministration's sudden announce-
ment of its voting referee plan.
The White House move came
after a long stalemate in the con-
servative-dominated Rules Com-
mittee appeared broken. Chair-
man Howard W. Smith (D-Va.),
a bitter foe of civil rights legisla-
tion, scheduled Rules Committee
hearings, then delayed them as
the Judiciary Committee plunged
into its own sessions.
Smith said he could "see no
reason why" his committee would
not clear a rights bill for floor
action this month. This was an
apparent indication that the coali-
tion of four southern Democrats
and four conservative Republicans
which had bottled up the measure,
had been broken, and that at least
three GOP members would join
with the committee's four liberal
Democrats to report out a bill.
charges on school construction.
Senate passage of school-aid leg-
islation came after Vice Pres. Nix-
on, breaking a tie on an earlier
amendment, voted to block federal
assistance for teachers' pay.
The Senate bill provides for
federal grants of about $916 mil-
lion in each of two years. The
federal outlay amounts to about
$20 per pupil per year, although
the actual state-by-state distribu-
tion would give poorer states a
larger allocation for each pupil.
States would not have to match
federal funds the first year, while
state contributions in the second
year would be geared to the relative
number of pupils and the relative
wealth of the states.
The richest state — New York —
would have to put up $1 for each
$2 in federal funds, while the poor-
est — Mississippi — would put up $1
for every $23 of federal money.
The average for the states would be
about $1 for every $4 received in
federal grants.
SENATE SCHOOL ROLLCALL
Following is the rollcall vote on the
Clark-Monroney amendment broad-
ening the aid-to-education bill by pro-
viding federal funds for both teachers'
salaries and school construction, and
raising the total outlay to $1.8 billion
over a two-year period:
FOR PASSAGE — 54
Democrats— 46
Bartlett (Alaska) Johnson (Tex.)
Bible (Nev.) Jordan (N. C.)
Byrd (W. Va.) Kefauver (Tenn.)
Cannon (Nev.) Kennedy (Mass.)
Carroll (Colo.) Kerr (Okla.)
Chavez (N. M.) Long (Hawaii)
Church (Ida.) McCarthy (Minn.)
Clark (Pa.) McNamara
Dodd (Conn.) (Mich.)
Douglas (111.) Magnuson (Wash.)
Engle (Calif.) Mansfield (Mont.)
Ervin (N. C.) Monroney (Okla.)
Frear (Del.) Morse (Ore.)
Fulbright (Ark.) Moss (Utah)
Gore (Tenn.) Muskie (Me.)
Green (R. I.) O'Mahoney
Gruening (Alaska) (Wyo.)
Pastore (R. I.)
Proxmire (Wis.)
Randolph (W. Va.)
Sparkman (Ala.)
Williams (N. J.)
Yarborough (Tex.)
Young (Ohio)
Hart (Mich.)
Hartke (Ind.)
Hayden (Ariz.)
Hennings (Mo.)
Hill (Ala.)
Humphrey
(Minn.)
Jackson (Wash.)
Republicans — 8
Aiken (Vt.) Javits (N. Y.)
Case (S. D.) Martin (la.)
Cooper (Ky.) Mundt (S. D.)
Fong (Hawaii) Smith (Me.)
AGAINST PASSAGE — 35
Democrats — 11
Byrd (Va.)
Ellender (La.)
Holland (Fla.)
Lausche (Ohio)
Long (La.)
McClellan (Ark.)
Robertson (Va.)
Russell (Ga.)
Stennis (Miss.)
Talmadge (Ga.)
Thurmond (S. C.)
Republicans — 24
Beall (Md.) Hickenlooper (la.)
Bennett (Utah) Hruska (Neb.)
Bridges (N. H.) Keating (N. Y.)
Brunsdale (N. D.) Kuchel (Calif.)
Bush (Conn.) Morton (Ky.)
Butler (Md.) Prouty (Vt.)
Carlson (Kan.) Saltonstall
Case (N.J.) (Mass.)
Cotton (N. H.) Schoeppel (Kan.)
Curtis (Neb.) Scott (Pa.)
Dirksen (IH.) Williams (Del.)
Dworshak (Ida.) Young (N. D.)
Goldwater (Ariz.)
Paired: Symington (D-Mo.) for, and
Johnston (D.-S. C.) against; Murray
(D-Mont.) for, and Eastland (D-
Miss.) against; Wiley (R-Wis.) for,
and Allott (R-Colo.) against.
Absent, but reported in favor of
the amendment: Anderson (D-N. M.),
McGee (D-Wyo.), Neuberger CD-
Ore.), Smathers (D-Fla.).
INot voting, and no position indi
cated: Capehart (R-Ind.).
AFL-CIO SUPPORT for $1 billion - emergency housing measure
was expressed by Boris Shishkin (right), secretary of AFL-CIO
Housing Committee, in testimony before Housing subcommittee of
House. Shishkin is shown conversing with Rep. Hugh H. Addonizio
(D-N. J.), a member of subcommittee holding hearings.
Discounts 'Gouge' Home
Buyers, Rains Charges
Home buyers are being "gouged" to the tune of $45 million a
month through "excessive" charges which lending institutions insist
on before granting mortgages, Rep. Albert Rains (D-Ala.), chair-
man of a House Banking subcommittee, has charged.
Rains, sponsor of an AFL-CIO-supported $1 billion emergency
housing bill opposed by the Admin-"^-
istration, said the soaring "discount'
rate stems from Pres. Eisenhower's
"tight-money" policy. If the situa-
tion is not reversed, he said, "hous-
ing construction may go into a
tailspin which could cause another
recession."
The Rains bill, which would pro-
vide $1 billion immediately to pur-
chase FHA and GI mortgages on
moderate-priced housing without
the necessity of excessive charges
by lending institutions, was ap-
proved by the subcommittee by a
7-3 vote. After expected approval
by the full Banking Committee, it
must still clear the Rules Commit-
tee.
The AFL-CIO, in testimony
before the Rains subcommittee,
charged that the discounts being
charged by the banks were "sim-
ply disguised interest payments
piled on top of sky-high interest
rates." Labor called for passage
of the stopgap measure, followed
by enactment of "comprehensive,
forward-looking" housing legisla-
tion to achieve an annual rate of
2.3 million housing units for the
next 15 years.
Rains based his estimate of "ex-
cessive mortgage discounts" on a
series of field reports from over 400
builders and realtors from all parts
of the country showing the amounts
which lending institutes collect
from home buyers in addition to
the interest. The reports were gath-
ered through the cooperation of the
National Association of Home
Builders and the National Associa-
tion of Real Estate Boards, both of
which have supported the bill.
Charges Shifted to Buyer
The reports show that buyers
must pay an average of 5 points —
an additional charge of 5 percent
of the total amount of the mortgage
— in order to obtain an FHA mort-
gage, and an average of 10 points
to obtain a GI loan, the Alabama
Democrat said.
"While in theory the builder of
a new home or the seller of an
existing home is supposed to pay
these discounts," Rains declared,
"most experts agree that in the
First Pact Yields
10-15 Cents in Canada
Drummondville, Que. — The Tex-
tile Workers Union of America
has negotiated a first contract giv-
ing wage increases of 10 to 15
cents an hour to nearly 2,000 em-
ployes of the Drummondville plant
of Canadian Celanese, Ltd.
final analysis they ultimately get
passed on to the home buyer.
"The defenders of the 'tight-
money' policy say that the answer
is to raise interest rates still higher
and higher, but we have learned
the hard way that this is no solu-
tion.
"Last year the Administration
raised the interest rates on FHA
and GI loans and what happened?
Discounts remained the same and
even increased, and there was no
increase in the availability of FHA
or GI financing."
09-81-8
Joblessness
Rises 600,000
For January
The nation's jobless swelled by
600,000 to a 4.15 million total as
of mid-January, leveling off at a
5.2 percent rate of unemployment
which set a record for any non-
recession January in the postwar
period.
The Labor Dept.'s monthly re-
port on the job picture showed that
the crucial figure — the 5.2 percent
rate, adjusted for seasonal influ-
ences — remained unchanged from
mid-December.
Higher Than 1957
The jobless rate was 5.8 percent
for January 1958 and 6 percent for
January 1959 as the nation moved
up to and down from the peak of
recession. January's 5.2 percent
compares to 4.2 percent for the pre-
recession January of 1957.
Total employment dropped by
1.9 million to 64 million, still a
high for the month, as post-Christ-
mas trade and post office jobs con-
tracted and winter curtailed outdoor
work.
In another dark spot, the num-
ber of long-term jobless — those out
of work 15 weeks or longer — rose
by 110,000 to a total 910,000. This
compares to 500,000 long -term
jobless in the pre-recession Janu-
ary of 1957.
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
gSSmZS' Saturday, February 20, 1960
Seeond Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
No. 8
Steps Listed
To Halt '61
Recession
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The AFL-
CIO Executive Council has
warned that Administration poli-
cies and current economic trends
are fusing "to make a recession
sometime in 1961 a very great
possibility."
Calling for reversal of the Ei-
senhower policies and adoption
by Congress of counter-recession-
ary measures, the council de-
scribed prospects ahead as "fright-
ening." It outlined both long-term
proposals and a short-term pro-
gram for Congress.
The council proposed the goal
of a balanced economy with a sus-
tained growth rate of 5 percent a
year. The growth rate has been
2.3 percent during the Eisenhower
years and 3 percent over the long
term, and was 4.6 percent in the
1947-53 period.
"Policy makers must choose,"
the council stressed, "because an
America with more jobs for
more people who can buy more
goods produced more efficiently
by greater plant capacity — and
an America with limited job op-
portunities, high levels of un-
employment, tight money, eco-
nomic restrictions and repeated
recessions."
Lashing at what it charged was
a tendency to repeat "past errors,"
the council warned that a continua-
tion of "lopsided" policies of the
past seven years "might produce a
1961 recession in which "the losses
could be greater" than in the 1953-
54 and 1957-58 slumps.
The statement reviewed the
forces which it said caused a
"slow-down in the rate of economic
growth" — the tight-money squeeze,
the balanced-budget "cudgel," the
fight against "inflation."
In the 1953-59 period, the coun-
(Continued on Page 2)
$50,000 Voted
For Strike Aid
At Shipyards
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The AFL-
CIO Executive Council has voted
$50,000 to aid the embattled Ship-
building Workers in their month-
old strike against East Coast ship-
yards of the Bethlehem Steel Co.
and urged all unions to support the
strike with adequate funds.
Pres. George Meany pointed out
that "the union worked for months
after its contract had expired in
an attempt to reach a settlement.
Unilateral action by the company
in making drastic changes in sen-
iority, grievance procedures and
work assignments provoked the
strike, he said.
'There is no question," said
Meany, "that the strike has been
forced by the company."
Council Bids Industry Halt
Labor Attacks, Asks Parley
Ike Urged to Call
White House Meet
By Saul Miller
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council concluded
its mid-winter session here with a call for "a broad national effort
to elevate and improve the level of labor-management relations"
and, specifically, for the holding of a "top level conference of
unions and industry leaders as suggested by Pres. George Meany"
to develop guidelines for improved relations.
The statement reviewed the general attack on unions and collec-
tive bargaining in the past year and declared that "this unprincipled
propaganda campaign against American working people (must)
cease."
The anti-union drive, the council said, included a phony infla-
tion campaign, the "scare" issue of work rules and a general charge
that unions have been blocking productive efficiency. (See story,
Page 3.)
The council adopted a statement welcoming Pres. Eisenhower's
"friendly reception" of Meany 's conference suggestion and urged
him to give "serious consideration" to convening such a meeting as
soon as practicable.
Meany in a press conference repeated an earlier statement that a
better climate is developing and that some "very important" seg-
ments of American industry realize that the problems of labor-man-
agement relations must be solved.
Results of the steel strike, he said, have made industry and
business more realistic in light of public support of the Steelwork-
ers toward the end of the walkout and the growing conviction
that the cure for a deadlock is not "compulsion" and specifically
not a Taft-Hartley injunction. Meany said that the "overall ef-
fect of the steel strike has been good" in helping to bring about a
changed climate.
At the final session, the council set up new machinery to secure
compliance on civil rights cases and directed the federation's eight-
man Executive Committee to work with the special Internal Dis-
putes group in drafting a detailed plan for settling such differences.
Replying to a question, Meany termed the council session "a
very good meeting" that developed a better understanding of feder-
ation problems. The AFL-CIO still has internal disputes problems,
he said, but the meeting had the effect of impressing union mem-
bers with their "relative unimportance."
Reminded that the council's meeting covered the anniversary of
the unity agreement signed by the former AFL and former CIO
in February 1955, Meany said the merger has "worked as well as I-
thought it would."
'Better Off Than Before'
"We brought inter-union rivalry into the house when we merged
and although we still have these problems, we are much better off
than before merger," he pointed out. "Merger has not added to
this problem and I am not dissatisfied with the progress of the last
five years."
As to the effect of the merger on the country at large, Meany said,
the people have realized " that there is no intent to concentrate pow-
er and that the welfare of the trade union movement is bound up
with the general welfare of the country."
"Those who have been crying 'wolf have been disappointed," he
said.
On organizing, he said that difficulties still exist in the South and
that automation has changed the employment pattern, with white
collar and technical workers becoming more important. The unions,
he said are aware of these problems and are doing the best they can
in difficult situations.
(Continued on Page 3)
Congress Asked to Avoid Partisan
Politics on Civil Rights Legislation
' Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has called for a blend of proposals for
federal safeguards of voting rights, expressing the hope that "petty partisanship" will not block en-
actment of sound civil rights legislation by the 86th Congress.
On the eve of Senate debate on civil rights, the council adopted a resolution here declaring that
a meaningful bill will be enacted "only if the friends of civil rights in both parties work and vote
together." The statement added: ^
NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUED in Wilson strike as workers got
support and practical aid. Here sympathizers and canned- foods
poured into Albert Lea, Minn., to support members of Packinghouse
Workers Local 6. Bus at right brought a union delegation and
3,000 pounds of goods from Duluth, Minn. (See story, Page 12).
Senate Opens Debate:
House Rules Group
Clears Voting Bill
By Gene Zack
Civil rights advocates won clearcut victories on both sides of
Capitol Hill in initial skirmishes as the 86th Congress plunged into
the long-delayed battle to enact meaningful legislation safeguarding
voting and minority rights.
The major break came in the conservative-dominated House
Rudes Committee, where a moder-^
ate civil rights measure has been
blockaded for six months. Yield-
ing to a rising tide of political
pressures, the committee voted to
clear a bill for floor action pos-
sibly beginning Mar. 10.
In the Senate, a move by South-
ern Democrats to force a one-week
delay in the debate was crushed
by a roll call vote of 61-28, after
the leaders of both parties redeemed
last year's pledge and opened con-
sideration of civil rights proposals
Feb. 15.
Discharge Near
The Rules Committee cleared the
way for House action next month
as liberals were within striking dis-
tance of obtaining enough signa-
tures on a petition to force the bill
out of committee. Of the 219 sig-
natures needed, liberals had ob-
tained 209 — 158 Democrats and 51
Republicans. .
The committee voted 7-4 to clear
the bill for floor action. A flood of
southern oratory seemed assured
as the committee approved 15 hours
of general debate and allowed un-
limited amendment of the modest
measure.
The scarcity of GOP signa-
tures was reportedly behind the
Republican switch which broke
the long deadlock. With Con-
gressional elections just over the
horizon, GOP leaders were said
to have persuaded committee Re-
publicans to end their coalition
with four Southern Democrats
which had bottled up the meas-
ure. This gave four liberal Dem-
ocrats the votes needed to break
the civil rights deadlock.
Although the committee cleared
only a modest bill, strong moves
were under way to amend the meas-
ure on the House floor to include
some version of various proposals
(Continued on Page 10) '
"If a good bill passes, there will
be enough credit for all concerned.
If there is failure, neither party will
benefit."
The AFL-CIO leaders said that
the fact that both liberals and
the Eisenhower Administration
have introduced voting-rights leg-
islation was an "encouraging de-
velopment." They added that
there has been "broad agreement
in principle on the need for leg-
islation to assure every citizen
his right to register and vote.".
Liberals have based their legis-
lative proposals on recommenda-
tions by the President's Civil Rights
Commission for the appointment by
the commission of federal voting
registrars in any area found to be
practicing discrimination. The Ad-
ministration has countered with a
proposal for court appointment of
voting referees.
"In at least two respects," the
Executive Council said, the Ad-
, (Continued on Page 10)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
AFL-CIO OFFICIALS exchange greetings at mid-winter session of
Executive Council at Bal Harbour, Fla. Left to right are Vice
Presidents Richard F. Walsh (standing), William C. Birthright,
William C. Doherty and Joseph A. Beirne.
Unions to Consult on
New Steps in Americas
Bal Harbour, Fla. — A conference of AFL-CIO unions actively
concerned with inter-American work will be held soon to consult
on the best method of coordinating it, the Executive Council
decided.
The meeting was recommended by the AFL-CIO Committee on
Inter-American Affairs in its re-^
tion approved the committee's rec-
ommendation that the AFL-CIO
earmark 30 percent of its own con-
tribution to the Solidarity Fund for
work in Latin America, subject to
the rules and practices of the fund
itself.
It also endorsed the committee's
recommendation that the ICFTU
committee studying changes in the
administrative structure discharge
its duties "in an atmosphere of
loyal cooperation to the principles
and activities of the ICFTU but
with necessary autonomy and free-
dom of action."
The recent expansion of Latin
American activities by international
trade federations was attributed
mainly to the "cooperation and ac-
tive participation" of AFL-CIO
unions.
port to the Executive Council. It
was suggested the conference be
held in Washington during the
week of May 3, when the council
itself will be in session in AFL-
CIO headquarters.
The committee hailed the deci-
sion of the executive board of the
Inter-American Regional Organiza-
tion of Workers (ORIT), at its
recent meeting here, to intensify its
activities in Latin America.
It urged the AFL-CIO repre-
sentative on the Intl. Solidarity
Fund of the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions to support
ORIT's request for additional
financial support of the hemi-
spheric organization's education-
al, organizational and publicity
activities.
The Executive Council in addi-
Council Reiterates Support :
Opponents' Delaying Tactics
Seen Threat to Forand Bill
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has warned that "delaying tactics" on the part
of the Eisenhower Administration, the American Medical Association and the insurance lobby are
"threatening enactment" of the Forand bill to provide medical care for the nation's older citizens.
With the House Ways & Means Committee expected to vote on the measure next month, the coun-
cil adopted a statement at its mid-winter session here reiterating labor's support of the bill introduced
by Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.)>
Passage of the measure is a key
plank in the AFL-CIO's 1960 legis-
lative program.
The council said it was "encour-
aging" that the committee headed
by Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.)
would vote on the bill at an early
date. It added that it was "signi-
ficant" that the Senate Subcommit-
tee on the Aged, headed by Sen.
Pat McNamara (D-Mich.) called
for enactment this year of legisla-
tion "to expand the system of old-
age, survivors and disability insur-
ance to include health service bene-
fits."
The AFL-CIO statement point-
ed out that the Ways & Means
Committee held hearings on the
Forand bill last year, adding that
"we cannot accept delay for an-
other year." The council ex-
pressed the hope that the com-
mittee would report out "a con-
structive program" that would
meet "the desires of the Ameri-
can people for prompt action" in
this area.
The Forand proposal to use the
social security system as the vehicle
for health care for the aged — by
raising the taxes on both employers
and workers one-quarter of 1 per-
cent — was hailed by the council as
the "most economical, effective and
universal" method for meeting the
problem. The statement continued:
"Under a form of administration
acceptable to hospitals and consist-
ent with their highest professional
goals, the new funds would rescue
many hospitals from financial dis-
aster and enable them to extend
high-quality care designed for the
aged at reasonable charges..
"Social insurance, unlike com-
mercial insurance, can provide
most aged people with paid-up
policies on retirement. Unlike
Fair Play Cries for Base Pay Rise,
Broader Coverage, Council Says
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Extension of the wage-hour law to millions of workers not now covered and an
increase in the minimum wage to at least $1.25 an hour has been described by the AFL-CIO Ex-
ecutive Council as "must legislation" for this session of Congress.
In a statement emphasizing support of the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill, the council declared "fair
play to the nation's defenseless and too-long-ignored low-wage workers cries out for prompt passage of
this legislation." &
The council hailed the schedul
ing of wage-hour hearings by the
House Subcommittee on Labor
Standards, to begin early in March,
and urged that they be followed by
early action.
"Since the subcommittee has
already held lengthy hearings • . •
in previous years, these hearings
AFL-CIO to Weigh
Museum of Labor
Bal Harbour, Fla— jThe
AFL-CIO Executive Council
has voted to explore the pos-
sibility of establishing a Labor
Hall of Fame or National
Labor Museum in Washing-
ton.
The council acted on the
recommendation of the Com-
munity Services Committee,
which noted that "there is no
single place in this country
where the history of the labor
movement and the stories of
the men and women who
built it can be found by the
scholar, the student, the
union member or the inter-
ested citizen/'
can and should be concluded
expeditiously," the Executive
Council declared.
The statement also urged the Sen-
ate Labor Committee "to report
favorably to the Senate as soon as
possible" a bill based on recom-
mendations made last year by a
subcommittee.
Pointing to "wide recognition"
throughout the nation that the pres-
ent minimum wage should be
raised, the Executive Council issued
a point-by-point refutation of the
principal arguments used by op-
ponents of improved wage - hour
legislatidn:
• The retail stores which would
be affected by the Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt bill are chain stores and
other substantial businesses. The
really small local stores not only
would not be covered, but would
stand to gain through increased
buying power of customers and the
fact that larger competitors would
have to meet fair wage-hour stand-
ards.
Protection of low-paid work-
ers cannot be left to the states be-
cause "with a few exceptions, the
states have demonstrated that they
are not willing or not able to pro-
vide adequate minimum wage, pro-
tection for the workers left uncov-
ered by the federal law."
• The argument that the effect
of the legislation would be infla-
tionary doesn't hold water because
"past experience has. demonstrated
that improvements in minimum
wage legislation do not have infla-
tionary effects." The Labor Dept.
report on the effect of the 1955 in-
crease in the minimum wage bears
this out.
• Increased coverage and a
higher minimum would not lead to
widespread layoffs. "In our judg-
ment, based on experience with past
adjustments, any adverse employ-
ment effects in marginal industries
would be negligible and would be
more than offset by increases in
employment generated by increased
buying power of those who benefit
from the higher minimum."
The fundamental issue, the Ex-
ecutive Council declared, is: "Will
our nation provide its lowest-wage
workers a fair share of advances in
American well-being or will it con-
tinue to allow American prosperity
to pass them by?"
the major medical form of com-
mercial insurance, it can encour-
age early diagnosis and preven-
tive treatment; it can avoid in-
flationary and unscrupulous
charges.
"It alone can translate a weekly
contribution of a few nickels from
working people into really effective
health protection in old age."
Plight of Elderly Ignored
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil criticized the Administration and
that many elderly people are with-
out adequate health services or are
ruined financially by even higher
medical costs."
Noting that the Administration
opposes the bill "without vet hav-
ing offered an alternative," the
council cautioned against a pos-
sible last-minute White House sub-
stitute "designed to meet the nar-
rowly conceived financial demands
of the AMA or the self-seeking
clamor of insurance companies
rather than the needs of the eld-
the AMA for "ignoring evidence | erly."
Labor Urges Action
To Avert Recession
(Continued from Page 1)
cil noted, the nation's growth rate,
in terms of output per person, was
"squeezed" to six-tenths of 1 per-
cent a year — one-seventh the rate
of Russia's growth — and the rate
of unemployment rose from 2.9 to
over 5 percent.
"As 1960 begins with a boom
that includes a high rate of job-
lessness and a large percentage
of idle industrial capacity, there-
fore, prospects for the future,
based on current policies, are
frightening," the statement
declared.
The population and work force
are growing and the big corpora-
tions continue to "pour" funds into
new plant and equipment of the
kind which promise sharp produc-
tivity increases, the council pointed
out.
It proposed for the long term a
six-point program it called essen-
tial to replace the "backward-
looking actions of seven years of
stagnation":
— The tight-money squeeze
should be reversed. The Ad-
ministration's attempt to remove
the 4.25 percent ceiling on long-
term bonds' "must be repulsed."
The current inadequate supply of
money to sustain a 5 percent
growth rate dictates that any effort
to tighten the money supply and
hike the interest rates must be
defeated.
— Government programs* for
public services such as
schools, hospitals, community facil-
ities and homes should be ex-
panded, not restricted.
3
Defense expenditures should
be "stepped up," with a bal-
anced budget secondary to military
security.
— An economic balance between
business investment and con-
sumer markets must be sought to
prevent a repeat of the 1955-57
experience when production ability
outpaced the ability to consume.
— Purchasing power should be
boosted, especially that of
low-wage workers. The federal
wage-hour law'minimum rate must
be raised to $1.25 an hour from
the present $1 and coverage ex-
tended to retaif and wholesale
trade, service industries and large-
scale farms.
— The tax structure should be
revised to promote greater
equity.
The AFL-CIO said it is con-
vinced the policies "now leading
us toward another recession" can
and should be reversed. But the
council added, realism dictates that
the Eisenhower Administration
may not reverse its policies quickly
and counter - recessionary policies
should be enacted by Congress.
The council proposed in this
field a three-pronged program: An
improved jobless pay system, with
federal standards at higher levels
and of longer duration; a federal
shelf of public works programs;
and expansion of the social security
system to provide higher benefits
and medical care to beneficiaries.
Monitorship
Lifted From
United Textile
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The AFL-
CIO Executive Council has lifted
the two and one-half-year-old mon-
itorship over the United Textile
Workers, finding that the union is
in complete compliance with the
council's previous directives and the
AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Codes.
The council acted on the rec-
ommendation of AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany. Peter M. Mo
Gavin, assistant to Meany, had
served as monitor for the union
since the monitorship was imposed
by the council Oct. 25, 1957.
The council found that the
United Textile Workers is con-
ducting its affairs in line with
AFL-CIO policy and directives.
It noted that the union has lifted
the charter of Local 229 in New
York, a source of difficulty for
the international union.
In placing the union under mon-
itorship the council found that the
UTW had taken steps to eliminate
corrupt influences but that some
additional steps were necessary.
The council found that since that
time, the necessary steps have been
taken.
The original finding by the AFL-
CIO Ethical Practices Committee
that the 40,000-member union had
come under the influence of cor-
rupt elements involved primarily
the actions of the former president,
Anthony Valente, its former secre-
tary-treasurer, Lloyd Klenert, and
its former Southern regional di-
rector, Joseph Jacobs.
T. H. Temple of
IAM Dies at 46
Seattle — Thomas H. Temple, 46,
a grand lodge representative for the
Machinists and a major contributor
to the cause of industrial safety,
died here Jan. 28 of a heart attack.
Death came to the veteran un-
ionist, who had played an active
role in the fight for adoption of a
new federal code for the ship re-
pair industry, just a few weeks be-
fore the code was to go into effect
Temple had been an IAM grand
lodge representative since July
1945.
Page Three
Council Demands Industry End Attacks
Calls on Eisenhower to Convene
Labor-Management Conference
(Continued from Page 1)
On civil rights within unions,
the council approved a system
under which Meany will appoint
special council subcommittees to
handle each case of alleged vio-
lation that has not been resolved
at a lower level. The special
subcommittee will deal with the
international unions involved and
report back directly to the Ex-
ecutive Council.
This new procedure replaces the
system in force since merger,
whereby problems of compliance
with directives to eliminate dis-
crimination were handled by a
tubcommittee of the federation's
Civil Rights Committee.
Frequent Meetings
At present, there is one case be-
fore the council, involving Local
26 of the Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers in Washington.
Meany will function as a subcom-
mittee of one in this case. (See
»tory, Page 5.)
The federation president, in dis-
cussing this case and the civil rights
program generally, said "we're
making progress, perhaps not as
fast as we'd all like, but there is
definite progress."
On internal disputes, Meany told
a press conference that the council
had set up a broader meeting to
help the Special Disputes Commit-
tee "further along with its work."
The Disputes Committee met fre-
quently during the council sessions,
he said, to develop a detailed plan
in line with the San Francisco con-
vention's resolution adopting the
principle of final and binding arbi-
tration as a method of settling such
disputes.
The convention instructed the
council to call a special convention
when it had agreed upon and for-
mally approved a detailed plan.
The special committee, and the
Executive Committee will meet
later, he said, to help the special
group come up with "an agreement
on a special convention."
The Internal Disputes Commit-
tee is composed of AFL-CIO Vice
Presidents Al J. Hayes, Walter P.
Reuther, Joseph D. Keenan and
Joseph A. Beirne and AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler.
The AFL-CIO Executive Com-
mittee is composed of Meany and
Schnitzler and AFL-CIO Vice
Presidents Harry C. Bates, David
Dubinsky, George M. Harrison,
Walter P. Reuther, James B. Carey
and David J. McDonald.
Meany emphasized that the pur-
pose of the meeting will be to se-
cure an agreement on internal dis-
putes as soon as possible, but that
there is no time element as to when
a report will be due.
In its final session, the Execu-
Friendship Group
Is Hailed at 50
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The AFL-CIO
Executive Council has expressed
"heartiest congratulations" to the
Labor Temple Fellowship as that
non-sectarian institution prepares
to celebrate its 50th anniversary
this spring.
The council observed that the
fellowship was founded by the late
Dr. Charles Stelzle for the purpose
of bringing about better under-
standing not only between labor
and religion but among all peoples
of every race, color, creed and
origin.
The council, in a' resolution di-
rected to AFL-CIO Vice-Pres. A.
Philip Randolph and his associates
of the fellowship, wished that or-
ganization well in the continuation
of its program for a projected new
headquarters and for proposed La-
bor Friendship Flights to other
parts of the world.
tive Council lifted the two-and-
a-half-year-old monitorship over
the United Textile Workers, find-
ing that the union is in complete
compliance with previous council
directives and the AFL-CIO
Code of Ethical Practices. (See
story, Page 2.)
On the domestic front there were
the following actions:
• Called on Congress to enact
without further delay a strong civil
rights bill to eliminate discrimina-
tion in registration and voting by
Negroes and allowing the govern-
ment to institute civil suits in school
desegregation cases. The council
said it hoped "petty partisanship"
will not block enactment of a sound
bill. (See story, Page 1.)
• Urged as an "absolute mini-
mum" that the House pass the
Thompson school construction bill
callings for approximately $1 bil-
lion to meet the crisis in education.
The council said the best bill be-
fore Congress is the Murray-Met-
calf measure but that Congress has
made it plain "it will not pass this
measure." (See story, Page 5.)
• Asked prompt action by the
House Ways and Means Committee
on the Forand bill providing health
care for the aged under the social
security system and declared the
aged and the nation cannot "accept
delay" for another year nor a sub-
stitute designed to meet the "nar-
rowly conceived financial demands
of the American Medical Associa-
tion or the self-seeking clamor of
the insurance companies." (See
story, Page 2.)
• Warned that the present
downturn in housing construction
if permitted to continue unchecked
could bring on "the next general
recession" and called for passage
both of the Rains bill providing
emergency aid and of a seven-point
comprehensive housing program
geared to meet America's need for
2.25 million new housing units a
year. (See story, Page 9.)
• Warned that Eisenhower Ad-
ministration policies and current
economic trends are fusing to
"make a recession sometime in
1961 a very great possibility." (See
story, Page 1.)
• Declared that only Congress
can put an effective floor under
state unemployment compensation
systems since for six years the
states have refused to heed Eisen-
hower's pleas for voluntary im-
provements. (See story, Page 9.)
• Called for a cabinet-level fed-
eral Dept. of Consumers and other
actions to protect consumers
against "exorbitant pricing, harm-
ful products and deceitful advertis-
ing." (See story, Page 9.)
• Called on Congress to grant
compulsory data collection powers
to the Labor Dept.'s Bureau of La-
bor Statistics in light of the recent
"disappointing" BLS report on pro-
ductivity and its failure to make
an "effective evaluation" of the
trend in productivity because of
fear of "offending business estab-
lishments" which provide data on
a voluntary basis. (See story, this
page.)
• Supported the 24 affiliates of
the AFL-CIO Government Em-
ployes Council in urging favorable
consideration of a bill calling for
an average 12 percent pay increase
and legislation to give full union
recognition to federal employe or-
ganizations. (See story, Page 5.)
In the international area the
council took these actions:
• Declared that Africa's unions
"provide the best hope for promot-
ing human dignity and individual
self-respect" in the dual struggle
against colonialism and the Com-
munist threat to subvert newly-won
independence. These unions must
be allowed to develop along their
own lines free of any "particular
European or American pattern of
organization structure." (See story,
Page 4.)
• Set up a conference on inter-
national affairs for Apr. 19-20 on
the theme "The Struggle for Peace
and Freedom" to crystallize labor
thinking on foreign affairs before
the East-West "summit" confer-
ence. (See story, Page 4.)
• Pledged full AFL-CIO sup-
port to the special committee of
the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions executive board set
up to study proposals on reorgani-
zation to make the organization "a
more effective instrument in meet-
ing the challenge" of the future.
(See story, Page 4.)
• Called for a U.S. consumer
boycott of all imports from South
Africa in light of that nation's
"continued brutal and inhuman"
racial policies. The boycott was
set up at the recent Sixth World
Congress of the ICFTU. (See story,
Page 4.)
• Approved actions taken by
the ORIT executive board at its
recent meeting to step up labor ac-
tivities in Latin America, includ-
ing a request that the AFL-CIO
earmark 30 percent of its contribu-
tion to the ICFTU's Intl. Solidarity
Fund for work in the Latin coun-
tries. (See story, Page 2.)
• Supported a program to co-
operate with the Israeli federation
of labor — Histadrut — in setting up
a labor training college in Israel for
trade union members from Asian
and African countries. The AFL-
CIO will provide half the scholar-
ships in the first year at a cost of
about $175,000.
• Approved a grant of $21,000
to the Kenya Federation of Labor
to help complete a trade union
headquarters building.
• Voted funds to help the Fin-
nish trade union movement (SAK)
fight off Communist attempts to
win control of the organization.
• Approved a $10,000 grant
for the relief of children of Al-
gerian trade union members pres-
ently sheltered in orphan camps in
Tunisia. Their parents have been
killed or injured in the Algerian
fighting. The council also urged
the U.S. government to help bring
an end to the Algerian warfare.
In other actions the council:
• Voted $50,000 to support the
Shipbuilding Workers in their
strike against Bethlehem Steel
Corp. shipyards and urged all un-
ions to support the strike forced on
the union by the company. In-
volved are eight East Coast ship-
yards and 17,000 workers. (See
story, Page 1.)
• Referred to the executive offi-
cers for further study a recommen-
dation of the Community Services
Committee that a National Labor
Museum or archives be set up to
bring together in one place the his-
tory, documents and the story of
the American labor movement.
• Approved a CSC recommen-
dation that the 1960 Murray-
Green Award for outstanding con-
tributions to the nation go to Mrs.
Agnes Meyer of Washington, D. C,
a leader in education and social
welfare work. (See story, Page 5.)
• Approved a tentative budget
of $100,000, the same amount
voted in 1959, for the AFL-CIO
farm workers organizing project in
California.
• Supported the work of the
National Advisory Committee on
Farm Labor, headed jointly by
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A. Philip Ran-
dolph and Frank Graham, with a
$7,500 grant.
• Voted to aid the 13th Intl.
Congress on Occupational Health,
to be held in New York City July
25, with a grant of $5,000.
REPORTERS QUESTION AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany at press
conference following Executive Council meeting. Veteran labor
reporters of leading newspapers and wire services covered the
council sessions.
Industry Charged with
'Unprincipled' Assault
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has ac-
cused business associations, some giant companies and industries,
and "certain Administration spokesmen" of launching a "stepped-up
attack" on labor and collective bargaining in recent years in an
effort to restrict trade unions."
The council called for an end to'f"
the "unprincipled propaganda cam-
paign" against workers and its re-
placement with a top-level confer-
ence of union and industry leaders
to work out guidelines for indus-
trial harmony. The council said
Pres. Eisenhower's "friendly re-
ception" to proposals along these
lines made by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany was "heartening."
Real Issues Sidetracked
In a strongly-worded statement
adopted at its mid-winter session
here, the council charged that
"business groups and government
leaders have poined hands in ele-
vating the phantom of runaway in-
flation to the status of America's
No. 1 problem, while real and
pressing issues at home and abroad
have been sidetracked."
"Under the guise of fighting
inflation," the statement said,
"the most modest improvements
in the wages and fringe benefits
of working people have been
branded as dangerous to the
nation."
The council said the attack on
labor's modest wage requests came
at a time when "corporation execu-
tives with already lavish salaries
and production bonus systems have
perfected the scandalous 'stock op-
tion' schemes in American indus-
try, swelling corporation executive
incomes to unbelievable heights."
'Scare Issue 9 Raised
The statement charged that work
rules have been "raised as a major
'scare' issue," particularly in the
steel and railroad industries, de-
spite Labor Dept. statistics showing
that output in steel jumped 50 per-
cent between 1947 and 1959, and
productivity of railroad workers
rose 55.5 percent from 1947 to
1958.
"This broadside attack against
unions and collective bargaining,"
the council said, "can be seen not
only in the great volume of prop-
aganda but also in increased diffi-
culties in labor-management rela-
tions in numerous industries." It
cited the 1958 auto industry can-
cellation of union contracts for the
first time in 22 years; the 116-day
industry-forced steel shutdown last
year; and the three-month Packing-
house Workers' strike at Wilson &
Co.
"Refusal of management to
bargain and to arrive at work-
able compromises has been
spreading and leading to strikes/ 9
the statement declared, adding
that the anti-union campaign
constitutes "a threat to basic,
free, democratic American
institutions."
Council Asks
Data Power
For BLS
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The AFL-
CIO Executive Council, charging
that the Bureau of Labor Statistics
"evaded its responsibilties" in a
productivity report out of fear of
being cut off from data by busi-
ness firms, declared it would seek
legislation granting compulsory
data-collecting powers to the BLS
and similar government agencies.
The recent BLS report, "Trends
in Output per Man-Hour in the
Private Economy, 1909-1959," the
council said, "is a great disappoint-
ment to us."
The council said the report's
title leads one to expect an analysis
of long-term productivity develop-
ments. However, it added, the re-
port "is practically barren of any
meaningful analysis. . . ."
Perhaps it is natural that any
government statistical agency
would be "reluctant" to make
findings which might prove "of-
fensive to any important seg-
ment" in the U.S., the statement
said. Nonetheless, it continued,
the BLS "evaded its responsi-
bilities by failing to make an
effective evaluation" of the pro-
ductivity data.
The BLS is "vulnerable" on any
report, the AFL-CIO said, because
it must depend on the voluntary
cooperation of business firms, being
limited to moral persuasion if a
firm fails to supply data.
The AFL-CIO pointed out that
the Commerce Dept.'s Bureau of
Census has authority to compel
reporting of information by various
segments of the economy.
Noting that BLS maintains both
business and labor advisory com-
mittees, the AFL-CIO said the op-
eration of these groups and BLS
generally would rest on a firmer
foundation if the bureau enjoyed
compulsory reporting powers.
The council said it would make
"vigorous" efforts to persuade
Congress to grant compulsory data
collecting powers to all government
statistical agencies to enable them
to pursue their work objectively
in the public interest and without
any improper pressures.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
Executive Council Warns:
TALKING THINGS OVER after the meeting of the AFL-CIO
Committee on Political Education at Bal Harbour, Fla., are (left
to right) COPE Dir. James L. McDevitt, Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler and Pres. George Meany.
Council Urges ICFTU
To Move on Revamp
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Full implementation of the reorganization
resolution adopted by the Sixth World Congress of the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions will create a basis for making the
free world labor body "a more effective instrument" in meeting the
challenge of the future, the AFL-CIO Executive Council said at its
meeting here.
The ICFTU congress, held in
Brussels in December, directed the
executive board to take steps to re-
vamp the structure so as to make it
"more adequate and responsive to
the tasks ahead," with increased
stress on the need for building ef-
fective trade unionism in Asia,
Africa and Latin America, and
other areas where "the struggle is
the hardest and the need is the
greatest."
The council said it is "encour-
aged by the increasing emphasis
and urgency" the ICFTU placed
on the need for greater attention
to the problems of Asian, Afri-
can and Latin American workers.
"Hundreds of millions through-
out the world live in abject poverty
and are denied the essentials of
political and spiritual freedom," the
council said.
"Soviet imperialism continues to
intensify and place increasing em-
phasis on attempts to exploit this
poverty and injustice through pro-
grams of economic penetration and
political subversion and enslave-
ment. The free world labor move-
ment is dedicated to the struggle to
win a fuller measure of both bread
and freedom for people every-
where."
The council pledged full AFL-
CIO cooperation to the special
committee the ICFTU executive
board set up to make proposals
on reorganization so the com-
mittee "can pursue its objectives
with vigor and dispatch" and re-
port back to the executive board
at a meeting in June.
"The Executive Council shares
the opinion," the statement con-
cluded, "that the reorganization of
the ICFTU structure and the in-
creasing emphasis which is to be
placed upon the work of building
free trade unions in Asia, Africa
and Latin America will stimulate a
more favorable and sympathetic re-
sponse for appeals to secure the
necessary support to the Intl. Soli-
darity Fund from the stronger free
trade union centers."
$4.2 Billion Foreign Aid
Sought by Eisenhower
Pres. Eisenhower has asked Congress for $4.2 billion in
new foreign aid funds, of which $2 billion would be in the
form of military assistance and $2.2 billion in economic help.
Included was a request for $700 million for lending by the
Development Loan Fund, combined with the extension of ad-
ditional aid to Bolivia, Haiti, North Africa and Middle East
nations. He also asked authorization for the United States
to join the proposed Intl. Development Association, which is
tied to the World Bank and would make easy-term loans to
nations seeking to develop primitive economies.
The AFL-CIO convention in San Francisco last September
called for long-term authorization for a minimum contribu-
tion of $1.5 billion a year to the Development Loan Fund,
as well as "effective U.S. financial support" for the Intl. De-
velopment Association and proposed regional development
groups.
Eisenhower proposed in addition an unspecified sum for a
joint project to develop the Indus River for irrigation, de-
pending on an agreement between India and Pakistan to share
use of the waters; additional conventional economic help to the
two nations; increased loans and grants to help Formosa be-
come self-sustaining; education and training funds for Africa
south of the Sahara Desert; and continued help to other na-
tions in training for technical skills.
Liberty in Self Development
Held Need of African Unions
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Africa's free trade unions, which have been in "the forefront of the struggle"
for their countries' national independence, must be allowed to develop along their own lines free
of any "particular European or American pattern of organization structure," the AFL-CIO Executive
Council has warned.
The council adopted a statement at its session here declaring that Africa's unions "provide the best
hope for promoting human dignity^
and individual self-respect" in the
dual struggle against colonialism
and the Communist threat to sub-
vert their newly-won independence.
The AFL-CIO pledged support
of decisions of the sixth world con-
gress of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions "for aiding
more effectively and generously"
Africa's emerging free trade un-
ions.
"If energetically executed (and)
flexibly applied," the council said,
these decisions will "speed the
growth of strong free trade union
movements and thwart the Commu-
nist drive to dominate the labor or-
ganizations in Africa."
The Executive Council declared:
"As the trade unions of Africa
grow and become more effective
instruments for protecting the in-
terests of the workers, they are
bound to develop forms of or-
ganizations most suitable to their
own specific conditions.
"Just as economic developments
and progress in the underdeveloped
countries will not proceed in the
tempo of the 19th century, so it is
unlikely that the trade union move-
ments in these lands will go through
the organic, step-by-step develop-
ment of the European or American
labor movements."
The council expressed the hope
that the forthcoming African trade
union conference, scheduled to be
held in Casablanca in May, "will,
with the cooperation and help of
the ICFTU and its affiliates, con-
tribute to uniting the people of
Africa on the basis of advancing
their political democracy, economic
freedom and human well-being."
Developments Welcomed
The recent Second All African
Peoples Congress at Tunis, the
statement continued, gave consider-
ation to "concrete measures, for
promoting economic integration
among the African states."
The AFL-CIO said that free la-
bor in the highly industrialized
countries "can only welcome these
significant developments which re-
flect the aspirations of the African
peoples to self-government, inde-
pendence, and indigenous free trade
union organizations."
The Executive Council said that
in recent years there has been "no-
table progress" in the efforts by the
peoples of Africa to attain national
independence, noting that "there
are now 10 independent African
nations — and more are coming."
The council added that "much re-
mains to be done" in Kenya, Al-
geria, Angola, Nyasaland, Uganda
and South Africa.
"The yearning of the Africans
for human dignity and freedom
has not yet been satisfied; their
fears and bitter resentment, gen-
erated by years of foreign tyran-
ny, have yet to be eliminated,"
the statement declared.
Through influence on U.S. for-
eign policy, through active partici-
pation in expanded international
trade secretariat activities, through
greater education of rank-and-file
members, and through utilization
of American labor's organization
strength and facilities, the council
said, "we of the AFL-CIO will
strive to help the cause of national
independence, democracy, free
trade unionism, economic develop-
ment and better conditions of work
and life for every country in
Africa."
AFL-CIO World Affairs Conclave
To Probe U. S. Foreign Program
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The international affairs conference called by the AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil for Apr. 19 and 20 — "The Struggle for Peace and Freedom" — will place U.S. foreign policy under
a microscope.
Scheduled for the 185th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the meeting is in-
tended to crystalize labor thinking on foreign affairs in anticipation of the East-West "summit" con-
ference, scheduled for May 16, of§>-
Pres. Eisenhower's June 10 trip to
Russia and of the presidential elec-
tion.
The conference was announced
by the Executive Council at its
meeting here in a statement predict-
ing that U.S. foreign policy will be
re-examined and put to test as
never before." It will be attended
by the officers of all international
unions and state and city central
bodies.
Arrangements for the meeting
are in the hands of an Executive
Council committee composed of
Vice Presidents George M. Har-
rison, Walter P. Reuther and David
Dubinsky.
"It is vitally necessary for our
country and our working people
in particular to have the fullest
possible understanding of the
most important international
problems and tasks," the council
declared.
"Such understanding by the
people is the first prerequisite
for our country evolving and pur-
suing an effective democratic
foreign policy.
"In view of the interest, in-
itiative and activities of the AFL-
CIO in the realm of our coun-
try's foreign relations and in the
ILPA Contest
Judges Picked
The faculty of the Dept. of Jour-
nalism at the University of Michi-
gan, with the assistance of the uni-
versity's Institute of Labor & In-
dustrial Relations, will judge the
1960 Journalistic Awards Contest
sponsored by the Intl. Labor Press
Association.
Closing date for receiving entries
at ILPA headquarters, 815 Six-
teenth St., N.W., Washington 6,
D. C, is Mar. 18. Eligible to com-
pete are publications issued between
Feb. 1. 1959 and Jan. 30, 1960.
development of the international
free trade union movement as a
vigorous force for the promotion
of peace, freedom and social
justice, our organization should
demonstrate and dramatize —
especially at this crucial moment
— its efforts to foster clarification
and understanding of the critical
world situation and United States
policies therein," the council said.
There is no better way, the coun-
cil maintained, of "assuring the full
contribution" of labor in the devel-
opment of a sound foreign policy
promoting peace and freedom.
Plans are being made for out-
standing authorities to address the
conference on all phases of the
international situation. Question
and discussion periods will follow
each principal address.
Labor Calls for Boycott
Of South African Goods
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has voiced
"deep concern" over the South African government's "continued
brutal and inhuman racial policies," and has called for a U.S. con-
sumer boycott of all imports from that country.
In a resolution adopted at the mid-winter council session here,
the AFL-CIO leaders noted that the ^
sixth world congress of the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions called on all affiliates to or-
ganize such boycotts.
The ICFTU session in Brussels
last December said the move would
be "tangible support" of labor soli-
darity with the oppressed South
Africans of Negro or mixed par-
entage and would "exert maximum
economic pressure" to bring about
a change in their government's ra-
cial policies.
The council instructed the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs to:
• Assist in the organization of
the boycott by the American labor
movement and provide educational
materials "to make the boycott ef-
fective."
• Work closely with citizen
committees comprising church,
civic and consumer groups, "thus
creating a broad base for a con-
sumers' boycott."
• Explore the "practicability of
reinforcing the consumers' boycott
by a government boycott of South
African gold and other materials."
• Advise the South African
government of labor's "determina-
tion to carry out the boycott" un-
less that government "is prepared
to change its inhuman racial poli-
cies."
The Executive Council said
South Africa's "apartheid" poli-
cies, which deny virtually all
rights to that country's millions
of Negroes, "do violence to all
concepts of decency and moral-'
ity." The United Nations Gen-
eral Assembly, the resolution
said, has "repeatedly con-
demned" the South African poli-
cies.
The worldwide boycott of South
Africa's raw materials and manu-
factured goods, the council said, is
being "strongly supported" in
Jamaica, many parts of Africa,
Western Europe, Scandinavia and
throughout the British Isles.
Page Five
Council Urges Thompson BUI:
$1 Billion School Aid
'Absolute Minimum'
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The $1 billion Thompson school construc-
tion bill — virtually the same as one introduced and then abandoned
by the Eisenhower Administration in 1957 — is the "absolute mini-
mum" to help meet the crisis in the nation's public schools, the
AFL-CIO has declared.
In a statement adopted at its^
session here, the Executive Coun-
cil restated labor's belief that the
"best bill before the Congress to
improve our educational system"
is the Murray-Metcalf bill, which
would provide $1.1 billion annually
for four years for both classroom
construction and teachers' salaries.
"Unfortunately," the council
declared in reference to mount-
ing conservative opposition both
to the size of the appropriation
and the use of federal funds
to help raise teachers' salaries,
"Congress has made it plain it
will not pass this measure."
The Murray-Metcalf bill cleared
the House Education Committee
last year but has been stalled by
the conservative - controlled Rules
Committee. In an effort to get an
aid-to-education measure past this
hostile group, a House Education
subcommittee this year voted unan-
imously for the bill sponsored by
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr., (D-
N.J.). ^
The Senate this year, by a 54-35
vote, passed a $1.8 billion two-year
school-aid bill that would make fed-
eral grants available for both con-
struction and teachers' pay.
House passage of the Thomp-
son bill, the Executive Council
statement declared, would "rec-
ognize the vital and urgent need
for federal grants to help build
the classrooms necessary to the
health and welfare of our chil-
dren" and would "at least be a
step in the right direction."
The Council said that the na-
tion's public school system "faces
a continuing genuine crisis in
1960," pointing to a nationwide
survey by the U.S. Office of Edu-
cation that showed that at the
start of the current school year
"we needed 132,000 additional
classrooms to house the growing
number of students and to replace
obsolete, unsatisfactory facilities."
While the classroom shortage
continues to be substantial and pub-
lic school enrollment — which has
climbed 42 percent since 1950 —
continues to increase, school bond
sales declined 20 percent from
September 1958 to August 1959,
the council said. It noted that
Health, Education & Welfare Sec
Arthur S. Flemming recently ad-
mitted this "unfortunate downward
trend."
The statement declared that Ad
ministration proposals to use fed
eral funds solely for the purpose of
helping pay interest charges on
school construction bonds is "next
to useless" because many school
districts "have literally reached the
limit of indebtedness and cannot
borrow more."
The AFL-CIO said the classroom
shortage is "only part of the story
of the crisis in education" and
pointed out that "because of in-
creased enrollment, more teachers
are needed each year." The state
ment continued:
Low Teacher Pay Hit
"Because wages are unconscion
ably low, not enough young men
and women enter the teaching pro-
fession. The results of the shortage
are evidenced in classes which are
too large and in the practice of hir-
ing teachers who do not meet mini-
mum certification requirements."
In the field of education, the
council also called for a federally
financed college scholarship pro-
gram for worthy students, point-
ing out that each year approxi-
mately 150,000 high school grad-
uates in the top quarter of their
classes do not enter college.
"Many of these students," the
council declared, "are deterred pri
marily for financial reasons. We,
as a nation, cannot afford this ter-
rible waste of our greatest natural
resource — our children."
Federal Pay Increase
Wins Council Support
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Salaries paid by the federal government to
its employes are "shamefully inadequate" and "below the com-
monly accepted requirement for a healthy and decent standard of
living," the AFL-CIO Executive Council declared here.
The council called on Congress to give "immediate and favorable
consideration" to legislation raisings-
salaries of annually-paid federal
workers by at least 12 percent.
The statement also endorsed the
full legislative program of the Gov-
ernment Employes Council, coordi-
nating body for 24 unions repre-
senting 650,000 federal workers.
Congressional approval was urged
for:
• A "long overdue" union rec-
ognition bill which would require
government agencies to consult
with unions "in setting policy and
resolving disputes involving work
rules, seniority, promotions and
routine grievances."
• Action by Congress "to halt
speed-up systems," including estab-
lishment of excessively high "pro-
ductivity norms" in some manual
operations.
• Modernization of the U.S.
Employes' Compensation Act, par-
ticularly with respect to benefits
payable for recurrence of injuries.
Under present law these benefits
are based on the employe's salary
at the time of the original disability
and no consideration is given to
interim wage increases.
Equal treatment for retired
government employes through en-
actment of a health benefit pro-
gram comparable to that voted last
year for active employes.
The Executive Council statement
emphasized, however, that salary
legislation should be given priority
consideration.
"The government's own figures,"
the statement declared, show the
"substandard" nature of federal sal-
aries.
A postal employe with three
dependents has approximately
$18 a week less take-home pay
than the average "spendable
earnings" of an industrial work-
er, the council declared quoting
Labor Dept. statistics.
"Almost one-half of all so-called
white - collar workers on Uncle
Sam's payroll earn less than $4,500
a year," the council noted.
Present federal pay levels, the
statement concluded, are below
"what is needed to man our public
service with skillful, conscientious
and efficient personnel."
RECOMMENDATION that the AFL-CIO General Board be convened after the party conventions
to consider endorsing a presidential candidate was made at a meeting of the Committee on Political
Education in Bal Harbour, Fla., which AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther is shown (above) ad-
dressing. The recommendation was approved the following day by the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
Civil Rights Cases in AFL-CIO
Face New Internal Procedures
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The AFL-CIO is making "definite progress" in policing civil rights abuses
within labor's ranks, Pres. George Meany declared here following Executive Council adoption of
new procedures to insure compliance with the federation's consitution in civil rights cases.
The council approved a system under which Meany will appoint special subcommittees to handle
each case of alleged violation that has not been resolved at a lower level. The subcommittees will
deal with the international unions^
involved and report directly back
to the Executive Council.
The new system replaces pro-
cedure under which compliance
with directives to eliminate dis-
crimination were handled by a sub-
committee of the AFL-CIO Civil
Rights Committee.
One Case Up Now
At the present time, there is one
case before the council. This in-
volves Local 26 of the Intl. Broth-
erhood of Electrical Workers in
Washington. Meany will function
as a subcommittee of one in this
case.
In discussing this case and the
broader internal civil rights at a
press conference, Meany said that
about 14 months ago the federa
tion was under tremendous pres
sure from the President's Commit-
tee on Equal Job Opportunities,
headed by Vice Pres. Nixon, to
take action against Local 26, which
refused to admit Negroes to mem-
bership.
Meany said the federation in-
sisted at that time that since the
contractor had signed an agreement
with the government containing a
non-discrimination clause, he be
forced to hire a Negro under the
union-shop provisions of his con-
tract with Local 26.
To facilitate a showdown,
Meany said, he told Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell, vice-chairman
of the committee, that a fully
trained Negro electrician would
be made available to the contrac-
tor. If the local refused to go
along, Meany continued, both
the IBEW and the federation
were prepared to act against the
local.
"I personally made that offer to
Mitchell on the telephone," Meany
said. "I urged him to act against
the construction company which
was violating its own contract with
the government."
No Word Since
The Nixon committee, he told
reporters, has never sent word to
the AFL-CIO since that time on
further action. A press release
which the committee had prepared,
detailing its activities in connection
with the Washington case, was
withdrawn, Meany said, "in order
to give the committee time to act
against the contractor, who was
the real culprit."
The AFL-CIO pointed out that
under the law the government can
cancel a contract when the contrac-
tor fails or refuses to honor his
guarantee not to discriminate in
employment.
Local 26, Meany said, is guilty
of non-compliance with the feder-
ation constitution but not of any
act regarding the Nixon commit-
tee. It is the contractor, not the
local union, which is in defiance of
the government provision.
The AFL-CIO president de-
clared "We're not going to aban-
don AFL-CIO policy or sur-
render to the local union," but
added that regardless of the
local's own stand on discrimina-
tion "the contractor should not
be allowed to hide behind the
policy of the local," with regard
to Negro workers.
He pointed out that a number
of civil rights cases have been han-
dled successfully, citing that of Iron
Workers Local 22 in Washington
which has registered several quali-
fied Negro rodmen for job re-
ferral, and an IBEW local in Co-
lumbia, S. C, that has been com-
pletely desegregated and has elected
a Negro as an officer.
Meany and AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
Walter P. Reuther serve on the
Nixon committee, and have coop-
erated over the years in eliminating
discrimination on jobs under gov-
ernment contract.
The AFL-CIO president said it
was unfortunate that the Nixon
committee "sort of lost interest" in
the IBEW Local 26 case "when we
insisted that they apply the law"
to the contractor.
Agnes Meyer Named
Murray-Green Winner
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The 1960 Murray-Green Award for out-
standing contributions to the nation will go to Mrs. Agnes Meyer
of Washington, D. C, author and lecturer in the fields of educa-
tion and social welfare, the AFL-CIO Executive Council announced
here. ® —
Mrs. Meyer, widow of the late
publisher Eugene Meyer of the
Washington Post & Times Herald,
will receive the award later this
year.
In other actions, the council:
• Voted $10,000 for the Gen-
eral Federation of Algerian Work-
ers (UGTA) to use in helping the
orphaned children of Algerian trade
unionists lost in the fighting there.
The children are in temporary
camps in adjoining Tunisia. The
council also urged the U. S. gov-
ernment to do everything in its
power to bring an end to the Al-
gerian war.
Aid to Finnish Unions
• Voted to provide financial aid
to the Finnish trade union move-
ment to prevent Communists from
taking control of the Finnish Fed-
eration of Labor (SAK).
• Approved a program to join
with the Israeli labor federation
(Histadrut) in setting up a labor
training college in Israel for Asian
and African trade unionists. The
AFL-CIO will provide half the
scholarships in the first year, a total
of about 60, at an approximate cost
of $175,000.
• Approved a $21,000 grant to
MRS. AGNES MEYER
Scheduled for Murray-Green
Award
the Kenya Federation of Labor to
help complete the federation's
headquarters building. The grant,
to come from the AFL-CIO Spe-
cial Purposes Fund, supplements
an initial $35,000 grant from the
William Green Memorial Fund and
was made because the Kenya group
could not raise the funds neces-
sary to complete the project.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20. 1960
The Canker Within
LOST IN THE MAZE of optimistic figures dominating the
government's latest job report and the headlines heralding
January 1960 as the "best January ever" for employment is a tragic
statistic revealing a dangerous infection in the nation's economic
bloodstream.
About 910,000 Americans have been out of a job for 15 weeks
or more. This in itself may not be an alarming figure although it
denotes an intolerable amount of despair, suffering and misery for
the families involved. What is alarming is the trend over the past
few years in this area of chronic long-term unemployment.
In 1957, before the onset of the worst postwar recession, there
were 500,000 persons in the 15 weeks or more unemployed cate-
gory. In January 1959 the figure rose to 1,375,000 as the effects
of the recession were still being felt. A year later, last month, in
a boom period it had dropped only to 910,000.
In the period from pre-recessioa to post-recession and boom,
long-term unemployment has increased 80 percent.
Coupled with the persistent over-5 percent rate of unemployment,
which plagued the country throughout 1959, and still persists, there
is real cause for alarm. The over-5 percent rate is the highest
leveling-off rate since the end of the war. And with the labor
force increasing steadily and automation and technology erasing
jobs, the problem can become even more acute.
A nation with 5.2 percent of its labor force idle cannot be
accurately described as having full employment despite economic
indicators pointing to a boom period.
There must be more jobs as the labor force expands; this is
simple arithmetic. The real problem is to eliminate the causes of
long-term chronic unemployment, to drop the rate of unemploy-
ment below 5 percent.
This can only be done by adopting policies geared to economic
growth rather than using tight money and restrictive budget policies
which perpetuate chronic ailments.
After Five Years
THE MIDWINTER MEETING of the Executive Council marked
the fifth anniversary of the agreement to merge the AFL and
CIO, approved by the Unity Committee after months of negotiations.
Five years later, after weathering a sharp political attack, a re-
cession, an assault on collective bargaining and on unions gener-
ally, the federation is in good working condition despite internal
disputes problems.
Internal disputes have been blown up out of all proportion by
incessant stories in the press, radio and TV that magnify internal
problems and completely overlook the positive, progressive pro-
grams of the federation to achieve ever-higher standards for all
Americans on and off the job. \
The council meeting focused attention on the important prob-
lems facing the nation and the labor movement — the problems of
organizing in a climate of sometimes vicious opposition to unions;
the problems of increasing automation and job displacement; the
task of winning progressive social welfare programs through
legislation and collective bargaining, of battling entrenched re-
actionary political forces, of fighting dictatorship and totalitarian-
ism everywhere and preserving free trade unions from extinction.
In the five years since the approval of the merger agreement,
the AFL-CIO has made progress in these areas far outweighing
the internal stresses that were inherent in the merger pact and which
are yielding, albeit slowly, to solution.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keen an
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M, Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, February 20, 1960
No. 8
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
How Do I Get To Be a Member?
Ar^U-CJlG
Law Professor Determines:
'Work' Laws Bar Best Industry,
Invite Exploitation and Strife
SO-CALLED "right-to-work" laws have re-
tarded the industrialization of the states that
have approved them, according to a noted legal
authority.
The conclusion was reached by Daniel H. Pol-
litt, associate professor of law at the University
of North Carolina, in an independent study of the
motivation and effect of the anti-collective bar-
gaining laws in 19 states.
A 36-page report on his research results, en-
titled "Right-to-Work Laws: An Evidentiary Ap-
proach," has been published by the National
Council for Industrial Peace, of which Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt and former Sen. Herbert H.
Lehman (D-N. Y.) are co-chairmen.
The report stated that the real purpose behind
"right-to-work" laws "is to hamstring union ef-
fectiveness."
Pollitt said in his heavily-documented study
that industries that boost the economy of an
area prefer to locate in "high-wage'* states in-
stead of states with "right-to-work" laws where
low wages prevail.
"These market-oriented plants produce such
things as automobiles, farm equipment, electrical
supplies, machinery, rubber products, and build-
ing materials," the report stated.
"They build the largest plants, employ the most
people, and pay the highest wages . . . they ex-
pected to be unionized and were in fact unionized.
Many of them have company wide agreements with
the home union whereby wages are standardized
in all plants, wherever located."
HE REPORTED that, by contrast, a few in-
dustries that pay the lowest wage scales have
moved to low-wage "right-to-work" states for the
purpose of "exploiting" working people, and that
the result has been to "create rather than solve"
economic problems.
"Industrialization, accompanied by low wages,
is the cause, not the cure, for economic problems.
"All studies . . . indicate that right-to-work
law states have not received more than their
proportionate share of new industry, and that the
enactment of right-to-work laws is in no way
responsible for their increase in non-farm em-
ployment. . .. •
"There is no evidence that industry as a whole
is concerned with 'right-to-work' laws when select-
ing a location for expansion.
"Of the ten states w hich led in the percentage
of increased industrialization from 1939 to 1953,
only two of them (Texas and Florida) were right-
to-work states."
Pollitt said that the type of industry which
moves to a state to avoid union wage scales
"does not increase the economic welfare of the
state where it settles — it exploits rather than
develops the economy, and thereby makes the
region less attractive" to industries that enhance
a state's economic well-being.
"RIGHT-TO-WORK laws have not only failed
to prevent work stoppages; they have had the
detrimental effect of depriving the employer of
what he wants most from a union — a firm 'no-
strike' pledge for the duration of the collective
bargaining agreement.
"The enactment of right-to-work laws did not
curtail the number of strikes in the 11 original
right-to-work states.
"Nebraska, whose spokesman told the Senate
that its right-to-work law decreased strikes, was
the scene of twice as many of the nation's strikei
in the years following the right-to-work law as in
the years preceding its enactment.
"In seven of the 11 original right-to-work
law states (Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska,
North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas) the
percentage of the nation's strikes has increased
since 1947. For the seven-year period prior
to 1947, the combined 11 right-to-work law
states had an annual average of 3.5 percent of
the nation's strikes; in the seven-year period fol-
lowing 1947, the percentage increased to 4.51
percent."
Pollitt made these further points:
• "The union shop contract is essential to the
very existence of unions in some industries, and
conductive to better labor-management relations
in all."
• "The overwhelming majority of employes
affected want the union shop, as do those em-
ployers with first hand experience."
• "There is no valid reason why the payment
of union dues as a basis of continued employ-
ment should not be left to agreement by manage-
ment and labor."
• "So long as unions must fight for the right
to exist, so long as the principle of good faith
collective bargaining is denied in large quarters,
unions need to negotiate for and enter into union
security agreements."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, JX C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Playing Politics at Canaveral?
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m„ EST.)
AT HIS NEWS CONFERENCE on Jan. 13,
Pres. Eisenhower angrily denied the implica-
tion of a questioner that his administration was
dealing with the issue of
defense on a partisan basis.
' . . . I don't have to be
partisan/* he snapped in
reply, "and I want to tell
you this: Tve spent my life
in this, and I know more
about it than almost any-
body, I think, ... in the
country . . . ."
Thus, the President set
himself up as the supreme
Morgan authority, as it were, on
the whole complex problem of our preparedness,
who simply wasn't going to brook any criticism
from anybody, least of all a lot of "parochial"
generals and busybody politicians.
That being the case, it is both proper and timely
to wonder how much the President increased his
knowledge by his jet-propelled trip to Cape Cana-
veral.
THE WHITE HOUSE broadly hinted that
"some important new stuff" would be seen and/or
revealed on the tour. News Sec. James Hagerty
said the President would have something to say to
reporters at the end of his visit and the implica-
tion was that it could well be an important pro-
nouncement about U.S. weapons strength.
The President's actual words did not make the
headlines. "Well," he said as he prepared to fly
back to Washington, "it was an interesting day,
and I have been wanting to come here for a long
time, so it is a trip that is another realization of
ambition." But with the crucial debate over our
relative strength with the Soviet Union still at
its height, every paper in America carried a picture
of Gen. Eisenhower, wreathed in a reassuring
smile, standing before a poised missile at Cape
Canaveral.
In the hurried improvisations that passed for
planning of the venture to the famous missile
and satellite testing center (Cape Canaveral
had 24 hours 9 notice of the visit which had been
so long on the President's mind), photographers
had prime vantage points but reporters were
held at arms length for "security" reasons.
Pres. Eisenhower spent less than three hours
actually inspecting equipment and being briefed.
Despite the Administration's belated emphasis
on a space program, he took no official of the
Civilian Space Agency with him and as Science
Writer William Hines reported in the Washing-
ton Star, "As far as increasing his grasp of
either science or missilery was concerned, Mr.
Eisenhower could have learned as much by
staying at home and being briefed" by Penta-
gon experts.
"About the only thing of any national conse-
quence that occurred," reported Hines, who ac-
companied the President, "was a breach of mili-
tary security." This involved some overheard
classified data on the Polaris submarine missile.
WHATEVER its other ramifications, the leak,
Hines wrote, "was important as a symptom charac-
teristic of what happens when news is created or
'managed' for reasons that apparently have little
to do with the national welfare. ... A prime
purpose of the tour seemed to be to secure photo-
graphs of Mr. Eisenhower in front of some
missiles."
Such a dispatch, in such a staunchly Republi-
can, loyally pro-Eisenhower metropolitan daily as
the Evening Star, is not lightly to be brushed
aside. "I will go to Korea," promised the general
in 1952 in what Democrats cried was the political-
ly-motivated but admittedly clinching climax of his
campaign. And now, as Washington Post Car-
toonist Herblock penned it so pointedly, with the
verbal missiles of the defense debate whistling
about his ears, he has beaten them to Cape Cana-
veral. A perfect ploy in political gamesmanship?
The stakes are terrifyingly high, whatever it is.
Heart Fund Support Is Asked
Approximately 900,000 Americans die every
year from diseases of the heart and circulatory
system — 54 percent of all deaths.
A lot of them, of course, are workers. The
Street & Electric Railway Employes, for instance,
conducted a study of the 171 deceased members
to whose families death benefits were paid in
Jan. 1959 and found that 104 — more than 60
percent — were victims of some form of disease
of the heart and blood vessels.
Workers can only mourn their dead. But they
can do something to restore the disabled and the
crippled to useful lives.
They can contribute to the annual Heart Fund
campaign of the American Heart Association,
which is conducted this month and which will
reach its climax on Heart Sunday, Feb. 28, when
1.5 million volunteers — many of them union mem-
bers — will make door to door collections.
There was a time when a worker strickerf by
a heart or circulatory ailment was put on the
Washington Reports:
scrap heap for the rest of his life. Now 80 per-
cent of all workers who survive first heart
attacks are able to go to back to work,
That is why organized labor so strongly sup-
ports the campaign to fight what the Heart Asso-
ciation calls the country's No. 1 enemy.
That's why AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and
Vice. Pres A. J. Hayes, president of the Machin-
ists, have accepted reappointments to the Commit-
tee of National Sponsors of the 1960 Heart Fund.
Meany pointed out that union members, "like
every other member of our society," are affected
by heart ailments and "must do their part to help
eliminate this scourge."
"It is only proper that we in the AFL-CIO
recognize our stake in the fight against heart
disease. As a national sponsor of the 1960
Heart Fund, I commend to you this worthy
cause for your support. I am confident the
men and women of the AFL-CIO will meet this
challenge."
More Economic Growth Urged
SEN. PAUL DOUGLAS (D-ILL.), chairman of
the Joint Congressional Economic Commit-
tee, and the ranking minority member of the com-
mittee, Rep. Thomas B. Curtis (R-Mo.) agreed
in an interview on Washington Reports to the
People that unemployment continues to increase
"at a worrisome rate" despite other improvements
in the economy.
They disagreed on the way to correct the situa-
Douglas said on the AFL-CIO public service
program heard on over 300 radio stations: "I
think we must recognize that rapid technological
growth brings in its wake much unemployment.
In the prosperous periods of 1951-53, unemploy-
ment was 3 percent. In 1956-57, it was 4 per-
cent. Now it's over 5 percent. Furthermore,
each recession tends to be more severe."
Curtis claimed that the expected budget bal-
ance "will help ease the tight-money situation so
that we can get investment necessary to finance
expansion, which means more jobs."
The two spokesmen disagreed on the bases for
estimating economic growth. Douglas divided his
figures into two periods: 1947-53 for the Truman
Administration, during which he said the growth
rate was 4.5 percent, and 1953-59, the Eisenhow-
er years, "when it was only 2.3 percent, or only
half as great."
Curtis claimed the figures were unfair, since
1953 was within the period of the Korean War,
when the growth was high. He said that from
1946, "which was the end of World War II,"
projected through 1960, the rate of growth is 4
percent.
Douglas challenged the inclusion of 1960 since
"it has not yet occurred," and pointed out that
the rate of growth from 1946 to 1959, according
to the Committee for Economic Development, a
business group, was 3.2 percent. Curtis argued
that there is "pretty good agreement by everyone
that we are going to hit a $510 billion national
product in 1960."
WASHINGTON
i
THERE IS SOMETHING distressing about the speech by the
venerable former Pres. Hoover the other day charging that this
country is "plagued by the infection of Karl Marx" and that the
agents of infection are people who "like hermit crabs crawl into
such terms as 'liberal,' 'progressive,' 'public electric power,' the
'welfare state' and a half-dozen others."
It is nearly 30 years since the 85-year-old Mr. Hoover was
drowned by public repudiation of the policies he pursued in the
White House in a time of dreadful national distress. Such a re-
pudiation is shocking to any human being, no doubt, and it is
understandable that he clings to a hope of vindication and stoutly
claims, "I was right/'
The carping reiteration of "Marx, Marx, Marx" to character-
ize every political position with which the old gentleman dis-
agrees is nevertheless an indication of one of the things really
wrong with the country.
Mr. Eisenhower, a temperate soul, would never publicly use
terms like "hermit crabs" to impute bad faith to those who "crawl
into" advocacy of "public electric power." His Administration did
try to gut the Tennessee Valley Authority in the abortive Dixon-
Yates deal and had to be fought to a showdown exposing chicanery
before the surrender. "Expansion" of the TVA, the President him-
self indicated, was his prime example of "creeping socialism."
It would be very bad, the successor to Mr. Hoover says, for the
federal government to appropriate funds to aid states and localities
in paying adequately such "local officials" as school teachers. He
has obviously never read the unanswerable massed testimony show-
ing that for generations the federal government has actually in-
vested funds to initiate and support educational systems, including
the payment of salaries, with never an evidence that this sapped
the people's moral fiber.
The American people historically have had the sense to use
their community strength, through the federal government that
represents all of them, to advance their common purposes.
* * *
THE U.S. CHAMBER of Commerce has found a congressman,
Rep. Phil Landrum (D-Ga.), to echo its argument that the prevail-
ing-wage protections of the Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healey Acts
are "unfair."
The chamber, as its own publications say, is "waging a cam-
paign" for repeal of these laws. Its spokesman, a Union Carbide
Corp. lawyer named William C. Treanor, told the chamber's leg-
islative conference on Jan. 27 that "someone should have had the
foresight" to get the laws repealed when the first minimum wage
act was passed in 1938, because minimum wages made the earlier
protective laws "entirely unnecessary."
The Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healey laws require contractors on
government jobs to pay wages equal to those "prevailing" in an
area. They were designed to prevent federal money from being
used for undermining standard wage rates.
The minimum wage law, on the other hand, was designed to
protect the defenseless worker in private business, not government
contracts, and chiefly those who because of circumstances have not
been capable of organizing unions for their own protection against
exploiters. The first standard minimum was $10 a week, rising to
$16 a week, and it is now $40 for a 40-hour week.
Landrum, one of the sponsors of the Landrum-Griffin Act,
wrote in Nation's Business last August that the more generous
provisions of the ^Walsh-Healey and Davis-Bacon Acts "work a
hardship on the government and the businesses they cover."
He said "repeal should be considered" because the $40 minimum
wage law "accomplishes the same general purpose."
Landrum is chairman of a House Labor subcommittee expected
to "investigate" the Davis-Bacon and Walsh-Healey Acts to demon-
strate the "hardship" when the government requires contractors to
pay anything above $40 a week.
SEN. PAUL DOUGLAS (D-ILL.), right, charged the Republican
party "believes in fighting inflation by helping to create unemploy-
ment" as he was interviewed on Washington Reports to the Peo-
ple, AFL-CIO public service radio program. Rep. Thomas B.
Curtis (R-Mo.) insisted that curtent GOP policies, including a bud-
get surplus, would reduce unemployment
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
Display oi Sea Power:
Aircraft Carrier Host to Executive Council
IN WARDROOM aboard giant carrier, Vice Pres. George M.
Harrison expresses thanks on behalf of council members for naval
display. At right is Rear Adm. W. A. Sutherland, Jr., commander
of Carrier Div. 2.
JET FIGHTERS are assembled on flight deck of U.S.S. Independence, largest of
nation's attack carriers, prior to full-scale display put on for members of AFL-CIO
Executive Council during mid-winter session at Bal Harbour, Fla.
MODERN OPERATING ROOM aboard Navy carrier is inspected by members
of Executive Council, who in addition to watching naval display toured the Inde-
pendence to get close look at facilities designed to care for crew members both in
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL members and staff pose about Independ- peacetime and under combat conditions,
ence's flight deck with Navy host prior to start of three-hour maneu-
vers designed to stress might of America's sea power. i$p
Members of Council |
Visit independence'
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The U.S.S. Independence, largest and might* |,
iest of the Navy's attack aircraft carriers, played host to members
of the AFL-CIO Executive Council during the mid-winter council p||;, .
session here.
For three hours out at sea council members, accompanied by
AFL-CIO staff members and reporters covering the council meeting,
watched the Navy put on a display of sea power that ranged from
bombing, strafing and aerial acrobatics to a convincing demonstra-
tion of "Sidewinder" missiles that tracked and destroyed their prey.
The naval exhibition also included a demonstration of sub-
marine and depth-bombing by the Destroyer Strong, which ac-
companied the Independence to sea for the special showing for
federation leaders.
Host to the council members were Rear Adm. W. A. Sutherland,
Jr., commander of Carrier Div. 2; Independence Capt. J. W.
O'Grady; and Capt. W. F. Schleck of the office of the Chief of
Naval Operations.
Council members making the all-day trip were Vice Presidents NAVY HELICOPTER hovers near aircraft carrier Independence while members of AFL-CIO
George M. Harrison, James B. Carey, William C. Doherty, Joseph Executive Council, federation staff members, labor reporters and crewmen line the rail to watch finale
Curran, L. S. Buckmaster, O. A. Knight, Paul L. Phillips, Karl F. of special naval show in waters off Florida coast. Display included depth-bombing, firing of
Feller and Richard F. Walsh.
missiles and submarine tracking.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
Page NSn*
States Have Failed:
Federal Standards
On Benefits Asked
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Declaring that in six years the states have
proved that they will not heed Pres. Eisenhower's pleas for volun-
tary improvements in their unemployment insurance laws, the AFL-
CIO Executive Council has declared "it is now clearly up to Con-
gress to ... put a floor under the state programs."
The council adopted a statement^
at its mid-winter session here sup-
porting the pending Karsten-Mu-
chrowicz-Kennedy-Case- McCarthy
bill which would set minimum fed-
eral standards, below r which the
states could not fall, on the amount
and duration of benefits, and
broadening coverage.
The bill would set benefits at
50 percent of a worker's average
earnings, not to exceed two-thirds
of the average state wage; would
pay unemployment insurance for
a flat 39-week period; and would
include millions of workers cur-
rently deprived of protection under
the program.
Appeal to States Futile
The Executive Council noted
that Eisenhower first called on the
state legislatures to amend their un-
employment insurance laws in
1954, repeating the plea periodi-
cally since that time.
In the six years which have
passed, the statement continued,
only Hawaii and possibly New
York have met these goals, al-
though the nation "has been
through two recessions with mil-
lions of unemployed suffering
from the shortcomings of the
state programs."
The council said that "it is only
by the federal government laying
down standards that the competi-
tion for low-cost (and therefore
low -benefit) programs between
states can be halted." It added that
unemployment insurance taxes on
employers today "average only one-
third the tax rate of 20 years ago."
In House hearings on the jobless
pay program last year, the Execu-
tive Council declared, the Admin-
istration and employers "admitted
that the state programs were inade-
quate to protect the unemployed,
but pleaded for more time to per-
mit the states to correct their pro-
grams." The statement added:
"The record of these hearings
shows that the same employers
who appeared in Washington to
urge Congress to rely on the
states, themselves opposed ade-
quate benefits when they ap-
peared before their state legisla-
tures. As a result, only 23 states
raised their maximum benefit
last year; only 16 lengthened the
duration of benefits.'"
The council warned that unless
Congress enacts permanent im-
provements this session "it will be
too late to be of any help for the
unemployed" if the nation experi-
ences a recession which economists
have forecast could begin in 1961.
DEEPLY ENGROSSED in their documents at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting at Bal Har-
bour, Fla., are these three AFL-CIO vice presidents — Pres. O. A. Knight (left) of the Oil, Chemical
& Atomic Workers; Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky (center) of the Clothing Workers and Pres. Harry C.
Bates of the Bricklayers.
Dept. of Consumers Cabinet Post
Asked as Safeguard Against Gyps
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Labor will press vigorously for federal, state and local action to protect con-
sumers against "exorbitant pricing, harmful products and deceitful advertising," the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council declared in a statement issued here.
Calling for establishment of a cabinet-level Dept. of Consumers, the council cited disclosures of
profiteering by the prescription drug industry and "payola" in broadcasting as examples of the "victim-
ization" of the public by commer-^
cial interests.
The statement praised the efforts
of some government agencies to
protect the health and interests of
consumers despite pressure from
powerful trade groups, but de-
Housing Construction Drop Holds
Seeds of Recession, Council Says
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Warning that the present housing construction downturn could precipitate
new recession, the AFL-CIO has called for both emergency and long-range housing legislation to
halt the decline.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council said the "major reason" for the housing slump has been "the
'tight-money' policy the Eisenhower Administration has foisted on the nation's economy." It added
that in the 1953-54 and 1957-58 ^
recessions "it was the cutback in
housing activity which preceded
and helped to precipitate the gen-
eral economic setback."
Housing experts, the council
said in a statement adopted at its
mid-winter session, are predicting
that 1960's housing starts will be
down by 200,000 or more "from
the already inadequate level of
1959." The statement said this
would throw an additional 400,000
or more workers out of jobs "at a
time when high level chronic un-
employment already plagues the
nation."
The council reaffirmed labor's
support of the emergency hous-
ing bill introduced by Rep.
Albert Rains (D-Ala.) which
would make $1 billion in federal
funds available for mortgages on
moderate-priced houses and free
home buyers from excessive "dis-
count" charges piled on top of
high interest rates. The council
termed the Rains bill a "neces-
sary stop-gap to restore mini-
mum levels of housing activity
Declaring that the nation needs
an annual building rate of at least
2.25 million housing units, the
AFL-CIO leaders urged that once
Congress has passed the Rains bill
it should "turn immediately to con-
sideration and enactment of a long-
range housing program geared to
the nation's total long-term housing
requirements." The program would
include:
• A large-scale, low-rent public
RAPT ATTENTION is paid to the proceedings at the Bal Har-
bour, Fla., meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council by Vice
Presidents A. Philip Randolph (leftj and Joseph N. Curran.
housing program "to provide decent
homes for low-income families."
• An effective middle-income
housing program.
• A fully adequate program of
housing for the elderly.
• A federal policy to assure
every family an equal opportunity
to obtain decent homes without re-
gard to race, color, creed or na-
tional origin.
• A greatly expanded slum
clearance and urban redevelopment
program.
• Effective encouragement to
metropolitan planning.
• Other measures, including en-
couragement for cooperative and
moderate-priced rental housing;
adequate housing for family farm-
ers and farm workers; requirement
of payment of the prevailing wage
in any housing construction in-
volving federal financial assistance;
and protection of home owners
against foreclosure in emergency
situations.
"Enactment of legislation con-
taining these features," the coun-
cil statement declared, "would
make possible for the first time a
major step toward the achievement
of the goal of good homes for all.
It would also help lay a solid foun-
dation for economic prosperity in
the years ahead."
CORRECTION
In the Feb. 13 issue of the AFL-
CIO News, there was an inadvert-
ent error in the headline on a story
dealing with the decision of Jack
Weinberger to remain as secretary-
treasurer of the Hotel & Restaurant
Workers. The headline mistakenly
referred to the veteran trade union-
ist by the name of "Weinheimer."
The AFL-CIO New* regrets the
error.
nounced other regulatory bodies as
"timid or apathetic."
"The Federal Communications
Commission should stop consider-
ing itself as the special protector
of the industry it is supposed to
regulate and instead start consider-
ing the public interest," the council
asserted.
The AFL-CIO leaders called
on the nation's physicians to help
break the "price-gouging poli-
cies" of the drug manufacturers.
These policies, coupled with un-
necessary promotional gimmicks,
"are adding untold millions to
the already high cost of medical
care," they stated.
A significant factor in the high
cost of drugs, the statement noted,
is the huge sum spent by the in-
dustry on "gifts, hospitality and
other types of kickbacks" in an
effort to persuade physicians to pre-
scribe drugs by trade-marked name
rather than by chemical ingredients.
"The aggressive salesmanship of
the drug manfacturers as well as
the too-ready acceptance of brand
names by the doctors must both
yield to a greater sense of respon-
sibility toward the patient's health
and his pocketbook," the council
added.
Pointing out that "organized
labor has always taken the con-
sumer's fight as its own," the coun-
cil called for support — and ade-
quate budgets — for regulatory
agencies including the Food &
Drug Administration and the Fed-
eral Trade Commission.
The FDA and its parent Dept. of
Health, Education & Welfare were
praised for "staunch refusal" to
permit the distribution of contami-
nated cranberries and poultry.
These episodes, the council
noted, "brought sharply into public
awareness the vital and difficult role
that government agencies must un-
dertake in behalf of the consumer
against careless, ignorant or callous
preoccupation with profit-making
at the possible expense of injury to
the consumer."
The statement emphasized that
pending legislation to protect
consumers against harmful color-
ing matter in food, drugs and
cosmetics should retain a provi-
sion banning any substance
shown to produce cancer in ani-
mals.
Appropriations for the Federal
Trade Commission must be "sub-
stantially increased" to allow the
agency effectively to police mis-
leading advertising, the statement
declared.
Calling for both state and federal
regulation of credit charges and de-
ception in installment selling, the
council endorsed a bill sponsored
by Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.)
to require that installment purchase
contracts include a full statement
of finance charges expressed in
terms of simple annual interest.
Would Alert Consumers
Such a law, said the council,
"would do much to alert consumers
to the high prices they now pay for
money."
The council praised the action of
states which "have pioneered in
the establishment of an Office of
the Consumer Counsel as a means
of initiating consumer programs
and legislation and stimulating
recognition of the consumer view-
point in governmental regulatory
activities."
Creation of a federal Dept. of
Consumers, the council declared,
would provide "a stronger voice
for the consumer" and "more
imaginative and disinterested ac-
tivity" in the consumer's behalf.
Publication on
Labor History
Makes Bow
New York — The first issue of a
scholarly publication devoted to
labor history has been greeted by
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany as
filling "a vital need."
The publication, called Labor
History, will come out three times
a year under the auspices of the
Tamiment Institute and will con-
tain original research in American
labor history, studies of unions and
biographical portraits of labor offi-
cials.
"Until it appeared," said Meany,
"there was no academic journal
devoted exclusively to labor history.
Surely this was a remarkable de-
ficiency: for labor is a vital force
in our national life and has power-
fully shaped the nation's history.
And without an understanding of
labor's contribution, it would be im-
possible to understand that history.
'Today more than ever labor
needs the objectivity, truth and
clarification which scholarship
can bring to an understanding of
its role in the life of the nation."
Chairman of the magazine's edi-
torial board is Prof. Richard B.
Morris. Board members include
Daniel Bell, Walter Galenson,
Maurice Neufeld, Philip Taft and
Brendan Sexton.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
BANQUET HONORING W. P. Kennedy on his re-election as president of the Railroad Trainmen
brought congratulatory handshake from/ left to right, Assistant Pres. S. C. Phillips of the Locomotive
Firemen & Enginemen; Assistant Grand Chief Engineer R. E. Davidson of the Locomotive Engineers;
Pres. H. E. Gilbert of the BLFE; Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy (D-Minn.); BRT Sec.-Treas.-elect W. E. B.
Chase; Kennedy; Asst. to the Pres.-elect Charles Lune; Minnesota State Legis. Rep. L. J. Covey.
Action on Civil Rights
Asked of Congress
(Continued from Page 1)
ministration proposal is "superior."
The statement pointed out that the
Eisenhower plan would extend vot-
ing right guarantees to state as well
as federal elections, and would in-
clude voting as well as registration.
The council added that the Ad-
ministration proposal "may not be
as effective" as the commission plan
backed by the liberal Democrats,
"in producing large numbers of
Negro registrations." As drafted,
thp Administration proposal might
require each person allegedly de-
nied voting or registration rights
to go through protracted court pro-
cedures to prove he was discrimi-
nated against, while the liberal plan
would permit wholesale registration
once discrimination was proved.
The AFL-CIO leaders expressed
fear that the coalition of southern
Democrats and conservative Re-
Guaranteed
Cargo Plane
Loans Backed
The AFL-CIO has endorsed
legislation authorizing government-
guaranteed loans to enable air-
lines to purchase jet cargo planes
which would be available for
military use in times of national
emergency.
AFL-CIO Legislative Rep.
George D. Riley told the Senate
Aviation subcommittee that the bill
should clearly specify that the air-
craft must be constructed in the
United States.
Sen. A. S. Mike Monroney
(D-Okla.), chairman of the sub-
committee, sponsored the bill
which provides guarantees for
loans up to 75 percent of the
purchase price of the aircraft
Cargo planes purchased through
government-guaranteed loans would
be required to meet design and
performance standards set by the
Defense Dept.
Similar legislation enacted in
1957, Riley told the subcommittee,
played an important part in help-
ing passenger airlines convert to
jet operation.
St. Louis Rail Clerks
Council Picks Officers
St. Louis — Anthony J. Posage
has been re-elected president of the
St. Louis-East St. Louis District
Council of the Railway Clerks.
Other officers elected at a meeting
here include O. E. Chartrand, vice
president, and William F. Mar-
ateiner, secretary-treasurer.
publicans "which was responsible
for the Landrum-Griffin bill last
year, and which has blocked much-
needed social and economic legis-
lation," may still be in operation in
Congress.
The council pointed out that if
the Republicans had "rallied be-
hand" a liberal-sponsored discharge
petition in the House which would
have bypassed the conservative-
dominated Rules Committee and
brought a bill to the floor, the
House "could have completed de-
liberations on civil rights."
The approximately 44 GOP
members who have joined 165
Democrats in signing the peti-
tion thus far, the statement said,
"deserve the appreciation of all
civil rights supporters."
In addition to voting guarantees,
the Executive Council declared, a
civil rights measure enacted this
year should carry a provision per-
mitting the government to institute
civil suits in school desegregation
cases in order to make the bill "ef-
fective and meaningful." The state-
ment concluded:
"The AFL-CIO calls upon the
Congress to enact such a bill with-
out further delay. The rights of
all citizens to vote, to attend
schools of their choice, to live in
dignity and security must not be
denied another day."
Unions Seek
Extension of
Working Pact
Portland, Ore. — Extension of a
17-month-old working agreement
between the Woodworkers and the
Pulp-Sulphite Workers has been
recommended by unity committees
from the two AFL-CIO unions.
The committees made the recom-
mendation to their respective ex-
ecutive boards following a meeting
here to review progress under the
10-point working agreement en-
tered into Sept. 25, 1958.
Joint Meeting Urged
In separate reports filed with
their respective unions, the com-
mittees recommended the calling of
a joint meeting of the executive
boards of both the Pulp-Sulphite
and Woodworkers unions in Chi-
cago Apr. 2.
In addition to considering ex-
tension of the interim working
agreement, the boards were urged
by the unity committees to discuss
a closer working arrangement in
the fields of education, political ac-
tion, legislative problems, collective
bargaining and organizing.
Serving on the Pulp-Sulphite
unity committee are S. A. Stephens,
Godfrey J. Ruddick, Frank Barnes
and Elmer Meinz. The IWA's com-
mittee includes Pres. Al Hartung,
Joe Morris, Harvey Nelson, Burk
Christie and James Fadling.
AFL-CIO Tells Congress:
Bond Interest Hike
Held Not Justified
Pointing out that interest rates are now "at a 35-year high," the
AFL-CIO has told members of Congress that "no change ... is
justified" in the current 4.25 percent interest ceiling on long-term
government bonds.
Taking direct issue with Pres. Eisenhower, who has urged com-
plete repeal of the interest ceiling^"
to give the Administration "flexi-
bility 1 ' in its fiscal policies, the fed-
eration declared that the "decision-
making authority on this vital mat-
ter" should not be "transferred to
the President."
The AFL-CIO position was set
forth in a letter which Andrew J.
Biemiller, director of the federa-
tion's Dept. of Legislation, sent to
all members of the House and Sen-
ate. Accompanying it was a de-
tailed statement summarizing la-
bor's opposition to the bond rate
proposals put forth by Eisenhower
in his Budget Message for the sec-
ond successive year.
"Since World War I — through
booms, depressions and military
crises — the U.S. has successfully
met its money needs without
breaching the 4.25 percent in-
terest rate ceiling on long-term
bonds," Biemiller's letter de-
clared.
Since 1953, he went on, "hard
money" has been "a persistent ob-
jective" of the Eisenhower Admin-
istration. In pursuit of this policy,
Biemiller told congressmen, the
White House has attempted to jus-
tify higher interest rates "on one
pretext after another even when
more effective and equitable ways
of achieving monetary objectives
have been available."
Liberals Fight Move
The Eisenhower proposal, turned
down by Congress last year, has
run into determined opposition on
Capitol Hill. Senate liberals have
served notice they will continue to
fight the interest rate move at least
until the Administration "reforms"
its fiscal policies. Chairman Wil-
bur D. Mills (D-Ark.) deferred
a vote on the Administration re-
quest in the House Ways & Means
Committee.
The AFL-CIO letter to con-
gressmen warned that the sale of
long-term bonds "at highly in-
flated costs at a time when inter-
est rates have been at a 35-year
high would unnecessarily add bil-
lions to taxpayer burdens and
further inflate all other interest
rates as well."
House Rules Committee Clears
Civil Rights, Senate Opens Debate
(Continued from Page 1)
calling for appointment of federal
officers to register Negroes and in-
sure their voting rights if these
rights have been denied by local
officials.
With a weeks-long southern fili-
buster looming in the Senate, liberal
strategy seemed to hinge on House
passage of a measure containing
these tougher provisions before the
Senate gets down to a vote. Senate
adoption of the House bill without
substantial change would preclude
a new blockade in the House Rules
unit.
Oratory Heated
The Senate debate began with a
blast of heated southern oratory
after Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.) announced that
a routine measure granting tem-
porary aid to a Missouri school
district would serve as the vehicle
for civil rights legislation. Pend-
ing civil rights bills have not been
cleared by either the Senate Judici-
ary or Rules Committees.
The Johnson parliamentary
maneuver, supported by Minority
Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen
(R-Ill.), brought angry speeches
from southern forces led by Sen.
Richard B. Russell (D-Ga.) who
charged that liberals were "lynch-
ing" Senate procedures in an elec-
tion-year attempt to "harass the
South."
With the Administration and
congressional liberals divided on
the question of the best method for
guaranteeing Negroes their regis-
tration and voting rights, the Senate
was expected to receive a pro-
posal drafted by Sen. Thomas C.
Hennings, Jr. (D-Mo.), which
would combine features of plans
advanced by both sides.
AFL-CIO Urges Action
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil, at its mid-winter session in
Bal Harbour, Fla., called for a
blend of both measures into a
workable bill and expressed the
hope that- "petty partisanship''
would not block passage of civil
rights legislation.
Under the Hennings' proposal,
minority rights in both state and
federal elections would be pro-
tected through court-appointed
officials on the basis on lawsuits
brought under the Civil Rights
Act of 1957. The Missouri
Democrat proposed that if a
judge found discrimination
against any Negroes, the Pres-
ident would be empowered to ap-
point officials to help all Negroes
in the area involved to register
and vote.
This would be achieved through
a finding by Congress that when-
ever a few Negroes were found by
a court to face voting discrimina-
tion, all members of the race would
be presumed to face the same dis-
crimination.
Under the Hennings plan, fed-
eral officials would register Ne-
groes under the same procedures
<( as for white persons.
29 Oil Firms
Acquitted of
Price Fixing
Tulsa, Okla. — Twenty-nine ma-
jor oil companies which raised gas-
oline prices in January 1957 after
the Suez Canal crisis cut off Mid-
dle East supplies have been ac-
quitted of violating the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act.
The companies had been indicted
for having conspired to raise prices
even though inventories of gasoline
and crude oil were considerably
higher than usual.
Federal Judge Royce H. Sav-
age, who heard the criminal case
without a jury, said the evidence
of conspiracy presented by the
Justice Dept. "doesn't rise above
the level of suspicion."
Almost identical language was
used by another federal judge last
November in dismissing the gov-
ernment's anti-trust charges against
drug companies accused of price-
fixing Salk polio vaccine.
The decision was hailed by the
oil companies, who had been rep-
resented by more than 80 attorneys
during the trial. Said Continental
Oil Co. Pres. L. F. McCollum,
The decision shows that the whole
petroleum industry serves the pub-
lic and the nation through vigor-
ous competition under the Amer-
ican free enterprise system."
Justice Dept. officials said it
would be "inappropriate" for them
to comment.
Struck Airline
Sues 2 Unions,
50 Members
Burbank, Calif. — The Flying
Tiger airline, grounded by picket
lines of striking navigators, mem-
bers of the Transport Workers,
has filed a number of multi-million
dollar lawsuits and injunctions
aimed at forcing Pilots and Flight
Engineers to cross the picket lines.
TWU pickets were posted in 10
cities where the cargo airline main-
tains terminals after the company
torpedoed a strike settlement by
insisting that 15 strikebreakers
hired to replace the 24 striking
navigators be retained with super-
seniority. The strikebreakers had
been hired under individual six-
month contracts after the TWU
navigators struck on Jan. 21.
Temporary restraining orders
were obtained by the company
against the Pilots in Federal Dis-
trict Court in New Jersey and
against the Flight Engineers in a
California state court. Members
of both unions had been respect-
ing the picket lines.
In addition the company has
filed damage suits demanding $6
million from the TWU and $5
million from the Pilots, and has
sued separately each of its 50 flight
engineers for $1 million, plus a $1
million suit against the union's in-
ternational president, Ronald A.
Brown.
TWU Vice Pres. James F. Horst,
director of the union's air transport
division, said the airline "is the vio-
tim of its own shameful pact" with
the strikebreakers and "is now at-
tempting to force a settlement that
would grant parasitic personnel
preference of employment.*'
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
Vuge FA even
'Battle of Survival' :
Portland Strikers Score Hit
With First Issue of Paper
Portland, Ore. — The Portland Reporter, a new weekly published by eight unions on strike against
the city's two daily newspapers, has made its bow and received a welcome that forced an immediate in-
crease in the press run.
The original 50,000 copies were bought so fast by a news-hungry public that an additional 10,000
copies had to be printed — and even they were not enough to meet the demand. Editor Robert A. Lee
said both the size of the paper and
the press run would be increased
if possible.
The Reporter is designed to fill
the gap in local news coverage left
when the Portland Oregonian and
Portland Journal forced their em-
ployes to strike. The two dailies
have been publishing a combined
edition with crews of strike-
breakers. The circulation has
been steadily whittled away by a
subscription-cancellation campaign
conducted by the strikers.
The new weekly covers metro-
politan Portland news and is not a
sounding board for the strike.
At a mass rally of strikers, Intl.
Rep. Charles Dale of the News-
paper Guild called the subscription-
cancellation drive the most effective
weapon in the effort to get the pub-
lishers to sit down and negotiate a
new contract.
He also warned that the strike
is a "battle of survival in news-
paper industries," explaining that
if the publishers can break a
Portland walkout in which all
unions are participating, "they
can do it anyplace."
Morse Asks Probe
Of Portland Papers
Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.)
has asked Congress to investi-
gate the strike at the Portland,
Ore., Portland Oregonian and
Oregon Journal.
He told the Senate in a
speech that the publishers of
the two newspapers had hired
"professional strikebreakers"
to put out a combined edition
in an attempt to break the
walkout. The situation merits
a study by Congress, he said,
because of "mounting evi-
dence" that a pattern of
strikebreaking 'is being estab-
lished by the newspaper in-
dustry in other parts of" the
country."
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
called here for establishment of a
fact-finding board to seek a solu-
tion in the strike.
"Any industry which has a pub-
lic responsibility, such as news-
papers do, should be willing to ac-
Electric Firms Indicted
On Rigged Bid Charge
Philadelphia — A federal grand jury here in a series of indictments
has charged leading electrical equipment manufacturers, including
General Electric and Westinghouse, with rigging bids on contracts
to government agencies and private utilities.
The criminal anti-trust indictments named a total of 14 com-
panies and 18 high officials of GE,^
Westinghouse and Allis-Chalmers.
Justice Dept. officials indicated that
additional indictments could be ex-
pected, possibly involving more
than $1 billion in rigged contracts.
Included in the indictments were
charges that:
• The companies agreed to di-
vide up contracts for sales to fed-
eral, state and municipal agencies
and submitted supposedly secret,
competitive bids on the basis of a
prearranged formula.
• In one series of bids, on power
switchgear assemblies, the arrange-
ment made at a secret meeting in
an Atlantic City hotel was that the
General Electric should get approx-
imately 39 percent of the business;
Westinghouse, 35; Allis-Chalmers,
11; I-T-E Circuit Breaker Co., 9,
and Federal Pacific Electric Co.,
7 percent.
• "At least 35 meetings" were
held in 1958 and 1959 to discuss
bids and divide up the market.
Company officers communicated
ACWA Wins
Court Fight on
Vacation Pay
Nashville, Tenn. — The Clothing
Workers have won a five-year legal
battle on behalf of a group of
workers cheated out of vacation
pay when their employer shut
down.
Most workers have now received;
vacation pay checks from a sum
totaling $11,036.79 from the A.-L.
Kornman Co. as a result of the
long battle. Checks are being held
for other workers not yet located.
The Clothing Workers had Korn-
man under contract when the firm
shut down in 1954, refusing to pay
some $10,000 in earned vacation
pay.
with each other under code names.
• The companies divided up
sales to private utilities under a
formula rotating high, low and in-
termediate bids. This was referred
to by the code designation "phase
of the moon."
• Prices of component parts
sold to other manufacturers were
raised by agreement to prevent po-
tential competitors from being able
to underbid the other firms and get
a share of the lucrative contracts.
Maximum penalty under the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act is a $50,-
000 fine on each charge for the
companies and a year in prison for
individuals convicted.
Cordiner 'Surprised'
Before the indictments were
handed down, General Electric
Board Chairman Ralph J. Cordiner
Had said he was "surprised" to
learn that some company officials
had violated the company's policy
of "strict compliance with the anti-
trust laws/' He said they had been
given cuts in pay as a punishment.
A GE vice president and four divi-
sion general managers were among
those indicted.
The indictments were cited by
Pres. James B. Carey of the Elec-
trical, Radio & Machine Workers
as indicative of "corporate cor-
ruption that has been festering
in big business and industry for
a very long time."
Carey accused GE of "hypoc-
risy" in resisting a wage increase on
grounds that it would be infla-
tionary "while at the same time
profiteering outrageously at the ex-
pense of the government and the
American taxpayers."
Among the agencies listed in the
indictments as having been victim-
ized by the rigged bids were the
Tennessee Valley Authority, the
Army, Navy, Air Force, Interior
Dept. and General Services Ad-
ministration.
cept fact-finding," he told a labor
breakfast.
The Portland publishers have re-
peatedly refused similar proposals
— including those made by two of
Kennedy's Capitol Hill colleagues,
Senators Wayne Morse and Rich-
ard Neuberger, Oregon Democrats
— and the unions have favored
them.
Kennedy also said he will take
a look at the newspaper strike-
breaking operation headed by
Bloor Schleppey and Shirley
Klein. According to reports it
has been used by the Portland
publishers, but they have denied
this.
Five men have been indicted here
on charges in connection with the
dynamiting in Portland the night
of Jan. 31 of four trucks used to
deliver the struck newspaper. Four
of them claimed they were hired
by the fifth, Levi McDonald, a
Stereotyper , and the only union
member of the group, to do the job.
He has denied it.
The Portland Inter-Union News-
paper Committee, representing all
the striking unions, which offered a
$1,000 reward for the arrest and
conviction of those' responsible for
the blast and another the sam^
night in nearby Oregon City, is
sued the following statement:
"The Portland Inter-Union News-
paper Committee was the first to
join the city of Portland in offer-
ing a $1,000 reward for informa-
tion leading to the arrest and con
viction of those responsible for the
Jan. 31 dynamitings of newspaper
delivery trucks. The committee
has cooperated fully with police in
their investigations.
"Naturally, we will withhold
judgment until any accused per-
sons have been tried in a court
of law.
"We deplore these senseless
acts of violence now as we did at
the time the reward was posted.
Violence in any form can only
damage our position/'
Hayes Lauds
Brotherhood
Week Goals
Organized labor's identification
with the ideals behind National
Brotherhood Week, being observed
the last week of February under the
auspices of. the National Confer-
ence of Christains and Jews, was
stressed by Pres. A. J. Hayes of
the Machinists in a statement
promising cooperation to the end
that its promise "will soon be
achieved for all men."
Hayes, chairman of the AFL-
CIO Ethical Practices Committee,
and Lee H. Bristol, chairman of
the board of directors of the
Bristol-Myers Co., are Brotherhood
Week chairmen pf the conference's
Commission on Labor-Management
Organizations.
"The labor movement of the
U.S., like the republican govern-
ment under which it has developed,
is founded on the principle of
brotherhood among all men,"
Hayes said.
"This free nation and its free
labor movement have long since
discovered that brotherhood can
know no bounds; no group of
men can be secure in the claim
of brotherhood among them-
selves unless they are, in truth,
brothers to all men."
WINNERS of Newspaper Guild's Heywood Broun Memorial Award
are congratulated by contest judges for prize-winning series of
articles exposing graft in New York City slum clearance program.
Left to right: Columnist Drew Pearson, one of the judges; Joseph
Kahn and William Haddad, the prize-winning New York Post
reporters; and contest judges James Marlow, Associated Press
writer, and Raymon'd P. Brandt, chief Washington correspondent
for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
N. Y. Post Team Wins
Heywood Broun Honor
Two reporters for the New York Post have been awarded the
1959 Heywood Broun Memorial Award for a series of stories ex-
posing graft, corruption and mismanagement in the New York City
slum clearance program.
The Newspaper Guild presented its 19th annual award to Post
reporters William Haddad andf;
Joseph Kahn, whose series of ex-
clusive stories was chosen as the
best among 72 entries in the com-
petition established by the ANG to
honor the crusading columnist who
served as the union's first president.
The winners will receive citations
from the Guild and share a cash
prize of $500.
Honorable mention went to
Edward G. McGrath of the Bos-
ton Globe for a series which
aroused public officials to the
need for new approaches to Bos-
ton's juvenile delinquency prob-
lem, and to City Editor Clancy
Lake of the Birmingham, Ala.,
News for a six-year crusade
which led to reforms in the
Alabama prison system.
Judges were James Marlow,
Associated Press writer and col-
umnist; Drew Pearson, nationally
syndicated colunmist; and Ray-
mond P. Brandt, chief Washing-
ton correspondent for the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch.
They described the Post series by
Haddad and Kahn as "a remark-
able job of investigation, organiza-
tion and clear reporting on a
subject of immediate and vital
concern to the public and in the
field of humanitarian journalism
for which Heywood Broun is
remembered."
Before the series appeared in the
New York paper, tenants were
being moved from one slum to an-
other to make way for luxury de-
velopments built with federal and
city funds for sponsors with po-
litical connections.
As a result, the Slum Clearance
Committee was reorganized, a re-
location agency was established,
secrecy was removed from the pro-
gram, and the selection of spon-
sors for new projects was placed in
responsible hands.
AFL-CIO Backs Model
D. C. Jobless Aid Bill
The AFL-CIO has urged congressional passage of a bill .in-
troduced by Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) which would provide for
the first improvements in the District of Columbia unemployment
compensation system since 1954 and also set a model for the nation.
Modernization of the law to raise the amount of benefits and
make them available for a longer^
period would "provide guidance
to the states" in overhauling their
own jobless pay systems, AFL-
CIO Legislative Rep. Walter J.
Mason told a Senate District of
Columbia subcommittee.
J. C. Turner, president of the
Greater Washington Central Labor
Council, also' testified in favor of
the Morse bill, which would set
the maximum benefits at half a
worker's weekly wage but not more
than two-thirds of the district'*
average weekly wage, payable for a
flat 39-week period.
Mason, who was accompa-
nied by Assistant Dir. Raymond
Munts of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Social Security, said the Morse
bill would bring the amount and
duration of benefits in the na-
tion's capital up to the standard
which Pres. Eisenhower has re-
peatedly urged states to adopt
voluntarily.
"Other states, exceptfng Hawaii
and possibly New York, have not
met the President's recommenda-
tions," the AFL-CIO spokesman
said, "but at least they have im-
proved benefit levels several times"
since 1954.
He said that expressing the maxi-
mum benefit as a percentage of av-
erage weekly wages — instead of
the "very restrictive" $30 maxi-
mum in the present law — would
make it unnecessary for Congress
to have to "analyze wage move-
ments and set a new (dollar) maxi-
mum every year."
Turner pointed out that in 1938,
the maximum benefit paid in the
district was 60 percent of average
weekly wages, but that this has
nose-dived to 30 percent because
of the static dollar limitation en-
acted six years ago.
The labor spokesmen were criti-
cal of bills introduced by Sen. Alan
Bible (D-Nev.) on behalf of the
District Commissioners and D.C.
employers which would hold down
benefits, provide for stringent dis-
qualification procedures and con-
tinue the sliding scale for the dura-
tion of benefits in order to reduce
further the already low unem-
ployment insurance tax paid by
employers.
Pape Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1960
House Group Hears Gray:
Building Trades Ask
Site Picketing Right
By Willard Shelton
A new round of hearings on labor legislation' opened as the AFL-
CIO Building' & Construction Trades Dept. asked Corfgress to legal-
ize "common situs" picketing on construction jobs, and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce urged defeat of the bill.
In a telegram AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany endorsed the prin-
ciple of the bill and requested its prompt approval.
The issue involved is whether a^
building trades union can legally
picket a construction site against
one employer when a number of
other employers are involved, as is
common in building operations,
and other workers respect the pick-
et lines.
Building Trades Dept. Pres.
Richard J. Gray pointed out to a
House Labor subcommittee that
beginning in 1954 both the Eisen-
hower Administration and commit-
tees of the House and Senate have
repeatedly approved legislation to
end the unfairness to unions in
the construction industry. The
bills have never reached the floor
for a vote.
NLRB Rule Upheld
'The employes in the electrical
department of a factory," Gray told
the subcommittee headed by Rep.
Carl D. Perkins (D-Ky.), can pick-
et a factory site and it is not called
an illegal secondary boycott even
though "carpenters employed in
another department concertedly re-
fuse to cross the picket line."
On a construction site, however."
there are normally "numerous em-
ployers," Gray testified, and the
National Labor Relations Board
held in the Denver Building
Trades case that an illegal boycott
was created if electricians picket
one employer and carpenters hired
by another contractor "concertedly
refuse to cross the picket line."
This NLRB rule was upheld by
the Supreme Court.
Workers in the building trades
are thus deprived of a "basic
freedom," Gray said, because of
a "technicality in the (Taft-Hart-
ley) law which did not take into
account the special facts of the
building and construction indus-
try."
Gray pointed out that the Sen-
ate-House conference committee
that compromised the Landrum-
Grifrin Act last year "fully consid-
ered" a proposal to legalize "com-
mon situs" picketing. He quoted
Sen. Winston L. Prouty (R-Vt.) as
indicating on the Senate floor that
a majority would have approved
it except for the threat of a tech-
nical objection in the House.
He also cited a Senate Labor
Committee report of 1954, when
Republicans had the majority, ap-
proving a Taft-Hartley amendment
specifically designed to reverse the
Denver Building Trades decision.
Gray testified before the sub-
committee on bills sponsored
by Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr.
(D-N. J.) and Perkins to kill the
Denver Building Trades decision.
He observed that a comparable
proposal was sponsored last year
by Rep. Carroll Reams (R-Pa.),
ranking GOP member of the full
Labor Committee, and pointed
out that the committee in 1959
had a majority on record as fa-
voring a similar provision in a
bill by Rep. Carl Elliott (D-Ala.).
The Building Trades Dept. pres-
ident also called the attention of
the House subcommittee to a com-
panion Senate bill, sponsored by
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
and Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel (R-
Calif.). Kennedy is chairman of
the Senate Labor subcommittee on
labor legislation and Kuchel is as-
sistant GOP leader of the Senate.
Leadership Pledge Given
Both House and Senate Demo-
cratic' leaders, Gray quoted Ken-
nedy as saying on the floor last
year, gave a "commitment" that the
Kennedy - Kuchel - Thompson bill
would be brought to a vote in both
houses in 1960.
The Chamber of Commerce test-
imony, given by Charles B. Mahin,
a Chicago lawyer, charged that the
Building Trades' case was "built
on a straw foundation."
Mahin did not refer in prepared
testimony to what Gray called the
"solid legislative history" support-
ing the bill, its record of both
House and Senate committee ap-
proval or Eisenhower Administra-
tion backing for the measure.
The House subcommittee, he
said, should "strengthen the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act and restore its
original (boycott) provisions which
were watered down by the Senate
conferees."
Water Pollution Bill
Offers First Veto Test
The 86th Congress, presenting Pres. Eisenhower with his initial
major legislative challenge of the present session, has passed a $900
million measure to curb water pollution despite vigorous Adminis-
tration opposition.
It offers the first possibility of a White House veto in 1960 and
a Democratic attempt to override. &
The bill is a compromise between
Senate and House versions ap-
proved last year, but allowed to re-
main in conference committee at
the end of the 1959 session in or-
der to prevent a pocket veto.
First MacLeish
TV Drama Feb. 28
New York— 'The Secret
of Freedom," the first tele-
vision play of Pulitzer Prize-
winner Archibald MacLeish,
will be telecast over the NBC-
TV network at 8 p. m., EST,
on Feb. 28.
The play, which concerns
a school improvement crisis
in a small community, was
filmed in Mt. Holly, N. J.
JAPANESE UNION DELEGATION meets with officers of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers Lo-
cal 439 during tour of Radio Corp. of America plant at Somerville, N. J. Group was welcomed by
Kathleen W. McNee, seated second from right, president and business agent of the local.
Mitchell Sees
Modest Hike
In Minimum
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has
told Congress that a "modest in-
crease" in the present S^an-hour
minimum wage would not "ad-
versely affect low-wage industries."
The secretary did not' spell out
the amount of increase the Ad-
ministration is prepared to support.
He is expected to give the exact
figure in testimony scheduled Mar.
2 as a House Labor subcommittee
begins hearings on wage-hour law
amendments.
Mitchell in his annual report
on the effects of the $1 -an -hour
minimum required under the
Fair Labor Standards Act re-
newed an Administration request
for an extension of minimum-
wage coverage to "several mil-
lion additional workers" not now
protected, and said that extension
of coverage was "the most im-
portant action Congress could
take."
He did not indicate whether the
Administration would support ex-
tension of coverage beyond the ap-
proximately 2.5 million workers he
recommended both in 1957 and
last year.
The AFL-CIO is backing the
Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill that
would extend coverage to approxi-
mately 7.8 million workers in
large interstate industries and raise
the hourly minimum to $1.25.
This bill is now pending in the Sen-
ate Labor Committee after sub-
committee approval last year.
Mitchell's report said that the
impact of the 1956 increase in the
minimum wage, when the rate was
lifted from 75 cents to a $1, had
now been substantially absorbed.
Another increase now, he indicated,
would not result in serious eco-
nomic dislocations or loss of em
ployment in the low-wage industries
to which the minimum applies
directly.
The measure sent to the White
House calls for federal grants of
$90 million a year for a 10-year
period to help local communities
build sewage-disposal plants. Un-
der legislation passed in 1957, fed-
eral aid for pollution control has
been running at the rate of $50 mil-
lion annually to meet this problem.
In his Budget Message to Con-
gress this year, Eisenhower called
for an end to the program after
the current fiscal year, arguing
that eontrol of pollution in the
nation's streams was solely a
state and municipal matter.
The compromise measure, ap-
proved earlier by the House, passed
the Senate by voice vote. Minor-
ity Leader Everett McKinley Dirk-
sen (R-Ill.) hinted broadly that the
bill would run into a veto.
Kansas City Bows,
Bans Strike Parade
Kansas City, Kan. — The
city commissioners here
knuckled under to "protests"
and revoked permission for
striking Wilson Co. workers
to hold a Feb. 13 motor pa-
rade protesting the company's
pre-settlement stubbornness
in forcing a long walkout on
the Packinghouse Workers.
Mayor Paul Mitchum made
the motion to revoke the per-
mit which the city had grant-
ed just a week before. He
said he had received "several
phone calls" protesting the
parade permit. One call he
said, came from a Wilson
official.
Canadian, British Labor
Assail 'Apartheid' Policy
The trade union movements of two British Commonwealth na-
tions have strongly hit at a third — South Africa — for its "apartheid"
policy of segregation and discrimination against native Africans.
The Canadian Labor Congress politely "regretted" Prime Minis-
ter John G. Diefenbaker's blunt refusal to raise the apartheid ques-
tion at -the Commonwealth Primed
Ministers' Conference later this
year, as the CLC had requested,
and attacked the South African
policy as harmful to the entire
Commonwealth.
The British Trades Union Coun-
cil called on all workers in Great
Britain to boycott South African
products during March "as a per-
sonal demonstration of horror and
disgust felt by civilized people at
the policy of apartheid."
The CLC had raised the South
African question in its annual
policy submission to the Prime
Minister and his cabinet. Diefen-
baker lectured the CLC delegation,
headed by Pres. Claude Jodoin, on
the "meaning" of the common-
wealth.
In a statement on behalf of the
CLC Executive Council, Jodoin ex-
pressed disagreement with Diefen-
baker's claim that every common-
wealth country, under all circum-
stances, must be allowed to carry
out its own policies without
criticism.
Canadian labor "has taken its
position on South Africa," he said,
"because of its faith in the basic
idealism of the commonwealth of
nations and the role which it
could play in promoting a world
of peace and freedom." He con-
tinued:
"We are firmly convinced that
the actions of the government of
South Africa deny the very prin-
ciples upon which this great
association of free people is
founded and make a mockery of
the best traditions and aspira-
tions of the nations of the com-
monwealth."
The TUC call for a boycott of
South African goods — principally
fresh fruit, canned foods and
alcoholic beverages — backed up ac-
tion by the National Council of
Labor.
"Millions of Africans, in their
own country, are being robbed of
human rights by the minority
who manage South Africa's af-
fairs," the TUC said, "They are
09-02-2
being deprived of representation
in Parliament, of educational op-
portunities, of the chance to be
apprenticed to a trade, of the
right to strike or to join a union
that can effectively negotiate for
them.
"Segregation and the Pass Laws
are leading to conscript labor at
poverty-line pay. They themselves
have organized boycotts as a pro-
test against harsh and wholesale
discrimination against them in their
homeland."
Wilson Strikers Voting
On Settlement Offer
Chicago — Delegates representing 5,500 Packinghouse Workers
have voted tentative acceptance of a proposal that would end their
long strike against Wilson & Co., the nation's third largest meat
packer.
No details of the proposal were available as the ArrL-CIO News
went to press. Terms of the agreed
ment were withheld until after
seven local unions in six states held
ratification meetings.
The vote to recommend ratifica-
tion came after 24 hours of con-
tinuous negotiations and discus-
sions by the delegates.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein
emphasized that the strike would
continue until all locals had
taken action on the strike settle-
ment proposal and details of a
new contract. He added that the
"Don't-Buy-Wilson" campaign,
which he said has received ex-
cellent support from organized
labor, would also be continued
until the strike's official end.
Helstein reported receipt of a
$25,000 contribution to the union's
strike fund from the Meat Cutters
& Butcher Workmen. The Meat
Cutters' Executive Board, voting
the gift at a board meeting in
Miami, described the Wilson atti-
tude during the strike as % *a chal-
lenge to all trade unions" and asr
sailed Wilson's use of non-resident
strikebreakers as "a despicable
management practice" long aban-
doned by most employers.
5 Alternatives Weighed:
Ike Weighs Shift on
Medical Aid for Aged
The Eisenhower Administration is reportedly considering a be-
lated election-year about-face on legislation to provide medical care
for the aged in the face of mounting public support for the liberal
backed Forand bill.
Although Pres. Eisenhower has long opposed any action in this
field, the Administration apparently is being spurred to last-minute
activity by political considerations involved in Vice Pres. Nixon's
drive for the presidency.
Currently under Administration scrutiny are five proposals-
some possibly keyed to private insurance plans and all falling short
— $of the AFL-CIO-backed measure
introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
High Court
Upholds
Slowdown
The Supreme Court has
knocked out a National Labor
Relations Board doctrine seek-
ing to hold that "harassing tac-
tics" by a union during prolonged
and unsatisfactory negotiations
are an unfair labor practice.
The case involved the Insur-
ance Agents Intl. Union, since
merged with the Insurance Work-
ers to form a single AFL-CIO af-
filiate, and the Prudential Insurance
Co.
When a contract expired in 1956
and an acceptable new agreement
was unobtainable otherwise, the
union members refused to work
scheduled hours, write new busi-
ness or take part in company pro-
grams. They did not go on strike.
The Eisenhower-appointed NLRB,
seeking to extend the definition of
illegal practices by unions, held
that this conduct showed a refusal
to bargain in "good faith."
Union spokesmen argued that
it was proper economic pressure
to induce the company to negoti-
ate a satisfactory new contract
after stubborn resistance.
The high court ruled unani-
mously that the NLRB had no
power to go beyond the mandate of
Congress to decide what it thinks
is the "ideal" or "balanced" state
of collective bargaining.
Up to Congress
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.,
in his opinion said that Congress
might wish to eliminate "more and
more economic weapons" from the
labor and mangement arsenals, but
that it might also "shrink from
[such] changes." In any case, he
wrote, "we do not see how the
board can do it on its own" and
thus "move into a new area of
regulation which Congress has not
committed to it."
Three justices, agreeing with
Brennan, held in a separate opinion
that the case should have been re-
manded to the NLRB for further
hearings.
(D-R. I.) and a bill filed by Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The
House Ways & Means Committee
is slated to vote on the Forand bill
by mid-March.
At its recent mid-winter session
in Bal Harbour, Fla., the AFL-
CIO Executive Council warned
that the Administration might in-
troduce an eleventh-hour pro-
posal "designed to meet the nar-
rowly conceived financial de-
mands of the American Medical
Association or the self-seeking
clamor of insurance companies
rather than the needs of the eld-
erly."
With Nixon reported to have
broken a long Administration log-
jam, five alternative plans were be-
ing studied by the Dept. of Health,
Education & Welfare. All five plans
reportedly involve administration
by the states, in contrast to the
Forand and Kennedy measures
which would use the social security
system as the vehicle for health
care for senior citizens.
The plans being considered by
H-E-W Sec. Arthur S. Flemming
include:
• A $90-million-a-year proposal
for medical care only for the "in-
digent aged" through public as-
sistance channels. This would call
for federal funds, contrary to Eisen-
hower's general budget policies.
• A payroll deduction plan cost-
ing workers $400 million annually
to take out "catastrophic" insur-
ance policies under which the pol-
icyholder would pay the first $250
in medical costs for a serious illness
with the policy paying up to 85
percent of the remaining costs. It
has not been learned whether this
would operate through the social
security system or private insurance
companies.
A somewhat broader plan,
costing $500 million a year, geared
to the same $250 deductible prin-
ciple.
• A $750 million payroll de-
duction plan to cover all costs of
surgery.
• A $1 billion payroll deduction
plan to provide complete medical
care, including nursing home care,
By contrast, the Forand and Ken-
nedy proposals, while differing in
detail, would finance medical care
for the aged by raising social se-
curity taxes on both employers and
(Continued on Page 2)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Saturday, February 27, 1960
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C
No. 9
Showdown Near in
Civil Rights Debate
END TO RACIAL BIAS in hiring of workers on government con-
struction jobs has been called for by members of Pres. Eisenhower's
Committee on Government Contracts. Shown drafting committee
statement are, left to right: John A. Roosevelt; Deputy Atty. Gen.
Lawrence E. Walsh; Boris Shishkin, AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil
Rights; Vice Pres. Nixon, chairman of committee; Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell; Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther; and AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany.
With AFL-CIO Backing:
New Moves Hit Bias
Under U.S. Contracts
Stern measures aimed at ending racial bias by contractors on
j'ederal construction projects in the District of Columbia have been
adopted by Pres. Eisenhower's Committee on Government Con-
tracts with the full backing of the AFL-CIO.
The committee headed by Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon adopted
a resolution calling on contractors^
to give Negroes "equal employ-
ment opportunity" in compliance
with nondiscrimination clauses cur-
rently included in all government
contracts.
"The President's committee,"
the resolution declared, "will co-
operate with the contractor and the
contracting agency in seeking to
find qualified Negro mechanics. Jn
House Committee Sidesteps into
Higher Interest Rate Proposal
The House Ways & Means Committee, by a vote of 18 to 7, has approved a bill which would
effectively grant Pres. Eisenhower's year-old request for sweeping authority to breach the present
4.25 percent interest ceiling on long-term government bonds.
The measure, vigorously opposed by the AFL-CIO on the grounds that it would "unneces-
sarily add billions to taxpayers' burdens" and touch off a dangerous new inflationary spiral, is expected
to come under heavy attack in bother
House and Senate. Observers say
it has about an even chance of
passage.
In 1959 and again this year,
Eisenhower had asked Congress to
remove completely the 4.25 percent
limitation on interest rates, declar-
ing such a move was essential to
permit "flexibility" in the Admin-
istration's fiscal policies.
The committee-approved meas-
ure, a compromise proposed by
Chairman Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.)
in consultation with Treasury Sec.
Robert B. Anderson, would not
grant Eisenhower's plea for out-
right repeal but would give the
Administration authority virtually
to ignore the present limit. It
would:
• Allow the Treasury to issue
about $5.8 billion in new long-term
bonds with interest rates higher than
the 4.25 percent ceiling, providing
the President issued a "finding"
there was a need for such action.
• Give the Administration au-
thority to bypass the legal limits on
outstanding government securities
by exchanging new bonds for old
ones. Under this system, although
the new issues would still carry the
4.25 percent interest rate, investors
would be able to buy them for less
than face value — receiving a bigger
dollar return, equivalent to a higher
interest rate.
• Repeal outright the 4.25 per-
cent ceiling on Series E and H
savings bonds. Such a move would
{Continued on Page 3)
this effort it will have the full co-
operation of the AFL-CIO." -
Participating in the drafting
and unanimous adoption of the
resolution were Nixon, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, Auto
Workers Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther, Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-
ell, Deputy Atty. Gen. Lawrence
E. Walsh, and John A. Roosevelt,
chairman of a D. C. subcommit-
tee.
Also present were Boris Shish-
kin of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Civil Rights; Victor Reuther of
the UAW's Washington office; and
George L-P Weaver of the Elec-
trical, Radio & Machine Workers.
They serve as alternates to Meany
and Reuther on the committee.
Labor Leaders Hailed
Following the committee ses-
sion, Mitchell applauded Meany
and Reuther for their "helpful-
ness" in the drive on racial bias
ness" in the drive on racial bias.
The resolution, which followed
the substance of a recommenda-
tion made by Roosevelt's sub-
committee, called on contracting
agencies of the federal govern-
ment "to institute steps to direct
all contractors holding federal
contracts for the construction,
repair and alteration of all fed-
(Continued on Page 7)
Full-Scale
Filibuster
Threatened
By Gene Zack
Battle lines were drawn tight
in the Senate's civil rights debate
as Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.) laid plans for
"around-the-clock" sessions for
the third week and Southerners
countered with an open filibuster
threat.
Virtually all normal business
ground to a halt as the debate
over measures to safeguard voting
and minority rights dragged on.
The House is due to take up civil
rights legislation after Mar. 10.
As a first move toward speeding
up action, Johnson held the Senate
in session 12 hours a day, and an-
nounced that unless voting on a
civil rights measure begins by Feb.
29 he would schedule "sunrise to
sunrise" sessions.
The announcement brought
angry protests from the southern
bloc. Sen. Richard B. Russell (D-
Ga.), leader of anti-civil-rights
forces, said the protracted sessions
constituted "legislative torture"
aimed at wearing down southern
Senators to "ramrod" a bill through
the chamber.
"Senators might as well get
their cloture petition ready," Rus-
sell declared, referring to the
steps which may have to be taken
to end a filibuster. Under rules
adopted at the start of the 1959
session, a vote of two-thirds of
the Senators present and voting
(Continued on Page 7)
Haggerty to Head
Building Trades Unit
C. J. (Neil) Haggerty, sec-
retary-treasurer of the Cali-
fornia AFL-CIO, has been
elected president of the AFL-
CIO Building and Construc-
tion Trades Dept. He will
take office Apr. 1.
Haggerty, who has
achieved a national reputa-
tion as an AFL-CIO leader
in California, will succeed
Richard J. Gray, who re-
signed a few weeks ago after
17 years in the post. Hag-
gerty is a vice-president of
the Lathers Union.
The Executive Council of
the Building and Construction
Trades Dept. named Hagger-
ty after hearing a report of a
four-man administrative com-
mittee set up to consider pos-
sible successors to Gray.
The council also elected
two vice-presidents, John J.
Murphy, vice-president of the
Bricklayers and Edward J.
Leonard, president of the
Plasterers. It moved William
J. McSorley from vice-pres-
ident to coordinator of the ex-
ecutive council. McSorley is
president emeritus of the
Lathers.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1960
REFUSAL OF CREW MEMBERS of Flying Tiger airlines to cross picket lines put up by strik-
ing navigators, members of the Transport Workers, grounded the cargo airline and forced company
to drop union-busting demand for super-seniority for newly-hired strikebreakers.
Major Victory Scored
In Flying Tiger Strike
Burbank, Calif. — Striking navigators on the Flying Tiger airline,
members of the Transport Workers, won a smashing victory on all
counts in a settlement agreement — and credited it to the trade union
solidarity of members of other air unions who refused to cross
TWU picket lines *
A key issue in the four-week
strike — the company's demand that
15 strikebreakers hired under in-
dividual six-month contracts be re-
tained with super-seniority — was
resolved by dropping the strike-
breakers to the bottom of the sen-
iority list. They will not be given
assignments until all regular em-
ployes, including union members
on layoff, are working.
The company also agreed to
drop its multi-million dollar law-
suits against the TWU, the Flight
Engineers and the Air Line Pilots
and its separate suits seeking
damages of $1 million against
each of the 50 members of the
Flight Engineers who refused to
cross picket lines.
At the time the settlement was
reached, the Pilots were preparing
to contest a temporary restraining
order obtained by the company
forcing them back to work.
The navigators won an $850
yearly increase retroactive to last
July. The 18-month contract also
calls for an additional $3,000 in-
crease for top navigators after the
company receives new equipment
in January 1961.
The settlement came a few days
after the navigators, who are used
on international flights, set up pick-
et lines at 10 terminals used by the
cargo airline for both domestic
and international operations.
Until the sudden settlement, re-
sulting from a meeting in Washing-
ton between TWA Vice Pres. James
F. Horst and top company officials,
the airline had claimed that its
planes were flying on near-normal
operations, manned by supervisory
personnel. The union retorted that
the company's claims were "strict-
ly flights of fancy."
Clothing Workers Seek
Wage, Welfare Boosts
Miami Beach, Fla. — The Clothing Workers have served notice
on the men's clothing industry that they intend to stand firm on
their demand for 25 cents an hour in increased wages and for
welfare benefits.
That was made clear by the union's general executive board,
which concluded its regular quar-^:
terly meeting here this week
In making public details of the
contract demands laid before em-
ployers early this month, ACWA
Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky said he
expected talks to be resumed the
first week in March. The present
contract, covering approximately
125,000 workers in men's and boys'
clothing, expires June 1. The last
industrywide wage increase was
won in 1956.
Of the 25-cent package de-
manded by the ACWA, 22.5
cents covers an across-the-board
wage increase and 2.5 cents rep-
resents improved health and wel-
fare benefits, Potofsky said.
The executive board also adopted
a five-point program reaffirming
the union's long-held position on
imports of men's cotton garments
from low-wage countries. In dis-
closing that cotton shirts are now
being imported from Hong Kong
alone at an annual rate of 30 mil-
lion shirts, or more than one-fifth
of domestic production, Potofsky
said:
"The rate of growth of these
imports and the danger of destruc-
tion of our domestic industry are so
great that drastic corrective action
is imperative. Delay may injure
the industry and the living stand-
ards of our members beyond
repair."
The five-point program approved
by the board included legislative
action (support of the Keating bill
authorizing the Secretary of Labor
to recommend to the President the
imposition of import quotas or new
duties where he finds a domestic
industry seriously threatened by
foreign competition) and:
• an approach to the Tariff
Commission and other agencies to
invoke existing powers to curtail
the flood of imports.
• an effect to obtain voluntary
quota agreements with foicign gov-
ernments.
• strict enforcement of ACWA
contract clauses prohibiting union-
ized manufacturers from handling
goods made under non-union or
substandard conditions.
• a consumer education pro-
gram to persuade the public that
purchase of "sweated" imports is
against the national interest and
their own economic welfare.
The board also voted "enthusi-
astic endorsement" of a clothing
industry national promotion cam-
paign.
4 New York
Leaders Win
Trips Abroad
New York — Four winners of dis-
tinguished service awards given by
the New York City Central Labor
Council will be the first of a group
annually to visit overseas labor
movements as representatives of
New York City's central body. The
four men, all local union officials,
received congratulations from AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany.
While it is the CLC which makes
the service awards, the individual
local union will pay for the trip
abroad. The winners are:
Michael DeCicco, manager, Lo-
cal 76-B, Furniture Workers.
Michael Sampson, business man-
ager, Local 1-2, Utility Workers.
Hyman Shapiro, business man-
ager, Local 664, Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers.
Thomas G. Young, secretary, Lo-
cal 32-B, Building Service Em-
ployes.
The awards, made at the annual
dinner of the CLC, were announced
by CLC Pres. Harry Van Arsdale,
Jr.
Irving Brown, AFL-CIO Euro-
pean representative, who was a
guest speaker, congratulated the
winners and the council for an
"important step" in international
labor.
The winners met with Brown to
plan their itineraries and receive a
briefing on labor developments
abroad. Young, who is also a New
York State Federation of Labor
vice president, will go to Israel and
Africa this summer; the others to
various parts of the world.
Dingell Assails
AMA Lobbyist
Rep. John D. Dingell CD-
Mich.) has accused the Amer-
ican Medical Association of
a "brazen attempt" to bring
pressure on congressmen to
defeat the Forand bill to pro-
vide medical care for the
aged.
In a speech on the House
floor, Dingell charged that
AMA Legislative Rep. Cecil
B. Dickson recently sent
House members lists of phy-
sicians in their districts ask-
ing congressmen to indicate
those doctors who were "per-
sonal friends."
"This is obviously a brazen
attempt by AMA lobbyists to
elicit from members of Con-
gress convenient pressure
points which the AMA can
use in tightening its tourni-
quet to strangle the Forand
bill," he declared.
McNamara Reports:
Senate Group Urges
U. S. Aids for Elderly
The Senate Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging
has intensified a political controversy with sweeping proposals to
help America's older citizens, giving top priority to health care for
social security beneficiaries.
The 12-point program was aimed chiefly at aiding the 16 million
Americans aged 65 and over with'^"
such problems as health needs, in-
come maintenance and housing.
The subcommittee split sharply
along party lines.
Chairman Pat McNamara (D-
Mich.), commenting on the
"sobering and humbling" nation-
wide hearings of his group, said
senior citizens "have been neg-
lected and literally cast aside by
the nation which they spent the
greater part of their lives helping
to make strong."
The report was endorsed by
Democratic Senators John F.
Kennedy (Mass.), Joseph S. Clark
(Pa.) and Jennings Randolph (W.
Va.).
The Republican minority of
Senators Everett McKinley Dirksen
(111.), GOP floor leader, and Barry
Goldwater (Ariz.) assailed the ma-
jority proposals point by point.
They said "the problems of the
elderly are essentially a local
responsibility."
The American Medical Associa-
tion immediately attacked the Mc-
Namara report as "politically in-
spired" and the proposal of health
care as "government medicine."
McNamara replied that the
AMA's "ridicule" and "tired
abuse" were perhaps "inevitable."
The majority proposal that
Congress act this year "to ex-
pand the system of old age, sur-
vivor and disability insurance to
include health service benefits"
for those under social security
was similar to the bill intro-
duced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D-R. L). Hearings were held
on the measure last year by
the House Ways and Means
Committee.
"T e No. 1 problem of Amer-
ica's senior citizens," the report
declared, "is how to meet the costs
of health care at a time when in-
come is lowest and potential or
actual disability at its highest."
The remaining proposals of the
McNamara subcommittee were in
the following areas:
• Job opportunities. Saying
that discrimination because of age
is the chief problem of the 40-64
age group, the subcommittee urged
the states to outlaw job bias based
on age and a federal law to ban
such discrimination on government
contract work.
• Adequate income. With 60
percent of all aged receiving less
than $1,000 in money income in
1958, the McNamara group pro-
posed hefty hikes in social security
benefits and a boost in the present
$33 minimum to at least $50
monthly.
• Housing. Finding safe, sani-
tary and congenial housing to be a
"major unmet need," the report
urged a minimum 5-year federally-
aided public housing program of
10,000 units annually for the low-
income elderly and $100 million
in direct loans to non-profit hous-
ing groups.
• Improved nursing homes.
Observing that many aged are re-
duced to "pitiable vegetation" with
lack of medical care in commercial
nursing homes, the report proposed
that federal standards be devel-
oped to guide state and local
authorities.
• U.S. Office of the Aging.
The subcommittee recommended
creation of a special agency to co-
ordinate programs affecting the na-
tion's 49 million people aged 45
and over.
Meany Plan
Aga in Backed
By Mitchell
Los Angeles, Calif. — Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell has reiterated
Administration support for "out-
side-the-bargaining-table" meetings
between labor and management to
help achieve "a sound and pro-
gressive economy."
A proposal that Pres. Eisenhower
convene a White House labor-man-
agement meeting to develop guide-
lines for industrial peace was made
by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
in November. Eisenhower has
since endorsed the proposal, and a
conference is expected in the
spring.
Meeting earlier this month at
Bal Harbour, Fla., the AFL-CIO
Executive Council issued a call
for "a broad national effort to
elevate and improve the level of
labor-management relations" and
urged an end to industry's "un-
principled propaganda campaign
against American working peo-
ple."
Mitchell, in an address to the
Los Angeles Junior Chamber of
Commerce, said regular labor-man-
agement sessions "must become a
practice in America," adding that
such meetings would help both
sides take off "the blinders . . .
that many have worn for 40 years
and more."
The secretary said "it is sur-
prising . . . how many labor and
management men, married to insti-
tutional positions of economic and
social policies, discard them in an
honest airing of private opinion."
Administration Veers
On Health Aid to Aged
(Continued from Page 1)
employes one-quarter of 1 percent
per year. This tax hike — a maxi-
mum of $12 a year each for
the employer and employe — would
raise $1 billion annually, with the
benefits paid directly through the
social security system.
The AFL-CIO has hailed the
use of the social security mech-
anism as "the most economical,
effective and universal" method
of providing health care. The
council declared:
"Under a form of administration
acceptable to hospitals and consis-
tent wtih their highest professional
goals, the new funds would rescue
many hospitals from financial dis-
aster and enable them to extend
high-quality care designed for the
aged at reasonable charges.
"Social insurance, unlike com-
mercial insurance, can provide most
aged people with paid-up policies on
retirement. Unlike the major med-
ical form of commercial insurance,
it can encourage early diagnosis
and preventive treatment; it can
avoid inflationary and unscrupulous
charges.
"It alone can translate a weekly
contribution of a few nickels from
working people into really effective
health protection in old age."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, IK C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, I960
Page Three
Dogged Endurance;
600 Stubborn Oil Workers
Battle Standard of Indiana
Sugar Creek, Mo. — A record for dogged endurance is being set by 600 members of Oil, Chemical
& Atomic Workers here.
They went on strike last July 8 against Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) and since then have encoun-
tered almost every difficulty that can fall in the path of a striking union. Yet they grimly refuse to
pull down their picket line around one of the several refineries operated by Standard of Indiana.
About 130 of the original group'f"
of strikers have gone back to work;
the 600 remain steadfast.
A visitor to the area recently
asked a rank-and-file striker: "How
do you do it?"
The striker replied, "We're Mis-
sourians. We're stubborn."
And plain, undiluted stubborn-
ness has been a major asset of these
union men. They are, incidental-
ly, neighbors of a famously stub-
born Missourian named Harry
Truman. His home in Independ-
ence is about four miles from the
picket line.
The Sugar Creek refinery
workers are striking for their first
contract as members of OCAW.
For many years, they were rep-
resented by an unaffiliated union,
but on Mar. 20, 1959, they voted
in an NLRB election to abandon
their separate status and desig-
nate OCAW as their bargaining
agent.
Attempts to negotiate a contract
bogged down on seniority and job-
assignment — clauses which would
protect the workers' job security
and work rules against the manage-
ment trend toward speedup, stretch-
out and job combinations.
Rather than knuckle under to
an inferior contract, members of
the local voted overwhelmingly to
strike. On July 8, 1959, approxi-
mately 730 members hit the bricks
— and encountered the following
String of difficulties:
• They were inexperienced. As
unaffiliated unionists, they had en-
gaged, back in 1952, in only one
strike, which had been settled after
two weeks. The international as-
signed strike-wise staff representa-
tives to conduct the walkout, but
rank-and-file members had had
little practice in this difficult phase
of unionism.
• The company immediately
began partial operation of the plant.
As the strike began, the union
agreed to an orderly shutdown,
meaning that the complex equip-
ment was taken out of operation in
such way as to leave it clean, in
good repair and ready for immedi-
ate re-use. Then management took
advantage of this to resume almost
immediate partial operation with
supervisors, technicians and white
collar employes.
• Court injunctions were issued.
Although there had been no vio-
lence and no restraint against the
strikebreaking supervisors and tech-
nicians, a circuit court judge is-
sued a comprehensive injunction
limiting picketing.
• A few strikers crossed the
picket lines early in the strike, and
the number increased until, as of
late February, about 130 of the
original group had deserted.
• The union was prosecuted in
court. Both the local and the in-
ternational were fined by the cir-
cuit court judge on an allegation
that they conspired to violate the
injunction.
• Strikers were jailed. After
an alleged altercation between
strikers and scabs at a point some
distance from the plant, 13 mem-
bers of the union were sentenced
to jail for from one to six months.
These men were sentenced for con-
tempt of court; they were not
allowed jury trial.
• The company stopped bar-
gaining. When the union made
concessions which made settlement
almost inevitable, the company
withdrew from bargaining early in
December and refused to meet
again until late February.
• A few strikers have fought a
giant company. Only a minority
of Standard Oil of Indiana em-
ployes are organized in bona fide
unions. Others are in unaffiliated
unions which have not aided the
strikers. When the strike began,
however, two other Standard re-
fineries, operating under the
AMOCO name, had been shut
down by other OCAW locals. One,
at El Dorado, Ark., reached a set-
tlement after about four months.
The other, at Texas City, Tex., set-
tled after six and a half months.
(The three OCAW groups were
under separate contracts and were
obliged to bargain separately. When
the El Dorado and Texas City
groups got satisfactory settlements,
they returned to work with the full
blessings of the Sugar Creek un-
ionists.)
Despite these difficulties, the
Sugar Creek veterans hold their
line. The international union pro-
vides a small weekly strike payment
— not enough to buy groceries for a
small family. Locals and friends
have contributed additional funds,
which are doled out to individual
strikers facing particular hardships.
Some members have not asked for
any "hardship" assistance in eight
months without a pay day!
As time passes, hardship cases
increase in number and severity.
Contributions from fellow union-
ists to meet their need would be
helpful, the Oil Workers say, inas-
much as they are determined to
stay on strike forever, if necessary.
ABC Wins NLRB Votes
At 3 Plants in 6 Days
The American Bakery & Confectionery Workers have scored
significant victories in three recent National Labor Relations Board
elections, winning bargaining rights at a previously non-union firm
and ousting unaffiliated "associations" at two other plants.
In the largest unit, at Kingston, Pa., employes of the Blue Ribbon
Cake division of the Interstate Bak-^
ing Co. gave the ABC 268 votes to
34 for the Kingston Mutual As-
sociation, which had held bargain-
ing rights since 1948. There were
only two "no union" votes. The
victory was considered especially
significant since the plant is sched-
uled for expansion in the near
future.
At the Storck Baking Co., Park-
ersburg, W. Va., the ABC defeated
both the Teamsters and the West
Virginia Beneficial Association,
which had previously held bargain-
ing rights. The vote in the three-
way contest was 66 for the AFL-
CIO affiliate, 18 for the Teamsters
union and 14 for the association
In Phoenixville, Pa., ABC won a
runoff election at the previously
non-union Bakers Biscuit Co., scor-
ing 48 votes to 33 for the unaffili-
ated Bakery & Confectionery
Workers, which was expelled from
the AFL-CIO in 1957 on findings
of corrupt leadership.
The three election victories with-
in a six-day period were ascribed
by ABC spokesmen to "hard or-
ganizing work," the "very real ac-
complishments" of the union in
other shops and plants in the areas
and active support by AFL-CIO af-
filiated unions in the vicinity.
Senate Drug Price Probe
Meets Early and Late
The Senate's anti-trust subcommittee began late night and
early morning meetings in a new round of hearings on ad-
ministered pricing in the drug industry after Senate Republi-
can Leader Everett McKinley Dirk sen (111.) broke up the
regularly-scheduled sessions.
Dirksen, who has protested "unfairness" to the drug manu-
facturers, objected to hearings being held while the Senate was
in long sessions on civil rights legislation. Under the rules,
the objection of a single senator can block a committee from
meeting while the Senate is sitting.
Dirksen told Subcommittee Chairman Estes Kefauver (D-
Tenn.) that he wanted to be present during the hearings but
couldn't be "in two places at the same time."
Kefauver reconvened the subcommittee immediately after
the Senate recessed at 10:11 p. m., kept it in session for
nearly four hours to hear industry spokesmen and then set
another session for 9:30 a. m., to get in another hour of tes-
timony before the Senate met.
Dirksen didn't show up at either of the subcommittee
sessions.
Peace in N.Y. Hospitals
Threatened by Lockout
New York — A lockout of 250 non-medical employes by a Bronx
nursing home has punctured the uneasy truce that followed settle-
ment of a 46-day strike at seven New York hospitals last spring.
Local 1199 of the Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store Union said
the Beth Abraham home has locked out union members since
Feb. 18, when they participated in 3^
TWO LONELY PICKETS hold the lines outside the unimpressive entrance to the Standard Oil
Co.'s sprawling Sugar Creek, Mo., refinery where striking members of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic
Workers are seeking to force the company into a first contract.
an hour-and-a-half demonstration
protesting management's continued
refusal to meet with the union or
abide by the policy statement signed
by 37 non-profit hospitals as part
of the 1959 strike settlement.
The union members, a major-
ity of the non-professional work
force, were told they were "fired"
when they reported for work aft-
er the demonstration, the union
said. The hospital asserts die
workers "struck" by not report-
ing for work at the scheduled
time.
Local 1199 Pres. Leon J. Davis
has accused the hospitals of re-
neging on the policy statement by
failing to set up equitable wage
scales and work schedules and
threatening union members. He
said "grievance procedures, where
they do exist, are a farce."
Davis accused the Greater New
York Hospital Association of tor-
pedoing a tentative settlement the
union reached with the Beth Ab-
raham Home by bringing pressure
on the institution. He said the set-
tlement dealt with grievances which
brought on the demonstration, in-
cluding a compulsory $4.50-a-week
meal charge, failure to establish
grievance procedures and "con-
sistent transfer of active union
members to less desirable work
schedules."
Davis warned the permanent
administrative committee set up
to supervise the labor relations
programs of the city's voluntary
hospitals that continued violation
of their policy pledge would lead
to "more widespread labor un-
rest."
The committee is composed of
six hospital officials and six pub-
lic members.
Under the 1959 agreement, the
hospitals agreed that workers with
grievances could be represented by
a union — a concession from their
original position of refusing to have
any dealings with a union. They
also agreed to a $l-an-hour min-
imum wage and a 40-hour week,
both major improvements over pre-
strike wages and hours.
Since the strike settlement last
June, union organization has con-
tinued actively and Local 1199 now
claims 6,300 members among the
35,000 workers in private, non-
profit hospitals, with solid major-
ities in many.
New York labor is pressing for
legislation to require voluntary hos-
pitals to engage in collective bar-
gaining.
House Group Votes Ike
Free Hand on Interest
(Continued from Page 1)
be largely illusory since these bonds
now pay only 3.75 percent, well
below the existing limit, and the
Treasury has given no sign that it
plans to raise the rate.
• Remove completely the inter-
est ceiling on long-term bonds sold
to the social security and veterans'
insurance trust funds, from which
the government borrows more than
half its total financing needs. This
would help raise the income of
these funds, restricted by law from
loaning money in the open market
where interest yields have been con-
siderably higher than the rate the
Treasury has paid in recent years.
The proposal is expected to
face its toughest sledding in the
Senate, where Majority Leader
Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) has
expressed opposition to any com-
promise. Liberal Democrats have
served notice they will mount an
all-out offensive against any in-
terest rate move, at least until
the Administration "reforms" its
fiscal policies.
The AFL-CIO registered its op-
position to any change in the inter-
est rate, declaring in a letter to
senators and congressmen that the
move would "initiate still another
round of higher interest rates which
hurt so many while retarding eco-
nomic growth."
The "high interest" policies
pursued by the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration in the past seven
years have heaped "tremendous
costs . . . upon millions of wage
earners and other private bor-
rowers" while lenders "reap
handsome profits without provid-
ing any added service," the fed-
eration declared.
The letter, written by AFL-CIO
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemil-
ler, pointed out that interest rates
are now "at a 35-year high" as a
result of Administration fiscal pol-
icies. Biemiller added that "no
change ... is justified" and that
the "decision-making authority on
this vital matter" should not be
"transferred to the President."
Pa**! Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1960
Forand and the AM A
THE INFLUENTIAL Washington Post 8c Times-Herald has
endorsed the principles of the Forand bill in language that
blisters the American Medical Association for its "usual doctrinaire
opposition" to all such social security plans.
The Forand bill, a measure to add, and pay for, certain health
benefits to the protections available under the social security system,
is a major objective of the AFL-CIO in this session of Congress.
It is slated for a key vote in the House Ways & Means Committee
some time in March.
The Post, editorially taking note of the report of the McNamara
Senate subcommittee on problems of the aging, cites with approval
the committee's finding that some system of health care for the aged
commands %k top prior ity" and said that adoption of the Forand bill
would "relieve retirement of one of the worst of its nightmares."
Health protection under the social security system is justified
because the period of a citizen's retirement "is the time, obviously,
when he will need it most — when, indeed, he is certain to need it
sooner or later, which is what makes the cost of . . . private
insurance prohibitively high for aged,*' the Post said.
The newspaper then declared regarding the Forand bill:
'That the American Medical Association would offer its usual
doctrinaire opposition to this proposal was as much to be expected
as a bill from a doctor after a visit to his office.
' Sen. McNamara has observed that the AMA had 'nothing to
offer but tired abuse.' That is not, by the wildest flight of the most
neurotic fancy, 'socialized medicine' or 'political medicine.' It is
simply a system, if the AMA could but calm its nerves enough to
realize it, which, like Blue Cross or Group Hospitalization or any
other insurance program, would enable a patient to go to the doctor
and the hospital of his choice and pay the bills resulting from the
care he needs in old age.
' It would help doctors, hospitals and medicine in general. And
it would enable American men and women to retire in their old age
with more security and self-respect."
To this, Amen.
Saddling the Grandchildren
THE STRONG INDICATION is that the Senate will be called
upon to save the country from being saddled with excessively
high interest rates on long-term government bonds, with all the
harmful side effects of such a fundamental change in fiscal policy.
The House Ways & Means Committee has approved a com-
promise plan which would allow the Eisenhower Administration
to exceed the existing 4.25 percent maximum interest rate on a
very large proportion of securities. In the Senate Finance Com-
mittee and among the Senate Democratic leadership, however,
there were stalwart opponents.
The AFL-CIO has pointed out that the 4.25 percent maximum
interest rate has financed the U.S. since World War I "through
booms, depressions and military crises" and that Administration
requests for a boost are merely the latest effort in a series employing
"one pretext after another" to intensify its "tight-money" policy.
This Administration is running- out of time. It should not be
permitted to load the people for the next generation with the bill
for its monetary doctrines.
Double Play!
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirae
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, February 27, 1960
No. 9
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dus trial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
New Study Shows:
Entry of Non- Whites Stabilizes
Neighborhood Property Values
AN ECONOMIC STUDY just published strikes
at the widely held idea that entry of non-
whites into a neighborhood always causes prop-
erty values to decline.
The work, a test of 10,000 real estate transac-
tions in six cities of the northern United States,
reveals that where non-whites buy houses, real
estate values are four times more likely to rise or
to remain constant than are prices in areas re-
maining all white.
Property Values and Race, by Luigi Laurenti,
is one of a series of five reports prepared for the
Commission on Race and Housing financed by a
grant of $305,000 by the Fund for the Republic.
Laurenti, a research economist who formerly
taught at the University of California, Berkeley,
is the author of several articles in real estate
journals. His present work took five years and
covers a nine-year period of transactions in the
San Francisco Bay Area and Philadelphia, with
supporting evidence from other studies in Chicago,
Kansas City, Detroit and Portland. His basic
figures:
41 percent of neighborhoods entered by non-
whites showed no change in prices.
44 percent of neighborhoods showed a com-
parative rise between 5 and 26 percent of price.
Only 15 percent of neighborhoods showed a
comparative decline; these were between 5 and
9 percent of price.
Laurenti writes: "The major statistical finding
is that during the time period (covered by the
study) and for the cases studied (10,000 cases),
the entry of non-whites into previously all-white
neighborhoods was much more often associated
with price improvement or stability than with
price weakening."
Laurenti's study scientifically tests the property-
value belief that often is cited by "Teal estate men
and home owners in defense of residential segre-
gation. He says that this belief has arisen because
slums are commonly inhabited by minority groups.
However, other economic factors — such as the
pressure toward illegal conversion of buildings —
are more important than race in determining real
estate values within slums, he writes.
He contrasts the general maintenance of values
in mixed and comparable all-white residential
areas. "The evidence obtained indicated that
non-whites were maintaining their properties at
least as well as white homeowners in comparable
areas," he said. He suggests that because the
non-whites who manage to enter all-white neigh-
borhoods generally are more educated than their
new neighbors, their ability and willingness to
maintain property is generally greater.
THE STUDY DESCRIBES the cycles leading
to panic that have been responsible for some cases
of declining property values. The sale of one
house to a non-white family may induce fear and
widespread selling; this in itself increases the
supply of housing and may cause temporary price
declines, he writes. Moreover, this situation has
sometimes been exploited by unscrupulous real
estate men of both races in a process called
"block-busting," in which one house is sold to a
non-white whose neighbors then are stampeded
into selling for less than they normally would
obtain.
"Block-busting" was rare in the areas studied.
He found several cases of mild price declines, but
these were usually followed by rises to or above
the previous level after two or three years.
Laurenti found no cases of catastrophic decline
of prices.
The book is expected to have an important
effect on the thinking of the real estate profes-
sion. Real estate opinion has modified over the
years, Laurenti says, away from the position
that any entry of a non-white into a white
neighborhood would be catastrophic. He found
a growing number of integrated neighborhoods,
which suggests a growing sense of responsibility
by members of the profession.
But he found, too, that the Real Estate Board's
Code of Ethics does not specifically forbid dis-
crimination in housing, and that many realtors
practice discrimination to their ultimate financial
loss.
"The important question," he writes, "is
whether, as segregation barriers weaken, whites
will be willing to buy into mixed neighborhoods
sufficiently to maintain or raise values. But
whites seem to be less alarmed by non-whites, so
long as the proportion of them does not rise too
high/'
He notes there is some evidence that stable
interracial neighborhoods are becoming more
common. As "exclusive" neighborhoods become
fewer, he says, "Race should gradually lose its
significance as a consideration in the real estate
market/'
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATl'RDAY, FEBM'UIY 27, 1960
Page Five
Morgan Says:
Progress on Rights Bill Brings
A Stirring of Hope for Negroes
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
WITH THE SENATE debate on civil rights
legislation now under way, and with the
House belatedly, reluctantly stirring on the
subject too, chances are
brighter than many dared
hope for a fortification of
the citizenship of Negroes
in an area most likely to
be effective, namely the
right to vote. We keep
telling ourselves that if we
don't like some things
in this country we can
change them at the polls.
The Negro doesn't like his
Morgan second-class citizenship
but massive denial in the South of his right to
improve his lot by the ballot box has forced him
to resort to boycotts and other means such as the
current wave of sitdown strikes at white lunch
counters.
While Congress grapples with the registrar,
referee and other plans to make the Negro's vote
count, it is timely to ask whether and/or how
badly his right of franchise is really being vio-
lated. An impressive part of the answer is furn-
ished by the actual field investigations of the
Federal Civil Rights Commission. Here are only
some of the facts from its record:
Florida has a better record of allowing
Negroes to vote than many of her neighbors
but the commission's first complaint came from
Florida's Gadsden County, on the Georgia line.
Although nearly 11,000 Negroes of voting age
live in the county only six were registered.
Mississippi, unsurprisingly, has been the worst
offender. Of the state's nearly half -million
Negroes over 21, less than four percent are regis-
tered. In 14 counties there is not a single Negro
voter.
IN LEFLORE COUNTY when a Negro vet-
eran, an ex-sergeant, tried to register the clerk had
him write his name and address on a piece of
paper. Soon after he returned home two white
men called to ask why he had tried to register.
"It's my duty," the veteran replied. They accused
him of trying to stir up trouble, warned him not
to make another attempt. He did not, for fear
of reprisals.
In Mississippi's Forrest County, a pastor
with two degrees from Columbia University
was accused of being a Communist when he
tried to register because he conceded member-
ship in the NAACP. One persistent Negro
citizen tried 16 times — twice a year for eight
years — to register. He failed.
At the commission's public hearing in Mont-
gomery, Ala., a little over two years ago, the wife
of a prominent Tuskegee research associate, her-
self a teacher, was asked why she wanted to vote.
"Because," she answered, "it is a right and privi-
lege guaranteed us under the Constitution. It is
a duty of citizens and I have four children to
whom I would like to be an example in perform-
ing that duty, and I want them to feel that they
are growing up in a democracy where they will
have the same rights and privileges as other
American citizens."
Next witness. Or is another needed?
Foreign Groups Visit AFL-CIO
A TOTAL of 1,553 foreign visitors from 61
countries, many of them in the far corners of
the earth, took the "grand tour" of AFL-CIO
headquarters in Washington in 1959.
They included trade union leaders and manage-
ment representatives, politicians and government
technicians, editors and educators.
They came to this country under the auspices
of the Intl. Cooperation Administration, the
Smith-Mundt Act leadership exchange program,
the Housing & Home Finance Agency, the For-
eign Students Service Council — and in some cases,
on their own.
Asia and the Middle East have replaced
Europe as the greatest source of the visitors,
Henry Rutz of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Af-
fairs noted in a summary report to Pres. George
Meany. Last year Asia and the Middle East
accounted for 717—420 of them management
leaders and 192 from the trade unions — com-
pared to Europe's 406. Latin America supplied
353 and Africa 77.
The Africans doubled their 1958 numbers and
are expected to triple this year.
There were 723 trade unionists among visitors,
574 management leaders, 144 in the political-
government group, 65 educators and editors, and
47 in the miscellaneous classification.
Under the guidance of Rutz, they were shown
Washington Reports:
Public Pressure
Action on Area
PRESSURE ON the House Rules Committee
is needed to get the area redevelopment bill
out of that committee, a Republican, Rep. James
Fulton (Pa.), and a Democrat, Rep. Wright Pat-
man (Tex.), asserted on Washington Reports to
the People, a program presented by the AFL-
CIO over 300 radio stations.
"Write to your own congressman and write
to members of the committee," Fulton suggested.
"Simply send the letter to the committee ad-
dressed: Rules Committee, U.S. House of Rep-
resentatives, Washington, D. C. And Howard
Smith is chairman of the committee.'*
'The bill has an excellent chance of passage
once it gets on the floor," Patman said.
The congressmen agreed on the urgent need of
legislation to assist the nation's depressed areas,
where there is substantial and chronic joblessness
the Lumen Winter mural in the lobby, the Execu-
tive Council meeting room and the library with
its relics of Samuel Gompers, and then gathered
in one of the meeting rooms for short lectures and
longer question and answer periods.
"The questions reflect the changing times, par-
ticularly from management," said Rutz. "Last
year they were largely about alleged racketeering
in unions. This year they wanted to know why
there was a steel strike with wages so high, or
'Does the AFL-CIO condone featherbedding as
practiced by the railroad unions?' "
RUTZ NOTED that more management groups,
especially Japanese, are asking that a trip to AFL-
CIO headquarters be included in their tours. The
Japanese visits come right after their sessions with
the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. and the
National Association of Manufacturers, and only
two days before they begin evaluation of their trip.
"This gives us a chance to correct misrepre-
sentations and to influence effectively the views
they take back home with them, 9 ' Rutz observed.
He noted that many visitors — from trade union,
management and government circles — are sur-
prised to learn that Gompers, with whose name
they are familiar because of his role in establish-
ing the Intl. Labor Organization, was also the
founder of the former AFL.
Urged to Get
Redevelopment
'The human tragedy that results is consid-
erable, 95 Fulton declared. "Many family heads
in these towns not only cannot find work in
their own communities, they can't find it any-
where. The Senate Committee on Unemploy-
ment found men in the Uniontown area, in
Pennsylvania, who said they went all over the
Pittsburgh valley trying to find jobs and
couldn't find any."
Patman said federal aid is needed because
state and local communities have been unable to
restore the distressed areas to economic health.
They explained how the proposed legislation,
which has passed the Senate, would work with
local communities in training workers for new
jobs, rebuilding plants and establishing new
industries.
ITS YOUR
WASMNGYON
A FLARING temper is increasingly marking Pres. Eisenhower's
response to persistent charges that his devotion to budget-balancing
is threatening the country with a perilous lag in its defenses. For
the first time in years his denials have silenced no one except the
military subordinates who are compelled to be submissive.
A year or two ago, the defense issue could not have been con-
sidered politically potent, because people tended to accept the
President's bland assurances that he "knows as much about" military
matters as anyone else.
Now it is not Mr. Eisenhower but Vice Pres. Nixon who will
bear the burden in the political campaign of defending the Ad-
ministration record — on defense as on everything else. And it
is not only presidential candidates but veteran legislators with
years of experience in budget-making for the Armed Forces who
are warning that the President's long-range policies are in-
adequate.
It is such a conservative former Eisenhower defense adviser as
Robert C. Sprague, co-chairman of the Gaither Committee that
produced a suppressed report, who tells a Senate subcommittee that
we should raise the defense budget "several billions" to meet na-
tional security needs.
Sprague describes himself as a "conservative Republican;" he is
an industrialist and chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of
Boston. And he says it is plain "silly" to pretend that these ex-
penditures would "bankrupt" the nation.
"I'd rather see a little inflation and survive," he declared.
* * *
MR. EISENHOWER confines himself to heated denials that he
has "deceived" the people or failed to act in good faith, and to
generalized affirmations of the power of our defenses today. But
cuts in our conventional forces have raised doubts among many
that we are equipped for "brush-fire" wars, and in regard to the
so-called "missile gap" the apprehension is for the future.
The President's failure to halt the criticisms is reminiscent of
one other hot controversy — the abortive Dixon- Yates deal in
which the attacks forced him finally to capitulate.
There are increasing signs that he is surrendering policy reins
to the Vice President, and Nixon is revealing that he has no taste
whatever for running for office on the stale, dead negativism that is
all Mr. Eisenhower has given us.
The Administration in this election year will propose a higher
minimum wage, and Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming with Nixon's
backing is urgently seeking some "alternative" to the Forand bill
that the Eisenhower Budget Bureau refuses to allow him to endorse.
Nixon is snubbing Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft Benson with what
must be, to Benson, a painful obviousness. A school-aid bill is
virtually certain to be laid on the White House desk, and a veto
would infuriate powerful groups in every state.
* * *
FOR SEVEN YEARS Nixon loyally stayed with the Admin-
istration each time he cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Each
time the bill was highly controversial, and he ended up voting to
kill a Davis-Bacon wage provision in the highway bill, force down
price supports for wheat, raise interest rates on Veterans Admin-
istration loans, fasten the McClellan "bill of rights" into last year's
labor bill, and kill a school-aid bill.
Votes on such issues during the first term cost him nothing,
since he was only heir-apparent and not even certain of his status
with the President. As recently as. 1956, Eisenhower called him in
to suggest that he "consider" his career and "consider" withdrawing
from the vice presidency. Now he is the obvious party choice for
successor, and increasingly on his own.
It is difficult for him to maneuver, especially on defense issues,
when he must seem both to support the Administration loyally
and yet suggest that he would prefer more drive and responsive-
ness. He must eventually face the music in the campaign.
AREAS OF CHRONIC unemployment need federal help through
an area redevelopment law, Rep. Jame& G. Fulton (R-Pa.), on left,
.md Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.) asserted on Washington Reports
lO the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1960
FIRST TRADE UNION group to visit this country from the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa and its
neighbors) is- shown in AFL-CIO headquarters with Harry Pollak (left rear) and Henry Rutz (right
rear) of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs following a luncheon in their honor. The 12 visitors
will tour key industrial areas and observe labor-management relations at first hand.
Labor Raps Proposed
Job Act Amendments
Organized labor has declared its opposition to both Republican
and Democratic-proposed amendments to the Employment Act
of 1946.
Stanley H. Ruttenberg, AFL-CIO director of research, lashed a
bill introduced by Sen. Prescott Bush (R-Conn.) as both "unneces-
sary" and "harmful."
The Bush amendment would
write into law a proposal in Pres.
Eisenhower's 1960 Economic Re-
port "to make reasonable price
stability an explicit goal of na-
tional economic policy/ 9
Ruttenberg pointed out that
the Employment Act's goal now
spells out "maximum employ-
ment, production and purchasing
power."
The idea of price stability is im-
plicit, he said, because the maximiz-
ing of purchasing power includes
the requirement that prices remain
stable.
The Bush bill could prove harm-
ful, he continued, because it might
be read as congressional approval
of present Administration measures
to maintain price stability even at
the expense of high unemployment
and a slowdown in the rate of
economic growth. It would be "a
serious danger," he said, to focus
exclusively on price stability.
Ruttenberg said in regard to a
second measure, sponsored by Sen.
Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.) and in the
House by Rep. Henry S. Reuss (D-
Wis.), that he agreed with the aim
of bringing to bear "an informed
Wa Ish -Hea ley
Photo Wage
Raise Sought
A minimum wage of $1.63 an
hour should be set for government
work in the photographic equip-
ment industry, labor representa-
tives declared at a Labor Dept.,
hearing under the Walsh-Healey
Act.
Under Walsh-Healey, the Secre-
tary of Labor determines the pre-
vailing minimum wage in an indus-
try that must be met by manufac-
turers working on government con-
tracts in the industry.
Representing the AFL-CIO
and the two major unions in the
industry, the Machinists and the
Chemical Workers, AFL-CIO
economist Seymour Brandwein
pointed out that the old $1.18
minimum "was determined four
years ago, on data over five
years old, was unduly low even
at the time, and certainly is quite
unrepresentative of minimums
prevailing in the industry today."
public opinion on price and^wage
increases which threaten economic
stability."
But he pointed out the frame-
work of the Clark-Reuss bill serves
merely "to remind" the President
of certain provisions of the Employ-
ment Act and does not and cannot
alter government policies.
Ruttenberg questioned a pro-
vision which would add a new
section authorizing the President
to order public hearings on actual
and prospective price or wage
increases.
He disputed the view that price
increases have been "alarming,"
tieing the postwar rise chiefly to
shortage and demand pressures aft-
er World War II and after the Ko-
rean war outbreak. Real wage hikes
roughly equaled productivity in-
creases, he added.
Ruttenberg also said the bill
would make it possible to hold
hearings on wage increases alone.
The bill in specifying prices and
wages, he added, omits such ma-
jor inflationary pressures as re-
search and development costs,
advertising and depreciation al-
lowances and profit margins, and
raises the possibility of interven-
tion by government at an early
stage of important collective bar-
gaining negotiations, Ruttenberg
noted. This, he said, labor would
oppose.
The Clark-Reuss bill, he contin-
ued, would bring government inter-
vention in areas of the economy
able to initiate price and wage in-
creases. But why should the gov-
ernment not act as well in such
depressed industries as textile and
apparel to increase wage increases
there, he asked.
Victor G. Reuther, administra-
tive assistant to Auto Workers'
Pres. Walter P. Reuther and head
of the UAW Washington office,
also endorsed the intent of the
Clark-Reuss bill but said its inade-
quacy defeated its purpose.
Reuther urged legislation to pro-
duce "cold, hard facts" on price
hikes rather than "public relations
propaganda." He said an effective
bill would require 60 days' notice
of price hikes by corporations hav-
ing 25 percent or more of then-
industries' total sales and govern-
ment subpoena power over com-
pany records.
Ryukyu Isles
Union Group
Visits U. S.
A delegation of a dozen union
leaders from the Ryukyu Islands,
the first to visit the United States,
was entertained at a luncheon in
their honor by the AFL-CIQ during
their stopoff in Washington.
Leading them was Komeshu Ta-
kashi, chairman of a committee at-
tempting to organize an islands-
wide trade union federation.
The Ryukyu chain includes the
major island of Okinawa, scene of
one of the great Pacific battles of
World War II. It is administered
by the United States under a United
Nations trusteeship. The Defense
Dept. is the largest single employer,
with more than 50,000 workers on
its roster.
Dir. Michael Ross of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs, who
welcomed the guests at the lunch-
eon, cited the U.S. labor federa-
tion's long interest in bettering the
condition of the islands' workers
and particularly pointed to the fact
that Howard Robinson, of the
AFL-CIO, has been loaned to the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions to help in strengthening the
labor movement there. Important
headway has been reported in the
last few months, he said.
A spokesman for the group
thanked the AFL-CIO for its con-
cern and expressed confidence that
the tour of the U.S., which will
take the visitors to key industrial
areas and enable first-hand observa-
tion of labor-management relations,
will be useful in increasing the ef-
fectiveness of their union activities
when they return home. Ross
urged all AFL-CIO affiliates to ex-
tend a particularly warm welcome
to them.
Newest States Join
Nation's Statistics
Alaska and Hawaii, the na-
tion's newest states, will be
included for the first time
during 1960 in several statis-
tical programs of the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics.
Their inclusion added a
few hundred thousand work-
ers to the labor force figures
for January, data for which
was released this month.
Other programs to be affected
as the new states are included
are studies of payroll employ-
ment, wages and industrial
relations and consumer
prices.
Administration Aid Asked:
Wage Bill Fight
Urged by Unions
Labor has called on the Administration to follow up its finding
that a "modest increase" in the minimum wage is economically
feasible by making a "vigorous effort" to get Congress to improve
the wage -hour law.
The AFL-CIO Joint Minimum Wage Committee said it "wel-
comes" Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-^
ell's implied endorsement of a
higher minimum wage as well as
extension of coverage. Both goals,
the committee pointed out, "have
long been sought by the trade
union movement."
As for the amount the minimum
should be increased — a point not
specified by Mitchell in his report
to Congress on the economic im-
pact of the present $1 minimum —
the AFL-CIO committee declared:
"We are firmly convinced that
the 25-cent increase we seek is
not only 'modest' . , . but essen-
tial to the economic well-being
of America's lowest paid workers
and to the economy as a whole."
Mitchell's report came on the
eve of House and Senate com-
mittee activity on wage-hour
legislation.
A House Labor subcommittee
headed by Rep. Phil M. Landrum
(D-Ga.) has scheduled wage-hour
hearings to start Mar. 2. Mitchell,
slated to be the lead-off witness, is
expected to spell out his definition
of a "modest" hike in the mini-
mum wage.
Previously Opposed Raise
Last year the Administration in
testimony before a Senate subcom-
mittee, voiced strong opposition to
any increase in the minimum wage.
It asked for limited extension of
coverage — to some 2.5 million ad-
ditional workers. This contrasted
with the labor-backed Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt bill to extend
coverage to 7.8 million more
workers and raise the wage floor to
$1.25 an hour.
Meanwhile the Senate Labor
committee dusted off its subcom-
mittee recommendations from last
year, based on the Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt bill, and began closed-
door consideration of the bill pre-
paratory to reporting it out for
Senate action.
The Joint Minimum Wage Com-
mittee; made up of 22 unions
spearheading the drive to improve
the wage-hour law, declared labor
Higher Minimum,
Forand Bill Backed
Jersey City, N. J. — The ex-
ecutive board of the Laundry
Workers has called on the
union's 30,000 members to
write their congressmen and
senators urging enactment of
the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
minimum wage bill and the
Forand bill to provide medi-
cal care for the aged.
The AFL-CIO union said
expansion of wage-hour cov-
erage to 170,000 workers in
the laundry and dry cleaning
industries and an increase in
the minimum wage to $1.25
would bring the bulk of these
workers closer to a decent
standard of living.
"would welcome Administration
support in this fight which has
been going on so long on behalf of
workers who are virtually without
a voice in the halls of government.'*
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir.
Andrew J. Biemiller and Special
Counsel Arthur J. Goldberg, co-
chairmen of the joint committee,
said the Labor Dept. report "proves
our long-held contention that an
increase in the minimum wage is
not inflationary."
1956 Gains Cited
They said the report shows that
low-wage communities prospered
as a result of the 1956 increase in
the minimum from 75 cents to $1,
and 14 of the 15 low- wage indus-
tries surveyed by the Labor Dept.
absorbed the increase in wages
without difficulty.
"If the Administration actively
supports its own report," the AFL-
CIO group concluded, "then Amer-
ica's lowest-paid workers will be
assured of a measure of economic
justice during this session of
Congress."
Musicians Unite Negro,
White Locals on Coast
San Francisco — Two Musicians' locals here — the predominantly
Negro Local 669 and the largely white Local 6 — have announced
"complete agreement" on terms of a merger, effective Apr. 1.
Three international officers, Vice Pres. William J. Harris, Sec.
Stanley Ballard and Treas. George V. Clancy, took part in the final
negotiations between the executive^
boards of the two locals and praised
the merger agreement as being in
accord with the AFM's policy of
eliminating duplicate locals.
In a joint statement, officers of
the two locals predicted that the
merger will bring "greater benefits
and gains for all working musi-
cians."
Under the agreement, the 450
members of Local 669 will be-
come full members of the 5,500-
member Local 6 and wiU be
immediately represented on both
the executive board and operating
staff.
Harris told San Francisco news-
men the international union's posi-
tion is that "separate locals are
wrong." This is the policy even if
"the colored people want them,"
be said.
He said duplicate locals now ex-
ist in only 40 of the 700 localities
where the AFM has chartered units.
Unity talks are currently going on
in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Denver,
Springfield, 111., and several other
cities, he added. In recent years,
he said, mergers have been achieved
in southern as well as northern
cities, including Miami, Jackson-
ville, Baton Rouge, Memphis and
Nashville.
Neither of the San Francisco
locals practiced discrimination as
a matter of constitutional policy.
There were some Negro members
in Local 6 and some white mem-
bers of Local 669 as a result of
mixed bands and orchestras.
Both AFM Pres. Herman D.
Kenin and his predecessor, James
C. Petri Ho, have strongly opposed
segregated locals and have worked
to convince Negro as well as white
musicians that it would be to every-
one's advantage to merge duplicate
unions in the same territory.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1960
Page Sevea
Advisors Ask Reforms:
Proposal to Revamp
NLRB Faces Delay
Action on sweeping proposals for reorganization of the National
Labor Relations Board seem likely to be postponed until the next
session of Congress.
The recommendations, unanimously offered by an advisory panel
to the Senate Labor Committee, called for Taft-Hartley Act amend-
ments to abolish the office of gen-^
eral counsel and speed up NLRB
procedures by other changes. A
draft bill to accomplish the reforms
was presented with the recommen-
dations.
The NLRB reforms were pro-
posed by the panel after it aban-
doned its earlier task of seeking
agreement on major changes in the
substance of the Taft-Hartley Act.
The panel, composed of 12 ex-
perts drawn equally from labor,
management and the public, said
that Congress in the Landrum-
Griffin Act had already covered
such issues as the voting rights of
economic strikers, organizational
picketing and secondary boycotts.
"No constructive purpose would
be served" by a report on subjects
on which Congress had so recently
legislated, it decided.
Sen. John F. Kennedy CD-
Mass.) said in releasing the panel
recommendations that "elemental
justice will continue to be effec-
tively denied" workers and em-
ployers until NLRB procedures
are streamlined and hastened.
Democratic spokesmen indicate
that minimum wages and other
legisation, in the relatively short
election-year session of Congress,
will cause a delay in pushing the
proposals.
In proposing abolition of the
NLRB general counsel, the advisory
panel agreed in effect that the Taft-
Hartley Act's creation and defini-
tion of this office was responsible
for delay and disorganization in
processing cases.
It recommended substitution of
an administrator who would take
over from the board and its trial
examiners all duties except hearings
and decisions in representational
and unfair practice cases and the
issuance of rules.
The administrator would control
field offices, investigate and pro-
secute unfair labor practice cases,
conduct representation elections
and handle all litigation.
The panel also proposed that
the "speedy remedy" of a tem-
porary injunction should be
available in charges against em-
ployers. At present the remedy
is available only in charges
against unions.
Other recommendations to speed
up NLRB procedures were:
• Establishment of a special
panel of trial examiners with au-
thority to order NLRB elections
after hearings without going to the
board.
• Restriction of the NLRB's
power of review of the findings of
trial examiners.
• NLRB conduct of a "reduced
docket of cases" in accordance with
normal judicial procedures, giving
personal responsibility to board
members.
• Reduction of delays between
issuance and enforcement of an
order.
Labor members of the panel in-
cluded Arthur J. Goldberg, special
counsel to the AFL-CIO and coun-
sel to the federation's Industrial
Union Dept.; Louis Sherman, coun-
sel to the Building & Construction
Trades Dept.; Plato E. Papps, Ma-
chinists' attorney; and David Cole,
umpire under the AFL-CIO No-
Raiding Agreement.
Chairman was Prof. Archibald
Cox of the Harvard University Law
School. Other members were: Guy
Farmer, former NLRB chairman
under Pres. Eisenhower; Prof.
Charles Gregory of the University
of Virginia; Denison Kitchel; Ger-
ald Reilly, former NLRB member
and critic of the original Wagner
Act; Prof. Russell Smith of the
University of Michigan; Prof.
George W. Taylor of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania; and W. Wil-
lard Wirtz.
Remove the Obstructions!
Wilson Pact Ratified,
Union Picks Arbiter
Chicago — Rabbi Jacob J. Weinstein of Chicago, nationally
known arbitrator and authority on social issues, is the Packinghouse
Workers' designate on a three-man arbitration panel to hear dis-
puted issues rising from the 110-day strike against Wilson & Co.
A majority of the seven striking UPWA locals voted to accept
new contract proposals and settle-^
ment terms that ended the long
dispute against the meat packing
firm.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein
Living Costs Drop
Slightly in January
The cost of living for Jan-
uary "edged off" one-tenth of
1 percent, chiefly because of
lower prices for women's ap-
parel, new cars and food, ac-
cording to the Labor Dept's
monthly Consumer Price In-
dex.
This means the market bas-
ket which cost $1 in the
1947-49 base period now
costs a little over $1.25.
The January CPI meant no
change in the pay envelopes
of about 1 million workers in
auto and related industries
whose index-tied wages are
adjusted quarterly. Some 60,-
000 in aircraft and farm ma-
chinery will have pay cuts,
mostly of 1 cent an hour.
Another 14,000, chiefly in
trucking, will get a penny an
hour hike on a semi-annual
adjustment.
called the new economic package
"equivalent to those of other con-
tracts negotiated in the industry."
He noted that it was Wilson's re-
fusal to meet the "benefits and eco-
nomic value of other agreements
negotiated in the industry as a
whole that led to the strike."
Helstein said the settlement was
"substantially improved" over the
company's offer of last September.
As part of the strike termination
program, Helstein added, "the un-
ion is no longer asking the public
to refrain from buying Wilson
products."
The arbitration panel is expected
to convene shortly to hear disputed
issues including the status of strike-
breakers — who are, the com-
pany contends, "permanent re-
placements" hired during the dis-
pute. If the union and company
designates to the panel fail to agree
on a third member, he will be
named by the chief judge of the
federal district court for this
region.
Rabbi Weinstein has been a
speaker at numerous union conven-
tions and once served as a member
of the national advisory council for
the Philip Murray Fund.
Showdown Nears in
Senate Rights Battle
(Continued from Page 1)
would be required to shut off de-
bate.
The possibility that a cloture pe-
tition might become necessary
touched off a flurry of parliamen-
tary maneuvering on the floor.
In order to fulfill a pledge made
by the leaders of both parties last
year that the debate would begin
Feb. 15, an unrelated house-passed
measure was used as a vehicle to
which civil rights amendments
could be attached. Senate rules
provide that amendments do not
have to be germane to the bill in
question except in cases where clo-
ture has been invoked.
In what was seen as the possible
first step toward cloture, Minority
Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen
(R-Ill.) withdrew the Administra-
tion's civil rights amendment and
reoffered it as a substitute for the
pending House-approved measure.
Russell denounced Johnson's
threatened "round-the-clock" ses-
sions as "legislative regimentation."
He served notice that civil rights
foes will demand repeated quorum
calls to bring members in "at awk-
ward hours." He warned that south-
erners would not permit any further
business to be transacted by unani-
mous consent, a device commonly
used to speed business.
Sen. Allen J. Ellender (D-La.),
chairman of a Senate Appropria-
tions subcommittee, announced he
would hold no further hearings on
public works projects of interest to
individual members.
At issue in the Senate debate
are various proposals introduced
by liberal Democrats and by the
Administration, calling for ap-
pointment of federal officers to
register Negroes and insure their
voting rights in cases where it is
determined that these rights have
been denied by local officials.
The liberal measures would es-
tablish federal voting registrars,
named by the President's Commis-
sion on Civil Rights, and would af-
fect federal elections only. Ad-
ministration proposals would call
for court appointment of voting
referees, who would both register
and insure the right to vote in both
federal and state balloting.
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil, at its recent mid-winter session
in Bal Harbour, Fla., called for a
blend of both proposals into a
workable bill and expressed the
hope . that "petty partisanship"
would not block passage of civil
rights legislation.
"If a good bill passes, " the
council said, "there will be
enough credit for all concerned.
If there is failure, neither party
will benefit/'
In addition to voting rights
guarantees, proposals are before
the Senate which would:
• Make it a crime to use force
or threats to obstruct court deci-
sions on school desegregation.
• Permit federal pursuit across
state lines of persons suspected of
bombing schools, churches or
homes.
• Make available limited fed-
eral aid to communities in planning
for orderly school desegregation.
• ' Provide aid for schooling of
servicemen's children in areas
where schools have been closed in
order to thwart desegregation or-
ders.
• Require preservation of vot-
ing records in federal elections.
• Give statutory authority to the
President's Committee on Govern-
ment Contracts.
Similar measures are pending in
the House where the conservative-
dominated Rules Committee, often
a graveyard for liberal legislation,
broke a six-month stalemate and
cleared the way for civil rights de-
bate beginning about Mar. 10.
Labor Backs
Bias Ban on
U.S. Contracts
(Continued from Page 1)
eral buildings and, particularly,
in the District of Columbia, that
they must comply immediately
with the nondiscrimination clause
presently a part of all contracts."
Contractors were told that they
"must find qualified Negro work-
ers, if they exist in the area, and
give such workers equal employ-
ment opportunity on any work
covered by federal contracts."
The action came in the wake of
a press conference statement by
Meany, during the recent AFL-
CIO Executive Council meeting in
Bal Harbour, Fla., that the Nixon
committee should move against any
contractor who fails or refuses to
honor his guarantee not to dis-
criminate in employment.
In the Bal Harbour press confer-
ence, Meany indicated there may
be instances in which local unions
engage in discriminatory practices,
but added that since the nondis-
crimination clause is part of the
agreement between the employer
and the government "the contractor
should not be allowed to hide be-
hind the policy of the local" with
regard to Negro workers.
The AFL-CIO president told re-
porters at that time that he had
personally telephoned Mitchell of-
fering to supply trained Negro
workers to contractors and urging
that the committee act against
contractors who violate the anti-
discrimination clauses in their
agreements with the contractors.
During the council session, the
AFL-CIO leaders approved a sup-
plemental program for insuring
compliance with the federation's
constitutional bar on racial bias.
Under the new system, in any
cases where a subcommittee of the
Civil Rights Committee cannot se-
cure compliance, Meany will ap-
point special Executive Council
subcommittees which will deal with
the international unions and report
directly back to the council.
He said he had named himself
as a subcommittee of one to deal
with the case of Local 26, Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
refusal of which to admit Negro
members had led to controversy in
one publicized case.
Labor, Justice Divide
L-G Criminal Probes
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has announced an agreement with
the Dept. of Justice under which he will delegate, on a case-by-case
basis, responsibility for investigating alleged violations of certain
criminal sections of the Landrum-Griffin Act.
The law authorizes the secretary to enter agreements with any
federal agency or state or its po-f . r~T7 ~ 7~.
nists from holding office, extortion-
ate picketing and deprivation of
rights of union members by force
and violence.
The Justice Dept. also will inves-
tigate criminal charges arising out
of the L-G provision which pro-
hibits, under certain circumstances,
the making and the acceptance of
payments or loans from employers
or their representatives to their em-
ployes or to unions or to officers or
employes of unions.
The results of the Justice Dept.
investigations will be referred to
the Labor Dept. for decision on
possible prosecutions.
litical subdivisions "in order to
avoid unnecessary expense and du-
plication of functions among gov-
ernment agencies. .. . ."
Mitchell said the Labor Dept.
itself will investigate all civil viola-
tions of L-G and five areas of
criminal infractions.
Four of these include investi-
gation of criminal charges aris-
ing from the act's reporting pro-
visions, union trusteeships, bond-
ing of persons handling union
funds or property, and payment
of court-imposed fines by a union
for a union official or employe.
The Labor Dept. also will inves-
tigate and present to the Federal
Parole Board applications for ex-
emptions by convicted individuals
who seek relief from the provision
of the act barring them from hold-
ing union office or serving in such
jobs as labor relations consultants.
Delegated to the Justice Dept.
will be the investigations of crimi-
nal charges dealing with embezzle-
ment of union funds, payment of
court-imposed fines by an employer
for a union official or employe,
prohibition of criminals or Commu-
Typos' Parley
Analyzes L-G
Louisville, Ky. — Some 200 of-
ficers and staff members from six
states attended the Typographical
Union's first regional seminar on
the Landrum-Griffin Act.
The delegates represented ITU
locals in West Virginia, Ohio, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Mis-
souri. Similar seminars have been
set by the ITU for Oakland and
Seattle about mid-March.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1960
Arrested in Pennsylvania:
Newspaper Strikebreak King
Faces Anti-Scab Law Charge
Philadelphia — Bloor Schleppey, 71, who for a number of years has been furnishing lavishly-paid
strikebreakers for struck newspapers throughout the United States, will have a chance next month
to prove his "profession" is legitimate.
Schleppey must appear before a Bucks County, Pa., grand jury at Doylestown, on Mar. 14 to face
a charge that he violated Pennsylvania's anti-strikebreaker-importing law.
If convicted, he faces a possible'^
fine of $1,000, or one year in jail,
or both, at the discretion' of the
court. He has pleaded not guilty.
Schleppey was arrested by
members of the Fugitive Squad
of the Philadelphia Police Dept.
in the early morning hours of
Feb. 12 at a Philadelphia airport
motel, after a cat-and-mouse
chase that began earlier in the
day at an uptown hotel. He
was booked, fingerprinted, re-
leased under $1,000 bond and
ordered to appear for the hear-
ing.
Participating in the dramatic
hunt were three Typographical
Union officers, Joseph Radice, pres-
ident of Trenton Typographical
Union and an ITU special repre-
sentative, and Pres. John F. Burke
and Sec. James H. Kelley of Phila-
delphia Typographical Union.
Schleppey was specifically
charged with importing strike-
breakers into Bristol, Pa., in Oc-
tober 1958, when two newspapers,
the Bristol Courier and Levittown
Times, both printed in the Bristol
plant, were struck by ITU me*n
Two witnesses appeared against
Schleppey at the hearing. They
were Radice and Gerald Gish, an
ITU member from Cleveland.
Radice, who had sworn out
the warrant for Schleppey's ar-
rest, outlined the scab agency
head's activities in the Bristol
strike. Gish, at one time asso i-
ated with Schleppey's operations,
testified that he accompanied
Schleppey to Bristol for the pur-
pose of serving as a strike-
breaker.
Gish remained on a "stand-by"
basis, however, because Schleppey
said his quota at the struck plant
was full. He was ordered else-
where.
The state was represented at the
hearing by Assistant State Attorney
Typos Seeking State
Strikebreaking Bans
Indianapolis — The Typographical Union has called for concerted
labor action to win passage in state legislatures of stringent laws
which will stamp out the "dreaded scourge" of strikebreaking.
ITU Pres. Elmer Brown urged state enactment of laws similar
to a 1937 Pennsylvania statute which prohibits persons or firms
"not directly involved in a labor f ^
strike or lockout" from recruiting
strikebreakers.
Bloor Schleppey, head of a scab-
importing agency, has just been
held for the grand jury on charges
of violating the Pennsylvania law.
He was arrested on a charge that
he provided strikebreakers during
an ITU strike at the Bristol Courier
and Levittown Times in 1958.
In a letter to the officers of the
ITU's 800 locals and to the chair-
men of the union's more than
4,000 shop units, Brown charged
that Schleppey's "union-destroy-
ing program" has cost ITU mem-
bers "hundreds of jobs." Linked
to the hiring of strikebreakers at
exorbitant weekly salaries, Brown
said, is a strike-insurance pro-
gram which reimburses publish-
ers for the loss of advertising
revenue and the added expense
of strikebreakers.
Schleppey's strikebreakers, the
ITU president charged, have forced
400 unionists out of jobs at the two
daily newspapers in Portland, Ore.
— the Oregonian and the Oregon
Journal. An additional 150 ITU
members, he continued, have been
displaced by Schleppey's recruits at
the Macy newspaper chain in West-
chester County, N. Y.
Brown urged ITU locals to work
through city and state central labor
bodies to win speedy enactment of
a Pennsylvania-type anti-strike-
Los Angeles Council
Fights Anti-Semitism
Los Angeles — Delegates to the
Los Angeles County AFL-CIO have
called for "vigorous law enforce-
ment" to combat acts of anti-semi-
tism in the United States. The res-
olution also called for "cooperative
action by community organizations
and public groups" to wipe out
"bigotry directed against any racial,
religious or ethnic group."
The delegates urged mobilization
of world opinion to protest anti-
semitic incidents in Germany and
the anti-semitic policy of the Soviet
government.
breaker-importing law which pro-
vides fines up to $1,000 and prison
terms up to one year.
He said that other unions "have
a direct interest" in such legislation.
"Once a newspaper is under non-
union operation," he pointed out,
"its editorial columns begin a cam-
paign to have other business con-
cerns oppose unions."
Gen. Victor Wright of Philadelphia
as prosecutor.
A few hours before his arrest,
Schleppey had gone to a Philadel-
phia hotel to visit a team of his
strikebreakers who were preparing
to go to another Pennsylvania city
where a newspaper strike had been
expected. After Schleppey's ar-
rest the waiting strikebreakers were
warned and checked out of the
hotel at 4 a. m., but not before all
were identified. They disappeared
and the strike was averted.
Several members of the team
recently had scabbed in the Port-
land, Ore., newspaper strike,
leaving there only after the pub-
lishers quit paying their hotel
and food bills.
Schleppey is charged with vio-
lating a 1937 Pennsylvania law
providing:
"That it shall be unlawful for
any person, firm or corporation,
not directly involved in a labor
strike or lockout, to recruit any
person or persons for employment,
or to secure or offer to secure for
any person or persons any employ-
ment, when the purpose of such
recruiting, securing or offering to
secure employment, is to have such
persons take the place in employ-
ment of employes in an industry
where a labor strike or lockout
exists."
Schleppey, who has been operat-
ing for a number of years under
the sponsorship of union-hating
publishers, has enjoyed a particu-
larly lucrative business in the past
two or three years since the pub-
lishers organized a strike-insurance
program, handled through agencies
in Canada, which pays strike-happy
publishers millions of dollars in a
matter of six to eight weeks to
cover their heavy losses.
Beck, 2 Industrialists
Freed in 'Loan' Case
New York — A federal judge here has dismissed criminal charges
of Taft-Hartley Act violations against Dave Beck, two trucking
company executives and three, corporations. In Washington the
Justice Dept. promptly announced it would appeal the ruling.
A Justice Dept. spokesman said the dismissal was contrary to
two other court decisions involving^
comparable charges.
$200,000 in Loans
The case involved $200,000 in
loans to Beck arranged in 1954
through Roy Fruehauf, president
of the Fruehauf Trailer Co., and
Burge M. Seymour, president of
the giant Associated Transport,
Inc., and their companies, and the
Brown Equipment & Manufactur-
ing Co., a wholly owned subsidiary
of Associated.
The government was prepared
to contend that Beck, former
president of the Teamsters, when
he was under income tax inves-
tigation, borrowed the money to
replace funds withdrawn from
the union treasury.
Testimony before the McClellan
special Senate committee in 1957
disclosed that Freuhauf arranged
with Seymour and Associated
Transport to advance the money
and that Beck repaid them after re-
selling to the Teamsters the $163,-
000 house in Seattle the union had
given him.
All the defendants were charged
with violating Taft-Hartley provi-
sions forbidding the payment or
receiving oi "any money or other
things of value" between employers
and representatives of employes. In
1953 Beck had advanced $1.5 mil-
lion in union funds to Fruehauf to
aid him in a stockholders' proxy
fight for control of the Fruehauf
company.
U. S. District Judge Sidney
Sugarman ruled in dismissing the
indictment that the exchange of
loans, if proved, did not consti-
tute a crime. He held that not
until the Landrum-Griffin Act
of 1959 were loan transactions
between union officials and cor-
porations specifically outlawed.
The government argued that the
loans were a transfer of a "thing of
value."
Fruehauf, Seymour and their
companies are the only corpora-
tions and corporation officials to
face criminal charges arising
from the three years of McClel-
lan committee investigations.
Sugarman required the defense
to make its motion for dismissal of
the charges in advance of trial, thus
allowing a government appeal di-
rect to the U.S. Supreme Court for
reinstatement of the indictments
without creating an issue of double
jeopardy.
BLOOR SCHLEPPEY
Arrested on charges of illegally furnishing strikebreakers
Labor Educator Starr
Hailed on Retirement
New York — More than 200 educators from across the nation
paid tribute at a dinner here to Mark Starr, a British coal miner
turned American labor educator, who retired recently as educa-
tional director of the Ladies' Garment Workers.
The salute to Starr's half-century of trade union service, 25 years
of which was spent in the ILGWU'^
post, highlighted a two-day Wash-
ington's Birthday conference of un-
ion educators at the Carnegie En-
dowment Intl. Center, sponsored
jointly by Teachers Local 189 and
the American Labor Education
Service.
In the principal address at the
dinner, Dr. Harold Taylor, former
president of Sarah Lawrence Col-
lege, voiced sharp criticism of the
total aimlessness" of the Eisen-
hower Administration and called
for "a new sense of social purpose."
Taylor, recently returned from a
six-month tour of Asia, said he was
in Indonesia at the time the stories
about rigged television broke in the
world press. The people of that
Asian country, he said, termed the
TV scandal "typical of the greed
and corruption of the capitalistic
system" in the U.S.
Taking part in the salute to Stan-
were Lawrence Rogin, chairman of
the ALES board of directors and
director of labor education and
services at the University of Michi-
gan and Wayne State University;
Benjamin D. Segal, president of
AFT Local 189; Norman Thomas,
former Socialist presidential nomi-
nee; and a score of Starr's labor
and education associates.
A guiding force in the develop-
ment of labor education service,
Starr was active in the formation
of both the ALES and AFT Lo-
cal 189, and serves at present as
a member of both executive
boards. He was for 10 years
president of the Teachers 9 local
and a national vice president of
the union.
The two-day education confer-
ence was geared to a discussion of
the need for a reassessment of
American society, and the role
which the labor movement can play
in such a reappraisal.
Associate Prof. Irving Howe
of Brandeis University declared
that Madison Ave. has "managed
to hide poverty" by creating the
"myth of the 'happy worker' and
the 'affluent trade unionist 9 99 at
a time when "millions of Ameri-
can families are trying to exist
on incomes of between $2,000
and $5,000 a year. 99
Also participating were Jack
Conway, administrative assistant to
Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther; Julius J. Manson, district di-
09-LZ-Z
rector of the N. Y. State Board of
Mediation; Everett Kassalow, re-
search director of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept.; Jack Bar-
bash, professor of labor education
at the University of Wisconsin
School for Workers; Hy Kornbluh
of the Institute of Labor & Indus-
trial Relations at Wayne State Uni-
versity; and Pres. Harry Van Ars-
dale, Jr., of the New York City
AFL-CIO.
House Fails in Try
At Overriding Veto
Pres. Eisenhower has
killed the first major bill of
the new Congress — a meas-
ure to double federal grants
for local water pollution proj-
ects to a $90 million-a-year
level.
A Democratic effort to
override the veto fell short
of the necessary two-thirds
majority in the House. The
vote was 249 to 157 in favor
of overriding — 22 fewer af-
firmative votes than were
needed.
Defeat of the bill will not
affect the existing sewage
and water-pollution program,
on which $45 million is be-
ing spent annually. The
President this year asked that
actual expenditures be re-
duced to $20 million, but
such a cut is deemed un-
likely.
Labor Rallies to Aid Shipyard Strikers
Bethlehem
Help Urged
By Meany
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has urged the 13.5-million-mem-
ber trade union movement to
rally its financial strength behind
the Shipbuilding Workers and
Technical Engineers in their six-
week-old strike at Bethlehem
Steel Co. s eight East Coast ship-
yards.
Management's efforts to "im-
pose lower wages, less job security,
reduced working conditions, and
elimination of grievance and arbi-
tration procedures" forced the
strike on the 17,000 unionists,
Meany declared.
The appeal for "substantial"
contributions was contained in
letters to the presidents of na-
tional and international unions,
state and local central bodies
and directly affiliated local un-
ions. The financial drive came
amid these developments:
• Shipbuilders' Pres. John J.
Grogan called on the Navy Dept.
to abandon its "neutrality" in the
dispute which has tied up work on
atomic-powered vessels and mis-
sile-carrying ships. He said the
strike could be settled in "a matter
of hours" if the Administration
would "demand that Bethlehem
make an honest and realistic ef-
fort" to negotiate a contract.
• Maryland's seven-man dele-
gation to the House of Represen-
tatives called on Navy Sec. Thomas
S. Gates, Jr., to prevail on man-
agement "to bargain in good faith."
The company's "acts of provoca-
tion," they said, left the unions
"no alternative but to go out on
strike."
• A Massachusetts court re-
fused company pleas for an in-
junction against mass picketing at
the Quincy yards on the grounds
that Bethlehem had failed to bar-
gain in "good faith" in the seven
months prior to the strike. Re-
buffed in its plea for a restraining
order, the company filed $1.25 mil-
lion damage suits against the un-
ions and individual strikers at
Quincy.
• The National Labor Rela-
tions Board continued hearings in
New York on charges that the
(Continued on Page 3)
Masaryk's Ideals
Live On — Meany
The ideals of freedom, de-
mocracy and social equality
that Thomas G. Masaryk
stood for will prevail in the
end, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany declared in a tribute to
one of Czechoslovakia's most
famous patriots, whose 110th
birthday falls on Mar. 7.
"The great tragedy of our
time is that the homeland of
the father of the Czechoslo-
vak-Republic is under foreign
control," Meany said. "So-
viet totalitarianism in 1948
swept away the liberty of
the Czechoslovak people and
turned the nation into a
prison camp where social
and political freedom were
eradicated.
"The Communists have
sought without avail to ob-
literate Thomas G. Masaryk's
name from history. But his
name is a great symbol of
democracy that can never be
erased from the hearts and
minds of free people. His
name will also be a reminder
that freedom can be regained
and an example to millions of
his countrymen and those of
other captive nations."
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C. . .
$2 a year Seeond Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, March 5, 1960
No. 10
Political Battle Flares on
Ike's Economic Programs
Democrats Lash at
Slowdown Policies
PETITIONS BEARING 5,000 signatures, asking support of legis-
lation authorizing on-site picketing in construction industry labor
disputes, is presented to Rep. Dante Fascell (D-Fla.), second from
right, by three members of the Miami Building & Construction
Trades Council's legislative committee — Chairman Dennis Murphy
(left), Sec. Joe Vernaglia and Bernie Rubin (right).
By 5-3 for Thompson Bill:
House Unit Okays
On-Site Picketing
A House Labor subcommittee headed by Rep. Carl D. Perkins
(D-Ky.) has approved the Thompson bill, to permit building trades
unions to picket multi-employer construction sites, following hear-
ings during which non-union employers voiced strenuous objections.
The subcommittee voted five to three to clear the measure.
Testifying in favor of the bill^~
were Pres. Richard D. Gray of the
AFL-CIO Building & Construction
Trades Dept., other building trades
spokesmen and Under Sec. of La-
bor James T. O'Connell, who gave
the measure full Administration
backing.
The measure now goes to the full
Labor Committee, where an early
vote is hoped for. Similar measures
have previously been aproved by
the Senate Labor Committee and
last year by the House Labor
"group, "batrtirey 1ravt rxe vei i cached
the floor of either house for a
vote.
Labor spokesmen told the sub-
committee the bill is crucial to the
preservation of union conditions
in the construction industry. It
would give building trades unions
picketing rights comparable to
those enjoyed in other industries
by reversing the Supreme Court's
6-3 decision upholding the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board in
the now-famous Denver Building
Trades case.
In that dispute, the NLRB
ruled that picketing of a non-
union contractor by one union at
the site of a construction project
constituted an illegal secondary
boycott if it induced other crafts
to walk off the job.
Thomas E. Bracken, attorney
for the Baltimore Building Trades
Council, gave the subcommittee
graphic illustrations of how open-
shop anti-union contractors in the
Baltimore area have prospered at
the expense of unionized competi-
tors through substandard wages and
working conditions.
The Associated Builders & Con-
tractors of Maryland, he said, was
organized in 1950 to represent a
small group of non-union contrac-
(Continued on Page 4)
Economic policy was projected sharply into the 1960 election
picture by a party-line split on the Administration's estimate of the
nation's present situation and future outlook.
The Joint Economic Committee of Congress split wide open in
its evaluation of the President's 1960 Economic Report. The Demo-
cratic majority said flatly that the
President's report and his budget
"will not achieve the objectives of
the Employment Act."
GOP Backs Ike
The Republican minority said
that the President's program "will
achieve reasonably" the objectives
of the act which sets up full pro-
duction and full employment as
national policies.
. Committee Chairman Paul H.
Douglas (D-Ill.) underscored the
split in a separate statement
charging the minority with using
"very intemperate language in
accusing the majority of "polit-
ical blackmail, of disregarding
freedom and of using phony fig-
ures."
The minority, said Douglas,
wants a "stamp of approval" on
the President's budget and eco-
nomic report and economic poli-
cies.
Democrats Cite Failures
Douglas said the majority can-
not agree with the President's poli-
cies and cited the following:
• Unemployment at an average
rate of 5.5 percent for 1959 — a
so-called prosperous year — is al-
most the same as in the recession
year of 1954 when it averaged 5.6
percent. "This is a serious prob-
lem and we do not intend to s\\ eep
it under the rug."
• The economy has grown at
a rate of only 2.3 percent between
1953 and 1959, below the his-
torical average and about half the
potential of the economy.
• The price level has been as
stable as at any time in history yet
"this is the time the Administra-
(C on tinned on Page 2)
Voting Law
Upheld by
High Court
The Supreme Court, clearing
the way for full-scale enforcement
of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, has
upheld the constitutionality of
federal lawsuits against state of-
ficers accused of denying voting
rights to Negroes.
The unanimous decision was
handed down as the Senate
plunged into around-the-clock
sessions aimed at breaking a South-
ern filibuster which since Feb. 15
has blockaded action on measures
to safeguard voting and other
minority rights.
Compromise Move Begun
As the non-stop effort to talk
rights legislation to death entered its
fourth day, the first reports of com-
promise moves began circulating in
the Senate. Majority Leader Lyn-
don B. Johnson (D-Tex.) was re-
portedly drafting a moderate bill
that might break the deadlock, and
the Republican Policy Committee
scheduled a meeting to draft strate-
gy.
The ruling, in a suit involving al-
leged discrimination against Negro
voters in Terrell County, Ga., im-
mediately became., a major issue in
the marathon debate.
Pending in the Senate is an Ad-
ministration proposal calling for
court appointment of referees to
(Continued on Page 5)
AFL-CIO Joins High Court Fight
To Retain Union Shop on Railroads
The AFL-CIO has joined with 15 non-operating rail unions in asking the Supreme Court to re-
verse a Georgia state court decision invalidating union-shop agreements on railroads.
Challenging the Georgia ruling that a union-shop contract cannot be enforced if part of a mem-
ber's dues are used for political and legislative activity, the AFL-CIO pointed out that a union's
political activity is directly related "to the economic advancement of the worker/ 5
The attack on the railroad unions-
shop agreements, the AFL-CIO
emphasized, challenges the right of
all unions "to enter into union-
shop contracts without abandon-
ing one of the most effective means
available for promoting the best
interests of their membership:
political and legislative action."
Two centuries of political ac-
tion by labor groups were cited
as evidence that "to protect his
wages and his pocketbook, the
worker must do more than bar-
gain with his employer. He must
join together with other wage
earners to secure a favorable
political climate for advancing
his economic interest. 9 '
The AFL-CIO arguments were
submitted in a "friend of the court"
brief backing the railroad unions'
appeal.
In 1956, the Supreme Court —
in what is known as the Hanson
case — unanimously upheld the con-
stitutionality of union-shop agree-
ments on railroads even in states
with so - called "right - to - work"
laws. Congress in 1951 amended
(Continued on Page 2)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Affiliates Win
592 Elections
In 3d Quarter
AFL-CIO affiliates won bargain-
ing rights in 592 National Labor
Relations Board elections during
the final quarter of 1959 — a gain
of 10 from the third quarter total
and 16 more than during the last
quarter of 1958.
They also lost more elections.
The ratio of victories dropped to
52 percent from 55 percent the
previous quarter and 58 percent
during the equivalent period of
1958.
Fourth-quarter statistics issued
by the NLRB showed 39,667
workers in the bargaining units
won by AFL-CIO unions. This
brought the total for the calen-
dar year to 157,021 workers in
2,312 units which voted for rep-
resentation by AFL-CIO affili-
ates.
NLRB elections do not* of
course, measure unions' total or-
ganizing gains. Many shops are
organized without representation
votes or with elections conducted
by state labor boards. -
The NLRB's quarterly statistical
summary also showed a continued
sharp upswing in the number of
unfair labor practice complaints is-
sued by the NLRB general coun-
sel. The total for the quarter was
an all-time high of 369. Of these,
234 were based on charges filed
against employers, 99 against un-
ions and 36 against both employers
and unions.
The five-member board issued
formal decisions in 719 cases — in-
cluding 586 representation cases
and 133 unfair labor practice de-
cisions. This was a 23 percent rise
over the comparable quarter in
1958.
Trend Shifts, New Rise in
Concentration of Wealth
The concentration of personal wealth in the U.S. has been
increasing since 1949 and in 1953 the top 1.6 percent of the
adult population held 30 percent of the nation's total.
The figures showing a reversal of the 20-year trend from
1929 to 1949, during which the concentration of wealth was
declining, are contained in a paper published by the National
Bureau of Economic Research.
The paper, by Robert J. Lampman, shows that the con-
centration of personal wealth in the hands of a small per-
centage of the population increased from 1922 to 1929, fell
to below the pre-1929 level in the 1930s, and dropped still
more during the war and to 1949. The trend changed from
1949 and concentration increased through 1956, the last year
covered in the study.
The degree of concentration of wealth, Lampman says, was
considerably lower in 1956 than in either 1929 or 1922.
The 1.6 percent of the adult population that held 30 per-
cent of the wealth in 1953 also owned at least 80 percent of
the corporate stock, virtually all of the local government
bonds, nearly 90 percent of corporate bonds and between 10
and 35 percent of other types of property.
Party Battle Flares
On Economic Report
(Continued from Page 1)
tion renewed its fight on 'infla-
tion,' " slowing the rate of growth
and keeping the levels of unem-
ployment and interest rates high.
• The President's program falls
below the level of maximum em-
ployment and production. "Un-
employment for 1960 will probably
average close to 5 percent for the
year."
'Starved for Funds'
The majority report declared
that the Administration's pro-
grams, and specifically public re-
sponsibility for schools, slum clear-
AFL-CIO Joins Fight
For Rails' Union Shop
(Continued from Page I)
the Railway Labor Act to permit
union-shop agreements whereas
such contracts had previously been
prohibited.
. Six Southern Railway employes
in Georgia, in a well-financed at-
tack on the union shop, based their
new court challenge on a portion
of the Hanson case decision which
declared that "if (union) assess-
ments are in fact imposed for pur-
poses not germane to collective
bargaining, a different problem
would be presented."
Although no assessments of any
kind had been levied on the rail
employes, their attorneys charged
that use of a portion of their dues
for legislative goals violated the
constitutional rights of the six em-
ployes who said they did not agree
with the political views of the ma-
'Clear' Glass Agency-
Product, Not L-O-F
Toledo, O. — The Libbey-
Owens-Ford Glass Co. said
it had discovered after "a
searching inquiry" that the
Federal Trade Commission
was right in charging that
camera trickery was used in
a television commercial plug-
ging its car window glass.
No one at L-O-F "had the
slightest suspicion" that films
showing the "undistorted"
quality of the company's glass
had actually been taken with
the windows rolled down, the
company declared in a state-
ment.
The commercial was pre-
pared by an advertising agen-
cy, the firm declared, and
company officials did not
know "that our instructions
had not been followed to the
letter."
jority of the union members.
The railroad unions 9 brief
noted that "railroad employes
have obtained through legisla-
tive and political activity retire-
ment and unemployment bene-
fits which employes in other in-
dustries have secured, in part at
least, by agreements between
employers and unions."
In this heavily-regulated indus-
try, the unions pointed out, "col-
lective bargaining cannot function
effectively or realistically without
legislative or political activity."
The AFL-CIO brief, which the
Supreme Court was asked to re-
ceive, coupled legal citations with
a review of labor's political ac-
tivity dating from the 18th cen-
tury.
Labor's battle for shorter hours
— beginning with the drive for
the 10-hour day — has always
been conducted on both the col-
lective bargaining and legislative
fronts, the brief said. Both state
and federal legislation was in-
volved.
Wage-hour legislation, elimina-
tion of child labor, and a broad
area of social legislation were cited
as evidence of the value of politi-
cal activity to union members.
Rubber Union Expert
On Notre Dame Panel
South Bend, Ind. — Gerard Mar-
tell, Rubber Workers time study
engineer, served on a panel that
discussed "Keeping Work Stand-
ards and Job Content Up to Date"
at Notre Dame University's annu-
al Union-Ma'nagement Conference
here.
The conference is sponsored by
the university's Dept. of Economics
and the Law School. The general
theme of this year's sessions was
improvement of relations between
the parties.
ance, resource development, the
elimination of depressed areas and
other functions among the major
keys to economic growth, are
"either starved for funds or their
programs are limited in scope."
Much more must be done, the
majority added, "in the fields of
missiles, space and combat
strength."
The majority renewed its long-
range program offered last month in
an exhaustive report on the econ-
omy over a period of years and
said the President's budget and
Economic Report do not contain
"any fundamental changes in the
directions which we think are nec-
essary. By and large they are a
status quo budget and report."
The Democrats declared that
monetary policy is "not discussed
in any constructive way," that
there is "no reordering of priori-
ties" on the budget and that the
major tax loop-holes are not men-
tioned. The report added:
"Each problem is broken down
into a series of minute recom-
mendations which give the ap-
pearance of support and action
but which when added together
provide no effective program."
The Republican minority report
said that prices have been stable
because of the Administration anti-
inflation programs and it defended
consistently the Administration's
program.
Javits Files Separate Views
The majority report was signed
by nine Democrats. Sen. J. William
Fulbright (D-Ark.) did not par-
ticipate in the hearings and neither
approved or disapproved the find-
ings or conclusions. Six Republi-
cans signed the minority report.
Sen. Jacob Javits (R-N. Y.) stated
his views separately, disagreeing
somewhat with his Republican col-
leagues and declaring that budg-
etary considerations must not be-
come "the primary determinants
of national policy."
Prosperity or Recession?
'Slowdown' Ahead,
Labor Urges Action
Current signs point to a "considerable slowdown" in the economy
about mid-year, setting the stage for another recession, the AFL-
CIO has warned in urging "positive steps" to boost sales, produc-
tion and jobs.
"Prosperity or basis of recession?" was the choice posed in the
latest issue of Labor's Economic^ -
Review, monthly publication of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Research.
The Review observed that 1960
opened "with a 'boom' that in-
cluded both a high level of unem-
ployment and considerable amounts
of idle plants and machines in many
industries." ,
"Sharp Recession" Feared
Noting that the rise in economic
activities since mid-November was
due largely to the restocking of in-
ventories depleted by the steel
strike, the Review said this build-
up will soon ease and government
policies "must be changed swiftly"
if the nation is to avoid a "sharp
recession next year."
The AFL-CIO proposed a two-
prong approach to the problem.
First, it recommended coun-
ter-recessionary measures such as
an improved jobless pay system
with federal standards on bene-
fit levels and duration; an ex-
pansion of social security bene-
fits to include health care and a
shelf of public works programs.
Second, the following actions
were urged to encourage a continu-
ing rise in sales, production and
jobs this year and to prevent a re-
cession in 1961:
• The tight-money policy "must
be halted" and an adequate money
supply provided to achieve maxi-
mum protection and employment;
interest rates should be reduced to
boost sales.
• Programs of federal aid and
low-interest loans should be enacted
to improve such public services as
education, health, community fa-
cilities, urban redevelopment, low
and middle-income housing and
conservation.
• The federal tax structure
should be overhauled to eliminate
loopholes and ease the burden of
low - income and middle - income
families.
• To bolster buying power, es-
pecially for low-wage workers, the
federal wage-hour law should be
extended to cover millions more
workers and the present $1 an hour
minimum raised to $1.25.
• Federal aid for distressed
communities is essential to attract
new business operations and to re-
train workers.
The Review pointed out that the
labor force has been growing faster
than job opportunities as young
people come out of school and the
exodus from farming continues.
6.3 Million Jobless, Underemployed
As a result, unemployment re-
mained high in January — 4.1 mil-
lion jobless or 5.2 percent of the
labor force — and 2.2 million addi-
tional people had only part-time
work because full-time work was
not available, the Review said.
"It would take a continuing
rise of sales, production and jobs
through 1960, therefore," the Re-
view added, "before full employ-
ment could be reached."
After the rebuilding of business
inventories eases off, the Review
warned, the policies of the Eisen-
hower Administration "are likely
to nip" the present rise of activity.
"Tight money, high interest rates
and the Administration's insistence
on a budget surplus, despite the
needs of a growing population for
expanding public services, are
squeezing the rise of sales, pro-
duction and jobs," the AFL-CIO
said.
The Review pointed to the
"serious national problem" of
high unemployment, noting that
the 3.8 million or 5.5 percent un-
employed during 1959 was nearly
as great as in the recession year
of 1954, when there were 3.6
million or 5.6 percent jobless.
If business activity tapers off in
the months ahead while the instal-
lation of automatic and semi-auto-
matic equipment continues, the
widening gap between the nation's
ability to produce and lagging sales
will spell a downturn, the Review
said.
Parley Airs
Co-op Housing
Role of Unions
The role of trade unions in spon-
soring and helping to develop co-
operative housing was a major topic
at a two-day meeting sponsored by
he National Housing Conference,
the Cooperative League of the USA
and the National Association of
Housing and Redevelopment Offi-
cials.
John Edelman, Washington rep-
resentative of the Textile Workers
Union of America, served as chair-
man of a session on stimulating
union interest in co-op housing.
On the panel were Jerome Belson
of the Meat Cutters, Henry Wilson,
attorney for the State, County &
Municipal Employes, and Pres.
Harry Van Arsdale of the New
York City Central Labor Council.
Bert Seidman, AFL-CIO econ-
omist, presided at sessions on de-
veloping more co-op housing
sponsors and on integrated hous-
ing projects. Roland Sawyer,
Steelworkers' housing consultant,
and William Oliver of the Auto
Workers participated.
Isidor Melamed of the AFL-CIO
Medical Service Plan, Philadelphia,
discussed community facilities in
co-op projects, and A. E. Kazan,
head of the union-backed United
Housing Foundation, New York,
reviewed the progress of coopera-
tive housing in the past year.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Page Three
Meany Calls On All Unions
To Back Up Shipyard Strike
(Continued from Page 1)
company's refusal to bargain and
unilateral imposition of drastic
work rules changes constituted un-
fair labor practices.
Union-Busting Drive
In his appeal for funds, Meany
said the Shipbuilders and AFTE
had made "every conceivable rea-
sonable effort" to achieve a settle-
ment while management "used
every method to break the work-
ers' resistance." He said the com-
pany's "adamancy can only be in-
terpreted as a continuation of the
big business policy to weaken and
destroy unions."
Recalling that labor's unstinting
support enabled the Steelworkers
to win a "sweeping victory" in
their 116-day strike last year, the
AFL-CIO president wrote:
"This strike, as was the Steel-
workers' strike, is of major im-
portance to each national and
international union. A victory
for the members of our brother
unions would be a victory for the
trade union movement, as it
would undoubtedly result in less-
ening big business' all-out at-
tempts to destroy unions and
shackle workers."
Grogan's plea for Navy aban-
donment of its "neutrality" came
in advertisements printed in New
York and Washington newspapers,
Social Workers Win
$5,200 Yearly Minimum
New York — A $5,200 minimum for social workers and psychol-
ogists was one of the key gains scored by Local 1707 of the State,
County & Municipal Employes in a new pact with seven casework
agencies here.
The union also won a shorter workweek and an average 13 per-
cent pay hike for clerical workers'^ -
in the two-year contract with the
RepL
agencies, all of which are affiliated
with the Federation of Jewish Phi-
lanthropies. -
Seven hundred and fifty workers
were involved in 10 weeks of talks
which went down to the wire. State
mediators joined at the mid-point.
After the membership voted to
strike, marathon sessions brought
agreement just as time ran out.
Local 1707 has 4,000 members
and bargains with more than 60
social and community agencies in
the New York City area. It is the
largest union local in the field of
private, non-profit agencies.
The new contract added im-
portant improvements to the
Jean McKelvey
laces Kerr
On UAW Body
Detroit — Dr. Jean T. McKelvey,
professor of the School of Indus-
trial and Labor Relations at Cor-
nell University, has become a mem-
ber of the Auto Workers' Public
Review Board, UAW Pres. Wal-
ter P. Reuther has announced.
First Woman Member
Dr. McKelvey, first woman
member of the board, replaces
Clark Kerr, president of the Uni-
versity of California, who resigned
from the UAW body because of
the press of his university duties
and because of the great traveling
distance required for hjm to at-
tend board meetings.
The Public Review Board
was established by the UAW's
1957 convention to provide close
public scrutiny of the union's af-
fairs. The board was granted
independent authority and re-
sponsibility to investigate and
make final and binding decisions
on appeals filed by individual
members. The board also deals
with alleged violations of AFL-
CIO or UAW Codes of Ethical
Practices.
The board's chairman is Rabbi
Morris Adler of Detroit. Other
members include Magistrate J. A.
Hanrahan of Windsor, Ont.; Msgr.
George C. Higgins, director of the
Social Action Dept. of the Nation-
al Catholic Welfare Conference,
Washington, D. C; Wayne County
Circuit Court Judge Wade Mc-
Cree; Methodist Bishop G. Brom-
ley Oxnam of Washington, D. C;
and Prof. Edwin E. Witte of the
University of Wisconsin.
nucleus of a "career scale" for
professional workers won in pre-
vious negotiations, the union
said.
The professional scale, retro-
active to Feb. 1, will now range
from $5,000 to $7,340. On Feb.
1, 1961, the scale will range
from $5,200 to $7,540. The
total increase in pay averages
$1,120.
The clerical group won a reduc-
tion of an hour and a quarter to
a workweek of 3614 hours. The
clerical pay hike ranged from $3
to $4.50 as of Feb. 1 and will rise
$2.50 to $4 next Feb. 1.
Employes covered by the new
agreement are with the following
agencies: Altro Health & Rehabili-
tation Services; Jewish Board of
Guardians; Jewish Child Care As-
sociation; Jewish Community Serv-
ices of Long Island; Jewish Family
Service; Jewish Youth Services of
Brooklyn and Louise Wise Services.
in which he declared that "there
can be no neutrality when a gov-
ernment contractor's greed and
irresponsibility stop work on vital
defense contracts."
The Shipbuilders president noted
that Gates last year intervened in
the steel dispute when the Admin-
istration obtained a Taft-Hartley
injunction to halt the USWA strike.
At that time Gates cited the steel
shortage as a threat to the Navy's
shipbuilding program.
He charged that the Navy
Dept. "knew that if Bethlehem
persisted in its unrealistic atti-
tude towards labor, a strike
would be inevitable," but that
despite the threatened tie-up of
ship production the Administra-
tion never "took a single step to
prevent Bethlehem from pursu-
ing policies which created the
crisis into which our naval de-
fense has been plunged."
Maryland's seven congressmen,
all Democrats, in a letter to Gates
called on him to use his "good
offices" to prevail on Bethlehem to
"bargain in good faith," pointing
out that "with each passing day
our national defense effort will be
seriously affected." They noted
that for seven months the union
members continued work without a
contract in an effort "to maintain
full and continuous production."
The letter was signed by Repre-
sentatives Daniel B. Brewster,
George H. Fallon, John R. Foley,
Samuel N. Friedel, Edward A.
Garmatz, Richard E. Lankford and
Thomas F. Johnson.
1,001 Credit Unions
In AFL-CIO Locals
Madison, Wis. — Members of
AFL-CIO unions organized 87 new
credit unions last year and now are
served by a total of 1,001, accord-
ing to a study just completed by
the Credit Union National Associa-
tion.
Credit unions in the organized
labor field are independent of un-
ion control, but only union members
are eligible for membership.
IATSE and 4 N. Y. Locals
Honored in Cancer Fight
New York — The Theatrical Stage Employes and four
Greater New York locals have received special citations from
the American Cancer Society for playing a key role in a major
cancer education project.
The IATSE was commended by Cancer Society Executive
Vice Pres. Lane W. Adams for making possible special show-
ings of two cancer education films which drew a record at-
tendance of 60,000 women in Long Island communities.
Motion picture projectionists and stage hands from IATSE
Locals 640, 306, 340 and 4 donated their services without
charge for the Cancer Society's one-day blitz educational cam-
paign in Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
In saluting members of the AFL-CIO union for the contri-
bution of their time and services, Adams declared: "Labor's
participation was an essential ingredient in the overall success
of this program."
Court Bars Injunction,
Sees 'Good Faith' Lack
Quincy, Mass. — The Massachusetts Superior Court has refused
to bar mass picketing by striking members of the Shipbuilding
Workers and the Technical Engineers at the Bethlehem Steel Co.
shipyards here on the ground that the company failed to bargain
"in good faith" prior to the walkout.
The, three-judge panel voted'^
unanimously to reject the com-
pany's request for a temporary re-
straining order that would have
halted the mass picketing in the
six-week-old walkout.
The court cited a Massachusetts
statute permitting injunctions in la-
bor disputes only if the complain-
ant has made "every reasonable ef-
fort to settle such dispute either by
negotiations, or with the aid of
any available governmental ma-
chinery of mediation, or voluntary
arbitration."
Futility Preceded Strike
Seventeen thousand members of
the two unions struck all eight of
Bethlehem's East Coast shipyards
Jan. 22 after seven months of futile
efforts to win new contracts.
In rejecting the company's in
junction plea, the court held that
management:
• Instituted sweeping work-
rule changes "unilaterally without
agreement or consultation with
Portland News Strikers Step Up
Subscription Cancellation Drive
Portland, Ore. — A door-to-door "cancel your subscription" campaign conducted by newspaper
unions against The Oregonian and Oregon Journal continued as the multi-union struggle against
the local dailies went into its 17th week.
Latest weekly canvass netted 955 cancellations, 25 more than the previous week. Since the
door-to-door drive started, over 9,000 new cancellations have been collected.
Cliff Bradshaw of Typographical'^
Local 58 and Jim Thomson of
Stereotypers Local 48, campaign
co-chairmen, announced an ex-
tended program aimed at still more
cancellations. This will blanket the
entire city and suburban area, to
assure that all householders are
reached and told the union side of
the strike.
The publishers, who have been
printing a combined paper at The
Oregonian plant since the strike be-
gan Nov. 10, received a setback
in their attempt to pin a secondary
boycott violation on the striking
unions.
Their appeal has been thrown
out by the National Labor Rela-
tions Board in Washington. This
decision, issued by NLRB Gen-
eral Counsel Stuart Rothman,
upholds the original ruling of
Thomas Graham, Seattle regional
NLRB director.
In the publisher appeal it was al-
leged that Stereotypers and the un-
affiliated Teamsters were guilty of
violating secondary boycott provi-
sions of the Taft-Hartley Act by
attempting to induce contract
truck drivers not to cross picket
lines.
Word of the newspaper strike,
now cited as the "Portland Pat-
tern," continues to spread. Helping
to pass the word are two Port-
landers on a nation-wide tour. They
are Frank Keith of the Typographi-
cal Union and Bill Fox of Mailers
Local 13.
Their purpose is to spell out the
"Portland Pattern" to newspaper
unions throughout the country.
They are making a special effort to
talk to union members in as many
of the S. I. Newhouse-operated pa-
pers as possible. The Oregonian is
one of 14 papers in the Newhouse
chain, third largest in the country.
While circulation goes down
on the combined Oregonian-
Journal, circulation goes up on
the Portland Reporter, the week-
ly published by unions idled be-
cause of the strike. Some 70,000
copies of a 12-page edition were
distributed by the third week.
The paper, to be printed for the
duration of the strike, and dis-
tributed free, has shown a 40
percent increase in business, ac-
cording to publisher Robert A.
Lee, a striking assistant news
editor.
The publishers stepped up their
war-of-nerves campaign against the
unions last week. Highlighted by
a six-page throw-away entitled
"Strike Facts," the campaign in-
cluded a menacing speech by Ore-
gonian Publisher Michael J. Frey,
renewed telephone pressure on re-
porters, photographers, and editors
who belong to the Portland News-
paper Guild, publication of articles
by four Guild and craft union
members justifying their return to
work, and the apparent "planting"
of a leaflet advertising the resump-
tion of separate publication by the
two papers.
Frey, in a speech at the Oregon
Press Conference, said that the
newspapers will hire replacements
for virtually all strikers.
"Union members who return . , .
are going to have to file applica-
tions for their former jobs and
take their place in line behind pres-
ent employes," Frey said.
" Also, the publishers placed an
advertisement in the "Help Wanted,
Editorial" column of Editor and
Publisher, newspaper trade publi-
cation. The publishers face possi-
ble criminal charges should any
worker take a job with the struck
papers as a result of the ad. The
ad does not carry a statement, re-
quired by Oregon law, that strike
conditions exist at the two papers.
the respective unions" in the
course of negotiations. "We find
that this indicates,' 9 the court
said, "that the company was not
making every reasonable effort in
good faith to settle the dispute."
• Demanded preferential con-
tract terms that would have placed
Bethlehem "in a substantially bet-
ter competitive position than any
other shipbuilder on the East
Coast." The court said "this indi-
cates that the company, in this re-
spect, has failed to make every
reasonable effort in good faith to
settle the dispute by negotiations."
• "Rejected categorically" un-
ion proposals to submit the dispute
to arbitration. The court held this
indicative of the company's failure
to "make every reasonable effort
to settle the dispute with the aid
of any available governmental ma-
chinery for voluntary arbitration."
• Remained "unchanged" in its
position in meetings with govern-
ment mediators, making it apparent
that future sessions "would not re-
solve the problem or result in a
new contract." The court called
the company's adament stand "fatal
to its case."
The three judges said that evi-
dence "has abundantly proved that
unlawful acts have been com-
mitted" by the unionists, whose
mass picketing allegedly kept 2,000
non-strikers from entering the ship-
yard. The decision added:
"In not granting a temporary re-
straining order, the court does not
condone the conduct (of the strik-
ers). However, the applicable stat-
ute enacted by the legislature
makes certain requirements a con-
dition precedent to the granting of
relief that cannot be disregarded,
no matter how compelling the other
facts are."
Because of the company's lack
of "good faith" bargaining, the
decision said, the court is "help-
less" to move against the unions.
IAM Wins Election
After 10- Year Drive
West Hartford, Conn. — Em-
ployes of Dunham Bush, Inc.,
have voted 203 to 133 for rep-
resentation by the Machinists in a
National Labor Relations Board
election here.
The vote climaxed a drive for
union representation which began
in 1950. Last year the IAM came
within 20 votes of victory. The
decisive win this year, the IAM
said, came despite a company
campaign that included pre-elec-
tion wage increases and captive
audience meetings.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH S, 1960
House Labor
Unit Okays
Situs Pickets
(Continued from Page 1)
tors. Today, he went on, it boasts
650 member firms and its opera-
tions have been so succesful that
it has chapters in Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia
and the District of Columbia.
Ten years ago, Bracken said,
the Baltimore Building Trades
Council's directory listed 58 gen-
eral contractors who used union
sub-contractors exclusively. The
list has now shrunk to five, he
said.
The cutthroat methods by which
the open-shop employers have
gained ground were read into the
record from affidavits member
firms made in 1955 when they
sought to overthrow a Baltimore
ordinance requiring the payment of
prevailing wages on city construc-
tion jobs.
They showed that when the
union rate for carpenters was
$2.42 an hour in 1951, the open-
shop rate was $1.90; house
painters received $2.05 compared
to the open-shop $1.55, and the
open-shop rate for electricians
was 71 percent under the city
rate.
Bracken testified that the wide
differentials have not changed ma-
terially. He said that one of the
group's members, identified as the
Pikesville Electric Co., had paid an
electrician $2 an hour without
overtime in 1959 during one week
and the next week paid the same
man $3.75 on a federal project at
Fort Meade, where he was com-
pelled to pay prevailing wages un-
der the Davis-Bacon Act.
Coercion or Undercutting?
He recalled that James Camp-
bell, board chairman of Associated
Builders, had testified "we believe
that instead of handing the unions
another weapon of coercion with
which to beat employers and em-
ployes in this industry over the
head, Congress should . . ." He
added:
"How about this coercion? How
about the union contractor who
pays his electricians the union rate
plus fringe benefits and then gets
beaten over the head by a competi-
tor down the street who is bidding
for the same work at a pay scale
almost 50 percent lower?
"We should all grow so strong
and wealthy by being beaten over
the head as that organization has."
Louis Sherman, general coun-
sel for the Building & Construc-
tion Trades Dept., testified that
the bill would amend the Taft-
Hartley Act and satisfy a vital
need that has been recognized
by the Administration and by a
large segment of the industry.
Opposition to the bill was led by
Associated General Contractors,
which had enlisted the support of
the National Association of Manu-
facturers and the Chamber of Com-
merce of the U.S.
Texas Labor Sets
$2,500 for Essays
Austin, Tex. — Cash scholarship
awards totaling over $2,500 are
being offered to Texas high school
graduates in the Texas State AFL-
CIO's annual essay contest.
Pres. Jerry Holleman announced
that the deadline for submission of
essays is Apr. 15, with the winners
of prizes from $50 to $500 to be
announced about May 15.
Competitors for the awards put
up by state and local labor groups
and individual union locals may
write on eithe* of two subjects:
"Labor's Role in our Society" or
"Do We Need Unions?"
J
n
TWO OF THE NEW FACES on the executive council of the AFL-
CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. are those of Pres. Ed-
ward J. Leonard (left) of the Plasterers and Sec. John J. Murphy
(right) of the Bricklayers. Seated is William J. McSorley, president
emeritus of the Lathers, who resigned to make way for C. J.
Haggerty, a member of the Lathers, the new department president.
Only one member of an affiliate may serve on the council.
Building Crafts Give
Views on Arbitration
The AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. and its
affiliates "are not opposed" to arbitration for settling inter-union
disputes, the department's executive council has announced.
The council came to that decision after giving "careful and ex-
tended consideration" to the difficulties inherent in setting up ma-
chinery peacefully to resolve dis- 1 ^
agreements between AFL-CIO af-
filiates. It reached these conclu
sions:
1. "That whatever machinery is
ultimately established must deal
with disputes — and disputes only —
and cannot be vested with authority
to pass upon basic jurisdictions of
trade unions."
2. "That this department and its
affiliates are not opposed to the use
of arbitration in the settlement of
inter-union disputes, provided there
are sufficient and effective safe-
guards to protect the interest of
the organizations affiliated with this
department in an equitable man-
ner."
Arbitration Found 'Effective'
The executive council also said
that the building trades "pioneered
in the use of the arbitration process
for the settlement of disputes and
have found it effective once agree-
ment is obtained on both the scope
and the limits of the matters to be
arbitrated."
The AFL-CIO convention in
San Francisco last September ap-
proved a resolution adopting the
principle of final and binding
arbitration for settling inter-union
disputes, and specifically exclud-
ing jurisdictional matters.
A Special Internal Disputes
Committee was set up to develop
a detailed plan and AFL-CIO
officers were instructed to call a
special convention to act upon it
when it is ready.
The committee met several times
during the recent AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council meeting in Bal Har-
bour, Fla., but was unable to agree
on a formula. The Executive
Council, after hearing a progress
report, directed the AFL-CIO Ex-
ecutive Committee to meet with the
special committee in an effort to
work out details of an acceptable
plan.
'Everything in Our Power 9 :
Building Trades Vow
Fight Against Bias
The AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. will "do
everything within our power" to correct racial discrimination on the
job or in apprenticeship training, Pres. Richard J. Gray has notified
Vice Pres. Richard Nixon, chairman of the President's Committee
on Government Contracts.
Copies of Gray's telegram to r ^
of Gray's
Nixon also were sent AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell, members
of the committee. Mitchell is vice
chairman.
The statement followed recent
charges involving Negro participa-
tion in apprenticeship training is-
sued by the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored
People. The study accused many
employers and several unions, in-
cluding some of those in the build-
ing trades, of blocking acceptance
of young Negroes in training pro-
grams leading to journeyman status.
Government apprenticeship agen-
cies were charged with condoning
the practice of exclusion.
"Fully Support" AFL-CIO Ban
In his telegram Gray declared
the department, representing 18 in-
ternational unions with approxi-
mately 3 million members, "fully
supports the non-discrimination
clause contained in the AFL-CIO
constitution."
"We respectfully request that the
government committee on discrim-
inatory practices on federal proj-
ects notify this office of any com-
plaints of racial discrimination on
construction jobs or in apprentice-
ship programs," he continued.
"I can assure you that this
office will investigate each and
every such complaint and will
do everything within our power
to immediately correct any inci-
dents of discrimination in em-
ployment or apprenticeship.
"I am sure that I speak with the
support of the overwhelming num-
ber of building trades leaders
throughout the country in telling
you that discrimination because of
race, color or creed must be wiped
out whether it be in the arena of
casting a vote for public office or
employment."
Allege Few Avenues Open
The NAACP study charged that
only a minor proportion of the
nation's skilled workers are Negroes
and that few of the avenues of
apprenticeship in the skilled trades
are open to Negroes.
Among its conclusions, the
study said:
"Currently, Negroes have not
achieved significant employment
in skilled-craft occupations; are
U.S. Navy Heeds Storm of Protest,
Withdraws Arab Boycott Provisions
. The Navy has withdrawn use of a cancellation warning in contracts for tanker charter operations
in the Middle East that served to give tacit support to the Arab nations' boycott of Israel.
Action was taken after complaints by the Seafarers and several Jewish groups to Pres. Eisenhower
and members of Congress that the Navy position also in effect violated the traditional concept of
the freedom of the seas, permitted foreign nations to bar American ships from carrying cargoes for their
own government, created a black-'^
list of U.S. ships and threw new
burdens on the already hard-
pressed U.S. merchant fleet.
The complaints in addition cited
the Agriculture Dept. and the
Commodity Credit Corp., which
have not yet acted on them.
The complaints were based, in
the Navy case, on warnings in con-
tracts that if a ship had ever done
business in Israel there was a pos-
sibility it might not be loaded in
ports of the Arab nations, and that
substitution of another vessel might
be required. The Arab states have
a long-standing boycott in effect
against ships which have carried
cargoes to or from Israel.
The Navy said the clause was
adopted in contracts for chartered
oil tankers about two years ago
"with no intention to give support
to any political boycott," but be-
cause "it was deemed advanta-
geous" to both the government and
the shipowners.
"Inasmuch as it has been mis-
takenly construed as providing
some solace to the Arab boycott
imposed on persons trading with
Israel, the Navy has discontinued
its use," a statement said.
In the SIU letter to Eisenhower,
Pres. Paul Hall wrote that the
same type of cancellation clause
was placed by the Agriculture
Dept. and the CCC in charter con-
tracts for dry cargo vessels carry-
ing surplus farm products under
the Contract Preference Act.
'The effect of these policies is
to put the U.S. in the contradictory
position of being a partner to an
Arab League shipping boycott to
which this nation is on record as
being opposed in principle," Hall
wrote.
"The immediate victim of this
policy is American shipping.
Shipowners and the seamen who
man their ships are, in effect,
being blacklisted by their own
government, which they help
support through their taxes and
in whose armed forces they are
called upon to serve."
The Maritime Trades Dept
strongly backed the SIU.
disproportionately concentrated
in unskilled and semi-skilled cate-
gories and are making no sub-
stantial progress towards rectify-
ing the pattern. As a result, the
differential between white and
colored workers is being perpetu-
ated and may intensify unless
immediate and effective remedial
action is taken.
"At the present time, Negroes
are indentured in small numbers in
only a few of the building and
graphic arts and service trades, and
are almost completely excluded
from the transportation and metal
craft trades. This condition holds
in the North as well as in the South
and in states with or without statu-
tory injunctions barring discrimina-
tion in employment.**
C. J. (NEIL) HAGGERTY
To head AFL-CIO Building &
Construction Trades Dept.
Haggerty Has
Long Record
Of Service
Sacramento, Calif. — Cornelius J.
Haggerty, California AFL-CIO ex-
ecutive secretary-treasurer who will
become president of the AFL-CIO
Building Trades Dept. on Apr. 1,
has a long record of service both
to the labor movement and the
community in California.
He has been on close personal
terms with Gov. Edmund C. (Pat)
Brown, a Democrat, and his two
Republican predecessors, Goodwin
J. Knight and Earl Warren, the lat-
ter now chief justice of the U.S.
He led labor's 1958 battle to elect
Brown in the latter's contest with
former Republican Sen. William F.
Knowland. Brown won by more
than 1 million votes.
Haggerty also led the success-
ful 1958 campaign to defeat so-
called "right-to-work" legislation
in California, which Knowland
backed.
Born in Boston in 1894, Hag-
gerty entered the labor movement
as a member of the Lathers in Los
Angeles and became president of
the local. He served as West Coast
organizer for his international and
was elected an international vice
president, and became secretary of
the Los Angeles Building Trades
Council and secretary-treasurer of
the former AFL state body.
He was named executive secre-
tary-treasurer when the Cali-
fornia AFL and CIO bodies
merged to form the California
Labor Federation.
^ In his new post Haggerty suc-
ceeds Richard J. Gray, who is re-
tiring after 17 years as president.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. G, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Pa*e Fit*
Under New Organizational Structure:
dayman, Zonarich Named
To Top Positions with IUD
Appointment of two veteran trade unionists to fill newly created posts in the AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. has been announced by IUD Pres. Walter P. Reuther and Sec.-Treas. James B. Carey.
The IUD, which represents 66 affiliated unions with a total industrial union membership of 7 mil-
lion appointed:
• Jacob Clayman, former secretary-treasurer of the Ohio State Industrial Union Council, as its
new administrative director to co-'§ " ~ TTm ^ ,.
ment, the IUD-Buildmg
ordinate activities in the fields of
legislation, education, research,
public relations, publications and
social security.
• Nicholas Zonarich, president
of the former CIO Aluminum
Workers prior to merger with the
Steelworkers, and more recently
a USWA international representa-
tive, as organizational director. He
will coordinate activities in connec-
tion with the department's internal
organizational disputes agreement,
the AFL-CIO No-Raiding Agree-
the IUD-Building Trades
Dept. agreement, collective bar-
gaining, organizing, time study and
strike assistance.
Reuther and Carey pointed out
that these are new departmental
positions. Al Whitehouse, IUD di
rector since the department's organ
ization in 1955 following the AFL-
CIO merger, resigned effective Mar.
1 to return to his position as USWA
regional director.
At a press conference, Carey
told reporters the creation of the
new posts was a part of a move
Supreme Court Rules
1957 Rights Law Valid
(Continued from Page 1)
function in both federal and state
elections. Appointment of such
referees would come if lawsuits
under the 1957 act proved that
Negroes' rights to register and vote
had been abridged.
Atty. Gen. William P. Rogers
said the decision made clear that
the two-year-old law "is a firm
foundation for further congres-
sional action to protect the right
of Negroes to vote." On the
Senate floor, Sen. James O. East^
land (D-Miss.), bitter civil rights
foe, denounced the ruling as
"claptrap."
In a separate action, the justices
unanimously ordered the reinstate-
ment of 1,377 Negroes "purged"
from the voting rolls in Washing-
ton Parish, La., in a campaign
carried out by a White Citizens'
Council. The ruling will allow the
Negroes to vote in the upcoming
general election on Apr. 19.
The Senate's "dawn-to-dawn"
sessions dragged slowly as 18
Southern Democrats, working in
shifts, controlled the floor with
hours-long speeches assailing the
score of proposals aimed at
strengthening existing statutes.
The Southerners demanded re-
peated quorum calls during night-
time hours, rousing senators from
their sleep on cots scattered
throughout the Capitol. The time
required to round up a majority
gave filibustering Southerners a
chance to rest from their nonstop
speaking chores.
No Compromise, Russell Says
Sen. Richard B. Russell (D-Ga.),
chief strategist for the Southern
Democrats, declared in a lengthy
speech that voting rights proposals
were "way down the line in the
order of being obnoxious." He
later denied that this was a bid for
a compromise.
Despite Russell's disclaimer re-
ports persisted that with the Dixie
bloc hopelessly outnumbered, some
compromise — possibly Johnson's —
eventually would be put forward to
permit a vote.
The possibility that the Senate
might have to invoke cloture — a
rarely-used procedure for shutting
off a talkathon — was raised re-
peatedly by both sides in the early
stages of the debate. It would take
the affirmative votes of two-thirds
of those present and voting to bring
an end to the filibuster.
On the House side, plans went
forward to begin debating civil
rights measures sometime after
Mar. 10. Despite reports that the
House might begin action sooner, in
an effort to help break the Senate
deadlock, there were no decisive in-
dications that the lower body would
advance its timetable.
The court's ruling on charges
of discrimination in Terrell
County, Ga., was the first law-
suit brought by the Justice Dept.
under the 1957 act. The com-
plaint said that in 1956 only 48
of the 5,036 eligible Negroes
were registered, while 2,679 of
the 3,233 whites were registered.
U.S. District Judge T. Hoyt
Davis dismissed the Justice Dept.
complaint, holding the statute was
unconstitutional because it tended
to permit suits against private citi-
zens as well as state officials.
The high court bluntly overruled
him, pointing out that Davis had
gone beyond the case in question
and considered a "hypothetical"
situation in violation of the judi-
ciary's responsibilities.
In the Louisiana case, Louisi-
ana District Judge J. Skelly
Wright had ruled that racially-
discriminated challenges were be-
hind the wholesale purge of
Negro voters, noting that 85 per-
" cent of all Negroes had been
stricken from the list, while only
seven-hundredths of 1 percent of
the whites had been dropped.
His order reinstating the Ne-
groes was stayed temporarily by
the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,
but the Supreme Court set aside
the stay.
to "revitalize and intensify" the
department's broad range of serv-
ices to affiliates, within the frame-
work of the IUD constitution
and consistent with established
AFL-CIO policies.
Clayman, a graduate of the Uni-
versity of Michigan Law School
and a former member of the Ohio
legislature, joined the Ohio State
IUC in 1943 as general counsel.
He was elected full-time secretary-
treasurer in 1948, serving in that
post until the AFL-CIO merger in
1955.
Assistant to Potofsky
Clayman was for three years spe-
cial assistant to Pres. Jacob S. Po-
tofsky of the Clothing Workers be-
fore returning to Ohio in 1958 to
play an active role in defeating pro-
posed "right-to-work" legislation.
He subsequently served the Ohio
State AFL-CIO as its state legisla-
tive representative.
Zonarich, a coal miner until
1927, led in the organization of
a federal labor union at the Alu-
minum Co. of America's New
Kensington, Pa., plant in 1932.
Five years later, he was elected
president of the newly-formed
CIO Aluminum Workers, serving
in this post until merger with
the USWA in 1944.
After becoming an international
representative for the Steelworkers
he concentrated on organizing with-
in the aluminum industry. In re-
cent years, he was in charge of or-
ganizing activities in ore and copper
mines in western states, where he
was successful in bringing some 100
locals into the USWA.
Carey told reporters that two un-
ions — the Operating Engineers and
the Molders — had withdrawn from
the IUD the 100,000 members they
had previously affiliated on the basis
of industrial occupation.
Since the department was formed
four years ago, Carey said, 11 un-
ions have been added to the IUD
rolls while 12 others have either
disaffiliated, been dropped for fail-
ure to pay per capita or been ex-
pelled in connection with ouster
from the AFL-CIO.
TWO VETERAN UNIONISTS, named to newly-created posts in
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept., study plans for stepped-up activ-
ities. At left is Jacob Clayman, former secretary-treasurer of the
Ohio State Industrial Union Council, the lUD's new administrative
director. At right is Nicholas Zonarich, an international representa-
tive of the Steelworkers, who becomes IUD organizational director.
Stanton E. Smith Named
State-Local Coordinator
Stanton E. Smith, president of the Tennessee State Labor Coun-
cil, has been appointed to the newly-created post of AFL-CIO co-
ordinator of state and local central bodies by Pres. George Meany.
The position was set up on the basis of a recommendation to
Meany by the first National Conference of State and Local Central
Bodies held in Washington early^ -
in January.
The conference also asked for
the appointment of an advisory
committee, to which Meany named
himself, Smith and the following:
Exec. Sec.-Treas. C. J. Haggerty
of the California Labor Federa-
tion; Pres. August Scholle of the
Michigan AFL-CIO; Pres. Mitchell
SviridofT of the Connecticut Labor
Council; Pres. John Rollings of the
Missouri Labor Council; Sec. Fred
A. Erchul of the Milwaukee
County Labor Council; Pres. Harry
Van Arsdale of the New York City
Central Labor Council, and three
AFL-CIO staff members — Legisla-
tive Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller, Or-
ganization Dir. John W. Living-
ston and COPE Dir. James L. Mc-
Devitt. Haggerty since has been
New York State AFL-CIO Presses
Gov. Rockefeller for 'Anti-Scab' Law
New York — The New York State AFL-CIO has called on Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) and
Industrial Commissioner Martin P. Catherwood to suport legislation outlawing the "unfair and evil
practice" of importing out-of-state strikebreakers to "foment labor-management disputes."
In telegrams to the two officials, Legislative Chairman Raymond R. Corbett of the state labor body
urged passage of legislation similar to a 1937 Pennsylvania law which prohibits persons or firms "not
directly involved in a labor strike'^
or lockout" from recruiting strike-
breakers.
Bloor Schleppey, head of a na-
tionwide scab-importing agency,
was recently arrested and held for
a Philadelphia grand jury on a
charge of violating the Pennsyl-
vania law by allegedly providing
strikebreakers during a 1958 Typo-
graphical Union strike at the Bris-
tol Courier and Levittown Times.
He pleaded not guilty at a hearing.
Schleppey Operation Charged
In his telegram, Corbett charged
that Schleppey had also provided
strikebreakers in disputes between
publishers and the ITU in West-
chester, Niagara and Nassau Coun-
ties. He said this was revealed in
testimony taken last year by a spe-
cial investigating panel appointed
by Catherwood's predecessor.
Present labor-management laws
in New York, the state labor
body wired Rockefeller and Ca-
therwood, are "deficient in fail-
ing to provide a bar against the
use of such agencies as that of
Bloor Schleppey." He charged
that last year's hearings showed
that Schleppey "not only helped
to foment labor-management dis-
putes, but by providing out-of-
state strikebreakers, helped to
insure continuance of the dis-
agreements."
The telegrams said there were
persistent reports that an anti-scab
bill had been drafted in Cather-
wood's department, and inquired
whether the measure would be in-
troduced in the current session of
the legislature, and whether it
would have the governor's support.
Corbett informed Rockefeller
and his industrial commissioner
that at the request of the State
AFL-CIO Sen. Joseph F. Periconi
(R) of the Bronx and Assemblyman
Ernest Curte (R) of Niagara County
had introduced bills patterned after
the Pennsylvania law.
"The recruiting of persons for
the purpose of strikebreaking is
an unfair and evil practice that
should have no place in sound
labor relations," Corbett said.
"Nevertheless, New York State
at this time does not have any
effective legislation to prevent
this disruptive and insidious tech-
nique of union-busting."
In the wake of Schleppey's ar-
rest under the Pennsylvania law,
ITU Pres. Elmer Brown called for
concerted labor action across the
country to win passage of similar
measures to stamp out the ''dreaded
scourge" of strikebreaking. He
urged ITU locals to work through
city and state central labor bodies
to secure enactment of such laws.
STANTON E. SMITH
elected president of the AFL-CIO
Building & Construction Trades
Dept.
Smith, who will assume his
new post later this month, will
work directly under Meany. He
will Jiave the responsibility, at
the request of the conference, of
directing coordination of state
and local centra] body activities
and assisting them in the handling
of major problems.
A native of Ohio, Smith attend-
ed Chattanooga schools and re-
turned to his home state to go to
Denison University, Granville, O.,
where he received a bachelor of
arts degree in 1930.
While serving as a Chattanooga
high school teacher from 1930 to
1942 he helped organize and be-
came president of the local Teach-
ers Union, and was an interna-
tional vice president from 1937 to
1946.
He directed regional educa-
tional activities for the Ladies'
Garment Workers from 1942 to
1945; was secretary- treasurer of
the Chattanooga Central Labor
Union from 1951 to 1956; pres-
ident of the AFL Tennessee Fed- *
eration of Labor from 1949 to
1956 and president of the Ten-
nessee Labor Council from the
statewide AFL-CIO merger in
1956 until the present*
Pa*e Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
The Pollution Bill Veto
T>RES. Eisenhower's veto of the clean-water bill last week was a
disastrous setback in the campaign against water pollution.
Perhaps more than any other of the President's 158 vetoes since
1953 it laid bare the essential philosophy of the Administration.
The bill passed by Congress limited federal aid for construction
of sewage treatment plants to 30 percent of the cost of a project,
or $450,000, whichever is smaller. This means 70 percent of the re-
sponsibility would remain in local hands.
The President argued that primary responsibility for solving the
water pollution problem lies with local governments. That's exactly
where the bill put it.
The President's own Water Pollution Control Advisory Board
endorsed the bill passed by Congress and recommended that he
sign it. But the President ignored his hand-picked advisers and
experts and substituted the judgment of his Budget Bureau,
This policy of substituting budgetary policy for ascertained na-
tional need is evident also in the defense budget. It is a basic char-
acteristic of the Administration all across the board. It can only
result in long-term national disaster.
Wall St. and the People
THE economic revolution of the 1930's, which shifted the center
of power from Wall Street to Washington, brought with it an
important change in the characteristics of American capitalism—
the continuing concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny mi-
nority of the population was reversed and more Americans had a
larger stake in the nation's riches.
Since 1949, however, the trend has been reversed as free-wheel-
ing profit-taking and widening tax loopholes helped shape a new
trend toward fewer and fewer Americans holding a larger and
larger share of the wealth.
A new study by economist Robert J. Lampman shows that in
1953 the top 1.6 percent of the adult population held 30 percent
of the nation's total personal wealth. With the concentration con-
tinuing, the assumption is that in 1960 an even smaller percentage
is holding a larger share.
The new trend toward increasing concentration of wealth in the
past decade coincides with national policies that have for all prac-
tical purposes shifted the seat of economic policy-making at least
partially back to Wall Street.
The unrestrained profit-taking, the mounting income from
dividends and tax loopholes are not only concentrating economic
power in the hands of a few, they are also narrowing the base
on which prosperity depends.
The need is an increasingly greater share of the wealth for more
Americans to sustain a modern, dynamic economy. If great wealth
in the hands of the few and inadequate resources in the hands of
the great majority continues another economic revolution may be
necessary.
Break the Filibuster!
SOUTHERN senators have deliberately chosen to tie up in knots
the U.S. Senate rather than allow passage of a civil rights bill.
Their clear and simply understood challenge has converted the Sen-
ate from a legislative arena to a physical battleground with endur-
ance substituted for legislative ability and statesmanship.
The pro-civil rights forces control the outcome. The southern
filibuster can be defeated if the rest of the Senate is willing to
marshal the determination and resources to overcome this attack
on orderly procedure.
"It's a Local Problem"
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirue
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, March 5, 1960
No. 10
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
DRAWN roftTME*
AFk-CIO news
Sees 'Invasion ot Rights':
Management Official Advises
Business: 'Stay Out of Politics'
The following is excerpted from an address by
Arnold H. Maretnont, president of Allied Paper
Corp. at a meeting of the Town Hall of Los
Angeles.
MY PURPOSE TODAY is to convince you, if
I may, that instead of getting into politics,
business ought for its own good to stay out of
politics, period.
The areas where the purposes of government
and business coincide have been expanding, it
is true; but wide gaps between them are still
evident.
For that reason, business frequently resists pur-
poses and programs which political government
has determined to be "in the public interest." The
business interest is often much narrower than the
public interest. Business's viewpoint is directed
to how a proposed program will affect the private
profit interest. Its viewpoint is narrowed by its
own immediate concerns.
Therefore, in the past, business has fought
against the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug
Act; the Clayton Anti-Trust Act; the Tennessee
Valley Authority; Social Security; the Public Util-
ities Holding Company and Securities and Ex-
change Acts; the minimum wage; workmen's com-
pensation, public housing, federal power regula-
tion, the reciprocal trade programs and many
other public policies.
It would be interesting to speculate — if time
allowed — as to where we would be today if
business's opposition to these "public interest"
measures had prevailed. I venture the opinion
that we could not function without them.
I do not believe that labor and management
are locked in a death struggle.
Management is charged with maintaining max-
imum earnings, that portion which comes from
sales and which is left after all costs are paid out
of dollars which the consumer — the third party
in the triangle — has spent. We businessmen seem
to be doing very well under the competitive pres-
sures, and the fact-finding and regulatory bodies
set up to protect consumer, investor, management.
Labor is charged with getting the best deal it
can on wages and working conditions. That is
its job.
I have never heard responsible union leaders
argue thai labor ought to engage in politics for
the purpose of "clobbering" business. I think that
anyone who argues that business must get into
politics in order to take a fall out of labor is
doing a distinct disservice to himself, his corpo-
ration, and his country.
Under our system, the one time when Man is
absolutely free is when he enters the polling
booth; but he is not free if he is told by the cor-
poration which employs him to go out and ring
doorbells, make speeches, distribute literature and
propagandize the corporation views.
NO COMPANY has the right to use its eco-
nomic power and job influence to dragoon its
members into political action.
The corporation employe who is projected
into politics faces, quite often, the problem of
submerging his own political convictions be-
cause economically he cannot afford to be
openly unsympathetic toward the policies and
purposes of the corporation.
I hope that no one is misled as to any altru-
istic purpose in such classes. The corporation,
as such, has no ideological desire to render self-
less and perhaps sacrificial public service. It
has an axe to grind.
That axe is the desire to advance the busi-
ness ideology of the particular corporation by
projecting the "hired hands" into the political
party action, after they have been sufficiently
indoctrinated in the classes.
I regard company classes on company prop-
erty, whether conducted by company executives
or others, as a serious invasion of individual
rights, and the invasion is even worse when it
involves an employe's inviolable right to do and
think politically as he pleases. The very fact that
a person may decline to attend such classes is
taken as an indication that he is out of sympathy
with corporation policy. And then the tab goes
up on his personnel file and he is a "marked" man
thereafter — the undependable maverick.
In my humble opinion, the worst course busi-
ness can take is to conduct political action pro-
grams which, inevitably, will lead to "company
machines" not unlike those political machines
which have passed into limbo. Ultimately, busi-
ness will pay a heavy price for such corporate
political activity.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Negroes and U.S. Move Ahead
While Senate Trails Reality
Morgan
THE UNITED STATES SENATE is currently
engaged in Operation Futility. This involves
a parliamentary journey to nowhere. It is some-
thing like riding a merry-
go-round in the becalmed,
unseeing eye of a hurri-
cane. The winds of inevi-
table change are blowing
but instead of navigating
with them the Senate has
struck its sails and is
wheeling about aimlessly
in the middle of the storm.
If there is any majesty in
its procedural maneuver-
ing on civil rights legisla-
tion it is the mock majesty of some pridefully stub-
born ancient mariner, spurning the sane modern
guidance of radar and sonar and setting out to
sea in a tub.
The irony of the impasse is heightened by the
fact that events have moved past the Senate while
a key minority of its crew fumbles with fiction and
mutinies in forlorn ante-bellum grandeur against
reality. The reality bears down on all sides in the
winds of human change. The reality is that
Negroes are no longer going to accept second-class
citizenship because they no longer have to. They
are beginning to realize, as they inch up the eco-
nomic ladder, that their money is as good as any-
body else's money and they have proved this in
tense but non-violent boycotts. They, and the
country, are awakening to the fundamental fact of
what we call democracy, that their vote is as good
as anybody else's vote, when cast and counted
Try as they will, the diehards and the demagogues
cannot suppress this fact much longer.
Indeed the towering significance of develop-
ments in Washington in the last 24 hours stems
not from the filibustered round-the-clock ses-
sions of the Senate but from the Supreme Court.
No sooner had the senators embarked on their
marathon of quibble over civil rights than the
Court made the core of their quibbling even
more meaningless by two major and unanimous
decisions which cleared the way for full en-
forcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
The Court, in effect, told the Department of
Justice to go ahead and sue states to protect the
voting rights of Negroes, guaranteed along with
those of all other qualified citizens? by the 15th
amendment. Parenthetically* the Department will
Washington Reports:
be remiss if it does not now intensity such suits
without waiting for the additional enforcement
authority Congress eventually will be obliged to
give it.
THE FACTS AND EVENTS that have left the
Senate and the House behind have at the same
time created a kind of irresistible undertow which
is bound to pull out of this session of Congress a
new civil rights bill of sorts. The pity of it is that,
given the need, an adequate measure cannot come
quickly. But emotions run deep and perpetuated
prejudice produces a hardening of the mental
arteries — often making it difficult for an other-
wise thoughtful man to see facts so clearly pinned
to the wall of reality. These are the reasons for
the current spectacle in the Senate. But what a
sad and wasteful spectacle it is. Was there ever
a time when we could less afford the extravagance
of wasted efforts and misspent emotions?
The President keeps harping on his piggy-
bank precept of a balanced budget as the
golden rule of our salvation. What we need
most are balanced minds and clear vision for
an even, steady thrust forward toward a na-
tional purpose which has more value in human
fulfillment than the Treasury can adequately
represent.
And the fact is that we don't have to have 20-
20 vision to recognize these needs. Their hand-
writing is scrawled boldly on the wall, whether
warning of the requirements for strengthening our
military armor or for tempering a more basic
armor still, the shield of civil rights without which
no self-respecting society can be strong.
A whole armada of wry but meaningful para-
doxes has already overtaken the Senate on its
voyage of futility and it would require only a little
recognition to steer that august body on to a truer
course. As Senator Eastland of Mississippi
slouched in his chair during the 25th hour of
desultory debate, a Negro corporal in a trim
Air Force uniform gazed down at him from an
unsegregated seat in the visitors' gallery. And for
some eloquently ironic reason, at the door of the
old Supreme Court chamber not far from the
Senate where 13 army cots have been installed
for refreshing catnaps for marathoning senators,
there stands a trim wooden sign with the inscrip-
tion on it in gold letters "the proclamation of
emancipation, September 22, 1862."
Meaningful' Civil Rights Bill
Will Pass, Two Senators Say
CONGRESS will pass a "meaningful* civil
rights bill in the current session, Sen. Jacob
Javits (R-N. Y.) and Sen. Philip Hart (D-Mich.)
agreed in an interview on Washington Reports
to the People, AFL-CIO public service program, .
heard on more than 300 radio stations.
Javits would not say "an effective" bill will be
passed. Hart declared, "Neither of us will be
happy, but we will be satisfied if we get a mean-
ingful bill."
Both stressed assurance of "the right to vote"
as basic. They said this might be achieved
through a combination of the proposals for
voting referees or voting registrars.
4 Secondly, we've got to give congressional back-
ing to the Supreme Court decision on segregation
in the public schools," Javits asserted. "This
whole effort has been lagging. Congress has not
gotten back of it. And finally, we need bills
against bombing, lynching and the poll tax."
Senator Hart mentioned Title 3 of the 1957
"right-to-vote" bill, giving the Attorney-General
the power to start civil injunction suits for indi-
viduals, as also desirable. (The section Was elim-
inated from the 1957 law.) Javits said that indi-
viduals find it difficult and expensive to under-
take these suits themselves, but "the Attorney-
General has the prestige and authority of the
United States behind him."
Also needed, Hart said, is a declaration that
the Supreme Court decision on integration is
the law of the land and provisions for aid to
school districts which need assistance in tran-
sition to integrated schools.
Javits has introduced a proposal, on which
Hart is co-sponsor, for technical assistance to be
given upon "request directly of a school district,"
instead of proceeding through the state govern-
ment machinery.
Javits, explaining how the current civil rights
issue came to the Senate floor, said that the ma-
jority and minority leaders had agreed on pro-
cedure. "If ever a civil rights measure was bi-
partisan, it's this one," he said.
Hart said that he had found the sentiment of
people in border states and even in southern
states demanding action by Congress on civil
rights.
He said that the current sit-downs by Southern
Negroes in stores and lunch rooms mean more
than "wanting a hot dog in a drug store. They
have to do with the denial of the vote and proper
schooling."
WASHINGTON
THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION practice of shield-
ing the President from the heat and rudeness of policy clashes exists
in the highest defense circles of the nation, and no one is more
worried about it than an able and devoted Republican, Robert A.
Lovett, who held high official posts under former Pres. Truman.
Lovett had a good deal to do with creation of the National Se-
curity Council alter World War 11, as a small top-level agency in
which the facts and major policy conflicts of the Defense and State
Depts. would be presented and debated freely before the President
'was asked to take the heavy responsibility of final decision/'
In closed-door testimony before a Senate subcommittee, later
published, Lovett disclosed apprehension about an increase in the
size of the Security Council under Eisenhower.
He has "grave doubts" about the council's "ability to operate
in a mass atmosphere," Lovett said.
There is always- a tendency among junior officials to want to
"protect 1 ' any President, he said, but it is a "real disservice to him"
because lack of debate "denies him the possibility of seeing an alter-
native or an obstacle."
Asked by Subcommittee Chairman Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.)
whether there was a "danger" in the practice of subordinates in
"trying to do (the President's) constitutional work for him," Lovett
replied:
"Yes, sir. I think the President in his own protection must insist
on being informed" and not shielded by his aides.
The Eisenhower technique in almost every area of govern-
ment is to insist that his aides settle problems by reaching a
reconciliation of conflicting views — and then present him with a
recommended and agreed-on course of action. The subordi-
nates, in short, have made the decisions.
When this is carried into the ultimate issues of national security,
it explains why ranking officers and high civilian officials resign in
protest to claim the freedom of expressing their views. It explains
why experts from every study commission, including those appointed
by Eisenhower, have unanimously criticized the Administration's
security policies and the budget-mindedness that dominate them.
* * *
THE NAM NEWS quotes an "influential member" of the House
as follows:
"Only a handful of the many who wrote asking our support of
the Landrum-Griffin bill have even bothered to drop us a line
acknowledging our votes."
The News says this representative was "one of the 229 House
members who voted for the bill ... at the behest of industry and
others" wanting strict "reform" legislation.
The NAM News thinks its readers ought to thank the 229, "even
if belatedly."
Others may think that there is another and better way to take
note of the decisive votes of the 229 members, who forced into
the nation's labor law a series of union-harassing provisions that
are already leading to picketing restrictions, encouraging anti-
union resistance and depriving labor of historic economic
weapons to promote improved wages and working conditions.
* * * ,
SEN. KARL MUNDT (R-S. D.), who must face his state's voters
this year, says that Vice Pres. Nixon is cutting loose on his own and
will soon present a farm program "entirely independent" of Pres.
Eisenhower's program and that of Agriculture Sec. Benson.
He doesn't think that people will blame Nixon for Benson's
failures if the Vice President, as Republican nominee, is able to
develop "persuasiveness and attractiveness" in "new approaches
of his own," Mundt says.
Precisely. As Nixon indicated in his Chicag6 speech opening his
independent bid for the presidency, he thinks the President's policies
are just dandy — and there are a lot of jthem, including farm program,
that he will change as fast as he gets the chance.
BIPARTISAN NATURE of drive for Senate enactment of mean-
ingful civil rights legislation was underscored by Sen. Philip A.
Hart (D-Mich.), left, and Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.), inter-
viewed on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, I960
How to Buy:
Protect Your Rights
To Social Security
By Sidney Margolius
SOME PEOPLE who became eligible for social security payments
under recent changes still haven't applied, officials report.
One of the largest groups believed to be passing up benefits is
elderly parents who were dependent on deceased workers. Another
group that sometimes fails to apply is totally disabled workers.
Even wives do not always realize they and the children can get
payments if their breadwinner dies.
Too, families often are unaware the
children can have payments if a
working mother dies even though the
father still lives.
But while many people forfeit
benefits for lack of knowledge, harsh
rules and procedures have blocked
many disabled workers who did ap-
ply. Representatives of several un-
ions and the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Social Security have protested pres-
ent rules under which a disabled
worker in one state may qualify for
benefits while officials in another
state may deny a similar claim.
LET'S FIRST GET the record
straight on dependent parents. If you provide more than half the
living expenses of an elderly parent, he or she can get payments if
anything happens to you. Under the 1958 amendments your parent
is eligible even though you also leave an eligible child or wife.
In fact, dependent parents of covered workers who died any time
since 1939 can still apply for payments.
In the case of disabled workers, the Social Security Administra-
tion has screened its files to locate those made eligible by the recent
easing of work requirements. But from some, it never got applica-
tions and can't tell who they are. Workers disabled even as long
ago as October 1941 have until June 30, 1961 to get full benefits.
Young disabled workers can't get payments until they're 50.
But they too need to apply by June 30, 1961, to have their wage
records frozen retroactively. A worker who had not accumulated
enough coverage to be fully insured when he became disabled
could lose all rights to payments if he doesn't apply for the
"freeze."
The 1958 amendments also made eligible for payments the
dependent children of disabled workers getting benefits, and their
wives if over 62 or with dependent children in their care.
The disability payments are really one of the most important
features of modern social security. They protect against a uni-
versal fear of workers — that they may become crippled by accident
or illness and unable to earn a living.
But there are two big loopholes which have frustrated many dis-
abled workers and urgently need fixing.
ONE IS THE PRESENT requirement that you must be 50 to
get payments. Actually younger disabled workers need payments
more than older ones. They generally have more dependents. The
age-50 requirement could be eliminated without increasing the
present disability-insurance tax you pay, former deputy Social
Security Commissioner George Wyman recently said.
The -other involves interpretation of the word "disability."
A worker in West Virginia qualified for insurance-company bene-
fits but was denied social security payments, Rep. Cleveland M.
Bailey (D-W. Va.) reports.
In Oregon, reports Sen. Richard L. Neuberger (D-Ore.) the state
rehabilitation division rejects 50 percent of the social security dis-
ability claims compared to a national average of 38 percent.
The real problem is that Congress never defined "total and per-
manent disability" very closely, and the present interpretation
is a severe one. A legless man who can't work at his usual occu-
pation still might be able to run a newsstand and thus might be
denied benefits. That's what a social security official told this
reporter.
If you ever do become disabled, note that the officials check
closely into your ability to travel to a job, even if you haven't got
one. If you're able to come to the social security office to make your
claim, there's already a question in their minds. The officials will
further try to determine if you can do any "substantial gainful work"
THAT DOESN'T MEAN they can tell a skilled worker he can
address envelopes even if housebound. They're not supposed to
reduce your work status that much. But they'll still evaluate how
much work of any kind you may be able to do.
Even the American Bar Association has criticized the fact that
the standards used to determine disability aren't revealed.
The AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security is battling to get this
problem straightened out through more liberal standards and giv-
ing the Federal Social Security Administration final say in judging
whether a worker is disabled. At present the federal agency
merely can "suggest" that a state give further consideration if it
feels state officials were too severe.
Even if turned down on a social security claim you can ask for
an appeal — on other types of claims as well as disability. You'll
then get a hearing before an impartial examiner, and a chance to
tell your story or demonstrate your disability. About one out of
seven recent such disability appeals was successful. The rate of
success on social security appeals of all types is a bit higher — about
one out of six.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
PROUD 10- YEAR-OLD expresses admiration as his father, Clyde H. Haps, gives blood to Red Cross
during organized labor blood donor day in East St. Louis, 111. Haps, a member of Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers, is typical of thousands of union members who respond through AFL-CIO Com-
munity Service channels to Red Cross appeal for citizen cooperation to carry out program of assist-
ance to Americans in need.
Meany Calls tor Backing:
'Unstinted Support' of Unions
Pledged to Red Cross Appeal
By Don Gregory
The AFL-CIO — which works daily through its
Community Services program to strengthen Red
Cross services to the American people — has
pledged "unstinted support" of the 1960 ARC ap-
peal for members and funds.
Official endorsement of the March campaign
came from AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany who
underscored the contribution trade unionists and
their families make to such Red Cross activities
as disaster services, blood banks, first aid, water
safety, child care and service to members of the
armed forces.
Machinists Pres. A. J. Hayes, labor vice
chairman of the National Red Cross Campaign
Committee, also issued a plea to the 13.5 mil-
lion members of the AFL-CIO to put their
"collective strength" back of the ARC drive.
Meany singled out the Red Cross blood pro-
gram for special commendation, noting that a
resolution calling for a national blood donor pro-
gram, adopted at the AFL-CIO's third constitu-
tional convention in San Francisco last Septem-
ber, praised the ARC "for its leadership in war
and peace in the collection of blood and the dis-
tribution of blood and its derivatives."
Operating under the convention mandate, Com-
munity Services currently is negotiating a memo-
randum of understanding with the Red Cross on a
national blood program. A progress report on
these talks was presented to the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council at its recent mid-winter session in
Bal Harbour, Fla.
In his letter of endorsement, Meany declared
that labor's "active participation" in the 1960
fund-raising campaign was an expression of "our
deep responsibility as citizens in our com-
munities."
The AFL-CIO president pointed out that the
key to labor support is "participation at all levels
by union members in the varied phases of Red
Cross service" — -and the bulging Community Serv-
ice files of personal volunteer services bear this
out.
Typical Union Story
Typical is the story of Joseph DeYulio, a mem-
ber of Steelworkers Local 1277 in Syracuse, N.Y.,
who, with his wife, Florence, recently chalked up
a record of 16 years and 2,500 volunteer hours as
Motor Service drivers for the Syracuse Red Cross
chapter.
DeYulio and his wife are on 24-hour emer-
gency call and think nothing of being summoned
from sleep in the middle of the night to deliver
blood for an emergency case.
An average day might find the DeYulios on
hand at 7:45 a.m., as they were one day recently,
to drive an aged woman to the airport and see her
safely aboard a plane on her way to a New York
cancer clinic.
Back to the Red Cross chapter, the DeYulios
map out a day's schedule of blood deliveries to
hospitals, transportation of elderly and crippled
patients to and from clinics and physicians' offices,
deliveries to bloodmobile sites and any number of
other emergency and routine trips.
Functioning in a different area of Red Cross
service is 44-year-old ^Marion J. Byrne, a mem-
ber of Machinists Lodge 202 in Wichita, Kans.,
who is well on his way to becoming his com-
munity's first "Gray Man" — the masculine
counterpart of the Red Cross Gray Ladies who
do volunteer hospital work.
An employe of the Santa Fe Railroad for 22
years, Byrne said he undertook this unique role
because "I believe everyone has a tendency toward
helping out, but somehow they don't get around
to volunteering. I just wanted to help the sick
and the aged."
Byrne took a special training course conducted
by his Red Cross chapter, and is now carrying out
service duties at the Sedgwick County Hospital in
Wichita.
Still another example of labor service was sup-
plied by Pres. H. E. Gilbert of the Locomotive
Firemen & Enginemen. In a letter urging "full
support" of the Red Cross drive, Gilbert recounted
a story of a BLF&E member who was able to save
the life of a woman injured in a train accident.
The accident occurred when a freight train
plowed into an automobile stalled on a grade
crossing. The fireman on the train was able to
check severe arterial bleeding and save the woman
from otherwise certain death. The unionist cred-
ited the feat to a Red Cross life saving course he
took early in World War 11.
Gilbert called this "a graphic example of how
the Red Cross, through only one of its many im-
portant services, aids in the saving of lives." He
noted that for half a century the ARC has been
conducting first aid courses "to stem the dreadful
toll of fatalities from accidents."
Hayes declared that "in one American com-
munity after another we see clear evidence of the
great value of Red Cross services to all Ameri-
cans," adding that much of it resulted from the
"direct cooperation" of organized labor.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Page Nim
AFL-CIO Raps Administration:
/Atomic Power Stall Blamed
On Ike's 'Budget-Balancing'
The AFL-CIO has sharply assailed the Administration's "wait-and-see" attitude on peaceful de-
velopment of atomic energy and has charged that the failure to move forward with a vigorous nuclear
power program stems directly from Pres. Eisenhower's preoccupation with "budget-balancing."
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller criticized as "inadequate" a 10-year program offered re-
cently by the Atomic Energy Commission which calls for eventual construction of reactors to produce
1 million kilowatts of energy. Five^
years ago, he noted, the AEC was
forecasting a 2 - million - kilowatt
nuclear power capacity by 1960.
In testimony before the Joint
Committee on Atomic Energy, the
AFL-CIO spokesman accused the
AEC of having made "a major
concession to the Budget Bureau's
bookkeeping theory of achieving
national policy goals" by scaling
down plans for peaceful atomic ac-
complishment.
Biemiller urged the committee
headed by Sen. Clinton P. Ander-
son (D-N.M.) to give serious con-
sideration to the five-point program
adopted by the AFL-CIO's third
constitutional convention in San
Francisco last September. The con-
vention called on Congress to:
• "Establish accelerated pro-
grams to develop nuclear power in
large amounts and at costs com-
petitive with those of power gen-
erated by conventional fuels."
• "Achieve greater protection to
the health and safety of workers
and the general public from radia-
tion hazards."
• "Safeguard development of
this new industry from being mo-
nopolized by a few large corpora-
tions."
• "Expand uses of radioisotopes
Metal Trades Hit AEC
On 'Farming Out' Jobs
The AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept. has denounced as "inequitable
and manifestly unfair" a burgeoning Atomic Energy Commission
practice of "farming out" work historically performed by members
of AFL-CIO unions holding exclusive bargaining rights at major
atomic energy installations.
Testifying before the Joint Com-^
mittee on Atomic Energy, MTD
Pres. James A. Brownlow accused
the AEC of a "constant whittling
away of our certified bargaining
units," and charged that entire work
classifications have been "carved
out" of bargaining units through
this process.
Brownlow urged the committee
headed by Sen. Clinton P. Ander-
son (D-N.M.) to recommend ap-
propriate legislation to halt the
practice unless it can win "firm as-
surances" from the AEC that:
• "Farmed-out" work will be
handled by the same employes who
have been performing such jobs.
• Subcontractors will maintain
the same wages, working conditions
and benefits that have been in ex-
istence under union contracts with
the prime contractors.
• The same collective bargain-
ing relationships be maintained.
• Adequate safeguards will be
devised for "employes' rights in the
event of a sub-contractor "cancel-
ing out and thus slipping away
from the responsibilities to these
workers."
The MTD president charged that
some of the work previously done
by union workers is being con-
tracted out to "non-union, unor-
ganized, low-wage establishments,"
and said the AEC has defended its
action by claiming it was operating
Hospital Lockout
Dispute Settled
New York — The 250 locked-out
employes of the Beth Abraham hos-
pital and nursing home have re-
turned to work and their union has
issued a statement declaring that
all issues in the dispute have been
satisfactorily resolved.
The one-week lockout followed
a demonstration by the workers,
members - of Retail, Wholesale &
Dept. Store Local 1199, protesting
management's refusal to meet with
the union. When the employes re-
ported back to work after. the hour-
and-a-half protest, they were told
they were .fired. The union promptly
set up picket lines.
After meetings between union
and hospital officials which led to
the settlement, the workers voted
unanimously to return to work.
in the interest of "economy" and to
"strengthen free competition in pri-
vate enterprise."
Brownlow said the "vicious
practice" has already cost the
jobs of 300 unionists at Oak
Ridge, Tenn., and that workers
performing janitorial services at
Hanford, Wash., under a con-
tract with General Electric Co.
face the loss of their jobs this
July under a similar move.
The "farming-out" threat is used
on some occasions, he said, "as a
most effective device to freeze wage
rates." Faced with a contracting-
out move at Oak Ridge in Septem-
ber 1958, he said, an AFL-CIO
union was able to save the jobs of
cafeteria and kitchen workers only
by agreeing to a two-year wage
freeze.
Brownlow said it was a "sorry
day" when a government agency
would use such a device "to chisel
a group of workers out of their
rights to any wage adjustments
whiok might be obtained for two
years."
The MTD president said work-
ers in most AEC plants have had
union representation for 10 years
or more, and have "struggled
against unusual and heavy odds
to achieve a measure of job
security" as well as retirement
plans, hospitalization and other
benefits. He accused the govern-
ment agency of refusing to evi-
dence "any real concern" for the
rights of the workers, adding:
"The AEC, in pursuing these
practices, fails to recognize the sac-
rifices which these workers made in
moving to these areas during the
construction of the plants; living in
trailer camps and under almost un-
believable conditions."
Most of these AEC workers, he
said, have now established perma-
nent homes at atomic energy sites
"under an insistent policy on the
part of the AEC compelling the
purchase by their employes of these
homes." -
Brownlow said the "farming-out"
practice will, in many instances,
"result in the forced sale of homes
which the government said these
people must purchase (and) the dis-
location of people and their fam-
ilies."
in industry, medicine and agricul-
ture."
• "Aid in securing leadership of
the U.S. in developing practical
uses of the atom and aiding free
world countries in establishing
their own atomic programs."
The federation spokesman
charged that the "modest" program
offered by the AEC contemplates
no new construction starts until
1963 or 1964, and urged that the
commission's "timetable be dras-
tically speeded up."
He asked Congress to adopt
legislation authorizing a large-
scale demonstration reactor pro-
gram, declaring that "only if the
commission itself undertakes to
unlock the door to competitively-
priced nuclear power, will the
hopes for abundant nuclear en-
ergy be realized in the reason-
ably near future."
Biemiller was critical of con-
gressional passage last year of a
bill which enables the states to take
over from the federal government
regulatory authority in the field of
atomic radiation. The 1959 law, he
said, "can gravely threaten the
health and safety of hundreds of
thousands of workers."
Labor's experience with state
governments "in the field of social
and economic programs has been
and continues to be frustrating," he
said. Radiation safety programs
cannot be enacted in the states
"without pitched battles against the
same anti-labor forces that have
prevented workmen's compensa-
tion, unemployment compensation
and other similar programs from
giving workers in general decent
protection," he declared.
Little Action by States
Only five states — California,
Minnesota, New York, Pennsyl-
vania and Texas — have adopted
comprehensive radiation safety reg-
ulations covering firms not in in-
terstate commerce, he said. Twenty-
six others have made only token
moves and the remaining 19 "have
enacted no statute or regulation" in
this field, he said.
"We submit," Biemiller told the
committee, "that the states have
not shown willingness or ability to
tackle this new occupational health
and safety problem."
He urged that the 1959 law be
"drastically" amended to give
labor, management and the
public a voice on the Federal
Radiation Council in determin-
ing minimum safe levels of
radiation exposure, and called
for establishment of a national
program to provide adequate
workmen's compensation for vic-
tims of radiation-connected dis-
ability or death.
The AFL-CIO spokesman ex-
pressed regret that this country had
failed to support the Intl. Atomic
Energy Agency "more adequately."
The tendency by the U.S. to cir-
cumvent the IAEA by signing bi-
lateral treaties, he said, has turned
the agency into "a paper shuffling
organization, narrowly concerned
with safety standards."
Organized labor, Biemiller said,
has "never lost sight of the promise
of peaceful nuclear development or
its potential in shaping the econ-
omy of the future in the interest
of our nation and the free world."
He said that 1960 "should find us
moving forward in a new era . . .
instead of marking time."
Hotel Union Moves to
Modify Trusteeships
Cincinnati, O. — The Hotel & Restaurant Workers have taken
steps to grant full autonomy to locals in two major hotel centers
whose affairs are now being conducted under the direction of the
international union.
In Chicago, John E. Cullerton has been appointed general man-
ager of the Local Joint Executive^
Board by Intl. Trustee Marcel
Kenney, who described filling of
the post — a new one — as "a major
step toward lifting the trusteeship."
In Miami Beach, Fla. ? Adminis-
trator Dave Herman of Local 255
has been instructed by Intl. Pres.
Ed. S. Miller to draft bylaws and
prepare for elections with the view
of making the local autonomous
within 18 months. It now is re-
ceiving "administrative assistance"
from the international, a state be-
tween trusteeship and autonomy.
Cullerton Leaves Local Post
Kenney said the new position in
Chicago was created in consulta-
tion with Miller. To accept it,
Cullerton resigned as president of
Hotel Service Workers Local 593,
an office he had held since 1950.
The joint board, which Kenney said
will "strictly observe" the interna-
tional constitution and federal
laws, represents 27,000 members
in nine locals.
Miller established the trusteeship
in July 1958 following charges
against several Chicago local offi-
cers before the McClellan commit-
tee. Cullerton was named assistant
trustee.
The Miami Beach local was char-
Bess Roberts,
Veteran Labor
Aide, Retires
Bess K. Roberts, who came to
work in the labor education move-
ment 27 years ago, has retired as
assistant to the director of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Education.
Miss Roberts joined the staff of
the Workers Education Bureau in
1933 as secretary to the director
and remained in increasingly re-
sponsible positions after it became
the Education Dept. of the former
AFL in 1950.
Before coming to work for the
labor movement, Miss Roberts, a
Smith College graduate, had served
with the National Council of Par-
ent Education, an adult education
group.
On the occasion of her retire-
ment, she was presented with a
watch by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany and was honored by her
colleagues in the department at a
luncheon.
tered in 1954 to take on the biggest
organizing job in the union's his-
tory — unionization of the big con-
centration of resort hotels. It was
under trusteeship until October
1957, when its status was changed
to the present.
It has made substantial prog*
ress, reaching a membership of
6,000, and in a little more than
a year has doubled the number
of union houses under contract.
Leadership and membership in-
terest have developed to the point
where Miller feels the local is
competent to conduct its own
affairs.
UAW Gains
First Missile
Site Contract
Los Angeles^-The Auto Work-
ers have w.crfi' a 34-cent-an-hour
package for Martin Co. employes
at Vandenberg Air Force Base —
first missile-firing site to be organ-
ized by the union.
UAW Vice Pres. Leonard Wood-
cock, director of the union's Air-
craft Dept., said the pact will have
a major impact on joint negotia-
tions which the UAW and Machin-
ists are scheduled to open shortly
with aircraft and missile manu-
facturers.
He added that successful or-
ganization of the missile site,
where 500 workers eventually
will be employed in the assem-
bly, testing, loading and firing of
Titan missiles, signaled a break-
through for the UAW.
The three-year agreement, nego-
tiated within 30 days after the un-
ion was certified by the National
Labor Relations Board, grants im-
mediate wage increases ranging
from 15 to 55 cents an hour, plus
a 4-cent hourly cost-of-living ad-
justment. This will establish a labor
grade structure in which wages will
range from $2.10 to $3.75 an hour.
The contract also calls for a
modified union shop, complete pro-
tection under a recently negotiated
UAW - Martin pension program,
seven paid holidays, paid vacations,
sick leave, site-wide seniority and
full arbitration rights.
RETIRING AFTER 27 years in the labor education movement,
Bess Roberts, assistant to the director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Education, receives a watch presented by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany in recognition of her long service.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Council Okays
Blood Bank
Agreement
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil has authorized the federation's
Community Service Activities to
negotiate a memorandum of under-
standing with the American Na-
tional Red Cross on a national
blood bank program.
The council approved the move
at its recent mid-winter meeting af-
ter hearing a progress report on
talks previously held between CSA
and Red Cross officials. Four years
ago, the federation and the ARC
signed a memorandum of agree-
ment recognizing labor's role in
disaster relief operations.
In other Community Service ac-
tions, the council:
• Endorsed plans for creation
of a $3.5 million Girls' Town in
Florida, similar to the famed Father
Flanagan's Boys' Town near Lin-
coln, Neb. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt
is the national chairman of the
committee for establishment of a
community to house abandoned
and underprivileged girls without
regard to race or creed.
• Gave general endorsement to
the recently created National In-
stitute for Muscle Disease in New
York. The institute, financed prin-
cipally by funds from the Muscular
Dystrophy Foundation, will con-
duct research in the field of neuro-
muscular diseases,
P. O. Clerks Make
New Merger Bid
The Postal Transport Associa-
tion, which is scheduled to vote on
merger with the Letter Carriers at
its national convention in August,
has received another invitation to
merge — this one from the Post Of-
fice Clerks.
The Postal Clerks' executive
board offered the NPTA a choice of
several merger formulas and guar-
anteed "autonomy" in matters deal-
ing with the special interests of
NPTA members.
NPTA Pres. Paul A. Nagle, in a
letter to Pres. J. Cline House of
the Postal Clerks, expressed thanks
for the "cordial invitation and the
warm tones" of the proposal and
described a recent meeting between
officers of the two organizations as
"useful and productive." The pro-
posal, he said, would be submitted
to the union's executive board.
He added, however, that the
NPTA's board "has taken a posi-
tion from which we are not pre-
pared to recede." The union's board
has voted to recommend merger
with the Letter Carriers and has
endorsed the goal of eventual
merger of all postal unions into a
single organization.
TEN- YEAR-OLD Thomas Simpson of Kentland, Md., who wasn't
around when the Boy Scout movement was born 50 years ago, pins
a Cub Scout pin on AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, who was. The
award was in appreciation of Meany's support of scouting and
labor's long cooperation with the Boy Scouts of America.
Fire Fighters Local
Battles for Its Life
Springfield, Mo. — The Fire Fighters local here, battling a union-
busting city administration, has forced a referendum vote on a
proposal to guarantee municipal employes the right to organize.
Petitions circulated by off-duty fire fighters, strongly supported
by the city's labor movement, placed on the ballot for an Apr. 12
election a proposition to amend the^
city charter so as to:
• Prevent the city from pro-
hibiting or interfering with the right
of its employes to belong to unions
or any other lawful organization.
• Protect the rights of employes
to present grievances, either collec-
tively or individually.
• Provide a final appeal to the
city council from disciplinary ac-
tions of the city manager.
Fire Fighters "Gagged'*
The petition movement sprang
from the refusal of City Manager
Bart Avery to meet with representa-
tives of Fire Fighters Local 152,
the imposition of a "gag order"
aimed at preventing union mem-
bers from bringing grievances to
the attention of the public or the
city council, and the dismissal of
the entire 12-member executive
board of the Fire fighters local
last July for issuing a press release
announcing the union's opposition
to combining the city's fire and
police departments.
The 12 were reinstated after
off-duty firemen held a "protest
march" around City Hall, carry-
ing placards reading: "Restore
the 12 Men or Fire Us All."
Meanwhile, in another case in-
volving a city's attempts to deny
employes the right to union repre-
sentation, two unions prepared to
challenge in court a Sioux Falls,
S. D., directive prohibiting em-
ployes of the health, police and
fire departments from belonging to
unions.
Invalid, Unions Say
State Circuit Judge George A.
Rice scheduled hearings on the con-
tention of the State, County &
Municipal Employes and the Fire
Fighters that the city council action
is invalid.
Among other reasons, the un-
ions contend, it violates the so-
called "right-to-work" provision
in the state constitution. Earlier
the judge had denied the union's
request for an injunction on the
grounds that the issue could be
decided on its merits before the
city's directive was scheduled to
go into effect, on Mar. 18.
The AFL-CIO News on Feb. 12
incorrectly stated that the city had
been temporarily enjoined from
putting its "yellow dog" directive
into effect. At the initial hearing
on the injunction request, the city
attorneys requested and were
granted a one-week postponement
but the injunction was subsequently
denied.
TWUA Launches Wage Hike Drive;
Asks Congress to Probe Mergers
New York — The Textile Workers Union of America has launched a drive for wage increases in
both northern and southern mills and has called for a congressional probe of mergers "which are
bringing larger and larger segments of the textile industry under the control of a relatively few cor-
porations."
Onlhe wage front, the TWUA's 11-man wage policy committee set an 11-cent package increase
as its goal in forthcoming negotia-'fr
lion handbills were distributed at
tions covering 45,000 workers in
nearly 200 cotton-rayon mills.
The union is asking a 10-cent
hourly increase plus an additional
1 cent-an-hour for correction of
job inequities. Current agreements
permit wage reopening or contract
termination on Apr. 15.
Southern Reopener Voted
Meanwhile, at Charlotte, N.C.,
delegates from 100 southern locals,
representing 70,000 workers cov-
everd by union contracts, voted to
reopen all contracts "for the pur-
pose of negotiating adequate wage
increases."
A massive TWUA leaflet cam-
paign, during which nearly 2 mil-
southern mill gates, was credited
with spurring four big textile chains
to announce a 5 percent wage in-
crease. A similar campaign last
year had le*d to a 10-cent hourly
raise in 1959.
"While we welcome this new
round of raises," TWUA Pres.
William Pollock declared, "we
deplore the fact that it is pid-
dling in size."
Pollock, in a letter to Rep.
Emanuel Celler (D-N.Y.), chair-
man of a House anti-trust sub-
committee, warned that the
merger trend in the textile in-
dustry poses "great danger to the
public."
Pollock cited the recent acquisi-
tion of one of the nation's leading
carpet manufacturers, James Lee &
Sons, by Burlington Industries, Inc.
He said last year Burlington ac-
quired five other mills. As a re-
sult, he wrote Celler, "it now
boasts a total of 127 mills employ-
ing more than 60,000 persons, and
its influence is felt in practically
every division of textiles."
Pollock said the giant corpora-
tions which dominate the indus-
try "pursue a vindictive anti-
union policy which ranges from
the brainwashing of textile work-
ers all the way to closing of
plants where pro-union sentiment
rears its head."
Accidents Rising:
Joint Safety Groups
Urged by Unionists
In the face of an upswing in job accidents, spokesmen for organ-
ized labor have called on unions to take the initiative in pushing
for joint union-management safety committees.
The union stress on safety was brought out at the three-day Presi-
dent's Conference on Occupational Safety attended by some 3 r 000
delegates from the ranks of labor,'^
industry, science, education and
government.
The conference was called by
Pres. Eisenhower to seek ways of
reducing the toll of occupational
accidents, up last year after a six-
year decline.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell,
who served as chairman, read a
message from the President deplor-
ing job accidents as "a grievous loss
of life, family income and produc-
tive capacity."
Mitchell said the 8 percent rise
in disabling work injuries and the
4 percent rise in work deaths in
1959 "are indeed sobering." They
reflect totals of 2 million workers
injured and nearly 14,000 killed
while on the job last year, he said.
"All unions ought to negotiate
safety clauses in their contracts,"
declared Vice-Pres. P. L. Siemiller
of the Machinists.
Siemiller emphasized that la-
bor considers safety and health
to be conditions of employment
and as such proper subjects for
bargaining. Safety clauses should
provide for joint union-manage-
ment safety committees, he
maintained.
The IAM official pointed out
that labor seeks the following
safety standards through state leg-
islation following action by the last
Congress that approved an Atomic
Energy Commission-sponsored bill
ceding regulatory power over radi-
ation safety to the states:
• Minimum standards of toler-
able occupational radiation expo-
sure equal to federal standards.
• Coverage of X-ray, radium
and particle accelerator machines.
• Opportunity for public hear-
ings on proposed laws or regula-
tions before they are submitted to
the AEC for approval.
• Adequate workmen's compen-
sation for radiation injury.
• Federal aid to help set up
sound state programs to protect
workers exposed to radiation.
George T. Brown, assistant to
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, ap-
pealed for a "two-way system of
communication" to replace the
half-century "one-way" approach
of "posters, signs, slogans, captive
audiences and other related tech-
niques" which assigned the worker
a passive role.
Sense of Participation
A two-way system, Brown added,
creates a sense of participation on
the part of the worker and puts to
use his knowledge of his job haz-
ards. He pointed out that there are
many instances of successful joint
safety groups and urged that labor
and management in each industry
inquire into the problem and de-
velop effective safety practices.
James A. Brownlow, president of
the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept.,
was co-moderator of a workshop
on "Why and How to Investigate
Accidents."
Participating in this panel were
Carpenters' Vice-Pres. John R.
Stevenson and Sec.-Treas. Kenneth
J. Kelley of the Massachusetts State
Labor Council.
Victor E. Whitehouse, safety
director of the Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers, served as
workshop consultant for the
panel on "New Emphases in
Training."
Serving on the technical advisory
committee for the conference were
Richard F. Walsh, an AFL-CIO
vice-president and head of the The-
atrical Stage Employes; Hunter
Wharton, secretary-treasurer of the
Operating Engineers; Harry See,
safety director, Railway Trainmen;
Brownlow and Brown.
University and government ex-
perts took . part in an opening day
symposium on "The 'Unchanging*
Nature of Man in a Changing En-
vironment."
Screen Actors Guild
Nears Strike Action
Hollywood — A tieup of *all motion picture production for theater
showing loomed here as the Screen Actors Guild scheduled a strike
of its 14,000 members at eight major studios for 12:01 a.m. on
Mar. 7.
The union's board of directors, charging the studios with refusal
to bargain in good faith, voted^
unanimously in favor of the walk-
out.
The action came after motion
picture entertainers voted nearly 6
to 1 in a secret mail ballot in favor
of a strike to enforce demands for
a share in profits from the sale of
theatrical films to television.
A strike by SAG members would
affect only films being produced ex-
clusively for theater use.
At issue in the deadlocked ne-
gotiations is a union demand
that actors receive additional
compensation from the profits
studios derive when they sell to
television networks films maHe
after Aug. 1, 1948. In the past
12 years, added payments to
actors from such films were made
the subject of negotiations each
time old films were sold for TV
showing.
The union is also seeking an
industrywide welfare and pension
fund, paid for by employer con-
tributions of 5 percent of the total
actors' payroll.
SAG National Executive Sec.
John L. Dales charged that presi-
dents of the major companies had
given their negotiators "a mandate
not to negotiate" oh the question of
films for TV showing, and added
that no progress had been achieved
on the welfare and pension de-
mands.
Dales took issue with what he
said were public statements by the
producers that "give the impression
that actors are rolling in wealth."
The SAG official said that 69 per-
cent of the union's 14,000 members
"earn less than $4,000 a year, and
85 percent earn less than $10,000
annually."
A pledge of "solid support" for
SAG in case of a walkout came
from Pres. Herman D. Kenin of
the Musicians in a telegram to
Ronald Reagan, president of the
actor's union.
Earlier, entertainment unions in
Great Britain and Mexico assured
SAG officials that they would re-
sist any attempt by American film
studios to produce "runaway" films
in their countries should SAG be
forced to strike.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
Page Eleven
Forand Principle Buttressed:
Council of Churches Urges
Medical Care for Elderly
Oklahoma City, Okla. — The General Board of the National Council of Churches of Christ in
the U.S.A. has conditionally endorsed the principle of the Forand bill to provide medical care
for the aged, declaring the government must act if voluntary insurance plans fail to offer needed
protection.
At a two-day meeting here, the board adopted a statement expressing "deep concern" over the
"availablity and financing of med-'^
cal care of high quality," and called
on the medical profession and the
public to maintain "flexibility" in
considering new approaches aimed
at meeting the problem.
. The board, governing body of
the 40-million-member religious
federation, said the "continued
growth of prepayment methods
shows promise of insuring high
quality of medical service."
"The churches should encourage
the inclusion of mental, dental,
nursing and other health services in
programs of prepaid care, and the
extension of the amount and kind
of care available to retired and
other aged persons and to persons
living in rural areas," it added.
"If voluntary prepayment plans
cannot accomplish the desired
ends, government should protect
the health of the people by mak-
African Leader Sees
XL S. Sympathy Rising
The American people's increased awareness of Africa and tradi-
tional sympathy for its struggle for independence are forcing the
U.S. government into a "much more positive" approach toward the
emerging continent.
This is the view of Julius K. Nyerere, considered certain to be-
come prime minister when Tan-§>-
ganyika gains self-government in
September elections.
Nyerere is here for a five-week
tour under the Dept. of State's
foreign leader exchange program.
He last came here five years ago
to plead Tanganyika's case for in-
dependence before the United Na-
tions.
Tanganyika, a British-run UN
trusteeship territory, has a popula-
tion of 8.7 million, native Africans
except for 90,000 of Asian and
25,000 of European descent.
The trade union movement,
IUD Plans Parley
On Arbitration
A course on "Problems of Ar-
bitration" for union staff members
will be held from Mar. 14 to 17,
the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept. has announced.
A total of 30 staff representa-
tives of IUD affiliates are expected
to take part in the four-day course
at American University in Wash-
ington, D. C.
The course will deal in a non-
legalistic way with the major prob-
lems in arbitration which might
face staff members. It will deal
with questions such as when to ar-
bitrate, procedure under a contract,
the use of transcripts, briefs and
witnesses and writing the arbitra-
tion brief.
founded only 10 years ago, now
totals 40,000 members in 13
unions. The Tanganyika Federa-
tion of Labor is affiliated with the
Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
Nyerere, a former trade unionist,
said he feels that the main contact
between Tanganyikan labor and
other national labor groups should
be through the ICFTU.
The 37-year-old Nyerere, meet-
ing with the labor press at the
Philip Murray Building in Wash-
ington, spoke in a thoughtful vein
as he indicated his strong prefer-
ence for loans rather than outright
grants or gifts to aid his people's
emergence into statehood.
"I think, for a young country
like my own, it would be a dan-
gerous thing to base our future
expectations on grants rather
than loans," he commented.
The job of developing Tangan-
yika "must be done by the peo-
ple themselves through work,"
he maintained.
The only exceptions he would
make in accepting outright grants
of aid, Nyerere said, would be for
experts and education — "we are
trying to raise money for a univer-
sity" — and for basic projects like
irrigation schemes.
ing possible the prepayment of
health services."
A floor move aimed at striking
from the resolution the reference
to the government's role was de-
feated after the Rev. Charles C.
Webber, director of religious rela-
tions for the AFL-CIO and a mem-
ber of the National Council's ex-
ecutive board, spoke in favor of re-
taining the original language.
In other actions, the religious
federation's governing body:
• Opposed extension, in its pres-
ent form, of the Mexican farm la-
bor program due to expire June 30,
1961, declaring the importation of
foreign workers "tends to produce
a labor surplus, thereby depressing
wages and labor standards for do-
mestic agricultural workers."
• Urged amendment of the Fair
Labor Standards Act to prohibit the
agricultural employment of chil-
dren under 14, except those work-
ing on farms owned by their par-
ents. "Health and safety records,"
the council noted, "now place farm
operations among the most hazard-
ous occupations."
• Called on candidates in the
forthcoming presidential campaign
to adopt high ethical standards,
"disdain all forms of demagog-
uery," and insure that there is "no
resort to intimidation or bribery,
direct or indirect."
Health a Key "Resource"
The Council of Churches state-
ment of concern for the nation's
health services declared that "it is
now widely recognized that the
health of people is an important
national resource, and therefore
government has increased its re-
sponsibility for the maintenance of
optimum health." It continued:
"With the rising cost of med-
ical care, serious or extended
illness has imposed economic
burdens which are beyond the
capacity of many individuals and
families to meet from current
income. There is need for
churches and church members
to study the economic aspects of
health services.
"Experimental patterns of health
service, such as group health pro-
grams under the auspices of labor,
management, or other responsible
voluntary associations of people,
deserve encouragement."
ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT for Forand bill to provide medical care to aged was voiced by 300
unionists from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island at day-long meeting of New England
Labor Council in Providence, R.I. Taking part in program were, left to right: Dir. Nelson H. Cruik-
shank of AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security; Sec.-Treas. Edwin C. Brown of the Rhode Island State
AFL-CIO; Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R.L), sponsor of the labor-backed medical aid bill; and Pres.
Thomas F. Policastro of the Rhode Island state labor body.
BACK IN 1956 Nancy Lea Parson began her studies at the State
University of Iowa under a State Federation of Labor essay contest
scholarship. Now Mrs. James E. Daggett, she is shown with Prof.
Harry Muhly after her initiation into Phi Beta Kappa, national
honorary scholarship society.
Protest Imported Tapes,
Musicians Ask Labor
New York — Members of AFL-CIO unions have been asked by
Pres. Herman Kenin of the Musicians to write letters of protest
to the sponsors of filmed TV shows which deprive American musi-
cians of jobs by the use of imported "robot tapes' 1 for background
music.
The cut-rate foreign-made re-^~
cordings are used by film producers
greedy for the "fast buck," Kenin
charged, but the responsibility be-
longs to sponsors, networks and sta-
tions despite their frequent dis-
claimers that they have no control
over the "package deals" they buy
from such producers.
The AFM president suggested
that union members who write an
advertiser "tell the sponsor in no
uncertain terms he cannot evade
responsibility for the contents of
the show."
Sponsor Obligated to Public
"If the sponsor suddenly learned
that poison was in his food he'd
do something about it besides blame
it on the farmer who raised the
foodstuffs," Kenin said. "These
shows are just as much a part of
the sponsor's product as the printed
package he wraps his goods in. The
sponsor has an obligation to the
public not only for his product
and its packaging but for all forms
of sales promotion or advertising."
Kenin declared networks and
stations which allow the use of
imported "robot tape" music
"commit the double sin of being
a party to a device to deprive
American musicians of work op-
portunities and also fail in their
obligation to the public, the ob-
ligation on which a license to
broadcast is based, to foster civic
and cultural developments. 9 '
Pointing out that "organized la-
bor comprises a huge block of the
buying public," Kenin said "avari-
cious producers evade the spirit
of a federal law that bars instru-
mental musicians from coming into
this country to compete at sub-
standard wage rates with American
musicians."
"They import instead 'robot
tapes' as substitutes for American
working men," he asserted. "Spon-
sors who buy such shows condone
evasion of the immigration laws
in the hearty tones of cash on the
barrel-head."
Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) is
sponsor of a resolution to investi-
gate the use of imported "robot
tapes." The investigation was en-
dorsed by the AFL-CIO Executive
Council at its recent mid-winter
meeting.
Canadian Steel Local
Upsets Pension Gyp
Guelph, Ont. — Stiff resistance by a local of the Steelworkers hero
has forced Federal Wire & Cable Co. to re-establish a pension plan
abandoned when the firm became a subsidiary of a U.S. corporation.
A new two-year contract with USWA Local 3021 not only calls
for return of the original pension plan but provides a 19-cent-an-
hour package of wage increases^
plus welfare benefits.
The American-owned H. K. Por-
ter Co., which recently acquired the
Guelph firm, had taken over money
placed in a trust fund by the pre-
vious owners as part of a negotiated
pre-funded employe pension plan.
It switched, from the pre-funded
plan to a terminal scheme under
which funds required to pay a pen-
sion are set aside only when the
employe retires.
The union, branding the move
a violation of a clause in three
earlier contracts, appealed to the
Ontario government for an inves-
tigation and warned it was pre-
pared to strike on the issue.
William Mahoney, USWA Cana-
dian director, called the company
action "the first case of an attempt
to manipulate a pension fund that
we have any knowledge of in
Canada.'*
The company refused to abide by
an arbitration board directive or a
conciliation board recommendation
in the matter, but the union's stand
forced reconsideration.
Mahoney pointed out that un-
der the original pre-funding plan
employes were sure that their
pension equity would be protect-
ed even if the company became
bankrupt
The new contract provides for a
return to full funding of the plan
within the life of the agreement.
The pact sets out 19 cents in
wage increases in four stages, the
first 5 cents retroactive to June 1,
1959.
In addition to meeting the full
cost of the pension, the company
will now assume the full premium
for the Physicians' Services, Inc.,
medical plan — a recommendation
of the majority on the conciliation
board.
Pape Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 1960
"Perverted Marketing Attitudes . .
Doctors Who Quit Declare
Drug Promotion Dishonest
By Dave Perlman
Two former medical directors of a leading drug company have told the Senate Anti-Trust Subcom-
mittee they quit in protest againt the firm's misleading — and sometimes dangerous — advertising claims.
Dr. Martin A. Seidell told the Kefauver subcommittee he resigned in 1959 as medical chief of the
J. B. Roerig division of Charles Pfizer & Co. because the firm's "perverted marketing attitudes . . .
were incompatible with both the ethics of my profession and my sense of morality."
The man who was brought in to|*
succeed him as medical director,
Dr. Haskell J. Weinstein, said he
quit several months later — and for
similar reasons.
Weinstein, who is now associated
with the City of Hope Hospital
Center in California, told the sub-
committee that potentially danger-
ous drugs have been placed on the
market after only "extremely mea-
ger and unobjective" studies of
their effects. He charged they were
"promoted in such a manner as to
lull the physician concerning the
hazards involved."
Weinstein, who proposed a six-
point reform program for the drug
industry, also challenged the "gran-
diose, self-serving" claims by the
industry of large research expendi-
tures — cited as justification for high
profit margins.
Much of what the industry
calls "research," Weinstein said,
is really promotion of products
and financing of meaningless
"studies" which serve no scien-
tific or medical purpose but are
intended to keep the brand name
of the drug before the medical
profession.
The subcommittee wound up its
current round of hearings by sched-
uling witnesses late at night — on
several occasions until 2 a. m. —
just before the Senate moved into
"round-the-clock" session on civil
rights legislation. Senate Minority
Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.),
who has complained that the hear-
ings have been "unfair" to the
drug industry, forced the night ses-
sions by objecting to subcommit-
tee meetings while the Senate was
in session.
'Enrax' by 'Blitz'
Seidell told the subcommittee
that the episode which directly led
to his decision to resign as medical
director stemmed from a "blitz"
advertising campaign used by the
company to introduce a drug it
called "Enrax" designed to treat
spasms in the digestive tract.
Enrax is a combination of two ex-
isting drugs.
To introduce the drug, he said,
the company prepared a flamboyant
cardboard folder for direct mail-
ing to doctors which included what
appeared to be the record of "more
than a year's clinical testing" in-
volving treatment of 512 patients,
with successful results in 448.
The only hitch was that the
drug had been in use for only
four months at the time of the
ad and the cases cited referred to
one of its component parts, and
not the compound product which
the company was trying to get
physcians to 'prescribe.
Seidell said he had protested
vigorously against the misleading
Belgium Gives $10,000
To ILO Andes Work
Geneva — The Belgian govern-
ment has given the Intl. Labor Or-
ganization 500,000 Belgian francs
($10,000) for the technical assist-
ance program for the Andean
Indian populations of Ecuador, Bo-
livia and Peru.
Worker and employer organiza-
tions of several countries, including
the former American Federation of
Labor, have made contributions to
the work in the high Andes, which
is aimed at helping integrate the
Indians into modern national life.
A half-dozen international agencies
are carrying it on, with the ILO
coordinating their activities.
advertisement, even to the point of
writing to the parent company's
board of directors but the "blitz"
advertising campaign continued.
The claims were modified only
after the Federal Trade Commis-
sion, alerted by Science Editor John
Lear of the magazine Saturday Re-
view, launched an investigation.
The FTC last month issued a for-
mal complaint charging the com-
pany with false and misleading
advertising.
The FTC action was possible be-
cause the advertisement allegedly
made false claims. However in an-
other category of drug advertising,
an "escape clause" in the law ex-
empts drug companies from a defi-
nition of "false" advertising which
covers failure to reveal pertinent
information, providing the advertis-
ing is directed only to physicians.
Thus an advertisement which
does not inform doctors of unsuc-
cessful experience with a drug
would not be considered "false"
advertising by the FTC. Kefauver
described drug advertising practices
as an "intolerable situation."
Weinstein told the subcommittee
that drug company advertising is
aimed at "brainwashing" the physi-
cian so that he will "think of the
trademark name of the drug at
all times ... He is given practically
no information as to the cost of
the drugs to his patient. Instead
he is seduced with gimmicks of all
sorts in an attempt to make him
loyal to a particular company or a
particular drug, with relatively little
attention being paid to the specific
merits of the drug in question."
Many so-called "scientific ar-
ticles" published in medical jour-
nals reporting on new drugs
"are written within the confines
of the pharmaceutical houses
concerned," Weinstein charged.
He said some journals which are
dependent on pharmaceutical ad-
vertising uncritically accept arti-
cles that are submitted.
There is even one journal, he
stated, which carries no advertis-
ing but charges a fee for publica-
tion and then makes additional
money out of reprint orders which
so-called detail men — the drug in-
dustry's salesmen — give to doctors
to impress them with the accept-
ance of their product.
Weinstein told the subcommit-
tee how sales of an antibiotic found
to have side effects that are harm-
ful — and sometimes fatal — picked
up sharply after the manufacturer
launched "a very effective and in-
tensive advertising campaign."
He also warned that physi-
cians are not sufficiently alerted
by the drug companies to the pos-
sibility that some drugs will clear
up symptoms of serious diseases
but leave the condition which
brought on the symptoms un-
touched.
In his recommendations for re-
form of drug industry practices,
Weinstein proposed:
• Drug manufacturers should
be allowed to list as research ex-
penditures only funds actually used
for basic studies.
• Advertising of pharmaceutical
products should emphasize the gen-
eric name with the trade mark
name "definitely secondary."
• The price of the drug to the
consumer should be clearly stated
on every piece of advertising going
to physicians. This may make the
physician "think twice before pre-
scribing a drug which is of un-
certain value, especially if the price
is high."
• The National Institutes of
Health and similar major research
centers should be given respon-
sibility for objectively evaluating
all drugs before marketing.
• Medical associations should
make greater efforts to publish ob-
jective reports on new drugs at the
time of the introduction of the
drug rather than "long after the
drug has been marketed."
• Advertising standards "must
be clearly established and en-
forced."
Government Employes
Rap Ike on Pay 'Study'
Federal employes "need and deserve a pay raise, not a pay
study," the executive council of the Government Employes declared
in a statement on legislative goals.
Sharply criticizing Pres. Eisenhower's proposal that a long-range
"study" of government salary systems be undertaken before Con-
gress considers pay legislation, the^
AFGE council said any delay
would "only result in making an
unfair situation that much worse."
Calling for "prompt congres-
sional action" on union-backed bills
providing a 12 percent increase, the
AFGE pointed out that annually-
paid federal workers have received
only two wage adjustments in the
past nine years.
To provide a permanent solu-
tion to the "salary lag that has
plagued government employment
for so long," the AFGE urged
passage of a bill introduced by
Rep. James C. Davis (D-Ga.) to
set up a joint congressional com-
mittee on pay which would hold
annual salary hearings and make
recommendations to Congress.
In other policy statements, the
AFGE council criticized the con-
tracting-out of work "traditionally
performed by federal employes"
and charged that the "merit pro-
motion" program in effect in the
government service is just'"another
paper policy" in many agencies.
Declaring that contracting-out of
work "that can be done more effi
ciently and more economically by
the government is placing an un-
necessarily heavy burden on the
American taxpayer," the AFGE
called for a congressional investiga
tion of this policy.
The union said a survey it con-
cluded on the merit promotion
program shows "strong indica-
tions that many government of-
fices are violating their own merit
promotion rules or have found
ways to stay within the letter of
the program while acting con-
trary to its spirit."
The AFGE called on the Civil
Service Commission to "thoroughly
probe" employe complaints in its
inspections of agency promotion
programs and not "just check
through agency files and records.'
Drug Firm's Threat Held
Violation of Sherman Act
The Supreme Court has ruled that a drug manufacturer
violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by threatening to cut off
supplies to retailers who sold at cut-rate prices.
By a 6-to-3 vote, the justices reversed a lower court decision
dismissing a government anti-trust complaint against Parke,
Davis & Co. The majority held the company went beyond
permissible bounds in warning drug stores in Washington,
D. C, and Richmond, Ya., that their supplies would be cut
off if they refused to go along with list prices.
Neither the District of Columbia nor Virginia has a so-
called "fair trade 9 ' law and the decision dealt only with the
anti-trust aspect of the case.
A dissenting opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan,
joined in by Justices Felix Frankfurter and Charles E. Whit-
taker, said that the majority ruling sent "to its demise" a 1919
precedent — known as the Colgate doctrine — allowing a com-
pany unilaterally to announce retail prices and refuse to sell
to customers which did not abide by these prices.
The majority opinion declared Parke, Davis & Co. had gone
beyond "mere announcement" of prices and "simple refusal
to deal" by using pressure to bring retailers into line.
UA W Review Board
To Study GOP Smear
The Auto Workers' Public Review Board has agreed to consider
a thorough review of Republican right-wing charges that the UAW
is shot through with "corruption, misappropriation of funds, bribery,
extortion and collusion with the underworld."
The review board, made up of seven citizens having no other
connection with the union, will^
meet Mar. 9 on request of the
UAW's executive board.
The UAW officers, announcing
the union's initiative in seeking the
top-level inquiry, charged that four
Republican senators on the McClel-
lan special Senate committee had
based their allegations on "false-
hood, fabrication, distortions and
malicious slander."
Report 'Leaked' to Press
Their so-called GOP "separate
views" assailing the UAW, arising
in connection with final reports of
the McClellan committee, was twice
"leaked" to newspapers in mid-Feb-
ruary and finally unofficially re-
leased by Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-
Ariz.).
The report attacking the UAW
and union Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther has not yet been filed in the
Senate. Sen. Philip Hart CD-
Mich.) announced on the Senate
floor on Feb. 17 that Goldwater
had agreed that the report, "when
filed," would not contain "certain
charges" that Goldwater ac-
knowledged were "n6t in order."
The GOP assault was based pri-
marily on partisan interpretation of
issues in the bitter Kohler Co. strike
at Sheboygan, Wis. The Goldwater
report, the UAW observed, "glar-
ingly and guiltily" omitted any ref-
erence to the record of unfair labor
practices and terrorism of the Koh-
ler company, which has been struck
by the UAW for six years and has
a half-century record of bitter re-
sistance to unions.
Asked by reporters^ at a press
conference whether the still-unof-
ficial GOP "separate views" covered
an NLRB finding of unfair practices
by the Kohler Co., Goldwater said
that such an issue was not "rele-
vant."
Neither he nor the "separate
views" discussed an acknowledg-
ment by Herbert Kohler, presi-
dent of the company, that before
the current strike the company
had purchased and stored an il-
legal arsenal of weapons and am-
munition to use in the expected
labor conflict.
The original "leaks" of the Gold-
water charges were published in
Phoenix, Ariz., and Indianapolis,
Ind., newspapers owned by Eugene
Pulliam, which strongly backed
Goldwater in bis 1958 re-election
campaign and sprang last-minute
scandalizing attacks on his oppo-
nents.
The "leaks" and Goldwater's
eventual distribution of the unof-
ficial "views" were timed to beat
publication of a book by Robert F.
Kennedy, former chief counsel of
the McClellan committee, charging
Goldwater and his three GOP col-
leagues on the Senate group with a
"get Reuther" drive.
Kennedy's book, The Enemy
Within, quotes Goldwater as telling
Kennedy that the reason for re-
peated GOP accusations of a "cov-
er-up" of Reuther was "politics."
09-
"You're in politics, Bob,
whether you like it or not," the
counsel quoted Goldwater as say-
ing to him.
The GOP "separate views" failed
to bear out speculative advance re-
ports that it would also assail Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the
chief counsel's brother, a member
of the committee and a candidate
for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
The McClellan committee mean-
while issued the first volume of a
planned four-volume final report
summarizing its three years of
work.
Minimums Raised
In Saskatchewan
Regina, Sask. — The Saskatche-
wan government has approved a
uniform minimum wage through-
out the province of $32 per week.
The present wage is $30 in the large
urban areas and $29 elsewhere.
Part-time rates have been
boosted to 85 cents an hour, Min-
ister of Labor C. C. Williams, a
leader in the Cooperative Com-
monwealth Party, announced. The
new rates go into effect Apr. 4.
Janitors in residential buildings
now must be paid at least $42 a
week while rates for cooks in log-
ging camps will be $150 per month
instead of the present $135. Log-
gers' minimums were jumped 20
cents to 90 cents an hour. The
government also raised taxi mini-
mums from $33 to $35 a week.
Vol. V
815 Sixteenth St. N.W„
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, March 12, 1960
7«@»,7 No. 11
Forand Bill Support Grows
As House Unit Nears Vote
Hate, Bigotry Endanger
U.S. Standing in World
Remarks of Edward P. Morgan on Mar. 8 in commentary closing
his nightly broadcast news report on the American Broadcasting
Company' s radio network, sponsored by the AFL-CIO:
NOTHING THAT AMERICANS are re-
sponsible for can be more damaging to
the welfare of the country, to national security
or to our position in the world than the obscene
carelessness by which we are permitting a hate-
twisted handful of bigots and political midgets
to smear the scourge of racism across the land.
Why should the Soviet Union worry over the
risk of exploiting the impending missile gap
when in one of the more monstrous ironies of
history the Communists can so securely ex-
ploit the moral gap, beckoning to the awaken-
ing colored hordes of Africa and Asia to steer
clear of the oppressions of American democracy
and embrace the principles of human dignity
and freedom so deeply rooted in the humane
magnanimity of Marx? Why should the
Kremlin leaders concern themselves seriously
over a disarmament program when they see
Americans already disarmed in the most vul-
nerable spot, in the corruption of justice?
Why should they fret enviously over our
superior material strength and riches while
we are so recklessly squandering the real
strength of our society — its human values —
and mocking the basic principles of our form
of government, equal opportunity and civil
rights?
On Feb. 23, the government newspaper
Izvestia announced in Moscow that the Soviet
Union during this year would open a new uni-
versity especially for African, Asian and Latin
American students, offering up to 4,000 of
them from four to eight years of specialized
training with all expenses paid.
THAT SAME DAY the civil rights debate
droned on in the U.S. Senate with the senior
senator from Mississippi, James Oliver East-
land, leading the crusade to preserve and pro-
tect second-class citizenship for Negroes. One
week later, Senator Eastland rose to the pointed
(Continued on Page 7)
Courts Upset
NLRB On
'Brown-Olds 9
By Dave Perlman
A series of appellate court de-
cisions has undermined the Na-
tional Labor Relation Board's
drastic "Brown-Olds remedy" for
alleged violations of the Taft-
Hartley ban on closed-shop hiring
practices.
During the past two months,
five U. S. Circuit Courts of Ap-
peal have refused to enforce
NLRB orders directing unions,
companies or both to reimburse
all employes in the bargaining unit
for union dues and initiation fees
collected during periods in which
the board had found an illegal hir-
ing hall or other so-called closed-
shop system.
'Oppressive and Capricious 9
Either a full-scale hearing on the
Brown-Olds doctrine, held Mar. 8
at the Third Circuit Court of Ap-
peals in Philadelphia, or a Supreme
Court decision on a related case
argued last fall, might lead the la-
bor board to abandon a policy
which the AFL-CIO has charged
is "oppressive and capricious, caus-
ing only slight inconvenience to
some unions and financial ruin to
others/'
The NLRB has not yet appealed
any of its lost circuit court cases to
the Supreme Court, but a spokes-
(Continued on Page 2)
Cloture Move Defeated:
Meany Appeals for
End to Filibuster
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has appealed to the Senate to
halt the "paralyzing" Southern filibuster which since Feb. 15 has
blockaded action on measures to safeguard voting and other mi-
nority rights.
In the wake of Meany's plea, contained in telegrams to all senators
except the 18 Dixie Democrats en-<^
gaged in marathon efforts to talk
civil rights legislation to death,
there were these major develop-
ments:
• The first move to curb the
Senate filibuster was defeated by a
Wilson Co. Strikers
To Get Jobs Back
Chicago — An arbitration
board has ruled in effect that
most Wilson Co. workers who
were replaced by strikebreak-
ers during the 110-day strike
by the Packinghouse Workers
will get their jobs back, even
if it means ousting the strike-
breakers.
By a 2-to-l vote, the arbi-
tration panel ruled that sen-
iority must govern "all the
way up and down.'* Since
nearly all the union members
had greater seniority than
their replacements, most of
them will be able to claim
their jobs back.
vote of 53-42. The 42 votes mus-
tered by pro-civil-rights forces fell
short even of a simple majority.
Under Senate rules, two-thirds of
those present would have had to
favor cloture before the talkathon
could have been halted.
• The House plunged into its
long-delayed civil rights debate,
with Southern Congressmen
pledged to use every available parli-
amentary device to delay action
and denouncing voting-rights legis-
lation as "an invitation to rioting
and bloodshed."
• Compromise talk continued
on Capitol Hill, with authoritative
sources indicating moves were un-
der way to win agreement on a
more modest bill insuring voting
rights, making federal funds avail-
able to educate servicemen's chil-
dren where schools are closed to
thwart desegregation, and provid-
ing penalties to halt racist bomb-
ings.
It was reported that senators
working toward a compromise
(Continued on Page 12)
Medical Experts
Endorse Measure
By Gene Zack
The drive for enactment of the Forand Bill moved into high
gear, picking up major support from within the medical profession
as the House Ways & Means Committee neared a vote on the
AFL-ClO-backed measure to provide medical care for the nation's
older citizens.
On the eve of committee action/^
Dr. Basil C. MacLean, former pres
ident of the national Blue Cross
Association — largest group of vol-
untary non-profit plans in the field
— gave unqualified endorsement to
the bill despite organized opposition
mounted by the American Medical
Association and the commercial in-
surance industry.
MacLean bluntly said that "the
costs of care of the aged cannot
be met, unaided, by the mechan-
ism of insurance or prepayment."
He added that financing health
benefits for the aged by means of
social security payroll deductions,
as called for in the Forand bill,
"provides a way of dealing with
the question with dignity and ef-
fectiveness/'
"The good sense of this meas-
ure," the former Blue Cross head
said in a letter to the bill's sponsor,
Rep. Aime I. Forand (D-R.I.),
"and the urgent need that created
it, recommend its passage without
delay."
AMA Opposition 'Misguided'
Joining in enthusiastic endorse-
ment of the bill was Dr. E. M.
Bluestone, professor of hospital ad-
ministration at Columbia and New
York Universities, who declared the
"sheer humanity" of the bill "far
outweighs" what he termed the
"misguided and ill-advised" opposi-
tion of the AMA and the insurance
industry. He charged that oppon-
ents were "motivated largely by
professional self-protection."
The letters were made public by
(Continued on Page 4)
BCW Units
Ask Ouster
Of Cross
Officers of five big locals of
the Bakery & Confectionery
Workers — the union expelled
from the AFL-CIO for corrupt
leadership — have charged in
court that BCW Pres. James G.
Cross has continued to "plunder"
the union's treasury for "personal
profit."
They asked the U. S. District
Court in Washington, D. C, to
force Cross and BCW Sec.-Treas.
Peter N. Olson to furnish a finan-
cial accounting and repay any mis-
appropriated funds. The court was
also asked to order a secret ballot
referendum of the BCW member-
ship to determine whether Cross
and Olson should be removed from
office.
Represent 20,000 Members
The five locals — in Chicago, Los
Angeles, Long Island City, N. Y.,
Pittsburgh and Houston — say they
represent 20,000 members, ap-
proximately one-third of the BCW's
remaining strength.
At a press conference, a spokes-
man for the group said the five
(Continued on Page 9)
Minor Gains Matched
By Setbacks in States
A small increase in unemployment benefits in Virginia, workmen's
compensation improvements in Maryland, anti-discrimination meas-
ures in Alaska and Nevada, and a watered-down bill to protect
migrant workers in Colorado are among the labor-backed laws
enacted by state legislatures in recent weeks.
Other major bills, including a^
state minimum wage law in Vir-
ginia, extended jobless benefits in
West Virginia, and reapportionment
in Maryland have gone down to
defeat in rural-dominated legisla-
tures.
Virginia U. C. Up Slightly
In Virginia, maximum unemploy-
ment benefits were increased $4 to
a new top of $32 a week, and dura-
tion of benefits was extended from
the previous 18 weeks to 20 weeks.
Labor-backed moves to provide
more substantial improvement were
defeated in House and Senate com-
mittees. The new schedule still
leaves Virginia's unemployment
compensation benefits among the
lowest in the nation.
As the Virginia legislature
headed for a scheduled Mar. 12
adjournment, the House voted
down a 75-cent state minimum
wage bill, which had won com-
(Continued on Page 12)
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
A 5-YEAR FIGHT AND VICTORY led to this happy scene of workers waving vacation paychecks
won for them by the Clothing Workers. When the A. L. Kornman Co. of Nashville, Tenn., shut
down and reneged on vacation pay, the ACWA won an arbitration decision awarding workers over
$11,000. The firm lost repeated court appeals.
Five Appellate Courts Overturn
Drastic 'Brown-Olds ' Remedy
(Continued from Page 1)
man said it Is "reasonable to ex-
pect" that one or more of the cases
would be appealed.
The precedent on which the
NLRB bases its controversial
doctrine is a 1956 case involving
the Brown-Olds Plumbing &
Heating Corp., where repay-
ment of union dues was ordered
after a finding that the com-
pany and the union in effect had
a closed-shop policy.
In 1958, the labor board cited
this precedent in serving notice that
it would order the refunding of all
union dues if hiring hall and other
job referral systems operated by
unions failed to provide specific,
written guarantees that non-union
members would be given equal
consideration for jobs.
'Remedy' Repeatedly Rejected
Unions and employers were al-
lowed a grace period to bring their
contracts and practices into con-
formity with the labor board rul-
ing. It was the NLRB s crackdown
on alleged violations after the
"grace period" had expired which
brought a rash of court challenges
-^-and decisions reversing the labor
board.
In cases where the Brown-Olds
Kennedy, Nixon Score
In New Hampshire Vote
The nation's first presidential primary, in rockribbed Republican
New Hampshire, showed Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts
piling up a record-breaking Democratic vote and Vice Pres. Richard
M. Nixon, the certain GOP presidential nominee, making an im-
pressive showing of his own.
The total Democratic vote was'^
above 50,000 while the Republican
count showed 70,000 — a sharp re-
duction from the 2-to-l majority
that the GOP can normally depend
on in the state.
The next significant primary will
come Apr. 5 in Wisconsin, where
Nixon is running on the Republi-
can side and Kennedy collides head-
on with Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
(D-Minn.), the only other openly
avowed candidate for the Demo-
cratic nomination.
Kennedy, with 42,969 votes,
about doubled the total won by
any Democratic candidate in
other years. The high-water
mark previously was the 21,701
votes for Sen. Estes Kefauver
(D-Tenn.) in 1956.
There were 375 write-in votes
this year for Sen. Stuart Syming-
ton (D-Mo.) and 6,734 votes for
an obscure Chicago manufacturer,
Paul Fisher, whose name appeared
on the ballot and who managed to
get an additional 2,000 plus write-
in votes on the Republican side.
Nixon, running unopposed in the
Republican primary and with no
personal campaigning in the state,
got 65,077 votes— nearly 9,000
Morgan Participant
In UW Symposium
Edward P. Morgan, radio broad-
caster whose nightly comment over
the ABC network is sponsored by
the AFL-CIO, was a participant in
a recent symposium on "The Six-
ties: Challenge to Our Generation,}'
at the University of Wisconsin: j
He and Earl P. Mazo, writer and
journalist, discussed "Mass Com-
munications and Their Obligations
to Society."
more than the previous GOP rec-
ord established by Pres. Eisenhower
in 1956. Another 2,890 Republi-
cans wrote in the name of New
York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
The New Hampshire campaign,
originally a quiet one because of
the lack of contests, exploded
dramatically at the last moment
when Nixon's state campaign man-
ager, Gov. Wesley Powell (R), pub-
licly charged that Kennedy was
"soft on communism."
Kennedy demanded and
promptly got from Nixon a re-
pudiation of the Powell charge.
Herbert Klein, the Vice Presi-
dent's press secretary, read for
the television cameras a state-
ment disavowing Powell's cam-
paign oratory.
Powell, a former administrative
assistant to New Hampshire Sen.
Styles Bridges, ranking Republican
in the Senate and a power in GOP
legislative circles, fired back a tele-
gram telling Nixon that to win the
presidency this year he must "at-
tack" his political opponents.
The New Hampshire primary is
what is called in political circles
a "beauty contest," giving candi-
dates a chance to show personal
popularity but having no binding
effect on delegates to the Demo-
cratic and Republican nominating
conventions next July.
In the past, however. New
Hampshire primaries have had oc-
casional influence. Pres. Eisen-
hower's showing as a candidate
against the late Sen. Robert A.
Taft (R-O.) in 1952 was the first
specific sign that Eisenhower, then
still in Europe as Supreme Com-
mander of North Atlantic Treaty
forces, might take the GOP nom-
ination from the Ohio senator.
"remedy" was the key issue, fed-
eral appellate courts in Philadel-
phia, New Orleans, the District of
Columbia, San Francisco and New
York have rejected the NLRB po-
sition. In only one of the 11 cir-
cuit courts — in Chicago — was the
labor board upheld, and labor at-
torneys do not consider that case
a clear-cut test of the Brown-Olds
doctrine. That decision has been
appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Third Circuit court in Phil-
adelphia, where a three-judge panel
had unanimously rejected the
Brown-Olds remedy in January, re-
heard the case before the full
seven-judge court in a legal "dou-
ble-header" in which a new case
involving the Brown-Olds doctrine
was also argued.
Before the circuit court issues
its opinion, however, there is a
possibility that the Supreme
Court might rule on the issue.
The case before the Supreme
Court — Machinists Local 1424
and the Bryan Mfg. Co. vs.
NLRB — could be decided with-
out a ruling on the Brown-Olds
issue, labor attorneys emphasize.
The AFL-CIO, however, sub-
mitted a "friend of the court"
brief dealing with the Brown-Olds
issue as a factor in the case.
The brief challenged the Brown-
Olds 'remedy" on the grounds that:
• It is based on an "unreason-
able inference" that union dues and
fees collected under an illegal un-
ion security or hiring hall arrange-
ment constitute "coerced pay-
ments."
All evidence and history points
out, the AFL-CIO declared, "that
the overwhelming majority of
workers voluntarily embrace union
conditions."
• The "mass reimbursement"
order is "not appropriate" to the
situation and is an "abuse" of the
NLRB's authority. The financial
burden of reimbursement "falls
most heavily upon the smaller un-
ions least able to sustain it."
Labor attorneys pointed out that
in some Brown-Olds type cases, the
company alone has been ordered
to reimburse the employes, in other
cases the union alone, and that in
still other cases financial liability
is imposed equally on the company
and the union. The NLRB order
directing reimbursement applies to
whichever party happened to be
named in the original charge.
• The legal precedent on which
the NLRB based its original Brown-
Olds decision is inappropriate. It
was a Supreme Court decision in
1943 which upheld an NLRB order
forcing the Virginia Electric &
Power Co. to pay back dues it had
collected on behalf of a company-
dominated union. The court held
that the employes had been coerced
into joining the company union.
By 19 Percent:
Corporate Profits
Last Year Top 1958
Despite the impact of the steel strike in the second half of 1959,
corporation profits last year soared nearly 19 percent above the
1958 figures.
That's the story as reported in the Wail Street Journal which
keeps tabs on the earnings of representative companies. The 545
corporations in the Journal's sam-^
1 industry groups checked by the
Journal increased in 1959:
Airlines, 12.5 percent; build-
ing materials, 31.6; chemicals,
33.7; department stores, 19; dis-
tilleries, 17.4; drug companies,
8.3; electrical equipment, 19.8;
farm equipment, 48; finance
companies, 6.5; food products,
14.7; leather, 32.8; metal and
mining, 15.2; office equipment,
9.7.
Also petroleum products, 7 per-
cent; pulp and paper, 25.2; rail-
way equipment, 60.2; rubber com-
panies, 26.9; textiles, 83; tobacco,
8; tools and other machinery, 31.9;
other industrial, 20.9; utilities, 7.4.
Hotel Union
Names Group
On Civil Rights
Cincinnati, O.— Pres. Ed. S.
Miller of the Hotel & Restaurant
Employes has announced the ap-
pointment of a committee on civil
rights headed by Intl. Vice Pres.
Richard Smith of Chicago.
Other members are William S.
Pollard of Los Angeles, chairman
of the Joint Council of Dining Car
Employes, who was named commit-
tee secretary; General Organizer
Betty Bentz of Local 6, New York;
pie jumped their profits to $11.5
billion from $9.7 billion in the
previous year.
Estimates of total national profits
for 1959 indicate a new record
high of over $48 billion, before
taxes. The previous record was
set in 1955 when profits reached
$44.9 billion.
Almost All Gained
All but four of the 28 industry
groups which the Journal reports
on showed profit gains over 1958.
The only declines were registered
in steel which registered a drop of
four-tenths of 1 percent, railroads
— affected by the steel strike —
which showed a drop of 1.2 per-
cent, aircraft and sugar.
Spectacular gains were regis-
tered for two groups: autos
showed a 91.3 percent jump in
profits and movies and movie
theaters registered a 719.4 per-
cent increase, according to the
Journal.
The Journal predicted that for
the first quarter of 1960 half of
the industry groups would show
additional gains in profits, with
automobiles and steel leading the
upward swing. The total profits
for the quarter are expected to
match or exceed profits for the
first three months of 1960.
Higher Depreciation
Among the factors held respon-
sible for the soaring profits picture
is an increase in depreciation
charges by corporations, with the
result of more cash flowing into
their coffers.
Here's how the profits of major
Labor Joins
Mourning for
Neuberger
Portland, Ore. — Sen. Richard L.
Neuberger (D-Ore.), who tri-
umphed over a cancer attack in
1958, died Mar. 9 after suffering
a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 47.
Neuberger, Oregon's first Demo-
cratic senator in 40 years, had
planned to seek nomination for his
second term in the May 20 pri-
mary. No Democrat had filed
against him, and Republicans had
been unable to select a serious con-
tender. His unexpected death left
the contest for the Senate seat
open.
In a telegram of condolence
to Neuberger's widow, Mrs.
Maureen Neuberger, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler said
they were "shocked and sad-
dened at the tragic death" of the
senator.
Neuberger, they wired, "had
achieved an enviable record of
service to his state and his country
and had been a staunch advocate of
liberal causes. We will miss him
and America will miss him."
Neuberger entered politics in
1941 when he won election to a
two-year term in the Oregon House
of Representatives. In 1949 he was
elected a member of the state sen-
ate, serving there until 1954 when
he waged his successful campaign
for the U.S. Senate.
The Senate broke off its civil
rights debate for three hours of
tribute in which Neuberger was
eulogized by leaders on both sides
of the aisle, then recessed for the
day out of respect.
RICHARD W. SMITH
Chairman, Hotel & Restaurant
Employes Committee on Civil
Rights
Mary Jackson, Seattle, Wash., and
John Gibson, president of the St
Louis local.
Appointment of the committee
was authorized by the last conven-
tion. It will work under Miller's
direction, according to the resolu-
tion, to help the international and
all locals carry out the constitu-
tional policy banning "discrimina-
tion against any individual based
upon race, color, creed or national
origin. "
Smith, pointing out that the un-
ion represents virtually every race,
said the new committee will work
closely with the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Civil Rights "to advance and
protect the civil rights of all work-
ers and all labor in the nation."
California Retail Clerks
File NLRB Election Bid
Los Angeles — Five Southern
California locals of the Retail
Clerk9 have filed petitions asking
the National Labor Relations Board
to conduct representation elections
in 15 Barkers furniture stores.
About 1,000 employes, working in
stores in 11 communities, are
involved.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Page Three
First Walkout in SAG's History:
Top Stars, Bit Players Strike
Giant Studios for TV Royalties
Hollywood — Fourteen thousand film actors — the nation's top stars and bit players, alike — have shut
down seven of the industry's eight giant motion picture studios in the first strike against the major
producers in the history of the Screen Actors Guild.
The strike began Mar. 7 after more than two months of fruitless negotiations. At issue is a
union demand that actors receive added compensation from the profits which studios receive on
theatrical motion pictures made^
after 1948 and subsequently sold to
television. SAG is also asking an
industry-wide welfare and pension
fund paid by the producers, plus
wage increases.
U-I Signs Up
Just prior to the walkout, SAG
cracked the solid front of the ma-
jor studios by signing a three-year
pact with Universal-International
settling all issues in the negotia-
tions. On the heels of this settle-
ment, the union reached similar
agreements with a dozen large
independent producers.
The U-I pact specifies that on
theatrical pictures made between
Aug. 1, 1958 and Jan. 31, 1960,
actors will receive 6 percent of re-
ceipts, after deduction of distribu-
tion costs, when the films are sold
to television. On pictures made
after Jan. 31, 1960, the producer
will pay 7 percent of receipts after
distribution costs.
The Guild contract with Uni-
versal-International also provides
for a producer contribution of.
5 percent of all actors' earnings
Striking Actors Get
AFL-CIO Backing
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany has wired officials of
the striking Screen Actors
Guild a pledge of the "co-
operation and assistance of all
your fellow unionists in the
united labor movement."
"Your long record of
peaceful collective bargain-
ing, spanning more than a
generation," Meany's tele-
gram said, "indicates without
question that this strike was
forced upon your union by
the stubborn refusal of the
employers to negotiate rea-
sonable terms."
into a pension and welfare fund
to be jointly administered by the
producer and the union.
In the area of salary increases,,
the pay of day players went up
from $90 to $100 daily; free lance
players up from $300 to $350
Guild Asks Laws to
Ban Professional Scabs
Legislation to outlaw professional strikebreaking and the strike
insurance plan that finances the "massive retaliation" of newspaper
publishers against the unions in their plants was demanded by the
Newspaper Guild executive board at a meeting in Washington.
The ANG's proposal, part of a broad outline for cooperation
among industry unions to combat'^
publisher attacks, was formulated
following board consideration of
the situation in Portland, Ore.,
where other newspaper labor groups
since Nov. 10 have been honoring
a Stereotypers' picket line thrown
around the Oregonian and the Ore-
gon Journal. The Stereotypers went
on strike when contract negotia-
tions broke down over the publish-
ers' demand for changes in work-
ing conditions.
The Guild program is similar
to one advanced at about the
same time by Pres. Elmer Brown
of the Typographers. It is de-
rived from a Pennsylvania law
barring the recruiting of strike-
breakers by a person or firm "not
directly involved in a labor strike
or lockout" which lead to the ar-
rest of Bloor Schleppey, head of
a notorious scab-importing oper-
ation, in connection with an at-
tempt to break an ITU strike at
the Bristol Courier and Levit-
town Times in 1958.
The ANG board adopted a pol-
icy statement which:
• "Instructs the top officers to
prepare legislative measures that
'Thirties' TV Show
To Be Aired Again
New York— "Life in the
Thirties,* National Broadcast-
ing Co. television program
depicting the depression, the
New Deal and the surge of
labor organization, will be
repeated Mar. 13 from 8 to
9 pan. over the NBC net-
work.
When originally shown,
the program was acclaimed
by union officials and mem-
bers for the way it showed
the rise of American labor
and the struggles of those
who fought to help build
trade unionism in the 1930s.
would bar recruitment of strike-
breakers by an individual or group
not directly involved in the strike;
abolish strike insurance, which has
become such a large factor in pub-
lisher resistance; impose limitations
on the use of the vicious doctrine
of 'massive retaliation,' and require
the strike-bound employer to an-
nounce in his advertisements for
workers that his enterprise is en-
gaged in a labor dispute.
• "Instructs the top officers to
pursue actively the introduction of
such measures in state and national
legislative bodies. Locals also
should be called upon to further
this program where and when ap-
propriate. The extended support of
trade union bodies at all levels,
particularly in the printing trade
unions, should be sought and en-
couraged."
The ANG leadership heartily
welcomed the cooperation at both
local and international levels that
has helped keep the Portland work-
ers "determined not to yield to a
despotic management seeking to
emasculate union strength." Plans
of top ANG officers to continue
meetings with the leaders of other
printing trades unions "for the pur-
pose of developing closer inter-
union cooperation" were approved.
The board also urged locals to
accept invitations to affiliate from
state or local printing trades
councils in areas where they have
been extended. Sen. Wayne
Morse (D-Ore.) was commended
for introducing a resolution call-
ing for a Senate investigation
of strikebreaking, and locals
throughout the country were
urged to ask their own senators
to support it.
The board noted many signs in-
dicating "plainly the desire of
members for inter-union coopera-
tion," citing resolutions urging
meetings of top officers to achieve
such cooperation.
weekly; stunt men up from $90 to
$100 daily, and from $345 to $400
a week.
SAG Pres. Ronald Reagan, hail-
ing the U-I pact and the subsequent
settlements with the independents,
called on the -heads of the seven
struck studios to show the same
"sense of responsibility" and sign
contracts with the Guild.
No Such Thing as Scabs
The walkout was accomplished
without fanfare and without picket
lines. As a SAG spokesman put
it: "There's no need for picket
lines. Nobody ever heard of scab
actors."
The strike affects only the pro-
duction of motion pictures for
showing in theaters across the na-'
tion. Union members will con-
tinue to work on films made ex-
pressly for television as well as on
religious, educational and com-
mercial films.
Efforts by U.S. Mediator Jules
Medoff to settle the strike foun-
dered at the outset when officials
of the studios brushed off his in-
vitation to meet "either separate-
ly or jointly" on the contract dis-
pute. The studio refusal to meet
came despite agreement by SAG
officials to sit down with the
mediator.
Pledges of support from labor
organizations whose total member-
shin runs into the millions poured
into SAG's offices here as the walk-
out began.
Pres. James A. Suffridge of the
Retail Clerks assured the actors of
his union's "full moral and finan-
cial support," and praised the Guild
for the "substantial assistance" it
has given the labor movement gen-
erally.
Ed S. Miller, president of the
Hotel and Restaurant Employes,
said the union's executive board
had voted "wholehearted" backing
of the strike action, which it said
was "forced" on SAG by the re-
fusal of producers to consider the
actors' demands.
The executive council of Actors
Equity unanimously voted to back
the strikebound screen performers,
declaring that a "resolution of the
deadlock in the favor of SAG is
most important to performers in all
the entertainment fields."
The California State AFL-CIO
wired Reagan that organized labor
in the state stands "united to ren-
der any and all assistance" hi
SAG's strike. The state body's ex-
ecutive council unanimously voted
"complete moral and financial sup-
port."
JOHN M. ELLIOTT
President of Street Railway Em-
ployes has been elected to board
of Union Labor Life Insurance Co.
The company will hold its annual
meeting in Baltimore Apr. 6.
News Blackout Charged
In Montreal Price Trial
Toronto, Ont. — Montreal newspapers are suppressing news
of a corporation trial involving price-fixing, Prof. Frank Scott
has charged.
Scott, a noted lawyer and former national chairman of the
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, told a meeting of the
Ontario branch of the Canadian Bar Association that the
Montreal Gazette and the Montreal Star — the city's two big
English-language dailies — published almost nothing about the
trial of 17 pulp and paper companies for restricting trade by
price-fixing.
The Star has carried no news at all and the Gazette has
printed only one story about the prosecutions. As a result
Canadian Press, which relies on newspaper sources, has carried
nothing over its wires, Scott added.
"Thus as far as I can find out the rest of Canada heard
nothing of it. The silence of the press also silenced the Cana-
dian Broadcasting Co., which relies — quite erroneously, in my
opinion — on the same sources as the newspapers."
Later the Gazette conceded it published only one story, but
said the event was not "newsworthy enough to justify day-to-
day coverage."
New Seamen 9 s Union
Moves on 'Runaways '
New York — The Intl. Maritime Workers Union has filed two
actions with the National Labor Relations Board against National
Bulk Carriers and its Liberian subsidiary, Universe Tankships, Inc.,
one of the largest American operators of American-owned "run-
away" ships flying the flag of the African republic.
The IMWU was set up several
months ago as a joint operation by
two AFL-CIO affiliates, the Mari-
time Union and the Seafarers, with
the authorization of the Intl. Trans-
portworkers Federation, to organize
the crews of "runaway" ships
owned in the U.S. but flying the
flags of other countries, particularly
Panama, Liberia and Honduras.
One action asked that the Global
Seamen's Union, which it described
as company-sponsored, be deprived
of its authorization as collective
New Trainmen
Officers Sworn
As Meet Ends
Cleveland — New officers took
the oath of office as the closing act
of the Railroad Trainmen's seven
weeks of convention sessions here.
These offices were filled in the
closing days by ballot of the 1,100
delegates on voting machines:
Vice Presidents J. H. Shepherd
North Platte, Neb.; G. C. Gale of
Winnipeg, Manit.; P. K. Byers,
Minneapolis, Minn.; W. P. Kelly,
Toronto, Ont.
Board of Trustees and Insurance:
Al J. LaRose, chairman; J. H.
Smith, secretary, and M. J. Beirne.
Executive Board: chairman, C. E.
Jones; secretary, O. B. Brooks;
and T. B. Brownfield, W. J. Cul-
bertson, and W. E. Smith, mem-
bers.
Kennedy Re-elected
An attempt by a minority of
delegates to oust supporters of
Pres. W. P. Kennedy ended in Ken-
nedy's re-election and victory for
all Kennedy supporters except one.
Sole winner was William J. Weil,
for secretary-treasurer until Apr. 1,
who lost in four election tries but
was elected 11th vice president.
Among the losers was C. W.
Wilkinson of Minnesota. Elected
chairman of the convention as a
committee of the whole in the first
week of the convention, Wilkin-
son was later defeated for trustee.
Clyde Titler, Pennsylvanian who
brought a civil suit last year against
the BRT insurance department, de-
clined to run for office. He had
announced his intention of running
for trustee, but changed his mind.
New terms of office for all offi-
cials start Apr. 1.
bargaining representative of the
crew of the SS Ore Monarch.
In addition, the union filed un-
fair labor practice charges against
the company for illegally interfer-
ing with organization work aboard
the SS Ore Jupiter, citing the firing
of Magoulianos E. Dionvsics, third
assistant engineer, because he had
helped obtain IMWU authorization
cards from crew members.
Shannon Wall, executive direc-
tor of the IMWU, described the
Global Seamen's Union as "noth-
ing but a company union set up
by D. K. Ludwig (National Bulk
president) to keep the crews on
his Liberian flag ships from get-
ting genuine union representa-
tion." He said National Bulk,
through Universe Tankships, op-
erates 22 tankers and 14 ore
carriers under the Liberian flag.
4 The actions of this American
operator on ships which he oper-
ates for American companies have
plainly violated American law,"
Wall declared. "We intend to es-
tablish that Ludwig and others of
his kind cannot use the Liberian
flag as a cover for such abuse and
exploitation of crews but must an-
swer for their actions under our
laws."
Typo Leaders
Assured of
Re-Election
Indianapolis, Ind. — For the first
time in modern history, members
of the Typographical Union are go-
ing into a referendum election
without a contest for the interna-
tional union's top two posts.
Without opposition, Pres. Elmer
Brown and Sec.-Treas. William R.
Cloud were assured re-election.
Brown received the endorsements
of 567 locals for another term.
Two potential rivals failed to re-
ceive the minimum of 50 endorse-
ments required by the union consti-
tution — Jesse B. Manbeck of Wash-
ington, who won approval from
three locals, and Howard C. Mur-
ray of Richmond, Va., who was
given 47 endorsements. Cloud was
unopposed even for endorsements.
Incumbent members of the in-
ternational executive board also re-
ceived endorsements from substan-
tial majorities of locals but face
opposition in the referendum sched-
uled for May.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Forand Bill Drive Gets Medical Backing
BLURRED THINKING of officials of Chicago Medical Society led to this unretouched picture of
exhibit attacking Forand bill as "socialistic" and "communistic." Medical Society officials refused
to permit photographer to take picture of exhibit, threatened him with "drastic measures" if he tried.
Another photographer shot the above photo hastily, was promptly ejected. Display was set up in
rooms of the Palmer House, where public had access, in connection with annual clinical conference
for doctors. Society spokesmen said pictures might embarass medicine.
Chicago Medical Society Watchdog
Tries, Fails to Foil Photographer
Chicago — Spokesmen for the Chicago Medical Society engaged in cloak-and-dagger antics coupled
with threats of "drastic" measures in an effort to block the AFL-CIO News from obtaining photo-
graphs of an exhibit attacking the Forand bill as a "socialist handout."
A free-lance cameraman arranged for by the AFL-CIO News hid a camera under his hat and
managed to take one blurred picture before being ousted by angry medical society watchdogs.
Earlier, a colleague was told he^
was "trespassing" if he had "any-
thing to do with the AFL-CIO."
Erected in a fourth-floor foyer
of the Palmer House in connection
with the society's clinical confer-
ence, the display was clearly visible
to delegates attending other meet-
ings in the hotel. But society offi-
cials claimed they feared photo-
graphs in the AFL-CIO News
might "portray medicine in bad
light."
"Scientific Exhibit"
The display was set up by the
society's Committee on Legislative
Information and was labeled a
"scientific exhibit." Prominently
featured was a copy of Karl Marx's
basic Communist work, "Capital,"
and a sign lambasting Forand bill
supporters as "do-gooders" for
wanting legislation which would
provide medical care for older
citizens.
An aspiring young actor, rig-
ged out as a circus barker in a
cutaway coat and top hat and
wearing a fake beard, lampooned
the bill as "payola for the gov-
ernment" under which "Big
Brother wants to make all your
decisions for you."
t The elaborate efforts by medical
society officials to ban picture-tak-
ing by the labor press were detailed
in reports from the two cameramen,
verified by Miss Lisbeth Bamberger
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security.
The first photographer was in-
terrupted by two men before he
could take any pictures. The men
demanded his personal and profes-
sional identification and the iden-
tity of the customer who had en-
gaged his commercial photographic
firm.
Not satisfied with the camera-
man's statement that he did not
know the name of the client, the
two men — one a burly six-footer —
told him he was "trespassing," was
"not wanted," and that if he was
found near the display again "dras-
tic measures would be taken." The
men accompanied him down the
elevator and out of the hotel.
The second photographer suc-
ceeded in getting his one shot be-
fore an irate official told him that
since he was "not a doctor," he
could not take pictures. The offi-
cial firmly ordered him to leave.
"Bunch of Communists"
Pressed for an explanation, the
official said that "a bunch of Com-
munists in the next room" were
trying to obtain pictures of the
display. Meeting in the next room
was the Group Health Association
of America.
The display featured a wide va-
riety of slick brochures denouncing
the Forand bill. They included:
• An American Medical Asso-
ciation pamphlet characterizing the
proposed system for medical care
for the aged as "political medicine"
that would "mean poorer, not bet-
ter, health care."
• Another AMA tract calling
the Forand bill "bad medicine,"
and claiming that it would "curtail
right of aged to spend their dollars
as they want," and would "cover
millions of people with . . . hos-
pjtal and surgical insurance, re-
gardless of whether they want or
need it."
• A third AMA brochure, in
which the doctor's lobby let its slip
show by complaining that "an
agency of the federal government"
would "set fees for physicians and
charges for hospitals and nursing
homes."
• A copy of a news letter by
Rep. Bruce Alger (R-Tex.) which
called the bill "socialized medi-
cine." The letter was reprinted by
the Association of American Physi-
cians and Surgeons.
• A voluminous copy of the
January "Dan Smoot Report,"
which claimed the Forand bill was
patterned after England's 12-year-
old national health program, which,
the report said, "is modeled on the
Soviet system created by Lenin."
Workers, Employers Will Pay
The display was keyed to the
theme that the Forand bill would
take money from "the public till"
—despite the fact that the proposed
legislation calls for employers and
employes each to make a maxi-
mum $12-a-year contribution
through increased social security
taxes to finance all of the medical
care for the aged.
Here's part of the "spiel"
which the young actor delivered
in sideshow-barker style:
"Step right up and hear about
the Forand bill. Yes— F-O-R-
A-N-D — don't forget the name,
he won't forget you. The bill
to provide free medical care, free
everything, and payola for the
U.S. government." At this point
the medicine man scattered a fist-
ful of gilt-covered "coins" into
the audience.
"Uncle Sam is passing out
money, all for free! Yes sir, step
right up for a Socialist handout!
Big Brother wants to make all your
decisions for you. Big Brother
will look after you. Yes, sir, the
Forand bill gives you freedom from
want . . . freedom from fear . . .
freedom from freedom."
The medical society used the
"scare technique" in one sign to
whip up doctor opposition to the
bill on the ground that the legisla-
tion would "take away your older
patients and their dependents un-
less you sign up."
Showdown Vote Near
In House Committee
(Continued from Page 1)
Forand in a speech on the House
floor. He said it was "significant"
that t; in the face of the usual closed-
mind opposition of the AMA, two
distinguished doctors closely ac-
quainted with the problem" support
the health insurance measure.
The two letters, the Rhode Island
Democrat said, indicate that "cor-
porate medicine, as represented by
the AMA, does not speak for doc-
tors who really know the prob-
lem." He added:
"I think it is a tragedy that the
general public should get the im-
pression that doctors as a whole
are opposed to health protection
for the aged. This is simply not
true."
In last years hearings before the
Ways & Means Committee, headed
by Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.),
more than a score of doctors sup-
ported the bill to finance health
care by increasing the social se-
curity tax on employers and em-
ployes by a maximum of $12 a
year each.
As support for the measure
mounted, reports persisted that
the Eisenhower Administration,
spurred by political considerations
involved in Vice Pres. Nixon's pres-
idential bid, was considering an
election-year about-face on medical
insurance legislation.
The AFL-CIO Executive
Council, at its recent midwinter
session, warned against any elev-
enth-hour Administration pro-
gram "designed to meet the
narrowly conceived financial de-
mands of the AMA or the self-
seeking clamor of insurance
companies rather than the needs
of the elderly."
In his letter to Forand, Dr. Mac-
Lean pointed out that he has been
in close contact with the problems
of care for the aged "for many
years and in many capacities." The
former national president of Blue
Cross continued:
"As a physician, I have had ah
intimate look at the special and
personal health needs of the aged.
As a hospital administrator, I have
seep that need reflected as a bur-
den of obligatory and uncompen-
sated service that acted as a con-
stant drag upon the hospital's eco-
nomic support and growth.
"As New York City Commis-
sioner of Hospitals, I have seen
these problems further translated
into financial and social deficit for
the entire community. As a presi-
dent of the national Blue Cross
Association, I participated first
hand in the attempt to meet some
of these problems through existing
voluntary prepayment organiza-
tions.
"A lifetime's experience has
led me at last to conclude that
the costs of care of the aged* can-
not be met, unaided, by the
mechanism of insurance or pre-
payment as they exist today. The
aged simply cannot afford to buy
from any of these the scope of
care that is required, nor do the
stern competitive realities permit
any carrier ... to provide bene-
fits which are adequate at a price
which is feasible for any but a
small proportion of the aged."
Dr. MacLean said that voluntary
plans would be "strengthened"
through use of the social security
mechanism to provide health care
for the aged.
Dr. Bluestone, who also serves
as a consultant to New York's
Montefiore Hospital, hailed the
Forand proposal as a "humanitar-
ian bill," and expressed hope that
Congress would pass the legislation,
"thus writing a new and comfort-
ing chapter in the history of mod-
ern" care for the aged.
"Passage of this bill into law,"
he wrote Forand, "would be a
boon for the great majority of
our elderly population who have
the right to look to our legis-
lators for relief at a time in their
lives when they may need it most.
It has all the wholesome ear-
marks of voluntary prepaid med-
ical care insurance with the
added advantage of government
partnership to see to it that no
citizen is neglected in the late
time of his trouble."
Pitts Replaces Haggerty
In California AFL-CIO
San Francisco — Thomas L. Pitts, a soft-spoken 45-year-old
unionist from Southern California, is the new secretary-treasurer of
the California State AFL-CIO.
He was chosen by the federation's executive council to succeed
C. J. Haggerty, who will take over the presidency of the AFL-CIO
Building & Construction Trades'^
Dept. Apr. 1.
To succeed Pitts as president of
the 1.25-million-member organiza-
tion, the executive council named
Albin J. Gruhn of Eureka, a vice
president of the federation for the
past 20 years.
Both men have close to 25 years
of service in the labor movement
behind them. Pitts became a busi-
ness representative of a Los Ange-
les freight drivers' local in 1936,
and in 1937 became secretary-
treasurer of Wholesale Delivery
Drivers' & Salesmen's Union Local
848. He held the latter post until
1955, when he took a leave of
absence to work full-time for the
state federation.
He was made a vice-president
of the former AFL state body
in 1941, and its president in
1950. In 1958, he was elected
president of the merged Cali-
fornia labor federation. He is a
member of the Bartenders Un-
ion.
Pitts is currently a member of
the State Board of Education,
served prior to that as a director
of the State Compensation Insur-
ance Fund. He has served on the
Governor's Committee for Employ-
ment of the Handicapped by ap-
pointment of both Governors Good-
win J. Knight and Edmund G.
Brown.
Gruhn is presently secretary of
the Humboldt County Labor Coun-
cil and Building Trades Council,
and is a vice president of the dis-
trict council of Laborers. He joined
the Lumber & Sawmill Workers in
1934 and was an active figure in
the 1935 lumberworkers' strike.
Community Work
Wins Ford Honor
Detroit — Mrs. Gwendolyn Ed-
wards, a member of the Auto
Workers who for 12 years has
played a major role in AFL-CIO
Community Services in Wayne
County, has been honored by the
Ford Motor Co. for her public
service work.
Mrs. Edwards was chosen by
Ford management as the recipient
% of the company's first Community
Services Award on the basis of her
"outstanding contributions."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Page Tiy+
1960 Fact Sheet on Congress— No. 5
Depressed Area Aid Stymied For 5 Years
Coalition, Presidential Veto
Block Action on Legislation
By John Beidler
In each congressional session since 1956 liberals have sought enactment of legislation to meet
the problems of chronic unemployment in localities, urban and rural, throughout the nation. In
each session, delays — and on one occasion a presidential veto — have frustrated these efforts,
The need for action is apparent. Despite their own "bootstrap" efforts, many localities continue
to be burdened with high levels of continuing unemployment brought on by factors beyond their
control.
Technological change is one major factor. Improvements in machines and methods of produc
tion in some areas have cut employment dramatically while production is maintained.
A second major factor is industrial migration — the movement of industry from one section of the
country to another. In the case of the textile industry, the movement of a large part of textile
production from New England and^
the Middle Atlantic states to the
southern states has left large num-
bers of skilled textile workers un-
employed. Many urban areas are
unable to create new employment
for them.
Shifting product demand and
various competitive factors also
serve to create local pockets of
unemployment.
The effect has been disastrous to
localities affected: human hardship
for the directly affected workers
and their families; a drag on the
economy as a whole caused by
declining purchasing power and
increased social costs such as pub-
lic assistance.
Token Program in '56
In 1955, at its first convention,
the AFL-CIO asserted that the
whole nation has a stake in helping
"the hundreds of thousands of our
fellow citizens" who live in dis-
tressed areas and added that the
creation of suitable employment
for displaced workers would add
millions of dollars to our national
output. The convention declared:
"The AFL-CIO calls upon the
federal government to utilize all
of its resources and to work un-
ceasingly — in cooperation with la-
bor, industry, the states, and the
affected local governments — to al-
leviate chronic area unemployment
in the United States."
In his State of the Union mes-
sage in 1956, the President of-
fered a token program which
fell far short of meeting the ex-
isting need. He asked only $50
million for technical assistance
and capital improvement loans
to the affected areas.
Democratic liberals led by for-
mer Sen. Herbert Lehman (D-
N.Y.) responded with a more vigor-
ous program. Following extensive
hearings before the Senate Com-
mittee on Labor and Public Wel-
fare, an amended Lehman bill was
reported in July 1956.
Get the Facts
On Key issues
The AFL-CIO News is
publishing on this page the
fifth of a new series of Fact
Sheets on Congress providing
background information on
basic issues coming before
the second session of the
86th Congress.
The series, prepared by
John Beidler of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation, is
designed to give the legisla-
tive history of the issue, the
various forces involved pro
and con and the general na-
ture of bills introduced.
Reprints of the fact sheet
series will be available from
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legis-
lation, 815 16th Street, N.W.,
Washington 6, D. C,
The Lehman bill passed the Sen
ate by a vote of 60 to 30, the
widest margin ever given by the
Senate to an area redevelopment
bill. Although similar legislation
was reported by a House commit-
tee, it died in the familiar grave
yard of liberal legislation, the
House Rules Committee. The 84th
Congress adjourned without fur-
ther action.
Fixing the blame for the meas-
ure's defeat, Rep. Daniel Flood
(D-Pa.) charged that the bill was
killed by the House Republican
leadership and spokesmen for
the Department of Commerce,
who "refused even to agree to
consider" the President's own in-
adequate program.
Following this initial defeat,
Pres. Eisenhower has restated his
support for his inadequate program
in 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960.
Each year conservatives in both
the Republican and Democratic
parties have sought to defeat it.
Provisions of Bill
Backed by AFL-CIO
The Douglas-Cooper-Spence depressed areas bill, S. 722,
would:
1 — Send technical specialists to the affected areas to help
them evaluate their economic resources and needs and plan
constructively for the future.
2 — Provide $200 million for low interest federal redevelop-
ment loans to aid the construction of modern plants in chron-
ically distressed areas.
3— Provide $175 million for federal grants and loans for
the construction of public facilities needed to attract and to
hold industry — like an improved water or sewerage system.
4 — Establish a program of vocational retraining for jobless
workers and provide federal subsistence payments during the
process of retraining.
5 — Give assistance to rural areas suffering from chronic
under-employment.
6 — Locate the administration of this program in a special
federal agency to be established solely for this purpose. Labor
would enjoy an advisory status to it and the participation of
trade unions in the program at the local level would be
encouraged as well.
7 — Finally, all aid would be denied to "runaway" employers
who might seek to locate in a depressed area while at the same
time creating unemployment elsewhere.
In 1957, jurisdiction over the
measure in the Senate was removed
from the Labor and Public Wel-
fare Committee and lodged in the
Banking and Currency Committee
There, a new series of hearings was
held before the Production and
Stabilization subcommittee, chaired
by Sen. Paul Douglas (D-I1L).
A stalemate in the subcommit-
tee was not broken until 1958,
when former Sen. Frederick Payne
(R-Me.) introduced a new measure
in an attempt to iron out differ
ences in the Administration and
Democratic positions.
Using this measure, Douglas
by-passed the subcommittee and
successfully moved to make the
Payne bill the first order of busi-
ness in the full Banking and
Currency Committee. The full
committee reported a new Doug-
las-Payne bill.
The Douglas-Payne bill passed
the Senate by a vote of 46 to 36.
Voting in favor of the bill were 29
Democrats and 17 Republicans
Twelve Democrats and 24 Republi-
cans opposed it.
House Finally Casts Vote
In the House Banking and Cur-
rency Committee, cuts were made
in the bill before a favorable re-
port was made. Even with these
cuts, however, the Rules Commit-
tee complacently sat on the bill for
a month and a half, while the ad
journment date for the 85th Con
gress grew nearer.
Finally, the Rules Committee
forced further changes in the bill
and it was brought to the floor,
On the key vote, a motion to re-
commit (and thus kill) the bill,
supporters of the measure won, 188
to 170. Supporting the bill were
139 Democrats and 49 Republi-
cans. Voting to kill it were 116
Republicans and 54 Democrats.
The bill then passed the House on
a standing (non-record) vote, 176
to 130.
The House version of the bill
was accepted by the Senate, and
the measure became the first area
redevelopment bill to reach the
President's desk.
He vetoed it.
In doing so he said the major
responsibilities for financing re-
development must remain with
local citizens.
In the face of growing unem-
ployment early in 1959 (by then
a large number of newly-depressed
localities were being added to the
list of areas needing assistance) the
Senate moved rapidly to pass a
new bill. Hearings were held by
Douglas' Production and Stabiliza-
tion Subcommittee in Washington,
Detroit and West Virginia in Feb-
ruary, and early March on the
Douglas-Cooper (R-Ky.) bill, the
Administration measure, and sev-
eral compromise measures.
In this and previous hearings, the
line-up of support and opposition
for area redevelopment was re-
vealed.
Supporting the Douglas-Cooper
bill were:
AFL-CIO.
National Farmers Union.
Cooperative League of the
U.S. Council of Mayors.
American Municipal Associa-
tion.
A substantial number of state
governors and municipalities.
Urging rejection of area rede-
velopment legislation were:
Chamber of Commerce of the
United States.
National Association of Manu-
facturers.
American Farm Bureau Fed-
eration.
American Bankers Associa-
tion.
Southern States Industrial
Conference.
The full Banking and Currency
Committee voted 9 to 6 to recom-
mend Senate passage of the Doug-
las-Cooper bill, S. 722. Two Re-
publicans joined seven Democrats
to report the measure. Three
Democrats and three Republicans
opposed it.
Rules Committee Blocks Action
On Mar. 23, 1959 the Senate
passed the $389 million Douglas-
Cooper bill by a vote of 49 to 46.
Forty-five Democrats and fouT Re-
publicans voted to pass the bill.
Sixteen Democrats and 30 Repub-
licans opposed it.
Earlier, the Senate had rejected
a motion to substitute the Admin-
istration's $53 million program by
a vote of 43 to 52.
The House Banking and Cur-
rency Committee, following several
days of hearings, voted to report
an amended version of S. 722 on
May 5. The amended bill cut the
grant and loan funds provided in
the Senate version from $389 mil-
lion to $251 million. This was
done, the committee said, to avoid
a presidential veto, but further cuts
could not be made without killing
the program before it got started.
The Rules Committee hurdle
remained.
On May 19, Banking and Cur-
rency Chairman Brent Spence (D-
Ky.) wrote Rules Committee Chair-
man Howard Smith (D-Va.) asking
that S. 722 be granted a rule and
cleared for House debate.
Between then and adjournment
of the first session on Sept. 15,
the Rules Committee failed to
act. Nor did it act on the bill
during the first two months of
1960.
As the most recent AFL-CIO
convention unanimously stated:
"The Area Redevelopment Act
(S. 722) meets the minimum re-
quirements for an effective federal
effort to alleviate local area dis-
tress and should be immediately
passed by the House of Repre-
sentatives and signed by the Presi-
dent. The hundreds of thousands
of victims of area distress have
already been forced to wait too
long for the initiation of a domes-
tic Point IV program geared to
meet the needs of our own citi-
zens."
Congressional Profile
Of a Depressed Area
When reporting the Douglas-Cooper-Spence bill, the House
Banking and Currency Committee majority said:
"Depressed industrial areas have many common character-
istics; first, they are areas which have lost certain historic
locational advantages.
"Second, they are areas where local enterprise and initiative
have usually been smothered and repressed by the existence
of persistent and chronic unemployment. Areas suffering from
prolonged unemployment are like individuals who have been
physically ill or unemployed. They lose heart and courage.
They become resigned and discouraged. Their physical ener-
gies have been drained. They are like unemployed individuals
who need the outside help of a professional agency dedicated
to providing them with specific guidance and courage and
assistance. Outside assistance, your committee believes, must
come from the federal government.
"Third, they are areas which have low financial resources
and are, therefore, least capable of raising the capital required
for long-term bold programs for rehabilitation. The very fact
that unemployment has persisted and become chronic has
meant that the communities' tax rolls have suffered and their
financial resources have been drained. They are not as capa-
ble of financing their own programs as are the more pros-
perous communities."
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C M SATURDAY, MARCH 12, I960
Forand Bill Showdown
OLD REACTIONARIES never die and they never learn.
Twenty-five years ago when the Social Security Act was being
bitterly debated in the 1936 presidential campaign, its opponents
freely predicted the" end of democracy in the U.S. Issuing social
security cards so that Americans could draw retirement pensions,
insurance payments, unemployment compensation and other social
insurance benefits, would establish a new dictatorship, they said.
The diehards never stopped fighting the social security system.
They opposed every progressive change since 1935. Now they
have focused their Big Lie technique on the Forand bill — a measure
to provide health care for the aged under the social security system.
The measure — headed for a showdown vote soon in the Hopse
Ways & Means Committee — would simply extend to persons
drawing benefits under the Social Security Act certain limited
health care provisions which would be paid for by all persons
covered by social security.
This, according to the reactionary elements in the American
Medical Association and their allies in the National Association
of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is "socialized
medicine" or "political medicine."
These same falsehoods have been heaped on every Advance in
medical care over the years— care for dependents of servicemen,
workmen's compensation, voluntary health insurance plans, dis-
ability benefits under social security, federal grants to local health
agencies and many other programs designed to bring better med-
ical care at a reasonable cost to millions of Americans.
At this point in history the House Ways & Means Committee
should have collected enough of this bilge to consiga it to the
proper sewer and move ahead with a measure to provide security and
self-respect to American men and women who retire on limited in-
comes after years of hard work.
The committee holds the key, for there is little doubt that if the
Forand bill is approved in committee the wide support for this
established pattern of paying for human security will sweep it
through Congress,
The issue is not "political medicine." It is providing health
care for our aged under a sound insurance system that has proven
its worth in the past 25 years.
The Senate Must Vote
THE SENATE has been debating new civil rights legislation for
nearly a month. It has exhaustively examined the denial of
full civil rights to all Americans. It has recorded all the possible
arguments on the subject, including the sophistry of the Southern-
ers on why Negroes should be regarded as second-class citizens.
Part of the month-long debate has included a filibuster by
civil rights opponents, a cold, unemotional filibuster keyed to
hysterical political climate rather than springing from conviction.
Moves to break the filibuster and prevent further misuse of the
democratic traditions of the Senate to deny democratic rights to
all Americans have so far failed. The Senate leadership has a
great responsibility to bring the debate to a climax. The Senate must
be allowed to vote on a definitive measure that will establish
clearly and beyond any question the government's commitment to
a national policy opposing racial discrimination in any form.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Birthright James B. Carey Wm. C. Doherty
David Dubinsky Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Emil Rieve Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
M. A. Hutcheson A. J. Hayes Joseph D. Keenan
L. S. Buckmaster Jacob S. Potofsky A. Philip Randolph
Richard F. Walsh Lee W. Minton Joseph A. Beirne
James A. Suffridge O. A. Knight Karl F. Feller
Paul L. Phillips Peter T. Schoemann L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany t Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V Saturday, March 12, 1960 No. 11
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of tts official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
"I Sure Could Use a Push"
'What about Social Sins?"
Clergy Should Know Workers
Better, Labor O
The following is excerpted from an address
by Harold C. Hanover, president of the New
York State AFL-CIO, at a seminar of the New
York State Council of Churches on the subject
"The Church and Industrial Relations"
THE GOALS OF CHURCH AND LABOR
are much the same. They both seek to en-
large the spiritual and material life of the masses
of people, and make the life of the family happy
and secure. The trade union activity in this area
of practical religion thereby upholds and sup-
ports the work of enlightened religious leaders.
First of all, labor is not a special interest group.
Our program is one to which not only the mem-
bers of organized labor but the vast majority of
people of all walks of life in our state and nation
can heartily subscribe. The things which we seek
to achieve reflect the aims and aspirations of most
Americans. In this sense, labor has the right to
speak for more than its own membership.
It is, therefore, not an accident that labor has
emerged as one of the partners in American indus-
try, as a very essential part of the creative process
that has made this country so powerful and great.
We have advanced to this position because Amer-
ican labor has been dedicated to the proposition
that we can make progress only as the nation
makes progress, that we cannot make progress at
the expense of the nation.
We have refused to operate as a selfish, nar-
row economic pressure group, but have instead
worked for policies, programs and goals that
would advance the welfare of the whole people,
knowing that our own welfare is inevitably tied
to that of our fellow Americans.
We must begin to change some the moral think-
ing of society. No one would dispute that mur-
der, embezzlement, extortion and such are sins,
but what about social sins? What about economic
exploitation of individuals and groups? What
about merciless milking of the consumer market
by greedy and reckless monopolies? Why is an
increase of the wage dollar a sin of inflation, while
an increase of a profit dollar an economic virtue?
What is the moral qualification of a profit a
company makes at the cost of discarding helpless
old men and women onto an industrial scrapheap
along with the rest of its obsolete machinery?
OBVIOUSLY THE CHURCH must begin to
put that kind of social sin in the same category
as personal sin and to act against it with the same
[ficial Says
vigor and drive with which it attacks other prob-
lems.
The role of the church, then, in relation to la-
bor is to insist on justice for all. But the con-
cept of justice and brotherhood cannot remain
abstract. It is not enough to be in favor of
justice alone; we must translate our ideas into
wages and jobs, into houses and security, into
schools and equal educational opportunity.
I think that the relation of church and labor
in this country is more than one of co-exist-
ence. It is a living relationship on a close,
friendly, cooperative basis. Neither wants to
control or dominate the other. Neither wants
to interfere with the inner workings of the
other.
Our union members are looking to the church
for spiritual guidance and counsel; but labor
doesn't expect and hardly wants the church to
take over the education of the worker in his rela-
tion to the union. We have qualified men to do
that job. However, what we need from the clergy-
man is that he learn to understand the daily ex-
perience of his wage earner church members and
be in touch with organized labor.
HE HAS TO HAVE more knowledge of social
questions and social phenomena. As the Rev.
John Daniel in his painstaking and revealing
study, "Labor, Industry and the Church," said:
"They," (that is, the pastors) "have been in-
adequately prepared for such work at the semi-
nary. Our colleges and theological seminaries
have given scant attention to Christian sociology,
social ethics, group and social dynamics, labor
and industrial problems, Christian community
life."
A clergyman should know what is in the
union contracts of the members of his church
as well as he knows his Bible. He should un-
derstand problems of seniority involved just as
clearly as he does the rules of protocol affecting
junior and senior vestrymen*
However, labor does not expect the clergyman
to be pro-labor or pro-management. If he is to
fulfill one of his functions in the community, the
clergyman must be simply pro-justice.
He should be able to repeat after Lincoln: u l
am not concerned about whether the Lord is on
our side. I know the Lord is always on the side
of the right, but it is my fervent prayer that we
may be found on the Lord's side."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Page Seven
"ROSE-COLORED" PICTURE of 1960 as a boom year for the nation is marred by this demonstra-
tion of jobless building trades workers at Knoxville, Tenn. The rally, called by the Knoxville
Building & Construction Trades Council, was aimed at ending governmental apathy towards rising
unemployment in the area.
Hate, Bigotry Damage Nation's
World Position, Morgan Says
(Continued from Page 1)
height of eloquence from the floor by describing
the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court as
"crap." To Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. Ambas-
sador to the UN who was touring the Soviet Union
at the time, the contrasting impact of these de-
velopments was appalling.
in Houston, Texas, a young Negro was kid-
naped, branded with the initials KKK and hung
by his heels from a tree, as a warning, he was
told, to Negro students — of which he was not
one — who had the audacity to protest lunch
counter segregation. In the city of Petersburg,
Va., 11 Negroes including eight students, two
clergymen and a beauty parlor operator, were
arrested and jailed. Their crime: trespassing the
white section of the Petersburg public library.
There were more arrests at Alabama State College
in Montgomery, protest jiemonstrations at Tuske-
gee Institute and trouble in Atlanta.
It should be plain enough by now from this
succession of events that they are not akin to
the goldfish-swallowing and telephone-booth-
stufhng episodes sometimes fashionable among
undergraduates. These young Negroes are
Washington Reports:
guilty of a far more serious offense than col-
lege hijinks. They are guilty of self-respect
which to the Eastlands of the world is a felony.
The trouble is with this type of crime that in
the long run there is no known defense against it.
As this reporter had occasion to comment four
years ago about the Montgomery, Ala. bus boy-
cott, "it is remarkable how the inspirational chem-
istry of a cause can contribute to the endurance
of people who believe in it. The momentum of
Gandhi's movement was irresistible."
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES it is a pity
that the racists cannot profit from the sobering
lesson the British learned from passive resistance
in India. Already the Negroes have punctured
the myth of the white supremacists. With a kind
of serene stubborness that history will remember
they are proving their superiority to the bigots.
It is all very well to savor this supreme asininity.
But where is the national indignation to shame it,
and where is the leadership to condemn it in
ringing terms that will be clearly heard around
the world, even unto the sacred halls of the U.S.
Senate?
Election Year Pressures Hold
Hope for Better Wage-Hour Act
PASSAGE OF A BILL to increase the mini-
mum wage to $1.25 an hour and to broaden
its coverage to workers not now protected will
help end raids on major industrial states, a Re-
publican congressman, Rep. William Ayres (O.),
and a Democratic member, Rep. John H. Dent
(Pa ), agreed on Washington Reports to the Peo-
ple, AFL-CIO public service program heard on
more than 300 radio stations.
Ayres added that such improvements of the
wage and hour law also would help correct in-
equities in some states. He gave an instance of
Arkansas, which "has a law that applies only to
women and girls, who get a minimum of $1.25 a
day — and we're talking here in Washington of
$1.25 an hour — if the worker has six months
experience on the job, and $ 1 a day if the work-
er has less than six months experience."
Dent said that the only way to prevent low-
wage area "raids" on industry in states like Ohio
and Pennsylvania is "by national law." He said
that "with the advent of the trucking and railroad
businesses, the place or site of a plant isn't im-
portant any more."
Dent said that one of the first decisions to be
made by a House subcommittee considering mini-
mum wage improvements is whether to increase the
minimum to $1.25 an hour and extend protec-
tion to 7.8 million more workers. Both Dent and
Ayres are members of the subcommittee.
The Ohio representative declared that discus-
sion of an improved federal wage-hour law may
help call public attention to another weakness of
state minimum wage legislation, the practice of
providing "different minimum wages for different
types of work. The states have made a very,
very serious mistake in doing this. It costs just
as much for a laundry worker when he goes to
the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread as it does
the automobile mechanic."
AYRES SAID that the proposed law would
exempt the small "so-called Mom and Pop
stores." One bill would limit the application of
the law to businesses that had more than a set
volume of business. Another would apply to
companies that had three establishments in one
state or several states, he said.
Dent was of the opinion that bills for improv-
ing the minimum wage law have a better chance
of passage this year because "the Administration
is asking for legislation, the majority party is
pledged to it and this is an election year."^
WASHINGTON
WiitaHdrSAeiten
SOME OF THE REPUBLICANS in this town suggested; shortly
alter Gov. Rockefeller pulled out of the GOP presidential race last
December, that Vice Pres. Nixon had everything going his way
and would do a turkey trot into the presidency come November.
All this proved is that politicians, like Washington political writers,
tend to swing too fast too far. This is a year of decision for the
American people after the Eisenhower siesta. Anybody who wins
the presidency is going to have to deserve it as well as work for it.
The ultimate thing is happening as Mr. Eisenhower perambu-
lates about the world. He is "covered," as befits a President, and
the editorialists duly pontificate upon his journeys. But it is pointed
out from Puerto Rico that after touring Latin America he announces
that he doesn't want to spend any real money there; he denies
any U.S. "master plan" for economic aid.
No one seems seriously worried: Mr. Eisenhower is on his way
out, and American policy will be made by the next President, not
this one. The eight-year* holding operation has become a thing of
a few months.
Mr. Nixon is striving diligently to disentangle himself from
the Eisenhower Administration's most obvious vulnerabilities.
The Nixon trouble is that the vulnerability is spread across the
board. It isn't just farm policy, where the Vice President has
already dumped Agriculture Secretary Benson, or just defense
policy, where he now calls for constant "re-examination" of
Soviet "intentions."
The whole range of Mr. Eisenhower's budget-balancing attitudes
on domestic issues is under massive attack that is having an observ-
able effect, at last, on the people. Even more than last year, the
President's remaining substantial power, a wholly negative one, is
the power to veto.
* * *
IT IS NOT YET CLEAR how much legislation he will veto in
the remaining three and a half months of Congress. But clearly
each such veto — on a reasonable minimum wage bill, on a Forand
bill if it is passed, on housing and federal aid to the schools — will
pain the Vice President exceedingly.
Mr. Nixon must run, fundamentally, on the Eisenhower record,
even after he becomes in effect the titular leader of his party. A
similar problem was one the difficulties Gov. Dewey faced in 1948
as the Republican nominee; he was stuck with the record of the
GOP-controlled 80th Congress, and the record of Republican con-
gressional minorities across the New Deal years.
The people clearly want federal aid to the schools, and they
are going to get it — this year or some other one. They want
health protection for social security beneficiaries — and they will
get this, too. They want more public services, and they are not
going to be blocked by narrow banker-controlled ideas of budget-
balancing.
For that matter, they will pay higher taxes for defense, if it is
asked of them, any time a respected President tells them frankly
the dangers confronting the country and warns that urgent measures
are needed to close the missile gap and rebuild the conventional
"brushfire-war" forces that have been scandalously reduced ever
since 1953.
* * *
ONE OTHER FACTOR will play a*major part in the campaign
^the judgment the people make of the relative competence and
character of Nixon and the eventual Democratic nominee on the
overriding issue of foreign policy, the preservation of the country's
freedom and security and maintain peace through strength.
This judgment will be made in the heat and testing of the
campaign and can be made in no other way. It will depend on
the people's observation of attitudes as well as oratory.
Nixon cannot expect to inherit automatically the people's trust
of Mr. Eisenhower in this field, even if the trust were not now
eroded by the telling attack on defense policy. The observation
will be close and intense.
REP. WILLIAM A. AYRES (R-O.), left, and Rep. John H. Dent
(D-Pa.) agreed there is a good chance of increasing the minimum
wage and extending its coverage this year because both parties are
committed and "this is an election year." They were interviewed
on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service
radio program heard on 300 radio stations.
Page ElgHl
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
How to Buz 9 :
Tax Load Falls On
Low, Middle-Paid
By Sidney Margolius
lY/TODERATE-INCOME taxpayers are shouldering an increasing
share of the nation's taxes. For one thing, families with
$5,000-$ 10,000 incomes are paying the biggest part of federal in-
come taxes, not the wealthy taxpayers as is popularly supposed.
The fact is, only one-sixth of all taxes come from the progressive
tax rates above 20 percent. In one recent year, those taxpayers
with incomes of over $1 million a
year paid about 35 percent of their
income in federal income taxes, not
the top rate of 91 percent as the pub-
lic generally believes.
But also, working families are pay-
ing an increasingly big chunk of state
and city taxes as the result of an
alarming jump in sales taxes and
other local and state levies. One
authority reports that state and local
taxes leaped from $59 per person in
1940 to over $175 now.
Just last year eight states increased
sales taxes. Pennsylvania even in-
creased its sales tax twice, first to
3V2 percent and then to 4, to match
Washington state's rate, highest in the nation. In all, 33 states and
many cities and towns now levy general sales taxes and three more
currently are considering new sales taxes.
Sales taxes are a reversal of the traditional American system of
progressive taxation. Progressive taxes put the biggest bite on
higher incomes. Sales taxes punish moderate-income families
hardest, since rich and poor pay the same penny tax on a loaf of
bread, or the same 3 percent on a pair of shoes. Most-punishing
sales tax is that which includes food. Lower-income families
spend a bigger part of their incomes for food than do higher-
income people.
BESIDES AROUSING moderate-income families to halt the
trend to more and bigger sales taxes, the new local income and sales
taxes have two immediate side effects:
They encourage unions to seek more fringe benefits from em-
ployers. Income taxes on pensions and other fringe benefits are
deferred and for most wage-earners will be escaped altogether.
They encourage moderate-income taxpayers to itemize federal
income-tax deductions on the long form 1040 rather than use the
short form 1040A. The short form automatically allows you a
10 percent standard deduction. But with increased sales, gasoline,
cigarette, income and other local taxes, there's greater likelihood
that these and other deductible expenses may add up to more than
10 percent of your income.
A new form — 1040W — is available for use by wage earners this
year for the first time. It's simpler to fill out than long-form 1040
but still allows you to itemize deductions and to claim the permitted
exclusion for sick pay. Form 1040 A doesn't allow you to exclude a
permissible part of the pay you get while ill this year.
You can exclude from your taxable income up to $100 a week
of pay received after the first week of an illness. If the illness was
due to an injury or you were*hospitalized at least one day, then
the exclusion applies from the first day.
The sick-pay exclusion now also applies to pregnancy absences
advised by a physician.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE whether to itemize deductions or take
the standard 10 percent, make a trial list of your potential deduc-
tions. These include:
Contributions to churches, charities and non-profit schools, and
gas and oil used in performing unpaid services for these groups.
Interest on carrying charges you pay on debts, installment pur-
chases and mortgages.
Other taxes you pay including property tax, state and local
income taxes, auto license fees and state sales and gasoline taxes.
State cigarette taxes and various local taxes on specific items as
movies are deductible if the state law says the tax is paid by the
consumer. Your local Internal Revenue Service office can tell
which local sales taxes are deductible and what the collectors
generaly use as a local guide line if you haven't kept actual rec-
ords of sales-tax payments. Most people don't.
Medical, dental and drug expenses within permissible limits, and
including fares and car expenses to get treatment.
Casualty losses, storm damage to your house, boat or other prop-
erty, and thefts for which you weren't reimbursed by insurance.
This includes car damage from a collision even if your own fault.
Vocational-education expenses if the course was necessary to
keep your job or employment status, and not merely to get a new
job or promotion.
WORK EXPENSES, including union dues, employment-agency
fees, technical periodicals, tools, safety equipment and distinctive
work uniforms which you can't use for general wear (plus repair
and maintenance costs).
You can't deduct expenses of traveling to work, but you can de-
duct costs of going to a second job. You can deduct costs of travel
and living expenses for a job out of town if it can be shown that
the job was temporary and its termination could be forseen within
a short period of time; for example, within a year.
Other potential deductions include child-care expense allowed to
women workers and widowers within limits; investment expenses
including fees for a safe-deposit box to hold bonds or other securi-
ties, and alimony payments.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
From Maine to Hawaii:
130 TV Stations Now Showing
'Americans at Work' Series
The AFL-ClO's TV film series, "Americans at Work" is currently being presented by 130 tele-
vision stations from coast to coast y in the new states of Alaska and Hawaii and in Puerto Rico.
The series is made available to the stations without cost to give them the opportunity of showing
viewers the story of American workers on the job. This is the current station line-up for "Ameri-
cans at Work." Consult your local newspaper for the exact viewing time.
CITY-STATE
Watertown, N. Y.
Fargo, N. D.
Grand Forks, N. D.
Akron, O.
Cleveland, O.
Youngstown, O.
Medford, Ore.
Portland, Ore.
Erie, Pa.
Harrisburg, Pa.
Lebanon, Pa.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
York, Pa.
Ponce, Puerto Rico
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Providence, R. L
Florence, S. C.
Aberdeen, S. D.
Rapid City, S. D.
Sioux Falls, S. D.
Amarillo, Tex.
Austin, Tex.
Corpus Christi, Tex.
Dallas & Ft. Worth, Tex.
Midland, Tex.
Port Arthur, Tex.
Sherman, Tex.
Tyler, Tex.
Waco, Tex.
Weslaco, Tex.
Wichita Falls, Tex.
Laredo, Tex.
Provo, Utah
Harrisonburg, Va.
Richmond, Va.
Roanoke, Va.
Ephrata, Wash.
Pasco, Wash.
Seattle, Wash.
Yakima, Wash.
Clarksburg, W. Va.
Huntington, W. Va.
Oak Hill, W. Va.
Parkersburg, W. Va.
Wheeling, W. Va.
La Crosse, Wis.
Madison, Wis.
Milwaukee, Wis.
CITY-STATE
STATION
DAY
Birmingham, Ala.
WBRC-TV
Sunday
Florence, Ala.
WOWL-TV
Saturday
Mobile, Ala.
WALA-TV
Sunday
Dothan, Ala.
WTVY-TV
Wednesday
Anchorage, Alaskr.
KENI-TV
Friday
Fairbanks, Alaska
KFAR-TV
Saturday
Phoenix, Ariz.
KTVK-TV
Sunday
Tucson, Ariz.
KVOA-TV
Saturday
Yuma, Ariz.
KIVA-TV
Sunday
Fort Smith, Ark.
KNAC-TV
Saturday
Chico, Calif.
KHSL-TV
Monday
Eureka, Calif.
KIEM-TV
Saturday
Fresno, Calif.
KFRE-TV
Sunday
San Diego, Calif.
KFSD-TV
Sunday
San Francisco, Calif.
KTVU-TV
Saturday
Denver, Colo.
KOA-TV
Saturday
Pueblo, Colo.
KCSJ-TV
♦
Grand Junction, Colo.
KREX-TV
*
Hartford, Conn.
WNBC-TV
Sunday
New Haven, Conn.
WNHC-TV
Sunday
Bridgeport, Conn.
WICC-TV
Monday
Waterbury, Conn.
WATR-TV
Saturday
Washington, D. C.
WRC-TV
Sunday
Panama City, Fla.
WJDM-TV
Tuesday
Pensacola, Fla.
WEAR-TV
Saturday
St. Petersburg, Fla.
WSUN-TV
Wednesday
Fort Myers, Fla.
WINK-TV
Friday
Honolulu, Hawaii
KHVH-TV
Boise, Ida.
KBOI-TV
Saturday
Lewiston, Ida.
KLEW-TV
Monday
Chicago, 111.
WNBQ-TV
Sunday
Elkhart, Ind. .
WSJV-TV
Sunday
Evansville, Ind.
WFIE-TV
Saturday
Fort Wayne, Ind.
WKJG-TV
Sunday
Southt Bend, Ind.
WSBT-TV
Saturday
Terre Haute, Ind.
WTHI-TV
Tuesday
Des Moines, Iowa
WHO-TV
Sunday
Fort Dodge, Iowa
KQTV-TV
Sunday
Sioux City, Iowa
KVTV-TV
Monday
Waterloo, Iowa
KWWL-TV
Alternate
Sundays
Topeka, Kans.
WIBW-TV
Saturday
Louisville, Ky.
WHAS-TV
Sunday
Lexington, Ky.
WKYT-TV
Sunday
Baton Rouge, La.
WBRZ-TV
Saturday
Lafayette, La.
KLFY-TV
Wednesday
Lake Charles, La.
KTAG-TV
Saturday
Monroe, La.
KNOE-TV
Sunday
Alexandria, La,
KALB-TV
*
Bangor, Me.
WLBZ-TV
Saturday
Portland, Me.
WCSH-TV
Saturday
Salisbury, Md.
WBOC-TV
Baltimore, Md.
WBAL-TV
Alternate
Sundays
Boston, Mass.
WGBH-TV
Friday
Springfield, Mass.
WWLP-TV
Sunday
Detroit, Mich.
WWJ-TV
Sunday
Traverse City, Mich.
WPBN-TV
Saturday
Saginaw, Mich.
WKNX-TV
Wednesday
Alexandria, Minn.
KCMT-TV
Saturday
Minneapolis, Minn.
WTCN-TV
Friday
Hattiesburg, Miss.
WDAM-TV
Saturday
Meridian, Miss.
WTOK-TV
Sunday
Springfield, Mo.
KYTV-TV
Sunday
St. Louis, Mo.
KSD-TV
Sunday
Kansas City, Mo.
WDAF-TV
Sunday
Billings, Mont.
KOOK-TV
Saturday
Butte, Mont.
KXLF-TV
Monday
Glendive, Mont.
KXGN-TV
Wednesday
Great Falls, Mont.
KFBB-TV
Tuesday
Helena, Mont.
KXLF-TV
Monday
Missoula, Mont.
KMSO-TV
Thursday
Omaha, Neb.
WOW-TV
Wednesday
Reno, Nev.
KOLO-TV
Friday
Manchester, N. H.
WMUR-TV
Tuesday
Carlsbad, N. M.
KAVE-TV
Wednesday
Plattsburg, N. Y.
WPTZ-TV
Sunday
Schenectady, N. Y.
WRGB-TV
Saturday
Utica, N. Y.
WKTV-TV
Monday
Charlotte, N. C.
WBTV-TV
*
Greensboro, N. C.
WFMY-TV
Friday
Bismarck, N. D.
KFYR-TV
STATION
DAY
WCNY-TV
Alternate
Sundays
WDAY-TV
Saturday
KNOX-TV
Saturday
WAKR-TV
Sunday
WJW-TV
Wednesday
WKBN-TV
Sunday
KBES-TV
Wednesday
KPTV-TV
Sunday
WSEE-TV
Sunday
WHP-TV
Saturday
WLYH-TV
Saturday
WCAU-TV
*
WIIC-TV
Sunday
WSBA-TV
Week-days
WRIK-TV
Saturday
WKAQ-TV
*
WJAR-TV
Sunday
WBTW-TV
Tuesday
KXAB-TV
Friday
KRSD-TV
Saturday
KELO-TV
Satirrday
KGNC-TV
Sunday
KTBC-TV
Saturday
KRIS-TV
Sunday
KRLD-TV
Sunday
KMID-TV
Sunday
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Sunday
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Saturday
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Saturday
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Saturday
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Sunday
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Monday
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Sunday
WTVR-TV
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The film is also being shown on 28 overseas sta-
tions of the Armed Forces.
* Please consult your local listing for time and day.
Civil Rights Story
Told With Chuckle
Harry Fleischman over the years has added a
new dimension to the job of bridging the gulf
between our ideals and the realities of the fight
to win civil rights. He has added charm, warmth
and civilized chuckle through his column "Let's
Be Human."
Fleischman's human interest approach to the
civil rights question, his essays, stories, anecdotes,
have now been collected in a book carrying the
same title as the column. The 160-page volume,
with illustrations by labor cartoonist Bernard
Seaman, contains the best materials mined from
Fleischman's column, which is sponsored by the
National Labor Service of the American Jewish
Committee. Fleischman is director of NLS.
In a brief introduction he answers the some-
times-heard charge that his approach stressing
progress in winning civil rights is Pollyannish.
Says Fleischman: "It is no accident that I stress
progress. I do h deliberately. As we know,
our mass media are wedded to the theory that
good news is no news."
Norman Thomas, famed Socialist leader, with
whom Fleischman was associated in the 1948
presidential campaign, says in a foreword: "A
lot of us could do worse than start our day by
reading one or more of the pertinent columns he
has here collected."
"Let's Be Human" is published by Oceana
Publications Inc. and is available in cloth at $2.95
and in paper at $1.50.
AFL-OONEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Page IVine
Right to Face Accuser . . • But:
Defense Dept. Snubs AFL-CIO,
Revamps Security Procedures
A new executive order revising industrial security procedures has been issued despite AFL-CIO
requests for an opportunity to discuss any new program before it was instituted. AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany conveyed the request in a letter to Defense Sec. Thomas S. Gates and received no
reply until five days after issuance of the order.
The executive order sets forth as a principle the right of persons accused of being security risks
to face and cross-examine their ac- ^
cusers, but leaves areas of excep-
tion. These areas appear capable
of administrative contraction or ex-
pansion to the point where the
principle might become meaning-
less.
Meany's letter to Gates, dated
Jan. 26, cited newspaper reports of
pending revisions in the industrial
security program as a result of the
U.S. Supreme Court ruling last
June 29 that procedures then in
effect, providing accused workers
no assurance of confronting their
accusers or cross-examining them,
had not been authorized by Con-
gress or the President.
He recalled that in the past the
AFL-CIO had consulted informally
with the Defense Dept. regarding
the old program, but had received
no communication regarding a new
one.
"I am accordingly requesting
that before any new program is
instituted or regulations adopt-
ed," Meany wrote, "the Dept. of
Defense afford us the oppor-
tunity to discuss with it what-
ever measures it has in mind.
Perhaps the best procedure, and
certainly the procedure most
clearly consonant with the spirit
of the Administrative Procedure
Act, would be for the depart-
ment to publish its proposed
regulations and invite interested
parties to comment thereon. If,
, however, the department pre-
fers some less formal way of
proceeding, we would like an
opportunity to consult with it."
The reply was dated Feb. 25 and
was signed by Deputy Assistant
Sec. Stephen S. Jackson.
Jackson said "the President has
now carried out" the Supreme
Court's suggestion that "faceless"
accusers be abolished, and said that
"the guidance thus provided will,
of course, be followed in the prep-
aration of such new and revised
regulations as the department finds
it necessary or desirable to adopt.
"The views of organizations such
as yours, however, are a matter of
continuing interest to us. Accord-
ingly, we would be happy to receive
a written statement of your present
thinking on this subject or, if you
prefer, to arrange for an informal
meeting."
'Fait Accompli' Was Feared
Meany replied "it was con-
cern lest we be met with such a
fait accompli" which prompted his
original request for consultation.
"Your delay until after issu-
ance of the executive order in
answering my letter," he added,
"thus insures that any discus-
sions between the AFL-CIO and
the Defense Dept. with regard to
the industrial security program
can serve only limited purposes,
since they can deal only with is-
sues not already disposed of by
the executive order. I believe,
however, that such discussions
could still serve some purpose."
He noted that the AFL-CIO in
the past has voiced three major ob-
jections to the way the industrial
security program operated. They
were:
• The fact that the testimony of
absent witnesses was allowed to
stand without the accused being
given the chance to break it down
by questioning.
• The fact that clearance board
members did not face the accusers
or know their identities, but usually
were forced to rely on the sum-
mary report of an investigator
without even examining the investi-
gator.
• The practice of permitting
employers to clear workers for ac-
cess to confidential (as distin-
guished from secret or top secret)
data, a power Meany said "is ob-
viously susceptible of anti-union or
other abuse" by persons with
"scant" qualifications for such a
function.
Meany called revision of the con-
frontations element, as laid down
in the new executive order, a "wel-
come liberalization."
"However," he continued, "the
executive order likewise contains
broad authorizations for the denial
of these safeguards in particular
cases, so that whether the new pro-
gram will in actual operation uti-
lize fairer procedure than the old
will depend on how the order is
effectuated through regulation and
in actual operation.
'That is one subject which
representatives of the AFL-CIO,
and of certain of the interna-
tional unions affiliated with it
which are particularly concerned
with the industrial security pro-
gram, would like to discuss with
appropriate officials of the De-
fense Dept."
Cross 'Plundered' Union Treasury,
Bakery Locals Charge in Lawsuit
(Continued from Page 1)
locals are spearheading a rank-and-
file move to clean up the interna-
tional union and bring it into com-
pliance with AFL-CIO ethical
practice standards. This would be
the first step towards reunification
of the nation's bakery workers.
Most of the 140,000 members the
BCW had when it was expelled in
December 1957 have moved into
the AFL-CIO-chartered American
Bakery & Confectionery Workers.
The rank - and - file leaders
charged that $65,000 in union
funds has gone to pay for a Palm
Beach, Fla., home for Cross,
suites in Washington, D.C., hotels
and personal expenses and trips
for Cross and his wife.
They charged that Cross spent
most of 1958 and 1959 in Palm
Beach "on unauthorized and un-
accused absences from his duties."
Charge Cross Controls Board
The local leaders said that on
Jan. 8 they "charged defendant
Cross and the BCW General Exec-
utive Board to their face with vi-
olation of their fiduciary duties,
corruption, misappropriation and
diversion of BCW funds."
The rank-and-file group said it
was forced to turn to the courts for
relief because the executive board,
most of whose members have been
hired by Cross as international rep-
resentatives, are under the presi-
dent's "control and domination"
and have either participated in or
condoned the abuses.
In filing the suit, the five
plaintiffs charged violation of
Sec. 501(a) of the Landrum-
Griffin Act which spells out re-
sponsibility of union officers "to
hold its money and property
solely for the benefit of the or-
ganization and its members."
Permission to file the suit "for
good cause shown" was granted by
U, S. Dist. Judge Luther W. Young-
dahl. Federal judges are required
to screen such lawsuits to weed out
frivolous cases.
The local leaders also cited gen-
eral equity law in asking relief.
The complaint also alleged that:
• Cross has paid money from
the BCW treasury to the wife of
former BCW Vice Pres. George
Stuart, now serving a prison term
for embezzlement of funds of Chi-
cago locals which he supervised as
trustee. The payments to Mrs.
Stuart are still going on, the com-
plaint alleges.
• Attorney fees amounting to
more than $100,000, charged for
the personal defense of Cross on
perjury charges before the AFL-
CIO Ethical Practices Committee
and before the McClellan special
Senate committee, have been paid
out of BCW funds. Cross was
acquitted by direct verdict
• Cross and his fellow trustees
of the union's staff pension plan,
in November 1958, changed the
ground rules of the program by eli-
minating a provision for forfeiture
of pension rights for anyone found
guilty of an offense against the
union after trial by the executive
board. The plan, which originally
would have required Cross to serve
until 1963 in order to receive a
pension, was changed to permit his
immediate retirement at age 47
with an $11,700 a year pension,
the petition adds.
• Cross discharged the account-
ing firm which had served the union
for more than 40 years on Septem-
ber 1957 after it had refused to
certify certain transactions of Cross
and other members of the executive
board.
• BCW funds were used to pay
deficiency income tax assessments
"for officers and representatives of
BCW who participated in, sanc-
tioned or failed to protest Cross'
many breaches of his fiduciary
duties."
EPC Charges Cited
The rank-and-file group also
cited the list of abuses previously
found by the AFL-CIO Ethical
Practices Committee in its investi-
gation of the BCW.
They said their locals had
been refused a detailed financial
accounting by the international's
executive board and they as-
serted that BCW "has failed to
make timely payment of death
benefits to beneficiaries of de-
ceased members of BCW and
many claims are currently in ar-
rears."
The five persons who filed the suit
— Pres. Walter Friese, Local 2,
Chicago; Sec. Charles R. Landers,
Local 163, Houston; Pres. Frank
Dutto, Local 3, Long Island City;
Pres. Ermin Moschetta, Local 12,
Pittsburgh; and Sec.-Treas. Albert
C. Meyer, Local 37, Los Angeles —
also asked the court to enjoin the
BCW or its "agents" from threat-
ening them or persons who coop-
erate with them in an effort to deter
the prosecution of the suit.
Launched
House Group Votes
$1 Billion Housing Bill
An AFL-CIO backed $1 billion emergency housing bill, designed
to give the nation's seriously depressed homebuilding industry a shot
in the arm and to help stave off another recession, has won over-
whelming approval in the House Banking Committee.
The full committee voted 18-7 to clear the measure introduced
by Rep. Albert Rains (D-Ala.).
Patterned after an anti-recession
housing bill enacted in 1958, it
would make Treasury funds avail-
able to purchase government-
backed mortgages on new houses
in the moderate and low-priced
range.
Seven of the committee's nine
Republican members promptly
raised the threat of an Eisenhower
veto. Although the money made
available by the bill would be re-
paid to the Treasury, the GOP
members attacked the measure as
"irresponsible spending."
The bill would provide for pur-
chase of FHA and VA mortgages
at face value by the Federal Na-
tional Mortgage Association. This
would halt the present practice
whereby lending institutions levy
added charges in the form of "dis-
counts" to circumvent the legal
interest limit set on government-
backed mortgages.
The AFL-CIO called these
charges c "unreasonable," declaring
that the discounts are "simply dis-
guised interest payments" which
when "piled on top of sky-high in-
terest rates are keeping large num-
bers of families out of the market"
The federation told Congress that
housing slumps set the stage for
the last two recessions, and that
emergency action was needed "to
forestall a downturn in homebuild-
ing."
Rains, pointing out that industry
sources predict only l.Y million
private housing starts in 1960, a
10 to 12 percent drop from last
year, said the stopgap bill would
help reverse the slump and keep
the economy from going into "an-
other tailspin."
The AFL-CIO has called pas-
sage of the Rains bill merely a
"first step" toward meeting the
nation's full housing needs and
has urged that it be followed by
"comprehensive, forward - look-
ing" legislation to achieve an an-
nual rate of 2.3 million housing
units during the next 15 years.
Ingredients of the long-range
housing program, labor declared,
should be a large-scale, low-rent
public housing program; an effec-
tive middle-income housing pro-
gram; fully adequate housing for
the elderly; greatly expanded urban
redevelopment and slum clearance;
adequate farm housing; and en-
couragement of cooperative and
moderate-priced rental housing.
In his Budget Message for fiscal
1961, Pres. Eisenhower made no
recommendations in any of these
key areas. He called instead for
an end to the GI and college hous-
ing programs, and for "flexibility"
that would make possible raising
of maximum interest rates under
the VA and FHA programs.
USWA, Kaiser Open
Joint Harmony Talks
Pittsburgh — The Steelworkers and Kaiser Steel Corp. have
launched a series of joint meetings aimed at devising long-range
formulas for achieving industrial harmony.
The groundwork was laid in last October's historic USWA-
Kaiser contract, which called for creation of two committees — one
to work out a method whereby ^
workers and the public could share
with stockholders in the fruits of
industrial progress, the other for
mutual exploration of work rule
problems.
The Kaiser pact, which cracked
the steel industry's solid front prior
to imposition of a Taft-Hartley in-
junction ending the union's 116-
day strike, eventually set the pat-
tern for similar agreements with
other large basic steel producers.
These later contracts also called
for joint study of labor-manage-
ment relations.
The first session between the
Steelworkers and Kaiser was
held in Spokane, Wash., and in-
volved the continuing study of
work rules. USWA Pres. David
J. McDonald led the union dele-
gation and Kaiser Board Chair-
man Edgar F. Kaiser the man-
agement team.
This was followed by a two-day
meeting in New York of the tri-
partite committee representing la-
bor, management and the public to
discuss a long-range formula "to
insure a proper sharing of the
fruits of the company's progress."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
LISTENING ATTENTIVELY during the meeting of the governing
body of the Intl. Labor Organization in Geneva are Sir Alfred
Roberts (left), veteran British chairman of the Workers Group, and
Rudy Faupl of the Machinists, U.S. worker representative.
'Made in India v Label
Seen for Indian Unions
New Dehli — A suggestion that the Indian labor movement may
have to develop its own techniques to serve its members was offered
by Eric Peterson, retired secretary-treasurer of the Machinists, in an
address at the convention of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha here.
Peterson as personal representative of AFL-CIO Pres. 'George
Meany extended his greetings and'^
those of the AFL-CIO to the In
dian trade union central body.
"As a representative of a labor
movement from a highly indus-
trialized country," he said, "I am
well aware that there are no single
answers, no 'blueprint' or pattern
that can be exported willy-nilly
throughout the world.
Unions Universal In Aim
"Each labor movement must de-
sign its own structure. Because of
your culture, your traditions and
your long past, including a long
period of colonial domination, you
may have to fashion new devices
ahd new techniques.
"But there are a certain number
of universal qualities which char-
acterize free trade unions such as
yours and ours: to be instruments
in the raising of the standard of
life and to be in the forefront of
social change. There may, of
course, be ideas, techniques and
practices in the American experi-
ence which you may find useful."
Peterson emphasized the many
3rd Defendant
Gets Probation
In New York
New York — Joseph Roberts,
third and last defendant in Dist.
Atty. Frank Hogan's drive to clean
up the Intl. Labor Record, a self-
styled "labor paper" which falsely
claimed AFL-CIO endorsement, re-
ceived a suspended sentence from
Judge Mitchell D. Schweitzer in
General Sessions Court.
Roberts, who had pleaded
guilty to a charge of petit lar-
ceny, also was placed on three
years probation. The prosecu-
tion, which had the support of
the AFL-CIO and was instituted
at the behest of the Intl. Labor
Press Association, was conducted
by Assistant Dist. Atty. Leonard
Newman.
Richard Koota, operator of the
Intl. Labor Record, in January was
sentenced to six months in the New
York City Penitentiary following
conviction of soliciting under false
pretenses. In carrying out boiler-
room advertising solicitation of em-
ployers in all parts of the country,
he falsely represented his publica-
tion as a legitimate labor paper
carrying AFL-CIO approval.
Murray Kaplow received a sus-
pended sentence last January.
years of support which American
labor gave to India's struggle for
independence. He also said that
U.S. union members are more and
more becoming concerned with
problems "that go beyond the
work-bench."
"They are beginning to think of
themselves not only as workers,"
he said, "but as citizens of the
larger community, the city, the
state, the country and, yes, the
world.
"The American trade unionist
is becoming more and more con-
cerned with broad social issues,
with the complete eradication of
discrimination by virtue of race
or nationality. He is concerned
with broadening the opportuni-
ties for a decent education for
all of the nation's children; He
is concerned with adequate hous-
ing and health programs for all
of the people.
"But above all, he is becoming
intimately concerned with and
aware of the problems of peoples
from distant places. He knows
now, as he, never did before, that
peace and freedom are indivisible,
that if democracy in India falters,
American workers will ultimately
feel the impact. He knows, too,
that if an aggressor threatens India,
he too is threatened. In short, the
mutuality of our interests is be-
coming increasingly clear."
U.S. Labor At Trade Fair
Harry Goldberg of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Intl. Affairs, en route to
a SEATO meeting in Manila, also
attended the convention, as did
Intl. Rep. Meyer Bernstein of the
Steelworkers. Peterson and Bern-
stein were U.S. labor representa-
tives at the U.S. Information Serv-
ice exhibit in the Indian trade fair
in Delhi.
Peterson discussed the role of
the labor movement in the U.S.
at the opening of the USIS ex-
hibit, emphasizing that its princi-
pal function is "to secure for
members and their families —
and by extension for consumers
at large — a greater share of the
nation's product, within the exist-
ing system of free enterprise."
"Wage standards, favorable
working conditions and other bene-
fits established through collective
bargaining are reflected in com-
parable advances for unorganized
workers," he said.
Pan- African Meeting Set:
ILO Governing Body Votes
New Intl. Labor Institute
Geneva — An AFL-CIO goal for assisting budding trade union movements was attained here when
the 80-nation Intl. Labor Organization voted to set up an International Institute for Labor Studies.
The decision was the highlight of a four-day session of the ILO's 40-member governing body. It
was approved by a unanimous vote after some heavy prodding by the worker delegation to over-
come the hesitations of a number of employer representatives.
Another achievement of the ses-^ -
sion saw the ILO's executive body
agree that the first ILO regional
conference for Africa must be open
to all the African nations instead
of only to those south of the
Sahara Desert.
Soviet Discordant Note
A Soviet discordant propaganda
note was squelched when the chair-
man, Ernst Michanek of Sweden,
declared unreceivable a resolution
from Soviet government delegate
I. V. Goroshkin calling for ILO
endorsement of Khrushchev's pro-
posals for "general and complete
disarmament."
Goroshkin became so upset by
what he called a "manifestation of
ill-will" that he forgot to challenge
formally the chairman's ruling. By
the time he did, he was called out
of order because the governing
body had moved on to the next
agenda item. He got his protest
against "this blatant violation of
international practice" noted in the
record.
Rudy Faupl, the AFL-CIO
representative among the 10
worker delegates on the govern-
ing body, said he was "im-
mensely happy that the Labor
Institute for which the workers
fought is now approved."
"It will make an outstanding
contribution to social and human
progress through education," he
said. Faupl recalled the strong
backing for the institute voiced by
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany in
a speech read by Sec.-Treas. Wil-
liam F. Schnitzler at the recent
ILO 40th anniversary dinner in
Washington.
George C. Lodge, U.S. assistant
secretary of labor, told the govern-
ing body that the institute will
have the "wholehearted support of
the United States." "In the years
to come," he added, "what we are
now creating here may well dwarf
any of our other activities which
today may well appear to be of
more importance."
The ILO's Pan-African confer-
ence is scheduled for December,
but the site has been left open.
France, Britain and several other
governments wanted to exclude the
North African countries from the
conference for fear that it would
be turned into a political battle-
ground.
Sir Alfred Roberts, veteran
British chairman of the worker
delegates, strongly opposed limi-
tation of the conference to any
particular region of the African
continent He said, however,
that the worker group generally
"would be vehemently opposed
to this conference being used as
a vehicle for political purposes
of any kind."
The main items on the confer-
ence's agenda will be vocational
and technical training and such
problems concerning worker-man-
agement relations as freedom of as-
sociation, joint consultations and
collective bargaining.
A budget of $10,200,000 for
1961, $600,000 more than that for
the current year, was approved by
the governing body for submission
to the ILO's annual conference in
June.
In an address to the governing
body during a visit to ILO head-
quarters, Pres. Manuel Prado of
Peru described the benefits his
country had received from ILO
standards and technical assistance
in formulating its social and eco-
nomic policies.
He thanked the ILO for its co-
operation in the Andean IndiaD
program to improve the living
standards of dwellers in communi-
ties on the high plateaus of the
Andes. The former AFL gave
considerable equipment to a train-
ing school set up as part of the
project, which also includes Bolivia.
ILO activities at present, Prado
said, "are all the more important
because economic advancement is
only worthwhile if it has high social
content."
Labor Studies Center
To Be on Lake Geneva
Geneva — The new Intl. Institute for Labor Studies, which the
governing body of the Intl. Labor Organization unanimously ap-
proved at its meeting here, will be housed by the Lake of Geneva
near ILO headquarters in space obtained with the cooperation of
Geneva municipal authorities.
Its aim, said ILO Dir. -Gen. ^ :
David A. Morse, will be "to fur-
ther a better understanding of la-
bor problems in all countries, and
of the methods for their solution."
It will undertake to stimulate lead-
ership training, he said, "by bring-
ing together people with experience
of labor problems so as to provide
them with an opportunity to learn
from each other while they study
together."
Lift for Growing Pains
It is expected to be of particular
help to union leaders from newly
independent and underdeveloped
countries where the labor move-
ment, like the economy, may be
suffering from growing pains and
inexperience.
It will operate largely through
seminars and round table confer-
ences which will bring together
authorities from the fields of
trade unionism, industry and
agriculture for the objective and
scientific study of labor prob-
lems. It is not intended that
any of the study groups will
adopt decisions or conclusions*
The governing body will name
a committee to prepare the work
program which will consist of six
of its own members, five interna-
tionally known experts and the
counsellor in charge of the Office
for Public Education of the Can-
ton of Geneva. Another commit-
tee to advise the institute director
on program matters will include
world authorities, representatives
of international organizations, the
University of Geneva and the di-
rector of the Graduate Institute
of Intl. Studies here.
Activities will be financed from
the income of a trust fund which
the ILO hopes to build up to $10
million and which is now open to
contributions from the governments
of IhQ member countries.
Wilhelm Claussen, represent-
ing the West German govern-
ment, announced that his coun-
try's 1960 budget has 3.15 mil-
lion marks earmarked for the
institute in order to permit it to
begin work as soon as possible.
The Swiss Federal Council has
agreed in principle to help finance
the institute, according to Max
Kaufmann, Swiss government rep-
resentative.
Kaufman also said the Swiss
government is prepared to give
guarantees of freedom of instruc-
tion at the institute and to extend
it the necessary facilities for its
work.
T-H Indictment Involves
New Test on Politics
The alleged use of union funds to pay campaign workers appar-
ently is one of the issues involved in the indictment of Teamsters
Vice Pres. Harold Gibbons and officers of Local 688, St. Louis,
on charges of violating the Taft-Hartley Act prohibition on expendi-.
ture of union funds in federal elections.
The Justice Dept. press releases-
announcing the indictment said
that a St. Louis grand jury had
charged a law violation in Local
68 8 's method of raising money for
political activity.
Gibbons and Local 688 said
that political funds were raised by
authorization cards, signed by
rank-and-file members, permit-
ting 25 cents per month of their
dues to be used for political pur-
poses. This sum was later raised
to 35 cents per month*
The unaffiliated Teamsters said
the signing of the cards was en-
tirely voluntary and thus not a
violation of the law prohibiting use
of union dues money. The union
said that when the proposed au-
thorization was raised to 35 cents
a month, about 40 percent of Lo-
cal 688 members declined to sign
cards and that none of their dues
money was involved.
The indictment itself cites the
alleged use of $3,500 to pay
campaign workers for a Demo-
cratic candidate for the House
of Representatives, Robert G.
Doud of Missouri in 1958. It
also cites an alleged use of funds
to pay local union members $12
a day to hand out Doud litera-
ture and work otherwise for the
Democratic candidate on pri-
mary election day.
The Justice Dept. thus appears
to be seeking to prove that wholly
self-controlled union activities in
behalf of a candidate, as well as
direct contributions to him, coik
stitute a violation of the Taf*
Hartley Act's redefinition of so-
called corrupt practices.
^The Teamsters charged the Jus-
tice Dept. with attempted "intimi-
dation" of workers in an election
year in the practice of their politi-
cal rights.
The Justice Dept. press release
on the indictment contained a para-
graph saying that the case did not
involve alleged Teamsters expendi-
tures in state and local elections.
It did not acknowledge that such
expenditures, in every state, arc
wholly legal subject to standard
limitations on amount.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Page Eleven
AFL-CIO Blasts Administration:
'Penny-Pinching' on
Labor, Welfare Hit
The AFL-CIO has charged that "penny-pinching M by the Eisen-
hower Administration has "throttled" development of essential pro-
grams and services by the Labor Dept. and the Dept. of Health,
Education and Welfare.
Testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Legis-
lative Rep. Hyman H. Bookbinder^
called on Congress to beef up ap-
propriations for the two depart-
ments which, he said, are "more
directly related to the needs of
American workers" than any other
departments of the federal govern-
ment.
The federation spokesman re-
minded the subcommittee headed
by Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R. I.)
that it has gone beyond Budget
Bureau recommendations in previ-
ous years "when the Administration
failed to display a real understand-
ing of important needs." He urged
the House group to "evidence once
again this same discretion, judg-
ment and fundamental humanity."
Funds Needed for Essentials
Organized labor, Bookbinder
said, does not favor a huge expan-
sion of federal activities or expend-
itures, but it does demand "that
there be sufficient funds available
to finance essential services and
programs which the federal gov-
ernment alone can adequately pro-
vide."
The AFL-CIO, he told the sub-
committee, is "alarmed by the
glaring deficiencies" in govern-
mental programs, adding that
"these gaps were emphasized"
recently in a report prepared
under the direction of Maj. Gen.
J. S. Bragden, special White
House assistant for public works
planning.
The report stated:
"In almost every field in public
works — hospitals, schools, civic
centers, recreational facilities —
shortages are the rule, not the ex-
ception. In almost every category
we are falling farther and farther
behind in meeting even current
demands. Backlogs, inadequate re-
placement schedules, urgent new
requirements are characteristic of
public works problems across the
nation."
Labor's Proposals
The AFL-CIO urged the follow-
ing improvements to overcome
"deficits" in Administration budget
requests for the two departments:
• An added $900,000 to hire
100 more investigators for the
Wage and Hour Div. of the La-
bor Dept. "to detect and prevent
chiseling on payments due work-
ers." Last year, despite a limited
staff, investigators found 178,000
workers underpaid $22.4 mil-
lion. This was estimated to in-
volve only 25 percent of the
total violations.
• An additional $50,000 to
make possible dissemination of in-
formation gathered under the Wel-
fare and Pension Plans Disclosure
Act of 1958.
• $750,000 more for the Bu-
reau of Apprenticeship and Train-
ing "for the specific purpose of
adding 100 persons to the field
staff to promote apprenticeship and
journeyman training."
• A considerable increase for
hiring field workers to investigate
working and living conditions
among the imported Mexican farm
workers.
• An increase in funds for the
Bureau of Labor Standards to fi-
nance modernization of hazard
standards for minors in agriculture
and* other fields.
• Additional funds for the Bu-
reau of Old Age and Survivors
Insurance for the purpose of
"speeding up and improving ad-
ministration" of the disability ben-
efits phase of the social security
system.
• Adding $5 million each for
maternal and child health serv-
ices, services to crippled children
and child welfare services to
achieve levels set by Congress in
1958.
• Restoration of $2 million cut
by the Budget Bureau from the
vocational education programs re-
lated to long-range apprentice
training. The AFL-CIO said "we
vigorously oppose this proposed re-
duction of funds for vocational
education programs of a perma-
nent nature, in favor of programs
of a limited type and temporary
duration."
• Restoration of $74 million
cut from the Public Health Serv-
ice budget by the Administration,
$60 million of which was hacked
out of the requests for federal
funds to aid local communities
in construction of hospital and
other health facilities.
Seafarers Sue ESSO
On 'Sweetheart' Pact
New York — The Appellate Div. of the State Supreme Court has
ordered to trial a charge by the Esso Tanker Men's Union that Esso
Standard Oil Co. and John Collins, so-called head of "independent"
unions in the tanker industry, set up a "sweetheart" agreement that
cost ETMU members an estimated $250,000 they are trying to
recover.
The ETMU, formerly the Esso
Tanker Men's Association, reorgan-
ized under its present name about
a, year ago and threw Collins out
of his office as "advisor." Last
summer it affiliated with the Sea^-
farers as a unit. Negotiations for
a new contract were halted when
the company announced it had re-
ceived a representation claim from
another group. The ETMU has
filed a petition for a representation
election with the National Labor
Relations Board.
Union Seeks Arbitration
■ The goal of the union in the
court fight is arbitration of its
claims for back wages. The origi-
nal demand was dismissed by a
Special Term of the New York
County Supreme Court, and the
case reached the Appellate Div. on
appeal.
The ETMU claims that Col-
lins and the company in Septem-
ber 1957 negotiated a secret
wage-cutting amendment, which
was never ratified by the mem-
bers, to a contract signed the pre-
vious July and likewise never
ratified. The contract now ap-
plying, the union claims, was
signed in 1956. The trial ordered
by the Appellate Div. will deter-
mine if the dispute will be arbi-
trated.
Collins' suit against the ETMU
for $89,000 he alleges is due him
under a salary and pension ar-
rangement with the ETMA, a sep-
arate legal action, has been thrown
out of court. He has filed an
appeal.
UNION EXPERTS in safety field, delegates to the President's Conference on Occupational Safety,
meet in AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington for discussion of labor's own program. George
Brown, assistant to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and secretary of federation's Committee on Safety
& Occupational Health, is shown addressing group.
'Tight-Money' Policy Will Exact
Extra $4 Billion, Labor Charges
Americans will pay more than $4 billion in "extra interest payments" this year because of the
Eisenhower Administration's "tight-money" policy, the AFL-CIO Economic Policy Committee has
charged.
The EPC asserted in the current issue of its publication, Economic Trends and Outlook, that $3
billion has been added to the interest payment on the national debt and another $1 billion piled on
interest on home mortgages and^~
consumer loans because of the Ad-
ministration-inspired hike in the
"cost of borrowing money."
'The only price rise that does
not seem to bother the Administra-
tion very much is the higher cost
of borrowing money," the publica-
tion declared.
Tight Money Costs Billions
"For seven years, Federal Re-
serve and Administration spokes-
men have repeatedly issued public
'inflation warnings' and called for
tighter money. Despite their an-
nounced concern about 'inflation,'
however, they have not been warn-
ing the American people about the
unnecessary billions of dollars tight
money costs.
"But higher interest rates cost
more now and will cost more in
the future than much of the
spending the Administration calls
'inflationary'."
The committee headed by Vice
Pres. Walter P. Reuther also re-
stated labor's vigorous opposition
to White House demands for re-
moval of the present 4.25 percent
interest ceiling on long-term gov-
ernment bonds. The House Ways
& Means Committee has approved
a compromise which in effect
grants Eisenhower's demands. The
measure is awaiting Rules Com-
mittee clearance.
Observers indicate the pending
interest-rate bill, which the AFL-
CIO has charged would "unneces-
sarily add billions to taxpayers'
burdens and touch off a new infla-
tionary spiral," has about an even
chance of passage, although it is
expected to come under heavy at-
tack from liberals in both House
and Senate.
$3 Billion in Extra Interest
The publication centered much
of its attack on the $3 billion in
extra interest payments that must
be made on the national debt this
year as a result of the "tight-
money" policy. Since fiscal 1954,
Trends pointed out, the interest
charges have risen almost 50 per-
cent — from $6.5 billion to $9.5 bil-
lion — while the debt itself rose only
3 percent.
"Why doesn't this extra $3
billion in interest payments cause
the Administration to crusade
against inflationary interest
rates?" the EPC publication
asked. "Wty doesn't the fact
that this increase costs more than
the housing bills vetoed as in-
flationary last year cause the Ad-
ministration more serious con-
cern."
Answering the argument that the
public, as holders of government
bonds, will receive these interest
payments back, the EPC declared:
"Any government spending
reaches the public in one form or
another. Surely federal spending
for schools, houses, health and wel-
fare reach more of the public in
more ways to the greater advantage
of more people than interest rate
money which mostly pours into
financial institutions."
The $1 billion in added interest
on mortgages and consumer loans
issued this year, the committee
said, does not tell the full story of
the impact of "tight-money." Over
the life of these loans, the public
will pay roughly $10 billion in ex-
tra interest, the committee added.
"Unlike some other prices," it
pointed out, "the cost of borrow-
ing money usually lingers on—
sometimes for a quarter of a cen-
tury. The person who borrows
money for 10 or 20 years . . .
will be paying at today's rates for
years to come. Recent high-inter-
est levels will therefore continue
to hurt taxpayers, home buyers,
farmers, small businessmen and
consumers for a long time — re-
gardless of the direction rates
may take in the future."
Heavy Fines Slapped
On Courier Publishers
Philadelphia — The U.S. Court of Appeals here cracked down
hard on Maxwell C. and Bert Raddock, owners and operators of a
self-styled "labor paper," the Trade Union Courier, sentencing
them to pay fines of $20,000 and $5,000 respectively on conviction
of criminal contempt.
The court also denied a petition'^
for reduction of a $35,000 fine pre-
viously imposed on the Courier it-
self, as a corporation, as well as
a plea for more time in meeting
the judgment.
Mar. 31 Deadline
The three-judge panel gave the
two Raddock brothers until Mar. 3 1
to pay their personal fines or be
jailed. The panel was composed
of Judges Herbert F. Goodrich,
Harry E. Kalodner and Austin L.
Staley.
The Raddock brothers and
their publishing company were
convicted of contempt on Jan. 11
on charges of violating a Federal
Trade Commission order and an
appeals court injunction telling
them to cease solicitation of ad-
vertising by claiming representa-
tion of or approval by the AFL-
CIO.
The AFL-CIO for years has de-
nounced the Trade Union Courier
as a bogus "labor paper" practic-
ing fraud in its advertisers. Busi-
nessmen all over the country have
been bombarded by ' boiler room"
long-distance high-pressure tele-
phone calls demanding the place-
ment of ads and have been harassed
by demands for payment for ads
they did not order.
The Intl. Labor Press Associ-
ation, composed of editors of
legitimate publications of the
AFL-CIO and affiliates, worked
closely with the FTC and federal
attorneys in prosecuting charges
against the Raddocks and the
Courier, which is published in
New York.
The FTC on June 30, 1955 is-
sued a decree ordering the Rad-
docks and the Courier to cease and
desist from its fraudulent practices
and a federal court injunction
against violations was obtained May
19, 1956.
The Appellate Court here on Jan.
1 1 convicted the Raddocks and the
Courier of criminal contempt for
"intentional violation." In reject-
ing a plea for clemency, it brushed
aside a protestation of "insolvency"
and a claim that any fine "would
jeopardize the jobs of the em-
ployes."
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 1960
Loan Fund Build-Up Urged:
Less Developed Nations Need
Greater Aid, AFL-CIO Says
By Gervase N. Love
The course of the world in the last year indicates a greater need than ever for economic aid to
the underdeveloped nations, the AFL-CIO told a hearing on the mutual security program by the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Stressing the AFL-CIOs conviction that the mutual security program is "a necessary and integral
part of the nation's overall foreign policy," Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller urged the com-
mittee to recommend a five-year
authorization of $1.5 billion a year
for the capital fund of the Devel-
opment Loan Fund.
"We particularly call attention
to the need for expanding the fund
and placing it on a more effective
basis so that it can at least begin
to meet the most urgent require-
ments of the less developed coun-
tries for economic growth," he
emphasized.
Biemiller recalled that last year
the AFL-CIO strongly supported
the same proposal when it was
advanced by Sen. J. William Ful-
bright, chairman of the Senate For-
eign Relations Committee, in the
face of an Administration request
for funds that both Congress and
the AFL-CIO regarded as inade-
quate.
"We recognized the need for
adequate funds for this program,"
he explained, "and the fact that
assistance for economic develop-
ment would be most effective if it
could be placed on a long-term
basis, because of long-term plan-
ning requirements."
The Senate committee pared
down Fulbright's suggestion to $1
billion a year, but retained the five-
year principle. On the Senate floor,
Biemiller said, the five-year author-
ization "unfortunately" was cut
back to two years with $700 mil-
lion for 1960 and $1.1 billion for
1961. The actual appropriation for
fiscal 1960 was $550 million.
"Now we find once again that
the Administration which has been
speaking fine words about the need
for stepping up our economic as-
sistance effort is unfortunately ex-
tremely short of its professed goals
in action," Biemiller said.
"Although every report which
has been published dealing with
development assistance stresses
the long-term aspects of the prob-
lem, the Administration refuses
to request that financing for the
program be shifted from its pres-
ent hand-to-mouth condition of
insecurity.
"Moreover, even though the
Congress last year authorized $1.1
billion for the DFL, for fiscal 1961
the Administration has requested
an appropriation of only $700 mil-
lion."
Biemiller said that the "tight
limitations" on funds for the DLF
"have undoubtedly held down pro-
posals for loans for projects which
would be extremely useful for eco-
nomic development." As of last
June 30, he said, applications for
more than $1.5 billion were still
under consideration.
Experts have estimated, he went
on, that if $3 billion a year more
were available, underdeveloped
countries in the 1960s could dou-
ble the rate of economic growth
of the 1950s, which was about 1
percent per year.
"This would by no means bring
on the millenium," he said. "But
it would, in at least some of these
countries, permit break-throughs
toward the ultimate goal of put-
ting their economies on a self-
sustaining basis. It would also
immeasurably improve prospects
for raising now intolerably in-
adequate living standards by sig-
nificant amounts. These goals are
well worth striving for."
Biemiller also asked the com-
mittee to recommend U.S. mem-
bership in the Intl. Development
Association, which he said would
"bring together most of the free
world nations in a joint effort to
provide funds on liberal terms for
economic advancement in newly
industrializing nations."
Union Role Urged
He also urged that "full recog-
nition" be given to labor and man-
power factors in the DLF program
as an additional way "in which we
could effectively demonstrate our
concern for the needs of people."
"We would suggest that in the
projects made possible by DFL
loans, 9 ' he said, "effective en-
couragement should be given to
the development of strong demo-
cratic trade unions.
"In addition, wages and working
conditions for workers on such
projects should be required to meas-
ure up to the principles of fair labor
standards so that workers employed
on them will receive their fair share
of the increased fruits of economic
development.
"This is extremely important be-
cause the success of the entire eco-
nomic development effort may well
depend on the extent to which the
people in the countries assisted feel
that they are able to benefit directly
from the general economic ad-
vance."
Meany Urges End to 'Paralyzing 9
Filibuster; Cloture Move Fails
(Continued from Page 1)
favored elimination of the contro-
versial Title III proposal which
would permit the Attorney General
to seek injunctions where per-
sons are denied the right to register
and vote.
In his telegram to senators,
Meany called this section "vitally
necessary" to any civil rights meas-
ure passed this year. It was stripped
from the Civil Rights Act of 1957
in a move to forestall a Southern
filibuster.
Meany warned against any
"misuse of the Senate's own
democratic procedures" by the
anti-civil-rights forces in their ef-
fort "to deny to American citi-
zens their democratic rights." He
said that the Senate rules favor-
ing free and unlimited debate
and making it difficult to shut off
a talkathon should not be used
to prevent the majority of sen-
ators "from registering their con-
victions" on civil rights legisla-
tion.
"The labor movement," said the
AFL-CIO president, "firmly be-
lieves in the right of all citizens to
vote, to attend schools of their
choice, to have an equal oppor-
tunity to employment commensu-
rate with their abilities, and to live
in dignity and security."
Hailed by Wilkins
Meany's telegram was hailed by
Roy Wilkins, executive secretary
of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
and chairman of the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights. Wil-
kins saluted the federation presi-
dent as a "staunch champion" of
civil rights.
The first move to cut off debate
in the Senate came as that body
had remained in continuous session
for 125 hours — far eclipsing the
old record of 85 hours set during
a 1954 filibuster on atomic energy.
The cloture petition was signed by
31 liberal senators — 23 Democrats
and eight Republicans.
Cloture talk came up repeat-
edly during the dawn-to-dawn
sessions which began Feb. 29, as
both sides sought rulings from
Vice Pres. Nixon and the Senate
parliamentarian on the pro-
cedures to be followed when and
if a petition to limit debate was
adopted by the affirmative votes
of two-thirds of those present
and voting.
Both Majority Leader Lyndon
B. Johnson (D-Tex.) and Minority
Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen
(R-Ul.) expressed advance doubts
that the move would be successful,
indicating the debate should be per-
mitted to continue for at least an-
other week before cloture efforts
were made.
House May Act
Continuation of the Senate de-
bate would permit House action
first on a civil rights bill that might
be acceptable to senators. Senate
adoption of such a measure would
bypass the powerful, conservative-
dominated House Rules Committee
which bottled up the current rights
measure for seven months.
As the House debate opened —
limited to a total of 15 hours of
discussion — Speaker Sam Rayburn
(D-Tex.) and Minority Leader
Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.) — pre-
Jicted the lower body would com-
plete action by Mar. 16. Neither
Democratic leader would forecast,
however, the final shape of the
House bill.
In addition to voting rights,
aid for schooling of servicemen's
children and anti-bombing legis-
lation, the House has pending
amendments which would affirm
the Supreme Court desegregation
ruling; make it a crime to use
force or threats to obstruct court
decisions on integration; require
preservation of voting records in
federal elections; and give statu-
tory authority to the President's
Committee on Government Con-
tracts to halt on-the-job discrim-
ination.
Various voting rights proposals
have been introduced by both lib-
eral Democrats and the Adminis-
tration, calling for appointment of
federal officers to register Negroes
and help them to vote if these
rights are denied by local officers.
Some liberals favor appointment
of federal voting registrars by the
President's Commission on Civil
Rights, while the Administration
would have a court appoint ref-
erees to serve in both federal and
state elections.
The AFL - CIO Executive
Council, at its recent midwinter
session, called for a blend of
both proposals into a workable
bill, expressing the hope that
"petty partisanship" would not
be allowed to endanger civil
rights legislation.
"If a good bill passes," the
council said, "there will be
enough credit for all concerned.
If there is failure, neither party
will benefit."
REPLICA OF PLAQUE which will adorn the George Meany
sports stadium in Nazareth, Israel, is presented to the AFL-CIO
president by Philip Lubliner, president of Pocketbook Workers
Local 1 of the Leather Goods, Plastic & Novelty Workers. The
local is co-sponsoring the stadium with Histadrut, the Israeli labor
federation, with which American labor has close ties.
Minor Gains Matched
By Setbacks in States
(Continued from Page 1)
mittee approval after hearings in
which the only opposition came
from the state's restaurant and
food industries.
Maryland's legislature rejected a
compromise apportionment bill
which would have given added rep-
resentation to big population cen-
ters without reducing the number
of legislators from rural areas. The
legislature then also turned down
a proposal to call a constitutional
convention to tackle reapportion-
ment.
The only major labor-backed
measure approved by the Maryland
legislature was a series of amend-
ments to the workmen's compensa-
tion law raising benefits and ex-
tending the time limit for riling for
compensation from the present 18
months to 24 months after the
injury.
The ceiling on total disability
payments was raised from $20,000
to $30,000 and dependent's bene-
fits from $10,000 to $15,000.
Maximum weekly payments were
increased by $15 to $40. In addi-
tion, the legislature authorized a
state rehabilitation program to aid
injured workers.
Nevada Bans Apprentice Bias
Nevada's apprenticeship law was
amended to ban discrimination be-
cause of race, creed, color or na-
tional origin. It provides that "any
employer, association or organiza-
tion" which violates this policy
"shall be suspended for one year
from participation in the appren-
ticeship program."
Alaska, which presently has a
fair employment law banning ra-
cial discrimination, enacted a law
prohibiting discrimination in em-
ployment because of age when
a job applicant is otherwise qual-
ified.
The Colorado law, as originally
introduced, required employers of
migrant farm workers to give each
worker a statement of his wages
with all deductions — such as hous-
ing, transportation and meals
charges — itemized. The employer
would also be required to keep wage
records which would be available
for inspection. The bill was con-
siderably weakened by a Senate
amendment exempting "piece-
work" from the coverage of the
law.
Colorado State AFL-CIO Pres.
George A. Cavender also reported
that the legislature greatly increased
appropriations for social services,
including state hospitals and men-
tal institutions and boosted aid to
local school districts. This, he said,
was made possible by increased
revenue resulting from labor-
backed tax reform at the previous
session of the legislature. The in-
come tax base was broadened and
the corporation tax raised to meet
the state's fiscal needs.
09-zi-s
Labor in West Virginia charged
the state legislature "failed miser-
ably" to provide "a broad program
of economic relief for the thou-
sands who 'suffer from persistent,
chronic unemployment."
Labor's program was "pigeon-
holed" and only $4.35 million in
new revenue was provided to aid
"desperately depressed West Vir-
ginians who have not had a
square meal for more than a
year."
In the political fighting between
Republican Gov. Cecil H. Un-
derwood and the Democratic-con-
trolled legislature, the State AFL-
CIO pointed out, the amount of
relief provided was less than either
the governor or the Democrats had
advocated.
Labor Backs Federal
Compensation Change
A bill which would empower
the Bureau of Federal Employes'
Compensation to decide if the date
of injury or the date of disability
shall govern payment of workmen's
compensation benefits to federal
employes was given AFL-CIO ap-
proval in testimony by Legislative
Rep. George D. Riley before the
House Safety & Compensation sub-
committee.
Latitude in administration of the
law is necessary, Riley pointed out,
inasmuch as injuries are not always
determined as of a fixed date be-
cause of lack of apparent serious-
ness or due to cumulative results.
Wage-Hour Standards Called 'Disgrace'
Coverage,
$1.25 Floor
Are Urged
By Dave Perlman
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has called on Congress to raise
the minimum wage to $1.25 an
hour and extend coverage to 7.5
million more workers as a "start
toward relieving the plight of the
most-neglected group in our so-
ciety."
In testimony before a House
Labor subcommittee, Meany
termed the continued existence of
a large group of "working poor"
in the United States a "social and
moral disgrace."
He asked: "How can we live
with our consciences when we
know that millions of our fellow-
citizens can't earn enough, work-
ing full time and overtime, to
provide themselves with food,
clothing and shelter?"
Also testifying as the subcom-
mittee opened its often-postponed
hearings were Pres. Jacob S. Po-
tofsky of the Clothing Workers and
an employer spokesman for a
group of clothing manufacturers
who said a higher minimum would
benefit industry and the nation.
Meany, pointing out that the
facts regarding the minimum wage
have been presented to congres-
sional committees "in exhaustive
detail" on four occasions in the
past five years, urged Subcom-
mittee Chairman Phil M. Landrum
(D-Ga.) to keep the hearings "as
brief as possible" so that action
can be completed this year.
The failure of Congress to act
earlier on wage-hour improve-
ments "has only made matters
worse. . . . The need was great
yesterday; it is greater today; and
unless it is met, I dread to think
of tomorrow," the federation pres-
ident said.
Weapon for Reds
Declaring that poverty among
American workers is a weapon in
the hands of world communism,
Meany said the United States must
stand by all of. the "four free-
doms."
"What kind of 'freedom from
want' does a man have at $1 an
hour?" he asked. "What kind of
•freedom from fear'?"
There is "not the slightest basis"
for claims that the labor-backed
Kennedy - Morse - Roosevelt bill
would handicap legitimate business
or contribute to inflation, he told
the subcommittee.
"But in all frankness," he
added, "if an enterprise cannot
survive except by paying wages
(Continued on Page 12)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, Match 19, 1960
No. 12
House Group Votes
School Aid Measure
The House Education
Committee by a 19-to-ll vote
has cleared a $975 million
school-aid bill that Democrat-
ic leaders expect to be able
to force to the floor for a
vote.
The bill, sponsored by Rep.
Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
NJ.), is a sharply reduced
substitute for a $4.4 billion
measure approved by the Ed-
ucation Committee last year
but bottled up permanently in
the House Rules Committee.
The Thompson measure
would provide federal funds
solely for school construction
and includes some features of
loan plans advocated by the
Administration. The Senate
has passed a $1.8 billion bill
providing grants for both
school construction and
teachers' salaries.
Building Trade Delegates
Push Legislative Program
'Tight-Money'Held
Stifling Economy
THE AFL-CIO GAVE West German Chancellor Konrad Ade-
nauer a warm welcome as he visited the federation's Washington
headquarters and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told him labor
believes there can be "no concessions" in negotiations "which would
in any way jeopardize the freedom and security of the 2 million
residents of West Berlin." Adenauer was greeted by members of
the Executive Council and the AFL-CIO staff.
'Prove by Our Actions 9 :
Meet Bias Problem
4 Head-On'— Meany
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has warned the leaders of local
and international unions that they must "face up to the problem" of
racial bias within labor's ranks and "find a solution for it based on
sound trade union principles."
Pointing to labor's drive on Capitol Hill for an end to the
month-long southern filibuster in'$>
By Gene Zack
The "tight-money" policy pursued by the government in recent
years came under sharp attack as the sixth national legislative con-
ference of the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept.
pressed for enactment of a program geared to bolstering the national
economy and insuring equity in labor-management relations.
Addressing the record 3,300 dele-'- -
gates from 50 states jammed into
the ballroom of Washington's Sher-
aton-Park Hotel, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany accused the govern-
ment of following a "policy of
immobilization" which has resulted
in an "uncertain and uninspiring"
economic outlook and left the
status of the nation's military de-
fenses "too doubtful for comfort."
Meany charged that "instead
of leading from strength in meet-
ing the domestic and interna-
tional problems that face us,
America today seems to be re-
treating from weakness."
He called on Congress "to re-
inforce the economic well-being of
the American people ... by end-
ing the 'tight-money' policy which
now stifles investment and business
initiative," warning that "another
economic tailspin" in America
could let Soviet Russia "win world
domination without having to fire
a shot."
Delegates to the four-day con-
ference in the nation's capital
heard:
• Retiring BCTD Pres. Richard
J. Gray call for concerted action
to win passage of legislation to
provide aid for depressed areas,
comprehensive federal aid to edu-
cation, adequate housing, Taft-
Hartley revision to permit picketing
on a common construction site,
modernization of the Davis-Bacon
prevailing wage act, and repeal of
T-H's Sec. 14(b) permitting so-
called state "right-to-work" laws.
(Continued on Page 4)
Ike Delays
On Elders'
Medical Aid
Sec. of Health, Education &
Welfare Arthur S. Flemming has
conceded to the House Ways &
Means Committee that the Ad-
ministration has not yet made
up its mind whether to propose
a medical care program for the
aged.
The admission came as the
committee headed by Rep. Wil-
bur Mills (D-Ark.) began two
weeks of closed-door deliberations
on the AFL-CIO-backed Forand
bill, which would provide medical
insurance for older people through
the nation's social security ma-
chinery.
The committee gave Flemming
until Mar. 23 to bring in any
White House proposals, after the
cabinet official said he was not pre-
pared to talk about the Adminis-
tration's attitude since no program
had as yet been approved.
About-face a Possibility
Although Eisenhower has long
opposed action in this field, it
has been reported in recent weeks
that the Administration was weigh-
ing the possibility of an election-
(Continued on Page 2)
the Senate and passage of a "strong
and meaningful" civil rights meas-
ure, Meany declared:
"Labor cannot in good con-
science urge Congress to act
against racial discrimination
when some of our own affiliated
groups themselves are guilty of
practicing discrimination."
Meany's demand that labor
"meet this problem head-on" was
coupled with a stinging denuncia^
tion of filibustering southern sejra-
tors as "states'-rights diehjtfds"
who, he said, are "the same. people
who have led the fight consistently
for anti-labor legislation.*'
He told 3,300 delegates te the
sixth national legislative confer-
ence of the AFL-CIO Building &
Construction Trades Dept. that
the practice of racial bias by
unions "violates every basic tra-
(Continucd on Page 4)
New Labor Dept. Reporting System
Shows Jobless Dip to 4.8 Percent
^unemployment declined by 218
the Labor Dept.'s monthly report
Introducing revised and refined
adjusted jobless rate moved down
The Labor Dept.'s press release
was the first time the unemploy-'^
ment rate has been below 5 percent
since the fall of 1957." Seymour
Wolfbein, Labor Dept. manpower
expert, later confirmed estimates
that the February rate would have
been 5.0 percent and not 4.8 per-
cent if calculated by the old fac-
tors.
By Robert B. Cooney
,000 to a total of 3.9 million as of mid-February, according to
on the job situation.
adjustment factors, the report showed that the key seasonally-
from January's 5.2 percent to 4.8 percent in February.
made the point that except for one month in early 1959, "this
"The effect of the new ap-
proach," AFL-CIO Research Dir.
Stanley H. Ruttenberg com-
mented, u is to indicate lower
seasonally - adjusted unemploy-
ment rates in the earlier months
of the year and higher rates in
November and December."
Wolfbein minimized the signifi-
cance of the statistical changes.
The Labor Dept. altered its fig-
ures back through 1947 on the
basis of the new adjustment factors.
Thus the adjusted jobless rate be-
came 5.9 percent for February
(Continued on Page 2)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
I 'Nine Good Reasons . • .
AFL-CIO Calls Forand Bill
Bar to 'Excessive Charges 9
NEW TEAM at head of California State AFL-CIO includes Pres.
Albin J. Gruhn, left, and Sec.-Treas. Thomas L. Pitts, who suc-
ceeds C. J. Haggerty as federation's chief executive officer. Gruhn
moved up from vice president to succeed Pitts as president of the
1.25 million-member state federation.
Jobless Rate Down in
New Reporting System
(Continued from Page 1)
1959, compared to 6.1 percent un-
der the old factors and 6.5 percent
for February 1958 compared to a
previously listed 6.7 percent.
The old rates of 5.6 and 5.2 per-
cent for November and December
of 1959 now are stated as 5.9 and
5.5 percent respectively. The rates
of 5.9 and 6.1 percent for those
months in 1958 are now stated as
6.2 and 6.4 percent.
The February report showed
an employment rise of 500,-
000 to a total of 64.5 million, a
figure which the Labor Dept.
called a record for the month. Of
the rise, 492,000 were in non-
farm industries and 8,000 in ag-
riculture.
There was an unusual divergence
between the 500,000 increase in
jobs as reported by Census Bureau
labor force surveys and a decline
500 to Attend
National CSA
Conference
New York — More than 500
labor, government and welfare
spokesmen are expected for the
fifth annual AFL-CIO National
Conference on Community Serv-
ices to be held May 8-12 at the
Commodore Hotel here, according
to Leo Pedis, AFL-CIO Commu-
nity Service Activities Director.
The conference will focus atten-
tion on four community issues: ju-
venile delinquency, consumer prob-
lems, health care and retirement
and aging.
Nationally known speakers will
be featured at the conference gen-
eral sessions. In addition, forums
and workshops will round out the
annual event. Among the subjects
slated for discussion in a series of
workshop sessions are blood bank-
ing, consumer counseling, retire-
ment planning and rehabilitation.
Advance registration can be
made by writing AFL-CIO Com-
munity Service Activities, 9 East
40th Street, New York 16, N. Y.
The conference fee of $20 per per-
son includes two luncheons, one
dinner and working materials.
IUD Mourns Death
Of Sen. Neuberger
Condolences of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept. on the death
of Sen. Richard Neuberger were
sent to his widow, Mrs. Maurine
Neuberger, by Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther and Sec. - Treas. James
Carey.
"Industrial labor will long re-
member his devotion to the wel-
fare of our nation and his deep
understanding of our problems/'
they said.
of 66,000 to a total of 52.2 million
as reported by payroll figures.
At the same time, the factory
workweek unexpectedly dropped
sharply by 24 minutes to 39.9
hours in February. Because of
shorter hours and reduced premi-
um pay, the report said, the weekly
earnings of factory workers fell by
$1.32 to $90.97 in February.
The Labor Dept. attributed the
drop in hours to the fact that
auto and related industries op-
erated at unusually high levels
in the wake of the steel strike.
But shorter hours were so wide-
spread, the report said, that it is
possible illness was partly to
blame for the factory drop.
Factory employment rose slight-
ly, a hike of 32,000, to a total of
16.5 million. This was up 700,000
from February 1959 but still
about 500,000 below the pre-
recession level of February 1957.
Automotive employment remained
relatively high, at about the 1957
level.
More Long-Term Jobless
The long-term unemployed —
those jobless 15 weeks or more —
increased by 54,000 to a total of
964,000 in February, a rise re-
garded as less-than-seasonal. This
compares to a total of 617,000
long-term jobless in the pre-reces-
sion February 1957.
Among the nearly 1 million
long-term unemployed were 430,-
000 workers who had been job-
less for six months or longer, the
report said. About one-third of
this group was last employed in
mining, transportation or manu-
facturing.
The report also showed that
young persons and Negroes were
suffering higher jobless rates in
February 1960 than in the pre-
recession February 1957.
The jobless rate for all workers,
seasonally unadjusted, now is 5.7
percent, compared to 4.7 percent
for February 1957.
The rate for 14-19-year old
males is now 13.1 percent com-
pared to 11.1 percent in 1957; for
20-24-year old males, now 10.7 per-
cent compared to 9 percent then.
The 14-19-year old female rate
now is 12.1 percent compared to
9.6 and, for 20-24-year old fe-
males. 8.2 compared to 7.4.
The jobless rate for Negro
males now is 11.9 percent com-
pared to 8.6 percent; for Negro
females, 9.8 compared to 8.7
percent.
Wolfbein noted that young work-
ers, especially school drop-outs,
are shown by the figures to have a
difficult time finding work.
In the occupational breakdown
of the jobless, the non-farm and
non-mine laborers' group has by
far the highest jobless rate: 14.7
percent.
Passage of the Forand bill would protect the
public against "excessive charges" on medical care
for the nation's older citizens, the AFL-CIO has
declared.
At the same time, the federation asserted in a
fact sheet published by the Dept. of Social Secu-
rity, the measure would relieve welfare agencies,
hospitals and non-profit medical care programs of
the '-High cost load of the aged" which has led to
"large and growing deficits."
Here are highlights of the fact sheet, entitled
"Nine Good Reasons for the Forand Bill," avail-
able through the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Secu-
rity:
~| More than 13 million men and women now
eligible for old age benefits under social secu-
rity would get "lifetime protection'' under the bill
which would pay the cost of 60 days of hospital
care annually, additional skilled nursing care and
surgical benefits. If beneficiaries under the rail-
road retirement system were also covered the
figure would be considerably larger.
Old people not entitled to old age benefits
would be aided indirectly if they were forced to
turn to public assistance. Since a smaller number
of people would be forced to seek public aid,
"each one could be given more adequate assist-
ance from the limited funds available to welfare
agencies."
O Young workers would gain since their aged
~ parents would be protected at once, and they
and their families would have similar protection
on retirement. Maximum cost to each worker
would be $12 a year, with a similar payroll tax
for the employer.
O Few persons over 65 "have or can afford good
health insurance protection through any other
means." According to the latest government fig-
ures, only two out of five have any protection,
most of it inadequate since it can be cancelled or
has lifetime ceilings. In addition, such policies
cost between $6.50 and $8.50 per person per
month and pay part, sometimes not even half, of
hospital costs for up to only 3 1 days.
A Claims that voluntary insurance will grow
rapidly, as are made by the commercial insur-
ance industry and the American Medical Associa-
tion, are "unsubstantiated." Not only have no
figures been released to support these assertions,
but predictions for the future disregard serious
financial obstacles to the aged purchasing this
insurance.
5 The Forand bill would strengthen welfare
agencies, hospitals and such voluntary plans
as Blue Cross and relieve them of the "high cost
load of the aged." Many hospitals have 'large
and growing deficits." Because it includes retired
people without charging them more than the com-
munity rate. Blue Cross keeps raising rates, as a
result is "increasingly threatened by competition
from commercial insurance." .
"Public welfare agencies now spend $300 mil-
lion a year for health care for the aged. In many
communities a large part of all old age assistance
costs are for medical care, which is an ever-
growing burden."
Financing health care costs through the social
security system would help community agencies to
improve and extend services. In particular, high-
quality, skilled nursing homes would be assured
of adequate revenues.
/I The cost would be moderate — only about $1
" billion the first year, according to the Secre-
tary of Health, Education & Welfare.
^7 The new benefits "can be financed on a sound
• basis" through social security payroll taxes
"without endangering present cash benefits. "
Health insurance provided through this system
would be the "best insurance buy available."
O The Forand bill follows the "established
patterns for paying the costs of health care,"
despite charges from the AMA that the bill advo-
cates "political medicine" or "socialized medi-
cine." These opponents "used similar unfounded
slogans against medical care for dependents of
servicemen, workmen's compensation, Blue Cross
and Blue Shield plans, disability benefits, federal
grants to local health agencies, and many other
worthy programs."
The bill "would protect the public from exces-
sive charges by the small minority of doctors, hos-
pitals and nursing homes who let business motives
dominate their medical activities."
9 Persons "most familiar with social security
operations and the health needs of the aged"
support the Forand bill's principles t Among them
are two former Social Security administrators —
Charles I. Schottland and Arthur Altmeyer; the
retired president of the national Blue Cross Asso-
ciation, Dr. Basil C. MacLean; the American Pub-
lic Welfare Association; American Nurses' Asso-
ciation, and the National Association of Social
Workers.
Administration Can't Make Up Mind
On Medical Care Plan for Elderly
(Continued from Page 1)
year about-face. Vice Pres. Nixon
and Flemming are said to be lead-
ing the move within the Admini-
stration for some health care pro-
posal, while Treasury Dept. and
Budget Bureau officials are re-
portedly in opposition.
At its recent midwinter session,
the AFL-CIO Executive Council
warned against the possibility of an
eleventh-hour Administration pro-
posal geared "to meet the narrowly
conceived financial demands of the
American Medical Association or
the self-seeking clamor of insur-
ance companies rather than the
needs of the elderly."
As the committee began ex-
ecutive sessions, Rep. Aime J.
Forand (D-R.L), sponsor of the
bill, served notice he would file
a discharge petition to bypass the
committee and bring the meas-
ure to the floor unless "favorable
action" is taken on the bill by
Apr. 1. A total of 219 signa-
tures is needed on a discharge
21,000 in New York
Win 25c Package
New York — Twenty-one thou-
sand members of Building Service
Employes Local 32B have won a
17.5-cent wage increase in a new
three-year contract, plus fringe
benefits worth an additional 7.5
cents.
petition to dislodge a bill from
committee.
Meanwhile, evidence continued
to pile up showing overwhelming
public support for the health care
bill, backed by a wide segment of
the medical profession despite the
official opposition of the AMA.
In the conservative 22nd Con-
gressional Dist. of Ohio, a survey
conducted by Rep. Frances P. Bol-
ton (R-O.) showed that voters fa-
vored legislation along the lines of
the Forand bill by a nearly 2-1
margin.
16,000 Replies
The poll, results of which were
inserted by Mrs. Bolton in the Con-
gressional Record, drew replies
from 16,000 families, with 60.3
percent voting "yes" on providing
payment for "all medical expenses
after retirement 1 ' through social se-
curity; 32 percent voting "no," and
7.7 percent indicating no opinion.
Mrs. Bolton reported that a sim-
ilar poll conducted in 1959 among
registered voters showed only 48.5
percent favoring the medical care
program,
Although deliberations on the
Forand bill hold the spotlight, the
Mills committee has under con-
sideration a wide range of pro-
posals for improvement of the so-
cial security system. In this regard,
the AFL-CIO has called on the
86th Congress to:
• Increase retirement benefits
for all, with widows receiving more
than the present 75 percent rate.
• Eliminate the 50-year-age re-
quirement in total disability cases.
• Permit women to receive
regular benefits at age 60.
• Raise the wage base above
the present $4,800 annual level to
permit higher benefits.
Bad for Business?
Well, Maybe So . . •
Opposition to the Forand
bill has cropped up in an un-
expected place — among a
group of Indiana undertakers.
Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-
R.I.) introduced into the Con-
gressional Record a resolution
by the Indiana Funeral Direc-
tors Association, Inc., urging
defeat of his bill to provide
medical care for the aged.
Forand declared he had
"expected" the organized op-
position of the American
Medical Association, the Na-
tional Association of Manu-
facturers, the UJS. Chamber
of Commerce and the com-
mercial insurance lobby, but
said the morticians' action
"surprised him."
"Could it be, n Forand
asked, "that undertakers are
opposed to good health?"
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Page Hire*
Record Meeting Held:
Film Strike Wins
All-Out Support
Hollywood, Calif. — In the largest meeting of actors and actresses
ever held in the United States, more than 4,000 members of the
Screen Actors Guild gave a unanimous standing vote of confidence
to their leaders in the strike that has shut down seven major movie
studios.
The SAG members shouted their'f
approval after hearing Pres. Ronald
Reagan give a detailed report on
the walkout, which started Mar. 7,
on the futile negotiations that pre-
ceded it and on the history of the
basic issue in dispute — increased
payments to the actors from the ad-
ditional profits the studios are mak-
ing on television sales of movies
made after 1948.
Top stars who are established
boxoffice draws, lesser known film
luminaries, bit players hopeful of
climbing higher and the stunt men
who risk their necks on every job
all joined in an impressive dem-
onstration of union solidarity after
keagan told them that upon the re-
newal of negotiations two days be-
fore, "a little progress started to be
made.**
The bargaining session was ar-
ranged after the SAG called in the
Federal Mediation & Conciliation
Service and was held after Com-
missioner Jules Medoff helped set
it up.
Dales Spikes Rumors
Rumors of an early peace, to be
preceded by union permission for
the casts of eight major films to
return to the struck studios to com-
plete production, snow-balled to
such a size that John L. Dales,
SAG national executive secretary,
issued a denial. He said:
"The Guild will not allow the
eight motion pictures to go back
into production until the negotia-
tions have proceeded to a point
where the Guild is assured of an
equitable deal. This point has not
yet been reached.**
Wide-ranging support for the
SAG board of directors in the
dispute was offered prior to the
mass meeting when 25 of the
most famous figures in filmdom
declared in a joint statement that
"we wish it to be known that we
are in full support of the posi-
tion taken by our board of direc-
tors and officers of the SAG in
our controversy with the major
studios.* 9
"We believe television is a new
outlet for entertainment," they said.
"NBC, CBS and ABC, three mil-
lion-dollar corporations, have rec-
ognized this; unions have recog-
nized this — indeed new unions have
come into being because of it.
"The producers must have rec-
ognized it when they agreed to the
stop-gap clause in 1948. They ad-
hered to this clause for 12 years.
Since 1948, all producers have been
on written notice from the actors
that their salaries in movies made
for theaters did not compensate the
actor for the additional and profit-
able display of the picture in televi-
sion — advertising products of every
description.
"Now the producers repudiated
the stop-gap clause and adamantly
refused to negotiate.
"This is no longer a matter of
money or terms, but is a question
of principle and we believe all ac-
tors must wholeheartedly back our
Guild leadership in this fact, as we
do.**
Signers were Lauren Bacall,
Ralph Bellamy, Ward, Bond,
James Cagney, Richard Carlson,
Jeff Chandler, Bing Crosby,
Tony Curtis, Bette Davis, Kirk
Douglas, Joan Fontaine, Bob
Hope, Louis Jourdan, 1 Janet
Leigh, Fred MacMurray, Thomas
Mitchell, Robert Mitchum, Rob-
ert Montgomery, Walter Pidgeon,
Edward G. Robinson, Barbara
Rush, Barry Sullivan, Spencer
Tracy, John Wayne and Jane
Wyman.
The international board of the
Actors & Artists, through which
the^AG has AFL-CIO affiliation,
took full-page newspaper ads to
express its support of the strike.
"The issue of a replay formula
involving the showing of post- 1948
motion pictures on television is of
vital interest and concern to all
performers," the AAAA board said.
"The Screen Actors Guild also
seeks a pension and welfare plan
for its members, a principle long
accepted by employers in other in-
dustries.
"Motion picture producers and
their agents have issued press state-
ments depicting performers as rich,
wealthy and gold-plated, when the
fact is that less than 1 percent are
in the 'higher income' brackets;
more than 75 percent of the per-
formers represented by the SAG
earn less than $4,000 annually; 60
percent actually earn $2,500 or less
per year in the motion picture in-
dustry."
UNANIMOUS VOTE of support for officers of the Screen Actors
Guild in the strike of 14,000 top stars and bit players against major
movie studios was voted at a jammed Hollywood membership
meeting. Those backing the walkout included (left to right) Janet
Leigh, Edward G, Robinson, Barbara Rush and Kirk Douglas.
FORMULA FOR LONG-RANGE sharing of fruits of industrial progress was discussed in New
York at first meeting of committee established in contract between Steelworkers and Kaiser Steel
Corp. Seated, left to right, are Kaiser Board Chairman Edgar F. Kaiser; USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald; Dr. George Taylor, chairman of Pres. Eisenhower's "fact-finding" panel in steel strike.
Standing, same order: USWA Vice Pres. Howard Hague; labor arbiter and conciliator David L.
Cole; Kaiser Vice Pres. C. E. Borden; John Dun lop, Harvard University; Vice Pres. E. E. Tref-
ethen, Jr. of Kaiser; Dir. Charles J. Smith, USWA Dist. 38.
USWA-Kaiser Pact Committee
Opens Industrial Peace Quest
New York — A tripartite committee representing labor, management and the public — created by the
contract signed last fall between the Steelworkers and Kaiser Steel Corp. — has opened its long-range
study of methods for achieving industrial peace.
At a two-day meeting here, the committee marked out several key areas for immediate study, with
spokesmen expressing optimism^
about initial progress in pursuit of
a formula for equitable sharing of
the company's economic gains with-
out the necessity of long shutdowns
to settle labor contract differences.
Dr. George W. Taylor, chairman
of the nine-man panel and head of
Pres. Eisenhower's fact-finding
board during last year's 116-day
nationwide steel shutdown, said the
tripartite committee "represents a
very significant new approach" to
labor-management problems.
"We have no doubt," he said,
"that collective bargaining will be
the better for this effort."
USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald, who headed the union
delegation, expressed the belief
that "this committee is going to
do a great job" for both the un-
ion and Kaiser management. He
added: "I hope some of it will
rub off on our friends in the rest
of the steel industry."
The 11 other giant basic steel
producers, who later followed
Kaiser's lead in settling the record-
breaking steel strike, signed con-
tracts establishing "human rela-
tions" committees dedicated to
tasks similar to those of the Kaiser
committee — but with no public
members serving on these panels.
Edgar F. Kaiser, board chair-
man of the steel company, termed
the initial sessions "worthwhile,"
and declared that "greater free-
dom" of discussion was possible
because the committee was "meet-
ing away from the pressures of the
bargaining table."
The areas which the committee
will study before it holds its next
session in Oakland, Calif., May 5-6,
include:
• Methods of sharing the com-
pany's economic progress between
employes and the public as well as
the stockholders,- with particular
emphasis on providing a share for
workers likely to be displaced by
technological change.
• The need for a wider area of
communication to keep workers as
well informed as company direc-
tors and stockholders on future
plans.
• Re-examination of grievance
procedures.
• Study of the future of incen-
tive methods as they relate to tech-
nological changes.
• Possibility of devising new
procedures to avoid strikes.
Besides Taylor, public members
on the panel include David L. Cole,
umpire under the AFL-CIO No-
Raiding Agreement, and John T.
Dunlop, nationally known arbitra-
tor for the building trades unions
and their industry.
Serving on the union team with
McDonald are Gen. Counsel Arthur
J. Goldberg, who was represented
by USWA Vice Pres. Howard R.
Hague; and USWA Dir. Charles J.
Smith of District 38.
The management group includes
Kaiser, Executive Vice Pres. E. E.
Trefethen of Kaiser-Industries, and
Executive Vice Pres. C. F. Borden
of Kaiser Steel.
The historic USWA-Kaiser pact
— signed before the government ob-
tained a Taft-Hartley injunction to
halt the nationwide steel shutdown
— also called for creation of a
labor-management committee for
mutual exploration of work rule
problems. That committee has al-
ready held its first session in
Spokane, Wash.
Bethlehem's Ultimatum
Branded as 'Gimmick'
New York — The Shipbuilding Workers branded as a "gimmick"
to conceal a determination not to bargain in good faith the Beth-
lehem Steel Co.'s warning that no progress "will be made or can
be expected" in negotiations so long as so-called mass picketing
is continued at its Quincy, Mass., shipyard.
The virtual ultimatum was hand-'3>-
ed down as bargaining sessions,
stalled during hearings into charges
of unfair labor practices the union
had filed with the National Labor
Relations Board, were resumed un-
der the direction of Walter A. Mag-
giolo, chief of mediation activities
for the Federal Mediation & Con-
ciliation Service.
It also followed two fruitless
attempts by the company to se-
cure injunctions in Massachu-
setts Superior Court forbidding
mass picketing at the Quincy
shipyard. Despite the dual re-
jections, the company still called
the large-scale picketing "illegal"
and insisted progress in bargain-
ing was impossible until the un-
ion gave assurance it had "per-
manently ceased."
The courts refused the injunc-
tions on the ground that the com-
pany had failed to bargain in good
faith. Since then, the company has
sued the union.
Company's Ultimatum
. 'The first order of business must
be a cessation of this illegal mass
picketing," the company said in a
statement issued at the close of the
first bargaining meeting.
IUMSWA Pres. John J. Grogan
charged the steel company's ship-
building division with seeking to
find a "new pretext for keeping its
shipyard closed" in an effort to
starve the workers into accepting a
contract with "unheard-of condi-
tions." The company statement, he
declared, was a "callous and pre-
sumptuous" insult to the union.
Some 18,000 members of the
union in Bethlehem's eight East
Coast shipyards have been on
strike since Jan. 22 in an effort
to win a new contract to replace
a three-year agreement that ex-
pired last July 31. The union is
seeking to upset unilateral
changes in work rules and con-
ditions the company imposed
while negotiations were in prog-
ress.
Meantime, Rep. James A. Burke
(D), whose congressional district
includes Quincy, appealed to Pres.
Eisenhower to use his good offices
to help end the walkout. In a tele-
gram to the President, he pointed
out that work on several navy ves-
sels, including some with nuclear
power, is at a standstill, and added
that "clergymen, public officials
and merchants are pleading for
White House action."
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
'Prove by Our Actions:'
Meet Bias Issue
'Head-On '—Meany
(Continued from Page 1)
dition of the free trade union
movement" and is in "direct con-
flict" with the AFL-CIO consti-
tution.
In the District of Columbia, he
said, "there are local unions whose
membership and whose apprentice
rolls are closed to Negro appli-
cants." He added that "on the basis
of our American heritage of free-
dom and democracy, as well as
our trade union ideals, these people
are entitled to political and eco-
nomic equality of opportunity."
Meany praised the BTD for
"taking an important step in the
right direction" by asking the Presi-
dent's Committee on Government
Contracts to notify the department
of "any complaints of hiring dis-
crimination" and for pledging to do
"everything in its power to correct
such situations."
Declaring that "the time has
come to meet this problem head-
on," the AFL-CIO president blunt-
ly said:
"It is up to local union leaders
to convince their numbers to
listen to reason.
"It is up to international union
presidents to exert effective lead-
ership on this question.
"We have got to face up to
the problem squarely and find a
solution for it based on sound
trade union principles."
Meany conceded that "this is not
a simple problem" and that "there
is no easy way out." He continued:
"We must put an end to this
hateful evil of discrimination when-
ever and wherever it occurs,
whether it be in a local union or
an international union.
"Our good faith is at stake. We
can prove it only by our actions.
As citizens and as free trade union-
ists, we must conduct our affairs in
accordance with the principles of
brotherhood and democracy."
The AFL-CIO president was
caustic in his criticism of the fili-
buster which, he said, is aimed
at stopping a clear Senate ma-
jority from carrying out the con-
stitutional guarantee that every
American citizen, regardless of
race or color, should have the
right to vote.
"Some of the opponents of the
civil rights bill," he said, "are hon-
orable men who have unhappily
been forced into an indefensible
position by the political dynamite
which hangs over their heads in
their home states. But the main
body of Southerners who have en-
gineered . . . this filibuster are still
fighting the Civil War."
He accused them of being "out
of step with the America of today
and tomorrow," adding that in ad-
dition to spearheading the anti-
labor drive "they have opposed . . .
every liberal and progressive meas-
sure designed to protect the Ameri-
can people against economic and
political oppression. They give lip
service to American ideals while
they desperately try with every
weapon in the book to negate and
destroy basic American concepts of
democracy."
•Civil rights opponents, Meany
said, have "served to undermine
confidence" at home in "'the sin-
cerity of the government's willing-
ness and ability to protect and en-
force the constitutional rights of its
citizens." He added:
"But it is abroad where the
wreckage of American prestige has
become most evident. How can we
ask the people of Asia and Africa
to build their future on the model
of American democracy when its
shortcomings are so painfully ex-
posed?
"We have given the Communists
a glorious opportunity to make hay
at our expense in the most critical
areas of the cold war. Their propa-
ganda machines are going full
blast, deriding our vaunted free
way of life as a fraud and a sham."
Meany said there is "only one
honest and effective way out of
this mess" — congressional enact-
ment of a "strong and meaning-
ful" civil rights law.
LABOR MUST "face up" to
problem of race bias within trade
union movement and find a so-
lution "leased on sound trade un-
ion principles," AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany told session of
AFL-CIO Building & Construc-
tion Trades Dept. legislative con-
ference.
CLC Assigns
USWA Staff
Man to Africa
Toronto, Ont. — The Canadian
Labor Congress, has picked Albert
Munro, a Steelworkers' representa-
tive, as one of three special lec-
turers at the African Labor College
in Uganda.
Munro, presently assigned to na-
tional headquarters of the USWA,
will leave this spring for three
months in Africa.
African unionists are taught tech-
niques of union organization and
administration, the process of col-
lective bargaining as it is conducted
in other English-speaking countries
and such subjects as economic re-
search methods.
The 37-year-old Munro was
born and educated in Aberdeen,
Scotland. He came to Canada in
November 1952 and was elected
vice president of USWA Local
3390, covering employes of Do-
minion Bridge Co. Ltd., Toronto,
in 1953. In March 1958 he
joined the USWA staff as an
expert in job classification and
rate evaluation.
Caribbean Assembly Reports:
Understanding Key
To Latin Relations
Mutual understanding, "the key to good relations among nations,"
is deficient among the countries of the western hemisphere, the
Caribbean Assembly decided after three days of discussions in
Puerto Rico.
The assembly was held under the joint auspices. of the American
Assembly of Columbia University'^
and the University of Puerto Rico. '
It drew 66 authorities in all fields
of inter-American relationships, in
eluding AFL-CIO Inter-American
Rep. Serafino' Romualdi and As-
sistant Research Dir. Peter Henle,
meeting for discussions of "The
United States and Latin America."
In a final report, to which there
were no signatories but upon which
there was general agreement, the
assembly attributed the lack of mu-
tual understanding to "inadequate
and sometimes distorted reporting
of events" in the different countries,
and failure on each side to appreci-
ate the other's cultural values.
The U.S. was urged to "try to
convey a much better picture of
its real values, especially its dedi-
cation to human dignity and so-
cial reform and its cultural ac-
complishments.'*
"Social and economic change is
coming everywhere in Latin Amer-
ica," the assembly concluded. "It
will be the function of hemispheric
policy to encourage the social and
economic reforms that will satisfy
aspirations without violence or dis-
regard of basic rights. The prob-
lem is not fear of revolutionary
change as such; the principal fear is
that it will be exploited by inter-
national communism and not for
constructive indigenous purposes*
"All of us are Americans. We
are all part of the same western
civilization, holding in common
ideals of freedom and democ-
racy."
On some specific issues the as-
sembly agreed that:
• The "global phenomenon" of
nationalism is present in all Amer-
ican nations, exceptionally strong
in some. "Anti-Yankeeism" is the
inevitable result of history, eco-
nomics, politics and the disparity in
wealth and power, plus U.S. "lack
of sensitivity" in dealing with Latin
American neighbors, but does not
extend to individuals.
• Economic development "has a
special urgency." Unless it is proved
by action and policy that free in-
stitutions offer the best prospect
for meeting Latin American aspira-
tions," solutions are likely to be
sought by extremist and. violent
methods." Both U.S. aid and col-
lective action are essential.
• Communism is making head-
way and there is a tendency to un-
derestimate the danger. If rapid
social change does not take place
through constructive democratic
processes, "it may provoke abrupt
chaotic processes in the course of
which a serious danger of Com-
munist control might arise.**
• A "sense of confusion** was
expressed in regard to Cuba, with
judgment tentative. The revolution
reflects "deep and legitimate popu-
lar aspirations,** but its trend "is
not democratic in its present form";
Communists "appear to be gaining
in influence, but a final judgment
on the prospects of Communist
control would be premature."
Green Honored
As Ohio Teen-Ager
Columbus/ O. — William Green,
president of the former AFL from
1924 until his death in 1952, has
been honored in his native state of
Ohio for his accomplishments as
an 18-year-old secretary of a min-
ers* local union.
Green was one of 32 prominent
Ohioans who began achieving
recognition while still in their teens.
Their portraits have been put on
exhibit in the state Capitol in a
newly-established Ohio Teen-Age
Hall of Fame.
Building Trades Rap Administration's 'Tight-Money' Policies
(Continued from Page 1)
© Sen. John F. Kennedy (ID-
Mass.) call for reversal of the
Eisenhower Administration's "dis-
astrous high-interest, tight-money
policies" to forestall a new depres-
sion. Kennedy endorsed labor's
broad-ranging legislative program,
calling for its passage before Con-
gress adjourns this summer.
• Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
Tenew the pledge made by the Ad-
ministration since 1954 to support
legislation freeing jobsite picketing
from Taft-Hartley's secondary boy-
cott provisions.
Two days of the conference
were set aside so that building
tradesmen, breaking up into state
delegations, could visit senators
and congressmen on Capitol Hill
to press for enactment of the
BTD's six-point program.
Meany told the conference that
in pursuit of the "policy of im-
mobilization," the Administration
has "hugged the status quo and re-
lied on the goal of a balanced
budget for salvation." He contin-
ued:
"It has failed to invest the funds
necessary to keep us ahead in sci-
entific research, to maintain mili-
tary superiority, to assure healthy
economic growth and to meet the
critical needs of the American peo-
ple.
"This policy is based on fear —
the groundless fear that if the
federal government assumes its
proper responsibility, it will grow
too big, it will spend too much,
it will tax too heavily and it will
in some way interfere with the
profit opportunities of big busi-
ness."
For several years, he said, the
AFL-CIO has been "hammering
away at the absurdity and the dan-
gers of this do-nothing policy,"
adding that recently the nationally
known columnist Walter Lippmann
published an article "fully support-
ing our position."
In the column, Meany said, it
was pointed out that the govern-
ment "by encouraging healthy eco-
nomic expansion can get all the
funds it needs to pay for defense
purposes, for scientific research,
for the construction of schools, for
an effective housing program in-
cluding slum clearance and urban
renewal, for building better roads
and airports, for providing more
adequate hospitals and public health
services, for improved water sup-
ply and sewage disposal, and for
industrial revival of depressed areas
— all this without raising taxes."
In addition to endorsing the
BTD's legislative goals, Meany
urged delegates to push for passage
of three other proposals that con-
stitute key planks in the overall
AFL-CIO program for 1960:
• Improvement of the mini-
mum wage to $1.25 #n hour and
coverage for millions not now pro-
tected.
• Forand bill passage to pro-
vide medical insurance for retired
workers that will "permit our older
people to live out the span of, their
lives in decency and save them
from becoming public charges."
• Enactment of uniform federal
minimum standards on the amount
and duration of unemployment
benefits.
Kennedy evoked sustained ap-
plause when he told delegates
he would fight to have Demo-
cratic and Republican leaders on
both sides of Capitol Hill re-
deem last year's pledges that the
job-site picketing measure would
be acted on this year. The 86th
Congress, he vowed, "shall not
adjourn until this measure is
brought to a vote."
The Massachusetts Democrat
also called for action this session
on federal minimum standards for
unemployment benefits. Since 1954,
he noted, the Administration has
DRIVE FOR ENACTMENT of six-point legislative program of
AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. received a major
boost as 3,300 delegates from all 50 states attended sessions at
Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel, spent two days visiting congress-
men on Capitol Hill to seek passage of measures to shore up the
economy and insure equity in labor-management relations.
called for voluntary state action in
this area. "No state has acted,**
Kennedy said. "No state will act."
He said state legislatures fear that
industry would run away to other
states "not meeting these stand-
ards."
Mitchell, reiterating Administra-
tion support for legislation that
would exempt common-site picket-
ing from Taft-Hartley's secondary
boycott restrictions, told delegates
that "you can't expect trade union-
ists to work with non-union people
on the same job."
The secretary also appealed for
stepped-up apprenticeship training
programs to insure an adequate
supply of skilled craftsmen in the
next 10 years, and recommended
that building trades unions "organ-
ize in the suburbs" so that all hous-
ing projects being erected to meet
the population explosion will be
built by union members.
Maken, Educator
For ILGWU, Dies
New York — Morris Maken, ed-
ucation director of the Cloak Out-
of-Town Dept. of the Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers, has died of a heart
attack. He was 51.
He was appointed to the educa-
tion post in 1948, left it to become
a field organizer in the South for
the Textile Workers Union of
America from 1951 to 1957, then
returned to the ILGWU education
post.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Page Firm
N. Y. Public Library Exhibit:
Union Workers and Their Unions on the Job
PHOTOGRAPHIC SERIES on trade unionists and trade unions in action shows (left to right, top ■ — —
to bottom) a chef in his kitchen, a serious union committee meeting, an engineer at work, a pen- LEFT TO RIGHT: Photographer Mildred Grossman, Pres. Harry
sioner talking over a problem with a union official, a union's employment service and a straw vote Van Arsdale, Jr., of New York City AFL-CIO, and Library Staff-
being taken in a New York state election. Photos were taken by Mildred Grossman. ers John Cory and Dorothy Oko.
F««* Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
The Unprotected
AMERICA HAS ENTERED the Soaring Sixties and their prom-
ise of unlimited prosperity with millions of workers completely
unprotected as to minimum wages or hours of work, eking out a
second-class existence at the hands of low-wage chiseling employers.
There are millions more whose wages are pegged at $1 an hour
under the Wage-Hour Act, striving desperately to achieve the
highly-touted American standard of living on $40 a week.
The persistence of poverty and near-poverty affects every
American. It constitutes a direct threat to the nation's general
progress toward ever-higher living standards and to the vitally
necessary increase in consumer purchasing power that spells the
difference between full employment and recession.
Four years ago Congress increased the minimum wage to $1 an
hour. Wage levels and the increased cost of living have hopelessly
outdated that figure. And there are still the millions working
without wage-and-hour protection.
This Congress must wipe out poverty to bolster our economic
strength and to control the low-wage employer whose profits are
sweated from exploited workers. There must be economic justice
for all workers, not union members alone. It can be accomplished
by quick passage of the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill.
Billions for Bankers?
THE ADMINISTRATION is asking Americans to shoulder a
$4 billion burden in 1960 in the name of fighting a non-existent
inflation.
That's the price of the Administration's tight-money, high-interest
rate policies, which it is seeking to extend by lifting the interest-
rate ceiling on long-term government bonds. It includes also $1
billion in additional mortgage and other borrowing costs paid by
consumers.
The almost relentless insistence on the necessity of lifting the
interest rate ceiling has dented some of the opposition to this costly
and misdirected economic policy in the House of Representatives.
But while the bill is marking time, supported by a favorable
committee report, activities in the financial world-are producing
results which tend to dispute the validity of the Administration's
position.
Interest rates on short-term Treasury notes have been dropping in
the past few weeks and may drop further after Apr. 15 with the
purchase of these notes to help meet income tax payments.
With inflation non-existent and interest rates dropping on short-
term notes, there appears to be no valid reason why American con-
sumers should be asked to pick up a $4 billion tab for the bankers
and the money lenders by lifting the interest-rate ceiling.
Words, Not Deeds
PRES. EISENHOWER'S recent trips to Asia, the Middle East
and Latin America focused attention on the economic assistance
needs of many of these nations. It focused attention also on the
gap between the Administration's fine words on stepping up eco-
nomic aid and the hard facts of its budget proposals.
Last year Congress 'authorized $1.1 billion for the Development
-Loan Fund after the Administration refused to support a proposal
to put the program on a long-range basis. In its budget this year
the Administration requested an appropriation of only $700 million.
The tight limitation on money for the development fund,
coupled with a refusal to change the program's present hand-to-
mouth insecurity, give a hollow ring to some of the President's
overseas speeches, to his constant emphasis on deeds, not words.
Shadow on the Graph
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckm aster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirae
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, March 19, 1960
No. 12
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organization* does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
DRAWN FOR THE
AFL-CIO news
Prominent Southerner Declares:
Negro Battle for Equal Rights
Carries on America's Heritage
The following is excerpted from a speech by
Frank P. Graham, United Nations mediator and
former U.S. senator; at a UN Mock Assembly at
the University of North Carolina of which he is
a former president.
WE LIVE in an age of revolution. The United
States was born in an age of revolution out
of which came the liberation of the people of
North and South America. The United Nations
was born in an age of revolution out of which
has come and is coming the liberation of the
peoples of Asia and Africa. -
The American Republic, as we learned in our
history, in its beginnings, was a political oligarchy
of landed, propertied, Protestant, white and male
adults. From Rhode Island, Maryland and Penn-
sylvania came ideas and attitudes, which in the
Jeffersonian movement were given an impetus
toward the removing of religious barriers and the
admission of Jews, Catholics and unbelievers to
the rights of suffrage and public office.
The on-going Jacksonian democracy opened
wider the doors of suffrage and office to the land-
less and propertyless people. The Civil War
amendments abolished the disqualification of race,
color and previous condition of servitude. The
women's rights movement later admitted half of
the adult people to the right of equal suffrage.
The removal of the barriers of creed, property,
color and sex transformed in successive epochs
the old monopolistic political oligarchy into an
expanding, advancing democracy.
The barriers of the poll tax and registration
remaining in some communities against the equal
right to vote cannot forever hold back the spirit-
ual momentum of 2,000 years and the democratic
momentum of a century and a half of American
history.
AMERICA HAS TAUGHT the Negro youth
the heritage and hopes of America and in her
heart of hearts she would not have them forfeit
that heritage or deny that hope. In their day and
generation they are renewing springs of American
democracy fresh and resurgent as they write a
chapter in the fulfillment of the American Revo-
lution with its universal declaration of human
rights that "all men are created equal and are
endowed by their creator with certain unalienable
rights and that to secure these rights governments
are instituted among men deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed."
We need to make clear to ourselves and to
the world that the advancing faith of the Amer-
ican Revolution and the widening meaning of
the American Bill of Rights are not only the
historic and past but are also the present and
living sources of America's faith in herself, the
world's faith in America and America's moral
influence and power in the world.
Human pride, prejudice and discrimination are
as old as history and as wide at the world. Across
the centuries in successive periods, prejudice was
variously expressed in the classification of peo-
ples as: Jews and gentiles, Greeks and barbarians,
Romans and provincials, Iberians and people to
the north of the Pyrenees who were white in
color, tall in height, and considered by the cul-
tured Iberians to be low in intellect, the Celestial
Chinese and the non-celestial other people, high
caste and low caste Indians, Anglo-Saxons and
the "lesser breeds without the law," and Aryan-
Nordic-German-Nazis and the allegedly inferior
races of the world.
In the present world are tensions between
yellow and brown, brown and black, colored and
white.
As a vital part of the southern people, the
Negro people, despite all the wrongs to these
people, compounded by centuries of slavery
and discrimination, have in the recent decades
of their freedom and labor, made a progress
unsurpassed by any people in a like period in
human history.
In the free minds and generous hearts of mil-
lions of southern people of both races, who have
long cooperated in human relations and works
of personal loyalty and kindness, will live and
grow the unfulfilled teachings of our religion for
the equal freedom, dignity and opportunity of all
human beings, the struggles of freedom for a
higher freedom, and the renewing faith of the
American dream, with its message of hope and
brotherhood in this age of suspicion and fear.
The gospel of love and understanding preached
by Martin Luther King, who draws his inspira-
tion from Jesus, his techniques from Gandhi, and
his advice from his noble teacher, Benjamin Mays
of Morehouse College, will yet prevail in our
time over fear and hate. The cross, warm with
the blood of human brotherhood, will triumph
over all the burning crosses lighted with the hot
oil of prejudice, privilege and power.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Page Serem
Morgan Says:
Bold Attack on Urban Blight
Brings Results in New Haven
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. f EST.)
HP HERE IS HARDLY a sizable city in the
country that isn't suffering from serious
growing pains in the form of a shortage of hous-
ing, a surplus of slums and
a strangulation of traffic.
Ironically the growth has
developed into a kind of
disease called urban blight.
It is a national problem
and it is shaping up as a
presidential campaign is-
sue.
Recently the Demo-
cratic Advisory Council's
unit on urban and sub-
urban problems fired a
broadside of criticism at the Eisenhower Admin-
istration for failing to grasp the dimensions of
the situation and the need for action.
In Washington, 500 delegates at the National
Housing Conference unanimously called for cre-
ation of a cabinet-rank Department of Urban
Affairs. While farmers, business and labor are
all represented, city dwellers, it was pointed out,
have no voice in the cabinet.
Alabama's Congressman Albert Rains, chair-
man of the House Banking subcommittee on
housing, promises to open hearings soon after
Easter on an omnibus housing and urban renewal
bill.
There have been complaints of boondoggling
and bad planning on urban renewal and Repre-
sentative Ludwig Teller, New York Democrat, is
pressing Rains' subcommittee to investigate pos-
sible profiteering in slum clearance and reloca-
tion of tenants. But some areas are tackling the
problem with boldness, imagination and effi-
ciency.
The Democratic Advisory Council's blast at
the Administration on housing, which may
emerge as a party platform plank, was mainly
inspired by Mayor Richard C. Lee of New
Haven, Conn., and this gives the report a sig-
nificant cutting edge because Lee's massive
and revolutionary plan for the rebuilding of
downtown New Haven is already under way
and is commanding nationwide attention.
The Democrats are trying to sharpen the issue
even further by arguing that the New Haven proj-
ect was successfully launched in spite of resistance
on key points by the 'Eisenhower regime, thus
dramatizing the difference in the Republican and
Democratic approaches to the subject.
Washington Reports:
WHATEVER THE POLITICAL NUANCES,
the New Haven plan has to be seen to be believed.
On Sunday, Mayor Lee took this reporter on a
personally-conducted tour of four separate proj-
ects embracing more than 700 acres on which
$150,000,000 are being spent. This is not just a
supermarket or shopping center exercise. Depart-
ment stores, hotels, banks, schools and office
buildings are being razed and relocated. Tene-
ments are being bulldozed, families resettled.
Fifty years ago, New Haven's Oak Street
neighborhood was one of the worst slums in New
England. Sinclair Lewis dubiously immortalized
it in an angry novel. Nearly 900 families have
been moved from the area and in the slum clean-
up, 10,000 rats were exterminated.
The Worcester Square district was a vivid
picture of how deep the rot was.
Warehouses and shops blighted residential
neighborhoods which in turn deteriorated into
marginal housing for Italians, Puerto Ricans,
Negroes. Crime and delinquency mushroomed.
Bookies and hoodlums lounged on the corner
of Wallace and Grand. Forty-seven persons
died in factory firetraps in 15 years. Taxes
dwindled. People and businesses began to
move away.
SOON WORCESTER SQUARE will be a
show place, cheery desegregated apartments,
homes and a dazzling community center on one
side, a spacious, sunlit, carefully zoned indus-
trial park on the other with a new highway down
the middle.
Mayor Lee and his commission, including
businessmen and labor leaders, have worked
seven nights a week grappling with the human
problems involved. People don't like to pull up
their roots. Many oppose integration.
Insofar as possible and healthful the human
fabrics of neighborhoods will be preserved,
though living conditions will change. On the
race question Lee makes the telling point that
he lives in a district in which 35 percent of his
neighbors are Negros. Frankie, who runs one of
the best-known Italian restaurants in New Eng-
land, is still passionately dissatisfied with the
terms and alternative sites the city has offered
him. In contrast, a florist dropped a big bouquet
by the mayor's office the other day. "A token of
appreciation," he said. "I fought the move but
now my business is booming." *
Not a week goes by without delegations from
other cities showing up to see how New Haven
is doing it. Perhaps the surest sign of Mayor
Lee's success lies in the fact that Democrats are
already talking about running this 44-year-old
man for governor or senator in 1962.
Legislation Urged to Prevent
Abandonment of Train Service
LEGISLATION is necessary to end
•1- ^ "wholesale discontinuance of passenger train
service," both Democratic and Republican mem-
bers of Congress said in an interview on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service program heard on more than 300 radio
stations.
Sen. Warren G. Magnuson (D-Wash.), chair-
man of the Senate Commerce Committee and
sponsor of a major bill on the issue, has gained
30 co-sponsors. He and Sen. George D. Aiken
(R-Vt.) agreed that the chances of passage in
this session are good.
The Magnuson bill would correct a situation
created by the 1958 Transportation Act in
giving the railroads power to apply either to
state public service commissions or the Inter-
state Commerce Commission for discontinu-
ance of a rail line the roads claimed was not
needed or was losing money.
"Wd didn't intend at the time that the roads
should inconvenience the public to the extent that
they have," Aiken declared "I think something
like 102 trains have been discontinued in the
last year or two and we are now seeing unfair-
ness to the public."
The 1958 law puts the burden of proof for
continuance on the public. 'This new law would
place the burden of proof upon the railroad,"
Magnuson explained. "They would have to prove
discontinuance is not against the public interest.
"Also, a section of the bill says that if and
when the ICC tells a railroad to continue a
line, the commission also has authority to say
what kind of service there should be. At the
present, the railroads are running some branch
lines with trains like cattle cars."
"THE ROADS were in financial trouble in
1956 and 1957," Magnuson said, "but a lot of
them have come back and conditions are better.
Many roads, however, consider their passenger
income separate from their freight income, and
to make a case on passenger discontinuance,
assert they are losing money on a road.
"I always ask them, 'Are you losing money
on your overall operations? You have a public
duty to provide passenger trains. The public
pays for your freight, too\*
Aiken declared that railroad service should be
supplied to rural as well as urban areas. "Serv-
ice is even more important in the rural areas,"
he said.
Magnuson in effect warned the ICC to go slow
in handling applications for passenger train dis-
continuance. "The ICC is a creation of Con-
gress," he said. "They should slow up until we
can see what's going on."
WASHINGTON
m
THE DEMOCRATS are clearly threatened with a North-South
split over civil rights at their national convention in July, but the
Republicans are having internal troubles of their own. Sen. Barry
Goldwater (R-Ariz.j, chairman of*the Senate GOP Campaign Com-
mittee, has joined Gov. Wesley Powell (R-N.H.) in publicly ex-
pressing unhappiness at the manner in which Vice Pres. Nixon is
conducting himself politically.
Goldwater, who is becoming a power in Senate Republican cir-
cles, has asked Nixon to make some speeches at GOP state con-
ventions and to "get out and campaign" rather than sit back while
he is attacked by Democratic presidential aspirants.
He would like to see Nixon "help out," United Press-Interna-
tional reports, in the "critical" North Dakota senatorial campaign.
There will be a special election in June to elect a successor to North
Dakota's late Sen. William Langer (R), and the GOP frankly fears
that the probable Democratic nominee, Rep. Quentin Burdick, will
beat Gov. John E. Davis for the seat.
"I don't think the Vice President can wait until after the Re-
publican convention to start his campaign," the Arizona right-
winger complains.
Gov. Powell got himself repudiated by Nixon for trying to
hang a "soft on communism" charge on Sen. John F. Kennedy
(D-Mass.), and showed his bruised feelings by charging the pri-
mary results proved that he was right, and Nixon wrong, in the
choice of campaign tactics.
George Sokolsky, the newspaper columnist closest to the GOP
right-wingers, followed up by pointing out that Nixon made "his
reputation as an anti-Communist," and said that if the Vice Presi-
dent "were presently to pose as a middle-of-the-road liberal, such
campaigners as John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey would chew
him to pieces."
* * *
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN right-wingers want is revealed
clearly in New Jersey, where Sen. Clifford P. Case, a GOP first-
termer, is sharply challenged by .a businessmen's group backing
Robert Morris, former counsel of the Senate Internal Security sub-
committee. The idea of the businessmen, almost plainly stated,
is to drive Case out of Republican office as "too liberal."
In fact, Case has an almost unparalleled record of support for
Pres. Eisenhower's announced programs. A highly articulate
and intelligent senator, he is by no means to be labeled slavishly
"pro-labor" and certainly not anti-business.
He voted last year, for example, for the original McClellan so-
called "bill of rights" in the labor bill. He voted to block recon-
sideration that might have removed the amendment. In the 85th
Congress he helped defend the Kennedy-Ives bill against crippling
amendments, but he also cast votes against public power, in favor
of forcing up interest rates, against larger federal grants for public
assistance to the aged, blind and disabled. In previous years he
voted in favor of a prevailing-wage amendment in the highway
construction program and in favor of public housing, but against
a pay rise for postal workers, against a farm price-support bill,
against payment of social security benefits to the disabled at age 50.
* * *
IN THE 85th CONGRESS, Republican election prospects looked
so poor that six senators facing re-election fights retired, and a
substantial number of GOP House members pulled out, too. Once
more, announced retirements are beginning to pile up.
On the Republican side, Rep. Leo Allen (111.), who would head
the Rules Committee if the GOP regained control of the House,
will quit. So will Rep. Donald Jackson (Calif.), ranking party
member on House Un-American, and Rep. Gordon Canfield
(N. J.), a high-ranking member of the Appropriations Commit-
tee. Nine other GOP members, some with much seniority, will
quit.
Among Democrats, Rep. Graham Barden (N. C), chairman of
the Labor Committee, will retire, and so will Rep. Carl T. Durham
(N. C), vice chairman of the Joint Atomic Energy Commission.
Most other Democrats who may quit, however, are planning to run
for other offices including the Senate.
LEGISLATION TO BLOCK discontinuance of passenger trains
without regard to public interest is urged by Sen. George D. Aiken
(R-Vt.), left, and Sen. Warren Magnuson (D-Wash.), sponsor of
the bill. Both were interviewed on AFL-CIO public service radio
program, Washington Reports to the People.
Page Elgin
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
course.
How to Buy:
Now You Can Tell
Vycron from Darvan
By Sidney Margolius
YOU NOW HAVE a new shopping aid when you buy clothing,
rugs, curtains, slip covers ancLother household textiles. A new
federal law requires that all textiles must carry a label stating the
exact percentage of each fiber in the material.
No longer can manufacturers and stores merely label a blouse
as, for example, "rayon and nylon." Now you'll be able to look at
the label and see whether there's 40
percent nylon or perhaps only 10
percent, which makes a big differ-
ence in the value.
The new law also will end the
nVy^Hk [rp| ? f|pJ7|^ deceptive practice of advertising
LU/l/^^^v ■ '■ rugs as "rayon and wool" or "rayon
and nylon" when there may be only
a trifle of the more-costly and desir-
able wool or nylon in the blend.
Labor unions and consumer
co-ops especially, can be proud
of the new law. Articles in union
and co-op papers helped to get
it passed, Rep. Frank £. Smith
(D-Miss.), author of the law,
reported.
The new labels won't solve all your shopping problems, of
You still have to judge the actual quality of a fabric. A
good-quality all-rayon material will give better service than a
poorly-constructed rayon-and-nylon.
Actually Congress would help consumers even more if manu-
facturers were required to label fabrics with performance standards
and maintenance needs. Thus if a "wash and wear" fabric had to
meet an established standard we'd know just what to expect
But even though you still must judge quality, the new labels
are a big help. You'll know that quality for quality, a pair of
slacks with 50 per cent Dacron is likely to keep its crease better,
require less ironing and wear longer than a fabric with 15 per
cent Dacron.
In fact, the new fiber-identification law has come just in time.
A host of new brand-name fibers has arrived on the market; more
soon will.
Perhaps you've seen clothing made of Creslan advertised re-
cently. Or Zefran. Under the new law, the label must carry the
generic (or scientific) name as well as the brand name. This is
something consumers have long pleaded for, as in the case of drugs.
Creslan and Zefran both happen to be acrylic fibers like Orion.
Now, besides being labeled with these brand names or trade names,
these particular fibers must be labeled with the generic name of
"Acrylic."
IT WILL TAKE a little time before you get acquainted with
some of the generic names like "Polyester" that you'll now see on
the textile labels. With the help of the editors of Modern Textiles
magazine, the American Carpet Institute and other expert sources,
this department has prepared a pioneering guide to the newer
generic names. It shows you the widely-used brand names under
each generic name, and the special features of each fiber.
Acrylic: Widely-advertised trade names include Orion, Acrilan,
Creslan, Zefran. Acrylics are synthetic fibers with bulky qualities
used for wool-like fabrics for clothing, blankets and rugs, and fur-
like coats. Acrylic is quick-drying, wrinkle-resistant, resistant to
deterioration from sunlight; has better draping quality than Dacron
but isn't as resilient or strong.
Modacrylic: Another synthetic fiber often sold under Dynel and
Verel brand names; generally used for springy, deep-pile fabrics
made into blankets, warm underwear, coats, socks; sometimes also
used in carpets.
Polyester: One of the most important modern synthetic fibers.
Brand names include Dacron and Kodel, with Vycron soon coming.
Polyester fibers have high wrinkle resistance, crease resistance and
strength. Often blended with cotton for wash-and-wear garments,
and with wool for lightweight suits.
Spandex: Stretch-type synthetic, increasingly used in bathing
suits, girdles, bras and other garments where elasticity is desired.
Brand names in this group include Tycron and Vyrene.
Nylon: A strong, abrasion-resistant, quick-drying, lustrous syn-
thetic often blended with other fibers to add strength and wash-
ability to a material. Often now also made into bulky textured
nylon for sweaters and stretch socks under such fiber brand names
as Ban-Lon and Agilon.
Nytril: Another synthetic with soft, resilient quality that doesn't
form fiber pills as some of the other man-made fibers sometimes
do. Darvan is a brand name for Nytril. Often used in pile fabrics
and sweaters.
Rayon: One of the most widely-used man-made fibers, sold under
numerous brand names. Modern rayon is the type that used to be
known as "viscose" rayon. Can have high or only mediocre
strength, depending on type and construction. Rayons are often
used now in carpeting and auto tires.
Acetate: No longer classified as "rayon" but designated sep-
arately. Generally has better draping quality, wrinkle-resistance
and washability than rayon, although is not always as strong. "Tri-
acetate," another version widely advertised under the Arnel brand
name, has excellent draping quality, and is fast drying; thus is
often used in wash-and-wear or minimum-care garments.
^Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
Loaded Questions a Danffer:
Opinion Polls Significant
But Still Not Foolproof
HP HE PUBLIC OPINION POLL has become
a significant factor in modern political life.
We may try to ignore or discount it but the polls
are quoted more and more as the days grind out
until election day.
This year, the most publicized poll of them
all, Dr. George Gallup's American Institute of
Public Opinion, marks its 25th anniversary. Since
so many people question how the Gallup Poll
operates and its accuracy in reflecting public
opinion, Dr. Gallup has provided information on
the techniques and methods used by his organi-
zation.
The Gallup report is informative and honestly
admits that developments can take place which
undermine the effectiveness of the poll.
The worst debacle which hit the Gallup Poll,
for example, was in 1948 when Harry Truman
and the Democrats scored a dramatic upset over
Thomas Dewey and the Republicans. Gallup's
explanation of what actually happened in that
election follows:
"Last-minute developments can always shift
opinion, especially of persons who have not
definitely made up their minds how they will
vote. In the 1948 Dewey-Truman campaign,
a drop in the price of farm products just before
the election was an important factor in shifting
farm voters to the Truman side. In 1956,
Eisenhower's majority was substantially in-
creased by the Hungarian revolt and the Suez
crisis which occurred just prior to the election."
Gallup said that the lessons of 1948 made it
necessary for the pollsters to make basic changes
in their procedure. For one, they now poll right
up to election day. Even at that, the 1952 presi-
dential election forecast was 4.4 percent off,
considerably higher than the average deviation
of 1.7 percent since 1948.
FIRST-RATE CATASTROPHE hit a prede-
cessor of the Gallup Poll back in 1936. The
Literary Digest received 2,375,000 mail ballots
from readers indicating that Gov. Alf Landon
would decisively defeat Pres. Roosevelt Every-
one knows what happened. Roosevelt won by the
greatest landslide in all history.
Gallup claims that if a representative sample
of only 500 persons had been taken it would
have indicated the great popular victory of /
Roosevelt. He insists that the poll would prob-
ably have been off only about 2 percent — the
margin for probable error.
Words, Music, History:
Gallup says that "a random or representative
sample should contain approximately the same
proportions of old persons and young — the edu-
cated and uneducated — rich and poor — farmers,
unskilled workers, professional people, white col-
lar workers, skilled laborers — Catholics and Prot-
estants, etc. — as exist in the population. And
the various regions of the country should be
properly represented."
There is much concern in some quarters that
the Gallup Poll actually serves to influence the
votes of many persons, starting bandwagon move-
ments. Gallup says this is not true and points
to the victory 6f Truman when the poll said that
Dewey would win.
On the other hand, if a candidate makes a poor
showing in early polls there seems little question
that many of his supporters will become discour-
aged.
ANOTHER CRITICISM of the Gallup Poll
is the manner in which questions are presented.
It is not always easy to phrase the questions to
remove any hint of bias. Gallup maintains that
the staff of the institute works carefully to remove
any conditioning of the answers. Nevertheless,
the system does not appear to be foolproof.
One example is a poll printed in February
1959. The public was asked whether they fa-
vored a law against "ieatherbedding." The term
"featherbedding" is a slanted word calculated to
produce a prejudicial answer. Even the actual
wording of the question favors the side of those
who charge "featherbedding":
"In order to create work for more union mem-
bers, some unions require more workers than
are actually needed on a job. Would you favor
or oppose laws to stop this practice?"
In its news release from Princeton, N. J.,
Gallup declared: "A majority of the public would
favor legislation aimed at stopping the practice
of 'featherbedding' — the word used to describe
the practice of making an employer hire more
workers than he needs."
Of course, the basic question, which was not
asked, is how many workers an employer needs.
This is a major issue on the railroads.
Public opinion polls are still widely used and
given general credence, despite the buffeting they
have received by actual results of elections. But
as this "featherbedding" example shows, they
aire still far from perfect. (Public Affairs Institute
— Washington Window.)
'Songs of Work and Freedom'
Calls Tune on Labor's Battles
ANEW, 208-page volume celebrating and
documenting the labor movement's struggles
in America and the fight for freedom around the
world has been published by the Labor Educa-
tion Div. of Roosevelt University.
"Songs of Work and Freedom" by Edith
Fowke and Joe Glazer contains the words and
music to 100 songs from the 14th Century to
the present. But it is not just another songbook.
Each song contains detailed notes tracing
its origin, the circumstances under which it
was first sung and what's happened to it since.
Five years of gathering and researching the
material went into the volume.
Miss Fowke is a noted Canadian folklore spe-
cialist; Glazer is well known as a union folk
singer and as education director of the United
Rubber Workers.
The book includes all the popular trade union
songs, "work" songs from all over and the songs
of "no work" of the breadlines and the soup
kitchens.
Newest song in the collection is "Automa-
tion" written by Glazer and describing a fac-
tory worker's horror when he comes to work
one day and finds that everyone — including
the boss — has been replaced by a machine.
Glazer has made a number of record albums
featuring his own as well as traditional labor
songs. In 1951 he was sent on a "singing" tour
of Europe by the State Dept. His most recent
album is based on the book and includes 15
songs from the collection.
Miss Fowke is the author of "Folk Songs of
Canada" and has edited a number of other folk
song volumes. She has prepared hundreds of
folk song programs for the Canadian Broadcast-
ing Corp.
Copies of "Songs of Work and Freedom" are
available from the Labor Education Div. of
Roosevelt University, 430 South Michigan, Chi-
cago 5, 111., at $2 for the soft cover edition and
$5 for the hard cover book.
"Isn't it wonderful? They even pre-burn the cake
for you!"
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Page Nine
Kohler Strike Drags On; So Does NLRB
Labor Board Ponders
Six-Year-Old Case
By Gervase N. Love
In Sheboygan, Wis., on Mar. 10, 1960, a handful of members
of Auto Workers Local 833 grimly maintained the Kohler Co.
picket line they started Apr. 5, 1954, when they walked out with
some 2,500 fellow-members in what has become the country's
longest — and bitterest — strike.
In Washington, the same day,f
same
another scene was acted out in the
tired drama demonstrating that
justice delayed is justice denied —
oral arguments before the National
Labor Relations Board on the trial
examiner's report in the unfair la-
bor practice case the union filed
against the Kohler Co. on July 8,
1954, nearly six years ago.
The record of the case is al-
ready one of the longest in
NLRB history — some 20,400
pages, more than 1,900 exhibits
and nearly 6,000 ft. of movie
film.
The union's original charge was
amended several times before hear-
ings opened before Trial Examiner
George A. Downing. With inter-
ruptions for negotiations and me-
diation and a reopening after hear-
ings before the Senate special com-
mittee headed by Sen. John L. Mc-
Clellan, the hearings have con-
sumed nearly four years.
Dominated by one of the
country's most rabid anti-union-
ists, Lyman C. Conger, a vice
president in charge of labor re-
lations, the Kohler company has
fought with unabashed consist-
ency through every stage of bar-
gaining, mediation, court action
and hearings before both the
Wisconsin Employment Rela-
tions Board and the NLRB.
Downing in all issued three in-
termediate reports. His first, dated
Sept. 12, 1956, dismissed the com-
plaints because union trustees* had
not filed non-Communist affidavits
but was reversed by the NLRB on
the ground that the affidavits were
not required.
The report was sent back to
Downing to decide on the merits.
His second report was issued Oct.
9, 1957. It held the company had
prolonged the strike by unfair
practices, and that nearly all rank-
and-file strikers whose jobs had not
been filled before June 1, 1954,
should be reinstated. He recom-
mended that if necessary the com-
pany discharge replacements hired
after June 1, 1954, to make room
for the strikers.
Company Acted Illegally
Downing wrote that the com-
pany transformed what had been
an economic strike into an unfair
labor practice strike in June 1954.
He recommended that the
company be required to bargain
in good faith, to supply the un-
ion with wage data it had re-
quested, and to reimburse strik-
ers who were ousted from
Kohler-owner homes and a
company-owned hotel.
Before the report got to the
NLRB, both sides asked for a re-
opening to get into the record tes-
timony before the McClellan com-
mittee in February and March
1958. So Downing conducted new
hearings and issued his third re-
port, a supplement to the second,
on Mar. 5, 1959.
'The new matter," he wrote
"simply supports and confirms the
former findings."
In his first report he said the
case "is only one phase of an
unedifying industrial conflict —
more typical of a bygone era of
labor relations — which has been
fought simultaneously on several
fronts with cdhstant bitterness
and frequent fury."
At the hearing before the board
Conger, the company spokesman,
attempted to knock down Down-
ing's report and recommendations.
George Squillacote, of the NLRB
Chicago regional office, appearing
for the board's general counsel,
and two union lawyers, Louis H.
Pollak and David Rabinovitz, sup-
ported Downing's findings and rec-
ommendations so far as they went,
but argued they had not gone far
enough.
Squillacote sought to show
that virtually every company
move was based on the intention
of getting rid of the union or so
weakening it that if it survived,
Kohler would have "20 years of
labor peace." The firm's anti-
unionism, he charged, pre-dated
the UAW's appearance as bar-
gaining agent.
Pollak adduced legal arguments
to support Downing's finding that
Kohler refused to bargain in good
faith, complimenting the trial ex-
aminer for "an extraordinary job,
but not a perfect job." The rec-
ord, he said, shows "no honest ef-
fort (by Kohler) to come to an
agreement."
Rabinovitz, winding up for
the union, stressed the human
element in the case. He accused
company officials of hatred of
unions, adding that "hatred
evinces a state of mind, and peo-
ple act in accordance with that
state of mind."
He attacked Conger's account of
"800 acts of violence," asserting
that "a tragic element" in the case
was the company's propaganda ef-
fort to give government officials
and boards the impression of wide-
spread vandalism.
'Premeditated Conduct*
He accused the firm of indulging
in "the most flagrant and premedi-
tated conduct" in efforts to break
the union, charged it with "spying
when it should have been bargain-
ing," and sought to have the board
order more reinstatements than
Downing did.
"This involves people," he em-
phasized, "people who believed
they had the right to better them-
selves, to call in a reputable inter-
national union to help them.
"These are people born and
raised in Sheboygan, people who
built their lives there. This com-
pany by its position has caused
many of them to leave. The com-
munity has suffered because they
went away, and we want them
back.
"The only thing a worker has
is his job — and in the final analy-
sis, that is what is at stake here."
The Kohler case, an almost
classic travesty of the majesty of
the law and its procedures, is far
from an end despite the hearing.
Still Unsettled
It is anybody's guess as to how
much time will be required for a
decision from the full NLRB which
heard the arguments — Chairman
Boyd Leedom and Members Philip
Ray Rodgers, Stephen S. Bean, Jo-
seph A. Jenkins and John H. Fan-
ning. Then, almost certainly, the
case will be entrusted to the courts,
including the U.S. Supreme Court.
The pickets who are still mak-
ing their rounds in snowy Sheboy-
gan, dreaming perhaps of a spring
when at least the weather will be
kinder, are likely to wear out a
lot of shoes before the wheels that
grind so slowly turn for the last
time.
WEIGHING THEIR CASE just prior to the start of oral argument
before the NLRB on the trial examiner's report in the Auto Work-
ers' long-standing dispute with the Kohler Co. are (left to right)
David Rabinovitz of the UAW legal staff, UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil
Mazey and Harold Cranefield, the union's general counsel.
Lockout to Force
Pact OK Held Illegal
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled illegal the use of
a lockout by Salt Lake City plumbing and heating contractors to
force quick acceptance by a union of the employers' contract
proposals.
The board's order, based on an intermediate report by Trial
Examiner William E. Spencer, di-'^
rected the Utah Plumbing & Heat-
ing Contractors' Association to
make up loss of pay to members
of four Plumbers locals because of
a four-day shutdown.
Spencer found that the multi-
employer group met Mar. 30, 1959,
and agreed on a lockout if the un-
ion should reject its final wage of-
fer the following day, the same day
the contract expired.
The proposal was made and,
Spencer reported, the employers
insisted on but failed to receive
assurances that the union leaders
would try to sell their members
on the offer. Then, he added,
the testimony indicated the em-
ployers believed "we have as
much right to lock you out as
you have to strike."
The lockout came Apr. 1. The
union locals voted to accept the
wage offer and agreement ended
the lockout Apr. 4.
Spencer called "incredible" the
employers' claim that they did not
know a strike vote, adopted on re-
jection of first wage offer, was auto-
matically cancelled by the em-
ployers' second offer.
Spencer labeled the lockout the
the "antithesis of good-faith bar-
gaining" and a move "resorted to
primarily not as an economic
weapon necessitated by a strike haz-
ard, but for the purpose of forcing
a quick acceptance of the employ-
ers' contract proposals."
In another case, the NLRB
accepted a reversal from the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Dis-
trict of Columbia and issued a
new order to the Honolulu Star-
Bulletin, Ltd., to reinstate and
provide back pay to one employe.
The board had previously ruled
that the newspaper made an illegal
contract with the Typographical
Union and illegally fired two work-
ers. It invalidated the pact and or-
dered reimbursement of union dues
and assessments to all employes.
The court found the contract to
be legal, voided the board's reim-
bursement order and also found
just one of the discharges to be
illegal.
Weldon Pajamas Put on
ACWA 'Don't Buy' List
New York — The non-union Weldon pajama has become the
target of a nationwide consumer education campaign sponsored by
the union label department of the -Clothing Workers.
Leaflet distribution was scheduled immediately at retail stores
in Detroit and seven other cities to inform the public and union
members where the products of the'^
Weldon Pajama Co., Inc., are sold
Weldon, the union declared, has
"stubbornly resisted" efforts by its
employes at three plants to join the
Clothing Workers.
At Williamsport and Muncy,
Pa., where 1,200 are employed,
the union said it was forced to
withdraw from a National Labor
Relations Board election last year
because of Weldon's "unfair tac-
tics" against its employes.
"An atmosphere of terror" was
created by Weldon at the Pennsyl-
vania plants, the union charged,
after the workers appealed to the
union for -help in organizing.
"Unions breed trouble," was the
way one Weldon plant manager ex-
pressed his attitude in a letter to
employes, the union noted. Union
sympathizers were laid off.
At a third Weldon plant in Gulf-
port, Miss., the union said it won
a labor board election to represent
some 500 workers. For two years,
management refused to sign a con-
tract. Then the plant was closed
temporarily and after Weldon re-
fused to rehire union leaders, the
NLRB ordered payment of back
wages. Weldon finally shut down
and sold the plant, the union said.
Navy Host to
Labor Group
In Latin Trip
A" three-man AFL-CIO delega-
tion has left on sort of a labor
"good-will" mission to South Amer-
ican ports with the help of the U.S.
Navy.
Aboard the aircraft carrier
Shangri La and headed beyond the
equator are AFL-CIO Special Rep.
George J. Richardson; Henry And-
erson of Chicago, vice president of
the Retail, Wholesale & Depart-
ment Store Union, and Wayne
Strader of Dallas, Tex., vice presi-
dent of the Grain Millers.
They left San Diego, Calif., on
Mar. 16 and expected to be gone
for 43 days, when the Shangri La
is scheduled to dock in New York.
The trip is the second on which
labor spokesmen have sailed to
South American ports as guests of
the Navy.
Their itinerary calls for stops of
varying lengths at Lima, Peru; Val-
paraiso and Santiago, Chile; Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, and Port-of-Spain,
Trinidad.
The delegation plans on hold-
ing a series of meetings with rep-
resentatives of organized labor in
each of the South American na-
tions for the purpose of cement-
ing and strengthening the good
relations the AFL-CIO and the
trade union movements of the
other countries have long en-
joyed. In addition, of course,
they will endeavor to promote
further good will between the
United States and the countries
on their itinerary.
1 Pres. O. S. Knight of the Oil
Workers, an AFL-CIO vice presi-
dent, accompanied Pres. Eisenhow-
er on the latter's recent good will
visit to Latin America. Knight is
chairman of the AFL-CIO Inter-
American Affairs Committee and
a member of Eisenhower's Advis-
ory Committee on Inter-American
Affairs.
Top Officers
Of Pressmen
All Renamed
Pressmen's Home, Tenn. — Top
officers of the Pressmen were
named to new terms without oppo-
sition in the quadrennial election
held among the union's 112,000
members in the U.S. and Canada.
Anthony J. Andrade of Bos-
ton, president since the death of
the late Pres. Thomas E. Dun-
woody in May 1959, was chosen
for a full four-year term. Re-
elected was Sec.-Treas. George
L. Googe, of Pressmen's Home
and Savannah, Ga.
Vice Presidents Alexander J.
Rohan, Washington; James F.
Doyle, Chicago, and Walter J.
Turner, Los Angeles, were re-
turned without opposition. J.
Frazier Moore of Detroit was
chosen vice president representing
newspaper pressmen over the in-
cumbent, Jack P. Torrence, and
also Ross Bonham, both of Chi-
cago.
Vice Pres. Patrick O'Sullivan of
New York, representing paper han-
dlers, won another term by defeat-
ing Fred Atkins, St. Louis. Vice
Pres. F. W. Maxted, Hamilton,
Ont., representative of Canadian
members, defeated Don Poitras of
Toronto to gain another term.
The trustees of the union's head-
quarters and the technical trade
school were elected without oppo-
sition.
The new officers will be for-
mally installed at the quadrennial
international convention to be held
in New York the last week in Sep-
tember and will serve until Sep-
tember 1964.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Bill Aims to
End Abuses in
Security Cases
A bill aimed at barring the use of
"faceless" accusers in cases under
(he industrial security program and
assuring judicial review has been
introduced in the House by Repre-
sentatives James Roosevelt (D-Cal.)
and Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N.J.).
Their proposal, one paragraph
long, would amend the Adminis-
trative Procedure Act. It reads:
"Notwithstanding any other pro-
vision of law, the decision or ad-
judication by any agency as to its
officers, employes and agents in the
course of the administration of any
federal employe loyalty or security
program or law and as to the of-
ficers, employes and agents of any
contractor with the United States in.
the course of the administration of
any industrial security review pro-
gram or law shall be made on the
record as contemplated by this act
and shall be subject to all other pro-
visions of this act."
The proposed amendment
seeks to require formal hearings
when a worker is accused of
questionable security qualifica-
tions and as a result is denied
access to classified information
required to carry out his job. The
government would no longer be
permitted to offer allegations of
unidentified witnesses, but would
have to put the witnesses them-
selves on the stand where they
would be subject to cross-exam-
ination.
Thompson and Roosevelt intro-
duced their amendment after the
AFL-CIO had protested a new ex-
ecutive order issued by Pres. Eisen-
hower despite AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany's request for con-
sultation before it was handed
down.
9 Unionists Given
Fines, Jail Terms
Denver, Colo. — Nine present
and former officials of the unaffili-
ated Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers
were fined and sentenced to prison
following conviction on charges of
filing false non-Communist affi-
davits with the National Labor Re-
lations Board.
The convictions were based on
oaths taken from 1949 to 1956.
The affidavits requirement, origin-
ally part of the Taft-Hartley Act,
was repealed by the Landrum-
Griffin Act passed by Congress last
year.
Sentenced by Federal Judge
Alfred A. Arraj to three years in
prison and fined $2,000 each were
Irving Dichter, secretary-treasurer
of the union; former Sec.-Treas.
Maurice Travis; Controller Harold
Sanderson; Raymond Dennis,
Chase Powers and Albert Skinner,
executive board members, and Intl.
Rep. Charles Wilson.
Terms of 18 months and fines of
$1,500 each were imposed on Intl.
Rep. Jesse Van Camp and James
H. Durkin, a former organizer.
Counsel for the nine announced
they will appeal.
LaRose Dies; Headed
Trainmen's Trustees
Cleveland, O. — Lloyd J. LaRose,
chairman of the board of trustees
of the Railroad Trainmen, died
unexpectedly in a hospital here at
the age of 51.
Born in Montreal, he worked as
a brakeman and conductor on the
Canadian National Railway, be-
coming chairman of the grievance
committee of Lodge 802 before
being elected to the grand lodge
board of appeals in 1954. He was
appointed to the board of trustees
to fill a vacancy in June 1956, was
named chairman in November and
was elected to a full term at the
recent convention here.
He is survived by his widow,
Elsie, two sons and a daughter.
JOHN D. CONNORS
Named to staff of AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany
LAWRENCE M. ROGIN
Appointed director of AFL-CIO
Dept. of Education
Connors, Rogin Named
To AFL-CIO Posts
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany announced two major staff ap-
pointments at the national headquarters, both effective in mid-April.
They were:
John D. Connors, director of the federation's Dept. of Education,
has been named to Meany's staff to handle special assignments for
the president. ®
Lawrence D. Rogin, veteran
trade union educator, was named
to succeed Connors.
Connors, 57, has been direc-
tor of the Dept. of Education since
the merger of the AFL and CIO
and previously headed the AFL
Workers Education Bureau.
Rogin, 51, has been director
of Labor Education and Serv-
ices for the Institute of Labor &
Industrial Relations at the Uni-
versity of Michigan since 1957.
He had served as education di-
rector of the Textile Workers
Union of America from 1941 to
1957 and prior to that held a
similar post with the Hosiery
Workers.
Connors, a native of Medford,
Mass., is a graduate of Boston
University and has served as presi-
dent of a local of the American
Federation of Teachers, secretary
of a central body, vice president of
the Massachusetts Federation of
Labor and as a national vice presi-
dent of the AFT. He headed the
Workers Education Bureau from
1943 to merger.
Rogin, a native of New York
City, is a graduate of Columbia
University. He started his trade
union career as an education direc-
tor and newspaperman in Reading,
Pa., and served as an instructor at
Brookwood Labor College before
joining the Hosiery Workers as ed-
ucation director.
At the University of Michigan
he has lectured in political science
as well as directing the labor edu-
cation program sponsored jointly
by the university and Wayne State
University. He has served as a
vice president of the Adult Educa-
tion Association and as chairman
of the American Labor Education
Service.
Seek to Cleanse Union:
B&C Reformers Call
National Conference
Leaders of a reform group within the Bakery & Confectionery
Workers have issued a call for a conference of B & C unions to be
held in St. Louis on Mar. 3 1 as the next step in their drive to clean
up their international union and pave the way for reaffiliation with
the AFL-CIO.
The conference call went out in'^
• the name of the Local Unions' Re-
unification Committee. It was
signed by the five local union offi-
cers who have charged in a suit
filed in U.S. District Court that
B&C Pres. James G. Cross is
"plundering" the international un-
ion's treasury for "personal profit."
The group followed up the suit
by asking court permission to "in-
spect and copy" the books and
records of the international for the
period since Jan. 1, 1956.
In an accompanying affidavit,
Atty. Samuel Harris Cohen, counsel
for the officers of the five locals,
said prompt court action was es-
sential because "defendants' prior
course of conduct gives good cause
to believe that given sufficient time,
incriminating records may be alt-
ered and incriminating documents
destroyed."
The reform k group predicted that
"more than 75 percent of the pres-
ent membership of the B & C" will
be represented at the St. Louis
meeting.
In its conference call, the re-
unifiieation committee said the
B&C has lost more than 70,000
members to the AFL-CIO's
American Bakery & Confection-
ery Workers, established after
the federation's expulsion of the
B & C in December 1957 for
failing to rid itself of corrupt
leadership.
Declaring that "the prestige of
the B & C is at its lowest ebb,"
the committee asserted that its
membership had dropped to 60,000
— of which 20,000 are in the five
locals leading the cleanup drive.
The committee members said
they had met with Cross in Wash-
ington, D. C, on Jan. 8, 1960,
FCC Head Resigns Under Fire,
Ike's 8th Conflict-of-interest Case
For the eighth time since Pres. Eisenhower took office in 1953 a high official of his Republican
Administration has resigned at the height -of a storm over alleged conflict of interest.
The latest in the parade of Eisenhower Administration officials quitting under fire was John C.
Doerfer, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who had been sharply criticized for
accepting favors from a member of the industry regulated by the FCC.
As was the case with other "
Administration resignees — in-
cluding former Presidential Asst.
Sherman Adams — Doerfer pro-
tested he was innocent of any
wrongdoing, but added he was
stepping down "to avoid possible
embarrassment" to either the
President or the Administration.
In reply, Eisenhower expressed
"regret" at the circumstances lead-
ing to Doerfer's resignation but said
they "indicate your decision to be
a wise one."
Guest on Yacht
Under fire from a special House
subcommittee headed by Rep. Oren
Harris CD-Ark.), Doerfer had ad-
mitted being the guest aboard a
yacht owned by George B. Storer,
president of a Miami Beach com-
pany owning five television and sev-
en radio stations. The foriner FCC
head said he made the plane trip
to the Florida vacation in Storer's
private plane.
The highest placed Adminis-
tration official to quit under sim-
ilar circumstances was Adams,
who virtually ran the White
House operation from 1953 until
he stepped down in 1958 in the
wake of testimony about lavish
gifts showered on him by Bern-
ard Goldfine, New England tex-
tile magnate whose firms were
having difficulties with several
government agencies.
Other Administration officials re-
signing in the face of conflict-of-
interest charges were:
• Harold Talbott, resigned Aug.
1, 1955 as Air Force Secretary;
accused of using his office to drum
up business for an industrial engi-
neering firm in which he maintained
an interest after becoming a govern-
ment official.
• Peter Strobel, resigned Nov.
8, 1955 as Public Buildings Com-
missioner; accused of using his
government job to further the in-
terests of an engineering consultant
firm with which he had been asso-
ciated.
• Hugh Cross, resigned Nov.
25, 1955 as chairman of the Inter-
state Commerce Commission; ac-
cused of intervening in negotiation
of a contract for the transfer of
baggage and passengers among Chi-
cago's railroad stations, with the
contract eventually going to a firm
headed by an old friend.
• Edmund F. Mansure, resigned
Feb. 6, 1956 as head of the Gen-
eral Services Administration; ac-
cused of political favoritism in the
award of a contract for expansion
of a Nicaro, Cuba, nickel plant
owned by the U.S. government
• Robert Tripp Ross, resigned
Feb. 14; 1957 as an Assistant Sec-
retary of Defense; criticized for
holding a top defense post at a
time when firms run by his wife
and brother-in-law held multi-mil-
lion-dollar uniform contracts with
the Army.
• Richard A. Mack, resigned in
1958 as a member of the FCC;
accused of receiving payments from
a friend working for a corporation
involved in a Miami television
channel award; later indicted with
the friend on charges of conspir-
ing to influence the award.
U. S. Investment
In Canada Rises
Ottawa, Ont. — Americans own
more than half of Canada's eco-
nomic resources, according to the
latest survey by the Dominion Bu-
reau of Statistics.
U.S. capital now accounts for
52 percent of the total investment
in Canada's manufacturing, min-
ing, smelting, and oil and gas, a
gain of 6 percentage points since
1954, the bureau reported. -
Capital coming into Canada
from other foreign countries in-
creased from 7 percent to 10 per-
cent of the total during the same
period.
after "having been informed that
Cross was ready to resign" but that
"he refused to do so."
They said Cross* change of
mind resulted from a meeting
with Teamsters Pres. James R.
Hoffa at which a merger between
the two expelled unions was al-
legedly discussed.
Their conference call charged
that:
• The B&C has been run
"solely for the benefit of Cross and
not for the welfare of the bakery
and confectionery workers" who
are members of the union.
• Since the union's expulsion
from the AFL-CIO, "over $2.5
million of B & C money has been
spent in a losing battle to fight ABC
in the courts, the National Labor
Relations Board and in the shops.**
• Cross has spent union "death
benefit reserves, of about $2.8 mil-
lion, in this fight to protect his own
interests. As a result, hundreds of
death benefit claims are not being
paid on time."
The five reform leaders — Local 2
Pres. Walter Friese, Chicago; Lo-
cal 3 Pres. Frank Dutto, Long
Island City,.N. Y.; Local 12 Pres.
Ermin Moschetta, Pittsburgh; Lo-
cal 37 Sec.-Treas. Albert C. Meyer,
Los Angeles, and Local 163 Sec.
Charles R. Landers, Houston — re-
iterated charges they had made in
their suit against the international
union and its top officers.
They said Cross has failed to re-
fute charges of corrupt conduct
leveled against him by the AFL-
CIO Ethical Practices Committee.
They charged that he has violated
the B & C constitution by failing to
furnish locals with semi-annual
audits of the financial transactions
of himself and his staff, and that he
illegally changed the terms of the
union retirement plan.
The reform leaders said Cross
has spent most of the past two
years in Palm Beach, Fla., at
union expense "and has rarely
even visited union headquarters
in Washington, D. C."
In their conference call, the five
reform leaders said they had to re-
sort "to legal action as well as
rank-and-file action" in order to
force a fiscal accounting.
Civil Liberties
Conference
Program Set
"What's ahead for American
freedoms?" will be discussed by
Rep. Richard Boiling (D-M6.) and
Emmet J. Hughes, recently chief
of foreign correspondents for Time
Magazine, at the dinner meeting
feature of the twelfth annual Na-
tional Civil Liberties Clearing
House conference at the Hotel
Sheraton-Carlton in Washington,
Mar. 24, 25.
Over 100 national organizations
are expected to participate in the
conference. Thomas E. Harris,
AFL-CIO associate general counsel,
will be one of the speakers, and
AFL-CIO Legislative Rep. Hyman
Bookbinder is a member of the pro-
gram committee.
"Civil Rights — Facts and Fore-
casts" will be discussed by a panel
including Rep. James Roosevelt
(D-Calif.), Deputy Attorney Gen-
eral Lawrence^W. Walsh, Dr. Dan-
iel W. Wynn, "chanjain of Tuskegee
Institute in Alabama, and Harold
C. Fleming, director of the South-
ern Regional Council.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1960
Page E!eve«
Average Family Pushed Out of Market:
Housing Conference Raps
Ike's 'Tight-Money' Policy
The average American family is being "deliberately and artificially" pushed out of the housing
market by the Eisenhower Administration's "tight- money" policy, Boris Shishkin, secretary of the
AFL-CIO Housing Committee, has charged.
Addressing the 29th annual meeting of the National Housing Conference in Washington, Shishkin
called for formulation of a new national policy to bring moderate-income families back into the mar-
ket "by lowering the interest rate,'^
by extending the repayment period,
or both."
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
the nation will need at least 35
million new homes between now
and 1975 to replace substandard
housing and to meet the popula-
tion explosion. This would call
for an annual rate of 2.3 million
units, as contrasted with the pres-
ent 1.1 million new starts a year.
Delegates to the two-day confer-
ence heard Leon Keyserling, chair-
man of former Pres. Truman's
Council of Economic Advisors,
lash out at the Administration's
"regressive policies on the tax front,
the monetary front and many other
fronts." An adequate nationwide
housing effort, he said, would be
"by far the largest single factor in
helping to sustain a high and stable
rate of over-all economic growth."
Rains Announces Hearings
Rep. Albert Rains (D-Ala.),
sponsor of an AFL-CIO-backed
emergency bill appropriating $1
billion to purchase FHA and GI
mortgages for lower-priced hous-
ing, assured the conference that the
stopgap measure would not jeop-
ardize the prospects for passage of
an omnibus housing bill later in the
present session.
Rains said the Housing sub-
committee of which he is chair-
man will begin intensive hearings
on broader legislation soon after
Easter. The measure would deal
with funds for urban renewal,
the low-rent public housing pro-
gram, college housing, and other
methods to provide housing for
all families in the lower-income
groups.
Sen. John Sparkman (D-Ala.),
pointing to Pres. Eisenhower's two
vetoes of broader housing legisla-
tion last year, charged the Admin-
istration with turning the clock
back "30 years." He called for ac-
celeration of the drive to eliminate
slums and substandard housing, and
for action to aid lower-income
families by means of "longer-term
and lower-cost credit."
Shishkin accused the Administra-
tion of attempting to "reinforce its
over-all tight-money policy" by
raising residential financial charges
"higher and higher."
Because of the high interest rates,
the AFL-CIO spokesman said, the
family getting a typical $12,000
mortgage this year at the current
FHA rate of 5.75 percent will pay
$3,204 in added interest charges
than it would have at the 1952
FHA rates, and $1,620 more than
at the 1957 rates.
In addition, in order to secure
funds in today's market, banks are
charging "discounts" ranging from
2 to 7 percent. At an average "dis-
count" of 3.6 percent, he said, the
buyer in effect has $457 added to
the cost of the house.
"On the basis of the generally
accepted rule that the annual hous-
ing expense prudently requires an
annual income five times the ex-
pense," Shishkin said, the added
charges of $175 annually "require
a family income $875 greater than
would be necessary at the previous,
lower interest levels."
Lowering interest rates and ex-
tending the term of the mortgage,
Shishkin said, would put new
homes within the reach of mil-
lions of families. A $12,000 30-
year FHA mortgage at the cur-
rent 5.75 percent rate, he said,
calls for monthly payments of
$73.88, while the same mortgage
at 3 percent, repaid over a 50-
year period, would require a
monthly payment of only $38.84.
Before winding up the two-day
session, conference delegates ap-
proved resolutions:
• Assailing the Administration's
"tight-money" policy as "inflation-
ary, unsound and unfair," and de-
claring that its effect is to "restrict
the essential growth of the whole
economy."
• Protesting the "apparent atti-
tude" of the Administration "that
public expenditures of any sort
constitute a drain on the nation's
resources." The conference called
for action on slum clearance, ur-
ban renewal and low-income hous-
ing which would "generate in-
creased economic activity ... so
vital for our future prosperity."
• Urging enactment of legisla-
tion requiring the payment of not
less than the prevailing wage in
connection with the construction of
any housing or community facili-
ties "involving federal financial as-
sistance or mortgage insurance,"
and calling on the Public Housing
Administration to let local housing
authorities fix the wages of mainte-
nance and clerical employes at the
prevailing local level.
• Expressing concern over the
"alarming lag" in the development
of such community facilities as
schools, parks, playgrounds, sewage
disposal plants, water systems and
transportation facilities. It called
federal financial assistance on these
projects "imperative if there is not
to be a drastic breakdown in com-
munity public services."
Auto Workers Strike
2 Case Tractor Plants
Strikes by the Auto Workers against the J. I. Case Co. farm
equipment plants at Bettendorf, la., and Racine, Wis., hardened as
the company refused joint meetings with federal mediators and the
local unions.
A third walkout may be forced at the Case plant in Rockford,
where the contract of UAW'
111.,
Local 378 expired Jan. 31.
Some 1,000 workers were cov-
ered by the contract of Local 858
at Bettendorf when it ran out Jan.
31. The workers struck Mar. 7
when negotiations deadlocked.
Some 2,000 workers at the Ra-
cine plant, where Local 180's pact
expired Feb. 29, walked out Mar. 9
as a result of stalled talks there.
The company in the past has re-
jected UAW bids for a master con-
tract. Bargaining takes place with
union locals individually at the
firm's seven plants.
In addition to wage and fringe
improvements, the UAW is seek-
ing to replace the present com-
pany supervised pension program
with a jointly administered plan.
The union also is seeking a sup-
plemental unemployment benefits
and severance pay program, a
union security clause, a cost of
New Home Building Sags
To Lowest in 19 Months
Private housing starts dropped 8 percent in February to
their lowest level in 19 months, the Commerce Dept. has
reported.
The disclosure that home building had declined to an annual
rate of 1.1 million units, from the 1959 level of 1.4 million,
came on the heels of a charge from the 29th annual meeting of
the National Housing Conference that the Administration's
"tight-money" policy was behind the housing decline.
Rep. Albert Rains (D-Ala.) said the report "underscores the
need" for immediate congressional approval of his $1 billion
emergency housing bill to "shore up a sagging key industry."
Prompt passage of the AFL-CIO-backed stopgap bill, he said,
would have a "stimulating influence" on the late spring build-
ing season.
living provision and an annual
improvement factor.
Case is attempting partial opera-
tion of the two struck plants. The
UAW reports that "just a handful"
of workers have reported at Betten-
dorf, while the company concedes
the Racine strike is almost com-
pletely effective.
A still unknown factor in the
industrial relations of the company
is the firm's new president, Wil-
liam J. Grede. Grede, 62, is for-
mer head of the National Associa-
tion of Manufacturers and served
as chairman of Case's executive
committee until he was elevated to
the top post early in February.
NMU Ousts
Independent
On Tug Line
New York — The Maritime Un^
ion has displaced an unaffiliated
union as collective bargaining rep-
resentative for crews of towboats of
the Sabine Transportation Co., Port
Arthur, Tex.
The NMU also has filed a pe-
tition for an election among some
200 unlicensed seamen on six
tankers the company operates be-
tween Port Arthur and other ports
in Texas and the west coast of
Florida. The Sabine Independent
Seamen's Association has held
representation rights since 1947.
The union, through its affiliated
tugboatmen's unit, the NMU Unit-
ed Marine Div., had challenged the
Sabine Independent Towboat Em-
ployes Association.
The vote on the 22 boats of the
company was 117 for NMU, 55
for the independent union and 2
for neither union.
The Money Curtain
Labor Urges Funds for
Less-Developed Nations
Participation of the United States in the proposed Intl. Develop-
ment Association, "a challenging new concept for aiding worldwide
economic progress, "was strongly supported by the AFL-CIO in tes-
timony before House Banking & Currency Subcommittee No. 1.
Research Dir. Stanley H. Ruttenberg expressed the AFL-CIO's
grave concern that the resources to'|^
be made available for the IDA
might ''be entirely too small to ac-
complish more than a small frac-
tion of the job to be done."
The IDA is a proposed asso-
ciation of free world countries
that would help finance in un-
derdeveloped countries, accord-
ing to its articles of agreement,
"any project . . . which will
make an important contribution
to the development of the area or
areas concerned, whether or not
the project is revenue-producing
or directly productive." U.S. par-
ticipation was endorsed by the
last AFL-CIO convention.
"Funds can be used not just for
revenue-yielding projects but for
roads, communications, housing,
sanitation, education and other
projects," Ruttenberg pointed out.
"These are projects which may
yield no immediate monetary re-
turns but will in time pay for
themselves many times over by
their invaluable contribution to the
expansion of the entire economy.
'Tremendously Important'
"While they may not be appro-
priately financed by 'bankable'
loans, they are tremendously im-
portant from the point of view of
achievement of sound economic
progress in the less developed
areas."
The IDA would be admin-
istered by the Intl. Bank for Re-
construction & Development and
would be closely coordinated
with the latter's activities. The
IBRD plays an important but
restricted role in aiding under-
developed countries, Ruttenberg
told the' committee, because it
can make loans only on the basis
of ability to repay.
Initial capital proposed for the
IDA is $1 billion. The U.S. would
provide $320 million; other eco-
nomically strong nations would put
up $443 million, and the remain-
ing $237 million would come from
the less developed nations them-
selves.
On the basis that these amounts
are intended for five years, the Ad-
ministration has asked only $73.6
million for fiscal 1961 and $61.5
million for each of the following
four years.
"We regard these amounts as
much too restrictive in view of the
size and scope of the job that ur-
gently needs to be done," Rutten-
berg said in urging that capital
funds be sharply increased.
'1 would emphasize that organ-
ized labor in the U.S. will continue
to endorse U.S. participation in and
support for the IDA only so long as
the IDA maintains policies fully at-
tuned to the needs and capacities of
the less developed nations. Indeed,
we would* urge this committee in its
report to Congress to recommend
that continued U.S. support for the
IDA be made conditional upon its
maintaining a flexible lending pol-
icy and that U.S. support should
be withdrawn if the IDA should
adopt a hard, bankable loan pol-
icy."
Ruttenberg cited the crying
need for helping many nations
in the underdeveloped areas of
the world to escape from the
grinding poverty of centuries*
Unless the free world aids them
in their climb to a better life, he
warned, they inevitably will turn
to the Soviet bloc despite the
equally inevitable threat to their
independence.
Assistance on an international
scale, he noted, is less likely to of-
fend the "sensibilities and pride" of
the recipient country and wipes out
the fear that an individual nation
providing help is doing so only to
promote its own political interest.
Has Bi-Partisan Support
U.S. participation in the pro-
posed new agency has strong bi-
partisan support. The authoriza-
tion bill on which Ruttenberg testi-
fied was introduced by Chairman
Brent Spence (D-Ky.) of the House
Banking & Currency Committee.
It also is backed by the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. C. Cheev-
er Hardwick, investment banker
and a member of the chamber's
finance committee, testified that in
the light of the needs of the less de-
veloped countries for developmental
capital, the IDA "represents the
most practical and reasonable pro-
posal which has been put forth."
Administration support came
through Sec. of the Treasury Rob-
ert B. Anderson, who told the com-
mittee this country would benefit in
the long run from participation in
the IDA because the countries
helped would buy more U.S. prod-
ucts as they developed. He said
there would be a temporary in-
crease in the balance of payments
deficit.
Page Twelve
Meany Tells Congress :
Nation's Conscience Demands
$1.25 Floor, Added Coverage
(Continued from Page 1)
of 75 cents or $1 an hour, I am
perfectly willing for it to go out
of business. ... It is not an
asset, it is a liability."
The nation's economy should be
growing "twice as fast as it is,"
Meany said, adding that lack of
consumer purchasing power is a
factor in the economic slowdown.
"It's perfectly obvious that a
group of people who are in a state
of permanent poverty aren't going
to buy their share," he said.
"The inability of these people to
be full consumers . . . cuts down
the number of higher-paid jobs
available by limiting the market
for everything from cars to car-
pets. It raises the direct and in-
direct cost of social welfare. The
poor are an expensive luxury for
the community as a whole . . .'
For ''employed, productive work
ers" to be a social problem, Meany
said, is "not only unjust; it is
plain foolishness."
Meany told the subcommittee
the AFL-CIO is glad that Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell has indi-
cated he no longer opposes any in-
crease in the minimum wage and
that "he has moved in our direc-
tion; even though he has not
moved nearly far enough."
He added that "the record
proves that Mitchell is consistently
over-cautious on wage-hour legis-
lation." Citing Mitchell's "gloomy
forebodings" in 1955 when Con-
gress went beyond the Administra-
tion's 90-cent-an-hour recommend-
Vote Issue Now Key
In Civil Rights Fight
The spotlight on the 1960 civil rights fight shifted to political
maneuvering in the House as the Senate marked time after five
weeks of debate and filibuster on measures to safeguard minority
rights.
Although the final version of civil rights legislation remained in
doubt, there were growing signs'^
were growing
that it would be a measure geared
almost exclusively to voting-rights
guarantees, shorn of other provi-
sions in the rights field.
On the heels of the overwhelm-
ing defeat of a motion to shut off
the marathon southern filibuster,
the Senate in quick succession:
• Killed a move to write into
the pending bill a proposal empow-
ering the Attorney General to file
civil suits to enforce rights in a
variety of fields, including school
Teamsters'
Brewery Raid
Beaten Down
Kansas City, Kan.— The Brewery
Workers spiked a new type of raid-
ing weapon the Teamsters trained
on employes of the Schlitz Brewing
Co. here by triumphing in a Na-
tional Labor Relations Board elec-
tion by a 97 to 14 vote.
The plot to drive the Brewery
Workers out of the brewery, where
BW Local 46 has been the bar-
gaining agent, began when Teams-
ters' representatives talked a Jew
malcontents into signing a petition
for an NLRB decertification elec-
tion.
At a hearing before a board
examiner, the Teamsters claimed
to have more than 30 percent of
the employes signed as members,
and the Brewery Workers promptly
forced them into a straight repre-
sentation election. When the ballots
were cast, the would-be raiders
emerged with less than 15 percent
of the vote.
The Brewery Workers mobil-
ized a hard-hitting field force
headed by Intl. Pres. Karl F.
Feller to protect their bargaining
status. Personal contact was
made with every member of the
bargaining unit, and at an open
meeting Feller gave an attentive
audience a rapid-fire expose of
Teamsters' tactics.
The Teamsters almost buried the
workers in propaganda letters char-
acterized by distortions and half-
truths. Spearheading their cam-
paign were Sam Ancona and Del
Nabors. Ancona, a bartender be-
fore appointment as a Teamsters'
business agent, once was a body-
guard for Lee Quisenberry, former
boxer. Nabors is himself an ex-
prize fighter. He pleaded guilty in
May 1954 to a charge of felonious
assault on a rank-and-file Team-
sters' member.
integration. This was similar to the
so-called "Title III" stripped from
the 1957 Civil Rights Act before
passage.
• Voted to knock out a section
making it a federal crime to ob-
struct court orders in integration
cases, after first having broadened
the provision by making it applica-
ble as well to injunctions in labor-
management disputes.
The Senate, which earlier had
remained in round-the-clock ses-
sions for a record-breaking 125
hours in an effort to wear down
filibustering Dixie Democrats, re-
turned to a more leisurely pace of
regular daily sessions awaiting
House passage of civil rights leg-
islation.
Senate adoption of a House-
passed measure would bypass the
powerful, conservative-domi-
nated House Rules Committee,
which bottled up the current
rights measure for seven months
until the threat of a discharge
petition forced the committee to
bring the measure to the floor.
Chances for enactment of an
omnibus bill were dimmed as the
House refused to consider amend-
ments which would have given per-
manent statutory authority to the
President's Committee on Equal
Job Opportunities and provided
limited federal aid to school dis-
tricts planning integration.
The amendments were ruled not
germane by the presiding officer
and sustained by a vote of the
House, with a majority of the Re-
publicans joining with southern
Democrats to prohibit consideration
of the measures despite the fact
that they were key provisions of
the Administration's civil rights
"package."
Partisan jockeying in the
House for a time threatened to
destroy proposals for guarantee-
ing voting rights for Negroes.
Liberal Democrats first moved to
have their proposal for White
House appointment of voting regis-
trars substituted for an Adminis-
tration plan of court - appointed
referees. Dixie representatives gave
the Democrats the balance of power
in making the substitution, then
switched and sided with Republi-
cans in striking the substitute from
the bill.
The Administration plan was
later revived, in slightly modified
form, and subsequently strength-
ened on the floor to insure that
legal delaying tactics would not be
used to keep Negroes from voting.
ation, Meany said: "If the secre-
tary had his way at that time, sev-
eral million workers would have
been short-changed."
Mitchell, who was originally
scheduled to be the lead-off witness,
will be heard at a later date, sub-
committee spokesmen said. The
witness schedule was reshuffled as
the starting date was postponed be-
cause of daily meetings by the full
Education & Labor Committee on
school construction legislation.
Meany said Mitchell and the
AFL-CIO are in agreement "in
principle if not in detail" in placing
a "high priority" on the need to in-
crease coverage.
He added, however: "This does
not mean — and I want to empha-
size the point — that the AFL-CIO
is prepared to accept an increase
in coverage, no matter how ex-
tensive, as a substitute for an in-
crease in the minimum itself.
Simple humanity demands both;
and on that principle no compro-
mise is possible."
Potofsky told the Landrum
subcommittee that a federal wage
floor too low to support a mini-
mum standard of living encour-
aged the growth of sweatshops.
He said many employers who
would like to pay a $1.25 mini-
mum are deterred by the "vi-
cious" practices of "chiselers who
exact their profits by condemn-
ing workers to live below or at
the very margin of subsistence."
He strongly urged extension of
coverage and spoke in particular
of laundry and dry cleaning work-
ers, most of whom are unprotected
by state minimum wage laws as
well as being left out of the federal
law. Even in states with a wage
law for these industries, he said,
the wage is sometimes less than
30 cents an hour.
Manufacturer Backs $1.25
Robert T. Garrison, spokesman
for a group of manufacturers em-
ploying 20,000 workers at factories
in 12 states, told the subcommittee:
"We support a minimum of
$1.25 per hour because we believe
it is necessary to stimulate pur-
chasing power among the lowest
paid workers and because employ-
ers who pay fair wages should be
protected against the unfair com-
petition of substandard wages."
Garrison, who is vice president
of Cluett, Peabody & Co., Inc.,
and head of its Arrow division,
said a higher minimum wage
would "help to create more job
opportunities" by raising purchas-
ing power.
IN RECOGNITION of his contribution to labor-management rela-
tions, Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, receives
the 11th annual Rerum Novarum Award of St. Peter's College at
a dinner in Newark, N. J., from Very Rev. James J. Shanahan,
the president. At left is AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, who re-
ceived the award in 1956;
Labor-Industry Meet
Supported by Cushing
Jersey City, N. J. — A national conference of labor and manage-
ment officials to "agree on some fundamental ethical principles"
for collective bargaining has been called for by Richard Cardinal
Cushing, Archbishop of Boston.
The Cardinal's plea for a "new era of more socially conscious
collective bargaining" came in a'f""
speech at St. Peter's College here
as he received the Rerum Nova-
rum Award for outstanding work
in the interests of industrial peace.
The award is named for Pope Leo
XIILs encyclical on the condition
of the working classes.
Parallels Meany Plan
The proposal parallels one made
last fall by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, himself a previous winner
of the Rerum Novarum Award,
who urged Pres. Eisenhower to
convene a top-level White House
conference to consider guidelines
for industrial harmony. Eisenhow-
er endorsed the plan in his State
of the Union Message, and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell has been
assigned to work out details of the
conference.
Cardinal Cushing said a national
labor-management conference to
agree on principles for guiding
"wage and price decisions" would
be "more than worth the effort"
even if it did no more than "pre-
pare the way or set the stage for
a continuing of working sessions in
specific industries."
"In the terminology of Catholic
teaching," he added, "it would be
a significant step in the direction
Meany Asks Ike to End
Alabama Rights 'Siege 9
Declaring that the "tense racial situation" in Alabama is
"deteriorating by the hour," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has urged Pres. Eisenhower to take emergency steps to restore
civil rights in that state.
In a telegram sent to the White House Mar. 11, Meany said
that in Montgomery, Ala., in particular, "authoritative reports
from responsible trade union leaders" indicated a "virtual state
of siege" for the Negro population.
"Negroes are being arrested and intimidated without provo-
cation," he said. "Negro students are being harassed for seek-
ing basic rights guaranteed all Americans. Negro servicemen
are confined to Maxwell Air Force Base outside Montgomery
for their own protection."
Meany called law enforcement authorities "either unwilling
or unable to preserve law and order with justice," and urged
Eisenhower to move speedily to restore civil rights in Mont-
gomery "and in any other area where local law enforcement
fails to provide equal justice to Negro and white alike."
Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther also wired the Presi-
dent urging that the Attorney General be instructed "to take
immediate action in your name to restore law and order in
Montgomery." The "reign of terror" in the Alabama city is
"shocking, immoral and un-American," Reuther said.
of the so-called industry council
plan" to which social encyclicals
issued by the Vatican "attach so
much importance."
The Cardinal called on labor
and management to improve the
collective bargaining atmosphere
as rapidly as possible for the sake
of national welfare. He said such
improvement would be possible if
09-61-8
there is "a modicum of common
sense and Christian charity on the
part of labor leaders and employ-
ers, and a reasonable measure of
patience, maturity and good judg-
ment on the part of the govern-
ment, the press and the general
public."
The Cardinal said he is "in-
clined to be at least guardedly
optimistic" about the future of
labor-management relations, de-
claring that recent agreements
between several companies and
labor unions to establish joint
committees to study mutual prob-
lems are "hopeful signs" of im-
provement in collective bargain-
ing.
Cardinal Cushing said, however,
that "the dispositions of justice
and charity" are more important
than any improvement in the tech-
niques of labor-management rela-
tions. Charity "is not a substitute
for justice or for technical im-
provement," he said, adding:
'Charity Unites Hearts'
"It is the only force capable of
persuading labor and management
to cooperate with one another on
a more sustained basis, in good
times and bad, and — even more
important than that — to subordi-
nate their legitimate, but partial
and parochial interests, to the over-
riding demands for the common
good. . . .
"Justice can remove the causes
of conflict, but charity unites hu-
man hearts."
Vol. V
Issied weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. M.W..
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C
Saturday, March 26, 1960 i*«^»>i7
No. 13
Meany Hits Administration
Surrender on Forand Bill
Calls on Congress
To Move Promptly
Vote Rights
Included in
House Bill
The House has passed a five-
part civil rights bill keyed to guar-
anteeing Negro voting rights and
sent the measure on to the Sen-
ate, which has been bogged down
in a six-week "sit-in" on similar
legislation.
The vote on passage was a
smashing 311-109. Voting for
the civil rights measure were 179
Democrats and 132 Republicans.
Opposing its passage were 94 Dem-
ocrats and 15 Republicans.
Efforts were expected in the Sen-
ate to substitute the House-passed
measure for civil rights legislation
which has been snarled by pro-
tracted debate and a record-break-
ing Southern filibuster. The threat
loomed large, however, that South-
ern Democrats might resume their
filibuster to delay final Senate ac-
tion.
Eventual acceptance by the Sen-
ate of the House civil rights bill in-
stead of passage of a different ver-
sion would eliminate one major ob-
stacle to enactment of rights legis-
lation this session.
May Duck Rules Group
Should the Senate vote a version
substantially different from the
House bill it would be necessary to
get new clearance from the power-
ful conservative-dominated House
Rules Committee, which bottled up
(Continued on Page 10)
N.C. Labor
Backs Sit-ins
By Negroes
Raleigh, N. C. — The North
Carolina State AFL-CIO has
thrown the support of its more
than 35,000 members behind Ne-
gro students staging "sit-in"
strikes throughout the South to
protest segregation in public eat-
ing places.
The more than 200 delegates
to the state body's third annual
convention here unanimously en-
dorsed a resolution expressing "ap-
proval of the efforts" of Negro stu-
dent groups to win equal rights
and condemning "unwarranted po-
lice actions" being carried out
against the peaceful protest.
In one of the strongest-worded
(Continued on Page 10)
FLOOD OF MAIL in support of AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill to
provide health care for the aged through social security is exam-
ined on Capitol Hill by bill's sponsor, Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-
R. I.). Despite mounting public pressures for passage of bill, Eisen-
hower Administration has gone on record publicly opposing measure.
Sailors Sent to Yards:
Shipbuilders Blast
Navy Strikebreaking
Camden, N. J. — Pres. John J. Grogan of the Shipbuilders has
branded the Navy's intervention in the union's strike at the Beth-
lehem Steel Co.'s eight East Coast shipyards "the most infamous
strikebreaking by members of our armed forces since federal troops
were used in 1890 to crush Eugene Debs and his American Rail-
way Union."
Grogan's blast came after the
Navy moved enlisted men into Beth-
lehem yards at Quincy and East
Boston, Mass., and Hoboken, N. J.,
to complete construction on four
vessels tied up by strikes of
IUMSWA and the Technical Engi-
neers.
At the Quincy yard, the Navy
placed enlisted men on the Spring-
field, a missile-firing cruiser, to
put government equipment in
place and remove the tools and
other gear of both the company
and the strikers, and later moved
it to Charleston Navy Yard.
From Bethlehem's East Boston
yard it moved the Thor, a cable
repair ship, to the Navy Yard, and
the icebreaker Edisto to the Navy
Yard's South Boston Annex.
It sent enlisted men into the Ho-
boken yard to finish repairs to the
oiler Waccamaw.
Grogan called the Navy's ac-
tion "inexcusable" and declared
union members cannot help but
believe "that their right to strike
against a private employer is be-
ing seriously curtailed by the
(Continued on Page 11)
Meany took sharp issue with a
(Continued on Page 3)
10,000 Ask
Action Now
On Forand
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has accused the Administra-
tion of "abject surcnder to the dictates of the medical lobby and
the insurance trust" in its all-out opposition to the Forand bill
to provide health care for the aged.
Meany's charge came in the wake of a statement by Health, Edu-
cation and Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming that the Administra-
tion would fight the labor-backed measure on the ground that its
proposal to use the social security system for medical benefits con-
stituted "cumpulsory health insurance."
At the same time, Flemming admitted to the House Ways &
Means Committee that the Admin- ~
istration had failed to come up
with any alternative to the bill in-
troduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D R. I.).
Meany charged that although it
was "barren of ideas itself, the Ad-
ministration just flatly opposes" the
medical insurance plan. He called
the Forand measure "a feasible and
practical measure . . . which could
do the job of providing aid to
Americans in desperate need."
Urges Congress to Act
The AFL-CIO president said he
was "shocked" at the Administra-
tion's admission that it "has no
proposal for alleviating the plight
of America's aged who need and
cannot afford medical care," adding
that the Administration "ought to
be thinking of the problems of
people, not the profits of insurance
companies."
He called on Congress to
demonstrate "the courage and
foresight which the Administra-
tion lacks" by promptly moving
on the measure, and urged the
House leadership to end "fur-
ther delay" by reporting the
measure out of Ways & Means
where it has been under study
for 15 months.
New York — The American
Medical Association is the "one
formidable enemy standing in the
way" of passage of the Forand
bill to provide health care under
social security, AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler told
10,000 retired union members at
an enthusiastic rally sponsored by
the New York City Central Labor
Council.
Schnitzler ridiculed AMA allega-
tions that the measure would estab-
lish "socialized medicine," recalling
that in the past the AMA has lev-
eled the same charge against non-
profit health insurance plans such
as Blue Cross.
He declared the AMA has ex-
hibited "little concern with human
problems and has suggested no al-
ternative."
The senior citizens who poured
(Continued on Page 3)
AFL-CIO World Affairs Conference
Keyed to Peace and Freedom Theme
Outstanding authorities on various phases of the critical world situation will address the AFL-CIO
Conference on World Affairs in New York City Apr. 19-20 keyed to giving the nation "competent
clarification" of the pressing world problems to be dealt with at the East-West May summit meeting.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, in letters to affiliated national an international unions and state
and local central bodies inviting officers to attend the two-day sessions, termed the conference "extra-
ordinary" and a "rare opportunity"-^
to place the problems confronting
the U.S. and the problems of the
summit in perspective.
Among the top experts in
world affairs and national de-
fense who will address the meet-
ings at the Commodore Hotel
will be Under Sec. of State C.
Douglas Dillon; William C.
Foster, former deputy secretary
of defense; Gen. John B. Me-
daris, recently retired chief of the
Army's missile program; and Dr.
Henry A. Kissinger, director of
the Intl. Seminar at Harvard.
In his letter of invitation Meany
wrote:
"On the outcome of the struggle
for peace and freedom depend the
very survival of the American peo-
ple as a free nation, the very ex-
istence of our trade union move-
ment, and the fate and future of all
of us and our families.
"As citizens and trade unionists,
it is our duty to help our country
(Continued on Page 12)
Page TNvo
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, I960
TESTIFYING BEFORE House Labor subcommittee, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany called for $1.25 minimum wage and extended
coverage to aid "most-neglected group in our society." With him at
witness table are AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller
(center) and Research Dir. Stanley H. Ruttenberg.
Union Presidents Urge
Minimum Wage Hike
By Dave Perlman
Three more union presidents have asked Congress to extend wage-
hour protection to millions of workers who are not members of any
union and to raise the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour.
Pres. James A. Suffridge of the Retail Clerks, Pres. -A. F. Hartung
of the Woodworkers and Pres. Joseph A. Beirne of the Communi-
cations Workers told a House La-^
AFL-CIO Lists 10 Key Points:
Testimony Points Up Need
For Updating Wage Law
bor subcommittee that the limited
extension of coverage proposed by
the Administration is inadequate
and discriminatory. They urged
passage of the Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt bill to extend coverage
to nearly 8 million more workers
and raise the wage floor.
Backing up earlier testimony by
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and
Research Dir. Stanley H. Rutten-
berg, they made these key points:
• Suffridge said there is "no
moral, legal or economic justifica-
tion for treating large-scale retail
businesses differently from other
economic enterprises."
The Administration proposal,
which would cover only estab-
lishments with 100 or more em-
ployes and would deny overtime
protection, suffers from "glaring
deficiencies," he said.
• Hartung told the subcommit-
tee how big paper and lumber com-
panies have evaded the wage-hour
law — and collective bargaining ob-
ligations — by subcontracting their
work through middlemen into units
which have fewer than 12 employes.
In some states, he said, the units
have been reduced to less than four
workers so as to avoid responsibil-
ity under state workmen's com-
pensation and minimum wage laws.
He asked that minimum wage cov-
erage be provided "for all workers
in the logging industry."
• Beirne, in a statement filed
with the subcommittee, said at least
half of the 44,000 switchboard op-
erators of independent telephone
companies are exempt from wage-
hour protection even though "a
clerk or construction, installation or
maintenance worker ... is pro-
tected by the law."
He said loopholes in the pres-
ent act "legally permit even
multi - billion - dollar telephone
companies to pay sub-minimum
wages." Exemptions, he told the
subcommittee, should be limited
to operators who provide tele-
phone service through switch-
boards located in their own
homes.
Still to testify before the subcom-
mittee was Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell who reportedly was pre-
pared to announce abandonment
of the Administration's previous
flat opposition to any increase in
the minimum wage. Mitchell has in-
dicated the Administration would
accept a "moderate increase" in the
present $1 an hour floor, although
it still opposes $1.25 as "too high."
Subcommittee Chairman Phil M.
Landrum (D-Ga.), co-author of the
Landrum-Griffin bill, questioned
Meany closely about the impact* of
a higher minimum wage on compe-
tition from foreign imports and on
the wage demands of union labor.
Meany retorted that if keeping
wages low were the answer to
problems arising from competi-
tion from abroad "then you
would have to advocate reduc-
ing our wages." He added "I
don't think that raising the mini-
mum wage is going to affect that
situation at all."
Meany pointed out that the vast
majority of union members earn
considerably more than the pro-
posed $1.25 minimum and that rais-
ing the wage floor would have little
impact on collective bargaining.
Ike's Stand on Medical
School Aid -'Study, Study 9
Rep. John E. Fogarty (I>-R. I.) has accused the Eisenhower
Administration of "making study after study and getting no
action" in the area of financial aid to medical schools.
Fogarty made his charge during a recent appearance of Sec.
of Health, Education & Welfare Arthur S. Flemming before
the House Appropriations Committee.
Questioned by Fogarty as to whether federal support for
medical schools was needed, Flemming avoided direct replies
and kept referring to the need for "current studies," a transcript
of the hearing showed.
The Rhode Island Democrat pointed out that at the Admin-
istration's request, studies were recently completed on the
supply of doctors and the adequacy of medical training.
"Maybe I'm a little impatient," Fogarty told the Secretary,
"but it seems to me we are just making study after study and
getting no action."
The detailed case for a $1.25 minimum wage
and extension of coverage to nearly 8 million
more workers was made for the AFL-CIO by
Research Dir. Stanley H. Ruttenberg at hearings
by a House Labor subcommittee. Here are
highlights from his testimony:
IThe Fair Labor Standards Act now covers
only one out of three workers. Of 66 million
workers, 24 million are covered and 22 million
are uncovered because they are self-employed,
government employed, or in the executive or pro-
fessional category.
This leaves 20 million other uncovered workers
who could be protected. Over a third of these
unprotected 20 million, some 7 million, are in
retail trade. The second largest group, over 4
million, is in the service industries.
Restrictions on coverage have made the act
apply unevenly and inequitably between industries,
within industries, and even within the same
company.
2 Data on wage levels well demonstrate that
uncovered workers lag far behind and have
a great need for legal protection.
Of the nearly 8 million workers to whom H. R.
4488 (the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill) would
extend protection, 3 million, or nearly 40 percent,
are still paid less than $1.25 an hour.
In the absence of minimum wage protection,
the wages of these workers at the bottom end
of the nation's wage distribution simply remain
stationary or creep up belatedly over the years
at only a minor fraction of the pace of general
wage advances.
3 Decent minimum living standards are im-
possible for a family on the low wages paid
so many uncovered workers.
There are two basic measures of how much is
needed today to support a family on a decent
minimum standard.
The first is the City Worker's Family Budget
of the U.S. Department of Labor, which measures
the minimum necessary to provide a "modest but
adequate" standard of living in this country.
As of January 1960, minimum annual earnings
of $4,800 would be needed to provide the items
included in the Labor Department budget. As-
suming steady employment all year and a 40-hour
workweek, this annual budget would require wages
of over $90 a week or $2.30 an hour.
The second basic budget yardstick is the esti-
mates made by various state governments of in-
come required for the minimum needs of a single
woman worker with no dependents. These studies
demonstrate that $1.25 would barely begin to pro-
vide a minimum adequate budget for a single
woman.
4 The states have not been able or willing to
provide adequate minimum wage protection
for workers left uncovered by federal law. Only
11 states have enacted minimums equal to the
federal minimum. Their experience demonstrates
that industries not covered by the federal act can
adapt to reasonable minimum wage standards
when required to.
But the other states have not approached the
federal standards. Indeed, overall, less than a
quarter of the workers uncovered by federal
law receive any protection whatever from state
minimums. In 21 states there is no minimum
wage law at all. In most of the others, coverage
is confined to a limited few industries or to
women alone, and the required minimum is
often badly outdated and abysmally little (in
over a half-dozen cases still under 50 cents an
hour).
5 The bill endorsed by the Administration last
year is inadequate. This measure would con-
fine extension of coverage to only the compara-
tively few largest firms. We estimate that the
Administration bill would cover fewer than 1 per-
cent of retail enterprises, thus leaving exempt not
only the small retailers but many of quite good
size as well.
The Administration bill proposes a test of $1
million in direct purchases across the state lines.
This clearly would invite manipulation; instead of
purchasing directly across state lines, an enter-
prise could simply purchase its interstate goods
indirectly through wholesaling or warehouse firms
in its state.
6 The Administration has been over-pessimistic
about the impact of a higher minimum wage.
When the present minimum of $1 was enacted
five years ago, the issue in the Congress was
whether to increase the old 75-cent minimum by
15 cents (to 90 cents) or 25 cents (to $1).
The Administration was willing to accept a 15-
cent increase to 90 cents, but refused to go any
further.
What actually happened after the $1 mini-
mum became effective was that some 2.5 mil-
lion low-wage workers received a needed lift
in wages. These increases were absorbed by the
economy easily and beneficially, with negligible
adverse effects even in the lowest- wage indus-
tries and regions in which some difficulties of
adjustment could reasonably have been antici-
pated. Indeed it appears evident from the
smoothness of the adjustment by the economy
that a higher minimum would also readily have
been taken in stride.
Low-wage communities benefited from higher
minimum wages in 1955, according to a Labor
Dept. survey of six communities with large num-
bers of workers affected. Since the increase, both
total employment and number of firms in business
showed gains.
7 If Congress does nothing more than merely
update the minimum to take account of
changes in the cost of living and increases in
national productivity since the last adjustment, it
has to raise the minimum to $1.25.
(1) The cost-of-living increase from mid- 1955,
when Congress enacted the $1 minimum, until
January 1960, is 9.6 percent.
(2) Productivity advances of the private econ-
omy for the five years from 1955 through this
year would be 16.5 to 18.7 percent, depending
on which of two alternate sources of data are
used.
Application of these two factors to the $1
minimum, as was done in 1955 to arrive at the
$1 level, requires that the minimum now be
raised to over $1.25, to put it precisely, $1.28 to
$1.30.
8 An increase to $1.25 is also warranted to
keep reasonable pace with advances in the
wage structure generally. In 1949, when the mini-
mum was put at 75 cents, the average hourly pay
for industrial workers was $1.40, so that there
was a gap of 65 cents an hour between the mini-
mum and the average. In the 10 years since then,
the average has gone up by 89 cents to $2.29 as
of January 1960.
Meanwhile the increase in the minimum in
these 10 years has been only 25 cents, so the 65-
cent gap was widened to become $1.29 difference
between minimum and average.
9 The increase to $1.25 can be accomplished
without "substantial curtailment in employ-
ment or earning power," the test which the act
suggests as limiting the amount of increase.
Apart from our general faith in the resourceful-
ness and ability of American industry, we rely
specifically on the fact that the impact of $1.25
would be of the same general magnitude as the
impact of the increase to $1, which was absorbed
with little difficulty.
In terms of payrolls of the economy as a
whole, our estimate is that the broadened cov-
erage and the $1.25 minimum together involve
an increase of only 1 percent of the nation's
payrolls.
Although small as a percentage of total payroll,
we estimate that the wage increases required by
H. R. 4488 would increase the buying power of
low-income families by nearly $2.5 billion a year.
"I f\ The $1.25 minimum and extended cover-
J-vr age would not be inflationary. I will not
go into the moral implications of whether the way
for the nation to fight inflation is to keep workers
at 80-cent or $1 wage levels. It is sufficient to
point out that the inflation argument has little
economic merit.
Experience with past improvements in the
minimum wages shows they are not inflationary.
When the minimum wage was last raised by 25
cents (from 75 cents to $1), the U.S. Depart-
ment of Labor reported no noticeable effect on
either the nation's consumer price level or
wholesale price level.
AFLrCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Page Three
To Aid Family Units:
AFL-CIO Supports
New Farm Program
The AFL-CIO has declared its support of the proposed Family
Farm Income Act of 1960 as a way to "substantially" improve the
federal farm program.
The AFL-CIO praised the provision creating a $500 million a
year program to distribute more nourishing surplus foods to the
needy and school children and the^
provision setting a ceiling on gov-
ernment payments to individual
farm operators.
Labor's support for a flexible
approach proposed in the bill to
enable farmers by voting to set
production controls also was made
clear in the statement filed with
the House Agriculture' Committee
by AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller.
He pointed out that trade un-
ionists understand farm family
problems because they have sim-
ilar problems and they learned
they must bargain collectively
with more powerful employers to
gain a fair wage.
Farmers, he continued, are one
of the few essentially unorganized
minorities remaining, with little
control over the price they receive
except for government help. As
farm output rises, prices tend to
fall, causing farmers to produce
still more, he added.
Biemiller said organized labor
long has supported federal pro-
grams to help raise family farm
income through price supports, ex-
pand farm credit, conserve the
soil, insure against crop damage
and strengthen rural cooperatives.
Labor is pleased, he went on,
that a serious reappraisal of the
farm program is now taking place.
Production Controls
The new legislation, introduced
by some 25 congressmen, sets up
a system whereby producers of a
crop in difficulty can vote to self-
impose production controls so as
to stabilize prices. Varying price
support devices would be allowed
except the government purchase of
surpluses.
Biemiller said American la-
bor does not want low food
prices "based upon the exploita-
tion of farm proprietors, ten-
ants, sharecroppers or hired farm
workers."
He said labor supports the flex-
ible mechanism proposed to
achieve a balanced demand and
supply at a fair price, including
direct payments where farmers
so choose. At the same time, he
added, farmers seeking to bene-
fit from publicly-guaranteed prices
must accept rigorous production
controls.
Biemiller supported reasonable
ceilings on government payments
to individual operators as a way
of reducing the cost of the pro-
gram and "ending the unjustified
federal bonanza to a handful of
giant commercial farms, a major
irritant now effectively utilized to
undermine public support for all
federal farm aid."
Biemiller also singled out the
provision which authorizes the
Secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare to carry out a program "to
increase the amount of dairy,
poultry and meat products dis-
tributed to the needy, to institu-
tions and through the school lunch
program."
He said this cost is properly an
outlay for public welfare and be-
longs under HEW. In the past,
surplus food has been distributed
by the Agriculture Dept.
Judge Orders B & C
To Preserve Records
A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction aimed at block-
ing officers of the Bakery & Confectionery Workers from destroying
union records.
The injunction was obtained by a reform group within the union
which has charged B & C Pres. James G. Cross with "plundering"
r^the union's treasury. The group, in-
cluding officers of five big locals,
says it is seeking a cleanup of the
international union to pave the way
for reaffiliation with the AFL-CIO.
U.S. Dist. Court Judge Luther
W. Youngdahl enjoined B & C
officers and employes from "de-
stroying, secreting, defacing, obli-
terating or altering" union rec-
ords, books or files pending a
hearing Mar. 29 on a request that
the court appoint a "custodian"
of the union's records.
Meanwhile the AFL-CIO affili-
ated American Bakery & Confec-
tionery Workers voiced support of
efforts to remove corrupt leader-
ship of the expelled union.
An editorial in the ABC's news-
paper pointed out that the suit is
based in large part on facts avail-
able for the past three years and
welcomed the five B & C locals "to
the ranks of those fighting corrup-
tion in the leadership of the B & C."
The ABC pointed out, however,
that law suits are subject to "delays,
deviations and lawyers' tricks." The
union said it will continue "with
even greater vigor to offer to the
membership remaining in the B & C
an opportunity to leave that organ-
ization and to find a home within
the trade union movement."
In recent weeks, ABC has won
seven straight National Labor Re-
lations Board elections and has
launched a major organizing
drive on the West Coast.
Administration Hit on
Forand Bill Surrender
Screen Actors
•geStudios
Stall Talks
Hollywood, Calif. — The Screen
Actors Guild, with 14,000 mem-
bers on strike in eight major film
studios, has charged the Associa-
tion of Motion Picture Producers
with stalling on negotiations and
demanded immediate meetings.
The SAG attack came from the
union's board of directors when
the producers failed to cany out
a promise to "let you know when
we are ready to resume" negotia-
tions. It resulted in quick action
from the employers, who asked
that a meeting* be held two days
later.
"Sporadic negotiations will not
end the strike," the SAG said. "We
want all studio employes to know
that it is' the employers who are
prolonging the strike — not the
Guild.
"The Guild is ready to go into
continuous negotiating sessions,
day and night, to bring a quick
end to the strike."
The strike was called Mar. 7
after two months of bargaining.
The main issue is payment to the
actors for motion picture theater
films made after 1948 and subse-
quently sold for use on television.
PETITIONS SUPPORTING the Forand bill were signed by thousands of the 10,000 retired union
members who attended a mass meeting sponsored by the New York City Central Labor Council
and who heard AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler attack Pres. Eisenhower for his refusal
to endorse the measure, which provides health care benefits as part of social security coverage. Aid
would be financed by increases of one-quarter of 1 percent in the social security taxes on employers
and employes. The maximum hike would be $12 per year each for the worker and his employer.
^ § — —
Schnitzler
Blasts AMA
On Forand
(Continued from Page 1)
out to register their endorsement
of the Forand bill jammed the
main ballroom in Manhattan
Center a half-hour before start-
ing time. Another ballroom was
quickly opened, but still they
came. By the time the meeting
got under way some 8,000 re-
tired workers had crowded into
the two ball rooms and another
2,000 who couldn't get in stayed
outside and heard the speeches
over an amplifying system.
"The big advantage of the For-
and bill," Schnitzler told this cheer-
ing audience, "is that it spreads the
risk and thereby makes possible full
coverage at low cost.
Priced Out of Reach
"We all know about the wonder-
ful new discoveries of science in
the field of medicine. But what
good are these advances in the heal-
ing arts when they are priced be-
yond the reach of the great major-
ity of retired workers?"
The AFL-CIO secretary-treas-
urer attacked Pres. Eisenhower for
his opposition to the Forand bill
and his request that consideration
of legislation to help pensioners
meet their ever-soaring health costs
be delayed.
"Don't get sick," he warned the
overflow audience. "The President
isn't ready for you yet. You know,
you've got a President who's sup-
posed to be concerned with your
welfare . . . and still he says there
is no need for the Forand bill."
Mayor Robert F. Wagner
called the bill "the logical and
necessary extension of this great
social security system." He
pledged his full backing to the
campaign for enactment of the
bill.
He presented to Pres. Harry
Van Arsdale, Jr., of the Central
Labor Council a proclamation
designating the week of Mar. 28
as "Senior Citizen Health Se-
curity Week" in New York City.
Dr. George Baehr, former presi-
dent of the non-profit Health In-
surance Plan of New York, derided
the statistics insurance companies
are using to fight the attempt to ex-
tend social security benefits through
the Forand bill. The industry, he
charged, is guilty of "falsifying sta-
tistics."
(Continued from Page 1)
claim by Flemming that private
insurance plans are providing ade-
quate medical care for the nation's
older citizens.
"That just is not so," the AFL-
CIO president declared.
"Only a few days ago, Dr. Basil
C. MacLean, immediate past presi
dent of of the National Blue Cross
Association, made that clear.
"A veteran physician, hospital
administrator and leader of volun-
tary health insurance programs, Dr.
MacLean candidly admitted the fact
that 'the costs of care of the aged
cannot be met, unaided, by the
mechanism of insurance or prepay-
ment as they exist today.'
"The Administration has
chosen to assert as fact a premise
that is provably false."
Of Flemming's assertion to the
committee that the Administration
would continue "exploring" the pos-
sibility of recommending an alter-
native plan, Meany said HEW has
been studying the problem since
August, 1957, adding:
"We don't need more study.
. . • We need action, not de-
lay."
The Administration's opposition
to any medical care bill utilizing
the social security system and paid
for by increased OASDI taxes on
both employers and employes was
divulged by right-wing GOP lead-
ers 24 hours before Flemming ap-
peared before the committee headed
by Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.),
Following a White House con-
ference, Senate Minority Leader
Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-IU.)
and House Minority Leader Charles
A. Halleck (R-Ind.) disclosed that
efforts by some Administration
members presumably including
Flemming, to win approval of some
alternative health plan had been re-
jected.
Endorses 'Exploration'
There had been earlier reports
that, despite Pres. Eisenhower's
long-standing opposition to any
medical care program, an election-
year about-face was under con-
sideration at the urging of Vice
Pres. Nixon.
Flemming said the Administra-
tion had given limited endorsement
to an "exploration" of his proposal
to subsidise payments of voluntary
medical insurance policies by aged
persons with low income. Further
consultation with federal, state and
private experts in the field are nec-
essary, he insisted.
"It is, of course, not possible to
predict the length of time that it
will take for these consultations,"
he said. "Moreover, I am not in a
position to predict how long it will
take to resolve the basic issues."
In the broad field of the exist-
ing social security program, the
Administration recommended:
• Repeal of the requirement that
workers permanently and totally
disabled must wait until age 50
before drawing benefits for them-
selves and their dependents.
• A boost in the benefit for
each child of a deceased worker
to 75 percent of the worker's bene-
fit amount.
• Providing benefits for the sur-
vivors of workers who died prior
to 1940.
• Broadening coverage to in-
clude policemen and firemen under
state or local retirement systems,
self-employed physicians, employes
of nonprofit organizations, and all
workers in Guam.
In addition to these Adminis-
tration proposals, the AFL-CIO
has urged Congress to raise re-
tirement benefits for widows above
the present 75 percent ceiling; per-
mit women to receive regular ben-
efits at age 60; and hike the wage
base above the present $4,800
level to permit higher benefits.
Is € AMA Disease 9
Pocketbook-itis ?
The American Medical As-
sociation's stand against the
Forand bill has been "diag-
nosed" in a poem by an
anonymous author, recited on
the House floor by Rep. John
Dingell (D-Mich.). The poem
sums h up this way:
"If you make a diagnosis
Of the medical psychosis
That is now identifiable as
AMA disease,
You will find the hyperten-
sion
Is induced by any mention
Of a method whereby pa-
tients can afford their doc-
tor's fees."
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Support Grows For Site Picketing Bill
Visits to Capitol Hill
Bring Pledges of Aid
APPRENTICESHIP COMMITTEE of AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept. set up to expand training pro-
gram, is shown at its organizational meeting. Left to right are: J. E. Poulton, Machinists; Joseph
Corcoran, Plumbers; Fred B. Irwin, Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Frank X. Hanley, Op-
erating Engineers; Committee Chairman David S. Turner, Sheet Metal Workers; S. Frank Raftery,
Painters; Metal Trades Dept. Pres. James A. Brownlow; J. William Hardesty, Iron Workers; A. F.
Young, Boilermakers; and Metal Trades Research Dir. Paul R. Hutchings, committee secretary.
Postal Unions Ask 12% Pay Hike,
Rap Ike's 'Wage Freeze' Demands
Federal employe unions have charged the Administration with "economic discrimination" for seek-
ing to impose a wage freeze on government workers in the face of continued gains by workers in
private industry.
Letter Carriers Pres. William C. Doherty, lead-off witness before the House Post Office & Civil
Service Committee, said the Post Office Dept. ^consistently shows a touching solicitude for the
postal budget and no solicitude^
whatsoever for the budget of its
employes."
Representatives of all AFL-
CIO government unions joined in
endorsing legislation introduced
by more than 60 congressmen to
provide a basic 12 percent pay
raise plus adjustments in salary
grades and increased longevity
allowances.
Legislative Dir. E. C. Hallbeck
of the Post Office Clerks told the
committee that postal wages have
lagged more than 25 percent be-
hind wage increases granted in
private industry during the past
decade.
Ask 'Same Yardstick*
Hitting at Pres. Eisenhower's de-
clared opposition to pay raises this
year, Hallbeck cited the Admin-
istration's role in helping to bring
about a wage hike for steelworkers
and asked that it use "the same
yardstick in measuring the needs
of all groups of workers."
The government unions were
encouraged by the 17-to-6 vote
by which the House committee
voted to set both an opening and
closing date for the pay hear-
ings — over the opposition of
Chairman Tom Murray (D-
Tenn.). In addition to setting
April 15 as the shutoff date, the
committee also voted 13-to-10
not to hold concurrent hearings
on Administration requests for
higher postage rates.
To back up its drive for a pay
raise, the AFL-CIO Government
Employes Council has called a leg-
islative rally to be held Apr. 4 and
5. Several thousand delegates from
a score of affiliated unions will per-
sonally contact their senators and
representatives. Similar rallies have
been part of every pay raise drive
in recent years.
Doherty, who is chairman of the
Government Employes Council and
a vice president of the AFL-CIO,
told the committee that postal
workers "have been engaged in a
continuing and sometimes frantic
effort to catch up with the eco-
nomic parade."
Their substandard wages, he
said, are a "drag" on the nation's
prosperity.
"Not a single letter carrier in
the United States" earns enough to
qualify for a Federal Housing Ad-
Plumbers Win Hike
In Pay, Training Fund
The Plumbers and Pipe Fitters have signed a new two-year con-
tract with the National Constructors' Association, featuring a
minimum wage of $3.05 an hour and a formula to stabilize their
joint training fund.
The gact, the first two-year agreement between the union and the
employer group representing the^
nation's 26 largest specialty and en-
gineering construction firms, suc-
ceeds a one-year contract expiring
March 31. It includes a reopening
clause on wages after one year.
Plumber's Pres. Peter T. Schoe-
mann said the minimum wage
scale is increased by 15 cents,
from $2.90 to $3.05 an hour.
Where local rates are higher, the
local scale will apply.
A formula calling for higher em-
ployer contributions when needed
was agreed on for the jointly-run
International Training Fund. At
present, employers contribute 2.5
cents an hour to the ITF for each
employe hour worked.
The new pact provides that, when
the ITF falls below $1 million for a
period of four consecutive months,
the employer contribution will rise
to 3 cents per employe hour
worked. The higher rate will con-
tinue until the ITF reaches and re-
mains above $2 million for four
consecutive months.
Thus, the ITF will be stabilized
at between $1 and $2 million.
In the past year and a half,
the ITF has granted some $1.4
million to local joint apprenticeship
groups applying for assistance. Last
year, ©the Plumbers Union itself
made grants totaling some $300,-
000 for training programs.
ministration mortgage on a $15,-
000 house, Doherty told the com-
mittee. "As a result, a program
designed to put home ownership
within the financial reach of work-
ers with moderate income is mean-
ingless for letter carriers. By FHA
standards, our income is not mod-
erate; it is immoderately low."
Postal union spokesmen also
cited evidence that fewer workers
are handling more mail than ever
before as a basis for productivity
increases for government employes.
Scheduled to testify next before
the committee are representatives
of classified employes — the govern-
ment's annually-paid white collar
workers.
A.A.Berle Gets
Union Public
Affairs Award
New York— The New York
Newspaper Guild's annual Page
One Award in public affairs has
been presented to Adolf A. Berle,
Jr., former assistant Secretary of
State, "for his persistent fight for
freedom in the world and his il-
luminating evaluation of the role
of the corporation in modern so-
ciety."
John L. Lewis, president emeri-
tus of the unaffiliated Mine Work
ers and once president of the for-
mer CIO, was voted the Page One
Award in labor by a panel of labor
reporters. Lewis was cited for his
lifetime leadership of the UMW
"and the inspirational role he
played in the advancement of in
dustrial unionism."
The award for "best example
of a crusading newspaper," an-
nually made by the New York
Guild, was omitted because the
judges ruled there was "no suit-
able entry P
Among other awards made in a
wide variety of fields at the annual
awards luncheon was a national re-
porting award to A. H. Raskin of
the New York Times for his steel
strike coverage and a foreign re-
porting award to A. M. Rosenthal,
also of the Times, for his stories
on Poland.
Mounting congressional support for a Taft-Hartley amendment
to permit picketing of multi-employer construction sites has been
reported in the wake or a four-day national legislative conference
staged by the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept.
The more than 3,300 delegates reported, after Capitol Hill visits,
that they received firm commit- ^
ments from 50 senators and 215
congressmen to support "situs
picketing" legislation. Ten sena-
tors and 26 representatives indi-
cated opposition with the remain-
der either asking more time to
study the measure or recorded as
noncommittal.
Cleared by Subcommittee
A bill designed to free job-site
picketing from the secondary boy-
cott restrictions of Taft-Hartley has
been introduced by Rep. Frank
Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.) and
cleared by a House Labor subcom-
mittee. It is awaiting a final vote
in the full Labor Committee, which
voted 22-7 to reject an amendment
by Rep. Robert Griffin (R-Mich.),
co-author of last year's Landrum-
Griffin Act, to seriously restrict
construction-site picketing.
The measure is designed to re-
verse a * National Labor Rela-
tions Board ruling, in the now-
famous Denver Building Trades
case, which held that picket-
ing of a non-union contractor
at a construction site constituted
an illegal secondary boycott if
it induced other crafts to walk
off the job.
The "situs picketing" amend-
ment is a key plank in the Building
& Construction Trades Dept.'s
1960 legislative program, which
also calls for legislation to pro-
vide aid for depressed areas, com-
prehensive federal aid to educa-
tion, adequate housing, moderniza-
tion of the Davis-Bacon prevail-
ing wage act, and repeal of T-H's
Sec. 14(b) permitting so-called
state "right-to-work" laws.
. Four of the Democratic Party's
major contenders for the presiden-
tial nomination addressed the rec^
ord turnout of building trades
delegates. They included:
• Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
(D-Minn.) endorsed the depart-
ment's program and assailed the
Eisenhower Administration for be-
ing "dedicated to the worship of a
new kind of golden calf — the fiscal
budget." He called for a "truly
massive program of construction,
public and private, to meet the
needs" of the nation.
• Sen. Stuart Symington CD-
Mo.) promised full support for the
six-point legislative goals of the
BCTD, and urged that the "dis-
OilWorkersReturn
At Sugar Creek
Sugar Creek, Mo. — The Oil
Workers have withdrawn their
eight-month long picket line from
the Standard Oil of Indiana re-
finery here.
The local union is meeting with
the company on the subject of
manpower needs, with a view to-
wards resuming negotiations for a
contract.
The local voted by a narrow
margin to return to work, an ac-
tion suggested by the international
union.
The refinery workers, once an
independent union, voted in March
of 1959 to join the Oil Workers.
When negotiations for a contract
reached an impasse, some 600 of
the 730 employes struck last July 8.
They stood against the giant
firm for eight months, until the
international proposed they con
sider a return to work. With the
company rescheduling workers "as
needed," some 190 maintenance
men still remain to be called back.
criminatory situation" resulting
from the NLRB's Denver ruling
be ended by Congress this year.
He said passage of legislation as-
suring home and school construc-
tion, full employment and adequate
security for the aged could be met
if the Administration's "budget-
balancing" policies were reversed.
• Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.)
said it was "time for labor to get
its Irish up" and fight for amend-
ment of last year's Landrum-
Griffin Act. "You can't live with
that bill," he told delegates, adding
that he was the only presidential
candidate who did not have to
apologize for his vote on L-G,
since he and the late Sen. William
Langer were the only ones voting
"no" on final passage.
• Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-
Mass.), who addressed the open-
ing day session, pledged he would
fight to have Democratic and Re-
publican leaders in Congress re-
deem last years pledges to act on
the "situs picketing" bill this year.
The 86th Congress, he vowed,
"shall not adjourn until this meas-
ure is brought to a vote."
TWU Warns
Of Jet Risk to
Ground Crews
New York — New dangers to the
lives and health of ground crew
workers brought on by the jet age
in airline operations are spelled out
by the Air Transport Div. of the
Transport Workers in a new book-
let that suggests specific precautions
on how to avoid them.
The 32-page pamphlet is illus-
trated with drawings, charts and
graphs depicting the perils and how
to meet them and survive. It is
being distributed to all ADT-TWU
members.
"The jet can be a killer,- TWU
Pres. Michael J. Quill and Vice
Pres. James F. Horst, who also is
ATD director, warn in a foreword.
Repeating the same theme, the
booklet points out that some of
the dangers in working" around
jet planes are more or less obvi-
ous and that others are hidden,
occurring only after long expo-
sure which makes them more se-
rious.
'Thus aircraft can inflict damages
which are more subtle . . . crippling
deafness, body damage from radar,
injured hands from fuels and sol-
vents," it says. "These are things
that will happen most often to those
who are even slightly careless."
Fourteen specific areas of danger
are discussed, leading to the con-
clusion that "safety is your respon-
sibility" and that airline ground
crew workers can contribute to their
own survival by working with "or
at least supporting" the safety com-
mittees set up in each ATD local.
The booklet was compiled from
U.S. military and civilian agency
handbooks, manufacturers' publica-
tions and technical publications.
Governor Lauds Labor's
Handicapped Program
Oklahoma City — Gov. J. How-
ard Edmonson (D) has expressed
his appreciation to the Oklahoma
AFL-CIO and to union members
for their leadership and support of
programs to promote jobs for the
handicapped.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Page Five
From Building Trades:
3,300 Delegates Give Push
To Legislative Program
RECORD TURNOUT of 3,300 delegates to sixth national legisla-
tive conference of AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept.
heard the Democratic candidates below address the sessions.
ADMINISTRATION PLEDGE to fight for Taft-Hartley change to
permit building trades picketing of common construction sites was
given by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell (right).
M CAPITOL HILL visits, like this one with Senate Majority Leader
1 1 Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.), highlighted conference as delegates
H pressed for enactment of BCTD's six-point legislative program.
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
JOHN F. KENNEDY
RETIRING PRESIDENT of department, Richard J. Gray (center), received ovation from delegates
as he ended 17 years as head of BCTD. With him are Peter J. Brennan (left), president of the New
York City BTC, and Frank Bonadio, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO BCTD.
NUMBER ONE TARGET
REVERSE DENVER BUILDING TRADES RULE
DENVER BUILDING TRADES RULE
COMPELS UNION BUILDING
TRADESMEN TO WORK
SIDE BY SIDE WITH
NON-UNION WORKMEN
STUART SYMINGTON
WAYNE MORSE
Denver role compels our union
Brother (raftsmen to aid in
tean'wj dowa our union wages
and conditions.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Mockery of Democracy
^TPHE "SIT-IN" protests against segregation in public eating places
that are erupting in the South reflect a growing national ~deter-
mination that discrimination must be stamped out from the body
politic.
But while Negro students are enduring arrests, jail, and vicious
insults in their protest demonstrations, the biggest "sit-in" of them
all is taking place in the U.S. Senate.
A minority of the Senate is intent on frustrating the will of the
nation for a civil rights bill. They have used and will continue
to use every parliamentary device established under democratic
procedures to block final action on a meaningful bill.
The restaurant "sit-ins" in the South are a legitimate use of the
guaranteed rights of freedom of speech and assembly. The "sit-in"
in the Senate is a planned mockery of democracy.
Bankrupt Administration
HP HE BANKRUPTCY of the Administration in meeting the na-
tion's human needs has been fully exposed in its position on
the Forand bill.
After months of backing and filling, Sec. of Health, Education &
Welfare Arthur S. Flemming was forced to go before the House
Ways & Means Committee to oppose legislation to provide health
care for social security beneficiaries and admit he had no counter
proposal to offer for this session of Congress.
The Forand bill provides a simple and equitable solution to the
increasingly critical problem of providing health care for older
citizens living on limited social security benefits. It would use the
existing system to provide these benefits, with the cost spread out
over a person's working life rather than exacting the cost of medi-
cal care from small retirement incomes.
This apparently is too much for the Administration. It is
willing to let the old folks shift for themselves despite the over-
whelming evidence that they cannot meet the cost of private in-
surance which would do an adequate job.
The Administration's refusal to face up to the responsibility of
leadership in the field of human needs — witness the veto of the
measure to control water pollution — makes it clear that Congress
must step in and do the job.
Labor and World Affairs
IN THE NEXT two months American foreign policy will be
examined, re-examined and put to the test as never before.
There will be an intense interest in the problems we face as the
leader of the free world, problems stemming from the Soviet Un-
ion's drive for world domination.
It is vitally necessary that American workers and the public
at large understand the nature of these problems and the reasons
for their existence. Only through such understanding can an
effective democratic foreign policy evolve.
The AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs in New York City
on Apr. 19-20 is designed to meet this need. Outstanding authori-
ties on critical phases of the world situation will put the problems
to be raised at international meetings and at the summit into per-
spective — not only for trade unionists but for all Americans.
This conference will serve once 'again to underscore the role of a
responsible trade union movement in a democratic society — the job
of thinking and acting in the national interest, of preserving and
strengthening democracy in this period of challenge.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A Knight
Peter T. Schoemano
Harry C Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keen an
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beinie
Karl F. Feller
L. M.-Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. y
Saturday, March 26, 1960
No. 13
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicU
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Sit-in
I. S. SENATE
m
Manufacturer Telis Congress:
$1.25 Minimum Wage Needed
To Safeguard Fair Employers
The following is excerpted from the state-
ment of James F. Haley, secretary of Cluett,
Peabody & Co., before a House Labor sub-
committee on the minimum wage bill. Haley
spoke for a group of nine manufacturers of
men's shirts, underwear, pajamas, neckwear,
handkerchiefs and related products employing
about 20,000 production workers in plants in
12 states.
THE COMPANIES for whom I speak are in
favor of a federal minimum of $1.25 per hour
for employes who have completed their training
period.
We support a minimum of $1.25 per hour
because we believe it is necessary to stimulate
purchasing power among the lowest paid work-
ers and because employers who pay fair wages
should be protected against the unfair competi-
tion of substandard wages.
It is customary for economists to classify man's
apparel as a necessity. But we in the industry
have learned through experience that our product
is a deferrable necessity. People are naturally
obliged to give priority to the purchase of food
and shelter. If anything is left, and if medical
expenses have not intervened, then they buy ap-
parel.
According to the latest overall study of factory
workers' earnings published by the Bureau of La-
bor Statistics in January 1959 (B.L.S. Bulletin
No. 1252) approximately 1.75 million workers, or
about 15 percent of all factory workers in the
United States, were earning less than $1.25 per
hour. These workers averaged $1.13 per hour.
It is our firm conviction that today these
workers cannot buy our products because of in-
adequate earnings, nor can they buy the prod-
ucts of many other industries. We think that
raising their wages to $1.25 per hour would
make them better customers for the products
of American industry and would help to create
more job opportunities.
We believe the resulting wage increase can be
absorbed with little or no effect on prices. The
same Bureau of Labor Statistics wage study shows
that raising all workers receiving less than $1.25
per hour to the $1.25 minimum would effect aver-
age hourly earnings of all production workers
by less than 2.3 cents per hour. In percentage
terms the effect would be only a small fraction
over 1 percent We believe that such an effect
would not be inflationary. We recognize that some
increases to other employes might be required be-
cause of narrowing differentials but this would
not be sufficiently substantial to have a marked
effect on wage levels.
It is true that in the men's furnishings industry
there is a large percentage of production workers
who earn less than $1.25 per hour and it may
very well be that the manufacturers who employ
those workers may have to raise their prices to a
reasonable level in order that their employes
should earn a decent minimum wage. The com-
panies for whom I speak all believe that this would
have a beneficial effect on our industry and on the
country as a whole.
WE HAVE SOME EMPLOYES who now
earn less than $1.25 per hour and would therefore
be affected by a $1.25 minimum. However,
we believe the salutary effects would justify the
cost to us. It is natural to ask why we have not
voluntarily adjusted our minimums to $1.25 per
hour. The answer lies in competitive conditions.
We cannot raise our minimums when others are
free to pay their workers $1.00 per hour. If we
were to do this we would invite self-destruction.
We firmly believe that honest competition
between business enterprises should not be con-
ducted at the expense of employes. That is
destructive competition, unworthy of the free
enterprise system. There are many areas in
the conduct of a business where competition can
play a constructive role: efficient management,
imaginative merchandising, aggressive selling,
modernization of machinery, modern produc-
tion methods, etc.
We should not reward the employer who com-
petes by paying less than a fair minimum. If we
require everyone to pay not less than $1.25 per
hour we will bolster purchasing power and elimi-
nate competition based upon substandard wages.
As long as the legal minimum remains at the
low figure of $1.00 per hour; it will continue to
be possible for substandard manufacturers to pro-
vide the worst kind of unfair competition to the
legitimate and efficiently operated units of the
industry. This competition tends to drive down
wage standards for the entire industry. The com-
petition of the substandard manufacturer is based
solely on the payment of low wages, not cm effi-
cient management, sound merchandising and the
like, and I submit that this is unhealthy.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATTRDAY, MARCH 26. 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Imperfect Agreement Seen
As Alternative to Oblivion
( I his column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. t EST.)
IN THE FACE of constant danger, psychologists
tell us, people have a tendency to develop a de-
nial of its existence. Familiarity, in other words,
breeds not exactly con-
tempt but a kind of numb-
ness as an insulation
against being scared to
death at too frequent in-
tervals. Or to put it more
simply, we just avoid real-
ity as much as possible IMMSBMIBM
when it is threatening.
This probably explains
why there is so little pub-
lic outcry against the quiv-
ering fact that the world . Morgan
is living more dangerously
today than at any time since the beginning of man.
Fire and flood and pestilence have menaced
civilization periodically but never before in history
has mankind been able to claim the morbid dis-
tinction of complete do-it-yourself destruction.
Tonight, though, we can all go light-heartedly to
bed, secure in the knowledge that there actually
exists, tucked cozily away in bomb stockpiles and
ready for use, enough nuclear energy to blast us
all to oblivion.
Some people insist on quibbling over this point.
They maintain that there are bound to be some
duds and that even though the demolition will be
vast it won't be total. Human survival on such
terms, however, somehow fails to arouse the spirit
of adventure in me. I am for being a little more
adventuresome with the alternatives that reality of-
fers, particularly now that the Geneva talks on
banning nuclear tests have become suddenly fluid.
Soviet Russia has made a bold and possibly
untrustworthy move. It has accepted the Amer-
ican plan to suspend tests with a big "if." The
"if" involves our agreement to a moratorium
— lasting, it was suggested four or five years —
on so-called "small" underground tests which
could escape detection* In the interim experts
would try to perfect detection machinery so
that a total ban could be invoked on all tests,
big and small, with reasonable assurance that
cheaters would be caught. '
This is a major change in the Soviet position.
Previously Moscow had held out for full sus-
pension across the board, rejected our plan and
ignored the argument that unless or until moni-
toring techniques were improved for blasts under
the 20,000-tons-of-TNT equivalent of Hiroshima's
Washington Reports;
bomb load, sneak tests could be made under-
ground and go undetected. Now the Russians not
only accept that principle but by doing so put the
talks on a common basis; both sides are at last
talking about the same thing, a limited treaty,
though, to be sure, in different versions.
Coupled with the earlier Soviet agreement in
principle to the concept of international inspec-
tion teams, this is an encouraging step toward
real concessions.
THE QUESTfON is how far the West is willing
to bend too. What the Soviets proposed in Geneva
recently is close to what the British wanted us to
do some time ago. But we have been holding
out for suspension of only such tests as can be
detected and thus policed and controlled.
Not in this category — yet — are small bangs
in a cave. (The adjective "small" here betrays the
mushroom growth of nuclear destructive power.
Less than 15 years ago the Hiroshima bomb was
the biggest explosion man had ever devised; now
on the nuclear scale it is a "little" thing.)
Pressure is building up in the Pentagon and
the Atomic Energy Commission to resume
small-blast testing not later than autumn. The
argument is this is needed to perfect lighter
missile warheads and anti-missile missiles and
besides we can't trust the Russians not to be
doing or preparing to do the same thing un-
announced.
I suggest that "trusting" is not the issue here.
Governments, even allies, never really trust each
other. But they do keep agreements when it is in
their own self interest to do so. Even the Krem-
lin has done that.
Presumably Khrushchev and company consider
it in their own self-interest not to have the world
blown up since they would go up with it too. So
the issue is the choice between two risks: an ulti-
mate cataclysm from a continued arms race, which
could be triggered by mistake or a madman as well
as calculation; and the danger that under the
guise of suspension of tests of new weapons some-
body would cheat.
Would he? Perhaps. So far as is known, how-
ever, neither Britain, the U.S. nor the USSR has
violated the voluntary test ban which has been
sustained for more than a year without inspection
or controls.
As they consider the admittedly imperfect
Russian offer, Washington and London must ask
themselves whether ironclad and foolproof guar-
antees can always be realized.
It may be easier to answer if we face honestly
the alternative question: how ironclad and fool-
proof is the world's present safety?
Congressmen Predict Passage
Of School Construction Bill
HP HE CHANCES of passing a bill providing fed-
eral aid for school construction is good this
year, Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.) and
Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen, Jr. (R-N.J.) agreed in
an interview on Washington Reports to the Peo-
ple, AFL-CIO public service program heard on
more than 300 radio stations.
"Speaking as a Republican," Frelinghuysen
•aid, "I will agree there's an excellent chance of
passage so long as the bill is substantially similar
to the one that our committee (House Education
& Labor) voted out."
"We hope that when this bill passes, the
Senate will yield and accept the House version
in the interests of getting the program on the
road," Thompson declared.
He said he believed the President "would be
most reluctant to veto a bill which is essentially
constructive and which is in fact quite moderate."
THE THOMPSON MEASURE would provide
for federal aid for school construction only.
Thompson said he continues to favor federal aid
for teacher salaries also, but "as a practical legis-
lator, in the interest of classroom construction,
I've retreated."
The House committee bill provides for both
grants on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis, and a
fund to assist states in debt services.
Thompson and Frelinghuysen discussed obsta-
cles to passage, including efforts to eliminate the
grant feature of the measure and substitute a debt
service approach only. Frelinghuysen said he him-
self is for a combination of the two. Thompson
said "the pure debt service approach is impractical
because of the legal difficulties it would create in
the states and we feel, too, that too many local
school districts have reached the legal limits of
their bonded indebtedness and wouldn't be able
to borrow money for school construction or estab-
lish the credit with which to issue bonds."
Frelinghuysen quoted a Dept. of Health, Edu-
cation & Welfare estimate that only 237 school
districts have borrowed to the utmost of their
capacity.
Thompson said he considered the often-quoted
237 figure as inaccurate.
"Senator Clark and myself have made an
analysis," he asserted. "In the case of New
Jersey, as an example, which in the HEW sur-
vey is said to have no classroom shortage, I have
learned that more than 70 districts have bor-
rowed up to within 5 percent of their legal
limit"
Both congressmen expressed the hope that the
so-called Powell anti-segregation amendment
would not be offered again, and if it were that
it would be defeated because it might kill the
whole measure and, furthermore, is not necessary.
irs YOUR
WASHINGTON
At
The regular column by Willard Shelton which normally ap-
pears in this space will return next week. This week we are re-
printing the following from Public A ffairs Institute — Washington
Window.
A BASIC DEBATE is now going on in the U.S. as to whether
we are neglecting our well-being as a nation in favor of our own
private well-being and opulence.
For twenty years the New and Fair Deals placed emphasis on the
public needs such as improved education, health services, public
works like the Tennessee Valley Authority, social security, slum
clearance, unemployment compensation. These might be called the
underpinnings of our society. They helped produce a standard of
living that has been the envy of the rest of the world.
For the past seven years under the Eisenhower Administration,
the emphasis has been away from these social projects and in
favor of individual well-being and prosperity largely as reflected
in the profit and dividend columns of our business enterprises.
The gospel, as preached day and night by the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, has been
that it is only through the freedom of business that we can have the
kind of social progress that presumably we all want.
The cry has been: keep the role of government to a minimum;
encourage private gain so that it will invest in job-producing enter-
prises; let businessmen make the decisions as to how our economy
shall develop; leave it up to the states and local communities to
give us such social services as we need.
HOW WELL has this worked? Undoubtedly it has worked well
for some.
Profits and dividends reached new highs in 1959. The tight
money policy produced the highest interest rates since before
the New Deal. The stock market has boomed much along the
lines of the 1920's. Most of us with jobs have shared to a certain
extent in the private opulence that has resulted, although a discour-
agingly high number— at least a fifth — definitely have not.
But, meanwhile, what has been happening to our plan as a na-
tion — education, housing, slum clearance, pure water, health serv-
ices? Are these really being kept up as they should be for an ever
increasing population or are we shortchanging ourselves in these
areas?
Wherever we turn we hear grave warnings that we are slipping
behind on these fronts: from the educators, from the conserva-
tionists, from the housing experts, from the social workers, from
the sanitation engineers, from virtually every group that is con-
cerned with the public welfare.
There is much evidence that we have not progressed on the
public front as much as we desperately need; that our economy is
not growing as fast as it should; that a day of reckoning may well
be ahead.
Between 1947 and 1953 the manufacturing index went up 40
points. Between 1953 and 1959 it went up only 14 points.
Our total annual rate of growth between 1947 and 1953 was
5.6 percent; between 1953 and 1959 it dropped to 2.3 percent.
Our annual rate of growth per capita during the same periods
dropped shockingly from 3.8 percent to one-half of one percent.
WITH THIS DRASTIC DROP in the rate of our growth, it is
no wonder that the business community keeps telling us that we
"can't afford" this social service or that one; it is no wonder that
the Federal budget has cut down on the public plant in the form
of cuts in appropriations for federal programs and even the aban-
donment of programs that have helped build our standard of living.
What good does it do us if we as individuals — and a few only
at that — are wealthy, if the people are poorly educated with millions
of them badly housed, in need of adequate health programs,
subsisting on inadequate retirement benefits and unemployment
compensation?
THE HOUSE BILL for federal aid for school construction stands
a good chance of passage by Congress this year according to
Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen, Jr. (R-N. J.), on left, and Rep. Frank
Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.). They were interviewed on Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program
heard on more than 300 radio stations.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
How to Buy:
Lured Into
Debt by Easy Credit
By Sidney Margolius
TNSTALLMENT DEBTS are soaring. So are wage-earner bank-
-■- ruptcies. So are pleas for help from families who have gotten
on a debt merry-go-round.
In this relatively boom era, there actually are more bankruptcies
than during the big depression, and many more involve working
families. In 1958, 83 per cent of the 80,000 personal bankruptcies
were by wage-earners compared to
35 per cent of the 70,000 in 1935,
reports the National Retail Credit
Association.
Despite the rise in bankruptcies,
American families are undertaking
even heavier debts, and most dan-
gerously, are developing a new credit
habit. They're buying more small
items, even clothing, as well as the
big ones on credit.
Last January, installment debts
jumped $400 million to a new rec-
ord of $40 billion. Such debts in-
creased 15 percent in just one year
What your family especially ought
to know is that only $150 million of
the January jump was for cars compared to previous average in-
creases of $200 million a month for this big purchase. The rest of
the increase was for smaller items.
Behind the big jump in credit buying of small items is the push
large banks and retailers are giving "revolving credit" and "check-
credit" plans. Sears Roebuck, for example, reports that nearly
half their sales are now on credit.
Similarly, over 100 banks now offer "check-credit." They credit
a loan to your account and you draw on it by check, repaying
monthly. In less than a year, 40,000 families opened such accounts
just with First National City Bank of New York.
Another modern easy-credit plan is bank charge accounts. You
get a card allowing you to charge at local stores, and pay the bank
monthly, taking up to six months. One big bank reports it now
has 36,000 such "charge" buyers.
REVEALINGLY, these easy-credit plans are pushed by the same
banks like First National City which have been plugging for high
interest rates with the argument that "tight money" will curb borrow-
ing and inflation. The banks are saying one thing but doing another.
Whole effect of such plans is to stimulate impulse buying. You
don't even have to stop to arrange for the credit; it's pre-arranged.
But while it's simpler to get into debt nowadays, no one yet has
invented a simple way to get out, readers testify.
"Your paper mentioned credit unions, which we never knew
existed," writes the wife of a Lock Haven, Pa.j worker. "We are
in debt to loan companies. We have tried borrowing from banks,
businessmen, etc. There just isn't enough to pay all the debts and
every month one or two must wait."
Another wife, from San Diego, Calif., reports her family is
paying $95 a month on debts on an income of $300. She writes:
"We are bogged down trying to make ends meet. I've tried every
gimmick; buy meats only on special, plan meals ahead, buy market
brands as much as possible, avoid buying of luxury food. Still my
grocery bill goes up. I find that although one item in one market
may be two cents cheaper, another is sure to be three cents higher.
"Our income is $300 per month. Mortgage payments are $64.50.
We are paying $60 on a $2,000 loan plus installment payments of
$35. We go behind a little more each month. We have three chil-
dren, 2, 4 and 5. Our regular bills are food $125 a month; utilities
$15; transportation $25; insurance (family policy) $14. The $11.41
installment we pay on our TV could be considered amusements, as
we don't go any place at all. I wonder how people in our position
ever get out of the hole."
HOW CAN these families get out of the hole?
1. They do need credit unions. If they belonged to one, they
would have gotten better counseling on debt management than from
the loan companies and installment sellers who let them over-
borrow.
Another value of joining a credit union is the opportunity to
get a consolidation loan at 12 percent or less a year, to repay
higher-rate debts. Loan companies generally charge 24 to 36
percent a year. Commercial banks are another source of reason-
able consolidation loans but tend to seek borrowers with more
financial ability.
2. If a low-cost consolidation loan is not available, the only other
way to get out of debt is to go on a "crash budget" for long enough
to reduce debts to a more reasonable level.
That may seem tough to say to a lady who already shops so
carefully for food. But even in her budget there's at least one
loophole in the $168 a year spent for an insurance policy covering
all members of the family. If the policy has been in existence a
while, there are cash reserves here that can be borrowed on at a
lower rate of interest to repay the installment debts. At a rough
guess, this family appears to be paying about $17 a month in interest
charges besides the payments on principal.
3. Among sources for homemaking and budgeting information
besides adult educi*ion programs and union and credit-union coun-
selors, are family service agencies in your area, county extension
home economists in rural and suburban communities, and even the
county welfare office.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
COLLEGE STUDENTS from all over the nation, in Washington, D. C, for a one-semester seminar
on government and related issues at American University, visit the AFL-CIO headquarters building
for briefing sessions and discussions on the trade union movement.
Report on 50,000 interviews:
Consumers Regard Government
As Guard Against Depression
PSYCHOLOGICALLY, World War II marked
a clear break with the past in the minds of
most Americans.
The Employment Act of 1946 embodied two
lessons widely learned by consumers — that de-
pressions are not inevitable and that the govern-
ment can help maintain full employment.
Well over half the 50,000 families interviewed
by The University of Michigan Survey Research
Center since this act was passed have said flatly
that nothing like the great depression could ever
happen again.
When asked why they felt this way, few peo-
ple mentioned war-related production. Most
talked in terms of public works and other types
of government spending. The public also credits
American business with power to help sustain
prosperity, though to a somewhat lesser extent
than the government.
This and other conclusions are contained in a
new book on "The Powerful Consumer," by Pro-
fessor George Katona of The University of Mich-
igan Survey Research Center.
Katona directs the SRC's economic behavior
program. His book summarizes interviews with
50,000 consumers since 1946 — the largest col-
lection of basic information on consumers in this
country.
These interviews show that most consumers
have no detailed understanding of intricate eco-
nomic activities. But they do have a good deal
of economic "horse sense."
In 1949, when many experts feared a depres-
sion, consumers refused to panic. Again, in
1954, consumers stopped economic stagnation and
led the economy upward. And in 1958 steady
consumer spending for non-durable goods and
services kept a recession from spiralling into a
depression.
SO FAR AS THEIR OWN personal economic
situation is concerned, most Americans have held
a highly optimistic view of their long-term pros-
pects. Out of every 10 persons, five expect their
income to increase over the next few years, four
expect it will remain about the same, and one an-
ticipates a decline. Older persons represent a siz-
able portion of the last group.
America's expanding economy has given great
new power to the consumer.
In a poor economy, most people must spend all
their income for food, shelter, and clothing, simply
to survive. In the U.S. today, the role of the con-
sumer is fundamentally different.
Several major developments have substantially
increased the power of American consumers, ac-
cording to Katona. These include:
• Changing income patterns — Millions of fam-
ilies now are in a position to spend money on
things besides the basic necessities.
• Increased financial reserves — Prior to World
War II, most families had no bank deposits or
government bonds. The total liquid assets of
American families was approximately $45 bil-
lion. By 1957 total savings and reserve funds
amounted to $175 billion.
• Credit buying — About two-thirds of all fam-
ilies have some kind of debt. This reflects both
the easy availability of credit and psychological
acceptance of buying on the cuff.
Although few families figure their budgets
to the last penny, most American consumers
have developed ways of controlling their spend-
ing.
The fairly large share of income used to pay
fixed obligations — mortgage installments and life
insurance, for example — helps keep track of
spending.
Installment buying also reduces the amount of
money available for other purposes, thus con-
tributing to self-regulation. While high interest
charges may make this kind of buying seem ir-
rational, it serves a "super-rational" purpose for
some families, Katona says. Taking their own
personal shortcomings into account, many con-
sumers who have the cash available or could ac-
cumulate it fairly quickly use installment credit
as a way of forcing themselves to save, he ex-
plains.
Strong group factors — assurance about buying
well by doing what friends and neighbors do — and
"in-the-store" factors, such as the arrangement of
displays or wrappings, also influence consumer
choices. But impulse buying, in the sense of
whimsical purchases, is of less importance to the
economy than occasional genuine decision-making
and very frequent manifestations of habitual be-
havior, Katona notes.
In genera], American families are well-inte-
grated economic units. Major buying decisions
are often made jointly by husband and wife.
Katona declares, "The idea that price increases
are a chronic feature of our economy has gained
adherents but has not become general. The theory
which postulates that union power, high govern-
ment debt, and spending inclinations of Congress
are enduring features of our society and make for
an inflationary age has thus far not entered into
the thinking of the majority of the American
people — not even of those in the upper income
brackets."
When consumers expect small price in-
creases, they tend to fight inflation by reducing
the demand for cars, appliances, and other dur-
able goods, Katona adds. Scarce buying and
hoarding occur only when substantial price in-
creases and shortages of goods are anticipated.
"The danger that creeping inflation will be
transformed into galloping inflation is not too
great," Katona continues.
"Creeping inflation is an evil, but not a catastro-
phe. During creeping inflation production is not
disorganized and employment is not reduced.
(Rising productivity may even help keep infla-
tion in bounds.) Most wages and salaries keep
pace with price increases, so that the society does
not consist of a few profiteers and masses of in-
flation victims.
"It is hardly correct, as we so often hear,
that 'The most important single issue confronting
us is inflation. 9 It may well be that a business
recession causes more human suffering than
creeping inflation."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Page Nin«
In Wilson Co. Arbitration:
233 More Strikers
Ordered Reinstated
Chicago — The three-man arbitration panel named to settle dis-
puted issues left over from the Packinghouse Workers' walkout at
seven plants of Wilson & Co. has ordered that 233 strikers accused
of picket line disturbances must be reinstated by Apr. 4.
Earlier the arbitrators had handed down a blanket order that
seniority must apply "all the way^
up and down" so far as jobs are
concerned.. In actual practice, this
ruling meant the restoration of ap-
proximately 3,000 strikers to their
jobs even if the company had to fire
approximately the same number of
strikebreakers to make room for
them.
The strikers ordered reinstated
in the latest decision of the arbi-
trators were accused of partici-
pating in mass disorders at Wil-
son plants in Albert Lea, Minn.,
and Cedar Rapids, la.
The arbitrators next were sched-
uled to take up the cases of 51
strikers who were accused of picket
line violence during the bitter 110-
day strike, according to Federal
Judge Joe Sam Perry, a member of
the board.
In addition, they will give con-
sideration to 41 other instances in
which strikers were alleged to have
been guilty of non-violent "infrac-
tions" during the walkout.
Status of Strikebreakers
When the arbitration board was
established in the strike settlement,
its major task was seen as straight-
Six Unions Map United
Drive in Portland Strike
Phoenix, Ariz. — Complete coordination of union efforts to beat
back the vicious anti-labor attacks of strikebound newspaper pub-
lishers in Portland, Ore., was agreed upon by the five printing
trades unions and the Newspaper Guild at a meeting here of the
Intl. Allied Printing Trades Association.
Rene Valentine of New York, ^
international representative for the
ening out the status of the scabs
hired to replace workers on picket
lines. The company contended the
strikebreakers were "permanent re-
placements" put on the payroll
during the strike.
The strike grew out of the
company's refusal to meet the
wage standards set in settlements
with other "Big Four" packing-
house companies, and its ada-
mant insistence on changes in
working conditions.
Wilson employes kept on the job
from Sept. 19, when the contract
expired, to late in October, when
the company locked them out after
demanding individual "yelk>w dog"
contracts covering working condi-
tions.
The union struck on Nov. 3. It
had widespread support from the
organized labor movement, includ-
ing an appeal from AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany for financial aid.
A union campaign to induce con-
sumers to refuse to buy Wilson
products during the strike, which
had considerable success, was called
off after agreement was reached.
Typographical Union, was named
coordinator of the strike with com-
plete authority to direct the unified
union offensive in Portland.
He will be in full charge of all
the resources the unions can throw
into the fight against the efforts of
the Portland Oregonian and the
Portland Journal to break up or
greatly weaken their employes* la-
bor organizations.
The united front includes, in ad-
dition to the Typos and the Guild,
the Bookbinders, Photo-engravers,
Stereotypers and Pressmen.
The presidents of the six inter-
national unions were scheduled
to meet individually with their
local memberships in Portland
this week, and then to speak
at a joint meeting explaining
the decisions of the conference
here and helping fill in the blue-
print for victory.
The Phoenix meeting made it
clear that the objective of the uni-
fied effort was to assure the Port-
land strikers of all necessary assist-
ance. It acted after hearing a report
from a Portland delegation on the
"Portland pattern" of union-bust-
ing which emphasized the employer
tactics of use of imported strike-
breakers paid for with strike in-
surance benefits.
The locally-owned Journal and
the Oregonian, a unit of the ex-
tensive S. L Newhouse chain, have
been jointly publishing one news-
paper with the help of scabs
brought in from other areas.
The situation grew out of the
publishers' efforts to foist on the
Stereotypers one-man operation of
a piece of foreign-made equipment
which the newspapers have not yet
purchased and which the union has
not seen in action. It would re-
place a machine which requires two
men to operate.
Drop in Production Seen
As Economic Danger Sign
An economic warning signal was sounded as the Federal
Reserve Board reported that the nation's industrial production
dropped one percent in February.
The drop in the industrial output index to 110 marked the
first decline — aside from those caused by the 1959 steel strike
— since the recession lowpoint of April, 1958.
The FRB reported that cutbacks in auto assemblies, ap-
pliances and apparel accounted for most of the reduced ac-
tivity at factories, mines and public utilities.
Behind the cutbacks, the board suggested, was the fact that
retail sales "remained below earlier levels of output. n
As for what's ahead, the Board reported that business
equipment and materials maintained peak output rates while
housing starts dropped. The decline in auto assemblies from
high January rates is expected to continue for March, the
Board added.
INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP was demonstrated by Western Federation of Butchers of Cali-
fornia, who played host to athletes from around the world during recent 8th Winter Olympic Games
at Squaw Valley. The organization, representing 50,000 union butchers, supplied free hot dogs
to Olympic participants, dispensing a total of 12,000 of them during the competition. Members of
U.S. gold medal hockey team are shown enjoying union hospitality after trouncing Czechoslo-
vakia's hockey entry to clinch first place in competition.
McDonald Tabs U.S. Steel Report
Bid to Set Stage for Price Boost
Pittsburgh, Pa. — The "entire tenor" of the U.S. Steel Corp.'s annual report "bears the flavor of an
attempt to justify future price increases," Pres. David J. McDonald of the Steelworkers declared in
citing it as a conclusive demonstration of the need for top-level labor-management discussions away
from the bargaining table.
McDonald said the union ^certainly" disputes some of the points raised in the report and feels
USWA can refute its
premise on
the causes of inflation." Labor-
management conferences are neces-
sary, he added, to provide a forum
where such "divergent views and
problems could be. evaluated so that
the true facts emerge."
Time to Be Constructive
"The time for being argumenta-
tive is past, the time for being con-
structive is here," he asserted.
"We feel that the Human Rela-
tions Committee, as provided in
the contracts with U.S. Steel and
other major steel makers, opens
the way to a means of frank discus-
sion of mutual problems and differ-
ences without the rancor and heat
generated in the highly-combative
atmosphere of actual negotiations."
McDonald recalled that for some
time the USWA has been urging
labor-management conferences un-
der the auspices of the White
House, a proposal pushed by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany.
"Top leaders from the major
industries and the major unions
could meet periodically and pre-
sent their cases for evaluation and
possible solution," he explained.
"The President is given the
benefit of such viewpoints on in-
ternational matters and in the
domestic area. We think it makes
sense to do so in the ever-pressing
problem of labor - management
relations."
McDonald said the USWA can
"quarrel justifiably" with U.S.
Steel's estimates on employment
costs as given in the annual report.
"We can show that while a Steel-
worker's wages rose only in keeping
with his productivity," the USWA
president declared, "the value of an
Court Stays Ban on
Unions in Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls, S. D. — Public employes here have won a last-minute
reprieve from a city commission order to resign their union member-
ships or be fired.
State Circuit Judge Walter Seacat issued a temporary injunction
blocking the city from firing union members in the Fire Dept.,
Police Dept. or Public Health Dept.^
— the three areas in which the
city commissioners have banned
unions.
Status Quo Maintained
The injunction also prohibits the
unions involved — the State, Coun-
ty & Municipal Employes and the
Fire Fighters — from soliciting any
additional members in these depart-
ments pending a court ruling on the
legality of the ban on union mem-
bership.
Pre-trial hearings have been held
on the unions' contention that the
city's action violated the consti-
tutional rights of public employes
— and also the state's so-called
"right-to-work" law — but no date
had yet been set for oral argument
as the AFL-CIO News went to
press.
Effect of the injunction was to
nullify notices posted in fire sta-
tions — where the Fire Fighters
had virtually 100 percent mem-
bership—directing employes "to
disassociate yourselves from
membership in the prohibited or-
ganizations" and requiring each
employe to state in writing that
he had done so.
The union-busting directive of
the city commissioners — adopted by
a two-to-one vote — came on the
heels of a mushrooming organizing
drive by the State, County & Mu-
nicipal Employes and by the Teach-
ers. While the school system was
not affected by the directive, local
union officials have charged that
the move was an obvious effort to
intimidate teachers and keep them
from organizing.
hour's work to the corporation rose
by nearly 400 percent since 1940.
Price Up, Hours Down
"For example, in 1940 the aver-
age price of a ton of steel was
$53.45 and almost 20 hours of
work was required to produce a ton
of finished steel. Then, the steel
industry received from its custom-
ers about $2.69 for each hour
worked by the Steelworkers.
In the first half of 1959, the
average price of a ton of steel
had risen to $148.84 while the
number of hours required to pro-
duce it had fallen to a fraction
above 11 hours. Thus, during
that period the steel industry re-
ceived $13.41 from its customers
for each hour of work, a rise of
$10.72 an hour or nearly 400
percent since 1940."
McDonald also charged that the
report "obscures the real facts'* in
the cost-of-living indices. The Con-
sumer Price Index of the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics
has risen only 1.2 points or about
eight-tenths of 1 percent in the last
18 months, he pointed out, while
the Wholesale Price Index has been
"virtually stationary" for two full
years.
"This is hardly in keeping with
the imaginary situation of a vast
inflation threatening to engulf the
nation, as pictured by the corpora-
tion," he commented.
Janet Seigel Dies;
ICFTU Aide at UN
New York — Dr. Janet Seigel, a
spokesman for the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions at the
United Nations, died in Mt. Sinai
Hospital of Hodgkin's disease. She
was 37.
She taught French history and
law at the New School for Social
Research, where she received her
doctor's degree, and was a corre-
spondent for Le Populaire, of Paris,
and Le Peuple, of Brussels, Social-
ist newspapers. Formerly on the
teaching staff at Roosevelt Univer-
sity, Chicago, she is survived by a
sister, Leila.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
GERMAN CHANCELLOR Konrad Adenauer paused during offi-
cial visit to AFL-CIO headquarters to greet federation staff member
Edwin M. Schmidt, right, a former German national and a onetime
schoolmate of Adenauer's son. AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany (at
left with back to camera) introduced the German leader to Schmidt,
a member of the AFL-CIO headquarters staff since arriving in U.S.
in 1951.
CLC Hits Inaction on
Newfoundland Laws
Ottawa, Ont. — Refusal of the federal government to "disallow"
the anti-union legislation the Newfoundland House of Assembly
passed a year ago will cause "great disappointment" to Canadian
workers, Pres. Claude Jodoin of the Canadian Labor Congress
declared. a
Under Canadian law, the fed-
eral government can in effect set
aside legislation passed in the prov
inces if a national issue is at stake,
but must act within a year. The
deadline for the Newfoundland
laws was Mar. 16 and went by
without action from Prime Minister
John Diefenbaker.
The legislation was 'aimed at
outlawing the Woodworkers in
the province because of a strike
of some 6,500 loggers against
two paper firms for improve-
ments in a $1.05 an hour mini-
mum wage scale and better liv-
ing conditions in the woods.
The CLC referred it last fall to
the Intl. Labor Organization of
which Canada was a founding
member, on the ground that it
constitutes a violation of the rights
of freedom of association and of
organization.
Jodoin said that following "a year
of vacillation and delay" by the
federal government, the CLC made
an 11th hour appeal to Diefen-
baker to disallow the offending leg-
islation while there still was time
to do so.
"We also made representations
to the Minister of Justice and the
Minister of Labor," he added. "Our
appeal was acknowledged, but noth-
ing was done about it. The CLt
deeply regrets the refusal of the
government, as voiced by the Prime
Minister on Mar. 16, to act in this
matter."
Jodoin said the CLC believes
the ELO governing body's com-
mittee on freedom of associa-
tion "will not absolve" the Cana-
dian government of its responsi-
bility in seeing mat the right to
organize and freedom of associa-
tion "are protected m all parts
of Canada."
"Any attempt on the part of the
federal government to put all the
blame on Newfoundland for the
fact that this legislation still ex-
, ists is certain to be condemned by
all those interested in the preserva-
tion of basic democratic rights,
for it was the federal government
that had, until midnight of Mar.
16, the constitutional authority to
set this legislation aside and to re-
store freedom of association in
Newfoundland.
"For its failure to act there is
no defense."
By Vote of 311-109!
House Passes Civil Rights Bill;
Referees To Guarantee Voting
(Continued from Page 1)
rights legislation for several months
until the threat of a discharge peti-
tion brought the measure to the
floor.
In its final form, the House bill:
• Sets up a new system of fed-
eral . referees to protect minority
rights to vote in all elections — state,
local and federal.
• Requires local officials to pre-
serve registration and voting rec-
ords for two years and permits Jus-
tice Dept. officials to inspect them.
• Makes it a federal crime, pun-
ishable by 60 days' imprisonment
and a $1,000 fine, to wilfully ob-
struct or interfere by force or
threats with court orders on school
integration.
• Provides for education of
servicemen's children when their
local schools are closed in integra-
tion disputes.
• Makes it a federal crime to
flee across state lines to avoid
prosecution in hate bombing, with
maximum penalties set at five
years' imprisonment and a $5,000
fine. *
Under the bill, the voting referee
system would be used only if a fed-
eral judge, acting upon a request
from the Attorney General, deter-
mined that a pattern or practice of
discrimination against Negro vot-
ing existed in any area.
The judge then could name
one or more referees to accept
Negro applications for voting
certificates and pass upon their
qualifications. Negroes would
have to show that local officials
had denied them registration or
voting rights after the judge made
his determination.
Local officials could contest the
referee's findings before the judge
issued any final order permitting
applicants to vote. Safeguards were
written in, however, to insure that
legal delaying tactics could not be
employed to keep Negroes from
voting.
Lacks Key Provisions
Missing from the House version
were four provisions which the
AFL-CIO had urged Congress to
include in any "meaningful" civil
rights legislation passed this year.
These provisions would have:
• Given the Attorney General
authority to institute civil suits on
behalf of Negroes denied rights in
a variety of fields, including inte-
gration. This was similar to the
so-called "Title III" stripped from
the 1957 Civil Rights Act before
passage.
• Provided technical and finan-
cial assistance to schools seeking to
abide by court integration orders.
North Carolina AFL-CIO Votes
Backing to Negro Sit-in Strikers
(Continued from Page 1)
civil rights resolutions ever adopted
by a labor organization in the
South, the convention declared:
"The American labor movement
has always stood for the rights of
all human beings, regardless of race,
color or creed.
"American labor recognizes that
the rights of minority groups are
now being denied in a variety of
areas such as the various public
facilities, in employment opportu-
nities and in the equal availability
of good housing."
The delegates applauded the pro-
test demonstrations being carried
out by the Negro students in an
effort to win desegregated lunch
counter service, declaring that the
students are using "peaceful labor
techniques such as the picket line,
the sit-down and the consumer boy-
cott for equal rights in public fa-
cilities."
Mass arrests of Negroes par-
ticipating in the "sit-in" strikes at
public eating places in North
Carolina and other Southern
states, the resolution said, consti-
tute "violations of rights of
American citizens to free speech
and assembly
The three-day convention of del-
egates representing more than 100
local unions throughout the state
was keyed to continued support of
the locked-out members of the Tex-
tile Workers Union of America at
the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills
in Henderson.
Delegates shouted their approval
of a resolution condemning what it
called a "conspiracy" between man
agement, law enforcement agencies
and state officials to break the
union.
"What began as a strike,** the
resolution said, "is now a lockout,
as a result of ruthless strikebreaking
by the company with the direct aid
of state police and the National
Guard in the role of scab herders."
Tied to the 16-month labor dis-
pute was the State AFL-CIO's drive
to get trade unionists registered and
voting so that their voices would be
heard both in the state capital and
'Featherbed 9 Engineer
Does Work of Five Men
Louisville, Ky. — A veteran locomotive engineer on the
Louisville & Nashville railroad has written his union paper
that he is puzzled about management's definition of "feather-
bedding."
"In steam engine days," J. W. Pinkleton wrote, it took six
crews to pull 2,600 tons between Louisville and Nashville.
"Now we are pulling 6,150 tons. ... I am doing the work of
five engineers. That is saving the company four engineers
and four firemen, four conductors, four trainmen and four
flagmen — a total of 20 men, not saying anything about fire
knockers, water pumpers and coal chute men.
"In the old days we had one superintendent, one train-
master, one traveling engineer. Now we have a superintend-
ent, an assistant superintendent, a trainmaster, two assistant
trainmasters and two traveling engineers.
"There are only three through freights each way and four
passenger trains, where we used to run on the average about
six to eight through freights and five passenger trains each
day."
in Washington. The convention's
theme was spelled out in a huge
sign hung across the front of the
hall, which read:
"Our aim: To prevent another
Henderson. How? Full political
participation by all."
This theme was hammered
home at a Committee on Political
Education banquet at the Caro-
lina Hotel at which William Du-
Chessi, political education direc-
tor of the TWUA, warned North
Carolina labor that collective bar-
gaining agreements are "worth-
less without the support of legis-
lators" at the state and national
level.
In the three-day convention, del
egates approved resolutions:
• Supporting the Forand bill to
provide health care for the aged
through the social security system
• Calling for raising the mini-
mum wage to $1.25 and broadening
coverage.
• Urging enactment of mini-
mum federal standards covering
the amount and duration of unem
ployment compensation benefits.
• Backing federal aid-to-edtica
tion legislation that would provide
funds for both classroom construc-
tion and adequate teachers' pay.
Presiding were Pres. Willard M.
Barbee and Executive Sec.-Treas.
J. W. Holder. There was no elec-
tion of officers, since the state lead-
ers were chosen for two-year terms
at the 1959 convention.
Sterns of Machinists
Dies Suddenly at 52
M. Richard Sterns, 52, since
1949 assistant general secretary-
treasurer of the Machinists, died
suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage
while on union business in Los
Angeles, Calif.
Before joining the IAM's interna-
tional headquarters, Sterns was for
16 years financial secretary and
business representative of Machin-
ists Lodge 239 in Seattle, Wash.,
and later served as grand lodge
auditor.
He is survived by his widow,
Fannie, and two sons.
• Affirmed the Supreme Court's
school desegregation order.
• Given permanent statutory
authority to the President's Com-
mittee on Government Contracts.
Before final passage of the civil
rights measure, the House had
sealed the voting guarantees into
the bill by a roll-call vote of 295-
124. Voting for the referee plan
were 172 Democrats and 123 Re-
publicans. Against it were 100
Democrats and 24 Republicans.
Meany Orders
Jersey Groups
To Merge
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has revoked the charters of the
New Jersey State Federation of
Labor and the New Jersey State
Industrial Union Council and or-
dered a new merged AFL-CIO
body created in the state.
Meany's decision and order
came after a hearing conducted by
Peter M. McGavin and R. J.
Thomas, assistants to the president,
to determine the present status of
merger negotiations between the
former AFL and former CIO
bodies.
On the basis of the hearing re-
port, Meany said, he ordered the
revocation of the charters and the
issuance of a charter to a new
group or body in the state to
serve as the "sole and exclusive
state central body of the AFL-
CIO.
He directed the two state bodies
to turn over their charters, funds,
properties, books and assets to
McGavin and Thomas.
All state bodies of the AFL-CIO
have merged with the exception of
Pennsylvania, where a merger con-
vention is set for June, and in New
Jersey, where merger talks have
been conducted since early 1956.
Failure to reach agreement on
a merger pact and constitution led
to the hearing and the Meany de-
cision. The charter revocation pro-
cedure was used only one other
time — to effect merger in Michi-
gan.
Plumbers Drop
IUD Membership
The Plumbers and Pipe Fitters
Union has "reluctantly" withdrawn
from membership in the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept effective
Mar. 31.
Union Pres. Peter T. Schoemann,
an AFL-CIO vice president, wrote
IUD Sec.-Treas. James B. Carey
that "we honestly believe that we
can no longer retain this affiliation
if at any time we are excluded
from exercising our proper voice
and consultation in the depart-
ment's councils."
Schoemann said that if in the
future the department's executive
committee wishes to discus matters
involving building trades unions
they may do so more freely with-
out the embarrassment of my pres-
ence or the need to ask me to -
leave." The reference was to a
meeting of the IUD executive com-
mittee at Miami during the Execu-
tive Council meeting which Schoe-
mann reportedly was asked to
leave.
The Plumbers and Pipe Fitters
were affiliated with the department
for about 50,000 of its member-
ship. Earlier this year the Oper-
ating Engineers and the Molders
withdrew from the department.
The IUD currently has 65 unions
affiliated representing a member-
ship of about 7 million.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Page Elevem
Henderson: Where Unionism Won't Die
900 Continue Fight
To Save Their Union
By Gene Zack
Henderson, N. C. — The flame of trade unionism still burns
brightly here in Henderson, scene of one of the most basic indus-
trial struggles in modern labor history.
For more than 16 months of strike and lockout, nearly 900 mem-
bers of Textile Workers Union of America Locals 578 and 584
have resisted efforts by the Harriet-^
Henderson Cotton Mills to destroy
collective bargaining.
"We're fighting for our union,"
they sing with feeling in union
meetings and on the picket lines
they still man three times daily,
"we shall not be moved."
In their fight to preserve their
union, which had a history of 14
years of collective bargaining prior
to the walkout on Nov. 17, 1958,
they have been harassed by mass
arrests and imprisonment and by
the use of both State Police and
National Guardsmen to protect
strikebreakers entering and leaving
the mill.
More than 200 unionists have
thus far been arrested, of which
150 have been given stiff fines and
suspended jail sentences and then
placed under strict court order to
remain away from the picket lines.
Thirty unionists have drawn sen-
tences to North Carolina's road
gangs; 12 are still imprisoned for
terms ranging up to 14 months al-
though strikebreakers involved in
the same and similar disorders were
freed with small fines.
In addition, eight TWUA mem-
bers — including Intl. Vice Pres.
Boyd E. Payton — were arrested by
the State Bureau of Investigation
for alleged "conspiracy" to dyna-
mite mill property; convicted on the
evidence of an ex-convict; and sen-
tenced to prison for terms ranging
from three to 10 years. They cur-
rently are free under heavy bond
while they appeal their cases to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
Of their arrest and conviction,
the AFL-CIO's third constitu-
tional convention last fall said
that the entire proceeding against
the eight unionists — convicted
for an alleged plot to commit a
dynamiting which never took
place — occurred "under circum-
stances that should trouble the
consciences of Americans every-
where."
Undaunted by the mobilization
of the entire political and economic
apparatus of the community and the
state against them, the TWUA
members in Henderson have dubbed
themselves the "Henderson Free
dom Fighters," and are proud that
the AFL-CIO convention adopted
their struggle for survival as one of
"prime significance to the entire
labor movement."
With unflagging determination,
the textile unionists here are press-
ing their fight for justice, now in
in its 17th month, with the same
vigor that characterized the first
days of the walkout.
Strike relief committees, welfare
committees, clothing committees,
food committees and picket com-
mittees function smoothly. Each
unionist has a job to do; each one
carries out the assignment with a
cheerfulness that belies the suffer-
ings everyone here has undergone.
To date, the TWUA's interna-
tional office has poured $750,000
into the struggle to feed and
clothe and house the strikers —
giving living proof that the union
is behind them. So is the en-
tire trade union movement, which
has added $250,000 thus far in
cash contributions, plus food and
clothing and toys that were dis-
tributed to starry-eyed children
at Christmastime.
The contributions, which still roll
in, have made it possible for the
union to point with pride to the
fact that not one family has lost
its home since the start of the
strike, not one family has had cars
or furniture or appliances repos-
sessed, not one of the 1,600 mem-
bers of union families has gone
hungry.
Behind the struggle at Hender-
son is what the AFL-CIO has called
a "sinister manifestation of a grow-
ing conspiracy . . . which has as
its objective the destruction or the
emasculation of existing unions in
the South."
The showdown in Henderson
came unexpectedly, after 14 years
of reasonable harmony.
Asked No Improvements
When the union contract neared
expiration in November 1958, the
TWUA locals submitted not a sin-
gle demand for improvements,
merely asking extension of the old
terms. Management waited until
less than 12 hours before the pact
was to expire before presenting
demands for radical and wholesale
changes, concentrating its major ef-
fort upon elimination of arbitra-
tion — a clause which had been in
the contract for 12 years — and ad-
dition of a punitive no-strike clause
The company's approach fol-
lowed almost to the letter what
the labor movement has called
"a formula for union-busting"
which has manifested itself often
in the South in recent years. It
has been used by the P. H.
Hanes Knitting Co. in Winston-
Salem, N. C, where a 14-year-
old TWUA local was destroyed,
and in textile communities such
as Gadsden, Ala., and Fitzgerald,
Ga., where bitter and costly
strikes were necessary to save
old, established local unions.
The formula calls for cancella-
tion of the contract through un-
reasonable management demands
which force a strike. Once the
struggle is in progress, the company
secures an anti-picketing injunction
and enlists the services of local and
state police — and even the National
Guard, if necessary — to escort
strikebreakers into the plant.
Unionists here, smarting under
the effects of such a formula, say
it adds up to "the right to strike —
but not to win," for once scabs are
allowed free access to a plant, un-
der the bayonets of National
Guardsmen or the riot guns of
state troopers, the economic weapon
of a strike is blunted.
Company Repudiated Settlement
The bitterness in Henderson is
heightened by the fact that, for
48 hours back in April, 1959, they
had rejoiced at a strike-ending
agreement arranged by Gov. Luther
H. Hodges (D), only to have the
pact repudiated by mill manage
ment who insisted that strikebreak
ers not even on the payroll, but
allegedly hired before the settle
ment, be given super-seniority over
workers with 40 years' experience,
It was at that point that the strike
became a lockout.
The "Henderson Freedom Fight-
ers" realize their struggle is not
over, but they are doggedly deter-
mined, with the aid of the trade
union movement, to continue their
battle.
The AFL-CIO has made it plain
that financial and moral aid will
continue to pour in here to buttress
these TWUA members. Said the
federation's convention last year,
referring to the Henderson union-
ists:
"They have kept faith with
the labor movement. They have
earned our unflinching support,"
INSIGHT INTO OPERATIONS of their government was given 26 rank-and-filers from six states at
the first of a series of legislative institutes planned by the Textile Workers Union of America. Here
they are posed on the steps of the Capitol, with some of the East Front reconstruction work
appearing in the right background.
Jailed Textile Strikers
Lose Legal Skirmish
Henderson, N. C. — Twelve members ,of the Textile Workers
Union of America have lost a round in their fight for freedom
from what they term "excessive" prison terms handed down in
connection with picket-line incidents during the strike and lockout
at the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills.
Federal Judge Edwin M. Stanley, ^
in an order filed in Middle District
Court in Greensboro, denied writs
of habeas corpus for the jailed un-
ionists on the ground that they
had failed to exhaust state law rem-
edies before turning to his court.
The 12 TWUA members were
imprisoned for terms ranging from
six to 14 months while nonstrikers
involved in the same incidents were
given light fines and suspended jail
sentences, their petition to the fed-
eral court declared.
The unionists pointed out that
they had originally been scheduled
for trial by a six-man jury in Vance
County Recorder's Court here. Al-
though the cases of nonstrikers
were handled in this lower court,
charges against TWUA members
were nol-prossed in Recorder's
Court and then reinstituted by in-
dictment and tried during a special
session of Superior Court.
The TWUA members con-
tended they were deprived of
trial in Recorder's Court with-
out being notified or given an
opportunity to object. They
charged that the process "consti-
tuted treatment unequal and dis-
similar to that extended other
persons who stood in equal and
similar circumstances."
Their petition to the federal
court said that the "unusual" court
proceeding and "exceptional" prac-
tices involved violated their rights
to equal treatment under the law,
guaranteed by the 14th Amendment
to the Constitution.
The unionists unsuccessfully chal-
lenged their sentences earlier in an
appeal to the North Carolina Su-
preme Court in which they con-
tended the special session of Su-
perior Court lacked proper juris-
diction over their cases.
In rejecting the petitions for ha-
beas corpus, Judge Stanley said the
unionists had given "no reasonable
showing" as to why the constitu-
tional question contained in the
federal court appeal had not been
presented to the North Carolina
Supreme Court.
"There can be no question," he
said, but that the unionists "have
a right under the laws of the state
... to raise the identical questions
presented in their petitions in this
court."
He added that it is "clearly estab-
lished" that the federal court may
not consider the constitutional ques
tion until the men have exhausted
remedies under the state law.
Ontario Labor
Halts Drastic
Bill on Unions
Niagara Falls, Ont. — A giant
letter-writing drive spearheaded by
the 500,000-member Ontario Fed-
eration of Labor seems to have
convinced the province's Conserva-
tive administration to abandon its
plan for major anti-union curbs.
Transport Minister John Yarem-
ko hinted broadly at such a devel-
opment in an address to the OFL's
education conference here.
Yaremko who was one of the
chief architects of the report of the
Select Committee on Labor Rela-
tions said he felt now was "not the
time" for a major overhaul of the
Labor Act.
The report, containing 51 recom-
mendations, included proposals for
drastic curbs on picketing, bans on
strikes in "essential services," new
hurdles for certification of unions
and an industrial inquiry commis-
sion which could short-circuit pres-
ent conciliation procedures.
The minister said he had received
many letters from both union mem-
bers and employers praising the
present labor act.
Energy Minister Robert Mac-
aulay said later in Toronto he had
been bombarded by a similar flow
of letters.
The OFL's program attacking
the proposed anti-union measures
took the form of a flood of post-
cards from union members across
the province to their MPs.
Shipbuilders Blast
Navy 'Strikebreaking'
(Continued from Page 1)
armed might of government"
"The Navy's decision to resort
to strikebreaking is flagrantly un-
fair in light of its continued hands-
orT policy when our union requested
aid in the settlement of this long-
standing dispute," he said.
'Naked Intervention*
"While consistently refusing to
serve as an impartial mediator to
this strike, the Navy has now taken
into its own hands open and naked
intervention.
"In the face of the company's
rejection of an offer to arbitrate,
its rejection of a federal recommen-
dation to create a fact-finding body,
and a state court's finding that
Bethlehem is not bargaining in
good faith, it is inconceivable that
the Navy is now using enlisted per-
sonnel to help this arrogant com-
pany break a strike of its employes.
"Such intervention by govern-
ment is all too close to the dic-
tatorial handling of labor-man-
agement relations in those na-
tions under Communist control."
The Navy took over completion
of work on the ships despite a re-
quest not td move the vessels by
the two Massachusetts senators,
John F. Kennedy (D) and Leverett
Saltonstall (R) and Rep. James A.
Burke (D-Mass.), whose district in-
cludes Quincy.
Seafarers Trounce
Teamsters in Vote
San Juan, P. R. — The Sea-
farers, by a vote of 106-64,
defeated the Teamsters in
a National Labor Relations
Board election for bargaining
rights at the Valencia Baxt
Express Corp. here.
The workers voted over-
whelmingly for the AFL-
CIO affiliate despite a last-
minute appearance in San
Juan of James R. Hoffa, pres-
ident of the expelled Team-
sters.
Commenting on HoftVs
trip to the island, SIU Pres.
Paul Hall said: "You can't
win a labor election from a
penthouse suite in the La
Concha Hotel. You have to
get down to the production
line where the workers are."
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NFWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1960
Quota Would Be Doubled;
Ike Proposes Liberalization
Of U.S. Immigration Policies
By Gervase N. Love
A program for major liberalization of immigration policies, which goes far in the direction of re-
forms long urged by labor and liberal groups, has been sent to Congress by Pres. Eisenhower.
One proposal would double the admission of quota immigrants each year, raising the total from
approximately 150,000 to about 300,000, and in part abandon the national origins basis for admission.
The other would open the door to the admission of additional thousands of refugees on a parole
basis in keeping, the President told'^
Congress in a special message, with
the spirit of World Refugee Year
which is now being observed.
Although Senate Republican
Leader Everett M. Dirksen (111.) and
several co-sponsors introduced -a
bill to carry out Eisenhower's pro-
gram, it was given little chance of
enactment because of the opposi-
tion of Chairman Francis E. Walter
(D-Pa.) of the House Immigration
subcommittee.
Walter Attacks Measure
Walter exerts a powerful in-
fluence in immigration matters. He
was a co-sponsor of the 1952 Mc-
Carran-Walter Act which set im-
migration policy and has been
roundly attacked by the AFL-CIO
as being too restrictive. He charged
Eisenhower with playing "election
year politics," saying the President
sent an identical message to Con-
gress in 1956 "and we are certainly
going to have one like it four years
hence."
On quota immigration, Eisen-
hower suggested admitting an-
nually one-sixth of 1 percent of
the U.S. population based on the
1960 census rather than on the
1920 census, as the law now pro-
vides, and using the 1950 figures
until the new ones are available.
The first 154,000 annually would
continue to be allocated under the
present national origins system. The
remainder would be allocated on
his new proposal and be based on
the number of immigrants actually
Meany Asks UN Action
Against Sonth Africa
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has called on the U.S. govern-
ment to take the lead in demanding United Nations action against
South Africa for the "ruthless, wanton" killings of Negroes near
Johannesburg as part of South Africa's "inhuman racialism."
The civilized world, Meany declared in a strongly worded state-
ment, was "shocked and horrified"
by this police brutality in which
more than 50 Africans were killed
and hundreds wounded for peace-
fully protesting South Africa's "no-
torious concept of apartheid."
The killings by the police, the
AFL-CIO president declared,
were "official murders" which
stemmed from South Africa's
"bloody • . . program of terror
and inhuman racialism." He
warned that South Africa's con-
tinued pursuit of its racialism,
"which negates every principle
of humanity and decency . • •
AFL-CIO Aids
Quake Victims
In Morocco v
The AFL-CIO Intl. Free Labor
Fund has made an emergency con-
tribution of $5,000 to the Moroc-
can Labor Union (UMT) for the
relief of victims of the disastrous
Agadir earthquake.
In a letter to Mahjoub Ben Sed-
dik, secretary general of the UMT,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany ex-
pressed the "shock and deep sor-
row" of the American labor move-
ment at the quake which made a
shattered ruins of the African city.
The $5,000 contribution,
Meany said, was to help the
UMT in its "desperately needed"
project of building a new city
and its work "to mitigate the
sufferings of the people of this
area."
The Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, through its Intl.
Solidarity Fund, made a similar
$5,000 contribution and appealed
to its affiliates to give as much aid
as they could to help the workers
of Agadir.
The money was presented by
ICFTU Sec. Gen. J. H. Oldenbroek
to £eddik a t an informal ceremony
in ICFTU headquarters in Brussels.
Seddik also was given the proceeds
of voluntary collections among
members of the staffs of the ICFTU
headquarters and its European Re-
gional Office in Brussels,
can bring only further violence
and death."
Democratic peoples throughout
the world, Meany said, have for
many years "condemned the poli-
cies of the South African govern-
ment," adding that they are "re-
volted anew by the latest manifes-
tation of apartheid."
At its midwinter session, the
AFL-CIO Executive Council voiced
deep concern" over the South
African government's "continued
brutal and inhuman racial poli-
cies," and called for a U.S. con-
sumer boycott of all imports, pos-
sibly reinforced by "a government
boycott of South African gold."
The council said South Africa's
"apartheid" policies, which deny
virtually all rights to that coun-
try's millions of Negroes, "do vio-
lence to all concepts of decency and
morality." It noted that the UN
General Assembly has "repeatedly
condemned" the South African
policies.
In his statement on the latest
wave of killings by South African
police, Meany said that American
labor strongly urges the U.S. gov-
ernment "in concert with all
other democratic nations, to
place this matter before the ap-
propriate body of the United
Nations for urgent and immedi-
ate action."
Earlier Walter P. Reuther, pres-
ident of the AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. and the Auto Work-
ers, urged Sec. of State Christian
A. Herter to take three specific
steps to help bring an end to "insti-
tutionalized brutality" and "enforce
a return to morality and humane
law" in South Africa. He recom-
mended:
• Recall of the U.S. minister
to South Africa, leaving our affairs
in the hands of a minor official as
has been done in the past in Hun-
gary and Germany.
• Suspension of the purchase of
gold from South Africa as an
avowed public expression of dis-
approval of South Africa's defiance
of the United Nations.
• Suspension of the purchase of
stragetic materials now being
stockpiled by the U.S. for defense.
admitted from each country be-
tween 1924 and 1959.
The President also would remove
the ceiling of 2,000 admissions
from the so-called Asiatic Pacific
triangle, with quotas of individual
countries retained but enlarged in
keeping with the new base.
In addition, he proposed that the
unused parts of the quotas of under-
subscribed countries be allocated on
a proportionate basis to the over-
subscribed countries.
After the message reached Con-
gress, the White House distributed
tabulations showing how the new
system would work with maximum
immigration of 300,000 based on a
1960 population of 180 million and
with quotas based on actual immi-
gration from individual countries
between 1924 and 1959.
The figures showed that Iraly,
which had a quota of 5,666 last
year, would have a new quota of
19,945; Ireland's 1959 quota of 17,-
756 would be raised to 27,023; the
1959 quota of 65,361 for Great
Britain and Northern Ireland would
go to 88, 945; Japan's quota of 185
last year would rise to 1,859; the
205 for Nationalist China and Chi-
nese persons in 1959 would be in-
creased to 2,067; and the overall
Asian quota of 3,090 last year
would go to 11,814 annually.
Eisenhower's refugee proposals,
apparently based at least in part on
actual experience during the 1956
surge of Hungarian fugitives from
Soviet oppression, provide for the
acceptance of 10,000 such "pa-
rolees" each year. Their entry
would be permitted by the Attor-
ney General on the recommenda-
tion of the Secretary of State, and
they could be accompanied by
spouses and unmarried children un-
der 21.
But additional refugees could
be admitted without restriction
as to numbers if the President by
proclamation were to find that a
situation had arisen which re-
sulted in new groups which could
legitimately be classified as "re-
fugees."
Walter has introduced a some-
what similar bill, also using the
parolee technique, to cover refugee
admissions.
Last Bill Died in 1955
During the 84th Congress, the
House passed a bill liberalizing im-
migration on July 30, 1955. It was
amended and passed by the Senate
on July 27, 1956, but as that was
the last day of the session it never
got back to the House floor.
The McCarran-Walter Act, which
continued policies adopted in 1920,
was passed by the 82d Congress
over Pres. Harry S. Truman's veto.
The AFL-CIO at its convention
last September declared that seven
years of the McCarran-Walter Act
"have established beyond question
that it is inconsistent with the tra-
ditional American concepts of hu-
manitarianism and democracy."
The delegates urged legislation
providing for the admission of at
least 250,000 immigrants a year and
replacement of the national origins
system by one based on "meaning-
ful and relevant factors," includ-
ing family reunion, this country's
technical and professional needs,
and refugee relief.
A separate convention resolu-
tion formally endorsed World
Refugee Year and asked Con-
gress to mark it by passing "sub-
stantive legislation that includes
liberalized refugee admissions,"
$50,000 CHECK from AFL-CIO will provide scholarships for
African and Asian trade unionists at new Israeli institute of labor
studies. AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler present check — first installment of $175,000 voted by
Executive Council — to Isaiah Avrech, American representative for
Histadrut, the Israeli federation of labor which is sponsoring the
institute, a new venture in training union leaders.
New Grant to Histadrut
To Aid Asians, Africans
A new venture in training labor leadership in the newly emerg-
ing nations of Asia and Africa moved closer to the operational
stage with the presentation of a check for $50,000 from the AFL-
CIO to Histadrut — the Israeli federation of labor.
The check presented by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany to Isaiah
Avrech, American representative^
for Histadrut, is the first part of
a contribution of $175,000 voted
by the AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil to help set up an institute of
labor studies in Israel. The total
grant will cover 60 scholarships at
the institute.
Histadrut will contribute the
same amount to establish the la-
bor institute at the Workers Col-
lege of Histadrut in Tel Aviv,
expected to open later this year.
The aim of the institute, Avrech
said, is to -offer training in the
operations of trade unions and co-
operative institutions in a free so-
ciety and provide a basic under-
standing of economic and social
problems in developing countries.
The emphasis will be to develop
leadership in the labor movements
of Asia and Africa.
A six-month course will include
such topics as labor economics,
social science, history of the labor
movement in industrial and other
countries, the role of trade unions
and cooperatives in developing
countries, problems of agriculture,
investment policy and the role of
the state.
In addition to the study pro-
gram, the students will examine in
detail the operations of Histadrut
and will visit its numerous enter-
prises.
The students will be recruited
from newly emerging labor
movements in Asia and Africa,
cooperatives and government
service. A number of Asian and
African nations have been send-
ing delegations to Israel for
short-term studies at the Work-
ers College and the Israeli gov-
09-9S-8
ernment and Histadrut have also
sent experts to various countries
including Ghana and Burma to
aid in the economic and social
developments of those areas*
World Affairs Parley
Planned by AFL-CIO
(Continued from Page I)
and all other freedom-loving people
win this struggle. ... To be effec-
tive ... we must understand the
urgent international problems at
hand."
He said the federation wants the
American people "to know more
about the international policies and
activities of the AFL-CIO in the
realm of international affairs" as
well as helping enlighten "the coun-
try and the general public" about
the critical world situation and the
position of the AFL-CIO "for
meeting the vital issues at stake."
The conference was called by
the AFL-CIO Executive Council
at its recent midwinter meeting
to deal with the theme of "The
Struggle for Peace and Free-
dom."
The conference will be opened
Tuesday, Apr. 19 by AFL-CIO
Vice Pres. George M. Harrison,
chairman of the federation's Intl.
Affairs Committee. Meany will key-
note the session with an address on
"American Labor and the World
Crisis."
Prof. Frank Tannenbaum of
Columbia University will deal with
hemisphere problems in an address
on "Inter-American Unity and
World Freedom." Prof. David N.
Rowe of Yale University will open
the afternoon session with a talk on
"The Far East and the World of
Tomorrow" to be followed by an
address on "Africa and the Near
East — the Problems of Economic
Progress and Freedom" by Dr.
Ernest Grigg, assistant director,
United Nations Community Devel-
opment.
Gen. Medaris will open the
Wednesday session with an ad-
dress on "The State of Our Na-
tional Defense" to be followed
by Dr. Kissinger on "Germany
— The Core of the European
Problem and the Summit."
Foster will lead off the afternoon
session with a speech on "Essen-
tials of an Effective Foreign Policy
for the United States" and Harrison
will close the conference. Dillon
will address a dinner meeting Wed-
nesday presided over by AFL-CIO
Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther.
Interest, Medical Bills Up Living Costs
Index Rises"
To Match
Record
The nation's cost of living,
feeling the impact of mounting
mortgage interest rates and high-
er medical bills, turned upward
in February to equal last Novem-
ber's all-time high, according to
the Labor Dept/s monthly Con-
sumer Price Index.
The CPI, reversing a two-
month downtrend, rose 0.2 per-
cent to 125.6. This means the
market basket which cost $ 1 in the
1947-49 base period now costs just
under $1.26.
Spendable earnings in Febru-
ary, after deduction of federal
income and social security taxes,
dropped by $1 to $81.10 for a
worker with 3 dependents and
$73.54 for a worker without de-
pendents.
The rebound of the cost of living
to its record peak under pressure
from higher interest rates and med-
ical bills pointed up the AFL-ClO's
repeated calls for action in these
areas and the Eisenhower Admin-
istration's opposition.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council
last February scored the Adminis-
tration's tight-money policies for
causing "the tightest squeeze in
more than a generation."
The council pointed out that,
while corporations escape the
tight-money squeeze by drawing
on their own huge financial re-
sources to modernize and ex-
pand, the high cost of borrowing
money helped drive up interest
payments on the national debt
by 40 percent since 1953 and di-
rectly affected private housing.
"The interest rate on FHA
mortgages is now 5.75 percent. But
that isn't all," the council said.
"There is another one-half percent
that must be added for insurance.
Untold additional payments have to
be made in order to even get a
mortgage."
Slump in Building
The council said the Administra-
tion's tight-money policies and the
practices following from it "brought
a slump in home-building" ' and
slowed state and local public proj-
ects "because borrowing has be-
come too expensive."
To combat steadily-rising medi-
cal costs, organized labor has been
vigorously pushing the Forand bill.
Introduced by Rep. Aime J.
Forand (D-R. L), it would expand
social security benefits to include
health benefits for beneficiaries.
Commenting on the outlook
for Spring living costs, .Robert J.
Myers, deputy commissioner of
labor statistics, told reporters
that "things are likely to get a
little worse before they get bet-
ter."
The Labor Dept. said the "main
upward thrust" of interest rates
and medical costs more than offset
a "sharp reduction" in gasoline
(Continued on Page 12)
Vol. v
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Saeond Clan Poetaaa Paid at Washington, D. C,
Saturday, April 2, 1960
No. 14
AFL-CIO Fights Move to
Extend McClellan Probe
I Committee
NAVY'S STRIKEBREAKING POLICY resulted in transfer of the missile cruiser Springfield from
the Bethlehem Steel Co.'s Quincy, Mass., shipyard past the Shipbuilders' picket boat (small craft) to
the Charleston Navy Yard. Navy also moved two other ships through IUMSWA and Technical
Engineers' picket lines, and sent enlisted men into another strikebound yard.
: $
Meany Tells Parley:
Federal School Aid
Role 'Inescapable'
By Dave Perlman
The federal government must meet its "clear and inescapable
responsibility" to help ease the nation's critical educational needs,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told delegates^ to the White House
Conference on Children and Youth.
The facts about school deficiencies are "chilling," Meany de-
clared in an opening-day address'^
to a conference forum on opportu-
nity for today's youngsters.
He charged that because of the
government's "short-sighted reluc-
tance" to act, "nothing effective is
being done" to remedy "fast-dete-
riorating" school facilities, a "crit-
ical shortage" of classrooms and
"seriously-impaired" educational
standards.
Meany placed before the dele-
gates for discussion in work-
group sessions a program and
philosophy geared to meeting the
manpower needs of tomorrow
(Continued on Page 2)
Labor Won't Compromise in Fight
To Wipe Out Bias, Meany Pledges
By Robert B. Cooney
Atlantic City — "The labor movement is a brotherhood — a brotherhood of workers. Surely it can-
not set its face against the brotherhood of man."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, with these words, told the Jewish Labor Committee's silver jubilee
convention here that organized labor cannot compromise on "the issue of civil rights, of equal op-
portunity."
"I say that if we have to prac- &
rice discrimination to organize
workers," Meany declared, "then
organization will have to wait un-
til we educate the unorganized.
"I say that if we have to lose a
vote in Congress on minimum
wages or the Forand bill or unem-
ployment compensation because we
take a stand on civil rights, that is
a price we are prepared to pay."
The Forand bill, introduced by
Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.) and
a major legislative goal of labor,
would expand the social security
system to include health benefits.
Meany 's transcribed remarks,
heard by over 300 delegates, ac-
knowledged a JLC tribute to or-
ganized labor "for its steadfast
devotion over the past quarter of
(Continued on f age 12)
Injunctions
Sought at
Bethlehem
Boston — The National Labor
Relations Board has gone into
federal court here with requests
for injunctions against the Ship-
builders, the Technical Engineers
and the Bethlehem Steel Co.'s
Shipbuilding Div. in what it called
a move to get the parties back to
the bargaining table.
Judge George C. Sweeney or-
dered both unions and the company
to appear before him on Apr. 6 to
show cause why temporary injunc-
tions should not be issued.
Legal authorities regard the move
against the company as highly un-
usual if not almost unprecedented.
In effect, the board is asking the
court to restrain the firm from per-
sisting in practices it alleges violate
the law in advance of the board's
own determination of the issue
through its normal processes.
The NLRB general counsel, Stu-
art Rothman, charged the company
with interfering, restraining or co-
ercing employes in the exercise of
their rights, and with refusal to bar-
gain in good faith with the repre-
sentatives of its workers. NLRB
Trial Examiner Thomas Ricci has
held 19 days of hearings and has
given both sides until Apr. 15 to
file briefs. An intermediate report
of his findings and recommenda-
tions is not expected until about
the middle of May.
The board's case was directed
(Continued on Page 2)
[Branded as
Anti-Union
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
I has vigorously opposed extending
the life of the McClellan special
Senate committee, charging that
in recent months it has "become
more and more a sounding board
for reactionary anti-union ele-
ments."
In telegrams to all members of
the Senate, Meany voiced labor's
firm opposition to proposals that
the committee be allowed to oper-
ate for another year, terming this
an effort to gain permanent status
for the committee "in defiance of
all Senate precedent."
Committee Approves Move
The wires were sent after the
Senate Rules Committee voted 5
to 3 to approve a resolution be-
latedly introduced by Sen. John L.
McClellan (D-Ark.) fo give the
committee a new 12-month lease
on life. The Rules body voted to
give McClellan only $100,000 to
continue investigations, instead of
the $150,000 he had requested.
McClellan, chairman of the
special committee since its cre-
ation in 1957 to probe impropri-
eties in the labor and manage-
ment field, filed the resolution
after his own Government Opera-
tions Committee voted 5 to 4
against seeking to take over some
functions of the expiring investi-
gative body.
In asking for the extension, Mc-
Clellan said the special committee
should have a "watchdog" role over
Labor Dept. administration of the
Landrum-Griffin Act. This pointed
up a basic conflict with the Labor
& Public Welfare Committee head-
(Con tinned on Page 4)
Dime Store
Clerk Tells of
$30 Wage
A dime store clerk has told a
House subcommittee what it is
like to live on a take-home pay
of $30.18 a week.
Evelyne Twilley, a member of
the Retail, Wholesale & Depart-
ment Store Union and a clerk at
the S. H. Kress Co. store in Gads-
den, Ala., told a subcommittee
considering minimum wage legis-
lation that she was luckier than
most store clerks in her home town.
Because her store is union or-
ganized, the wages — although kept
down by competition — are higher
than those in other stores. As an
experienced worker, she has re-
(Continued on Page 11)
Pjge Two
AFL-CIO iNEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
CHILDREN BELONG in schools, not factories or fields, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told dele-
gates to White House Conference on Children and Youth.
U.S. Has Duty to Aid Schools,
Meany Tells White House Parley
(Continued from Page 1)
through more and better school-
ing for today's youngsters, cou-
pled with strengthened child la-
bor laws and tearing down racial
discrimination barriers to job op-
portunities.
The White House conference — a
once-every-10-years exploration of
the unmet needs of the nation's
youngsters — carried on a tradition
begun by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt
in 1909. A record 7,000 delegates
attended, appointed by state gov-
ernors and nearly 600 participating
national organizations including the
AFL-CIO and several international
unions. *
Representing labor on the con-
ference's national committee was
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann, president of the Plum-
bers & Pipe Fitters and chairman
of the federation's Committee on
Education. Schoemann presided at
one of the conference's five theme
assemblies.
Meany hammered hard at ad-
vocates of weakening child labor
laws so that youngsters can get so-
called "work experience" at an ear-
lier age.
'More and Better Schooling*
He said children today need
"more and better schooling" if the
nation is to meet a growing de-
mand for skilled manpower. They
"belong in school, not in a factory
job or even an office job, until they
have acquired sufficient training to
make the most of their aptitudes."
In a talk before another con-
ference forum, Leo Perlis, direc-
tor of AFL-CIO Community
Service Activities, told the dele-
gates that so-called work experi-
ence "can stunt and even kill, as
it recently did a 12-year-old girl
who was caught in a potato-dig-
ging machine on an Idaho farm."
Perlis said "work for the young
is no substitute for a working father
and for a working community —
a community whose government,
agencies and citizens care enough
to want to spend time and money
to provide different kinds of edu-
cation and training for different
types of youngsters, adequate rec-
reational facilities, comprehensive
medical care and social services
and housing."
Meany called for strengthening
of child labor laws, declaring that
"thousands of children in our cities
work in hazardous occupations be-
cause the federal law does not pro-
tect them and the state laws are
woefully inadequate." Youngsters
who are excused from school to
work on farm harvests, he added,
are being "shamelessly exploited
within the letter of the law."
Calling for improved vocational
training "through consultation with
labor and management," Meany
warned against "misguided attempts
to turn out half-trained technicians
through 'quickie* one or two-year
vocational courses."
Proper vocational training, he
said, should "complement the
widespread and effective appren-
ticeship programs which form the
cornerstone of the training of the
nation's skilled workers."
Delegates broke into applause
when Meany declared that the is-
sue of racial discrimination in jobs
JNLRB Seeks Injunctions
In Bethlehem Strike
(Continued from Page 1)
against the company's unilateral
changes in working rules and
conditions which it imposed on
employes upon expiration of the
old agreements on July 13, 1959.
These included depriving workers
of seniority rights in layoffs and
recall and discontinuance of
grievance procedures.
The unions vainly tried to per-
suade the company to continue the
old contracts in force until new
ones had been negotiated. They
finally walked out on Jan. 22.
Rothman, who said he went into
court in the public interest, claimed
the activities of both company and
unions have delayed settlement of
the strike with a consequent stop-
page of work on Navy vessels
which he claimed are essential to
national defense.
The injunction suit against the
two international unions, two
IUMSWA locals and one local of
the Technical Engineers is aimed
at preventing alleged mass picket-
ing, violence and threats of vio-
lence, or other conduct which
blocks entrance and exit at several
shipyards.
In a parallel action, Rothman
also filed an NLRB complaint
against the two unions charging
them with illegal mass picketing.
A hearing before a trial examiner
has been set for May 9.
j Massachusetts state courts have
twice rejected Bethlehem requests
for injunctions restraining mass
picketing at its Quincy, Mass., yard.
"can no longer be buried or over-
looked. . . . Discrimination in hir-
ing, whether by employers, unions
or any group, is equally indefensi-
ble and intolerable." He added:
"It gains us nothing to give the
Negro child equal educational op-
portunity only to have the employ-
ment opportunity for which he is
qualified barred to him. The Amer-
ican dream is bound to lose its
luster for the college graduate who
can find no better job open than
running an elevator.
"This whole evil is so vast, so ir-
rational, so shameful to our na-
tional honor and so damaging to
the American image in the eyes of
the rest of the world that it requires
urgent and immediate corrective ac-
tion."
More Money Needed
Meany warned that America's
education lag can only be met by
investing "a much larger amount
of the national income in the ed-
ucation and training of our chil-
dren and youth." He pointed out
that "the enhanced power of So-
viet Russia today clearly results
from her heavy investment in ed-
ucation."
He suggested, too, that those who
are concerned with the rise in ju-
venile delinquency look for the bas-
ic causes to "the shabby schools
and the shocking slums of our
cities."
"How can we expect anything
better," he asked, "when we
starve thousands of highly quali-
fied teachers, capable of provid-
ing the inspiration and guidance
needed by the youth of today,
into abandoning their dedicated
profession?"
And he warned that "every time
a boy or girl is compelled to leave
school prematurely and take any
kind of a job, by the sheer neces-
sity of supplementing the family
income, America suffers an irre-
trievable waste of her human re-
sources."
Meany called on the delegates to
come up with "constructive and
courageous recommendations."
Work Groups Report
Under the elaborate conference
procedure, each of more than 200
work groups submitted recommen-
dations which were to percolate up
through the higher levels of the
conference.
In a keynote address, Pres. Ei-
senhower said the best antidote to
juvenile delinquency is "a happy
family; one that finds its greatest
enjoyment in such things as the
family picnic, the 'cookout' or the
home movies."
At Youth Conference:
Union Delegates Put
Needy Kids First
Labor delegates to the White House Conference on Children and
Youth put top priority on an action program aimed at giving millions
of underprivileged kids a fair start in life.
At a round-table meeting sponsored by the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Education, they picked up the torch for the youngsters who go to
bed hungry, who live in city or^
rural slums, who are taught in over-
crowded schools by underpaid
teachers, who are forced to quit
school to supplement inadequate
family incomes and who run into
racial discrimination bars from
early childhood on.
To meet these basic problems,
the 70 labor delegates set out to
convince their 7,000 fellow dele-
gates from all walks of life that
the conference should recommend
a bold program of legislative action
— including federal aid as well as
state and local laws — plus pro-
posing more adequate funds for
budget-starved health and welfare
services.
Question Experts
The delegates, who ranged from
top officers of international unions
and state federations to young ap-
prentices, heard and questioned a
panel of labor experts on the is-
sues to be discussed at the White
House conference.
They included AFL-CIO Legis-
lative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller,
Assistant Dir. Katherine Ellickson
of the Dept. of Social Security;
Community Services Rep. Julius
Rothman and Pres. Carl Megel of
the Teachers. Education Dir. John
D. Connors was chairman of the
session.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann, president of the
Plumbers & Pipe Fitters and la-
bor's top representative on the
conference's planning board, told
the delegates the conference's
goal is to "provide a rallying point
for a mass attack on every ques-
tion affecting the well-being of
the next generation."
Previous conferences, he pointed
out, have brought "great advances"
in the field of child welfare. He
dated this progress from the first
such meeting in 1909, which
"helped create the U.S. Children's
Bureau, aided the enactment of
much-needed child labor laws and
furthered the cause of free public
education for all."
Youth to Shape Unionism
He emphasized that "the youth
of today and tomorrow will also
shape the trade union future. What
schools they attend, what they are
taught, what age they begin work,
how they are trained — all affect
attitudes of the future and the cli-
mate in which unions exist."
The panel discussion hammered
home these points:
• One-fifth of the nation's chil-
dren live in families with yearly
incomes under $2,500. At least 8
million children are in families
where unemployment remains a
persistent problem.
• The largest student enroll-
ment in the nation's history has
made the shortage of trained class-
room teachers even more acute.
In Illinois, while 72 colleges showed
gains in enrollment in 1959, the
teachers' colleges enrolled 1,500
fewer students.
• A higher minimum wage, de-
pressed area relief, more adequate
unemployment benefits as well as
federal aid to education and health
care for Social Security benefici-
aries all have a direct bearing on
child welfare and family life.
Union Fiscal
Officers Study
L-G Problems
Miami Beach, Fla. — The new
administrative problems posed for
local and international unions and
their members by the Landrum-
Griffin Act were analyzed in depth
by the AFL-CIO Secretary-Treas-
urers' Conference at its winter
meeting here.
J. Albert Woll, AFL-CIO general
counsel, gave a detailed discussion
of the reporting forms required un-
der the act, and interpreted the
bonding provisions. Members re-
ported a wide range of rates de-
manded by surety companies for
"faithful performance" bonds,
many of them described as high.
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William
F. Schnitzler said 387 bonding
companies have been cleared by
the Labor Dept. for the issuance
of fidelity bonds and warned that
such clearance is necessary if the
bonds are to be acceptable.
Dir. Nelson Cruikshank of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security
described organized labor's drive to
secure passage of the For and bill
to give health care benefits to social
security recipients.
The meeting saw a new confer-
ence treasurer take over. He was
Sec.-Treas. Hunter Wharton of
the Operating Engineers, who suc-
ceeded former Sec.-Treas. Vernon
Housewright of the Retail Clerks.
Housewright announced his retire-
ment at the previous meeting.
LABOR DELEGATES to White House Conference on Children
and Youth are welcomed by AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T. Schoe-
mann, president of the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters and labor's repre-
sentative on the top planning board for the conference. Meeting
for union delegates was sponsored by AFL-CIO Dept. of Education
and was addressed by experts in fields covered by the conference.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
Page Hire*
NLRB Upset By 6-3:
Supreme Court Knocks Out
Curtis Anti-Picket Doctrine
The Supreme Court has knocked out the National Labor Relations Board's controversial Curtis
doctrine in which the board attempted to outlaw peaceful picketing by a union which had lost the
majority of an employer's workers.
The court's 6-to-3 decision held that the board was mistaken in overruling its own precedents
to rule that peaceful picketing could be stopped on the theory that non-union workers were being
"coerced" by the pickets. &
The court said that the earlier
decisions of the board — in which
peaceful picketing to protest an em-
ployer's anti-union actions was held
legal — were "sounder" in their in-
terpretation of the Taft-Hartley
Act than the Curtis decision.
Significance Uncertain
The long-term significance of the
decision remains uncertain in view
of the passage last year of the
Landrum-Griffin Act. The three-
justice minority said that a new L-G
section seemed to them "squarely
to cover" the type of peaceful pick-
eting involved in the Curtis case.
The minority did not discuss the
board's attempt to outlaw the pick-
eting under the Taft-Hartley Act
alone.
The case arose when a local of
the Teamsters won a National
Labor Relations Board election
but was unable to obtain a first
contract from the Curtis Com-
pany, a Washington, D. C. furni-
ture enterprise. When the union
struck after extensive negotia-
tions, ,the company promptly
hired strikebreakers and obtained
a second NLRB 'election in which
the strikers, as "permanently re-
placed" employes, were not al-
lowed to vote.
Having displaced the union, the
company next asked the labor
board to halt the union's continued
picketing. By a 4-to-l decision the
board reversed its 10-year-old pre-
cedents and held that the effect of
the picketing was to apply "eco-
nomic coercion" against the em-
ployes — including the strikebreak-
ers hired after the walkout began.
Curtis Rule Spread
In two other cases — the O'Sul-
livan Rubber case and the Califor-
nia Alloy case — the board applied
the new doctrine in somewhat sim-
ilar circumstances to prohibit both
picketing and a union boycott of
company products.
Its ruling in the O'Sullivan
case had been upheld by a U.S.
Court of Appeals in regard both
to picketing and the boycott and
an appeal from that ruling is now
pending in the high court. In the
Curtis case the U.S. Court of Ap-
peals for the District of Columbia
reversed the board and the Su-
preme Court has now upheld the
reversal.
The majority in an opinion writ-
ten by Justice William J. Brennan,
Jr. said that the Taft-Hartley Act
gave the board power to halt pick
eting conducted in an unlawful
manner or for an unlawful purpose
but that it had no authority to ex-
tend these powers to the circum
stances of the Curtis case,
L-G Basis Rejected
The court also rejected the
board's contention that even if its
ruling was not justified under the
Taft-Hartley Act it was authorized
by enactment of the Landrum-Grif-
fin Act last year.
The court conceded that the
L-G law "goes beyond" the Taft-
Hartley Act in its restrictions on
picketing but said that "it also
establishes safeguards against the
board's interference with legiti-
mate picketing activity."
The decision is the second major
case this year in which the high
court has overruled the National
Labor Relations Board and pro-
tected the right of unions to use
historic economic persuasions in the
field of labor relations.
In a case involving the Insurance
Workers, the justices held that so-
called "intermittent" work stop-
pages and slow downs in the course
of lengthy bargaining were not an
unfair labor practice.
Forand Bill Backers Rally Forces
After First-Round House Setback
Prospects for enactment of legislation providing health care for the aged within the framework of
the social security system remained high despite House Ways & Means Committee rejection, by a vote
of 17 to 8, of the AFL-ClO-backed Forand bill.
Supporters said the vote on the measure introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.) left the
door open for working out a compromise within the committee to bring to the House floor some form
of legislation to aid the nation's 15'^
million senior citizens.
The bill turned down by the com-
mittee headed by Rep. Wilbur D.
Mills (D-Ark.) would have pro-
vided hospitalization, surgical and
nursing care for social security
recipients — financed by a maximum
social security tax increase of $12
a year each for employers and em-
ployes.
Meanwhile, three leading Dem-
ocratic presidential aspirants-
Senators John F. Kennedy (D-
Mass.), Hubert H. Humphrey (D-
Minn.) and Stuart Symington CD-
Mo.)— gave wholehearted en-
dorsement to medical care legis-
lation at a giant rally in support
of the Forand bill staged in De-
troit by the Auto Workers. Ken-
nedy and Humphrey have intro-
duced separate health measures
in the Senate.
Failure of the House Ways &
Means Committee to include health
care provisions in any social secu-
rity legislation this year would not
spell an end to chances in this direc-
tion during the current session of
Congress, Forand bill supporters
pointed out.
Any social security bill could be
open to amendment on the House
floor and would be subject to im-
provement in the Senate, where
bills similar to those sponsored by
Kennedy and Humphrey could be
added as amendments.
The AFL-CIO has called passage
of health care legislation a major
goal for the 86th Congress, and has
flayed the Administration's opposi-
tion to such a measure as an "ab-
ject surrender to the dictates of the
medical lobby and the insurance
trust."
Speaking for the Administra-
tion, Health, Education & Wel-
fare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming
told Mills' committee the Ad-
ministration opposed using the
social security system for medical
benefits because this would con-
stitute "compulsory health in-
surance." . Pres. Eisenhower
tagged the Forand bill with a
"socialized medicine" label at his
Mar. 30 press conference.
At the Detroit rally, UAW Pres.
•Walter P. Reuther introduced the
three Democratic presidential as-
pirants to a cheering crowd of 10,-
000 who had gathered to register
support for the health care measure.
Symington declared that the na-
tion's elderly citizens are "caught
in an economic squeeze," pointing
out that while hospital costs have
soared 100 percent in the past 12
years, the income of persons over
65 has increased only 42 percent.
"A sudden illness, a stay in the
hospital, can wipe out all of their
long-accumulated savings," the Mis-
souri Democrat said. "Surely we
all agree that a person who has
saved during his working years
should be able to face illness later
without turning to charity."
Symington said "nothing in the
Forand principle would affect the
American system of free medicine,"
adding: "This plan deals only with
how medical bills are paid. The
doctors, the hospitals, the nursing
homes, the way medical care is
provided — they are all left alone."
Kennedy, noting that this year
marks the 25th anniversary of
the social security system, said
that it is in the spirit of- Franklin
Roosevelt and Harry Truman
"that we battle today for a social
security law which will truly pro-
vide our older citizens . • . with
a decent and a dignified and a
healthy way of life."
The average social security check
is a "pitiful" $72 a month, the Mas-
sachusetts Democrat said, which is
insufficient to meet the high cost
of medicines, hospitals and "sky-
rocketing" doctor bills.
He termed the Administration's
opposition to the Forand bill as an
indication that it would "rather
save its precious budget surplus
than save the health, the self-re-
spect and the economic welfare of
our older citizens."
Humphrey Assails GOP
Humphrey urged the public to
keep up the flood of letters to Con-
gress demanding passage of the
health care measure, declaring that
the Administration's pledge to
"study" the situation after oppos-
ing the Forand bill was "cold-
blooded Old Guard Republican
politics rather than warm-blooded
concern for people and their prob-
lems."
The "study" proposal, he de-
clared, was designed to win "the
maximum political benefits for
(Vice Pres.) Nixon, rather than the
maximum medical benefits for
you."
"Don't let the Administration
sidetrack our bills at the very
brink of a historic breakthrough
in social responsibility," Humph-
rey urged. "Don't let the Ad-
ministration wriggle out of the fix
in which its past indifference and
the mounting needs and demands
of . . . retired Americans have
placed it."
Also speaking at the UAW rally,
Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.)
predicted that federal health insur-
ance would be enacted this year,
adding that it would "rank in im-
portance with the creation of the
social security system itself, and
with unemployment insurance,
workmen's compensation and other
great social advances we've made
since the 30s."
UNANIMOUS SUPPORT for Forand bill was voted by five-mem-
ber, all-Republican City Council in Chester, Pa. Resolution was
presented to council by Mayor Joseph L. Eyre at request of Textile
Workers Union of America Local 10, and its Pensioners Club.
Shown at council ceremonies are, left to right: Bernie Hefling, Pen-
siohers Club secretary; Matthew Sharpless, a club member; Mayor
Eyre; and Rose Johnson, club president.
State, City Governments
Endorse Health Care
Publip demand for the Forand bill to provide health care for
the aged continued to mount as the Massachusetts legislature and
the city councils of Philadelphia and Chester, Pa., called for prompt
congressional passage of the measure.
The Massachusetts legislature adopted a resolution urging Con-
gress to enact the bill introduced'^
by Rep. Aime J. Forand (D- R. I.),
which would make health care for
the aged available through the so-
cial security system, financed by
increased employe and employer
contributions.
The resolution, inserted in the
Congressional Record by Rep,
Thomas J. Lane (D-Mass.),
termed enactment of the bill in
this session of Congress "essen-
tial to meet the growing need for
more adequate medical care for
elderly people." Nine out of 10
people over 65, the Bay State
legislator said, would be aided by
the measure.
In Chester, Pa., the five members
of the City Council, all of them
Republicans, unanimously endorsed
a resolution introduced by Mayor
Joseph L. Eyre at the request of
Textile Workers Union of America
Local 10 and its pensioners' club.
The Chester body forwarded cop-
ies of the resolution to members
of the Pennsylvania delegation in
Congress, accompanied by strong
personal pleas for support of the
Forand bill.
More than 60 trade unionists —
headed by Pres. Jack Mullen of
the Delaware County AFL-CIO
Council; Steelworkers Intl. Rep.
William Toners; and Shipworkers
Local 802 Business Rep. Phil News
— were on hand in the Chester
council chambers when the reso-
lution was adopted.
The Philadelphia City Coun-
cil's resolution noted that "the
most serious problem facing our
elderly citizens is that of meeting
the rising costs of medical care
at a time when their income is
lowest and the potentiality of
illness and total disability is
highest."
The Philadelphia lawmakers
pointed out that at present social
security "provides a bare subsist-
ence income" for retired benefi-
ciaries and "makes no provision for
medical care and hospitalization for
the millions of elderly people who
are unable to meet these costs from
their pension payments."
Since the problem of health care
for the aged "exists today in every
section of our country," the reso-
lution said, "its solution should be
a responsibility of the federal gov-
ernment." It added that passage of
the Forand bill "woulJ help ameli-
orate this serious situation."
NMU Members Begin
Balloting For Officers
New York — Some 40,000 members of the Maritime Union have
begun casting their ballots in the union's biennial referendum elec-
tion for a full slate of national and port officers.
Eighty posts, ranging from international president to port patrol-
men, will be filled in voting conducted from Apr. 1 to May 31
30 port headquarters on all'^
in 3U port headquarters on
coasts, the Great Lakes and the
major river routes.
Members mark their ballots
in the various headquarters and
mail them to the Amalgamated
Bank in New York, where they
will be kept in a sealed vault
until the election period ends.
The bank then will turn them
over to the Honest Ballot Asso-
ciation, which will count them
and announce the results. The
HBA is in full charge of all
phases of the election.
Pres. Joseph N. Curran, in office
since 1937, is seeking his 11th
term. Opposing him are Albert J.
Tiger and Stanley J. Walker. Cur-
ran was last opposed in 1956, and
also overcame rival candidates in
1946, 1948 and 1950.
Steve Federoff, a former vice
president who became secretary-
treasurer in 1958, faces opposition
from Hugh Curtis McMurray, Leo
Stoute, Cornelius J. Sullivan and
Charles Torres.
Six candidates are vying for
three national vice presidencies
and four are seeking to fill three
posts as national representative.
Ten port agents have no opponents,
The NMU Pilot, the union's
official publication, in accordance
with past practice has published a
special election issue carrying the
candidates' statements and photo-
graphs.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
Ike to Open
Union Label
Show May 6
Pres. Eisenhower has accepted
organized labor's invitation to offi-
ciate at the opening of the mam-
moth AFL-CIO Union-Industries
Show to be held May 6-11 at the
National Guard Armory in the
nation's capital.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and Sec.-Treas. Joseph Lewis of
the AFL-CIO Union Label and
Service Trades Dept. which spon-
sors the exhibition, presented the
invitation to the President in a
meeting at the White House.
Designed to highlight good labor-
management relations, the show
will boast over 375 displays exhi-
bited by AFL-CIO unions, their
employers and government agen-
cies. Displays valued at several
million dollars will portray virtu-
ally every craft, skill and service of
union members.
The show, which this year will
be keyed to the value of workers
and employers cooperating under
a free enterprise economy, will
be built around the theme of
"Democracy at Work."
The Union-Industries Show has
been produced annually by the
Union Label Dept. since 1938, with
the exception of the World War II
years, to acquaint the public with
the union label, the shop card and
the union button.
Noted for its "giveaways," the
show this year will award prizes
and souvenirs worth more than
$80,000. These will include an all-
electric kitchen, a fiber-glass boat,
tons of fresh meat, gas and electric
ranges, color and black-and-white
television receivers, clothing, elec-
trical appliances and all expense
vacation trips.
British Union
Leader Sets
Retirement
London — Sir Vincent Tewson,
general secretary of the British
Trades Union Congress, has ad-
vised the TUC general council of
his intention to retire at the annual
congress next fall.
Tewson, who is 62, will have
completed 35 years of service with
the TUC at the time of his retire-
ment. He told the council that at-
tainment of this goal, as well as
medical advice, were responsible
for his decision.
A member of the Amalgamated
Society of Dyers, Tewson joined
the TUC staff in 1925 as secretary
of the then new Organization Dept.
In 1931 he became assistant gen-
eral secretary, and in 1946 was
chosen general secretary to succeed
Sir Walter (now Lord) Citrine.
Tewson had a distinguished rec-
ord in World War I, rising from
private to brigade staff captain and
winning the Military Cross. He has
been a member of the executive
board of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions since its organ-
ization in 1949 and was its presi-
dent from 1951 to 1953.
Bus Union Names
Full-Time Council
The Street-Electric Railway Em-
ployes have announced the appoint-
ment of Washington attorney Bern-
ard Cushman to a new full-time
post as counsel to the union. Cush-
man, president of the Washington
chapter of the Industrial Research
Association, has been associated
with the Labor Bureau of Middle
West for the past 13 years.
Union Pres. John M. Elliott said
the complexity of the Landrum-
Grillin Act was one reason for cre-
ation of the new post. He said Chi-
cago Attorney O. David Zimring
will continue to serve as the union's
national counsel.
GIFT OF $7^000 from union barbers in Detroit made possible
complete set of equipment for new emergency and admitting de-
partment at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. Elmer
Albrecht (right), director of Detroit Union Barbers Health & Wel-
fare Fund, watches as Dr. R. H. Gregg, medical director, demon-
strates new equipment.
Schnitzler Warns
Business of 'Friends 9
New York — Business needs protection from its .self - styled
"friends," not from labor; AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler declared here.
Addressing union and business leaders at a dinner honoring
Pres. Edward Carlough of the Sheet Metal Workers, Schnitzler
pointed out that "reactionaries and 1 ^
stand-patters" who claim to be
friends of business advocate "rigid
economic policies which would
paralyze business."
Growth Good for Business
In contrast, he pointed out, "the
trade union movement is doing its
utmost to promote full employ-
ment and to increase the purchas-
ing power of the American people."
To obtain full employment,
Schnitzler said, the economy
must grow at least 5 percent a
year. "Would more business be
helpful or harmful to the em-
ployers of this country?" he
asked. "The answer is obvious."
The labor movement, he noted,
"is concededly the most active and
most effective foe of communism
in this country . . . how can the
trade union movement threaten the
welfare of American business and
act as its chief defender at the
same time?"
Declaring that "the time has
come when business should probe
deeper into these paradoxical po-
sitions and discover who are its
real friends and enemies, Schnitzler
added:
"Instead of misdirecting their
energies toward seeking even more
restrictive an ti- labor legislation,
business organizations would far
better serve their own members by
encouraging the trade union move-
ment to achieve its constructive
objectives."
Schnitzler charged that busi-
ness organizations which "feel
compelled to justify their exist-
ence by carrying on an unending
war of aggression against organ-
ized labor ... do not speak for
the decent employers of this
country, who are probably in the
majority. Instead they cater to
the lowest level of union-hating
bosses who, if given their way,
would quickly destroy the Amer-
ican standard of living."
He praised "the high degree of
labor-management cooperation" in
the sheet metal industry, where the
bulk of small employers "realize
the advantages of running their
plants under a union contract."
Union Benefits Cited
Among these, Schnitzler pointed
out, are "stability of production,
availability of highly-skilled crafts-
men and protection from the cut-
throat competition of chiselers on
the one hand and the cannibalistic
greed of big business monopolies
on the other."
Too 'Broad,' CWA Says:
Court Asked To Kill
NLRB Picket Curb
The Communications. Workers have asked the Supreme Court
to amend a National Labor Relations Board order — issued in con-
nection with a strike three years ago at Portsmouth, O. — because
it is "so broad in scope'' that it threatens CWA with automatic
contempt proceedings in future labor disputes anywhere in the
nation.
In oral arguments before the
high court, union attorneys chal-
lenged the "cease-and-desist" order
on the ground that it went far be-
yond the strike in question when it
instructed both the international
and Local 4372 to cease restraining
or coercing employes of Ohio Con-
solidated Telephone Co. "or any
other employer. "
The union urged the court
either to strike the phrase "any
other employer" from the NLRB
order, or to write in additional
language making it clear that the
directive applies only to Local
4372's strike against the Ohio
Consolidated, a wholly owned
subsidiary of the General Tele-
phone Co.
Failure to do this, they con-
tended, would leave the 260,000-
member CWA liable to immediate
contempt proceedings in the event
of any picket line disorders in-
volving any of its 730 local unions
throughout the U.S. and Canada.
The NLRB order, handed down
in conection with alleged picket
line incidents during a 1956-57
strike at Portsmouth, originally in-
structed both CWA and Local 4372
to cease from "in any manner" re-
straining the employes of Ohio Con-
solidated "or any other employer."
Wording Changed
The union appealed the ruling
to the Sixth Circuit Court of Ap-
peals, which struck down the phrase
"in any manner" on the ground
that the words were vague and sub-
ject to misinterpretation.
The court allowed to stand, how-
ever, the phrase "any other em-
ployer," after the NLRB argued
that supervisors against whom
union misconduct allegedly was di-
rected were employes of General
Telephone, the parent concern, and
other subsidiary companies in Gen-
eral's system in Ohio, Indiana, Illi-
nois, Pennsylvania and West Vir-
ginia.
In handing down the "cease-
and-desist" order against CWA
and Local 4372, the labor board
reversed the conclusion of Trial
Examiner C. W. Whittemore that
no unfair labor practices had
been committed by the union.
Whittemore's report charged,
instead, that outbreaks of violence
had been precipitated by manage-
ment, and noted that company
Newspaper Urged to
Read Own Editorial
Providence, R. I. — The ex-
ecutive board of the Rhode
Island AFL-CIO has politely
suggested that the Provi-
dence Journal-Bulletin prac-
tice what it preaches in its
editorials and agree on a de-
cent contract with the Provi-
dence Newspaper Guild.
The Guild won collective
bargaining rights last May
and has since been trying to
reach agreement with the
highly-profitable newspaper.
The State AFL-CIO board
pledged its combined re-
sources to assist the union.
It also cited an editorial in
the Evening Bulletin which
wondered "why cannot man-
agement and labor work to-
gether" and asserted that
"labor has the right to fight
management for the highest
wages and best working con-
ditions according to its pro-
ductivity ." The board urged
the newspaper to "stop play-
ing the role of a two-face."
officials had threatened employes
with physical violence, had con-
spired with hired investigators to
kill strike leaders and had engaged
in physical violence against strikers.
The examiner accused the tele-
phone company of "contempt for
the right of its employes," and
added that the filing of the unfair
labor charges against both the local
and international union was "an
attempt to abuse the board's pro-
cesses as part of an illegal effort
to defeat employe rights."
Overturning this intermediate
report, the NLRB ruled that the
question of whether the company
may have "unlawfully interfered
with these employe rights is ir-
relevant." It declared that the
examiner had extended the case
beyond the "single issue" of
whether the union had engaged
in unfair practices.
Presenting the CWA case to the
nation's high court were Attorneys
Al Philip Kane and Charles V.
Koons of Washington, and Thomas
S. Adair and J. R. Goldthwaite, Jr.,
of Atlanta, Ga.
Labor Hits Move to Continue McClellan Group
(Continued from Page 1)
ed by Sen. Lister Hill .(D-Ala.)
which previously had won Rules
Committee clearance for a larger
staff to supervise L-G procedures.
Meany pointed out in his tele-
grams that the McClellan commit-
tee was created "as a temporary
select committee with an unusually
large budget and staff to conduct a
particular investigation." He said
that the committee "completed its
investigations many months ago,
and Congress enacted legislation
based in part" on its findings.
Meany added:
"At that point the select com-
mittee's legitimate reasons for ex-
istence ended."
In April 1959, in the wake of
Senate passage of labor legislation,
McClellan declared that the time
ha*d come for his special committee
to close up shop.
"I have indicated I would try to
wind up this year," McClellan said
1 2 months ago, "and that still goes.
"Three years of investigation is
enough to build a record. We will
have compiled a record fully ade-
quate to enlighten and inform the
Congress of the improper practices
in the labor-management field that
need remedying. That record is
fully sufficient to enable Congress
to legislate intelligently and effec-
tively to correct these conditions."
Meany declared that "the time
has come" to return the functions
of the special committee to Hill's
committee "which has jurisdic-
tion over the labor-management
relations field." He said the ear-
lier approval of the Labor Com-
mittee's function in regard to
Landrum-Griffin was "the first
proper step in that direction."
The AFL-CIO's third constitu-
tional convention in San Francisco
last fall denounced the McClellan
committee for having devoted itself
"to an ill-concealed effort to dis-
credit and weaken and, if possible,
destroy the free and democratic
American trade union movement."
In bluntest criticism to come
from the federation during the
committee's lifetime, delegates ac-
cused the committee of having been
"little more than a vehicle of re-
actionary elements seeking to dis-
credit" labor for "partisan political
purposes."
When the committee was estab-
lished, the convention resolution
declared, the AFL-CIO "sincerely
hoped that it would make a sig-
nificant contribution." It said that
at the outset "it may have served
a useful purpose in bringing to light
certain facts concerning those crim-
inal and corrupt influences that
have fastened themselves upon a
small segment of labor." But it
added:
"Unfortunately the committee
has virtually ignored the much
greater degree of corruption in
business and other sectors of the
American economy."
The resolution ticked off this
list of grievances:
• Procedures "never adequately
protected the rights of witnesses or
of those accused by witnesses."
• Individuals were "put on trial
in the press and by television;"
many questions were asked solely
"for publicity purposes;" and some
members "even rendered verdicts
of guilty before hearing testimony . w
• The committee was "far too
often used as a vehicle for whip-
ping up hysterical support for anti-
labor legislation."
• Some members "sought to use
the committee to challenge the very
right of the American trade union
movement to exist" by moving more
and more "into matters totally un-
related to the problem of labor
corruption."
• Because of "anti-labor bias,"
the committee "failed to investigate
effectively management corruption,"
and at times "deliberately sought
to block the public's view of cor-
ruption on a huge scale in busi-
ness."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
Page Fi*s
Crass Boots Backing:
Labor Rallies Its Forces Behind Forand Bill
■ ■ • • ;.
::::::::; - : - :: : :;: : ;:< : : v : : : x : X:'-
THE NEW YORK RALLY heard an impressive list of speakers
headed by AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler, who blasted
the American Medical Association for opposing health care for the
aged through social security*
SOME 8,000 RETIRED WORKERS jammed into Manhattan Center ballrooms
and another 2,000 crowded outside streets at a mammoth rally supporting the
Forand bill which was sponsored by the New York City Central Labor Council.
THIS IS WHAT THE STREET looked like outside Manhattan Center as the
retired union members stormed the building. Mayor Robert F. Wagner of New Jgjgt
York called the Forand bill the "logical and necessary extension" of social security.
AFTER THE MEETING, Schnitzler and several of the retired
workers who attended were interviewed for an NBC television
program. Petitions asking Congress to pass the bill were signed by
hundreds of retired workers.
THREE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES for the presidential nomination endorsed the Forand bill
or its "principle" at another big meeting in Detroit. They were (left to right) Sen. Stuart Symington SOME OF THE THOUSANDS of workers and their families—
(Mo.), Sen. Hubert Humphrey (Minn.) and Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.), shown with Auto retired and still active— who attended the Detroit rally are shown
Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther and Vice Pres. Leonard Woodcock. above listening intently to the speakers.
Pagr Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
The Children's Week
TH HE CHILDREN AND YOUTH of America had their week in
A Washington Mar. 27 through Apr. 1 — the one nationally created
week in 10 years dedicated to their problems.
Millions of words were aired by the 7,000 delegates to the decen-
nial White House Conference on Children and Youth, in sincere,
dedicated efforts to create in the decade of the Sixties an improved
atmosphere for our young.
In the hundreds of meetings, forums and workshops the dele-
gates evaluated how far the nation has come in dealing with the
problems of its children since 1950 and analyzed the problems
of today. The meetings explored not only the problems facing
the younger generation but the complexities of modern life that
have brought new problems for their parents.
The vast conference has synthesized diverging viewpoints and
come to an easily predicted conclusion that the nation must do
better by its children and youth. But how?
There are two basic areas involved in this question — the public
area, dealing with education, public assistance, social welfare pro-
grams, housing, etc., and the private area of family life, moral
climate and the instillation into our young of the ethical values
of democracy.
The moral tone or fibre of a nation is set to a large extent by
its leaders. It cannot be legislated or written into a legal code.
In the public area, however, there are great possibilities for
action. And if the White House Conference contributed nothing
else, it has drawn the nation's attention to those areas where pub-
lic action is possible.
The most important public enterprise affecting children and
youth is education. There is an overriding national need for a
federal program of aid to education, pointed up by the discussions
at the conference. This means a federal program backed by federal
funds on a meaningful level. This is something the Administration
and Congress can do at this session.
The use of child labor is a public problem and it can be solved
by legislation at the federal and state levels.
The fate of children of migratory workers is one of the blackest
marks against our democratic system. This, too, can be cor-
rected by public action, by legislation.
The searing discrimination against children of minority groups is
an area for public action, at the very least in terms of schooling,
housing and access to public places.
Undoubtedly some progress has been made in these areas since
the last White House Conference. But not enough, for these are
real problems, they still exist. They exist because the nation has
not been willing to devote an adequate proportion of its wealth to
education, health and welfare services, housing and public aid pro-
grams.
As one delegate commented:
"It is a curious and shocking irony that in a nation which talks
so much of its concern for the welfare of children and young people
and holds White House Conferences focusing on the welfare of chil-
dren every 10 years, the lowest monthly payments are granted on
the two (public) assistance programs where the main or a large
proportion of recipients are children."
The job in the next decade is to remove these "shocking
ironies," to translate into reality the numerous recommendations
flowing from the conference so that when the children and youth
mark their week in 1970 there will exist a record of accomplish-
ment.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemano
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirae
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, April 2, 1960
No. 14
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
1
1
THE LABOR MOVEMENT
IS A BROTHERHOOD. . . A
BROTHERHOOD OF WORKERS
SORELY IT CANNOT SET
ITS FACE AGAINST THE
BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.'
— MEANY
JIFL-CiO President Pledges:
'We Will Carry
Against Bigotry
The silver jubilee convention of the Jewish
Labor Committee held in Atlantic City Mar. 25-
27 honored the labor movement for its fight for
human rights. AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
acknowledged the honor in the following message:
WE IN THE AFL-CIO sincerely appreciate
the honor which is being paid to the labor
movement tonight. No one person in the ranks
of labor earned this honor. It was indeed a united
effort of the entire AFL-CIO.
In their name I thank you.
You in the Jewish Labor Committee and we
in the AFL-CIO have far more in common than
the word "labor" in our names. We have fought
shoulder to shoulder on many issues.
In your case, you have fought valiantly to pre-
serve and extend individual rights against all forms
of bigotry and totalitarianism — not just Jewish
rights, but the rights of every man.
In our case, whether at the collective bargaining
table or in the legislative halls, we fight for the
economic and social progress of the people as a
whole.
I KNOW IT SOMETIMES seems to our friends
that we move very slowly indeed on matters that
are of deep, primary concern to them. Are we
doing enough on the minimum wage law? Some
of our own affiliated unions would say we ought
to be doing more. Are we doing enough on the
Forand bill? Not enough to satisfy everyone who
is interested in medical care for the aged. What
we are doing is the very best we can.
We find the same situation when we come to an
even more fundamental issue — the issue of civil
rights, of equal opportunity. It has been said by
some, as you well know, that while the AFL-CIO
supports civil rights legislation in Congress, we
have not been vigorous enough in ridding our own
movement of practices based on bigotry and dis-
crimination.
I want to make two points absolutely clear.
First, on this matter, as in so many others, I
have nothing in common with the southern sena-
tors. I do not propose to argue, a century after
the Civil War, that discrimination will disappear
if we just leave it alone. We haven't left it alone;
we're not leaving it alone today; and we will never
leave it alone until we wipe it out.
Second, while I do not pretend to enjoy criti-
cism, I do not resent it when it is honest and fac-
tual, although sometimes I wish our friendly critics
on the Fight
in All Its Forms'
would keep in mind the ground we have already
covered, as well as the distance we have yet to go.
I THINK THE RECORD PROVES we have
come a long way. Many of our older unions were
born and grew up in an earlier and less enlight-
ened period. They reflected the attitudes of their
communities — prejudice based on ignorance.
It is a measure of our progress that where
discrimination still survives in the labor move*
ment, it is a bootleg product, sneaked in by sub-
terfuge. Even those who practice discrimina-
tion know that its days are numbered. And
we are going to make sure of it
I do not mention our progress with any feeling
that we deserve praise for it. We do not deserve
plaudits for doing what is obviously the right
thing. On the contrary, I agree with those who
are not satisfied,, who believe the status quo is not
good enough. I am not satisfied, either.
There are still some units within the AFL-CIO
that engage in discriminatory practices. And
there are others in our ranks, whose own records
are clean, who think it is unwise for us to take
a vigorous, public stand on civil rights.
They argue that we have enough problems and
enough enemies without inviting more. They
say that the civil rights issue is used to prevent
union organization in the south, and to weaken
the unions that exist in that part of the country.
They say that some southern Congressmen, who
might otherwise be receptive to some parts of our
legislative program, are alienated.
I have heard all these arguments at first hand*
They have not changed my convictions in the
slightest degree.
I say that if we have to practice discrimina-
tion to organize workers, then organizing will have
to wait until we educate the unorganized.
I say that if we have to lose a vote in Congress
on minimum wages, or the Forand bill, or unem-
ployment compensation because we take a stand
on civil rights, that is a price we are prepared to
pay.
The labor movement is a brotherhood — a broth-
erhood of workers. Surely it cannot set its face
against the brotherhood of man.
I assure you that we will carry on the fight
against bigotry in all its forms, wherever it is
found. To me, this is not merely a fight to en-
force the laws of man; it is a fight to fulfill the
word of God. I will be satisfied with nothing
but total victory.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C f SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Aid to Underdeveloped Areas
Spurred by New UN Agency
ITS YOUR
WASHINGTON
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
THAT PERENNIAL whipping-boy, foreign
aid, is up before the Congress again. After
an unimaginative defense of it by the Adminis-
tration and the expected
spate of opposition, some-
thing quite substantial in
the way of funds undoubt-
edly will emerge to con-
tinue U.S. activities in a
clouded and contentious
field of endeavor.
But why is our support
of foreign aid so reluctant,
why is it a major issue on
Capitol Hill year after year
when the Marshall Plan
was so stunningly successful a decade ago in re-
viving Western Europe and since the Soviet Union
has endorsed the soundness of the principle by
electing to compete with us in assistance to the
huge under-industrialized areas of Asia and
Africa?
The answer is, perhaps, that we Americans
have never really clarified our approach to the
idea.
We have sold ourselves largely on the argu-
ment that foreign aid is part of our military,
defense. Indeed the lion's share of the $4.2 bil-
lion the President has requested for the next fiscal
year involves outright military assistance plus
what is known as "defense support."
By comparison our contributions to purely
non-military projects, technical cooperation and
support of various special UN programs are
almost peanuts. And if we haven't had the
secondary misconception that we could "buy"
friends we have assumed the unfortunate atti-
tude that we were dispensing a kind of global
charity.
"Governments," writes former Marshall Plan
Administrator Paul Hoffman, "should not use tax
money for philanthropic purposes."
So what should be our approach? As head of a
new and exciting UN agency called IDA, Inter-
national Development Association, Hoffman has
crystallized some concepts which may help us.
Washington Reports:
It it is true that a city with slums and other
blight is not healthy then it should follow that
the poorest regions of the world are not healthy
either. Hoffman cites the fact that more than
100 countries on the globe are dreadfully poor.
Here a billion and a quarter of human souls are
absorbed in what somebody has called the "revo-
lution of rising expectations."
"THERE ARE POWERFUL moral and po-
litical reasons why we should be concerned with
this revolution," he argues. "But there are busi-
ness reasons as well. If the less-developed coun-
tries receive additional foreign capital and in-
crease local savings sufficient to lift their per
capita incomes by only 1 percent more a year
over the coming decade, they might well offer to
the U.S. alone a market for an estimated $14
billion of its exports in 1970."
Here is where IDA comes in. Conceived to
make long-term, low-interest loans for public
facilities which can be repaid as the fledgling
economy grows, IDA goes beyond the limited
scope of the World Bank which has to hedge
all the short-term risks. But to do its job, Hoff-
man estimates IDA may need a billion dollars
a year. The U.S. share of this — if Congress
approves our participation — would be 32 per-
cent or $320 million.
One of the most ardent advocates of full
American support for IDA is Henry Cabot Lodge,
U.S. ambassador to the UN. In a recent speech
in Washington he indicated some of the advan-
tages of the cooperative UN approach over bi-
lateral foreign aid, necessary as some of that will
continue to be: it may be easier to get other
industrial countries to help us share the load; the
recipient country has more of a sense of partici-
pation through the UN and there is less likelihood
of an embarrassing "ugly American" situation
developing; furthermore this may be the best
possible way to call the Soviet band in the game
of economic aid — let it be channeled through the
UN. Because of the way these agencies are set
up, Moscow could not veto their joint ventures.
Of course, a key question we Americans must
ask ourselves as these plans unfold is how much
we want to veto them by "going it alone" with
an exclusive, limited foreign aid program of our
own instead of cooperating — as we are so easily
inclined to ask others to do— through the UN.
Congressmen Urge Letters As
Spur to Forand Bill Action
HP HE PEOPLE have written in great volume to
members of Congress on the Forand Bill, but
even more should write if the bill is to become
law, Rep. Seymour Halpern (R-N. Y.) declared
on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service program heard on more than 300
radio stations.
Appearing with Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. L),
Halpern said that he believes the people are over-
whelmingly for health insurance for recipients of
social security old age benefits, but this is not
"properly felt in Washington."
"I strongly urge that the public let their
feelings be known," he said. "They're for it — I
know — -but it takes more than passive support*
"Public sentiment, I believe, can be the de-
ciding factor in this issue. The people should
let their Congressmen and Senators and the Ad-
AFL-CIO's Program
On 300 Radio Stations
More than 300 radio stations are carrying
Washington Reports to the People, AFL-
CIO public service program* during the
second session of the 86th Congress.
This is 50 more stations than in the first
session of the 86th Congress and 100 more
than in the 85th Congress.
Members of Congress — a Republican and
a Democrat each week — are interviewed on
major issues before the House and Senate.
The moderator is Harry W. Flannery, radio-
television coordinator in the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Public Relations.
ministration know how they feel about this bill.
And they should emphasize that this legislation
is needed now, not tomorrow, or the day after
tomorrow," Halpern said.
FORAND SAID that despite the attitude of
the people, "we seem to have difficulty getting
action. The bill is before the Ways and Means
Committee. To get it out, I have introduced a
discharge petition. I'm convinced I'll get the
219 signatures necessary to bring the bill up."
Halpern noting that he had introduced a com-
panion bill, identical to Forand's, said that "this
co-sponsorship provides a bi-partisan or non-
partisan touch."
Forand commented, "I think we should for-
get politics completely in this situation. This
is a question of merit. This is a humanitarian
measure, and the only suggestion that has been
made to meet an acknowledged need."
Halpern said that the doctors' organizations
have declared opposition to the bill, but, "I do
not believe this reflects the views of the average
doctor. I've spoken to many of them, I've lis-
tened to them before the committee, and I've
read many of their views. I'm thoroughly con-
vinced that the average doctor believes this move
will be good for their profession and the Ameri-
can people."
Forand said he has stacks of letters from
doctors "who have said to me that I'm on the
right path."
Both congressmen said the charge of socialized
medicine is nonsense. "There's complete free-
dom of choice of doctors," said Halpern. "The
rates are not fixed by the government; they're
decided by the doctors themselves."
7k
THE MAJOR ARGUMENTS of the Eisenhower Administration
against the Forand bill raise a question as to which part of the 20th
Century the President's advisors think they are living in.
Health, Education & Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming told re-
porters that the "compulsory" element of the Forand measure was
the thing the Administration found particularly objectionable.
He came up with this gem after his second appearance of the
session before the House Ways & Means Committee to present the
Administration's attitude. It turned out that he still had no alter-
native to the Forand bill to suggest, but he did manage to say that
a health insurance program involving "compulsion" was not ac-
ceptable.
There is not the slightest difference between this argument in
1960 and the arguments filed by right-wing Republicans a quar-
ter of a century ago when the original social security bill was
pending in Congress.
The American Liberty League, organized to fight the progressive
proposals of Roosevelt's New Deal, admitted that maybe something
had to be done about the problems of penniless old age for millions
of Americans but contended that it should not be done through a
social insurance system. To do it through social insurance, they
said, involved "compulsion," and this was wrong.
In fact, the foundation of all social insurance is the use of taxeg
to finance the system, and all taxes are necessarily a compulsion
upon the people. The Forand bill would offer social security bene-
ficiaries protection against the hazards of poor health and heavy
hospitalization charges at a time when their earning power is gone*
It is just as right to finance this kind of system through social
security involving tax payments as it is to use taxes to finance
protection against the natural inevitability of old age.
For Flemming to say that he is against compulsion means simply
that he is against the whole principle of social insurance. Or it
means that the Administration is resigned to accepting the social
insurance system it inherited but will fight to the death to prevent
its logical extension.
* * *
A SECOND ARGUMENT advanced by the Administration is
that the Forand bill would require tax payments by workers today
to pay for the health expenses of beneficiaries who did not them-
selves make such tax payments in the past. This, of course, is true
but it is irrevelant. The initiation of any social insurance program
involves a certain adjustment to take account of the needs of those
who have already completed their full allotment of years of work.
Old-age pensions established in 1935 gave a higher relative bene-
fit to those already within a few years of retirement than they did
to workers just beginning their careers. A start must be made
somewhere, and any inequity in favor of those already in need is far
less objectionable than the total inequity of continuing a system in
which nobody will ever get health protection through social security.
The predecessors of Mr. Eisenhower and Sec. Flemming ut-
tered complaints in 1935 that were identical with those advanced
today by responsible officials who have had 25 years to learn
better.
The principle embodied in the Forand bill would not cost the
government any money. It would not be a budgetary burden.
It would be financed by taxes paid by worker and employer and
its benefits would be widespread.
A Republican observer in this town, asked the other day what
in his opinion was the reason for the diminishing popularity of the
Republican party, replied bluntly: "I think it's because they give
the impression they don't care, anything about people."
HEALTH CARE for aged, bill introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D-R. I.), right, was strongly endorsed by Rep. Seymour Halpern
(R-N. Y.) on AFL-CIO public service radio program, Washington
Reports to the People, heard on more than 300 stations.
F*ge Elgin
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL % I960
How to Buy:
Commercial Medical
Plans Too Costly
By Sidney Margolius
READERS ARE ASKING about the hospital and surgical in-
surance for people over 65 being offered through the mails
by the American Association for Retired Persons.
To get this insurance you have to join the AARP for $2. This
entitles you to buy the insurance for $6 a month. Whether you buy
the insurance or not, your membership gets you the Association's
magazine and the privilege of buy-
ing medicines through the Associa-
tion at savings said to be 25 per-
cent. Anyone over 55 can join
AARP. But you or your spouse
have to be at least 65 to buy its in-
surance.
The AARP performed a great
public service at the Kefauver drug
hearings. It demonstrated the dam-
age done to older people by exces-
sive charges of medicines, and ex-
posed how some manufacturers tried
to stop the association from selling
medicines at reduced prices.
But AARP's insurance, while
among the best available except for
Blue Cross in some areas, provides no real solution for the tough
problem of medical insurance for retired workers.
In fact, analysis of AARP's plan, others offered by commercial
companies, and new Blue Cross "senior" plans, clearly shows
there isn't going to be any adequate hospital and health insurance
for seniors unless it's made part of the Social Security system as
the Forand bill, now before Congress, would provide.
The Forand bill is being determinedly supported in its new try
for congressional approval by labor unions, other community
groups, health co-ops and many independent medical experts. It
would provide hospital and surgical insurance for Social Security
beneficiaries.
UNLESS THE ALREADY-EXISTING Social Security machin-
ery is used, the problem of health insurance for senior citizens
is just too big and expensive for private insurance companies or
any individual association to solve.
The AARP plan actually is insured by Continental Casualty
Company and is much the same as Continental's widely adver-
tised "65-pIus" hospital-surgical policy.
The AARP plan costs $72 a year for each person compared to
$78 for Continental's "65-plus" policy. For this AARP pays up
to 31 days of hospital bed and board at a rate of $10 a day; 50 per
cent of miscellaneous services required while in the hospital, like
X-rays, lab tests, etc., up to $125; surgical payments on the basis
of a specified rate of payment, like $100 for an appendectomy, but
in no case more than $200, and outpatient emergency hospital care
up to a maximum of $125 for any one accident.
AARP also provides an optional coverage for $3 a month extra.
This pays for 50 doctor calls a year, at the rate of $3 at office or
hospital, or $4 at home, plus nursing-home payments of $5 a day
for 31 days and $3.75 for the next 29 days of each confinement,
plus additional hospital payments of $7.50 a day for the next 29
days.
This optional coverage is a desirable extension into paying for
non-hospitalized bills. But coverage doesn't begin until you already
have spent $25 for doctor's visits at the rates above.
THE TROUBLE with these privately-insured plans, as AFL-CIO
Social Security Director Nelson Cruikshank has pointed out in
the case of Continental, is that the cost is too high for most retired
people, and the benefits are too limited.
The cost for a couple is $144 a year for only partial hospital and
surgical insurance, with no provision for ordinary doctor bills unless
you also buy the optional coverage at an additional $72 a year for
a couple. A single person would be paying $108 a year, and a
couple $216. This would take about 10 percent of the current
maximum Social Security income of a retired couple without insur-
ing it against most of its total medical, dental and drug expenses
The payment of $10 a day for hospital room and board is far
from the actual cost these days in most cities. The rough average
cost of semi-private hospital room and board in 17 cities selected
at random by this writer, is $19.15 a day. Rates in these 17 cities
range from $13.06 in Atlanta, Ga., to $27.80 in Oakland, Calif.
Just as serious is the limitation on so-called "ancillary" bene-
fits, the extras like X-rays, lab tests, etc. These are very im-
portant in hospital admissions of elderly people. But commercial
policies characteristically limit them. The insurance companies
know what they're doing. It's not unusual for a person over 65
to run through $100 of these extra charges in just one day of a
hospital stay.
The AARP policy is one of the best of the generally unsatisfac-
tory policies being offered people over 65. But it really doesn't
solve the problem. In those areas where Blue Cross has no age
limit or offers "senior certificates," it would be wise first to investi
gate these. They don't cover surgical payments. But they do pro-
vide greater hospital and auxiliary benefits. Many Blue Shield
plans also permit retired workers to continue coverage, although
at a cost of 15-20 percent higher than group price.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margoliu*
GLOBAL CAMPAIGN directed by the World Health Organization to eradicate malaria, the world's
greatest killer and crippler, is being carried on in 92 countries. One of the most aggressive drives is
that of Brazil, where National Malaria Service spraymen are shown treating a drainage ditch near
Belen to wipe out both adult females and larvae of the Anopheles mosquito.
With Spectacular Results:
World Health Organization
Fights to Wipe Out Malaria
HPHE GREATEST CONCENTRATION of tal-
ent, effort and resources in history is moving
in on one of mankind's oldest and fiercest enemies
malaria.
Never before have doctors, engineers, labora-
tory workers and their helpers, armed with medi-
cines ^nd poisons, been mobilized in such num-
bers or on so wide a battlefront to challenge a
single disease — even one that is a constant threat
to the lives and health of 1.2 billion people. The
goal is eradication.
The global campaign is under the direction
of the World Health Organization, which for
World Health Day on Apr. 7 has chosen the
theme, "Malaria Eradication — A World Chal-
lenge."
Malaria is caused not by a bacterium or a virus,
but by a tiny parasitic animal. It is transmitted
from person to person by the bite of a mosquito
— not any mosquito, but just by the female of
the genus anopheles.
Researchers have found that the mosquito, hav-
ing bitten a malaria victim and drawn out a drop
of his blood — usually at night, and indoors — likes
to rest on a convenient surface such as a wall, a
floor, or under a bed, while it digests its meal.
This habit of resting after a meal has gov-
erned the strategy of the anti-malaria army. It
sprays these surfaces with insecticides.
By Aiding Fund Drive:
This phase of the eradication program must
continue until all malaria parasites now infecting
people disappear. They live in the human body
for a period of three to four years as a rule, so if
reinfection can be prevented for that length of time
the parasites will die out naturally.
BUT THERE ARE PROBLEMS. In some
areas the anopheles has become resistant to poi-
sons such as DDT and new ones are being devel-
oped. And in some sections houses have no walls
where a well-fed mosquito can rest undisturbed,
so it is necessary to spray widely in the out-of-
doors to kill both adults and larvae.
The worldwide campaign was voted at the
WHO World Health Assembly held in Mexico
City in 1955, but the Western Hemisphere
campaign had got under way a year earlier.
It was in 1954 that the Pan-American Health
Organization launched its own drive to eradicate
malaria from Terra del Fuego to Alaska, in-
cluding the island outposts where it flourished.
The results, in view of the gigantic task, have
been spectacular. Already malaria has been
cleared from areas with 7 million population. But
even more remains to be done — clearing the killer
from lands housing 87 million, and even here the
job is well under way save in Cuba where a sur-
vey of needs is being made, and in Haiti, where
financing the local share of the cost is a problem.
Workers Can Help Win Fight
To Prevent and Cure Cancer
AMERICAN WORKERS and their families
have "a vital stake in the fight against cancer,"
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has declared,
pointing out that "about 50,000 manhours per
year are lost due to cancer disability."
In a letter supporting the April Crusade of the
American Cancer Society, Meany said that "work-
ers, like every group in our society, can help win
the fight against cancer by contributing as vigor-
ously as possible" to the 1960 ACS fund-raising
drive.
'The AFL-CIO president hailed the "remark-
able progress" that has been made in recent
years in fighting this dread disease, adding that
the Cancer Society "can be justly proud of its
contribution to progress and cancer control
through its program of research, education and
service to cancer patients."
LABOR'S INTEREST in the fight on cancer
was exemplified recently when the Cancer Society,
Community Services and the Glass Bottle Blowers
Association launched a three-way cooperative
venture involving a six-year research study to seek
the causes of cancer.
The intensive study — marking the first time that
an entire international union has been surveyed
in this manner— will involve 53,500 GBBA mem-
bers and their wives and husbands, as well as re-
tired members of the union.
Questionnaires have been mailed to union mem-
bers as the first step in the study which the Can-
cer Society indicates will be extended to a num-
ber of other unions in the near future. Aim of
the study is to help scientists prevent cancer by
reducing an individual's exposure to those factors
responsible for the disease.
In the continuing fight on cancer, the national
society estimates that 1 million Americans are
alive today who have been cured of cancer be-
cause the disease was diagnosed early and
treated properly.
This figure represents a steady growth in can-
cer control. In 1938, the society estimates, one
in seven who had the disease was saved; by 1948
the figure was one in four; currently the figure is
one in three.
Summing up organized labor's view on the
progress to date and the need for continued sup-
port of ACS, Meany declared:
"I am confident that American workers, aware
of the record of the American Cancer Society and
the need for continuation of its campaign against
this dread disease, will once again contribute
vigorously during the April Crusade."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
Page Nin4
Wartime 'Emergency 9 Ended:
Labor Raps Importation of
Farm Labor as 'Colonialism'
The AFL-CIO, lashing as "imported colonialism" the government program of supplying Mexican
workers for corporation farms, has appealed to Congress to overhaul it to protect American farm
workers and gradually to end the 18-year old practice.
It would be "unconscionable," AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller told a House Agri-
culture subcommittee, to extend even temporarily the program due to expire June 30, 1961, without
building in strong safeguards.
The Meat Cutters and the Pack-
inghouse Workers joined the AFL-
CIO in urging approval of a bill
by Rep. George McGovern (D-
S.D.) to phase the program out of
existence over a five-year period,
meanwhile incorporating major
safeguards against abuse.
The Agricultural Workers Un-
ion testified it sympathized with
the aims of the McGovern bill,
but said the Mexican program
should be allowed to expire next
year because of its "disastrous"
impact on domestic workers. The
NAWU said domestic labor is
available to fill all needs.
Bills to extend the Mexican im-
port program beyond 1961 and to
trim the Secretary of Labor's lim-
ited authority over wages and other
standards were backed by the
American Farm Bureau Federa-
tion, grower spokesmen and con-
gressmen from areas using imported
workers.
Program Swells After War
The wartime emergency pro-
gram, which brought in 63,400
Mexicans in 1944 to meet a labor
shortage, grew in postwar years to
a level of 432,000 Mexican labor-
ers during 1958.
A number of citizen and church
groups testified in support of the
McGovern bill or for a quicker end
to the program, or simply in a fact-
finding capacity.
Biemiller said it is surprising to
find the American Farm Bureau
Federation in the mid-20th century
seeking to "further degrade" both
Mexican and American farm work-
ers through bills such as the one in-
troduced by Rep. E. C. Gathings
(D-Ark.), the subcommittee chair-
man.
"We do not believe that the
people of this country — who al-
ready have been quite generous
in their aid to agricultural pro-
ducers — will much longer toler-
ate this incredible exploitation of
agricultural labor," he declared.
Biemiller urged that as the Mex-
ican import program is gradually
ended, the U.S. government should
join with Mexico in aiding that
country's industry and agriculture
to provide job opportunities for
returned Mexican workers.
Adverse Effect Seen
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
the program has had "an extremely
adverse effect" on domestic farm
worker wages and job chances, ad-
versely affected small and medium-
sized farms competing with the 2
percent of farms using foreign la-
bor, and provided no solution for
Mexico's unemployed.
Biemiller said that although Mex-
icans are supposed to be used only
for emergency labor shortages on
essential crops at prevailing wages,
they have been used by the thou-
sands in year-round work, on skilled
and semi-skilled jobs.
He expressed labor s regrets that
Congress did not see fit to meet its
past request for a special commit-
tee to investigate "this program of
imported colonialism."
However, he said, a group of
consultants named by Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell last year pro-
duced a unanimous report that
the import program should not be
renewed even temporarily unless
"substantially amended" to pro-
tect domestic workers.
The McGovern bill would in-
corporate the consultants' proposals
as part of the foreign labor import
program.
Other witnesses . testified as fol-
lows:
• Meat Cutters. Arnold Mayer,
legislative representative, said the
mass importation of Mexican work
ICFTU Asks UN Group
To Act on South Africa
Brussels — The convening of an extraordinary session of the
United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimina-
tion and Protection of Minorities to consider the problems growing
out of "apartheid" has been asked by the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions as a result of the South African government's slaught-
er of native demonstrators.
In a cable to UN Sec-Gen. Dag
Hammarskjold, ICFTU Gen. Sec.
X. H. Oldenbroek said the sub-
commission meeting is called for
by the "cruel and bloody suppres-
sion" of the Africans' protest
against laws requiring them to car-
ry passes.
Since the outburst of police rifle
fire that killed scores of demonstra-
ble rantin/ng' of
South Africa Urged
Detroit — Pres. Eisenhower
and Sec. of State Christian
Herter have been urged by
Pres. Walter P. Reuther of
the Auto Workers to "put
teeth" into the U.S. protest
to South Africa over the po-
lice killings of Africans pro-
testing racial discrimination.
Reuther proposed a com-
plete "economic quarantine,"
and if South Africa does not
react by giving civil rights to
non-white citizens, that the
Administration consider sus-
pending diplomatic relations.
tors and wounded about 200, the
government has instructed police
not to ask for Africans 7 passes and
not to make arrests for failure to
carry, them.
In the UN, the Security Council
was to consider putting the matter
on its agenda for discussion.
Oldenbroek in a separate state-
ment described the entire free
labor movement as "appalled"
at the loss of life in the police
attack on the anti-pass demon-
stration.
"This is one more crime com-
mitted in the name of 'apar-
theid'," he said. "Must there be
many more before Africans are
accorded full human rights in the
land of their birth?
"It was to protest against South
Africa's vile racial policies and hos-
tility to the trade union movement
that the ICFTU's 6th world con-
gress called for a consumer boycott
of South African goods. This call
has already received a wide re-
sponse in countries where free trade
unionists want to show their abhor-
rence of racial obsessions and op-
pression."
ers helps maintain "the scandalous
poverty and underprivileges of 2
million American farm workers"
whose income averages $892 a year.
The "cancer" of the import pro-
gram has spread to where hungry
Mexicans are being used as strike-
breakers at the Peyton Packing Co.
in El Paso, Tex., he said.
• Packinghouse Workers. Re-
search Dir. Lyle Cooper testified
that "in the Salinas (Calif.) area,
the typical situation was that there
were no job openings for residents
of that area and for other domestic
workers — they were already filled
by Mexican nationals."
• Agricultural Workers. Pres.
H. L. Mitchell said imported Mexi-
can workers have been used to
break strikes in California's Im-
perial Valley, have forced wages
for American farm workers down
to 40 cents an Jiour in Arkansas
and have enabled California straw-
berry growers to undercut their
competition in Louisiana.
• National Advisory Committee
on Farm Labor. Frederick S. Van
Dyke, a California grower, testified
that wages of American farm work-
ers are artificially depressed "due
to an unnatural surplus of labor
brought in from Mexico." The
NACFL is a fact-finding group
headed jointly by ex-Sen. Frank
Graham (D-N.C.) and Pres. A.
Philip Randolph of the Sleeping
Car Porters.
• National Consumers League.
D. Gale Johnson, professor of eco-
nomics at the University of Chi-
cago, said it is "simply impossible"
to admit 450,000 foreign farm
workers without boosting produc-
tion of crops already in surplus and
without cutting family and hired
farm labor income.
• National Council of Churches.
Rev. Shirley E. Greene said the
use of imported labor perpetuates
i4 one of the bleakest and most per-
sistent pockets of poverty in our
generally affluent economy" and
raises "human and ethical issues of
grave concern to the conscience of
Christian people."
• National Sharecroppers Fund.
Board Member Gardner Jackson
called for an end to the import
program in 1961, pointing out that
60 percent of all imported Mexi
cans at the peak of employment
work in crops already stored in
surplus .at a $550 million a year
cost to taxpayers.
Chilean Sea Union
Signs Up Runaway
Valparaiso, Chile — The Maritime
Confederation, the Chilean sea-
men's union, has wrested an agree-
ment substantially assuring Chilean
wages and working conditions for
the crews of two ships flying the
Liberian flag which have been
chartered by a Chilean company,
The ships, the Bylayl and the
Jonancy, were brought to Chile by
Chilean crews which accepted sub
standard wages and working condi
tions in order to insure that Chilean
crews would work them.
When the company announced
it planned to operate them under
the same conditions, the union, an
affiliate of the Intl. Transportwork-
ers Federation, threatened to in
voke a worldwide boycott because
of the low wages and the under-
manning. Within a few days the
company capitulated and signed a
standard union agreement which
applies to all similarly-chartered
foreign flag vessels.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE will not much longer tolerate the "in-
credible exploitation" of farm workers, declared AFL-CIO Legis-
lative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller before a House Agriculture sub-
committee. Biemiller, shown talking with committee member Rep.
Harlan Hagen (D-Calif.), backed the McGovern bill, which would
gradually end the Mexican contract labor program; grower-backed
bills would extend it.
AFL-CIO Asks Strong
Mutual Aid Program
AFL-CIO support for extending and strengthening the mutual
security program, with emphasis on economic aid to underdeveloped
nations, was spelled out for the Senate Foreign Relations Commit-
tee in testimony by Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller.
Labor's views were given on Biemiller's behalf by AFL-CIO
Economist Bert Seidman. Earlier,'^
Biemiller had testified before the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Recalled for the Senate commit-
tee was the AFL-CIO convention
resolution which declared that this
country '"should continue to make
the major contribution toward
helping economic growth in the
less-developed countries," particu-
larly by congressional authoriza-
tion of "an expanded, long-term
and fully effective program of eco-
nomic and technical assistance."
Seidman said that since the
AFL-CIO's last appearance be-
fore the committee, "new factors
have developed which, in our
considered judgment, have en-
hanced the importance of and
increased the need for a fully
effective mutual security pro-
gram."
He listed the stepped-up Soviet
economic aid drive among less de-
veloped countries, authorization by
Congress for U.S. participation in
the new Intl. Development Associa-
tion, the need for increasing ap-
propriations to the Development
Loan Fund and the growing aware-
ness that economic aid from an
international body may sometimes
accomplish more in the long run
than assistance from an individual
"have" nation.
Joint Venture Praised
The IDA, Seidman pointed out,
"will bring together most of the
free world nations in a joint effort
to provide funds on flexible terms
for economic advancement in new-
ly industrializing nations." It dem-
onstrates a willingness by many
countries, both industrialized and
less-developed, to join in a com-
mon effort to solve the problems of
economic development, he added.
The testimony again stressed
the AFL-CIO's position that the
DLF should have more money
and should be placed on a long-
term basis.
Last year the AFL-CIO support-
ed the proposal of Sen. J. William
Fulbright (D-Ark.), committee
chairman, for an authorization of
$1.5 billion a year for five years
for the DLF. The Eisenhower Ad-
ministration fought the program.
The committee cut the recom-
mendation to $1 billion but retained
the five-year authorization. In final
form the act authorized $700 mil-
lion for fiscal 1960 and $1.1 billion
for fiscal 1961. Actual appropria-
tion was $550 million for the first
year, with the Administration ask-
ing only $700 million for the sec-
ond.
$7.5 Billion Urge4
"We urge this committee," Seid-
man said, "to recommend to Con-
gress a five-year authorization of
$1.5 billion a year for the capital
fund of the DLF.
"Even this amount, supple-
mented by other public and pri-
vate funds, which may conceiv-
ably become available, is likely
to fall short of what is needed
to assure broadscale economic
advancement in the newly indus-
trializing countries. But it would
place the fund on a more ade-
quate basis, and it would make
possible long-term planning in
the entire program."
The Administration's limited re-
quests for funds despite its "fine
words" about stepping up the pro-
gram, he said, are "unfortunately
extremely short of its professed
goals."
"Strengthening of the DFL
would provide concrete evidence
that the U.S. is serious and sincere
when we talk about what we will
do to help bring about economic
advancement and a better life for
people in the less-developed coun-
tries," he said.
"This is the kind of challenge to
the Soviet professions which would
provide new strength and courage
in the entire free world."
Seidman also urged that on
projects made possible by DFL
loans, "effective encouragement**
be given to developing strong
labor unions. The principles of
fair labor standards should ap-
ply, he added, so that the workers
will receive their fair share of the
fruits of development.
'This is extremely important,"
he explained, "because the success
of the entire economic development
effort may well depend on the ex-
tent to which the people in the
countries assisted feel that they
are able to benefit directly from the
general economic advance."
Fage Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
SPECIAL ORIENTATION program to familiarize Dept. of State foreign service officers with the U.S.
labor movement has been undertaken by the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs. First of week-long
sessions shows (left to right) Stephen Low, Samuel McPherson Janney, Jr., and Harold Aisley,
foreign service officers; Dir. Michael Ross and Harry Pollak of the Dept. of Intl. Affairs; Parke D.
Massey, training officer of the State Dept.'s Foreign Service Institute, and Ernest A. Nagy, also a
foreign service officer.
6 Truth-in-Lending' Bill Supported
To Alert Consumers to Credit Gquge
Millions of Americans are being "bilked" by "slick time-payment plans" which are being used by
some unscrupulous retailers to disguise usurious credit and interest charges, a Senate Banking sub-
committe has been told.
The "credit gouging" charge was raised by spokesmen for the Association of Better Business Bu-
reaus, Inc., the Navy Federal Credit Union, and the Union Settlement in New York. All urged pas-
sage of a bill introduced by Sen.'-^
Paul H. Douglas (D-I1L), chairman
of the subcommittee, to require full
disclosure to the purchaser of all
finance charges.
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil at. its midwinter meeting voiced
strong support for the Douglas bill,
declaring its passage "would do
much to alert consumers to the high
prices they now pay for money."
The council declared that there
should be both state and federal
regulations against "deceptive prac-
tices and exorbitant charges in
vending consumer credit, particu-
larly installment credit."
Douglas, in a statement open-
ing the hearings on his "truth-
in-lending" bill, declared the
measure was not designed to con-
trol credit but rather "to strip the
disguises and camouflage that
hide or distort the true price of
credit."
He cited these four types of what
he called "finance charge disguises":
• The consumer is quoted a
price in terms of so much down and
so much a month, with the price
of credit buried in this "easy terms"
quotation. "The true annual rate,"
Douglas said, "which may vary
from 6 percent to more than 100
percent, is never disclosed."
• The price of credit is quoted
as a monthly rate, making the true
annual rate 12 times the quoted
monthly rate. As an example, the
Illinois Democrat said, "a monthly
rate of 3.5 percent is 42 percent a
year."
• Credit is quoted as a percent-
age of the original amount, rather
than of the unpaid balance. Under
Teamsters, Monitors
T angle in Court Cases
The bitter conflict between the unaffiliated Teamsters Union and
the court-appointed clean-up Board of Monitors has left the board
with only one functioning member, Chairman Martin F. O'Dono-
ghue, and tangled in a struggle on whether union Pres. James R.
Hoffa will be placed on trial on charges of mishandling funds.
Following resignation of Daniel'^
B. Maher as monitor representing
the Teamsters, Hoffa nominated as
his successor William E. Bufalino,
president of Local 985, who has
been a target of McClellan Senate
committee charges of exploitation
and shakedowns. U.S. District
Judge F. Dickinson Letts took the
matter under advisement.
Letts in another action dis-
missed Lawrence T. Smith as a
member of the Board of Moni-
tors representing a group of rank-
and-file union members whose
charges against Hoffa resulted in
establishment of the monitorship
in January 1958. .Smith said
he would appeal to the higher
courts.
In another development, a ma-
jority of the rank-and-file members
dropped Godfrey P. Schmidt as
Chad Health Group
Elects Perlis to Board
New York — Leo Perlis, national
director of Community Service
Activities for the AFL-CIO, has
been elected to the board of di-
rectors of the National Organiza-
tion for Mentally 111 Children, Inc.,
here.
their counsel. Schmidt himself
previously had served as the moni-
tor representing rank-and-file inter-
ests but resigned after an appellate
court found that he was involved
in a conflict of interest.
The monitors earlier had filed
charges looking to the ouster of
Hoffa on grounds that he had mis-
used funds of Local 299 by pledg-
ing them for a loan to a Florida
real estate project in which he had
a concealed private interest. A trial
has been scheduled for April.
Hoffa asked that the trial be
canceled and said the monitors
had illegally abused their powers
to bring up what he termed "stale
charges."
Meanwhile final reports were
issued by the McClellan commit-
tee recapitulating its conclusions
after three years of investigations.
A federal grand jury in Cleve-
land, Ohio, indicted William Pres-
ser, a Hoffa supporter and presi-
dent of Teamsters Joint Council 41,
on charges of corruptly obstructing
the committee. Presser is accused
of partially destroying and conceal-
ing documents subpenaed by the
committee.
such circumstances, the real rate is
about double the rate stated.
• The price of credit is stated as
an "add-on" or "discount," applied
to the original amount. This would
make the true rate approximately
twice the rate quoted.
Douglas lashed out at the "wide-
spread use of misleading and de-
ceptive methods" of stating the
price of credit which, he said,
make it difficult for the average
consumer "to make meaningful
comparisons and therefore intel-
ligent choices of the various credit
terms offered to them."
Support Cited
He introduced into the record
statements of support for the prin-
ciples of the disclosure bill from
the board of governors of the Fed-
eral Reserve System, the Federal
Trade Commission, the Federal
Home Loan Bank Board, the Treas-
ury Dept., and the Dept. of Health,
Education & Welfare.
In testimony before the subcom-
mittee, two credit union officials
— William A. Hussong, general
manager, and Cmdr. Ralph B. Ter-
rill, president — introduced a file of
cases in which service personnel
had been bilked by sales contracts
in which the true interest rates
ranged from 36 to 62.5 percent.
Hussong told the senators that
consumers are "enmeshed in a web
of charges, fees, insurance and rub-
bery interest rates," adding that
these "perverted rates" victimize
well-educated, middle-income fami-
lies as well as those in low-income
groups.
Victor H. Nyborg, Better Busi-
ness Bureau president, told of
complaints to his organization
that some automobile dealers and
finance companies have been tak-
ing advantage of the "public's
ignorance" to "pack" time con-
tracts with undisclosed insurance
costs — on which the consumer
also must pay interest charges.
Before a buyer signs an install-
ment contract, he said, he should
be told the cash price of the item,
the exact amount of down payment
and trade-in allowance, the finance
charge, and the cost of insurance
and the coverage provided.
William Kirk, representing the
Union Settlement, said low-income
families living in metropolitan
areas are being "victimized" by
door-to-door •'easy credit" sales-
men.
NLRB Upholds Examiner:
Hosiery Mill Guilty
Of Threats, Coercion
The National Labor Relations Board has found the management
of a Franklin, N. C, hosiery mill guilty of illegal "interference,
restraint and coercion" in an effort to block a 1959 unionizing drive
in which a Hosiery Workers' organizer was brutally beaten.
The board ordered the management of Franklin Hosiery Mills,
a subsidiary of the giant Burlington'^"
Mills Corp., to ^nd interference
with employes "in the exercise of
their right to self-organization." At
the same time it ordered reinstate-
ment of two unionists laid off for
union activities.
The board affirmed the findings
of Trial Examiner Max M. Gold-
man, ruling that the company has
engaged in a long list of unfair la-
bor practices against the AFHW
organizing drive. Specifically, the
NLRB found the company guilty
of:
• Threatening to fire unionists
associated with the organizing
drive.
• Threatening to close the plant
rather than negotiate a contract
with the Hosiery Workers or any
other union.
• "Seeking to have employes
inform on the union activities of
other workers."
• "Fostering the impression
among employes that their activities
(were) under surveillance.**
The beating of AFHW Organizer
Robert D. Beame figured promi-
nently in the NLRB hearings. The
unionist sustained severe face and
head wounds from thugs who
forced their way into his hotel
room. The mob stole authorization
cards signed by Franklin workers
and then forced Beame out of town
and over the state line into Georgia.
Testimony was introduced at the
labor board hearings tending to
show than Dan Stewart, a mill
supervisor, told several workers
Beame's motel room was under
constant surveillance.
On the day of the beating,
Stewart fired one unionist who
had witnessed signatures on the
authorization cards, and was
quoted as saying he knew the
names of all the workers who
had signed the cards stolen from
Beame.
A Franklin grand jury subse-
quently refused to hand down any
indictments despite a signed con-
fession by one of the participant*
naming the others.
The attack on Beame was foK
lowed by a wave of similar anti-
union violence in the South. Two
weeks later, Vice Pres. Boyd E.
Payton of the Textile Workers Un-
ion of America was assaulted in a
Henderson, N. C, motel during a
strike against the Harriet-Hender-
son Cotton Mills.
In May 1959, TWUA Field Rep-
resentatives Frank Barker and
Frank Chupka were dragged from
a motel room in Fitzgerald, Ga^
and beaten and knifed during a
strike against the Fitzgerald Mills
Corp.
Canada Unions Demand
Unemployment Action
Ottawa, Ont. — An unexpectedly sharp jump in unemployment
to a near-record 8.9 percent of the labor force in the week ending
Feb. 20 has been denounced as "disgraceful" by Executive Vico
Pres. William Dodge of the Canadian Labor Congress.
Dodge at the same time demanded that the federal government
immediate and courageous® : "
Union-Fighter
Newhouse Sues
Six Unions
take
steps" to create new jobs by aug-
menting its present winter work
program.
'The economic loss is staggering
and the human suffering is intol-
erable," he declared.
The latest figures, released by the
Dominion Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics, showed 555,000 fully un-
employed out of a labor force of
6,218,000, an increase of 51,000
in a month. In February 1959
there were 537,000 jobless, or 8.8
percent of a labor force of 6,048,-
000.
The CLC has long contended
that the federal winter work pro-
gram is not broad enough to meet
conditions posed by Canada's se-
vere winters. The program pro-
vides for federal payment of 50
percent of the labor costs on mu-
nicipal projects which would not be
carried out during the harsh weath-
er without the federal aid.
Opinion differs as to the reason
for the increase in unemployment
between January and February.
The government blames it on the
winter, which has been unusually
severe even for Canada. The CLC
has maintained that there is a grow-
ing number of more or less perma-
nently unemployed resulting from
the government's failure to meet the
problem of job attrition because of
automation, plus the fact that the
work force is growing faster than
the number of new jobs.
The Conservative government
has been under sharp attack in
Parliament by the Co-operative
Commonwealth Federation and the
Liberals for failing to stem the rise
in unemployment.
Newark, N. J. — The Newark
Morning Ledger Co. has filed a
civil suit in federal Court here
asking $6 million in damages and
a restraining order against six un-
ions and 16 individuals as a result
of the strike against the Portland
(Ore.) Oregonian.
Both papers are owned by S. I.
Newhouse, Sr. The suit alleges the
defendants "conspired" to put into
effect "retaliatory measures" against
all Newhouse-owned newspapers
and organized a "fight-Newhouse*
committee to support the Portland
strikers. The committee was to
direct slow-downs and work stop-
pages in violation of contracts, the
suit claims.
The Portland strike grew out of
Newhouse's demand that the Ster-
eotypers bow to his work rule
demands governing a piece of im-
ported machinery the union had
not seen. It was called on Nov. 10
and also affected the Portland Jour-
nal Other unions have respected
the picket lines.
The complaint asks $1 million in
compensatory damages and $5 mil-
lion in punitive damages. It names
Newark locals and specific officers
of the Stereotypers, Typographers,
Pressmen, Photo-Engravers and
Mailers; a deliverers' union in New
York and its president, and the
president of the New York Stereo-
typers' local and a group of mem-
bers.
aft>cio news, Washington, d. c, Saturday, april 2,1a*,
Page Elevet
McCarth y Group Declares:
'Decisive Action 9 Needed
To Avert Rising Joblessness
"The problem of unemployment will assume far greater proportions in the next 10 years unless
decisive action is taken," warned a politically-explosive report filed with the Senate by its Special
Committee on Unemployment Problems.
The committee headed by Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy (Minn.) split along party lines as the Demo-
cratic majority proposed a wide range of federal programs which the Eisenhower Administration has
vetoed or opposed.
The 12-point program ranged
across federal activities and policies
to achieve an increased rate of eco-
nomic growth and maximum em-
ployment, aid for distressed areas,
federal jobless pay standards, stand-
by anti-recession legislation and an
end to job discrimination.
In raising the threat of higher
unemployment levels, the report
pointed out that "after each of the
last three recessions, the rate of
unemployment was higher than it
had been before the recession."
"In the next decade the num-
ber of youths entering the labor
market will increase by 46 per-
cent. Dislocations caused by au-
tomation and technological
change will increase.
"A sharp increase in unem-
ployment will take place unless
private and public measures are
taken to absorb the increased
manpower," the report declared.
The majority was comprised of
Chairman McCarthy and Senators
Pat McNamara (Mich.), Joseph S.
Clark (Pa.), Jennings Randolph
(W.Va.), Vance Hartke (Ind.) and
Gale W. McGee (Wyo.).
The minority of Senators John
Sherman Cooper (Ky), Winston L.
Prouty (Vt.) and Hugh Scott (Pa.)
disagreed with the Democratic pro-
posals and offered a counter-pro-
gram designed "to stimulate private
businesses/'
Cooper broke with the minority
on several points. He said the pro-
posal of higher tariffs to meet
foreign competition seemed in con-
flict with the policy of expanded
trade.
Cooper also proposed depressed
areas legislation along the lines
Workers Tell Congress
Of Low Pay, Long Hours
(Continued from Page 1)
ceived several raises and now makes
90 cents an hour. Some of her
fellow-workers receive only 70
cents. She doesn't have a family to
help support, and her parents send
her meat, vegetables and eggs from
their farm.
Backing up the testimony of the
president of her international un-
ion, Max Greenberg, urging exten-
sion of minimum wage coverage to
retail workers and an increase in
the minimum to $1.25 an hour,
she brought this message from her
fellow workers:
"We have been watching and
waiting for news from Congress
for a long time. It certainly
would make a great difference in
the way we live if we could get
the same minimum wage that
other people do."
Greenberg told the subcommit-
tee, headed by Rep. Phil Landrum
(D-Ga.), that bringing Evelyne
Twilley and millions of others like
her under federal wage-hour pro-
tection would serve a double pur-
pose. It would enable low-paid
workers "to buy food, clothing and
other necessities they sorely lack
today." And by so doing, it would
stimulate the nation's economy.
Greenberg hit hard at the claims
made by some retail stores that
many retail employes are house
wives out to earn a little "pin
money," and that therefore there
Welfare and Pension
Reports Due Apr. 29
The Labor Dept. has issued
a public reminder to welfare
and pension plan administra-
tors that their annual reports
must be filed by Apr. 29.
Urging early filing to avoid
crowding the deadline, the
department noted that the
Welfare & Pension Plans Dis-
closure Act requires annual
reports to be filed with the
Labor Dept. within 120 days
from the end of the calendar
year.
Some 50,000 reports on
welfare and pension plans al-
ready have been received.
However, "many thousands
are still missing," the depart-
ment added in pointing out
it has on file some 135,000
plan descriptions.
is no reason to bring them under
minimum wage coverage.
He pointed out that the typical
part-time employe is trying to
supplement her husband's earn-
ings and at the same time give
her children some care during the
day. Their work, he pointed out,
comes at the peak hours when
the work is hardest.
"Department stores and variety
stores get more productivity out of
part-timers than they would if they
had to employ an equal number of
people full-time and their wage bill
is considerably less," Greenberg
pointed out.
"To deny these part-time em
ployes the protection of the Fair
Labor Standards Act is just as cruel
as it would be to deny the full-time
breadwinner that protection," he
declared.
Another worker-witness
brought in by the RWDSU, Dor-
othy Bammerlin of South Bend,
Ind., told the subcommittee that
while she earned well above the
minimum, many part-time work-
ers were paid only 75 cents an
hour. But she said the lack of
time-and-one-half pay for over-
time work costs her $18.72 a
week.
As the subcommittee continued
its hearings, a corps of 17 Southern
lumber and sawmill operators told
the committee that "the flame of
inflation" would be fed if they had
to pay their workers $1.25 an hour.
"This nation has always sanc-
tioned and encouraged the profit
motive," one of their spokesmen
told the subcommittee.
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.),
co-sponsor with Senators John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Wayne
Morse (D-Ore.) of the AFL-CIO
backed wage-hour bill, questioned
whether Congress, by exempting all
but the largest lumber operators
from the wage-hour law, was not
"in effect producing for you a sub-
sidy through the wage scale** in
competition with employers who
pay higher wages.
He said, "In 1933, I heard al-
most the same speech many,
many times — that it was going to
bankrupt the country, and no one
could afford to pay the wages
that were being suggested.**
But, Roosevelt added, "pretty
soon the country got settled down
to it and everybody profited in
many ways."
of a bill he co-sponsored with
Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-IH.)
and "immediate action** by the
executive branch to help the hun-
gry and the jobless.
The Democratic majority report
concluded, after 27 days of hear-
ings across the nation, that unem-
ployment is "serious and continu-
ing," with jobless rates topping 25
percent in some areas; that complex
national forces create different types
of unemployment; that younger and
older workers, Negroes, women,
the unskilled and the least educated
have the highest jobless rates; and
that unemployment can be reduced
through private and public policies
as well as through national growth,
The Democratic majority backed
these recommendations:
• Maximum employment and
a higher rate of economic growth;
• Assistance to distressed areas;
• Establishment of national
standards for unemployment in-
surance;
• Extension of federal grants to
cover public assistance to the un-
employed;
• Increased educational serv-
ices, especially for vocational edu
cation and assistance to special
groups;
• Attention to employment dis-
locations caused by defense and
trade policies;
• Elimination of discrimination
in employment;
• Extension of unemployment
benefits to domestic migratory farm
laborers;
• Strengthening the employment
services;
• Standby anti-recession legisla-
tion;
• Improved measurements on
employment and unemployment
rates;
• Continuing attention to man-
power resources and utilization.
Spring, After Spring, After Spring, Fever!
3 AFL-CIO Affiliates
Turn Back 4 UE Raids
Three AFL-CIO unions have repelled four major raiding efforts
by the unaffiliated United Electrical Workers, expelled from the
former CIO in 1949 on findings that it was under Communist
domination and control.
The victories by federation affiliates were hailed by AFL-CIO
Dir. of Organization John W. Liv-^
ingston as proof that American
workers want "militant, responsible
and decent unions to represent
them."
In elections conducted by the
National Labor Relations Board:
• The Electrical, Radio & Ma-
chine Workers defeated the UE by
a vote of 3,444 to 3,175 at the
General Electric Co. at Lynn,
Mass.
• The Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers trounced the UE
by a vote of 839 to 377 at West-
inghouse Electric Corp. in Balti-
more.
• The Machinists beat the un-
affiliated union, 326-93, at plants
of Air Products, Inc., in Allentown,
Emaus and Trexlertown, Pa.
The Machinists beat back a
raid at Sylvania Products, Inc., in
Mill Hall, Pa., by a vote of 229-
186.
Livingston said that the elections
demonstrated the "repudiation" by
workers of the "efforts of the dis-
credited UE to raid established
AFL-CIO unions."
"The forward march of clean,
militant trade unionism," he de-
clared, "cannot be stopped by those
who would cripple organized labor
or by those who would betray it."
In reaffirming their support for
the IUE, IAM and IBEW, Living-
ston said, union members at the
four companies "have once again
demonstrated their determination
to remain in the mainstream of tho
American labor movement."
Another Administration Official
Under Fire for 'Impropriety 9
Congressional committees have raised the possibility of new improprieties and conflicts of interest
within the Administration, eight top officials of which have quit under fire since Pres. Eisenhower
took office in 1953.
The latest official to face public criticism was Federal Power Commission Chairman Jerome J.
Kuykendall, who admitted that a gas company representative made behind-the-scenes contacts with
him and other FPC members about?^
a multi-million-dollar rate case be-
fore the commission.
Appearing before the House
Commerce Committee, Kuykendall
vigorously denied the suggestion
made by Chairman Oren Harris
(D-Ark.) and Rep. John D. Dingell
(D-Mich.) that he was guilty of
any "impropriety."
Meanwhile, Sen. Stuart Sym-
ington (D-Mo.), chairman of a
Senate Agriculture subcommittee,
disclosed that James R. Mc-
Gregor, deputy administrator of
the Agriculture Dept.'s Commod-
ity Stabilization Service, resigned
under pressure last Fall after
having been confronted by de-
partmental charges of "decep-
tion," apparently involving dis-
posal of outside interests.
One of McGregor's subordinates,
Earl C. Corey, also resigned after
admitting that he reaped $83,500
from a silent partnership in a West
Coast company that stored govern-
ment-owned grain. The Justice
Dept. currently is presenting con-
flict-of-interest charges against
Corey to a federal grand jury.
Symington revealed that although
McGregor was permitted by the
Agriculture Dept. to resign "in lieu
of charges," the case still is under
investigation by the Justice Dept.
The disclosure of the off-the-
record contacts with Kuykendall
came up during routine Com-
merce Committee hearings on
legislative proposals to draw up
standards of conduct for mem-
bers of the FPC and other fed-
eral regulatory agencies.
The case concerned the petition
of Midwestern Gas Transmission
Co., a subsidiary of the Tennessee
Gas Transmission Co., to fix rates
for a new pipeline. The company
had urged that rates be set high
enough to guarantee Midwestern a
7 percent return on investment,
but the FPC staff recommended
only a 6.25 percent return.
It was revealed that the contacts
with Kuykendall were made by
Thomas G. Corcoran, a Washing-
ton lawyer and one-time official in
the Roosevelt Administration.
In handing down its decision,
the FPC overruled the staff re-
port and authorized construction
of the natural gas pipeline with
an "open-end" return. Although
industry sources have estimated
this actually would result in a 7
percent rate, Kuykendall said this
could not be predicted "at this
time."
Dingell, who said Kuykendall**
actions had raised "grave questions
of propriety," estimated that tho
FPC decision would add $16 mil-
lion annually to the price con-
sumers will have to pay for natural
gas.
The disclosures involving tho
FPC head and Agriculture Dept.
officials came swiftly on the heels
of the resignation in mid-March of
John C. Doerfer as chairman of
the Federal Communications Com-
mission following criticism for ac-
cepting favors from a member of
the industry regulated by the FCC.
The highest-placed Administra-
tion official to quit under fire was
Presidential Asst. Sherman Adams.
Earlier, conflict-of-interest charges
had led to the resignations of Air
Force Sec. Harold Talbott, Public
Buildings Commissioner Peter Stro-
bel, Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion Chairman Hugh Cross, Gen-
eral Services Administrator Ed-
mund F. Mansure, Asst. Defenso
Sec. Robert Tripp Ross, and Fed-
eral Communications Commission-
er Richard A. Mack.
Pagre Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 1960
New Senate Filibuster Looms:
'Anti-Labor' Provision Added
To House-Passed Rights Bill
[ By Gene Zack
The Senate has resumed its civil rights debate, adopting in rapid-fire order a series of amendments
- — one of which the AFL-CIO called "ill-considered, unnecessary and potentially anti-union'' — which
the Judiciary Committee had tacked on to a five-part measure passed overwhelmingly by the House.
Wholesale rewriting of the House bill brought charges by civil rights advocates that legislation to
safeguard voting and other minority rights was being seriously watered down.
Organized labor directed its &
criticism against one change
m hereby a section of the House
measure, which would make it a
crime to interfere with school de-
segregation orders, was broad-
ened to apply criminal penalties
to violators of any federal court
order.
Introduced by Sen. Frank J.
Lausche (D-O.), the amendment
was approved by a rollcall vote of
68 to 20 despite opposition from
liberals who argued it could convert
the section into an anti-labor statute
directed against unions during in-
dustrial disputes.
Andrew J. Biemiller, director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legislation,
pointed out that the Lausche
amendment would do nothing to
further the ciuse of civil rights "but
could permit harassing action
CanH Compromise
On Bias, Meany Says
(Continued from Page 1)
a century in the fight against op-
pression, injustice and racism."
The JLC, a 500,000-member fed-
eration of unions and other organ-
izations, was formed shortly after
Hitler came to power. Its purpose
was to mobilize democratic groups
to fight Nazi ism and to aid the vic-
tims of oppression.
David Dubinsky, president of the
Ladies' Garment Workers and JLC
treasurer, accepted the testimonial
on Meany's behalf.
Organized labor, Dubinsky
said, "must encourage every evi-
dence of action by the southern
Negroes to fight openly for their
own rights, for no one knows
better than those of us who or-
ganized and built the unions . . •
that all the sympathizers in the
world cannot win victory for any
deprived group, that the group
must fight for itself and that the
sympathizers must help them in
that fight."
Charles S. Zimmerman, vice-
president of the Ladies' Garment
Workers and chairman of the JLC
National Trade Union Council for
Human Rights, presided at a panel
session on discrimination and segre-
gation.
Zimmerman said the progress of
organized labor on civil rights often
is ignored, while labor's shortcom-
ings have been seized on by the
press.
Labor's record is not "without
blemish," declared Zimmerman,
who is chairman of the AFL-CIO
Civil Rights Committee. He said
there are "still altogether too many
local unions" in both the North and
South which practice discrimina-
tion.
Meany, in his message, said la-
bor is doing the best it can on the
federal wage-hour law and the
Forand bill.
On "an even more fundamental
issue — the issue of civil rights, of
equal opportunity," he said, critics
have argued that the AFL-CIO sup-
ports civil rights legislation but has
"not been vigorous enough in rid-
ding our own movement of prac-
tices based on bigotry and discrimi-
nation."
Meany said he wanted to make
two points clear.
"First, on this matter, as in so
many others, I have nothing in
common with the southern senators.
"I do not propose to argue, a
century after the Civil War, that
discrimination will disappear if
we just leave it alone. We haven't
left it alone; we're not leaving it
alone today and we will never
leave it alone until we wipe it out.
"Second, while I do not pretend
to enjoy criticism, I do not resent
it when it is honest and factual, al-
though sometimes I wish our
friendly critics would keep in mind
the ground we have already cov-
ered as well as the distance we have
yet to go."
Meany said many older unions
grew up in a less enlightened time,
reflecting community attitudes of
"prejudice based on ignorance."
Where discrimination still sur-
vives, he added, "it is a bootleg
product, sneaked in by subter-
fuge. Even those who practice
discrimination know that its days
are numbered. And we are go-
ing to make sure of it."
Dock Arbiters Study
Automation Payments
New York — The Longshoremen and waterfront management have
launched a joint search here for an economic formula that will safe-
guard 40,000 dock workers against wage or job losses resulting
from automation.
A three-man arbitration board has begun consideration of the
amount of royalties due ILA rnern- 1 ^
bers to compensate them for the
increasing use of cargo containers
— large, reusable metal boxes which
are loaded at the point of origin,
instead of having the contents
loaded aboard ships by dock work-
ers.
The imminent threat of whole-
sale job losses because of the in-
troduction of containerization was
a major issue raised by the ILA in
negotiations with the N. Y. Ship-
pers Association last fall. Creation
of the arbitration panel was a key
provision in the three-year pact
signed in December to prevent re-
sumption of an East Coast walk-
out that had been temporarily
halted by a Taft-Hartley injunction.
The panel's first task is to de-
termine the extent to which the
shipping containers curtail job op-
portunities, after which royalties
will be worked out on the basis of
the tons of cargo handled in this
fashion.
Serving on the arbitration board
are Dr. Emanuel Stein, professor of
economics at New York University,
the public member; Thomas W.
Gleason, ILA general organizer,
representing the union; and Vice
Adm. Frank M. McCarthy, retired,
the employer representative.
against unions by unfriendly federal
attorneys."
He said that organized labor had
backed the original provision to
make obstruction of court orders
a crime only because it was an in-
dication of open congressional sup-
port of the historic Supreme Court
decision on school desegregation.
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
that labor "will not play the
crude divide-and-conquer game
of those who oppose all civil
rights legislation," adding that if
Congress should "unfortunately"
retain the broadened language
"this will not keep the AFL-CIO
from supporting an otherwise
satisfactory bill."
Labor's "final judgment" of
whether the civil rights bill "is
worth supporting at all will depend
upon all of the actions taken before
the bill is finally enacted," Biemiller
said. "There is not much to cheer
about as of now."
On the heels of adoption of the
Lausche amendment, the Senate ap-
proved by voice vote 14 other
changes, many of them technical
in nature, recommended by the
Judiciary Committee headed by
arch-conservative Sen. James O.
Eastland (D-Miss.).
Referee Plan Threatened
Still ahead of the Senate, as the
AFL-CIO News went to press, was
an amendment sponsored by Sen.
Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) which
civil rights backers said would un-
dermine the key voting referee plan
in the bill.
As passed by the House, the bill
provides that federal judges should
appoint referees to register qualified
Negro voters whenever a court
found their rights had been blocked
by local authorities.
The Kefauver amendment
would permit local officials to be
present at the actual registration
— a move which civil rights ad-
vocates said would turn the pro-
ceedings into a "public circus"
and discourage Southern Negroes
from seeking to exercise their
voting rights.
The rewriting of the civil rights
bill appeared to signal the abandon-
ment of previous strategy under
which the Senate was attempting to
win approval of the House measure
without substantial change in order
to bypass a possible roadblock in
the conservative-dominated House
Rules Committee.
Despite the speed with which the
Senate was moving on amending the
House bill, the threat loomed that
Southern Democrats would resume
their filibuster in a last-ditch effort
to talk the bill to death on final
passage.
Long Sessions Scheduled
In a move apparently designed
to meet this threat, Majority Leader
Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) laid
plans to convene the Senate earlier
and hold it in session later in the
day, coupled with the scheduling
of a Saturday session — the same
technique that was used before the
Senate plunged into its record-
breaking 'round-the-clock session
which marked the anti-civil-rights
filibuster early in March.
Johnson said it was "obtious
that we are facing lengthy debate
on the bill," which was first called
up in the Senate on Feb. 15. He
would make no forecasts on when
the Senate might have to vote on
invoking cloture — limitation of
debate*
"WILL I MAKE IT?" said Russell A. Weller to himself as he leaped
12 feet from his locomotive cab window to the ground and raced
40 feet to snatch an elderly woman from the path of rolling boxcars.
The 38-year old Weller, shown re-enacting the incident, made it and
was honored with the annual Intl. Safety Award of the Locomotive
Firemen and Enginemen at a banquet in Washington, D. C. Weller,
of Belief ontaine, O., and the New York Central System, received
the award from Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell.
Interest, Medical Bills
Boost Cost of Living
(Continued from Page 1)
prices and the fifth straight month-
ly decline in food prices.
"Mortgage interest rates, which
have risen persistently for the past
18 months, contributed appreciably
to the rise in the cost of housing,"
the department said in reporting
mortgage interest rates up 8 per-
cent from a year ago.
The .8 percent gain in medical
costs in February was the largest
rise in nearly a year and a half,
the report said. The February
rise was traced to "substantially
higher" health insurance premi-
ums in Chicago, Seattle, Port-
land, Ore., Youngstown, O. and
Charleston, W. Va.
The February CPI was 1.5 per-
cent above February of 1959, the
department said, an increase it at-
tributed chiefly to "the costs of buy-
ing, owning and maintaining a
house and an automobile and
charges for medical care."
The report said relatively few
workers are covered by contracts
tying wages to the February index.
Some 1,000 employes of firms af-
filiated with the Los Angeles Ware-
housemen's Association will receive
an increase of 3 cents an hour in
their annual adjustment.
In an accompanying report, the
department said that while spend-
able earnings and buying power of
factory workers declined from Jan-
uary the figures still represented an
all-time high for February.
The decreases were caused by a
decline in the factory workweek
and a lesser drop in overtime pay,
the report noted.
The fall in spendable earnings,
taken with the increase in the cost
of living, combined to cut the buy-
ing power of factory workers' earn-
ings by about 1.5 percent over the
month, the report added.
House Nears Vote on
Area Redevelopment
The House appears to be moving toward a vote on a $250
million, Administration-opposed area redevelopment bill, barricaded
for the past 10 months in the conservative-dominated Rules Com-
mittee.
Under the threat of a parliamentary move to bypass the com-
mittee, Chairman Howard W. Smith-^
(D-Va.) scheduled a meeting by
Apr. 5 to take up the bill. There
was no assurance, however, that a
bloc of Southern Democrats and
conservative Republicans on the
committee would drop their oppo-
sition.
Should the committee fail to
report out depressed area legisla-
tion, a little-used procedure called
"calendar Wednesday" — last em-
ployed in 1950 in connection
with a Fair Employment Prac-
tices bill — may be utilized.
Under this procedure, commit-
tees are polled alphabetically and
given an opportunity to bring up
such legislation as they see fit If
this method is employed, the Bank-
ing and Currency Committee —
fourth on the alphabetical list — has
power to call up the measure it
approved in May 1959.
The "calendar Wednesday" pro-
cedure requires that action on any
bill brought up must be finished the
same day, except for the final roll-
call vote. This will put pressure on
supporters of the area redevelop-
ment bill to make certain that the
House does not adjourn because of
the lack of a quorum.
A year ago, the Senate voted 49
to 46 for a $389.5 million measure
sponsored by a liberal coalition
headed by Senators Paul H. Doug-
las (D-Ill.) and John Sherman
Cooper (R-Ky.). The Administra-
tion has recommended only $57
million for aid to depressed areas
in its budget proposals for fiscal
1961.
Vol. V
Issied weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W-
Washington 6, D. C.
92 a year
Seeond Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C
Saturday, April 9, 1960
No. 15
Senate Hearings Spur Drive
To Pass Forand Health Bill
Wh ite House Aga in
Delays on Program
Insurgents
Push Fight
On Cross
St. Louis — Insurgent leaders
seeking to bring the ousted Bak-
ery & Confectionery Workers
back into the AFL-CIO have
opened a second front in their
drive to unseat Pres. James G.
Cross.
In a three-day conference here,
they voted to seek a special un-
ion convention in September and
to raise a $100,000 fund for use in
fighting Cross.
The conference was called by
five BCW local union officers who,
three weeks earlier, had filed a
federal court suit in Washington
aimed at the removal of Cross and
Sec.-Treas. Peter N. Olsen.
The meeting here brought to-
gether 80 officers of 48 BCW
locals. They said they represent
36,868 of perhaps 62,000 mem-
bers remaining in BCW since its
expulsion in 1957 on findings
that it was run by corrupt ele-
ments.
The aim of the reform group is,
first to get rid of Cross and clean
house within the union, then to
seek a merger with the AFL-CIO
American Bakery & Confectionery
Workers.
Expelled by AFL-CIO
The ABC was chartered by the
federation immediately after the
expulsion of BCW. It now has
about 80,000 members.
In their suit, the five insurgent
leaders charged Cross and other
top officers with "corrupt and self-
ish conduct designed to plunder
BCW" for Cross' personal benefit.
They asserted here that $5.3 mil-
lion in union funds had been
(Continued on Page 11)
May Merger
Ordered in
New Jersey
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has called a special convention
for May 19-20 of all AFL-CIO
organizations in New Jersey to
form a merged labor body in
the state.
The convention will be held
in the Newark Armory.
The convention call came sev-
eral weeks after Meany ordered
revocation of the charters of the
New Jersey State Federation of
Labor and the New Jersey Indus-
trial Union Council, directed the
(Continued on Page 4)
STRANDED UNIONIST, Richard McClure of Packinghouse Work-
ers Local 34, guides labor-manned rescue truck through flood
waters near his home after disaster struck area around Sioux City,
la. AFL-CIO Community Services joined hands with Red Cross
in setting up rescue and relief program, with 100 union volunteers
joining in. (See story, Page 12.)
'Runaway 9 Conference Speaks:
Youth Parley Bolts
On Rights, Schools
By Dave Perlman
A "runaway" White House Conference on Children and Youth
has called on Congress to vote "substantial" federal aid to educa-
tion, asked Pres. Eisenhower to use "the prestige of his office" to
speed school desegregation and proposed a broad program of social
legislation aimed at giving millions of underprivileged youngsters a
fair start in life.
The 7,000 conference delegates
invited by the President to "review
the unmet needs of young people
and recommend solutions," did ex-
actly that, breaking away from the
Adm inistration's "leave - it - to - the -
states" position on the nation's
social needs.
In a series of hard-hitting resolu-
tions, delegates asked strengthened
and better-enforced child labor
laws, a higher federal minimum
wage extended to millions not how
covered, higher standards of unem-
ployment insurance, expanded pub-
lic housing, an end to exploitation
of migrant farm workers and
eradication of all forms of racial
discrimination.
More than 1,000 Resolutions
More than 1,000 conference res-
olutions poured out of 18 forums
where delegates voted on proposals
initiated in small work-group ses-
sions.
Originally the final plenary ses-
sion was to have included a sum-
mary of the actions taken by the
forums — to form the basis of the
conference's official report to the
President. Conference officials
{Continued on Page 9)
By Gene Zack
Liberals on both sides of Capitol Hill stepped up their drive for
legislation to provide health care for the aged, despite stiffening
Administration opposition to the Forand bill and initial rejection of
the AFL-ClO-backed measure in the House Ways & Means
Committee.
As congressmen continued to be deluged with the heaviest flood
of mail in years, showing mounting public demand for the Forand
bill's social security principle, there were these developments:
• A Senate Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged opened
public hearings on federal health insurance, with Chairman Pat
McNamara (D-Mich.) forecasting^
passage of a bill this year. There
were indications that, if the House
fails to include health care in a
pending social security measure,
attempts would be made to amend
the bill in the Senate.
• Auto Workers Pres. Walter
P. Reuther, in a statement pre-
sented to the McNamara sub-
committee, charged the Forand
bill was being blocked by
"powerful and politically influ-
ential groups" including the
American Medical Association,
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
National Association of Manu-
facturers. He expressed confi-
dence that "the vast majority"
of Congress "will find a way to
bring this legislation to a vote."
• James B. Carey, testifying as
president of the Electrical, Radio
& Machine Workers and secretary-
treasurer of the AFL-CIO Indus-
trial Union Dept., said opponents of
health care are "calloused by their
own creature comforts." He ac-
cused the Administration of "an
outright betrayal of the needs of
America's 16 million elder citizens."
• Following a White House
conference, Senate Minority Leader
Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-UI.)
spelled out what he termed Admin-
istration-approved "guidelines" but
no GOP health care program. He
emphasized opposition to social se-
(Continued on Page 11)
Major Air
Pact Signed
At Republic
In the first major agreement in
critical 1960 negotiations with
the aircraft and missile industry,
8,400 members of the Machinists
have won a two-year contract
from Republic Aviation Corp.,
Farmingdale, N. Y., scene of a
turbulent 114-day strike four
years ago.
The Republic pact gives work-
ers wage hikes ranging from 7 to
11 cents an hour immediately, to
be followed by increases of from
5 to 8 cents hourly effective Apr.
3, 1961. In addition, a 6-cent
cost-of-living increase accumulated
over the past two years was incor-
porated into all base rates, and the
living-cost clause was continued up
to a limit of 6 cents over the next
two years.
The pact raised company pay-
ments for pensions from $1.75
per month per employe to $2.25
monthly; eligibility for pensions
was reduced from 15 to 10 years
(Continued on Page 11)
AFL-CIO Backs Truth-in-Lending'
Bill, Hits Consumer Credit Gyps
Sharply assailing "deceptive practices" in the consumer credit field, the AFL-CIO has called
for congressional passage of a "truth-in-lending" bill that would require full disclosure to the purchaser
of all finance charges.
Peter Henle, assistant director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research, told a Senate Banking sub-
committee that its hearings on a bill introduced by Chairman Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.) were "break-
ing new ground" since Congress'
"has never before taken a look at
consumer credit from the view-
point of the borrower."
The government, he said, has an
"obligation" to protect the con-
sumer in the credit field in much
the same manner as it safeguards
him against deceptive advertising,
impure foods or medicines, and
through laws requiring appropri-
ate labels for clothing, furniture
and other products.
At its midwinter meeting, Henle
told the subcommittee, the AFL-
CIO Executive Council gave its
"clear endorsement" to the Doug-
las bill, declaring that its passage
"would do much to alert consum-
ers to the high prices they now pay
for money."
The council called for both state
and federal regulations against "de-
ceptive practices and exorbitant
charges in vending consumer credit,
particularly installment credit." It
added that this could be achieved
through the Douglas bill's require-
ment that finance charges on all in-
stallment purchases be expressed in
(Continued on Page 2)
Tag* Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, I960
PROTECTION OF PUBLIC against "deceptive practices" in con-
sumer credit field can be achieved through passage of Douglas
"truth-in-lending" bill, Peter Henle, assistant director of AFL-CIO
Dept. of Research, told Senate Banking subcommittee hearings.
Citing labor's concern, he said AFL-CIO Community Service Ac-
tivities has instituted special consumer information programs to
educate members.
AFL-CIO Backs Law
To End Credit Chiseling
(Continued from Page 1)
terms of "simple annual interest."
With consumer credit at a rec-
ord high of over $51 billion — three
times what it was in 1949 — Henle
said the problem of "deceptive
credit practices" has been brought
home forceably to trade union of-
ficials because members are turn-
ing more frequently to them for
help.
Because of this rank-and-file
concern, he -said, AFL-CIO
Community Service Activities —
labor's operating arm in the so-
cial welfare field — has instituted
a special consumer information
program "to help educate our
membership concerning the pit-
falls of installment buying and
other credit purchases.'*
"But education is not enough,"
Henle continued. "It is our con-
tention that the problem is suffi-
ciently serious to require action by
the federal government."
The Douglas bill, he said, "pro-
vides an excellent approach" to
this problem.
"it does not attempt to regulate
the terms of any consumer financ-
ing contract," he added. "It does
attempt to simplify consumer fi-
nance contracts by requiring full
cost disclosure in such a way that
Easter Seal Drive
Backed by Meany
Labor welcomes the oppor-
tunity to assist in furthering
the rehabilitation program for
the handicapped through the
purchase and use of Easter
Seals, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany said in accepting re-
appointment as a sponsor of
the program of the National
Society for Crippled Children
and Adults, which directs the
annual seal sale.
"An organization that has
established an enviable rec-
ord of service to humanity
truly merits the support of all
Americans," he said, "and I
am confident that the men
and women of the AFL-CIO,
keenly aware of the dedicated
service of the Easter Seal so-
cieties, will be both generous
and warm-hearted in their
support."
Care and treatment for the
handicapped, with full inde-
pendence as the goal, are pro-
vided through some 1,400
Easter Seal centers and pro-
grams with specialized medi-
cal supervision and advice.
There are no restrictions for
eligibility.
the consumer himself can make an
intelligent choice regarding the
credit that is being furnished him."
At present, N Henle said, "every
conceivable obstacle" has been
placed in the path of the consumer
seeking "adequate information on
which he can base an intelligent
decision regarding his use of
credit."
Advertising 'Deceptive'
Advertising by consumer loan
companies, automobile dealers and
others who sell goods on credit,
the AFL-CIO spokesman declared,
"is often quite deceptive and very
confusing." He introduced a series
of newspaper ads which, he pointed
out, "indicate the rate of repayment
but seldom if ever mention the price
of the loan either in terms of the
total charges or as an annual rate
on the principal."
In addition, he said, credit in-
struments "turn out to be even
more confusing than the advertise-
ments." While they give the
amount of the loan and the repay-
ment schedule, they often do not
list such charges as insurance or
service fees that are lumped in, and
"in no case are the finance charges
expressed in language simple
enough for the buyer to recognize
whether he is paying a reasonable
amount for his loan."
Henle said the method of
presenting finance charges to the
customer is also confusing, point-
ing out that the 3 percent a
month charged by a small loan
company is a true 36 per cent
annual interest rate; and the 1.5
percent monthly charge by a de-
partment store or mail order
house under a "revolving credit
arrangement" is a true 18 per-
cent.
Enactment of a law embodying
the principles set forth in the Doug-
las bill, the federation spokesman
declared, "will do more to put the
operations of the consumer credit
industry on a sensible basis than
any other possible action by Con-
gress."
Stagehands Choose
New Vice President
New York — Jerry Tomasetti,
business agent of Film Exchange
Employes of Local B-51 here, has
been elected ninth vice president of
the Theatrical Stage Employes Un-
ion.
Tomasetti was named by the
IATSE general executive board at
its semi-annual meeting in Port-
land, Ore., to fill the unexpired
term of the late Louise Wright of
Dallas, Tex. The post represents
the union's Special Dept.
Report to Mitchell:
Job Policy Advisors Urge
Aid for Depressed Areas
Enactment of area redevelopment legislation that would "revitalize the economies" of depressed
areas has been urged on the Eisenhower Administration by the tripartite Federal Advisory Coun-
cil on Employment Security.
At the same time, the council called for a program of financial assistance to communities which
"exhibit tendencies" toward persistent unemployment but which have not yet "deteriorated to the
of becoming classified as^
point
chronic labor surplus areas."
The unanimous views of the
council's 24 labor, management
and public members were contained
in a report to Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell. The council is a statu-
tory body established to advise the
Secretary of Labor and the Direc-
tor of Employment Security on
policies relating to unemployment.
Persistent Joblessness
Its report was geared to a study
of persistent joblessness in the
nation. According to the most re-
cent Labor Dept. employment-un-
employment report, there were
964,000 persons unemployed 15
weeks or more in February, com-
pared to 617,000 long-term job-
less in pre-recession February 1957.
The report was made public as
the powerful House Rules Commit-
tee, ending a 10-month blockade
of depressed area legislation, open-
ed hearings on a $250 million, Ad-
ministration-opposed bill, slightly
smaller in scope than one Pres.
Eisenhower vetoed in 1958, but far
larger than the $57 million recom-
'Scab' Agency
Head Fined in
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia — Bloor Schleppey,
73-year-old operator of a profes-
sional strikebreaker recruiting agen-
cy, has been fined $500 for viola-
tion of Pennsylvania's state law
prohibiting use of third parties to
obtain "replacement" employes in
labor disputes.
Sentence was imposed on Apr. 1
in Bucks County Court by Judge
Edward G. Biester after Schleppey
avoided a scheduled grand jury
appearance by pleading no contest
to charges against him.
Asks Mercy
A "no-contest" or nolo conten-
dere plea in criminal cases means
that a defendant, without directly
admitting guilt, throws himself on
the mercy of the court. Maximum
penalty in Schleppey's case was
one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Faced with the possibility of
being held in probation, Schlep-
pey stated in court that he would
not again operate in a manner
violating Pennsylvania's anti-
strikebreaker recruiting law.
Schleppey was arrested Feb. 11
in a Philadelphia airport motel
after flight from police involving a
crew of hired strikebreakers pre-
pared to go to Chester, Pa., where
a newspaper strike was threatened.
He was charged with having previ-
ously imported strikebreakers in a
newspaper dispute at Bristol-Levit-
town, Pa.
Schleppey's strikebreaking ac-
tivities in the newspaper industry
were documented last year in un-
dented testimony before a New
York State board conducting
hearings on the importation of
professional scabs in a strike
against the Macy papers in West-
chester County.
Union spokesmen in the current
multiunion strike against Portland,
Ore., newspapers have charged
that professional strikebreakers for
merly associated with Schleppey's
operations showed up, at premium
pay and with extra expense ac-
counts, to help the publishers start
a struck newspaper under the joint
masthead of the Oregon Journal
and the Portland Oregonian.
Pamphlet Promotes
A rea Redevelopment
The union-backed Area
Employment Expansion Com-
mittee has issued a popular
pamphlet to help win passage
of the Area Redevelopment
Act — "a Point Four for
America."
"Today's boomtown may
be tomorrow's ghost-town," it
warned in listing 177 "dis-
tressed labor markets" where
unemployment of 6 to 30 per-
cent has persisted for at least
18 months.
The pamphlet, sent to all
members of Congress, noted
a similar program was vetoed
in 1958 by Pres. Eisenhower
and appealed for prompt ac-
tion because "the country can
wait no longer."
mended in current Administration
budget proposals.
Passage of aid-to-depressed
areas legislation is a key plank
in the AFL-CIO's 12-point
"Positive Program for America,"
which organized labor has asked
Congress to enact before it ad-
journs in July for the Demo-
cratic and Republican presiden-
tial nominating conventions.
The Labor Dept.'s advisory group
told Mitchell that an area redevel-
opment measure should give "prior-
ity to efforts to revitalize the econ-
omies" of depressed areas "rather
than to measures to relocate work-
ers.
Although relocation might be in-
dicated in "a few remote and small
stranded communities," the report
said, if it were applied generally it
would lead to "unnecessary losses
of invested capital and commu-
nity equipment and facilities and
. . . heavy financial and social
burdens on the individuals trans-
ferred."
The tripartite committee called
for enactment of safeguards in
depressed areas legislation "to
avoid giving assistance to 'run-
away* plants which, by relocat-
ing in a depressed area, would
create an unemployment prob-
lem in the original location.
In dealing with persistent un-
employment, the committee called
for government financial support
for retraining jobless workers, in-
cluding financial aid to the jobless
whose unemployment insurance
benefits have been exhausted or
who are not covered by unemploy-
ment assistance, but who are under-
going approved training.
Since in some states jobless
workers undergoing training may
not be eligible for unemployment
benefits, the committee stated, it
urged that state laws be "amended
where necessary so as to avoid
claimants being disqualified for ben-
efits solely because they are under-
going approved training."
The report added that states
should extend the duration of bene-
fits for jobless workers training for
new skills, as is now provided in
Massachusetts and Michigan.
More Areas Cited for
Heavy Unemployment
The job situation across the nation underwent "slight improve-
ments" between January and March, the Labor Dept. reported in
its bimonthly survey of 149 major areas, but the areas with a "sub-
stantial labor surplus" edged upward from 31 to 33.
The "smaller areas of substantial labor surplus" also increased
slightly, from 107 in January to^
109 in March.
A labor market area is classified
in the "substantial labor surplus"
category if it has unemployment of
6 percent or over.
The usual "moderate spring pick-
up in job totals is anticipated by
employers in 90 percent of the na-
tion's principal employment and
production centers," reported the
survey, which also takes in employ-
er hiring plans.
The report said seasonal ex-,
pansion in commercial and in-
dustrial construction, trade, serv-
ice and food processing would
lead the job rise, "with hiring in
residential building likely to lag
behind 1959 levels."
"Mixed trends" were seen for the
durable goods industries to mid-
May. The durable goods job out-
look is keyed to the auto industry,
the report noted. A late winter sur-
vey of auto centers revealed "un-
certainty" as new car sales lagged
behind industry expectations, the
report went on.
Auto Hiring Uncertain
The Labor Dept. said overtime
work and second shift operations
were being curtailed in a number of
auto centers in recent weeks, with
some layoffs reported in other cen-
ters.
The department went on to say
that while auto job totals set for
mid-May did not seem ''significantly
different" from mid-March, "a
number of areas" indicated a fur-
ther weakening in demand might
alter hiring plans.
The "unsettled outlook" in autos
apparently is being felt in steel, the
department added, where major
producing centers reported cut-
backs in orders and output sched-
ules from earlier peaks. Steel jobs
were expected to stabilize at cur-
rent levels, it said.
Some Gains Seen
The report said job gains wero
anticipated in electrical and non-
electrical machinery, fabricated
metals, ordnance and instruments.
The Labor Department said
employers in most major manu-
facturing centers reported short-
ages of skilled workers. Areas
like Chicago, St. Louis, Phila-
delphia, Baltimore and New
Haven, Conn., were reported
short of such highly-skilled work-
ers as tool and die makers, ma-
chinists, machine tool operators
and other metal workers.
In a few areas, skill shortages
appeared to hold up hiring of pro-
duction workers, the report said.
Of the 33 areas with a "substan-
tial labor surplus," 25 were in
Group D, with 6 to 8.9 percent
jobless; four in Group E, with 9
to 11.9 percent, and four in Group
F, with 12 percent and over unem-
ployed.
AFL-QO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1960 .
Page Thre*
NLRB Orders Back Pay:
Shutdown Maneuver
Costly to Mill Owner
The National Labor Relations Board, in a 3-to-l decision, has
ordered a mill employer who shut down his major operations to
avoid dealing with a union to give back pay to fired workers until
they secure "substantially equivalent employment with other em-
ployers."
Bonnie Lass Knitting Mills, Inc.,^
of Clifton, N. J., according to the
NLRB, switched its operations
from manufacturing to jobbing and
cut its work force from over 100
down to three full-time and 5 to
10 part-time employes to avoid
bargaining with the Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers.
The board rejected the trial ex-
aminer's recommendation that the
employer be required to reopen its
customary sweater-making depart-
ments, observing that the company
has disposed of its machinery and
equipment.
But since Bonnie Lass still is
a functioning business "and may
resume full-scale operation," the
majority said, it is ordered to
set up a preferential hiring list
and it must offer full and im-
mediate reinstatement plus back
pay to 49 fired workers if it re-
sumes manufacturing.
If Bonnie Lass does not reopen
its manufacturing facilities, the
board said, it must make good to
the 49 workers discriminatory dis-
charged Dec. 15, 1958, the money
they would haye earned from that
date until each secures or did se-
cure "substantially equivalent em-
ployment.'*
"I do not agree," declared Mem-
ber Philip Ray Rodgers in a partial
dissent.
Rodgers said there is nothing in
the Taft-Hartley Act limiting an
employer's right to go out of busi-
ness. Bonnie Lass, he contended,
"disposed of its machinery and
equipment and permanently with-
drew from the industrial scene as a
manufacturer."
The board majority was com-
prised of Chairman Boyd Leedom
and Members Joseph Alton Jenkins
and John H. Fanning.
According to the report of Trial
Examiner C. W. Whittemore, the
union campaign got under way in
May and June of 1958. With or-
ganizing carried on in both Eng-
lish and German, the union soon
had authorization cards from 56
of the 101 employes.
The testimony showed, the re-
port said, that the employer con-
ceded the union's majority but
refused to deal with it, em-
barking on "an intensive cam-
paign of interference, restraint
and coercion."
The company's counsel called a
meeting of all employes and told
them the union was a "bunch of
goons, thugs and all* they were in-
terested in was dues," according
to the NLRB report.
The company spokesman threat
ened to close the plant before deal-
ing with the union and also prom-
ised such benefits as hospitaliza-
tion, paid holidays and vacations
if the union did not come in.
The company laid off what it
called "the ring leader" for a few
days. Finally, the workers voted
to strike and stayed out from Aug.
12 until Dec. 15, when they offered
to return unconditionally.
The union committee was told
a contract had been made to sell
some machinery but a plant re-
opening would be considered if
the workers would renounce the
union in writing.
The employes rejected the em-
ployer's demand and the switchover
from manufacturing to jobbing took
place between January and April
1959.
2 New York Hospitals
Sign Union Contracts
New York — Union contracts have been negotiated with two
private non-profit hospitals here and a third has entered into negoti-
ations following an overwhelming vote for union representation by
its employes.
Local 1199, Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, which
conducted a 46-day strike for^
union recognition at seven New
York hospitals last spring, termed
the new agreements "an important
step forward" in the drive to win
full union recognition at the city's
voluntary hospitals.
The strike ended with a com-
promise settlement with the hos-
pitals agreeing to some of the union
demands in a statement of policy
that set up a grievance procedure
and provided for periodic wage re-
views, but refused to sign agree-
ments with the union.
Local 1199 Pres. Leon J.
Davis said the Daughters of
Israel Hospital in Manhattan and
the Daughters of Jacob Hospital
in the Bronx had now agreed to
full union recognition and signed
union contracts. Both institu-
tions are members of the Great-
er New York Hospital Associa-
tion, which has led the light
against meaningful union recog-
nition. The agreements cover a
total of 375 non-professional,
technical and office employes.
At Trafalgar Hospital in Man-
hattan, workers voted 102 to 17
for union representation in a secret
ballot election conducted by the
State Labor Relations Board.
Although non-profit hospitals
are not required by state law to
bargain with unions representing
their employes, the Trafalgar man-
agement agreed to a consent elec-
tion and said it would recognize
the union if a majority of the work-
ers voted for representation.
Second Election
The vote was the second repre-
sentation election held for workers
in a non-profit hospital in New
York. Early in 1959, Montifiore
Hospital negotiated a contract with
Local 1199 after its employes voted
628 to 31 for the union.
Davis termed the statement of
policy under which most hos-
pitals now operate "unwork-^
able," and expressed hope that
other hospitals would "follow a
path of recognizing the union
where it represents a majority
of employes."
He warned that hospital manage-
ments which refuse to permit work-
ers to be represented by a union
of their choice "will be inviting
widespread labor unrest and strikes
of even greater proportion than
occurred last spring."
Local 1199, he said, is "anxious
to avoid" the necessity of striking
for full recognition*
. . mm
C. J. (NEIL) HAGGERTY (left), in his new capacity as president
of the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept., confers
with Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.), member of House Educa-
tion & Labor Committee, on legislative matters of interest to labor,
ACWA Wins Biggest
Pay Hike in History
New York — Some 125,000 members of the. Clothing Workers will
receive a contract package worth 21.5 cents an hour, including their
first wage increase since 1956, under a new three-year agreement
with the U.S. Clothing Manufacturers' Association.
The settlement, which affects about 700 major manufacturers of
men's suits and overcoats, includes^
the largest basic wage increase ne
gotiated in the union's history —
17.5 cents an hour effective June 1.
It also continues unbroken the
40-year record of peace in the
industry. The last major dispute
was a combined strike and lock-
Insurance by
ULLICO Hits
Record High
Baltimore, Md. — New high totals
for insurance coverage, assets, in-
come and benefits paid have been
announced by the Union Labor Life
Insurance Co. in its annual report
for 1959.
Edmund P. Tobin, president of
ULLICO, which is wholly owned
by labor unions, said insurance in
force has reached the all-time high
of $1.07 billion, as against $248
million 20 years ago.
Income in 1959 aggregated $47
million, a gain of 7.7 percent over
the previous year. Of that total,
nearly $42 million was paid in divi-
dends and benefits to policyholders
and beneficiaries, $5 million more
than in 1958.
The report, presented at the
company's 34th annual stock-
holders 9 meeting, noted that
among the new services under-
taken in group policies during
the past year were benefits for
dental care and the cost of pre-
scribed drugs and medicines out-
side of the hospital.
There is now increasing empha-
sis, Tobin said, on coverage and
services for retired persons and he
promised that ULLICO will "pio-
neer in this as well as other import-
ant insurance undertakings which
have marked its reputation and
progress." v
In its first 33 years, Tobin said,
ULLICO has more than fulfilled
the most ambitious dreams of the
trade unions which founded it
2 RCIA Locals
Unite in Los Angeles
Los Angeles — Retail Clerks Lo-
cal 777 has been merged into Local
770 following a membership vote
of the two locals.
Local 770 was brought to a
strength of about 18,000 members
and its food and drug jurisdiction
enlarged to include Local 777's
jurisdiction in shoe, department
store, variety store and other retail
firms.
out in 1921 affecting the New
York, Baltimore and Boston pro-
duction centers.
ACWA Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky,
hailing the settlement, said the pres-
ent national average wage for cloth-
ing workers is $1.77 an hour. In
the big production centers, he said,
it runs above $2, compared with
the factory worker's average of
$2.29. The pay raise will be trans-
lated into higher rates for piece
work, by which earnings are gov-
erned for most clothing workers.
In addition to the pay hike, the
contract provides for liberalization
of health and welfare benefits start-
ing Sept. 1. They include:
• An increase of $4 to $18 a
day in hospitalization benefits.
• A jump in the allowance for
incidental hospital expenses, such as
X-rays and anesthetics, from $50
to $75.
• A $25 raise in surgical allow-
ances to a maximum of $275.
• An increase in maternity ben-
efits from $50 to $100.
• A doubling of life insurance
coverage from $500 to $1,000.
The ACWA had foregone asking
for wage increases — as it could
have done — since the 1956 pay
raise because of economic condi-
tions in the highly-competitive in-
dustry, particularly in view of an
influx of foreign-made suits and
overcoats. Its members have re-
ceived 12.5 cents an hour in addi-
tional health and welfare benefits
in the last four years.
The union position since 1956
resulted in an unusual situation
when bargaining for the new con-
tract opened two months ago. There
was no disagreement on the fact
that a wage increase was in order
— the only point of discussion was
on its size. The union originally
asked for a package worth 25 cents
an hour, with 22.5 cents*in wages
and the rest in fringe benefits. The
employers' first offer was 12 cents.
During the bargaining, differ-
ences over some work rules were
worked out, although they are
not to be written into the new
contract, and both sides agreed
to continue their joint effort to
improve efficiency, promote the
introduction of technological im-
provements and fight sweat-shop
competition from abroad.
The new agreement was subject
to ratification by local unions over
the next few weeks, but Potofsky
expressed confidence of approval.
NMU Joins
Hotel Co-op
For Retired
New York — Members of the
Maritime Union have voted in
favor of participation by their or-
ganization in a cooperative pro-
gram to build and operate resi-
dential hotels for retired union
members.
The project is called Four Free-
doms Hotel, Inc., a trade union co-
operative. It plans to build or buy
hotels in favored resort areas, pro-
viding deluxe rooms with meals
and recreational facilities specially
designed to meet the needs and
wishes of older people.
Retired union members — couples
or single persons — would be ac-
commodated at minimum rates, es-
timated at $100 to $125 monthly
per person for room and board.
The NMU membership en-
dorsed the project at regular
membership meetings in March
in the union's 30 port headquar-
ters. The seamen voted on a pro-
posal to make an initial invest-
ment of $110,000 of union treas-
ury funds in the project. The
total vote was 3,725 in favor and
642 opposed.
Four Freedoms Hotels, Inc.,
plans to build first in California
and Florida, the exact locations
not yet decided. The number and
locations of subsequent hotels will
be determined by participating un-
ions.
NMU Pres. Joseph Curran said
that his organization is participating
in the Four Freedoms project be-
cause "we regard it as a sound and
praiseworthy effort to meet what is
one of the most serious problems
facing older people."
Wool, Cotton
Contracts Set
Pay Patterns
Boston — Wage increases ranging
from 6.5 to 10 cents an hour have
been won by the Textile Workers
Union of America in pattern-set-
ting agreements covering two major
segments of the industry.
Pay boosts from 6.5 to 10 cents
were gained in negotiations under
a wage reopening with Berkshire-
Hathaway, Inc., which employs
6,000 workers at seven plants in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The settlement, which pro-
vides for a new minimum of
$1.31 an hour, is expected to set
a pattern for nearly 200 northern
cotton and rayon plants employ-
ing about 45,000 workers. The
anion obtained a 10-cent across-
the-board increase in April 1959.
The agreement followed a series
of settlements in the woolen and
worsted branch of the industry un-
der which some 23,000 workers in
100 mills received 7 cents an hour
with a new minimum of $1.50.
This pattern was set in a contract
with the Wyandotte Worsted Co.,
with 1,200 employes in four New
England plants. The settlements ex-
tended the contracts for two years
with a reopening for wages and
fringe benefits in April 1961 and
another for wages only the fol-
lowing April. Last year a 10-cent
wage raise was negotiated.
School Dedicates
Hillman Room
New York — A Sidney Hillman
Memorial Room has been dedi-
cated at the New School for Social
Research.
Mrs. Bessie Hillman, widow of
the Clothing Workers' first presi-
dent and herself a vice president of
the union, unveiled a memorial
plaque and a bust of her late hus-
band.
ACWA Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky
and Meyer Kestnbaum, president
of Hart, Schaffner & Marx of
Chicago.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. G, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1960
Strike Closes
Wilson Sports
Goods Unit
Chicago — Production of base-
ball and golf equipment as well as
other sporting goods was stopped
at the Wilson Sporting Goods Co.
by a strike called Apr. 4 by the
Packinghouse Workers.
Wilson Sporting Goods is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the
Wilson Meat Packing Co., whose
six plants were tied up for 109
days by the same union in a re-
cently-ended strike which drew
national attention to the com-
pany's union-fighting efforts.
Nearly 475 workers, members of
UPWA Local 715, took up picket
signs to back their committee's
efforts to secure adequate wage in-
creases and welfare benefits. The
UPWA won an NLRB election last
September to take the Sporting
Goods unit away from the unaf-
filiated United Industrial Workers,
headed by Angelo Incisco. Incisco
was forced out of the Allied In-
dustrial Workers in 1957 after dis-
closure by the AFL-CIO Ethical
Practices Committee of improper
use of union and welfare funds.
Negotiations have dragged in-
conclusively since labor board
certification, held up through
company maneuvering until
early last February, a five-month
delay, the union said.
Under the company's wage offer,
minimums in the Sporting Goods
unit would be $1.35 for women
and $1.55 for men. The minimum
in the same company's meat-pack-
ing plants is $2,175. Wilson also
declined to offer any type of paid
hospitalization or sick pay bene
fits to the Sporting Goods group,
the union said.
Union Leader
Named Regent
At Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wis. — Jacob F.
Friedrick, a veteran trade union
leader and president of the Milwau
kee County Labor Council, has
been appointed by Gov. Gaylord
Nelson to the University of Wis-
consin board of regents.
Friedrick's appointment to the
nine-member board, responsible for
the over-all direction of the uni-
versity, is subject to confirmation
by the State Senate.
A native of Hungary, Friedrick
came to the U.S. in 1904 and al-
most immediately joined the Ma-
chinists here. In 1919 he became
business agent for IAM Lodge 66,
leaving that post 10 years later to
become a labor reporter for the old
Milwaukee Post.
In 1935, Friedrick was elected
general organizer of the former
AFL Federated Trades Council. He
left the council in 1945 to become
regional director for the AFL in
Wisconsin, returning in 1951 as
general secretary, the council's top
post. The council merged with the
Milwaukee County Industrial Un-
ion Council last year. The united
body represents an estimated 130,-
000 trade unionists in 250 locals.
Friedrick has served on the
advisory committee of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin's School for
Workers, where he collaborated
with the late Prof. John R. Com-
mons in preparing the first un-
employment compensation bill
introduced in the state legislature.
The union leader has served on
both the unemployment and work-
men's compensation advisory com-
mittees to the Wisconsin Industrial
Commission, and has served on the
Milwaukee sewerage commission.
In recognition of his long service
to the labor movement and the
state, Friedrick recently was award-
ed an honorary doctor of laws de-
gree by the University of Wiscon-
sin.
w\'Tribute to Members: 9
RETIRING AFTER 19 YEARS of service, Charles F. Crampton,
left, of the engineering maintenance staff of AFL-CIO headquarters,
receives a watch and best wishes from AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. Wil-
liam F. Schnitzler. Crampton, a member of Firemen & Oilers'
Local 63, says he hopes now to use his leisure for all those put-off
tasks.
Mediation Efforts Fail
In Rail Pact Dispute
The rail wage dispute between unions representing 600,000 non-
operating workers and the nation's railroads appeared to be headed
for a Presidential Emergency Board as preliminary mediation efforts
failed.
After 10 weeks of effort, the National Mediation Board an-
nounced on Apr. 4 that it was^
on
unable to obtain an agreement be
tween the carriers, which originally
demanded that their workers take
a pay cut of 15 cents an hour, and
the unions, which have asked for a
25-cent hourly increase, plus addi-
tional vacation and holiday bene
fits.
This theoretically left the un-
ions free to strike after a 30-day
"cooling-off ' period, but both
union and management officials
expected the board to certify the
dispute to the President and ask
him to set up an emergency
board to conduct a fact-finding
study and make recommenda-
tions for a settlement.
An emergency board would have
30 days to report to the President
Both parties would then be re-
quired to bargain for an additional
May Merger
Ordered in
New Jersey
(Continued from Page 1)
creation of a new merged AFL-
CIO body in the state.
The order to revoke the char-
ter came on the basis of a re-
port by Peter M. McGavin and
R. J. Thomas, assistants to the
president, that negotiations for
a merger in line with the AFL-
CIO constitution were stale-
mated. All state bodies in the
federation have merged with the
exception of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. In the Keystone
state an agreement to merge has
been completed and a conven-
tion will be held on June 6.
All AFL-CIO local unions and
organizations in New Jersey affili-
ated with either the former AFL
or former CIO body will be given
credentials to the merger conven-
tion if they are in good standing.
McGavin and Thomas will act as
convention officers and present a
draft constitution for the new AFL-
CIO body to the delegates.
The New Jersey State CIO Coun-
cil announced meanwhile that it
will hold a one-day convention May
7 at the Essex House in Newark
to discuss the creation of a state
AFL-CIO body.
30 days before the unions would
be legally free to strike.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, a six-
man arbitration panel began con-
sideration of the wage dispute be-
tween the Locomotive Engineers
and the railroads. The BLE ac-
cepted arbitration — one of the al-
ternatives offered by the Railway
Labor Act — while the non-operat-
ing unions rejected it in favor of
emergency board procedure.
Still to reach the stage of na-
tional negotiations are the con-
troversial work rules changes
which the railroads have asked
the operating unions to accept,
and which rail labor has de-
nounced as union-busting pro-
posals that would destroy 50
years of union-won progress.
The railroads took to the courts
in an effort to avoid bargaining
with the non-operating unions on a
demand for life insurance and
medical benefits. * In a suit filed in
the U.S. District Court at Chicago,
they contended that the issues are
"non-bargainable" under the Rail-
way Labor Act.
The Railway Labor Executives'
Association promptly challenged
the legal maneuver and pointed out
that a case between the Railroad
Telegraphers and the Chicago &
North Western Railway involving
the scope of bargaining under the
Railroad Labor Act is currently
pending before the U.S. Supreme
Court.
30,000 Petition for
Forand Bill Passage
Petitions bearing the sig-
natures of nearly 30,000
members of the Papermak-
ers & Paperworkers urging
passage of the Forand bill
have been delivered to mem-
bers of Congress from the
districts in which the 300
UPP locals are situated.
Accompanying the peti-
tions was a letter from AFL-
CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew
J. Biemiller pointing to the
growing public demand for
the bill to provide health care
for the aged, and calling for
prompt action on the long-
stalled measure.
Rail Unions Dedicate
New Headquarters
In impressive ceremonies, top leaders in government and labor
joined to dedicate the newly-completed Railway Labor Building,
new home of railroad unionism in the nation's capital.
The new $3 million, seven-story structure was hailed by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany as "a tribute to the 1 million members of
railroad labor organizations who® -
for so many years have set an ex-
ample for all labor in this country."
Also taking part in the dedica-
tion ceremonies, and in paying
tribute to railway unions, were
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, Sen-
ate Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.), House Speaker
Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.), Sen. John
Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) and Rep.
John Bennett (R-Mich.).
Leighty Chairman
George E. Leighty, chairman of
the Railway Labor Executives' As-
sociation and president of the Rail-
road Telegraphers, who served as
chairman' of the building commit-
tee, declared that the modern
seven-story structure "symbolizes
the spiritual dreams of the Ameri-
can people for the better life."
The building houses the Wash-
ington offices of standard railway
unions; Labor, the railroad work-
ers' national weekly, and the
RLEA. In addition it provides
office space for units of the Labor
Dept. and the Federal Housing
Administration.
The dedication ceremonies oc-
curred less than two years after
ground was broken on Apr. 29,
1958 by Johnson, Rayburn and
T. C. Carroll, chairman of the
board of directors of Labor.
Leighty declared that "the ad-
vancement of labor is an advance-
ment of our national ideal — the
greatest good for the greatest num-
ber — which has long been the phi-
losophical cornerstone of our
democratic form of government.
"The newspaper, Labor, has been
dedicated to this fundamental ideal
ever since its founding some 41
years ago," he continued, stressing
that "while Labor today is pub-
lished by 18 standard railroad la-
bor organizations, its real owners
are 1 million workers in the rail-
road industry."
Meany unveiled a plaque in
the lobby of the new building —
a plaque in the format of a front
page of Labor, which tells both
the story of the 41-year-old rail
union newspaper and the high-
lights of the dedication.
"This dedication is to me an
occasion of memories of people
gone by, as well as an inspiration
for the future," the AFL-CIO pres-
ident said. "We must give credit
to those old timers who had the
foresight to start this labor news-
paper.
"The railroad unions have al-
ways led the way in dedication.
They are held in the highest re-
spect not only by their fellow un-
ionists, but by the general public
as well."
Cornerstone Laid
The cornerstone for the building
was laid with various important
documents enclosed, including a .
copy of a book by Edward Keating,
founding editor of Labor; copies
of important issues of the news-
paper; and the bylaws of the
RLEA.
Mitchell told the hundreds
who gathered for the ceremonies
that "the railroad unions and
their paper, Labor, have fought
for their members — fought fairly
and fought well."
Johnson said that the rail unions
have been effective instruments for
their members "because they have
been so reasonable, so honorable
and so just," while Rayburn echo-
ing these sentiments declared: "I've
never known a group of people in
any organization that were easier
to get along with the last 70 years
— even including the farmers of
Texas."
Cooper said the new Railway La-
bor Building "is a proper monu-
ment to the long years of dedica-
tion and service to the interest of
railroad workers." Bennett de-
clared that "this new home should
be inspiring to every railroad work-
er in the United States."
Ike Rejects Plea for
Board in Ship Strike
Pres. Eisenhower has rejected a request by 105 congressmen that
the White House establish a fact-finding board to help settle the
11 -week-old strike of 18,000 members of the Shipbuilders and the
Technical Engineers at eight East Coast shipyards of Bethlehem
Steel Co.
The Administration's refusal to'^~
intervene came as the National La-
bor Relations Board went into fed-
eral court in Boston with a request
for injunctions against the two un-
ions and the company in what the
labor board described as a move to
get the parties back to the bargain-
ing table.
The company broke off nego-
tiations immediately after the
NLRB asked for the injunctions,
declaring that company negotia-
tors would be unable to meet
with the union as long as the
management team "is occupied
with the union-inspired injunc-
tion proceeding against the com-
pany."
In turning down the plea of the
105 congressmen for White House
action to break the deadlock, David
G. Kendall, special counsel to Eis-
enhower, said the President would
give "serious consideration" to fact-
finding only if both the union and
management requested such action.
The Shipbuilders promptly de-
clared they would send members
back to work if a fact-finding board
were established and would abide
by whatever recommendations the
board decided. There was no re-
sponse from management, which in
the past has rejected efforts by fed-
eral mediators to settle the dispute.
In a letter to Rep. James A.
Burke (D-Mass.), the White House
aide said Eisenhower "does not feel
that it would be consistent with the
concepts of free collective bargain-
ing, which this Administration has
constantly supported, for him to
intercede in this controversey ex-
cept upon direct request of the
parties."
Kendall said that "appropriate
agencies of the government are tak-
ing all reasonable and practical
measures to facilitate a settlement."
In the Boston court case,
NLRB Gen. Counsel Stuart Roth-
man charged Bethlehem with in-
terfering, restraining or coerc-
ing employes in the exercise of
their rights, and with refusal to
bargain in good faith. The in-
junction against the IUMSWA
and the Technical Engineers
asked an end to alleged mass
picketing at several shipyards.
AFL-QO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1960
Page Flw
Notables Present:
Rail Unions Dedicate Home in Washington
NEW HOME of railroad unionism in nation's capital is this mod-
ern seven-story building which will house Washington offices of
rail unions and Labor, weekly newspaper of railroad workers.
TRIBUTE TO PIONEERING leadership of rail labor is voiced at dedication
ceremony by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, by congressional leaders from both
parties and Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell. Construction cost $3 million.
PLAQUE MADE from front page of Labor newspaper, telling story of the dedi-
cation, is unveiled by Meany. At right is G. E. Leighty, chairman of Railway
Labor Executives' Association and head of building committee.
VETERAN RAILROAD unionists and their families were among
guests, along with leaders of other unions. They toured the building,
which includes office space for units of Labor Dept. and FHA.
SOME WITNESSES to historic ceremony didn't give a sniffle for HIGH-SPEED PRESSES turn out the railroad workers' newspaper. In its 41 years, Labor news-
what went on. That's the young son of RLEA Chairman Leighty paper has crusade^ for better conditions for the nation's railroad workers, progress for the rail in-
getting an emergency wipe. dustry, safety for its passengers and a better life for all Americans.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 1960
Horse-and-Buggy Doctors
T^HE FIGHT TO SECURE health care for the aged under the
social security system has developed into a major battle in the
86th Congress with tempers frayed and shortened, mail piling up
and the Administration frantically searching for some solution to
cover its surrender to the organized medicine and life insurance
lobbies.
Up to its ears in the struggle is the American Medical Associa-
tion — the organization representing the good gray doctors who
work wonders with 20th Century medicine while offering mumbo-
jumbo incantations to economic and political gods of another and
buried world*
There is a saddening disenchantment watching the doctors prac-
tice the witchcraft of horse-and-buggy economics in an era of radio-
active isotopes and wonder drugs.
Perhaps the apparent schizophrenia calls for a prescription of a
mild tranquilizer compounded of equal parts of the Hippocratic oath
— the medical profession's dedication to healing — and a short course
in the economics of living on meagre social security benefits.
No More 'Study' Needed
IN SEVEN OF THE PAST 11 years the federal government has
imposed a pay freeze on postal and other government workers.
Pres. Eisenhower three times has vetoed government pay raises
voted by Congress.
Study after study, survey after survey conducted by congressional
committees, by the Administration and by public groups have shown
an alarming gap between the pay scales of federal workers and their
counterparts in private industry. The gap has grown wider since
the last government pay raise.
In the face of this demonstrated need, the Administration this
year has proposed still another long-range study of government
salaries; meanwhile it asks that wages be frozen at present levels.
Four thousand delegates, representing 600,000 union members
employed by the federal government, came to Washington to tell
their story to their congressmen and senators. Because government
employes do not have the economic weapons of other trade union
members, their only recourse to secure economic justice is to petition
Congress.
The entire trade union movement is behind them in this struggle.
A pay increase for government workers is urgently needed this year,
now. There can be no excuse for delay.
Drag on the Economy
ECONOMISTS OF ALL SHADES and hues of opinion are in
general agreement that the first three months of 1960 have
been confusing, with all sorts of "mixed trends" and conflicting
directions.
The expected boom of major proportions has not quite material-
ized and everything from the stock market to the severe winter
weather is offered in explanation.
One explanation that is not readily forthcoming, however, is why
with a drop in unemployment in mid-February the number of major
job areas with a jobless rate of 6 percent or over rose from 31 to 33
between January and March.
This is one area in which federal action can be of immediate
help, action contained in the proposed aid for depressed areas bill,
approved by the Senate but still languishing in the House Rules
Committee.
Doctor of Economics
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, April 9, 1960
No. 15
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to' solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Retail Coverage Urged:
Largest U. S. Industry Can Pay
Minimum Wage, Suffridge Says
The following is excerpted from a statement
by James A. Suffridge, president of the AFL-CIO
Retail Clerks Intl. Association before the House
Labor subcommittee during hearings on amending
the Wage-Hour law.
THE GIANT RETAILERS in this country
have increased in size and power through ac-
quisitions and mergers. As an example, the At-
lantic & Pacific Tea Co. is now the fourth largest
corporation in the United States. It is exceeded
in size only by General Motors, Standard Oil of
New Jersey and the American Telephone & Tele-
graph Co. It is bigger than anything in steel;
bigger than anything in chemicals or in the elec-
trical industries.
The corporation pattern of growth and in-
creased power is certain to continue. In view of
these facts, I am sure that you will agree; with
me that Congress cannot justify, in the year 1960,
the continuation of such discrimination against
retail store employes working in large chains such
as Sears, with a volume of over $4 billion per
year; the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., with an
annual volume of more than $5 billion, not to
mention the many other large chains whose busi-
ness runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars
per year. The part of retailing that we ask to
be covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act has
annual sales equal to 19 percent of the gross na-
tional product of our country.
I might emphasize that retailing is the largest
single industry in the United States; that re-
tailing operations cross state lines through cen-
tral management, advertising, purchasing and
the transportation of millions of dollars worth
of goods in commerce.
We frequently hear, and correctly so, that
many of the retailers only net 1, 2 or 3 percent
per year on sales. What we seldom hear, how-
ever, is that their percentage of net profit on in-
vestment is not too bad. Take for example,
1958. The American Stores' profit, per net
worth, was 23.5 percent; Colonial Stores, 24.2
percent; Food Fair, 34 percent; A & P, 28.3 per-
cent; Krogers, 28 percent; Safeway, 31.8 percent
and Winn-Dixie, 47.7 percent. The average for
all food chains was 28.6 percent profit as per-
centage of net worth, before taxes.
Gentlemen, I re-emphasize, we are not talking
about "Mom and Pop" stores.
I should also like to point out to you that
productivity in retailing is higher than the na-
tional average in any other business. Retail
productivity increased 36.4 percent since 1950,
or 4 percent per year. This stems from two
sources: (1) from greater retail output which rose
31 percent since 1950, and (2) from more inten-
sive work loads on employes.
In fact, the man-hours in retailing are less to-
day than in 1950. In 1950, there were 327
million man-hours in retailing; today, 313 million.
This reduction was made despite the tremendous
increase in volume, as well as the growth in
population in our country.
We would also like to mention that we have
presented this committee with evidence on nu-
merous occasions showing that the national chains
sell their products by and large on a national
mark-up basis.
AS AN EXAMPLE, in New Bern, N. C,
Houston, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco and
in other cities throughout the nation, goods are
sold for the same identical retail price. That's
perfectly all right with us. That's management's
business. They make the sole determination on
the price for which their merchandise is to be
sold. But we must point out that in many of
these cities, the salespeople receive less than one-
third the wages that the retail salespeople work-
ing for the same enterprise receive, as for ex-
ample, in San Francisco.
I wish to emphasize that the coverage urged
by our organization will not jeopardize the fine
old institution of retailing. The increase in wages
will not bring about any kind of an economic
shock, it will not add new members to the Retail
Clerks Intl. Association, nor will it raise the
wages of our members in any instances that I
know of where our union has collective bargain-
ing agreements.
The increased coverage and raise in the mini-
mum wage that we urge is well justified, both on
an economic and moral basis.
If big retailing is covered, it will be a great
step forward in removing the tag of second-
class citizenship from a substantial number of
employes in the retail trade. It will enable
these workers to make a greater contribution
toward the economic growth of our country by
raising their purchasing power.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. f SATURDAY. APRIL 9, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Attacks on Defense
Get Under Eisenhower's Skin
WASHiNGTON
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. t EST.)
PRESIDENT EISENHOWER SEEMS to be
growing more and more sensitive to criti-
cism of his defense policies. He told a Republi-
can women's gathering in
Washington that "only the
ignorant and the blind"
can insist we are not the
most powerful nation in
the world. He extolled
the careful tailoring of the
"whole defense structure"
to fit the country's needs
with the highest opera-
tional efficiency.
Yet even as he did this,
attacks on the instrumen-
tality of the Eisenhower military program, the
Pentagon, mounted. Indeed it is a wonder that
the Democratic opposition hasn't long since
dramatized the predicament of the Pentagon as
the real Achilles heel of the Republican regime.
The ingredients are there for a classic case: the
vaunted efficiency of a business administration
coupled with the sure-handed experience of a
great general should equal the peerless function-
ing of the Defense Dept. Instead, so the charges
read, the giant organism which devours more
than half of the federal budget is a maelstrom
of murderous service rivalry, inefficiency and
sheer waste.
This is not an idle indictment by captious ob-
servers but the considered judgment of experts
including, apparently, one of Mr. Eisenhower's
most ardent apologists, publicist Henry Luce.
Luce's Life magazine has just leveled a devastat-
ing broadside at what it labels "shameful strife
in the Pentagon" and has called for reforms to
replace the facade of "unification" which is dis-
guising the destructive competition and duplica-
tion among the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Perhaps even more expert is the balanced
but withering critique of Democratic Congress-
man Frank Kowalski of Connecticut, a pro-
fessional politician admittedly by accident but
a professional soldier up from the ranks
through West Point with 33 years' continuous
military service, including a year's duty in the
Pentagon. He has already introduced a bill to
abolish competing uniforms for a single uni-
form and a truly unified command.
The mild-mannered ex-colonel, who has al-
ready exposed such military manpower wastes as
'martini stirrers and dog-washers, argues that only
by such drastic means can even more serious
flaws and malfunctions — needlessly costing, he
estimates, $7 billion a year — be rectified. In the
April issue of True magazine, Kowalski cites
enough military madness to unhinge that most
patient of patriots, the taxpayer. Items:
• Recently while the Air Force was cam-
paigning frantically and expensively for fighter
pilots, the Navy and Marines were discharging
some of theirs in a reduction of forces.
• The U.S. was overcharged $42 million in
26 Navy and Air Force contracts.
• More than $2 billion was spent last year
on antiquated weapons projects.
• Instead of arranging a swap, the Navy and
Air Force in one case shipped needed jet fuel in
opposite directions.
• In another instance, the Air Force was
about to sell off more than $8 million worth of
surplus helicopter parts at a fraction of original
cost while the Army was ordering the same parts
from the same manufacturer for the same heli-
copter. Intervention by the General Accounting
Office averted only part of the fiasco.
• Duplication is rife in separate hospital serv-
ices, reserve training facilities and intelligence
gathering.
• At various stages of rocket development the
Army and Air Force "hoarded scientific infor
mation from each other almost as scrupulously
as from the Soviets."
• The Life article reported that after the
peaceful Marine landings in Lebanon in 1958
there was such warfare among the Army, Navy
and Air Force over commands and functions it
could have seriously jeopardized the whole op-
eration if real fighting had developed.
On top of his proposal to reorganize the De-
fense Dept. under a strong civilian secretary,
Kowalski has written the President urging unifi-
cation of all missile programs under one tent
and suggesting Admiral Rickover, the contro-
versial expediter of the atomic submarine, as
boss.
Plainly these are visions of a dreamer but of
a serious-minded dreamer who has been through
the military mill and, especially with any public
encouragement, they will cause nightmares in the
Pentagon.
Washington Reports:
Congressmen at Odds on Need
For Emergency Housing Bill
AN EMERGENCY housing bill is needed to
stop the drop in housing starts, Rep. Albert
Rains (D-Ala.) declared on Washington Reports
to the People, AFL-CIO public service program,
heard on more than 300 radio stations.
Housing starts as reported by the Census Bu-
reau are at their lowest level in 19 months.
"I think this underscores the urgent necessity,
if we are to continue housing at even a million
starts a year — which is 200,000 below any mini-
mum ever established — of action soon on the
emergency home ownership bill, which is in reality
a mortgage credit bill," he said.
Rep. William R. Widnall (R-N. J.) said on the
same program that he saw no need for the bill.
"It would provide a false market for mort-
gages," he asserted. "This is actually inflationary
spending of $1 billion, which would tend to un-
balance the budget."
Rains replied, "I would like to point out that
the bill doesn't affect the present budget a single
penny. I get a little dismayed at the continual
statement that a mortgage credit bill, which pro-
vides for the issuance of debentures by the Fed-
eral National Mortgage Association, is a take-
out on the federal budget. It is not and never
has been."
Widnall also said he believed the economy is
gradually improving and "interest rates will be
lower; money will be back in the mortgage mar
ket" without the assistance of an emergency hous
ing measure.
THE REPUBLICAN Senate leader, Everett Mckinley Dirksen
(III.), recently emerged from the White House saying that a tele-
graphic survey made by the Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare
found only 237 school districts in the country that had reached the
unit of their borrowing power for school buildings. This was
intended to show that there is little or no need for federal school aid
legislation, and letters are moving into Congress citing this Dirk-
sen quotation attributed to the department headed by Sec. Hemming.
It now turns out that Flemming's "survey" was something less
than complete and accurate, and he has so acknowledged in a
letter to Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.). A report by Rep. Frank
Thompson, Jr. (D-N.J.) to his constituents cites Flemming as
acknowledging that the survey "did not call for full information
as to the practical limitations on school financing," and that the
secretary has arranged for the Office of Education "to make a
supplementary survey to obtain complete information."
Thompson goes on to point out that from July 1958 to March
1960, a total of 159 school districts in his own state of New Jersey
had applied to the state commissioner of education for permission to
exceed their statutory debt limitations to build more schools.
A great many of these districts "have reached the absolute limit
of their ability to borrow for school building," Thompson con-
tinued, but the HEW "survey" cited by Dirksen "showed NO short-
age in New Jersey" of borrowing capacity. It listed not a single
New Jersey district as among the 237 that were supposed to be the
only ones that had touched their borrowing-power limits.
The unrefuted evidence accumulated by the Office of Educa-
tion shows hundreds of thousands of children attending part-time
school sessions or housed in substandard buildings that are fire-
traps and that even relatively wealthy communities lack local
funds to make expensive and extensive repairs as quickly as they
should be made.
There are 100,000 school children in New Jersey alone on part-
time sessions or in substandard buildings despite the fact that the
state has spent $500 million since 1955 on school construction.
Thompson's school construction bill, now pending in the House
Rules Committee, would authorize about $1 billion in federal grants
to the states across three years — certainly a modest sum in relation
to the tremendous amounts actually spent by states and localities
in the great postwar school boom. A Senate-approved bill would
authorize federal grants of $1.8 billion in two years, allowing the
states to use their allotments either fqr buildings or for teachers'
salaries. Both measures are stalled by Administration opposition.
This opposition is an Administration privilege, although Vice
Pres. Nixon has shown in public speeches that he is concerned about
the prospect of running on a record of unconcern for the school
problems. The Administration policy is not bolstered by the so-
called "survey" that Dirksen talked, about, and the statistics should
not have been used in an attempt to justify it.
* * *
SEN. BARRY GOLDWATER (R-Ariz.) went down to make a
conservative Republican speech to the South Carolina Republican
state convention recently, and somewhat astonishingly he emerged
from the event with an endorsement of Sen. Goldwater for the Re-
publican presidential nomination. Not Vice Pres. Nixon, who is
being warned by Goldwater not to try to "turn liberal," but the
senator from Arizona is the one South Carolina Republicans think
has just the proper ideas for the next President.
The man who arranged this coup for Goldwater was Roger
Milliken, whose name has sometimes appeared in the AFL-CIO
News these last few years. Milliken is the textile magnate who
closed down his mill in Darlington, S. C, when the Textile Work-
ers Union of America won an NLRB election. He was held
guilty of unfair labor practices but his longtime employes were
left jobless and lacking recourse because Milliken preferred not
to operate a mill if he had to bargain with his employes' union.
RAINS COUNTERED by saying that no wit
ness, except the Administration, "claimed money
was going to ease during the year. I remember
the mortgage bankers and everyone else say the
rate is alarmingly high and that discounts will be
maintained."
"There may be some loosening of mortgage
credit that will go into corporate investments, but
I hear from no builders that there will be mortgage
credit at reasonable rates for low cost homes,"
he added.
Widnall believes the bill will pass the House,
but he expects it to be vetoed by the President if
passed also by the Senate. He claimed a compre-
hensive housing bill would have a better fate.
"I think there are things in an omnibus bill
that would be seriously considered and ap-
proved by members on both sides of the aisle,"
he declared.
In regard to the emergency measure, Widnall
said that no builder had written him and asked for
its enactment.
"You're about to hear from home builders,"
Rains told him. "They're already in touch with
the chairman of the committee, I can assure you."
DISAGREEMENT ON NEED for emergency housing bill was
expressed by Republican Rep. William R. Widnall (N. J.) (left) and
Democratic Rep. Albert Rains (Ala.) in housing discussion on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL % I960
How To Buy:
Health Insurance
Too High for Aged
By Sidney Margolius
MOST OLDER PEOPLE can't afford even the best of the new
hospital and surgical insurance plans currently being offered
them. This department's survey of "over-65" plans finds that the
problem of medical insurance for senior citizens is simply too big
for private companies or voluntary associations to solve.
The only feasible solution yet proposed is the use of the present
Social Security machinery as provided by the Forand bill now pend-
ing in Congress. That way we would deposit a quarter a week in
the Social Security piggy-bank during our working years and our
employers would chip in another quarter, to pay for hospital and
surgical needs when we retire.
Here are the financial facts of retirement:
"I It now costs about $205 a month for a retired couple to have a
• modest standard of living in a typical U.S. city, as based on data
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Community Council
of Greater New York. This is a modest budget providing for a
three-room apartment, about a dollar a day per person for food, and
approximately $15-$ 17 a month in most cities for medical care.
The medical allotment worked out by welfare experts takes eight
percent of the modest model budget compared to the 5 to 6 percent
most younger families spend.
Q Most elderly people can't afford even this modest budget.
^ # Actually three out of five older people have less than $1,000
a year money income from all sources, compared to the welfare
council budget of about $2,400 a year for a couple or $1,700 for
a single person. Even the current maximum Social Security of
$170 to a couple can't meet this modest budget with its medical
allotment outlay of $15-$ 17.
You want to know how much retired persons really can afford
for medical care? Two-thirds of the people over 65 interviewed
in a survey by the Health Information Foundation said they could
pay just $5 a month for insurance that covered all medical expenses.
O Even if you could afford $15 to $17 a month, the best of the
plans now available would take most of your medical-care
allotment and not begin to meet all your medical needs.
The retired worker's dilemma is that the purportedly cheap medi-
cal insurance being offered him provides only very limited benefits,
but more adequate insurance is too costly.
FOR EXAMPLE, the plan now being offered by the American
Association of Retired Persons costs a coupje $144 a year if you
include partial insurance for doctors' visits outside the hospital. Yet
the model budget provides only about $200 a year for all medical
care. This must pay for dentists, drugs, eyeglasses and other needs,
as well as that part of the surgical, hospital and doctor expenses
not covered by the insurance. For example, the AARP plan, like
the similar "65 plus" plan being promoted by the Continental In-
surance Co., pays only $10 a day for hospital care compared to
actual typical charges of $20.
Another plan for insuring elderly people for hospital and surgical
care is being tried out by Blue Shield in Wisconsin, reports the
Group Health Association. It costs $9 a month per person, or $216
a year for a couple — more than the entire medical allotment in the
modest model budget. Despite this large cost, it provides only $10
a day for hospital care, although unlike the AARP plan it does pay
for all miscellaneous hospital expenses, not just part.
A third possibility for the hospital insurance part of medical
care is the Blue Cross senior plans spreading through the coun-
try. So far, 19 Blue Cross regional plans now offer a special
"Senior Certificate." This calls for either a higher rate or reduced
benefits at the same rate for people over 65. Fourteen additional
Blue Cross regions have no restriction at all on age. Two do
have an. age limitation but periodically open membership lists to
people over 65. Eight additional plans have applied to their state
insurance departments for approval of a senior certificate.
This trend is desirable if Congress again refuses to pass the
Forand bill. People already retired or expecting to soon should
first see what the local Blue Cross offers before signing up for com-
mercial hospital insurance.
Yet even the best of the Blue Cross plans are still too costly for
most retired people For example, Cleveland's Blue Cross is con-
sidered an outstanding plan because it makes no extra charge for
age, and provides relatively generous benefits. It provides 120 days
of hospital care including full payment for all extras such as X-rays,
plus hospital outpatient care and minor surgery. But the cost is
$69.60 a year in a ward for one person, or $140.00 for a family.
(Family cost for semi-private accommodations is $165.) That would
take two-thirds of the entire medical-care budget in the modest
model budget.
Some of the new Blue Cross senior plans trim the cost by co-
insurance, meaning you pay part of the bill. Detroit's "senior cer-
tificate," for example, provides 30 days payment for hospital care
for each confinement. You pay the first $25 or 20 percent of the
first $500 of hospital cost, whichever is greatest. Maximum payment
is $500. Over that, you pay the bill itself. The cost is $125 a year
for a couple.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
Reader's Digest in anguish:
Magazine Opens Drive
To Discredit Jobless Aid
ANEW CAMPAIGN to discredit the nation's
unemployment compensation system. and to
picture the unemployed as "loafers, system beat-
ers and dole grabbers," has been touched off in
the April issue of Reader's Digest.
Part of the campaign apparently is designed to
create a nation of informers, for in its original
article on "The Scandal of Unemployment Com-
pensation" the Digest urges:
"If you know of any cheaters report the facts
to employment officials or to your local news-
paper."
The article, timed to appear as the House
Ways & Means Committee is considering pro-
posed improvements in the jobless benefits law,
aims its major fire at the proposal to write new,
realistic federal standards into the unemploy-
ment compensation law, raising the old spectre
of federal control.
It appeared also at about the same time a
special Senate committee on unemployment com-
pleted exhaustive hearings and pinpointed the
following shortcomings in the present system:
• Limited coverage of the law prevents one
out of three of the unemployed from qualifying
for benefits.
• A much smaller portion of wages is insured
by benefits now than 20 years ago.
• In the recent recession about one out of
three exhausted his benefits before he could
find a job.
• The employer tax rate today, even after a
recession, is only one-third of what it was 20
years ago.
On the question of permanent improvements
in the program in terms of federal standards
governing benefits, duration and other provisions
— improvements backed by organized labor and
many other organizations — the Digest declares:
"NOW THE SITUATION threatens to grow
worse. Legislation before Congress would put
the states completely under the thumb of Bureau
of Employment Security by imposing mandatory
federal benefit rates in all states to run nine
months for anyone who qualifies for jobless aid.
Big unions are already beating the drum for this
federal take-over of jobless assistance."
And this is the Digest formula for action:
"What can you as a citizen do about this?
Here are suggestions: If you know of any cheat-
ers, report the facts to employment officials or to
your local newspaper. Find out if your state
law needs to be tightened to prevent what you
consider unjustified payments. If you decide that
something should be done, communicate with
your legislator. Write your governor, get your
neighbors interested. Find out if your congress-
man intends to support national legislation that
would turn over unemployment compensation en-
tirely to the federal government. . . . Just be-
cause it is technically legal to dip into the public
till, don't let yourself be persuaded that it's the
right thing to do. . . . We cannot afford to be-
come a nation of loafers, system beaters and dole
grabbers."
The article completely overlooks the long his-
tory of employer abuses such as:
• Two percent of employers are delinquent
or defaulting on unemployment compensation
taxes, a larger percentage than all worker dis-
qualifications from benefits are to total claims.
• In Ohio, where the Digest quotes govern-
ment officials to back its charges, employers are
allowed to hire "actuarial and service" firms to
fight all appeals by their employes. They are
paid according to their success in defeating the
unemployed claimants.
• Overdue and defaulted employer unem-
ployment compensation taxes are over $40 mil-
lion, better than three times what the Digest says
has been taken by "gypsters."
• Employer pressure on legislatures to hold
down benefits and introduce restrictions. An em-
ployer lobby in Washington has admitted spend-
ing $125,000 in the 1958 recession to defeat per-
manent improvement in the program.
In every case of alleged scandal presented in
the article, the magazine omits the essential fact
which weighed in the court or appeal board'*
decision.
In the case of the Wisconsin mine-hoist op-
erator who was discharged, the Digest omitted the
crucial fact that the claimant's superintendent
had told him he could stay away until his doctor
cleared him for mine-hoist work again.
Two of the Digest "scandals" involve women
who quit because they wanted to live with their
husbands. One was married and had to move
to stay with her husband; the other left to
marry a man in another town. Both wanted
to continue working and were looking for work
in their new residences.
Woven through the article is the assumption
that jobless pay is an employer's gift and that his
interest alone should be respected. Only the
employer's experience with appeals is cited: **In
a recent 12-month period more than two-thirds
of their (employer) appeals to referees and the
board of review were turned down." The Digest
omits the fact that three out of four workers lose
their appeals.
THERE ARE NO INSTANCES cited where
a worker has been shortchanged by the law, such
as the employe who, while off duty, was griping
about his employer; when the word got back he
lost his job and was disqualified from benefits as
"discharged for misconduct."
Or the woman in Michigan who confided to
her employer that she was pregnant, but assured
him that she would be around for five or six
months. That day she was discharged and then
disqualified for benefits on the grounds that preg-
nancy caused her unemployment.
1
mm
SUPPORT FOR IS^GRO "SIT-IN" protest against discrimination at lunch counters in the South
brought out more than 1,000 members of Ladies' Garment Workers who picketed three Wool worth
stores in New York City in sympathy demonstration. Charles S. Zimmerman (wearing hat in cen-
ter), chairman of AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee and a vice president of the ILGWU, led pickets,
called discrimination "highly offensive." He hailed use of "techniques of non-violence" by Negroes
in protesting discrimination in the South.
'Federationist' Article Says:
Skilled Men Abandon 'Work 9
States for Wages, Conditions
A leading economist has warned that so-called "right-to- work" state laws are causing hundreds of
thousands of skilled workers to migrate to freer industrial regions for higher wages and better working
conditions. t1
The economist, Milton J. Nadworny of the University of Vermont, asserted that the anti-collective
bargaining laws are crippling industrial expansion i n many states, especially in the South.
In an article in the current issued
of the American Federationist, of-
ficial monthly publication of the
AFL-CIO, he advised states seek-
ing industrial expansion that if they
hope to keep their work force at
home to staff new plants, it would
be to their advantage to:
• Repeal so-called "right- to-
work" laws that forbid manage-
ment and labor from including un-
ion security agreements in collec-
tive bargaining contracts, even
when both desire this arrangement.
• Upgrade their economic sys-
tems "to match the higher wages
and healthier labor-management
policies of the rapidly-growing in-
dustrial states" with which they
compete for industry and workers.
Nadworny based his conclusions
on a study into the causes of migra-
tion of industrial workers. He
quoted a U.S. Dept. of Labor re-
port which stated: "During a single
year, more than 10 million persons
move. . . . The largest outflow was
from the predominantly agricultural
South. . . . The search for better
employment opportunities is a
major force behind this migra-
tion."
In 19 States
The southern states led the move-
ment to enact "right-to- work"
laws, which are in effect in 19
states.
Commenting on the Labor Dept.
report, the economist said:
"These 'better employment op-
portunities 9 to most workers, es-
pecially those with skills, ordi-
narily mean higher wages and the
right of membership in strong
and responsible trade unions
whose . . . collective bargaining
is not restricted by 'right-to-
work' laws and anti-labor com-
munity attitudes."
Nadworny said that "in seeking
the reasons for the continuing exo-
dus of members of the labor force
from the Southeast, it is pertinent
to examine the disparity in the
wage levels of the states of this
'Oh, Well, He Won't Be Back for 10 Years'
Supreme Court Upsets
NLRB O'Sullivan Ruling
The National Labor Relations Board's attempt to prevent a un-
ion from engaging in peaceful picketing and organizing a boycott
because it has lost bargaining rights at a plant has been struck
down by a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision came in the nearly four-year-old O'Sullivan Rubber
in^
strike by the Rubber Workers
a brief unsigned order knocking
out the NLRB order. The basic
ruling on picketing by a union that
has lost bargaining rights came a
week earlier when the high court
rejected a similar NLRB ruling in
the Curtis case.
In the Curtis decision, the court
ruled that the board erred in find-
ing that peaceful picketing should
be stopped on the theory that' non-
union workers were being "co-
erced" by pickets. The court acted
against the board under the terms
of the Taft-Hartley Act before it
was amended by the Landrum-
Griffin Act. It did not rule on
whether L-G amendments would
outlaw such picketing.
The unanimous ruling in the
O'Sullivan case overturned a
decision by the Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals.
URW members at Winchester,
Va., were forced on strike by
O'Sullivan, after winning an NLRB
representation election by 343 to 2,
when lengthy negotiations broke
down. The company continued to
operate, hiring strikebreakers, and
in 1958 filed a petition for a board
election to determine if the URW
represented the workers.
With strikers barred from vot-
ing under Taft-Hartley provisions,
the local was decertified as bargain-
ing representative but continued
picketing and organized a nation-
wide boycott against O'Sullivan
products. The board held this to
be in violation of T-H and ordered
the union to cease and desist The
Role of Labor Press
Described at College
Pittsburgh — The role of the labor
press in educating union members
and the necessity of the trade union
movement presenting its story fairly
were spelled out for the faculty
and students of the Duquesne Uni
versity School of Journalism by
John McManigal, editor of The
Sentinel, published by Steelworkers
Local 1397 in Homestead, Pa,
union appealed and the board was
finally reversed in the Supreme
Court.
The court denied an appeal
in another and similar picketing
case on the grounds that the un-
ion, the Machinists, had made
no objection to the board against
a trial examiner's finding of vio-
lation of T-H. The company in-
volved is the Alloy Manufac-
turing Co.
The case reached the U.S. Su-
preme Court from the Ninth Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals which had
upheld the board on its picketing
ruling but had found the boycott
campaign conducted by the union
to be entirely lawful.
region and states elsewhere which
are enjoying rapid industrial and
population growth/'
He said that California, which
rejected the "right-to-work" law
by nearly a million votes in 1958,
had a net population gain of nearly
3.7 million from 1950 to July 1,
1958, while most "right-to-work"
states were showing a continuous
net population loss despite the high-
est birth rates in the nation.
Wage Differential Noted
California, the economist noted,
had an average weekly wage in
manufacturing in November 1959
of $101.63, well above the national
average of $88.98. The average
weekly wage of an industrial work-
er in North Carolina, a "right-to-
work" state, for the same month
was $62.93.
"As a matter of fact," Nadworny
commented, "average weekly earn-
ings in manufacturing in eight
(southeastern) 'right-to-work' states
was about $14 below the national
average in 1950; by November
1959, the differential was almost
$22 per week."
He concluded:
"Any state or region which con-
templates or encourages industrial
expansion of a significant order
must evaluate not only its present
supply of labor and labor skills,
but its ability to develop, Jiold and
attract labor.
"It takes time for economic
movements to crystallize, and for
the general public to become
clearly aware of them. In this
year of a national election, the
continued flight of workers to
regions with superior job oppor-
tunities suggests that if workers'
economic 'votes' can be counted,
the southeastern states, and, in-
deed, the total group of 'right-
to-work' states, may well be los-
ing an important election.
"It may be well for the future for
the southern states to take a long
look at the philosophy of a low
wage economy and restrictive legis-
lation which can produce results
both painful and costly to the eco-
nomic development of the states
which have embraced it."
AFL-CiO news
Youth Conference Bolts
On Rights, School Aid
(Continued from Page 1)
omitted that portion of the con-
cluding ceremonies because of lack
of time to analyze the resolutions,
eliminate duplications and polish
up the language.
In areas of special interest to
some 70 labor delegates, .the
language was clear-cut and force-
ful. Delegates recommended:
• "That Congress enact at this
session legislation providing sub-
stantiaf general federal support for
public education."
• "That the minimum wage law
be increased to $1.25 per hour, that
federal wage laws be extended to
cover migratory workers, hotel and
hospital workers, agricultural work-
ers and other groups specifically ex-
empted from the present law."
• "That unemployment com-
pensation be increased to 50 per-
cent of the wages the individual
receives on the basis of 39 weeks
for every worker covered by ex-
isting laws."
• "That child labor laws be
strengthened and enforced. We
recommend that the child labor
provisions of the Fair Labor Stand-
ards Act be amended to provide
children in agricultural employ-
ment the same protection now af-
Senate Moves Toward Passage
Of Mild Voting-Rights Measure
The Senate moved toward final passage of civil rights legislation, rejecting amendments by liberal
supporters designed to strengthen the House-passed measure, and turning back moves by Southern
Democratic opponents to mutilate the bill's voting-rights guarantees.
As the battle went into its 8th week of debate and filibuster, there was an apparent effort under
way— led by Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) and Mi nority Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (R-Ill.)— to settle on a'^
middle-of-the-road measure.
The pattern of compromise
became clear as Dirksen led the
successful fight to table an
amendment, sponsored by the
GOP Administration, which
would have given permanent
statutory status to the President's
Committee on Government Con-
tracts. The amendment, offered
by Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.),
was tabled by a vote of 48-38.
Dirksen also opposed an Admin-
istration-backed proposal for fed-
eral grants to school districts under-
taking desegregation programs and
another amendment which would
have permitted the Attorney Gen-
eral to intervene in school desegre-
gation suits initiated by private
citizens. Joined together, the
amendments lost by 61 to 30.
Also defeated were proposals by
Dixie opponents which would have
watered down the voting guaran-
tees. These unsuccessful amend-
ments included one by Sen. Estes
Kefauver (D-Tenn.) to permit local
authorities to participate in proce-
dures for registering Negro votes
previously denied these rights at the
local level; and an amendment by
Sen. Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.)
which would have limited the regis-
Haskins, Inge Going
To ILO Oil Parley
Intl. Rep. Loyd Haskins of the
Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers
and Arvil L. Inge, Operating En-
gineers' regional director in Hous-
ton, Tex., will represent U.S. oil
industry workers at a meeting of
the Intl. Labor Organization's Pe-
troleum Committee to be held in
Geneva from Apr. 25 to May 6.
tration powers of federal voting
referees to congressional elections.
The House-passed measure pro-
vides for federal intervention in
federal, state and local elections
where Negro registration rights
have been denied.
The Senate also turned back by
a 73 to 18 vote a move by Sen.
Allen J. EUender (D-La.) to
strike from the bill the entire sec-
tion that would allow courts to
appoint referees for the registra-
tion of minority groups in cases
where a federal judge finds dis-
crimination by local, authorities.
Failure of the Senate to alter in
any major detail the House civil
rights bill indicated that the minor
changes made thus far should be
either acceptable to the House or
easily compromised by a joint Sen-
ate-House conference committee
forded children employed in other
industries."
• "That state workmen's com-
pensation and unemployment insur-
ance laws be extended to farm
workers."
• "That child care programs,
including foster. day care, day care
centers and homemaker services, be
instituted and strengthened by fed-
eral, state and local help, including
state regulation of standards."
• "That minimum wage laws of
the states be increased to meet the
federal minimum wage # and ex-
tended to cover presently exempted
industries."
A series of resolutions, adopted
by overwhelming majorities in most
cases, denounced racial bias and
demanded equal opportunity in all
areas of life. Pres. Eisenhower
was asked to use "all means at his
disposal, including the prestige of
his office," to speed compliance
with school desegregation orders.
Sit-ins Supported
Conference delegates, including
a large representation of young
people, voted support for "sit-in"
demonstrations by students pro-
testing segregated facilities, de-
manded abolition of discrimination
in housing, education or employ-
ment, called for "access to public
facilities by all youths regardless of
race, creed, color, economic or
social status," supported Negro
students in their fight for equality
and "deplored the use of force,
violence, political or legal contri-
vances to prohibit or intimidate
students protesting inequalities."
Other resolutions asked improved
vocational training and urged
broadening apprenticeship oppor-
tunities for youth.
Another forum recommendation
asked "development of financial re-
sources at the national, state and
local levels to follow-up on the rec-
ommendations of the conference.**
The 7,000 attendance was the
largest in the history of the
White House conferences, held
every 10 years since 1909. Sever-
al hundred prominent speakers
addressed conference programs,
including leaders in education,
religion, labor, business, agricul-
ture, government and social
work. AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany and Community Service
Activities Dir. Leo Perlis were
among the forum speakers.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann, president of the Plum-
bers & Pipe Fitters and chairman
of the federation's Committee on
Education, served on the confer-
ence's top planning board and as
chairman of one of the five them*
assemblies.
'age Ten
:iO NEWS, "WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 19i
WAGE INCREASES IN MAJOR SETTLEMENTS— 1959
PERCENT
OF WORKERS
COVERED
40%„
30%.
20Vo.
10%.
3%
0 UNDER 7 AND 11{ AND NOT
7{ UNDER 11$ OVER COMPUTED
This lobulation by the D.S. Department of Labor of wage increases negotiated in majolr settle-
ments (those covering 7,000 or more workers each) covers a total of 3 million workers in almost
1,000 major settlements in all industries except construction, services, ftnance and government. It
does not include automatic cost-of-living escalator adjustments or fixed -Increqses provided auto-
matically under long-term agreements*
SOURCE* U.S. Oepf. of lobor CHART BY AFL-CIO DEPT. OF RESEARCH
Unions Told to Seize
Initiative in Bias Fight
Boston — International and local unions were urged at the annual
Labor Institute on Human Rights here to seize and maintain the
initiative on problems of discrimination and human rights.
Speakers and workshop participants at the institute, conducted
by the Civil Rights Committee of the Massachusetts State Labor
Council, agreed that unions should^
seek out and act on problem areas
instead of letting issues develop to
the point where labor is put on the
defensive.
Among the principal speakers
were Boris Shishkin and Don Slai-
mon, director and assistant director,
respectively, of the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Civil Rights.
The more than 250 delegates
recognized, according to a
spokesman, "that organized la-
bor not only has a deep interest
in the civil rights issue, but has
a strong stake in it, and the
AFL-CIO is firmly committed to
supporting action on a major
scale."
They also expressed strong sup-
port of southern sit-in demon-
strators and pictured them "as
practicing a new adaptation of the
old trade union sit-down technique
of the late 1930's."
Workshops considered Job dis-
crimination, apprenticeship train-
ing, planning local union civil
rights programs, labor's policy on
civil rights and the relationship of
southern sit-in demonstrations to
organized labor.
The institute also dealt with at-
tacks on the bill of rights, including
anti-labor laws, congressional in-
vestigations and local police ac-
tions.
The Jewish Labor Committee
and the Catholic Labor Guild
cooperated closely with the State
AFL-CIO in operation of the
institute.
The conference was headed
jointly by Michael D. Harrington
and Julius Bernstein, chairman and
executive secretary, respectively, of
the State AFL-CIO Civil Rights
Committee. Bernstein also is JLC
Regional Director.
Speakers in addition to Shishkin
and Slaimon included State AFL-
CIO Pres. J. William Belanger;
AFL-CIO Reg. Dir. Hugh Thomp-
son; Harrington; Bernstein; Edu-
cation Dir. Benjamin D. Segal of
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers. Salvatpre Camelio, Rub-
ber Workers district director and
executive vice president of the
State AFL-CIO, opened the pro-
gram.
Collective Bargaining Reports:
Pay Increases in 1960 Seen
'Somewhat Larger 9 than '59
Collective bargaining as it is shaping up in 1960 probably will bring wage hikes "at least equal
to and most likely somewhat larger than in 1959^" according to an AFL-CIO analysis.
In fact, with the cost of living edging up only slightly, it should be possible for most unions to
win greater "real" wage increases than in recent years, commented Collective Bargaining Report,
a publication of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research.
"This forecast is explained," thef"
report added "principally by* the
generally good business conditions,
plus the fact that so many workers
already are scheduled to receive
increases of a least 6 to 8 cents
plus cost-of-living adjustments."
The report noted that a Labor
Dept. tabulation of 1959 wage in-
creases granted under major con-
tracts showed that, of a total 5.2
million workers, 37 percent re-
ceived from 9 to 11 cents an hour
and another 23 percent received
11 cents or more.
Living Costs Up
The cost of living rose during
the year by 1.3 percent, an increase
which generally would require an
additional 3 cents an hour for a
worker's purchasing power to keep
pace, the report said.
It pointed out that its forecast
is not a goal for or judgment on
union demands, but "simply a
candid estimate of how bargain-
ing is shaping up in I960."
Looking back, the report said
"large increases could readily have
been supported by the rate of busi-
ness improvement and profit rise
in 1959" and in turn would have
stimulated greater, economic ex-
pansion.
The report observed that econo-
mists agree business activity will
continue at high levels during 1960
and, while rates of improvement
may vary, profits should set new
records.
Wage Raises Needed
The report also pointed out that
the fact that consumer sales in the
early part of this year have been
below business expectations points
up the economy's need "for signifi-
cant wage increases in 1960 to
strengthen consumer markets and
increase sales."
The report said marked pro-
ductivity increases and high sales
volumes have expanded profit mar-
gins. The First National City Bank
of New York reports that 1959
profits of 2,404 major corpora-
tions topped 1958 by 20 percent,
with a 27 percent hike for the
Administration Compromise Stalls
Action on Farm Labor Import Plan
Organized labor's efforts to cut down and finally end the mass importation of Mexican workers
and to step up improvements for domestic farm workers appear to be stalemated for this year
by an Eisenhower Administration internal compromise.
A House Agriculture subcommittee closed its hearings on extension of the Mexican contract-labor
program, due to expire in June of 1961 and allowing the importation of 450,000 Mexican a year, as the
Labor Dept. declared the Adminis-^
tration's opposition to grower-
backed bills to continue the pro-
gram and weaken protection.
A White House conference re-
portedly produced an agreement
whereby Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell would not testify as
scheduled but instead have a sub-
ordinate express opposition to
the grower-backed bills and
promise positive proposals for
next year.
Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft Ben-
son and grower interests, on the
other hand, reportedly agreed to
drop support of grower-backed
measures on condition that Mitch-
ell would not immediately seek the
substantial changes in the law he
has publicly espoused.
New Study Due
Mitchell, in a speech before a
meeting of the National Travelers
Aid Association in Washington, said
that a soon-to-be-released study
by his agency will show that "a
for hired farm
feasible and de-
minimum wage
workers is both
sirable."
Obserying that this is a political
year, he said it is meant for the se-
rious consideration of the next
Congress.
Improvements Needed
Mitchell also reiterated his belief
that the Mexican import program
"should not be extended unless and
until adequate remedial measures
are adopted and substantial im-
provements are made."
The AFL-CIO and affiliated
unions had testified earlier in
support of a bill by Rep. George
McGovern (D-S. Dak.), which
would end the Mexican import
program in five years and mean-
while incorporate the safeguards
recommended by a committee of
consultants named by Mitchell
last year.
Msgr. George G. Higgins, Di-
rector of the Social Action Dept.
of the National Catholic Welfare
Conference and one of the
Mitchell consultants, also sup-
ported the McGovern bill but
said the Mexican program should
be ended "in 1963 or 1964 at the
very latest."
Newell Brown, assistant secre-
tary of labor, told the subcommit-
tee that "in a significant number
of areas Mexican workers are paid
as low as 50 cents an Hour and do-
mestic workers working alongside
of them are receiving less."
Brown charged that provi-
sions of alternate bills before
the subcommittee were aimed
against the Secretary of Labor's
authority to set the standards by
which the employment service
recruits domestic farm workers
for growers.
They are, he said, "patently an
outgrowth of the grower opposi-
tion" whipped up against amend-
ments recently issued by Mitchell
to improve housing and other
standards.
1,382 manufacturing firms, the
AFL-CIO noted.
These profit levels and produc-
tivity advances can "support
widespread substantial wage in-
creases without creating any un-
due pressure on prices," the
AFL-CIO report added.
On the cost of living, the AFL-
CIO said the outlook for a slight
1 to 2 percent rise this year means
that unions negotiating in the
spring will again need a hike of
about 3 cents to maintain pur-
chasing power before considering
what is needed in addition to im-
prove real wages.
4 Million on Escalator
Over 4 million workers will have
their pay adjusted automatically,
the report continued, because they
are covered by agreements with
cost-of-living escalator provisions.
On the other hand, it pointed
out, the persistence of unemploy-
ment levels at about 5 percent
while production advances has "a
dampening effect" on wage nego-
tiations in some situations.
Warning on Propaganda
The report also said that unions
seeking wage increases will have to
contend with the major propa-
ganda effort by industries trying
to persuade the public that pay
hikes cause "inflation."
Wage increases for this year al-
ready have been decided for some
2.5 million workers covered by
long-term major contracts affect-
ing 1,000 or more workers.
Some 66 percent of these
workers will receive hikes of
from 6 to 8 cents an hour under
"deferred" or "annual improve-
ment" contract provisions. Those
covered by long-term contracts
also will receive additional in-
creases under escalator clauses
should the cost of living rise
about the same as it did in 1959.
In construction, where agree-
ments usually do not have an es-
calator provision, some 458.000
workers will get raises already de-
cided on.
Thus, the report concluded, the
prospects for 1960 are — allowing
for such variables as the attitude
of a union's membership and union
strength, management's attitude,
the condition of an industry or
company and the extent of other
benefits and contract length — "that,
overall, increases will generally run
at least as much as in 1959 and
probably a bit more."
Government Workers
Press Pay Raise Drive
Four thousand delegates to a legislative conference called by
the AFL-CIO Government Employes Council cheered a promise
of early Senate hearings on pay raise legislation, shouted approval
of a prediction that Congress would override the President if a pay
bill should be vetoed for the fourth time in the Eisenhower Admin-
istration, and then set about their
main task of personally calling on
congressmen and senators from
their home states.
Goal of the government em-
ploye unions is a pay bill intro-
duced by 73 congressmen which
would provide a basic 12 percent
raise plus revision of pay steps
which would additionally raise
average postal salaries.
At an opening rally in Washing-
ton's National Guard Armory,
Rep. James H. Morrison (D-La.),
chief House sponsor of the pay
bill, told the delegates that "in
this election year" he didn't expect
more than 40 votes to be cast
against a pay raise and he was
"willing to make a small wager"
that any veto by the President
would be overridden.
Johnston Promises Hearings
Chairman Olin D. Johnston (D-
S. C.) of the Senate Post Office &
Civil Service Committee promised
hearings on pay raise legislation
as soon as the Senate completes
action on civil rights legislation.
The Government Employes
Council, on the morning of the
rally, wired a sharp protest to Re-
publican leaders who turned down
invitations to speak.
Identical messages to Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon, Senate
GOP Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (111.) and House Re-
publican Leader Charles A. Hal-
leck (Ind.) declared: "Two and
one-half million federal em-
ployes work in behalf of every
citizen, whether he be Republi-
can or Democrat. Their eco-
nomic welfare should also be the
concern of both political parties,
and not just the Democratic
party."
Nixon sent a message extending
"best wishes for a very successful
but not committing
the unions' pay de-
conference"
himself on
mands.
In contrast, three Democratic
presidential candidates, Senators
Hubert H. Humphrey (Minn.),
John F. Kennedy (Mass.), Stuart
Symington (Mo.), sent messages
voicing strong support of postal
and federal pay raises. Another
announced Democratic candidate,
Sen. Wayne Morse (Ore.), appeared
in person to back the pay drive
and urge the delegates "not to
compromise for half a loaf."
GEC Chairman William C.
Doherty, president of the Letter
Carriers and a vice president of
the AFL-CIO, said the attend-
ance was the largest in the his-
tory of the GEC's legislative
conferences. He described the
rally as a "crusade for economic
equality."
Federal workers, Doherty point-
ed out, have received only four in-
creases during the past 11 year*
and as a result have fallen far be-
hind workers in private industry.
Find 'Real Friends'
Morrison urged the delegates to
find out who "their real friends
are" when they make the rounds
of congressional offices. He said
in the past legislators "who have
used every delaying tactic in the
book" to block pay bills from com-
ing to the House floor have claimed
to be "friends of federal employes"
because they voted for pay bills
"on final passage."
"Without your organizations,
yours would be an empty voice in
the wilderness," Morrison declared.
Johnston told the delegates to
"go home and tell the non-mem-
bers how they are getting benefits
from the dues dollars paid by un-
ion members."
Senate Hearings Spur Forand Bill Drive
Administration Hit for\
Ignoring Health Needs \
(Continued from Page 1)
curity and to hiking social security
taKes, and called for a scheme
geared to private insurance com-
panies tor payment of limited ben-
efits.
• Sec. of Health, Education
& Welfare Arthur S. Flemming
appeared before the McNamara
committee, declared the Admin-
istration had a "very deep-seated
concern" about the problem and
a "real sense of urgency" about
finding a solution, but said no
specific proposal had been de-
cided upon because of "the com-
plexity of the problem."
• Seven Republican senators,
unwilling to wait for the Adminis-
tration proposal, introduced a com-
plex plan calling for federal-state
grants to help provide insurance by
subsidizing the cost of private pro-
grams. Recipients would also be
required to share in the cost, with
contributions on a sliding scale
geared to retirement income.
• Although House Ways &
Means rejected the Forand bill by
a vote of 17-8, and turned down a
more limited version by a 16-9
margin, reports persisted of new ef-
forts aimed at a compromise.
• The liberal House Democratic
Study Group, in a statement issued
by Rep. Thaddeus M. Machrowicz
(D-Mich.), asserted that "no mat-
ter what the Ways & Means Com-
mittee ultimately does, no matter
what parliamentary route may be
necessary, we declare our determi-
nation to enact this year a work-
able, responsible program."
Meanwhile, Rep- Aime J. For-
and (D-R. L) filed a discharge pe-
tition in the House to spring his
bill from committee. The sig-
natures of 219 congressmen
would be necessary to force the
bill to the floor for a vote with-
out committee approval.
In a statement read to the com-
mittee by Leonard Lesser, UAW
director of social security, Reuther
predicted that growing public de-
mand will bring about enactment
of medical care legislation during
this session of Congress.
Public J>emands Action
The House Ways & Means vote,
he said, "suggests that that body
has not yet become fully aware of
the public demand for action and
of the overwhelming evidence that
the best way to deal with the prob-
lem before us is by providing health
benefits to the aged through so-
cial security."
The labor-backed Forand bill
a key plank in the 1960 legislative
program of the AFL-CIO — would
provide hospitalization and surgical
benefits and nursing home care for
social security recipients, financed*
by a maximum social security tax
increase of $12 a year each for
employers and employes. Parallel
bills some of them slightly limited,
are pending in the Senate.
Reuther called health care for
the aged "one of the foremost
issues facing the American pub-
lic." despite the fact that legisla-
tion aimed at meeting the prob-
lem has been "belittled, ignored,
opposed and suppressed."
He accused the insurance indus-
try and spokesmen of organized
medicine of "naked self-interest and
irrational opposition" to health leg-
islation, and charged that Vice Pres.
Nixon and Flemming have been
indulging in some fancy foot-
work" to cover up the Administra-
tion's opposition to the labor-sup-
ported measure.
Carey charged that there is "re-
markable unconcern in high places
with the pressing medical care
needs of the aged," and declared
that the AMA, the insurance indus-
try and others opposing health care
"are calloused by their own crea-
ture comforts."
Declaring that it is "distressing"
to note the Eisenhower Administra-
tion's opposition to the social se-
curity approach, he said:
"The President has not hesi-
tated to use all the benefits of
state medicine provided to his
office. He is living proof, in fact,
that good medical care can be
provided in this fashion. Why
the President seems to feel that
outright 'socialized' medicine is
good for him, but that limited
health coverage through the so-
cial security system is bad for
our older citizens, is beyond my
understanding."
Carey said private health plans
cannot be substituted for an over-
all insurance approach, as suggested
by the Administration, any more
than private pension plans are "con-
sidered a substitute for old age in-
surance benefits."
He noted that the social security
system has not prevented the de-
velopment of private pension plans
and that minimum wage legisla-
tion has not blocked development
of superior wage structures. He
said the American system supple-
ments basic legislation with volun-
tary action.
"This is the approach that must
come in the field of health care for
the aged," Carey declared.
Dirksen said the White House
conference — attended by Nixon
and Flemming — won presiden-
tial approval for some type of
a voluntary health insurance pro-
gram in which the federal gov-
ernment, the states and the in-
dividual would share in premi-
um costs.
In a letter to the presidents of
national and international unions
and state central bodies, AFL-CIO
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemil-
ler said the Ways & Means com-
mittee may agree on some modifi-
cation of the measure.
"The important thing now is
to continue in full force all of
the effective work which our af-
filiates have been doing in sup-
port of the Forand bill," Bie-
miller wrote. "Continue to pour
in letters, resolutions and peti-
tions. The fight on this issue has
only begun."
ADMINISTRATION'S "SURRENDER" to American Medical As-
sociation and insurance lobby on Forand bill was assailed by Pres.
James B. Carey, of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, secre-
tary-treasurer of AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept., in testimony
before Senate Subcommittee on Aging. Carey called for passage
of medical care legislation for aged, financed through social security.
Foes of Cross in BCW
Open Second Front
(Continued from Page 1)
"squandered" to protect Cross' in-
terests and fight the ABC.
At the conference, the insur-
gents:
• Demanded flatly that Cross re-
sign, on grounds that he had not
carried out a 1958 convention
pledge to correct the policies that
led to BCW's ouster — and that
BCW has since lost an additional
40,000 members as a result.
• Set up a permanent "Local
Unions' Reunification Committee"
to continue the campaign, with
Pres. Ermin Moschetta, of Pitts-
burgh Local 12 as chairman.
• Agreed to a sort of collective
security pact, under which the full
"moral, financial and physical
strength of the full committee will
be used to aid any local, officer or
member who is "intimidated" for
participating in the drive.
• Decided to look into the pos-
sible legal means to keep per capita
payments to the international from
Reuther, Carey Testimony
Stings Dirksen to Wrath
Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.)
has accused the presidents of two AFL-CIO unions of mak-
ing "stinking statements" about the Eisenhower Administra-
tion in the course of testimony on health care legislation.
Dirksen erupted during the course of McNamara Commit-
tee hearings when testimony by Auto Workers Pres. Walter
P. Reuther was read, and when Pres. James B. Carey of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers testified.
Reuther's testimony asserted that although Eisenhower had
indicated at his Feb. 3 press conference that a social security
tax hike "to make greater provision for the care of the aged"
was under consideration, Vice Pres. Nixon and Sec. of Health,
Education & Welfare Arthur S. Flemming were engaged in "a
retreat from this presidental promise."
Dirksen shouted that "I think that is a stinking statement
from Walter Reuther," adding that "Nixon and Flemming are
just as interested as Walter Reuther or anyone else" in medi-
cal care for the aged, and that furthermore Eisenhower had
not made any "promise."
Twenty-four hours later, when Carey accused the White
House of "shameful surrender to the American Medical As-
sociation and the insurance companies," the GOP leader called
this "another stinking charge" and an "insane statement"
When Carey tried to speak, Dirksen said: "Suppose you just
keep your mouth shut"
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.) said Dirksen's comments were
"uncalled for and undignified."
being "misused." This was not
spelled out, but one possibility dis-
cussed was to pay the per capita
into a court-administered fund.
The $100,000 war chest would
amount to about $3 per member,
based on the committee's claimed
rank-and-file strength. It will be
up to the locals to decide whether
to raise the money by assessment
or voluntary contributions.
BCW already has an official
"reunification committee" — set
up, according to the insurgents,
to quiet the internal rumbles for
return to the AFL-CIO. Dele-
gates here said Cross had termed
their meeting a "rump confer-
ence." Frank Dutto, co-chair-
man of the permanent commit-
tee, said the results here "ex-
ceeded everything" the leaders
hoped for.
Moschetta, Dutto and three
other top officers of the permanent
committee were the plaintiffs in the
federal suit and sponsors of the
original conference call.
The suit seeks an accounting of
the union's finances and asks that
the court order a referendum for
removal of Cross.
Engineers Show
Gain in Members
Miami Beach, Fla. — AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell will be ma-
jor speakers at a five-day conven
tion here of the Operating Engi
neers, which in the past four years
has gained 52,000 members and
now has a total membership of
302,000.
The work of 750 expected dele-
gates will be devoted largely to
consideration of approximately 80
amendments to the union constitu-
tion, including proposals dealing
with pensions and elections.
The convention, opening Apr.
11, will also nominate officers for
four-year terms, subject to election
by membership referendum
J. C Turner to Get
Gty of Hope Award
J. C. Turner, president of the
Greater Washington Central Labor
Council, AFL-CIO, will receive
the City of Hope'* Humanitarian
Award at a testimonial dinner May
18.
Primary Fight
Shifts From
Wisconsin
Apparently unwearied by a hard-
fought primary battle in Wisconsin,
two Democratic aspirants for the
I presidency — Sen. John F. Kennedy
(Mass.) and Sen. Hubert H. Hum-
phrey (Minn.) — headed toward an-
other direct clash in West Virginia
May 10 after Kennedy piled up a
popular vote majority and two-
thirds of the convention delegates
in Wisconsin's Apr. 5 primary.
A heavy outpouring of voters
gave Kennedy 478,118 to Hum-
phreys 372,034 in Wisconsin's
Democratic contest. Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon, running unop-
posed in the Republican primary,
trailed both Democrats with 341.-
463 votes. Nixon congratulated
I Wisconsin GOP officials on this
showing, but the consensus of poli-
tical observers was that his third-
place finish had not enhanced his
reputation as a vote-getter.
Humphrey Wins Farm Areas
Humphrey carried three western
Wisconsin congressional districts
that are primarily rural and the
mid-state 2nd district that includes
Madison, the state capital, and both
industrial and farming activities.
There were indications that he
benefited there from support of
voters previously identified with
former Gov. Adlai Stevenson of
Illinois, Democratic presidential
nominee in 1952 and 1956.
Kennedy ran strongly in indus-
trial districts and also carried the
7th district, which has a sub-
stantial farm population. His
statewide total was slightly more
than 56 percent of the Demo-
cratic vote.
There were indications that Re-
publicans, with no contest in their
own primary, "crossed over" in
substantial numbers to vote for
either Kennedy or Humphrey in
the Democratic race.
Humphrey is entered in the Dis-
trict of Columbia primary May 3,
one week ahead of the West Vir-
ginia contest, but Kennedy's name
will not be on the ballot. Sen.
Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) will pro-
vide Humphrey's major District of
Columbia opposition.
Harrison, Carey
Back Symington
Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.)
has been endorsed for the Demo-
cratic presidential nomination by
George M. Harrison, president of
the Railway Clerks, and James B.
Carey, president of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers.
A joint press release by Carey
and Harrison called Symington a
man of "thoughtful liberalism and
dedicated belief in America's fu-
ture" who "will and should be nom-
inated by the Democratic national
convention" next July.
Major Air Pact
Won at Republic
(Continued from Page 1)
of service; and early retirement
on a reduced pension at age 60
was provided. Hospital bene-
fits were broadened from $15 to
$18 a day and allowances for
doctors' visits were raised an
average of 25 percent.
The scene of aircraft and missile
negotiations — being conducted in a
coordinated campaign by the IAM
and the Auto Workers — has shifted
to the West Coast, where contract
talks opened with Lockheed Air-
craft at Santa Barbara, Calif.,
North American Aviation at Los
Angeles, and Douglas Aircraft at
Santa Monica.
CSA Disaster Plan Effective:
Unionists Help Ease
Iowa Flood Disaster
Sioux City, la. — A volunteer labor task force of 100 skilled union
members with boats, trucks and outboard motors made themselves
immediately available here under an AFL-CIO Community Serv-
ices-Red Cross disaster plan when flood waters struck this mid-
western city.
Concentrating their rescue and^
relief efforts on the two hard-hit
suburban communities of Morning-
side and Riverside, the union volun-
teers worked around the clock to
check the destructive toll taken
by the Floyd and Big Sioux Rivers
as they overflowed their banks.
At the same time, labor offi-
cials were marshalling additional
volunteers to serve as a rehabil-
itation and mop-up corps once
the flood waters receded.
The handpicked task force was
recruited by a four-member labor
disaster committee. Working with
the Red Cross in charge of the op-
eration were Robert Chesker, pres-
ident of the Sioux City Bricklayers;
Earl Mielke, Community Services
staff representative; Milton O'Har-
Jodoin Sees
Advantages in
Joint Unions
Boston — Control of Canadian
labor unions in the United States
is lessening while U.S. control of
Canadian industry is on the rise,
Pres. Claude Jodoin of the Cana-
dian Labor Congress told the an-
nual business conference sponsored
by the Boston College Graduate
School of Business Administration
and the Boston Globe.
Nearly 90 percent of Canadian
union members belonged to inter-
national labor bodies in 1911,
Jodoin told the conference, while
at present only 70 percent belong
to unions with membership in both
countries.
"While this reduction has been
taking place," Jodoin pointed out,
"the Canadian members of inter-
national unions have been gaining
increasing autonomy.
"Actually, there is very good
reason for something approach-
ing a million Canadian men and
women to belong to interna-
tional unions. Their association
with trade unions in the U.S.
has enabled them to organize in
Canada on a scale that would
otherwise have been impossible."
row, president of the Building
Trades Council; and George Kour-
pias, president of the Woodbury
County Labor Council.
Within hours after the flood
alert was sounded, Wallace O. Nel-
son, AFL-CIO CSA staff represent-
ative for Omaha, Neb., arrived on
the Sioux City scene to coordinate
labor activity. Experienced in dis-
aster services, Nelson contacted un-
ion officials and mobilized labor
resources to combat the flood.
Nelson reported that when he
arrived in Sioux City a total of 340
families had been evacuated from
the flood area and were being
housed in the city auditorium. Ad-
ditional space was needed and five
union halls were immediately
turned into centers where families
could be sheltered and furniture
could be stored. '
Nelson discovered an additional
source of volunteer manpower at
a meeting of 400 striking building
tradesmen. When asked to serve
in the disaster, every man respond-
ed to the call, the CSA staff man
reported.
Nelson also cited an episode in-
volving labor-management coopera-
tion when the need arose for
plumbers to reconnect stoves. The
Beane Plumbing Co. made its em-
ployes available free of charge
until the Plumbers Union could
set up machinery to provide volun-
teer crews to residents of stricken
areas.
As flood waters began to re-
cede, labor began laying exten-
sive plans for supplying volun-
teer workers to help with re-
habilitation and resettlement
work throughout the region. The
labor disaster committee expects
to draw needed manpower from
the ranks of Sioux City's 100,-
000 union members.
Meanwhile in neighboring
Omaha, Neb., Herman Groom,
president of the Omaha Central
Labor Union, headed a committee
to recruit 2,000 skilled volunteers
to work throughout the state on
sandbag crews and as drivers of
heavy equipment. Assisting Groom
was John Humpal, AFL-CIO Com-
munity Services staff representa-
tive based at Omaha with Nelson.
DISASTER OPERATIONS are worked out between Red Cross and
AFL-CIO Community Services in wake of floods at Sioux City,
la. Conferring with Mrs. Mary S. Kennedy, executive director of
Red Cross chapter, are (left to right) James Wengert, secretary of
Woodbury County Labor Council; Council Pres. George Kourpias;
Robert Shesher, president of Bricklayers Local 5 and president of
Northwest Iowa Building Trades Council; and Labor Disaster
Chairman Earl Mielke, trustee of Packinghouse Workers Local 71.
American labor's stake in;
World Peace and Freedom
Will be given national and international distribution in a
special 16-page illustrated supplement in the Sunday New
York Times of May 8.
This authoritative, documented analysis of the critical world
situation available just before the Summit conference, will
be based on the expert papers and analyses presented at
the AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs in New York City
April 19-20.
It will contain also articles in depth explaining American
labor's deep concern with foreign policy, with the struggle
for peace and freedom, with its accomplishments in build-
ing and expanding the free world labor movement.
You can obtain copies of this supplement— "American Labor
Seeks World Peace and Freedom"— by writing
AFL-CIO Dept. of International Affairs
815 Sixteenth St., X.W.
Washington 6 9 B.C.
Single copies free.
Up to 1,000 copies, 5 cents each.
Over 1,000 copies, 4 cents each.
Mitchell Again Urges
Union-Industry Talks
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, speaking before the annual safety
awards banquet of the Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, repeated
his urgings to labor and management to meet continuously outside
the bargaining table so they can serve "the greater good — the public
good."
"The alternative is an abhorrent '®z " r — 7 77. 7
from the path of rolling boxcars.
The incident occurred last May,
one — to force, to control, to re-
quire and to mandate by legislative
action or by administrative action,"
he declared.
In an oblique reference to con-
tract negotiations now warming
up between rail unions and the
industry, Mitchell expressed hope
the railroad industry "would be
the first to show they have the
understanding and capacity to
serve the greater good."
In the case of management, this
is not necessarily higher profit lev-
els, nor with labor, increased wages
and better working conditions,
Mitchell added.
The banquet honored Russell A.
Weller, 38-year-old locomotive fire-
man from Bellefontaine, O., with
the D. B. Robertson Safety Award
Trophy and a $500 prize.
Weller became, in the words of
BLFE Pres. H. E. Gilbert, "a hero
by choice" when he risked his own
life to snatch an elderly woman
Wagner Honored
By Label Group
New York — Mayor Robert F.
Wagner of New York City has been
named to receive this state's 1960
Union Label Award of Merit.
He will be honored for his pro-
motion of effective labor-manage-
ment relations. The award will be
given at the 33rd annual conven-
tion of the Union Label & Service
Trades Dept. of the New York
AFL-CIO, to be held in Albany
on May 26.
when Mrs. Lena Short, a 76-year-
old diabetic, went for a stroll near
her daughter's home in Anderson,
Ind. She fell across the tracks just
as a string of boxcars was
"dropped" off to roll onto a siding.
Weller, from the switch en-
gine, saw Mrs. Short lying help-
less on the siding track. He
leaped through his cab window
12 feet to the ground and raced
40 feet to pull her free just in
time.
Mrs. Weller and a large gather-
ing of congressional, government,
industry and rail union leaders
looked on as Weller received the
award from Mitchell.
In his main address, Mitchell
said he saw a "new era" emerging
in American labor-management re-
lations.
He said the private sector of
die economy now has two great
powers — business and corporate
bodies whose power is exercised
not by their owners but by man-
agers and trade unions whose
power is exercised by agents or
administrators.
Calling the collective bargaining
table an "antiquated" institution in
the light of such challenges as auto-
mation, improved technology, the
impact of foreign trade and workers
displaced by technology, Mitchell
warned labor and management
would have to act in the public in-
terest or see Congress and state
legislatures intervene to curb
abuses.
ICFTU Protests
Trials in Spain
Brussels — The speedy court mar-
tial convictions of two Spanish
workers in connection with the
placing of four bombs in Madrid
has been vigorously protested by
Gen. Sec. J. H. Oldenbroek of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions in a cable to the com-
mander of the Madrid Military
Region.
"In the name of justice and hu-
manity we trust you will not con-
firm these sentences," Oldenbroek
asked.
Convicted a week after their ar-
rests were Antonio Abad Donoso,
24, a laborer, who was sentenced
to death, and Justiniano Alvarez
Montero, 37, a cafe employe, who
received a life sentence. The
bombs were discovered Feb. 18
and 19. Two exploded; the only
victim was Perez Jurado, who
helped place them.
The fact that the two were found
guilty only a week after their ar-
rests has aroused grave doubts that
their legal rights were observed.
Union School Meet
Lures Civic Groups
Harrisburg, Pa. — Members of
Parent-Teacher Associations and
church and civic organizations
joined trade unionists from three
counties at an education confer-
ence held by the Harrisburg Region
Central Labor Council.
Meany Asks 'Final Push' on Forand Bill
Raps GOP
Proposal as
'Unrealistic'
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has rallied the 13.5 million mem-
bers of organized labor for a
"final push" on behalf of the
Forand bill, calling on affiliates
to "redouble all efforts" to win
congressional passage this year
of legislation providing health
care for the aged through the
social security mechanism.
Pointing to mounting public de-
mand for action on the labor-
backed bill, Meany said the feder-
ation will continue to give "top
priority attention" to the measure
introduced by Rep. Aime J. Fo-
rand (D-R. I.).
"Through one parliamentary
route or another, in the House
or in the Senate," Meany as-
serted, "the interest in the Fo-
rand bill will ultimately lead to
action by Congress this year."
Organized labor has spearheaded
the drive for passage through
letter-writing campaigns, resolu-
tions bearing thousands of signa-
tures directed to congressmen, and
the adoption by local and state
legislative bodies of resolutions
calling for prompt action on the
bill to finance health benefits for
retired workers through social se-
curity taxes.
'In Best Tradition'
In letters to the officers of na-
tional and international unions and
itate and local central bodies, the
AFL-CIO president declared:
"Your efforts in support of leg-
islation to bring security and dig-
nity to Americans in their twilight
years is in the best tradition of the
labor movement's concern for the
general welfare. I know you will
not fan."
At the same time, he char-
acterized as "unrealistic and
unworkable" an alternative pro-
posed by several Republican
senators to provide federal-state
subsidies to private insurance
companies to help cover the
costs, with retired workers pay-
ing from 50 cents to $13 month-
ly, depending on their income.
The GOP alternative was de-
nounced as a "cruel hoax" by Rep-
resentatives Emanuel Celler (D.-
N. Y.) and Abraham J. Multer
(D.-N. Y.), who assailed the plan
as "a windfall to insurance com-
panies, but a shabby subterfuge
to far as meeting older people's
need for medical care."
Flemming Making 'Study*
Sec. of Health, Education &
Welfare Arthur S. Flemming de-
clined to endorse the GOP sen-
ators' plan, declaring only that it
was "a step in the right direction"
toward the Administration's ideas.
He told the McNamara Senate Sub-
committee on Problems of the
(Continued on Page 3)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Se«ond Class Postage Paid at Washington. D. C.
Saturday, April 16, 1960
No. 16
Joblessness Rises Sharply
To 4.2 Million for March
Committee
Approves
Jobsite Bill
The House Labor Committee, by
a vote of 21 to 5, has approved a
bill that would amend the Taft-
Hartley Act to permit building
trades unions to picket multi-em-
ployer construction sites.
The "situs picketing" measure,
introduced by Rep. Frank Thomp-
son, Jr. (D-N. J.), was supported
in committee by 18 Democrats and
three Republicans. Voting against
it were two Democrats and three
Republicans, while four other GOP
members abstained.
The measure is designed to over-
turn a National Labor Relations
Board ruling, subsequently upheld
by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the
now-famous Denver Building
Trades case. The labor board held
that picketing of a non-union con-
tractor at a construction site con-
stituted an illegal secondary boy-
cott if it induced other crafts to
walk off the job.
The bill would make it clear
that peaceful picketing at con-
struction sites could not be
deemed a boycott Building
trades leaders, in testimony on
the Thompson bill, argued that
the amendment is necessary to
give craft unions the same picket-
ing safeguards enjoyed by in-
dustrial unions.
The Labor Committee included
a similar provision in the labor-
management bill it approved last
year. The safeguard was elimi-
nated, however, by the Landrum-
Griffin bill substituted for the com-
mittee measure on the House floor
and subsequently passed, after re-
visions, by Congress.
The "situs picketing" bill is a
key plank in the 1960 legislative
program of the AFL-CIO Building
& Construction Trades Dept.
More than 3,300 delegates to
(Continued on Page 2)
HANDSHAKES MARK SETTLEMENT of month-long strike of
14,000 members of Screen Actors Guild against motion picture
industry's major studios. New contract gives entertainers share in
profits on films sold to television plus first health and welfare pro-
gram. Shown at Hollywood settlement are (left to right) Charles S.
Boren, vice president of Association of Motion Picture Producers;
Vice Pres. B. B. Kahane of Columbia Pictures; SAG Pres. Ronald
Reagan; and Charlton Heston, member of SAG board of directors,
who won Oscar as best actor of year. (See Story, Page 3).
Session Half-Over:
Major Bills Await
Vote in Congress
By Willard Shelton
After three months devoted almost exclusively to the civil rights
battle, Congress is ready to move into high gear for a series of votes
on major programs that may sharpen political issues for the Novem-
ber election.
A school-aid bill, minimum wage bill, area redevelopment bill
and a dozen others are piled up in'^
committees, ready or nearly ready
to be taken to the floor of either
House or Senate for a showdown.
A heavy schedule of appropria-
End 'Competition in Human Misery,'
Raise Wage Floor, Dubinsky Urges
Pres. David Dubinsky of the Ladies' Garment Workers has called on Congress to "stop the spread
of unfair competition in terms of human misery" by placing a "realistic floor under wages."
He was joined in testimony before a House Labor subcommittee by a Tennessee manufacturer who
said the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill to raise the wage floor to $1.25 an hour and extend coverage
to an additional 7.6 million workers would "benefit both employer and employe."
Meanwhile, the Administration^ " " ~ ■ =
and wage boosts.
Mueller called for the Admin-
lor the first time this year flatly op-
posed the measure. Commerce
Sec. Frederick H. Mueller told the
•ubcommittee "I am speaking for
the Administration" in opposing the
measure, declaring the $1.25 mini-
mum and extension of coverage to
7.6 million workers would be "in-
flationary," and would trigger price
istration's 1959 bill limiting ex-
tension of coverage to 2.5 million
workers, and said it was up to
Congress to determine what
"modest" increase — an expres-
sion used by Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell — should be made in
the present $1 minimum. He
said he personally opposed the
"whole philosophy" of govern-
ment setting minimum wages, de-
claring they should be deter-
mined "by economic factors."
Earlier the subcommittee, headed
by Rep. Phil M. Landrum (D-Ga.),
heard testimony by Pres. William
Pollock of the Textile Workers Un-
{Continued on Page 2)
uons bills, including bills that will
carry funds for defense and mutual
security, remains to be cleared by
the end of the fiscal year June 30.
Less than three months remain
for the heavy Democratic con-
gressional majorities to complete
the record on which the party's
candidates must run. The session
is expected to adjourn early in
July in time for the Democratic
National Convention in Los An-
geles July 11 and the Republic-
an convention July 25 in Chi-
cago.
The Democratic convention's
resolutions committee, which will
draft the platform for considera-
tion of the delegates, will meet July
5. Regional advisory platform con-
ferences already are being held on
major issues.
The threat of vetoes by Pres.
Eisenhower has led to the paring
down of Democratic programs in
some areas, and this process of
(Continued on Page 7)
Weather
Blamed by
Labor Dept.
By Robert B. Cooney
Unemployment swung upward
by 275,000 between February
and March, reaching a total of
4.2 million, according to the
Labor Dept's monthly job
report.
The jobless total had been ex-
pected to drop seasonally by
180,000.
The key rate of unemploy-
ment, adjusted for seasonal influ-
ences, jumped from 4.8 percent in
February to 5.4 percent as of mid-
March. In the pre-recession March
of 1957, unemployment totaled 2.9
million, with a seasonally-adjusted
rate of 3.8 percent
Total employment had been
expected to increase by about
450,000 but instead feU by 253,-
000 to 64.3 million.
"Unusually cold weather and
heavy snowfalls which blanketed
large areas of the country in mid-
March . . ." were blamed by
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell for
the counter-seasonal changes in
both jobs and the jobless.
The number of long-term unem-
ployed — those jobless 15 weeks or
more — rose from 964,000 in Feb-
ruary to 1.2 million in March,
double the increase expected. This
compares to 1.5 million long-term
unemployed in March of 1959 and
663,000 in the pre-recession March
of 1957.
Dr. Seymour Wolfbein, Labor
(Continued on Page 7)
500 Expected at
World Affairs Meet
An estimated 500 dele-
gates from scores of na-
tional and international
unions and state and local
central bodies will attend
the AFL-CIO Conference
on World Affairs in New
York City Apr. 19-20.
The two-day sessions will
be keyed to the struggle for
peace and freedom, AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany
has declared.
Among top experts who
will address the meetings at
the Commodore Hotel will
be Under Sec. of State C.
Douglas Dillon; William C.
Foster, former deputy sec-
retary of defense; Gen. John
B. Medaris, recently retired
chief of the Army's missile
program; and Dr. Henry A.
Kissinger, director of the
Intl. Seminar at Harvard.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
CLC Sets Up
Program for
3d Convention
Montreal, Que. — Some 2,200
delegates representing nearly 1.2
million Canadian workers will meet
here the week of Apr. 25 for the
third constitutional convention of
the Canadian Labor Congress.
More than 450 resolutions al-
ready have been submitted cover-
ing the vital issues affecting the
Canadian labor movement and the
country at large.
Among the more significant sub-
jects scheduled for discussion are
an increase in per capita payments
to the CLC to meet rising costs and
expanded operations; the proposed
new party, discussions on which
were first authorized by the CLC's
1958 convention in Winnipeg; po-
litical action; resolution of jurisdic-
tional disputes; a review of the sus-
pension of the Seafarers, and a
wide range of economic and social
topics.
The usual Conference on Politi-
cal Education, in the past held the
day prior to the convention, this
year is scheduled for Saturday,
Apr. 30, the day following its close.
All of Wednesday, Apr. 27, includ-
ing an evening session, will be
devoted to discussion of political
action and the new party.
There will be the traditional
greetings from the AFL-CIO, de-
livered by Vice Pres. George M.
Harrison. Convention speakers
otherwise are being kept to a mini-
mum in order to permit all pos-
sible debate on the issues.
Site Picketing
Voted 21-5
By House Unit
(Continued from Page 1)
the department's recent national
legislative conference, called on
members of the House and Senate
seeking support of the measure.
Mitchell Backed Bill
The Eisenhower Administration
since 1954 has supported the "situs
picketing" amendment and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell, addressing
last month's BCTD conference,
said the measure was necessary be-
cause "you can't expect trade un-
ionists to work with non-union
people on the same job."
All four of the Democratic
Party's announced contenders for
the presidential nomination — Sena-
tors John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.),
Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) and
Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) — gave
their full support to the Thompson
proposal in addresses to the same
conference.
Schnitzler Tells LID:
Stronger America
Set as Labor Goal
New York — Labor has three main legislative goals in the 10
years just ahead. AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler has
declared.
Speaking Apr. 9 at the 55 th annual luncheon of the League for
Industrial Democracy, Schnitzler said labor aims
America
FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE to democracy, University of
Michigan Economics Prof. William Haber (left) receives the John
Dewey award of the League for Industrial Democracy. Taking part
in the ceremony were, left to right, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William
F. Schnitzler; Harry W. Laidler, LID executive director emeritus;
Aryeh Neier, LID executive secretary.
Dubinsky Asks $1.25
Floor Under Wages
(Continued from Page I)
ion of America that raising and
extending the minimum wage would
be ''the most direct and simplest
procedure for reducing govern-
mental costs."
The costs of substandard wages,
in terms of welfare expenditures by
local, state and federal agencies,
is actually borne by the -.tax payer,
Pollock pointed out. He said
"there is no more constructive way
of minimizing total welfare ex-
penditures than by assuring a fair
wage of at least $1.25 to all em-
ployes in American industry."
Dubinsky told the subcommit-
tee that raising the minimum wage
would not curtail employment and
would have only a negligible effect
on prices.
In the women's wear industry,
he said, wholesale prices today are
lower than in 1947 "despite the in-
tervening advances in federal mini-
mums as well as gains made in
wage levels by collective bargain-
ing."
To ILGWU members, Dubin-
sky emphasized, "minimum wage
legislation is not just an aca-
demic issue. It is of practical
bread-and-butter importance."
He described the highly competi-
tive nature of the garment indus-
try, where the average shop em-
ploys only 36 workers, where capi
tal investment is low and "unfair
competition often takes the form
of competition in terms of wage
levels."
Dubinsky departed from his pre
oared testimony to tell the subcom-
mittee members how the ILGWU
arose from the sweatshops to re-
store human dignity to the workers
in the industry and of the continu-
ing fight to establish and maintain
fair standards.
"Because new firms can easily
come into the industry, because
employers can easily shift their
' operations from one shop to an-
other, the threat of unfair com-
petition is ever present," he em-
phasized.
The ILGWU president pointed
to the widening gap between the
minimum wage and the average
manufacturing wage since enact-
ment of the Fair Labor Standards
Act in 1938. While average wages
in manufacturing rose $1.66 an
hour since 1938, the minimum
wage has gone up only 75 cents.
Since 1949, average wages went
up 90 cents an hour, but the mini-
mum wage is only 25 cents higher,
he pointed out.
Puerto Rico Rise Asked
Dubinsky strongly urged the
subcommittee to raise minimum
wages for workers in Puerto Rico
at the same time the minimum is
increased on the mainland. He said
a proposal by the Puerto Rican
Boss Sees 2-Car Families
On 85-Cent Hourly Wage
These things were said — in testimony before a House sub-
committee — by retailer spokesmen who don't want their work-
ers brought under wage-hour coverage and who don't want
the wage floor raised to $1.25 an hour:
A Michigan store owner said he saw no need to extend or
raise the minimum wage because "not one" of his employes
"ever starved" on pay of less than $1 an hour.
An Illinois retailer claimed that most store clerks don't have
to work and "these are the people mostly responsible for the
so-called two-car family." He acknowledged under question-
ing that he didn't know if any of his employes, who started
at 85 cents an hour, have two cars.
Still another witness, J. T. Meek, head of the Illinois Retail
Merchants Association and a former unsuccessful GOP can-
didate for senator, said he was against a minimum wage be-
cause it would lead to "socialism" and would be "upholding
the power and ruthlessness of AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany."
He also said the law might have served some purpose during
the depression but "the depression has long been gone and
forgotten."
government to raise existing mini-
mums — which are set on the island
under an industry-by-industry wage
board system — by the same per-
centage as the federal minimum
wage is raised "represents a step in
the right direction."
Both Dubinsky and Reid Mur-
phey, president of the Signal
Knitting Mills, Chattanooga,
Tenn., agreed that low-priced
imports presented a serious prob-
lem to the industry but that this
problem couldn't and shouldn't
be met by trying to compete on
wages with areas of the world
where workers are paid 12 to 14
cents an hour.
Murphey told the subcommittee
that raising the minimum wage
would increase the nation's pur-
chasing power — and the market for
the industry's products.
Because "the pricing of our
products is directly related to the
lowest price quoted in the market
the manufacturer with low wage
rates is a serious threat to all of
us," he said.
Pollock, whose testimony was
read to the subcommittee by
TWUA Research Dir. Solomon
Barkin, described the $1 minimum
wage as "completely obsolete" and
said continued exclusion of mil-
lions of workers "has made a mock-
ery of the law's purpose to assure
fair labor conditions."
• To rebuild America by sup-
porting the investment of more
money in schools, hospitals, roads,
airports, rivers, homes:
• To expand social justice pro-
grams — social security, unemploy-
ment compensation, health insur-
ance for the aging,' civil rights;
• To push for a new labor law
that will be fair to management,
labor and the public.
Schnitzler said the workers of
America have one other major
goal — regaining U. S. military
superiority, whatever the cost.
On the need for new labor legis-
lation, Schnitzler said the pendu-
lum in the last 20 years has swung
all the way from the Wagner Act
to the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-
Griffin Acts.
Asks liven Break'
Labor doesn't look for "favored
treatment," he said. "All we seek
is an even break. We will push
for a new law fair to management
and labor alike, and protective of
the public interest."
"This program contains nothing
startling or revolutionary," the
AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer said.
"Others may shoot for the
moon. If this program can be
put into effect within the next
10 years, we in the trade union
movement will be happy to live
out our days here on earths
The LID conference centered on
the theme "Labor in the 1960V*
Panel Participants
Three other AFL-CIO repre-
sentatives took part in panel dis-
cussions. They were Boris Shish-
kin, director of the Dept. of Civil
Rights, on labor and civil rights;
Peter Henle, assistant research di-
rector, on the outlook for collec-
tive bargaining: Saul Miller, direc-
tor, Dept. of Publications, on la-
bor and the public.
The League's John Dewey award
to a distinguished alumnus was
given to William Haber, professor
of economics at the University of
Michigan. *
The delegates directed an open
letter to Upton Sinclair, founder
of the LID, and to his wife Craig,
in salute for their services in the
fight against social injustice.
Schnitzler told LID that every-
thing labor hopes for in the next
decade must be predicated on two
assumptions — that a war of extinc-
tion can be averted and that the
free world will retreat no further
under threat of Communist ag-
gression.
It should not be surprising, the
speaker said, that the push for
progress in this country comes
largely from worker ranks.
"American workers never
have, and never will, accept the
status quo as the be-all and end-
all of existence," Schnitzler said.
"No one can tell them that they
have reached the end of the line.
They refuse to be overpowered
by class restrictions or a caste
system.
"Their lot has not forbade them
to dream, nor to achieve practical
programs for enrichment of the
American way of life through their
own effort."
The true role of the U.S. trade
union, Schnitzler said, is to edu-
cate, rather than dictate; to imple-
ment the desires of its members,
rather than to regiment them.
'7 Years of Nothing*
As , to the political future,
Schnitzler said the workers and
people of this country have had
"enough of seven years of noth-
ing:'
"The sit-tight and do-nothing
policies of those seven years," he
said, have seriously impaired the
position of America in world
affairs and have stunted the
growth of our national economy.
"It is unthinkable that American
voters should inflict another seven
lean years upon Uncle Sam."
The lean years, the speaker said,
include tight-money policies, high
unemployment, no effective pro-
grams in providing jobs, in scien-
tific research, schools, hospitals,
housing, roads.
Make Up Lost Time
"We seek federal aid to educa-
tion of at least a billion dollars a
year.
"We must make up for lost time
in low-cost housing, in the eradica-
tion of slums, and in restoring
blighted city areas.
"We have to build hospitals, re-
search laboratories, airports and
roads. We must protect our rivers
from pollution and prevent floods,"
Schnitzler called for reinforc-
ing the social security system by
the payment of higher benefits,
by the institution of uniform fed-
eral standards for unemployment
compensation, and by the enact-
ment of health insurance for the
aging.
Equally urgent, he said, is the
need for an effective civil rights
program to stamp out the evils of
race discrimination, and a labor
law to guarantee industrial de-
mocracy and prevent abuses like
racketeering and thievery.
STRONG PLEA for raising federal minimum wage to $1.25 and
extending coverage is made to House Labor subcommittee by Pres,
David Dubinsky of Ladies' Garment Workers (left) and an en*-
ployer spokesman, Reid MurpKey^
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
Page Three
Fact-Finding Torpedoed:
Injunctions Issued
In Shipyard Strike
Boston — Federal Judge George C. Sweeney has issued injunc
lions against both labor and management in the 12-week-old strike
by 18,000 members of the Shipbuilders and the Technical Engineers
against eight East Coast shipyards of Bethlehem Steel Co.
The injunction ordered the company to bargain in good faith anc
to cease interfering with, restrain-
ing or coercing employes in the
exercise of their rights. The court
also instructed the two unions to
end. sporadic mass picketing at the
Quincy shipyards.
Both sides immediately asked
the First Circuit Court of Ap-
peals here to set aside the in-
junctions, which the National
Labor Relations Board had
sought in what it termed a move
to get the parties back to the
bargaining table.
Meanwhile, prospects for ap-
pointment of a presidential fact-
finding board were dashed when
the company flatly rejected the
idea of government intervention in
the dispute. Pres. Eisenhower, re-
plying to 105 congressmen who
had urged fact-finding, said he
would act only if both labor and
management requested such a
move. IUMSWA Pres. John J.
Grogan and AFTE Pres. Russell
M. Stephens had joined in request-
ing presidential fact-finding.
The federal court injunction
against Bethlehem was virtually
without precedent since, in effect,
it restrains the firm from persist-
ing in practices which the NLRB
alleged violate the law despite the
fact that the board's own determi
nation of the issue has not been
completed.
NLRB Trial Examiner Thomas
Ricci has held 19 days of hearings
on the charges against the com
pany and is not expected to com
plete his intermediate findings and
recommendations until mid-May.
Hie NLRB action against
Bethlehem was an outgrowth of
the company's unilateral changes
in working rules and conditions
which it imposed on workers
when previous contracts expired
July 13, 1959. The changes de-
prived workers of seniority rights
in layoffs and recall, and dis-
continued long-standing griev-
ance procedures.
The federal court injunction
against mass picketing came on the
heels of rejection by Massachu
setts state courts of Bethlehem's
request for restraining of pickets
at the Quincy yard. The state
courts held that since the company
had not bargained in good faith it
was not entitled to any relief.
Five -Week Strike Won
By 14,000 Film Actors
Hollywood — The Screen Actors Guild has scored a sweeping
victory in its five-week strike against major motion picture studios,
winning a share in the profits on theatrical motion pictures sold to
television, plus establishment of industry-wide pension and health
and welfare funds.
The walkout of 14,000 film<^-
actors against seven of the eight
xgiant studios marked the first strike
in the history of the entertainment
union.
The three-year contract, sched-
uled to be placed before the
Union Renews
Fight for Jobs
At Darlington
The Textile Workers Union of
s America has asked the National
Labor Relations Board to overrule
a trial examiner's report and order
the Deering, Milliken textile chain
to provide jobs and back pay for
500 former employes of a Darling-
ton, S. C, mill which closed down
more than three years ago rather
tha bargain with a union.
The board has already found
the Darlington Mfg. Co. guilty of
unfair labor practices in closing its
plant and ordered new hearings to
determine whether the parent cor-
poration, Deering, Milliken & Co.,
and Roger Milliken, president of
both the Darlington firm and the
textile chain, could be held respon-
sible for the closing of the mill and
the loss of jobs.
On technical grounds, NLRB
Trial Examiner Lloyd Buchanan
ruled early this year that the Deer-
ing, Milliken chain could not be
penalized for the actions of its sub-
sidiary.
In its new brief, the TWUA
argues that the closed cotton mill
was an integral part of the chain
and that Roger Milliken was
personally responsible for the de-
cision to close the plant.
The unions asks that Deering,
Milliken & Co. be ordered to pay
back wages for the former Darling-
ton workers and offer them new
jobs, either through reviving the
plant or through employment at
other Deering, Milliken mills.
membership at a mammoth rally
Apr. 18 in the Hollywood Bowl,
provided a two-pronged break-
through on films made for theater
showing which subsequently are
sold to television.
On all such films produced after
Jan. 31, 1960, actors will receive
6 percent of the sales price, after
deduction of distribution expenses.
In lieu of payments on films pro-
duced between 1948 and 1960,
SAG accepted a lump sum settle-
ment of $2,625 million— $375,000
to start the health and welfare^
fund, and the remaining $2.25 mil-
lion to be paid in 10 annual install-
ments as the start of the actors
pension fund.
In addition, producers agreed to
SAG demands for a contribution
of 5 percent of the total actors'
payroll — 3 percent to go into the
pension fund and 2 percent for the
health and welfare fund.
The settlement also provided
for an increase in salary mini-
mums for all classes of actors,
with day players hiked from $90
to $100; free lance players from
$300 to $350 a week; and stunt
men from $90 to $100 daily.
Only one major studio was un-
affected by the strike: Universal-
International, which reached a
settlement with the Screen Actors
Guild just prior to the general
walkout. A dozen independent
producers also settled with the un-
ion in advance of the strike.
Pilots' International
Reelects Sayen
Istanbul, Turkey — C. N. Sayen,
president of the Air Line Pilots,
has been re-elected president of the
Intl. Federation of Air Line Pilots
Associations at its 15th annual con-
ference here. He will be serving
his eighth consecutive term.
The international federation rep-
resents 24 ; 000 pilots from 41 na-
tions.
STACKS OF PETITIONS bearing signatures of 30,000 members
of Papermakers and Paperworkers, calling for passage of Forand
bill to provide health benefits for the aged, are shown to bill's
sponsor, Rep. Aime J. Forand (D.-R.L). With the congressman
are AFL-CIO Legislative Rep. John T. Curran (left) and UPP Vice
Pres. Frank Grasso (right).
Labor Steps Up Drive
For Forand Health Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
Aged that, by direction of Pres
Eisenhower, he was conducting a
study to see if a "sound alterna-
tive" to the Forand bill could be
developed.
The Administration's failure thus
far to devise any health care plan
came under new fire in hearings
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-
Minn.) assailed the insistence on
further "study" of the situation.
"We have had plenty of studies,"
he said, adding: "If we wait for
the Republican go-slow, not-
now, veto Administration to take
action ... we will wait forever."
Rep. lohn D. Dingell (D.-Mich.)
said "it ill behooves the Adminis
tration to shilly-shally around" on
the issue, and said that the Pres-
ident, "who is probably the number
one recipient of socialized medicine
and cradle-to-the-grave security in
the U.S." should take the lead in
doing "something constructive."
Both witnesses spoke out against
the alternative put forward by the
Republican senators. Dingell said
it was "open to grave question as
to . . . propriety" on the ground
that "payment to the insurance
industry by the government would
be a subsidy and socialization" of
insurance firms. Humphrey said
provisions calling for heavy state
outlays was "ducking the issue,
since states are "overloaded" on
their tax burden at the present time.
In a detailed analysis of the
Republican proposal, AFL-CIO
Social Security Dir. Nelson H.
Cruikshank said there was "vir-
tually no possibility" that each
of the 50 states, "many of which
are already in substantial debt
and financial difficulty," could
raise the $640 million of state
funds required. He also said
prospects were dim that the
nearly $500 million in federal
appropriations would be ap-
proved by Pres. Eisenhower.
Cruikshank said the bill's re-
quirement that 50 state govern-
ments negotiate with a multitude of
insurance companies "is not only
formidable, it is most unlikely to
be carried to a successful conclu-
sion." A crack task force from
the U.S. Civil Service Commission,
he said, was "nearly overwhelmed
by the complexity" of trying to
negotiate a similar program just
for federal employes.
The labor-backed Forand bill
was turned down two weeks ago
by the House Ways & Means Com-
mittee by a 17-8 vote in what
Meany called "a setback for this
crucial piece of legislation, but . . .
not a fatal blow."' He said the
issue w ill not die, because there is
too much public demand for ac-
tion."
Despite the rejection of the Fo-
rand bill in its original form, the
committee is still considering alter-
native proposals. The AFL-CIO
president made it clear that labor
"does not insist that every last de-
tail of the Forand bill is perfect,"
adding that "there are undoubtedly
acceptable alternatives to some of
the details."
"The basic objective," he con-
tinued, is "a program of health
benefits for our older citizens
through the use of the social se-
curity mechanism."
Meany noted that, in the face of
the mounting public demand for ac-
tion, Forand has filed a discharge
petition to sidestep the committee
and bring the bill to the floor of the
House for a vote. The signatures
of 219 congressmen — a majority
of the House memberships — would
be necessary to force the bill from
committee.
Court Asked
To Ban Alien
Strikebreakers
The Meat Cutters have renewed
a request to a federal court to put
teeth into a finding by Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell that the Peyton
Packing Co., El Paso, Tex.,
shouldn't be permitted to bring in
aliens to serve as strikebreakers.
The union is challenging a Jus-
tice Dept. claim that the ban on
importation of strikebreakers from
Mexico should apply only to new
job applicants — not to Mexican na-
tionals who had already taken jobs
at the plant whose regular workers
went on strike Mar. 2, 1959.
Latest legal brief by the Meat
Cutters is an answer to a Justice
Dept. motion for dismissal of the
union's petition asking the U.S.
district court in Washington, D. C,
to force Atty. Gen. William P.
Rogers and Immigration Commis-
sioner Joseph M. Swing to bar
from the country the 250 aliens
the union says commute daily from
Juarez, Mexico.
Last October, Mitchell issued
a finding that "the admission of
any aliens to the United States
for employment at the Peyton
Packing Co. during the strike
now in progress will adversely
affect the wages and working
conditions of workers in the
United States." The Justice
Dept. & Immigration Service
held the finding inapplicable to
Mexicans already employed.
Under the Rogers-Swing inter-
pretation, the union contends,
Mitchell's findings would remain
meaningless since the strikebreak-
ers would be permitted to continue
crossing the border and forcing
down wage levels.
The union brief declared: "The
commuting aliens working as
strikebreakers for Peyton accept
wages considerably below those
which prevailed prior to the strike.
The strike was in large part caused
by a substantial wage cut which
the company forced on its em-
ployes. Obviously the alien strike-
breakers who live at a lower stand-
ard of living across the border, in
accepting low wages and poor
working conditions, tend to de-
press wages generally."
McClellan Unit Gets
'Standby 9 Authority
A compromise move has rung down the curtain on the McClellan
special Senate committee, transferring its records and investigative
authority to the Government Operations Committee on a ''stand-
by" basis, and affirming the Labor Committee's exclusive authority
to oversee administration of the Landrum-Griffin Act.
A resolution to this effect was^ ~~ —
staff increase to supervise pro-
approved by voice vote in the Sen
ate after Sen. John L. McClellan
(D-Ark.) dropped another resolu-
tion giving a 12-month lease on
life for the special committee
created three years ago to investi-
gate improprieties in the labor-
management field.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
vigorously opposed continuation
of the special committee, charg-
ing that in recent months it had
become "more and more a
sounding board for reactionary
anti-union elements."
In telegrams to all members of
the Senate, Meany pointed out that
the committee "completed its in-
vestigations many months ago, and
Congress enacted legislation based
in part'' on its findings. "At that
point," he said, "the select com-
mittees legitimate reasons for ex-
istence ended."
McClellan earlier had sought
to have the special committee's
records and total authority ab-
sorbed by his own Government
Operations Committee and asked
for a "watchdog" role over L-G
despite the fact that the Labor
Committee had won previous
Rules Committee approval for a
cedures under the new labor
law.
Rebuffed by a 5-4 vote in Gov-
ernment Operations, McClellan
countered with the resolution ask-
ing for a one-year extension of the
special committee, plus $150,000
for continued investigations.
The compromise — worked out
by McClellan, Chairman Lister
Hill (D-Ala.) of the Labor Com-
mittee, Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D.-Tex.) and Minority
Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen
(R-Ul.) — gave Government Opera-
tions $75,000 to keep records of
the special committee intact, main-
tain a skeleton staff, and make in-
vestigations as needed.
On the Senate floor, Mc-
Clellan declared that he had no
intention of carrying on a "cru-
sade" of investigations. He in-
sisted, however that he needed
"stand-by" power "if some emer-
gency arises/'
Twenty-four hours later, the
Arkansas Democrat told reporters
that he planned to hold additional
hearings after the 86th Congress
adjourns later this year, but de-
clined to spell out what fields would
be subjected to the new inquiry.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
Weathervane
THE LABOR DEPARTMENT'S monthly reports on employ-
ment and unemployment are becoming increasingly difficult to
distinguish from those issued by the U.S. Public Health Service or
the U.S. Weather Bureau.
For the period Jan. 15 to Feb. 15 the department reported
that the sharp drop in the length of the factory workweek was
explained in part by the number of workers afflicted by influenza,
not quite an epidemic but enough to cut the hours of work and
therefore the average weekly earnings of factory workers.
In its latest report showing a sharp, contra-seasonal increase of
300,000 in unemployment between Feb. 15 and Mar. 15 and a
jump in the rate of unemployment from 4.8 percent to 5.4 percent,
the department declares:
"Unusually cold weather and heavy snowfalls which blanketed
large areas of the country in mid-March contributed substantially
to the drop in employment."
A closer reading of the report shows another drop in the factory
workweek, but this time part of the drop is attributed to a "sharp
cutback in over-time hours in auto plants."
The report notes also that long-term unemployment — those out
of work for 15 weeks or longer — increased by 253,000, "substan-
tially more than the slight rise expected for this time of year." But,
said the department, if the weather had been better many unem-
ployed workers would have found jobs.
Somewhere in the weather-report-oriented analysis of the
jobless situation is the fact that 4.2 million persons were unem-
ployed in mid-March.
These figures are more pertinent perhaps because they reveal
sharply that all is not well with the economy, that a number of
key industries are cutting produetidn, that retail sales and other in-
dicators point to something less than a lusty, booming prosperity.
Three Months to Go
THE SECOND SESSION of the 86th Congress has reached the
halfway mark without a single piece of major legislation en-
acted into law.
The dominant note of the first three months of the session has
been the jockeying for political position for the crucial 1960 elec-
tion. The issues that will determine the outcome of the elections
have been discussed in depth, but there has been little action.
In January the AFL-CIO presented to Congress a "Positive
Program for America" highlighting a 12-point program dedicated
to advancing the general welfare of all Americans.
Only one of the 12 points has reached the floor of both cham-
bers for a vote— civil rights legislation.
Health care for the aged has been temporarily defeated in
committee. Aid to depressed areas is stalled in the House Rules
Committee. A bill to raise and extend the minimum wage is still
in the hearing process. Federal aid for school construction is
stalled, as is a housing bill.
The Administration has exhibited little interest in most of these
measures except to oppose the majority of them in the form en-
dorsed by the AFL-CIO, Its veto threat — put into actual use to kill
a measure to curb stream pollution — plagues congressional con-
sideration of important bills.
The time for studies, hearings and speech-making is over.
Congress has less than three more months before it adjourns.
The record of the final months may well be decisive in the out-
come of the presidential race and beyond that the state of the na-
tion's economic health for the next few years.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. SufTridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A, J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther y George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F, Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Gervase N. Love David L. Perlman
Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, April 16, 1960
No. 16
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'We Have a Deep-Seated Concern About the Problem'
:X/B
VSJBt DR^yyH FOR YHR
AFL-CIO news
McCarthy Committee Reports:
Human Toll of Unemployment
Can't Be Tabulated by Statistics
The following is excerpted from the report
of the Senate's Special Committee on Unem-
ployment Problems headed by Sen. Eugene /.
McCarthy (D-Minn.):
UNEMPLOYMENT is in many respects the
central economic problem of our free society.
Its toll in terms of lost production and human
hardships is imposing.
Solving the problem of unemployment is not
simply a matter of maintaining "prosperity."
Since the end of World War II, three periods of
general economic recession have disrupted our
economy. Even, when our economy has been at
the top of the business cycle, substantial areas of
our country and numerous classes of our people
have suffered unemployment.
Although we have not experienced mass un-
employment in recent years, large numbers of our
people have been affected by "class" unemploy-
ment. Since the number of youthful entrants into
the labor force, will rise by nearly 50 percent in
the next 10 years, unemployment is likely to con-
tinue at high levels unless remedial and preventa-
tive action is taken. Already many thousands of
Americans suffer long-term unemployment be-
cause of age, race, lack of proper training, or
obsolescence of once-valued skills.
FIGURES ALONE cannot measure the human
suffering caused by persistent unemployment.
While it may be true that there will always
be some unemployment in our complex and
changing economy, it does not follow that un-
employment should entail hardship, that it
should be prolonged, or that we need make no
effort to keep it to a minimum.
The nation has become accustomed in recent
years to living with higher levels of unemploy-
ment and to viewing such unemployment as "nor-
mal." Weighing the statistics of unemployment
against those of production and profits, some have
described current unemployment as marginal in
economic terms, and marginal therefore in its
claim upon our concern and attention in the form-
ulation of public policy.
WHEN UNEMPLOYMENT is widespread,
brought on by a cyclical swing of the whole econ-
omy, there is general awareness of its existence
and its consequences. But chronic local unem-
ployment remains out of sight because statistically
it does not involve a high percentage of the na-
tional labor force. The wider community of the
nation forgets that cities and areas of our country
are chronically ill of an economic disease to which
only the crudest of home remedies have been
applied.
Witnesses spoke eloquently to the committee
of the extent of the human cost of unemployment.
A county school superintendent in West Virginia
testified that 120 out off 290 children in one
school came from homes in which no wage earner
was employed:
"Quite often children come to school without
breakfast because there is no food in the house.
Whenever we discover a condition like this we
manage to feed them. Lack of food and re-
spectable clothing causes a bad psychological
reaction among the children. Much of the
teachers 9 time is spent in trying to supply the
children with necessities."
In Pennsylvania, formerly skilled anthracite
miners who have been out of work for years have
in many instances become housekeepers while
their wives have found work in local needlecraft
plants. This reversal of roles has had troubling
effects on many families, and tensions arising from
demoralization of men have broken up families.
Other witnesses testified to the grave effect of
unemployment on the social structure of the family
and the community. In Indiana a representative
of the Evansville Council of Churches spoke of
personal and family distress and dislocation, and
pessimism and hopelessness about church and
community life.
The argument has been made that a certain
amount of unemployment is necessary to lubri-
cate the economic machine, that there must always
be workers changing jobs, industries declining
as others rise, and a ready labor supply available
for new products or extra shifts.
Unfortunately, such theories are too often used
to explain away unemployment as a necessary
evil or even a positive economic good. The
unemployed who are idle because they cannot
meet an employer's entrance requirements or be-
cause they are not suitably located perform only a
minor labor supply function in our economy. And
chronic unemployment, which has crippled and
is still crippling scores of American communities,
contributes nothing whatever to our economy.
Unproved economic theories should not di-
vert us from the simple, positive response that
justice demands when we see the misery and
hoplessness in which too many of our people
now live. Evasion of their just claim for help is
faulty democracy as well as bad economics.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
Page Five
At Operating Engineers 9 Convention:
Meany Rallies Labor to Lead
Battle for Stronger America
Bal Harbour, Fla.— To win the world struggle for freedom the whole fabric of American life
will have to be strengthened, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told the 26th convention of the Oper-
ating Engineers. . _ . .
Effective national defense, he emphasized, requires more than military weapons— it must in-
clude a healthy expanding econom y, greater social protections against poverty and illness, and
enjoyment of democratic civil rights'^— . . . " 77
tion required for compliance with
the Landrum-Griffin Act. They
by all citizens
Addressing 750 cheering dele-
gales representing the IUOE's
302,000 members, Meany called
upon the trade union movement
to beat back the opposition of
reactionary business and political
forces and to make its maximum
contribution to the welfare and
security of the nation.
In similar vein, Sen. John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) called upon la-
bor and the American people as a
whole to provide "an affirmative
answer" to the challenge of dic-
tatorship.
Kennedy warned that the needs
of the people cannot be met by the
type of government "frozen in the
ice of its own indifference." .
He drew laughter and applause
from the delegates with a jibe at
Vice Pres. Nixon's statement that
he was "mighty pleased" with the
results of the Wisconsin primary,
where the unopposed Republican
presidential candidate received 29
percent of the total vote, as against
the 58 percent amassed by Pres.
Eisenhower in the 1956 primary.
Keunedy said he made the
trip here from the West Virginia
presidential primary campaign in
response to IUOE Pres. Joseph
J. Delaney's invitation, "because
he took over the presidency of
this organization two years ago
in a somewhat difficult time and I
think he has been a distinguished
leader of it."
Meany also praised Delaney,
whom he said he had known for
50 years and regarded as a "truly
dedicated trade union leader.**
Mitchell Praises Union
Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell,
who addressed the convention
earlier, told the delegates, "I like
what I see in the actions of the
officers of this international union
and I want to help in any way I
can.** Referring to criticism from
certaia unnamed newspaper col-
umnists, Mitchell said 'Td like to
tell them they don't know what the
hell they're talking about.**
The delegates voted overwhelm-
ing approval of a package of 52
amendments to the union's constitu-
aJso adopted measures designed to
strengthen the IUOE's organizing
and administrative machinery and
to set up national standards for
apprenticeship training.
In his keynote address, De-
laney said the union had gained
52,000 members in the past four
years and had successfully with-
stood a concerted and intensified
campaign of employer opposition
which had forced an unusual
number of strikes and lockouts.
These critical battles, he re-
ported, required the international
to pay out $317,646 in strike bene-
fits in the past four years as against
only $18,150 in the previous four
years. Delaney said that while the
IUOE had triumphed decisively in
its collective bargaining tests, em-
ployers would not hesitate to renew
their offensive if they felt the new
anti-labor legislation gave them an
advantage.
Summing up the IUOE's achieve-
ments he declared:
Troud of Our Union*
"We have every right to be proud
of our union. We have won for
our members the highest standards
enjoyed by any trade in this or any
other country. Today our union
stands at peak strength — in mem-
bership, in finances, in efficiency,
and above all in fighting spirit."
Meany warned that labor faces
continued strong opposition in the
furtherance of its progressive pro-
grams but had always thrived on
such opposition in the past.
"Our enemies are not satisfied
with the legislation they got last
year,* he said. "Not the Gold-
waters, the Landrums and the
Mundts. They would like to put
over a national 'right-to-work 9
law next."
The AFL-CIO president said it
was not enough to fight back
against such attacks but labor must
push constantly for affirmative
progress. "America cannot stand
still without slipping backward,
he warned.
In the legislative field, Meany
said, labor will press for immediate
WASHINGTON
adoption of the minimum wage
amendments providing for $1.25
wage floor and broader coverage.
He also stressed the urgency of the
Forand bill to provide health care
insurance for elderly citizens who
have retired on social security pen-
sions.
"The Administration would
like to wave away this problem,"
he charged, "but our respon-
sibility to the older people of our
country cannot be disposed of by
ignoring it."
In the economic field, Meany
said, the most practical answer to
the continuing menace of mass un-
employment and industrial slumps
would be a vast building program.
"We need some industry to lead us
back to real prosperity and full
employment," he pointed out. "In
my book, that's the construction in-
dustry. We've got to build the
schools, the homes, hospitals, roads,
airports, and factories to meet
America's present and future re-
quirements."
These jobs have to be done by
union workers at union wages,
Meany said, in order to maintain
high American standards.
It will take intensive organiza-
tion and effective legislative and
political action to achieve labor's
goals, the AFL-CIO chief pointed
out. He added:
"The purpose of a trade union
must be to advance the welfare and
conditions of its members. There
can be no other purpose for its
existence. Our first duty is to make
our own unions as perfect as they
can be. To do this we must have
leadership dedicated to the interests
of the workers. Whatever power
we possess now and in the future
must be a power for good — for the
good of our membership, for the
good of the community, and for the
good of our country."
After an appeal for voluntary
contributions for the coming polit-
ical campaign by William McSorley
of COPE, the delegates dropped
$2,975 into the hat.
"Sec.-Treas. Hunter P. Wharton
and I will make it an even $3,000,
Delaney announced.
Washington Reports:
Federal Employes' Pay Boost
Urged by Holifield, Broyhill
BACK IN 1945, on the night of Apr. 12, a crowd of perhaps
5,000 people stood in Lafayette Park, across the broad avenue from
the White House, and paid their tribute to the memory of the dead
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some who were there have never for-
gotten it.
It was a quiet crowd, with only murmured words among friends,
and few could have explained why they were drawn to that place.
Perhaps it was the expression of a sorrow. shared with the dispos-
sessed and the never-hads of many lands and many natures at the
departure of a President who had somehow lifted the spirit. Per-
haps it was shared grief with Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had in-
formed Harry S. Truman of the death of her husband and on his
natural expression of sympathy had made her wonderful reply:
"What can we do for you?" For the burden as well as the glory
were now Mr. Truman's, and only those intimately associated with
an American President can know the full loneliness of the office.
It is now 20 years since Roosevelt was elected for the last full
term of office he was spared to serve. Twenty years is just about
the normal time lapse in this country between bursts of creative
energy and progress, though some make a good case that the
period normally is shorter.
The one thing certain is that the next eight years will be pro-
foundly different, in spirit and accomplishment, from the immediate
past. It is time for another New Deal — and Republican newspapers
that supported Mr. Eisenhower in 1952 are beginning to make it
clear that the GOP must come up with something better than more
of what we have been given.
* * *
GOV. LEROY COLLINS OF FLORIDA MADE a statewide
television speech, at the time the Negro protest sitdowns in store
restaurants began, which deserves more notice than it has been given
as an example of the attitude of many Southerners.
He pointed out that Negroes who enter the stores pay the pro-
prietors a profit on their purchases and shop at many departments
and are welcomed. There is a "moral" problem involved, he said,
when they are invited to use all facilities of the stores except one —
the lunch counters — and then are told to go elsewhere.
Gov. Collins also told his people that it was time for the mod-
erates to take a hand in helping solve the racial difficulties of the
state. He set up a statewide Commission on Race Relations and
named two Negroes and four white people as its first members,
and he called on cities throughout the state to create local com-
missions to work out problems.
His mail in the early days ran eight to one in favor of his
approach.
* * *
MR. EISENHOWER'S OFFICE OF EDUCATION has pre-
pared a "study" saying that the American people should accept as
their "national goals" a 50 percent increase in teachers' salaries
and a $25 billion school-building program, the former by 1963 and
the latter across the next 10 years.
Sec. Arthur S. Flemming, whose Dept. of Health, Education &
Welfare includes the Office of Education, said the "study" was in-
tended merely to offer a "basis of discussion" for 100 educational
organizations. But Commissioner of Education Lawrence G. Der-
thick called it "a professional appraisal of the factual situation"
facing Americans in raising the standards of our school system.
The "study" offered a thorough analysis of the needs, but no
responsible official in the Administration is ready to face the fact
that to meet a need somebody must spend some money. Lots
of studies, just no money.
On a somewhat parallel matter, the Intl. Cooperation Administra-
tion has issued a leaflet describing its services in many countries
in promoting adequate supplies of safe water. Mr. Eisenhower has
consistently opposed and tried to cut down appropriations for fed-
eral safe-water programs in this country, and only this year vetoed
a bill to expand the program by raising funds to $90 million a year
from the $45 million now authorized.
POSTAL AND OTHER GOVERNMENT em-
ployes deserve a pay increase of at least 10
per cent, Rep. Chct Holifield (D-Calif.) and Rep.
Joel T. Broyhill (R-Va.) said on Washington Re-
ports to the People, AFL-CIO public service pro-
gram, heard on more than 300 radio stations.
"In almost every other line of endeavor,
whether in private enterprise or for municipali-
ties, the pay is better," Holifield asserted. "For
instance, in Los Angeles, a girl who rides along
on a motorcycle and marks cars for overpark- .
ing gets $153 a month more than a starting
employe in the post office."
Broyhill pointed out that supermarket clerks in
the Washington area who made an average of $23
a week in 1937 now make $97 a week, almost
400 per cent more. The postal worker, on the
other hand, "who was making $1,800 to $2,100
a year is now making $4,600 to $4,800, a much
wnaller increase."
HOLIFIELD NOTED also that. "A letter car-
rier's wage is too low for him to qualify to buy an
FHA $15,000 home," a low figure in the Wash-
ington area.
r Broyhill asserted that those who oppose the
pay increase fail to realize that "it will more than
pay for itself in increased efficiency, better morale,
decreased turnover of employes and lower cost of
training new workers." He added:
"The Civil Service Commission, which is re-
sisting pay increase efforts, itself acknowledges
the need by its public admission that they are
going to exercise their authority to raise start-
ing wages for engineers, architects and scientists
to get a sufficient number to work for the
government."
Holifield pointed out that although workers in
private industry have the right to strike, this right
is denied postal and government employes.
"They don't want such a right," he said, "but if
they had it they would have a much higher wage
today. Since they don't have such a right, Con-
gress has a heavy responsibility to see that postal
and government workers are fairly compensated."
Both agreed that the chances for the bill in
this session are good. "There's been a lot of
speculation as to whether or not a modest or rea-
sonable pay increase would result in a Presi-
dential veto," Broyhill remarked, "but whether
or not there is a veto, it's our responsibility in
Congress to do what we think is proper."
AN INCREASE in salaries of government workers is thoroughly
justified and urgently needed, Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R-Va.), left,
and Rep. Chet Holifield (D-Calif.) agreed on Washington Reports
to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
Box Score of the 86th Congress
The 2nd session of the 86th Congress is approximately at the halfivay mark. Here is a report on the status of AFL-ClO-supported legislation.
ISSUE AFL-CIO POSITION ACTION
HEALTH BENEFITS FOR THE AGED: Expansion
of social security program to provide hospital, nursing
home and surgical care for social security beneficiaries.
MINIMUM WAGE: Increase in minimum wage to
$1.25 an hour and extend coverage to millions not now
protected.
EDUCATION: Federal aid to states and local com-
munities for school construction and teachers' salaries,
to make up for inability of states to meet growing needs
in public education.
AREA REDEVELOPMENT: Establishment of new
federal program to aid areas suffering from high chronic
unemployment, providing grants and loans for public
works, retraining workers and technical assistance.
CIVIL RIGHTS: Broadening of federal powers to pro-
tect the civil rights of all citizens, strengthen voting
guarantees and affirm Supreme Court decision on school
desegregation.
HOUSING: Continuation and expansion of federal
programs of public housing, housing for the elderly,
middle-income housing, slum clearance and urban re-
development.
UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION: Application
of federal standards for state unemployment compen-
sation systems to guarantee each worker unemployment
benefits for 39 weeks equal to 50 percent of his average
weekly wage, two-thirds of the state's average weekly
wage.
SITUS PICKETING: Modification of Supreme Court
and NLRB decision which prevented picketing of one
employer at construction site when such picketing
causes employes of other subcontractors to stop work.
AFL-CIO convention unanimously urged adoption of
Forand bill, H. R. 4700.
Prompt enactment asked of Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
bills (S. 1046, H. R. 4488).
AFL-CIO 1959 convention and Executive Council
action called for passage of Murray-Metcalf bills (S. 2,
H. R. 22).
Endorsed Douglas-Cooper-Spence bill (S. 722).
Support of Douglas-Celler bill (S. 810, H. R. 3147) plus
an effective voting referee-registrar plan to protect vot-
ing rights.
Executive Council urged adoption of legislation to meet
these needs, plus passage of emergency Rains bill to
increase housing starts by authorizing $1 billion for
mortgage purchases.
Urged passage of Karsten-Machrowicz-Kennedy-Case-
McCarthy bffl (S. 791, H. R. 3547).
Asked Congress to pass Thompson-Kennedy bill (S.
2643, H. R. 9070) to restore basic freedom to picket
peacefully in construction industry.
House hearings completed; Ways & Means Committee
rejected bill by 17-to-8 vote but is considering revised
plans in executive session.
Senate hearings completed, bill reported by Senate La*
bor subcommittee with modifications; House hearings
now in progress.
Senate passed McNamara bill providing $1.8 billion
over two years in salary, construction grants; House
Education Committee reported Thompson bill providing
$975 million over three years for construction only. *
Senate passed bill providing $390 million for loans
and grants; House Banking Committee reported bill
authorizing $251 million. Rules Committee stalled
bill for 1 1 months, recently began hearings.
House passed a bill with voting referee plan, but re-
jected efforts to broaden general civil rights guarantees
and affirm Supreme Court decision; Senate weakened
House version before passage.
House Rules Committee has approved Rains bill to
encourage housing starts; action on general housing
bill has not yet begun.
Hearings completed by House Ways & Means Com-
mittee; committee now considering unemployment com-
pensation as part of general work on social security bilL
Bill reported by House Labor Committee.
NATURAL RESOURCES: Conservation and develop-
ment of natural resources to provide productive use
today and preserve resources for future generations.
GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS: Extension of federal
requirement for payment of prevailing wages on govern-
ment construction contracts, as provided in Davis-Bacon
Act, to include prevailing fringe benefits; provision for
effective enforcement of federal requirement that pre-
vailing wages be paid to workers on government sup-
ply contracts, as provided in Walsh-Healey Act.
LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS: Need for continuing pro-
gram of federally-supported public works to implement-
Employment Act of 1946; increase in federal aid to
local communities for construction of water pollution
control systems.
ECONOMIC GROWTH: Tight-money policy of Ad-
ministration stifles economic expansion; increased in-
terest rate on long-term government bonds would "lock"
high interest rates into the economy.
FARM PROBLEMS: Falling farm income hurts family
farmer.
ATOMIC ENERGY: Expansion of technical and op-
erational programs to develop atomic energy for peace-
ful uses.
SUPREME COURT: Limitation of Court's jurisdic-
tion, restriction of its power to interpret federal statutes.
MUTUAL SECURITY: Continuation of technical as-
sistance, economic and military aid to other countries.
IMMIGRATION: Abolition of national origins quota
system to permit entry of 250,000 immigrants annually.
RADIATION HAZARDS: Establishment of safety
standards and federal workmen's compensation stand-
dards for atomic workers.
NATIONAL DEFENSE: Closing of space and missiles
gap with Soviet Union, increased support for other mili-
tary programs.
TAXES: Closing loopholes in federal tax laws which
give unfair advantage to a few, discriminate against low
and middle-income taxpayers.
FEDERAL PAY RAISES: Increase in federal classi-
fied and postal worker pay scales to provide equitable
wage adjustment.
Convention urged development of great river basins
on TVA principle, continuation of yardstick principle
of public competition with private utilities, and acceler-
ated soil conservation, water and land development and
national recreation programs*
Approval asked of Humphrey-Fogarty bill (S. 1119,
H. R. 4362) to amend Davis-Bacon Act, and passage
of legislation to improve administration of Walsh-
Healey Public Contracts Act.
Requested approval of legislation establishing "com-
munity facilities 9 ' program of low-interest rate loans to
municipalities; asked passage of Blatnik bill (H. R.
3610) doubling amount of grants available for water
pollution control.
Asked for reorganization of Federal Reserve System,
use of federal economic powers to encourage expan-
sion; opposed H. R. 10590 to increase interest rates
on long-term government bonds.
Supported legislation to improve income of family
farmer, distribute surplus food and fiber.
Asked for enactment of "more vigorous" program
for atomic energy development.
Condemned H. R. 3, which would severely restrict
Court's powers.
Reaffirmed historic support for mutual security pro-
gram; urged expanded Development Loan Fund.
Urged elimination of quota system by Congress.
Asked enactment of federal legislation protecting atomic
workers.
Demanded increased emphasis on space and missile
programs.
Urged elimination of tax loopholes and asked increase
in personal exemptions, elimination of excise taxes.
Supported Morrison bill (H. R. 9883) providing 12
percent pay raise.
No action In either House, except for limited reclama-
tion and parks proposals.
No action in either House.
No action on general local public works program; Pres-
ident vetoed water pollution bill increasing grants to
$90 million a year.
No action on Reserve reorganization; H. R. 10590
reported by House Ways & Means Committee.
Hearings on family farm income bill completed by
House Agriculture Committee.
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy considering bill
making modest improvements.
H. R. 3 passed by House; Senate hearings concluded,
but no further action taken.
House Foreign Affairs Committee approved Adminis-
tration request with slight cuts.
Minor bill admitting 5,000 refugees passed House.
Bill passed authorizing pacts with states but no federal
standards written into law.
Appropriations committees considering Administration's
inadequate budget requests.
Cut in cabaret tax enacted; no action on general tax
measures.
Hearings in progress in House; Senate hearings sche-
duled this month.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1960
age seven
Major Bills Await Action
By Congress At Mid-Point
(Continued from Page 1) *
modification may continue to an
undetermined extent.
Eisenhower has successfully
vetoed one bill already this year —
a measure by Rep. John A. Blat-
nik (D-Minn.) to raise federal
spending for river purification to
$90 million a year for 10 years.
An effort by the House Democratic
leadership to override the veto
failed on a vote of 249 to 157—22
votes short of the required two-
thirds majority.
The clash between liberals, con-
servatives and the White House was
illustrated by the scaling-down of
a school-aid bill approved last year
by the House Education Commit-
tee.
The 1959 bill, providing $4.4
billion for school construction and
teachers' salaries in a four-year pro-
gram, was stuck in the powerful
Rules Committee and advocates
were bluntly informed that the
ILGWU Local
Official Gets
AFL-CIO Post
Maida Springer, former Ladies'
Garment Workers business agent,
has been appointed an international
representative in the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Intl. Affairs.
measure had no chance of clear-
ance for a House vote.
The Education Committee,
faced with this ultimatum, sought
an agreement with the Adminis-
tration on a modified measure
that would be assured of White
House approval but was unable
to obtain any commitment in-
volving a direct grant of federal
funds to school districts.
The committee this year ap-
proved a substitute bill by Rep.
Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.)
eliminating funds for teachers' sal-
aries and authorizing only $975
million in a three-year program
for construction alone.
Passage is expected when the bill
reaches the floor, and it would
mark the first time in history for
House approval of a general school
aid program. The bill then would
got to a House-Senate conference
committee, but whether a com-
promise measure would be signed
or vetoed by the President was
unpredictable. The Senate earlier
this year approved a $1.8 billion
bill for both construction and
teachers' salaries.
The end of the civil rights fight
was forecast when House Speak-
er Sam Raybura (D-Tex.) indi-
cated that the Rules Committee,
despite domination by Republic-
ans and southern Democrats,
was expected to clear the Senate-
passed bill promptly and that a
floor vote on accepting the Sen-
ate measure would be sought
Apr. 21.
The Rules Committee also be-
gan hearings on an area rede-
velopment bill approved last year
by the House Banking Committee.
The Senate-passed measure, ap-
proved by a narrow 49 to 46 vote,
would authorize $390 million; the
House measure is similar. There
was no assurance that the bill would
be cleared after hearings.
Other measures that must still
obtain Rules Committee clearance
are an emergency $1 billion hous-
ing bill, sponsored by Rep. Albert
Rains (D-Ala.), and the Thompson
MAIDA SPRINGER
Named to the AFL-CIO
Intl. Affairs staff
Born in Panama, she went to
high school in Bordentown, N. J.,
attended the officers' training
school of the Intl. Ladies' Garment
Workers Union, the New School
for Social Research, and Ruskin
College, Oxford, England.
In 1933 she joined an ILGWU
dressmakers local, becoming an ex-
ecutive board member in 1937. She
has been an education committee
chairman, educational director for
the Plastic, Button & Novelty
Workers, and a dressmakers' busi
ness agent since 1948.
In 1955 she attended the first
seminar in Accra, Africa, of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions for the former AFL. She
has attended four similar African
conferences, most recendy as AFL
CIO special representative on the
trade union scholarship program.
DiSalle Names Cope
To State Committees
Columbus O. — Elmer F. Cope,
secretary-treasurer of the Ohio
State AFL-CIO, will serve on two
state committees by appointment
of Gov. Michael V. DiSalle.
The governor made Cope a
member of a committee to study
property taxes. The committee
elected Cope its secretary. An-
other committee, the new Ohio
Department of Industrial and Eco-
nomic Development's advisory
committee, elected Cope vice chair-
man.
Unemployment Hits 4.2 Million,
Storms Blamed For Unexpected Rise
situs picketing" bill just approved
by the House Labor Committee.
"The Rains bill is opposed by the
Administration. The Thompson bill,
restoring the right of building trades
union to picket multi-employer
construction sites without violation
of secondary boycott laws, has Ad-
ministration support.
The Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
minimum wage bill has not yet
reached the floor of either house
for a vote, although a Senate sub-
committee headed by Sen. John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) last year ap-
proved a measure to raise the mini-
mum from $1 to $1.25 an hour and
expand coverage to an additional
10 million workers, most of them
in retail trade.
The bill has been listed for action
by the Senate Democratic leader-
ship, but prospects are less certain
in the House, where hearings are
still in progress before a subcom-
mittee headed by Rep. Phil Lan-
drum (D-Ga.), one of the co-
sponsors of the Landrum-Griffin
Act of 1959. The Eisenhower Ad-
ministration has announced opposi-
tion to the $1.25 minimum and has
not revealed its proposals on ex-
panded coverage.
Other measures backed by la-
bor which are almost certain to
reach votes are the Forand bill
on health protection for social
security beneficiaries, an om-
nibus housing bill comparable to
those twice vetoed last year by
Eisenhower, and a bill to raise
the salaries of government postal
and civil service workers. The
Administration is hostile to all
three.
The Forand bill has aroused tre-
mendous support and the Adminis
tration, feeling the heat in an elec-
tion year, is still searching for i
substitute to provide "voluntary'
assistance in meeting the health
needs of older people. The For-
and bill is considered certain to
reach a showdown vote in the
Senate, and possibly in both houses,
despite initial disapproval in the
House Ways & Means Committee
BUST OF SIDNEY HILLMAN at New School for Social Research
is admired by Clothing Workers' Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky (left) and
Pres. Meyer Kestnbaum of Hart, Schaffner and Marx of Chicago.
Occasion was the dedication of a study and seminar room to honor
the memory and achievements of the union's first president.
Sidney Hillman's Ideals
Lauded at Dedication
New York — The ideas, the ideals and the works of the late Sid-
ney Hillman were eulogized at the dedication of the Sidney Hillman
Memorial Room and documentary collection at the New School for
Social Research here.
Hillman used persuasion and logic rather than force to win his
commented Pres. Jacob S.'^
goals,
Potofsky of the Clothing Workers.
A prime example of the ap-
proach employed by the union's
first president, Potofsky pointed
out, was the winning of the pioneer
contract at Hart, Schaffner and
Marx, a pact which provided for
arbitration of grievances for the
first time.
The current head of that giant
men's clothing firm agreed.
HS&M Pres. Meyer Kestnbaum,
a principal speaker at the cere-
monies, observed that Jan. 14,
1961 will mark the 50th anniver-
sary of the first contract between
the company and the nnion —
"with no regrets on either side.*
"What he achieved for his peo-
ple," Kestnbaum said of Hillman,
"was not through power, but
(Continued from Page 1)
Dept. manpower expert, fore-
cast for reporters "a pretty sharp
rebound" from the March fig-
ures when the April job report
is issued.
Referring to the rise of 275,000
in the jobless, the report said "a
large part of the rise in unemploy-
ment occurred among outdoor
workers, although there were also
some employment cutbacks in
automobiles and aircraft plants."
Farm Jobs Down
Wolfbein traced the job and job-
less figures chiefly to counter-sea-
sonal changes in agriculture, con-
struction and trade.
Farm employment, which usually
rises about 250,000 this time of
year, he said, instead fell by 54,000
to an all-time low of 4.6 million.
Wholesale and retail trade nor- .
mally rises by 25,000 between
February and March, but fell by
33,000 to a total of 11.3 million.
Contract construction, Wolfbein
continued, normally would have
risen by 80,000 but instead dropped
by 116,000 to a total of 2.3 ma-
lion.
Manufacturing employment,
which usually moves upward be-
tween February and March, de-
clined by 54,000 to a total of 16.5
million-
Stressing the effect of the
weather on the March figures,
Wolfbein said a "substantial vol-
ume" of employer reports attrib-
uted layoffs and restricted hiring
to bad weather. In addition, he
said, the weather bureau called the
weather "the worst for the middle
of March since 1941."
The weather also was blamed
for reducing the hours of work "in
a number of industries."
Wolfbein said data from Cen-
sus Bureau household surveys
showed that full-time workers
reduced to part-time work dur-
ing the survey week rose by 1
million to a total of 2.2 million.
The number of people with a job
but not at work during the survey
week rose by 500,000 to a "fabu-
lous" 825,000, he noted. This
compares to 170,000 in March of
last year, he said.
The factory workweek, in
which there normally is little
change between February and
March, declined for the third
ICFTU Officials Aid
African Rail Strikers
Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika —
Staff officials of the Intl. Confeder-
ation of Free Trade Unions and
the Intl. Transportworkers Fed-
eration have met here with East
African trade union leaders to back
up the 15,000-member African
Railway Union in its two-month-
old strike for higher wages.
straight month. The workweek
fell 12 minutes to 39.6 hours in
March.
The largest portion of the 54,
000-job decline in manufacturing
employment took place in the
transportation equipment industry
Here jobs declined by 26,000 as
auto plants trimmed their work
force, the report pointed out.
through intelligence and a remark-
able power of persuasion.
Sense of Dedication
"He infused into the labor move-
ment a great sense of dedication —
which I hope it will always keep."
Mrs. Bessie Hillman, widow of
the late union leader and herself a
vice-president of the union, un-
veiled a bronze bust of Hillman
and a memorial plaque. The Me-
morial Room, to be used as a study
and for seminars, is jointly spon-
sored by the union and the New
School and is located' in the univer-
sity's new Albert A. List Building.
William H. Davis, New School
trustee and long associated with
Hillman and the industry as medi-
ator, advisor and chairman of the
War Labor Board in World War II,
presided and spoke briefly of his
recollections of Hillman.
Potofsky told the gathering of
union officials, educators and com-
munity leaders that on the national
and international scene, as well as
the industrial front, Hillman be-
lieved in interdependence.
Hillman's philosophy applied
to today, Potofsky said, means
that labor "must march forward
with a positive program to im-
prove the welfare of all the peo-
ple. We must make better use
of our resources — human and
physical — than we have in the
past." The economy must be de-
veloped "to strengthen the fabric
of our democracy."
2 Firms Plead Guilty
To Antitrust Charges
Philadelphia — Two electrical equipment manufacturers hava
pleaded guilty to criminal antitrust charges after a federal judge
refused to accept pleas of no contest (nolo contendere).
Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co. and three of its officials pleaded guilty
to two indictments charging illegal price-fixing and rigging of sup-
posedly competitive bids in sales'^
of electrical equipment to govern-
ment agencies and private utilities.
The ITE Circuit Breaker Co.
pleaded guilty to one indictment
and innocent to four others.
8 To Fight Charges
Eight other firms which had
sought to plead no contest, which
would mean that they did not con-
test the government's allegations
without formally confessing guilt,
pleaded innocent. At an earlier ar-
raignment, the two giant com-
panies in the group indicted — Gen-
eral Electric and Westinghouse —
entered pleas of innocent.
U.S. District Court Judge J.
Cullen Gamey turned down the
nolo contendere pleas at the re-
quest of the Justice Dept. "in light
of the serious nature of these
charges." Although such pleas
are usually considered the same
as guilty pleas in determining
penalties, a "nolo" plea may not
be used later as an admission of
guilt in a civil suit for triple
damages filed by parties injured
by antitrust violations.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 16, I960
' A Modest Step Forward 9 :
Moderate Voting Rights Bill
Clears Senate, Nears Passage
The 86th Congress moved near to final passage of a moderate five-point civil rights bill con-
taining new voting guarantees for Negroes but stripped of two key provisions supported bv the
AFL-CIO.
The measure, which cleared the Senate by a 71-18 vote after eight weeks of debate and filibuster,
was described by AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller as "a far cry from the kind of
civil rights legislation the country^
had a right to expect."
He said the AFL-CIO "deeply
regretted" that the bill did not
contain major provisions sought
by labor and civil rights groups
giving the Attorney General au-
thority to bring civil suits on be-
half of Negroes deprived of equal
rights, and providing federal aid
to schools seeking to desegre-
gate in accordance with the Su-
preme Court decision of 1954.
The heart of the civil rights
measure is the establishment of a
system of federal voting referees to
permit disenfranchised Negroes to
register and vote after a federal
court decree that a "pattern or
practice" of discrimination exists.
The registration plan applies to
local, state and federal balloting.
Biemiller said that if the voting
provisions of the measure help -end
the wholesale discrimination against
minorities in registering and voting,
the bill will represent a modest
step forward."
Although the Senate made 15
changes in the civil rights bill
passed earlier by *a 311-109 vote
in the House, there were strong
indications that the lower body
would give swift approval to the
modified version.
Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-Va.)
chairman of the powerful, con-
servative-dominated Rules Commit-
tee which bottled up civil rights
legislation for seven months, an-
nounced that the committee would
meet Apr. 19 to act on sending the
measure to the floor. Speaker Sam
Rayburn (D-Tex.) said that if the
bill clears the committee he -would
bring it to a vote Apr. 21.
The Senate bill was opposed
to the end by a hard core of 18
Southern Democrats from nine
states of the old Confederacy.
Earlier, they had staged a mara-
Construction Unions
Hail NLRB 'Precedent'
The National Labor Relations Board has ordered a representa-
tion election for employes of a southern contractor, an action which
could mean a breakthrough for construction unions undermined by
wide-ranging non-union operators.
The NLRB election will be held by Apr. 29 among employes
of the Trammell Construction Co. 1 ^
of Bristol, Va., in a dozen counties
in eastern Tennessee and south-
western Virginia.
The East Tennessee Building
and Construction Trades Coun-
cil, AFL-CIO, welcomed the
NLRB order as "a precedent or
opening wedge of great import-
ance to the construction trades." "*
The council, whose unions have
been picketing Trammell's non-
union operations at the Green Val-
ley State Hospital project since last
September, said the election could
pave the way for 18 unions to win
recognition from general contrac-
tors and subcontractors.
NLRB policy in the construction
field is irregular because of the
seasonal nature of the industry and
the fluctuating workforce.
In the present case, the board
found that while Trammell had
about five regular employes who
served as a nucleus for the for-
mation of new work crews, there
were 652 workers hired at least
once in the past three years.
Their average employment under
Trammell was 65 days a year.
The board agreed with the East
Tennessee Council's petition that
such intermittent employes with
records of substantial employment
with Trammell have enough con
tinuing interest in their conditions
to entide them to vote.
Get your order in now
For the AFL-CIO's
Special supplement on
World Peace and Freedom
On Sunday, May 8, the New York Times will dis-
tribute nationally and throughout the world a special
16-page illustrated supplement based on expert
papers and analyses presented at the AFL-CIO
Conference on World Affairs in New York City,
April 19-20.
You can obtain copies of this supplement —
"American Labor Seeks World Peace and Free-
dom" — by filling out and mailing the coupon below.
Do it now to insure delivery of the number of copies
you need.
AFL-CIO Dept. of International Affairs
815 Sixteenth St., N. W.
Washington 6, D. C
Sencf me a single copy of the supplement free.
Send me copies
(Up to 1,000 copies, 5 cents each)
(Over 1,000 copies, 4 cents each)
Name
Address
thon filibuster which kept the
Senate in continuous session for
a record 125 hours, in an effort
to talk the measure to death,
In addition to the voting right;
guarantees, the bill would:
• Make it a criminal offense to
obstruct the proper enforcement of
any federal court order. Originally
aimed only at court orders in school
desegregation cases, this section
was broadened by an amendment
introduced by Sen. Frank J
Lausche (D-O.) which the AFL-
CIO called "ill-considered, unnec
essary and potentially anti-union
Biemiller had said the Lausche
amendment, applying criminal pen
alties to violators of any federal
court order, would do nothing to
further the cause of civil rights
but could permit harassing action
against unions by unfriendly fed-
eral attorneys."
• Make it a federal crime to
transport or possess explosives, or
to cross state lines to avoid prose-
cution, in connection with hate
bombings of schools, houses of
worship, or other buildings.
> Require the preservation of
voting records for 22 months.
• Provide for the education of
children of military personnel in
cases where regular schools are
shut down to avoid desegregation.
As spelled out in the voting rights
section, the Attorney General is
authorized, providing he has won
civil suit under the 1957 Civil
Rights Act, to ask the court for a
separate finding of a "pattern or
practice" of depriving Negroes of
the right to vote in the area in-
volved in the suit.
If the court found such a
"pattern or practice," any Negro
living in that area could apply
for a court order declaring him
qualified to vote, provided he
passed state voter qualifications,
had tried to register after the
"pattern or practice" finding, and
had not been allowed to register
by local authorities.
Senate passage of the modified
bill marked only the second time
since the post-Civil War Recon-
struction Era that a civil rights
measure has won congressional ap-
proval. The first breakthrough
came in 1957
Leading the drive for a middle-
of-the-road measure were Majority
Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-
Tex.) and Minority Leader Everett
McKinley Dirksen (R-I1L), who
helped marshall votes against both
liberal moves designed to strengthen
the House-passed measure and
Southern Democratic efforts to mu-
tilate the bill's voting rights
guarantees.
In this process, two vital pro-
visions of the Administration's own
civil rights bill were rejected — one
giving statutory authority to the
President's Committee on Govern-
ment Contracts, and the other giv-
ing financial aid to school districts
wishing to desegregate.
Government Unionists
Win Pledges on Pay
The drive for pay raise legislation for government employes has
picked up momentum in Congress in the wake of personal visits by
4,000 union members to their congressmen and senators.
Delegates to a three-day legislative conference of the AFL-CIO
Government Employes Council returned to the post offices and fed-
eral agencies where they work after'^
winning pledges of support from a
solid majority of Congress for bills
which would enable government
workers to catch up with progress
of union members in private in-
dustry.
Early pay hearings in the Senate
were announced by Chairman Olin
D. Johnston (D-S. C.) of the Post
Office & Civil Service Committee.
Johnston told delegates to the
GEC's "Crusade for Economic
Equality" pay rally that he strongly
favored a government pay raise
Meanwhile the House commit-
tee completed the first part of
its pay hearings — testimony by
union representatives in support
of a basic 12 percent raise —
and was scheduled to hear Ad-
ministration witnesses explain
why they are opposing any sal-
ary increase. The committee is
scheduled to wind up its hear-
ings by the end of April and im-
mediately move into executive
session to write up a pay bill.
The government unions, repre
senting 600,000 federal workers,
have put top priority on getting
peedy action by Congress in view
of the implied threat of a veto by
Pres. Eisenhower. Three vetoes of
pay bills by the President during
his Administration are among the
reasons why government pay scales
have lagged behind the rest of the
larpenters Head
To File Appeal
economy, union officials declared.
Winding up the case for the
labor-backed 12 percent bill, AFL-
CIO Legislative Rep. George D.
Riley told the House Post Office
& Civil Service Committee that
government employes are entitled
to a pay raise.
The Administration's "official
line/' he said, is: "When a survey
looks good, sit on it till you can
find one that looks bad and then
you've got it made."
09-9I-*
Kenin Hails Cut
In Night Club Tax
Los Angeles — Pres. Herman
Kenin of the Musicians hailed the
50 percent cut in night club taxes
voted by Congress as "an example
of what unity can achieve when
the efforts of a quarter of a million
union musicians are exerted in be-
half of a just cause." The bill,
which reduces the wartime 20 per-
cent cabaret tax to 10 percent, has
been signed by Pres. Eisenhower.
An appeal to the higher courts
will be filed by Pres. Maurice A.
Hutcheson of the Carpenters from
conviction of contempt of Con-
gress for declining to answer certain
questions before the McClellan
special Senate committee last year,
his counsel said.
Hutcheson was found guilty of
contempt by U. S. District Judge
James W. Morris in Washington,
D. C, who heard the case without
a jury. Sentence was deferred.
Hutcheson balked at answering
McClellan committee queries in-
volving alleged complicity in an
Indiana land deal for which he
faces trial in the state courts. He
did not invoke the Fifth Amend-
ment against self-incrimination. He
refused to answer on grounds that
the questions dealt with alleged per-
sonal activities rather than union
affairs and that any answers might
jeopardize his defense in the state
courts.
Human Rights
Bill Approved
In Kentucky
Frankfort, Ky. — Organized la-
bor won a major victory in its cam-
paign to ease racial tensions in the
South as the Kentucky State Sen-
ate overwhelmingly approved a
House-passed bill to establish a hu-
man rights commission to investi-
gate complaints of racial discrimi-
nation.
The measure, actively supported
by the Kentucky State AFL-CIO,
was approved in the Senate by a
vote of 22 to 10, to make this state
the first in the South to create such
a commission.
Sec. -Treas. Sam Ezelle and
Legislative Chairman Earl Bel-
leu of the state labor body, who
worked in both the House and
Senate for passage of the meas-
ure, hailed the bill as a "great
step forward" in labor's fight for
racial equality.
The bill, sent to Gov. Earl
Combs (D) for his signature,
creates a commission of 11 mem-
bers, appointed by the governor —
one from each congressional dis-
trict and three from the state at
large. The commission was given
$25,000 appropriation to carry
out its investigations of racial dis-
crimination over the next two
years.
Vol. V
815 Sixteenth St. N.W„
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C
Saturday, April 23, 1960 I7««®M* jy G
Labor Urges Bold, Dynamic
U.S. Program for 'Summit'
Firm Stand
Called for
By Meany
New York — The danger of ag-
gression and war can be reduced
if "our leaders at the conference
table . . . convince the Commu-
nist leaders that we have the de-
termination, the resources and the
power to deter any aggressor . . .
in order to preserve world peace
and human freedom," AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany declared
here.
In a speech key noting the AFL-
CIO Conference on World Affairs
at the Commodore Hotel, Meany
warned that if the "free nations
begin to retreat at the summit con
ferences on the future of Berlin"
or any other major issue, "it will
be interpreted as a sign of weak-
ness."
Appeasement of Khrushchev
at the summit, he declared,
"would prove just as disastrous
for the cause of peace and free-
dom as was the appeasement of
Hitler at Munich in 1938."
America and the free world, he
added, "cannot afford to underesti-
mate Soviet strength — military and
economic — nor should we become
overawed by it." America has what
it takes to win the struggle for free-
dom, he asserted. "The greater
danger is default rather than de-
feat."
The American labor movement,
Meany said, favors taking "every
necessary practical and every safe
step to prevent war," and firmly
believes that "our government
{Continued on Page 4)
Labor Scores
2 Victories
In High Court
In twin decisions, the U.S. Su-
preme Court has ruled that rail-
road workers cannot be enjoined
by federal courts from striking to
prevent abolishment of jobs and
that American sea unions cannot
be banned from picketing "run-
away" ships flying foreign flags
and paying substandard wages.
Both decisions, although based
on events of several years ago,
have an important impact on cur-
rent labor-management problems in
the rail and maritime industries.
On the railroads, management
has sought to avoid bargaining on
non-operating union demands for
life insurance and medical benefits,
contending in a suit filed in the
U. S. District Court of Chicago
that the issues are "non-bargain-
(Continued on Page 12)
^fc**"^ • •
SUPPORT FOR SIT-IN demonstrations comes from AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany and Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther, shown signing
cards pledging they will not patronize Woolworth stores until chain
ends lunch counter segregation in South. Seated with them is
ex-baseball star Jackie Robinson. Standing (left to right) are Major
Johns, Chairman Charles Zimmerman of AFL-CIO Civil Rights
Committee, and Marvin Robinson.
Two Major Moves :
Graphic Arts, Paper
Unions Talk Merger
Two major moves toward unity in the graphic arts field have
been launched virtually simultaneously by four unions.
Meeting in Indianapolis, officers of the Typographical Union and
the Newspaper Guild announced agreement on the goal of "one
big union" in the printing, publishing and related industries.
At the same time, the Printing
Pressmen and the Papermakers &
Paperworkers, at a session in the
nation's capital, joined in a pledge
to work for unity in the printing,
paper and paper converting indus-
try, and as a first step signed a
six-part declaration looking toward
organic unity.
A joint statement issued by
leaders of the 110,000-member
ITU and the 32,000-member
ANG declared that whether
"unity takes the form of a merg-
er, an amalgamation of existing
unions, or a new organization;
whether it begins with a combi-
nation of two unions or several —
are details which should not
hinder us in the pursuit of our
goals."
Signed by ANG Executive Vice
Pres. William J. Farson and ITU
Pres. Elmer Brown, the statement
called for "immediate" steps to-
wards unity, hailed the move al-
ready taken by the Pressmen and
the UPP, and expressed the hope
that "all separate efforts toward
unity soon will be consolidated into
discussions involving every union
in the graphic arts field."
The six-point program announced
by UPP Vice Presidents Harry
Sayre and Mark Fisher, and IPPAU
Vice Presidents Walter J. Turner
and Alexander J. Rohan — whose
(Continued on Page 11)
Parley ChartsPath
To Peace, Freedom
By Saul Miller
New York — Organized labor conducted a searching investigation
here of American foreign and military policies in preparation for
the May summit conference and turned up a number of weaknesses
and shortcomings.
Correction of these weaknesses and the mounting of a realistic
offensive to secure world peace and freedom were urged by the 10
major speakers at the two-day AFL-CIO Conference on World Af-
fairs attended by 600 leaders of AFL-CIO unions and state and local
bodies.
The Administration's position, one of the hardest assurances yet
given that West Berlin would not be "sold into slavery," was pre-
sented by Undersea of State Douglas Dillon, who said that the Soviet
Union would be sadly mistaken if it expected the United States to
yield to its threat on Berlin.
Dillon told the conference, the first of its kind ever held by the
AFL-CIO, that Soviet talk of desire for peaceful coexistence had not
yet been accompanied by any sign from the Communists that they
were ready to curb their expansionist goals. (See story, Page 5.)
The conference, called by the AFL-CIO Executive Council to give
the nation and the labor movement "the fullest possible understand-
ing" of the world crisis, was dedicated to fostering "clarification and
understanding of the critical world situation and United States poli-
cies therein."
Outstanding authorities on the problem areas of the globe pointed
up the complexity of the existing situations in Africa, Asia, Latin
America, Germany and the Near East and the aggressive Communist
campaign to exploit those areas where newly emerging nations are
trying to secure the benefits of political and industrial democracy.
Others pinpointed the confusion, weakness and lack of leader-
ship of American foreign and military policy and warned of a
lack of realism in the U.S. approach to the summit meeting.
Among both labor and non-labor speakers there appeared to be
a concensus that the U.S. and the free world must take bold,
dynamic steps to reverse the situation and prevent expansion of
Communist rule to now non-Communist areas of the world.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany sounded the keynote, declaring
that the "great task and responsibility of our leaders at the confer-
ence table will be to convince the Communist leaders that we have
(Continued on Page 3)
Breakthrough in Health Care Seen
Despite Nixon's Open Opposition
By Gene Zack
A major breakthrough appeared in the making on health care protection for the aged through
social security, as compromise proposals reportedly gained ground in the House Ways & Means
Committee — apparently with strong backing from Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) and Chairman
Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.).
As Congress continued to react to mounting public demand for legislation along the lines of the
AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill,- Vice
Pres. Nixon broke his long silence
on the issue and openly opposed
the measure, characterizing it as
"compulsory health insurance."
For months, sources close to
Nixon's presidential campaign
pictured the Vice President as
having waged a strong, but los-
ing, light within the Administra-
tion for a Forand-type bill that
would gear health benefits to the
nation's social security machin-
ery.
The Ways & Means Committee
— which several weeks ago rejected
the original biU introduced by Rep.
Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.) by a 17-
8 vote — has been meeting almost
daily in an effort to find a com-
promise that would still contain
Forand's social security principle.
Limited to Hospital Care
The bill said to be making strong
headway in committee would be
limited to 60 days of hospital care
a year for persons drawing retire-
ment benefits, as compared with
Forand's broader benefits including
surgical and nursing home care for
all social security beneficiaries.
The cost of the program would
Jbe financed by raising the base
wages on which social security
taxes are levied on both employers
and employes from the present
ceiling of $4,800 a year to $6,000.
The Forand bill called for an ad-
ditional tax of one-quarter of 1
percent annually — raising the costs
to employers and employes by $12
a year each.
In what was regarded as an
effort to meet the objections of
opponents of the measure that
health care benefits would be
"compulsory," the compromise
{Continued on Page 11)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 19 So
INTENSE LOOKS mark faces of four members of AFL-CIO Exec-
utive Council during proceedings of AFL-CIO's Conference on
World Affairs at Hotel Commodore, in New York. Left to right
are Vice Presidents A. Philip Randolph, Joseph D. Keenan, Harry
C. Bates and Emil Rieve. Conference hammered out nine-point
program to secure world peace and freedom.
Change in Viewpoint
Urged for Americas
New York — A "differently-oriented leadership" in both the
United States and Latin American countries is needed to break
with the status quo and pave the way for a Marshall Plan designed
to help the people of Latin America, declared Prof. Frank Tannen-
baum of Columbia University.
"Our help," Tannenbaum told^
the AFL-CIO Conference on World
Affairs here, "requires and will
stimulate profound social change.
"And neither we nor the govern-
ments of Latin America are pre-
pared to accept the impending
change." The United States, Tan-
nenbaum charged, is "wedded to
the status quo" and so are most
Latin American governments, a
condition which bars social and
economic progress.
' "Our problem," he added, "is to
find a way for the Latin American
people to identify us with their
aspirations for a better life. The task
of the local leadership is to prepare
the ground for the needed changes.
A differently-oriented leadership is
required at both ends— and that is
most difficult to find.
"But when we consider that it
has been possible in this hemisphere
to work out a mutual security sys-
tem while preserving the sovereign-
ty of the individual nations, it would
seem possible to face up to the task
of dealing with the economic and
social difficulties so as to make the
system effective."
Part of the problem, Tannen-
baum explained, is the outdated
images the U. S. and Latin America
have of each other and, as well, of
the false images still projected by
either side.
Tannenbaum scored U.S. govern-
ment and private enterprise spokes-
men in Latin America whose Madi-
son Avenue language fosters an
image that the U.S. stands for "ab-
solute individualism and an abso-
lutely competitive free enterprise
system, as if there were no trade
unions, no social security, no food
and drug act, no Securities & Ex-
change Commission."
Old Image Sticks
Tannenbaum said Latin Ameri-
cans still see the U.S. as the nation
wielding the "Big Stick" of Pres.
Theodore Roosevelt, an image forti-
fied by a tolerance of Latin dicta-
tors which has been interpreted as
support.
"We were told many times,"
Tannenbaum stressed, "that
strengthening the armies in Latin
America was a political error
and that it would identify us with
enemies of democracy and with
the opponents of freedom."
For their part, he continued,
Latin intellectuals not only havd a
false image of the U.S., but "seem
unaware of political corruption,
nepotism and subversion of public
interest to private and family ends"
within Latin American societies. 1
In pointing up the urgency of
the problems in this hemisphere* he
noted that average annual income
of $2,200 per person in the U.S.
compared to $200 per year per
person in Latin America, with the
gap widening.
The social picture is as bleak,
Tannenbaum said. About half the
school-age children in Latin Ameri-
ca do not go to school "because
there are no schools for them." Of
those who do go, half drop out by
the end of the first year, he noted.
Speaking after Tannenbaum's ad-
dress, Serafino Romualdi, AFL-
CIO inter-American affairs repre-
sentative, warned the conference
that "right now" the greatest single
threat to inter-American unity is
the pressure of the "Communist
conspiracy," existing in the "favor-
able climate" of political instability,
economic discontent and nationalist
aspiration.
"We must satisfy the hunger for
bread but also the hunger for free-
dom," he declared.
Victor Reuther, administrative
assistant to Auto Workers Pres.
Walter P. Reuther, said that blam-
ing Communists sometimes was an
"over-simplification," and added
that Latin American problems had
existed since before the Communist
revolution. He called for more la-
bor support of Latin American as-
pirations for a better life.
Medaris Tells Conference:
Coordination,DecisionFailures
Undermine Defense Position
New York — The U.S. defense position is undermined by failure in coordination and decision,
Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris (ret.), recently head of the Army's anti-missile system project, told
the AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs.
An adequate supply of "destructive capability" is now available to our armed forces "to deter
any all-out attack," Medaris told the delegates.
He then listed numerous "short-'^
comings" in our posture:
• "All the money that is
claimed to be required" for retalia-
tory power "sufficient to destroy
the world and all its people" is un-
hesitatingly granted — but this is
"contrary to our overriding pur-
pose, which is constructive and not
destructive."
• Our three separate inter-
continental ballistics missile pro-
grams "are simply too many"
and involve "billions of dollars
far beyond the basic need," and
seem to suggest that we are pre-
paring "not for retaliation but
for obliteration."
• The Polaris (Navy-operated)
missile system offers "the best bet
for retaliatory striking power for
the near future," and would suffice
with "a very reasonable number"
of land-based missiles. "Those who
play the numbers racket by advo-
cating more and more I believe are
rendering a disservice to the coun-
try."
• The Nike Zeus, an anti-mis-
sile system now in advanced de-
velopment, would relieve the na-
tion from "the dread shadow of
the nuclear bomb suspended by
the thin threat of an enemy's ra-
tionality" and "for every day that
we delay committing the Zeus sys-
tem to production we pay a day's
penalty."
• We must "develop and main-
tain the capability to move selec-
tively" in the choice of weapons
against any threat, but such a
capability "does not exist." We
lack capacity to move the Army
directly to a possibly distant point
and the airlift to move ground
forces is not under the Army's con-
trol.
• We desperately need a pos-
itive civil defense program "that
will teach the people how to re-
act, how to fight panic, how to
prevent chaos," Any man-made
missile can be "defeated by a
superior technology," and "I will
never accept the policy of a
monstrous counter-strike capa-
bility while funds necessary to
protect our citizens against that
very threat are withheld."
• The badly divided space ex-
ploration program should be cen-
tralized in a joint command with
"undivided responsibility" to meet
dangers not yet wholly perceived.
Medaris in his wide-ranging
speech hit hard at uncertain
leadership that had placed us, he
suggested, in a weakened posi-
tion to exercise our military and
moral power affirmatively for our
own purposes.
Again and again, Medaris warned
that if we ever slip to a place
where our retaliatory power must
be used, "it has failed of its pur-
pose."
If its purpose is achieved, "the
weapon will never be employed,"
he continued.
Our defense lags should not
leave us to make a "Slash deci-
sion" either to "accept incoming
destruction as inevitable and lose
the first battle or resort to the
flaming sword of retaliation, thus
admitting that all is lost and
condemning mankind to Arma-
geddon."
We are engaged in a conflict in-
volving "opposite philosophies so
broad and profound" that it en-
gages military, economic, diplo-
matic, political, psychological and
spiritual power, he declared.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. James B.
Carey in floor discussion of the
Medaris speech called for the full
use of American initiative to build
"weapons of peace" now that this
initiative has produced the ability
to deter aggression.
"We should use our funds to
strengthen the economies of emerg-
ing states by a new Marshall-type
plan," he declared.
U. S. Language Lag Seen
Cutting Communication
New York — The United States is about 25 years behind the
Soviet Union in knowledge of Far Eastern languages and at a big
disadvantage in the distribution of low-cost books carrying key ideas
and techniques, Prof. David N. Rowe of Yale University told the
AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs.
"The world of tomorrow," Rowe,'^
a Far Eastern specialist, told the
delegates, "must be one in which
the positive communication of
ideas and knowledge will be great-
ly accentuated over its current
level."
Rowe argued that inter-commu-
nication with Communist China is
virtually impossible today because
of the Bamboo Curtain but, with
respect to other areas, this nation's
Military Weakness of West Seen as
Cause of Soviet 'Blackmail' on Berlin
New York The U.S. position on Berlin has weakened and deteriorated in the past 18 months
since the Soviet Union provoked the crisis, and the recklessness of American military policies and
the breach in Western allied unity have contributed to this weakness.
This was the theme of an address to the AFL-CIO World Affairs Conference here by Dr. Henry
A. Kissinger, director of the Intl. Seminar at Harvard.
Talking on "Germany — the core'^
of the European problem and the
summit," Kissinger declared, "we
must not pretend we are not in
great peril in Europe" because of
the Berlin and German question
If the U.S. and the West had
stronger forces in Europe and had
strengthened NATO over the years
"we would never have heard of
Berlin," he said.
If the West weakens its forces
in Europe any further there will
be an increase in the Soviet
"blackmail" that has brought on
the current impasse in Berlin, he
warned.
As to the summit, Kissinger said
he does not believe that the Soviet
Union will accept German unifi-
cation or arms control, that the
Communists are not interested in
a settlement.
The situation in Berlin, he com-
mented, is the "touchstone" of the
application of the principle of self-
determination in Germany and Eu-
rope as well as in Africa and Asia.
In face of this symbolic impact of
Berlin, the U.S. and Western re-
sponse has not been to close ranks
but to discuss what could be con-
ceded to the Russians.
This approach can put use in an
almost "hopeless" position with the
rest of the world, he emphasized.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Walter
P. Reuther, speaking in the dis-
cussion period following Kis-
singer's presentation, declared
that Khrushchev is unwilling to
allow a test of the principle of
self-determination in Berlin and
Germany in terms of a United
Nations' plebiscite because he
knows that if the people are giv-
en a free choice they will vote
against Communist tyranny.
The weakness of the American
and Western position, said Reuther,
is that "we go to the bargaining
table ill-prepared. We talk about
the Soviet Union's demands, about
the crisis they have created. We
always take the defensive."
'Courageous' Policy Urged
He called for the free world to
take the offensive on the political,
economic and social fronts to cre-
ate a social environment where "we
can make them talk about our de-
mands." The vital ingredient, he
added, is leadership but the U.S.
instead has "government by clever
public relations when we need gov-
ernment by courageous public pol-
icy."
Kissinger told the conference tfrat
the present strange calm that ap-
pears to exist is misleading, that it
is the "calm in the eye of a hurri-
cane — the period of greatest diffi-
culty is still ahead." A measure of
the difficulty in Berlin, he added,
is that we consider an easing of a
threat as progress, a threat that
should never have been allowed to
be made. "A change of tone is not
a change of policy," he warned.
The Soviet offer on Berlin was
characterized by Kissinger as an
offer of gradual strangulation
rather than immediate collapse
and, he said, we should resist it
all the way.
"The real threat to peace in
Europe," he said, is the mainte-
nance by force of the satellite re-
gime in East Germany. East Ger-
many cannot negotiate on unifica-
tion in good faith, he warned, but
if the West accepts the division of
Germany as final there will be
gradual pressure for unification on
Communist lines that could result
in chaos.
major shortcoming is "our almost
disastrous lack of knowledge of the
languages of the Far East."
"The day is past and gone
when we can well gain and keep
friends in that area without a far
greater degree of mutuality in the
use of languages than we now
have as a people and as a na-
tion," Rowe said.
He observed that recent efforts
to make up lost ground are produc-
ing the first trickle of new students
of so-called "rare languages" — so
"rare" they are spoken by several
hundred million people.
He also noted that, "largely be-
cause of the high cost of American
books," America is not communi-
cating its most important ideas and
techniques to Far Eastern peoples.
But the linguistic resources of
Russia and China, he said, enable
the Communists to send millions of
translated books every year into
the Far East "at little or no cost to
the ultimate consumers."
Two other major points Rowe
made were that "the world of
tomorrow must preserve the na-
tion-state system" and that "the
world of tomorrow must embody
the improvement of the conditions
of life for the billions of human
beings who will populate the earth
in coming generations."
The chief threat to this system,
he asserted, "is the world Commu-
nist revolution with its universalist
dogma backed up by military ag-
gression and political subversion."
Criticizing those who have "an
unbalanced degree of trust in the
efficacy of economic measures,"
Rowe said it is a fact of life in
the Far East "that military security
is an absolute prerequisite to eco-
nomic development."
On the economic side, Rowe
cautioned against rushing into in-
dustrialization in countries with
agricultural traditions.
He cited Japan and Taiwan as
models for the reform of agricul-
ture preliminary to industrializa-
tion, allowing for historical differ-
ences and American aid.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, I960
Page Three
Labor Urges Realistic Summit Program
Parley Charts Way to
Peace and Freedom
(Continued from Page 1)
the determination, the resources and the power to smash any ag-
gressor."
Appeasement of Khrushchev, he added, can be as "disastrous for
the caus_e of peace and freedom as was appeasement of Hitler at
Munich." There is no magic formula for "immediate solution" of
the world's problems, he said. At best "we can hope for a gradual
subsiding of international tensions" through acts of good faith by
both sides.
The AFL-CIO president presented to the conference a 9-point
program for peace depending "primarily on our own efforts" be-
cause "we cannot bank on any Soviet concessions given in false
coin." (See story, Page 4).
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther called for a total mobili-
zation of America and the free world in the battle for peace led
by the free labor movement, which he termed the "most effective
anti-Communist force in the world."
A political, economic and social offensive based on full employ-
ment and full production can win over tyranny, Reuther declared
in a speech at the conference banquet, if the effort is made and
America and the free world can shake loose of complacency and
lethargy. (Sec story, Page 4.)
Vice Pres. George M. Harrison, chairman of the AFL-CIO
Intl. Affairs Committee land conference chairman, declared Ameri-
can labor has "the most vital stake in the struggle between de-
mocracy and dictatorship," and outlined as the conference's top
goal the task of helping the nation "replace apathy witht alertness
and action, complacency with a sense of urgency, and confusion
with clarification."
Harrison, spelling out the nature of the Soviet challenge, warned
that the U.S. is in a "very critical period" in which the American
people are not '"sufficiently aware" of the gravity of the threat of
Communist "despotism" against freedom. For this reason, he said,
the conference "could not come at a more appropriate time." (See
story, Page 5.)
Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, director of the Intl. Seminar at Harvard,
pointed out sharply that the U.S. position on Berlin has weakened
and deteriorated in the past 18 months since the Soviet Union
provoked the crisis. The recklessness of American military policies
and the breach in western unity have contributed to this weakness,
he added. (See story, Page 2.)
Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris (U.S. Army retired), recently in
charge of the Army's anti-missile system project, said the U.S.
defense posture has been plagued by failures in coordination and
decision in meeting the major* threats to national security. He
enumerated a series of shortcomings and urged action x>n the Nike-
Zeus anti-missile system now in advanced development to relieve
the nation from "the dread shadow of the nuclear bomb suspended
by the thin thread of an enemy's rationality."
Urges Polaris Missiles
Medaris specifically recommended the Navy-operated Polaris
system as offering the <A best bet for retaliatory striking power for the
near future," commenting that "those who play the numbers racket
by advocating more and more I believe are rendering a disservice
to the country." (See story, Page 2.)
Former Deputy Sec. of Defense William C. Foster said U was
"not only stupid but disgraceful" for the U.S. to measure survival
of western civilization "in terms of dollars" or in comparison to
"the aesthetics of tail fins." Such an attitude, he said, constitutes
**a betrayal of the hopes and aspirations" of millions who sacrificed
to bring the nation to its present state as a first-class power. (See
story, this page.)
The West was urged by Dr. Ernest C. Grigg, chief of the UN
Community Development Group, to propound positive standards
rather than be content with telling the peoples of Africa and the
Near East only "what we are against." This latter posture, he said,
is "sterile and useless" to those nations which are in the midst of a
great social change. (See story, this page.)
Prof. David N. Rowe of Yale University said the U.S. is a
quarter of a century behind the Soviet in knowledge of Far Eastern
languages — a fact, he said, which presents a barrier to "the positive
communication of ideas and knowledge." (See story, Page 2.)
A call for a "differently-oriented leadership" in both the U.S.
and Latin America, in order to break with the status quo and pave
the way for a Latin American Marshall Plan, was issued by Prof.
Frank Tannenbaum of Columbia University. (See story, Page 2.)
The 600 members attending the conference followed the speakers
closely. At the conclusion of Meany's keynote, Al Hartnett, secre-
tary-treasurer of the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, urged
broader cultural relations with the Soviets including exchange
of trade union delegations. Meany responded that he would not
become involved in fraternizing with the killers of millions of workers
behind the Iron Curtain. (See story, Page 4.)
Commenting on Kissinger's speech, Reuther declared that the
problem with American policy was lack of leadership. He noted
also that the Soviets will not face up to testing the policy of self-
determination at the polls because they know that workers who
have been exposed to Communist tyranny will not support it in a
secret ballot plebiscite.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. James B. Carey, speaking after Medaris,
urged a Marshall-type plan to aid the emerging nations of the world
insofar as America has established its military deterrence power.
FREE NATIONS CANNOT retreat on principles at the summit meeting, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany declared in speech keynoting labor's Conference on World Affairs. Some of the top experts
from the field of international relations who addressed 600 delegates at opening session are shown
with AFL-CIO leaders on platform at New York's Commodore Hotel.
'Disgracef uF to Allow U. S. to Become
Second-Class Power, Foster Says
New York — For the United States to permit itself to become a second-class power, "to measure
survival of western civilization in terms of dollars, or the value of survival against the aesthetics of tail
fins, is not only stupid but disgraceful," former Deputy Sec. of Defense William C. Foster told the
AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs.
In addition, it constitutes "a betrayal of the hopes and aspirations and prayers of millions who
sacrificed all that we might today^"
even have our present choice," he
declared in "an estimate of how we
are doing in our foreign policy."
"If I sound violent on this point,"
he added, "I mean to.
"To shirk, minimize and mean-
ly handle our foreign aid, to
focus on the mistakes and not on
the accomplishments and oppor-
tunities, is disgustingly short-
sighted.
"If this nation and its people
have the sheerest glimmer of the
utility and prospect of what our
foreign aid opens to us we may gain
a wise and useful perspective on
the world ahead. I am forced,
sadly, to comment that the vision
today seems weak and almost on
the verge of being ineffective.
Need for Leadership
"But the hopeful thing is that
you men in this room and thou-
sands like you, men of energy and
responsibility, men of this century,
can exercise leadership and can
bring understanding to our people,
tear the veil of complacency and
apathy and ignorance from the
minds of America, and let us act."
Foster's topic was "Essentials
of an Effective Foreign Policy for
the United States." He listed these
"irreducible essentials":
• "We stand for the concepts
of freedom which are inherent in us
because we are the products of
western civilization."
• "We recognize that we are in
the minority; that all men do not
think as we do or share our values.
Therefore, we support honest in-
ternational agreements to harmon-
ize differences without resort to
force . • . We favor the rule of
law."
• "We want not one inch of
other lands. We want no colonies.
We deplore unilateral intervention
by ourselves or anyone else. We
want no markets except those we
win by free, honest competition."
• "We favor and seek justice
and personal, political, economic
and social freedom for men every-
where, including those who lack it
still within our national boun-
daries."
• "We share, indeed we truly
lead, in the world's yearning for
disarmament."
• "We favor and actively lead
in assisting peoples in less developed
lands to improve their conditions.
"We must, as I see it, increase
in amount our resources devoted to
economic assistance to less devel-
oped countries and encourage other
industrialized countries to do the
same.
"We must continue military as-
stance to those allied with us."
Foster commented in depth on
disarmament and on the need for
aid to undeveloped nations. Dis-
armament, he said, "is a desirable
policy, but it is a conditional
policy."
"However, limitation, reduc-
tion and control of armaments is
so vital to the world's future that
we should devote ourselves to-
wards finding ways in which we
can progressively apply it while,
at the same time, in no way re-
ducing our relative security posi-
tion."
In discussing assistance programs,
Foster said that the "revolution of
rising expectations" accelerating in
so many parts of the world was "in
a very real sense" started by the
United States with its breaking out
of colonial status, its contributions
to mass production and mass con-
sumption, and its current revolu-
tion in agricultural technology.
"The gap between our stand-
ard of living and that of people
in the underdeveloped countries,
is "increasing so rapidly that it
cannot be other than a source of
envy and discontent."
'Positive 9 Stand Called
Need in East, Africa
New York — The West must declare what it stands for if it is to
find common ground with the peoples of Africa and the Near East
who are in the midst of a great social change, a United Nations'
official has declared.
Dr. Ernest C. Grigg, chief of the UN Community Development
Group, warned the AFL-CIO Con-^
ference on World Affairs that eco-
nomic progress and freedom are in-
volved in the change, the outcome
of which will affect the rest of the
world.
"What we are against is sterile
and useless and has no meaning
for the peoples of Africa and the
Near East," he said.
"We must declare ourselves for
the things we stand for and then
prepare to implement those stand-
ards without regard to whether the
methods adopted conform to our
own notions of how things should
be done."
'What We Are For*
Grigg proposed the following
positive standards as a way of mak-
ing clear "what we are for rather
than what we are against":
"We are for the full development
of the legitimate national aspirations
of people everywhere.
"We are for equal opportunity
for individuals and states.
"We are for an improved stand-
ard of living for the underprivi-
leged.
"We are for the dignity of the
individual.
"We will do what we can in
individual instances to aid in the
achievement of these goals.
"We will exert ourselves to help
create a world climate in which it
is possible for all countries to work
toward these ends."
The revolution sweeping Africa
and the Near East, Griggs said, will
generate frictions compounded "of
past indignities, of newborn unac-
customed freedoms, of differing sets
of superficial values, of personal
ambitions, of justifiable suspicions,
of former affiliations, of pride and
prejudice."
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1960
PART OF CROWD of 600 delegates to AFL-CIO World Affairs Conference is shown packed into
banquet room at New York's Commodore Hotel to hear American labor's broad-ranging program
for peace and freedom. At speaker's lectern is Vice Pres. George M. Harrison, chairman of
AFL-CIO Committee on Intl. Affairs, who was chairman of conference.
Stand Firm on Principles, Meany
Urges Free World Negotiators
(Continued from Page 1)
should negotiate with Soviet Rus-
sia at the summit and at every other
level. But let us negotiate as real-
ists/'
No 'Pious Platitudes'
He warned that official com-
muniques from the summit "pay-
ing lip service to pious platitudes"
would serve no good cause, that
"smiling photographs and public
handshakes can perpetuate a mon-
strous fraud if they do not symbol-
ize anything deeper, than surface
politeness."
Meany pointed out that there
"is no magic formula in sight for
the immediate solution of the
major problems that beset our
world. The best we can hope
for is a gradual subsiding of in-
ternational tensions through a
step-by-step- program of acts of
good faith by both sides. The
road to peace is an uphill climb
all the way."
Meany outlined in his keynote
a specific nine-point program in-
cluding adequate military strength
for the free world "to defeat any
aggressor"; revitalizing and broad-
ening NATO; stronger U.S. leader-
ship in promoting peaceful use of
atomic energy; elimination of colo-
nialism; reduction of armaments
coupled with inspection guarantees;
strengthening the UN; free elec-
tions in all world areas or terri-
tories in dispute including Berlin;
closer ties between the U.S. and
Latin America; and stepped up eco-
nomic growth in the U.S.
Examining the background
against which the summit confer-
ences are taking place, Meany
sketched the potential awaiting
mankind in eliminating hunger and
disease, providing decent homes
and adequate clothing for all the
world. Illiteracy and ignorance can
be wiped out in a generation or
two and we are now witnessing
the beginning of the end of color
"as a divisive force in spciety. At
last the world will recognize only
one race — the human race."
Goals Are Attainable
These goals are attainable in our
times, the AFL-CIO president said,
if the "great negative potential in
world affairs today," atomic war or
cold war, military war or economic
war, is removed. The '"continuing
threat to human survival and prog-
ress stems from one source and one
source only — Soviet Russia."
In the final analysis, Meany
said, the outlook for world peace
and freedom "depends primarily
on our own efforts. We can-
not bank on any Soviet conces-
sions given in false coin."
Comparing the U.S. and Soviet
intentions, Meany noted that
"America has no aggressive designs
now or in the future against Soviet
Russia. No other free nation en-
tertains such foolhardy notions. If
there can be any one certainty in
international affairs, it is this — that
the free world is willing to live and
let live."
In contrast the Soviet record is
one of repudiating every agree-
ment with her former allies,
Meany said, and suppressing
"with brutal and overpowering
force" revolutions in Hungary,
Poland and East Germany.
Moscow, he added, "invented
and initiated the cold war" and
while there have been "changes of
faces in the Kremlin" there is "not
one scrap of evidence of any change
in the fundamental Communist de-
termination to dominate the entire
world by every available method,
even war."
The Soviet record, he empha-
sized, is a "record of deeds that
cannot be justified by any words."
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. James B.
Carey, speaking from the rostrum
after Meany's speech, charged that
the Eisenhower Administration had
left the country ill-prepared for
summit conferences.
He criticized the preoccupation
with budget-balancing that denied
workers in America feasible social
gains and accused the Administra-
tion of comparable indolence in
preparing for the major internation-
al conferences.
He warned that the spread of
atomic weapons to France and pos-
sibly to Germany and Red China
was a serious threat to peace.
In Battle with Tyranny:
New Policy Needed,
Reuther Tells Parley
New York — Free world labor is the "most effective anti-Com-
munist force in the world*' and wherever labor is strong the forces
of tyranny are "weak and without influence," AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
Walter P. Reuther declared here.
In a speech introducing Undersec. of State Douglas Dillon,
Reuther declared that the new'^ -
power struggle is not for supremacy
but for survival, and that in this
struggle military power is a "nega-
tive aspect of foreign policy that
buys time" so that an offensive can
be mounted on the political, eco-
nomic and social fronts to win over
tyranny.
"We will prevail," he said, "by
demonstrating that our society
can provide solutions. . . . Peace
or freedom cannot be made se-
cure in a vacuum/*
The free world is losing ground
in the struggle for the uncommitted
nations, he added, because "we're
not really trying." Our policies
"are shaped in the image of our
fears not of V>ur hopes," and in too
many areas we are identified with
the forces defending the status
quo, "a status quo that is unac-
ceptable."
Everywhere humanity is on the
march, he said, and this country
must move with it.
We must identify ourselves
still more sympathetically with
the rise of nations in Asia and
Africa and wherever peoples are
striving for social justice and
freedom, he continued.
He warned against letting this
country be identified in other lands
as one in which "second-class citi-
zenship" can survive.
As part of a total effort to win
the peace Reuther urged a national
list of priorities topped by an inten-
sive effort to improve and extend
education to meet the Soviet chal-
lenge and a complete identification
of the U.S. with the global struggle
to eliminate racism, to stamp out
the master race theory and to "give
us moral credentials in the world. H
More Emphasis Needed
In the foreign area there is a
need for a greater emphasis on wip-
ing out hunger by making full use
of our food surpluses and creating
regional world granaries to provide
food capital for those countries that
need it, Reuther said.
He urged greater channeling,
of efforts through the United
Nations and creation of scholar-
ships for Americans and other
peoples to create a "UN Peace
Corps" to serve in economic,
technical and social assistance
roles around the globe.
Reuther called also for exertion
of every effort to set up a ban on
nuclear testing with a universal in-
spection and control system. He
urged that the Chinese Communist
problem be considered realistically
because no arms agreements can be
made effective if they are outside
such a pact.
"Our potential to fight and win
wars must be used to battle and
win the peace," Reuther declared.
He added that labor must lead
the way in bringing about full em-
ployment and full production for
peace as it has in the past for war.
The major task, he concluded, is
to shake the country out of its com-
placency and mobilize it completely
for the battle for peace and free-
dom, i-
Labor's Goal of Peace and Freedom
Emphasized in Nine-Point Program
Meany Again Rejects
Red Union Exchanges
New York — A vigorous exchange on the question of meetings
with so-called representatives of Soviet workers featured discussion
of AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany's keynote address at the federa-
tion's World Affairs Conference.
Meany rejected a proposal by Al Hartnett, secretary-treasurer of
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
The following nine-point program to secure
peace and freedom was outlined by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany at the federation's Confer-
ence on World Affairs in New York City:
Oufcountry and the free worU must acquire
adequate military strength to deter and, if nec-
essary, to defeat any aggressor. What we need,
not what it costs, must be the determining factor.
O NATO must be revitalized and broadened
^ into an organization for promoting effective
economic scientific and cultural — as well as mili-
tary — cooperation among its member states.
O America should exert stronger leadership in
an international program to promote peaceful
uses of atomic energy, harnessed to modern in-
dustrial techniques.
A Colonialism must be systematically eliminated
and the nations thus gaining independence
assisted in raising the living standards of their
people through industrial and agricultural devel-
opment. Only an unceasing struggle against ra-
cial discrimination in the United States will enable
our country, as a democracy with anti-colonialist
traditions, to win the full trust and support of the
captive peoples of Africa, Asia and Europe.
Every effort must be made to secure even
limited reduction of armament, provided ef-
fective international inspection is guaranteed. Our
^oai should be the banning of military atomic
tests, an end to production of nuclear and other
weapons of mass destruction and the genuine
reduction of land, sea and air forces.
/I The UN should be strengthened as an instru-
" ment of world peace, and empowered to im-
plement it$, decision on vital international prob-
lems.
^7 Under UN supervision, free elections should
• be held in every area or territory in dispute —
in Asia and Africa, as well as in Europe — to set-
tle existing problems peacefully, democratically
and finally. This is the only just and practical
method for the re-unification of Germany and,
thereby, the solution of the Berlin problem.
O It is most urgent that America cement closer
" ties with our Latin American neighbors on a
basis of equality. By helping to promote eco-
nomic development and to raise living standards,
we can strengthen democratic forces, discourage
dictatorships and unite the continent as a more
effective stronghold of peace, freedom and well-
being.
9 Our government, together with private in-
dustry, should pursue a clear-cut policy of
stepped-up economic growth. Only thus can we
meet the needs of the defense program and our
increasing population. Only thus can we carry
out our obligations to preserve peace and promote
a better way of life for mankind.
Workers, that American union
spokesmen should "think of includ-
ing exchange meetings on a con-
structive basis" in a cultural pro-
gram with spokesmen of Soviet
labor groups.
"We cannot ignore the exist-
ence of the Communist forces,"
Hartnett said, and people in the
free world and the Communist
countries "should learn to live
together through association."
Meany bluntly replied that "when
you exchange on a cultural level"
with spokesmen from other coun-
tries "you must have someone to
talk to, and there are no representa-
tives of unions in Soviet Russia — •
only representatives of the govern-
ment/'
"We have an obligation to the
workers behind the Iron Curtain,
millions of whom were once free
and are now prisoners of a vicious
dictatorship," he declared. "They
hope some day again to be free;
they look to you as workers to help
them.
"We must think how they would
feel if we fraternized and socialized
with their captors, their jailors.
"The so-called representatives
of Soviet unions are government
officials who tell the workers
what jobs they can have, how
much to produce, where they can
live.
"Let them talk to representatives
of our government if they want to
talk. They're not going to talk to
mc."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D* C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1960
Page Five
Goals Are Prosperity, Freedom 9 :
Dillon Pledges Firm Stand
On Berlin, Warns Soviets
By Willard Shelton
New York — Pledging that the U.S. will stand firm at upcoming summit conferences on the future
of Berlin, Undersec. of State Douglas Dillon called for wholehearted support of this nation's "deliber-
ate effort to influence the forces of history" toward a worldwide expansion of prosperity and freedom.
Dillon acknowledged "considerable evidence that the Soviets, like ourselves, are conscious of dangers
and wish to reduce the risks of major war." The government, he said, is "seeking to verify this
through negotiation."
But he also warned the AFL-
CIO World Affairs Conference here
that we cannot sacrifice principles
in Berlin or elsewhere which "we
deem right and just."
He served notice that the West-
ern powers would not allow West
Berlin to be "sold into slavery 5 *
and said that the Soviet Union
was "skating on very thin ice" in
repeated threats to sign a separate
peace treaty with East Germany
unless the West capitulated on
Berlin.
A first imperative of our policy,
he said, is "to maintain our mili-
tary strength" as a deterrent against
nuclear war, and a second is to
"maintain and reinforce our collec-
tive security defense pacts with
nearly half a hundred nations" to
deter the Communists from seek-
ing military expansion, as in
Korea, through local aggressions.
No issue on earth is "more crit-
ical" than the fate of Berlin, Dillon
declared, because it represents a
crucial test of our own firmness of
purpose and of Soviet good faith.
It would be "highly optimistic"
to think that summit conferences
offer a bright prospect of early
agreement on Berlin, the undersec-
retary said.
Challenges Khrushchev
He bluntly charged Soviet Pre-
mier Nikita Khrushchev with re-
cent statements "far removed from
the facts," and challenged the So-
viet claim that the so-called "ab-
normal" situation should be solved
by declaring Berlin a free city.
The situation is "indeed ab-
normal," he said, because of
artificial separation of East Berlin-
ers from West Berliners and of
East Germans, dominated by So-
viet arms, from the Federal Re-
public.
The Soviet pretense of devotion
World Conference
Hailed by Adenauer
New York — The AFL-
CIO Conference on World
Affairs here drew a salute
from the Chancellor of the
German Federal Republic,
Konrad Adenauer.
In a cable sent to federa-
tion Pres. George Meany and
read to the conference, Ade-
nauer said:
"The unswerving position
of the American trade union
movement is of great signifi-
cance to the entire free world.
"I wish the conference on
world affairs full success and
to you and all its participants
best regards."
to self-determination "is exposed
as an empty gesture" when it is not
applied to Berlin and Germany, he
declared.
The U.S., Dillon said, is "not
prepared to begin the process of
liquidating 'left-overs' from.
World War II by permitting the
isolation and engulfment of West
Berlin."
Dillon paid high tribute to
American labor for its support of
programs to aid the economically
underdeveloped nations and the
work of the AFL-CIO through the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions in assisting free labor or-
ganizations in other parts of the
world.
The Soviet emphasis on econom-
ic penetration, he told the confer-
ence, presents an even greater
challenge to U.S. labor and free
unions abroad.
"The task of American labor in
making its experience of economic
advancement in a democratic
framework understandable to the
newly-developing countries is a
challenge that will muster all the
ingenuity and perseverance it can
muster," the undersecretary de-
clared.
"Free labor is in an especially fa-
vored position to bring this message
to the workers of the developing
countries and to point up the illu-
sory nature of the Communist ap-
peal to achieve economic develop-
ment at the cost of personal and
national freedom," he continued.
Dillon emphasized what he
called three major aspects of our
foreign policy:
• Preservation of the strength
and liberty of the free world against
the Sino-Soviet imperialist drive.
• Efforts to keep "the fierce and
inescapable struggle to which we
have been challenged by the So-
viets from exploding into war."
• "Our long-range search for a
world order capable of securing
peace with justice and freedom."
He warned that despite Soviet
talk of "peaceful coexistence," there
is no evidence that "Communist ex-
pansionist ambitions have altered
in the slightest."
"Their present emphasis on
non-military measures does not
mean that the struggle will be
less intense or the stakes less im-
portant," he continued. "The
primary issue today is nothing
less than the survival of free men
in a free society.
"We can and must demonstrate
that freedom works — that it, better
then communism, can mobilize hu-
man energies and bring about
equitable sharing of the fruits of
labor.
"We can and must bury the So-
viet myth that our system is de-
cadent, while communism is the
'wave of the future.' "
Labor Has 'Vital Stake' in Meeting
Soviet Threat, Harrison Tells Forum
New York — American labor has "the most vital stake in the struggle between democracy and
dictatorship," AFL-CIO Vice Pres. George M. Harrison told the federation's World Affairs Conference
here.
Speaking as chairman of the AFL-CIO Committee on Intl. Affairs and chairman of the conference,
Harrison said that the period leading up to "summit" meetings with the Soviet Union and other
nations revealed both "an impera-^
tive challenge to find the means of
survival" and a "growing desire of
all peoples for peace."'
The free world, he declared,
"must develop the purpose, the
plan and the power to meet the
Communist challenge and its
subversive conspiracy" aimed at
world domination.
He continued:
"Our job at this conference is to
help our country replace apathy
with alertness and action, compla-
cency witty a sense of urgency and
confusion with clarification."
Members of American labor,
Harrison told the conference,
are ordinary citizens with a de-
votion to freedom.
"We want peace with freedom,
not the peace of the prison or the
cemetery."
Sees 'Grave Threat'
Spelling out the nature of the
Soviet challenge, Harrison warned
that we are now in a "very critical
period" in which "the threat of
Communist despotism against free-
dom is terribly grave." "Too few
Americans are sufficiently aware of
the seriousness" of the threat, he
declared.
The Khrushchev dictatorship
"has never hidden its unrelenting
determination to dominate the
world and remold it on the Soviet
pattern," he continued.
"No free trade union move-
ment can exist without democ-
racy. JNor can democracy sur-
vive anywhere, for any length of
time without a strong free trade
union movement."
It is in this spirit, he said, that
the AFL-CIO called the conference
to furnish a forum for outstanding
leaders in the field of world affairs.
"The opinions expressed by the
speakers," he pointed out, might or
might not "be in accord with those
of the AFL-CIO" and might be
accepted, rejected or modified by
the 600 union representatives at-
tending the conference.
But "experience has taught us,"
he declared, "that the weakening or
destruction of freedom anywhere
serves the undermining and over-
throw of freedom everywhere . . .
free labor has been the first target
of every dictatorship."
"The issues the diplomats will
discuss at 'summit" meetings vi-
tally concern all of us — in the
smallest isolated village no less
than in the biggest cities," he
said in his opening remarks.
The AFL-CIO conference, there-
fore, "could not come at a more
appropriate time."
American labor has always
fought dictatorship, he said, and
opposed "Bolshevism, Fascism, Na-
ziism, Falangism and Peronism
from the very outset."
It has fought hunger and disease
as well, Harrison said, and has held
that "there is no room for colonial-
ism in a free world."
THE CLEOPATRA, an Egyptian passenger-cargo ship tied up at
Pier 16 on New York's East River, is picketed in protest against
Pres. Gamal Abdel Nasser's blacklist of ships which stopped at
Israeli ports. Seafarers and Longshoremen unions welcomed the
Cleopatra and Egyptian seamen, but charge Nasser's policies threaten
seamen's jobs and freedom of the seas.
Seafarers' Picket Line
Protests Arab Blacklist
New York — American maritime workers greeted Cleopatra, an
Egyptian passenger-cargo ship, with picket signs protesting Pres.
Gamal Abdel Nasser's blacklisting of American ships and thereby
set off a storm which raged from the East River's Pier 16 to Cairo.
A Seafarers' picket line, maintained since Apr. 13 in protest
against the United Arab Republic's 1 ^
boycott of ships which touch at
Israeli ports, is being honored by
the Longshoremen.
Charging that the Nasser
blacklist threatens job oppor-
tunities of American seamen and
others dependent on the mer-
chant marine, the two unions
urged the U. S. government to
act to restore international law
and freedom of the seas.
If necessary, they said, the gov-
ernment should bar the Navy from
purchasing oil in any port which
blacklists American ships and
should stop shipments of publicly-
owned farm surpluses to any black-
listing nation.
"The government may do noth-
ing," declared SIU Pres. Paul Hall,
"but we don't believe the American
public will swallow this without a
murmur. Certainly, American mar-
itime workers do not intend to take
this sitting down."
The picketing of the Cleopatra
produced these reactions:
• In New York, Federal Judge
Thomas F. Murphy was due to
rule on whether federal courts have
jurisdiction over a request by the
vessel's owner, the Khedivial Mail
Line of Alexandria, for a prelimi-
nary injunction to ban picketing.
The two unions are opposing the
shipowner's move.
• In Cairo, U.S. Ambassador
G. Frederick Reinhart made sev-
eral visits to the UAR Foreign Of-
fice in connection with the case.
It was understood he explained that
court procedure takes time. Mean-
while, the Cairo press reported that
Arab dockworkers in Port Said and
Alexandria have threatened to boy-
cott visiting U.S. ships.
• In Damascus, the Syrian Fed-
eration of Trade Unions ordered
picketing of all American cargo
ships in retaliation for picketing of
the Cleopatra.
Meany Reaffirms Labor
Support of Free Society
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany closed the World Affairs
Conference with a pledge that brought the delegates to their
feet cheering.
Meany declared that "in the finest traditions of the trade
union movement American labor in the trying days ahead will
rise fully to the occasion and demonstrate its belief in a
society of free men in a society of free people."
He made the pledge after reading from the speech presented
earlier in the conference by Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris (Ret.)
that "to win the struggle for peace will require patriotism of
the highest order."
From Tel Aviv came reports
of a favorable reaction in govern-
ment circles and messages of con-
gratulations to the SIU from Hista-
drut, the Israeli Federation of
Labor.
The New York Shipping Associ-
ation protested to the 1LA that the
picket line was for a "political pur-
pose" and charged the union with
violating the no-strike clause in its
contract.
Capt. William V. Bradley, ILA
president, replied that the Cleopatra
was "a hot ship" and said he doubt-
ed longshoremen would work the
vessel even if the picket line was
removed.
Hall lashed U.S. government
agencies for "stringing along with
Nasser" in the blacklisting despite
a press conference statement re-
cently by Pres. Eisenhower that it
is "certainly not our policy" to take
part in such discrimination.
Hall said the Dept. of Agricul-
ture still has a charter clause that
bars American freighters which
have traded with Israel from carry-
ing government-financed farm sur-
plus cargoes to the Middle East.
Hall recalled that the SIU-
manned tanker Kern Hills was
forced out of business due to
the blacklist. The Danish-flag
freighter Inge Toft, he said, was
detained nine months and its
cargo confiscated, drawing pro-
tests from the seamen's section
of the Scandinavian Transport
Workers' Federation.
Calif ornians to
Honor Haggerty
San Francisco — Pres. Clark Kerr
and President-emeritus Robert Gor-
don Sproul of the University of
California will be special guests at
the C. J. (Neil) Haggerty Testimo-
nial Dinners scheduled in May.
The twin $100 a plate dinners in
honor of Haggerty, former secre-
tary-treasurer of the California
Labor Federation and now presi-
dent of the AFL-CIO Building and
Construction Trades Dept., will be
held May 19 in San Francisco and
May 23 in Los Angeles.
The net proceeds will go to help
establish the Earl Warren Legal
Center on the Berkeley campus of
the University of California, the
first such cenler in the West. Hag-
gerty is a regent of the university,
having been named to that post by
Chief Justice Warren when the
latter was governor of California.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, I960
Needed: A Sense of Urgency
A S THE LEADERS of the free^ world speed from capital to capital
for almost endless consultations in preparation for the summit
conferences and Khrushchev continues his traveling salesman routine
several viewpoints are observable.
One is that the summit will solve all the problems of the world,
come up with pat solutions and answers that will remove the threat
of nuclear annihilation.
Another is a dragging apathy, an unconcerned complacency
that best summarizes as a "so-what" attitude.
There is a third approach, a concerned approach that says in
effect as long as there are talks the world will continue intact.
There is obviously no short cut to world peace and freedom.
There are no easy solutions that would not involve a chipping
away at the democratic concept of freedom. The road to world
peace is a complex path crisscrossed with booby traps that can
trigger either a nuclear war or a loss of democratic rights.
This means an alert nation, a nation with a sense of urgency of
purpose and direction, concerned with something more than the ful-
fillment of material desires and the consumption of mountainous
piles of goods. The bomb will not go away and neither will the
constant threat of a world run by men who sneer at the concept of
democracy.
A sense of urgency and a sense of realism based on the needs and
the aspirations of the peoples of the free world can produce at the
summit some possible easing of tensions.
A free world dedicated to the preservation of freedom and
democratic values can touch off a realistic campaign to obliterate
hunger, poverty, disease, illiteracy, racism and ignorance, the
factors that lead to wars and freedom-wrecking dictatorships.
American labor is prepared to make a maximum contribution
to that campaign; this is a war worth fighting. But it cannot be
waged effectively with a pollyannish or an apathetic attitude.
Upholding the Right to Picket
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH, so plainly and
clearly stated in the Constitution, apparently has to be spelled
out time and again when it comes to peaceful picketing.
In two cases this week, one before the U.S. Supreme Court and
the other before a National Labor Relations Board trial examiner,
the issue was decided in cases where even challenging the right of
peaceful picketing is beyond comprehension.
In the court case, a Panama steamship company challenged the
right of American seamen to picket a Liberian-registered ship
putting in at American ports — picketing to protest the low wages
and the miserable working conditions aboard the ship. The court
ruled that any ship that voluntarily enters American waters sub-
jects itself to American laws and jurisdictions.
In the case before the NLRB examiner a three-year-old picket
line of the Hotel Workers at the swank Stork Club in New York
was in question. With the passage of the Landrum-Griffin Act last
year the NLRB general counsel moved to stop the pickets on the
grounds that recognition picketing violated the new law.
The examiner found that the picketing was lawful as an ex-
pression of free speech.
Both rulings — although the examiner's is not final — point up the
right of workers to advise and inform the public that there are
unfair employers operating under substandard conditions — the right
of free speech guaranteed in the Constitution.
How many more rulings are necessary to make this point clear?
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. SufTridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm: L. McFet ridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty .
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, April 23, 1960
No. 17
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Still a Long Way to Co:
Labor's Role in Fighting Bias
Seen as Refutation of Critics
The following is excerpted from an article by
Harry Fleischman of the Jewish Labor Committee
which appeared in the April 18th issue of the New
Leader.
WHEN GEORGE MEANY, AFL-CIO presi-
dent, was quizzed by reporters on Adam
Clayton Powell's prospective assumption' of the
chairmanship of the House Labor Committee, his
characteristically blunt reply: "I think it's terrible'*
exploded on the front pages of the nation's Negro
newspapers. Meany's criticism of Powell's al-
leged ''racism" and record of absenteeism in
Congress was brushed off as "irrelevant."
The National* Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, which a year or two ago said,
"We deplore and dissociate ourselves from the
banner of extreme racialism raised by Mr. Pow-
ell," this time joined other Negro groups to defend
Powell and hit Meany. Negro papers asked rhe-
torically, "Why hasn't Meany ever attacked Gra-
ham Barden (the House Committee's retiring
Dixiecrat chairman) or Sen. Eastland of Missis-
sippi?" ignoring the fact that Meany has repeatedly
denounced Southern white racists.
Unhappily, prejudice has become ingrained
so deeply in all of us that only Negroes may
safely criticize other Negroes; only Jews other
Jews; only unionists other unionists — without
being charged with bias.
NOBODY CAN DENY that labor has a long
way to go to bring about an era of equality for
all within every union and within all unionized
industries. Yet it must also be admitted that
labor has broken down many of the barriers to
job equality for workers of every race, creed and
national origin. Has any other national institution
— including the church, business and political
parties — done as much?
Democratic and Republican national conven-
tions have gone on record for Federal fair em-
ployment practice laws, yet no such bills have
been passed by Congress. Unlike the labor move-
ment, not a single U.S. national manufacturers'
or trade association has a civil rights policy, a
civil rights program or any staff to advance fair
employment opportunities in industry.
All the major religious denominations inveigh
strongly against segregation, but many a minis-
ter ruefully concedes that 11 o'clock Sunday
morning is the nation's most segregated hour
of the week. Unions, too, are faced with the
problem of closing the gap between official
policies and actual practices.
AND NEGRO WORKERS are justifiably im-
patient. For almost a hundred years since the
Emancipation Proclamation, discrimination has
continued. Negroes are still the last to be hired
and the first to be fired.
Negro unionists are still skeptical as to how
fast labor will move to wipe out bias. But they
recognize that not only white unionists keep some
locals segregated. The American Federation of
Musicians has 40-odd Negro locals, many of
which have resisted merger efforts by the parent
union. Officials of such locals are concerned
about their fate in merged unions where the white
membership is much larger; members are worried
about representation at union conventions.
Recognizing these legitimate concerns, A. Philip
Randolph insists that "it does not follow that a
merger pf a racially segregated union with a white
union will always result in a complete elimination
of colored officials." As if to underscore this
point, the first Negro president of an integrated
lodge in the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks was
elected last January in West New York, N. J. He
won by a margin of two to one over a white oppo-
nent, although two-thirds of the lodge's almost
1,000 members are white.
While union membership composition is largely
determined by employer hiring policy, unions have
rejected the "easy out" of failing to advocate laws
banning discrimination in employment. The
AFL-CIO and many of its affiliates have cam-
paigned vigorously for state and local fair em-
ployment practice laws, which make refusal to
hire, on the grounds of race or creed, a law
violation.
Yet Negro union leaders and civil rights organ-
izations insist that labor's progress is still inade-
quate, and the AFL-CIO Executive Council shares
this view. But the latter has been hampered by
a lack of punitive power to remove discriminatory
practices — except to recommend expulsion, which
it is understandably reluctant to do.
Its reluctance stems from the fact that expul-
sion does not end discrimination, it only removes
the discriminatory union from the house of labor,
where the AFL-CIO's powers of persuasion can
no longer be fruitful. Persuasion, unfortunately,
takes a long time, especially when deep-rooted cus-
toms are involved. But the Council has tackled
the problem and is trying to provide more effective
and speedy tactics.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, .I960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Regulatory Officials Still
Accept Favors from Industry
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
NOW IT COMES TO LIGHT that the chair-
man and two other members of the Federal
Power Commission flew from Washington to Lou-
isiana and back last month
in the private plane of a
gas pipeline company
which had $45 million in
rate increases up before
the commission.
This was no junket or
pleasure trip, says Chair-
man Jerome K. Kuyken-
dall, "it was an errand of
mercy. . . ." The wings
for the errand were
thoughtfully provided by
Pres. Ed Parkes of United Gas Pipe Line so Com-
missioners Kuykendall, Arthur Kline and Freder-
ick Steuck could attend the funeral of fellow FPC
member John B. Hussey in Shreveport
The chairman didn't think the government
would pay for such a trip and he didn't have the
money to afford it personally. What a merci-
ful, unmercenary gesture then for the head of
the country's largest gas pipeline company to
provide his plane for the commissioners, before
whom, just one week earlier, he had placed an
application for an $11.5 million rate increase,
latest in a series totaling 45 million! Reflect-
ing their common sense of values, the chairman
of the House legislative oversight subcommittee,
Oren Harris of Arkansas, approved the trip in
advance.
With due respect to the dead, this touching
testimony to the gas industry's heart reminds me
of the wakes Irish politicians used to hold for de-
parted colleagues in order, incidentally of course,
to cement their constituencies with sympathy.
The now ex-chairman of the Federal Commu-
nications Commission, John Doerfer, made his
shallow-water cruise on the yacht of a television
tycoon for fun. The power commissioners traveled
in a gas mogul's plane for the sombre purpose of
a funeral. And in each instance, of course, public
interest was objectively served.
Washington Reports:
PERHAPS EVEN MORE than that of the
FCC, the Federal Power Commission's record
reflects the fascinating process by which the ethi
cal standards of government regulatory agencies
are expediently squeezed to fit the purposes of
special interests.
In 1954, Kuykendall issued an FPC code of
conduct discouraging acceptance by any commis
sion employe of "any valuable gift, favor or serv-
ice from any person with whom he transacts busi-
ness on behalf of the United States." Yet when
questioned by the Harris committee about a 1953
tour he took of the Southwest in another gas com-
pany plane, Kuykendall testified, "that was not
entertainment at all. That was an inspection
tour."
In a first-class job of digging, reporter Warren
Unna cited in the Washington Post, 10 separate
instances of apparent Power Commission bias in
favor of industry over the public. ". . . There
has been increasing cause to wonder," Unna re
ports, "whether the FPC is still a regulatory
agency on behalf of the public, or a referee on
behalf of the industry; a quasi-judicial body or
perhaps an oil-gas-power chamber of commerce
endowed with federal prestige and sponsorship."
No advocate of socialism, creeping or other-
wise, Fortune Magazine last fall charged the
Federal Power Commission's fumbling reluct-
ance to tackle its job of regulation "has created
confusion bordering on chaos."
Some confusion surrounding the backstage con-
tacts of Attorney Thomas Corcoran with FPC
commissioners on another gas pipeline rate case
may be clarified when he testifies before the leg-
islative oversight inquiry in three weeks. Pressure
on the Power Commission is not a clean-cut par-
tisan issue. In fields where financial stakes are
so high, the influence of petroleum and power
empires has touched Republicans and Democrats
alike. Corcoran is a Democrat, once a key New
Dealer, more recently interested in the presiden-
tial prospects of Sen. Lyndon Johnson.
Pundits have called Johnson's identification
with gas and oil interests a principal obstacle to
his candidacy. An ironic fact is that many gas
and oil men, in and out of Texas, consider the
majority leader too liberal for them. What a
timely, tailor-made opportunity for Sen. Johnson
to drive that little-known point home now with
a clear statement of his own views of the pious
Kuykendall scenario.
WASHINGTON
a
Congress Seen Still to Face
Major Issues Before Quitting
TTEALTH INSURANCE for the aged, school
construction, improvement of the federal
minimum wage law, aid to depressed areas, farm-
ing, housing and reclamation are major issues that
Congress must act upon before adjournment, ac-
cording to Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (R-Mich.),
and Rep. Richard Boiling (D-Mo.).
"I think we have a fair chance of getting
something within the social security system that
will start to take care of the dreadful health
problems of our older citizens,' 9 Boiling de-
clared on Washington Reports to the People,
AFL-CIO public service program heard on
more than 300 radio stations.
' It will be a close, tough fight. I think we
must move along the lines set down in the Forand
bill."
Ford doubted that the Forand bill in its present
form will become law. However, "the whole area
of medical and surgical assistance for the aged
must be acted upon, if not in this session, in the
very near future," he asserted.
IN RECKONING on what Congress has done
so far in the second session of the 86th Congress,
both congressmen said that the civil rights measure
is not all they would have liked but it will aid in
protecting a basic right, the right to vote.
Ford called it a step forward. Boiling noted
that it is "the second civil rights bill in 85 years."
The Michigan congressman said that as he saw
it, a school construction bill should "give assist-
ance on the basis of local need and demonstrated
effort."
Boiling asserted there has been an urgent need
for federal aid for school construction for more
than 10 years.
"We face a problem with the President," he
said. "Despite the fact that the House bill is in
essence the same that Mr. Eisenhower recom-
mended several years ago, it's hard to say what
he will do about it."
Ford said that Congress should act on two
housing bills, "one that would make it easier to
get mortgage money, and another that would be
more comprehensive. There'll be difficulty on
both in Congress, and we also face the problem
of a presidential veto."
He said most members of Congress hope to
adjourn by July 4 to make way for the national
conventions.
"Then we can, after the conventions, go out
and defend or attack what has been done rather
than come back after the conventions," he said.
"I think we can really finish if we put our nose
to the grindstone-"
ONE OF THE REASONS the mutual security and similar foreign
aid proposals face trouble in Congress each year is that the Eisen-
hower Administration is vulnerable to a charge that it advocatet
"spending money" to help out "foreigners" in regard to schools,
depressed areas, depressed economic conditions and public health
while it opposes or limits such programs at home.
It is not the foreign programs that are vulnerable so much as the
Administration.
The case for so-called "foreign aid" is a strong one, indeed an
unanswerable one, and there is every reason to believe that the
proper kind of leadership could obtain expansion of the program
rather than the now-familiar paring down process.
Congress doesn't hand out taxpayers 9 money to peoples else-
where without being completely confident that the purposes of the
aid are both understood and affirmatively supported by the voters.
The record shows that when such programs are presented by the
President with imagination and vigor, our people respond generous-
ly. It was true at the time of the postwar British loan, of the
Marshall Plan and its immediate successors, of Mr. Truman's Point
Four program of 1949.
* * *
IT IS ALSO TRUE, however, that foreign aid is harder to gain
support for when the same Administration that urges it is subject
to the accusation that it is more generous in its attitude toward other
people than toward our own citizens.
Nothing much can be done, at this late date, about the curiously
restricted imagination that dominates the Budget Bureau, the Treas-
ury and the White House under Mr. Eisenhower.
Their attitude is that the federal government shall never be
permitted to do anything regarding the general welfare that it has
not done before. The government, for example, has for generations
made grants for the support of education in special circumstances,
but the White House cannot tolerate a different kind of school
support — a general construction program — to meet a different set
of special circumstances today.
Water pollution arising from the concentration of industry and
population on the great river systems is a relatively new national
problem, for the simple reason that pollution did not exist on such
a scale in an earlier era. Mr. Eisenhower simply cannot understand
why poisoned streams cannot still be treated as a "local problem"
for the solution of which the federal government bears no respon-
sibility.
The mutual security program will survive because Congress knows
that the people still support it. But the expanded and revitalized
kind of program that we again need, because the world has moved
tremendously since 1949, could ^not be obtained by this Adminis-
tration even if it asked.
A new Administration will also be needed before our own people
find more sympathetic comprehension of broader social needs.
* ♦ ♦
SEN. CLIFFORD P. CASE (R-N. J.) won renomination by a margin
of more than 100,000 votes despite a savage drive against him by
Robert Morris, former counsel of the Seriate Internal Security Com-
mittee, and a heavily-financed band of conservative GOP business-
men calling Case "too liberal."
Case won despite the fact that the excessively cautious New
Jersey Republican county leaders ducked out on him. He won
despite a quietly waged personal campaign far which he simply
stated his record, which is "too liberal" only by the standards of
Republicans to the right of 19th century steel barons.
This is the second try Morris has made for the Senate. Two
years ago, he ran third in a contest for the GOP nomination. An-
other counsel of the Internal Security Committee, J. G. Sourwine,
also tried for the Senate once — in Nevada, after the death of Sen.
Pat McCarran. Sourwine ran fourth in a four-man Democratic
primary.
CONGRESS HAS A BIG unfinished job for the remainder of this
session, Rep. Richard Boiling (D-Mo.), left, and Rep. Glenn R.
Ford, Jr. (R-Mich.), agreed as they were interviewed on Washing-
ton Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFI.-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, I960
How to Buy:
Convenience Often
Overpriced in Ads
By Sidney Margolius
ONE OF THE BIG SLOGANS in the advertising trade is: "Don't
sell the steak, sell the sizzle." By this, the ad experts mean
they can sell us more goods at higher prices by playing up emotional
and psychological aspects of the merchandise rather than telling us
plain facts about the merchandise itself. The many psychologists
employed by ad agencies nowadays say that "sizzle selling" really
works. It's being used to sell every
thing from peanut butter to political
candidates.
The -business psychologists regard
us consumers as not very bright. A
pp- x JrVvy-) leading psychologist recently wrote in
JX^MC J ' * — the Harvard Business Review that
today's buyer "is often vague about
the actual price he pays for some-
thing; he has few standards for judg-
ing the quality of what he buys, and
at times winds up not using it any-
way."
Even a federal judge recently
pointed out how successful emotional
appeals are in persuading us to buy.
"The men of Madison Ave. sold shirts
by depicting a man with an eye patch; they have sold soap by adver-
tising it to be '99 and 44/100ths percent pure' without bothering
to add the noun; they have sold brassieres by displaying a sleep-
walker," wrote Judge Luther W. Youngdahl.
For example, you know why food processors now offer two types
of peanut butter? Their psychologists discovered that while boys
liked the traditional grainy or chunky peanut butter, the manufac-
turers could sell more peanut butter to girls if it were made smooth,
because smoothness in foods is generally understood to be more
feminine.
In fact, the processors made some peanut butters so smooth, by
adding vegetable oils and fats, that the Food &_Drug Administra-
tion no longer permits the blended product even to be called "peanut
butter." This doesn't bother the "sizzle sellers." They made a
virtue of necessity. Now Procter & Gamble advertises: "Have you
discovered the delicious difference between 'Jif and peanut butter?"
BUT WHEN YOU SEPARATE the sizzle from the steak, you
find you're getting only 75 percent peanuts. The "exclusive blend
of smoothing ingredients" consists mainly of vegetable shortening.
This, of course, is a cooking fat which you can buy for as little* as
28 cents a pound, depending on the brand.
The spread of 41 to 80 cents a pound in the prices of different
brands of peanut butter is a good example of how much you can
overpay when you buy the sizzle instead of checking the ingredients
on the label to see how much real steak you get. Significantly, the
"smooth*' peanut butters all generally cost more than the regular
grind. Highest price this department found is for "Big Top Smooth,"
37 cents for 7 ounces packed in a sherbet glass. In comparison,
supermarkets' own brands in ordinary glass containers cost as little
as 41 cents for 16 ounces. So you pay 40 cents for a sherbet glass.
You can get a useful, factual booklet telling how to judge quality
in women's apparel and select styles suitable for your figure, from
the people who know most about what goes into good clothes —
the workers who produce them. The booklet "How To Be Well
Dressed" is offered without charge by the Ladies' Garment Workers.
It analyzes figure problems, gives inside shopping tips and sugges-
tions for selecting a harmonious wardrobe. The booklet points out
that simplicity is the key to being well-dressed nowadays; "the fussy
costume is out of date." You can get a copy of "How To Be
Well Dressed" by writing to ILGWU Label Dept., P. O. Box 608,
Radio City Station, New York 19.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius
Glazer Sings His Songs
Of Work and Freedom
Joe Glazer has done it again! He has taken 15 of the songs
included in his recent book, and recorded them beautifully on a
long playing record. These 40 minutes of Joe's singing, accompa-
nied by the distinguished guitarist, Charlie Byrd, constitute some
of the best music with "social significance" I have heard in a long
time. ^
The Metropolitan Opera will nev-
er bid for Joe's services, but I don't
think there's a better singer any-
where for the kinds of songs in-
cluded in "Songs of Work and
Freedom." His warmth, his sin-
cerity, his understanding, and sheer
pleasure in singing of man's strug-
gles and his hopes come through
with every note.
Selecting 15 out of the book's
100 songs must have been a mighty
difficult chore: Every listener will
regret the omission of some of his
favorites, but the record does con-
stitute a good balance. There are
union songs, and there are freedom
songs. There are American songs,
and there are foreign songs — like
Kevin Barry and Planting Rice.
Some of Joe's own songs are there,
too — like Automation and Mill Was
Made of Marble. And there is
Solidarity ' Forever, along with its
predecessors John Brown's Body
and Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The record belongs in every la-
bor man's home — and in every un-
ion office. There are few better
ways of running union meetings
than taking time out to be inspired
again and encouraged again by
listening to Glazer and Byrd.
("Songs of Work and Freedom."
Long Playing Record WR-460,
issued by Washington Records,
1340 Connecticut Ave., N. W.,
Washington, D. C. $4.98. Or
from your local record shop.)
Hyman H. Bookbinder
Threat to Family Life:
Housing Picture Across
Nation Not Encouraging
IT IS ONE of the great ironies of political life
that those who speak in such mellow tones
about the family as .the foundation of American
life rarely are moved to decisive action to meet
what is probably the greatest threat to family life
— poor housing.
The results of the 1960 census will provide us
with the latest information on the state of housing
in America but earlier government and private
surveys and studies provide us with some useful
information at this time. It is not encouraging.
This is the picture:
• Some 15 million American families are still
ill housed. This is about one-fourth the total of
U.S. families.
• Some 13 million of these families live in
homes that do not even meet the minimum re-
quirements for family living.
The housing needs fall into these categories:
PUBLIC HOUSING— For families with an
average income of $1,913 or less. Congress in
1949 authorized public housing construction at the
rate of 135,000 units a year. However, Congress
has since limited the actual building to a small
fraction of this rate.
The peak year was 1952. A total of 58,000
units were constructed. The 1955-1958 comple-
tions ranged between 10,000 and 15,000 a year.
The late conservative Sen. Robert A. Taft
(R-O.) estimated in 1952 that we needed 200,-
000 to 250,000 low-cost public housing units
to even make a dent in this critical, slum, crime-
breeding picture. The need has increased since.
MIDDLE INCOME HOUSING— Families
with incomes in excess of $2,000 a year are ex-
cluded from low-rent public housing. Ways must
be found to provide families of moderate or mid-
dle income with help in obtaining new homes
within their means.
It is estimated that 12 million families in this
group, with incomes too high for public housing
and too low for new private housing, are in mod-
erate to desperate need of new homes.
HOUSING FOR THE ELDERLY— The Sen-
ate Subcommitttee on Problems of the Aged and
Aging recently completed a study which showed
that "the provision of safe, sanitary and congenial
housing at a rental whicl\ older persons can afford
is a major unmet need of the elderly."
From Soup to Nonsense:
The subcommittee further noted that "despite
the beginning success of a broadened program
of public housing for the elderly, the bulk of
America's senior citizens will continue to live in
unsuitable structures until supply begins to meet
demand within their financial limitations. The
elderly require a special allocation for public
housing."
MINORITY HOUSING — In our cities minor-
ity groups such as Negroes, Puerto Ricans and
Mexicans are frequently pushed into slum ghettos.
Miserable conditions where several families are
forced to share a single room are not uncommon.
In addition to broad housing programs for all
economic groups, a specific help is fair housing
practice laws. Some 14 states and eight cities
have enacted such laws. Unless discriminatory
barriers are removed minority groups will continue
to live in pitiful hovels.
URBAN REDEVELOPMENT AND PLAN-
NING — Under the 1949 Housing Act hundreds
of cities throughout the country have undertaken
programs of modernizing their communities, in-
cluding slum clearance and urban redevelopment.
The federal government bears two-thirds of the
difference between the purchase price and the re-
sale figure. Local governments assume the other
third.
Funds for this program, however, have been
seriously limited by Congress. At least $1 billion
a year is considered a minimum need.
THE OVERALL PICTURE— Home construc-
tion has always had a direct relationship to the
health of our economy. The current cutbacks in
housing starts are reflected in other areas of the
economy.
Annual rate of home construction in February
was 1,115,000 units a year. The seasonally ad-
justed January rate was 1,210,000 starts. The
February total was a drop of 19 per cent from last
year.
Authorities estimate that it will take 35' million
new housing units in the next 15 years — at least
2.25 million a year — to provide a decent home
for every American by 1975.
Obviously, unless we get some meaningful,
clear-cut federal programs operating we will lag
far behind this most desirable goal. (Public Af-
fairs Institute, Washington Window).
Spring Cleaning Urge Hit You?
Lie Down and It Will Go Away
By Jane Goodsell
SPRING-CLEANING FEVER has got me,
and I've decided to clean out my desk.- Nat-
urally, I keep only necessary and important things
in my desk, but I'll
have to file a few
things away some-
place else. The
other day I tried to
put four airmail
stamps in the- top
drawer, and they
wouldn't fit. Mat-
ter of fact, I had to
pry the drawer open
with a paper knife.
Maybe I can
start by getting rid
of the paper knife.
I never use it. I
just tear envelopes
open with my fingernails. Still, I think I should
use a paper knife. It's neater and more refined.
I'd better keep the paper knife and train myself
to use it.
Now I'll just remove the top drawer and dump
everything out on the bed. Well, for goodness
sakes! Here are my manicure scissors! Isn't it
a shame I bought a new pair? No use keeping
an empty paper clip box. Gracious, I had no
idea I had so many rubber bands. There must
be hundreds of them. Still, you never know when
you'll need a rubber band so I'd better keep them.
I'll just fish the paper clip box out of the waste-
basket and put them in it.
NOW I'LL GO THROUGH the other drawers.
Well, look at this recipe for Veal Birds in Sour
Cream! My, that sounds good, doesn't it? And
here's a photograph of somebody. It certainly is
fuzzy. On the back it says, "Irma, 1953." Do
I know somebody named Irma? Well, I must
know her. Why else would I have her picture?
I'd better paste it in my album. I wonder where
the album could be? .
And here are a whole bunch of washing in-
struction tags. It's very important to keep
those. I wonder if this one could be from
Katie's jacket? It says, "Do not put in dryer."
It probably is from Katie's jacket because the
Lining got all matted when I put ifin the dryer.
Here's that Christmas card list I was looking
for. I'd better keep it to check against the new
list I made. And here's a box top entitling me
to enter a contest to win a trip around the world.
Oops! The contest ended December 31, 1956.
Why, here's a little booklet on removing spots
and stains. And here's another on First Aid.
Isn't that nice? I'm glad I have these. They're
full of vital information.
And what's this? It's a raffle ticket on a tele-
vision set. I can't remember buying it so I guess
the raffle is ' over by now. Still, suppose they
called me tomorrow and told me to bring my
ticket and collect the TV set I'd won? Wouldn't
I feel terrible if I'd thrown the ticket away? I'd
better hang on to it, just in case.
Oh boy! Look at all these trading stamps!
Now, if I can just find that stamp book to paste
them in ... Oh my goodness! Look at the time!
Five-thirty, and I haven't even thought about din-
ner. Maybe I'll fix veal birds in sour cream . . .
no, there isn't time. We'll have to eat hamburger
again, I guess. Oh well.
I'd better just dump all this stuff back in my
desk. I'll straighten it out tomorrow, for sure.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, I960
Pag* Niiid
Ef fective Regulation Needed:
Marketplace Scandals Spur
Consumer Legislation Drive
Payola, sick chicks, cancer in cosmetics, watered oysters, concealed credit charges and short
weighted meats are among the recent marketplace scandals which should spur labor and consumer
groups into a drive for effective consumer legislation, the AFL-CIO has declared.
"Much of the federal protective legislation now on the books has been paid for by human lives,
commented Labor's Economic Review, a publication of the AFL-CIO Department of Research, in
discussing the present state of con-® ; ~~~~
with respect to cosmetics and ther-
apeutic" devices, the Review added.
In these areas, FDA still has to
sumer protection.
"Fresh scandals involving cor-
rupt practices in advertising, in
radio and TV broadcasting and
in drug pricing," the Review said,
"point to the need for greater
understanding of consumer pro-
grams and for organized action
in behalf of the consumer."
The Review noted that several
states now provide for direct con-
sumer representation, in their gov-
ernments, while two bills" before
Congress would recognize the con
sumer at the federal level.
Federal Agency Proposed
A bill introduced by Sen. Estes
Kefauver (D-Tenn.) would create
a federal Dept. of Consumers,
which would maintain contact
with its "consumer constituency
through an annual National Con-
ference of Consumers. Another
measure, sponsored by Sen. Jacob
K. Javits (R-N.Y.), would create
a Select Committee on Consumers.
"Labor union members and their
families have a special stake," the
Review emphasized, "in the degree
to which producers, merchants and
advertisers, wittingly or unwitting-
ly, end up deceiving those who buy
and use their products.
"Hard- won wage increases
should not and need not be frit-
tered away on overpriced prod-
ucts, phony bargains, dangerous
foods, worthless medicines and
concealed financing costs on in-
stallment loans."
Federal regulation to protect con-
sumers from physical harm began,
the Review noted, in 1 906 with the
Federal Meat Inspection Act and a
Pure Food and Drug law. Caustic
poisons were included in 1927 and;
in 1938, cosmetics were added to
what is now the Food, Drug and
Cosmetic Act.
Fight for Poultry Law Won
The Review pointed out that the
Meat Cutters' Union led the drive
for an inspection law to cover the
rapidly-growing poultry industry, a
law finally passed in 1957 after
two poultry workers died and 62
others became ill from handling
poultry diseased with parrot fever.
The Food and Drug Adminis-
tration has the job of policing some
$70 billion in retail products, the
Review observed. But new "won-
der" drugs, pesticides and food
^additives" have created new prob-
lems. These are now covered, with
a special "cancer clause" in the
1958 Food Additives Amendment
added with the strong support of
the AFL-CIO.
The Review noted that the pre-
testing of new chemicals came
under regulation only u after an
untested sulfa drug containing
an anti-freeze ingredient caused
the death of over 100 persons.* 9
Unfinished business in requiring
pre-testing of ingredient remains
catch up with an unsafe product
after the damage is done.
An important related problem,
the Review said, is to make sure
products with harmful ingredients
are not "misused by the consumer/ 1
"In a single year," the Review
added, "240,000 children were
poisoned, over 5,000 of whom
died. Accidental poisonings ac-
counted for 43 percent of all
deaths of children between the
age of 2 and 3."
The Review said labor is sup-
porting remedial legislation now be-
fore Congress and is urging that it
be extended to include industrial
chemicals.
In this day of secret formulas,
exotic additives and "miracle" fab-
rics, the Review said, the consumer
has a "right to know" what he is
buying. The Review said the Fed-
eral Trade Commission has little
more than "cease and desist" au-
thority against such deceptive prac-
tices as earn-money-at-home
schemes; phony correspondence
schools; "bait" advertising; fictiti-
ous pricing and fast-talking sales-
men.
The FTC administers three label-
ing acts — the Wool Products Label-
ing Act of 1939, the Fur Products
Labeling Act of 1951 and the Tex-
tile Fiber Products Identification
Act of 1958. The Wool Act covers
labeling only, while the latter two
include advertising, the Review
said.
The Review set out three areas
where consumer protection is un-
der discussion:
• Labeling the Cost of Credit
The Review said consumer credit
is now over $51 billion, not count-
ing mortgages, with interest on this
sum estimated at about 20 percent
per year and the ordinary buyer
usually in the dark on credit
charges.
The Review pointed out that a
bill sponsored by Sen. Paul H.
Douglas (D-IU.) and 19 other sena-
tors and backed by organized labor
would require that all borrowers
be informed in writing of the total
dollar amount of finance charges
and the total finance charge in
terms of a true annual interest rate
• Grade labeling. The Review
noted that grade labeling for qual
ity was developed for the conven-
ience of trade, but urged that it
be made compulsory for the pro-
tection of the buying public.
• Maintaining price competi-
tion. Pointing out that brand com-
petition is replacing price competi-
tion, the Review warned that a so-
called federal "fair trade" law
which would protect brand-name
products on a high-price, low-sales
basis was favorably reported by
the House Interstate Commerce
Committee. It would, the Review
said, cost the buying public $10
billion a year more in higher
prices.
Railroad Wage Dispute
Certified to President
The National Mediation Board has asked Pres. Eisenhower to
appoint a fact-finding panel to head off a possible nationwide rail
strike on May 5.
Establishment of a Presidential Emergency Board to recommend
a settlement in the wage dispute between the railroads and unions
representing 600,000 non-operating'^
employes would preclude a strike
for at least 60 days. The board
would have 30 days to make its
recommendations and both parties
would then be required to bargain
for an additional 30 days before
the unions would be legally free to
strike.
The mediation board which,
under the Railway Labor Act,
made the first effort to bring
about a settlement, abandoned
its efforts on Apr. 4 after being
unable to close the gap separat-
ing the union proposal for a 25-
cent hourly increase plus vaca-
tion and holiday benefits and the
railroads 9 demand that workers
take a 15-cent hourly pay slash.
The board formally bucked the
case to the President by certifying
that the dispute threatens "to halt
essential transportation service and
disrupt interstate commerce."
While the unions were prepared
to take strike votes to back up their
demands, the referral to a Presi-
dential Emergency Board has long
been expected. The board's recom-
mendations are not binding on
either side, although they normally
form the framework for final nego-
tiations.
The operating unions — repre-
senting the actual train crews — are
not affected by the National Medi-
ation Board's action. They are still
in direct negotiations, except for
the Locomotive Engineers who
have placed their wage case in ar-
bitration. An entirely separate
round of negotiations will begin at
a later date on the railroads' de-
mands to the operating unions for
changes in work rules which the
unions say would destroy jobs,
present safety risks and sharply
cut earnings.
Types Of Deceptive Practices
EARN MONEY AT
HOME SCHEMES
PETECTWf
SCHOOL
JhJL
PHONEY CORRESPONDENCE
SCHOOL
FUR.
OUR
PRiCB
ARTIFICIALLY PRICED
C00DS
SUCK DOOR TO DOOR
SALESMEN
EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE to safety by publications in the labor
field brought the National Safety Council's public interest award to
the B. C. Lumber Worker, Vancouver, B. C; The Machinist; the
Pilot (National Maritime Union); the Sentinel, of Homestead, Pa.
(Local 1397, Steelworkers); and the Voice (Cement, Lime & Gyp-
sum Workers). Mrs. Jane Stokes of The Machinist is shown re-
ceiving her paper's award with the approval of Roger Coyne (right),
IUE director of safety, and Gordon H. Cole (left), editor of The
Machinist.
Seafarers' President
Hits Hoffa 's 'Schemes 9
Bal Harbour, Fla. — Seafarers Pres. Paul Hall, in a blistering
indictment of James R. Hoffa, president of the expelled Teamsters,
has served notice that he will not take part in the so-called "Con-
ference for Transportation Unity" or any other of the Teamster
chief's "ambitious schemes."
"This charming little chap
nothing but a whistle-blower and a
fink," Hall told the 26th convention
of the Operating Engineers here.
"He has made a lot of noise
about his opposition to the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act and he has threat-
ened to defeat any member of Con-
gress who voted for it. Yet he has
invoked that very same law in an
effort to upset an election in Puerto
Rico where we beat him hands
down.
"Anyone who does that, any-
one who is willing to sit down
with Harry Bridges and his Com-
mie friends on the West Coast in
a grab for more power, is through
in my book," Hall told the cheer-
ing delegates.
"He may boast about his 1.6
million members and his $50 mil-
lion bank account, and he may
threaten to wipe us out in Puerto
Rico and push us into the ocean,
but you can't get 'more than 200
men on the end of a dock."
Hall's charges came as the after-
math of an intensive organizing
drive in Puerto Rico which resulted
in an NLRB election victory for
the SIU over the Teamsters. He
said he offered to turn over the
truck drivers to the Teamsters be-
fore its expulsion from the AFL-
CIO. However, the Teamsters at
that time were not interested in
organizing in Puerto Rico.
Recently Hoffa insisted on the
surrender of the truck drivers to
him, but Hall said that on in-
structions from AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany he refused to do
so. In the bitter struggle that en-
sued, Hall alleged, the Teamster
chief sent battalions of "strong-
arm men" into Puerto Rico to
intimidate the workers, "yet now
he is charging us with terroris-
tic tactics."
Hall praised the "stand-up" qual-
ities of Puerto Rican workers and
urged all legitimate trade unions to
take a greater interest in organizing
them and improving their condi-
tions.
Officers Renominated
By Operating Engineers
Bal Harbour, Fla. — The new administration of the Operating
Engineers won a resounding vote of confidence and support from
the 750 delegates at the union's 26th convention here.
Joseph J. Delaney was nominated for re-election as president with-
out opposition, as was Hunter P. Wharton for secretary-treasurer.
Long lines of delegates from vir-^
tually every local in this country
and Canada took the floor micro-
phones to make seconding speeches
for the two men who took office
two years ago, when the union was
under fire from the McClellan com-
mittee.
Elections will take place this sum-
mer by secret ballot referendum of
the entire membership.
Only one contest developed in
the slate of vice presidents. R. B.
Bronson, of Local 12, Los Angeles,
was nominated to oppose the in-
cumbent second vice president,
Frank P. Converse of Local 18,
Cleveland.
John F. Brady, of Local 41, Chi-
cago, was nominated to replace
John J. MacDonald of New York
as first vice president. According
to advance reports, MacDonald in-
tended to run against Wharton for
secretary-treasurer, but support for
this move failed to materialize and
he was not nominated for any office.
The nominating procedures took
four hours as the enthusiasm of the
delegates carried the convention
beyond the scheduled time for ad-
journment.
Top achievement of the conven-
tion was the adoption of constitu-
tional amendments extending equal
voting privileges to all the union's
302,000 members.
Contests Mark Vote
By Screen Extras
Hollywogd, Calif. — Twenty-
three candidates are competing for
17 offices in the annual election of
the Screen Extras Guild.
Pres. Jeffrey Sayre is opposed
for re-election by John Rice and
Recording Sec. Evelen Ceder has
been challenged by Sandee Mar-
riott. Fifteen members are com-
peting for 1 1 positions on the
board of directors.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1960
NLRB Jumped the Gun:
Stork Pickets Legal,
Trial Examiner Says
New York — That picket line around the Stork Club the National
Labor Relations Board had had enjoined as "illegal" isn't, according
to an NLRB trial examiner.
Instead, said Trial Examiner C. W. Whittemore in his report, it
does not violate any proviso of the Labor-Management Relations
Act, including the 1959 Landrum-'f"
PHILADELPHIA DRESS Joint Board workers form a smiling phalanx on the Capitol steps. They
visited members of Congress and the Senate April 2 in support of the Forand bill and minimum wage
amendments. Men in the front row are Congressman Herman Toll, Chairman Aaron Einbinder of
the Joint Board, and James J. Mahoney, directly behind Einbinder.
'Pigeonholed 9 Study Criticizes
Overuse of Emergency Boards
Rules for the appointment of presidential emergency boards in labor disputes should be reviewed
to make sure that a national emergency is in sight, and not mere public inconvenience, a federal
consultant has recommended.
In a study of the impact of collective bargaining in the transportation industries, Prof. William
Gomberg of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania inter-
viewed management and union^
leaders in the maritime, railroad,
trucking and airline industries, and
reached these conclusions:
• The National Mediation
Board should encourage rail labor
and- management to establish a
commission to study work rules and
work practices (what management
has called the "featherbed" issue)
after current negotiations on con-
tracts have been concluded;
• Labor and management
should try to find some private
mechanism that would do for them
what the right of eminent domain
does for property owners and gov-
ernment agencies in the public
field;
• Work rules should be
looked on as a property right of
Air Unions Challenge
Strike Insurance Pact
Six airline unions, in a renewed legal action, have petitioned the
Civil Aeronautics Board to kill an expanded mutual assistance pact
by nine major U.S. airlines.
The language of the revised agreement would, if the CAB ap-
proves, provide strike insurance for a struck airline even if the strike
were deliberately provoked by man^ Na ^ Northwest Air
agement, the new Association ot
Air Transport Unions argued in the
petition.
This would be illegal, and
against the public interest, the
unions said. The pact, said Ma-
chinist Pres. Al J. Hayes, chair-
man of the union association, is
"nothing more nor less than an
open declaration of war against
unions in the airline industry by
the larger carriers."
The petition represented the first
joint action by the union associa-
tion, created after the employers
made a mutual aid pact. The un-
ions are the Machinists, Air Line
Pilots, Air Line Dispatchers, Rail-
way Clerks, Flight Engineers, and
Transport Workers.
Changed Provisions
Heart of the union protest is that
six of the employers made a pact
which was approved by CAB last
January on the ground that it would
permit the airlines to protect each
other from demands made by un-
ions in excess of those recommend-
ed by a Presidential Emergency
Board. The new pact, with three
more airlines added, would go be-
yond the original purpose and
make the pact applicable to all
strikes, even those provoked by
management, the unions told CAB
in their latest brief.
Airlines involved in the origi-
nal agreement were American,
Capital, Eastern, Pan American,
Trans World, and United Air
Lines. The revised agreement
includes those six, plus Braniff,
Lines.
The union petition declared:
. . while it was contended that
the original pact was merely an
effort to oppose unreasonable de-
mands by unions, the amendments
to the agreement drop all pretense
of such an objective. . . . The agree-
ment emerges into the light of day
bearing the label of an out-and-out
effort of the larger carriers in the
industry, by combination, to bring
about labor agreements that em-
brace their views as to employes'
wages, hours, and working condi-
tions."
The union brief points out that
the Railway Labor Act, under
which the industry operates, seeks
to encourage free collective bar-
gaining. The brief asks:
"What respect is there for the
process of free collective bargain-
ing in an agreement which says, in
effect, that the principal carriers
intend to gang up on all unions —
big and small — to enforce those
carriers' demands to restrict the
statutory right of the employes rep-
resented by those unions to with-
hold their services as a recognized
legal part of such bargaining
process?"
The unions asked CAB to hold
a full-fledged hearing on the re-
vised pact. Six airlines signed the
original agreement Oct. 20, 1958,
to bail out Capital Airlines during
a Machinists' strike. In the pact,
the lines agree to reimburse a struck
line out of extra revenues taken in
by diversion of passengers to the
other lines.
workers, arrived at in lieu of
wage increases;
• No new legislation should be
considered this year in the air trans-
portation field, except possibly an
amendment of the labor law to
legalize the hiring hall;
• The Railway Labor Act
should be left alone at this time;
• Maritime management and
unions should be encouraged by
government agencies to work out
ways to help the American mer-
chant marine compete with other
flags.
Prof. Gomberg's 25-page re-
search paper was prepared in
connection with the transporta-
tion study of the U. S. Depart-
ment of Commerce. Dated Feb.
4, 1960, it was kept under wraps
until Apr. 11, 1960, when the
New York Times reported its
contents. Subsequently the re-
port was reproduced by the Rail-
way Labor Executives' Assn.
Gomberg discusses the question
of whether or not there has been
too much automatic recourse to the
use of the Presidential Emergency
Board.
"It is completely possible," he
says, "that one of the reasons that
the board has lost much of its im-
pact is the indiscriminate recourse
to its use, instead of impressing
upon the parties that they fail to
come to agreement at their own
risk."
Kelly Joins Staff
Of AFL-CIO News
Eugene A. Kelly, until recently a
reporter with the former Cleveland
News, has joined the staff of the
AFL-CIO News as an assistant
editor.
Kelly, widely known in the labor
field for his coverage of many un-
ion conventions and other labor
events, was with the Cleveland
News more than 20 years.
He was a charter member of
Local 1 of the Newspaper Guild
when it was founded in 1933, and
is the only person to serve two
terms as its president. For over
15 years he served as a member of
the local's executive board.
His reporting assignments for the
Cleveland News and the Cleveland
Press, and Plain Dealer, where he
also worked, have included school,
metropolitan affairs, consumer is-
sues, and the courts.
Griffin amendments the board cited
when it went into Federal Court
last February and obtained an anti-
picketing injunction which remains
in effect until the NLRB finally
disposes of the case.
The picket line was set up by
Hotel & Restaurant Employes
Locals 1 and 89 back in January
1957 when Sherman Billingsley,
operator of the gilded hangout of
cafe society, fired a kitchen work-
er because of activity on behalf
of Local 89.
The union filed charges of illegal
discrimination and refusal to bar-
gain with the New York State La-
bor Relations Board, which took
two years and 2,000 pages of tes-
timony to decide it lacks jurisdic-
tion.
The Stork Club later filed NLRB
charges that the line violated the
ban on picketing for recognition or
organizational purposes because the
unions were not certified as bar-
gaining representatives of employes.
Such picketing is permitted, under
the 1959 amendments, for only 30
days when the union has not filed
a petition for an NLRB election.
It was this complaint that
Whittemore found not substanti-
ated. He said that immediately
after the Stork Club filed the
charges, the union publicly pro-
claimed it was withdrawing any
demand for recognition.
He found that in light of the
public withdrawal of their demands,
the locals' "object" in picketing the
place could not be said to have
been forcing the club to recognize
and bargain with them.
Under "all circumstances," he
recommended that the complaint
be "dismissed in its entirety."
The NLRB general counsel ob-
tained the anti-picketing injunction
Stork (Club) Flaps
Its Wings in Vain
New York — Sherman Bil-
Kngsley, operator of the gold-
plated Stork Club, forgot all
about labor solidarity when
he invited 200 stage people to
a "Tony" party. A "Tony* is
the Broadway counterpart of
Hollywood's "Oscar."
When the invitations went
out Angus Duncan, execu-
tive secretary of Actors Eq-
uity, couldn't help thinking
about the picket line Hotel &
Restaurant Employes Locals
1 and 89 have had around
the Stork Club. He sent
telegrams to some of the
prospective guests reminding
them that a labor dispute ex-
isted and pointing out that
the "prestige of the theater
will suffer if our allegiance
to the labor movement is
open to question."
So 15 people showed up.
Among those who didn't
were Ethel Merman, Mary
Martin, Melvin Douglas,
Walter Pidgeon, Harry Bela-
fonte and Kurt Kasner.
"I'm gonna sue," threat-
ened Billingsley. "Let him
sue," said Duncan*
when the Stork Club's charges were
filed. The usual picket signs were
promptly pulled off the line, and
under the auspicies of the Union
Label & Service Trades Council of
Greater New York a new picket
line was thrown around the place
in a campaign to educate the public
to watch out for the union label
and the union shop card as evidence
of employer fairness.
Boycott of South Africa
Set to Start on May 1
The Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions has set May 1 for
the start of free labor's worldwide boycott of South African goods.
Called to express abhorrence of South Africa's "apartheid" racial
policies, the boycott was voted by the last ICFTU world congress
and was approved in principle by the AFL-CIO Executive Council
at its February meeting in Bal Har-
bour, Fla. It will continue for at
least two months.
In New York, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany said the U.S. gov-
ernment will be asked to cut off its
purchases of South African gold,
one of that strife-torn country's
major products. Labor in addition
will support the boycott of con-
sumer goods.
The AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl.
Affairs, in accordance with in-
structions from the Executive
Council, has worked with other
groups to help set up a broad
base for a consumers 5 boycott.
The department also was directed
to notify the South African gov-
ernment of U. S. labor's de-
termination to continue the boy-
cott "unless it is prepared to
change its inhuman racial poli-
cies."
The ICFTU resolution, approved
at the world congress in Brussels
last December, was intended to give
tangible support of free labor's sol-
idarity with persecuted native Afri-
can workers and to exert maximum
pressure on the government to
change its repressive policies and
to end its denial of trade union
rights.
Boycotts have already been in-
stituted by the labor movements
of several countries, including
those of Great Britain, the Scan-
dinavian countries, Germany, *
other African nations and coun-
tries in the West Indies.
South Africa's major consumer
products are wines, spirits, fresh
fruits and fish, and a wide variety
of canned foods, including jams,
fruits, fish, meats and vegetables.
In a manifesto announcing the
start of the boycott, the ICFTU de-
nounced the police murders of un-
armed South Africans demonstrat-
ing against stringent laws based on
racial discrimination; government
policies which "make Africans
third-class citizens in their native
land," and the complete denial of
all political and trade union rights.
M Let the free trade unionists
of the world take the lead in a
mighty movement of protest
against the brutal oppression of
the great majority of South Af-
ricans by a handful of racial
fanatics," the ICFTU asked.
"Let us insist, in particular, on
full trade union rights for all South
Africans: the right to form and
join unions of their own choice, to
bargain collectively and to strike."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1960
Page EIevc»
Kef auver Hits GOP Stall in Drug Probe
'Critics' Give Views,
Dirksen Blast Fails
By Dave Perlman
The Kefauver antitrust subcommittee, after having touched off a
federal grand jury investigation of the prescription drug industry,
overrode the objections of Senate Republican Leader Everett Mc-
Kinley Dirksen (111.) and continued its drug probe with the an-
nounced goal of "bringing out the facts and letting the chips fall
where they may."
se-
In an angry exchange as the sub-
j committee resumed its hearings,
; Dirksen accused Chairman Estes
iRefauver (D-Tenn.) and the sub-
committee staff of being "unobjec-
tive and unfair" by calling as wit-
; nesses leading physicians who were
; "critical" of the drug industry,
i Dirksen, backed by his fellow Re-
! publican on the subcommittee —
Sen. Roman L. Hruska (Neb.) —
! also criticized Kefauver for not
, scheduling until later in the hear-
: iogs testimony by the American
I Medical Association.
Kefauver, accusing the Re-
publicans of trying to "impede
: and delay" the subcommittee, re-
ported that "so long as I am
chairman, there is not going to
! be any whitewashing of any in-
dustry or of any group."
He noted that the Justice Dept.,
as a result of the subcommittee's
hearings earlier this year, had on
Apr. 7th empaneled a speqial grand
jury in New York to investigate the
manufacture, distribution and sale
of prescription drugs.
The "critical" witnesses to
whom Dirksen and Hruska ob-
jected included the former medi-
cal director of a pharmaceutical
company and experts from the
faculties and staffs of leading
medical schools and hospitals.
Speaking from first-hand experi-
ence, they warned of misleading
drug advertising, of inadequately-
tested drugs put on the market to
reap a quick profit, and of the dan-
gers of physicians accepting unsub-
. stantiated claims for drugs as a
substitute for proper medical care.
Dr. A. Dale Console, for five
years until 1957 chief medical di-
rector of the Squibb division of
Glin Mathieson Co., told the sub-
committee that the drug industry
depends for its profits on getting
physicians to prescribe drugs which
aire either of no benefit to the pa-
tient, are no better than an inex-
pensive substitute, or which are
more apt to harm than help a
patient.
He warned that most of the
so-called "studies" of the effec-
tiveness of drugs, based on re-
ports from physicians who agree
to test new drugs on their pa-
tients, lack scientific validity.
Legitimate medical education, he
said, finds it hard to compete with
the drug industry's "carefully con-
trived distortions driven home by
the trip-hammer effect of weekly
mailings, the regular visits of the
detail man, the two-page spreads
and the ads which appear six times
in the same journal, not to men-
tion the added inducement of the
free cocktail party and the golf
outing."
He proposed establishment of "a
central agency empowered to ap-
prove or to disapprove the sale of
drugs on the basis of objective evi-
dence of efficacy and to ban mis-
leading and ambiguous advertising
and promotion."
A faculty member from Iowa
State University's School of Medi-
cine, Dr. William Bean, told the
subcommittee that the selling tac-
tics of many drug firms are incom-
patible with proper testing of drugs.
He said:
'The richest earnings occur when
a new variety of drug is marketed
before competing drugs can be dis-
covered, improvised, named and re-
leased. This bonanza time may last
only a few months. Unless there
are large earnings, the quick kill
with the quick pill, the investment
does not pay off."
He charged "censorship" by some
medical societies "which avoid
scheduling papers by speakers who
might be critical of a drug exhibi-
tor's products" and said "some edi-
tors have refused to publish articles
criticizing particular drugs, lest ad-
vertising suffer."
Lavish Dinners'
At certain professional meetings,
Dr. Bean said, "various pharmaceu-
tical houses maintain convenient
rooms for the relaxation of their
friends and clients. Cocktail par-
ties are the order of the day. Lavish
dinners may be held.
"These seem to be free. In-
stead they are supported by in-
creasing the cost which our pa-
tients pay for drugs."
Another medical school faculty
member, Dr. Frederick H. Meyers
of the University of California, de-
clared that physicians are "confused
by nearly 400 new drug products
per year, of which only a few have
any value."
Dr. Chauncey D. Leake, assist-
ant dean of Ohio State University's
School of Medicine and president
of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, said "it
would be much more useful to a
physician to be given the chemical
formula of a new drug in an ad
than to be offered merely its short,
snappy trade name in big type
alongside the head of a pretty girl.".
PETITION BEARING SIGNATURES of 7,000 retired members of Auto Workers urging Forand
bill passage is presented to Rep. Wilbur D. Mills (left), chairman of House Ways & Means Committee,
by UAW Pres. Walter P. Reuther. Looking on are some of the union's retirees who signed petition at
mass rally in Detroit Labor-backed Forand bill currently is stalled in Mills' committee.
Breakthrough in Health Care Seen
Despite Nixon's Open Opposition
(Continued from Page 1)
reportedly would give retired
workers the choice of accepting
the health insurance or of re-
ceiving higher social security
benefits.
The efforts at compromise re-
portedly had the backing of Ray-
burn, who broke a major logjam
on Capitol Hill by declaring that
any health care legislation will be
financed "through the social se-
curity approach."
Nixon's firm opposition to the
social security principle for health
care was spelled out in detail by
his administrative assistant, Robert
H. Finch, in a letter to Dr. Ralph
A. Dorner, president of the Polk
Printing, Paper Unions
Step Up Merger Talks
(Continued from Page 1)
unions have a combined member-
ship of 250,000 — contained an in-
vitation to all unions in the graphic
arts and paper industries to join in
harmony talks.
Workers in the related indus-
tries, their "unity declaration"
said, "acknowledge the futility of
two or more . • • unions com-
peting against each other in the
fields of organization and collec-
tive bargaining," and "recognize
that far greater accomplishments
can be achieved through joint ex-
penditure of time, energy and
money."
Declaring their "ultimate objec-
tive is complete organic unity and
full merger" of all unions in the
field, the Pressmen and Papermak-
ers agreed:
• To work "sincerely and un-
selfishly" toward this goal with all
unions in their respective industries.
• To cooperate in collective
bargaining "to secure and advance
uniformly high standards of wages
and working conditions."
• To organize jointly "or render
assistance to each other" in union-
izing drives.
• To render "all possible assist-
ance and aid" in strikes or lockouts.
• To exchange information and
material of mutual benefit in collec-
tive bargaining.
• "To cooperate in all other
ways to advance the welfare of our
members."
The 1TU-ANG agreement,
worked out by leadership teams at
a two-day meeting at ITU head-
quarters in Indianapolis, empha-
sized that "unity is demanded to
build the collective strength of our
members striving for just wages
and working conditions and to
combat the attacks of of unfair
employers and the effects of puni-
tive legislation."
A unified organization, they went
on, "would create a strong force
for the ultimate progress of em-
ployes and the industry which em-
ploys them."
In initial discussions, the two
unions agreed to designate staff
and field representatives as liaison
in situations which may lead to
a strike or lockout, to exchange
information for use in collective
bargaining; to combine organiz-
ing drives in selected cities; to
explore proposals for mobile
printing plants for use in strikes
or lockouts; to study the possi-
bility of a common defense fund;
and to work toward even closer
coordination of bargaining ef-
forts.
Taking part in the talks for the
ITU besides Brown were Vice
Presidents John J. Pilch, A. Sandy
Bevis and Joe Bailey; Sec.-Treas.
William R. Cloud; and Harry Reifin
and F. E. McGlothin, assistants to
Brown.
Representing the Guild were
Farson, Pres. Arthur Rosenstock,
Sec.-Treas. Charles A. Perlik, Jr.;
Organizing Dir. J. William Blatz;
and Research Dir. Ellis T. Baker.
County Medical Society of Des
Moines, la., and published in the
April issue of the Polk County
Medical Bulletin.
"The Vice President, through-
out his career as a public official,
has consistently opposed and
will continue to oppose any com-
pulsory health insurance pro-
gram," Nixon's aide wrote.
"This, of course, includes the
Forand bill which, as you may
have noted, has been endorsed
without qualification by the three
announced Democratic presiden-
tial candidates" — Senators John
F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Stuart
Symington (D-Mo.) and Hubert
H. Humphrey (D-Minn.).
Finch wrote the medical society
head that Nixon "believes that the
best way to handle the problem of
people over 65 who do not have
and cannot afford health insurance
is through a program which will
enable those who desire to do so
to purchase health insurance cover-
ing catastrophic illnesses from pri-
vate group carriers on a voluntary
basis."
Linking Nixon firmly to Eisen-
hower's long-standing opposition
to providing health care through
the 25-year-old social security pro-
gram, the Vice President's admin-
istrative assistant declared:
"Any reports to the effect that
either the President or the Vice
President have supported or will
support a compulsory health in-
surance program are completely
without foundation."
Strike Brings Gains
At Sport Goods Firm
Chicago — A 10-day strike
of 475 Packinghouse Work-
ers at the Wilson Sporting
Goods Co. plant near here
has ended with a vote in
favor of a contract providing
wage increases of nine cents
an hour this year, and an ex-
tra six cents next April 1.
The plant makes athletic
equipment, including Sam
Snead and Walter Hagen golf
clubs. The workers struck
April 4 for their first UPWA
contract after 10 or more
negotiating sessions. In the
new agreement, management
agrees to absorb half the cost
of employe insurance premi-
ums; add an eighth paid holi-
day, and make other im-
provements.
This appeared to torpedo claims
from some GOP quarters that
Nixon was, in effect, a captive of
Eisenhower's policies but that the
Vice President would be "liberal"
if elected to the White House in
his own right.
Organized labor has assailed the
Administration's opposition to the
Forand bill as "abject surrender to
the dictates of the medical lobby
and the insurance trust." AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany has
charged that the Administration
"ought to be thinking of the prob-
lems of people, not the profits of
insurance companies."
Meany Hails
African Fight
For Freedom
New York — The loyalty, devo-
tion and support of American labor
"in the fight for human and na-
tional freedom, for a thoroughly
humane, free and prosperous
world," were pledged by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany in greetings
to the African Day Freedom rally
here.
"The stirring events now gripping
Africa and sections of our own
country," he said, "are but a con-
tinuation of the historic advance of
the people of every race, color and
creed towards freedom and well-
being."
The days of colonialism "be-
come fewer and fewer,** Meany
said, as Algeria and other Afri-
can nations "become free and
weld their cooperation for the
promotion of democracy and hu-
man well-being." A "desperate
reactionary regime in South Ar-
rica," he added, "is fighting mad-
ly and savagely its last round."
"Now that color as a bar to
dignity and decency in human re-
lations is disappearing," Meany
continued, "liberty-loving people
everywhere must redouble their ef-
forts to hasten the day when no
people on earth will be degraded
by and suffer from racial discrimi-
nation, bigotry, oppression and ex-
ploitation under the guise of any
self-arrogated civilizing mission or
world-remoulding party or dogma.
"Only an unceasing struggle
against racial discrimination in the
United States will enable our coun-
try, as a democracy with anti-colo-
nialist traditions, to win the full trust
and support of the captive peoples
of Africa, Asia and Europe."
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1960
Does Not Fulfill Hopes:
Mild Civil Rights Bill Passed;
Fight to Go On, Meany Says
The 86th Congress has passed and sent to Pres. Eisenhower a watered-down civil rights bill which
the AFL-CIO said "does not fulfiill the hopes" of organized labor for a "truly meaningful measure/'
In a calm anti-climax to the bitter battle which raged for more than two months on Capitol Hill,
the House, as expected, adopted the Senate's stripped-down bill, keyed almost exclusively to moderate
voting-rights guarantees.
House approval of the modified'^
civil rights measure brought to an
end a struggle that has dominated
the election-year Congress since its
opening. Final passage came by
an overwhelming vote of 288 to 95.
Voting for the bill were 1 65 Demo-
crats and 123 Republicans. Against
it were 83 Democrats and 12 Re-
publicans.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
bluntly warned that the trade un-
ion movement would not be con-
tent with the modest advances made
in what was only the second civil
rights measure to be enacted since
the post-Civil War reconstruction
era.
"The struggle for full freedom
in America," Meany said after
House acceptance of the bill, "has
never enjoyed a moratorium from
the very first days of the republic to
the present.
"With enactment of the Civil
Rights Act of 1960, there must
again be no moratorium. The
AFL-CIO will be back again ask-
ing the 87th Congress to rein-
force and to build on the founda-
tion that has been laid so slowly
and so weakly."
The civil rights measure was
largely the product of massive com-
promise by Senate Majority Leader
Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) and
Minority Leader Everett McKin-
ley Dirksen (R-Tll.), who rallied a
majority to hold the line against
both liberal efforts to strengthen the
measure and southern Democratic
moves to weaken its key provisions.
Meany declared that "whatever
little good remains" in the measure
finally adopted "is due to the con
scicntious and dedicated work of a
relative handful of legislators in
both parties whose efforts prevented
still further scuttling of the pro
posed legislation."
The AFL-CIO president said that
"unfortunately" these legislators
"were outnumbered too often by a
strange coalition of Southerners
whose position was at least under-
standable, if not commendable, and
other members of Congress whose
vacillation on civil rights was com-
pletely inexcusable."
Regrets Expressed
Meany expressed labor's "regret
that the Administration did not . . .
stand firm for its own very mod-
erate proposals." He referred to
Dirksen's leadership in the fight
which eliminated Administration-
backed sections that would have
Court Voids Injunctions
Against Rail, Sea Unions
(Continued from Page 1)
able" under the Railway Labor Act.
It was a similar contention which
the Supreme Court rejected in in-
validating a federal court injunc-
tion which, in 1958, prohibited the
Railroad Telegraphers from strik-
ing to prevent unilateral action by
management to close several hun-
dred small stations and throw a
large group of union members out
of work.
Justice Hugo L. Black, speaking
for the majority in a 5-to-3 de-
cision, declared that the Norris-
LaGuardia Act, broadly prohibit-
ing federal courts from issuing
injunctions in labor disputes,
"squarely covers this controversy."
Declaring "we cannot agree
with the Court of Appeals that
the union's efforts to negotiate
about the job security of its
members represents an attempt
to usurp legitimate managerial
prerogatives, 9 ' Black pointed out
that "in the collective bargaining
world today, there is nothing
strange about agreements that
Labor Wins
Anti-Scab Law
At Wilmington
Wilmington, Del. — An ordinance
outlawing the recruiting of profes-
sional strikebreakers in Wilming-
ton labor disputes has been passed
by the City Council at the behest of
organized labor and signed by
Mayor Eugene Lammot.
The measure, which became ef-
fective immediately, makes it il-
legal for any person, firm or cor-
poration not involved in a labor
dispute to recruit, secure or seek to
secure persons for jobs when the
purpose "is to have such person
take the place in employment of
employes in an industry where a
labor strike or a lockout exists."
The ordinance does not apply to
any employment agency licensed by
the city.
affect the permanency of employ-
ment."
Referring to a "trend of legisla-
tion" to broaden the scope of col-
lective bargaining on the railroads,
the Supreme Court declared "it is
too late now to argue that employes
can have no collective voice to in-
fluence railroads to act in a way
that will preserve the interests of
the employes as well as the inter-
ests of the railroad and the public
at large."
Black was joined by seven other
justices in a parallel ruling that the
Norris - LaGuardia Act prohibits
federal courts from enjoining pick-
eting of ships flying so-called "flags
of convenience" even if there is no
labor dispute between the crews of
the ships and the owners.
The decision gives a major assist
to the joint drive by AFL-CIO un-
ions to organize the "runaways" —
ships owned by Americans but fly-
ing the flags of foreign countries,
usually Liberia, Panama or Hon-
duras, to avoid paying union wages
and meeting United States mari-
time laws.
The case reached the Supreme
Court on an appeal from an in-
junction barring the Marine Cooks
& Stewards — a unit of the Sea-
farers — from picketing a Liberian-
registered ship delivering a cargo
of salt to Tacoma, Wash. When
the ship entered Tacoma harbor, it
was met by a union picket boat
carrying a sign: "AFL-CIO seamen
protest loss of their livelihood to
foreign flag ships with substandard
wages or substandard conditions."
Pointing out that the protest
dealt with wages and working
conditions, Black said the case
"clearly does grow out of a labor
dispute" even if the unions and
the ship owner did not have an
employer-employe relationship.
The decision emphasized that
"Congress passed the Norris-La-
Guardia Act to curtail and regulate
the jurisdiction of courts, not, as
they passed the Taft-Hartley Act,
to regulate the conduct of people
engaged in labor disputes."
given federal aid to schools seekine
to desegregate, and that would have
given statutory authority to the
President's Committee on Govern-
ment Contracts.
He also voiced "regret" that
the bill failed to include the so-
called "Title III" — similar to a
provision knocked out of the
1957 Civil Rights Act— which
would have given the Attorney
General authority to file civil
suits on behalf of persons denied
their rights in a broad range of
cases, including school desegre-
gation cases.
The measure which went to the
White House for Pres. Eisenhower's
expected signature would:
• Establish a system of federal
voting referees to permit disfran-
chanised Negroes to register and
vote in federal, state and local elec-
tions after a federal court decrees
that a "pattern or practice" of dis-
crimination exists.
Meany expressed the hope that
"despite its obvious shortcomings,"
this section would "bring some
progress" in the extension of de-
mocracy, but added that success
would "depend in large part" on the
determination of the Executive
branch "to press forward vigorously
in the full enforcement of civil
rights laws, both old and new. Such
enforcement has fallen short of the
mark in the last few years."
• Make it a criminal offense to
obstruct proper enforcement of any
federal court order. Originally
aimed only at school desegregation
cases, it was broadened by an
amendment introduced by Sen.
Frank J. Lausche (D-O.) in the face
of labor opposition.
Meany called the section "ill-
considered, unnecessary and poten-
tially anti-union," and said it could
"permit harassing action against
unions by unfriendly federal attor-
neys." He added that courts now
have "sufficient power to deal with
willful obstruction of court orders
in labor cases."
• Make it a federal crime to
transport or possess explosives, or
to cross state lines to avoid prose-
cution in connection with hate
bombings of schools, houses of
worship or other buildings.
• Require preservation of vot-
ing records for 22 months.
• Provide for the education of
children of military personnel in
cases where regular schools are
closed down to avoid desegregation.
Using Inadequate Material
OR AWN FOP Tug
$1.1Q-$1.15 Minimum
OK with White House
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, spelling out for the first time the
Administration's recommendation of a "modest" increase in the
minimum wage, has indicated the White House would accept a floor
of $1.10 to $1.15 an hour.
Mitchell, appearing before a House Labor subcommittee, ex-
pressed continued Administration'^
hostility to the AFL-CIO-backed
Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill
which would raise the minimum to
$1.25 an hour and broaden cover-
age to include 7.6 million workers
not now afforded the protection of
the wages and hours law.
In his prepared testimony, the
Secretary called for limiting the ex-
tension of coverage to only 3.1
million of the 20 million not cur-
rently protected. Under question
Mitchell indicated he was not "ir-
revocally wedded" to the 3.1 mil-
lion figure, leaving the door open
to further extension with a pledge
to consider another figure.
The support for raising the min-
imum from its present $1 level to
$1.10 or $1.15 marked a major
breakthrough, since the Adminis-
tration for the past three years had
opposed any hike in the wage floor.
Earlier, another Administration
spokesman — Commerce Sec. Fred-
erick H. Mueller — declined to
name any figure which he con-
sidered "modest," and declared that
he personally opposed the "whole
philosophy" behind minimum
wages. Mueller leaned toward a
bill which would extend coverage
only to 2.5 million.
The AFL-CIO position on a
more meaningful bill is supported
by the Citizens Committee on
the Fair Labor Standards Act, of
which Very Rev. Francis B.
Sayre, Jr., of Washington, D. C,
is chairman.
Mitchell testified that the impact
of these proposals would be "far
too great to permit absorption" of
wage increases without substantial
cuts in employment.
"This would require an increase
in the wages of millions of these
workers," he declared. About 1.4
million of them are paid less than
$1 an hour, and 400,000 are paid
less than 75 cents.
"Many of the firms, including
thousands of small businesses which
would be brought under the act for
Meany Demands ILA Lift
Charter of Dominicans
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has instructed the Long-
shoremen to withdraw a charter issued to a group of workers
in the Dominican Republic.
Noting that "all labor is under control of a vicious dictator-
ship" in the Dominican Republic, Meany asserted that con-
tinued existence of the charter "is an affront to free labor
everywhere in the world and in particular to the American
trade union movement."
The instruction to lift the charter was contained in a tele-
gram to Capt. William V. Bradley, ILA president.
Meany said newspaper reports indicate the charter had not
been withdrawn despite the fact that on Mar. 28, "you made
a commitment" to Peter J. McGavin, assistant to Meany, that
the charter would be nullified.
"I demand," the AFL-CIO president wired Bradley, "that
you now take prompt action to immediately withdraw this
charter."
the first time, would be required
to adjust to increase in wage costs
of 50 percent and more.
"We recognize that there are
millions of workers who are en-
titled to the protection of the act,
and who need to be treated as other
workers. But as a practical matter
you can only extend this act by
stages or degrees.
"When we talk of extending
coverage to 3.1 million workers
as opposed to 8 million we are
doing that, not because we have
no concern for the other 5 mil-
lion, but because it is not prac-
tical."
The Secretary said Pres. Eisen-
hower has, in each of the past seven
years, recommended extending
wage protection to several million
additional workers. It may be
Mitchell said, that Congress has
taken no action on these recom-
mendations because of the "extreme
provisions" of counter proposal in-
troduced in Congress.
AFL-CIO Backs
Free Flight Bill
The AFL-CIO, in a statement
before the Senate Aviation sub-
committee, endorsed a House-
passed bill which would authorize
free or reduced-rate travel for
civilian aviation employes.
AFL-CIO Legislative Rep.
George D. Riley said this has been
an uncertain issue for nearly three
years, growing out of an effort to
define "immediate family" of air-
line directors, officers and workers.
Stage Set for Talks on Industrial Peace
-
High-Level
Conference
Is Planned
Pres. Eisenhower has formally
set in motion plans for a top-
level conference of labor and
management leaders in a move
designed to bring about harmo-
nious industrial relations.
Meeting at the White House
with AFL<TO Pres. George
Meany and Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell, the President said his
call for a conference was the first
step toward encouraging "regular
discussions between management
and labor outside the bargaining
table."
Eisenhower requested Meany to
designate three persons from labor
to meet with an equal number
from management for the purpose
of developing conference plans
"without government participation."
A White House press statement
said the President will meet soon
with Rudolph Bannow, president
of the National Association of
Manufacturers, to request the
naming of management delegates.
The statement stressed that these
would be top executive officers —
either presidents or board chair-
men — of companies "that have
collective bargaining agreements
with affiliates of the AFL-CIO."
The meetings were first proposed
last November by Meany, who
urged the President at that time to
summon a conference to "consider
and develop guiding lines for just
and harmonious labor-management
relations." Eisenhower officially
endorsed the proposal in his State
of the Union Message early this
year.
Government to Step Out
Although the conference an-
nouncement came from the White
House, the emphasis was on labor
and management, developing among
themselves, understanding on the
subject matter, the selection of any
additional conferees, the time and
place of meetings, and other mat-
ters necessary to inaugurate a se-
ries of conferences.
The White House statement said
the purpose of the meetings would
be to consider the interests of the
public along with the interests of
labor and management in "the
maintenance of industrial peace,
price stability, incentive for contin-
uous investment, economic growth,
productivity and world labor stand-
ards."
Meany told reporters following
the meeting with the President that
his original proposal planned "no
government participation beyond
the initial stages," and added that
the separate meeting with labor and
management representatives would
mark "the end of government's
role" in the conference.
The AFL-CIO president ex-
pressed the belief that "a lot of
(Continued on Page 3)
Morgan Wins
Hillman Award
For Newscasts
New York — Edward P. Mor-
gan's broadcast under sponsor-
ship of the AFL-CIO have won
for him, and the ABC radio net-
work, a $500 prize award from
the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
Morgan and three other win-
ners received the awards from
Jacob S. Potofsky, Hillman's suc-
cessor as president of the Cloth-
ing Workers, at a luncheon at-
tended by 350. They were given,
(Continued on Page 12)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at ^pusm^
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, 0. C.
$2 a year Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, April 30, I960
m»» No. 18
Congress Girds tor Action
As Ike Raises Veto Threat
KENNETH E. SCHULTZ ROBERTA J. MIDDLETON
GENE S. CAIN
WESLEY C. GREEN
JOSEPH F. CULLEN
MARY E. BLAKELY
THESE SIX high school pupils, all honor students in their June graduating classes, have been awarded
AFL-CIO merit scholarships for full four-year college or university training. They were selected after
interviews on the basis of their records in National Merit Scholarship exams. (See story, Page 12.)
Labor Dept. Reports:
Living Costs Rise,
Earnings Decline
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's cost of living crept upward to an all-time record
in March, with further increases expected in the montrjs ahead, ac-
cording to the Labor Dept.'s monthly report.
Food prices, showing the first rise in six months, pushed up the
Consumer Price Index by 0.1 percent from February to a level of
125.7. This means the market bas-'^
ket which cost $1 in the 1947-49
base period now costs nearly $1.26.
The March index brings a penny-
an-hour wage increase for some
800,000 railroad workers in a semi-
annual adjustment since the CPI
moved upward by at least 0.4 per-
cent from the 125.2 of last Septem-
ber.
"The earnings and buying
power of factory workers de-
clined between February and
March," the Labor Dept. also
said in an accompanying report.
Cutbacks in the factory work-
week in several industries, traced
to employers blaming bad weather,
reduced spendable earnings an av-
erage of 36 cents over the month
to $80.87 per week for a worker
with three dependents and $73.31
for a worker without dependents.
The drop in spendable earnings,
together wtih the slight boost in
consumer prices, cut the factory
worker's buying power by about
0.5 percent between February and
March. His buying power in March
was 0.7 percent below March of
1959.
Asked for a forecast on the
the cost of living, Arnold Chase,
new chief of the Division of
Prices and Cost of Living of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, said
seasonally higher food prices will
exert an upward pressure on the
CPI.
In the absence of any offsetting
decline in other areas, he added,
''the chances are for some slight
(Continued on Page 4)
GOP Warned
'R-T-W Means
Election Loss
Former Republican Gov.
George N. Craig of Indiana has
bluntly warned GOP candidates
in his home state — and by infer-
ence Republicans everywhere —
that they face certain defeat in
this year's elections if they "con-
tinue to embrace" so-called
"right-to-work" laws.
The ex-governor and past na-
tional commander of the American
Legion, in a statement issued in
Washington, denounced the com-
pulsory open-shop measure enacted
in Indiana three years ago. The law,
he said, "does not help labor, man-
agement or the public."
He admonished his state's GOP
to abandon its backing of the anti-
collective bargaining scheme and
become "a party of both labor and
management ... a party of public
service, not of private interest."
"Right-to-work" laws, Craig
said, constitute "an albatross
around the neck of those who
support it."
In the 1958 elections, Democrats
swept to power in Indiana in what
(Continued on Page 2)
Rains Bill
Is Passed
By House
By Gene Zack
The 86th Congress, with the
protracted civil rights battle be-
hind it, braced for a possible
showdown fight with a veto-
minded President in the areas of
health care for the aged, mini-
mum wage improvements, aid to
education, housing, and area re-
development.
With most of its legislative pro-
gram still to be written in the slight-
ly more than two months remaining
before adjournment, Congress
stepped up the tempo of its activi-
ties amid these developments, which
signaled a widening breach between
the White House and Capitol Hill:
• Pres. Eisenhower, prepar-
ing for crucial East-West sum-
mit talks, warned he would turn
the Geneva talks over to Vice
Pres. Nixon and fly back to
Washington if Congress passed
key measures "and I felt that
they should be vetoed."
• House Republicans, waging
the Administration's battle against
key legislation, suffered a major de-
feat as the House passed a $1
billion, AFL-CIO-backed emergen-
cy housing measure after turning
back a GOP move to scuttle the
bill by tacking on an anti-segrega-
tion rider. The bill was introduced
by Rep. Albert Rains (D-Ala.).
• Majority Leader John W. Mc-
Cormack (D-Mass.) announced the
House would consider Administra-
tion-opposed area redevelopment
legislation May 4, under "calendar
Wednesday" procedure.
• Senate Minority Leader Ever-
ett McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.) and
(Continued on Page 11)
Budget Chief Sticks
To Pay Freeze Plan
Pres. Eisenhower's budget
director has told Congress
that the Administration is
firmly opposed to a pay raise
for government workers this
year, although the Bureau of
Labor Statistics reports that
half of all federal white col-
lar employes haven't caught
up with the rise in living costs
since 1939.
The figures on the pay lag
were given to the House Post
Office & Civil Service Com-
mittee by BLS Commissioner
Ewan Clague.
Budget Director Maurice
H. Stans, however, said sal-
aries should be frozen until
a more detailed BLS survey
is completed. That, Stans
made clear, wouldn't be until
after Congress adjourned.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1960
A PAGE ONE AWARD in science goes to Prof. Leo Szilard, famed Chicago University scientist
and nuclear physicist, in his sickroom at New York's Memorial Hospital. When the scientist missed
a date at the Page One ball April 1, New York Newspaper Guild officers visited him and Mrs. Szilard.
The officers, left to right, are Wilfred E. Alexander, M. Michael Potoker, President Leeds Moberly,
I. Kaufman.
Stop Watch Schemes Used to Cut
Wage Gains, Schnitzler Charges
A warning that time study, wage incentive and job evaluation "schemes" are being used by man-
agement arbitrarily to "reduce legitimate collective bargaining gains," was sounded by AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler as he issued a call to the 1960 AFL-CIO Industrial Engineering
Institutes.
In letters to the presidents of national and international unions, Schnitzler, chairman of the AFL-
CIO's Research Committee, warned^
that ''arbitrary and abusive" tech-
niques are being used by manage-
ment. As a result, he said, "wage
increases are negated by downgrad-
ing jobs, increasing work loads and
lowering incentive earnings."
The institutes — sponsored
jointly by the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research and the famed School
for Workers at the University of
Wisconsin — will be held on the
university's campus in Madison,
Wis., June 12-24. In charge of
the cooperative program will be
Bertram Gottlieb, federation in-
dustrial engineer, and Norris
Tibbetts, an instructor at the
School for Workers.
The program offers organizing
and service representatives, as well
as members of research and educa-
tion departments, two-week basic
institutes in time study and wage
incentives, and in job evaluation
and wage determination. Also
scheduled for the institute are two
week-long advanced courses. One,
to be held June 12-17, will cover
collective bargaining of industrial
engineering problems; the other,
scheduled for June 19-24, will be
on synthetic work standard sys-
tems.
Provide Essential Training
Schnitzler pointed out that the
institutes will provide the training
Joseph W. Childs Dies,
Vice President of URW
Akron, O. — Joseph W. Childs, vice president of the Rubber
Workers and regarded as the likely successor to the union's top
spot when Pres. L. S. Buckmaster retires later this year, died here
Apr. 24.
The 50-year-old trade unionist, a URW vice president since
succumbed at Akron City^"
1949,
Hospital two weeks after having
been stricken with coronary throm-
bosis.
Childs was a member of the
AFL-CIO General Board, and had
been an executive board member
of the Industrial Union Dept. since
1957.
Buckmaster termed Childs'
death "a terrific loss for our un-
ion. He was a dedicated and sin-
cere trade unionist and citizen
who worked unceasingly for the
benefit of other people."
In a telegram to Buckmaster,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler
expressed their "sincere regrets at
the untimely death" of the URW
official. "He was a staunch trade
unionist," the federation leaders
said, "who served his fellow work-
ers with distinction and dedica-
tion."
Born in Barrackville, W. Va.,
Mar. 21, 1910, Childs attended
schools in the Uniontown, Pa., area
and at the age of 18 began work
as a tire builder at General Tire &
Rubber Co. in Akron. In the early
1930's he helped organize Federal
Labor Union 18232, which later
became URW Local 9.
He served as president of Lo-
cal 9 in 1940 and again in 1946-
49, when delegates at the inter-
national convention in Toronto
elected him to the union's vice
presidency.
Active in a broad range of affairs,
Childs served on the Akron City
Council from 1942 to 1943; was ap-
pointed to the Cleveland War Board
in 1944 and as an alternate to the
National War Labor Board; and
from 1949 to 1955 was a member
of the executive board of the na-
tional CIO and served on its So-
cial Security Committee.
Served on Wage Board
In 1952, Pres. Truman appointed
him to the Wage Stabilization
Board as chairman of the CIO sec-
tion. Two years later he represented
CIO on a "Crusade for Freedom"
trip in Europe. In 1958 Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell named him to
the labor advisory committee on
wage stabilization.
Surviving are his widow, Mrs.
Frances Childs; two daughters, Mrs.
Charles Gifford and Patricia L., and
a son, Donald W,
that union staff members "must
have to effectively represent work-
ers faced with management's use
of . . . arbitrary and abusive" in-
dustrial engineering methods and
practices.
In an accompanying letter,
Dir. Stanley Ruttenberg of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Research said
that "heavy emphasis" will be
placed on the collective bargain-
ing implications of the "schemes"
being used with increasing fre-
quency by employers.
Leading authorities in the field of
industrial engineering from the
trade union movement will join
with Gottlieb and Tibbetts on the
training staff. They will include
William O. Kuhl of the Boiler-
makers, Richard Humphreys of the
Allied Industrial Workers, Kermit
Mead and Fred Simon of the Auto
Workers, George Haaglund of the
Pulp-Sulphite Workers, Russell Al-
len of the AFL-CIO Industrial Un-
ion Dept., Seymour Brandwein of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research,
and Hy Fish, an independent con-
sultant, of Chicago.
Officers of
Extras Guild
Re-Elected
Hollywood, Calif. — Pres. Jeffrey
Sayre of the Screen Extras Guild
defeated John Rice, his opponent
in the annual election of the guild,
by better than two to one, it was
announced on completion of the
tabulation of secret mail ballots by
Cobun and Baldwin, certified public
accountants. Sayre received 962
votes to 431 for Rice.
Sayre led the entire guild admin-
istration ticket to victory. Evelen
Ceder, incumbent recording secre-
tary, defeated Sandee Marriott 920
to 416. Eleven administration can-
didates for the board of directors
were elected by substantial margins
over four candidates nominated by
independent petition. Unopposed
in the election were First Vice Pres.
Paul Cristo, Second Vice Pres. Tex
Brodus, Third Vice Pres. Murray
Pollack and Treas. Kenner G.
Kemp. All were elected for three-
year terms.
Nation's Economy Endangered:
Wage Gap Growing,
Hotel Union Warns
The Hotel & Restaurant Employes, warning that the nation's
economy is heading for a smashup as $l-an-hour service workers
become more numerous than $3-an-hour industrial workers and
craftsmen, has urged immediate passage of the Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt minimum wage bill.
In testimony before a House La-'^ — ■
seventh
bor subcommittee, in its
week of hearings on amendments to
the Fair Labor Standards Act, the
union urged extension of coverage
to 7.6 million additional workers,
including a large group of presently-
excluded hotel and restaurant work-
ers, and an increase in the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour.
Frederick B. Sweet, Hotel &
Restaurant Employes' editor and
public relations director, pointed
out to the subcommittee that in
mid-1957 "for the first time there
began to be more people em-
ployed at providing services in
our economy than were employed
producing goods ... and the
gap has widened steadily ever
since."
Declaring that "those who earn
the highest wages in the U.S. labor
force are becoming fewer and those
who earn the least are becoming
more numerous, Sweet asserted:
"We are moving toward a time
when our consumer economy, ut-
terly dependent upon rising sales
curves in a mass market system,
will find itself dependent, not upon
the $3-an-hour steel worker or coal
miner or auto worker, but upon the
$l-an-hour clerk or secretary or
hotel maid."
He appealed to the subcommit-
tee to "broaden the coverage and
raise the rate before it's too late.
Broaden it to embrace as many
retail and service workers as pos-
sible in order to undergird their
family budgets, and the national
economy which rests upon those
budgets."
The union spokesman declared
that the 1958 Supreme Court de-
cision requiring the National Labor
Relations Board to process hotel
cases refuted the argument that the
hotel business is "essentially local"
in nature.
He pointed to the growing per-
centage of chain-operated hotels,
multi-state operations and billion-
dollar volume.
Mitchell Threatens
Ike Veto of $1.25
Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-
ell has threatened a presiden-
tial veto if Congress passes
the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
bill to raise the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour.
Mitchell told a news con-
ference he will ask Pres. Eis-
enhower to veto any bill
which raises the wage floor
above $1.15. In earlier testi-
mony before a House Labor
subcommittee, Mitchell said
the Administration would not
oppose a "modest" increase
of 10 or 15 cents in the pres-
ent $1 minimum*
Sweet challenged the "myth" that
waiters, waitresses and bellmen
don't need minimum wage coverage
because "they make so much on
tips."
He pointed out that only a mi-
nority of hotel and restaurant work-
ers make any significant amount in
tips and took "strongest exception"
to the argument "that an incentive
system underwritten by the cus-
tomer, however erratically, some-
how relieves the employer of meet-
ing toward his employes the mini-
mal obligation met by other em-
ployers to pay his workers a decent
basic wage."
The hotel and restaurant in-
dustry, Sweet said, "has used the
tipped worker as an excuse to
fight off coverage for everybody,
including dishwasher and maid."
Sweet invited "any member of
this subcommittee who would like
to see for himself on an "escorted
tour of any town he should choose"
and visit hotel and restaurant work-
ers "living on incomes far below
even the minimal budgets for de-
cency set forth in government
pamphlets."
GOP Cautioned 'R-T-W'
Means Loss of Election
(Continued from Page 1)
was regarded as a repudiation of
GOP office holders who the year
previously had enacted the meas-
ure. The Republicans in Indiana
openly supported the "work" meas-
ure in the 1958 campaign.
The Democrats elected their first
U. S. senator in 20 years, captured
eight of the state's 1 1 congressional
seats, and won majorities in the
state legislature in the traditionally
Republican state.
Voter Revolt Seen
Surveying the havoc in Indiana
following the election, Rep. Cecil
M. Hardin, turned out of office
after 10 years, said the Republican
defeat was "directly attributable"
to voter revolt over "right-to-
work."
The same theme was empha-
sized in election post mortems
held by Republican leaders in
California and Ohio, where the
GOP went down to defeat along
with "work" proposals on the
ballots.
Defeated for the Senate, GOP
Gov. Goodwin J. Knight of Califor-
nia said he had "warned the Repub-
licans, not once but many times,
that if they succumbed to the temp-
tation of making an attack on the
working people of California they
would be the losers." Democrats
won a Senate seat, three House
seats, the governorship, all top state
officers, and control of the Cali-
fornia Legislature for the first time
in the 20th century.
In Ohio, State GOP Chairman
Ray Bliss said he had "repeatedly
warned" that "defeat would be a
possible consequence*' of putting
the "work" referendum on the bal-
lot. It was. Democrats captured
the governorship, a Senate seat,
three House seats, and took control
of the traditionally Republican leg-
islature.
Frederick W. Gehle,
ULLICO Official, Dies
New York— Frederick W. Gehle,
a director of the Union Labor Life
Insurance Co. and a man decorated
by four governments for his World
War II overseas relief work, has
died here at the age of 74.
The London-born Gehle began
his career as a reporter here, mov-
ing later into the banking field. He
was honored by Finland, Great
Britain, Belgium and Luxembourg
for his war relief work and at home
headed the New York State war
bond committee. In 1948, he took
leave from his post as vice-president
of Chase National Bank to assume
top posts with the Greater New
York Fund.
First Contracts Could Set Pattern:
Phone Workers Use Ads, TV
In Contract Negotiations
Omaha, Nebr. — Major telephone collective bargaining parleys moved towards the home stretch last
week, with the prospect that new contracts negotiated by the Communications Workers will establish
1960 "patterns" by nearly a quarter-million telephone employes throughout the country.
As a backdrop to its negotiations, the CWA took unusual steps to inform the telephone-using public
of its bargaining program and viewpoint. Double-page advertisements were placed in half a dozen
Sunday newspaper magazine sec-'^
tions and in several papers in
smaller cities. At the same time, a
documentary 15-minute film fea-
turing CWA Pres. Joseph Beirne
was shown on television stations
throughout seven states and in the
District of Columbia.
The union is bargaining with the
Northwestern Bell Telephone Co.,
which operates in the Dakotas,
Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska;
with the Wisconsin and Illinois Bell
subsidiaries; and with Chesapeake
& Potomac, which operates in
Washington, D. C.
CWA's proposals were framed
by the union's Collective Bargain-
ing Policy Conference in New
York last February. The union
is seeking wage gains, improve-
1,000 Guests Expected
At Cathedral Ceremony
The AFL-CIO officially will present three stained glass windows
to the Washington Cathedral at dedication ceremonies May 2.
The windows, honoring Samuel Gompers, William Green and
Philip Murray, will be accepted by Very Rev. Francis .B. Sayre, Jr.,
dean of the Cathedral.
The Gompers and Green win- r ^
dows will be presented by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany. The Murray
window will be presented by Walter
P. Reuther, president of the Auto
Workers and an AFL-CIO vice-
president.
Gompers was founding president
of the former American Federation
of Labor and Green succeeded him.
Murray was president of the former
Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions.
Approximately 1,000 persons
are expected to attend, the cere-
monies. Pres. Eisenhower and
Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell
will head a list of government of-
ficials at the dedication. In ad-
dition, labor leaders and delega-
tions from international unions
will be present.
Rev. Hugh White, Jr. of the De-
AMA, Unions
To Discuss
Medical Care
Chicago — Representatives of or-
ganized labor and the American
Medical Association will sit down
here May 13-14 in an effort to find
common ground on the subject of
prepaid medical care.
AFL-CIO participation in the
two-day conference was formally
requested by the AMA in a letter
to federation Pres. George Meany
Also scheduled to participate are
representatives from labor-manage-
ment health and welfare funds, in-
surance companies, and Blue Cross
and Blue Shield plans.
Named by Meany to represent
the labor movement were Miss Lis-
beth Bamberger, assistant director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security; Anthony G. Weinlein, di-
rector of research and education
for the Building Service Employes
and a member of the AFL-CIO So-
cial Security Committee; Leonard
Lesser, director of social security
for the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept.; Isador Melamed, director of
the AFL Medical Service Plan in
Philadelphia; and Vice Pres.
Charles Zimmerman of the Ladies'
Garment Workers, a member of
the AFL-CIO Social Security Com-
mittee.
The meeting will concentrate on
methods of financing medical care
in the light of the mushrooming of
health and hospitalization programs
established by union-won collective
bargaining agreements.
The two-day conference was re-
quested on instructions from the
AMA's House of Delegates.
troit Industrial Mission will speak
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler and Clothing Workers
Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky will partici
pate in a special ceremony high-
lighting readings from the Bible.
Theme of the windows stresses
the unity of religion and labor in
common service to God.
The Gompers memorial window,
known as the "Artisans and Crafts-
men Window," is the first nave
aisle window on the cathedral's
south side. The Murray window,
"Industrial and Social Reform,"
and the Green window, "Agricul-
tural and Maritime," are situated on
the north side of the cathedral. The
Gompers and Green windows were
given by the William Green Me-
morial Fund. The Murray window
was a gift from the Philip Murray
Memorial Fund.
In announcing the gift, the AFL-
CIO recognized that the Washing-
ton Cathedral was chartered as "a
house of prayer for all people." It
noted also that Gompers, Green
and Murray belonged to different
religious faiths but were united in
"love of their fellow men and de-
votion to God."
ments in health and pension pro-
grams, and what it considers to
be long-overdue liberalization of
the Bell vacation program.
Beirne's TV talk included scenes
of telephone workers on the job
and showed pictures of the union
convention. In addition, it devoted
considerable time to the problems
of protracted expensive illness.
Automation Change Cited
Noting that the average person
is apt to think of the typical tele
phone worker as a young girl work
ing for a couple of years between
high school and marriage, Beirne
pointed out that automation
"drastically" changing the charac
ter of the telephone work force
The CWA president said Bell
"deserves full credit for pioneer-
ing" in the establishment of pen
sion programs many years ago,
but today, he said, "an outmoded
pension program simply isn't
good enough to provide retiring
telephone workers with the sort
of income that will permit them
to be useful, self-reliant members
of the community in their senior
years.' 5
Furthermore, he told television
viewers, the problem of coping with
accidents and illness is one that
must be met, for the benefit of the
entire community.
Running through Beirne's talk
and the advertising messages was
the theme that CWA wants the pub
lie to know about the "reasonable
proposals of a responsible union.
The union said that "in the dy
namic America of the 1960's," it
believes there is a greater responsi-
bility for "labor and management
to search together for methods to
solve common problems."
"We telephone workers are
proud of the service we provide,
and we value your support and
understanding," the union con-
tinued. "That is why we want
you to know about our collective
bargaining proposals to the tele-
phone company."
Union Wins Contract
At Sixth N. Y. Hospital
New York— Drug & Hospital Employes Local 1199 has won
bargaining rights and a retroactive wage increase for 700 employes
in a first contract with the University Hospital of the New York
University-Bellevue Medical Center.
In another major development, the union, a local of the Retail,
Wholesale & Dept. Store Union, 1 ^
and Trafalgar Hospital agreed on a
permanent no-strike policy, coupled
with a strong arbitration provision
The policy, adopted in the midst of
current negotiations on wages and
working conditions, was hailed by
both union and management rep-
resentatives as a "milestone" in
hospital labor-management rela-
tions.
The Trafalgar Hospital agree-
ment provides that arbitration
will be used to resolve differences
that might develop in negotiation
of future contracts as well as in
disputes arising during the life of
the contract being negotiated.
University Hospital became the
city's sixth private, non-profit hos-
pital to formally recognize Local
1199. By agreeing to a written con-
tract, the hospital broke away from
the limited "Statement of Policy"
adopted by the Greater New York
Hospital Association after a 46-day
strike at seven hosni'als in 1959.
The policy statement set up a
grievance procedure and a $1 an,
hour minimum wage, but barred
full bargaining rights and written
contracts.
Since then, the union has been
granted formal recognition at four
hospitals in addition to the two in-
stitutions which already had union
contracts. Local 1199 is preparing
to serve demands for written con-
tracts on 12 other hospitals where
it has majority membership, in-
cluding the seven institutions struck
last spring. The "no-strike" clause
negotiated with Trafalgar Hospital
is seen as undercutting the claims
of the hospitals that union recog-
nition would pose a continuing
strike threat to the hospitals.
Local 1199 Pres. Leon J.
Davis said the University Hospi-
tal agreement gives employes a
$10 monthly increase, retroactive
to Jan. 1, 1960, raises minimum
starting salaries $5 a week and
provides improved vacations and
sick leave. A further "review"
of wages is scheduled for Sept.
1, 1960.
TOP-LEVEL TALKS between labor and management representa-
tives to insure industrial peace have been launched by Pres. Eisen-
hower at behest* of AFL-CIO. Shown outside White House, after
30-minute meeting with Eisenhower, are Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, who first proposed
high-level conference to President last November.
White House Sets Up
Labor-Industry Parley
(Continued from Page 1)
good" can come out of the top-
level meeting. He declared that
the conference would "get labor
and management discussing var-
ious phases of their relationship
with the idea of reducing the
area of disagreement."
Mitchell said at an impromptu
press conference outside the White
House that the plan for a confer-
ence was "a significant event" that
would "help further industrial
peace." He said the conference
delegates should consider such top-
ics as "automation, inflation, price
stability, economic growth and for-
eign competition" — all of which,
the Secretary said, are "not neces
sarily bargainable subjects."
Although the White House was
bowing out of the conference in
terms of actual participation, Mitch
ell emphasized that the President
"initiated the conference and will
look for success of the meetings."
Asked if he had any assurance
that the NAM would go along
with the plan — particularly with
the designating of only those of-
ficials whose companies have col-
lective bargaining agreements
with AFL-CIO affiliates— Mitch-
ell replied emphatically: "Yes."
At a formal press conference a
few hours later, Mitchell rejected
the notion that the meeting should
be made a tripartite affair with pub-
lic, as well as labor and management
representatives, in attendance. The
top union and industry officials, he
said, "are capable of considering
the public interest" in their dis-
cussions.
The secretary expressed the hope
that the six-member committee
would hold initial meetings in May
to consider an agenda, meeting site
and possible expansion of confer-
ence membership.
He set these criteria for suc-
cessful conduct of the labor-
management conference: that it
be informal, with the press ex-
cluded, that no daily statements
be issued, and that discussions
commence with common, non-
controversial problems.
In proposing the conference last
year, Meany cited the "increasing
Soviet economic challenge" which,
he said, made it "imperative that
our country insure the continuous
growth and prosperity of our econ-
omy. Sound labor-management re-
lations are indispensable to this
progress and well-being."
The AFL-CIO president said the
conference could bring "greater
stability to our entire economy and
new vitality to free and voluntary
responsible collective bargaining,"
and pointed out that only the Presi-
dent has "the necessary prestige
and national respect to insure that
such a conference be fully repre-
sentative and authoritative insofar
as both labor and management are
concerned."
Auto Workers
Strike GM Plant
Detroit — Some 4,200 members
of the Auto Workers have gone on
strike at the General Motors Fleet-
wood plant here in a dispute over
problems of production standards.
UAW Vice Pres. Leonard Wood-
cock, director of the union's Gen-
eral Motors Dept., said the walkout
was authorized by the international
after four weeks of negotiations
"failed to produce any evidence of
a realistic attitude by the com-
pany."
Woodcock charged GM manage-
ment with "an unsual amount of
resistance" to settling manpower
problems at the Fleetwood plant.
Involved are production employes
in UAW Local 15.
Executive Council
To Meet May 3-6
The AFL-CIO Executive
Council will open its spring
meeting in Washington May
3. The sessions are expected
to run through May 6.
Members of the council
will attend the dedication May
2 of stained glass windows at
the Washington Cathedral
memorializing Samuel Gom-
pers, William Green and
Philip Murray. On May 6
they will participate in the
formal opening of the Union-
Industry Show at the National
Guard Armory.
Page Fonr
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 50, I960
Buckmaster Hits 'Glib-Tongued 9 Lenders:
END TO "MORALLY .SHOCKING" cheating of consumers
through phony finance schemes was called for by Rubber Workers
Pres. L. S. Buckmaster (left), testifying as a vice president of AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept. before Senate Banking subcommittee
With him is Everett Kassalow, research director for IUD. Buck-
master urged passage of "truth-iri-lending" bill introduced by Chair-
man Paul H. Douglas (D-I1L).
NLRB Counsel Loses
Bid to Halt Picketing
The Supreme Court has overruled the National Labor Relations
Board for the third time this year and an NLRB trial examiner
has rejected an effort of the board's general counsel to hit a Typo-
graphical Union local with an anti-picketing order under the Lan-
drum-Griffith Act.
The Typographical Union case,^
offering one of the early tests of
L-G provisions on recognition pick-
eting for more than 30 days, in-
volved the Charlton Press, Derby,
Conn., and Ansonia Local 285.
In an earlier NLRB proceed-
ing, a trial examiner had found
that all nine composing room
employes of Charlton had been
fired in 1959 for joining the un-
ion. The company agreed to re-
instate the workers, but did not
recognize their union. The work-
ers continued on strike for rec-
ognition — and later — when hit
with a court injunction — picketed
for informational purposes.
NLRB General Counsel Stuart
Rothman last December filed
a charge of Landrum-Griffin viola-
tion against the local for picketing
more than 30 days without asking
a board election. Since then, new
union charges against the company
have been filed.
Trial Examiner . Ralph Winkler
rejected Rothman's complaint,
holding that the local clearly had
represented a majority of employes,
that the Charlton company was
guilty of an unfair labor practice
in refusing recognition of their un-
ion, and that anti-picketing provi-
sons of the Landrum-Griffin Act
did not apply.
Winkler ruled that the strike was
basically an "unfair labor practice
strike against the company's (pre-
vious) unlawful refusal" to grant
recognition and other offenses. He
cited the Supreme Court's decision
overruling the NLRB in the Curtis
Brothers' case and holding that in
case of an unfair labor practice
case, "picketing has been equated
with striking."
There is nothing in the legis-
lative history of the L-G Act,
Winkler held, to show that Con-
gress meant to deprive a union
of its right to picket peacefully
in a strike arising from an em-
ployer's "unlawful" practices to
"undermine" the union.
In addition to seeking a labor
board ruling against the union,
Rothman also has sought to
broaden the federal court in-
junction — obtained from U.S.
District Judge Robert P. Ander-
son — to prohibit the present "in-
formational" picketing as well as
so - called organizational picket-
ing. A hearing is scheduled
May 2.
The Supreme Court, in its deci-
sion reversing the NLRB, held that
the board could not ignore a six-
month statute of limitations to pe-
nalize a union for obtaining a un-
ion-shop contract under "illegal"
conditions.
Living Costs Rise Again;
Wages, Workweek Slip
(Continued from Page 1)
increases in the price index month
by month until July and August.
At that time, we should have a
seasonal downturn."
The 125.7 CPI for March repre-
sented a 1.6 percent increase over
March of 1959.
Medical care showed the great-
est rise over the year, going up by
3.9 percent; food showed no
change from a year ago; housing
was up 2 percent; apparel rose by
1.7 percent; transportation was
up by 1.1 percent; reading and
recreation rose 3.1 percent and
personal care went up 2.3 per-
cent.
In the February to March
changes, food rose by 0.3 percent;
housing by 0.1 percent; apparel by
0.4 percent; medical care by 0.2
percent; personal care by 0.1 per-
cent; reading and recreation by 0.2
percent.
Thus, while the ^food price up-
turn was called "the most important
advance" in March, apparel and
gasoline prices also rose seasonally.
These increases, the report showed,
more than offset a "stronger-than-
usual" March decline in prices of
used and new cars and the expected
downturn in heating oil. .
The report said the March
drop in used car prices was the
largest in nearly five years, with
the "price weakness" traced to
large inventories, slow winter
sales and competition from "com-
pact" cars.
The wages of about 225,000 elec-
trical workers and some 95,000 air-
craft workers, adjusted on the basis
of the March index but at quarterly
intervals, remain unchanged.
Truth-in-Lending Law Urged
To Block 'Back-Alley' Tactics
Lashing out at "back-alley business practices" of some "unscrupulous" finance agencies, an AFLr-
CIO Industrial Union Dept. spokesman has called for congressional passage of "tnith-in-lending w
legislation requiring full disclosure to the purchaser of all finance charges.
IUD Vice Pres. L. S. Buckmaster, president of the Rubber Workers, told a Senate Banking sub-
committee that a bill introduced by Chairman Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.) would "help protect . . .
trusting consumers against glib-^
tongued" lenders who charge "ex-
orbitant borrowing costs."
"The average American is not
a fishmarket haggler," Buckmas-
ter declared, "nor does he enjoy
arguing with his 'friendly' loan
company, or telling a business
representative he doesn't trust
him.
"If a salesman tells him his car
payments will be $60 a month, why
should a prospective buyer be
forced ... to examine the fine
print with the eagle eye of a Sher-
lock Holmes? It is degrading to all
concerned."
Cites Actual Cases
Citing the experiences of a num
ber of URW members, Buckmaster
inserted into the subcommittee rec-
ords cases in which they were
charged interest rates ranging from
36 to 55 percent, while being given
the impression that they were pay
ing only 6 or 7 percent.
One of the cases involved a rub-
ber worker in Chicago who bor
rowed $630 from a finance com
pany in order to buy a car and then
turned to his local union for help
"when he saw the huge finance
charges" involved in the transac-
tion. On the union's advice, he
then borrowed money from his
credit union at a fair rate of in-
terest in order to buy out the con-
tract with the loan company.
The finance company became
"nasty," Buckmaster continued,
but finally settled with the URW
member "for finance charges of
$345.74 for the 27-day period"
in which he had the $630 loan.
Buckmaster termed the affair
"calloused exploitation" of the
consumer.
The IUD spokesman stressed the
fact that the "overwhelming major-
ity of our business establishments
Credit Truth
Bill Backed
By Consumers
The National Consumers League
has joined the AFL-CIO in urging
Congress to approve the Douglas
bill requiring merchants and finance
firms to state exact annual credit
costs and interest percentages.
Mrs. Patricia Harris, member of
the League's board of directors,
appeared before the Senate Bank-
ing and Currency Committee's sub-
committee on production and sta-
bilization. She asked for legislation
to help the consumer learn "the
whole truth, and nothing but the
truth," about finance charges.
"We are asking only," Mrs.
Harris said, "that the consumer be
informed by a clear statement in
writing of the total costs of his pay-
ments."
Knowing the facts about credit
charges would help consumers cut
down on excessive indebtedness and
bankruptcies, she said. She told the
subcommittee that the truthful
statement of the cost of a loan or
credit purchase, not the interest
rate, is most likely to protect the
merchandiser and the consumer.
CORRECTION
A picture caption in the April
23rd issue of the AFL-CIO News
ncorrectly listed the first name of
Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (R-Mich.)
as "Glenn.'! The AFL-CIO News
regrets the error.
are dedicated to the good eco-
nomics of fair and honest deal-
ings." He said that the Douglas
bill "strikes only at the unscrupu-
lous few who give business in gen-
eral a bad name. It strikes only at
those who have given rise to the ex-
pression: 'the morals of the market-
place'."
'Step Forward'
Calling the Douglas bill "a step
forward in the direction of moral
responsibility," Buckmaster assert-
ed:
"I am impatient with smug and
devious implications that consumers
are satisfied with glib, smiling sales-
men who tell them one thing and
then deliver their wares with a
high-interest-rate bomb inside. . . .
"I am impatient with the mor-
ally shocking expression: 'Let the
buyer beware.' I am impatient
with those who rationalize their
devious actions by this time-
dishonored watchword of the
cheat. . . .
"It is time we began talking
about the human beings involved
in our age of installment living. No
theory or set of statistics can ra-
tionalize away their daily struggle
to keep their heads above personal
financial waters. . . ."
He warned that failure to estab-
lish "a favorable public image of
trust" could have adverse effects on
the American system of install-
ment-plan buying.
He added that the public's experi-
ence with "unscrupulous" lending
agencies and the disclosures by the
subcommittee of flagrant over-
charging has served to give the
public a "bad public image" of
finance companies.
AFL-CIO Fights Bills
Loosening Tax Codes
The AFL-CIO has vigorously opposed a rash of bills aimed at
revising Internal Revenue codes to permit income tax deductions
for certain lobbying expenses, warning that the measures would
release a flood of business propaganda at the taxpayers' expense.
Andrew J. Biemiller, director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legisla-
tion, charged that the bills — some'^
of which would apply only to ini-
tiative petitions on the ballot and
others which would cover the broad
range of local, state and federal
legislation — "would benefit busi-
nessmen and professional lobbyists,
but do nothing for union members
or other ordinary citizens."
• In a letter to Rep. Wilbur D.
Mills (D-Ark.), chairman of the
House Ways & Means Committee
which is now considering the meas-
ures, Biemiller charged the bills
discriminated against unionists since
they would allow tax deduction only
for lobbying expenses in connec-
tion with "any issue affecting the
business of the taxpayer."
"Suppose, for example, that a
'right-to-work' measure is on the
ballot in a state election," Bie-
miller declared in an analysis filed
with the committee, "and that
some union members contribute
to a fund to be used in opposing
the measure, while some employ-
ers contribute to a fund to be
used to support the measure. . . .
"It is likely that the employer
contributions would be deductible
under the bills on the theory that
the 'right-to-work' measure related
to their trade or business.
It appears quite clear, on the
other hand, that the union mem-
bers would not be permitted to
deduct their contributions, for the
reason that a union member's trade
or business is the job he works at,
and not the operation of his union."
Mueller View Hit
The AFL-CIO analysis took
sharp issue with Commerce Sec.
Frederick H. Mueller, who support-
ed the measures on the ground that
"freedom of expression" via the
lobbying route "is an essential ele-
ment of a free economy."
"If allowing tax deductions
really has something to do with
freedom of speech," the federa-
tion spokesman asserted, "the
bills should of course be broad-
ened to permit the deduction of
all lobbying, political and propa-
ganda expenses, whether or not
related to a trade or business."
At the same time, the AFL-CIO
raised anew its objections to Inter-
nal Revenue Service regulations
adopted last December restricting
individual deduction of union dues
on income tax returns if a "sub-
stantial part" of a union's activities
consists of legislative or political
activity. The same regulations
broadened corporation deductions
of propaganda presenting "views on
economic, financial, social or other
subjects of general nature."
Management Not Fooled
By Its Own Propaganda
Personnel and industrial relations executives of large and
small companies across the country apparently don't read the
propaganda blasts of big business front groups which continu-
ally blame spiraling prices on wage increases.
This has been revealed by the Bureau of National Affairs
in a report on a personnel policies survey made during 1959
and 1960 among a representative cross-section of selected
industry officials.
Asked about the so-called "wage-price" spiral, 56 percent
of the more than 100 officials queried declared there was "no
relationship between wage boosts and price increases," while
another 20 percent said that only a "slight percentage" of
their price hikes was traceable to wage increases.
Only four percent of those taking part in the survey con-
tended that 75 cents out of every $1 in higher prices resulted
directly from higher wages.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, H. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1960
Page FWe
In Pre-Summit Conference:
Labor Turns Spotlight on World Problems
Search for Peace and Freedom
Six hundred serious, concerned trade unionists from all parts of the nation met for two
days in New York City for a searching examination of world problems and America's
position on the eve of the summit conference.
The men they invited to address them included some of the nation's most knowledge-
able experts in the field of world affairs.
The goal: to give the nation and the labor movement "the fullest possible understand-
ing" of the problems involved in the ceaseless search for peace and freedom.
CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN George M. Harrison, head of AFL-
CIO Committee on Intl. Affairs, welcomes Arne Geijer, president
of the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions. AFL-CIO Sec- m
Treas. William F. Schnitzler is at right.
COr*FER12NN
ON
WORLD AFFA1
SPEAKING FROM THE FLOOR, AFL-CIO Vice Pres Joseph WEST BERLIN WON'T be "sold into slavery" at the summit, Undersec. of State Douglas Dillon
D. Keenan comments on points raised by a conference speaker, pledged in a firm statement of the U.S. position on the German issue. He said Soviet talk of peaceful
Major addresses were followed by delegate discussion. co-existence has not yet been matched by actions.
SOME 600 DELEGATES from AFL-CIO unions, state and local central bodies,
attended the two-day conference. Delegates above are shown registering.
FACES OF DELEGATES show interest with which the serious, sometimes grim
remarks of the speakers were followed during the two days of sessions.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1960
Not Willing to Wait
CONGRESSIONAL PASSAGE of a civil rights bill has created
a new and complex legal mechanism that will permit some dis-
enfranchised Negroes to register and vote: - As such it is a small
contribution in the never-ending struggle to translate theoretical
freedoms into reality.
There are valid doubts whether the new bill will give many
Negroes in the South the cherished rights of citizenship. The ma-
chinery appears to be cumbersome and. depends on the generally
slow legal process of establishing 'that a "pattern or practice" of
discrimination exists.
The civil rights struggle today is no longer geared to legisla-
tive solutions that must be examined by and tested in the courts.
And while legislation and judicial rulings are of importance, the
Negro, and those segments of the population dedicated to the elimi-
nation of discrimination in all its ugly forms, are exploring other
solutions.
★ ★ ★
IT HAS BEEN six long years since the U.S. Supreme Court
handed down its historic decision holding segregation in public
school education to be unconstitutional. Yet only a small fraction
of the school districts in the South have moved toward integration
and in many of the districts where some action has been taken it
has been token integration at best.
The Supreme Court decision has been subverted and out-
flanked because the executive branch of the government, which
pressed for the decision, failed to provide the leadership necessary
to translate the court decision into an active policy.
Courts do not operate in a vacuum. Unless their decisions and
rulings are enforced by the Administration and public opinion is
rallied in their support, their meanings can be thwarted.
This is what happened to the school integration decision. At the
moment of its announcement the nation was ready to accept the de-
cision as the supreme law of the land and to go along with its en-
forcement. The Administration did nothing. Into this void created
by lack of leadership stepped the militant segregationists and for the
next few years the battle was fought on their terms.
The frustrations of trying to put into practical effect the school
decision led to the 1957 legislative battle. The resulting "right-
to vote" law immediately ran into the same opposition as the
school decision and was challenged at every turn. Again the
Administration failed to rally public opinion, this time behind
a legislative decision in which it participated.
The obvious inadequacy of the 1957 law led to revived attempts
in Congress to adopt meaningful legislation, but the 1960 effort
is kin to the 1957 measure and shaped by the same hands.
★ ★ ★
THIS, THEN, IS THE RECORD of six years of legislative and
legal struggle — victories in the courts, partial victories in the legis-
lative halls and no improvement because of a pronounced lack of
leadership and direction from the Administration.
The civil rights climate will change. The current sit-in demon-
strations are indicative that the Negro no longer will tolerate second-
class citizenship.
That change can be peaceful and positive or it can be bloody
and bitter, depending on whether the Administration is willing to
put some moral muscle into its well-rounded phrases paying homage
to full freedom and civil rights for all Americans.
Still Not Enough Stepping Stones
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, W alter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B, Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Lov«
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, April 30, 1960
No. 18
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of ln»
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid, advertising in
any of Us official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
57>Ut
'Business Week 9 Says:
Social Security
To Meet Health
Following are excerpts from "A Challenge
that Cant be Ducked" an editorial in the Apr.
16 issue of Business Week:
HEALTH INSURANCE FOR THE AGED is
fast becoming the No. 1 issue facing Con-
gress this year. And there's political dynamite in
it: Any candidate suspected by the millions of old
people (and those concerned about their health
problems) of taking a cold or know-nothing atti-
tude toward the issue is likely to be in serious
trouble this election year.
One thing about the issue is clear: Although
plenty of politicians may see it as a vote-catching
device, there is nothing synthetic or phony about
the problem. Everyone who has seriously studied
the situation has concluded that the provision of
better health care for the aged is a serious — and
growing — problem. Thanks to medical progress,
the number of aged is increasing rapidly.
For far too many of these, long life has
meant shrunken incomes, increased sickness,
loneliness, and the shame of being a candidate
for a handout from society.
Health, Education & Welfare Secy. Flemming,
in his thorough report to the House Ways &
Means Committee last year, concluded that three
out of eyery four aged persons would be able to
"prove need in relation to hospital costs."
The issue, then, is not whether there is a prob-
lem but rather how to meet the problem.
REP. AIME FORAND (D-R. I.) has proposed
to deal with it through a system of compulsory
federal insurance within the framework of the
Social Security Act. The Forand bill would pro-
vide insurance covering 60 days of hospital care,
or 120 days of combined hospital and nursing
home care, together with surgical services, to all
those eligible for old age. insurance benefits. It
would be financed, initially, by boosting social
security payroll taxes 0.5 percent — divided equal-
ly between employes and employers.
The Forand bill has been attacked for a num-
ber of reasons by various groups, especially
the American Medical Association, which sees
it as the camel's nose of socialized medicine
coming under the tent.
But the main weakness of the Forand bill, as
specialists in the health field see it, is not that it
does too much but too little. They condemn it as
too narrow and as an encouragement to "hospital-
itis" — the tendency, inherent in many of our pres-
Principle 'Best'
Need of Aged
ent voluntary insurance programs, to put the sick
into hospitals because there are no provisions for
covering treatment at home or in doctors' offices.
The bill sponsored by Sen. Javits (R-N. Y.)
strikes at this weakness. As Javits points out,
though hospitalization costs comprise a large part
of an aged person's annual medical bill, the aver-
age older couple spends $140 a year on health
costs unrelated to hospitalization.
JAVITS WOULD DEAL with the problem by
a voluntary program that* would combine federal
and state subsidies, contributions scaled to income
by the aged themselves, and both commercial and
non-profit insurance companies such as Blue Cross
and Blue Shield. The program would not become
operative in any state until the state put up the
money, arranged with the insurance carriers, and
agreed to certain standards for the program.
Although the Javits bill makes a hard effort to
provide a "voluntary" (and heavily subsidized)
program, it does not appear to meet the test of
practicality. The program would take a very long
time to negotiate with 50 individual state govern-
ments and with the insurance carriers — assuming
that it would be possible at all to get them in-
volved in a program whose costs are unpredict-
able.
Indeed, after studying Flemming's able re-
port, and the arguments on all sides of this
issue, we are forced to conclude that the volun-
tary approach simply will not do the job.
The problem basically is that the aged are high-
cost, high-risk, low-income customers. Their
health needs can be met only by themselves when
they are young or by other younger people who
are still working. The only way to handle their
health problem, therefore, is to spread the risks
and costs widely. And that can best be done
through the social security system to which em-
ployers and employes contribute regularly.
We do not pretend to know all the answers to
the problem of enlarging the social security sys-
tem to include a health insurance program for the
aged.
Nevertheless, no democratic government can re-
fuse to grapple with a problem of such demon-
strated urgency and importance. The issue can-
not be evaded and, before it becomes a political
football, the politicians of both parties should ac-
cept responsibility for finding the best possible
answer in the shortest possible time.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON", D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
State Dept. Position in Korea
Called Admirable but Belated
(This column is excerpted from tlie nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC comtnen-
. tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
DURING THE HEIGHT of the rioting in Seoul
the American Embassy, prodding Syngman
Rhee to face the reality of the people's protests
against the repressions of his government, issued
a sharp warning that "this
is no time to temporize."
The sentiment was admir-
able but it was about 10
years late.
Koreans have cheered
U.S. support of their de-
mands for new elections.
But the fact is we bear
heavy responsibility for the
convulsions of Korea be-
cause we temporized our-
selves. If American policy Morgan
had paid more constructive attention to the peo-
ple's needs and desires for an emerging democratic
system, instead of condoning repressive measures
for the hallowed but often hollow excuse of anti-
communism, if we, in other words, had followed
a policy of principle instead of expediency, the
present crisis might never have blown up.
Looming across the 38th parallel there is, un-
deniably, a threat from Communist North Korea,
But with the blood and the billions we have spilled
in that tortured land in the name of democracy
and freedom, is the Rhee regime a bargain?
Under the dignified, gentle firmness of
Christian Herter, who has just finished his first
year as Secretary of State, the Eisenhower
regime or part of it seems to be attaching more
importance now to performing on the principles
we are supposed to embrace. (Hence, for
example, the surprisingly outspoken identifica-
tion of the American Embassy in Seoul with the
people's protests; hence the restraint in dealing
with the dangerous petulance of Castro in
Cuba.) But our legacy of demeaning principle
is long and, furthermore, hindsight reveals vast
flaws in the expediency of brinkmanship as
practiced by Sec. Herter's predecessor.
In May Day Messages:
The present plight of Korea recalled the stinging
criticism of a church whose most distinguished
members include Pres. Eisenhower and the late
John Foster Dulles. In June, 1958, the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church deplored
the Eisenhower Administration's glib use of the
"mythical" term, "the Free World."
"Our fathers' concept of freedom is . , . being
debased," an Assembly resolution said. ". . .
This nation counts among its allies some nations
which are. in no sense free. By our actions we
proclaim to the world that lands where human
freedom is utterly dead can qualify for member-
ship in the Free World simply by supplying mili-
tary bases or strategic commodities." The resolu-
tion called that "abhorrent hypocrisy."
HAPPILY, THE SEEDS OF FREEDOM have
not been killed in South Korea. But their growth
has been unnecessarily stunted, partly by a failure
to strike the right proportion between Korea's
military and civilian needs. The area does figure
importantly in the defense of Japan and Formosa
but let us keep our sense of purpose clear and
realize that it is ideals as well as real estate we
are defending. Let us not forget that the form
and the substance of our policies are important.
We decorated dictators in Argentina and
Venezuela before they were overthrown. We
tolerated Trujillo in the Dominican Republic
and Batista in Cuba long before Castro came
along from the other direction. India's Prime
Minister Nehru basked under the beaming good
will of Pres. Eisenhower but so did Dictator
Franco of Spain. And now today there emerges
from the White House the fascinating intelli-
gence that the President may not be able to stay
very long at the summit meeting in Paris be-
cause after one week he has a date in Lisbon
with the only other dictator remaining in West-
ern Europe, Salazar of Portugal.
Vice Pres. Nixon, we are told, has been alerted
to sit in for the President at Paris if domestic or
other requirements call him home. Is this states-
manship or has somebody looked at" the popularity
polls and decided a little summitry will suit the
President's choice as his successor?
YOUR—
WiMwuL "SAeHort
World Labor Urged to Lead
Struggle for Peace, Freedom
THE AFL-CIO REAFFIRMED its "solidarity
with the fighters for human freedom, national
independence, social justice and genuine peace"
on "both sides of the Iron Curtain," in a special
May Day message issued by Pres. George Meany,
May Day is celebrated by free trade union-
ists in many lands as a workers' day comparable
to Labor Day in the U.S., and is regarded as a
symbol "of their aspirations for better condi-
tions of life and labor and for a life rich in
meaning and happiness."
Meany pointed out that American labor draws
"inspiration and strength" from its affiliation with
free trade unionists under the banner of the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Unions. "To us of
the AFL-CIO," he declared, "international labor
solidarity is not a mere wish or pious pledge. It
is a source of hope. It is the road to transform-
ing our aspirations into realization."
The ICFTU, in a May Day manifesto, called
for a rededication of free labor to the "task of
winning social justice in peace and freedom for
all the workers, everywhere," and asked for in-
creased aid for the Intl. Solidarity Fund to carry
out the struggle for "peace, bread and freedom."
MAY DAY 1960, the AFL-CIO president de-
clared, should be the signal for free trade union-
ists throughout the world "to redouble their efforts
to free the entire world from the perils of poverty
and war, from all dictatorship and oppression."
He continued: m
"The stirring struggles for freedom and human
dignity now going on in Algeria, South Africa,
Korea, and the reviving spirit of revolt against ex-
ploitation and tyranny behind the Iron Curtain all
demonstrate that the plain people of the world are
determined to win freedom from hunger and
tyranny and to share in the benefits of modern
industrial progress."
On the eve of East- West summit talks at
Geneva, Meany appealed to "workers and all
other liberty-loving people to gather their
strength and rally world public opinion to the
cause of peace and freedom."
These principles, he declared, "demand that
the peoples of Germany have the right to national
unification in freedom," and require "that the
people of West Berlin never be sacrificed in any
degree in order to appease the Soviet aggressors."
IN 1960, AS IN 1939, he said, "appeasement
of aggression can lead only to war — and this time
an even more devastating war. Momentary peace
bought at the expense of freedom and the security
of the free world would spell disaster not only for
West Berlin and Germany. Such a Munich peace
. . . would open the floodgates of Soviet aggression
westward."
The ICFTU asked for an end to the Algerian
war and "fulfillment of the Algerian people's de-
sire for self-determination"; a halt to aid to "blood-
stained tyrants like Franco and Trujillo"; the ad-
vance of African freedom and support for the
worldwide boycott of South African goods as long
as "brutal oppression" continues in that country
under the "apartheid" racial policies.
Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical, Radio
& Machine Workers, in a May Day message
broadcast by the Voice of America, extended
greetings to "brothers and sisters behind the Iron
Curtain as well as in the free world." The IUE
president reported on American labor's legislative
and bargaining programs and pledged "an in-
creasingly active and responsible role in .interna-
tional affairs."
THE PLIGHT OF A TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION in Derby,
Conn. — related in a news story on Page 4 of this issue of the News
— will serve for the time being as an example of the incredible
complexities now confronting unions caught up in the intricacies of
the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Acts, as applied by a labor
board seeking to protect anti-union employers rather than workers'
rights.
Temporarily, at least, this local won a decision from an NLRB
trial examiner, but it is by no means out of the woods. The esseir-
tiai facts are that it has still not gained recognition from an em-
ployer despite the unanimous desire of the workers for union recog-
nition — and that the NLRB general counsel, Stuart Rothman, is
trying to punish the union for picketing rather than taking into
account the unlawful acts of the employer.
The employer fired his workers early last year for joining the
union. This was so found by a board trial examiner, and the
employer did not contest the findings. He offered job Teinstate-
ment but still did not grant union recognition, so a strike
continued.
The company is operating with strikebreakers, having avoided
dealing with the union its original employes desired. As soon as
the Landrum-Griffin Act restrictions on picketing became effective,
the employer moved to invoke them and the labor board's general
counsel began operating on two fronts in his behalf.
* * *
MR. ROTHMAN'S OFFICE sought and obtained a federal court
injunction to prohibit "recognition" picketing. The pickets changed
their signs to make them informational, and Mr. Rothman's office
countered this by seeking a contempt citation. A court hearing is
now scheduled on the issue of whether informational picketing as
well as recognition picketing is barred under Landrum-Griffin.
In a parallel action, the Rothman office also filed new labor
board charges. It argued before a second trial examiner, Ralph
Winkler, that the Landrum-Griffin Act was intended to bar even
"majority" picketing unless the strikers file for an election within
30 days.
The union contested this argument, insisting that not a word in
the entire legislative debate suggested that "majority" picketing was
supposed to be covered, but Trial Examiner Winkler refused to make
such a finding.
Mr. Winkler did, however, give a tremendous amount of weight
to the fact that the employer's original "unlawfuL" acts — firing the
workers and refusing union recognition — had caused the strike. He
ruled that such an unfair-labor-practice strike was "protected" and
<itat picketing could continue.
The interesting thing is that Mr. Rothman's office has a differ-
ent theory — that the "unlawful" acts of the employer do not make
the strike a "protected" one. Winkler's intermediate report is
subject to review by the full NLRB and, eventually, by the federal
courts.
As of now, the employer is laughing at the federal law supposed
to require him to recognize and bargain collectively with valid
organizations of his workers. The workers have been out of their
jobs for more than a year, and the massive machinery of the labor
board's prosecuting arm is marshaled against them.
* * *
SEN. JAMES E. MURRAY of Montana, veteran liberal Demo-
crat, has joined Sen. Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island in
announcing that he will not seek re-election this year. The passage
of years that moved both to this decision should not cause anyone
to ignore the breadth of character and warm human sympathy that'
marked their long careers.
As have many other men of independent means and even wealth,
they viewed service in the Senate as an opportunity to promote the
general welfare.
They represented ably the area interests of their states, but they
also spoke for all the people on broad issues of education, the
protection of labor and farmers, the protection of citizens against
the inescapable disasters of old age and sickness and disability.
They helped build the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and they have
helped prevent the dismantlement of its achievements.
LABOR HAS A BIG STAKE in the arbitration process and would
like abuses curbed to help preserve it as part of the labor-manage-
ment relationship, Jacob dayman, administrative director of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept., told an IUD-sponsored institute
on arbitration at American University in Washington, D. C. Staff
members of 12 unions attended.
Page Eiglit
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, I960
How To Buy:
Shop Around For
Lowest Interest Rate
By Sidney Margolius
WATCH OUT for higher food costs from now until fall. Meat
prices are edging up, pork won't be quite the bargain it's been
recently. You'll need to select meats carefully at the meat counter
to restrain costs for the next several months. In May, poultry, eggs
and beef chucks still are comparatively reasonable.
May is a month of spring clothing clearances. One of the best
values being offered this spring is
print and solid-color dresses of Dac-
ron, and Dacron-and-cotton, for un-
der $10, lowest price yet. These
drip-dry fabrics are crease-resistant
and require little or no ironing, thus
are a top choice for warm-weather
wear. Machine-washable resin-treat-
ed cotton dresses in classic shirtwaist
styles also are being offered for as
little as $7.50-8.50.
May also is a good month to find
price cuts on television sets in the
closeouts of this year's models. You'll
also find special sales on washing ma-
chines and cooking ranges, and sheets
and towels in the white sales.
Beware getting involved at this time in high mortgage costs with
excessive extra fees, especially for second mortgages. Actually
there is more money available for mortgages than lenders admit.
Many are holding back on first mortgages and seeking to use their
funds for second mortgages on which they can get interest rates
of 8-10 percent. Some lenders currently are offering second and
even third mortgages in newspaper ads as a way to consolidate bills.
This is both a dangerous as well as costly way to borrow money.
On conventional first mortgages, interest rates now average
about 8 percent higher than a year ago. But the tight money
situation is loosening up.
Fortunately, Congress delayed approval of the Administration's*
recent demands to raise interest rates on the money the govern-
ment itself borrows. This congressional stubbornness may well have
saved the government and the tax-paying public many millions
of dollars. Follow that lead in your own borrowing. It will pay
you to shop more widely among all the lenders in your area for
the lowest possible rates.
MANY HOMEOWNERS are asking about the new pre-planted
flower and vegetable gardens, reports the U.S. Agriculture Depart-
ment Information Office. These are lengths of cotton wadding in
which a variety of seeds are embedded. They sell for as little as
98c for a 15-foot length. You simply roll out the pre-planted mat
on the ground where you want a garden. You can cut the mats
to any wanted shape or length. The mats come planted either with
"cut flowers" providing a variety of plants over 10 inches tall, or
"edging mixtures" (yielding shorter plants).
Pre-planted gardens have won cautious approval from several
state agriculture experiment stations despite some variation in
qualtiy of different brands. The mats simplify planting and con-
serve seed since they can't be washed or blown away. The
wadding also discourages weeds during early growth although
some weeding is necessary later.
But there have been disappointments too, warn the agriculture-
experiment testers. For best success they advise: (1) prepare the
soil into fine loose loam smoothed level, and fertilize it if the mat
is not pre-fertilized; (2) anchor the seeded mat to keep it from
blowing away, preferably covering it with not quite a quarter inch
of soil; (3) water frequently until the roots are firmly established,
since the cotton wadding tends to dry out quickly.
Some sellers are promoting the mats with strong claims in news-
paper and TV ads. "A child can do it!" one advertiser proclaims.
We would suggest the child take the precautions advised above by
the experts.
FAMILIES PLANNING TO MODERNIZE HOMES or com-
plete attics will find some building materials cheaper this spring.
Lumber prices, especially playwood, have been forced down in recent
weeks by the building slowdown. There's been a sizable drop in
prices of asphalt roofing. Price tags on heating equipment also
have been trimmed.
Several new building materials show promise of cutting modern-
ization and expansion costs. Among them:
• A new lightweight plastic-surfaced plywood for use as a wall-
covering and counter tops costs about $1 a yard compared to the
more-usual $2 for such standard plastic-surface materials as For-
mica and Micarta. The new lightweight surfacing is more easily
workable. But where structural strength is important, the older
products do provide a three-quarter plywood backing compared to
only one-quarter inch for the inexpensive new surfacing.
• Liquid plastic tile, applied in liquid form, for use in bath-
rooms and kitchens in place of ceramic tile has proved to be an
important money-saver, reports the New York State Division of
Housing.
• Closets are easier and less costly to build with new floor-to-
ceiling plywood doors that open and close on pivots.
• A .new butyl rubber coating applied like paint has been in-
troduced by consumer co-ops to extend the life of asphalt roofing.
It's especially interesting because it comes in light colors to reflect
the sun and keep the house cooler than do dark roofing materials.
Copyright I960 by Sidney Margoliu*
<&h i 'pi t\v i| o m &t m t$
AFL-CIO
AMERICAN LABOR SEES
ORLD PEACE AND FREE
THIS IS THE COVER of the special 16-page illustrated supplement to be distributed throughout the
world in the May 8 issue of the New York Times. The supplement, based on the recent AFL-CIO
Conference on World Affairs, can be ordered from the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs, 815 Six-
teenth St., N. W., Washington 6, D. C. Single copies are available free. Up to 1,000 copies can
be ordered at 5 cents each; over 1,000 copies 4he cost is 4 cents each.
From Soup to Nonsense:
Self-Improvement for the Birds,
Confused Columnist Complains
By Jane Goodsell
T GET ALONG pretty well, in a bumbling sort
-■- of way, until I start reading articles on how
to improve myself. Then I go to pieces.
For instance, I am
only now recover-
ing from an article
I read several
weeks ago on how
to go to sleep. Up
to then I'd never
tTiought much
about going to
sleep. I simply
went to bed, closed
my eyes, and that
was that.
The article began
by quoting statis-
tics on the time it
takes an average
adult to go to sleep, in comparison with the more
relaxed lower vertebrates.
It posed such grim questions as: Do you lie
awake worrying? Do you punch your pillow?
Can you relax? Do you watch the clock?
The article then taught you how to avoid all
these pitfalls. It prescribed soothing thoughts, a
mattress of the right degree of softness, the cor-
rect temperature of the bedroom and special re-
laxing positions.
These constructive suggestions convinced me
that I could never do anything as difficult as going
to sleep, and I've had insomnia ever since. I lie
awake worrying, I punch my pillow, I watch the
clock and I can't relax.
THEN THERE WAS the article on memory
improvement Now, I've always been able to re-
member the dates of the Battle of Hastings, the
birthdays of everyone in my family, the major hol-
idays and when Columbus discovered America.
With a little figuring I can remember when I
graduated from high school and my favorite
recipe for sponge cake. Occasionally I remem-
ber the names of people to whom I'm intro-
duced, and I hardly ever forget a telephone
number.
The article attempted to improve my memory
through the association of ideas. I was supposed
to co-ordinate my graduation from high school
with Roosevelt's second inauguration, and an in-
troduction to Mrs. Blake with Blake, the poet. Or
with the word "lake" with a "B" added to it.
After a week of wrestling with this sort of
thing, I could hardly remember what day came
after Wednesday.
A dietary chart, prescribing the basic daily re-
quirements of riboflavin, vitamin C and protein,
does not improve our menus. What it does ac-
complish is to take all the joy out of cooking.
Etiquette books make me feel like a bar-
barian, and advice on speeding up my reading
rate unnerves me to the point of being unable to
comprehend the funnies.
Now I understand that still another book has
been written on how to avoid worry. As if things
weren't bad enough already, now I've got to worry
about worrying.
I'd be all right if they'd just leave me alone!
Disillusionment Spreads ;
Cuban Workers
Feel Castro Lash
Restive Cuban workers are becoming increasingly disillusioned
with the revolutionary government headed by bearded Fidel Castro,
according to Serafino Romualdi, AFL-CIO inter-American repre-
sentative.
The latest spur to their growing resentment is a recent require-
ment that all Cuban citizens regis-*
ter in a labor census which is ex-
pected to make the government's
controls over the nation's work
force even more complete, he said
Romualdi, a long-time sudent of
Latin American affairs, pointed out
that prior to the latest edict, Labor
Minister Augusto Martinez had is-
sued orders prohibiting workers
from changing jobs without govern
ment authorization and forbidding
them to obtain employment without
government credentials.
v Both rank-and-file union mem-
bers and their leaders, he said,
"resent the now-accepted prac-
tice of branding anti-communism
as counter-revolutionary, a charge
that can bring discharge from the
job, immediate arrest and loss of
property."
He cited the case of Raul Ramos
Proenza, former president of the
Barbers' Union of Havana, who
was arrested for counter-revolution-
ary activity that consisted of put-
ting up a sign, "Death to Commu-
nism." He was sentenced to three
years in jail.
Luis Penelas and Jose Fernandez,
leaders of the Construction Work-
ers' Federation, were ousted from
office at a Communist-packed union
meeting because they had incurred
the displeasure of the minister of
labor by opposing the Communist
policies of Jesus Soto, secretary of
organization of the Cuban Confed-
eration of Workers (CTC).
Noelio Morel, acting secretary
general of the CTC, branded the
meeting illegal and refused to
recognize the new regime, and
was backed by the CTC executive
committee. Thereupon, said Ro-
mualdi, the minister of labor or-
dered troops to take over the
CTC.
Romualdi also said that Ignacio
Gonzalez Tellechea, a prominent
figure in the international labor
movement, has been forced to seek
political asylum in the Mexican
Embassy.
Tellechea, secretary of the Ship
builders Union for more than 25
years, a leader in the Cuban Mari
time Federation, CTC secretary of
international relations, president of
the Inter-American Regional Or-
ganization of Workers from 1955
until last year, and since 1957 a
member of the Intl. Labor Organ
ization Governing Body, previously
had had to go into hiding to escape
arrest, although there were no
charges against him. His inherited
house arid other personal property
were confiscated a few months ago
"Discontent is mounting among
the sugar workers who, after los-
ing the wage differential for 1959,
amounting to about $25 million,
are now being forced to hand
over to the Castro government as
'voluntary constributions' 15 per-
cent or more of their earnings,"
Romualdi noted.
"Never before in the history of
the republic did the worker who
earned less than 100 pesos (nomi
nally $100) a month pay an income
tax. Now anyone earning from 1
peso up pays a 3 percent gross tax
on his income. On Apr. 1 the
workers began to pay an additional
4 percent tax to help the govern
ment industrialize the island. Add-
ed to this workers are daily being
asked to contribute to agrarian re-
form and to the purchase of arms
and planes to combat 'foreign ag-
gression and defend the sovereignty
of Cuba'."
$1 Minimum Wage Bill
Signed by Rockefeller
A Albany, N. Y. — Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) has signed into
law three labor-backed bills passed by the legislature in the final
days of the session, including a $l-an-hour state minimum wage.
He also signed a labor-opposed unemployment compensation bill
which drastically stiffens eligibility requirements.
The minimum wage bill, al-'^
though less than the $1.25 an hour
sought by labor, extended cover-
age to large groups of workers
excluded from the federal wage-
hour law and not protected by New
York's limited industry-by-industry
wage board system.
Included in the state's first
statutory minimum wage are em*
ployes of non-profit institutions,
including voluntary hospitals.
Senate Republicans pulled the
rug from under Rockefeller by vot-
ing in a secret ballot at a caucus
not to call up a bill which would
have prohibited discrimination in
Conciliation Service
Supervisor Named
San Francisco, Calif. — The ap-
pointment of Thomas J. Nicolopu-
los as supervisor of the California
State Conciliation Service has been
announced by State Industrial Re-
lations Dir. John F. Henning.
Nicolopulos, a state conciliator
since 1948, placed first in a promo-
tional examination held to fill the
vacancy left by the retirement of
Glenn A. Bowers, who had headed
the conciliation service since its in-
ception in 1947. Bowers plans to
remain active in the industrial rela-
tions field as an arbitrator and col-
lege instructor.
sale or rental of most types of
housing.
Rockefeller expressed "sharp dis-
appointment" and was quoted by
the New York Post as saying the
bill's rejection would be a "great
blow to the Republican party."
In the area of social legislation,
the legislature boosted the ceiling
on workmen's compensation and
sickness disability benefits to $50 a
week, a $5 increase.
Coverage under workmen's com-
pensation was broadened to include
establishments with two or more
employes — previously four or more
— and non-profit institutions.
The ceiling on unemployment
benefits was also boosted to $50 a
week, but the legislation was op-
opposed by the State AFL-CIO
because it included a severe re-
striction on benefits for persons
who voluntarily quit their jobs
or are fired for misconduct.
In place of the previous six-
week waiting period for these
groups, they will be required to
have intervening employment and
earn at least $200 or work three
days a week for four weeks before
their eligibility is restored.
The labor-opposed bill narrowly
passed the lower house, 78-to-71,
as a number of Republicans from
industrial areas joined with the
Democrats in voting against it.
AFL-CIO SUMMER SCHOOLS will use materials chosen by this mostly shirt-sleeved committee of
union educators at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D. C. Members are, left to right: John
Brumm, Machinists; Mel Evans, Auto Workers; Don Stevens, Michigan State AFL-CIO; Al Wickman,
Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers; George T. Guernsey, AFL-CIO Dept. of Education; Otto Pragan,
Chemical Workers; Bill Elkuss, Clothing Workers; Dick Logan, Papermakers & Paperworkers.
House-Passed Boost in Health Funds
Goes to Senate Appropriations Unit
A Senate Appropriations subcommittee will soon take up a House-passed measure providing $4.2
billion in fiscal 1961 appropriations for the Labor Dept. and the Dept. of Health, Education & Wel-
fare.
The House, by a rollcall vote of 362-10, added $197.5 million to the HEW budget over Admin-
istration protests. It thus followed a pattern in existence since Pres. Eisenhower took office in 1953
whereby increases are voted each^
year in funds for health and educa-
tion programs.
At the same time, the House
shaved $13.2 million from the Pres-
ident's requests for the Labor Dept.
The bulk of these cuts— $10 million
— was based on hoped-for declines
in jobless levels this year and would
be restored, if needed, through sup-
plemental appropriations.
The increase in the HEW
budget followed recommenda-
tions by a House Appropriations
subcommittee headed by Rep.
John E. Fogarty (D-R.I.) which
characterized the White House
requests as "a retrenchment, a
step backward."
Although it granted the majority
of the improvements urged by the
AFL-CIO, the House ignored a
plea for an added $900,000 to hire
100 more investigators for the
Wage -Hour Div. "to detect and
prevent -chiseling on payments due
workers." There was a possibility
the Senate might add the labor-
requested funds before final pas-
sage.
Major HEW budget additions in
the House centered on these key
areas:
• A $24 million hike in funds
Social Work
Award Goes to
UAW Staffer
Detroit — Andrew W. Brown, as-
sistant director of the Auto Work-
ers' Community Services Dept., has
been named by the Detroit Metro-
politan Chapter of the National As-
sociation of Social Workers to re-
ceive its seventh Award of Merit
given for 1959-60.
Brown, who also administers
strike assistance programs for some
1,300 UAW locals and guides the
creation of community service
committees in UAW locals, was
commended for "the thoughtful
and successful manner in which he
has interpreted professional social
work to organized labor on local,
state, national and international
levels."
The award was scheduled to be
made at a special dinner honoring
Brown.
CORRECTION
Through an error, the Apr. 23,
1960 issue of the AFL-CIO News
was incorrectly identified as Vol. V,
No. 16. That edition of the paper
actually was Vol. V, No. 17.
for hospital construction under the
Hill-Burton Act. The Administra-
tion admitted there was a shortage
of 80,000 hospital beds across the
nation, but asked for a 25 percent
slash in funds.
• A $25 million boost for con-
structing waste treatment plants,
raising funds for these projects to
$45 million. Earlier this year, Eis-
enhower vetoed a bill calling for
$90 million annually for 10 years
for these projects, declaring water
pollution is largely a "local prob-
lem."
• A $187.3 million appropria-
tion to aid schools in federally im-
pacted areas. The Administration
had proposed a slash to $126.6
million.
• A $55 million increase for
the National Institutes of Health.
The Administration had asked for
only $400 million — the same as
was appropriated for fiscal 1960.
Restored to the Labor Dept.
budget was $2 million which the
Administration had cut from voca-
tional educational programs. The
AFL-CIO had vigorously opposed
the proposed reduction.
Also voted in the House were
labor-backed requests of $120,000
more for international labor activ-
ities; $230,000 to hire additional
investigators for the Mexican farm
labor program; and $1.2 million
for revision of the Consumer Price
Index, a move the AFL-CIO said
had been "long delayed."
Freedom Commission
Urged to Combat Reds
The AFL-CIO has given its endorsement to pending legislation
which would establish a Freedom Commission and a Free World
Academy to train personnel for a "coordinated effort" in combat-
ting Communist ideology.
In letters to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, AFL-
CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J.'3 >
Biemiller urged support for the
measure which is expected to come
before the committee for action
shortly.
Multiple Approach Planned
The academy would train per-
sonnel to serve on a commission
aimed at countering the Commu-
nist offensive "in the economic,
political, social, religious, moral and
cultural fields."
Urging passage of the meas-
ure "at the earliest possible
moment," Biemiller declared that
the AFL-CIO "has been among
the first that have consistently
pointed to the threat posed to
the free world by the attempts
by world communism to conquer
and dominate the world." He
added:
"The Communist conspiracy
works on every level and works 24
hours a day. Its agents are hard-
working fanatics who have been es-
pecially trained at their jobs of in-
filtration and subversion.
"The necessary effort of defense
and counterattack on our part can-
not be successfully achieved by
hit-and-miss, uncoordinated efforts.
Our country needs a coordinated
effort on all levels, using men well
grounded in knowledge of all as-
pects of Communist ideology and
endeavor, and skilled in countering
its agents all over the world."
Hartnett Views
On Exchanges
Are Clarified
Al Hartnett, secretary-treasurer
of the Electrical, Radio and Ma-
chine Workers, has told the AFL-
CIO News that he favors cultural
exchanges involving American and
Soviet workers, not exchange of
visits between trade union groups.
Hartnett's remarks carried in the
Apr. 23 issue of the News indicated
that he was suggesting exchanges
between American union spokes-
men and spokesmen of Soviet la-
bor groups.
Hartnett said at the AFL-CIO
Conference on World Affairs, ac-
cording to a transcript, "I believe
that we will learn to live together
more quickly by association one
with each other and I would like
to see included as part of this pro-
gram the suggestion that we engage
in cultural and other types of ex-
change between our people so that
some kind of a contribution can be
made to understanding the needs
of our people."
He added: "I believe they (the
Soviets) need to see American
workers. I believe they need to see
the average American family. I
believe in seeing it they might ac-
cept it."
At Chicago Rail Convention;
Douglas Warns of Risks
In Compulsory Arbitration
Chicago — The state of labor-management relations in the railroad industry "calls for a new deter-
mination on the part of all to make collective bargaining work" to prevent compulsory arbitration,
Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.) declared here in an address to the 12th convention of the AFL-CIO
Railway Employes' Dept.
Douglas was given a tremendous ovation by convention delegates, who rose to their feet as he
completed his talk. Delegates also^
A HUNDRED TONS of jet airplane depends on its landing-gear, so
constant maintenance is a vital task for one group of "Americans at
Work." The 66th episode in the AFL-CIO's weekly TV series
shows what happens to a jet between takeoff and landing — the op
erations that passengers seldom see, but that require seven workers
on the ground for every, one in the air. Those shown are members
of the Machinists.
State, County Workers
Weigh Dues Increase
Philadelphia — Delegates to the 12th national convention of the
State, County and Municipal Employes prepared at the opening
session here to increase their union's strength, militancy and service
with added financial support.
Overwhelming passage is expected for a recommendation of the
international executive board rais- 1 ^
ing the per capita tax from 65 cents
to 80 cents and providing for inten-
sification and extension of current
organizing and collective bargain-
ing programs.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
telegraphed the delegates he
hoped they would "vote addi-
tional support to the internation-
al union so that the interests of
public employes may be served.
They deserve a strong, militant
organization."
The AFL-CIO head also saw
unionization of public employes an
aid to good government.
Bargaining Aids Merit System
"Collective bargaining," he said,
"needs to be established in the pub-
lic sector of the economy as it has
in private employment. This would
be an aid to the merit system and
to better public administration
That is the special and. particular
responsibility of your union."
Meany also praised the union's
venture into public housing in Mil-
waukee and the "contribution your
SCME Wins
Citywide Pact
In Cincinnati
Cincinnati — District Council 51
of the State, County and Municipal
Employes has won union recogni-
tion from the City of Cincinnati,
the first council-manager city of
major size to accept the collective
bargaining principle.
A one-year pact recognizes the
union as bargaining agent for some
3,800 city employes. This excludes
police and firefighters and certain
other classifications.
The contract, signed for the un-
ion by AFSCME Vice-Pres. Henry
Ostholthoff and for the city by City
Manager C. A. Harrell, provides a
general wage boost retroactive to
Jan. 1; premium and differential
pay; hospital and surgical coverage;
pension and death benefits and nu-
merous other advantages.
union is making in the struggle
against totalitarianism with its par-
ticipation in the work of the Public
Services Intl., a trade secretariat re
lated to the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions.
Pres. Arnold S. Zander set the
keynote for the convention, urging
the 800 delegates, representing
1,600 locals with 200,000 members
in 46 states, to "build big and aim
high."
"Make no little plans," he said,
"they have no power to stir men's
souls."
The delegates cheered his report
on organizational efforts now
under way "with every prospect of
success" among Puerto Rico's 70.
000 municipal and commonwealth
employes. Zander told how the co-
operation of Gov. Luis Munoz
Marin resulted from the mutual in
terest of the government and union
in sorely-needed housing projects.
Philadelphia's Mayor Richard-
son Dil worth also drew the dele-
gates' plaudits as he pledged,
"Philadelphia city employes soon
will have the union shop." The
union, 'he said, "rightfully feels
that those who have not joined
but receive the benefits achieved
by your organization, should
bear their share of the cost. They
are free-loaders who are helped
but don't want to pay the freight.
"Right now, the city and the un-
ion are working out the proper ex-
ceptions such as certain super-
visory posts, and the union shop
should become a reality shortly."
Philadelphia will be the first city
of more than one million popula-
tion with a union shop. Such mu-
nicipal agreements now number 65
in smaller cities.
Although the union is exempt
from the provisions of the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act, the convention,
acting in the spirit of the labor
movement's democratic traditions,"
adopted a constitutional amend-
ment requiring that all convention
delegates and alternates, unless un-
opposed, shall be elected by secret
ballot after due advance notice of
nominations and elections.
heard adresses from Chairman G.
E. Leighty of the Railway Labor
Executives' Association, who is also
president of the AFL-CIO Railroad
Telegraphers; Mayor Richard J.
Daley of this city; Pres. William A.
Lee of the Chicago Federation of
Labor; Eli L. Oliver, nationally
known' economist, and others.
The department is comprised
of six international unions with a
railroad shopcraft membership—
the Machinists, Boilermakers and
Blacksmiths, Sheet Metal Work-
ers, Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers, Railway Carmen
and Firemen and Oilers. Pres.
Michael Fox, veteran official of
the Electrical Workers before he
became head of the department,
was re-elected to a third term.
Howard Pickett, former Car-
men's official, was re-elected sec-
retary-treasurer.
Douglas said he had not followed
current railroad negotiations "close-
ly enough to assess the relative
blame for the difficulties in reach-
ing an agreement. I know the rail
roads are critical of your wage
rules proposals. But I believe you
have raised very serious questions
whether they have bargained frank-
ly and responsibly in insisting on
wage cuts, in their work-rules de-
mands, and in seeking to exclude
certain benefit proposals from the
bargaining process.
Unsettled Grievances'
"Furthermore, the long record of
unsettled grievance cases before
the National Railroad Adjustment
Board and of delays prior to a final
determination make it clear that
even this arbitration process is be-
ing impaired."
The Railway Labor Act pro
vides for binding arbitration by that
board of grievances arising out of
existing agreements.
The senator stated that those
Panel Opens
Hearings on
Rail Wages
Chicago — A three-man Emergen-
cy Board, appointed by Pres. Eisen-
hower, has opened fact-finding
hearings on the thorny wage dis-
pute between 11 unions represent-
ing 650,000 non-operating workers
and the nation's railroads.
The board members — Dr. John
T. Dunlop, Harvard University pro-
fessor and veteran arbitrator; Ben-
jamin Aaron, UCLA professor and
arbitrator, and Arthur M. Sempli-
ner, Wayne County, Mich., circuit
court commissioner — have 30 days
to come up with a recommendation
for settlement of the dispute. The
unions are barred from striking for
another 30 days after the board has
submitted its recommendations.
The President named the Emer
gency Board after the National
Mediation Service reported inabil-
ity to bring about an agreement
between the "non-op" unions, seek
ing a 25-cent hourly increase plus
holiday, vacation and health bene-
fits, and the railroads which coun-
tered wtih a demand for a 15-cents-
an-hour pay slash.
Before the date the Emergency
Board is due to report, an arbitra-
tion award is expected in the wage
dispute between the Locomotive
Engineers and the railroads. Still
in preliminary stages of bargaining
are the railroad demands that the
operating unions agree to sweeping
changes in work rules.
"who regard (emergency) stop-
pages as the greatest evil now pro-
pose compulsory arbitration as the
proper solution." He declared that
the railroads, "which are already
regulated in some matters by the
Interstate Commerce Commission,
should not be allowed to become
the entering wedge for detailed gov-
ernment regulation of all key in-
dustries arising out of compulsory
arbitration."
He said: "Businessmen who at
first thought tend to favor compul-
sory arbitration because they be-
lieve it would 'prevent strikes'
would therefore do well to look be-
fore they leap.
"While there are abuses of free-
dom by some, we should not ignore
its basic importance to all.**
Leighty told the delegates he
didn't think that the railroads
had fought "any movement any
harder than they have our pres-
ent movement" for a 25-cent
hourly wage increase, improved
paid vacations, health and wel-
fare improvements, and life in-
surance without cost to the em-
ploye. He cited carrier-instigated
delays in concluding negotiations
on these proposals, now before
an emergency (fact - finding)
board named by the President.
Leighty described the financial
condition of the railroads as being
the best in their history. This, he
said, is "demonstrated by their net
earnings; by the fact that less than
one-half of 1 percent of the rail-
roads are either in bankruptcy or
receivership, as compared to as
high as 30 percent in other years."
He said, also, that the "ratio of cur-
rent assets to current liabilities is
better now than it has ever been."
Rails Inflated Pay Costs
Oliver said that the railroads, in
an arbitration board proceeding in-
volving the unaffiliated Locomotive
Engineers, had exaggerated their
payroll cost by more than $1.5 bil-
lion. He said that it was "not up
$1,200,000,000 (from 1953 to
1958, as the railroads had claimed)
—it was down by $400,000,000."
"That is a sample of the accuracy
of the financial and wage data we
are having to meet in these cases,"
he declared.
3 Unions to Cooperate
In Sylvania Negotiations
Three unions in the electrical manufacturing field have announced
the start of a coordinated bargaining effort in plants of Sylvania
Electronic Products Inc., major manufacturing arm of the giant
General Telephone & Electronics Corp.
The agreement, second of its kind in the electrical manufacturing
field, was designed to counter 1 ^
mutual-aid pacts by employers and
to produce better contracts foi
7,000 Sylvania workers.
More than a year ago, the AFL
CIO Industrial Union Dept. set up
the General Electric-Westinghouse
Conference to coordinate bargain
ing efforts of five unions represent-
ing 150,000 General Electric Co.
workers and 70,000 employed by
Westinghouse.
Seven local unions in Sylva-
nia's plants sent 30 delegates to
a Washington meeting with rep-
resentatives of the internationals
involved — the Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers, Machin-
ists, and Electrical, Radio & Ma-
chine Workers — and the AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept.
Delegates reported that Sylvania,
a major producer of industrial and
consumer electronic products, now
has sales in excess of $400 million
annually.
Company Profits High
The profit position of Sylvania
and General Telephone is excel-
lent, the workers said. Both com-
panies have expanded at a much
faster rate than competitors, they
reported
It was agreed that IUD will cir-
culate a questionnaire in all Sylva-
nia plants seeking information on
job classifications and wage incen-
tive systems.
Delegates reported a wide dif-
ference in Sylvania plant condi-
tions and rates. They agreed on
the need for improvements in
insurance and pension plans
geared to a profit-sharing ar-
rangement.
The meeting urged exploration
of the possibilities for organizing
presently unorganized Sylvania
plants and units. The IUD will
review the possibilities for coordi-
nated effort with the international
unions most concerned, IUD Or-
ganizational Dir. Nicholas Zonarich
said.
Zonarich expressed hopes that
coordination in collective bargain-
ing would lead to coordinated ac-
tivity in organizing.
"All of us know," he said,
"that our best hope for good
contracts lies in maximum organ-
ization of any given industry, and
that best results with any major
corporation are obtainable only
if we are organized for effective
bargaining."
The IUD-Sylvania conference is
intended to be a permanent organ-
ization. Further meetings will be
scheduled as the unions start to
bargain.
Most contracts with Sylvania ter-
minate this summer or fall, or are
subject to reopening on wages.
Most GE and Westinghouse con-
tracts also terminate in the fall.
Last December, 220,000 workers
in the two chains had the chance
to mark a ballot containing 19 sep-
arate bargaining points which will
form the basis for union contract
proposals.
Carpenters Win
7-Month Strike
Waco, Tex. —The Carpenters
have ended a seven-month strike
against the Sams Mfg. Co. here
after winning what union officials
described as "a fair settlement."
The union's state organizing di-
rector, G. H. Simmons, Jr., said
the company, which makes church
furniture, agreed to a standard un-
ion contract. He said the settle-
ment is "something we can build
on."
Workers at the plant walked out
when negotiations for a first con-
tract broke down two months after
they had voted 64 to 4 for union
representation. Hourly wages at
the time averaged only $1.25.
Resolution Overwhelmingly Approved:
Canadian Labor Congress
Calls for New Political Party
By Gervase N. Love
Montreal, Que. — Canada's proposed new political party received a powerful shot in the arm when
the 1,700 delegates to the third constitutional convention of the Canadian Labor Congress formally
endorsed its tentative general principles and instructed the CLC Executive Council to continue efforts
to bring it to actuality.
The action came after three hours of discussion during which most of the two score speakers urged
approval of a Political Education^
Committee report containing the
recommendations. The actual vote
showed only a slim scattering of
hands in opposition, although a
group of Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers members from Que-
bec earlier had walked out of the
hall rather than vote against it.
The delegates broke into loud
cheers, threw scraps of torn paper
into the air and sang "Solidarity
Forever" when Pres. Claude Jodoin
banged down his gavel to indicate
passage of the resolution.
Throughout the debate, three
recurrent themes were empha-
sized by speakers from the floor
— that organized labor in Canada
despite victories on the picket
line and at the bargaining table
"is losing ground" in parliament
and the provincial legislatures;
that trade unions are under in-
creasingly bitter attack by anti-
labor forces from coast to coast,
with political action offering the
only salvation; and that organ-
ized labor must merely play a
part in, not dominate, any new
political party.
Chairman of the Political Action
Committee was Eamon Park, Steel-
workers' staff representative from
Toronto and a former member of
the Ontario legislature. He told
the convention that approval of his
committee's recommendations and
formation of the party "may well
change the course of Canadian po-
litical history."
"We aim to create a sense of
realism," he said, "of honest left
and right views, and put an end to
GE Stockholders Get
Report from Union
Chicago — In an unprecedented move, the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers have given the stockholders of General Electric
Co. a preview of collective bargaining aims — keyed to a guaran-
teed annual wage — which will be presented at negotiations which
open this summer.
The IUE's approach was con- 1 ^
tained in a "Jobholders Report"
presented to the 68th annual meet-
ing of GE stockholders here, in
order to make shareholders aware
of the "attitudes" of the union.
The report was based, in the
main, on a unique approach in-
augurated by the AFL-CIO In-
dustrial Union Dept., which es-
tablished a GE - Westinghouse
Conference composed of five af-
filiates employed by the two
giant electrical equipment manu-
facturers, and which polled em-
ployes on their preferences for
collective bargaining demands
this year.
Complete results of the poll —
which showed overwhelming pref-
erence for the guaranteed annual
wage, a general wage increase, a
union shop, increased pensions and
cost-of-living increases — will be
presented to a May meeting of the
conference board called to formal-
ize the collective bargaining pro-
gram to be presented to the two
companies.
Comprising the conference
board, besides IUE, are the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
Machinists, Auto Workers and
Technical Engineers. The five un-
ions represent 150,000 GE em-
ployes and 70,000 workers at West-
inghouse.
The IUE report, signed by
Pres. James B. Carey and dis-
tributed to each GE stockholder
at the meeting here, said that un-
ion negotiators this year "will be
armed for the talks as no similar
group has been in the history of
union-management relations."
Here, in capsule form, are high-
lights from the IUE's arguments to
the GE stockholders on the five
improvements given top priority in
the poll:
Guaranteed Annual Wage — Also
known as Supplemental Unemploy-
ment Benefits, this provides a sys-
tem of giving laid-off workers cer-
tain benefits in addition to unem-
ployment compensation. It has pro-
vided "an economic stabilizer for
workers, industries and communi-
ties" alike in such major industries
as auto, steel, rubber and alumi-
num.
General Wage Increase — Since
the contract negotiated in 1957,
"the productivity of the IUE work-
er in GE has far outstripped the
wage increases he has received."
Union Shop — The "overwhelm
ing majority" of IUE members out-
side GE already enjoy union shop
security. GE's resistance to the un
ion shop is "based on principles
that are archaic and expensive."
Increased Pensions — In some GE
plants "the only workers on the job
are those whose seniority amounts
to at least half the time necessary
to qualify for pensions.
Cost - of - Living Increases — Es
calator clauses in present contracts
"have protected the workers only
in part" against rising prices.
Analyzing the company's ability
to pay, the IUE report pointed out
that in 1959 GE achieved an all-
time record in after-tax profits of
$280 million — up $38 million from
the 1958 level.
Turning to the state of labor-
management relations at GE, the
report asked stockholders to
"make known their doubts"
about the company's present in-
dustrial relations policies, devised
by the company's one-time Vice
Pres. Lemuel R. Boulware — pol-
icies criticized recently by Prof.
Benjamin M. Selekman of Har-
vard University as "an outstand-
ing example of cynicism" in this
field.
'Say Ahr
the tweedledum and tweedledee of
the Liberal-Tory system of the last
few years — and also to give some
life to the kind of resolutions we've
been passing at conventions these
last few years."
In addition to the committee
report, the delegates also had
before them an Executive Coun-
cil report outlining steps taken
since the 1958 CLC convention,
held in Winnipeg, Man., de-
clared that "the time has come
for a fundamental realignment
of political forces in Canada,*
and instructed the council to ini-
tiate moves for the formation of
a new liberal political party.
The council reported that it had
joined with the Cooperative Com-
monwealth Federation (CCF) na-
tional council to establish a Na-
tional Committee for the New
Party, which has sponsored or
helped organize grass-roots discus-
sion meetings in all parts of the
country, and has published study
papers on a constitution and a pro-
gram which, the council empha-
sized, do not purport to be final
documents.
Widespread interest both in and
outside the labor movement, the
council asserted, "shows the great
possibility for effective political ac-
tion which lies ahead."
The resolution the convention en-
dorsed approved the Executive
Council report, including the New
Party's general principles; instructed
the council to continue its work in
the National Committee fqr the
New Party; authorized the council
to assist in preparing for and call-
ing a founding convention, and
urged all local unions and their
members to help in the party's
formation.
In other actions the convention:
• Stood for a minute of silence
in mourning for unarmed Africans
shot down while demonstrating
against discriminatory laws; con-
demned the "policy and practice"
of the South African government;
endorsed the boycott of South Afri-
can goods sponsored by the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions and asked the government to
demand the condemnation of South
Africa in the United Nations and
the councils of the British Com-
monwealth.
• Heard AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
George M. Harrison, fraternal dele-
gate to the convention, commend
the CLC for having "forwarded the
cause of progressive, dynamic and
clean trade unionism," and note
that the major problems of the la-
bor movements in both countries
are the same — technological change
and attacks by management.
Life, Business Week Back
Principle of Forand Bill
Two of the nation's leading, conservative-oriented publica-
tions — Life Magazine and Business Week — have both en-
dorsed the Forand bill principle of financing health care for
the aged through the social security system.
In an editorial comment, Life declared that private volun-
tary plans "can never meet the whole need." It added that
the "cheapest and most logical way" to provide needed health
insurance "is by extending the existing system of social
security."
Business Week asserted that "the voluntary approach sim-
ply will not do the job." Use of the social security system, said
the magazine, "has the advantage of keeping old people from
feeling that they are beggars." (See text of Business Week
editorial, Page 6.)
AFL-CIO «cwi
Congress, Ike Set for
Legislative Showdown
(Continued from Page 1)
House Minority Leader Charles A.
Halleck (R-Ind.), after a White
House meeting with Eisenhower,
hurled "budget-busting" charges at
the Democrats. The President, they
said, will send Congress a special
message urging enactment of his
moderate program, following it up
with a radio-TV appeal to the pub-
lic.
• Senate Majority Leader Lyn-
don B. Johnson (D-Tex.) fired back,
accusing the Administration of
"panic," and warning that the Dem-
ocratic Congress would not be a
"rubber stamp" for the President.
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.) charged that tfie Republicans
were "grabbing for an election is-
sue, and up to now they haven't
got one."
Designed to pump life into the
sagging home building industry, the
Rains emergency housing bill was
passed by a vote of 214-163, after
the House rejected two GOP moves
designed to scuttle the measure.
A so-called "civil rights" rider —
introduced by Rep. Clarence J.
Brown (R-O.) and GOP Whip Leslie
C. Arends (R-Ill.) in an effort to
revive the conservative Republican-
Southern Democratic coalition —
was defeated by a teller vote of 126-
83. Following passage, the House
voted 235-139 against a motion to
recommit which involved the rider.
The bill would provide $1 billion
to purchase FHA and GI mort-
gages on moderate-priced housing,
protecting home buyers against ex-
cessive charges by lenders.
Scheduled for action before
the election-year Congress winds
up early in July, in time for the
Democratic and Republican Na-
tional conventions, are a host of
other measures near completion
in committee. These include:
• A $390 million area redevel-
opment bill, next major piece of
legislation scheduled for House ac-
tion. Similar to one passed by the
Senate by a 49-46 vote last year,
the measure will be forced to the
floor by bypassing the blockading
Rules Committee through a little-
used procedure, McCormack an-
nounced. The bill is similar to one
vetoed by Eisenhower in 1958.
• The Kennedy -Morse -Roose-
velt minimum wage bill which
would raise the minimum from $1
to $1.25 and expand coverage to an
additional 10 million workers,
scheduled for at least two more
weeks of House Labor subcommit-
tee hearings. The Administration
recommended only a "modest" in-
crease — interpreted by Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell to mean a new
minimum of $1.10 to $1.15. Mitch-
ell said he would "recommend a
veto" if Congress goes beyond that
figure.
• Medical care for the aged,
keyed to the social security prin-
ciple, still is under study in the
House Ways & Means Committee
as compromise efforts continue, in
the wake of initial committee dis-
approval. The Administration's
open hostility was restated by Ei-
senhower at his Apr. 27 press con-
ference, when he called using the
social security mechanism "a com-
pulsory affair."
• A federal-aid-to-education
measure, now stuck in the powerful,
conservative-dominated House Rules
Committee. The bill, introduced by
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N.J.)
would authorize $975 million in a
three-year program for school con-
struction.
The Senate earlier this year
passed a $1.8 billion bill for
school construction and teachers 9
salaries, despite vigorous Admin-
istration opposition. GOP lead-
ers have hinted that even the
Thompson bill might prove un-
acceptable to the President.
Also scheduled for action at this
session is the Thompson "situs pick-
eting" bill, approved by the House
Labor Committee, which would re-
store the right of building trades
unions to picket multi - employer
sites without being held in violation
of Taft-Hartley's secondary boycott
provisions. Endorsed by the Dem-
ocratic majority and the Adminis-
tration, the measure has not yet
been formally reported by Com-
mittee Chairman Graham Barden
(D-N. C), who opposes it.
Metal Trades Beat
2 Raiding Attempts
AFL-CIO Metal Trades Councils
in Colorado and Texas have beaten
back two raiding attempts by un-
affiliated unions in elections con-
ducted by the National Labor Re-
lations Board.
At the Rocky Flats installation
of the Atomic Energy Commission,
the Denver Metal Trades Council
turned back Dist. 50 of the Mine
Workers, reaffirming majority rights
which the AFL-CIO affiliate has
held for seven years.
The vote at the AEC installation
was 582 for the Metal Trades
Council, 493 for Dist. 50, and 12
for no union.
At Texas City, Tex., the AFL-
CIO Metal Trades Council retained
its right to represent the workers,
piling up 1,163 votes against 451
for the unaffiliated Pace union, and
157 for neither.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, APRIL SO, 1960
6 Students Win AFL-CIO Scholarships
Merit Awards Cover
Four Years at College
Six high school students, scheduled to graduate in June, have
been awarded AFL-CIO merit scholarships.
Two girls and four boys will get full four-year scholarships to the
accredited college or university of their own choice.
The winners, who are from union and non-union families, are:
Mary E. Blakely, Rock Hill,^> :
S. C; Gene S. Cain, Panama City,
Fla.; Joseph F. Cullen, Bozeman,
Mont.; Roberta J. Middleton, Pueb-
lo, Col.; Kenneth E. Schultz, Ste-
vensville, Mich.; Wesley C. Green,
Pawtucket, R. I.
In a letter to each of the winners,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany of-
fered congratulations and wishes
for success.
"I hope your college days will
be enjoyable and fruitful," he
said. "The honor came as a re-
sult of hard study, multiple tests
and multiple judging, in addition
to a consideration of your outside
activities."
AFL-CIO merit scholarships
were awarded for the first time last
year. They are designed to call
attention to the federation's educa-
tional policies. They seek to meet
Soviet competition by helping tal-
ented students get to college.
Unions Give $500,000
The AFL-CIO effort is part of
a larger program by U.S. trade un-
ions. Under it, unions give more
than $500,000 a year to help gifted
students.
Final selection of the winners
was made by AFL-CIO representa-
tives from among students who
qualified for final consideration in
National Merit Scholarship exams.
Here are details on the winners
and their plans:
Mary E. Blakely, daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Ralph E. Blakely, is
a student at Rock Hill, S. C, High
School. She is a member of the
2 Republicans
Elected From
Pennsylvania
Two Republican candidates won
election to the House, to fill vacan-
cies arising from the death of GOP
members, and Vice Pres. Richard
M. Nixon and Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy (D-Mass.) won presidential
preference primaries in Pennsylva-
nia balloting Apr. 26.
Nixon, running unopposed on
the Republican ballot, rolled up ap-
proximately as many votes as the
952,000 Pres. Eisenhower received
four years ago. None of the Dem-
ocratic presidential figures was
listed on the ballot but Kennedy
got more than 70 percent of an
impressive Democratic write - in
vote.
With 88 percent of the pre-
cincts reported, Kennedy had ap-
proximately 161,000 write - ins.
Others showed: former Gov. Ad-
lai E. Stevenson, 25,000; Sen.
Hubert H. , Humphrey (Minn.),
12,000; Sen. Stuart Symington
(Mo.), 5,500; Sen. Lyndon John-
son (Tex.), 3,400.
Republican Douglas Elliott won
House election in Pennsylvania's
18th District by an 8-to-5 margin
over a Democratic candidate, but
in the 17th District the ratio was
sharply cut in a traditionally GOP
area.
Republican Herbert T. Schnee
bell won by about 3,500 votes over
Democrat Dean Fisher — a plurality
reduced from the normal GOP
margins.
school band and glee club, and is
active in local church activities.
She will major in mathematics and
French at Duke University, and
plans to teach high school.
Mother Is Unionist
Gene S. Cain, son of Mr. and
Mrs. Guy E. Cain, is a student at
Bay County High School in Panama
City, Fla. He is active in student
government, the International Rela-
tions Club, and the football team.
He will major in political science
at Florida State University, and
plans to become a lawyer. His
mother, Mrs. Eloise Cain, is a mem-
ber of Local 1414, Post Office
Clerks.
Joseph F. Cullen, of Bozeman,
Mont., Senior High School, is a
son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph T.
Cullen. Active in student govern-
ment and community service, he is
a member of the Bozeman Munici-
pal Band and a popular local or-
chestra. A member of Local 709
of the Musicians, he will major in
chemical engineering at California
Institute of Technology. He plans
a career as an industrial scientist.
Wesley C. Green has been a
straight A student at Pawtucket,
R. I., West High School. Son of
Mrs. Wesley C. Green, he. is active
in many school organizations. He
plans to major in mathematics at
Brown University, and to become
a teacher.
Girl to Major in Math
Roberta J. Middleton, of Pueblo,
Col., will major in mathematics at
Colorado State University for a
career as a computer programmer.
Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Donald
S. Middleton, she is a member of
Central High School's math and
science clubs. She is secretary and
moderator of youth programs in her
church.
Kenneth E. Schultz, of Lakeshore
High School in Stevensville, Mich.,
is a member of the debate team,
president of his school's National
Honor Society chapter and inter-
ested in sports. He will major in
electrical engineering at Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology, and
wants to become an engineer in
sales and administrative work. His
father, Paul O. Schultz, is a mem-
ber of Local 1290, Auto Workers,
at Benton Harbor, Mich.
SIDNEY HILLMAN AWARD is presented to Edward P. Morgan
(left), American Broadcasting Co. news commentator sponsored by
the AFL-CIO, by Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky of the Clothing Workers
at dinner in New York.
Ed Morgan Broadcasts
Bring Hillman Award
(Continued from Page 1) &
Potofsky said, not merely for tech-
nical competence or artistic talent,
but in recognition of "a willing-
ness to grapple with controversial
issues, an awareness of community
needs, and a sense of courage in
facing up to these needs."
Also cited for work in 1959
were Prof. Harold M. Hyman,
University of California, for his
book, To Try Men's Souls, a
history of loyalty oaths; Harry
W. Ernst, education editor of the
Charleston, W. Va., Gazette, and
Charles H. Drake for their arti-
cle in The Nation magazine,
Poor, Proud and Primitive: the
Lost Appalachians; and Ely A.
Landau of Station WNTA in
New York for Play of the Week.
Judges in the contest were Wil-
liam L. Shirer, author and lecturer;
Lewis Gannett, former New York
Herald Tribune book critic; and Dr.
Buell Gallagher, president, City
College of New York.
Morgan in the principal guest ad-
dress described the Negro sit-ins
in the South as a cause worthy of
support by all Americans.
"The Negro is simply fighting for
full and recognized membership in
the human race," Morgan said.
"This is a revolution. Here is
a new generation of Negroes, well
Doctors Drown in Tons
Of Drug Firm Circulars
A Salt Lake City physician, Dr. James E. Bowes, who kept
a careful record for two months last year of all the circulars
and free samples sent him by drug manufacturers, has told the
Kefauver subcommittee that the results were "fantastic."
Assuming, he said, that other practicing physicians had re-
ceived the same material, it would require two railroad mail
cars, 110 large mail trucks and 800 postmen to deliver a single
day's mailing to doctors. "Then it would take over 25 trash
trucks to haul it away, to be burned on a dump pile whose
blaze would be seen for 50 miles."
He estimated the weight of drug circulars mailed in one
year at 24,247 tons. He said the wholesale cost of free sam-
ples received in the mail comes to $86.2 million a year, to
which should be added another $86.5 million worth of samples
left with doctors by retail men.
"The $12 million paid by the drug manufacturers merely for
bulk rate postage on the circulars and samples would build
three large hospitals per year," Dr. Bowes added. "Probably
50 hospitals could be added to this figure if we had the amount
of money that the pharmaceutical houses throw into the
doctors' wastebaskets."
dressed, college educated, re-
strained, determined, asserting its
constitutional rights to a freedom
promised a century ago but never
really fulfilled, North or South."
Morgan was a reporter for the
Seattle Star, Chicago Daily News,
United Press and Collier's. Former
news director for CBS, he has for
seven years given a nightly news
commentary on ABC stations. In
1956 he received the Peabody award
for his broadcasts.
Potofsky traced the important
educational role played by mass
communications media in the last
ten years, and listed several major
challenges to our existence" in that
period.
Among them he listed the Mc-
Carthy "threat to our basic liber-
ties"; the strains of the cold war;
and the struggle to make equal op-
portunity a reality for all people.
"I am not in a position," Potof-
sky said, "to make a detailed judg-
ment of how our mass media re-
sponded to these challenges. All of
us probably will agree that in too
many cases the response left much
to be desired.
"Too often our major organs
of communication have turned
tail at the first sign of contro-
versy. Too often they rode the
tide of reaction and hysteria, in-
stead of helping to stem it.
"Too often they reported only the
surface sensations without any ref-
erence to the historical or theoreti-
cal background. Too often they
confined their efforts to entertain-
ment, rather than instruction."
McClellan Unit
Finds New Home
The old McClellan special Sen-
ate committee — its functions trans-
ferred to the Senate Government
Operations Committee on a ''stand-
by" basis — has set up shop as an
arm of the permanent Senate In-
vestigations Subcommittee.
Named as chief counsel of the
labor - management investigative
group was Jerome S. Alderman,
who succeeded Robert F. Kennedy
as chief counsel of the old commit-
tee in September 1959.
The life of the special committee
ran out at the end of February. Sen.
John L. McClellan (D. Ark.), who
headed the committee for three
years, also is chairman of the Gov
ernment Operations Committee and
the Investigations Subcommittee.
Unions Urge
$1.83 Floor
In Paper, Pulp
Union representatives have asked
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell to
set $1.83 an hour as the minimum
wage under the Walsh-Healey Act
for workers in the paper and pulp
industry.
Spokesmen for two unions in the
industry and the AFL-CIO argued
at a rehearing that the $1.63 mini-
mum, tentatively proposed by
Mitchell in March 1959, was in-
adequate at the time and is now
seriously outdated.
The rehearing was ordered by
Mitchell over labor protests at the
request of management. Although
labor then had considered the $1.63
figure as low, the unions had asked
that it be put into effect pending
new hearings on further adjust-
ments. The present wage floor is
only $1,115 an hour.
When Mitchell withdrew the
$1.63 determination and ordered a
rehearing, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany in Sept. 1959 charged
Mitchell with ''nullifying" the effect
of the Walsh-Healey Act by pro-
longed delay.
Under the Walsh-Healey Act,
companies which work on govern-
ment contracts must meet the mini-
mum wage determined by the Sec-
retary of Labor on the basis. of the
prevailing pattern in the industry.
Union representatives at the re-
hearing were AFL-CIO Economist
Seymour Brandwein, Vice-Pres.
Frank Grasso of the Papermakers
& Paperworkers, and Henry Segal,
auditor for the Pulp, Sulphite
Workers.
09-os-*
Pilots to Seek
Improvements
In Pensions
The Air Line Pilots have served
notice on the nation's airlines that
retirement benefits must be im-
proved to compensate pilots for
forced grounding at age 60 under
the Federal Aviation Agency's con-
troversial new rule.
Following a U.S. Court of Ap-
peals decision in New York uphold-
ing the authority of the FAA to
force pilots into early retirement,
ALPA m Pres. C. N. Sayen an-
nounced that the union has filed
formal notices under the Railway
Labor Act for reopening of con-
tract provisions dealing with pen-
sions. He said present pension
plans differ from airline to airline
but "all of them need improve-
ment" in view of the "arbitrary"
curtailment of earnings.
In a speech to the Aero Club in
Washington, D. C, Sayen said the
FAA ruling set "an extremely dan-
gerous precedent . . . that the pro-
fessional life of an individual may
be terminated at a given chrono-
logical age regardless of his experi-
ence, competency or the state of
his health."
As a result of the FAA ruling,
Sayen added, "some of the healthy
and competent pilots who are
forced to retire will have no retire-
ment income."
Labor Hits 'Polities' in Ike Medical Plan
Vol. V
Issied weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Clasi Postage Paid at Washington, D. C
Saturday, May 7, 1960 17
No. 19
Council Steps Up Drive for
'Positive' Legislative Goals
Appeal for
Forand Bill
Renewed
Eisenhower Administration
proposals for meeting the health
needs of older persons through
subsidies to commercial insurance
companies have "evidently been
shaped to meet the political de-
mands of an election year rather
than the urgent needs of the
aged," the AFL-CIO has charged.
The federation's Executive
Council — examining the Adminis-
tration plan presented to the House
Ways & Means Committee by
Health, Education & Welfare Sec.
Arthur S. Flemming — said that the
"desirable objectives" of the pro-
gram have been rendered "practi-
cally meaningless'' by the cumber-
some federal-state mechanism which
it proposes.
At a press conference, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany bluntly termed
the Administration measure "worse
than no bill at all," and predicted
it would not get "too much atten-
tion" on Capitol Hill where senti-
ment continues strong for some ver-
sion of the labor-backed Forand
bill geared to the social security
principle.
The long-delayed Administra-
tion plan calls for annual federal-
state outlays of $1.2 billion in
payments to private insurance
companies. Under the program,
elderly persons receiving public
assistance would get the insur-
ance free, while others eligible
for coverage — on the basis of
annual incomes of less than $2,-
500 for a single person and $3,-
800 for a couple — would pay an
annual fee of $24 per person.
Protection offered would be on a
so-called "catastrophic" basis, with
subscribers paying the first $250 in
annual medical expenses and 20
percent of all costs over that figure.
The insurance would cover the re-
(Continued on Page 10)
General Board Date :
Aug. 17 in Chicago
The AFL-CIO General
Board will meet in Chicago
on Aug. 17, the Executive
Council decided at its Wash-
ington session.
The Executive Council it-
self will hold its midsummer
session immediately prior to
the General Board parley,
meeting in the Drake Hotel,
Chicago, on Aug. 15.
"PEOPLE SHUN ME when I ask for a job," radiation victim
Jackson McVey (left) told a Joint Atomic Energy subcommittee.
McVey and his wife (right) — ill, broke and demoralized since a
Houston radiation accident three years ago — were backed in their
quest for help by Leo Goodman (center) of Industrial Union Dept.'s
Atomic Energy Technical Committee. (See Story Page 8.)
6 Special Significance 9 ;
Newspaper Strikers
In Portland Backed
The AFL-CIO Executive Council has given its full endorsement
to 800 striking newspaper workers in Portland, Ore., and has con-
demned publishers' use of a "huge strike insurance pool" and their
importation of professional strikebreakers.
Special circumstances of the Portland strike, now in its sixth
month, give it special significance,^
the council said
"First, it is a struggle against an
attempt by the Portland publishers
to weaken or wipe out terms of
employment which have been es-
tablished for years," the AFL-CIO
leaders declared.
"Second, the publishers are being
financed by a huge strike insurance
pool created by the American
Newspaper Publishers Association.
"Third, the struck newspapers
are being manned by professional
strikebreakers on a scale unprece-
dented in this generation.
"There are grave reasons to
suspect that the strike is a lab-
oratory for the newspaper own-
ers, where they are testing the
posibility of destroying union or-
ganization throughout their in-
dustry.
"This test cannot be allowed to
succeed. If it does, it may become
a pattern in other cities and other
industries."
Asking all unions to support the
Portland strikers, the council said
their fight is of the deepest concern
to the entire labor movement.
"We shall not," it said, "let these
workers be defeated, for their de-
Seeks Harmony in
Industry Relations
By Saul Miller
The AFL-CIO accelerated its drive to win a "positive program
for America" and to create an improved climate for labor-man-
agement relations at the spring meeting of the federation's Execu-
tive Council in Washington.
It focused attention also on the "trend toward a totalitarian state"
in Cuba and the continuing blacklisting and boycotting policies
against American seamen by Arab League countries.
In the first three days of its current meeting the council also
voted to explore the possibility of helping ease the housing short-
age by providing jobs for union workers and possibly cracking
the high home mortgage interest rates by investing health and wel-
fare fund dollars in government-guaranteed mortgages.
On the legislative front the council termed the four-month record
of the second session of the 86th Congress a "record of failure" and
called for a "major effort to pass" positive legislation before the na-
tional political conventions open. (Story Page 2.)
The council adopted a statement calling for action in the next 60
days on a 10-point program if "Congress is to earn a reputation de-
serving of support by the people at the polls next November."
Only one piece of major legislation has been enacted to date, the
council said, "a civil rights law so feeble and so limited in scope
that its value is dubious."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany at a press conference declared
that the council has made no attempt "to fix responsibility."
The council statement called for action on health care for the
aged, an increase in the minimum wage and extensions of cover-
age, federal aid for school construction, aid to depressed areas, an
emergency housing bill and a general measure to aid middle-in-
come housing, situs picketing legislation, a pay raise for federal
workers, a farm program to halt the decline of farm income and
federal standards for unemployment compensation.
The council charged the Eisenhower Administration with formu-
lating a plan for health care for the aged "to meet the political
demands of an election year rather than the urgent needs of the
aged."
The Administration plan — a substitute for the labor-supported
Forand bill — would provide $1.2 billion in annual federal-state
subsidies to private insurance companies. The council said the cum-
bersome mechanism involved makes the plan "practically meaning-
less." In a press conference, Meany said the Administration's
abandonment of the social security principle made the proposal
"worse than no bill at all." (Story this page.)
On a pay raise for federal workers, the council branded the "stal-
(Continued on Page 3)
Lawyers Want Own 'Closed Shop/
Fight Union Aid to Injured, Jobless
By Eugene A. Kelly
St. Louis — Union counselors and directors of community service in central labor bodies may be
charged with practicing law without a license if a charge filed by a committee of the St. Louis Bar
Association is upheld, the president of the Missouri State AFL-CIO has warned.
Missouri unions have set up a defense fund and will battle the bar association to the limit, said
Pres. John I. Rollings of the State AFL-CIO. An adverse ruling will be appealed, he said.
feat would signal a new outbreak
of industrial warfare throughout
the land."
Another statement, in support of
anti-strikebreaker legislation, said
Portland newspaper owners have
been able to resist the "just de-
mands of their employes for almost
six months only through the use of
professional strikebreakers, import-
ed from out of the state and under-
{Continued on Page 11)
Accused by the bar of practic-
ing law without a license is Edward
M. Tod, director of community
services for the St. Louis AFL-
CIO. He violated the law, the
lawyers charge, by advising union
members of their rights in work-
men's compensation and unem-
ployment compensation cases.
Conviction of Tod on the
charge will mean, union spokes-
men say, that lawyers in effect
have established a bar associa-
tion "closed shop" in Missouri
and can force injured workers,
{Continued on Page 9)
Pus:* Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7. 1960
'Record of Failure 9 Cited:
IMPETUS FOR HOUSE ACTION on area redevelopment legisla-
tion came as Rep. Brent Spence (D-Ky.) (left), chairman of House
Banking Committee, testified before Rules Committee on need for
reporting out measure. Shown with Spence outside committee room
is Hep. Richard Boiling (D-Mo.), member of Rules Committee.
Depressed Area Aid
Approved by House
Long-denied federal aid to depressed areas moved closer to reality
as the House passed a $251 million program by a vote of 201-184.
The Senate last year approved a $390 million measure.
The Democratic area redevelopment program still must hurdle
a veto threatened by Pres. Eisenhower, whose own $53 million alter-
native was knocked down by a 152-^
77 vote. Eisenhower vetoed a Dem-
ocratic aid measure in 1958.
The House bill was forced to the
floor through an unusual device, by-
passing the conservative-dominated
Rules Committee which had held
the measure bottled up for a year
The Democratic leadership
used "calendar Wednesday" to
free the bill, relying on House
rules which allow an alphabetical
rollcall of committees so chair-
men may bring up committee-
approved bills for immediate ac-
tion. A filibustering coalition of
Republicans and southern Dem-
ocrats tried in vain to stall or
sidetrack the bill in a long after-
noon of quorum calls and roll-
calls.
The final vote saw 178 Demo-
crats joined by 23 Republicans to
make up the 201 votes in favor.
Against the bill were 115 Republi-
cans and 69 Democrats, most of
the latter from the South.
The $251 million House bill
would create two $75 million re-
volving loan funds, one for indus-
trial areas and the other for rural
areas.
The bill also authorizes $50 mil-
lion for public facility loans and an
additional $35 million for public
facility grants in the hardest-hit
areas.
Subsistence Payments Set
A total of $10 million was speci-
fied for subsistence payments to
workers being retrained; $4.5 mil-
lion was earmarked for- technical
aid and $1.5 million for vocational
training grants.
The majority report which ac-
companied the House bill out of
committee last year traced five
major causes of depressed areas:
technological change, industrial mi-
gration, shifts in consumer demand,
prolonged seasonal unemployment
and depletion of resources. The re-
port concluded that "outside assist-
New SAG Pact
Wins in Mail Vote
Hollywood, Cal. — Members of
the Screen Actors Guild have voted,
in a secret mail ballot, to approve
the new three-year contract nego-
tiated with the Association of Mo-
tion Picture Producers. The vote,
tabulated by a firm of public ac-
countants, was 6,399 in favor, 259
against.
ance . . . must come from the fed-
eral government."
Although House Democrats
tapered down their program to
$251 million in hopes of avoid-
ing a veto, Eisenhower just the
day before the vote singled out
the bill in his special message to
Congress. He called it a scheme
to "perpetuate insecurity by mak-
ing distressed areas dependent
upon the uncertain ties of con-
tinued federal subsidies.'*
The Senate-House compromise
which finally goes to the White
House will test whether Eisenhower
will repeat his 1958 veto and wheth-
er the Democrats can muster a two-
thirds vote to override.
Only 60 Days Left for Action,
Congress Warned by Council
The first four months of the congressional session have been a "record of failure," and the 86th
Congress has only the next 60 days to write a record of "constructive achievement," the AFL-CIO
Executive Council said in a statement.
The only major piece of legislation enacted thus far, the council charged, is the new civil rights law,
and this is "so feeble and so limited in scope that its value is dubious."
'The rollcall of positive legisla-
tive measures still unresolved and
desperately needed is long," the
council stated, and Congress in the
two months remaining before the
national political conventions "must
buckle down to the major unfin-
ished business on its calendar."
The statement listed 10 specific
fields of legislation in which
action is particularly needed "if
Congress is to earn a reputation
deserving of support by the peo-
ple at the polls next November."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
asked at a press conference where
the council placed "the blame" for
failure of Congress to move more
decisively on major legislation, re-
plied that there had been "no at-
tempt to fix responsibility."
Rayburn Cries 'Polities'
Meanwhile, in a midterm restate-
ment of White House doctrine that
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.) called a political "speech,"
Pres. Eisenhower coupled a request
for legislative action on his own
program with warnings • against
"electioneering" in this political
year.
The President's message, read to
the House in Eisenhower's absence
by a clerk, renewed Administration
recommendations for limited bills
on minimum wages, schools, area
redevelopment and similar domestic
issues and re-emphasized what he
called "the need of restraint in new
authorizations for federal spending."
Wants Money Without Taxes
At the same time, the message
gave a preview of the "spending"
provisions of the Administration's
proposed substitute for the Forand
bill on health care for the aged.
The program, spelled out next day
Executive Council Text
On Record of Congress
Following is the full text of a statement by the AFL-CIO Ex-
ecutive Council, May 3, I960, on the record of the 86th Congress
and the action called for:
During the next 60 days the 86th Congress must write its record.
To date it is a record of failure. In four months of this session
only one piece of major legislation has been enacted — a civil rights
law so feeble and so limited in scope that its value is dubious.
If Congress is to make a record of constructive accomplishment
before the national political conventions, it must buckle down to the
major unfinished business on its calendar.
America and her people need action. The rollcall of positive
legislative measures still unresolved by this Congress and desperately
needed by America is long. These measures must be dealt with
if Congress is to earn a reputation deserving of support by the peo-
ple at the polls next November.
In particular, we cite:
# Health benefits for the aged within the social security system.
% An increase in the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour and ex-
tension of the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act to millions
of American workers not presently covered.
# Federal aid to school construction through grants to states
and local school districts to help eliminate the huge shortage of
classrooms.
# Legislation to establish a federal program to restore economic
health to chronically depressed areas.
# An emergency housing measure to help increase the number
of housing starts this year.
# A general housing bill to encourage construction of middle-
income housing and provide for a broadened public housing, slum
clearance and urban redevelopment program.
# A bill to grant building trades unions the right to picket con-
struction sites.
# An equitable pay raise for federal employes.
# A farm program designed to halt the decline in American
farm income that could lead to another depression.
# A bill to establish federal standards for unemployment com-
pensation which would aid in wiping out existing inequities and low
benefits,
by Health, Education & Welfare
Sec. Arthur S. Flemming, calls for
$600 million in annual federal
spending from general revenues,
without a program of taxes to sup-
port it.
To House Republican lead-
ers, the President dropped a hint
that he might call Congress back
into special session after the
political conventions if appropri-
ations for mutual security were
cut severely. He made a similar
suggestion last year but signed
the bill, eventually, despite ap-
propriations slashes.
Direct clashes between the White
House and the Democratic major-
ities seemed certain as congressional
committees pushed legislation the
President has opposed and the Ad-
ministration rallying-cry was "one-
third plus one" of either house to
sustain Eisenhower vetoes. A two-
thirds vote of each house is required
to override a veto.
The extent of the clash, however,
remained unclear as conservative
southern Democrats in control of
the House Rules Committee and
other key units applied slowdown
tactics.
Areas of Needed Action
The 10-point legislative program
the AFL-CIO Executive Council
cited as deserving particular atten-
tion included:
• Health benefits for the aged
within the social security system.
• An increase in the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour and exten-
sion of the protection of the Fair
Labor Standards Act to millions of
American workers not presently
covered.
• Federal aid to school con-
struction through grants to states
and local school districts to help
eliminate the huge shortage of clabb-
rooms.
• Legislation to establish a fed-
eral program to restore economic
health to chronically depressed
areas.
• An emergency housing meas-
ure to help increase the number of
housing starts this year.
• A general housing bill to en-
courage construction of middle-in-
come housing and provide for a
broadened public housing, slum
clearance and urban redevelopment
program.
• A bill to grant building trades
unions the right to picket construc-
tion sites.
• An equitable pay raise for fed-
eral employes.
• A farm program designed to
halt the decline in American farm
income that could lead to another
depression.
• A bill to establish federal
standards for unemployment Com-
pensation which would aid in wip-
ing out existing inequities and low
benefits.
AFL-CIO Scholarship
Winner Dies in Crash
Panama City, Fla. — Four days after he was chosen as one of
the 1960 AFL-CIO merit scholarship winners, 17-year-old Gene
S. Cain died near here in a tragic automobile accident which also
claimed the lives of two fellow students and a teacher.
Cain — whose mother, Mrs. Eloise Cain, is a member of Post
Office Clerks Local 1414 — was^ ; — —
local union for many years, and
killed as he, two other members of
the senior class of Bay County High
School, and their class adviser were
returning from a National Honor
Society meeting in Pompano, Fla.
In a telegram to the boy's par-
ents, Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Cain,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany de-
clared he was "shocked and sad-
dened" at the news of the fatal
accident.
Of the boy who was to have
gone to college under a full four-
year scholarship provided by the
federation, Meany declared: "We
had come to think of him as one
of our family and we share your
great loss."
Meany also sent a telegram to
Bay County High School Principal
John M. Johnston mourning the
death of the youth "to whom it had
been our honor and pleasure to
award a scholarship."
All three youngsters who died in
the crash were members of the
National Honor Society, active in
their school's affairs, and leaders
of youth organizations in their re-
spective churches.
Four days before the crash,
the AFL-CIO, on the basis of
examinations conducted by the
National Merit Scholarship
Corp., had announced scholarship
awards to Cain and five other
youngsters. Cain was to have
majored in political science at
Florida State University and had
planned to become a lawyer.
Active in student government at
his school, he was one of 10 seniors
elected to the school's Hall of
Fame.
His mother has been active in her
has served in the past as a dele-
gate to several national conventions
of the Post Office Clerks. The boy
had attended some of these con-
ventions with his mother.
Besides his parents, he is survived
by two younger brothers.
High Court
Cuts Back
NLRB Order
For the fourth time this year the
Supreme Court has rapped the
knuckles of the National Labor Re-
lations Board for its attempted ap-
plications of the Taft-Hartley Act
against unions.
The court did not disturb a board
order holding that the Communica-
tions Workers had "coerced" em-
ployes of the Ohio Consolidated
Telephone Co. during a strike — long
since settled with a contract — but
modified it sharply.
It struck out NLRB language
ordering the union not to coerce
employes "or any other employer"
in their Taft-Hartley Act rights —
a shotgun prohibition against future,
contingent and uncommitted "un-
lawful' ' acts. This language, the
court said in an unsigned decision,
was "unwarranted."
The NLRB order had previously
been modified by the U.S. Court
of Appeals by striking out language
ordering the union not only to cease
and desist from acts found to be un-
lawful but also unspecified and un-
defined other acts labeled merely a*
"in any manner."
Council Asks Congress to Pass Key Bills
Seeks Better Climate
In Industrial Relations
(Continued from Page 1)
ling and stalemating tactics of the Administration" as "despicable,"
charging that it was using the fact that government workers cannot
strike or bargain collectively as "a lever to keep from them the
economic advantages" enjoyed by other American workers. (Story
Page 12.)
On the labor-management front Meany announced that he and
Vice Presidents Walter P. Reuther and George M. Harrison would
be the three labor conferees at preliminary talks to set up meetings
under a formula worked out by Pres. Eisenhower to improve the
industrial relations climate. The National Association of Manufac-
turers will name three representatives, active heads of companies
that have contracts with AFL-CIO unions, to help set up the meet-
ings. (Story Page 4.)
In two other statements the council pointed up the continuing
threat to collective bargaining in the newspaper industry.
It adopted a statement calling on members of all AFL-CIO unions
to support the seven newspaper unions in their struggle with the
Portland, Ore., newspapers, declaring that a defeat in this strike
"would signal a new outbreak of industrial warfare.**
Another statement urged all affiliates at the state and local level
to work for enactment of legislation to prevent the importation of
strikebreakers — a feature of the Portland strike — and said the AFL-
CIO would seek national legislation along the same lines. (Story
Page 1.)
On the international front the council declared that events in
Cuba under the Castro regime have "revealed unmistakable signs"
of a trend toward totalitarianism based on the techniques of regi-
mentation and militarization. It noted that the right of collective
bargaining "has been abolished" and that the Communist party is
"the only political party which is free to operate today in Cuba."
It concluded that the "Castro government is endangering the peace
of the western hemisphere." (Story Page 5.)
In a statement supporting the Seafarers' peaceful picketing of an
Egyptian ship in New York, the council said the blacklisting anc
boycott policies of certain Arab countries threaten "job opportuni
ties for American seamen" and rejected statements that the action
is political and irresponsible. The council called on the Admin-
istration and the State Dept. to "take all appropriate diplomatic
action to protect the interests of our shipping and seamen" from
Arab discrimination. (Story this page.)
At the direction of the council, Meany wired Senate-House con-
ferees considering mutual aid legislation protesting "continued
waivers" of requirements that 50 percent of all goods shipped over-
seas under the act be carried in American flag ships. The waivers
have "already seriously jeopardized our export trade and our security
potential," the telegram said, and further moves in this direction
"will accelerate the deterioration of our U.S. flag shipping." Meany
said U.S. ships now carry only 8 percent of the mutual aid cargo.
Housing Investment Advice Studied
On the use of health and welfare funds for investment in guaran
teed home mortgages, Meany told reporters that a three-man council
committee would explore the possibility of setting up an AFL-CIO
advisory agency to guide unions in this area and would probably
report to the council's August meeting. (Story Page 4.)
In other actions the council:
• Instructed Meany to continue to seek compliance by the Intl
Longshoremen's Association with the terms under which it was
provisionally admitted to the AFL-CIO at the last convention.
Meany said he expected the ILA to cancel a charter it had recently
issued in the Dominican Republic, to cooperate on cleaning up racial
discrimination and to take other steps. Non-compliance with AFL-
CIO directives, he said, could mean revocation of the charter.
• Discussed a trip by Pres. Joseph Curran of the Maritime
Union to the Soviet Union. Meany said Curran's trip had been
approved by the NMU and that the upshot of the situation is that
"he's going, and our policy remains the same." The AFL-CIO
convention adopted a policy opposing exchange of trade union dele-
gations with dictatorship countries. ♦
Meany said in reply to a question that he believes the conven-
tion's policy is the "right policy" but that there is room for differ-
ence of opinion and that it is "no terrible crime if someone dis-
agrees." He noted that Curran will visit Russia in his capacity as
president of the NMU.
• Named^a three-man subcommittee of Vice Presidents Joseph
A. Beirne, William C. Doherty and Meany to prepare presentations
of AFL-CIO views to the platform committees of the Republican
and Democratic parties at their national conventions.
• Approved the creation of a council committee to study the
changing character of the work force and to plan future organizing
campaigns. Meany told reporters that the continuing drop in blue-
collar workers and the rise in white-collar workers poses new prob-
lems in organizing and other areas.
• Approved further study of a proposal for a labor exhibit at
the New York World's Fair in 1964.
• Named Vice Presidents Lee Minton and David J. McDonald
as AFL-CIO fraternal delegates to the convention of the British
Trades Union Congress in September.
• Set the next meeting of the council for Aug. 15 in Chicago
at the Drake Hotel with a meeting of the AFL-CIO General Board
scheduled for Aug. 17.
REPORTERS AT PRESS CONFERENCE hear AFL-CIO Pres
George Meany outline actions of federation's Executive Council on
Portland newspaper strikebusting, legislative lag in 86th Congress,
freedom of navigation, totalitarian trends in Cuba, use of union
funds for housing investment and other subjects.
Sea Unions Supported
In Arab Boycott Fight
The AFL-CIO Executive Council has pledged "full support" to
AFL-CIO maritime unions in their protests against Arab black-
listing and boycotting of U.S. flag ships in the Middle East and
specifically backed the picketing of the Cleopatra.
The Cleopatra, an Egyptian passenger-cargo ship, has been tied
up with its cargo aboard since its'^-
arrival Apr. 13 at Pier 16 on New
York's East River. A Seafarers'
picket line, protesting the United
Arab Republic's boycott of ship:
which touch at Israeli ports, has
been strictly observed by the Long
shoremen.
The council also stated it "re-
jects the implication unwarrant-
edly made by Sen. [J. W.] Ful-
bright in a speech in the Senate
that this action is a political ac-
tion of an 'irresponsible' union
group."
In announcing the council's ac-
tion, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
told newsmen that "I'm still trying
to see if I can't work out some solu
tion to this problem."
The council said it reaffirms that
the purpose of AFL-CIO maritime
unions is to protect the interests of
American shipping and seamen
against the Arab boycott which the
U.S. Dept. of State itself has rec
ognized as "discriminatory."
The Eisenhower Administration
and the State Dept. were urged by
the council "to take all appropriate
diplomatic action to protect the in-
terests of our shipping and sea-
men."
The council observed that the
U.S. District Court in New York,
on grounds that the picketing in-
volved a legitimate labor interest,
denied the shipowner's request for
an injunction.
Action Sustained
The District Court action was
sustained May 4 by the U.S. Court
of Appeals, the council pointed out.
The council also noted that the
AFL-CIO by convention action is
pledged to the principle of "free-
dom of navigation for all nations
through the Suez Canal" and equal-
ly to the international law of free-
dom of the seas.
The blacklisting and boycott
practices of certain Arab nations,
the statement charged, have threat-
ened job opportunities of American
seamen whose livelihood depends
on the American merchant marine
and unrestricted peaceful trading
and transportation.
However, the council contin-
ued, protests to the State Dept.
"have thus far been unavailing"
and only after the failure of such
appeals did the Seafarers under-
take the peaceful picketing of the
Cleopatra.
The council acted after a briefing <
on the case by Seafarers' Pres. Paul
Hall. Earlier, Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell visited AFL-CIO head-
quarters to discuss the issue. The
State Dept. has expressed concern
over retaliatory picketing of U.S.
ships in Middle Eastern ports.
The Transport Workers execu-
tive council, meanwhile, adopted a
resolution commending the SIU
"for its principled stand and its
dramatic demonstration of interna-
tional trade union solidarity."
Data Sent Senators
The SIU, which earlier urged
Fulbright as chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee to
launch an inquiry into the failure
of the State Dept. to prevent the
mistreatment of American seamen
in the UAR, sent a resume of the
entire dispute to all senators.
Hall, commenting further on Ful-
brights's charge that the union was
interfering with foreign policy,
pointed out that Fulbright has
failed to acknowledge the union's
request for an inquiry and instead
is giving substance "to the false
charge of the Cairo propaganda
machine."
Continued Lag
In Jobs Casts
Serious Doubt
Two straws in the wind indicate
that economic conditions, despite
general "prosperity," are showing
a continuing employment lag.
First, the number of workers
filing initial claims for unemploy-
ment compensation during the
week ending Apr. 23 rose by 21
percent over the comparable week
of 1959, the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research has pointed out.
In the comparable week of
1959, there were 235,295 initial
claims filed. This total was
eclipsed by the 284,803 initial
claims filed the same week this
year.
The total of insured unemployed
— not to be confused with the total
unemployed, on which figures soon
will be released by the U.S. Dept.
of Labor— was 2,126,958 for the
week ending Apr. 16. This repre- #
sented a 9.5 percent rise over th#
1,941,089 for the same week of
1959.
Second, the Eisenhower Admin-
istration has quietly conceded that
joblessness is currently running at
a rate well in advance of its esti-
mates last year.
The concession came in a re-
quest that Congress vote a sup-
plemental appropriation of $8
million for the Labor Dept. for
the balance of fiscal 1960.
The request was to cover un-
employment compensation benefits
for ex-servicemen and former fed-
eral employes. In submitting the
request, the White House said
claims have been running higher
than anticipated when the 1960
budget was submitted a year ago.
Attack on World
Problems Urged
Chester, Pa.— The Eisenhower
Administration must be replaced
in November by a government
which will come to grips with world
problems, Victor Reuther, di-
rector of the Auto Workers' Wash-
ington office, told 300 labor dele-
gates at the second annual banquet
sponsored here by the Delaware
County AFL-CIO Committee on
Political Education.
Reuther, in a discussion of world
affairs, urged that the democracies
put greater emphasis on human dig-
nity and human rights.
AFL-CIO Hails Record of
Italian Labor Federation
The AFL-CIO stands shoulder to shoulder with the Italian
Confederation of Labor Unions (CISL) "in the pursuit of our
common goals of bread, peace and freedom," Pres. George
Meany said in a message marking the 10th anniversary of the
Italian labor center's founding.
Meany expressed the appreciation of AFL-CIO officers,
Executive Council and members for the role played by CISL
during the postwar reconstruction period, hailing it particu-
larly for its successful fight against Communist efforts to take
over the Italian labor movement.
"Today, chiefly through your efforts, their strength has been
reduced to the point where that danger no more exists," he
said.
"Chiefly through your efforts also have the living standards
of Italian workers been improved substantially, though the
fight on that level against the paternalism of the Italian in-
dustrialists still is being energetically pursued.
"We appreciate especially the consistency with which CISL
has pressed for unity of all the democratic trade union forces
of Italy. That unity is necessary not only for a better defense
of the economic interests of Italian workers, but as a stabiliz-
ing force in the uncertain political situation and as a bulwark
in the defense of democracy generally against communism
and its allies."
Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7, I960
Washington Post Photo
GUESTS AND PARTICIPANTS at the dedication were welcomed
by Dean Francis B. Sayre, Jr., of Washington Cathedral. From left
are: Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers, Dean Sayre, Pres. Eisenhower, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky of the Clothing Workers and AFL-
CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler. The President and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell headed a delegation of government officials.
FAMILIES OF the late Philip Murray and William Green attended
the dedication of stained glass windows given in memory of Ameri-
can labor's three great leaders. At left, Joseph Murray, son of the
president of the former CIO. At right are William Green's son,
Harry Green, and William, a grandson named after his grandfather.
At Washington Cathedral :
Gompers, Green and Murray
Church Windows Dedicated
By Dave Perlman
In a solemn dedication service at Washington Cathedral, members of three religious faiths honored
the memory of Samuel Gompers, first president of the former American Federation of Labor; William
Green, his successor for 28 years, and Philip Murray, president of the former Congress of Industrial
Organizations from 1940 until his death in 1952.
Three stained glass windows, memorializing the labor pioneers and flanked by the seals of 103
AFL-CIO unions, were formally'^
presented, accepted and dedicated
GREAT-GRANDSON of Samuel Gompers, Joseph M. Crockett,
Jr., chats with AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany after dedication cere-
mony at Washington Cathedral. He and other members of the
Gompers family were among the special guests.
Committee Appointed
To Meet NAM Group
A three-member committee has been named by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany to meet with a comparable group appointed by Pres.
Rudolph Bannow of the National Association of Manufacturers
to lay plans for labor-management discussions seeking harmonious
bargaining relationships. j
Meany in a press conference dur-'^
ing the AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil meeting in Washington said he
had named Vice Presidents Walter
P. Reuther and George Harrison
and himself as the federation's rep-
resentatives.
The White House statement
announcing the meetings, which
arose from a suggestion by
Meany last November, said the
overall purpose should include
discussions away from the pres-
sures of contract negotiations, of
"the maintenance of industrial
peace, price stability, incentive
for continuous investment, eco-
nomic growth, productivity and
world labor standards."
Employer spokesmen to be
named by Bannow, under terms of
the White House statement, are to
be heads of business firms that have
contractual relations with AFL-
CIO unions.
at services attended by 1,000 per-
sons including the President of the
United States.
Meany, Carey Present Windows
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
presented the Gompers and Green
windows, gifts of the William
Green Memorial Fund, and James
B. Carey, president of the Electri-
cal, Radio & Machine Workers
and an AFL-CIO vice president,
presented the window donated by
the Philip Murray Memorial Fund.
Dean Francis B. Sayre, Jr., of
the Cathedral accepted and dedi-
cated the windows as a "noble
offering to the honor of the
Creator and for the illumination
of his children."
Participating in the religious
services which preceded the formal
dedication were AFL-CIO Sec.-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler and
Vice Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky, pres-
ident of the Clothing Workers,
who led Biblical readings; the Rev.
Charles Webber, AFL-CIO repre-
sentative for religious relations,
who read the prayers; and the Rev.
Hugh C. White, Jr., of the Detroit
Industrial Mission, who preached
the guest sermon.
Meany, in presenting the Gom-
pers and Green windows, declared
that the three union leaders being
honored "exemplified the finest
traditions of American labor."
Despite differences in background,
he said, they shared a common
belief "in the dignity of labor and
the basic dignity of the individual
human being."
Labor's Role Cited
In a preface to a booklet de-
scribing the windows, Meany em-
phasized "the participation of the
free, democratic American trade
union movement in the growth and
development of this great nation.
. . . There is no battlefield on
which America has fought that is
not marked by the bodies of Amer-
ican trade unionists; there is no
monument to American progress
which does not reflect the contribu-
tion of American labor."
Carey eulogized Murray's
"half-century of rich and fruit-
ful labors for democratic union-
Ism." Carey substituted for
Walter P. Reuther, Murray's
successor as president of the for-
mer CIO, who was unable attend
because of an illness in his fam-
ily.
The windows, Carey declared,
symbolize a trade union fraternity
"that cannot be delimited by re-
ligious boundaries, nor by distinc-
tions of race or national origin."
He said it was "profoundly ap-
propriate that the Philip Murray
Foundation and the William Green
Foundation have joined hands
Health Is Theme
Of AFL-CIO Talks
Some 85 delegates from 70 un-
ions are expected to attend the sec-
ond national AFL-CIO Conference
on Safety and Occupational Health
in Washington, D. C, May 10-12.
Occupational health will be the
'theme of this year's conference.
Talks by experts on such problems
as radiation burns and industrial
poisoning will occupy the morning
sessions, with delegates breaking up
into workshop groups for afternoon
discussions.
Sessions will be held in the fed-
eration's headquarters building.
through the medium of the merged
labor movement to dedicate these
windows to three union leaders of
different religious faiths."
President in Attendance
Pres. Eisenhower brought with
him to the dedication ceremony the
Rev. Frederick E. Fox, a member
of the White House staff, and
James C. Hagerty, the President's
press secretary.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
headed a delegation of government
officials including Under Sec.
of Labor James T. O'Connell and
a party of high military officers.
Members of the families of
Gompers, Green and Murray
were honored guests at the dedi-
cation, which was attended by
the AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil.
The windows, designed by two
noted artists — Joseph G. Reynolds
and Napoleon A. Setti — symbolize
the link between labor and religion.
The Artisans and Craftsmen
window, in memory of Gompers,
takes as its theme 'The Housing
of the Covenant" and tribute is
paid to artists and craftsmen "who
have given their utmost to build a
worthy tabernacle for God's holi-
ness."
Social Justice Murray Theme
The Industrial and Social Re-
form window, memorializing Mur-
ray, uses as its theme the necessity
of justice, law and love in indus-
trial relations. The lower panel
shows the Israelites in bondage in
Egypt being forced to make bricks
without straw.
Green is commemorated with
The Agriculture and Maritime
Window, keyed to the sacra-
mental nature of man's work.
Dominating the center lancet of
the window is the Old Testament
figure of Ruth, holding sheaves
of wheat. Prominent also are
Peter as a fisherman and Joseph
as a shepherd boy.
Edging all the windows are the
seals of AFL-CIO unions.
Council to Explore Plan
To Boost Housing Funds
A special AFL-CIO Executive Council committee will explore
the possibilities of creating an advisory agency to help local and
international unions channel health and welfare funds into home
mortgages guaranteed by the government.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told a press conference that he
expects to name a committee of^
federation vice presidents soon to
explore the problem and report
back to the next council meeting.
Houses and Jobs
The use of health and welfare
funds in the housing field, said
Meany, would help alleviate the
housing shortage, provide employ-
ment for building trades workers
who would construct the new
houses, and eventually cut the
costs of mortgage money by forc-
ing interest rates to lower levels.
If health and welfare fund
dollars were placed in govern-
ment-guaranteed VA and FHA
mortgages, Meany said, the funds
would also receive a better return
for their pensioners than under
the present general policy of in-
vesting in government securities. '
Meany stressed that the plan does
not involve the creation of a finan-
cial corporation but the setting up
of an agency of the AFL-CIO to
help unions to channel their funds
into this field.
The agency, he added, would ad-
vise unions on how the mortgage in-
vestment plans work and also act
as a clearing house on what other
unions are doing in the field.
Tight-Money Hikes Interest
The federation president said that
FHA home loans pegged at 5.75
percent interest are actually going
at a discount because of the tight-
money policies of the Administra-
tion—discounts that push the real
interest rate up to 7 percent and
more over a 25- to 30-year period.
These discounts are preventing
the purchase of homes, he said,
and are accountable in great part
for the predicted drop of 10 to
20 percent in new housing starts
in 1960.
A number of AFL-CIO unions,
including the Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers and the Ladies'
Garment Workers are currently us-
ing health and welfare funds to pur-
chase government insured mort-
gages to stimulate home building.
Religion 'Not a Yardstick 9
For Union Office— Meany
Labor can take "deep satisfaction 9 ' in the fact that it is "a
happy coincidence" that each of its leaders honored at the
Washington Cathedral services followed a different religious
faith, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has declared.
In a signed editorial in the May issue of The American
Federationist, Meany said "we would have no cause for pride"
if Samuel Gompers had been elevated to leadership because
he was a Jew, Phillip Murray because he was a Catholic or
William Green because he was Protestant.
"To put it another way," Meany declared, "there is no
place in the labor movement for 'balanced tickets 9 or rotation
of office based upon religion, race or national origin. We do
not select men as leaders, or deny them leadership, by any
such false standards. To us, religion is a matter of personal
conscience, not a yardstick for or against a candidate for office
in a democratic institution."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1960
Page Fh*
Endangers Hemisphere:
Castro Regime Hit
On 'Totalitarianism'
The disruptive activities of Fidel Castro's government in Cuba
"have all the earmarks of a well-planned strategy designed to make
Cuba an advanced outpost of the Soviet Union's drive to infiltrate
the New World," the AFL-CIO Executive Council declared in a
hard-hitting statement.
At the same time the council^
called on the Organization of
American States (OAS) to take col-
lective measures authorized in its
charter "to protect the peaceful
democracies from the aggressive de-
signs of the dictators and from the
subversive actions, of international
communism."
"The AFL-CIO has consistent-
ly advocated that dictatorships
have no place in the world and
particularly in our inter-Amer-
ican system," the council as-
serted.
"We have consistently urged,
time and again, the OAS to isolate
the dictatorship of the Dominican
Republic and similar regimes which
do not emanate from the freely ex-
pressed will of the people. .
"We have also urged the OAS to
take firm steps to prevent these dic-
tatorships from endangering the
peace of the Americas with their
constant subversive plots against
neighboring democratic regimes.
"We now believe that with its
repudiation of the existing inter-
American treaties and its pur-
poseful, violent and slanderous
anti-United States campaign, tai-
lored on the Communist pattern,
the Castro government is endan-
gering the peace of the Western
Hemisphere."
The Executive Council recalled
that the AFL-CIO has frequently
expressed its support, since the fall
of the Batista regime, of the Cuban
people's efforts to rebuild their
country's political and economic
structure on the basis of social jus
tice, freedom, civic morality and
human rights.
Hopes Not Fulfilled
The AFL-CIO shared the mis
givings caused by the revolution's
initial excesses, the council noted
but also shared the hope that dem-
ocratic processes would soon be re-
stored and the work of rebuilding
would get under way.
"Events in Cuba have taken,
however, quite a different turn,"
the statement continued.
"The latest manifestations of
the Castro regime have revealed
unmistakable signs of a definite
trend toward a totalitarian state.
This is based upon the technique
of regimentation and militariza-
tion of the masses to a degree
comparable to the practices pre-
vailing under fascist or Com-
munist regimes."
In support of its charge of a
totalitarian trend, the Executive
Council listed these facts:
• The Communist Party is the
only political party allowed to op-
erate, with opposition newspapers
forced to close and democratic
journalists driven into exile.
• The Cuban Confederation of
Labor "has become a mere ap-
pendage of the government under
complete control of pro-Communist
elements imposed from above."
• Loyalty to democratic princi-
ples and opposition to communism
have been branded counter-revolu-
tionary, with punishment by loss of
job, arrest and confiscation of prop-
erty.
• The right of collective bar-
gaining has been abolished and, as
in countries behind the Iron Cur-
tain, workers cannot change jobs
without government approval.
• Government spokesmen have
said that democratic elections will
not be held in the forseeable fu-
ture; the courts are subjected to the
will of the executive, and the right
of habeas corpus has been sus-
pended.
These actions have "shocked"
Cuba's friends, the council said,
and added:
"The Cubans, our traditional
friends, are being subjected to an
intensive violent campaign of hat
red and scorn against the U.S. This
propaganda of hate, organized with
the official sanction of the Castro
government, has been extended to
other countries of Latin America
with the obvious purpose of caus
ing suspicion and enmity towards
the U.S.
Treaties Repudiated
"This has been aggravated by
the repudiation, on the part of the
Castro regime, of the treaties
which are the foundation of our
inter-American system. These trea-
ties bind the countries of the West-
ern Hemisphere to respect each
others' sovereignty and pledge them
to unite against external aggression
and internal Communist subversion.
"The disruptive activities of
the Cuban government can no
longer be lightly dismissed as
outbursts of inexperienced, youth-
ful leaders swept by the upsurge
of economic nationalism."
The council sent the Cuban peo-
ple "renewed expressions" of sup-
port for their hopes for economic
reform and sent "fraternal assur-
ance of solidarity" to the country's
free trade unionists, "now fighting
to rescue their labor movement
from the presently imposed, pro-
Communist totalitarian control."
HARRY BATES, left, who resigned as president of the Bricklayers,
administers the oath of office to his successor, former Sec. John J.
Murphy. Bates becomes president emeritus of the union.
WILLIAM L. McFETRIDGE
Retired president of Building
Service Employes
Cornell Sets
International
Scholarships
Ithaca — A scholarship program
to train union members for careers
in the international labor field has
been created by the New York
State School of Industrial and La-
bor Relations at Cornell Univer-
sity.
Up to six scholarships will be
available under the program, be-
ginning this September. The schol-
arships, which include tuition,
travel costs and a monthly stipend
of $300, are supported by a grant
from the Marshall Foundation of
Houston, Tex.
Representing labor on an ad-
visory board which will guide the
program are George M. Harrison,
president of the Railway Clerks
and chairman of the AFL-CIO In-
ternational Affairs Committee,
Pres. Joseph A. Beirne of the Com-
munications Workers and Pres.
Lee W. Minton of the Glass Bottle
Blowers. Officials and teachers of
the ILR School also serve on the
board.
Union Presidents Bates
And McFetridge Retire
Two veteran trade union leaders have retired from the presi-
dencies of their international unions after long careers in the labor
movement.
Stepping down from top leadership posts were Pres. Harry C.
Bates of the Bricklayers and Pres. William L. McFetridge of the
Building Service Employes. Both^
will continue to serve, however, as
AFL-CIO vice presidents and mem-
bers of the federation's Executive
Council.
Bates Becomes Emeritus
Bates, in a letter to his union,
said his decision to leave the post
he had held since 1935 was reached
"upon the advice of my doctor, due
to my physical condition." Under
the union's constitution, he immedi-
ately assumed the office of presi
dent emeritus.
Acting under powers conferred
by the constitution, Bates appointed
Sec. John J. Murphy to fill out his
unexpired term as president.
McFetridge announced his
retirement at the BSElU's 12th
general convention in New
York. He told the delegates he
was leaving office because of
'R-TW Link Means Defeat at Polls,
Another Ex-Governor Warns GOP
Fred Hall, former Republican governor of Kansas, has advised his party leadership and GOP
candidates for office to cease supporting so-called "right- to- work" laws if they hope to win the 1960
election.
Hall, now a leader in th& Republican Party in California, joined former Republican Gov. George
Craig of Indiana in warning that support of the "punitive" anti-labor "right-to-work" legislation can
lose the GOP this year's national'^
election
The former governor, who
earlier vetoed a "right-to-work"
bill in Kansas, said in a statement
addressed to his party:
The Republican Party never
has been — is not now — and cannot
be- — an anti-labor party any more
than it can be an anti-farm or an
anti-business party.
"These are crucial times for
the Republican Party. We have
lost control of the Congress and
can ill afford to support "right-
to-work" laws which are against
the best interests of management,
of labor, and the public, and
which will do serious harm to
the chances of a Republican vic-
tory in November.
"Right-to-work laws are con-
trary to the platform of the Re-
publican Party, which has ex-
pressed itself repeatedly against
any such punitive, anti-labor legis-
lation."
Hall said that "Gov. Craig
should be commended for his
statement advising Indiana Repub-
licans not to support R-T-W,"
adding:
"In stating that the 'right-to-
work' issue is an albatross around
the neck of the Republican
Party, Gov. Craig is telling the
party exactly what I told them
in 1955 when I vetoed 'right-to-
work' legislation as governor of
Kansas.
"I was convinced then, as I
firmly believe now, that it is a fatal
mistake for Republicans in the in-
dividual states to believe they can
support such legislation without
adverse effect on the entire Re-
publican Party. Party responsibil-
ity does not end at county or state
lines. What the Republican state
organization does, how Republican
members of state legislatures vote,
and what Republican candidates
for office advocate, affects the fate
of the Republican party through-
out the nation.
"I would like to add that I
believe it is a mistake for either
ICFTU Welcomes
Changes in Korea
Brussels — The Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions has wel-
comed the results of popular dem-
onstrations for democracy in Korea
and expressed the hope that "a
truly democratic and stable govern-
ment, based on fredom of elections
generally reflecting the will of the
people, will now be established."
"This is the essential prerequisite
to peaceful progress in this critical
nerve-center," the ICFTU declared.
party to nominate or elect can-
didates who support 'right-to-
work' laws. Such laws are
morally and legally wrong and
are contrary to the platforms of
both political parties.
"These proposals have only one
purpose, and that is to destroy the
right of labor to organize and for
management and labor to bargain
collectively."
Craig Warns Party
Hall's advice to his party on
GOP strategy for 1960 followed a
statement by former Gov. Craig in
which he said:
"If the Republican Party in In-
diana and its state candidates con-
tinue to embrace the right-to-work
law it and they will be defeated in
this election.
"The right-to-work law does not
help labor, management or the
public, and it is an albatross around
the neck of those who support it.
"The Republican Party in In-
diana is especially limiting itself to
a selected few — and it will become
and remain a minority party un-
less it liberalizes its policies.
"It must be a party of both labor
and management; indeed, it must
be designed to serve all legitimate
interests within our society.
"It must be a party of public
service, not of private interest."
poor health. The convention was
scheduled to elect a new presi-
dent to fill the post McFetridge
had held for 20 years.
Bates, a native of Denton, Tex.,
joined the Bricklayers in 1905 and
five years later became president
of Local 5 in Dallas. In 1914 he
was elected president of the Texas
State Conference of Bricklayers.
He went to work for the union as
an international representative in
1916, was elected ninth vice presi-
dent in 1920, treasurer in 1924,
and first vice president in 1928.
When Pres. George Thornton died
in 1935, Bates was named by the
executive board to fill the vacancy
and the following year was elected
president of the international at the
convention in Buffalo, N. Y.
A Union Man Since 1923
McFetridge entered the labor
movement in 1923 when he joined
the Chicago Flat Janitors Union.
Fourteen years later he became the
local's president, a position he con-
tinued to hold while serving as in-
ternational president of the BSE1U.
.Both Bates and McFetridge, as
members of the former AFL Exec-
utive Council, served on the com-
mittee which »worked out the merg-
er of the AFL-CIO.
Wage Raises
'Inflation'-But
Not Dividends
Business is good enough for Hot
Shoppes Inc. to give stockholders
the plum of a 4 percent stock divi-
dend June 15, but the company
president opposes a federal mini-
mum wage of $1^25 an hour as
'inflationary."
The president of the restaurant
chain is J. Willard Marriott, for-
mer head of the National Restau-
rant Assn.
Financial pages of the daily
papers reported Apr. 26 that com-
pany directors declared a 4 percent
stock dividend on the common and
Class B stocks and Marriott said
that sales in the first three quarters
of the fiscal year totaled almost $36
million, a jump of 20.3 percent.
On Apr. 27 Mariott testified be-
fore a House Labor subcommittee
that a proposed increase of 25 cents
an hour in the national minimum
wage would "impose a prohibitive
and unnecessary wage increase on
our business."
He warned that a federal mini-
mum wage law for restaurants
would reduce sales and affect the
employment of thousands.
Pagjo Six
AFT -CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, MAY T, I960
Portland Is No Joke
THE SIX-MONTH-OLD newspaper strike in Portland, Ore., is
not just another strike; it is a direct challenge to effective collec-
tive bargaining in the newspaper industry.
Over the past few years publisher organizations have been testing
a number of weapons designed to weaken and destroy unions in
the newspaper field. These include strike insurance funds that
protect publishers against loss for specified periods, generally 13
weeks. Strike insurance is planned to maintain the publishers' po-
sition over a long enough period so that the union will weaken and
accept an inferior, substandard contract.
The other weapon, resurrected from an earlier period of industrial
warfare, is the perfecting of a mobile strikebreaking force on tap
for use at the opportune moment.
The strikebreakers, in combination with the strike insurance
plan, are turned loose to justify publishers* attacks on working
conditions built up over- the past Ttalf-century. The phony
"featherbedding" cry is raised, union workers are forced onto the
streets and strikebreakers are herded into plants operating with
protection against loss because of the insurance pool.
This is the pattern in Portland, where these weapons are being
employed in a major testing operation.
The courage and determination of the seven unions involved in
the Portland strike, their unity and cohesion in face of this attack,
are the critical factor. They are fighting all labor's fight, for if the
Portland publishers are successful in their union-smashing drive
the insurance funds and the strikebreakers will be employed else-
where — and not only in newspaper plants.
The 'Compulsion 9 Fake
THE GREAT DEBATE over a workable plan to provide health
care for the aged has met the fate of many of the vital issues
facing the country — its opponents have resorted to befogging propa-
ganda in an almost hysterical attempt to block action.
A decade ago when a proposal for national health insurance
was being debated nationally, the American Medical Association
financed a multi-million dollar campaign tied to the slogan "social-
ized medicine."
The Forand bill fight called for a new twist, so the AMA, the
insurance companies and the Administration have come up with
"compulsion." They are against "compulsion," or more realistically,
against a health care for the aged plan based on a 25-year-old social
security system.
The "compulsion" campaign has its most recent origins
in the "right-to-work" campaign of 1958, when reactionary forces
tried to pin the "compulsory unionism" label on union security and
thus revive the union-busting open shop. The voters would not
buy^ it in five states and they will not buy the campaign to deny
health care to older citizens under a social security system.
If the compulsion argument is carried to its logical conclusion
the social security system would have to be abolished. That
would do away with such things as retirement benefits, survivors
insurance, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children
and general public assistance.
The argument is not compulsion and never has been. It's a simple
matter of providing for health care during a person's working years
and spreading the cost over the longest possible period and the
widest possible base so that when his income is reduced and his
health problems are most acute he can finance the care in dignity
and as a matter of right.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Fedetation.of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, May 7, 1960
No. 19
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Portland Pattern
D&AWN PQ« TMK
AFL-CIO mev*
In Spirit of Gandhi:
Dignity and Courage Mark
Negro Battle for Equal Rights
Following are excerpts from an address by
Edward P. Morgan at the Sidney Hillman
Foundation's 10th annual awards luncheon*
Morgan, whose daily radio commentary is spon-
sored by the AFL-CIO, was one of five award
winners honored.
SOMEBODY SUGGESTED over a drink in
Washington recently that what Americans
need today is not a good five-cent cigar but a
cause. We are squirming and groping for some-
thing to live for beyond frozen television tray
dinners and motel swimming pools.
In an atmosphere of kickback and influence-
peddling, we have forgotten a central truth:
people are more important than anything* The
fabric of our social system was woven to pro-
tect the individual with equal justice, to clothe
him with freedom land self-respect. But some-
how we have threaded into the garment the fat
bulky strands of materialism, the tight dark
thongs of selfishness, fear, prejudice and out-
right hatred. The garment has been twisted
into a degrading shape.
Has anybody been ennobling the human species
lately?
Down in Greensboro, N. C, last Feb. 1, a
handsome 18-year-old freshman at the state Agri-
culture and Technical College, named Ezell Blair,
Jr., led three schoolmates to the lunch counter in
a Woolworth's store and asked for service.
Thus, inauspiciously began an auspicious move-
ment, the Negro sit-ins against segregation which
have spread to nearly every state in the South.
EZELL BLAIR and his mates didn't know
quite what they were starting, but they knew where
they got their inspiration. They got it from Mo-
handas K. Gandhi. "I've never forgotten a tele-
vision show I saw last year called the Pictorial
Story of India," young Blair told a New York
Times reporter. He was impressed with how the
strength of Gandhi's passive resistance seemed to
grow each time he was thrown into jail. Blair and
his fellows like to think of themselves as part of
a movement of "passive insistence."
This is a revolution. Here is a new generation
of Negroes, well-dressed, college-educated, re-
strained, determined, asserting its constitutional
rights to a freedom promised a century ago but
never really fulfilled, North or South. ~We follow
the news from Algiers, from Leopoldville, Cape-
town and Johannesburg with excited concern over
the latest chapters in the unending history of men's
struggle for independence. But to the convulsive
developments in a liberation movement rising right
under our noses in Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte,
Orangeburg and Baton Rouge, we react with
about as much attention as we ordinarily give the
National Safety Council's figures on Memorial
Day traffic deaths.
LET US NOT make the disastrous mistake of
enshrining the Negroes as a population of para-
gons. There is evil, lethal delinquency and tragic
corruption of leadership among them too, and you
only have to step up the street to Harlem to find
evidences of both. But on balance, Negro dema-
gogues do not begin to match the number or
viciousness of the bullies of white supremacy and
if erring Negro teen-agers have often been brutally
violent in their rebelliousness, the duck-tailed de-
linquents of the white rock-'n'-roll set have no
prouder record. Indeed with the legacy of repres-
sion and prejudice which our Negro citizens have
inherited, it is a monumental wonder that they
have been able to hold on to their patience and
restraint so well.
Ironically, the steadiness of their deportment
has inspired some emotional inclination to endow
them with certain superhuman faculties, which,
when you stop to think about it, involves a sin of
racial prejudice in reverse.
I have been guilty of this. Shortly after the
explosion at Little Rock in the autumn of 1957
I found myself talking to Dr. Alfonso Elder, the
Columbia-educated president of North Carolina
College, a Negro school in Durham. I told him
I had been deeply moved by the high courage erf
those nine Negro students as they went out utterly
alone to run the gamut of hostility and danger
and enter Central High. "I am not sure," I said,
"that anybody else could have done that."
"You are wrong," Dr. Elder replied rather
sharply. "Courage is a human trait, not re-
stricted to any race. If the tables had been
turned, white children would have behaved the
same."
There, in a nutshell, was the whole lesson. The
Negro is simply fighting for full and recognized
membership in the human race, with all its inhe-
rent strengths and weaknesses.
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1960
Page Seve«
Morgan Says:
Women Voters' League Marks
40 Years of Civic Crusading
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC com"
mentator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen
to Morgan over the ABC network Monday
through Friday at 7 p. m. EDT.)
I DON'T WANT to seem faithless to the Daugh-
ters of the American Revolution but I'm afraid
the fact is I've rather lost my heart to another
group of girls for quite different reasons. The
DAR didn't let me down.
They, not without a strug-
gle, raised their own dues
from two dollars to three.
They demanded, possibly
as a study in cause and
effect, a return to the gold
standard. They denounced
almost everything involv-
ing the world, including
the world court, world
government, world trade
and the World Refugee Morgan
Year. Ah, these matriarchal Mata Haris, these
vigilant sentinels spying against the enemies of
their never-never land, I love them well. Still, a
man can spend just so much time in the splendidly
engirdled isolation of their desert island before
his eye begins to wander and mine has.
Some say a woman doesn't reach the peak of
her irresistible charm until she's at least 40. Well,
in St. Louis the League of Women Voters has
been celebrating its 40th anniversary and I find
myself in a long queue of admirers wishing these
dynamic ladies well. I use the word dynamic ad-
visedly. The Daughters of the DAR have a dyna-
mism that is almost overwhelming but their en-
gines keep spinning in reverse. The ladies of the
League have got thei^ wagon in forward gear and
are steady on the climb.
The League of Women Voters sprang from
the suffragette movement It is a little dizzy-
ing to contemplate the fact that it was scarcely
more than a generation ago, in November,
1920, that American women voted in a na-
tional election for the first time. The added
fact that their judgment didn't seem to be any
better than their men's and we got Harding
anyway is beside the point*
No Easy Solution;
The point is that the League has probably done
more than any single non-partisan organization
to provide political education to all hands. In
contributing to the growth of the citizen by pro
ducing antitoxin to the poison of prejudice, chau-
vinism, chicanery and sheer political cussedness
these females of the species have surely proved
more deadly than the male.
WHILE THE DAR was turning its orchid-
purple passions loose in the petrified forest of the
past, the League with dispassionate purpose was
plowing the fields of change in order to cultivate
a crop of realism and common sense with which
to face the present and the future.
They helped get better food and drug laws
They supported the Tennessee Valley Authority
when foes of public power tried even more fren-
ziedly than today to cripple it with the tag of
creeping socialism. They backed Lend Lease
against the America Firsters in World War II
They have consistently defended the United Na-
tions, reciprocal trade, and civil liberties although
I wish they could have been a little more resolute
on racial issues.
On the local level they have fought City Hall
and won better urban zoning, charters, schools,
health services and tax reforms. How they
have been able to do all these things without
tearing themselves apart in the frightening image
of the contentious American clubwoman is be-
yond me but they have.
While they have been scrupulously non-parti-
san in their approach to issues, Democrats and
Republicans working side by side, this has not
destroyed their individual loyalties and indeed
the major parties have found the League a valu-
able training ground for party activity.
Perhaps the League's greatest single contribu-
tion to good government has been its sustained
campaigns to get out the vote. Some of these
have verged on the extreme. In Toledo, O.,
restaurants in 1924, the waiter brought not only
the menu but information on the date of the
primaries. The day after the primaries the waiter
would inquire whether the diner had voted. The
League of Women Voters has the quaint idea that
the people, who are the government, should ac
tively participate in it.
Disarmament Debate Goes On
To Ticking of Nuclear Bombs
A DEEP SENSE of urgency prevails among
many Americans as they ponder the debate
that is now in progress over efforts to disarm or
at least to prevent a catastrophic nuclear race
among the great powers which is all but certain to
spread to other nations.
Disarmament is a dream that has long cap-
tured men's hopes. We sought it after the mass
killing of the trench warfare of World War L
We even succeeded in a partial disarmament
agreement among the then great powers on the
naval front. The renunciation of that agree-
ment by Japan in the 1930s was one of the
precursors of World War II,
For the most part we have talked of disarma-
ment in terms of war or in terms of the immense
economic burden that it places upon all people;
in terms of the schools we could build, the houses
we could have, the educational system we could
create if we could be spared the immense costs of
huge military establishments.
But today the urgency is infinitely greater. The
scale of the potential destruction of men and pro-
perty has taken on a new dimension. The hydro-
gen and atom bombs now threaten mankind itself.
TODAY'S "DISARMAMENT" CRISIS largely
deals with stopping tests of nuclear weapons..
There are two broad viewpoints in the United
States on the stopping of tests.
• One is that only in this way can possession
of nuclear weapons be kept in the hands of the few
nations that now have them — the United States,
Great Britain, the Soviet Union and now France.
Such limited possession holds greater hope of con-
trol and limitation than if other countries includ-
ing Red China begin to produce them.
• The other, and opposition viewpoint, is that
stopping tests would be injurious to our own
defense; that the Soviet Union could not be trusted
to keep any agreement that may be reached and
that we, ourselves, need more time and more
testing to develop the kind of nuclear weapons
that are militarily desirable.
THERE ARE ALSO two approaches to the
broader problem of disarmament. One group, a
minority, believes that disarmament in both weap-
ons and troops is so essential that it should be
negotiated and started at once, on a regular and
inspected basis, even before agreements have been
reached on the various danger spots of the world.
The larger group believes that disarmament can be
achieved only after some solid agreement on the
handling of some of these danger spots can be
brought about.
The American positifcn has been that from the
very start, disarmament has to be tied to a thor-
ough-going international inspection and policing
system. A less dangerous- "military environment"
must be created by measures to prevent surprise
attacks by effective policing of a test-ban on nu-
clear weapons and by future limitations on pro-
ducing of them.
Once that point has been reached, then "pro-
gressive, gradual and balanced reductions of
national military forces can and should be ac-
complished." That includes ceilings on man-
power and transfer of excess conventional weap-
ons to international custody.
At that point the next question Would be: "Who
is to keep the peace of the world?" The United
States' position is that an international armed
force must be created to do this job and that it
must operate under rules of law backed by a World
Court. (Public Affairs Institute, Washington
Window).
^trs YOUR—
WASHINGTON
J
J2n
MR. EISENHOWER in his midterm legislative message to Con-
gress repeated all his familiar warnings against "spending." Then
he sent HEW Sec. Arthur S. Flemming up to Capitol Hill to propose
a $600 million annual "spending" program for limited doles to the
aged, and uttered not a syllable about the dire consequences of
"inflation" or the evils of threatening an unbalance in the federal
budget.
The Forand bill, in contrast, is a model of fiscal responsibility.
It would place health care for the aged under the social security
system. It would finance the program by taxes — pay-as-you-go —
in the familiar pattern of social security levies on the employed and
their employers and on the self-employed. Across the years, the
beneficiaries would pay for their own health insurance instead of
making it a burden on the general taxpayer.
Faced with the implacable public demand, the Administration
squirmed and twisted in an effort to avoid facing the health-care
issue. Mr. Flemming began last November to promise a "plan,"
and he kept on promising it to congressional committees. Eventu-
ually his "plan" turned out to be a repudiation of the social
security principle. Even inflation and an unbalanced budget are
preferable, from Mr. Eisenhower's viewpoint, than going one inch
beyond the social security areas that he inherited from Presidents
Roosevelt and Truman.
About social security his attitude apparently is the same as about '
the Tennessee Valley Authority — the system has been a great success
and it would be "socialistic" to do anything like it again.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT'S press secretary, James C. Hagerty, claimed '
in his announcement of two Federal Power Commission appoint-
ments that the White House was abandoning what he called the
"practice" of naming FPC members as representatives of consumers
or the oil-and-gas interests.
This misses the point in the senatorial storm that is growing over
Mr. Eisenhower's refusal to reappoint William R. Connole, the only
commissioner who has a record of having voted for the consumers.
Whether he was following "practice" or not, all Mr. Eisen-
hower's other appointees have shown themselves basically sub-
servient to the oil-and-gas interests.
The plain fact is that the FPC was created by law to regulate the
oil-and-gas industry — not to find excuses for failing to regulate it.
It was created by Congress to give protection to the consumers
against the rapacity of private enterprisers who through their control
of production, pipelines and intermediate distributing systems would
otherwise have the market at their mercy.
* * *
IN THE CELEBRATED Cities Service case, Connole was the
only one of the five members nominated in the past by the President
who dissented from a decision permitting Cities Service and three
other corporations gas sales worth $1 billion without the formality
of final approval of increased rates.
The Supreme Court overruled the FPC majority in a decision
that was nothing less than a rebuke to the "regulators" who tried to
decline to regulate. The court upheld Connole's viewpoint and
told the FPC to start doing its proper job.
Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) quotes the oil industry trade
journal, Petroleum Week, as saying that "because he is the FPC's
strongest adherent of regulation, Connole has become something
of an enemy in the view of many gas producers. But he has the
respect of those who disagree with his views."
This is the man the President is dropping with the uncandid
remark, "I think I can get a better man."
And Mr. Hagerty makes the equally unilluminating remark that
Mr. Eisenhower is abandoning the "practice" of inquiring into the
views of nominees on the subject ofregulation.
One of the President's two new appointees, a former FBI man
and lawyer, Thomas J. Donegan, says that all he knows about gas
and utilities comes from paying his gas bills. He is a "better man"
than Connole?
THREE NEW DIRECTORS of Union Labor Life Insurance Co.
study 12-month report of labor-owned insurance firm at ULLICO's
annual meeting in Baltimore. Left to right are Pres. Edward
J. Leonard of Plasterers; Pres. John M. Elliott of Street Railway
Employes; and Pres. Lee Minton of Glass Bottle Blowers.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1960
Labor Backs
Investment Bill
As Amended
The addition of committee-ap-
proved amendments to a foreign
investment incentives tax bill would
remove AFL-CIO objections to the
measure, members of the House
have been notified by AFL-CIO
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemil-
ler.
The original bill provided for re-
ductions in taxes on earnings from
operations of American - owned
plants in less-developed countries.
The House discussed it some weeks
ago and postponed further consid-
eration. The Ways & Means Com-
mittee has now offered two amend-
ments.
AFL-CIO objections to the orig-
inal measures were based on its
lack of definition of a "less-devel-
oped' 1 country and its failure to in-
clude protections for workers.
One committee amendment, Bie-
miller pointed out in a letter to all
representatives, would restrict the
bill's benefits to investments in
countries that are designated "less-
developed" by the President. The
second would insure that the bene-
fits would not apply if the operation
in a less-developed country is con-
ducted under substandard labor
conditions. This, Biemiller noted,
would "hopefully assure adequate
minimum labor standards."
"The AFL-CIO urges you to sup-
port these amendments," he con-
cluded, "and, upon their adoption,
to vote for the bill."
5-State Parley
Sets Plans for
Legislatures
Milwaukee — AFL-CIO leaders
from five midwestern states con-
vened here Apr. 28 and 29 to dis-
cuss plans for unemployment in-
surance and workmen's compensa-
tion in the 1961 sessions of the
state legislatures.
Arthur Altmeyer, former U. S.
commissioner for social security,
discussed the evolution of the un-
employment insurance program. He
said experience rating had-adversely
affected the program contrary to
the hopes of its proponents. He
urged enactment of federal benefit
standards to restore the program to
its original purposes.
The conference was opened by
George Haberman, president of the
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, and
keynoted by Nelson Cruikshank, di-
rector of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Social Security. Clinton Fair and
Raymond Munts of the department
presided at discussion sessions.
State AFL-CIO affiliates in Illi-
nois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota
and Wisconsin were represented,
along with staff representatives
from the Carpenters, Auto Work-
ers, Boilermakers, Steelworkers,
Machinists, Teachers and other un-
ions.
The conference is one of a series
on state social insurance sponsored
by state bodies in cooperation with
the federation's Dept. of Social
Security.
Automation Throws
20,000 on Relief
Springfield, 111. — Some 20,-
000 workers in the Chicago
area alone have been put on
relief in the last few months
by automation, the Illinois
House was told as it began
consideration of a $35 mil-
lion deficiency appropriation
for public assistance.
Peter W. Cahill, executive
secretary of the Illinois Public
Aid Commission, said auto-
mation has been a "key fac-
tor" in the rising cost of re-
lief. He issued his warning
as the legislature met in spe-
cial session.
Administration 'Dragging Feet':
POPE JOHN XXIII, at audience in' Vatican, praises AFL-CIO
member Paul J. Murphy of Boston for leadership in campaign to
provide sightseeing trips for hospital patients. Murphy, a member of
Street Railway Div. 589, launched campaign two years ago, enlisting
support of fellow Street Railway members and Office Workers to
provide bus tours for invalids. Pope John hailed Murphy's efforts
to bring cheer to hundreds of bed-ridden patients.
Radiation Victim Urges
Federal Safety Controls
By Robert B. Cooney
The tragic case of the Jackson McVeys — radiation victims of the
atomic age — has re-enforced organized labor's appeal to Congress
to reassert federal control over radiation health and safety.
The consequences of a Houston, Tex., accident involving McVey
shows, declared Auto Workers' Pres. Walter P. Reuther, "that the
action of the Congress last sum-^
mer permitting transfer of radia-
tion control to the states was pre-
mature."
McVey, now weary and ailing
and jobless at 39, wept as he re-
told his experience and pleaded
with a Joint Atomic Energy sub-
committee to support his request
for aid from the Atomic Energy
Commission.
Leo Goodman, secretary of the
Industrial Union Dept.'s Atomic
Energy Technical Committee, urged
the subcommittee to provide com-
plete medical, occupational and so-
cial rehabilitation and to reimburse
McVey for his expenses and loss
of earnings.
Goodman proposed that a model
procedure be developed in light of
the McVey case to protect future
victims of radiation mishaps. Good-
man also repeated labor's call for
repeal of the new law which ceded
radiation safety control to the
states.
Dwight A. Ink, AEC assistant
general manager, testified that he
recognized the mental anguish suf-
fered by the McVeys and said the
AEC is considering a complete
medical review of the case.
The tragedy of Jackson McVey
began in March of 1957 in the
small Houston laboratory of the
M. W. Kellogg Co.
A tiny pellet containing dead-
ly iridium- 192 cracked and the
invisible radioactive dust wafted
up over the thick lead wall of
the roofless "hot cell." A warn-
ing bell sounded, but by then it
was too late.
McVey and his supervisor, Har-
old Northway, took routine pre-
cautions but the unseen radioactive
particles had spread to street clothes
in nearby lockers. Some 50 people
were involved as the particles were
spread through the neighborhood.
Panic followed and the McVeys
began suffering ostracisim.
"I've had nausea, fatigue, a kid-
ney infection, the threat of leuke-
mia, lost 50 pounds and both my
wife and I have *had nervous
breakdowns," McVey told a re-
porter.
Mrs. McVey, who accompa-
nied her husband to Washington
on a trip financed by neighbors,
has cataracts as a result of her
radiation, and both McVey and
his son also are developing cat-
aracts. He said both his daugh-
ters have become emotionally
disturbed.
"Besides that, we're ruined finan-
cially," McVey said.
At the time Houston was the cen-
ter of investigation, the Houston
Post reported two independent re-
search physicists as saying the Kel-
logg lab was unsafe for the ma-
terials used.
Goodman said he had an en-
gineering estimate that a roof on the
Kellogg "hot cell" would have cost
$1,200 to $2,400.
The Post reported that W. B.
Converse of New York, head of
Kellogg's Nuclear Products Divi-
sion, conceded that McVey and
Northway repeatedly tried to get
the cell enclosed. Converse said
this was a good idea on "the part
of workers who did not have to
think about expenses.
"It would be nice, too, if all
of us could drive around in
Cadillacs," Converse added, ac-
cording to the Post account
Reuther Hits Stall
On Minimum Wage
Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther has accused the Eisen-
hower Administration of "dragging its feet** on minimum wage
legislation "just as it has done on virtually every piece of progres-
sive social legislation which has come before Congress."
In a statement to a House Labor subcommittee considering
changes in the wage-hour law, 3^
Reuther said labor supports the
Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill to
raise the minimum wage to $1.25
and extend coverage to 7.6 million
more workers "because conscience
demands it and because the health
of our economy requires it."
Declaring that Administration
proposals on minimum wage exten-
sion would "only scratch the sur-
face," Reuther asserted that Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell presented
the Administration proposal to the
subcommittee "with an obviously
bad conscience."
Reuther declared Mitchell
"knows that it is grossly inade-
quate," but is "under the influ-
ence of the Administration of
which he is a member." He said
that vision and faith in America
should lead to a conclusion "that
what is morally right must be
and is economically possible in
the wealthiest country in the
world."
Taking exception to Mitchell's
statement to the subcommittee that
it is "not practical" to extend cov-
erage in a single step to 8 million
more workers, Reuther retorted:
"Not practical? I say there is
nothing more impractical than to
continue denying to these workers
and consumers a wage which will
afford them at least a bare mini-
mum standard of living.
"There is nothing more im-r
practical, in an economy which
is lagging and stagnating for lack
of sufficient purchasers, than to
hold down below starvation
levels the purchasing power of
those whose need is greatest."
The UAW president pointed out
that members of his union "al-
ready N receive wages averaging
more than twice the proposed
$1.25 minimum" but emphasized
that "the human costs of poverty
are intolerable to our sense of
moral justice . . . Broken homes,
dependent families, juvenile delin-
quents and all the other social
evils which so often have their
roots in poverty all contribute to
a burden which all of us must
share."
America's position in the world,
he declared, demands an effective
war against poverty and the elimi-
nation of sweatshop conditions "if
we are to convince the uncom-
mitted peoples of the world that a
free economy in a politically free
society can provide a higher and
better standard of living than a
totalitarian police state."
USWA, Steel Industry
Open Quest for Peace
The Steelworkers and the nation's 11 giant steel producers have
set in motion machinery aimed at establishing long-range industrial
peace in the basic steel industry.
USWA Pres. David J. McDonald and U.S. Steel's Executive Vice
Pres. R. Conrad Cooper will serve as co-chairmen of two joint
studies, set up under the terms of^
contracts negotiated between the
union and the 11 companies to end
last year's record-breaking steel
shutdown.
One study will be undertaken
through the new Human Relations
Research Committee, established to
recommend "guides for the deter-
mination of equitable wage and
benefit adjustment," and to study
job classifications, wage incentives,
seniority, medical care and other
overall problems.
The other study by the joint com-
mittee will look into local working
conditions — one of the major areas
in which steel management mount-
ed its assault on the USWA during
contract negotiations — with recom-
mendations called for by Nov. 30,
1960.
Marvin Miller, USWA associ-
ate director of research, and R.
Heath Larry, U.S. Steel admin-
istrative vice president, will be
coordinators in both joint studies.
Other union and industry people
who will participate will be an-
nounced later, as will the sched-
ule of meetings.
Involved with the USWA in the
effort to achieve labor-management
harmony will be the steel producers
who made up the "Steel Companies
Coordinating Committee" for joint
bargaining last year. Besides U.S.
Steel, they include Allegheny Lud-
lum, Armco, Bethlehem, Colorado
Fuel & Iron, Great Lakes Steel,
Inland, Jones & Laughlin, Repub-
lic, Wheeling Steel, and Youngs-
town Sheet & Tube.
Communist Employer Problem
Disrupts ILO Oil Conference
Geneva — Failure of employer delegates to settle among themselves the problem of the Commu-
nists in their ranks has forced the issue to the floor of the Intl. Labor Organization's petroleum
conference here.
The wrangle raised by the attempt of employer delegates to sideline the Soviet delegate high-
lighted the first few days of the two-week session of the ILO's Petroleum Committee.
Intl. Rep. Lloyd A. Haskins of ^~
the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers was elected by the work-
er delegates as chairman of their
group.
Arvil L. Inge of Houston,
Tex., regional director of the
Operating Engineers, is the sec-
ond man of the two-member
AFL-CIO delegation to the 20-
nation parley.
The Soviet delegation labeled as
a "flagrant violation of its rights"
the refusal of the employers' group
to name the one Soviet Union em-
ployer delegate to the subcommittee
on trade union organization.
The non-Communist majority
among the worker delegates to ILO
sessions have always succeeded in
handling the issue of the Commu-r
nists in their ranks without allow-
ing it to interfere with the orderly
conduct of business. Employers
frequently have not.
Because of this failure, the con-
ference was forced to decide the
Soviet demand for a reversal of the
employers' decision, voting 55 to
40, with 16 abstentions, to overrule
the employers' group.
Haskins reported that despite the
dispute over representation the sub-
committee on trade union organi-
zation in the oil industry immedi-
ately launched into a "constructive
discussion."
The group was concentrating
on the problem of helping trade
unions of oil workers in the
newly-developing countries.
Dr. Abbas Ammar, assistant di-
rector general of the 80-nation ILO,
told the committee when it began
its session that he hoped the discus-
sions would strengthen "the prin-
ciple of establishing Responsible and
efficient trade unions, valid part-
ners in negotiations."
Survey Shows:
Union Shop Wins
Growing Acceptance
Union security provisions are now a common feature of collective
bargaining agreements, with management opposition now confined
to the legislative and public relations fronts, according to an AFL-
CIO analysis of a new U.S. Dept. of Labor survey.
% The steady spread of union security provisions,'* said the AFL-
CIO, "reflects the favorable ex-<^
perience with them by both man-
agement and unions."
The survey was discussed in
Collective Bargaining Report, a
publication of the AFL-CIO Dept
of Research.
The Labor Dept. study cov-
ered all union agreements, ex-
cept in the rail and airline in-
dustries, with 1,000 or more
workers, and showed that 70
percent of such pacts contained
union shop provisions. The 1,631
agreements involved 7.5 million
workers, or about one-half of
all workers with contracts.
A second major finding was that
the more limited forms of union
security "have increasingly been
strengthened," the AFL-CIO ob-
served.
Opposition Fades
"One-time strong opposition of
many employers to such provisions
has faded in recent years and un-
ion membership requirements are
now generally an accepted, relative
ly non-controversial part of union
agreements," the Report said, add-
ing:
"The exceptions occur mainly
where they are prohibited by so-
called 'right-to-work' legislation
enacted in 19 states or where a
union is new or extremely weak.
"Management opposition still
existing against union security pro-
visions shows up principally not at
the bargaining table, but on the
legislative and public relations
fronts."
The AFL-CIO gave two main
reasons why union security pro-
visions no longer are in great con-
troversy: because they provide un-
ions with the stability necessary to
act responsibly without fear of
losing members or being undercut
and because management has come
to agree that simple fairness re-
quires that workers enjoying bene-
fits should also share the costs of
union representation.
The survey found that 79 per-
cent of the contracts covering
81 percent of the workers, in-
cluded some requirement of un-
CORRECTION
In an excerpt from an article in
the New Leader magazine by Harry
Fleischman which appeared in the
Apr. 23 issue of the AFL-CIO
News, the writer was inadvertently
identified as associated with the
Jewish Labor Committee. He is
director of the National Labor
Service of the American Jewish
Committee.
ion membership. The main form
was a union shop, provided for
in 71 percent of the pacts and
covering 74 percent of the work-
ers. Exclusion of the "right-to-
work" states which bar the union
shop would boost the proportion
to 79 percent and coverage to
78 percent.
The Labor Dept. also found that
so-called "escape" provisions had
declined sharply. The last survey
of union security in 1954 revealed
that 20 percent of modified union
shop provisions allowed a brief
period for a member to withdraw.
This proportion is now down to 8
percent.
In a breakdown by industry, the
survey showed union shop con-
tracts to be slightly more prevalent
in manufacturing than in non-
manufacturing.
The union shop was provided
for in over 90 percent of the con-
tracts in apparel, lumber, printing,
rubber, leather, stone, clay and
glass, primary metals, fabricated
metal products, mining, wholesale
and retail trade. However, in
tobacco, petroleum and communi-
cations, 25 percent or fewer of the
pacts provided for a union shop.
The survey also found that
the maintenance-of-membership
provision — a compromise be-
tween the union demand for a
union shop and management's
opposition — has declined from
covering 25 percent of all work-
ers to 7 percent in 1959 as it
was converted into the union
shop.
In "right-to-work" states, the
AFL-CIO pointed out, unions and
employers have agreed on union
security provisions which would
take effect when permitted legally.
The "agency shop" — enabling
workers to pay a form of service
charge, usually equal to union
dues — is provided for in about 15
agreements. Alabama has held
such a provision invalid, it was
noted.
Since the Labor Dept. survey,
the AFL-CIO said, the Steelwork-
ers early in 1960 adopted the
agency shop principle for its mem-
bers in "right-to-work" states.
The survey also revealed that
nearly three-fourths of the major
agreements contain a checkoff pro-
vision, where the employer deducts
dues and other payments for trans-
mittal to the union. The checkoff
had its greatest growth in the
1940's and its prevalence has re-
mained steady in recent years, the
Report said.
UNION SECURITY PROVISIONS
1949 vs. 1959
PERCENT OF WORKERS COVERED
PROVISION
UNION MEMBERSHIP
NOT REQUIRED
MAINTENANCE OF
MEMBERSHIP
UNION
SHOP
Three surveys by the U.S. Dept. of labor of major urion agreements (those
covering 1,000 or more workers each) in the last 10 years show a marked increase in.
vnion shop provisions (those requiring all workers fo join the union}, caSS»»»
SOURCE: U.S. Dept. of LoW Charf by AFI CIQ Depf. of Uesearch
AT DISTILLERY WORKERS CONVENTION in Miami Beach,
Fla., Pres. Mort Brandenburg, right, and Sec.-Treas. George J.
Oneto, left, are sworn in for new four-year terms by Peter M. Mc-
Gavin, assistant to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Officers Re-Elected
By Distillery Workers
Miami Beach, Fla. — Pres. Mort Brandenburg and General Sec.-
Treas. George J. Oneto were unanimously re-elected to new four-
year terms at the tenth biennial convention of the Distillery Workers
held here.
The 400 delegates also placed their stamp of approval on 1961
collective bargaining goals, includ-^
ing a reduced workweek, severance
pay and an industry-wide pension
program.
Joining Brandenburg and Oneto
on the union's executive board
were the following nine incumbent
vice presidents: Victor Bryan,
Mabel Lutherbeck, Joseph Slota,
Michael Weintraub, Tony Volpa,
Jack Schwartzberg, Irven Grath-
wohl, John N. O'Grady and Paul
Fournier. Two additional vice
presidents, John E. McKiernan of
Kentucky and Edward O'Neill of
Illinois, were elected for four-year
terms.
The newly-elected officers
were installed by Peter M. Mc-
Gavin, assistant to AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, who ex-
pressed satisfaction with the
progress made by the union dur-
ing the past two years. McGavin,
who is monitor of the union by
appointment of Meany, cited
improved servicing facilities ac-
corded the members and the
unity and harmony prevailing in
the organization as "illustrating
a new way of life in your inter-
national union."
An expression of confidence was
also given by George Baldanzi,
president of the United Textile
Workers, which was removed from
AFL-CIO monitorship last Feb-
ruary. Other speakers included
Harfy O'Reilly, executive secre-
tary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO
Maritime Trades Dept., and Joseph
Lewis, secretary of the Union
Label and Service Trades Dept.
Juul Poulson, general secretary
of the Intl. Union of Food and
Orink Workers, met with the
DRW AW executive board prior to
the convention to discuss the Inter-
American Conference of Food and
Drink Workers, slated to be held
in Lima, Peru. Brandenburg, a
member of the AFL-CIO delega-
tion to this conference, was to meet
Poulson in Lima immediately fol-
lowing the adjournment of the
DRW AW Convention.
The DRWAW constitution
was revised both to permit the
streamlining of the structure and
function of the international un-
ion and to provide accommoda-
tion to the requirements of the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
In addition, 61 resolutions, set-
ting forth the position of the union
on national and international issues
as well as those relating to the
specific problems of the industry,
were approved.
A dramatic highlight of the con-
vention was the distribution of 20-
year membership pins to union
veterans who had been members
of the organization since 1940.
Approximately 4,000 pins were
distributed, an unusually high per-
centage in an industry where there
is a large percentage of women
workers and considerable labor
turnover. Brandenburg emphasized
that a proposed "senior citizens"
community is being designed for
the benefit of these veterans as
"partial payment by our generation
for the efforts made by these pio-
neers in building a solid founda-
tion of trade unionism in our in-
dustry."
Chief stress in the program
unanimously adopted by the con-
vention was placed on organiz-
ing the unorganized. The dele-
gates selected New Orleans as
the site for the 1962 convention.
$1.81 Floor
Asked Under
Walsh-Healey
A minimum wage of $1.81 an
hour should be set for government
work in the office machine indus-
try, labor representatives have rec-
ommended at a Labor Dept. hear-
ing under the Walsh-Healey Act.
Under Walsh-Healey, the Secre-
tary of Labor determines the pre-
vailing minimum wage in an indus-
try and that minimum must be met
by manufacturers working on gov-
ernment contracts in that industry.
The present Walsh - Healey
minimum wage in the office ma-
chine industry is $1.10. Indus-
try representatives asked that it
be raised to no more than
$1,275.
Representing the AFL-CIO and
four major unions in the industry
— the Machinists, Auto Workers,
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers and Electrical, Radio
and Machine Workers — AFL-CIO
economist Bert Seidman pointed
out that the old $1.10 minimum
"was determined four years ago on
data now over 10 years old. It was
unduly low even at the time it went
into effect and is certainly com-
pletely unrepresentative of the
minimums prevailing in the indus-
try today." He based the union
recommendation for $1.81 on an
analysis of new wage data for the
industry.
About 60,000 workers are cov-
ered by the Walsh-Healey Act in
the office machine industry. Gov-
ernment contracts in the industry
in fiscal year 1959 amounted to
approximately $244 million.
Stone Cutters Re-Elect
Henson As President
Indianapolis, Ind. — Howard L
Henson has been renominated with-
out opposition and declared elected
to another term as president of the
Journeymen Stone Cutters.
Vice Pres. Frank DePace of New
York faces opposition from John
W. McRae of Bedford, Ind. Con-
tests also are set for membership
on the executive board from three
of the union's five districts.
'Closed Shop' Goal of
Lawyers in St. Louis
(Continued from Page 1)
and the unemployed, to hire an
attorney even in routine cases.
A commissioner appointed by
the Missouri Supreme Court held
hearings for seven days in March
on the charges against Tod. He
will rule after studying many pages
of testimony, and after arguments
are made by lawyers.
AFL-CIO spokesmen say few if
any state bar groups have pressed
a claim that lawyers must be hired
in unemployment compensation
cases, where money claims usually
are not more than a few hundred
dollars. In workmen's compensa-
tion cases, the pattern varies from
state to state.
In states where the issue has
been carried to court, labor gen-
erally loses, it was reported.
In the St. Louis case, State Pres.
Rollings said:
"It looks like the bar associa-
tion is acting as searcher of the
record, indicter, prosecutor, and
judge/'
The St. Louis Labor Tribune
said, under a headline reading
"Lawyers Want Monopoly in
Workmen's Compensation, Unem-
ployment Gravy":
"Counsel for the bar committee
presented his case so aggressively,
it was charged, that you would
imagine he was defending the
rights of starving lawyers to pick
the bones of union members exer-
cising their statutory rights to re-
ceive unemployment compensa-
tion, and get a sum fixed by state
law for death or injuries on the
job.
"They let it appear that no one
except a lawyer should appear for
a claimant, even at an informal
conference . . . and chisel a 25
percent fee for doing what the law
says automatically has to be done
for the claimant.
"This counsel voiced an equally
angry attack on any layman ap-
pearing before the Unemployment
Compensation body, even though
state law and the rules and regula-
tions issued by the Division of Em-
ployment Security approve this
practice."
The newspaper said the bar's
spokesman objected strongly to the
introduction into the record of
opinions of Missouri Attorneys
General, in 1947 and 1960, up-
holding Tod.
Said Pres. Rollings: "Compen-
sation cases should be decided
administratively. No one should
have to hire a lawyer to receive
his rights under the law. It
looks to me like the bar would
like to make law practice a busi-
ness instead of a profession."
About five years ago, Rollings
said, an industry representative
was fined and ordered to stop ad-
vising businessmen for a fee. Tod
never has received a fee, he said.
DEMONSTRATIONS AND ROUSING CHEERS from all parts of the hall greeted passage by the
Canadian Labor Congress convention in Montreal of a resolution approving steps taken to form
a new liberal political party and instructing CLC officers, working with other groups, to set up
a founding convention.
CLC Demands Program
To End Unemployment
By Gervase N. Love
Montreal, Que. — A sharp demand that the government meet
Canada's unemployment problem with a program geared to supply-
ing the unmet needs of the nation and the underdeveloped countries
was voiced by the more than 1,700 delegates at the closing session
of the third constitutional convention of the Canadian Labor
Congress. 3>-
In a far-ranging statement on
economic policy, the convention
asserted that although official fig-
ures show 9.1 percent of Canada's
labor force jobless in March, the
actual rate was "about" 9.8 per-
cent, and the number of unplaced
job applicants on National Employ-
ment Service rolls was 13.3 per-
cent — the worst record since the
end of World War II except for
March 1958.
"And this with production at
an all-time high," the statement
continued. "This situation is
nothing less than outrageous.
Governments, management and
labor must bend all their ener-
gies to end it. But the heaviest
responsibility rests upon the na-
tional government, which alone
has the necessary powers to
make full employment effective."
To provide and maintain full
employment, the statement said,
the annual rate of growth of the
Canadian economy must be stepped
up by meeting Canada's need for
housing, schools, hospitals, parks,
roads and other phases of social
investment, and by helping the un-
derdeveloped * countries to raise
their standards of living.
"There are enough unmet
needs in Canada and among the
free people of the world to pro-
vide full production, full em-
ployment and steadily rising
standards of living for as far into
the future as we can see," the
convention declared.
The convention acted after hear-
ing Minister of Labor Michael
Starr concede "unemployment pre-
sents a challenge to Canada's in-
dustrial way of life" despite "indi-
cators of vigorous economic ex-
pansion."
A "considerable amount" of
unemployment, he claimed, "flows
from the very complexity of our
industrial organization" and is of
the type "which can and must be
tackled by labor, management and
government, working together."
While the government's winter em-
ployment program this year created
about 50,000 jobs, he said, addi-
tional steps must be undertaken.
Starr also said that so long as
he remains in office, the rights
of labor and management as
preserved in federal legislation
will neither be "infringed nor
abridged."
In other actions the convention:
• Directed CLC heads to renew
negotiations with the Canadian &
Catholic Confederation of Labor
in an effort to find a formula for
merger.
• Re-elected top officers, head-
ed by Pres. Claude Jodoin, with-
out opposition.
• Heard Pres. Arne Geijer of
the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions declare that the la-
bor movement needs political par-
ties and that they must be based
on "realism and progressive think-
ing."
• Rejected a resolution which
would have changed the CLC con-
stitution to permit the entry of the
Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers, ex-
pelled from the former Canadian
Congress of Labor more than a
decade ago on findings of Com-
munist domination. The Execu-
tive Council had previously re-
jected an application for affiliation
on the ground that a clean-up had
not gone far enough.
• Increased the per capita tax
to the CLC from 7 cents to 10
cents per month and raised offi-
cers' salaries. Jodoin's salary was
raised from $14,000 to $16,000 a
year; Executive Vice Presidents
William Dodge and Stanley
Knowles from $12,000 to $13,000,
and Sec.-Treas. Donald MacDon-
ald from $12,000 to $14,000.
Two Unions
Expelled by
Canadians
Montreal, Que. — The Canadian
Labor Congress convention voted
to cut its ties with two major affil-
iates by expelling the Seafarers and
giving the Teamsters 30 days to re-
form or face expulsion. Raiding
was the charge in both cases.
The Seafarers were accused of
filching members from the National
Association of Marine Engineers
and the Teamsters from both the
Railway Clerks and the Brick &
Clay Workers.
Ousting of the SIU followed 18
months of preliminaries during
which the union at times agreed to
abide by CLC directives and later
refused to, resulting in suspension
by the CLC Executive Council on
June 18, 1959.
The SIU had the right to appeal
to the convention, but failed to put
in an appearance. The Executive
Council originally recommended to
the delegates that expulsion be
made automatic six months after
convention action, but when no ap-
peal was made changed its proposal
to immediate dismissal.
Efforts to settle the dispute be-
tween the Teamsters and the
Railway Clerks continued until a
few hours before the convention
took up the issue but were aban-
doned when the Teamsters re-
fused to accept a compromise of-
fered by the CLC Executive
Council.
During the debate, which lasted
for more than three hours, much of
the support for the Teamsters came
from Communist-oriented dele
gates.
Millions Still IS eed Union:
Building Employes
Step up Organizing
New York— The Building Service Employes Union — its ranks
swelled by 50,000 new members since its last convention five years
ago— has pledged a stepped-up organizing drive to meet the "chal-
lenge of a growing labor force."
More than 400 delegates attending the union's 12th general con-
vention at the Astor Hotel here^
heard a report from the BSEIUs
executive council declaring that
"we cannot be content with the
gains of the past while more than a
half million workers in the service
industries and several million em-
ployes of state and local govern-
ments remain unorganized."
A strong endorsement of the
BSEIU's drive to bring the bene-
fits of trade unionism to the un-
organized came from Labor Sec,
James P. Mitchell, who warned
that failure to win union recog-
nition would leave millions of
workers "at the mercy of some
unscrupulous employers."
Mitchell declared that the coun-
try "owes its prosperity" to the
trade union movement. "I have no
patience," he told cheering dele-
gates, "with those who say unions
are not good things for the coun-
try. They don't know what they're
talking about. We owe a great debt
to the trade union movement."
The secretary paid high tribute
to Pres. William L. McFetridge,
who announced earlier to the con-
vention that he was retiring after
having served for 20 years as
BSEIU president. Mitchell hailed
McFetridge's long career of service
in the trade union movement and
praised the union president for help
he has rendered the Labor Dept.
over the years.
Mitchell presented to McFetridge
a special citation — first of its kind
ever given by the Labor Dept. —
for his "distinguished service.'' The
citation will be known as the Sec-
retary of Labor's Award of Merit
The executive board's report
noted that the union is "uniquely
suited" to undertake the task of or-
ganizing in the years ahead, since
it has been operating in the service
industries, "where the greatest fu-
ture expansion (of the working
force) can be expected."
The council noted that in some
fields of service, particularly hos-
pital employment, "labor costs
constitute the major part of the
total cost of the service. If wages
are especially low . • • then the
process of improving wages
through collective bargaining
must inevitably increase the cost
to the ultimate purchaser of the
service."
The report cautioned that "we
must face the fact that, as these
costs rise, many segments of the
population may protest. This must
not deter us in our drive to win for
the service worker the better wages
and working conditions he de-
serves."
Ahead of the convention were
proposed changes in the union's
constitution to meet requirements
imposed by the Landrum-Griffin
Act; election of officers; and action
on a score of resolutions covering
a broad range of trade union prob-
lems.
Labor Raps 'Politics'
In Ike's Medical Plan
3&
Stop, That's Compulsion!
(Continued from Page 1)
maining 80 percent up to certain
maximum limits.
The Administration offered its
program as a substitute for the
AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill,
which would finance medical care
for the elderly through the social
security mechanism. The cost would
be borne by an increase of one
quarter of 1 percent in the social
security tax levied on both employer
and employe — a maximum tax in-
crease of $12 a year for each.
The Executive Council em-
phasized that the American peo-
"are willing to pay the necessary
costs to provide health care for
the aged but they will rightly
insist on a sound and efficient
program." The Administration
proposal, it declared, "does not
meet this test."
The council cited a half-dozen
objections to the program Flemming
submitted to the House committee,
including:
• The plan "rejects the most
universal, economical and dignified
approach" — the use of the social
security system.
• No health benefits will be
available until state legislatures en-
act necessary laws and' appropriate
necessary funds. "Many states are
financially impoverished," said the
AFL-CIO; "many could only fi-
nance such a program through
higher sales taxes; many more are
all too susceptible to pressure from
reactionary elements which would
seek to block such legislation."
• It would not provide "the real
help that low-income aged persons
need." The 80 percent of those
over 65 with incomes of less than
$2,000 a year would have to pay
$24 in annual premiums and $250
in out-of-pocket medical expenses
before receiving any benefits at all
"The financial barrier to seeking
early preventive care would remain.
Medical costs would continue to
wipe out savings and use up money
needed for daily living essentials,"
• It would not make benefit*
available "as a matter of right," in-
stead would set up "a yearly income
test for our elderly citizens."
• Administration would be
"costly and unnecessarily compli-
cated," involving 50 different state
agencies as well as a federal ad-
ministrative agency."
• It "opens the door" to using
commercial insurance companies, a
practice which the council called
"inefficient and extravagant" since
a large portion of premium dollars
would be channeled "away from the
beneficiary and into the coffers of
private insurance companies."
Organized labor, the council said,
wants a program "built on the
proven, sound principle of social
insurance, under which a worker by
regular payments based on earnings
during his working years insures his
health benefits when he retires."
UIU Officer Elected
To Secretariat Board
Montecatini, Italy — Vice Pres.
Al Rota of the Upholsters has been
elected the first North American
representative on the executive
committee of the Intl. Federation of
Building & Woodworkers.
Joe Morris of the Woodworkers,
a vice president of the Canadian
Labor Congress, was named alter-
nate. Sir Richard Coppock, of the
Amalgamated Building Trades-
Workers of Great Britain, retired
as president of the trade secretariat
and was succeeded by I. Smets of
the Belgian Woodworkers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, M Af 7, 1960
Page Elevem
$18 Million in Benefits:
Phone Industry Pattern Set
By CWA, Northwestern Bell
Omaha. Neb. — A new three-year agreement, hailed as "pattern-making and precedent-setting,"
was signed by the Communications Workers and Northwestern Bell Telephone Co. half an hour
before expiration of the old contract.
CWA Pres. Joseph A. Beirne predicted that the agreement, which brought forth a package esti-
mated at over 10 cents an hour the first year, would quickly become the 1960 pattern for the entire
Bell System. He said it would ^
bring benefits estimated at $130
million to telephone workers in ev-
ery part of the nation. The con-
tract provides for reopeners on
wages and related matters after the
first and second years.
The CWA estimated that work-
ers would receive an average wage
lift of over eight cents an hour from
the contract formula. In addition,
Beirne described the pact as rep-
resenting a "major break-through
to a new plateau of social welfare
benefits, not only in telephone but
throughout all industry."
Deemed of particular signifi-
cance was the first "catastrophic
illness and disability" protection
ever negotiated for telephone
workers. It provides that Bell
system employes will receive cov-
erage, supplementing their regu-
lar health benefits, of up to
$15,000 for employes and their
families. It requires the individ-
ual worker to make a compara-
tively small initial outlay, but
after that the policy picks up 80
percent of the charges, up to the
$15,000 maximum expenditure.
In addition, the agreement pro-
vides that the 46,000 Bell pension-
ers and their dependents will re-
ceive a $2,500 "major medical"
insurance policy along similar lines.
Major Step Forward
This, Beirne declared, "repre-
sents a major forward step in pro-
viding badly needed medical pro-
tection for our older generation."
Over and above the wage and
medical provisions, the contract
provided that Bell will increase
company-paid life insurance on
each employe from $1,000 to
$2,000; raise the minimum pension
in two $5 step-ups; provide four
weeks of vacation with pay after
25 years of service, instead of after
30 years as in the past; reclassify
a number of cities and towns to
permit higher pay scales, and im-
prove a number of local conditions.
18,000 Immediate Beneficiaries
An approximate 18,000 North-
western Bell employes were imme-
diate beneficiaries, according to
Dist. Dir. D. K. Gordon. The pact
was negotiated by a five-man com-
mittee elected by local unions
throughout the area, which com-
prises the Dakotas, Minnesota,
Iowa and Nebraska.
Contract talks between CWA and
other Bell operations in Wisconsin,
Illinois and the District of Colum-
bia, which had been marking time
while the Northwestern talks moved
toward the deadline, were expected
to bring quick agreement on the
basis of the pattern.
The contract was signed at 11:25
p. m. Apr. 30, just 35 minutes be-
fore expiration of the old agree-
ment. The union had made it clear
that because of great progress in
the parleys, the old agreement
would have been extended. There
was no talk of a strike.
As the union moved towards
the negotiations, it had developed
a major public relations program
to bring its story to the telephone-
using public of the five-state area,
and also to people in Wisconsin,
Illinois and Washington, D. C.
Two-page advertisements in met-
rojpolitan newspaper Sunday mag-
azine sections, ads in smaller pa-
pers, and a television speech broad-
Railway Employes Dept.
Backs Wage, Job Goals
Chicago — The current battle of the shopcraft organizations to
win higher wages and other benefits from the nation's railroads was
given the unanimous support of the AFL-CIO Railway Employes
Dept. at the closing session of its 12th convention here.
The call for backing was sounded by B*rt K. Jewell, veteran
union leader who had served as^
president of the department for
more than 25 years, and was an-
swered with a rising vote by the
delegates.
The unions in the department
are the Machinists, Boilermakers &
Blacksmiths, Sheet Metal Workers,
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, Carmen, and Firemen &
Oilers. In addition to wage in-
creases, they are asking the rail-
roads for improved vacations, a
better health and welfare program,
and life insurance at no cost to the
employe.
The convention also called for
a job stabilization program to
provide "regular employment
throughout the year" for all
workers represented by the de-
partment's affiliated unions. The
shopcraf ts have seen about 175,-
000 jobs disappear since the end
of World War II.
The resolution charged the man-
agement practice of ''farming out"
work usually done by the shopcrafts
is "wasteful and inefficient," and
pointed out that failure to "keep
locomotives and cars in good re-
pair causes loss of business" be-
cause the equipment isn't ready
for shippers.
"Farming out" also creates a
serious hardship for workers, the
resolution continued, by undermin-
ing employment opportunities for
men with long service "who have
reached the age where they cannot
secure employment in any indus-
try, or else suffer a serious loss in
income."
The convention called for enact-
ment of legislation by Congress to
end the "slaughter" of railroad
passenger service through the car-
riers' abuse of provisions in the
Transportation Act of 1958 which
give them a large measure of free-
dom to cancel service as they
please.
Enactment by Congress of pend-
ing legislation to advance employe
and passenger service and reduce
freight damage also was demanded.
Sec. of Labor James P.
Mitchell fitted the railroad indus-
try into Administration endorse-
ment of the proposal of AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany that
labor and management get to-
gether for discussion of common
problems away from the bargain-
ing table.
He said that now that railroad-
ing is no longer a monopoly to be
regulated but competes with other
forms of transportation, it is con-
ceivable that joint labor-manage-
ment discussions could produce
possible recommendations to end
what he called "over-regulation."
cast in most cities in the area all
stressed the union's desire to serve
the public interest and to achieve
benefits which would help not only
the workers but their communities
as well.
Using up-to-the-minute commu-
nications techniques, CWA had
phone message centers operating in
key cities throughout the five-state
area to bring latest news of the
contract talks to local union leaders
and rank-and-file members. Re-
corded talks each day — and more
frequently towards the deadline —
brought new developments to those
who dialed the special numbers at
union offices.
The system is part of CWA's
national "Dial U for Union" set-up
of telephone message centers for
getting information to the member-
ship.
IBEW Wins
Bell System
Contract Gains
Omaha, Neb. — Local 1947 of
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers has won agreement on
major improvements in medical
benefits, pensions and vacations ex-
pected to set a pattern for 55,000
members employed by the Western
Electric Co.
The agreement, reached nearly
two weeks before expiration of the
current contract, is expected also
to constitute a pattern for other
major Bell System installations
where employes are represented by
the IBEW. Negotiations continue
on wage increases for the local's
3,500 members.
The company agreed to pay for
a major medical program with a
maximum of $15,000 to be effec-
tive Sept. 1.
In addition it increased pensions
at age 65 as follows: for those with
20 to 30 years of service, $115 a
month; 30 to 40 years, $120 a
month; and more than 40 years,
$125 a month.
The $1,000 life insurance pol-
icy for each employe was dou-
bled, going to $2,000, and four
weeks of vacation was granted
after 25 years instead of after 30
years.
OUT ON STRIKE 22 months against Continental Trailways, 317
members of Street and Electric Railway Division 1142 were spurred
to make their union the first in Dallas to hit 100 percent in COPE
contributions. Business Agent Charles Hunter (left) presents check
to Allan L. Maley, Jr., secretary-treasurer, Dallas AFL-CIO.
SCME Locals Pledge
Higher Per Capita Tax
Philadelphia — Delegates representing an estimated 90 percent of
the support for a defeated resolution to increase the per capita tax
voluntarily offered to hike their own monthly payments to the State,
County & Municipal Employes at the union's 12th convention here.
The offer was accepted with "heartfelt gratitude" by Pres. Arnold
S. Zander. ^
A proposal from the executive
board to raise the per capita from
65 cents to 80 cents was beaten in
the convention by 40 votes, with a
two-thirds majority required. How-
ever, the delegates then raised the
per capita for new locals to $1 a
month.
They acted after hearing Pres.
Walter P. Reuther of the Auto
Workers say the AFL-CIO Indus-
trial Union Dept., which he also
heads, would extend financial as-
sistance if the convention also
took action to provide the inter-
national with additional funds.
Earlier, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany in a message had ex-
pressed the hope the delegates
would vote additional support to
the international "so that the in-
terests of public employes may
be served."
Reuther called education the
country's No. 1 problem and civil
rights "our second priority."
The richest country in the world,
he declared, "is robbing our chil-
dren of the opportunity of facing
the future," adding that we seem
to be more concerned with ade-
quate plumbing than with adequate
education.
"We must bridge the gap," he
said in discussing civil rights, "be-
tween our moral principles and our
Portland News Strike
Endorsed by Council
(Continued from Page 1)
written by strike insurance.
Noting that strikebreakers are
an old story to labor and have
"spread their stench" through
the entire industrial history of
America, the council said news-
paper strikebreaking has devel-
oped to a point that a central
agency is now maintained to
"book scabs into newspaper
strikes wherever they occur."
The Oregon Journal and the Ore-
gonian, the latter a part of the S. I.
Newhouse chain, have imported
nearly 200 professional strikebreak-
ers from all over the United States
and have hired hundreds of others
in the Portland area, the council
said.
The council asked all affiliates to
support anti-strikebreaker legisla-
tion in states and cities along lines
proposed by the Portland unions. It
directed legal and legislative depart-
ments of the AFL-CIO to "work
for the introduction and enactment
of appropriate federal legislation to
ban the recruiting of strikebreak-
ers by outside parties, and the em-
ployment of professional strike-
breakers." .
The striking unions have named
Rene J. Valentine of the Typo-
graphical Union as strike coordina-
tor and opened a central strike
headquarters. Unions have been
asked to send contributions to him
at Room 714, Roosevelt Hotel,
Portland, Ore.
The Portland Reporter, strike
newspaper, is printing 100,000
copies twice a week, and trying
for a third issue per week. More
than 300 carriers are distributing
the paper.
The Stereotypers struck Nov. 10,
and other unions respected their
picket lines. The regional office of
the National Labor Relations Board
rejected a union charge that the
publishers were guilty of an unfair
labor practice. A charge that the
union refused to bargain will be
heard by the NLRB May 10.
nasty practices of discriminating
against negroes."
A resolution sponsored by 25
locals called for full support for the
Forand bill to provide health care
for Social Security recipients, and
was passed unanimously.
In addition, the delegates under-
took on returning to their homes to
embark on an intensified campaign
to stimulate grass roots support for
the measure. They agreed to ask
city councils and state legislatures
to pass resolutions urging Congress
to pass the measure.
"As an international union
successful in achieving enabling
legislation to provide social secu-
rity coverage for public em-
ployes," observed Zander, "we
are happy to be extremely strong
supporters of the Forand bill."
Pres. Adolph Kummernuss of
the Public Services Intl., worldwide
trade secretariat for unions of pub-
lic servants, called for an increased
awareness by U.S. labor of its re-
sponsibility to fight for a world in
which all people can live in peace
and freedom.
Kummernuss, a veteran German
trade unionist who was tortured in
a Nazi prison camp and twice con-
demned to death, recently com-
pleted a tour of Africa. What is
going on there, he said, "demon-
strates the vital importance of help-
ing young and struggling labor
movements before it is too late."
Zander and Sec.-Treas. Gordon
W. Chapman were re-elected. New-
comers to the executive board in-
clude Vice Pres. Rena Ainsworth,
Portland, Ore., who was given an
ovation by the 800 delegates for
her record of signing up one new
member a day for the past two
years.
ILPA Rallies Aid
For Portland Strike
New York— The Intl. La-
bor Press Association has
called on labor editors to in-
form their readers of the
threat to labor posed by the
Portland newspaper strike,
and to urge their financial
support of the strikers.
A check for $1,000 from
the Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers was the first
tangible result IBEW Pres.
Gordon M. Freeman said the
contribution was a direct re-
sult of the ILPA appeal.
Pnpe Twelve
AFL-OONEWS, "WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1960
For Federal Employes:
House Group Votes
9 Percent Pay Hike
The House Post Office & Civil Service Committee has reported
a 9 percent pay raise bill for federal workers in the face of strong
Administration opposition.
Defying Pres. Eisenhower's demand for a pay freeze pending a
salary survey scheduled to be completed after Congress adjourns,
the committee voted 16 to 4 for a^> :
bill which would raise salaries of
1.7 million government postal and
white collar workers either 9 per-
cent or $350 — whichever is higher
— effective July 1. Congressional
and judicial employes would also
be included.
Committee action came as the
AFL-CIO Executive Council
adopted a resolution branding
"the stalling and stalemating tac-
tics of the Administration" on
pay legislation as "despicable."
Committee Chairman Tom Mur-
ray (Tenn.) was the only Demo-
crat reported voting against the
salary proposal, which was pared
down from the 12 percent orig-
inally sought by the AFL-CIO Gov-
ernment Employes Council.
The Executive Council charged
the Administration with using the
fact that government employes can-
not strike or bargain collectively
*'as a lever to keep them from the
economic advantages which non
government organized labor enjoys
everywhere in the United States
Meanwhile the Senate Post Of-
fice & Civil Service Committee
moved swiftly with hearings on gov-
ernment pay raises.
In addition to testimony from of-
ficers of the Letter Carriers and the
Post Office Clerks, the committee
heard the wives of postal workers,
Humphrey and
Kennedy Split,
Nixon Strong
A series of primary elections on
May 3 gave Sen. Hubert H. Hum-
phrey (D-Minn.) nine District of
Columbia delegates for the presi-
dency at the Democratic National
Convention and saw Vice Pres.
Nixon run strongly in Indiana in
the Republican primary.
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
won the Ohio and Indiana primary
contests on the Democratic side,
but ran somewhat behind Nixon in
his personal vote in Indiana. The
Vice President was unopposed on
the Republican ballot while Ken-
nedy was opposed by two minor
opponents who siphoned off about
one-fifth of the total Democratic
vote.
In Ohio two slates of candi-
dates pledged to Kennedy com-
peted with each other. The slate
backed by Gov. Michael V. Di
Salle won most of the delegate
seats over another group iden-
tified with Cleveland's former
mayor, Ray T. Miller.
An effort by former U.S. Sen.
George Bender (R) to buck a slate
of pro-Nixon delegates by announc-
ing support of New York's Gov.
Nelson Rockefeller failed when
Bender ran far behind.
In Alabama, the principal con-
test was between rival slates of
"states' rights" and "loyalist" Demo-
crats for the Electoral College. The
"states' righters," refusing to pledge
support of the Democratic presi-
dential nominee, held a lead but
runoff primaries will be required in
most contests.
Humphrey beat Sen. Wayne
Morse (D-Ore.), his only presiden-
tial rival in the District of Columbia
primary, by an 8-to-5 margin, and
won the convention delegates under
a unit rule. His slate of delegates
ran ahead of one pledged to Adlai
E. Stevenson in most races but
despite Stevenson's public request,
Stevenson supporters in most cases
•urpassed the Morse slate totals.
members of the Ladies' Auxiliary
of the Letter Carriers.
Mrs. Woodrow P. Gaines, moth-
er of four children and wife of a
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., carrier, told
the senators what it means for a
family to sink deeper and deeper
into debt despite every possible
economy.
"Financial trouble is the con-
stant companion of our waking
and sleeping hours," Mrs. Gaines
said. She told how they had been
forced to drop all insurance and
take a second mortgage on their
home to meet day-to-day ex-
penses, even though she works to
supplement her husband's in-
come.
"My husband's best suit is nine
years old," she added. "I cannot
remember when we last saw a mo-
tion picture."
She asked the committee: "Have
you ever been placed in a position
where you said a prayer that a lit-
tle boy would not really lose his
loose tooth for two more days be
cause it was Wednesday and payday
was Friday and there just wasn't
any small change so that the fairies
could come? Have you ever known
what it was to hunt in all the little
teapots and containers to find 35
cents for the price of a child's
school lunch ticket?"
Letter Carriers Pres. William C.
Doherty blasted the Administra-
tion's demand that pay be frozen
until completion of the wage sur-
vey. He charged that at least four
other government wage studies dur-
ing the past seven years have been
"virtually ignored . . . presumably
because they did not produce the
results the Administration wanted."
He said 65 percent of the na-
tion's letter carriers work in cities
of 100,000 or more population
where living costs are highest and
where the average letter carrier's
salary of $4,640 is "clearly inade-
quate."
E. C. Hallbeck, legislative direc-
tor of the Post Office Clerks, chal-
lenged the Administration's insist-
ence on a pay freeze in view of "its
participation in the settlement of
the steel dispute." He said the Ad-
ministration "cannot fairly deny at
least equal increases to postal and
federal employes."
MORE THAN A MILLION tickets have been distributed for the
AFL-CIO Union-Industries Show in the Washington, D. C, Na
tional Guard Armory May 6-11. Democracy at Work is the theme
of 375 exhibits showing almost every union craft, skill and service
Smiling a welcome above are AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler, left, and Joseph Lewis of the Union Labor and Service
Trades Dept., which sponsors the show.
Union-Industries Show
Opens in Washington
Organized labor's traditional symbols of quality goods and serv
ices — the union label, the shop card and the service button — went
on display in the nation's capital for the first time as the AFL-CIO
Union-Industries Show opened May 6 at the D. C. National Guard
Armory.
Pres. Eisenhower was scheduled'^
to join with other leaders of gov-
ernment, labor and management
and representatives of many of the
world's free nations in opening the
show, which will run through
May 11.
Colorful Opening
AFL-CIO Pres.. George Meany,
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler,
members of the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council, top officers of national
and international unions, members
of the Cabinet and ambassadors
from more than a dozen foreign
nations were due to take part in the
colorful opening ceremonies.
Virtually every craft, skill and
service represented by members
of AFL-CIO unions was on dis-
play in the huge Armory for the
exhibition's six-day run, with
scores of major companies hav-
ing contracts with AFL-CIO
unions entering exhibits.
The Union-Industries Show is
sponsored and produced each year
by the AFL-CIO Union Label
& Service Trades Dept. Joseph
Lewis, the department's secretary
treasurer, is the show director.
The show, first staged in 1938
in Cincinnati, O., is a cooperative
project between labor and manage
ment to focus attention on the day-
to-day good working relationship
that exists between union and en-
lightened management.
Theme of the massive show
with its 375 colorful, action-
packed displays is "Democracy
at Work." The various ex-
hibits, Lewis declared, "prove
that harmony between labor and
management is practical and
possible."
More than $80,000 worth of
valuable union-made goods — in-
cluding an all-electric kitchen, gas
and electric stoves, color and con-
ventional television sets, electrical
appliances and clothing — will be
given away free during the six-day
show.
Keep Wages, Taxes, Labor Down,
Chamber of Commerce Demands
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — praised in an opening speech by Pres. Eisenhower as "a great
organization" because "you agree with me"— has called on businessmen to intensify their political
activities against social security, medical care for the aged, a higher minimum wage, depressed area
legislation and federal aid to education.
Flexing its political muscles in this election year, the 48th annual convention of the businessmen's
organization came out four-square'^
for lower taxes on higher income
brackets and a reduction of the na-
tional debt.
Following a custom of nearly
half a century, the 2,000 dele-
gates meeting in the nation's
capital were treated to a full-
scale assault on the "lawlessness"
of the trade union movement,
linked to a renewal of the cham-
ber's plea for compulsory open-
shop legislation.
Eisenhower urged the nation's
businessmen to join him in stump-
ing for "prudence" in federal
spending, declaring that "world
peace and stability" depended on
"the soundness of the dollar."
The President said that while
the CofC had earned "a very
enviable reputation" by its rec-
ommendations on government
policy, it must step up its propa-
ganda in members' home towns to
"influence public opinion" against
liberal legislation.
Commerce Sec. Frederick H.
Mueller expanded on this same
theme, emphasizing that business-
men "are urgently needed ... to
create better public understanding
of the priceless value of free
enterprise."
"To keep mum on vital public
issues," Mueller declared in an
open bid for greater political ac-
tivity by the business community,
"would be to abandon the defense
of business and to desert civic
responsibility."
Outgoing chamber Pres. Erwin
D. Canham warned that failure of
businessmen to play an active po-
litical role could lead to "an un-
stable, uncompetitive economy."
Landrum-Griflin Praised
In a swipe against the labor
movement, Canham declared that
enactment of the punitive Landrum-
Griflin Act last year helped "re-
store the balance of economic
power," but added that "further
steps" are necessary to control "the
stark bargaining power of nation-
wide unions in vital industry."
Speakers got around — briefly —
to the chamber's own business: the
business climate facing the nation
this year. They expressed cautious
optimism that the economy would
make "moderate" advances, but
agreed that it would not reach
"boom" proportions.
Milliners Hail
First Local
At 50th Year
New York — Words and music
went nicely together in Carnegie
Hall when the Millinery Workers*
Union celebrated the 50th birthday
of Local 24, first U.S. milliners'
union.
The words were provided by
Mayor Robert F. Wagner; Pres.
Alex Rose of the parent Hatters,
Cap & Millinery Workers; Man-
ager Nathaniel Spector of the local
joint board, and others.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
sent a message congratulating
the union and its 12,000 mem-
bers for a half-century of suc-
cess built on sacrifice.
The audience of 3,000 also
savored the music of Kreisler, Bar-
tok, Saint-Saens, Handel, Rossini,
Gershwin, Buzzi-Peccia, Manuel de
Falla, Bloch, Sibelius and Mana
Zucca.
Speeches opened the program,
and were resumed after some mu-
sic and a 10-minute intermission.
Then the musicians took over
again — Isidor Lateiner, violinist;
Jennie Tourel, soprano; William
Warfield, bass-baritone, with piano
accompaniment by Edith Grosz,
Edwin Hymovitz, and John Wust-
man.
Wagner thanked the milliners
for driving "Communists, gang-
sters and racketeers" out of the
industry. Meany's message, read
by Spector, recalled that mem-
bers of the union have made
many sacrifices which they can
see today translated into hours,
wages and working conditions
comparable to the best.
Local 24's first agreement in 1910
provided a wage of $15 for 60
hours of work, compared with $115
today for 35 hours.
09-L-fl
'Yellow Dog'
Law Hits S. D.
City Employes
Sioux Falls, S. D.— The Fire-
fighters and the State, County &
Municipal Employes have an-
nounced plans to appeal a court
ruling upholding a "y el low-dog"
policy adopted by the Sioux Falls
City Council.
A decision by State Circuit
Court Judge Walter Seacat held
that the city has the right to ban
union membership in the Fire
Dept., Police Dept. and Public
Health Dept. — and to require em-
ployes to resign from their unions
or be fired. The two unions had
challenged the right of the city
council to ban union membership
and also had charged that the pol-
icy violated a so-called "right-to-
work" provision in the state con-
stitution.
Firefighters in Danger
If » upheld, the decision would
force the breakup of a long-estab-
lished local of the Firefighters and
put a major roadblock in the path
of the AFSCME. The latter un-
ion had launched a promising or-
ganizing campaign shortly before
the council adopted its union-
busting policy by a 2-to-l vote at
the urging of Mayor Fay Wheel-
don.
ILG Routs
Racketeers
In Votes
The Ladies' Garment Workers
scored a major triumph in a two-
and-a-half year struggle with
union-battling Pennsylvania dress
operators when in 3 3 -shop Na-
tional Labor Relations Board
elections the union won every
shop and rolled up a total of
1.578 votes for the union, only
114 against.
The elections were considered
crucial to maintaining the wage and
pension standards won in a brief
March 1958 strike in the eight-
state area serving the New York
metropolitan dress market.
' Jungle Competition' Ends
They were hailed by the ILGWU
as final victory over racketeer and
underworld elements that had fled
from New York to penetrate the
Pennsylvania manufacturers' field
and sought to disrupt the union to
restore "jungle competition" wreck-
ing industry stabilization.
"The results," said ILGWU
Pres. David Dubinsky in New
York, "represent a very gratify-
ing demonstration of the workers'
faith in their union. They show
that underworld elements, even
though they have their clutches
on some of the contractors, can-
not get a foothold among the
workers."
David Gingold, ILGWU vice
president in charge of the North-
east Div., hailed the election results
as the final blow to the "discredited
and defunct" Pennsylvania Gar-
ment Manufacturers Association
that had tried to split away, in 1958,
from the established employer bar-
gaining association in the area and
set up shop under non-union con
ditions.
Nearly 250 operators were rep
resented in the Pennsylvania group
when it began challenging ILGWU
representation of the workers in
January 1958 and attempted to
break away from the established
employer bargaining group in
March, with settlement of the
strike.
More than 11,000 Pennsylvania
workers stayed on the picket lines
when the strike was ended else-
(Continued on Page 3)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Seeond Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, May 14, 1960
No. 20
Jobless Rate Stuck at 5%,
Meany Cites Danger Signs
— ®
Action Urged to Aid
Distressed Areas
Kennedy and
Nixon Score
In Primaries
Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.)
acored a spectacular victory in
the West Virginia Democratic
preferential primary, knocking
his principal primary competitor,
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
(Minn.), out of the race, and Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon con
tinued a strong showing with ;
heavy write-in vote in Nebraska's
Republican primary.
Fresh from a close victory in
Wisconsin and facing what most
observers considered an uphill fight
in West Virginia, Kennedy pulled
ahead of Humphrey in the first
scattered returns and went on to
win by landslide proportions with
approximately 60 percent of the
total vote.
In the face of journalistic re-
ports that religious prejudice
might influence the vote in
strongly Protestant West Vir-
ginia, Kennedy met the issue
head-on by directly challenging
whispers that his Roman Cath-
olic religion "disqualified" him
for the presidency.
In an obvious reference to the
religious controversy, which domi-
nated reporters' stories before the
election, Kennedy said in a post-
(Continued on Page 8)
RECORD-BREAKING CROWD pours into National Guard Ar
mory in nation's capital to view annual AFL-CIO Union-Industries
Show after formal opening participated in by Pres. Eisenhower and
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany. Both presidents hailed the annual
showing, of the union label, shop card and service button as an
outstanding example of labor-management cooperation. (See story,
Page 4; other pictures, Page 5.)
To Protest Racism :
U.S. Urged to Ban
South African Gold
The AFL-CIO has asked Sec. of State Christian Herter to give
"serious consideration" to halting U.S. purchases of South African
gold to demonstrate disapproval of the "inhuman and callous" racial
policies pursued in that country.
"It is our firm conviction that only the most clear-cut expression
of world public opinion can hope^
to modify the policies of the South
African government," Pres. George
Meany wrote Herter.
"It is in the light of this belief
that the AFL-CIO is joining with
the free trade union movement of
the whole world, organized in the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, in organizing the boycott
of South African goods."
The world boycott was author-
ized at the ICFTU's last congress
Special emphasis has been placed
on its application during May.
Meany reminded Herter of the
AFL-CKVs concern, shared with
most other Americans, over re-
cent developments in South
Africa. He noted "unnecessarily
brutal police action 9 ' which re-
sulted in "innumerable deaths"
during "justifiable demonstra-
tions" of Africans against "apar-
theid" segregation policies, and
the fact that thousands of Afri-
cans have been jailed "as a result
of their demand for humane
treatment and respect for their
dignity as human beings."
The "inevitable reaction" of the
great mass of South Africans, he
pointed out, has resulted in "even
fiercer repression" and "total dis-
regard for the most elementary
rights of human beings."
Meany also noted that a boycott
of South African goods in the U.S.
will have little effect because of
relatively small imports.
Last year U.S. imports from
South Africa had a dollar value
of $104.8 million. The most sig-
nificant consumer product con-
sists of shellfish and their prod-
ucts, particularly the popular
rock lobster tails which in 1959
(Combined on Page 2)
The nation's rate of joblessness stuck at 5 percent in April despite
a jump in employment and a sharp drop in the total unemployed
from March, according to the Labor Department's monthly job
report.
The key rate of unemployment, adjusted for seasonal influences,
declined to 5 percent from the 5.4 percent of March. But this com-
pared to 3.9 and 4 percent, respectively, in the pre-recession Aprils
of 1956 and 1957.
"America cannot be smug," said AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
while welcoming as "good news" the job rise of 1.9 million and the
drop of 546,000 in the unemployed.
"There are more people un-
employed than there were last
year and almost a million more
than there were in 1956 and
1957," Meany said, adding:
"The unemployment rate of 5
percent of the labor force is greater
than in February, traditionally the
month of highest unemployment.
"Long-term joblessness is about
40 percent above 1956 and 1957.
The number of insured unemployed
under the unemployment insurance
system is approximately 10 percent
above last year and a third more
than it was three and four years
ago."
Meany noted that the 33 major
and 109 smaller industrial cen-
ters in "economic distress" ex-
ceed 1956 and 1957 and urged
Pres. Eisenhower to sign the re-
cently-passed $251 million area
redevelopment bill to help ease
the problem.
Eisenhower, at his press confer-
ence, broke what he called the good
economic news in reporting the job
rise to a total of 66.2 million and
the drop in unemployment to 3.7
million.
The White House announcement
(Continued on Page 8)
Ike's Health
PlanLashed
As 'Hoax'
By Don Gregory
New York — The Administra-
tion's plan for legislation to meet
the health needs of the aged is
"a political hoax" and a "Rube
Goldberg contraption," AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler
charged here.
Branding the recently-unveiled
plan "political in the lowest sense
of the word," the AFL-CIO lead-
er said the Administration has vio-
lated "its own rule against budget-
busting."
"If Congress were to adopt it
tomorrow, the President would
have to veto his own plan,"
Schnitzler charged, since it calls
for $600 million federal outlays.
He said the Forand bill is "the
only plan to date that is sound,
practical and effective."
Schnitzler addressed more than
(Continued on Page 9)
IUD Calls for Action on Legislation,
Sets up Strike Aid, Jurisdiction Unit
By Robert B. Cooney
Some 500 delegates to a two-day legislative conference of the Industrial Union Dept. took their
case directly to their legislators in a drive to protect the recently-passed depressed areas bill against
a presidential veto and win health care for the aged, improved minimum wages, aid to education and
more housing.
IUD Pres. Walter P. Reuther, in his keynote address, lashed the Eisenhower Administration for
standing "immobile, paralyzed by&
drift and indecision."
He urged the delegates to work
hard to win legislation as a
"down payment on the greater
job" in the November elections.
The IUD Executive Board also
met and named six members to a
reactivated IUD-Building and Con-
struction Trades Department com-
mittee whose aim will be to work
out rules to resolve jurisdictional
disputes.
The Board decided unanimously
to create a multi-million dollar cen-
tral strike fund and also voted aid
to the Bethlehem Steel shipyard
strikers and Portland newspaper
strikers.
IUD Sec.-Treas. James B.
Carey told a press conference
the fresh IUD-BCTD effort was
undertaken with the "express
support" of AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany and BCTD lead-
ers Peter T. Schoemann, presi-
dent of the Plumbers and
Maurice A. Hutcheson, president
of the Carpenters. He also cited
AFL-CIO Executive Council
and convention support.
Carey said it was expected the
BCTD Executive Council, at its
scheduled May 16-18 meeting,
would name its six members so the
12-man group could report its op-
erating status to the AFL-CIO
Council meeting in Chicago in
August.
"This is an unusual opportunity/'
Carey added, "for the two depart- ,
ments to come to agreement on
rules of procedure" to deal with
disputes on "raiding and boycotts. "
He said it would make easier the
broader work of the AFL-CIO
Special Committee on Union Dis-
putes.
Carey said the efforts of the ear-
lier joint group, which met last in
January of 1957, foundered chiefly
because of "Jimmy Hoffa, who is
no longer with us." Hoffa is presi-
dent of the Teamsters, expelled in
1957 on grounds of corrupt domi-
nation.
In the course of their conference,
the delegates heard speeches by
Sen. Joseph Clark (D-Pa.), Rep.
John W. McCormack (D-Mass.),
(Continued on Page 12)
AFL-CtO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY,
, MAY 14, 1960
___________ ;
NEW LABOR BACKING for Negro protests against lunch counter discrimination comes from three
labor leaders in Harrisburg, Pa., joining in picketing of Woolworth store. Left to right are Marvin
Rogoff of Ladies' Garment Workers Local 108; Pres. R. Stearl Sponaugle of Harrisburg Region Cen-
tral Labor Council; Richard Madison of National Association for Advancement of Colored People;
and Henry Dropkin, business agent of Clothing Workers Local 363.
SIU Ends Picketing of Arab Ship
As State Dept. Gives Assurances
New York — The Seafarers ended their picketing of the United Arab Republic ship Cleopatra after
the State Dept. assured the AFL-CIO it would "renew its efforts ... to protect the interests of our
shipping and seamen now being discriminated against by the Arab boycott and blacklisting policy."
The Longshoremen, who had strictly observed the picket line since the ship arrived April 13 at
East River's Pier 16, unloaded the Cleopatra and she set sail for other east coast ports.
The Cleopatra boycott action, '-^
taken by the SIU to protest mis-
treatment in fo r eign ports and
the loss of jobs resulting from the
Arab blacklisting of ships which
touch at Israeli ports, inspired re-
taliation in Middle Eastern ports
and sparked diplomatic repercus-
sions.
After the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council firmly backed up
the SIU picketing, negotiations
involving AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, Special Counsel Arthur
Goldberg, Acting Sec. of State
Douglas Dillon and Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell finally pro-
duced a peace formula.
Meany informed the SIU of the
new pledge from Dillon and sug-
gested withdrawal of the pickets.
SIU Pres. Paul Hall replied his un-
ion would comply, but cautioned in
a statement to the press that the
SIU would have no choice but to
U.S.-Mexican Labor
Set Joint Sessions
The Sixth Intl. Conference
of the labor movements of the
U.S. and Mexico will be held
in Brownsville, Tex., and Ma-
tamoras, Tamaulipas, Mex.,
May 17-19, it has been an-
nounced by Frank L. Noakes,
chairman of the U.S. Section
of the Joint U.S.-Mexico
Trade Unions.
The call to the conference
has been issued by the Inter-
American Regional Organiza-
tion of Workers (ORIT), the
hemispheric branch of the
Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
The conference is sched-
uled to chart the joint poli-
cies of the U.S. and Mexican
labor movements for the com-
ing year on such matters as
pending proposals for renew-
ing the Mexican Contract La-
bor Program and other mat-
ters affecting the welfare of
workers on both sides of the
border.
resume picketing if the State De-
partment failed to give "practical
implementation" to its pledge.
Two other problems remained in
the wake of the agreement. The
owners of the Cleopatra still have
pending damage suits against the
SIU totaling $110,000. In Con-
gress, a clause inserted in a foreign
aid bill would enable the President
to withhold aid from the UAR un-
til the Arab boycott ends. UAR
Pres. Gamel Abdel Nasser already
has reacted strongly against this
move.
Upon receipt of a four-page
"statement of policy" from Dillon,
Meany wired Hall on May 6:
e Good-Faith Assurance'
"I have today received from act-
ing Secretary of State Douglas Dil-
lon the good-faith assurance of the
government of the United States
that it will fully investigate the
grievances of U.S. seamen and re-
new its diplomatic efforts to pro-
tect American seamen and shipping
against future indignities and dis-
crimination.
"I firmly believe that the good
trade union purposes for which the
Seafarers International Union es-
tablished the picket line at the Cleo-
patra have been served and I sug-
gest the picket line be withdrawn
"Please be assured of the con-
tinued and complete support of
the entire trade union movement
for the members of the SIU and
all merchant seamen. We intend
to protect the interests of Ameri-
can shipping and seamen at all
times."
Hall acknowledged Meany's re
port of the government's assurances
and added:
". . . in deference to your sug
gestion as president of the AFL
CIO and in light of our traditional
support of AFL-CIO policy, we
will abide by your request and will
remove the picket line.
"The officers and members of
our union take this opportunity to
express to you and to the Execu-
tive Council our deep appreciation
for your interest in and support of
our fight for the rights of American
seamen and for freedom of the
seas for American flag ships/'
In a press statement, Hall re-
iterated the purpose of the picket
line and added that, in the pledge
given Meany, "it appears that,
for the first time the State De-
partment has expressed its in-
tent to face up to these problems
and to take positive action."
"However, should the State De-
partment fail to give practical im-
plementation to the assurances
made today, we will have no other
recourse but to resort to picketing."
The State Department, in its
statement, reiterated its support of
"the principle of freedom of the
seas and free access to foreign
ports and facilities."
The department went on to spell
out that it would press this princi-
ple with the governments con-
cerned, work toward a solution of
the basic Arab-Israel conflict un-
derlying the problem, have its con-
sular officers alert to the grievances
of seamen and others and consult
with the AFL-CIO and its mari-
time unions on future developments.
U.S. Ban on
South African
Gold Urged
(Continued from Page 1)
had a value of $9.9 million, an
increase of nearly 200 percent in
one year.
Other consumer products, im-
ported in much smaller volume, in-
clude dried fish; fresh and prepared
fruits; cocoa, coffee and tea; cer-
tain wines and liquers, and furs,
most of which have to be processed
before being sold to the consumer.
Imports of uranium are quite
large but all relevant statistics are
classified. The largest single im-
ported item is unmanufactured
wool, which was worth more than
$20 million last year.
Other large imports include pre-
cious and semi-precious stones, in-
cluding diamonds, which had a
value of $15.4 million last year; and
metals, including ferroalloy ores,
copper ore, steel mill products and
lead ore, with a total value of $36.5
million.
Workers Win Vote:
ILO Group Backs
Cut in Workweek
Geneva — Worker delegates at the two-week session here of the
Intl. Labor Organization's Petroleum Committee pushed through a
demand for action on the issue of a shorter workweek.
Intl. Rep. Lloyd A. Haskins of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic
Workers authored a resolution calling for "concrete results" on the
workweek question that was adopt- ^~
ed by a vote of 54 to 42, with 15
abstentions.
'This is one of the most vital
questions before the committee,"
Haskins told a plenary meeting of
the government, worker and em-
ployer representatives from 20
countries.
The AFL-CIO delegate, who is
chairman of the workers 9 group
at the oil parley, brought the
issue before the committee de-
spite the sidetracking of his reso-
lution by the session's steering
body.
The proposal calls for the atten-
tion of the ILO annual conference
meeting here in June to be directed
to the "great interest which the
petroleum workers attach to the
reduction of working hours without
loss of pay."
Haskins had raised the work-
week issue during his major ad-
dress to the committee as U.S.
worker delegate when he recalled
that 12 years after the ILO oil unit
had recognized the 40-hour week
as a "desirable goal," only four
countries have actually introduced
it.
'This is really a sad commen-
tary on the industry, the govern-
ments and the trade union move-
ments of our respective coun-
tries," he said.
Haskins congratulated Stuart
Rothman of the National Labor
Relations Board and U.S. govern-
ment delegate for the "factually
correct" account he gave of the
situation in the American oil in-
dustry.
While agreeing with Rothman
that the American unions had rem-
edies available under the law against
employers who fail to recognize
their right to organize, he pointed
out that they were slow and cum-
bersome.
"We do not like these condi-
tions," he added, "but we con-
sider them only temporary under
our system of government. The
remedy lies in the hands of the
people. The people will act and
conditions will change.
"The workers of the U.S. would
not have it any other way. We can
and do make progressive changes
within the framework of our soci-
ety," he said.
This reminder to the Communist
delegates to the session was empha-
sized by Andre Miffre, observer of
the Intl. Fed. of Petroleum Work-
ers.'
"We heard with satisfaction the
U.S. government delegate declare
that the right to strike was a sacred
and indispensable right respected by
his government," Miffre said.
"We would have been much
more reassured on the way the
freedom of trade unions is guar-
anteed the workers of eastern
Europe if the government dele-
gate of the Soviet Union had
been as clear and as precise on
the subject of the right to strike
in his country," he added.
Among the conclusions adopted
by the committee was the affirma-
tion that "free, vigorous and healthy
trade unions" can make an impor-
tant contribution "to a policy of
sound human relations in the petro-
leum industry, and to an improve-
ment of social conditions generally
in each country."
The committee also recognized
the need for unions "to be support-
ed financially by their members
without financial dependence on
employers, governments or political
parties."
Arvil L. Inge, of the Operating
Engineers and second U.S. worker
member to the parley, served on
the subcommittee that dealt with
the question of employer-employe
communications.
One of the subcommittee's rec-
ommendations adopted by the plen-
ary group was the listing among the
"most important aims" of the
"bringing of grievances quickly to
the attention of management."
Keyserling Sees Profits
Reducing U.S. Markets
Duluth, Minn. — The United States is pricing itself out of world
markets not because wages are too high but because profit margins
are, Leon Keyserling, formerly economic advisor to Presidents
Roosevelt and Truman, told the second annual Labor Conference
on World Affairs here.
The total labor cost per unit of ^
production, he maintained, is lower
in this country than in most others
because of greater productivity.
Kyserling accused the Eisen-
hower Administration and its
spokesmen of "misleading" the
country by giving out "misinforma-
tion" to cover up their own eco-
nomic failures. The Administra-
tion has abandoned an economy of
abundance in favor of an "economy
of scarcity," he added, claiming
that restoration of an annual rate of
economic growth of 5 percent
would wipe out 95 percent of the
country's unemployment.
If the economy were to grow
the way it should, he declared,
the U.S. could consume all it
can produce plus all the imports
now coming into the country.
Pres. Paul Hall of the Seafarers
told the parley that American labor
must insist on "full participation"
in foreign affairs if the State Dept.'s
policy "mistakes" regarding workers
are to be corrected.
Harry Pollak, of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Intl. Affairs, told a con-
ference luncheon that Latin Amer-
ican workers intend to get "eco-
nomic liberty plus political liberty *
and declared the days of Latin
American dictators are numbered.
Textile Workers Ask
Joint Stand on Imports
New York — The impact of tex-
tile imports on the domestic textile
industry is "a worker's problem
and a community problem, too,"
declared the Textile Workers Un-
ion of America in a full-page ap-
peal to management to join TWUA
in a joint approach to the prob-
lem.
The union placed its advertise-
ment in the Daily News Record,
textile trade publication and mailed
reprints to federal and state offi-
cials, legislators and community
leaders.
AFI^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Page Thre«
By IAM and UAW:
Aircraft Contract
Talks Under Way
Contract talks involving several hundred thousand aircraft and
missile workers approached the critical stage as one local of 600
machinists struck, and another with 40,000 stayed at work in
Boeing plants under a temporary contract extension.
Most companies in the aircraft, missile and related electronics
industry are in negotiation with the'^7
Machinists and the Auto Workers.
The two unions made trade un-
ion history last August when they
agreed on a joint collective bar-
gaining program for nearly 600,-
000 workers. Seven basic con-
tract proposals were spelled out.
Reports on the status of contract
talks were discussed by the IAM
executive council at a meeting in
Washington. No acceptable pay
pattern has emerged as yet.
Contract Deadlines Near
IAM and UAW contract dead-
lines will be reached this month —
for IAM at various Convair and
Lockheed plants in California, the
Douglas plants at Santa Monica and
El Segundo-Tor ranee, Calif.; at
Convair in Fort Worth, Tex., and
at Lockheed in Marietta, Ga.; for
UAW, Douglas plants in Long
Beach, Tucson and Tulsa; North
American plants in Los Angeles,
Columbus, O., and Neosho, Mo.
IAM and UAW members at
several United Aircraft divisions
are working without contracts.
They want job security provisions
on a company-wide basis.
First walkout in current negotia-
tions closed down the Carlstadt,
N. J., plant of Curtiss-Wright Elec-
tronics Division. Members of IAM
Lodge 703 voted for a strike by a
margin of better than 10-1 when
Curtiss-Wright, a giant in its indus-
try, offered no wage increase this
year, five cents next year, plus a
few fringes.
Boeing Airplane Co. has IAM
contracts at plants in California,
Florida, Kansas and Washington
state.
A company-wide contract ex-
pired April 22, was extended to
May 8, and then was continued
indefinitely. Members voted
twice in two weeks to turn down
company proposals. Union meet-
ings were held in Seattle and
Moses Lake, Wash.; Wichita,
Kan.; Edwards Air Force Base in
California; Walton Beach and
Cocoa Beach, Fla.
The union asked for a 7 percent
package boost in each of two years,
or about 36 cents for the term.
Boeing offered a pay increase of
3.25 percent this year, 2.75 percent
next year, a one-quarter of 1 per-
cent boost in fringe benefits.
UAW Calls Conferences
Of Ford Committeemen
Detroit — All Auto Workers' committeemen in plants of the Ford
Motor Co. throughout the country will soon be called to regional
meetings to prepare for the union's 1961 negotiations, the UAW
National Ford Council decided at a meeting here.
In addition to preparing a trade union educational campaign
based on the facts of wages, profits^
and prices, the regional meetings
will explore the intensified political
campaigning of business and under-
score the issues of this year's presi-
dential race, emphasizing the im-
portance of the COPE dollar drive
and local registration activities.
The council also reaffirmed the
union's belief that Ford could cut
prices $100 or more per car and
"share with consumers some of
the fruits of greater productivity
and, thereby, lead to an expan-
sion of the car market and an in-
crease in job opportunities for
Ford workers."
The cut would still leave Ford
with annual net profits of about
$300 million, the resolution said,
plus additional profits growing out
of increased sales.
Another resolution rapped Ford's
present policy of scheduling over-
time and hiring new workers at
some plants while refusing to recall
New Committee to
Study Organizing
A committee of three AFL-CIO
vice presidents has been named by
Pres. George Meany to study the
changing character of the work
force and to plan future organizing
campaigns.
The committee was created by the
Executive Council at its spring
meeting in Washington because of
the new problems posed in organ-
izing by the continuing drop in blue-
collar workers and the correspond-
ing rise in the number of white-
collar workers.
Named as chairman of the com-
mittee was AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
Walter P. Reuther, president of the
Auto Workers. Also appointed by
Meany to serve on the study group
were Vice Presidents James A. Suf-
fridge, president of the Retail
Clerks; and Lawrence M. Raftery,
president of the Painters.
veteran Ford employes with long
seniority who have been laid off at
others. It urged the company par
ticularly to channel more work into
the "distressed" Rouge plant and
to others hit hard by unemploy-
ment.
The council also acted to alert
union members to the "thorough-
ly vicious, irresponsible and false
campaign" of business to blame
higher prices on wage increases
won by workers. Ford officials,
a resolution pointed out, have
been particularly vocal in the
drive.
"If we allow the false charges of
Ford and others to go unanswered
and permit the adoption of further
restrictions on union effectiveness,
the resolution said, "we will suffer
a double penalty. We will not only
be victimized by the impact of in-
flation upon our living standards
and our job security, but we will be
made to bear the guilt, in the public
mind, for the cause of our own
hardship and insecurity."
The fact that Ford officers, ex-
ecutives and a few "key" person-
nel shared $37 million in cash
bonuses last year reveals "how
false" is the company's claim that
workers are responsible for too-
high prices, the Council declared.
Labor cannot afford to be com-
placent in the face of business' twin
propaganda and political cam-
paigns, the council declared.
"By exploiting the myths of *un-
ion monopoly' and 'wage-push in-
flation' industry is attempting to rob
labor unions of their political voice
and their economic effectiveness,"
it maintained. 'They are attempt-
ing to turn the clock back to the
pre -union days when depressed
wage rates, intolerable production
standards and miserable working
conditions squeezed every possible
dollar of profit out of every work-
er."
NEW PRESIDENT of Building Service Employes, David Sullivan (left) is shown receiving congratula-
tions after BSEIU convention in New York elected him to succeed William L. McFetridge (second
from right), who headed union for 20 years. Left to right are Sullivan, Vice Pres. Thomas Burke,
McFetridge, and Sec.-Treas. George E. Fairchild.
Building Service Convention Names
Sullivan as Successor to McFetridge
New York — David L. Sullivan, for 19 years an official of the Building Service Employes, has been
elected president of the 275,000-member union at the BSEIlTs 12th general convention here.
The 400 delegates unanimously chose Sullivan to succeed William L. McFetridge, 66, who stepped
down from the presidency after leading the union for 20 years.
McFetridge, who will continue as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council and a federation
vice president, was named to served
as an adviser and consultant to the
BSEIU. In addition, he will devote
time to the $36 million residential-
commercial building project his
union is sponsoring in Chicago.
Sullivan, who has been presi-
dent of the BSEIU's 37,000-
member Local 32B in New York
for the past 19 years, pledged to
the convention that, as the
union's new international presi-
dent, he would place primary
emphasis on organizing so that
millions of workers "may also
enjoy the benefits we have
achieved for our own members."
The new president told delegates
representing 410 local unions in
the U.S. and Canada that the trade
union movement had done "more
good for working people than any
other groups, organizations, politi-
cal parties and movements."
Automation Cuts Jobs
The convention was told that,
despite a gain of 50,000 members
over the past five years, the BSEIU
is still faced with the loss of jobs
as the result of automation.
Re-elected as members of the
BSEIU executive board were Sec.-
Treas. George E. Fairchild, and
Vice Presidents Thomas Burke of
Chicago, Charles Levey of Pitts-
burgh, Thomas Shortman of New
York, George Hardy of Los An
geles, and Albert Hearn of Toronto.
Henry Kruse of Chicago was
elected to the vice presidential
vacancy caused by Sullivan's elec-
tion as president.
In five days of sessions, the con
vention amended its constitution to
provide for holding conventions
every four years, instead of five
years as in the past, in order to
comply with Landrum-Griffin Act
requirements. Delegates also
adopted resolutions:
• Providing for the creation of a
strike fund to pay benefits of $20
per member per week.
• Urging amendment of the So
cial Security Act to make tips count
as credit towards old age retirement
benefits.
• Calling for establishment of a
federal minimum wage of $1.50
per hour.
• Urging the strengthening of
civil rights laws.
• Revising the union's dues
structure downward for retired
members.
• Urging establishment by the
AFL-CIO of a daily labor news-
paper.
• Protesting the "apartheid" ra-
cial policies of the government of
South Africa.
Sullivan, 56, a native of Cork
Ladies' Garment Union
Wins 33 NLRB Votes
(Continued from Page 1)
where by agreement on pensions,
job security and wage increases and
a rigid system of contract enforce-
ment to checkmate chiseling em-
ployers seeking to undermine union
standards.
Differential Approved
Eventually the Pennsylvania
manufacturers accepted the stand-
ard contract with an understanding
they would receive a 10 percent
differential to compensate for truck-
ing charges and other legitimate
differences in production costs, and
the shops resumed work. The in-
dustry's impartial chairman, Harry
Uviller, fixed the 10 percent figure
as a reasonable differential and the
ILGWU had acknowledged from
the start the Pennsylvania opera-
tors' right to such an arrangement.
The NLRB rejected the claim
of the so-called Pennsylvania
Garment Manufacturers Associa-
tion to bargain for the shops,
and individual contractors and
operators began signing up on a
full union basis. Others, how-
ever, still challenged ILGWU
representation.
When the NLRB ordered indi-
vidual shop elections last Novem-
ber, only 117 operators remained
on the holdout list, and this figure
shrank to 41 on the eve of the
NLRB balloting.
During the May 2-4 elections,
eight more shops surrendered, leav-
ing only 33 shops where ballots
were actually cast and counted to
show the ILGWU triumph.
City, Ireland, was one of the
founding members of Local 32B
in 1934 and soon afterward be-
came the local's business agent.
He was elected secretary-treas-
urer of the local in 1938 and
president in 1941. That same
year he was elected a BSEIU
international vice president.
Active in community service af-
fairs, Sullivan has received citations
from such groups as the American
Red Cross, March of Dimes, the
Arthritis and Rheumatism Founda-
tion, Cerebral Palsy and the Boy
Scouts of America.
Unions Win
First Contracts
In Citrus Drive
Stockton, Calif. — Seven years
of company stalling ended when five
Sunkist affiliates in the lemon pack-
ing industry signed first contracts
containing the highest wages and
best working conditions in the coun-
try's citrus packing industry.
Announcement of the signing was
made by Norman Smith, director of
the AFL-CIO Agricultural Work-
ers Organizing Committee which is
conducting an organizing campaign
among field and shed workers.
"These agreements," he said,
"constitute a major break-through
toward organizing the 25,000
workers employed in the citrus
industry. Now that a beach-head
of union organization has been
established in the Sunkist em-
pire, AWOC will push to expand
its membership throughout the
citrus industry ?
The agreements provide wages
ranging from $1.35 to $1.80 an
hour; overtime after 8 hours in one
day or 40 hours in a week; time
and a half for Sunday and holiday
work; employer-paid hospitaliza-
tion and medical insurance, and
paid vacations after one year.
The marathon battle began in
1953, when the 500 workers in the
plants voted for union representa-
tion. Smith hailed the Packing-
house Workers for carrying the
fight through the years in the courts
and before the National Labor Re-
lations Board in its determination
to win contracts.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
NEWEST, YOUNGEST AND SMALLEST member of Hotel and
Restaurant Employes, 10-year-oid Stuart Yachnowitz is shown re-
ceiving union button following award of honorary membership from
Local 164 in New York. The youngster, who "helps out" in his
father's catering business, is shown with the local's officers. Left to
right are Pres. Joe Yachnowitz, father of the young member; Shop
Steward Daniel Carroll; and Sec.-Treas. Stephen A. Szekely.
Brownlow Urges More
Jobs for Handicapped
Responsibility for helping the physically handicapped cannot be
met merely by appropriating funds for food, clothing and shelter
but only by integrating them fully into the work force, Pres. James
A. Brownlow of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept. told the annual
meeting of the President's Committee on Employment of the Phys
ically Handicapped.
winners, plus $100 each for
The meeting in the U.S. Labor
Dept. auditorium was attended by
an audience of about 1,000 includ-
ing 42 winners of a nationwide es-
say contest for 11th and 12th grade
pupils in public, private and par-
ish schools.
The 42 winners came to Wash-
ington as guests of the AFL-CIO,
its state federations, and the Dis-
abled American Veterans. The
AFL-CIO organizations paid
travel expenses for 37 of the
University to
TrainUnionists
In World Role
The AFL-CIO and the School of
Intl. Service of American Univer-
sity, Washington, D. C, have an-
nounced plans for a special program
in international labor studies to pre-
pare trade unionists to meet the
increasing need for trained person-
nel in the international labor field.
It will include nine months of
classroom work and three months
of in-service apprenticeship aimed
at giving the best individual train-
ing possible to lit the needs of the
student and the requirements of
his potential assignment.
Studies will include a view of the
U.S. labor movement in interna-
tional perspective, the international
labor movement and U.S. labor's
role in it, U.S. foreign policies and
programs, contemporary world la-
bor movements and ideologies, la-
bor in specific foreign countries,
and an appropriate foreign lan-
guage.
Nominations, within certain broad
limitations, will be made by the in-
ternational unions. Admissions will,
be limited to 10 students the first
year to be selected by a panel head-
ed by Philip M. Kaiser, director of
the school's program for overseas
labor and a former assistant secre-
tary of labor.
Scholarships for tuition and gen-
eral fees are available under ar-
rangements between the AFL-CIO
and the university, but it is ex-
pected the sponsoring international
unions will pay for living expenses,
books and other costs.
spending money.
The young people, shook hands
with Pres. Eisenhower and AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany at the
AFL-CIO Union-Industries show;
toured the Capitol area, Mt. Ver-
non, and the AFL-CIO headquar-
ters. At the meeting of the presi-
dent's committee, they heard
speeches by Brownlow, Vice Pres.
Nixon, and others.
Trophy Presented
Nixon presented the President's
trophy to Dwight D. Guilfoil Jr. of
Arlington Heights, 111., as "Handi-
capped American of the Year" for
1959. Guilfoil, 37, has been con-
fined to a wheelchair with spinal
meningitis and polio since 1943.
He founded a company which
makes devices for the handicapped.
At a luncheon for the winners,
Pres. Gordon Freeman of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers presented gifts in the
name of Pres. Meany, whom he
represented. Al Capp, cartoonist,
was master of ceremonies.
Theme of this year's essay con-
test was "Jobs for the Handicapped,
Passports to Dignity." Winner of
the $1,000 top prize was Gail Marie
Chadwell of Reno, Nev. Runners-
up were Kay Clausing of Toledo,
Cynthia Neild of Pawtucket, R. I.;
Craig Grant, Denver; Sandra Fair-
burn of Hueytown, Ala.; Kay
Smith, Dallas.
At the committee meeting, Brown-
low said the record shows continu-
ing progress in employment of the
handicapped, but at far too slow a
rate.
"We have won some skirmishes,
but the victory still lies ahead,"
he said.
"We cannot meet this responsibil-
ity by merely appropriating money
for food, clothing and shelter.
"We must devote ourselves to
the task of integrating the handi-
capped into our society and work
force, regardless of the cost and
effort required. Only in this man-
ner can we meet our respon-
sibility."
Walter J. Mason of the AFL-
CIO legislative dept. is the federa-
tion's representative on the execu-
tive committee of the President's
committee.
Eisenhower, Meany Open Exhibition:
'Democracy at Work 9 Theme
Of Union-Industries Show
By Eugene A. Kelly
The close working partnership between organized labor and its fair employers was spotlighted by
Pres. Eisenhower and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany at ceremonies opening the 1960 AFL-CIO
Union-Industries Show.
Speaking at ceremonies launching the first showing in the nation's capital of labor's annual exhibit
of the union label, the shop card and the union button, Eisenhower described the exhibition as an
example of what can be accom-^
plished by "real cooperation" be-
tween labor and management.
Meany termed the show "a venture
we can all be proud of."
Both addressed a record-break-
ing opening day crowd which
had gathered outside the District
of Columbia National Guard
Armory for the ceremonies which
launched the six-day run.
"It is," said Eisenhower, "with a
distinct sense of personal honor that
I accepted the invitation to be with
you on the opening of this great in-
dustrial exhibition.
"After touring the show, the re-
action I had was that of realizing
anew what can be achieved by real
cooperation."
Meany said: "This show is a fit-
ting example of union-management
cooperation, an indication of the
philosophy of the American trade
union movement, under which a
man must have a successful busi-
ness in order to fill a pay envelope.
"This is a cooperative venture
of free workers and their em-
ployers in a free society. I hope
it will encourage labor and other
representatives of management to
cooperate with a sense of re-
sponsibility to consumers and all
of society."
John J. Mara, president of the
Boot & Shoe Workers' Union, pre-
sided at the opening ceremony as
head of the AFL-CIO Union Label
and Service Trades Dept. Joseph
Lewis, director of the department,
described the show's theme as "De-
mocracy at Work," and said the
show was sponsored by "free labor,
free management, and the agencies
of a free government."
The invocation was delivered at
the opening ceremony by Msgr.
George G. Higgins, National Cath-
olic Welfare Conference.
The show, with 375 exhibitors,
pleased the President and evi-
dently pleased the crowds. Rain
on Sunday, third day of the show,
failed to keep away a house that
stayed packed until closing time.
All exhibit space was taken a
month before the exhibits opened,
according to the sponsors. They
said it was the first "sellout" in his-
tory, and that it set a mark to shoot
at for next year's show in Detroit.
Eisenhower toured the exhibits
with Meany, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler, and the
White House press corps.
He told Meany he wanted to see
Actors Seek Gains
In TV Contracts
Hollywood — A pension plan and
a health and welfare plan topped
the list of union proposals as tele-
vision actors in the Screen Actors
Guild opened negotiations for a
new contract with the Association
of Motion Picture Producers and
the Alliance of Television Film Pro-
ducers.
The current contract expires May
31.
The Guild also is seeking in-
creased minimum salaries and a
contract three years in term.
The pension and health and wel-
fare plans sought by the union
would be financed by employer con-
tributions of amounts equal to 5
percent of total actors' payroll in-
cluding residuals.
Other demands are for an upward
revision of residual payments for
re-runs of television films through-
out the world and such improve-
ments as meal and rest periods and
a five-day week.
the exhibits of the plumbing trades
in which Meany once worked.
Later he told the first-day audience
that "Mr. Meany acknowledged
himself amazed" by the technologi-
cal changes in his old trade.
"I was impressed," the Presi-
dent said, "that in the AFL-CIO
booth there is an exhortation to
help the less well-developed na-
tions. If we exhibit that kind of
concern for our brothers, we
make this a more peaceful, more
prosperous and better world."
The president received a pair of
union-made golf shoes and a pair
of hunting boots from the Boot and
Shoe Workers. Val Hamer of Bal-
timore, a glass bottle blower for 44
years, blew a large glass bubble and
a small bottle for Mr. Eisenhower.
Sees Train Exhibit
The chief executive looked at a
model train display of the Railway
Clerks; an all-electric kitchen, given
away on the closing day by the
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers;
a fallout shelter and an apprentice
bricklayers' contest sponsored by
the Bricklayers and their employers.
Meany introduced Eisenhower to
42 students who won top state
awards in an essay contest. The
president saw Patricia Hiele of Cul-
ver City, Calif., in her stocking feet.
When he asked if her feet hurt,
Barbara said "They're killing me."
Exhibiting for the first time, the
Ladies Garment Workers presented
two shops, the old and the new.
Crews of comely girls produced
cocktail aprons for the crowds.
Hottest exhibit was a 2,700-
degree furnace heating glass for
the blowers. Show viewers saw
exhibitions of sheep shearing,
meat cutting, cake frosting, mail
sorting and other pursuits.
Washington Local 36, Fire Fight-
ers, showed a fire engine retired
from service in 1929, and gave
away a bicycle. Some $80,000 in
gifts were distributed during the
show.
Press comment on the show was
favorable. The only sour note was
sounded by the National Associa-
tion of Manufacturers. Its newslet-
ter said "unionists usually manage
to get top-flight politicians to en-
dorse the exhibit" and "aim to give
the impression that union label
products are better made and longer
lasting."
Council Asks $250,000
In 'Project HOPE' Drive
The AFL-CIO Executive Council has announced a drive to raise
$250,000 within the trade union movement to help finance medical
care for underdeveloped nations through "Project HOPE."
At its spring meeting in the nation's capital, the council discussed
the medical aid plan with Dr. William Walsh of Washington, D. C,
president of the People-to-People^
Health Foundation, Inc., which is
sponsoring the project.
The council's action is in line
with a resolution adopted at the
AFL-CIO's third biennial conven-
tion in San Francisco last Septem-
ber, which strongly endorsed "Proj-
ect HOPE" and called on the trade
union movement to "contribute
generously to this worthwhile proj-
ect."
Discussing the council's plans
at a press conference, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany told report-
ers that the federation will cam-
paign for the financial aid by
reaching down to the local union
level through national and inter-
national unions.
Although the federal government
has taken a former hospital ship out
of mothballs and made it available
as a floating medical center, "Proj-
ect HOPE" is not a government
project. It will be operated by the
Feople-to-People Health Founda-
tion, Inc., with funds contributed
voluntarily by the American people,
The hospital ship is in the process
of being fitted out at the present
time and is scheduled to be dis-
patched shortly to aid underdevel-
oped nations in Southeast Asia,
with Indonesia as its first stop.
The AFL-CIO convention resolu-
tion hailed the projected plans to
help directly in medical treatment
and rehabilitation and to help im-
prove health standards generally,
declaring:
"This is a humanitarian proj-
ect of the highest sort calculated
to help relieve human suffering
wherever found. This type of
people-to-people project can only
cement friendly relations between
peoples of East and West and is
thus directly in line with the aims
and ideals of the AFL-CIO."
'Freedoms 9 Theme Urged
For Roosevelt Memorial
The theme of the "Four Freedoms" has been suggested by
Communications Workers Pres. Joseph A. Beirne as the design
for the proposed Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in the
nation's capital.
Beirne made the proposal as Francis Biddle, chairman of
the FDR Memorial Commission, appointed a panel of five
judges to consider memorial designs. The memorial has been
urged by the CWA since its 1953 convention.
The "Four Freedoms" — freedom of speech and of religion,
freedom from fear and from want — were enunciated by Roose-
velt in his State of the Union Message to Congress in January
1941. Beirne wrote Biddle that a design incorporating these
principles would be "fully expressive" of Roosevelt's life.
The National Capital Park Service has offered a 27-acre
site on the Potomac to the commission for erecting the FDR
memorial.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Page Flvm
Nation's Capital in Salute to Union Label
HERE IS OVERALL SCENE at the District of Columbia National Guard Armory,
where the AFL-CIO Union-Industries Show ran May 6-11 with 375 colorful,
action-packed displays showing cooperative relationships between unions and en-
lightened management The annual show was staged the first time in 1938 in
Cincinnati. This is its first appearance in the nation's capital.
YOUNG LADY WITH SHOES OFF, Patricia Hiele of Culver
City, Calif., tells President feet "are killing me." Winner of
California essay contest on jobs for handicapped, she came to
Washington with expenses paid by AFL-CIO.
DAVID DUBINSKY, longtime president of the Ladies' Garment
Workers, proves he has lost none of his skill with a cutting machine.
Onlookers are AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and Mrs. Meany, a
former garment worker who still holds an honorary ILGWU card.
CUTTING THE RIBBON for official opening of the Union-Industries Show is
Pres. Eisenhower. Flanking the President, left to right, are AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler, Pres. George Meany, Union Label & Service Trades Dept.
Sec.-Treas. Joseph Lewis; department Pres. John J. Mara.
ATTRACTIVE AND FASCINATED young girls, perhaps with an
eye to the future, observe delicate final touches in the production of HERE A WIDE-EYED GROUP of visitors watches a skilled worker, member of the Intl. Brother-
a cake by member of American Bakery Workers. hood of Operative Potters, give painstaking attention to the hand decoration of chinaware.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Economy's Danger Signals
NEITHER BAD WEATHER nor illness can explain the salient
factors in the government's latest report on unemployment, a
report that reveals a basic weakness in the country's economy.
Despite a numerical drop in the number of unemployed, the rate
of unemployment is still at the persistently high rate of 5 percent
of the labor force. And even with the drop in unemployment there
are more jobless this April than a year ago.
The number of hours worked per week have continued to decline,
a sign that inventories are not moving.
In face of these danger signals — including the failure of long-
term unemployment to drop — the Administration's refusal to
move on legislative solutions is inexplicable*
The unemployment problem will not go away if we don't look.
And if action on a broad program to assure full employment and
production is not taken the situation will become increasingly ag-
gravated and acute at a time when the nation needs its full economic
strength in the struggle for peace and freedom.
New Form of Dictatorship
HAT STARTED OUT in Cuba as a revolution to replace the
" Batista dictatorship with a political and economic system based
on social justice and freedom has become a new form of totalitarian
ism and among the victims of this new regime have been the free
trade unions.
As Cuba continues to move implacably toward a form of dicta-
torship the Castro regime has abolished collective bargaining and
imposed a harsh regimentation that prevents workers from changing
jobs without government approval. The Cuban Confederation is
completely dominated by the government and is in the hands of
pro-Communist leaders.
The Cuban workers' bid for political democracy also has been
nullified. Opposition to the government is tagged as counter-
revolutionary and punishments are severe. Opposition newspapers
have been forced to close and the right of habeas corpus has been
suspended.
These are not the hallmarks of a democratic government nor do
they fulfill the promise that greeted the overthrow of the Batista
regime.
The Castro revolution is being consolidated into a pro-Communist
regime that threatens the peace and economic stability of Latin
America.
Shadow Over the Caribbean
lis Up to Ike
CONGRESS HAS discharged its responsibility to the country by
passing and sending to the President a bill to aid depressed
areas. Now it's up to Mr. Eisenhower.
The bill that finally hurdled the conservative coalition in the
House is a weaker version than the Senate measure passed last year.
But it is a start on the solution of a chronic problem. There are over
a hundred American communities today where unemployment is
high and unyielding, where prosperity is a hollow mockery. These
are areas where raw materials have been exhausted, technological
changes have taken place, government programs have been shifted
or curtailed. The result is the same — depression.
In light of these facts, for the President to invoke his new
formula of "one-third plus one" and veto the measure is to sen-
tence these depressed areas to a continuing slow death. Superficial
budgetary considerations must be put aside. The depressed area
bill concerns people, not dollars.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, May 14, 1960
No. 20
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Stmk
Community Musi Fill Cap:
Workmen's Compensation Acts
Neglect
Needs
PROBABLY SIX MILLION persons of work-
ing age today have serious disabilities which create
difficulties in getting proper jobs, according to
estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the
Department of Labor.
The magnitude of this problem has too fre-
quently been overlooked.
It was believed that when the principle of work-
men's compensation was established— even though
the benefits were low — the major battle for pro-
tection of injured and disabled workers had been
won. The widespread conviction is that the prob-
lem has not been resolved.
In 1954 the Rehabilitation Committee of the
Association of Industrial Accident Boards and
Commissions ripped into the states for their fail-
ure to up-date archaic and outmoded aspects of
workmen's compensation, saying:
"Workmen's compensation has long been
looked to as the program with primary respon-
sibility for protecting the welfare of injured
workers; it is now often accused of being
one of the institutional barriers to successful
rehabilitation."
Jn the years since this statement appeared little
progress has been made.
A frontal assault on the problem took place in
Atlantic City recently where a representative group
of experts in this field met. They were from the
rehabilitation organizations, the labor movement,
the medical profession and state and federal gov-
ernments. The conference was called the National
Institute on Rehabilitation and Labor Health
Services.
The primary purpose was to establish a program
whereby labor and consumer-sponsored health
programs could be brought into closer working
relationship to help meet the problem of disability.
IN THEIR STUDIES the technicians also came
to the conclusion that workmen's compensation,
far from helping injured and disabled workers re-
habilitate themselves, actually serves to defeat the
avowed objects of rehabilitation. Here are some
of the ways this happens:
• Victims of occupational disease or injuries
are often given a lump sum settlement, usually
closing the case, without proper attention having
been given to the use of full, retroactive medicine
and rehabilitation services which could have en-
abled them to return to useful work.
• Injured workers sometimes have stiff and
useless hands, atrophied muscles and other con-
ditions which could have been prevented if they
had been given other physical treatment in the
early part of medical care.
• Injured workers often suffer from traumatic
neuroses and are unable to work. This could have
been prevented if they had received early counsel-
ing before being overcome with feelings of dis-
couragement and fear as to the future.
• Injured workers are frequently discharged
from hospitals as "cured" but are unable to work
thereafter, and nothing is being done for them.
Many groups today are supporting drastic
changes in our workmen's compensation laws and
administration which would help resolve these
tragic problems. However, since today's injured
workers must be cared for under today's law, or-
ganized labor and the rehabilitation groups are
now planning to work for adjustments and prac-
tices which can better serve the rehabilitation
needs of the injured worker today.
There are today more than 60,000 men and
women from the ranks of organized labor
serving on boards and committees of public
and voluntary community health and welfare
organizations.
The plan is that these and other community
service workers be familiarized with the many re-
habilitation facilities and programs so that workers
may enjoy their advantages.
In addition, of course, the growing medical and
welfare programs of unions are expected to be
geared to a closer working relationship with re-
habilitation agencies. This is already being done
in some areas. Labor has assumed a major role
in the work of the President's Committee for Aid
to the Handicapped. In several states unions are
represented on state vocational rehabilitation
agencies.
All told, though, there is great need for a vast,
coordinated program involving labor, government
and rehabilitation agencies. — (Public Affairs In-
stitute, Washington Window.)
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Pas* Severn
Morgan Says:
£ ven Administration Celebrates
Birthday of New Deal's RE A
(This column is excerpted from (he nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
' Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
IT WASNT SO LONG AGO that vast areas ot
our own land were remote and cut off. Progress,
such as it is, came to rural America long after it
came to the cities. But
when it came it came rap-
idly and its arrival was
hastened, perhaps more
than by any other single
factor, by a Roosevelt
New Deal invention called
RE A, the Rural Electrifi-
cation Administration,
branded by its enemies,
mostly the private utilities,
as a form of creeping so-
cialism.
Morgan
This is the 25th anniversary of REA, which has
crept, quite unsocialistically but with exciting suc-
cess, into almost every state in the union to revo-
lutionize the life of the American farmer. Al-
though private power interests are still fighting it
at almost every turn, REA has become such an
established institution that the current Republican
Administration took care to see that a special
observance be held on this birthday.
When REA was formed, on May 11, 1935,
only one U.S. farm in 10 had electricity. Private
power companies had ignored or couldn't afford
From Soup to Nonsense:
the investment required to bring current to the
consumers in the country.
Today some 97 percent of our farms are elec<
trifled, about half of them — around 2 l A million —
according to REA, served by systems financed by
that agency. Think of the transition that has
been wrought in a quarter of a century! The hand
pump in the backyard has been replaced by a
powered water system; coal stoves have given
way to electric ranges and cows are now not
only milked but washed by machines. And tele-
vision, while its culture content has been low,
has penetrated farm life's isolation.
THIS IS ALSO the silver jubilee year for the
Rural Electric Cooperatives, the non-profit, local
ly owned and operated private enterprises sup-
plying low-cost electricity to much of rural
America.
Some tension has been created between co-
operatives and the REA, largely due to the high-
interest-rate policies of the Eisenhower adminis-
tration.^ The president in his last budget mes-
sage called for a rise in the two percent ceiling
of REA loans. But Congress, which fixed the
ceiling in 1944, has so far refused to change it.
There is still a rising need for rural elec-
trical power. By no means has all the darkness
been lifted from American farms, some of
which are in the weakest brackets of our econ-
omy.
There is something stirring, something smack-
ing of the flavor of the frontier in the continued
efforts of the cooperatives to light up the rest of
the country.
Two Left Hands Can Make Life
nright Frustrating, It Seems
By Jane Go$*isefi
")MEN 1 ENVY most are those who
3ed by other women as the sort who
"do everything so nicely."
They arrive at birthday parties and baby show-
ers with gifts so handsomely wrapped that every-
one murmurs that it's a shame to unwrap them.
Clever little pipe cleaner figures or tiny nosegays
are tucked into the ribbon. I join in the cries of
"How clever!" and "How adorable!" but I smoul-
der with envy and resentment.
The gentle, womanly art of flower arrange-
ment is one that I have never mastered. I like
flowers at all times except when I am trying
to make them look nice in a bowl. Then I
could — and sometimes do — wring their pretty
necks. For me, flowers refuse to swoop grace-
fully or tower regally. Instead they huddle
together in a clump like orphans of the storm
or they sprawl, leaving an enormous gap in the
middle.
When it comes to wrapping gifts, I am so awk-
Washington Report:
ward that I need gobs of cellophane tape and
somebody with a ready finger in order to produce
a bow with two loops. .
MY HANDWRITING is neither dashing nor
pretty, but just a hard-to-read scrawl with no
character.
At sewing, my skill is taxed to its limit when
I mend a sock or sew on a button. I burn with
envy when I hear another modestly admit that she
made her own living room draperies, adding that
French pleating really isn't difficult. Maybe not.
For her.
I can cook a pretty good pot roast, but I can-
not, to save me, produce a pretty carrot curl or a
radish rose. I can toss a salad, but I cannot
"arrange" one. When I try to make things look
dainty on a plate, I achieve the frazzled, belabored,
done-over-and-over-again look of a child's first
attempt at writing.
With my own two hands, I can make a mess
of anything.
its youn
WASHINGTON
7*1
Wi££cVuL SAetien
Continuing Study of Jobless
Problem Urged by Clark, Scott
THE NEED for a continuing study of unem-
ployment in the nation, with particular empha-
sis on the fact that the number of jobless is larger
after each successive recession ends, was stressed
by a Democratic and a Republican senator on
Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service program, heard on more than 300
cadio stations.
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.) declared that leg-
islation to end chronic and cyclical unemployment
has been prepared and submitted to Congress,
adding: "I hope it will have bipartisan support."
Sea. Hugh Scott (R-Pa.) said that Republican and
Democratic members of a special Senate Com-
mittee on Employment were in substantial agree-
ment on findings and recommendations.
The problem of unemployment is going to
get worse instead of better unless decisive action
is taken by both private and public agencies,"
dark quoted the majority as warning.
He outlined the committee recommendations:
Using all possible public facilities to increase the
rate of economic growth; distressed areas bill;
national standards for unemployment insurance;
federal grants for public assistance should include
the jobless; an improved educational system; re
study of defense and trade policies with a view to
relieving unemployment; elimination of discrimi
nation in employment; extension of unemployment
benefits to migratory farm labor; strengthening of
unemployment services; stand-by anti-recession
legislation; better unemployment statistics; in-
creased attention to manpower, resources and
utilization.
SCOTT SAID that there must also be consider-
ation of the unemployment problems of the aging
and young people looking for their first jobs. He
stressed the importance of aid to needy children.
"The test should be the need of the child rather
than the divorce of parents or the mental inca-
pacity of one parent," Scott said.
Clark declared that unemployment is the con-
cern of the federal government because most of
the causes are national in origin,
THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE assigned to investigate the
federal regulatory agencies has made a good many headlines during
its history, but there is not much assurance that it will ever produce
the kind of inquiry and the kind of final report that will point the
way to basic reforms.
Chairman Oren Harris (D-Ark.) took over control when Rep.
Morgan M. Moulder (D-Mo.) resigned the chairmanship after the
uproar involving the committee's original counsel, Bernard Schwartz.'
and the replacement of Schwartz by Robert W. Lishman. Since
then, in its two years, it has exposed the Bernard Goldfine business
that led to the departure of Sherman Adams from the White House;
has revealed various favors and kindnesses to agency members by
the industries they are supposed to regulate; and has beaten loud
publicity drums with the exposure of television "payola."
In the latest episodes it has managed to bring up two big names:
Dick Clark, whose disc-jockey career appears to be remarkable
for the good business counsel he received from his advisers, and
Thomas G. Corcoran ("Tommy the Cork"), a former architect of
the New Deal who now practices lucrative corporation law in
Washington.
There is no sign that the investigation is seeking to show how
the regulatory agencies have fallen into the hands of commis-
sioners who seem to think their primary purpose is not to regulate,
and what Congress might do about it.
* * *
THE CASE CAN BE MADE that at least two of the agencies—
the Federal Power Commission and the Federal Communications
Commission — have steadfastly declined to exercise their authority
to police the industries.
The FCC obviously does not know how to cope with the un-
mistakable fact that TY licenses tend to be treated as vested
rights of the private owners, rather than franchises granted for
the use of the public's limited air channels for the "public inter-
est, convenience and necessity." The Harris subcommittee has
not said anything to indicate that it might recommend FCC
licensing of the networks as well as individual stations.
The FPC has been abruptly and pointedly overruled by the
Supreme Court in major cases of extreme generosity to the oil-
gas-pipeline complexes and told, in effect, that it is failing to enforce
the basic law under which the commission exists. If this produces
in the subcommittee a sense of indignation at scandalous nonfeas-
ance by government officers, the chairman has not led the way in
saying so.
* * *
IT MAY BE ARGUED that the Senate, under the constitution,
has the exclusive power to confirm or refuse to confirm presidential
appointees to the regulatory agencies and that the House may
shrink from re-examining the working habits and attitudes of com-
missioners the Senate has approved.
This is too narrow a viewpoint. The House played a part in
creating the agencies and in writing the basic laws, and it has a
coordinate part to play in inquiring whether the agencies and their
members are doing what they were instructed to do.
The story circulated when the subcommittee investigation was
set up was that Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.), who at an
earlier period had much to do with sponsoring the agencies, was
deeply disturbed at their deterioration. Two years have passed
— and if any agency other than the Federal Trade Commission
shows more signs of life, the evidence is invisible.
Chairman Harris is from a gas-producing state. He was co-
sponsor of a bill designed to weaken Federal Power Commission
regulation of the huge gas corporations. And Democrats from the
southwestern states, who occupy powerful positions in the Senate,
had much to do a decade ago with denying a new term to FPC
Commissioner Lei and Olds, a strong regulation man.
UNEMPLOYMENT IS NOT a necessary part of the free enterprise
system and can be corrected by public and private policies, Sen.
Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.), on left, and Sen. Hugh Scott (R-Pa.)
asserted on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
6,500 Delegates Participate:
Big Turnout, Enthusiasm
At COPE's Area Parleys
A record turnout of local union leaders and a record display of enthusiasm featured this year's
coast-to-coast series of COPE area conferences on "Issues and Communications" which concluded
recently in Portland, Ore.
Nearly 6,500 delegates from all 50 states took part in the 15 two-day sessions, which began Feb. 13
in Savannah, Ga. Attendance exceeded all expectations, since only seven conferences were Saturday-
Sunday affairs. \oted to national issues of current
Ike Expected to Veto
Aid to Depressed Areas
Pres. Eisenhower was reportedly poised for an election-year veto
of a $251 million depressed area bill which AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, in a special letter to the White House, called a "fair" and
"humane" measure.
Meany's appeal to the President to sign the bill pointed out that
it would be "effective in removing ^^T^^-
from the American nation continu-
ing high unemployment in the sur-
plus labor areas" and would help
thousands of citizens "regain their
economic livelihoods and their dig-
nity as human beings."
The flat prediction that Eisen-
hower would veto the bill — simi-
lar to one which he pocket vetoed
in 1958 — came from Senate Min-
ority Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (R-I1I.). He noted that
the margins by which the meas-
ure passed — 201 to 184 in the
House and 45-32 in the Senate
— were not large enough to over-
ride presidential disapproval.
At his May 11 press conference,
Eisenhower said he was "not pre-
dicting anything" about what he
would do with the measure, but
hinted strongly that "I don't ap-
prove" of the bill which Congress
passed despite his recommendation
that only $53 million be spent to
aid areas of chronic joblessness.
The President called the measure
rel bill."
In his letter to the President,
Meany declared that the bill
passed by Congress would "not
place an undue burden on the
federal government." Eisen-
hower, in vetoing the 1958 meas-
ure, had argued that it placed
too great a strain on the federal
budget.
Basically, the measure seeks to
deal with chronic joblessness by
providing loans and grants to com
munities and private business for
the diversification of industry in
areas where unemployment has
reached 6 percent of the labor force
for 18 of the previous 24 months,
or where joblessness has been sub-
stantially higher for a shorter
period of time.
It would create a special Area
Redevelopment Administration with
powers to make 30-year loans to
both rural and industrial areas,
with programs for economic devel-
opment to be prepared by local
leaders with federal government
assistance.
Delegates left no doubt that they
felt the effort was worthwhile. At
the final meeting in each area they
were asked to submit their com-
ments, unsigned. Of the thousands
turned in, only a handful were
critical.
New Format Praised
Especially popular was the new
format of this year's conferences.
Each began with a general ses-
sion on the opening morning. In
the afternoon and the following
morning, the delegates were divided
into four discussion groups. Each
group, in turn, dealt with four dif-
ferent topics. Another general ses-
sion concluded the conference.
Carrying out the general theme,
three of the group sessions were de-
importance and those that will be
at stake in the November elections.
The fourth dealt with communica-
tions — ways and means of getting
labor's political story to the mem-
bership and to the community.
In most instances, discussions
were still going at a lively clip
when the 75-minute classes end-
ed. Movies and film-strips were
used to help tell the story on some
issues.
The largest turnout was 1,281 at
a weekday conference in Philadel-
phia, which comprised the Middle
Atlantic states. Weekend meetings
in Indianapolis (Indiana, Michigan,
Ohio) and Nashville (Alabama,
Primaries Boost Stock
Of Kennedy and Nixon
(Continued from Page 1)
primary statement to West Virginia
Democrats:
"Despite all that has been written
about the people here, after travel-
ing to every corner of your state
and meeting you, I had no doubt
that you would cast your vote on
the basis of the issues and not on
any religious prejudices."
Humphrey in a statement con-
gratulated Kennedy on a "signifi-
cant and clear-cut victory" and an-
nounced that he was no longer a
presidential candidate but would
seek re-election to the Senate in
Minnesota.
"I shall do whatever I can to
make sure that the Democratic
convention will adopt a liberal
platform and nominate liberal
candidates who will be elected in
November," Humphrey declared.
Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon John-
son (D-Tex.) now seem certain to
go to the July 11 Democratic Na-
tional Convention in Los Angeles
with massive voting strength on the
early ballots, with Sen. Stuart
Jobless Rate Stuck at 5 Percent,
Meany Warns of Danger Signs
(Continued from Page 1)
came amid reports that Eisenhower
was prepared to veto the pending
depressed areas bill.
The Labor Dept. — which nor-
mally issues the job report unaided
— reported "the employment situ-
ation rebounded between March
and April with the return of better
weather."
The March-to-April job rise took
place chiefly in the seasonal indus-
tries of agriculture, construction
and trade, the Labor Dept. said.
The 1.9 million increase compared
to the normal rise of about 600,000.
Unemployment dropped by 546,-
000 to a total 3.7 million for April.
The normal seasonal decline is
about 300,000.
However, these larger-than-sea-
sonal changes "must be viewed
against the weather situation of the
past few months," said Seymour
Wolfbein, Labor Dept. manpower
expert. Bad weather has been
blamed in the past few job reports
for holding down outdoor employ
ment and buoying the jobless fig-
ures.
The 3,660,000 unemployed in
April compared to 3,627,000 for
the same month yast year, 2,-
755,000 in April 1956 and 2,-
690,000 in April 1957.
A warning signal was raised as
the Labor Dept. reported that "sev-
eral hard goods manufacturing in-
dustries reported employment de-
clines larger than normal for this
time of year."
Manufacturing Jobs Down
Manufacturing employment
dropped by 112,000 to a total 16.4
million in April. Greater-than-usual
cutbacks were reported in automo-
biles, fabricated metals supplying
auto plants, primary metals and
electrical machinery.
Calling this "a very critical sec-
tor, Wolfbein conceded in answer-
ing a question that in terms both of
fewer jobs and reduced hours, "you
don't have the buoyancy in that
particular sector" as in other indus-
tries in the April report.
The long-term unemployed —
those out of work 15 weeks or long-
er — remained about the same for
April at a total of 1.2 million. This
compared to 1.4 million for April
1959, but was still far above the
648,000 for April 1956 and the
706,000 for April 1957.
The Labor Dept. also reported
a decline for the third straight
month in the factory workweek,
a decline of 18 minutes to 39.4
hours. This reflected a drop of
24 minutes in overtime to 2.1
hours in April, the report added.
The decline in hours was "espe-
cially sharp" in autos, metals and
the machinery industries, the report
said.
The shorter workweek was due
in part to the fact that some 3.5
million workers had taken time off
for the Good Friday and Passover
holidays, which occurred in the
survey week, the report contended
An effect of the reduced hours
was to cut factory earnings by $1.08
over the month to $89.83 in April,
the report added.
Wolfbein forecast that unemploy-
ment would decline to about 3.5
million in May, rising to about 4
million in June with the entry of
school graduates into the job mar-
ket. He said projections show the
jobless total should certainly drop
below 3 million in October, tradi
tionally a lowpoint month.
Symington (D-Mo.) and former
Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois,
the party's nominee in 1952 and
1956, as potential compromise can-
didates in case of a deadlock.
Nixon, who has rolled up sub-
stantial votes in successive GOP
primaries in Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Indiana, continued an impressive
showing in the Nebraska primary,
and Sen. Roman L. Hruska (R-
Neb.) claimed the results "dis-
pelled" the claim that Republicans
were "weak" in farm areas.
Nixon has all but publicly re-
pudiated Agriculture Sec. Ezra
Taft Benson, architect of Eisen-
hower farm policy, and has
openly pledged a new program
if he should be elected. Benson,
who earlier had announced sup-
port of Nixon, more recently
expresed uncertainty about the
Vice President's nomination for
the White House.
Kennedy ran away with the
Democratic Nebraska primary,
where his name was the only one
appearing on the ballot, and his
competitors got only token write-in
votes.
Nixon rolled up a Republican
write-in vote that trailed by only a
few thousand Kennedy's Demo
cratic total in the state. As he has
done elsewhere, he swamped New
York's Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in
the write-in contest, leading by
about a 30-1 margin.
Kentucky, Tennessee) drew 712 and
647, respectively. A weekday
throng of almost 600 in St. Louis
(Illinois, Missouri) was the biggest
surprise, swamping the host hotel.
In each area, COPE Dir. James
L. McDevitt and his staff held pri^
vate conferences with state AFL--
CIO leaders on the political outlook
in every Congressional district.
Labor Spurs
Fight on Bias
In New York
New York— the New York City
AFL-CIO has announced formation
of a civil rights committee to "pro-
mote aggressively" AFL-CIO anti-'
discrimination programs and pouV
cies in Greater New York.
Louis Simon, vice president of
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
and manager of the Laundry Work-j
ers' Joint Board, is chairman. He j
said the 10-member committee will
concern itself with all forms of dis-
crimination, inside and outside the
labor field.
"We do not intend," said Si-
mon, "to sit back and wait for
complaints. We are going to un-
cover conditions whicl
AFL-CIO policy and
and we will act to com
The committee has
seven-point program to
rights of eveiy indi
group" in the fields of hi'
and employment conditions, public
and private housing, education and
voting.
It has asked "constant alertness
against discrimination in the admin-
istration of justice." Its program
will be coordinated with an educa-
tional campaign to "eradicate the
seeds of discrimiantion" in the labor
movement and outside.
Other committee members are
William Bowe, Sleeping Car Por-
ters; Warren Bunn, Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers; Bert Jemmott,
Amalgamated Laundry Workers;
Sam Kaplan, Glaziers; Albert Per-
ry, Building Service Employes; Mil-
ton Reverby, Retail, Wholesale &
Department Store; Paul Sanchez,
Ind. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers; Arduilio Susi, Hotel &
Restaurant; James Trenz, Electri-
cal, Radio & Machine Workers.
Labor Dept. Announces
L-G Form for Employers
The final form for reports by employers under the Landrum-
Griffin Act will be published in the Federal Register by May 15,
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has announced.
Mitchell, in his announcement, asserted that promulgation of
the employer report form under government procedures "had raised
serious legal and even constitutional'^
problems." The form now being
officially announced requires re-
ports from employers 90 days after
the end of their fiscal year.
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil at its last meeting discussed the
matter of equal treatment in the
administration of L-G reporting re-
quirements. It instructed the Ex-
ecutive Committee and AFL-CIO
Gen, Counsel J. Albert Woll to
study the problem and report back.
The Labor Dept. noted that
when the employer form was
published in preliminary form,
a number of its requirements
were objected to by both the
chief employer groups and or-
ganized labor as going beyond
the requirements of the new law.
The Mitchell announcement
came on the heels of a sharp pro-*
test by Auto Workers' Pres. Walter \
P. Reiither that corporations had*!
been allowed to treat the new law -
with "arrogance and open defi-
ance." The deadline for filing ro- 4 j
ports based on the calendar year
was Apr. 1.
Reuther pointed out that aftt
50,000 local and international un-
ions had complied "promptly and
responsibly,"
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Page Nine
At Community Services Conference:
Administration's Health Plan
Branded as 'Political Hoax'
(Continued from Page 1)
500 labor and social welfare repre-
sentatives at a four-day AFL-CIO
National Conference on Commu-
nity Services at the Hotel Commo-
dore.
In other conference develop-
ments:
• Joseph A. Beirne, Communi-
cations Workers president and
chairman of the AFL-CIO Com-
munity Services Committee, said
the scientific battle against disease
is being lost through the lack of
comprehensive medical care for the
American people.
• Leo Pedis, AFL-CIO Com-
munity Service Activities director,
issued a plea for government and
the community to assume greater
responsibility for consumer protec-
tion.
• Murray D. Lincoln, Coopera-
tive League of America president,
asserted the nation has failed to
organize its health services so that
people can take advantage of pre-
ventive medical examinations.
• Dr. George Baehr, medical
consultant to the Health Insurance
Plan of Greater New York, at-
tacked the Administration's pro-
posed health care plan as a '*pie-
in-the-sky ,, scheme designed to
"fool the public." Costs under the
Administration plan would be ' ex-
cessive," he said, in endorsing the
use of social security machinery for
financing health insurance.
• George P. Larrick, Food and
Drug Administration commissioner,
pointed up the need to expand
FDA's total investigational program
to protect the American people.
• The American National Red
Cross presented a citation to the
AFL-CIO for its support of Red
Cross blood bank program and dis-
aster services.
On the Forand bill, Schnitzler
said: "We now have the most
promising opportunity in our
time of enacting this great so-
cial reform before the present
Congress adjourns."
"Clearly, the people of this coun-
try want action — and they want ac-
tion now — to protect the aged from
the devastating costs of illness,'* he
maintained.
Most Challenging Issue
Schnitzler termed the problem of
providing health care for the aged
"the most challenging issue before
the nation."
He cited the opposition from the
American Medical Association, the
insurance companies and the Ad-
ministration when the AFL-CIO
launched its campaign to obtain
enactment of the Forand bill three
years ago.
"But this year there has been a
revolutionary change in the climate
of public opinion," Schnitzler said,
adding that the members of Con-
gress have been hearing from 'the
old folks at home and from the
younger folks in their families."
"So great a torrent of mail has
never before flooded official
Washington," he contended.
When the AMA's cry of social-
ized medicine "fell flat," the AMA
along with the Administration and
the insurance corporations de-
nounced the Forand bill as "com-
pulsory," Schnitzler declared.
"That is a new scare-word in-
jected into this issue when the old
scare-word of 'socialized medicine'
failed to click," Schnitzler said.
"The Forand bill is compulsory in
the same sense that the social se-
curity system itself is compulsory."
He said that "even the AMA
would not dare to demand repeal
of social security and school at-
tendance laws on the ground that care program,
they are compulsory." | Pointing to the heavy burden that
He said if the new Administra-
tion plan were to be enacted, "we
might wind up with 50 different
health insurance programs for the
aged or none at all." He charged
also that "it can be safely assumed
that the private insurance compa-
nies are given a guaranteed profit
in this Administration plan sup-
posedly designed to help the old
folks."
He stressed the fact that the re-
quirement for state as well as fed-
eral action, "automatically nullifies
whatever good there might possibly
be in the plan."
"Everyone knows how the
state legislature drag their feet
on issues involving social prog-
ress," Schnitzler said. "Every-
one knows that the states already
are hard pressed to meet their
financial commitments and will
not lightly undertake" any addi-
tional annual expenditures.
He said the Administration plan
is intended "to deceive the Ameri-
can voters into believing that the
Administration is generous, rather
than cold-hearted in its attitude
toward the health problems of re-
tired citizens."
An 'Out' for Orators
"It is designed to provide an
: out' for pro-Administration orators
in the coming campaign," Schnitzler
continued.
"I do not believe this transparent,
hypocritical trick will work," he
added. "I do not believe the voters
of this country .will be fooled that
easily."
He predicted the plan will
"boomerang against the Admin-
istration and those who propose
to follow in its footsteps."
He questioned why the Adminis-
tration can "accept the idea of sub-
sidizing private insurance groups to
do a half-way job without a shud-
der, yet go into a swoon at the very
thought of a government insurance
program to protect the aged."
He said an Administration veto
of the Forand bill would mean "po-
litical suicide in the elections."
He said the AFL-CIO is "willing
to make this the central issue of
the 1960 campaign."
"We are in the fight not for po-
litical considerations but in order
to win a significant victory for
humanity," Schnitzler concluded.
CSC Chairman Beirne, who
lashed out at the high cost of med-
ical care, said: "Hospitals, drug
companies and even doctors have
priced themselves out of reach."
"They are living in the aspirin
day and charging penicillin prices,"
he said. "They should stop consid-
ering cold cash and rusty tradition
and start considering the con-
sumer."
Pedis, in a keynote address,
proposed that consumer educa-
tion be made a part of the adult
education program of the na-
tion's public school systems. He
also called for the creation of
consumer counsel posts by every
governor; community-wide con-
sumer conferences to be called by
every mayor; and the establish-
ment of a federal department of
consumer interests, headed by a
secretary of cabinet rank.
Sharply critical of hospital costs,
Lincoln predicted they will jump
from the current $28 per day to
about $58 a day by 1975.
Commissioner Larrick, detailing
the needs of FDA, declared: "We
now get into the average factory
once in four years." Five years
ago, he said, "we were inspecting
plants on the average of about once
in 10 years."
"This is much better, but it is
still totally inadequate to give a
clear picture of what goes on in
the food, drug and cosmetic indus-
tries," Larrick said.
The CSA parley centered on four
main community issues: health
services, needs of the aging, con-
sumer education, and juvenile de-
linquency.
CITATION FOR LABOR'S ROLE in time of disaster and its
support of Red Cross blood bank program is presented to AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler by Vice Pres. Robert Shea (right),
of American Red Cross, at opening day luncheon of fifth annual
AFL-CIO National Conference on Community Services at Hotel
Commodore in New York.
Labor, AMA Meet on
Better Health Plans
Chicago — Five representatives of the AFL-CIO headed by Vice
Pres. Charles S. Zimmerman of the Ladies' Garment Workers are
meeting here with spokesmen of some 30 other organizations to
seek ways to improve prepaid health insurance plans and strengthen
union-negotiated medical care programs.
Sponsor of the meeting is the'^"
American Medical Association,
which sought the counsel of other
groups in a Congress on Prepaid
Health Insurance.
In a statement issued on behalf
of the AFL-CIO representatives,
Zimmerman pointed out that the
federation and the AMA have in
common the objective of "making
prepaid health insurance more ef-
fective."
"We are here," he continued,
"because we have an enormous
stake in the success" of such plans
"We have made substantial contri-
butions toward better medical care
through negotiated health plans of
many varieties."
Labor "vigorously supports'
Liberal Senate Democrats Offer
New Bill on Health Care for Aged
A new drive has been launched on Capitol Hill to win passage this session of legislation to finance
health care for the aged through the social security system.
With the Forand bill stalled in the House Ways & Means Committee, Sen. Pat McNamara (D
Mich.) and 15 other liberal Democrats introduced in the Senate an insurance plan geared to social
security but also providing federal contributions to cover some 3 million oldsters not receiving retire-
ment benefits.
The McNamara bill — far broad-
er than the labor-backed measure
introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D-R.I.) — would provide payments
for out-patient diagnostic service,
hospitalization, nursing home care
and home health services, and par-
tial payment for expensive drugs.
Broader Than Forand Bill
By contrast, the Forand bill
would provide only hospital and
nursing home care. Both measures
would be financed by increases of
one-quarter of 1 percent in the so-
cial security taxes levied on both
employers and employes. This
would mean a maximum additional
tax of $12 a year each.
The filing of the McNamara
proposal came as a belated Ad-
ministration substitute — geared
to federal-state subsidies for pri-
vate insurance companies — came
under fire from several quarters.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R-
N.Y.) flatly rejected the White
House suggestion that a national
medical program should be financed
out of the general revenues of fed-
eral and state governments and
again endorsed the principle of
social security financing of a health
the bill would place on the states,
Rockefeller said that even as weal-
thy a state as New York would
"find it difficult" to raise its share
out of general revenues. As pro-
posed by the Administration, the
federal government would pay a
$600-million-a-year subsidy to pri-
vate insurance funds, and the state
governments would be expected to
raise a similar sum.
Democrats Attack
Democratic Gov. Edmund G.
Pat Brown of California assailed
the plan as a "sub-minimum pro-
posal which tries to dump a major
part of a federal fiscal burden on
hard-pressed state governments,"
and Democratic Gov. G. Mennen
Williams (Mich.) branded it "ir-
responsible," noting that many
states are "unable or unwilling" to
assume this responsibility.
Right-wing elements in Eisen-
hower's own party also attacked
the proposal — but for different
reasons. Sen. Barry Goldwater
(R-Ariz.) called it "socialized
medicine," and the American
Medical Association, which has
consistently opposed all health
care measures, termed the White
House plan "unacceptable." The
majority of older people, said the
AMA, "can afford" health care.
Earlier, the AFL-CIO Executive
Council had assailed the Admin-
istration's subsidy proposal, declar-
ing it had "evidently been shaped
to meet the political demands of an
election year rather than the urgent
needs of the aged."
Auto Workers Pres. Walter P.
Reuther, in a letter to Eisenhower,
said the plan ''would impose extra
charges and heavy costs on older
people . . . (and) would allow com-
mercial insurance carriers to profit
at the expense of the aged."
White House Plan
Under the White House plan,
elderly persons on public assistance
would receive free coverage. A
means test would be applied to all
other retirees, and single oldsters
with less than $2,500 a year in an-
nual income and couples with under
$3,800 a year would pay an annual
fee of $24 per person.
Protection would be on a so-
called "catastrophic" basis, with
subscribers paying the first $250 in
annual medical expenses and 20
percent of all costs over that figure.
the Forand bill for medical care
of the aged under the social se-
curity system, Zimmerman said,
but the fact that on this bill the
AFL-CIO has "vast differences"
with the AMA "does not rule out
worthwhile discussions in other
areas."
"We have learned that our re-
sponsibilities do not end when the
employer has agreed to devote a
certain sum of money to health
coverage," Zimmerman said.
Labor speakers on the conference
program include Dr. William A.
Sawyer, medical consultant of the
Machinists, and Jerome Pollock,
social security program consultant
of the Auto Workers.
AFL-CIO representatives, in ad-
dition to Zimmerman, are Lisbeth
Bamberger, assistant director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Secu-
rity; Leonard Lesser, director of
social security activities for the fed-
eration's Industrial Union Dept.;
Isador Melamed, executive director
of the Philadelphia AFL Medical
Service Plan; Anthony G. Weislein,
director of the research and educa-
tion department of the Building
Service Employes.
N. Y. Times Editorial
SupportsForandBill
The influential New York
Times has thrown its full edi-
torial support behind the For-
and bill, and has rejected a
federal-state substitute pro-
posed by the Administration
as "little short of bewilder-
ing."
In the lead editorial in its
May 10 issue, the Times
said the "arguments for using
social security," as proposed
in the Forand bill, are "over-
whelming."
It denied there was any
"compulsion" involved in the
labor-backed Forand bill,
adding that the Administra-
tion bill involves a great com-
pulsion since the use of gen-
eral tax revenues to finance
the White House proposal
would mean that "taxpayers
as a whole — including those
not given protection — would
be compelled to cover the
costs of state and federal sub-
sidies."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
CHAMPION BRICKLAYER apprentice Edward Wilkinson, 22,
of Local 1, Wilmington, Del., smiles proudly as he is congratulated
by Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R. I.), on left and Sen. Theodore F.
Green (D-R. I.), on right. Occasion was testimonial banquet for
Fogarty sponsored by Allied Masonry Council. Wilkinson won
national contest.
Labor, Industry Pay
Tribute to Rep. Fogarty
Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R.L), bricklayer-turned-congressman,
has been paid special tribute by the labor-management Allied
Masonry Council for his "devotion to the education of the youth
of America and to sound apprenticeship training."
A highlight of the testimonial banquet attended by several hundred
guests was the crowning of 22 J &
year-old Edward Wilkinson of
Bricklayers' Local 1, Wilmington,
Del., as the nation's champion
bricklayer apprentice.
President-emeritus Harry C.
Bates of the Bricklayers — the la-
bor side of the council — praised
Fogarty not, he said, because
Fogarty is a friend of labor but
"because he is a bricklayer who
has translated the craftsman's
skill, the logic of construction
and the pride in good building
into worthy deeds at the highest
levels of the United States gov-
ernment."
Bates singled out Fogarty for
•'his support of apprenticeship,
which can truly be said to be the
Kfeblood of our craft skills in
America."
Cabinet Officers in Tribute
Two cabinet officers who have
faced Fogarty from the witness side
of the table at hearings of his ap-
propriations subcommittee also paid
him high praise.
Health, Education & Welfare
Sec. Arthur S. Flemming lauded
Fogarty for his "deep concern" for
human welfare. He said Fogarty
played a key role in the passage of
the defense education program and
with creation of plans for the com-
ing White House Conference on the
Aging set for next January.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
praised Fogarty as a model "non-
partisan" legislator who puts first
the welfare of the people.
Mitchell credited Fogarty with
helping to enlarge such Labor Dept.
activities as law enforcement, ap-
prenticeship programs, the Wom-
en's Bureau and especially inter-
national labor. He then presented
Fogarty his agency's award of
merit.
Douglas Whitlock, council chair-
Charges Against
O'Rourke Dismissed
Mineola, N. Y. — Extortion
charges against John J. O'Rourke,
head of the Eastern Conference of
Teamsters, have been dismissed in
Nassau County Court here.
Judge Paul Widlitz ordered the
jury to dismiss the charges against
O'Rourke and four co-defendants
on the basis of a legal technicality
over wiretapping.
The others freed with O'Rourke
were Anthony Pafumi, Charles De-
Forte, Kenneth Ciazza and Pas-
quale Catroppa.
man, stressed the need in the com-
ing decades for "an enormous
number" of apprentices. He said
it will come from city youth, from
displaced farm youth and from
minority groups previously denied
opportunities and he urged that
labor and industry not be found
wanting.
Whitlock, who also is chair-
man of the board of the Struc-
tural Clay Products Institute,
presented to Fogarty on the
Council's behalf a silver trophy
showing a bricklayer poised with
trowel in hand.
Stephen D. Raimo, president of
the Mason Contractors Association
which, with the institute make up
the employer side of the council,
said Fogarty has endeared himself
to every contractor for his part in
the development of apprenticeship
training.
The bricklayer apprentice win-
ners finished in this order after a
series of local and state contests:
Wilkinson; Richard Gyrha of Lo-
cal 1, Omaha; Leonard Egnor of
Local 1, Wilmington, Del., and
Frank Blonda of Local 21, Chicago.
Wilkinson received a trophy and
$500; the runners-up received cash
prizes of $300, $200 and $100,
respectively.
'No Longer a Stepchild: 9
AFL-CIO Unions Set Program
On Safety, Occupational Health
Delegates from 50 international unions and state central bodies hammered out a program for pro-
tecting workers against occupational health hazards through collective bargaining, state and federal
legislation and education at a three-day conference sponsored by the AFL-CIO's Standing Commit-
tee on Safety and Occupational Health.
Keynoting the conference, held at AFL-CIO headquarters, Pres. George Meany described safety
and occupational health programs^
as "outstanding examples of cooper-
ation between labor and manage-
ment."
In the past 20 years, Meany de-
clared, the emphasis has switched
from court battles to require un-
willing employers to compensate
workers for illnesses resulting from
their work to cooperation among
unions, employers and government-
al bodies to prevent health hazards.
Conference Chairman Richard
F. Walsh, AFL-CIO vice presi-
dent and president of the The-
atrical Stage Employes, said the
active participation of unions
in safety and health activities,
demonstrates that the field "is
no longer considered a stepchild
of the labor movement."
He reported that as a result of
recommendations made at last
year's conference — the first of its
kind held — the AFL-CIO conduct-
ed a survey of collective bargaining
agreements to determine the extent
to which union contracts are used
to promote safety and industrial
health.
George T. Brown, executive sec-
retary of the AFL-CIO committee,
gave the delegates a detailed report
of the survey results, which showed
that:
• Two-thirds of 7,000 contracts
analyzed contained safety clauses.
This, Brown said, "demonstrates
clearly that AFL-CIO affiliates rec-
ognize the value of labor-manage-
ment relations to achieve safe and
healthful working conditions for
their members." It demonstrates
"with equal clarity," Brown said,
that "there is room for improve-
ment."
• Forty percent of contracts
containing safety and occupational
health clauses provide for partici-
pation of union representatives on
safety committees, but only 15 per-
cent grant equal participation on
joint labor-management committees.
• In virtually every contract
having a safety clause, specific pro-
vision was made for use of griev-
ance machinery to resolve safety
problems and disputes.
• Ninety-seven percent of all
safety clauses required employers
to meet standards higher than those
required by law. "The survey dem-
onstrated positively that turning
over responsibilities of safety to the
state by means of legislation was
not a satisfactory answer for trade
unions (since) safety laws, at best,
set minimum requirements."
Dr. Herbert K. Abrams, occupa-
tional health consultant to the
Chemical Workers, emphasized the
inadequacy of existing state and
federal legislation.
Few states have meaningful
occupational health programs,
he emphasized, and there has
been too Little research into job-
related diseases. He urged unions
to "be more active 9 ' in pressing
for legislation which would bring
the federal government into the
occupational health field.
Delegates also heard and ques-
tioned experts from government
and private agencies on problems
of radiation burns, industrial poi-
soning, industrial noise and eye
protection.
Daily workshop sessions were
held to draft recommendations un-
der the chairmanship of Sec.-Treas.
Hunter P. Wharton of the Operat«
ing Engineers; George DuVal,
Communications Workers; F. A.
VanAtta, industrial hygienist for
the Auto Workers; and Frank
Burke, safety director of the Steel-
workers.
Judge Rules Against
'Runaway 9 Shoe Firm
Philadelphia — A "runaway" shoe manufacturing firm has been
found guilty of violating its union contract by a federal judge who
ruled that a partial change in ownership did not invalidate an exist-
ing collective bargaining agreement.
District Judge Harold K. Wood upheld the claim of the United
Shoe Workers that a contract with'3> — ; ;
a lower wage scale. Even in the
absence of a runaway shop provi-
the Brooks Shoe Mfg. Co. prohibit-
ing any shutdown of the firm's Phil-
adelphia plant is still in effect de-
spite a reshuffling of the company's
top management.
The firm, while continuing to
operate a non-union plant in
Hanover, Pa., closed and sold its
Philadelphia factory which had
been "tinder union contract for 20
years. It claimed that its union
agreement was no longer in effect
because one of the two brothers
who had operated the business as
a partnership had dropped out
and the business was changed to
a corporation owned by the re-
maining brother and a nephew.
Rejecting this defense, the court
held that the new corporation was
merely "the alter ego" of the old
partnership.
The court also dismissed a de-
fense claim that the move from
Philadelphia to Hanover had been
prompted by the desire to produce
cheaper shoes for which there was
a larger market.
"We can well understand why the
cheaper labor at Hanover was
sought," Judge Wood commented.
"But cheaper labor in this case
means non-unionized labor paid at
Cof C Speakers Ask Drastic Curbs
On Labor Political, Economic Tower'
Abolition of labor's right to participate in political activity was called for at the 48th annual meet-
ing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Calling for new legislative restrictions on organized labor were Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and
Dr. Sylvester J. Petro, professor of law at New York University. They spoke at a chamber session
devoted to "Union Power in a Free®"
Society."
Despite last year's passsage of
the Landrum-Griffin Act, the Ari-
zona Republican declared, "Con-
gress has still to come to grips
with the real evil in the labor
field . • . the enormous economic
and political power now concen-
trated in the hands of union
leaders."
Goldwater said that labor "hurts
the nation's economy by forcing on
employers contract terms that en-
courage inefficiency, lower produc-
tion, and high prices — all of which
result in a lower standard of living
for the American people." He
added that labor "corrupts the na-
tion's political life" by its activities
in election contests.
Petro charged that labor has
"built a political position of awe-
some strength." Declaring that un-
ions "are the most vicious self-
interest groups in the country," the
NYU professor called for enact-
ment of new legislation to "restrain
trade union excesses."
Petro also called for abolition
of the National Labor Relations
Board, which he charged with
making a "sham" of the Taft-
Hartley Act through "maladmin-
istration and misinterpretation"
of the law. In effect, he said, the
NLRB has "repealed Taft-Hart-
ley in labor's favor."
Before the 2,000 delegates ended
their meeting in the nation's capi-
tal they were treated to a rose-
colored-glasses view of the future
as Bell & Howell Co. Pres. Charles
H. Percy projected his "newsreel"
of America in 1976.
By that time, said Percy at the
CofC annual dinner, America's
population will have zoomed 60
million to a level of 240 million;
the gross national product will be
$900 million — nearly double the
present level; and "the average an-
nual income per family will have in-
creased by 50 percent."
But, said Percy, this will not be
accomplished unless the nation's
businessmen "make certain that em-
ployes . . . fully understand the im-
portance of adequate profits;" sup-
port federal fiscal policies "that will
result in a sound dollar;" participate
in politics; and "govern our busi-
nesses in accordance with the high-
est ethical standards."
sion in a collective bargaining
agreement, an employer may not
move his business operation in or-
der to obtain such labor.
"We think the record here re-
veals a design on the part of the
employer to avoid his duties and
responsibilities to his unionized
Philadelphia employes by mov-
ing his manufacturing operation
to the non-unionized shop at
Hanover."
The union's attorneys, Joseph L.
Rauh, Jr., and John Silard, said the
next step in the legal proceedings
will be a court hearing on the reme-
dies to be ordered in the case, in-
cluding the issue of back pay for
the Philadelphia workers.
City Orders
Registration of
Organizers
Statesville, N. C — The City
Council of this community of 17,-
000 has unanimously passed an'or-
dinance requiring the registration
of persons soliciting paid member-
ships in clubs, associations or un-
ions.
In the past, similar laws have
been declared unconstitutional by
the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mayor J. Garner Bagnal, in dis-
cussing the new law, referred to
"union thugs and goons" and the
long strike of the Textile Workers
Union of America against the Har-
riet-Henderson Cotton Mills at Hen-
derson, N. C.
"Henderson's situation would not
have come about had that city an
ordinance such as the one we have
just passed," Bagnal declared.
The law requires a paid organ-
izer to obtain a license from the city
clerk's office on payment of one
dollar.
He also must be fingerprinted,
furnish two letters from residents
and prove he has no record of
felony convictions. In addition,
he must never have been con-
nected with any group listed as
subversive by the U.S. Attorney
General.
Each day's refusal to comply vull
count as a separate offense, pun-
ishable by a fine of $50 and/or 30
days in jail.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, I>. C, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1960
Page Elerem
'A Deluxe Snow Job' ;
A dm in is tra tionffit
For U. S. Pay Stall
Administration attempts to block action this year on pay raises
for government employes have been described by the .AFL-CIO as
"a deluxe snow job."
Legislative Rep. George D. Riley, testifying before the Senate
Post Office & Civil Service Committee, accused the Administration
of "stalling" by insisting that fur- 4 ^
ther studies and surveys be made
before Congress acts on pay legis-
lation.
The federation spokesman said
the Administration has consist-
ently ignored previous surveys
which showed the need for pay
adjustments. The only thing sig-
nificant about current salary
studies, he said, is the fact that
they would not be completed un-
til after Congress adjourns.
Strong support was reportedly
building up in the Senate commit-
tee for a bill matching the 9 percent
pay raise bill reported by the House
Post Office & Civil Service Com-
mittee May 4.
As the Senate committee wound
up its hearings on postal pay, Pres.
James A. Campbell of the Govern-
ment Employes opened up the case
for a pay hike for 1 million classi-
fied, white collar employes.
Most government salaries, Camp-
bell emphasized, have lagged behind
the cost-of-living increase since
1939 and have fallen far behind the
level of private industry. The fed-
eral government, he declared, "was
a leader" at one time and set the
salary pattern in the white collar
field.
At present, he said, that lead-
ership has passed to large busi-
ness corporations which set sala-
ries for office and professional
employes either through direct
negotiations or on the basis of
patterns established in collective
bargaining agreements with pro-
duction workers.
Campbell declared that testimony
by Budget Director Maurice Stans
and Civil Service Commission
Chairman Roger Jones "has proved
just one thing — there is no legiti-
mate case against pay increases."
The Administration's appeal for
delay pending "further study" also
brought a sharp attack from Sen.
Olin D. Johnston (D.-S. C), chair-
man of the committee.
Johnston declared: "I have
heard many times that the Ad-
ministration does not favor or
wish to consider legislation be-
cause it does not know the facts.
... I, as chairman, will tolerate
no longer the excuse that we do
not know, that we need to study,
that we should form a commis-
sion to find out."
Meanwhile the AFL-CIO Gov-
ernment Employes Council has
called on federal workers to write
to Vice Pres. Nixon, calling on him
to support "sorely needed federal
and postal pay raises." Nixon, the
council declared in a bulletin to
affiliates, is the only announced
presidential candidate who has not
yet expressed support for pay raise
legislation.
Wage-Hour Hearings
In Last Week in House
A House Labor subcommittee moved into its final week of hear-
ings on wage-hour legislation, with union spokesmen strongly sup-
porting the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill to raise the wage floor
to $1.25 and extend coverage to 7.6 million additional workers, with
employer representatives flatly opposed to any improvement in the
present law.
Meanwhile, Sen. John F. Ken
nedy (D-Mass.) announced that the
Senate Labor Committee will re-
sume consideration of a minimum
TWU Council
Backs Pickets
At Woolworth
New York — Support for Wool-
worth store pickets and sitdowners,
and condemnation of the Wool-
worth Co. for "discriminatory prac-
tices" has been voted by the Trans-
port Workers' executive council.
The TWU executive council
adopted a resolution deploring
the "shameful pattern of racial
segregation" and pointing out
that the humiliation of any mi-
nority group for reasons of race,
color or creed is in "flagrant
violation 4 ' of the morals, ethics,
and humanitarian principles of
the overwhelming majority of the
American people.
"The Woolworth chain of five-
and-dime stores throughout the
South/' it said, "has refused to
serve our Negro brothers at their
lunch counters and cafeterias, along
with white members of the commu-
nity.
"A spontaneous and non-violent
movement among Negro students
has challenged this practice by the
staging of sit-down strikes.
"Therefore the Intl. Executive
Council condemns the discrimina-
tory practices of the Woolworth
Co.; supports the picketing and boy-
cotting of Woolworth stores; rec-
ommends support for the pickets
and community action until the
company yields."
wage bill on May 23 and will con-
tinue to meet in executive sesssion
until a bill is reported.
"It is already long past the time
when a $1 an hour wage could pro-
vide the barest necessities of life,"
Kennedy declared. "The test of
our belief in human dignity is the
manner in which we treat those
at the bottom of the economic
ladder."
Two unions with large groups
of members in industries pres-
ently excluded from the Fair
Labor Standards Act told the
House Labor subcommittee that
discrimination against workers
in excluded industries should be
ended.
Vice Pres. Leon B. Schachter of
the Meat Cutters said there is no
justification for exempting firms
processing fruits and vegetables
from the overtime provisions of the
wage-hour law during peak periods
of operation.
Leading processing firms, he said,
show steadily rising profits and can
well afford to pay overtime rates,
especially since productivity in the
industry has outstripped wage gains.
He called also for elimination of
the exemptions for large retailers
and the seafood processing industry.
Pres. John M. Elliott of the
Street, Electric Railway Union
asked for an end to "the unjust
discrimination against transit em-
ployes."
jDeclaring that "transit systems
in many cities of varying sizes are
presently operating successfully un-
der union agreements providing for
a 40-hour week," Elliott said "the
time is long overdue for Congress
to remedy the inequities that were
established at the time the law was
paissed."
LETTER CARRIER'S WIFE, Mrs. Woodrow P. Gaines, tells Senate Post Office & Civil Service
Committee what it means to try to stretch inadequate government pay to meet minimum family needs.
With her are Letter Carriers Pres. William C. Doherty and Vice Pres. Jerome J. Keating.
It's the Little Things that Hurt Most,
Letter Carrier's Wife Tells Senators
Mrs. Woodrow P. Gaines, wife of a union
letter carrier and mother of four children, gave
an eloquent and moving reply to Administra-
tion demands for a continued wage freeze for
government workers. Following are excerpts
from her testimony before the Senate Post Of-
fice & Civil Service Committee:
My husband has the top seniority among letter
carriers in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., post office by
virtue of his 21 years service . . . but we have
found that we cannot eat seniority privileges, nor
can we cash them at the bank.
Many things which most families consider part
of their normal routine are luxuries beyond a let-
ter carrier's reach. My husband's best suit, for
instance, is nine years old. I cannot remember,
offhand, when we last saw a moving picture show.
If enjoyment costs money, it is beyond the Gaines
family budget.
We have been blessed with four wonderful
little boys, the oldest 10, the twins 7, and our
youngest, 4. My husband's take-home pay has
less buying power than it did before we started
our family. Surely a couple should not be ex-
pected to remain childless merely for the priv-
ilege of the husband's being a government em-
ploye!
Despite the fact that I, also, have to work and
my husband takes odd jobs after his regular day's
work is done, we had to take a second mortgage
on our home. We have found it necessary to drop
mortgage insurance and hospitalization insurance
. . . maintained for 10 years at great personal
sacrifice until it became a luxury which we could
no longer afford. . . . We have more indebtedness
on our home than on the day we bought it.
Because of low pay and rising costs we have
been taking one step forward and sliding back
two— no, three steps.
I am a public stenographer working in our own
home and I have done this for five years. I aver-
age six to six and one-half hours sleep per night
because there is not time for more. I am too busy
supplementing my husband's salary, plus running
a home and caring for four growing boys to wear
out and out-grow clothes, whose growing feet re-
quire shoes and whose healthy appetites make a
grocery expense that is a first on our budget.
To a wife and mother, it is the little things that
hurt. When one 4-year-old begs, "Mama, please
rock me," it hurts that I am typing material that
must meet a deadline.
Have you ever been placed in a position
where you said a prayer that a little boy would
not really lose his loose tooth for two more
days because it was Wednesday and payday was
Friday and there just wasn't any small change
so the fairies could come? Have you ever
known what it was to hunt in all the little tea-
pots and containers to find 35 cents for the price
of a child's school lunch ticket?
On my last birthday, my dad, who is not a
postal employe, sent me $20 with the stipulation
that I buy some "extravagant thing" which I
could otherwise not afford.
I would have much preferred to use that money
toward new shoes for the four boys which we
could not otherwise afford. I distinctly remember
using it for groceries. You see, it was only Sunday
and payday was a week away.
But, why should it be necessary to continue this
narrative which I find is both distasteful and har-
rowing?
The Gaines family is in financial trouble.
Financial trouble has become a way of life with
us — it is the constant companion of our waking
and sleeping hours. And — as I say — we are
typical of the letter carriers' families of this
country.
Certainly our failure to make ends meet is not
the result of any extravagance or self-indulgence
on our part. My husband is a high school gradu-
ate, possessed of a great deal of common sense,
and like myself, a person of moderate tastes and
desires. Neither of us drink nor do I smoke. My
husband is a man who is respected in our commu-
nity. We are both very proud of the fact that we
work with youth groups, he holds an office on the
executive board of the PTA, and is an active mem-
ber of the Board of Stewards of the Methodist
Church of which we are members.
Before our marriage I was trained in Business
Administration and given half a chance could run
the household well and save money for future
needs, but the United States Government is not
even giving us that half a chance.
We are not embittered but we are terribly
concerned and deeply troubled. Surely the
United States of America — the richest and most
powerful nation in the world— can afford to
pay their letter carriers a decent salary so they
can rear their children in pride and decency.
This is all I have to say, Mr. Chairman and
members of this committee. If I have appeared
less than objective, I feel that in all sincerity I
may state that I do not feel that God expects us
to be objective about a situation that is so desper-
ate and so pressing to so many people, the letter
carriers and their families.
In our daily struggles there is a little prayer
which I frequently use for comfort and with your
kind indulgence I wish to pass it on to you.
"We cannot all be heroes on the front lines.
Lord, make us winners of the daily round. Send
us out to do the best we can — where we are—*
with what we have."
IUD Urges Action on Key Legislation
Strike Aid Voted, Unit
On Jurisdiction Set
(Continued from Page 1)
Rep. Richard Boiling (D-Mo.) and
Rep. Chester Bowles (D-Conn.)
National committee chairmen Paul
Butler, for the Democrats and Sen
Thruston B. Morton, for the Re-
publicans, also spoke.
Clark urged the delegates to pin
down candidates during the com-
ing election campaign and try to
win commitments that they will
support an overhaul of the "ob
solete" Senate and House rules
which now block meaningful civil
rights, social and other needed leg
islation.
McCormack told the confer-
ence that health care for the aged
is a "must." He expressed op-
timism about getting an aid-to-
education bill to the floor for a
vote.
Bowles praised labor for sensing
America's potential during World
War II and he called on labor to
meet the challenge of moving
America into taking a more active
role in "a world in ferment-
world in change."
Boiling said the delegates could
do "a good deal" to move needed
legislation, adding that this would
point the way toward the critical
fall elections.
Reuther called on the delegates
to relate their legislative efforts
to the political decision of No-
vember when, he said, it will be
decided whether America will
have "eight more years of drift
and indecision ... of sweeping
problems under the rug, of gov-
ernment by public relations. . .
He said it is "incredible" when
Pres. Eisenhower on the same day
can appeal for support of a $4 bil
lion foreign aid bill and then char-
acterize as "extravagant" the $251
million area redevelopment pro-
gram proposed and passed by the
Democratic Congress.
Reuther called on the delegates
to intensify their support of the
Forand bill, which would provide
health care for social security bene-
ficiaries.
Observing that Eisenhower
had criticized the Forand ap-
proach as "compulsion" because
it would be financed through pay-
roll deductions, Reuther pointed
out the President's proposal
would be supported by govern-
ment payments.
"Is that going to be a voluntary
tax?" Reuther asked.
He gave this example of how the
average widow with $800 annual in-
come would fare under the Eisen-
hower plan if she had a medical bill
of $440; it would take a $24 pre-
mium to be eligible for coverage;
she would have to pay the first $250
and 20 percent over that or an
additional $38.
Thus, Reuther said, this widow
would pay $312 of a medical bill
totaling $440. She would be
left with less than $10 a week to
live on over the year, he added.
The IUD Board, in a series of
actions:
• Named as its members to the
J. A. Owens Dies,
AFL-CIO Staffer
San Francisco — John A. Owens,
59, a member of the organizing
staff of the AFL-CIO, died here of
a heart attack May 9.
A member of the Boilermakers
for over 30 years, Owens was ap-
pointed by then AFL Pres. William
Green an an organizer in Hawaii
in 1941, shortly before Pearl Har-
bor.
He came to California on the
AFL regional staff in 1953, cover-
ing the states of California and
Nevada.
|IUD-BCTD committee Reuther.
Carey, Pres. David J. McDonald of
the Steelworkers, Pres. Paul Phil-
lips of the Papermakers and Paper-
workers, Pres. O. A. Knight of the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers
and IUD Organizational Dir. Nich-
olas Zonarich.
• Created a central strike fund,
to consist initially of the $1 million
strike contributions returned to the
IUD by the Steelworkers plus $1
per member from each participat-
ing IUD affiliate.
Carey said the fund, for which
rules remain to be set up, is de-
signed to cover situations where
a company "tries to put the
union out of business. 9 ' He gave
Kohler, Wilson, Westinghouse,
Henderson and O'Sullivan as
examples.
He said participation would not
be restricted to the 65 IUD unions
with their total dues-paying mem-
bership of 6 million.
• Voted to send $50,000 to the
Shipbuilding Workers and $5,000
to the Technical Engineers, both on
strike against the Bethlehem Steel
Shipyard Division. An as yet un-
determined amount was voted for
the newspaper unions striking
against the Portland Oregonian and
the Oregon Journal.
• Confirmed the appointments
of Jacob Clayman as IUD adminis-
trative director and Zonarich as or-
ganizational director.
• Approved a joint approach to-
ward pooling the organizing efforts
of affiliates. Carey explained that,
with Zonarich as coordinator, four
big unions were asked to name their
25 primary organizing targets in
the Philadelphia area.
He said the UAW, IUE, Machin-
ists and Steelworkers compiled a
total of 94 plants and it was shown
that only 7 campaigns overlapped,
with not more than two unions in-
volved in each overlapping.
LASHING the Eisenhower Administration as "paralyzed by drift
and indecision," Pres. Walter P. Reuther of the Industrial Union
Department urges some 500 delegates to an IUD legislative confer-
ence to persuade their legislators to act on health care for the aged,
minimum wages, housing, education and other measures.
Machine Tool Industry
Seen Failing Challenge
The domestic machine tool industry is facing a growing challenge
from the Soviet Union in world markets, delegates of five unions
attending a meeting of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept. Ma-
chine Tool Industry Committee were told.
The meeting was called to review the economics of the industry
in preparation for bargaining de-^
velopments. Two reports were
presented to the day-long session,
one prepared by the IUD's Re-
search Section and a special report
presented by Prof. Seymour Mel-
man, an expert on the economics
of the industry in the U.S. and
Europe.
Unions represented at the meet-
ing were: the Machinists, Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers,
Steelworkers, Auto Workers; and
the Mechanics Educational Society.
Senate Asked to Boost
Labor, HEW Budgets
The AFL-CIO, accusing the Administration of "greater concern
for the budget deficit than for the human-needs deficit," has asked
the Senate to appropriate more funds for the Labor Dept. and the
Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare than Pres. Eisenhower has
requested.
Labor's position was outlined for'^-
a Senate Appropriations subcom-
mittee by AFL-CIO Legislative
Rep. Hyman H. Bookbinder in
testimony on House-passed Labor-
HEW appropriations for fiscal 1961
totaling $4.2 billion. On the HEW
side, the figure was $197.5 million
higher than the Administration
wanted.
Bookbinder, noting that Eisen-
hower recently sent a special mes-
sage to Congress warning legisla-
tors not to "overspend and over-
reach" in the fiscal field, declared:
"The fact is that if Congress
had followed the Administra-
tion's proposals over the last
seven years, it would have ap-
propriated hundreds of millions
of dollars less on public health
services.
"Can anybody show that Con-
gress did 'overspend and overreach'
when it supported hospital con-
struction and medical research and
water pollution at levels higher than
the Budget Bureau recommenda-
tions?"
In adding money to the HEW
budget, the House followed a
course it has pursued since Eisen-
hower took office in 1953 whereby
it has each year voted increases in
funds for this department.
These boosts included $24 mil-
lion more for hospital construction;
an added $25 million for construct-
ing waste treatment plants; $61 mil-
lion for aiding schools in federally
impacted areas; and $55 million
more for the National Institutes of
Health. On the Labor Dept. side,
the House added back $2 million
which the Administration had cut
from vocational educational pro-
grams.
The AFL-CIO spokesman
urged the Senate to keep these
added sums in the budget and to
add to the House-passed measure
$900,000 to hire 100 more inves-
tigators for the Wage-Hour Div.
"to detect and prevent chiseling
on payments due workers."
Bookbinder declared that it is
"difficult to understand" the Ad-
ministration's continued pleas for
"fiscal responsibility" in the face of
its action on legislation to provide
health care for the nation's retired
workers.
The White House, he declared,
rejected the AFL-CIO-backed For-
and bill which would have provided
health care through social security
taxes on employers and workers,
and substituted instead a proposal
for direct government subsidies to
private insurance companies that
will siphon $600 million a year
from general treasury funds.
Delegates from local unions and
the internationals concerned were
in attendance.
The IUD report noted that
despite wide fluctuations, the in-
dustry has enjoyed good profits
during the postwar period. It
stated that no reason exists for
the industry to expect its work-
ers to subsidize it by accepting
static wage levels.
Prof. Melman charged that the
machine tool industry has "failed
to meet the needs of America and
the West for inexpensive and high-
ly productive machines." Noting
that machine tools are the basis
for industrial progress, Melman
stated that the failure is "inhibit-
ing U.S. productivity."
Outdated Equipment in Use
Because of a lack of economi-
cally produced machines, tool-using
industries have tended to retain
older equipment, he said. In 1959,
he pointed out, "about 60 percent
of the machine tools used in the
United States were 10 years old
and more, with a resulting de-
pressing effect upon the efficiency
of manufacturing industry as a
whole."
Melman, who visited Soviet
machine tool factories last year,
told the delegates that in the
Soviet Union the machine tool
industry has been highly stand-
ardized and mechanized. He
added that this, far more than
any low direct labor costs, will
permit the Soviet to challenge
U.S. superiority in the field.
Melman's report was corrob-
orated by a lengthy study made by
the Industrial Union Dept.'s own
researchers. This study pointed
out among other things that the
U.S. is losing ground in foreign
markets, although exports of ma-
chine tools are still in excess of im-
ports.
The study pointed out that even
during the recession year of 1958,
only one major company had an
actual deficit operation. It found
that from 1946 through 1959, "all
major companies showed a good
increase in net worth.''
Six-Member
Harmony Unit
Meets May 19
Plans for a top-level conference
of labor and management to con-
sider "guidelines'* for industrial
harmony moved forward as plans
were laid for a preliminary explora-
tion meeting in Washington May
19.
Commerce Sec. Frederick H.
Mueller and Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell announced the first ses-
sion of the outside-the-bargaining
table meetings. They said a com-
mittee of six — three from labor and
management — would get together.
The cabinet officers emphasized that
the group would handle future con-
ference details without further par-
ticipation by the government.
Representing organized labor
at the conference — called by
Pres. Eisenhower at the sugges-
tion of AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany — will be Meany and Vice
Presidents Walter P. Reuther and
George M. Harrison*
On the management team will
be Pres. William J. Grede of the
J. I. Case Co., currently struck by
the Auto Workers; L. A. Petersen,
president of Otis Elevator Co.; and
Robert W. Stoddard, president of
Wyman-Gordon Co. The appoint-
ments were in keeping with Eisen-
hower's decision that only firms with
collective bargaining agreements
with AFL-CIO affiliates would be
eligible for representation on the
planning body.
National Association of Manu-
facturers Pres. Rudolph Bannow.
who chose the three industry dele-
09-n-a
gates and who heads the non-union
Bridgeport Machines, Inc., will at-
tend the first planning session only.
In calling the two sides together,
Eisenhower said following a re-
cent White House conference with
Meany that the conference was the
first step toward encouraging "reg-
ular discussions between manage-
ment and labor outside the bargain-
ing table.'' He emphasized the talks
would be held "without government
participation."
Speed Urged in
Civil Rights Drive
Omaha, Neb. — Although sub-
stantial progress has been made in
the area of civil rights in recent
years, the pace is not fast enough,
Don Slaiman, assistant director of
the AFL-C10 % Dept. of Civil Rights,
declared here.
Addressing the second annual in-
stitute on human relations staged by
the Omaha Central Labor Council
at the University of Omaha's con-
ference center, Slaiman told dele-
gates that organized labor feels it
must step up the tempo of its own
efforts to rid its ranks of discrim-
ination, despite the fact that the
AFL-CIO has moved faster in thia
regard than any other group in the
nation.
Presiding over the conference
was Pres. Herman Groom of the
Omaha central body. Cooperating
in this program was Prof. Virgil
Sharpe, assistant dean of the uni-
versity's adult education program. (
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C
Saturday, May 21, 1960
No. 21]
Distressed Area Bill Vetoed;
Rally Hails For and Measure
Workers of U.S. Behind Ike'
In Summit Crisis, Meany Says
Here is the text of a statement issued by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany in support
of Pres. Eisenhower following destruction of the Paris summit conference by Premier
Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union:
OVIET RUSSIA has now demonstrated the
^ bankruptcy of her position on peace.
Khrushchev has destroyed the hopes of the
free world that the tensions of the cold war
could soon be eased.
Clearly Khrushchev sought to create political
division in America by his intemperate and
insulting denunciations of Pres. Eisenhower.
His attack on the President will have the
opposite effect. It will unite America.
The workers of this country stand behind
Pres. Eisenhower. Their confidence in the
honesty of the peaceful intentions of the United
States is matched only by their thorough mis-
trust of the intentions of Soviet Russia.
'Racket' Local Dissolved :
AFL-CIO, Affiliates
Rout Phony 'Union'
By Gene Zack
New York — The AFL-CIO and two affiliated unions, back-
stopped by the New York State Labor Relations Board and the
courts, have led a successful fight to oudaw a "racket" union which
claimed affiliation with the federation.
Michael Mann, director of AFL-CIO Reg. II, spearheaded the
drive against Amalgamated Local f
2379, which had been signing
"sweetheart" contracts in the bowl-
ing alley field to block an organiz-
ing drive of the Building Service
Employes.
Cooperating with the regional
Labor-Management
Conferences Begin
Labor-management talks in
the hope of charting ways to
industrial peace got under
way with a three-hour session
in Washington May 19.
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, speaking for both la-
bor and management repre-
sentatives, said there had been
"an amicable and reasonable
discussion of some of the mat-
ters" referred to the group by
Pres. Eisenhower. The dis-
cussions, he said, covered "at
length proposals for improve-
ments of labor-management
relations."
The conferees will meet
again in about six weeks or
two months, Meany said, t**,
Present for the AFL-CIO,
in addition to Meany, were
Pres. Walter P. Reuther of the
Auto Workers and Pres.
George M. Harrison of the
Railway Clerks.
office were the BSEIU, the Retail,
Wholesale & Dept. Store Union,
and the Committee on Exploita-
tion of the Greater New York
AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.
The latter was, set up two years
ago at the urging of AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany to end ex-
ploitation of workers by "racket"
unions.
The joint drive against the self-
styled local and its president, Jo-
seph Scalza, resulted in issuance by
the New York Supreme Court of
an order permanently restraining
the local from claiming AFL-CIO
affiliation; withdrawal by the SLRB
of its certification, and the subse-
quent dissolution of the local.
Hearings Expose 'Rackets'
During the labor board's hear-
ings into the activities of the local,
officials from the AFL-CIO and its
affiliates testified against Local
2379's activities and its "collusive
arrangements" with management.
Among them were Mann and
RWDSU Intl. Vice Pres. Alex Bail,
who told the board a "charter" is-
sued by a New Jersey RWDSU lo-
cal to Local 2379 had been disa-
vowed by the international and
withdrawn by the New Jersey local.
The "racket" local's status as a
labor organization first was chal-
lenged by BSEIU Local 54, which
{Continued on Page 4)
Rhode Island
A n ti-Sca bBil I
Killed by Veto
Providence, R. I. — Gov. Chris-
topher Del Sesto (R) for the sec-
ond time in recent days has vetoed
an anti-scab bill aimed at banning
the importation of strikebreakers
into this state.
The Rhode Island general as-
sembly is no longer in session, and
the governor's action apparently
kills anti-strikebreaking legisla-
tion this year.
'Disregard of Workers'
Edwin C. Brown, secretary-treas-
urer of the State AFL-CIO, said of
Del Sesto: "I am convinced that his
second veto of a strikebreaking bill
will be a major issue in our cam-
paign to defeat him regarding any
office he may seek."
Brown said the governor's ac-
tion was a "clear indication of
his complete disregard for the
welfare of workers."
About the same time, Del Sesto
also vetoed two other bills which
had gone through the legislature
with the support of the Fire Fight-
ers.
One would have given a salary
increase of $300 annually to all
firemen and policemen in the state.
The legislature acted because the
municipalities were unable to raise
enough additional revenue to fi-
nance the wage boost, and it felt
the state had a measure of respon-
sibility.
The second bill would have
amended the fire fighters' pension
system so that cancer would be con-
sidered an occupational disease.
The two anti-scab bills had been
patterned after the Pennsylvania
anti-scab law and were part of the
(Continued on Page 5)
Meany Hits
'Politics' in
Substitute
New York— More than 20,000
senior citizens attending a mam-
moth rally at Madison Square
Garden heard AFL-CIO Pres
George Meany deliver a blister-
ing attack on the Administration
plan for health care for the aged,
coupled with a charge that the
White House moved only after
the issue "snowballed into emerg-
ency proportions" with strong po-
litical implications.
At the same time Meany accused
Chairman Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.)
of the House Ways & Means Com-
mittee of "surrender" to the Admin-
istration by introducing a "watered-
down" version of the White House
plan.
The midday rally on behalf of
the AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill
filled the Garden nearly to capacity,
with some of the elderly persons
having come 450 miles from Buf-
falo aboard five buses chartered by
the Auto Workers.
Crowd Present Early
At 8:45 a.m. 200 senior citizens
stood outside the arena in a cold,
pelting rain. By 10 a.m. the crowd
was so dense special police had dif-
ficulty getting the doors open.
The hero of the hour at the rally
sponsored by Golden Ring Clubs
of older citizens was Rep. Aime J.
Forand (D-R.I.), sponsor of the bill
to provide medical care for the
aged through the social security sys-
tem, who received a thundering
ovation.
The crowd was in a holiday
mood, giving Meany, former Sen.
(Continued on Page 4)
Backlog
Piles Up
In Congress
By Willard Shelton
A White House veto of the de-
pressed areas bill hit Congress as
the legislature headed into what is
expected to be the last six weeks
of the session, and a major back-
log of other legislation remained
piled up as the conservative
House Rules Committee delayed
action and the threat of additional
vetoes slowed the Democratic
majorities.
An effort may be made to over-
ride Pres. Eisenhower's disapproval
of the depressed areas bill. A two-
thirds majority in each house would
be required to pass the measure
over the veto. The House vote in
favor of the bill was only 201 to
184 and the Senate vote was 45 to
32, both short of a two-thirds
margin.
In the last legislative week of
May, here was the picture:
• A House vote on the long-
stalled federal aid-to-schools bill
appeared assured before the end of
the month. The Senate last year
passed a $1.8 billion bill providing
assistance for construction and
teachers' salaries; the House Educa-
tion Committee this year approved
a $975 million bill for construc-
tion only.
• The House Ways & Means
Committee once again failed to
reach agreement on any program
of health insurance for the aged
under the social security system as
provided in the Forand bill.
Chairman Wilbur Mills CD-
Ark.) of the committee suddenly
(Continued on Page 5)
Committees Slate Vote
On Wage-Hour Revamp
By Dave Perlman
Two congressional committees were scheduled to meet in execu-
tive session May 23 to begin voting on amendments to the wage-hour
law, including the AFL-CIO-backed Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill
to raise the wage floor to $1.25 and extend coverage to 7.6 million
more workers.
A House Labor subcommittee'^
wound up 10 weeks of hearings at
which a score of union spokesmen
called for a major updating of the
wage-hour law, employer groups
including the National Association
of Manufacturers warned of "in-
flation," and Administration spokes-
men, with varying degrees of en-
thusiasm, supported "modest" in-
creases in coverage and amount.
While the six-member subcom-
mittee — reported to be evenly di-
vided between supporters and oppo-
nents of labor-backed improve-
ments — will take up the bill first,
the actual job of writing a bill may
be done by the full committee be-
ginning at its May 26 meeting.
Before the committee, in addi-
tion to proposals for raising the
minimum and extending cover-
age, is a "sleeper" amendment
which would in effect repeal the
Walsh-Healey and Davis-Bacon
Acts.
The amendment, introduced by
Rep. Edgar W. Hiestand (R-
Calif.) provides that no person
could be found in violation of the
Walsh-Healey Act, under which in-
(Continued on Page 9)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
BCTD Names
Committee on
Jurisdiction
Appointment of a six-man com-
mittee of leaders of the AFL-CIO
Building & Construction Trades
Dept., to meet with a similar group
from the Industrial Union Dept. on
jurisdictional disputes has been an-
nounced by BCTD executive coun-
cil.
Appointment of the committee,
as part of a reactivation of a IUD-
BCTD joint effort to work out rules
to resolve jurisdictional problems,
was made at the suggestion of
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Named to represent the BCTD
were the department's president,
C. J. (Neil) Haggerty; Pres. Mau-
rice A. Hutcheson of the Carpen-
ters; Pres. L. M. Raftery of the
Painters; Pres. Gordon M. Freeman
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electric-
al Workers; Pres. Peter T. Schoe-
mann of the Plumbers & Pipe
Fitters: and Pres. John H. Lyons
of the Iron Workers.
The naming of only principal
officers of international unions to
serve on the committee was in
accordance with a recommenda-
tion by Meany, who pointed out
to both departments that the
naming of deputies would be a
waste of time.
Earlier, the IUD executive board
. named its six-man committee.
Representing the IUD will be the
department's president, Walter P.
Reuther, who is also president of
the Auto Workers; Pres. James B.
Carey of the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers; Pres. David J.
McDonald of the Steelworkers;
Pres. Paul Phillips of the Paper-
. makers & Paperworkers; Pres. O. A.
Knight of the Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers; and IUD Organ-
izational Dir. Nicholas Zonarich.
New Jersey
Unity Blocked
By Stalemate
Newark, N. J. — Efforts to create
a united labor movement represent-
ing New Jersey's nearly half-a-
m ill ion trade unionists collapsed as
the two state labor bodies failed to
reach agreement on merger terms.
Informed of the stalemate, AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany post-
poned indefinitely the harmony con-
vention scheduled to open in the
National Guard Armory here on
May 19.
Meany's decision was announced
jointly by his two assistants, Peter
M. McGavin and R. J. Thomas,
who had been appointed to work
with the State Federation of Labor
and Industrial Union Council in
the creation of a united labor move-
ment.
In a message to the 2,000
AFL and 1,000 IUC delegates
who held separate meetings in
place of the unity session, Meariy
declared he was acting "to pro-
tect the best interests of the AFL-
CIO and its affiliates, their sub-
ordinate bodies and members in
New Jersey."
At the same time, the AFL-CIO
president said he was postponing
' until my further order and direc-
tion'' the effective dates for the re-
vocation of the charters of the two
state bodies.
McGavin and Thomas issued a
joint statement that efforts to ac-
complish "an honorable merger . .
have not proven successful." They
added that it was "tragic" that the
state bodies had been unable to
agree to "reasonable terms for ac
complishing unity."
Since the national merger of the
AFL and CIO in December 1955,
a total of 48 state bodies have
achieved merger. The 49th — Penn-
sylvania — is scheduled to unite in
June.
LABORERS' NEW HEADQUARTERS building was formally dedi-
cated in Washington, D. C, before government and union officials
and local delegates from throughout the U.S. and Canada. Here a
speaker pays tribute to the union's progress.
Union Plans Appeal
In Bethlehem Case
New York — A National Labor Relations Board trial examiner has
recommended dismissal of a sweeping bad-faith bargaining complaint
against Bethlehem Steel Co.'s Shipbuilding Div. in connection with
a four-month-old strike of 17,000 members of the Shipbuilders.
Examiner Thomas A. Ricci held that the company did not violate
the law by what NLRB charges'^
called a "take-it-or-leave-it" atti-
tude at the bargaining table since
last July, or by unilateral imposi-
tion of work-rule changes in August
Union Is 450,000 Strong:
Laborers Dedicate
New Headquarters
The new headquarters building of the Laborers', 57 years old and
450,000-members strong, was dedicated May 14 in Washington,
D. C.
In a speech at the dedication ceremonies, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany reaffirmed labor's faith that America's strength rests in a
trade union movement "that repre-f
sents the human being rather than
in the faceless corporations that
1959 affecting seniority rights,
grievance procedures and shift dif-
ferentials.
Instead, he held that Bethlehem
was guilty of only a "limited unfair
iabor practice" at its eight East
Coast shipyards by insisting on one
minor contract provision "to the
point of bargaining impasse.*'
IUMSWA Pres. John J. Gro-
gan announced immediate plans
to appeal to the full labor board
the examiner's proposed dismissal
of the main charge. The ruling
in this instance, he said, "ignored
all legal precedent.* 9
At the same time, Grogan de-
clared that Ricci's report pointed
squarely to Bethlehem's "outra-
geous refusal" to bargain in good
faith, and expressed satisfaction that
the examiner had taken note of this
refusal in at least one instance.
Ricci's recommendation that the
basic charge be thrown out came
despite rulings by both federal and
state courts that the company had
consistently failed to bargain in
good faith.
Court Actions
In April, U.S. District Judge
George C. Sweeney issued an in-
junction against the company in
Boston, ordering it to bargain in
good faith. A month earlier, the
Massachusetts Superior Court re-
fused to bar mass picketing by
striking IUMSWA members, de-
claring that the company's failure
to bargain in good faith denied
Bethlehem recourse to the court
under the state's labor injunction
law.
In a lengthy intermediate report,
Ricci pointed out that two weeks
after the old pact expired — during
a period when the union continued
working without a contract while it
sought to negotiate a settlement —
the company "put into effect at all
shipyards those changes in its meth-
od of operations which it had pro-
posed" at the bargaining table.
"These," the NLRB examiners
report said, "were largely diversi-
fied changes in the seniority rules,
work assignments, division of work
within categories, and special em-
ploye benefits, such as bonus, pre-
mium or overtime" pay.
He conceded that "loss of earn-
ings • • • would be suffered by
individual workmen* 9 under the
"curtailment of special assign-
ment premiums • • . discontinu-
ance of the escalator clause . . .
and changes in the method for
dividing work."
Ricci ruled, however, that none
of these actions constituted "anti-
union bias" on the part of the com-
pany, but instead was a move "to
exert a pressure upon the union to
accept the company's demands and
come to terms on that basis."
'Limited' Unfairness
The "limited unfair labor prac-
tice" involved in the company's
position, he said, covered manage-
ment insistence that the new con-
tract require the signatures of
individual workers on grievances
before they can be processed.
The trial examiner recommended
that Bethlehem cease "insisting to
impasse" upon this contract clause,
and that the company "upon re-
quest" bargain collectively with the
Shipbuilders on wages, hours and
other conditions of employment.
represent material wealth."
Laborers' Pres. Joseph V. Mores-
chi, Sec.-Treas. Peter Fosco and
Under Sec. of Labor James T.
O'Connell were other speakers at
ceremonies attended by several hun-
dred local union delegates and
guests.
Meany observed that the Labor-
ers in early days were made up of
immigrant groups — the union's
journal at the time was published
in English, Italian and German.
"America has always been the
haven of the oppressed," the fed-
eration president declared, ". • •
for political reasons, religious
reasons and for reasons of eco-
nomic oppression, and let us hope
it will always remain a haven for
the oppressed."
He said the union's new head-
quarters building stands as a sym-
bol of its achievements in bringing
a better life to its members, and
said he hoped it would be a kind
of "half-way house."
White House Message
Moreschi, after whom the eight-
story structure was named, said in
brief dedicatory remarks that the
union believes that "in order to
have a strong America we need a
strong labor movement." Moreschi
has headed the union since 1926.
O'Connell said the granite of the
new building symbolically reflects
"the great strengths of the many
national strains" which make up the
Laborers and the American labor
movement.
Vincent F. Morreale, the union's
general counsel, read a congratu-
latory message from the White
House and presented a gold-plated
trowel to Fosco for the cornerstone
laying.
Fosco read a list of the contents
of a box placed inside the corner-
stone — a history of the union, the
1951 convention proceedings au-
thorizing the new building, copies
of -the union's charters and other
historical documents.
As Meany, Moreschi, O'Con-
nell, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas, Wil-
liam F. Schnitzler and other
guests looked on, Fosco spread
the mortar and set the stone. The
job was completed by Fred Pe-
terson, stone foreman and mem-
ber of Bricklayers' Stone & Mar-
ble Masons Local 2; William
Tymus, labor foreman, and H.
B. Buskey, both members of La-
borers Local 74.
The Laborers' headquarters
building was designed in modified
federal-style architecture by Eggers
and Higgins of New York. It is
faced with Indiana limestone, with
bronze spandrels and window
frames.
An 18-foot mural by Louis Ross
in the lobby is dedicated to "la-
borers through history" and depicts
the activity of laborers from the
time of the pyramids to the present
The spirit of the laborer is pro-
vided by this quotation from Wil-
liam Shakespeare's "As You Like
It," mounted in metal in the vesti-
bule :
"I am a true laborer: I earn that
I eat, get that I wear, owe no man
hate, envy no man's happiness, glad
of other men's good."
Actors Equity Charges
Producers Plan Lockout
New York — Actors* Equity Pres. Ralph Bellamy has accused
Broadway producers of "lockout tactics" and of threatening to black
out theater marquees when the union's current contract expires May
31.
Bellamy's charge that the major producers were planning to ring
the curtain down on all Broadway^
shows came as the League of New
York Theaters announced suspen-
sion of all activity on future pro-
ductions until a contract is signed.
The Equity president said ne-
gotiations, which opened in mid-
April, have made no progress
because of management's "lack
of good faith" at the bargaining
table.
The union is asking a new three-
year pact containing the first pen-
sion and health and welfare fund
in the legitimate theater, raising of
Half way Action on Rights
'Not Enough, 9 Meany Says
The Supreme Court's historic decision on public school
desegregation has been carried out with much less than the
"deliberate speed" it ordered, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
said May 17 on the sixth anniversary of the high court's action.
"Much more must be done to translate principle into reality,"
he said, "not only in the schools but in other aspects of civil
rights. The task would be nearer completion if Congress had
enacted a broad and effective civil rights law this year, instead
of a very narrow measure of dubious value.
"Halfway and half-hearted action is not enough. We in the
AFL-CIO pledge again that we will press the next Congress
for legislation that will make our constitution meaningful to
every citizen; we will attack bigotry and discrimination on all
fronts for as long as they continue to betray the democratic
faith."
minimum salaries and improvement
of "substandard" working condi-
tions. On the latter point, the union
has issued a survey pointing to
"unsafe and unsanitary" conditions
both in Broadway theaters and the-
aters across the country where ac-
tors make road-show appearances.
Theater owners countered with a
41 -point demand calling for a five-
year agreement. Management de-
manded reduction in rehearsal time;
sharp limitations on outside appear-
ances except for unpaid publicity
appearances on behalf of the show;
and elimination of union security
provisions in the old pact.
In the wage area, Equity asked
that minim urns for actors and
chorus be raised from the present
$103.50 a week to $120 in New
York, and from $135 to $160 on
the road. For extras, the union
asked a hike from the current
$52 weekly to $60. Comparable
raises also were asked for stage
managers and their assistants.
In its appeal for pension and
welfare benefits, the union noted
that "actors' incomes are notorious-
ly erratic," and that taxes take
"disproportionate bites in the good
years" making the accumulation of
substantial savings difficult.
The union's safety and sanitary
demands included adequate lighting
backstage, proper ventilation in
dressing rooms, showers and hot
and cold running water.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
Page Three
Machinists to Lead Campaign;
Labor Opens Major Drive
To Organize U.S. Gypsum
A major new campaign to organize 31 unorganized plants of the bitterly anti-union United States
Gypsum Co. has been launched with eight AFL-CIO unions agreeing to concentrate campaign respon
sibility in the Machinists.
The campaign to bring the benefits of union contracts to 9,500 Gypsum workers started with z
leaflet distribution at 26 company locations in the U.S. and 5 in Canada. It will be carried to a con-
clusion by the IAM staff with the'^
cooperation of the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Organization and its regional
directors and organizers.
Six petitions for elections at
Gypsum locations already have
been filed with the National Labor
Relations Board, and others will be
filed shortly, machinists Vice Pres.
George Watkins reported to IAM
Pres. A. J. Hayes.
Elections covering 700 employes
have been asked for two plants in
Jacksonville, Fla., and one each in
Falls Village, Conn.; Gerlach, Nev.;
Greenfield, Miss.; Corsicana, Tex.,
and New Braunfels, Tex. At Ger-
lach, the Machinists intervened
after the Teamsters filed a petition
The history-making agreement
by the eight unions that the
Machinists should take leader-
ship in the Gypsum drive was
brought about by what the unions
involved have called "the chal-
lenge of Sewell A very ism."
Avery is a Gypsum director and
a long-time foe of unions. A re
port prepared for the AFL-CIO
Executive Council said "the spirit
of Sewell Avery permeates this
company's attitude."
Avery as president of Mont
NLRB Orders Cross Co.
To Rehire All Strikers
Fraser, Mich. — The Cross Co., blamed by the National Labor
Relations Board for provoking a strike by the Auto Workers in
August 1959 has announced defiance of an NLRB order to rehire
strikers and, if necessary, fire the strikebreakers who took their jobs.
The firm makes automation equipment.
The labor board, going beyond-f
the recommendation of a trial
examiner, ruled that the "basic
cause of the strike" was the com-
pany's "refusal to bargain" with the
union.
As "unfair-labor-practice strik-
ers," the UAW members are en-
titled to their jobs back with full
seniority, the NLRB said, and if
they aren't rehired within five
days after application they are
entitled to pay from that date
until they are called to work.
Some 100 of the union members,
those who were available for em-
ployment, promptly applied for
their jobs in the face of a company
announcement that management
will carry its fight against the ruling
to the courts.
George Merrelli, co-director of
UAW Region 1, declared: "The
strike can be settled in a matter of
hours once the company gets
around to honest bargaining. The
(NLRB) order is truly heartwarming
to the workers."
A statement from the Cross com-
pany "welcomed" the NLRB ruling
as an opportunity to carry its fight
with the union "into the federal
courts as quickly as possible." The
company said it "admitted frankly"
that it had "refused to bargain"
with the UAW.
The strike, marked in its early
days by clashes between pickets
and strikebreakers, began after
the Cross management had re-
fused to accept an NLRB rejec-
tion of a company appeal from
two representation elections. The
second vote, in Nov. 1958, repre-
sented a UAW victory in a con-
sent decertification election.
Cross management, claiming that
the UAW had "misled" the workers
in a handbill, refused to meet with
the union after the labor board re-
jected the company's objections.
In a series of legal skirmishes,
the company lost a federal appel
late court bid to have the NLRB
election set aside but was able to
obtain from a state court an injunc-
tion against mass picketing.
NLRB Trial Examiner James A.
Shaw on Feb. 5 found the company
guilty of refusal to bargain but rec-
ommended only that the firm be re-
quired to negotiate with the union
and cease from discouraging union
membership.
The labor board, acting
through a three-member panel of
Philip Ray Rodgers, Stephan S.
Bean and John H. Fanning,
branded the dispute an "unfair
labor practice strike" and as-
serted the right of the strikers to
their jobs, even if it would re-
quire the company to lay off the
strikebreakers.
NLRB Gives First Ruling
On L-G Boycott Clause
Laborers' Local 1140 of Omaha
has been hit by the first National
Labor Relations Board decision ap-
plying the expanded secondary boy-
cott bans of the Landrum-Grifnn
Act.
The 4-0 decision ruled that the
union violated the new amendments
to the Taft-Hartley Act by "coerc-
ing and restraining" a general con-
tractor to cease doing business with
a subcontractor and also to force
the latter into recognizing the union
without certification.
In announcing the ruling, the
board said that pressure on sec-
ondary employers had been law-
ful before the Landrum-Griffin
Act, the original boycott ban be-
ing held to apply only to pressure
exerted on employes.
The case involved Local 1140
and the Gilmore Construction Co.,
general contractor on a project at
Omaha's South High School. Gil-
more had eight subcontractors, one
of whom was the Simpson Co.
On last Nov. 20, Simpson
hired several non-union "day labor-
ers" for work on the otherwise
all-union project.
The board said the stipulated
facts were that the non-union work-
ers and a union employe of Gil-
more's stopped work at the request
of Local 1140's business agent and
a picket line was set up.
The board said that, after Simp-
son agreed to pay union scale but
refused to sign a contract, the union
continued picketing; refused an of-
fer by Gilmore to supply union
laborers; and sought to have a
Gilmore official who also was an
officer of Associated General Con-
tractors put Simpson on the AGC
blacklist. A temporary restraining
court order ended the picketing.
gomery Ward & Co. during World
War II carried defiance of unions
to such a degree that Pres. Roose-
velt ordered his plant seized. Army
men had to carry him forcibly from
his Chicago office.
Gypsum has 61 plants with
12,500 employes. Only 17 plants
are organized, and most of the
unions involved report manage-
ment harassment with every
known legal and psychological
device.
The eight-union agreement for
the new Gypsum campaign has the
support of the AFL-CIO Executive
Council, and a report prepared for
the council had this to say about
the company:
"Nothing short of a major or-
ganizing campaign could solve the
bargaining problems of individual
unions in the plants.
'Notorious' Policy
"The spirit of Sewell Avery per-
meates this company's attitude.
Avery is neither chairman of the
board or company president, but his
spirit and influence run deep in
USG policy.
"A bevy of shrewd lawyers is
hired to keep unions continually
involved in litigation. The com-
pany is notorious for its policy
of breaking unions at any cost.
Where legal tactics cannot be ap-
plied, USG conducts a polished
but vile game of psychological
warfare."
Unions involved in the agreement
with the Machinists represent about
3,000 company workers. They are
the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Work-
ers; a Canadian Labor Congress
federal union; Cement Workers;
Papermakers & Paperworkers;
Chemical Workers; Steelworkers;
Pulp, Sulphite Workers. Last year
the Machinists won bargaining
rights at the Staten Island, N. Y.,
plant.
USG, with general offices in
Chicago, had 1958 sales of $265
million and operating profit of al-
most $76 million.
It owns quarries, mines, paper
mills and plants making metal, lime,
asphalt and asbestos cement prod-
ucts; insulation lath, wallboard,
sheathing and hardboard. It owns
five ocean-going freighters.
IN PORTLAND PARADE members of eight newspaper unions, on
strike for seven months against two publishers, march past the Jour-
nal plant to remind the public they still are fighting for survival
against union-busting and imported professional strikebreakers.
Oregon Unions Rally Aid
For Newspaper Strikers
Portland, Ore. — A pledge of support from unions all over Oregon
has put new heart into 400 newspaper workers on strike since Nov.
10 against two Portland dailies.
The pledge was made by delegates from AFL-CIO and unaffil-
iated unions at a statewide union rally here. Conference Co-chair-
men James T. Marr and Ed Whelari^
Stone Workers
Rout Mine-Mill
Carlsbad, N. Mex. — The
AFL-CIO Stone & Allied
Workers smashed the Mine,
Mill & Smelter Workers by
a 277 to 160 vote in a Na-
tional Labor Relations Board
election at the Intl. Mineral
and Chemical Corp. here.
The victory eliminated
Mine-Mill from this area,
which produces 90 percent of
the nation's potash, capping
a multi-union drive launched
eight years ago. Mine-Mill
was expelled from the former
CIO on grounds of Commu-
nist domination.
At the same time, a half-
dozen companies in the potash
basin agreed to joint negotia-
tions with a four-union group
chaired by the AFL-CIO In-
dustrial Union Dept. The un-
ions, representing some 4,000
workers, are the Stone & Al-
lied Workers, Machinists,
Boilermakers and Operating
Engineers.
called the rally the first manifesta-
tion in years of statewide labor
solidarity. Marr is executive secre-
tary of the state AFL-CIO and
Whelan secretary-treasurer of the
Multnomah County AFL-CIO,
Portland.
In two days of meetings, dele-
gates heard reports on the strike,
now in its seventh month. They
agreed to:
• Broaden and intensify the
campaign to stop buying, reading
and advertising in the two struck
papers, the Portland Journal and
the Oregonian.
• Contribute money regularly
for the support of the strikers and
their families.
• Support the Portland Report-
er, strike newspaper, and its ad-
vertisers.
• Endorse a U.S. Senate resolu-
tion by Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.)
for an investigation into anti-union
activities of newspaper publishers.
Morse also has suggested a fact-
finding panel to be headed by Dr.
George Taylor of the University of
Pennsylvania, who was chairman of
a Taft-Hartley fact-finding unit in
the steel strike.
Delegates agreed to maintain
statewide machinery for defense
against anti-union programs, in-
cluding an expected attempt at a
compulsory open-shop law. They
agreed to support a proposed
state law to forbid the importing
of professional strikebreakers.
The two struck newspapers have
been operating with the help of out-
of-state as well as local strike-
breakers. The AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council, at its spring meeting,
called for federal and state laws
outlawing the recruiting and em-
ployment of such outsiders to break
strikes.
Some delegates remote from
Portland saw copies of the Port-
land Reporter for the first time.
They asked that it be circulated in
their areas to help with the drive
for cancellation of Journal and
Oregonian subscriptions.
A resolution adopted by the
conference recommended that the
Reporter be made a daily paper,
and be distributed statewide.
Lacking a wire service and syn-
dicated features, the Reporter is
centering its attention on the
Portland area.
The paper now publishes 125,-
000 copies twice a week. Two re-
cent issues have been running 56
pages.
The struck newspapers have filed
new charges with the NLRB ac-
cusing four unions of supporting
an alleged illegal strike of the
Stereotypers; one also is accused of
seeking to cover a union foreman
in its contract. All the unions
have denied breaking the law. An
earlier charge that the Stereotypers
refused to bargain in good faith
will be heard by the labor board
June 1.
The strikers have been telling
their side of the story on a Sun-
day television program. On two
recent programs, a panel of
unionists answered questions
phoned in by viewers. Publishers
of the struck dailies had refused
a union invitation to take part
in the panel discussion.
Meanwhile Levi S. McDonald,
Stereotypers' Local 48, has an-
nounced that he will appeal his
conviction of a charge of dynamit-
ing trucks used to haul the struck
newspapers. Circuit Judge Alan F.
Davis sentenced him to serve 10
years in the state penitentiary and
pay a $500 fine.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
PETITIONS FROM 160,000 New Yorkers in support of Forand health care bill are presented to Rep.
Eugene J. Keogh (D-N. Y.), left, and Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.), right, the bill's sponsor, on behalf
of New York City AFL-CIO. Petitions were brought to Washington by three busloads of retired work-
ers, members of Pensioners Society of N. Y. Hotel Trades Council. Pictured are Mary Fox, E. P. Gibbs
and Paul Englander.
New Yorkers
Petition for
Forand Bill
Three busloads of retired hotel
workers served as spokesmen for
160,000 fellow New Yorkers who
petitioned Congress to pass the For-
and health care bill.
The petitions, sponsored by the
New York City AFL-CIO, were
collected in a whirlwind campaign
which included sidewalk booths and
house-to-house canvassing.
On hand to present the stacks of
petitions at a ceremony in the House
Ways & Means committee room
were members of the city's con-
gressional delegation, including
Rep. Eugene J. Keogh (D), a com-
mittee member. Also present was
the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Aime
J. Forand (D-R. I.), who was greet-
ed with an ovation by the 100
members of the Pensioners Society
of the N. Y. Hotel Trades Council,
ranging in age from 65 to 80.
Sec-Treas. Morris Iushewitz of
the City AFL-CIO formally turned
the petitions over to the committee
as they were brought in by the hotel
pensioners who had carried them
from New York.
Walter Sheerin, director of the
Pensioners Society, and Julia Al-
gase, legislative spokesman for the
Hotel Trades Council, told the as-
sembled congressmen that the Ad-
ministration health care program
would require retired workers to
spend two or three months total in-
come on an illness before qualify-
ing for benefits.
Clothing Workers
Aid Addams Fund
Philadelphia — The Jane Addams
centennial campaign, set up to hon-
or the memory of the pioneer social
worker and first woman winner of
the Nobel peace award, has re-
ceived gifts of $1,000 from the
Clothing Workers and $2,000 from
the Sidney Hillman Foundation,
which seeks to perpetuate the ideals
of the union's founding president.
The centennial observance was
initiated by the Women's Intl.
League for Peace & Freedom, of
which Miss Addams was a founder,
and was given unanimous approval
by the last AFL-CIO convention.
The campaign goal is $200,000
which would be used, among other
things, to support and publicize in-
ternational peace activities.
Jacob S. Potofsky, successor to
Hillman as ACWA president, asked
that the foundation's gift be used
to reprint Miss Addams' book,
Peace and Bread in Time of War,
an account of her work in Europe
after World War I.
7-Year Fight by UAW
Wins Back Pay for 30
Wooster, O. — A seven-year legal battle by the Auto Workers has
produced an order by the National Labor Relations Board that Borg-
Warner Corp. must make back-wage payments of $18,678 to 30
union members in its plant here.
The 30 are the only survivors of a struggle that started when the
UAW won a bargaining election'^
Dec. 11, 1952. They won their'
rights after a strike, a return to
work, several firings, and hearings
before the labor board, the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals and the
U.S. Supreme Court.
The latter court upheld the
right of the international union
to be a party to the contract. It
turned down a company claim
that non-union workers have a
right to vote on union-negotiated
contracts.
The Court of Appeals previously
had referred to the NLRB the ques-
tion of reinstatement for fired
strikers, and back pay for lost time.
The latest NLRB ruling supports
the union's original position com-
pletely, said UAW Reg. Dir. Pat-
rick J. O'Malley, Cleveland. The
total money settlement would have
been much larger, O'Malley said,
except that many workers left Borg-
Warner for other jobs early in the
dispute.
An NLRB officer said the Su-
preme Court decision in the case
has set a legal precedent for solving
similar issues in contract disputes.
After UAW organised the plant,
management made demands that
stalemated negotiations. The de-
mands were, UAW said, that all
plant employes be permitted in a
secret ballot vote to decide whether
to reopen the contract or to strike;
and that UAW Local 1239 be sole
signatory to the contract.
That would have eliminated the
international union from the con-
tract. UAW said Borg-Warner had
made no such demand at any of its
30 other plants under UAW con-
tract. The union struck the Woo-
ster plant in March 1953, and filed
charges Apr. 7, 1953.
In May of that year, O'Malley
advised the strikers to return to
work until the labor board and
the courts had ruled. After an
NLRB hearing, an examiner
ruled in favor of UAW on all
counts. Labor board members
modified the examiner's ruling by
denying reinstatement and back
pay to fired workers.
When Borg-Warner failed to
comply with the NLRB directive,
the case was carried to the appellate
court, then to the top court. Borg-
Warner has notified the NLRB re-
gional office that checks for back
pay will be mailed within 30 days.
Union and management signed
a contract last March providing for
a modified union shop, a 6-cent
annual improvement factor, sup-
plemental unemployment benefits,
cost of living increases, shift pre-
miums, health insurance, paid va-
cations, and seniority provisions.
AFL-CIO and Affiliates
Break Up Phony Union
(Continued from Page 1)
sought to organize employes at
a Queens bowling alley and dis-
covered it was stymied by a five-
year "collective bargaining agree-
ment" between the employer and
Local 2379.
The board noted that the so-
called union had been formed
primarily by businessmen and
employers, that its operating
funds were obtained from cer-
tain employers who also consti-
tuted the executive board, that
no employes participated in its
formation, and that the "con-
tract" with the bowling alley gave
employes no added wage or
fringe gains.
Mann hailed the SLRB's decision
in withdrawing certification of Lo-
cal 2379 as "paving the way" for
BSEIU organizing among the 15,-
000 workers in the bowling alley
field in this area.
The New York Times editorially
lauded the AFL-CIO and its affili-
ates for the role they played in
fighting the "racket" local, declaring
it was "an important demonstration
of how legitimate unions can bring
about the ouster of those who don't
genuinely represent the workers."
SLRB Chairman Jay Kramer also
hailed labors coordinated drive to
bring about the "extinction" of Lo-
cal 2379. Kramer added that vic-
tory over the self-styled union "is
expected to play a significant part
in the continuing attempt by the
AFL-CIO to combat illegal activi-
ties in the labor relations field."
Meany Blasts 'Political 9 Substitute:
20,000 at N.Y. Rally
Demand Forand Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
Herbert H. Lehman (D-N. Y.)
and Mayor Robert F. Wagner
(D) — whose father sponsored the
social security bill a quarter-cen-
tury ago— a tumultuous recep-
tion.
Lehman called passage of the
Forand bill a "must" and said the
issue "cannot be dodged or ducked
any longer." He lashed the Ameri-
can Medical Association for its op-
position to the bill and declared the
medical lobby "has just about for-
feited its moral right to be listened
to" on the issue.
Wagner gave his all-out support
to the Forand bill, declaring there
is "no sense" to the suggestion that
a prosperous nation like the U.S.
"cannot arrange for the retirement
of our workers at a reasonable age
and provide them with the means
for medical care."
Also among the speakers was
Frances Perkins, secretary of labor
under the late Pres. Franklin D,
Roosevelt and strong champion of
social security and labor-protection
programs. Miss Perkins received
an ovation.
Forand Raps Opposition
Forand disclosed his office has
"definite proof" that the health care
issue had been turned into a "po-
litical football." He said he had
copies of letters sent by some doc-
tors to others in the medical pro-
fession urging campaign contribu-
tions to the Republicans "because
they're fighting the Forand bill."
Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.),
the only one of several GOP legis-
lators who accepted an invitation
to appear, was booed when he re-
ferred to his own alternative for
health care without the social se-
curity principle. As the crowd made
it plain it favored the Forand bill,
Javits declared: "I know how you
feel. I knew it before I came. But
I came anyway." He received a
large round of applause when he
concluded his remarks.
The rally— keyed to the 25th
anniversary of the signing into
law of the Social Security Act by
Pres. Roosevelt — heard Meany
attack the White House proposal
as "unworkable" and designed
solely for "political purposes."
Despite this, he said, the Admin-
istration plan "represents a tre-
mendous victory for our cause."
The White House, he said, has
finally "abandoned its posture of
detached indifference and admitted
publicly for the first time that the
government has a clear and direct
responsibility" in this field.
"We have won the first round —
a victory for the basic principle of
government responsibility," Meany
told the huge crowd, which inter-
rupted his speech 27 times with
applause and cheers.
Thousands of pamphlets on
health care legislation were dis-
tributed. Indicative of the melting-
pot character of the rally, they were
printed in six languages — Greek,
Spanish, Chinese, Yiddish, Italian
and English.
The Administration plan — sub-
jected to harsh criticism by all of
the speakers except Javits — was de-
scribed by Meany as one which
promises "the American people the
moon without providing any way
of getting there."
Meany was equally critical of
the proposal Mills advanced in
committee on the eve of the rally.
The AFL-CIO president called it
a "watered-down" version of the
White House plan, adding that
the proposal "is not in accord
with the kind of action called
for" by House Speaker Sam Ray-
burn (D-Tex.) and Senate Ma-
jority Leader Lyndon B. John-
son (D-Tex.)
The AFL-CIO official declared
that "only through social security
can we get full medical insurance
coverage for all retired citizens over
65. Only by such universal cover-
age can we spread the risk and keep
costs down."
Answering AMA charges that the
bill would be "compulsory," Meany
said the only compulsory feature
would be an increase of one-quarter
of 1 percent each in social security
taxes on employers and employes.
"This is compulsory in the same
sense that all taxes are," he said.
"For that matter, school attend-
ance is compulsory, but no one con-
siders it un-American."
He added:
"All this boils down to the sim-
ple but hard fact that when one
grows old, his income shrinks,
his need for health care expands
and existing forms of health in-
surance no longer meet his re-
quirements.
"This is the problem that afflicts
the older citizens of our country.
This is the needless wrong that we
are determined to right.
"We are determined to do it the
same way we wiped out the threat
of the poorhouse — through, social
security."
One of the rally's highlights wai
the presentation of a pageant —
"Each Age Is a Dream" — written
by Hyman H. Bookbinder and Lee
Bamberger, both of the AFL-CIO
headquarters staff. It dealt with (
Roosevelt and the Social Security i
Act of 1935.
Tm Studying It'
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
Page five
Depressed Area Bill Vetoed:
Bottleneck Slows
Legislative Goals
(Continued from Page 1)
announced support of the Eisen-
hower Administration's principle
of benefits financed by grants
from government treasuries out-
side the social security system,
but with benefits sharply scaled
down from those envisioned in
the Administration substitute for
the Forand bill. His proposal was
promptly denounced by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany.
• A bill to legalize job site
picketing of multi-employer con-
struction operations by building
trades unions — the "situs picketing"
bill — remained stalled in the House
Rules Committee. The measure has
been approved by the Labor Com-
mittee but drastic action may be
needed to force it to the floor.
• A House Appropriations
subcommittee headed by Rep. Otto
E. Passman (D-La.) threatened
severe slashes, as much as $1.5 bil-
lion, from the $4 billion authorized
for the mutual security program.
A letter from Meany to all mem-
bers of the House warned that such
an attack on funds for mutual se-
House Blocks
'Giveaway' in
San Luis Bill
The long fight by organized la-
bor, both in California and nation-
ally, to block a federal giveaway
and preserve a democratic reclama-
tion policy was rewarded as the
House voted by 214 to 181 to apply
the 160-acre limitation to the San
Luis, Calif., irrigation project.
The bill now goes to conference
to resolve minor differences with a
Senate-passed measure which also
contains the 160-acre limitation.
In a recent letter to House mem-
bers, AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller urged elimination
of the provision in the bill which
would have exempted state-served
areas from the 160-acre limit, there-
by benefiting large corporations
holding a substantial portion of the
land in the San Luis area.
The House bill was passed by
voice vote after the exemption was
knocked out and after adoption, by
the 214-181 vote, of an' amendment
by Rep. Al Ullman (D-Calif.) to
apply the 160-acre limit to the
state-served areas.
The project is designed to irrigate
480,000 acres of rich land on the
west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
The federal government can pro-
ceed alone if agreement is not
reached by Jan. 1, 1962.
curity would endanger the program.
• House and Senate committees
were scheduled to begin work May
23 to May 26 on minimum wage
bills, and Senate approval of a bill
to raise the minimum from the
present level of $1 an hour and to
expand coverage was considered
likely. House opponents are ex
pected to seek to delay action until
• A pay increase for govern
ment workers hung uncertainly,
with a House committee having
approved an average increase of
9 percent and the Senate commit
tee still considering various propo-
sals to benefit postal and civil
service employes in the face of
Eisenhower Administration hos-
tility.
On the depressed areas bill,
Eisenhower's veto message de-
nounced the measure as having "de
parted from standards" he was will-
ing to accept. The bill would have
provided $251 million in loans and
grants for areas of chronic heavy
unemployment, including both
urban and rural areas. Eisenhow-
er's own proposal was limited to
$53 million in loans.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
had urged Eisenhower to sign the
bill, citing "persistent joblessness"
and "persistent economic distress
and high levels of unemploy-
ment" reported by the Labor
Dept. "in 33 major and 109
smaller industrial communities."
The President vetoed a compar-
able bill in 1958 just before the
congressional elections.
The problem of advancing legis-
lation as Congress neared adjourn-
ment was pointed up by maneuvers
involving the school aid bill.
Two school bills approved by the
House Education Committee have
been held in the Rules Committee,
with Chairman Howard W. Smith
(D-Va.), Rep. William M. Colmer
(D-Miss.) and four Republicans
preventing their clearance.
Faced with an ultimatum
threatening a bypass of the Rules
Committee, Smith scheduled a
hearing on a $975 million bill for
school construction only spon-
sored by Rep. Frank Thompson,
Jr., (D-N. J.).
If the bill should not be cleared,
leaders promised it would be forced
to the floor by so-called "calendar
Wednesday" procedure.
Under calendar Wednesday rules,
any bill may be called up by the
committee that approved it origin-
ally, but opponents may resort to
filibuster and delaying tactics. Ac-
tion except for final passage must
be completed in a single day or the
bill is dropped.
Union Fights Airlines
Suit on Bomb Search
Chicago — The Air Lines Employes has pledged a showdown fight
against a $200,000 damage suit filed against the union as a result
of a bomb scare involving a passenger airplane. The union is a unit
of the Air Line Pilots.
Victor J. Herbert, union president, said that the suit, filed in
Miami, Fla., state court by National'^
Airlines, followed a dispute at Intl.
Airport, Idlewild, New York, in
which eight union workers were dis-
charged for alleged "refusal to
search baggage on a plane pur-
ported to have a bomb aboard."
The eight employes were shortly
reinstated, Herbert said, and there
were no further discharges in spite
of a threat that others would be
fired "if they also refused to search
the baggage."
Sharply denying that the union
had anything to do with the dispute
at the time of the firings, Herbert
rejected the National Airlines
charge that a "violation of the
existing employment agreement"
was involved.
"Ground station employes are
the ones who must bear the brunt of
dangers of searching for a bomb.
These employes, on threat of dis-
charge, are forced to conduct these
searches."
"In most instances," Herbert con-
cluded, "their insurance coverage is
invalidated while they are forced
to perform a hazardous job for
which they haven't the slightest
training."
CONTRACT PROVIDING wage, health, vacation and pension benefits for members of the Commu-
nications Workers employed at Northwestern Bell Telephone Co. is formally signed by union and
management negotiators. Seated, left to right, are O. W. Selindh and M. L. McLellan, both company
executives, and CWA Dist. Dir. D. K. Gordon and Asst. Dir. E. J. Follis. Standing are: L. C. Blanc,
J. S. Tighe and F. F. Wright, management negotiators, and Beverly McCarthy, F. A. Marsh, J. J. Klauer
and Agnes Granger, members of the CWA negotiating committee.
Labor Rights
Group Meets
In Midwest
Chicago — The newly-organized
AFL-CIO Midwestern Advisory
Committee on Civil Rights held its
first meeting here May 16-17.
Following a first-day organiza-
tional session, the group marked the
sixth anniversary of the Supreme
Court decision outlawing public
school segregation. Luncheon
speakers were Milton P. Webster,
first vice president of the Sleeping
Car Porters, and Augustine Bowes
chairman of the Chicago Human
Rights Commission.
The new group is comprised of
representatives of the Illinois, Min
nesota, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin,
and Michigan AFL-CIO state fed-
erations, all of which have state
civil rights committees.
Stanley L. Johnson, executive
vice president of the Illinois State
AFL-CIO, was named chairman
of the committee, which was
appointed by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany. Each state will
have three members — the execu-
tive of the state central body, the
chairman of its civil rights com-
mittee, and one committee mem-
ber.
Among those attending the initial
meeting were: Dir. Boris Shishkin
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil
Rights, and Assistant Directors
Theodore E. Brown and Donald
Slafman; Sec.-Treas. Elmer F. Cope
of the Ohio State AFL-CIO; and
Pres. George A. Haberman of the
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.
Also present were international
union consultants from the Auto
Workers, Hotel & Restaurant Work-
ers and Steelworkers, and AFL-CIO
and affiliated union regional offi-
cials.
N.Y. Labor Backs
Negro College Aid
New York — The New York City
Central Labor Council has voted
unanimous support of the 1960
United Negro College Fund and
issued an appeal to all affiliated
unions in this area.
Council Pres. Harry Van Ars-
dale, Jr., Sec. Morris Iushewitz and
Treas. James C. Quinn are serving
as co-chairmen of the College
Fund's New Yor\: City Labor Com-
mittee.
UNCF embraces 33 private, ac-
credited and desegregated univer-
sities, all but one located in the
South and all with the purpose of
providing higher education to Ne-
groes at a price they can afford.
Detroit Picked for Next
Union-Industries Show
Labor's annual display of products produced by the cooperation
of union workmen and fair employers will move to Detroit next
year for an Apr. 7-12 showing at the new Cobo exhibition hall.
The announcement was made as the doors closed on the 1960
AFL-CIO Union-Industries Show in the District of Columbia Na-
tional Guard Armory.
An attendance of more than 239,
500 was recorded in six days of the
Washington show. Sponsors said
the attendance was a "gratifying
demonstration of the interest shown
by District of Columbia residents
in union label products" on the
show's first visit to the Washington
area.
The annual exhibition brought
home to visitors the quality and
quantity of products produced
under the symbols of the union
label, the union shop card, and
the union button. More than 375
exhibitors used all available Ar-
mory space to make the show a
"sellout."
The 1960 show was noteworthy
for the presence of Pres. Eisen-
hower, who toured the exhibits with
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Also present were leaders of labor,
management and government;
members of the President's cabinet
and Congress, and ambassadors or
representatives of 14 nations.
Pres. Eisenhower addressed an
opening day crowd of 5,000, and
cut a ribbon to open the exhibition
formally.
The nation's President compli-
mented the AFL-CIO for an exhibit
stressing the need of helping less
well-developed nations.
Meany described the Union-
Industries Show as a fitting ex-
ample of union-management co-
operation. He noted that "the
payment of good wages and the
maintaining of good conditions
can well be part of a successful
business."
After the show closed, thanks to
all who participated were expressed
by John J. Mara, president of the
AFL-CIO Union Label and Service
Trades Dept., and by Joseph Lewis,
its secretary-treasurer.
Rhode Island Governor
Vetoes Anti-Scab Bills
(Continued from Page 1)
Rhode Island State AFL-CIO's
1960 legislative program. The
original sponsors of the legislation
were Providence Local 33 and Paw
tucket Local 212 of the Typograph-
ical Union.
In his veto message killing the
first bill, Del Sesto complained it
had a misleading title and ambig-
uous language. The bill sought to
outlaw the hiring of strikebreakers
for "an industry" through outside
agencies.
The governor said, for example,
it was not clear whether the ban
would apply to only the struck plant
or a whole industry.
His first veto was overridden in
the House, but did not come up for
a vote in the Senate.
The second anti-scab bill sub-
mitted by the State AFL-CIO
contained some of Del Sesto's
suggested revisions, but not all.
In the second bill labor refused
to go along with a suggestion from
the governor that it include a pre-
amble "pointing out clearly that
this evil of strikebreaking agencies
does not exist in Rhode Island and
has not existed in the past, but that
the bill is merely preventative.
Labor leaders said such a pre-*
amble would be "foolish" since
it implies there is no need for
such legislation.
The AFL-CIO also refused to ac-
cede to a request from the gover-
nor that the second bill require reg-
istration and reporting by employ-
ers and strikebreaking agencies be-
cause "if you register, then you
legalize scab-herding."
Labor officials contend that the
governor was under "terrific pres-
sure" from newspapers and TV and
radio stations, as well as industrial
leaders contributing generously to
campaign funds, to veto any anti-
scab bill.
Therein, they charged, lies the
real reason for the vetoes; — rather
than the language of the meas-
ures.
The measures were designed to
prevent the importation of pro-
fessional strikebreakers from out of
state as in the strike at the Port-
land Oregonian and Oregon Jour-
nal. They had the solid support of
the Rhode Island locals of the
Newspaper Guild, the ITU, Print-
ing Pressmen, Stereotypers. and
Photo Engravers.
The governor said he received
more communications concerning
the anti-strikebreaking bill than he
had regarding any other piece of
legislation coming before the 1960
General Assembly.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
A Myth Explodes
SOVIET PREMIER KHRUSHCHEV has exploded the carefully
nurtured myth that the Soviet Union is dedicated to easing world
tensions and creating an atmosphere for "peaceful co-existence/'
Whether because of the impact of the U-2 plane incident or
because the Kremlin finally realized that the West would not sur-
render Berlin to the East German puppet government, Khrushchev
has crudely posed impossible ultimatums to the free world and
specifically to the United States.
No nation dedicated to peace, freedom and human dignity can
tolerate threats and bullying tactics, first on Berlin and now on
the plane incident. These are the tactics of a dictator and a
regime seeking to heat up the cold war rather than seeking to
ease tensions and arrive at reasonable solutions.
There is no point in negotiating with a dictator so long as he
continues to club representatives of the free world with ultimatums.
Politics in 1960
TP HE RECENTLY CONCLUDED series of COPE two-day con-
ferences covering ail 50 states has demonstrated a very live and
deep interest in the issues of the 1960 campaign.
Record turnouts and sustained interest reveal that more and more
unionists have grasped the essential fact that the solution tb many
of the problems confronting the trade union movement is political
because labor's opponents have taken these problems out of the
economic area arid into the legislative halls.
With the conferences laying the groundwork, the next job is to
achieve political effectiveness for labor's goals by intensive regis-
tration campaigns, contributions to COPE and a continuing exam-
ination of the candidates and the issues.
In 1960 the political results will have as great a bearing on the
worker's economic status as each union's negotiating sessions with
the employer.
The Single Forand Issue
THE ISSUE INVOLVED in the Forand bill is a simple one
despite the complications in which opponents have attempted to
entangle it: It is whether the social security principle is valid in
meeting the natural hazards of life — including ill health in old age
as well as dependency, disability and such hazards as blindness.
A quarter of a century ago the American people, acting through
their political institutions, decided that social security was the proper
way to protect themselves against the inevitable decline in earning
power as age comes on.
The system has been expanded and improved; it has been
spread to include more persons and more types of hazards. Never
in all the years has any responsible official taken the viewpoint
that social security is wrong, that it should be abandoned, that it
has not worked.
The Administration, caught in its contradictory dogmas, opposes
the Forand bill, and Chairman Wilbur D. Mills (D-Ark.) of the
House Ways & Means Committee is proposing approaches even
weaker than the Administration's unworkable substitute. But the
logic persists: The social security system offers the correct and
sensible method of insuring older people against the costs of ill
health, and nothing short of the social security principle will meet
the need.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, May 21, 1960
No. 21
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Check List!
^1960 ELECTION^
BE SURE TO
SEND A*BUCK"
TO
KNOW ALL
THE ISSUES
KNOW THE
CANDIDATES
ImiHI
'0m
DRAWKI FORTHC
AFU-C/OnewS
Mediation Director Says:
Understanding of Real Issues
Key to Effective Negotiations
Following are excerpts from an address by
Joseph F. Finnegan, director of the Federal
Mediation & Conciliation Service, at the annual
forum of the Ford ham University School of
Business:
THE PRESENT LABOR - MANAGEMENT
SCENE bears little resemblance to that of
15 to 20 years ago. Even after the passage of
the Wagner Act in 1935, strikes were often char-
acterized by violence practically amounting to
armed warfare between deputized company guards
or police and pickets.
The modern strike, in most instances, does
not smack of warfare, but merely a means of
enforcing the bargaining position of the union.
Workers tend to regard their unions, once a
contract has been signed, not as an instrumental-
ity for beating the employer over the head, but
more as a mechanism for policing the workers'
relations with the company and to assure fair
review of whatever complaints they may have
regarding working conditions or application and
interpretation of the contract.
ANOTHER ASPECT of the current labor-
management scene is the tendency — with a few
notable exceptions — for labor and management
leaders to take less emotional positions in nego-
tiations.
The mature company negotiator does not waste
his time calling the labor leaders "Communists,
agitators, outsiders," or applying similar uncom-
plimentary labels. The experienced union negotia-
tor does not try to revive the old picture of the
boss as a pot-bellied gent wearing striped pants
and a cutaway coat, wielding a lash.
MANY INDUSTRIAL LEADERS are gen-
uinely convinced that unions can be a real asset
to a company in effectively communicating com-
pany problems and policies to the workers.
Many labor leaders also recognize that it is
part of their job to see that the companies with
which they have contracts remain economically
healthy and prosperous, not through any motives
of altruism, but because they recognize that unless
the companies achieve and maintain this state
they will be unable to pay the wages and other
benefits which go to make up a good union
contract.
I clearly recognize that there are certain areas
of conflict which will never be permanently re-
solved. The management which surrenders or
permits undue invasion of its responsibilities to
run the business in an efficient manner is derelict,
and equally derelict is the union which does not
vigilantly police managerial actions. Drawing the
lines of demarcation necessarily engenders con-
flict.
THERE IS ONE CARDINAL RULE to be
observed if one is to bargain intelligently — namely,
careful advance preparation by the bargainers so
that when contract negotiations start the parties
are not in a haze as to what happened the last
time or as to how the contract has functioned
during the contract term.
Preconditioning should be a continuing process
and careful notes should be kept as to how the
contract has functioned so that if you are a union
business agent you will know when you sit down
at the table where the sore spots have been during
the past year and thbse portions of the contract
which you want clarified, eliminated, changed, or
modified. By the same token, the company nego-
tator should be thoroughly cognizant of the weak-
nesses of the contract which have come to the
surface during the past contract term.
The period between contract negotiations
should not be left fallow. I think that both
management and union representatives should
get to know each other better during this in-
terim period, because the contract was never
written which covers all contingencies- — and it
never should be written.
Experienced labor and management representa-
tives recognize that on occasion each can take
the other "off the hook." Internal politics is most
certainly a part of labor relationships, and the
company representative who insists on rigid adher-
ence to a contract provision which may make a
"sitting duck" of his union counterpart may find
it the counsel of wisdom to waive his technical
rights rather than face an embittered opponent at
the next bargaining session.
The same thing applies to the union representa-
tive who is confronted with a situation where the
management bargainer has slipped or "pulled a
boner." Adhering to a technically correct position
may expose the management bargainer to criti-
cism and embarrassment, which will most certainly
condition his thinking in future dealings with the
union representative.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
Vuizc Seven
Morgan Says:
Networks Asked to Provide
Free TV Time to Candidates
iTS YOUR
Morgan
{This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
I fiday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, the pile of
frustration that summit hopes have been re-
duced to in Paris will poke its way into the 1960
presidential campaign. It
will be only one of a num-
ber of issues. How well
will we come to under-
stand these basic ques-
tions, how thoroughly will
we get to know the candi-
dates discussing them? The
answer is: neither well nor
thoroughly enough unless
some major changes are
made in the slick, gimmick
and costly methods of
campaigning.
Ail but drowned out by the rumbling crumbling
of summit conference plans, a Senate subcommit-
tee got off to a dignified, dispassionate start with
hearings on legislation to aim more light and less
heat on the presidential race.
The first witness was Adlai Stevenson, who sup-
ported a bill to require all television networks to
furnish free prime time once a week for eight
weeks before the election to the two principal
presidential nominees.
"I doubt," Stevenson testified, "if ever before
in history have so many men and women, living
over so wide an area, been expected to participate
in choosing from among men they do not know,
two national leaders to whom they will entrust
such a large measure of their destiny. I doubt
further if the issues with which these leaders will
have to deal have ever been more complex and
fateful/'
To hear issues and see principals of bygone
campaigns, Stevenson recalled, "people rode all
day by buggy and wagon; they waited for hours
for the candidate's train; they stood in the sun
and rain and listened." But today, at the height
of the huckster era, the electorate is mobilized
by such commercials as "vote for Dan, the man
with the plan."
Stevenson conceded these were not very reflec-
tive times and it would be too much to expect a
I
Washington Reports:
revival of such a great debate as his great-grand-
daddy, Jesse Fell, suggested to Lincoln and Doug-
las on slavery.
But, he argued, people would listen if a serious
try were made to get the presidential candidates
to discuss the issues without a lot of extraneous
political claptrap. His medium: television, the
only way possible to reach virtually all the coun-
try's 100 million voters. His format, 90 minutes
or at least 60 minutes a week to be divided equally
between the Republican and Democratic nominees
in a single program but it would not necessarily
be a debate — each would discuss the issues he
thought important and in his own way.
Stevenson estimated that an hour of evening
time on all TV networks this fall may cost more
than $6,000 a minute — a terrific burden on
national committee exchequers, though an ad-
vantage to the party with the fatter kitty.
Licensed as they are to use a public utility, the
air, networks should be required to furnish this
time as a public service. If this temporary sacri-
fice proved too sharp a loss in revenue — and
Stevenson doubted that it would — he suggested
the federal government should be prepared to help
foot the bill.
He was leery of volunteered time because "such
offers of cooperation are always made with the
unstated reservation that it be on the networks'
own terms."
LATER TOP NETWORK executives, plus a
parade of Republican notables, from Herbert
Hoover to Richard Nixon, had their say before
the subcommittee and the word was a unanimous
and horrified "no" to any compulsory plan.
With ABC to be heard from later, NBC and
CBS said they were willing to offer at least one
hour free air time weekly to the major presidential
candidates this fall, preferably in a debate or dis-
cussion format; presumably to minimize the dan-
ger of boredom; admittedly some political speeches
can be deadly dull.
If the networks can indeed fill the electorate's
requirements on a voluntary basis then, obviously,
compulsory legislation is not needed. But on the
strength of past performance on their responsibility
to the public, the burden of proof is on the net-
works. When the chains — and the listeners —
realize that a meaningful discussion of disarma-
ment might possibly be as important as a deodor-
ant commercial, that will be the day.
to Assist Family Farmers
Would Also Aid City Worker
LEGISLATION TO AID the family farmer
I would benefit city workers as well, Rep. George
S. McGovern (D-S. D.) and Rep. Alvin O'Kon-
ski (R-Wis.) declared on Washington Reports to
the People, AFL-CIO public service program,
heard on 350 radio stations.
"We've lost about a million family farms in the
last 10 years and the problem is getting worse,"
McGovern asserted.
"Farmers are leaving the farms by droves/*
O'Konski said. "The only way in which a
farmer in my district can make a living now is
by working on the farm and holding down a
city job, and that's taking jobs away from city
people. If s increasing unemployment rolls and
having a tremendous adverse effect on the econ-
omy of the country
McGovern made the additional point that,
"with farm purchasing power down approximately
a third from the level of 10 years ago, there is a
real threat to those producing for the farm traded
McGovern has a bill before Congress called the
Family Farm Act, "to gear federal farm programs
to aid the average family-type farm unit. 91
O'Konski asserted that operators of the large
industrial type farm don't need federal aid.
THE McGOVERN BILL would give "farmers
the opportunity to devise their own program," the
South Dakota congressman explained. "The leg-
islation would provide for creation of farmer-
elected committees for each commodity in par-
ticipation. These farmer-elected committees would
suggest commodity stabilization programs designed
to help the farmer adjust his marketing volume to
what the market will absorb at a fair price.
"Industry uses this device. They don't sell
automobiles below the cost of production. They
adjust the number going to the market to what
it will support at a fair price."
Taking up McGovenvs statement that "some
people have the false notion that you encourage
farmers to reduce their production by dropping
their price," O'Konski asserted: "That's where
Secretary of Agriculture Benson is totally unsound
in his program. I remember in Wisconsin, when
we dropped off 90 percent of parity, every farmer
in my district added two, three, four or five cows
because his costs are fixed. He has to take in so
much money."
Both congressmen attacked publications that
criticize the farm program "on the claim that it
makes subsidized stooges out of farmers." Both
said the farmer would prefer not to get hand-outs.
They want and need a fair price. Said McGovern,
"The very magazine" carrying the editorial he
referred to "is getting a $10 million subsidy every
year in mailing privileges."
WASHiNGTON
Wi££ahd*SAe£ten,
EXPERIENCE OF THE DEMOCRATS during nearly two com-
plete sessions of the 86th Congress suggests that changes in the rules
or the makeup of the controlling committees in the House are ur-
gently needed.
An effort to change the rules at the beginning of Congress in Jan-
uary 1959, immediately after the 1958 elections, failed. One of the
rejected plans was an attempt by liberal Democrats to restore a 21-
day rule, adopted in 1949 and lasting only one Congress, that gave
to chairmen of legislative committees the power to call up bills after
the otherwise all-powerful Rules Committee had delayed action for
more than three weeks.
We are now close to the waning days of Congress — and it can
be said that the bipartisan coalition that controls the House
through committee and leadership posts has been extremely effec-
tive in postponing, watering down and threatening to kill a sub-
stantial body of legislation.
Chairman Howard W. Smith (D-Va.) was successful in denying
clearance to a depressed-areas bill approved in 1959 by the Banking
Committee, and the measure had to be hauled on to the floor by the
complicated procedures of the so-called "calendar Wednesday,"
which give parliamentary advantages to opponents ready to filibuster.
The Rules Committee declined clearance of a school-aid bill,
providing $4.4 billion in federal grants for teachers' salaries and con-
struction, approved last year by the House Education Committee.
When a drastically scaled-down measure offering less than $1 billion
for construction alone was offered by the Education unit, Smith's
Rules Committee still delayed until it was threatened with "calendar
Wednesday" procedure.
* * *
THE TECHNIQUES BY WHICH bills may be delayed by hostile
committee chairmen are almost innumerable.
A Labor Standards subcommittee headed by Rep. Phil Landrum
(D-Ga.), who lent his name as a sponsor of the Landrum-Griffin bill
last year, went through nine weeks of exhaustive hearings on a min-
imum wage measure before Landrum would agree to call a halt.
Landrum is opposed to the present enforcement and concept of
various laws that protect workers; the slowdown on minimum
wage legislation was one method of handling things. Whenever a
bill is approved by the full Labor Committee, it still will have to
run the gantlet of Smith's Rules Committee.
A hostile chairman can also delay an official report on a bill to
take maximum advantage of the approach of adjournment.
Along about two weeks before adjournment, in the past, Mr.
Smith of the Rules Committee has frequently felt an urgency to
return to his home-district farm and study extensively the well-being
of his cattle. In his absence, time ticks away.
* * *
TINKERING WITH THE RULES is by no means a complete
answer to the fact that the House during this Congress has proved
slow to act on legislation promised quite clearly by the Democratic
platform of 1956.
The ouster of Rep. Joseph Martin (R-Mass.) from his House
GOP leadership and the election of Rep. Charles A. Halleck (R-
Ind.) meant that Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) faced difficulties in
working out a program. Halleck is a partisan in a grimmer sense
than Martin, and he has worked closely in concert with southern
conservative Democratic powers in controlling the situation.
The operation of the coalition and the exploitation of the rules in
this Congress nevertheless make it clear that the House is less re-
sponsive than it should be to the voice of the people as expressed in
the 1958 election. This is a problem for Democrats in Congress as
well as for the country generally.
CRUX OF THE FARM PROBLEM is the salvation of the family-
type farm, Rep. Alvin E. O'Konski (R-Wis.), left, and Rep. George
S. McGovern (D-S. Dak.) asserted on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
How to Buy:
New Benefits for Vets
Offer Life Protection
By Sidney Margolius
THE NEW VETERANS' BENEFITS effective July 1 actually
assure that you or your family will never be left destitute if you
must stop working because of disability or old age, or if you die.
These new benefits now become your second biggest backlog against
financial disaster — second only to Social Security.
That is, if you and your family know about them. Like Social
Security, you get vets' payments only
if you apply when eligible. They
never arrive automatically. It would
be wise to have your wife read this
report, and file it with your insur-
ance policies. In effect the new ben-
efits are an insurance policy.
Perhaps the most important new
feature is the protection for your
family if anything happens to you.
Widows and minor children of
World War II and Korean War
vets can get monthly payments —
just like World War I widows have
been getting — if their income falls
below a certain level. Up to now,
bereaved families of the more re-
cent GI's qualified for monthly payments only if the vet had a
service-incurred disability.
After July 1, widows with no minor children, and orphaned
children with no parents, will be eligible if their total other income
is no more than $1,800 a year. Widows with minor children can
get payments if their other income is no more than $3,000.
Social Security as well as private income is counted in the
"other income." Large families getting the maximum Social
Security family payment of $254 a month thus would not be
eligible. Ironically, they would lose $70 or more a month be-
cause of the extra $4. But most Social Security payments are
below the new limits for veterans' benefits.
Take a widow with one child getting, say, $1,650 a year from
Social Security, and with $300 of other private income. Since her
total is under $2,000, she'd be eligible for an additional $60 a
month from the Veterans Administration.
A widow with one child, who has other income of no more than
$1,000, gets $75; with other income of $2,000-$3,000, it would be
$40. The payment is increased $15 for each additional child.
Widows with no minor children get $60 a month if their other
income is no more than $600, and $45 if other income is $600-
$1,200; $25 if $1,200-$ 1,800. Since the present maximum Social
Security payment to a widow without dependents is $90, most
moderate-income widows would be eligible for at least some VA
payment.
THE OTHER BIG BENEFIT in the vets' law is that the bread-
winner himself is eligible for payments if he becomes totally dis-
abled, or in old age, and if his other income is no more than $1,800
with no dependents, or no more than $3,000 with dependents. The
disability need not be service-incurred. Any disabling permanent
illness or injury that prevents you from obtaining regular full-time
employment will qualify you. Don't shrug off this potential benefit
because you're still young and vigorous. This is like getting a valu-
able accident and health insurance policy at no cost.
When you reach 65, you also have a good chance of getting the
VA payments in addition to your Social Security. The law presumes
that vets over 65 are 90 percent disabled merely because they are
65. Few have any trouble proving the other 10 percent disability
through such common ailments as bad eyesight, varicose veins, etc.
A single veteran who qualifies through disability or old age would
get $85 a month if his other income is not over $600; $70 if between
$600 and $1,200, and $40 if over $1,200 but not more than $1,800.
If he has one dependent, he'll get $45 to $90 a month, depending
on how much other income he has.
In addition, any war vet's family, no matter what its income, is
eligible for a $250 burial benefit from VA when he dies.
The new rules immediately qualify almost 300,000 widows and
vets who previously were ineligible. VA offices will accept appli-
cations from them now.
VETS OR FAMILIES already getting VA pensions have a choice
of coming in under the new rules or remaining under the old. Com-
pare your present payments with the new payments based on income
limitations. Once you switch to the new system, you have to stick
to it.
For example, under the old law, a qualified vet's widow with
no minor children gets $50.40 a month if her annual income is
not more than $1,400. Under the new law, she gets $60 a month
if her income is not more than $600 a year; $45 or less if income
is over $600. Thus a widow with not more than $600 should
choose the new rules. One with over $600 should stick to the
old plan.
Because of some confusion, VA officials emphasize that the new
law deals only with non-service pensions. It does not affect benefits
being paid for service-connected disabilities.
Copyright I960 by Sidney Margolius
Former Medical Director Charges:
Drug Industry Tactics Put
Profits Above Principles
Dr. A. Dale Console was chief medical di-
rector of the Squibb division of Olin Mathieson
Co. for five years, until 1957. Following are
excerpts from his testimony in the Senate inves-
tigation of the drug industry being carried on by
the Kefauver antitrust committee:
WHEN A PATIENT pays for a drug which
he does not need or for one from which he
derives no benefit, the cost is excessive regardless
of price.
I would classify drugs roughly in four catego-
ries:
1. Effective drugs prescribed only for patients
who need them.
2. Effective drugs prescribed for patients who
do not need them.
3. Drugs from which patients derive either no
benefit or no more benefit than would be derived
from an inexpensive substitute.
4. Drugs which have a greater potential for
harm than for good.
These are all products of the pharmaceutical
industry. Since the incidence of disease cannot
be manipulated, increased sales volume must
depend at least in part on the use of drugs
unrelated to their utility or need, or in other
words, improperly prescribed.
Human frailty can be manipulated and exploited
and this is fertile ground for anyone who wishes
to increase profit. The pharmaceutical industry is
unique in that it can make exploitation appear a
noble purpose. It is the organized, carefully
planned, and skillful execution of this exploitation
which constitutes one of the cost of drugs which
must be measured not only in dollars but in terms
of the inroads the industry has made into the entire
structure of medicine and medical care.
THE PRACTICE WHICH FORMS the back-
bone of all advertising and promotion of drugs is
the use of the testimonial as scientific evidence.
A drug trial which makes no allowance for
placebo effect, and which fails to make accurate
comparison with an untreated group, is suspect.
The vast majority of reports on such studies are
simply testimonials, not scientific evidence.
A testimonial written by a doctor, even when
it is given the additional cloak of respectability
afforded by publication in a scientific journal, is
still a testimonial. It has no more scientific valid-
ity than the opinion expressed by the woman who
caught the largest tuna on record, that a certain
brand of cigarettes is kind to the throat. Yet the
From Soup to Nonsense:
claims for the efficacy of an amazing number of
modern drug products are based exclusively on
this type of evidence.
Testimonials are used not only to give appar-
ent substance to the advertising and promotion
of relatively worthless products, but also to
extend the indications of effective drugs beyond
the range of their real utility. They appear
either as complete reprints or as priceless quo-
tations in advertisements or brochures. They
convince too many physicians that they should
prescribe these drugs.
These practices and others more vicious such as
subtle persuasion to use indiscriminately drugs
which are dangerously toxic and indicated only
in selected desperately sick patients suggest that
dedication is primarily to profit, even at the
expense of good medical care.
ONE MUST WONDER about the responsibility
of the leaders and educators in medicine. Most
face the problem with denial, complacency, or a
sense of futility.
How can legitimate education compete with the
philosophy of the opium pipe and the carefully
contrived distortions driven home by the trip-
hammer effect of weekly mailings, the regular
visits of the detailman, the two-page spreads, and
the ads which appear six times in the same journal,
not to mention the added inducement of the free
cocktail party and the golf outing complete with
three golf balls stamped with the name of the
doctor and the company in contrasting colors?
There have, however, been encouraging moves
by courageous medical educators to ascertain and
disseminate unbiased information on drugs. Un-
fortunately, the principal audience for this infor-
mation consists of those who are already skeptical.
I SUGGEST with hesitation the consideration
of a central agency empowered to approve or to
disapprove the sale of drugs on the basis of objec-
tive evidence of efficacy and to ban misleading and
ambiguous advertising and promotion. I recog-
nize that it will be virtually impossible to set up
proper criteria but there are some areas where it
is better to be guided to the dictates of good
common sense rather than tortured legal con-
structions.
Surely a panel of experts who can distinguish
between privilege and license, charged with the
responsibility for protecting medical care can make
these decisions better than someone who has
something to sell, and who simply makes "busi-
ness decisions."
At Least Great-Grandma Could
Complain of Her Aching Back
By Jane Good sell
THE TROUBLE WITH BEING a housewife in
this 20th century era of "carefree modern
living" is that you can't ever complain about your
aching back.
The American
housewife — or mod-
ern homemaker, as
she is usually called
— is regarded as a
pampered creature
who spends her
days lying on a
patio lounge, drift-
ing into the house
occasionally to push
a languid finger to
a button that sets in
motion one of her
automatic house-
hold servants.
If she should complain that she is all tired out,
her husband would stare at her in amazement.
How can she be tired? Has he not provided her
with an automatic washer that washes and rinses
the laundry at the mere flick of a switch?
Her husband has heard so often that all the
drudgery has been eliminated from housework
that he sometimes wonders what on earth his wife
does all day. He has provided her with a host of
household aids, and he knows what they do for
her.
HIS WIFE, on the other hand, knows what
they do not do for her, and she knows only too
well what she does all day. She dusts and sweeps
and changes diapers and scours and polishes and
chauffeurs children and weeds and scrubs and
peels and stirs and mends.
But she, too, has read about the new work-
free era of home-making. She has also heard
about great-grandmother, who bore eight chil-
dren and made her own soap and scrubbed
clothes on a washboard.
She has even toyed with a nasty little suspicion
that maybe there was a hired hand or a slave or
an unmarried female relative lurking somewhere in
great-grandmother's kitchen. But she isn't con-
vinced enough to get any real comfort from her
suspicions.
When great-grandmother felt like a tired
housewife, she could act like a tired housewife.
She could grumble about how hard she had
worked all day because she wasn't constantly
being told what a lucky woman she was.
There is no such thing as an automatic child-
tending machine and, if you look behind that
wonderful roll-easy vacuum, you'll find a woman
pushing it.
Modern household aids are marvelous, but
the price comes high. The price is a woman's
right to complain about her aching back.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
Page NiM
Consumer Pays Bill:
Drug Probe Shows
High Prices, Prof its
New federal laws may be necessary to protect the American
people from the monopolistic practices of drug manufacturers, and
existing laws should be more vigorously enforced to stop profiteering
and misleading advertising, the AFL-CIO has declared.
The continuing investigation of the Senate anti-trust subcommittee
headed by Sen. Estes Kefauver^
(D-Tenn.), commented Economic
Trends and Outlook, publication of
the AFL-CIO Committee on Eco-
nomic Policy, "has already shown
that the American people are pay-
ing vastly inflated prices for pre-
scription drugs because of the poli-
cies and practices of the large drug
manufacturers."
These practices, the AFL-CIO
charged, "maintain uniform high
prices, extraordinary profits, ex-
aggerated advertising claims and
great expenses for advertising and
promotion aimed at convincing
doctors to prescribe drugs by
their brand names."
The AFL-CIO said the govern-
ment so far "has failed" to protect
consumers against these practices.
The gap between the production
cost of prescription drugs and their
IBEW Wins
Contract Gains
In Bell Unit
Wage increases ranging from $2
to $4.80 per week have been gained
by Local 1974 of the Intl. Brother-
hood of Electrical Workers follow-
ing negotiations with Western Elec-
tric Co. in Omaha, Neb. Settlement
came a few minutes before a mid-
night contract deadline May 12.
The settlement is in addition to
gains in non-wage areas negotiated
Apr. 30. IBEW Pres. Gordon M.
Freeman said the settlement totaled
"more than 10 cents an hour," for
the 3,500 members.
The IBEW represents over 55,-
000 Western Electric employes as
well as some in other Bell units.
Freeman said the cost to Western
Electric would "exceed $11.5 mil-
lion over the next 12 months" as
the contract terms are applied in
other IBEW units of the company.
Major gains were made in the
arbitration clause of the agreement,
which also creates job evaluation
and wage incentive committees. The
three-year contract provides wage
reopeners in May of 1961 and 1962,
with the right to strike recognized
on each reopener, Freeman stated.
sales price is "staggering," the AFL-
CIO said.
The Senate hearings showed that
the drug prednisolone cost $1.57
per 100 tablets to produce and bot-
tle. This amount sold for $17.90 to
druggists and $29.83 to consumers,
according to staff testimony, the
AFL-CIO said.
"The difference between the
$1.57 production cost and the
$17.90 wholesale price is mainly
composed of extraordinary profits
and the substantial expense of
propagandizing the nation's phy-
sicians," the AFL-CIO said.
The analysis said that, in 1959,
the after-tax profits of 27 top drug-
makers were 21.9 percent of their
net assets or nearly double the 11.6
percent profit rate of some 2,000
leading manufacturers.
Profits Exceeded Investments
The Kefauver hearings showed,
the AFL-CIO said, that a banking
group which bought the war-seized
Schering Corp. from the govern
ment's Alien Property Custodian
for $29 million in 1952 had run up
$32 million in after-tax profits in
five and one-half years.
In illustrating one way profits
reach these proportions, the AFL-
CIO noted that a House committee
report in 1957 revealed apparent
widespread price-fixing on Salk
polio vaccine.
High prices are maintained not
only by "extraordinary profits"
but also by great expenditures for
advertising and promotion, the
analysis said.
The AFL-CIO said the Kefauver
hearings revealed that the 20 larg-
est drug manufacturers spend 24
cents of each sales dollar on ad
vertising and promotion, compared
to 6.4 cents for research. This
means about one-half billion dol-
lars a year out of a sales volume of
$2 billion, the AFL-CIO added.
The major promotion expense is
the maintenance of some 15,000
so-called detail men who try to
persuade doctors and druggists to
use particular high-price, brand
name drugs, the analysis said.
Committees Slate Vote
On Wage-Hour Revamp
(Continued from Page 1)
dustry minimum wages are set for
firms supplying goods to the govern-
ment, unless he has previously been
convicted of a Fair Labor Stand-
ards Act violation. Hiestand's
amendment would apply also to
the Davis-Bacon Act, which re-
quires prevailing wages to be paid
on federally-financed construction,
and the Eight-Hour Law, limiting
work on government construction to
eight hours a day unless overtime
rates are paid.
Instead of meeting the often
considerably higher standards of
these laws, designed to prevent
government contracts from being
used to undercut existing stand-
ards in private industry, employ-
ers would only have to meet the
subsistence-level minimums of
the Wage-Hour Act.
The Senate committee had be-
fore it a subcommittee bill reported
last year which it began working
on before the civil rights debate
tied up legislative activity.
In the final union testimony be-
fore the House subcommittee, the
Pulp-Sulphite Workers urged elimi-
nation of the exemption from the
Wage-Hour Act of logging crews
consisting of 12 men or less.
George W. Brooks, the union's
research and education director,
charged that the exemption, origi-
nally intended to help farmers who
do part-time logging, "has been per-
verted into an elaborate system of
evasion of the social responsibility
for paying living wages."
He said "the great disparity of
coverage between groups in the
mills and in the woods in the
same industry is not healthy ei-
ther for the industry or for the
communities dependent upon the
paper industry "
Meanwhile, in a statement filed
with the subcommittee, the NAM
expressed concern that a higher
minimum and extended coverage
"would be harmful towage earners."
The NAM said the result would
be "increases in the cost of living
which would possibly lead to de-
mands for another increase in the
minimum wage."
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT calls for better education of American
youth at the final dinner of the four-day AFL-CIO National Con-
ference on Community Services in New York City. Seated at left
of Mrs. Roosevelt is Richard F. Walsh, president, Theatrical Stage
Employes union; at right is Leo Perlis, AFL-CIO Community
Service Activities director.
Ike's Health Plan Hit
As 'Outlandish Scheme'
New York — The Eisenhower Administration's recently-unveiled
plan to provide health care for the aged is "an outlandish scheme
unworthy of being called health insurance," Dr. George Baehr,
special consultant to Health Insurance Plan of New York, declared
here. &
Speaking at the fifth annual AFL-
CIO National Conference on Com-
munity Services, Baehr said the
Administration plans are "so com-
plicated, so costly to administer and
so inefficient they would never have
a chance of being enacted by this
or any other Congress."
He told more than 500 labor
and social agency representatives
that the Administration measure
follows the pattern of "so-called
major medical insurance, promoted
most profitably by commercial in-
surance companies."
Such insurance, he said, is "ap-
propriate for wealthy business
executives but not for poor, old
people, most of whom live on
social security or on small retire-
ment incomes."
The Administration proposal and
other plans supported as alterna-
tives to the Forand bill are "so
unrealistic we must assume they
were designed to delay action and
bamboozle the public," he declared.
Final sessions of the four-day
health and welfare parley also saw:
• Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt de-
clare that Americans are not giving
their young people good enough
education.
• Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R. I.)
announce that two government
agencies have been allocated a total
of $1,060,000 to develop a major
national blueprint for the control
of juvenile delinquency.
• Rev. C. Kilmer Myers, vicar,
Lower East Side tyission of Trinity
Parish, New York City, call upon
organized labor "to challenge the
existing power structures which
unite in maintaining conditions
which produce delinquent behavior"
in American youth.
• Dr. Howard A. Rusk, asso-
ciate editor, New York Times, out-
line labor's "strong stake in reha-
bilitation."
In addition to sharply criticiz-
ing the new Administration plan,
Baehr said the Javits-Keating bill
— a substitute program by GOP
Senators Jacob K. Javits (N. Y.)
and Kenneth Keating (N. Y.) — is
"just as bad because it violates
all health insurance principles for
spreading the risk."
"It is most encouraging, however,
that one Republican, Gov. Nelson
Rockfeller (N. Y.), promptly re-
pudiated this outlandish scheme and
has come out publicly in support of
the Social Security method for pre-
paying the cost of hospital and nurs-
ing home care," Baehr said.
Mrs. Roosevelt, addressing the
final dinner of the CSA conference,
said: "We ought to change the base
)f higher education."
"We should open higher edu-
cation to every child on the basis
of ability," she stated, adding that
this country "cannot afford to go
on wasting ability in our young
people."
Fogarty, hitting hard at what he
termed "the epidemic of delinquen-
cy," said FBI estimates show that
delinquency is costing the national
economy four billion dollars each
year.
He said the Appropriations sub-
committee on Labor, Health, Edu-
cation and Welfare, which he heads,
has appropriated $1 million to the
National Institute of Mental Health
and $60,000 to the U.S. Children's
Bureau to come up with a plan
for coping with the delinquency
problem.
Maryland
Primary Won
By Kennedy
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
swept the Maryland Democratic
presidential primary May 17 and
promptly headed for the nation's
final pre-convention contest in
Oregon, scheduled May 20.
He rolled up 200,000 votes to
49,000 for Sen. Wayne Morse (D-
Ore.) in the Maryland race, with a
total of 11,000 for two nominal
candidates and 25,000 cast for an
uncommitted slate of delegates to
the Democratic National Conven-
tion opening July 11.
Kennedy, backed by most of
the state Democratic organiza-
tion including Gov. J. Millard
Tawes, scored with approximate-
ly 70 percent of the voters. Un-
der Maryland law, the state's
convention delegates are bound
to vote for him on the first con-
vention ballot although not there-
after.
In the Oregon race, Kennedy's
forces hoped to pull an upset vic-
tory over Morse in the lattefs home
state. Morse three times has over-
whelmed opposition, both Repub-
lican and Democratic, in contests
for the Senate.
Also listed on the Oregon ballot
are three additional Democratic
figures — Senators Stuart Symington
(Mo.), Lyndon Johnson (Tex.) and
Hubert H. Humphrey (Minn.).
Humphrey's withdrawal for the
presidential race following his de-
feat by, Kennedy in West Virginia
came too late for his name to be
removed from the Oregon ballot.
Neither Johnson, an unavowed
candidate, nor Symington has
campaigned in Oregon. Former
Gov. Adlai £. Stevenson of Illi-
nois, whose name was entered by
petition of his supporters, re-
moved it by filing an affidavit
with the Oregon secretary of
state that he was not a candidate.
In other political developments,
Symington was given the not-unex-
pected backing of former Pres.
Harry Truman, who praised the
Missouri senator as "outstanding,"
and it was reported that Charles H.
Percy, president of Bell & Howell
Co. and last year chairman of the
Republican Committee on Program
and Progress, would be named
chairman of the GOP National
Convention's Resolutions (plat-
form) Committee.
Talks with AMA Useful
Despite 'Propaganda'
Representatives of organized labor and some 30 other organiza-
tions have held "constructive discussions" of methods for improving
prepaid health insurance plans, an AFL-CIO delegation reported fol-
lowing a two-day conference in Chicago.
At the same time, the five AFL-CIO representatives, in a joint
statement, expressed "regret" that^~
the American Medical Association
took advantage of the meeting "to
provide a propaganda platform for
persons whose bitter and reaction-
ary philosophy ... is clearly re-
pugnant to representatives of labor
and many others attending the
meeting."
The statement on behalf of the
labor delegation was issued by its
chairman, Vice Pres. Charles S.
Zimmerman of the Ladies' Garment
Workers.
The AFL-CIO sent a delega-
tion to the AMA-sponsored con-
ference "in good faith," the state-
ment said, adding: "We cannot
quite understand why the AMA
should have chosen to harangue
those it invited to its congress
with political outbursts."
One of the conference speakers
the American Farm Organization,
who attacked the labor-backed For-
and bill as "socialized medicine."
Representing the AFL-CIO, be-
sides Zimmerman, were Lisbeth
Bamberger, assistant director of the
federation's Dept. of Social Secu-
rity; Leonard Lesser, director of
social security activities for the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.;
Isador Melamed, executive director
of the Philadelphia AFL Medical
Service Plan; and Anthony G. Weis-
lein, director of research and edu-
cation for the Building Service
Employes.
The delegation pledged it would
make further efforts to work with
elements of the AMA in "objective
and unprejudiced consideration of
all varieties of health plans and
many different methods of organiz-
was Sec.-Treas. Roger Flemming of ' ing and paying for medical care."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
PASSAGE OF HOUSING LEGISLATION is needed to provide 2.3
million units annually for the next 10 years and to forestall another
recession, Boris Shishkin (right), secretary of AFL-CIO Housing
Committee, told Senate Banking subcommittee. Accompanying
Shishkin at hearings was Bert Seidman (left) of AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research.
AFL-CIO Warns of 'Disastrous Decline':
Housing Legislation Urged
To Avert Recession Threat
The nation is faced with another "disastrous decline" in residential construction which could "pull
the country down into the morass of another economic recession," the AFL-CIO warned as it called
for prompt congressional enactment of omnibus housing legislation.
Testifying before a Senate Banking subcommittee headed by Sen. John J. Sparkman (D-Ala.), a fed-
eration spokesman sharply criticized the "failure of the present Administration to face up to the full
dimensions" of the housing prob-'^~
Furniture Union Spurs
Political Action Drive
Chicago — All-out trade union participation in the crucial 1960
presidential and congressional elections is essential to winning en-
actment of liberal programs to aid the nation, the 11th biennial con-
vention of the Furniture Workers declared here.
The 150 delegates, representing 40,000 UFWA members in 150
locals in the U.S. and Canada, ap-^
proved a resolution calling for 100
percent contribution from trade un-
ion members to the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Political Education.
Adoption of the resolution fol-
lowed an address by Al Barkan,
deputy director of COPE, who
stressed the stake which American
labor has in the forthcoming elec-
tions.
The delegates unanimously re-
elected Pres. Morris Pizer and
Sec.-Treas. Fred Fulford to two-
year terms. Pizer has been presi-
dent since 1946, and Fulford
has been secretary-treasurer since
1950.
Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer
of the Auto workers, delivered a
blistering attack against the Eisenr
hower Administration for its oppo-
sition to the Forand bill to provide
medical care for the aged. Mazey
accused Eisenhower of being an
"in grate" in receiving free medical
service throughout his lifetime as
an Army officer and as President,
while denying similar care to the
elderly.
Nicholas Zonarich, new director
of organization for the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept., spelled out
IUD programs for coordinated or-
ganizing activities and for a strong
central defense fund to aid unions
against management efforts to "turn
back the clock."
In a series of actions, delegates
approved resolutions:
• Instructing UFWA officers not
NMU Scholarship
Worth $10,000
New York — The Maritime Un-
ion's second annual $10,000 col-
lege scholarship has been awarded
to 17-year-old Vernon M. Edgar of
Great Neck, Long Island, son of
a sea-going matron.
Vernon's mother, Mrs. Vinnie E.
Edgar, is now at sea aboard the
cruise ship SS Santa Rosa. She has
been an NMU member since 1938.
His father, David Edgar, is a high
school social science teacher.
NMU Pres. Joseph Curran pre-
sented the scholarship, which pays
up to $2,500 per year for tuition
and expenses for four years at the
college of the winner's choice, ex-
cept for schools which discriminate
in enrollment on grounds of race or
religion.
to sign the AFL-CIO No-Raiding
Agreement.
• Urging repeal of the Landrum-
Griffin and Taft-Hartley Acts.
• Calling for new legislation by
the 87th Congress to strengthen
civil rights guarantees.
• Demanding passage of legisla-
tion along the lines of the Forand
bill to provide health care for the
aged through the social security
system.
• Urging passage of a $1.25
minimum wage and broadening of
the Fair Labor Standards Act cov-
erage to include several million ad-
ditional workers.
• Calling for passage of a com-
prehensive housing bill to meet
mounting national needs and fore-
stall a new recession.
lems confronting the nation.
Boris Shishkin, secretary of the
AFL-CIO Housing Committee
called for construction of 2.3 mil-
lion private homes annually for the
next 15 years to meet national
needs. Official Census Bureau fig-
ures show new housing starts are
currently running at an annual rate
of slightly over 1.1 million — down
sharply from the 1959 rate of 1.3
million.
"It is incredible," Shishkin
said, "that in the face of the
current sharp dip in housing con-
struction and the gloomy pros-
pects ahead, the Administration
nevertheless seems to display
nothing but optimism about the
housing situation. 9 '
Shishkin spelled out labor's broad
program geared to the long-term
housing requirements of the nation.
It included:
• Restoration of the authoriza-
tion for construction of public
housing provided in the Housing
Act of 1949. This would in effect
permit construction of an addition-
al 100,000 low-rent public housing
units. He called this a "rockbottom
minimum requirement."
• Authorization of $600 million
for urban renewal capital grants
as called for in a bill introduced by
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.), as a
start toward aiding cities in the
undertaking of a "full-scale, long-
range attack against the blight and
slums that are threatening to engulf
them."
• Approval of a proposal by
Clark and Sen. Jacob K. Javits
(R-N. Y.) creating a federal agency
authorized to issue a maximum of
$2 billion in long-term, low-interest
bonds for construction of housing
for moderate-income families and
elderly persons.
• Authorization for the Federal
National Mortgage Association to
purchase $50 million in FHA-in-
sured cooperative housing mort-
gages.
Shishkin called for legislation
barring bias in housing, payment
of prevailing wages in any hous-
ing project involving federal fi-
nancial assistance, a $500 million
authorization for college housing,
and protection of homeowners
against foreclosure in the event
of temporary unemployment, ill-
ness or other emergency.
The AFL-CIO spokesman urged
establishment at Cabinet level of a
Dept. of Housing and Metropolitan
Affairs, as provided in legislation in-
troduced by Clark. Nathaniel S.
Keith, president of the National
Housing Conference, concurred in
this plea for the new cabinet post,
declaring that "the present status
of federal housing . . . and related
programs has suffered from lack of
representation" in the inner circles
of the Administration.
Federal Housing Administrator
Norman P. Mason told the Spark-
man subcommittee that the new
federal department should be
created soon to help cities solve
housing problems, but added he op-
posed the Clark measure "at this
time."
Mason urged that Pres. Eisen-
hower be allowed to make the
recommendation later in the year
as part of a government reorgan-
ization plan the President pro-
poses to send Congress just prior
to leaving the White House.
AFL-CIO Cites Perils
In Bill on Monitorships
The AFL-CIO has expressed opposition to a bill that would pro-
hibit federal courts from appointing monitors or receivers of labor
unions.
In a letter to Rep. Edwin E. Willis (D-La.), chairman of a House
subcommittee that has begun hearings, AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany pointed out that there is "no^ -
evidence that the federal courts
have engaged in . . . abuse of their
powers" in undertaking supervision
of union affairs.
The Norris-La Guardia Act limit-
ing the powers of federal injunc-
tions in labor cases, Meany said,
followed "a period of years (in
which) the federal judiciary had en-
gaged in widespread abuses."
If federal courts were abusing
their powers "by unwarrantably
undertaking to supervise the ad-
ministration of labor unions," the
federation president said, "I
would be the first to object, but I
know of no evidence that they
are doing so."
The immediate purpose of the
bill, Meany -observed, is to end the
monitorship now exercised through
U.S. District Court for the District
Six Democratic Senators Sponsor
Bill to Provide Jobs in Recession
A stand-by anti-recession measure — designed to create jobs and reduce unemployment during busi-
ness slumps— has been introduced in the Senate as the aftermath to a six-month study of recession-bred
joblessness by the McCarthy Special Committee on Unemployment.
The measure would make funds automatically available for public works and housing construction
at the outset of a recession, without the need for further congressional action.
Principal sponsor of the bill is'^
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.). Co-
sponsors, all members of the com-
mittee, include Chairman Eugene
J. McCarthy (D-Minn.) and Sena-
tors Pat McNamara (D-Mich.), Jen-
nings Randolph (D-W.Va.), Vance
Hartke (D-Ind.), and Gale W. Mc-
Gee (D-Wyo.).
In effect, the bill would create
a "shelf" of federal, state and
local public works projects on
which work could begin within
three months after a determina-
tion that the nation's economy
was in trouble.
The provisions of the bill would
be placed into effect whenever the
national unemployment rate rose
for six consecutive months and
reached a point above 5 percent.
When unemployment was again
brought down below 5 percent, the
President would be authorized t\
terminate the programs.
Of the authorized funds, $1 bil-
lion each would be available for
expediting federal public works, for
loans for state and local public
works, and for purchases by the
Federal National Mortgage Associ-
ation of FHA and VA mortgages
on lower-priced homes.
Formula Based on Experience
Clark explained that the formula
for triggering the bill's provisions
was derived from an analysis of the
three postwar recessions — the only
occasions in the past 14 years when
unemployment increased continu-
ously over a six-month period and
exceeded 5 percent.
Had such an act been on the
books during the three recent re-
cessions, the government could have
moved promptly to halt the econ-
omy's downward trend, he pointed
out.
"During the 1958 recession,"
Clark said, "we lost precious
months debating whether any-
thing at all should be done and,
if so, what. If we can decide in
advance, those months will be
saved.
"The timing of the action is
vital. A spurt in public works as
the downturn is getting under
way might reverse the whole re-
cessionary movement."
The recession-caused federal defi-
cit of $12.4 billion in fiscal 1959,
Clark said, was due more to loss of
revenue than increases in federal
expenditures. He added that if the
downturn could have been checked,
the revenue loss would have been
prevented and higher expenditures
for public assistance and unemploy-
ment compensation would have
been averted.
Transfer of Funds Possible
Under the proposed program, the
President would be authorized to
transfer $1 billion from any unused
appropriation balances to such fed-
eral construction programs as pub-
lic buildings, hospitals, roads, air-
ports or stream control where proj-
ects could be expedited.
The $1 billion for state and local
public works would be loaned at 2
percent interest, with terms up to
50 years — terms which coincide
with those in the Rural Electrifica-
tion Association power and tele-
phone projects.
of Columbia over the unaffiliated
Teamsters.
This monitorship, he pointed out,
exists because of a consent decree
entered into by the union and mem-
bers who had filed charges involv-
ing the rigging of elections and al-
leged irregularities in the handling
of funds.
As a general rule, Meany said,
Congress "should refrain from
interfering with the judiciary's
performance of its function" for
the purpose "of affecting the out-
come of a particular pending
case."
He pointed out that issues under
the Teamsters' monitorship are now
before the U.S. Court of Appeals
and that the appellate court's deci-
sions, in turn, will be subject to re-
view by the Supreme Court.
Meany also cited two other ob-
jections to the bill: that it would
restrict federal courts from legiti-
mately appointing receivers to
preserve assets in a "schism" situa-
tion involving intraunion contest-
ants, and that the state courts, more
likely to indulge in "abuses'' in the
appointment of receivers, were not
covered.
Meanwhile, in the tangled actions
and counter-actions involving the
Teamsters Board of Monitors, a
scheduled hearing for union Pres.
James R. Hofla on charges of mis-
using funds of Local 299 for real
estate speculation in which Hoffa
allegedly had a personal interest
was delayed pending appeals.
U.S. District Judge F. Dickin-
son Letts, who set up the moni-
torship under the consent decree
entered into by all parties, dis-
qualified himself from conducting
the hearing when the Teamsters
filed an affidavit of prejudice. A
retired judge of the Court of
Customs and Patent Appeals, Jo-
seph R. Jackson, was named as
Letts' successor.
The appellate court overruled
Letts in the latter's attempted ouster
of Monitor Laurence T. Smith as
representatives of plaintiffs in the
case and Smith remained on the
board.
The resignation of Daniel B.
Maher as monitor representing the
Teamsters was accepted by Letts
after weeks of delay and William
Bufalino was sworn in as his suc-
cessor.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
Page Eleven
AFL-CIO Cites Exploitation:
Wage Law Urged
For Factory Farms
By Robert B. Cooney
The AFL-CIO has urged Congress to extend federal wage-hour
coverage to factory farms as a start toward breaking "the discrimina-
tory manacles which chain hired farm workers to an old world of
poverty and disease and hopelessness."
The passage of pending bills to provide wage-hour protection, tc
end child labor and to require crew-^
leader registration would be a long
step toward bringing the farm work
er to first-class citizenship, AFL-
CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J.
Biemiller told a Senate Labor sub-
committee, headed by Sen. Harri-
son A. Williams, Jr. (D-N. J.).
The Meat Cutters said a farm
minimum wage would help end the
"scandal" of farm worker poverty
and strengthen family farms against
the present cheap labor edge of
factory farms. The Meat Cutters
also backed the ban on child labor,
crew-leader registration and a sep-
arate pending bill to curtail or
end the importation of Mexican
workers.
It is not true, Biemiller told
the subcommittee, that the farm
worker has been "forgotten."
"On the contrary, he has been
carefully and skillfully discrim-
inated against by a wide range of
laws and administrative proce-
dures."
Biemiller backed as "a modest
beginning" a bill, co-sponsored by
Sens. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.) and
Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.), which
would apply a three-step minimum
wage to farm workers.
A 75-cents an hour minimum
would apply initially, rising to 85
cents the next year and $1 an hour
in the third year. It would cover
the biggest 26,000, of the nation's
4.6 million farm operators, bene-
fiting an estimated 800,000 workers.
Biemiller said the bill's exemp-
tion of farms employing "not more
than 2,244 man-days of hired farm
labor during the preceding calendar
year" would be very difficult to ad-
minister because of the lack of rec-
ord keeping. He proposed instead
a test based on either total annual
cash wage bill or value of gross
sales of output.
Biemiller also put labor's strong
support behind another McNamara
bill which would end a provision
exempting farm children from gen-
eral protection of the wage-hour
law. He said present law, purport-
ing to prevent child labor "during
school hours/* is ineffective because
"crop vacations" close down schools
at harvest time.
"In this rich land, in this af-
fluent society,** Biemiller contin-
ued, "there is no excuse for utiliz-
ing the labor of children under
16 years of age in commercial
agriculture."
On crew-leader registration, Bie-
miller said labor would be happy
to see the passage of either of two
pending bills to end the "old and
ugly story" of exploitation by la
bor contractors. One was intro-
duced by Williams, the other by
Senators Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.)
and Kenneth B. Keating (R-N. Y.)
Biemiller said labor prefers the
Javits-Keating test of three workers
for defining compulsory crew-lead-
er coverage instead of ten workers
as in the Williams bill. But the
Javits-Keating measure is deficient
in other respects, he added, urging
that any bill reported require ade-
quate insurance and record keeping.
The Agricultural Workers urged
the committee to support an end
of the government program of im-
porting Mexican farm workers; the
legal right to organize; wage-hour
protection and jobless pay coverage
The AFL-CIO has called for elimi-
nation of the Mexican worker pro-
gram within five years.
School Funds Sought
For Migrant Children
The AFL-CIO and other interested groups have called upon
Congress for federal funds and other aids to state and local school
agencies to help them serve the children of the nation's 500,000
migratory farm workers.
"During the last century, the labor movement worked to get
children out of the mills and mines'^ — — —
Biemiller stressed that the edu-
cation in migrant-worker areas is
a "national problem susceptible
only of a national solution 9 * be-
cause of the transient and sea-
sonal nature of farm work.
He noted that, during the 1958
fiscal year, the Labor Dept.'s wage-
hour inspectors found 4,491 chil-
dren — over 3,000 of them under 14
— working illegally in the fields.
He estimated some 500,000 chil-
dren work in the fields legally be-
cause of loopholes and shortcom-
ings in federal law and the inade-
quacy or absence of state laws.
Eli E. Cohen, executive secre-
tary of the National Child Labor
Committee, backed both bills as
"excellent/' but urged clearer def-
initions so as to cover intra-state
migrants.
Miss Elizabeth B. Coleman, testi-
fying for the Migrant Children's
Fund, Inc., strongly backed the
planning grants section as vital to
the development of special pro-
grams.
William L. Batt, Jr., Pennsyl-
vania's secretary of labor and indus-
try, pointed to government findings
that migrant children are one to
four years behind in school. He
said education would do more than
anything else to break the mi-
grants "pattern of poverty/'
and into school," Andrew J. Bie-
miller, director of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Legislation, told a House
Education subcommittee.
*Tn the twentieth century, Amer-
ica is overdue in getting children
out of the fields of industrial agri-
culture and into school."
Ignorance passed on from par-
ent to child is a waste "too costly
in human terms and in economic
terms," the federation spokesman
declared.
Biemiller expressed labor's sup-
port of a bill introduced by Sub-
committee Chairman Cleveland M.
Bailey (D-W. Va.).
The Bailey bill would provide
open-end federal payments to local
education agencies to help them
meet the impact of migratory farm
families and authorize $300,000 in
grants to help state and local bodies
set up summer schools and $250,-
000 in state grants to survey needs
and plan programs.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Edith
Green (D-Ore.) differs chiefly in
that it would specify $2.5 million
a year in federal payments to local
school agencies and would pro-
vide fellowships for specialized
training in languages and the so-
cial sciences.
CHART ANALYZING safety clauses in 7,000 union contracts is examined by AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
Richard F. Walsh, chairman of federation's Safety & Occupational Health Conference, and Thomas
F. Miechur, who represented the Cement, Lime & Gypsum Workers at the three-day session at AFL-
CIO headquarters. Delegates pledged campaign for safer job conditions.
Safety Conferees Map
Drive on Job Diseases
Delegates to the AFL-CIO's National Conference on Safety and
Occupational Health have pledged "renewed efforts" to protect
workers against job-caused disease.
A statement adopted at the conference's closing session called for
a stepped-up drive "to preserve the lives of wage-earners" through
collective bargaining, education of^ -
union members and a campaign for
effective state and federal legisla-
tion.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
in announcing the conference
action, observed that the dele-
gates were "shocked" by the
nation's "calloused indifference
... to the health hazards which
wage earners are expected to
accept as a part of their jobs."
The delegates, representing 50 in-
ternational unions and state central
bodies, charged: "Federal respon-
sibilities for on-the-job health of
workers have been avoided by as-
signing such duties to the individual
states
Three Pickets
Stabbed in
ACWA Strike
Shreveport, La. — A spirit that
will not be daunted has kept up the
morale of 235 striking Clothing
Workers here despite the arrest of
29 pickets and the stabbing of three
strikers.
The pickets have been arrested
at various times since the walkout
started Apr. 27 at three plants of
the Shreveport Garment Mfg. Co.
Knives Used on Pickets
They face trial on assault and bat-
tery complaints issued by strike-
breakers.
Last week, eight strikebreakers
were walking toward the com-
pany's McNeil Street plant when
three pickets approached. The
pickets were cut with knives and
scissors, and Jive strikebreakers
face trial on assault charges.
Mrs. Roberta Williams 26, one
of the pickets was stabbed eight
times. She is in serious condition
in Physicians & Surgeons Hospital
here. A knife cut pierced her spinal
cord, and her left leg may be para-
lyzed permanently, medical men
said. A presser, Mrs. Williams is
the mother of a 5-year-old son.
The ACWA local was organized
last October. Morale has been high
and spirit strong, according to AC-
WA Vice Pres. Richard Brazier, St.
Louis, and ACWA Reg. Dir. Wil-
liam Hall. Other unions have
strongly supported the infant local
in its first strike, Hall said.
Union Chosen by Workers
The company is one of the
South's largest manufacturers of
work clothes. Two Shreveport
plants with 322 employes make
trousers. Another with about 65
workers makes shirts at Mansfield,
La., 40 miles away.
ACWA began an organizing
campaign at the three plants last
fall and won bargaining rights,
226-149, on Dec. 4.
After 15 negotiating sessions
management had made no wage of-
fer, though average wages are $1.10
an hour, Hail said. The union
voted to strike, and walked out in
April.
Management refused to budge at
a meeting recently with a U.S. con-
ciliator. The union is asking a wage
increase of 12.5 cents an hour, plus
5.5 percent of payrolls for welfare
benefits.
States 'Ignore' Problem
The conference statement pointed
out that "most states ignore this
obligation." In 36 states, the dele
gates noted, public health expendi-
tures for occupational health pro-
grams range "from nothing to less
than 5 cents per worker per year."
Pointing up the obstacles to be
overcome, the delegates declared:
"Efforts by individual workers
to protect themselves against
many on-the-job health hazards
are often meaningless, since some
occupational diseases develop
slowly and require years of ex-
posure before their dire effects
make themselves known.
"Even then, medical diagnoses
often fail to pinpoint the origin of
industrial diseases because all too
often physicians have not been
trained to recognize the relation
between the occupation of the wage
earner and his illness.
"Trade unions have been largely
blocked in their efforts to protect
workers by an inability to obtain
the elementary facts in sufficient
quantities to awaken the conscience
of America. Most industrial dis-
eases are not officially reported and
many such diseases are not com-
pensable under state workmen's
compensation laws."
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Richard F.
Walsh, chairman of the federation's
Standing Committee on Safety and
Occupational Health, which spon-
sors the annual conference, told the
delegates that the committee will
move promptly to enlist the parti-
cipation of all AFL-CIO affiliates
in the drive against occupational
health hazards.
White House
Delegates Cite
Radiation Risk
The need for adequate measures
to safeguard both workers and the
public against excessive radiation
exposure was highlighted at the
cent White House Conference on
Occupational Safety.
This was disclosed as the Labor
Dept. published a summary of con-
clusions reached by delegates.
The summary declared there is
a need for "more industrial per-
sonnel trained in the evaluation and
control of harmful exposure," in
view of the growing industrial use
of radioactive materials.
The delegates also called for
effective government regulation
"to keep necessary exposures
within maximum allowable lim-
its," and urged a study of ade-
quate methods for disposal of
radioactive wastes.
Organized labor's delegates to
the conference called by Pres. Eis-
enhower included AFL-CIO Vice
Pres. Richard F. Walsh, president
of the Theatrical Stage Employes;
George T. Brown, assistant to Pres.
George Meany; Pres. James Brown-
low of the Metal Trades Dept.;
Sec.-Treas. Hunter Wharton of the
Operating Engineers; and Harry
See, safety director of the Railroad
Trainmen.
Union Label Knows
No Language Bar
New York— There is no
language barrier when it
comes to promoting the un-
ion label, according to Sec.-
Treas. Harry Avrutin of the
Union Label and Service
Trades Council of Greater
New York.
Avrutin reports that Ladies 9
Garment Workers Local 23 is
using a four-page Chinese-
language newspaper to reach
more than 900 Chinese-speak-
ing members here in the skirt
and sportswear field with
news about products carrying
the union label.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 21, 1960
In Letter to Congressmen :
Meany Warns of 'Reckless'
Slash in Mutual Security Aid
By Gervase N. Love
The AFL-CIO has asked Congress, in letters sent all members of the House by Pres. George
Meany, to resist "reckless slashing" of mutual security appropriations.
Meany acted following newspaper reports that as much as $1.5 billion may be cut from actual
appropriations under the $4 billion authorized by Congress and approved by Pres. Eisenhower.
The federation president told House members the possibility of a deep cut in appropriations is
"particularly distressing" after the^
"very welcome" completion of con-
gressional action a week earlier.
Congress had authorized only $88.7
million less than the $4.1 billion
requested by the President.
Meany recalled to the congress-
men that the AFL-CIO recently
held its Conference on World Af-
fairs in New York.
"As a result of these delibera-
tions," he said, "American labor
is more convinced than ever that
Communist imperialism must be
fought with every means at our
command, in every possible way.
Military preparation is crucial,
but it will be to no avail if we
do not help our allies and the
uncommitted nations of the world
continue economic and political
resistance to Communist aggres-
sion.
"I am keenly aware of and sym-
pathetic to the problems faced by
members of Congress who find it
difficult to support 'foreign aid'
when the Administration refuses to
give adequate support to domestic
measures such as aid to education,
aid to depressed areas, and similar
measures. We have urged passage
of such bills and continue to do so.
America needs such help, and can
afford it.
"Our failures in these areas, how-
ever, must not be permitted to inter-
fere with our obligations in the
world area. There will be little
value in protecting and extending
the frontiers of security at home if
communism is permitted to extend
its frontiers throughout the world."
Committee hearings on mutual
security appropriations got under
way in both House and Senate
soon after Eisenhower, express-
ing his thanks to Congress, signed
the authorization bill.
The $4 billion authorized in-
cludes $1.3 billion in new spending
and $2.7 billion which was author-
ized during the last session of Con-
gress and was carried over.
Hayes Cites Case for
Liberal Trade Policy
Organized labor's traditional support of a liberal foreign trade
policy is maintained, despite internal stresses, because "we must look
at the whole economy and not just a part," Pres. A. J. Hayes of the
Machinists said in a speech before the Industrial Management Club
of Port Chester, N. Y.
A policy based on low and rea-®*
sonable tariffs at home in order to
keep markets open for sales abroad,
said, is "particularly trouble-
some" to the IAM, which has
members working in some 250 dif-
ferent industries.
"Employers may worry about the
impact of foreign competition on
their profits," he pointed out, "but
our members worry about its ef-
fect on their jobs.
Special Consideration Asked
"Therefore, we receive many
appeals from our local lodges ask-
ing the international to adopt a
position in favor of higher tariffs
on this commodity or that. How-
ever ... we know that a tariff
favoring one group may easily les-
sen the job opportunities of many
other groups.
'Thus, despite pressure, we
have maintained our commitment
to the principle of liberal trade.
We believe that in this matter, as
in all others, the determining
consideration must be the nation-
al interest. And we frankly be-
lieve that a liberal policy of re-
ciprocal trade is in the national
interest."
Hayes, who also is an AFL-CIO
vice president, said the fact that
Europe and Japan are again com-
petitive after the vast destruction
of World War II, is testimony to
the effectiveness of the Marshall
Plan in attaining its announced goal
of restoring them to competition.
The situation created by the re-
turn of foreign producers to inter-
national competition "is not so
desperate as some people would
have us believe" for either manu-
facturers or workers in the United
States, he asserted.
He dismissed as "specious*" the
argument raised during the steel
strike that U.S. wages were "pric-
ing U.S.-made goods out of world
markets," pointing out that we
still export far more than we
import.
The Labor Dept., Hayes noted,
has estimated that the jobs of about
4.5 million workers, or some 7 per-
cent of the labor force, depend on
foreign trade. The Commission on
Foreign Economic Policy, he con-
tinued, has estimated that if the
U.S. abandoned all tariffs, some-
where between 200,000 and slightly
more than 400,000 jobs would be
lost. If we went to the other ex-
treme of high tariffs, all 4.5 million
jobs could well be wiped out.
Low Pay Not Always Cheap
Despite the fact that U.S. wages
are the highest in the world, Hayes
said, the U.S. manages to stay in
world markets because "low-paid
labor — foreign or domestic — is not
necessarily cheap labor."
"The true measure of labor
costs is not hourly wages but unit
labor costs," he said. "And in
Europe when a manufacturer cal-
culates his costs on a unit basis,
he finds that what costs less by
the hour often costs more by the
piece.
"It is not relevant to compare the
direct hourly wages of European
workers and American workers, for
the two are not comparable. In
Europe a worker gets many fringe
benefits in the way of health care,
housing, retirement and so forth
that go far beyond those enjoyed
by American workers. These bene-
fits come out of the cost of produc-
tion, of course, and when they are
taken into account, the difference
between labor costs abroad and
those at home is considerably
smaller than a mere comparison of
hourly wage rates would indicate.
"And even if there remains a
margin between American and
European wages, it is fast disap-
pearing for the simple reason that
wages are rising faster in Europe
than they are in America*"
The new authorization is broken
down into $256 million for special
assistance; $150 million for the
President's contingency fund; $675
million for defense support; $1.3
million for the United Nations'
High Commissioner for Refugees;
and $16.5 million for the relief of
refugees in Palestine. Congress
also earmarked $6.5 million that
may be spent for the relief of the
Palestine refugees.
The hold-over authorization is
made up of $2 billion for military
assistance; $700 million for the
Development Loan Fund and $20
million for administration.
After passage of the bill, Chair-
man J. W. Fulbright of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
warned that the program "cannot
survive many more annual author-
izations" because each year Con-
gress has tied on more "administra-
tive strings" which have resulted in
making the program "so slow and
cumbersome as to reduce its ef-
fectiveness very greatly."
"Multi-year authorization"
should replace the yearly author-
ization and appropriation proce-
dure, he asserted, with Congress
restricting itself to "periodic re-
view." The AFL-CIO has fre-
quently testified before congres-
sional committees in favor of
long-term authorization.
This Is the 1 6-page AFL-CIO special supplement that
appeared in the New York Times on May 8. Fill out
and mail the coupon below to insure delivery of the
number of copies you need.
AFL-CIO Dept. of International Affairs
815 Sixteenth St., N. W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Send me a single copy of the supplement free.
Send me copies
(Up to 1,000 copies, 5 cents each)
(Over 1,000 copies, 4 cents each)
Name
Address
South African Boycott
Wins World Support
Free world labor's boycott of South African products has won the
unqualified support of internationally-known persons who are promi-
nent in a wide range of spheres of activity.
Among them is Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who heartily endorsed
the boycott so long as South Africa continues its repression of Afri-
and its disregard of their'^
cans
elementary rights.
The boycott, which has the firm
support of the AFL-CIO, was in-
stituted by the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions as a demon-
stration of labor's solidarity with
the people of South Africa and to
exert pressure on the government to
change its racial policies.
In addition to Mrs. Roosevelt,
backing for the boycott came from
the Rev. Trevor Huddleston, the
English clergyman who has worked
long and devotedly in African loca-
tions in South Africa; Gabriel Mar-
cel, of the French Academy; J. B.
Priestley, the British novelist, and
Earl Russell (Bertrand Russell),
English philosopher.
"There is now little doubt that
unless very massive pressure can
be brought to bear upon the
South African government,"
wrote Father Huddleston, "the
kind of tyranny now in existence
there will continue for a long
time. • • •
"What is really needed is the kind
of economic pressure which would
convince white South Africa that
isolation is a real possibility, and
that, in any case, there is no hope
of South Africa being received back
into the fold until a change of
policy is brought about. I believe
that the trade unions are capable
themselves of providing just this
kind of pressure."
Earl Russell wrote that he has
previously refrained from buying
South African products. On sup-
port of the boycott, he said:
"I propose doing so until the
South African government adopts a
more liberal policy."
Meantime, the ICFTU has sent
the Intl. Labor Organization a
detailed report on the prison farm
labor system in South Africa and
asked ILO Dir. Gen. David
Morse to call it to the attention
of the ILO Committee on Forced
Labor "with particular reference
to ILO Convention No. 105 con-
cerning the abolition of forced
labor."
The ICFTU report was based on
a first-hand investigation by a rep-
resentative of the worldwide labor
center.
It noted that African labor has
been made available to European
farmers in South Africa through
two systems. One is prison labor,
which is still in force, when an
African has been sentenced in a
court. The other is the so-called
"volunteer" scheme under which
petty offenders are induced to take
farm jobs instead of being prose-
cuted. The latter system, the
ICFTU pointed out, seems no long-
er to be applied to the native-born,
but is still in effect for other Afri-
cans.
"There have been a number of
cases of ill-treatment of these work-
ers brought to court, but this, of
course, does not mean that all cases
have been reported," the ICFTU
document said.
"Some of these cases are in keep-
ing with the best traditions of Bel-
sen (a Nazi Germany concentration
camp), but it would be highly in-
accurate and unjust to say that all
white South African farmers treat
their laborers in this inhuman fash-
ion. There is, however, a sufficient
number of these cases to warrant
a full investigation."
09-lS-S
ILO Treaties
Accepted by
UAR, Liberia
Geneva — The Intl. Labor Organ-
ization has announced the ratifica-
tion of seven ILO conventions, or
treaties, by the United Arab Re-
public and of three concerning sea-
farers by Liberia.
The UAR agreed to four conven-
tions concerning conditions of work
— two restricting the work period to
8 hours a day and 48 hours a week
in industry, commerce and offices;
another on weekly rest in industry;
and a fourth on minimum wage-
fixing machinery.
The UAR also approved two con-
ventions concerning workmen's
compensation for accidents and oc-
cupational diseases, and a seventh
barring discrimination in employ-
ment and occupation.
Liberia adopted conventions set-
ting standards for officers' compe-
tency certificates, shipowners' lia-
bility in case of sickness and injury,
and the minimum age for employ-
ment in the maritime industry.
Union Gives $2,000
For Polio Victims
New York — Manager Philip
Lubliner of Pocketbook and Novel-
ty Workers' Local 1 has presented
the 1960 March of Dimes with a
$2,000 check, bringing to over
$10,000 the total of contribution*
from the local's members since
1955.
Living Costs
Up Sharply,
Pay Down
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's cost of living
jumped sharply to another record
high in April while the purchas-
ing power of factory workers
slumped for the fourth straight
month, according to the Labor
Dept.'s monthly report.
The increase in the Consumer
Price Index to 126.2 — a rise of
0.4 percent from March and the
largest advance since last June —
was caused chiefly by the sharpest
hike in food prices in two years,
the report said.
This means the market basket
which cost $1 in the 1947-49 base
period now costs just over $1.26.
The Labor Dept. reported that
cutbacks in the auto, metals and
machinery industries and "to
some extent* 9 the religious holi-
days occurring in the April sur-
vey week combined to shorten
hours of work, dropping spend-
able earnings by 85 cents be-
tween March and April.
This drop in spendable earnings,
taken with the rise in consumer
prices, left the factory worker with
three dependents with buying
power of $63.55 per week in April.
Last December, his buying power or
"real" spendable earnings totaled
$65.74.
The April CPI will mean a wage
increase of 1 or 2 cents an hour
for the greater part of some 1.1
milllion workers whose escalator
contract clauses are tied to the
April index.
Some 975,000 workers in the
automobile, farm equipment and
related parts industries will receive
a 2-cent hike.
About 1 50,000 workers — most
of them with Westinghouse Elec-
tric Corp. — will receive 1-cent in-
creases. City indexes will bring a
one-half cent hike to 12,000 em
ployes of the Chicago Transit Sys
tem and a 1-cent increase to 4,000
employes of American Bosch
Armour in New York.
Arnold Chase, the depart-
ment's price expert, expressed
the view that the large advance
in the April CPI "does not mark
the beginning of a sharp upward
trend."
He said the large April rise
means much of the seasonal in
crease in food prices has now oc
curred, though there will be in-
creases continuing through the
summer months.
Asked if any price declines are
expected which will offset the 0.4
percent April rise, Chase said it is
unlikely since, with food more than
with any other group, "consump-
(Continued on Page 2)
ACLU Defends
Dues Use for
Political Aims
New York — The use of mem-
bers' dues by unions for polit-
ical purposes is "an exercise of
the right to free expression of
opinion protected by the First
Amendment," according to the
American Civil Liberties Union.
"Although a minority of union
members may dissent from the
opinions expressed," the ACLU
said, "so long as such members
have an effective right to partici-
pate in the decision-making process
within the union, including the
right to vote for union officials of
their choice, they are not deprived
of their civil liberties.
"The remedy lies not in sti-
fling the expression of group
opinion, but in democratic par-
ticipation in the political life of
their union so that a majority of
{Continued on Page 3) I
Vol. V
(sued weekly at >
815 Sixteenth St. N W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year Seeond Class Postage Paid at Washington. D. C.
Satur day, May 28, 1960
No, 22
House Passes School Bill;
Adds Discrimination Bar
3,000 STARS AND EXTRAS from hit stage plays and musical shows climax march up Broadway,
crowd into New York's Astor Hotel to endorse Actors' Equity negotiating team in deadlocked con-
tract talks. Actors approved union recommendation against general strike, voted' instead to hold
nightly "meetings" of various show casts which could bring temporary cancellations of individual
performances until contract is won from League of New York Theaters.
S> —
Producers
Threaten to
Close Shows
New York — Broadway pro
ducers voiced open threats of a
lockout that would darken legiti
mate theater marquees here, as
negotiations between Actors' Eq-
uity and the League of New York
Theaters limped along toward a
May 31 deadline.
The threat of a complete black-
out was made by Burton A. Zorn
special counsel for the theater
owners, who warned the producers
would "close all productions" if
the AFL-CIO union attempts selec-
tive closings of hit shows after
current three-year contracts expire
at month's end.
More than 3,000 members of
Equity earlier overwhelmingly
endorsed their union's recom-
mendations that they decline to
halt all Broadway shows by a
general theater strike. They ap-
proved, instead, an Equity plan
for nightly "meetings'" of various
hit-show casts which would re-
sult in scattered cancellations of
individual performances.
The action by performers from
the casts of leading dramatic and
musical shows came as Mayor Rob-
ert F. Wagner (D) stepped into
deadlocked talks and called both
actors and producers into continu-
ous negotiations in an effort to iron
out the dispute.
The actors and actresses gave
ringing endorsement to the
{Continued on Page 4) J
Committee Showdowns IS ear:
Wage Drive Gains
Steam in Congress
A drive to modernize the minimum wage law picked up steam
as a House Labor subcommittee agreed to turn over to the full
Labor Committee on June 2 a compromise Kennedy-Morse-Roose-
velt bill.
On the Senate side, an effort to get a meeting of the Labor Com-
mittee on minimum wage proposals^ — —
was blocked by objections from Sen
ate Republican Floor Leader Ever
ett McKinley Dirksen (111.), who
twice invoked a frequently-waived
Senate rule to prevent the commit
tee from meeting while the Senate
was in session.
In both committees the stage
is apparently set for eventual
showdown votes on bills scaled
down from the original Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt proposal that
would raise the minimum from
$1 an hour to $1.25 an hour and
widen coverage to an estimated
7.8 million workers not now pro-
tected by the law.
The Kennedy - Morse - Roosevelt
bill, backed by the AFL-CIO, was
sponsored by Senators John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Wayne
Morse (D-Ore.) and by Rep. James
Roosevelt (D-Calif.). As reported
last year by subcommittee to the
full Senate Labor Committee, it
would have added about 10 million
now unprotected workers to the
{Continued on Page 2)
Measure
Approved
By 206-189
By Gene Zack-
The House has passed an ex-
panded $1.3 billion four-year
aid-to-education bill — the first
general federal school-aid meas-
ure ever to win approval in the
House of Representatives.
The vote on final passage was J
206 to 189.
Passage came despite addition
of a so-called anti-segregation
amendment sponsored by Rep.
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (D-N. Y.)
and sealed into the measure by a
rollcall vote of 218 to 181.
In both 1956 and 1957, the only
other years of the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration when federal school
bills came to a vote in the House,
addition of such an amendment
sounded the deathknell of construc-
tion-aid bills. The measures were
killed after the amendment had been
adopted.
The fate of the measure re-
mained uncertain this year as
doubts were expressed whether
the Senate, which earlier had
passed a $1.8 billion program for
grants for both teachers' salaries
and school construction, would
accept the Powell amendment.
The possibility existed that a
joint Senate-House conference com-
mittee could reach a compromise
satisfactory to both chambers.
Before final passage, provisions
affecting state contributions were
adopted as the House tailored
the bill slightly to meet White House
demands in an effort to head off a
threatened presidential veto.
Passage of the bill came after
two days of parliamentary maneu-
vering which saw these develop-
ments:
• A move to substitute the
Administration's modest bill pro-
(Continued on Page 2)
AFL-CIO Raps Dirksen
Anti- Strike Proposal
The AFL-CIO has sharply denounced a proposal by Senate Re-
publican Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen (111.) to prohibit work-
ers from striking in protest against abolition of jobs and to prevent
unions from bargaining with employers about layoffs.
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller said the Dirksen bill, which
would amend the Norris-La
Guardia, Taft-Hartley and Railway
Labor Acts, "is more than reaction-
ary. . . . For parallels to this pro-
posal, one must look to totalitarian
sources — Nazi Germany and So-
viet Russia."
Biemiller, charging that Dirk-
sen "has repeatedly shown his
subservience to anti-union em-
ployer interests," added: "Even
so, we doubt that the Senate
minority leader comprehends the
full reach of this bill, which was
evidently slipped to him by some
railroad lobbyist/' - ,
Biemiller's denunciation of the
Dirksen proposal was issued in a
statement released to the press. He
said the judgment of the effect of
the Illinois senator's move was
based on analysis by legal counsel.
A Supreme Court decision on
Apr. 18 invalidated an injunction
prohibiting the Railroad Telegra-
phers from striking to prevent uni-
lateral action by the Chicago &
North Western Railway to close
several hundred small stations. The
court, declaring that "there is noth-
ing strange about (collective bar-
{Continued on Page 4)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C„ SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
Showdown Near in N. Y. :
TWO KENTUCKY members of the Clothing Workers, part of a
three-state delegation which won a trip to Washington by bringing
in the most letters from neighbors and co-workers in support of
minimum wage legislation, find that calling on congressmen and
senators is hard on a girl's feet. Shown alongside of the special bus
w hich brought them to the capital are Retha Cook and Betty Miller.
School Aid Bill Passed
By House 206 to 189
(Continued from Page 1)
viding $100 million a year for
30 years to help states pay the
interest charges on school con-
struction bonds, was defeated by
an overwhelming voice vote.
• An attempt by Rep. Lee Met-
calf (D-Mont.) to include federal
aid for teachers' salaries was ruled
out of order on the grounds that
the debate was limited to aid for
school construction.
• A move by Rep. Roman Pu-
cinski (D-Ill.) to broaden the bill
to provide loans to parochial and
private schools was blocked when
the amendment was ruled out of
order.
• Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
N. J.), sponsor of the original three-
year $975 million measure, won ap-
proval of his broader substitute by
a teller vote followed by a rollcall
vote of 233 to 170.
In an effort to compromise
with the Eisenhower Administra-
tion, Thompson's final bill called
for either state or local contribu-
tions to match federal grants in
the first two years of the pro-
gram, with matching state grants
required the final two years.
As the debate opened, Health,
Education & Welfare Sec. Arthur
S. Flemming raised the threat that
Pres. Eisenhower would veto the
measure unless changes were made
in matching state grants. As orig-
inally drafted, the bill called for
matching state funds in the second
and third years but federal grants
only the first year. Flemming urged
that state funds be required in each
year.
At the same time, the HEW
official, in an exchange of letters
with Rep. Carroll D. Reams
(R-Pa.), called for proportion-
ately larger sums for the poorer
states "where the need for fed-
eral assistance is greatest/'
State AFL-CIO Wins
Compensation Claims
Charlestown, W. Va. — The AFL-CIO West Virginia Labor Fed-
eration provides a service for the members of its affiliated unions
which pays off in cold cash at a time when dollars and cents have
a particular value.
In brief, it follows every claim for workmen's and unemploy-
ment compensation from the time ® t j ona j
it is filed until the case is closed.
In the first 17 months of operation
it has won for injured union mem-
bers alone $38,871 they otherwise
would not have had.
"The cost of this entire service
is included in the per capita tax
of 12 cents per month for each
affiliated member," said Miles
C. Stanley, president of the state
labor body.
The federation has set up a
special Workmen's/ Unemployment
Compensation Dept. in the state
office with an experienced full-
time director and the necessary
clerical help, and because of a
Slate Supreme Court ruling jar-
ring laymen from representing
claimants before appeal boards,
has retained a lawyer, James ML
Sprouse, on practically a full-time
basis to act in litigation on appeal
cases.
In practical operation, this 1 is
how the service works:
• Each local union has set up
a compensation committee, the
chairman of which notifies the fed-
eration's compensation department
whenever a member sustains an" in-
dustrial injury, incurs an occopa-
disease or runs into diffi-
culty in filing for or obtaining un-
employment compensation.
• A file is built in the federa-
tion's office and is kept up to date
through every step of the claim.
• All litigation, before field ex-
aminers or in the courts, is han-
dled by Sprouse with the express
consent of the claimant.
During the first 17-month pe-
riod, the department took 661 un-
employment compensation claims
to hearings. It won nine, lost one
and is awaiting decisions on the
rest.
In the same period it handled
898 workmen's compensation cases.
Hearings were held in 33, of which
the department won 12, lost three
and awaits decisions in 18. An
additional 14 hearings are pending.
In addition to approximately
$130,000 in benefits paid, on ap-
proval of the workmen's com-
pensation commissioner, the fed-
eration's service won for mem-
bers $24,700 by reopening
claims for permanent partial
awards; $6,200 in increased
rates, additional time of pay-
ments, etc.; and $8,000 in
awards won at hearings.
Hospital Employes Pressing
For Recognition, Contracts
New York — The drive for union recognition by workers in private, non-profit hospitals here has
neared the showdown stage with eight hospitals under contract or in negotiations and 10 holdouts
warned that they face a "sure strike" unless they agree to negotiate with their employes.
Pressing for full union recognition is Drug & Hospital Local 1199 of the Retail, Wholesale & Dept.
Store Union, which waged a 46-day strike for recognition in 1959 against seven hospitals. The strike
ended with a truce when the city's^
voluntary hospitals issued a state-
ment of policy setting up a griev-
ance procedure, agreed not to dis-
criminate against union members
and established a $l-an-hour min-
imum wage.
Charging that the unilateral
policy set by management
"hasn't worked," Local 1199 has
pressed for written contracts and
full recognition.
The union has offered — and has
negotiate d — an unprecedent-
ed "never-strike pledge" which
provides for arbitration of all dis-
putes, including contract renewals.
The latest breakthrough by the
union came when the Beth Abra-
ham Home & Hospital signed a
union-shop contract covering its
350 non-professional employes.
The agreement marked a sharp
turnabout for the hospital which
last February locked out a large
group of union members for six
days after a demonstration for
recognition.
At the same time, Local 1199
announced that the Home of Old
Israel, with about 85 employes, has
agreed to recognize the union and
negotiate a contract.
The three-year pact negotiated
Wage Drive
Gains Steam
In Congress
(Continued from Page 1)
coverage of the Fair Labor Stand-
ards Act.
New Formula Possible
Various proposals now pending
in committee would call for reduc-
tion of the number of newly cov-
ered workers to an estimated 5
million or 6 million, a series of step-
ups in higher minimum wages and
a series of step-downs in weekly
hours for workers now lacking in
protection.
The Eisenhower Administration
through Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-
ell has endorsed a "modest in-
crease" in the minimum wage,
which Mitchell has defined as per-
haps $1.10 or $1.15 an hour and
coverage of about 3.1 million new
workers by wage provisions.
The last time the minimum
wage was raised was in 1956,
when the statutory wage was
lifted from 75 cents to $1 an hour
but there was no change in cov-
erage.
The AFL-CIO has strongly en-
dorsed broader coverage this year
as well as a higher wage, pointing
out that the percentage of workers
in interstate commerce now pro-
tected is far smaller than 1938,
when the first Fair Labor Standards
Act was passed.
Three Nations Ratify
7 ILO Conventions
Geneva — The Intl. Labor Organ-
ization has announced the ratifica-
tion of seven assorted ILO conven-
tions, or treaties, by three nations.
Liberia ratified three conventions
concerning fishermen adopted last
year, dealing with minimum age
for employment, medical examina-
tions and articles of agreement.
Iraq approved three dealing with
working conditions — weekly rest
in industry, paid holidays and pro-
tection of wages. Portugal ratified
the convention on workmen's com-
pensation in agriculture.
with Beth Abraham provides ma-
jor improvements in vacations,
sick leave, severance pay and other
fringe benefits, with the wage issue
submitted to arbitration.
The first of a series of strike
votes has been scheduled by the
union for workers at Mount Sinai
Hospital, one of the largest of the
institutions struck last year. The
hospital, in a move which Local
1199 Pres. Leon J. Davis charged
was designed to '"lull" the workers,
has announced that its minimum
pay will be raised to $1,125 an
hour on July and said it "plans"
to increase the wage floor to $1.25
at a later date.
Hundreds of hospital workers
at institutions where the union
claims a majority have taken
part in off-duty picketing dem-
onstrations demanding union
recognition and written con-
tracts.
A brochure including editorials
in five New York newspapers hail-
ing the union's permanent no-
strike offer was sent by the union
to trustees of the holdout hospi-
tals, under the heading: "An Ap-
peal to Reason — How to Avoid
Another Hospital Strike.**
Living Costs Up Sharply,
Spendable Wages Down
(Continued from Page 1)
tion is relatively inelastic.**
The April CPI, at 126.2, was 1.9
percent higher than in April 1959.
Comparing the Aprils of 1959 and
1960, medical care is now 3.9 per-
cent higher; food is up 1.6 percent;
housing, up 2.1 percent; apparel,
up 1.8 percent; transportation, up
0.6 percent; personal care, up 2.2
percent; reading and recreation, up
2.9 percent; and other goods and
services, up 2.9 percent.
The only significant decline from
March was for used cars in the pri-
vate transportation subgroup. Used
cars are meeting "severe competi-
tion" from new compact cars, the
report said.
In a concurrent report on the
spendable earnings of factory
workers, the Labor Dept. said
the March-April decline was
"more than seasonal."
The drop of 85 cents or 1 per-
cent in net spendable earnings — ■
after deduction of social security
and federal income taxes — left the
worker with three dependents with
$80.20 per week; the worker with-
out dependents with $72.66.
The "real" spendable earnings
represent the buying power of the
spendable earnings after the change
in the cost of living is taken into
account. For the worker with
three dependents, the figure of
$63.55 in April was down 1.5 per-
cent from March and down 2.5 per-
cent from April 1959.
Meany to Head N.Y.
Labor Day Parade
New York — AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany has accepted an in-
vitation to act as grand marshal of
the Labor Day Parade sponsored
by the New York City Central
Labor Council.
SNAPPILY-DRESSED MODELS and "Uncle Sam" were on hand
to greet federal employes who work for the District of Columbia
when they reported for work May 24 at the District Building in
Washington. The employes were given copies of the health insur-
ance program the American Federation of Government Employes
is offering its members.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
Page Thre€
Non-Ops Conclude Case;
Four Boards Weigh
Rail Wage Cases
By Dave Perlman
Chicago — A Presidential Emergency Board here heard clos-
ing arguments in the dispute between 11 railroad shop crafts seek-
ing a 25-cent hourly raise for half-a-million workers and rail man-
agement, which has countered with a 15-cent wage slash proposal.
The three-member board has until June 8 to submit its recom-
mendations, which are non-bind-^
ing. The Railway Labor Act pro-
hibits a strike for an additional 30
days while direct negotiations are
resumed on the basis of the emer-
gency board proposals.
Meanwhile, an arbitration
panel has concluded its hearings
on the wage demands of the
40,000-member Locomotive En-
gineers, unaffiliated, and there
was a possibility that its decision
might be announced before the
report on the non-operating un-
ions' case. The BLE chose bind-
ing arbitration, one of the alter-
natives under the Railway Labor
Act, in preference to the emer-
gency board procedure.
Still another long-smouldering
rail dispute — involving the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad, where the Trans-
port Workers represent the largest
group of non-operating employes —
hit the emergency board stage.
Strike Averted .
In a move to avert a scheduled
June 6 strike by 25,000 TWU
members, Pres. Eisenhower named
a board headed by University of
Michigan Prof. Russell A. Smith
to make recommendations on union
demands for a 35-cent wage in-
crease, a ban on contracting-ou,t
maintenance and construction work
and changes in job classification
and work scope rules.
The same board will consider
wage and rule demands of some
8,000 Pennsy workers repre-
sented by craft unions affiliated
with the AFL-CIO Railway Em-
ployes Dept.
A series of "continuous meet-
ings" of TWU members to protest
management delay during more
than two years of negotiations
virtually halted freight operations
and curtailed passenger service on
May 19. The railroad obtained a
federal court injunction against the
union; the TWU, declaring that the
stoppages were the result of local
actions, advised its members to re-
turn to work. Pennsylvania man-
agement has filed suits in federal
court seeking $15 million damages
from the union.
Switchmen Case Referred
In the national negotiations with
the railroads, involving the stand-
ard rail unions affiliated with the
Railway Labor Executives' Associa-
tion, an emergency board has been
convened to consider the wage dis-
pute of the Switchmen. The board
is headed by Frank P. Douglass,
former chairman of the National
Mediation Board.
Other operating unions — besides
the Locomotive Engineers and the
Switchmen — are still in earlier
stages of mediation.
The most-publicized dispute
involving railroad workers and
their unions is not expected to
come to a head for several
months. This is the "work rule"
proposal served on the operat-
ing unions by the railroads.
Changes asked by management,
the unions contend, would throw
thousands of workers out of their
jobs, make ghost towns out of rail-
road communities and take away
safeguards won in generations of
collective bargaining.
As the Locomotive Engineers
concluded their presentation before
the arbitration panel, Grand Chief
Engineer Guy L. Brown, who has
headed the BLE since 1953, an-
nounced that he will retire July 31.
Contracts Extended as
Aircraft Talks Continue
More than 100,000 of the nation's aircraft and missile plant
workers are staying on the job under contract extension while
bargaining committees of the Machinists and Auto Workers are
continuing negotiations with management.
Most of the agreements covering 600,000 workers have reached
their expiration date, or will do so^
shortly. Talks are proceeding under
a cooperative bargaining program
agreed on last August by the IAM
and UAW.
Several expired contracts are
being extended day by day. At
numerous locations, well-attended
membership meetings have voted
by overwhelming margins to au-
thorize a strike call, if that be-
comes necessary.
Strike authorizations have been
Toted as follows:
United Aircraft plants in Con-
necticut employing 30,000 at the
East Hartford and Manchester main
plant (IAM); Hamilton Standard
division plants at Windsor Locks
and Broad Brook (IAM); the Si-
korsky plant in the Stratford-Bridge-
port area (UAW); the Pratt & Whit-
ney engine plant at North Haven,
Conn. (UAW).
Convair plants with 14,000 IAM
members at San Diego, Pomona
and other California locations;
Douglas plants with 3,500 workers
at Long Beach, Calif.; other Doug-
las plants at Tulsa, Okla., and
Charlotte, N. C.
Lockheed Missile & Space units
around Los Angeles with 10,500
1AM members employed.
Negotiations are continuing at
all locations where strike author-
ization has been voted recently,
and at Convair in Ft Worth,
Tex.; Douglas in Santa Monica
and £1 Segu n do-Torranc e , Calif.;
Lockheed in Burbank, Calif., and
Marietta, Ga.; Boeing plants at
Seattle, Wash., and Wichita, Kan.
The only walkout to date in cur-
rent negotiations continued for the
fifth week at the Carlstadt, N. J.,
plant of the Curtiss- Wright Elec-
tronic Division. Some 600 Machin-
ists walked out after futile negotia-
tions.
IAM Pres. A. J. Hayes and UAW
Vice Pres. Leonard Woodcock is-
sued a statement after a meeting of
the IAM-UAW Joint Coordinating
Committee in Washington. They
said:
"We are gravely concerned at the
lack of progress so far in our dis-
cussions with the industry. In this
most critical period for our nation's
defense, management is trading on
borrowed time.
"Already 70,000 workers have
chosen to work temporarily without
contracts rather than settle for sub-
standard agreements. It would be
a mistake for anyone to believe that
this situation can continue indefi-
nitely."
In Hartford, Conn., Pres. Hayes
was keynote speaker at a rally at-
tended by several thousand United
Aircraft workers who voted to au-
thorize strike action.
VICTORY OVER UNION-BATTLING Pennsylvania dress operators is cheered by members of
Ladies' Garment Workers at Lackawanna Dress Co., Scranton, after union won sweeping National Labor
Relations Board elections in 33 shops. Major triumph capped two-and-a-half-year struggle against
racketeer and underworld elements which had penetrated Pennsylvania dress field.
ACLU Defends
Dues Use for
Political Aims
(Continued from Page 1)
the union members may, in time,
be persuaded of their wisdom.
"This view does not impair the
right of dissenting members to ex-
press their opinions in public de-
bate of public issues."
The statement was adopted by
ACLU's board of directors in
comment on a union political ex-
penditure case now before the U.S.
Supreme Court. The case went up
on appeal by the Machinists from
a Georgia Supreme Court decision
that the Railway Labor Act, which
permits employers and unions to
sign union-shop agreements, is un-
constitutional.
The Georgia court ruling was
based on the claim that the union
shop interfered with the freedom
of opinion of workers who disagree
with a union's political stand. As
a result, the opinion said, a worker
"compelled" to "support candi-
dates" for public office "is just as
much deprived of his freedom of
speech as if he were compelled to
give his support to doctrines he
opposes."
AFL-CIO Files Brief
The AFL-CIO has filed a brief
with the U.S. Supreme Court sup-
porting the IAM appeal.
The ACLU also pointed out that
the constitutionality of the Corrupt
Practices Act is related to the po-
litical spending problem raised in
the Georgia case. This act bars
unions and corporations from
spending funds "in connection with
any election (to federal office) . . .
or in connection with any primary
election or political convention or
caucus held to select candidates
(for such office) . . ."
The U.S. Supreme Court has
never ruled on the act's constitu-
tionality. In 1948 the late Pres.
Philip Murray of the former CIO
was indicted for violating it in con-
nection with the election of Rep.
Edward Garmatz (D) in a Balti-
more, Md., district. The Supreme
Court threw out the indictment
without considering the constitu-
tionality. The officers of a St. Louis
Teamsters local are currently un-
der indictment.
The ACLU in 1948 asserted
the act was unconstitutional be-
cause it interfered with the right
of free speech by the majority
of union members. The applica-
tion of the act to the political
expenditures of corporations and
trade associations is now being
studied by the ACLU's Freedom
of Speech and Association Com-
mittee.
Trial Examiner Hits
Newspaper as 'Unfair 9
Arlington, Va. — The Northern Virginia Sun was guilty of an
unfair labor practice when it fired 14 union printers in March 1959,
a National Labor Relations Board trial examiner has ruled in an
intermediate report.
Examiner Louis Plost said the paper, published daily except
Sunday in this suburb of Washing-^
ton, violated the Taft-Hartley Act
in firing the printers to make way
for a Photon machine and teletype-
setters run by non-union men.
He recommended that the
paper be ordered to return the 14
men to their jobs, with back pay
to the date of. firing minus any
wages earned meantime. Ten
other Sun printers, on strike for
14 months, must be offered their
jobs back if they apply for re-
instatement, the examiner recom-
mended.
The back wage bill will total
about $125,000, according to the
Columbia Typographical Union,
ITU Local 101. Sun Publisher
Philip M. Stern said he will appeal
the ruling to the NLRB.
Stern and three others started the
paper in April 1957. One of the
partners was Clayton Fritchey, for-
mer executive director of the Dem-
ocratic National Committee and
former editor of the New Orleans
Item. Stern himself is a former
research director for the Demo-
cratic National Committee.
The trial examiner held that the
introduction of new machinery does
not free an employer from the duty
of recognizing and bargaining with
a previously certified union.
The paper must reinstate the
24 ITU men, Plost recommend-
ed, and train them at its own
expense, if necessary, to operate
machines installed at the start of
the strike.
The Sun's agreement with Local
101 expired Feb. 28, 1959. Before
the expiration date, the examiner
reported, the newspaper secretly re-
cruited non-union replacements and
prepared to install the new machines
without telling the ITU.
Plost's decision followed a hear-
ing ordered by the NLRB general
counsel and a previous dismissal of
the charges by the NLRB regional
director.
His intermediate report held that
the Sun laid plans almost a year
before its ITU contract expired to
run with non-union help. It said
the paper:
• Secretly recruited non-union
employes to stand by.
• Installed, on the day after the
contract expired, new photocom-
position and teletypewriter equip-
ment previously bought and secret-
ly stored during contract negotia-
tions.
• Failed to give any notice to
the union that such equipment was
to be installed; failed to offer union
members a chance to operate the
equipment; failed to make any ef-
fort to bargain on wages or work-
ing conditions for operators of the
new machines.
Masters, Mates Union
Revamps Constitution
Galveston, Tex. — Major revisions of the constitution of the Mas-
ters, Mates & Pilots to give local unions an expanded voice in the
operation of the international were voted here by the 44 delegates
to MMP's biennial convention.
At the same time, the delegates representing 11,000 MMP mem-
bers in 47 locals in the U.S., Can-f-
ada, Panama and Puerto Rico made
the office of president a full-time,
fully paid post for the first time in
the union's history and nominated
a slate of officers for top positions.
The delegates abolished the
posts of district vice presidents,
previously filled by convention
action, and created instead a
board of directors. Under the
new arrangement, the executive
officer of each local will auto-
matically become a member of
the board.
In addition to voting the added
democratic safeguards, the conven-
tion made constitutional changes
to conform with the 1959 Land-
rum-Griffin Act's provisions.
Capt. Robert E. Durkin, MMP
president since the 1958 conven-
tion in San Francisco, declined
nomination for re-election to the
full-paid post as head of the union.
Nominated by delegates for the
presidency were P. F. O'Callahan
of , Baltimore, Arthur L. Holdeman
of New York, Price L. Mitchell of
Mobile, Ala., Roy D. Lurvey of
Boston and Floyd D. Gaskins of
Norfolk.
Nominated for secretary-treas-
urer, the only other full-time
post in MMP, were the incum-
bent, Capt. John M. Bishop, and
Carl B. Mortensen of New York.
Fag* Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 196«
Still Demanding Attention
Lockout Threat Raised
By Broadway Producers
(Continued from Page 1)
union's negotiating team which for
six weeks has unsuccessfully
sought to win producers' approval
of demands for the legitimate the-
ater's first pension, health and wel-
fare fund, plus minimum salary
hikes and improvement of back-
stage sanitary conditions.
Dr. Witte Dies,
Framed Social
Security Act
Madison, Wis. — Dr. Edwin E.
Witte, 73, widely known as the
father of the Social Security Act
of 1935, died here recently as the
nation was celebrating the 25th an-
niversary of the legislation he
drafted.
A retired professor of econom-
ics at the University of Wisconsin,
he was known throughout the na-
tion as an authority on labor rela-
tions and labor law.
In the early 1930s, he was sum-
moned by Pres. Roosevelt to head
the committee which worked out
the social security system that
stands as a landmark for all of
the social legislation enacted during
Roosevelt's years in the White
House.
Nelson Cruikshank, director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security, expressed "deep regret"
at Witte's death. Dr. Witte, he
said, "made a tremendous con-
tribution to the people and the
nation in his role as architect of
the Social Security Act which
has brought dignity and security
to retired workers, widows and
orphans."
Witte was graduated from the
University of Wisconsin in 1909,
and served as a statistician for the
Wisconsin Industrial Commission.
He subsequently was a special
agent for the U. S. Commission
on Industrial Relations.
During World War II he served
on the National Defense Mediation
Board and the National War Labor
Board. From 1949 to 1953 he
served on the Atomic Energy
Labor Relations Panel.
Clerks Win Gains
In A & P Contract
Indianapolis — Retail Clerks Lo-
cal 725 has won hefty wage and
fringe gains in a new two-year con-
tract with the Atlantic and Pacific
Tea Co. chain in this area.
Hikes of 10 to 18 cents an hour
went to both male and female
clerks, with top classifications re-
ceiving from 13 to 18 cents.
Before meeting at the Astor Ho-
tel in the heart of the theater dis-
trict, the entertainers had staged
an early morning mass march up
Broadway, alternately singing trade
union songs and hits from currrent
musical shows.
The Broadway producers have
flatly rejected the union demands,
contending they would result in
theater ticket price increases which
would reduce boxoffice receipts.
Louis A. Lotito, president of the
producers' association, charged
that the legitimate theater is "a
chronically sick industry, already
close to disaster."
Angus Duncan, executive sec-
retary of Equity, countered with
a statement that the producers
are giving a "false image 9 ' of the
industry's condition. He cited a
report issued by the Dept. of
Commerce and Public Events of
the City of New York which
showed that gross receipts last
year hit $45.5 million, a 17.7
percent increase over 1958.
Wagner's entrance into the
stalled contract talks came just one
week before the current contracts
were due to expire. The mayor
said he intervened because the
Broadway theater is an "important
segment" of the city's economy,
and that a shutdown of shows
would hurt not only the entertain-
ment industry but also hotels and
restaurants.
In Pageant at Rally:
Zeal of Forand Bill Supporters
Spurred by FDR's Magic Voice
. . Our progress must continue to be a steady and deliberate one; we cannot stand still, we
cannot slip back . . ."
The recorded voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt boomed over the loudspeakers, 20,000 senior
citizens who remembered F.D.R. gasped, and a solemn hush settled over the almost-darkness of New
York's Madison Square Garden.
The Roosevelt speech set the^
theme for a special pageant —
"Each Age Is a Dream" — present-
ed at a Golden Age Clubs rally
May 18 marking the 25th anni-
versary of the Social Security Act
by urging its modernization to pro-
vide health care for the aged.
Written by Hyman H. Bookbind-
er of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legis-
lation, assisted by Lisbeth Bam-
berger of the Dept. of Social
Security, the pageant was punctu-
ated with the bittersweet ballads
of the trade union movement —
sung by Joe Glazer of the Rubber
Workers.
For the thousands of Golden
Age Club members who jammed
the Garden to emphasize their
support of the labor-backed For-
and bill, the pageant was a time
of remembering, of reliving the
struggles of a quarter-century
ago.
"We remember well the 1920s —
and the 1930s," the narrator said.
"We remember a United States
without minimum wage laws, with-
out public housing laws, without
unemployment insurance laws, and,
yes, without social security bene-
fits for those who gave a lifetime
of service to society."
Then came the voice of F.D.R. :
. . It is my hope that soon
the United States will have a
national system under which no
needy man or woman within our
borders will lack a minimum
old-age pension that will provide
adequate food, adequate clothing
and adequate lodging to the end
of the road — and without hav-
ing to go to the poorhouse to
get it."
And Glazer sang:
"If each little kid could have
fresh milk each day,
If each working man had enough
time to play,
If each homeless soul had a
good place to stay,
It could be a wonderful world."
The Opposition
The battle for social security
legislation, the pageant recalled,
was not an easy one. Typical of
the opposition was that of the Ohio
Chamber of Commerce, which
warned Congress that it was em-
barking on the road to socialism —
"upon a pathway which has de-
stroyed nations." And a congress-
man said on the floor of the House:
"We are simply going to wreck
the nation as sure as the sun rises
tomorrow morning."
But the dream of social prog-
ress that marked the New Deal
was not to be denied, and on Aug.
14, 1935, Roosevelt signed the bill
with the declaration that "today
a hope of many years' standing is
in large part fulfilled."
"How shall we measure what
social security has meant in
these 25 years?" the narrator
asked. "How shall we measure
the added serenity, the added
dignity, the added calm which
has come to us in the autumn
of our lives?
"Who can count the homes we
never abandoned? Who can
count the hunger pangs we never
felt? Who can count the tears
we never shed?"
The pageant turned, then, to
the Forand bill — "a new goal, a
new hope, a new dream," the nar-
rator said.
"There are ugly voices again
being raised to oppose social prog-
ress," he went on, "and this time,
the charge is being led by groups
who should know better — the med-
ical societies."
He quoted one medical spokes-
man: "The beginning of a new
year should find us with renewed
vigor for the fight with that mon-
ster — the Forand bill. The advo-
cates of this lizardous bill will be
pushing it with greater-than-ever
enthusiasm . . . they are like lurk-
ing snakes with double tongues
ready to strike at us."
'We Shall Not Be Stopped'
"But we will not be stopped,"
the narrator said, and the crowd
roared its determination. "We will
defeat the calamity-howlers, the
vested interests, the do-nothing
crowd."
Glazer dipped again into labor's
songbook and sang:
"We will overcome, we will over-
come;
We will overcome, some
day . . ."
Then came the recorded voice
of F.D.R. again, and tears welled
in the eyes of the oldsters:
"The test of our progress is
not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have
much; it is whether we provide
enough for those who have too
little. . . .
"Shall we pause now and turn
our back upon the road that lies
ahead? Shall we call this the
promised land? Or shall we
continue on our way? For 'each
age is a dream that is dying, or
one that is coming to birth.' "
Thousands of voices joined with
Glazer to give the answer:
"We will build a new world, we
will build a new world.
We will build a new world, some
day.
Oh, oh, down in my heart, I do
believe
We will build a new world some
day."
AFL-CIO Raps Dirksen
Anti-Strike Proposal
(Continued from Page 1)
gaining) agreements that affect the
permanency of employment," held
that the anti-strike injunction
granted by a lower federal court
violated the Norris-La Guardia Act
The railroads have launched a
drive for legislation to restrict the
scope of collective bargaining. The
Association of American Railroads,
in a letter addressed to "editors
and commentators" throughout the
Highly-Skilled Plate Printers Keep
Sharp Eye on Effects of Automation
New York — Increased automation and competition from workers with inferior wages and work-
ing conditions are causing unionized printers of paper currency and hand-engraved stationery to keep
a close watch on standards of one of the nation's most highly skilled crafts.
This emerged as the union's number one problem at the end of the week-long 68th annual
convention of the Plate Printers, Die Stampers, and Engravers Intl. Union of North America held
here.
Twenty-six delegates represent-
ing 14 local unions in the United
States and Canada unanimously re-
elected Ben J. Mazza president and
Walter J. Smith secretary-treasur-
er of the 800-member union. Also
^re-elected for the ensuing year were
14 executive board members. A
new first vice president, John Fesi
<of New York, was named.
The main business before the
convention was amending the
union's constitution - to conform
with provisions of the Landrum-
Griffin Act.
One of the first six labor or-
ganizations in this country to af-
filiate with the former American
Federation of Labor, the Plate
Makers, were originally part of
the 19th Century Knights of
Labor. Members of the union
are employed at the U.S. Bu-
reau of Engraving in Washing-
ton, D. C. and by leading do-
mestic producers of postage
stamps, certificates, foreign cur-
rency and other specially en-
graved material.
Their crafts include plate mak-
ing, printing press operations, hand
tracing, vignette engraving, etching,
die molding and other allied work.
One of the major concerns of
the union these days is foreign
competition, particularly in Great
Britain where workers are paid
roughly one-third of what Ameri-
can workers earn. A number of
American firms do their basic print-
ing there. However, according to
Mazza, his union is enjoying the
cooperation of British unions which
are endeavoring to increase wages
and eliminate unfair competition.
Except for the secretary-treas-
urer of the Plate Makers, who re-
ceives $750 a year for expenses,
none of the union officers either on
the international or local union
level receives any compensation.
Each is paid by his local union or
by the international union for ex-
penses incurred for meetings and
conventions.
Members' monthly dues range
from $2.50 to $6, and current con-
tracts provide for wages ranging
from $95 to as much as $300 per
week, depending on the type of
work performed.
The union's next convention will
be held in 1961 in Ottawa,
nation, has called for passage of
the Dirksen bill.
Biemiller, describing Dirksen's
proposal as "shocking," declared:
"Nothing is of greater or mora
legitimate concern to workers than
their job security. Enlightened stu-
dents of labor relations, including
employers, recognize that employ-
ers owe an obligation to their
workers and to society generally to
provide maximum practicable con-
tinuity of employment, to pay rea-
sonable severance pay when lay-
offs are inevitable, and to make
decent provision for their workers*
old age.
"Employers are, as the law now
stands, obligated to engage in good
faith discussion of all of these mat-
ters with unions of their employes,
and while employers are not re-
quired to agree to any union pro-
posal . . . the workers are free to
strike if agreement is not reached.**
Biemiller added that "the scales
are already tipped against em-
ployes" in efforts to negotiate job
security.
Colorado AFL-CIO
Re-Elects Cavendish
Denver, Colo. — Executive Pres.
George A. Cavendish and Execu-
tive Vice Pres. R. C. Anderson
were re-elected by acclamation at
the annual convention of the Colo-
rado AFL-CIO Labor Council
here.
A. Toffoli of Pueblo, a member
of the Hod Carriers, was elected
executive secretary-treasurer by a
5 to 4 margin over the incumbent,
J. Clyde Williams of Denver. More
than 300 delegates representing 130
locals attended.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
Page Five
20,000 at Madison Square (harden:
Senior Citizens Rally for Forand Bill
20,000 SENIOR CITIZENS jam New York's Madison Square Garden for giant
rally to mark 25th anniversary of Social Security Act and to urge broadening
of law to include Forand bill provisions giving retired workers health care. In
charge of rally were Adolph Held of the Ladies' Garment Workers and Zal-
men Lichtenstein, president and program director, respectively, of Council of
Golden Ring Clubs which sponsored event.
FROM BUFFALO, 450 miles away, retirees took long trip aboard buses chartered by Auto
Workers to attend rally, register their support for AFL-CIO-backed health care measure. Gay holi-
day mood prevailed among those at rally.
IN COLD, PELTING RAIN hundreds of oldsters lined up outside
Madison Square Garden hours before doors opened. Extra detail
of New York police was put on duty to help speed admission of
senior citizens into arena.
RAPT ATTENTION shines on faces of retirees as they watch pageant recalling struggle quarter "WE HAVE WON THE FIRST ROUND," AFL-CIO Pres.
century ago to pass Social Security Act, heard recorded voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt call George Meany told Golden Ring Clubs rally, referring to belated
for assuring aged of adequate care "without having to go to the poorhouse to get it." Administration recognition of responsibility in health care field.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
New Threat to Unions
SEN. DIRKSEN of Illinois, the Republican Senate leader, has
filed a menacing little bill that would handle the problems of
people faced with automation joblessness by depriving them of
protections existing under the Norris-La Guardia and other federal
laws.
It would be impossible, under Dirksen's bill, for a union to
bargain legally on the question of layoffs. It would be impossible,
under the Dirksen proposal, for workers to strike to protect job
continuity and enforce safeguards in regard to layoffs and job
rights.
The presumption must be that Dirksen's bill arises from railroad
lobbyists protesting a Supreme Court decision upholding the right
of workers on the Chicago & North Western Railroad to strike
against a management decision to close stations. Its impact is
obviously broader: A major issue in the 1958-1960 bargaining of
the Auto Workers, the Steelworkers and the railroad brotherhoods
has been precisely the issue of job losses and the responsibility of
the industries that have profited by the labor of the workers.
The clumsy, brutal solution Dirksen offers — a law to deprive
unions of the right to effective protest— is a discredit to the senator
and to the industry spokesmen who suckered him into it.
Ailing Economy
ONCE AGAIN the cost of living, as measured in terms of 1947-
49 prices, has jumped. The increase taken by itself is not
overwhelming, but it is considerably more spectacular than the
slow, steady rise experienced in other recent months.
There has been a general trend, a persistent benchmark, identi-
fying the state of the economy in the aftermath of the recession
that was supposed to have been ended long ago.
Long-term joblessness continues to rise. The rate of unem-
ployment has never yet dropped to the rate preceding the reces-
sion. The cost of living has continued to rise. It is hard to argue
that a combination of these three economic facts represents hardy
good health.
One-Third Plus One
[R. EISENHOWER'S VETO of the depressed-areas bill was
sustained by the Senate, and the Administration has again
proved that "one-third plus one" of either house is sufficient to
control the government's policy. It was nevertheless proper for
the supporters of the bill to make the effort to override the veto.
There is no other way in which their differences in viewpoint with
the Administration can be highlighted.
The President's veto message carried language suggesting that
anyone who disagreed with his analysis of the legislation was
guilty of "pork-barrel" raids on the Treasury. This involves a
kind of logic-in-circle. A pork-barrel raid is any expenditure of
which the Budget Bureau disapproves, and Mr. Eisenhower hires
the Budget Bureau people who dispense the advice.
Everything and everybody is now fine and dandy except for the
jobless workers and sinking economies of the areas of chronic dis-
tress — and for the handful of Republican Senate liberals, including
some seeking re-election, who vainly appealed to the President to
sign the bill.
M'
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
JM. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Win L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler'
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard SJielton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St,, N.W.
Washington 6, D. C
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
No. 22
Vol. V
Saturday, May 28, 1960
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
In Wake o£ Scandals:
'Consumers Becoming Wiser
And the Politicians Know It'
Colston E. Warne, president of Consumers
Union, was one of the speakers at a Consumer
Round Table sponsored by the Food & Drug
Administration. Following are excerpts from
his talk:
THIS PROMISES to be a decisive year for the
consumer. Congressional hearings last year
revealed leading networks, leading advertising
agencies and leading advertisers to be joint part-
ners in television fraud. The current Kefauver
hearings have shaken American consumers of all
ages. Covering as they have the wide gamut
from phony automobile pricing practices to those
of avaricious drug firms eager to capture the
highest possible profit margin from the ailing and
infirm, they have shocked the nation.
The Federal Communications Commission has,
in its hours of trial, provided an excellent exhibit
of what a public service agency should not de-
generate into. Only recently, under the impact
of these many blows and under new leadership,
has the Federal Trade Commission found new life
after years of slumber. The Dept. of Agriculture
has recently added its anti-consumer contribution
by its efforts to abandon lamb grading.
Indeed, in all Washington, the only consumer
protective agency which has acquitted itself
well has been the understaffed Food and Drug
Administration which has had to stand up
under unprecedented assaults ranging from
cranberry and orange growers to drug and lip-
stick manufacturers.
WHILE BILLS to emasculate the Food and
Drug Act and to reestablish fair trade continue
to pour into the congressional hopper, a novel
type of bill — consumer bills — have for the first
time in many years begun to receive genuine and
sympathetic consideration from congressmen who
keep a close eye on the direction from which the
wind is now blowing.
The fact of the matter is that consumers are
becoming educated and are not quite such easy
victims for planned obsolescence championed by
grinning television artists.
Consumers cannot be content with such
minor goals as having an occasional advisory
committee and writing letters protesting some
obvious fraud. A primary goal in a consumer
platform is to have a Dept. of the Consumer — -
an agency which should in its scope be as im-
portant to the nation as a Dept. of Commerce
or a Dept. of Agriculture*
A second consumer goal is that of protecting
and expanding the existing consumer outposts in
Washington, specifically the Food and Drug Ad-
ministration and the Federal Trade Commission.
The Federal Trade Commission has in recent
months been somewhat rejuvenated by the emer-
gence of a new and vigorous chairman, Earl
Kintner. It is too early to say whether Mr.
Kintner will receive sufficient support from the
other commissioners and from his staff to make
the agenty a genuine consumer protection effort.
A third plank in a consumer program is that
of cleaning up the Federal Communications
Commission.
A fourth consumer plank is a bill to label the
true cost of consumer credit. This bill, intro-
duced by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois calls
for the disclosure of true finance charges on all
consumer-credit transactions. The proposed law
simply requires that all consumer-credit charges
be stated in true-annual-interest terms, so that
borrowers may be able to compare costs between
competing sellers and lenders.
A fifth plank in a consumer program is to stop
price hikes in goods in the so-called "administered
price" category. The Kefauver hearings have
vividly made evident that prices in a wide range
of goods bear scant relationship to costs.
Another consumer plank is that of meat grad-
ing. There has been a months' long seesaw on
the part of Agriculture Sec. Benson between big-
packer pressure and consumer insistence on
protection.
CONSUMER PROGRAMS, at the state as
well as the federal level, need to be developed in
a dozen fields— in eliminating unsightly billboards,
in preventing bait advertising, in eradicating the
racket of fictitious pricing, in tightening laws
affecting consumer credit, in coordinating laws on
usury, so that outrageous rates would be elimi-
nated, and in developing a clear and explicit
definition of the "cost of doing business/*
Seldom has there been a time in which the
consumer movement has been more vigorous.
National organizations, ranging from the General
Federation of Women's Clubs to the AFL-CIO,
have placed consumer programs on their agendas*
Schools and colleges are increasingly using con-
sumer materials in classes. And while our ex-
pectations still outrun our results, we do ham
a considerable number of new consumer credit
protection measures.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28. 1 060
Page SevM
Morgan Says:
Crackup of Summit Conference
Helping to Make Political Hay
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
IF WASHINGTON WERE the capital of Utopia
and all the politicians were paragons, the scene
here would be one of orderly soul-searching and
bipartisan pursuit of the
most enlightend policy
possible to repair the dam-
age suffered at the summit.
But Washington can be a
mean, petty town, espe-
cially in a presidential
election year.
Both parties are being
only about half responsi-
ble, partly because both
Republicans and Demo-
crats are jockeying for po-
litical advantage and each
is trying to make it look as if the other were
playing the exclusive role of villain.
Hence, while Vice Pres. Nixon is risking un-
popularity with rightwingers in his own party by
appealing to Republicans in the House to support
the Administration's foreign aid program as a
vital instrument of U.S. policy, he barks the im-
plication that Democrats are being irresponsible
to raise questions about the conduct of policy.
His colleague, Senate Minority Leader Dirk-
sen, made himself vulnerable to charges of ir-
responsibility by quoting a repudiated "inter-
view" in a Paris newspaper as proof that Adlai
Stevenson would appease Khrushchev.
Dirksen's gamey gamesmanship will be hard to
match. But behind and apart from the evolv-
ing debate on foreign policy, a couple of obscurely
powerful Democratic congressmen are victimizing
government projects whose importance, ironically
enough, has been increased by the recent turn of
events.
Mention the name of Rep. John J. Rooney of
Brooklyn at the State Dept. and the place becomes
a petrified forest of apprehension. Mention the
name of Rep. Otto E. Passman of Louisiana to
a representative of the mutual security program
and a similar paralysis sets in against a back-
ground pulsating with profane frustration.
Washington Reports:
Summit Failure
WASHINGTON
7k
i
As chairmen of two appropriations subcom-
mittees, these honorable gentlemen have inordi-
nate influence on American foreign policy and
they use it in their own peculiar ways. A master
of detail, Rooney rides herd on the State Dept.
budget with the ruthlessness of a prosecutor —
which he once was. Projects live or die accord-
ing to Rooney's whim.
At a time when the Administration is sup-
posed to be mounting a major effort on dis-
armament, he chose this session to axe a State
Dept. request for $400,000 — one-hundred
thousandth of the defense budget— for various
studies on arms control.
Passman, a delightedly dedicated foe of foreign
aid except, apparently, for Franco Spain, is flexing
his prerogatives even more menacingly. He is
intent on cutting the heart out of the foreign aid
money bill, the size of the slice ranging upwards
by various predictions to $2 billion, which is
almost exactly half the entire program.
PASSMAN HAS BEEN CONDUCTING hear-
ings on the measure with breath-taking disregard
of objectivity or fairness, delicately referring to
government witnesses as "liars" and their testi-
mony as "stinking." He invited some 30 major
national organizations favoring the program' to
testify all on a Saturday morning with a time al
lotment of 10 minutes each. To an America
First group headed by a fancier of the late Sen.
McCarthy and of the notorious pamphleteer,
Joseph Kamp, Passman gave a day and a half
for testimony against the bill.
Responsible leaders of both parties have long
since subscribed to the principle of foreign aid.
One scandal or one stupidity in the administra-
tion of the program is one scandal or one stupid-
ity too many but the basic meaning of the whole
idea is to contribute to the economic health of
our allies and the so-called neutral countries so
they can be strong enough to be free.
A major weakness has been a lack of continuity,
preventing the fruition of long-range projects. But
a major weakness in any Democratic critique of
Administration foreign policy now is the spectacle
of Passman trying to emasculate foreign aid at a
time when an adequate, wisely administered pro-
gram is needed most.
Points up Need
For Aid Funds, Senators Say
THE FAILURE of the summit conference in
Paris makes substantial appropriations for
mutual security imperative, Sen. John Sparkman
(D-Ala.) and Sen. Alexander Wiley (R-Wis.)
agreed as they were interviewed on Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service
program, heard on 350 radio stations.
"The Khrushchev tantrum in Paris provided
one more bit of evidence that the East- West
struggle — rather than diminishing — will in all
likelihood continue sharply on all fronts in the
future," Wiley asserted.
Sparkman declared that: "Khrushchev, of
course, is going to appeal to the so-called un-
committed nations of the world/'
Both senators, members of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, were asked about reports
that the Mutual Security appropriation will be cut
$1.5 billion from the authorization just voted by
Congress.
'There is always talk of big cuts about the
time the bill hits the appropriations committees,"
Sparkman said. "There may be some cuts, but
I doubt there will be anything like that. . . . The
appropriations committees have not acted yet,
and 1 think they certainly will have this (summit
conference failure) well in mind in any actions
they might take."
Wiley answered: "I think new conditions in
Europe will help the appropriations go through.
I think Congress will act responsibly." He added;
"The renewal of the tough Stalinist line — as
evidenced by Khrushchev at the Paris meeting —
will, I believe, add new emphasis to the need for
maintaining strong, effective cooperation among
the free nations of the world to hold off Commu-
nist aggression."
BOTH SPARKMAN AND WILEY stressed
the point that most defense-support money in the
Mutual Security bill goes to countries on the bor-
der of Communist Russia and China: South Korea,
Formosa, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Iran, Laos
and South Vietnam. Sparkman, in talking about
defense support, asserted:
"Take Korea and Turkey, for instance.
They have military forces far beyond their
economic ability to maintain and they are two
of the strongest bulwarks that we have against
Communist aggression."
Wiley reminded listeners: "The program re-
flects a realistic effort to fulfill our responsibilities
as a world leader; in addition, it represents self-
interest in providing the nation with greater pro-
tection at less cost than could otherwise be
obtained."
Technical assistance, another part of the pro-
gram, "is just about the smallest item," Sparkman
said, "but measured from the amount of money
spent, it is the best."
THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE headed by Rep. Phil Lan-
drurfl (D-Ga.) heard about nine weeks of exhaustive testimony on
minimum wages before it closed off its labors, and the subcommit-
tee was expected to buck the whole issue up to the full House
Committee on Labor. This is procrastination by conservative con-
gressional coalition; Mr. Landrum the Georgia Democrat, along
with the Republican subcommittee members, disbelieves in improv-
ing minimum wages.
The subcommittee nevertheless received some testimony that
could have been usefully emphasized, such as the testimony of Mrs.
Mary Dublin Keyserling that the number of low-income people
has been increasing in recent years.
Mrs. Keyserling, testifying for the National Consumers League,
cited government statistics to show that the number of families or
"consumer units*' earning less than $1,000 a year had jumped
from 3.4 million in 1953 to 3.7 million in 1958. The number re-
ceiving less than $2,000 in annual income increased from 9.5 mil-
lion to 9.6 million.
The harsh truth remains that great islands and areas of poverty
remain in our affluent society, and that a low-wage policy in
many industries and a few sections is substantially responsible.
There has been a tendency to fasten the "low-wage" label on
southern employers, but in this as in other matters some misunder-
standing is involved. The fiercest lobbyists against protection of
millions of workers have been the wealthy, powerful retail depart-
ment stores and chain stores, controlled by remote northern man-
agers and sprawled all over the country in their sales outlets.
* * *
SEN. BARRY GOLDWATER (R-Ariz.) is quoted as follows by
Murray Kempton of the New York Post in regard to the medical-
handout program advanced by Sec. Arthur S. Flemming as a substi-
tute for the Forand social security bill:
"Three days before the Medicare plan was announced, I went
to a legislative meeting with the President and he pounded the
table and said that so long as he was President the federal gov-
ernment would not spend one cent for aid to the aged. And
then this comes out."
There is no reason to disbelieve the senator from Arizona in his
expression of disillusion with Mr. Eisenhower. He sometimes also
seems disillusioned with Vice Pres. Nixon, and thinks he has the
duty of warning Mr. Nixon that "millions" of dead-end-kid Re-
publicans will sulk at home and refuse to vote if the Vice Presi-
dent acts too "liberal."
It is perfectly possible to accept the Goldwater testimony that
Mr. Eisenhower, three days before Flemming went up to Capitol
Hill with a "plan" for the aged, was refusing to acknowledge that
any such thing was necessary. Mr. Flemming began his assault
on the White House fortress, to compel it to recognize the need
for "a plan," last November, and for many weeks it was by no
means certain that he could get any plan past the Budget Bureau.
* * *
ONE SCARCELY DARES to say it, but among the most sensible
speeches of 1960 was an address on federal intervention in local
affairs to a national convention of parent-teachers' groups by Dr.
Harry D. Gideonse, president of Brooklyn College.
Dr. Gideonse assailed the sacred slogans about "local control
of the schools" — which he pointed out meant many substandard
school systems, resisting consolidation into sensible districts and
lacking study of foreign languages and a good many other subjects.
His major point was that the fetish against "federal intervention"
in local affairs is celebrated by political philosophers whose con-
stituents have benefited for decades from expensive if entirely justi-
fiable federal programs — for the farmers, for example. Two-thirds
of our people now live in cities and their suburban areas, Dr.
Gideonse pointed out, but if anyone mentions the need of cities for
slum clearance and urban renewal there is a pretense that the moral
fiber of the nation has rotted.
KHRUSHCHEV'S UPSET OF THE SUMMIT makes any cut in
mutual security appropriations unlikely according to Sen. Alexander
Wiley (R-Wis.), left, and Sen. John J. Sparkman (D-Ala.), both
members of the Foreign Relations Committee. They were inter-
viewed on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
How to Buy:
Social Security
Isn't Sufficient
By Sidney Margolius
CONFERENCES ON RETIREMENT problems recently held ir
various states have brought out significant financial facts that
even workers who have some years to go ought to know about. As
Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) remarked at a Cleveland confer-
ence, despite the increase in life expectancy the death rate is stili
100 percent. So's the retirement rate.
This department has estimated a
minimum budget for a retired couple S .
based on data from the Community C^r v>> / /
Council of Greater New York, the \y /Q /
Bureau of Labor Statistics and other
agencies.
Here is approximately what this i\
budget would run in a typical U.S.
city at today's prices:
Monthly
Food $ 62.00
Housing, utilities 77.00
Medical care 18.00 M^v~
Clothing 13.00 M Tr^ ^
Other goods, services 40.00
Total $210.00
The total would be somewhat higher in the West, especially in
California, and a little less in the East.
This budget is really the minimum. It allows only a dollar a
day per person for food, and just a two or three-room rented apart-
ment. It would provide a retirement of shabby respectability. You
could pay your basic bills. But you couldn't own a car on it, nor
have much recreation, nor any margin to cope with an expensive
medical disaster.
Actually, most of the already-retired workers this reporter met
at the conferences estimated that you really need about $250 a
month for modestly-comfortable retirement. Florida state author-
ities, who have had a lot of experience with retirement expenses,
also warn retirees they should have about $250 a month.
LOOKING AT THIS ESTIMATE of modest living costs for a
retired couple in a large city, you can see your potential problems
are:
• Insufficient income to cover even a very modest budget. Even
maximum social security currently payable to a retired couple, of
$180 a month, falls noticeably short of the minimum budget.
• Housing takes an unusual slice of the retired couple's budget —
37 percent compared to the more usual 33 percent. Housing is the
largest expense. The housing allotment in this budget includes
furnishings, cleaning supplies and utilities.
• Medical care also looms notoriously large in a retired
worker's budget. It's given 9 percent of the income compared to
the SVi per cent younger families typically spend.
• Present Social Security rules are hard on widows especially.
A widow gets only three-fourths the amount payable to her husband,
or to put it another way, half what they got together. But her living
costs are more than 50 percent. Typical living costs of a single
person are about 70 percent of those of a couple. Thus, the most
a widow can get from Social Security at this time is $90 a month.
But the costs of this minimum budget for a single person would be
close to $150 today.
YOU DON'T have to be an economics expert to look at these
estimated living costs and see what's most urgently needed to assure
retirees at least shabby respectability.
Most obvious need is to provide hospital and surgical insurance
through the social security system. At the various retirement con-
ferences the big plea was for the Forand bill. In fact, at the Lake-
wood, N. J., retirement conference, the delegates ignored the hotel's
evening entertainment until the master of ceremonies hit on the idea
of introducing the entertainers as supporting the Forand bill.
Another critical need is moderate-cost housing. If a couple
can arrange mortgage payments during their working years so
their house is paid up on retirement, they will have taken a big
step toward solving this costliest problem.
But many working families can't manage this. Other potential
solutions are cooperative housing or government-sponsored develop-
ments that will provide three-room apartments for $60-$75 a month
including utilities.
ANOTHER URGENT NEED is for financial, medical and nu-
tritional counseling of older people. They are the targets of a num-
ber of health rackets, real-estate promoters, nutritional fads and
insurance promotions. The mails, ads and TV commercials are
filled with promotions for miracle medicines, vitamin preparations,
special diagnostic machines and vibrators guaranteed to cure every-
thing from falling hair to high blood pressure.
Another promotion that has been hitting retired families is
furnace remodeling. Salesmen go into older houses and offer a
furnace cleaning at no cost. In actual cases the "repairmen" have
knocked holes in furnaces to convince older folks they need new
ones, although neither the age of the couple nor of the house
justified such a purchase.
Since the Better Business Bureaus and other authorities are very
aware of the furnace racket, the promoters now remove the old
furnace completely, so no one can tell whether a new one really was
needed.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
MODERN MEDICAL INSTRUCTION techniques will be carried to the developing countries of the
world aboard the combined hospital and training ship "Hope" when the project of the People-to-
People Health Foundation gets under way. AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has asked the presidents
of national and international unions to urge contributions from their locals to the privately-financed
project, which was endorsed at the 1959 AFL-CIO convention in San Francisco.
PeopIe-to-PeopIe Medical Mid:
Labor Urged to Launch
HOPE on Asian Mission
AFL-CIO PRES. GEORGE MEANY, with
the full backing of the Executive Council,
has given a shot in the arm to the move to get
Project Hope" out of the mothballs and off to
Southeast Asia on a goodwill floating medical
mission.
"Project Hope" is the plan of the People-to-
People Health Foundation to take the Navy hos-
pital ship "Consolation" out of the mothball fleet,
rename it the "Hope," and send it to the under-
developed areas of the world to help by teaching
some of the techniques of attack on one phase of
the vicious circle of disease, ignorance and sub-
standard economic development from which so
much human misery flows.
A campaign to raise $3.5 million to get the
project off to a good start has been under way
for months. Meany has now asked the presi-
dents of all national and international nnions
to write their locals urging them to contribute
to "Project Hope" a donation from their treas-
uries equal to 10 cents per member.
Meany also asked the national and interna-
tional presidents to tell their members through
the locals that "Project Hope" is aimed at bring-
ing the skills of the American medical and health
professions to people in countries where medical
knowledge is scant and good health is rare.
The immediate objective is to get the 15,000-
ton, 800-bed hospital ship to Southeast Asia this
year.
"Project Hope" is not a government operation.
It is simply a matter of the people of one country
— the United States — helping the people of other
countries who need aid in fighting to build the
good health on which they can call in striving for
improved standards of living, greater productivity,
self-reliance and true independence.
It is based on the belief that too often the
best-intentioned efforts of government and in-
ternational organizations are suspect, but that
when individuals reach out to help, barriers
can be crossed more easily, teaching is more
effective and understanding on both sides comes
more easily.
The AFL-CIO convention in San Francisco last
year "strongly" endorsed "Project Hope" after
hearing it explained by Dr. William B. Walsh,
president of the People-to-People Health Founda-
tion. Meany is a member of the board of
directors.
THE HOSPITAL SHIP is envisioned as a
floating medical center and school that will carry
the modern concept of health to the people who
need it most. It will be essentially a teaching op-
eration, though not excluding treatment, directed
toward the medical professions and. the auxiliary
medical and health services of countries it will
visit only upon the invitation of their medical
men. Especially it will show its "students" how
to pass on their newly-acquired skills to their
associates.
It will have teaching and clinical facilities
aboard, and in addition will have mobile units
which will carry instruction and treatment in-
land to areas far from port cities. These will
include units for epidemiological research, nu-
tritional research, sanitation and public health,
and other specialties to be determined by local
needs.
The hospital-school ship will be manned by
civilian seamen and will be operated without fee
by the American President Lines.
The medical staff will include both full time
and rotating personnel from the top levels of their
professions. The permanent staff will be made up
of 10 to 15 physicians who are experts in their
various fields; two dentists, 20 graduate nurses
and 20 auxiliary personnel. In addition, a rotat-
ing staff of 35 physicians will carry out four-
month turns of duty.
Work of preparing the ship is already under
way. It has been repainted and given its new
name, and the red crosses that warn off war craft
have been brightened.
THE FINANCING to complete the job and to
maintain the "Hope" once it leaves the West
Coast on its career of mercy will depend entirely
upon donations from private sources, including
organized labor. The depth of the need for its
services is attested to by the fact that already it
has received invitations from the medical pro-
fessions of Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, Okinawa,
Pakistan and other countries.
Southeast Asia was selected for the first ven-
ture because of the great need for raising the level
of medical care, plus the fact that a ship is the
ideal way to reach large numbers of its people.
Meany asked the contributions from local
unions be channeled to their internationals, and
thence to AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler for transfer to the foundation.
The boss gave me an extended coffee break."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, I960
Warns of Slump:
Labor Asks Housing
To Meet U.S. Needs
The AFL-CIO has called again for congressional passage of
comprehensive housing legislation based on bills sponsored by
Rep. Albert D. Rains (D-Ala.) in order to "bring good housing
within the financial reach of the average American family."
At the same time, a federation spokesman told Rains' House
Banking subcommittee, enactment* urban renewal,
of the bill would help stem the cur-
rent downturn in the home build-
ing industry.
Boris Shishkin, secretary of the
AFL-CIO Housing Committee, de-
clared that if the sharp housing
dip is left unchecked it could lead
to another recession just as declines
in housing activity "helped to pre-
cipitate" the 1953-54 and 1957-58
recessions.
'Indifference' Charged
With housing starts running at a
rate of only 1.1 million annually,
compared with estimated needs of
2.3 million new units a year for
the next 10 years, Shishkin ac-
cused the Administration of "in-
difference" to the nation's need.
The Administration's sole con-
tribution to revive housing con-
struction, he said, has been to re-
duce down payments on houses
ranging from $15,000 to $26,000 in
price by sums of from $50 to $500.
Shishkin charged the move would
breed "false complacency" which
could delay effective congressional
action.
"What is needed more than
anything else," he declared, "is
the exercise of responsible lead-
ership by the executive branch of
the federal government."
He praised recent House ap-
proval of Rains' $1 billion emer-
gency housing measure designed to
pump new life into the sagging
home building industry by freeing
extra funds for FHA and VA
mortgages. The measure, now
awaiting Senate action, will make
an "important contribution" toward
maintaining a prosperous economy,
he said. It is approved by the
Eisenhower Administration.
Omnibus Bill Approved
Shishkin said, however, that
"more than emergency legislation
is needed to meet the rapidly ex-
panding housing needs of the na-
tion." He called for prompt ap-
proval of Rains' omnibus bill
"geared to the long-term housing
requirements of all American fam-
ilies."
He urged appropriation of
$600 million a year for a 10-
as requested by the U.S. Con-
ference of Mayors, to permit
cities to undertake a "full-scale,
long-range attack against the
blight and slums that are threat-
ening to engulf them."
Shishkin also endorsed a provi-
sion to make available 60-year
loans at 2 percent interest — the
same rate used by the Rural Elec-
trification Administration for the
past 25 years — to finance middle-
income housing for families dis-
placed by urban renewal programs.
At least $1 billion should be author-
ized at the outset, he said, to per-
mit construction of 75,000 to 80,-
000 units.
The AFL-CIO spokesman also
called for:
• Authorization of at least $50
million in additional funds to fi-
nance FHA-insured cooperative
housing projects.
• Restoration of the public
housing authorization in the Hous-
ing Act of 1949 to permit construc-
tion of an additional 100,000 units
"as quickly as possible."
• Appropriation of at least $50
million in added funds for the pro-
gram of direct loans for housing
for the elderly launched last year.
• An increase of $4 billion in
the FHA insurance authorization.
• Reduction in the FHA insur-
ance premium from the present
one-half of 1 percent to one-quarter
of 1 percent.
• Protection of homeowners
against foreclosure in the event of
temporary unemployment, illness
or other emergency.
• Federal action to bar discrim-
ination in housing because of race,
color, creed or national origin.
• Authorization of $500 million
for college housing.
• Adoption of an "effective
farm housing program to make
good homes available to rural fam-
ilies."
• Requirement of payment of
prevailing wages in any housing
construction involving federal
grants, loans, guarantees or insur-
ance.
Georgia Court Upholds
Union's Merger Order
Atlanta, Ga. — The Georgia Supreme Court has unanimously
upheld the right of Intl. Pres. William A. Calvin and the executive
council of the Boilermakers & Blacksmiths to merge two local
lodges.
'The charter of a local union," the state's highest court ruled,
"is subject to all of the conditions^
contained in the constitution and
bylaws of the parent organization,
which constitute a contract be-
tween the parent union and the
local union and its members.
'The rule (to this effect) in
Georgia is the general rule in the
jurisdictions of this country."
The court pointed out that the
union's constitution gives the
president "unlimited power to
consolidate'' offices and district
and subordinate lodges when it
is regarded as desirable for the
good of the union.
The consolidation involved
Lodge 554 at Brunswick and Lodge
26 at Savannah, both of which op-
erate primarily in the construction
field throughout Georgia. The
merger was ordered 18 months ago
by Calvin and the Executive Coun-
cil on the ground that the state
could not support two lodges.
Business Agent C. K. Curry and
Sec.-Treas C. T. McCullough of
Lodge 554 objected and went to
court seeking an injunction barring
the merger. The international
union appealed the lower-court in-
junction and won the reversal from
the Supreme Court.
"There are no allegations of
fraud, accident or mistake," the
ruling said, "on the part of the in-
ternational president, the executive
council of the international union
or the person designated by the
president (Vice Pres. C. S. Massey)
to effect a consolidation . . . and
no right is shown in the plaintiffs
to oppose the consolidation of the
local unions, which consolidation
would terminate their offices in Lo-
cal Union 554.**
A WATER-BORNE TAXI gets a Seafarers' representative on board a lake freighter in the St. Clair
River. The "taxi" is a 26-foot speedboat owned by SIU and used to provide union service for crews
on board cargo carriers. The SIU boat carries a loudspeaker system for use in organizing campaigns,
Union-Owned Launch Ferries
SIU Agents to Crews on Lakes
Algonac, Mich. — "Get on board," the union song advises — and that's what the Seafarers are do-
ing in the busy St. Clair River with the aid of their own 26-foot speedboat.
SIU representatives*, unwilling to wait six hours for the end of a freighter trip between Detroit and
Port Huron, Mich., use a launch to board Great Lakes freighters as they move up and down the river
connecting the upper and lower lakes.
That saves a lot of time, and it
enables SIU representatives to get
the maximum good out of visits to
crews and captains as the bulk car-
riers move without reducing speed.
This unique water taxi service
started this year, when SIU bought
its own launch. It has proved so
satisfactory that the union has been
able to service twice as many ships
as before.
Last shipping season SIU rent-
ed J. W. Westcott Co. launches
to get staff members on board
freighters as they passed Detroit
or Port Huron, but the staffers
had to wait until the ship
reached the other end of the
river to disembark after com-
pleting their business.
Most freighters do not stop in
the St. Clair or Detroit Rivers. They
pick up mail and boarding parties
from launches.
Shipping companies with SIU
contracts have agreed to a regular
shipboard grievance procedure.
Grievances that cannot be worked
out between SIU representatives
and the freighter captain are sub-
mitted to shore procedure, then to
arbitration if that step is needed.
The SIU launch can call ships
by radio telephone, and ask the
captain's permission to board. The
union boat has two 100-horsepow-
er Gray Maine engines, powerful
enough to pace the fastest freight-
ers on the lakes. Its sturdy con-
struction can withstand the rough-
est river weather without strain.
Chief benefit of the new serv-
ice, the union's Great Lakes dis-
trict says, is that the SIU can go
to its members when it is most
Ship Safety Programs
Reduce Injury Rate
New York — Shipboard safety
programs are producing results be-
cause of a joint program of the
Seafarers and 70 shipping com-
panies, SIU reported in the first
edition of a new publication called
"Safety Line." Irwin Spivack is
editor.
The four-page three-column tab-
loid says accident rates have
dropped by 30 to 60 percent on
some lines. The average industry
rate has decreased from 7.30 in
1957 to 5.12 in 1959. Joe Algina,
SIU safety director, said safety
training films will be shown soon
to SIU seamen at New York dock
locations.
convenient for them. Otherwise
port agents would have to wait
for ships to dock, and crews to
give up part of their short shore
leave, to meet. Most freighters
are in port only from four to
eight hours.
The SIU launch is equipped with
a public address system. That en-
ables union men to talk to unor-
ganized crews, and to conduct
"sales" campaigns with the aid of
recordings.
Just ended is a drive to organize
seamen on ships of the Pioneer,
Buckeye and Steinbrenner-Kins-
man fleets. Labor board elections
have been held on those ships, and
another will start June 1 in the
Interlake fleet, operated by Pick-
ands Mather & Co. SIU has con-
tracts with 25 other lake fleets.
False Inflation Issue
Seen Blocking Progress
The United States in recent years has concentrated attention,
efforts and policies "on the wrong economic and social issues," Nat
Goldfinger, assistant director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research,
told the annual meeting of the National Industrial Conference
Board.
Goldfinger declared we have "ig-^
nored or shunted aside the major
economic and social issues of our
time, and failed even to deal with
the actual problem of a slowly up-
creeping price level."
"Under the leadership of business
and Administration spokesmen,"
he asserted, "the nation has con-
centrated much of its attention in
the decadent effort to defeat a non-
existent runaway inflation instead
of concentrating on economic
growth to meet our national
needs — more adequate national de-
fense and public services, adjust-
ments to radical technological
change, elimination of poverty at
home, technical and economic aid
for the less developed areas of the
world.
"This creeping rise of the price
level has been falsely diagnosed
as runaway inflation, based on
the fiction of excessive general
demands and widespread short-
ages, and it has been blown up
for propaganda purposes into an
overriding national economic is-
sue, to be combated at all cost
by depressing the rise of demand
for goods and services from both
the private sector of the economy
and the federal government."
The result since 1953, Gold-
finger said, has been a "condition
of near-stagnation" that has seen
the rise in the real volume of out-
put cut to the point where it has
become not much greater than the
population growth. In addition,
while 5 million persons have joined
the labor force, fewer than 1 mil-
lion new lull-time jobs have been
created in the past seven years and
all employment has increased by
only 2.9 million. The number of
unemployed, on the other hand,
had doubled, he said.
Productivity Big Factor
Goldfinger told the conference
board that productivity "obviously"
will be a factor in collective bar-
gaining in the period ahead, "and
it may be a factor of growing im-
portance."
"The trade union movement
hopes," he said, "that the economic
and social environment in the
period ahead will be considerably
different from what it has been in
recent years — a faster rate of eco-
nomic growth, a greater degree of
utilization of productive capacity
and manpower, an easier adjust-
ment to radical technological
change, a better atmosphere for
labor-management relations, and,
above all, a much greater sense of
national purpose."
Texas Labor Names
Scholarship Winners
Austin, Tex. — Winner of a $500
award for the best essay in the
Texas State AFL-CIOs college-
scholarship contest was Marilyn
Preusse, Austin, for an essay on
"Labor's Role in Our Society."
An essay on "Do We Need
Unions?" won the $250 second
award for Deanna McGuire of
Gilliland. Fifteen other essayists
will get $50 to $250, when they
register in college, from local
unions affiliated with the state AFL-
CIO.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
1960 Schedule for
Union Conventions
Herewith is a revised list of conventions scheduled for the re-
mainder of 1960 by AFL-CIO national and international unions
and by federation departments and state central bodies. Addi-
tions and changes will be reported.
DATE
ORGANIZATION
PLACE
May 30-June 3
Clothing Workers
Miami Beach, Fla.
May 30-June 4
Textile Workers Union
Chicago, 111.
June 6-9
Michigan
Grand Rapids, Mich.
June 6-9
Musicians
Las Vegas, Nev.
June 8-10
Ohio
Cleveland, O.
June 9-10
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pa.
June 9-11
South Dakota
Aberdeen, S. D.
June 13-15
Idaho
Idaho Falls, Ida.
June 13-17
Communications Workers
St. Louis, Mo.
June 13-24
Railroad Telegraphers
Chicago, 111.
June 16
Montana
Miles City, Mont
June 19-24
Leather Goods, Plastics
Atlantic City, N. J.
& Novelty
June 23-25
Maine
Portland, Me.
June 27-July 1
Meat Cutters & Butcher
Atlantic City, N. J.
Workmen
June 27-July 1
Newspaper Guild
Chicago, 111.
June 27-July 1
Potters
Seattle, Wash.
July 11-14
Washington
Seattle, Wash.
July 18-22
Bookbinders
Chicago, 111.
July 25
Glass & Ceramic
New York, N. Y.
July 28-30
Kansas
Kansas City, Kan.
Aug. 1-5
Oregon
Baker, Ore.
Aug. 1-6
Theatrical Stage Employes
Chicago, 111.
Aug. 8-10
Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Aug. 8-11
Texas
Dallas, Tex.
Aug. 9-11
Women's Intl. Union
Pocatello, Ida.
Label League
Aug. 15
California
Sacramento, Calif.
Aug. 15-18
Special Delivery
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Messengers
Aug. 15-19
Teachers
Dayton, O.
Aug. 15-20
Photo Engravers
Louisville, Ky.
Aug. 16-18
Iowa
Sioux City, la.
Aug. 19-21
Nevada
Las Vegas, Nev.
Aug. 20-26
Typographical Union
Denver, Colo.
Aug. 21-27
Letter Carriers
Cincinnati, O.
Aug. 22-24
Postal Transport
Cincinnati, O.
Aug. 22-26
Technical Engineers
Toronto, Ont., Canada
Aug. 22-27
Post Office Clerks
St. Louis, Mo.
Aug. 28-Sept. 3
Fire Fighters
Buffalo, N. Y.
Aug. 29-31
Connecticut
Hartford, Conn.
Aug. 29-31
New York
New York, N. Y.
Aug. 29-31
Virginia
Roanoke, Va.
Aug. 29-Sept. 1
Government Employes
Cincinnati, O.
Aug. 29-Sept. 1
Post Office Motor Vehicle
Detroit, Mich.
Employes
Aug. 29-Sept. 1
Wisconsin
Green Bay, Wis.
Sept. 6-9
Indiana
Indianapolis, Ind.
Sept. 6-10
Grain Millers
Denver, Colo.
Sept. 6-16
Machinists
St. Louis, Mo.
Sept. 12
Tobacco Workers
Montreal, Que., Canada
Sept. 12-16
Bricklayers
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sept. 12-16
Electrical, Radio &
Miami Beach, Fla,
Machine Workers
Sept. 12-16
Stereotypers
Miami, Fla.
Sept. 16-17
Delaware
Wilmington, Del.
Sept. 16-18
Vermont
St. Johnsbury, Vt
Sept. 19
Alaska
Sitka, Alaska
Sept. 19
Bill Posters
Boston, Mass.
Sept. 19
Steelworkers
Atlantic City, N. J.
Sept. 19-23
Chemical Workers
Atlantic City, N. J.
Sept. 19-23
Rubber Workers
St. Louis, Mo.
Sept. 19-24
Papermakers &
Washington, D. C
Paperworkers
Sept. 26
Printing Pressmen
New York, N. Y.
Sept. 26-28
Missouri
Kansas City, Mo.
Sept. 26-29
Minnesota
St. Paul, Minn.
October
Air Line Dispatchers
New York, N. Y.
October
Alabama
Not selected.
October
New Mexico
Santa Fe, N. M.
Oct. 2-7
Railway Patrolmen
Chicago, 111.
Oct. 3
Cigarmakers
New York, N. Y.
Oct. 3
Roofers
St Louis, Mo.
Oct. 3-7
National Maritime Union
New York, N. Y.
Oct. 5-7
Massachusetts
Boston, Mass.
Oct. 10
Illinois
Springfield, 111.
Oct. 10-12
Nebraska
Grand Island, Neb,
Oct. 10-14
Marine & Shipbuilding
New York, N. Y.
Workers
Oct. 13-15
Utility Workers
Washington, D. C
Oct. 17-20
Florida
Orlando, Fla.
Oct. 17-22
Cement, Lime & Gypsum
Dallas, Tex.
Workers
Oct. 21-22
Railway Supervisors
Chicago, 111.
Oct. 24-28
Bridge & Structural Iron
Not selected.
Workers
Oct. 24-28
United Textile Workers
Miami Beach, Fla.
Nov. 14-16
Arkansas
Little Rock, Ark.
Nov. 14-18
Air Line Pilots
Miami Beach, Fla.
Nov. 19-20
Rhode Island
Providence, R. L
TV Drama Based on
Sacco-Vanzetti Case
The National Broadcasting
Co. will present a two-part
television documentary
drama based on the Sacco-
Vanzetti case from 8:30 to
9:30 p.m. EDT on successive
Fridays, June 3 and 10.
Scores of labor figures
participated in the fight to
save Nicola Sacco, a shoe
factory worker, and Bartolo-
meo Vanzetti, a fish peddler,
from execution in Massachu-
setts in 1927 following their
conviction of a 1920 payroll
holdup-murder. Many con-
tended the two men were
convicted because of their
belief in anarchism and that
their guilt was not proved at
their trial.
The NBC program, "The
Sacco- Vanzetti Story," is the
work of Reginald Rose, one
of television's leading play-
wrights, whose "Twelve An-
gry Men" won an Emmy
award.
Cheap Labor
Imports Worry
Trade Group
Geneva — The General Agree-
ment on Tariffs & Trade (GATT)
is making an effort at its three-
week meeting here to solve the
problems raised by instances of
sudden flooding of world markets
with low-priced goods produced
by cheap labor.
The major industrial nations are
seeking to reconsider protection of
the relatively high living standards
of their own citizens and the need
to help the developing and other
low-wage countries to expand their
international trade and thus raise
their living standards.
Japan is a typical case in point,
it is indicated here. Highly mech-
anized and with low-cost labor,
Japan's industry has broken into
world markets which previously
had offered outlets to exports from
nations where the worker gets a
larger share of the return from his
labor.
GATT was founded in 1948
to break down trade barriers un-
der agreements intended to give
all countries a fair deal and thus
promote mutual prosperity by
expanding exchanges of goods in
all directions.
Japan is a member, but 13
GATT countries have invoked a
waiver clause allowing them to
withhold application of all the
equal treatment" rules.
Longshore Compensation.
Pier Injury Benefit
Betterments Urged
Organized labor has mounted a drive to win from Congress the
free choice of doctors and higher minimum and maximum disability
benefits for some 600,000 workers covered by the Longshoremen's
& Harbor Workers' Compensation Act.
Labor "urgently" asks favorable action on pending bills to
achieve these and other improve-^
ments, AFL-CIO Legislative Rep
Walter J. Mason told a House La-
bor subcommittee. He also testified
for the AFL-CIO Metal Trades
Dept. and the Washington Central
Labor Council.
The Longshoremen's Act, first
passed in 1927 and last amended in
1956, covers longshoremen, ship
repairmen, harbor workers and
other off-shore workers; all work-
ers for private employers in the
District of Columbia and employes
of government contractors at de-
fense bases or on public works
projects overseas.
Congress has a responsibility,
Mason stressed, to make the act
a model for state legislative ef-
forts. The need for improve-
ment, he added, is demonstrated
by government accident figures
for 1959 on workers covered by
the act.
He said there were 187 deaths
from on-the-job accidents and there
were these injuries: 29,663 long-
shoremen; 24,069 harbor workers;
8,692 defense base workers and
27,968 private employes in the Dis-
trict. The total: 89,392.
Mason described as "commend-
able" efforts to improve medical
care the bills sponsored by Rep.
James Roosevelt (D-Calif.) and
Rep. Herbert Zelenko (D-N. Y.).
These bills would give injured
workers the right to choose a doc-
tor from a panel assembled by the
employer. At present, the worker
must acept the employer's choice
of doctor. Mason said the panel
would be "more ideal" if chosen
jointly by the medical profession
and program administrator.
With regard to benefits, Mason
said identical bills sponsored by
Zelenko and Rep. Edith Green
(D-Ore.) would cut from 28 to 21
the number of days before bene-
fits are allowed for the first three
days of disability; raise the max-
imum to $70 per week from the
present $54; raise minimum bene-
fits to $22 per week from the
present $18 and hike death
benefits to widows to $70 per
week from the present $54*
A separate Roosevelt bill would
reduce the qualifying period to 21
days before the first three days of
disability are paid; raise the maxi-
mum to $121 per week; raise the
minimum to $26 a week and set
maximum death benefits at $121
a week.
Mason said setting the maximum
benefit at $70 a week would restore
the principle of two-thirds of the
average wage loss only to those
earning up to $105 a week, the
average pay for New York long-
shoremen. The average pay over-
seas is much higher, he noted,
while the average weekly wage in
the district in 1959 was $87.
Other bills pending deal with the
fuller protection of employe rights
and administration of the program.
Exec. Vice Pres. Patrick J. Con-
nolly of the Longshoremen, testi-
fying on behalf of some 75,000
workers in East Coast, Gulf and
Great Lakes ports, declared the un-
ion is "alarmed" over the way the
act has been allowed to lag behind.
Connolly supported bills to give
workers "a reasonable degree of
choice" in choosing doctors; the
Zelenko bill to set a $22 minimum
and $70 maximum on benefits and
a "very much needed" bill spon-
sored by Rep. Dominick V. Daniels
(D-N. J.) to protect employe rights.
3 Honored for
Work on Aging
New York — Citations for out-
standing work on behalf of the
aging have been presented to three
persons by District 65, Retail,
Wholesale & Department Store
Union.
The union's fourth annual "Sen-
ior 65er" awards went to Sen. Pat-
rick McNamara (D-Mich.), chair-
man of the Senate Subcommittee
on Problems of the Aged and Ag-
ing; Ollie Randall of the National
Committee on the Aging; and
Dean John McConnell of Cornell
University's school of industrial
and labor relations.
Retired members were in the
audience as framed scrolls were
presented. McNamara was cited
for his efforts to improve health
and welfare laws; Miss Randall for
helping to develop social work
services for the elderly; McConnell
for outstanding research into, and
organization of studies related to,
pre-retirement programs.
THREE HEAD TABLES were needed at this dinner in Boston, Mass., for the first Gompers-Murray
memorial sponsored by the Massachusetts State AFL-CIO. Federation officers gave citations to 21
heads of national and international unions, and to a congressman, for being a credit to the state.
At UPWA Convention:
Delegates Back Up
Civil Rights Vote
Chicago — Six hundred delegates to the Packinghouse Workers'
twelfth constitutional convention gave a dramatic demonstration
of their support of a strong civil rights resolution by picketing two
Woolworth stores on State in the heart of Chicago's "Loop" area.
The demonstration was a scheduled part of convention business.
Delegates recessed from the con-^
vent ion floor and reassembled be
fore the two stores to endorse south-
ern sit-ins at eating places and to
protest segregation and discrimina-
tion.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein
told the convention in his key-
note speech that the loss of jobs
through automation and plant
closings is "a tragedy that cries
for solution." He said that a
fund to study the effects of auto-
mation is now a feature of some
UPWA contracts and he predict-
ed that the study will lay a basis
for next year's contract negotia-
tions with the meat industry.
Employment in the industry
dropped by 30,000 between 1956
and 1959, Helstein noted, and he
added that last year there was a net
loss of 5,100 packinghouse jobs.
He forecast an intensified organiz-
ing drive by UPWA, particularly in
Puerto Rico where the union al-
ready has more than 50,000 mem-
bers and in the agricultural fields
of the West.
Helstein added that particular
organizing attention would be given
to plants now under contract to the
so-called National Brotherhood of
Packinghouse Workers, an unaffili-
ated group that was a disruptive
force during UPWA's 109-day
strike against Wilson & Co. several
months ago.
Referring to the collapse of re
cent summit talks, Helstein de-
nounced '"as pious hypocrisy the
Soviet outrage at spying." He
branded the Administration's han-
dling of the U-2 incident as "inepf
but said, "the ill-considered de
mands made by Khrushchev for
apologies could not have been met
by any self-respecting nation."
Praised for Rights Stand
UPWA was praised by Pres. A.
Philip Randolph of the Sleeping
Car Porters for the lead it has taken
in promoting civil rights at every
level of the union. Only the com-
plete elimination of discrimination
and segregation because of race,
creed or color will "complete the
house of democracy," Randolph
said. He advocated an amendment
to the AFL-CIO codes of ethical
practices to deal with "those who
practice racialism" just as the codes
now ban corruption and commu-
nism.
Al Barkan, deputy director of
the AFL-CIO Committee on Po-
litical Education, warned the del-
egates that time is running out for
launching successful drives to
elect liberal officials.
Fire Fighters' Survey
Shows Casualty Rate Up
The rate of fire fighters killed in the line of duty jumped 78 per-
cent between 1958 and 1959, according to a special survey com-
piled by the Fire Fighters.
'The startling rate of fire fighters killed in the line of duty
mounted from 37 per 100,000 men in 1958 to 66 per 100,000 men
in 1959 largely due to structural^
collapses, explosions, asphyxiations,
electrical shock, burns and traffic
accidents/' the IAFF study re-
ported.
The survey covered 1,200 cities
and towns.
The union noted that the rate
of accidental deaths among fire
fighters was triple the rate of 22
per 100,000 for the average
worker. Fire fighters also suf-
fered seven times as many on-
the-job injuries in 1959, the un-
ion added.
New York and Chicago each re-
ported seven fire fighters were
killed in the line of duty last year,
the union said. Six lost their lives
in St. Louis and five died in a
Kansas City, Kan., tragedy. Four
other fire fighters met death in
Philadelphia.
The IAFF study also dis-
closed that 208 active fire fight-
ers were fatally stricken with
heart attacks last year, a ratio of
six out of every ten fire fighter
deaths. The union said this is
"an especially high count" since
the average age of fire fighters is
38 years.
The union said the survey, re-
vealing that heart attacks and
cardiovascular disorders are far
more common than in other lines
of work, reflected the strenuous
work of the fire fighter. A high
incidence of respiratory diseases
caused by inhaling smoke, gases
and dust also was recorded.
OFFICERS OF NEWLY-MERGED Cincinnati AFL-CIO take oath of office before 500 delegates
and guests. AFL-CIO Reg. Dir. Jesse Gallagher administers the obligation.
,
COMMUNITY RESCUE Service in Hagerstown, Md., received a
new ambulance from the Central Maryland AFL-CIO Council, with
Sec.-Treas. Ralph Wagaman (second from left) of the council
making the presentation.
Civil Defense
Funds Backed
By AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO has appealed to
the Senate Appropriations Com-
mittee, for the sake of "a strong,
capable, total national defense" in
the present crisis, to appropriate
the full $76.4 million asked by the
Office of Civil & Defense Mo-
bilization for fiscal 1961.
Curtailments recommended by
the House Appropriations Com-
mittee represent a "short-sighted
approach" which will nullify ef-
forts at federal leadership having
citizens provide fallout protection
for themselves, AFL-CIO Legis-
lative Rep. George D. Riley told
the Senate group.
Riley testified that civil defense
helps served as "an antidote for
nuclear blackmail, a deterrent to
war and a capability for survival
if the worst comes."
He said the AFL-CIO is so
"intensely serious" about the
problem that it has been micro-
filming records and documents
for safe storage at a relocation
site; relocated files and equip-
ment there; surveyed building
facilities of organized labor for
conversion to fallout shelters;
conducted education programs
and built prototype shelter proj-
ects.
He said the OCDM request
amounts to "survival insurance" at
the low cost of 50 cents per capita
Morgan Cited
For Quality
Of Newscasts
Edward P. Morgan's "penetrat-
ing" news commentaries have won
the praise of McCall's Magazine,
which recently took sharply to task
the "sensationalism" and "yellow
journalism" of most radio news-
casts.
Commented McCalTs:
'There are well-informed, serious
men who are not content with the
pattern. Newscasting is their pro-
fession. Listen, for example, to
Edward P. Morgan — one of the
very best — who broadcasts the news
five evenings a week over the ABC
network.
"He does more than read you the
headlines; what you hear is a pene-
trating distillation of Morgan's in-
quiry, research and knowledge.
. Those 15 minutes a day/ he
says, 'take all my energy. It's a full-
time job. And then there's always
a chance to do just a bit more, fol-
low one more lead, make one more
contact, be a little more thorough.'
"As a result, Morgan puts the
news in intelligent perspective, dis-
cusses the more important issues of
the day, and gives listeners an in-
formed opinion, with absolutely no
interference — to the great credit
of the AFL-CIO, his longtime
sponsor."
100,000 Cincinnati
Unionists in Merger
Cincinnati — More than 500 delegates voted unanimously to ap-
prove merger of the former AFL and CIO bodies here May 14 to
form the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council.
The council, which includes 63,000 former AFL members and
37,000 former CIO members, is headed by John J. Hurst of the Car-
penters, who had headed the old^
AFL Central Labor Council since
1934. George Jent of the Auto
Workers is executive secretary-
treasurer. They will be the only
full-time officers.
Delegates to the merger meet-
ing heard Hurst, Jent, Dir. Al
Whitehouse, of Steelworkers
Dist. 25, Charles Paulsen, direc-
tor of organization for the Res-
taurant Workers, and others, urge
the necessity for labor unions to
work and fight together.
Local political leaders, including
Mayor Donald Clancy, Sheriff Dan
Tehan and Councilmen John J.
Gilligan and Charles P. Taft, wel-
comed the merged group and con-
gratulated Cincinnati union mem-
bers on their long record of clean
and militant progress.
The old AFL council here was
unique in that although it was
formed in 1896, it had one of the
few charters which was not signed
by Samuel Gompers, AFL founder,
but John McBride, who unseated
Gompers for a single year.
Biggest affiliate among former
AFL unions is the Machinists,
with about 5,000 members; next
is the State, County & Municipal
Employes with 4,000. The Build-
ing Trades have about 2,200.
Top among the old CIO unions
are the UAW, 12,000 members;
Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers and Steelworkers, each
with 8,000 members; Clothing
Workers with 3,600.
Though one of the last to sign
a merger pact, leaders here have
pledged "to make it work." Hurst
acknowledged that "we'll have to
make some adjustments," but added
that he personally feels "it is a fine
idea because it will enable labor to
present a solid front in Cincinnati."
Advisors on Radiation
Job Perils Again Asked
The AFL-CIO has renewed its plea for creation of a statutory
labor-management advisory committee on atomic radiation hazards
to assure that progress in the peaceful development of the atom is
not made "at the expense of human safety."
In a letter to Rep. Chet Hoiifield (D-Calif.), chairman of a sub-
committee of the Joint Senate-^"
House Committee on Atomic En-
ergy, AFL-CIO Legislative Dir.
Andrew J. Biemiller said labor has
proposed such a committee "with-
out avail" for the past three years.
Biemiller said that the "un-
conscionable delay" on the part
of the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion in taking more than a year
to put radiation regulations into
effect "points up the urgent ne-
cessity" for creation of the labor-
management panel.
At the same time, the AFL-CIO
spokesman restated labor's dissat-
isfaction with a law enacted last
year which sidestepped the estab-
lishment of federal standards on
radiation and instead left the ques-
tion of supervision of hazards up
to negotiations between the AEC
and the governors of each of the
50 states.
Biemiller called this "a serious
potential threat to the health and
safety of workers" because it means
"fragmentation among the states of
radiation health and safety pro-
grams heretofore carried out by
the federal government."
The 1959 law, he said, made
the "erroneous" assumption that
the individual state governments,
"for the most part possessing
miserable records in economic
and social legislation, are now
somehow armed with ability to
undertake this additional new
and complex" task of setting up
adequate radiation safeguards.
Biemiller said the AFL-CIO will
spell out its specific objections and
suggest changes in the AEC's so-
called "standards" when it pre-
sents formal testimony to the Joint
Committee in mid-June.
USWA Helps 128
Through College
Pittsburgh — A total of 128 stu-
dents are now enrolled in colleges
and universities on scholarships
sponsored by the Steelworkers,
Pres. David J. McDonald has an-
nounced.
Local unions set aside $67,620
annually and USA districts con-
tributed $60,600, making a total
of $128,220 under current schol-
arship aid programs.
The first scholarship fund in the
steel union was undertaken by a
344-member local in Logansport,
Ind., in 1948. Grants now range
from the $100 program of Mon-
tana miners to the two annual
$4,000 grants made by Kaiser Lo-
cal 2869 at Fontana, Calif.
«
f, D. C. SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1960
U.S.-Mexico Committee Meets:
Unions Agree on
Bracero Standards
Brownsville, Tex. — A six-point statement of policy on the Mexi-
can farm labor import program was unanimously adopted at the
sixth conference of the Joint U.S.-Mexico Trade Union Committee
held here and in the nearby Mexican city of Matamoras.
Jn addition, the Mexican labor movement renewed its declaration
that its members have no desire to^r
displace U.S. farm workers or to
undercut their wages when "bra-
ceros" enter this country to work
on farms in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley.
The policy statement:
• Urged Pres. Eisenhower to
veto pending legislation sought by
growers' associations to take ad-
ministrative control of the program
from the Secretary of Labor.
• Called on the U.S. Labor
Dept. to tighten its procedures for
certifying the need for foreign
workers and for determining the
prevailing wage in areas where
they are to work.
• Demanded establishment of
a minimum wage of "no less
than $1 an hour" in the next
agreement between Mexico and
the U.S., which must be reached
if the program is to go beyond
next year.
• Asked "many times" the
present number of Labor Dept.
compliance inspectors and amend-
ment of the international agree-
ment to permit Mexican consuls to
set up similar compliance staffs.
• Called for broader and in-
creased insurance for both occupa-
Mathews Named
To IAM Position
L. Ross Mathews of Fort Worth,
Tex., has been named assistant sec-
retary of the Machinists.
Mathews will assist General Sec.
Treas. Elmer E. Walker, who ap-
pointed him with the approval of
the IAM Executive Council. The
new assistant secretary succeeds M.
R. (Dick) Sterns, who died recently
after serving in the post for 11
years.
Mathews, 52, a former machine
tool operator, has been an IAM
member since 1943. For seven
years, he served as secretary-treas-
urer of IAM District 776 at the big
Convair plant, Fort Worth. He
joined the IAM's grand lodge staff
in 1956, first as a special repre-
sentative and later as a grand lodge
auditor.
tional and non-occupational sick-
ness and injury protection.
• Condemned the U.S. Immi-
gration & Naturalization Service
for its continued issuance of "^pe-
ciaF work permits under which
Mexican workers cross the border
to work on U.S. farms at substand-
ard wages and without proper legal
safeguards.
A resolution on cooperation
urged greater exchange of informa-
tion between counterpart unions in
the two countries, and praised the
"solidarity pacts" between U.S.
and Mexican unions already exist-
ing in several industries.
It also commended the Mexi-
can Confederation of Workers
and the Texas State AFL-CIO
for renegotiation of their agree-
ment not to undercut each oth-
er's wage standards so as
to make it applicable to all con-
struction jobs on the Rio Grande.
Sec-Gen. Alfonso Sanchez Mad
ariaga of the Inter-American Re
gional Organization of Workers,
western hemisphere arm of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, convened the session and
praised the affiliates for their con-
tribution to worker solidarity.
Noakes Named Chairman
Sec.-Treas Frank Noakes of the
Maintenance of Way Employes
chairman of the committee's U.S
section, was elected conference
chairman. Named vice chairmen
were Sen. Jesus Yuren, chairman
of the Mexican section, and Pres.
Jerry Holleman of the Texas State
AFL-CIO.
Others in the U.S. delegation
were AFL-CIO Inter-American
Rep. Serafino Romualdi; Sec.-
Treas. Fred Schmidt of the Texas
AFL-CIO; Dir. E. P. Theiss of
AFL-CIO Reg. 18; Assistant Dir.
Irwin DeShetler of AFL-CIO Reg.
22; R. P. Sanchez, the Joint Com-
mittee's field representative in
Texas; Intl. Rep. Vernon Ford of
the Mine Workers, and Milton
Plumb, public relations director
for the Railway Labor Executives'
Association.
WE MUST BREAK "the discriminatory manacles which chain
hired farm workers to an old world of poverty and disease and hope-
lessness," AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller told a
Senate Labor subcommittee in backing bills to educate migrant
children, register crew leaders and bring farm workers under cover-
age of the federal wage-hour law.
FRIENDSHIP ON THE RIO GRANDE shows Mexican Sen.
Jesus Yuren, chairman of the Mexican delegation to the Joint U.S.-
Mexico Trade Union Committee, left, and Chairman Frank Noakes
of the U.S. delegation, at Brownsville, Tex., meeting.
Farm Lobby Accused
Of 'Misuse ' of Data
The AFL-CIO has charged that an "apparent" conflict in farm
wage and income data presented at Senate hearings by the federation
and the American Farm Bureau Federation resulted from the Farm
Bureau's "careless or deliberate misuse of statistical data."
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller made the charge
in a supplementary statement filed ^
with the Senate subcommittee on
migratory labor at the request of
Chairman Harrison A. Williams,
Jr. (D-N. J.).
The issue arose at recent hear
ings on a farm minimum wage
bill co-sponsored by Sens. Pat Mc-
Namara (D-Mich.) and Joseph S
Clark (D-Pa.) which would apply
a 75-cent hourly minimum and
boost it to $1 in three years.
Biemiller said the Farm Bu-
reau, in claiming that farm in-
come was falling while wage
rates rose, used a false compari-
son by matching average compos-
ite hourly wage rates of farm
workers against average annual
net income of all farm oper-
ators.
This, he pointed out, is a "rab-
bit-burger" average.
In fact, he said, the total cash
farm wage bill fell sharply and
also fell as a percentage of total
farm production costs between
1949 and 1959. In addition, he
said, real annual earnings of farm
workers declined because of fewer
days of labor.
Furthermore, Biemiller wrote,
the McNamara-Clark bill would
apply to only six-tenths of 1 per-
cent of all farms, the big farms
which use most of the labor — not
to the small farmer.
Senate Backs Ike
On Area Aid Veto
The Senate has failed to override
Pres. Eisenhower's veto of a $251
million area redevelopment measure
— the second aid-to-depressed-com-
munities bill vetoed by the Presi-
dent in the last two years.
The Senate divided 45 in favor
of overriding and 39 opposed — 1 1
votes shy of the two-thirds majority
required to pass a measure in the
face of White House disapproval.
Forty liberal Democrats were
joined by five liberal Republicans
in voting to override. A coalition
of 25 Republicans and 14 South-
ern Democrats voted to uphold
Eisenhower's veto.
Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-UL),
floor manager for the bill, accused
the President of "hypocrisy" in pro-
posing "all kinds of foreign aid
spending" to assist underdeveloped
countries while refusing "even small
assistance at home" for depressed
areas.
Meany, ILA
Group Meet
On Charter
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has met with a committee from the
Longshoremen to discuss the ILA's
issuance of a charter to a group of
workers in the Dominican Republic.
Heading the delegation was Capt.
William V. Bradley, ILA president.
Also present at the hour and 45
minute meeting at AFL-CIO head-
quarters were Pres. Paul Hall and
Executive Sec. Harry E. O'Reilly
of the AFL-CIO Maritime Trades
Dept.
Following the meeting, Meany
said the ILA defended its reasons
for issuing the charter and fur-
nished him with the names of firms
with which the local has contractual
relations. He said Bradley also
promised to furnish details on the
composition of the firms and copies
of the contract
Meany said that next month the
federation would have an opportu-
nity to discuss the impact of the
charter on the whole question of
the Caribbean when Hall attends a
meeting of the Intl. Transport work-
ers Federation and Meany attends
an executive board meeting of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions in Brussels.
The AFL-CIO president said he
planned to call ILA officials back
in about Aug. 1 to discuss the sit-
uation further, adding that he would
have a recommendation on the
Dominican charter to submit to the
Executive Council when it meets
Aug. 15 in Chicago.
TUC Proposes
Buyer Protection
London — The British Trades Un-
ion Congress recently proposed es-
tablishment of a national council to
protect the interest of consumers.
It made the suggestion in testi-
mony before the Committee on
Consumer Protection set up by the
government. The council, it main-
tained, should test consumer goods
of all types and make public re-
ports, and advise individuals and
consumer organizations.
I 'Fear' Voided
Vote, NLRB
Aide Rules
Baltimore — An election lost by
a union after a gang-up by the
town's sheriff, mayor, chamber of
commerce, merchants and news-
paper was held "in the face of a
widespread fear that the employer
would close up its plant and move,"
concluded Regional Dir. John A.
Penello of the National Labor Re-
lations Board in recommending a
new election.
Penello recommended the set-
ting aside of the election which the
Ladies' Garment Workers lost by
a 147 to 69 vote at the Lawrence
Mfg. Co., Lawrenceville, Va., last
March.
**. . . this fear of economic loss
so permeated the atmosphere sur-
rounding the election as to render
impossible the rational, uncoerced
selection of bargaining representa-
tive . . Penello wrote in hand-
ing down his decision.
"Such fear," he said, "was the
natural result of the threats of
plant shutdown confronting the
employes at every turn — in the
local stores, in the street, in the
plant, in the newspaper and even
in their homes through the media
of telephones and house visits."
Penello said the only authori-
tative source which could deny the
threats was the employer and the
employer not only failed to do this
but, "in fact, it ratified and sup-
ported them" through its foreman.
The NLRB report quoted
from worker witnesses and from
the town and business leaders, who
campaigned against the union, as
well as quoting from the front-
page editorial which appeared in
the county newspaper, entitled:
"Vote AGAINST the union!"
09-8S-SI
U.S. Urged to
End Control of
Genl Aniline
The AFL-CIO has renewed its
appeal to Congress to enact legis-
lation to sell the government's ma-
jority control stock in the General
Aniline and Film Corp.
George D. Riley, AFL-CIO leg-
islative representative, told a House
Interstate and Foreign Commerce
subcommittee that the return of
General Aniline to private owner-
ship would be in the best interests
of the 4,000 employes who
are members of AFL-CIO unions.
Two locals of the Chemical Work-
ers represent approximately 2,000
of the workers.
Riley said labor long has sup-
ported such legislation as the pend-
ing bills sponsored by Reps. Leo
W. O'Brien (D-N.Y.) and Howard
W. Robison (R-N.Y.).
The O'Brien-Robison bills would
amend the Trading with the Enemy
Act to permit the U. S. Attorney-
General to dispose of the govern-
ment-held stock in General Ani-
line. The company has nine plants
in six states.
Riley said the AFL-CIO has
testified before both Senate and
House committees over the course
of the past eight years and con-
siders the delay "not understand-
able."
House Unit
Takes Up
Wage Bill
The full House Labor Com-
mittee has taken over considera-
tion of wage-hour legislation from
an evenly-divided subcommittee
and there were indications that a
bill raising the minimum wage
and extending coverage might
reach the House floor by mid-
June.
Action by the full committee
was predicted by Rep. James Roose
velt (D-Calif.), one of the sponsors
of the labor-backed Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt bill.
The compromise measure re-
ported by the subcommittee with-
out recommendation would lift the
hourly wage of those presently
covered to $1.25 in three steps —
$1.15 this year, $1.20 in 1961, and
$1.25 in 1962. In addition, it
would extend coverage to about
4.5 million additional workers, who
would receive $1 immediately,
$1.10 the second year, $1.20 the
third year and $1.25 the fourth
year.
Meanwhile the Senate Labor
Committee, which has had a sub-
committee bill pending since the
first session of Congress, found it-
self stymied by early convening of
the Senate and the refusal of Re-
publican Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (111.) to give the unanimous
consent necessary to permit a com-
mittee to meet while the Senate is
in session.
The committee has scheduled
new meetings beginning June 7.
In a move to speed action on
wage-hour legislation, the AFL-CIO
notified the House committee that
it was not "dead set" against bring-
ing newly-covered workers up to a
$1.25 hourly minimum in annual
step-ups, although it did not con-
sider such an action necessary.
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Bie-
miller, in supplemental testimony
filed with the Labor Standards
subcommittee, emphasized that
large groups of excluded workers
"have been denied their moral
right to decent wage-hour stand-
ards for so many years that the
essential point, the indispensable
point, is to bring them under the
act, even if it must be in steps."
Biemiller said labor didn't object
to revisions which may be necessary
to meet legitimate objections raised
by "bona fide small businessmen,"
but "we cannot respond to the tune
of the fellow who takes in a million
but thinks $1 an hour is too much."
The AFL-CIO spokesman said he
was "shocked" at the statement of
Commerce Sec. Frederick H. Muel-
(Continued on Page 2)
Vol. v
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. M.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
•wood Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. 0.
Saturday, June 4, 1960
17,
No. 23
School Aid Fate Uncertain
Despite House, Senate Bills
Measures
May Go to
Conference
Asks Active Participation:
Step Up Education,
Meany Urges Labor
Organized labor is "only as good as the sum total of the efforts
workers put into their unions," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told
an AFL-CIO Education Directors' Conference as he urged a step-
up in union efforts to "tell the truth about the labor movement."
Addressing more than 60 education directors from 45 interna-
tional unions who attended a day-^
long session in Washington's Wil
lard Hotel, Meany emphasized that
the labor movement is "more than
a slot machine where you put your
money in one end and look around
to see what you get for your
money."
There is a direct relationship,
Labor in Mississippi
Girds for R-T-W Fight
Jackson, Miss. — Mississippi labor has opened a two-front drive
against an effort to write the state's so-called "right-to-work" law
into the state constitution.
While carrying on an active publicity and get-out-the-vote drive
for a scheduled June 7 special election, officers of the State AFL-
CIO have challenged the legality of>
the referendum and have petitioned
in chancery court for an injunction
blocking the vote.
The suit charges that official
30-day notice of the election was
given in only one of the state's
82 counties through publication
in three Jackson newspapers. The
union group also challenged the
referendum on the ground that
the legislature which voted to sub-
mit the amendment was not prop-
erly apportioned as required by
the state constitution. As in many
states, large population centers
are under-represented in Missis-
sippi.
A third challenge was based on
the fact that the special election is
being held simultaneously with the
THIS IS JUST THE OVERFLOW from a rally in support of the Forand bill in Hartford, Conn., called
by the Connecticut State and Greater Hartford AFL-CIO Labor Councils. Elderly persons from all
over the state poured out in such great numbers that the Bushnell Memorial was quickly filled, and
these participants were accommodated at a second meeting on the grounds of the state capitol.
Seniors Jam
Connecticut
Forand Rally
Hartford, Conn. — More than
5,000 of Connecticut's senior
citizens poured into this state
capital May 26 to demonstrate
their support for action on the
Forand bill at this session of
Congress.
The rally, sponsored by the
Connecticut State Labor Council
in conjunction with AFL-CIO
city central bodies and senior citi-
zen groups throughout the state,
jammed the 3,300-seat Bushnell
Memorial and necessitated an over-
flow meeting for an additional 2,000
on the lawn of the state capitol.
Largest Ever in State
" Mitchell Sviridoff, president of
the state labor council, said that the
meeting was the largest public rally
ever held in Connecticut.
Principal speaker was Rep. Frank
Kowalski (D-Conn.), who looked at
the thousands of senior citizens and
declared, "This is a fantastic turn-
out."
Kowalski, a co-sponsor of the
social security health care bill
introduced by Rep. Aime Forand
(D-R. I.), told his audiences at
both meetings that "we have no
Madison Ave. public relations
firm to sell our case to the pub-
lic, but we have something more
important — we have truth and
humanity on our side."
He attacked the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration, the American Medical
Association, and other organiza-
tions opposing the Forand measure.
In this society of ours, where
we have the hospitals, medicines
and doctors, all our citizens have
the right to this kind of care," he
said.
Al Barkan, deputy director of the
{Continued on Page 3)
Democratic primary which, the suit
charges, will "create confusion and
chaos, the result of which will be
to deprive a large number of elec-
tors of the right to vote."
All other proposed constitutional
amendments passed by the legisla-
ture will be submitted to the voters
in the November general election,
the State AFL-CIO pointed out.
As a state law, "right-to- work"
is subject to repeal by a simple ma-
jority vote of the legislature. As a
constitutional amendment, it would
require a two-thirds vote, followed
by referendum approval, to elimi-
nate "right-to-work."
During the debate in the legisla-
ture, supporters of a constitutional
amendment argued that labor is
(Continued on Page 3)
Meany said, between labor's ac-
tions and the welfare of the com-
munity and the nation as a whole,
and union members should be-
come more active in the affairs
of their union "instead of leaving
these affairs in the hands of a few
members and officers."
The meeting centered its atten
tion on a discussion of the broad
range of educational problems fac-
ing the trade union movement, ex
ploring the role which the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Education can play
in being of greater service to affili-
ates. Presiding over the conference
was Lawrence Rogin, the federa
tion's education director.
Earlier, the AFL-CIO Education
Committee headed by Vice Pres.
Peter T. Schoemann met to discuss
a proposed staff training institute.
The committee's views will be re-
ported to the Executive Council, to
which the 1959 AFL-CIO conven-
tion referred the proposal.
Meany told the conference lunch-
eon session that the American peo-
ple are "largely ignorant about the
labor movement," and are unaware
that "the things we advocate are
good for all people."
"You just can't improve the lot
of those you represent," Meany
declared, "without also improv-
ing the lot of those you don't rep-
resent." He added that wage
gains won in collective bargain-
ing inevitably result in higher pay
for non-union workers.
In the legislative field, he said.
(Continued on Page 3)
Final action by the 86th Con-
gress on federal aid to education
remained in doubt despite action
by both House and Senate in
passing school-aid bills this ses-
sion.
In the wake of House passage
of the first general school-aid
measure in history, the legislation
was endangered by a technical
situation which at least temporarily
stalled action by a possible joint
Senate-House conference commit-
tee to iron out differences between
their respective versions.
Technical Snarl
Because of the technical snarl, the
posibility loomed that the fate of
school-aid legislation might depend,
in the end, on the powerful, con-
servative-dominated House Rules
Committee headed by Rep. Howard
Wo Smith (D-Va.). The committee,
long regarded as the graveyard of
liberal legislation, bottled up the
school bill for months before bring-
ing it to the floor.
If the measure gets to conference,
informed congressional sources in-
dicated, a compromise is feasible.
The House, by a vote of 206-189,
approved a $1.3 billion four-year
bill for classroom construction. The
measure included a so-called anti-
segregation amendment sponsored
by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
(D-N. Y.). Voting for the measure
on final passage were 162 Demo-
crats and 44 Republicans. Opposed
were 97 Democrats and 92 Repub-
licans.
In February, by a 54-35 vote, the
(Continued on Page 2)
3,000 Actors
On Broadway
Face Lockout
New York — Three thousand
members of Actors' Equity faced
possible lockout as Broadway
producers threatened to shut down
the nation's top legitimate theaters
here in a contract deadlock center-
ing on actors' demands for pen-
sion, health and welfare funds.
The darkening of theater mar-
quees was slated by the League of
New York Theaters for June 2.
The lockout would ring the cur-
tain down on 22 top dramatic and
musical productions.
A shutdown would mark the
first time since 1919 that Broad-
way theaters have been closed
in a labor dispute. The strike
41 years ago halted 37 hit shows
for a month, and was climaxed
by the first formal recognition of
Actors' Equity by theater owners.
The lockout plans were an-
nounced by Alexander H. Cohen,
spokesman for the producers
(Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1960
'Let's Finish the Job 9
JM II H II It B H i>
Final School Aid Action
By Congress Uncertain
(Continued from Page 1)
Senate approved a two-year $1.8
billion bill making federal funds
available for both school construc-
tion and teachers' salaries. Passage
of the measure overrode an earlier
vote by Vice Pres. Nixon to block
federal assistance for teachers' pay.
Nixon had broken a tie to defeat
the first school bill to go to a roll-
call in the Senate.
In addition to differences on
the amount of funds involved and
the duration of the program, here
are the basic points on which the
Senate and House versions differ:
TEACHERS' SALARIES— The
Senate bill would permit states to
use federal funds either for class-
room construction, raising teachers'
salaries or both. The House limits
aid to school construction.
ANTI- SEGREGATION — The
House version would deny federal
funds to any school district which
is in definance of the Supreme
Court's desegregation decision. No
such provision is contained in the
Senate bill.
EQUALIZATION FORMULA
— The Senate bill would distribute
funds on the basis of need, so that
poorer states would receive twice as
much per pupil as the wealthier
states. The House bill would base
allocations to the individual states
on the number of school-age chil-
dren.
MATCHING FUNDS— Under
the Senate bill, states would have
to match federal funds the first
year, while state contributions in
the second year would be geared to
the relative number of pupils and
-the relative wealth of the states.
The House would permit either the
states or local school districts to
match the federal funds in the first
two years, but would require match-
ing state funds in the last two years.
Informed sources indicated that,
if the bills get to conference, the
compromise that would emerge
might be tailored roughly along the
following lines:
• A four-year $1.3 billion meas-
ure, as called for by the House.
• Elimination of the Powell
amendment now in the House ver-
sion.
• Deletion of the Senate's au-
thorization to use some of the funds
for teachers' salaries.
• An equalization formula
roughly approximating that in the
Senate bill.
• A formula for matching funds
similar to the House measure.
There was uncertainty as to the
Administration's reaction to such a
compromise. At the outset of the
House debate, Health, Education &
Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming
raised the threat that Pres. Eisen-
hower would veto the measure un-
less it called for matching state
funds and proportionately larger
funds for poorer states.
The compromise would go part
of the way toward meeting those
objections, but the bill would be
substantially higher than the Ad-
ministration's recommendation of
only $100 million a year for 30
years to help school districts pay in
terest charges on construction loans.
AFL-CIO Gives Red Cross
$5,000 for Aid to Chile
The AFL-CIO has given the American Red Cross $5,000
for the relief of victims of the series of natural disasters in
Chile, Pres. George Meany announced.
The money was earmarked to be turned over immediately
to the Chilean Red Cross to ease the sufferings of the 2 mil-
lion people left homeless by a virtually unprecedented succes-
sion of major earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions
that devastated the South American nation over six harrowing
days. An estimated 5,000 victims were killed.
In a letter to the Red Cross Meany said the gift was prompted
by a desire to help alleviate the suffering and need.
"We sincerely hope," he wrote, "that the donation of $5,000
will help the Red Cross speed relief to the Chilean people.
Please assure them that other branches of the American labor
movement are at this moment raising additional funds and
materials to help in this disaster relief.
"The Inter-American Organization of Workers (ORIT) and
the Inter-American Federation of Food & Drink and Tobacco
Workers have alerted their members to the great need for
relief activity and we feel certain that other organizations will
also rush to the aid of their Chilean brothers and sisters."
Urges Aid to Displaced Families :
Reuther Asks Creation of
Ca binet-Level Housing Dept.
Creation of a Dept. of Housing and Urban Affairs in the President's Cabinet, to insure "belated
recognition" of the nation's housing needs, has been urged by Pres. Walter P. Reuther of the AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept.
"Much of the past neglect of the desirable low-rent public and middle-income housing as well as
general urban redevelopment," Reuther declared, "might have been avoided if there were a strong
at the Cabinet level in sup-^
voice
port of effective housing legisla-
tion."
Reuther, who is also president
of the Auto Workers, expressed his
views in a letter to Rep. Albert
Rains (D-Ala.), chairman of a
House Banking subcommittee
which currently is holding hear-
ings on comprehensive housing leg-
islation.
The IUD president emphasized
that the current slowdown of the
economy, coupled with the na-
tion's continuing housing needs,
"make it imperative that Con-
gress legislate boldly and quickly"
in the housing held. "Weak-
nesses in the residential construc-
tion industry have been a major
factor in keeping the economy at
a reduced level of operations with
a continuing high rate of unem-
ployment," he said.
For eight consecutive months,
Reuther pointed out, housing starts
have lagged behind the level of
the preceding year. "This de-
pressed rate of residential con-
struction," he said, "is intolerable
in the light of the great shelter
needs of millions of American
families and the persistent shortage
of jobs in so many sectors of the
economy."
Relocation Aid Endorsed
Reuther gave strong endorsement
to a measure introduced by Rains
to establish a new relocation as-
sistance program for families dis-
placed by urban renewal and slum
clearance activities, but urged
further strengthening of the meas-
ure.
"It has become evident," he as-
serted, "that the inability of many
communities to provide shelter
for persons displaced by urban
renewal programs may bring
these . . . programs to a grind-
ing halt in many parts of the
country. Urban renewal be-
comes a mockery if it leads to
housing burdens and misery for
thousands of displaced persons."
The Rains bill, he said, offers a
possible way out of this dilemma by
providing authority to the Federal
Housing Administrator to make
loans to non-profit corporations for
construction of housing for low and
middle-income families displaced
by such activities.
Reuther added that there should
be "clear provisions" to make cer-
tain that loans and the building of
alternative shelter are completed in
advance of actual urban renewal
activity.
Noting the pressing need for
middle-income housing, the IUD
official urged inclusion in housing
legislation of proposals to estab-
lish a federal limited profit mort-
gage corporation authorized to
issue up to $2 billion to help get
this program under way.
This legislation, he said, would
make possible the construction of
150,000 units for middle-income
housing by providing for low-cost,
40-year, 90 percent mortgages.
Reuther, pointing to the grow-
ing gap in low-income housing
needs, urged that Congress enact
the necessary legislation to permit
construction of 100,000 low-rent
public housing units "originally en-
visaged under the Housing Act
of 1949."
Building Site Picketing
Bill Hearings June 7-8
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has called up his "situs picket-
ing" bill for Senate Labor subcommittee hearings June 7 and 8, and
will seek to bring the bill to the floor for a vote this session, he
has said.
The Kennedy announcement re-emphasized the drive to get action
on the bill to legalize "common^
situs" picketing, a major legisla
tive goal of the AFL-CIO and the
federation's Building & Construc-
tion Trades Dept.
In a speech on the Senate floor,
Kennedy recalled that leaders from
both parties committed themselves
to act on a "situs picketing" bill
shortly after the Senate voted fa-
vorably on the Land rum-Griffin
bill.
"I intend," Kennedy told the
Senate, "to fulfill the commit-
ments which were made last Sep-
tember to do all in my power to
bring this bill to a vote in the
Senate, and secure its enactment."
The situs picketing bill spon-
sored in the House by Rep. Frank
Thompson, Jr., (D-N. J.), has been
Stricter Explosive Law
Asked by Fire Fighters
Municipal firemen look to Congress to protect them from hazards
such as those which killed 13 persons and blew up several city blocks
in Roseburg, Ore., last Aug. 7, a witness for the Fire Fighters has
testified.
Pres. Leonard English of the Cleveland Fire Fighters' local told
the House Committee on Judiciary'^
that immediate action on a Senate-
passed bill to regulate the transport
of hazardous material is impera-
tive.
A member of the international
union's safety committee and a
lieutenant in the Cleveland Fire
Department, English reminded
the committee that the bill was
approved by the Senate last Sep-
tember, and said that delay in the
House continues the exposure of
firemen and other citizens to
avoidable hazards.
At Roseburg, a truckload of
blasting powder and other explo-
sives was parked next to a ware-
house. The warehouse caught fire,
and firemen fought the blaze
without knowing what was in the
truck, English said. The resulting
explosion killed 13, injured 125,
and destroyed buildings and streets
for blocks around.
A law requiring shippers and
truckers to notify safety officials
when hazardous materials are being
moved might have avoided an ex-
plosion near Boys' Town, Neb.,
which destroyed an ammunition
truck and tore a 15-foot hole in
the pavement several years ago,
English said.
The Senate-approved bill would
amend present laws by adding dan-
gerous materials not now covered
— radioactive materials, etiologic
(disease-causing) agents and toxic
substances like chemicals and gases.
The bill would allow the Inter-
state Commerce Commission some
leeway in setting up rules for trans-
porting dangerous susbtances.
"The existence of these dangers
has increased tremendously," Eng-
lish said, "since the Transportation
of Explosives Act was enacted in
1908.
"Today there are many new
chemical substances that are po-
tentially explosive. Many are so
unstable that they can be ex-
ploded by heat or shock. But
there is no labeling requirement
that would adequately warn han-
dlers or fire fighters of the
potentially explosive character-
istics of these substances.
"Operators, drivers, handlers and
storage workers should be told of
the hazards presented by explosive
materials, and they should be in-
formed of proper procedure in an
emergency."
stalled in the Rules Committee since
its approval weeks ago by the
House labor unit. Passage would
correct what the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council, at its meeting last
month, called "an unjust and in-
equitable restriction on the rights"
of building trades unions to picket
peacefully for lawful objects.
BCTD Pres. C. J. Haggerty
has requested all affiliated unions
to ask both members and con-
tractors to write their senators
and congressmen, so as to coun-
teract the "tremendous anti-labor
letter writing campaign" of the
National Association of Manu-
facturers and other employer
groups.
Kennedy on the floor of the Sen-
ate read from the record remarks
of Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.);
Sen. W. L. Prouty (R-Vt.); Sen.
Everett M. Dirksen (R-Ill.); and
Kennedy himself showing that those
legislators, along with House Speak-
er Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) and Rep.
Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.), had
agreed to take up the issue.
"In addition," said Kennedy,
"there is a solid legislative record
in support of the bill. The Presi-
dent of the United States recom-
mended enactment of this legisla-
tion in his message of 1954" and
again in 1958 and 1959.
House Unit
Begins Work
On Wage Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
ler that, although he testified as an
Administration spokesman in sup-
port of "modest" improvements in
the wage-hour law, he personally
was opposed to any minimum wage
legislation.
The Kennedy- Morse -Roosevelt
bill, as originally introduced, would
raise the wage floor to $1.25 an
hour and bring an estimated 7.8
million additional workers under
coverage.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has
said he would not oppose a $1.10
or $1.15 minimum wage, but would
recommend a veto of $1.25. The
Administration bill would extend
coverage to approximately half as
many workers as the Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt bill. ,
AFT^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1960
Page Three
In New Constitution:
7 Air Unions Adopt
Mutual Aid Pact
The Association of Air Transport Unions, set up by seven AFL-
CIO affiliates representing nearly all of the country's airline
employes, has formally adopted a constitution that includes a new
mutual assistance agreement.
The agreement becomes effective in time for this year's negoti-
ations with the major airlines. It^
provides that in case of a strike by
one of the member-unions, the
others will give all possible and
practical financial and moral as-
sistance.
The seven unions in addition
agreed not to reach final contract
settlement with a struck employer
until he has signed an agreement
assuring full and immediate re-
instatement of all strikers and has
withdrawn all other retaliatory
action.
The unions which established the
AATU are the Machinists, Air Line
Pilots, Transport Workers, Air
Line Dispatchers, Railway Clerks,
Flight Engineers and Auto Work-
ers.
Officers are IAM Pres. A. J.
Hayes, chairman; James F. Horst,
TWU vice president and direc-
tor of TWU's Air Transport Div.,
vice chairman; and ALPA Sec.
R. L. Tuxbury, executive secretary.
They will serve until the next regu-
lar meeting in September.
The constitution was formally
adopted at a meeting in IAM head-
quarters in Washington.
The organization itself grew
out of past cooperative efforts of
the seven unions through the
AFL-CIO Aviation Legislative
Committee and was first broached
at a meeting of representatives of
the seven unions during the AFL-
CIO convention in San Francisco
last September.
Behind it lay a mutual assist-
ance compact signed by six airlines
in Oct. 1958 to help Capital Air-
lines during an IAM strike. The
signatories — Capital, American,
Eastern, Pan American, Trans
World and United — agreed to give
a struck airline the extra revenue
collected because of diversion of
passengers to other airlines during
a walkout resulting from union de-
mands beyond the recommenda-
tions of a presidential emergency
board. The unions protested ap-
proval of the agreement by the
Civil Aeronautics Board.
Now the unions are fighting a
petition for an expanded agree-
ment filed with the CAB by the
six original airlines plus Braniff,
National and Northwest. They
contend the new proposal would
make mutual assistance apply in
all strikes, including those pro-
voked by management.
The constitution was drafted by
a committee that included Horst as
chairman; Pres. Ron A. Brown of
the Flight Engineers; Vice Pres.
E. R. Kinley of the Railway Clerks,
and Tuxbury.
It provides for the formation of
local air transport councils to pro-
mote continuing cooperating at both
national and local levels.
AFL-CIO EDUCATION COMMITTEE meets to discuss federa
tion's training role in advance of day-long education directors' con-
ference in Washington. Left to right are Vice Pres. Peter T. Schoe-
mann, committee chairman; Lawrence M. Rogin, new director of
AFL-CIO Dept. of Education; and Vice Presidents Paul L. Phillips
and Joseph D. Keenan.
Labor's Education Job
Emphasized by Meany
Producers Threaten
To Close N.Y. Shows
(Continued from Page 1)
who said "every play and musical
in town will be out" June 2.
Equity members, whose three-
year contract with the producers
expired May 31, voted not to call
a theater-wide strike. Instead, they
gave a ringing endorsement to a
plan to call "meetings" of selected
show casts under the terms of a
clause in the union contract which,
in effect, declares that the actor's
primary obligation is to Equity.
The first such "meeting" was
held June 1, resulting in the one-
night closing of "The Tenth Man."
Other hit shows had been slated
for similar one-night shutdowns un-
til settlement was reached.
Burton A. Zorn, special counsel
for the league, said a $1 million
damage suit would be filed on be-
half of "The Tenth Man," charg-
Mississippi
Labor Girds for
R-T-W Fight
(Continued from Page 1)
gaining in political influence in the
state and there was "no guarantee"
that the majority in a future legisla-
ture might not vote to repeal the
"work" law.
A series of constitutional amend-
ments adopted in 1958 made labor's
task in opposing the "R-T-W" pro-
posal harder.
Before 1958, constitutional
amendments required a majority of
all votes cast in the election. This
was changed to permit adoption by
a majority of votes cast for or
against the proposition.
Previously, three months notice
was required before the date of a
referendum on constitutional
changes. The notice period was
reduced to 30 days.
ing Equity and the show cast with
"harassment" and "inducement of
breach of contract" for the June
cancellation.
Despite continuing negotiation
sessions called by Mayor Robert
F. Wagner (D), prospects appeared
dim for an early settlement in view
of the producers' lockout threat.
At issue in the dispute is an
Equity demand for a contract es-
tablishing the first pension, health
and welfare fund in the legitimate
theater. Under the union proposal,
producers would contribute 1 per
cent of payroll initially, with con-
tributions rising in steps to 4 per-
cent of payroll in the fifth and
sixth years.
During the first two months of
contract talks, the producers balked
at establishing a fund. On the eve
of the expiration of the old agree-
ment, they offered a token fund
into which they would contribute
nothing the first year, 1 percent of
payroll in the next two years, and
2 percent for three additional years.
No pension would be provided
actors earning more than $500 a
week.
Equity also has asked for an in-
crease in minimum weekly salaries
of actors, assistant directors and
extras, and improvement of back-
stage sanitary conditions.
Glass Firms, Union
Plan Community Aid
New York — Plans for a nation-
wide community services program,
including union-management co-
operation in voting and registration
campaigns, have been formulated
by the Glass Bottle Blowers Asso-
ciation and the Glass Container
Manufacturers Institute.
It was agreed that GBBA local
unions and management groups
will cooperate in assisting local
community chests, blood banks,
vaccine centers and like agencies.
(Continued from Page 1)
labor's fight for unemployment
compensation, workmen's compen-
sation, child labor laws and laws
protecting women in employment
"do not just affect trade union
members — they have pulled up the
standards of all workers."
"In fact," the AFL-CIO president
said, "the higher purchasing power
of all Americans is directly the
result of the efforts of trade union
members."
Organized labor's main role is to
educate its own members to the
value of trade unions and to help
unionists realize that "the only place
to get the philosophy, ideals and
truth about the trade union move-
ment is at union meetings."
Meany described the federation's
roles in the education field as an
"advisory" one, in which the Dept.
of Education will cooperate with
affiliates and coordinate joint activi-
ties.
In the working sessions, educa-
tion directors urged that emphasis
be placed on holding separate con-
ferences around given needs — such
as civil rights, economics and com-
munity services — to augment broad
conferences being held across the
country.
Rogin told delegates that the
AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions
will conduct more than 100 train-
ing schools this summer, at which
local union leaders will be taught
how to do their jobs better.
He pointed out that the current
issue of "Education News and
Views," the department's publica
tion, lists 107 week-long sessions at
which more than 6,000 rank-and
file union leaders will be trained,
Since that time, he added, several
more internationals have scheduled
summer schools for more than
thousand additional unionists.
Most of the schools will be held
on college or university campuses
A typical curriculum will include
labor history, current legislative
problems, public speaking, parlia-
mentary procedure, how to handle
grievances, community relations
and similar subjects. There are also
specialized schools on technical
matters such as incentives, time
study and industrial engineering.
Delegates to the education con-
ference urged the preparation of
more text books in the fields of
labor history, politics and eco-
nomics, and recommended that
the AFL-CIO act as a clearing
house to assure wider distribution
through labor channels of books
dealing with trade union subjects.
Chairmen of special sessions dur-
ing the day-long program were
George T. Guernsey and John E.
Cosgrove, assistant directors of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Education; Hel
muth Kern, education director of
the Meat Cutters; James E. Wolfe,
education director of the Brewery
Workers; Jules Pagano, education
director of the Communications
Workers; and Joe Glazer, education
director of the Rubber Workers.
NLRB Examiner Rejects
Attack on Picketing
An NLRB trial examiner refused to go along with a "presump-
tion" that a union which once picketed for recognition failed to act
in good faith when it changed its signs to give "publicity" to the
employer's failure to operate under a contract.
Involved were the Ladies' Garment Workers and the Nashville,
Tenn., firm of Saturn & Sedran/^
makers of women's garments and
related products. The dispute orig-
inated under a prior owner who in
May 1958 refused the union de-
mand for recognition as bargaining
agent for a unit of cutters.
The union continued to picket
after losing an NLRB election and
following purchase of the plant by
the new owners in Nov. 1958. It
changed its signs to declare that
the company "does not employ
members of ILGWU and is un-
fair to organized labor' on Oct. 1,
1959. This followed passage of the
Landriim-Griffin Act but before its
effective date of Nov. 13, 1959.
The new law prohibits picket-
ing for recognition where an
NLRB election has been held
within the previous 12 months,
or for more than 30 days without
filing a petition for an election.
The union changed its signs to
conform with the act, which spe-
cifically permits picketing for
publicity unless it is aimed at
halting pickup or delivery of
goods.
The NLRB general counsel's of-
fice argued at the hearing before
Trial Examiner A. Norman Somers
that a union official's statement
early in 1959 that picketing would
continue until a contract was
signed demonstrated the union's
goal was unchanged when the signs
were changed later in the year.
Somers rejected this position.
• Respondent utilized the grace
period between passage of the
new law and its effective date to
do precisely what the grace peri-
od contemplated . . . conform its
conduct to the new law. It ad-
dressed its appeal directly to the
public/' he said.
MEBA Plans
Election on
District Units
Denver, Colo. — Preliminary
plans for reorganizing the structure
of the Marine Engineers to provide
added strength in collective bar-
gaining and organizing were aired
here by the 40 delegates to the
union's biennial convention.
The delegates authorized
MEBA's national office to conduct
a referendum among 10,000 engi-
neers on the Atlantic, Pacific and
Gulf Coasts and the nation's inland
waterways to determine if the
membership favors establishment
of district councils to implement
this program.
Under the proposal, engineers
in locals from Boston to Miami
would be represented by an At-
lantic District; those in ports
from Tampa to Houston would
be represented by a Gulf District;
and districts would be created for
engineers on the West Coast, the
Great Lakes, and the nation's
rivers. Existing locals in each
port would become branches of
the newly-created district head-
quarters.
Because the proposal requires
formulation of constitutional
changes, the referendum is not ex-
pected to be submitted to the mem-
bers until early 1961. At that time,
the convention action declared, a
majority vote by the members in
each district will be required in
order to put the new plan into effect
in that district.
Delegates voted creation of a na-
tional administrative committee
composed of the president and sec-
retary-treasurer, and two newly
created executive vice presidents.
Elected by acclamation for the vice
presidencies were Raymond T. Mc-
Kay, president and business man-
ager of MEBA's Great Lakes local;
and William G. Kellogg, business
manager of the Houston local and
chairman of the Atlantic and Gulf
Coast Conference.
Forand Rally
In Connecticut
Draws 5,000
(Continued from Page 1)
AFL-CIO Committee on Political
Education, received a standing ova-
tion after his two-fisted attack on
opponents of the health insurance
measure.
Connecticut's Sec. of State Ella
Grasso told the audiences, "I
don't think that your generation,
which contributed jso much to the
nation's prosperity, should have so
little a share of that prosperity."
A number of senior citizens
spoke briefly on the need for imme-
diate action by Congress.
City central bodies, working
in cooperation with senior citi-
zen groups in their communities,
provided more than 100 buses to
bring the union retirees and Gold-
en Age groups to Hartford. Box
lunches were furnished during the
trip, which required as much as
four hours for those coming from
distant parts of the state.
Two bands contributed by Hart-
ford Local 400 of the Musicians
entertained the crowd inside the
Bushnell Memorial and outside on
the capitol lawn.
Iowa Federation
Gives Scholarship
Waterloo, Iowa — Miss Phyllis
Gardner, daughter of a charter
member of Auto Workers Local
838 here, has been named winner
of the sixth annual scholarship
award of the Iowa State AFL-CIO.
Miss Gardner, chosen for the
$500 top prize from among 700
entries, in May received a cash
award as local winner from the
Blackhawk County Union Council.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1960
School Aid Still io Peril
THE FEDERAL school-aid bill is still in trouble, despite passage
by both House and Senate of separate bills that embody the
principle of federal grants for school purposes. It is urgent that
friends of federal action be aware of the danger that Congress could
still adjourn without final action, without a bill being sent to the
White House for the President's signature.
This is an unusual although not unprecedented situation, and it
arises solely from the implacable opposition to federal aid of some
leaders of the conservative coalition in the House. It arises, to
be precise, from the opposition of Rep. Howard Smith (D-Va.), the
chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, and uncertainty about
the position of Rep. Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.), the GOP floor
leader, and his four Republican members on the Rules unit.
A joint Senate-House committee, it is reliably indicated by key
congressmen, could easily reach agreement on a compromise
school-aid bill, dropping from both House and Senate bills some
controversial sections and uniting on a measure that would provide
federal funds in substantial amounts for the single purpose of
urgent school construction. The President might veto this bill;
on the other hand, the terms of the talked-of compromised
measure seem reasonably close to what the White House itself
recommended in 1956 and 1957.
The difficulty is that before the House can agree to a conference
committee with the Senate, normally, the Rules group has to give
consent. And the Rules Committee already has revealed its dis-
position by sitting on the House Education Committee's bill for
many weeks before allowing it to go to the floor for a vote.
Failure of Congress to complete action on a school-aid bill,
after the House for the first time in history has actually passed
a general assistance measure, would be a deplorable breakdown
of the democratic process. It would mean minority veto of a
principle which both houses have approved by minority vote on
the floor. It would be the frustration of a program that both Re-
publicans and Democrats in the Senate approved as long ago as
1949.
The problem presents a challenge to the leadership of both parties
in the House — to Speaker Rayburn to do everything in his power
to expedite a compromise measure, to Mr. Halleck and other Re-
publican policy makers to accept honorably and gracefully the
expressed judgment of the House minority, to the Rules Committee
itself.
We are very close to federal school aid. Surely it would be
unworthy of Congress to allow a faltering at the very end.
People-to-People
ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE, Edward P. Morgan's commentary
taken from one of his news broadcasts tells the story of the
conception of Project Hope — the launching of the S.S. Hope on a
people-to-people mission of mercy and healing.
Ten cents per member from locals of the national and interna-
tional unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO would send the Hope this
year to Southeast Asia, where its medical and health training facili-
ties are desperately needed. Surely there could be no project more
deserving of help and support from millions of American union
members.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Wm. C. Doherty
Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Berrne
Karl F. Feller
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
James A. Stiff ridge O. A. Knight
Paul L. Phillips Peter T. Schoemann L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Wiilard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, June 4, 1960
No. 23
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publication?. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Fuel Needed for the Voyage!
Dixiecrat 'Sham' Hurts South,
Georgia Congressman Declares
Rep. Erwin Michell (D-Ga.), the only mem-
her of his state delegation to vote against the
Lanclrum-Griffin bill last year, recently dis-
cussed in a Georgia speech what he considers
the "hypocrisy" of southern political figures
who use a Democratic Party label to get elected
and then "join the opposition" on issues of prin-
ciple. Excerpts of his speech follow:
IN AMERICA we have by our own free choice
elected to operate under what is known as the
two-party system. Every member of Congress
is sent to that body, under the label of Democrat
or Republican. Is party affiliation important? To
this I think we all would answer "yes" simply
because at the state and national level it is im-
perative to have party affiliation in order to be
elected.
But the prime question is this: why is party
affiliation important?
There are many, many answers to this but
most fundamental and most important is the
fact that only by men and women of kindred
thought joining together in a political organiza-
tion can there be the unification and strength
essential to the presentation and implementation
of an effective course of governmental action.
This is, of course, the legislative program and
the platform which a party adopts and which it
believes to be in the best interest of the Nation.
Therefore, we who have voluntarily cast our lot
with the Democratic party have thereby manifested
our general — not specific — but our general ap-
proval of the political philosophy of the Demo-
cratic party of the United States.
When any candidate seeks to run as a nominee
of his party he thereby signifies that that partic-
ular party's ideas and goals most closely approx-
imate his own.
THIS BEING SO, it is a source of amazement
that we constantly return to office as Democrats,
elected officials who have established the practice
of berating our party, its leadership and its prin-
ciples.
It is absolutely astounding that we permit these
men and women to bear the Democratic badge
when they at every opportunity, through voice and
vote, join with the opposition party.
I can say this because I have not and will never
be a part of the sham and hyprocrisy that perme-
ates the ranks of the Democratic party in the
South. And when I say this I am talking about
political leadership both state and national
throughout the South. May the day be forthcom-
ing, and I say to you with the strongest convic-
tion of which I am capable that this day will
be forthcoming, when we Democrats will nominate
and elect Democrats and will send scrambling
those who use our party only as an expedient
avenue to public office.
The false, self-styled Democrats from the
Southland do more harm to our region than
any group of northern Democrats and Republi-
cans could ever do. This small group of men
and women, and thankfully it is small and will
continue to grow smaller, is one of the major
obstacles in the path toward unprecedented eco-
nomic growth, development, and prosperity.
These are the people who through their hue and
cry have with a great deal of success instilled in
the minds of Georgians and other Southerners the
false belief that the remainder of the Nation lit-
erally hates us. These are the ones who constantly
cry out that Northerners seek to crucify us, to in-
sult us, to make whipping boys of us. I have
traveled throughout our great nation and I have
never found this to be so.
Our fellow Americans j^gardiess of where they
come from stand ready to join with us for our
mutual benefit if we would only let them. But the
attitude of many of our political leaders closes
the door to this prospect. They say we are sus-
picious of you, we don't trust you, and we will
not cooperate with you. This pessimistic attitude
has caused us suffering in many ways.
EACH YEAR the influence of the South in
Washington is being lessened. Southern opposi-
tion to the genuine needs of our metropolitan areas
has lost support for the farm programs that are
so vital to our economy. This same untenable at-
titude has led all public education in our state to
the very brink of destruction.
Tradition is fine. No one is more proud of his
heritage than I. No one loves Georgia and the
Southland any more than I but I am afraid that
by and large our leadership has been guilty of
too much tradition and not enough vision.
This is the age of rockets and nuclear power.
While we should continue to treasure the past
and gain experience from it, we should no longer
live in it. We must have leaders who are living
in the present and are looking to the tomorrow.
AFT -CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. JUNE 1. I960
Page Five
Morgan Says:
'Project Hope' Takes Hearts,
Too, Out of the Mothball Fleet
( I his column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan bver the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
OS A DAY OF HOMAGE to the war dead it
seems not untimely to pay respects to those oc-
casional humanitarian ideas to keep people living
— ideas which, if brought
to full flower, could con-
ceivably obviate the need
of new Memorial Days in
the future.
About Christmastime a
year and a half ago in
Washington, a doctor, a
lawyer and a businesman
formally incorporated an
idea. They called it the
People - to - People Health
Morgan Foundation, Inc., or, for
short. Project HOPE — Health Opportunity for
People Everywhere. The idea was simple: Take
a navy hospital ship out of mothballs, load it
with medical supplies, a trained civilian staff of
doctors, nurses and technicians and sail it off to
Asian ports as a floating storehouse and school-
room for health with a mission of mercy as an
added assignment in case of disaster, like the re-
cent quakes in Chile, the tidal waves in the far
Pacific.
Attorney Eugent Zuckert, a former Atomic
Energy Commissioner; Industrialist Joseph T.
Geuting, Jr., and Dr. William B. Walsh, medi-
cal officer on a destroyer during the war, were
ail three driven by this philosophy: Poor health
and illiteracy are the two heavy horsemen riding
down the hopes of the underdeveloped coun-
tries. The unwell cannot learn properly. Poor
health leads to poverty, poverty to hunger and
hunger to despair. This chain reaction, un-
checked, makes the illusory paternalism of com-
munism attractive. As an antidote, Walsh took
the idea to Pres. Eisenhower who was struck
by its potential in real people-to-people diplo-
macy. He promised to put a hospital ship in
operating condition if Project HOPE could raise
enough money to run it as a citizens* venture,
not a government project.
Red tape being what it is, even in goodwill,
the USS Consolation — rechristened HOPE — is
still being readied in the Bremerton, Wash., Navy
Washington Reports;
Yard, but by mid-September it will be off to
Indonesia with a staff of 60 doctors, nurses and
assistants aboard, all volunteers. Already Walsh
is oozing optimism: School children's dimes,
pledges from industry and labor have subscribed
a third of the $3.5 million budget.
SO IMPRESSED was AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany with the idea that he sent a special letter
to all unions urging contributions equivalent to
10 cents a member — this alone could net more
than a million dollars. A Detroit milk container
company will spend $250,000 to film a docu-
mentary of the project. The petroleum industry
has pledged $300,000 worth of fuel, enough to
run the hospital ship for a year and the American
President Lines, in cooperation with maritime un-
ions, will operate the vessel.
Indonesia was the first of half a dozen Asian
countries to invite HOPE in. And no wonder. The
country has 1,500 trained doctors for a popula-
tion of more than 85 million.
Admittedly this is a tiny drop in the great
bucket of need. There are bigger plans. Min-
nesota's Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey has been
working for some two years with other members
of Congress of both parties on a grandiose proj-
ect to demothball a number of excess naval ships
and embark them as a permanent "Great White
Fleet" of peaceful missions for public health
training, other technical assistance programs and
to supply food and first aid in catastrophes. A
resolution calling on the President to establish
such a disarmed and disarming armada is
grounded somewhere in committee and with the
last fortnight's headlines of disaster as added
impetus, Humphrey is trying to refloat it.
Walsh is sympathetic toward such moves but
with pardonable pride in his own project he hopes
to get HOPE afloat first. He has an old-fashioned
idea that people will respond if they have a sense
of participation — something that can easily get
crushed in the wheels of bureaucracy.
The job, though, is plainly so vast that to have
more than a feature-story meaning, however in-
spiring, it will need all the combined support of
government and public and all the imagination
that the bureaucrats and private citizens can give
it.
At any rate the idea strikes me as more fitting
to the occasion of Memorial Day than the prospect
of nuclear carnage or the carnage of combat on
the highways with which we currently celebrate it.
Kuchel, Teller Endorse Bill
To Permit Jobsite Picketing
THE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT must be amend-
ed to correct an injustice to members of the
building and construction trades, the minority
whip of the Senate, Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel (R-
Caiif.), and Rep. Ludwig Teller (D-N.Y.) asserted
as they were interviewed on Washington Reports
to the People, AFL-CIO public service program,
heard on 350 radio stations.
"In my judgment, a bipartisan majority of
the members of the Senate would approve this
legislation," Kuchel declared.
' in the lengthy debate on labor-management
legislation last year, some promises were extracted
that this legislation would be taken up this year.
And, speaking for myself, I hope we may have an
opportunity to vote on it."
Teller said the House version of the Taft-
Hartley Act amendment is now in the Rules Com-
mittee.
4 T have done everything within my power and
I shall do everything in my power in support of
this bill because it is a good bill," he said.
BOTH SPEAKERS said that the issue — situs
picketing — is not easy for the layman to under-
stand. Teller said it's a legal term that has come
into general use. He pointed out that the law now
forbids secondary boycotts, and has been inter-
preted to prevent picketing at a construction site
when a union has a dispute with the general con-
tractor or with one of the subcontractors doing the
plumbing, the electrical work, the masonry or
some other part of the job.
Kuchel quoted Pres. Eisenhower as having said
in 1954: "The prohibitions against secondary
boycotts are designed to protect innocent third
parties from being injured in labor disputes that
are not their concern. . . . The act must not, how-
ever, prohibit legitimate concerted activities
against other than innocent parties. I recommend
that the act be clarified by making it explicit that
concerted action against an employer on a con-
struction project who together with other em-
ployers is engaged in work on the site of the
project will not be treated as a secondary t>pycott."
The recommendation was repeated in 1958,
the Republican senator said, "and the Dept. of
Labor prepared legislation to provide for equal-
ity in the treatment of men and women in the
construction movement."
Noting the bipartisan character of the legisla-
tion, Teller spoke of the House bill, the one that
bears the name of a Democrat: Rep. Frank
Thompson, Jr. (N. J.). Teller, who has been a
college professor, contrasted the situation affect-
ing an ordinary struck plant and the peculiarly
different case of a construction site. 'The Thomp-
son bill is needed in justice," Teller said.
WASHINGTON
I
THE MOST COGENT public speech by a public figure in the first
five months of this year may very well be the. remarkable speech of
Sen. Joseph S. Clark, a Pennsylvania Democrat, at a university
forum on the theme of 'The Federal Government and the Cities."
The speech came last March and no one has refuted its facts or
contested its logic, nor is any one likely to.
Sen. Clark spoke of the deterioration of public services — the
deficiencies in schools, roads, housing, security systems, health and
welfare — and of facts we should consider in combatting these de-
ficiencies.
"My remarks,-' he said bluntly, "are addressed only to the
civilized," not to those "who feel no distress at the appalling
inadequacy of public services. . . . I have no message for them."
Does anyone really believe the pap peddled about a "vast expan-
sion" of federal spending for public services and the "threat" such
an expansion might imply to "local control"?
Well, federal revenues have risen by 74 percent since 1946, but
that is less than the economy has grown, and state and local revenues
have more than tripled.
The federal debt has risen 5 percent — but state and local govern-
ment debt has leaped 309 percent — or 62 times as fast.
The federal government collects 63 percent of all public revenues
— but this is down from 77 percent in 1946.
This does not sound as if America's moral fiber has been weakened
by dependence on the federal treasury. It sounds as if the federal
treasury is paying a steadily decreasing share for public services.
* * *
CLARK POINTS OUT that seven-eighths of all local tax dollars
are levied on real estate. The poor man or middle-class suburbanite
may have practically all his accumulated wealth centered in whatever
equity he owns in a house; and he is taxed on the totality of it.
The man who has accumulated additional wealth has it largely "in
the form of stock certificates, or bonds, or other intangibles. And
the local property tax does not penetrate the secret confines of the
safety deposit box."
States and localities in desperation turn to the sales tax and the
wage tax — but these provide less than 10 percent of their total
revenue, Clark says, and both taxes are regressive in their effects.
From these facts and the fact that federal taxes are "far more
equitable," Clark argues, another fact flows automatically: "The
federal tax system should be used to an increasing degree to
finance services which have been heretofore strictly state and
local."
This is "heretical," the senator admits. But the plain fact is that
Congress acts under the proposition frequently, even under the
Eisenhower Administration. It began financing schools in 1958
under a law that it disguised by calling it a "National Defense
Education Act." It finances 90 percent of the interstate highway
system by calling the roads "national defense" roads. It finances
hospital construction, airports, urban renewal by pretending the
programs are "temporary" and thus do not subvert the spirit of man.
The tax issue, says the brave Sen. Clark, is at heart a "class issue."
It is simply the issue of who pays the taxes to finance services.
Citing his own state as an example, he says that Pennsylvania
admittedly must pay more for federally-financed services than for
locally-financed ones, but "it is not the same taxpayers." Two-thirds
of the state's families, with $6,000 annual income or less, "pay less
when programs are financed through federal aid. It is only the one-
third with incomes above that level who pay more."
Why do newspaper publishers and corporations run editorials
denouncing federal aid to education as "reckless" and immoral,
sapping the moral grandeur of the people?
It's simple, says Clark. "They hate the federal government
and love local government because the former taxes them heavily
and the latter lightly. Federal aid redistributes the wealth down-
ward. A shift of responsibility to the states would redistribute
the wealth upward."
Quite a speech.
JUSTICE TO BUILDING TRADE WORKERS requires amend-
ment of Taft-Hartley Act to permit "situs picketing," Rep. Ludwig
Teller (D-N.Y.), left, and Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel (R-Calif.), Senate
minority whip, declared on Washington Reports to the People,
AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE *, 1960
AFL4IO Backs Murray Bill:
Water Resources
Held Key to Growth
Organized labor has renewed its strong endorsement of a heavily-
sponsored Senate bill which would establish a national resources
policy, create a congressional Joint Committee on Resources and
Conservation and set up a presidential Council of Resources Ad-
visors.
AFL-CIO Legislative Rep. Jack'^
Curran told the Senate Select Com
ONE HUNDRED HOURS of work for the New Mexico Committee on Political Education won
scrolls and thanks for each of seven Women's Activities Dept. volunteers. Pictured left to right
are Erma Fewell, Thelma Follis, Coy Garrison and Selma McDaniel, Albuquerque; Ann Ulibarri,
Santa Fe; Marie Shipley, Carlsbad; Annie Baca, Santa Fe, the winners, with Horace Follis and Mrs.
Margaret Thornburgh of COPE.
Schnitzler Calls for Priority Tag
On U.S. Civil, Military Defense
Instead of showing "bored annoyance" with air alerts, the American people will have to get busy
in the wake of the summit conference collapse and build up an effective civil defense and mobilization
program, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler declared at the second training conference of
the National Defense Executive Reserve.
"Now that the dove of peace has laid an egg at the summit," he said, "the flood of over-optimism
has suddenly been washed out and^
the free world roughly bumped
down to earth again.
"Our first order of business must
be to take a new and more real-
istic look at what lies ahead in
America's defense picture. Clearly
two storm fronts are headed our
way.
"First is the danger — no longer
unthinkable — of the sneak out-
break of a hot war. The odds
are still against this happening,
but after what took place in Paris
no one will deny that those odds
have shrunk. We must be pre-
pared, as best we can be, for the
ultimate contingency, no matter
how insane atomic warfare would
unquestionably be.
"Second, even if a shooting war
can be averted, we face the in-
escapable prospect of prolongation
and intensification of the cold war.
Nothing short of a miracle can now
prevent mounting bitterness and
tension. Soviet Russia seems delib-
eratively to have chosen this course.
We can either resist or surrender.
"These alternatives are harsh
but real. We have had ample
warning, at least, to keep our
powder dry."
The National Defense Executive
Reserve is composed of labor and
industry leaders who would help
administer the government in case
of a major emergency and would be
available for immediate assignment
in a crisis. Labor representatives
were nominated by international
unions at the request of AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany. A number
have been assigned to the Labor
Dept. and to the Office of Civil &
Defense Mobilization, but other
branches of the government ap-
parently have been reluctant to
make selections.
Schnitzler spoke at a two-day
meeting in Washington held to help
prepare the executive reservists to
meet any national emergency. The
first day was devoted to a confer-
ence keynoted by OCDM Dir. Leo
A. Hoegh with an address on "Pre-
paredness on the Home Front."
On the second day the reservists
visited the agencies to which they
have been assigned.
In his address, Schnitzler re-
viewed what organized labor has
done in the civil defense area. He
described how members of build-
ing trades unions, particularly the
Bricklayers, have constructed 70
prototype fall-out shelters; as-
signment of labor executives to
emergency posts in 42 states, and
test experience in coping with
natural disasters such as floods,
hurricanes and tornadoes.
"All this amounts to a good be-
ginning, but only a beginning," he
said. "From this point on, the
civil defense program will have to
be greatly expanded. It must be
done now. We cannot take the risk
of waiting until after we may be
attacked, because we know how
disastrous the effects of a single
atomic raid could be.
"It goes without saying that our
military defense program must also
be beefed up. ... I think I echo
the feelings of most American
workers when I say we want our
country strong enough not only to
retaliate against an aggressor, but to
prevent him from hitting us with
bombs or rockets or any other type
of weapon."
The key to successful national
defense — for either hot or cold war
— is a healthy economy, Schnitzler
pointed out to the reservists, and
the country needs full employment
at high wages to provide the mass
purchasing power necessary to keep
industry and agriculture prosperous.
"How can we achieve full em-
ployment?" he asked. "Increased
defense production is not the an-
swer. We must make a capital
investment in America's future.
That means building the schools
our country so desperately needs
and providing better education for
our children — in itself an essential
to national security. It means build-
ing better roads and modern air-
ports, getting rid of festering slums
and constructing vital community
facilities.
"Our moral fiber also needs
tightening. It is time to end the
denial of American fair play to
millions of our citizens and to
end the waste of our human re-
sources resulting from racial and
religious discrimination. It is
* time to end the disgraceful ne-
glect of the health needs of our
older people."
mittee on Water Resources that an
expanding economy and the needs
of a population expected to exceed
230 million by 1975 probably
would double the use of water.
"The AFL-CIO strongly be-
lieves, therefore," Curran said,
"that the failure now to move
rapidly toward an integrated na-
tional water resources policy —
which would be the keystone of
an integrated over-all resources
policy for America — will hamper
economic expansion, mobility of
population and industry and the
recreational enjoyment that is be-
ing sought by increasing millions
of Americans."
Curran reaffirmed labor's support
of a bill introduced by Sen. James
E. Murray (D-Mont.) and co-spon-
sored by 27 Democrats and two Re-
publicans.
The Murray bill, which was the
subject of hearings by the Senate
Interior and Insular Affairs Com-
mittee earlier in the year, would
establish a national resources policy
and make the legislative and execu-
tive branches responsible for an an-
nual review, Curran noted.
The special Senate group has re-
turned from a series of hearings
around the nation on the question
of water resources. Its report is
due by next January 31.
Curran stressed the importance
to working people of "an integrated
and progressive water resources
policy."
"Water is the key resource,"
he said. "Its availability, quan-
tity and quality is the basic con-
dition determining economic and
social development of any region
or nation."
He pointed out that the knowl-
edge needed for a sound, compre-
hensive water policy is at hand but
"the question still unanswered is
whether we possess the statesman-
Supreme Court Asked to Overturn
Convictions in Henderson Mill Strike
The Textile Workers Union of America has carried to the U. S. Supreme Court its fight to over-
turn the convictions of eight union officers and members charged with an alleged conspiracy during
a bitter TWUA strike at Henderson, N. C.
The union members were convicted a year ago for allegedly plotting to dynamite buildings of
the strike-bound Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills and a power substation of the Carolina Power &
Light Co. The dynamiting in fact^
did not take place
Facing long ' prison terms —
ranging from three to 10 years —
are TWUA Vice Pres. Boyd E.
Payton, the union's Carolinas di-
rector; TWUA Staff Represent-
atives Lawrence Gore and Charles
Auslander; Vice Pres. Johnnie
Martin of Local 578; and four
rank-and-file members of Local
578 — Calvin Ray Pegram, Robert
Abbott, Warren Walker and Mal-
colm Jarrell.
In its plea asking the high
court to weigh the case, the
union charged that the convic-
tions were the result of a "care-
fully engineered plan" in which
North Carolina's Atty. Gen. Mal-
colm Seawell, "who was engaged
in a bitter personal controversy
with the leaders of the union, de-
termined to jail them iegally.' "
The brief contended that both
the charges against the unionists
and their trial were a "sham."
The union members they said, were
convicted for "participation in an
unconsummated conspiracy which
was controlled and directed by an
agent of the state for the sole pur-
pose of obtaining &uch convic-
tions."
The leader of the "conspiracy,"
the brief asserted, was Harold E.
Aaron, an "agent provocateur" in
the hire of the State Bureau of In-
vestigation who discussed plans for
the dynamitings in motel room
meetings with some of the de-
fendants, secretly tape-recorded by
the SBI, who planned to lead the
dynamitings, and who was the
state's "star witness."
The brief contended the eight
unionists were denied a "fair
trial" since the court case was
conducted "in an atmosphere of
hysteria" while Henderson was
under martial law.
The union contended that the
prosecutor "deliberately" presented
"inadmissible" testimony which he
knew would be stricken, that the
judge repeatedly permitted these
prosecution "tactics," and that the
judge exhibited "partiality in his
treatment of counsel."
"The sentences imposed," the
TWUA pointed out to the Su-
preme Court, "make it clear that
the purpose of the entire proceed-
ing was to punish the defendants
because of their union position
rather than their involvement in a
conspiracy."
The brief asserted that the sen-
tences were imposed on the de-
fendants "based upon their ranks
in the union, rather than their de-
gree of involvement in the 'con-
spiracy.' " Payton, an officer of
the international union, and Gore
and Auslander, his aides, were
given 6 to 10-year prison sentences;
Martin, vice president of the local,
and Pegram, Abbott and Walker
were given 5 to 7-year terms; and
Jarrell was given a 2 to 3-year sen-
tence.
The conviction of the eight
defendants was appealed to the
North Carolina Supreme Court,
which unanimously sustained the
convictions of seven of the de-
fendants. One jurist dissented in
Pa} ton's case, declaring there was
"insufficient" evidence to warrant
a conviction unless "conjecture
were invoked."
The State of North Carolina has
30 days in which to file a brief in
response to the TWUA brief. The
prospect is that the Supreme Court
will not have time to act on the
union petition until the fall sitting.
ship to subordinate narrow and
selfish economic interests to the
overriding general interest. ..."
Curran proposed the following
framework of principles to assure
adequate supplies of clean, pure
water:
• A "vigorous reaffirmation" of
the federal government's role as
steward of the nation's resources,
with broad planning related to na-
tional goals.
• A redefinition of the vital
roles to be played by state and local
governments and private enterprise,
each within its capabilities and with
the aim of better cooperation.
• A sharp boost in the nation's
natural resources investment, which
has dropped off in the past six
years.
• Safeguards against "monopo-
listic attempts to seize the fruits of
public resources development."
• Resources projects should be
comprehensive and multipurpose
rather than local and single pur-
pose.
• Expansion of research in re-
sources, such as the needed broad-
ening of the Interior Dept.'s saline
water program.
W. Va. Youth
Gets AFL-CIO
Scholarship
Travis A. Meredith, of Welch,
W. Va., has been awarded a full
four-year AFL-CIO merit scholar-
ship.
Meredith, who is 18, is one of
six of this year's high school grad-
uates from both union and non-
union families to receive AFL-CIO
scholarship awards. He fills a va-
cancy created when one of the
previously-named winners, Gene S.
TRAVIS A. MEREDITH
Winner of AFL-CIO scholarship
Cain, Panama City, Fla., was killed
in an automobile accident four days
after his selection was announced.
The scholarship winners may
attend accredited colleges or uni-
versities of their choice. Young
Meredith, who stood second in
his high school class of 180 stu-
dents, expects to major in electri-
cal engineering at Vale Univer-
sity. His father, Travis A. Mere-
dith, is a member of Railway
Clerks Local 619, Bluefield, W.
Va.
The national AFL-CIO scholar-
ship program is part of a larger
program carried on by U.S. unions
through which more than $500,000
in scholarships is offered annually.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C M SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1960
Page Severn
Worker Delegates Back Move;
ILO Group Opens Drive
To Ban Unsafe Machinery
Geneva — The Intl. Labor Organization planned a new drive to assure the safety of workers at a two-
day session here of its Governing Body.
Worker delegates on the 40-member executive organ of the 80-nation ILO strongly endorsed the
move toward an international agreement banning the sale, hire and use of machinery unequipped with
the safety devices needed to protect the men operating it from being killed or mangled.
u It is invariably the workers who'f*
take the brunt of unsafe and inade-
quately guarded machinery," Rudy
Faupl, AFL-CIO member of the
Governing Body, said. 'That is
why we are concerned."
David A. Morse, ILO director
general, had proposed that the ques-
tion be studied as a possible item
for the 1962 session ILO confer-
ence, when the drafting of an inter-
national agreement would be begun.
The ILO official offered to draw
up a report for the Governing
Body's November session when a
final choice will be made of the
questions to be taken up at the
1962 meeting. His offer was ac-
cepted.
"Prohibiting the sale and hire
of inadequately guarded machinery
Meany Hits 'Whitewash'
Of Job Discrimination
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has charged the General Services
Administration with attempting to "whitewash" race discrimination
by contractors who failed to hire five Negro electricians on federal
building projects in the nation's capital.
Meany declared it was "essentially misleading and dishonest" for
the government agency or the em-f*
ployers to attempt to shift respon-
sibility for the discrimination to Lo-
cal 26 of the Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers, which has failed
to admit Negroes to membership.
The AFL-CIO president said
his "continuing and insistent 9 ' ef-
forts to bring Local 26 into full
compliance with the federation's
non-discrimination policy "can
best be furthered by placing the
Randolph to
Head up New
Negro Council
Detroit — The Negro American
Labor Council was formed here at
a weekend meeting of approximate-
ly 1,000 Negro members of trade
unions.
Elected as president was A.
Philip Randolph, president of the
Sleeping Car Porters, and the meet-
ing also named an executive board
with centralized power to discipline
or oust local groups found dom-
inated by Communists or corrupt
influences.
The constitution approved by the
group set its objective as the elim-
ination of racial segregation in
American life, and specifically
called for removal of any color
bar involved in union membership,
job advancement, apprenticeship
programs and policy-making or
staff positions.
Randolph said: "While the
Negro American Labor Council
rejects black nationalism as a
doctrine and practice of racial
separatism, it recognizes the fact
that history has placed upon the
Negro, and the Negro alone, the
basic responsibility to complete
the incompleted Civil War revo-
lution through keeping the fires
of freedom burning.-'
Pres. Walter P. Reuther of the
Auto Workers and Sec.-Treas. I.
W. Abel of the Steelworkers in
speeches pledged support of the
council's objective of eliminating
color bars.
A floor revolt by about 70
women members of the assembly,
who charged that women were dis-
criminated against in the selection
of executive board members, led
to expansion of the board to pro-
vide for two additional posts ear-
marked for women.
A group composed of Team-
sters Union members and leftists
was beaten in an effort to eliminate
the constitutional provision allow-
ing the board to oust Communist-
dominated or corrupt local groups.
prime responsibility for discrimi-
nation • • • where it properly
belongs, that is on the employers
who by contract with the govern-
ment have assumed such respon-
sibility."
Meany's assertions were con-
tained in a telegram to Roy Wilkins,
executive secretary of the National
Association for the Advancement
of Colord People, who had charged
that the rejection of the five Ne-
groes was "the direct result of their
exclusion from the apprentice train-
ing program" of the IBEW local.
The AFL-CIO president wired
Wilkins that his criticism was based
on "inaccurate information fur-
nished to the press," and suggested
that the NAACP leader "direct your
protest to the employers who con-
tinue to discriminate . . .; to the
GSA which continues to provide an
escape hatch for employers . . .
and to the President's Committee
on Government Contracts which up
to now has failed to compel these
employers to comply" with anti
discrimination directives.
Last February, the President's
committee, headed by Vice Pres
Nixon, announced it was undertak-
ing stern measures to end racial
bias by contractors. The program
was given the AFL-CIO's full back-
ing. At that time, the committee
and labor leaders pledged to find
qualified Negro workers for con-
tractors.
The five Negro electricians
who applied for the District of
Columbia jobs, Meany said, "are
all electricians holding proper li-
censes" and with extensive expe-
rience in the trade.
He charged that GSA claims of
having conducted a "competent re-
view" of the qualifications of the
Negro applicants and found them
unqualified was "actually without
merit." Meany said he concurred
with the opinion expressed by Les-
ter B. Granger, executive director
of the National Urban League, that
the "so-called 'review' of the failure
of the contractors to hire Negro
electricians ... is nothing but a
'whitewash' of discrimination . . .
Meany said the discrimination
by employers was in "direct viola-
tion" of the contractual obligations
to the government not to discrim-
inate. Local 26, he said, "does not
have an exclusive referral contract
with the electrical contractors . . .
and is therefore not an exclusive
source of qualified electricains. The
collective bargaining contract be-
tween this local union and its em-
ployers gives the employer com-
plete freedom to hire anyone he
chooses without any obligation on
him to even consult with the union."
is tantamount to requiring built-in
safety," Morse said.
"Built-in safety is usually better
and cheaper than safety provided
after construction, and it is par-
ticularly useful for small under-
takings that have neither the knowl-
edge nor the resources to make it
safer where this is necessary."
Faupl said that in addition to
banning the sale and hire of poorly
safeguarded machinery, the project-
ed international legislation should
also prohibit its use.
He explained that extending the
ban to cover the use of such ma-
chinery would "make it more in-
clusive and give greater safety pro-
tection to the workers."
The aim of the worker delegates
is to get an international agreement
that will make it possible to "fix
responsibility for the prevention of
the use of unsafe machinery,"
Faupl added.
Another highlight of the brief
session was the scheduling of the
ILO's seventh regional Conference
of American States for next April.
The Governing Body accepted the
Argentine government's invitation
to meet in Buenos Aires.
Among the questions to be de-
bated at Buenos Aires are social
security for migrant and non-na-
tional workers, vocational training,
and conditions of wage-earning ag-
ricultural workers described as
"semi-independent."
A meeting of experts on major
mine disasters in Geneva early next
year was also approved by the Gov-
erning Body.
WELCOME TO THIRD constitutional convention of the Doll &
Toy Workers was offered in Chicago by Daniel J. Healy, AFL-CIO
regional director. In the picture, left to right, are DTW Pres. Harry
O. Damino; Healy, and Victor J. Failla, DTW Midwest director and
international vice president.
Top Officers Re-Elected
At Doll, Toy Convention
Chicago, 111. — The Doll and Toy Workers closed its 3rd consti-
tutional convention at the Sherman Hotel here after completing
changes in its constitution aimed at bringing the union into compli-
ance with the Landrum-Griffin Act. A banquet and installation of
officers marked the final session of the four-day parley.
One of the constitutional changes'^ -
provides specifically for donations
from the union's treasury to chari-
ties, for community services, for
educational purposes and other
contributions.
The 148 delegates from locals
in the United States and Canada
approved an all-out political edu-
cation campaign. The program
calls for the enrollment of the
union's entire 20,000 member-
Laundry Union Renews
Pledge on Organization
Milwaukee, Wis. — Continuation of a drive to organize the un-
organized workers in their industry was voted overwhelmingly by
the 100 delegates to the second biennial convention of the AFL-
CIO Laundry & Dry Cleaning Intl. Union.
The union was created in 1958 to replace the old Laundry Work-
ers, expelled from the AFL-CIO on 1 ^
charges of corruption
In a joint report, Pres. Win-
field S. Chasmar, Sec.-Treas. Sam
H. Begler and the union's execu-
tive board reviewed the interna-
tional's activities since its found-
ing convention in Washington,
D. C, in May 1958. Emphasis
was placed on a string of vic-
tories scored over the expelled
union in elections held in Mil-
waukee, Indianapolis, Oakland,
Calif., Shreveport, La., Canton
and Cincinnati, O., and Muncie,
Ind.
Delegates representing more than
25,000 union members in 40 locals
in the U.S. unanimously re-elected
Chasmar and Begler to their sec-
ond two-year terms as heads of the
new union.
8 V.P.'s Re-Elected
Also re-elected were Vice Presi-
dents Morris G. Tusher of New
York City, Amy Ballinger of Pitts-
burgh, Russell Crowell of Oakland,
Calif., Henry Romigiuere of San
Francisco, Herbert Schockney of
Indianapolis, William Kennedy of
Stamford, Conn., John Donovan of
Boston, and Abraham Solomon of
Jersey City, N. J.
Elected as vice-president to suc-
ceed Arno Schulz, who resigned
following his unsuccessful attempt
in October 1958 to march Milwau-
kee Local 3008 back into the ex-
pelled union, was Frank Ervolino
of Buffalo, N. Y. The latter was
succeeded as an international trustee
by Jerome Gapinski of Milwaukee.
Move H.Q. to Pittsburgh
The delegates voted to transfer
the union headquarters from Jersey
City, N. J., where Chasmar main-
tains his offices, to Pittsburgh where
Begler's offices are located. Chas-
mar will continue to operate his of-
fice in New Jersey.
AFL-CIO Committee on Politi-
cal Education Dir. James L. Mc-
Devitt, who conducted the swear-
ing-in ceremonies for officers elect-
ed here, urged the delegates to par-
ticipate actively in labor's political
activities in this "crucial presiden-
tial election year."
The convention adopted a new
constitution and by-laws prepared
under the direction of AFL-CIO
Gen. Counsel J. Albert Woll. The
changes were necessary to bring
the constitution into line with
requirements of the Landrum-
Griffin Act.
In other formal actions the con-
vention urged passage of the For-
and bill to provide medical care
for the aged through social security,
and the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
bill to increase the minimum wage
to $1.25 an hour and extend cover-
age to millions now excluded.
The delegates selected San Fran-
cisco as the site of the 1962 con-
vention.
ship in the AFL-CIO Committee
on Political Education.
The convention opened on a sad
note as Daniel Soldo, a general ex-
ecutive board member from New
York Local 223, suffered a fatal
heart attack.
Delegates heard welcoming
speeches by William A. Lee, presi-
dent of the Chicago Federation of
Labor, and Daniel Healy, director
of AFL-CIO Region 14. Both
praised the Doll and Toy Workers
for its growth in membership. The
union went over the 20,000 mark
for the first time this year.
In a series of resolutions the dele-
gates called for:
• Improvements in the mini-
mum wage.
• Increased activity in the field
of organizing and efforts to insure
that workers share in the benefits
of technological advances.
• A shorter work day and work
week.
The delegates also approved res-
olutions on improvements in civil
rights legislation, community serv-
ices, improvements in workmen's
compensation laws, use of the un-
ion label, full employment and eco-
nomic growth.
All incumbent officers were re-
elected. They are Pres. Harry O.
Damino, New York; Sec.-Treas.
Milton Gordon, New York; 1st
Vice Pres. Louis Isaacson, New
York; 2nd Vice Pres. Victor Failla,
Chicago; and 3rd Vice Pres. Salva-
tore J. Russo, New York.
Two new vice presidencies were
created through the constitutional
changes. Elected were 4th Vice
Pres. Andrew Arcuri, New York,
and 5th Vice Pres. Lewis Cole of
California. Additional general ex-
ecutive board members are Allan
Carton, New York; Daniel Musa-
chio, New York; Willis Reeves, Il-
linois; James Amedeo, New York;
Fred Kershaw, New York; Per-
fecto Gonzalez, New York; An-
thony Mobilia (trustee), New York;
James Yorke (trustee), New York;
and Ben Lefari (trustee), New
York.
CORRECTION
Denver — George A. Cavender
has been unanimously re-elected
president of the Colorado State
AFL-CIO at its convention here.
A story in the May 28 issue of the
AFL-CIO News incorrectly spelled
his name Cavendish.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1960
At Clothing Workers Convention:
Mitchell Challenged to Get Ike
To Sign Broad Wage-Hour Bill
Bal Harbour, Fla. — A re-inforced drive to move the stalled minimum wage bill, intensified
independent political action, a sound import policy, and a two-pronged organization and public
campaign were the chief themes at early sessions of the Clothing Workers' convention here.
Some 1,200 delegates representing over 400,000 workers at the 22nd biennial conference heard:
• Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky reply to a "facts-of-life" speech by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell by
urging Mitchll to persuade Pres.'^
Eisenhower to take to televison to
help get an improved wage-hour
law and medical care for the aged
through a reluctant Congress.
tk He did it * on the Landrum-
Gr.Tan law," Potofsky said firmly.
"Why not do it on this?"
• Mitchell warn earlier that the
"facts of life" of a conservative
Congress doom the "extreme" Ken-
nedy-Morse-Roosevelt wage bill
backed by the AFL-CIO. He ad-
vised a scale-down of its demands
from the 7.5 million to be newly
covered under that bill to "an at-
tainable, practical" goal of 3.5 to
4 million.
• Mrs. Agnes E. Meyer, writer
and widow of the late publisher of
the Washington Post, volunteered
her services to boost the registration
of union wives and working women
and so "increase the labor vote."
Unions, she said, "are the main-
stay of any endeavor to achieve
human progress in our country."
Mrs. Meyer, winner of this
year's AFL-CIO Murray-Green
Award for public service, public-
ly renounced her lifelong affilia-
tion to the Republican Party.
Her personal choice for the Dem-
ocrats, she said, is a Stevenson-
Kennedy ticket. Her dominant
reason for renouncing the GOP,
she told the delegates: "It is
Nixon."
Rejecting Mitchell's advice, the
delegates unanimously adopted a
resolution backing the Kennedy-
Morse-Roosevelt bill and urging a
$1.25 minimum wage, vastly broad-
er coverage, simultaneous increases
for Puerto Rico and a 35-hour
workweek.
Officials and rank-and-file dele-
gates stressed the need for greater
pressure on key congressional lead-
ers in both parties and called for a
telegram barrage. Facilities to as-
sist delegates in the convention hall
lobby did a heavy business.
Back Political Action
A political action resolution,
passed unanimously, pledged great-
er activity in registering members,
in education, in turning out the
vote and in promoting financial sup-
port of ACWA's political activities
and the AFL-CIO Committee on
Political Education.
Union leaders emphasized the
need for an independent attitude.
"We are not wedded to either
party. We are wedded only to our
principles," declared Potofsky.
"Labor should not give its blind
endorsement to the Democratic
Party" but rather clarify issues and
elect men of ability and courage,
said Sec.-Treas. Frank Rosenblum.
On problems facing the union
and labor generally, Potofsky
warned that "the rising tide of im-
ports from low-wage countries
threatens disaster" to ACWA em-
ployers and may involve "over a
million jobs" in the apparel indus-
tries. He blamed the problem on
wage rates of 14 cents an hour in
Reports Growth,
Defense Fund
TWUA
Sets Up
Chicago — The long-beleaguered Textile Workers Union of
America, heartened by two years of modest economic and member-
ship gains, girded itself for a new drive in its problem industry by
raising dues to establish a defense fund to repel employer assaults.
More than 1,000 delegates at the union's 11th biennial convention
here voted almost unanimously for^
a $l-a-month dues hike after
watching a half -hour dramatic pro-
gram based on the Harriet-Hender-
son strike. This 18-month-old dis-
pute in Henderson, N. C, was
brought about when the mill-owners
insisted on eliminating the impar-
tial arbitration of grievances.
Similar attacks on long-estab-
lished and widely-accepted contract
provisions have plagued TWUA's
Southern locals in recent years.
For a union whose member-
ship has been cut in half over the
last decade by industrial shrink-
age, migration and repressive leg-
islation, TWUA's two-year record
was surprisingly bright.
Nearly every member in the
United States and Canada has re-
ceived two wage hikes since the last
convention, Pres. William Pollack
reported in his traditional "state
of the union" address. He warned
this had been achieved by the
threat of union organization rather
than by organization itself; these
tactics could not have succeeded, he
acknowledged, if the industry had
not been exceptionally prosperous.
Also encouraging, Pollack said,
was an actual growth in member-
ship during the last year — the first
increase in more than 10 years.
There could be no real surge among
the 600,000 unorganized workers,
he said, without the help of a friend-
ly Administration in Washington.
The foreign affairs issue was ex-
plored by Adlai E. Stevenson in
one of his rare appearances at a
trade union convention.
Delegates gave thundering ap-
plause to Sen. Hubert H. Hum-
phrey (D-Minn.), who called for
a revival of American determina-
tion "to move forward" in the
spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
They warmly responded to Sen.
Paul H. Douglas (D-lll.), a long-
time friend of the union, when he
challenged Pres. Eisenhower — "a
kindly man" — to tour the areas that
would be helped by the area rede-
velopment bill the President re-
cently vetoed.
"I am sure you would provide
escorts to see that no harm comes
to him," Douglas said.
Arthur J. Goldberg, general
counsel of the Steelworkers and
special counsel to the AFL-CIO,
drew parallels between the recent
steel strike and TWUA's prob-
lems, charging that "government
neutrality on the issue of the
desirability of collective bargain-
ing is intolerable."
James McDevitt, national di-
rector of COPE, warned that ef-
fective political action was essen-
tial to protect the right of unions
to negotiate reasonable agreements
with employers.
The convention voted by almost
a 9 to 1 margin an endorsement of
Kennedy for the Democratic presi-
dential nomination. The vote was
preceded by a vigorous 90-minute
debate in which opponents disa-
greed about the wisdom of advance
endorsement.
Pollack said that "since we are
in convention, this choice should be
made by the delegates themselves."
Japan and 10 to 12 cents in Hong
Kong as well as on the eagerness of
Japanese businessmen to expand.
He said Spain, Okinawa, Taiwan,
the Philippines and Jamaica re-
portedly also are planning a "large-
scale invasion" of the U.S. apparel
market.
Potofsky said the union has
long supported the nation's recip-
rocal trade policy but, because it
can endanger the entire apparel
industry, the ACWA is forced to
seek legislation to "safeguard his-
toric levels of domestic apparel
production," launch a consumer
education campaign and enforce
contract provisions to keep low-
wage materials out of ACWA
shops.
Mitchell told the delegates he had
just phoned Washington and as-
sured them "the seriousness of dis-
cussions (with the Japanese) will
be greatly increased." He urged the
delegates to recognize the "larger
problem" of a reciprocal trade pol-
icy "that promises self-reliance to
developing nations" and one that
is in line with labor's aim of ex-
panding freedom elsewhere.
Potofsky replied that the union
felt that the problem of the im-
pact here "was not taken seriously
by the Japanese interests."
Education Stressed
Calling for a "permanent, con-
tinuing and coordinated organizing
and educational program" in the
"crusading spirit" of the 1930's.
Potofsky said the educational as-
pect must correct the image of la-
bor distorted by congressional in-
vestigators and organizing drives
must aim at the sizable groups re-
maining unorganized as well as in
the South.
He also scorched the Administra-
tion for allowing unemployment to
reach "intolerable" levels and ex-
pressed hope for better labor-man-
agement understanding through ex-
changes of views on common prob-
lems.
Rosenblum presented the re-
port of the general executive
board on foreign policy and dis-
cussed the nuclear arms which he
said have made war "obsolete"
and negotiation imperative. "It
is a question of peaceful coexist-
ence or no existence," he said.
"We may not like the Soviets or
the Chinese communists. We are
completely opposed to their ide-
ology. But they are, nevertheless,
the people with whom we must
deal," he declared.
CONVENTION OF Packinghouse Workers in Chicago was recessed
so that the 600 delegates could picket two downtown Woolworth
stores to demonstrate support of "sit-in" movement in the South.
UPWA Pres. Ralph Helstein is carrying the picket sign. Demon-
stration followed passage of strong civil rights resolution.
Ban Strikebreakers,
UPWA Delegates Ask
Chicago — Delegates to the Packinghouse Workers convention
here, many of them veterans of long and bitter strikes against the
Wilson and Swift chains last winter, voted overwhelmingly for a
stand-by plan to replenish the union's strike fund and called for a
sweeping legislative ban on the use of strikebreakers.
A constitutional amendment was^
adopted — subject to ratification by
locals representing a majority of
the membership — authorizing the
UPWA executive board to raise
per capita dues by up to $5 a week
during periods of major strikes.
The $5-per-member-per-week figure
is the amount that many locals con-
tributed voluntarily during the 109-
day Wilson strike and the 52-
day Swift dispute.
In a resolution on strikebreak-
ing, the delegates said the one-
sided ban on "secondary boy-
cotts" in the Land rum-Griffin
Act, ostensibly designed to re-
strict the dispute to the parties
directly concerned, should be
balanced by a prohibition against
employers bringing in "mercen-
aries" in an effort to break the
strike.
Delegates asked "federal, state
and local legislation to outlaw the
hiring of scabs."
In other major actions, the
UPWA delegates:
• Adopted, after hot debate, a
resolution on "independent political
action" which advocates of a third
party in American politics charged
was "too weak" but which was sup-
ported by UPWA Pres. Ralph Hel-
stein as serving notice that any
party seeking labor support must
present candidates and programs
meriting support — and carry out its
programs. Helstein made it clear
that he was strongly opposed to
New National Contract
Won by Telegraphers
Wage increases averaging 21 cents an hour over a two-year
period will go to almost 25,000 Western Union Telegraph Co. em-
ployes at all U.S. offices under a new agreement negotiated by the
Commercial Telegraphers.
Basic agreement on the new pact was reached on the eve of con-
Contracts will be'^
tract expiration,
extended on a day-to-day basis
while negotiators iron out written
terms, including job classifications
that will mean higher wages for
some employes, Chairman E. L.
Hageman of the 10-man CTU bar-
gaining committee said. The agree-
ment is subject to ratification by the
members.
The agreement provides in-
creases of 10 cents an hour retro-
active to June 1, I960, and an-
other 5 cents next Jan. 1 for all
except walking and bicycle mes-
sengers, who got a 5-cent increase
effective June 1, 1960.
Also agreed to is a company-paid
medical and hospital plan, expanded
group insurance, and four weeks of
vacation after 25 years of service.
The union said the new contract
will mean an average wage boost
of 21 percent for 19,500 workers
in the Western Union division,
3,000 in the Southern division,
2,500 in the Southwest division.
Another union represents New
York employes.
formation of a third party at the
present time.
The resolution declared that
if it becomes "increasingly evi-
dent" that labor cannot get con-
sideration from existing parties,
the UPWA should "call upon the
AFL-CIO to call a conference to
investigate the possibility of and
give serious thought to the de-
velopment of an independent po-
litical force in America."
• Denounced the importation of
farm laborers from Mexico as
"peonage," charged it was being
used to keep down standards for
American farm workers, and called
for an immediate end to the pro-
gram.
• Changed the name of the
union to the United Packing-
house, Food & Allied Workers to
reflect membership outside of
the meat packing industry, but
retained the initials UPWA to
designate the union.
• Unanimously re-elected Hel-
stein as president; G. R. Hathaway
as secretary-treasurer; Russell R.
Lasley and F. W. Dowling as vice
presidents.
• Hailed the cooperation be-
tween the Meat Cutters and the
UPWA during last year's contract
negotiations and in the joint strike
against the Swift chain. Although
there have been no recent merger
negotiations between the two
unions, the convention authorized
a committee "to investigate the pos-
sibility ... of a merger with honor.**
Delegates also called for "im-
mediate steps" to explore possi-
bilities of "total amalgamation of
all unions in the food industry."
• Viewed "with grave concern
the development . . . of court-ap-
pointed monitors with asserted au-
thority to direct and control the
operation of a union."
• Established an annual $1 ,000
scholarship in memory of Russell
Bull, a UPWA district director
until his death two years ago.
Vol. V
IssiMf weekly at
015 Sixteenth St. N.W.,
Wuhinaton 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C
Saturday, June 11, 1960
17
" No. 24
Labor Girds for New Push
In Drive for Medical Care
Missile Talks Fail;
IAM, UAW Strike
By Gene Kelly
A total breakdown of negotiations with two major aircraft and
missile companies has forced walkouts of 28,000 Machinists and
11,000 Auto Workers. At plants of four other major contractors,
strike authorizations have been voted and deadlines set for the
week beginning June 13.
One new contract covering 24,-
000 workers was signed between
the Auto Workers and North
American Aviation Co.
Hayes Hits Convair
IAM Pres. A. J. Hayes charged
that management of the Convair
division of General Dynamics
Corp., where 3,000 workers struck
June 6, is trying to "exploit its posi-
tion as a prime defense contractor
to impose substandard conditions
on its workers."
The Convair strike at six West
Coast locations was followed by
walkouts of 35,000 IAM and
UAW members at five major
United Aircraft plants in Con-
necticut. Management asked for
an injunction after a picket-line
flurry at East Hartford in which
five persons were arrested and
four were treated at hospitals.
In Los Angeles, UAW members
voted almost unanimously to ratify
a new two-year contract covering
24,000 employes of North Ameri-
can. The agreement provides for
a 7-cent hourly pay increase one
year from now; the first layoff
benefit plan in the industry, ac-
cording to the union; continuation
of the present cost-of-living allow-
ance; improvements in the insur-
ance program; and a revamped pen-
sion plan that UAW said will be the
"best in the industry."
North American has plants with
(Continued on Page 3) i
Meany Asks
Emergency
Aid to Chile
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has called on American labor to
contribute "desperately needed
dollars for emergency relief to
earthquake-stricken Chile.
Declaring that "the very lives
of more than a million human
beings are at stake," Meany asked
all state and central bodies to
conduct fund-raising drives in
their localities and "to work with
your local community agencies in
mobilizing all possible resources to
help in this disaster."
He wired all affiliated national
and international unions urging
immediate cash contributions "to
alleviate incredible suffering."
Although the AFL-CIO rushed
a $5,000 contribution to the Amer-
ican Red Cross for Chilean relief
— one of the first cash gifts to be
sped to the stricken country — "ad-
ditional labor support is impera-
tive," Meany emphasized.
Funds donated by international
unions, Meany said, should be chan-
neled to the Red Cross through
(Continued on Page 3)
Labor in Pennsylvania
Merges State Bodies
By Gervase N. Love
Pittsburgh, Pa. — The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO came into existence
here when the former Pennsylvania Federation of Labor and the
Pennsylvania Industrial Union Council surrendered their separate
identities and merged into a new united state organization.
The merger — 49th on the state level, including the Common-
wealth of Puerto Rico, since crea-^ —
tion of the AFL-CIO in 1955— all muscles. Today, when our na
but completed unification of AFL
and CIO bodies in the states. Only
New Jersey still has to act.
The charter was presented to the
new organization by AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler.
"No good unionist can lend
himself to the perpetuation of
feuds within our own ranks," he
declared. "Even in normal times,
the labor movement needs unity
as much as an athlete needs
tion is confronted with mounting
crises both at home and abroad,
we can no longer remain in a
house divided."
A merger agreement was
adopted, a proposed constitution
approved and officers chosen at
separate conventions of the old or-
ganizations on the two days before
the unity convention. The agree-
ment provided for an unusual of-
(Continued on Page 12)
Adjournment Pressure Mounts :
Congress Poised
For Key Actions
By Gene Zack
The 86th Congress was poised for action on five major fronts —
social security, minimum wage, housing, aid to education and gov-
ernment pay raises — as the House and Senate stepped up the tempo
of their activities and headed into the last weeks of the current
session.
In rapid-fire order, there were
these developments on Capitol Hill
as the leadership drove for a legis-
lative clean-up that would permit
adjournment in advance of the July
Democratic and Republican na-
tional conventions:
• The House Ways & Means
Committee neared completion of a
measure liberalizing social security
benefits and extending coverage to
1.3 million more people. The meas-
ure was shorn of the Forand pro-
posal to provide health care for the
aged through social security; instead
will call for modest aid to the states
in providing medical services to
those on public assistance.
• The Senate Labor Commit-
tee neared the finishing touches
to the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt
bill extending the minimum wage
by steps to $1.25 and broadening
coverage. The bill seems likely
to include 6.4 million additional
workers. Sen. John F. Kennedy
(D-Mass.) indicated the measure
may reach the Senate floor before
June 17.
• A Senate Banking subcommit-
tee headed by Sen. John J. Spark-
man (D-Ala.) unanimously ap-
proved a $1.5 billion housing andi
urban renewal measure. Rejected
by the subcommittee in completing
the compromise omnibus measure
were provisions which would have
made available additional funds for
public housing and provided $100
million for middle-income housing.
• The Senate sent the aid-to-
education issue to conference in
an effort to iron out differences
between varying Senate and
House measures. If the House
appoints conferees, there were in-
dications that a quick compro-
mise could be effected.
• House leaders arranged to
bring up on the floor on June 15
an Administration-opposed bill to
give a 9 percent pay boost to 1.5
million federal employes. The
measure will be voted on under a
procedure barring floor amend-
ments.
To Protect All Disabled
The social security measure being
readied by the House Ways &
Means Committee would drop the
present limitation which makes dis-
ability benefits available only to
those over 50 so that all disabled
persons would be eligible for bene-
(Continued on Page 12)
House Unit
Rejects Bill
By 16 to 9
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has rallied the 13.5-million-
member trade union movement
for "the final push necessary for
victory" in the drive for health
care for the aged linked to social
security, and has called for a de-
luge of letters to senators to
"impress" on them "the need to
take proper action for all our
retired persons."
Meany's call was issued in the
wake of action by the House Ways
& Means Committee in rejecting the
AFL-CIO-backed measure intro-
duced by Rep. Aime J. Forand
(D-R.I.) embodying the social se-
curity principle.
The AFL-CIO president called
the Ways & Means 16-to-9 vote
against the Forand bill "a setback,
but not final defeat."
The House committee headed
by Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.)
voted instead a medical care plan
through public assistance to per-
sons aged 65 or over who are
impoverished, but benefits would
be available only in those states
providing additional funds to
match federal grants.
In letters to the presidents of
national and international unions
and state and local central bodies,
Meany termed this proposal "a very
inconsequential program of med-
ical assistance for those older per-
sons who in effect must take a
'pauper's oath.' "
No Floor Amendments
Because the social security bill
will go to the House floor under
a rule barring amendments, pre-
venting addition of the Forand prin-
ciple at that time, Meany said the
hopes for medical care for the aged
(Continued on Page 4)
Meany to Speak on
Future of Germany
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany will make a major
national radio address on the
future of Germany on June
16 — eve of the anniversary
of the uprising of the East
German workers in 1953.
The address will be broad-
cast on the American Broad-
casting Co. radio network at
7:30 p. m. EDT. In New
York City it will be carried
on WABC at 10:30 p. m.
and in Washington, D. C, it
will be heard on WMAL at
10:30 p. m.
Subject of the address will
be "The Future of Germany
— Free or Communist."
Page Two
| Labor Dept. Reports:
Hard-Hit Areas Up
Despite Job Gains
The job situation across the nation ''improved moderately" in
most areas during the spring, the Labor Dept. said in its bimonthly
survey of 149 major industrial areas, but the areas with a "sub-
stantial labor surplus" continued to mount.
In May there were a total of 35 major areas with a substantial
labor surplus — that is, a jobless rate ^7
of 6 percent or over — compared to
Discharge Petition Ends
U.S. Pay Bill Bottleneck
A successful discharge petition has rescued a 9 percent govern-
ment pay raise bill from a House Rules Committee pigeonhole, vir-
tually assuring passage by the House of Rrepesentatives the week
of June 13.
A whirlwind 36-hour campaign obtained the signatures of the
required 219 congressmen in record^
time. One hundred and fifty signa-
WORKER FATHER OF THE YEAR, Charles Hartung, is shown with Debbie, 9, and Steven, 6.
Hartung, a member of Columbus, O., Local 106 of the Glass Bottle Blowers, won the national
award for his active participation in civic and community services. Mrs. Hartung is at right.
"i960 'Father 9
Chosen For
Civic Service
Columbus, O. — When the Co-
lumbus Citizen chose Charles and
Frances Hartung last fall as typical
of 13,000 United Appeal workers,
it started a chain reaction that re-
sulted in Hartung's choice as Amer-
ican worker-father of the year for
1960.
The National Father's Day Com-
mittee selected Hartung, member
of the Glass Bottle Blowers and
former steward of his Kimble Glass
Co. shop, from a number of other
nominees.
The result for Hartung and his
wife included their first plane ride
and their first trip to New York, as
guests of the union and the com-
pany. They were to be welcomed
at LaGuardia Airport by Maryann
Cinque, who is "Miss Union Maid"
for the Greater New York Union
Label and Service Trades Council.
The Hartungs also were to visit
Philadelphia and Washington,
D. C, as part of their award.
Typical Volunteer
Last year a Citizen story depicted
the Hartungs as representative of
United Appeal volunteers. The
story described their interest in civic
causes and community services.
Pictures showed Hartung at
home, drying the dishes, playing
with the dog, and sharing the
comics with Debbie, 9, and Ste-
ven, 6. He was photographed at
work, inspecting newly-made tel-
evision tubes in the quality con-
trol department of Kimble Glass,
a subsidiary of Owens-Illinois
Glass Co.
A clipping from the Citizen went
to Glass Horizons, monthly publi-
cation of the union, and portions
of the story were reprinted in the
November 1959 issue. Members of
the Father's Day committee saw it,
and added Hartung to their list of
prospects. Late in May he was
notified of his selection.
Hartung has been a member of
Local 106, GBBA, for 10 years.
A one-time high school football
player, Hartung is active in the
Y. M. C. A. and the Boy Scouts.
His wife is co-leader of a Brownie
Girl Scout troop.
SIU Wins Vote on
17 Lake Freighters
Cleveland, O. — The Seafarers
have been chosen as bargaining
agent by seamen on 13 ships of the
Pioneer Steamship Co. and 4 Buck-
eye Steamship Co. freighters. That
gives SIU bargaining rights on 27
Great Lakes fleets.
tures were put on the petition dur-
ing the first hour it lay on the
speaker's desk as congressmen lined
up to demonstrate their support for
a pay raise despite the Administra-
tion's strong opposition. The AFL-
CIO Government Employes Coun-
cil backed the petition drive.
Behind the urgency of the peti-
tion campaign was the knowl-
edge that Pres. Eisenhower is ex-
pected to veto the pay bill — as
he has three other pay raises en-
acted during his administration.
The warning of a veto was clear-
ly sounded by Administration of-
ficials during House and Senate
hearings. Although the President
has never been overridden on a
pay raise veto, the unions are
planning a major effort this year
to line up the two-thirds majority
of each house which would be
needed.
Local leaders of postal and other
federal employe unions helped
solicit signatures on the discharge
petition. The AFL-CIO gave its full
backing to the drive with a letter
from Legislative Dir. Andrew J.
Biemiller to congressmen pointing
out the importance of the discharge
petition "if there is to be any legis-
lation this year" on government
salaries.
Meanwhile the Senate Post Of-
& Civil Service Committee,
which has completed hearings on
government pay legislation, is wait-
ing on passage of the House bill. A
strong effort is expected to be made
to have the Senate accept the House
bill without change and thus avoid
a conference between the two
bodies.
The bill, as reported by the
House committee, would provide
a 9 percent hike for a total of
1.57 million workers, including
nearly a million white collar,
classified employes, 535,000 post-
al field workers, 7,500 congres-
sional employes and several small
groups of government workers
paid under different salary acts.
It was reduced in committee
from the original 12 percent goal
of the Government Employes
Council.
Success of the discharge petition
— a seldom used and rarely-success-
ful method of forcing a bill to a
vote in the face of opposition by
either a legislative committee or the
House Rules Committee — kept un-
broken the record of success of
government unions in use of this
device.
Discharge petitions were suc-
cessfully used to bring up salary
bills in 1949, 1954 and 1957 and
to pass a 1950 bill sponsored by the
Letter Carriers to require two mail
deliveries a day.
32 Sugar Locals Vote
To Join Grain Millers
Thirty-two Sugar Workers federal labor unions have voted to af-
filiate with the Grain Millers in one of the largest movements of
directly affiliated locals to an international union since the AFL-CIO
merger.
The locals, representing 1,500 sugar workers in 11 states — Colo-
rado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, 1 ^
Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, South
Dakota, Utah, Washington and
Wyoming — ratified their affiliation
with the 31,000-member Grain
Millers in individual secret : ballot
elections.
Following the decision by each
of the directly affiliated locals,
the Intl. Council of Sugar Work-
ers and Allied Industries Unions,
formed in 1947 to represent the
interests of the 32 federal locals,
voted to dissolve effective June
30,
Delegates from the 32 locals, at-
tending the council's 13th annual
convention in Spokane, Wash., ap-
proved a resolution declaring that
the affiliation with the Grain Millers
would "create a strong force for the
ultimate progress and economic
well being of the members."
The council representing the
FLUs was headed by Philo D.
Sedgwick of Logan, Utah.
33 in March and 31 in January.
The total for May of 1959 was 60.
The "smaller areas of substan-
tial labor surplus" also continued
to increase — to 113 in May from
109 in March and 107 in Janu-
ary. The total in May 1959 was
172.
The report said surveys by state
employment security agencies in
the 149 major areas "indicated the
usual spring seasonal pickup in con-
struction and other outdoor activi-
ties had gathered momentum in
April and early May after being
delayed by cold and snow in
March."
Some Gains Offset
"In some centers, however,** the
report stated, the "effects of the
seasonal gains were offset, at least
in part by employment or workweek
reductions in some durable goods
activities."
The report said employer hiring
plans indicated there would" be mod-
erate job improvements through
midsummer in two-thirds of the
areas, with the largest gains in such
seasonal industries as construction
and food processing.
In durable goods employment, the
report went on, key groups like
autos, steel, fabricated metals and
nonelectrical machinery "anticipate
relatively stable employment levels
— or a tapering off of recent de-
clines — between mid-May and mid-
July."
Moderate increases expected in
most electrical machinery centers,
the report said, are expected to
be offset in the overall job totals
by a scheduled cutback in air-
craft.
The major areas with a substan-
tial labor surplus were boosted to a
total of 35 by the addition of New
Britain, Conn, and Battle Creek,
Mich.
The group of smaller areas with
a substantial labor surplus rose to
113 with the addition in May
of Dover, Del.; Lewiston- Auburn,
Me.; Adrian, Mich.; Ashland, O.
and Mansfield, O. The area of
Rockingham-Hamlet, N. C, was re-
moved.
Of the major areas previously
listed only Atlantic City experienced
improvement, moving from Group
E — from 9 to 11.9 percent jobless
— to Group D — from 6 to 8.9 per-
cent.
With the May report, the La-
bor Dept began a listing of
"areas of substantial and persis-
tent labor surplus" to identify
those areas where a "markedly
higher" than national average rate
of joblessness has persisted.
Twenty major areas and 71
smaller areas made the list in May.
The Labor Dept. said the jobless
problem in these areas "reflects
long-term declines in locally-impor-
tant industries — such as coal min-
ing, textiles, machinery or autos—
or a lack of industrialization."
The major areas listed were:
Evansville and Terre Haute, Ind.;
Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell and
New Bedford, Mass.; Detroit,
Mich.; Atlantic City, N. J.; Al-
toona, Erie, Johnstown, Scranton
and Wilkes-Barre — Hazleton, Pa.;
Mayaguez, Ponce and San Juan,
P. R.; Providence, R. I.; Charleston,
Huntington-Ashland and Wheeling,
W. Va.
The special listing was prepared
at the request of an Eisenhower Ad-
ministration inter-agency commit-
tee responsible for cordinating fed-
eral aid to urban areas.
Rural Votes Pass R-T-W
Proposal in Mississippi
Jackson, Miss. — Mississippi voters ratified a so-called "right-to-
work" amendment to their state constitution in a special election
June 7, but the 2-to-l margin was smaller than had been predicted.
While rural areas of the state voted heavily to write the existing
ban on the union shop into the constitution, three of the most
industrialized counties turned in^
solid majorities against "right-to-
work."
State AFL-CIO leaders, who
had sought unsuccessfully to ob-
tain an injunction blocking the
"quickie" election, promptly filed
suit in state circuit court to inval-
idate the vote. A hearing was
set for June 10.
The suit charged that the re-
quired official notice of the special
election had not been properly
given and challenged the action of
the legislature in submitting the
amendment on the ground that it
had not been reapportioned to re-
flect the population shifts within
the state.
In Lauderdale County, where the
state's second largest city, Meridian,
is located, two out of three voters
opposed the amendment. In Jones
County, whose seat is Laurel, early
returns indicated a 3-to-l vote
against 'R-T-W" and in Jackson
County, whose county seat is Pasca-
goula, the "work" amendment was
trailing by nearly 4-to-l.
In several other counties, State
AFL-CIO Pres. Claude Ramsay re-
ported, the amendment was defeat-
ed in the cities but was narrowly
carried by the votes from rural
areas.
Ramsay said pre-election esti-
mates of victory by sponsors of
"right-to-work" had ranged from
5-to-l to 10-to-l. He said the
vote against the constitutional
amendment was "remarkable"
considering that labor had little
time to wage a campaign against
the proposal.
The sudden decision by anti-labor
groups to seek to write the state's
"work" law into the constitution, he
said, was based on "fear" that the
time was not long distant when a
majority of the legislature would be
ready to repeal the law. As a con-
stitutional amendment, it would re-
quire a two-thirds vote of the legis-
lature for repeal, followed by a
referendum election.
RCIA a Sponsor of
Garroway TV Show
The Retail Clerks, aiming to get
its message to millions of American*
across the land, has become a par-
ticipating sponsor of Dave Gar-
roway's "Today" program on the
National Broadcasting Co.'s tele-
vision network.
Pres. James A. Suffridge said the
union chose television as an effec-
tive means of helping the public
identify union stores through the
RCIA emblem and to explain the
union's aims and accomplishments.
, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1960
Pag© Thw*
Missile Talks Fail;
IAM, U AW Strike
{Continued from Page 1)
UAW contracts in Los Angeles,
Columbus, O., and Neosho, Mo.
Indifference of Convair manage-
ment and failure of U.S. govern-
ment officials to heed a crisis warn-
ing forced IAM members to strike
at key missile bases, Hayes said.
He cited painstaking efforts of
union members to reach a peace-
ful settlement in negotiating ses-
sions starting Mar. 14 and continu-
ing for as many as six days a week
at Cape Canaveral, Fla.; Vanden-
berg Air Force Base, Calif.; and
four other Air Force test sites.
Contract Ran Out May 5
The Convair contract expired
May 5, but union members worked
more than a month longer while
contract talks continued. Hayes
said:
"The work stoppages • • . have
taken place with the full knowl-
edge of both management and
government officials on the high-
est level."
The IAM president said that on
May 14, following a meeting of the
Joint Coordinating Committee of
the IAM and UAW, he issued a
public statement explaining the sit-
uation and warning that it could
not continue indefinitely.
No Government Moves
"On May 17," he said, "I per-
sonally called on the Secretary of
Labor at his office and reported the
seriousness of the situation. 1 urged
him to send a team of the nation's
top mediators into the dispute.
"When no movement was forth-
coming from management and little
interest evidenced by government,
our members took strikes votes
Management was fully informed of
the outcome of these votes.
"At no time has there been any
evidence that anyone was greatly
upset by the prospect of a strike.
Meany Calls
For Donations
To Chile Relief
(Continued from Page 1)
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler. Local central bodies,
he said, should funnel their contri-
butions through local Red Cross
chapters, churches or CARE and
notify the AFL-CIO of their dona-
tions.
The earthquakes which spread
death and destruction over a wide
area of Chile, Meany pointed out,
"have left more than a million
men, women and children cold,
hungry and homeless."
The approaching winter in Chile,
where the seasons are the opposite
of those in the northern hemis-
phere, "will cause unimaginable
suffering on the part of these help-
less people unless vast amounts of
aid are forthcoming immediately,"
he said.
Cash Needed Primarily
Meany pointed out "cash con-
tributions are needed primarily, be-
cause they can be converted into
food, shelter, drugs and clothing as
the need arises in a specific region."
He added:
"The American labor move-
ment has been called upon to
help. The great need for emer-
gency relief demands that we, as
trade union members, do our part
to help our brothers and sisters
in Chile.
4 Time is vital. I know you will
lespond quickly and generously."
An estimated 5,000 persons lost
their lives during the harrowing six
days of major earthquakes, tidal
waves and volcanic eruptions. In
many areas, virtually every home
was destroyed.
It is apparent to me that this
company is trying to exploit its
position as a prime defense con-
tractor in an effort to impose sub-
standard working conditions on
its employes."
Hayes pointed out that the
weighted average pay for industry,,
employes is $2.68 an hour, includ-| |
ing overtime, in the latest availabl
government figures, those for Feb
ruary.
"Yet Convair," he. said, "in line
with the rest of the industry, is at
tempting not only to deny its em
ployes a justified wage increase but
also is attempting to weaken the
cost of living escalator that has
given some measure of protection to
our members."
Little Job Security
Hayes said aircraft and missile
employes have little job security,
yet Convair refuses to discuss sever-
ance pay and demands contract
language that would permit indis
criminate layoffs without regard to
seniority.
"Convair has refused even to dis-
cuss with union negotiators an im-
provement in its pension program,
though other companies in this in-
dustry are negotiating pension im-
provements at this moment."
The Auto Workers and Ma-
chinists, which established a co-
operative bargaining program
last August, said major goals are
seniority, grievance improve-
ments, full arbitration and union
security provisions. Members in
some plants have been working
without contracts for as long as
six months.
After deadlocked negotiations,
IAM's Lockheed missile and space
division voted to strike June 15 if
no contract has been agreed to. The
airframe division continued con-
tract talks. Some 10,000 are em-
ployed in three California locations.
Douglas Strike Votes
Three UAW locals served notice
on Douglas Aircraft Co. that con-
tracts covering 20,000 workers will
terminate at midnight June 14. One
IAM local voted 92.7 percent for
strike authorization at El Segundo,
Calif. Another at Santa Monica was
scheduled to vote on authorization.
UAW locals at Buffalo, N. Y.,
and Dallas, Tex., rejected a wage
reopener offer by Bell Aircraft but
stayed at work.
Some 25,000 Machinists are
working without a contract at Boe-
ing plants in Seattle. At Chance-
Vought installations in Grand
Prairie, Tex., 5,000 UAW members
set June 13 as their contract ter-
mination date.
MACHINISTS posted pickets at this Convair aircraft plant in San Diego when workers walked out
June 6 for 24 hours. The picture shows a picket, ordered off company property, keeping his vigil
close to an entrance. At a union meeting, members voted for a dues increase of $10 a month to
finance IAM strike action at other Convair-operated installations.
Locked-Out Actors Urge Public
Probe of Broadway's Economics
New York — Actors' Equity has called for appointment of a public fact-finding board to inves-
tigate the week-old lockout of 3,000 actors here, as theatrical producers forecast their shutdown of all
Broadway productions would last through the summer.
The League of New York Theaters brought the curtain down on 22 top-flight dramatic and
musical productions June 2 and shelved "indefinitely" rehearsals on 43 shows scheduled for this
fall in a dispute with the AFL-CIO^
union over establishment of pen-
sion, health and welfare funds for
actors.
The fact-finding proposal was
first put forward by Mayor Robert
F. Wagner (D). The plan for an
impartial study was accepted im-
mediately by Equity but rejected by
the producers.
Angus Duncan, executive sec-
retary of the union, said that if
Wagner does not appoint fact-
finders, Equity will seek creation
of "a board of distinguished and
qualified private citizens to inves-
tigate fully the overall economics
of the theater."
The lockout of show casts — in
the first shutdown of Broadway the-
aters by a labor dispute since Equity
struck for 30 days in 1919 to win
recognition — came two days after
expiration of the union's previous
three-year contract. Equity mem-
bers had voted overwhelmingly
against a theater-wide strike and
had scheduled nightly "meetings
of individual show casts.
The first such "meeting" was held
June 1, resulting in the one-night
closing of "The Tenth Man." The
producers' decision to black out
the marquees of all Broadway the-
aters followed 24 hours later.
At issue in the dispute is Equity's
demand for establishment of the
legitimate theater's first pension
fund. Under the union proposal,
producers would contribute to the
fund on a sliding scale beginning
with 1 percent the first year and
rising in steps to 4 percent of pay-
roll in the fifth and sixth years.
The union also asked for crea-
tion of a health and welfare fund
to which producers would con-
tribute 3.3 percent of actors' sal-
aries. The union has been grant-
ed 2 percent as a result of arbi-
tration. Equity also asked for
increases in minimum wages for
extras, actors and assistant direc-
tors and improvement of back-
stage sanitary conditions.
On the eve of the lockout, pro-
ducers abandoned their two-month-
long opposition to the pension plan
by recognizing the principle of a
retirement program but insisting on
only token contributions that would
provide nothing the first year, only
1 percent in the next two years, and
2 percent for three additional years.
Efforts to reach agreement in
post-lockout negotiations have
broken up in an attitude of bitter-
ness, and no new talks have been
scheduled.
Major Gains Won in
New Potash Contracts
Carlsbad, N. M. — Four AFL-CIO unions have won elimination
of incentive systems and the conversion of incentive pay into base
wages in the first joint bargaining ever conducted with the potash
industry.
The joint bargaining with six companies representing 95 percent
of the potash industry produced a^
FIRST INDUSTRY-WIDE bargaining in potash field found rep-
resentatives of Machinists, Operating Engineers, Boilermakers and
Stone Workers meeting across bargaining table at Carlsbad, N. M.
with six companies controlling industry. Joint bargaining, coordi-
nated by AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept., won elimination of
incentives and conversion of bonuses into base wages, plus 25-cent
hourly package spread over two years.
two-year contract giving 3,000 un-
ionists a 24.1-cent-an-hour econom
ic package in addition to elimina
tion of the varying incentive sys-
tems.
Participating in the unified bar-
gaining, which was coordinated
by the AFL-CIO Industrial Un-
ion Dept., were the Machinists,
Stone & Allied Workers, Boiler-
makers and Operating Engineers.
Chairman of the union bar-
gaining team was Carlin Allen,
administrative assistant to IUD
Organization Dir. Nicholas
Zonarich.
A fifth union in the potash field
— the Intl. Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers — did not participate in
the joint negotiations, but coordi-
nated its bargaining strategy with
the four other unions and won a
similar settlement for its members.
The incentive systems were es-
tablished by the major companies
during World War II. Although
some were based on raw tonnage
produced in the mines, others were
complicated by being based on re-
fined tonnage.
Under the agreement reached
here just prior to expiration of the
old contracts May 31, a weighted
average of all of the bonus systems
at the six companies was deter-
mined. This average of 21.55 per-
cent of base wages was then con-
verted into base pay for all of the
union members. For journeymen
machinists — the highest paid of the
workers under contract — this will
mean a 53-cent hourly addition to
the previous $2.47 base. i
In addition, wage increases, of 8
cents hourly the first year and 9
cents the second year were won
across the board by the four un-
ions, and shift differentials were
raised to 6, 9 and 12 cents.
N The unions won an improved sick
leave plan; an increase in the com-
pany's supplement fo state work-
men's compensation benefits so that
the injured workers will receive
$22 weekly from the company and
a maximum of $38 from the state;
a funeral leave pay plan of five days
off with three days' pay for funerals
of members of the immediate fam-
ily; a modified union shop; and a
vacation scale giving workers an
additional day off each year between
the 10th and 15th years of service.
The joint negotiations covered
economic issues only and although
members of the four unions in-
volved have ratified the economic
items, negotiations are going for-
ward on an individual union and
company basis on non-economic
items.
Representing the various unions
at the bargaining sessions were IAM
Grand Lodge Rep. Jimmie C.
Jones, Intl. Rep. D. A. Brazel of
the Operating Engineers, Intl. Rep.
Ray Clark of the Stone Workers,
Regional Dir. Joseph McGee of the
Stone Workers, and Intl. Rep. Cot-
ton Murray of the Boilermakers.
The six companies involved in
the negotiations were P6tash Co. of
America, U.S. Borax & Chemi-
cal, Intl. Minerals & Chemical, Na-
tional Potash, Southwest Potash and
Duval Sulphur & Potash.
Page Foot
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1960
WISCONSIN'S FIVE Democratic congressmen receive petitions circ^
CIO and signed by thousands of . trade unionists. House Ways and Means Committee later reported
"pauper-oath bill." Left to right are Representatives Henry S. Reuss, Lester R. Johnson and Clem-
ent J. Zablocki; AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller; AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T.
Schoemann; and Representatives Gerald T. Flynn and Robert W. Kastenmeier.
Labor Girds for Major New Push
In Drive for Medical Aid for Aged
(Continued from Page 1)
now rest with the Senate where, he
said, "our chances for success al-
ways looked better."
In the Senate, several pro-
posals embodying the social se-
curity principle have been intro-
duced. Two of these — intro-
duced separately by Sen. John
F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen.
Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.)
— provide the same general range
of benefits offered in the Forand
bill, although they vary in some
details.
The third, introduced by Sen.
Pat McNamara (D-Mich.), is the
broadest of the health care meas-
ures both in terms of benefits and
coverage. In addition to the 11.3
million social security beneficiaries,
whose medical care would be fi-
nanced through increased social se-
curity taxes, it would provide
benefits to 1.7 million old age as-
sistance beneficiaries and 1.8 mil-
lion other retirees through annual
appropriations of $370 million
from general tax revenues.
Efforts will be made in the Sen-
ate to add one of these measures as
an amendment to whatever social
security bill is passed by the House.
Help Needed Now
With the 86th Congress point-
ing toward an early July adjourn-
ment in advance of the Republican
and Democratic presidential nomi-
nating conventions, Meany said that
labor's campaign for medical care
for the aged needs "prompt and
complete help" from all segments
of the trade union movement.
"In the very short time re-
maining at this session of Con-
gress," he wrote the leaders of
affiliated unions and central
bodies, "it is crucial that mem-
bers of the Senate be urged to
add a Forand-type provision to
the bill coming over to them
from the House.
"Letters, wires, petitions and
every other method of communica-
tion must be used immediately to
impress upon the Senate the need
to take proper action for all our
retired persons.
"Only through Forand-type leg-
islation, which means the use of
the social insurance system, can we
hope to meet the basic problem of
health care for all people with dig-
nity and security — not on the basis
of means tests.
"Our campaign for the Forand
bill has made the entire country
keenly aware of the issue. Now
let us make the final push neces-
sary for victory."
Fact Sheet Issued
In an accompanying fact sheet,
the AFL-CIO pointed out that the
health care provisions of the social
security bill due to come out of the
Mills committee offer "a little
more medical care" for those "who
are so poor that they can pass a
'means test'," instead of paying
costs "as a matter of right" for 12
million aged social security recipi-
ents.
"The new program on medical
services will not safeguard the
peace of mind and dignity of the
aged," the fact sheet pointed out.
'It offers no assurance to younger
persons that their parents will
be adequately protected. It does
not utilize social insurance as a
method of enabling working peo-
ple to contribute towards their
own health expenses after re-
tirement."
Under the "means-test 11 principle,
such things as income, resources,
medical expenses and other needs
will be determined by the several
states, which will be free to impose
rigorous eligibility requirements, the
Group Health Delegates
Back Forand Principles
Columbus, O. — The Group Health Association of America
has reaffirmed its strong support for "immediate action" to
provide health benefits for the aged financed through the
social security system.
In a resolution adopted at GHAA's annual meeting here,
delegates asserted that use of the social security principle
"provides a practical and workable means" of financing health
care.
The association rejected Administration proposals for sub-
sidizing private insurance companies from federal and state
treasuries; Statements by the various governors, GHAA's
resolution said, indicate that most states are in such financial
difficulty that they could not make the needed contribution
and "most aged people would never receive any benefits."
AFL-CIO declared. "Judging by
past experience in many states,"
the federation added, stiff eligibility
requirements "undoubtedly will be"
set up by state governments.
In addition, the fact sheet de-
clared, many states are "finan-
cially impoverished" and there-
fore will be slow to appropriate
necessary funds. Twenty-four
states currently match only part
of the federal funds available for
old-age assistance, including med-
ical care, it added.
The Ways & Means medical care,
proposals were assailed by Sec-
Treas. James B. Carey of the AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept. as
"miserly and inadequate" and em-
bodying "19th century charity con-
cepts." Carey, president of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers, said that the "means test" prin-
ciple in the House bill would mean
that "many in desperate need would
be denied assistance" because of
tough state eligibility requirements.
Result of 'Bad Law 9 :
U.S. Radiation Policy
Rapped as 'Chaos'
Expressing fear that the nation has moved from "drift" to "chaos"
in the field of atomic radiation protection and workmen's com-
pensation, labor has appealed to Congress to develop a "sound and
urgently-needed integrated national radiation policy."
Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legislation,
testifying before a special radiation^
subcommittee of the Joint Atomic
Energy Committee, proposed a
"drastic" overhaul* of the 1959 law
under which Congress relinquished
radiation safety control to the
states.
Biemiller sharply criticized the
Atomic Energy Commission's
new occupational exposure stand-
ards and its safety criteria for the
states and the Federal Radiation
Council's new guide for federal
agencies.
If this is federal radiation health
and safety policy, Biemiller de-
clared, then "we can only say that
the period of drift is now over and
we are entering a new era of chaos."
'Bad Law'
Biemiller rapped the law passed
last year as "a bad law" on grounds
it was "premature and unnecessary"
and it turned regulatory authority
over to states which have not dem-
onstrated either capacity or willing-
ness to deal with radiation hazards
already within their jurisdiction.
That law, he declared, is "a
grave potential threat to the
health and safety of radiation
workers" and the "hazy" criteria
just issued have reinforced the
"serious misgivings" of organized
labor.
Biemiller proposed the following
"constructive" changes in the 1959
law;
• Require that any proposed
state plan include control over all
three types of nuclear material —
source, by-product and special.
• Require that a state have a
health and safety program regulat-
ing non-AEC sources of man-made
radiation such as radium, X-rays,
particle accelerators, etc., all of
which are now outside the 1954
Atomic Energy Act
• Require an adequate work-
mens* compensation program deal-
ing with radiation illnesses and in-
juries.
• Expand the Federal Radiation
Council, make the Health, Educa-
tion and Welfare secretary its per-
manent chairman, set up a tripartite
group, including labor, to advise
the FRC and empower the FRC to
set mandatory standards of tolera-
ble radiation exposure.
• Make available federal grants-
in-aid to help states finance the new
safety programs.
The AFL-CIO also proposed
that Congress amend the Atomic
Energy Act to create a Labor-
Management Advisory Commit-
tee so that day-to-day problems
can be handled smoothly at staff
levels.
Biemiller said that the AFL-CIO
has drafted an all-federal radiation
workmen's compensation program
which it hoped would be introduced
this year and acted on by Congress
next year.
'Needless Delay' Hit
The legislative changes sought by
labor do not remove labor's oppo-
sition to the 1959 law, the AFL-
CIO spokesmen said, but rather rep-
resent a constructive effort to make
it a better law to live with.
He also lashed what he termed
"needless delay" on the part of
the A EC in developing standards
of radiation protection, to take
effect next Jan. 1 and covering
AEC licensees.
Biemiller then posed a series of
questions involving the definition of
terms, omissions and conflicts in
the AEC criteria for the states and
the FRC radiation protection guid-
ance for federal agencies.
These questions, he added, reflect
the "large areas of confusion, doubt
and growing concern in the whole
federal radiation picture."
Major Insurance Firm Backs
Social Security, Health Care Link
Columbus, O. — Cracking the solid front of the insurance industry, one of the nation's major
companies — Nationwide Insurance — has endorsed the principle of a government program of medical
care for the aged based on social security.
The decision was announced by Pres. Murray D. Lincoln, who said that Nationwide'* board of
directors had adopted a formal resolution making clear the organization's support of "some sort**
of program linked to social security.^
The insurance company at the
same time voiced its opposition to
any form of "government subsidy"
of private insurance companies.
This is a principle underlying the
Administration proposal that $1.2
billion a year be taken from federal
and state treasuries to underwrite
the cost of insurance for senior
citizens who can pass a "means
test."
Although he made no mention
of the Administration plan as
such, Lincoln warned that sub-
sidies would, in effect, make
"charity cases" out of older
citizens.
"In our younger years," Nation-
wide's president said, "we should
pay for our needs in. our retiring
years. This is the principle upon
which our social security system is
based, and as such it is the prin-
ciple of government sponsorship
rather than government subsidy."
The Nationwide policy did not
indorse any particular bill, but de-
clared that its study of the situation
pointed up the fact that "the gov-
ernment must step in if basic medi-
cal care is to be made available to
people who need it."
Lincoln in effect challenged the
contention of insurance lobbyists
that passage of a health care bill as
part of the social security system
would endanger private insurance
firms.
"With a proper balance of ef-
fort on the part of industry and
government," he declared, "the
building of a program to provide
for every citizen's health needs in
his old age can be achieved."
The role of the insurance indus-
try, the policy statement declared,
would be to "provide further health
care through voluntary coverage in
addition to that which may be fur-
nished through government pro-
grams." This is the same function by
Labor Officials
Join Medical Board
New York — Pres. Jay Rubin of
the New York Hotel Trades Coun-
cil and Vice Pres. William Michel-
son of Dist. 65, Retail, Wholesale
& Department Store Union, have
joined five other labor representa-
tives on the board of directors of
the Health Insurance Plan of
Greater New York (HIP).
which private retirement plans and
those negotiated in collective bar-
gaining supplement basic old age
benefits provided through social se-
curity.
Brick, Clay Local
Cited for Service
Watsonville, Calif. — Contribu-
tions of $3,396 to people in need
and other major community activi-
ties have won the 1959 citizenship
award of the Brick & Clay Work-
ers' District Council for Local 998
of the Brick & Clay union.
With only 100 members, the lo-
cal union spent $552 for three
members in need, and the balance
for such needs as these: $376 to
buy a wheel chair for a retarded
child; $500 for a family whose
home was burned; $94 for a re-
frigerator for a family on relief;
$7.80 for flowers for a hospital
patient.
Paul Pelf rey, vice president of the
international union, also cited gift*
of $755 for a Christmas party for
needy children, $725 to the Little
League of Watsonville, and $100
to Boys' Ranch here.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C* SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1960
Page Flv#
Two States Study Impact of Automation
Organized labor's continuing concern with the effects automation has on human beings was expressed in
emphatic terms by labor spokesmen at conferences on automation held in Massachusetts and New York. The
conferences were called by Massachusetts Gov. Foster Furcolo (D) and New York Gov. Nelson A. Rocke-
feller (R) to explore the broad range of problems arising out of automation. The accompanying stories tell
how in each case the problem was described and the suggestions which were advanced for dealing with tech-
nological changes.
Labor's Spokesmen
Stress Human Factor
Cambridge, Mass. — The human problems caused by automation
cannot be eliminated by punching an electronic device. All Amer-
icans have a right to expect that democratic government and wise
management will work with labor to help smooth the adjustment
to automation.
Two AFL-CIO speakers — Pres>
David J. McDonald of the Steel-
workers and Stanley Ruttenberg,
director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research — sounded that warning to
industry and government at Gov
Foster Furcolo's conference on au-
tomation at the Harvard School of
Business.
The conferees included 20 other
labor representatives, a dozen gov-
ernment officials, and more than 70
from such major companies as Gen-
eral Foods, Swift, International
Business Machines, Standard of In-
diana, General Motors, General
Electric.
'The nation desperately needs
up-to-date policies to match its
modern equipment," said Rutten-
berg. "The American people
are our most important product
Responsibility for ghost towns
rests with people — not machines.
"Business, labor and government
are responsible for the future course
of automation."
McDonald put it this way: "When
a nation begins to act as if produc-
tion is the ultimate goal, and profits
per se are the measure of economic
health, we are in deep trouble.
Measure of Progress
"We (of labor) measure progress
in terms of how people live, of their
economic security, of their ability
to provide education for their chil-
dren, of the degree to which pro-
duction of goods can contribute to
a happier life and a more whole-
some community."
Too much attention is being
given, Ruttenberg told the con-
ference, to the things automation
can produce, too little to the
sharing of greater productivity,
to the assurance that automation
will work for the benefit of all
Americans.
"Yes, we are a half-trillion dollar
economy," he said. "Yes, employ-
ment and income have reached all-
time highs.
"But millions of Americans are
jobless, and 5 percent of the labor
force is unemployed at a time of
record prosperity.
"Poverty and unemployment are
not necessarily the result of automa-
tion. But automation has brought
unemployment and poverty to men
whose only crime was that a mar-
velous invention destroyed their jobs
and removed their sources of in-
come."
'Major Error'
Americans have made a major
error, he said, in assuming that new
jobs will automatically develop, that
office and factory automation will
create new jobs.
"It has not and it will not," Rut-
tenberg said.
"The labor movement does not
pretend to know the whole answer.
But we are convinced that we know
the framework within which solu-
tions can be found.
"From experience we know
that collective bargaining, busi-
ness initiative, and community
organizations will not provide the
total answer. The government
also must be prepared to partici-
pate in treating some of the
social and economic wounds of
automation."
Ruttenberg recommended these
practical steps: advance planning on
problems incident to automation be-
fore a human crisis results; spelling
out seniority rights and payment of
transfer expenses; retraining of
workers at company expense; main-
taining worker income by special
funds, early retirement, supplemen-
tal benefits; classification upgrading
and shift changes. In addition, he
said, the government must foster
job-creating, job-inducing programs.
McDonald said that his own in-
dustry, the "mighty men of steel"
apparently mean to ignore the press-
ing economic problems of their em-
ployes and hard-pressed steel com-
munities.
"The leaders of government in
most cases do not even acknowledge
the existence of this great domestic
problem.
"All eyes are still riveted on
money management, not on the cry-
ing needs of millions of American
wage earners," McDonald told the
conferees.
The Steelworker president listed
three areas in which practical steps
are needed:
• Proper protection for workers
who man automatic equipment.
Standard job evaluation systems and
incentive pay methods, coupled with
automation, are direct threats to
pay scales.
• The 40-hour workweek must
be reduced in the light of current
needs and technology, but there is
no sign that a negotiated shorter
workweek in major industries is on
the horizon.
• More jobs must be made avail-
able and more human needs must
be met, by public and private in-
vestment.
3- Way Cooperation
Sought in New York
Cooperstown, N. Y. — Labor spokesmen at Gov. Nelson Rocke-
feller's conference on automation here made it clear that techno-
logical change in American industry would necessitate greater
federal-state intervention in the economy to prevent wholesale un
employment depression and penury.
While in no sense was opposi
tion to automation expressed by
labor spokesmen, the future and
even present implications of the
new technology were raised as
matters of proper governmental
concern because, they argued,
no one plant or industry could
by itself deal with the problem
of job displacement and its con-
sequences.
The trade union representatives
who attended the conference in this
up-state New York town, the home
of the baseball Hall of Fame, in-
cluded:
Solomon Barkin, director of re-
search, Textile Workers Union of
America; Pres. Joseph Beirne, Com-
munications Workers; Pres. Peter
Brennan, Building and Construc-
tion Trades Council of New York
state and city. Sec.-Treas. Harold
J. Garno, New York State AFL-
CIO; Arthur J. Goldberg, general
counsel, Steelworkers; Nat Gold-
finger, assistant director of research,
AFL-CIO; Pres. David Sullivan,
Building Service Employes; Pres.
Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., New York
City Central Labor Council.
Other spokesmen at the three-day
meeting came from industry, state
government, education, banking,
and private consultants to industry.
Barkin, whose paper was one of
four discussed by the conference,
argued that automation confronted
not only individuals and industries
with great risks but even more seri-
ously, communities.
"In^ the American dynamic
economy," he said, "no commu-
nity or labor market area is com-
pletely secure of its economic
future.
Goldberg argued that automation
would be no problem if the rate of
displacement was low enough to be
absorbable by industry. However,
when the steel industry operates at
capacity for a short limited period
of time, then automation becomes a
serious problem.
Supplemental unemployment
benefits in the steel industry,
which Goldberg said, is really
"an automation fund," will not
scratch the surface of automation
unemployment. What will make
automation work without injury
to workers will be a guarantee of
expanding national economic
growth, he said.
Goldfinger emphasized that la-
bor's concern was in the period of
five-to-ten years ahead, "not in the
long run." The real problem was
an immediate one — "Creeping un-
employment which at the rate we're
going may become galloping un-
employment."
Shorter Workweek Urged
Van Arsdale raised the question
of the shorter workweek. He ar-
gued against those employers who
were concerned at the campaign for
a reduced workweek by pointing
out that with 4 million unemployed,
multiplied by 40 hours, America
was Josing 160 million man-hours
of production.
A major address by Rockefeller
was an implied attack on the Eisen-
hower Administrations' fiscal and
economic policies. By expressing
dissatisfaction at the rate of eco-
nomic progress and national eco-
nomic growth in recent years —
he obviously was disassociating him-
self from Administration handling
of the nation's economic affairs.
Meat Cutters Launch $96 MUlion
Middle-Income Housing Co-op in N.Y.
New York — The Meat Cutters and the state of New York have signed an agreement for construc-
tion of a $96 million middle-income housing project by using the air space above the Mott Haven
railroad yard in the Bronx.
Union officials have applied for, and state authorities have signed, a commitment for a $25
million mortgage loan to build the first section of Concourse Village, to consist of seven 20-story
buildings containing 1,686 apart-'f^
Belson said, "to help provide des-
perately needed housing for the
middle-income wage earner.
There is low-cost public housing
per room plus carry.ng charges of J fof |hose on , ow and
ments.
Tenants will pay $6 million, or
an average down payment of $700
about $28 per room per month
Construction of the first sec-
tion will start late this year. An-
other 2,400 apartments will be
started six months later, and the
remaining 1,120 before the end
of 1961. They will house an es-
timated 22,000 persons in 5,206
apartments.
Bronx borough officials have ap-
proved the new development, which
marks the first use of air space in
New York City for a middle-income
housing project. Such space has
been used for office building and
stores.
Jerome Belson, the union's hous-
ing director, said the space above
the railroad.yard provides an excel-
lent site in a central location with-
out destroying other buildings.
'The Meat Cutters are proud,"
luxury housing for the wealthy.
But few cities have housing for
the family with $7,500 yearly
earnings."
"We would not be properly rep-
resenting our 60,000 members in
the New York area if we closed
our eyes to the housing problem,"
said Joseph Belsky, vice president
of the international union.
Previously the union has spon-
sored four other middle-income co-
operatives in Brooklyn and the
Bronx.
On completion, Concourse Vil-
lage will consist of 22 20-story
buildings covering 19 percent of the
40-acre site. Remainder of the land
will be used for recreation, parking
and landscaping.
A separate community center
will be used for civic and recre-
ational activities. Other features
of the project include private bal-
conies for most apartments and
easy access to the Concourse sub-
way and two rapid transit lines.
The mortgage commitment pro-
vides for alternate methods of -fi-
nancing. If the first section of Con-
course Village is approved by the
Limited Profit Housing Mortgage
Corp., the state will provide a third
of the loan and the corporation
two-thirds. Otherwise the state will
provide the full amount of the mort-
gage. James W. Gaynor, state hous-
ing commissioner, has approved the
transaction.
The union expects that financing
of the remaining buildings will be
provided by the new State Housing
Finance Agency, organized to carry
out Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's $525
million finance program for middle-
income housing.
JACOB F. FRIEDRICK
Milwaukee County Labor Coun-
cil President named to University
of Wisconsin Regents.
Women Seen
Most In Need
Of Pay Floor
Women workers would benefit
most from a new minimum wage
of $1.25 an hour and extension of
coverage to several million more
workers, an AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. speaker told delegates
to a conference celebrating the 40th
anniversary of the founding of the
Labor Dept.'s women's bureau.
"The AFL-CIO," said Mrs. Es-
ther Peterson, legislative representa-
tive for the IUD, "has asked Con-
gress to increase the wage minimum
from $1 to $1.25 an hour, and to
extend coverage to 7.5 million more
workers.
"This would mean a better
living standard for single women,
possibly a new dress once a year.
For many a married woman with
dependent children, it could mean
a better fed and clothed family."
Mrs. Peterson made these other
points: Most of the 24 million wom-
en in the U.S. labor force are mar-
ried and work more from necessity
than choice; they fill many lower-
paid jobs, and must depend on
federal law to lift their status; state
minimum wage laws are little help
to most women workers.
Labor Undersec. James T.
O'Connell told the conference that
the number of women workers will
increase from about 24 million to
30 million by 1970 — an increase of
25 percent while male workers in-
crease by an estimated 15 percent.
A panelist on the same program
with O'Connell was Pres. Howard
Coughlin of the Office Employes.
Minnesota Labor
Gives Scholarships
St. Paul, Minn. — The Minnesota
Federation of Labor's $500 George
W. Lawson scholarship, named in
honor of the veteran union leader,
has been awarded to Rodger C.
Dahlberg, Duluth. The son of Carl
A. Dahlberg, a member of Steel-
workers Local 1028, he plans to
attend Gustavus Adolphus College
at St. Peter.
Janice Knutson and Irwin Gub-
man, both of St. Paul, were pre-
sented with $400 scholarships by the
St. Paul Trades & Labor Council,
while at the same meeting a Build-
ing Service Employes $200 scholar-
ship was awarded to Nancy Pink of
St. Paul.
The $100 scholarship of the State
Council of Machinists went to
Larry G. Brown, Moorhead, whose
father, George W. Brown, is a
member of Local 1426, Intl. Broth-
erhood of Electrical Workers.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE II, 1960
Up To The Senate
THE FIGHT TO EXTEND to the area of health care the tested
and reliable principles of the social security system is shifting
to the Senate.
On the House side, the Forand bill for limited social security
health benefits to retired persons has been temporarily side-tracked.
The Ways & Means Committee, after an agonizing internal struggle,
has turned it down. It is ready to report a social security bill with
weak substitute provisions on health care that are a flat rejection of
the principle sponsored by Rep. Aime Forand (D-R.I.). Forand
promptly labeled the substitute a "pauper's oatlT plan.
There is no way for the House immediately to cure this deficiency
by overriding its committee, Under standard practice on social
security measures, the committee bill is expected to go to the floor
under a closed rule forbidding floor amendments.
The Senate is not subject to a comparable rule and a similar
debarment. The Senate is expected to have a chance to vote —
and vote separately — on proposals that embody the principle
urged by Forand, the principle that the expenses of health care for
the aged should properly and rightly be met under the social
security system.
This system is based on a simple philosophy: That during working
years, people should pay taxes into a social insurance program and
that after working years they should be able, as a matter of right,
to draw benefits from the program. •
The philosophy is as sound and logical for meeting the extra-
ordinary hospital and other health expenses of old age as for meet-
ing the reality of reduced income during retirement or of disability
suffered before retirement.
It is a disappointment that the House Ways & Means Committee
rejected this philosophy. It is particularly disappointing because
the committee has the power of initiative in the tax system on which
social security is based and often has been its guardian and protector.
Nevertheless, the Senate is now the arena in which the first
showdown floor vote may be expected. A number of bills em-
bodying the social security principle are pending.
Senate passage of a bill including the principle would send it back
to the House — and then the House itself might have the chance to
vote Yea or Nay on a key issue.
A preliminary House committee engagement has been lost but by
no means the whole issue. The case is still pending, and the people
have a chance to make themselves heard.
'Er — After Careful Study of Your Case . •
Help for Chile
IN MEETING the human needs of Chile's people in the aftermath
of earthquake and tidal wave, what the Red Cross and other
international agencies equipped to deal with disaster need urgently
is money.
In many an emergency situation here at home, gifts of clothing,
food and medical supplies are useful and desirable. Shipping
facilities are easily available; time is available.
It is not possible for ordinary citizens in this country to know
the distribution of supplies immediately needed in Chile, both by
international agencies and by the national government trying to cope
with the situation. It is not possible to know the priorities for airlift
transport over thousands of miles.
Prompt gifts of money by unions and by central bodies will give
the Red Cross, CARE and similar agencies greatly needed flexi-
bility in helping meet natural disaster on a scale that most of us
are never compelled to face personally.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm.^C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suflridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm, L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, June 11, 1960
No. 24
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
WtJ FOR THR
AFL-CIO new*
With Utile Success:
Communists Try to Break Link
Of African Unions with ICFTU
Among the young trade union movements of
Africa, a continent of peoples reaching swiftly
for national independence and for rapid eco-
nomic improvement, a hidden struggle is tak-
ing place. The World Federation of Trade
Unions, dominated by the Soviet Union, seeks
constantly to penetrate, to influence leaders, to
spread infiltration. This report, taken from
Spotlight, publication of the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions, gives some of the details:
EVERY DAY the world is getting smaller. We
take it for granted that news should travel
from the ends of the earth to our breakfast-table
within a few hours. The same is true of ideas
which spread as fast as modern communications.
No wonder therefore that the idea of trade union-
ism, with which we are concerned, has rapidly
spread throughout the African continent where it
is gaining ground each day, side by side with the
African's national aspirations.
Through years of bitter struggle for human
dignity and a just reward for their labor, the
workers of the early industrialized countries
learned that solidarity was their only weapon and
that the trade union movement was the best
means of using it effectively. This experience
they have passed on to the workers of Africa who
are organizing their own unions throughout the
continent.
But that continent is no longer cut off from
the rest of the world; it is no longer the private
enclave of a few powers. Most of the young
trade unions in Africa, grouping about 1.4 mil-
lion members, are affiliated to the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions, in which each
organization has equal rights in deciding the
overall policy, and in which the workers' soli-
darity throughout the free world finds full
expression.
There is, however, one factor which cannot be
left out of the picture. It is the Communist-
controlled World Federation of Trade Unions
whose main aim is to further the policy of the
Soviet Union and to extend its influence and domi-
nation. The funds it disposes for that purpose
are practically unlimited. Its activities in Africa
have various aspects.
IT IS SIGNIFICANT, however, that the
WFTU, which never had an sizeable affiliated
membership in Africa, makes no attempt to gain
members there, but concentrates on trying to keep
African unions out of the main stream of the
international trade union movement. Exploiting
the African's natural longing for emancipation
and tlieir resentment against colonialism, the
WFTU uses pan-Africanism to encourage a sep-
aratist trade union movement.
On the other hand, the WFTU and its affiliated
organizations in the Communist-ruled countries
run scores of schools, seminars and courses for
young African trade unionists, they publish a great
number of propaganda pamphlets and reviews,
they distribute hundreds of invitations for May
Day as well as for "informative visits" in the
"workers' paradise," countries in central and east-
ern Europe. They are assiduous in sending dele-
gations to African countries.
Under the slogans of "decrease in interna-
tional tension 9 ' and "struggle against colonial-
ism," the WFTU last year organized a series of
trade union courses for Africans in Hungary
and in the Soviet Zone of Germany. .These
courses were not primarily concerned with train-
ing Africans in running trade union affairs but
as Communist indoctrination schools.
THE COMMUNISTS— as usual— are elastic
in their propaganda tricks. Subject to needs and
situation, they stand for internationalism on one
day and for nationalism on another. They are
too clever to go among Africans with the Com-
munist label, they do not even use their favorite
slogans, but they base all their tactics on exploit-
ing for their purposes the two ideals that are
sweeping Africa: The call for independence and
the fight against colonialism.
Despite the efforts of the WFTU, Communist
infiltration does not seem to have made much
headway among African trade unions. These is
no doubt that the influence of the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions with its emphasis on
genuine independent trade unions is effectively
countering this trend. The best evidence for that
is the steady growth of its membership in Africa
and the growing number of national African or-
ganizations which join the ICFTU. The most
recent concrete proof was given in Nigeria where
its powerful Trades Union Congress unanknouatjr
endorsed an earlier decision to affiliate to the
ICFTU.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. JUNE 11, I960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Jail Term For Sit-In Doesn't
Discourage Two Negro Girls
CI his column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
I' rid ay at 7 p. m., EDT.)
np HERE IS A LULL in the Negro sit-in demon-
A strations in the South, but only a lull. Whether
it is a lull before an angrier storm depends on
how realistically the officials and the politicians
read the warnings. There
have been both heartening
and discouraging develop-
ments.
Lunch counters have
been desegregated in San
Antonio, Galveston, Nash-
ville and elsewhere and
the republic is still stand-
ing.
Five variety stores in
Winston-Salem, N. C,
opened their counters to Morgan
Negroes without discrimination. Describing the
encouraging event Time Magazine said: ". . .
whites and Negroes sat side by side without dis-
order, insults or even stares, as if things had
never been any different."
Elsewhere one of the basic troubles is the fail-
ure to recognize change. One of the South's most
respected universities, Vanderbilt, has placed it-
self in the embarrassingly hypocritical position of
expelling a student from its Divinity School for
following its Christian teachings by participating
in the sit-downs. The almost ludicrous irony of
Vanderbilt's stand is painfully heightened by the
fact that as a result of the demonstrations Nash-
ville lunch counters are being desegregated.
Florida primary voters apparently rejected the
moderate approach of Gov. Leroy Collins by
electing as his successor — barring a virtually im-
possible Republican upset in November — a man
who promised to preserve segregation, Farris
Bryant. One of Collins' basic approaches, which
his candidate, Doyle E. Carlton, Jr., endorsed,
was communication between hostile groups, get
them talking to work out compromises.
Said Democratic nominee Bryant bluntly: "The
less said about segregation the better. To talk
about it merely incites the people, and it doesn't
solve the problem."
The political hopeful may be in for something
of a surprise. I wish he could have been in my
office while two sisters recently graduated from a
Washington Reports:
49-day course in the Tallahassee jail spoke dis
passionately of their experiences and hopefully of
their plans.
These two Florida A., and M. University stu-
dents, Patricia and Priscilla Stephens, aged 20
and 21, were arrested last winter at a Wool-
worth's lunch counter by a task force comprised
of the mayor, the chief of police and 15 cops.
Rather than pay a $300 fine each, they chose
60 days in jail; they got 11 days off for good
behavior.
In jail they mopped floors, scrubbed toilets
did a lot of thinking and tried X6 study — the jailer
wouldn't let Patricia's music teacher come to give
her trumpet lessons and refused Priscilla a diet
her doctor said she needed for a chronic ulcer
THEY GOT 500 LETTERS of encourage-
ment from nearly every state of the union, Japan
Spain and other foreign countries. They com-
posed a sit-in song to the tune of Old Black Joe
sang it with their minister when he came to visit
them each night at six, and taught it, by request, to
the segregated white women inmates of the jail
Before they were released, one of the white
watchmen in the jail, who had been distant if not
hostile at first, began to do them little favors and
in their last week he brought his two-year-old
boy, all dressed up, in to visit them. The girls
didn't know quite why.
But in a voice as soft as cotton, Patricia
Stephens hold me that of all the white people
who had offered to help them, none had said
they were doing it because they were sorry for
Negroes; instead they explained they felt that
by helping this cause they were somehow help-
ing themselves. "This segregation business,"
one white friend told the Stephens girls, "hurts
me too."
Priscilla wants to be a grade school teacher
when she finishes college. Patricia is interested
in social work. But right now they are absorbed
in something they think cannot wait.
For the next few weeks they will be traveling
around the country, relating their experiences,
trying to elicit support for a broadening campaign
of non-violent protest against the denial of civil
rights. They plan to join more sit-ins before
September.
"I suppose," said Priscilla with a smile, "that
we will be arrested again." "I like to think
Patricia said, "that everybody in this is fighting
for democracy."
Proposed Fair Trade' Act Held
Costly to Nation's Housewives
PRICE STUDIES by economists show that a
proposed new national fair trade law "would
cost housewives $1 billion to$10or$ll billion
more each year to run the house."
So declared Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.)
on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service program heard on 350 radio sta-
tions.
He said: "This is an incredibly bad bill for
the consumer, an outrageously bad bill for the
small business man, and a generally hurtful bill
for the whole economy,"
The bill would give manufacturers the right to
set a minimum price on the resale of commodities
they manufacture.
Rep. John B. Bennett (R. Mich,), also appear-
ing on the program, pointed out that the measure
would put retail business in interstate commerce.
In the present situation, he said, small merchants
are considered as in purely local business and
thus are not subject to the Fair Labor Standards
Act, including the federal minimum wage. Ben-
nett added that any such bill might be unconstitu-
tional, and pointed' out that the Michigan supreme
court has declared a state fair trade statute, sim-
ilar to this one, to be unconstitutional.
Fair trade laws that have been enacted,
Dingell declared, have been "used as a basis
for violation of the federal anti-trust laws. They
have been used to harass, intimidate, coerce,
harm, destroy the small competitor.
"Many small retailers have been induced to
support this [national] measure on the grounds
that it will give them a better competitive situa-
tion. Nothing could be further from the truth."
BENNETT SAID that experience in states
which have had fair trade laws has shown there
are many ways to evade the law.
"You can have trading stamp practices, trade-in
allowances. Also, we have had any number of
witnesses at hearings who testified about the great
impetus a federal bill would give to chain stores,
department stores and mail order houses which
have private brands, identical to items fair traded,"
Bennett said.
"The group that's pushing this bill is a
polyglot conglomeration of mixed interests,"
Dingell declared. "There are lobbyists here for
retail groups, big business and gas and oil com-
panies, pharmaceutical houses. The bill as
drafted with certain amendments offered by the
gas and oil lobby would create certain ex-
emptions from anti-trust decisions. In the words
of the Federal Trade Commission, the bill would
repeal the anti-trust laws."
Both Bennett and Dingell warned that efforts
are being made by proponents of the bill to push
it through this session of Congress. They said they
thought the people should be alerted to this fact.
rrs your
EFFORTS ARE BEING made to find a way to compromise the
separate House and Senate school bills and reach agreement on a
bill that will provide money instead of a campaign issue. A point
must be made about the party vote in the House in regard to the
Powell anti-segregation amendment.
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N.J.), the sponsor of the bill
approved by the House, has run the record and has found that 78
Republican members voted to attach the Powell amendment to the
measure — but voted against the bill itself on passage. They voted
in favor of an amendment that guaranteed southern Democratic votes
against the final bill. Then they voted against the amended bill
themselves.
This parliamentary deviousness was used by conservative House
Republicans a few years ago with extreme effectiveness. First they
voted successfully to attach the Powell amendment; then they killed
the total bill as they had amended it.
This year the parliamentary tacticians of the GOP tried the
same device. Among the Republicans who voted for the Powell
amendment, then against the bill, were Floor Leader Charles A*
Halleck (Ind.), Chairman William E. Miller (N.Y.) of the Re-
publican Congressional Campaign Committee, Chairman John W.
Byrnes (Wis.) of the House GOP Policy Committee.
In the tag-end weeks of the legislative session, with forces deli-
cately balanced between the* Eisenhower power of veto and the
Democratic nominal majorities in Congress, such a straw in the wind
takes on significance.
Mr. Halleck, like all others among the official House Republican
leaders, is tagged as a Nixon man. Mr. Nixon has indicated in
speeches that he wants to depart from the Eisenhower record against
school aid. The position of the House GOP powers on a com-
promise bill, for which they are willing to vote, is still unclear.
* * *
GOV. ROCKEFELLER probably shifted few delegate votes by
his blistering statement on the "fence-sitting" Vice Pres. Nixon, but
he shattered the Republican Party's surface calm, and he appears to
have guaranteed controversy in the GOP convention on its platform
if not its nominees. He listed the disturbing results of eight years
of the Eisenhower Administration in terms very likely to be paralleled
in the platform approved at the Democratic convention.
On the conduct of foreign policy, on defense and school-aid
issues, on the Forand bill, he charged unmistakably that the
Administration was weak and wrong.
As he noted, it is not considered proper for political leaders
thus to criticize their own party. The sensible explanation of why
he did it is the obvious one: he is deeply concerned about the
country's welfare and deeply skeptical of Mr. Nixon's capacity to
break with the Eisenhower record and provide bold and imaginative
leadership.
Asked by reporters whether he thought GOP leaders would
accept his word that he totally rejects a vice presidential nomina-
tion with Nixon, Rockefeller replied:
"If they don't, then I don't know what they will believe."
Asked if he would like to use the press conference "to endorse
Vice Pres. Nixon for the presidential nomination," he said tersely:
"I hadn't planned to."
* * *
POLITICAL LEADERS, who are remarkably capable of self-
deception, tend to believe that "nobody" really would turn down the
vice presidential place once it is offered to him. But this is false and
its falsity has been demonstrated.
In 1924 the Republican convention nominated Frank O. Lowden,
a former governor of Illinois, for Vice President, to run with Calvin
Coolidge. Lowden refused, and the convention had to turn to
Charles G. Dawes.
In 1948 Associate Justice William O. Douglas was repeatedly
asked by Pres. Truman to accept the vice presidential nomination,
and Douglas declined.
A PROPOSED FEDERAL FAIR TRADE law would seriously
hurt the small retailer and benefit large chain outfits, according to
Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), left, and Rep. John B. Bennett
(R-Mich.). They were interviewed on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1960
fWUM'S # OR AMERICA IS SDQD I0U LABOR
PHILADELPHIA LOCAL 37 of the Upholsterers commemorated
27 years of union activity by painting the 40-by-40-foot front of its
hall at 2132 Germantown Avenue in the way pictured. It helps get
labor's ideas to the people, suggests Local Pres. George Bucher.
Hour to Buy:
Rising Food Costs
Hit Family Budgets
By Sidney Margolius
MODERATE-INCOME FAMILIES are in for a summer of high
food prices. Costs have been moving up all spring and will
rise further before supplies increase again this autumn.
This situation requires careful planning and shopping to defend
not only your pocketbook but your family's actual nutrition. Sur-
veys show that nutrition is affected noticeably by purchasing power.
Of course, there are pockets of
poor nutrition among well-to-do
families, too. For example, teen-
agers at every income level, and es-
pecially the girls, often suffer from
poor nutrition.
But money is the main factor.
Low and moderate-income families
are especially likely to suffer from
insufficient calcium and vitamin C,
a Government survey found. That
means they don't get enough milk
and fruit juices and fresh fruits. In
the South, where incomes are gen-
erally lower than elsewhere, families
especially tend to have inadequate
diets, U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture researchers report.
HERE IS A CHECK-LIST of cost-cutters that can help you buy
the most nutrition for your food dollars this summer:
• Plan your menus around advertised specials; avoid impulse
buying.
• Cook vegetables in as little water as possible, but save any
excess liquid — and that from canned vegetables — for making
soups. Much of the nutrition is in the liquid. Cook potatoes in
the skin instead of pared, to preserve food value and avoid waste.
• Buy the cheapest brand of vegetable shortening instead of the
more-expensive brands. (They are all much the same.)
• Buy standard whole-wheat, rye and white breads instead of
rolls or special breads.
• Serve homemade desserts instead of commercial baked goods.
• Buy standard grades (B and C) instead of fancy Grade A.
(They are the same nutritionally.)
• Buy supermarkets' own brands of canned or packaged foods.
• Serve home-cooked cereals instead of ready-to-eat pack-
aged types. (The home-cooked are often more nourishing, too.)
• Buy foods loose when available, such as cottage cheese, sauer-
kraut, produce. You save packaging cost.
• Buy large sizes of canned and packaged foods instead of small.
• Buy plain instead of homogenized milk if the price is lower.
Use non-fat milk to supplement your purchases of fresh milk.
• Buy cheese off the loaf instead of in packages or jars.
• Buy brown or mixed-color eggs if cheaper in your locality.
• Serve fish, poultry, cheese, eggs or baked-bean main dishes oc-
casionally, especially in summer when meat is most expensive. Tur-
keys particularly are in heavy supply and will be reasonable this
summer.
• Avoid heavy use of bacon, especially this summer when all
pork products will be expensive. In some families bacon is the chief
meat expense. But nutritionists count bacon as fat, not a protein.
• In beef, look for the more economical cuts — chuck and round.
These can be just as tender and flavorful when broiled or roasted
as the costlier rib and loin cuts, U.S. home economists report.
• Serve these cheaper, but nutritional vegetables more often:
carrots, collards, green cabbage, kale and turnips.
You can get an excellent free food-buying guide, with basic facts
on nutrition and many money-saving recipes. Just write to Office of
Information, U.S. Agriculture Dept., Washington 25, D. C, for a
copy of "Family Fare."
(Copyright I960 by Sidney Margolius) I
Schoemann Tells Executive Council:
Youth Conference Shows
People Support Progress
THE RECENT WHITE HOUSE Conference
on Children and Youth gave "solid evidence"
that the American people support the AFL-CIO's
program for social and welfare legislation, Vice
Pres. Peter T. Schoemann has reported to the
AFL-CIO Executive Council.
Schoemann, labor's top representative at the
conference, said the "significant, forward-looking
recommendations" made by the 7,000 delegates,
drawn from 50 states and 600 national organiza-
tions, reflected a "majority view" in the nation
which is "many times far ahead" of the policies of
the Eisenhower Administration.
While applauding the conclusions reached by
the delegates, Schoemann said the value of the
conference — a once-every-10-years prospect begun
by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt — will depend on the
follow-up.
t The question, he said, is whether recommen-
dations strongly favoring federal aid to educa-
cation, full civil rights, and more adequate so-
cial legislation "can and will be implemented by
local, state and federal legislation, by volun-
tary agencies and, ultimately, by the American
people. 55
Seventy trade union officials who participated in
the conference as members of state delegations or
as representatives of international unions "played
an active role in the workshops and forums that
hammered out the final recommendations of the
conference," Schoemann reported.
Schoemann, a member of the conference's na-
tional planning board appointed by Pres. Eisen-
hower and chairman of the AFL-CIO's Education
Committee, pointed out that labor participation
began a year before the conference. "The AFL-
CIO made a sizable financial contribution" to the
conference budget and "trade unionists by the
hundreds participated actively in the scores of
preliminary meetings in all parts of the country.'*
Schoemann noted that "they are likewise partici-
pating now in the many follow-up programs over
the nation."
DECLARING THAT conference delegates rec-
ognized that "the problems of the young were,
largely, the problems of all the people," Schoe-
mann pointed to resolutions adopted on labor and
social standards which:
• Urged increasing the federal minimum wage
to $1.25 an hour, and broadening coverage.
• Called for states to adopt minimum wage
laws equal in amount to the federal law and
From Soup to Nonsense:
covering groups usually excluded, such as farm
workers.
• Recommended increasing unemployment
compensation to 50 percent of wages with 39
weeks of coverage.
• Asked extension of both workmen's compen-
sation and unemployment insurance laws to farm
workers.
• Asked federal and state standards for regis-
tration of migrant crew leaders, state migratory
housing codes and better enforcement of exist-
ing regulations.
IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION, Schoe-
mann reported, the conference called for "substan-
tial general federal support for education." It
urged in one resolution that representative local
committees "composed of educators, businessmen,
labor representatives and citizens be created to
examine existing restrictions on apprenticeship job
opportunities with the idea of broadening appren-
ticeship opportunities for youth."
In a series of strong civil rights resolutions, the
conference "spoke boldly and farsightedly" to:
• Support Negro students in their fight for
equality and endorse "non-violent, sit-in demon-
strations protesting segregated facilities." .
• Condemn "the use of force, violence, political
or legal contrivances to prohibit or intimidate stu-
dents protesting inequalities."
• Demand that access to all public facilities
"be guaranteed all children and youth regardless
of their race, creed, color, economic or social
status."
• Urge an end to all discrimination in "housing,
education and employment."
In other significant areas, Schoemann re-
ported to the council, die White House con-
ference urged cooperative federal, state and
local action to deal with problems of depressed
areas, workers displaced as a result of automa-
tion and relocation of plants, and the problem
of vocational retraining.
Summarizing the 1,600 conference resolutions,
Schoemann told the executive council:
"Without by any means endorsing every rec-
ommendation of the White House Conference
on Children and Youth, the AFL-CIO can take
real satisfaction in the many important things
it did recommend on behalf of America's
young/*
Why Can't Men's Magazines
Plug Virtues of Domesticity?
By Jane Goodsell
I* DIDN'T KNOW men's magazines were like
that! I'm shocked. It isn't so much the
photos of movie starlets, although I must admit
that those young
ladies certainly are
butter-fingered at
keeping a bathtow-
el clutched around
themselves. But
that's only inciden-
tal.
What really
bothers me is the
demoralized tone of
men's magazines
and their devil-
may-care attitude
toward life.
As a thoroughly
brainwashed victim
(oops! I mean reader!) of women's magazines,
I naturally assumed that men's magazines were
doing their bit to promote such worthwhile ob-
jectives as Family Harmony, Togetherness and
Living Within a Budget.
In my innocence, I figured that all the How
To articles in women's magazines (How to Take
Inches Off Your Hips, How to Stuff a Bell Pepper,
How to Decorate with Decals, How to Bolster
Your Husband's Ego) would be counterbalanced
by similar articles in magazines for men:
How to Repair Sagging Porch Steps; How to
Fix a Broken Roller Skate; How to Be a Good
Host; What Every Father Shold Know; How to
Bolster Your Wife's Ego; What Is Your Wife
Really Like?
INSTEAD OF ENCOURAGING their readers
to become better husbands and fathers, men's
magazines encourage them to forget the very
existence of wives and children.
Men's magazines preach the joys of owning a
wine cellar, racing sports cars and collecting
far-out jazz.
There are How To articles, all right, but they
aren't calculated to promote domestic harmony:
How to Win at Poker; How to Cure a Hangover,
Where to Stay at Las Vegas; How to Play Par
Golf; How to Mix a Dry, Dry Martini; How to
Succeed with Women (which is not at all the same
thing as getting along with your wife).
Some magazines for men include recipes, hut
not the sort he can whip up when you leave
him to fix dinner for the children. Men's maga-
zine recipes are designed primarily to bolster
the male ego. Most of them call for 15-pound
hunks of meat and enough rare wines and bran-
dies to use up an entire week's food budget.
It isn't fair! Women's magazines exhort their
readers to be patient, virtuous, devoted, con-
scientious, loyal, dutiful goody-goodies. And
men's magazines adopt a soothing boys-will-be-
boys attitude, and encourage their readers to live
it up, sow plenty of wild oats and act like men,
not mice.
Talk about double standards!
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1960
age rxjne
Schnitzler Urges Political Action:
Labor in Ohio Maps
'60 Legislative Goals
Cleveland — A comprehensive legislative program that will be
pushed in the Ohio Legislature in 1961 was approved at the Ohio
AFL-CIO second constitutional convention.
The 1,700 delegates representing more than 500,000 union mem-
bers approved resolutions calling upon the legislature to authorize:
• A $ 1 .25 hourly minimum wage^
law for industries not covered by
the federal minimum wage law.
• A State Housing Authority,
which would provide low-interest
mortgage loans for homebuilding.
The Authority would issue its own
bonds.
• Overhauling of the state tax
structure, with emphasis on elimi-
nation of the 3 percent sales tax
on drugs and medicines and other
changes to ease the burden on low
and middle-income groups.
• Improvements in unemploy-
ment and workmen's compensation.
• A "little" Wagner Act that
would set up a state labor rela-
tions board and provide for elec-
tion procedures for union certifi-
cation for employes not covered
by the National Labor Relations
Act
A "little" Norris-La Guardia Act
that would require notice and hold-
ing of a hearing before issuance of
an injunction in a labor dispute.
• Liberalization of voting hours
until 8 p.m. and door-to-door regis-
tration to provide fuller expression
of voter sentiment at the polls.
• Prohibition of the importation
of strikebreakers into the state, such
as occurred in recent newspaper
strikes in Lima and Zanesviile.
Delegates also were scheduled to
vote on an increase in the monthly
per capita payments by affiliated
locals from 4 to 5 cents.
Political Action Urged
Two speakers at the opening ses-
sion stressed the importance of
electing new leaders at the Novem-
ber election. The speakers were
William F. Schnitzler, AFL-CIO
secretary-treasurer, and Al Barkan,
deputy director of the Committee
on Political Education (COPE).
Schnitzler warned that unity is a
"must" in labor and in the nation
because of a threat to the labor
movement from enemies within and
a threat to the nation from ene-
mies without.
"The American people will no
longer let themselves be lulled by
a dictator's smiling promises into
sweet dreams of peace. They will
insist that our military defense
program be beefed up.
"If I read the signs correctly, the
American people also want our na-
tional economy strengthened so that
the cold war can be met without
impairing the high standard of liv-
ing which is our country's great
achievement.
"To carry out this program will
require, in the first place, new and
more progressive national leader-
ship.
"This is now becoming increas-
ingly evident to the great majority
of American citizens, even to those
who for almost eight years have
been dazzled by the Eisenhower
image.
"That image of a strong and ef-
fective leadership was a myth cre-
ated by skillful Madison Ave.
pitchmen. Now the myth has been
sadly deflated. It collapsed simul-
taneously with the summit."
Beware GOP, Barkan Says
Barkan told delegates that a Re-
publican victory in November will
confront organized labor with a
program aimed at its complete de-
struction and annihilation.
"The giants of American indus-
try have not accepted labor's right
to bargain collectively, and in my
opinion, they live for the day when
they can destroy us," he said.
He said that Sen. Barry Gold
water (R-Ariz.) has proposed, if the
Republicans win in November, a
program for a national "right-to-
work" law, the outlawing of indus-
try-wide bargaining and political
activity by labor and placing labor
under anti-trust laws.
"You can't fight this at the
bargaining table or on the picket
line. The only place to fight it
is at the ballot box.
"We must do the same job in
1960 that was done in 1958 in Ohio
in defeating the 'right-to-work'
amendment. We don't have the
'right-to-work' amendment on the
ballot this year, but it is in Gold-
water's program.
"We need a President who looks
on unemployment not just as sta-
tistics but as human beings, a Presi-
dent who sees the increasing prob-
lem of people faced with rising
hospital and medical costs, who
would prevent business from taking
over regulatory agencies of govern-
ment. That description does not
fit the probable Republican nomi-
nee — Richard ]VL Nixon," Barkan
observed.
State Ruling Upsets City
Ban on Fire Fighters
Sacramento, Calif. — A state law upholding the right of a group
of public employes to bargain collectively supersedes city ordinances
denying or limiting this right, California Atty. Gen. Stanley Mosk
has ruled.
The opinion, handed down at the request of State Industrial
Relations Dir. John F. Henning,^
dealt specifically with a law enacted
last year which guaranteed fire
fighters the right to organize and
bargain collectively, though not to
strike. Palo Alto, a chartered city,
had refused to recognize the new
state law.
Although Palo Alto does not ban
organization of fire fighters by law,
city officials have carried on an
anti-union campaign and have re-
fused to bargain with the Fire Fight-
en. At least two other communi-
ties, Bakersfield and South Pasa-
dena, have local ordinances forbid-
ding fire fighters from organizing,
the union reports.
Mosk ruled that where a con-
flict exist* between an act of the
legislature and a city charter pro-
vision, the legislature will prevail
except in matters of strictly local
concern.
He declared that "the right of
individual workmen to be free to
organize and join labor unions is a
matter of more than strictly local
concern." Therefore, he said, the
provision of the law "guaranteeing
the right to fire fighters will prevail
over conflicting laws of chartered as
well as unchartered cities and coun-
ties."
Although the ruling dealt with
fire fighters legislation, the State
AFL-CIO said it should help pave
the way for legislation guaranteeing
all public employes the right to
organize.
MRS. ROBERT F. WAGNER, wife of New York's mayor, sews
the first union label into a U.S.-made hat with the smiling approval
of Alex Rose, left, and Nathaniel Spector of the Hatters, Cap &
Millinery Workers. The three attended a New York City luncheon
celebrating a new agreement with milliners who will use the label.
Musicians Press Drive
For Live Radio Music
Las Vegas, Nev. — Pres. Herman D. Kenin told some 1,200 dele-
gates to the Musicians' 63rd annual convention here that the union
would mount a legislative drive to require broadcasting licensees to
meet their obligations in promoting and employing local talent.
It may mean, Kenin declared, "a rewriting of the Federal Com-
munications Act with built-in polic-^
ing and enforcing powers that stop
just short of programming censor-
ship."
But, he added, the union would
not relax its demand upon "the
several thousand broadcast li-
censees who fatten off a multi-
billion dollar monopoly dedicated
only to the propagation of the
almighty dollar."
This is the first international un-
ion convention to be held in Las
Vegas, a city popular with Musi-
cians because of its record employ-
ment of instrumentalists.
Kenin was assured of election to
another term as head of the union,
having been nominated earlier with-
out opposition. A contest was
scheduled for the vice presidency.
Proposals of Senators Alan Bible
and Howard W. Cannon, both Ne-
vada Democrats, in urging the del-
egates to seek total repeal of the
federal cabaret tax in the next Con-
gress won cheers. The 20 percent
wartime excise tax was cut to 10
percent last year.
Bible, who was unable to attend
but whose message was read to the
delegates, said the union's apparent
next goal is "outright repeal." He
advised that the union marshall all
its facts and statistics "to bolster
the argument that the tax has a
direct relation to unemployment
among your members" and so im-
prove the chances of "wiping this
iniquitous statute from the books."
Cannon told the delegates that
the cabaret tax had been "an
albatross around the neck of the
entertainment world," resulting in
IUE Unit Donates
Funds for Library
Kiamesha Lake, N. Y. — Dist. 4,
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers has made a gift of $10,000 for
the James B. Carey Testimonial
Library at the Rutgers University
Institute of Management & Labor
Relations, named in honor of the
IUE president.
the discouragement of live music
and development of the arts.
He commended labor's position
in welcoming foreign artists and
talent to America while carefully
drawing the line at imported taped
music which aimed to evade union
standards. •
Cannon praised the talent devel-
opment and scholarship programs
of the Musicians. He ^also urged
the union to send artists abroad "to
show the peoples behind the Iron
Curtain and throughout the world
the spirit of the American people
Donald F. Conaway, executive
secretary of the Federation of Tele-
vision and Radio Artists, urged a
solid front on the part of entertain-
ment unions in approaching em-
ployment opportunities in the new
field of pay television.
AFL-CIO Unit
Visits Unions
In 6 Nations
Bomb bursts near a Buenos Aires
hotel were an explosive incident in
a tour of six Latin-American coun-
tries for three representatives of
the AFL-CIO and its affiliates on
the aircraft carrier Shangri-La, they
reported on their return from a 47-
day cruise. The bombs were a
local protest against local high liv-
ing costs.
The union, officials made the trip,
at the invitation of Navy Sec.
Thomas S. Gates Jr. On the visit
to more than a dozen cities were
George J. Richardson, special rep-
resentative of the AFL-CIO; Vice
Pres. Henry Anderson, Retail,
Wholesale & Department Store
Union; and Vice Pres. Wayne
Strader, Grain Millers.
Richardson reported that Argen-
tine workers have been disturbed
by a 63 percent rise in living costs
since February 1959.
An Argentine Commercial Em-
ployes union, he said, owns and
operates a large Buenos Aires de-
partment sfore, and unionized rail-
way workers run a training school
for members in the same city.
In Brazil, unions claim nearly 4
million members, Richardson said.
The government collects dues of
one day's pay per worker per year
and transmits it to unions minus 20
percent for operating costs, but
many unions raise additional funds
under separate union dues systems.
Highly industrialized Sao Paulo
state has 250 unions and 16 labor
federations,, he said, operating
under laws for collective bargain-
ing, labor courts, national media-
tion services and minimum wages.
Labor laws call for separation pay,
job security, health and accident
benefits.
In Santos, a coffee port, dock
workers run their own school for
workers' children.
The delegation also visited union
officials in Peru, Chile, Uruguay
and Trinidad.
Jacob Reibel Dies,
Veteran Union Leader
Miami, Fla. — Jacob Reibel, 87,
who helped organize two local un-
ions, recently died here. He had re-
tired in 1951 as president of the
Cleveland Library Workers and
moved here in 1 954.
Mr. Reibel came to New York
City from Germany at the age of
15, helped organize a union of
tailor's helpers, and became presi-
dent. He moved to Cleveland,
helped to build the Library Work-
ers. In 1954 his union and the
former Cleveland CIO Council gave
him a testimonial dinner.
Study Shows Earnings
Losses by 'Drop-Outs'
Boys and girls who leave high school before graduation have
higher unemployment rates, earn less on jobs they do get and are
more likely to wind up in unskilled work with less future, according
to a recent Labor Dept. study of school "drop-outs."
Highlights of the survey carried out by the Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics are available to high schools-
students and their parents in an il-
lustrated 13-page pamphlet entitled
"From School to Work: The early
employment experience of youth in
seven communities, 1952-1957."
The study of the vocational ad-
justment of drop-outs and of high
school graduates who did not go
on to college or take other formal
•training was based on interviews
with more than 4,000 young people
and information from school rec-
ords.
"At the time of the survey
the Labor Dept. reported, "only
3 percent of the boy graduates
were earning less than $40 a
week, compared with 15 percent
of the boy drop-outs. Nearly a
third of the boy graduates were
earning $80 or more a week
compared with a fifth of the
dropouts.
"Half of the girl graduates were
earning $50 or more a week while
only one-sixth of the girl drop-outa
were earning that much."
On the average, the report con-
tinued, "the drop-outs experienced
from two to three times as much
unemployment as the graduates."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, in
announcing the study, said poor
grades, boredom with school sub-
jects and dislike of teachers wer«
some of the reasons given for leav-
ing school. The second most im-
portant reason given by girls was
marriage; by boys, "to go to work."
NLRB Applies
L-G as Bar
To Picketing
The National - Labor Relations
Board has ruled unanimously that
a union cannot conduct peaceful
picketing for recognition unless it
petitions for a representation elec-
tion "within a reasonable period of
time not to exceed thirty days."
The board also held that picket-
ing for informational purposes alone
is unlawful if it has the effect of
stopping pickups or deliveries.
These provisions of the Landrum-
Griffin Act were applied for the
first time as the board ordered
Teamsters' Local 239 to stop pick-
eting Stan-Jay Auto Parts and Ac-
cessories Corp., Long Beach, N. Y.
The board said the union be-
gan picketing in September after
having a contract demand re-
jected by Stan-Jay, which has
five employes. The picketing con-
tinued after L-G went into effect
and an NLRB complaint was is-
sued 17 days later on the basis
of an employer's unfair labor
practice charge.
The board said that, since picket-
ing had been going on for nearly
two months before passage of L-G,
the additional 17 days is "a reason-
able period of time" in which to
file for an election.
The NLRB rejected a union ar-
gument that informational, as dis-
tinguished from recognition, picket-
ing after Nov. 13 was legal. The
board noted an earlier union picket
notice to suppliers and failure to
rescind it and said that, even if dis-
ruption of service is not intended,
such effect makes it illegal.
Labeling of
Substitutes for
Wood Urged
Hardwood substitutes used in wall
paneling, furniture, television and
hi-fi sets should be plainly labeled to
avoid misrepresentation, an AFL-
CIO aide has told a House Com-
merce subcommittee.
George D. Riley, of the federa-
tion's Dept. of Legislation, said the
AFL-CIO endorses the provisions
of three bills pending before the
subcommittee and .a fourth bill ap-
proved last month by the Senate, to
give the Federal Trade Commission
new powers to protect consumers.
Riley told the subcommittee that
the public needs to know when
fillers, plastics and printed overlays
are used in wood products. Such
substitutes should be labeled, he
said.
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil, at its January 1960 meeting, up-
held the need for broader FTC pow-
ers and urged Congress to "move
decisively" against false advertis-
ing and other evils.
An industry spokesman said "de-
ceptive labeling and advertising
of finished hardwood and imita-
tion hardwood products is con-
siderably more widespread" than
those in the fur industry, which
produced the Fur Products Label-
ing Act
"SCALPING" IS THREAT to Pres. William Pollock of the Textile
Workers Union of America unless the 1962 convention is held in
Canada. Wielding tomahawk is Bud Clark, a Canadian staffer
of Indian ancestry. Pollock promised "favorable consideration."
Court Upholds Bar on
Felons in Union Jobs
The Supreme Court by a 5-to-3 vote has upheld a section of
the New York-New Jersey Waterfront Commission Act forbidding
service of convicted felons, lacking either a pardon or a "good-
conduct" certificate, from serving as an officer of a waterfront union.
In a blistering dissent, a three-justice minority accused the
majority of making constitutional 1 ^
cases turn upon "whimsical circum
Delegates Urge Consumer Laws:
TWUA Asks Action
To Bolster Economy
Chicago — A wide-ranging program of economic reform, from aid
to depressed areas to adequate protection for consumers, was ham-
mered out by closing sessions of the Textile Workers Union of
America's 11th biennial convention here.
Reaction of the more than 1,000 delegates was typified by dis-
cussion of a resolution urging dis-^
Marciniak Named to
Key Chicago Post
Chicago— Edward A. Mar-
ciniak has been named execu-
tive director of the Chicago
Commission on Human Rela-
tions. Mayor Richard J.
Daley administered the oath
of office for the post, which
pays $13,404 a year.
Marciniak is 42. He will
resign, he said, as director of
the Catholic Council on
Working Life here and as a
vice president of the Ameri-
can Newspaper Guild.
stances. 77 The minority in an opin-
ion by Justice William O. Douglas
said the majority decision had di-
rectly departed from an earlier de-
cision striking down a Florida
statute forbidding a person con-
victed of a felony from serving as
an officer of any union.
Federal labor law specifically
guarantees the right of employes
to bargain "through representa-
tives of their own choosing." In
the New York waterfront case,
the question was whether the
two-state waterfront Commission
Act banning felons from union
office was in conflict with the
federal statute and thus uncon-
stitutional under the federal pre-
emption doctrine.
Justice Felix Frankfurter in the
majority opinion said Congress had
held hearings on New York-New
Jersey waterfront problems and
was intimately acquainted with
abuses arising from the presence
of "criminals with long records."
Hearings Cited
Congress also held hearings on
the proposed two-state Waterfront
Commission Act, including the
section forbidding felons in office,
and affirmatively approved the
New York-New Jersey compact,
Frankfurter pointed out.
He acknowledged that the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act, passed lasf year,
debarred former convicts from
serving as union officers only for
certain crimes and for a limited
period, but said that in this statute
Congress specifically asserted the
preemption doctrine in sections
where it wished the doctrine to
apply.
Douglas grimly remarked in
his dissent that the minority
could "more nearly comprehend
the thrust" of the majority de-
cision if Frankfurter's opinion
had said that the Florida prece-
dent had been directly overruled
and that Frankfurter's dissent in
that case was now adopted.
The Waterfront Commission Act,
Douglas said, contains a provision
upholding the right of employes to
bargain "through representatives of
their own choosing" and anything
in conflict violates both this pro-
vision and federal law.
If Florida is forbidden to set up
qualifications for union office, he
said, "I fail to see why" New York
is not foreclosed.
Striking Upholsterers
Just 'Won't Give Up'
Jasper, Ind. — A 165-member local of upholstery workers, on the
picket line at the Jasper Novelty Furniture Co. for nine months in
Indiana's longest strike, will tell the strike story in letters to every
telephone subscriber in Dubois county, and in handbills for buyers
at the Chicago Furniture Mart.
The local has been spreading its^
story in labor papers and in a
weekly radio broadcast. Now it
will send letters to 2,700 families
living within 12 miles of this wood
processing town in southwest Indi-
ana. The letters and the handbills
will tell how management has re-
buffed every union effort to settle
the strike.
"We have told the company, and
other companies, that we hate to go
outside the county with our story,"
said Sec.-Treas. Donald Marks of
Local 331. "But it can't be helped."
Other upholsterers' locals, the in-
ternational union, and the Indiana
AFL-CIO have helped keep the lo-
cal going with strike donations. The
money has helped pay strike bene-
fits for jobless members and foot
bills for the radio broadcasts and
strike publicity.
Local 331 was attempting to bar-
gain on its first contract when the
walkout was voted on Sept. 4, 1959,
after 13 months of attempted nego-
tiation.
Management refused to bar-
gain on any issues. Instead, said
Marks, it submitted counter-pro-
posals on a "take-it-or-leave-it"
basis. It fired a member of the
negotiating committee, refused to
arbitrate grievances, and import-
ed 175 strikebreakers.
Unfair labor practice charges
were dismissed by the National La-
bor Relations Board. An appeal
was turned down. The Indiana
State Labor Dept. declined to take
a hand.
tribution of surplus food under a
food stamp program. Members
from several states rose to support
the plan, not because it was needed
by present members, but because
"we owe an obligation to our for-
mer members who have been caught
by the liquidation and migration
of mills."
Under the general heading of
consumer protection the dele-
gates struck at shortcomings of
the Federal Communications
Commission and the Federal
Food and Drug Administration;
called for enactment of the
Douglas bill requiring full dis-
closure of credit charges, and
advocated a "Dept. of Con-
sumers" in the Cabinet.
On basic federal labor law, the
convention proposed five major re-
visions: Repeal of the provision that
permits state "right-to-work" laws
to take precedence over the federal
statute; repeal of the so-called em-
ployer "free speech" section which
is "in reality a license to employers
to threaten and coerce workers";
clarification of the law to insure that
all those who act in an employer's
interest in opposing union organiza-
tion shall be regarded as employer
agents; restoration of the pre-hiring
election; and adoption of a provi-
sion for mandatory injunctions
against employer violations of law
during organizing campaigns.
Rieve Asks Progress
As a last-minute substitute for
UAW Pres. Walter P. Reuther, pre-
vented from appearing by illness,
TWUA Pres. Emeritus Emil Rieve
challenged the labor movement to
break new ground toward social
progress.
"I agree with the Forand bill,*
he said. "But why stop with
only medical care for the aged?
Why are we afraid to come out
for a national health program for
every body?"
Rieve, who headed TWUA from
its foundation in 1939 until 1954,
was voted the new title of president
emeritus by the convention. Pre-
viously he had been chairman of the
executive council, an office that
has now been abolished. He will
continue as a vice president of
AFL-CIO and a member of the
federation's Executive Council.
Re-elected by acclamation to
their fourth terms were -Pres.
William Pollock and Secy.-Treas.
John Chupka. Twenty vice pres-
idents, who make up the balance
of the TWUA executive council,
were also re-elected.
Pollock and Chupka were voted
$2,500 salary raises to $18,500
and $15,000, respectively.
A vigorously-discussed resolution
urged joint labor and manage-
ment action to restrict textile im-
ports produced under substandard
working conditions. The conven-
tion heard John Greenhalgh, sec-
retary of the Intl. Federation of
Textile Workers* Associations, a
trade secretariat of the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions,
discuss the coming merger with a
similar garment workers' group.
At its final session the convention
upheld by nearly 10 to 1 a ruling
by the TWUA executive council
that Local 371 of Front Royal, Va.,
threatened a violation of the union
constitution by proposing to lend
$8,000 to a private segregated high
school. The local public high school
was desegregated under federal
court order.
Neither side in the spirited de-
bate defended segregated schools
as such and both sides acknowl-
edged Local 37Ts long record of
leadership in fighting for racial
equality.
Local officers defended their pro-
posal to buy the 6 percent bonds,
first, as a "good investment,'* and
second, as a proper exercise of lo-
cal union autonomy. Pollock, clos-
ing the debate, said "We cannot
afford to pussyfoot on this issue;
much as we may sympathize with
the problems of this local union,
the real issue is segregation."
Court Mulls Hoffa Bid
To Block Ouster Trial
The U.S. Court of Appeals has taken under advisement efforts
by attorneys for James R. Hoffa to prevent a court trial of Hoffa
on Teamsters Board of Monitors charges of misusing union funds.
The appellate court action came after it previously had reversed
District Judge F. Dickinson Letts in ousting one of the three monitors
without a show-cause hearing and^
delayed, pending a further hear-
ing, a Letts action in authorizing
Chairman Martin F. O'Donoghue
individually to handle certain ad-
ministrative matters.
The appellate court was unani-
mous in reversing Letts in his ouster
of Lawrence T. Smith, a monitor
named to represent the original
plantiffs who filed suit in 1957 to
prevent Hoffa from taking office as
Teamsters president, qft
The court split 2 to 1 in staying
the Letts authorization to O'Don-
oghue to direct certain Board of
Monitors administrative activities
singlehandedly.
In the major attack on the moni-
tors, whom Hoffa has been seeking
to oust from supervision of the un-
ion's affairs, the union and Hoffa
are seeking to have the monitors
dismissed and the Teamsters given
freedom of action to hold a new
convention for election of officers.
The majority of the Board of
Monitors, on the other hand, is
seeking to oust Hoffa, as president
on a charge that lie deposited
$500,000 in Local 299 funds,
without interest, to secure bank
loans to finance a speculative
Florida real estate project in
which Hoffa had a concealed
profit interest.
The Court of Appeals is expected
to rule in a few weeks on whether
Hoffa must stand trial on the
charges. Previously a motion to
halt the trial was denied by retired
U. S. Judge Joseph R. Jackson,
sitting in place of Letts, after Letts
disqualified himself when Hoffa and
the Teamsters filed affidavits charg-
ing prejudice.
The monitorship, created in Janu-
ary 1958, was set up under a con-
sent decree ending other actions in
the original suit by rank-and-file
Teamsters to deny Hoffa the presi-
dency. The plaintiffs charged il-
legal procedures in regard to the
1957 Miami Beach union conven-
tion at which Hoffa was elected to
succeed former Pres. Dave Beck.
Organizing Drive Mapped;
ACWA Hikes Per Capita,
Raps 'Sweatshop Imports 9
By Robert B. Cooney
Bal Harbour, Fla.— The Clothing Workers ended its 22nd biennial convention here after voting to
boost the per capita of local unions to bolster the international and expand organizing activities.
The 1,200 delegates also called for a foreign policy which gives top priority to the goal of world
disarmament, urged enforceable federal laws to wipe out discrimination and pledged "direct action"
unless the "rising tide" of low-wage Japanese goods is controlled.
the^
Winding up a busy week,
delegates heard:
• Pres. David Dubinsky of the
Ladies' Garment Workers attack
Pres. Eisenhower for espousing the
doctrine of 4 'one-third plus one,"
the margin needed in either house
of Congress to keep a two-thirds
vote from overriding his vetoes.
Majority rule will return in Novem-
ber, Dubinsky said, because work-
ing people "have the power to veto
the veto of the President."
This was Dubinsky's first ap-
pearance before an ACWA con-
vention since 1934; it returned a
visit by Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky
to the last ILG convention and
pointed up stronger ties between
the two needle trades unions.
• Alexander J. Allen, associate
director of the National Urban
League, discuss the "tension and
pressure for change" toward racial
equality. He said the "race prob-
lem** is at bottom an economic
problem, the result of poverty, job-
lessness and general insecurity.
• Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-
Me.), son of a Polish immigrant
tailor, declare that his visit to the
Soviet Union last fall convinced him
the Soviet government enjoys pop-
ular support. He urged that Amer-
ica turn its energies to providing
individual security and opportunity
and fulfilling its ideals so the world
will know "that what we have is
best, not only for us, but for them."
The problem of imported
"sweated'' goods from Japan and
Hong Kong threatening the in-
dustry and, according to Potof-
sky, "over a million jobs,**
stirred the strongest debate of the
convention.
Claude Cox of Local 55-D, Los
Angeles, and Peter J. Swoboda of
the Pennsylvania Joint Board point-
ed out that 24 million shirts were
imported during 1959, chiefly from
Japan and Hong Kong.
Cox urged that ACWA cutters
be encouraged "not to cut goods
imported from low-wage coun-
tries." Swoboda said consumers
should be persuaded to stop buy-
ing products of "greedy, chisel-
ing, sweatshop profiteers" who
pay wages of 10 to 14 cents an
hour.
Potofsky reviewed the issue and
read a message of support from the
convention of the Textile Workers
Union of America.
"We are not going to mince
about," Potofsky declared.
"We are going to enforce our
contracts. We are going to con-
tinue our efforts legislatively and
administratively, but we are going
to rely on our own strength by di-
New CWA Pacts Cover
100,000 Bell Workers
Close to 100,000 Communications Workers are covered by nine
new contracts negotiated with the Bell System — and similar con-
tracts covering another 200,000 workers now are being negotiated.
CWA Pres. Joseph A. Beirne said the nine new three-year pacts
provide major medical expenses paid for by the company; four-week
vacations after 25 years of service;^
higher minimum pensions; and pay
boosts ranging from $1.50 to $4.50
a week.
The nine new agreements fol-
low the lines of a "breakthrough"
agreement reached Apr. 30 with
Northwestern Bell. Beirne said a
majority of the 61 locals in the
five states covered by the North-
western pact have voted to ratify.
CWA members are voting on
ratification of agreements reached
with these other eight companies:
Wisconsin Bell; Illinois Bell, for
10,000 clerical, traffic and toll
workers; Chesapeake & Potomac
for 6,374 employes in all Washing-
ton, D. C, departments; Ohio,
Michigan and New Jersey Bell com-
panies; Cincinnati & Suburban Bell;
and Western Electric Co. in Buf-
falo, N. Y.
Morgan Broadcasts
Named To p Program
The National Association
for Better Radio and Televi-
sion has named "Edward P.
Morgan and the News" the
best radio news program of
the year, NAFBRAT Pres.
Clara S. Logan has an-
nounced.
The program, sponsored
by the AFL-CIO, is heard
Mondays through Fridays, 7
p.m., EDT.
NAFBRT's annual
awards are based on a mem-
bership vote of the Associa-
tion. Founded in 1949,
NAFBRAT is dedicated to
the advancement of the pub-
lic's interest in the broadcast-
ing industry.
Beirne said the Bell System was
one of the last major employers to
agree to payment of health insur-
ance.
Effective July 1, 1960, monthly
pensions at age 65 will be increased
to $120 a month for those with 30
to 40 years of service, to $125 for
40 years or more of service. Com-
pany-paid life insurance policies will
be increased from $1,000 to $2,000.
rect action, if necessary/'
In other actions, the delegates
passed resolutions on:
• Foreign policy, declaring "the
real struggle in the world today
is not for supremacy but for sur-
vival."
In urging a wide series of ac-
tions, the resolution said that ''most,
important, we must tirelessly pur-
sue the goal of world disarmament"
under United Nations supervision
and control. This means coopera-
tion with all nations, the ACWA
said, "including Communist China
with its 600 million people."
The resolution also proposed
that all foreign aid be channeled
through the UN and that Ameri-
can food surpluses be used to
create regional world granaries.
• Civil rights and human free-
dom, warning that continued racial
discrimination threatens America's
position as a world leader in the
fight for freedom.
The resolution pledged AtWA
to fight for equal rights inside
and outside the labor movement;
passage of federal laws to assure
equality "in education, employ-
ment and housing" as well as in
voting; continued vigilance to
protect civil liberties.
• Organizing, welcoming the
12,000 new members recruited
since the last biennial convention
and committing the union to a re-
newed drive to "organize the unor-
ganized."
• Per capita, raising the pay-
ments from locals or joint boards
from the present $1 to $1.25 per
member per month effective next
October.
The delegates also adopted reso-
lutions calling for a prepaid na-
tional health insurance system and
federal medical scholarship aid as
well as the Forand bill to provide
medical aid for the aged; federal aid
for school construction and teacher
salaries; a halt to Eisenhower Ad-
ministration "giveaways" and prop-
er government development of nat-
ural and atomic energy resources;
repeal of the "bigoted" McCarran-
Walter Immigration Act and adop-
tion of non-discriminatory immigra-
tion.
THIS WAS LAUNCHING AREA for barrage of telegrams from
Clothing Worker delegates to key party leaders in Congress,
demanding quick passage of the Kennedy-Morse-Roosevelt bill.
ACWA convention in Bal Harbour, Fla., backed the bill, which
would boost the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour, expand coverage
to millions of workers now unprotected.
Tariff Parley Considers
Sweatshop Import Ban
Geneva, Switzerland — An international attack on the issue of
imports from countries with sweatshop working conditions was
mapped here at a three-week session of the world's leading trading
nations.
A program presented by the United States was adopted by the
42 member countries of the Gen-^
eral Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT).
The Intl. Labor Organization will
be asked to cooperate in the effort
to meet the threat to workers with
decent living standards raised by
cut-price imports from countries
where poorly organized labor is the
cheapest item in production costs.
The AFL-CIO steadily pushed
the State Dept. to seek the action
now being taken at the interna-
tional level. Bert Seidman, econ-
omist with the AFL-CIO Dept
of Research, was here as an
observer of the trade parley's
deliberations.
Taken out of the language of
diplomats and trade experts, the is-
sue discussed was how to prevent
low-wage goods from areas such as
Japan and Hong Kong from wash-
ing away the jobs of trade unionists
in higher-wage nations without sti-
fling international trade.
Also recognized as a problem was
the fact that unless the cheap-labor
countries can export their goods the
Shorter Hours, Better Housing
Top Agenda at ILO Conference
Geneva, Switzerland — Worker, government, and employer delegates are drafting new international
standards for shorter working hours and improved workers' housing at the 44th session of the Intl.
Labor Organization conference here.
Rudy Faupl, international representative of the Machinists, leads the eight-man AFL-CIO team
at the three-week session of the 80-nation ILO's supreme policy-making body. Faupl seconded
the nomination for president of the'^
session of Peru's minister of labor,
Dr. Luis Alvarado, a former as-
sistant to ILO's Dir. Gen. David
A. Morse.
Alvarado called on the dele-
gates who had elected him by ac-
clamation to concentrate all their
energy so as to "deal with the prob-
lems before us in a positive and
practical way."
"By devoting ourselves exclu-
sively to this specific task we
shall be making our proper con-
tribution to the solution of the
difficulties facing mankind in this
critical juncture in world affairs,"
he declared.
Nevertheless the Soviet Union's
propaganda line was promptly in-
troduced by worker delegates of
Poland and Bulgaria, who spon-
sored a resolution directing the di-
rector general to begin planning
"immediately" for the good things
possible after adoption of Soviet
Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev's
"general and complete disarma-
ment" proposals.
This propaganda campaign has
been waged by the Soviet bloc na-
tions in all the United Nations spe-
cialized agencies without any result
except for the time lost by forcing
a political debate in forums that
deal with non-political issues.
Michael Ross, director of the
AFL-CIO Dept of IntL Affairs,
and Bert Seidman, Dept. of Re-
search, were named to the con-
ference's resolutions committee,
which is expected to deflate the
Polish-Bulgarian trial balloon.
On the committee to put into
final form the international stand-
ards for protecting workers from
ionizing radiations is Elwood D.
Swisher, vice president of the Oil
Workers.
E. R. White, vice president of the
Machinists, was assigned to the
committee dealing with promotion
of effective consultation and coop-
eration between labor, management
and government.
On the committee on shorter
working hours is Ernest J. Mo-
ran, administrative assistant,
Auto Workers, with Harry C.
Bates, president emeritus of the
Bricklayers, named to the com-
mittee on workers' housing.
Lourne H. Nelles, director of
Steel workers District 35„ was as-
signed to the committee that checks
on whether governments carry out
their promise to enact into their na-
tional legislation the standards set
by the ILO for the improvement of
working and social conditions the
world over.
standards of their people never will
rise.
The United States called for a
double-barrel approach to the is-
sue. On the short-range problem
of allowing the low-cost countries
to find markets, the United States
asked that all the importing na-
tions that can afford it take a
share of the exports instead of
forcing one or two to take the
brunt.
This was understood as the mean-
ing of Charles W. Adair, Jr., State
Dept. official who led the U.S. dele-
gation, in urging nations with bar-
riers to Japaneses goods to dis-
mantle them.
Under an escape clause, 14 mem-
bers of the General Agreement do
not extend its fair-trade rules to
imports from Japan. The United
States is not one of them, but many
of the big European trading coun-
tries such as Britain, France, Bel-
gium, Holland and Austria are dis-
criminating against Japanese im-
ports.
On the other hand, Adair said
that it was also the duty of the
low-cost countries to control their
exports.
A 16-nation committee was ap-
pointed to study these problems and
to suggest at the next session, start-
ing at the end of October, the "im-
mediate action" that can be taken
for helping to solve them.
The committee also was instruct-
ed to go into the long-range ques-
tion of the various economic, social
and economic factors, "including
labor costs," that affect the trade
picture. It was in this study that
it was decided "to seek the coopera-
tion of the ILO."
AFL-CIO Endorses
D. C. Teachers Bill
The AFL-CIO has renewed its
support of legislation which would
enable District of Columbia school
teachers who take leave without
pay for the purpose of advanced
study to count such leave as credit
towards retirement.
AFL-CIO Legislative Rep. George
D. Riley testified before the House
Committee on the District of Co-
lumbia in support of a bill intro-
duced by Rep. John R. Foley (D-
Md.). A counterpart bill introduced
by Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) has
been passed by the Senate.
For 500,000 Rail Workers:
Emergency Board
Proposes Pay Hike
By Dave Perlman
A Presidential Emergency Board has recommended a 5-cent
hourly increase for half-a-million nonoperating railroad employes,
coupled with major improvements in fringe benefits. The non-
binding proposals were recommended as a framework for renewed
negotiations.
Earlier an arbitration panel had^
made a binding award of a two-
step, 4 percent wage hike for mem-
bers of the Locomotive Engineers,
one of the five unions representing
some 250,000 train crew members.
The Conductors promptly negoti-
ated a similar settlement based on
the arbitration award. The Loco-
motive Firemen and the Railroad
Trainmen were reported in negoti-
ations. Wage proposals of the fifth
operating union, the Switchmen,
were before a separate Emergency
Board.
For most workers covered by
the 4 percent pattern — 2 percent
Rail Leaders Blast
Dirksen Proposal
A bill by Sen. Everett Mc-
Kinley Dirksen (R-Ill.) to bar
workers from striking — or
even bargaining — over layoffs
or abolition of jobs has been
denounced by the Railway
Labor Executives' Association
as "one of the most vicious,
anti-labor, undemocratic and
inhuman proposals ever to be
laid before Congress." The
AFL-CIO had previously de-
nounced the proposal.
In a resolution, the 23 rail
onion chiefs said the bill
"would go farther in restrict-
ing the legitimate and long-
recognized collective bargain-
ing rights of labor than has
ever before been attempted."
on July 1, 1960, and 2 percent
on Mar. 1, 1961 — the total boost
will amount to 10 or 11 cents.
Management had demanded that
both operating employes and non-
ops take a 1 5-cent hourly wage
slash.
While the operating unions were
agreed or near agreement on wages,
the publicized battle over manage-
ment work rules demands was just
beginning. The railroads have said
they will ask the unions to name
national negotiating committees on
what it calls the "featherbedding"
issue.
The Emergency Board, headed
by Harvard Prof. John T. Dun-
lop, proposed its 5-cent raise,
effective July 1, in a contract to
run "until some time in the late
fall of 1961." If the agreement
is for a longer period, the board
commented, it would "permit
greater increases."
In place of a further general wage
increase in early 1961, the Emer-
gency Board recommended the fol-
lowing benefits:
• An increase in the amount
contributed by the railroads to the
present health and welfare program
"to insure financial integrity."
• Additional contributions by
the railroads to make it possible to
give dependents benefits equal to
those now received by employes.
• Establishment by the railroads
of a group life insurance program.
• Extension of benefits to fur-
loughed employes for a period of
three months.
• Incorporation into the basic
wage rate of the 17 cents in cost-
of-living adjustments now received
by employes.
• Two weeks of vacation after
three years of service, instead of
the present five years, and reduc-
tion in the number of work days
in a year required before an em-
ploye is eligible for a vacation.
Taking note of the fact that the
railroads have denied that they are
obligated to bargain on health and
welfare benefits — and have a suit
pending in federal court — the board
said its recommendations on fringe
benefits were made "without prej-
udice" to the legal issues involved.
The Emergency Board recom-
mendations met most of the un-
ion demands in the health and
welfare area, but fell short of the
proposals on extra vacation and
holiday benefits. The non-ops
had asked a 25-cent hourly raise.
The operating unions, which did
not seek fringe improvements,
had requested 12 to 14 percent
higher wages.
Chairman G. E. Leighty of the
Railway Labor Executives' Associa-
tion, who has headed the non-op
negotiations, said top officers of the
11 unions involved will meet in
Chicago next week to consider the
Emergency Board's proposals.
Congress in Stretch,
Vote Near on Key Bills
(Continued from Page 1)
fits. It would raise benefits for
400,000 surviving children of work-
ers covered by the insurance pro-
gram and provide benefits to about
25,000 widows of workers who died
before benefits became available in
1940.
The bill would also liberalize
work test requirements to make
about 600,000 more persons eligi-
ble, and add 150,000 self-em-
ployed physicians to other profes-
sional groups now covered and
bring into the program other
groups including employes of
non-profit concerns and some
domestic help.
In the health care area, the bill
would offer medical care through
public assistance to the impover-
ished who can pass a "means test."
The aid would go to state welfare
programs providing they appropri-
ate added funds to match federal
grants.
Several of the items in the hous-
ing bill cleared by Sparkman's sub-
committee — including $300 million
for additional GI loans — could
meet Administration opposition.
The measure would provide
$350 million for urban renewal,
$500 million for college housing,
$100 million for public facilities
and $25 million each for housing
for the elderly and cooperatives.
The Senate's move in sending aid
to education to committee was an
effort to break a temporary dead-
lock which developed in the wake
of House and Senate passage of
differing measures. The House bill
provided $1.3 billion for four years
for classroom construction. Added
to the measure was a so-called anti-
segregation "amendment sponsored
by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
(D-N. Y.). The Senate's bill calls
for $1.8 billion over two years for
both school construction and teach-
ers' salaries.
Labor in Pennsylvania
Merges State Bodies
COOPERATION OF ORGANIZED LABOR, which contributed $1,300 worth of special equip-
ment, made possible heart study project involving 800 grade school pupils in JLaconia, N. H. Shown
in first test of new equipment are, left to right: Pres. George Lynch of Lakes Region Labor Coun-
cil, AFL-CIO; students Susan Hooker and Timothy Lacey; Dr. Richard J. Waters, who is con-
ducting project; Pres. Edmond J. Sullivan of Steelworkers Local 4524; and Marion Meliinger, R.N.
Labor Funds
Back School
Heart Study
Laconia, N. H. — "Operation
Heartbeat," a pioneer heart study
project among grade school chil-
dren, has been launched here as a
result of a community services proj-
ect of organized labor.
Underwritten by the Lakes Re-
gion Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and
Steelworkers Local 4524, the proj-
ect will study the heartbeats of chil-
dren from the third through the
eighth grades in order to detect at
as early an age as possible any
heart disorders.
Organized labor provided the
$1,300 needed to purchase sensi-
tive tape recording instruments
and other equipment to be used
for monitoring and analyzing the
heartbeats.
The funds were provided after
Labor Council Pres. George Lynch
and USWA Local 4524 Pres. Ed-
mond J. Sullivan discussed the proj-
with Dr. Richard J. Waters of the
Laconia Clinic.
(Continued from Page 1)
ficer setup with two co-presidents,
one from each group, a secretary
and a treasurer.
The CIO convention elected
Harry Boyer of the Steelworkers
as its co-president and Harry Block
of the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers as secretary. Boyer had
been president and Block secretary-
treasurer of the PIUC.
The state federation ran into a
political snag that took a 15-hour
continuous session of the executive
board to unravel. Delegates chose
Pres. Joseph P. McDonough as co-
president of the new body and
named Sec.-Treas. Earl C. Bohr of
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers treasurer of the new state
AFL-CIO despite McDonoughs
earlier threat to walk out if Bohr
were picked. McDonough im-
mediately announced his resigna-
tion and walked off the speakers'
platform.
The AFL group then selected as
Rockefeller Hits Nixon;
Platform Fight Forecast
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York has ruptured the harmony
of the upcoming Republican National Convention with a direct
attack on Vice Pres. Nixon's tactics in seeking the presidential
nomination and a sharp criticism of what he implied were deficiencies
in Eisenhower Administration policies on defense and both foreign
and domestic affairs. !
The Rockefeller blast — which
presaged a fight in the GOP plat-
form committee — followed Nixon's
uncontested victory in the Califor-
nia Republican primary in which
Nixon scored a larger total vote
than Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown
rolled up in the Democratic pri-
mary. The total Democratic vote,
with about five-sixths of the pre-
cincts reported, was 1.1 million for
Brown and 506,000 for a challeng-
er, veteran pension promoter
George McLain. Nixon was close
to 1.2 million.
In New York, with no presiden-
tial candidates or delegates on the
ballot, Democratic reform forces
scored a victory over the organiza-
tion of Carmine DeSapio by beat-
ing Rep. Ludwig Teller (D) for
renomination and also defeating
an incumbent state senator. Teller
won the Liberal Party nomination.
In the Montana primaries,
Rep. Lee Metcalf (D) beat three
rivals for Domination for the
Senate seat now held by Sen.
James Murray (D), who is retir-
ing. Metcalf will be opposed in
the November election by former
Republican Rep. Orvin B. Fjare.
In South Dakota, Rep. George
McGovern (D) was named to op-
pose incumbent Republican Sen.
Karl Mundt in the November elec-
tion. The Democrats chose Ray
Fitzgerald, a farmer, to run for
McGovern's seat in the House and
Republicans nominated Dr. Ben
Reiffel, a fullblooded Sioux Indian.
In the California congressional
primaries, a notable casualty was
Murray Chotiner, longtime public
relations advisor and campaign
guide for Nixon. Chotiner in his
first bid for national office on his
own was defeated.
Rockefeller's long formal state-
ment said the "new spokesmen" of
the Republican Party were declin-
ing to say before the GOP conven-
tion "what they believe, and what
they propose, to meet the great
matters before the nation."
The path to "great leadership/'
he said, "does not lie along the top
of a fence."
Charging that our world situa-
tion is "dramatically weaker" than
15 years ago, he warned that in
defense and in the conduct of
foreign policy we are "gravely
challenged" by communism. He
also lashed at Administration op-
position to school aid and a health
aid plan for the aged embodying
the social security principle.
its co-president Joseph F. Burke,
for 23 years business representative
of Sheet Metal Workers Local 19
of Philadelphia and a former pres-
ident of the Philadelphia Building
Trades Council. The executive
board's choice was confirmed by
the convention.
The former AFL and CIO
each named 15 vice presidents of
the state merged body and each
selected three auditors. No an-
nouncement was made as to
membership in the new body but
it is more than 1 million.
Peter M. McGavin was tem-
porary chairman of the merger
convention and R. J. Thomas tem-
porary secretary. Both are assist-
ants to AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany. Wesley Reedy, an aide to
Schnitzler, was temporary vice
chairman.
In his address, Schnitzler said
that to get the kind of program the
American people want — strong in
military defense and meeting the
needs of the people at home — will
require "new and more progressive
national leadership."
"This is now becoming increas-
ingly evident to the great majority
of American citizens, even to those
who for almost eight years have
been dazzled by the Eisenhower
'image'," he said.
"That image of a strong and ef-
fective leader is a myth created by
skillful Madison Avenue pitchmen.
Now the myth has been sadly de-
flated. It collapsed simultaneously
with the summit/'
He noted that there is one can-
diate for president "who, willy-
nilly, must run on" the Eisenhower
Administration's record.
"As a member of the Eisenhow-
er 'team' he bears a share of re-
sponsibility for it," Schnitzler said.
"We will weigh his qualifications,
his voting record and his party
platform as against those of his
opponent. Then, after full and
public discussion, the General
Board of the AFL-CIO will make
an endorsement next August."
Schnitzler urged the delegates to
recall in November Pres. Eisen-
howers veto of the bill to aid de-
pressed areas, with which Penn-
sylvania is dotted.
Free Germany Key to Peace — Meany
Vol. V
lined wttkly at
915 SixUtnth St. N.W,
Washington 6, 0. C.
92 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washlniton. 0. C
Saturday, June 18, 1960
17 No. 25
$ 1 .25 Wage, More Coverage
Win House Unit Approval
Broadcast
Calls For
UN Election
Declaring that Germany pro-
vides "the key to world peace,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has warned that until the future
of Germany is determined "the
world will continue to exist on
the razor edge between peace and
war."
In a nationwide radio address
over the ABC radio network on
the eve of the seventh anniversary
of the uprising in East Germany,
Meany warned that the free world
must consider no "retreat" from its
commitment to protect West Ber-
lin and preserve the integrity of the
West German Republic.
The "road to peace," he said,
lies in according the German
people "the opportunity to deter-
mine their own destiny through
free elections supervised by the
United Nations."
The working people of East Ger-
many who took part in the "spon-
taneous revolt against their Com-
munist oppressors" in 1953, Meany
declared, proved "that the Commu-
nists had to rule by force because
they could not command the will-
ing allegiance of the people."
In Stalin's Footsteps
He charged that Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev, following in the
footsteps of Lenin and Stalin, "is
determined to absorb all of Ger-
many with its millions of skilled
workers and its tremendous indus-
trial wealth." He added:
'That is why the Communists
beat down the East German revo-
lution so ruthlessly seven years ago.
That is why Stalin attempted to
(Continued on Page 10)
Unions Win
Nuclear Plant
Safety Fight
By Dave Perlman
A federal court has upheld la-
bor's demand that construction of
a giant nuclear power reactor at
Lagoona Beach, Mich., be halted
until the Atomic Energy Commis-
sion can make an unqualified
finding that the reactor can be
operated "without undue risk to
the health and safety" of 2 mil-
lion persons living in the Detroit-
Toledo metropolitan area.
In a 2-to-l decision, the U. S.
(Continued on Page 4)
HANDSHAKE SEALS AGREEMENT ending 11 -day lockout of
members of Actors' Equity by Broadway producers. Settlement gave
Equity members first pension plan for actors in history of legitimate
theater. Left to right are Angus Duncan, executive secretary of
Equity; City Labor Commissioner Harold A. Felix, who drafted set-
tlement terms; and Louis Lotito, president of League of New York
Theaters which had shut down New York shows. (See story Page 2)
In Aircraft, Missile Field:
Douglas Strike Ends,
Other Talks Go On
By Gene Kelly
Settlement of a one-day strike of Auto Workers sent 20,000 UAW
members back to their jobs at two Douglas Aircraft plants while
contract negotiations continued 81,000 other Machinists and
Auto Workers in the strife-torn air-space industry.
The Douglas settlement was accepted in UAW plants at Long
Beach, Calif., and Tulsa, Okla.^
Some 750 members at the Char-
lotte, N. C, plant continued nego-
tiating on local issues, particularly
pay scales they said were below
those in other Douglas locations.
The two-year pact was similar to
the recent UAW settlement cover-
ing 24,000 workers in three North
American Aviation plants. It in-
cludes a wage increase of 7 cents
an hour next year, plus cost-of-liv-
ing increments, pension and welfare
benefits, and other improvements
effective this year.
The Machinists saw prospects of
settlement of the nine-day Con-
vair strike in an agreement ap-
proved by IAM members at the
Cape Canaveral, Fla., missile in-
stallation. Machinists there went
back to work, but will go out again,
they said, unless 1,600 Convair
strikers at five other locations rati-
fy a management offer.
Still on strike for contract im-
provements were 13,500 IAM
members at four Lockheed Mis-
siles and Space Div. plants in
California; 35,000 IAM and
UAW members at seven t plants
(Continued on Page 3)
Labor Views Bill
As 'Breakthrough 9
By Gene Zack
The House Labor Committee put its stamp of approval on a bill
to raise the minimum wage to $JL25 an hour and broaden coverage
to include an additional 3.9 million workers, while the Senate Labor
Committee continued wrestling with the extent of coverage.
The action came amid mounting adjournment pressures, as
Senate and House leaders aimecf^
at sharply accelerated activities in -w- f i
Joblessness
Stalled at
5% Level
Total employment in the United
States increased by almost 1 million
in May while the number of job-
less dropped 201,000 from the
April total, according to the Labor
Dept's monthly job report.
The seasonally adjusted rate of
unemployment— 4.9 percent — was
only slightly changed from the
April level — 5 percent — in the re-
port released by Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell. The drop was "statis-
tically insignificant," Labor Dept.
manpower expert Seymour Wolf-
bein told a press conference.
The May 1960 figure of 4.9
percent unemployed was identical
with the percentage in May 1959.
The new employment figure
for May 1960 was 67.2 million,
as against 66 million for April
1960. The increase in employ-
ment paralleled an increase in the
total work force, which went up
1.3 million from May 1959 to
May 1960 while employment was
increasing 1.2 million.
The monthly job report pointed
(Continued on Page 4)
in
an effort to clean up the heavy
backlog of impending major legis-
lation in advance of the Demo-
cratic and Republican national
conventions next month.
The AFL-CIO Joint Minimum
Wage Committeed viewed the
committee's action in boadening
coverage as a "substantial break-
through in the line which has
been held for over 20 years"
against bringing workers under
minimum wage protection, but
called on the Senate to expand
coverage still further.
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Bie-
miller and Special Counsel Ar-
thur J. Goldberg, co-chairmen
of the committee, said that the
measure "does not cover as many
workers as the labor movement
believes" deserve coverage. They
called it "particularly unfortu-
nate" that seafood processing and
logging employes continue to be
denied protection.
The wage bill cleared by the
House committee would boost the
minimum from its present $1 level
in three steps for employes now
covered by the Fair Labor Stand-
ards Act. For newly covered em-
ployes, the $1.25 rate would be
achieved in four steps.
The Senate committee, agreed on
the principle of increasing the
minimum by steps, beat off a move
(Continued on Page 12)
Farm Worker Organizing Unit
Chartered by Executive Council
The AFL-CIO Executive Council has formally chartered the Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee and assigned it the initial task of bringing more than a quarter of a million California
farm and orchard workers into the AFL-CIO.
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler announced that the charter had been granted and rules approved
under which the committee will function "until, in the opinion of the committee and the AFL-CIO,
organization should^-
a permanent
be established."
Norman Smith, who had di-
rected the AFL-CIO's organizing
activities among California farm
workers as a pilot project, was
named by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany as chairman and director
of the A WOC and as secretary-
treasurer of its operating com-
mittee.
AFL-CIO Organization Dir. John
W. Livingston declared issuance of
the charter "will give strength, en-
couragement and impetus 1 ' to the
California farm organizing drive.
Has 4,000 Members
Livingston said more than 4,000
"long neglected" agricultural work-
ers in the Central Valley of Cali-
fornia are now "dues paying mem-
bers" of the AWOC and "a pattern
of organized bargaining has been
introduced" in the area.
From Stockton, Calif., field head-
quarters of the AWOC, came re-
ports of union victories in brief
work stoppages which have resulted
in significant hourly wage and
piece rate gains for tens of thou-
sands of pickers in cherry, .apricot,
(Continued on Page 1)
iPage Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
News Strike
Union Label
Charge Filed
Portland, Ore. — A criminal com-
plaint charging the Oregon Journal
with unauthorized use of the Allied
Printing Trades Council label was
issued here as the strike of 850
newspaper workers against the
Journal and the Oregonian eptered
its eighth month.
Oregon law prohibits unauthor-
ized use of a union label as a crim-
inal misdemeanor carrying a maxi-
mum penalty of $500 fine and three
months in jail.
Robert E. McMahon, council
secretary, swore to a criminal
complaint in the offices of Dist.
Atty. Charles E. Raymond. The
complaint was issued by Dist.
Judge Ray D. Shoemaker when
McMahon presented evidence
that the struck newspaper used
the union "bug" on printed mat-
ter as recently as last month.
The council said it also may file
another civil suit against the news-
paper. A previous petition for an
injunction was denied by district
court when the Journal agreed to
stop using the label.
The Stereotypers struck the two
Portland dailies last Nov. 10, and
all other unions refused to cross the
picket lines. An unfair labor prac-
tice charge against the Stereotypers
was issued by the National Labor
Board, and hearings held. An
NLRB decision is expected in Sep-
tember.
Members of all AFL-CIO
unions have been supporting the
strike with donations to the Port-
Band Inter-Union Strike Commit-
tee. The AFL-CIO Executive
Council at its May meeting rec-
ommended such support and pro-
tested the use of imported strike-
breakers by the two papers. It
urged all unions to work for
anti-strikebreaker laws in each
state.
Copies of Pennsylvania's "anti-
scab-importing" law have been sent
by Elmer Brown, president of the
Typographical Union, to all unions
and central bodies in the U. S. and
Canada with a suggestion that they
seek similar legislation in their states
and provinces.
Meanwhile the Portland Re-
porter, tabloid newspaper pro-
duced by a union staff, published
a third edition last week for the
first time. It was a special Rose
Festival edition. The paper has
been issued twice a week with
press runs of 130,000 each issue.
Rene Valentine, strike coordi-
nator, and Robert Webb, Reporter
publisher, said they are studying
the possibility of permanence, in-
cluding its own building, for the
paper.
PORTLAND NEWSPAPER STRIKERS get a $403 donation from
members of Local 1, Office Employes, who work at Typographical
Union headquarters in Indianapolis. The local's stewards' commit-
tee is shown giving a check to George R. Duncan, ITU assistant
secretary. Left to right are Ruth McAninch, Josie Ferguson, Edna
Watson and Lucy Preston.
Pension Plan, Raises
Reopen N. Y. Theaters
New York — Agreement on the first pension plan for actors in the
history of the legitimate theater has brought an end to an 11 -day
blackout of top dramatic and musical shows here.
The League of New York Theaters ended its lockout of 3,000
members of Actors' Equity after agreeing to settlement terms pro-
posed by New York City Labor^
Commissioner Harold A. Felix
Earlier the Broadway producers had
forecast their lockout would run
through the summer.
The settlement establishes a
pension program into which pro-
ducers will contribute 1 percent
of actors' payroll immediately;
2 percent in 1961 and 1962, and
3 percent in 1963, 1964 and
1965. By that time, the fund
will be above the $2 million
mark, exclusive of interest.
The agreement also provides that,
in the event the present 5 percent
city tax on theater tickets is re-
moved or reduced, producers will
step up their contributions to the
industrywide pension plan.
The new contract, which will run
for four years, will continue pro-
ducers' contributions of 2 percent
of payroll into a health and wel-
fare fund. The 2 percent figure was
set recently in an arbitration case
won by the union.
The agreement provides $14
in wage hikes for actors over the
four-year contract period, $18
for stage managers of dramatic
productions, $16 for stage man-
agers of musicals, and $5.50 for
extras. Increases were also ne-
gotiated in wage scales while
Farm Organizing Unit
Chartered by AFL-CIO
{Continued from Page 1)
olive and peach orchards and in
asparagus and celery harvesting.
Among the patterns set as a
result of union action were an
increase in the piece rate for
cherry picking from the 85 cents
originally set by the growers to
the $1.10 demanded by the union
and establishment of a $1.25
hourly rate for apricot pickers
and in a growing number of
peach orchards. The $1.25 rate
is 35 cents above the previous
season's pattern.
Picket signs set up by the AWOC
during the height of the crop season
have been respected, almost with-
out exception, by non-union as well
as union members, field organizers
report. In many cases, farm man-
agement has come to terms within
i matter of hours. One cherry
grower who brought in a large
group of "weekend pickers" from
Los Angeles rather than meet the
union's terms found his orchard
nearly destroyed by the clumsiness
of inexperienced pickers.
Named to serve with Smith on
the organizing committee were
AFL-CIO Regional Dir. Daniel V.
Flanagan, Franz E. Daniel of the
Dept. of Organization, AFL-CIO;
Thomas L. Pitts, executive secre-
tary-treasurer of the California
State AFL-CIO; and Henry Han-
sen, W. T. O'Rear, C. R. Van Win-
kle and Harry Finks, all secretaries
of local central labor councils in
areas where agricultural worker or-
ganizing is going on.
Smith, Daniel and Flanagan were
named to the operating committee,
which will be expanded to include
a delegate from each branch of the
AWOC.
Under the committee's rules,
branches will be established when
there is a membership of at least
200 persons in a community, when
there is an active steward training
program and a background of resi-
dential and economic stability.
on the road, rehearsal expense
money and per diem allowances.
Not related to Felix's settlement
terms were sweeping changes nego-
tiated in safe and sanitary condi-
tions in New York and road thea-
ters. All New York theaters will
be completely air conditioned by
mid-1962, theaters will have sep-
arate and complete shower facilities
within the next year, and an en-
forceable code of backstage safety
and sanitation conditions will be
adopted by the theaters.
The shutdown of the top shows
here marked the first time since
1919 that a labor dispute had rung
the curtain down on Broadway pro-
ductions. The strike 41 years ago
lasted for 30 days and ended when
Equity won recognition and its first
contract from theater owners.
Unity Talks
Held by ANG
Pressmen
Pressmen's Home, Tenn. — Of-
ficers of the Printing Pressmen and
the Newspaper Guild have agreed
at a meeting here that their unions
should work toward a single organ-
ization of all workers in the print-
ing, papermaking and allied indus-
tries.
It was the first such meeting be-
tween officers of the two unions
since the Guild was formed in 1933.
Two other similar unity talks
have been held recently — the
Typographical Union with the
Guild, and the Pressmen with
the Papermakers & Paperwork-
ers. The latter two unions re-
cently made a compact pledging
mutual aid and calling for ulti-
mate unity of all unions in the
field.
ANG officers met with ITU of-
ficers in April and again May 16
to continue discussions of ways to
achieve unity.
Pres. Anthony J. DeAndrade of
the Pressmen and Executive Vice
Pres. William J. Farson of ANG
said they agree that their organiza-
tions "should have as their objec-
tive a single organization of all
workers" in their industry, and that
they "will call on their members to
implement and support this objec-
tive."
"We expect," they added, "that
future discussions toward our
common objective will include
still other unions in the printing,
paper and related trades/'
At Telegraphers 9 Convention:
Rail Poverty Plea
Blasted by Harrison
Chicago — Acceptance by an emergency fact-finding board of an
employer "ability to pay plea" was blasted here by Pres. George ML
Harrison of the Railway Clerks in an address at the 35th convention
of the Railroad Telegraphers.
Harrison referred to a report and recommendations of the Presi-
dential emergency board which ^~
emergency
heard union testimony on contract
demands of 1 1 AFL-CIO unions,
including the Telegraphers and
Railway Clerks.
The board recommended a 5-
cent hourly wage increase; some
concessions relating to vacations
and holidays, although the length
of vacations and the number of
holidays would not be increased;
some concessions, also, on health
and welfare, and life insurance at
no cost to the employe.
The unions are seeking a wage
increase of 25 cents an hour; maxi-
mum paid vacations of four weeks
instead of the present three, and
other improvements in the vaca-
tion agreement; nine rather than the
current seven holidays with pay,
and improvements in the contract
clauses which provide for holidays;
health and welfare improvements,
and life insurance at no cost to the
employe.
Harrison warned of the danger
posed by the board's acceptance of
the railroads' "poverty plea," point-
ing out that it was the first time
that an emergency board had ac-
cepted the "ability to pay" argu-
ment.
Harrison, a vice president of
the AFL-CIO and a member of
its Executive Council, charged
that both "the board and the
public have been brainwashed
into believing the railroad indus-
try is on its deathbed, and that
workers must take sacrifices to
keep it in business."
"In a capitalistic society,** he
said, "the man who makes the bet-
ter mousetrap gets the business. If
you cannot compete you perish
under the free enterprise system —
and I am for the free enterprise
system."
He indicated that the railroad in-
dustry, instead of eliminating es-
sential services to the public and
lopping off jobs, should be making
a determined effort to get more
business. He asserted that the rail-
roads represent an "antiquated,
hesitating, backward industry,"
which hasn't "demonstrated the
vision and taken the necessary
action" to cope with the problems
of transportation.
The Railroad Telegraphers have
been victims of a concerted pro-
gram by some railroad manage-
ments to close stations. A recent
U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld
a union position that matters relat-
ing to station closings were bar-
gainable under the Railway Labor
Act. Pres. G. E. Leighty, in his
convention report, said that the
union now hopes "to stem the in-
creased pace" of the station-closing
program. He charged:
"Their program . . . has
wrought havoc with not only our
people but with the public in gen-
eral by literally creating 'ghost
towns' in many communities by
depriving them of service, rev-
enues for businesses and tax
monies."
Pres. Michael Fox of the AFL-
CIO Railway Employes' Dept
scored attempts of the railroads and
other employer and reactionary in-
terests "to turn the clock back 50
years and more" in labor relations
through such legislation as the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act.
Because of these efforts, he
warned, unions must "work close-
ly together to see to it that those
who are responsible for our des-
tiny are not fair weather friends"
but are public officials genuinely
concerned with the interests of
the people.
Pres. Harold C. Crotty of the
Maintenance of Way Employes told
the 477 convention delegates that
"for the long term, there must be a
recognition by government, and by
railroad managements, that a na-
tion that will have 87 million work-
ers in its labor force by 1970 can-
not long continue as a leading
power if government is to continue
a program of deliberately slowing
down economic growth.**
Grand Chief Guy L. Brown
of the unaffiliated Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers saluted
the "remarkably united front"
presented by rail labor, stating,
also, that "we have had a great
deal of help from the rest of la-
bor, from George Meany and the
AFL-CIO."
Brown, stressing mutual labor-
employer responsibilities, declared
that "we have a responsibility, in
my opinion, to make sure our own
agreements do not cripple the rail-
roads or handicap them in their
competitive race with other forms
of transportation.**
"I do not mean,** he said, "that
we are to surrender the protection
we have won, the gains we have
made through the years.'*
Walter J. Tuohy, president of
the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad,
called for labor-management "co-
operation and understanding to
blaze the trail of untouched oppor-
tunities in the crucial era of rail
transportation in the 60V
Rump Rail Unit Folds,
Represented Only 26
Chicago — The United Railroad Operating crafts, a rump rail la-
bor organization with headquarters here, has folded up shop.
J. P. Carberry, three-term president of the group, announced his
resignation effective June 1 and instructed secretaries of UROC to
discontinue collection of dues.
The group, which reached a peak '^ ■
of 1,700 members about eight years In addition to being rejected by
ago, had been experiencing extreme
difficulties recently. Most of the
difficulties stemmed from a Dept.
of Labor ruling a year and a half
ago that UROC was not a "bona
fide" labor organization under the
terms of the Railway Labor Act.
Under that act, unions must be
"national in scope." At the hear-
ing before the Labor Dept., it
was revealed that UROC had
only three agreements, covering
26 employes— one with a Class
II railroad operating only 20
miles of track*
the Labor Dept. as not "bona fide,"
the group had been rejected twice
before that — once in a civil action
and again by a division of the
National Railroad Adjustment
Board.
Twenty-two standard railway la-
bor unions opposed UROC in all
actions, claiming that it had not
submitted evidence to support iU
contention that it was "national in
scope,*' nor had it qualified by ex-
perience or financial stability to
adequately represent any railroad
worker.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Page Hire*
In Aircraft, Missile Field:
One-Day Douglas Strike Ends;
UAW, I AM Press Other Talks
(Continued from Page 1)
in Connecticut. Some 700 IAM
workers who walked out early in
May at the Carlstadt, N. J., elec-
tronics division of Curtiss- Wright
Corp. returned with a new con-
tract
Lockheed workers walked out
at midnight June 15 when manage-
ment negotiators failed to come
up with acceptable contract terms.
Machinist contracts cover about
8,000 workers at Sunnyvale, Calif.;
2,000 at Van Nuys, Calif., 1,000
at Vandenberg and Santa Cruz
Calif.
Machinists at Douglas plants
prepared to walk out June 16 un
less an acceptable contract offer
was made.
In the United Aircraft strike at
seven Connecticut plants, Machi-
nists and Auto Workers agreed to
limit picketing at seven plants.
Still at work but poised for
walkouts were 25,000 Machinists
IUE Asks 3.5 Percent
Wage Boost from GE
The Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers formally served con
tract demands on the huge General Electric Co., asking for a
program of economic progress and job security that would give
68,000 workers a 3.5 percent wage hike, supplemental unemploy-
ment benefits and other contract improvements
The union's demands were^
handed to GE management by IUE
Pres. James B. Carey more than
four months before the Oct. 1. ex-
piration date of the present five-
year contract, and two months
prior to the scheduled Aug. 15
opening date for negotiations.
In presenting the demands in
advance, Carey said the IUE was
offering GE an opportunity to
negotiate "free from the threats
of strikes." In the past, he said,
negotiations have generated crises
"because they were compressed
within a short space of time
against a fast-approaching dead-
line."
After presenting the demands to
GE, Carey made them public in a
unique closed - circuit television
press conference sponsored by the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.,
which is coordinating GE and
Westinghouse contract talks on be-
half of five unions — the IUE, the
Machinists, the Auto Workers, the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, and the Technical En-
gineers.
In addition to the across-the-
board wage boost and establish-
ment of a SUB fund through 3
percent payroll contribution by the
company, the union asked:
• Continuation of the present
cost-of-living escalator, coupled
with freezing into the base rates
living-cost hiked granted over the
past five years.
• Eight paid holidays; two
weeks vacation after a year of serv-
ice, graduated to four weeks after
20 years.
• Creation of a joint labor-
management committee, headed by
a neutral chairman, to recommend
a program for equitable sharing by
employes in the benefits of auto-
mation.
• A separation pay program
that would go beyond GE's present
system of giving separation pay
only when an entire plant is closed.
• Union security provisions.
• Protection of employe rights
when production is transferred
to a new plant, including fi-
nancial aid in moving to the
new location; an end to subcon-
tracting unless plant capacity is
completely utilized and employes
on layoff have been recalled; and
no overtime except for brief
emergency periods until those on
short workweeks are fully em-
ployed and those on layoff re-
called.
• Overhaul of the pension and
health and welfare programs to im-
prove benefits and make them com-
pletely non-contributory.
Pointing to GE's ability to meet
the cost of increased benefits, the
IUE said company profits zoomed
15 percent — from $247.9 million
after taxes in 1957 to $280 million
in 1959 — while "employment
plummeted by 36,000 or 12.5 per-
cent" during the same period.
at Boeing plants in Seattle; 3,-
000 Auto Workers at the Chance-
Vought Aircraft plant near
Dallas, Tex.; and 700 members
of the UAW at Bell Aircraft
locations in Buffalo, N. Y., and
Dallas.
The UAW members at Chance-
Vought left work one day for a
union meeting and said they might
issue a call for another meeting
unless management offers improve.
Bell workers walked out for a day
and may go out again, they said.
Douglas Terms
The UAW gave these details of
the new Douglas agreement:
Cost-of-living terms in effect
without limit; the five-year pension
agreement has been improved by
providing a base benefit of $2 a
month per year of service for re-
tired workers; early retirement age
was reduced to 55.
The pact provides what UAW
negotiators said is one of the
best insurance plans in the in-
dustry, including fully-paid sur-
gical benefits; extended layoff
benefits at the rate of $50 per
year up to a total $500 for lay-
offs longer than four weeks, and
other improvements.
At San Diego, Calif., the Engi-
neers & Architects Assn., unalfili
ated, called a one-day walkout at
two Convair plants. A union nego-
tiator said the professional workers
would strike every Monday until an
acceptable contract is agreed upon.
Shortly before the Machinists
returned to work at Cape Cana-
veral, Fla., General Counsel
Stuart Rothman of the National
Labor Relations Board said
NLRB would ask the Tampa,
Fla., Federal Court for an in-
junction, against the IAM. He
said Machinists 9 Lodge 610 has
been violating secondary boycott
provisions of the Labor Act by
picketing to induce other work-
ers to stay oft the job.
In Bridgeport, Conn., union and
management representatives of the
Sikorsky flant of United Aircraft
agreed to a limit of 20 pickets.
At the Sunnyvale, Calif., plant
of Lockheed, three pickets were in-
jured by autos carrying non-union
members into the plant. One union
picket suffered a broken leg.
THREE MACHINISTS walk the picket line at a Convair missile
plant site on Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Shortly after the
picture was taken, the Convair pickets were joined by striking Ma-
chinists from the Lockheed Missiles Div. plant.
Strike Warning Given
10 New York Hospitals
New York — Ten hospitals here which have refused to meet with
union representatives have been told they face a strike "anytime
after June 23" unless they agree to collective bargaining.
The strike notice was served by Drug & Hospital Local 1199 of
the Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store Union, which last year struck
seven of the hospitals for 46 days.'^ -
DEAF-MUTE DICK SANFORD, striking member of the Machinists, falls to the ground in scuffle
with police on the picket line at East Hartford, Conn., outside United Aircraft Corp.'s Pratt & Whit-
ney plant. Court agreements to limit picketing later were reached at Hartford
Local 1199 Pres. Leon J. Davis
said there will be no strike "if hos-
pital managements will agree to
meet with representatives of their
employes."
He said the union has made and
will continue to make "right up to
the final moment every possible
effort to resolve this dispute in a
fair and peaceful manner."
Union Offers Rejected
He declared the strike notice —
backed up by overwhelming votes
of union members in the hospitals
— resulted from managements' "ar-
rogant rejection" of union offers to:
• Prove that it represents a ma-
jority of the workers by "a secret
ballot representation election to be
conducted by any impartial agency."
• Mediate, arbitrate or cooper-
ate in fact-finding proceedings.
• Include "a perpetual never-
strike clause in any signed agree-
ment, thereby removing the possi-
bility of a strike for all time."
Such agreements have been nego-
tiated by the union with several
other hospitals recently brought un-
der contract.
1959 Settlement
The 1959 strike ended after the
hospitals issued a unilateral state-
ment of policy agreeing to a griev-
ance procedure and establishing a
board, with public members but no
union representation, to periodically
'review" wages and working condi-
tions.
Davis charged that the review
board has "revealed itself as an
instrument of management" and
noted that its secretary is also ex-
ecutive secretary of the New
York Hospital Association.
To avoid hardships to patients in
the 10 hospitals where strike notice
has been served — Mount Sinai,
Grand Central, Beth Israel, Beek-
man-Downtown, Flower-Fifth Ave.
and Lenox Hill, all in Manhattan;
Bronx Hospital; Brooklyn Jewish,
St. John's Episcopal and Unity hos-
pitals in Brooklyn — Davis asked
that admissions to these hospitals
be stopped immediately. He also
proposed a meeting "to work out
necessary details for providing per-
sonnel to handle emergency cases."
The union's position won influ-
ential editorial support from the
New York Times, which called
on the hospitals to "reconsider
their position against union rec-
ognition • • . ignore their legal
exemption (from federal and state
collective bargaining laws) and
modernize their labor relations
with the collective bargaining that
is the common practice of our
day."
The newspaper praised "the am-
ple grace period" given in Local
1199's strike notice and its willing-
ness to include a "never-strike"
provision.
EAL Pilots
Balk at Court
Order to Fly
Miami — Eastern Air Line pilots
continued to balk at a federal court
order forcing them to fly jet planes
under conditions they consider un-
safe as the AFL-CIO News went
to press, despite advice from their
union to comply with the injunc-
tion.
The issue, which has led to a
walkout by nearly all Eastern pilots
in support of the jet crew mem-
bers, is whether federal inspectors
who are not themselves qualified
to fly jet planes should be allowed
to take over the position of one of
the three pilots in a jet so as to ob-
serve the crew's performance dur-
ing a flight.
Current union contracts with
the major airlines require three
pilots in the cockpits of the high-
speed jet planes, even though
the Federal Aviation Agency does
no* presently require more than
two. Each pilot has assigned
flight duties.
The pilots have made it clear that
they have no objection to a federal
inspector taking over the position
of any crew member — provided the
inspector is properly qualified to
operate, the plane in which he is
flying. They say it would be im-
possible, in an emergency, to play
"musical chairs" to get the pilot
back into the place occupied by the
inspector.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE IS, 1960
THE TVA SALARY POLICY Council, shown meeting here with management of the Tennessee
Valley Authority, has secured a contract giving increases of about 3 percent and other benefits to
7,500 salaried workers. Ben Man of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept. assisted the Policy
Council, composed of three AFL-CIO unions and two unaffiliated locals, at the council's request.
Also assisting was Richard Beman, industrial engineer.
Jobless Rate Still at 4.9 Percent
Despite Increase in Employment
(Continued from Page 1)
out that most of the employment
increase in May was due to seasonal
factors. Jobs in agriculture and
construction — outdoor work — ac-
counted for 682,000, or 68 percent,
of the increase.
A continued high level of un-
employment despite the seasonal
improvement was reflected in a
total of 3.461 million jobless in
May as against 3.66 million in
April. Wolfbein said the decline
was "about an average for this time
of year."
The report noted that there were
1.7 million jobless on state unem-
ployment insurance rolls in JMay—
a drop of 270,000 from the April
total but an increase of 228,500
over May of 1959.
There was a decrease in the
so-called "long- term" unem-
ployed — jobless for 15 weeks or
more — 920,000. Between April
and May 1960 the figure dropped
by 284,000.
It was the first significant decline
in recent months in the number of
long-term unemployed. The 920,-
000 figure still is higher, however,
than the pre-recession total of 637,-
000 in May 1957.
The Labor Dept. said the total
of non-agricultural jobs in May set
a new all-time record of 61.3 mil-
lion, up 444,000 from April. Other
features of the report were these:
• The factory workweek rose by
four-tenths of an hour to a May
average of 39.8 hours, despite a
sharp cut in steel-plant working
hours. This increase in the work-
week reversed a three-month trend.
• Hourly earnings of factory
production workers remained un-
changed over the month at $2.28,
High Court Voids Tax
On Kohler Strike Aid
The Supreme Court has ruled that strike benefits paid by the
Auto Workers to a Kohler, Co. striker were not subject to federal
income tax, but left unsettled the question of whether strike bene-
fits generally are subject to taxes.
A 6-to-3 court majority ruled that in the specific case — involving
a non-union member, Allen Kaiser,^
who walked out in 1954 with the
UAW— union benefits of $565 to
Kaiser could not be counted for in-
come tax purposes.
The effect was to order the Inter-
nal Revenue Service to refund $108
it had demanded and collected as
taxes on Kaiser's benefits.
The decision appeared to swing,
however, wholly on the facts of the
case.
A federal court jury had agreed
that Kaiser's strike benefits could
not be taxed, but the trial court
judge overruled the jury, and was
in turn overruled by an appellate
court. The Supreme Court held
that the jury was justified in its
verdict.
Four members of the high
court majority said that Kaiser's
"needs" and other factors might
properly have persuaded the
jury that the UAW benefits came
from "generosity or charity" and
"not as a recompense for strik-
ing." This opinion, written by
Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.,
was joined by Chief Justice Earl
Warren and Justices Hugo L.
Black and William O. Douglas.
The other two members of the
majority — Justices Felix Frankfurt-
er and Tom C. Clark — said the
jury's verdict was justified by "suf-
ficient" evidence but that the case
was "very-sdose."
Frankfurter's opinion concurring
with the specific decision said that
ordinarily a strike benefit "does not
fit the notion of a 'gift.' " A union
has a "strong self-interest in paying
such benefits," Frankfurter de-
clared.
The three-justice minority con-
tended that the IRS was correct in
collecting taxes from Kaiser and
said it was "plain enough" that
strike benefits were paid "to enable
and encourage striking workers to
continue the strike."
The decision was announced
by the Supreme Court along with
decisions in two other tax cases
involving "gifts."
The court held, 8-to-l, that a
businessman's "gift" of a, Cadillac
car to another businessman for
"leads" on prospective customers
was taxable income to the business-
man who got the car.
It reversed a lower court ruling
that a $20,000 "gift" by New
York's Trinity Church to a former
church official was free from v tax
claims. The case was sent back to
a trial judge for further findings on
the facts.
All three cases involved a gov-
ernment request that the Supreme
Court lay down specific rules re-
garding taxes on "gifts." The high
court declined and said, in effect,
that each such case must be decided
on its merits.
but weekly earnings rose by 91
cents to $90.74 because of the in-
crease in the average workweek.
• Jobs increased by 236,000 in
the building, trades, the report said;
by 21,000 in food products, 71,000
in the service trades, by 444,000
in agriculture, 26,200 in lumber
and wood products.
• The number of fobs dropped
32,000 in steel plants, 42,000 in
machinery and transportation
equipment, 91,000 in retail and
wholesale stores, 124,000 in fed-
eral employment, largely census-
takers.
• Those on short workweeks
totaled 10.7 million in May. The
figure included 7.8 million who
usually work part-time, and 2.9 mil-
lion who usually work full-time.
The forecast for the immediate
future, according to Wolfbein,
is that unemployment will rise
this month as schools and col-
leges reach semester's end. In
July, total employment should
reach a new high point, he said.
Asked whether a 5 percent job-
less rate is satisfactory, Wolfbein
said:
"No, it is not. It is higher than
any of us want."
In "good" employment years
the rate has ranged from 3.2 to
4 percent, Wolfbein said.
Among the long-term unem-
ployed in May were 400,000 per-
sons who had been without work
for more than 26 weeks. The
number represented a drop of
100,000 from the April figure and
was 200,000 below May 1959, ac-
cording to the Labor Dept.
The rate of long-term jobless-
ness continued relatively high
among workers over 45, non-white
workers, and relatively unskilled
non-farm laborers.
Negro Colleges
Honor 7 Unions
New York— Seven AFL-CIO un-
ions and the treasurer of the New
York City Central Labor Council
were scheduled to receive citations
June 16 for their services to the
United Negro College Fund.
The treasurer is James C. Quinn,
who will be honored for serving as
co-chairman of the fund's New
York labor committee with Council
Pres. Harry Van Arsdale Jr. and
Sec. Morris Iushewitz.
Others scheduled for citation
were Local 3, Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers; the Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers, Oil Workers, Mari-
time Union, Retail, Wholesale &
Department Store Union, and
RWDSU Dist. 65 and Local 338.
At Ohio AFL-CIO Convention t
Mike Lyden Retires,
Hannah Moves Up
Cleveland — Michael J. (Mike) Lyden, the "grand old man of
Ohio labor," retired as president of the Ohio State AFL-CIO at its
second constitutional convention.
Lyden, 80, a member of the union movement in this state for
more than 50 years, helped bring about the merger of the AFL-CIO
in Ohio in 1958 and became its first'^
president after having served 23
years as head of the Ohio State
Federation of Labor.
Lyden's successor as president of
the state labor body is Phil Han-
nah, who stepped up from execu-
tive vice president. This post, cre-
ated as part of the 1958 merger
agreement, was abolished.
Hannah, a member of the
Machinists, was elected president
unanimously. Elmer F. Cope,
of the Steelworkers, who had
served as secretary-treasurer
since 1958, was re-elected with-
out opposition.
Also elected were 24 vice presi-
dents who serve on the executive
board.
Lyden was given a standing ova-
tion when he announced his re-
tirement. Delegates also adopted a
resolution praising him as a "hum-
ble, gracious, devoted and unselfish
trade unionist who has given most
of his lifetime to the service of his
fellowman."
Lyden was born in County Mayo,
Ireland, and came to the United
States at 19. He worked as a labor-
er in a chemical plant in Philadel-
phia for three years before moving
to Youngstown in 1903, where he
became an errfployee of the Mahon-
ing Valley Street Railway Co.
At that time he joined the Street,
Electrical Railway & Motor Coach
Employes, of which he is still a
member.
Delegates approved a consti-
tutional amendment raising the
per capita from 4 to 5 cents a
month. This was needed, Cope
said, so that the state body can
do a more effective job for its
members.
Another amendment permits af-
filiation by payment of only ona
month's per capita.
Ohio AFL-CIO officers hope
this will persuade locals or councils
which had dropped out or have not
joined since the 1958 merger to af-
filiate.
Before the election of the con-
vention's closing day, delegates
heard Vice Pres. Nixon labeled a
"product of payola" by Emit
Mazey, Auto Workers' secretary-
treasurer.
In a slashing attack on the
favored candidate for the Re-
publican presidential nomination,
Mazey suggested that Nixon and
Charles Van Doren would make
a fitting team as GOP presiden-
tial and vice-presidential candi-
dates.
Van Doren is the former Colum-
bia University instructor who ad-
mitted participating in rigged TV
quiz shows.
Court Backs Unions
In Atom Plant Fight
(Continued from Page 1)
Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia cancelled a construc-
tion permit which the AEC had is-
sued to a group of private utility
companies, including Detroit Edi-
son. The court acted on a petition
brought by three AFL-CIO unions
— the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers^ Auto Workers, and Paper-
makers & Paperworkers.
The court victory — still tentative
since the AEC has announced it
will appeal — climaxed a four-year
crusade by the entire labor move-
ment to block construction of the
$45 million "fast-breeder" reactor
until all safety problems had been
solved.
At the heart of the dispute
was the question of whether the
AEC is required by law to de-
termine that nuclear plants can
be safely operated before author-
izing construction.
The AEC, conceding that all
safety problems had not been
solved, maintained that continuing
research would eliminate the exist-
ing hazards in this type of reactor
and said it would slow the nation's
atomic development program if
construction had to be held up until
the "bugs" had been eliminated. At
any rate, AEC attorneys argued,
permission to operate the plant
would not be given until the com-
mission had made a final determi-
nation on the safety of the opera-
tion.
The. court majority upheld the
unions' contention that safety of op-
eration must be assured in advance
of construction, declaring:
'The economy cannot afford to
invest enormous sums in the con-
struction of an atomic reactor that
will not be operated. If enormous
sums are invested without assur-
ance that the reactor can be oper-
ated with reasonable safety, pres-
sure to permit operation without
adequate assurance will be great
and may be irresistible."
During the four-year effort to
hold up the project until safety of
operation could be assured, tho
AFL-CIO vigorously backed the
position taken by the three unions.
An Executive Council statement in
August 1956, the month the initial
construction permit was issued,
charged the AEC action showed "a
complete disregard for the safety of
the community."
At AEC hearings in 1957,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
strongly urged the commission
to reconsider its action, declar-
ing that "progress in atomic de-
velopment must be consistent
with public safety He warned
that "any major disaster in this
new industry could lead the pub-
lic to lose confidence in atomic
reactor safety controls and there-
by seriously set back development
of the peaceful uses of the atom.' 9
In rejecting labor's request for
reconsideration, the AEC main-
tained there was "reasonable assur-
ance ... for the purposes of this
provisional construction permit**
that the plant could be operated
safely.
The appellate court asserted that
such a qualified finding "does not
meet the purpose of the (Atomic
Energy) Act."
In declaring that congressional
intent was clear that there should
be a firm finding of safety before
construction was authorized, the
majority quoted from the Sen-
ate debate on the Atomic Energy
Act in which Sen. Hubert H.
Humphrey (D-Minn.) raised this
point.
IUE Attorney Benjamin C. Sigal
represented the three unions before
the appellate court The majority
decision was handed down by
Judges Henry W. Edgerton and
David L. Bazelon.
Judge Warren E. Burger dis-
sented, declaring there were no
grounds for thinking that the AEC
would be influenced by the fact that
millions of dollars had been invest-
ed in the project.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Page Five
AFL-CIO Convention Acts:
Political Aid Fund
Voted in Michigan
Grand Rapids, Mich. — A special fund to aid "politically dis-
tressed areas" was established by the Michigan AFL-CIO convention
when it voted a 1-cent increase in per capita taxes.
Of the new 7-cent monthly rate, 1.5 cents will be set aside for
a COPE fund to be used primarily in areas of low union member-
ship. More than $100,000 annually'^
will be available to local central
unions without adequate political
action funds of their own. The
over-all COPE program will be fi-
nanced by the state organization's
general fund plus voluntary con-
tributions.
The first convention since state
merger in 1958, the four-day meet-
ing drew 950 delegates who ham-
mered out state and national legis-
lative objectives in the coming elec-
tion campaigns.
Presidential Hopefuls Speak
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
endorsed for the Democratic presi-
dential nomination by Gov. G.
Mennen Williams, came to the con-
vention in a bid to solidify Michi-
gan support. His pledge of immedi-
ate action to nullify the job losses
caused by automation drew enthu-
siastic response.
Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.)
followed Kennedy to the podium a
day later. The Missouri Demo-
crat delivered a stinging denuncia
tion of the domestic and foreign
policies of the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration.
Williams, addressing a state
labor convention for the last time
as governor, pledged to continue
his cooperation with labor in
whatever capacity he may.
"People in labor have never asked
me to do anything for them that
was not of benefit to all the peo-
ple," he told the convention. The
six-term governor was presented
with a plaque hailing him as "one
of the greatest governors in the
history of the United States."
Three Democratic candidates to
succeed Williams were also heard —
Lt. Gov. John B. Swainson, Sec. of
State James Hare and Detroit Coun-
cilman Edward Connor. All have
been elected to their present posi-
tions with labor support. This
situation resulted in a policy of no
AFL-CIO endorsement in the
gubernatorial primary. Sen. Patrick
V. McNamara (D-Mich.) was en-
RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT of the Midwest Labor Press Association at a meeting in Chicago was
I Irwin Klass (left), editor of the Chicago Federation News. Seen with him are (left to right) Jim
dorsed for re-election and the union
nod in the contest for lieutenant-
governor on the Democratic ticket
went to Richard VanderVeen, [
young Grand Rapids attorney.
A three-hour debate on state and I
national issues was a highlight of
the convention. Rep. Alvin Bentley
(R-Mich.) Republican candidate op-
posing McNamara, was matched [
^^^^♦^^^^^^i^^^^^Tsw-^^^^?**^^!™" - B ? => ^^^~ 1 071ax-lc, editor of the Ironworker; Warren Bolds, editor for Steelworkers Local 3911, Chicago; Roland
ocratic party chairman, m a dis-l _„ ... . ^ _ , ' . _ , ' , __. _
cussion of health legislation. Staeb- Whlte ' edltor °* the Dubuque (Iowa.) Leader, and rjenry Lowenstern of the Machinist,
ler supported the Forand bill, Bent- 1
ley indicated he favored a "volun
tary" program of health insurance
There were no contests for the
three top offices in the state organi-
zation. Pres. August Scholle and
Sec.-Treas. Barney Hopkins were
re-elected by acclamation. Unani
mous choice for executive vice
Stand on Health Care for Aged
Political Backing Test— Schnitzler
Columbus, O. — AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler has bluntly warned that organized
labor will use each candidate's stand on medical care for the aged as a tk clear-cut and conclusive'. test
president — a post vacant since the I for determining labor support,
death of George Murphy — was Wil- "Any candidate for Congress who refuses to endorse Forand-type health insurance for those over
Ham C. Marshall, president of Lo- 65," Schnitzler told the merger convention of the Columbus Federation of Labor and the Industrial
cal 1303, Street, Electric Railway Union Council, "is manifestly un-'f
& Motor Coach Operators and worthy of the support of American '
chairman of the national council I workers."
of Greyhound bus locals. The The AFL-CIO leader added that
newly-elected 40-man executive any candidate "who tries to weasel
board includes 17 non-incumbents.
The convention voted opposi-
tion to a drive for a state consti-
tutional convention sponsored by
the League of Women Voters and
the Junior Chamber of Com-
merce. The business-sponsored
plan calls for election of dele-
gates to such a convention on the
basis of unrepresentative legisla-
tive districts. This would permit,
the convention pointed out, a
minority of Michigan voters to
elect a majority of delegates who
would rewrite the state constitu-
tion.
Delegates also adopted resolu-
tions supporting improvements in |
unemployment compensation, a
state corporate profits tax, lunch
Union Leaders Sponsor
Testimonial to Mitchell
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell will be honored at a testimonial
dinner sponsored by the American labor movement on Wednesday,
June 29, in the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Washington, D. C.
The non-political affair will mark Mitchell's seven years of public
service in his present cabinet post.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany is* Schoemann and L
honorary chairman for the dinner,
and AFL-CIO Sec.-TreaV William
F. Schnitzler is honorary vice
chairman. George M. Harrison,
president of the Railway Clerks, is
dinner committee chairman.
Twenty-eight top leaders of
American labor, all of whom
are members of the AFL-CIO
Executive Council and officers
of national and international un-
ions, are serving on the dinner
committee.
Besides Meany, Schnitzler and
Harrison, they include Vice Presi-
dents Walter P. Reuther, Harry C.
Bates, William C. Birthright, James
B. Carey, William . C. Doherty,
David Dubinsky, Charles J. Mac-
Gowan. David J. McDonald, Emil
Rieve, William L. McFetridge, Jo-
seph Curran, M. A. Hutcheson, Jo-
seph D. Keenan, L. S. Buckmaster,
Jacob S. Potofsky, A. Philip Ran-
dolph, Richard F. Walsh, Lee W.
Minton, Joseph A. Beirne, James A.
Suffridge, O. A. Knight, Karl F.
Feller, Paul L. Phillips, Peter T.
on this issue and declines to come
out publicly and wholeheartedly in
favor" of providing health care for
the aged through the social secur-
ity mechanism ''identifies himself as
a reactionary who would oppose
virtually the entire progressive pro-
gram of the trade union move-
ment."
A crowd of 400 delegates and
visitors was on hand for the
convention which brought to-
gether 114 local unions repre-
senting between 45,000 and
50,000 members into the new
Columbus-Franklin County
AFL-CIO. With merger here,
organized labor has now achieved
unity in all of the state's major
cities.
Elected president of the merged
counter sit-ins, state legislation I body was Frank Brockmeyer, in-
outlawing importation of strike- ternational representative of the
breakers, and the Portland news- Auto Workers. Robert W. Greer,
paper strike. | executive secretary-treasurer of the
former Columbus federation, was
elected to the same office in the
merged union. Charles Larry of
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers was named executive vice
president.
Delegates unanimously approved
the merger agreement, adopted a
constitution for the new central
body, and elected 10 vice presi-
dents.
Schnitzler told delegates to the
harmony convention that 1960
"is a year of decision" for the
nation, and said that "to meet
the tests that lie ahead, America
needs new and stronger and more
progressive leadership."
Declaring that the nation has
"lost precious ground" in the past
seven and a half years, Schnitzler
pointed out that America has fallen
behind in economic development,
education, housing, urban renewal,
health care, national defense and
scientific development. The nation,
he said, needs "leadership that be-
lieves that the government can act
and should act to protect the safety
and the welfare of its people."
In the fight for broadening the
social security system to provide
health care for the aged, Schnitz-
ler said, "labor now looks to the
Senate" in the wake of House Ways
& Means Committee action in ap-
proving a substitute program geared
only to medical care for the in-
digent through public relief.
'If we fight hard enough," he
told the convention, "there is a
good chance thai we can obtain
M. Raftery.
Also on the committee are: C. J
Haggerty, president, AFL-CIO
Building and Construction Trades
Dept.; Harry E. O'Reilly, execu-
tive secretary-treasurer, AFL-CIO
Maritime Trades Dept.; James A
Brownlow, president, AFL-CIO
Metal Trades Dept.; A. E. Lyon,
executive secretary, Railway Labor
Executives' Association; G. E.
Leighty, chairman, RLEA; Michael
Fox, president, AFL-CIO Railroad
Employees Dept.; Joseph Lewis,
secretary-treasurer, AFL T CIO Un-
ion Label and Service Trades Dept.;
N. A. Zonarich, organizational di-
rector, AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept.; Jacob Clay man, administra-
tive director, IUD; .and Thomas
Kennedy, president, Mine Workers.
Invitations have been sent to all
national and international unions of
the AFL-CIO and the Mine Work-
ers and state central labor bodies of
the AFL-CIO.
Speakers at the testimonial din-
ner will be announced at a later
date.
Medical Problems
Of Aged in WD Film
A presentation of the prob-
lems of medical care for the
' aged has been made by the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept. in a motion picture en-
titled "Cast Me Not Off."
The film presents the facts
and conclusions of the Spe-
cial Senate subcommittee on
the Problems of the Aged and
Aging, headed by Sen. Pat
McNamara (D-Mich.), and is
narrated by John Fitzpatrick,
Auto Workers' representative
for the Ford Pension Pro-
gram.
Prints of the 28-minute
film can be obtained through
the IUD.
enactment of a sound program of
health insurance for the aged at
this session of Congress."
He said the principle contained
in the bill introduced by Rep. Aime
J. Forand (D-R. I.) "provides a
simple way" to provide medical
care. Financing would be through
increased social security taxes not
exceeding $12 a year each for em-
ployers and employes. .
"Thus, for a few nickles a week,
every worker and his family would
earn health insurance coverage for
himself and his family on retire-
ment," Schnitzler said.
Hails Unity
The AFL-CIO official hailed or-
ganized labor in Columbus for
achieving unity, declaring that
merger here and elsewhere is "a
constructive contribution to the
future welfare of our country and
of the working people whom we all
serve."
Labor unity, be said, is "all-im-
portant in this election year." He
pointed out that with the trade un-
ion movement currently being made
the target of ruinous atacks by its
enemies, the only choice we have
is between unity and failure."
Speed Urged on Aid
To Medical Schools
The AFL-CIO has urged Congress to act "with a sense of urgen-
cy" on bills to provide federal assistance for medical research and
medical school construction to help meet the "pressing" shortage of
doctors.
In a statement submitted to a House Commerce subcommittee,
Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemil-^ -
ler said the need for federal aid to
medical, dental and public health
education "is so compelling, so well
documented, and so immense that
it is impossible to justify a single
further day of hesitation or delay.
The AFL-CIO spokesman
strongly endorsed a bill sponsored
by Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-R. I.)
to provide $1.25 billion for med-
ical construction, and a measure
introduced by Rep. Oren Harris
(D-Ark.) to earmark funds for
medical research on a program
basis rather than for individual
projects.
Fogarty's bill would provide $50
million a year for five years for ex-
pansion and improvement of exist-
ing medical school facilities, plus
$100 million annually for 10 years
to build new medical training cen-
ters. Biemiller pointed out that con-
sultants to Health, Education &
Welfare Sec. Arthur S. Flemming
indicated recently that between 14
and 20 new medical schools are
needed merely to maintain the
present ratio of physicians to popu-
lation.
"Recent years," Biemiller said in
his statement, "have seen a striking
expansion in the demand for medi-
cal services. The rapid spread of
health insurance programs and pre-
payment plans of various kinds has
meant that millions of people who
previously lacked the means (to
finance medical attention) now are
in a position to do so. . . .
"In the face of this, the sup-
ply of physicians is increasing at
a relatively static rate that falls
far short even of the rate that
would be required to maintain
the existing doctor-patient ratio
against the normal increase in
population."
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
the "chief barrier" to any substan-
tial increase in the supply of physi-
cians and dentists "is the limited
capacity of the nation's medical
schools," which are "already hard-
pressed just to met their bare oper-
ating budgets at present levels of
activities."
Page Six:
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Danger Signals
TIT HEN THE LABOR DEPT. reports that 67.2 million Ameri-
cans held jobs during May there is a tendency to relax and
bask in the rosy glow of this seeming abundance and prosperity.
The impact of a report showing so many Americans employed
tends to downgrade the other figures in the monthly job report —
figures that are cause for concern and anxiety about the nation's
continuing economic health.
The rate of unemployment in the same month that saw 67.2
million employed was 4.9 percent of the labor force — exactly the
same rate as 12 months ago.
In a year of widely advertised prosperity and boom the expecta-
tion is for a sharp drop in the rate of unemployment. But month
after month the rate has remained dangerously static at around the
5 percent mark.
The May report has other danger signals. Most of the increase in
employment for the month — 68 percent — is seasonal. And the in-
crease in the total work force over the past year has been greater
than the increase in employment.
The continued high level of unemployment means that in the
past 12 months we have been running hard to stand still.
Truth About Health Care
A MAJOR NATIONAL insurance company has effectively de-
molished the phony propaganda that health* care for thQ aged
financed under the social security system will damage the interests
of private insurance companies.
Nationwide Insurance, a company with assets of $350 million
and more than 3 million outstanding policies in 20 states, has long
been a leader in the nation's cooperative movement. In endorsing
the social security principle for health care for the aged, the com-
pany declares that rather than damage the insurance industry the
companies "would have a broader, sounder market for voluntary
insurance among our older people by building on the basic pro-
visions of social insurance legislation."
Nationwide recalls that the insurance industry opposed basic
social security legislation 25 years ago for essentially the same
reasons it is opposing health care for the aged now.
The excellently documented and reasoned case presented by Na-
tionwide in favor of using the existing social security system to pro-
vide health care for the aged should put to rest for all time the hys-
terical opposition of the insurance and medical lobbies.
Bar to Farm Exploitation
THE AFL-CIO'S PILOT PROJECT in California to organize
farm workers has produced tangible results and strong evidence
that this exploited work force is ready to join millions of American
workers in building strong trade unions.
The project revealed also the need for new machinery to meet
the special problems and needs of farm workers and has led to the
formation of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee by
the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
AWOC will base its activities on the experience revealed by the
pilot project in directing the campaign to bring the 250,000 farm
workers in California into the AFL-CIO.
The very existence of the AWOC will tend to curb the cruel
exploitation of farm workers by growers and ranchers, and as it
grows in strength and membership the human dignity and im-
proved standard of living inherent in trade union membership
will spread to an area that has long been the shame of the nation.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan.
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Lovo
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, June 18, 1960
No. 25
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In*
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one Is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'We're Picking Up Speed'
Linked to World Peace, Freedom:
European Workers Show Keen
Interest in U. S. Election Race
By Saul Miller
AN AMERICAN visiting in Europe in June
1960 is impressed by the tremendous interest
in American political affairs and most particularly
the ever-recurring question as to the probable
identity of the next occupant of the White House.
This interest is widespread in Rome, London
and Paris, not only among newspapermen and gov-
ernment officials and others occupationally con-
cerned with American politics, but among ordi-
nary voters who view the U.S. presidential elec-
tion as an integral part of the never-ending battle
for world peace and freedom.
It is especially true in the free labor move-
ments of Italy and France and in the British
Trades Union Congress. In the labor move-
ments of these countries major attention is given
to foreign affairs, and foreign policy questions
loom importantly in the internal functioning* of
these organizations.
In France and Italy, where free, democratic
trade union groups are in constant combat with
Communist unions, foreign policy is critically im-
portant as the Communist unions respond to the
latest twitches from the Kremlin and pattern their
domestic policies to dovetail with the latest Soviet
position. *
IN THE ROME HEADQUARTERS of CISL,
the free trade union movement of Italy, not of-
ficially linked with any political party but whose
leaders belong to several of the left-of-center
groups, the concern is with the political instability
that has led to a parade of new governments in the
past few months.
The long-term hope for political stability, as
far as Italian free labor is concerned, rests with
a political realignment of the progressive, demo-
cratic forces of the Social Democrats, the Christ-
ian Democrats, the Republicans and possibly
the left-wing Socialists led by Nenni, if they can
in a real sense break away from the Com-
munists in the trade unions, the municipal gov-
ernments and the cooperatives*
But the Communist CGIL is staging a desperate
struggle to prevent a break by the left Socialists
and the general outlook is uncertain. The rela-
tive degree of chill in the cold war, the outlook of
the new American Administration that will take
office in 1961, and the unrelenting Soviet drive to
crack the democratic parties all will play a role in
the outcome.
IN PARIS, the free trade union movement as
represented by Force Ouvriere is involved in a
series of rotating strikes stimulated by the De-
Gaulle government's policy of attempting to freeze
wage levels as part of an anti-inflation campaign
and by the Communist CGT's forcing of the
strike issue against the unpopular government pol-
icies.
The demand for higher wages in view of in-
creased efficiency and diminishing buying power is
in the traditional trade union vein. And the strikes
reinforce the position of the unions at the bargain-
ing table where negotiations for a pay increase
have been underway for some time.
But the CGT's new strike strategy and its ap-
proach to the problems facing the country reveal
overtones of Khrushchev's change in policy toward
France and especially on the Algerian question.
The Kremlin had treated the Algerian question
circumspectly before the Summit; now Khrush-
chev has again sharply attacked the DeGaulle re-
gime for waging war against Algeria with the
"complicity of the United States."
The basic economic problems of free French
trade unionists is coupled with the international
situation and great attention is paid to the contests
for the U.S. presidential nominations.
IN LONDON, the TUC is deeply involved in a
foreign policy debate with particular emphasis on
nuclear disarmament that is linked with the in-
ternal political policies of the Labor party.
The Summit collapse has acted to intensify the
debate in the TUC and the Labor party and has
spurred new interest in the running discussion,
since the party's last election defeat, in reshaping
its domestic and foreign policy lines.
But while the debate is internal, the American
presidential election casts its shadow, with the ex-
pectation that the change in Administration may
bring a new emphasis, a new tactic that could af-
fect the world situation.
The feelings in these countries place the
American political contest in its proper context
of being an election not only for Americans but
for the world. The necessity is for Americans
to understand the presidential campaign in this
context so that they can choose wisely not only
a president but a world leaden
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. Jl \E 18. 1960
Page So veil
Morgan Says:
Low Income of Farm Workers
Clouds Picture of Prosperity
Morgan
( This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
BEHIND THAT HAPPY FIGURE of more
than 67 million Americans working at full-
time jobs in May, which the Labor Dept. was
understandably delighted to release, lie some
circumstances which dull
the brightness of the pic-
ture.
Take, for instance, the
lot of- some 2 million per-
sons — half a million of
them migrants — doing the
work of Hank the hired
hand, farm laborers help-
ing to produce the crops
to feed the country.
Virtually unprotected by
any laws guaranteeing
their wages or working standards, ineligible, for
the most part, for even minimal public welfare
benefits, these people are stuck on the lowest rung
of the U. S. economic ladder. Some of them,
maybe even a majority, were among those 67
million employed, since it was still the spring
planting season but their income was another
matter. Their average annual wage for 1958 for
farm work only was $766, plus $195 for off-farm
jobs, bringing their total income to the munificent
sum of $961 a person at a time when our gross
national product was approaching half a trillion
dollars.
THE SQUEEZE is on in Congress again to deny
them any relief from their plight. It's as if House
Minority Leader Charlie Halleck, or someone
with an equal flair for drama on Capitol Hill,
had decided that these folks should become a
sort of permanent repertory company, playing
the Grapes of Wrath in perpetuity. . It's a bril-
liant job of type-casting but the show is begin-
ning to bore citizens with a sense of social justice.
Last March what Labor Sec. James Mitchell
thought was a bargain was struck with Agricul-
ture Sec. Benson in which Mitchell agreed not to
press, now, for needed reforms in Public Law 78
governing the importation of nearly half a million
Mexican farm workers, or braceros.
In return Benson was to call off . the dogs of
the Farm Bureau and other right-wing grower
types baying for legislation to strip Mitchell of
the thin control he already exercised through
the totally U.S. -financed federal placement
service to require growers hiring through that
service to met the meagerest minimum wage
and working standards.
Although P. L. 78 doesn't expire until June
1961, the farm lobby also wanted to bull an ex
tension of it through this session of Congress
That too Mitchell was able to head off — but not
for long.
UNDER PRESSURES that are not completely
identifiable beyond the operation of the GOP-
Southern Democrat coalition the Mitchell-Benson
bargain has become unstuck. An amendment
fathered by Congressman Gathings, Arkansas
Democrat, has unexpectedly sailed through the
Rules Committee and is due for early debate on
the House floor.
It would bring about all the things Benson pur-
portedly promised Mitchell, who after all is on the
same- Administration team, would not happen.
In a minority report on the Gathings bill,
three midwestern congressmen, all Democrats,
called its moral implications "shocking,' 9
charged it would increase the destitution, under-
employment and exploitation of 2.3 million
domestic farm workers, and put the family farm
at a further competitive disadvantage.
Two emerging developments, however, indicate
that all is not lost in the cause of Hank the hired
hand and his economic class.
To head off the Gathings move in the House,
Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) introduced leg-
islation in the Senate which would provide some
protection for farm workers and would eliminate
the importation of Mexican labor after another
two years. (This was a World War II measure to
fill shortages of farm workers and it has bene
fited both the U. S. and Mexico but it needs much
tighter and more judicious administration pointed
toward its gradual suspension.)
The trade union movement has been singularly
unsuccessful in organizing field workers partly
because its major attention has been on in-
dustry. But AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William
Schnitzler announced a major new organizational
effort in agriculture which has already harvested
4,000 paid-up rank-and-file recruits, mostly in
California. Several contracts have been signed
with growers with substantial improvements in
wages and job conditions.
Woman's work is never done, as the old saw
said, and neither is the job of strengthening the
social structure.
Washington Reports:
Cooper, McCarthy Ask Senate
Passage of Forand-Type Bill
HP HE SENATE SHOULD PASS a bill in this
session of Congress to provide health insur-
ance for the aged through the social security prin-
ciple, Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) and Sen.
Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) asserted on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service program, heard on 350 radio stations.
The House Ways & Means Committee voted
down a bill sponsored by Rep, Aime Forand
(D-R. I.), which would have been based on the
social security principle. It has adopted instead
a federal-state matching measure which Mc-
Carthy said might provide aid to "naif a mil-
lion persons if they go through the process of
meeting the means test.**
Cooper is co-sponsor of a measure based on
foderal-state participation, and he said he would
vote for that, but "the Forand Bill is the simplest
and most manageable.** At least it would be a
starting point, with an additional measure calling
for federal and state grants to provide health in-
surance for those not receiving social security old
age assistance.
MCCARTHY SAID the Senate could start by
adopting the bill proposed by Sen. Pat McNa-
mara (D-Mich.), which b similar to the Forand
fa&L
JT * fe! Jfert feat bill or something
comparable to it might be included in the social
security amendment and passed by the Senate,"
he said.
"Everyone who has taken even a glancing look
at the problem of medical expenses for the aged
realizes that something needs to be done. Anyone
familiar with the way the social security program
has worked out must conclude that the only decent
and the most effective way to deal with medical
expenses for the aged is through that well estab-
lished program."
COOPER SAID he believed there is "wide sup-
port in the Senate for a comprehensive and ade-
quate bill. We'll maybe differ on the means. . . .
I think that without question the need (to take care
of the health needs of the aged) must be met in
this great rich country."
On the requirement for a means test, in the
House Ways & Means Committee version, Mc-
Carthy said, "I had hoped that we had moved be-
yond the point where the means test is a part of
a national program." He declared that the pro-
posal that the states be required to match funds
would mean that people in many states would not
be aided at all.
"This is a national problem," he said, " and it
ought to be approached through a national pro-
gram."
WASNtNGTON
WceiwidSAetion I
THE POLITICAL WRITERS have turned out innumerable
speculative columns on the purpose and intent of Gov. Rockefeller
in issuing his blast at Vice Pres. Nixon and the Eisenhower Admin-
istration. Just a day before the blast was made, the usually well-
informed Wall Street Journal had a piece affirming that Rockefeller
was now gunning for the GOP presidential nomination in 1964 —
in the belief that Nixon would be nominated this ye*ar and beaten
next November.
It seems to this observer that two presumptions are logical:
That Rockefeller was impelled to speak — and to speak now,
• not later — because he is genuinely and deeply disturbed about
Eisenhower defense policies, the Eisenhower Administration's con-
duct of foreign policy, the Eisenhower (and Nixon?) opposition to
federal school aid and opposition to health care for the aged
through social security.
O That the governor fervently doubts that Nixon is the man to
^ # rebuild and modernize the Republican Party. That such a
rebuilding is urgently necessary, and that the process must be
started at whatever the immediate apparent cost.
Rockefeller's 1964 ambitions have been temporarily damaged
with GOP professionals, who hate for anyone to challenge their
grip on the party. But a lot of things can happen in four years.
If the governor is not motivated by a strong desire to take his
party and drag it, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the
seventh decade of the twentieth century, he is talking like a man
motivated that way.
He is talking, in fact, the way Wendell L. Willkie talked in 1944
in a drive for a second GOP presidential nomination — like a man
almost in despair at the incapacity of the GOP's longtime leaders
to understand the time of day.
Willkie in private conversations made no secret of his desire for
another chance to remake the Republican party and he had a tough,
realistic idea how he could use the powers of the White House to do
it. That's why the professionals repudiated him. Rockefeller's
program in New York State, some of his attitudes on domestic
issues, are subject to challenge by liberals as well as by GOP right-
wingers. But he is different, certainly, from GOP right-wingers, and
he is clearly seeking to place a fresh stamp on his party.
* * *
WEEK AFTER WEEK, as the Supreme Court turns out its deci-
sions, the fact emerges that a different court has come into being,
and that in the field of personal liberties and individual immunities
and the field of labor law. The current minority consists of Chief
Justic Earl Warren and Associate Justices Hugo L. Black and
William O. Douglas, often joined by Associate Justice William J.
Brennan, Jr.
The new conservative majority, broadly speaking, consists of
three justices named by Pres. Eisenhower — John Marshall Butler,
Charles E. Whittaker and Potter Stewart — and Justices Felix Frank-
furter and Tom C. Clark. Frankfurter was Roosevelt's nominee,
Clark was appointed by former Pres. Truman.
Looking back across more than 20 years since Roosevelt as-
sailed the "old" court for "horse-and-buggy" attitudes but later
had the opportunity to name eight new justices, it is easy to believe
that it is harder to keep the court liberal than to liberalize it
initially.
Of Roosevelt's appointees, only three are left — Black and Douglas,
plus Frankfurter. All are remarkable men, all have left their mark.
But Frankfurter almost from the beginning showed a different
philosophy from Douglas and Black, and his doctrine is now in the
ascendency.
Mr. Eisenhower's appointment of Warren was surely a dis-
tinguished one; the chief justice brought with him warmth and a
profound understanding of the nature of American life. Justice
Brennan is manifestly a scholar in the law as well as a human-
itarian.
It is a familiar line nevertheless to read:
"The chief justice and Justices Black and Douglas dissenting,"
often with Justice Brennan's name added.
THE SENATE MUST PASS a bill providing health insurance for
the aged, Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.), on left, and Sen. John
Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) agreed as they were interviewed on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
AWARD OF MERIT given annually by the New York State AFL-
CIO Union Label & Service Trades Dept. was presented to Mayor
Robert F. Wagner (left) of New York City by the Rt. Rev. Msgr
John P. Boland, first chairman of the new State Labor Relations
Board, during the department's 33rd convention in Albany.
•mm
7 msm
How to Buy:
Annual Sales Offer
Chance for Saving
By Sidney Margolius
A FELLOW REPORTER once paid $50 for a coat at a well-
known men's shop. The next week he saw the same coat at
the same store for only $40. If he had waited one week he'd have
saved 20 percent. This was a family man who could well have used
that $10 for other clothing needs.
Timing your buying to take advantage of the annual sales and
clearances is one of the best money-
saving techniques. If you don't plan
your buying this way, when practi-
cal, you're likely to pay $12 for
shoes this week and see them offered
for $10 next week, or $1.30 for ny-
lon stockings now and see them in
the July sales for 99 cents. These
are actual examples.
Similarly, if you need a new fur-
nace you can buy it now for $30 less
than you'll have to pay in six weeks.
You can save 5 to 10 percent on
fuel by filling up now at reduced
summer prices. There are many
ways to save if you anticipate your
needs and*watch for the sales. That's
the main reason why we publish this monthly buying calendar
prepared especially for working families.
July is one of the two best months to find annual sales and price
reductions (the other is January). Among the imporatnt July sales
and clearances are shoes; summer dresses, sportswear and hosiery;
men's suits, jackets and shirts; used cars; refrigerators and washing
machines; soaps, toiletries and drug sundries.
Here are notes on buying opportunities for July, 1960:
BUILDING MATERIALS: Tight money and the building slow-
down have pushed down prices of some building materials.
Families planning home improvements or expansions should note
that prices of these materials have dropped: asphalt roofing (quite
heavily); heating equipment; plumbing fixtures (slightly); lumber (a
little); plywood (heavily).
APPLIANCES: Huge inventories of household appliances have
caused widespread layoffs of workers, and compelled heavy price
cutting. The cuts are sharpest on the standard non-deluxe models.
One national chain that normally priced its two-speed, 10-pound
washer at $230, cut it to $198 last spring and recently sale-priced
it at $163.
Automatic dryers recently have been priced as low as $128.
Similarly, 13-cubic-foot refrigerators that were $200 last year,
then were reduced to $180, now are available for less than $170.
Prices also are being cut on ranges, sewing machines and vacuum
cleaners. You can expect prices of large appliances to be higher
again in August, when the 1961 models arrive in the stores.
CLOTHING VALUES: One of the biggest hits in women's wear
this year is Arnel jersey dresses. Arnel is a "triacetate" — a kind of
rich relative of the familiar acetate fabric which is a second cousin
to rayon. Triacetate drapes well, resists wrinkles, washes well, drips
dry, and dries fast. Arnel jersey dresses are particularly useful for
vacation and travel wear, and are available in July sales for as little
as $10.
CARS: We're also coming into a period of additional price-cutting
on cars. Used-car prices traditionally drop after July 4, but this
year started tumbling in the spring because of the competition from
the new compacts.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney MarjroHus)
From Maine to Hawaii:
139 TV Stations Showing
'Americans at Work' Films
The AFL-CIO's TV film series, "Americans at Work" is currently being presented by 139 tele-
vision stations from coast to coast, in the states of Alaska and Hawaii and in Puerto Rico.
The series is made available to the stations without cost to give them the opportunity of showing
viewers the story of American workers on the job. This is the current station line-up for "Ameri-
cans at Work." Consult your local newspaper for the exact viewing time.
CITY-STATE
Birmingham, Ala.
Dothan, Ala.
Florence, Ala.
Mobile, Ala.
Anchorage, Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska
Phoenix, Ariz.
Tucson, Ariz.
Yuma, Ariz.
Ft. Smith, Ark.
Chico, Calif.
Eureka, Calif.
Fresno, Calif.
San Diego, Calif.
Sari Francisco, Calif.
San Jose, Calif.
Denver, Colo.
Grand Junction, Colo.
Pueblo, Colo.
Bridgeport, Conn.
Hartford, Conn.
New Haven, Conn.
Waterbury, Conn.
Washington, D. C.
Ft. Myers, Fla.
Panama City, Fla.
Pensacola, Fla.
St. Petersburg, Fla.
Columbus, Ga.
Honolulu, Hawaii
Boise, Ida.
Lewiston, Ida.
Springfield, 111.
Elkhart, Ind.
Evansville, Ind.
Fort Wayne, Ind.
South Bend, Ind.
Terre Haute, Ind.
Des Moines, la.
Fort Dodge, la.
Sioux City, la.
Waterloo, la.
Topeka, Kan.
Lexington, Ky.
Louisville, Ky.
Alexandria, La.
Baton Rouge, La.
Lafayette, La.
Lake Charles, La.
Monroe, La.
Bangor, Me.
Portland, Me.
Baltimore, Md.
Salisbury, Md.
Boston, Mass.
Springfield, Mass.
Detroit, Mich.
Saginaw, Mich.
Traverse City, Mich.
Alexandria, Minn.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Hattiesburg, Miss.
Jackson, Miss.
Meridian, Miss.
Kansas City, Mo.
Springfield, Mo.
St. Louis, Mo.
Billings, Mont.
Butte, Mont.
STATION
HA V
CITY-STATE
STATION
DAY
WBRC-TV
Sunday
Glendive, Mont.
KXGN-TV
Wednesday
WTVY-1V
Wednesday
Great Falls, Mont.
KFBB-TV
Tuesday
WOWL- 1 V
Saturday
Helena, Mont.
KXLF-TV
Monday
WALA-1 V
Sunday
Missoula, Mont.
KMSO-TV
Thursday
IS "C XT T T\ 7
KbiNl-1 V
Friday
Lincoln, Neb.
KOLN-TV
vr AD T\/
KrAK- 1 V
Saturday
Hay Springs, Neb.
KDUH-TV
iv 1 Viv
Sunday
Omaha, Neb.
WOW-TV
Wednesday
Jrv V UA- 1 V
Saturday
Las Vegas, Nev.
KLAS-TV
Sunday
K1VA-1 V
Sunday
Reno, Nev.
KOLO-TV
Friday
K.MAL- 1 V
Saturday
Manchester, N. H.
WMUR-TV Tuesday
rvrioJL- 1 V
Monday
Albuquerque, N. M.
KOAT-TV
Friday
TV
IVlJbJVl- 1 V
Saturday
Carlsbad, N. M.
KAVE-TV
Wednesday
JvfKJq- 1 V
Sunday
Buffalo, N. Y.
WBEN-TV
Saturday
KroU- 1 V
Sunday
New York City, N. Y. WABC-TV
Sunday
Kl VU
Saturday
Pittsburgh, N. Y.
WPTZ-TV
Sunday
T/\ITV
JVIN 1 V
Sunday
Schenectady, N. Y.
WRGB-TV
Saturday
~[S C\ A TV
JSAJr\r 1 V
C* r\ #11 x- r\ Oil
oaiuraay
Utica, N. Y.
WKTV
Monday
T/dcv TV
*
Watertown, N. Y.
WCNY-TV
Sunday
*
IvCoJ-l V
*
Charlotte, N. C.
WBTV
WTpn T\7
jvioijCMy
Greensboro, N. C
WFMY-TV Friday
KFYR-TV *
Tzvmr* TV
ouiiu* y
Bismarck, N. D.
AA/XTUr^ TV
WJNJHAJ-1 V
ounaay
Fargo, N. D.
WDAY-TV
odiurudy
\\ J A TD TV
WA1K-1 V
oaiuruay
Grand Forks, N. D.
KNOX-TV
^3 o ■fn rri air
odiurudy
\A7P^ TV
Sunday
Akron, 0.
WAKR-TV
ounudy
YX/TX1"L r TV
Friday
Cleveland, O.
WJW-TV
YV CvJIlCbUdy
M/TTW/T TV
WJJJM-1 V
Tuesday
Youngstown, O.
WKBN-TV
ounudy
urc a J} TV
WiiAK-1 V
oaiuroay
Eugene, Ore.
KVAL-TV
T. W. Th. FrL
u/CT TXT TV
w eunesaay
Medford, Ore.
KBES-TV
Wednesday
VX7P T5T TV
ounuay
Portland, Ore.
KPTV
Sunday
\£ u\/U TV
iv ri V ri- 1 V
Erie, Pa.
WSEE-TV
Saturday
i/Dr\T TV
rvDWl- 1 V
Ddiurody
Harrisburg, Pa.
WHP-TV
Saturday
WT "PW TV
iviuijudy
*
Lebanon, Pa.
WLYH-TV
Saturday
*
H/TrC TV
Philadelphia, Pa.
WCAU-TV
VX/QT V TV
WoJ V - 1 V
Dunciay
Pittsburgh, Pa.
WIIC-TV
Sunday
u/rjr npv
oalUfUdy
Ponce, Puerto Rico
WRIK-TV
Saturday
Jvv^ 1 V
ouuuciy
San Juan, Puerto Rico WKAQ-TV
\UCDT TV
WOD 1 - 1 V
odiuj ud y
Providence, R. L
WJAR-TV
Sunday
WTWT TV
W 1 ill - 1 v
Florence, S. C.
WBTW-TV
Tuesday
*
WHO TV
OUIlvJajf
Greenville, S. C.
WFBC-TV
T/rjTV TV
JVl^ 1 V - 1 v
Aberdeen, S. D.
KXAB-TV
Friday
VVTV
lVAUiivJoy
Rapid City, S. D.
KRSD-TV
KWWT TV
IV W W JL- 1 V
ouiiiJ«y
Sioux Falls, S. D.
KELO-TV
Saturday
WTRW-TV
TV IJJ vv - 1 V
ijalUl Ud j
Knoxville, Tenn.
WBIR-TV
Sunday
U/T/VT TV
WJV I 1-1 v
ouiiuciy
*
ArMarillo, Tex.
KGNC-TV
Saturday
xx/yj a e TV
w ri/\o- 1 v
Dallas & Ft. Worth, Tex. KRLD-TV
Sunday
FAT P TV
JV/VLD- 1 V
*
Laredo, Tex.
{CGNS-TV
Saturday
U/RR7 TV
jalUI %j<Ly
Midland, Tex.
KMID-TV
Sunday
XVJL^X 1 - 1 V
TV t. ui jtoiJtJ y
Port Arthur, Tex.
KPAC-TV
Saturday
KTArj TV
JV 1 f\KJ- 1 V
Saturday
San Angelo, Tex.
KCTV
Saturday
KNOE-TV
Sunday
Sherman, Tex.
KXII-TV
Saturday
WLBZ-TV
Saturday
Tyler, Tex.
KLTV
Sunday
WCSH-TV
Saturday
Waco, Tex.
KWTX-TV
Saturday
WBAL-TV
Sunday
Weslaco, Tex.
KRGV-TV
Saturday
WBOC-TV
Saturday
Wichita Fails, Tex.
KSYD-TV
Saturday
WGBH-TV
Friday
Provo, Utah
KLOR-TV
Monday
WWLP-TV
Sunday
Harrisonburg, Va.
KSVA-TV
Sunday
WWJ-TV
Sunday
Richmond, Va*
WTVR
Tuesday
WKNX-TV
Wednesday
Roanoke, Va.
WSLS-TV
Sunday
WPBN-TV
Saturday
Ephrata, Wash.
KBAS-TV
Monday
KCMT-TV
Saturday
Pasco, Wash.
KEPR-TV
Monday
WTCN-TV
Friday
Seattle, Wash.
KOMO-TV
Sunday
WDAM-TV
Saturday
Yakima, Wash.
KIMA-TV
Monday
WJTV
Saturday
Clarksburg, W. Va.
WBOY-TV
Sunday
WTOK-TV
Sunday
Huntington, W. Va.
WHTN-TV
Saturday
WDAF-TV
Sunday
Oak Hill, W. Va.
WOAY-TV
Friday
KYTV
Sunday
Parkersburg, W. Va.
WTAP-TV
Tuesday
KSD-TV
Sunday
Wheeling, W. Va.
WTRF-TV
Saturday
KOOK-TV
Saturday
La Crosse, Wis.
WKBT-TV
Wednesday
KXLF-TV
Monday
Madison, Wis.
WKOW-TV Friday
l for date.
Milwaukee, Wis.
W1SN-TV
Saturday
From Soup to Nonsense:
You, Too, Can Save Old String
By Jane Goodsell
THHE FOLLOWING economy measures, if
practiced over a five-year period, should net a
total savings of 11.5 cents (or enough money to
keep a pre-school child in bubblegnm for three
days.
1. Save string. Every time a package arrives
from the store, carefully undo each little knot and
tie the shorts ends of string together. By follow-
ing this routine, you will never again need to pur-
chase a ball of string, providing you can remem-
ber where you put it.
2. Hang on to all those prescriptions in your
medicine cabinet. You may develop strawberry
rash again one of these days, and that old ointment
will come in handy. Unless they've invented a
new miracle cure in the meantime.
3. Save the paper that things come wrapped in.
Flatten it carefully to smooth out the wrinkles and
put it away. Never neglect to do this, and you
will have more wrapping paper than you can pos-
sibly have any use for.
4. Resist that impulse to give your grandmoth-
er's afghan to the rummage sale. Someday it may
be worth a lot of money as a collector's item if
you can keep the moths out of it.
5. Pry used envelopes apart, and use the
backs of them lor your shopping lists. Scratch
pads cost money, but not very much. You
might do better to stop writing shopping lists.
6. Before tearing old pajamas, shirts and
blouses into dustcloths, carefully remove all the
buttons and put them into your button box. Be-
fore you know it, you'll have hundreds of buttons,
none of which are the sort you're looking for at
the moment.
7. Never throw away your old hats. They may
come back into style — if you live to 110.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Page Nin«
Time to End 6 Colonialism 9 :
AFL-CIO Condemns
Farm Exploitation
It is "high time" America acted "forcefully to eradicate every
vestige of the native colonialism" under which farm workers exist,
the AFL-CIO Economic Policy Committee has declared.
The "imported colonialism" of government programs under which
some 450,000 foreign workers are imported each year also was
blasted in "Economic Trends and^
Outlook/' the committee's publi-
cation.
' In a nation which prides itself
on being both humane and the
wealthiest in the world," the publi-
cation said, "the continued degrada-
tion of Americans who work for
wages in agriculture is neither mor-
ally nor economically justifiable.
"... In 1960, there is no argu-
ment that can justify the contin-
ued denial of a minimum wage to
farm workers, their exclusion
from federal protection of the
right to organize, their lack of
coverage under unemployment
and workmen's compensation
laws and the exclusion of many
even from coverage under the
federal old-age and survivors in-
surance law."
On an immediate issue, the pub-
lication warned that the House Ag-
riculture Committee recently re-
ported a bill which would extend
the program of importing Mexican
workers for the benefit of some
50,000 big growers and strip the
Secretary of Labor of his "already
inadequate" authority to prevent
exploitation of farm workers.
The publication quoted the mi-
nority report which described as
"shocking" the moral implications
of the bill sponsored by Rep. E. C.
Gathings (D-Ark.).
The minority report said the
Gathings bill "would literally in-
crease the destitution, the underem-
ployment and the exploitation of
2.3 million domestic farm workers
who are the poorest of the poor in
our nation" and further undermine
family farms.
The economic statement recalled
the report filed by a group of con-
sultants named last year by Labor
Sec James P. Mitchell. The con-
sultants found that the wartime pro-
gram to import unskilled workers
for emergency labor shortages had
grown into a year-round system in-
volving skilled jobs and with 60
percent of all Mexicans working on
such surplus crops as cotton.
The publication said organized
labor wholeheartedly backed the
position of the consultants that
the import program be extended
temporarily and then only if sub-
stantially overhauled.
It noted that labor supports leg-
islation to end the foreign labor im-
portation program over a five-year
period while providing foreign aid
to Mexico to help reabsorb the
returned workers by creating jobs at
home.
"The most critical aspect" of
the problem, the publication de-
clared, concerns the 1.6 million
Americans, including some 400,-
000 migrants, who work from 25
to 150 days a year. The earnings
of this group averages only
about $600 a year, the AFL-CIO
stressed.
While farm output per manhour
rose 125 percent since World War
II and real farm wages increased
but 6 percent, the ratio of farm
wages to industrial wages continued
downward to 47 percent at the end
of the war and 36 percent in 1959,
the AFL-CIO noted.
"At the behest of the powerful
American Farm Bureau, the Na-
tional Association of Manufacturers
and their allies, these people have
been singled out and deliberately
discriminated against by a whole
range of laws and administrative
procedures."
R-T-W Amendment Held
Stagnation Blueprint
John M. Redding, director of the National Council for Industrial
Peace, has charged that Mississippi has "written a blueprint for eco-
nomic stagnation into the state constitution" by its action in approv-
ing an anti-collective bargaining "right-to-work" amendment.
Voters, whose balloting was limited to those who had paid a poll
tax for two successive years, rati-'^
fied the union-busting amendment
in a June 7 special election. The
election was arbitrarily advanced
from the regular Aug. 23 primary
date in a further maneuver to limit
the voting.
The two-to-one vote to place the
"right-to-work" law in the constitu-
tion, however, fell far short of the
five-to-one majority claimed in ad-
vance of the election by backers
of the anti-labor amendment,
Mississippi, where workers are
the lowest paid in the nation, has
had a so-called "right-to-work"
law on its statute books since
1954.
Commenting on the special elec-
tion, Redding said in a statement:
"Wage-earners and their families
will be the real victims of this
shameful manipulation of the proc-
ess of free election in Mississippi.
"Workers in Mississippi have the
lowest per capita income, the low-
est average weekly earnings, and
the lowest average hourly wage rate
in the nation. Their hopes for bet-
tec living conditions have been
dashed by this 'right-to-work'
amendment.
"Reactionary advocates of the
'right-to-work' fraud have again
demonstrated they will go to any
lengths to wreck peaceful labor-
management agreements which are
reached through the democratic
process of collective bargaining.
"The Mississippi vote will per-
petuate the state's cellar position
in the nation's economy and has
- written a blueprint for economic
stagnation into the state con-
stitution."
Redding said that the U. S. Dept.
of Commerce Survey of Current
Business shows that Mississippi's
per capita personal income dropped
from a level of $894 below the na-
tional average to $1,004 below the
average in the four years after the
"right-to-work" law was approved.
"By startling contrast," Red-
ding said, "the per capita
personal income of Louisiana,
Mississippi's neighbor, has ad-
vanced from $1,315 to $1,576
since repeal of its "right-to-work"
law.
"Mississippi might well have
taken note of Louisiana's prosperity
and moved to repeal this punitive
and regressive law, instead of nail-
ing it down in its state constitution,"
NEW PENNSYLVANIA AFL-CIO officers receive their charter from AFL-CIO Sec. Treas. William
F. Schnitzler (right) at Pittsburgh convention that merged former AFL and CIO state central bodies.
From left, Sec. Harry Block, Co-Pres. Harry Boyer, Treas. Earl Bohr and Co-Pres. Joseph F. Burke.
New Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO
Maps Vigorous Legislative Drive
By Gervase N. Love
Pittsburgh, Pa. — The new-born Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO made its first steps strong ones by
endorsing a vigorous political action program, assailing the inadequacies of the Eisenhower Admin-
istration and demanding progressive programs of state and national legislation at its founding convention
here.
Approximately 2,400 delegates, representing at least 1 million organized workers in Pennsylvania,
laid down the basis for a far-^~
reaching state AFL-CIO program
in nearly two-score resolutions
which were approved after presen-
tation of a charter to the merged
body by AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. Wil-
liam F. Schnitzler.
The new organization began to
grow almost as soon as it was
formally established. The Rail-
road Trainmen affiliated in open
session, State Legislative Rep.
Charles J. Sludden presenting a
check to cover the per capita
tax on 15,000 members.
The two co-presidents elected ear-
lier by the old organizations under
the merger agreement — Harry
Boyer, formerly of the CIO, and
Joseph F. Burke of the former AFL
— alternated in the chair during the
harmonious sessions.
McDevitt, Lawrence Speak
The political action resolution re-
flected strong "get-out-the-vote"
pleas by National COPE Dir. James
L. McDevitt, previously president
of the former Pennsylvania Fed-
eration of Labor, and Gov. David
Lawrence (D).
McDevitt, who was given a warm
welcome "home," warned that "we
can win the legislative battle only
if we have enough people who are
friendly to us on both sides of the
aisles" in the legislatures and in
Congress.
"We have to make the politicians
realize," he declared, "that we have
some rights — and we want them."
He reminded the delegates that
"you can win the finest contract in
the world only to have its benefits
taken away by legislative action,"
and said that "there is only one
approach" to correcting the situa-
tion. That, he repeated, is to elect
legislators friendly to labor's pro-
grams.
Business, he added, has been con-
centrating on legislative activity
which has paid off in the Landrum-
Griffin Act and so-called "right-to-
work" laws in 18 states.
"The answer is a determination
by all of us," McDevitt said, "to
fight to retain what's left of our
rights and to recapture those that
have been stolen from us."
He asked the delegates to take
another look at political education
among their own members by step-
ping up voter registration "as soon
as you get home, not next October."
Fifty-nine percent of Pennsylvania's
working people are not registered
Mississippi AFL-CIO
To Appeal 'Work' Vote
Jackson, Miss. — Mississippi AFL-CIO leaders will carry to the
State Supreme Court their legal challenge of the validity of the
June 7 special election which ratified a so-called "right 7 to-work"
amendment to the state constitution.
The decision to carry the fight "to the highest courts possible"
was announced by State AFL-CIO^
Pres. Claude Ramsay after a state
circuit court rejected a petition to
block certification of the vote.
The 'suit, filed in the name of
35 union members from all sec-
tions of the state, asks that the
election be set aside on the follow-
ing grounds:
• That provision for reappor-
tionment of the legislature follow-
ing each census had never been
carried out since the state constitu-
tion was adopted in 1890, thereby
invalidating the vote to submit the
right-to-work" amendment for rat-
ification.
• That holding the election at
the same time as the Democratic
primary and using the same elec-
tion personnel and registration
books, resulted in "confusion and
disorder."
• That the required 30-day no-
tice of the special election had not
been properly given in each of the
state's counties, as required by the
state constitution.
• That many of the ballot boxes
used were cardboard boxes with a
hole in the top, and could not be
safeguarded in the manner required
by law.
to vote, he rioted, compared with
89 percent registered among the
moneyed and business people.
"And they vote, they show up,"
he said. "Get out a united vote of
our members and their families,
and show me the politician who'd
dare to defy them!"
'Vital Role'
Lawrence declared that organized
labor has a vital role to play in
public life.
"That it has begun to play that
role far better than any compa-
rable organization can best be
shown by the chorus of criticism
which arises when labor engages
in political action," he said. 'We
have come to expect these pained
complaints over union participa-
tion in the election of qualified,
liberal candidates.
"I a*m unswervingly in favor of
political action by all segments of
community life — the workingman
through his union; the social and
service organizations through their
own membership and spokesmen;
and the leaders of business and
industry through their organizations.
"Labor and management have
not only the right but the obligation
to work for the candidates of their
choice."
The convention endorsed a
step-up in organization; called on
Congress to pass the Forand bill
to provide health care for the
aged through social security, to
approve a boost in the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour and to
provide federal aid to education;
rapped the Eisenhower Admin-
istration's tight-money policy and
called for wage increases for
Pennsylvania public employes,
who have not had a pay raise in
seven years.
It joined with Lawrence in con-
demning what the governor called
Pres. Eisenhower's "imprudent use
of his veto power" in rejecting the
depressed areas bill for the second
time. It also endorsed a bill spon-
sored by Sen. James E. Murray
(D-Mont.) calling for an integrated
national water resources policy in a
resolution presented by Rep. George
Rhode* (D-Pa.), member of the Ty-
pographical Union who was elected
a Yice president of the merged body.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Reds Center Ire on Faupl;
Free Labor at ILO Meeting
Scores Hungarian Regime
Geneva — Soviet bloc delegates sputtered embarrassed indignation under slashing attacks by free
workers over the suppresion of trade union and other freedoms in Hungary at the 44th session here
of the Intl. Labor Organization's annual conference.
Rudy Faupl, Machinists' international representative and U.S. worker delegate, was chief target of
the Red's ire because of a speech that helped push through a scorching condemnation of the puppet
regime installed in Hungary by^
WOMEN'S ROLE IN POLITICS is receiving intensified emphasis
from the trade union movement across the country in anticipation of
the November presidential elections. Here methods for registering
voters in Connecticut are being studied as part of continuing women's
program. Seated, left to right, are Lucy Zebraskas, coordinator of
women's activities for Connecticut COPE; Madeline Matchko of
Connecticut State AFL-CIO; and Esther Murray, Eastern Division
Women's Activities director of National COPE. Standing are
Gladys Attenborough, Betty Fusco and Sally Raymond, volunteers
in statewide registration drive.
Freedom for Germany
Key to Peace — Meany
(Continued from Page 1)
force us out of Berlin in 1948, only
to be checkmated by the American
airlift. That is why Khrushchev to-
day is insisting that the allied na-
tions withdraw the troops that have
safeguarded the freedom and secu-
rity of the people of West Berlin."
Meany warned that for the west-
ern powers to "yield to Soviet pres-
sure on these issues would be
worse than appeasement. It would
mean surrender."
The AFL-CIO president
charged that Khrushchev's "ex-
plosive behavior" which wrecked
the Paris summit conference
stemmed directly from the fact
that "the allied leaders were
standing firm on both the Ger-
man question and disarmament."
. The Soviet leader, he said, had
"worked tirelessly for over a year"
to engineer a summit meeting, first
trying "threats and ultimatums" be-
fore resorting to the "more subtle
strategy" of negotiating with allied
leaders to pursuade them to a meet-
ing of the chiefs of state.
'Dynamited' Conference
Meany said Khrushchev had
counted on "intimidating and hum-
bling" the leaders of the free world
at the summit through the sheer
weight of "Soviet superiority of
space and inter-continental weap-
ons." He added that Khrushchev,
who had counted on "offers of ap-
peasement. . . deliberately dyna-
mited the conference" when he
found the, West was not prepared to
yield on Berlin.
"Khrushchev's rage over the U-2
incident failed to carry conviction,"
the AFL-CIO official continued,
"especially when he boasted that
he knew about such over-flights at
the time of his visit to America last
year and never uttered a word of
protest.
"The Soviet dictator declared
the United States was due for a
jolt and that he jolted us. As a
matter of fact, he did. He jolted
us right out of our national com-
placency. He made it crystal
clear that all his talk of peace and
friendship and co-existence was
an elaborate propaganda trap.
"Today there can be no more il-
lusions in this country or among our
allies about the real purpose of the
Soviet Union. That purpose is
worldwide domination. It is un-
changeable. No matter what they
say, the Communists will not de-
viate from this overriding objective.
They are determined to achieve it,
whether by war, by subversion or
by our default."
Meany said that while the
weeks-long uprising by "unknown
soldiers from the factories of
East Germany" seven years ago
was crushed by the overwhelm-
ing power of the Soviet army, it
proved "that the love of liberty
cannot be stamped out by fear or
force or terror."
Although the Red army smoth-
ered the uprising, Meany said, "it
could not erase the stain" on the
Communist record. "Here was the
regime that promised to create a
worker's paradise," he said,
"stripped of its hypocritical cam-
ouflage and revealed as the arch
enemy of free workers."
The heroic stand of the work-
ers of East Germany, he con-
tinued, provided inspiration for
the revolts of workers in Poland
and Hungary and contributed to
the "multiplying signs of disaf-
fection" within Soviet Russia it-
self where industrial workers are
"openly manifesting impatience
with pitifully low wages and
heavier work loads."
He said there are "encouraging
signs of a sharpened awareness" of
the real nature of the Communist
threat among the free nations of
the world. In Great Britain, he
said, Labor Party Leader Hugh
Gaitskell is intensifying his efforts
to strengthen the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization.
Salutes Gaitskell
"Liberty-loving people every-
where salute" Gaitskell for these
efforts, Meany said. "We agree
with him that NATO should be-
come the effective instrument for
international democratic progress in
the economic and political as well
as military fields," he added.
In West Germany, he continued,
Chancellor Conrad Adenauer and
the Social Democratic Party are
moving toward the common goal of
rallying the full strength of the
German people in behalf of reuni-
fication in freedom.
This can best be accomplished,
Meany said, through UN-super-
vised elections. He added:
. "Whether Soviet Russia will
eventually choose to go along,
only time will tell. Let us use
the time we have to strengthen
the free world in every possible
way for the crucial test. If we
do this and if we hold true to the
spirit of the German workers who
died for freedom seven years ago,
we need not fear the outcome."
Soviet tanks and machine guns
"The Hungarian people, now, no
less than a year ago, are ruled by
a government which was imposed
upon them by the military might
of a foreign power," Faupl said in
referring to last year's conference
decision to throw out the entire
Hungarian delegation.
"Now, no less than last year,
the so-called Hungarian trade un-
ions are completely subservient
to the totalitarian government
and in no way either represent the
workers or advance their inter-
ests."
Faupl conceded that the failure
of the United Nations to reach a
decision on the issue of Hungarian
representation made it more diffi-
cult each year for the ILO confer-
ence to force out the delegates from
that country.
He appealed, however, to the
conference to tack on to a commit-
tee recommendation — that the Hun-
garians be allowed to sit by taking
ho action on their credentials — a
Philippine amendment "deploring"
the Hungarian government's refusal
to allow the ILO to investigate the
Hungarian situation.
Gives Voice to Hope
The amendment also expressed
the "earnest hope" that "funda-
mental human rights, including
freedom of association, will be se-
cured to the Hungarian people."
"The workers of the United
States deeply regret that there is
possible this year only the mildest
form of condemnation by this body
of an oppressive regime under
which the Hungarian people are
suffering," Faupl said.
Stanley H. Knowles, executive
vice president of the Canadian
Labor Congress, said that the
Philippine proposal would allow
the conference to get on with its
work while enabling most of the
delegates "to do what we feel
we must do, namely to express
our continuing abhorrence, our
continuing condemnation of the
situation in Hungary."
The United States' decision to go
along with the amendment instead
of pressing again for the denial of
seats to the Hungarians represented
"no change in our attitude toward
the present Hungarian regime, nor
in our desire to give hope to the
Hungarian people's tragic and hero-
ic struggle for freedom," Horace E.
Henderson, deputy assistant secre-
tary of state, told the conference.
Bitter protests by Soviet bloc
delegates who stormed the speaker's
platform failed to stem the tide.
The proposal letting in the Hun-
garian delegation through the back
door without actually recognizing
it was carried by a vote of 159 to
80, with 15 abstentions.
The conference continued its
technical work in committees
where an international agreement
on the standards to be set for
workers' houses was among the
documents being hammered out.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Harry
Bates, president emeritus of the
Bricklayers, warned against over-
encouraging self-help housing pro-
grams.
"By their very nature, self-help
schemes are inefficient and uneco-
nomical," he said. "It seems to me
that even in less developed coun-
tries every effort should be made
to encourage as rapidly as possible
development and use of advanced
skills and techniques in the con-
struction history."
Cola G. Parker, vice president
of the National Association of
Manufacturers, was one of three
employer delegates from non-
Communist countries to give
up their committee seats because
the special appeals board set up
last year upheld the right of em-
ployer delegates from the Soviet
bloc to places on the committees.
While last year all the non-Com-
munist employers walked out of the
committees, this year the majority
took a leaf from the free workers
by deciding to counter the Com-
munists from the inside rather than
hold up the work of the conference
by protracted debates on the issue
in plenary sessions.
By a unanimous vote the confer-
ence admitted the new African
states of Togo and Cameroon, rais-
ing the total membership of the
United Nations special agency to 82
states.
Faupl Asks ILO Push
For Cut in Workweek
Geneva — Rudy Faupl, U.S. worker delegate and leader of AFL-
CIO representatives, called on the Intl. Labor Organization to
give a "new and strengthened impetus to the worldwide movement
for reduction of hours of work."
"With the increasing efficiency of our economies, leisure should
no longer be the privilege of the^
wealthy," he said. "It should be
possible for all people to enjoy."
Faupl told the 44th session of the
Intl. Labor Conference that its pre-
liminary discussion on the question
should enable next year's parley to
adopt an "up-to-date, effective in-
ternational convention establishing
the 40-hour week as a goal to be
achieved in every country at the
earliest possible date."
He told the government, work-
er and employer delegates of the
82-nation organization that he
House Group Slashes
Mutual Security Funds
The House Appropriations Committee slashed $790.5 million
from Pres. Eisenhower's request for $4.2 billion to finance the mu-
tual security program during the fiscal year beginning July 1.
The committee in recommending $3.4 billion disregarded a plea
by Pres. Eisenhower, just before he took off for the Far East, to
restore at least half of the cut which 3> x . , . ~ " ~ :
(Mich.), offered a proposal to in-
crease the defense support appro-
had been recommended by a sub-
committee dominated by conserva-
tives and headed by Rep. Otto E.
Passman (D-La.).
The AFL-CIO has consistently
supported the Eisenhower foreign
aid program and had urged appro-
priation of the full Administration
request. Passman originally sought
to cut the appropriation by $1
billion.
The Appropriations Committee
took its heartiest whack at mili-
tary assistance to U.S. allies, cut-
ting the Administration's request
for $2 billion to $1.6 billion.
Then it knocked down the $724
million proposed for the defense
support program to $600 million.
Rep. John Taber (R-N. Y.), a
long-time foe of government
"spending," lost a motion to restore
$200 million of the military aid cut
by a vote of 27 to 16. Another Re-
publican, Rep. Gerald R. Ford
priation to $650 million, but was
defeated 26 to 16.
The committee voted to give
the Development Loan Fund
$550 million, or $150 million
less than the Administration had
asked to help underdeveloped
nations to strengthen their econ-
omies.
It reduced special assistance by
$62.5 million to $206 million. The
Point Four program of technical as-
sistance would receive $184.5 mil-
lion, or $22 million less than the
Administration asked. The com-
mittee, seeking to insure closer
supervision of Point Four project
applications, adopted an amend-
ment requiring that all projects be
justified to it before any money catf
be spent.
The committee cut Eisenhower's
request for a $175 million contin-
gency fund by $25 million.
was pleased to report that in the
United States "we are moving
slowly perhaps, but surely, on the
path of full racial equality."
Because of the part played by
American trade unionists on behalf
of human dignity and social justice
it is understandable that they have
been deeply shocked by the de-
cision of the ruling group in one
country to establish extreme racial
discrimination and segregation as
its most fundamental national pol-
icy," he said.
The question of shorter working
hours is important, he said, because
"young people entering employment
today have the right to be assured
that the hours they put in on their
jobs will not be so long as to deprive
them of a full opportunity for fam-
ily life, cultural enrichment, recre-
ation and relaxation."
The AFL-CIO delegate warmly
welcomed the recent ILO decision
to establish in Geneva an Intl. In-
stitute for Labor Studies. The insti-
tute, which has the strong backing
of the AFL-CIO, should greatly
help to draft "improved programs
and policies affecting labor in many
different parts of the world," he
said.
Faupl also endorsed ILO ef-
forts to improve living and work-
ing conditions in Africa. The
ILO faces a "tremendous chal-
lenge" in the African countries
that have just achieved or are
about to achieve their independ-
ence, he said.
But the new emphasis on Africa
"should not result in a decrease in
the ILOs programs in other geo-
graphical or, in fact, in non-regional
programs," he added.
"Those of us who are sincerely
dedicated to the great ideals on
which this organization was found-
ed have a heavy responsibility and
are faced with a tremendous chal-
lenge," the American worker del-
egate said.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Page Elevea
ITF Group Sets Goals:
Sea Unions Step Up
Runaway Ship Fight
New York — A stepped-up drive by world sea unions against ex-
ploitation of seamen on "runaway" ships has been approved by the
seafarers' section of the Intl. Transportworkers' Federation, Pres.
Joseph Curran of the Maritime Union and Pres. Paul Hall of the
Seafarers reported here on their return for a section conference in
London.
The London meeting adopted a
statement of principles which will
be taken to a full conference of the
ITF July 19-29 in Berne, Switzer-
land. Hail and Curran said the ITF
will be asked at Berne to approve
a drive by all its affiliated unions to
organize all sea fleets.
Unanimous Agreement
At London, 45 delegates from 18
nations voted unanimously for a
policy statement that no ITF union
will supply any crews, make any
agreements or have any dealings
with runaway ships or their owners,
Curran and Hall said. They led the
U.S. delegation.
The conference adopted an eight-
point statement of principles on
"flags-of-convenience" fleets and a
resolution on freedom of naviga-
tion, urging the Egyptian govern-
ment to allow free passage in the
Suez Canal.
The seafarers* section will rec-
ommend to the fuH ITF that it
classify as "runaway" any ship
registered, for the purpose of
evading labor standards, taxes
and safety regulations, in a coun-
try other than the country in
which the ship's ownership or
control is vested.
That will remove any chance, the
two union presidents said, that a
shipowner will be able to get a
contract with any ITF-affiliated un-
ion covering a runaway operation.
This has happened in the past, they
said, in the case of some American
operators of Panamanian, Liberian
and Honduran-flag ships.
The ITF will be asked to apply
the policy also to shipowners who
may try to avoid organizing drives
by transferring from Liberian or
Panamanian registry to some other
registry.
The Berne conference will bring
together delegates from 200 unions
engaged in all forms of land, water
and air transportation in 65 coun-
tries of the free world. They will
be asked to approve this statement
of principles agreed to in London:
• No union affiliated with the
ITF shall supply crews, make agree-
ments or otherwise deal with ship-
owners who have been pronounced
unfair or classed as "runaways" by
the appropriate ITF body.
• Jurisdiction over flags-of-con-
venience ships shall lie in the coun-
try where actual control of such
ships is vested.
• When an affiliate concludes a
collective agreement with a ship-
ping company, such agreement shall
wherever possible cover all the
ships operated by the company un-
der flags of convenience.
• Only agreements concluded
with the prior approval of the ap-
propriate ITF body shall be recog-
nized as valid.
• All existing agreements not in
conformity with ITF policy shall
be terminated, and an ITF custody
agreement shall apply until the un-
ion under whose jurisdiction the
shipping company comes shall sig-
nify it is ready to apply the policy
to such ships.
• In the application of this pol-
icy, average North European wages
and conditions shall be the mini-
mum acceptable standards.
The London conference appealed
to the Egyptian government to
"honor its international undertak-
ings" by renouncing action against
ships in the Suez Canal and placing
reliance in United Nations proce-
dures.
It said that the "detention and
blacklisting of ships" by the
Egyptian government threatens
the livelihood of seafarers and
other workers, and rejected at-
tempts to justify such interference
with neutral shipping on the
grounds of a state of war between
Egypt and Israel.
Michigan Re-districting
Going to Supreme Court
Detroit — Michigan AFL-CIO Pres. August Scholle will carry to
the U.S. Supreme Court his fight to end unequal representation in
the Michigan Legislature.
Scholle lost the first round when the Michigan Supreme Court, in
a 5-3 decision, ruled that no judicial remedy existed to re-apportion
state senatorial districts on a popu-^
MEMORIAL TRIBUTE WAS PAID Philip Murray, late president of the Steelworkers and the for-
mer CIO, at a graveside service in Castle Shannon, Pa., by the Rev. Charles Owen Rice, former
Pittsburgh priest; Pres. Michael J. Quill of the Transport Workers and TWU officers and members.
TWU Group
Has Service
For Murray
Pittsburgh, Pa. — Tribute to the
late Philip Murray for the changes
he helped bring to the lives of
workers was paid at a memorial
service near here recently by Pres.
Michael J. Quill of the Transport
Workers and the Rev. Charles
Owen Rice of Washington, Pa.
Two busloads of TWU interna-
tional officers and representatives
of the railroad division laid a
wreath on the grave in Castle Shan-
non and took part in the services.
Before his death Murray was
president of the Steelworkers and
the former Congress of Industrial
Organizations.
Quill spoke of the revolutionary
changes made under the Murray
leadership in the lives of working
families. He recalled the days when
the valleys around Casde Shannon
were filled with shacks and people
suffered hunger and despair.
Today new homes of workers
fill the valleys and the hillsides.
Much of the change can be credited
to a lifetime of dedicated leader-
ship by Murray, Quill said.
Father Rice, in prayers for the
man who had been his lifelong
friend, said: "He was at home and
at ease with working people. He
devoted his life to serving them."
'Flagrant' Human Rights Violations
In Dominican Republic Hit by OAS
After a four-month investigation, the Inter-American Peace Committee of the Organization of Amer-
ican States (OAS) has accused the Dominican Republic of "flagrant and widespread violations of
human rights."
The violations, the committee said, included "the denial of free assembly and of free speech, arbi-
trary arrests, cruel and inhuman treatment of political prisoners, and the use of intimidation and ter-
ror as political weapons." ^
The peace committee also reached
the conclusion that the Dominican
Republic, by its denial of human
rights, had aggravated tensions in
the Caribbean area.
When the five-nation committee
asked to visit the Dominican Re-
public for an on-the-spot inquiry,
it was refused permission. It inter-
viewed refugees, former Dominican
government officials and newspaper-
men.
Backed by AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO-backed investiga-
tion grew out of the complaint sub-
mitted Feb. 7 by Venezuela to the
OAS Council that the denial of
human rights in the Dominican Re-
public threatened the already pre-
carious peace in the Caribbean.
The council referred the matter
to the peace committee. This group,
originally created in 1940 but in-
active since 1956, was reactivated
last August at the Inter-American
foreign ministers' conference in
Santiago, Chile.
The committee was empow-
ered to examine "the relationship
between violations of human
rights or the non-exercise of rep-
resentative democracy, on the
one hand, and the political ten-
sions that affect the peace of the
hemisphere, on the other."
Members of the committee are
the United States, El Salvador,
Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The chairman is Ambassador John
C. Dreier of the United States. For
the investigation of the Dominican
Republic, Colombia was designated
a substitute for Venezuela.
The Venezuela Ambassador to
the OAS, Dr. Marcos Falcon-
Briceno, presented the charges on
behalf of his government. He sub-
mitted documentation concerning
violation of human rights, suppres-
sion of civil liberties, denial of free
trade unionism and continuous in-
terference in the affairs of neigh-
boring democratic countries, par-
ticularly Venezuela, even to the ex-
tent of helping plots to overthrow
the constitutional regime of Pres.
Romulo Betancourt.
The action taken by the peace
committee vindicates the position
of the AFL-CIO and the Inter-
American Regional Organization of
Workers, which long ago demanded
moral condemnation of the Trujillo
dictatorship as a prelude to diplo-
matic isolation until such time as
human rights and civil liberties are
restored.
In a resolution adopted by the
AFL-CIO Executive Council in
February 1959 and reaffirmed by
the AFL-CIO convention in San
Francisco last September, the
U.S. government was urged to
take the lead in the OAS in con-
demning the brutal dictatorship
of the Trujillo regime in the
Dominican Republic.
The free labor movement also
has repeatedly demanded that non-
intervention in the internal affairs
of other countries should not be in-
voked as a cloak to condone sup-
pression of civil liberties and viola-
tion of human rights, specifically
protected in the OAS charter.
lation basis.
The State AFL-CIO leader's suit
was based on a 1952 amendment
to the Michigan constitution which
established senatorial districts vary-
ing in population by as much as 15
to 1. Scholle contended, since he
lives in the largest district, that his
vote was worth only one-fifteenth
that of a citizen in the smallest dis-
trict. This, he argued, deprived him
of equal protection as guaranteed
by the 14th amendment to the U. S.
Constitution and the 2nd amend-
ment to the Michigan constitution.
Scholle had asked the court
to declare the 1952 amendment
unconstititional and to provide
the legislature with an opportu-
nity to re-apportion senatorial
districts on a population basis.
Should the legislature fail to act,
he petitioned, the court should
order at-large elections.
The 5-3 decision against Scholle's
suit brought five separate opinions.
The majority opinion was written
by Justice George Edwards who
ruled that no violation of the state
constitution was involved because
the 1952 amendment changed the
intent of the equal protection
clause.
"This court does not determine
the wisdom of the decisions made
by the people of Michigan in adopt-
ing their constitution," Edwards
wrote. He added that the amend-
ment also did not violate the U.S.
Constitution.
Sympathy Voiced
At the same time, Edwards ex-
pressed sympathy with Scholle's
position in a reference to the "dis-
tasteful rationale" of the voters in
adopting unrepresentative districts.
Three other justices, in a separate
opinion, agreed with Edwards' legal
contentions but not with his reason-
ing on the morality of the situation.
Justice Leland Carr wrote the opin-
ion which also was signed by Chief
Justice John R. Dethmers and Har-
ry F. Kelly.
Justice Eugene Black, in still
another opinion, agreed with
most of the majority contentions.
He wrote that Scholle's position
might be correct but that no le-
gal remedy existed. In effect,
he urged that the case be ap-
pealed because the U.S. Supreme
Court may change the stand it
has maintained on such political
questions.
A minority viewpoint by Justices
Talbot Smith, Theodore Souris and
Thomas M. Kavanagh held that the
senatorial districting was a clear
violation of the U.S. Constitution.
"Our people have a right, un- (
alienable and undisputed, to equal-
ity of representation," Smith wrote
in an opinion joined by Souris. "It
is a somber and frightening thing to
take from the people in a democ-
racy their right to an equal vote."
Downfall' Predicted
Kavanagh, in a concurring opin-
ion, predicted that the continuation
of unrepresentative government
would result in the "eventual down-
fall of Michigan itself."
Scholle said that language in at
least four of the five opinions pro-
vides justification for an appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court
Approval of such action was
unanimously voted by the Michigan
AFL-CIO convention in Grand
Rapids.
Strikebreaking
Curbs Stalled
In 2 States
Laws prohibiting third parties
from recruiting or furnishing strike-
breakers have been passed by the
lower houses of the Delaware and
New Jersey Legislatures, but have
been bottled up in the state senates.
In Delaware, the lower house on
June 6 voted 18-to-17 for a labor-
backed bill which would provide
maximum penalties of a year in
prison and $1,000 fine for persons
or firms "securing or offering to
secure employment ... in an in-
dustry where a labor strike or lock-
out exists."
The bill was called up in the
Senate June 13, but when it be-
came evident that it would fail of
passage by two votes, the measure
was put back on the calendar.
In New Jersey, a similar bill
easily passed the Democratic-con-
trolled lower house earlier this year
but has been pigeonholed by the
GOP-controlled Senate Labor Com-
mittee — perennial graveyard for lib-
eral legislation. The legislature has
gone into summer recess and is
scheduled to reconvene in mid-
September.
Teamsters Routed
In Brewery Raids
New York — Firemen & Oilers
Local 56 has defeated a raid by
Teamster Locals 1 and 8 on 285
Local 56 members employed by
the Piel, Rheingold, Schlitz, Rup-
pert and Schaeffer breweries here.
Joseph Sullivan, Local 56 busi-
ness agent, and Michael Hart, sec-
retary-treasurer, said the vote in an
NLRB election was 228 for Local
56, as against 45 for the Teamsters
and 1 for no union.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1960
Improved Minimum Wage Demanded:
CWA Convention Emphasizes
Organization of Tree Riders'
By Willard Shelton
St. Louis — A major emphasis on organization, with specific stress on recruiting non-members of
existing locals, marked the 22nd annual convention of the Communications Workers here.
In an unusual arrangement, the 1,400 delegates representing 755 locals devoted a full day to
seminars, division meetings and major addresses on the problems of completing organization of the
locals and reaching out for white-collar and technical workers to increase CWA effectiveness in the
widespread communications indus-^
tries.
Ahead of the delegates was ac-
tion giving full endorsement to an
executive board proposal and a
formal convention resolution urg-
ing that organizing be continued
as CWA's "top priority," and that
the Organizing Dept., headed by
Vice Pres. Ray Hackney, continue
emphasis on "direct assistance" to
locals encountering "special organ-
izing problems."
CWA Pres. Joseph A. Beime
spelled out the definition as
meaning locals with less than 85
percent membership in a collec-
tive bargaining unit. He called
on locals with more than 85 per-
cent membership to assist the
other units.
He warned that in the telephone
industry, dominated by the giant
Tax-Free
Lobbying Held
'Detrimental'
The AFL-CIO has registered
strong opposition to action by the
House Ways & Means Committee
in approving a bill which would
permit the cost of lobbying — in-
cluding advertising — to be deducted
from taxable income.
In a letter to the House leader-
ship, AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller called for defeat
of the measure, declaring it would
be "highly detrimental to the pub-
lic as a whole, and could consti-
tute an unwarranted and substan-
tial loss to the Treasury."
The bill is designed to erase
a flat ban imposed by the Treas-
ury Dept. last December deny-
ing tax deductions for lobbying,
or for advertising designed to in-
fluence either legislators or the
voters on referendum petitions.
It would also overturn an In-
ternal Revenue Service ruling that
dues paid to unions and trade
associations could not be de-
ducted if a "substantial part" of
the organization's activities is
spent in lobbying.
Biemiller wrote congressional
leaders that although the bill would
"in some small measure" benefit a
few individuals in the labor move-
ment, this advantage would be
more than offset by the new free-
dom it would allow corporations.
<4 There is every reason," he
wrote, "to expect that making such
expenses openly deductible would
lead to a tremendous increase in
lobbying, just as the deductibility
of expenses for business entertain-
ing has lead to an enormous in-
crease" in such expenditures "to
the detriment of tax collections."
Chandler Chosen
By Screen Actors
Hollywood — The board of direc-
tors of the Screen Actors Guild has
unanimously elected George Chan-
dler as president, to succeed Ronald
Reagan, who resigned to become a
producer.
Chandler, a member of the
Guild's board of directors, has been
SAG's treasurer since 1948.
The board chose former Pres.
Leon Ames to succeed Chandler as
treasurer. Ames was a founder of
the Guild in 1933 and has served
either as an officer or a director
continuously since 1945.
Bell System, and with a work force
marked by high turnover, this
meant signing up new employes on
the first day of the first week, other-
wise "the company coach will have
told them how great a place it is
to work."
In other actions the convention:
• Heard Beirne charge that the
Eisenhower Administration is the
victim of "a bad case of tired
blood."
"We resent and deplore attacks
on the President" by Soviet Pre-
mier Nikita Khrushchev, Bierne
said, and he demanded that the
Soviet official cease his "hysterical,
personalized name-calling."
• Approved a statement on for-
eign policy rejecting "Communist
ideological conceptions as morally
revolting" and calling for constant
defense of free Berlin, but urging
careful continuing appraisal of
problems of world peace and sup-
port of the United Nations, in-
cluding a UN police force.
• Approved a statement on
economics charging that the
growth rate of the nation has
been stifled and approved reso-
lutions on legislative proposals
endorsing an improved minimum
wage, unemployment compensa-
tion, and social security systems.
• Gave renewed endorsement
to CWA special projects, includ-
ing the establishment in Washing-
ton of a Franklin D. Roosevelt
Memorial, resistance to renewed
imposition of a telephone excise
tax, and expansion of the union's
program of armed services Christ-
mas overseas telephone calls.
The delegates also gave careful
attention to the audit report of un-
ion expenditures and its budget for
the coming year. They approved a
program of seeking "pattern-mak-
ing" settlements with units of the
telephone industry comparable to
that which the union announced in
its settlement this year with North-
western Bell Telephone Co.
Ahead of the delegates lay a ses-
sion on political action in an elec-
tion year and the consideration of
proposed constitutional amend-
ments, including a recommendation
that conventions be changed from
annual to biennial events and that
officers be chosen for four-year in-
stead of two-year terms.
Beirne charged in his opening
speech that the "mess in Washing-
ton" goes beyond partisanship and
involves nothing less than "a form
of paralysis in government."
The nation, "acted boldly and
thought big" in Roosevelt's time,
he said, adding that the Ameri-
can people respond "every time
we're given a chance."
Labor must be able to "adjust
to the new circumstances" of the
future, he declared, and the AFL-
CIO "must do far more than it has
so far been able to accomplish."
American labor will have to "think
big and act bold to meet new chal-
lenges," he said.
In the day-long session devoted
to organizing, John W. Livingston,
AFL-CIO director of organization,
commended the convention for the
CWA's organizing program but
asked for "two or . three times as
much."
"When any union stops organiz-
ing," Livingston said, "it's going
to die. If it completes its own in-
ternal organizing in its own area,
it still must organize the outside."
Brendon Sexton, coordinator of
organization for the Auto Workers,
told the delegates that new concepts
and approaches would be needed in
organizing the white collar and
technical workers as they rise in
number, but that unions will "find
a way" as they did in the past.
The white collar worker is "a
different breed," Sexton said. But
when such workers pretend they
are "too good for a union" they
are really afraid they are "not good
enough."
They are afraid in their economic
insecurity of management discrim-
ination or "community disap-
proval," he said. But the "snob in
the office or shop is really afraid
that he will be thought inferior."
Federal Pay Raise Bill
Sails Through House
A scaled-down 7.5 percent government employe pay bill has sailed
through the House, 377-to-40, despite warnings by GOP leaders
that it faces a certain veto.
The bill — originally for a 9 percent pay raise — was forced to the
House floor by a discharge petition, thus bypassing a Rules Commit-
tee bottleneck. ^
In a move to win added support,
necessary if the expected presiden-
tial veto is to be overriden, sup-
porters of the pay raise trimmed it
back to 7.5 percent for more than
1 million white collar employes in
the classified civil service, the judi-
cial and legislative branches and in
the top grades of the postal service.
Some 400,000 postal workers in the
lower pay grades will receive raises
averaging about 8 percent.
Key vote, in the opinion of
government union leaders, was
the 324-to-94 tally rejecting a mo-
tion to send the bill back to com-
mittee to trim the raise down to
5 percent.
The recommittal move was re-
jected by well over the two-thirds
majority which would be needed to
override a veto despite a flat state-
ment by House GOP Leader
Charles A. Halleck that it will face
rejection "as it is now written."
Committee Chairman Tom Mur-
ray (D-Tenn.) led the opposition to
the pay raise. He said if the House
passed the union-backed bill, Con-
gress would be giving in to "dic-
tatorship" by "lobbyists" for the
government workers. He said there
were so many union representatives
in the corridors that he could hardly
make his way into the committee's
meeting room that morning.
Rep. James H. Morrison CD-
La.), chief sponsor of the bill,
told the House the revised pay
proposal was "a good, fair and
substantial pay raise that is cer-
tainly justified."
The Senate Post Office & Civil
Service Committee meanwhile ap-
proved an identical pay bill in a
move to speed the measure through
the upper house.
And It's Later Than You Think!
DRAWN roftTHH
/\fl-c»one%yi
Minimum Wage Wins
House Unit Approval
(Continued from Page 1)
by Republican members to knock
from the Kennedy-Morse-Roose-
velt bill provisions extending cover-
age to employes of retail stores.
The bill due to go to the Senate
floor is expected to include protec-
tion for 6.4 million additional work-
ers.
Meanwhile, there were these
other developments on Capitol Hill
as the 86th Congress drove toward
possible adjournment within the
next three weeks:
• Comprehensive housing leg-
islation moved toward passage as
the House Banking Committee ap-
proved a $1.4 billion measure
which would for the first time ex-
tend no-down-payment financing to
non-veteran home buyers. The Sen-
ate Banking Committee sent to the
floor a measure calling for the
same dollar outlay, but concen-
trating in the main on extension of
existing programs.
• The Senate approved an
amendment introduced by Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) to re-
peal the loyalty oath provision in
the National Defense Education
Act. The provision had required
that before college students could
be eligible for federal loans, they
had to sign a so-called "non-sub-
versive affidavit."
• The House overwhelmingly
approved a bill to grant a 7.5 per-
cent wage increase, effective July 1,
to more than 1.5 million govern-
ment employes, sending the meas-
ure to the Senate where the Post
Office & Civil Service Committee
recommended identical legislation.
The vote on final passage was 377
to 40 — 99 more votes than would
be required to override any presi-
dential veto. Pres. Eisenhower had
asked for no increase for this year.
• The Senate Finance Com-
mittee voted to repeal the 10 per-
cent federal taxes on local telephone
service, telegrams and travel. Eisen-
hower had asked that these and
other tax cuts scheduled for July 1
be postponed for another year, and
the House voted 222 to 174 for
the extension urged by the Admin-
istration.
• The House, by voice vote, ap-
proved a resolution to give the vote-
less citizens of the nation's capital
the right to help elect the President
and Vice President. The proposed
constitutional amendment received
earlier approval from the Senate,
but it was linked with two other
proposed constitutional changes —
the outlawing of poll taxes and the
provision for new methods of filling
House vacancies in case of a major
disaster — on which the House took
no action.
• The House and Senate, in
rapid-fire order, approved a $4
billion farm bill carrying funds for
several projects which the Presi-
dent had not requested. These in-
cluded research laboratories in
North Dakota, Alabama, New
York, South Dakota, Louisiana and
Idaho.
Action on Minimum Wage
The minimum wage bill ap-
proved by the House Labor Com-
mittee compares with the original
Kennedy - Morse - Roosevelt bill,
which called for an immediate hike
to $1.25 and coverage for nearly
10 million additional workers, and
09-8I-S
Administration proposals that only
a "modest increase" — in the area of
$1.10 to $1.15, according to Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell — be granted,
with added coverage of only 3 mil-
lion workers.
Under the bill, which won
committee approval by a 19-9
vote, workers presently covered
would go to $1.15 as of Nov. 1,
1960; $1.20 on Nov. 1, 1961; and
$1.25 on Nov. 1, 1962. For
newly covered workers, the $1
minimum would take effect this
November. This would be
boosted to $1.10 in 1961, $1.20
in 1962, and $1.25 in 1963.
The bill would extend wage-hour
coverage to employes of retail
stores, laundries, hotels and local
transit businesses providing the first
do at least $1 million worth of
business a year. However, those
hotel employes who receive most of
their income from tips would con-
tinue to be excluded.
For newly-covered workers, the
bill would require overtime pay
for a 48-hour workweek starting
Nov. 1. The overtime provision
would be cut gradually to a 40-
hour week after four years.
In the drive to complete action
on Capitol Hill before the party
presidential nominating conven-
tions, Senate Majority Leader Lyn-
don B. Johnson (D-Tex.) served
notice on the Senate floor that that
body would convene earlier and re-
main in session later each day and
would begin Saturday sessions in
order to clean up the backlog of key
measures.
Labor Urges Prompt Wage-Hour Action
yoi. v
Issied weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6. D. C.
92 a year
Second Class Postaoe Paid at Washington. 0. C Saturday, Jlllie 25, 1960
No, 26
Forand Fate Up to Senate
As House Votes Token Bill
Congress Pushes
For Early Close
CHECKS FOR CHILE are presented by AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler to Red Cross
Pres. Alfred M. Gruenther at an air base near Washington, D. C, where the first MATS planeload
of building materials is shown waiting to take off for the Chilean earthquake scene. Pictured left
to right: Serafino Romualdi and Peter M. McGavin of AFL-CIO; Gen. Gruenther; Chilean Am-
bassador Walter Mueller; Schnitzler; Asst. Sec. of State for Inter-American Affairs Roy R. Rubottom;
and Jorge Schneider, special envoy from the president of Chile.
Labor Tells Leadership:
Minimum Wage Bill
'Must' for Congress
Organized labor has called on House and Senate leaders to
adopt "whatever parliamentary tactics are necessary" to insure enact-
ment of a minimum wage bill before the expected adjournment of
the 86th Congress early in July.
The appeal for prompt action came from leaders of the AFL-
CIO Joint Minimum Wage Com-^
mittee on the heels of Senate La-
bor Committee approval of a bill
raising the minimum in step-ups to
$1.25 an hour and extending Fair
Labor Standards Act protection to
5 million additional wage earners.
The committee sent the bill to the
floor by a 1 2-3 vote.
A House Labor Committee-ap-
proved bill, also calling for raising
the minimum to $1.25 in steps but
including coverage for only an addi-
tional 3.9 million workers, is now
awaiting clearance by the powerful,
conservative-dominated Rules Com-
mittee.
The co-chairmen of the AFL-
CIO committee — Andrew J. Bie-
miller, director of the Dept. of
Legislation, and Arthur J. Gold-
berg, the federation's special
counsel — warned in their call for
prompt action that "America's
lowest-paid workers cannot wait
any longer."
They expressed "deep gratifica-
tion" that a vote was near on both
increases in the minimum and im-
provements in wage-hour coverage,
and called the Senate committee's
action on the Kennedy-Roosevelt
bill "a real advance toward the
relief of a long-neglected problem/'
Bills Are Similar
Goldberg and Biemiller noted
the close similarity between the
Senate and House committee pro-
posals, both of which, they said,
"extended coverage to many work-
ers who have hitherto been unfairly
excluded, and increased the mini-
mum wage to $1.25, even though
this is accomplished over a period
of years instead of immediately as
we had hoped/'
The bill sent to the floor by
the committee — with only Minor-
ity Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (R-II1.) and GOP Sena-
tors Barry Goldwater (Ariz.) and
C. Norman Brunsdale (N.D.)
dissenting — applies separate for-
mulas for raising the minimum
(Continued on Page 12)
Labor Flies
Emergency
Aid To Chile
Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
— Thundering jets provided back-
ground music here at a dramatic
ceremony marking the first gift of
building materials by the unions
of America to 500,000 Chileans
hit by earthquakes and tidal
waves.
At this base near Washington,
a Globemaster plane loaded with
more than 120,000 pounds of un-
ion-made building materials, hop-
ped off on the 7,000-mile flight to
Santiago, Chile, shortly after AFL-
CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler turned over the first union dona-
tions to Red Cross and Chilean
officials.
Schnitzler presented checks for
the first planeload of relief mate-
rials, valued at $12,124, to Pres.
Alfred M. Gruenther of the
American Red Cross, Chilean
Ambassador Walter Mueller, and
Jorge Schneider, here as the per-
sonal envoy of Chilean Pres.
Jorge Alessandri.
The donations had passed the
$30,000 mark within a week after
an appeal for help voiced by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany — and the
tide of contributions was growing
daily.
In making the presentation,
(Continued on Page 12)
By Gene Zack
The fate of legislation providing health care for the aged through
the social security system rested with the Senate as the House passed
a social security bill extending only token help, through state public
assistance programs, to retirees who are impoverished.
The social security bill, liberalizing some benefits and extending
coverage of Old Age, Survivors and$>
Disability Insurance to 1.3 million a -w-^ ^
CAB Sets
Probe of
Airline Pact
By Dave Perlman
The Civil Aeronautics Board
has announced a full-scale in-
vestigation of the 10-airline so-
called mutual aid pact — a form
of strike insurance which unions
in the industry have charged
undermines collective bargaining
and violates the intent of the
Railway Labor Act.
The CAB had previously ap-
proved the original agreement en-
tered into by six airlines in October
1958, and a one-year renewal last
year, but it decided to take a fresh
look at the pact in view of proposed
changes in the agreement and the
experience during the period it has
been in force.
Under the original pact, an air-
line would be reimbursed by its
competitors for loss of business
during a strike only if the strike was
called to back up union demands
(Continued on Page 2)
more people, was approved by a
roll call vote of 380 to 23. The
measure had been brought to the
floor under a closed rule, barring
any amendment to add the AFL-
ClO-backed Forand bill.
Passage came amid a feverish
burst of legislative activity which
saw the Senate Labor Committee
clear for early action the Ken-
nedy-Roosevelt bill raising the
minimum wage by steps to $1.25
an hour and extending wage-hour
protection to 5 million additional
workers.
The increased tempo on Capitol
Hill signaled an intensive drive to
wind up the 86th Congress within
the next two weeks, before the
Democratic National Convention
opens in Los Angeles July 11.
Estimates on an adjournment
date ranged from a hopeful July 2
to July 9, with at least some Demo-
crats expressing the belief that they
would be catching "the last jet" to
Los Angeles on convention eve.
As Congress entered its stretch
drive, there were these rapid-fire
developments:
• The Senate approved a $1.2
billion comprehensive housing bill
by a margin of 64 to 16. It con-
(Con tinned on Page 3)
Labor in San Francisco
Boycotts Sears Stores
San Francisco — Signs, leaflets and scores of advertising pickets
bloomed around Sears Roebuck's two big stores here as the San
Francisco Labor Council formally launched a consumer boycott
against the giant chain.
Signs urged shoppers, "Please don't shop at Sears," and pro-
claimed, "Sears? Not for me." The^
leaflet, over the labor council's sig-
nature, pegged the basic issue:
"Sears Roebuck & Co. has
launched a deliberate effort to drive
its employes' unions from its stores
and service centers in San Fran-
cisco."
The council charged the com-
pany had fired 262 employes
solely because they respected the
sanctioned picket line of another
union during a two-week strike
last month.
The council also charged that
the company, by hiding behind
"so-called 'national policy' dictated
from Chicago," had denied the
striking union, Machinists Lodge
1327, "any proper or effective voice
in setting the conditions under
which its members work."
The dispute originated in the
Machinists' negotiations where
Sears refused, under the guise of
"national policy," to discuss union
security, improvements in the firm's
(Continued on Page 2)
Pag<? Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1960
CAB to Probe
Airline Strike
Assistance Pact
(Continued from Page 1)
for benefits in excess of those rec-
ommended by a Presidential Emer-
gency Board.
The airlines now want to make
benefits payable in cases where
no emergency board has been set
up. This, the seven AFL-CIO
unions in the recently-formed As-
sociation of Air Transport Un-
ions have charged, would make
the pact applicable to strikes pro-
voked by management.
In addition four more airlines —
BranifT, Continental, National and
Northwest — have entered the agree-
ment. The original signers were
American, Capital, Eastern, Pan
American, Trans World and United.
Sharp objections were filed by
the unions — the Machinists, Air
Line Pilots, Railway Clerks, Flight
Engineers, Transport Workers, Air
Line Dispatchers and Auto Work
ers — which asked the CAB to either
reject the amended agreement out-
right or hold full hearings to cover
all issues raised by the original
agreement and its amendments.
In agreeing to the union request
for a complete review of the pact,
the CAB noted that changed provi-
sions for strike benefits exchanged
between the airlines "substantially
increase the possible impact/* The
10 airlines, the CAB noted, carry
approximately 90 percent of the
nation's long-haul traffic.
Expansion of the agreement,
the CAB declared, indicates that
"the principle of mutual aid is
intended to become a long-term
feature of labor-management re-
lations in the industry."
In rejecting the airlines' conten-
tion that any hearings should be
limited to the amendments to the
pact, since the CAB had previously
approved the original agreement,
the agency said its original approval
was given without access to all of
the facts.
With more than a year of expe-
rience under the agreement to eval-
uate, the CAB said, its investigation
will aid "in determining to what
extent the carriers are developing
long-term mutual labor relations ar-
rangements, and the possible impact
of these arrangements on industry
employment, stability and related
matters which it is the board's duty
to consider in weighing whether the
agreements are consistent with the
public interest."
A STUDENT at sixth annual Army War College national strategy
seminar at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., George T. Brown (right), assistant
to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, chats between sessions with John
S. Wilpers, one of several government civilian students taking pro-
gram to develop formula for national strategy.
In Aircraft, Missile Field:
Labor in San Francisco
Boycotts Sears Stores
(Continued from Page 1)
health and welfare program, or a
citywide bargaining unit.
Open Shop "Mandatory"
The company told the union that
its "open shop" policy was man-
datory; local negotiators could not
discuss it. It would not consider
health and welfare improvements
needed to bring the company's
benefits up to levels in the union's
other San Francisco contracts.
And although Machinists worked in
two Sears locations here, the com-
pany said "national policy" pre-
vented it from bargaining for more
than one location at a time.
The Machinists went on strike,
and more than 400 Sears em-
ployes stayed away from their
jobs. A court order based on a
legal technicality temporarily
ended the strike but Sears took
advantage of the injunction to
fire most of the employes who
had respected the Machinists'
picket lines.
In all, 137 retail clerks, 51
machinists, 28 clerical workers, six
Oil Workers Map
Bargaining Program
Denver, Colo. — Ten rank-and-file members of the Oil, Chemical
& Atomic Workers' bargaining policy committee for the oil industry
have been called into session June 27 to work out a comprehensive
bargaining program for upcoming contracts this year and next.
The meeting represents OCAW's new approach to bargaining
under a policy approved by the^
210.000-member union's last con-
vention. Under it, bargaining pol-
icy will be formulated by the un-
ion's members from each industry,
such as basic chemicals, pharma-
ceuticals and drugs, atomic energy
plants, corn products and others, at
separate meetings.
Met First by Regions
Regional meetings were held by
OCAW as a me'hod of getting
members' thinking before the na-
tional meetings.
At the oil industry meeting
June 27, two delegates elected
by local unions in each of five
districts will discuss bargaining
problems and contract needs.
The districts are East Coast, West
Coast, Great Lakes, Mid-Conti-
nent and Gulf Coast.
"We have talked with our mem-
bership throughout the country,"
said OCAW Pres. O. A. Knight,
"and we have found some serious
problems that concern them deeply.
"By preparing a program that
will meet these needs, and by dem-
onstrating to the oil industry that
our people are prepared to support
such a program, it seems likely that
certain gains can be made at the
bargaining table."
In preliminary meetings in April,
membership interest was centered
on wage increases, fringe benefits
improvements, especially hospitali-
zation and medical plans; elimina-
tion of outside job-contracting, and
length of the workweek.
OCAW has 600 local unions in
40 states and six Canadian prov-
inces, and 1,375 contracts with 665
employers in the petroleum, chem-
ical, atomic and related industries.
Its master contract with Texaco
is being negotiated now. Some
OCAW contracts also are open this
year, mainly for fringe isues. Most
major contracts expire in 1961, the
union said*
warehousemen, seven shoe sales-
men, five garage and service sta-
tion employes and 28 building serv-
ice employes lost their jobs in the
company's sweeping action — all of
them union members.
And this, the labor council points
out, despite the fact that Sears' con-
tracts with San Francisco unions
protect the right of the employe to
respect a proper picket line and to
be an active union member.
Meantime, with the expiration
this week of the 30-day injunc-
tion, the Machinists renewed
their strike. Unions of the dis-
charged employes have initiated
procedures under their agree-
ments and with the National La-
bor Relations Board to secure
their reinstatement without loss.
But Sears' sweeping action, the
labor council charged, has no ex-
planation except that Sears is de
termined to drive the unions out of
its stores.
The council launched its boy
cott after Sears ignored the coun
cil's call for reinstatement of the
fired employes and for reestablish
ment of 'good faith" collective bar-
gaining on a basis in keeping with
San Francisco traditions and prac-
tices of labor relations.
Oscar Harbak,
Vice President
Of IBEW, Dies
San Francisco — Oscar G. Har-
bak, vice president of the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
for the ninth district — California,
Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Alas-
ka and Hawaii — was stricken with
a heart attack June 17 in Portland,
Ore., and died there in a hospital
June 19.
Born May 7, 1899 in Tacoma,
Wash., he was initiated into the
IBEW in 1917. Later he served as
president of Local 580 in Olympia,
Wash., and as business manager of
Local 77 in Seattle, Wash. In 1941
he was named an IBEW internation-
al representative.
When J. Scott Milne was ap-
pointed international secretary of
the brotherhood in July 1947, Har-
bak succeeded him as ninth dis-
trict vice president and was elected
and re-elected to that post at suc-
ceeding conventions.
Mr. Harbak is survived by his
wife, Martha, and daughter Anita.
Douglas StrikeEnds;
Pact Near at Convair
By Gene Kelly
Agreement has been reached for ending a strike of 18,000 Ma-
chinists against Douglas Aircraft, and 27,500 IAM members are
voting on a new contract with Convair division. General Dynamics
Corp. In two other strike situations, pickets still marched at plants
of Lockheed Aircraft Corp. in California and United Aircraft in
Connecticut. 3> —
same monthly cost of $7.25 per
At Sunnyvale, Calif., the IAM
accused Lockheed management of
recruiting teen-aged boys and girls
to cross the picket lines of 10,500
striking missile workers. Union
men showed Lockheed employment
forms covering 73 boys and girls,
aged 16 and up, who were put to
work after the strike started.
Picket lines of 31,000 Machin-
ists and Auto Workers at seven
Connecticut locations of United
Aircraft held firm while manage-
ment met separately with nego-
tiators for both unions at the urg-
ing of Gov. Abraham Ribicoff
(D). Meanwhile, management
urged workers, in full-page ads
and radio-TV appeals, to return
to work.
Members of the IAM at Douglas
plants in Santa Monica, and El
Segundo, Calif., and four missile
bases are voting on a proposed
two-year agreement which includes
wage increases of 55 cents an hour
in several classifications; accidental
death benefits of $20,000 for work-
ers in hazardous occupations; and
other improvements.
Wage, Pension Boosts
Other benefits include a 7-cent
hourly increase in the second con-
tract year; continuation of the full
cost of living increase, with existing
cost of living benefits (4 cents an
hour) to become part of the basic
wage rate; increase from 30 to 34
in maximum number of years for
pensions; increase from $1.75 to $2
in the basic pension benefit; $1,000
death benefit for retired employes.
Also provided in the new pact is
a severance benefit plan with a top
of $1,600 payable after 10 years
of service; an increase in compre-
hensive insurance coverage at the
employe; and better permanent dis-
ability benefits for early retirees.
The pact drops a previous clause
permitting employes to withdraw
from the union.
The contract covers workers at
two main plants and the missile
bases at Vandenberg, Calif.; Cape
Canaveral, Fla.; Edwards AFB,
Calif.; White Sands, N. M., and
Sacramento, Calif.
Workers at Lockheed plants in
Sunnyvale and Burbank, Calif.,
June 20 rejected an offer by man-
agement to raise wages by 4 cents
an hour this year, 3 cents next
year.
The strike of the IAM and UAW
against United Aircraft continued
in Connecticut while negotiations
were conducted. A UAW repre-
sentative cited a full-page company
ad in the Hartford Courant as an
example of "the latest strikebreak-
ing technique."
The ad urged workers to "join
the thousands back at work." It
asserted that, even though both
sides are "negotiating in good faith, *
the talks will take time and "we
urge you to return to work at once."
IAM members at Convair mis-
sile bases and test sites were vot-
ing over the week-end on a new
two-year agreement
The company offered an imme-
diate increase of 4 cents an hour
for all employes not on a field rate,
and another 3 cents next year; a
new top rate of $3.75 an hour, up
59 cents, for field grade employes
in nine factory, office and techni-
cal classifications; extended unem-
ployment benefits; improvements in
the cost of living clauses, and in
grievance, seniority and recall pro-
visions.
Ship Workers Win
On Work Rules, Pay
Seventeen thousand members of the Shipbuilding Workers have
voted overwhelmingly to end a five-month-long strike at Bethlehem
Steel Co.'s eight East Coast shipyards, after scoring a sweeping
victory on both work rules and economic issues.
Settlement of the long contract dispute was reached when man-
agement withdrew arbitrary changes^
made almost a year ago, in the
midst of negotiations, which uni-
laterally eliminated grievance and
arbitration procedures, reduced
working conditions, and watered
down job security.
Coupled with the defeat of
management's efforts to change
the work rules, the settlement
gave IUMSWA members a 25-
cent-an-hour wage package over
the life of the three-year agree-
ment, major improvement of
recall rights for laid-off workers,
and establishment of a joint hu-
man relations committee to study
the impact of automation.
Following ratification of the pact
at overflow meetings, members of
the Shipbuilding Workers began
streaming back to work at seven
of the eight yards. At Quincy,
Mass., 10,000 IUMSWA members
remained temporarily off the job as
the AFL-CIO News went to press,
while representatives of 1,000 mem-
bers of the Technical Engineers at
that yard remained in negotiations
with Bethlehem in an effort to com-
plete agreement on a contract.
The Shipbuilding Workers' vic-
tory on the work rules, grievance
and arbitration procedures was par-
ticularly significant since the com-,
pany had unilaterally placed its so-
called "white book" of sweeping
changes into effect nearly a year
ago, while negotiations were still in
progress. The unionists remained
on the job for nearly six months de-
spite these changes in an effort to
win peaceful settlement of the dis-
pute.
Wages to Rise 25 Cents
Under terms of the settlement,
the IUMSWA members receive an
immediate 4-cent hourly wage in-
crease; another 5 cents on Aug. 1,
1960; 11 cents in August 1961, and
5 cents in August 1962. The pact
runs through June 1, 1963.
The union also won an $ll-per-
week hike in sick and accident ben-
efits, raising the level of benefits .to
a range of $53 to $68; a $500 in-
crease in life insurance benefits;
and an increase in pension bene-
fits to $2.50 per month for each
year of service up to the present,
and $2.60 for each year of future
service.
Recall rights were extended
from the present two years to five
years; rates for the same jobs in
the various shipyards were equal-
ized; premium pay was improved;
and a provision was added giving
workers holiday pay for jury duty.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
Page Three
Forand Bill Fate Left in Senate's Hands
House Votes Skeleton
Health Care Program
(Continued from Page 1)
tained $500 million more than Pres
Eisenhower had asked for public
housing and urban renewal, and ex-
tended until 1965 the World War
II GI home loan program which
the Administration had wanted to
let die July 1. A $1.4 billion hous-
ing bill approved by the House
Banking Committee is awaiting
clearance by the Rules Committee.
• The House Rules Commit-
tee, in a surprise move, again
endangered school legislation this
year by voting 7 to 5 against
sending differing Senate and
House school bills to a joint con-
ference committee. Approval of
a rule sending the bills to confer-
ence had been expected in the
wake of House passage of its first
general school-aid measure in
history.
• The Senate, by a 62-17 vote,
passed and sent to the White House
a bill giving a 7.5 percent wage in
crease to more than 1.5 million
government employes. The meas
ure, vigorously opposed by the Ad-
ministration, earlier sailed through
the House by a vote of 377 to 40.
The lopsided margins on both sides
of Capitol Hill raised hopes that
the necessary two-thirds vote could
be mustered in each house to over-
ride an almost certain veto.
• A $3.58 billion foreign aid bill
1 — $590 million below what Eisen-
hower had asked — won House ap-
proval by a vote of 258 to 124.
Before passage the House, in a rare
rebuff to its powerful Appropria-
tions Committee, restored half of
the $200 million the committee had
cut from military aid funds.
• The Senate has approved a
bill extending for another year ex-
cise taxes on local telephone serv-
ice, telegrams and travel scheduled
to die July 1. In addition, by a
narrow 42-41 vote, it repealed the
present 4 percent tax credit allowed
on stock dividend income, tight-
ened the law on business entertain-
ment deductions, and closed a loop-
hole in the mineral depletion allow-
ance.
• By a vote of 70 to 5 the Sen-
ate passed a bill authorizing future
construction of $1.5 billion in flood
control, navigation and reclamation
projects. The measure now goes
back to the House, which last year
passed the bill with only about a
third of the projects approved by
the Senate. The bill is similar to
ones vetoed by Eisenhower in 1956
and 1958.
The social security hill passed
by the House linked medical care
for the aged to what AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany said was a
"pauper's oath" -provision, since it
provided for aid only through
public assistance programs which
help only the destitute.
Health benefits would be avail-
able only in those states providing
additional funds to match federal
grants.
In other areas covered by social
security, however, the House meas-
ure dropped the present limitation
which makes disability benefits
available only to those over 50, so
that all disabled persons will be
eligible for assistance. It also raised
benefits for 400,000 surviving chil
dren of workers covered by the in-
surance program and provided ben
efits to about 25,000 widows of
workers who died before benefits
became available in 1940.
The bill also liberalized work
test requirements to make about
600,000 more persons eligible;
added 150,000 self-employed
physicians to other professional
groups now covered; and brought
into the program other groups
including employes of non-profit
concerns and some domestic help.
Growers Ask Mitchell
To Break Picket Lines
By Robert B. Cooney
The fate of AFL-CIO picket lines marching outside rich ranches
and orchards of central California hung in the balance as Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell issued "several interpretations" on the ques-
tion of whether the government could and would send domestic
workers or imported Mexicans past the pickets.
A group of California's most^
powerful growers and their lawyers,
in two long sessions with Mitchell
in Washington, protested the re-
fusal of the California Dept. of
Employment to refer domestic
workers or Mexican nationals to
farms picketed by the AFL-CIO
Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee.'
Mitchell announced afterwards
he would, at the request of the
AFL-CIO, meet soon with labor.
After the meeting with the grow-
ers, a statement from Mitchell said
he agreed the problems were "of a
serious nature and needed review."
The statement said Mitchell
"had already advised the director
of the California Dept. of Em-
ployment of several interpreta-
tions of the regulations affecting
the referral of workers and prom-
ised to give the overall problems
immediate study and report on
the results of that study as quick-
ly as possible."
The statement said Mitchell "was
fully aware of the economic conse-
quences of any large-scale loss of
crops" and he would be in day-to-
day touch with the California situa-
tion. He invited the growers to call
him "if an emergency arose" mean-
time.
Irving Perluss, California's em-
ployment director, relied on the "la-
bor dispute" clause to the Wagner-
Peyser Act of 1933 in refusing to
refer either domestic workers or
Mexicans to the growers. That law
created the federal-state employ-
ment system.
John Zuckerman, a rancher from
Stockton and chairman of the new-
ly-organized California Farmers'
Emergency Food Committee, said
the group wanted from Mitchell a
definition of "labor dispute" which
would prohibit what he called
"stranger picketing."
Zuckerman said a labor dispute
should be considered bona fide only
if the picket had had an employe
relationship to the employer he was
picketing.
Zuckerman, who led the group of
six growers and four lawyers which
met with Mitchell for nearly four
hours, had explained earlier that the
growers emergency committee was
formed to develop a non-union
work force "to pick crops in areas
where these labor parasites hit."
In California, it was reported that
John Newman of Oxnard, head of
the Council of California Growers,
tried to get Vice-Pres. Richard M.
Nixon to intervene with Mitchell.
Newman reported Nixon as saying
that, although he was sympathetic,
he could not overrule Pres. Eisen-
hower's appointees.
MEAT CUTTERS DRAMATIZE 15-month strike against Peyton Packing Co. at El Paso, Tex.,
with this horse-drawn 88-year-old carriage. Consumer boycott has been urged to end "horse and
buggy wages and working conditions" and use of alien strikebreakers.
8 Democrats on Committee Blast
Means Test in Health Care Bill
The 70 million workers covered by the social security system "should be given the opportunity to
contribute" toward paid-up medical protection in old age for themselves, their wives and their
widows, eight liberal Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee have asserted.
The liberals, in supplemental views on the social security bill sent to the House floor by the com-
mittee, said they were "greatly concerned" that the measure did not contain "any provision for
social insurance protection against'^
the hazard of medical costs in old
age
Signing the supplemental state
ment were Democratic Representa
tives Aime J. Forand (R. I.), Cecil
R. King (Calif.), Thomas J. O'Brien
(111.), Eugene J. Keogh (N. Y.) ;
Frank M. Karsten (Mo.), Thaddeus
M. Machrowicz (Mich.), Lee Met
calf (Mont.) and William J. Green
Jr. (Pa.),
Expressing opposition to the
bill s provision extending health
care only to the medically in-
digent, they declared: "We are
shocked that after the 23 years
of successful operation of the so-
cial security system there are
those who would have us rely
still on relief and assistance as
the sole governmental approach
to meeting a major economic
hazard of universal occurrence."
In a separate statement, Rep.
Hale Boggs (D-La.) declared that
in my judgment a program of
medical care for the aged must ulti
mately be worked out within the
framework of the established social
security system."
In their supplemental views, the
committee liberals said that through
the social security system "the great-
est threat to the economic security
of the retired aged would be met on
a planned and orderly basis — with-
out cost to the general revenues of
federal, State and local governments
and in a way that supports the
Douglas Bill Seen
Blocked by Lenders
Madison, Wis. — Some money-
lending agencies are outwardly sup-
porting the "truth in lending'' bill
sponsored by Sen. Paul Douglas
(D-Ul.) but behind the scenes are
working to block its passage by
Congress, H. Vance Austin, manag-
ing director of the Credit Union
National Association, has charged.
Douglas' bill, endorsed by 25
other senators and representatives,
would require all consumer credit
lenders and sellers to disclose the
true annual interest rate and" all
other finance charges involved in
credit transactions. Approved by a
subcommittee, it is now bogged
down in the Senate Banking Com-
mittee. 1
rights and dignity of the individual
citizen."
They pointed out that the objec
tive of legislation linking health
care for the aged to the social se-
curity mechanism would remove
the "haunting fear" that an expen-
sive illness would "wipe out a life-
time accumulation of savings,
threaten the ownership of a home,
force dependence on children, or
make one, after a lifetime of in-
dependence, submit to the humilia-
tion of a test of need."
The congressmen said the na-
tion's goal should be "to prevent
dependency rather than to deal
with it at the expense of the gen-
eral taxpayer after it has oc-
curred."
The Democrats said that the sec-
tion of the social security bill call-
ing for federal-state welfare con-
tributions to aid only "medical pau-
pers" will not meet the "great need
for protection" of the 16 million
people now over 65, adding that
"the logical and certain method for
meeting the need is through con-
tributory social insurance."
Spread Costs
"We believe," they said, "that
the American people are eager for
this additional protection and will
gladly pay the modest amounts in-
volved during their working years
in order not only to provide pro-
tection for those now old but to
spread the costs of that protection
over workers and employers as a
group rather than having it fall un-
evenly on those young people who
have retired parents and other rel-
atives who get sick.
"Most of all we believe it is in
the best American tradition to make
prior provision for the future by
having those now young start buy-
ing paid-up protection to be added
to their , cash benefit (under social
security) when they retire."
Medical Care for Aged
'Next Step, 9 Johnson Says
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) has
told the Senate that action on medical care for the aged is
"the next major step" which the 86th Congress must take
before adjournment.
In a speech on the Senate floor lusne 19, on the 25th
anniversary of Senate passage of the Social Security Act of
1935, Johnson expressed "a deep feeling of pride that it was
my party — the Democratic Party — that overwhelmingly sup-
ported" the social insurance program.
The social security system, he declared! "has brought dignity
and security to our* senior citizens," and "has helped remove
the haunting fear of loss of productive ability which once
hovered over them."
"In this 25th anniversary year," Johnson continued, "we
are engaged in another controversy revolving around the
social security program. We are faced with the making of
a decision as to whether to take another important step in
eliminating the haunting insecurity of old age.
"This time the issue involved is health care. We must face
up to the fact that medical costs have risen constantly, whereas
our senior citizens generally live on fixed incomes."
Johnson said he would not coment on the legislation since
it was then pending in the House, but declared: "I hope that
before this session is over we shall build another strongroom
on the foundation that was so well laid 25 years ago."
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
Rail Talks to Resume,
Unions Hit Board Report
Chicago — Eleven non-operating railroad unions are scheduled to
resume negotiations with the nation's railroads June 27 following
settlement recommendations by a Presidential Emergency Board,
which are not binding.
Earlier, chief executives of the unions, after reviewing the board's
report, declared there was "unani-^
UNION-BACKED, this new $2.4 million addition to the non-profit Metropolitan Hospital in the heart
of Detroit will open the way for full family health care not only for United Auto Worker families but
for the entire community. The new wing, financed by a UAW loan, will open in the summer of 1961.
Union-Aided
Hospital Gets
New Building
Detroit — The ground - breaking
here for a union-backed $2.4 mil-
lion addition to the non-profit Met-
ropolitan Hospital was called a
"milestone" on the road to ade-
quate medical care for the entire
community.
Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey of the
Auto Workers told a gathering of
some 250 doctors, staff members
and union families that this expan-
sion of medical facilities marks "an
important milestone in providing
improved medical care for the com-
munty."
"Metropolitan Hospital will be
the keystone," Mazey added, "of
a group medical practice plan
which will concentrate on pre-
ventive care.
"It will provide comprehensive,
prepayment medical care, includ-
ing doctors 9 visits and hospitali-
zation."
The new addition to Metropoli-
tan Hospital, which is located in the
heart of the motor capital, is being
financed by a UAW loan. The two-
story air-conditioned structure is
scheduled to open in the summer
of 1961.
Metropolitan will provide medi-
cal and hospital service for the
Community Health Association,
which soon will be enrolling mem-
bers for full family health care
protection. UAW Pres. Walter P.
Reuther is president of CHA.
Metropolitan and the two branch
clinics planned for the end of this
year on the outskirts of the city will
serve mainly UAW families through
CHA, but the facilities are open
to the entire community.
* unani-
mous disappointment" with the re-
port. They added that, as matters
stand now, "the disputes arising out
of the organizations' proposals . . .
and the carrier counter-proposals
remain for disposition by collective
bargaining."
The emergency board recom-
mended a 5-cent hourly wage in-
crease in a contract to run until the
fall of 1961. In addition it pro-
posed a number of fringe benefits,
including group life insurance, im-
proved health and welfare benefits
and extension of benefits to fur-
loughed employes for three months.
Meanwhile, Pres. George M.
Harrison of the Railway Clerks,
an AFL-CIO vice president,
charged that the emergency board
reached "conclusions which were
not in keeping with the facts in
the case."
They came to these conclusions,
he added, "long before the report
was written." He presided at a na-
tional organization conference of
the Railway Clerks.
Don't Meet Needs
The board's recommendations,
he asserted, are "wholly unsatis-
factory (and) disappointing." They
do not "meet the needs of the peo-
ple we represent," he said. But he
pointed out that the unions "still
have a responsibility" under the
Railway Labor Act to negotiate
with the railroads.
Harrison repeated remarks he
made in an earlier address at the
convention of the Railroad Teleg-
raphers in which he flayed board
acceptance of the railroads' "inabil-
ity to pay" plea. He declared that
the board "roamed far afield to deal
with problems it might very well
have left alone."
"The board," he continued, "says
that the workers, operating through
their unions, are in a measure re-
sponsible for the failure of the in-
dustry to be in a thriving, healthy,
growing condition." It made this
observation, he charges, even
"though it knows that the workers
have no voice in management pol-
icies."
"The board also blamed us for
failure to get help for the industry
from a government that is not our
government, but industry's," he
continued.
Harrison pointed out, also, that
"the railroads say we have been
critical and unfair and accuse us of
being responsible for all their diffi-
culties; that our work rules make
necessary the employment of men
who are not needed to the tune of
$500 million a year."
In this "general atmosphere
there is little room to sit down
and consider the problems of the
industry," he warned.
He added that while "manage-
ment is responsible to its stockhold-
ers for profits, and to the public for
service, unions are responsible for
the welfare of their members."
In another phase of rail negotia-
tions, the first national bargaining
between operating unions and the
railroads over the hotly-debated
work rule issue was scheduled to
begin July 6.
In Chicago, the 107,000-member
Railroad Trainmen and the nation's
railroads agreed on a new wage
pact calling for a 4 percent pay in-
crease to end a 14-month-old con-
tract dispute. It followed closely
the pattern established by the arbi-
tration award handed down in the
wage case between the carriers and
the Locomotive Engineers.
The new contract calls for a 2
percent wage increase — 5.1 cents
an hour — effective July 1, 1960
and another 2 percent for the
trainmen on Mar. 1, 1961. Ex-
piration date of the pact was set
for Nov. 1, 1961.
Also included in the agreement
was a provision freezing into the
base pay rate 17 cents an hour in
cost-of-living increases granted un-
ion members since May 1957. The
living cost escalator clause was not
included in the new pact.
Curran Wins 1 1th Term
As President of NMU
New York — The Maritime Union has re-elected Joseph Curran
to his 11th consecutive term as head of the 40,000-member union.
Curran, head of the NMU since its founding in 1937, polled
18,949 votes, against 2,024 for Stanley A. Walker of New Orleans
and 1,410 for Albert J. Tiger of San Francisco in biennial elections
conducted by the Honest Ballot'^
Association.
The voting by secret ballot in
the union's 30 port headquarters
on all coasts, the Great Lakes and
major river routes, was conduct-
ed between Apr. 1 and May 31
to permit members who were
away at sea to cast their ballots.
Steve Federoff, incumbent secre-
tary-treasurer, was elected for a
second term of office, defeating four
opponents. Federoff polled 11,820
votes, to 2,617 for Hugh McMur-
ray, 2,490 for Leo Stoute, 2,390 for
Charles Torres and 1,198 for Cor-
nelius J. Sullivan.
Vice President David M. Ramos
and Shannon J. Wall were re-
elected, and Rick Miller, a former
national representative, was chosen
to fill the third vice presidency.
Re-elected as port agents were
John T. Hunt of Boston; John T.
Dillon of Norfolk, Va.; Layton J.
Overstreet of Mobile, Ala.; Harry
Alexander of New Orleans, La.;
S. D. George of Galveston, Tex.;
John P. Daly of Chicago; William
A. Kelly of Detroit; Max Sykalski
of Ludington, Mich.; and Elmer
Barnette of Port Arthur, Tex.
Also elected as port agents were
Edward J. Pogor of New York;
Louis Parise of Philadelphia; Joseph
Patton of Charleston, S. C; Samuel
L. Moore, Jr., of St. Louis; John
T. Reaves of Baltimore; and Wil-
liam D. Trussa of Pittsburgh, Pa.
There was no candidate for port
agent in Houston, Tex. William T.
Kelly, who has been acting agent
by appointment of the NMU na-
tional office, will continue in the
post.
'Have No Choice 9 :
RR Telegraphers
Stress Political Role
Chicago — Unions should engage in politics because "they really
have no choice in the matter," a report adopted by the Railroad
Telegraphers in convention here declared.
The report, presented by the convention Committee on State
and National Legislation, stressed that labor organizations are
"automatically in politics because^
they exist under a legal and poll
tical system which has been gen
erally critical of union activities/'
It added: "The conspiracy suit
and the injunction judge have been
problems for unions from the
earliest times. A minimum of polit-
ical activities is essential therefore
in order that unions may be able to
engage in collective bargaining on
even terms."
The report blasted legislation
introduced by Sen. Everett M.
Dirksen (R-Ill.), which it pointed
out would nullify a recent deci-
sion of the U. S. Supreme Court,
won by the Telegraphers, revers-
ing lower court rulings which up-
held "the right of the carrier (the
Chicago & North Western Rail-
way) to ignore its contract with
our organization and abolish sta-
tions promiscuously, without con-
sideration of the rights of the
employes or the public."
The union had served a job stabil-
ization request on the railroad, and
the carrier, claiming the proposal
was non - bargainable under the
Railway Labor Act, had refused to
bargain collectively with the union
on its request. The high court
held that bargaining was mandatory
upon the railroad under the law.
"If the Dirksen bill is enacted
into law it will be little less than a
calamity," the committee report
charged. E. J. Manion, who served
as president of the union for many
years, was chairman of the com-
mittee, and another retired pres-
ident, V. O. Gardner, was secretary.
Telegraphers Pres. G. E. Leighty,
in his convention report, empha-
sized that "our problems with the
railroads are serious ones. Hun-
dreds of thousands of railroad
employes during the last decade"
he said, had lost their jobs. He
added: "Electronics, moderniza-
tion and mechanization and more
recently the Transportation Act of
1958 have had a tremendous im-
pact on the employment forces of
the railroads. These programs,
with favorable legislation from
Congress, federal administrative
patronage and sympathetic state
utility commissions, have aided the
railroads in their desire to become
a ^push-button, highly profitable
transportation system."
Delegates also heard Pres. J. A.
Paddock of the unaffiliated Rail-
way Conductors and Brakemen as-
sert that there "has been a com-
plete breakdown in the intent and
purpose of the Railway Labor Act
in emergency board proceedings."
"In my opinion," he said, "emer-
gency boards are merely a farce."
He declared:
"The only way to accomplish
our objectives in Washington is
for you, who are the leaders of
the local organizations, to go
back to your own divisions, talk
to every railroad man . . . and
make him realize that he has to
do his part by talking to his
neighbor, by making sure that
we get progressive men in Con-
gress and the presidency, and
wherever we can.'"
Pres. H. E. Gilbert of the Loco-
motive Firemen and Enginemen
charged that an "integral part of
the modern approach to collective
bargaining is the insidious, clever
concoction of diversionary issues."
He said: "When you can't argue
against the obvious righteousness of
one issue, you create a dispute to
help offset the other. The present
dispute about so-called working
rules falls into this category."
Gilbert pointed out that "if an
industry multiplies its profits be-
cause of more production by its
workers, the employe rightfully de-
serves a fair share of record earn-
ings." He continued:
"I do not believe that anyone
can argue with that reasoning.
But it is at this point that the
work rules enter the picture. In-
dustrial powers cannot effectively
argue against improved wages in
time of prosperity. So they intro-
duce the work rules or feather-
bedding 9 strawmen."
Gilbert declared that the fact
"that wages and rules are being
negotiated separately in our indus-
try does not alter my view, because
the rules dispute is aimed at wages
. . . Simply by changing rules that
have an influence on rates of pay, a
carrier can agree to a wage in-
crease and then endeavor to take
part of it back. In the final analysis,
the worker loses if he has to pay
for a wage increase by working
more hours under less desirable
conditions, and for less money than
the wage agreement contemplated."
Job Security
Strike Ban
Hearing Opens
A Senate Judiciary subcommit-
tee, heavily weighted with conserva-
tives, moved ahead with "quickie**
hearings on a bill by Sen. Everett
McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.) to ban
bargaining or strikes over job se-
curity issues despite strong protests
from railroad unions — chief target
of the bill.
Sen. John L. McClellan (D-
Ark.) is chairman of the subcom-
mittee considering the bill. Other
members are Senators Sam J. Er-
vin, Jr., (D-N. C), John A. Car-
roll (D-Colo.), Roman L. Hruska
(R-Nebr.), and Dirksen.
As an array of management wit-
nesses appeared in support of the
bill, which would nullify a Su-
preme Court decision upholding a
union's right to strike to prevent
loss of jobs, a top official of the
Southern Railway ordered a group
of supervisors to flood their con-
gressmen with letters.
A copy of the letter, written by
Southern Railway Supt. D. R. Mac-
Leod, was obtained by the Railway
Labor Executives' Association. It
directed 38 subordinate officials
to write their congressmen on their
personal stationary and send a file
copy to MacLeod. The officials
were also told to "encourage" others
in their area to write similar let-
ters and to furnish MacLeod the
"names of the individuals you con-
tact."
Chairman G. E. Leighty of the
Railway Labor Executives' Asso-
ciation declared the drastic Dirk-
sen proposal "is a matter that no
responsible legislature would wish
to consider lightly or hurriedly."
Leighty pointed out that top rail
union officials are moving into new
negotiations with the carriers on the
basis of recommendations of a Pres-
idential Emergency Board, and that
his own^union, the Railroad Teleg-
raphers is in the midst of a con-
vention.
The AFL-CIO has sharply de-
nounced the Dirksen bill and the
RLEA described it as "vicious."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, B. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
Page Five
Ohio Worker Chosen:
Labors 'Father of Year' Gets VIP Honors
CHARLES HARTUNG of Columbus, O., chosen Worker-Father of 1960, gets an appreciation
scroll from Pres. Lee Minton, left, of the Glass Bottle Blowers. Hartung is a television tube inspector
for Kimble Glass Co., a 10-year member of GBBA, and a former Local 106 shop steward.
THE HARTUNG FAMILY lands at LaGuardia Field on its first
trip to New York. From left are Hartung's wife, Frances; daughter
Debbie, 9, Hartung and son Steven, 6.
CONGRATULATIONS are extended to
Hartung and his family by AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler, right, and
Sec. Newton W. Black of the Glass Bottle
Blowers, center, in a meeting at the AFL-
CIO headquarters in Washington.
THE UNION LABEL of the Ladies' Garment Workers
on the frock Mrs. Hartung buys from saleslady
Mildred Shively, left.
HARTUNG AT WORK inspects a new television tube
at the Kimble Glass plant of Owens-Illinois Glass Co.
He is a parts inspector.
BLOOD DONOR HARTUNG is no stranger to
Mrs. Charles Hardin, left, and Chief Nurse Margaret
Reeves, of the Columbus Red Cross.
SIR CEDRIC HARDWICKE, right, stage father of
the year, exchanges union cards with Hartung in New
York. Sir Cedric is in the Screen Actor's Guild.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
The Senate Will Decide
THE HOUSE HAS PASSED and sent to the Senate an omnibus
social security bill containing a number of excellent provisions
for improving the program. But the same bill contains a "pauper's
oath" approach to health care for the aged that contradicts all of
the basic principles of a sound social insurance program. Hokum
has been substituted for legislation.
The membership of the House had no choice. The bill con-
taining the improvements and the "compromise*' on health care
went to the floor under a closed rule preventing amendments of
any kind. The House did not have the opportunity to vote on
the Forand bill principle of using the time-tested social security
system to provide health care for the aged.
The fight to enact legislation to help retired persons meet the
crushing costs of health care through the social security system
has shifted to the Senate where the first round will be fought in
the Senate Finance Committee*
A favorable committee report will ease the way for a vote on
the Senate floor for a Forand-type bill. But in any case the Senate
can be expected to vote on the issue, an issue that has aroused
the American people as no other in recent years and an issue that
will loom importantly in the election campaign.
The Senate can help decide whether health care for the aged will
become a reality this year or merely a campaign debaters' point.
Labor wants a law — not an election issue; because the only
real issue is still: Can you afford to be 65? Can you afford to
have 65-year-old parents?
Vote the Funds
THE ACTION of the House of Representatives in voting about
$600 million less for the mutual security program than it au-
thorized for the program a month ago is in keeping with an un-
fortunate tradition that ill becomes a nation to which the free
world looks for leadership.
Year after year Congress authorizes the expenditure of a set
amount of dollars for the foreign aid program and then, when
it comes to voting the actual dollars, trims back its own judgment.
This can be interpreted only as a small-minded, narrow in-
sistence on the conceded fact that Congress controls the purse
strings.
In the 1960 missile and space era, this limited approach to
critically important foreign policy matters is inadequate. If in the
best judgment of Congress the foreign aid program for fiscal 1961
should be set at $4.2 billion then the funds should be voted.
» Instead, the House chopped off $600 million, more than half of
it for technical aid and economic assistance — two programs that
are the bedrock of America's struggle to spread democracy in the
newly emerging and underdeveloped nations. The final House bill
represents improvement over the Appropriations Committee recom-
mendations, but not enough.
It is imperative that the Senate restore these funds, especially
the dollars authorized for the Development Loan Fund.
The action is all the more necessary because of the Soviet Union's
sabotaging of recent efforts to ease world tensions through sum-
mitry and high-level, personal diplomacy. The foreign aid pro-
gram under present circumstances becomes an evermore important
weapon in the fight for world peace and freedom.
To weaken this pre^nously approved program by withholding
necessary funds is to weaken America's leadership of the free
world.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Wm. C. Doherty
Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
James A. Suffridge O. A. Knight
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
Paul L. Phillips Peter T. Schoemann L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, June 25, 1960
No. 26
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of it* official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Forgotten Something, Haven't Yon?
ORR.WN FoRTHC
AFL-CIO news
Rewards ot 'Patriotism: 9
Taxpayers Pay Twice Over
For Defense Research Patents
IT HAS BEEN SAID that the question of gov-
ernment-financed research and the private
patents that result from it is such a "technical"
matter that it is almost impossible to get the
public interested.
Yet there is a side to the question that is far
from "technical" and should be within the grasp
of everyone who has the interests of the United
States at heart.
That is the immense cost to our people in-
volved in spending billions of dollars of the tax-
payers' money annually on research only to per-
mit private corporations to obtain private com-
mercial patents on the discoveries that they make
through the use of these same public funds.
Those costs have been estimated as high as
$30 billion over the next quarter of a century
in higher prices.
Even more importantly they involve the
strengthening and even perpetuation of monop-
olies that it has long been public policy to destroy.
The question of government-financed research
and resulting private patents is more than a "tech-
nical" matter.
CONGRESS IS DEBATING whether it should
insist that patents obtained through Defense De-
partment research should revert to the govern-
ment or should be permitted to revert to private
interests as has been taking place ever since World
War II.
In the House an amendment was introduced to
the Defense Department appropriations bill pro-
viding that all patents resulting from government-
financed research become the property of the
United States.
The amendment was defeated 37 in favor to
104 against. So as far as the House is con-
cerned, powerful American corporations can go
on patenting discoveries made with govern-
ment money even though in their own private
contracts with scientists they have strict clauses
under which patents are automatically assigned
to the corporation and not to the employe mak-
ing the discovery.
Senator Russell Long (D-La.) has made sev-
eral major speeches in the Senate on the subject
and has introduced a bill making ^patents result-
ing from government-financed research govern-
ment property.
His speeches and his bill have brought strong
opposition from the American Patent Law Asso-
ciation made up of patent lawyers, many of whom
represent leading corporations. These corpora-
tions do research for the government at the cost
of billions of dollars annually but are far more
interested in the additional billions to be gained
through commercial exploitation of the discov-
eries made through the use of public research
funds.
Their concern over the possible cutting off of an
immensely lucrative operation is understandable
from the viewpoint of private profits. And, as de-
bate in the Senate made clear, the same concern
is understandable from the viewpoint of the pub-
lic interest.
The history of private corporations with rela-
tion to defense research and private patent profits
and monopolies is not too edifying. Long told
the Senate that many defense contractors in World
t War II "took the position that they did not want
to do the research and development unless they
could get the private patent rights. The govern-
ment reluctantly yielded on that pcrtnt."
Having "taken" the government so patriot-
ically on the patent point, they have been "tak-
ing" the government and the public ever since.
HERE ARE SOME of the comments made in
Congress during discussion of this issue:
Sen. Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska): "What is the
use of talking about the enforcement of antitrust
laws when the present Administration is at the
same time creating patent monopolies that cost
the American public billions of dollars?"
Rep. Harris B. McDowell (D-Del.): "I have
been astounded to discover that in the absence of
any legislative enactment by Congress establishing
a patent policy for the federal 'government, officials
of the Dept. of Defense have themselves under-
taken to develop a patent policy of their own
which is in direct conflict with the repeated enact-
ments of Congress as expressed in the Atomic
Energy Act, the National Aeronautics and Space
Act and other legislation where Congress has
spelled out a national patent policy which protects
the interests of our country."
All of which should not be too "technical" for
the public to understand if it is to avoid paying
through the nose twice — once for the research and
again for the commercial products^of the research
because of monopolistic prices protected by 17,
34 or even 51 year patents. (Washington Window)
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C. SATURDAY, Jl M> 2". 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Red Nations Move into Africa
As U.S. Curtails Foreign Aid
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
If THE CATASTROPHIC cancellation of
President Eisenhower's trip to Japan had
been a single bolt from the blue it might have
been somewhat less pain-
ful to take.* But this dra-
matic disappointment and
the earlier crumbling of
the summit, with which it
was linked, are only the
more spectacular evi-
dences of a slippage of
American power, prestige
and influence which has
set in almost everywhere.
And instead of a mar-
shalling of forces in Wash-
ington for a carefully-co-
ordinated counter-offensive there is only con-
tention and confusion with candidates jockeying
for advantage in a presidential year plus a par-
ticularly pin-headed pettiness in Congress in the
mauling of foreign aid legislation. The House
has fortunately restored some of the deep cuts in-
flicted on foreign aid in the Appropriations com-
mittee by Louisiana's self-styled expert on foreign
affairs. Congressman Otto Passman.
Even if all these weaknesses are corrected in
current legislation our slippage in Asia and Africa
is already tangible and alarming. Why, we might
ask, are construction projects so important? One
of the most urgent needs of these emerging nations
is for school buildings. The Soviet Union is con-
structing a big technical high school in Ethiopia,
another for 2500 students in Guinea and will
staff both, of course, with Soviet teachers and
technicians.
Guinea, which less than three years ago was
still a French colony on the western bulge of
Africa, suggests a classic picture of the way
the Communists are moving to heat us at our
own game in the foreign aid fieHd.
Washington Rep orts:
Last winter, bent on stretching his horizons as
befits a presidential prospect, Sen. Stuart Sy-
mington took off to Africa. In Guinea he was
pleasantly surprised to discover that local resi-
dents would applaud the American flag on Am
bassador Edward Morrow's car as it passed. The
ambassador's daughter worked in a hospital and
he had become actively interested in the country
President Sekou Toure, who had just recently
been in the U.S., confirmed to Symington that
this kind of diplomacy engendered good feelings
Later, when it came to the senator's attention
that the president needed a small airplane to
get about his country where roads are scarce,
he determined to see if a surplus American C-47
couldn't be made available. Checking made it
lopk simple; cost shouldn't exceed $100,000 and
the State Dept. was enthusiastic. But then he
got a phone call from State with the bad news:
the Budget Bureau had ruled the government
couldn't afford it. Of course you have to stop
somewhere.
MEANWHILE here is what the Communists
are doing today in Guinea, whose per capita in-
come is approximately $.42.50 a year:
Toure asked us for a printing press but gov
ernment agreements for such things through the
aid program are long and technical and compli-
cated and certain immunities are required for
American officials and technicians involved. So
the Czechs are installing the printing press and
Communists will teach the Guineans how to run it.
There was discussion with us about a radio
transmitting station but East Germans are build-
ing it and will initially control the country's com-
munications.
Rice is a Guinea food staple. The govern-
ment could use American experts to demon-
strate scientific methods to increase the crop.
A few weeks ago a band of Chinese Communist
"volunteers" arrived to school Guinea farmers
in their methods to improve the quality of the
rice. And then there is the Soviet technical
high school.
Question: How warmly will an American —
senator, student or whatever — be welcomed in
Guinea say two or three years from now?
Federal Pay Hike Deserved,
Senators Johnson, Smith Agree
OEN. LYNDON JOHNSON (D-Tex.), Senate
majority leader, expressed hope that Congress
can override an expected presidential veto of the
postal and federal pay increase bill, but said he
was not certain that this could be done. His
statement was made in an interview on Washing-
ton Reports to the Pepple, AFL-CIO public
service program, heard on more than 300 radio
stations.
Johnson and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-
Me.) agreed that a fedieral pay increase was justi-
fied and was the responsibility of Congress "since
federal workers do not have the right to strike or
the bargaining vehicle that organized workers
have" in private employment.
The House and Senate, by more than two-
thirds majorities, voted to incirease postal and
federal pay 7.5 percent The President has 10
days, after getting the measure, to decide
whether to approve or veto it.
Johnson thought there would be enough time,
if a veto occurs, for Congress to act.
"One of the reasons for taking the bill up now
as we have," he said, "is to get it to the 'President
and give him ample opportunity to have it re-
searched and get the recommendations of his
people . . . and give us time to consider any rec-
ommendations he may make."
SEN. SMITH, commenting on the reasons for
the increase, said that she knows personally of in-
stances among postal workers' families where the
wage is so low that "two people in the family are
obliged to work or the main wage earner has to
take an evening job." She also said that the low
wage among government workers causes a high
turnover.
"I'm told that this is essentially because pri-
vate industry offers so much more," she as-
serted. "Government workers have not re-
ceived increases anywhere comparable to those
in private industry."
Johnson pointed out that the increased wage
would go not only to postal, secretarial, clerical
and other such government employes but also to
the scientists who work on missiles and other de-
fense projects.
"I think that unless we're realistic and face
up to the situation, we'll have a government run
by second-rate people, and I don't think any-
one wants that to happen," he said.
Mrs. Smith rejected the Administration request
that the increases be delayed until the Bureau of
Labor Statistics completed a survey on govern-
ment wages, saying: "I'm very skeptical about
surveys and studies. I think there are places for
them, but too often I've seen them result in noth-
ing but delay or as the means to kill a proposal/'
WASHINGTON
Wtfewtd Section
i
REGARDLESS OF WHAT LEGISLATION is rescued from the
devouring hostility of the House Rules Committee in the last few
days of Congress, it must be recorded that the committee through-
out the session has demonstrated its veto power on legislation with
an arrogance not easily surpassed.
Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.) and a spokesman for Vice Pres.
Nixon indicate that they hope to reverse the Rules unit's 7-to-5 vote
locking up the federal school aid bill.
The fact remains that the committee sat for a year on a school
bill approved by the House Education Committee and then de-
layed for three months more a second scaled-down measure that
easily won approval of the House once it was allowed to go to
the floor.
The Rules group agreed on a green light for the bill only after
being threatened with drastic action that would force the bill out
through so-called "calendar Wednesday" procedure.
The fact remains that after both the House and Senate had
approved, by substantial votes, somewhat differing versions of school-
aid programs, the Rules Committee again imposed its power to
thwart the clearly-expressed desires of a majority of each house.
It has been generally understood that a Senate-House conference
committee would quickly reacr^ agreement on a compromise bill so
that it could be sent to the White House for Pres. Eisenhower's
signature or veto. But for four lingering weeks the Rules Com-
mittee declined to clear the bill for a conference committee.
* * *
THIS IS NOT the only instance of sheer obstructionism. The
House Labor Committee's minimum wage bill is threatened with
delay unless drastic procedure is "again employed. The Labor Com-
mittee's jobsite picketing bill, designed to correct a clear injustice
to building trades unions in an industry where nonunion operations
are expanding, is still stuck in the Rules unit.
Calendar Wednesday 'procedure had to be used to force to the
House floor a bill to increase the salaries of government postal
and civil service workers. The Rules Committee declined to
clear it, and the end of the session was near.
The Rules Committee has used its power to control the nature
of legislation as well as its presentation to the House. The school
bill was sent to the floor with an open rule allowing all types of
amendments, but the committee voted a non-amendments rule when
it did not want to risk liberalization of a measure on the floor.
* * *
AN INTERESTING QUESTION was raised about the relations
of Mr. Nixon and the House Republican leaders when the Vice
President's press secretary, Herbert Klein, announced that Mr. Nixon
was trying to arrange a floor vote on the school bill. Despite this
public statement, all four Republican members of the Rules Com-
mittee voted on June 22 to refuse the bill a green light.
Mr. Klein promptly said that the bill was "not dead" and there
appeared to be a chance that the committee vote would be re-
versed. But time was running short, and during the end of the +
session, the coalition conservatives controlling the Rules Com-
mittee had power to exact penalties, trading off one bill for agree-
ment on the death of another. The coalition consists of the
four Republicans plus Chairman Howard Smith (D-Va.) and
Rep. William M. Conner (D-Miss.).
* * *
The Young Republicans, polled on candidates for Vice President
on Mr. Nixon's ticket, voted naturally — for Sen. Barry Goldwater,
the Arizona self-styled conservative as their favorite.
Back in other days, only former Sen. William F. Knowland (R-
Calif.) rejoiced in the nickname of "young fogey." Knowland will
have to move over; he has company.
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Lyndon Johnson (D-Tex.) ex-
pects a presidential veto of the postal and government pay increase
bill but hopes the Congress will be able to override the veto. Sen.
Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me.), left, agrees that the raise is justified.
Johnson and Mrs. Smith were interviewed on Washington Reports to
the People, AFL-CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
How to Buy:
\, Co-ops Offer
Prepaid Dental Care
By Sidney Margolius
ONCE MORE labor unions and co-ops have taken the lead in
solving a major family financial and health problem — the need
for adequate dental care. Previously they pioneered in developing
group medical-care plans, and more recently have begun to change
the faces of the cities with cooperative housing developments.
Now unions and health co-ops are vigorously developing dental-
insurance plans. In 1958 the U.S.
Public Health Service listed 100
dental plans throughout the country.
Its new report which will be out
soon lists 200 plans, says William J.
Page, Jr., its dental resources ad-
visor.
Largest numbc? of the new dental
plans are sponsored by unions, and
many others jointly by employers
and employes as a new trend in col-
lective bargaining., A number are
community-wide — sponsored by lo-
cal group-health cooperatives and
dental and medical societies. A
few are sponsored by fraternal
societies.
A good dental-insurance plan is a simple but extraordinarily
effective idea. You pay a certain number of dollars a year, or
your organization or employer pays them for you. In return
your family gets preventive care to forestall dental troubles, and
remedial care to correct any that do occur.
As with medical insurance, there are two types of dental insur-
ance: "service" plans and "indemnity" plans. In service plans, the
insurance covers all or most of any dental treatment your family
needs without extra cost to you. In some cases the care is pro-
vided by the plan's own clinic.
"Indemnity" plans or combinations of indemnity" and "service"
work something like Blue Shield. You select the dentist. The in-
surance pays specified allowances for each service. If your income
is below a certain limit, participating dentists agree to accept the al-
lowances as payment in full. Families with higher incomes, or those
using non-participating dentists, pay any difference between the
dentist's fees and the plan's allowances.
In still other dental plans, the insurance pays for periodic exams
and X-rays, and other services are provided at reduced prices.
THE PREVENTIVE CARE provided by dental insurance is the
key idea. In dentistry, perhaps more effectively than in any other
field of health care, modern preventive care can avoid many of our
present dental troubles.
Unfortunately, to save the cost many moderate-income fam-
ilies avoid going to dentists until teeth actually begin to ache or
wobble. Then it's often too late to save them.
Recently Dr. Aurelia Toyer, representing the Metropolitan Con-
■ sumer Council, told the New York State Joint Legislative Commit-
tee on Health Plans that nearly 40 percent of the American people
receive no dental care during the course of a year. The amount of
dental care noticeably varies with income. A government study
found that only 23 percent of the families with incomes between
$2,000 and $3,500 seek dental care. Only 33 percent with incomes
between $3,500 and $5,000, and 45 percent with between $4,500
and $7,000, get adequate dental care.
The preventive dentistry provided by dental insurance saves
money as well as teeth. It finds and repairs cavities while still
small, thus saving the expensive bridges that many people must
have while still young. It also prevents premature loss, of "baby
teeth," which may cause crooked permanent teeth needing ex-
pensive orthodontic treatment. It also can help detect and treat
gum conditions before they become so advanced that we lose our
teeth altogether.
The other value of dental insurance is that it takes care of any big
bills that do occur. It's a fact, says Dr. Toyer, that much of the
money borrowed from small-loan companies is for medical and
dental bills. Even banks now advertise "dental loans." Prepaid
insurance enables families who can't lay out a big sum at one time
to provide ahead for dental bills and save finance charges.
ONCE EXISTING CONDITIONS are corrected, dental insur-
ance can be quite reasonable. For example, Office Workers
Local 153 in New York has insurance with Group Health Dental
Insurance at a cost of $1.65 a month for an individual, and $6 for
a family no matter how many children. The plan allows, for ex-
ample, $4 to $10 for fillings, $4 for extractions, up to $410 for
orthodontia for children, $96 to replace one missing tooth, $500
for a pair of full dentures, and other payments for almost all possible
dental needs. The 4700 participating dentists accept these payments
in full for families with incomes under $6,500.
Especially notable is Local 153's provision for a special one-time
payment to correct existing conditions, including any needed den-
tures. This was financed by the local's welfare fund as "an invest-
ment in the dental health of our members." The one-time fee orig
inally was set at $50 for an individual and $130 for a family.
But so much repair work was required that GHDI had to raise
the existing conditions rider to $70 for an individual and $160 for
a family. It's still a desirable investment.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius)
Parks
Playgrounds
HOMES
A LIVING WAGE HELPS EVERYBODY
HERE IS THE NEWEST AFL-CIO poster on the need for adequate wages. Its theme: A Living
Wage Helps Everybody. Poster No. 12 may be ordered from the AFL-CIO Dept. of Education, 815
Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washington 6, D. C, at 5 cents a copy, 100 copies for $3.
Chosen tor 1959 AFL-CIO Awards:
First Winners of Scholarships
Show Ability in Freshman Year
THIS MONTH the six students who were hon-
ored in 1959 as recipients of the first AFL-
CIO Merit Scholarship awards completed their
freshmen year in college, demonstrating the far
above average ability which had qualified them for
the four-year grants.
Two of the group, Richard Olson of Council
Bluffs, Iowa, and Joyce Zars, of Bellwood, 111.,
have been at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology. Joyce is one of only 66 coeds. She is
majoring in mathematics, and taking science and
Russian to prepare herself for a scientific career.
Olson was successful in achieving the dean's
list for the first semester, an honor reserved for
students who have averaged B+ and higher.
He has carried to college his interest in dramat-
ics, and also sings in the MIT Glee Club. In his
first year, Richard has taken courses in physics,
chemistry and the humanities, providing himself
with a liberal background before specializing.
Richard's father is a member of the Order of
Railroad Telegraphers.
AT WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, Clyde
Headley, has compiled an impressive A — aver-
age. Clyde, from the little town of Herts in Lin-
From Soup to Nonsense:
coin County, still plans on a career in electrical
engineering. Orphaned during the year when his
school-teacher mother died, Clyde is hoping for a
summer job to help him meet college expenses.
Originally planning to attended the University
of Michigan, Bruce Kole of Oak Park, Mich.,
switched to Wayne State University when his
father, a UAW member, died just before Bruce
completed high school.
During his first year, Bruce was elected to
the Wayne Frosh Board, which plans student
activities, and started his pre-med course.
Christopher Ehret, Santa Paula, Calif., success-
fully completed his first year at the California In-
stitute of Technology. During the year he dis-
covered that his real interest is in the liberal arts,
rather than mathematics, in which he had planned
to major. As a result, he is transferring to the
University of Redlands to continue his studies.
David Kennedy from Louisville, Ky., has had
a successful year at the University of North Da-
kota where, among other things, he has carried
on his interest in radio by working at the student-
operated radio station at South Bend. His father
is a member of the Post Office Clerks.
Give a Woman a Bobby Pin
By Jane Goodsell
1 WON'T MAINTAIN that a woman can fix
anything with a bobby pin, but the point is,
she'll try. If a bobby pin doesn't do the trick,
she'll try the ice-
pick, the manicure
scissors, the eyelash
curler, the potato
masher, the nail file
and her bare hands.
Only when all else
fails will she at-
tempt to use a ham-
mer, a wrench or a
pair of pliers.
If nothing works,
she'll summon a
professional to do
the job. What she
won't do (at least, I
hope she won't) is
call upon her husband for help.
There is no home repair job so simple that a
man can't make it complicated. Give a man a
child's 39-cent toy to assemble, and he'll run up
a bill for $8.75 buying the tools he needs to do
the job. He can parlay a burned-out fuse into a
complete set of electrician's tools.
The average woman can paint the basement
playroom, hang the curtains and rearrange all
the furniture in the time it takes her husband to
reach a decision on what kind of brush to buy
for the job.
WHAT A WOMAN WANTS is results. If she
can get the sink to drain by jumping up and down
on the kitchen floor, she'll jump. Her husband
recoils in horror at such tactics. His solution is to
take the sink apart, spread it out on the floor
and throw the whole kitchen out of commission
for three days.
My own husband can make an engineering job
out of straightening a picture. Instead of simply
moving it a little bit this way and that way until
he gets it right, he assumes an air of heavy re-
sponsibility and acts as though he'd been chosen
to build the bridge over the River Kwai.
After several minutes of intense concentra-
tion, during which he squints at the picture and
taps his teeth with a pencil, he disappears into
the basement. Twenty minutes later he emerges
to announce that he's going to the hardware
store to buy a level.
An hour or so passes before he returns with
the level, a new tape measure, a new hammer and
some special picture hooks he has been talked
into buying. Finally — after filling several sheets
of paper with algebraic equations and holding an
intense half-hour conference with the man next
door — he hangs the picture.
It's slightly crooked but, after moving it a
little bit this way and a teeny bit that way, I get
it to hang straight.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
Page Nif*
Full-Scale Survey Urged:
Neglect of Energy Resources
Slows Growth, Labor Warns
The AFL-CIO, expressing alarm over what it called the Eisenhower Administration's neglect of the
nation's energy resources, has called for an exhaustive survey preliminary to the creation of an inte-
grated national energy policy.
"Labor's stakes in such a policy are immediate and vital," declared Labor's Economic Review, a
publication of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research. ^
"Increased productivity, maxi
mum employment and rising liv-
ing standards of workers, all are
dependent upon future supplies
of energy in abundance and at
the lowest possible cost," the Re-
view added.
The Review charged that "dur-
ing the past eight years this prob-
lem has been swept under the rug
by the present national Administra-
tion and the hour is growing late."
'Stupendous' Needs
There should be no delay of
policies and programs to increase
supplies of energy to meet the
needs of the "stupendous dimen-
sions" outlined by every student of
the field, the Review said.
'The consequences of further in-
action and irresolution can be most
serious," the Review cautioned,
"and can well penalize the healthy
and accelerated growth of the U.S.
economy, which, more than any
other nation, rests upon the ade-
quacy of its energy base."
The Review said a new survey
could update the findings of for-
mer Pres. Truman's 1950 Paley
Commission.
Such a survey would provide the
basis for an energy policy along
these principles: abundant supplies
at lowest possible cost; protection
against monopolistic practices; fed-
eral leadership, with state., local and
private cooperation; use of research
and technology; integration of en-
ergy and national resource policies.
Historical Pattern Traced
The AFL-CIO publication out-
lined historical patterns of Amer-
ica's energy consumption, future
needs, reserves of energy fuels,
trends in costs, potential new
sources and types of public policies
required.
The Review noted that, in 1850,
wood supplied 90 percent of the
nation's energy needs. Over the
next century, coal replaced wood
and in turn was supplanted by oil
and natural gas. By the year 2000,
nuclear energy will assume a prom-
inent role.
The nation in 1958 was using
six times as much energy as in
1900; 175 percent more than in
1940 and 4.5 percent more than
in 1955.
Of total energy consumption in
1958, oil made up 45 percent; na-
tural gas, 26.5 percent and bitumi-
nous coal, 23.1 percent.
As for the chief uses of this en-
ergy, industry accounted for 39.2
percent; transportation, 20.2 per-
cent and domestic use, 18.6 percent.
On the world scene, the United
States produced 41 percent of all
the energy in 1937, declining to
37 percent in 1957. In electric
energy, the UJS. leads with 39
' percent in 1958. The Soviet Un-
Kefauver Sponsors Bill
To License Drug Firms
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) has introduced a bill to require
the Food & Drug Administration to pass on the effectiveness, as
well as the safety, of new drugs and requiring federal licensing of all
manufacturers of prescription drugs.
Kefauver told the Senate the necessity for the legislation was
demonstrated by the hearings his'^
Antitrust & Monopoly subcommit
tee has- been conducting on admin
istered pricing in the prescription
drug industry.
He said the bill, by reassuring
physicians that they can safely
prescribe drugs by generic name
rather than the trade name of big
manufacturers, could lower drug
prices by bringing "competition
into play within the industry.**
Kefauver said claims that differ-
ent brands of the same drug were
not equal in therapeutic quality,
"whether fact or fiction," would be
answered by broadening the scope
of federal regulation. 'There is not
and should not be any room in
America for first, second and third-
class drug products," Kefauver em-
phasized.
A provision in his bill requiring
the Secretary of Health, Education
& Welfare to license drug manufac-
turers and carry out regular inspec-
tion of conditions and controls un-
der which drugs are manufactured
would, Kefauver declared, eliminate
the risk of irresponsible "bathtub
manufacturers" of prescription
drugs.
Predicting that "large numbers of
physicians would prescribe drug
products by generic names if this
bill is enacted," Kefauver said "no
longer could one drug manufactur-
er say to the practicing physician
that its products are better than an-
other manufacturer's products if
both are making the identical drug
product under identical processes
and procedures."
Kefauver said he is planning
to introduce additional legislation
at a later date to deal with other
problems uncovered during the
subcommittee probe.
ion ranks second in electric pow-
er capacity, but has one-third
America's capacity at present.
The Review pointed out that, be-
tween 1950 and 1957, the Soviet
Union led the world in the rate of
electric power capacity increase,
followed by West Germany, Great
Britain and the United States. It
added that the Soviet Union has
hydroelectric projects now under
way which surpass the St. Lawrence
and Grand Coulee developments.
Turning to the nation's future
needs, the Review said the "gar-
gantuan demands of America's
economy for energy over the past
half-century will be dwarfed" by
the needs forecast for the next
few decades. It cited population
increases, technological advances
and rising living standards as the
motivating forces.
The Review quoted Resources
for the Future, Inc., as forecasting
that the U.S. will be consuming
88 percent more energy in 1975
than in 1955. RFF says the en-
ergy demand will increase by 75
percent for soft coal; 95 percent
for oil; 107 percent for natural gas
and 121 percent for hydropower.
Reserve Estimates Grow
But estimates of the nation's en-
ergy reserves have varied, the Re-
view observed. Some experts see
the reserves as adequate indefinitely
while others see exhaustion in some
50 years.
The AFL-CIO said, while noting
that oil never has felt the effect of
a public yardstick as has electric
power through the Tennessee Val-
ley Authority, that improved tech-
nology would lessen the cost and
conserve present reserves. Hydro
resources as of 1958 were only 25
percent developed, it noted.
AEC Policy Hit
On potential new energy re-
sources, the AFL-CIO scored the
Atomic Energy Commission for al-
lowing the development of atomic
reactors to stall.
The AEC was urged to take
the initiative by setting goals for
competitive nuclear power in
lowest as well as high-cost fuel
areas; by setting up demonstra-
tion reactors and thus helping to
create yardstick competition by
federal, public and cooperative
power systems.
The Review also observed that
the U.S. has abundant shale oil
reserves; that use of solar energy
is still not feasible and that fusion
power, which would enable man-
kind to tap the nearly limitless en-
ergy of the world's oceans, remains
in the laboratory stage.
PERCENT OF TOTAL U.S. ENERGY CONSUMPTION
100% ^->su <h.
•0% —
ATOMIC POWER: A NEGLIGIBLE AMOUNT OF ATOMIC POWER
if at present being generated in the U.S.A.
1850 "60 70 80% '90 .1900 '10 20 '30 '40 '5Q '56 «
I Source: Reiovrcei for the Future, Inc., Federal Power Comminion, Dr. Walter K. Zlnn, formerly wifn A.E.C.
TWENTY-TWO APARTMENT HOUSES like these, each 20
stories* high, are scheduled to rise out of the Mott Haven railroad
yards in New York's Bronx under a building project of the Meat
Cutters in cooperation with the State of New York. The Meat
Cutters are taking applications for cooperative apartments in the
first section, shown above. The $96 million middle-income develop-
ment is designed for workers who can pay $700 a room in down
payments, carrying charges of $28 monthly per room.
Senate Acts to Plug
Some Tax Loopholes
A Senate-passed tax bill plugging a few of the more glaring loop-
holes in the present statutes headed for an uncertain fate in con-
ference committee under the pressure of a June 30 deadline.
The bill contains a one-year extension of corporate income and
excise levies as well as a temporary increase in the statutory limit
on the national debt. Added to the'^
measure on the Senate floor were
provisions to kill the 4 percent tax
credit in dividends in excess of $50
and to put a $10 limit on allowable
business gifts and curtail allowances
for other business expenses for in-
come tax purposes, except for eat-
ing and drinking.
The Senate defeated by 62 to
54 an amendment to compel tax-
withholding on income from div-
idends and interest and also over-
rode the Senate Finance Com-
mittee's recommendation to re-
move the 10 percent excises on
telephone calls, telegrams and
transportation.
The House version of the meas-
ure is a straight one-year extension
of current levies without amend-
ment or change.
The key vote on eliminating the
tax credit on dividends — a provi-
sion written into the tax laws in
1954 at the insistence of the Ad-
ministration — was 42 to 41 and
came after Majority Leader Lyndon
B. Johnson (D-Tex.) produced a
switch of two votes after the
amendment apparently had been
defeated 43 to 40.
Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy CD-
Minn.), sponsor of the amend-
ment, estimated closing of this
loophole would raise an addition-
al $350 million in revenue. The
vote to kill the tax credit did not
affect the deduction from income
of the first $50 of dividend pay-
ments now allowed all taxpayers.
The vote to curb business ex-
penses for incomei tax purposes was
45 to 39 on an amendment spon-
sored by Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-
Pa.).
House Opposed
The Senate last year adopted an
amendment similar to the Mc-
Carthy loophole-closing move of
this year but it was rejected by
House conferees. A similar fate
was expected for the amendment
this year with the House reportedly
opposed to the Senate change. This
was expected to apply also to the
Clark amendment.
The conferees were forced to
work under a tight deadline as
the excise rates put into effect
during the Korean war expire
June 30 unless extended. These
apply to whisky, beer, wine, cig-
arettes, automobiles and auto
parts.
The Senate also adopted by a
vote of 87 to 0 an amendment that
its sponsor, Sen. Albert Gore (D-
Tenn.), said would prevent abuse of
the depletion allowance for min-
erals and mining industries by per-
mitting producers to compute the
allowance only on the value of the
raw ore, not the finished product.
Maag Retires
As S. Dakota
AFL-CIO Head
Huron, S. D— Albert J. Maag,
who has devoted much of his time
for 43 years to organized labor,
has retired as president of the
South Dakota AFL-CIO after 32
years in that post and the pres-
idency of the former Federation
of Labor. He was named as
president emeritus at the recent
state convention at Aberdeen.
First elected state president in
1928, he served without salary
until 1939, except when on full-
time service during legislative ses-
sions. On his retirement this
month, Clifford Shrader of Sioux
Falls was elected his successor.
Maag is a charter member of
Railroad Local 247 of the Sheet
Metal Workers. Now 68, he
started work for the Chicago &
North Western Railroad 50 years
ago, and retained his seniority
rights until he retired recently.
He was secretary-treasurer of
his own local, and of the C&NW
Federated Shop Crafts from 1918
to 1938; financial secretary, re-
cording secretary or president of
the Huron central labor body for
most of that time.
Editorial tribute to the veteran
labor unionist was paid June 15
by the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader,
the state's most widely read news-
paper. It said: 'The record of
organized labor in South Dakota
through the years has been sig-
nificantly refreshing. And cer-
tainly Maag deserves considerable
credit for it."
From the
Forest to the
Atom - 100 Years
of U.S. Energy
(Fuel)
Consumption
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS put their communications training to good use in their conven-
tion. Here, operating a standard cordless PBX switchboard on the platform, is Selina Burch, New
Orleans, La. On left is Ronald J. Rapp, Campbell, Calif., controlling floor microphones and~timing
speakers, and Ed Disch, Chicago, right, handles requests for recognition from the floor. Each of
five floor mikes — privilege, motions, yes, no and question — is connected by phone with switchboard.
Labor Asks Government Action
To Halt Unemployment Trend
The federal government must play "a more active role" in halting the continuing trend towards
higher unemployment if Administration forecasts of a labor force of 87 million people by 1970 are
to be achieved, organized labor has warned.
Peter Henle, assistant director of research for the AFL-CIO, told a Senate Labor subcommittee
that although the Labor Dept. provides "a reassuring picture of the trends" anticipated in the '60s,
"the stubborn fact that confronts'^
At 22nd Annual Convention:
CWA Puts Stress
On COPE Activity
By Willard Shelton
St. Louis — The Communications Workers, a union with an vmr
matched record for political education participation by its members*
voted to intensify its drive for voluntary COPE contributions during
this election year and authorized the executive board to make
"necessary political decisions" after the Democratic and Republican
nominating conventions select their^
us is that current trends in employ-
ment and unemployment will have
to be substantially reversed if this
reassuring picture is to come true."
The AFL-CIO spokesman pointed
out that the government's figures
merely project high employment in
1970 on the basis of population
growths "and then distribute among
the various industries the potential
labor force for that year." For the
next decade, he said, the major
problem will be "not how this high
employment will be distributed, but
whether in fact it will exist at all."
During the postwar period,
Henle said, unemployment has
increased to a point where it is
a "serious problem" even during
years of relative prosperity. In
the early postwar years, he said,
joblessness was at or below 3
percent. After the 1954 reces-
sion, unemployment never
dropped below the 4 percent
mark, while currently, in the
wake of the 1958 recession, it is
hovering in the vicinity of 5 per-
cent*
In addition, he pointed out to the
subcommittee, the unemployment
figures "do not take into account
the time lost by those workers who
would like full-time work but are
only working part time." Labor
Dept. figures indicate there are ap
proximately 2.4 million workers in
this category, Henle said, with the
total idle time of these workers
equivalent to an additional 984,000
unemployed.
Toor Record'
"The basic fact," said the AFL-
CIO spokesman, "is that in recent
years our economy has not been
generating sufficient job opportuni
ties to absorb the unemployed and
those entering the labor force for
the first time. The economy's poor
record in creating new jobs . .
contrasts sharply with the very re-
assuring expectations" of the Ad-
Stock Ownership Found
Mostly in Upper Brackets
Ann Arbor, Mich. — A survey of stock ownership and in-
come on a family basis has revealed that, while stock owner-
ship has broadened in recent years, it remains highly con-
centrated in upper-income families.
The report issued by the University of Michigan Survey
Research Center was based on interviews with a repre-
sentative sample of 4,773 families conducted between Novem-
ber 1959 and February 1960.
It found that slightly over 14 percent of America's families
now own publicly traded common stock, compared to less
than 10 percent in 1955 and less than 6 percent in 1952.
But, it added, comparison with a study based on 1955 data
shows there has been "no substantial change" in the concen-
tration of stock ownership by dollar value in upper in-
come families.
A total of 46.5 percent of the families surveyed fell in the
under-$5,000 income category. Only 6 percent of these
low-income families held stock and this totaled only 10 per-
cent of the dollar value of all the stock.
In contrast, over half of the 4.5 percent of families in the
$15,000-or-over income group held stock and it amounted to
42 percent of total stock dollar value. Over one-third of the
10 percent of families in the $10,000-$15,000 group held
stock worth 22 percent of total dollar value. Thus, the
$10,000-and-over income groups owned 66 percent of all
common stock by dollar value.
ministration for the next 10 years.
He charged that one of the
major problems has been the fact
that government leaders had
"tried to minimize" the impor-
tance of continuing high jobless-
ness, instead of demonstrating
"recognition of its seriousness.'*
In addition, Henle continued,
"restrictionist" governmental eco-
nomic policies have been adopted
which have stifled growth because
the Administration was applying its
so-called "inflation" test instead of
attempting to "accelerate economic
growth and put unemployed people
to work."
Distressed Area Aid Urged
The AFL-CIO spokesman called
for legislation to provide special
assistance to distressed areas as one
means of helping to halt continu-
ing high joblessness, and noted that
in 1957 and again this year Pres
Eisenhower vetoed legislation to
meet the needs of depressed com-
munities.
He also urged enactment of
federal standards, below which
the states could not fall, cover-
ing the amount and duration of
unemployment insurance bene-
fits in order to "strengthen" the
jobless aid program's role in eas-
ing the impact of technological
advances.
In adjusting to the changes re-
sulting from automation, Henle
said, "there is a need for re-thinking
the training programs which are
provided for workers who have lost
their jobs."
The introduction of new tech-
nology has left many middle-age in-
dividuals without jobs, he said, add-
ing that it is more difficult for them
to find new work. "The time has
come to adapt the existing training
programs or to devise new ones that
will meet the specific needs" of this
situation, Henle declared.
CORRECTION
The convention of the Bridge &
Structural Iron Workers will be
held Oct. 17-21 at the Statler-Hil-
ton Hotel in Washington, D. C»
The AFL-CIO News had previous-
ly reported the convention would
be held Oct. 24-28 at a place not
then selected.
presidential nominees,
In other actions the 1,400 dele
gates in the closing sessions of the
CWA's 22nd annual convention:
• Heard Steelworkers Pres,
David J. McDonald warn that the
spread of automation now threatens
millions of jobs and call for in-
creased organization among white
collar and technical workers and a
"forward step" toward a four-day,
32-hour workweek.
• Turned down a Constitution
Committee recommendation that
CWA conventions be held bien-
nially instead of annually, with a
national education conference in
the alternate years, and rejected an
other proposal that the terms of of-
ficers be extended from two years
to four years,
• Approved a major organizing
campaign to complete union mem-
bership in areas where the CWA
has only partially enlisted those
covered in bargaining units and
affirmed that organization remains
a "top priority."
• Approved a policy on "mer-
chandising" products and services
offered by industries in which CWA
members work which recognizes the
benefits of keeping such businesses
"at a high level" but rejecting com-
pany "bonuses, prizes, pressures"
and employe rating systems tied to
an individual's record on "merchan-
dising."
In the field of political activity,
CWA Sec-Treas. William A,
Small wood reported that 212 of
the union's 755 locals had earned
certificates of award by meeting
their full quotas of an average of
50 cents a member in voluntary
contributions to the COPE pro-
gram, and that 68 of these locals
had won gold scrolls for 100 per-
cent contributions by members.
In a special award by the na-
tional COPE organization, Deputy
Dir. Al Barkan told the convention
that CWA was "the only union in
the AFL-CIO that has met its quota
to COPE for five years running."
Mass Joblessness Hit
McDonald, saying that labor
"welcomes" automation and any
process that helps lift labor off the
backs of men, nevertheless warned
that America "cannot prosper" un-
less industrialists can be brought to
grasp the fact that mass joblessness
as a byproduct of automation is in-
tolerable.
"We tried to negotiate peacefully
in the steel industry" on this prob-
lem, he said, "but we found out a
year ago that the current rulers of
the industry don't believe in mutual
trusteeship — though some in the in-
dustry do — and they forced a 116-
day strike.
"We have determined in the
Steelworkers that the time has
come for action-' to obtain a
share of the "emoluments'*' of
automation for the USWA mem-
bers, the USWA president de-
clared.
The proposal for a shift from
annual to biennial conventions was
warmly debated on the convention
floor as the Constitution Commit-
tee recommended the greater em-
phasis on education of local union
leaders that would result from a
full-scale education conference,
with delegates apportioned as for
conventions, every two years. In
the end argument prevailed that the
union was not yet prepared for such
a step, and the proposal was beaten
by a substantial majority on a show
of hands.
Approximately the same major-
ity defeated the proposal for length-
ening the terms of officers from two
to four years.
Other proposed constitutional
amendments, to clarify confusions
that had arisen and to adapt the
constitution to technical require-
ments of the Landrum-Griffin Act,
were approved.
Kennedy Tops
Straw Poll of
CWA Delegates
St. Louis — A straw vote poll at
the Communications Workers con-
vention here revealed that 83 per-
cent of the voting delegates wanted
to see a Democrat elected President
this year and that Sen. John F.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) led in first-
choice preference for the Democrat-
ic nomination.
Among the 817 delegates who
participated, 3 percent favored a
Republican for President and 14
percent said they have no prefer-
ence,
Kennedy won first-choice prefer-
ence from approximately 32 per-
cent of the delegates. Former Gov.
Adlai Stevenson of Illinois was the
choice of 19 percent and other-
wise the poll showed: Sen. Stuart
Symington (D-Mo.), 14 percent;
Sen. Lyndon Johnson (D-Tex.), 10
percent; Sen. Hubert Humphrey
(D-Minn.), 6 percent; Vice Pres.
Nixon, 2 percent; Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller of New York, 1 per-
cent; others, a scattering.
Postal Transport Union
Votes Against Merger
Members of the Postal Transport Association have voted 10,246
to 5,958 against a proposal for merger with the Letter Carriers. In
the same mail referendum, however, the delegates returned to office
their national president, Paul A. Nagle, who has been the chief ad-
vocate of merger of the two unions and eventual amalgamation of
all postal unions.
Nagle received 8,915 votes to
8,098 votes cast for Robert A. Rice
of Burlington, Wis.
Other national officers — Vice
Pres. Harold A. Manker, Industrial
Sec. Wallace J. Legge and Sec-
Treas. Jerauld McDermott — were
re-elected without opposition.
A companion referendum
question on whether the NPTA
should maintain its status as a
separate organization was car-
ried 11,633 to 3,041.
Nagle, who has served as na-
tional president since 1956, said the
referendum results rule out the pos-
sibility of an immediate merger but
he added that he continues to hope
for eventual unification of all
postal workers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON', D. C, SATURDAY. Jl NE 23. 1960
Pag* ElevM
At ILQ Meeting:
S. African Union Delegate
Condemns Apartheid Policy
Geneva, Switzerland — South Africa's racial discrimination policies came under attack here both
from the credentials committee of the Intl. Labor Organization and from South Africa's own worker
delegate during the ILO's 44th annual session.
The conference's credentials committee strongly rebuked the South African government for its
"apartheid" policy in a unanimous report which charged that racial discrimination had spread to
South Africa's trade union field "iri^
contradiction to the fundamental
'That Won't Do the Job'
principles on which the ILO is
based."
The committee had ben asked to
invalidate the credentials of Louis
Petersen, South African worker
delegate, on the grounds that he
represented a trade union organiza-
tion which barred colored workers.
While finding that it was unable,
for technical reasons, to invalidate
the credentials the committee said
it "associates itself with the objec-
tors and with the delegates who
have condemned all racial discrimi-
nation before the present session of
the conference.*'
Petersen, general secretary of
the South African Garment
Workers* Union, joined in criti-
cism of his own government for
its failure to apply the principles
of democracy "to all people."
He expressed regret that the
South African Trade Union
Council, which he represented,
was forced by law to exclude
African workers and said he was
"objecting energetically" to the
discrimination against them.
The South African worker dele-
gate urged the ILO to undertake
an investigation of racial policies
practiced by his country and to
follow up the investigation by rec
ommending to the South African
government measures that would
"enable the conditions of all work-
ing people to reach humane and
civilized standards."
Delegates Praise Courage
Delegates from other African
countries, who had staged a walk-
Union Camp Shelters
2,000 Agadir Refugees
Agadir, Morocco — A few miles outside the shattered ruins of this
city, virtually levelled by an earthquake in February that killed a
still undetermined number of its residents, is a tent city where
some 2,000 of the more fortunate refugees are living under the
care of the Moroccan Labor Union (UMT)
They are fortunate because the^
camp is set up to continue family
life and is organized so that the
workers from one firm are housed
in the same quarter. In other pub-
lic camps, at least 50 people are
lodged in huge marquee tents, with
families separated; they are guarded
by soldiers and passes are needed
to get in or out.
The UMT camp, at Ait-Mel-
loui, is financed largely by gifts
from workers of the free world.
The AFL-CIO gave $£,000 from
its Intl. Free Labor Fund. Addi-
tional thousands have come from
other national labor centers and
from the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions.
On a recent visit to see what has
been done and what remains to be
accomplished, Albert Heyer of the
ICFTU staff found that the major
unmet need is vitamin-rich food,
especially for children.
The camp does not receive sup-
plies from the National Aid Organ
ization, but with the help of UMT
funds and the money the trade un
ion federation receives from outside
labor sources, each week it dis-
tributes flour, oil, tea, sugar, rice,
coffee, noodles, milk and all kinds
of canned goods not only to resi-
dents but to about 1,000 additional
Kaplansky Named to
ILO Governing Body-
Geneva — Kalman Kaplansky, di-
rector of international affairs for
the Canadian Labor Congress and
a member of the Typographical
Union, has been elected to Govern-
ing Body of the Intl. Labor Organi-
zation.
Born in Poland, Kaplansky went
to Canada in 1929 and became ac-
tive in union affairs and Quebec
politics upon joining the ITU three
years later. He is a former direc-
tor of Canada's Jewish Labor Com-
mittee, a former associate secre-
tary of the CLC Committee on
Human Rights and represented the
CLC on the Canadian Welfare
Councils Committee on Hungarian
Refugees.
families for whom there is no room
in this settlement.
Four huts for a school were com
pleted the day Heyer arrived at the
camp. A kindergarten had already
been established for the younger
children, and a playing field laid
out. A mosque had been set up in
a tent.
The UMT was awaiting word
from health authorities on an an-
alysis of water from a newly -dug
well. Water was being brought
to the camp in the meantime. An
electric generator was ready for
operation, but there was not
enough money to install a light-
ing system.
In his report to the ICFTU,
Heyer noted that most contribu-
tions from labor sources to date
have been earmarked for recon-
struction of workers' homes in
Agadir. He said he was informed
that the death toll was far greater
than first reports indicated, with
some estimates that 75 percent of
the city's 60,000 residents perished
in the earthquake.
out from the conference when
Petersen rose to speak, returned to
the session to express public apol-
ogies to the South African worker
representative.
Jean Dende, worker delegate of
the Gabon Republic, acting, as
spokesman for those who staged
the protest walk, told the confer-
ence Petersen was to be congratu-
lated for the "courage with which
he denounced the South Africa
tragedy from this platform."
"All the African workers,"
Dende said, "ask the ILO to see
that this courageous friend is not
worried when he returns to his
country."
Earlier, worker delegates from
the free nations joined to help block
Communist attempts to use the ILO
to trumpet the Kremlin's phony dis-
armament propaganda among the
peoples of the underdeveloped
countries.
Bert Seidman, a member of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Research, car-
ried the fight in which the ILO res-
olutions committee rejected as "in-
expedient" a resolution of the so-
called worker delegates of Bulgaria
and Rumania which would have
put the ILO on record as support-
ing the Soviet program for "gen-
eral and complete disarmament."
In the plenary conference of
the 82 -nation organization, Com-
munist delegates tried to tack on
to a Venezuelan resolution an
amendment that would have
linked Soviet disarmament pro-
posals to DLO plans to "meet
greater demands for assistance to
developing countries." The dis-
armament amendment was re-
jected by a vote of 125 to 47,
with 15 abstentions.
The Communist move was de-
feated after Harold Rossetti, British
government delegate, reminded the
conference that the resolutions com-
mittee had rejected the disarma-
ment plan.
Intl. Rep. Rudy Faupl of the
Machinists, head of the American
worker team, was re-elected by the
conference's workers' group as one
of its 10 representatives on the
ILO's governing body for the next
three years. A bid by so-called
worker delegates from the Soviet
for a seat on the governing body
was rejected.
House Votes Aid Funds,
Some Cuts Restored
The House has passed and sent to the Senate a bill appropriating
$3.58 billion to finance the mutual security program for the fiscal
year beginning July 1 .
Passage came on a rollcall vote of 258 to 124 after the House,
in a rare reversal of its powerful Appropriations Committee, re-
stored half of the $400 million'^
slashed from Pres. Eisenhower's re-
quest for military assistance to U.S
allies.
In other major moves, the House
knocked out a committee provision
which would have cut off U.S. funds
from the billion-dollar Indus River
Basin development program on the
Indian subcontinent and struck lan-
guage designed to block funds for
construction projects in the new
program of assistance to tropical
Africa.
Left standing, however, were
cuts in other phases of the mutual
security program totaling $590
million. The slashes in Adminis-
tration requests were made by a
conservative-dominated subcom-
mittee headed by Rep. Otto E.
Passman (D-La.).
The AFL-CIO has consistently
supported the Eisenhower foreign-
aid program and had urged the
House to grant the Administration's
full request for funds.
The House-passed measure went
to the Senate where Appropriations
Committee hearings have been
scheduled. The bill is not expected
to reach the Senate floor until the
final days of the current session.
The bill passed by the House
provided:
• $1.8 billion for military as-
sistance, instead of the $2 billion
Unions Hit 'Phony 9 Ship Transfers,
Ask NLRB to Take Jurisdiction
Transfer of U.S. ships to foreign registry is "pure paper shuffling" and "phony baloney" and the
National Labor Relations Board should take jurisdiction over such "runaway flags/' maritime union
lawyers said in oral arguments before the labor board.
Four members of the five-man board will rule later on whether U.S. labor laws should apply to
seamen on the "runaway" S.S. Sea Level, cargo carrier registered under the flag of Liberia; the S.S.
Florida, cruise ship also under Li-'-*7
berian registry; and the S.S. Yar-
mouth, Caribbean cruise ship now
flying the Panamian flag.
All three ships are owned by
U.S. companies and sail from
American ports. The U.S. Mari-
time Administration permitted
the owners to transfer registry to
other nations.
"Our union is dying because of
these phony transfers," said an at-
torney for the Seafarers. ''Since
1953 we have lost 500 ships and
16,000 jobs.
The only thing different about
a vessel transferred to foreign reg-
istry is the flag at her masthead.
Arguments before the board
were by shipping companies, the
Seafarers and the Maritime Un-
ion which filed a brief as amicus
curiae (friend of the court). Six
months ago the two sea unions
formed the Intl. Maritime Work-
ers' Union to extend the benefits
of "decent wages and working
conditions" to seamen of any na-
tionality serving on "runaway"
vessels registered under a foreign
flag.
A state court ruling adverse to the
union was handed down recently
and will be appealed. Justice Hen-
ry Clay Greenberg of a New York
state trial court permanently en-
joined IMWU from picketing two
cruise ships owned by Incres Steam-
ship Co.
The NLRB previously ruled that
U.S. labor laws cover the crew of
the S.S. Florida, owned by the
Peninsular & Occidental Steamship
Co. It decided to take up that
case again, and the lawyers covered
it in the arguments.
Later the NLRB will hear argu-
ments from the NMU on its peti-
tion for an election on 18 United
Fruit ships sailing under the flag
of Honduras. ,
asked by the Administration.
• $600 million for the defense
support program which provides
grants to 12 underdeveloped coun-
tries in military alliances with the
U.S., down from the $724 million
sought by Eisenhower.
• $550 million for the Develop-
ment Loan Fund, $150 million less
than the Administration had asked
to help underdeveloped nations to
strengthen their economies.
• $206 million for special as-
sistance, a cut of $62.5 million from
the requests.
• $150 million for the contin-
gency fund, a slash of $25 million.
• $184.5 million for the Point
Four program of technical assist-
ance, $22 million less than the
President wanted.
In a move to insure closer
supervision of Point Four project
applications, the House approved
a committee amendment requir-
ing that all projects be submitted
to Congress for specific authori-
zation before any funds can be
spent
Turkey Agrees
To Allow Link
With ICFTU
Brussels — The new government
of Turkey has issued a decree per-
mitting the Turkish Confederation
of Trade Unions (Turk-Is) to affili-
ate with the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions, according to
word received at ICFTU headquar-
ters here.
The ICFTU announced it plans
to send a free trade union mission
to Turkey.
Trade unionism in Turkey is a
comparatively late development.
The first union was organized in
1947 and Turk-Is was constituted
in 1952.
The recently-ousted Menderes
government refused to permit it to
affiliate with the ICFTU on the
basis of a law which ignored Tur-
key's ratification of the Intl. Labor
Organization convention on free-
dom of association.
Turkey unions are forbidden by
law to strike or to participate in
politics. The ICFTU expressed the
hope that Turkish labor legislation
will soon be liberalized in line with
recommendations by the ILO.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1960
In Georgia Rail Case:
High Court Delays
Union Shop Decision
The Supreme Court has ordered additional argument in its review
of a Georgia state court decision invalidating the union shop on
railroads and has certified the case to the U.S. Atty. General as
involving a constitutional issue.
The effect is to delay a decision until the court's next term
beginning in October and to placed
all parties, including the Dept. of
Justice, on notice that the consti-
tutionality of the union -shop
amendment to the Railway Labor
Act is "drawn in question."
Fifteen railroad unions, backed
by the AFL-CIO, have asked the
high court to reverse the Georgia
ruling that a union-shop contract
cannot be enforced if part of a
member's dues are used for po-
litical and legislative activities.
The Supreme Court in addition
ruled in a series of cases that arbi-
tration clauses of a union-manage-
ment contract are to be broadly in-
terpreted and generally the awards
of an arbitrator are not to be inter-
fered with by the courts.
3 Steelworker Cases
In an unusual show of near
unanimity, the court upheld the
Steelworkers in three cases involv-
ing arbitration of firings after con-
tracts g-out of work; a rehiring
award after discharge of employes
in violation of contract; and an
award of reinstatement after a
worker had been fired following a
partial disability claim.
In one case the court voted 8 to
0 to uphold the arbitrator, in the
others it split 7 to 1 to sustain the
awards. Justice William O. Dou-
glas wrote the majority opinion in
each case. Justice Hugo L. Black
did not participate in the decisions.
In two cases, adverse decisions by
U.S. appellate courts were reversed.
Douglas wrote that "the griev-
ance machinery under a collec-
tive bargaining agreement is at
the very heart of the system of
industrial self-government. Arbi-
tration is the means of solving
, the unforseeable by molding a
system of private law. . .
An arbiter usually is chosen "be-
cause of the parties' confidence in
bis knowledge of the common law
of the shop and their trust in his
personal judgment," Douglas said.
The ablest judge cannot be ex
pected to bring the same experience
and competence to bear upon the
determination of a grievance."
The court's order for reargument
in the Georgia rail case, together
with its invitation to the Attorney
General to participate, indicates a
full-scale review of the question of
whether under a union-shop con-
tract unions may spend part of dues
revenue for legislative and political
activities.
In a well-financed attack on
the constitutionality of the 1951
union-shop amendment to the
Railway Labor Act, six Southern
Railway employes are charging
that their constitutional rights
have been violated by union use
of a portion of their dues money
for legislative goals with which
they do not agree.
The Georgia Supreme Court up-
held their suit and ruled that the
union-shop clause of the Railway
Labor Act was invalid.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1956
rejected an earlier attack on the un-
ion-shop clause but included a
statement that "a different problem
would be presented" if union as-
sessments "are imposed for purposes
not germane to collective bargain-
ing."
The AFL-CIO and the rail un-
ions have argued that two cen-
turies of experience have proved
that "to protect his wages and his
pocketbook, the worker must do
more than bargain with his em-
ployer. He must join with other
wage earners to secure a favor-
able political climate advancing
his economic interest."
The Georgia case challenges the
right of all unions, the AFL-CIO
warned, "to enter into union-shop
contracts without abandoning one
of the most effective means for
promoting the best interests of their
membership: political and legisla-
tive language."
Relief Plane to Chile
Carries Union Gifts
(Continued from Page 1)
Schnitzler said: "We, the workers
of America, hope this contribution
will ease a little the suffering of the
homeless people of Chile."
Gen. Gruenther expressed grati-
tude for the gift, and said he hopes
the response will continue. Am-
bassador Mueller said the worst
part of the earthquake disaster is
over, and Chile is starting to think
in terms of rehabilitating the strick-
en areas.
"The way that people have
given their personal help is rather
overwhelming," he said. "The
plane that is ready to take off for
Chile is a bridge between our two
countries.
"This is proof that our relations
are not based on friendship alone.
This is real brotherhood and un-
derstanding.''
Others at the ceremony included
Roy R. Rubottom, assistant secre-
tary of state for inter-American af-
fairs; Peter M. McGavin, assistant
to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany;
and Serafino Romualdi, AFL-CIO
representative for inter - American
affairs.
Rubottom said the Chilean disas-
ter has touched the hearts of Ameri-
can citizens everywhere.
Gruenther reported that the
Red Cross has earmarked $700,-
000 for relief of earthquake suf-
ferers of the $750,000 contrib-
uted in the first month after
Pres. Eisenhower issued an ap-
peal for funds. After the AFL-
CIO mercy plane took off, four
others followed.
Two were Globemasters. Three
were C-124s belonging to the Mili-
tary Air Transport Service. Ar-
rangements for the MATS airlift
were made by the U.S. State Dept.
The Red Cross purchased construc-
tion materials and gave them to the
government of Chile through the
Chilean Red Cross.
The supplies are being used in
building emergency housing to shel-
ter some 6,000 families against the
winter cold, now closing in on the
Andes mountain country.
Put on board the planes at this
base and two other bases were
200,000 square feet of corrugated
aluminum roofing; 72,000 square
feet of interior wallboard; 45,000
square feet of plastic window
covering; 3,000 hammers and
1,700 shovels.
One plane from Dover, Del.,
AFB carried 5,000 pounds of
blankets collected by Church World
Service and Catholic Relief Serv-
ices.
The Red Cross said more con-
struction materials will be shipped
by sea.
Labor Urges Prompt
Minimum Wage Action
would bring in more than 1 mil-
lion other workers by changing
the wording of the present law.
As it now stands, the law covers
any "employe" engaged in inter-
state commerce, while the change
would, make it applicable to all
employes if any worker in the
firm is engaged in interstate com-
merce.
Before approval of the bill, the
committee beat down an attempt by
Goldwater to amend the measure
09-9S-9
WINNERS of seventh annual Better Relations Awards of Hotel and Club Employes, Local 6, New
York City — Mrs. Sarah Patton Boyle, Charlottesville, Va., writer and lecturer, and Sleeping Car
Porters Pres. A. Philip Randolph — display their citations. Left to right: Local 6 Sec.-Treas. James
Marley, General Organizer Betty Bentz, Mrs. Boyle, Randolph, Local 6 Recording Sec. Scotty Eck-
ford, and Hotel Trades Council Pres. Jay Rubin.
Hotel Local
Honors 2 for
Rights Role
New York — Pres. A. Philip Ran-
dolph of the Sleeping Car Porters
and Mrs. Sarah Patton Boyle, a
leader in the fight for integration
of public schools in Virginia, have
been presented with the seventh
annual Better Race Relations
Awards of Hotel & Club Employes
Local 6 here.
Hundreds of active shop dele-
gates, representing 27,000 members
who had balloted to select the win-
ners, gathered in the union's head-
quarters to watch General Organ-
izer Betty Bentz, chairman of Local
6's civil rights committee, make the
presentations.
The citation honored Randolph
as a "man who already, has be-
come a legend in his own life-
time,'" and saluted him for his
"years of sacrifice to build a un-
ion for the sleeping car porters."
Mrs. Boyle, a writer and lecturer
from Charlottesville, Va., was hon-
ored for her work on integration of
Virginia's schools, during which, the
citation said, she "suffered personal
abuses, threats and slanders be-
cause of her devotion to this fight
for equality."
In accepting the award, Ran-
dolph reminded his audience that
the nation is in "the midst of a
great civil rights revolution . . . not
only for the Negro, but for the
Catholic and Jew and the labor
movement, as well."
Mrs. Boyle insisted that "the
people -who really deserve (the
award) are those people whom
you'll never hear about . . . hun-
dreds of people, unsung and un-
known who carry on with a quiet
and daily determination."
Among those taking part in hon-
oring Mrs. Boyle and Randolph, in
addition to shop delegates, were
some of the past winners of the
Local 6 award.
NLRB Aides Set
Hearings Record
Trial examiners for the National
Labor Relations Board heard a rec-
ord-breaking 100 unfair labor prac-
tice cases in May and issued 54 in-
ternational reports, another near-
record.
Since the end of 1959, the num-
ber of docketed cases awaiting
hearings has been reduced by a
third, from 340 to 216. During the
first five months of the year, trial
examiners conducted 412 hearings,
the greatest number for any similar
period in 25 years.
(Continued from Page 1)
for those presently covered and
those newly protected.
Under both the Senate and
House bills, the minimum for those
now covered would go from the
present $1 level to $1.15 this No-
vember, $1.20 in 1961 and $1.25
in 1962.
For newly covered workers, the
Senate would apply the $1 mini-
mum this year, $1.05 the second
year, $1.15 the third and $1.25 the
fourth, as compared with the House
bill calling for $1 this year, $1.10
in the second year, $1.20 the third
year and $1.25 the fourth.
On overtime provisions, the Sen-
ate bill would not become effective
until 1961, at which time overtime
pay would be due after 44 hours.
This would drop to 42 hours in
1962 and 40 hours in 1963. The
House committee version would
make those provisions applicable
after 48 hours the first year, 46 the
second, 44 the third, 42 the fourth
and 40 the fifth.
Breakthrough on Coverage
Both measures, in the first ma-
jor breakthrough on expanding cov-
erage since passage of the FLSA 20
years ago, extend the law's protec-
tion to 3.9 million employes of re-
tail establishments with gross sales
of more than $1 million a year.
This would affect most of the coun-
try's long-exempt giant department
stores, grocery chains and variety
stores.
In addition, the Senate bill
Rubber Workers
Set Wage Talks
Akron, O. — The Rubber Workers
have scheduled wage negotiations
with three of the "Big Four" of the
rubber industry, under terms of re-
openers in the URW's current con-
tracts.
URW Pres. L. S. Buckmaster
said the negotiations will cover 67,-
000 union members employed by
Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.,
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and
U.S. Rubber Co.
Firestone talks, covering 18,000
workers in eight cities, will open
July 18 in Cleveland; Goodyear ne-
gotiations affecting 24,000 workers
in 11 cities open in the same city
July 26; and talks with U.S. Rub-
ber covering 25,000 workers in 18
plants will begin in Cincinnati on
the same date.
A starting date and site for wage
negotiations with B. F. Goodrich
Co. have not yet been set, Buck-
master said.
and make the $1 million sales test
applicable to individual stores in
chain operations. This would have
denied protection to some 2.5 mil-
lion workers who would be pro-
tected by FLSA standards for the
first time under the Kennedy-Roose-
velt bill.
AFL-CIO Continues
Morgan Broadcasts
The AFL-CIO has renewed
its contract with the American
Broadcasting Co. for sponsor-
ship of the award-winning ra-
dio show, Edward P. Mor-
gan and the News (Mondays
through Fridays, 7 p. m.,
EDT), Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler has announced.
The renewal, effective June
27, will run for one year,
Schnitzler said.
He also announced that the
AFL-CIO will resume its sum-
mer weekend news broadcasts
over ABC beginning in July,
George Ansbro, veteran news-
caster, will again broadcast
the news beamed to listeners
in their cars, at home or on
vacation. The programs will
be heard at 12:25 p. m., EDT,
on Saturdays and 7:30 p. m.,
EDT, on Sundays.
Schnitzler said that due to
the long illness of John W.
Vandercook, veteran ABC
commentator, that labor-spon-
sored broadcast went off the
air June 24.
ouse Kills Roosevelt Wage-Hour Bill
Coalition
Votes Weak-
Substitute
In a final assault on welfare
legislation preceding the sched-
uled recess of Congress, a con-
servative coalition of House Re-
publicans and southern Demo-
crats teamed up to kill labor-
backed compromise minimum
wage legislation in favor of a
watered-down version substan-
tially weaker than Administra-
tion proposals.
The coalition rejected the House
Labor Committee's sharply scaled-
down Roosevelt bill in favor of the
Ayres-Kitchin bill denounced by
the AFL-CIO as "completely un-
acceptable" and a "political fraud."
The House voted to substitute
the Ayres-Kitchin measure for
the Roosevelt bill first on a teller
vote and then on a rollcall in
which 90 Democrats, most of
them southern Democrats, joined
with 121 Republicans to kill the
committee measure.
The rollcall vote on the sub-
stitute was 211 to 203, and the
House promptly followed by ap-
proving the bill as amended by
a vote of 341 to 72. Voting
against the substitute, prior to
passage, were 176 Democrats
and 27 Republicans.
Still pending in the Senate and
not expected to reach a vote until
Congress returns in August is the
Kennedy bill, approved by the La-
bor Committee, that would raise
the minimum wage by steps to
$1.25 an hour and broaden cover-
age to an estimated 4.9 million
workers.
'Retreat' Denounced
The Ayres - Kitchin substitute
was denounced by the AFL-CIO
in a statement issued by Andrew J.
Biemiller and Arthur J. Goldberg,
co-chairmen of the federation's
Joint Minimum Wage Committee,
who pointed out that labor had
"reluctantly accepted" previous
compromises in proposed new wage
legislation but "cannot and will not
retreat any further."
"Our goal has been to solve a
problem, not to make a political
issue," they said. "But if the op-
ponents o£ this legislation — the en-
emies of the 'working poor' — insist
on a political issue, that's what they
will get."
Passage of the Ayres-Kitchin
substitute followed two hours of
debate in which the coalition
spokesmen bitterly assailed pro-
posals for a more substantial bill.
The effect was to knock out a
proposed increase in the minimum
wage to $1.25 an hour, in a series
of step-ups, and substitute a flat
$1.15 an hour.
The further effect was to leave
(Continued on Page 5)
'Anti-Scab' Bill
Gains Support
In Louisiana
Baton Rouge, La. — The Lou-
isiana legislature headed for a
scheduled July 7 adjournment
with prospects bright for passage
of an anti-strikebreaker measure
and with an attempt to revive the
state's discarded "right-to-work"
law dead for the session.
A bill prohibiting "third par-
ties" in a labor dispute from re-
cruiting or furnishing strikebreak-
ers breezed through the lower
house of the legislature with only
two dissenting votes. It was ex-
pected to get a quick endorsement
from the Senate Labor Committee
(Continued on Page 4)
Issoed WMkly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
y o | y Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year Seeond CIms Pontage Paid at Washington. D. C.
Saturday, July 2, 1960
No. 27
Major Welfare Bills Await
Post-Convention Session
Rules Unit Logjam
Checks Congress
STRIKING Retail Clerks, fired by Sears Roebuck & Co. in San
Francisco for observing Machinists' picket lines, form special "wel-
come" committee for Sears' Board Chairman Charles H. Kellstadt
on his arrival in San Francisco to address security analysts' luncheon.
Unions, led by San Francisco Labor Council, are conducting con-
sumer boycott to protest firings. Shown picketing are Esther Perry
(left) and Dorothy Marquardt. (See story, Page 2.)
I AM, UAW Make History.
Union Spirit Glows
In Aircraft Strike
By Gene Kelly
Hartford, Conn. — Twenty girl pickets, on strike for the first
time in their lives, refused to back down for 14 state police at a
United Aircraft plant in Broad Brook, Conn., and a crew of men
strikers lay down on a railroad track at East Hartford in front
of a freight train carrying a shipment of jet aircraft engines.
The pickets march quietly now,T
as the strike of 31,000 aircraft
workers approaches its fifth week,
and the spirit of the striking Ma-
chinists and Auto Workers does
not often flare into public view.
But the stories of the early days
will be told by union people for
years to come, and they illustrate
the change that has come over air-
craft workers in the mammoth
shops within a 50-mile radius of
the Connecticut capital.
Everything about this strike
seems likely to make history.
It's the biggest in the history of
the state. It involves the biggest
union local in Connecticut, the
biggest jet engine plant in the
world, the first joint cooperative
effort of the Machinists and
Auto Workers in eastern air-
craft and missile plants.
But the most important thing of
all, to seasoned union people, is
the change in the spirit of the work-
ers — a grass roots rebellion against
stubborn, dictatorial, uncompro-
mising management policies.
Year after year the members of
(Continued on Page 4)
By Willard Shelton
In a sudden change of plans, Democratic leaders of Congress
decided to recess the session July 2 and return Aug. 8 after the
political conventions to complete action on bills now stalled in
committee and threatened with legislative suffocation.
The move, announced by House Speaker Sam Rayburn and
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon f "
Johnson, both Texas Democrats,
guaranteed an unusual pre-election
session immediately after the Dem-
ocratic and Republican national
conventions have written their plat-
forms and nominated their presi-
dential candidates.
Pointing to a piled-up backlog of
essential appropriation bills and
other bills listed as "must" legisla-
tion, Johnson said it would be im-
possible for Congress to complete
work on all measures by the July
9 adjournment date previously
deemed most likely.
The decision by the Demo-
cratic leaders created the possi-
bility of an eventual change in
the legislative situation on bills
considered of major importance
by labor.
Three of these bills — on school
aid, housing and construction in-
dustry jobsite picketing — are now
stalled in the House Rules Commit-
tee, with no apparent method
available to the leaders to force
them out if the session should ad-
journ before the conventions in-
stead of recessing until a later date.
Wage Bill Threatened
Another bill, the minimum wage
measure, was watered down on the
House floor before passage, and
there was a threat that the Rules
Committee could regain control of
any bill passed by refusing to send
it to a conference committee if the
Senate should approve a more lib-
eral measure.
Still another legislative goal of
labor — a bill to create a system of
health care for the aged through
the social security system — is now
pending in the Senate Finance
Committee, with two days of hear-
ings completed but with no pros-
pect of immediate agreement on
(Continued on Page 5)
Recount in
N. Dakota
Upset Seen
A hard-fought special Senate
election in North Dakota ended
in a photo-finish, with an official
recount in prospect to determine
the winner, but Democrats hailed
the strong showing of Rep. Quen-
tin Burdick as evidence of a
major continuing trend against
the Republican Administration in
the midwestern grain belt.
On the basis of nearly complete
unofficial returns, Burdick — a first-
term member of the House — held
a narrow 660-vote plurality over
Republican Gov. John E. Davis in
the election to choose a successor
to the late Sen. William Langer,
maverick Republican who fre-
quently voted with liberal Demo-
crats on domestic policy issues.
The vote was exceptionally
heavy for a special election, the
208,000 total substantially sur-
passing the 191,000 cast two
years ago in the regular congres-
sional elections.
The vote, considered from any
angle, was bad news for the Repub-
licans, who had thrown their major
campaigners into an effort to hold
the Senate seat in a state in which
Democratic candidates a few years
ago normally got as low as 25 per-
cent of the vote.
Vice. Pres. Nixon, New York's
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Sen.
Thruston Morton (Ky.), chairman
of the GOP National Committee,
entered North Dakota to call for
(Continued on Page 5)
Oldenbroek Resigns ICFTU Post,
Becu Named New General Secretary
Brussels — J. H. Oldenbroek, general secretary of the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions
since its founding in 1949, has resigned his post at the Executive Board meeting here.
The board elected Omer Becu, presently secretary-general of the Intl. Transportworkers Feder-
ation and president of the ICFTU from 1953 to 1957, to fill the vacancy effective Aug. 1.
Becu will resign his ITF post after that organization's convention later this month.
The Oldenbroek ^"noimn
resignation
foreshadows a sweeping reorgan-
ization of the ICFTU structure.
At the sixth congress of the IC-
FTU in Brussels last year a res-
olution was adopted to make the
organization "more adequate
and responsive" to the tasks of
building effective trade unions in
Asia, Africa, Latin America and
other parts of the globe.
The executive board set up a
five-man ad hoc committee on re-
organization to examine a number
of proposals.
Oldenbroek, who was re-elected
to his post last December, was the
(Continued on Page 10)
Pase Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, I960
Court Scolds
Labor Board
In ILA Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia sharply
scolded the National Labor Rela-
tions Board in knocking down a
provision of a board order requir-
ing the Puerto Rico Steamship As-
sociation to withdraw recognition
from Longshoremen's Local 1901
because of a preferential hiring
clause.
The court, observing the nature
of the technical law violation and
the absence of proof that the clause
ever was enforced, said, "We see no
rational basis for the remedy or-
dered by the board" in having rec-
ognition withdrawn pending board-
run elections.
Labor Peace Upset
"Nor do we see how it could ef-
fectuate the policies and purpose of
the (Labor-Management Relations)
Act to destroy a contractual rela-
tionship which has resulted in labor
peace for a number of years," com-
mented the court.
The court noted there was no
competing union and were no in-
equities, yet during the period
pending an election the employes
would have been working without
a contract and without represen-
tation on such matters as griev-
ances.
The NLRB order also had in-
structed the employer association
and member firms to reimburse em-
ployes for dues and other union
fees collected while the illegal clause
was in the contract. This the ap-
pellate court also reversed, pointing
out the NLRB conceded such a re-
imbursement • order had been re-
jected in a previous court ruling.
What remained was a board or-
der directing the employers to cease
and desist from activity infringing
on worker rights.
The preferential hiring clause was
contained in a 1956 contract and in
a modified form in a 1958 contract
renewal. After the NLRB com-
plaint, the clause was removed two
months later.
LOCOMOTIVE FIREMAN R. M. Berland, Portland, Ore. took
the controls of a speeding passenger train when Engineer John E.
Muck blacked out with a heart attack. The so-called "dead man's
pedal" failed to stop the train, but Berland stopped it. Railroad
management has been saying a fireman in a Diesel cab is "feather-
bedding."
'Unneeded' Fireman
Averts Train Wreck
Portland, Ore. — A diesel locomotive fireman, whose job would
be abolished by the Association of American Railroads as "feather-
bedding," has been proposed for a union safety award for stopping
a speeding passenger train when the engineer keeled over with a
fatal heart attack.
R. M. Berland, member of the^—
Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen,
was calling signals in the cab of a
Union Pacific express approaching
Portland at 70 miles an hour when
Engineer John E. Muck failed to
repeat the signal.
When Berland saw the engineer
San Francisco Labor
Pushes Sears Boycott
San Francisco — A strong upsurge of support has greeted the
consumer boycott of Sears Roebuck and Co. which was launched
here last week by the San Francisco Labor Council. Representatives
of more than 80,000 retail clerks in California, meeting in Fresno in
the convention of the California State Council of retail clerks,
pledged their "vigorous and effec-^
tive" support.
One immediate result was that
their parent body, the Retail Clerks
Intl. Association, has called its na-
tional chain store committee into
an emergency meeting in Washing-
ton July 7-8. The California group
asked the RCIA to consider a pro-
gram to further the boycott in
every way.
Across the bay, the 62,000 mem-
ber Alameda County Central Labor
Council also acted to back the boy-
cott on Sears. It will distribute
literature and bumper strips to un-
ion members throughout the East
Bay.
Meantime, the Labor Council
push was building up steam as
volunteers and money began
coming in to back the fight
against the big mail order firm's
anti-union conduct. More than
125,000 folders, describing the
firing of 262 employes who were
discharged by Sears for respect-,
iog a picket line, were in the
mails to union members.
Advertising pickets maintained
their patrols around the two big
stores with signs and leaflets. They
were reinforced during night open-
ings and on Saturdays by volun-
teers from scores of unions not
directly involved in the fight, some
of the discharged employes, along
with striking members of produc-
tion Machinists.
Sears Official "Welcomed 9
Lodge 1327, formed an informal
"welcome committee" for Sears
Board Chairman Charles H. Kell-
stadt when he spoke here last week
at a luncheon of security analysts.
Among the signs that greeted
him when he arrived at the swank
Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill were:
"Sears stock? going down in San
Francisco"; "Mr. Kellstadt speaks
of security. Whose security?"
Simultaneously Department
Store Employes Union Local 1100
and Retail Shoe Salesmen Local
410 asked the federal court here
to order Sears to comply with con-
tract grievance and arbitration
procedures in the cases of 145
members who were fired. A similar
action has been instituted by a
Teamster local which lost 28 mem-
bers in the company's union purge.
The Labor Council launched
the boycott after Sears ignored
its appeal to reinstate 262 em-
ployes who were fired for refus-
ing to cross a properly-sanc-
tioned picket line, and to re-
establish "good faith collective
bargaining" with the striking
Machinists Union.
slumped down in his seat, he moved
from his post on the left side of the
cab and applied the brakes to stop
the train. Berland called other crew
members who summoned an ambu-
lance.
They found the engineer's foot
resting on the so-called "dead
man's pedal," a device intended
to stop the train when an engi-
neer is stricken. It did not work
in this case, Berland said.
Engineer Muck was taken to St.
Vincent Hospital and was pro-
nounced dead shortly after arrival.
Probable Crash Averted
The train's route into Portland
was a steep down-grade from the
point where the engineer was strick-
en. Berland said that, had the en-
gineer been alone in the cab, the
train would have continued at in-
creasing speed and probably would
have left the track at a curve near
Providence Hospital.
"This is not the first time," he
said, "that the dead man's pedal
has failed to work. I believe this
demonstrates why diesel locomo-
tives need a fireman in the cab.
Railroads claim the fireman is
superfluous."
Berland's name was to be sub-
mitted for BLF&E's monthly and
annual safety awards.
Sponsor Hits Use
Of Foreign Music
New York — The Ruppert Brew-
ery here has thrown its support to
the Musicians in their drive against
the use of "runaway" musical scores
on U.S.-made filmed television
shows.
The brewery, sponsor of a dra-
matic half-hour TV show, "Sea
Hunt," which uses a foreign-made
music track, has announced it will
not renew its contract for the pro-
gram unless it ceases using music
recorded abroad at cut-rate scales
to the detriment of job opportuni-
ties for American musicians.
For 4th Straight Month:
Living Costs Climb
To Another High
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's cost of living inched upward to a new record in
May for the fourth straight month, the government has reported.
Higher food prices were chiefly responsible for the Consumer
Price Index rising by one-tenth of 1 percent to 126.3 percent, the
Labor Dept. said. This means the market basket which cost $ 1 in
the 1947-49 base period now costs'^ " ~ : 77 ~~T
. & . ~r v and gasoline, causing the recent
more than $1.26. . , b , 9 . , . . ,
The May figure will bring cost
of living pay increases of 1 or 2
cents an hour to some 200,000
workers, mainly in meat packing
and aircraft, whose union contracts
are tied to the May index.
In a companion report, the
government said that spendable
earnings and buying power of
factory workers rose between
April and May after several
months of decline. However,
buying power remained 2 per-
cent below May of 1959.
The report said an increase in
hours of work raised spendable
earnings by 70 cents, or 1 percent,
over the month to $80.91 per week
for a worker with three dependents
and $73.36 for a worker without
dependents.
Since the small rise in prices af-
fected the earnings only slightly,
buying power was increased by 0.8
percent over the month.
Arnold Chase, the Labor Dept.'s
price expert, forecast continued in-
creases in food prices but added
this may be balanced in the index
by further declines in new car
prices.
Chase said there was hope of a
decline in overall living costs by
next fall.
Medical Costs Up
The May report showed that the
cost of medical care services con-
tinued its long upward trend.
The 0.3 percent April-to-May
increase — the largest of any sub-
group — "was influenced mainly
by a rise for physicians 9 house
and office visits and for hos-
pitalization insurance," the re-
port said.
The price index for medical care
stood at 155.9 percent in May, a 3.8
percent rise over May of 1959.
Matched against the 1947-49 base
figure of 100, medical care costs
have risen comparatively higher
than any other group and more
than double the overall increase in
the cost of living.
The medical care rise of 3.8 per-
cent over the past year also doubled
the 1 .9 percent increase in the over-
all CPI for the same period.
The biggest boost in May was the
2.3 percent recorded for fruits and
vegetables.
Among the price declines were
those for new and used cars, tires
steady downtrend in private
transportation costs to fall below
the year — earlier level for the
first time in about four years.
The housing index dropped for
the first time in nearly two years,
chiefly because of price cuts in such
home items as appliances and tex-
tiles anid the seasonal drop in heat-
ing fuels.
Drive Opens
To Organize
Crown Clothes
Cincinnati — Don't be misled by
the words "union made" on Crown
or Headlight work clothes or over-
alls, the Cincinnati AFL-CIO has
warned.
In a resolution passed at a cen-
tral body meeting, delegates ad-
vised AFL-CIO union members
that the "union label" on Crown
and Headlight products is not a
genuine AFL-CIO union label and
does not signify that the clothing
is manufactured under AFL-CIO
conditions.
As a result of worker com-
plaints, the Clothing Workers
have begun an organizing cam-
paign. A petition for an election
has been filed with the National
Labor Relations Board for com-
pany plants here and at Falmouth
and Flemingsburg, Ky., accord-
ing to ACW s union label depart-
ment.
The AFL-CIO central body res-
olution pointed out that employes
of the company that makes Crown
and Headlight products here do not
have the benefits of bona fide union
representation, and enjoy none of
the customary union benefits of
paid holidays and vacations, griev-
ance procedures, wage progressions,
and other conditions common to
union shops.
Workers Deny Union Exists
Affidavits published recently in
the Cincinnati Chronicle, local la-
bor paper, detailed the lack of union
conditions at Crown. One worker
asserted there never had been a
meeting of the so-called Needle
Trades Association, representing
plant workers. There are no busi-
ness agents or union representa-
tives. Requests by workers for a
copy of the contract went un-
answered, they asserted.
Productivity Up Sharply
In '59, Rise in Hours Low
A very sharp rise in productivity, topping the average in-
crease for the past 13 years, was recorded in 1959, the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported.
The 1959 rise for the entire economy was between 4.2 and
4.4 percent, with almost all of the gain in the non-farm sec-
tors.
This increase was continuing in the early months of 1960
as manufacturing production jumped twice as fast as employ-
ment.
The rise in output per manhour in 1959 compared with an
average of a little over 3 percent per year for the entire post-
war period of 1947-59.
The government report indicates that the total number of
hours worked in private industry rose only 2.8 percent be-
tween 1958 and 1959 as the economy pulled out of the re-
cession, while private industry's total production increased
7.2 percent.
The BLS report revealed also virtually no improvement in
agricultural productivity in 1959 compared to an average in-
crease of 6 percent a year in the postwar period.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
Page Three
Victory at Bethlehem:
Two Shipyard Unions Thank
Labor for Strike Support
Eighteen thousand members of the Shipbuilding Workers and Technical Engineers — victorious in
their 152-day strike at Bethlehem Steel Co.'s eight East Coast shipyards — have paid tribute to the
backing given them ,by organized labor as a key factor in their blunting of" management's latest
assault on trade unionism. *
At the heart of the contract dispute which stretched back nearly a year was management's arbitrary
imposition of work rule changes'^
which, according to 1UMSWA Pres.
John J. Grogan, would have forced
workers to "surrender 20 years of
hard-won gains and be forced back
to the pre-union era of economic
vasseldom."
And at the heart of the settle
ment was a forced withdrawal of
Bethlehem's effort unilaterally to
eliminate grievance and arbitration
procedures, reduce working condi-
tions and water down job security
Health Care Fight Shifts
To Senate Committee
The Senate Finance Committee, as Congress neared its recess,
became the immediate battleground in the fight to provide health
care for the aged through the social security system.
Indicating a delay of several weeks in committee action, Chairman
Harry F. Byrd (D-Va.) said that earlier agreement to report a social
security bill to the Senate floor was'^
impossible.
The committee concluded two
days of public hearings with the
Administration urging amendment
of the House-passed bill with its
own previously rejected proposals,
the American Medical Association
urging Senate approval of the
House measure, and proponents of
a Forand-type bill backing a new
proposal by Sen. Clinton Ander
son (D-N.M.).
Nelson Cruikshank, director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security, told the Senate commit-
tee that the "AFL-CIO will gladly
support" the Anderson proposal
and hopes that the committee
"will incorporate it into the bill
which is reported to the Senate."
The Anderson bill, with report-
edly wide support in the Senate,
would amend the House bill to pro
vide benefits for social security
beneficiaries at 68, the average age
of retirement, by increasing the so-
cial security tax by one-quarter of
1 percent each on workers and em
ployers.
The older persons entitled to
benefits would receive hospitaliza-
tion, nursing home care and home
nursing services but no medical or
surgical care.
The first $75 of hospitalization
cost would be paid by the bene-
ficiary. The remainder would come
from social security taxes placed in
a separate and special trust fund.
If another period of hospitalization
is required beyond 24 days, an addi-
tional $75 deductible payment
would be made by the beneficiary;
the fund would then pay all costs
for up to one year of hospital care.
Skilled nursing home recupera-
tive care following hospitalization
would be available up to 180 days.
Cruikshank declared that the 0.5
percent of payroll cost would "make
possible a good start for all bene-
ficiaries 68 years of age or over."
Under the Anderson bill, persons
not covered by social security
would be covered by the medical
aid provisions of the House bill.
While the committee took public
testimony, the Governors' Confer-
ence meeting in Glacier National
Park, Mont., voted 30 to 13 in
favor of a health insurance plan for
the aged based on the social se-
curity system.
Six Republican governors joined
24 Democrats in voting for the res-
olution, while four southern Demo-
cratic governors were among the
13 who voted against the resolu-
tion.
HEW Sec. Arthur S. Flemming
urged the Senate committee to add
to the House bill the Administra-
tion's plan based on financing from
general tax funds and tied to neces-
sary action by 50 state legislatures.
The AMA reiterated its strong
Congress Urged to
Override Pay Veto
The AFL-CIO has called
on the Congress to override
Pres. Eisenhower's veto of
the federal pay raise bill as
an "unconscionable affront
to federal employes." It said
justice and equity demand
passage at this session of the
vetoed bill.
An attempt to override was
scheduled for July 1, with the
House voting first.
The Eisenhower message
said the bill to raise wages of
postal and classified employes
by some $750 million a year
was irresponsible, unfair and
discriminatory.
opposition to any social security-
type approach and called for ap-
proval of the House bill which labor
has termed a "pauper's oath" meas-
ure, limited to between 500,000 and
1,000,000 persons because of its
means test provisions and its cum-
bersome federal-state grant system.
Cruikshank told the committee
that health benefits through OASDI
would ease the financial problems
of hospitals, relieve the high-cost
load of Blue Cross plans, and also
relieve private and government wel-
fare agencies of a load now fi-
nanced by taxpayers or donations.
The AFL-CIO spokesman as-
sailed Flemming for attempting "to
frighten your committee and the
nation into believing that social in-
surance is too costly. The exag-
gerated figures he uses reflect slo-
gans we have long heard from the
Chamber of Commerce and the
insurance companies. It is un-
fortunate that this Administration
is turning increasingly to such prej-
udiced sources for its statistics."
Insulating the 18,000 strikers
against the full economic impact
of the walkout — which began in
January, nearly six months after
the company imposed the harsh
work rules changes in the midst
of contract negotiations — was a
broadly-based program of fi-
nancial assistance from the entire
trade union movement.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
issued the call for economic sup-
port, pointing out that manage-
ment's arbitrary introduction of its
so-called "white book" of work rule
changes had forced the strike on
the union members.
In a joint letter to AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler,
the three top IUMSWA officers —
Grogan, Vice Pres. Andrew A. Pet-
tis and Sec.-Treas. Ross D. Blood
— wrote that "the determination of
the strikers to win justice, despite
suffering and heavy sacrifices, could
not have been realized without
your splendid cooperation and gen
erosity." Without the "loyal and
generous moral and financial sup-
port of our sister unions," triumph
would have been impossible, they
said.
"Our victory is a tribute to
your unity and solidarity in back-
ing the unflinching resolution of
our strikers not to be beaten,"
they concluded. "From the bot-
tom of our hearts and with a
profound sense of deep appre-
ciation and gratitude, we extend
you the everlasting thanks of the
strikers, the locals and the na-
tional officers."
Pres. Russell M. Stephens of the
Technical Engineers sent a similar
letter of thanks to the secretaries
of all AFL-CIO affiliates.
To bolster the two unions in
their fight for on-the-job justice,
the AFL-CIO Executive Council
voted a $50,000 contribution to
the unions 9 strike funds and the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.
followed quickly with $100,000.
In all, affiliates contributed more
than $700,000 to the two unions
during the long strike.
The strike marked one of the
most crucial battles in recent years
against the growing management
effort to take away gains won in
collective bargaining over the years.
The worlc rules onslaught used
against the IUMSWA and the AF-
TE was virtually the same as the
one tried unsuccessfully during the
record-breaking 116-day steel shut-
down last year, and in the railroad
brotherhoods' negotiations with rail
management this year.
TERMS OF CONTRACT ending five-month strike of Shipbuilding
Workers against eight East Coast shipyards of Bethlehem Steel Co.
are given to members of IUMSWA Local 90 at Quincy, Mass.
Standing (left to right) are Local Pres. Arthur Fitzgerald, Treas.
Charles M. Johnston, Vice Pres. J. Wilfred Shelley and Recording
Sec. C. E. Yasevicz. Seated, same order, are Trustees Henry B.
Fall, James Kilroy and Joseph Grendle.
Tribute Paid Mitchell
As Labor Dept. Head
Organized labor paid tribute to James P. Mitchell as "one of the
best secretaries of labor in the history of our country" at a testi-
monial dinner in Washington June 29.
Over 850 trade union leaders and their wives applauded Mitchell
for his "intelligent statesmanship and competence as a public admin-
istrator," for his "human under- ^
standing, wise counsel and good
sense" as secretary of labor 'in
advancing the welfare of the people
of the United States."
Ike Praises Labor
Pres. Eisenhower stopped in at
the dinner to praise his cabinet
member for his courage, honesty
and integrity and to thank the labor
movement for its continuing fight
for freedom and progress in the
international area and its under-
standing that America's future de-
pends on working with the free
nations of the world.
Labor, said the President, rec-
ognizes the falsity of isolation-
ism built on the theory of erect-
ing walls of guns and walls of
tariffs. He acknowledged that in
many areas the Administration
and labor differed, differences
which he described as at times
based on your "accurate calcu-
lations," but that in the interna-
tional field, "on behalf of the en-
tire nation I must thank you. 95
Mitchell, responding to speeches
by dinner committee chairman
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. George M.
Harrison, federation Sec. - Treas.
William F. Schnitzler and Vice
Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky, said that
"as of noon on Jan. 20, 1961, I
will embark as a private citizen"
on the task of improving civil
rights, conditions of farm labor and
labor-management relations.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
in Brussels attending an executive
board meeting of the Intl. Confed-
SWEEPING WORK-RULES VICTORY is cheered by part of crowd of 5,000 members of Shipbuild-
ing Workers Local 5 at Quincy, Mass., who jammed meeting to ratify three-year contract marking
end of five-month strike at Bethlehem Steel Co.'s shipbuilding division,^
eration of Free Trade Unions,
cabled that "we are publicly reiter-
ating our belief that Jim Mitchell
is not only an able and conscien-
tious public servant, he is also a
friend of labor and a fine man."
Harrison, noting a good deal
of political speculation running
rife about the dinner, stressed
that its only significance was that
the "trade union movement con-
siders Jim Mitchell a splendid
fellow and wants everyone else
to know what it thinks of him."
Schnitzler declared that the din-
ner demonstrated that "good trade
unionists, in support of a basic
principle, can rise above politics . . .
that no extraneous considerations
can dissuade us from speaking up
for a friend."
There have been times, Schnitz-
ler said ,when Mitchell could have
done a more effective job "if he had
enjoyed greater, authority — times
when it appeared he was fighting
.with both hands tied behind his
back." Schnitzler singled out
Mitchell's "courage" in publicly op-
posing "right-to-work" laws as well
as his efforts in aiding building
trades, railroad, garment workers
and steel workers.
Potofsky praised Mitchell's
record as "enlightened and far-
sighted" public service and said
that while labor and the secretary
have not always agreed "we have
always given him credit for good
intentions and we never had any
doubt that his has been a liberal-
izing influence in the Administra-
tion. . ."
Mitchell told the audience after
the presentation of a scroll com-
memorating the occasion and a set
of china dinnerware to Mrs. Mitch-
ell, that the major tasks ahead for
America were to eliminate all forms
of discrimination, to extend decent
living standards and other benefits
of democracy to farm workers and
migrants and to bring a more adult
and understanding approach to col-
lective bargaining, including better
communications between labor and
management away from the bar-
gaining table.
The testimonial dinner was set
up by a committee composed of
members /of the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council and leaders of federa-
tion departments and affiliated un-
ions as well as representatives of
the United Mine Workers.
Meany served as honorary chair-
man, Schnitzler as honorary vice-
chairman and Harrison as chair-
man.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
Aircraft Strikers Confident of Victory
I AM, UAW Members
Seek Key Protections
GOP Leader
Warns Party
Against R-T-W
Albuquerque, N. Mex. — A prom-
inent New Mexico Republican
leader has publicly warned his party
that it "will go down to certain
defeat this fall" unless GOP can-
didates for the legislature "disavow"
ties with advocates of so-called
"right-to-work" laws.
Harry D. Robins, former Re-
publican state chairman, said candi-
dates who support a "right-to-work"
law "have learned nothing from the
defeat of Bricker and Knowland."
His reference was to the 1958
election trouncing of former GOP
Sen. John W. Bricker in Ohio and
the defeat of former Republican
Sen. William F. Knowland in his
bid for election as governor of
California. In both states, a "right-
to-work" referendum was a "key
issue in the campaign and Know-
land and Bricker backed the pro-
posal.
Charging that "work" law advo-
cates are trying to take over the
Republican Party in the legislature,
Robins served notice that he will
not support Republican candidates
who are in favor of "R-T-W."
While the Republicans are a
small minority in the state legisla-
ture, their influence has been ex-
tended by a working coalition with
conservative Democrats. In the
1959 legislative session, a proposal
to submit to referendum a constitu-
tional amendment on "right-to-
work" was narrowly defeated.
'Work' Forces
Juggle Kansas
Wage Figures
The National Council for Indus-
trial Peace has accused promoters
of so-called "right-to-work" laws
of "juggling statistics" to give the
false impression that Kansas wage-
earners have prospered as a result
of adoption of an "R-T-W" con-
stitutional amendment in 1958.
NCIP Dir. John M. Redding
said a news letter circulated by
the National Right to Work Com-
mittee claimed that "average week-
ly wages of production workers
had risen from $85.74 to $99.29"
in the year after Kansas adopted
the "work" amendment.
In fact, Redding stated, figures
compiled by the Labor Dept.'s Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics show the
average wage for Kansas produc-
tion workers in 1958 was $91.31
and rose to $93.72 during the 12-
month period. This more modest
increase, he emphasized, was ob-
tained "not as the result of, but
in spite of, the restrictions imposed
by the regressive 'right-to-work'
law."
IAM-UAW UNITY is demonstrated on picket line at United Air-
craft's East Hartford, Conn, jet engine plant.
Labor Hits Dirksen Bill
To Shackle Bargaining
Labor has asked a Senate Judiciary subcommittee to reject a
bill which would bar unions from striking — or even bargaining
over issues involving job security.
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller described the
measure, sponsored by Senate Republican Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (111.), as "a voice from the'^
19th Century — and the first half
of the century at that."
Spokesmen for the Railway La-
bor Executives' Association, repre-
senting 23 rail unions, branded it
"an effort by the railroads to legal-
ize their violation of the present
law."
The Dirksen bill "strikes down
the essentials of collective bar-
gaining and would create chaos
in every industry," George M.
Harrison, president of the Rail-
way Clerks and a vice president
of the AFL-CIO, told the sub-
committee.
Arthur J. Goldberg, testifying as
counsel for the Steelworkers and
the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept., described the bill as "an
unwarranted interference by Con-
gress with the collective bargain-
ing process." He said it was "an
invitation to both unions and man-
agement to run to Congress" with
controversies which should be
settled through negotiations.
Biemiller, accompanied by AFL-
CIO Associate Gen. Counsel
Thomas E. Harris, said the Dirksen
bill's amendments to the Norris-
LaGuardia Act, the National La-
bor Relations Act and the Railway
Labor Act would have the effect
of leaving all Issues involving
creation or discontinuance" of
jobs "to the unilateral determina-
tion of the employer."
Under the Dirksen bill, the
AFL-CIO warned, a union might
Anti-Scab Legislation
Gains in Louisiana
(Continued from Page 1)
and be cleared for an early vote in
the Senate.
State AFL-CIO Pres. Victor
Bussie said three anti-labor bills
introduced by State Sen. Jack Da-
vis of Caddo Parish have been
either rejected in committee or
withdrawn.
By a 7-to-3 vote, the Senate La-
bor Committee turned down a bill
to put a "right-to-work" constitu-
tional amendment on the ballot. A
companion bill, to reinstate the
"work" law which the legislature
repealed in 1956, was withdrawn
after the committee refused to rec-
ommend passage.
, Earlier the committee had
voted down a proposal for a
"little Landrum - Griffin Act"
which would have imposed severe
restrictions on union rights and
activities at the state level.
Bussie said a labor-opposed
amendment to the state unemploy-
ment compensation law has also
been rejected in committee. This
would have made it more difficult
for injured workers to qualify for
benefits and would have required
that any income earned by persons
receiving total and permanent dis-
ability benefits be deducted from
their benefit checks.
be blocked from negotiating pro-
visions dealing with automation,
supplemental unemployment
benefits, layoff according to sen-
iority, job classifications, appren-
ticeship programs and other is-
sues touching on job security.
The effect, he said, would be to
"cut the groundwork from under
every collective bargaining agree-
ment in the country."
The railroad unions, ostensible
target of the bill, charged that rail
management witnesses favoring it
had "falsified and misdescribed"
the issues involved in the recent
Supreme Court decision upholding
the right of the Railroad Telegra-
phers to strike to prevent wholesale
discontinuance of jobs.
RLEA Attorney Lester P.
Schoene declared that the Chicago
& fWth Western Railroad had
"defied the law by its refusal to
bargain." The Supreme Court on
Apr. 18 threw out an injunction
issued by a lower federal court.
The majority decision held that the
strike over abolition of jobs in-
volved "terms or conditions of em-
ployment" and therefore was pro-
tected from federal injunction by
the Norris-LaGuardia Act.
At the request of the railroads,
Dirksen introduced his bill to nulli-
fy the effect of the Supreme Court
decision. "Quickie" hearings were
promptly scheduled, over the pro-
tests of rail unions, before a sub-
committee headed by Sen. John L.
McClellan (D-Ark.).
Unexpected support for labor's
position that the bill's implica-
tions are more far-reaching than
the specific rail dispute involved
in the Supreme Court decision
came from U. S. Chamber of
Commerce.
The CofC — supporting the bill —
described it as having "much
broader implications" than "the
right of a railroad to abolish cer-
tain jobs."
The business group said unions
have "succeeded in compelling em-
ployers to bargain regarding such
matters as union security, the
check-off, retirement and pension
plans, group insurance plans, profit-
sharing K and retirement, subcon-
tracting of work, transfer of em-
ployes in connection with plant re-
moval to a new location." All of
these, the chamber implied, are
really management prerogatives.
(Continued from Page 1)
two IAM lodges and two UAW
locals voted for higher wages, and
| gave up on many conditions con-
sidered to spell the difference be-
tween a good contract and a poor
one — seniority, union shop, tighter
grievance machinery, arbitration,
job progression.
"What happened?" this reporter
asked union committeemen.
"It's a rank-and-file revolution,**
they said. "Our members got
tired of giving in to management
every year. They made up their
minds it had to stop."
So the pact that united the mem-
bers of the IAM and the UAW was
carried out successfully, and the
picket lines at East Hartford,
Bridgeport, Stratford, Broad Brook
and Windsor Locks, North Haven
and Manchester, Conn., all bristle
with signs proclaiming:
IAM and UAW on Strike for
Automatic Wage Progression.
UAW and IAM United for a
Decent Seniority System.
IAM and UAW on Strike for
Union Security.
UAW and IAM on Strike for
Arbitration.
Union people say that produc-
tion has been almost halted.
The mutual aid pact of the IAM
and UAW is contemplated with
quiet satisfaction by John K. Main
Sr., senior business representative
of IAM Dist. 91 in East Hartford.
Not Alone
"This time we don't stand alone,
because all the aircraft plants in
Connecticut are with us," said
Main. "Another good thing — the
fighting Machinist, as we used to
call the typical IAM member in
the old organizing days, has come
back.
"For 15 years this company
has given out wage increases and
emasculated our contract. This
year our people put their foot
down.**
Dave Fraser is president of IAM
Lodge 1746, which represents 16,-
000 Pratt & Whitney workers at
East Hartford and Manchester,
Conn. Asked about a report that
high school and college youths are
being hired as summer-time train-
ees, he said:
"You can't make jet engines with
high school kids. You need skills,
and our people have the skills."
There had been early signs of the
changing contract climate. On De-
cember 4, 1959, Pratt & Whitney
workers voted by a small margin
to reject a company offer. But it
was not until the strike vote meet-
ing in June, when only 700 mem-
bers out of more than 4,000 voted
against a strike, that the sun of a
new union day climbed above the
horizon.
By that time other contracts
had expired, and with them pro-
visions for deducting dues from
members. Aircraft workers be-
gan coming to union halls to pay
their dues, and many thousands
of non-members began signing
up — 2,300 in Lodge 1746 alone
since early June.
Union leaders expect to come
out of this strike with both better
contracts and stronger unions. They
believe the work stoppage will be
worth the cost — and that cost is
high, in terms of lost wages, lost
dues income, strike benefits and
insurance payments.
At the UAW hall on Union
Avenue, Bridgeport, strikers from
the Sikorsky helicopter plants in
Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn. —
divisions of United Aircraft — filed
in all day June 28 for strike bene-
fits — $12 a week for single men,
$17 for workers with one depen-
dent, $22 for men with a family.
UAW Local 877 has 4,850 in its
bargaining unit.
The UAW took over insurance
payments when Sikorsky stopped
the payments early in the strike.
IAM is paying $35 a week to mem-
bers in good standing, and mem-
bers may pay their own insurance
premiums. Workers with less than
six months' union membership get
a cash payment, usually $10 or
more.
The main Sikorsky plant is at
Stratford, a few miles from
Bridgeport. Pickets report for
duty at a strike tent in a big field
close to the plant. Food is pre-
pared there, and delivered to all
gates of the $20,000,000 Strat-
ford plant, and to Bridgeport.
At North Haven, Conn., suburb
of New Haven, UAW Local 1234
has 4,500 out from a Pratt & Whit-
ney feeder plant producing jet
parts.
IAM Lodge 743 represents 4,500
workers at United Aircraft's Hamil-
ton Standard plants in Windsor
Locks and Broad Brook, Conn.
It makes jet units, and members
have continued their strike in the
face of persistent "return to work'*
phone calls from many of the 1,200
supervisors and strikebreakers in-
side the plant.
Estimates on the number of re-
turned workers differ. UAC man-
agement announced 5,871 out of
31,000 have returned. The unions
say 2,498.
In negotiations at Hartford,
UAC management was resisting
union efforts to get these contract
improvements: automatic pro-
gression to replace a merit rating
system; union security; seniority
rules instead of a 10 percent layoff
clause; broader seniority rights;
arbitration of all unsettled griev-
ances; the right of a worker to see
his steward, and of the steward to
investigate grievances.
Convair, Douglas Pacts
Ratified, Talks Continue
Two strikes in the aircraft and missile industry continued while
negotiators for 40,000 Machinists and Auto Workers kept trying for
a settlement with Lockheed Aircraft Corp. in California and United
Aircraft in Connecticut.
Members of the IAM voted to ratify new two-year contracts
covering 27,500 Convair workers^
and 18,000 Douglas employes at
San Diego and other California
locations. Majorities for ratification
were 58 percent among Convair
workers, 70 percent at Douglas.
Three federal conciliators sug-
gested a basis for settling the strike
of 10,500 Machinists at Lockheed
locations in Sunnyvale, Vanden-
berg, Holloway, Van Nuys and
Santa Cruz, Calif., and Honolulu,
P. I. The union indicated willing-
ness to accept the suggested basis
but management called for a two-
day recess and rejected the pro-
posal.
In Connecticut, 200 IAM and
UAW pickets demonstrated in front
of the state capital while 200 wo-
men took over picket stations at
the East Hartford plant of United
Aircraft. It was "ladies' day" on
the picket line.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
Page Tiy
In Recess for Conventions:
Congress Quits Until August,
Rules Unit Stalls Welfare Bills
(Continued from Page 1)
a specific plan that would move
quickly to the Senate floor.
Any Senate bill would still be
subject -to the House agreement,
and the Rules Committee might
again assert control.
As a result of the recess, most
Democratic members of Congress
were expected to leave shortly for
Los Angeles, where the Democratic
national convention is scheduled to
open July 11 and where the plat-
form and credentials committees
have sessions listed for the preced-
ing week.
House GOP Attacks
The Republican members, with
four weeks to go before the GOP
national convention in Chicago
July 25, lacked the urgency for a
Democrats, and House Republicans
voted overwhelmingly to object to
the change in plans. Sen. Everett
McKinley Dirksen (R-I1L), the Re-
publican floor leader, gave his sup-
port to Johnson.
The last major item of busi-
ness before the recess, except
for appropriation bills, appeared
likely to be an effort to override
Pres. Eisenhower's veto of a bill
providing a 7.5 percent pay in-
crease for government workers.
Widespread political speculation
arose that the August session would
be marred by partisan wrangling
Some Democrats joined Republi-
cans in expressing this apprehen
sion.
'Confrontation' Seen
There was speculation also that
temporary recess that beset the I the return of Congress would pro-
$1.25 Wage Bill Killed,
Weak Substitute Passed
(Continued from Page 1)
uncovered even by the $1.15 fig
ure workers who for years have
been completely unprotected by the
Fair Labor Standards Act.
The Ayres-Kitchin bill would
add a potential of 1.4 million work
ers to the 24 million previously
covered but would grant these
newly covered workers of major re
tail chain stores a minimum of
only $1 an hour — thus creating two
classes of protection.
Overtime Pay Denied
The substitute would also deny
newly covered workers any protec
tion in overtime pay. There would
be no maximum workweek at the
conclusion of which overtime pay
rates would be required.
Even the apparent benefit to
the 1.4 million workers who might
now earn less than $1 an hour was
subject to possible avoidance by
a loophole in the substitute.
Extended coverage would be
applied only to chains operating
five or more retail outlets in two
or more states. Lawyers sug-
gested that a chain retailer might
escape the provision by incor-
porating local units separately in
different states.
The modified House Committee
bill sponsored by Rep. James
Roosevelt (D-Calif.) emerged from
committee after protracted hear-
ings that began last year and after
other lengthy delays. It then re
mained stuck in the House Rules
Committee until first Rep. William
H. Ayres (R-O.) and then Rep. A
Paul Kitchin (D-N. C.) offered the
identical substitute that the Rules
unit cleared.
The Ayres-Kitchin bill was
thrown into the House hopper as
a final device of the southern
Democratic-Republican coalition
to emasculate if it could not
block all other bills to improve
the nation's minimum wage
structure.
Its proposals to hold down a
wage increase from $1.25 to $1.15
had been beaten in the Labor Com-
mittee and proposals similar to its
restrictions on expanded coverage
also had been beaten. The Rules
Committee nevertheless in effect
gave it priority over the commit-
tee's scaled-down Roosevelt bill by
clearing it as a substitute. An
amendment in the nature of a sub-
stitute by parliamentary practice
must be voted on and defeated be-
fore the original measure is in or-
der.
'Political Gesture'
Biemiller and Goldberg in their
statement denounced the Ayres-
Kitchin plan as "a political gesture
that offers no more than pretense
of relief for the nation's millions
of underpaid workers."
Labor has already "comprom-
ised to the utmost" in an effort to
help produce an acceptable min-
imum wage law "this year," they
said. It had "reluctantly ac-r
cepted" reductions cutting by
more than half the extension of
coverage under a new bill and
postponing the effective date of
a $1.25 minimum.
The original bill backed by the
AFL-CIO was the Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt measure that would have
made a $1.25 minimum effective
immediately and expanded protec-
tion, with full overtime provisions,
to 7.8 million workers not now
covered.
Senate Bill Provisions
The Senate Labor Committee re-
ported the Kennedy bill with new
coverage reduced to only 5 million
and with a rise in wages and reduc-
tions in hours provided in a series
of step-ups and step-downs.
The House Labor Committee bill
reduced additional coverage to 3.5
million and provided step-ups and
step-downs in wages and hours.
The Administration plan backed
by Mitchell offered coverage to 3.1
million workers — approximately
1.7 million more than the Ayres-
Kitchin bill — although it was sim-
ilar to the latter bill in its refusal
of overtime pay provisions for
more than 40 hours of work a
week.
duce an almost unprecedented "con-
frontation" of party presidential
nominees. Vice Pres. Nixon, sure
to be the GOP candidate, is presid-
ing officer of the Senate, and three
Democratic senators are recognized
presidential candidates — Johnson
himself, and Senators John F. Ken-
nedy (Mass.) and Stuart Symington
(Mo.).
The last time Congress held a
session between the nominating
conventions and the election was in
1948, when then Pres. Truman
called an August special session on
what he labeled "Turnip Day" to
push his demand for anti-inflation
legislation.
The three-week "Turnip Day"
session rejected Truman's pro-
posals and adjourned after com-
pleting action on a Republican
alternative plan, but Truman as
Democratic nominee used the
record as part of his campaign,
labeling the GOP-controlled leg-
islature "the do-nothing, no-good
80th Congress."
The Democratic decision came as
mounting protests began to beat
against the six-member bipartisan
coalition that exploits control of
House Rules Committee to delay
or kill legislation considered almost
certain to pass if it could be forced
to the floor.
Major Bills Pending
Johnson, in telling the Senate of
the decision to recess the session,
pointed out that 10 appropriation
bills, including the mutual security
and public works measures, are still
pending in Congress. He listed a
number of secondary measures that
have or are expected to get com-
mittee approval and have previously
been listed on the congressional
program for action.
In arguing for the recess, the
Texas senator said that a mini-
mum wage bill and health care
bill and other bills of that kind
should not be "watered down the
way some people want them
watered down" or "abandoned
the way some people want them
abandoned."
The decision for the recess coin-
cided almost precisely with two
Rules Committee actions refusing
to clear the housing bill and send-
ing the House-passed school bill to
a Senate-House conference.
It coincided also with action by
Chairman Graham Barden (D-
N.C.) of the House Labor Com-
mittee in refusing to recognize com-
mittee members seeking to instruct
him to force to the floor the job-
site picketing bill by the "calendar
Wednesday" procedure, and then in
blocking all other committee action
under this procedure.
DRAWN FOft THE
AFL-CIO new.
House Conservatives
Bar Job Picket Vote
The fate of a drive to amend the Taft-Hartley Act's restrictions
on secondary boycotts so as to permit picketing on common con-
struction sites was thrown into doubt as Congress approached recess.
While a Senate Labor subcommittee heard organized labor and
the Eisenhower Administration appeal for passage of the Kennedy-
Thompson bill, a group of southern'^
'Canned' Editorials Used
By Situs Picketing Foes
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.) has charged that what
he called the "kept press" reprinted identical canned editorials
as part of a concerted lobbying drive against the Kennedy-
Thompson "common situs" picketing bill.
Speaking from the House floor, Thompson referred to a
document distributed to House members by the American
Retail Federation and entitled: "More Newspapers Reflect
Mounting Public Indignation Over Efforts to Blast a Big Hole
in the Landrum-Griflin Law With Common Situs Picketing
Bill."
The document contained 52 identical or nearly identical
articles and editorials from newspapers in 22 states and the
District of Columbia and, Thompson noted, all appeared with-
in a period of three weeks.
Twelve newspapers carried an identical editorial in one
eight-day period, he said.
Thompson lashed the canned editorial "writers" for dis-
torting the issue by saying the proposed legislation was
"Hoffa-sponsored" and for not mentioning that the Eisen-
hower Administration backed the bill along with the Demo-
crats.
Democrats in the House torpedoed
efforts to get the House bill to a
floor vote.
The legislation sponsored by
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.)
and Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr.
(D-N. J.), in effect would overturn
a 1951 Supreme Court ruling that
the Denver building trades unions
violated T-H in picketing non-un
ion work on an otherwise all-union
project.
Chairman Howard W. Smith
(D-Va.) of the powerful House
Rules Committee reportedly de-
manded that the Thompson bill
be scuttled in exchange for clear-
ing a minimum wage bill for
floor action.
Chairman Graham A. Barden
(D-N. C.) of the House Labor
Committee — which last April
okayed the Thompson bill by a
21-5 vote — then permitted a fili-
buster to consume an entire com-
mittee meeting. This prevented
liberal Democrats from forcing the
picketing bill directly to the floor.
On the Senate side, Building &
Construction Trades Dept. Pres.
C. J. Haggerty of the AFL-CIO
urged a floor vote on the basis of
legislative hearings over the years
and a leadership pledge repeatedly
reported by Kennedy.
Commitments Cited
Haggerty quoted Kennedy as
telling the Senate late in May that
"commitments have been made by
the leadership and other responsi-
ble legislators on both sides of the
aisle in both Houses to bring the
situs picketing bill to a vote this
session."
Haggerty told the Senate group
that the Denver rule had adversely
affected the building trades. In
Baltimore, he said, the number of
all-union general contractors plum-
meted from 58 in 1951 to five in
1959, with "substantial differen-
tials" created between union and
non-union rates.
Under Sec. of Labor James T.
O'Connell came under unfriendly
questioning from Republicans after
testifying the Kennedy bill would
mean "long overdue correction of
the common situs inequity" and
was in line with Pres. Eisenhowers
message to Congress last year.
Senate Republican Leader Ev-
erett M. Dirksen wondered whether
the Administration still supported
the amendment, noting the Presi-
dent made no mention of it in his
State of the Union message this
year. O'Connell said the President
still wants the change.
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) in.
joined in, saying he didn't think
the Administration understood the
bill's implications.
O'Connell said it could not be
fairly argued that employers jointly
engaged in a construction project
are "wholly unconcerned" in a law-
ful dispute involving any single em-
ployer. Therefore, he added, the
union should be free to picket with-
out fear of a secondary boycott
charge.
Nature of Industry Involved
Haggerty pointed out that it is
because the Taft-Hartley Act did
not concede the nature of the build-
ing and construction industry that
employes in the industry are de-
nied the right of peaceful picket-
ing enjoyed by other workers.
In the Denver case, a general
contractor on a commercial project
sublet work to a non-union electri-
cal contractor who was paying his
workers 42.5 cents an hour less
than the union scale. The Denver
building trades picketed the site as
'unfair."
The lower courts took the view
that the union action was focused
on the non-union aspect of the
project and thus was legal. The
Supreme Court, by a 6-3 decision,
reversed this judgment.
Haggerty quoted from past com-
mittee reports which recommended
that the secondary boycott be re-
defined to recognize that the typi-
cal construction project is an "inte-
grated economic enterprise" in-
volving different employers.
Farm Revolt
Behind Vote in
North Dakota
(Continued from Page 1)
Davis' election and Davis himself
in effect repudiated the farm poli-
cies of Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft
Benson.
Burdick, who in 1958 became
the first North Dakota Democrat
in history to win a House seat,
made an all-out assault on Ad-
ministration farm policies. All
major announced Democratic
presidential candidates traveled
to North Dakota to lend their
backing.
The result was a Burdick triumph
in most rural areas, plus a sharp re-
duction in the Republican share of
the vote in nearly all the state s
cities. An early 11,000 plurality
for Davis in the cities steadily
shrank as the rural returns poured
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C. SATIRDAY. JULY 2, 1960
Retledieatiom 1960
I T IS AN HONORED and accepted truism of democracy that
* each generation must rededicate itself to the fight for peace and
freedom, a truism that has been converted into a cliche in the hands
of Fourth of July orators.
On the 184th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of
Independence this rededication can no longer be regarded as an
oratorical luxury. It is essential.
In our age of peril and anxiety and uncertainty there is a recurring
need to go back to Jefferson's "self-evident" truths:
"That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.. That to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
power from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form
of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right
of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new govern-
ment, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their safety and happiness/*
Where Are the Jobs?
HP HE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS report on the tremen-
•■■ dous rise in productivity in 1959, an increase that is continuing
in the first half of 1960, reflects both the new efficiency of American
industry stemming from the technological revolution and automation
and the dangers this situation poses for the nation unless there is a
sharp increase in economic growth.
The increase in productivity in 1959 reveals that a small increase
in employment has resulted in a large increase in production. Unless
there is a matching increase in consumption, stemming from higher
purchasing power this production will pile up, bringing with it acute
economic distress.
While productivity sharply increases and the number of workers
needed to achieve these levels of production drop, the number of
new workers entering the labor force is increasing.
There is only one answer — expansion and growth tied to govern-
ment policies that will direct that growth to the area of greatest
need — the public services.
Rules Committee Arrogance
THE SHOCKING PERFORMANCE of the Southern Democratic-
Republican coalition that controls the House Rules Committee
in delaying — with intent to kill — important legislation in the public
interest should have kindled the indignation of every responsible
member of the House.
For what the controlling coalition on this committee has done is
to flatly inform every representative — men and women who collec-
tively have won the support of millions of American voters — that
only they, a half dozen or so, are the best judges of what issues a
great legislative body will be allowed to pass on.
Neither the House membership nor the nation can tolerate this
situation. The American governmental process is studded with
enough checks and balances to insure moderation at all levels. The
issue is not moderate or liberal — versus — conservative policies; it
is the knowing and willful use of legislative machinery to prevent
a decision by a popularly elected legislative body.
This is a dangerous burlesque of democracy, that if allowed to
go unchecked will eventually corrupt representative government.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, W alter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Wiliard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, July 2, 1960
No. 27
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dust rial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of it* official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Make It Loud and Clear
Contract Conditions Improved:
New High for Farm Workers
Set by West Indies Program
By Milton Plumb
MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS negotiated in the
labor-backed program for employment of
farm workers from the British West Indies in the
United States have set a new high in working con-
ditions for agricultural workers.
The new standards were voluntarily established
by U.S. employers participating in the program
following a series of discussions with Assistant
Sec. of Labor Newell Brown and other officials
of the Labor Dept. aimed at better protection of
U.S. farm workers against any adverse effect
from foreign worker employment, and at improved
working conditions for the British West Indian
workers. ,
Not only have the employers agreed to meet
at the minimum all of the standards set up under
the Mexican contract labor program but they
have continued and expanded many protective
features of the BWI program which have pre-
viously been well in advance of the Mexican
program. The BWI program of accident and
sickness insurance for injuries or illness off the
job, for example, is the oldest in the country,
having been established in 1948.
The major new advances agreed to by the em-
ployers are:
• The major portion of the workers' cost of
transportation between jobs in this country will
be paid by the employer in the future, despite the
fact that BWI compliance officials have always
insisted that long distance travel must be at the
same standards of comfort as those provided the
traveling public. Greyhound and Trailways buses
will continue to be used for BWI workers, whereas
under the Mexican program much of the transpor-
tation is done 'by contractors using converted
school buses and similarly inferior equipment.
• Workers will be guaranteed employment for
at least three-quarters of the normal hours of work
during the contract period.
Other contract changes represent merely for-
mal recognition of what were already the normal
practice. They include provision of free housing
for the workers — with BWI compliance officials
demanding higher standards than those of the
Mexican program and making much more regu-
lar inspections — and assurance that food will be
provided at cost.
BRITISH WEST INDIES WORKERS repre-
sent only about 6,500 of the 450,000 foreign
workers admitted each year to work on U.S. farms.
Because BWI compliance officials have steadily re-
fused to let their nationals work under the sub-
standard conditions offered to domestic farm
workers and under other foreign' labor programs,
the number has declined in recent years while the
Mexican program has grown.
BWI workers are used chiefly in Florida, Con-
necticut and in some states in the north-central
and middle-Atlantic regions. It is sharply different
from the Bahaman worker program which labor
has attacked as substandard.
In congratulating the committee representing
employers using BWI labor upon their "con-
structive response*' to the Labor Dept.'s request
for contract revision, Brown said that it is "a
source of satisfaction that the BWI program is in
some respects well ahead of the standards imposed
under the Mexican labor program."
Brown praised Harold F. Edwards, chief
liaison officer for the government of the West
Indies in the farm labor program.
Edwards has been largely responsible for the
steady improvement of wages and working con-
ditions under the BWI program since he took over
as the chief compliance official in 1951.
Whereas the Mexican program has a de facto
minimium wage of 50 cents an hour, Edwards
will not contract any workers for less than 65
cents an hour as the minimum guarantee and most
workers contracted at this minimum actually earn
considerably more,
Brown, in praising Edwards, stressed that all
improvements in foreign worker contracts serve
indirectly to improve also the opportunities and
conditions for U.S. workers.
Members of the British West Indies Employers
Committee, who helped in voluntarily setting a
new standard for agricultural labor employment in
this country' are Ralph C. Lasbury, Jr., of the
Shade Tobacco Growers Association, chairman,
and Fred C. Sikes, vice president in charge of
personnel of the U.S. Sugar Corporation, and
Marvin H. Keil, personnel director of the Wis-
consin Division of the Green Giant Foods Corp,
A tour of inspection of some of the BWI
camps on the East Coast was made recently
by Serafino Romualdi, the AFL-CIO's Inter-
American Representative. He reported that the
living conditions under which the BWI workers
he visited were living were well in advance of
those enjoyed by most farm workers.
AFL-CW NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, S ATI RDAY, JULY 2, 1960
Morgan Says:
It's Time for Breadwinners
To Match Teenagers' Wages
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
I riday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
BACK IN THE dear dead days beyond recall,
1 used to mow lawns for 25 cents an hour
and get a nickel each for gopher tails. I don't
know what has happened to the gopher-trapping
business since I was a boy but I am informed that
unorganized baby-sitters in some American metro-
poli now bank as much
as $1.50 an hour and a
teenager won't look at a
long-haired lawn for less
than $1.25.
1 applaud this growth
in the economy, even if it
forces manufacturers to
make larger piggy banks,
but I don't think it is
enough to justify the Vice
President's optimism in
the comparison between
our expansion and that of
the Soviet Union. I would be a little more con-
fident about our competitive position over the
long pull if more adult breadwinners could be
assured of earning as much per hour as a baby-
sitter or a lawn trimmer. Which brings us to the
subject of the minimum wage.
A few unions have done such a strong job that
when somebody mentions a rise in the minimum
wage, many people react instinctively against it,
oblivious to the fact that millions of workers in
the U. S. still make less than a dollar an hour.
The little-appreciated point is that less than
a third of the country's current labor force of
some 67,000,000 are protected by the federal
wage-hour act whose minimum now is a dollar
an hour. Many of the unprotected two-thirds,
of course, are making more than the minimum
but there are so many who aren't that they com-
prise dangerous soft spots in the economy*
For once, Congress is preparing to shrink these
soft spots. Both House and Senate labor com-
Washington Reports:
Morgan
mittees have approved somewhat different versions
of new minimum wage legislation.
The Senate bill, sponsored, fortuitously enough
by Senator Kennedy, won committee OK June 22
The more ambitious of the two, the Senate pack
age would extend coverage to more than five mil-
lion employes not now protected and gradually
increase the minimunvto $1.25 an hour.
The House measure would provide a similar
rise but would extend coverage to only about 3.5
million more workers. The sharpest and most
controversial difference between the two is this
Under the Senate version if anybody in a plant
gets federal fair wage protection because his par
ticular job is in interstate commerce, the coverage
would be extended to all workers in the plant. The
House bill has no such provision. The Senate
provision would benefit about a million workers.
THE LEGISLATION is charged, unsurpris-
ingly, with election-year politics. The cantank-
erous House Rules Committee, through its right-
wing bias, could block all legislation, as it has on
the school bill, by refusing to authorize House
conferees to adjust differences with the Senate
The administration wants a top of $1.15 on the
minimum wage — but it's possible that vote-con-
scious Republicans will be able to dissuade the
White House from vetoing whichever version Con-
gress sends up.
Interestingly enough, virtually none of the
workers who would benefit from the minimum
wage legislation belong to unions. Conceivably
the benefits could make them harder to organize
So why does labor bother?
One answer I get is that the union move-
ment believes it gains from a healthy economy
and loses when workers are underpaid whether
they are union members or not. This clearly is
self-interest; it seems more enlightened and real-
istic to me than the argument of Commerce
Sec. Mueller who testified against a $1.25
minimum because it would increase our export
disadvantage in world markets.
By Mueller's logic, our world position would be
best protected by reducing wages to, say, the
levels of labor abroad.
'Modest' Housing Bill Provides
Help for 'Displaced Families'
THE 1960 HOUSING BILL is a very modest
bill. We have purposely kept out some of the
controversial subjects. And I feel it will pass,"
Rep. Leonor Sullivan (D-Mo.) asserted on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service program heard on more than 300 radio
stations.
One of the new items in the bill, she said, would
be to help take care of the housing needs of dis-
placed low-income families who could not qualify
for public housing.
Some of these people, Mrs. Sullivan said,
should get assistance through FHA in buying
"older houses in older neighborhoods. To aid
in this move, we are asking the FHA to relax
"Youll get a kick out of this— last week one of my
len sold some guy a set of storm windows to fit on over
feflf storm windowsr
the term 'economic soundness' to mean 'reason
able risk.' "
Rep. William B. Widnall (R-N. J.) said that he
agreed with the proposal, but warned that when
an old home is bought in a run-down neighbor
hood, "unless there's a plan throughout the neigh-
borhood for improvement, you might be throwing
money down the drain and regret your investment
in that locality. We feel that under the urban
renewal housing program, it's possible to take care
of the situation on a community basis."
WIDNALL NOTED that the housing for the
elderly program would be continued under the
new housing program. It was initiated in the pre-
vious housing bill, but most of the previous appro-
priation has not yet been used. The current bill,
he said, would increase the appropriation by $50
million.
"There is a great deal of interest in housing for
the elderly, and there will be more so as the years
go by," he said.
"This is not public housing. It's private hous-
ing put up by non-profit organizations to afford
the elderly an opportunity to get housing at a
lower cost," Mrs. Sullivan explained.
Widnall said, "I have asked the committee to
make some studies in this field to see why land
costs so much in slum areas when everybody says
it's in a deplorable condition, a blighted area, run
down. Municipalities must be failing to tax in
accordance with land values paid on condemna-
tion."
Mrs. Sullivan also said municipalities should be
made responsible for the cost of housing projects.
"There has been so much money made on slum
property that people fight tearing it down. They
know they can't acquire other property and get
that much profit out of it."
WASHINGTON
Wiiiahd SAeiten.
THE DEMOCRATIC STUDY GROUP, a carefully named
band of more than 100 liberals in the House, is credited by ob-
servers here with a respectable measure of influence on a few of
the major legislative issues that arose in Congress this year.
The Study Group, a reasonably cohesive association, took form
as a successor to a less formal conference previously existing under
the leadership of Eugene McCarthy, now a senator from Minne-
sota but until 1958 a member of the House. It would be correct
to think of the group as Democratic House members tired of having
affairs run by a coalition of conservative southern Democrats and
conservative Republicans and in favor of carrying out Democratic
Party platforms.
Temporary chairman is Rep. Lee Metcalf (D-Mont.), who is now
running for the Senate himself and will be out of the picture after
November, with Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-N. J.) as temporary
secretary.
The group includes both one-term and two-term Democrats,
who would like to pass bills they think they were elected to help
pass, and veterans with significant seniority. The Study Group
has whips responsible for floor duties, discussion sessions on
issues, and a research director, William C. Phillips, to coordinate
staff work. The members care enough about their objectives to
dig into their own pockets for some expenses.
The Study Group is credited with a major negative victory as
the source of a threatened fullblown floor fight when the House
Ways & Means Committee, pushed by the Administration, ap-
proved a back-door program of raising the interest ceiling on long-
term government bonds. The Study Group's economists assailed
the plan and persuaded the Democratic leadership that conditions
were about to change in the money marts — as they did. They were
sounder in their economics than the Eisenhower Administration
experts who claim special expertness.
On the civil rights bill, the Study Group made a project out
of collecting signatures to a discharge petition, to blast the bill
out of the reactionary House Rules Committee. It helped obtain
the so-called "calendar Wednesday" procedure that forced the
distressed area bill to a vote.
It worked hard and successfully to produce a school-aid bill — ■
the first general aid to education measure ever passed by the House
— although the bill was promptly blockaded again by the Rules
Committee.
* * *
This is by no means an insignificant record, but one suspects
that Study Group members would concede that more will be needed
to give the Democratic Party an adequate performance chart.
The congressional recess left a large amount of unfinished busi-
ness — on school aid, minimum wages, jobsite picketing, a broad
housing program and a Forand-type social security health measure.
They were all stacked up, or had previously been blocked, mostly
in the House Rules committee.
Surely it is not unreasonable to hope that a Congress that is
heavily controlled by Democrats should establish the party's bona
fides by passing such legislation, and without lengthy delay.
School aid and expansion of minimum wage coverage are not
new ideas; they have been kicking around for years, debated to
exhaustion. The social security system is a quarter century old,
and it passes understanding that a Democratically controlled
Ways & Means Committee should repudiate extension of the
same principle to health care during old age.
By coincidence perhaps the Democratic Study Group is almost
exactly the same size as the southern Democratic bloc in the House
— a little more than 100 members. Real power all through the
session has vested not in the official Democratic leadership but in
the reactionary coalition of the Republican members and southern
Democrats controlling the Rules Committee and many of the key
legislative committees.
HOUSING FOR THE ELDERLY and a program to aid middle-
income families displaced by slum clearance should be included in
any 1960 housing bill, Rep. William B. Widnall (R-N. J.), left, and
Rep. Leonor K. Sullivan (D-Mo.), members of the House housing
subcommittee, said on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
How to Buy:
Good Driving Habits
Can End Gas Waste
By Sidney Margolius
rpHE DRIVING SEASON is here and so are the big gas bills.
Cost of fuel ranks next to depreciation as the largest expense of
car ownership. You'll pay more for gas this summer, especially
because of increased gas taxes. The majority of states now tax gas
at 6 cents or more per gallon. In fact, 13 states now tax at 7 cents.
Experts differ on gas mileage. Generally, over 30 mph you start
losing mileage. But the increase is
not significant until you go over 40.
If at 30 mph you get 21 mpg, then
(typically) at 40 you get 20; at 50,
18; at 60, 16; at 70, 14.
That doesn't mean all cars will get
the same mileage at these speeds, of
course. Other factors affecting niile-
age are weight, engine compression
ratio, condition of the car and driv-
ing habits.
A 3,000-pound car gets 50 per-
cent more mileage than one weigh-
ing 4,000, other factors equal. You
can see why the new compact cars
are running away with car sales this
year. They're 2,300 to 3,000
pounds.
They don't provide quite as much mileage as some of the ads
claim. But drivers' experiences so far indicate that they yield 19-26
mpg for the manual-shift sixes, depending on weight.
A HIGH COMPRESSION RATIO theoretically al£o helps en-
gines get more mileage out of gas. But the high-compression cars
on the road generally are those loaded with gas-using extra acces-
sories like automatic transmission and power steering. Too, over
a certain ratio, generally 9 to 1 or higher, you need premium grade.
Fortunately, octane ratings have been increased each year so that
regular gas now rates as high as premium did in 1953.
Automotive engineers estimate that about 50 percent of all cars
on the road in 1960 will be satisfied with 91 octane gas. Regular
gas now is well over 91 in mo$t areas, and country-wide, averages
92.4. Cars generally can get along with lower-octane than aver-
age in mountain country.
Also note the higher octane of regular gas in the East and North
Central states — due to strong competition in those areas.
Underinflation of tires also wastes gas. Five pounds of under-
inflation wastes a half-gallon on every 20, the American Petroleum
Institute estimates.
Keeping your car serviced and adjusted properly also is vital for
gas mileage. Besides carburetor adjustments and spark timing, here
are points to check:
• A dirty air filter can reduce mileage as much as 10 percent.
• A slow or stuck choke can rob you of 30 percent.
• Too-heavy motor oil in the wrong season is another waster.
• So are stuck manifold and cooling-system thermostatic valves.
You can waste much gas through careless habits. Among them:
Jack-rabbit starts, staying too long in lower gears before shifting,
rushing up to your stop and then jamming on the brakes, unnecessary
idling, nervously racing the engine while you wait for a light to
change.
(Copyright 1960 by Sidney Marjarolius)
KEEP UP
WITH
THE
WORLD
Coast to Coasts
on ABC
Monday thru Friday
7 P.M. Eastern Time*
•Check your poper lot JocoJ >ime
" r
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND
CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS
GEORGE MEANY WM. F. 5CHNITZIER
Pmident Secretary-Treasurer
• 15 SIXTEENTH STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON 6, D. C
THIS POSTER, spelling out labor's dedication to a "better world," is 'available without charge to
local and international unions and state and city central bodies. Based on the back page of the recent
AFL-CIO international affairs supplement in the New York Times, the two-color poster measures
11 by 14 inches. It is intended for union halls and offices, plant bulletin boards and community
exhibits. Orders for the "Three Children" poster should be sent to the AFL-CIO Dept. of Education,
815 16th St., N. W., Washington 6, D. C.
From Soup to Nonsense:
Modern Ads Top Ci
By Jane Goodsell
ANY OF YOU PEOPLE been grumbling that
modern life is lacking in magic and miracles?
If it's miracles-you're after, there's nothing to beat
a good Before and After layout.
Some of my favorites of latter day magic appear
in house and garden magazines. You know those
sags, in which a
young couple stum-
ble onto an old dog-
house and decide to
remodel it into
their home.
The first picture,
obviously taken dur-
ing a heavy snow-
storm with a pre-
Civil War camera,
is the size of a com-
memorative stamp,
and it depicts the
old doghouse in its
original state. It is,
indeed, as the cap-
tion states, "dingy and cramped," and some
people might be too discouraged by its dilapidated
state to recognize that it is "full of creative pos-
sibilities."
But not our young couple. They have vision.
They have imagination. (And only a cynic would
notice that they also seem to have about $85,000
in cash.)
Their acumen is proved by the After pictures,
a six-page portofolio of photographs in glowing,
vibrant color. The old doghouse has been
magically transformed into a perfect jewel of a
Regency house, authentic in every detail, includ-
ing its four bathrooms and the servants' quarters.
Now that's what I call inspiration for daily
living.
But maybe it's fairy tale romance you re look-
The
ing for. Or wizardry and black magic.
Arabian Nights and that sort of thing.
LISTEN, LADIES, if you think mystic rites are
lost and gone forever, you've fallen behind on
your magazine reading. Are you unaware that
your humdrum existence can be revitalized into
thrilling, pulsating romance by a single applica-
tion of secretly blended ingredients?
Haven't you seen those pictures of a matronly
housewife, sitting alone — unloved and unwanted
— in the chimney corner, mourning that life has
passed her by?
When next seen, that same lady (having treated
her grateful pores to a dose of miraculous triple
hormone jelly) is scarcely recognizable. But there
she is, transformed into a tearing beauty, casting
scornful glances at a bevy of dark, continental
gentlemen who are aiming kisses at the nape of
her neck.
Are you so uninformed that you don't know that
magic can be wrought via the miracle couches of
home reducing plans?. Unless you've been living
in a decompression chamber, you must have seen
those photographs.
Picture Number One shows a bedraggled
matron who tips the scales at 215 pounds, dressed
in a shapeless housedress and sneakers. She is
standing in front of a tenement shack and, judging
from the expression on her face, contemplating a
four-part ax murder.
Picture Number Two shows the same lady, 100
pounds lighter and 20 years younger. She is
gowned by Balenciaga, coiffed by Henri and
jewelled by Cartier. Festooned in orchids, she
stands beside a Mercedes Benz, parked in the
driveway of an elegant town house.
If you don't think that beats Cinderella to a
pulp, you're hopelessly mired in the past. Go
back to your pokey old fairy tales!
i sponsored by AFL-CIO j
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2 ? 1960
Page Nintf
Kefauver Bill Supported:
Federal Dept. of Consumers
Urged as Buyers' Safeguard
Organized labor has thrown its full support behind a widely sponsored bill to create a federal
Dept. of Consumers.
The worker spends virtually all his income on retail products, AFL-CIO Assistant Dir. of Research
Peter Henle told a Senate Government Operations subcommittee, and "can ill afford to have hard-
won wage increases . . . dissipated at the store counter through exorbitant prices, shoddy or unsafe
products or short weights and meas-^
ures."
Jacob Clayman, administrative
director of the Industrial Union
Dept., also urged passage of the
proposed legislation. Because of
shortweighting, he charged, "the
American family is losing $25 mil-
lion annually on butter alone/*
The bill, introduced by Sen.
Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) and
carrying the names of 23 co-
sponsors, would — as Kefauver
put it — provide effective repre-
sentation of the American people
"in their capacity as consumers."
Kefauver pointed out that almost
all present federal agencies repre
sent people as producers — the Dept.
of Commerce for businessmen, the
Dept. of Agriculture for farmers
I AM Government Lodge
Raps Closing of Plants
The Administration's policy in dismantling government industrial
facilities in the nation's capital and contracting production out to
private industry at higher prices has been attacked as "defense
payola" by Machinists Lodge 174.
The IAM lodge, which represents groups of employes of the
Naval Weapons Plant, Naval Ord-^"
nance Laboratory, Naval Research
Laboratory, Naval Powder Plant,
and other Washington area govern-
ment industrial facilities, made the
"payola" charge as it announced
the launching of a national cam-
paign "to acquaint the American
people with the sad facts about the
Administration's defense procure-
ment policy."
The drive was launched as an
aftermath to Administration
plans to close down the Naval
weapons plant as part of what
Lodge Pres. Edward A. Marcey,
Jr., said was a policy of "private
enterprise at any cost."
Newspaper advertisements ap-
pearing in Washington newspapers,
and scheduled to appear in daily
papers in other major cities, kicked
off the campaign. They noted that,
according to the report of a Sen-
ate committee headed by Sen.
Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), "during the
1956 presidential campaign, officials
of the 100 largest military prime
contractors contributed $1,133,882
to the Republican Party and $40,-
975 to the Democratic Party."
Marcey said the Administration's
policy means that "government"
manufacturing facilities, represent-
ing an investment of Billions of
dollars, are being allowed to "go
down the drain" while the taxpay-
ers' money is being used for "de-
fense subsidies" of private industry.
The IAM lodge's campaign, he
said, will fight both in the closing
days of the 86th Congress and at
the Republican and Democratic
National Conventions, "urging
both parties to act quickly to
reverse the present Administra-
tion policy."
"The deliberate destruction of the
Naval Weapons Plant," Marcey
charged, "has already cost the tax-
payers millions of dollars, not to
mention the discharging of person-
nel whose special skills are lost to
the nation."'
Calling the procurement policies
"the worst 'payola' scandal in
America" and one about which the
American public "knows the least,"
the newspaper ads inserted by
Lodge 174 listed these instances as
"symptoms of this 'payola 1 policy:"
• The Navy spent $21.10 each
"for lamp sockets similar to those
offered by retail stores for 25
cents."
• An infra-red guided missile
developed by Hughes Aircraft "cost
10 times as much in mass produc-
engineered to meet the same func-
tional requirements."
• Ramo Woolridge, a corpora-
tion given full responsibility for
missile research and development
for the Air Force, "parlayed an
initial $248,000 'investment' into
a $29 million operation inside of
four years." The ad said that "97.1
percent of Ramo-Woolridge's sales
were to the Air Force."
• Since 1955, government estab-
lishments have been under direct
Administration order "to contract
out everything possible to private
sources, regardless of cost."
• In 1955, the Administration
reinforced this order by "setting
up standards by which existing
government facilities would be eli-
minated," and that in pursuit of this
policy the Navy closed out 19 major
field operations, including plants at
the Corpus Christi, Tex. Naval
Air Station, the Pocatello, Ida.,
Naval Ordnance Plant, and the
South Boston, Mass., Annex to the
Boston Naval Shipyard.
The ad charged that the Ad-
ministration has become "deeply
involved in defense subsidies" to
private industry, and that "the
know-how in the production of
key defense material is falling
into the hands of a relatively few
large corporations, who owe no
obligation to the government."
and the Dept. of Labor for workers.
Consumer representation, he de-
clared, is "limited, fragmented and
relatively ineffectual."
Kefauver said in his testimony
that many consuming groups go un-
represented: the young, the retired,
the white-collar workers with lag-
ging incomes and the unorganized
workers.
He noted that "business pro-
motion often tends to confuse
rather than to inform" and that
regulatory agencies charged with
protecting the public interest have
degenerated into umpiring con-
flicts between private interest
groups.
The proposed new agency would
have transferred to it such units as
the Food & Drug Administration
and the Division of Prices & Cost
of Living of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. It would speak for con-
sumers before regulatory bodies and
in the judicial branch; it would
sponsor an annual consumers con-
ference and offer an information
service for consumers.
Henle Hits Abuses
Henle said that such recent "out-
rageous abuses" as rigged TV
shows, payola, high-priced drugs,
concealed credit charges and the
cranberry episode reflect the domi-
nance of producer and profitmaking
interests.
Henle pointed out that precedents
for the Kefauver bill now exist with
the creation of Consumer Counsel's
offices in New York and California;
a Dept. of Consumer Protection in
Connecticut and a consumer's ad-
visory office under the Massachu-
setts attorney-general.
The AFL-CIO spokesman
stressed that the AFL-CIO con-
vention last year endorsed the
idea of a federal consumer agen-
cy and the AFL-CIO Executive
Council specifically backed the
Kefauver bill.
Clayman recalled a recent gov-
ernment survey which showed short-
weighting to be a common practice
on prepackaged foods. He said the
new agency should serve as a "clear-
ing house of consumer complaints"
and said it would help achieve
higher real living standards.
NEWEST MEMBER of board of directors of Union Labor Life
Insurance Co., Willard C. Butcher (center), vice president of Chase
Manhattan Bank of New York, is shown following election to board
to fill unexpired term of the late Fred Gehle, also of Chase Man-
hattan. With Butcher are ULLICO board members Richard F.
Walsh, president of the Theatrical Stage Employes and AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler.
NAACP Backs Unions,
Asks End to All Bars
St. Paul, Minn. — The National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People reiterated its support for organized labor at its
51st national convention here but charged a "disparity" between
labor's civil rights policy and the practices in some unions.
A comprehensive resolution on labor and employment opposed
"right-to-work" laws and urged ^
NAACP branches to prevent the
Security Risk Seen
In 'Runaway 9 Shipping
Representatives of AFL-CIO seamen's and waterfront unions have
urged Congress to enact pending legislation to keep Communists
off merchant ships and docks and recommended that the bill be
broadened to cover seamen on "runaway" ships.
Testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee
on behalf of the 108,000 unionists^
represented by the Seafarers' Sec-
tion of the AFL-CIO Maritime
Trades Dept., Attorney Ray R.
Murdock said the foreign seamen
on "runaway" ships "represent a
potential plague of security risks
who will have easy access to our
waterfront facilities."
Murdock said that the policy
of American ship owners trans-
ferring their vessels to "flag of
convenience" registry to avoid
U.S. wage scale, safety standards,
labor laws and taxes has reduced
the American merchant marine to
a fourth-rate status.
After World War II, he said, the
U.S. merchant marine was larger
tion as a Navy-developed missile, I than all other merchant fleets com-
bined, but that it now ranks behind
Britain, Norway and Liberia — the
latter one of the three nations which
has welcomed "runaway" shipping.
The other two are Panama and
Honduras.
Murdock, who is also Washing-
ton counsel for the Seafarers' Intl.
Union, estimated that last year U.S.
flag ships carried little more than
10 percent of American imports
and exports.
Support for extending the secu-
rity provisions of the bill to "run-
away" shipping also came from
Howard Ostrin, general counsel of
the Maritime Union; Hoyt Had-
dock, director of the MTD's Sea-
farers* Section; and Marion Chrus-
niak, representing several Baltimore
locals of the Longshoremen.
use of Negroes for strikebreaking
purposes during labor disputes.
"Colored workers especially,''
the resolution said, "need the
protection of a vigorous union
movement to prevent economic
exploitation."
The resolution contained also a
section declaring that the NAACP
"as a last resort" will call on the
National Labor Relations Board to
enforce provisions of the Taft-Hart-
ley Act against any unions which
bar Negro members.
William Cratic of Minneapolis,
former president of the Minne-
apolis branch of NAACP and an
active delegate in the Minneapolis
AFL-CIO, moved to strike the
reference to the NLRB from the
resolution.
He told the delegates that the
resolution as it stood would injure
the cause of the NAACP and "in
effect is declaring war on labor,
His motion to delete the reference
was defeated and the resolution
adopted.
The statement noted the contri-
butions by unions in the struggle
for Negro rights and the support
by organized labor for FEPC laws
in many states but added that some
unions operating in the South, "in
seeking to avoid conflict over racial
issues, are permitting racist ele-
ments to gain control of local union
operations."
'Share Objectivess'
The action followed receipt by
the convention of greetings from
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
who said:
"We share your objectives. We
are as fully committed to them as
you are and we are constantly
pressing for their fulfillment in the
laggard areas of the labor move-
ment as well as in the nation as a
whole. While we are proud of the
accomplishments of the trade union
movement to^ date, we are cog-
nizant that much remains to be
done within our own house, and,
as we have made quite clear, we
intend to do that job."
Meany added: "But the goal
we share with you is not so close
to achievement as to permit the
luxury of differences in tactics
developing into recriminations.
We are both entitled, on the basis
of our individual organizational
records, to confidence in the
other's good faith."
The only real satisfaction for
those interested in the civil rights
fight will come Meany wrote, when
complete victory is a "matter of
historic record," and "when we
have finally translated America's
promise of citizenship for all her
people into actuality. I am con-
fident that day will come because
we will make it come."
At the NAACP's annual labor
dinner, Ralph Helstein, president of
the Packinghouse Workers, pleaded
for Negro and labor unity, de-
claring that "this is not a fight any
one group can win; it can only be
won together."
A. Philip Randolph, an AFL-
CIO vice president, told the din-
ner that the "gulf of misunder-
standing seems to be widening
between the Negro community
and the labor community," add-
ing "This is an unfortunate de-
velopment. It ought not to exist.
It must and will be resolved."
Administration
Asks Area Bill
Compromise
Two high-ranking officials of the
Administration have called on the
86th Congress to enact area rede-
velopment legislation along lines of
a compromise recently offered.
The appeal came from Labor Sec.
lames P. Mitchell and Commerce
Sec. Frederick H. Mueller less than
two months after Pres. Eisenhower
vetoed a $251 million depressed
area measure. In 1958, Eisenhower
also vetoed a broader bipartisan
bill.
In letters to Sen. A. Willis Robert-
son (D-Va.), chairman of the Sen-
ate Banking Committee, and Rep.
Brent Spence (D-Ky.), chairman of
the House Banking Committee, the
two cabinet officers called for "an
effective program to achieve the
mutual objectives of the Adminis-
tration and the Congress."
Without mentioning the two Eis-
enhower vetoes, Mueller and Mitch-
ell said "it is most important that
legislation be enacted to alleviate
persistent unemployment in those
localities where outside financial
and technical assistance, such as the
federal government could provide,
would give an important stimulus
to local efforts to solve this prob-
lem."
[Page TerT v -~
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
GREETINGS to Latin-American labor are extended by three AFL-
CIO men through a U.S. labor attache in Valparaiso, Chile, on the
cruise of the U.S. aircraft carrier Shangri-La. In the picture, left
to right, are Wayne Strader, Grain Millers vice president; George J.
Richardson, special AFL-CIO representative; Vice Pres. Henry
Anderson, Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union; and
Norman Pearson, U.S. labor attache.
Japanese Labor Policy
Seen Blocking Progress
Sound relations between Japanese labor and management would
go a long way toward weakening the Communist-left wing Socialist
combine that stirred up riots in Tokio and forced the government
to cancel its invitation to Pres. Eisenhower to visit that country,
according to AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Joseph D. Keenan.
"If a few top labor-management^
teams from this country could go
to Japan and tell union and indus-
try officials how we do things it
might very well have a good effect,"
he told the AFL-CIO News.
Keenan, secretary of the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
and a member of the AFL-CIO Intl.
Affairs Committee, spent some time
in Japan, India, Singapore and the
Philippines last year. With him
in Japan and India was Harry Pol-
lak of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl.
Affairs.
The largest Japanese trade union
federation, SOHYO, represents
some 3.5 million workers. It is
not a member of the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Labor, although
some of its affiliates are.
The Marxist orientation of
some of its leaders, Keenan feels,
has helped block the develop-
ment of trade unions in the sense
the term is used in the United
States, Canada and most of Eu-
rope. Formally, SOHYO is left
wing Socialist, somewhat com-
parable to the Nenni Socialists in
Italy. It follows the Communist
line on many major international
issues, but in general denies that
it is Red.
"Japanese trade unions for the
most part have never emerged from
the stage of plant unions which
grew out of paternalism in industry,
to the stage of national unions,"
Keenan said.
"With some notable exceptions
they do not bargain with their em-
ployers but are more in the nature
of demonstrating groups.
"I think Japanese workers would
benefit by the formation of true
free, democratic trade unions along
the general lines that we have fol-
lowed in this country — national un-
ions in the different industries and
a strong central organization with
a top spokesman such as AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany in the
U. S. who believes in getting a fair
shake for the workers within a
democratic framework.
"With organizations such as
these, the workers would be able to
bargain through their unions with
their employers. They would be
able to gain benefits for themselves
and would also be in a position to
constitute the only effective opposi-
tion to communism, that of free,
democratic trade unionism."
Oldenbroek Resigns,
ICFTU Chooses Becu
(Continued from Page 1)
first and only secretary-general of
the organization.
Becu, like Oldenbroek a bitter
anti-Communist, is a veteran of 40
years in the labor movement. Born
in Ostend, Belgium, he went into
his country's merchant marine as
a radio operator in his youth, was
active in the seamen's union and
became head of the dock workers'
union. His role in developing co-
operation between marine and
waterfront workers in different
countries led him into the Intl.
Transportworkers Federation, of
which he became president.
Oldenbroek at that time was
ITF secretary-general. When he
became ICFTU general-secre-
tary in 1949, Becu succeeded
him in the 1TF post. The latter
was named president of the
ICFTU at the Stockholm con-
gress in 1953 and served until
1959.
Oldenbroek was born in Holland
and was barely in his teens when
he joined the Amsterdam local of
the Union of Commercial & Cler-
ical Employes. At 18, during
World War I, he went on the staff
of the Netherlands Trade Union
Federation (NVV) and followed its
secretary-treasurer, the late Edo
Fimmen, to the staff of the old
Int. Federation of Trade Unions at
the end of the war. He also worked
with Fimmen in the ITF, became
ITF acting secretary general on
Fimmen's death in 1942 and was
chosen secretary-general at the first
post-war convention in 1946. He
was elected operating head of the
ICFTU at the founding congress
in London.
The president of the ICFTU is
Arne Geijer, president of the Gen-
eral Federation of Swedish Trade
Unions, who succeeded Becu in
1957.
Moves Against Racial Bias :
ILO Urges Atomic Radiation
Standards, Short Workweek
Geneva — The Intl. Labor Organization's 44th conference here adopted a treaty proposing minimum
standards for protecting workers against the unseen dangers of the atomic age.
Another feature of the three-week session of the 900 worker, government and employer delegates
and their advisers was the preparation of new measures to cut the hours of work without reducing
take-home pay, intended for action at next year's conference.
The conference also set in motion^
new procedures to be followed by
the ILO to deal with complaints of
racial discrimination against work-
ers after hearing blistering attacks
on the South African government.
The eight-man AFL-CIO team
headed by Rudy Faupl of the
Machinists played an effective
part in pushing through the pro-
posals aimed at making the world
a better place for workers every-
where.
A 1961 ILO budget of $9.8 mil-
lion was adopted with the solid
support of worker delegates but
over refusal of the* employers to
vote for it. The 1961 figure repre-
sents an increase of $557,000 over
that of the budget for the current
year.
Ratification Needed
The proposed treaty, technically
known as a convention, lays down
minimum regulations to protect the
health of workers against radia-
tions. It becomes effective when
ratified by individual governments,
which also guarantee to seek to
support the treaty by domestic law.
It is accompanied by a recom-
mendation on how best to assure
that the standards set are effectively
observed and by a resolution on the
need to keep under constant study
the case of women workers of child-
bearing age.
Elwood D. Swisher, vice presi-
dent of the Oil Workers, told the
conference that the convention's
main purpose "is to call upon
all governments, employers and
workers to accept their responsi-
bility in protection [of the pub-
lic] from radiation."
"It is general enough to meet the
advancing knowledge in this field,
and yet it is strict enough to pro-
vide adequate protection," he said
on behalf of the worker delegates
in urging its adoption.
The conference approved a com-
mittee report proposing that stand-
ards to be adopted next year should
set the 40-hour week as a world-
wide goal. This "will give new hope
to the world's workers that leisure
is no longer to be the privilege of
the few," Ernest J. Moran of the
Auto Workers said.
Ease Workers' Burden
"The adoption of these conclu-
sions will constitute an important
step forward towards relieving mil-
lions of workers of the burden of
hours of labor far beyond the limit
which is either necessary or desir-
able," the AFL-CIO spokesman said
in the ILO session.
Opposition to the proposals was
voiced by employers but they were
carried by a vote of 123 to 43, with
28 abstentions.
The South African government
delegates were alone in voting
against the resolution calling for
ILO action on the issue of dis-
crimination.
Kalmen Kaplansky of the Cana-
Goldfine Jail Term
Allowed to Stand
The Supreme Court has refused
to review the convictions of New
England textile magnate Bernard
Goldfine and his secretary for con-
tempt of court in their failure to
produce records for income tax in-
vestigators.
The high court's refusal left
standing a three-month sentence im-
posed on Goldfine by District Judge
Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., in Bos-
ton, and a 10-day sentence handed
to Miss Mildred Paperman, Gold-
fine's secretary.
dian Labor Congress put the South
African question bluntly when he
asked the conference: "Can this or-
ganization remain indifferent to the
official, undeniably — even proudly
— proclaimed policy of a govern-
ment which flouts and contradicts
the very principles upon which this
organization has been built?"
'Affront to Democracy 5
"Discrimination based on race,
creed or color constitutes an affront
to the basic principles of social
justice and democracy," AFL-CIO
economist Bert Seidman said as he
followed Kaplansky to the Speakers'
platform.
The resolution called on the
BLO's governing body, or execu-
tive council, to give special at-
tention to how govern men is apply
the ILO convention on discrimi-
nation in employment and to
consider the setting up of spe-
cial machinery to deal with com-
plaints received.
Other work completed by the
conference included the drafting of
a set of principles to be sent to
governments for following in the
promotion of consultation between
unions, employer organizations and
the public authorities.
The conference also drew up a
series of conclusions for better hous-
ing for workers which will now go
to governments for study and com-
ment in order that they may be put
into final form by next year's con-
ference.
The admission of the new ly in-
dependent state of Mali in the final
days of the conference raised the
membership of the ILO to 83 states.
Earlier in the session two other new
African nations, Togo and the Cam-
eroons, were also welcomed to the
ILO fold.
At a one-day session that fol-
lowed the conference the ILO
governing body elected for its
chairman for the next year
George C. Lodge, U.S. Assistant
Secretary of Labor fof Intl. Af-
fairs. At 32, Lodge is the young-
est chairman in the history of the
41-year-old ILO.
Jean Moeri of Switzerland
stepped in to fill the breech when
Sir Alfred Roberts of the British
Trades Union Congress refused to
allow the workers to re-elect him
as worker vice chairman of the
executive unit.
Castro Pins Red Label
On His Regime in Cuba
Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba put the Red stamp on his admin-
istration when he declared in a marathon speech on June 22 that
those who oppose Communists must also be considered opposed to
his regime.
This is the judgment of AFL-CIO Inter-American Rep. Serafirio
Romualdi, who said the speech was$
the first time the bearded leader
expressed "personal, public agree-
ment" with similar remarks made
at a youth congress last February
by Juan Marinello, leader of the
Cuban Communist party.
The speech, Romualdi said,
followed by less than a month a
government-called national con-
vention of the Cuban Federation
of Construction Workers at
which a slate of known Com-
munists was named to succeed
the expelled pro-democratic ex-
ecutive board.
It also followed shortly upon the
opening of a school for the Com-
munist indoctrination and training
of Latin American students at the
Hogar Club in the Veda section
of Havana. The first five students
to enroll under Cuban government
scholarships were Puerto Ricans,
members of that island's Inde-
pendent Party, Romualdi said.
The Communist-dominated Cu-
ban Confederation of Labor (CTC),
the official line of which now is
to "fight pay increases" to liead
off inflation growing out of the
government's printing of money
to pay its bills, was represented at
the congress of the Communist
World Federation of Trade Unions
in Peiping by Jose Maria de la
Aguilera, secretary of propaganda,
and Armando Cordero, second vice
secretary-general, according to Ro-
mualdi.
Resentment of workers forced
to forego wage increases in the
face of rising prices on the one
hand and to contribute nearly
15 percent of their earnings to
various revolutionary and social
welfare funds, Romualdi said,
has begun to worry Castro.
In a speech to the Union of
Commercial Workers, he undertook
to stem unrest by saying his re-
gime may order longer paid vaca-
tions for workers in an effort to
solve the unemployment problem,
Romualdi said, by creating more
jobs. Castro also predicted that
25,000 new jobs would be created
by forcing employers to hire one
additional worker for every five
on their payrolls during the slack
summer season, Romualdi added.
Tobacco Units
In Canada Hold
Conference
Montreal, Que. — Education is
the key to the industrial future
which will be created by today's
automation and advanced technol-
ogy, Guy Merril Desaulniers, Mon-
treal labor lawyer, told the 15th
annual conference of the Joint Ex-
ecutive Council of Canadian lo-
cals of the Tobacco Workers.
In the past, he pointed out, un-
ions had to spend their energy on
such things as bargaining and seek-
ing higher living standards. The
broad-scale education that is now
necessary, he maintained, must in-
clude an appreciation of the social
and political problems that confront
workers as Canadian citizens.
Ted Silvey, of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Research, outlined the
scope and rate of development of
automation in North American in-
dustry and discussed specific prob-
lems that may arise in the tobacco
industry. He emphasized that un-
ions have a right to demand and re-
ceive information about technical
developments that may affect their
members' jobs, wages and working
conditions.
TWIU Pres. John O'Hare and
Canadian Vice Pres. John Purdie
participated in the discussipns.
Eighty delegates from six locals
attended.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY _2^!9£9-
In Senate Testimony:
AFL-CIO Asks Full
Mutual Aid Funds
The AFL-CIO has urged the Senate Appropriations Committee
to back appropriation of the full $4 billion authorized for the
mutual security program.
"This is no time to relax our efforts in this field,'* Legislative
Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller told the committee in testimony read for
him by Legislative Rep. H. H.^
Bookbinder.
Pres. Eisenhower had strong
backing from the AFL-CIO for his
original budget request for $4.1
billion, but later agreed to the $4
billion authorized. The House has
passed a bill appropriating $3.58
billion, upholding all but $200 mil-
lion of slashes recommended by its
Appropriations Committee.
Prestige Down
'The failure of the summit con-
ference and the related develop-
ments in Japan which forced the
cancellation of the President's visit
to that country," Biemiller said,
"have brought United States pres-
tige in crucial areas of the world
to a low ebb.
"Failure to support the full
Administration request for mili-
tary, technical and economic aid
programs would rob this nation
of an effective implement in the
quest to restore that prestige and
would also further weaken our
international position.
"Undoubtedly the deteriorating
international situation persuaded
the House to restore $200 million
in military assistance. We applaud
this partial restoration, but we em-
phasize that it is not military as-
sistance alone which is needed to
strengthen the free world alliance."
Eisenhower's original request for
$2 billion in military aid went un-
changed in the authorization bill.
The House Appropriations Com-
mittee, cut the figure to $1.6 bil-
lion, but it was boosted to $1.8
billion on the floor.
The AFL-CIO specifically asked
the Senate committee to restore the
$75 million the House cut in re-
ducing the defense support appro-
priation to $675 million; a $22
to $184 million; and $150 million
cut from the $700 million author-
ized for the Development Loan
Fund.
Also urged was elimination of
a House provision requiring prior
approval of technical assistance
projects by the two congres-
sional appropriations commit-
tees, and another barring the use
of contingency funds for certain
types of projects.
In his conclusion, Biemiller took
note of claims that appropriations
"should be drastically reduced as
the House has done" because of
alleged "waste and inefficiency" in
the conduct of mutual security pro-
grams.
"I am not an expert on the ques-
tion of waste and inefficiency in
connection with these programs,"
he said, "but it is apparent to me
that if such is the case, the remedy
is not to kill the programs but to
improve the administration of
them.
Not a Valid Argument
"There has also been much
criticism to the effect that, while
the present Administration sup-
ports foreign aid programs hand-
somely, it is wholly negligent in
needed programs for our own
country. We cannot view this as
an argument to reduce military,
economic and technical assistance
programs abroad. These programs
are as important to our national
and individual well-being as are
the domestic programs for which
we have been working. America
needs both and can afford both.
"Our country today is in an un-
fortunate position. We ask you to
prevent a worsening of our posi-
tion by approving the full budget
requests for the mutual security
CHICAGO'S WCFL, the radio station owned and operated by the Chicago Federation of Labor,
celebrated its 34th year on the air during the current 1960 Chicago International Trade Fair. The
"Voice of Labor" broadcasts direct from the Navy Pier, where the mammouth and spectacular Fair
was to run through July 5.
UAW Warns 'Big Three' Against
Political 'Juggling' of Production
Detroit — Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther has called on the automobile industry's "Big
Three" to meet with UAW representatives to discuss projected schedules, in the wake of trade reports
that the manufacturers planned on "juggling production schedules for political purposes" this fall.
In letters to Pres. William Newberg of Chrysler Corp., Pres. Henry Ford II of Ford Motor Co.,
and Pres. John Gordon of Generate
million slash which reduced the program without undesirable re
technical assistance appropriation | strictions."
ORIT Official Reports
On Chilean Relief Need
The Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT)
has given $1,000 for the relief of earthquake and tidal wave victims
in Chile after hearing a report from one of its staff members on
assignment in Concepcion when the first tremblers hit.
The money was in addition ,to $400 Daniel Benedict, ORIT
assistant secretary and director of^
education, gave on behalf of Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ion affiliates immediately after sur-
viving three days of shocks. Bene-
dict formerly was on the staff of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs.
"I was in Concepcion on a five-
day visit to various unions when the
earthquake hit/' he wrote the AFL-
CIO News.
"Actually I was asleep (it was 6
a. m.) when I was awakened by
the double shock of my bed bounc-
ing all over the place and the build-
ing opposite begining to crash down
into the street with a tremendous
noise.
"About 300 people were killed
in that first shock in Concepcion
and the surrounding villages,
most of them poor people living
in old homes. The electricity, gas
and more important, water sup-
ply, were broken by the first
quake. By the second day, the
continuous hammering of more
and more quakes finally brought
about a small amount of panic,
particularly when the tidal waves
began."
Despite a cold rain — it was the
beginning of Chile's winter — thou-
sands of people moved from their
homes to parks and squares, Bene-
dict wrote, preferring to take a
chance with falling trees rather than
falling walls and ceilings.
Immediate Gift Made
Benedict was able to get out on
the third day, the start of a govern-
ment airlift which provided trans-
portation for the injured, children,
foreigners and residents of unaf-
fected parts of Chile.
Before he left, he wrote, "I gave
what money I had with me for im-
mediate relief through the local
unions." He said $200 was given
in ORITs name to affiliates of the
National Confederation of Labor
(CNT) in Concepcion, Valdivia and
Temuco and $100 to the Maritime
Federation, another ORIT affiliate.
He also gave $100 to Chilean un-
ions of steel workers in the name
of the Intl. Metalworkers Federa-
tion, as they are not affiliates of
ORIT or ICFTU.
Motors Corp., Reuther said he was
"deeply disturbed" by the reports
which appeared in the June 13 is
sue of Ward's Automotive Reports,
often considered the "bible" of the
industry.
The Ward's article stated that
production of cars this September
would be 69 percent above the
level of a year ago, and that Octo
ber schedules, just in advance of
the election, would result in the
"biggest October for factory work
ers in history." Ward's said the
production figures would make "in
teresting reading in this presidential
election year."
Reuther bluntly warned the in-
dustry that to tamper with pro-
duction schedules in an obvious
effort to help elect a Republican
President "would represent a dan-
gerous and irresponsible game
played with explosive economic
factors."
Spokesmen for the "Big Three"
denied the charges. At GM,
spokesman said the Reuther state-
ment was "erroneous, distorted,
(and) misleading." Chrysler called
it "completely erroneous," and Ford
said the statement was "false, irre-
sponsible, and obviously made for
propaganda purposes."
All three companies were silent
on whether they would accede to
the UAW request to discuss pro-
duction schedules with union rep-
resentatives.
'Chills-and-Fever Production'
"As the legally certified repre-
sentatives of the workers," the
UAW president said in his letter
to the three leading automobile
manufacturers, "we would, of
course, like nothing better than to
see production going full blast, pro-
viding steady employment for the
largest possible number of men and
women.
"But our members have had
altogether too much sad experi-
ence with chills-and-fever pro-
duction scheduling which brings
excessive overtime for short peri-
ods followed by heavy and ex-
tended layoffs and repeated short
workweeks.
"As you know, we have had oc-
casion in previous years to protest
irresponsible scheduling by the in-
dustry and, as you also know, our
warnings on those occasions were
subsequently borne out by the
facts."
Reuther said the production en-
visioned in Ward's article would
and new models amounting to 850,
000 cars — 25 percent above the all-
time record of 680,000 established
Oct. 1, 1957, at the outset of the
latest recession.
"Clearly such production sched-
ules and such inventories at the
outset of the model year would
represent a substantial borrowing
from future production," Reuther
wrote. "Following Election Day,
output would have to be cut back
drastically with resultant large lay-
offs and extensive short workweeks.
Unemployment insurance rolls and
welfare loads in the auto-producing
centers would increase sharply.
"Deep cutbacks in auto pro-
duction, coinciding with a general
downturn in the economy, would
speed up the recessionary spiral
and carry it to lower depths than
it would otherwise reach, making
recovery more difficult and in-
tensifying the hardships and suf-
fering that recessions always
cause."
Reuther said that "while, histori-
cally, the industry has not been
noted for considering the welfare
of workers," the UAW had thought
the "Big Three" would have shown
more concern for its dealers, who
would "have to go into hock" to
carry the huge inventories and who,
in the end, would have to dispose
of the cars "only by cutting prices
to bargain-basement levels."
The UAW president predicted
this would lead to "widespread deal-
er distress and an increase in dealer
bankruptcies." He said the union
believes that consumers should have
the benefit of lower prices, but such
reductions should come from real-
istic manufacturer prices instead of
the technique of "pressing dealers
to the wall."
NMU Says State Dept.
Put Pressure on NLRB
New York — Pres. Joseph Curran of the Maritime Union has
accused the State Dept. of "pressuring" the National Labor Rela-
tions Board in a "runaway ship" case and has asked for a confer-
ence with Sec. of State Christian A. Herter to document the charge.
In a statement, Curran said the State Dept has tried to persuade
the NLRB to rule that it has no'$> — - : :
Sea unions have won a ruling
jurisdiction over American com-
panies which operate "flag of con-
venience" vessels in so called run-
away fleets.
That would mean U. S. laws
would not apply to American ships
sailing under a foreign flag, and
would prevent sea unions from
using NLRB facilities on behalf of
union members or prospective
members. NMU and other unions
have been organizing ship crews,
and have asked NLRB to hold rep-
resentation elections.
"Our union," said Curran, "con-
siders the active interference of the
State Dept. with the exercise of the
NLRB's jurisdiction over . . . com-
panies flying flags of convenience,
and clearly engaged in American
commerce, wholly unwarranted and
improper.
'NMU vigorously protests inter-
ference . . . in the statutory func-
tions of the NLRB. The NLRB is
the agency established by Congress
to administer the Labor-Manage-
ment Rejations Act and to elimi-
nate industrial strife which 'inter-
feres with the normal flow of corn-
result in an Oct. 1 inventory of old i rnerce . . .
from a federal court that the labor
board should decide whether they
have a right to picket runaway
ships. They are appealing a ruling
by a New York trial court that
permitted two Liberian-flag cruise
ships to leave New York and
ordered NMU and the Seafarers
to stop picketing the two Incres
Steamship Co. ships.
V AW Film Cited
At Movie Festival
"Pushbuttons and People,"
a United Auto Workers film
dealing with the impact of
automation, was awarded a
special-mention prize at the
recent Intl. Labor Film Fes-
tival in Stockholm.
The film, available from the
UAW Education Dept., shows
UAW Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther testifying before a Sen-
ate anti-monopoly committee
and presents proposals to
cushion workers against the
effects of plant relocation and
mechanization.
age i welve
AFT -CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1960
In 'Anti-Union' Climate:
Meat Cutters Boost
Per Capita Dues
By Gene Zack
Atlantic City, N. J. — Expressing deep concern over the "present
anti-union atmosphere'' in the nation, 1,400 delegates to the Meat
Cutters' 20th general convention here shouted overwhelming ap-
proval of a resolution hiking the per capita tax 25 cents a month —
to $1.65 — effective Jan. 1, 1961.
At the same time the 350,000-
member union, fresh from a pro-
tracted strike against Swift & Co.
last fall, authorized the executive
board to levy a temporary $l-a-
month assessment — for a maximum
of three months a year — at any time
the union's strike fund dips below
the $2 million mark.
The anti-union climate was
stressed by two principal conven-
tion speakers — AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler, and
Dir. James L. McDevitt of the
AFL-CIO Committee on Political
Education — both of whom cited
last year's passage of the Landrum-
Griffin Act as indicative of the
success of efforts by the National
Association of Manufacturers and
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to
turn the public against organized
labor.
Schnitzler issued a strong plea
to the trade union movement to
step up its organizing activities
in order to bring into its ranks
the 20 million workers in the
nation "who need and must be
accorded union representation."
'The AFL-CIO," Schnitzler told
delegates from 450 local unions in
th£ U.S. and Canada, "has never
lost sight of its obligation ; to or-
ganize. Since the merger, we have
organized 800,000 new workers
and have brought another 300,000
workers into the fold through the
affiliation of hitherto independent
railroad unions.
The organizing job must be
done, Schnitzler said, "in spite of
the temporarily unfavorable cli-
mate of public opinion, in spite
of southern opposition to labor's
civil rights program, in spite of
the continued diffidence of white
collar workers toward joining
unions."
McDevitt, tracing the action in
Congress last year which led to
passage of Landrum - Griff in,
stressed the role played by Vice
Pres. Nixon, who broke a tie vote
in the Senate to seal into the labor
bill the so-called "bill of rights"
sponsored by Sen. John L. McClel-
lan (D-Ark.).
Referring to Nixon's almost cer-
tain nomination by the Republican
National Convention in Chicago,
the COPE director said the anti-
labor vote by Nixon on the McClel-
lan amendment was just one ex-
ample of his "long record of
opposition to all social labor legis-
lation."
Congress Coalition Assailed
McDevitt bitterly assailed the
coalition of southern Democrats
and reactionary Republicans which,
he said, has effectively controlled
Congress since 1947 when the Taft-
Hartley Act was passed, and urged
that union members support candi-
dates "not on the basis of their
partisan label but rather on their
voting records and nothing else."
Schnitzler told the delegates
that NAM and CofC "propa-
ganda" had "undermined public
confidence" in organized labor
and that for the trade union
movement to "reverse that
trend" would call for strict ad-
herence to the AFL-CIO Codes
of Ethical Practices and for con-
tinuation of labor's drive to
strengthen the national economy.
He paid high tribute to the 62-
year-old union — headed by Pres.
Thomas J. Lloyd and Sec.-Treas.
Patrick E. Gorman — for its "pio-
neering efforts" to inaugurate fed-
eral poultry inspection "and thus
protect consumers from food unfit
for consumption."
Under the resolution raising the
per capita to $1.65 a month, $1.10
will go to the general fund, 20
cents will be deposited in the death
benefit fund, 10 cents will go into
the strike fund, and the remaining
25 cents will be earmarked for the
retirement fund.
Sit-Downers Backed
The delegates pledged the union's
"fullest support, both morally and
financially," to Negro students en-
gaged in sit-in strikes aimed at
ending lunch counter segregation
in the South.
Also in the civil rights field,
delegates endorsed a resolution
calling on any national, interna-
tional and local union affiliated
with the AFL-CIO which still
has racial clauses in its consti-
tution to "eliminate the dis-
criminating practice"; pledged
support to the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Civil Rights; and established
an active Civil Rights Commit-
tee within the international un-
ion.
In other actions, the convention:
• Renewed its support of the
principle of merging the Meat Cut-
ters and the Packinghouse Workers
— a merger unsuccessfully at-
tempted in 1956 — and instructed
the incoming executive board to
again explore the matter with
UP WA officers.
• Hailed the completion of the
merger previously undertaken with
the former Fur and Leather Work-
ers, now a department of the Meat
Cutters.
• Strongly condemned the im-
portation, of Mexican workers by
Peyton Packing Co., El Paso, Tex.,
scene of a long and bitter meat cut-
ters strike and assailed the "misap-
plication" of immigration laws and
laws governing importation of Mex-
ican workers "to provide a reser-
voir of cheap', union-busting labor."
• Adopted a 12-point legisla-
tive program including labor law
amendments that will protect un-
ions in their right to organize and
negotiate; improvement of the Fair
Labor Standards Act; added con-
sumer protection legislation; fed-
eral unemployment compensation
standards; civil rights improve-
ments; and passage of housing, aid-
to-education, health insurance and
equitable tax legislation.
PHOTOS ILLUSTRATING the $96 million middle-income cooperative housing project sponsored
in the Bronx, N. Y., by the Meat Cutters, on display at the union's convention in Atlantic City,
are shown to AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler (right) and AMCBW Vice Pres. Karl
Muller (left) by Jerome Belson, union housing director. The project, which will provide quarters
for 5,200 families, pioneers the use of "air rights" in real estate development, as it utilizes the space
over the Mott Haven railroad storage yards.
Union Files
NLRB Charges
In Portland
Portland, Ore. — Unfair labor
practice charges against the two
daily newspapers here have been
filed by the Portland Newspaper
Guild.
The Guild, which has been re-
fusing to cross the picket lines of
the striking Stereotypers at the two
papers, accused the Oregon Journal
and the Oregonian of refusing to
bargain in good faith. Guild mem-
bers voted by secret ballot, 56-4, to
reject an oral management proposal
containing a "no strike" clause and
other contract regressions.
The Portland Reporter, strik-
ers' daily paper, signed adver-
tising contracts with two big de-
partment stores and two spe-
cialty shops not previously ad-
vertising in the paper. Executives
hope to publish three times a
week, then daily, instead of the
current twice-a-week.
Two court actions were reported:
the Journal entered a plea of in-
nocent to a civil suit accusing it of
using the Allied Printing Trades'
union label without authorization;
and attorneys for six Journal em-
ployes agreed to file an amended
petition in their suit alleging trus-
tees have violated terms of the will
of the former owner.
Another development in the long
dispute came when Portland locals
of the Printing Pressmen and the
Stereotypers, at a joint meeting,
adopted resolutions advocating
merger of the two unions on an
international basis.
ANG Speakers Stress
Theme of Labor Unity
Chicago — Newspaper labor unity became the dominant theme of
the Newspaper Guild's 27th annual convention here this week.
"There is the realization, so dramatically underscored by Portland,
that in the year 1960 the unions in the newspaper industry can no
longer afford to go their own separate ways, unthinking and alone,"
said ANG Executive Vice Pres.^ —
THIS IS THE GAVEL used by presiding officers at the Newspaper
Guild convention in Chicago. ANG Pres. Arthur Rosenstock (left)
accepts it from Pres. Marsh Schiewe (right) of the host local as ANG
Sec.-Treas. Charles A. Perlik, Jr., looks on.
William J. Farson.
"It has come to pass that we
are down to the alternative of
amalgamation or annihilation,"
declared Pres. Elmer Brown of
the Typographical Union, one of
the featured speakers.
Presidents of other craft unions
in the industry — Wilfrid T. Connell
of the Photo Engravers, James H.
Sampson of the Stereotypers, and
Anthony J. Deandrade of the Press-
men — were scheduled to address
later sessions of the convention,
largest in the Guild's history.
The 260 delegates have been
asked to approve continuation of
talks among the officers seeking
"ways and means of achieving a
sound and mutually-acceptable ba-
sis for unity" for report to the 1961
convention.
Farson reviewed conversations
already held between Guild and
ITU leaders and between the offi-
cers of the Pressmen and the Guild.
"No one expects unity of any
kind to be accomplished overnight,"
he said, "and what form it ultimate-
ly will take in our case remains to
be seen. It does seem to me only
common sense that our objective —
our goal — should be a single organ-
ization, assuming that such an or-
ganization can be worked out to
the satisfaction of all the unions
concerned. . . .
Will Ask Blueprint
"Accordingly, at the next meet-
ing of the board of governors of
the Allied Printing Trades Associa-
tion, I intend to suggest that each
international union name three peo-
ple to a working committee to blue-
print an organization. Only when
we have a specific draft before us
will we be able to evaluate such an
organization and measure it against
our hopes and fears."
Both Farson and Brown sug-
gested that a new, single union
might be made up of departments
or branches following natural divi-
sions of the industry.
"A modern departmentalized or-
ganization compares in structure to
an army, which has its various
branches, such as infantry, tank,
artillery, air, etc.," said Brown;
"each a highly specialized depart-
ment of one army, yet all joined
and operating as a single unit under
a single staff command."
"The members of our organ-
izations are asking for a plan to
stop the various crafts from
'legally scabbing' on each other.
They have a right to know why
we continue a practice of cross-
ing each other's picket lines."
Brown said the unity movement
has been spurred by the trend to-
ward monopoly newspaper owner-
ship, technical developments, anti-
labor legislation, and the growing
strength and recalcitrance of the
publishers themselves.
"The owners of some large pub-
lishing interests consider organized
employes as a hindrance to their
greed and free trade unions as
pests," he declared.
In his keynote address to the
convention, ANG Pres. Arthur
Rosenstock also attacked the evap-
oration of newspapers through
sales, suspensions and mergers for
the resultant loss of jobs and the
growing conformity of opinions —
"the sterilization of the thinking of
the people."
"We have more and more one-
newspaper towns accompanied in
many instances by control of the
other means of communication
within the area," Rosenstock ob-
served.
Offers Liebling Plan
Because so many newspaper
sales and mergers are prompted
solely by profit-taking motives, the
ANG president urged Congress to
adopt a suggestion of A. J. Liebling,
New Yorker magazine writer, to
revise the capital gains tax to make
such sales less attractive. Rosen-
stock also called on Congress to
weigh a "guardian waiting period"
during which any newspaper up for
sale would be- offered to new buy-
ers before it could be sold to its
competitors in the same city.
The growth of monopoly news-
paper ownership, he said, has
created such an emergency that
the public has lost "even squatters'
privileges to their right to know."
Meany Asks Federal Action
To Spur Economic Growth
Issaed weekly at
S15 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
^jX^ Saturday, July 9, 1960
Second Clate Poetaae Paid at Washington, D. C.
No. 28
House Goof
Endangers
Wage Law
By Gene Zack
The 86th Congress, with
mountain of major measures still
awaiting action, ground to a tem-
porary halt for the presidential
nominating conventions on the
heels of a colossal House error
which could strip 14 million per-
sons of wage-hour protection.
In the final rush to recess be-
fore the Democratic and Repub-
lican conventions, the House
adopted a hastily-drawn amend
ment to the minimum wage bill
which, if left standing, would leave
only 10 million workers protected
by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
For House rollcall on Minimum
Wage, see Page 14.
The amendment, introduced by
Rep. Frank E. Smith (D-Miss.),
would exempt from coverage any
individual employed in any county
where farm products are produced
unless the employe worked in a city
of more than 250,000 population.
The AFL-CIO Joint Minimum
Wage Committee pointed out that
the House-adopted amendment
would exclude steel workers,
auto workers, garment workers
and any others now covered if
they were employed in smaller
urban centers or in rural areas.
As rammed through the House
by a coalition of Republicans and
southern Democrats, the bill would
raise the present $1 minimum to
$1.15, and add a potential 1.4 mil-
lion workers in retail trade to the
law's coverage — but only to the ex-
tcftt-e^a^l^-'arrhoii r-mimm u r rr w ~j
(Continued on Page 15)
New Jobless Data
Catted " 1 Tightening*
Los Angeles — The Dept of
Labor's figures on mid-June
unemployment "will show the
largest May-to-June increase"
since World War II and will
be "frightening," AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany told the
Democratic National Conven-
tion's platform writers here.
In a statement prepared
for presentation, Meany made
a "flat prediction" that the
jump in joblessness will break
postwar records "in both
numbers of unemployed as
well as in percent of the labor
force."
"The total will be so near
1 million more unemployed
as to be frightening," he
warned.
The figures on employment
and unemployment were
scheduled for release the week
of July 11 in Washington.
Rivals Wait in Wings:
Kennedy- Johnson
Battle Shaping Up
By Willard Shelton
Los Angeles — A head-on battle between Massachusetts' front
running Sen. John F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon Johnson, the
Senate majority leader from Texas, shaped up as the Democratic
National Convention approached its opening session July 11, with
two other candidates waiting in the wings.
With delegates and candidates'^
pouring into this sprawling city,
backers of two-time nominee Adlai
E. Stevenson and of Missouri's Sen.
Warns Democrats
U.S. at Crossroads
Los Angeles — The major task of the next Administration is to
develop "a climate that will promote economic growth by meeting
the people's needs," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told the Demo-
cratic National Convention here.
In an incisive declaration of labor's social and economic philoso-
phy, Meany called for government policies to release our free
society's energies. He charged bluntly that after seven years, de-
spite rising productivity and a growing work force, our enormous
potentials "are being translated into unemployment and part-time
work" instead of increased output.
The AFL-CIO president ex-^
Labor Asks
36-Point
Platform
Los Angeles— The AFL-CIO
has asked the Democratic Na-
tional Convention to pledge the
party to a 35-hour workweek
under the wage-hour law, to re-
form and revise existing labor
relations laws, and to strip the
conservative coalition in Congress
of its power to stifle welfare legis-
lation.
The federation also called for
major revisions of the tax struc-
ture, .charging that the burden
pressed labor's hope that in 1960
the platforms of both political
parties would represent "principles
instead of promises; convictions in-
Partial text of statement on
Page 7.
Stuart Symington freely conceded
that their hope was for a Kennedy-
Johnson -deadlock _ that._WQuld force
the convention to some other
choice.
In the wake of a series of na-
tionally televised press conferences
by Kennedy, Johnson and former
Pres. Harry S. Truman — a Syming-
ton backer — these factors emerged:
• There was backing from John-
son, but not from powerful Demo-
crats generally, for Truman's charge
that National Committee Chairman
Paul Butler had "rigged" the con-
vention for Kennedy. The pros-
pect was for an all-out open struggle
on the convention floor.
• A potential battle neared on
proposal for rules changes that
would prevent "switches" of state
delegation votes after a rollcall but
before the tally is announced.
Ballot Change Studied
The proposed change, clearly
aimed at preventing Kennedy
from a first-ballot triumph with
Switches" after delegations had
cast complimentary votes for favor-
ite sons, was under study by
Florida's Gov. LeRoy Collins, the
convention's permanent chairman,
and the rules committee. Any rules
change taken to the convention!
might produce an early test of can-
didate strength.
• A minor struggle, rather than
a major one, appeared likely on
p<wwWWrTTffi^ 'Joy a 1 1 y "
stead of unspoken compromises;
intentions instead of expediency."
As a concrete example, Meany
stressed the burning question of
civil rights. "I happen to be-
lieve," he told the platform draft-
ers, "that civil rights in this
country — the fulfillment of
America's promise to every citi-
zen — is the No. 1 moral issue of
our time and that necessary leg-
islation to achieve those rights
must be promptly enacted."
For the first time in history, the
federation president said in his oral
statement prepared for the conven-
tion platform committee, totalitari-
an communism faces us with "a
real challenge to the American way
of life" that forces us to ask
whether our way "has run its
course."
The "inseparable" twin issues of
"overriding importance" are safe-
guarding the free world militarily
and strengthening our society to as-
sure the protection of freedom,
Meany declared.
r "What we are offering is not
%impjy a iegislative pro£farn to be
set against the federal budget as it
stands today," he said. "What we
are proposing is a program for
^conomic growth."
^"What we ask of y
ment said, "is the legislative frame-
work in which freedom can win the
day by force if necessary, and by
force of example if not."
The military strength of the free
where threats have arisen that local
party leaders would seek to throw
(Continued on Page 16)
For excerpts, see Page 12.
world "must be great enough to
deter, and if necessary to defeat,
(Continued on Page 6)
now "falls most heavily on low and
moderate-income families," and re-
form of the election laws to "pre-
vent a few families from making
huge financial outlays to influence
elections."
In a detailed document pre-
pared for the Platform Commit-
tee headed by Rep. Chester Bowles
(D-Conn.), AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany presented a 36-point specific
program covering both foreign and
domestic policy. It included:
• A declaration that the world
faces from "Soviet imperialism and
Communist conspiracy" an ^in-
creasingly grave threat to peace,
freedom and human well-being,"
which must be met both with ade-
quate free world military strength
and a U.S. foreign policy directed
to our "survival as free men."
• A warning against the
"mounting degree of economic
(Continued on Page 13)
Head of 'Impartial' NLRB-P hiiiges
Into GOP Fight to Re-elect Mundt
Boyd Leedom, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, has taken the lead in a parti*
san political campaign on behalf of Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S. D.), one of the bitterest, anti-labor mem-
bers of the Senate. '
Leedom, who heads up the independent, quasi-judicial NLRB, set up for the purpose of adminis-
tering impartially the Labor Management Relations Act, injected himself into the campaign in a
letter promotin.g a $50-a-plate^
luncheon for Mundt. Mundt's seat
is being challenged by Democratic
Rep. George McGovern.
The letter, addressed to "Fellow
American" and signed by Leedom
as general chairman of the 4t D. C.
Mundt for Senate Committee,"
hailed the South Dakota Republican
as a "recognized leader in the battle
against encroachment of socialistic
schemes in America."
The letter declared:
"Sen. Mundt has an especially
tough campaign since certain
labor leaders hav# announced
that he is on their purge list.
These labor leaders are making
many thousands of dollars avail-
able to his opponent."
During hearings by the Senate
committee headed by Sen. John
McClellan (D-Ark.) on the strike
conducted by the Auto Workers
against the Kohler Co. of Kohler,
Wis., committee member Mundt
left little doubt he accepted the
Kohler version of the dispute.
However, an NLRB trial ex-
aminer has recommended that the
board resolve the union's unfair
labor practice charge against Kohler
by ordering the re-instatement of
some 2,000 workers. Leedom must
still vote on the pending Kohler
case.
Mundt last year voted to make ,
the so-called "bill of rights" sec-
tion a part of the Landrum-
Griffin Act, he voted to strength-
en the ban on secondary boycotts
and he voted against an expan-
sion of the jobless pay system.
Mundt voted against aid to
depressed areas in both 1958 and
1959. He voted against effec-
tive civil rights action, he voted
{Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY % 1960
Charter for 'Cheap Labor 9 :
Mexican Farm Labor Imports
Extended Until 1963 by House
By Robert B. Cooney
The House pushed through a bill, assailed by liberal Democrats as a charter for "cheap labor,"
which would extend until 1963 the program under which 440,000 Mexicans a year are imported for
powerful grower groups.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. B. F. Sisk (D-Calif.) was sent to the Senate and referred to an Agri-
culture subcommittee headed by Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.). Humphrey and eight other
Democrats are co-sponsoring a^
NEW ERA in labor-management relations in New York City's
private, non-profit hospitals is celebrated with a handclasp by, left
to right, Pres. Leon J. Davis of Drug & Hospital Local 1199; City
AFL-CIO Pres. Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., and David Livingston,
president of Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store Union's Dist. 65. They
negotiated five-year peace pact with hospital management.
'Live, Let Live 9 Policy
Ends Hospital Crisis
New York — An overflow meeting of hospital workers here enthu-
siastically endorsed a * 4 live and let live" labor-management policy
negotiated with spokesmen for the city's non-profit, private hos-
pitals and pledged there will be no strike for at least five years if
the hospitals live up to their end of the agreement.
The agreement, hammered out^
in a series of City Hall conferences
in which Mayor Robert F. Wagner
actively participated,* averted a
strike for union recognition which
had been authorized by members
of Drug & Hospital Local 1199 of
the Retail, Wholesale & Dept.
Store Union.
Wagner came to the Local 1199
meeting to tell more than 1,000
employes of non-profit, . private
hospitals that he was convinced
there has been a "change in atti-
tude" on the part of hospital man-
agement, whose uncompromising
opposition to unionism had led to
a 46-day strike in 1959.
"I can assure you," Wagner
declared, "that every hospital
worker now has the right to join
your union without interference."
New York City AFL-CIO Pres.
Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., and David
Livingston, head of RWDSU Dist.
65, outlined these major changes
in the labor-management relations
policy of the voluntary hospitals:
• An administrative committee,
set up in the agreement ending the
1959 strike, has been transformed
into an all-public review board,
with labor and management having
an equal advisory status.
The 1959 agreement had re-
sulted in a 12-member panel, six
representing management and six
public members, to make annual
recommendations on wages, work-
ing conditions and personnel prac-
tices. The new panel will be com-
posed of six public members with
voting rights, three non-voting con-
sultants named by the Greater New
York Hospital Association and
three designated by the New York
City AFL-CIO.
• A speeded-up grievance pro-
cedure, with recourse to mediation
as well as arbitration. Arbitrators
and mediators will be designated by
the public ( review board.
In giving its approval to the
new agreement, Local 1199 told
the mayor it would regard the
recommendations of the review
hoard as binding and it would
not strike providing the hospi-
tab likewise accepted the pro-
posals. Local 1199 Pres. Leon
J. Davis made it clear that the
union would not feel obligated
to keep its members at work in
any hospital that rejected a re-
view board recommendation.
While the union did not win its
demand for full collective bargain-
ing rights, Davis traced the im-
provement in the condition of hos-
pital workers during the past year
and the expansion of union mem-
bership and declared:
"We*ve come a long way. Hos-
pital workers are no longer the
forgotten men and women in this
city."
counter-measure, introduced by
Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy (D-
Minn.), which would drastically
overhaul the Mexican program to
protect domestic workers.
Meanwhile, leaders of an
AFL-CIO farm organizing drive
in California met with Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell on the
issue of whether the government
would supply strikebreakers to
growers. Mitchell in effect tossed
the problem back to California.
A week earlier, a group of Cali-
fornia's most powerful growers had
tried to get Mitchell to ban
"stranger" picketing and thereby to
upset the refusal of the California
Dept. of Employment to refer
either Americans or Mexicans to
farms picketed by the AFL-CIO.
Irving Perlussf California's em-
ployment director, had interpreted
a "labor dispute" as "any contro-
versy," regardless of whether there
had existed an employer-employe
relationship.
When Referrals Are Barred
Mitchell, who heads the federal-
state employment service created
by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933,
said that law's "labor dispute"
clause prohibits referrals where a
dispute is over "the filling of the
job."
He promised both the grower
and labor groups "a continuing
study of the problem" and said
he already had sent several
interpretations of the critical
phrase to Perluss and an emerg-
ency state senate fact-finding
committee.
The Mitchell interpretations,
however, were based on established
union-employer relationships or on
inter-union conflicts.
Wage Disputes Unprotected
In a key sentence, Mitchell told
Perluss "a labor dispute involving
exclusively a controversy over
wages has not been construed by
the Department to be an issue in-
volving the filling of the job. . . ."
This, then, would be a case
where the government would be
enabled to send domestics or im-
ported Mexicans past picket lines.
In the dispute which inspired
the emergency sessions with
Mitchell and the state inquiry,
pickets of the AFL-CIO Agricul-
tural Workers Organizing Com-
ABC Wins $250,000 Settlement
In Fund Suit Against Rival Union
New York — The American Bakery & Confectionery Workers have hailed a $250,000 settlement of
a lawsuit pressed by' its welfare and pension fund trustees against trustees of a rival union as recog-
nition of tk the right of workers to abandon a corruptly-led organization without jeopardy to their right
in existing funds."
ABC Pres. Daniel E. Conway said the union and fund trustees brought the suit to protect workers
against the Bakery & Confection- 1 ^
ery Workers' use of welfare and
pension funds as a weapon to pre-
vent members from switching to
ABC.
The BCW was expelled from the
AFL-CIO on charges of corrupt
domination.
Conway said the offer of
settlement by BCW trustees rec-
ognized the principle sought by
ABC and was accepted since a
continuation would have in-
volved years of litigation at a
cost of hundreds of thousands of
dollars to the members.
The ABC leader pointed out
that the BCW trustees voted against
the settlement. He charged this
was a "cowardly*' gesture since
their use of the funds to threaten
workers was exposed and they had
prior assurance the employer trus-
tees would vote for it with the sup-
port of the neutral trustee.
The terms were deposited with
New York State Supreme Court
Justice Arthur G. Klein.
Under the settlement, "a reso-
lution of the disputed claims to
the reserves existing in the de-
fendant (BCW) funds' 9 is to be
effected "in such a way as best
to protect the interests of all
employes on whose behalf con-
tributions were made to the said
funds without forfeiture of
benefits by reason of transfer of
such employes'* to ABC as well
as "without injury' 9 to the inter-
ests of those who remain with or
become members of the BCW*
The ABC victory on the legal
front followed a long series of
election successes in the struggle to
win over members from the ex-
pelled BCW.
mittee carried signs reading "On
Strike For a Fair Wage" outside
the world's largest cherry or-
chard. Since the state refused
to send workers through, the
pickets proved effective.
Beyond disputes over wages,
doubt exists because agriculture is
exempt from the Taft-Hartley Act
and farm workers do not have the
legal right to union recognition
and collective bargaining.
In the House debate over the
Sisk bill, to extend the Mexican
import program due to expire in
1961, Rep. John E. Fogarty (D-
R. I.) lashed the grower-backed
measure as "class legislation" and
led the unsuccessful fight by lib-
erals. The hope of Senate liberals
is to block any extension this year.
Oil Locals to Vote on
Union's Wage Demands
Denver, Coio. — Oil Worker local unions will be mandated to
seek an across-the-board wage increase of 18 cents an hour for
90,000 oil industry workers if the new wage goal is approved in a
referendum.
The OCAW national bargaining policy committee for the oil
industry, meeting here, voted to^r
seek 18 cents in forthcoming nego-
tiations. No policy was set on
other issues, or for other segments
of the membership.
OCAW has an additional 120,-
000 members in the chemical, drug,
pharmaceutical and other indus-
tries.
"Committee members," said
Pres. O. A. Knight, "decided to
establish a flat cents-per-hour fig-
ure because they felt equity de-
mands it.
"Our past few wage increases
have been computed on a per-
centage basis. The committee
feels it is time to provide a uni-
form pay raise for every member
of the union in the oil industry."
The committee's recommenda-
tion will take effect if approved by
75 percent of the oil units involved,
in a secret ballot vote now getting
under way.
The union said the average wage
for oil production and refining jobs
is $2.97 an hour. Six cents of the
new wage goal is based on an in-
crease of approximately 2 percent
in the cost of living since January
1959, when the last wage hike — 5
percent — took effect. The other 12
cents is based on a rise of 4.5 per-
cent in oil industry productivity,
OCAW said.
The oil industry bargaining com-
mittee is comprised of 10 rank-
and-file union members — two from
each of the five regions in OCAW.
Delegates adopted the new wage
goal after a study of recommenda-
tions by local union delegates to
regional meetings, held in April.
The union's master contract with
Texaco is now in negotiation.
Extras Seek Approval
For Television Strike
Hollywood — The Screen Extras Guild will seek strike authoriza-
tion from its members to bolster union negotiators in deadlocked
contract talks with the television industry, SEG's board of directors
has announced.
Plans for a mid-month strike referendum— which will require a
75 percent majority of those voting^
to authorize a strike — came as the
union reported no progress in talks
with the Association of Motion Pic-
ture Producers, the Alliance of
Television Film Producers and the
New York Film Producers Associa-
tion.
Earlier, the Associated Actors &
Artistes of America — AFL-CIO
parent body of all U.S performers'
unions — voted unanimously to ap-
prove and support an extras* strike.
At issue in the stalled negotia-
tions are union demands for crea-
tion of health and welfare funds
for performers and adequate
wage increases. The producers
have flatly rejected the health and
welfare plan and have offered
only a token 7.5-cent hourly wage
increase.
H. O'Neil Shanks, SEG executive
secretary, denounced the token pay
offer, declaring that it is "so far
below that given other performers
and other employes in the industry
that it would seem the employers
are trying to foment trouble."
SEG's contracts with the industry
expired Apr. 2, and the entertainers
have been working without a con-
tract since that date.
Meanwhile, the Screen Actors
Guild, which struck the motion
picture industry's major producers
for 29 days earlier this year to win
creation of the industry's first pen-
sion, health and welfare fund, x an-
nounced settlement with the televi-
sion industry on similar terms.
The television pact requires
producers to pay 5 percent of total
actors* salaries — not to exceed
$2,500 an actor on a half-hour show
or $4,000 an actor on an hour-long
show — into the new funds. The
agreement also gave performers pay
increases spread over a two-year
period. For day players, the rat©
goes from $80 to $90 immediately,
and to $100 in 1962.
Sheet Metal Union
Loses NLRB Ruling
The National Labor Relations
Board has ordered the Sheet Metal
Workers to end what the board
called 15 years of boycott activi-
ties against the Burt Manufactur-
ing Co. of Akron, O.
The NLRB ruled, in a unani-
mous decision, that since 1945 the
Sheet Metal Workers, and three of
its locals — No. 70 in Akron, 65 in
Cleveland and 98 in Columbus, O.
— had carried out a boycott against
Burt whose employes are repre-
sented by the Steelworkers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Page Thi-e*
AFL-CIO Offers Program:
Joblessness Called
Chief 'Trouble-Spot'
Five "suggested approaches" to the problem of unemployment,
"the single most important trouble-spot in today's economy," are
advanced by the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research in the current issue
of its publication, Labor's Economic Review.
There can be "no easy solution" for this problem, the department
points out, because "it is obviously^
related very closely to a host of
other economic issues facing the
economy." It suggests:
• Give the unemployment is
sue the attention it deserves. Both
government officials and commu
nity leaders, the article charges,
"have tried to minimize its im
portance."
• In considering public policies
give greater recognition to their
impact on unemployment. The
great weight given inflation in con
sidering public policies in the last
few years, the article notes, "has led
to a series of restrictionist policies
affecting monetary and fiscal policy,
taxation and government expendi
tures" which have adversely af-
fected jobs.
• Strengthen the role of unem-
ployment insurance by extending
coverage, increasing benefits and
recognizing that "changing tech-
nology and geographical displace-
ment of industry have lengthened
the duration of unemployment be-
yond the provision of state laws.'
• Meet the special problems
of depressed areas. Only if the
federal government lends its sup-
port, the department says, will
Camp:
NLRB Chief
>aigns for
GOP Senator
(Continued from Page J)
against federal public power
projects, he voted against improv-
ing unemployment compensation
standards.
The nature of the battle shaping
up between Mundt and McGovern
was further revealed by a com-
panion $50-a-plate promotional let-
ter signed by Senate Minority Lead-
er Everett McKinley Dirksen (111.)
and House Minority Leader Charles
A. Halleck (Ind.).
Dirksen and Halleck, noting that
"certain labor leaders" have cast
their support for McGovern, whom
they describe as "a member of the
ultra-liberal Democrat (sic) wing of
the House," go on to say:
"These labor leaders are anxi-
ous to purge Sen. Mundt because
of his activities as a member of
the McClellan Labor Rackets
Committee and his over-all con-
servative record."
The official name of the McClel-
lan group is the Select Committee
to Investigate Improper Activities
in Labor-Management Relations.
Dirksen and Halleck went on in
their June 8 letter to make this
statement:
"We have heard the South Dako-
ta Democrats have flatly -stated that
they expect to spend more than
four times as much as Republicans
can raise in this campaign. They
are trying to buy this Senate seat."
these communities be able to get
back on their feet.
• Devise a new type of train-
ing program. The area of educa-
tion for jobs in industry must be
extended, in view of today's condi-
tions, to cover the older worker left
jobless by technology as well as
untrained youth, the department
says.
"These are but a few suggested
approaches to the serious problem
of unemployment," the article con-
tinues. "Others could be men-
tioned relating to the role of educa-
tion and training, the counseling
and placing of job applicants, the
location of industry, and the main-
tenance of income during periods
of unemployment.
"The development of adequate
policies to reduce the currently
high level of unemployment pro-
vides a very real test of the
economy's ability to meet the
changing conditions of the mod-
ern world."
In discussing joblessness, the de-
partment declares that unemploy-
ment has become a serious concern
"not merely during recession years,
but even in more prosperous times
Highest in World
One evidence of just how serious
it is, the article says, is that it is
"considerably higher than in any
other industrialized country" in the
world, even allowing for differences
in statistical methods.
"If attention is directed at the
U.S. experience during the post
war period," the department ob-
serves, "the one fact that stands
out is the continuing trend towards
higher unemployment.
In the early postwar years it was
not unusual at all for unemploy-
ment to be less than 2 million work-
ers, or about 3 percent of the labor
force. , After the 1954 recession,
however, unemployment never
dropped to this level but remained
at about the 4 percent mark."
Today, two years after the
1958 recession drove joblessness
up to more than 5 million, or 7
percent of the labor force, it has
dropped only to 5 percent "and
shows every indication of remain-
ing at this figure."
The seriousness of the problem,
the article says, is pointed up by
three factors:
• Unemployment figures do not
take into account those working
part time instead of their normal
full time.
• High joblessness has kept at
home or in school many people who
ordinarily would be in the labor
force. Labor Dept. estimates made
some years ago projected for 1960
labor force about 500,000 less
than it actually is.
• The average duration of un-
employment has increased sharply
in recent years.
UNITED WE STAND, the Machinists and Auto Workers proclaim
in a sign on IAM headquarters opposite the strike-bound East
Hartford, Conn., plant of Pratt & Whitney Engine, a division of
United Aircraft Corp. The men in the picture axe waiting to take
a turn on the picket line.
Bargaining Continues
In Aircraft Walkouts
Negotiations continued on new contracts for 41,000 Machinists
and Auto Workers as pickets kept to their lines before Lockheed
and United Aircraft plants in California, Connecticut, Florida and
Honolulu.
IAM negotiators said an expected "package" offer to end a strike
of 10,500 Lockheed workers in^
California and the Philippines had
not materialized, Lodge 727 m
Burbank, Calif., scheduled a report
meeting for members July 9
IAM reported that strike action
could materialize at other plants
where negotiations have produced
no settlement — Lockheed Aircraft
Service; Rohr Aircraft Service in
Chula Vista and Riverside, Calif.,
and Aerojet General in Azusa and
Sacramento, Calif.
Several issues also delayed a
settlement of the United Aircraft
strike at seven Connecticut loca-
tions and one in West Palm
Beach, Fla. Negotiators for IAM
and UAW have been meeting
separately with management in
Hartford, Conn., on new con-
tracts for 30,500 workers.
Wages are not a major issue in
the United Aircraft strike. The
IAM and UAW, united for the
first time in a mutual aid pact, are
fighting for some form of union
security instead of the old open
shop arrangement, seniority pro-
visions, effective grievance proce-
dure, arbitration of all unsettled
grievances, the right of a worker
to see his steward when he has a
grievance, and the right of the
steward to investigate grievances.
All the unresolved issues have
been standard features of other
shop contracts for a dozen years
and more, the unions say.
United Aircraft produces jet en-
gines at the Pratt & Whitney plant
in East Hartford, where 16,000
workers have an IAM contract;
propellers, starters, air condition-
ers and other jet equipment at
Hamilton Standard plants with
4,500 IAM members at Windsor
Locks and Broad Brook, Conn.
IAM also is on strike at the Pratt
& Whitney foundry and warehouse
at Manchester, Conn., and a re-
search and development plant em-
ploying 1,400 in West Palm Beach.
Two UAW locals have been on
strike since early June at a Pratt
& Whitney feeder plant employing
4,200 in North Haven, Conn., and
Sikorsky Aircraft Div. plants mak-
ing helicopters at Bridgeport and
Stratford, Conn.
Insurance
Union Wins
1-Day Strike
Contract improvements benefiting
6,000 agents were gained by the
Insurance Workers after a one-day
strike against the John Hancock
Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Bos-
ton, Mass.
The union declared a walkout
when the contract expiration date
was reached. It was the first IWIU
strike against John Hancock since
contract relations began in 1951.
A federal mediator brought the
negotiators together again, and
agreement on a two-year contract
was reached within 24 hours.
Covers 32 States
IWIU said the new pact, cover-
ing agents in district offices in 32
states, contains these improve-
ments:
• Larger security benefits, in-
cluding gains in provisions for con-
tingent annuity options, surgical
and major medical coverage for re-
tiring agents, and in other features
of the medical-surgical plan.
• Refund of pension contribu-
tions made in former years. The
union said some 4,000 agents will
get sums ranging from $100 to
$2,000 with no reduction in bene-
fits. It quoted management as say-
ing this would total $2.7 million
plus about $800,000 in tax replace-
ment cost.
• Streamlined arbitration pro-
visions, and other improvements in
working conditions.
• Commission increase for first
year debits; increase from $47.50
to $50 in minimum combined col-
lection commissions; vacation pay
and special allowance increased by
$1.
• Management will enforce a
union shop provision in all districts
where such a provision for pay-
ment of union dues or fees is per-
mitted.
The union negotiating commit-
tee of 15 members was headed by
Vice Pres. William S. MacDer-
mott, Boston, with the assistance
of Pres. George L. Russ, Gen.
Counsel Irving Abramson and
Maurice Holsberg, assistant to the
president.
Operating Rail Unions
Ask Work Rules Study
i95i im
Seurtt: U. S. Deperlment of lalar
»S4 . 1955 1?56 195/ \m 1959 I960
SfASONAUY ADJUSTED UNEMPLOYMENT AS A PERCENT OF THE CIVILIAN LABOR mxtt
Chicago — Four operating rail un-
ions have proposed that the complex
work rules dispute be submitted to
a special study commission which
would include representatives of
the unions, management and the
public.
The proposal was made here by
top officers of the Locomotive- Fire-
men, Railroad Trainmen, Locomo-
tive Engineers and Railway Con-
ductors at the opening of national
negotiations on railroad demands
for drastic changes in the work
rules and long-standing contract
protections. The four brotherhoods
represent nearly 250,000 railroad
employes.
In a joint letter to management
negotiators, the union chiefs de-
clared the rules demands would
modify or eliminate "virtually
every rule affecting compensa-
tion and working conditions."
They said the ordinary proce-
dures of the Railway Labor Act
"are not suited" to such a "com-
prehensive review."
The union negotiators said the
proposed study commission should
be authorized to consider both the
changes proposed by the railroads
"and such other proposals as either
party may desire to submit."
On previous occasions, the oper-
ating unions have pointed out that
the work rules issue is a two-sided
dispute. Train crews, they have
emphasized, don't receive away-
from-home expenses, differentials
for night, Sunday and holiday
work, and other benefits standard
in most industries.
For more than a year pre-
ceding the current negotiations,
the railroads carried out a wide-
spread propaganda campaign
seeking to pin the so-called
"featherbedding" label on the op-
erating crafts. The unions, in
turn, have accused management
of trying to destroy job and safety
protections won in half-a-century
of collective bargaining.
In proposing creation of a tripar-
tite study commission, the unions
suggested that the three public
members be chosen from among the
following well-known labor rela-
tions experts: Cyrus S. Ching, David
L. Cole, Nathan P. Feinsinger,
Whitley P. McCoy, George W.
Taylor and W. Willard Wirtz.
A fifth operating union, the
Switchmen, are not participating
in the work rules negotiations at
this stage because a wage dispute
has not yet been settled. The union
is awaiting the report of a Presi-
dential Emergency Board on the
union's pay demands.
Meanwhile non - operating rail
unions, not directly affected by the
work rules issue, have resumed
negotiations on wage and fringe
benefits. The talks were scheduled
in the wake of a Presidential Emer-
gency Board recommendation
which the unions have described as
"disappointing."
Rising
Unemployment
Rate
1951-60
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
PRESENTATION OF the George Washington honor medal of the Freedoms Foundation to the
Treasury Dept.'s Savings Bond Div. for its AFL-CIO-sponsored promotion film, "24 Hours in Ty
rantland," is shown above. Left to right are William H. Neal, national director of the division; Rob-
ert Young, movie and TV star who led the cast; AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler; and Dr.
Kenneth Wells, Freedoms Foundation president
Freedoms Foundation Awards Medal
To AFL-CIO-Backed U.S. Bond Film
The George Washington honor medal of the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pa., has been
presented to the Savings Bond. Div. of the Treasury Dept. for the AFL-CIO-donated film, "24 Hours
in Tyrantland," and installed in the department's exhibit room.
The medal was accepted for the bond division by its national director, William H. Neal, from Dr.
Kenneth Wells, president of the foundation. Present were AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler
and Robert Young, motion picture 1 ^
and television star who headed the
cast of his TV serial, "Life With
Father," in making the film.
Made in 1959 for the Treas-
ury's savings bond drive, the
film was sponsored by the AFL-
CIO, which met the costs of
production as a patriotic gesture,
and was made by an all-union
cast — members of which gave up
a week of their vacation to make
it.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
appears at the end urging the pur-
chase of savings bonds not only as
a good investment, but as a way to
help supply the United States with
the "peace power" it needs.
Jury Enthusiastic
Wells said the jury which chose
the film as a medal winner was
highly enthusiastic about it and
called it one of the greatest patri-
otic pictures they had ever seen.
Neal was high in his praise of
the AFL-CIO in his acceptance
speech — not only for the film, but
for its continued support of sav-
ings bond drives over the years.
"The picture has been widely
shown in payroll savings cam-
paigns and before various com-
munity audiences," Neal said.
"Prints, on loan from our state
offices, are in great demand. We
consider this one of the most
effective and inspiring films of
all that have been donated to
the savings bond program in the
past 19 years."
Schnitzler said that organized
labor regards savings bonds as an
opportunity for average citizens "to
own part of their country." The
AFL-CIO is "pleased and hon-
ored," he added, to have the op-
portunity to aid in their sale.
The picture tells the story of
Young, as "Father," arriving home
full of enthusiasm at being named
head of a bond sales drive in his
community and finding his an-
nouncement being greeted with in-
difference by his family, played by
Jane Wyatt, Elinor Donahue, Billy
Gray and Lauren Chapin.
He makes a deal with them.
For 24 hours they are to live as
they would in one of the world's
tyrannies, with himself as tyrant.
If they don't break under his
grim rule, he'll give each of them
a bond. If they do, they'll help
in the drive.
During the 24 hours under
Young's "dictatorship," the rest of
the family comes to a realization
and understanding of the freedom
they had been taking for granted,
and in the end voluntarily join with
"Father" in promoting the bond
sales campaign.
Union Wins Safeguard
Against Foreign Plant
Roanoke, Va. — A strike of 1,200 Virginia garment workers
against Kenrose Mfg. Co. has ended in an agreement setting up
a supplemental insurance fund out of which workers at four plants
will be paid if their earnings drop because of the operations of a
new garment plant in Cork, Ireland.
Wages in the Irish plant ranged
from 25 to 50 cents an hour. The
average wage in the Virginia plants
is $1.50, the union said.
Pres. David Dubinsky of the
Ladies Garment Workers and
Vice Pres. Arthur Rosenstein of
Sharon CofC Hails Labor
As Leader in Community
Sharon, Pa. — The Sharon Chamber of Commerce has
presented a special plaque to the Mercer County Central La-
bor Council honoring organized labor for its contribution to
community welfare.
Nearly 500 guests at the CofC annual dinner heard cham-
ber Pres. Burton J. Moss salute labor for the "terrific" job it
did in building the Mercer County Crippled Children's Clinic
with volunteer labor, and for its financial backing of the United
Fund.
Organized labor, Moss said, "has been in the forefront of
every movement for civic betterment" in the Shenango Valley.
The plaque expressed appreciation for what labor has done
in "making the valley a finer place in which to live."
The plaque was received on behalf of the central labor
body by William Nicholson, assistant director of Steelwork-
ers' Dist. 21 and a vice president of the United Fund.
the company have agreed that,
for each dozen dresses made by
the firm in the Irish plant and
sold in the United States, the
company will pay 30 cents into
a jointly administered fund, up
to a top of $30,000 a year.
Workers will be paid for any
wage losses due to the Irish x>pera-
tion under a formula to be put
into writing soon.
Dubinsky said the agreement sets
a precedent which will protect U. S.
employes of companies with over-
seas branches. Rosenstein said the
company never intended that its
"affiliation with any foreign oper-
ation'' would or could reduce the
amount of work in Virginia, but
agreed to "comply with the union
demand because of economic con-
ditions."
Workers at the plants in Roa-
noke, Radford and Buchanan, Va.,
demanded a written agreement cov-
ering the Irish plant. The union
asked for maximum employer pay-
ments of $100,000 a year, and the
company first offered $2,000. The
strike-ending agreement was
reached at ILG offices in New York
City.
Michigan Professor Warns :
Another Recession
Appears in Making
Another recession "definitely appears to be in the making," one
of the nation's leading employment specialists has warned.
The recession shaping up is likely to leave the nation with 6 or 7
percent jobless, compared to the 5 percent to which "we appear to
accommodate ourselves" in the wake of the 1958 downturn, Prof.
William Haber of the University of ^
Michigan told a convention of
employment security personnel at
Colorado Springs, Colo.
The rate of joblessness ranged
around 3 percent during 1952 and
1953.
Haber, a senior member of the
Federal Advisory Council on Em-
ployment Security, strongly urged
a presidential commission to re-
evaluate the 25-year old unemploy-
ment compensation system.
He said the reappraisal should
take place now and "not when
we are in the midst of the next
recession and have no choice but
emergency and temporary meas-
ures.'*
Haber's comments coincided
with two other storm warnings:
• A 73-page academic study of
'The Impact of Unemployment in
the 1958 Recession,** released with-
out comment by the Senate Special
Committee on Unemployment
Problems, pointed out the jobless
pay system could be a "much more
powerful stabilizer in recessions
than it was in 1958." Haber co-
authored the study with Prof. Wil-
bur J. Cohen and Eva Mueller,
colleagues at Michigan.
• The university's quarterly
survey on buying attitudes showed
"a marked decline in consumer
optimism." Of 1,400 adults inter-
viewed, 60 percent believed an-
other slump of the 1958 scale is
possible and 16 percent believe it
may already have begun.
The study of the impact of un-
employment expressed the urgent
need of a research program so
steps can be taken "to deal with
what appears to be the persistence
of relatively long-term, and in
many areas, 'hard core' unemploy-
ment."
The Cohen-Haber-Mueller study
disclosed that jobless pay fell short
of its task, observing that:
"In view of our findings that
about four out of every 10 of the
unemployed heads of families
did not receive any unemploy-
ment insurance benefits • . .
and that two out of 10 did not
receive benefits all of the time,
unemployment benefits replaced
only a small fraction of the wage
loss incurred by unemployed per-
sons in the recession. . . .
"And during the 1959 recession
funds available under the unem-
ployment insurance system were
utilized only to a limited ex-
tent. . . .**
FEPC Bill Passed By
Delaware Legislature
Dover, Del. — The Delaware Legislature has passed a labor-
backed Fair Employment Practices bill, the 17th state to enact an
enforceable ban on job discrimination.
The bill, awaiting the expected signature of Gov. J. Caleb Boggs
(R), was hailed by State AFL-CIO leaders as the culmination of a
20-year drive to dislodge anti-dis-^;
crimination measures from com-
mittee pigeonholes.
Success was achieved, State
AFL-CIO Legislative Chairman
James J. LaPenta, Jr., reported
through amendments made on the
House floor to a Senate-passed bill
banning job discrimination because
of age.
On the showdown vote in the
House, bars on discrimination
because of race, color, creed and
national origin were added by a
24-to-3 vote. In the Senate,
after attempts to sidetrack the
bill failed, the House amend-
ments were accepted by an 11-
to-1 vote. The action came at
2 a. m., shortly before the leg-
islature recessed until August.
The bill puts enforcement of the
law under the State Labor Com-
mission. The State AFL-CIO said
it will wage an active drive for ap-
propriations to finance adequate
enforcement.
Delaware is the only state which
has acted on FEPC legislation dur-
ing 1960, an "off-year" for most
state legislatures. Last year, Cali-
fornia and Ohio enacted state
FEPC laws. Similar laws are also
on the statute books in New York,
New Jersey, Michigan^ Washing-
ton, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,
Harry Boyer to Head
State Welfare BoartI
Harrisburg, Pa. — Co-Pres. Harry
Boyer of the Pennsylvania AFL-
CIO, last president of the former
Pennsylvania Industrial Union
Council, has been elected chairman
of the new State Board of Public
Welfare.
The board was created by the
last legislature as a result of the
merger of the former Departments
of Public Assistance and Welfare.
Colorado, Connecticut, New Mex-
ico, Rhode Island, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Alaska and Oregon.
In other action by the Dela-
ware Legislature before recess,
two key bills in the AFL-CIO-
endorsed consumer protection
program were passed and sent
to the governor.
Both deal with regulation of in-
stallment sales contracts, one
specifically covering auto sales fi-
nancing and the second setting
forth protections for purchasers of
other products.
William L. Cowley,
AWIU Officer, Dies
St. Louis, Mo. — William L. Cow-
ley, 59, international secretary-
treasurer of the Aluminum Work-
ers since 1953, died recently after
an illness of 16 months.
Cowley joined Federal Labor
Union 18730 when it was formed
in 1933 at his plant of the Alumi-
num Co. of America, and was as-
signed by the former American
Federation of Labor as an organ-
izer on a leave of absence basis in
1939, and on the full-time staff in
1946.
He helped form the Internation-
al Council of Aluminum Workers
and was elected its secretary-treas-
urer in 1946. When the Aluminum
Workers* union was formed in
1953, he was elected unanimously
as secretary-treasurer, and served
until his final illness.
Condolences of the labor move-
ment were expressed by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Sec.-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler in a
message characterizing the AWIU
officer as a "staunch trade unionist
who served his fellow unionists
with distinction and dedication/'
WASHINGTON, 0. C, SATURDAY, JULY % I960
Page Fit*
Local Level Action Urged:
ANG Convention Approves
Continued Merger Parleys
Chicago, BL — The Newspaper Guild has given its officers a green light to continue merger discus
sions with leaders of other unions.
The Guild's 27th annual convention here, in adopting the report of its organizing committee, di-
rected the officers to continue their exploration of "ways and means of achieving a sound and mutu-
ally acceptable basis for unity among the unions in the printing, publishing and related industries"
and to "make every effort to re-^
port to the 1961 convention with a
specific plan."
The convention also called on
locals to "continue to work for
union solidarity at the local level
and participate to the fullest pos-
sible extent in newspaper union
councils, allied printing trades
councils and city and state central
bodies."
The report was adopted with-
out dissent, although reserva-
tions had been expressed by a
few delegates in committee dis-
cussions and by two convention
speakers.
Pres. Wilfrid T. Connell of the
Photo Engravers, president of the
board of governors of the Allied
Printing Trades Association, said
that despite a strong feeling for
unity among all workers in the in-
dustry, "there are more obstacles
than ever as a result of the rapid
mechanization which has brought
overlapping of craft work."
Nevertheless, Connell declared:
"All of us in the printing trades
are interested in some form of con-
certed action and unity, and we
realize that the Guild is a group
that should be with us."
Sampson a Speaker
James H. Sampson, president of
the Stereorypers & Electrotypers,
stressed thaj merger or unity must
be of th£ kind that will benefit all
participating organizations.
"We are for a unified move-
ment," he declared, "but for a type
we go into with our eyes open, one
that will benefit every member."
In earlier speeches, ANG Ex-
ecutive Vice Pres. William J. Far-
son and Typographical Union Pres.
Elmer Brown both acknowledged
that fears and obstacles do exist
but were confident they could be
resolved satisfactorily.
Unions Spur Campaign
For 'Safe' Labor Day
Organized labor and the National Safety Council have embarked
on their second annual campaign to make Labor Day — labor's own
holiday — a day of safety instead of tragedy.
The aim is to cut to the irreducible minimum the toll of death
and injuries that usually marks the long weekend holiday at the
"official" close of summer. Last^
year, traffic accidents took 438
lives, boating mishaps and drown-
ings 91 lives, and miscellaneous
causes 84 lives.
"Labor's national holiday to
honor the workers of America,"
observed AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, "will be desecrated by the
deaths of hundreds of men, worn
en and children and the injury of
thousands of persons over the La-
bor Day weekend, based on past
experience."
He urged all AFL-CIO affili-
ates and their members to par-
ticipate in the campaign for safe-
ty over the holiday weekend and
to improve a death and accident
record which he described as a
"national disgrace."
The labor steering committee
working with the National Safety
Council in pushing the campaign
is headed by Pres. James A. Brown-
low of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades
Dept.
Named by Walsh
Brownlow was named to the post
by AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Richard
F. Walsh, chairman of the Com-
mittee on Safety & Occupational
Health.
Other members are Vice Pres.
P. L. Siemiller of the Machinists;
George T. Brown, assistant to the
AFL-CIO president; Mrs. Elda
Luebbert, secretary-treasurer of the
AFL-CIO Auxiliaries; Pres. Rich-
ard C. Howard of the Intl. Labor
Hospital Board Picks
Walsh as Chairman
Saranac Lake, N. Y. — Richard
F. Walsh, president of the Theat-
rical Stage Employes and an AFL-
CIO vice president, has been elect-
ed chairman of -the board of di-
rectors of the Will Rogers Memo-
rial Hospital and Research Labora-
tories here-
The hospital, treating virtually
all types of chest diseases, is spon-
sored by the entertainment indus-
try. Its services are rendered free
to all persons connected with the
industry and to all members of
their families.
Press Association; Gordon H. Cole,
editor of the Machinist; Harry W.
Flannery, AFL-CIO radio coordi-
nator; Charles Ferguson, Mine
Workers safety director; and Saul
Miller, AFL-CIO director of pub-
lications.
Last year some 3,500 union
organizations participated in the
first Labor Day safety campaign.
It is expected that twice that num-
ber will take part this year.
The steering committee plans to
promote the drive through talks at
union meetings, safety films, news
stories, radio announcements and
a revival of Labor Day parades.
Free packets of campaign ma-
terials are available to labor or-
ganizations by writing the Labor
Div., National Safety Council,
425 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago
11, m.
Included are a safety poster, sug-
gestions for campaign activities,
fact sheets on traffic and water
safety, and a suggestion that the
clergy call attention to the signifi-
cance of Labor Day in their Labor
Sunday sermons and also encour-
age safety over the holiday.
'The phrase 'one big union/
said Farson, "is a symbol of unity,
not a blueprint."
The eight-month-old Portland,
Or eg., newspaper strike was an-
other major topic at the conven-
tion. The delegates urged that
the strike against the Portland
Oregon ian and the Oregon Jour-
nal, which originated Nov. 10
with a walkout by the Stereo-
typers, be labelled a national
emergency for all unions and
that participation and support of
the entire labor movement be
enlisted in an intensified pro-
gram to win the dispute.
After vigorous debate in the col-
lective bargaining committee, how
ever, the convention rejected a pro-
posal that ANG contribute $50,000
toward establishing the thrice-
weekly Portland Reporter — interim
strike paper published by the Port-
land newspaper unions — as a com-
mercial daily in competition with
the Oregonian and the Journal.
In other areas, the convention:
• Rejected a proposed increase
of 10 cents in per capita payments,
but increased from $1 to $3 the
international share of initiation
fees for new members covered by
contract and raised the convention
registration fee from $15 to $25 to
help meet a budget of $464,570
for 1960-61.
• Chose Robert Hickey of San
Jose, Calif., and William Millis of
San Francisco as candidates for
the vacant Reg. IV vice presidency,
and Jack Dobson of Toronto and
Robert Zonka of Chicago as can-
didates for a vice president at large
vacancy. Referendum elections will
be held in September.
• Presented the annual $500
Wilbur E. Bade Memorial Award
for outstanding local leadership to
Dorothy Ann Benjamin of Greens-
boro, N. C.
• Condemned the apartheid
policy of the government of the
Union of South Africa and voted
support of the boycott of South
African goods called by the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions.
• Called on locals and district
councils to intensify their political
action programs "in this decisive
year" and to promote the enact-
ment of anti-strikebreaking legisla-
tion.
• Designated Buffalo, N. Y., as
the 1962 convention city. Van-
couver, B. C, was chosen last year
as the site of the 1961 meeting.
ILGWU Saluted on
Its 60th Anniversary
The sixtieth birthday of the Ladies' Garment Workers was marked
by display ads in daily newspapers, and an editorial salute from
the New York Times.
The Times said the ILGWU "as distinctive a New York land-
mark as the Empire State Building . . . has brought economic uplift
to its members and stability to its ^
industry, the largest and . . . most
fiercely competitive in the city."
The ILGWU said, in almost-full-
page ads: "On this day, 60 years
ago, the American Federation of
Labor issued a charter of affiliation
to the 11 workers who, only 20
days earlier, founded the union.
"In the years since then the
ILGWU has fought on picket line
and at bargaining table to wipe
out the sweatshop, to end child
labor, to shorten dawn-to-dusk
workdays, to substitute the rule
of reason for the test of force in
SHOWER OF MONEY is counted at Meat Cutters convention in
Atlantic City, N. J., after delegates, in voluntary contributions,
raised more than $2,000 for Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.),
a convention speaker, to help defray debts Humphrey incurred in
unsuccessful primary campaign for presidency. Meat Cutters Vice
Pres. Abe Feinglass (left) helps tally the contributions.
Cut Hours, Save Jobs,
Meat Cutters Demand
Atlantic City, N. J. — Faced with a mounting loss of jobs and
displacement of members under the impact of automation, the Meat
Cutters' 20th general convention here called on the entire union
movement to mount a "massive effort" for a shorter workweek.
Winding up their week-long ses-^
sion at Convention Hall, the dele-
the settlement of industrial dis-
putes, to bring democracy into
the shop ... to end the despera-
tion of illness and the helpless-
ness of old age.
"The garment industry has
moved from an environment of
chaos and jungle combat into one
of industrial stability and com-
munity responsibility."
The union expressed its apprecia-
tion to its pioneers, its members,
and industry employers as ILGWU
entered its seventh decade of serv-
ice.
gates put their stamp of approval
on the shorter workweek resolution
after hearing a report that the in
dustry's "recently speeded pace
of mechanization" had brought
joblessness to tens of thousands of
the union's members.
Despite the sharp inroads
made by technological changes,
the Meat Cutters' membership
rose by more than 50,000 since
the union's last general conven-
tion four years ago, reaching a
current level of 350,000, accord-
ing to Pres. Thomas J. Lloyd.
The membership rise, he said,
resulted from victories in 146
National Labor Relations Board
elections since 1956.
The committee on mechanization
and automation, headed by Vice
Pres. Henry Freise, said that in the
packing industry, 'less than 160,000
production workers are now re-
quired to produce the same amount
of red meat which over 190,000
produced in 1956."
In the canning industry and retail
food markets, 85 workers now do
the same volume of work which re-
quired 100 workers four years ago,
the report went on, while in the
leather industry automation com-
bined with declining sales have dis-
placed more than 10,000 of the
40,000 production workers em-
ployed in 1956.
"Such trends duplicated in in-
dustry after industry," the re-
port warned, "carry within them-
selves seeds of major economic
dislocation for the entire nation.
''Out of high profit margins
which last year brought American
corporations more than $50 bil-
lion of net income before taxes,
additional billions of dollars have
been appropriated to intensify in-
dustry's drive for even speedier
mechanization.
"Month by month the hourly out-
p u t of the average American
worker is being driven up, while
his power to buy back goods pro-
duced in American factories re-
mains constant or suffers a slight
decline.
"Only labor's total program for
the protection of workers' economic
status has prevented a slide back
into a depression similar to that
which came when dramatically ris-
ing productivity and stagnant, open-
shop wage levels brought the major
economic crisis of 1929."
The resolution, adopted by a
unanimous vote of the 1,400 dele-
gates representing 425 local unions
in the U. S. and Canada, called on
the entire trade union movement
to unite in a campaign for the
shorter workweek as a step toward
offsetting "technological unemploy-
ment." The delegates urged an all-
out drive in the 87th Congress to
win adoption of the shorter work-
week principle without loss of
takehome pay.
Earlier, the convention had heard
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey CD-
Minn.) call for a resurgence of the
"zeal that was once in the labor
movement" in order to elect an
Administration dedicated to "a bet-
ter deal for people."
Humphrey, who received a tu-
multuous reception, blistered the
Eisenhower Administration for its
"littleness in leadership."
Americans, he said, "have
been the victims of men of little
vision, little daring and little con-
cern for people" in an "era of
The convention unanimously
re-elected Lloyd to the presi-
dency which he has held since
the death of the late Earl W.
Jimerson in 1957, and unani-
mously renamed Patrick J. Gor-
man as secretary-treasurer. Gor-
man, a veteran of 40 years as an
international officer of the Meat
Cutters, has been its secretary-
treasurer since 1941.
Seventeen incumbent vice pres-
idents were re-elected without op-
position. Chosen to fill existing
vacancies by the delegates were
Vice Presidents Joseph Cohn, Mark
H. Allen, Russell E. Dresser and
Sam Talarico.
In other actions, the delegates:
• Approved extensive changes
in the union's constitution.
• Assailed the Administration
for using its "budget mania" as a
"gimmick" to oppose needed social
legislation.
• Sharply denounced the gov-
ernment of the Union of South
Africa for its "segregationist policy
of 'apartheid.' "
• Condemned the Arab nations
for having demonstrated "a com- *
plete disregard for human dignity"
in waging "an anti-Jewish campaign
of total discrimination," and called
on the U. S. government "to cease
complying with the requests of these
governments that Jewish soldiers in
American uniforms be barred"
from their countries.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY % TOW
Government's Role Outlined by Meany
Democratic Leaders
Get Labor 9 s Blueprint
DEEPLY ENGROSSED in proceedings at the recent meeting of the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions' executive board in Brussels are these three members from two sides of the world.
Left to right they are Gen. Sec. J. J. Hernandez of the Philippines Trades Union Congress, AFL-
CIO Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
ICFTU Mobilizes Resources to Help
Build Free, Strong Unions in Africa
By Arnold Beichman
Brussels, Belgium — The world's free labor movement, the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade. Unions,
is streamlining itself for achieving as swiftly as possible its major goals within the next few years.
Primarily, the ICFTU will direct its resources to help organize strong unions in the newly-inde-
pendent countries of Africa. Where such unions already exist in Africa, as well as Asia and Latin
America, the ICFTU will utilize these resources to reinvigorate them so that they will be able not
only to stand up against eifriployers^
and unfriendly governments but
also against the dangers of Com-
munist subversion and blandish-
ments.
For the real and immediate
job ahead in Africa is to beat the
Communists to the punch. Both
The Soviet Union and Commu-
nist China are already moving
into Africa, pinpointing their
ubiquitous target — unorganized,
underpaid, hungry workers*
Under the leadership of Omer
Becu of Belgium, the newly-elected
secretary general of the ICFTU
w ho takes office Aug. 1, a team of
four assistant general secretaries
will be designated to carry out
crucial assignments.
$10 Million Goal
To finance this crusade, the
stronger labor organizations in the
ICFTU have pledged, by resolution,
to try to raise $10 million between
1961 and 1963 for the Intl. Soli-
darity Fund for the specific purpose
of building union strength in less
developed countries.
Becu, who is leaving his post as
general secretary of the Interna-
tional Transportworkers Federation,
is expected to confer early in Sep-
tember with the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Intl. Affairs in regard to
the future policies of the ICFTU.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and
Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther partic-
Los Angeles to Hold
Union Label Show
Los Angeles — Some lucky visitor
to the "New Horizons Show," an-
nual exhibit of union-made prod-
ucts and services sponsored by the
Los Angeles County Union Label
Council, will come away with a
17-foot Islander deluxe fiberglass
boat. The boat, including a 40-
horsepower Mercury motor and
trailer, will be the grand prize at
the Oct. 12-18 show, to be held at
the Shrine Exposition Hall,
ipated in the recent sessions of the
ICFTU executive board in Brussels.
J. H. Oldenbroek of The Nether-
lands, who resigned after having
served as secretary general of the
ICFTU from its inception in De-
cember 1949, was praised by the
Executive Board for guiding "the
organization through its formative
stage."
'Grateful Thanks*
"He has earned the respect and
grateful thanks," the resolution de-
clared, "of his wide circle of
friends and colleagues throughout
the world for his unceasing efforts
to further the purposes of the ICF-
TU which are identicalNvith his own
ideals and convictions. "
Among major decisions at the
ICFTU session here were:
• A warning against admitting
Franco Spain to the North Atlan-
tic Treaty Organization (NATO).
If Spain is admitted, the ICFTU
and -its affiliates "will sever their
relationships" with NATO and
other regional inter-governmental
organizations, whether military or
economic.
• Denunciation of the Cuban
government for its rapid drift in
the direction of communist totali-
tarianism. The ICFTU charged
that the Communist Party today
controls the Cuban Confederation
of Workers and that anti-Com-
munist labor leaders have been re-
moved.
• To consider a call to the
United Nations "to consider adopt-
ing economic sanctions against the
Union of South Africa" if there is
no change in that government's
racial policies in the near future.
• A sharp attack against the So-
viet Union for "torpedoing the
Geneva conference on disarmament
at precisely the moment when new
proposals were to be presented."
The statement appealed to the dem-
ocratic powers "to continue to show
their readiness to resume negoti-
ations, either direct or sponsored
by the United Nations" for disarm-
ament
• Asked member governments
of the Organization of American
States to break off diplomatic re-
lations with the Dominican Re-
public and to consider "imposing
effective economic sanctions"
against the Trujillo regime.
• To send trade union missions
to Indonesia, Japan, Turkey and
the French-speaking part of Africa.
The Turkish Trade Union Feder-
ation, Turk-Is, with about 800,000
members, has been affiliated to the
ICFTU pending completion of
formalities.
• Other new organizations ad-
mitted include those from Liberia,
St. Vincent, Bahamas and Maur-
itius. The ICFTU now has 135
affiliates from 102 countries com-
prising a total membership of 56.5
million workers.
(Continued from Page 1)
any aggressor," Meany told the
committee.
"It must be flexible enough to
wage limited as well as total war.
No one in his right mind would
put out a 'grassfire' war with an
atomic bomb but by the same
reasoning no one can allow the
grass-fire war to spread for lack
of adequate fire-fighting equip-
ment, until it becomes a total
world conflagration.**
Every other question is "far less
important than what we do, here
in our own country, to demonstrate
the superiority of freedom as a way
of life," he said.
In a series of charts prepared for
presentation, the AFL-CIO presi-
dent cited to the platform commit-
tee detailed evidence of economic
lag4n the past seven years:
• The civilian labor force "grew
by 5.4 million but the number of
new jobs grew by only 3.4 million."
• The number of full-time jobs
"has actually gone down in the
last three years and is only 300,000
greater than seven years ago,"
while the number of part-time jobs
has gone up by 3.2 million.
• There are "actually, 2 mil-
lion less jobs in manufacturing,
mining and the railroad industry
than in 1953, in the areas where
most jobs are normally found."
• The total number of man-
hours worked in private employ-
ment is less today than it was in
1953. The total number of private,
full-time jobs has likewise gone
down.
• There is "a constantly widen-
ing gap between our actual pro-
duction and our capacity to pro-
duce. A large part of our existing
plant is standing idle."
• In the next 10 years, "26 mil-
lion young workers will enter the
labor force and we shall have to
create an average of 1.35 million
civilian jobs a year." This contrasts
with an average of "less than 800,-
000" for the past 10 years.
"We are not going to do it with
a rate of economic growth of
only 2.5 percent a year, the rate
we have experienced in the last
seven years," Meany warned*
"That is the road to stagnation,
not to growth."
In a call for federal action to
create an economic policy of
growth, Meany ridiculed the "as-
sumptibn" of "professional* de-
Reuther Sees Danger
In Low- Wage Imports
Brussels, Belgium — Walter P. Reuther, president of the Auto
Workers, has warned trade union affiliates of the ICFTU that "pres-
sure is building up in America which will lead to economic isola-
tionism and be a blow to the free world."
His statement was made at the semi-annual session of the ICFTU
Executive Board as it took up the^
problem of imports into the U.S. of
competing products manufactured
by low-wage workers overseas.
Reuther pointed out that the
AFL-CIO is today committed to
freer international trade. But, he
said, "we must understand that
goodwill and noble sentiments are
an inadequate answer to a worker
losing his job because another work-
er is making the same product with
the same tools but getting half the
wage of the American worker."
"If we don't solve this prob-
lem," he said, "it will not be
possible to tell the American
worker much longer you can't
protect yourself. Economic iso-
lationism may become necessary
as a matter of survival and that
would fragmentize the free
world's economy.
The issue of low-wage foreign
imports is probably the most burn-
ing economic question in the
ICFTU since among its 135 affili-
ates are many labor organizations
whose members live by foreign
trade. In addition, there are labor
unions in underdeveloped countries
whose officials resist pressing for
wage increases beyond a certain
point lest they jeopardize national
economic planning for industrializa-
tion.
"We know that as a practical
matter," said Reuther, "we can't
equalize wages in all areas of
the world but we can minimize
the differential so that we can
live with them. We don't want
to see a situation where today
there isn't a single American
company making sewing-
machines."
fenders of free enterprise" that
federal action in the public inter-
est "is something new and alien."
More often than not, he said in
citing the historical record, the
great surges*' in our economy
have been linked with government
—the two great wars, the recovery
from the depression and so on."
"One way or another, the climate
— the economic climate — had to be
favorable. It seems clear to us
that in the years ahead the govern-
ment must create such a climate/'
he went on.
"The great myth of this decade
is that public investment is in-
herently wasteful, while private
investment is good. I say this is
nonsense."
"We have a lot of unfinished
business here in America," the
AFL-CIO president declared, and
detailed the shortages in schools, in
low - income and middle - income
housing, in hospitals, medical and
dental schools, in distribution of
medical facilities and in recreational
facilities.
"The strength of the democratic
idea rests upon the kind of life our
people can enjoy — on a good edu-
cation, on equality of opportunity,
on a decent place to live, on a rea-
sonable measure of personal se-
curity in youth or age," he said.
A free trade-union movement
"flourishes best in a- free-enterprise
society," Meany declared, but "how
fast could private enterprise have
expanded if the federal government
had not helped build our canals,
turnpikes and railroads? What
about the help the federal govern-
ment extends today to airlines and
the merchant marine?"
"We publicly finance" highways
and harbors, airports, water supply
and sewage disposal, schools, health
agencies and research, and without
these services "private enterprise
could not function," he went on.
Anticipating "the question that
is always raised" about govern-
ment social and economic activi-
ties, Meany said that "a price tag
would be meaningless in the con-
text of this presentation."
The AFL-CIO program would
"double the rate of economic
growth. It would entail a bigger
federal budget; but it would be a
prosperity budget, not an austerity
budget."
Program for Growth
Labor's proposals would "cause a
phenomenal growth in the gross
national product, and the tax rev-
enues would jump accordingly," he
pointed out.
If we "do not follow this course,*
he said, the alternate cost will be
"painful" and "one which we can-
not afford to pay."
The Employment Act of 1946,
he reminded the platform com-
mittee, clearly declares the fed-
eral government's responsibility
"to promote maximum produc-
tion and employment The in-
tentions have not been carried
out for seven years. They must
be carried out in the years
ahead."
The Marxists say, Meany con-
cluded, that "free societies can sur-
vive only when there is war or the
threat of war. Yet we urge a
program in the area of foreign
affairs which we hope will lead to
a relaxation of tensions, a reduc-
tion in armaments and the eventual
elimination" of the threat of war.
Labor's domestic program, he
said, would show "that a free so-
ciety, in a peaceful world, could
and would prevail.
"We believe in the perfectibility
of our society; and we maintain that
this goal is essential to our security
today and to our future tomorrow.*
AFL-CIO NEVS, TTASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Page Sev*^
Labor Urges Action for Economic Growth
The following is excerpted from AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany's statement to be presented to the Democratic
Party Platform Committee:
WE ARE TODAY THE RICHEST, the most produc-
tive, the most bountiful land on earth. But for the first
time in our history we face a real challenge. All over the
world the question is raised: Has the American way of
life run its course? Can we keep pace? Will we, in due
course, be surpassed by the Soviets, who seem on the
face of things at least to be ahead of us in scientific
achievements?
Despite a general illusion of prosperity in this country,
a large part of our potential resources for growth — our
rising productivity and our growing labor force — none
of these have been translated into an increased output
of goods and services.. Instead they are being translated
into unemployment and part-time work.
All of us are well aware that unemployment has per-
sisted at a level of about 5 percent, in the face of record
figures for total employment, record figures for gross
national product, and all the rest.
We don't have the latest figures on unemployment.
They will not be released by the Dept. of Labor until some-
time next week.
But I want to make a flat prediction right here and
now :
These figures will show the largest May to June increase
in unemployment in the post-World War II period in
both the numbers of unemployed as well as the percent of
the labor force unemployed.
The total will be so near one million more unemployed
as to be frightening.
But let us go a step further. Let us take a look behind
the statistics as we get them in the summaries that are
published in the daily papers.
Look at what has happened to employment from 1953
to 1960 — using the average for the first five months, in
each case.
We find that the civilian labor force grew by 5.4 million;
but the number of new jobs grew by only 3.4 million.
You have a deficit of two million jobs right there.
BUT THAT'S ONLY A BEGINNING. We find that
the number of full-time jobs has actually gone down by
500,000 in the last three years, and is only 300,000 greater
than it was seven years ago. Meanwhile, the number of
part-time jobs, using the standard of 34 hours a week or
less, has gone up by 3.2 million over the same seven-year
period.
I wish I could say that this was a sign that the 30-hour
week was taking hold in this country, but I can't. In
reality, these represent people who are only partly em-
ployed; yet they are counted the same as fully employed
workers in the Dept. of Labor Statistics.
There are actually two million less jobs in manufacturing,
mining and the railroad industry than there were in 1953.
And there is only the same number of jobs in construction,
communications and utilities, such as the gas and electric
companies.
Mind you, we have had an increase of almost 5.5 mil-
lion people in the labor force over this period; but we
have had a loss of two million jobs in the areas where
most jobs are normally found.
YOU MAY WONDER WHY, in the face of these
figures, there has been any increase in total employment.
One reason is the expansion in the service trades and re-
lated areas. These areas, unfortunately, are notorious for
-low wages and a high proportion of part-time work. When
there is a transfer of employment opportunities from indus-
try to — say — retail or wholesale trade, there is also a drop
in average earnings, consumer buying-power and standard
of living.
Even allowing for the increase in the service trades,
there is a still more dramatic figure. The total number of
manhours worked in private employment of all kinds is
less today than it was in 1953. The total number of
private, full-time jobs has likewise gone down.
I ask you to think about these figures. The population
has gone up; the work-force has gone up; but the number
of full-time jobs in our private economy has gone down.
Obviously there has been an increase in non-private
employment — public employment — that has to some ex-
tend filled the gap. But as I pointed out earlier, it has not
filled the gap entirely. It has not kept us from having a
to-called "normal" unemployment rate of 5 percent — com-
pared to a rate of 2.7 percent seven years ago. That,
ladies and gentlemen, is an increase of nearly 100 percent
in what is called "normal" unemployment.
In the face of these conditions, we still hear it said
that the present great need in our country is to "encourage
new investment."
LABOR FORCE
EMPLOYMENT V UNEMPLOYMENT
MANUFACTURING CAPACITY U PRODUCTION
1953 -I960 »
1953 54 55 56
* Mtana \<no • too
ft* M«6Jttw llll ESTIMATE
58 59 I960
ffPfWt BSUHL NMfr V hffcUW Mil rv<SMi Ct
57
61
3.9
j MILLION
'UNEMPLOYED
1953*
1957*
* Mfffittt JAM.- MAT EACH YTAfl
SCWKt: VS- NTT. Of LAMB
I960*
I AGREE THAT NEW INVESTMENT— insofar as it
represents the continuing expansion of our productive
capacity — is essential. But I maintain that our greatest
need now is not new investment, but a new ability to con-
sume what we are now capable of producing. The need
for new investment would inevitably follow an increase in
consumer demand that taxed our present productive ability.
There is a constantly widening gap between our actual
production and our capacity to produce. A large part of
our existing plant capacity is standing idle.
I am not suggesting a return to the idea that we ought
to plow under every fourth steel mill, or anything of the
sort. Quite the contrary. I say we ought to have the
kind of economy that will strain our productive capacities
to the utmost.
The greatest incentive to new investment isn't tax re-
bates, or quick depreciation, or other special favors to
corporations. It's the certainty of more customers.
WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE? In the next 10 years,
26 million young workers will enter the American labor
force.
The net increase in job-seekers — after allowing for
withdrawals from the labor force, for whatever reason —
will be the highest in our history. By 1970, there will be
87 million Americans able and willing to work.
In these 10 years, then, we will have to create an
average of 1,350,000 civilian jobs each year. Over the
previous 10 years we have averaged less than 800,000.
How are we going to create these new jobs?
I am sure of one thing — we are not going to do it with
a rate of economice growth of only 2.5 percent a year, the
rate we have experience in the last seven years.
That is the road to stagnation, not growth.
I AM SURE YOU HAVE READ, as I have, all sorts of
comparisons between this growth rate and that of the Soviet
Union. I share the doubts of those who question the val-
idity of the Soviet statistics but these comparisons are
healthy at least to the extent that they emphasize the need
for reexamination of our own policies. It is up to us to
prove that a free society can always be a better and a more
productive society.
Twenty-three years ago it was fairly said that one-third
of our nation was "ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed." Today
the one-third has shrunk to one-fifth; but that is still one-
fifth too many.
This is not just a humanitarian appeal. Even if we could
ignore the tragic human costs of inadequate family in-
come, frustration and lost self-respect that unemployment
and underemployment bring — and they cannot be ignored
— this mammoth waste of manpower is costing the nation
billions of dollars in goods and services that we could be
creating and using, but are not. The welfare of that one-
fifth of the nation is a practical concern for us all.
LET US REMEMBER THAT we have not abolished
poverty in this country. We still have over seven million
families and single individuals whose total income is less
than $2,000 a year; and almost three million whose income
is less than $1,000. Those are shameful figures for America
in 1960.
I agree that it is proper to look at our country as a
whole; to keep in mind the well-fed, well-clothed and well-
housed majority, as well as the others. Certainly I am not
one of those who brushes aside our achievements and looks
only at our shortcomings.
But I repeat — as well as we have done, we must do
better. Above all, we can never accept poverty as an es-
tablished condition in America.
I would be the last to deny the contributions of private
enterprise to the development of America, or to depre-
cate its present and future role in our society. Certainly a
free trade union movement flourishes best in a free enter-
prise society. My quarrel with the professional defenders
of "free enterprise'' is with their assumption that federal
action, in the public interest, is something new and alien
to the American scene.
How fast could private enterprise have expanded if
the federal government had not helped to build our canals,
turnpikes and railroads? What about the help the federal
government extends today to airlines and the merchant
marine?
THE GREAT MYTH OF THIS DECADE is that pub-
lic investment is inherently wasteful, while private invest-
ment is good. I say this is nonsense.
We publicly finance our highways and harbors, our
water supply and our sewage disposal. We publicly finance
airports, river developments, postal services and many other
functions that are essential to private enterprise. We have
public education, public health agencies, public employ-
ment services, public libraries and public research. With-
out them, private enterprise could not function.
Let us remember that there has always been a stimulus
for great periods of expansion in our private economy.
Some of these were in themselves a part of that economy,
such as the mass development and expansion of the auto-
mobile industry in the Ninteen-Twenties. More often than
not, however, the great surges have been linked with gov-
ernment — the two great wars, the recovery from the depres-
sion, and so on.
ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, the climate— the economic
climate had to be favorable. It seems clear to us that -in
the years ahead the government must create such a climate,
not by further favors to business, but by policies that will
promote economic growth by meeting the people's needs.
Let me remind you that our nation is already committed
to this concept. It is proclaimed in the Employment Act
of 1946, which clearly declares that it is the responsibility
of the federal government, in cooperation with industry, ag-
riculture and labor, and with state and local governments,
to utilize all its resources to promote maximum production
and employment in the United States.
This act is still on the books. The machinery for imple-
menting it has been created. But the intentions of the act
have not been carried out in the last seven years. They
must be carried out in the years ahead.
Let me anticipate the question that is always raised in
connection with the social and economic activities of gov-
ernment: ' How much will it cost?''
That question has been pressed with special vigor in the
last eight years, in both the executive and legislative
branches of government.
Frankly, we have not attempted, in this presentation, to
put a price-tag on each of our recommendations. Let mc
explain our reasoning.
It is perfectly possible, of course, to estimate how many
dollars will be needed to catch up with our shortage of
schools, for instance; or to start a program for reviving
depressed areas, and all the rest.
We develop these estimates when we offer legislative pro-
posals to Congress. We are not afraid of the figures. We
are a practical organization; we have a budget of our own,
and we know that when money is spent, someone has to pay
the bill.
HOWEVER, A PRICE TAG, or a cost analysis, would
be meaningless in the context of this presentation. What
we are offering is not simply a legislative program, to be set
against the federal budget as it stands today. What we are
proposing is a program for economic growth.
We believe our program would double the rate of eco-
nomic growth in this country; that it would go far toward
th,e elimination of poverty; that it would raise the general
standard of living for all the people. And as I pointed out
a moment ago, this is aot only a humanitarian project.
Consider what this would mean in terms of federal rev-
enues. Yes, it would entail a bigger federal budget; but
it would be a prosperity budget, not an austerity budget.
We must ask ourselves, not just "What will it cost?" but
also "How much will it bring in?"
What we propose would cause a phenomenal growth in
the gross national product and certainly the tax revenues
— at the current tax levels — would jump accordingly. It
is true that these proposals would mean vastly increased fed-
eral expenditures in terms of dollars but, in terms of a per-
centage of the gross national product, the "cost" would be
below that of today. This, coupled with legislation plug-
ging up the most unfair of the present tax loopholes, would
put the federal budget in its best posture in our time.
FINALLY, THERE IS ANOTHER QUESTION which
I think has been implicit in our entire program: "What
will it cost us not to follow this course?" That would be
the painful cost, and one which we cannot afford to pay.
It is a well propagandized article of faith in the Marxist
doctrine that free societies can survive only when there is
war or the threat of war.
The threat of war is certainly with us and will be as long
as we are confronted by a powerful totalitarian adversary.
Yet we urge a program in the area of foreign affairs which
we hope will lead to a relaxation of tensions, a reduction in
armaments and the eventual elimination of the threat.
If these proposals should be adopted, would the eco-
nomic picture at home ultimately prove that the Marxists
are right? We say no; we say that a free society, in a peace-
ful world, could and would prevail.
What we ask of you is the legislative framework in which
freedom can win the day by force if necessary, and by
force of example if not. We believe in the perfectibility
of our society; and we maintain that this goal is essential
to our security today and to our future tomorrow.
EMPLOYMENT LOSSES
1953-1960'
manufacturing: 1,500,000
railroads 400,000
MINING 200000
tfAviua m-yff unit*, arm v**»M m *m
* * * *** t mswz m* «•«
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Platform for America
T^HE HISTORY of American politics is studded with conglomer-
* ations of sonorous and meaningless prose parading under the
description of party platforms — documents that either promise all
things to all men or promise nothing behind the facade of empty
cliches.
To some extent this has reflected the exuberance of American
political life, the eras of torchlight parades and free-swinging ex-
changes of oratorical assaults. But more importantly, it has reflected
the diverse groupings that make up the political parties in America.
The concept that a party's presidential campaign platform
must be broad enough for every element in the party to stand
on has been undergoing continuing change in light of the newer
concept that a political platform must essentially represent a
philosophy of government containing basic approaches to solu-
tions of the many problems that face the nation in the 1960s.
In this issue of the AFL-CIO News a number of pages are
devoted to labor's views on what a modern-day political party
platform should contain. The federation's recommendations range
over the entire spectrum of problems confronting America, for
labor is involved in all of them.
Labor's recommendations to the political party platform com-
mittees are conceived in a philosophy of government that is
concerned with the economic well-being, the political freedom
and the human dignity of the overwhelming majority of Ameri-
cans who work for an hourly wage or a weekly paycheck.
The political garty that will write and commit itself to a campaign
platform incorporating these principles will be well on the way
to winning the support and loyalty of the voters.
Wage-Hour Travesty
A LITTLE LESS THAN a year ago a coalition, of Republicans
and southern Democrats in the House substituted the Lan-
drum-Qriffin bill for a more moderate labor reform measure re-
ported by the House labor committee.
In speech after speech, Landum-Griffin supporters piously in-
sisted they were striking a blow on labor's behalf by "protecting"
workers from the iniquities of trade unions.
Last week the identical coalition, by an almost identical vote,
substituted the Kitchin-Ayres bill for a moderate wage-hour meas-
ure reported by the same labor committee.
There was no talk of "protecting" workers this time; for the
Kitchin-Ayres bill, as it stands, would strip away all wage-hour
safeguards from 14 million Americans who are now protected.
Sponsors of this bill now say the reduction in coverage was not
intended, but was due to a technical "mistake." To the millions
of workers who need legal wage-hour protection, the bill itself is
a "mistake," even without the technical error.
The committee bill would have extended the law's coverage to
some 3.5 million more workers and raised the minimum wage to
$1.25 in a series of steps over several years. The Kitchin-Ayres
bill offers virtually no increase in coverage; sets a minimum of $1
an hour (with no overtime pay) for any who might be newly in-
cluded, and raises the minimum to only $1.15 for those already pro-
tected. This is not a wage-hour bill; it is a travesty.
When Congress returns next month the Senate will start debate
on its own wage-hour bill. It is the Senate's solemn obligation to
adopt a fair and meaningful measure; and it is the solemn obliga-
tion of the congressional leadership to see that such a measure
becomes law.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Committee,
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
I
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
- Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V.
Saturday, July 9, 1960
No. 28
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of it* official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
•ft*
4
p
SODEMS.- GOP
DRAWN FOR. THfS
AFL-CIO neiv3
Warren, Douglas, Black and Brennan:
High Court Minority Assails
Social Security Rights Denial
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in a
5 to 4 decision that a person deported for past
membership in the Communist Party can be de-
prived of all benefits due him under the Social
Security Act. Chief Justice Warren and Justices
Douglas, Black and Brennan, in joint and sepa-
rate dissents, assailed the majority decision as
violating the constitutional prohibition against
ex post facto punishment and voiding the prin-
ciple that a contributor under the social security
system has a vested right in his benefits. The
following are excerpts from these dissents.
EPHRAM NESTOR came to this country from
Bulgaria in 1913 and lived here continuously
for 43 years, until July 1956. He was then de-
ported from this country for having been a Com-
munist from 1933 to 1939. At that time mem-
bership in the Communist Party as such was not
illegal and was not even a statutory ground for
deportation.
From December 1936 to January 1955 Nestor
and his employers made regular payments to the
government under the Federal Insurance Con-
tributions Act. These funds went to a special
federal old-age and survivors insurance trust fund
in return for which Nestor, like millions of others,
expected to receive payments when he reached
the statutory age.
In 1954, 15 years after Nestor had last been
a Communist, and 18 years after he began to
make payments into the old-age security fund,
Congress passed a law providing, among other
things, that any person who had been deported
from this country because of past Communist
membership should be wholly cut off from any
benefits of the fund to which he had contributed
under the law. After the government deported
Nestor in 1956 it notified his wife, who had re-
mained in this country, that he was cut off and no
further payments would be made to him.
THIS ACTION takes Nestor's insurance with-
out just compensation and in violation of the due
process clause of the Fifth Amendment. More-
over, it imposes an ex post facto law and bill of
attainder by stamping him, without a court trial,
as unworthy to receive that for which he has paid
and which the government promised to pay him.
In Lynch vs. United States, this court unani-
mously held that Congress was without power to
repudiate and abrogate in whole or in part its
promises to pay amounts claimed by soldiers un-
der the War Risk Insurance of 1917.
This court held that such a repudiation was
inconsistent with the provision of the Fifth
Amendment that "no person shall he • . • de-
prived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensa-
tion.*'
The court [majority] today put the Lynch case
aside on the ground that "it is hardly profitable
to engage in conceptualizations regarding 'earned
rights' and 'gratuities.' " The court goes on to
say that while "the 'right' to social security bene-
fits is in one sense 'earned,' " yet the government's
insurance scheme now before us rests not on the
idea of the contributors to the fund earning some-
thing, but simply provides that they may "justly
call" upon the government "in their later years,
for protection from 'the rigors of the poor house
as well as from the haunting fear that such a lot
awaits them when journey's end is near.' "
THESE ARE NICE WORDS but they cannot
conceal the fact that they simply tell the con-
tributors to this insurance fund that despite their
own and their employers' payments the govern^
ment, in paying the beneficiaries out of the fund,
is merely giving them something for nothing and
can stop doing so when it pleases.
The people covered by this act are now able
to rely with complete assurance on the fact that
they will be compelled to contribute regularly
to this fund whenever each contribution falls
due. I believe they are entitled to rely with the
same assurance on getting the benefits they have
paid for and have been promised, when their
disability or age makes their insurance payable
under the terms of the law.
The court consoles those whose insurance is
taken away today, and others who may suffer the
same fate in the future, by saying that a decision
requiring the social security system to keep faith
"would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness
in adjustment to everchanging conditions whieh
it demands."
People who pay premiums for insurance usually
think they are paying for insurance, not for "flexi-
bility and boldness."
Social security payments are not gratuities.
They are products of a contributory system, the
funds being raised by payment from employes
and employers alike, or in case of self-employed
persons, by the individual alone.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Page Nin«
Morgan Sa ys :
Are Current Cultural Values
The True Blessings of Liberty?
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
"YWTE THE PEOPLE," the founding fathers
said, "in order to form a more perfect un-
ion .. . and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves . . . establish this
constitution for the Unitec 1
States of America."
How perfect has this un-
ion become? How blessed
its liberty? These are
questions, not exclamatory
sentences. It is appropri-
ate to ask them, I think,
not only because of what
events of great portent the
political parties are about
to move into in Los An- Morgan
geles and then Chicago but because of the un-
certain orbit we Americans are pursuing in the
space of current history.
Right here in the heart of strange, ugly, excit-.
ing Los Angeles there is, of course, plenty to
feed the proud appetite of patriotism. -In the
palm-fringed green of Pershing Square on the very
doorstep of Democratic party headquarters in the
Biltmore Hotel citizens gather of an evening to
exercise their right of free speech.
ONE NIGHT in the length of a seven-minute
stroll there on a gridiron-sized greensward which
covers a huge subterranean parking lot, I en-
countered a spirited argument over the merits of
'free love, a vigorous spasm of hymn-singing by
a redoubtable group of men and women ranging
from their 20's into the 70's, a sad-eyed young
Negro quoting the gospel to nobody, and a white-
haired, red-faced Irishman in a blue pea jacket
haranguing a handful, of dubious listeners about
nothing in particular. "I have dealt with those
Communists, plenty of them," he cried with a
disconcerting smile, "and don't think they don't
know about the calibre of Christianity we prac-
tice in the United States!"
Two gigantic signs dominated the square. One
in blood-red neon letters sponsored by the Tem-
ple Baptist Church exhorted all in range to "come
worship the Lord." The other, a king-sized strip
of canvas, unfurled the legend: "Stevenson for
president." There was freedom of expression and
political belief for you!
As for the blessings of growth, they abound
in this seemingly endless acreage the Chamber
of Commerce prefers you to call the Greater
Los Angeles area. This is still the fastest-grow-
ing city in the country. The eight-lane free-
ways slashing across it were obsolete almost
before their concrete was poured at a cost of
multi-million dollars a mile. And what union
could be more perfect than, one whose conti-
nental extremities are bound together by vast
curving turnpikes for diesel trucks and private
trailers, by steel rail rights-of-way for freights
and vistadomes and now by jet streams through
which giant airliners sail you from coast to
coast m five hours?
And yet, somehow, this throbbing panaroma
wavers and sputters like an imperfect image on
a television screen. While the devoted and the
doubters flex their democratic rights in Pershing
Square, Rhode Island police flex their muscles
and other armaments to break up a riot of college
students frustrated by allegedly inadequate and
inhibiting arrangements for enjoyment of a jazz
festival in the sedately outraged resort of fashion-
able Newport.
I would be less perplexed over Vice Pres.
Nixon's skepticism toward the preoccupation
of some American observers with "growthman-
ship" if I could satisfy myself that he and his
party were genuinely concerned over the gen-
erally unplanned, profiteering kind of growth-
manship which is littering the landscape of Los
Angeles and other urban areas with new gener-
ations of split-level slums.
I would be less worried over the cultural values
and the status-seeking of a restless society if the
cumulative impact were brighter with promise.
After all, it is our right to tolerate the soggy
tastelessness of airborne meals as part of the lux-
ury of jet travel, our privilege to spend the Fourth
of July menacing life and limb on the road.
But I keep asking myself whether this is the
picture of perfect union and the blessings of lib-
erty that we want, particularly when related to the
high purpose we are supposed to pursue in our
worldly orbit. I hope the candidates — and their
constituents — are asking themselves the same
questions.
WASHINGTON
J
Washington Reports:
People Can Force Congress
Into Action, 2 Senators Declare
TF THE PEOPLE LET their representatives
know they want action when Congress returns
after the recess, then there will be action, Sen.
Jacob K. Javits (R-N. Y.) declared on Washing-
ton Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public serv-
ice program, heard on more than 300 radio sta-
tions.
Javits recalled 1948 when Congress was called
back into sbssion after the conventions.
"I'm dismayed by the prospect if we repeat
the same performance as in 1948," he asserted.
"That session came to absolutely nothing. Nothing
was passed that had not been passed before we
started the deferred session."
Sen. Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D-N. J.) said
he hoped that the members of Congress will go
home during the recess and find that the people
Tve been working here for 10 years and do you think
in all that time they gave me a raise? No, they . .
are vitally interested in such issues as federal
aid for school construction.
"I wish people would speak up more than they
do on the desperate need of our communities for
federal aid to meet the school problem," he said.
Javits said the major issues on the agenda are
federal aid for school construction, housing, mini-
mum wage and medical care for the aged. Hq
said he and Williams are also interested in the
middle-income housing bill to provide $2 billion
in low-interest loans largely for cooperatives.
"MIDDLE INCOME FAMILIES," he assert-
ed, 4k are caught between public housing for which
they are not eligible and high rentals in the big
cities."
Williams said that Congress' return gave hope
for enactment of legislation to help metropolitan
areas plan and carry out programs for improved
transportation. He added that there is now hope
of getting the housing and school construction
bills out of the House Rules Committee.
"The Rules Committee, towards the end of any
session, certainly is a very fine sieve to pass nec-
essary legislation through," he declared.
Javits remarked that the time limitation also
made it more difficult to use other procedures
to get bills on the floor, but the August return,
would give opportunity for maneuver.
He said he believed that if Congress determines
to do so, it could decide in three days on whether |
medical aid for the aged should or should not
operate on the social security principle.
'Then we'd be all on the same side," he as-
serted. "And we'd have a bill, because I think
there's a solid majority for the fact that we've got
to have legislation in this field."
LOS ANGELES — MR. TRUMAN'S attack on Democratic Na-
tional Committee Chairman Paul Butler for what Truman called a
"prearranged" nominating convention provoked an uproar that
made it clear the Democrats would much rather have a Donny-
brook than a love feast.
"I belong to no organized political party," said the late Will
Rogers. "I'm a Democrat." Here in this convention city the
delegate claims of supporters of both Sen. John F. Kennedy and
Sen. Lyndon Johnson cannot both be true. One set of prognosti-
cations will be proved wrong — and both of them are wrong, ac-
cording to the supporters of Sen. Stuart Symington and of Adlai
Stevenson, who dearly hope that the front-running Kennedy and
the powerful Senate majority leader will kill each other off.
A week in advance of the first ballot, no recognized candidate
seemed likely to quit and pull out — again to quote Mr. Truman
in regard to his constancy to Symington — "until the last dog dies."
This is healthy for the country. The candidates are all for-
midable men, engaged in a serious contest for political preferment
on the basis of serious aspirations for the most powerful and
responsible office in the free world. Any questions asked now
of a candidate will be asked insistently during the campaign that
follows, and the people will want answers.
* * *
NOT WITHIN REMEMBERED HISTORY, if ever, have we
had a situation in which the leaders of Congress called a recess
until after the political conventions with the announced purpose
of returning later and driving through a legislative program bit-
terly opposed by a powerful congressional coalition and by the
President himself.
The issues for the session that will be resumed in August are
basically social welfare issues and the use of the people's federal
government to do things* the states and cities cannot do them-
selves and to set minimum economic standards that the people
cannot obtain themselves.
The issues, plainly, include a federal school aid bill, and a new
minimum wage bill that broadens coverage as well as raises wages
in place of the ill-begotten Kitchin-Ayres bill the House passed.
They include health protection of older citizens through the social
security system. They include housing and the correction of
clumsy legislation that prohibits job-site collective action by build-
ing trades unions.
The Democratic leaders, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas and
his fellow Texan, Sen. Johnson, obviously are putting their party
majorities to the ultimate test of fire and sword. Mr. Rayburn 's
House has been dominated by the coalition led by Republican
Floor Leader Charles A. Halleck of Indiana and Rules Committee
Chairman Howard W. Smith of Virginia.
^ BOTH HOUSES HAVE PASSED school-aid bills but the Rules
Committee refuses to let them be reconciled and compromised in
a joint Senate-House conference committee.
The job-site picketing bill has been approved by the House Labor
Committee, but the Rules Committee refuses to send it to the floor.
The minimum wage bill was cleared- only after a substitute, the
Kitchin-Ayres measure, was carefully drafted to satisfy the Rules
Committee that coverage of workers would not be substantially
broadened and that low-wage employers could pay low wages still.
The housing bill approved by the Senate and by the House Bank-
ing Committee is blocked in the Rules Committee. The House
Ways & Means Committee refused to approve health aid for retired
workers through social security.
The problem, obviously, is to pass bills in the Senate that the
conservative coalition has refused to let the House pass and
meanwhile to induce, persuade or bludgeon the House out of
imposing a veto in August and September as it has imposed
vetoes since January 1959. Mr. Eisenhower thereafter may
insert his own vetoes — but that is not a problem for Democrats.
BUSINESS NOT POLITICS will mark the August session of Con-
gress if the people urge action on their representatives, Sen. Jacob
K. Javits (R-N. Y.), on left, and Sen. Harrison A. Williams, Jr.
(D-N. J.) declared on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service radio program.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, I960
How to Buy:
Drug Costs Remain
High Despite Probe
By Sidney Margolius
DRUG MANUFACTURERS by and large have shrugged off the
recent exposes of excessive prices charged for vital drugs and
medicines. A survey by this department finds that:
1 — There have been no price cuts of any significance.
2 — New drug items arriving on the market are as expensive as
the older ones criticized widely as unnecessarily costly.
3 — Drug manufacturers are con-
tinuing uniform pricing of their
products as though Sen. Kefauver
and the Federal Trade Commission
didn't even exist. The fact that
manufacturers of supposedly-com-
peting drug brands charge the same
price is one of the biggest problems.
For example: Hottest drug item
at this time is a diuretic used for
kidney problems and other illnesses
in which it is necessary to relieve
the body of excess fluid. There are
now three brands or versions on the
market: Diuril, Hydro-Diuril and
Esiderex. All three are priced at
the same suggested list of $9 per
100, with some variations in price depending on quantity and how
much an individual druggist may charge.
Significantly, these new diuretic drugs with their high uniform
prices were introduced after the Kefauver hearings. This shows
the attitude of the drug industry toward the public indignation.
As long as most doctors still aren't concerned about the prices,
the drug manufacturers aren't really worried. They have exclusive
products. If the doctor prescribes them, you have to pay their
prices.
The only price concession has been a small unofficial one, pos-
sibly only temporary and not necessarily of benefit to the public
unless people know about it. Manufacturers' salesmen are re-
ported to be giving retail druggists an unofficial discount on the
vital antibiotic drugs in the form of ten percent free samples with
each order.
But the exposes have had one effect. Unions and co-ops are
pushing hard to find ways of cracking drug prices. These efforts
are taking several forms:
• Simplest method being used by a number of local unions in
Detroit, New York and several other cities is to arrange with a local
pharmacist or chain for reduced prices for members. More unions
have been developing such arrangements as the result of the
Kefauver exposes.
Depending on the efficiency of the pharmacist involved, this
method can save a worthwhile part of the cost but doesn't solve
the basic problem of manufacturers' high prices. It's also necessary
to police such a plan because it's difficult for the consumer to check,
the charge for a compounded prescription to see if he is getting a
genuine reduction. One way to police is by sending out shoppers
from time to time with an Rx to check prices against those quoted
by other pharmacies.
• Unions and group health co-ops also are expanding pharma-
ceutical services of their own health centers. A pharmacy operated
as part of a health center has the advantage of strong control over
prices, economies of volume buying and avoidance of some of the
duplication of brands necessary in regular drug stores.
As one example, the health center for New York hotel workers
last year filled over 37,000 prescriptions with none costing over $2.
Another example is the pharmaceutical service provided by
Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound. In one year the av-
erage member had 3.3 prescriptions filled at a cost to the co-op
of $1.52 per Rx, or $5.07 per member.
• Still another approach is straight insurance. For example, in
San Jose, Calif., the bricklayers' union has arranged group insur-
ance covering prescription drugs. The plan has the cooperation
of the local druggists' association and is insured through a life-
insurance company at a cost of $1 per month per family. The
plan has been able to operate in the black during its first six months.
Insurance has the advantage of assuring that in severe illness
families will get the medicines they need without financial hardship.
But unless an insurance plan also enlists local doctors and phar-
macists in trying to keep down the costs of medicines, it doesn't
solve the price problem. In fact, insurance alone may serve to
perpetuate high prices.
• Most comprehensive plan is that being developed by a num-
ber of New York unions in collaboration with Health Insurance
Plan of Greater New York. As developed so far, it proposes to
set up nine pharmacy depots to fill subscribers' prescriptions and
also to provide insurance to cover drug costs, and to educate doctors
to prescribe drugs under basic (generic) names at lower cost than
under brand names, where possible.
The plan has aroused protests from retail druggists who fear that
they are being made the scapegoat for high prices instead of the
manufacturers.
• Some unions also are exploring the possibility of operating
their own pharmacies in their union halls, like the one operated
for members for many years by District 65 of the Retail, Whole-
sale Department Store Workers in New York.
(Copyright 1060 by Sidney Margolius)
mm
HERE IS NEW HEADQUARTERS of Kenya Federation of Labor, in Nairobi, dedicated recently
as a symbol of "living aspirations of workers for human dignity."
Kenya Union Headquarters
Symbol of Africa's Aspirations
NAIROBI, KENYA— In this British protec-
torate on the East Coast of Africa, there is today
a brand-new trade union home for one of the
youngest labor movements in this continent, the
Kenya Federation of Labor. The building, for-
mally dedicated two weeks ago in the presence
of trade unionists from other parts of Africa,
Europe and the U.S., "is more than an inanimate
object — it is a symbol of all the living aspirations
and stirrings of the masses of workers to achieve
a higher standard of living, a complete respect for
their individual human dignity."
That was part of the message from President
George Meany. It was read in his absence
by Tom Mboya, general secretary of the KFL.
"This fight for freedom and human dignity,"
wrote President Meany, "in Africa is part of
the worldwide effort of all free workers to
achieve world peace and economic prosperity.
We are joined together irrespective of race,
creed or color in this basic quest for real securi-
ty. For we know that without a free and demo-
cratic society there cannot be either security or
peace for the peoples of all nations and all
races. The threat to peace and security exists
wherever and whenever dictatorship exists.
"That is why the struggle for free trade union-
ism can never be separated from the fight for
freedom and democracy. The fight to attain
economic and social justice, led by the free trade
unions, can only be achieved within the frame-
work of political democracy."
MEANY PLEDGED AFL-CIO support and
solidarity to the Kenya Federation of Labor and
all African free trade unionists in their fight to
achieve independence, national sovereignty and
political freedom; complete political freedom
From Soup to Nonsense:
through independence and prosperity and, third,
support for a united, free and democratic Africa.
Irving J^rown, AFL-CIO representative in Europe,
represented U.S. labor at the ceremonies.
Walter P. Reuther, president of the United
Auto Workers, in a message read for him, said
that in recent decades, the people of Africa
"have shattered forever the chains of servitude
imposed on them by an inhuman tyranny in
total disregard for the lives of human beings."
He added: "Not only must the new nations
sweep aside the racist trash of decaying colonial-
ism but in the process spurn the temptation to
buy deceiving bills of goods from the Communist
tyrannies, where neither political nor trade union
freedoms are tolerated."
THE TWO-STORY BUILDING, called Soli-
darity House, received furnishings and equipment
from the German Federation of Labor, the Israeli
Federation of Labor and the British Trades Union
Congress. The AFL-CIO contributed $5 1 .000.
Actually the headquarters opened for business
last April and it is already too small.
The dedication ceremonies were followed in
Nairobi by a meeting of 14 African trade union
organizations from as many countries which, in
a communique called for:
• Unity of Africans against racism, colonial-
ism and imperialism.
• An end to "tribalism whatever its forms and
in all its evil manifestations." Tribalism "is the
worst enemy of African unity."
• Unity among African trade unions but with
the right of each African national organization to
decide freely whether it wants to belong to the
ICFTU or not, without pressure from oiher
African states.
Don't Just Sit There! Worry!
By Jane Goodsell
ARE YOU A WORRIER? Oh, c'mon now, tell
the truth! You needn't be afraid I'll scold
you. Far be it from me to tell you to pack up
your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile,
smile.
Listen, if you've got worries (and I'm sure you
have) you go right
ahead and worry
about them. Don't
let anybody tell you
that worry is futile.
I know better.
For years now
I've worried about
our roof. I've lain
awake at night fret-
ting about it spring-
ing leaks and calcu-
lating the cost of
having a whole
new roof installed.
Well, I consider
those hours of wor-
ry well spent because we still have the same old
roof (which, of course, I'm still worrying about).
We certainly can't afford a new roof now that
we've just put in a new furnace. Every time I
think about that new furnace, I could kick my-
self. If only I'd had enough sense to worry
about our old furnace, it would never have
broken down.
Take the hours I've spent, worrying that one of
the children might develop acute appendicitis.
Every time one of them got a stomach-ache, I
diagnosed it as appendicitis and summoned the
doctor. Well, all three of the children still have
their appendixes, but my husband — whom I neg-
lected to worry about — had to have his removed.
PEOPLE WHO WRITE BOOKS telling you
to stop worrying are missing the point completely.
If you stop worrying, you're asking for trou-
ble. The best way tp keep your house from
catching on fire is to lie awake nights, wonder-
ing if you smell smoke.
Not worrying leads to other sorts of trouble,
too. In an effort to get their minds off their wor-
ries, people do all kinds of crazy things. A wom-
an's favorite method of shaking off her worries is
to go downtown and buy something expensive that
she doesn't need. A man who is trying to forget
his troubles is likely to stop in at Joe's Bar and
Grill for a couple of quick ones.
In both cases, the people involved would be
much better off at home, worrying their heads oft
AFLXIO NEVS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Page Eleve*
Eisenhower Rebuffed:
Congress Overrides
U. S. Pay Raise Veto
Congress has handed Pres. Eisenhower the sharpest legislative
setback of his Administration by overriding — with votes to spare —
his stinging veto of a pay raise for 1.6 million government workers.
In a bitter veto message, Eisenhower had described the salary
increase voted by Congress — 7.5 percent for 1 million white collar
workers in the classified civil serv-^
ice and about 8 percent for nearly
600.000 postal employes — as "fis-
cal and legislative irresponsibility."
He said the postal union leaders
had exerted "intensive and uncon-
cealed political pressure'' and he
expressed dismay that they would
"even entertain thoughts of forc-
ing Congress to bow to their will.'*
Congress gave its answer the
day after the veto. The House,
voting first, overrode the veto
345 to 69. The Senate, where the
balloting had been expected to
be close, promptly followed with
a 74 to 24 vote to override. The
vote to override in the House
was 69 more than the two-thirds
margin necessary and in the Sen-
ate eight more than the needed
figure.
Of the President's 169 vetoes,
only one other had been overrid-
den. That was in September 1959,
when a public works bill was
adopted over the President's veto.
Ike's 'Offer' Fails
An "offer" by the President to
accept a 2.1 percent government
pay raise bill — the percentage the
cost of living has increased since
federal salaries were last adjusted
— apparently failed to swing any
votes away from the 7.5 percent
bill. In the House, 89 Republicans
joined 256 Democrats in voting
to override, with 13 Democrats and
56 Republicans upholding the veto.
The Senate lineup found 55 Demo-
crats and 19 Republicans Voting to
override, with nine Democrats join-
ing 15 Republicans to sustain the
President.
During both the House and Sen-
ate debates, government employes
on leave, including hundreds of
blue - uniformed letter carriers,
crowded the visitors' galleries to
capacity. They broke into a cheer
as the Senate vote was announced
Letter Carriers Pres. William
C. Doherty, an AFL-CIO vice
president and chairman of the
AFL - CIO Government Em-
ployes Council, steered the legis-
lative strategy which saw the ori-
ginal 12.5 percent pay bill
trimmed to 9 percent by the
House Post Office & Civil Serv-
ice Committee, forced to the
House floor by a discharge peti-
tion which bypassed the hostile
Rules Committee, and finally
trimmed to 7.5 percent in a move
to win the added support needed
to override the anticipated veto.
It was the fourth time the Presi-
dent has vetoed a pay raise for gov-
ernment workers. The last pre
Eisenhower pay bill veto was dur
ing the Coolidge Administration.
The congressional slap at the
President brought an angry retort
from James C. Hagerty, the Presi-
dent's press secretary. He said:
"This is the second time that
pressure and pork barrel tactics
have overridden a presidential veto.
Nevertheless, the President will not
abandon but will continue unabated
his efforts to further responsibility
in government/*
Consumers Seen Taxed
By Weight Chiselers
Labor has "a special stake in programs that protect the value of
the consumer dollar/' AFL-CIO Research Dir. Stanley H. Rutten-
berg told a national conference on weights and measures.
Declaring that unions "cannot afford" to neglect the area of con-
sumer protection, Ruttenberg declared:
"Practically every cent of la-
bor's take-home pay goes. into the
purchase of products at retail.
The wage increases negotiated at
the bargaining table must not be
lost at the store counter — in the
form of unfair prices, misrepre-
sented goods, or short weights
and measures."
Ruttenberg, whose address to the
conference was read by Anne Drap
er of the Dept. of Research, said
consumer protection programs need
"more effective legislation ... ad-
ditional budgets and greater public
understanding and support."
Despite the fact that all state
Jones Advanced
Boilermakers
By
Kansas City, Kan. — Charles W.
Jones, director of research and ed-
ucation for the Boilermakers, has
been appointed an international vice
president of the union and a mem-
ber of the executive council.
Jones' appointment, announced
by Pres. William A. Calvin, will
fill the vacancy caused by the re-
cent retirement of Vice- Pres. Cecil
S. Massey. Jones will serve in the
Gulf Coast section.
At the same time, Calvin an-
nounced that William O. Kuhl, as-
sistant research and education di-
rector since January, had been pro-
moted to succeed Jones as head of
the department Kuhl formerly
was a professor at the School for
Workers at the University of Wis-
consin.
have weights and measures laws,
Ruttenberg said, estimates of the
loss to consumers from short
weights and short measures range
as high as $3 billion a year. On
food purchases, he declared, the
loss is the equivalent of an 8 per-
cent sales tax.
Ruttenberg suggested the con-
ference consider federal stand-
ards in weights and measures,
pointing out that only a minority
of states presently have adequate
laws and enforcement budgets.
Emphasizing the labor move-
ment's legislative efforts to strength-
en consumer protection laws and
agencies, Ruttenberg cited union
testimony in the current session of
Congress in support of bills:
• To require pre-testing of color
additives used in foods, drugs and
cosmetics.
• To require warning labels on
toxic household chemicals not pres-
ently covered by the Caustic Poison
Act.
• To prepare the lamb grading
program which had been threat-
ened with discontinuance.
• To require lenders to disclose
the full amount of finance charges
on consumer loans and the state-
ment of these charges in terms of
the true annual interest rate.
• To provide adequate appro-
priations for consumer protection
programs of the Federal Trade
Commission, the Food & Drug Ad-
ministration and the Agriculture
Dept.
LABOR APPLAUDS Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell at a non-political testimonial dinner in Wash-
ington for being "one of the best" departmental leaders in the "history of our country." Leading
the applause is AFL-CIO Vice Pres. George M. Harrison, next to Mitchell; AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler, AFL-CIO Vice Pres. David J. McDonald, Msgr. George G. Higgins and Mrs.
Anna Mitchell, the secretary's mother.
House Committee Rejects Bill
Easing Poultry Inspection Act
The House Agriculture Committee has shelved an Administration proposal which would have al-
lowed the Agriculture Dept. to grant permanent exemptions from the requirements of the Poultry
Products Inspection Act after spokesmen for organized labor charged that passage of the measure
would be "a blow against consumers."
The committee's action, just before adjournment, made full enforcement of the law designed to
protect consumers' from unwhole-'^
some poultry foods effective, j
scheduled, on July 1.
The unanimous vote sustained
the action of an Agriculture sub-
committee which heard AFL-CIO
Legislative Rep. George D. Riley
charge that passage of the bill
would be "a serious mistake" and
would do "serious damage to the
protection afforded the public
against poisoning and disease from
unwholesome or unfit poultry."
Arnold Mayer, legislative rep-
resentative for the Meat Cutters,
told the subcommittee the Agri-
culture Dept. was seeking the
virtual repeal of the three-year-
old law as part of the depart-
ment's continuing "offensive
against consumers."
The law calls for inspection of
poultry processing plants to make
certain that the meat is wholesome,
that minimum sanitary practices are
adhered to, and that labeling of
poultry products is correct. To min
imize the impact of the law, the
department was granted authority
to make temporary exemptions
which had been scheduled to expire
July 1. The department is now
seeking to have these exemptions
made permanent.
The bill would permit the Secre-
tary of Agriculture to determine
future exemptions. Riley charged
that "such a broad grant of author-
ity to an administrative agency"
would be "wholly inappropriate"
and could create a "dangerous loop-
hole in the law."
The AFL-CIO spokesman said
that processors not subject to con-
tinuous inspection might "yield to
the temptation to obtain unfit poul-
try at cheaper prices from non-
inspected slaughterers. . . . More-
over, the possibility is left open for
CWA Local Leader
In Mental Health Post
Charlotte, N. C— John F.
Kluttz, president of Communica-
tions Workers Local 3063 here, has
been elected president of the
Mental Health Association of Char-
lotte and Mecklenburg.
Active in community affairs,
Kluttz is chairman of the Commu-
nity Services Committee of the
Charlotte Labor Council and a
member of the council's Commit-
tee on Political Education.
He is also a member of Char-
lotte's Social Planning Council, a
long-range community health study
committee.
the use of improper chemical addi-
tives, either harmful in themselves
or designed to conceal food deteri-
oration."
In the "expectation" of getting
the pending bill enacted, Riley said,
the department did not ask for
funds needed for the additional in-
spection services this year. He
added:
• . The dictation of the
budget is an irrelevant criterion
in the administration of a law
designed to protect the health
and safety of the consumer. . . .
It is indeed an alarming thought
that any time the department
wants to save some more money,
it will issue new exemptions
under the extremely broad grant
of power that it would have."
Mayer told the subcommittee the
pending bill would allow the Agri-
culture Dept. "to end any part of
poultry inspection" called for in the
bill and would "undo everything
that Congress did to protect the
consumer."
The Meat Cutters' spokesman
said that this marked the # third time
this year that the department had
attempted to curtail consumer pro-
tection. The other occasions, May-
er said, were the department's un-
sucessful attempt to end lamb grad-
ing and its "refusal" to request
sufficient money for poultry inspec-
tion.
Burdick Wins Senate
Seat in Close N.D. Vote
Fargo, N. D. — Democratic Rep. Quentin Burdick, a first-term
member of the House, was elected to the Senate in North Dakota's
special election June 28, the official canvass of the close vote
revealed.
Burdick, a liberal who In 1958 was the first Democrat in history
elected to the House from this nor-^~
mally Republican stronghold, beat
GOP Gov. John E. Davis by ap-
proximately 1,100 votes out of
nearly 208,000 — a heavy turnout
for a special election.
Davis has not yet conceded his
defeat but the Burdick margin ap-
peared sufficient to be conclusive.
Correction of errors in the original
unofficial ballot count added slight-
ly to Qurdick's plurality.
Burdick will serve out the re-
maining four and a half years of
the term of the late Sen. William
L anger, maverick Republican
who often voted with liberal.
Democrats on labor, farm and
other domestic issues.
The Langer seat has temporarily
been held by former Gov. C. Nor-
man Brunsdale, appointed by Davis
for service pending the special elec-
tion. It is expected that Burdick
will take his oath as a senator on
Aug. 8, "when the Senate recon-
venes after the political conven-
tions.
The major issue in the special
election appeared to be intense
farmer-rancher dissatisfaction with
Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft Benson
and Eisenhower Administration
farm policies. Burdick's election,
was considered a sign that in No-
vember the GOP may find wide-
spread revolt in normally Republi-
can midwestern farm states.
Retired Officer of
Stage Union Dies
San Francisco, Calif. — Steve B.
Newman, former vice president and
assistant president of the Theatrical
Stage Employes and a member of
the union since 1897, died at his
home here after a long illness. He
was 82.
He was named a vice president
in 1919, later was assistant presi-
dent under former Pres. Charles C.
Shay, and served as an internation-
al representative during four inter-
national union administrations in-
cluding that of the incumbent,
Pres. Richard F. Walsh.
He aided in establishing several
unions in the motion picture field
while stationed in Hollywood in
the 1920s and 1930s, fostered early
agreements between IATSE and
the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters and
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, and had served as a vice
president of the California Federa-
tion of Labor and the Los Angeles
Central Labor Council.
Page Twelve
AFt-OO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. fc, SATURDAY, JULY % Mtit
AFL-CIO's Platform Recommendations
LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS— The Taft-
Hartley Act, and more recently the Landrum-Griffin Act's
amendments to Taft-Hartley, have added numerous pro-
visions to the law which are utterly at variance with de-
clared policies. These provisions hamper and restrict the
practice of collective bargaining. They impair the right
of workers to organize, thus preserving instead of cor-
recting the disparity of bargaining power between em-
ployers and workers. i
Amendments to the Wagner Act have restricted the
practice of collective bargaining. I refer to such pro-
visions as those which outlaw the closed shop and specify
in minute detail just what sorts of union shop agreements
employers and unions may negotiate. This sort of regi-
mentation of collective bargaining is an unwarranted in-
trusion upon the freedom of workers and employers.
Amendments to the Wagner Act impair the right of
workers to organize, thus preserving instead of correcting
the disparity of bargaining power between employers and
workers.
In place of a national labor relations policy of encourag-
ing "a stabilization of competitive wage rates and working
conditions within and between industries," subsequent
amendments to the Wagner Act have invited the states to
compete for industrial plants by passing anti-union legis-
lation. Provisions like these should be eliminated. Con-
gress should enact new legislation based on the principles
of the Wagner Act to which Congress has never ceased to
pay lip service. This would automatically eliminate the
vicious so-called state "right-to-work" laws, that harass
and damage free collective bargaining.
The AFL-CIO and most of its affiliated unions were in
favor of legislation to help the labor movement rid itself
of the crooks and racketeers who have infiltrated a few
unions. We supported, in general, the bill sent to the
floor of the Senate by its labor committee.
However, on the floor of the Senate and the House there
were grafted onto the bill numerous other provisions in
part attributable to demogoguery, in part to anti-union
sentiment and in part to just plain confusion. Some of
these provisions are unduly burdensome to unions without
serving any constructive purpose; others make rational
administration of the act almost impossible.
The Landrum-Grifnn Act is thus in urgent need of re-
writing to eliminate the unwarranted burdens it places on
unions and to make possible a more rational administra-
tion.
FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT— The lowest-wage
groups should receive a fair share of the general progress.
Coverage of the Fair Labor Standards Act should there-
fore be extended and its minimum wage requirement in-
creased to at least $1.25 an hour. The continued failure
to provide this needed extension and updating of the mini-
mum wage is undermining our nation's economic, social
and moral well-being.
The existing 40-hour workweek standard of the act,
established more than two decades ago, should now be
updated as rapidly as possible to provide for a standard
7-hour day, 35-hour week.
WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION — Congress should
without delay enact legislation fixing minimum standards
of benefits for the workers who are occupationally dis-
abled producing the goods and providing the services es-
sential to our society. Only a federal underwriting of
standards can safeguard this program from the efforts of
the states to protect their industries from higher insurance
rates. The overall effect of state competition has been a
ruthless disregard for the welfare of the job-injured worker
and his family.
PUBLIC SERVICE NEEDS — America is starving the
public sector of its economy. A rapidly-growing popula-
tion and inadequate programs to improve the nation's
public services have created vast and expanding backlogs
of unmet needs.
These public needs cannot possibly be met by private
groups, even if they wished to do so. They are public
needs that can be met only by public funds, supplemented
by private efforts.
The basic and major responsibility rests upon the fed-
eral government. These public needs are national needs.
Many of them cross the boundaries of cities, counties and
states. They can be met only by national efforts.
AID FOR DEPRESSED AREAS— Chronically de-
pressed industrial areas, and rural areas in which under-
employment is chronic continue to blight many sections
of the nation even in periods of general prosperity.
Local efforts, no matter how valiant, have proved in-
sufficient to cope with this growing problem. Federal aid
is long overdue.
Unfortunately, such a comprehensive federal program
has failed to become law, even though it twice has been
enacted by Congress.
It is high time that the commitment of both political
parties to initiate an adequate federal domestic Point IV
program foe Americans be fulfilled.
TAX AND FISCAL POLICY— The burden of today's
tax system falls most heavily on low and moderate income
families. While the tax rate schedule is highly progressive,
ranging from 20 to 91 percent, a host of special exclusions,
deductions and tax credits allow upper-income taxpayers
to avoid the effects of the high rates.
A tax reform program should:
Eliminate special favoritism; provide tax relief to low
and moderate income families by raising substantially the
$600 personal exemption; strengthen the estate and gift
The material on this page is excerpted from the AFL-
CIO's detailed recommendations to be presented to the
Platform Committee of the Democratic Party in Los An-
geles on July 8. The recommendations were submitted
on behalf of the AFL-CIO by Pres. George Meany.
These excerpts cover major areas in the AFL-CIO'j
presentation. The complete document runs 15,000
words and covers 36 areas of interest to the trade union
movement.
taxes by developing a single coordinated system covering
both.
AID TO FARMERS — Over a quarter of a century ago
America accepted the view that federal cooperation is
essential to the achievement of a decent livelihood for the
farmers whose work produces our abundance of food and
fiber. We are unalterably opposed to those who now hold
that the federal effort should be lessened or terminated.
On the other hand, we recognize the need to revamp and
improve our presently inadequate and costly farm pro-
gram.
As part of the effort to balance agricultural supply and
demand at a fair price we approve a flexible approach,
including direct payments where farmers themselves
choose this alternative. At the same time, those who
wish to benefit from publicly guaranteed prices must ac-
cept the discipline of rigorous production controls.
Furthermore, federal programs should concentrate on
aiding the family-owned and operated farm rather than
the giant commercial farm which needs no assistance.
HIRED FARM WORKERS — In 1960 there is no eco-
nomic or moral justification for the continued denial of a
federal minimum wage to farm workers, federal protec-
tion of their right to organize, coverage under the federal
old-age and survivors insurance act and the various un-
employment and workmen's compensation laws.
Public Law 78 — the outdated wartime legislation which
last year permitted the importation of 438,000 Mexican
nationals to undermine the job opportunities and wages
of American farm workers — should be extended only tem-
porarily and then only if substantially amended, as recently
recommended by four distinguished consultants to the
Secretary of Labor.
CIVIL RIGHTS — Our Supreme Court and the federal
judiciary have made plain the meaning of the law of the
land with respect to civil rights and have spelled out the
manner of its application and enforcement.
Laws to protect equal rights are vital, but perhaps even
more vital is a national Administration, headed by a
dedicated President, that understands the nature of the
problem and will give it the sense of purpose and sense of
urgency without which no real progress is possible. The
White House must be a source of inspiration and an edu-
cational force. It must, above all, believe in equal rights
and say so clearly and boldly.
We call for federal action to fully assure every citizen
the right to register and vote, the right to be secure from
violence, intimidation, restraint and coercion, and the
right to resort to the courts for enforcement of constitu-
tional guarantees.
We call for the enactment of a federal Fair Employ-
ment Practices Law to assure equal opportunity and equal
treatment in hiring, tenure and terms and conditions of
employment, without discrimination because of race, creed,
color or national origin.
FOREIGN RELATIONS — The world is now facing an
increasingly grave threat to peace, freedom and human
well-being. This threat comes solely from Soviet im-
perialism and its worldwide subversive Communist con-
spiracy.
This threat is all the more dangerous because the ag-
gressive Kremlin rulers combine flexibility of tactics with
firmness of purpose. Unless our country and the free
world redouble their vigilance, Communist skill in fraudu-
lent maneuvering, in hypocritically exploiting the great
desire of people everywhere for peace and genuine co-
existence, can only lead to fatal illusions, confusion and
division in the ranks of democracy.
As citizens and free trade unionists, we of American
labor stress that the pursuit of peace, through every honor-
able means, is not a mere pious wish but an earnest day-to-
day task. There must be no limit to our patience and
persistence in seeking just and peaceful settlements of
issues. In this spirit, our country should — regardless of
abuse, slander and provocation — always keep open the
door to negotiations with Moscow.
In such negotiations, we must be ever mindful of the
fact that appeasement of the demands of any expansionist
power only invites aggression. Hence, our government
should, in its negotiations, never assume nor accept as
settled and final any conquests the Kremlin or any other
totalitarian regime has made through direct or indirect
military aggression, threat of armed intervention or Com-
munist subversion.
.FOREIGN ECONOMIC POLICY— Congress should
authorize an expanded long-term program of economic
and technical assistance to the industrially less developed
nations. This program should include:
A long-term authorization of at least $1.5 billion a
year to the Development Loan Fund to provide loans for
economic development to less developed countries.
Expanded support for technical cooperation programs
both through our own agencies and through the specialized
agencies of the United Nations.
Expanded programs to distribute surplus foods and
fibers abroad in order to help improve living standards
and assist economic growth in the less developed countries.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE— The United States, along
with the other free nations, must find ways and means of
liberalizing trade, while at the same time assuring maxi-
mum benefit and minimum injury to workers both in our
country and in the countries of our trading partners.
To accomplish these objectives, the extension of the
Reciprocal Trade Act by the United States should include
the following features:
Incorporation of the principle of fair labor standards
in international trade as an essential facet of U.S. trade
policy.
Continuance of the escape clause and peril point pro-
cedure under the Trade Agreements Act.
Maximum emphasis on safeguarding absolute historic
levels of domestic production so as to prevent drastic pro-
duction cutbacks or employment displacement in domestic
industries as a result of sudden large influxes of low-price
imports from low wage countries.
SOCIAL SECURITY— The old-age, survivors and dis-
ability insurance system must be made more adequate by
a substantial increase in cash benefits, by raising the wage
base and benefit maximums in line with rising productivity
and earnings, by computing benefits on years of highest
earnings, by extending protection to persons now excluded
and by reducing the retirement age for women to 60.
Adequate insurance against the rising costs of health
care as part of the OASDI system is required by its bene-
ficiaries to overcome anxiety, enhance dignity and avoid
sudden financial disaster for themselves and their families.
In unemployment insurance, we need broad federal
standards with regard to benefit amounts, duration of bene-
fits and eligibility requirements. The wage insurance pro-
visions that prevailed 20 years ago, allowing benefits equal
to one-half the individual's average weekly earnings subject
to a maximum of two-thirds of the state's average weekly
wage, should be enacted as a condition for state participa-
tion in the present federal-state system. Benefits should be
available up to 39 weeks for unemployed persons for whom
no employment is available.
FEDERAL AID TO EDUCATION— Events of recent
years illustrate with startling clarity the major deficiencies
of our educational system. The critical shortage of com-
petent teachers, the dangerous classroom shortage and the
waste of talent permitted by the lack of a general scholar-
ship program all point up the scope and nation-wide
character of the problem. The efforts of localities and
states have failed utterly to provide solutions.
Even though this national problem can only be met by
a national effort, the 86th Congress thus far has failed to
agree on even a modest education bill. Accordingly,
America's children will get no new aid this year from the
federal government in improving their education.
HOUSING — America needs an expanded, comprehen-
sive, forward-looking housing program aimed at providing
a decent home for every family, regardless of race or
income, in well-planned and modernized communities.
This program should include: ^
A national policy objective aimed at construction of at
least 2.3 million dwellings a year; a large-scale, low-rent
public housing program to provide decent homes for low-
income families; an effective program of low-interest, long-
term loans to provide good homes within their means to
moderate-income families and elderly couples and indi-
viduals priced out of today's housing market by sky-high
financial charges and rents; expansion and redirection of
the urban renewal program with major stress on slum
clearance and urban redevelopment to provide good homes
in well-planned communities within the financial reach of
ordinary American families.
NATURAL RESOURCES— A sound, progressive natu-
ral resources policy must rest on the strong reaffirmation
of the responsibility of the federal government as the
principal steward of the people's resources heritage.
The United States should plan, undertake, finance and
manage major resources programs keyed to national goals,
as a desirable and proper function. States, localities and
private sectors all have important roles to play, each with-
in its own abilities and capacities.
The federal government must have a unified resources
policy and the means to carry it out without duplication
and waste. This calls for basic reorganization of federal
resources agencies.
IMPROVING CONGRESSIONAL PROCEDURES—
Democratic process requires that the will of the majority
shall be effected in the Congress of the United States.
Such is not now the case in relation to certain specific,
controversial legislation. In this Congress, the majority
in both Houses has been unjustly frustrated in its attempt
to secure prompt and constructive action on civil rights,
federal aid to education, area redevelopment, home rule
for the District of Columbia and other legislation of
vital importance to the nation.
In each case a willful minority, sometimes a relatively
tiny one, was able to prevent prompt action. Reforms
should be instituted in both Houses at the opening of the
next Congress to permit a simple majority of the members
to bring any measure to a vote vvith a minimum of delay,
and to prevent a minority, utilizing endless debate or the
accident of committee membership, from exercising in-
terminable obstructionist tactics to achieve defeat of legis-
lative proposals.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY % 1960
Page Thirteem
AFL-CIO Asks Democrats
To Back Liberal Program
(Continued from Page 1)
waste" through a lag in employment
to match our growing work force
and technical expansion. "In the
name of fighting a non-existent
'runaway inflation,' " Meany said,
the government for seven years has
followed policies "suppressing
America's great potential for eco-
nomic expansion and depressing
the rate of increase in per capita
national output."
• A Jong list of national pro-
grams in the fields of health, educa-
tion and welfare that have been
neglected, ignored or allowed to be-
come substandard.
• A series of programs to mod-
ernize and improve various labor
protective laws and to add new
protections to those previously es-
tablished.
In his analysis of the present Fair
Labor Standards Act, Meany told
the Democratic platform writers
that millions of workers have been
allowed to lag "far behind the rest
of the nation'* because of exemp-
tion from coverage.
The $l-an-hour minimum
wage falls "far short of a decent
minimum living standard" even
for workers who are covered and
who have fulltime employment,
and should be raised to "at least
$1.25" in line with living costs,
productivity and wage levels
generally.
The 40-hour workweek estab-
lished as a standard in 1938, he
said, "should now be updated as
rapidly as possible to provide a
standard 7-hour day, 35-hour
week."
In a blistering attack on the
Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin
Acts, the federation president point-
ed out that the Wagner Act's
proclaimed purpose — "to encourage
collective bargaining," to protect
workers in their exercise of the
right and to correct "inequality of
bargaining power" — had been left
standing, but that T-H and L-G
amendments were "utterly at vari-
ance.**
There is now a "regimentation of
collective bargaining" and an "un-
warranted intrusion upon the free-
dom of workers and employers."
Amendments granting a favored
position to employers in invoking
the law contribute to "preserving
instead of correcting the disparity
of bargaining power," and a "na-
tional labor policy" has been aban-
doned in favor of an invitation to
states "to compete for industrial
plants by passing anti-union legis-
lation."
Along with reiterated proposals
for strengthened social security
laws, a federal school aid bill, area
redevelopment, housing programs
Borchardt Dies
In Washington
Dr. Herbert Borchardt, a den-
tist who devoted most of his life
to the labor movement and civic
affairs in Washington, died recent-
ly. He was 67.
A member of the Post Office
Clerks and a former volunteer or-
ganizer for the Government Em-
ployes, he was a delegate to the
Greater Washington Central Labor
Council for more than 25 years.
For most of the time he also was
labor representative on the District
of Columbia Commissioners' Citi-
zens Advisory Council.
He did research work in dentistry
until entering the service in World
War I. After the war he became
a labor information specialist with
the old Federal Security Board and
its successor, the Dept. of Health,
Education & Welfare. He also was
associated with the Justice and Post
Office Departments. Survivors in-
clude a sister, Selma Borchardt, an
international vice president of the
Teachers.
and civil rights, Meany pointed out
that in Congress "the majority has
been unjustly frustrated" by a "will-
ful minority, sometimes a relatively
tiny one" under existing Senate and
House rules.
There should be reforms "insti-
tuted in both houses at the opening
of the next Congress to permit a
simple majority to bring any meas-
ure to a vote with a minimum of
delay," he urged the Platform Com-
mittee.
On taxes, Meany spelled out
the AFL-CIO position by observ-
ing that the tax schedule is "high-
ly progressive" but that "a host
of special exclusions, deductions
and tax credits allow upper-in-
come taxpayers to avoid the ef-
fects of the high rates."
Adequate revenue can be guar-
anteed, he said, "by eliminating
special favoritism," which would in-
crease the tax yield "by $12 to $15
billion" and allow reduction of the
burden on low-income and moder-
ate-income families.
Election reforms should be aimed
at spreading the franchise by get-
ting rid of existing restrictions and
by law changes that cut down the
contributions of wealthy families
and increase financial contributions
by larger numbers, he said. Meany
specifically proposed a $5 tax credit
— an actual offset to the tax bill —
for political contributions as a sub-
stitute for the present ineffectual
maximum limit on giving.
World in Collision
In the field of foreign policy,
Meany warned that the "present
world struggle is a collision be-
tween two conflicting ways of life
— democracy and Communist to-
talitarianism."
The door should be kept open to
negotiations with Moscow, he said,
but we must ever be mindful that
appeasement of any expansionist
power only invites aggression."
Laying down guidelines for
American policy, he declared that
we must have "adequate military
strength to deter and if necessary
to defeat any aggressor," that the
North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion must be "revitalized and
broadened," that we should
strengthen the United Nations as
an instrument of peace and push
for UN elections in disputed
areas, that we must struggle un-
ceasingly against racial discrimi-
nation and colonialism, and take
steps to help raise the living
standards of peoples elsewhere
and pursue domestic policies of
stepped-up economic growth to
finance our programs.
Meany called for modernization
of the unemployment compensa-
tion and workmen's compensation
systems and improvement of the
Walsh-Healey and Davis-Bacon
Acts to include fringe benefits in
the "prevailing wage." concept, and
programs designed to meet ade-
quately the needs of railroad, mari-
time and government workers.
Pres. James B. Carey of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers denounced the record of the
House Rules Committee as a "dis-
grace and abomination of the dem-
ocratic process" and recommended
that the, committee "be deprived
of arbitrary and autocratic power
to smother or completely destroy
urgently needed legislation."
Carey, in testimony before the
platform committee, charged that
the committee has "thwarted and
frustrated" the will of the majority
in Congress because the Rules
Committee is ruled by a "willful"
reactionary coalition. He urged
that congressional procedures be
modified so that the committee's
majority would be "committed to
the implementation" of the plat-
form of the party in control of the
House.
LEATHER GOODS, Plastics and Novelty Workers' leaders were
reelected to a new term by delegates to the union's ninth regular
convention. They are shown being installed by AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler, who delivered a major address urging
workers to pin down the candidates on issues of concern to labor
and the nation in this election year.
Beware 'Political Bunco'
In Election — Schnitzler
Atlantic City — Turn a critical eye on the candidates and their
records and beware of the "political bunco artist," AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler advised trade unionists here.
Schnitzler told some 400 delegates to the ninth convention of
the Leather Goods, Plastics and Novelty Workers of the importance
of pinning down the candidate on^T
specific issues.
If a candidate tells you he
favors health care for the aged,
but it must be "voluntary ," then,
Schnitzler warned, "you have
hooked a poor fish who has
swallowed the propaganda line
of the American Medical Asso-
ciation."
The convention of the 35,000-
member union was highlighted by
the attendance for the first time of
a delegation from Puerto Rico,
where the union has been conduct-
Profit-Laden G-E Warns Workers
Wage Hikes May Be 'Inflationary'
The General Electric Co. — its profits up 15 percent in the past two years — has trotted out the
specter of "inflation" as its first answer to contract proposals submitted by the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers.
GE made no direct answer to the union's request for a 3.5 percent general wage increase, sup-
plemental unemployment benefits and other contract improvements for 68,000 IUE members.
Instead, the company aired its re-*^
actions in two internal publications
circulated in the ranks of manage-
ment.
The company's failure to reply
directly to the union apparently
spelled management rejection of a
plea from IUE Pres. James B.
Carey for an early start to nego-
tiations, instead of waiting for the
scheduled opening date of Aug. 15.
Carey had urged an earlier date
so that talks could proceed free
from the threat of the contract ter-
mination deadline.
The IUE*s demands — geared
to a program of economic prog-
ress and job security — include,
besides the SUB proposal, re-
quests for the union shop, com-
pany assumption of present
employe contributions to pension
and insurance funds, separation
pay to protect workers against
technological unemployment, and
creation of a joint labor-manage-
ment committee to recommend
equitable sharing by employes in
the benefits of automation.
GE, one of the nationwide lead-
ers in the battle for state enact-
ment of so-called "right-to-work"
laws, has consistenly refused labor's
demands for union shop clauses in
the past, and also has stolidly op-
posed any form of supplementary
jobless benefits.
The company, in its internal pub-
lications, denied union charges that
it negotiated on a "take-it-or-leave
it" basis, and said the proposals it
would present next month would
leave "adequate room for whatever
changes may become appropriate
in the light of any new and sig-
nificant facts."
GE charged that the union's de
mands would cost the company
$500 million over the two-year life
of the contract which the IUE has
proposed to replace the present five-
year pact which expires Oct. 1.
IUE Sec.-Treas. Al Hartnett,
denying the price tag GE placed
on the proposal, said that most of
the things contained in the un-
nion's bargaining program "are
already in effect in other indus-
tries. They are the product of
tried and tested bargaining and
they are within General Electric's
ability to pay."
Between 1957 and 1959, the un-
ion pointed out, GE's profits after
taxes zoomed 15 percent — from
$247.9 million to $280 million-
while employment plummeted by
36,000 or 12.5 percent during the
same period.
The union stepped up its bar-
gaining campaign by sending out
on the road a caravan telling the
graphic story of its 1960 "pro-
gram for peace and prosperity."
A self-contained trailer, it car-
ries displays and signs which are
shown at scheduled stops. The
back end is equipped for the pro-
jection of sound movies from be-
hind the screen. Slogans in vivid
colors are painted on side panels,
with each panel dominated by the
IUE seal.
Upon leaving IUE headquarters
in \Vashington, the first stage of
its tour was set for communities
with large GE installations. It was
scheduled to appear at local and
plant gate meetings, civil functions,
shopping centers, etc., to explain
the GE bargaining program.
The day before the caravan left
IUE headquarters in Washington,
the union formally presented its
1960 bargaining proposals to the
West inghouse Corp.
They include a wage increase
of at least 3.5 percent based on
the company's increased produc-
tion per man-hour, revision of
the cost-of-living clause, elimina-
tion of plant-to-plant wage dif-
ferentials, supplementary unem-
ployment benefits, separation
pay and improvements in |he
pension, insurance and health
programs.
The union also has proposed
formation of a joint labor-manage-
ment committee with a neutral
chairman to "recommend adjust-
ments necessary to properly dis-
tribute the benefits of automation."
The present 5-year contract expires
Oct. 15.
ing an organizing drive.
Pres. Norman Zukowsky, who
was re-elected along with the rest
of the union's leadership, said the
union took pride in its work in
New York City and elsewhere
"through which the Puerto Rican
newcomers are learning their first
lessons in industrial democracy.**
In other actions, the delegates:
• Approved a program aimed
at achieving contract uniformity.
Locals are advised to seek a 37.5-
hour week, improved welfare and
pension benefits, a severance fund
and a union label provision.
• Overwhelmingly voted an in-
crease in per capita payments to 95
cents from 65 cents.
• Passed constitutional changes
designed to streamline the union's
operations and bring the governing
laws into conformity with the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
The delegates also adopted reso-
lutions on the 1960 political cam-
paign, civil rights, international
problems and special industry
problems caused by "an inequitable
excise tax and an equally discrim-
inatory tariff ' policy."
Schnitzler warned the delegates
that most candidates will seem to
agree on most issues in general
terms. He offered several tests to
enable workers to "tell the phonies
from the real thing."
"If a candidate says he is all for
national defense, but we have to be
on guard against unbalancing the
budget, beware! He is giving you
double-talk," Schnitzler declared.
"If a candidate pledges full mil-
itary assistance to allied nations,
but balks at economic assistance,
take another look. This is the
latest escape hatch."
If a candidate says he favors
more schools and higher education-
al standards, but insists the respon-
sibility rests with the states and
communities, "that's the alarm
bell," Schnitzler said.
On the issue of civil rights, he
continued, the guilt of ''too-little,
too-late progress" is shared by
both parties along with the peo-
ple themselves.
Schnitzler pointed out that ef-
fective civil rights legislation has
been wrecked on the "shoals of
Senate filibusters" and a test of a
candidate's sincerity on civil rights
is whether he' will support a change
in the Senate rule to enable the
majority to act.
Page Fourteen
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY % 1960
House Rollcall on Minimum Wage Bill
Here is the rollcall by which the
House of Representatives voted,
211-203, to substitute the Kitchin-
Ayres bill for the compromise
Roosevelt minimum wage bill ap-
proved by the House Labor Com-
mittee. On labor's scoreboard, a
vote for the substitute was a wrong
vote (W); a vote against was a right
vote (R). A absent; NV not voting;
PR paired right; PW paired wrong.
(Numerals denote district;
AL: At Large.)
ALABAMA
1. Boykin (D) W
2. Grant (D) W
3. Andrews (D) W
4. Roberts (D) R
5. Rains (D) R
6. Selden (D) W
7. Elliott (D) R
8. Jones (D) R
9. Huddleston (D) W
ALASKA
AL Rivers (D) R
ARIZONA
J. Rhodes (R) W
2. Udall (D) R
ARKANSAS
1. Gathings (D) W
2. Mills (D) W
3. Trimble (D) R
4. Harris (D) W
5. Alford (D) A
6. Norrell (D) W
CALIFORNIA
1. Miller, Clem (D) R
2. Johnson (D) R
3. Moss (D) R
4. Mailliard (R) R
5. Shelley (D) R
6. Baldwin (R) R
7. Cohelan (D) R
8. Miller, G. P. (D) R
9. Younger (R) PW
10. Gubser (R) W
11. McFall (D) R
12. Sisk (D) R
13. Teague (R) W
14. Hagen (D) R
27. Sheppard (D) PR
28. Utt (R) W
29. Saund (D) R
30. Wilson (R) W
Los Angeles County
15. McDonough (R) W
16. Jackson (R) W
17. King (D) R
18. Hosmer (R) W
19. Holifield (D) R
20. Smith (R) W
21. Heistand (R) W
22. Holt (R) R
23. Doyle (D) R
24. Lipscomb (R) W
25. Kasem (D) R
26. Roosevelt (D) R
COLORADO
1. Rogers (D) R
2. Johnson (D) R
3. Chenoweth (R) W
4. Aspinall (D) R
CONNECTICUT
1. Daddario (D) R
2. Bowles (D) PR
3. Giaimo (D) R
4. Irwin (D) R
5. Monagan (D) R
AL Kowalski (D) R
DELAWARE
AL McDowell (D) R
FLORIDA
HAWAII
AL Inouye (D) R
IDAHO
1. Pfost (D) R
2. Budge (R) W
ILLINOIS
14. Hoffman (R) W
15. Mason (R) PW
16. Allen (R) W
17. Arends (R) W
18. Michel (R) W
19. Chiperfield (R) W
20. Simpson (R) W
21. Mack (D) R
22. Springer (R) W
23. Shipley (D) R
24. Price (D) R
25. Gray (D) R
Chicago-Cook County
1. Dawson (D) R
2. O'Hara (D) R
3. Murphy (D) R
4. Derwinski (R) W
5. Kkiczynski (D) R
6. O'Brien (D) R
7. Libonati (D) R
8. Rostenkowski (D) R
9. Yates (D) R
10. Collier (R) R
11. Pucinski (D) R
12. (Vacancy)
13. Church (R) W
INDIANA
1. Madden (D) R
2. Halleck (R) W
3. Brademas (D) R
4. Adair (R) W
5. Roush (D) R
6. Wampler (D) R
7. Bray (R) W
8. Denton (D) R
9. Hogan (D) R
10. Harmon (D) R
11. Barr (D) R
IOWA
1. Schwengel (R) W
2. Wolf (D) R
3. Gross (R) W
4. Kyi (R) W
5. Smith (D) R
6. Coad (D) R
7. Jensen (R) W
8. Hoeven (R) W
KANSAS
1. Avery (R) W
2. George (D) R
3. Hargis (D) R
4. Rees (R) W
5. Breeding (D) R
6. Smith (R) W
KENTUCKY
1. Stubblefield (D) W
2. Natcher (D) R
3. Burke (D) R
4. Chelf (£» ' W
5. Spence (D) R
6. Watts (D) W
7. Perkins (D) R
8. Siler (R) W
LOUISIANA
1. Hebert,(D) W
2. Boggs (D) R
3. Willis (D) W
4. Brooks (D) W
5. Passman (D) W
6. Morrison (D) R
7. Thompson (D) R
8. McSween (D) W
MAINE
1. Oliver (D) R
2. Coffin (D) R
3. Mclntire (R) W
1.
Cramer (R)
W
MARYLAND
2.
Bennett (D)
W
1.
Johnson (D)
R
3.
Sikes (D)
w
2.
Brewster (D)
R
4.
Fascell (D)
R
3.
Garmatz (D)
R
5.
Herlong (D)
w
4.
Fallon (D)
R
6.
Rogers (D)
w
5.
Lankford (D)
R
7.
Haley (D)
w
6.
Foley (D)
R
8.
Matthews (D)
w
7.
Friedel (D)
R
GEORGIA
MASSACHUSETTS
1.
Preston (D)
w
1.
Conte (R)
R
2.
Pilcher (D)
w
2.
Boland (D)
R
3.
Forrester (D)
w
3.
Philbin (D)
R
4.
Flynt (D)
w
4.
Donohue (D)
R
5.
Davis (D)
PW
5.
Rogers (R)
R
6.
Vinson (R)
A
6.
Bates (R)
R
7.
Mitchell (D)
R
7.
Lane (D)
R
8.
Blitch (D)
PW
8.
Macdonald (D)
R
9.
Landrum (D)
w
9.
Keith (R)
R
10.
Brown (D)
w
10.
Curtis (R)
W
11.
O'Neil (D)
R
12.
McCormack (D)
R
13.
Burke (D)
R
14.
Martin (R)
MICHIGAN
W
L.
jvieaaer ^kj
1X7
3.
Johansen (R)
W
4.
Hoffman (R)
W
5.
Ford (R)
W
6.
Chamberlain (R)
W
7.
O'Hara (D)
R
8.
Bentley (R)
PW
9.
Griffin (R)
W
10.
Cederberg (R)
w
11.
Knox (R)
w
12.
Bennett (R)
R
18.
Broomfield (R)
Detroit-Wayne County
w
1.
Machrowicz (D)
R
13.
Diggs (D)
R
14.
Rabaut (D)
R
15.
Dingell (D)
R
16.
Lesinski (D)
R
17.
Griffiths (D)
MINNESOTA
R
1.
Quie (R)
W
2.
Nelsen (R)
w
3.
Wier (D)
R
4.
Karth (D)
R
5.
Judd (R)
W
6.
Marshall (D)
w
7.
Andersen (R)
w
8.
Blatnik (D)
R
9.
Langen (R)
w
1.
Abernethy (D)
w
2.
Whitten (D)
w
3.
Smith (D)
w
4.
Williams (D)
w
5.
Winstead (D)
w
6.
Colmer (D)
MISSOURI
w
1.
Karsten (D)
R
2.
Curtis (R)
w
3.
Sullivan (D)
R
4.
Randall (D)
x R
5.
Boiling (D)
R
6.
Hull (D)
W
7.
Brown (D)
R
8.
Carnahan (D)
A
9.
Cannon (D)
R
10.
Jones (D)
W
11.
Moulder (D)
MONTANA
R
1.
Metcalf (D)
R
9
Anr1p>rcnn ^T~^i
■TY11UCI OKJil
NEBRASKA
A
1.
Weaver (R)
w
2.
Cunningham (K)
T>
K
J.
p rn «V (TX\
urocK \uj
VV
TT
A
jvicvjiniey \D)
NEVADA
VV
AL
Baring (D)
NEW HA Mr » HIKE
R
1.
~Merrow (R)
R
2.
Bass (R)
NEW JERSEY
W
i
i.
ill \mS.)
-p
XV
9
vjiciiii \*^-J
XV
j •
w
TT
4.
Thompson (D)
R
5.
Frelinghuysen (R)
W
6.
Dwyer (R)
R
7.
Widnall (R)
R
8.
Canfield (R)
R
9.
Osmers (R)
R
10.
Rodino (D)
R
11.
Addonizio (D)
R
12.
Walhauser (R)
R
13.
Gallagher (D)
R
14.
Daniels (D) .
R
AL
Montoya (D)
R
AL
Morris (D)
NEW YORK
W
i
l.
wainwrigni ikj
TT
9
Derounian (R)
XAI
TT
J.
r>ecKer yK)
\X7
TT
9£
ZD.
uooiey {ts.)
TT
27.
w
28]
St. George (R)
w
29.
Wharton (R)
w
30.
O'Brien (D)
R
31.
Taylor (R)
R
32.
Stratton (D)
R
33.
Kilburn (R)
W
34.
Pirnie (R)
w
35.
Riehlman (R)
w
36.
Taber (R)
w
37.
Robison (R)
w
38. Weis (R)
39. Ostertag (R)
40. Miller (R)
41. Dulski (D)
42. Pillion (R)
43. Goodell (R)
New York CHy
4. Halpern (R)
Bosch (R)
Holtzman (D)
7. Delaney (D)
8. Anfuso (D)
Keogh (D)
Kelly <D)
11. Celler (D)
12. Dorn (R)
13. Multer (D)
14. Rooney (D)
15. Ray (R)
16. Powell (D)
Lindsay (R)
Santangelo (D)
Farbstein (D)
Teller (D)
Zelenko (D)
22. Healey (D)
23. Gilbert (D)
24. Buckley (D)
Fino (R)
5.
6.
9.
10.
25
NORTH CAROLINA
W
W
W
R
W
W
R
W
R
R
R
PR
R
R
R
R
R
W
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
PR
R
1. Bonner (D)
W
2. Fountain (D)
W
3. Barden (D)
w
4. Cooley (D)
w
5. Scott (D)
w
6. Durham (D)
w
" 7. Lennon (D)
w
O. XVI IX 11 111
w
TT
9. Alexander (D)
w
10. Jonas (R)
w
11. Whitener (D)
w
12. (Vacancy)
NORTH DAKOTA
AL Burdick (D)
R
AL Short (R)
w
villi LI
1. Scherer (R)
w
2. Hess (R)
w
3. Schenck (R)
w
4. McCulloch (R)
w
5. Latta (R)
w
7. Brown (R)
w
8. Betts (R)
w
9. Ashley (D)
R
10. Moeller (D)
R
11. Cook (D)
R
12. Devine (R)
w
13. Baumhart (R)
w
14. Ayres (R)
w
15. Henderson (R)
w
16. Bow (R)
w
17. Levering (D)
R
18. Hays (D)
R
19. Kirwan (D)
R
20. Feighan (D)
R
21. Vanik (D)
R
22. Bolton (R)
W
23. Minshall (R)
w
OKLAHOMA
1. Belcher (R)
w
2. Edmondson (D)
PR
3. Albert (D)
R
4. Steed (D)
A
5. Jarman (D)
W
6. Morris (D)
A
OREGON
1. Norblad (R) *'
W
2. Ullman (D)
R
3. Green (D)
R
4. , Porter (D)
R
PENNSYLVANIA
7. Milliken (R)
W
8. Curtin (R)
W
9. Dague (R)
w
10. Prokop (D)
R
11. Flood (D)
R
12. Fenton (R)
W
13. Lafore (R)
w
14. Rhodes (D)
R
15. Walter (D)
R
16. Mumma (R)
W
17. Schneebeli (R)
w
18. (Vacancy)
19. Quigley (D)
R
20. Van Zandt (R)
W
21. Dent (D)
R
22. Saylor (R)
W
23. Gavin (R)
W
24. Kearns (R)
w
25. Clark (D)
R
26. Morgan (D)
R
27. Fulton (R)
R
28. Moorehead (D)
R
29. Corbett (R)
30. Holland (D)
Philadelphia
1. Barrett (D)
2. Granahan (D)
3. Byrne (D)
4. Nix (D)
5. Green (D) *
6. Toll (D)
RHODE ISLAND
1. Forand (D)
2. Fogarty (D)
SOUTH CAROLINA
1. Rivers (D)
2. Riley (D)
3. Dorn (D)
4. Ashmore (D)
5. Hemphill (D)
6. McMillan (D)
SOUTH DAKOTA
1. McGovern (D)
2. Berry (R)
TENNESSEE
1. Reece (R)
2. Baker. (R)
3. Frazier (D)
4. Evins (D)
5. Loser (D)
6. Bass (D)
7. Murray (D)
8. Everett (D)
9. Davis (D)
TEXAS
1. Patman (D)
2. Brooks (D)
3. Beckwith (D)
4. Rayburn (D)
5. Alger (R)
6. Teague (D)
7. Dowdy (D)
8. Thomas (D)
9. Thompson (D)
10. Thornberry (D)
11. Poage (D)
12. Wright (D)
13. Ikard (D)
14. Young (D)
15. Kilgore (D)
16. Rutherford (D)
17. Burleson (D)
18. Rogers (D)
19. Mahon (D)
20. Kilday (D)
21. Fisher (D)
22. Casey (D)
UTAH
1. Dixon (R)
2. King (D)
VERMONT
AL Meyer (D)
VIRGINIA
1. Downing (D)
2. Hardy (D)
3. Gary (D)
Abbitt (D)
5. Tuck (D)
6. Poff (R)
7. Harrison (D)
8. Smith (D)
9. Jennings (D)
0. Broyhill (R)
WASHINGTON
1. Pelly (R)
2. Westland (R)
3. (Vacancy)
4. May (R)
5. Horan (R)
6. Tollefson (R)
7. Magnuson (D)
WEST VIRGINIA
1. Moore (R)
2. Staggers (D)
3. Bailey (D)
4. Hechler (D)
5. Kee (D)
6. Slack (D)
WISCONSIN
1. Flynn (D)
2. Kastenmeier (D)
3. Withrow (R)
4. Zablocki (D)
5. Reuss (D)
6. Van Pelt (R)
7. Laird (R)
8. Byrnes (R)
9. Johnson (D)
10. O'Konski (R)
WYOMING
AL Thomson (R)
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
W
W
w
w
w
w
R
w
w
w
w
w
w
R
w
w
w
w
R
w
NV
w
w
w
R
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
R
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
w
R
R
w
R
R
R
R
R
R
R
A
R
R
W
w
w
R
R
W
AFlrCIO NEWS. WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Page Fifteea
Status of Legislative Program :
Major Bills Await Action
As Congress Takes Recess
Here is the status of the AFL-CIO's 12-point legislative program as Congress recessed for the na-
tional political conventions:
Issue
1. Minimum wage: AFL-CIO called for a $1.25
minimum and coverage for 7.5 million more
workers not presently protected by the Fair La-
bor Standards Act, as provided by Kennedy-
Roosevelt bill.
2. Aid to depressed areas: AFL-CIO-supported
Douglas-Cooper-Spence bill would have provided
$251 million in loans and grants to help economic
recovery of areas of high, continuing unemploy-
ment.
3. Civil rights: AFL-CIO called for strong action
to extend federal protection of civil rights of all
Americans.
4. Health benefits for aged: Forand bill, which
would provide hospital, nursing home care and
surgical benefits for the aged within the social
security system, was supported by AFL-CIO.
5. Improved unemployment insurance: AFL-
CIO. asked federal standards for unemployment
compensatioa to raise benefits to 50 percent of a
worker's wages, to a maximum of two-thirds of
the state's average weekly wage, and extend pay-
ments to 39 weeks, as provided in Karsten-Mach-
rowicz, Kennedy-Case (N. J.)-McCarthy bill.
6. Federal school aid: AFL-CIO supported Mur-
ray-Metcalf bills providing federal grants to states
and local school districts to build new classrooms,
increase teachers' salaries. Also supported more
modest Thompson, amended McNamara bills.
7. Housing: AFL-CIO urged substantial increase
in public housing construction, encouragement of
middle income housing, expanded slum clearance
and urban redevelopment programs.
8. Economic growth: Use of federal economic
power advocated by AFL-CIO to encourage eco-
nomic growth. Congress specifically asked to
reorganize Federal Reserve Board, refuse Admin-
istration request to increase interest rate ceiling
on long-term government bonds.
9. Labor standards: AFL-CIO asked legislation
to include fringe benefits in "prevailing wage"
determinations under the Davis-Bacon Act, to
modernize Walsh-Healey Act along same lines
and eliminate undue delays and legal entangle-
ments in minimum wage determinations under
Walsh-Healey.
10. Taxation: Closing of tax loopholes such as
dividend income credit, capital gains tax, exces-
sive depletion allowances, and an increase in per-
sonal exemptions were asked by AFL-CIO.
11. Resources: AFL-CIO asked broad expansion
of atomic power program, aid for construction
of sewage treatment facilities, strong, uniform
standards for protection of atomic workers, pro-
tection of 160- acre limitation in San Luis re-
clamation project.
12. Farm program: AFL-CIO supported legis-
lation to increase income of family farmers, to
use farm production to improve diets at home
and abroad, to bring economic security to farm
workers.
Status s
House passed and sent to Senate a Republican
Southern Democratic substitute raising minimum
to $1.15 for those presently-covered, to $1.00 for
those to whom coverage would be extended. Cov-
erage would be extended only to a potential 1.4
million retail workers, without overtime protec-
tion. House also exempted 14,000,000 presently-
covered workers. Pending Senate bill would
eventually raise minimum to $1.25 for all cov-
ered workers, extend coverage to nearly 5 million
more workers.
Bill passed by both Houses, but was vetoed by
Pres. Eisenhower. Attempt to override veto
failed.
Congress passed and President signed a watered-
down voting rights bill only.
House passed social security bill which provided
"pauper's oath" protection for a small number of
aged persons, but rejected benefits under social
security system. Senate Democrats have an-
nounced an attempt to include Forand-type legis-
lation by amending the House-passed bill.
Hearings were held but House adopted only minor
technical changes.
House passed $1.3 billion Thompson bill for
grants for school construction. Senate passed
$1.9 billion McNamara bill for construction and
teachers' salaries. Legislation currently blocked
because House Rules Committee refused to report
a rule to send the bills to Senate-House confer-
ence.
Bill providing expanded federal programs passed
by Senate, reported by House Banking & Cur
rency Committee. Rules Committee has refused
to clear bill for House vote.
Congress has refused to raise the interest rate
ceiling, but has failed to act on legislation to re-
organize Federal Reserve Board. Administra-
tion's tight-money, high interest rate policies con
tinue to stunt economic growth.
Congress failed to act. No committee action.
CEREMONIES EFFECTING official order requiring the Clothing
Workers' union label on all shirts worn by officers and uniformed
members of the New York City Fire Dept. show (left to right)
Capt. Joseph Lovett of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association;
Fire Commissioner Edward F. Cavanaugh, Jr.; Charles J. Garrahan
of the ACWA Shirt Makers Joint Board, and Pres. Moe Rosen of
the Union Label & Service Trades Council of Greater New York.
'Slip' Perils Wage Law
As Congress Recesses
Senate approved and House accepted amendment
partially restricting depletion allowances. Sen-
ate also approved, but House rejected, amend-
ments closing dividend credit and expense account
loopholes.
Congress passed, but Pres. Eisenhower vetoed,
bill to increase federal grants for sewage disposal
facilities. Congress approved legislation retain-
ing 160-acre limitation in San Luis project, failed
to act on atomic power program, safety for atomic
workers.
No major action by Congress in these fields.
(Continued from Page 1)
no overtime ceiling on hours
worked.
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller and Special Coun-
sel Arthur J. Goldberg, co-chair-
men of labor's minimum wage
committee, called on the Senate,
when it resumes deliberations Aug.
8, to pass the Kennedy bill, already
reported by the Senate Labor Com-
mittee, which would raise the mini-
mum, by steps, to $1.25 and cover
an added 4.9 million workers.
They denounced the House bill
as "unfair, unjust and flagrantly
discriminatory to both the work-
ers it purports to cover and those
who remain excluded," and said
the measure was "political f akery
at its worst."
Passage of the bill introduced by
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Biemiller and Goldberg said, would
be a step toward bypassing the
"pretense" at legislation enacted by
the House, so that "justice can be
achieved for the nation's needy
workers" when the varying meas-
ures go to conference.
Hope for 'Reason'
"We hope," the co-chairmen of
the minimum wage committee said,
"reason prevails between now and
the time Congress reconvenes in
August."
The minimum wage measure will
vie with proposals for health care
for the aged through the social
security system when the Senate
resumes deliberations in a rare post-
convention session. The Senate
Finance Committee has completed
two days of hearings without any
indication of immediate agreement
on sending a measure to the floor.
Appearing before the commit-
tee headed by Sen. Harry Flood
Byrd (D-Va.), AFL-CIO Social
Security Dir. Nelson H. Cruik-
shank assailed both the limited
House version, which would pro-
vide aid only to the medically
indigent, and the Eisenhower
Administration proposal for fed-
eral-state subsidies to private
insurance firms.
Reiterating labor's long-standing
support of the social security prin-
ciple, the AFL-CIO spokesman
said this was the "most appropriate
method" of insuring meaningful aid
"as a matter of right" without the
means test" requirement in the
House-passed measure.
The Administration plan, Cruik-
shank charged, was offered "not
to help the old people but to help
the Administration." He added
that its "glittering list of potential
benefits" was negated by the fact
that much of the cost would be left
to the aged, while the balance — in
the form of $1.2 billion a year in
subsidies — would be available only
if state legislatures appropriated
funds to match federal grants.
He accused the Administra-
tion of attempting to "frighten"
the nation into believing "that
social insurance is too costly,"
through the use of "exaggerated
figures" which "reflect slogans
we have long heard from the
Chamber of Commerce and the
insurance companies."
When the House resumes its ses-
sions Aug. 15 — a week after the
Senate reconvenes — it will be faced
with the problem of prying loose
from the powerful, conservative-
controlled Rules Committee three
pieces of legislation considered of
major importance by labor.
Stalled in the committee headed
by Rep. Howard Smith (D-Va.) and
dominated by a coalition of con-
servative Republicans and southern
Democrats are federal aid to educa-
tion, omnibus housing legislation,
and a measure that would remove
construction industry jobsite picket-
ing from Taft-Hartley's secondary
boycott restrictions.
With the extended session, the
"calendar Wednesday" technique
or the discharge petition may be
employed by the House to break
the Rules Committee's strangle-
hold on these measures.
Meanwhile, liberal Democrats
began marshaling their forces for
a new drive — probably in the open-
ing days of the 87th Congress — to
curtail the Rules Committee's power
to stifle and delay major legislation.
Legislative Action
Urged by McDonald
Pres. David J. McDonald
of the Steelworkers has sent
telegrams to majority and
minority leaders in both
branches of Congress point-
ing out that resumption of
sessions in August offers a
chance "to meet with prompt
and clear-cut action the criti-
cal problem of unemploy-
ment."
He urged an 8-point pro-
gram including implementa-
tion of the Employment Act
of 1946, aid to distressed
areas, federal funds for
school construction, "genu-
ine" medical care insurance
for the retired, federal hous-
ing, a public works program,
raising the minimum wage to
$1.25 an hour and expanding
coverage, and increasing and
extending unemployment
compensation benefits as in
the Kennedy-McCarthy bill.
Page Sixteen
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 9, 1960
Kennedy- Johnson Battle Taking Shape
Stevenson, Symington
Put Hope in Deadlock
(Continued from Page 1)
electoral college votes against the
Democratic nominee if they did not
like the convention choice and
platform.
The viewpoint of convention
managers seemed to be that in-
dividual delegates who had, as a
matter of record, been "Democrats
for Eisenhower" might be chal-
lenged but not entire delegations.
• Rep. Chester Bowles CD-
Conn.), chairman of the platform
committee, sought to develop a
platform setting forth a philosophy
rather than a lengthy and ambigu-
ous detailed program, but his suc-
cess in the project was uncertain.
As hotel headquarters opened
for all the widely-mentioned can-
didates and some of the favorite
sons, the "stop Kennedy" move-
ment was a factor in convention
affairs but had not noticeably
gathered steam.
Kennedy spokesmen including
the senator's brother, Robert F.
Kennedy, continued to claim vic-
tory on an "early ballot" and be-
lieved the senator had substantially
strengthened his appeal by his tele-
vised news conference performance
rejecting Truman's suggestion that
he "withdraw" as "not ready" for
the presidency.
They felt that Kennedy had sur-
mounted the direct Truman attack
and has turned his relative youth —
he is 43 — into an asset by his delib-
erate bid for support as a spokes-
man of the postwar generation.
They counted up more than 600
first-ballot votes of the 761 needed
to nominate and worked hard to
produce the additional 100-odd
votes for a majority among the
favorite-son and uncommitted dele-
gations such as Pennsylvania, Cali-
fornia, Illinois and New Jersey.
Johnson in his press conference
formally announcing his candidacy
said his managers informed him
that he would have 500 or more
votes on the first ballot and that
Kennedy would have fewer than
600.
Johnson supporters suggested
that Kennedy would lose votes fast
if not nominated on the first bal-
lot, naming Indiana, Ohio and
Maryland as states where the Mas-
sachusetts senator would lose. They
thought Johnson might win on the
fifth ballot.
Symington's managers claimed
that a "solid 600" delegates —
more than a third of the total in
the convention — would remain
aloof from both Kennedy and
Johnson, and that in the end 'it
will be a contest between Syming-
ton and Stevenson."
Totally without aid and comfort
from Stevenson himself, the former
nominee's managers fought hard
for hotel headquarters space, con-
vention floor passes and other as-
sets. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt,
widow of the late Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Stevenson's most
formidable backer, was scheduled
to begin a round of direct appeals
to state delegations in behalf of the
governor.
President Asked to Call
Economic Conference
UAW Pres. Walter P. Reuther has asked Pres. Eisenhower "to
carry out your responsibilities under the Employment Act of 1946"
by calling a national conference of leaders from all walks of life
to study "where the economy is going and where we want it to go"
and thus ward off a threatened recession.
Despite propaganda claims of$"
prosperity, Reuther wrote the Pres-
ident, the "hard facts" make it
clear the country does not have
even a "reasonable approximation"
of the maximum employment, pro-
duction and purchasing power the
act sets forth as the goals of na-
tional economic policy.
Pointing out that the act gives
the federal government the re-
sponsibility of using "all practica-
ble means" to promote the goals,
Reuther said:
"Our economy is limping pain-
fully. Unemployment is far too
high, in fact higher than at this
time last year. Sharp production
declines in key industries are hold-
ing back the economy as a whole.
"I believe a growing number
of Americans are deeply dis-
turbed at the unhealthy state of
our economy, and there are
alarming signs that unless action
Lee Minton Proposes
Nixon-Mitchell Ticket
Philadelphia, Pa.— Lee W. Min-
ton, president of the Glass Bottle
Blowers and an AFL-CIO vice
president, has urged the Republi-
can party to nominate Sec. of La-
bor James P. Mitchell as GOP can-
didate for the vice presidency of
the United States.
In a telegram to George Bloom,
chairman of the Pennsylvania State
Republican Committee, Minton
said: "As a lifelong Republican
and as a representative of organ-
ized labor, I urge the Republican
party to support the candidacy of
James Mitchell on the Nixon
ticket."
is taken our troubles may soon
grow much worse "
Reuther pointed out that the Em-
ployment Act envisages national
consultation on the state of the
economy when conditions appear
to warrant it, and added that "in
view of the seriousness of the pres-
ent situation," the time has come.
PHILADELPHIA SIGNERS of petitions with names of 100,000 supporters of the Forand Bill prin-
ciple of health care brought this king-size postcard to the office of Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.).
Pictured left to right are John Edelman, Textile Workers' Union of America; Julia Maietta, Cloth-
ing Workers; Sen. Clark; Sara Fredgant, Clothing Workers; AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew
Biemillerf Joseph T. Kelley and William J. Brennan, Philadelphia labor political education leaders;
and William Leader, Hosiery Workers. ,
Meany Urges Affiliates to Step Up
Forand Bill Drive During Recess
Organized labor will use the month-long congressional recess to renew its efforts on behalf of legis-
lation providing health care for the aged through the nation's social security system, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany has declared.
The suspension of congressional activities — until Aug. 8 for the Senate and Aug. 15 for the House
— offers the trade union movement a "unique and unexpected opportunity" to press its campaign in
this direction "while the legislators'^
are back home," he said.
In letters to the presidents of na-
tional and international unions and
state and local central bodies,
Meany called,, on the 13.5 million
members of organized labor to "in-
tensify your efforts" on behalf of
legislation similar to that offered
by Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R. I.).
Organized labor, Meany de-
clared, is "irrevocably committed
to the basic principle" of making
health care benefits for senior
citizens available, as a matter of
right, under the social security
system.
A Senate proposal embracing
this principle has been introduced
by Sen. Clinton P. Anderson (D-
N. M.) on behalf of a group of
liberals, Meany noted, adding that
General Board to Meet
On Political Endorsement
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler have sent all members of the AFL-CIO General
Board the formal call to a meeting on Aug. 17 in the Drake
Hotel, Chicago, starting at 10 a. m. to determine labor's posi-
tion in the presidential elections.
The call pointed out that under the AFL-CIO constitu-
tion, the General Board shall decide all policy questions re-
ferred to it by the Executive Council.
"The Executive Council," it continued, "has referred to the
forthcoming General Board meeting the responsibility of
weighing the voting records of the Democratic and Republican
parties, their platform commitments and the individual rec-
ords of the candidates for President and Vice President of the
United States.. The General Board will determine the AFL-
CIO position and accordingly make such position known to
its entire membership."
The General Board is composed of all members of the
Executive Council and the president or other principal officer
of each affiliate and each trade and industrial department. The
call advised the members that the Executive Council decided
the meeting and all future meetings shall be executive in
character, with only the permanent representative of each
organization permitted to attend, and substitute or alternate
representation barred*
of the varying measures pending in
the Senate the Anderson bill "has
the best chance of adoption/'
Accompanying Meany's letter
was a fact sheet on the present
status of social security legislation
in the wake of House adoption of
a token measure that would use
federal and state grants to care for
only those senior citizens who
would be determined, through a
"means test," to be medical paupers.
Senate Bill Expected
The fact sheet, prepared by the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security,
forecast that the Senate Finance
Committee, which held two days of
public hearings just prior to the re-
cess, would report out a social se-
curity measure shortly after the
Senate reconvenes.
Labor's aim, the fact sheet said,
"is to have the Anderson amend-
ment adopted if possible by the
committee and, failing that, by floor
action."
The measure introduced by the
New Mexico Democrat would
make benefits available to social
security recipients at age 68, with
financing to come from a special
social security fund financed by an
increase of one-quarter of 1 per-
cent each in the OASDI tax on
employers and employes.
Benefits would include hos-
pital care up to 365 days; 180
days of skilled nursing care in
the home during recovery; 365
days of visiting nurse services,
and such special in-hospital serv-
ices as laboratory, X-ray and
private duty nurses.
In addition to contacts with sen-
H. J, Powell Sentenced
For Defrauding Union
New York — Hyman J. Powell,
ousted in December 1958 as secre-
tary-treasurer of the Jewelry Work-
ers on charges of financial irregu-
larities, has been sentenced to a
year in jail for using $1,200 in un-
ion funds to finance a trip to Eu-
rope for his wife and daughter.
ators and congressmen while at
home during the congressional re-
09-6-i
cess, Meany said, trade unionists
should "intensify your efforts to
mobilize the widest possible com-
munity support for Forand-type
legislation such as the Anderson
amendments."
The AFL-CIO president urged
the labor movement to concen-
trate in particular on rallying sup-
port among the Golden Age Clubs
and other organizations of elderly
or retired persons.
Despite the setback in the House,
Meany declared in the letters,
"there is still time to win this
fight" in 1960 if all the members
of affiliates exert their efforts in
behalf of health care legislation.
Unions Contribute
Labor for Charity
Big Spring, Tex. — The Howard
County Assn. for Crippled Child-
ren and Adults will have a new
building soon, thanks to union
members who are donating their
labor and businessmen who will
supply building materials.
Plans developed after the Cham-
ber of Commerce manager asked
Frank Parker, business manager of
Operating Engineers' Local 826,
whether union members would
paint an old building donated to the
association.
The union people decided a new
building was in order, and all
pitched in to help build it — mem-
bers of the Painters, Carpenters,
Bricklayers and other unions.
nemployment Soars to
illion
Vol. v
Im««I wtthly at
015 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Secend Clan Postaae Paid at Washington, D. C Saturday, JllK 16, 1960
No. 29
Kennedy, Liberal Platform
Spark Democratic Drive
Senator Pledges
All-Out Campaign
Civil Rights,
Growth Key
ToProgram
Los Angeles — A sweeping
pledge to promote aggressive poli-
cies of economic growth and to
reform the labor laws marked the
Democratic National Convention
platform adopted here.
In a 15,000- word statement of
principles keyed to "the rights of
man," the convention also:
• Pledged to promote free-
dom throughout the world by force
of example and by foreign policies,
both economic and diplomatic.
• Adopted over a minority pro-
test the most forward-looking pro-
gram of civil rights in the history
of American political parties.
• Called for revision of fiscal
policies and repudiated the "notion"
that the U.S., "with a half-trillion
dollar gross national product and
nearly half the world's industrial
Text of planks on collective
bargaining, civil rights and eco-
nomic growth on page 5.
resources, cannot afford to meet the
needs of her people and in our
world relationships."
• "Urged" that in the 87th
Congress procedures and rules be
revised "so that majority rule pre-
vails and decisions can be made
after reasonable debate without
being blocked by a minority in
either house."
• Pledged action on a long list
of domestic programs such as
school aid, minimum wage, housing
(Continued on Page 2)
ECONOMIC LAG during past seven years is emphasized by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany during presentation to Platform Com-
mittee at Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles as he
presented labor's proposals for "a program for economic growth."
5.5 Percent in June:
Meany Praises Platform
As 'Sound and Liberal 9
Los Angeles — AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany hailed the
Democratic convention platform committee's majority report
as "sound and liberal" and deserving the "enthusiastic sup-
port of every union member" at the convention here.
The text of Meany's statement follows:
"This is a sound, liberal platform — the most progressive
and most constructive in my memory.
"The committee has courageously faced the No. 1 moral
issue of our time — civil rights. It has proposed a program
of immediate action which will meet and solve that prob-
lem. I hope it will be adopted exactly as submitted and
that all crippling amendments will be overwhelmingly defeated.
"The platform merits, and I predict, will receive the enthu-
siastic support of every union member at this convention.
"We in the labor movement fully expect that the candi-
dates of the Democratic Party will not only run on this
platform but that they will translate it into law. without equi-
Tocation and without delay."
Jobless Rate Near
Recession Levels
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's rate of unemployment in June hit the third highest
level for the month in the postwar years, according to the govern-
ment's report on the job situation.
The key rate of unemployment, adjusted for seasonal influences,
jumped from 4.9 percent in May to 5.5 percent in June.
This was exceeded in postwar
Junes only by the 7 percent and 6
percent in the recession years of
1958 and 1949, respectively, and
matched the 5.5 percent of 1954,
also a recession year.
The Labor Dept. reported that
unemployment increased by 964,-
000 over the month to a total of
4.4 million, while employment rose
to a record high of 68.6 million.
The 4.4 million jobless was the
second highest total in postwar
Junes, topped only by the 5.4
million jobless in 1958. It com-
pares to 4 million jobless in June
1959.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
recently predicted before the Dem-
ocratic National Convention plat-
form committee that the sharp jump
in the unemployed for June would
be "frightening."
The department attributed the
sharp increases in the job and job-
less totals to the entrance of 2.2
{Continued on Page 9)
By Willard Shelton
Los Angeles — The Democratic Party has turned over its leader-
ship to 43-year-old Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, one of the young-
est men ever nominated for the presidency by either party, who
promptly pledged a fighting campaign and said: "We will win."
The delegates nominated Kennedy on the first ballot after ap-
proving a platform that committed the party to sharp reversal of
the Eisenhower Administration's "tight-money" policies and stifling
of domestic welfare measures and wrote a new program of action
in the civil rights field unparalleled in previous party platforms.
Pledging a strengthened United States and free world to resist
Communist aggression, the platform also warned that this country
could bear its proper share of the burden only if our potential was
unleashed, and promised policies to produce an economic growth
rate of approximately 5 percent a year in place of the slow-paced
2.7 percent annual growth rate allowed by Eisenhower programs.
The convention had not yet ^~
selected a running mate for the
party's standard bearer as the
AFL-CIO News went to press.
The Kennedy triumph came as
a climax to a week of tense maneu-
vering and angry charges and
counter-charges that themselves cli-
maxed a long struggle between Ken-
nedy and his rivals that began when
the Massachusetts senator an-
nounced his candidacy last January.
A last-minute drive for the re-
nomination of Adlai E. Stevenson,
launched by Mrs. Eleanor Roose-
velt, was carried through straight to
the rollcall.
Stevenson Drive
The powerful Senate Majority
Leader, Sen. Lyndon Johnson of
Texas, won the support of the South
except for two favorite-son delega-
(Continued on Page 3)
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Clerks Ask Nationwide
Boycott of Sears Chain
A nation-wide boycott of all Sears Roebuck & Co. stores in the
United States and Canada has been recommended by the National
Chain Store Committee of the Retail Clerks.
The committee reviewed a report of the firing May 25 of 262
Sears employes who refused to cross a Machinists' picket line in
San Francisco, and voted to ask^
every central, county and state la-
bor-body, and every building trades
council to support a boycott in-
stituted by the San Francisco Labor
Council after the mass firings.
The report accused the big
chain store firm of "pursuing
a national policy of anti-union-
ism." The committee instructed
seven RCIA regional subcom-
mittees to spearhead the boycott
wherever Sears has stores, and
called on union members every-
where to stay away from Sears
cash registers until the company
gives full redress to the 262 fir-
ing victims.
"The Clerks have borne the ma-
jor burden of Sears' anti-unionism,"
the committee said. "But the vic-
tims include members of several
other union organizations.
"We recommend that the Chain
Store Committee develop the
broadest type of participation. Lo-
cal committees should be formed
and should include all of the or-
(Continued on Page 10)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
1
COPIES OF AFL-CIO'S detailed document containing "program for economic
growth" which organized labor submitted to Platform Committee at Democratic
National Convention were presented by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany to the
three leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. In first
Plank on Civil Rights
Strongest Ever Adopted
Los Angeles — The strongest civil rights platform plank in Amer-
ican political history was approved overwhelmingly here by the
Democratic National Convention with a minimum of oratorical
bombast, without a rollcall or the whisper of a Dixie "bolt."
The civil rights program reported by the platform committee
won warm endorsement from AFL-^
CIO Pres. George Meany, who said
the committee had "courageously
faced the No. 1 moral issue of our
time."
The convention turned down a
minority report, offered by 10
southern states, to strike out the
platform proposals on civil rights,
and shouted its approval of a pro-
gram giving moral support to peace-
ful "sit-in" demonstrations. It called
on the next President to use his
"full powers, legal and moral," to
ensure "the beginning of good-faith
compliance" with the Supreme
Court's school desegregation deci-
sions "by 1963" — 100th anniver-
sary of the Emancipation Proclama-
tion.
The rights section was framed
by the committee after public
hearings in which labor strongly
backed the proposals submitted
by a broad Leadership Confer-
ence on Civil Rights declaring
that the time for action was now.
Meany told the committee that
requests from southern spokesmen
for "patience" and an "educational"
approach came "too late." He had
learned as a U.S. delegate to the
United Nations General Assembly
at the time of the Little Rock crisis,
he said, that any deficiencies in
American practice had "repercus-
sions all over the world."
There must be government ma-
chinery to translate principles into
actuality "for all citizens," he
warned, and it is "all right to say
the problem will be solved by rea-
son, but the world is moving too
fast."
Reuther Backs Proposals
Walter P. Reuther, president of
the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept. and of the Auto Workers,
specifically endorsed the civil rights
proposals of the leadership confer-
ence, presented to the platform
committee by Roy Wilkins of the
National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People.
James B. Carey, president of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers and secretary-treasurer of the
IUD, testified in association with
the leadership conference program.
Other labor witnesses also warned
that the U.S. must set an example in
eliminating economic, social and
political disadvantages to minority
groups.
The platform committee's civil
rights program, in line with a
reported pledge by Chairman
Chester Bowles (D-Conn.) to
avoid sectional self-righteousness
and "abrasive" words, acknowl-
edged failures in many sections
of American society.
"It is the duty of Congress to
enact" necessary laws to promote
constitutional rights, the platform
stated. It declared that "what is
required now is effective moral and
political leadership by the whole
executive branch of our government
to make equal opportunity a living
reality."
Discrimination in "housing and
employment" is a problem in the
North, it suggested, just as "dis-
crimination in voting, education
and the administration of justice"
is an issue in another area.
'The time has come to assure
equal access for all Americans to
all areas of community life, includ-
ing voting booths, schoolrooms,
jobs, housing and public facilities."
The minority protest of 10 south-
ern states charged that the majority
was seeking to enthrone the federal
government as "unlimited govern-
ment."
It placed heavy emphasis on an
argument that actions urged by the
majority were prohibited by the
10th Amendment reserving powers
to the states.
Despite the sharp differences of
opinions the debate was relatively
restrained and free of supercharged
emotional overtones.
The contrast between 1960 and
1948 was striking.
Twelve years ago, a relatively
mild declaration of civil rights was
introduced only as a minority re-
port. It was carried only on a roll-
call in which the decisive vote was
not reached until Wisconsin — sec-
ond last state on the alphabetical
roll — with some border and moun-
tain states supporting the South.
Adoption of the 1948 plank pro-
voked a convention bolt by the
Mississippi delegation and half trie
Alabama delegation.
This year the far stronger civil
rights plank came from the plat-
form committee majority, with
only 10 southern states signing
the minority protest, with no del-
egation "bolt" and not even a
rollcall.
Informed southern sources said
that Mississippi "states' rights" lead-
ers might seek to organize a later
upheaval and that some support for
a new Dixiecrat drive would de-
velop elsewhere in the South.
New Pamphlet Cites
Political Heritage
Organized labor's historic
role in political and legislative
activities is traced in a new
pamphlet published by the
AFL-CIO.
Entitled "Union Political
Activity Spans 230 Years of
U.S. History," the pamphlet
is based on an article which
appeared in a recent issue of
the AFL-CIO American Fed-
erationist, official monthly
magazine of the labor move-
ment.
The 12-page pamphlet —
Publication No. 106 — is avail-
able from the Pamphlet Divi-
sion of the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Publications, 815 16th St.,
N. W., Washington, D. C.
Single copies are free; up to
100 copies, 5 cents each; $3
per 100; and $25 per 1,000.
photo are (left to right): AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller; Meany;
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.), and Mrs. Johnson. Photo
at center shows Meany with Sen. Stuart Symington (Mo.), while picture at right
shows the AFL-CIO president conferring with Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.).
'Rights of Man' Key
To Liberal Platform
Meany Cites
Labor Action
To End Bias
Los Angeles — The anti-civil
rights argument in the Democratic
convention platform committee
here was summarized by Sen. Spes-
sard Holland (Fla.), who defended
southern pleas for "moderation" by
what he charged was "labor's ex-
ample."
Accusing the AFL-CIO of having
failed to eradicate race discrimina-
tion wholly in affiliated unions, he
also asserted that the federation
wanted to "swing its weight" and
"purge" those who disagreed with
its programs.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
sharply retorted that the federa-
tion makes "no claim to perfec-
tion" but pointed to both prin-
ciple and progress as drawing a
distinction.
In the past, he said, "25 interna-
tional unions had a color bar to
membership and today there is only
one."
"This one will not remain long
unless it removes that bar."
We do not get "complete enforce-
ment" of the anti-discrimination
policy among 68,000 local unions,
Meany acknowledged, but progress
is being made, and the policy is
open and declared and "it is a good
one."
The policy is right because it is
based "on the principles of Judeo-
Christianity" from which our whole
free society springs, he testified.
The labor movement has ma-
chinery to seek to enforce its
policies, Meany told the commit-
tee, and "the government must
have machinery/'
(Continued from Page 1)
and social security, including "paid
medical insurance through the so-
cial security mechanism and avail-
able to all retired persons without
a means test."
In a blistering attack upon the
"tight-money" policies of the Eisen-
hower Administration, the conven-
tion went far beyond any compar-
able political document in directly
endorsing programs "to release the
full potential of our American
economy for employment, produc-
tion and growth."
The Administration's policy of
high-interest rates will be rejected,
and a new Democratic President
will "unshackle American enter-
prise and free American labor, in-
dustrial leadership and capital" to
create abundance, the convention
pledged.
The Eisenhower programs have
failed to keep prices down and
have "given us two recessions . . .
and added billions in unnecessary
higher interest charges," the con-
vention said.
"We Democrats believe that our
economy can and must grow at an
average rate of 5 percent annually,
almost twice as fast as our average
annual rate since 1953. We pledge
ourselves to policies that will
achieve this goal without inflation."
Through the Taft-Hartley and
Landrum-Griffin Acts, the conven-
tion declared, the theoretical right
of workers to bargain collectively
has been denied by what the state-
ment bluntly labeled an Administra-
tion "anti-labor policy."
The restrictive laws strike
"hardest at the weak or poorly
organized," the platform con-
tinued, and fail "to deal with
equal vigor with abuses of man-
agement as well as those of
labor."
"We will repeal" the Taft-Hartley
Act's Sec. 14-b that authorizes so-
called "right-to-work" laws, the
convention said, and repeal Lan-
drum-Griffin provisions that limit
"the right to strike, to picket peace-
fully and to tell the public the facts
of a labor dispute."
The broad platform section on
economic policy and domestic af-
fairs was based on a reaffirmation
of Franklin D. Roosevelt's 16-year-
old economic bill of rights.
Every person, it recounted, has
"the right to a useful and remun-
erative job," without artificial
barriers obstructing him, and the
right to decent housing, sound
education and protection from
the hazards of old age.
In the major foreign affairs sec-
tion of the platform, the convention
promised that a Democratic Ad-
ministration would:
• Rebuild our military machine
to provide forces and weapons "of
a diversity, balance and mobility to
deter both limited and general ag-
gression."
• To resist Communist aggres-
sion but to "develop responsible
proposals that will help break the
deadlock on arms control."
• To attune foreign policy to a
"world of change" and overhaul the
administrative machinery "so that
America may avoid diplomatic em-
barrassments and speak with a
single confident voice in world af-
fairs."
• To strengthen and expand
our economic aid to underdevel-
oped lands and our commitment
to the United Nations and the
Atlantic community, to liberalize
the immigration laws, to promote
world trade.
• To "confidently accept" the
Communist challenge to "competi-
tion in every field of human effort"
and demonstrate "enduring friend-
ship" to the people of the Commu-
nist world and "its captive nations."
New Policies for Peace
The pursuit of peace, the plat-
form declared, depends "in large
measure on our ability to release
the full potential of our American
economy for employment, produc-
tion and growth."
It was on the basis of this
premise that the platform pledged
a new Democratic Administra-
tion to initiate broad programs to
conserve and develop national
resources, assist cities and their
suburbs to meet modern urban
problems, run the budget for the
benefit of the people rather than
the people for the budget, develop
new transportation systems and
revise the tax system for equity
and larger revenues without
higher tax rates.
The platform also frankly stated,
however:
"If the unfolding demands of the
new decade . . . should impose
clear national responsibilities that
cannot be fulfilled without higher
taxes, we will not allow political
disadvantage to deter us from doing
what is required.
"As we proceed with the urgent
task of restoring America s produc-
tivity, confidence and power, we
will never forget that our national
interest is more than the sum total
of all the group interests in Amer-
ica.
"When group interests conflict
with the national interest, it will be
the national interest which we
serve.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
Page Three
Democrats Turn Over Helm to Kennedy
r> - -Y^-W* ^ -w-.. -m ^ m ® — = -
Senator Rallies Party to Fighting
Campaign After Ist-Ballot Victory
(Continued from Page 1)
tions. The Texas senator, backed
by House Speaker Sam Rayburn
waged battle for the favor of dele
gates by citing his "seasoned leader
ship" and record of proved accomp-
lishment, and Johnson proved to be
Kennedy's final major rival.
Four candidates clung to the
votes of their own states on the
rollcall, despite only negligible sup-
port from other areas, at a time
when it appeared that Kennedy
might fall short in his drive for a
first ballot victory and when both
Johnson and Stevenson forces were
manifestly hoping to force an ex
tended struggle in which delegate
strength might slip away.
A civil rights fight was carried
to the floor, and the minority re-
port filed by 10 southern states
was soundly beaten without even
a roll call. But word began to
circulate that Mississippi state
leaders were planning to invoke
Candidates
Get Plea for
Plant
Navy
The campaign by Columbia
Lodge 154 of the Machinists to
save the Navy weapons plant in the
Washington area from being dis-
mantled has been carried to Demo-
cratic and Republican candidates
for the presidency.
In telegrams to the Democratic
National Convention, Lodge Pres.
Edward A. Marcey, Jr., urged Sen-
ators John F. Kennedy (Mass.) and
Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.) to help
save the jobs of several thousand
workers at^the plant, slated for im-
mediate dismantling.
"The loss to the nation in dol-
lars and skills," Marcey said,
poses a grave danger to the de-
fense effort. We urge you to
commit yourselves to a balanced
defense program that would re-
tain thousands of skilled workers,
and prevent an enormous tax-
payer investment from going
down the drain.
"Your immediate support in urg-
ing the government to cease this
dismantling project pending further
study would be most welcome to
all Americans of every political
persuasion."
The same plea will be made to
the Republican National Conven-
tion. Last month union officials
met with Sen. Stuart Symington
(D-Mo.) and Vice Pres. Richard
Nixon.
an "independent elector" system
to take the State's Electoral Col-
lege vote away from Kennedy
and the Democrats in November.
Former Pres. Harry S. Truman
renewed charges, on the eve of the
convention, that the meeting was
"prearranged" and "rigged" by
Democratic National Committee
Chairman Paul Butler in favor of
Kennedy.
Won in 7 Primaries
In all the turmoil and the occa-
sional flashes of high excitement,
the Kennedy forces moved calmly
and deliberately to draw the re-
wards of the senator's seven vic-
tories in primary elections and care-
ful, patient organization work.
Mrs. Roosevelt lifted the sting
of the "rigging" charge by calmly
observing in a press conference
in behalf of Stevenson that she
had never known a convention
that was "wholly free," and sug-
gesting that any group of dele-
gates could have their freedom
by asserting it.
In the upshot, in the convention
sessions themselves, nothing could
have been more open and untram-
meled.
Affirmative Liberal Program
On two successive nights, includ-
ing the night of the balloting, the
audience galleries were packed with
enthusiastic young Stevenson sup
porters seeking to stampede the
convention with cries of "we want
Adlai." The Stevenson "demon-
stration," when his name was placed
in nomination by Sen. Eugene Mc
Carthy (Wis.), ran beyond those of
other candidates, and Mrs. Roose-
velt made a seconding speech for
her candidate despite the fact that
she was not a delegate and tech-
nically, therefore, ineligible to parti
cipate in the nomination process.
The convention commanders
were determined, it seemed clear,
to avoid occasion for offense by
speaking softly even while pursuing
their objective of an affirmative
liberal program.
Three months ago, an all out
battle seemed in prospect on the
issue of party "loyalty," as at
least five southern states took
steps in the direction of setting
up "independent electors." When
the time came, the liberals took
die advice of southern moderates
who warned that to make martyrs
of potential rebels would give
them far more publicity than
their importance warranted.
A challenge filed by one Virginia
delegate against another, charging
that the second had publicly sup-
ported Pres. Eisenhower for elec-
tion in 1956, was quietly with-
drawn.
On the platform, however, the
convention spoke with clarity in the
fields of civil rights, economic pol
icy, welfare programs and the role
of the federal government. In the
end, the platform seemed one that
fitted Kennedy as it would fit other
Democratic liberals, and its mean-
ing was unmistakable.
Johnson Move Too Late
For Johnson, the Senate leader
who launched his . campaign only
six days before the convention
opened, it was clear from the be-
ginning that his move came far too
late.
He had quietly tried to stake out
a claim to western support in the
Mountain States, but the empire
he sought was never firmly in his
grasp and it turned out that Ken-
nedy had more delegate support in
the region than Johnson.
California was a blow to both
Kennedy and Johnson as the dele-
gation refused to deliver the bulk of
its strength to the Massachusetts
senator but gave scarcely any to
Johnson; the rest went to Stevenson
The drive for Stevenson, twice
previously the nominee, was largely
nostalgic. There was undoubtedly
more Stevenson sentiment in the
convention than showed on the
rollcall but no assurance at all that
in any kind of protracted struggle
and showdown Stevenson would
ever have received a majority.
Kennedy won because his
forces were better organized, be-
cause the Massachusetts senator
had campaigned the full width of
the country and captured both
primaries and organization lead-
ers, and because in two moments
of crisis he had proved himself
clearsighted, tough and mature.
The first was when he left the
West Virginia primary, amid an
uproar about "bigotry" and about
his Catholicism, and in a full-blown,
eloquent speech to the American
Society of Newspaper Editors in
Washington answered anti-Catholic
charges with devastating force. It
was a speech with impact on an
audience of people of influence.
The second was his televised
news conference when he answered
Truman's charge tha^ he was not
'ready" for the presidency. His
performance made many observers
think that he owed the greatest debt
of his campaign to Truman, whose
attack furnished Kennedy with a
eady-made national television audi-
ence to display the qualities of his
mind and character.
Now Is the Time!
Kennedy, Johnson Vow
Fight for Key Legislation
Los Angeles — Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy
and the man who was his principal convention rival, Senate Ma-
jority Leader Lyndon Johnson (D.-Tex.), will team up to seek
decisive action in the upcoming recess session of Congress on key
legislation.
The effect will be to test the^
WALTER P. REUTHER
Urges action to insure meaningful
civil rights safeguards
david Mcdonald
Cites steel mill slowdown, asks
shorter workweek
JAMES B. CAREY
Hits House Rules blockade
of key legislation
capacity of the new Democratic
Party leadership to bring up and
pass major policy bills that have
been blocked by the conservative
coalition dominating the House
Rules Committee.
It will also produce an unusual
situation in which the party nomi-
nees — Kennedy and Vice Pres. Nix
on, the almost certain choice of the
Republican convention — may face
each other in advance of the elec
tion in the Senate chamber.
These prospects shaped up
when Kennedy at a pre-conven-
vention news conference prom-
ised to return to the chamber to
lead the fight for a minimum
wage bill and Johnson reiterated
pledges that he would seek in the
August session to get final action
on bills on minimum wage, school
aid and health care for the aged
through the social security sys-
tem.
Nixon as Vice President is pre
siding officer of the Senate and pre-
sumably, by that time, will be seek-
ing to assert control of Republican
Party policies as 7 part of the election
campaign.
Kennedy pointed out that he is
sponsor of the minimum wage bill
approved by the Senate Labor Com
mittee and that he is scheduled to
manage the floor fight for passage.
$1.25 Goal
The bill would raise the mini-
mum wage from the present $1 an
hour to $1.25 an hour by step-ups
and spread protection to 5 million
workers not now covered, whose
workweek would be reduced in step-
downs to 40 hours, with time-and-a-
half for overtime.
The House bill, stalled for
months by protracted hearings and
by Rules Committee delay, was al-
most gutted when a bipartisan Re
publican-Southern Democratic co-
alition passed the Kitchin-Ayres
substitute for a House Committee
bill.
The substitute would raise the
wage to $1.15 but would extend
pay protection only to a relative
handful of new workers and deny
them overtime for work after a
40-hour week. In addition, the
bill, by a monumental legislative
"goof," knocked out of protection
some 14 million workers now
enjoying both wage and overtime
coverage.
Johnson's restatement of a pro-
gram for the recess session came in
a television interview,, before the
convention, stating his confidence
that Congress in August would take
decisive action on appropriation
bills and key legislative issues.
The House Rules Committee ap-
peared to offer the major test of the
power of Kennedy, Johnson and
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.), Johnson's principal backer
here, in breaking the stalemate on
welfare legislation.
Six of the Rules unit's 12 mem-
bers are controlled by Republican
House Leader Charles A. Halleck
(Ind.) and by Chairman Howard
W. Smith (D-Va.), who have ex-
ploited their power to tie up the
committee and refuse to schedule
bills for action.
Both houses have passed fed-
eral school-aid bills — the House
of Representatives for the first
time in history — but the Rules
Committee has refused to allow
appointment of a Senate-House
Conference Committee.
The Rules Committee has refused*
to clear for floor action a housing
bill approved by the House Banking
Committee, although a similar bill
has bee_n passed by the Senate.
It has also refused to give a green
light to the bill to relegalize jobsite
picketing in the construction indus-
try, although pledges for floor ac-
tion were announced for the lead-
ership last year.
The Rules Committee also holds
potential life-and-death power
over any social security bill passed
by the Senate that includes health
care for the aged financed by pay-
roll taxes on employes and employ-
ers. The House-passed bill did not
include such a provision, and the
rules unit might seek to block con-
ference committee action.
Speaker Rayburn has been unable
to persuade the Rules Committee to
act on a wide range of measures
despite his belief, expressed in Jan-
uary 1959 to liberals seeking a rules
change to strip the committee of
power, that the House could count
on the chance to vote on the key
bills without making parliamentary
changes.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
BLOOD BANK CARDS are presented by Pres. Alfred M. Gruen-
ther (center) of the American National Red Cross to Pres. Gordon
M. Freeman (left) of Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and
IBEW Sec. Joseph D. Keenan. Presentation came as headquarters
staff of IBEW initiated a blood donor program. Nearly 300 of the
union's locals across the country have similar programs.
Threat to Close Plant
Ruled Illegal by Court
Supervisors' threats that a plant would close down if a union won
a representation election constitutes illegal coercion of workers
despite an advance disavowal of such threats by the company,
U. S. Court of Appeals has ruled.
The court ruled also that while a supervisor's statement that the
firm would lose important custom-%
ers if the union were victorious is
not necessarily coercion, this type
of statement could constitute an
illegal threat if the firm cannot show
a reasonable basis for the statement.
Both rulings were contained in
a decision involving the Neco
Electrical Products Corp. of Bay
Springs, Miss., upholding the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board rul-
ing of violation by the company
of sections of the Taft-Hartley
Act as part of its campaign to
prevent unionization of its work-
ers by the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers.
On a third point, a matter that
figured prominently in the 1957
representation campaign, the court
found that the board could not act
on the NLRB general counsel's re-
fusal to include union charges that
the company injected racial preju-
dice in its campaign to defeat the
union in the complaint, but that the
union could, if it wished, attempt
to get a review on the question in
district court.
Prejudice Key Element
The racial prejudice was a major
element in the defeat of the union's
bid to organize the workers with
the company waging a widespread
campaign to stir up racial bias
against the union because of its civil
rights position.
The IUE is studying the decision
and whether or not to seek review
of the general counsel's decision
refusing to include the charge in the
complaint.
The union attempted to organize
the plant again earlier this year and
was defeated in an NLRB election.
In its rulings on the supervi-
sor's comments the court said
that an employer cannot avoid
liability for the coercion merely
because at the start of the organ-
izing campaign it allegedly in-
formed supervisors that under the
law they were not permitted to
make threats to employes and
that the firm did not want them to
take such action.
"On the question of losing custom-
ers — the company manufactures
electric blankets which it sells to
large national chain operations — the
court said such comments should
have some basis and not come out
of thin air. If there is no reasonable
basis, said the court, such a state-
ment could constitute an illegal
threat and would not be protected
under the "free speech" provisions
of T-H.
The court remanded this question
to the NLRB with directions to
afford an opportunity for the pres-
entation of evidence so that the
board can redetermine the issue.
Inflation-Fearful Bosses
Get Record Pay, Bonuses
Industry's highest paid executives — who customarily oppose
as "inflationary" wage increase demands of their employes —
received fatter salary and bonus checks in 1959 than ever
before.
The magazine U. S. News & World Report recently said, on
the basis of reports filed with the Securities & Exchange Com-
mission, that 278 officials of top corporations earned more
than $100,000 last year.
The nine highest paid officials in the nation all worked for
the automobile industry. Seven of them were General Motors
officials and two were officers of Ford. Their salaries and
bonuses ranged from $437,300 to the record level of $670,350
paid to GM Board Chairman Frederic G. Donner.
The top 24 men in industry received salaries, stock options
and bonuses last year totaling $9.9 million. Of this amount,
$3.6 million went to the seven GM executives at the top of
the heap and another $1 million went to the two Ford officers.
In New York, the former chairman of Inland Steel Co. —
Clarence B. Randall — said some corporations are guilty of
"featherbedding ... at the top management level" by over-
paying their key executives.
In 500 Biggest Industrial Firms :
Sales, Profits Set Record
But Jobs Fail to Pick Up
The nation's 500 largest industrial corporations racked up their biggest volume of sales and lush-
est profits in history during 1959. Most of them accomplished this feat with fewer employes than
in 1957, the previous high-water mark of the economy.
Fortune magazine's annual report on industry's vital statistics shows that sales rose 11.6 percent
above the 1958 recession levels, profits soared 25.1 percent — but the number of employes increased
by only 6.5 percent.
In the case of some giant com-
panies — including General Elec-
tric, the nation's fourth largest
in sales volume — employment
dropped even below 1958 levels
despite the pickup in sales and
profits.
The 500 largest manufacturing
firms — not necessarily the same
companies each year — collected
$11,987 billion in net profits in
1959 as compared with $9,582 bil-
lion in 1958 and $11,657 billion
in 1957.
Percentagewise, the smaller in-
dustrial companies did even better.
While their sales rose only 8.8 per-
cent above 1958 — less than the in-
crease for the 500 biggest — their
profits went up 28.4 percent.
A breakdown of the three-
year shift in sales, profits and
employment of the four biggest
companies clearly shows up the
shadow on the corporate x-ray
which leading economists see as
a major danger sign: The failure
of employment to rebound to
pre-recession levels.
General Motors in 1959 made
net profits of $873.1 million, up
$239.5 million from 1958 and $29.5
million more than in 1957. But
average employment during 1959
of 557,200 workers was only 36,-
300 higher than 1958 and fell 30,-
960 from the 1957 level. In the
nation's number one company in
amount of safes, fewer workers
were producing more and earning
more profit for the corporation.
Employment Down
The number two company,
Standard Oil of New Jersey, made
$629.8 million in 1959, up from
$562.5 million in 1958, but below
the 1957 level of $805 million.
During the three-year period, how-
ever, employment dropped steadily,
from 160,000 workers in 1957 to
154,000 in 1958 and only 146,000
last year.
Ford's profits in 1959 were
$451.4 million, up a whopping
$355.7 million from 1958 and
$168.6 million higher than 1957.
But employment of 159,500 was
only 17,500 above 1958 and more
than 32,000 below the 1957 level.
General Electric's 1959 profits
of $280.2 million were more than
$37 million above 1958 and bet-
ter than $32 million above 1957.
But the declining employment
curve shows 246,800 workers in
1959 as compared with 249,700
in 1958 and 282,000 in 1957.
The Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers cited the sharp drop in
employment during a period of
raising profits and sales as evidence
of General Electric's ability — and
moral obligation — to meet union
contract demands for job security
and supplemental unemployment
benefits. The IUE has also pro-
posed creation of a labor-manage-
ment committee to recommend a
program for equitable sharing by
employes in the benefits of automa-
tion.
Drug Profits High
Fortune's latest survey showed
that drug manufacturers main-
tained during 1959 the high profit
ratios which prompted the Ke-
fauver subcommittee's investigation
into the reasons for the high cost
of prescriptions.
Two drug firms remained in the
top 10 companies ranked on profits
as a percentage of invested capital.
Smith, Kline & French, with a
35.5 percent return on its capital
was in second place, followed by
American Home Products with a
32.2 percent return.
In the top 10 listing on profits as
a percentage of sales, Smith, Kline
& French with 18.5 percent and
Parke, Davis Co. with 16.2 percent,
were high on the list. Several
other equally profitable drug com-
panies were not on the list only
because their volume of sales did
not put them among the 500 largest
in the nation.
The 500 biggest industrialists set
an overall record in sales and profits
despite the dampening effects of
the long steel strike. For example,
U.S. Steel, the nation's fifth biggest
industrial corporation in point of
sales, made only $254.6 million last
year as compared with a $301.6
million profit in 1958 and $419.4
million in 1957.
G-E Indicted Again on
Charge of 'Rigged Bids 9
General Electric Co., which has cited "competition" in the in-
dustry as one reason why its employes shouldn't expect any great
"generosity" in forthcoming contract negotiations, has been indicted
for the 17th time this year on charges of violating antitrust laws.
A federal grand jury in Philadelphia charged that GE, Westing-
house and Allis-Chalmers sub-^ '
mitted ''collusive, rigged bids" on
sales of turbine-generator units
used to produce electricity by use
of steam. The rigged bids, the
grand jury charged, involved sales
to the Tennessee Valley Authority,
to private electric utility compa-
nies and to state and local govern-
ments.
Westinghouse, with GE one of
the giants in the electrical equip-
ment industry, has also been in-
dicted 17 times since mid-Feb-
ruary. This was the ninth in-
dictment of Allis-Chalmers. In
all, the Justice Dept. has ob-
tained indictments of 27 com-
panies accused of collusive bid-
ding and price fixing of 18 sep-
arate products, involving annual
sales of $1,675 billion.
In one of the counts of the in-
dictment, it was alleged that the
supposedly competing firms met in
September, 1957, to "discuss" in-
vitations for bids issued by the
Tennessee Valley Authority for a
500,000 kilowatt generator.
At the meeting, the grand jury
indictment charged, it was agreed
that General Electric should get
the bid. "Thereafter, General
Electric Co. bid approximately
$16,112 million and Westinghouse
Electric Corp. bid approximately
$16,225 million to Tennessee Val-
ley Authority," the indictment said.
The indictment alstf alleged that
representatives of GE, Westing-
house and Allis-Chalmers met in
the fall of 1955 to decide which
companies should have "position"
on nuclear-powered turbine gen-
erators to be sold to purchasers in
Chicago, New York and Detroit.
The three companies and sev-
eral smaller firms named as co-
conspirators, the indictment as-
serted, "frequently discussed and
agreed upon bids and quotations
to be made to particular pro- '
spective customers.'*
Merger Move Backed
By Farm, Meat Unions
Plans are moving forward for the merger of the 3,000-member
Agricultural Workers into the Meat Cutters, following approval by
both unions of the principle of amalgamation.
In a secret ballot, members of the 26-year-old farm union voted
overwhelmingly in favor of joining the Meat Cutters. The vote,
^cording to Agricultural Workers* ^ ^ ^ former ApL cfaar-
Pres. H. L. Mitchell, was 1,098 in
favor of merger and 38 opposed.
Special Department Planned
Delegates to the recent 20th gen-
eral convention of the 350,000-
member Meat Cutters in Atlantic
City, N. J., unanimously approved
a resolution authorizing its officers
to enter into a merger agreement
with the Agricultural Workers.
When the merger becomes final,
a special department for agricul-
tural, processing and allied workers
will be established by the Meat
Cutters. Mitchell will join the
AMCBW staff with an assignment
in the South, and Ernesto Galarza,
secretary-treasurer of the Agricul-
tural Workers, will be assigned to
the West.
The farm union had its begin-
ning 26 years ago on a cotton
plantation in eastern Arkansas,
when 18 sharecroppers — 11
whites and seven Negroes —
founded the organization which
for its first 12 years was known
as the Southern Tenant Farmers
Union.
tered the sharecropper organization,
which changed its name to the Na-
tional Agricultural Workers Union.
The charter was issued after a per-
sonal appeal by Patrick E. Gorman,
secretary-treasurer of the Meat Cut-
ters, who appeared before the AFL
Executive Council on behalf of the
farm union.
Spotlight on Sharecroppers
Despite the fact that it was never
a large union, the NAWU attracted
widespread public attention to the
problems of sharecroppers and ten-
ant farmers in the South, and was
credited with playing a role in Pres.
Roosevelt's appointment of a Com-
mission on Farm Tenancy which
later developed a government hous-
ing program for migrant farm
workers.
In 1950 the NAWU was one
of the organizations which per-
suaded Pres. Truman to appoint a
Commission on Migratory Labor.
The commission's report on exploi-
tation of farm workers has formed
the basis for present efforts to bring
about reforms in this field.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
Page Five
Democratic Platform:
. . . On Collective Bargaining
THE RIGHT TO A JOB requires the restoration of
full support for collective bargaining and the repeal of
the anti-labor excesses which have been written into
our labor laws.
Under Democratic leadership a sound national policy
was developed, expressed particularly by the Wagner
National Labor Relations Act, which guaranteed the
rights of workers to organize and to bargain collectively.
But the Republican Administration has replaced this
sound policy with a national anti-labor policy.
The Republican Taft-Hartley Act seriously weakened
unions in their efforts to bring economic justice to the
millions of American workers who remain unorganized.
By administrative action, anti-labor personnel ap-
pointed by the Republicans to the National Labor Rela-
tions Board have made the Taft-Hartley Act even more
restrictive in its application than in its language.
Thus the traditional goal of the Democratic Party —
to give all workers the right to organize and bargain
collectively — has still not been achieved.
We pledge the enactment of an affirmative labor
policy which will encourage free collective bargaining
through the growth and development of free and re-
sponsible unions.
Millions of workers just now seeking to organize are
blocked by federally authorized "right to work" laws,
unreasonable limitations on the right to picket, and
other hampering legislative and administrative pro-
visions.
Again, in the new Labor-Management Reporting and
On this page are the texts of the planks dealing
with collective bargaining, civil rights and eco-
nomic growth contained in the 1960 platform
adopted by the Democratic National Convention
in Los Angeles.
Disclosure Act, the Republican Administration perverted
the constructive effort of the Democratic Congress to
deal with improper activities of a few in labor and
management by turning the act into a means of restrict-
ing the legitimate rights of the vast majority of working
men and women in honest labor unions.
It likewise strikes hardest at the weak or poorly
organized, and it fails to deal with equal vigor with
abuses of management as well as those of labor.
We will repeal the authorization for "right-to-work"
laws, limitations on the right to strike, to picket peace-
fully and to tell the public the facts of a labor dispute,
and other anti-labor features of the Taft-Hartley Act
and the 1959 act. This unequivocal pledge for the
repeal of the anti-labor and restrictive provisions of
those laws will encourage collective bargaining and
strengthen and support the free and honest labor move-
ment.
The Railroad Retirement Act and the Railroad Un-
employment Insurance Act are in need of improvement.
We strongly oppose Republican attempts to weaken the
Railway Labor Act.
We shall strengthen and modernize the Walsh-Henley
and Davis-Bacon Acts, which protect the wage stand-
ards of workers employed by government contractors.
Basic to the achievement of stable labor-management
relations is leadership from the White House. The
Republican Administration has failed to provide such
leadership.
They failed to foresee the deterioration of labor-man-
agement relations in the steel industry last year. When
it became obvious that a national emergency was de-
veloping, they failed to forestall it. When it came,
their only solution was government-by-injunction.
A Democratic President, through his leadership and
concern, will produce a better climate for continuing
constructive relationships between labor and manage-
ment. He will have periodic White House conferences
between labor and management to consider their mutual
problems before they reach the critical stage.
A Democratic President will use the vast fact-finding
facilities that are available to inform himself, and the
public, in exercising his leadership in labor disputes
for the benefit of the nation as a whole.
If he needs more such facilities, or authority, we will
provide them.
We further pledge that in the administration of all
labor legislation we will restore the level of integrity,
competence and sympathetic understanding required to
carry out the intent of such legislation.
On Civil Rights
MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE. A
new Democratic Administration, like its predecessors,
will once again look beyond material goals to the
spiritual meaning of American society.
We have drifted into a national mood that accepts
payola and quiz scandals, tax evasion and false ex-
pense accounts, soaring crime rates, influence-peddling
in high government circles, and exploitation of sadistic
violence as popular entertainment.
For eight long critical years our present national
leadership has made no effective effort to reverse this
mood.
The new Democratic Administration will help create
a sense of national purpose and higher standards of
public behavior.
We shall also seek to create an affirmative new
atmosphere in which to deal with racial divisions and
inequities which threaten both the integrity of our
democratic faith and the proposition on which our
nation was founded — that all men are created equal.
It is our faith in human dignity that distinguishes
our open free society from the closed totalitarian so-
ciety of the Communists.
The Constitution of the United States rejects the no-
tion that the rights of man means the rights of some
men only. We reject it too.
The right to vote is the first principle of self-govern-
ment. The constitution also guarantees to all Amer-
icans the equal protection of the laws.
It is the duty of the Congress to enact the laws
necessary and proper to protect and promote these con-
stitutional rights. The Supreme Court has the power
to interpret these rights and the laws thus enacted.
It is the duty of the President to see that these rights
are respected and the constitution and laws as in-
terpreted by the Supreme Court are faithfully executed.
What is now required is effective moral and political
leadership by the whole Executive Branch of our
government to make equal opportunity a living reality
for all Americans.
As the party of Jefferson, we shall provide that
leadership.
In every city and state in greater or lesser ^degree
there is discrimination based on color, race, religion or
national origin.
If discrimination in voting, education, the administra-
tion of justice or segregated lunch-counters are the is-
sues in one v area, discrimination in housing and em-
ployment may be pressing questions elsewhere.
The peaceful demonstrations for first-class citizen-
ship which have recently taken place in many parts
of this country are a signal to all of us to make good at
long last the guarantees of our constitution.
The time has come to assure equal access for all
Americans to all areas of community life, including
voting booths, schoolrooms, jobs, housing and public
facilities.
The Democratic Administration which takes office
next January will therefore use the full powers provided
in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960 to secure for
all Americans the right to vote.
If these powers, vigorously invoked by a new At-
torney General and backed by a strong and imagin-
ative Democratic President, prove inadequate, further
powers will be sought.
We will support whatever action is necessary to
eliminate literacy tests and the payment of poll taxes
as requirements for voting.
A new Democratic Administration will also use its
full powers — legal and moral — to ensure the begin-
ning of good faith compliance with the constitutional
requirement that racial discrimination be ended in
public education.
We believe that every school district affected by the
Supreme Court's school desegregation decision should
submit a plan providing for at least first-step compliance
by 1963, the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation
Proclamation.
To facilitate compliance, technical and financial
assistance should be given to school districts facing
special problems of transition.
For this and for the protection of all other con-
stitutional rights of Americans, the Attorney General
should be empowered and directed to file civil injunction
suits in federal courts to prevent the denial of any
civil rights an grounds of race, creed, or color.
The new Democratic Administration will support
federal legislation establishing a fair employment
practices commission effectively to secure for everyone
the right to equal opportunity for employment. 4
In 1949 the President's Committee on Civil Rights
recommended a permanent commission on civil rights.
A new Democratic Administration will broaden the
scope and strengthen the powers of the present com-
mission and make it permanent.
Its functions will be to provide assistance to com-
munities, industries or individuals in implementation of
constitutional rights in education, housing, employment,
transportation and the administration of justice.
In addition, the Democratic Administration will use
its full executive powers to assure equal employ-
ment opportunities and to terminate racial segrega-
tion throughout federal services and institutions, and
on all government contracts. The successful desegre-
gation of the armed services took place through such
decisive executive action under Pres. Truman.
Similarly the new Democratic Administration will
take action to end discrimination in federal housing
•programs, including federally assisted housing.
To accomplish these goals will require executive
orders, legal action brought by the Attorney General,
legislation, and improved congressional procedures to
safeguard majority rule.
Above all, it will require the strong, active, persuasive
and inventive leadership of the President of the United
States.
. . . On Economic Growth
THE NEW DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION
will confidently proceed to. unshackle American enter-
prise and to free American labor, industrial leadership,
and capital, to create an abundance that will outstrip
any other system.
Free competitive enterprise is the most creative and
productive form of economic order that the world has
seen. The recent slow pace of American growth is
due not to the failure of our free economy but to the
failure of our national leadership.
We Democrats believe that our economy can and
must grow at an average rate of 5 percent annually,
almost twice as fast as our average annual rate since
1953. We pledge ourselves to policies that will achieve
this goal without inflation.
Economic growth is the means whereby we improve
the American standard of living and produce added tax
resources for national security and essential public
services.
Our economy must grow more swiftly in order to
absorb two groups of workers: the much larger number
of young people who will be reaching working age in
the 1960% and the workers displaced by the rapid pace
of technological advances and automation. Republican
policies which have stifled growth could only mean in-
creasingly severe unemployment, particularly of youth
and older workers.
As the first step in speeding economic growth, a
Democratic President will put an end to the present high
interest, tight money policy.
This policy has failed in its stated purpose — to keep
prices down. It has given us two recessions within five
years, bankrupted many of our farmers, produced a
record number of business failures, and added billions
of dollars in unnecessary higher interest charges to
government budgets and the cost of living.
A new Democratic Administration will reject this
philosophy of economic slowdown. We are committed
to maximum employment, and decent wages and with
fair profits, in a far more productive, expanding
economy.
The Republican high-interest policy has extracted a
costly toll from every American who has financed a
home, an automobile, a refrigerator or a television set.
It has foisted added burdens on taxpayers of state
and local governments which must borrow for schools
and other public services.
It has added to the cost of many goods and services,
and hence has been itself a factor in inflation.
It ha3 created windfalls for many financial insti-
tutions.
The $9 billion of added interest charges on the na-
tional debt would have been even higher but for the
prudent insistence of the Democratic Congress on main-
taining the ceiling on interest rates for long-term gov-
ernment bonds.
Pa** ste
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
January in June
THE MENACING CHILL of a possible recession in the mak-
ing nipped the nation's consciousness this week with the Labor
Department's report that 5.5 percent of the labor force was unem-
ployed last month.
The half-hearted attempts to dismiss the report as unbalanced
statistics based on an increasing number of teen-agers looking for
summer jobs failed to shake the spreading feeling that some-
thing's wrong with the economy.
That something is not an especially mysterious economic prob-
lem for learned technicians. It's a simple matter of the national
economy failing to grow sufficiently to provide enough jobs for 5ri
expanding population.
It's the story also of the present weakness in the economy re-
flected in production slumps in steel, autos and other basic indus-
tries, as well as the ever-mounting impact of technological progress
and automation.
Too many people seeking too few jobs is the formula for re-
cession — a recession that can be avoided only by a new national
economic policy geared to the dynamic growth that is inherent in
our economic structure.
* * ★
THE JUNE UNEMPLOYMENT report takes on fuller meaning
when compared with the trend in profits. Fortune Magazine re-
ports that last year the nation's 500 largest industrial corporations
reaped the largest harvest of profits in history, topping 1958 by
25 percent.
While these companies racked up $11.9 billion in profits,
employment in most of these firms last year increased only 6.5
percent and in some companies actually dropped below 1958
levels while sales and profit figures reached new record highs.
The magazine's compilation showed- that in many major com-
panies employment levels were below 1957, evidence of the sharp
impact of new technology and automation.
This is all part of the continuing loss in employment manufac-
turing, railroads and mining, a loss of 2.1 mililon jobs since 1953.
Ever-increasing productivity coupled with the administered
pricing system used in most industries to return a high, pre-
determined profit rate can produce an economic imbalance that
can spell trouble. Add an expanding labor force and a limited
national growth rate and the ingredients for recession are at hand.
Now is The Time!
THE 1960 CAMPAIGN invaded America's living and family
rooms this past week via television, radio and newspapers, the
first installment in a series of events that will be climaxed on Nov. 8
with the election of a new President.
Between now and Nov. 8 every American citizen will be involved
in the political decision making — even those who decline to partici-
pate, for their failure to exercise their political responsibilities will
give more decision-making power to those who do.
The nation's course for the next decade will be decided in the
1960 campaign, a course that will involve the well-being and
security of all Americans, This, then, is the time for political
action.
It is especially a time for action by members of trade unions
seeking to protect and expand their economic and social gains. It
is imperative that they examine the candidates and the issues, quali-
fy themselves to register and vote and contribute to COPE.
Now is the time — after Nov. 8 it's too late!
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V.
Saturday, July 16, 1960
No. 29
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of tt* official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Ilnswer to Sen. Coidwater:
Labor's Role in Politics Seen
As Extension of Bargaining
The following is excerpted from a leaflet pub-
lished by the International Association of Ma-
chinists entitled "Labor and the Elections/' by
I AM Pres. A I /. Hayes.
A UNITED STATES SENATOR recently told
a cheering audience of businessmen, "I see
no reason for labor unions to participate in poli-
tics." The senator was Barry Goldwater of Ari-
zona. In this speech, he went on to say:
"Since unions were created for economic pur-
poses, their activities should be restricted accord-
ingly. They should be forbidden to engage in
any kind of political activity."
Sen. Goldwater's statement sums up very clear-
ly the argument against a labor organization ex-
pressing any interest or taking any part in the
civic affairs of the community or the nation.
His argument reminds me of the landlubber
who claims it is wasteful to teach sailors to
swim because their job is to sail.
Wage earners join unions so they can influence
economic conditions, so that they can have some
say, not only over their own wages and conditions
of work, but also on the kind of community in
which they live.
UNION MEMBERS have acquired an under-
standing that many of the economic forces in our
lives cannot be controlled through contract nego-
tiations on a shop-by-shop or even on an indus-
try-wide basis.
We have learned that a depression for the
farmer inevitably brings layoffs in the factories.
We have learned that when our industries can-
not sell their products, entire plants close down.
We have learned that our industries are not self-
contained, that we are dependent upon raw ma-
terials from overseas, as we depend also on selling
our products in overseas markets.
We have learned that our skills can become
obsolete and our jobs disappear before a rapid-
ly advancing technology.
We have learned that some cities in our coun-
try can experience depression, while most areas
are enjoying prosperity.
These are only a few of the problems that affect
our jobs and our security. If the wrong men are
in public office, they can arrive at wrong policies,
policies that create problems rather than solve
them.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the misnamed
"right-to-work"' laws in a number of states, and
the latest so-called Labor Reform Act of 1959 are
laws made by politicians at the direct request of
employers.
Those who resent labor's sharing in the abun-
dance of America have never hesitated to use
the state legislatures, Congress, the government
boards and even the courts to curb labor's ef-
forts. Those who oppose labor's efforts do not
leave government policies to the politicians.
Nor should they; nor should union members.
IN THE BEGINNING of our republic, voting
rights were limited to those with property and
wealth. Agitation, led by labor organizations of
the early 19th Century, helped to extend the right
to vote to those with little or no wealth.
Once working people won the right to vote they
used it first to establish a public school system
that would help all childifen to learn. They
argued that a man could only be a good citizen if
he could read and write and understand. By the
use of their ballots on election day, wage earners
succeeded in establishing public schools during
the first half of the last century. Then, through
the use of their ballots, union members led the
movement to abolish debtor prisons.
If organized labor had not backed candidates
pledged to social and economic improvements,
our progress toward a higher standard of living
would have been slower.
Certainly the real estate lobby has not spear-
headed the fight for low-cost housing and slum
clearance.
The medical and drug lobby has seldom spon-
sored legislation to extend and strengthen the na-
tion's public health facilities.
The utilities companies have not sought regula-
tion of consumer prices of gas and electricity.
The insurance industry has never championed
higher compensation benefits for injured workers,
more adequate old age benefits, or realistic un-
employment compensation.
And, business and industry have shown lit-
tle constructive concern over legislation to pro-
tect the consumers against administered prices
or other unfair and unethical business prac-
tices.
Labor's legislative program today', as it did a
century ago, seeks to benefit the entire nation.
Union members, through their votes on elec-
tion day, Seek an imroved public school system,
broader public health care, assistance to depressed
areas, slum clearance and urban renewal pro-
grams, civil rights, and an adequate national de-
fense, not just for the benefit of those who be-
long to unions, but for the benefit of every citizen.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, I9mi
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Tragedy Stalks Independence
Of Unprepared Congo Republic
Morgan
THE BELGIAN CONGO might be called the
world's biggest zoo, the greatest living museum
in Africa. A huge place, a third the size of the
United States, it abounds
with natural sideshows, all
manner of wild beasts —
though alarmingly on the
wane — living in the great
preserves of Albert Nation-
al Park, pygmies who hunt
with poison darts and pose
for tourists' photographs
providing cigarettes are
produced, savage tribes
who still practice ritual
cannibalism, and a total
population of more than
13.5 million native Congolese many of whom are
so ignorant of the meaning of the independence
they are officially receiving tomorrow that they
have inquired of missionaries, according to New
York: Timesman Homer Bigart, whether it comes
wrapped in a package or whether they must go to
the bank and draw it out.
How is it possible, gasps the incredulous
western world, to make a free nation of a prim-
itive people to whom field mice and flying ants
are tasty delicacies; of whom at least half are
illiterate, among whom there is not one trained
Negro doctor, lawyer or engineer and from
whose midst have emerged only sixteen college
graduates, with only twelve Congolese rising to
administrative positions in the Belgian colonial
government?
It is not possible. And yet the Congo republic
has been born. Perhaps nothing that has hap-
pened in Africa shows more dramatically than this
the explosive force of African nationalism and the
inability of most western nations, notably our own,
to face up to it as a fact.
Logically it would have been better for the
Congolese to wait. That is the way it was planned
by the Belgians, who in recent generations have
converted the ruthless exploitation of the nine-
teenth century to what might be called a kind of
model paternalism. But the Belgian timetable
was cut short fifty years by an infectious national-
ism which simply would not wait.
THERE IS THE PORTENT OF TRAGEDY
and the inspiration of courage mixed in the spec-
tacle in Leopoldville. Already tribes are fight-
ing each other and a separatist movement — pos-
Washington Reports:
sibly encouraged by dissident European interests
— has flared up in one of the richest areas, the
mining state of Katanga in the south, threatening
a union with Rhodesia.
The Congo could disintegrate into a num-
ber of tribal empires — it has some 500 tribes
speaking 400 tribal dialects — presaging what
many western observers fear most in Africa,
a Balkanization of that continent.
No viable agreement could be reached on which
of two Congolese leaders would head the new
government so the leadership was divided be-
tween the two and the question is how well or
whether these two different men will be able to
work together.
Named to the premiership was a former postal
clerk once imprisoned for embezzlement of gov-
ernment funds named Patrice Emery Lumumba,
who rose to prominence with phenomenal speed as
head of the radical Congolese National Movement.
A shy, more moderate man, ex-candidate for
the priesthood, Joseph Kasavubu, who is some-
thing of a figure in the tribal association, is the
Congo's first president. Ironically the atmos-
phere reached such a fever pitch in Leopold-
ville earlier today that independence rallies were
forbidden as a threat to public safety on the
very eve of independence.
This weakness of the incipient government is
a threat and a challenge. "The political orienta-
tion of the Congo in the coming months," de-
clares the London Economist, "will be every bit
as important to the West as the success or failure
of General de Gaulle's efforts to reach a settle-
ment in Algeria before the nationalists there re-
sort, in desperation, to active alliance with the
Communist bloc." The West, it warns, should
learn from the lesson of Guinea that African lead-
ers left to stew in the juice of impoverished inde-
pendence will inevitably turn to Moscow.
Guinea has made several important commer-
cial contacts with the Communist bloc after
negotiations with Washington had got nowhere.
Reportedly, Congolese politicians have already
turned up in Peiping.
There is no evidence that the United States has
a policy adequate to the African upheaval. Bau-
doin, king of the Belgians, was in the Congo for
the freedom celebrations. So were delegations
from the world's uneasy family of nations, in-
cluding the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R. Sym-
bolically the Soviet group arrived in a jet, the
Americans in an old-fashioned piston plane.
States Lag in Radiation Safety,
Congressional Experts Warn
EFFECTIVE LAWS to protect workers and
others from atomic radiation hazards are
needed, Rep. Melvin Price (D-Ill.), chairman of
the special radiation subcommittee of the Con-
gressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy,
declared on Washington Reports to the People,
AFL-CIO public service program, heard on more
than 300 radio stations.
Rep. James E. Van Zandt, of Pennsylvania,
ranking Republican on the committee, said that
radio isotopes are used today not only in hospi-
tals and other medical facilities, but also in tex-
tile plants, the food industry, factories that manu-
facture machines, and elsewhere.
"We're concerned about health and safety of
workers in the event they absorb radiation,™
Van Zandt said, "and we're concerned that
communities, states and the federal government
have laws to protect against these hazards."
Van Zandt pointed out that Price, as chairman
of the subcommittee, has drawn up the framework
"that the several states may follow in writing nec-
essary laws."
"TWO STATES, California and New York,
now have atomic energy programs and industrial
radiation safety programs that are models for
other states to follow/' Price said. "My own
state of Illinois is getting more and more inter-
ested in the setup of a commission to study this
problem. They are not as energetic as I would
like, but this may be because the area is new and
they're waiting for leadership from the federal
level."
Van Zandt said that the hearings were held to
study the hazards, to educate the American peo-
ple on the facts and "to apply a little pressure to
the states. In my own state of Pennsylvania —
weVe somewhat dragged our feet, but we're com-
ing along gradually — our governor has appointed
a commission and they're now training the per-
sonnel and beginning to build a framework of
laws that will have to do with control of the radia-
tion hazard."
Price pointed out that "there are now hun-
dreds of different licenses in states where in-
dustrial use is made of radiation and radioactive
isotopes. This indicates the necessity of the
states doing a policing job and also beginning
to think about new compensation laws to deal
with these new hazards."
Transportation of radioactive materials is an-
other concern of the government, Van Zandt
noted. "In the event of an accident (during
transport of such material) you could contaminate
a wide area, and affect thousands of people," he
warned
Price said the hearings also pointed out that
there was laxity in early control of radiation fa-
cilities such as x-ray machines, fluoroscopes and
various types of therapy instruments.
trs YOUR
WASHINOTOH
7h
1
LOS ANGELES — THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION here
produced a changing of the guard unparalleled in the party since
Franklin D. Roosevelt's first nomination in 1932. There was a
scattering of seasoned veterans in the John F. Kennedy camp,
but the Kennedy nomination is a triumph primarily of men whose
public careers date from after, rather than before, the end of the war.
It is a triumph, too, of the National Committee and the na-
tional convention nominating system over the congressional
system. All the charges of "rigging," the complaints of favor-
itism, boiled down to the fact that power in a Democratic con-
vention is centered in the populous and fermenting industrial
states.
The passing generation — the leaders of the New Deal and
Fair Deal and the wartime years — took prestige and experience
into the battle to halt Kennedy.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, most loved as well as one of the most
skilled politicians of her party, threw her strength behind Gov.
Stevenson. Sen. Symington had the backing of former Pres. Tru-
man and Truman's onetime special counsel, Clark Clifford, the
architect of the Fair Deal's domestic policy.
Behind Sen. Johnson were speaker Sam Rayburn and the major-
ity of the congressional majorities that Rayburn and the Senate
seniors marshalled. Johnson's citizens' committee was headed by
two Truman associates, former Interior Sec. Oscar Chapman, and
Mrs. India Edwards, former vice chairman of the Democratic Na-
tional Committee.
* * *
ALL THESE INFLUENTIAL FIGURES, people known and
trusted, were outmaneuvered, outthought and outfought by the tough
young new professionals who flooded the Kennedy camp. With a
practiced skill astonishing in view of their relative freshness on the
national scene, they parried every blow and struck back with stag-
gering counter-punches.
Beardless youths they seemed. But they were the wary, confident
victors of the primaries, the organizers of. the tremendous machine
that carried the Kennedy name and claim to every state; that
planned every step to build the Kennedy lead and to hold it against
convention raids and forays.
In the end, Kennedy himself stood as the dominating figure.
The candidate had passed the fiercest tests — the primary battles,
the test of the religious issue, the Truman attack, the withering
assault on his so-called "immaturity" — and stood cool, tough
and unruffled, a man manifestly in command of himself and the
issues.
* * *
PAUL M. BUTLER, the National Committee chairman, had
laid the foundation for the reassertion of the national party's liberal-
ism in the convention.
Unwilling to let congressional Democrats alone speak for the
party in the second Eisenhower term, Butler created' the Dem-
ocratic Advisory Council, which by its existence and its policy
declarations gave a rallying-point to those who want the Democratic
Party to be a party of progressive action, a party that looks forward,
a party prepared to govern for the common good.
In Congress, conservative Democratic committee chairmen,
out of tune with the demands of the great majority of the people,
can block legislation and frustrate programs. In the convention
they are stripped of power — no longer the masters elevated into
dominance by seniority and the rules system.
Kennedy reached for the voters for whom the advisory council
spoke. He sought the sources of strength that count in the
convention. His victory was built on the fact that he compre-
hended the key factors with cool and penetrating insight. Con-
gressional power faded, and the new leaders of the Democratic
Party took command for the tough campaign to follow.
LAWS TO PROTECT against atomic radiation hazards were urged
by Rep. Melvin Price (D-Ill.), left, and Rep. James E. Van Zandt
(R-Pa.), members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, as
they were interviewed on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-
CIO public service radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
How to Buy:
High Dental Costs
Bring Tooth Neglect
By Sidney Margolius
WANT TO KNOW the secret ingredient of sound teeth? It's
money! The Health Information Foundation found over half
the members of $7,500-a-year families saw a dentist at least once a
year but only 17 percent in families with less than $2,000.
That secret ingredient is getting tougher to manage all the time
Dental fees have gone up 37 percent in the last decade, in compari-
son with the overall cost-of-living
rise of 27 percent, Bureau of Labor
Statistics reports show.
Even the fees for ordinary dental
services are getting sizable. Note
the list of typical fees with this re-
port and the extraordinary varia-
tions. Philadelphians may consider
$6 for a filling expensive enough.
But Los Angelenos pay $8. Six dol-
lars for ah extraction may seem
plenty to Detroiters. But people in
Portland, Oregon, pay close to $8
for the same job, and San Francis-
cans a whopping $10.
Dental fees have risen four per-
cent even since those figures were
gathered.
Suppose a family of four does make a semi-annual visit to the
dentist, as the dentists, toothpaste advertisers and health authori-
ties all urge. Even if the dentist finds only a commonplace one or
two cavities apiece, the family would have a bill including clean-
ings of $50 or $60. All the people telling you to visit your den-
tist twice a year are absolutely right. But they don't say how to
pay for this need.
Heaven forbid you should need something really expensive, like
a bridge. Replacing just one missing tooth may cost you a solid $150.
And some conscientious families find themselves paying prices like
$500 or so for orthodontia work to straighten a child's teeth.
A growing answer to the problem of adequate care for moderate-
income families is dental insurance. It has three advantages:
1. Since your payment includes preventive care, there's no finan-
cial reason for neglect.
2. The preventive work thus also keeps down the cost of dental
care since the dentist can catch defects while they're still small.
3. If you ever do require costly work like dentures or periodontia
(treatment of loose teeth), youVe paid ahead for it.
BUT WHILE DENTAL INSURANCE has noticeable benefits,
the only really economical way to buy it is on a group basis. Group
purchases reduce the cost of administering a plan.
Both employers and unions like dental insurance. In fact, some
employers even maintain their own dental clinics. The advantage to
management, of course, is in improved employe health and morale.
But while everybody recognizes the desirability of dental in-
surance, it still has to take its place in line with other "fringe
benefits," such as pension plans and more adequate hospital and
medical insurance. Too, the cost of the older fringe benefits like
hospital insurance is going up all the time. This increases the
competition for the "fringe dollar" among the various types of
benefits.
Still, a dollar invested in a good dental-insurance plan often is
worth more to a moderate-income family than a cash dollar. On
your own, you generally can't buy dental care as reasonably as un-
der a group plan.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margoliua
More Training Needed:
Lack of Education Factor
In Chronic Joblessness
FDR Rehear dStill Great
It should be compulsory for every candidate for public
office to spend four hours listening to a new album of records
just published of the major speeches by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt!
It was during Roosevelt's second inaugural address that
he summed up in one sentence the basic philosophy of the
New Deal. "The test of our progress," he said, "is not
whether we add more to the abundance of those who have
much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have
too little."
This listener was impressed with how very much — in so
short a time — Roosevelt's wonderful phrases have already
become part of our political conversation. From his first
inaugural speech came "nothing to fear" and from his second
acceptance speech came "rendezvous with destiny." Then
there was "one third of a nation," "quarantine the aggressor,"
"four freedoms" and "day of infamy."
The speeches were edited by the noted historian Henry
Steele Commager, whose brief and unobtrusive commentaries
are very helpful.
This volume of records will never make the best seller*
list. Not many homes can afford a six-record long-playing
album. But every union library should have one. And
every public and school library should have one. It would
make an ideal gift from your local union to the library or
school in your area. H. B.
"F. D. R. SPEAKS"— Published by Washington Records,
Inc. $29.95.
WHEN DO AMERICANS begin to get ex-
cited about unemployment and decide that
something should be done' about it?
During the past two and a half years unem-
ployment in the United States has never once
fallen below the 3,000,000 mark with an actual
high of 5,437,000 in June 1958 and a low of 3,-
230,000 in September 1959. During those years
the rate of unemployment has rarely dropped be-
low 5 percent which is far above what used to be
considered the normal amount of perhaps un-
avoidable joblessness.
Yet, during these years, the only groups that
have shown any basic concern over the situation
have been organized labor and a relative hand-
ful of liberal members of Congress. The Eisen-
hower Administration has repeatedly "explained"
away continuing unemployment as "normal" or
"seasonal" or "to be expected," and has spent its
time, instead, boasting of new "highs" in the econ-
omy.
Congress itself has shown no flaming concern
over the jobless figures. It has voted aid for the
chronically depressed areas of the country on the
ceaseless urging of such men as Sen. Paul Doug-
las (D-HL), but has been unable to muster enough
votes to override the presidential vetoes that have
followed. Here and there a report such as that
recently made by Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-
Minn.), has stirred interest for a brief period but
has then been forgotten.
The experience during the Great Depres-
sion of the Thirties would indicate that reces-
sions don't really count in the United States un-
til they hit the suburbs. There was a huge
amount of unemployment in this country dur-
ing the last days of the Hoover administration
— Hoovervilles, bonus marches, breadlines.
They made for a lot of excitement, but it was
not until the depression reached into middle-
class suburban areas that the real demands for
action began to be made.
Complacent Americans who had argued that
men who were out of work had no one to blame
but themselves and that they could find work if
they would look for it, suddenly were shocked to
discover that their suburban neighbor down the
street who had held such a nice job had lost it
and that the mortgage on his lovely home was be-
ing foreclosed. It was only then that the depres-
sion suddenly assumed menacing proportions to
From Soup to Nonsense:
men who before that time had scarcely been
moved by the plight of millions of jobless work-
ers. The New Deal was made possible by their
votes.
THE RECESSIONS of the past few years in-
dicate that as a nation we have not changed much
since the Thirties; that as a preponderantly mid-
dle-class people we are not moved to action until
our own class is hurt. A recent study of the
1958-59 recession by the University of Michigan
gives statistical support to this theory.
This survey showed that "those persons most
likely to be affected by unemployment and to ex-
perience relatively long spells of unemployment
are those who are in the weakest position in terms
of skills and material resources — unskilled la-
borers, those with low incomes, those with low
education, the very young and the very old."
Further support for this conclusion came in an
analysis of the effect of the recession on family
breadwinners in terms of their educational ad-
vantages. This showed that there was a direct
relationship between unemployment and educa-
tion. For example: 46 percent of grade school
graduates had been hurt by the recession; a small-
er percentage — 35 percent — of high school grad-
uates had been hurt, and only 18 percent of col-
lege-trained workers had been hit.
"Among those experiencing seasonal or oth-
er recurrent unemployment, 9 ' the study further
reported, "46 percent had only grade school
education, 82 percent were skilled or unskilled
workers and farm laborers, 24 percent were
Negroes and 32 percent were under 35 years
©Id."
Thus the picture is one in which the weakest
and least influential members of the community
are those who suffer from recessions. The same
is true of the depressed areas where hundreds of
thousands of Americans are actually living on
surplus food handouts. And the same is true of
the 20 percent of submerged Americans all over
the country whose income is far below commonly
accepted subsistence standards.
The Michigan study clearly points up the need
for vastly improving American educational op-
portunities for all workers. It should also give a
strong jog to the social consciences of the 82 per-
cent of American college-trained people who were
"not affected" by the 1958-59 recession.
(Public Affairs Institute, Washington Window)
News That Didn't Stop the Press
By Jane Goodsell
TV"EWS STORIES I keep hoping to find:
^ Tipped off by neighbors, the police yesterday
discovered two 80-year-old sisters, living a hermit-
like existence in a dilapidated shack. The shack,
which was unheated and contained neither plumb-
ing nor electricity, was piled high with old news-
papers, dirty rags,
children, and they don't owe a cent to anybody.
They have no other children.
tin cans, broken
bottles and garbage.
A thorough search
of the premises
failed to reveal
$200,000 in cash.
Only 26 cents in
coins was found in
a broken jelly glass.
* * *
Alphonse
Quigley, recently
defeated in his
bid for election
to the post of
dogcatcher, was
interviewed yesterday by the press. When
asked to analyze the underlying causes of his
defeat, Quigley replied, "Too many people
voted for my opponent."
* * *
Mrs. Violet Pinkney gave birth to triplet girls
yesterday morning at Saint Anne's Hospital. The
babies' father, Myron Pinkney, has a full-time su-
pervisory job at the Firebrand Machine Works.
The Pinkneys own a house large enough for three
Mrs. Clarence Huff summoned police late yes-
terday afternoon because her two-year-old son,
Roger, had been missing for several hours. After
a fruitless search of the house and neighborhood,
one of the police officers noticed that the Huffs*
collie seemed to be trying to lead them some-
where. The dog, who answers to the name of
Red, was barking excitedly and running around
in circles.
"Okay Red," said the officer. "We'll follow
you. Let's go!"
Red tore off eagerly, followed by the police.
After a two-mile chase, Red stopped dead in his
tracks, pawed the earth under a camellia bush
and gave several joyous yelps. He emerged with
a large bone in his mouth. Roger was later dis-
covered, sound asleep, under his own bed.
* * *
Miss Juanita Brown, a chorus girl at Las
Vegas, became Mrs. Richard Hunt Montgomery
III yesterday afternoon. Asked when she first
realized that she was in love, the titian-haired
beauty replied, "When I found out that his
father is chairman of the board of General Cop-
per Mines Incorporated."
* * *
Coach Joe Masters, whose Central College
team has suffered six defeats and won no victories
this season, was queried on Central's chances of
beating undefeated Coolidge Cardinals.
"We haven't a prayer," sighed Coach Masters.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. <i, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
Page Nin*
Conference on Economic Progress Report:
Waste, Joblessness Blamed
On Ike's Tight Money Policy
The Conference on Economic Progress has charged that the Eisenhower Administration's "tight-
money-rising-interest-rates" policy has imposed wasteful costs on government, burdened consumers
and small businesses and helped produce unemployment of men and plants.
"Unless reversed, its damaging consequences will swell in the years ahead," warned CEP.
In its 77-page study,' entitled "Tight Money and Rising Interest Rates . . . and the Damage They
are Doing," the non-profit CEP^
proposed that the President's annual
Economic Report contain a 44 Na-
tional Prosperity Budget" so mone-
tary policy ean be meshed with a
national economic policy.
CEP also suggested that Con-
gress act to induce the Federal
Reserve System to back up
Treasury financing and empower
the FRS to use selective controls
like consumer and housing credit
since general monetary control
is "too blunt/'
In attacking the Eisenhower pol-
icy, the CEP declared:
"By periodically stimulating in-
vestment in producer facilities
while repressing private consump-
tion, home building and vital pub-
lic programs, during the very pe-
riods when these activities were
failing to keep up with investment
in the power to produce, the policy
has contributed during seven years
to a succession of short booms,
periods of stagnation and reces-
sions."
"The consequence," the study
added, "has been the low growth
rate of the American economy
which has meant high unemploy-
ment of plant and manpower and
made us as a nation 'unable to
afford 9 the great things which we
need to do both at home and
overseas.' 5
The study showed the effect of
the tight money policy on typical
families. Using as a standard a
$10,000 government-protected new
home mortgage, the study gave this
comparison:
In 1952, based on a 4.25 percent
interest rate, a 20-year mortgage
would require monthly payments
of $62, not counting insurance
premiums, or a total of $14,880.
In 1960, based on a 5.75 percent
interest rate,, a 20-year mortgage
would require payments of $70.30
a month or a total of $16,872.
Thus, the higher interest rate
means a family with this type
mortgage now pays $8.30 a
month more or an additional
$1,992 over the length of the
mortgage.
A 25-year mortgage in I960 re-
quires, because of the higher in-
terest rate, monthly payments of
$63 or $8.80 higher than in 1952
and a total of $18,900 or $2,640
additional by the time the house is
paid off.
The CEP study said the 1953-
59 tight money policy has had the
broader effects of:
• "Strain" on public budgets:
Compared to 1952 rates, rising in-
terest costs have imposed an extra
burden of $5 billion on the federal
budget, over $500 million on state
and local budgets, and about $17.5
billion on private individuals and
enterprises.
• "Waste" in use of funds: Over
$23 billion in excess interest pay-
ments has been transferred from
the pockets of those who borrow
to those who lend. Policies like
improved social security, tax struc-
tures, farm programs and minimum
wages could have, with that sum
of money, raised by $925 the in-
comes of the 3.5 million low-in-
come families whose average an-
nual incomes are only $1,225, the
report said.
"Damage" inflicted on the
economy: By stunting economic
growth and keeping the economy
at half-speed, about $218 billion
in national production was for-
feited; each family forfeited about
$3,500 and government forfeited
some $65 billion in tax revenue.
• Inflationary impact: The "in-
efficiencies" of an economy grow-
ing too slowly, with idle manpower
and plant and with shortages in
services like medical care and hous-
ing, have caused a much greater
rate of increase in consumer,
wholesale and retail prices during
1953-59 than in the 1922-59
period.
• "Fumbling and stumbling" in
debt management: Investments in
government bonds have become
speculative ventures; the national
debt has risen from $260 billion
in 1952 to $285 billion in 1959.
The CEP study devoted a chap-
ter to increased interest costs to
home owners, consumers, farmers
and small business.
On housing, CEP said the esti-
mated effective interest rate — com-
paring 1959 with 1952 — has
jumped 33 percent on homes in-
sured by the Federal Housing Ad-
ministration, 30 percent on homes
insured by the Veterans' Adminis-
tration and about 14 per cent for
conventional housing.
The occupants of these three
types of housing paid almost $2
billion more in interest than they
would have paid at the 1952 in-
terest rates, the study said.
Tfre tight money policy, CEP
noted, also hurts those who cannot
obtain new homes because of the
curtailment of credit or its excessive
costs.
CEP called housing "a perfect
example" of how the "blunderbuss"
policies of the Federal Reserve
System have suppressed home con-
struction while encouraging other
activity.
On the burden to consumers, the
study said the rise in the interest-
bearing consumer debt outstanding
from $20 billion in 1953 to about
$36 billion in 1959 contained over
$1 billion in excess interest costs.
Farmers were hit by an excess
interest cost of nearly $112 mil-
lion in the 1953-59 period on the
rising farm mortgage debt, the
study continued, thus worsening
"the cruel and contrived defla-
tion of farm income in recent
years."
Small business was especially
hard-hit by the tight money policy,
the study observed, since it is less
able than big business to borrow,
to pass on the cost or even self-
finance its needs.
"Business failures per 10,000
listed firms rose from 14.3 in 1947
to 51.9 in 1959," the study pointed
out, adding:
"More than 90 percent of these
failures occurred among small
businesses with liabilities under
$100,000."
The CEP study was made by a
staff directed by Leon H. Keyser-
ling, chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisers under former
President Truman.
$10,000 NEW HOME MORTGAGE PAYMENTS
UNDER NATIONAL HOUSING ACT (FHA)
COMPARING 1952 WITH 1960
Based on 4 1/4% interest rote in 1952 ond 5 3/4% interest rote in I960.
Payments exclude insurance premiums.
Suf fridge Sees Need
For 35-Hour Week
A call for the 35-hour week to help the human victims of the
"new industrial revolution" caused by automation has been issued
by Pres. James A. Suffridge of the Retail Clerks.
In a report prepared for the Joint Economic Committee, Suff-
ridge warned the nation that automation of supermarkets, depart-
ment stores, offices and warehouses^
has swelled from a trickle to a
flood, and heroic action is needed
now to save the human beings in
volved from disaster.
Asserting that labor, management
and government must act together
to help the workers whose jobs are
affected, the RCIA president called
for the shorter work week to shore
up purchasing power; retraining
programs; careful scheduling of new
electronic equipment; new job op-
portunities in retailing; overtime
pay to meet the problem of those
who "moonlight" on an extra job;
more adequate pension systems for
older workers; and leisure time pro-
grafns for those on shorter work
weeks.
The automatic warehouse is
here, Suffridge said; the auto-
matic store or supermarket, with
Jobless Rate Leaps to 5.5 Percent,
Third Highest in Post- War Era
(Continued from Page 1)
million teenagers into the workforce
and the coincidence of the survey
week falling at the latest possible
time in the month after most stu-
dents had left school.
A companion report on un-
employment compensation claims '
revealed that workers drawing
jobless benefits totaled 1.7 million
in mid-June, a level nearly 20
percent higher than a year ago.
The June report is a "harbinger
of things to come," warned Sey-
COST OF RISING INTEREST RATES
TO U.S. GOVERNMENT, 1952-1959
Colendor Years
TOTAL INTEREST-BEARING
U.S. PUBLIC DEBT
285:
Billions of Dollars
280
255
1952 '53 '54 '$5 '5S '57 '58 '59
DOLLAR COST OF RISING
INTEREST RATES
8.5
Billions of Dollars
Interest charge computed
at 1952 rates
_J I I t t f
5.5
1952 53 54 55 56 57 58 59
NOTE i All figures relate to total amounts outstanding
mour Wolfbein, Labor Dept. man-
power expert, in recalling last fall's
manpower projections which out-
lined the impact of the World War
II baby boom on the 1960's.
"This is just the beginning,* 1
Wolfbein stressed By 1965, he
added, the number of young people
entering the workforce "will really
be out of this world."
The June report traced 800,000
of the increased unemployment to
teenagers and an additional 100,000
to the 20-24-year-old bracket.
"This is not a harbinger of
recession," Wolfbein said of the
June report, adding that unem-
ployment is expected to drop in
the coming months.
Asked about the effect of the
young jobseekers on older bread-
winners, Wolfbein said that, for the
most part, the jobs sought by the
teenagers are not competitive.
Not 'Satisfied'
This is not to treat the 5.5 percent
rate of joblessness lightly, he added,
saying "I don't think anybody is
satisfied" with that level.
The report said "virtually all" of
the May-to-June increase in unem-
ployment was among those seeking
work less than ^5 weeks, boosting
this total by 1 million to a total of
2.7 million.
The long-term unemployed —
those out of work 15 weeks or
longer — dropped seasonally by
100,000 to 800,000. This was
100,000 below the 1959 total,
but remained substantially higher
than the 500,000 of 1957.
In non-farm employment, the La-
bor Dept. reported mainly seasonal
changes, "except in the steel indus-
try, where layoffs were reported for
the fourth successive month."
Non-farm payrolls rose by 270,-
000 to a total of 53.5 million, with
increases of 140,000 in construction
and about 70,000 in trade.
Factory employment increased
35,000 to a total of 16.4 million,
a less-than-usual rise because of
a cutback of 25,000 in primary
metals and a drop of 45,000 in
transportation equipment, the re-
port said.
The drop in transportation jobs
resulted "mainly from a strike at
some aircraft plants," but also re-
flected the "steady decline" in air-
craft jobs over the past three years.
Compared to June a year ago, the
report showed a drop of 110,000
jobs in durable goods industries.
The sharpest declines were primary
metals, down by 91,000 and trans-
portation equipment, down by
94,000.
The factory workweek showed a
less-than-usual rise, by six minutes
to 40 hours in June. The workweek
was 42 minutes longer a year ago.
Weekly earnings of factory pro-
duction workers rose by 23 cents
over the month to $91.60, with
hourly earnings unchanged at $2.29.
a few cashiers and stockroom
helpers to push buttons, has been
patented and is ready for intro-
duction.
Automated devices may flood re-
tailing, materials handling and dis-
tribution within the immediate fu-
ture, as they have in warehousing
and billing, Suffridge reported.
"We recognize," he said, "that
many progressive managements are
aware of this problem, and are pro-
viding training programs, severance
pay, and other forms of assistance.
But too often these measures are
uncoordinated, hit or miss ap-
proaches.
"We agree that the introduction
of automated equipment ought to
be carefully planned, and the proper
time selected. We feel also that it
is important that labor sit down
with management to seek effective
solutions."
Joint consultation between labor
and management has worked ex-
ceedingly well in the meat pack-
ing industry, the RCIA head said.
He cited Armour & Co., which
agreed by contract to contribute 1
cent for each 100 pounds shipped
from its plant.
The nation cannot afford, Suff-
ridge said, to allow automation to
become an uncontrollable force. He
added:
"Certainly more study is re-
quired. Perhaps one of the most
effective ways of softening the im-
pact of automation would be a
reduction in the work week. It
provides a sensible approach to the
distribution of automation's fruits.**
Suffridge cited these examples
of automation — a New York de-
partment store which will "get
around a tight clerical labor mar-
ket" by using machines to handle
300,000 sales checks per hour
with a single operator; a food
chain in Lakeland, Fla., which
has replaced 150 store workers
with 35 in an automated ware-
house; a San Francisco motor
parts firm which pays $5,200 a
month for computers to cut its
clerical force by six.
Painters' Local Gives
Flag to Scout Troop
Kalispell, Mont.— Painters' Local
975 has presented a 50-star Ameri-
can flag and a troop flag to Boy
Scout Troop 36 in nearby White-
fish. Union Sec. Perry Melton,
first Eagle scout in northwest Mon-
tana, made the presentation. He
was introduced by Scoutmaster Ken
Jones, past president of Local 975.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
| Injunction Modified:
U.S. Appellate Court Eases Bar
On Picketing of Stork Club
New York — The U. S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a lower court issued too sweeping an in-
junction when it barred all informational picketing of the union-busting Stork Club here.
The four-man court unanimously ordered the Federal District Court for Southern New York to
revamp its blanket injunction and permit Locals 1 and 89 of the Hotel & Restaurant Employes to
picket the night club during certain stated hours.
The lower court had issued the'^
TWO YOUTHS FROM KENYA, AFRICA will be able to take
advantage of scholarships at American schools, thanks to efforts of
Laundry Workers Joint Board of Clothing Workers in New York,
which raised $1,800 to add to funds collected in Kenya for trans
portation and living expenses. Here R. Chege Mwangi, 19, (left)
expresses thanks to Joint Board Mgr. Louis Simon for union's aid
Chege will study at Phillips Exeter Academy in Andover, N. H.,
while his brother, Kamau, 25, will take graduate courses at Uni-
versity of Michigan.
It CIA Asks Nationwide
Boycott of Sears Chain
(Continued from Page 1)
ganizations whose members are
victims of the Sears policy."
The Machinists struck Sears
stores in San Francisco when store
officials said they could not bargain
on many items because the com-
pany's, national labor policy was
set in Chicago. Members of the
Retail Clerks, Machinists, Build-
ing Service Employes, Teamsters
and the building trades refused to
cross IAM picket lines, and re-
turned only after the Superior
Court of California issued an in-
junction based, IAM said, on a
technicality.
About 50 percent of the re-
turning employes were fired by
Sears. The others have been
subjected to a "vicious program
of aggression and discrimination'
because they upheld basic trade
union principles in refusing to
cross a sanctioned picket line,"
RCIA said.
This discrimination was prac-
ticed in spite of the fact that union
contracts with San Francisco Sears
specifically protect the right of
members to observe picket lines.
RCIA recalled that Wallace
Tudor, Sears vice president, once
apologized to the McClellan Sen-
ate Committee for "widespread use
of pressure and coercion" against
Sears employes; discrimination
against employes for union activi-
ties; favoritism; intrigue; and un-
fair labor practices. It said Tudor
laid the blame for these tactics on
his predecessor and on Nathan
Sheflerman, company consultant on
labor relations.
In San Francisco, Sec. George
W. Johns of the Labor Council
said Sears' business has been hit
hard by the labor boycott.
"Sears will try to fight the boy-
cott with bargains," Johns said.
"Advertising expenditures will be
increased. Sales, specials and fea-
tured items will be pushed with
every kind of merchandising de-
vice."
PennsylvaniaHighCourt
Backs AFL-CIO Bakers
Philadelphia — An attempt by the AFL-CIO-expelled Bakery &
Confectionery union to seize the assets of local unions switching
to the affiliated American Bakery & Confectionery Workers has
been sternly rebuffed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Upholding a lower court ruling that Locals 6 and 492 had the
right to retain their assets wheri^
quitting the ousted international, the
state's highest court declared the
corruption of the B & C leadership
"was proved after a full hearing by
the Ethical Practices Committee of
Local 32B Awards
Four Scholarships
New York — Four children of
members of Local 32B, Building
Service Employes, have been
awarded four-year, $4,800 scholar-
ships in the local's 10th annual
scholarship awards program.
Under the scholarship program,
40 children of members have re-
ceived awards during the past de-
cade. The total amount of funds
expended by the union is more
than $150,000 to date.
the AFL-CIO."
The Supreme Court declared
that the expulsion of the B & C
on findings of corrupt domination
"abrogated • • • the constitutional
obligations binding the locals to
it."
Therefore, the court said, the two
locals had the right to secede and
take their assets with them despite
provisions of the international's con-
stitution which specify that all
"money and property" of a local
union revert to the international if
it disaffiliates or is dissolved.
ABC spokesmen hailed the deci-
sion as giving "the green light to
local unions to join the ABC in
order to get out of the corruptly-
dominated union and at the same
time hold on to their property and
assets." i
injunction under a provision of
the Landrum-Griffin Act that in
fomational picketing was illegal
if "an effect of such picketing is to
induce an individual employed by
any other person . . . not to pick
up, deliver or transport any goods
or not to perform any services."
Beyond the Scope
The high court, taking note of
the fact that some truck drivers
refused to cross the informational
picket line, conceded that the pick-
eting had the effect of inducing
other employes not to make deliv-
eries. But at the same time it said
the injunction should have been
"tailored" only to stop this viola-
tion of the law.
"To enjoin all picketing," the
court ruled, "even at times when
deliveries would not be made but
where there is ample opportunity
to convey information to consum-
ers and other members of the
public, would seem to carry the
scope of the injunction beyond
what is contemplated by the Act."
Although the two Hotel & Res-
taurant locals carried only informa-
tional signs noting that the Stork
Club was non-union, the lower
court ruled this was actually an ex-
tension of recognition picketing
which the locals had carried on
from January 1957 until January
1960, when Landrum-Griffin's pro-
vision barring recognition picket-
ing after 30 days was invoked by
the National Labor Relations Board.
Once the recognition picketing
was barred, the union advised the
labor board and the. Stork Club
that it was no longer seeking rec-
ognition, and that it was changing
its signs to carry nothing but the
informational appeal to the pub-
lic.
Union Votes
On Ending
Ford Strike
Cleveland, O. — Tentative agree-
ment has been reached here between
the Auto Workers and the Ford
Motor Co. for settlement of a strike
over health and safety conditions
and production standards. Terms
of the settlement were not disclosed
pending a ratification meeting of
UAW members.
UAW Local 420 members
walked out of the Walton Hills
stamping plant after management
gave three-day layoffs to 1,019
workers and announced it would
order more layoffs because of an
alleged work slowdown.
Local Pres. Dale Martin said
union committeemen have been try-
ing for months to get management
to settle grievances over working
conditions. A strike deadline was
set in June, but the actual walkout
came after laid-off workers re-
turned to their jobs and the local
was threatened with additional dis-
ciplinary layoffs, he said.
The strike affected 3,800 in Wal-
ton Hills, and almost 18,000 in
other plants for which the stamp-
ing plant makes parts. Laid off for
several days were workers in four
plants making Ford Falcons and
Comets — in Lorain, O.; Metuchen,
N. J.; Kansas City, Mo.; and San
Jose, Calif.; workers producing
standard Fords at Chester, Pa.; St.
Paul, Minn.; Atlanta, Ga.; and Dal-
las, Tex.; and at the Dearborn,
Mich., frame plant. ,
The lower court said there was
"reasonable cause to believe" that
the union still was seeking recogni-
tion — a contention which the Ap-
peals Court ruled was "clearly er-
roneous."
"To say that the carrying of
signs stating that the employer has
no contract with the union is proof
of recognition^ picketing is to
ignore the letter and, we think, the
spirit of the statute," the appellate
court held in rejecting the lower
court's ruling.
The Appeals Court recom-
mended that the lower court issue
a new injunction, tailored so as
to bar picketing at hours when
deliveries and pickups are being
made, while still according mem-
bers of Locals 1 and 89 "the
protection which Congress obvi-
ously wished to provide for in-
formational picketing."
The court added: "To curtail the
dissemination of information by
the unions in a manner approved by
(Landrum-Griffin) at times when
only consumers and other members
of the general public would be ex-
pected to be exposed to this activity,
is, we think, beyond what was in-
tended to be prohibited by the Act,
and unnecessarily raises a con-
situtional question by its impact on
the right of free speech."
Unions Blast Rejection
Of Work Rules Study
Four rail operating unions have denounced management's "abrupt
rejection" of union proposals for a study of disputed work rules
by a commission made up of public, labor and management repre-
sentatives.
Chief executives of the Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, the
Trainmen, the Locomotive Engi-^
neers and the Conductors charged
that "the hurried and thoughtless
action of rail management" has
denied the public "which has an
equal interest ... an active role in
the solving of these problems."
The railroads . turned down the
unions' proposal with the assertion
that the proposed study contained
no provision for binding settlement
and covered too broad an area.
Rejection of the proposal, the
four unions declared, has "pushed
the industry closer to a major
labor-management crisis" and has
"broken faith with the public."
The position of the railroads, the
operating unions said, follows "a
deliberate, well-planned program to
force a service interruption and ac-
companying government interven-
tion."
Sweeping Changes Demanded
At issue in the dispute are man-
agement demands for sweeping
elimination of job and safety pro-
tections, drastic changes in methods
of setting pay and a virtual free
hand in work and jurisdiction as-
union-
there
signments.
In other areas of rail
management negotiations,
were these developments:
• The Transport Workers, rep-
resenting 25,000 non-operating em-
ployes of the Pennsylvania Rail-
road, has declared it will strike after
July 25 to enforce demands for
rules which would protect job
classifications and ban contracting
out of maintenance work. The un-
ion will be free to strike on that
date, 30 days after a Presidential
Emergency Board report which
denied the union proposals. The
TWU is also seeking a 35-cent wage
hike.
• A Presidential Emergency
Board has recommended that the
Switchmen, the only operating un-
ion which has not reached a wage
settlement, accept the 4 percent in-
crease which has been the pattern
in agreements reached by the other
four operating crafts. The Switch-
men have maintained an additional
increase is needed to eliminate in-
equities.
'Runaway' Injunction
Modified by N.Y. Court
A New York Supreme Court injunction barring the Intl. Mari-
time Workers Union from picketing two "runaway" ships has been
upheld by a 3-2 vote of the Appellate Division, but with a limita-
tion hailed by the union as "a substantial victory."
"We are going to respect the order until it's reversed, but it
leaves us free to engage in protestf
picketing," commented H. Howard
Ostrin of Cooper, Ostrin and De-
Varco, the union's legal counsel.
The IMWU, created last fall
by the Maritime Union and the
Seafarers to organize ships which
registered under the flags of Pan-
ama, Liberia and Honduras for
the purpose of evaiding U.S.
standards and/ or unionization,
had been picketing two cruise
vessels of the Incres Steamship
Company. Italian seamen man
the Liberian-flag Incres ships*
Justice Henry Clay Greenberg on
May 25 granted a permanent in-
junction which restrained the
IMWU "from interfering in any
way with the operation and man-
agement" of the two ships.
Greenberg pointed out he was
establishing a new principle in hav-
ing state courts assume jurisdiction.
The Appellate Division's major-
ity decision upheld the state juris-
diction on grounds it could not find
that federal labor law applies to
foreign shipping or to the dispute
at issue. Thus, it added, no labor
anti-injunction law stops the state
court from prohibiting the alleged
"illegal" union activity.
The minority argued that Green-
berg lacked jurisdiction.
The high court's majority deci-
sion, however, modified Green-
berg's action "to limit the injunc-
tion to the condemned activity as
presented in this case."
The limitation imposed by the
high court was welcomed by the
union counsel as "a substantial vic-
tory" since it freed the union to
picket other "runaway" ships. The
union action against Incres resulted
in the cancellation of three cruises.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C. t SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1960
age Elevea
Peyton Strike Bolstered:
Judge Bars Aliens
As Strikebreakers
Meat Cutters picketing the Peyton Packing Co. in El Paso,
Tex., for the past 16 months were given a shot in the arm as Fed-
eral Judge Luther W. Youngdahl ruled that immigration officials
must bar Mexican nationals who have been commuting across the
border to work at the struck plant.
"The union has won an extreme-^"
ly important victory," declared
Meat Cutters' Pres. T. J. Lloyd and
Sec.-Treas. Patrick E. Gorman.
The ruling by Youngdahl, who
sits in the UJS. District Court for
the District of Columbia, will bar
those among the some 250 strike-
breakers who have been commut-
ing. The union had noted the
practice of Mexicans using £1
Paso addresses to obtain work
LIRR Strikers
Demand End to
6-Day Week
New York — A strike by Train-
men on the Long Island Rail Road
idled New York's principal com-
muter line and led to a jurisdictional
clash between federal mediators
and a state fact-finding board set
up by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller
(R).
The union's demand is for a
five-day week with no cut in pay.
The 1,350 strikers are presently on
a six-day week.
National Mediation Board Chair-
man Francis A. O'Neill, Jr., who
tried unsucessfully to head off the
walkout with a ' compromise" plan
tying a cut in pay to a shorter
workweek, said full-scale hearings
planned by Rockefeller's fact-find-
ers would delay a settlement and
were hampering his efforts to bring
about an agreement.
In a move to lessen inconvenience
to the railroad's regular patrons, the
union distributed 100,000 leaflets to
commuters before the strike an-
nouncing the scheduled time for the
walkout and stating the union's
case.
permits and then commuting
from Juarez.
Youngdahl ruled against a Dept.
of Justice motion to dismiss the un-
ion's complaint.
Lashes Evasion
In a memo, Youngdahl lashed
the Dept.'s Immigration and Nat-
uralization Service for evading a
ruling by Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell and threatening to make
a "shambles" of Congressional in-
tention in the 1952 immigration
law "to insure strong safeguards
for American labor."
Mitchell had issued a finding that
the admission of aliens for work at
the struck plant would "adversely
affect" the wages and conditions of
domestic workers in similar work.
The immigration service applied
the Mitchell ruling only to new
entrants, regarding the commuters
as "resident" aliens.
Since the Peyton plant already
had its force of strikebreakers, it
did not have to rely on new en-
trants and the Mitchell ruling be-
came ineffective.
Youngdahl said an "adverse ef-
fect" finding by the Secretary of
Labor means even commuters are
"excludable" from entry to the U.S.
and, he added:
"It is not sufficient to resort to
an 'amiable fiction 9 to justify a
wholesale evasion of the Secre-
tary's certification — Mexican
commuters destined for employ-
ment covered by the certification
must be excluded just as any
non-resident alien."
To do otherwise, he said, would
be to permit administrative prac-
tices to make "a shambles" of Con-
gress' intention to protect American
labor.
THE FLIGHT ENGINEERS present awards in the form of savings bonds to the two outstanding
1960 graduates of Aviation High School, Long Island City, N. Y. The graduates were picked by
school officials as most likely to succeed as flight engineer. Pictured left to right are Alfred Kilb
and Alfred Barth, the winners; School Principal Frank Woehr, and Harold Tiedemann, American
Airlines flight engineer.
Craftsmen Give Labor
For Retarded Children
San Bernardino, Calif. — A new building housing two classrooms,
a workshop and a speech therapy room has been added without cost
for labor to the School of Hope here through the cooperation of
the San Bernardino Central Labor Council and the members of
building trades unions.
The school is a private institution'^
which was started and is operated
by the parents of mentally retarded
children. It has an enrollment of
75 children ranging in age from 3
to 26 years with an average mental
age of 7 years, and is staffed by
nine teachers especially trained for
their work and two administrators,
The labor-aided addition pro-
vides space for 25 pupils who had
been on a waiting list.
Sec. Earl Wilson of the Cen-
tral Labor Council estimated that
union building tradesmen do-
nated between 1,100 and 1,200
man-hours, mostly on weekends,
to complete the project
Mitchell Calls Hearing on Issue of
Job Referrals to Struck Orchards
The explosive issue of whether the government should send strikebreakers through picket lines
and into California's lush orchards will be the subject of special hearings August 8. s
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, who postponed the hearings from July 21 at the request of growers,
said the aim is to resolve a grower bid for modification of regulations barring the public employment
service from referring workers to jobs at issue in a "labor dispute
"Because of the sharply conflict-'^
ing factual descriptions of the
precise way these regulations op-
erate which have been presented to
me in meetings with the growers
and union representatives," Mitch-
ILG Local Awards
Six Scholarships
Philadelphia— Six $2,400 schol-
arships to children of workers in
the knitgoods industry here have
been awarded by Ladies' Garment
Workers Local 190.
Joseph Schwartz, manager of the
local, said five of the awards were
made from a special scholarship
fund established by the union in
1956 and supported by 10 cents
from the monthly dues payments
of each of the more than 8,000
members.
The sixth scholarship was
awarded by the Martin Saligman
Foundation which honors the mem-
ory of the late vice president and
founder of a Philadelphia women's
sportswear firm.
Scholarship winners were Har-
vey P. Cheskis, James E. Kozin,
Alan J. Marcus, Edward J. Rogo-
zinski. Froma S. Rosenberg and
Walter R. Weeks.
ell said, "I have concluded that
everyone who has an interest should
be given an opportunity to hear,
examine and respond to these diver-
gent views."
Make "Necessary" Amendments
Mitchell said he will, on the
basis of evidence presented at the
hearings, "make such amendments
to the present regulations as appear
proper and necessary."
The problem came to a head
during the recent cherry harvest
in California's San Joaquin Val-
ley. The AFL-CIO Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee
picked out as its chief target Fred
Podesta's 200-acre orchard, big-
gest in the world.
The pickets, aided by what
AWOC reported as Podesta's long
record of poor labor relations, had
the effect of cutting the harvest
force drastically. Podesta claims
to have lost about two-thirds of
his crop or about $200,000.
But what proved crucial was the
broad interpretation of a "labor
dispute" by Irving Perluss, Cali-
fornia's director of employment,
who refused to refer either domes-
tic workers or imported Mexican
nationals to the picketed orchards
Since then, Mitchell, who runs
the federal-state employment serv-
ice, sent to California several inter-
pretations to guide Perluss in future
cases.
Mitchell provided one basis
for referring workers when he in-
formed Perluss the ban does not
apply in "a labor dispute involv-
ing exclusively a controversy
over wages . . ."
A spokesman for the growers
said they seek an outlawing of what
they call "stranger" picketing. He
said they consider a picket "bona
fide" only if he has had an em-
ploye relationship to the employer
he is picketing.
The union action and state sup-
port inspired the growers to organ-
ize a California Farmers* Emer-
gency Food Committee to develop
a non-union labor force. The grow-
ers* anxiety is focused ahead, on
the big peach and tomato harvests
in the late summer and early falL
Union sources report the growers
also are pointing for action in the
state legislature early next year to
limit or outlaw union activities in
perishable crops."
Involved were members of Car-
penters Local 944, Lathers Local
252, Plasterers Local 73, Laborers
Local 783 and Local 477 of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers. In addition, union con-
tractors donated the plumbing and
the roofing.
Has Community Support
The school has widespread sup-
port here. It operates on a budget
of about $35,000 annually, part of
which comes from the United
Fund. It receives no state aid be-
cause the • California Education
Code does not allow funds for
schools of its type even though the
public schools will not accept chil-
dren with low IQs.
Support for the School of
Hope is but one civic project in
which San Bernardino organized
labor is active. Another is known
as "Santa Claus, Inc./' which
was formed by a group of citi-
zens to provide Christmas gifts
for the children of indigent fam-
ilies.
Members of Fire Fighters Local
891 refurbish donated toys during
the year. Cash gifts are spent on
candy, clothing and additional toys,
and when Christmas comes around
the parents are invited to a central
point where they make their choices
as in a department store.
CWA Signs
Six New Bell
Agreements
The Communication Workers
have announced the signing of six
new contracts with Bell System
telephone companies for a total of
15 agreements covering 137,000
workers. Negotiations covering an
additional 150,000 workers are cur-
rently under way.
All contracts negotiated this year
follow the breakthrough pattern es-
tablished with Northwestern Bell.
The three-year agreements provide
company-paid major medical insur-
ance, a fourth week of vacation
after 25 years, higher pensions and
pay hikes ranging from $1.50 to
$4.50 a week, with two wage re-
openers.
Local Gains
The contracts also include a
number of local gains, including
upgrading of scores of towns to
higher pay categories.
In addition to contracts previ-
ously reported in the AFL-CIO
News, agreements have been nego-
tiated covering workers employed
by Southern California Bell, Ohio
Bell, Chesapeake & Potomac Com-
panies of Maryland, Virginia and
West Virginia, and Pacific Tele-
phone & Telegraph Co. of North-
ern California & Nevada.
Major contracts still in negotia-
tion include Southwestern Bell, af-
fecting 46,000 employes in five
states, and Southern Bell, covering
53,000 in nine states.
'Chance 3 for a New House
Latest in Fringe Benefits
San Juan, P. R. — A chance on an $8,000 house is the latest
thing in fringe benefits, provided in a new two-year contract
between the Carpenters and the IBEC Housing Corp.
Each of the company's 2,000 employes will be given a
chance on the house in a raffle provided for under the contract.
Other benefits include wage increases of five cents an hour as
of June 1, 1960; Jan. 1, 1961; and July 1, 1962; an additional
five cents an hour as a Christmas bonus; five paid holidays per
year; and an improved health program.
The first of the three pay hikes brought the base wage of
IBEC employes to the level of a new base building trades wage
of 77 cents an hour, just recommended by an industry com-
mittee of the Puerto Rico Dept. of Labor.
Union Organizer Braulio Martinez said the union has nego-
tiated a similar contract for 250 employes of the Amporico
Construction Co., and is bargaining on a new contract with
Metropolitan Builders Inc.
Post- Adjournment Veto:
Louisiana Governor
Kills Anti-Scab Bill
Baton Rouge, La. — A labor-backed anti-strikebreaking bill,
passed by the Louisiana legislature before adjournment, has been
vetoed by Gov. James H. Davis (D).
It was the second such bill passed by a state legislature this year
« — and the second to be vetoed. In May, Rhode Island Gov.
Christopher Del Sesto (R) vetoed^
a similar bill and also a modified
substitute passed a few days later.
Pres. Victor Bussie of the Lou-
isiana State AFL-CIO described
Davis' veto as "terribly disap-
pointing" to labor. He challenged
the governor's explanation that
the use of strikebreakers was not
a problem in Louisiana.
Despite strong opposition from
newspaper publishers in the state,
the bill passed the lower house of
the legislature with only two dis-
senting votes. It won by 23-to-12
in the Senate, in the face of mount-
ing employer pressure to defeat it.
Similar to Pennsylvania Law
Similar to Pennsylvania's anti-
scab law, it would have made it
"unlawful for any person, firm or
corporation, not directly involved
in a labor strike or lockout" to re-
cruit or furnish strikebreakers. An-
other provision would have banned
third parties from importing strike-
breakers into the state. Penalties of
up to one year in prison and a
$1,000 fine were provided in the
bill.
Opponents of the Louisiana anti-
scab bill made an unsuccessful ef-
fort to emasculate the measure in
the Senate Labor Committee.
Amendments were proposed — and
defeated — to exempt newspapers
from the provisions of the bill and
to prohibit picketing by anyone who
was not an employe of the struck
company.
Unions in the newspaper and
printing industries, where pools of
professional strikebreakers and
"schools for scabs" are available
to union-busting publishers, have
been leaders in the campaign for
effective anti-strikebreaking legis-
lation. The legislative drives were
given impetus by the use of pro-
fessional strikebreakers by the
publishers of the Portland, Ore.,
newspapers.
The only such law now on the
statute books — in Pennsylvania —
was used this year against Bloor
Schleppey, operator of a profes-
sional strikebreaker recruiting agen-
cy for newspaper publishers. Schlep-
pey, who was arrested while trying
to flee the state in an episode in-
volving a standby crew of strike-
breakers allegedly earmarked for
Chester, Pa., was fined $500 and
agreed to keep his illegal operations
out of Pennsylvania. ,
6 Work' Laws Denounced
By Business Leaders
Six business leaders, firmly committed to the principles of labor-
management cooperation, have spoken out strongly against so-
called "right-to-work" laws in a new pamphlet issued by the National
Council for Industrial Peace.
The business officials sharply denounced state legislative bans on
the union shop as harmful to em-'^
ployers as well as unfair to workers
Dan A. Kimball, president of
California's missile-making Aerojet-
General Corp., said he can see
•'nothing good about 'right-to-work'
laws."
The union shop, he declared,
"makes for a fair balance in
labor-management relations. • • •
I am convinced this proposal
fright-to-work') would do more
to disrupt industrial harmony
than anything the Communists
themselves have been able to
achieve during the cold war and
would be extremely harmful to
our national security."
John I. Snyder, Jr., president and
board chairman of U.S. Industries,
asserted that "from the point of
view of what is good for an em-
ployer, I am firmly opposed to any
so-called 'right-to-work' law. Once
a majority of employes in any plant
have voted for a union, that union
has the right and the duty to repre-
sent everyone of the employes in
the plant in collective bargaining.
. . . When that happens in any of
our plants . . . then I want everyone
of our employes to take the most
active part possible in the affairs of
their union."
Two small businessmen, E. F.
Higgins, Jr., a Wilmington, Del.,
electrical contractor, and Leo Weis-
field, Seattle business leader, joined
in rejecting the compulsory open
shop.
Higgins warned that anti-labor
laws "decrease consumer pur-
chasing power by lowering wages
and thus disrupt the nation's
economy." Wakefield declared
"there would be nothing but cha-
os" in labor-management rela-
tions under an open shop.
Bernard I. Schub, spokesman for
the Connecticut Dress Manufactur-
ers Association, declared that "de-
ceptive" proposals for R-T-W
"clearly place management's best
interests in jeopardy." He added
that 'by outlawing the right of man-
agement and labor to agree on a
union shop, these proposals would
ultimately destroy the base of the
collective bargaining process."
Also quoted in the pamphlet are
statements made by J. Paul Getty,
Texas billionaire, who challenged
the anti-union bias of many busi-
ness executives. "Unions are here
to stay," Getty declared. "The
smart businessman accepts, under-
stands and respects them."
Single copies of the pamphlet,
entitled "Responsible Business
Leaders Oppose the So-Called
'Right-to- Work' Law," are avail-
able free from the National
Council for Industrial Peace, 605
Albee Bldg., Washington 5, D. C.
Bulk orders are $1.15 per hun-
dred.
25TH ANNIVERSARY OF WAGNER ACT was marked by labor and civic leaders at dinner held
by Labor Temple Fellowship, interfaith and inter-racial organization in New York, as part of its own
50th anniversary. Shown at affair are, left to right: Michael Mann, director of AFL-CIO Region II;
Dr. Richard Evans, president of Labor Temple Fellowship; Lewis M. Herrmann, editor of New
Jersey Labor Herald; AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A. Philip Randolph; Norman Thomas, former Socialist
Party presidential candidate; and Dr. Frank P. Graham, former Democratic senator from North
Carolina,
30 Governors Call for Passage
Of Social Security Health Bill
The governors of 30 key states — with more than two-thirds of the nation's population and nearly
11 million of America's 16 million senior citizens — have called on Congress to enact health care for
the aged linked to the social security system.
The 25 Democratic and 5 Republican chief executives called the financing of "adequate" health
and medical care for retired workers the "most pressing" of all of the problems confronting the
elderly. ® :
ance for the aged "financed princi
Use of the social security mech-
anism was «a key element in the
AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill, re-
jected by the Ways & Means Com-
mittee before House passage last
month of social security improve-
ments. A Senate proposal embrac-
ing the same principle has been in-
troduced by Sen. Clinton P. Ander-
son (D-N. M.).
AFL-CIO Pres. George Mca-
ny, declaring that Anderson's bill
stands "the best chance of adop-
tion," has called on the 13.5-
million-member trade union
movement to use the current con-
gressional recess to "intensify
your efforts" to get the Senate to
amend the House-passed social
security measure to include
meaningful health care.
"There is still time to win this
fight in 1960," Meany recently
wrote the presidents of national and
international unions and state and
local central bodies, if labor mo-
bilizes "the widest possible commu-
nity support for Forand-type leg-
islation such as the Anderson" bill.
The stand in favor of Forand-
type legislation was taken by the
state chief executives during the
recent 52nd annual meeting of the
Governors' Conference at Glacier
National Park. By a vote of 30 to
13, the conference adopted a reso-
lution calling for enactment of leg-
islation providing for health insur-
Ike Signs Improved Bill
For Dam on Rio Grande
Pres. Eisenhower has signed into law a labor-backed bill author-
izing the construction by the U. S. and Mexico of the $108 million
Amistad Dam project on the Rio Grande River.
The AFL-CIO and the Texas State AFL-CIO strongly endorsed
the project, which passed minus a provision which labor charged
was a $1 million a year "eiveawav"^
giveaway
for private enterprise.
Amistad means "friendship"
and replaces the earlier name of
Diablo Dam, given because the
project was to be located near
the confluence of Devil's River
upstream from Del Rio, Tex,
The international storage dam
has the multi-purpose of flood con-
trol, conservation and silt retention.
A change in the House bill made by
the Senate Foreign Relations Com-
mittee was a requirement that any
federal hydroelectric power plant
at the dam must be self-liquidating.
The Senate group rejected a
Budget Bureau recommendation
that local interests be required to
repay costs allocated to irrigation
and water supply if the dam was
operated for these purposes.
Organized labor had attacked the
earlier provision which would have
put a private utility in control of
power generation and marketing,
warning this would undermine 50
years of public power policy.
pally through the contributory plan
and framework of the Old Age,
Survivors and Disability Insurance
system."
Voting in favor of the resolution
were Governors John Patterson
(D-Ala.), William A. Egan CD-
Alaska), Paul Fannin (R-Ariz.),
Orval Faubus (D-Ark.), Edmund
G. (Pat) Brown (D-Calif.), Stephen
L. R. McNichols (D-Colo.), Abra-
ham A. Ribicoff (D-Conn.), LeRoy
Collins (D-Fla.), George Docking
(D-Kan.), Bert T. Combs (D-Ky.),
John H. Reed (R-Me.), Foster
Furcolo (D-Mass.), G. Mennen
Williams (D-Mich), Orville L.
Freeman (D-Minn.), James T.
Blair, Jr. (D-Mo.).
Also favoring the move were
Governors J. Hugo Aronson (R-
Mont.), Ralph G. Brooks (D-Neb.),
Grant Sawyer (D-Nev.), Robert B.
Meyner (D-N. J.), John Burroughs
(D-N. M.), Nelson A. Rockefeller
(R.-N. Y.), Michael V. DiSalle
(D-O.), J. Howard Edmondson
(D-Okla.), Christopher DelSesto
(R-R. I.), Ralph Herseth (D-S. D ),
Buford Ellington (D-Tenn.), Price
Daniel (D-Tex.), Robert T. Staf-
ford (R-Vt), Albert D. Rossellini
(D-Wash.), and Gay lord A. Nelson
(D-Wis.).
Governors opposed to the so-
cial security principle were J.
Caleb Boggs (R-Del.), S. Ernest
Vandiver (D-Ga.), Robert E.
Smylie (R-Ida.), William G.
Stratton (R-Ill.), Harold W.
Handley (R-Ind.), Wesley Powell
(R-N. H.), Luther H. Hodges
(D-N. C), Ernest F. Hollings
(D-S. C), George Dewey Clyde
(R-Utah), J. Lindsay Almond,
Jr. (D-Va.), Cecil H. Underwood
(R-W. Va.), Peter T. Coleman
of American Samoa, and John D.
Merwin (R) of the Virgin Islands.
At the same time, 23 of the 25
Democratic governors supporting
Forand-type legislation, in a tele-
gram to Sen. Pat McNamara (D-
Mich.) said linking health care to
Unionist Named to
Michigan Board
Lansing, Mich. — Kenneth A.
Hull, a veteran of 39 years in the
trade union movement, has been
sworn in as a member of the Mich-
igan Employment Security Com-
mission's Appeals Board.
social security would "enable the
citizens of our country to contri-
bute small amounts during their
working lives and have as a matter
of right a paid-up health insurance
policy to protect them during re-
tirement years when their medical
needs are likely to be greatest and
income lowest."
Belated UC
Benefits Set
At GM Plants
Flint, Mich.— Nearly 5,000 mem-
bers of the Auto Workers employed
by General Motors here are in line
for unemployment compensation
denied them 33 months ago when
they were laid off because of a
plant shutdown 200 miles away in
Mansfield, O.
Referee Wesleyan Voigt of the
Michigan Employment Security
Commission, acting as the result of
a decision by the State Supreme
Court in a similar case involving
UAW members at Ford, belatedly
upheld the right of the GM workers
to collect checks averaging $70
each.
The original denial of unem-
ployment benefits was based on
the commission's ruling in the
Ford case that unemployment re-
sulting from a work stoppage
anywhere in a multi-plant cor-
poration disqualified jobless
workers from receiving benefits.
The court overruled this conten-
tion, declaring that an out-of-
state work stoppage was beyond
the control of workers in this
state.
GM's Mansfield workers struck
on Sept. 18, 1957, and settled eight
days later. The cutoff of materials
from Mansfield resulted in work
curtailment at GM's Buick and
Fisher Body plants here.
yd. y
Iwied WMkty at
915 Slxtwnth St. N.W.
Waihinflton 6, D. C
|2 a year
s««oad class ?*um faid at wasbiajteii, ». c Saturday, July 23, 1960
No. SO
Meany Urges GOP to Map
Program to End Stagnation
Boycott of
Trujillo Is
Tightened
By Robert B. Cooney
The democratic trade union
movement has moved toward
tightening a world boycott of the
Dominican Republic in a fresh
effort to topple the tottering
Trujillo dictatorship.
Fastbreaking events followed
successful picketing in mid-July
by Puerto Rican workers and
Dominican Republic refugees
against a Hamburg-American Line
ship which docked in Puerto Rico
with Trujillo cargo. Puerto Rican
labor appealed to the AFL-CIO for
support and Pres. George Meany
urged longshoremen there to boy-
cott the ship.
Then came these developments
• In Berne, Switzerland, the
powerful Intl. Transportworkers
Federation opened its convention
and prepared to act on a proposal
to enforce a general boycott of
Dominican shipping and goods.
• In Caracas, Venezuela, union
leaders from a number of Carib
bean and South American nations
signed a pact to use all their power
to enforce an anti-Trujillo boycott
• In Puerto Rico, where the is-
sue had been joined earlier, dock
workers refused to unload two
Dominican freighters which had
traveled a scant couple of hundred
miles from the neighboring island.
• Meany also telegraphed an
appeal to Puerto Rican Gov. Luis
Munoz Marin to deny the use of
commonwealth port facilities to
Dominican vessels.
Serafino Romualdi, AFL-CIO
(Continued on Page 3)
Council Postpones
General Board Date
The AFL-CIO Executive
Council has voted by wire to
postpone to a later date the
General Board meeting which
had been scheduled for Chi-
cago Aug. 17.
The action was taken so
that officers of international
unions who are interested in
pending legislation in the
August session of Congress
could give full attention to
this work.
The vice presidents who
comprise the Executive Coun-
cil voted to give the AFL-
CIO Executive Committee
authorization to call the Gen-
eral Board into session at a
later date.
The council will meet in
Chicago, as scheduled, on
Aug. 15.
ECONOMIC GROWTH is essential to stability at home, peace
abroad, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany tells Republican Platform
Committee in Chicago, emphasizing growing joblessness by means
of chart in background. Meany presented labor's same detailed
recommendations to Republicans as were presented to Democratic
Platform Committee in Los Angeles earlier.
27,000 Still Out in Connecticut:
IAM Ends Strike
At Lockheed Plants
A month-long strike df Machinists at four California locations
of Lockheed Aircraft Co. has ended in a new two-year agreement
providing wage increases for 10,500 workers, along with layoff
payments, improved hospitalization benefits, and protection against
job reclassification at lower rates.
Members of the IAM voted by^
a three-to-two margin to accept a
company offer and to return to work
at missile and space divisions in
Sunnyvale, Van Nuys, Santa Cruz
and Vandenberg, Calif. Also af-
fected by the settlement but not on
strike were IAM members at Hon-
olulu and at Holloman Air Force
Base, N. M.
The IAM announced approval
also of new contract terms for
members at a Lockheed aircraft
plant in Marietta, Ga. It said
missile and aircraft workers em-
ployed by Boeing Aircraft Co.
are scheduled to vote July 23 on
a management contract offer
whose details were not revealed.
Some 25,000 IAM members at
plants in Seattle, Wash., Wichita,
Kan., and missile bases in Florida
and California remained at work
when their contracts expired.
In Connecticut, members of the
Machinists and the Auto Workers
stayed on strike at six plants of
United Aircraft Co. Members of
UAW Local 1234 voted to accept
a new contract and return to work
Raps Goldwater 9 s
6 Socialism 9 Charge
Chicago — Labor has told the Republican National Convention
here that the issues of freedom and a strengthened American society
are "inseparable," and that "we cannot be safe against the enemy
without unless we have conquered" the dangers of poverty and
economic stagnation within.
Testifying before a GOP Platform Subcommittee on Labor and
Commerce, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany directly challenged the
doctrine of Republican conservatives that federal stimulation of
the economy or federal legislation was "socialism."
Taking note of attacks on federal social and economic activity
by Republican Congressional Policy'-^ ■
Committee spokesmen, including £^ 4~W^% O i
IxUJr het
For Choice
Of Nixon
By Willard Shelton
Chicago — An explosion on the
civil rights issue marked platform
committee sessions here as the
Republican National Convention
moved toward formal opening
July 25 of sessions expected to
ratify the choice of Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon for the presi-
dential nomination.
Both Gov. Nelson A. Rocke-
feller of New York and Sen. Barry
Goldwater of Arizona, spokesman
of right-wing conservative groups,
were possible competitors, but
Nixon was expected to win over-
whelmingly against any opposition
on the first ballot July 27.
Goldwater has the endorsement
of a handful of delegate votes from
South Carolina and Arizona, but
would not say whether he expected
his name to be placed in nomina-_
tion.
Rockefeller, leader of the big
96-vote New York delegation,
has held off any endorsement of
the Vice President but whether
(Continued on Page 3)
Runaway Employer Ordered to Pay
Union$200,000,ReopenPlantinN.Y.
New York — An employer who talked of expansion while he secretly moved his operations "at night
and over a weekend" to Mississippi has been ordered by an arbitrator to reopen a plant here and
pay the Clothing Workers over $200,000 in damages.
ACWA Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky welcomed the decision and said the award and the union's boycott
of the Record and Currick & Leiken labels aim to show "that runaway employers will pay heavily
for trying to avoid their legitimate'^;
contractual obligations to their
workers."
"We will not tolerate this dis-
ruption to our hard-won condi-
tions," he added, "which are
faithfully observed by the em-
ployers in the industry, of whom
98 percent are organized."
The manufacturer — Jack Meil-
man, head of Hickory Clothes,
Inc. — indicated he would go to
court to fight the award. He had
at the North Haven jet parts plant
of UACs Pratt & Whitney engine
division.
The UAW local said its mem-
bers at North Haven accepted a
company offer of wage increases
(Continued on Page 2)
Sen. Barry Goldwater (Ariz.),
Meany ridiculed Goldwater's earlier
platform testimony that "the people
don't want" government aid in edu-
cation, health care and similar pro-
grams.
"There is a long history of gov-
ernment subsidies to stimulate
private enterprise," he observed.
"I have never understood why
we can take public money to
help the railroads drive to the
Pacific or to help build the air-
craft industry, and that's not so-
cialism, but if we take public
money to give lunch to some
undernourished kid, that's social-
ism. I don't agree with that."
In a press conference following
his testimony, Meany emphasized
that he was received "courteously"
by the subcommittee headed by Sen.
Prescott Bush (Conn.), and that
the unit seemed to show "some
concern for the economic situation"
of continuing high-level unemploy-
ment, which Meany described as
"frightening."
The federation president's test-
imony came as the platform com-
mittee split into eight units to con-
sider various areas of policy after
the full group heard nine speakers
discuss a general "philosophy" or
declaration of principles" that Re-
publican National Committee
Chairman Thruston B. Morton
(Continued on Page 3)
lost an earlier legal effort to block
arbitration.
The union, however, expressed
confidence the award would be up-
held because of recent U.S. Su-
preme Court rulings strengthening
arbitration against judicial reversal.
The union charged that MehV
man left 300 workers jobless and
violated the contract by moving
his equipment and unfinished
materials to a new plant financed
by a $360,000 public bond issue
in Coffeeville, Miss.
The union went to arbitration
under a provision prohibiting manu-
facturers from moving plant or
production without union consent.
Contracts between the ACWA
New York Joint Board and the New
York Clothing Manufacturers' Ex-
change in addition bar any covered
employer from being involved in
(Continued on Page 6)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
WE Advances Date:
DEMOCRATIC presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.) ticks off points in huddle with
his vice presidential running mate, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.) in huddle at Los Angeles Coliseum
as party standard bearers waited to accept their nominations to head Democratic ticket in November.
Kennedy, Johnson Map Campaign,
Seek Democratic Party Unity
The presidential drive of Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy got under way as the senator sched-
uled conferences with his vice presidential running-mate, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.), and with
former presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson.
Kennedy began an intensive round of conferences with high-ranking party advisers after a few days
in his summer home at Hyannis Port, Mass., and Johnson was set to fly there from a brief post-
convention vacation at his LBJ'^
Texas ranch and Acapulco, Mexico.
The Kennedy forces already had
started an intensive drive for sup-
port from independent Republicans,
independents and dissident or half-
dissident Democrats by announcing
a new "Citizens for Kennedy" or-
ganization headed by Byron White
of Colorado, 43-year-old lawyer,
former college and professional
football player, and former Rhodes
scholar.
The Democratic presidential
nominee, moving swiftly to mend
weak fences before the Republi-
cans make their expected nomi-
nation of Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon in Chicago, issued a clear-
cut bid for the New York anti-
organization reformers who
backed Stevenson at the Los An-
geles convention.
This group, headed by Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt, former Sen.
Herbert H. Lehman and Thomas
Finletter, is seeking to oust Car-
mine DeSapio, New York Demo-
cratic national committeeman, as
state leader. Former Gov. Averill
Harriman, who was defeated for re-
election in 1958 by Republican Nel-
son A. Rockefeller after a Demo-
cratic state convention marked by
open conflict between the DeSapio
and the Roosevelt-Lehman forces,
was considered a possible reconcil-
ing force.
An early addition to the Kennedy
inner circle was James Rowe,
Washington lawyer who was close
to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New
Deal and who during the pre-con-
vention campaign worked succes-
sively in the camps of both Minne-
sota's Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
and, later, Sen. Johnson.
Kennedy Picked Johnson
Johnson was tapped by Kennedy
for the vice presidential nomination
in a day-long series of conferences
in which the presidential nominee
conferred extensively with both
liberal and Democratic organiza
tion forces at the Los Angeles con-
vention.
The Texas senator, some of
whose advisers at first strongly
counseled him to reject Ken-
nedy's approach and to cling to
his post as Senate Majority
Leader, appeared at acceptance
ceremonies in the huge Los An-
geles Coliseum to pledge support
of the party's platform, with its
civil rights plank of unprece-
dented strength, and to pledge
that he would "stand bv the side
of and "stand behind" Kennedy
in the campaign and in office.
The selection of Johnson was a
surprise to many, who believed the
choice had narrowed down to Sen.
Stuart Symington (Mo.), earlier a
dark-horse presidential candidate,
or Sen. Henry M. Jackson (Wash.)
strongly backed by northwestern
delegates.
Johnson under a Texas law
passed last year, reviving an ar-
rangement previously made for
John N. Garner when Garner as
House Speaker ran for the vice
presidency with Roosevelt in 1932,
will be able to seek both national
office and re-election to his Senate
seat. If the ticket wins nationally,
he would resign from the Senate;
if it is beaten, he would remain in
the Senate and undoubtedly con-
tinue as Majority Leader.
Some Apprehension
Johnson's nomination Caused
some apprehension among liberals
that he and Kennedy might "ap-
pease" the southern opponents of
the convention's civil rights plank.
Some Republicans claimed that de-
spite Johnson's nomination, they
would carry four or five southern
states for Nixon, the GOP's pros-
pective nominee, while others said
the Democratic ticket presented
them with a formidable challenge
both in the North and South.
Johnson's supporters pointed
to his leadership in pushing
through two "right-to-vote" laws
in 1957 and 1960, the latter over
a full-blown southern Senate fili-
buster. They also cited pre-con-
vention endorsements of Johnson
as a presidential candidate by
Philadelphia and New York Ne-
gro leaders, including Harlem
leader Adam Clayton Powell (D-
N. Y.), who in 1956 campaigned
for Pres. Eisenhower.
Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi,
who was nominated as a last-minute
"favorite son" by the state's con-
vention delegation as a protest of
the civil rights plank, announced a
few days later in Mississippi that
he would recommend to his fellow
Democrats that they refuse to sup-
port the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
A so-called "states' rights" or Dixie-
crat separate candidacy, compar-
able to that of Southern bolters in
1948, appeared possible.
In the swift reorganization of
Democratic forces by Kennedy,
Sen. Jackson was named as chair-
man of the Democratic National
Committee for the campaign, re-
placing the retired Paul M. Butler.
Butler who previously had an-
nounced a fixed decision to quit,
had built the Democratic Advisory
Council to furnish a sounding-board
for liberal Democrats during the
four years in which congressional
voices otherwise would have been
the party's only spokesmen.
Mrs. Margaret Price, National
Committeewoman for Michigan
and an influential figure in Gov.
G. Mennen Williams' organization,
was named vice chairman of the
committee and head of the women's
division, replacing Mrs. Katie
Louchheim.
The senator's brother, Robert F.
Kennedy, was appointed personal
campaign manager.
Former Pres. Harry S. Truman,
a Symington backer who had re-
fused to go to the convention
when he charged that its results
were "prearranged," within five
days announced his support of
the ticket.
All this followed the climax when
the convention moved from the
Sports Arena to the 1 10,000-capac-
ity Coliseum for the acceptance
speeches from Kennedy and John-
son and for rallying addresses from
Stevenson and from Kennedy's
beaten rivals, Humphrey and Sym-
ington.
All over the world, said the 43-
year-old Massachusetts senator
whose forces had claimed an early-
ballot victory in the convention and
reached exactly what they prom-
ised, there were "revolutionary"
changes, and political power was
passing into the hands of young
men.
He would summon the American
people to "sacrifice" rather than to
easy solutions, he said, to conquer
the "New Frontier" that appears be-
fore them.
Kennedy urged the voters to
move with him toward that "New
Frontier," declaring that "after
eight years of drugged and fitful
sleep" under the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration "this nation needs
strong, creative Democratic leader
ship in the White House."
Johnson, for six of the past eight
years leader of the Democratic ma-
jority in the Senate while a Re-
publican occupied the White House,
hit hard at the theme of "divided
government."
"As our nation moves into the
times we see ahead," he declared,
"you know, I know, all Americans
know that divided government must
end and it will end in January."
Job Security Talks
Under Way at GE
New York — The Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers have
opened negotiations here with General Electric Co. on a new con-
tract for 68,000 employes.
The talks got under way a month ahead of the scheduled Aug.
15 opening date for negotiations after IUE Pres. James B. Carey
appealed to the company for an'^
early start to avoid the possibility
of a last-minute stalemate and shut
down.
In their initial stages, negotiations
are being confined to the question
of employment security — a key is-
sue at General Electric, the nation's
fourth largest company, where em-
ployment nosedived 12.5 percent
between 1957 and 1959 while com-
pany profits were rising 15 percent.
To meet the problem of de-
clining jobs, the IUE has urged
supplemental unemployment ben-
efits, an adequate separation pay
program, protection of employe
rights when production is trans-
ferred to a new location, and an
end to contracting out and over-
time until workers on short
weeks have been fully employed
and those on layoff recalled.
As the meetings opened here,
GE's Philip D. Moore, manager of
employe relations, countered IUE
demands by insisting that unem-
ployment should be treated as a
local issue, instead of being ap-
proached on a company-wide basis.
Moore, head of the management
bargaining team, insisted that the
causes of joblessness varied from
locality to locality.
In addition to the employment
security issues, IUE has asked that
the new contract — to replace the
five-year pact which expires Oct. 1
— provide for a 3.5 percent wage
hike, continuation of the present
cost-of-living escalator, eight paid
holidays, and two weeks vacation
after a year's service graduated to
four weeks after 20 years.
The union has also asked for
union security provisions in its
contract. This issue has long been
a stumbling block, since GE has
been one of the leaders in the
fight to have states enact so-
called "right-to-work" laws.
In a move aimed at insuring
industrial harmony, the IUE has
urged creation of a joint labor-
management committee, headed by
a neutral chairman, to recommend
a program for equitable sharing by
employes in the benefits of automa-
tion.
IAM Members.
End Strikes
At Lockheed
(Continued from Page 1)
ranging from 7 to 12 cents an hour
this year, and again next January;
improvements in insurance bene-
fits; and some advances in contract
language involving arbitration, se-
niority, and grievance procedure.
Still out are almost 27,000
members of the two unions
at East Hartford, Manchester,
Windsor Locks, Broad Brook,
Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn.
The new Lockheed contract in-'
eludes the following provisions:
• A wage increase of four cents
an hour this year, retroactive to
June 13, and another three cents
next year.
• Six cents an hour in cost-of-
living increases, previously granted,
are frozen into base pay rates, and
new cost-of-living increases after
July 1961 if living costs increase.
• A layoff benefit of $50 for
each year's employment, with a
maximum payment of $500.
IAM said the union won in-
creased hospitalization benefits, and
contract language protecting work-
ers against being reclassified in
lower-paid job assignments.
Benson Intervenes in
Farm Picket Dispute
Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft Benson has fired a warning shot
across the bow of the Labor Dept., indicating that the government
must send workers through picket lines if farmers are to have
"freedom" to farm.
Benson, in a letter to Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, stressed the
urgency of prompt rulings after the^~
Aug. 8 public hearings set by Mitch-
ell at the request of powerful Cali-
fornia growers.
The growers seek to upset the in-
terpretation of a "labor dispute"
under which the California public
employment service refused to send
either domestic workers or imported
Mexicans through picket lines of
the AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers
Organizing Committee.
"It is the great concern of this
department," Benson wrote, "that
interpretations of a 'labor dispute'
shall not result in an untenable
position for farmers and ranchers,
especially at harvest time."
Benson argued that "the labor
problem" in agriculture is "entirely
different" from industry and added:
"As you know, harvest of most
crops is limited to a short period
of time. This makes agriculture
particularly vulnerable to work
stoppages. It is important that farm-
ers and ranchers operate in an at-
mosphere of freedom."
An Agriculture Dept. spokesman,
in explaining the problem to news-
men, said some cases at issue in-
volved organizational picketing and
this should not be considered a
"labor dispute."
2 Unions Set
Safety Record
In Atomic Plant
Albuquerque, N. M. — Members
of two AFL-CIO affiliates and their
employer, Sandia Corp., have re-
ceived a safety award trophy from
the Atomic Energy Commission for
establishing a new, all-time, nation-
wide record for man-hours worked
at an atomic energy installation
without a disabling injury.
Cited by the AEC were 2,700
employes represented by Atomic
Projects & Production Workers
Metal Trades Council and Local
251 of the Office Employes.
As of July 1, the commission re-
ported, Sandia employes had
worked more than 12.7 million
man-hours without a lost-time in-
jury, eclipsing the old record of
11.1 million man-hours held by
General Electric Co/s installation at
Lockland, O.
Representing the two unions in
the award ceremonies were H. E.
Burrell of the Metal Trades Coun-
cil and £. L. Gunn of the OEIU.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
Page Three
Meany Urges Economic Growth Action
AFL-CIO Program to Build Nation
Presented to GOP Platform Unit
(Continued from Page 1)
(Ky.) said he hoped would fit into
the convention theme of "Building
a Better America."
Sharp Clashes
The general hearings were
marked by sharp doctrinal clashes
between Congressional and Ad-
ministration leaders and New
York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller,
with the Platform Committee giving
its vocal approval to Rep. John
W. Byrnes (Wis.), chairman of the
House GOP Policy Committee, and
to Goldwater.
Rockefeller set forth a sweep-
ing program urging the Repub-
licans to commit the U. S. to a
broad concept of regional inter-
national groupings and to full-
speed domestic economic ad-
vance to counter the challenge of
— Soviet" Russia; - The governor
mentioned a 5 percent economic
growth rate as essential to our
security and welfare.
Treasury Sec. Robert B. Ander-
son, speaking in defense of the
Administration's fiscal and eco
nomic positions, denounced the in-
vocation of what he termed any
"magic formula" and the worship
of "expansion" as such.
Anderson said that an "honest
dollar" was necessary to give "con-
fidence in the future" and to stim
ulate savings and the accumulation
of capital for investment.
Both Byrnes and Goldwater
joined in sharp attacks on a feder-
ally stimulated economy.
Union Ties' Hit
Byrnes charged that Democrats
had allied themselves to unions and
become "subservient" to what he
called "these self-perpetuating em-
pires of vast economic and political
power." He urged the GOP to be
"willing to risk the wrath of power-
hungry union leaders" when col-
lective bargaining rights are "sub-
verted into unrelenting pressure
against the public interest."
Goldwater said that "history is
littered with the remains of once-
proud republics" destroyed by
self-indulgence and "national ac-
ceptance of the false and destruc-
tive idea that you can get some-
thing for nothing."
He received an ovation from the
platform committee members as
he expressed concern "lest the Re-
publican Party lose its identity in a
mistaken effort to adopt the tactics
and practices of the spend-and-
spend, elect-and-elect architects of
the New Deal and the Fair Deal."
Meany's testimony, which re-
peated the oral presentation he had
given the Democratic Platform
Meany Puts Faith
In Party Platforms
Chicago — The ancient fic-
tion of humorists that party
political platforms are mere
window - dressing, meant to
trap votes, was challenged
here by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany.
.Telling a news, conference
that he hoped for a libera]
platform from the Republi-
can Convention, Meany said
that he personally "puts a
good deal of faith in plat-
forms."
The pledges a party makes
in its platforms "are not al-
ways immediately implement-
ed," the federation president
said, but a great many such
platform promises "have been
implemented over a period of
years."
Committee in Los Angeles, warned
that the high level of unemploy-
ment despite a "general illusion of
prosperity" endangered our se-
curity.
Urging a 5 percent economic
growth rate, he said that the na-
tional expansion rate of 2.7 percent
of the last seven years would not
furnish jobs for the 26 million
young workers who will enter our
labor force in the next decade.
The subcommittee's questions of
Meany did not center directly on
this issue. Inquiries by Platform
Committee Chairman Charles H,
("Chuck") Percy, by Bush and by
various subcommittee members
involved tax rates and policies to
encourage" business and "capital
accumulation," reciprocal trade
policies and the problems of U.S.
corporations in the export trade.
Meany pointed out to Bush
World Labor Boycott
Aims to Upset Trujillo
(Continued from Page 1)
Inter-American Representative,
said the boycott actions were in
the tradition of the opposition by
the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions and its associated
bodies to the Trujillo dictator-
ship's "cruelty, violation of trade
union freedom and suppression
of liberty and human rights."
He said an ICFTU commission
a few years ago finally was able to
get into the Dominican Republic
and substantiated these charges. An
Intl. Labor Organization commit-
tee on freedom of association later
was barred by Trujillo.
Arrests Cited
Romualdi said the nature of the
Trujillo regime was revealed fur-
ther in the wholesale arrests of
those in opposition. The AFL-CIO
and the ICFTU called for counter-
measures to isolate the Dominican
Republic economically and diplo-
matically.
The Organization of American
States then condemned the Tru-
jillo dictatorship. The OAS, by
a 19-0 vote, has set an August
meeting to act on Venezuela's
charges that Trujillo conspired
in the assassination attempt on
Venezuela's Pres. Romulo Betan-
court in June.
The latest boycott actions by
free labor came with the report that
the Hamburg-American's S.S. Ise-
lorn was nearing Puerto Rico with
Dominican Republic cargo.
The leadership of the Puerto
Rican labor movement asked moral
support from the AFL-CIO and
Meany quickly responded.
Meany wired an appeal for soli-
darity of action to Juan Perez Roa,
president of the Puerto Rican
Longshoremen; Pres. Hipolito Mar-
cano of the Puerto Rican Federa-
tion of Labor, and Seafarers' Pres.
Paul Hall.
The next day hundreds of Puerto
Rican workers and Dominican Re-
public refugees picketed the Iselorn
and the action won headlines in the
Latin American press.
Shortly after, in Caracas, a boy-
cott pact against Trujillo was signed
by labor leaders from Venezuela,
Argentina, Ecuador, Puerto Rico,
Cuba, Costa Rica, Curacao, Aruba
and Trinidad.
that the AFL-CIO in endorsing
the reciprocal trade policy had
approved in a convention resolu-
tion last year certain principles
in regard to quotas, the peril
point and the improvement of la-
bor standards in low-wage export
areas abroad. He also empha-
sized that labor had taken the
lead, in advance of the U.S. Mar-
shall Plan, in helping strengthen
unions in other countries and to
build up their national economies
as potential users of American
goods.
Percy said that business in other
nations had some advantages over
American business in tax write-off
policies that allowed foreign cor-
porations to undersell our products.
Meany replied that labor was "flexi-
ble" in considering such issues but
that the principal need of American
business was "more customers
more consumers" in the domestic
market.
Pointing to unused American
production facilities, he continued:
"We don't underestimate the im-
portance of foreign trade. But the
record shows that the number one
customer of American business is
the American worker and Ameri
can housewife.
"What good would it do to stimu
late new investment in a steel mill,
he asked, when steel production is
now at less than 50 percent of
capacity?
Mrs. G. M. McDaniel of Texas,
Republicans Prepared
To Give Reins to Nixon
(Continued from Page 1)
his own name would be formally
offered to the convention would
be determined, his spokesmen
said, over the pre - convention
weekend.
A national citizens' committee
headed by a Californian, William
M. Brinton, claimed at a press con
ference that 21 state "draft Rocke
who described herself as a "home- 1 feller" groups were operating,
maker" whose husband is an in- Brinton said that opinion surveys
dependent oilman, challenged showed Nixon running far behind
Meany's program of proposed fed- the Democratic presidential nomi
eral activities and said she was
disappointed" he had not asked
"where the money is coming
from."
"Why, from taxes," replied the
federation president.
"We might take some of that
27.5 percent oil depletion allow-
ance and get some of the money
from that."
Among subcommittee members
was Roger Millikin of South Car-
olina, chairman of the GOP State
Committee that has offered its con-
vention delegate votes here to
Goldwater for president.
Millikin is the textile magnate
who closed down his Darlington,
S. C, mill several years ago when
workers voted in an NLRB elec-
tion to be represented by the Tex-
tile Workers Union of America.
nee, John F. Kennedy, in five big
states with 160 of the 269 electoral
college votes needed to elect a Presi-
dent in November.
He made no claim, however, of
substantial delegate votes in ad
vance of the convention, while
Nixon spokesmen were claiming
more than 1,100 of the 1,331 total
with 666 needed to nominate.
The real issues facing the dele-
gates were Nixon's choice of a
vice presidential running - mate
and his personal decision on how
"progressive" or "moderate" the
platform would be.
Powerful forces were seeking to
get Nixon to offer the vice presi-
dential nomination to Rockefeller
despite the New York governors
repeated public differences with the
Eisenhower Administration and his
repeated declarations that he "posi
Millikin did not question Meany | tively and absolutely and under no
circumstances" would take the
Number 2 place.
Morton, Lodge Mentioned
Others mentioned as the possible
vice presidential nominee were Sen.
Thruston B. Morton (Ky.), chair-
man of the Republican National
Committee and U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations Henry Cabot
on labor policy, although the fed-
eration president urged amendment
of the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-
Griffin Acts to remove clauses con-
trary to the basic Wagner Act
philosophy of encouraging collec-
tive bargaining.
E.F. McGrady Dies;
FormeF Lctfooi* ^Vide Lodge, former Massachusetts sen
ator beaten in 1952 by Kennedy
Newton. Mass. — Edward F. Mc-
Grady, a former Assistant Sec. of
Labor and a veteran negotiator on |
both sides of the bargaining table,
died here at the age of 88.
McGrady, who started his 55-
year career as a pressman on Boston I
newspapers, rose to the presidency
of the Boston Central Labor Union,
the Massachusetts Federation of
for re-election to the Senate.
The impact of the Democratic
Convention with its admittedly
strong progressive platform and
its ticket of Kennedy and Sen.
Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.) was
acknowledged by Republicans
here to be a factor in their cam-
paign planning.
The GOP was having platform
Labor and the vice presidency of his trouble, however, on the issues of
international union. He served as economic growth, military defenses
legislative representative of the and government activity in the wel-
former AFL and in 1933 was f are area as well as in civil rights,
named assistant administrator of the The civil rights explosion was
National Recovery Administration, sparked when Platform Committee
During World War II, McGrady Chairman Charles H. ("Chuck")
served as a special consultant and Percy, young Chicago businessman
"trouble-shooter" on labor matters with a Horatio Alger career as a
under Sec. of War Henry L. Stim- Bell and Howells executive, inter-
son * I rupted a witness at subcommittee
hearings to suggest that he wanted
a "responsible" rights plank.
Clarence Mitchell, Washington
director of the National Associa-
tion for the. Advancement of
Colored People, rose from the
audience to say he was "deeply
disturbed" at press reports that
the Republicans would not try
to "match" the Democratic rights
plank, which the NAACP had
praised as the strongest in his-
tory.
Percy replied that the Demo-
cratic platform's "dreams" had been
repudiated" by 10 southern states
which served notice their congress-
men would fight it.
The economic growth and mili-
tary defense issues were injected by
Rockefeller both in a televised news
conference and in a formal appear-
ance before the Platform Commit-
tee.
Questioned on comparative mili-
tary strength, Rockefeller pointed
out that the Soviet Union had
threatened us with "rockets" in re-
gard to Fidel Castro's Cuba, but
that we did not feel able to make
the same kind of move when the
Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956.
Balance Has Shifted
If the balance of power has not
shifted, I assume the Russians
would not have made their threat,"
he observed to a silent Platform
Committee.
An economic growth rate of 5
percent to 6 percent a year is
needed, he said, as opposed to an
average growth of what he called
'almost 4 percent" for the years
since World War II. (Most econ-
omists use a 2.7 percent average
growth rate as representing the
seven Eisenhower years.)
Rockefeller proved a Republican
troublemaker also on health care
for the aged, repeating his criticism
of the Administration program as a
subsidy" plan violating GOP doc-
trines of "fiscal responsibility."
Endorsing the social security
approach, he urged that the Re-
publicans support the principle
that people who get health ben-
efits in their old age should be
the ones who have paid for them
in taxes. This is the principle
embodied in the House Forand
bill and Senate bills endorsed by
the AFL-CIO.
No estimate could be made of
the likelihood of a minority report
the Platform Committee rejected
these Rockefeller ideas, but efforts
clearly were being made to "recon-
cile" the differences in approach.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
True Perspective
AT A TIME when the problem of agricultural surpluses in the
•^-United States is a leading political issue, it is especially appro-
priate that the Jntl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions should
have put the question in its true perspective.
For some years now it has been possible to produce on this
planet enough food and fiber to meet the basic needs of every
human inhabitant. The failure has been in distribution. While
surpluses plague some nations, including our own, millions else-
where go hungry.
Surely this is an area especially well-suited for international co-
operation. There must be a better way to handle our own agri-
cultural bounty than to consign it to sterile — and expensive — storage
while others starve.
Ironically, as the ICFTU statement points out, many of the
worst fed are the workers who grow the harvest food. On this
point the United States is no exception.
The "Freedom from Hunger Campaign" initiated by the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization deserves the whole-
hearted support, not only of the ICFTU, but of the people and
the government of our own" bountiful land.
Timely Rebuke
^INCE THE WAYS of the courts are often mysterious, it is
^ perhaps too early to hail as a final victory the arbitrator's deci-
sion upholding the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' case against
a runaway shop.
Even so, the decision is heartening evidence of a growing
public conviction that "free enterprise" has greater responsibili-
ties than maximum profits at all costs. It is also a timely rebuke
to those who, like Sen. Everett M. Dirksen (R-I1I.) would deny
to all unions the right to bargain for job security.
The employer in question, by "stealth ... at night and over a
weekend" transferred his operations from New York to a publicly-
financed plant in Coffeeville, Miss., despite a clause in his ACWA
contract forbidding such migration without the union's consent.
Unquestionably, as the arbitrator ruled, this was a "calculated
and deliberate" violation of contract. Unquestionably, too, the
arbitrator's decision will be assailed by the likes of Dirksen as an
intolerable infringement upon the freedom of an employer to do
as he pleases.
It is upon this latter point that the issue must ultimately be
decided. Is it sound public policy to permit a thriving enterprise
to abandon, at will and without penalty, the community and the
workers with which it attained prosperity? Is it sound public
policy for a state or a community to use public funds for indus-
trial piracy?
In recent years the courts, the National Labor Relations Board
and various impartial arbitrators have come up with conflicting
answers to these and related questions. Eventually there will need
to be a consistent answer.
Once it was accepted practice for farmers to exhaust their land
and move westward. Eventually the nation decided this kind of
freedom was too costly, and measures were devised to discourage
it. Perhaps the same practice by industry is now too costly, too.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Wiilard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, July 23, 1960
No. 30
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of ilo official publications. No one Is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
oWW« to<?-THE
AFJ.-CIO NEWS
Text oi ICFTU Statement:
World Labor Pledges Support
To Freedom from Hunger Goal
Following is the text of a statement by the
executive board of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions:
WE WELCOME the initiative of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion in organizing the "Freedom from Hunger
Campaign" to extend over a period of three to
five years. The planned objectives of the cam-
paign — the promotion of a climate of informed
opinion throughout the world about the causes
and cures of hunger and assistance to the less
developed countries in their efforts to achieve
tangible improvements in the production, distri-
bution and consumption of food — are whole-
heartedly supported by the ICFTU.
There is, indeed, no more urgent problem
facing the world today than that of eradicating
the appalling poverty in which the majority of
the world's population lives. Hundreds of mil-
lions of people lack adequate standards of food,
clothing, housing, medical care and other essen-
tial elements of a decent existence. Hunger and
malnutrition are particularly acute in many areas
of the world.
Ever since its inception the ICFTU has
fought for policies aimed at removing the basic
causes of poverty and at raising living stand-
ards by assisting the economic and social de-
velopment of underdeveloped countries. More-
over, the ICFTU has advocated special meas-
ures for tackling world food problems. Thus
we have given our full support to proposals to
create a world food reserve and national food
reserves and we have consistently called for
action to stabilize the markets and prices of
primary commodities.
The passage of time has not diminished the
size of the world food problem. In some areas
huge surpluses of food have been accumulating
and the technical possibilities exist there for in-
creasing food production still further while in
other areas food production per head of the
population is even below pre-war levels. Some
efforts have been made to make surpluses avail-
able to countries which need them, and these are
to be welcomed warmly. The fact remains, how-
ever, that millions still go hungry because they
lack the necessary purchasing power.
THE FREE TRADE UNIONS, especially in
the economical!) underdeveloped countries, have
a vital interest in the success of the "Freedom
from Hunger Campaign'' in contributing to the
alleviation of hunger and malnutrition among the
millions of workers whom they represent. More-
over, to the workers engaged in the food, agricul-
ture and plantation industries throughout the
world it is of the greatest importance that the
purchasing power of other workers for their
products should be raised.
We believe that the free trade unions can
themselves make an important contribution to
the campaign and we strongly urge all govern-
ments engaging in plans to increase food pro-
duction and consumption to seek cooperation
of the trade unions in their respective countries.
At the same time, we call upon all affiliated
organizations to give their full support to the cam-
paign in their respective countries by participating
in national campaign activities, by giving pub-
licity to the campaign and to world food problems
generally, and by cooperating in particular proj-
ects which may be undertaken as part of the
campaign.
We urge all governments, as part of the cam-
paign, to devote particular attention to the work-
ing conditions of agricultural workers in their
countries, including those who are still living in
subsistence economies, with a view to raising the
standards of living of these workers.
We also urge governments to give every en-
couragement to the adoption of cooperative meth-
ods, both arhong producers and among consum-
ers, as an important means of improving the
efficiency of agricultural production and distribu-
tion and thereby of increasing the purchasing
power of both these groups. In some countries
land reform may be an essential part of any pro-
gram to promote economic development and so-
cial progress, and we therefore appeal to govern-
ments to take resolute action on the question ol
land reform wherever it is needed.
While highly conscious of the importance of
the technical and publicity aspects of the "Free-
dom from Hunger Campaign/ 9 we call upon
the FAO, other inter-governmental agencies
and governments concerned to be always aware
of the need to undertake large-scale interna-
tional action, to remove the underlying causes
of world hunger, by doing all that is possible to
assist the economic and social development of
underdeveloped countries.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
Page Five
lorgan Says:
Active Belief in U. S. Needed to
Improve National Environment
WASHINGTON
Wieeand&Ae&mt I
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. t EDT.)
IN A PLACID CLUMP of Virginia woods
above the Potomac, I conducted a series of
interviews yesterday with a tree toad, a cater-
pillar and a grounded
fledging robin, minus tail
feathers. Communing with
these constituents of na-
ture provided a pleasant,
necessary interlude be-
tween the convention
tasks of trying to commu-
nicate with the genus po-
liticus Democraticus on
the one hand and Repub-
licanensis on the other.
A tree toad can look
fully as important as a
politician and he gives you honest answers be-
sides. A caterpillar is a little more devious; you
don't know whether he is heading for the nearest
television studio and a reunion with Kukla, Fran
and Ollie or is preparing to turn into a butterfly.
In any case he concedes his sadly clownlike char-
acter and doesn't mind being laughed at. There
is something dumb and pitiable about a grounded
bird but you are moved by the undisguised sin-
cerity of his fear.
As you regard these smaller members of the
animal kingdom, however, you are struck by the
fact that the lowliest politician is, or has no ex-
cuse for not being, higher than they. The differ-
ence is that they are prisoners of their environ-
ment but man is, or should be, master of his;
when it deteriorates we are supposed to fix it —
without, if possible, seasoning it with strontium
90.
Improving our environment is not an easy task.
Mark the gap between the promise of party plat-
forms and fulfillment. The platform which the
Democrats adopted in Los Angeles last week is
one of the finest and most forward-looking in the
party's history but wishes won't make it come
true. Nor can the politicians alone transform it
into reality. It will take active support from the
electorate and an active belief in a higher purpose
than just the profit motive.
The fact is that for all the debilitating glut of
our riches, Americans can be and are moved by
basic human principles. Maybe not enough but
I stumbled onto revealing evidence of this during
Washington Reports:
the Democratic convention in, of all places, that
mecca of messy materialism, Los Angeles.
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD of Pasadena, on
the ever-expanding edge of the city a man named
Bernard Richter runs a car wash business with
his mother. This is what's known as the low end
of the service trade with a high turnover of
"winos, bums, derelicts and transients" in hard
work at about a dollar an hour.
The Richters started this way too and from
scratch. Then suddenly they changed their
approach with the double-edge belief that the
work was not unskilled, indeed required really
competent personnel and that these people "are
human beings who want their full share of the
good things of life and above all social equal-
ity."
The Richters spent $50,000 on special equip-
ment, raised pay as much as 60 percent over the
prevailing wage, organized beach parties, sports
nights and award dinners for the staff. Many
of their employes are Negroes whom the com
munity does not welcome as residents. Some of
them drive 70 miles round trip daily to work.
When local barber shops (which happened to be
non-union) wouldn't serve them, Richter pro-
tested, asked the Los Angeles Chamber of Com-
merce, to which he belonged to take a "moral'
position. He got no action. He resigned from
the Chamber.
"Everyone in the car wash business said we
were crazy," Richter told me, "that we were
starry-eyed radicals and would go broke.*
Today, however, Richters' car wash grosses
half a million dollars a year, has cut personnel
turnover from 650 per annum to 60, reduced
damages from negligence to zero and increased
productivity to more than 50 cars per man per
day, double the national high.
Bernard Richter objects to the word "race
as "divisive." "The differences of people," he
says, "are far over-shadowed by their similarities.
... We like to think in terms of one race, the
human race; we're all in it whether we like it or
not."
To remove all doubt of his dangerous radical
ism, Richter aggressively advocates a higher and
broader federal minimum wage and says the car
wash industry should be unionized. In fact he
called AFL-CIO headquarters in Los Angeles,
said he wanted to talk to somebody about organ-
izing his shop.
Drop in Farmers' Income Seen
Factor in High Unemployment
THE DROP IN FARM INCOME is one of the
reasons 4.4 million American workers are job-
less, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) de-
clared on Washington Reports to the People,
AFL-CIO public service program, heard on more
than 300 radio stations.
Sen. George D. Aiken (R-Vt.) said on the same
program: "We've learned from sad experience
that when farm income declines to a certain point
the entire economy is affected. It is important that
farm income be kept up, that the farmer remain
prosperous because a dollar which goes to the
farm rolls over several times before it comes to
rest.''
Both senators, who are members of the Sen-
ate Agriculture Committee, said that farm in-
come has been steadily declining, Aiken said
that "there's also a million less families engaged
in farming or depending on farming for their
income now than there were 10 years ago."
Humphrey remarked that the situation "is one
of the real tragedies of recent years. Their in-
come has been dropping sharply as the cost of
operation has gone up despite the increased ef-
ficiency of family farm production. The family
farm is one of the most efficient, productive units
in the entire American enterprise system."
He a^ded: "We fcnow th at pur family farm sys-
tem in America is much more efficient than the
collective farm system behind the Iron Curtain
and I have a feeling that man for man and dollar
invested it's more efficient than some of the cor-
porate farms. But we're not after efficiency. Main
ly what we want is decency, social justice and fair
play."
BOTH SENATORS agreed that farm programs
should concentrate on aiding the family farm.
Aiken said that the Senate has tried to put
a limitation on the amount of payments that
can go to any one farm or farmer. "The large
farmers, the corporation farmers, have been in
the main beneficiaries of our farm programs,
particularly the support price program. We
ought to reverse that."
Humphrey remarked that, 'Tve offered a family
farm development bill that would provide enabling
legislation for farmers themselves to work out
their own programs on a commodity-by-commod
ity basis. I think we ought to work with the prin-
ciple of abundance rather than scarcity and the
use of our food and fibre for peace and justice
abroad, just as we should use food stamps to aid
the needy at home. Add to that land retirement,
expanded conservation."
Aiken urged encouragement of farm living by
better schools, hospitals and transportation.
CHICAGO— COMPARED TO THE REPUBLICAN conven-
tion shaping here, the Democratic gathering in Los Angeles was a
poor man's show.
All the candidates of the Democrats were men of means — sub-
stantially or moderately so — but the party that staged the affair was
just emerging from financial insolvency and staggered through the
convention to the level of being just dead broke.
Retiring National Committee Chairman Paul Butler had barely
paid off the 1956 campaign debts when he turned over the party
to his heirs. The GOP operation for which the clans are gather-
ing is a very different kettle of fish.
The skeleton publicity staff of the Democrats was stuck in a
string of small rooms on the second floor of Los Angeles' Biltmore
Hotel — about four floors removed from working press quarters in
the bowels of the building. So broke was the national committee
that the publicity director was not allowed to bring his secretary,
who had handled large numbers of pre-convention details. Other
divisions of the committee worked under equally Spartan conditions.
* * *
IN THE VAST EXHIBITION HALL of the Conrad Hilton
Hotel here, where communications systems and working rooms are
located, the publicity staff of the Republican National Committee
works on the same floor in adequate space and with a smooth effi-
ciency that speaks of adequate manpower and money.
The publicity releases, five days before the convention opens,
had poured out in a vast flood — not only the prepared text of
Platform Committee testimony but also a flow of general in-
formation, background information and peripheral information.
There are biographical sketches of Republican governors and
Republican national committeemen, national committeewomen and
state chairmen. There are biographies of Republican senators and
the wives of Republican senators, biographies of the national com-
mittee officers, a biography of Vice Pres. Nixon's pre-convention
campaign manager, Leonard W. Hall, issued by the Vice President's
office.
There is a release section on women's activities. There are six
general features for newspapers — well conceived and brightly writ-
ten — and some have showed up in the local press. There are boiler-
plate pictures for the weeklies. The releases were added to by
Gov. Rockefeller's office for the governor's two-day pre-convention
foray, and made the total output in two weeks look insignificant.
* * *
THE REPUBLICANS OPERATE with efficiency in their Plat-
form Committee hearings. Chairman Chester Bowles at Los An-
geles was always running behind time; his witnesses spoke to the
full committee in a sprawling room, and any member was free to
make a lengthy speech in the guise of a question. The opening
statements of Republican witnesses were confined to nine speakers
before the tight little drafting subcommittee, and Chairman Charles
("Chuck") Percy was able to recess his board meeting at least twice
because proceedings were running ahead of schedule.
Even Rockefeller's "draft" movement makes the draft-Steven-
son operation at Los Angeles look amateurish. The suddenly
set up "citizens' committees" took over the Blackstone theater
across the street from the headquarters hotel, and a vast array
of pennants, hats, posters, bumper stickers, windshield stickers,
buttons, petitions and demonstrators with cowbells issued forth.
The Stevenson people in Los Angeles had influential party names
behind them if not many delegate votes, and there was plenty of
spontaneous enthusiasm in the hundreds of young people, who
marched all week outside the fence at the Sports Arena shouting
for Adlai through homemade megaphones. Rockefeller's drafters
lack the big party names, and the spontaneity hasn't yet shown up
in the demonstrators, but the draft movement has some money.
The Los Angeles throngs of pretty girls, in red-and-white or
red-white-and-blue striped blouses and dresses, haven't shown up
here to pass out buttons for the candidates whose managers paid
for the costumes. Maybe it's the difference between Hollywood
and Chicago.
HELPING THE FAMILY FARM will aid the whole economy, Sen.
Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.), left, and Sen. George D. Aiken
(R-Vt.), both members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, as-
serted on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960 -
FIRST PENSION CHECK from Westchester County, N. Y. Build-
ing Laborers' Pension Fund is presented to 82-year-old Cosimo
Cecere, veteran of 51 years of union membership, by Fund Chair-
man James Arena (center). At right is Jack Vallarelli, one of the
union trustees of fund which covers 3,000 members of 10 locals
affiliated with Westchester County District Council of the Laborers.
Runaway Firm Ordered
To Return, Pay Damages
(Continued from Page 1)
any clothing operation that is with-
out a Joint Board contract.
The union case was upheld by
Prof. Herman A. Gray of the New
York University Law School, who
was serving by Exchange and union
agreement as substitute for the ail-
ing Walter Brower, the industry's
permanent arbitrator.
Gray found that the company
violated the contract by moving last
May "at night and over a weekend"
to Mississippi even while discuss-
ing with the union an expansion of
the New York operations because
of "thriving business."
"The very stealth with which
he managed the moving of his
plant established understanding
on his part that he was violating
the terms of his agreement with
the union and that the violation
was calculated and deliberate,"
Gray said.
Gray called the removal of the
factory "a severe blow to the con-
tinuing stability of the clothing in-
dustry in the City of New York,
seriously damaging in its immediate
effects, but even more serious in the
consequences of the example set
by an act of deception carefully
planned."
Gray relied on court precedent
in ordering Meilman to "cease and
desist" from operating a clothing
operation anywhere outside of New
York City and directed that he re-
open a plant here of the size he
formerly operated.
Gray granted the union money
damages totaling $204,681 for
lost wages of members, including
vacation and holiday pay, as well
as contributions to the union's
welfare and retirement fund.
The money award covered the
period from April 22 through July
8, when the award was handed
down.
Potofsky said the union would
seek further damages for the period
after July 8 or until the manufac-
turer complies with the terms of the
award.
"Such action as that by Meilman
can only tend to bring back sweat-
shops and jungle conditions that
prevailed in this important industry
50 years ago," Potofsky declared.
The employer had refused to take
part in the arbitration hearings on
the grounds that Hickory Clothes
had gone out of business and that
he had no interest in the Mississippi
operations.
State Supreme Court Justice
Henry Clay Greenberg rejected the
employer's efforts to block the arbi-
tration proceeding. The Appellate
Division in turn refused to stay the
case pending an employer appeal.
Rail Operating Unions
Assert Bargaining Unity
All five railroad operating unions have made it pointedly clear
to management that they stand together— and will bargain together
— on the hotly-disputed issue of work rules.
Railroad management had asked the Firemen & Enginemen to
meet separately with the railroads to discuss management demands
for elimination of firemen from the^ recess . The unions have termed
crews of diesel-powered freight
trains — a proposal which rail un-
ions have charged would create a
major safety hazard.
Rejection of the bid for separate
talks came in a letter signed by
chief executives of the Locomotive
Engineers, the Trainmen, Switch-
men and Conductors, in addition to
the Firemen.
Declaring that management pro-
posals for drastic rules changes,
'including the elimination of fire-
men's jobs, "affect all the employes"
represented by the five unions, they
declared there must be "joint nego-
tiations" on issues involving work
rules.
The unions proposed that joint
negotiations be started in September
on all work rules issues, including
the union position that a study com-
mission with public representation
be established.
In other major developments:
• Non-operating unions resumed
negotiations with the railroads on
wage and fringe benefits after a 10-
"disappointing" a Presidential
Emergency Board's recommenda-
tion of a 5-cent wage hike plus im-
provements in health and life insur-
ance, vacations and other non-wage
clauses.
• A federal court cleared the
way for a possible strike by the
Transport Workers against the
Pennsylvania Railroad on or after
July 25. An injunction was modi-
fied to permit a strike over union
work rule demands involving job
classification and a ban on con-
tracting out of maintenance work,
since all mediation and fact-finding
procedures of the Railway Labor
Act have been exhausted. The un-
ion is still barred from striking over
wages, an issue still in mediation.
• Federal and state mediation
efforts continued in an attempt to
settle a strike by the Trainmen
which has shut down the Long
Island Rail Road, principal com-
muter line serving the New York
City area. The union is seeking a
five-day week with no loss of pay.
149 Radio Stations Carry
Edward P. Morgan Program
One hundred and forty-nine stations of the American Broadcasting Co. radio network now carry
the Monday-xhrough-Friday news commentaries of Edward P. Morgan. These AFL-CIO-sponsored
broadcasts originate at 7 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time. Local stations or newspapers should be con-
sulted for the time of broadcast, however, since some stations carry the program at a different hour.
ALABAMA
WAUD, Auburn
WCRT, Birmingham
WOWL, Florence
WNPT, Tuscaloosa
ARIZONA
KOY, Phoenix
ARKANSAS
KFSA, Fort Smith
KLRA, Little Rock
KBRS, Springdale
CALIFORNIA
KPMC, Bakersfield
KIBS, Bishop
KICO, El Centro
KABC, Los Angeles
KGB, San Diego
KGO, San Francisco
KCOK, Tulare
COLORADO
KHOW, Denver
KGHF, Pueblo
CONNECTICUT
WHAY, Hartford
WNHC, New Haven
WATR, Waterbury
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
WMAL, Washington, D. C.
FLORIDA
WNDB, Daytona Beach
WKWF, Key West
WKAT, Miami Beach
WREA, Palatka
WPCF, Panama City
GEORGIA
WALB, Albany
WGIG, Brunswick
WLBA, Gainesville
IDAHO
KBAR, Burley
ILLINOIS
WBYS, Canton
WLS, Chicago
WQUA, Moline
WROK, Rockford
WCVS, Springfield
INDIANA
WTTS, Bloomington
WFBM, Indianapolis
WBAT, Marion
IOWA
KXEL, Waterloo
KANSAS
KGGF, Coffeyville
KFRM, Concordia
WREN, Topeka
KENTUCKY
WKCT, Bowling Green
WTTL, Madisonville
LOUISIANA
WYNK, Baton Rouge
WSMB, New Orleans
KRMD, Shereveport
MAINE
WLAM, Lewiston-Auburn
WRKD, Rockland
WTVL, Waterville
MARYLAND
WWIN, Baltimore
WICO, Salisbury
MASSACHUSETTS
WNAC, Boston
WTXL, West Springfield
MICHIGAN
WBCM, Bay City
WXYZ, Detroit
WLAV, Grand Rapids
WKLA, Ludington
WDMJ, Marquette
WKBZ, Muskegon
MINNESOTA
KXRA, Alexandria
KTOE, Mankato
KMHL, Marshall
WTCN, Minneapolis
KDMA, Montevideo
MISSISSIPPI
WABG, Greenwood
WHSY, Hattiesburg
WLAU, Laurel
MISSOURI
KMBC, Kansas City
KSD, St. Louis
NEBRASKA
KMMJ, Grand Island
KSID, Sidney
NEW MEXICO
KHAM, Albuquerque
KRSN, Los Alamos
KTRC, Santa Fe
NEW YORK
WOKO, Albany
WENE, Endicott-Binghamton
WJTN, Jamestown
WABC, New York City
WHDL, Olean
WNBZ, Saranac Lake
WKAL, Utica-Rome
NORTH CAROLINA
WRRZ, Clinton
WTIK, Durham
WGNC, Gastonia
WGBR, Goldsboro
WGBG, Greensboro
WMFR, High Point
WFRC, Reidsville
NORTH DAKOTA
KXGO, Fargo
OHIO
WHBC, Canton
WSAI, Cincinnati
WJMO, Cleveland
WMNI, Columbus
WIMA, Lima
WWIZ, Lorain
WMAN, Mansfield
WTOL, Toledo
OKLAHOMA
KCRC, Enid
OREGON
KASH, Eugene
KAGO, Klamath Falls
KMED, Medford
KWJJ, Portland
PENNSYLVANIA
WRTA, Altoona
WICU, Erie
WHGB, Harrisburg
WLAN, Lancaster
WKST, New Castle
WFIL, Philadelphia
KQV, Pittsburgh
WEEU, Reading
WILK, Wilkes-Barre
WMPT, Williamsport
RHODE ISLAND
WPAW, Providence-Pawtucket
SOUTH CAROLINA
WOKE, Charleston
WCKI, Greer
WALD, Walterboro
SOUTH DAKOTA
KSDN, Aberdeen
KSOO, Sioux Falls
TENNESSEE
WAPO, Chattanooga
WTJS, Jackson
WBIR, Knoxville
WHHM, Memphis
TEXAS
KNOW, Austin
KBST, Big Spring
WFAA, Dallas-Fort Worth
KWBA, Houston-Bay Town
KRBA, Lufkin
KEEE, Nacogdoches
KMAC, San Antonio
WACO, Waco
UTAH
KIXX, Provo
VERMONT
WSKI, Montpelier
VIRGINIA
WMEV, Marion
WIVIBG, Richmond
WASHINGTON
KOMO, Seattle
KLYK, Spokane
KTEL, Walla Walla
WEST VIRGINA
WHMS, Charleston
WTCS, Fairmont
WTAP, Parkersburg
WISCONSIN
WDUZ, Green Bay
WKTY, La Crosse
WISM, Madison
WISN, Milwaukee
WRJN, Rachine
WDUX, Waupaca
WYOMING
KVOC, Casper
KFBC, Cheyenne
Scholarships for 60 Union Staffers
Available for 3 University Institutes
Scholarships available to trade union staff members to attend 10-week residential study institutes
to be held next summer at three leading universities have been described as an "unusual oppor-
tunity" by AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Peter T. Schoemann, chairman of the federation's Committee on
Education. Schoemann has asked presidents of international unions and state central bodies to give
"serious consideration" to nominating candidates for up to 60 scholarships offered by the National
Institute of Labor Education with^-7
the help of a grant from the Fund
of Adult Education.
The 1961 summer institutes will
be held at Cornell University, the
University of California, and at
Michigan State University, where
the program will be in cooperation
with the University of Michigan
and Wayne State University.
The fulltime program is designed
to provide union staff members
with a solid background in eco-
nomics, political science, sociology
and psychology and trade union
history and philosophy.
There are no academic require-
ments for admission. Applicants
may be in either appointed or elec-
tive positions, preferably on a full-
time basis, with either a local
union, international union or state
federation.
"An applicant," the rules state,
"must have the official sponsorship
of his organization as well as as-
surance that he will, upon comple-
tion of the study institute, return
to a responsible position within the
labor movement."
The value of the tuition scholar-
ship, which will be given to each
student selected, is approximately
$800. The cost of room and board
is estimated at about $8 a day.
Scholarships covering one-half the
cost of room and board are avail-
able on request.
Application forms and a descrip-
tive brochure are available from
Joseph Mire, executive director,
National Institute of Labor Edu-
cation, 1303 University Ave., Mad-
ison 5, Wis. The deadline fo£
applications is Jan. 1, 1961.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
Page Severn
Meany Sends Congratulations :
German Union Wins
Shorter Workweek
A union-won agreement on establishment of a 40-hour work-
week in a large section of German industry has been hailed by
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany as "a new triumph for the cause of
free trade unionism/'
Meany, in a message to IG Metall, the German Metal Workers
Union, sent the congratulations of^
the American trade union move-
ment on establishment of the prin-
ciple of a reduction in hours with
no loss of pay. German workers,
presently working 44 to 48 hours
a week, will reach the 40-hour goal
in two steps under their new con-
tract.
Nation Benefits
The AFL-CIO president cited the
experience of the United States as
evidence that "not only labor but
the entire nation benefits from a
shorter workweek." In this coun-
try, he said, the 40-hour week "has
promoted the continuity of eco-
nomic prosperity, a rising standard
of living, better industrial relations
Captured Airman
From Union Family
Topeka, Kan. — One of the two
surviving crew members of an
American reconnaissance plane
shot down by the Soviets in the
Arctic is the son of a prominent
Kansas trade unionist and was him-
self a member of the Carpenters at
the time he entered military serv-
ice.
Lt. John R. McKone, now held
prisoner by the Soviet government,
is the son of Jean A. McKone,
legislative representative of the
Greater Kansas City Building &
Construction Trades Council, a
former state official, and a former
member of the state legislature.
His father said Lt. McKone, a
navigator, helped make his way
through Kansas State University by
working as a millwright. Lt. Mc-
Kone's wife and three children now
make their home at Topeka.
and growing participation by labor
in civic affairs/'
He pointed out that the AFL-
CIO's present goal is "a 35-hour
workweek in order to meet the
problems posed by the second in-
dustrial revolution and to insure
labor a fair share of the fruits of
economic progress."
The international labor move-
ment has always demanded a short-
er workweek, Meany declared, "for
humanitarian reasons, in the name
of social justice, as a prerequisite
for cultural advancement and in the
interest of promoting democracy."
He added:
No Loss in Pay
"While behind the Iron Curtain
the long-promised reduction of the
workweek is carried out, if at all,
haltingly and is always accom-
plished by higher work-norms and
lower wage rates, the IG Metall
has obtained an agreement — thanks
to its strength, the determination of
its leaders and the solidarity of its
members — that the workweek will
be substantially shortened without
any loss of wages or salaries for the
workers."
Meany expressed hope that the
"pioneering achievement" of the
1.3 million-member union, whose
members work in steel, auto and
other basic industries, "will soon
bring the blessings of the 40-hour
workweek to all German work-
ers."
The adoption of a 40-hour week
will also mean that those segments
of German industry which are pres-
ently on a six-day workweek basis
will shift to a five-day week. Most
plants presently working 44 and 45
hours are already on a five-day
basis.
EN ROUTE HOME to Brazil after attending meeting of executive board of Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions in Brussels, Deocleciano de Hollanda Cavalcanti (second from right), president of
National Confederation of Industrial Workers of Brazil, pays visit to AFL-CIO headquarters in Wash-
ington. With him are, left to right, Serafino Romualdi, AFL-CIO inter- American representative; Vice
Pres. O. A. Knight; and Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler.
Economic, Social Crisis
Grips Congo Republic
By Arnold Beichman
Leopoldville — This capital city of what was once a Belgian col-
ony stands on the brink of economic and social disaster less than
three weeks after achieving independence.
Thousands of Congolese workers and houseboys — how many
nobody knows — went without their weekly pay Friday because of
Belgian employers fleeing, leaving^
everything behind.
Food prices are spiraling up
wards to meet a 30 percent wage
increase over the dollar a day min-
imum ordered by Patrice Lumum-
ba, prime minister of the Congo
Republic.
Throughout this city, there are
so many strikes that observers here
say it is virtually a general strike.
Adding to the unestimated number
Steelworker Divides His Work
Between Lathe and Legislature
Milwaukee — Allen J. Flannigan, a member of Steelworkers' Local 1114, earns his living as a
tool-grinder at the Harnischfeger Corp. here.
But when the Wisconsin legislature convenes, Flannigan goes on half-time. For Flannigan is one
of those increasingly familiar figures in public life— an elected representative from the ranks of
working people.
a'^
Assemblyman Flannigan,
Democrat, is now in his second
term as representative of Milwau-
kee's 7th District.
As a union member, Flannigan
is in a minority in the Assembly.
Of 100 members, only five men
come from the shop and about ten
Cross Strikers Hit
Sale to Soviets
Detroit — Auto Workers Local
155 has protested to the govern-
ment the granting of an export
license to the anti-labor Cross Co.
of Fraser, Mich., to sell automa-
tion machinery to Soviet Russia.
Local Pres. Russell Leach said
he had filed protests with the State,
Commerce and Defense Depart-
ments, opposing the idea of gov-
ernment agencies helping the firm
while it is in violation of a direc-
tive of the National Labor Rela-
tions Board which ordered Cross
to bargain collectively with the
UAW.
At the same time, the UAW of-
ficial sent a cablegram to Soviet
Premier Nikita Khrushchev to
prove that "your government is as
interested in justice for working
people as you continually claim to
be" by refusing to purchase the
automation equipment from Cross
until it settles its dispute with the
union.
can be considered to be active un-
ion members. Farmers account for
about 40 seats, lawyers hold about
25 and the remainder are domi-
nated by insurance and real estate
salesmen.
Flannigan, in speaking before
local union gatherings, makes the
point that union members holding
public office and greater political
activity by labor bring results
which are in the broad public in-
terest.
"Organized labor is working
for civic betterment for all, not
just on narrow lines but in all
the broad areas of human dig-
nity, 9 ' Flannigan has said.
This was shown in the unsuc-
cessful fight for an improved state
minimum wage, he notes, a law
strongly backed by labor but one
which would not have affected
most union members.
But there were victories, Flan-
nigan adds, counting such actions
as repeal of the state law which
restricted trade union political ac-
tivity; a new law assuring area
union scales on all state work and
a law extending to public em-
ployes the right to organize.
These gains were possible, in
Flanaigan's view, because conserv-
ative members in the Republican-
contreiled state Senate "saw the
light when labor turned out in the
1958 elections."
The Democrats enjoy a 55 to
45 edge in the Assembly, gaining a
majority in 1959 for the first time
in 20 years. The state also elected
its first Democratic governor in 20
years.
'Get Out and Work'
In urging his union listeners to
"get out and work" during politi-
cal campaigns, Flannigan likes to
observe that the improvement of
such standards as unemployment
compensation, workmen's compen-
sation and safety regulations turn
on the interest of working people
in politics.
"Give your dollar to COPE by
all means," he tells his audiences,
"but then get in touch with your
labor-endorsed candidate and ask
if you can help him with nomi-
nation papers or distribution of
literature. Believe me, he will
find something for you to do.
"In return, your voice is going
to be heard in the legislative halls
to combat all of the money spent
by reactionary interests.
"You — the working men and
women," Flannigan declares, "are
the most powerful lobby in this
country!"
of unpaid Congolese workers are
about 80,000 unemployed.
The trade union situation here is
grim as different organizations —
Christian Socialist and Liberal-
seek to maintain some kind of dis
cipline. But right now it is un-
certain who represents whom.
This vast country — one-third the
size of the United States — is in
danger. Observers here feel the
situation could lead to serious re
suits, with the possibility of Com-
munist subversion.
Several Congolese leaders are
under Communist influence and
work closely with the Czechoslo-
vak Embassy here.
It is believed that only a massive
program of financial aid, after
some kind of armistice is worked
out in the presence of United Na-
tions troops to maintain a cease-
fire, can rescue the Congo from an
irretrievable chaos.
Experts here believe the western
world must make a tremendous ef-
fort to put the Congo Republic on
its feet. Failure may mean the
spread of the conflict to other parts
of this continent and set back other
colonies seeking independence.
Whites have been arrested by
Congolese soldiers, whether Bel-
gian, American or anybody else,
since many of these soldiers com-
ing from the bush country con-
sider all whites to be Belgians.
Sternback Leaves
Inter-America Post
David Sternback, a pioneer or-
ganizer in the Caribbean area, has
resigned as AFL-CIO associate in-
ter-American representative. He
served three years in the post.
Sternback had been the CIO re-
gional director in Puerto Rico. He
led in the organization of 50,000
Puerto Rican sugar workers who
have since become part of the
Packinghouse Workers.
Sternback also founded unions
among the refinery workers of
Shell on the island of Curacao and
of Standard Oil of New Jersey on
the island of Aruba and organized
phosphate miners on Curacao.
The veteran organizer also car-
ried out a one-year mission in Co-
lombia for the ICFTU.
Chile Unions
Voice Thanks
For U.S. Aid
American aid to Chilean earth-
quake victims has touched the
hearts of the people of Chile more
than anything else the United States
ever did, the Trade Union Federa-
tion of Chile (FEGRECH) said in
a letter of thanks to the AFL-CIO
Executive Council.
The letter, one of many received
from Chilean sources by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany and Sec.-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler, was
from the National Executive Coun-
cil of FEGRECH, an affiliate of
the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
Pres. Munoz C. Eleodoro Diaz
and two other FEGRECH officers
expressed the appreciation of the
workers of Chile for the "oppor-
tune, efficient and generous aid of
the government, the armed forces,
the people and the workers of the
United States" for aid given after
the tidal waves and earthquakes
that hit Chile in May.
"The workers of Chile," they
said, "believe that neither the
long years of diplomacy nor the
many official visits here have
reached the hearts of Chileans
and given them an appreciation
and understanding of the people
of the U. S. as has the aid ex-
tended to them.
"We have no way to express our
gratitude for the noble gesture,
and can only manifest our feeling
by a fervent exclamation: may God
bless the United States, its govern-
ment, its people, and especially its
working class."
Union Checks Helped
Building materials bought with
donations from AFL-CIO and af-
filiated unions were airlifted to
Chile in June by the American Na-
tional Red Cross after an appeal to
all unions by Meany. Checks for
$13,385 were turned over to Red
Cross Pres. Alfred Gruenther by
Schnitzler, who has received an
additional $3,491 for transmittal to
the American and Chilean Red
Cross.
Some union donations were
made directly to the relief organ-
izations following Meany's ap-
peal. The total of labor's gifts
was over $30,000.
The letter from FEGRECH
pointed out that the airlift of the
U.S. Air Force was of decisive im-
portance in saving victims of the
May disaster. U.S. planes brought
food, blankets, tents, medicines
and field hospitals.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1960
Only Members Can Act:
Bench Bars Ouster
Of Hoffa by Court
The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Teamster Pres. James R
HofTa cannot be ousted from his post except by the vote of the
membership in a regular election.
Acting on an appeal by HofTa, the three-man panel held that
Hoffa must face trial on Board of Monitors' charges that he im-
properly used $500,000 in union^
funds as collateral to back a Florida
real estate development in which
the IBT president had a personal
financial interest. But the judge?
added that Hoffa could not be re-
moved from office by the court.
The appellate decision held
that the action setting up the
board does not give the court
the power to remove officers. It
cited federal labor laws guaran-
teeing to unions the right to
choose their own officers.
The decision came a week after
Martin F. O'Donoghue resigned as
chairman of the Monitors, a post
he has held since creation of the
board in January 1958 to oversee
the affairs of the strife-torn union.
In a letter of resignation to Fed-
eral Judge F. Dickinson Letts,
O'Donoghue said more than two
years of work to rid the IBT of
"corrupt influences" had been
blocked by "ill will" and "bad
faith" on Hoffa's part.
The board was created under a
consent decree to end a legal chal-
John J. Mara
Dies, Headed
Label Dept.
Wellesley, Mass. — John J. Mara,
president of the Boot & Shoe Work-
ers since 1929 and president of the
AFL-CIO Union Label & Service
Trades Dept., died here at the age
of 73.
His death, after a brief illness,
brought tributes and condolences
from leaders of the trade union
movement. A telegram from
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler to Mrs. Mara hailed
him as "a devoted and dedicated
trade unionist" and declared that
"the record of accomplishment
of his union stands as a fine
monument to him."
Sec.-Treas. Joseph Lewis of the
Union Label & Services Trades
JOHN J. MARA
Dept. wired Mrs. Mara that her
husband's memory "will live
throughout the coming years and
decades in the minds and hearts of
the millions of union workers and
their families whom he served so
well and so devotedly."
Mara, a native of Cincinnati,
had been a union member for more
than half a century and served as a
delegate to every convention of the
Boot & Shoe Workers since 1919.
He was first elected to the execu-
tive board of the Union Label Dept.
in 1932 and was elected president
in 1956 to succeed the late Mat-
thew Woll.
lenge by rank-and-file Teamsters
protesting alleged illegal procedures
at the IBT's 1957 convention which
elected Hoffa to succeed former
Pres. Dave Beck. The consent de-
cree was issued a month after the
AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters
on corruption charges.
O'Donoghue said the Moni-
tors' goal over the past two and
one half years has been to con-
vene a "truly democratic conven-
tion" to select the union's lead-
ership. This objective has not yet
been attained, he said, because of
the "persistent and unrestrained"
legal maneuvers by Hoffa which
have slowed the board's pro-
cedures.
O'Donoghue pointed out that he
had twice sought to resign for per-
sonal reasons, suggesting to Letts
that "the progress of the monitor-
ship might be enhanced if a new
chairman were appointed." He said
he remained in the post at the
"urging" of the court on the earlier
occasions in order not to delay ful-
fillment of the board's role.
O'Donoghue reported to Letts
that he had been subjected to
"unwarranted personal attacks"
since taking the chairmanship,
adding that these attacks in-
creased following appointment of
William £. Buffalino of the
Teamsters to the board. O'Don-
oghue called Buffalino a "dis-
rupting influence."
Buffalino, a lawyer and president
of IBT Local 985 in Detroit, was
sharply criticized by the McClel-
lan special Senate committee dur-
ing its long investigation of the
Teamsters. Chairman John L. Mc-
Clellan (D-Ark.) accused Buffalino
of using Local 985 for his own
"personal aggrandizement" and
said Buffalino got his start in the
juke box business with the help of
the Detroit underworld.
In a related action, Godfrey P.
Schmidt, one-time member of the
Board of Monitors and former at-
torney for the rank-and-file Team-
sters whose suit led to creation of
the monitorship, filed a petition in
federal court seeking Buffalino's
ouster from the board.
Detailing the progress made by
the board in the past 30 months,
O'Donoghue reported that the
major achievement was agreement
by the union on an improved sys-
tem of maintaining membership
records, and the fact that agree-
ment appeared near on adoption of
a uniform method of accounting.
On the debit side, he said, was
the "refusal" of IBT leaders "to
take positive remedial action to
remedy the wrongdoing of of-
ficers." He charged that despite
a long list of such wrongdoings
Hoffa "still ignores his obliga-
tions in this regard."
Gus Tyler Elected
To Recreation Board
New York — Gus Tyler, director
of the political, educational and
training departments of the Ladies'
Garment Workers, has been elected
to the board of directors of the
National Recreation Association,
which works with unions to help
provide better recreational facili-
ties for all Americans.
Tyler is a member of the AFL-
CIO Committee on Education and
serves on the operating committee
on political education of the Amer-
ican Veterans' Committee. He is
vice chairman of the Trade Union
Council of the Liberal Party of
New York.
NEW YORK LABOR LEADERS meet with King Bhumibol of Thailand at luncheon at Waldorf-
Astoria honoring monarch. Left to right are Louis Hollander, chairman of the Executive Council of
New York State AFL-CIO; King Bhumibol; New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who conferred on
monarch the city's gold medal of honor and leather-bound scroll; and Harry van Arsdale, president
of New York City AFL-CIO.
U.S. Must Build Military Strength,
Meany Tells Bookbinders Parley
Chicago — Survival is America's basic problem, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told some 400 dele-
gates to the 31st convention of the Bookbinders here.
Meany said labor's program for preserving the democratic way of life includes keeping the U.S.
strong militarily, helping new nations and underdeveloped countries to help themselves, and building
up the American economy. "No matter what it costs," Meany said, "we must be militarily strong
enough to turn back open aggres-'^
sion."
or creed. That doesn't belong
here."
The AFL-CIO leader said the
economic problems to be faced
are finding jobs for the unem-
ployed of today, employment for
future members of the work
force, better use of our produc-
tive capacity, and meeting school,
housing and hospital needs.
Elmer Brown, president of the
Typographical Union, issued a plea
for unity in an address to the con-
vention. He said the outstanding
need of the Bookbinders, like that
of the other crafts in the printing
and publishing industry, "is to par-
ticipate in the formation of one
organization large enough, strong
enough and intelligent enough to
fight back against the attacks leveled
at our separate organizations."
Brown stressed that a successful
industrial type of union can be built
on the departmental plan.
Each section would be special-
ized, yet all sections would be joined
and operating as a single unit under
a single staff command. Brown said,
The AFL-CIO president outlined
the Communist threat and attacks
against America led by Russia in
Cuba, Japan, at the summit meet-
ing in Paris, and now in the Congo.
Meany said the U.S. is the
principal target for the Red
propaganda mill because
"whether we will it or not, Amer-
ica is the leader of the free
world."
We have been criticized, Meany
said, for fighting Communism. "Our
friends in Europe . . . have told us
we ought to handle the Commu-
nists differently. The truth of the
matter is that dictatorships are de-
signed to control workers . . .
oppress workers.
"If you are for democracy, you
must be against Communism."
He noted that much work needs
to be done at home to preserve
democracy. "We must face up to
the great moral issue of our time,"
Meany said, "we must eliminate all
discrimination against race, color
Government Employes
Propose Merger Talks
Pres. James A. Campbell of the Government Employes has in-
vited unaffiliated organizations of federal white collar workers to
"sit down at the conference table with us" and discuss a merger.
The invitation went to the National Federation of Federal Em-
ployes, the AFGE's chief competitor, and to a number of depart-
mental organizations including the^
National Association of Internal
Revenue Employes and the Organ-
ization of Professional Employes
of the Dept. of Agriculture.
Campbell reminded the unaffil-
iated groups that "determined
efforts" were made in Congress to
eliminate the government's 1 mil-
lion classified employes from the
pay raise voted by Congress and
passed over the President's veto.
While the attempt to limit the
pay raise to postal workers was
unsuccessful this year, Campbell
said, it is "a warning to classified
employes that they must join to-
gether in a strong union or be
content with substandard pay and
working conditions."
The AFL-CIO Government Em-
ployes Council, with which AFGE
is affiliated, "has done a remarkable
job of improving benefits and work-
ing conditions for federal em-
ployes," Campbell declared. "But
it is not getting the support it needs
from classified employes."
Effective organization requires
"members and money," Campbell
declared. He added: "No single
organization of government em-
ployes has enough of either to do
the job. ... By forming these small
groups, classified employes dissipate
their strength and dilute their in-
fluence."
What is needed, the AFGE pres-
ident emphasized, is "a single,
strong union of classified employes
to join with unions representing
other segments of the federal work
force in promoting our common
aims."
as official spokesman for the Typo-
graphical Union, that he was pre-
pared to go as far as any "of our
sister unions can be persuaded to
go."
Bookbinders' Pres. Joseph Denny
reminded the delegates that the 3 1 st
convention is the third held in Chi-
cago. The first one was held here
in 1893, when the union was only
one year old, he said, adding:
"The workweek consisted of
about 60 hours, with an hourly
wage rate approximating 25 cents
an hour. Our numerical strength
numbered about 3,000 members.
"It has taken our union many
years to achieve our present-day
status of strength," Denny said.
"This was accomplished by hard
work, with great sacrifice, at a
terrible cost/'
He said the major tasks of each
local union are to bring up the wage
rates of the union's lowest-paid
members, improve working condi-
tions and fringe benefits, and con-
stantly organize the unorganized.
Sec.-Treas. Wesley A. Taylor, in
his pre-convention report, said five
new locals have been chartered in
the last two years. Taylor reported
that the union gained 1,793 mem-
bers, bringing the total membership
to 60,788.
Retail Clerks Give
Scholarships to 7
Seven high school graduates
have won $2,000 college scholar-
ships financed by the James A.
Suffridge-Retail Clerks' scholarship
fund.
Fund trustees chose the seven,
all "A*' students, out of 400 candi-
dates in a competition open to
members of the Retail Clerks and
children of members. The fund is
named for the union's president.
ongress Urged to Act on 5 Key 15i
Vol. V
Isjted weekly at
SI5 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Wa»hlneton 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Pottage Paid at Washington. 0. C Saturday, July 30, 1960
No. 31
Nixon, Lodge to Campaign
On Revised GOP Platform
Schnitzler
Asks Action
In Congress
New York— AFL-CIO Sec-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler has
called on the 86th Congress to
give priority to five key measures
■ — minimum wage, school con-
struction, housing, situs picketing
and health care for the aged —
when it resumes deliberations in
August.
At the same time, re-emphasiz-
ing organized labor's "deep con-
cern" with the problems of national
security, he pledged that "if Con-
gress can do anything effective to
reinforce the defense program by
immediate action to increase mili
tary budgets, the trade union move-
ment will support such legislation
at whatever cost."
In the area of domestic needs,
Schnitzler told delegates to the
14th constitutional convention of
the Glass and Ceramic Workers
here, action on the five pending
bills "will fortify the economic
and social fiber of the entire
economy."
The unique windup congressional
session, in the wake of the Demo
cratic and Republican National
Conventions, will give the voters
an "unusual opportunity" to judge
"which candidates are willing to
match promises with performance,"
he declared.
Charging that Congress accom-
(Continued on Page 2)
Living Costs
Again Rise to
Record High
The nation's cost of living rose
for the sixth straight month to a
new record in June, the govern-
ment has reported.
The Consumer Price Index in-
creased by 0.2 percent to 126.5
percent for June, chiefly because
of price hikes for fresh fruits and
pork, according to the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This means the market basket
which cost $10 in the 1947-49 base
period now costs $12.65.
About 600,000 workers in the
aircraft, electrical equipment and
trucking industries will get wage
increases — two cents an hour for
most of them — since their union
(Continued on Page 10) i
NEW YORK'S Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (left) presents recom-
mendations to Republican Platform Committee in Chicago as hear-
ings open in advance of GOP National Convention. Seated are
Rep. Melvin R. Laird (Wis.) and Dr. Gabriel Hauge (right), the
platform committee's executive secretary.
Nixon in Firm Control:
Rockefeller Pact
Shocks Old Guard
Chicago — Five days after the Nixon-Rockefeller agreement struck
the Republican National Convention here like a bombshell, Nixon
was effectively in control of his party even while enraged conserva-
tives were refusing to be catapulted or dragged, kicking and scream-
ing into the seventh decade of the 20th century.
Rockefeller
Imprint on
Key Planks
Chicago — The Republican Na-
tional Convention launched its
drive for a new party lease on
office by whooping through a plat-
form on which Vice Pres. Nixon
and New York's Gov. Nelson
Rockefeller had stamped their
imprint.
In contrast to the 1956 GOP
platform, which was largely a
paean of beaut it tides to Pres. Ei-
senhower, the 1960 document was
less backward - looking and more
specific.
For key GOP planks on civil
rights, collective bargaining and
growth, see Page 5.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, al-f^
though totally out of the presidential
race, succeeded by his hectoring and
badgering in forcing acknowledg-
ment of some of his dissatisfaction
with Pres. Eisenhower's leadership.
The Vice President and Rocke-
feller had not compelled the con-
vention s rebellious, angered Plat-
form Committee to swallow all of
the "14 points" laid down in the
famous manifesto about which
the two party leaders said they
"agreed."
But changes there were enough
to make the party realize that
Nixon as presidential nominee
could be expected to make other
bold and unexpected moves if he
reached the cool, calculated deci-
sion that such moves were essen-
tial during the campaign.
Rockefeller was confirmed as a
major power in his party's affairs —
a power recognized as necessary to
the GOP's success in the election
and one whose support Nixon him-
self said he expected to be "deci-
sive."
To anyone unfamiliar with the
emotional despair that is the hoof
and-mouth disease of the Republi-
can "Old Guard," the right wingers'
reaction to the "14 points" might
have seemed ludicrous.
Rockefeller and Nixon agreed,
for example, that they believed
in "economic growth" — but it
was perfectly clear that they
wanted to stimulate "growth"
primarily by fiddling with tax
rates so as to stimulate accumula-
tions of capital by investors and
encourage what is usually called
a "favorable climate" by business
spokesmen.
The two powerful leaders, domi-
nating the delegations from the big
industrial states that control na-
tional conventions and decide elec-
tions, issued no demand for repudi-
ation of the Taft-Hartley or Lan-
drum-Griffin Acts.
They "compromised" their state-
ment on health care for the aged
until it became meaningless; Rocke-
feller neither demanded nor did
Nixon concede that medical care
should be financed through the
(Continued on Page 2)
The 1960 platform remained less
specific than the Democratic docu-
ment approved two weeks earlier
at Los Angeles, on such major is-
sues as reorganization of the na-
tional defense, welfare legislation
and the stimulation of economic
growth, and was closer to Eisen-
hower Administration policies than
to the Democratic document.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
had recommended to the Republi-
cans precisely the program he rec-
ommended earlier to the Demo-
cratic convention.
The Nixon-Rockefeller influ-
ence forced changes in four
planks previously approved by
the GOP Committee on Resolu-
tions, which in Republican par-
leys drafts the party program.
The Nixon - Rockefeller agree-
ment was reflected in other planks
(Continued on Page 2)
Stage Set
To Attack
Kennedy
By Willard Shelton
Chicago — The Republican
Party has turned over leadership
to Richard M. Nixon, crushing a
threatened rebellion from bitter-
end right-wingers "and setting the
stage for a slashing campaign
against Democratic nominee John
F. Kennedy as an "immature"
candidate who will be taught that
the White House is "not for sale."
Nixon promptly chose as his vice
presidential running-mate the U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations,
Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachu-
setts.
He turned down the demands of
midwestern Republicans, who have
suffered severe election losses across
the past several years, for "recogni-
tion" of the section as the former
"heartland" of the Republican
Party.
The election campaign will see
an unprecedented event in Ameri-
can history — a clash directly involv-
ing four members and former mem-
bers of the Senate.
Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon
B. Johnson, the Democratic nom-
inees, are incumbents. Nixon was
for two years a senator before his
elevation to the vice presidency*
Ambassador Lodge served terms
interrupted by World War II and
terminated by his defeat for re-
election by Kennedy in 1952.
The Vice President's triumph
over his handful of party foes was
total — on the spirit and approach
(Continued on Page 3)
GOP Platform Drafter
Asks Funds for R-T-W
The chairman of the South Carolina State Republican Committee,
who helped draft the labor plank at the GOP convention, has ap-
pealed for funds to support the drive to enact so-called "right-to-
work" laws.
Roger Milliken, in a fund solicitation for the National Right-to-
Work Committee sent out on the 3^
eve of the Republican convention,
praised the Landrum-Griffin Act as
"a start in the right direction" and
a helpful "tool" for employers. But.
he indicated, it doesn't go quite far
enough.
Milliken, who represented his
state on the GOP platform com-
mittee, was named to the labor
subcommittee which adopted a
platform in effect upholding Sec.
14b of the Taft-Hartley Act, un-
der which 19 states have banned
the union shop. The platform
also took "credit" for the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act, describing it as
"Republican-sponsored legisla-
tion."
Enclosed with Milliken's letter,
sent to a list of business firms, was
a contribution form addressed to
the National Right-to-Work Com-
mittee which carried the slogan:
(Continued on Page 3)
JPa*« Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
SEN, BARRY GOLDWATER (R-Ariz.) waves acknowledgment
of reception given him by delegates at Republican National Con-
vention at Chicago. His appearance came before GOP convention
nominated Richard M. Nixon as presidential candidate, and adopted
Nixon-Rockefeller-oriented platform, opposed in part by Goldwater.
Pact with Rockefeller
Shock to Old Guard
(Continued from Page 1)
tested social security machinery.
There was nothing in the state-
ment specifically in short, to cause
a legitimate uproar about a "sell-
out."
The Republican old guardsman,
however, is a peculiar animal, condi-
tioned by 20 years of intraparty
defeat and repeated election defeats
to react violently when anyone says
"me, too."
The convention delegates,
chosen by the state and county
machines that have been losing
COP governorships and seats in
Congress, are more conservative,
generally, than the great body of
GOP voters.
The Platform Committee, made
up of two members from each state
delegation and named by the state
bosses, is at least as conservative as
the bulk of the delegates.
Goldwater 'True Hero'
The Platform Committee hear-
ings showed that Goldwater was
the group's true hero — the witness
who received the most and loudest
cheers, who was greeted with a
standing ovation while Rockefeller
got barely respectful applause.
To the conservatives and the
Platform Committee, Rockefeller in
his pre-convention conduct was act-
ing like a "me-tooer" to the
Democrats.
When Nixon took the initiative
in visiting the governor and agree-
ing on the "14 points," he became
to a degree a "me-tooer."
The Vice President made one
of his rare tactical errors when he
allowed the Goldwaters and
southerners more than 48 hours
to dominate the news here- — and
also gave the Platform Commit-
tee time and a chance to move in
defiance to complete its action
on the platform subject merely
to revision.
It was in response to warnings
from convention leaders that Nixon
hastily called a Washington, D. C.,
press conference to get out his ver-
sion. The New York Daily News
quoted copiously from a secret
memorandum sent to party bigwigs
claiming that "NR" had "given up"
or "yielded" more than "RN" in the
famous New York meeting.
Partly as a result of the tactical
mistake, neither Nixon for Rocke-
feller was able to force the Plat-
form Committee to adopt the 14
points in toto.
They did not get specific /men-
tion of advocacy of strong, regional
"confederations" of nations in the
foreign policy plank.
The civil rights plank was
changed but left weaker than the
Democratic plank: the platform
committee rejected amendments
proposing "support" of lunch-
counter "sit-ins" and a federal
provision barring employment
discrimination by airplanes and
radio-television stations that exist
solely under government license.
Nevertheless, Nixon and Rocke-
feller together were able to bludgeon
and pry out enough concessions
from the conservatives to begin the
process of doing whatever party re-
building the Vice President may
care to undertake during the cam-
paign.
He served public notice in his
July 25 press conference here that
he considers the platform "only a
beginning," and that during the
campaign he intends "to go far
beyond the platform in various
fields, with new ideas that the Plat-
form Committee may not have had
time to consider."
GOP Conclave Backs Platform
With Nixon-Rockefeller Stamp
(Continued from Page 1)
as well, and particularly in the sec-
tion labeled ''conclusion," which
apparently was drafted in response
to insistence that the country's need
for stepped - up defense programs
was urgent.
The four planks specifically re-
vised to take account of Nixon-
Rockefeller pressure were civil
rights, foreign policy, aid to educa-
tion and an acknowledgment of the
need for expanded defense efforts.
The Vice President and Rocke-
feller failed to force through all of
the changes in the civil rights and
other planks that their surprise
agreement on program demanded,
but the changes approved in nearly
four days of agonizing sessions by
the reluctant platform committee
were sufficient to establish the pre-
dominance of the Nixon-Rockefel-
ler viewpoints.
An analysis of the Republican
platform, comparing it with the
GOP's 1956 document and the
Democratic platform of 1960, re-
veals the following major points of
distinction:
NATIONAL DEFENSE — The
1956 GOP platform praised Pres.
Eisenhower for "peace" as well as
"prosperity" and treated the na-
tion's world situation as strong and
unchallenged. The 1960 platform
acknowledged "great perils" and a
"growing vigor and thrust of Com-
munist imperialism."
The section labeled "conclusion,"
which apparently was written as a
catch-all for Rockefeller viewpoints
after the rest of the platform was
released, acknowledged that "new
generations of weapons" require us
to "arm ourselves effectively and
without delay."
The Democratic platform
charged that during the Eisen-
hower Administration the nation
has lost the military "preeminence"
it held in 1953, and pledged the
party to "recast our military capac-
ity to provide forces and weapons
. . . to deter both limited and gen-
eral aggressions."
FOREIGN POLICY — The 1960
Republican platform departed from
the 1956 version to acknowledge
that our "greatest task" is to "nul-
lify the Soviet conspiracy" that
seeks to "destroy the world's con-
fidence in America's desire for
peace." It failed to adopt Gov
Rockefellers proposals for "con-
federations" of regional groupings
of free world nations under Amer-
ican initiative and participation in
such confederations.
The Democratic platform called
for a "review" of the "inherited"
system of pacts and alliances, a
shift from military aid to allied
nations to economic assistance. The
Democrats offered the non-Com-
munist nations of Asia, Africa and
Latin America "working partner-
ships." They specifically stated
they would "identify American pol-
icy" with the "values and objec-
tives" of the world social revolu-
tion and place both military aid
and economic assistance on a long-
term basis to help "freedom be-
come meaningful . . . and worth
defending" among newly independ-
ent peoples.
ECONOMIC GROWTH — The
Republican platform paid tribute
to the principle of economic growth
without mentioning the 5 percent
unemployment rate that has pre-
vailed during the year or mention-
ing the Employment Act of 1946.
The platform subcommittee
dealing with economic growth
was labeled the "Subcommittee
on Labor and Commerce" — a
category denying labor a separate
group consisting of labor rela-
tions experts. It was headed by
Sen. Prescott Bush (Conn.), a
former investment banker who in
a press conference announcing
the subcommittee's deliberations
neglected to mention high-level
unemployment and, when prod-
ded, said merely that he thought
the report would contain "appro-
priate words."
The platform concluded that
"high priority" must be accorded
economic growth but rejected the
concept of "artificial" growth stim-
ulated by "massive federal spend-
ing." The mainspring, said the
platform, "lies in the private sec-
tor of the economy" and requires
that we foster a "healthy climate"
by "tax reform" that gives "realis-
tic incentive" to businessmen seek-
ing fast tax-writeoffs.
The Democrats specifically
pledged themselves to economic
growth "at an average rate of 5
percent annually, almost twice as
fast as our average annual rate
since 1953," and achievement of
this rate "without inflation."
CIVIL RIGHTS— Under insist-
ent prodding from Nixon and
Rockefeller, the GOP platform
Schnitzler Urges Congress to Act
On Key Domestic, Defense Issues
(Continued from Page 1)
plished "very little in the first six
months of this year," the AFL-CIO
official said that the House and
Senate face "a significant backlog
of important, unfinished business"
and said the issues "can no longer
be safely evaded or buried."
Although Congress is expected
to remain in session only about
three weeks before adjourning for
the 1960 presidential campaign,
he said, it should be able to act
quickly on pending measures be-
cause the "time-consuming pre-
liminaries" of the legislative proc-
ess have been completed and
every major bill still on the calen-
dar "has been thoroughly ex-
plored and debated at hearings/*
"Now all that Congress really has
to do is to vote," he declared.
The federation official pointed
out that both major parties adopted
platforms at their recent conven-
tions spelling out their position on
national defense, and on domestic
goals which include those covered
by the pending legislation.
Cautioning that "the voters are
in no mood to be appeased with
slogans," Schnitzler said that the
American people want, and "will
insist on," results. He added:
"All the brave words and
sweeping pledges of the political
conventions are apt to boomer-
ang against the candidates unless
Congress delivers the goods be-
fore it adjourns."
On the subject of the nation's
defense posture, Schnitzler said la-
bor is "appalled by the loss of face
and the loss of leadership which
our country has suffered in world
affairs during the past few months,"
adding:
"We feel very strongly that since
it is America's mission to lead the
free world, we must lead from
strength. Apparently we do not
enjoy the military superiority that
we previously took for granted, or
Soviet Russia would not dare to
blackmail us with threats of aggres-
sion."
He emphasized that "economic
strength is just as important to
our national security as military
power," recalling that the AFL-
CIO "has frequently warned that
Soviet Russia could win without
having to fire a shot if our na-
tional economy were to collapse
as it did in 1932."
He pointed out that currently
the national economy "lacks the
vigor and drive it should have"; that
unemployment has climbed to "ab
normally high levels"; that indus
trial production has dropped "far
below expectations"; and that Wall
Street "is afflicted with the jitters."
"Clearly," he said, "the nation-
al economy has become flabby
and uncertain. It needs to get
going and get growing again.
"The legislative program recom
mended by the trade union move
ment is therefore designed to stimu
late a healthy and invigorating eco-
nomic revival."
The AFL-CIO official said that
in the final session of the 86th Con-
gress "each and every tnember .
will be tested," adding:
"The eyes of the American peo-
ple will be concentrated on the
leaders of both parties. They want
progress, not retreat.
"Only the candidates who are
willing to help the nation go for-
ward will earn and receive the sup-
port of the voters next November." ^
committee adopted amendments to
its original plank strengthening its
pledges of affirmative future action
to speed up school desegregation,
to foster further equality in employ-
ment opportunity and to end dis-
crimination in federally "sub-
sidized" housing.
It declined to approve a per-
manent Fair Employment Prac-
tice program or to give specific
"support" to "sit-in" demonstra-
tions.
The plank contained a pledge
to seek 'appropriate legislation to
end the discriminatory membership
practices of some labor union lo-
cals, unless such practices are erad-
icated promptly by the labor un-
ions themselves."
The Democratic civil rights plank
embodied almost all the specifics of
the GOP plank and added a sweep-
ing pledge of strong federal leader-
ship involving "effective moral and
political leadership by the whole
Executive Branch of our govern-
ment." The plank is both broader
and more detailed than the Re-
publican program, and both are
stronger than platform pledges pre-
viously issued by the two major
political parties.
LABOR LEGISLATION — The
Republicans, in a report issued
from the "labor and commerce'*
subcommittee headed by Sen. Bush,
promised "strengthening" of the un-
employment compensation system
and "upward revision and extended
coverage" of the minimum wage
law, without spelling out specifics.
They pledged "diligent adminis-
tration" of the Taft-Hartley and
Landrum-Griffin Acts without ac-
knowledging specific errors or in-
equities in restricting of bargaining,
picketing and and boycotts.
The Democratic plank pledged
enactment of an "affirmative labor
policy ... to encourage free col-
lective bargaining through the
growth and development of free
and responsible unions." It pledged
repeal of "unreasonable limitations
on the right to picket" and repeal
of Sect. 14-b of the Taft-Hartley
Act authorizing so-called "right-to-
work" laws in the states.
It also proposed expansion of the
Walsh - Healey and Davis - Bacon
Acts to "protect the wage stand-
ards of workers employed by gov-
ernment contractors."
HEALTH CARE— The Republi-
can platform rejected Gov. Rocke-
feller's original demand for a new
system of health care for the aged
financed through the social security
system, and Rockefeller apparently
did not press the demand in his
agreement with Vice Pres. Nixon.
The GOP plank pledged what
apparently amounted to support
of the Administration plan of
subsidies from the federal treas-
ury to the aged "needing" hos-
pital or nursing home care, with
emphasis on "encouraging" pri-
vate insurance companies to pro-
vide new private policies.
The Democrats promised "an ef-
fective system of paid-up medical
insurance" for retired workers and
other beneficiaries, "financed
through the social security mechan-
ism and available to all retired per-
sons without a means test."
SCHOOL AID — The Republi-
cans, under pressure from the Vice
President and Gov. Rockefeller,
promised federal aid for school
construction "in a limited number
of states" and limited the pledge by
saying the aid should go only to
states offering "approval and par-
ticipation."
The Democrats said that the
country could meet its educational
obligations "only with generous
federal financial support," which
they pledged in the form of "fed-
eral grants to states for educational
purposes they deem most pressing,
including classroom construction
and teachers' salaries."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
Page Thre#
Republicans Unite Behind Nixon, Lodge
Slashing Attack on Kennedy Sets
Stage for Presidential Campaign
(Continued from Page 1)
of the platform and on the nomina
tion itself.
The right wingers, enraged by the
Vice President's pre-convention
agreement on platform issues with
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New
York, abandoned plans for a min-
ority civil rights report to the con-
vention when it became apparent
they would be overwhelmed.
Sen. Barry Goldwater (Ariz.) who
claimed status as a symbol of right-
wing discontent when he denounced
Nixon's agreement with Rockefeller
as a Republican "Munich," was
nominated against the Vice Presi-
dent — but withdrew his name.
The vote on the first ballot was
1321 for Nixon and 10 dissidents
from Louisiana for Goldwater.
In the end, Nixon was clearly
the dominant figure in the Repub-
lican Party and had moved de-
cisively to seek to shake himself
loose from total dependence on
the record of Pres. Eisenhower.
The Vice President capitalized on
the carefully phrased but significant
Rockefeller demands for more ag-
gressive governmental policies in
foreign and domestic affairs. He
responded to Rockefeller's persist-
ent assaults by journeying to New
York to reach agreement with the
governor and then serving blunt no
tice to the convention that it was
compelled to accept his judgment
because "it is necessary that the can-
didate have a platform that he can
stand on."
The platform can be labeled
"conservative" in its attitudes to-
ward government action in the wel-
fare field, in its "trickle-down" doc
trine that the way to cure average
5 percent unemployment is to give
faster tax writeoffs to businessmen
to create a "favorable climate" for
investment, in its refusal to ac
knowledge specific inequities in the
Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin
Acts.
No Sharp Break with Ike
Nixon and Rockefeller by no
means forced, or attempted to force,
a drastic break with the Eisenhower
approach. The platform as adopted
placed heavy emphasis on avoiding
any appearance of reliance on fed-
eral action to meet social and wel
fare problems — on school aid,
GOP Leader
Asks R-T-W
Contributions
(Continued from Page 1)
"Americans must have the right, but
not be compelled to join labor
unions."
Milliken won notoriety in labor
circles several years ago when he
closed down his Darlington, S. C,
textile plant and auctioned off the
machinery after his workers exer-
cised their "right" to vote for union
representation in a National Labor
Relations Board election.
An attempt by the Textile Work-
ers Union of America to force Mil-
liken to compensate the Darlington
workers for their loss of jobs and
offer them employment at other
mills in his textile chain is still
pending before the NLRB.
In a press interview commenting
on the GOP's labor platform prior
to winning his party's presidential
nomination, Vice Pres. Nixon de-
clared his support of the Taft-Hart-
ley Act's provision allowing states
to outlaw the union shop but indi-
cated that he personally did not
support so-called "right-to-work"
laws.
RICHARD M. NIXON
HENRY CABOT LODGE
health insurance for the aged, mini-
mum wages, unemployment com-
pensation, hospital and health facili-
ties, natural resources.
In point after point, the GOP
platform on which the Vice Presi-
dent was willing to stand supports
Eisenhower's familiar insistence
that the separate states must be a
chief factor in meeting the people's
human needs and that federal ac-
tion embodies a threat of undue
centralization and tryanny.
The President journeyed to the
convention to receive a spectacu-
lar ovation as he defended his
stewardship of eight years, and
his less than 24 hours in town
was one long personal accolade.
But the keynote was one of fare-
well as well as affection.
The Vice President nevertheless
used the Rockefeller activity to
break with his party's extreme right
wing and to make it clear that he
intended to be his own man.
In news conferences in Washing-
ton and here, in intense pressure on
the delegates through private con-
versations and telephone calls, he
served notice that the triumph with-
in his grasp would be accepted upon
his own terms.
He won from Rockefeller an en-
dorsement from New York's power-
ful 96-vote delegation, aid and sus-
tenance in the platform battle and
pledge of all-out help, in New
York and many other states, during
the campaign.
The Vice President's intent to
respond vigorously to Kennedy and
the Democrats was signified in
many convention speeches.
The keynote address of Rep.
Walter Judd (Minn.) answered
Democratic criticisms of Eisen-
hower's foreign policy difficulties
by reviving charges that the
Democratic presidents, Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Tru-
man, had been "willing to give in
to Soviet leaders."
Permanent Chairman Charles A.
Halleck (Ind.), the House Republi-
can leader, charged that the Demo-
crats had adopted a policy of
"budget-busting defense spending"
and a "high-cost-of -living program"
and that the "peace" record of
Eisenhower "is fairly important to
the mothers of this country."
Gov. Mark Hatfield of Oregon,
nominating Nixon for the presi-
dency, began by proclaiming that
"the White House is not for sale"
— apparently a signal that the Re-
publicans intend to make an issue
of the wealth of Sen. Kennedy's
father, Joseph P. Kennedy.
Dewey in Slashing Attack
Former Gov. Thomas E. Dewey
of New York, lashing Kennedy for
attacks on Nixon in the senator's
speech accepting the Democratic
nomination, mockingly quoted for-
mer Pres. Harry Truman's pre-con-
vention words that Kennedy was
"not ready" for the presidency.
For Nixon, his triumph at the
convention was the climax of a long
and sometimes frightening lonely
journey.
As recently as 1956 his public
career seemed in jeopardy when
Eisenhower called him in and ad-
vised that he "consider his
future" carefully — and proffered
the pledge of a Cabinet post if
Nixon would be kind enough to
step down from the vice presi-
dency.
The Vice President's biographer,
Earl Mazo of the New York Herald
Tribune, is authority for the story
that during the first term, Nixon
and his wife were so discouraged
about their prospects that they seri-
ously considered leaving public life.
While maintaining a public posi-
tion that he was more "thoroughly
informed" and given "greater re-
sponsibilities" than any other Vice
President in American history, Nix-
on was known to chafe at presiden-
tial policies — and lack of policies
— on major issues.
He carefully weighed his chances
and coolly told newsmen, in 1957,
that winning a presidential nomina-
tion was not an achievement any
person could gain on his own ini-
tiative — that "events" rather than
personal ambition usually proved
controlling.
Then he set himself the task of
putting himself into such a posi-
tion with "events." He cam-
paigned so fiercely for the Re-
publican Party that the 1956
election was barely ended before
he was recognized as the GOP's
preeminent partisan.
Praising Eisenhower, who had
rescued the Republican "Old
Guard" from 20 years of frustrated
defeat, he made himself so much
the future symbol that by the mid-
dle of 1959 he had in effect fore-
closed the nomination.
Gov. Rockefeller, fresh from his
briliant triumph over former Gov.
Avereli Harriman in New York,
learned in three brief months of
campaigning last fall that "the lead-
ers of the party," as he put it,
"didn't want a contest" at the con-
vention, and he pulled out.
On the eve of the convention,
Nixon and Rockefeller moved, into
cooperation on the platform.
The result was to transform the
foreclosed Nixon victory at the con-
vention into a triumph that began
the process of fixing the Nixon
image on the party.
PROBLEMS OF AFRICAN NATIONS are discussed by Sen. John
F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Democratic presidential nominee, and Tom
Mboya, general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, at
pre-campaign conference at Kennedy's summer home in Hyannis
Port, Mass. >
Mitchell Fetes Labor's
Convention Delegates
Chicago — A luncheon given by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell cli-
maxed participation of labor union members serving as delegates to
the Republican National Convention here.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, whose last-minute
agreement on GOP policy with Vice Pres. Nixon cleared the way
for Nixon's changes of the conven- 1 ^
tion platform, paid tribute to
Mitchell as an able Cabinet mem-
ber and effective administrator of
his duties.
"Let's face it," said the gover-
nor of New York, "it isn't the easi
est thing in the world to be Secre-
tary of Labor for the Republican
Party."
Sen. Thruston Morton (Ky.),
chairman of the Republican Na-
tional Committee, also praised
Mitchell.
'The service he has performed
for the Republican Party is one for
gratitude from all who want to
make the Republican Party the ma
jority party," declared Morton.
The luncheon group included
about 30 union officials and mem-
bers who were convention dele-
gates, according to Robert Gorm-
ley, head of the Labor Section of
the Republican National Commit-
tee.
It also included some 30 to 40
other union officials, Gormley said,
who had official positions with the
convention guests or assistant ser-
geants at arms.
Prior to the convention proper,
several union witnesses followed
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany in
testimony before the labor and
commerce subcommittee of the
Platform Committee.
Pres. Lloyd A. Mashburn of the
Lathers, testifying in behalf of the
federation's Building & Construc-
tion Trades Dept., urged the com-
mittee to include a plank to reverse
the so-called Denver Building
Trades rule of the National Labor
Relations Board and relegalize job-
site picketing.
Mashburn pointed out that legis-
lation to reverse the labor board
had been recommended by the Ei-
senhower Administration.
Steel Slump Hit
Frank N. Hoffmann, legislative
director of the Steelworkers,
warned the subcommittee that "the
American steel industry is in a
depression," with 135,000 work-
ers unemployed and 350,000 oth-
ers suffering "drastic reductions in
income" because of part time work.
Hoffmann said the industry ie
now "producing less steel than is
the Soviet Union" and urged
amendment of the minimum wage
law to establish a 324iour work-
week as the standard.
In a statement presented for Al
J. Hayes, president of the Machin-
ists, John T. O'Brien told the sub-
committee that a free trade union
movement in many areas is or can
become "the most powerful non-
governmental force working for free
and representative government."
He urged repeal of two specific sec-
tions of the Taft-Hartley and Lan^
drum-Griffin Acts to prevent in-
equities — the "right-to-work" pro-
vision and the so-called "no-man's
land" provision.
Pres. Thomas Kennedy of the
unaffiliated Mine Workers warned
that unemployment is a more seri-.
ous problem than many officials ac-
knowledge.
He proposed liberalization of the
social security and minimum wage
laws and outright repeal of the
Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin
Acts. i
Mrs. Esther Peterson, legislative
representative of the AFL-CIO In-
dustrial Union Dept., spoke in be-
half of 24 national organizations in
asking the Republicans to drop
their traditional support of a so-
called women's "equal rights*
amendment, which would actually
invalidate many existing laws pro-
tecting the position of women in
commerce and industry.
Harry H. Broach,
IBEW Leader, Dies
Prince Frederick, Md. — Harry
H. Broach, 67, president of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers from 1929 to 1933, died
of a heart attack July 25 in Calvert
County Hospital here.
A veteran of 51 years with the
IBEW, Broach became an interna-
tional representative for the union
in 1917 and three years later was
elected a vice president. He suc-
ceeded to the presidency following
the death of Pres. James P. Noon an.
Broach had been secretary of the
union's executive council from 1 946
until hi* retirement early this year.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
ROLE OF AMERICAN LABOR in aiding trade union movement
in underdeveloped countries is underscored by this picture of
George McGray (second from left), a member of State, County and
Municipal Employes, who is serving as an instructor at Kampala
College, Uganda. McGray is shown with Nigerian students at col-
lege financed by Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
Separation of Medical
Services Called Archaic
New York — Artificial separation of in-plant medical facilities and
health care provided for workers off the job has been described as
"archaic'' by Dr. Morris Brand, medical director of the Sidney
Hillman Health Center here.
Dr. Brand made a strong appeal for closer coordination of medical
services in an opening day speech'^
to the 13th International Congress
on Occupational Health.
The 2,500 delegates to the con-
ference represent doctors and other
industrial health personnel from 60
nations. Participants from the U.S.,
for the first time in the history of
the international conference, in-
clude two AFL-CIO representatives
— Vice Pres. Richard F. Walsh,
chairman of the federation's Stand-
ing Committee on Safety & Occu-
pational Health, and Pres. James A.
Brownlow of the Metal Trades
Dept. Both were scheduled to speak
at panel sessions.
Dr. Brand, who heads the med-
ical center operated jointly by
the Clothing Workers and the in-
dustry's employer association in
New York, said neither workers
nor employers see any reason for
a sharp division between medical
care given on plant premises and
in outside facilities.
He pointed out that "90 percent
of the 500 million days of work
lost each year is due to non-occu-
pational illnesses and injuries."
Some of these, he added, "may be
due to chronic conditions related
in part to occupational factors." He
added:
Sees Closer Liaison
"As labor participates in or or-
ganizes more direct services plans
(for medical care), there will of
necessity develop a closer relation-
ship between the industrial medical
departments and the outside med-
ical programs.
"Since nearly all unionized in-
dustries today have a health and
welfare fund, labor may some
day consider the possibility, of
having the in-plant medical plan
AFL-CIO Issues JSetv
List of Publications
A new edition of the AFL-
CIO List of Publications has
been issued, containing infor-
mation on more than 60
pamphlets, books and leaflets
currently available.
Data given on each publi-
cation include a brief de-
scription, date of publication,
price and ordering instruc-
tions.
The July 1960 List of Pub-
lications can be obtained with-
out cost from the PAM-
PHLET DIVISION, AFL-
CIO Dept. of Publications,
815 16th Street, N. W., Wash-
ington 6, D. C.
established and its personnel em-
ployed by the health and welfare
fund. The medical department
will then be serving both labor
and management and there will
be less possibility of the workers
distrusting the medical team as
is often the case at present."
Dr. Brand also called for:
• Major improvements in state
workmen's compensation laws to
provide adequate coverage for all
occupational diseases.
• Better training for industrial
medical personnel.
• Sick leave programs for all
workers "so that they can seek med-
ical care without loss of earnings."
• Equal opportunity in employ-
ment for physically handicapped
workers and improved rehabilitation
services.
• Strengthening of state and fed-
eral health agencies.
Economic Crisis Grows:
Trade Unionism in Congo
Faces Uncertain Future
By Arnold Beichman
Leopoldville — With United Nations military forces and- civilian experts fanning out through the
Congo Republic, the question is now being raised as to the future direction and development of the
young trade union movement largely concentrated in this capital city.
The Ghanfon government is working dosely with Patrice Lumumba, Congolese premier, and is re-
portedly sending in its trade union representatives to enlist Congolese labor in a pan-African labor
organization and pledging financial ^g^^^^
aid
The present unsettled Congolese
economy and the unstable govern-
ment may bring on a crisis capable
of driving this new African country
into the arms of the Soviet Union,
it is believed here.
Secession of the huge province of
Katanga in the Eastern Congo, a
rich copper producing territory
which supplies the government with
60 percent of its income, can only
contribute to the economic disin-
tegration, and more seriously to the
outbreak of a civil war between
the presently Belgian - dominated
rump government and the central
government here.
The effect on the Congolese
workers can only mean privation
and unemployment until the po-
litical crisis is settled. In the
meantime it is felt that the exist-
ing union structure must be
strengthened against Ghana-
Guinea infiltration.
The labor movement of the for-
mer Belgian Congo was really non-
existent until 1957 when trade un-
ionism was finally given legal ex-
istence by the colonial government.
Some kind of unionism existed for
Europeans, but only 7,500 Africans
out of one million employed had
union affiliations in 1954. This
minimal African participation was^
due primarily to the government's
discouragement of African trade
union organizations lest they be-
come independence-minded. The
1957 decrees permitted union fed-
erations and by late 1958 the esti-
mated total African union member-
ship was 60,000.
However these developments had
no appreciable affect on union
growth because collective bargain-
ing in any real sense did not exist.
State Dept. Group Gets
Training in Labor Field
The first of a series of experimental orientation programs aimed
at familiarizing U.S. foreign service officers with the American labor
movement has been conducted by the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl.
Affairs.
The program was set up in the belief that a more intimate under-
standing of the labor movement's'^
role in American society will en
hance the ability of U.S. Dept. of
State professional personnel abroad
to interpret the United States and
in turn to report to the State Dept.
on vital developments in their for-
eign posts. It reflects the govern-
ment's greater recognition of the
increasingly vital role trade unions
play in many countries around the
world.
Four in First Group
The first group to receive the
special training was composed of
four foreign service officers with
four to 12 years experience who
were assigned to the State Dept.
labor affairs training program last
September. They were Harold
Aisley, Samuel McPherson Janney,
Jr* Stephen Low and Ernest A.
Nagy.
The week-long program in-
cluded morning and afternoon
meetings and discussions with
AFL-CIO department heads, vis-
its to several departments, at-
tendance at a Dept. of Intl. Af-
fairs conference conducted by
Dir. Michael Ross, a meeting
with Wesley Reedy, assistant to
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler, and visits to head-
quarters of the Intl. Brotherhood
of Electrical Workers and the
Communications Workers.
Foreign service officers assigned
to the program also will travel in
the field and observe local union
operations.
Co-chairmen of the special pro-
gram are Harry Pollak of the Dept.
of Intl. Affairs and Parke D. Mas-
sey, State Dept. Foreign Service
Institute training officer.
TUC Names Woodcock
General Secretary
London — George Woodcock, a
veteran staff member, has been
named to succeed the retiring Vin-
cent Tewson as general secretary of
the 8.3 million-member Trades Un-
ion Congress.
Woodcock went to work in a tex
tile mill as a child. He eventually
gained an Oxford University educa
tion at a time when working class
students were rare there. Upon
graduation, he joined the research
staff of the TUC and rose to the
post of assistant general secretary.
were under no legal
compulsion to bargain with unions,
there were no labor-management
contracts and strikes were unheard
of until February 1959 when 1,100
African bus drivers and conductors
walked out in a wage and personnel
policies dispute. The only real func-
tion African unions had was the
handling of individual grievances.
The existing national centers in
the Congo are the Congo Federa-
tion of Christian Unions affiliated
with the Intl. Federation of Chris-
tian Trade Unions, and the Belgian
Confederation of Workers, Congo
Section, a Socialist-oriented group
which'was affiliated with the ICFTU
through its parent group. Obvi-
ously, European affiliations will be
broken under Lumumba's regime
because of the deep resentment of
the Congolese toward anything Bel-
gian. At present no Congolese un-
ions are affiliated with the WFTU.
Another important center cover-
ing African government employes
is the Association of Native Person-
nel of the Colony, or APIC, which
has siginficant political strength.
The economic crisis means that
job opportunities in a country
with already high unemployment
and under-employment will con-
tinue on the downward path while
prices spiral upward in inevitable
inflation unless strong controls
are exercised.
In addition, lack of training for
the Congolese means the industrial
structure will be unable to expand
even with the arrival of United
Nations and other experts to man
government machinery during the
interim.
10- Year Task
The rehabilitation job in the Con-
go is estimated at a minimum of 10
years, perhaps more, and during
this period the government must
surmount political crises and avoid
already visible attempts by the
Soviet Union to clamp its hold on
the country. The present crash pro-
gram in the Congo by the United
Nations is concerning itself with re-
storing order, technical services and
providing food and medical aid.
But little attention is being paid to
the role of free trade unionism in
the Congo Republic.
Potters Hit 'Dumping' of
Low- Wage Area Imports
Seattle — Delegates to the Potters convention, held here recently,
called for quota limitations on imports of dinnerware from low-
wage countries.
Pres. E. L. Wheatley, while emphasizing that the union recognized
the need for international trade, declared that "dumping" of low-
cost dinnerware in the U.S. market'^
had resulted in the permanent loss
of more than 5,000 jobs, in recent
years through the closing of plants.
In addition, he said, plants still
in operation have never recovered
from the 1958 recession and un-
employment in the industry re-
mains "considerably higher" than
the national average*
The convention, the 66th in the
69 years since the IBOP was found-
ed, adopted a number of constitu-
tional revisions aimed at limiting
participation in the union's affairs
to active members employed at the
trade.
Back Legislative Program
In other action, the 225 delegates
unanimously endorsed the AFL-
CIO legislative program and pledged
strong support to the COPE fund
drive, backed up by an on-the-spot
donation by the delegates. Miami
Beach was chosen as the site for
the 1961 convention.
In an address to the convention,
George Richardson, assistant to
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
warned that wage freezes — under
the guise of fighting inflation — "are
incompatible with an expanding
economy and a rising standard of
living."
The effect of a wage freeze, he
declared, would be the destruc-
tion of collective bargaining,
higher unemployment "and the
Packinghouse Union
Wins Sunkist Affiliate
Santa Barbara, Calif. — Workers
at the lemon packing shed of the
lohnston Fruit Co., a Sunkist affili-
ate, have voted by 80 to 23 for the
Packinghouse Workers in an elec-
tion conducted by the National La-
bor Relations Board.
ultimate destruction of trade
unions."
Declaring that America needs
"new and stronger and more pro-
gressive leadership," Richardson de-
clared: "To obtain such leadership,
the trade union movement will have
to play an active role in the coming
election campaign — and it will have
to be united."
'Buy Union 9
Drive Urged
In N. Y. State
Albany, N. Y. — A broadened
campaign aimed at acquainting
New York State's 2 million union
members with the advantages of
"buying union" was called for here
by Harold C. Hanover, president of
the New York State AFL-CIO.
Addressing the 33rd annual con-
vention of the state's Union Label
& Service Trades Dept., Hanover
pointed out that New York State
unionists, with an annual spendable
income of $15 billion, "could exer-
cise a tremendous economic influ-
ence on behalf of the trade union
movement."
He described this purchasing
power as a "sleeping giant that
must be awakened" in order to
realize its "tremendous potential
for the furtherance of the ideals,
the aims and purposes of the labor
movement."
"When a product or service bears
the union stamp," Hanover said,
"you can be sure that the worker*
involved were employed under de-
cent, healthful conditions; were
paid fair wages, and had achieved
other gains which union contracts
today provide, all adding up to the
kind of product and the kind of.
employment labor can well be
proud of."
AFLrCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
Page Fl**
Republican Platform Planks:
. . . On Collective Bargaining
AMERICA'S GROWTH cannot be compartmented.
Labor and management cannot prosper without each
other. They cannot ignore their mutual public obli-
gation.
Industrial harmony, expressing these mutual inter-
ests, can best be achieved in a climate of free collec-
tive bargaining, with minimal government intervention
except by mediation and conciliation.
Even in dealing with emergency situations impair-
ing the national safety, ways of solution must be found
to enhance and not impede the processes of free col-
lective bargaining — carefully considered ways that are
in keeping with the policies of national labor relations
legislation and with the need to strengthen the hand
of the President in dealing with such emergencies.
In the same spirit, Republican leadership will con-
tinue to encourage discussions, away from the bargain-
ing table, between labor and management to consider
the mutual interest of all Americans in maintaining
industrial peace.
Republican policy firmly supports the right of em-
ployers and unions freely to enter into agreements pro-
viding for the union shop and other forms of union
security as authorized by the Labor-Management Re-
lations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act).
Republican-sponsored legislation has supported the
right of union members to full participation in the
WE RECOGNIZE that discrimination is not a prob-
lem localized in one area of the country, but rather a
^problem that must be faced by North and South alike.
Nor is discrimination confined to the discrimination
against Negroes. Discrimination in many, if not all,
areas of the country on the basis of creeds or national
origin is equally insidious. Further we recognize that
in many communities in which a century of custom and
tradition must be overcome heartening and commend-
able progress has b$en made.
The Republican Party is proud of the civil rights
record of the Eisenhower Administration. More prog-
ress has been made during the past eight years than in
the preceding 80 years.
The Republican Record is a record of progress — not
merely promises. Nevertheless, we recognize that much
remains to be done.
Each of the following pledges is practical and within
realistic reach of accomplishment. They are serious — ■>
not cynical — pledges made to result in maximum
progress.
1. VOTING. We pledge:
• Continued vigorous enforcement of the civil rights
laws to guarantee the right to vote to all citizens in all
areas of the country; and
• Legislation to provide that the completion of six
primary grades in a state accredited school is conclusive
evidence of literacy for voting purposes.
2. PUBLIC SCHOOLS. We pledge:
• The Dept. of Justice will continue its vigorous
support of court orders for school desegregation. De-
segregation suits now pending involve at least 39 school
districts. Those suits and others already concluded will
affect most major cities in which school segregation is
being practiced.
• It will use the new authority provided by the
Civil Rights Act of 1960 to prevent obstruction of court
orders;
• We will propose legislation to authorize the At-
TO PROVIDE THE MEANS to a better life for
individual Americans and to strengthen the forces of
freedom in the world, we count on the proved produc-
tivity of our free economy.
We therefore accord high priority to vigorous eco-
nomic growth and recognize that its mainspring lies in
the private sector of the economy. We must continue
to foster a healthy climate in that sector. We reject
the concept of artificial growth forced by massive new
federal spending and loose money policies. The only
effective way to accelerate economic growth is to in-
crease the traditional strengths of our free economy
initiative and investment, productivity and efficiency.
To that end we favor:
• Broadly based tax reform to foster job-making
and growth-making investment for modernization and
expansion, including realistic incentive depreciation
schedules.
• Use of the full powers of government to prevent
the scourges of depression and inflation.
• Elimination of featherbedding practices by labor
and business.
• Maintenance of a stable dollar as an indispensable
means of progress.
• Relating wage and other payments in production
On this page, the AFL-CIO reproduces excerpts
from three key planks — on collective bargaining, eco-
nomic growth and civil rights — contained in the I960
platform adopted by the Republican National Con-
vention in Chicago.
affairs of their union and their right to freedom from
racketeering and gangster interference whether by labor
or management in labor-management relations.
Seven past years of accomplishment, however, are
but a base to build upon in fostering, promoting and
improving the welfare of America's working men and
women, both organized and unorganized.
We pledge, therefore, action on these constructive
lines:
• Diligent administration of the amended Labor-
>lanagement Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley) and
the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act
of 1959 (Landrum-Griffin) with recommendations for
improvements which experience shows are needed to
make them more effective or remove any inequities.
© Correction of defects in the Welfare and Pension
Plans Disclosure Act to protect employes' and bene-
ficiaries' interests.
• Upward revision in amount and extended cov-
erage of the minimum wage to several million more
workers.
On Civil Rights
torney General to bring actions for school desegregation
in the name of the U.S. in appropriate cases, as when
economic coercion or threat of physical harm is used
to deter persons from going to court to establish their
rights.
• Our continuing support of the President's proposal
to extend federal aid and technical assistance to schools
which in good faith attempt to desegregate.
We oppose the pretense of fixing a target date three
years from now for the mere submission of plans for
school desegregation. Slow-moving school districts
would construe it as a three-year moratorium during
which progress would cease, postponing until 1963 the
legal process to enforce compliance. We believe that
each of the pending court actions should proceed as the
Supreme Court has directed and that in no district
should there be any such delay.
3. EMPLOYMENT. We pledge:
• Continued support for legislation to establish a
Commission on Equal Job Opportunity to make perma-
nent and to expand with legislative backing the excellent
work being performed by the President's Committee on
Government Contracts.
• Appropriate legislation to end the discriminatory
membership practices of some labor union locals, unless
such practices are eradicated promptly by the labor
unions themselves;
• Use of the full-scale review of existing state laws,
and of prior proposals for federal legislation, to elimi-
nate discrimination in employment now being conducted
by the Civil Rights Commission, for guidance in our
objective of developing a federal-state program in the
employment area; and
• Special consideration of training programs aimed
at developing- the skills of those now working in mar-
ginal agricultural employment so that they can obtain
employment in industry, notably in the new industries
moving into the South.
• Strengthening the unemployment insurance sys-
tem and extension of its benefits.
• Improvement of the eight-hour laws relating to
hours and overtime compensation on federal and fed-
erally assisted construction, and continued vigorous en-
forcement and improvement of minimum wage laws
for federal supply and construction contracts.
• Continued improvement of manpower skills and
training to meet a new era of challenges, including
action programs to aid older workers, women, youth,
and the physically handicapped.
0 Encouragement of training programs by labor,
industry and government to aid in rinding new jobs for
persons dislocated by automation or other economic
changes.
O Improvement of job opportunities and working
conditions of migratory farm workers.
• Assurance of equal pay for equal work regardless
of sex, encouragement of programs to insure on-the-
job safety, and encouragement of the states to improve
their labor standards legislation, and to improve vet-
erans' employment rights and benefits.
• Encouragement abroad of free democratic in-
stitutions, higher living standards and higher wages
through such agencies as the Intl. Labor Organization,
and cooperation with the free trade union movement
in strengthening free labor throughout the world.
4. HOUSING: We pledge:
• Action to prohibit discrimination in housing con-
structed with the aid of federal subsidies.
5. PUBLIC FACILITIES AND SERVICES. We
pledge:
• Removal of any vestige of discrimination in the
operation of federal facilities or procedures which may
at any time be found;
• Opposition to the use of federal funds for the
construction of segregated community facilities;
• Action to ensure that public transportation and
other government authorized services shall be free from
segregation.
6. LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURE. We pledge:
• Our best efforts to change present Rule 22 of the
Senate and other appropriate congressional procedures
that often make unattainable proper legislative imple-
mentation of constitutional guarantees.
We reaffirm the constitutional right to peaceable
assembly to protest discrimination in private business
establishments. We applaud the action of the business-
men who have abandoned discriminatory practices in
retail establishments, and we urge others to follow their
example.
Finally we recognize that civil rights is a responsi-
bility not only of states and localities; it is a national
problem and a national responsibility. The federal
government should take the initiative in promoting
inter-group conferences among those who, in their com-
munities, are earnestly seeking solutions of the complex
problems of desegregation — to the end that closed chan-
nels of communication may be opened, tensions eased,
and a cooperative solution of local problems may be
sought.
In summary, we pledge the full use of the power,
resources and leadership of the federal government to
eliminate discrimination based on race, color, religion
or national origin and to encourage understanding and
good will among all races and creeds.
. . . On Economic Growth
to productivity — except when necessary to correct in-
equities — in order to help stay competitive at home
and abroad.
• Spurring the economy by advancing the success-
ful Eisenhower-Nixon program fostering new and small
business; by continued active enforcement of the anti-
trust laws; by protecting consumers and investors
against the hazard and economic waste of fraudulent
and criminal practices in the marketplace; and by
keeping the federal government from unjustly com-
peting with private enterprise upon which Americans
mainly depend for their livelihood.
• Continued improvement of our vital transporta-
tion network, carrying forward rapidly the vast Eisen-
hower-Nixon national highway program and promoting
safe, efficient, competitive and integrated transport by
air, road, rail and water under equitable, impartial and
minimal regulation directed to those ends.
• Carrying forward, under the Trade Agreements
Act, the policy of gradual, selective — and truly recipro-
cal — reduction of unjustifiable barriers to trade among
free nations. We advocate effective administration of
the act's escape clause and peril point provisions to
safeguard American jobs and domestic industries
against serious injury.
In support of our national trade policy we should
continue the Eisenhower-Nixon program of using this
government's negotiating powers to open markets
abroad and to eliminate remaining discrimination
against our goods. We should also encourage the
development of fair labor standards in exporting coun-
tries in the interest of fair competition in international
trade. We should, too, expand the Administration's
export drive, encourage tourists to come from abroad,
and protect U.S. investors against arbitrary confisca-
tions and expropriations by foreign governments.
Through these and other constructive policies, we will
better our international balance of payments.
• Discharge by government of responsibility for
those activities which the private sector cannot do or
cannot so well do, such as constructive federal-local
action to aid areas of chronic high unemployment, a
sensible farm policy, development and wise use of
natural resources, suitable support of education and
research, and equality of job opportunity for all Amer-
icans.
Action on these fronts, designed to release the
strongest productive force in human affairs — the spirit
of individual enterprise — can contribute greatly to our
goal of a steady, strongly growing economy.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, I960
Every Vote Counts
HP HE NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTIES have adopted plat-
forms and nominated candidates; now the question is how many
Americans will exercise their democratic privileges and vote on
Nov. 8/
On the basis of past records the 35th President of the United
States will be elected by a minority of those Americans eligible to
vote. Even the most optimistic forecasts and the promise of a hard-
fought campaign is not likely to bring out a majority of those eligible
to vote.
In 1952, when a record-breaking 62.7 percent of eligible
Americans cast ballots, Gen. Eisenhower received 54.1 percent
of the vote to emerge the victor. He was elected, however, by
only 34.6 percent of the people eligible to participate in the
decision.
There are many factors that affect the failure to vote ranging
from the poll tax to literacy requirements and residency laws. These
all keep millions, otherwise eligible, away from the polls on Election
Day.
But the fact that since .the formation of modern American politi-
cal parties no President has ever been elected by a majority of
those eligible to vote stems also from other reasons.
There is the myth that one vote doesn't count very much in
the eventual result — a myth that has been exploded in election
after election.
There is the cynicism of other decades that politics is a "dirty"
business that should be avoided so as not to become contaminated.
This, happily, is disappearing as more and more people realize that
the very basic decisions that affect all phases of American life
are made by political leaders — that politics is the art of government.
There is also the overriding apathy, the let-George-do-it approach
that strikes at the core of the democratic structure.
The tremendous display of interest in the national conventions
must be maintained through the coming months of the campaign so
that in this critical election a majority of eligible citizens will partici-
pate in the selection of a President for the next four years.
Trade unions can lead the way in this fight to strengthen and
extend political democracy by working through COPE to get all
eligible voters registered and qualified to vote, by stirring wide-
spread discussion of the issues and by convincing voters to
translate their interest in the election by contributing their dollars
to the cause of political education.
Rose-Colored Glasses
THE ADMINISTRATION has acknowledged in a roundabout
way that it has been looking at the unemployment problem
through rose-colored glasses.
The Budget Bureau has admitted that expenditures from the
unemployment trust fund have exceeded by some $353 million the
level of expenditures estimated last January. The reason, said the
bureau, is that joblessness exceeded expectations.
The Budget Bureau's estimate of expenditures and income for
any given budget is based primarily on its forecast of the economic
situation. It is obvious that last year the bureau and the Admin-
istration took little or no note of the chronic, long-range nature
of unemployment at that time and of the easily available figures
on the growth ctf the labor force indicating higher unemployment
unless economic growth increased sharply.
This is a problem that will not just fade away. Unless the
Administration reverses its current policies and moves to accelerate
growth, the situation will grow worse.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh .
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Wiilard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love.
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, July 30, 1960
No. 31
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of it* official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Barriers to Franchise:
Millions Denied Right to Vote
By Outmoded Election Laws
The following is excerpted from an article
in the July AFL-CIO American Federationist
entitled "The Votes That Are Never Counted:'
A MAJOR CAUSE for non-voting is the out-
moded election laws which remain on the
statute books, setting up barriers to easy access
to exercise of the franchise.
Five states — Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi,
Texas and Virginia — make the payment of a poll
tax a prerequisite for voting. These laws were
originally adopted by most states to keep the vote
in the hands of the propertied class. Today, they
are used in combination with other laws to de-
prive Negroes of the right to vote.
Although the poll tax is gradually receding
as an instrument for voting discrimination,
other laws are used in the South to achieve
this same end.
Literacy tests are imposed, like Mississippi's
requirement that voters "read, write and inter-
pret reasonably any section of the state constitu-
tion" — a requirement easily susceptible to dis-
crimination on the part of examiners. In addi-
tion, registrars throughout the South rely on
challenges by White Citizens Councils — for real
or imagined reasons — to disenfranchise large
groups of Negro voters.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 sought to make a
first step toward correcting that situation, and the
1960 civil rights inched a little further along. The
U.S. Supreme Court, in two landmark decisions
handed down earlier this year, upheld the con-
stitutionality of federal lawsuits against state of-
ficers accused of denying voting rights to Negroes.
BUT VOTING LAWS designed to further the
"white supremacy" myth are not the only ones
on the books which disenfranchise voters. Archaic
residency laws — which require as much as two
years of residence in a state and as much as one
year in the county or city — act as high barriers to
easy participation in elections.
Modern-day America has a highly mobile
society. This was recognized during World
War II, and arrangements were quickly made
to insure that this mobility would neither al-
low men of draft age to drift away from their
responsibility nor permit the less scrupulous to
acquire more than their share of red and blue
points from their rationing boards.
Yet residency laws remain unrealistically high.
The American Heritage Foundation estimated
that in 1956, 6 million citizens were disenfran-
chised because they had moved to another city or
state and could not meet residential requirements
The failure of many states to provide for ab-
sentee ballots also has cut into the actual vote.
Four years ago, according to the foundation, some
5 million hospitalized and physically disabled
persons and an additional 2.6 million travelers
were prevented from voting.
TO HELP STIMULATE voter participation
in elections, many unions have negotiated time off
for voting as part of their union contracts. Addi-
tionally, 29 states now have laws compelling em-
ployers to grant from one to four hours to vote
unless the polls are open for a sufficient time out-
side working hours so that employes can ballot
without difficulty.
Voter apathy plays a large role, too, in the
failure of Americans to participate in elections.
In a nation with more than 100 million voters,
the cry is repeatedly raised: "My vote won't
count." The record successfully refutes this
contention.
The great American writer, Walt Whitman, in
an editorial which appeared in the Brooklyn
Eagle on Nov. 3, 1846, pointed out that "one
vote elected Marcus Morton governor of Mas-
sachusetts in 1841, out of an aggregate of 100,-
000."
In 1944, Sen. Robert A. Taft carried Ohio by
less than 1 vote per precinct. In 1948, Pres. Tru-
man carried California and Ohio by the same
margin and picked up the electoral votes needed
to score the greatest upset in American political
history. That same year, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson
was sent to the Senate by a majority of 87 votes
from the huge state of Texas.
In 1950, Gov. G. Mennen Williams of Mich-
igan was elected by less than one vote for
every three precincts. In 1954, Sen. Richard
Neuberger of Oregon won election by less than
one vote per precinct while Gov. Averell Har-
riman of New York won by only a shade more
than that.
In the crucial elections of 1960, every vote will
have meaning. And in the privacy of the polling
booth, during that brief moment it will take to
mark ballots or pull levers on voting machines, the
people will be doing more than merely holding in
their hands the destinies of two men contesting
for the presidency. They will, in a very real sense,
be controlling the future of the American system
of representative government and the course of
prospective legislation, not only for the immedi-
ate future, but for at least another decade.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
Page Sevc*
Morgan Says:
Ugly Smear Campaign Used
In Effort to Defeat Kefauver
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
ALMOST FORGOTTEN in the hubbub over
the Democratic and Republican conventions,
a senatorial race with national ramifications is
grinding toward a climax in the state of Tennessee.
In a Democratic primary traditionally tantamount
to election, the voters on August 4 will choose
between a man who twice
has been at the very center
of the presidential nomina-
tion fight, Estes Kefauver,
and a country judge named
Andrew 'Tip'' Taylor,
running for the U.S. Sen-
ate seat Kefauver has held
for 12 years.
The campaign has taken
an alarming, ugly turn and
the soft-spoken man in the
coonskin cap who was
Adlai Stevenson's chief op-
ponent in 1952 and his running mate in '56 is
fighting for his political life.
It is more than the crime-busting, price-probing
image of Kefauver which gives this battle a na-
tional dimension. Taylor is. a states rightser of the
narrow old school and by indirection and innuendo
he has been blazing away at Kefauver as "soft on
communism," a lover of big government and no
man to speak for Tennessee or the South on civil
rights.
If he should succeed in unseating the moderate
senator it could encourage a rebellion of southern
extremists against the national Kennedy-Johnson
ticket, piqued as they already are over the liberal
Democratic party platform. So bitter and blood-
shot has the "race" issue become that Kefauver
himself has not been able to clasp the platform's
civil rights plank completely to his bosom while
Taylor has denounced it as, in effect, the work
of the devil and the NAACP.
Kefauver is getting liberal and important or-
ganized labor support which, ironically, is some-
thing of -a liability in some sections of Tennessee.
But of more interest is the strange nature of his
opposition. Much of it springs from the caves of
the same radical right crowd which tried — stri-
dently but unsuccessfully — to defeat Tennessee's
junior senator, Albert Gore, two years ago.
Their material includes the same old tawdry,
scurrilous material — dodgers maligning Estes as
the "bestest liberal-socialist," an advocate of
"black supremacy" and, of course, creeping
socialism through TV A, one of Tennessee's
proudest assets.
Much of this stuff is unsigned and has been
referred to the FBI as illegal campaign literature.
But something new has been added. It might be
called drugstore opposition.
SEN. KEFAUVER's recent investigation of the
drug and pharmaceutical industry, revealing some
exorbitant profits and questionable practices,
stirred vengeful indignation in that industry. So
far it has not been possible to verify persistent
rumors that manufacturing firms are "spending
heavily" to defeat Kefauver but one tactic has
emerged into the clear. Their detail men have
been making the rounds of doctors and retail
druggists, attacking the Kefauver inquiry as a
"black smear" on the white-smocked men of
science in the pharmaceutical research labora-
tories.
The senator himself has made the point that
his subcommittee was not investigating drug-
stores or doctors but practices which allowed
the pharmaceutical industry to enjoy, after
taxes, profits double those of manufacturing as
a whole and whether this situation was in the
public interest, including that of the corner
druggist.
Some pharmacists, however, have come out for
Kefauver with a signed campaign of their own.
A mimeographed letter on the stationery of the
Red Bank, Tenn., Pharmacy, under the motto
"Your Health Our Business" dated July 15 and
signed with the name of the firm's manager,
M. L. Sparks, Jr., urged voters to "think" who was
responsible for a number of reforms in the drug
industry including the ouster of the head of the
federal Food and Drug Administration's antibiotic
division who had been caught in a scandal. The
answer, the letter said, was "the honorable Estes
Kefauver, a friend of every pharmacist."
Whether this is giving enough medicine to coun-
ter the headaches created by the radical right re-
mains to be seen.
Joint Economic Committee Told:
Automation Takes Toll of Jobs
In Nation's Telephone Industry
THE GRIM EFFECT of automation on jobs
has been dramatically illustrated in the tele-
phone industry where service has increased 25
percent during the past five years while jobs have
dropped 5Vi percent.
These figures were presented recently to the
Joint Congressional Economic Committee by
Pres. Joseph Beirne of the Communications
Workers, a union that was among the first to be
hit by automation and that is still being hit.
Beirne told the committee that, since his last
appearance before it in 1955, automation has
continued to take its job toll through the elimina-
tion of telephone operators.
In 1955, 84 percent of all local calls were
dialed by the customer, with 16 percent being
handled by an operator. Today only 4 percent
of local calls are handled by an operator. In
1955 no long distance calls were dialed by the
customer, today one out of four long distance
calls is dialed by the customer.
During this period, Beirne testified, the num-
ber of average daily phone conversations has gone
up 23 percent and the number of telephones has
increased by 26 percent, yet "employment de-
creased by 33,000 — five and one-half percent —
in the operating portion of the industry."
Beirne said this situation of expanding service
and shrinking employment underscores his 1955
recommendation that:
# "Industries and particularly those like the
communications industry where automation is
having a daily effect on job opportunities must
begin to think in terms of a shorter workweek and
guch other job spreading devices as longer vaca-
tions and lowe r optional retirement age.
• "In order to maintain high productivity and
a high employe morale, attention must be given
to such things as: (a) improved force reduction
and . rehiring procedures, (b) interdepartmental
and intercompany transfers including payment of
transfer expenses, (c) higher pensions and lower
optional -retirement age, (d) more liberal termina-
tion payments for persons who lose their jobs as
a result of technological change, (e) better and
more extensive job retraining programs, (f) great-
er weight to seniority.
• "A separate Bureau of Automation should
be established in the United States Department of
Labor to coordinate all information on automa-
tion in the United States and to develop recom-
mended public policies in the area of automa-
tion."
He added:
"Perhaps the most important thing we have to
say to this committee is that this entire problem
of automation cannot be viewed, in our opinion,
on an industry by industry or job by job basis.
There is a need for some over-all attention to this
problem and some public policies in this field."
Bell system testimony to this same committee
emphasized the service to the public made possi-
ble by automation, but the company made no
mention of the effect on employment in the in-
dustry caused by automation.
Using the year 1920 for its comparison, com-
pany testimony showed that employment had
risen "more than two and one-half times." What
the company didn't say, though, was that the
number of telephones is now more than seven
times what it was in 1920 and calls made over
these phones have increased even faster.
WASHfNGTON
7h
j
CHICAGO— THE PRE-CONVENTION MEETING between
Gov. Rockefeller and Vice Pres. Nixon served the interests of Mr.
Nixon as effectively as Sen. Kennedy was served by the pre-conven-
tion attack in which former Pres. Truman assailed the Democratic
parley as "prearranged/ 1
For each, an incident furnished a priceless opportunity for a
declaration of doctrine, of principles,' of a claim to party leadership.
Sen. Kennedy was given Ihe chance of a nationally televised
press conference audience that he could not possibly have ob-
tained in advance of the convention simply on his own. He would
no doubt have won the nomination in any case, but he was given
a chance to speak to the whole people about issues that will
arise in the campaign, and to speak affirmatively. Mr. Nixon used
Rockefeller's running fire of demands on the Republican plat-
form as a springboard from which he could start asserting his
independence of Pres. Eisenhower.
This has been necessary to the Vice President: He could not
possibly seek to win the election as a pale ghost of the man whose
Administration is running to its end — and running out of steam.
He must make his own case, seize the party leadership — and the
platform is the obvious instrument through which to start doing it.
* * *
THE FURY with which Republican right-wingers greeted Rocke-
feller's 14-point platform statement, to which the Vice President
said he assented, was reminiscent of the barely suppressed rage with
which the late Sen. Taft's supporters took their repeated defeats.
They knew less about Mr. Nixon, it seems, than reporters who
have watched the young man's career in the slaughtering-pens of
top-level politics.
His agreement with Gov. Rockefeller committed him to no "lib-
eralism" in the economic sense. It expressed his own idea of what
is necessary for the country and for the Republican Party and for
himself as Republican leader.
The civil rights situation, with school desegregation still balked
and with refusal to recognize the demand of all minority groups
for full status as human beings, no longer makes it tolerable for
a White House aspirant to be content with the Eisenhower poli-
cies. The President has waited too long to assert moral leadership.
Republicans may defend the record as they please — but Gov.
Rockefeller was unanswerable when he pointed out that the Soviet
Union now feels capable of threatening us with "rockets" about
Cuba whereas we felt capable of nothing when the Soviets seized
Czechoslovakia and reconquered Hungary.
* * *
THE NOTION that the Vice President "capitulated" on funda-
mental principles to Gov. Rockefeller is based on the "right-wing-
ers' " assumption that presidential elections can be won in this
country the way Sen. Goldwater, from a sparsely settled western
state, won re-election to his job in Arizona.
Presidential elections are on an entirely different level. The
issues are different, different things are looked for in those who
make the claim to preferment.
There is every reason to believe that Mr. Nixon is a conserva-
tive of intense convictions on economic policy, on fiscal policy,
on labor policy. But he intends to do many things more vigor-
ously than Mr. Eisenhower has done them, to campaign differ-
ently, to talk differently, to be his own man.
He left no doubt when he entered this convention city that he
intended to assert his leadership of the party — not to "break" with
the President, which is of course impossible, but to stake out his
own claim.
He chose to do this via a platform agreement in which he used
the fact that Gov. Rockefeller also wants changes from the situation
of stalemate in which Mr. Eisenhower has left us. He would have
found some other method had this one been unavailable.
OFFICE EMPLOYES Local 277, representing 1,600 clerical
workers at Convair plant in Fort Worth, Tex., helps keep union
committeemen well-informed by taking out subscriptions in their
names to AFL-CIO News. Local 277 Sec.-Treas. L. B. Cobb,
left, and Pres. R. E. Norman, Jr., right, turn over to AFL-CIO
Regional^pir. Lester Graham check for year's subscription for 31
officers and stewards.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
How to Buy:
August Sales Offer
Pre-Season Savings
By Sidney Margolius
AUGUST IS ONE OF THE BEST MONTHS to shop for furniture,
rugs and mattresses. The other sale opportunities this month
are china, housewares, sheets and curtains. Pre-Labor Day sales
give you a chance to replace worn tires at reduced prices.
The August coat sales in advance of the season are another buy-
ing opportunity. For example, last year leading clothiers offered
men's coats in August sales for
$49.75 and $59.75. In September
these coats advanced to their regular
$'59.95 and $75 tags. (Note the ex
tra-large reductions on the costlier
coats.) Then in December they
were reduced again for the mid-
winter clearances. The shopper who
buys in advance of the season, and
the shopper who waits until late,
both pay less than the one who buys
at the height of the season.
Other useful August sales are the
end-of-summer specials on paint,
wallpaper, brushes and hardware,
and clearances of lawnmowers,
and other outdoor furniture.
The auto industry has almost a million 1960 models to unload
in a hurry. Dealers are cutting prices heavily on the '60's because
the 1961 cars will be out in October, two weeks earlier than
usual. One reason for the big stock of 1960 cars still on hand is
the large number of models offered this year with the introduc-
tion of the compact cars.
But the biggest price cut is on used cars — down almost nine per
cent in just three months.
IF YOU'RE A RENTING FAMILY seeking a new apartment,
your prospects are brightening a little. For the first time since
World War II, rents actually are stabilizing this summer with more
apartments available in a number of areas. Best bet is in apartment
buildings. Vacancies in single-family houses are still scarce in most
cities, with their rents still rising.
Food has been expensive this summer, especially pork, but you
can expect cheaper prices this fall as meat becomes more abundant.
However, not all the potential bargains are going to reach con-
sumers. The peach crop is the biggest since 1947. But in Cali-
fornia, growers, canners and state officials are discussing how much
of the peach crop to destroy, as they did last year, to keep up the
price.
Result of such destruction is that canned peaches are selling for
only a little less than a year ago, but fresh peaches cost 25-50 per-
cent less. That's a food bargain to grab at, not only for current use,
but for preserving or freezing.
HERE ARE TIPS on August buying opportunities.
You'll have to be a careful shopper to get top value and the most
suitable tires for your needs. There's a fierce controversy in the tire
industry over the introduction of nylon tires with list prices of only
$12.95. Two big manufacturers are pushing the new economy tire.
Another maker says their ads are misleading; that there's no way
"to produce cheaper tires without cheapening quality."
For one thing, it should be understood that the new economy
tire is really a fourth-line tire even though it may be called a
third line. Now, most manufacturers have four lines of tires:
third-line, second-line, first-line or original-equipment grade, and
premium. Moreover, in each group there is generally a rayon and
a nylon model. There are really eight grades to choose from.
If that isn't confusing enough, the fancy names of the various
lines will really fool you. A "deluxe" tire may really be a manu-
facturer's low-grade line.
Nor is comparative price a reliable guide to quality. One dealer
may charge as much for a second-line tire as another for a first.
In general, in each grade nylon-cord tires are preferable, with
Tyrex rayon second, and ordinary rayon third.
That doesn't mean a rayon isn't a good tire. Many original-
equipment tires are rayon. But since there is now only a dollar or
two difference between nylon and rayon tires of the same grade and
amount of tread, the nylon does have several advantages. The nylon
body is considered to be a little cooler-running, and excessive heat
reduces tire life and tends to cause blowouts in fast driving on a hot
day. Too, the nylon body gives more protection against sidewall
injuries.
While the new economy tire is a lot for the money, our con-
sultants recommend it only for moderate use for a car you plan to
keep only a short while.
For a car you will keep a couple of years, the higher-quality
second-line tire costs only $2-$3 more. For hard use, the first-line
(original-equipment) grade is recommended. You may be asked as
much as $25-$30 for a first-line tire but can find this quality for as
little as $20-$22 with your old tire, for the 6.70 x 15 size, at cur-
rent sales.
Besides providing a thicker tread, a well-made first-line tire
also has the numerous cross-cuts or hook-shaped "sipes" in the
tread which aid traction, assist stopping and help resist skids.
Generally the expensive "premium" tires aren't necessary. They
often are merely a device for trading you up to a high-profit pur-
chase. *
Copyright 1%Q by Sidney Margolius
LABOR . PARTICIPATION leaders in the 1961 Greater Boston United Fund campaign are shown dis-
cussing plans for the drive with Boone Gross, general chairman. Left to right are Berry Aronson,
AFL-CIO consultant at the United Fund; Pres. J. William Belanger of the Massachusetts State Labor
Council; Gross; Sec.-Treas. Kenneth J. Kelley of the AFL-CIO, and Joseph McLaughlin, State AFL-
CIO vice president and labor consultant to the United Fund,
Investment Boom, Not Wages,
Held Causing Canada
OTTAWA, ONT. — Inflation in recent years has
been caused by an investment boom and price
rises in non-unionized industries — not by union
wage demands.
This is the "inescapable" conclusion drawn by
the Canadian Labor Congress research staff in a
recent edition of Labor Research.
To combat this type of inflation, the CLC urges
an end to hold-the-line policies and tight money.
The Congress's economists advocate the institu-
tion of selective controls over investment.
Labor Research, in an issue entitled "Infla-
tion," analyzes price increases since 1945. In
every case, the bulletin points out, periods of in-
flation were caused by excessive demand rather
than excessive costs.
There is no evidence that inflation has been
caused by wage increases, the CLC says. Labor
costs have dropped in some industries and al-
most without exception unit labor costs (wages
related to productivity) rose less sharply than
prices.
The cost, however, of some goods and services
were definitely out of line during periods of infla-
tion, the CLC points out. In some instances
profits were "unduly" high. Health care, largely
non-unionized, jumped sharply as did e prices in
the food industry.
THE MOST UNION-INFLUENCED com-
ponent of the price index, clothing, increased only
1 percent between 1955 and 1958.
From Soup to Nonsense:
Also, the CLC points out, wages invariably
followed price increases. The pattern of the
past 15 years had prices going up first.
There were three distinct periods of inflation
in the post-war years.
The first, in 1946-48, was caused primarily by
the sudden increase in consumer and capital de-
mand after the war. Money was plentiful, goods
were not. Prices rose with demand.
The same thing happened after the Korean
War. Heavy expenditures in the western world on
defense put a great deal of money into the econ-
omy and prices shot upwards.
However, the last period, 1955-57, was slight-
ly different. An investment boom was the culprit.
"We had a situation in which investors were
willing and able to invest more capital than there
were resources and manpower to invest in," the
research bulletin states.
This type of inflation threatens today.
Tight money does not help the situation.
What is needed, says the CLC, is selective con-
trol of investment through variable deprecia-
tion allowances and the licensing of large capi-
tal bond issues.
"In an economy with idle manpower and re-
sources, the injection of additional money will not
as a general rule raise prices," the bulletin holds.
"The economy is under-employed and more
money would be used to take up the slack."
It All Just Goes into One Ear
And Keeps Right on Going...
By Jane
I CANT SEEM to get my message across:
Me: "Now, darling, don't forget to come home
early Wednesday evening. We're going to the
Bennetts' for dinner."
Him (two days later): "Say, you don't have
anything planned for Wednesday night, do you?
Bill Fletcher's in town and I asked him to have
dinner with us."
Goodsell
Or better yet, drive it home and show it to the
kiddies. Isn't that metallic tweed the most beau-
tiful upholstery you ever saw in your life?"
Me: "Honey, would you mind picking up a
loaf of unsliced egg twist on your way home?"
Him: "Here's that rye* bread you wanted."
please.
Me: "I'd like to see a dress in size 12,
Either black or navy and not over $40.
Saleslady: "This yellow and white print would
be lovely on you, and it's marked down to
$89.95."
"Dear Sir: Please do not send me your book
club selection for this month, The Sound of
Bugles.' Thanking you, I remain, yours truly
"Dear Katie: "I'm so glad you're enjoying
camp. Are you remembering to brush your teeth
and change your underwear? Have you written
to Grandma? Is your cold better?"
"Dear Mommy: I am having fun. Please send
me $5 for basket weaving."
"Dear Madam: We are sending you under sep-
arate cover our book club selection The Sound
of Bugles.' Yours very truly . . ."
Me: "No, Molly, you can't have a cookie. You
can't have anything to eat. Dinner will be ready
in ten minutes."
Molly; "Can I have a peanut butter sandwich?"
Me: "Just exactly how much does this car
cost?"
Car Salesman: "We can give you a really sen-
sational deal on this car. When you consider
the easy monthly installments plus the savings on
gas and oil . . . say, why don't you just slip be-
hind the wheel and drive it around the block?
Me: "How long will it take to repair my iron?"
Man-behind-the-counter: "You can depend on
us to do an A-l job soon as we can get to it. Our
repairman's been on half-time lately because his
wife just came home from the hospital with twin
boys. Cutest little tykes you ever saw in your
life . . ."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
Page Nin«
'Death Sentence' to Industry:
Glass Union Hits
US. Trade Policy
New York — The U.S. Dept. of State has been charged with
"arrogantly issuing death sentences" on thousands of American
enterprises by dominating policy decisions on trade. The accusa-
tion was contained in an officers' report to the 14th constitutional
convention of the Glass and Ceramic Workers here.
In a special foreword to the re-^
port, UGCW Pres. Ralph Reiser
told some 200 delegates to the con-
vention that their union faces the
greatest challenge in its 25-year his-
tory in developing long-range an-
swers to the increasingly serious
menace of foreign imports.
Reiser noted that imports of
ceramic tile during 1959 amounted
to 45 million square feet for a total
of $18 million, and that window
plate glass imports during the same
period totaled 425 million square
feet for a total of $36 million. Glass
imports for use in frame mirrors
and in automobiles accounted for
Eagles Select
Doherty for
Labor Award
Milwaukee — The Fraternal Or-
der of Eagles has announced that
its annual Green-Murray award
will be given this year to WiTliam
C. Doherty, president of the Let-
ter Carriers and a vice president of
the AFL-CIO.
The award, named in honor of
WILLIAM C. DOHERTY
Green-Murray Award Winner
the late presidents of the former
AFL and the former CIO, is given
each year by the Eagles to an out-
standing union leader selected on
the basis of "leadership and states-
manship in the field of labor rela-
tions."
Previous recipients of the award
have been Machinists Pres. A. J.
Hayes, William L. McFetridge,
president emeritus of the Building
Service Employes, Pres. George M.
Harrison of the Railway Clerks
and Pres. Peter T. Schoemann of
the Plumbers.
Award Ceremony Aug. 4
Doherty will receive the award
Aug. 4 at the Eagles' convention in
! Miami Beach. He will fly from the
Postal Telegraph & Telephone
Intl. Congress in Vienna, Austria,
for the ceremony.
Judge Robert W. Hansen, pro-
gram director for the Eagles, who
will present the award, declared
that Doherty "has certainly earned
this recognition through a lifetime
of proven accomplishment and
achievement on behalf of his fel-
low workers and fellow men."
The Letter Carriers' president,
who also heads the AFL-CIO Gov-
ernment Employes Council, has
been credited with a key role in
the successful campaign for a pay
raise for government workers, in-
cluding overriding by Congress of
a presidential veto. He is a mem-
ber of the Eagles, as were William
Green and Philip Murray.
an additional 56 million square feet,
he reported.
He estimated that imports of
glass during last year accounted
for a full-time output of at least
2,300 production workers, while
those in the ceramic field were
equal to the full-time output of
more than 2,600 workers.
"We cannot erase the problem of
imports by just being militant on
the picket line," Reiser declared.
"We cannot stand idly by when im-
ports take the jobs of our members.
We have taken steps to protect their
seniority rights and earning ability.
Your officers and representatives
have spent a great amount of time
working out agreements so that per-
sonal hardships caused by imports
have been eliminated or at least
minimized."
Subsidy Proposed
One of the resolutions due to
come before the convention for ac-
tion provides for a subsidy for
workers displaced by foreign im-
ports. It would create an employer-
employe program of subsidies to
supplement workers' earnings with
sums comparable to the amounts
lost by virtue of displacement be-
cause of imports.
Another major issue facing the
convention involved the problem
of automation, which has taken
a heavy toll of jobs among glass
and ceramic workers. Most of a
membership loss of some 12,000
that has taken place since the
union's last convention two years
ago was attributed by the officers'
I report to the worsening problem
of automation. Reiser told dele-
gates that in a growing economy,
both technological progress and
added world trade can improve
[ the living standards of working
people.
"In a standstill economy, automa-
tion and imports undermine and
ultimately destroy these living stand-
ards," the UGCW president de-
clared. "What happens to our
members, for good or ill, depends
in part on the policies we enforce
at the plant level. It also depends
in part on the principles developed
at the national level." He called
for enlightened action on both
fronts.
Trade Policy 'Chaotic'
The officers' report termed the
State Dept.'s trade policy "chaotic."
It held that the nation as a whole
is threatened with an unfavorable
balance of trade for the first time
since 1876, pointing out that the
United States has become depend-
ent on far away sources for critical
raw materials needed both in peace-
time and in war. Continuing the
present trend, the report warned,
might mean defeat in war if Ameri-
ca should be isolated from the
sources of these raw materials.
The report also struck out at the
National Labor Relations Board,
citing a dispute the UGCW has had
with the Jackson Tile Manufactur-
ing Co. in Mississippi, charging that
the NLRB is operating in such a
manner as to protect the interests
of industry.
Texas Unions Boost
Retarded Kids Fund
Austin, Tex. — {jprteen central la-
bor bodies and seven local unions
have made contributions to the $3,-
000 fund which the Texas State
AFL-CIO is raising for the Texas
Association for Retarded Children,
State Sec.-Treas. Fred Schmidt said.
PRACTICAL TRAINING in how management takes time studies and uses them against trade un-
ion members is given members of AFL-CIO affiliates during 1960 Industrial Engineering Institutes
at University of Wisconsin, sponsored jointly by AFL-CIO Dept. of Research and the university's
School for Workers.
Labor Negotiators Go to School to
Learn Management Speedup Tricks
Madison, Wis. — The manner in which management uses time studies, wage incentives and job
evaluation to reduce legitimate collective bargaining gains was demonstrated to 49 trade union staff
members at the 1960 AFL-CIO Industrial Engineering Institutes at the University of Wisconsin's
School for Workers here.
The unionists — from 14 national and international unions, two federal labor unions, and the field
staffs of the national and stated -
AFL-CIO — attended basic and ad-
vanced institutes conducted jointly
by the AFL-CIO Dept. of Re-
search and the School for Work-
ers.
The basic courses covered time
study, wage incentives, job evalua-
tion and wage determination, while
the advanced courses were geared
to collective bargaining of indus-
trial engineering problems and
synthetic work standard systems.
Goal of the annual training
program is to provide union staff
members with the information
needed to effectively represent
workers faced with the burgeon-
ing management use of industrial
engineering methods and prac-
tices.
In issuing the call to the training
sessions, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. Wil-
liam F. Schnitzler had charged
management with "arbitrary and
abusive" use of industrial engineer-
ing, and said that as a result "wage
increases are negated by down-
grading jobs, increasing work loads
and lowering incentive earnings."
Emphasized Bargaining
The courses — under the direc-
tion of Bertram Gottlieb, AFL-
CIO industrial 'engineer, and Norris
Tibbetts of the faculty of the
School for Workers — placed heavy
emphasis on the collective bargain-
ing implications of industrial engi-
neering, and gave those attending
the sessions practical training in
how management makes its engi-
neering determinations.
Attending the sessions at the
School for Workers were staff
representatives from the Auto
Workers, Sheet Metal Workers,
Machinists, Boilermakers, Paper-
makers & Paperworkers, Meat
Cutters, Steelworkers, Intl. Broth-
erhood of Electrical Workers,
Allied Industrial Workers, Car-
penters, Upholsterers, Glass
Bottle Blowers, Pulp-Sulphite
Workers, and the State, County
& Municipal Employes.
Leading authorities in the indus-
trial engineering field from the
trade union movement joined with
Gottlieb and Tibbetts on the train-
ing staff. They included:
Seymour Brandwein, economist
from the AFL-CIO Dept. of Re-
search; Russell Allen, education di-
rector for the AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept.; Richard Humphreys,
education and research director for
the Allied Industrial Workers; Wil-
National Goals Group
To Report in December
A long-term Commission on National Goals, established early
this year by Pres. Eisenhower to develop a program of national pol-
icies for the next decade, expects to complete its work and submit
its report to the President by December.
In a letter to Pres. Eisenhower, Commission Chairman Henry M.
Wriston, former president of Brown^
University, said the December tar-
get date would help insure the "non-
partisan approach" of the commis-
sion by keeping its work "out of
even indirect involvement in the
political campaign."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
was one of the 11 leading citi-
zens appointed by Eisenhower to
serve on the commission, whose
work is being financed from pri-
vate funds and whose inquiry is
being conducted free of any di-
rect connection with the federal
government.
Wriston wrote Eisenhower that —
conducting its study with no direct
connection either with the Adminis-
tration or either political party —
the commission is working on a
"unified and self-contained state-
ment of the basic elements that
. . . should be included in the na-
tional agenda" over the next five
or 10 years.
In a reply sent from the vacation
White House at Newport, R. I.,
Eisenhower said he felt the recom-
mendations of the committee "will
be most timely," adding: "I feel
more strongly than ever that your
committee has the opportunity to
make an historic addition to our
knowledge and understanding of
the democratic processes and our
national ideals and purposes."
liam Kuhl, research and education
director for the Boilermakers; Ker-
mit K. Mead, director of the time
study and engineering division of
the Auto Workers; Fred Simon of
the agricultural implement depart-
ment of the UAW; and Hy Fish,
consulting industrial engineer from
Chicago.
w -
Union-Busting
Tactics Fail to
Break Strike
Philadelphia — A plucky band of
Oil Workers — their union just over
a year old — has taken on a sub-
sidiary of a giant company in what
the union describes as "a strike for
survival."
"We are all of the opinion that
this is going to be another so-called
'Kohler strike,' " declared William
J. Wade, Jr., chairman of the
workmen's committee at the Sin-
clair and Valentine Printing Ink
Co.
The employes of Sinclair and
Valentine — a subsidiary of the huge
American-Marietta Co. — voted for
the Oil Workers by 24 to 6 in a
representation election in May of
1959.
The new Local 12-398 quickly
won a one-year contract.
But the company early this year
filed for a decertification election.
This the union won by a 22 to 8
vote.
Negotiations on a new contract
were stalemated from the start. The
union asked for a wage increase of
ten cents an hour, based on the
average union-won increase of
eight cents and the rising cost of
living.
The company offered five cents
an hour in wages and one-half cent
in fringe benefits and, the union
reports, it was a take-it-or-leave-it
position. The company offer was
rejected unanimously and the
workers struck on June 16.
The union said it soon became
apparent that, with back-to-work
appeals and other tactics, the com-
pany intended to try to destroy the
union.
Local 12-398 reports that the
heavily-mechanized plant is shut
down tight but, recognizing "this is
a tough battle," has appealed for
the backing of organized labor.
GIVING WITH A SMILE, delegates to Newspaper Guild convention in Chicago dig deep for con-
tributions to AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education. Making COPE donation in center is M.
Michael Potoker, president of New York Newspaper Guild. Collectors used aprons decorated with
Ladies' Garment Workers' new union label.
Cost-of-Living Sets New Record as
Index Rises for 6th Straight Month
(Continued from Page 1)
contract cost-of-living clauses
are tied to the June CPI.
A companion report showed
little change between May and
June in the spendable earnings and
buying power of factory workers.
The purchasing power of factory
workers, however, is "1.7 percent
lower than in June of 1959.
The buying power decline was
caused by the over-the-year in-
crease of 1.6 percent in the cost of
living. The rise of 5 cents in
Hartnett Hits
Poor Training
For Negroes
Canton, O. — The Negro worker
is handicapped in the constant com-
petition for jobs at all levels be-
cause he is "less educated, less
trained and less skilled," Sec.-Treas.
Al Hartnett of the Electrical, Ra-
dio & Machine Workers told a civil
rights workshop here.
The first step in eliminating the
gap in training, he asserted, is to
insure that Negro children receive
public education equal to what is
given white children.
"We've got to push vigorously
against discrimination in educa-
tion," he declared. "We've got
to make sure that federal aid is
provided for education. We have
to make certain that vocational
training is given only in unsegre-
gated and equal facilities."
The workshop was jointly spon-
sored by the Canton AFL-CIO
Council and the Urban League.
Other speakers included Mayor
Charles L. Babcock of Canton;
Pres. W. E. Wycoff of the AFL-
CIO Council; Don Slaimon, assist-
ant director of the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Civil Rights; J. Carlton Yeldell,
Urban League labor relations sec-
retary; and Clarence A. Thomas,
the league's executive director.
Mayor of San Jose
Is Officer of Union
San Jose, Calif. — Paul
Moore, member of two un-
ions, has been elected mayor
of San Jose for a two-year
term by his fellow council-
men.
Moore has served six years
on the city council. He is a
member of Local 332, Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, and secretary of
Local 134, Theatrical Stage
Employes.
hourly earnings was largely offset
by a reduction of 0.7 hours in the
workweek since June last year.
Arnold Chase, Labor Dept. price
expert, foresaw there "might not
be very much change in the index
next month" and held out hope for
a decline in the August CPI.
The June report said that,
while price hikes for fresh fruits
and pork accounted for most of
the 0.2 percent rise from May,
food prices advanced somewhat
less than usual.
The June increase was mod-
erated, the report said, by seasonal
declines in such important foods as
fresh vegetables and eggs. New
car prices dropped more than
usual* prices of appliances fell for
the fifth straight month and furni-
ture prices declined.
Prices for services continued to
rise in June, the report noted, but
the uptrend has been slower recent-
ly than in any similar period in
recent years.
"Prices for medical care services
increased less in June — 0.1 percent
— than in any month since March
1959," the report said.
The cost of medical care serv-
ices had been rising sharply. The
report showed this item to be
4.1 percent above June of 1959.
The June CPI marks an adjust-
ment point in many union con-
tracts with escalator clauses.
Quarterly adjustments will take
effect for employes of the Douglas
and McDonnell aircraft firms and
for General Electric and Sylvania
in the electrical field. About 235,-
000 workers will get a two-cent
increase and about 115,000 will
get a one-cent hike.
On a semi-annual adjustment,
mainly in trucking, about 200,-
000 workers will receive a raise
of two cents an hour and some
50,000 will get one cent.
The June report on net spend-
able earnings — after the deduction
of federal income and social se-
curity taxes — showed earnings in-
creased by 18 cents or 0.2 percent
to $81.59 for a worker with three
dependents and to $74.03 for a
worker without dependents.
The rise was attributed to an in-
crease of 0.1 hours or six minutes
in the factory workweek.
The buying power of this in-
crease was wiped out by the small
increase in the cost of living, the
report observed.
Manufacturers Criticized:
Drug Agency Acts
To Curb Abuses
The Food & Drug Administration, criticizing high pressure sales
tactics of prescription drug manufacturers, has proposed new regu-
lations aimed at keeping untested medications off the market and
alerting physicians to possible hazards in the use of some new drugs.
One of the proposed regulations — providing for federal inspection
of manufacturing facilities and con-^
trols before a drug can be marketed
— follows closely recommendations
made by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-
Tenn.), whose antitrust subcommit-
tee turned the spotlight on question-
able practices by drug firms.
A second proposal, aimed at
insuring that physicians are ade-
quately warned of any side-effects
of new drugs, seeks to deal with
another problem aired by wit-
nesses at the Kefauver hearings.
Testimony by two former medical
directors of leading drug manu-
facturers alleged that potential
hazards of new drugs have been
minimized or buried in lengthy
scientific reports which often go
unread by busy physicians.
To meet this problem, the Food
& Drugf Administration proposed
wh&t it described as "sweeping
changes" in the labeling of prescrip-
tion drugs.
Under its proposed regulations,
the FDA said, "virtually all pre-
scription drug packages and printed
matter distributed to physicians to
promote sale of a drug would be
required to bear complete informa-
tion for professional use of the
drug, including information about
any side effects or necessary precau-
tions." The only exception would
be for frequently used medicines
that are already familiar to all doc-
tors.
Not Now Required
Present FDA regulations do not
require such detailed information in
labeling when the data are available
in scientific literature or can be
obtained by the doctor on request.
The other major regulation
proposed empowers the FDA to
keep a new drug off the marked
until the manufacturer's claims
"regarding the reliability of man-
ufacturing methods, facilities and
controls have been confirmed by
a factory inspection by the Food
& Drug Administration."
The FDA said it has sometimes
found on spot inspections that con-
ditions in manufacturing plants
were "contrary" to claims made by
the manufacturer.
Drug manufacturers and other
Striking Machinists Vote Down
'Insulting 9 Pratt & Whitney Off er
East Hartford, Conn. — Striking Machinists at the Pratt & Whitney jet engine plant of United Air-
craft have voted, 3,613 to 98, to reject a management contract proposal as "insulting" and to con-
tinue the strike in effect since June 8.
The action came in the wake of an IAM contract agreement ending a four-week strike of 10,500
Machinists at Lockheed Aircraft's missiles and space division in California. The agreement was keyed
to automatic progression m pay
raises, instead of the unilateral com-
pany merit rating plan that triggered
the walkout; and a money package
averaging an extra 23 cents an hour
over a two-year period, the union
said.
Similar IAM settlements also
were approved by lodges represent-
ing 9,000 Lockheed workers at Ma-
rietta, Ga.; 1,000 at Solar Aircraft
in San Diego, Calif.; 750 at Good-
year Aircraft, Phoenix, Ariz.; and
1,360 at the Pratt & Whitney re-
search and development center in
West Palm Beach, Fla.
In East Hartford, members of
IAM Lodge 1746 angrily rejected
a management proposal that was
called worse than one the lodge
refused to accept last December.
Besides failing to meet union re-
quests for job security, it con-
tained two more regressive de-
mands, according to a negotia-
tions report by John K. Main,
senior IAM business agent.
As part of the strike settlement,
Main said, management refused to
rehire 43 strikers, and demanded
that all strikers be "herded into a
parking lot like cattle" to register
for assignment to jobs, if and when
available.
All negotiations to end the strike
of 20,000 Machinists at two Pratt
& Whitney plants in East Hartford
and Manchester, Conn.; two Hamil-
ton Standard plants in Windsor
Locks and Broad Brook, Conn.; and
5,000 members of the Auto Work-
ers at Sikorsky Aircraft division
plants in Bridgeport and Stratford,
Conn., have come to a halt.
IAM officers were served with a
National Labor Relations Board no-
tice stating that Pratt & Whitney
management has asked the board to
hold a representation election. A
company union is conducting a
drive among non-striking workers.
At the Sikorsky plants, the NLRB
set Aug. 29 as the date of a hearing
on company charges that the UAW
is guilty of unfair labor practices.
The union asked that the hearing be
delayed until after an election, but
the labor board refused. The Auto
Workers challenged a so-called in-
dependent union to join it in secur-
ing an election as soon as possible.
Pittsburgh Glass Co*
Contract Extended
Pittsburgh, Pa. — The Glass
Workers and the Pittsburgh Plate
Glass Co. have extended their cur-
rent contract by one year, to Feb.
16, 1962. The extension came eight
months before the pact was to have
expired.
The extension agreement pro-
vides wage increases of 4 cents an
hour for all workers not under in-
centive or bonus plans, effective
next February,
interested parties have been given
60 days to submit written com-
ments on the proposed regulations.
Commenting on the proposed
regulations, FDA Commissioner
George P. Larrick declared:
'The large number of new med-
ications has made it increasingly
difficult for doctors and pharma-
cists to keep adequately informed
about them. We are hopeful that
the proposed regulations will im-
prove the communication of vitally
necessary information and bring
about a general improvement in
drug promotion practices. At the
same time, they should furnish a
basis for more effective government
control where necessary."
An FDA spokesman added
that the proposed labelling
changes "would correct a tend-
ency on the part of some manu-
facturers to describe to physicians
the merits of a drug without giv-
ing information regarding its haz-
ards and the special precautions
necessary for maximum safety
and effectiveness."
Aptitude Test
Ruled Invalid
In Promotion
Paramount, Calif. — A high score
on a psychological aptitude test is
not sufficient evidence to justify
promotion of a spray machine op-
erator with three years of experi-
ence over an operator with 1 3 years*
experience, an arbitrator has ruled.
Arbitrator George H. Hildebrand,
in a precedent-making decision in-
volving seniority in promotions,
ruled in favor of the Brick & Clay
Workers and against the Pacific Tile
& Porcelain Co. here.
Seniority Threatened
The company started a psycho-
logical testing program eight years
ago among supervisors and techni-
cians. Last year it attempted to
introduce its "pseudo-scientific pan-
acea" into the Local 487 bargain-
ing unit. The union feared that the
final result of such tests would elim-
inate seniority in promotions. It
carried a test case to arbitration.
Doctors of philosophy in indus-
trial psychology testified as expert
witnesses for both union and com-
pany.
Management claimed that a
high score on an abstract psycho-
logical test — placing pencil dots
in circles and tracing lines
through a maze — was justifica-
tion for passing over an operator
with long experience on the joh.
The tests proved that a junior
operator had more mechanical
aptitude than the senior bidder,
management said.
Union witnesses asserted that test
results should not have more weight
in promotions than experience,
ability to do the job, and seniority.
Cites Fatal Weaknesses
The arbitrator said in his deci-
sion that "testing for aptitudes in
abstract fashion . . . suffers from
fatal weaknesses when used for de-
termining ability and fitness for a
promotion to a specific job"' under
a union contract.
He upheld management's right to
use tests for ability, but ruled that
the company here did not give ade-
quate weight to other kinds of evi-
dence, and did not rely on tests
"having a reasonably clear relation-
ship to the requirements of the job.'*
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1960
Page Elevefli
Joins with Screen Actors:
AFTRA Approves
Joint Bargaining
A major stride toward labor unity among television performers
was taken when some 160 delegates to the annual convention of the
Television and Radio Artists voted to accept the Screen Actors
Guild's proposals for joint bargaining and administration of
contracts.
AFTR.Vs action cleared the way^
for a united approach in impending
negotiations. The current two-year
contracts with all three television
networks expire Nov. 15, with talks
expected to open about Sept. 15.
SAG, which is now taking a mail
referendum on specific proposals
for closer cooperation between the
two unions, welcomed AFTRA's
action and expressed confidence it
would "solve the problems between
the two unions."
S AG's main proposal called for
"joint negotiation and administra-
tion of collective bargaining con-
tracts in the field of all TV com-
mercials (live, tape and film) and
in the field of TV entertainment
programs made on video tape."
AFTRA also approved the addi-
tional SAG proposals for study of
possible interchangeability of per-
formers' union cards and the prac-
ticality of allowing cross-crediting
for pension and welfare fund pur-
poses.
The SAG proposals and the
AFTRA's acceptance came in wake
of a jointly-sponsored study on the
practicability of organic merger
which David L. Cole, nationally
prominent arbitrator, issued last
January.
Cole's recommendation of full
merger and, short of that, a possi-
ble working arrangement, was met
with "reservations" by SAG.
AFTRA said after its conven-
tion action that it hoped the
approval of the SAG proposals
would lead to "such a successful
limited partnership'- that it ulti-
mately could be expanded to the
unions' full jurisdiction.
Cole in his report observed that
performers holding dual or multiple
memberships had a strong desire for
one-union as early as 1938.
The rise of television and its im-
pact on broadcasting and union
membership have brought the prob-
lem to a head. The use of video
tape — which is neither live nor film
— has increased the overlapping
membership of SAG and AFTRA
and their membership has become
concentrated in Hollywood and
New York.
While relations with the SAG
and the shaping of television and
radio contract demands were the
chief items before the AFTRA con-
vention, the delegates also:
• Reelected actress Virginia
Payne — the Ma Perkins of radio
fame — to a second one-year term as
unpaid president.
• Heard Executive Sec. Donald
F. Con away report a membership
increase of 2,891 to a total of
nearly 16,000.
• Voted the coveted George
Heller Memorial Award of a life-
time gold membership card to I. S.
Becker, a Columbia Broadcasting
System vice-president. Becker, the
first management representative to
be so honored, was cited for his
work as industry chairman of the
six-year old AFTRA Pension and
Welfare Fund.
• Listened to Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell appeal for labor-man-
agement talks beyond the bargain-
ing table. Mitchell said the nation
must end prejudices based on age,
race, color and religion. He urged
the broadcasting industry to war on
the "mediocrity" of some television
programs and thereby ward off pub-
lic control.
• Applauded a report that
AFTRA became the first perform-
ers union to establish jurisdiction
in the field of pay television.
AFTRA and the Musicians signed
a pact with the Intl. Telemeter
Corp., a Paramount Pictures sub-
division, for the recent production
of Gian-Carlo Menotti's "The Con-
sul."
• Charged in a resolution that
many broadcasters "have failed to
live up to their promises" in public
service programming and urged
that broadcasters be made to give
an accounting when their licenses
come up for renewal.
• Decided to hold their next
convention in Detroit.
Meany to Arbitrate
Barge Captain Dispute
New York — A five-day strike of 750 barge captains has ended
here, following agreement between the Seafarers and the Maritime
Union to submit the issues involved in the walkout to AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany.
The strike followed refusal of the Harbor Carriers of the Port
of New York, which operate the^r
city's sand and gravel scows, to rec-
ognize the barge captains after they
voted to switch affiliation from the
NMU to the S1U. Prior to the
captains' move to change affilia-
World Fete Honors
AFL-CIO TV Film
A film from the AFL-CIO
public service television se-
ries, "Americans at Work,"
was cited for its "excellent
qualities™ by the third an-
nual Intl. Labor Film Festi-
val in Stockholm, Sweden.
The AFL-CIO entered
only the Musicians 1 episode,
which depicts both jazz and
classical musicians at work*
The film also stresses the role
of the Musicians in main-
taining employment for its
members as a means of pre-
serving and encouraging mu-
sical talent.
tion, the barge operators had a
contract with Local 335 of the
NMU's United Marine Division.
Under the terms of the settle-
ment, worked out in an all-night
meeting between Peter M. Mc-
Gavin, assistant to Meany, and
representatives of the two unions,
the question of affiliation will be
submitted to the AFL-CIO presi-
dent, whose findings will be "final
and binding on both parties."
Meany is scheduled to meet with
SIU Pres. Paul Hall and NMU
Pres. Joseph Curran, contingent
upon their return to this country
from overseas trips.
Meany 's intervention had been
requested by the NMU on the
ground that the AFL-CIO presi-
dent is the chief administrator of
the no-raiding provisions of the
federation's constitution. The NMU
had contended that the move by
the barge captains to the Seafarers
constituted a violation of the ban
on raiding.
BADGE IS PINNED on Typographical Union Pres. Elmer Brown (right) by Bookbinders' Pres. Joseph
Denny at Bookbinders' convention in Chicago. Brown issued plea for unity among all unions in graphic
arts field to counter threat of newspaper mergers and growing assault on graphic arts unions.
Bookbinders' Convention Endorses
Federation of All Printing Trades
Chicago — Support for unity* among unions in the printing trades industry was registered at the
31st biennial convention of the Bookbinders here.
Delegates approved a resolution reaffirming action taken by the 1940 convention calling for a single
federation of all unions in the printing industry.
The resolution passed at the current convention specifies that the Newspaper Guild and the unaffili-
ated Lithographers be included in^
any federation of graphic arts
unions.
The delegates, at the closing
session, revoked earlier conven-
tion action on a per capita tax
increase. A 25-cent boost was
shelved in favor of a 15 -cent hike
to go into effect Feb. 1, 1961.
The per capita tax increase is
subject to a referendum vote of
the international union's 60,000
members.
Tied to the increase was a pro-
vision that $15,000 be set aside to
defray convention expense in the
future so parleys can be held in
smaller cities.
Final Vote Unanimous
After action on the increase,
Pres. Joseph Denny said "Now
we've got real harmony." Small
and large locals of the union had
wide differences of opinion on the
size of the boost. The final vote
for the 15-cent increase was unani-
mous.
Denny's salary was raised from
$16,500 to $17,500 a year. The
annual salaries of Sec.-Treas. Wes-
ley A. Taylor and First Vice Pres.
John Connolly were also raised $1,-
000; Taylor to $17,000 and Con-
nolly to $12,500.
The delegates approved constitu-
tional changes to meet requirements
of the Landrum-Griffin Act and
called for repeal of the law. They
voted support of the AFL-CIO civil
rights program, medical care for the
aged, $1.25 an hour minimum wage
and called for an end to discrimi-
nation of workers on the basis of
age.
They also called for federal
standards in unemployment in-
surance, backed the AFL-CIO
Committee on Political Education
and called for investigation of
violence against unions. Dele-
gates urged a probe of delaying
tactics in the National Labor Re-
lations Board, and called for leg-
islation insuring the right of a
member to sue for damages when
his employer deliberately violates
the contract
Other resolutions covered tax re-
form, setting up an educational pro-
gram, jurisdiction matters, industry
improvements, job safety and a
guaranteed annual wage.
Defeated were proposals to set up
a study for a pension plan, to
change the name of the interna-
tional to include bindery women,
and restrictions on setting up new
locals.
Kenneth J. Brown, Lithograph-
ers' president, said more than lip
service to the idea of unity in the
printing industry is needed. He
offered to have the Lithographers'
organization director meet with a
Bookbinder representative to form
a joint organization plan. Denny
said he hoped such a plan could be
worked out.
Rep. Roman Pucinski (D-Ill.)
said a codification of the nation's
labor laws is needed to bring
some sense and reason into our
labor legislation. He said:
"What we have done is to create
a situation where we have a full
employment act for the labor law-
yers of America."
Pres. Reuben G. Soderstrom of
the Illinois State AFL-CIO reviewed
legislative accomplishments of Illi-
nois labor.
Other speakers included Peter M,
McGavin, assistant to AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany; presidents of
other printing trades unions, and
several employers.
Labor Asked to Boost
Handicapped Job Stamp
Organized labor has been urged to give its "enthusiastic support**
to the promotion and use of a 4-cent "Employ the Handicapped"
commemorative stamp which will be issued by the Post Office Dept.
Aug. 29.
The appeal for labor support for the project came from Pres.
Gordon M. Freeman of the Intl.^
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
who is serving as vice chairman of
the President's Committee on Em-
ployment of the Physically Handi-
capped.
In letters to the officers of all
state central bodies, Freeman
pointed out that Governors' Com-
mittees in each of the states are
arranging special ceremonies in
their respective state capitols on
Aug. 29, and urged that "the labor
movement in your state lend its full
support to this event and assure its
recognition throughout the state."
Freeman, who serves on the
President's committee by desig-
nation of AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, also urged all labor or-
ganizations to order large quanti-
ties of these stamps from their
local postmasters for future use.
The IBEW president said there
will be no second printing of the
stamp, adding that advance orders
placed now will cause an increase
in the planned run of 120 million
stamps. He called the commemor-
ative stamp a "once-in-a-lifetime" I
boost for the program of employing
the physically handicapped, and
urged state bodies to "make the
most of it."
In support of the program for
employing the handicapped, in
which the committee staged an
essay contest among high school
students, each state body awarded
prizes which included a trip to
Washington and a visit to the AFL-
CIO Union-Industries Show for the
winners. The state contest winners
were introduced to Meany and
Pres. Eisenhower who officiated at
the opening of the annual show
staged by the AFL-CIO Union
Label & Service Trades Dept.
DESIGN of stamp supporting
jobs for physically handicapped.
In Wake of Conflict-of-interest Scandal:
l JAW Demands Full Probe of
Chrysler Contract-Out Policy
Detroit — A sweeping reappraisal of Chrysler Corp.'s "contracting-out" policies has been demanded
by the Auto Workers in the wake of the resignation of Chrysler Pres. William C. Newberg on conflict
of-interest grounds.
Newberg stepped down as head of the nation's third largest automobile manufacturing firm and re-
paid the company $450,000 after it was disclosed that he held secret financial interests in numerous
concerns under contract to Chrys-f — ; " . . ^ , • ,
The union official emphasized
Misfortune Teller!
ler.
The UAW's demand for action
came from Vice Pres. Norman Mat-
thews, director of the union's Chrys-
ler Dept., in a letter to the com-
pany's new president, L. L. Colbert,
former chairman of the board of
directors which brought about New-
berg's resignation.
Matthews, lashing out at New-
berg's "questionable practices" in
giving to other firms work previ-
ously performed in Chrysler
plants, offered to turn over to the
company all data in the UAW's
possession which "indicate that
the contracting of work to out-
side vendors has appeared to be
unjustified. 9 '
that "it is not the policy or practice
of the UAW to become involved in
intra-corporation differences at the
management level," but said that the
conflict-of-interest exposure "is a
matter of most immediate and ur-
gent concern" to Chrysler employes
since it involved the loss of jobs as
the result of contracting out work.
Employment Down Sharply
Citing the fact that Chrysler em-
ployment has nosedived from 135,-
000 in 1956 to 67,000 last month,
Matthews asserted:
"We recognize that some of this
decrease is due to automation, but
the inescapable fact remains that a
substantial proportion of it is due
Scholarships Awarded
By William Green Fund
Columbus, O.— Income from a $100,000 grant made by the
William Green Memorial Fund as an enduring memorial to the
long-time president of the former AFL will again finance two under-
graduate scholarships and two graduate fellowships at Ohio State
University.
Undergraduates who will received
grants to cover their expenses dur-
ing the 1960-61 academic year are
• Loyd E. Lee, an honor stu-
dent who has a record of almost
perfect grades while working his
way through college, will use the
grant to finance his junior year this
fall. Lee's occupational goal is col-
lege teaching.
• Gerald L. Soliday, beginning
his senior year, is another self-sup-
porting student who has made his
mark academically. The son of a
truck driver, he plans to continue
his studies at the graduate level in
the field of historical research. A
professor described him as "one of
the very best young men whom I
have taught in any university — avid
for learning, courageous in his
search for truth. . . ."
Chosen for graduate fellowships
at the university were:
• Paul J. Cox, the son of a coal
miner, has been interested in the
labor movement since he was a boy.
The selection committee says he
"gives every promise of achieving
distinction as a graduate student be-
cause of the excellent quality of his
work, his intellectual curiosity, his
high ideals, and his great identifi-
cation with the problems and the
work of the labor movement as a
whole."
• William S. Westbrook, who is
working to complete his Doctor of
Philosophy degree, has been an in-
John E. Mara to
Head Boot Union
Boston — John E. Mara, 39, re-
gional director of the western di-
vision of the Boot and Shoe Work-
ers, has been elected to the union's
presidency by unanimous vote of
the general executive board, to suc-
ceed his father, the late John J.
Mara.
The unanimous vote of the board
was announced by Joseph W. Mac-
Gonigal, BSWU executive vice pres-
ident, who had taken over the pro
tern presidency pending the election
of a new president.
MacGonigal said it was his wish
that Mara's name be placed in nom-
ination, and said the board's unan-
imous action will mean "uninter-
rupted continuity of the union's
basic principles."
structor at Ohio University in Ath-
ens and has completed his MA de-
gree in labor economics. His rec-
ommendations state that he has "a
tremendous amount of natural abil-
ity, a fine analytical mind and was
one of the best economics students
in the graduate school at Ohio Uni-
versity."
Alma Herbst, chairman of the
William Green Memorial Scholar-
ship and Fellowship Committee at
Ohio State University, which ad-
ministers the grant, wrote AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany:
"The members of the commit-
tee again wish to convey to you
their enthusiasm over the stu-
dents who .have received and who
are now accepting the new Wil-
liam Green Scholarship and Fel-
lowship awards."
to contracting work out to other
companies, prompted in many in
stances not hy the best interests of
the corporation and the workers
but by the opportunity of some
company officials to benefit person-
ally and substantially at the expense
of both the corporation and the
workers."
The UAW in the past, he said,
"raised questions in a number of
instances" about the contracting
out of Chrysler work "which did
not appear to be, hy any stretch
of the imagination, justifiable
from the point of view of eco-
nomic and efficient operation."
Each time the union protested, he
said, Chrysler officials "took refuge
in the principle of 'managerial pre-
rogatives.' "
Matthews called on Chrysler to:
• Conduct a "complete review"
of company purchasing policies
"and an investigation of all per-
sonnel connected in any way with
or responsible for purchasing."
• "Return ... all work to
Chrysler plants where facilities and
manpower are available."
• Make available to the UAW
all information in the company's
possession which would indicate
those instances where the "deter-
mining factor" in the farming out
of work was "conflict of interest on
the part of any company executive,
rather than economy and effi-
ciency."
• Reimburse Chrysler workers
for lost wages if they were made
jobless because of "unethical prac-
tices on the part of any Chrysler
executive."
The UAW official noted that
a recent financial report by the
company showed that nearly 60
cents of every sales dollar re-
ceived by Chrysler went to in-
dependent suppliers, adding that
"it appears to us there is a wide
area for intensive and penetrating
investigation."
Transport Service Union
Asks Strong Rights Law
Chicago — The 100 delegates to the 12th biennial convention of
the Transport Service Employes voted support of the entire AFL-
CIO legislative program, called on both parties to support strong
civil rights action and elected officers to four-year terms during four
days of sessions at the Morrison Hotel here.
Officers to be installed Aug.
are Pres. Eugene E. Frazier, (in-
cumbent), Chicago; Executive Vice
Pres. Walter P. Davis, New York;
Vice Pres. J. P. Covington, Wash-
ington, D. C; Vice Pres. A. O.
Maxwell, New York; and Sec-
Treas. Richard S. Hamme, Boston.
Installing officer will be the
Transport Service Employes' Gen-
eral Counsel Leon M. Despres, al-
derman from Chicago's 5th Ward.
The delegates, representing
8,000 members in the U.S., voted
support for the "sit-in" demon-
strations in the South, approved
of the "Eisenhower Administra-
tion foreign policy as dealing
with Cuba's Castro," called for
aid to the underdeveloped na-
tions of the world and set up a
committee to rewrite the union's
constitution to bring it in line
with the new labor law.
Frazier said the union doesn't
agree with the Landrum-Griffin
Act and hopes for its repeal. He
said the Transport Service Em-
ployes' parley did not endorse any
presidential candidates. Frazier
said the delegates chose to wait
until after the AFL-CIO General
Board makes its decision.
The union represents red caps,
porters and other railroad and air
line workers, some tobacco and
chemical workers.
Frazier said the organization
plans to expand its unionizing work
in the airline industry. He said the
growing union lists Sen. Paul Doug-
las (D-Ill.) as one of its first spon-
sors. Frazier said Douglas was
teaching at the University of Chi-
cago when he encouraged forma-
tion of the Transport Service Em-
ployes.
Speakers included George Brown
and R. J. Thomas, assistants to
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany;
Theodore Brown, assistant director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. on Civil
Rights; Boyd W. Wilson, Steelwork-
ers representative; AFL-CIO Re-
gional Dir. Daniel Healy; and
Aaron Aronin, field director, Jewish
Labor Committee of Chicago.
DRAWN FOfcTHK
AFL-CIO new3
Unemployment Clouds
Ike's Balance Sheet
The Eisenhower Administration has conceded that unemployment
levels are running higher than expected.
This acknowledgment clouded a balance sheet report in which
Treasury Sec. Robert B. Anderson and Budget Dir. Maurice H.
Stans described as "particularly gratifying" the $1.1 billion surplus
for the fiscal year which ended
June 30.
The report also revealed that
unemployment trust fund expend-
itures totaled $2,737 billion or
some $353 million over the level
estimated by the government last
January.
A Budget Bureau spokesman ex-
plained that unemployment com-
pensation payments were higher
than foreseen because joblessness
had exceded expectations.
There were 4.4 million jobless in
June, according to the latest gov-
ernment figures. The key rate of
unemployment, adjusted for season-
al influences, jumped from 4.9 per-
cent in May to 5.5 percent in June.
This rate has ben exceeded only in
recession years.
While the Labor Dept.'s job re-
port attributed the sharply increased
totals of employed and unemployed
to the influx of teenagers and the
end of the school year, a com-
panion report on jobless pay claims
sounded a warning.
Unemployment compensation
recipients in mid-June totaled 1.7
million, a level nearly 20 percent
higher than in June of 1959.
The jobless pay totals tend to
understate the problem since they
omit those unemployed who are in-
eligible for payments and those who
exhausted their payments.
The budget report for the 1959-
60 fiscal year thus underscored the
Labor Dept.'s employment report.
The balance sheet showed the
federal government took in $78.4
billion and spent $77.3 billion —
leaving a surplus of $1.1 billion.
This was five times the $217,000
surplus predicted in January.
President Eisenhower, from his
McSorley Named
Aide to Haggerty
William J. McSorley, Jr., has
been appointed to the post of as-
sistant to Pres. C. J. (Neil) Hag-
gerty of the Building and Construc-
tion Trades Dept.
McSorley had been assistant di-
rector of the Committee on Politi-
cal Education since the merger. A
member of the Asbestos Workers
and the Lathers, McSorley joined
the staff of the former AFL Labor's
League for Political Education at
its founding in 1948.
He also served as building and
construction trades adviser to the
Marshall Plan and to the successor
Mutual Security Agency.
vacation headquarters in New-
portj R. I., welcomed the report
as an "encouraging turnaround"
from last year's deficit of $12.4 .
billion.
Eisenhower said "this demon-
stration of fiscal responsibility not
only reinforces economic strength
here at home, but reaffirms to the
world that the United States in-
tends to run its financial affairs on
a sound basis."
09-oe-i,
Anderson and Stans said in a
joint statement that the shift from
last year's recession-caused deficit
was "aided by the vigorous re-
bound of our economy and by ef-
forts of many who joined in the
President's determination to restore
financial order in the government'*
affairs."
Observers noted the Eisenhower
Administration over its reign has
spent $18.3 billion more than it
took in.
Dinner to Celebrate
Social Security Law
Chicago — The AFL-CIO
will sponsor a dinner at the
Drake Hotel here Aug. 14
commemorating the 25th an-
niversary of the signing of
the Social Security Act by
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Speakers at the affair will
be AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany; present Social Securi-
ty Commissioner William I,
Mitchell; and former Com-
missioners Dr. Charles h
Schottland, John W. Tram-
burg, and Arthur J. Altmeyer.
The dinner, which will
come on the eve of the AFL-
CIO Executive Council meet-
ing, will be one of a series of
special events being held by
many groups across the nation
to mark the first quarter cen-
tury of social security's ex-
istence.
Union Right
Bill Placed
On Ballot
Olympia, Wash. — Labor in the
state of Washington has won a
place on the November election
ballot for an initiative guarantee-
ing the right of union recognition
and collective bargaining to state
civil service employes.
The successful petition cam-
paign was begun by the State,
County & Municipal Employes
and actively supported by the State
AFL-CIO and federal and postal
organizations, which saw in the
campaign a spur to enactment of a
national union recognition law for
federal employes.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia,
the State, County & Municipal
Employes won a landmark agree-
ment providing a modified union
shop for 12,000 of the city's
18,000 employes. When the City
Council ratifies the contract, as it
is expected to do before Sept. 30,
Philadelphia will become the
largest city in the nation to pro-
vide union security for its mu-
nicipal employes.
The union, which won exclusive
bargaining rights in most municipal
departments in 1957, negotiated
an agreement providing that all new
employes in covered units must
join the AFSCME and all present
members must remain in good
standing. There is an annual 15-
day period in which members may
drop out.
New employes are covered by
the city's health care plan as soon
as they join the union, without the
six-month waiting period otherwise
required.
In Washington state, the civil
service initiative including author-
ization for written union agree-
ments, won a place on the ballot
when 110,000 signatures were col-
lected, 20,000 more than the num-
ber required.
A whirlwind two-week climax
to the drive brought in 48,000
signatures and the final group of
petitions, collected in the Seattle
area, was flown by helicopter to
the grounds of the state capitol
building in Olympia on the dead-
line day for filing.
The drive found union members
throughout the state soliciting sig-
natures from door-to-door and can-
vassing supermarkets, bowling al-
leys, parking lots and recreation
areas to put the campaign over the
top.
In addition to writing into state
law the principle of union recogni-
tion for public employes, the initi-
ative provides for a merit system
in state employment and establishes
a grievance procedure and the prin-
ciple of seniority in layoffs.
Railroads
Split Over
Work Rules
One of the nation's biggest rail-
road systems has broken the solid
front of railroad management on
the controversial issue of work
rules. The Southern Railway,
which had participated in the year-
long propaganda campaign of rail
management aimed at convincing
the public that union work rules
were "featherbedding," formally
withdrew all but one of the de-
mands for rules changes it had
served on the five operating unions.
The one remaining issue —
management demands for the
abolition of firemen on freight
trains — is the most publicized
rules issue, however.
All of the railroad unions have
lined up solidly in support of the
position taken by the Firemen &
Enginemen that the safety of train
crews and passengers would be en-
(C on tinned on Page 6)
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, August 6, 1960
No. 32
Democrats Slate Key Bills
As Congress Reconvenes
Politics, Coalition
May Test Session
A TRUCKLOAD OF FOOD for Connecticut aircraft strikers was
donated by IAM members at Republic Aircraft on Long Island
and driven by the lodge's president to East Hartford. A total of
25,000 members of the Machinists and the Auto Workers have
been on strike for nine weeks at United Aircraft plants.
At International Conference :
Job Health, Safety
Tied to Bargaining
New York — The role of collective bargaining in protecting workers
against occupational disease and safety hazards was emphasized by
two labor spokesmen at concluding sessions of the 13th International
Congress on Occupational Health.
Papers by AFL-CIO Vice-Pres. Richard F. Walsh, chairman of
the federation's Standing Commit-'f
tee on Safety & Occupational
Health, and Pres. James A. Brown-
low of the Metal Trades Dept. de-
clared the "concern and responsi-
bility" of the labor movement for
the protection of workers against
job-related hazards.
Walsh, whose paper was read
by George Brown, executive
secretary of the committee and
assistant to AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany, emphasized la-
bor's strong belief that all col-
lective bargaining agreements
should provide for joint labor-
management health and safety
programs.
Brownlow asserted labor's re-
sponsibility to represent its mem-
bers on occupational health and
safety matters "just as vigorously
and thoroughly as we do on the
more commonly recognized 'bread
and butter' issues." Brownlow's
paper was presented by Paul R.
Hutchings, research director for
the Metal Trades Dept.
Legislation Lags
Brownlow pointed out that la-
bor's progress on the collective bar-
gaining front hasn't been matched
in the field of state and federal leg-
islation.
State legislation, in the areas
of both workmen's compensa-
tion and prevention of health
and safety hazards, "still leaves
much to be desired," he empha-
sized.
Declaring that "the job health
of our work force cannot any long-
er be left totally to the vicissitudes
of those state legislatures which
have thus far failed to give proper
recognition to this entire area,"
Brownlow called for federal stand-
ards "coupled with adequate grants
in aid" to raise the level of state
programs.
Walsh also emphasized the need
for "effective legislation," pointing
(Continued on Page 2)
By Wiilard Sheltom
The 86th Congress returns Aug. 8 for what Democratic leaders
hope will be a short session marked by swift passage of major bills
left pending during the convention recess but with actual results
dependent on uncertain factors.
The uncertainties include:
• What success House of Representatives leaders have in get-
ting approval of measures long blocked by the Republican-con-
servative Democratic coalition in the House Rules Committee.
• The threat of pre-election politics, three months before the
balloting, in a session in which three of the four major party
nominees will meet each other face 1 ^
to face in the Senate. It is an un-
precedented situation in American
history.
• The possibility that Republi-
cans will raise a civil rights issue
as a "challenge" to the Democrats
to enact now all or much of the
party convention's civil rights plat-
form plank. This, if pushed suc-
cessfully, might throw the session
into a shambles.
• The threat that Pres. Ei-
senhower will veto bills he is
known to oppose and the prob-
ability that the bills cannot be
passed over his veto.
In three weeks of almost continu-
ous conferences involving Demo-
cratic presidential nominee John F.
Kennedy and party and legislative
leaders, a tentative program for
rapid action has been laid out, be-
ginning in the Senate. (The House
does not reconvene until Aug. 15.)
To Push Four Bills
In extensive conversations at
Hyannis Port, Mass., Kennedy and
his vice presidential running-mate,
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon
Johnson of Texas, reached agree-
ment to seek passage of four major
"welfare" bills hitherto blocked by
Eisenhower opposition and the con-
servative coalition in the House.
These include a minimum wage
bill, a broad general housing bill,
federal aid for school construction,
and health care for the aged
(Continued on Page 8)
Output Up,
Jobs, Sales
Stagnant
Increases in productivity in
several key industries for 1959
indicate "the vigor with which
the economy has recovered" from
the recession of 1957 and 1958,
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell said
in a statement. But an AFL-CIO
economist warned that the na-
tion still is in trouble because of
layoffs, short workweeks, and
"declining job opportunities."
Mitchell cited figures from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics showing
rises in output per man-hour of
production workers "in those in-
dustries for which adequate data
are available" through 1959.
Nat Goldfinger, of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Research, drew this con-
clusion from the figures:
"The sharp rise in productivity
for 1959 points up a continua-
tion of the major domestic eco-
nomic^ problem of recent years.
"Productivity has been rising
rapidly, but sales and production
have risen very slowly. The ef-
fect of this combination of
rapidly rising productivity and
(Continued on Page 2)
More Cities Put on Distressed List
As Economic Downtrend Continues
By Robert B. Cooney
The job situation in the nation's key employment and production centers continued to worsen
slightly in the long downtrend which started last winter, according to the Labor Dept.'s labor market
report for July.
The bimonthly survey of 149 major industrial areas showed an increase to 37 in the total of major
areas with a substantial labor surplus — that is, unemployment of 6 percent or over.
There were 35 such areas in *
May, 33 in March and 31 last
January, marking the lowest to-
tal since the pre-recession No-
vember of 1957. The 1959 re-
covery from the 1958 recession
showed a sharp decrease from 76
in January 1959 to 32 in No-
vember 1959.
Smaller areas with a jobless rate
of 6 percent or higher continued a
steady increase during 1960 sim-
ilar to that of the larger centers.
The July report revealed an in-
crease to 116 smaller areas. There
were 113 in May, 109 in March
and 107 in January. The 1959 re-
covery saw a drop from 183 in
January to 112 last November.
In the new special listing of
"Areas of Substantial and Persist-
ent Labor Surplus" — begun in
May — the major area of Lorain-
Elyria, Ohio, was added and the
three smaller areas of Hopkins-
ville, Owensboro and Paducah,
Ky., were also added. This raised
the July totals to 21 major and 74
smaller areas now entitled to pref-
erence on defense contracts.
In presenting the July report, the
Labor Dept. stressed that "most
employers interviewed during re-
cent surveys covering 149 major
labor market areas looked for wide-
spread but modest job gains to au-
tumn." Seasonal factors will be
chiefly responsible, the report add-
ed.
The report said the latest sur-
veys disclosed the job picture in
(Continued on Page 2)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
During Next 25 Years:
BROAD SMILES were in evidence 25 years ago, as the picture shows, when Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the Social Security bill Aug. 14, 1935. Grouped around FDR, from the left, were
Rep. Robert L. Doughton (D-N. C), Director E. A. Witte of the President's social security commit-
tee, Sen. Robert F. Wagner (D-N. Y.), Sen. Robert M. LaFollette, Jr. (Prog.-Wis.), Sen. Augustine
Lonergan (D-Conn.), Labor Sec. Frances Perkins, Sen. William H. King (D-Utah), Rep. David J.
Lewis (D-Md.), and Sen. Joseph GufTey (D-Pa.).
More Cities Added to
Labor Surplus Listing
(Continued from Page 1)
most areas "had not changed
significantly" during the late
spring and early summer.
The Labor Dept. said employ-
ment generally continued at "high
levels" and factory jobs totals re-
mained above year-ago levels in
most areas.
The forecasts based on the July
report are for "moderate employ-
ment increases in most automobile
centers" when initial production of
1961 cars and trucks gets under
way.
Steel payrolls are expected to
recover "to some extent" from mid-
summer lows, partly as a result of
renewed demand from the auto in-
dustry, the report continued.
"Major aircraft centers, how-
ever, looked for a continuation
of the long-term decline in
aircraft employment, notwith-
standing high activities in tlip
missile sector," the report said.
The report said that recent job
gains were mainly seasonal and
were offset in many areas by manu-
facturing cutbacks. The latter were
traced to plant shutdowns for va^-
cations, the steel production drops
and temporary layoffs for an ear-
lier-than-usual model changeover
in the auto industry.
The Labor Dept. said the auto-
motive industry should register the
largest job gains to mid-September
in the durable goods sector if em-
ployer hiring plans materialize.
Steel producers "apparently ex-
pect a gradual uptrend" over the
coming months "as^ inventories are
reduced and auto manufacturers
begin taking delivery of steel for
the 1961 models," the report added.
The Labor Dept. reported
that steel production fell "to its
lowest total for any non-strike
week since 1949 in the first week
of July," due to high inventories
and vacation shutdowns.
July's total of 37 major areas
with a substantial labor surplus was
the highest total since July a year
ago, when it was 46. Three areas
were added and one was removed
since May.
Youngstown-Warren, Ohio, was
added when its jobless level jumped
to between 9 and 12 percent. Pat-
erson, N. J. and Lorain-EIyria,
Ohio, were added because of 6 to
8.9 percent jobless rates.
The Steubenville-Weirton, Ohio-
W. Va. area was removed from the
substantial labor surplus group to
the moderate labor surplus cate-
gory.
Increase in Productivity
Outpacing Economy
(Continued front Page 1)
slow economic growth has been
layoffs, declining job opportuni-
ties, and short workweek sched-
ules in key business lines."
BLS quoted these figures on pro-
ductivity increases for the economy
in 1959: basic steel, 12 percent;
mining, 10.2 percent; bituminous
coal and lignite mining. 8.7; crude
ore copper mining, 8.4; crude ore
iron mining, 3.9; recoverable metal
copper mining, 0.9 percent.
"It is gratifying to see these ad-
vances take place within the private
sector of the economy," Mitchell
said.
"It should be borne in mind that
productivity data are available for
only a few industries, and that these
figures do not in themselves reflect
the state of the economy as a whole.
However, we know from other
studies that productivity has ad-
vanced broadly in private industry.
"For example, output per man-
hour of all persons engaged in pri-
vate industry increased last year by
more than 4 percent, surpassing the
average of a little over 3 percent
for the postwar period from 1947
to 1959."
BLS said output per man-hour
in the individual-industry statis-
tics refers to the relationship
between total physical output and
the hours of workers engaged in
production. It does not include
the hours of non-production
workers who have, BLS said, be-
come increasingly important
since World War II.
BLS indexes in 1959 for output
per man-hour of production worker
are as follows, with 1947 equaling
100: anthracite mining, 209.5; bitu-
minous coal and lignite mining.
195.6; crude ore copper mining,
170.8; recoverable metal copper
mining, 140.1; crude ore iron min-
ing, 134.7; usable ore iron mining,
94; railroad transportation-total
revenue traffic, 164.9; railroad
transportation-total car miles,
169.8; basic steel, 141.8.
Hea Ith, Sa fety
Linked to
Bargaining
(Continued from Page 1)
out that even if the labor move-
ment were completely successful
in protecting its members through
collective bargaining, the majority
of American workers would still
be without protection.
He charged that "all too often
progressive employers have re-
mained silent and inactive in the
legislative field ~. . . Meanwhile,
marginal employers have con-
tinued to jeopardize progress in
an industry by translating health
and accident hazards into ruin-
ous price competition."
Declaring that "trade unions can-
not afford to wait upon those em-
ployers whose thinking has not yet
led them into joint action in this
field," Walsh told the delegates—
who represented some 50 nations
— that American trade unions have
developed their own training and
educational programs in the fields
of job safety and occupational
health. He said the AFL-CIO
committee is currently considering
establishment of an Occupational
Health and Safety Training Insti-
tute to which trade unionists could
be sent for education and training.
"We are quite confident," he
added, "that such positive steps on
our part will be a positive stimulant
to our employers to join with us
in joint labor-management pro-
grams of education and training."
Spotlight Publi slier
Sentenced to Jail
New York — Ernest Mark High,
publisher of a self-styled "labor pa-
per" denounced by the trade union
movement, has been fined $500 and
sentenced to five months in jail on
a charge of contempt of Congress.
High, operator of Spotlight Pub-
lications in New York and Miami
pleaded guilty to the contempt
charge. He had ignored a subpoena
issued in 1958 by the McClellan
special Senate committee which had
sought to quiz him on his alleged
high-pressure advertising solicita-
tions.
The AFL-CIO and the Intl. La-
bor Press Association repeatedly as
sailed High for claiming that he
represented the trade union move-
ment, and had issued warnings to
businessmen not to be misled by the
advertising solicitors tactics.
Changes Foreseen in
Social Security Act
The Social Security Act, a quarter-century old this month, will
undergo major changes before it reaches the half-century mark, ac-
cording to Dir. Nelson H. Cruikshank of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Social Security.
Writing in the August issue of the American Federationist, AFL-
CIO monthly publication, on "The^
Social Security Challenge of the
Next 25 Years," Cruikshank re-
calls that when the late Pres. Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt signed the original
act on Aug, 14, 1935, he called it
a cornerstone in a structure
which is being built but which is
by no means complete." Roose-
velt added: "What we are doing is
good. But it is not good enough."
"Today, 25 years later, there
is little disagreement that social
security is good," Cruikshank
says. "Even those who fought
it most vociferously no longer
talk about getting rid of it. How-
ever, a lot of people feel with
the New Deal president that de-
spite improvements it still 'is not
good enough'
In discussing changes in the Old
Age, Survivors' and Disability In-
surance program — which he points
out "is social security to most peo-
ple" — Cruikshank declares:
'The proportion of present earn-
ings that is represented by benefits
on retirement must be materially
increased for workers in the mid-
dle and upper income brackets. A
worker with average wages in in-
dustry today receives only about 30
percent of his present earnings. In
order to keep pace with the rising
levels of living and to maintain
confidence in the system on the part
of those in the middle and'upper
wage ranges, he should receive 25
years from now, or sooner, at least
60 percent of his earnings on re-
tirement.
Higher Wage Base Needed
'To achieve this the wage base
which is taxed to finance retire-
ment benefits will have to be tripled,
or at the very least doubled."
Cruikshank foresees a steady in-
crease in wage rates in the next 25
years.
"Industrial wages of $200 a
week (in terms of present dol-
lars) will not be unusual — in
fact, they should average that,"
he predicts. "Thus social secu-
rity benefits for a retired couple
should be up to about $500 a
month."
Not only the retirement system
but the other programs set up in
the Social Security Act will require
changes, "some of them major, if
they are to be kept current with
needs and our capacity to meet
them," Cruikshank writes.
Needs 'Complete Revamp'
"It is inconceivable, for in-
stance," he asserts, "that a jerry-
built, hodge-podge program such
as unemployment compensation
can continue for another 25 years
without almost a complete re-
vamp."
Some time during the coming
quarter-century, he maintains,
unemployment insurance must
be combined with a nationwide
temporary disability benefits pro-
gram into "an income mainte-
nance plan for the work force,
with benefits for those who are
unemployed and willing to work,
and for those who are unable to
work because of illness or in-
jury."
"There will be both basic and
emergency supplemental benefits
levels," he predicts. "The basic
weekly benefit will be fixed by law
at 65 percent to 75 percent of the
individual's wage loss. An eco-
nomic commission will be em-
powered to supplement these levels
during a deep or prolonged reces-
sion up to the normal full-time
weekly wage. The duration of ben-
efits will be scheduled by law and |
will be longer for older workers
with no limit for those over 55,
subject to the test of availability
for work as at present.
Public assistance will remain
an "important second line of de-
fense against economic insecu-
rity" during the next 25 years,
he says. It is "unreasonable,"
he adds, to expect that the fed-
eral role in easing poverty "will
be geared to the cause of the
need rather than to the need it-
self."
"People today can get help if
they are old, disabled, blind or are,
or have in their care, dependent
children," he explains. "But if
they are unemployed and not eligi-
ble for unemployment compensa-
tion, they can get no assistance in
most states though they may have
dependent families.
"The social security principles
which the last 25 years have proved
sound will certainly be applied to
new areas of need in the years
ahead."
Cruikshank flatly predicts that
"if not this year, certainly next
year or at the latest by 1962," the
principle of social insurance will
be applied to the cost of medical
care for older people. Once this
"most difficult phase" of the prob-
lem of providing good medical
cafe is solved, he said, private in-
surance will be free to undertake
coverage for people during their
productive years.
"Americans are long-suffering
and patient," he says, "but they
will not wait forever for prepaid
medical health care of the high-
est quality. If organized medi-
cine and the insurance industry
persist in their present indiffer-
ence to the public need, they cer-
tainly will bring national health
insurance to the nation before
another 25 years have passed."
Cruikshank also discusses work-
men's compensation, "the country's
oldest social insurance program,"
though it is not included under the
Social Security Act. Operating as
it does under a different system in
each state, he says, "it should not
seem strange that it is in need of
drastic overhauling."
If it is to survive the next 25
years, he asserts, "its legal, medical
and administrative concepts must
change to provide coverage for all
workers whose injuries arise out of
their employment, whether by ac-
cident or disease." If it fails to
keep pace with changing times, he
claims, "its functions will be ab-
sorbed in a comprehensive nation-
al social insurance program."
Pamphlet Describes
Consumer Program
Labor's role in helping un-
ion members to safeguard
their hard-earned dollars is
spelled out in a new pamphlet
entitled "Consumer Counsel-
ing," published by the AFL-
CIO.
The consumer counseling
program is being carried out
jointly by AFL-CIO Commu-
nity Service Activities and the
federation's Union Label &
Service Trades Dept.
Copies of "Consumer
Counseling," Publication No.
109, may be obtained through
AFL-CIO Community Serv-
ice Activities, 9 East 40th St.,
New York 16, N. Y. Single
copies are free; $2.50 per
hundred.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTWT, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
Page Three
In Address to IATSE Convention:
Meqny Warns of Spread
Between Jobs, Production
Chicago — 'The economic situation we are now facing could be disastrous, could be just as disas-
trous for us as a military defeat, because it has long been an item of the Communist faith that dem-
ocracies go down the drain because they cannot handle their economic problems. And they have
been looking fondly toward America for an economic collapse."
That is how AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany summed up the need to meet the "Number One" is-
sue of our times — "survival of the^
American way of life" in a talk to
the 1,200 delegates at the 45th
convention of the Theatrical Stage
Employes (IATSE).
Meany told the convention,
meeting at the Conrad Hilton Ho-
tel here, that if economic collapse
comes, then there is no longer a
question of who will dominate the
world. He said: 4
"I say to you, on the basis of
our own government statistics,
that our so-called prosperity at
the present time is an illusion
and a snare. Yes, we have ris-
ing productivity, greater produc-
tive power and greater produc-
tive capacity. But what good is
greater productive capacity if
you do not use it?
"And the spread between jobs
and our productive capacity is in-
creasing all the time."
Meany stressed: "Yes, we have
this rising productivity, and we
also have a growing labor force.
We have more jobs than we had
seven years ago. We have more
people than we had seven years
ago, so of course, we should have
more jobs."
IATSE Pres. Richard F.
Walsh, a vice president of the
AFL-CIO, was sharp in his crit-
icism of the Landrum-Griffin
Act and the decisions of some
courts and the National Labor
Relations Board which whittle
away the rights of unions and
their members.
Walsh, in his report, hailed the
Wagner Act of 1935 which ere
ated the NLRB as an instrument
to maintain a fair balance between
labor and management's conflict-
ing interests. Twelve years later,
he said, Congress tipped the scales
in favor of management with the
Taft-Hartley Act. "In 1959, after
a lapse of another 12 years, labor
was dealt another vicious blow in
the form of the Landrum-Griffin
Law."
Walsh charged that the new la-
bor law was enacted in an atmos-
phere of frenzy and haste, with the
outward purpose of reform, "but
with the true underlying purpose to
carry forward the drive, spurred on
by big business, to eliminate the
trade union movement as a signif-
icant factor on the American
scene."
'Sinister Purpose'
"Step by step," Walsh said, "on
one front after another, this sinis-
ter purpose is being pursued — strip-
ping unions of their power by
curbing the scope of strike, picket-
ing and boycott activities; by out-
lawing closed-shop, hot cargo and
other types of contract clauses
which represented the cornerstones
of unionism; and by saddling in-
ternational unions and locals with
a myriad of technical burdens and
restrictions in the conduct of their
internal affairs."
Walsh said the heaviest dam-
age to unions has been done in
the area of strike, picketing and
boycott activity: "In truth, so ex-
tensive are the restrictions im-
Profits in 2nd Quarter
Down from 1959 High
Corporate profits in the second quarter of 1960 "fell markedly"
below the record-breaking profit levels for the same period a year
ago, with the lag apparently continuing into the July-August-
September period.
This was the substance of the Wall Street Journal's quarterly
compilation of the earnings and ex-'^
pectations of 384 corporations,
The 384 firms covered showed
an aggregate net income after taxes
of $2.1 billion— 12.9 percent low-
er than the same companies earned
for the second quarter last year.
Looking ahead for the current
quarter, the Journal had this to
say on the basis of interviews with
company executives on their profit
prospects:
"Significantly, the poorer earn-
ings comparison with a year ago
anticipated by some companies
in the third quarter is expected
to occur even though the 1959
period was not a particularly
good one, reflecting the steel
strike which started in mid-July,
1959."
The industries which had the
N. Y. Unions to Send
485 Kids to Camp
New York — Forty-two unions
in the city AFL-CIO have raised a
record $2,500 to send 485 children
of union members to summer camp
for two or three weeks, Chairman
Sam Kovenetsky of the Community
Services Committee's camp pro-
gram has reported.
Cooperating locals are affiliated
with the Auto Workers, Steelwork-
ers, Ladies Garment Workers,
Theatrical Stage Employes, Retail,
Wholesale & Department Store, Re-
tail Clerks, Int. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers, Textile Work-
ers, Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers, and others.
greatest changes in profit percent-
ages between the second quarters
of 1959 and 1960 were affected by
an abnormal factor, the Journal's
report said.
Business boomed in early 1959
in steel, farm equipment, railroads
and aluminum.
Thus, in comparison, earnings
this year dropped 52.9 percent for
the steel industry and 51.9 percent
for farm equipment. Sales of U. S.
Steel in the second quarter fell
over 30 percent, from nearly $1.5
billion last year to just over $1 bil-
lion this year. Sales for Reynolds
Metals declined from $128 million
to $110 million.
On the other hand, profit in-
creases were recorded for mov-
ing picture producers — up by
101.1 percent — and for aircraft
makers — up by 96.6 percent.
These were explained by a very
small profit for movie makers a
year ago and a $10 million deficit
for Douglas which cut sharply
the earnings total for the air-
craft industry in 1959's second
quarter.
The Journal said that, of the 26
groups into which it classifies the
384 firms, 17 reported lower earn-
ings and only nine reported gains.
In addition, the Journal saw a
"squeeze on profit margins' for
109 companies which reported sales
as well as profits for the period.
Earnings were down despite gains
in sales, the Journal observed from
the totals.
posed that except for a direct
strike involving terms of employ-
ment, it is doubtful whether, un-
der the present state of the law,
there is still any room left where
unions can safely exert economic
pressure in any other kind of in-
dustrial controversy.
"No longer can a union, with-
out subjecting itself to great risk,
solicit the cooperation of other un-
ions, or in many situations even
call upon fellow members for as-
sistance."
In his report to the convention,
Walsh made a strong appeal for
IATSE participation in the AFL-
CIO Committee on Political Ed-
ucation. He said the anti-union
trend can be reversed, "if only we
can bring the facts home to the
working people. . ." He urged
100 percent participation in COPE.
The union represents workers in
radio and television, the legitimate
stage, motion picture theaters, the-
atrical wardrobe attendants and
motion picture salesmen. Walsh's
report reviewed conditions in each
department of IATSE. He con-
cluded:
"The outlook for the union
and its members is a bright one
provided that we, joining with
the rest of the trade union move-
ment, can rally the working peo-
ple of America to stem the swell-
ing tide of adverse legislation
against which we have struggled
for the past 13 years."
Meany said helping people with
problems of housing, jobs, educa-
tion and helping school children
get milk they would not otherwise
get has been called socialism while
subsidies to airlines, roads and cot-
ton farmers has not been labeled
socialism.
He said if meeting school, hous-
ing and other needs is socialism,
"then socialism is all right with
me.
Meany said the recent Republi-
can convention in this city went
into all sorts of problems and never
once mentioned the word "unem-
ployment." He said it is the job
of organized labor to bring the is-
sues that are being ignored to the
attention of the American people.
Windy City
Never That
Windy Before
Chicago — AFL-CIO President
George Meany made some show
business people laugh here. His
audience was composed of the 1,-
200 delegates to the 45th conven-
tion of the Theatrical Stage Em-
ployes meeting in the Conrad Hil-
ton Hotel.
The AFL-CIO president's re-
marks which got the laughs were:
"Now, this being the Windy City,
I suppose I will have to make my
contribution. ... It occurred to me,
coming in here this morning, think-
ing of it as the Windy City, that it
was never quite so windy as it was
last week. [The Republican Na-
tional Convention met here.]
"You know, these conventions
are great shows. However, I can
say that I watched that one last
week and you know, you watch
and you get an idea of what is go-
ing to happen; and the way it
wound up — I was disappointed. I
thought the ticket was going to be
Lincoln and God, and that is not
the way it worked out."
MRS. ELEANOR ROOSEVELT received a warm welcome from
delegates to the Glass & Ceramic Workers convention in New York.
She is joined on the platform by officers of the union including Sec-
Treas. Lewis McCracken, left, and Pres. Ralph Reiser, right.
Glass Delegates Urged
To Fight Discrimination
New York, N. Y. — Pay attention to the rights of minority groups
or wake up some day to find that the Soviets have taken world
leadership from the United States, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt advised
the Glass & Ceramic Workers here at the union's 14th convention.
Reminding the 200 delegates that this country's world standing
depends on how it treats minorities,^
the widow of former Pres. Franklin
D. Roosevelt said:
"We do not give the respect to
our own people that other countries
do. And if we expect to hold on to
our leadership while failing to fol-
low the proper line of action, we're
apt to wake up some day and find
the Soviets have taken over."
Mrs. Roosevelt, herself a
Newspaper Guild member, spoke
of the reaction of United Na-
tions delegates and other visi-
tors from abroad to school segre-
gation, lunch counter discrimina-
tion, and restrictions of Negro
voting in the South. The whole
world, she said, is watching us.
On the subject of imports, the
solution of import problems is to
raise the living standards of work-
ers here, and all over the world,
she advised.
Pointing out that most of the
world has turned to the U. S. for
help in strengthening their finan-
cial resources, Mrs. Roosevelt
called imports a "natural example
of this _trend." She asserted that
America must continue to follow
this policy if it hopes to "win and
hold the uncommitted nations."
The convention's official posi-
tion on imports was stated in the
officers' report, read by Pres.
Ralph Reiser and adopted unani-
mously by delegates. The report
warned against "liberals who do
not know the hardship which ex-
ists because* of an overdose of
certain imports," and urged every
member of the union to help ex-
plain the import problem to his
neighbor.
Early this year, the report re-,
lated, a Providence, R. I., firm im-
ported 500 tons of window glass
from the, USSR — the equivalent of
a year's production by 500 workers
using three machines.
"This means," the general execu-
tive board said, "that jobs have
been transferred to the very peo-
ple who are out to destroy our way
of life, the people who boast they
will bury us economically.
Trade Seen Key Issue
"One of the major tasks facing
our union is supporting candidates
for public office who understand the
complex problems of world trade,
and are willing to press for poli-
cies which will make world trade
a blessing instead of a hardship for
workers in the industries involved."
Local unions in the U. S. and
Canada submitted 45 resolutions to
the convention. Among those
adopted were resolutions on sub-
sidies for workers who lose their
jobs because of imports; on urging
that the National Labor Relations
Board operate so as to administer
"even-handed justice"; on a shorter
workweek; political action through
COPE; on the union label; repeal
of the Landrum-Griffin Act; in sup-
port of a $1.25 minimum wage and
extension of coverage; on safety
and industrial health; community
services; overhaul of the tax sys-
tem; and enactment of health as-
sistance to aged and retired persons
through a Forand-type law.
Chairman Appointed
For Labor Day Mass
Chicago — Stephen M. Bailey,
vice-president of the Chicago Fed-
eration of Labor and business man-
ager of Plumbers' Local 1 30, again
has been named chairman of a
committee of 100 which is setting
plans for the annual Labor Day
Mass at Holy Name Cathedral.
Orders Being Taken for
1960 COPE Handbook
The 1960 COPE Handbook, the book of facts which no un-
ion speaker wants to be without during the political campaign,
will be available soon and may be ordered now.
The book gives the background on important national is-
sues and tells what has happened to them in Congress, out-
lines AFL-CIO policy and provides talking points for political
candidates. It is issued in loose-leaf form so that COPE can
send additional material as issues develop — as during the
August session of Congress — and thus be kept up-to-date.
Space is provided for material involving state or local candi-
dates.
The handbook may be ordered from the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Political Education, 815 Sixteenth Street, N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C. Price, $1 each to unions and union
members, $5 to non-union individuals or organizations.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
The Task for Congress
r rHE RESUMED SESSION of Congress has a tremendous op-
A portunity to break the stalemate that for more than a year and
a half has seen the frustration of a program for which the majority
of the people voted in November 1958.
It may be natural for members of the competing parties to seek
political advantage just before the election.
There is a natural temptation to Republicans to attempt such
devices as the introduction of a sweeping civil rights bill for the
sake of trying to expose the Democrats as divided on the issue.
The GOP campaign theme is that the Democratic convention
simply "promised" things, well knowing that many of the pledges
might not be redeemed.
But there is also a danger that any attempt to play smart politics
may backfire — and it should.
Neither party could be expected in a few weeks to come close
to enactment of the broad general programs they endorsed in their
platforms.
Each of these platforms represented long-range goals and each
of them was based on the assumption of a new tenant in the White
House, exerting an entirely different kind of leadership from that
the country has known for seven and a half years.
WHAT THE RECESS SESSION can be expected to do is to take
up and vote on the bills that have been carefully prepared, for
which the groundwork has been laid in committee hearings and
reports, for which clear-cut majorities may easily be found if the
issues are presented squarely.
The country is obviously ready for a new minimum wage bill,
for federal aid to education, for a system of health care to the
aged through the social security system, for a general housing
program to expand existing operations.
The jobsite picketing bill has been repeatedly endorsed by Pres.
Eisenhower and by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell. Its principle
was endorsed years ago by the late Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-O.), who
showed himself genuinely willing to clear up inequities in the Taft-
Hartley Act after they had been exposed by time. It is endorsed
by the Democratic leadership in both houses, and all that remains
is the question of getting it to the floor for votes.
The majority Democrats have their own problem in dealing
with the minority of extreme conservatives among the Southerners
who hold key committee posts and have cooperated with conserva-
tive Republicans to block action since January 1959.
They face Mr. Eisenhower's veto power and the knowledge that
they may not find a two-thirds majority to override such vetoes.
NEVERTHELESS, the election returns of 1958 showed a tre-
mendous increase in Democratic membership from the northern,
eastern and western states, and the issues in that election were
clearly drawn.
They were precisely the issues involved in the program the
Democratic leaders have laid down for the session that they
hope will end by Labor Day.
Party action on such measures may legitimately be taken as
pointing the way to what could be expected in the future after
the new election contest is fought and settled, under Mr. Nixon
on the one hand and under Mr. Kennedy on the other.
The best politics is likely to be the politics that represents
conviction and principle rather than maneuver and efforts to muddle
the issues.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, August 6, 1960
No. 32
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of //- official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for an\ publication m the name of the AFL-CIO
Being Followed!
•..cots flc fl i W f>i/? R the
flT z U~C\0 NEWS
In Africa's Bigaesl Nation:
Split in Nigerian Unions Adds
To Problems of Independence
By Arnold Beichman
LAGOS, NIGERIA — Nigerian trade unionism
has big prospects but restricted possibilities at the
precise moment when it should be preparing to
assume a role as the leading organization in all
Africa. On Oct. 1, Nigeria, the most populous
country in Africa, will gain its complete inde-
pendence from Britain to become a Common-
wealth dominion.
With a population of 38 million Africans,
Nigeria is regarded by observers here as a coun-
try which could well become the most important
on the continent. With a relatively well-trained
civil service, widespread overseas interest in in-
vestment here, educationally ambitious young
men, a western-oriented, non-Communist politi-
cal leadership with a pro-American slant, Nigeria
has the makings of success — but its labor move-
ment is in trouble.
A few months ago, it split wide open. To-
day there are two national centers — the ICFTU-
affiliated Trades Union Congress Nigeria
known by its initials, TUC(N), and the Nigerian
TUC, rumored to be financed and supported
by Ghana's President Nkrumah and Guinea's
Premier Sekou Toure, both of whom are op-
posed to affiliation of African unions to the
ICFTU.
The TUC(N) reportedly has twice the member-
ship— 80,000— of the NTUC although some
large unions, like the teachers' organization with
50,000 members, have refused to join either or-
ganization. Government figures show a total un-
ion membership of 250,000, out of a half million
work force.
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS af-
flict Nigerian workers although some progress is
made towards a solution. Unemployment and
underemployment — chronic evils in underdevel-
oped economies — low wages, high living costs
are among these problems.
Particularly burdensome to employed workers
is the fact that too many persons without an in-
come live at the expense of a single worker. This
is known as the "extended family*' system. One
wage-earner, by tribal tradition and rigid custom,
will sometimes have to support dozens of rela-
tives besides his own immediate family.
The TUC(N) leadership is highly regarded.
H. P. Adebola, who became president of the or-
ganization last April, is, despite his 44 years, a
veteran unionist. He glowed with pride as he told
me that his birthday, Oct. 1, coincided with
Nigerian independence day. Adebola has been in
trade union activity, primarily railroads and trans-
port, since 1942. His own organization, of which
he has been secretary since 1945, the Railway
and Ports Transport Staff union, has risen in mem-
bership in his 15 years of office from 1,100 to 5,-
000 members. He has also been secretary gen-
eral of the Nigerian Union of Railwaymen, some-
thing like our Railway Labor Executives' Asso-
ciation, and is now president of this strategic or-
ganization.
The other two leaders of the TUC(N) are L. L.
Borha, general secretary, and S. I. E. Ese, deputy
general secretary, who is an ICFTU executive
board member.
The three men are always on the go, traversing
this huge country — equal in area to Texas and
Colorado — on unending assignments but it means
that on important occasions in Lagos the organ-
ization must wait for their return so that policy
decisions can be taken.
A MERGED NATIONAL CENTER existed
from March, 1959, until early this year when a
group of Nigerian trade unionists headed by a
self-styled Socialist, M. Tmodu, who was president
of the organization, tried to force a secession
movement from the ICFTU. Imodu's group
called for "positive neutrality," which happens to
be the current line in Africa of the Communist
World Federation of Trade Unions.
It is also a matter of record that Imodu re-
cently visited Moscow, Peking and other Com-
munist areas over a three-month period and
upon his return started his present campaign
against the pro-ICFTU leadership in Nigerian
labor. In addition, the Imodu group now in
the Nigerian TUC has begun pressing extreme
demands such as a three-month wage bonus as
part of Nigerian independence celebrations.
It is difficult to foretell at this writing what will
happen to the Nigerian labor movement. One
can, however, predict that with the influences ex-
erted by the WFTU, by Ghana and by Guinea,
the Nigerian worker will find that national in-
dependence and economic amelioration do not
necessarily go hand in hand.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. AUGUST 6. 1960
Page Five
Morgan Says:
White House Stand-by Policy
Upset by Rockefeller's Revolt
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
lri day at 7 p. m. t EDT.)
WHEN NELSON ROCKEFELLER intro-
duced the Republican presidential nominee
to the convention in Chicago, he called him Rich-
ard E. Nixon instead of Richard M. Maybe that
was a Freudian slip reflecting continuing uncer-
tainty about the candidate whom he had cuttingly
described only seven
weeks before as a man
riding into the future un-
der a banner whose only
emblem was a question
mark. But perhaps the
most remarkable thing
about the GOP festivities
was the fact that the New
York governor, defying
almost every political
rule in the book, not only
did not slip himself but Morgan
came out of it with more than he had ever ex-
pected to gain even though he did not get every-
thing he wanted in the party platform.
What was largely missed in Chicago was the
story of how nearly the convention came to a
disastrously divisive floor fight on the issue of
defense policy. While most journalistic attention
was focused on the more emotional row over civil
rights, the real battle was being waged behind the
scenes on the defense plank, with the White House
itself drawn with angry, defensive passion into the
fray.
As one Rockefeller source put it, Pres. Eisen-
hower's entourage at Newport "went up in flames"
when it learned, after the fact, of the Vice Presi-
dent's eight-hour meeting with the governor in
New York and of Nixon's endorsement of Rocke-
feller's 14 points as requirements for a strong
platform.
Not only was the White House stunned with
surprise but its first reading was — accurately —
that the memorandum of Fifth Avenue was a
critical reflection on Administration defense
measures and plans.
The Administration's first reaction came through
National Republican Chairman Thruston Morton
who told the platform committee in a closed meet-
ing in Chicago, in effect, to "revolt" against the
memo, that nobody was going to dictate the
committee's work.
But that quickly produced a stalemate. After
working secretly and fruitlessly with the Nixon
staff in the Blackstone Hotel, the governor's emis-
sary in Chicago, Emmett Hughes, warned that
Rockefeller had decided to carry the fight on
defense to the convention itself. Some of Rocke-
Washinffton Reports:
feller's own advisers counseled against this, arguing
that he might be booed out of the hall — if not out
of the party — in bitterness without accomplishing
anything. But the governor was determined
largely because the draft as then written reflected,
in his view, nothing of the urgency for a larger
defense effort.
AROUND MIDNIGHT Rockefeller himself
called Nixon, who had arrived from Washington
just that day, to reinforce his warning but almost
before he could utter a sentence, the Vice Presi-
dent told him, in effect, that he too was dissatis
fied and was going to ask the whole platform
committee to reconsider the defense plank. Out
of this came language which spoke of the need to
"intensify, accelerate and increase" instead of
merely "continue" the defense effort.
These soft semantics were a far cry from
Rockefeller's specific demands for a $3.5 billion
increase in the defense budget but, recognizing
the pressure Nixon was under from the White
House to avoid even a glimmering reflection on
Eisenhower defense policy, the governor felt he
had made an obvious point: the need for
stronger defenses. A floor fight was avoided.
Some people, understandably but mistakenly,
theorized that Nixon was fighting for a stronger
defense plank in a last-minute effort to lure Rocke-
feller into second spot on the ticket. It is reliably
reported that one of the Vice President's top
aides, Robert Finch, had said only a few days
earlier that the ticket would lose without the gov-
ernor on it. Both Nixon and Rockefeller camps
had separately judged the Kennedy- Johnson com-
bine as the most formidable opposition. How
ever, any lingering hopes of a Nixon-Rockefeller
team to confront that combine were finally dis
solved when the principals spent the first hour and
a half of their historic New York meeting discuss-
ing the vice presidency.
Does this mean that Rockefeller thinks the
Republicans are going to lose and is ruthlessly
planning to build his own leadership of the party
in 1964 out of the wreckage?
The first part of the question may be a qualified
yes although Rockefeller sources now feel, with
something more than surface amity achieved,
there is a better chance to carry New York where
only the thinnest one existed before. As to the
governor's ambitions his confidantes argue that if
they came before his principles, he couldn't have
proceeded in a worse way to realize them; that he
would have been far better advised simply to lie
low and pick up the pieces.
In any event Rockefeller's stand provided the
fulcrum which Nixon used, with a certain deft
courage and realism, to pry the party's position
away from the status quo toward a more aggressive
position for the future.
iTS YOUR
WASHINGTON
wrm
Conferees Urged to Bar Use
Of Cancer-Causing Additives
HP HE DELANEY AMENDMENT which pro-
* hibits the use of any cancer-causing substance
must be in the color-additive bill passed by Con-
gress in the August session, Rep. Leonor K. Sul-
livan (D-Mo.) and Rep. John B. Bennett (R-
Mich.) asserted on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service educational pro-
gram, heard on more than 300 radio stations.
The House and Senate have passed separate bills
to clarify the authority Congress has given the Sec-
retary of Health, Education and Welfare to police
the use of color additives used to add eye appeal
to food, drugs and cosmetics. The bills, now in
conference, could put responsibility for testing
on the industry, under the supervision of the de-
partment. The Delaney amendment, introduced
by Rep. James J. Delaney (D-N. Y.), is not in the
Senate bill.
Mrs. Sullivan said that new legislation is nec-
essary because "the dyes that were tested years
ago and found harmless are being tested today
under new scientific testing methods and found
not to be so harmless as previously assumed/ 9
Rep. Bennett said that the new bill would set
up a trial period of two and a half years to test
the colors used in cosmetics, foods and drugs. "If
at the end of that period, the Secretary finds the
colors are safe with reasonable tolerances, he may
okay them," he said.
MRS. SULLIVAN SAID that she likes the
fact that the bill shifts the burden of proof from
the government to the producer, but added the
measure does not go far enough. She asserted
that it leaves loopholes that should be closed.
Bennett agreed that the Secretary should be
given the power to revoke licenses where "there's
reasonable ground to believe that an additive
may be dangerous.'*
Mrs. Sullivan declared that one loophole forced
the government to spend $10 million to buy up
chickens that had been treated with stilbesterol.
Bennett reported that Rep. Oren Harris CD-
Ark.), chairman of the committee, "didn't want
to get into this phase of the problem in this ses-
sion because the subject is already complicated,
but he has said in public hearings and told me
privately that at the beginning of the next session,
he's going to deal with the problem which Mrs.
Sullivan has very properly brought up."
The loopholes, Rep. Sullivan said, are in the
Food Additives Act. the Pesticides Act and in the
basic Food and Dru^ Act of 1938.
i
VICE PRES. NIXON EMERGED from his posteonvention
conference with Pres. Eisenhower at Newport, R. L, promising
that the President would "veto" any excess "spending" bills that
the short session of Congress might pass. There is a good deal
of bombast in the constant reiteration of this theme, because a great
many of the controversial measures now pending are not really
"spending" bills at all.
A minimum wage bill is not a "spending" measure. X Forand-
type bill to set up a health care program financed through the social
security system involves no drain on the federal treasury.
Even a general housing bill would not be literally a "spending"
bill, any more than the depressed area measure that the Presi-
dent vetoed was primarily a "spending" bill.
# # #
THE HOUSING BILLS that Mr. Eisenhower vetoed last year
were primarily loan and insurance measures. The government
would have guaranteed the mortgages for or have advanced money
for cooperative housing, college housing, housing for the elderly,
but direct loans would have been repayable.
Only in the area of urban renewal and public housing would
substantial federal expenditures have been involved, and the first-
year spending would have been limited to $75 million by the Ad-
ministration's own estimate.
In a minimum wage bill, the only federal expenditure is the
small amount required for administration and enforcement. The
wages are paid by private employers and received by private em-
ployes.
In the vetoed depressed-areas bill, which Mr. Eisenhower treated
as outrageously expensive, the overwhelming total of funds would
have been in loans and guarantees — not in grants of funds.
A Forand-type social security bill to provide health benefits
for the aged would cost the federal treasury practically nothing.
Private employers and employes would pay taxes, which would
be segregated in a special trust fund, to finance the benefits for
later years. It would be a self-financing program, not a "spending"
program taking benefits from the general revenues of the treasury.
It is the Administration plan for health aid, indeed, that
deserves the brand of "fiscal irresponsibility."
It rejects the idea that people should pay for their own benefits
through the tested social security system, and offers instead an
invitation to a raid on the treasury.
There is a philosophy of government, which Mr. Eisenhower
has embraced, that considers federal activity to be basically im-
proper if not immoral. The application of this philosophy is often
what our political campaigns are about.
But it has nothing to do with "spending" issues, and it should not
be so presented.
* * *
ON ONE ISSUE embodied in the famous Fifth Avenue Compact
between Vice Pres. Nixon and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, the
governor clearly lost — and that is the health care issue.
Rockefeller repeatedly issued statements repudiating the Presi-
dent's plan, but in the announcement of the Nixon-Rockefeller
agreement the whole matter was left fuzzy. The Republican plat-
form picked up some of the language of the agreement but left
the meaning even more fuzzy.
Mr. Nixon has now declared that he still is against a social
security program of paying for health care, although Gov. Rocke-
feller had said that the social security system was precisely the
fiscally responsible method of financing aid that was preferable.
The explanation may be in the flaring White House tempers
that greeted the surprise announcement of the Vice President's
visit to Rockefeller, and their agreement that the GOP platform
should contain language that was considered to imply a substan-
tial repudiation of Mr. Eisenhower's approach on such overriding
issues as defense and foreign policies.
CANCER-INDUCING ADDITIVES to food, drugs and cosmetics
must be prohibited by law, Rep. John B. Bennett (R-Mich.), left,
and Rep. Leonor K. Sullivan (D-Mo.) declared on Washington Re-
ports to the People, AFL-CIO public service program. The provi-
sion is not in the Senate bill, now in conference.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
Hat Doing Double Duty
Newspapers across the country have picked up from the AFL-
CIO News of July 9 the story that Chairman Boyd Leedom of the
quasijudicial National Labor Relations Board was leading a partisan
political campaign to re-elect Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S. Dak.), one of
the Senate* s most bitter anti-labor members. The cartoon above
and the editorial below entitled "Keep NLRB Out of Politics^
appeared in the Milwaukee Journal:
"The AFL-CIO is incensed because Chairman Boyd Leedom of
the National Labor Relations Board is hustling campaign funds for
his old friend, Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S. Dak.), while the Kohler Co.
strike case is pending before the labor board.
"The AFL-CIO News says that Mundt, as a member of the
Senate committee which looked into the Kohler strike in 1958 as
part of its investigation of improper activities in the labor or man-
agement field, accepted the company's version of the dispute. It
calls Mundt 'bitterly anti-labor.'
"Organized labor has reason to be incensed over Leedom's con-
duct. So has the public. And not just because the Kohler case is
pending.
"The National Labor Relations Board is semijudicial. It sits
in judgment over cases involving unfair labor practices, union rep-
resentation and union elections. Its chairman and other four mem-
bers ought to be as aloof from political campaigning as federal
judges.
"Leedom should have the good sense and good taste to stay clear
of fund raising."
Solid Front of Railroads
Broken on Work Rules
(Continued from Page 1)
dangered if trains were forced to
operate without a "co-pilot" in the
locomotive cab.
Rule change demands dropped
by the Southern system and its- five
subsidiary roads include manage-
ment proposals to lengthen the
mileage run used to compute a
basic day's pay, to use regular
train crews for specialized yard
work, to be given a free hand in
determining the number of crew
members required for any opera-
tion, to permit abolition of many
crew-change points, and elimina-
tion of standby employes as a saf-
ety measure when self-propelled
equipment is used.
Despite the action taken by the
Southern Railway — described by
management sources as a "surprise"
move — spokesmen for other rail-
Flynn Named to
Labor Center Staff
Annapolis — Peter J. Flynn, vet-
eran trade unionist, has been ap-
pointed a consultant and instructor
at the Intl. Labor Center located
at St. John's College here.
Flynn, 54, migrated from Scot-
land to New Jersey in the mid-
1920's. He joined the Molders and
later took an active part in efforts
to organize auto workers; he helped
build the state CIO, serving as exec-
utive secretary and later as secre-
tary-treasurer. He headed a Ship-
builders local, aided in organizing
drives of the Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers and served as an
AFL-CIO organizer.
roads indicated they were sticking
to their original demands for
sweeping changes in work rules.
However, the head of one large
Eastern railroad was quoted by the
Wall Street Journal as saying: "The
Southern's pull-out weakens the
dam. Other roads could decide to
follow suit."
Meanwhile, Sept. 7 has been set
as the date for the first round of
national negotiations on the rail-
roads' rules demands. Chiefs of
the five operating brotherhoods in-
volved have scheduled a meeting
in Cleveland for Aug. 8 to prepare
for the September talks. A propos-
al by the unions that the issue be
submitted to a study commission
which would include representa-
tives of the public has been re-
jected by railroad management.
Although the non-operating rail
unions are not directly affected by
the work rules negotiations, they
are currently engaged in national
negotiations on wages and fringe
benefits. Recommendations of a
Presidential 'fact-finding board on
this issue have been termed "dis-
appointing" by the non-op unions.
Labor Reporter Given
Management Post
Cleveland — Anthony J. Disan-
tis, labor reporter for the Plain
Dealer since 1942, has been as-
signed to the paper's labor rela-
tions staff and will help negotiate
labor contracts for management.
His successor as labor reporter is
John W. Rees, city editor of the
Cleveland News for 10 years until
its snle to the CIeve!~- " "ress last
January.
AWOC Forces Up Wage Scales:
Labor Dept. Bars Aliens
From Struck Pear Orchards
The farm labor issue flared from California to Washington, D. C, as a corporate grower resorted
to court injunctions and appealed for Mexican nationals to break AFL-CIO picket lines.
An immediate effect of the strike and picket lines thrown up by the AFL-CIO Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee against the giant Di Giorgio Fruit Corp.'s pear orchards in Yuba
County, Calif., was a forcing up of wage scales.
AWOC is seeking a rate of
$1.25 an hour and union recog-
nition. Di Giorgio has boosted
its rate to $1.10 an hour plus a
bonus and has sent labor recruit-
ers a distance of 100 miles in an
effort to round up strikebreakers.
During the dispute which erupted
in mid-July, Di Giorgio won a tem-
porary state court order and, when
it expired, a temporary federal
court order which forced the Cali-
fornia Dept. of Employment to send
American workers through the
picket line.
But Di Giorgio suffered a set-
back when Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell rejected a request for 300
Mexican nationals.
To authorize the use of im-
ported Mexicans in the circum-
stances of the Di Giorgio dispute,
said the U.S. Labor Dept.,
"would be tantamount to supply-
ing alien strikebreakers."
The number of Mexican nation-
als in use in California in recent
years has ranged from a minimum
of 25,000 early in the year to a
peak of about 90,000 in September.
With unusually hot weather in
California speeding up harvest pat-
terns — a fact which Mitchell noted
would cause some crop loss
"wholly unrelated to labor supply"
— these fast-moving events un-
folded:
• Mitchell said his agency es-
tablished that in mid-July at least
130 of 186 American workers
walked out of a Di Giorgio orchard,
with the strike spreading later to
another ranch.
• Di Giorgio quickly obtained a
10-day restraining order from Yuba
County Superior Court Judge War-
ren Steel which stopped Califor-
nia's Employment Dir. Irving Per-
luss from refusing to refer domes-
tic workers to the picketed ranches.
• When the state court order
expired, Perluss announced that on
the advice of the state attorney gen-
eral he would again refuse to refer
workers to the struck ranches.
• Di Giorgio then won a tem-
porary federal court order from
U. S. District Judge Sherrill Hal-
bert which continued to compel
Perluss to refer domestic workers.
On the court front, Di Giorgio
is seeking a permanent injunc-
tion and is trying to have the
case switched back to the state
court. Attorneys for California
and the U. S. Labor Dept. are
trying to keep the case in fed-
eral court on grounds that fed-
eral regulations are at issue.
In Washington, meantime,
Mitchell announced that public
hearings on the request of Califor-
nia growers to modify employment
service regulations have been post-
poned from Aug. 8 to Aug. 22.
The postponement came at the re-
quest of AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany. The growers had won a
delay from July 21.
The farm strikes in California
have turned on the interpretation
of the ''labor dispute" clause in the
Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933, which
created the federal-state employ-
ment system. That law provides
mat the employment service shall
"maintain a farm placement serv-
ice," with the "dispute" clause as a
protective factor against strike-
breakers.
The California Dept. of Em-
ployment has interpreted the
"labor dispute" clause broadly.
In turn, Public Law 78, which
covers some 450,000 imported
Mexicans, bars the referral of
foreign workers to jobs where
American workers cannot be re-
ferred.
The growers, facing their major
harvests in the next few months,
seek a narrowed definition of 44 la-^
bor dispute" from the Washington
hearings. They also are turning to
emergency county ordinances to
thwart union organization and re-
portedly will seek state legislation
to bar union activities in "perish-
able crops."
Dutch Unionist to Head
Transport Federation
Bern, Switzerland — Pieter de Vries, veteran Dutch regional of-
fice director of the Ind. Transportworkers Federation, has been
elected secretary-general of the federation as successor to Omer
Becu.
The federation picked de- Vries at its 26th Congress here to fill
the top spot for two years because'^
of Becu's recent election as secre-
tary-general of the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions.
Roger Dekeyzer, president of
the Belgian Transport Workers
Union, was elected chairman of
the federation's 1 1 -member exec-
utive committee. He takes over
from Frank Cousins, general sec-
retary of Britain's Transport and
General Workers Union.
The British, instead of coming up
with one nominee for the executive
committee seat that Cousins held
for many years, asked the Congress
to chose as its candidate between
Cousins and F. Greene of the Brit-
ish National Union of Railwaymen.
While Greene got the nod from
the floor as British nominee, he
subsequently failed to win one of
the seven seats on the executive
committee decided by ballot.
A. E. Lyon Elected
The American elected to the ex-
ecutive committee was A. E. Lyon,
executive secretary-treasurer of the
Railway Labor Executives. Joseph
Curran, head of the Maritime Un-
ion, was assigned one of the seats
filled by co-option.
At the unanimous request of the
British delegation, no British name
was considered for co-option im-
mediately. It is expected to come
up when the executive committee
meets in London in November.
Paul Hall, president of the Sea-
farers, presented a resolution by
which the congress strongly con-
demned the United Arab Republic's
denial of the Suez Canal to ships
calling at Israeli ports.
Carried by an overwhelming
majority despite opposition by
Arab delegates, the resolution ex-
pressed "grave concern that the
UAR government continues to
restrict freedom of navigation"
through the canal.
It rejected as "totally inadequate
attempts to justify interference with
neutral shipping on the grounds of
a state of war between the UAR
and Israel." The congress called on
the Cairo government "to honor its
international undertakings by re-
nouncing action against ships in
the Suez Canal and placing reliance
in the procedures of the United
Nations."
The congress also elected an Is-
raeli delegate, Z. Barash, to the ITF
executive committee.
The congress also reaffirmed "its
opposition to dictatorship of any
kind" in another resolution de-
nouncing the trampling of trade
union rights and democratic lib-
erties in the Dominican Republic,
Paraguay and Cuba.
The resolution expressed the del-
egates' disappointment at the *"in- 1
creasing influence of those ele-
ments in the Cuban revolutionary
movement intent on denying Cuban
workers and the general population
the promised freedom and dignity
for which so many fought so val-
iantly against the Batista tyranny."
The dictatorships in the Do-
minican Republic and in Par-
aguay were attacked for turning
the trade unions in the two coun-
tries into a "mockery of the fun-
damental principles of labor or-
ganization for which the ITF
stands."
I
Calls for a five-day, 40-hour
week and the need to guarantee
safety by assuring two-man opera-
tion of locomotives and efficient
use of specialized crew members
on aircraft were also sounded by
the congress.
A resolution emphasized the
"vital role" the ITF has to play in
assisting transport workers in the
less-advanced countries "to develop
effective trade union organizations"
so that they can "realize a greater
measure of political, economic and
social freedom."
The congress selected Helsinki as
the site of its 1962 session.
IBEW Opens
Westinghouse
Negotiations
Pittsburgh, Pa.— The Intl. Broth-
erhood of Electrical Workers and
the Westinghouse Corp. have
opened negotiations here on a new
contract to cover some 12,000
IBEW members in 60 company
locations.
The union is seeking a general
wage increase, a supplemental un-
employment benefits plan, sever-
ance pay, a shorter workweek, im-
proved insurance and pension plans,
longer vacations, more paid holi-
days, improvements in the griev-
ance procedure and arbitration lan-
guage, and standardized classifica-
tions for key jobs.
The eight-member union negoti-
ating committee is made up of rep-
resentatives of IBEW members who
work in the various branches of
Westinghouse industries. It is
headed by the top officers of the
IBEW Westinghouse Employes'
Council — Pres. William Baker of
Boston, Vice Pres. Edward Hunter
of Cincinnati and Sec.-Treas.
Charles Knox, Jr., of Baltimore.
Four IBEW international repre-
sentatives headed by Paul Menger,
the union's director of manufac-
turing operations, have come to
Pittsburgh from international head-
quarters in Washington to assist.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
Page Seven
Kennedy Sets Election Plans :
Nixon Hits at Bias
As Campaign Opens
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon launched his presidential campaign
with a fighting speech climaxing the Republican National Conven-
tion in Chicago and immediately began the first of the cross-country
tours in which he expects to enter all 50 states between now and
November.
A swift two-day campaign
Hawaii, where Nixon attacked
"prejudice" as "the greatest prob-
lem confronting us in the world
battle of ideas," was followed by
West Coast conferences just before
the recessed session of Congress
was to convene.
Meanwhile his presidential op
ponent, Sen. John F. Kennedy
completed three weeks of vacation
and intensive party conferences in
Hyannis Port, Mass.
Congress Faces Long Hours
Kennedy and Senate Majority
Leader Lyndon Johnson, the Dem-
ocratic vice presidential nominee,
served notice that the expected
three- week session would work long
hours and possibly six days a week
in order to complete action on
scheduled bills.
Kennedy and Johnson turned
down a Nixon proposal that Sat-
urday sessions be ruled out in
order to allow time for top-Jevel
August campaigning.
Nixon's declaration of campaign
plans came in his speech accepting
the Republican nomination and
thanking the Chicago convention
for accepting his preference for
Henry Cabot Lodge, U.S. ambas-
sador to the United Nations, as his
running-mate.
Fresh from a platform battle in
which he joined New York's Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller to force
changes promising to "accelerate
Conference
Group Meets
Second Time
A second in a series of meetings
on top labor-management problems
produced a "nice, friendly discus-
sion," AFL - CIO Pres. George
Meany reported after a three-hour
session in the Hotel Commodore,
New York.
The group of three labor repre-
sentatives and three industrialists
met for the second time in 10
weeks.
"We are still talking structure
— the methods by which we can
proceed to implement" the pur-
poses of the meetings, Meany
said.
He was accompanied by two
AFL - CIO vice presidents — Pres.
Walter P. Reuther of the Auto
Workers and Pres. George M. Har-
rison, Railway Clerks. Manage-
ment conferees were Pres. L. A.
Petersen, Otis Elevator Co.; Pres.
R. W. Stoddard of the Wyman-
Gordon Co.; and Pres. William J.
Grede of the J I. Case Co.
Meany proposed high-level talks,
away from the pressures of the bar-
gaining table, in a letter to Pres.
Eisenhower last November. Meany
asked the President to arrange
meetings to "consider and develop
guiding lines for just and harmoni-
ous labor - management relations."
Eisenhower endorsed the proposal
in his State of the Union message
early this year.
The purpose of the meetings, the
President said in a statement issued
from the White House, would be
to consider the interests of the pub-
lic along with labor and manage-
ment interests in the "maintenance
of industrial peace, price stability,
incentive for continuous invest-
ment, economic growth, productiv-
ity and world labor standards. "
as necessary" and "intensify" de-
fense efforts, Nixon rejected Dem-
ocratic charges that a speed-up was
urgently needed.
Nixon Sees Foreign Problems
The United States is "the strong-
est nation militarily, economically
and ideologically," he declared, but
he warned that "the foreign policy
problems of the Sixties will be dif-
ferent and vastly more difficult."
The Vice President told the
convention that the Democratic
program would be "disastrous for
America" and that "we arc not
going to try to out-promise" any-
body.
For himself, he pledged that the
GOP would "build on the record"
of the Eisenhower Administration.
He said older citizens would have
"adequate protection against the
hazards of ill-health," that young
Americans would have "the best
basic education" and the chance to
develop their "intellectual capaci
ties to the full," that wage-earners
"shall enjoy increasingly higher
wages" with greater protection
against the hazards of unemploy-
ment and old age.
White House Press Secretary
James C. Hagerty said that Pres.
Eisenhower would play an active
part in the Nixon-Lodge campaign.
There was no comment on reports
that the Nixon-Rockefeller agree
ment on platform, with its implied
criticism of Eisenhower programs,
had led White House staff members
to try to intervene.
Nixon Levels Charge
In California, before his takeoff
to Hawaii, the Vice President
charged that Kennedy had "paid
the price" in the Democratic plat-
form for whatever support he might
get from union officials. "I won't
pay that price," he declared.
At Hyannis Port, a stream of
Democratic leaders including Adlai
E. Stevenson called on Kennedy
to pledge support and work out
campaign plans.
Kennedy had a telephone con-
versation with former Pres. Tru-
man, who had opposed his nomi-
nation, and announced that Tru-
man would back the ticket and
would campaign for it.
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D
N. J.) was named head of a regis-
tration drive for the Democratic
forces and a series of regional con-
ferences was begun by the nomi-
nee's brother, Robert F. Kennedy.
Among visitors to Kennedy were
Pres. David J. McDonald of the
Steelworkers and Pres. Walter P.
Reuther of the Auto Workers, each
of whom stressed the issue of wide-
spread unemployment that has per-
sisted at a 5 percent level during
"prosperity."
McDonald Notes Steel Slump
McDonald discussed unemploy-
ment and underemployment spe-
cifically in the steel industry, where
production has, been sharply
slashed.
Reuther warned that the coun-
try may be on the verge of a
"third Eisenhower-Nixon reces-
sion," signaled by both unem-
ployment and a decline in new
orders for durable goods.
In only 13 of the 78 months un-
der the Eisenhower Administration,
he pointed out, has joblessness
dropped below a 4 percent rate,
and % *11 of those months were in
1953." In 40 of the 78 months,
he said, unemployment "has been
5 percent or higher."
REPUBLICAN RUNNING-MATES in the upcoming presidential campaign are Vice Pres. Rich-
ard M. Nixon and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge. Nixon, who won
the GOP presidential nomination on the first ballot at Chicago, picked Lodge as a personal choice
for the vice presidential place.
Court Orders Sears to Arbitrate
Firings of 144 in San Francisco
San Francisco, Calif. — A Federal Court here has ordered Sears Roebuck & Co. under its agree-
ment with two Retail Clerks' unions to arbitrate the discharge of 144 Sears workers who refused
to cross a Machinists' picket line.
U.S. District Judge George B. Harris rejected Sears' contention that the dispute belonged before
the National Labor Relations Board and ordered immediate arbitration.
The ruling is only the first step,^
a union attorney emphasized, in
labor's fight to win reinstatement of
262 Sears workers laid off for re-
specting a picket line at two Sears
service centers here last May.
George Johns, secretary of the
San Francisco Labor Council,
urged all labor organizations in
the United States and Canada to
intensify a consumer boycott of
the big retail store chain. Almost
a million handbills, and more
than 100,000 bumper stickers,
have been distributed coast to
coast in the "Don't Buy Sears"
campaign:
Judge Harris, in his decision di-
recting the company to live up to
its contracts with two RCIA unions,
said the basic problem in the law-
suit is whether Sears may replace
the employes, and what rights re-
placed workers may have.
"It is conceded by the parties,"
the judge said, "that replacement
may be made. It is equally clear
that arbitrary and capricious con-
duct cannot be engaged in . . . nor
may the replacement theory be used
as a subterfuge in order to create
reprisals . . . against otherwise in-
nocent employes."
Judge Harris granted the pe-
tition of Department Store Em-
ployes' Local 1100 and Retail
D. C. Unions Ask
End to Segregation
All unions affiliated with the
Greater Washington AFL-CIO, and
all union members have been urged
to join in eliminating segregation
and discrimination in education,
employment, housing and public
places.
In a resolution based on AFL-
CIO policy, central body delegates
from the District of Columbia and
nearby suburbs noted that much
progress has been made in eliminat-
ing bias but that it is "embarrassing
to find discrimination and segre-
gation remaining in an area which
should be the showplace of the na-
tion" and the free world.
The resolution called on all un-
ion members to "join the crusade
for freedom"; commended student
leaders of the sit-in movement for
their "dignity and self-sacrifice,"
and asked amusement parks, thea-
ters, and other public places to end
segregation.
Shoe & Textile Salesmen's Local
410 for an order directing im-
mediate arbitration.
The judge noted that the unions
had filed complaints under the
grievance procedure after Sears had
refused to rehire 137 members of
Local 1100 and seven members of
Local 410. Along with other union
members, they reported back for
work after honoring a picket line
of Machinists' Lodge 1327.
The judge also called attention
to the fact that Sears management
had ignored the unions' repeated
demands for grievance hearings.
The grievances alleged by the two
unions, Judge Harris said, are "mat-
ters covered in the collective bar-
gaining agreements." He added:
"The asserted arbitrary and dis-
criminatory replacements, denials
of employment, layoffs, discharges,
terminations and lockout are within
the terms of the collective bargain-
ing agreement."
Ousted Foes of Cross
Sue for Reinstatement
Four insurgent leaders of the Bakery & Confectionery Workers
have filed a $1 million damage suit against B&C Pres. James G.
Cross and have asked a federal district judge to order their reinstate-
ment as international representatives.
The action is the second legal attempt this year by groups within
the B&C to force the ouster ot&—
Cross and pave the way for an
internal cleanup and eventual unity
with the AFL-CIO's American
Bakery & Confectionery Workers
(ABC). Still pending is a suit by
officers of five big B&C locals to
force a secret ballot referendum on
the ouster of Cross, who they
charge has "plundered" the union's
treasury.
Two of the plaintiffs in the new
legal action are international vice
presidents of the B&C — Max
Kralstein of New York and
Henry Alvino of Pittsburgh.
After having been fired from
their paid positions on the union
staff, they had been scheduled to be
tried by the Cross-dominated ex-
ecutive board on charges of "foster-
ing secession." However U.S. Dis-
trict Judge George L. Hart served
notice that he would "take a dim
view" of the board's proceeding
with the trial in advance of a hear-
ing on the complaint filed by the
two officers and by two other ousted
international representatives —
George Siebold of Buffalo and
Peter Sullivan of Brooklyn.
The four plaintiffs said the
action taken against them by
Cross and the B&C board were
"reprisals designed to intimidate
other members."
They charged that although more
than one-third of the B&Cs local | ing in the B&C
unions have petitioned for a new
convention — sufficient under the
union's constitution to force such
an action — Cross has refused to call
a convention.
'Sham and Subterfuge'
Instead, they charged, he has in-
dulged in the "sham and subter-
fuge" of seeking a committee to
determine whether the endorse-
ments by the locals were "proper."
Kralstein, who has been a B&C
vice persident for 12 years, also
alleged that the Cross leadership
has solicited money for legal
defense from employers through
the Bakers' Mutual Defense
Fund.
Judge Hart set Aug. 9 for a hear-
ing on the complaint and a decision
as to whether to consolidate the
complaint with the earlier suit
brought by officers of the Local
Union Reunification Committee, a
coordinating group for anti-Cross
locals of the B&C.
Since the expulsion of the B&C
by the AFL-CIO in December,
1957 on findings of corrupt leader-
ship and the chartering of the ABC,
the expelled union has lost more
than half of its membership to the
rival AFL-CIO affiliate. The anti-
Cross group claims it represents a
majority of the membership remain-
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1960
Democrats, GOP Face Test in Congress
Rules Unit Bottleneck
Threatens Legislation
(Continued from Page 1)
through the social security system.
Other issues likely to be pushed
include a bill to legalize jobsite
picketing by building trades unions,
a method of stepping up defense
expenditures and possibly a new
farm bill or at least a bill on wheat
supports and production.
In addition, the session must
complete action on appropriation
bills left unfinished last month, in-
cluding the mutual security appro-
priation bill.
The first major bill to be called
up in the Senate may be Ken-
nedy's own minimum wage meas-
ure, which has been approved by
the Labor Committee.
Senate Minority Leader Everett
McKinley Dirksen (111.), an unsuc-
cessful candidate for the Republi-
can vice presidential nomination at
the recent GOP convention, has
said that he hopes the recess ses-
sion can have an "agreed" pro-
gram. Sen. Thruston Morton (Ky.),
chairman of the Republican Na-
tional Committee, said he saw no
benefit in a "political" session.
Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N. H.),
chairman of the GOP Senate Policy
Committee, has declared that he
expects "politics" to dominate
events.
Two New York Republicans,
Sen. Kenneth B. Keating and Rep.
William E. Miller, have said they
will push the civil rights issue.
Democrats, exercising majority
control, are expected to resist the
move on the ground that deliberate
invitation of a filibuster by anti-
civil rights southern Democrats
would destroy the chance of pass-
ing other legislation.
Platform Test
Democratic spokesmen say that
the business of the 86th Congress is
to complete action on bills now
pending, on which hearings have
been completed, rather than to try
a test of promises in party plat-
forms that are based, in each case,
on the assumption of the election
of a new President and control of
the White House in 1961.
From Republican sources the
prospect has been raised that
Pres. Eisenhower may counter
convention assaults on his poli-
cies by sending a special message
repeating demands for his own
programs, which have been tacitly
rejected, in place of Democratic
bills on minimum wages, school
construction, housing, distressed
areas, farm programs and health
care for the aged.
The status of pending major leg-
islation indicates the vital role of
the House Rules Committee, which
for a year and a half has been al-
most totally controlled by the south-
ern Democratic - Republican coali-
tion. The coalition is managed by
Rep. Charles A. Halleck (R-Ind.j,
Industrial Unions
Back Jobsite Bill
Trenton, N. J. — New Jersey's
industrial unions, through the
State CIO Council, have asked the
state's 14 members of Congress to
support the fight of craft un
ions for the jobsite picketing bill
now pending in the House of Rep-
resentatives.
In letters to the New Jersey con-
gressional delegation, State CIO
Pres. Joel R. Jacobson urged votes
when Congress reconvenes for the
situs picketing bill introduced by
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
N. J.) which would give building
trades unions the right to picket a
single contractor on a multi-em-
ployer construction site.
the GOP floor leader, and Rules
Committee Chairman Howard W.
Smith (D-Va.), who normally can
account for six of the committee's
12 votes.
The key figure in influencing the
Rules Committee to break loose
bills will be House Speaker Sam
Rayburn (D-Tex.), who worked
hard if unsuccessfully in the Los
Angeles convention to produce the
nomination of Johnson for the pres-
idency and who has been a power-
ful influence in the House ever
since early New Deal days.
The Rules Committee now is
blocking three programs:
• School aid. Separate bills for
federal grants have been passed by
the House and the Senate, marking
the first time such a measure has
been cleared by the House, but the
Rules unit has refused to allow the
two bills to be taken to a House-
Senate conference committee for
compromise of the differences.
• Housing. The Senate has
passed a general housing bill and
a similar measure has been ap-
proved by the House Banking Com-
mittee, but the Rules Committee
has failed to clear the measure for
a floor vote.
• Jobsite picketing. The
House Labor Committee has ap-
proved a bill to remove the legal
barriers that prevent building
trades unions from picketing a
non-union contractor at a multi-
employer construction site, but
the Rules unit has refused to give
it a green light for floor action.
Here is the status of other legis-
lation:
• Minimum wage. The Ken-
nedy bill, to come up in the Senate,
would raise the minimum from $1
an hour to $1.25 an hour in step-
ups. It would also expand protec-
tion to about 5 million workers
now uncovered, providing overtime
pay for excess hours in a series of
step-downs until the 40-hour stand-
ard week is attained.
The House has passed a weak
bill to raise the minimum to only
$1.15 an hour and extend cover-
age — but without overtime for ex-
cess hours — to about 1.4 million
workers. A monumental "goof" by
legislative drafters would literally
knock out of coverage about 14
million workers now protected.
The House Rules Committee
could become a controlling factor
on the minimum wage issue by re-
fusing to permit a Senate-House
conference to make compromises
between the House-approved meas-
ure and any bill the Senate passes.
• Health care. The Senate Fi-
nance Committee is expected to
vote whether to report a new social
security bill providing health bene-
fits for the aged through tax pay-
ments by employes and employers.
House Passed a Bill
The House has passed a bill that
rejects the principle of social secu-
rity taxes as a method of financing
health benefits for retired workers.
If the Senate should approve a
bill embodying the social secu-
rity formula, the House Rules
Committee again might be able
to block passage by refusing to
allow a conference committee to
compromise differences in the
two measures.
The White House can play a ma-
jor role in legislation during the
recess session by vetoes or the
threat of vetoes.
Vice Pres. Nixon, the Republi
can presidential nominee, said after
a conference with Mr. Eisenhower
that the President wouJd veto
"spending" bills and would also
J veto a Forand-type social security
I bill for health care for the aged.
YOU CANT
LMLESS YoO l <
The Big Picture
Religious Leaders Rap
'Right-to-Work' Law
So-called "right-to-work" laws are described as contrary to the
ethical teachings of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths in a
new pamphlet issued by the National Council for Industrial Peace.
The misleading phrase "right-to-work" is described in the pam-
plet as "an attack upon the trade unions" by the Very Rev. Francis
B. Sayre, Jr., Episcopal dean of$>
Washington, as "an attempt to un-
dermine and weaken responsible
democratic unionism" by Rabbi
Solomon J. Sharfman, president of
the Rabbinical Council of America;
and as "very unwise . . . mislead-
ing and fallacious" by Catholic
Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of
Santa Fe, N. Mex.
Included in the pamphlet are
statements such as these:
Methodist Bishop G. Bromley
Oxnam: "Greedy and undemocra-
tic powers that maintained the 12-
hour day and by every device from
company housing to depressed
wages sought to resist the introduc-
tion of democracy into the eco-
nomic order are among those who
today sponsor these "right-to-work
laws."
Archbishop Henry J. O'Brien of
Connecticut: "It is neither immoral
nor unethical to require union mem-
bership for the greater common
good of the group."
Rev. Peter D. Hanson, Meth-
odist minister at Poultney, Vt.:
"Lack of union security tends to
perpetuate a low standard of liv-
ing . The so-called 'right-to-work'
law denies to both union and man-
agement the right of freedom of
contract."
Bishop Robert F. Joyce of
Burlington, Vt.: "I believe they
would disturb our present peace,
bring no advantage to anyone
and seriously injure the public
good. . . . This matter is of no
concern to me from a political
or partisan viewpoint; it is of
concern as a moral question in
the field of social justice and of
public welfare."
ILO Sends Experts
To UN Staff in Congo
Geneva — The Intl. Labor Organ-
ization has sent its first group of
specialists to the Congo at the re-
quest of Sec-Gen. Dag Hammer-
skjold of the United Nations.
Jacques Chatelain, of French na-
tionality, will function as a labor
counselor and Robert Rossborough,
ILO official of British nationality,
as counselor in questions of person-
nel and administration. A Swiss ex-
pert in public works will be named
soon.
Quoted also in the pamphlet are
statements declaring that union
membership as a basis of continu-
ing employment should be neither
required or forbidden by law which
have been issued by the general
board of the National Council of
Churches, the United Presbyterian
Church in the U. S. A. and the
Board of Social and Economic Re-
lations of the Methodist Church.
The pamphlet, entitled "Why So
Many Faiths See Evil in Right-to-
Work Laws," is available free in
limited quantities from the Nation-
al Council for Industrial Peace,
605 Albee Bldg., Washington 5,
D. C. Bulk orders are $11 per
thousand.
9.5 Cent Hike
Negotiated by
Rubber Union
Akron, Ohio — The Rubber
Workers have negotiated a 9.5
cent hourly raise for 52,000 em-
ployes of three big companies un-
der wage reopeners. The agree-
ments, expected to set a pattern
for the industry, also provide ad-
ditional increases for groups of
skilled workers in tire plants.
As the AFL-CIO News went to
press, wage settlements had been
reached covering 21,000 workers
at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.,
13,000 at B. F. Goodrich and 18,-
000 at Firestone Tire & Rubber
Co. The additional increases for
skilled tire workers, to correct lo-
cal inequities, range from 4 to 6.5
cents.
Union spokesmen reported that
negotiations were "proceeding sat-
isfactorily" with U. S. Rubber Co.,
the other member of the industry's
Big Four, where 24,000 URW
members are employed.
Talks have also begun with
General Tire & Rubber Co. and
have been scheduled with a num-
ber of smaller firms in the indus-
try. In all, the 9.5 cent pattern
is expected to spread to more
than 100,000 workers at plants
where contracts are reopened.
Pay hikes in most plants will be
retroactive to July 25 after ratifica-
tion by local unions.
URW Pres. L. S. Buckmaster,
praising the "spirit in which the
negotiations have been conducted,"
said the settlement "compares very
favorably" with past agreements.
Last year's general increase was 10
cents an hour.
Mitchell Files L-G Suit
To Void Union Election
Newark, N. J. — Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, in the first such
action under the Landrum-Griffin Act, has moved to upset an elec-
tion held last February by an unaffiliated local, the Independent
Petroleum Workers Union of Bayway.
In a civil action filed in the U.S. District Court here, Mitchell
charged that the union had failed'^
to provide adequate safeguards to
insure a fair election.
The unaffiliated union represents
some 1,300 employes at the Esso
Standard Oil Co.'s Bayway refinery
at Linden.
In the disputed election, IPWU
Pres. John J. Goppa was reported
re-elected by a vote of 286 to 204
over an insurgent slate headed by
John Sullivan.
The union has 20 days to an-
swer the suit, in which Mitchell
asks the court to void the election
and order a new one under his su-
pervision.
Mitchell's action was based on
a complaint filed by union mem-
bers in June and charging the
union with violating L-G's elec-
tion provisions.
Mitchell's suit charged the union
with violating L-G in that:
• "It had or permitted to have
a substantial number of ballots
printed in excess of those required
for the said election;
• "It removed the ballots,
through its officers and agents,
from the packages in which they
were received from the printer
prior to the time that it was neces-
sary to do so in order to mail the
ballots to its members;
• "It had the returned ballots
placed in the Post Office lock -box
of the defendant, which box was
freely accessible to anyone possess-
ing the correct combination to the
lock and to anyone purporting to
be authorized to open the box, in-
cluding the incumbent, who \*as
the winning candidate for the office
of president, and any person to
whom he made the said combina-
tion available;
• "It had the ballots collected
from the Post Office box of the de-
fendant before the arrival of the
observers for the losing candidates
and prior to the agreed time for the
collection of the ballots."
The law requires the- Secre-
tary of Labor, if his investiga-
tion gives him probable cause to
believe an election violation has
occurred and has not been rem-
edied, to file a civil suit with-
in 60 days of a complaint.
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Unemployed Rate Sticks
At 5.4 % Despite Jobs Rise
Adult Idleness Up,
Steel, Autos Lag
TELEVISION CAMERAS ROLL in New York City as final scenes go into pro-
duction for the half-hour public service film documentary, "Land of Promise,"
being made by the AFL-CIO especially for the 1960 Labor Day weekend. Rehears-
ing a closing sequence are, from left, the film's narrator, Melvyn Douglas, Director
Bill Buckley, Producer Joel O'Brien, and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany. Above
AFL-CIO's
TVFilmSet
For Sept. 4
A half-hour public service tel-
evision film, produced by the
AFL-CIO, will be carried on the
nationwide network of the Amer-
ican Broadcasting Co. on Sun-
day, Sept. 4, at 5 p.m. EDT.
The film, "Land of Promise,"
is described by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany as "a historical
documentary which records fac-
tually and dramatically the devel-
opment of the American labor
movement in the light of the events
that shaped our nation's history."
The film is being produced by
the federation, he said, for the
Labor Day weekend to honor the
American worker on his own na-
tional holiday.
"This is clearly a public serv-
ice program of special merit,"
Meany said. "We believe the
film will effectively report to the
American people on the major
part played by the men and
women of labor in building our
nation."
' Land of Promise" stars Melvyn
Douglas, noted actor currently ap-
pearing in the Broadway play,
"The Best Man," and features a
musical score with Ronny Gilbert,
Joe Glazer and the Tarriers. Di-
recting the project for the AFL-
CIO were Al Zack, public relations
director, and Morris Novik, AFL-
CIO radio and TV consultant.
Award-Winning Producer
The film was produced in New
York City by Joel O'Brien Pro-
ductions. O'Brien, producer of
award-winning TV shows, was re-
sponsible for the television series
"Briefing Session" and the out-
standing civil defense series, "Ten
for Survival."
Director of "Land of Promise"
is Bill Buckley, whose credits in-
clude more than 100 institutional
and educational documentaries
for television. Among his films
he numbers one which won a
Christopher Award and another
that received a Freedoms Foun-
dation Award.
The script was written by Shel-
don Stark, whose film "Assign-
ment: Southeast Asia" won the
1957 award as "best TV docu-
mentary of the year."
In charge of camera work on
"Land of Promise" is Richard Bag-
ley, cameraman for the "Quiet
One" and "On the Bowery," both
of which were nominated for Acad-
emy Awards.
right, Meany is on camera during an interview in the film which traces historically
the development of America's abundance and the part played by the American
worker. The film will be shown at 5 p.m. EDT, Sunday, Sept. 4, over the ABC
television network. The special program is a tribute to the American worker on
the eve of Labor Day.
Saturday, August 13, 1960
No. 33
Wage Bill
Fight Opens
In Senate
By Willard Shelton
The Senate plunged into a full-
scale battle on the minimum wage
bill after the post-convention ses-
sion of Congress opened with a
civil rights clash heavily inter-
larded with campaign politics.
Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.),
Democratic presidential nominee,
opened the debate in favor of his
Labor Committee-approved bill
to raise the minimum wage from $1
an hour to $1.25 and to broaden
coverage to 5 million workers not
now protected by the wage-hour
law.
The Senate was expected to clear
the bill after showdown votes on 20
to 30 emasculating amendments of-
fered by Sen. Barry Goldwater
(R-Ariz.) and another major crip-
pling amendment sponsored by Sen.
Spessard Holland (D-Fla.).
The minimum wage bill was
called up by Sen. Lyndon John-
son (D-Tex.), Kennedy's vice
presidential running mate, after
Democrats had tabled a civil
rights bill thrown into the antici-
pated short session with the ob-
vious intent of embarrassing the
majority party leadership.
The White House, Vice Pres.
Nixon, the Republican presidential
nominee, and the Senate GOP
leadership joined in these campaign
maneuvers:
• Pres. Eisenhower sent a mes-
(C on tinned on Page 7)
General Board to
Meet on August 26
The AFL-CIO General
Board will meet in Washing-
ton, D. C, on Aug. 26 at the
Statler-Hilton Hotel, AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany
announced.
The session originally
scheduled for Aug. 17 at
Chicago was postponed by
the Executive Council. The
General Board is composed
of the principal officer of
each affiliated union and con-
stitutional department, plus
the members of the Execu-
tive Council.
Missouri Law
Used to Break
Utility Strike
Kansas City, Mo. — A Mis-
souri law forbidding public utili-
ties strikes has, for the third
time in a dozen years, been used
to break a strike of workers in
this midwestern state.
Gov. James T. Blair Jr. (D.)
invoked the King-Thompson
law, and a circuit court judge
issued a temporary order re-
straining 840 linemen from picket-
ing and 860 inside operators and
clerical workers from honoring
picket lines at the Kansas City
Power & Light Co. here. The line-
men are members of Local 1464,
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers. The operators are in
(Continued on Page 2)
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's rate of unemployment in July was 5.4 percent — a
rate exceeded only in recession years and double the postwar low
of 2.7 percent in 1953 — according to the government's report on
the job situation.
The 5.4 percent jobless rate for July, considered by the Labor
Dept. as "not significantly differ-'^ -
ent" from the 5.5 percent of June,
was registered even as employment
rose to a record 68.7 million.
Although saying we are con-
tinuing to operate at very high
levels, Labor Dept. manpower
expert Seymour Wolfbein in sum-
ming up the report acknowledged
"a very definite brake in such
sectors as steel."
He said the "continued drag in
the steel sector" was counterbal-
anced in the July figures by a more-
than-seasonal upturn in construc-
tion.
In the pre-recession year of 1957,
the seasonally-adjusted rate of un-
employment was at a low of 3.8
percent in March. As the reces-
sion developed, it jumped past the
5 percent mark and climbed to 5.2
percent in November.
In the 33 months since then, the
jobless rate has fallen below 5 per-
cent just three times — to 4.9 in
May 1959, 4.8 last February and
4.9 last May. In 30 months it has
been 5 percent or higher; it has
never dropped to the "pre-reces-
sion" rate.
Wolfbein also noted the impact
of teenagers on the employment re-
port. Unemployment, he observed,
declined by 406,000 between June
and July to a total of 4 million —
(Continued on Page S)
Two Aircraft
Strikes Won,
5,000 Still Out
By Gene Kelly
Settlement of two Machinists'
strikes at United Aircraft plants
in Connecticut, and ratification
without a strike of a new con-
tract at two Lockheed airframe
plants in California, left one
major strike in the aircraft in-
dustry — at the Sikorsky division
of United Aircraft, where almost
5,000 Auto Workers maintained
picket lines and kept trying to get
management back to the bargain-
ing table.
The settlements benefited 1 6,000
in the IAM bargaining units at
Pratt & Whitney divisions in East
Hartford and Manchester, Conn.;
4,800 IAM members at Hamilton
Standard divisions of UAC in
Windsor Locks and Broad Brook,
Conn.; and 12,500 covered by IAM
contracts with Lockheed.
Meanwhile, voting was sched-
uled on a new contract offer for
25,000 Machinists at Boeing Air-
% (Continued on Page 2)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1960
Missouri Law
Used to Break
Utility Strike
(Continued from Page 1)
IBEW Local 412 and the office
workers in Local 1613.
Local 1464 is considering appeal
to the higher courts against the
law permitting Missouri governors
to seize a public utility when ne-
gotiations break down and a strike
occurs. Unions have tested their
rights in the past but lengthy de-
lays meant that the disputes were
settled before the high courts ruled.
The Kansas City plant was
seized by the state in 1957 and
remained under state control for
nine months. The U.S. Supreme
Court finally held that a chal-
lenge to the law was moot and
refused a decision on the law's
constitutionality.
In negotiations preceding the
strike this year, the union asked
for contract language defining the
work day and work week to pre-
vent changes in assignments with-
out consultation with the union.
Management refused on the claim
that it was "not contemplating" a
change in past policy.
"That's the principal issue,"
said William H. James, business
manager of Local 1464. "We
hear they are planning a change,
and we want protection."
Other contract objectives are a
sick leave clause with arbitration
if the parties disagree; protection
against changes in job classifica-
tions and safety regulations; and
a wage increase.
The inside workers reached
agreement on contracts providing
wage increases and fringe bene-
fits of about 4.5 cents an hour.
When the linemen walked out
July 12, the inside workers re-
fused to cross the lines of Local
1464.
The King-Thompson law gives
the governor power to seize a
public utility whenever he be-
lieves the public welfare may be
endangered by a strike. The
law has been used in three of the
last four Missouri strikes involv-
ing a utility.
Unions maintain the law gives
utility management an unfair ad-
vantage in bargaining.
Labor Group Gives
$500 Scholarship
San Rafael, Calif. — The Marin
County Labor Council has pre-
sented its first four-year $500-per-
year college scholarship to Gretchen
Glazier, 16, graduate of San Rafael
High School.
Gretchen was one of 50 competi-
tors for the scholarship, which re-
places the one-year scholarship
.awarded annually for the past eight
years. She will major in creative
writing at Stanford University.
Plus Fringe Benefits:
I960 Wage Hikes
Average 4 Percent
Contract settlements in the first half of 1960 provided wage in-
creases of approximately 4 percent, but the real wage gain was
reduced to about 2.5 percent because of the rise in the cost of living,
an AFL-CIO publication has reported.
The current issue of Collective Bargaining Report, published by
the federation's Dept. of Research,'^
says a majority of settlements
HENRY SON and his wife Stella, Philadelphia, help the Voice of
America note the 25th anniversary of the Social Security Act in
an interview for broadcast to an estimated 50 million VOA listen-
ers. Son came here from Russia, worked for the Philco Corp.,
now is pensioners' committee chairman for his union district.
Interview is conducted by Liston M. Oak, VOA labor and econom-
ics editor.
Union Member Tells
Social Security Story
Philadelphia — A retired member of the Intl. Electrical, Radio
and Machine Workers was selected by the Voice of America to tell
the story of Social Security to the world on the occasion of the 25th
anniversary of social security Aug. 14.
Henry Son, 71, who retired 14 months ago after 30 years as a
tool and diemaker at the Philco 1 ^ — — 77 — TX , 0i x 7;
grated to the United States. Dwor-
kin for many years worked for
Corp. here, was interviewed by the
Voice of America at the head-
quarters of IUE District Council 1.
He works at the office part-time on
a voluntary, no-pay basis as chair-
man of the district's Committee of
Pensioners.
"I guess I'm a lot luckier than a
lot of our senior citizens because I
have a little nest egg to help me and
my wife, Stella," Son stated. "With
the nest egg, our social security and
my Philco pension, we're able to
lead a comfortable life. But with-
out my nest egg in these days of
high living costs, we'd be in
trouble."
Son and his wife receive $174
a month social security, which is
augumented by his Philco pen-
sion of $63.70 a month.
His interview for the Voice of
America was to be broadcast
through the stations maintained
throughout the world by the VOA
and will eventually reach an esti-
mated 50 million listeners.
Born in Odessa, Russia, Son
learned his trade as a tool and die-
maker in the Black Sea industrial
center of Baku. There he became
friendly with another apprentice
named Dworkin. Both later mi-
RCA.
A chance reunion in Philadel-
phia between the two men in 1912
resulted in Son's meeting Dwor-
kin's young sister, Stella. She be-
came his bride the same year.
Their daughter, Kathryn, works in
Washington, D. C.
Son came to the United States
in 1906. Without union security
and union protections, he plied
his trade for many years before he
went to Philco. He became a citi-
zen of the United States in 1917.
ranged from 7 to 12 cents an hour,
or an increase of 3 to 5 percent.
Increases of 13 or more cents
per hour were negotiated in al-
most 25 percent of the settle-
ments; rises of 6 cents or less in
20 percent of the reported con-
tracts, mostly in chronically de-
pressed industries; and no in-
creases at all in 3 percent of the
settlements.
The publication said this year's
increases are about equal to, or a
shade larger than, 1959 settlement
levels.
Collective Bargaining Report
cited these background factors:
• Most industries appear to
have been in a position to grant
larger increases than those nego-
tiated. Sales levels and profits have
been maintained or increased over
last year's levels. Productivity has
been rising.
• Wage increases for many
workers covered by union contracts
are being provided automatically
under agreements which will run
through 1960 without further nego-
tiation. These increases generally
have been 4 percent and more.
e Unemployment still is a major
problem in some industries and
areas. Large-scale unemployment
may have had a limiting effect on
wage negotiations in these indus-
tries and others.
• The cost of living has been
edging up by 1.5 to 2 percent over
the preceding year. It has been
necessary, therefore, for unions to
get increases of that amount merely
to catch up with price rises.
Fringe benefits are being liber-
alized widely in 1960 bargaining,
the publication found. Improve-
ments have been negotiated in ap-
proximately 75 percent of all set-
tlements.
The publication quotes Labor
Dept. figures showing that some
2.5 million workers will receive
automatic wage increases under
contracts negotiated in previous
years. These increases were
most often in the range of 6 to
8 cents an hour.
For construction workers, listed
in a separate tabulation, the most
common increase in 1960 under
continuing contracts is 22 cents
an hour. Most of the 458,000
workers in this category will get
11 cents or more — 85 percent of
such workers.
Leading wage settlements in-
clude the following:
Aircraft, 4 to 11 cents an hour
for 80,000 workers represented by
the Auto Workers and Machinists;
apparel, 17.5 cents for 125,000
workers in men's and boys' cloth-
ing; construction, 15 to 20 cents;
railroads, 10.5 cents; rubber, 4 to
9.5 cents; steel, 16.4 cents; tele-
phone, 7.3 cents; textiles, about 5
percent; utilities, 4 to 5 percent.
The AFL-CIO publication also
reported these statistics:
In manufacturing industries, 7.8
million of the nation's 11.7 mil-
lion production workers are in
plants where a majority is covered
by union contracts. Dividing the
country into regions, the north
central states have 3 million manu-
facturing workers in plants cover-
ed by union contract; northeastern
states, 2.8 million; southern 1.2
million ; western, 800,000 workers.
Basic scales of union building
trades in 100 cities as of July 1
were shown to average $4.18 an
hour for bricklayers, $4.01 for
plasterers and plumbers, $4 for
electricians, $3.77 for carpenters,
$3.54 for painters, $2.78 for la-
borers.
2 Connecticut Aircraft Strikes Won,
UAW Still Out at Sikorsky Plants
5-Day Week Agreement
Ends Strike on LIRR
New York — Trainmen on the Long Island Rail Road have won
a five-day week after a 26-day strike, the longest in the 126-year
history of the nation's most-traveled commuter line.
The settlement, hammered out during 12 hours of negotiations
in the New York City office of Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R), is
close to a federal mediator's pro- 1 ^
posal which the union had ac-
cepted and the railroad had turned
down.
The Trainmen, who presently
receive the equivalent of seven
days basic pay for a six-day
workweek, were granted a five-
day week. Part of the cost to
the LIRR of the changeover will
be met by a 2.5 cent hourly pay
cut agreed to by the Trainmen.
The cut will mean that they will
receive only half of the 5-cent
hourly pay raise negotiated by
their union at the national level.
In addition, the Trainmen agreed
to modifications of existing work
rules which will reduce the number
of new employes the railroad will
have to hire as a result of the five-
day week.
Similar agreements are expected
to be negotiated with the Firemen
& Enginemen and the unaffiliated
Locomotive Engineers, the two
other principal operating crafts on
the line.
The railroad said the settlement
with the Trainmen will add only
about one-third of one cent a ride
to the fare increase which had been
scheduled before the strike.
(Continued from Page 1)
craft locations in Seattle, Wash.,
and other cities. Boeing lodges
have turned down four previous
management offers and stayed at
work while negotiations were
resumed.
The Connecticut agreements set-
tling nine-week strikes at Pratt &
Whitney and Hamilton Standard
plants followed meetings of IAM
Pres. Al J. Hayes and UAC Pres.
William Gwinn with Gov. Abra-
ham Ribicoff (D).
Pact Ratified
Members of IAM Lodge 743
voted, 1,102 to 361, to ratify a 20-
month pact giving 4,800 Hamilton
Standard workers these major im-
provements:
An improved arbitration clause
and broadening of seniority cover-
age; elimination of a clause per-
mitting management to disregard
seniority of 10 percent of laidoff
workers; pay raise protection for
all transferred employes; a pro-
vision tjiat discharged employes
have a right to see their union
steward before they leave the plant.
Wages were not an issue in \
the strike that started June 8,
but the new pact provides wage
increases ranging from 14 to 24
cents over the term of the con-
tract to bring rate ranges next
January to $2.07-$3.70 an hour.
Also provided were greater union
representation, improved leaves
of absence and holiday, vacation
and insurance benefits.
At UAC's Pratt & Whitney di-
vision, IAM Lodge 1746 members
ratified the new agreement, 2,319
to 316. It provides a pay boost of
7 to 12 cents now and on Jan. 2,
1961, with a wage reopener pos-
sible on Nov. 30, 1961; improved
arbitration language, changes in
seniority and grievance procedure,
and the same insurance and holi-
day provisions as in the Hamilton
Standard contract.
Pres. Dave Fraser said manage-
ment and the union have agreed
that Chief Justice Raymond Bald-
win of the Connecticut Supreme
Court will name an arbitrator to
decide the status of 43 strikers dis-
charged for alleged picket line
incidents.
The settlement at Lockheed air-
frame divisions at Burbank and
Palmdale, Calif., ratified by an 80
percent vote, included an hourly
wage hike of 4 cents, retroactive to
June 13; folding-in of 6 cents an
hour in cost-of-living benefits; an-
other wage increase of 3 cents and
a cost-of-living hike effective July
10, 1961. The union also won a
supplementary layoff benefit plan,
effective Sept. 5, 1960, or a 3-cent
wage increase if the plan does not
meet legal requirements. The un-
ion represents 12,500 workers.
In Connecticut, 2,600 UAW
members heard a report from
Pres. John Monahan of UAW
Local 877 on the last remaining
strike against United Aircraft.
The company is "dragging its
feet" in an attempt to fill the
Sikorsky plants at Bridgeport
and Stratford, Conn., with strike-
breakers, he said.
The union is awaiting a decision
from the National Labor Relations
Board on its appeal that company
charges of unfair labor practices
be set aside so a representation elec-
tion can be held.
Roberts' RulesDidn't
Halt Armed Robber
Council Bluffs, la. — Rob-
erts' Rules of Order were no
help to the president of the
Central Labor Union's wom-
en's auxiliary when an armed
robber got the floor just long
enough to rifle a Labor Tem-
ple safe of $1,800, on hand
to cash pay checks of club-
room patrons.
Mrs. Eleanor Cloyd was
reading the agenda of a 2
p. m. meeting in the club-
rooms when the gun-waving
robber got recognition with-
out asking for it in approved
parliamentary fashion. He
lined the audience against a
wall, slapped an auxiliary
member lightly with his gun
handle, cleaned out the safe
and escaped in a white Cadil-
lac.
The robber was arrested a
short time later.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1960
Page Three
State Convention Meets:
Texas Labor Told
Of 'War for World 9
Dallas, Tex. — The U.S. must begin to win at home the war for
men's hearts and minds being waged on a worldwide basis, Pres.
Jerry Holleman told the Texas State AFL-CIO at the opening ses-
sion of its convention here.
He called for a demonstration that "our object is a full life for
all the people, that free enterprise^
and the profit motive are a means
to such an end, not the end itself. "
At the same time he asked the
1,000 delegates to approve an ex-
panded program, to be financed by
an increased per capita tax, aimed
at seeking repeal of the Texas so-
called "right-to-work" law, higher
workmen's compensation and un-
employment compensation benefits,
and a state minimum wage law
and industrial safety act.
Maury Maverick, Jr., ex-state
legislator and son of the late
liberal congressman, challenged
unions which have been slow to
admit Negroes "to open their
doors for their own protection"
as well as to do justice to a mi-
nority group.
Maverick, who has been men-
tioned as a Democratic candidate
for the Senate if Sen. Lyndon B.
Johnson is elected Vice President,
declared that racial justice is a
matter of global interest, and that
the world is watching the U.S. for
its stand on human rights.
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.)
and Rep. J. W. Wright (D-Tex.)
told the convention that the goal
of congressional Democrats in the
short session now meeting is pas-
sage of a legislative program that
includes a meaningful minimum
wage law, medical aid for the aged
and authorization of situs picketing
by building trades unions.
Roosevelt compared the se-
lection of Sen. John F. Kennedy
(Mass.) and Johnson to head the
Democratic ticket to the team of
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and
John N. Garner in 1932. The
presidential nominee's selection
of Johnson as his running mate,
the Californian added, demon-
strated Kennedy's "deep wis-
dom," for Johnson will be able
to persuade the people of the
South to accept the Democratic
program of civil rights on the
basis of reason and of patriotic
concern for U.S. leadership in
world affairs.
Pres. Alex Dickie, Jr., of the
Texas Farmers Union, urged a
strong farmer-labor alliance to re-
make Texas into a liberal state
where the problems of both labor
and farmers will receive the just
consideration that is now blocked
by reactionaries in the State legis-
lature and administration.
Pres. O. A. Knight of the Oil,
Chemical & Atomic Workers de-
clared that workers who give all
their lives to an industry have a
right to expect that industry to pro-
vide for their total needs in re-
tirement without reduction of their
living standards.
Knight, who accompanied
Pres. Eisenhower on his South
American trip, deplored the loss
of regard for the U.S. there as a
result of the Administration's
inept foreign policy. He urged
a little of the same kind of pump-
priming for Latin American na-
tions that was done at home
under the New Deal.
The State AFL-CIO executive
board recommended an increase in
the per capita tax from 8 to 15
cents a month. A sharp contro-
versy was indicated with heaviest
opposition to the recommendation
from Houston area locals. There
were predictions of a possible com-
promise at 12 cents.
$6 Million Hearst Suit
Against Guild Dismissed
A $6 million libel suit by Hearst Consolidated Publications
against the Newspaper Guild has been dismissed without comment
by U.S. District Judge Luther M. Youngdahl.
William J. Dempsey, attorney for Hearst enterprises in the District
of Columbia, has notified Arthur J. Goldberg of ANG counsel that
he will appeal the decision grant-'^
ing the ANG's petition to dismiss.
Hearst listed three complaints in
the original lawsuit — a news story
in the Guild Reporter of Oct. 23,
1959; a news release by ANG
based on the story; and a commu-
nication from ANG officers to the
U.S. Dept. of Justice.
The suit grew out of action by
the ANG international execu-
tive board last October, when
Strikes Down for
1st Half of 1960
The nation had 1,915 new work
stoppages in the first six months
of 1960, a drop of 121 from last
year's first half and the third lowest
number for any first half from the
end of World War II, the U.S. La-
bor Dept., Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics has reported.
Strike idleness in the first half
of 1960 accounted for 0.17 per-
cent of estimated working time.
Only 1957 and 1958 showed a
lower half-year idleness ratio, ac-
cording to the report.
BLS said 670,000 workers were
involved in 1960 stoppages, the
smallest figure for the period since
1946. Total idleness resulting from
labor disputes starting in 1960 or
continuing from 1959 totaled 9.75
million man-days, a substantial de-
cline from the corrcr^onding 1959
period, it said.
Guild officers were directed to
ask the Justice Dept. whether
anti-monopoly issues might be
involved in reports and denials
that Hearst and the Scripps-
Howard papers were considering
merger of two New York dailies,
the Journal-American and the
World-Telegram & Sun.
The IEB pointed out that pre-
vious newspaper mergers and sus-
pensions had been preceded by
management denials.
Hearst also filed suit last Oct. 30
asking $3 million in damages. The
suit was dismissed "without pre-
judice" in the southern New York
district court.
The Justice Dept. took no action
on the Guild's petition for an in-
vestigation "so far as we know,"
ANG Pres. Arthur Rosenstock told
the Guild convention in Chicago
recently.
In another development, a fed-
eral grand jury in Buffalo, N. Y.,
gave Hearst and Scripps enterprises
until Aug. 10 to produce records
of their dealings in Sunday supple-
ments, specifically color comic
sections. Officials of the Hearst
Corp., King Features Syndicate,
Newspaper Enterprise Association
Inc., the E. W. Scripps Co. and
four printing companies have been
subpoenaed to testify, apparently
about possible price and territorial
agreements.
PRETTY GIRLS and trained chickens are crowd-stoppers on the county fair circuit in Indiana,
where the Indiana Council for Industrial Peace and the State AFL-CIO are carrying to the state's
farm families the drive for repeal of the so-called "right-to-work" law. Staffing the booth at the Scott-
Vanderburgh County Fair at Evansville is volunteer Janet Pruitt, a member of the Communications
Workers, handing literature to a visitor. The baseball-playing chicken is named Casey.
County Fair Exhibits Carry Drive to
Repeal R-T-W to Indiana's Farmers
Indianapolis — Indiana's Council for Industrial Peace is carrying its drive for repeal of the state's
so-called "right-to-work" law directly to the state's farm families.
A traveling exhibit, co-sponsored with the State AFL-CIO, is making the rounds of 23 county fairs,
prelude to the big state fair which opens Aug. 31.
The campaign to explain why "right-to-work" hurts the farmer as well as the city worker has the
cooperation of the Indiana Farmers^ -
Union. John Raber, state presi-
dent of the farm organization,
heads a farm advisory committee
of the Indiana council, a non-
partisan citizens' group affiliated
with the National Council for In-
dustrial Peace.
A couple of trained chickens,
named Casey and Biddy, are the
crowd-gatherers, attracting visi-
tors to the exhibit. Attractive
volunteer hostesses, most of them
members of locals of the Com-
munications Workers in nearby
areas, pass out pamphlets and an-
swer questions.
Casey, a baseball playing hen
who nas appeared on television,
defies the tradition that "chickens
cannot be trained." When a visi-
tor pushes a button, Casey grabs a
bat in her beak and hits a rubber
ball. Her partner, Biddy, hands
out souvenir cards and pushes a
button with her beak which lights
a sign saying "thank you."
The attention-getting exhibits are
attracting big crowds at every fair,
according to State AFL-CIO Pres.
Dallas W. Sells. More important,
he added, the message of labor-
farmer cooperation is apparently
making headway.
Farmers Affected
Raber, explaining why there is
growing farm support for repeal
of the state's "right-to-work" law,
declared:
"This unjust law hurts the
farmer by weakening labor's
ability to obtain fair wages for
the industrial worker. When
the factory worker's salary goes
down, so does the price of pork
and everything else the farmer
produces."
The county fair program is the
first phase of a %i person-to-person"
campaign by the Indiana Council
for Industrial Peace to bring the
harmful results of the "right-to-
work*' law to the attention of every
Indiana voter.
During the 1959 session of the
legislature, a bill to repeal the
"work" law passed the Democratic-
controlled lower house but was
narrowly blocked in the Republi-
can-dominated Senate. As a re-
sult, repeal is one of the major
issues in the 1960 election con-
tests for the state legislature and
governor.
2 Worlds Clash on
Phoenix Picket Line
Phoenix, Ariz. — Two worlds meet where pickets walk at the
door of the Valley Feed & Seed Co. here, but there is no bridge
between them — the world of Northtown Phoenix and the world of
Southtown Phoenix.
Southtown Phoenix has old adobe houses, unpainted wooden
tenements, dirt streets bathed
dust or running with mud. Work-
ingmen like the men on the picket
line try to raise families here on $1
an hour or less. Pete Torres is one
of the men on the picket line.
Northtown Phoenix glitters
with the handsome homes, sleek
lawns, swimming pools, tennis
courts and golf courses of the
businessmen, ranchers and indus-
trialists whose money comes
from the three C's that have
made Arizona famous — cotton,
copper, cattle — and grain proc-
essing. William Corpstein Jr.
lives in this world. He owns the
Valley Feed & Seed Co.
Visitors to the state's largest city
see the gleaming buildings, the
comfortable homes, and a weather-
beaten picket line, straggling under
the hot sun. They do not see the
two worlds with no bridge between
them, but Pete Torres does.
Torres is one of the tired and
dusty pickets, taking his turn on
the line that has marched in front
of the million-dollar feed mill for
five weeks.
He sees the strike of less than
100 workers as much more than
a struggle for a starting wage of
$1.65 an hour, or even for pro-
tection against firings, speedup,
discrimination; for sick leave
with pay, health and welfare
benefits, seniority and union rep-
resentation; for a chance to get
a drink of water occasionally in
the hot and dusty mill, and a
toilet closer than the one a block
away from work.
"My great grandfather settled
in Phoenix a hundred years ago,
and helped to build the Arizona
flour mills, one of the first big in-
dustries in this area," said Torres
in a letter mailed to the daily
Arizona Republic but not yet
printed.
"I represent the fourth genera-
tion of a family whose members
have spent their lives in building
and operating the mills that have
made Phoenix one of the fastest
growing cities in the United States.
"The owners are now million-
aires, but we are still struggling
along on wages that are not enough
to provide decent homes, food or
clothing for our families.
"I am raising the fifth genera-
tion of my family in Phoenix,
and I am determined to make
this city a decent place to live,
not only for them but for other
working people as well. My fel-
low union members and I believe
the people who provide the labor
in Arizona are entitled to at
least a living wage."
In his letter, Torres told how the
mill workers failed in individual
attempts to get more than $1.25 an
hour for a 44-hour week; how they
joined the Packinghouse Workers,
Local 667, and voted for the union
in a National Labor Relations
Board election. After a month of
negotiations, they rejected a wage
offer of 5 cents an hour and went
on strike. Thereafter the strikers
were faced with a demand that they
take a cut in wages, Torres said.
Torres is philosophical about the
two worlds of Phoenix. Less phil-
osophical is John Janosco, UPWA
field representative. If ever there
was a town that needed organiza-
tion, Phoenix is it, he says.
The state was one of the first to
pass a "right to work'' Jaw to keep
the unorganized out of unions. It
is the home of Sen. Barry Gold-
water (R.), outspoken foe of or-
ganized labor.
Janosco said Valley Feed em-
ployes are not allowed to leave
work for a drink of water, though
the mill is hot, dirty and dusty.
The company recently refused to
install a soft drink dispenser for
workers, he said.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C. SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1960
. . — — x
Health Care Battleground
r T 1 HE FIRST SENATE battleground on the health-care issue is
-■- the Finance Committee, where Chairman Harry Flood Byrd
(D-Va.) has indicated his opposition to providing hospital benefits
for the aged through the tested machinery of the social security
system.
Progress of a bill would be greatly eased if the Finance Commit-
tee should report favorably a measure incorporating a social-secur-
ity method of financing health care. This is not the Eisenhower
Administration's approach; it is not the approach of the "pauper's
oath" bill passed by the House. But it is the approach that com-
mends itself to those who want a responsible program, properh
financed, and offering protection as a matter of right to those whc
in their working years have paid taxes to finance their own future.
It is, as a matter of fact, the approach championed by the Re-
publican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who has denounced
the Eisenhower "subsidy" proposals as "fiscal irresponsibility."
The overall objective of the social security system was stated
by Franklin D. Roosevelt in these words:
"I see an America where those who have reached the evening
of their life shall live out their years in peace, in security, where
pensions and insurance . . . shail be given as a matter of right to
those who through a long life of labor have served their families
and their nation so well."
The social security system was not designed to be a frozen insti-
tution, incapable of expansion to meet broader needs than were
first encompassed. Protection of pensioners against heavy hospital
costs should be as reasonably a part of the system as old-age
pensions.
The great social insurance system came into existence exactly
25 years ago, when on Aug. 14, 1935, Roosevelt signed the bill.
It would be a fitting memorial, a quarter century later, to add a
new key element to the protections the people have created for
themselves.
Every effort should be made to secure a sound bill in the
Finance Committee. If such a measure should be blocked, the
fight must be taken to the Senate floor.
To Tennessee-Thanks
THE ENTIRE NATION OWES a debt of gratitude to the voters
of Tennessee who by an overwhelming margin renominated
Estes Kefauver for the Senate for the next six years— as he has ably
represented them for the past 12 years.
This was the election in which racists and reactionaries were out
to destroy Kefauver and the principles for which he stood.
His defeat would have been a warning to other legislators from
the South who want to look to the future instead of the past, who
would like to speak for economic liberalism and for moderation
and compassion on civil rights issues.
Kefauver won his greatest victory and he won it by standing on
his principles, without apology or recanting.
Organized labor in Tennessee has every reason to be proud of
its role in the renomination campaign.
The state's labor press, in issue after issue, carried the facts to
thousands of readers where Kefauver's opponent had the support
of powerful commercial dailies. Hundreds of women, under the
guidance of the Committee on Political Education, manned tele-
phones on election day to call citizens and remind them to vote.
There was a vigorous campaign to increase the registration.
Kefauver's victory was his own — but everyone who helped him
has won a victory, too.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckm aster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, August 13, 1960
No. 33
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any oj IL, official publications. No one Is authorized to solicit
advertiser* for anv publication in the name of the AFL-CIO
Tennessee Waltz!
AFL-CIO N£W3 )
6 Cents an Hour for Laborers:
Workers Struggle
Against Exploitation, Feudalism
By Arnold Beichman
MONROVIA — A Liberian worker has just
brought to my hotel room a piece of paper I
very much wanted to have as evidence of what
exploitation of labor in this independent African
country means. It is the payroll sheet for the
Ducor Palace Hotel construction job.
The Ducor Palace is a new, beautifully modern
tourist hotel which stands high on a cliff over-
looking Monrovia on one side and the sweeping
Atlantic on the other. It is air-conditioned and
charges anywhere from $12 to $18 a day. The
ham sandwich delivered to my room a little
while ago cost $1, the pot of coffee 40 cents.
The unskilled workers who are building an-
other wing and swimming pool get 6 cents an
hour — a generous 2 cents an hour more than the
legal minimum — while skilled workers or fore-
men get about 35 to 40 cents an hour.
The payroll sheets tell the story — 250 hours
over two weeks with a take-home pay of $17.50
or $8.75 a week for, say, Domenic Zennah.
Office manager Thomas Davies, who worked
183 hours at 17 cents an hour, received $15.55
a week or $31.11 for the two weeks. And
that's all straight time by my long division.
Sometimes the Ducor Palace workers go from
7 a.m. to midnight, and 22 hours straight, as can
be seen from the payroll sheet, is not unusual.
That gives you two hours' sleep which you take
on the jobsite.
You eat when you can because there's no
break for meals. My Liberian friend who gave
me the payroll sheets has been working on the
hotel job since 1958 without a paid vacation.
Here is a quotation from a U.S. Dept. of Com-
merce bulletin titled "Establishing a Business in
Liberia." It says, page 5; 'There are no provi-
sions under Liberian labor legislation regarding
safety standards; unemployment insurance; sani-
tary standards in factories, shops, and offices;
sickness benefits, except in the case of injuries
occurring in the course of employment not caused
by the negligence, or carelessness of the employee;
social security benefits; family and children's al-
lowances; or guaranteed employment plans. In
the absence of such legislation, however, certain
companies have adopted paternalistic employ-
ment policies which do provide some measure of
social security and other benefits."
AND YET WITH ALL THIS, there is a vund
of change blowing in this country, the size of the
state of Ohio with less than a million population.
After years of phony unionism, a new national
center was organized early this year calling itself
the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO)
of Liberia. Last June it was accepted as a mem-
ber of the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions. The new federation is a splitoff from
the original Labor Congress of Liberia (LCL).
The federation is the first real step — small
as it is — in the direction of free trade unionism
in a country run as a benevolent, paternalistic
dictatorship by Pres. William V. S. Tubman,
a likeable, friendly man of 65 who has just
been elected to his fourth term and who has
held the office for 17 years.
There is no legal opposition nor is there an
opposition press. There is only one party, the
True Whig, and all members of the Liberian
House and Senate belong to this party.
Tubman is honorary president of the CIO as
well as its opposing LCL. He installed the offi-
cers at the Executive Mansion last March. Presi-
dent of the federation is T. O. Dosumu-Johnson,
Tubman's political and economic adviser. Secre-
tary is J. L. F. Sawyer, a senior civil servant at-
tached to the Bureau of Mines and Natural Re-
sources. Its executive vice-president, Col. J. B.
McGill, is a retired army officer who runs what
is considered the best union in Liberia, the Mech-
anics and Allied Workers Trade Union.
Tubman is also an intelligent, astute politician
with a sense of pride in his country. Too much
is happening in Africa for one of the oldest inde-
pendent states on this emerging continent to
stumble along a feudal road.
It is embarrassing to be charged in the Intl.
Labor Organization, as Liberia was last June,
with dealing in forced labor, with refusing to
apply the ILO forced labor convention the
government ratified in 1931. Prof. Milton R.
Konvitz of Cornell's School of Industrial and
Labor Relations has been retained to revise Li-
beria's antediluvian labor code so that it meets
ILO conventions and standards.
Given Liberia's economic potential, Tubman's
policy of expansion in public education (illiteracy
is about 90 percent) and teacher training and,
above all, his obvious realization that Liberia
must run scared if he's going to be an African
leader of consequence — and there's every reason
to hope that Liberian trade unionism may in
time become a meaningful force in this land.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13. 1960
Conservation Programs Needed Now:
Dwindling Natural Resources
Held Threat to Nation's Future
ITS ONE THING to know that we are using
up our natural resources so fast that in many
ways we will be a "have not" nation within 50
years. It's another thing to do something about it.
Only as we put conservation to work in specific
projects can we make the future look right for
the next generation. For the big squeeze is on
between the demands of our rapidly growing
population and dwindling natural resources, and
conservation holds the key to our future.
Here are some of the main problems, and
what we can do about them: -
• Water. We are now using over two-thirds
of our available fresh water for drinking and
domestic uses, and to meet the demands of agri-
culture and industry. The experts tell us that
within 20 years the East and Midwest will be
using all available water, and be forced to reuse
it too. Unless we find ways to increase the supply
and control the use of fresh water, many millions
of people will be forced to use, and even to
drink, purified sewage water.
Practically everything that can be done to
change this situation is in the hands of govern-
ment — local, state, regional or national. Here
they are:
Develop new supplies of fresh water and
bring it to the places needing it. This means
laws, engineering projects, financing running
into billions, determination of best uses be-
tween industry and agriculture, river basin
compacts because natural boundaries don't fit
neatly into man-made county and state lines.
It means a program to desalt sea water to
meet the needs of coastal cities, getting the costs
down to where this is practical. It means, too,
a rapidly expanding program of pollution con-
trol. Now the Federal Government puts up $1
for every $5 the cities invest in sewage treatment
plants, but this doesn't even allow making any
serious inroads on the immensity of the pollution
problem, and contamination of our rivers and
lakes is gaining ground.
With local tax sources overburdened, de-
spite the President's veto of the anti-pollution
budget, more federal money is needed badly
now. All these matters not only concern all
citizens, but they can do something about them
in an election year when candidates have to
state their position on such issues.
• Recreation has become a major conserva-
tion problem. It is a multimillion-dollar busi-
ness, too, as people find their leisure time hanging
heavy on their hands and the great outdoors
beckons. Boating, fishing, hunting, hiking, camp-
ing, bird watching, golfing, picknicking, horse-
back riding — the whole range of healthful out-
door recreation is vitally important not only to
us but to the next generation to follow. It has to
be planned for now.
Already overcrowded facilities and natural
Washington Reports:
recreational sites giving way to industry make
costs mount while raising the issue of providing
more space and preserving more natural beauty
for the enjoyment of all the people regardless
of their ability to own them individually. But
with another 100 million people joining us in
the next 40 years, the demands on our public
outdoor recreational facilities will be staggering.
What is needed right now is a well co-ordinated
and properly financed program to acquire local,
state and national parks, to establish and operate
more public picnic and camping facilities, to
create wilderness areas where nature can have
its way. An inventory of the sand dunes, forests,
lakes, sea and river shores has been made. If
the public does not acquire them now, commer-
cialization and speculation in such properties will
drive the price up high.
Even a slowly conservative, step-by-step effort
to buy these natural recreation sites has met with
the stubborn and successful resistance of a budg-
et-minded President.
• Forests are at the crossroads where saw
timber is fast becoming scarcer and costlier as
demand increases and we pay the price of the
"cut and get out" policies of the past. It is
only a matter of a few years now before the cost
of constructing tens of millions of new homes
leaps skyward just because of scarce lumber.
Right now we need a national program of
constructing access roads through forests to
get out the mature and down timber, and to
protect new and standing growth from fires and
other hazards. We Ji€ed to get started planting
the 50 million acres of forest land now carrying
too few or inferior trees.
• The Air now becomes a problem of major
concern. Air pollution by factories, refineries,
auto exhausts, trash burning, furnace smoke, is
proving harmful to humans and animals, to plants
and trees. Its control reaches beyond local com-
munities, on even to the federal government level.
• Energy sources are poorly distributed and
increasing in cost. There is still four-fifths of
the hydroelectric power potential of our falling
waters needing development. Yet no new starts
have been undertaken by this Administration
during its almost eight years in office. And the
development of our energy resources has been
held back a full generation. The failures of the
Federal Power Commission to act in behalf of
the consumers in regulating natural gas and elec-
tricity can cost the consumers millions of dollars.
—Public Affairs Institute
Edward P. Morgan, AFL-CIO-sponsored
radio commentator, is on vacation. His Mon-
day-through-Friday broadcasts, heard over the
ABC network at 7 p.m. (EDT), will be resumed
the week beginning Aug. 15.
Minimum Wage Improvements
Predicted by Javits, Randolph
CONGRESS WILL PASS a federal minimum
wage bill closer to the liberal Senate Com-
mittee version than the House measure, accord-
ing to Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) and Sen.
Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.). The senators
made the assertion in an interview on Washing-
ton Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public serv-
ice educational program.
The House passed a bill before the recess for
the conventions that would increase the minimum
to $1.15 from the present $1 and extend coverage
to about 1 million workers now unprotected. The
House added a "goof amendment that would
remove coverage from 14 million workers now
covered. Both senators said they expected this
"error" would be corrected.
The proposed Senate committee version, spon-
sored by Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) would
increase the minimum to $1.25 and extend cover-
age to 5 million more workers.
Sen. Randolph said: "My thinking is that
the Democratic leadership which solidly sup-
ports the Senate committee bill will tight along
with those of us on the Labor subcommittee to
ha\e something nearer to the Senate version
come out of conference. "
Sen. Javits said that the committee had "made
wide exclusions I think sufficient to satisfy any-
body who really had a legitimate complaint."
He said, "There are areas of the country in
almost every state where there is substandard
competition considering present conditions and
present living costs."
RANDOLPH SAID that so-called "inflation"
from a higher minimum is by no means as im-
portant as the "human" values. "The question
is whether or not working for less than a living
wage is to be encouraged or discouraged in the
United States of America," he declared.
Javits said: "Some problems may be created,
but I do not believe they can be compared to the
gains and that they would be insuperable or too
difficult."
On the threat of a presidential veto, Randolph
emphasized "The Administration's position on
coverage and the Senate version are not too far
apart. The Administration has taken a rather
adamant position against $1.25, saying $1.15
would suffice."
Javits said, "I believe the bill that will come
out of conference will be signed by the President.'^
^trs YOUR=
WASHINGTON
I
THE POST-CONVENTION session of Congress opened with
politics at the center of the stage, with the White House and Re-
publicans on Capitol Hill joining in demands that the majority
Democrats stop doing what they planned to do — pass some bills \
and debate an Eisenhower program instead.
The partisanship is inescapable in an election year, so natural
in the American scene that its absence would be astonishing.
There are risks for both parties. The risk for the Democrats
is that a surviving coalition of Republicans and southern con-
servative Democrats might frustrate the leadership and the party's
national ticket of Senators Kennedy and Johnson. The risk for
the Republicans is that too cynical a display of parliamentary
trickery might backfire.
Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.), the minority floor leader
who voted last spring to kill two Eisenhower civil rights proposals,
is scarcely the person to revive the proposals and claim that the
Democratic leaders are culpable in refusing to give them a second
priority.
For the record, the Senate debate last June shows clearly that
Johnson cited a minimum wage bill, a health care bill including
social security financing, and a federal school-aid bill as measures
that Congress would have to confront when it returned from the
conventions.
Discussing the Kennedy minimum wage bill reported by the Sen-
ate Labor Committee, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) served floor
notice directly to Johnson that he had more than 20 amendments
to offer and that he would want to discuss them for at least "three
days."
He did not think the Democrats would be able to push through
a minimum wage bill, said Goldwater candidly, if they were to
try to do it within the 12 days or so before the Los Angeles Na-
tional Convention was to open July 11. This was one bill alone
—disregarding school aid, health care, jobsite picketing and other
measures then on the Senate calendar or Hearing it.
What the candidates take into the campaign will be the record
of what they and their parties have achieved or fought to achieve
not the trickery and maneuver that may furnish a technique of
blocking bills that- have been long considered and should be passed.
* * *
THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE may be the most formi-
dable obstacle for the Democratic leadership.
Both houses have passed school-aid bills, but the Rules Com-
mittee refuses to let them go to a conference committee for com-
promise. The housing bill has been passed by the Senate and
cleared by the House Banking Committee. The picketing meas-
ure has been approved by the Labor Committee. The Rules unit
has blocked them from the floor.
The Senate may substantially expand both the minimum wage
bill and the social security bill passed by the House. Once again
the Rules Committee could become an obstacle, because it might
seek to prevent final action by declining to let the measures be com-
promised between House and Senate versions.
The iron power of the Rules Committee was a plague to Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt, who in 1938 felt compelled to seek to assert his
party leadership by seeking defeat of conservative Democrats who
from key committee positions fought New Deal proposals.
The so-called "purge" failed in most cases, but Roosevelt suc-
ceeded in producing the defeat of Rep. John O'Connor (D-N. Y.),
who used his Rules Committee chairmanship of the day to delay
or kill minimum wage, social security and other liberal measures
just as Chairman Howard W. Smith (D-Va.) does today.
It is an old problem — and unless it is met squarely and effec-
tively, the system may be a torment to future liberal presidents
even when the people elect them.
Six members of the 12-member committee, most of them so ob-
scure that their names are unknown nationally, can stubbornly
frustrate the legislative objectives of the White House, when it has
them, and the majority of both houses of Congress. It is a situa-
tion that obviously requires reform.
THREATS OF A VETO on minimum wage increase and extension
of coverage were discounted by Sen. Jennings Randolph (D-W.
Va.), left, and Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.) as they were inter-
viewed on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public
service radio program.
Page Six
IATSE Hits 'Work' Lttws:
HELICOPTER LANDING on the grounds of the state capitol at Olympia, Wash., carried the last
of 110,000 signatures which guaranteed a place on the ballot for an initiative providing union recog-
nition for state employes. Left to right are: State, County & Municipal Employes Rep. Robert Henry;
Joseph Lewis, an AFSCME member who, as a gardener at the state capitol, arranged for the landing
of the helicopter; Pres. N. B. Crippen of the State AFSCME council; Washington Secretary of State
Victor A. Meyers, who accepted the petitions; AFSCME State Exec. Sec. Norman Schut and Treas.
Donald Hall. Members of federal employe unions helped in the drive.
AFL-CIO Raps Tax Loophole on
Dividends as Bonus for Wealthy
The AFL-CIO has called for a closing of the tax loopholes for dividend income, pointing to a
university study as demonstrating that privileges under the Eisenhower Administration's 1954 tax law
"go to the tiny minority of wealthy families who have large stockholdings." m
The appeal and the charge were made in the current issue of Economic Trends and Outlook, pub-
lication of the AFL-CIO Economic Policy Commitee. AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther is
chairman of the group
Of every 100 American fam-
ilies, 86 own not a single share
of publicly-traded common stock,
according to a recent study made
by the Survey Research Center
of the University of Michigan,
the AFL-CIO noted.
Only 14.3 percent — or 7.7 mil-
lion families — own any stock. The
majority of these families, 4.8 mil-
lion of them, own less than $5,000
worth of stock each.
"The result," commented the
AFL-CIO publication, "is that only
a tiny minority of Americans get
a major benefit from the tax ad-
vantages for stockholders."
The Michigan study estimated
only 2 percent of the stock owners
have a diversified portfolio of seven
or more stock issues.
The non-stockholders pay higher
taxes on their earned income from
wages and salaries, the AFL-CIO
emphasized since the 1954 tax law
changes gave the minority of fami-
lies who own stock these benefits:
a deduction on the first $50 — $100
if married — of dividend income
and a 4 percent tax credit on addi-
tional dividend income.
The AFL-CIO said this is
how it works: A married couple
with an income of $5,000 from
dividends pays a federal income
tax of $513.60 because of the
NLRB Sets Hearing on
Key L-G Picketing Cases
The National Labor Relations Board has announced it will hear
oral arguments Sept. 8 in four leading cases growing out of the
Landrum-Griffin Act's restrictions on organizational and recognition
picketing.
The board said the cases, selected from a larger group now pend-
ing, contain representative issues'^
in the interpretation of the new
L-G restrictions.
The four key cases involve: Hod
Carriers Local 840 and Blinne
Construction Co., Kansas City,
Kan.; Hotel and Restaurant Em-
ployes Local 681 and Crown Cafe-
teria and Peter W. Irwin, Long
Beach, Calif.; Hotel and Restau-
rant Employes Locals 89 and 1
and Stork Club Restaurant, New
York City; Teamsters Local 705
and Cartage and Terminal Man-
agement Corp., Chicago.
In the Stork Club and Crown
Cafeteria cases, the NLRB trial
examiners recommended dismissal
of the complaints. In the Blinne
and Cartage cases, the trial ex-
aminers found violations of the
new law.
The pertinent section of L-G
regulates picketing or threats
of picketing by an uncertified
union with the object of organiz-
ing or forcing bargaining recog-
nition. A subsection bars pic-
keting unless a petition for an
election is filed "within a rea-
sonable period of time not to
exceed 30 days/'
The same subsection permits
informational picketing.
In the Crown case, the hotel
workers picketed to obtain recog-
nition and to appeal to customers
not to patronize the cafeteria. The
examiner found this a lawful object
and method and recommended dis-
missal.
The Stork Club case involves
similar issues and an additional
point raised by the examiner
when he urged dismissal of the
complaint. At issue is the pub-
licly-announced withdrawal of
a prior demand for recognition.
The Blinne case concerns pick-
eting to protest an alleged refusal
to recognize or bargain. The ex-
aminer's finding was the first that
held peaceful picketing to be an
unfair labor practice, even if con-
ducted by a majority union.
The Cartage case involves a
situation where the examiner held
the employer had "offered recog-
nition and accepted recognition,
which the union refused." He
found the union violated the law
by picketing to impose certain
conditions on the employer.
"twofold tax break." The wage-
earner with the same income pays
a federal income tax of $660—
an extra $146.40.
Even among stockholders, the
1954 tax revisions are unfair, the
AFL-CIO adds, since the changes
favor those with huge stockhold-
ings.
At a 5 percent dividend rate,
the AFL-CIO said, the family with
$2,000 worth of stock would get
$100 in dividend income and be
entitled to deduct all of it on a
joint return but receive no benefit
from the 4 percent tax credit al-
lowed after the first $100. On a
tax rate of ! 25 percent, their tax
saving is estimated at $25.
By contrast, the AFL-CIO
added, the family with stock-
holdings worth $100,000 would
receive about $5,000 in divi-
dends. They deduct the first
$100 and apply the 4 percent tax
credit to the remaining $4,900.
If their tax rate is 45 percent,
their income tax saving amounts
to $241.
The Economic Policy Commit-
tee observed that the Michigan
study found stock ownership con-
centrated among families of man-
agement officials, business execu-
tives and professionals.
Only 1 percent of families of
skilled craftsmen and less than 1
percent of families headed by un-
skilled workers and service em-
ployees have stockholdings of over
$5,000. Stock ownership among
farm families is similar to the
skilled group.
Pointing to the 2 percent of
families with large stockholdings,
the AFL-CIO declared:
"It is ironic that the Adminis-
tration is proud of vetoing the
$250 million depressed area bill
— to aid communities of chronic-
ally high unemployment — but
has opposed efforts to close this
dividend loophole which costs
the U.S. Treasury an estimated
$400-500 million per year/'
Neither the tax structure nor
the concept of a democratic society
can condone such "special privi-
lege for those few who have so
many privileges already,*' the AFL-
CIO said in urging that the loop-
hole be closed.
Stage Union Asks
Curb on 'Runaways'
Chicago — Action to curb the growing practice of U.S. movie
makers in producing films abroad was taken on several fronts
here by the 45th biennial convention of the Theatrical Stage Em-
ployes.
The 1,200 delegates meeting at the Conrad Hilton Hotel called
on the union to use all of its power'f;
and influence to halt "runaway" film
production by American firms for
the American market. Because of
legal restrictions, they turned down
a proposal to boycott "runaway"
films.
The convention urged Con-
gress to end special tax privileges
for people in the entertainment
industry and called for govern-
ment subsidies to independent
producers who make films com-
pletely in the U.S.
Differences over "Pay TV" were
settled when opposing factions
withdrew their resolutions. The
22 West Coast studio locals are in
favor of pay TV. The motion pic-
ture theater projectionists feel paid
television will lead to the further
closing of movie houses. IATSE
Pres. Richard Walsh, an AFL-CIO
vice president, announced the con-
troversy will be handled within the
framework of the union.
Walsh, who has been IATSE
president for 18 years, was re-
elected without opposition at the
closing session for another two-
year term.
Also re-elected without opposi-
tion were Sec.-Treas. Harland
Holmden and nine vice presidents:
James J. Brennan, Carl G. Cooper,
Harry J. Abbott, Orin W. Jacobson,
Hugh J. Sedgwick. Albert S. John-
sone, John A. Shuff, Le Roy Upton
and Jerry Tomasetti.
Ask Wage-Hour Coverage
In other resolutions the dele-
gates called on Congress to bring
theater employes under minimum
wage law protection, sent jurisdic-
tion matters to a special committee,
asked closer cooperation between
local unions in organizing efforts,
and announced support of the For-
and bill.
The convention urged that local
unions support presidential and
congressional candidates who are
on record as being in favor of
repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act,
Landrum-Griffin Act and all state
"right-to-work" laws. It also asked
legislation to halt the rise in living
costs and a reduction in the Social
Security retirement age to 60 years.
Delegates approved a pension
plan for the international officers
and turned down a measure call-
ing for a tax on "runaway" films
for the benefit of the union's pen-
sion and welfare fund.
Speakers at the four-day session
included AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany: William A. Lee, president
of the Chicago Federation of La-
bor; Joseph D. Keenan, secretary
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers; Joseph Lewis, sec-
retary of the AFL-CIO Union
Label and Service Trades Dept.,
Director James L. McDevitt of the
AFL-CIO Committee on Political
Education.
The original resolution on plug-
ging tax loopholes said, "... that
appropriate action be taken by this
convention to recommend to Con-
gress that an American citizen who
resides outside of the United States
shall be entitled to no tax exemp-
tions until and unless such person or
company has been a non-resident
of the United States for at least
10 years." The approved draft was
changed to plug loopholes only
for people in the entertainment
industry.
Subsidies Asked
Proposal for subsidies for U.S.-
made film makers asked that the
parley "go on record as recom-
mending to the Senate Finance
Committee and such other govern-
ment agencies as may hear this
problem to set up subsidies for in-
dependent producers who engage in
motion picture production com-
pletely within the United States . .
This measure was adopted in an
effort to counteract subsidies of-
fered movie makers by foreign
countries.
Trusteeship to End
Segregation Upheld
The U.S. Labor Dept. has upheld the action of the Auto Workers
in placing under trusteeship a Memphis local which refused to de-
segregate washrooms and drinking fountains in the union meeting
hall.
The government rejected a complaint from a group of members
of the local charging the trustee- ?
ship was not established for pur-
poses authorized by the Landrum-
Griffin Act. The group also
charged the international had no
right "to force integration."
The Labor Dept. pointed out
that an objective of the UAW's
constitution is "to unite in one
organization regardless of re-
ligion,, race, creed, color, politi-
cal affiliation or nationality, all
employes under the jurisdiction
of the international union."
In ruling in favor of the inter-
national, the Labor Dept. said an
inquiry by its Bureau of Labor-
Management Reports showed the
UAW had followed the union's
procedural requirements and set
up the trusteeship to carry out
legitimate objectives.
About 500 of the 1 ,800 members
of Memphis Local 988 are Ne-
gro. Over a two-year period,
members repeatedly petitioned the
international to act.
These members, the Labor
Dept. reported, sought action to
end racial discrimination and
segregation, "alleging systematic
exclusion of Negroes from all
union committees and segrega-
tion of rest rooms and water
coolers in the union hall."
The UAW executive board, after
conducting a hearing last January,
adopted a resolution authorizing
a trusteeship over the local.
The UAW, in a report to the
Labor Dept., said it instituted the
trusteeship action because "the
local union was continuing a
course of discriminatory and un-
equal treatment of members on the
grounds of race and particularly
in the maintenance of separate
washroom facilities for the exclu-
sive use of white and non-white
members respectively. . . ."
Labor to Participate
In Pollution Meeting
Representatives of labor and
other civic groups have been asked
to meet in Washington Dec. 12 for
the opening of the first federally
sponsored Conference on Water
Pollution. The object will be to
mobilize public opinion behirid a
program for clean water supplies.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1960
Page Seven
Asks 'Protection' Against Unions:
California GOP Lines Up
On Side of Big Growers
Sacramento, Calif, — California's Republican party has joined the state's big growers and growers'
associations in a slap at farm workers and the AFL-CIO's farm labor organizing drive.
The Republican party convention threw its weight, with just two dissenting votes, behind a plat
form demand for "positive protection ... by law to prevent perishable crop losses through harass
ment by organizations pursuing unfair organizing methods and improper labor objectives."
In the context of picket lines
at "factory farms" in this state,
the GOP resolution was inter-
preted as hitting directly at or-
ganizing efforts of the AFL-CIO
Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee.
The earlier Democratic state
convention, which was working on
a platform plank on the imported
farm labor program and other prob-
lems of farm workers, was forced
to adjourn without action by a
minority of farm county Demo-
crats.
Both party conventions, meeting
here on succeeding weekends, ad-
journed in the midst of sharp de-
bate and turmoil. The Republi-
cans quit without taking a stand
on a legislative reapportionment
proposition which is on the state's
Nov. 8 ballot.
The Republicans did approve
an agricultural labor plank
which, according to a State AFL-
CIO spokesman, would bring the
organization rights of workers
"up to the beginning of the 19th
century."
In addition to demanding "posi-
tive protection ... by law" against
organizing drives, the Republicans
applauded current efforts of big
growers and their associations to
recruit strikebreakers, both domes-
tics and Mexican nationals. They
also supported the "bracero" im-
portation program without any re-
vision to protect domestic workers
and their wages and working con-
ditions.
Action Delayed
Extension of the "bracero" im-
port program without change was
the major goal sought by the hand-
ful of rural Democrats in that
party's convention a week earlier.
They also sought to ignore the
Retail Employers Seek
To Kill Wage-Hour Bill
Powerful employer groups have joined forces for a last-ditch
fight to scuttle minimum-wage legislation this year. Trade associa-
tions in the retail and service industries, presently exempt from the
Fair Labor Standards Act, have formed a special lobbying group
headed by Rowland Jones, Jr., president of the American Retail
Federation. ^
Goal of the new group, accord-
ing to the Daily News Record, in-
dustry trade publication, is to emas-
culate — if it cannot kill outright —
any extension of the wage-hour law
to retail and service establishments.
The lobbying group, which calls
itself the Distribution Services Plan-
ning Committee, has adopted as its
legislative hero Sen. Barry Gold-
water (R-Ariz.), who has proposed
26 weakening amendments to the
labor-backed Kennedy bill.
This bill, as reported by the Sen-
ate Labor Committee, would ex-
tend coverage to an additional 5
million workers, raise the minimum
wage in steps to $1.25 an hour and
reduce the maximum hours of
straight-time work for newly-cov-
ered workers to 40 hours in three
steps.
Goldwater, a Phoenix depart-
ment store owner and leader of
the extreme right-wing forces in
Congress, has proposed amend-
ments ranging from elimination of
all retail wage-hour coverage to
proposals which would deprive
workers of all but a handful of
giant enterprises of any benefit
from the law.
The Daily News Record quoted
a member of the retailers' lobbying
group as describing the new com-
mittee as a "flying squad" whose
main duty would be to supply
speech material and other informa-
tion to legislators and to keep tabs
on the attitudes of members of
Congress. .
The retail trade groups have
called for a "grass roots" drive by
their members to influence legisla-
tors. The Washington representa-
tive for the National Association of
Retail Grocers was named vice
chairman of the committee.
AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers
Organizing Committee drive and
the part the "bracero" program
plays in undermining farm labor
conditions.
Strong proposals on these
points were delayed in the Plat-
form Committee until the early
hours of the morning. When the
farm labor plank was finally
ready to be acted on, a quorum
call forced an abrupt adjourn-
ment.
The Democratic State Central
Committee sought to fill the gap
next day by adopting the total labor
plank as a resolution "to be
deemed " part of the convention
platform.
The committee's plank noted
that California's "farm workers are
rising against their unfortunate lot
and years of accumulated neglect."
It called for extension to farm
workers of federal and state labor
laws, including minimum wages
guarantees of their rights of or-
ganization and collective bargain-
ing, unemployment and disability
insurance.
The committee also called for
"reforms" in foreign labor im-
portation programs to insure that
foreign labor is brought in only
where need has been "conclu-
sively demonstrated," with ade-
quate safeguards for domestic
labor's wages and working con-
ditions which give "meaningful
effect to the prior rights of em-
ployment of domestics."
Tariff Protection
Sought by Hatters
New York — The Hatters have
petitioned the U.S. Tariff Com-
mission for relief from increasing
imports of the women's fur felt hat
bodies which will, the union says,
destroy a substantial portion of the
hat industry unless checked by an
increase in import duties.
The application was filed for the
men's hat, cap and millinery indus-
tries, and the handbag and luggage
industries under a law providing
that the Tariff Commission can rec-
ommend to the President, after
an investigation, that duties may
be increased where imports threaten
"destruction" of an industry.
SIGN-UP DAY at the U.S. Dept. of Labor brought in 140 new members for Lodge 12 of the Gov-
ernment Employes in a whirlwind climax to a membership drive. Here the shop stewards who sparked
the drive turn in the membership applications obtained in the one-day blitz. Blueprint for the
project was an article by AFL-CIO Organization Dir. John Livingston which appeared in a recent
issue of the AFL-CIO Education News and Views.
Heavy, Heavy Hangs . . .
Senate in Full-Scale
Minimum Wage Fight
(Continued from Page 1)
sage to Congress demanding pas-
sage of a 21 -point program includ-
ing civil rights and a depressed-area
bill — although he has twice vetoed
depressed -area measures passed
with bipartisan sponsorship.
• Herbert Klein, press secretary
to Nixon, in a news conference
cited the Republican nominee as
regretful about the "irresponsi-
bility" of the Democrats on the
suddenly revived Eisenhower civil
rights proposals.
• Sen. Everett McKinley Dirk-
sen (R-Ill.), GOP floor leader who
voted to kill both these proposals
last spring, sponsored the resusci
tated measure, and Republicans in
dicated they might add civil rights
'"riders" to any bills the Democrats
seek to pass.
Party-Line Vote
The Dirksen bill was tabled by a
largely party-line vote, only four
Democrats voting against tabling
and only two Republicans voting in
favor.
Both Kennedy and Johnson, in-
terpreting the Dirksen move as de-
signed to embarrass the Democrats
by exploiting the possibility of a
southern Democratic filibuster,
voted to table the bill.
The motion to table was made
by Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.),
who with Sen. Hubert H. Hum-
phrey (D-Minn.) issued a statement
upholding the Kennedy-Johnson de-
cision to push first for action on
major bills ready or nearly ready
for floor debate. The Clark-Hum-
phrey statement charged the GOP
with seeking "to prevent the enact-
ment" of minimum wage and
school-aid bills "and exploit the
civil rights issue for political pur-
poses only."
Kennedy opened the minimum
wage debate after the Senate by
a 66-to-21 vote had ratified the
12-nation treaty dedicating the
Antarctic Continent to interna-
tional control and peaceful de-
velopment.
"Conscience and good business
sense" demand passage of the Sen-
ate committee bill, he said.
Kennedy Cites Benefits
Lashing the expected drive to
knock out the proposed coverage
for some 3.5 million retail workers
not now protected by the minimum
wage, Kennedy pointed out that
retail trade associations have per-
sistently demanded restrictive fed-
eral laws against strikes and picket-
ing. They cannot any longer
claim exemption from federal wage
legislation, he said.
The proposed increase in the
statutory minimum wage to $1.25
an hour would have little adverse
effect on business and employment,
he said, and cited a Dept. of La-
bor report showing that a larger
percentage increase in 1955 had
little or no undesirable impact.
Passage of the bill would increase
purchasing power, give a "fairer
opportunity" to the country's low-
est-paid workers, and eliminate un-
fair competition to "employers who
pay a decent wage," the Massachu-
setts senator declared.
The Goldwater amendments in-
volve interlocking proposals to re-
duce or eliminate coverage of re-
tail workers. The Holland amend-
ment represents a conservative
southern Democratic move to give
a bipartisan coloration to the as-
sault on the committee bill.
Goldwater said on the Senate
floor that he believed the Eisen-
hower Administration was willing
to accept a new minimum of $1.15
an hour plus coverage for an addi-
tional 2.5 million workers.
Kennedy pointed out that in
1959 the Administration had de-
clined to recommend any in-
crease in the wage standard but
agreed to a "modest increase"
this year, which was credited with
meaning $1.10 or $1.15.
The House has passed a bill lim-
iting additional coverage to about
1 million workers and raising the
minimum to $1.15. It was ap-
proved by a coalition of Republi-
cans and southern Democrats as a
substitute for a broader House La-
bor Committee bill sponsored by
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.).
Passage of a more liberal Senate
version might force a Senate-House
conference committee to reach
agreement on a compromise.
Goldwater 'Pickets 9
Committee Meeting
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-
Ariz.) was flummoxed by the
rules when he tried to prevent
Senate Labor subcommittee
approval of the situs picket-
ing bill by "picketing" the
subcommittee from the door-
way of the meeting room.
"Be fair," cried Goldwater
as he teetered on the thresh-
old, claiming he wasn't "pres-
ent" to provide a quorum but
was, too, "present" to argue
that without him there wasn't
a quorum.
On advice of the Senate
parliamentarian, Subcommit-
tee Chairman John F. Ken-
nedy (D-Mass.) ruled that
Goldwater couldn't have it
both ways. The bill was ap-
proved, 3 to 0.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1960
Meany Urges Action:
Automation Seen as
Federal Problem
The federal government should assume the major responsibility
for cushioning the impact of automation upon working people and
local communities, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has declared
in a statement presented to the Joint Economic Committee.
"Only in an economy that is growing rapidly and creating new
job opportunities at a fast pace 1 "
can the dislocations of automation
be held to a minimum," Meany
said.
He pointed out that the Em-
ployment Act of 1946 obligates
the government to pursue pol-
icies "to promote maximum em-
ployment, production and pur-
chasing power."
Meany observed that automation
promises long-run social and eco-
nomic gains but, he warned, over
Construction
Wages Rise
2.8 Percent
By
Hourly wage rates of union build-
ing trades workers rose an average
2.8 percent during the three months
ending July 1, 1960, according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
quarterly survey of seven major
construction trades in 100 cities.
The increase was slightly less than
the 3 percent gain in the corre-
sponding 1959 period and equaled
the increase recorded in the second
quarter of 1958.
BLS said wage negotiations in
contract reopenings during the
spring and early summer advanced
the average hourly rates for all
building trades workers 9.8 cents
during the second quarter of 1960.
The increases ranged from 6.3 cents
for plasterers to 10.9 cents for car-
penters. For bricklayers and elec-
tricians, the advances averaged 10
cents.
On July 1, 1960, the estimated
average wage rate was $3.65 an
hour for all union tradesmen com-
bined. Pay scales went up for two-
thirds of the workers surveyed.
They advanced for 76 percent of
the carpenters and for 56 to 66
percent of workers in each of the
other trades.
Average rates listed in the survey
were $4.18 for bricklayers, $4.01
for plasterers and plumbers, $4 for
electricians, $3.77 for carpenters,
$3.54 for painters, $2.78 for build-
ing laborers. The averages do not
include sums set aside for insur-
ance, pension, or vacation funds.
the transition period of the next
10 to 20 years, "the widespread
and rapid introduction of radical
technological change can create
vast social and economic disrup-
tions."
"Many specific and localized
problems related to rapid and ra-
dical technological change can be
handled through collective bargain-
ing, labor-management cooperation
and joint community efforts, as-
sisted by the federal government.
* k But the major responsibility
for providing adequate safe-
guards and cushions for adjust-
ments to rapid technological
change," Meany told the com-
mittee, "lies with the federal
government."
He said the benefits of the new
technology should be widely shared
"to raise living standards, strength-
en national defense, increase lei-
sure and improve housing, educa-
tion, health, community and rec-
reational facilities, mass transpor-
tation and natural resources."
Improvements Needed
"Substantial improvements" in
the unemployment compensation
system are needed to cushion the
impact on displaced workers and
those whose skills are made obso-
lete and require retraining, Meany
warned.
A broad federal program of fi-
nancial and technical aid for the
increasing number of economical-
ly-distressed communities also is
needed, he added, together with
improvement of the social security
system, and wage-hour law.
Reduced hours should be
sought through federal law as
well as through collective bar-
gaining, he told the committee.
The nation's educational system
and vocational training facilities
should be improved to meet the
demands of a rapidly-changing
economy, he continued. He also
proposed a continuing review by a
government agency of the progress
of technological change so govern-
ment and private policies can keep
pace.
"Above all," Meany stressed,
"the government should encourage
a rapid pace of economic growth."
5.4 Percent Unemployed
As Factory Jobs Drop
(Continued from Page 1) ^
but "all the drop and more" oc-
curred among teenagers.
While unemployment among
adults 25 years and over rose by
153,000, unemployment in the
14-to-24 year old group plum-
meted by 562,000. The teen-
agers, he said, "found jobs."
Wolfbein confirmed that the
increased unemployment among
breadwinners was reflected in the
higher levels of those drawing un-
employment compensation. Those
with no previous work experience,
like the teenagers, are ineligible for
jobless pay, he noted.
An accompanying report showed
that unemployment compensation
recipients totaled 1.869 million for
the week ending July 16 — 367,000
higher than the total recipients for
the comparable week in July a year
ago. The latest total was 1.817
million for the week ending July
30. These totals are conservative
in revealing total unemployment
since they omit those who have ex-
hausted benefits as well as those
ineligible.
The July report showed that
manufacturing employment fell
by 158,000 to a total of 16.3
million. The chief declines were
in the steel sector, with a loss of
43,000 jobs, and in the auto in-
dustry, where a drop of 27,000
was reported.
The steel decline since last Feb-
ruary now totals about 120,000.
The drop in auto jobs was tied to
the model changeover.
Another warning sign remained
unchanged. The long-term unem-
ployed — those jobless 15 weeks or
longer — rose slightly by 18,000 to
a total of 834,000 for July. A year
ago this group totaled 817,000.
The July figure compares to a total
of 494,000 for the pre-recession
July of 1957.
The Labor Dept. also reported a
seasonal drop of 12 minutes to an
average factory workweek of 39.8
hours. As a result of this re-
duced time, average factory earn-
ings dipped by 46 cents over the
month to $91.14 a week, while
hourly earnings held steady at
$2.29.
CARGO CARRYING NUCLEAR-POWERED submarines can
revitalize America's merchant marine, and future sea lanes will
run under the North Pole, predicted A. F. Young, Washington
director of the Iron Shipbuilders Intl. Marine Council. Young (left)
accepts a plaque from Pres. J. A. Sullivan of the Gulf Coast Iron
Shipbuilders Intl. Marine Council at the latter's recent New Orleans
convention.
Steel Union Asks Plan
To Avert 'Depression 9
Congress must act now if the current "depression" in the steel
industry is to be prevented from spreading to the "rest of the econ-
omy, the Intl. Wage Policy Committee of the Steelworkers said
in a statement adopted at a meeting in Washington.
The statement was released by USWA Pres. David J. McDonald,
who said the committeemen would 1 ^
call on senators and representatives
to express concern about. the 135,-
000 union members who are un-
employed and the 350,000 who
are working less than a full week —
almost half the total membership.
The 171-member committee
approved a 10-point program
aimed at restoring full employ-
ment, including amendment of
the Fair Labor Standards Act
next year to establish a 32-hour
week.
On the question of a possible
USWA backing of a presidential
candidate, McDonald said the
union convention will consider en-
dorsements when it meets in At-
lantic City, N. J., starting Sept.
19. The principal convention
speaker will be Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy (D-Mass.), the Democratic
nominee for president, McDonald
announced.
This is the 10-point program
endorsed by the Wage Policy Com-
mittee:
• Implementation of the Em-
ployment Act of 1946 by appro-
priate federal, fiscal and financial
actions.
• Raising and extending unem-
ployment compensation benefits, as
specified in the Kennedy-McCarthy
bill.
• Adequate economic aid for
distressed areas, as proposed by
Sen. Paul Douglas (D-Ill.) and
others.
• A federal school construction
bill, whose enactment has been
"frustrated" by the House Rules
Committee.
• A program of medical care
insurance for retired workers,
solidly based on Social Security
and~ without a means test.
• An expanded federal housing
program, now tied up in the House
Rules Committee.
• A broad public works pro-
gram.
• Correction of the "folly of
higher-and-higher interest rates"
and a harder-and-harder money
policy when consumption is falling
behind production.
• An increase in federal mini-
mum wage to $1.25 an hour, ex-
pansion of coverage to additional
millions of workers, and reduction
of the 40-hour workweek to 32
hours.
• Establishment of a Commis-
sion on Continuing Prosperity as
proposed in the Kefauver-Holland
bill.
Asserting that the steel industry
is losing production at the rate of
70 million tons a year and is per-
mitting the Soviet industry to out-
strip us, the committee said:
"If remedial measures are not
taken, the depression in steel will
continue to spread to more indus-
tries, with disastrous consequences.
"A recent government report
by the Secretary of Labor shows
that productivity in steel in-
creased by a record-breaking 12
percent — tops in American in-
dustry. The Steelworkers, hav-
ing done their part, have a right
to expect the steel industry to
join with the union in urging that
Congress act ... to end the de-
pression in steel.
"The time to act is now, not
next January when the nation may
very well face a full-fledged de-
pression."
Film Extras
Win Major
Contract Gains
Hollywood — Agreement on
terms of a new contract covering
extra players in all forms of mo-
tion pictures was reached Aug. 7
by the Screen Extras Guild, the
Alliance of Television Film Pro-
ducers and the Association of Mo-
tion Picture Producers. The new
four-vcar pact will run until June
30, i964.
Announcement of the agreement
was made by Jeffery Sayre and H.
CTNeil Shanks, SEG president and
executive secretary respectively,
Richard Jencks. ATFP president,
and Charles S. Boren, AMPP ex-
ecutive vice-president.
The contract settlement was
reached after union members
had voted 1,579 to 188 to autho-
rize a strike against the television
film producers, if necessary. The
more than 9-to-l margin for
the strike vote was a record for
unions in the entertainment in-
dustry here.
The agreement covers extras in
theatrical and television films, com-
mercial films and in industrial and
other types of films.
Highlights of the agreement are:
# Minimum salary scales in all
categories are increased 10 per-
cent starting June 1, 1960 for the
first two years of the contract and
an additional 5 percent for the
last two years. Examples of im-
mediate increases are: general ex-
tra players from $22.05 per day
to $24.25; dress and riders from
$29.04 per day to $31.94; and si-
lent bit extras from $61.33 per day
to $67.46.
• Extras are to be partici-
pants in a health and welfare
plan to which the motion picture
and television film industries will
make an initial $50,000 contri-
bution prorated among all pro-
09-tl-8
ducers. Subsequent employer
contributions are to be on an
equivalent percentage basis as
that of the Screen Actors Guild
Health and Welfare Plan (be-
tween 2 and 2.5 percent).
• There is retroactive adjust-
ment for the period of Apr. 2,
1959, through Oct. 1, 1959, of
01.20 per day (based on 15 cents
per hour).
Court Orders B&C
To Rehire 4 on Staff
A federal judge has ordered the Bakery & Confectionery Workers
to reinstate four international representatives who charged they were
fired because of their opposition to B&C Pres. James G. Cross and
their desire to clean up the union as a step towards rcadmission to
the AFL-CIO.
The union was expelled by the^
federation in 1957 on findings of
corrupt leadership.
A preliminary injunction, issued
by U.S. District Court Judge
George L. Hart, Jr., in the District
of Columbia, also barred the ex-
ecutive board from proceedings
with scheduled trials of two of the
Cross opponents who are vice pres-
idents. The two, Max Kralstein of
New York and Henry Alvino of
Pittsburgh, had been charged with
"fostering secession."
Hart, citing provisions of the
Landrum-Griffin Act, also en-
joined the B&C from discharging
or disciplining anyone for sup-
porting legal action aimed at
seeking the ouster of Cross. A
group of local unions in the
B&C have petitioned for a new
convention. Hart set Sept. 15
for further hearings on the intra-
union dispute.
The B&C attorney, opposing re-
instatement of the ousted repre-
sentatives, said the firings were
economy moves, based on the fact
that the union has lost half its
membership since its expulsion
from the AFL-CIO and the charter-
ing of the American Bakery &
Confectionery Workers. He said
it "would be a denial of manage-
ment rights" for the court to re-
quire the B&C to reinstate the four
representatives.
Council Launches Massive
Election Registration Drive
Vol. v
Issued weekly at
S15 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6. D. C
$2 a year
^©SS^S^ Saturday, August 20, 1960
Second Claes P»«t*ge Paid at WaeMnataa. D. C.
No. 34
Wage Bill
Headed for
Senate Vote
By Dave Perlman
The Kennedy minimum wage
bill appeared headed for Senate
passage after surviving two major
attacks by a conservative coalition
and two other modifying amend-
ments.
There still remained a possi-
bility that piecemeal amendments
would trim back somewhat the
extension of coverage in the bill
to 5 million additional workers.
But the biggest hurdle ahead ap-
peared to be the sharp difference
between the Senate bill and the
-much weaker House bill passed be-
fore Congress recessed.
Sen. John F. Kennedy (Mass.),
the Democratic presidential candi-
date, and his running mate, Major-
ity Leader Lyndon B. Johnson
(Tex.), staked their prestige in a
fight against attempts to emasculate
the coverage provision of the bill
and limit the increase in the mini-
mum wage to $1.15, without the
step-ups to $1.25 provided in the
committee-approved bill.
The Senate, after a sharp debate,
turned down by a 50-48 vote an
amendment by Sen. A. S. (Mike)
Monroney (D-Okla.) that might
have narrowed coverage in some
degree but would not have disturbed
the committee bill's provision for a
gradual increase of the minimum
wage to $1.25.
It also defeated, 56 to 41, an
amendment by Sen. Winston L.
Prouty (R-Vt.) that would have
slashed the minimum wage for
newly covered workers to $1.10 an
hour and would have removed an
estimated 1 million from the com-
mittee bill's proposed 5 million ad-
ditional.
Forty-nine Democrats voted
(Continued on Page 12)
Labor Day Radio
Speeches Scheduled
Four AFL-CIO officials
will speak on national radio
networks on Labor Day, Sept.
5, on the role of trade unions
in American society. Here
is the schedule:
Pres. George Meany will
be heard on the American
Broadcasting Co. network at
7:15 p.m., EDT.
Vice Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther will appear on the Co-
lumbia Broadcasting System
at 8:15 p.m., EDT.
Vice Pres. Al J. Hayes will
broadcast over the Mutual
Broadcasting System at 9:15
p.m., EDT.
Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler will talk on the
National Broadcasting Co.
network at 9:30 p.m., EDT.
BENEATH GIANT PHOTOGRAPH showing late President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt signing Social Security Act on Aug. 14,
1935, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany addresses dinner in Chicago
at which trade union movement celebrated twenty-fifth anniversary
of the wide-ranging social security system.
6 Union-Busting' Charged :
U.S. Boycott of Sears
Is Called by Council
Chicago — A nationwide consumer boycott of the giant Sears
Roebuck & Co. chain to combat the company's "union-busting"
tactics has been launched by the AFL-CIO.
The federation's Executive Council endorsed the national boy-
cott invoked by the National Chain Store Committee of the Retail
Clerks and the San Francisco labor^
movement, declaring it would re-
main in effect until the 1,500-store
company "ceases to interfere with
the self-organization of employes
and until it demonstrates good-
faith acceptance of union security
clauses in contracts." (See text of
statement Page 5.)
At the same time there were
these other developments:
• The San Francisco Labor
Council, through Sec. George W.
Johns, asked the Federal Mediation
& Conciliation Service to invite top
Sears officials to take part in "re-
sponsible negotiations" to settle the
local labor dispute.
• From Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, General Sec. Erich
Kissel of the 2.5-million-member
Intl. Federation of Commercial
Clerical & Technical Employes
cabled Sears Roebuck denouncing
the "arbitrary and unfair" action
of the company in firing union
workers.
Tied to Shefferman
• A California Dept. of Em-
ployment referee ruled, in the first
of a series of appeals, that several
employes fired by Sears are entitled
to collect unemployment benefits
back to the date of dismissal. That
reversed previous rulings that none
of the 262 dismissed workers was
entitled to benefits.
The Executive Council recalled
that Sears is the company which
"put the notorious Nathan Sheffer-
man into business" and that when
Shefferman's 'Illegal and anti-union
activities" were exposed, publicly
apologized and pledged it would
never resort to such tactics. Yet
today, the council said the company
"has intensified its aggressive war
(Continued on Page 3)
Unions to Finance
Nonpartisan Move
By Saul Miller
Chicago — The American labor movement has launched a major
intensive drive to get trade union members, their families and neigh-
bors registered and eligible to vote in the critical 1960 elections.
The program, to be financed by a 5-cent-a-member contribution
by affiliated unions, climaxed the Executive Council's summer meet-
ing here — sessions dominated by consideration of the current session
of Congress and the November elections.
The council declared that the congressional session provided a
"direct challenge to the sincerity of both political parties" as it
called for action on five key measures and strongly criticized Pres.
Eisenhower as coming "perilously close to cynicism" on some of
his own legislative recommendations. (See text of statement Page 5.)
'Political Circus' Promoters Hit
It struck out sharply at the "flagrant efforts of some elements" in
Congress to "substitute a political circus" for serious legislative
business and said it was "especially distressed" that the President
"has lent his personal and official encouragement" to these efforts.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, in reporting the council's ap-
proval of the registration drive, said the funds would be made avail-
able immediately, and that the campaign would be handled directly
by his office and work through citizens' committees composed of
anyone interested in the purpose of "getting the American people
to exercise their right to vote."
He said all possible techniques and approaches will be used
on a nonpartisan public service basis to get people registered.
In addition to its action in the legislative and political areas, the
council:
• Called for a nationwide consumer boycott of Sears Roebuck
& Co. to combat the company's "union-busting" tactics and pledged
full support for efforts to completely organize the giant chain. (See
story this page.)
• Adopted a program designed to put billions of dollars of wel-
fare and pension funds to work helping build good-value homes
for Americans by authorizing the creation of an AFL-CIO Dept.
of Investment to advise and help service affiliated unions interested
in investing reserves in government-guaranteed mortgages. (See
story Page 2.)
• Appropriated an additional $100,000 for the Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee's drive in the San Joaquin Valley
of California to organize farm workers after hearing reports of
"considerable progress" in enrolling members and sharply stepping
up wage rates. (See story Page 2.)
• Assailed the Administration's failure to provide leadership in
the economic development field in Latin America as contributing
to the deterioration of U.S.-Latin-American relationships and called
on the Organization of American States to act on the Dominican
Republic dictatorship and the Communist infiltration in Cuba. (See
story Page 2.)
• Approved a statement of understanding between the AFL-
CIO Community Services Committee and the American Red Cross
on a national blood program which insures that all trade union
members who donate blood under the ARC program will in turn
receive blood for themselves and their families without cost for the
blood itself on a reciprocity factor of a one-for-one basis. (See
story Page 3.)
In announcing the registration drive, Meany told reporters that
(Continued on Page 3)
Mitchell Calls Welfare Fund Act
'Shameful Illusion,' Urges Revisions
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has assailed as a "shameful illusion" the Welfare and Pension Plans
Disclosure Act of 1958, and has called for speedy enactment of several "strengthening amendments."
The amendments he asked are similar ^provisions that the AFL-CIO urged be included in the
1958 measure. They were contained in the Douglas-Kennedy-Ives bill which passed the Senate by an
88-0 vote two years ago but were deleted before passage in the House.
In a report to Congress on the
first 18 months of operation of
the act, Mitchell lashed out, in
particular, at the law's failure to
provide any "persuasive deter-
rent" to either management or
labor administrators of health
and welfare plans who "manipu-
late or embezzle funds/'
Mitchell recommended tightening
of the law by making embezzlement
and "kickbacks" a federal felony,
and urged that the Secretary of
Labor be given subpoena powers
and authority to seek injunctions
compelling compliance with the
act.
In a letter of transmittal to Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon, as pre-
siding officer of the Senate, and
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.), Mitchell said the 18 months'
experience with the law "raises
grave doubts as to the wisdom of
retaining so weak a law on the
statute books." He added:
"To continue the law in its
present form in the belief that it
assures adequate protective safe-
guards is a shameful illusion. To
abandon it entirely, however,
would be an act of betrayal to
the millions of Americans who
have a right to a sense of secu-
rity that the billions of dollars
annually received and disbursed
by these plans are being honestly
and prudently managed."
The Secretary said that experi-
(Continued on Page 10)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960
INFORMAL DISCUSSION on subjects before AFL-CIO Executive
Council session in Chicago is held by Vice Presidents William L.
McFetridge (left) and Charles J. MacGowan,
AFL-CIO Offers Plan
To A id Latin-America
Chicago — The Administration's failure to provide leadership in
the economic development field in Latin America has contributed to
the deterioration of U.S. -Latin American relationships, the AFL-
CIO Executive Council declared here.
The Administration's aid programs, the council said in outlining
a comprehensive program of eco-^
nomic assistance, "too often have
been grudging, piecemeal and un-
duly limited," resulting in inade-
quate headway in aiding Latin
America to "cope with its serious
economic problems."
The long-run welfare and secu-
rity of the hemisphere "rest on
the success of efforts to elevate
living standards of the Latin Amer-
ican peoples," the council asserted.
It also called on the foreign
ministers of the Organization of
American States, now in session
in San Jose, Costa Rica, to adopt
"positive, courageous measures'*
to strengthen inter-American sol-
idarity and oppose and defeat
k *anv totalitarian threat" to de-
mocracy.
The very existence of the OAS,
said the council, depends on how
it handles the charges against the
Dominican Republic and the threat
of Communist infiltration and dom-
ination of the Castro regime in
Cuba.
The AFL-CIO reaffirmed its
strong condemnation of the Trujillo
dictatorship in the Dominican Re-
public and called again for sanc-
tions against the country "as an
unworthy member of the American
family of nations," including sus-
pension from OAS and severance
of diplomatic relations.
The council declared that it was
deeply concerned "over the now
obvious domination of the Cuban
revolution by Communist ele-
ments and its complete political
and economic subservience to
Soviet Russia and its satellite
countries."
In the area of economic aid the
council called for joint planning
with Latin American representa-
tives, a long-term over-all program,
substantial funds, flexible and lib-
eral standards for loans, economic
cooperation beyond financial aid
and a wide sharing of the benefits
of growth.
To Spur Economy, End Interest Gouging:
Council Votes Program to Aid
Union Investments in Housing
Chicago — A program designed to put billions of dollars of welfare and pension funds to work
helping build good value homes for Americans, with the potential of lowering mortgage interest rates,
has been adopted by the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
The council approved a report of its subcommittee on investment programs authorizing the cre-
ation of an AFL-CIO Dept. of Investment to advise and help service affiliated unions interested in in-
from these funds
vesting reserves
in government-guaranteed housing
mortgages.
The department would be headed
by a director experienced in the
investment field and familiar with
the specialized needs of the reserves
of welfare, pension and other
funds.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
told a press conference here that
he hoped to establish the depart-
ment in the next few months so
that a start could be made on
putting the billions of dollars
available to work in the housing
field.
He stressed that the purpose of
the council's action was not to set
up a financial institution but to
create a servicing and advisory
apparatus to encourage unions to
invest in Federal Housing Adminis-
tration and Veterans Administra-
tion guaranteed mortgages.
Such mortgages would be made
available at the legal FHA and VA
rates, he said, giving the home
buyer full value for his money
rather than having him pay the
present discount rate which
amounts to as much as $1,200
worth of "water" on a $16,000
mortgage.
Meany added that he hoped
the program would have some
effect on banks and other mort-
gage lenders to eliminate dis-
counts and thus help bring down
interest rates. Investment of
union funds in this area, he said,
will help meet the critical need
for housing and will provide jobs
for construction workers and
Company 'Strike Pay'
Delays Rail Settlement
The Railway Labor Executives' Association has charged that
strike insurance payments to the Long Island Rail Road delayed
settlement of the resent 26-day strike by the Trainmen.
RLEA Chairman G. E. Leighty announced that the association
will consider a court challenge to the industry's strike insurance
program which he said was harm-'^
ful to the public interest and a road
block to good faith collective bar-
gaining.
Strike insurance payments of
$50,000 a day "definitely pro-
llonged" the LIRR strike, Leighty
said. Total payments to reim-
burse the company for its fixed
AFL-CIO Votes $100,000
In Farm Worker Drive
Chicago — The AFL-CIO Executive Council has appropri-
ated another $100,000 for the Agricultural Workers Organiz-
ing Committee's drive in the San Joaquin Valley campaign to
organize farm workers.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, announcing the council
action, said that "considerable progress" has been made in the
campaign and that there are presently about 5,000 organized
workers in the area, "something that has never happened
before/'
He said the AFL-CIO is "very much encouraged," and will
"continue this effort until we organize" all of the farm workers
in the area. He stressed that the federation hoped to eliminate
the "inhuman" treatment of farm workers on large corporate
farms and pointed to the fact that the organizing campaign
already has raised wages for approximately 60,000 to 70,000
workers who are not members oif the union.
While the AWOC pilot project 5s concentrating on Califor-
nia, he said, if it is successful it will eventually be extended to
the rest of the country. The council had authorized the ex-
penditure of $162,000 for the campaign before voting its
latest contribution.
costs amounted to $1.35 million
from the start of the walkout to
the time the trains moved, he
added.
Leighty told a news conference
that strike insurance — first used on
a large scale by newspaper publish-
ers — "has no place in the labor-
management field." He added: "It
does not result in industrial peace.
It does not benefit the public, and
in the long run, it isn't going to
help the railroads."
The RLEA chairman pointed out
that in a related industry, the air-
lines, the Civil Aeronautics Board
is taking a second look at the mu-
tual aid pact entered into by a
number of airlines which agree to
hand over . to struck competitors
profits from extra business diverted
to their lines as a result of strikes.
Labor-management relations in
both industries, he emphasized, are
governed by the Railway Labor
Act, and both are regulated by
government agencies.
Leighty also announced that
the RLEA will seek action at the
current session of Congress on
legislation to check the whole-
sale abandonment of passenger
service.
Other immediate goals, he said,
include passage of the Railroad
Accident Reports bill and legisla-
tion blocking airlift of regular mail
normally handled by rail.
those involved in the home fur-
nishings industry, as well as pro-
viding a better return for the
funds on their reserves to pay
future pensions, etc.
The subcommittee, composed of
AFL-CIO Vice Presidents David
Dubinsky, Joseph Keenan and
Joseph A. Beirne, was appointed
at the May 1960 meeting of the
council to study the question of
establishing an investment advisory
committee.
'Great Social Need*
The subcommittee found a "great
social need and demand for decent
housing in all areas of the coun-
try" and also found that discounts
demanded by lenders from the face
amount of mortgages "has raised
effective rates to usurious levels in
many areas." A new source of
mortgage money at realistic and
stabilized interest rates, it deter-
mined, was available from AFL-
CIO affiliates.
Government insured and guar-
anteed mortgage loans, the report
continued, "are excellent and de-
sirable investments for reserve
funds and will decrease the tend-
ency of fund trustees to put an
ever larger portion on specula-
tive stocks, in lower-yielding gov-
ernment bonds or just allowing
money to remain idle.
In addition to recommending
creation of a Dept. of Investment,
the subcommittee urged also the
appointment of an advisory com-
mittee "to promulgate and review
the investment policies guiding our
affiliated funds."
The subcommittee's report con-
tained a table showing that the cur-
rent VA loans with an allowable
interest rate of 5.25 percent were
being discounted 10 points, making
the effective interest rate over 25
years 6.35 percent. FHA loans at
5.75 percent were being discounted
to bring the effective interest rate
to 6.2 percent for 30 years.
Machinists Ratify New
Pact at 6 Boeing Plants
Machinists at six Boeing Aircraft locations across the nation have
voted to approve a new two-year contract covering 40,000 workers.
It was the first major corporationwide agreement in the industry, the
IAM said, and a step toward the union's goal of companywide con-
tracts in the aircraft, missile and related electronics fields.
Meanwhile Auto Workers Local^
877 maintained the United Air-
craft picket lines that have affected
5,000 workers in Sikorsky division
plants at Bridgeport and Stratford,
Conn., since early June. The strike
is the last of several called in UAC
plants employing more than 30,000
workers.
Another UAW aircraft unit,
Local 856 in Akron, O., settled
a four-day strike involving 2,300
workers at Goodyear Aircraft
with a new two-year contract
providing wage increases of 9.5
cents an hour now, with an extra
4 cents for equity adjustments in
the skilled trades; improvements
in promotion rights, transfer
rights and bereavement pay; and
settlement terms for a large back-
log of grievances.
The new Boeing agreement was
ratified by IAM members at meet-
ings in Seattle and Moses Lake,
Wash.; Edwards Air Force Base,
Calif.; Wichita, Kan.; Long Island,
N. Y.; and Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Covered employes had been work-
ing without a contract since June
22 at Wichita, and since May 8 at
the other locations.
An innovation at the meetings
was a vote by members on which of
several alternate plans were to be
used in providing sick leave, sever-
ance pay and vacations, and for
the appeal of gradings under Boe-
ing's performance analysis program.
The contract provides immedi-
ate wage increases ranging from
5.5 to 9.5 cents an hour in the
top labor grade, and an addition-
al hourly increase of 4.5 to 8
cents next August.
Wages next year will range from
$1,985 to $3,265, and employes
in the four highest grades at missile
test bases and other remote loca-
tions will receive 54.5 cents on top
of their base rates.
A major gain, IAM reported, is
the establishment of a severance
pay clause under which employes
may accumulate credits to be used
for sick leave, severance pay and
vacations. Another gain is in lib-
eralization of appeals from the per-
formance analysis system.
Meany to Lead
Mammoth N.Y.
Labor Parade
New York — With AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany in the lead,
this year's Labor Day parade will
be "bigger and better" than last
year's record-breaking event, some
500 local parade chairmen pledged
at a meeting of the City Central
Labor Council.
According to their estimates,
close to 170,000 union members
will be in the line of march up
Fifth Avenue on Monday, Sept 5.
Some 150 major floats and thous-
ands of banners will carry then-
message of unity, pride and deter-
mination.
Last year's parade in New
York was the first of its kind
there since the 1939 parade,
when Meany headed the march
as president of the state federa-
tion of labor. Last year 115,000
marchers paraded in what ex-
perts called "the greatest show
the city has ever seen."
Council Pres. Harry A. Van Ars-
dale, Jr., said, "We had a tremen-
dous demonstration in 1959, and
we learned a lot. This year all that
we learned is being used to make
this parade an even greater demon-
stration of labor solidarity."
"Register in order to vote" will
be one of the major themes.
New York City unions through
the Central Labor Council will
be swinging into their registra-
tion drive immediately after
Labor Day and the parade wiD
be used by many unions to set
the stage for the drive.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960
Page Hire*
Council Opens Voter Registration Drive
Affiliates to Finance
Nonpartisan Effort
(Continued from Page 1)
surveys and spot checks indicated very "discouraging" facts on the
number of persons who do not register or vote and that the number
of trade unionists in this category is about the same as for the com-
munity as a whole.
Effort to Be Intensified
The labor movement has been running registration drives for
many years, he said, but this year the effort will be intensified.
There is no political problem involved, he declared, because the
campaign is purely educational and nonpartisan and has always been
financed from union general funds.
Carl McPeak, AFL-CIO cordinator of state legislative activities,
will direct the registration drive, Meany said, for the president's
office. The continuing campaign in this area by COPE will not
be involved.
The federation president said he expected the AFL-CIO Gen-
eral Board meeting in Washington Aug. 26 to endorse a presi-
dential candidate but that the registration drive was not connected
in any way with the probable endorsement or similar registra-
tion campaigns being run by the Democratic and Republican
Parties. He added that any citizen of any party would be welcome
to help get citizens registered.
In its statement on the congressional session, the council's criti
cism of Eisenhower involved also the White House position that
national defense can be strengthened through administrative action
without an increase in appropriations. The council termed this
position a "disservice to the nation."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, at a press conference here, said the
council "misrepresented the motives of the President" and defended
the Administration program. Commenting the following day
Meany said the Mitchell statement was expected and understand
able because of the secretary's cabinet position. He said that while
he, Meany, personally respected the President, "I stand completely
on the statement we issued. It represents the political facts of life
as they are."
Mitchell Bows Out
Mitchell spoke to one session of the council on farm labor prob-
lems, and, as Meany told reporters, appeared for the last time as
Secretary of Labor to express his appreciation for the cooperation
of the AFL-CIO. Meany said that on behalf of the council, he
expressed the appreciation of the federation to Mitchell and char
acterized the relationship over the years as "good and sound," in
light of Mitchell's cabinet position.
The council's congressional statement called specifically for ac
tion before adjournment on wage-hour improvements, medical care
for the aged, aid to education and housing and a situs picketing
bill. It said all these measures enjoyed widespread support both
in Congress and throughout the country but have been "delayed,
bypassed or shelved" by a handful of "backward looking men of
both parties."
In other actions the council:
• Decided to withhold for a week or so decision on the action
of the Intl. Longshoremen's Association in granting charters to two
locals in the Dominican Republic in order to obtain additional in
formation. The ILA presented its defense at the meeting after
Meany had wired the unions to withdraw the charters.
• Heard argument from the Upholsterers and the Furniture
Workers on a long series of disputes and won agreement from both
unions to approve a plan to be drawn up by the Executive Council
providing for final arbitration of all disputes now and in the future,
with the provision that both unions will abide by council decisions.
O Gave a hearing to the Flight Engineers and the Pilots in a
dispute involving manning of jet aircraft at Continental Air Lines
and got agreement from both unions to attempt to mediate the dis-
pute. Meany named AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Al J. Hayes to mediate
the problem.
• Voted $25,000 for the National Institute for Labor Educa-
tion (NILE) which is sponsoring a number of projects in the field
of labor education.
• Authorized the spending of $20,000 to lay the groundwork
for developing an education program for Latin American trade
unionists with the hope of interesting major foundations and other
groups in the project of helping train about 300 leaders a year for
three months in the U.S., plus subsidization for nine months in their
own countries. v
• Voted $10,000 for the Jewish Labor Committee to help it
with* its work and $5,000 for a labor relations program to be con-
ducted at a school in New Delhi, India.
At a press conference Meany said he expects that the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions in the future will have a more
comprehensive program to aid workers in new and underdeveloped
nations to form effective unions and that AFL-CIO contributions
to the ICFTU Solidarity Fund in the future will be larger than in
the past.
Queried about the recent trip of Pres> Joseph Curran and a Mari-
time Union delegation to visit Soviet seamen's unions, Meany said
that the trip was in violation of the policy of the AFL-CIO, the
ICFTU and the Intl. TransportWorkers Federation, all of which
have taken a firm position against visits of trade union delegations
to Communist and dictatorship countries.
Meany said there was no action contemplated on the issue, that
if Curran "wants to violate the policy that's up to him.* 5 i
STATUS OF AMERICAN ECONOMY is explained to members of AFL-CIO Executive Council,
meeting in Chicago, by Leon Keyserling (left foreground), of the Council on Economic Progress.
Keyserling is pointing to charts, just out of camera range, emphasizing importance of achieving
satisfactory rate of economic growth to forestall a new recession.
National Sears Consumer Boycott
Supported by Executive Council
(Continued from Page 1)
against unions on a nationwide
basis."
[Shefferman, head of a Chi-
cago labor consultant firm with
hundreds of clients across the
country, came under direct fire
from the McClellan special Sen-
ate committee in 1957. Chairman
John L. McClellan (D-Ark.) as-
sailed Shefferman as the operator
of what he termed an "anti-
union" agency "dedicated to the
proposition that no employer
need deal with a labor union
unfriendly to his interests."
[The committee's probe cen-
tered on Sears Roebuck as Shef-
ferman's largest client, which
paid the labor consultant $239,-
651 to disrupt union organizing
drives through labor spies, pay-
offs, intimidation and firings.
[It was at the McClellan hear-
ings that Wallace Tudor, em-
ploye relations vice president of
Sears, apologized, for the com-
pany's "pressure and coercion;
discrimination, favoritism, in-
trigue and unfair labor practices"
across a period of years, calling
them "inexcusable, unnecessary
# and disgraceful mistakes."]
The Executive Council pointed
out that at the Sears stores in San
Francisco, 262 union members were
fired when they declined to cross
picket lines set up by the Ma-
chinists. - These workers, said the
council, "had every right under
their contracts to respect the picket
lines of a sister union."
The council noted also a case in
St. Louis, where members of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers were fired and replaced
with strikebreakers when they re
fused to give up their jobs and
transfer their employment to a serv-
ice company.
In other areas, Sears manage-
ment has refused to renew union-
shop clauses in contracts with the
RCIA, the council charged, and
has refused to accept clauses ac-
cepted by its major competitor
Montgomery Ward.
The council concluded that it
"is convinced that Sears Roebuck
Blood Bank Agreement
Made With Red Cross
Chicago — Trade union members and their families will be elfgible
to participate in. blood bank programs without cost for the blood
itself on a one-for-one basis under a new agreement reached by the
American Red Cross and the AFL-CIO Community Services Com-
mittee.
The "statement of understand-'^
ing," approved by the AFL-CIO
Executive Council here, sets out
basic standards and principles
covering the ARC blood program
and the AFL-CIO program for an
mproved voluntary system of de-
veloping blood banks.
The Red Cross said in the state-
ment that it recognizes the principle
that blood and blood derivatives
shall be made available without
cost for the blood itself and that
hospital and laboratory charges be
maintained at a minimum.
It agreed that there should be
'no segregation of blood or blood
derivatives along racial lines" and
that a national clearing house pro-
gram for the exchange of blood and
blood credits be set up on a one-
for-one basis.
For trade union members this
means a balance has to be main-
tained between the total amount
of blood put into a blood bank
and the amount withdrawn so
that there is a constant quantity
available for use.
The agreement noted that the
Community Services Committee
will regularly inform all AFL-CIO
affiliates of the status and develop-
menf of the Red Cross blood pro-
gram and make suggestions de-
signed to strengthen the participa-
tion in and support of organized
labor in the program.
Jointly called conferences oh the
national, regional and local levels
also are provided for to develop
and expand the program.
The ARC and the AFL-CIO had
previously reached a similar under-
standing on disaster services which
has been working successfully.
& Co. is engaged in a calculated
and concerted effort to deprive
flts employes of their rights to
lamon protection," and endorsed
the boycott.
It pledged also the "full support**
of the AFL-CIO to efforts of affi-
liated unions fully to organize the
729 retail stores and the 853
catalogue stores in the chain.
The San Francisco Labor Coun-
cil, which initiated the boycott, sug-
gested that U. S. conciliators should
invite Charles H. Kellstadt, Sears
board chairman, and the company's
top policy committee to meet with
representatives of the San Fran-
cisco labor movement.
The cable from IFCCTE said the
complete text of the organization's
protest has been sent to the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions and all 57 affiliates of IFC-
CTE, requesting support for the
RCIA and for the labor boycott of
Sears products.
The dispute between Sears and
its union employes developed in
May, when Machinists Lodge
11327 went on strike after local
management said it could not
make contract changes without
the consent of top chain officials
am Chicago.
Clerks and other employes re-
spected the IAM picket lines until
a state court, in a ruling May 24,
issued an injunction denying the
Machinists' right to strike. When
union employes reported back for
work, 262 were fired.
The San Francisco Labor Coun-
cil launched a local "Don't Buy
Sears" campaign, and the RCIA
National Chain Store Committee
approved a proposal calling on un-
ion members in the U. S. and
Canada to refrain from buying
Sears products until the company
gives full justice to the firing vic-
tims.
? 6J Convention Set
For Miami Beach
Chicago — The Fourth Con-
stitutional Convention of the
AFL-CIO will open Dec. 7,
1961, in Miami Beach, Fla.
The Executive Council set
the convention place and time
at its meeting here. The con-
vention will run through the
following week.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUCUST 20, I960
Something to Be Added!
ANNIVERSARY
OF THE
SUCCESSFUL
SocialSecowty
J System
1
•I960
W4
■1
" OttAWH FOR.THE
At 25th Anniversary Dinner:
Labor Vows Major Drive
To Extend Social Security
Chicago— The AFL-CIO celebrated the 25th birthday of the Social Security Act by rededicating
itself to improving and extending the system for the benefit of all Americans.
Federation Pres. George Meany told the 550 persons attending the silver anniversary banquet at
the Drake Hotel here that the trade union movement will do "everything in its power" to "safeguard
the soundness of social security" and use its "true genius for growth" to solve two m ajor problems
■ ■
facing the nation.
Tripartite Advisory Unit
Proposed by Goldberg
Chicago-^A permanent national council of labor-management
advisers representing labor, management and the public, to "restore
that sense of common purpose" which the nation had during the
war and which "we need so desperately now," has been proposed
by Arthur J. Goldberg, AFL-CIO special counsel.
Goldberg advanced his proposal'^
at a dinner here honoring him and
marking the 15th anniversary of
Roosevelt University, which labor
played a major role in establishing.
The council would "advise"
and "recommend" to the Presi-
dent programs for submission to
Congress and formulate proposals
for "advancing industrial peace
and minimizing industrial con-
flict."
The general counsel of the Steel-
workers and noted labor attorney
made it clear that his proposal was
a purely "personal" one and reflects
only his own thinking.
Emergency Displites
Goldberg urged that the council
be assigned one "operational" job —
the responsibility of dealing with
national emergency disputes. He
stressed, however, that this would
be an "incidental" function of the
council rather than the main pur-
pose of advising the President in
the development of "constructive
policies and programs."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
told the 500 persons attending the
dinner that Goldberg had played a
"leading part" in helping bring
about merger of the AFL and the
CIO and had had a "tremendous
influence" on helping solve prob-
lems in the AFL-CIO itself.
Meany said the labor move-
ment is "delighted" that Roose-
velt University was paying trib-
ute to Goldberg, an "outstand-
ing lawyer and humanitarian."
He reviewed labor's part in the
long campaign to secure a free
educational system, and reas-
serted the necessity to improve
the system of higher education
so that every young person may
have a chance to secure a college
education whether or not they
have the economic means.
The dinner was estimated to have
raised approximately $40,000 for
the university. Organized labor has
contributed more than $415,000 to
Roosevelt University in the last 10
years.
Over a year ago Goldberg made
his first proposal in this area, for
contact between labor and manage
ment leaders away from the bar-
gaining table, in face of a "harden-
ing attitude" on both sides. These
problems and their extension pro
vide the background for his latest
recommendation.
Automation, Goldberg said, is
necessary and indispensable "if
we are to remain the greatest in-
dustrial producing country of the
world." This must be recognized
by both labor and management,
he added, but there must be a
recognition also that there must
be protection against the hard-
ship and suffering which can re-
sult from automation.
The excellent record of the War
Labor Board in World War II, he
said, proved the value of a tripart-
ite approach through an equal num-
ber of representatives of labor,
management and the public. He
urged the same structure for his
proposed national council.
Tripartite Staff Urged
Goldberg proposed that the Sec-
retary of Labor, Secretary of Com-
merce and Chairman of the Council
of Economic Advisers be ex-officio
members of the council and that
other members serve as needed
backed up by a permanent, full
time staff on a tripartite basis.
The council, he continued,
should not interfere in established
collective bargaining methods, or
supersede normal functions of gov-
ernment agencies. It should "seek
to define the role of government
and of management and labor in
mplementing our national goal of
achieving foil production and full
employment."
Goldberg suggested that the
council might set up national and
regional meetings as well as con-
sider convening White House
conferences on labor-manage-
merit problems.
The AFL-CIO special counsel
praised the development of Roose-
velt University, declaring that the
labor movement has implemented
through support of the university
its objective of strengthening demo-
cratic institutions.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Al J.
Hayes served as toastmaster at
the Goldberg dinner. He filled
in for AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Wal-
ter P. Reuther, who was called to
Washington, D. C. Mayor Rich-
ard J. Daley brought greetings
on behalf of the city of Chicago,
of which Goldberg is a native.
The dinner was planned by a
Chicago committee representing 24
international unions. Eight AFL-
CIO vice presidents served as hon-
orary co-chairmen.
These problems, he said, are
"providing medical insurance for
citizens on the social security
rolls'' and establishing "uniform
federal standards of unemploy-
ment compensation benefits at
levels considerably higher than
the present average."
Helping celebrate the social se-
curity law's 25th birthday were the
present social security administrator
and three of his predecessors, who
spoke on the principles and the
problems still ahead to make the
present system capable of meeting
the challenge of the next quarter
century.
The banquet marked to the day
— Aug. 14, 1935 — the signing of
the Social Security Act into law by
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. A
photograph of the actual signing
dominated the banquet hall and a
major portion of the anniversary
celebration was broadcast over la-
bor-owned radio station WCFL.
Nelson Cruikshank, director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Se-
curity, served as chairman of the
dinner.
Meany said the celebration
marked the graduation of the
social security system from the
"experimental stage" to the point
where it has become "a perm-
anent part of the American way
of life."
Reviewing the history of its in-
ception and actual passage against
the backdrop of the depression of
the Thirties, Meany noted that it
withstood "tidal waves of bitter
criticism" and has proved to be "a
tower of strength to the private
enterprise system."
14 Million Get Benefits
Social security has grown impres-
sively from its "original limited
dimensions," Meany declared, to
the point where today 14 million
Americans are drawing benefits —
11.5 million retired workers and
their wives; 2.25 million young
widows and children of workers
who have died; 366,000 perma-
nently and totally disabled.
The top problem facing the
social security system today, the
AFL-CIO president said, is to
provide a system of medical in-
surance for the aged as part of
the overall program. Meany as-
sailed the American Medical As-
sociation, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and the NAM for
"again reviving the shopworn and
Labor Hails FDR at
Social Security Rite
Hyde Park, N. Y.— The
AFL-CIO paid tribute to the
late Pres. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt at ceremonies at
his grave here to mark the
25th anniversary of the sign-
ing of the Social Security
Act.
As part of the ceremonies,
a memorial wreath from the
trade union movement was
placed on the grave by Hy-
man H. Bookbinder, AFL-
CIO legislative representa-
tive. The ribbon on the
wreath read: "In reverent
memory and appreciation
from American workers.
George Meany, president;
William F. Schnitzler, secre-
tary-treasurer."
Principal speaker at the
memorial services was Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Democratic presidential nom-
inee.
discredited bugaboo of 'social-
ism' " against this proposal.
He added:
"We want an effective program
and we are convinced we can get
it only through the tried and tested
social security system. The over-
whelming majority of the Amer-
ican people have made it clear that
they agree.
Up to Congress
"Therefore we look to Congress
to respond to public demand and
adopt a sound workable and com-
prehensive medical insurance pro-
gram for the aged, as part of the
social security structure, before ad-
journment."
Uniform federal standards for
unemployment compensation bene
fits will have top priority for the
labor movement at the 1961 session
of Congress, Meany said, to correct
the "manifest shortcomings of un
employment compensation stand-
ards in most of our states." He said
it would be "futile" to wait for the
states to act, adding, "They either
cannot or will not assume the re-
sponsibility."
'Our Chief Tool'
Arthur J. Altmeyer, former
member and chairman of the So
cial Security Board and former
commissioner for social security,
declared that the system can be our
chief tool in making certain that
"a portion of our ever-increasing
abundance is actually dedicated"
to the social purpose of the aboli-
tion of poverty.
Altmeyer called for increasing
benefits to average 50 percent of
wages, covering all workers, pay-
ing for disabilities lasting more
than six months without a find-
ing of total disability, liberalizing
the retirement test and a benefit
increase of 4 percent a year for
workers who defer retirement at
the minimum age.
He called also for federal stand-
ards for unemployment compensa-
tion, extension of coverage to all
persons covered by the social secu-
rity system and offsetting the effects
of employer experience rating by
reducing the federal levy to 1 per-
cent to give the state an incentive
to increase benefits.
William L. Mitchell, present
commissioner of the Social Secu-
rity Administration, reviewed the
history of the passage of the act
25 years ago and said the prin-
ciples and the policies established
then have been tested and found
sound. These principles, he said,
were compulsory and compre-
hensive coverage based on work-
er-employer contributions and re-
lated to wage earnings.
John W. Tramsburg, social
security commissioner in 1953-54,
spoke specifically on public as-
sistance and called for eliminating
the residency requirement as a con-
dition of eligibility as no longer
being pertinent in light of the in-
creasing mobility of Americans.
Charles I. Schottland, social
security commissioner 1954-59,
hailed labor's role in advancing the
system.
The labor movement, he not-
ed, has always insisted upon the
contributory principle and it is
to its credit that "it has always
said that the American worker is
willing to pay his share providing
the benefits are proper and equi-
table."
Schottland reviewed the work of
the many labor leaders who helped
formulate the original Social Secu-
rity Act and paid special homage to
Cruikshank, who he said "has won
the respect of all who have worked
with him because of his dedication
to social security and his zeal in
fighting for its improvement."
THE FOUR MEN who have administered the Social Security Act during the 25 years it has been
law are shown with Nelson H. Cruikshank, director of the Dept. of Social Security of the AFL-
CIO and master of ceremonies at the federation-sponsored dinner in Chicago marking the law's
anniversary. From left are Cruikshank, former Social Security Commissioners Arthur J. Altmeyer,
John W. Tramburg, Charles L Schottland, and the present commissioner, William L. Mitchell
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960
Page Five
Text of Statements:
Council Lists 5 Key Legislative Goals
Herewith is the full text of the statement by the
AFL-CIO Executive Council listing labor's priority
legislative goals for the remainder of the present
session of Congress:
THE EXTRAORDINARY SESSION of Congress
now in progress offers a direct challenge to the sin-
cerity of both political parties and provides a crucial
test of present congressional rules and procedures.
It must be remembered, first of all, that the basic
reason for the return of Congress was to complete un-
finished business. Several major measures were near-
ing enactment when the advent of the party conven-
tions forced a recess. Those are the measures on
behalf of which this August session was scheduled;
nothing that has since taken place in Los Angeles and
Chicago affects this fundamental fact.
We condemn the flagrant efforts of some elements
in Congress to substitute a political circus for serious
legislative business. We are especially distressed that
the President of the United States has lent his per-
sonal and official encouragement to those efforts.
The introduction of wide-ranging programs in Con-
gress at this late date is a transparent political maneuver.
For the President to place special emphasis on area
redevelopment, less than two months after his second
veto of such a bill, comes periously close to cynicism.
Even more -serious is the President's position that
he can strengthen our national defense through "ad-
ministrative actions" involving no increase in appro-
priations. To propagate the notion that we can have
more security without paying for it is a disservice to
the nation.
The American people are not shopping for bar-
gains in national defense. They want the best, the
most, the soonest.
The work of this session of Congress must be lim-
ited in scope because it is unfortunately limited in time.
We believe that Congress will be fulfilling its obli-
gation to the public interest if it completes action in
the next few weeks on those legislative matters that
were well under way at the time of the recess.
FIVE OF THESE MEASURES have undergone ex-
tensive congressional examination, have already been
acted upon by legislative committees and should be
promptly enacted:
"1 Wage-hour improvements — The Kennedy-Morse-
Roosevelt bill, which we supported, was greatly
weakened in the House Committee on Education and
Labor and was then gutted by floor amendments. A
modest but acceptable bill has been reported by the
Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. The
latter bill -should be adopted by the Senate without
further delay and should be the basis foi" the measure
ultimately enacted.
Medical care for the aged — There is no question
that a majority of both houses supports the prin-
ciple of old-age medical care through the social secu-
rity system. Committee procedures prevented the
House of Representatives from incorporating this prin-
ciple into an omnibus social security bill.
The Senate should fulfill the responsibility its
Finance Committee shirked. It should promptly add
such a program to the bill and the House should
concur in it so that the will of the people can prevail.
3 Situs picketing — Every responsible party con-
• cerned with labor-management relations has long
acknowledged the unfair handicaps imposed by the
Taft-Hartley Act upon unions in the construction in-
dustry when labor disputes arise. A remedy approved
by the late Sen. Robert A. Taft has been awaiting
adoption for almost a decade and is recommended by
the present Administration. Simple justice demands
that it should wait no longer.
A Aid to education — Heavy majorities in both the
Senate and House supported similar bills to pro-
vide federal assistance to help solve this most pressing
need. But these majorities have been frustrated by the
refusal of the House Committee on Rules to permit a
Senate-House conference to work out differences be-
tween the bills. This roadblock to final action should
be immediately removed.
Ef Housing — The nation's steadily-mounting deficit
in low and middle-income housing is an unchal-
lengeable fact. The Senate has already adopted a
moderate housing bill; a similar bill has been voted by
the House Banking and Currency Committee. It should
be cleared by the Rules Committee at once.
EACH OF THESE FIVE OBJECTIVES enjoys
widespread backing in Congress and throughout the
country. Each has, in one way or another, been de-
layed, bypassed or shelved by congressional techni-
calities, especially in the House. A handful of back-
ward-looking men, of both parties, has until now pre-
vailed against the public interest.
We have been and we still are firm believers in the
need for changing the rules of Congress to strengthen
the processes of democracy. We recognize, however,
that in the closing hours of the session such funda-
mental changes cannot be undertaken. That is a task
for the new Congress.
^ Today the principal roadblock is the House Rules
Committee, where a coalition of six reactionaries —
four from the Republican Party and two from the
Democratic Party — thwart the will of the people. One
Republican vote added to the six liberal and moderate
Democratic votes would permit legislation, such as the
school construction bill, which the Administration
claims to support, to reach the House floor.
We believe the rules should not deposit such veto
power in the hands of six men.
ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL REASONS why this
Congress did not eliminate this power concentration
was the good-faith assurances to House members by the
leadership of that body that the rules would not be
allowed to thwart the will of the majority.
Now is the time for that pledge to be redeemed.
Now is the time for Congress to demonstrate that
it can be responsive to the needs and aspirations of
the people. Now is the time for both parlies to
demonstrate legislative responsibility.
We are gratified that the Senate leadership has so
far moved promptly and vigorously to fulfill its com-
mitments.
We expect the House will move as speedily when it
meets for serious legislative action on Aug. 22; but the
key to vigorous and prompt action in*the House lies
with its committees, particularly the Rules Committee,
which should and must be meeting and acting this week.
Of course any new or far-reaching legislative pro-
posal should be subjected to careful study, even in the*
face of an apparent majority in its favor. But that does
not apply to any of the foregoing measures. They have
been examined; they have been debated; they are neither
new nor radical; their public support has mounted with
each passing year of inaction.
To wait longer is not caution but obstructionism.
Moreover, while it is true that the above program is
one of limited objectives, its enactment would be a
substantial step toward promoting the higher rate of
economic growth our country desperately needs. A
new surge of activity in housing and school construc-
tion, and greater purchasing power in the hands of the
aged and the lowest-paid, will provide the stimulus
sorely needed if we are to have progress instead of
the recession which threatens America today.
ASIDE FROM THE MEASURES already in proc-
ess, including of course the appropriation bills, we
would commend to the attention of this brief congres-
sional session two others, also well-studied and of the
utmost importance:
The most scrupulous care should be devoted to
J- • the areas of national defense and foreign aid, to
make sure that foolish optimism does not supplant
prudent statesmanship and that an unreasonable fetish
for budget balancing does not endanger our security.
O The trade union movement favors any meaning-
ful forward step that can be taken to further in-
sure the civil rights of all Americans. Specifically, we
refer to items upon which thorough hearings have al-
ready been held, sound language drafted and extensive -
debate held. These include authorization for the Justice
Department to initiate civil rights suits in school de-
segregation cases; authorization to federal agencies to
supply technical and financial aid to school districts
moving to desegregate their schools; and statutory au-
thority for the presidential committee policing discrim-
ination in employment on federal contracts.
As AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told the platform
committees of both political parties, civil rights is the
"No. 1 moral issue of our time."
However, we are not politically naive. We are
not deceived by the sudden interest in civil rights
legislation by some on Capitol Hill who previously
ignored or opposed it. We are well aware that their
objective is to precipitate a debate that will block
all progressive, liberal action in this session. That
must not happen.
WE EARNESTLY APPEAL to the leaders of Con-
gress in both parties to move promptly on the specific
matters we have outlined. After these have been en-
acted, we urge both parties to unite on a bipartisan
civil rights program determining and applying the par-
liamentary techniques that will make possible another
advance toward Jhe goal of full civil rights for all.
The positive program we have outlined comprises
the major unfinished business now before Congress. We
believe all of these bills are consistent with both party
platforms and pledges and should be accorded biparti-
san support.
Call for Nationwide Boycott of Sears
Herewith is the text of the AFL-CIO Executive
Council statement denouncing the labor policies of
Sears Roebuck & Co. and calling on all labor to back
a nationwide consumer boycott of the giant chain
until the company corrects its policies:
THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT is becoming
increasingly concerned over the union-busting methods
deliberately employed by one of the nation's largest
merchandising chains, Sears Roebuck & Co.
This is the outfit that put the notorious Nathan
Shefferman into business. When Shefferman's illegal
anti-union activities were exposed by the McClellan
committee, Sears publicly apoligized and pledged it
would never again resort to such tactics. Yet today it
has intensified its aggressive war against unions on a
nationwide basis.
A specific case in point is the Sears stores in San
Francisco where 262 union members were summarily
fired after they declined to cross picket lines set up by
the Intl. Association of Machinists. .These workers,
who belong to the Retail Clerks, Building Service
Employes, Office Workers and the building trades
had every right under their contracts to respect the
picket lines of a sister union.
As another example, Sears Roebuck in St. Louis
tried to force a group of employes who were members
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers to give
up their jobs and transfer their employment to a service
company. When the workers refused and went on strike,
Scars fired them and replaced them with strikebreakers.
IN OTHER LOCATIONS, the management of Sears
has refused to renew union-shop clauses in agreements
with the Retail Clerks and has even rejected the modi-
fied union-shop provision accepted by its major com-
petitor. Montgomery Ward.
The Executive Council is convinced that Sears
Roebuck & Co. is engaged in a calculated and con-
certed effort to deprive its employes of their rights to
union protection. We endorse the nationwide con-
sumer boycott of this company invoked by the San
Francisco labor movement and the National Chain
Store Committee of the Retail Clerks Intl. Assn.
- Beyond this, we pledge the full support of the AFL-
CIO to the efforts of our affiliated organizations to fully
organize the 729 retail stores and 853 catalogue
stores in the Sears Roebuck chain. Only when this
task of organization is completed will the employes of
this giant corporation be assured of effective protection
of their collective bargaining rights.
We urge all members of organized labor and their
friends not to patronize Sears Roebuck stores until
management ceases to interfere with the self-organ-
ization of employes and until it demonstrates good-
faith acceptance of union security clauses in its
contracts.
Page Si%
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, AtJGUST 20, 1960
Stunted Growth
HPHE DEBATE about economic growth, which seems likely to
be an important issue in the political campaign, involves a great
deal more than an argument in a vacuum.
Almost a full three years after the 1957 recession began to get
under way, the latest Labor Dept. figures show that the rate of job-
lessness is still stuck above the 5 percent mark, and there is no sign
that things will improve swiftly. The "indicators" studied by
economists for industry and others show, on the contrary, a certain
softness.
The unemployment rate was as low as 3.8 percent in 1957 —
before the recession. In the 33 months since it climbed above
the 5 percent rate, it has never again dropped to this pre-recesslon
level.
It has been below 5 percent only three months out of the last
33 — and in only one of these months has it been as low as 4.8
percent.
Add to the jobless the millions on parttime work, on short shifts,
although they are counted as fully "employed," and the picture is
one of continued, chronic loss of production and income at a level
that cannot possibly be called acceptable.
This is part of what the growth issue is about. The country's
economy has not expanded sufficiently to furnish jobs for our grow-
ing population and our increased labor force.
Major industries are running at far less than capacity, losing bil-
lions of dollars of production their plants are capable of turning
out. This is another thing that the growth issue is about.
These facts cannot be wished away or quipped away, nor can
they be safely ignored by a country bearing the heavy burdens of
Free World leadership in a time of struggle and tension.
The Sears Boycott
THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL CALL for a nationwide con-
sumer boycott of the giant Sears Roebuck chain arises from a
background of challenges to labor's rights that could not be ignored.
Only three years ago, Sears was apologizing abjectly before the
McClellan committee for its labor-battling tactics. It was involved
up to its neck in the activities of the notorious self-styled labor "con-
sultant," Nathan Shefferman.
Shefferman himself at first talked blandly about his operations,
claiming merit and virtue, but in the end he chose to rely on his
right against self-incrimination to avoid answering McClellan com-
mittee questions.
Sears Roebuck decided them that the company's best method
of avoiding trouble about its union-busting was to acknowledge
error. A vice president named Wallace Tudor therefore began
his Senate committee testimony by volunteering profuse apologies
for what he labeled "inexcusable, unnecessary and disgraceful
mistakes."
Three years later the company is back at its old game. This
time it fires union members for asserting their right to respect a
picket line in San Francisco. It fires them in St. Louis for refusing
to accept job transfers when the management decided to assign
them bodily to a service company. It resists renewal of union-shop
clauses it has previously accepted.
Against such a direct assault, labor has no alternative but to
res ist — to resist on the picket line where strikes are forced, to
resist through a consumer boycott against a company that has
grown rich and strong, at least in part, through its sales to millions
of workers and their families.
Sour Note
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Me/vny, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Rafter>-
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Suhii iptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, August 20, 1960
No. 31
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in tlxc name of the AFL-CIO.
********
******
Meany Reaffirms Policy:
AFL-CIO Still Shuns Exchanges
With Captive Unions in USSR
Herewith are excerpts from a statement on
trade union delegation exchanges with dictator-
ship countries issued by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany in Chicago:
THE ICFTU has declared that the basic in-
terests of human freedom, world peace, and
international labor solidarity require that free
trade unions should not exchange delegations with
so-called trade unions in dictatorship countries.
The first constitutional convention of the AFL-
CIO unanimously endorsed the above position.
The AFL-CIO Executive Council has, on several
occasions, unanimously reaffirmed its agreement
with and support of the position taken by the
ICFTU.
Nothing has happened in the USSR since
the death of Stalin and the rise of Khrushchev
as his successor to warrant the AFL-CIO
changing the aforementioned policy. In fact,
Khrushchev's industrial "reform" measures
have served only to tighten Communist Party
control of Soviet economic life and its
institutions.
More than ever before do the so-called Soviet
trade unions serve as agencies of the Communist
dictatorship for the purpose of speeding produc-
tion — without concern for the well-being and the
rights of the workers.
The basic problem confronting any or-
ganization which calls itself a trade union is
wages and working conditions. The various
Khrushchev industrial reorganization decrees
have only reaffirmed and reinforced the power
of management (the Communist government
employers) to have the last word in regard to
wages, change of employment, and the compul-
sory shifting of workers from one plant to
another.
The much propagandized high rate of Soviet
economic growth has been attained, in very great
measure, at the expense of labor's economic in-
terests and democratic rights.
NO FREE TRADE UNION, therefore, can
fraternize with the Communist government and
its agents dominating the Soviet labor bodies.
On the contrary, such fraternization seriously
hurts the interests of the Soviet workers and in-
sults their aspirations to individual human dignity
and freedom.
i¥hen free trade unions exchange delegations
with Soviet company unions, they unwittingly
lend moral prestige and democratic respectability
to these Communist labor fronts and to the po-
litical dictatorship which uses them for their op-
pressive purposes at home and aggressive pur-
poses abroad.
For more than 40 years the Soviet workers
have been arbitrarily shut off by the Communist
dictatorship from contact with the working peo-
ple of the free world. However, the representa-
tives of the American or any other free trade
unions cannot break through these barriers and
get contact with the Soviet working people by
discussions and exchanges with those who are
running the state company unions for the
Communist Party.
Indeed, any free trade union delegation ex-
changes with Communist enemies of the workers'
rights and interests can only discourage and de-
moralize and even estrange from us the labor vic-
tims of Soviet despotism. Such free labor contacts
and exchanges actually strengthen the tyrants'
hands and set up new barriers between the work-
ing people on both sides of the iron curtain.
The bonafide free trade unions in our country
and in every other democracy have no counter-
parts or equal and opposite numbers in the
USSR or under any other dictatorship with
which to exchange delegations.
During the days of Hitler and Mussolini, no
self-respecting free trade unions sent delegations
to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy "to see for them-
selves and learn first-hand" how the workers "got
along" or suffered under these dictatorships.
Soviet Communism is as much anti-labor as
Fascism, Nazism, and Falangism.
WE OF AMERICAN LABOR desire the clos-
est contact, understanding and friendship with the
Soviet workers. We believe that they, like the
American workers, desire human dignity, free-
dom, social justice, and well-being.
We look to the day when the Soviet workers
will have trade union organizations of their own —
independent of their employers and not under the
domination of any political party, free to repre-
sent and promote the interests of labor. The
AFL-CIO will then gladly apply towards labor
in Russia the policy which we now pursue towards
labor in the free world — the policy of cooperating
for the improvement of the conditions of life and
labor and the promotion of democracy and peace.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20. 1960
Vuge >evr
Morgan Says:
World's Big Task Is to Make
UN an Effective Traffic Cop
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
FROM THE MOVING vantage point of a
rented car in the left-hand lane of traffic
through England, Wales and Scotland, I have
collected a bundle of not necessarily earth-shaking
impressions over the past fortnight. Hardly any-
thing has changed, of course, but it is often useful
to confirm the basic same-
ness in people's strengths
and weaknesses by focus-
ing on the scene from a
fresh angle.
Men are bouncing con-
versations of! a balloon a
thousand miles in space as
easily as my brother and I
used to toss a tennis ball
over the woodshed but in
the Congo other men have
still not solved the prob- Morgan
lem of communicating face to face.
Congress has begrudgingly convened its clean-
up session and, as everybody knew it would, is
reverting to the stereotype of its classic prejudices
and proceeding to mangle the high-sounding plat-
forms of both the Republican and Democratic
parties:
Nixon and Kennedy are cautiously sparring,
husbanding their haymakers for the long slugging
match ahead. Khrushchev and Castro are still
up to their expected mischiefs in their respective
bailiwicks and the neglected, critical problems of
Latin America are being looked at again, this
time in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Frustrated commuters may draw some comfort
from the fact that the British are suffering, if pos-
sible, worse traffic problems than we have.
The kingdom with the fanciest perambulators
in the world has licensed everything on wheels
except these baby carriages to use some of the
narrowest roads in the world and the result is
utter chaos — compounded by the fact that the
steadily rising post-war standard of living has
put a car or motorbike within reach of thou-
sands who never could afford one before; these
suddenly liberated citizens have invaded the
public highways en masse to learn how to drive
only to find themselves imprisoned in road jams
that have become front page news in almost
every newspaper in the United Kingdom.
The British press, on the whole, has reported
Washington Reports:
these tie-ups more faithfully than more contro-
versial matters. It remained for such a thought-
ful journal as the London Observer to reveal that
the basic objective of the wildcat shipping strikers
was not major concessions from shipowners but
a reform in what they considered the barnacled
leadership of the seamen's unions.
While such responsible papers as the Times of
London, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph
and the Manchester Guardian were doing their
best to pull meaningful dispatches out of the caul-
dron of the Congo, the right-wing but broadly
circulated Daily Mail and Daily Express were
printing the same kind of silly, impetuous ac-
counts from Leopoldville and Elizabethville that
marked their coverage of the Suez misadventure
four years ago. The British have their problems
with the irresponsibility of the press too and in
some instances the problems are more serious
than ours.
But the Observer, which I read as our jet
streaked over a flotilla of icebergs off Greenland,
caught what has seemed to me the development
of major significance of these last two weeks —
the emergence of two men on the international
political scene and their names are not Kennedy
and Nixon but Hammarskjold and Bunche. But
for the existence of the United Nations, the situa-
tion in the Congo today would be even more
dangerously loaded with political explosives.
There may be a disastrous detonation yet
but if one is averted it will be largely due to the
tireless personal efforts of the UN secretary-
general and Ralph Bunche, his African expert
who was born on the wrong side of the tracks
in Detroit.
Somewhere on the drive through the tidy British
Isles, where history scrapes your fenders, the idea
hit me that there is a definite connection between
the highway chaos in London or Los Angeles and
the political chaos of the Congo. In each instance
there are too many vehicles on the road but
Lumumba as a beginner in politics is, in his way,
exercising the same right to block traffic as the
inexperienced driver with a learner's license.
The new nations and the new drivers demand to
be recognized. They refuse to be shunted to the
side of the road. The question is how to keep
them purposefully moving. Leaving the auto-
motive problem aside for the moment, I suggest
that if we don't make the UN the real international
traffic cop it should be, we deserve the collisions
that will come.
Senate Committee Health Bill
Blasted as Grossly Inadequate'
YOUR
SEN. CLINTON P. ANDERSON (D-N. M.),
author of a bill for health insurance for the
aged, blasted the Senate Finance Committee's
substitute measure as he was interviewed with
Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.), co-author
of another bill, on Washington Reports to the
People, AFL-CIO public service program, heard
on more than 300 radio stations.
"The committee bill adds very little to the
House measure and is grossly inadequate," Ander-
son charged. "It must be amended on the Senate
floor if it is to mean anything. It fails to use
the social security means of taking care of costs,
the most efficient and logical method.
' Instead it would use the federal-state system,
which depends upon state acceptance, and it uses
a means test to select those entitled to aid.
Persons on social security would be unable to
meet this test, and I think they need such aid as
a matter of right."
COOPER SAID that doctors "who now seem
to be supporting the House bill" should realize
that "the principle is the same whether assistance
is on a small or large basis. The nut of the ques-
tion is whether or not we're going to pass a
bill that will actually take care of these people."
Cooper joined Anderson in pointing out that
the House bill depends upon state acceptance and
would require a 'paupers oath" to get any aid.
"I don't want people ruled out by a means
test," Anderson declared. "If anyone has in-
come or property, he's not eligible for aid with
such a test. Folks on social security would be
ruled out because social security benefits are
income. And people who own a house don't
want to mortgage it to get assistance."
He doubted that many states, required to put
up a total of $160 million under the House bill,
would be able to comply. "They re in a very
serious financial situation now," he said.
Cooper is co-author of a federal-state health
measure that would require payment of a pre-
mium ranging from 50 cents to $13 a month and
would cover up to 16 million persons, at an
estimated cost of $1.2 billion.
Anderson said he did not criticize coverage of
16 million, but preferred his approach to Cooper's.
His bill would not require premium payments by
individuals or congressional authorization of funds.
It would be financed through a payroll tax of a
fourth of 1 percent on employer and employe.
Persons 68 and over would be covered for hos-
pital, nursing home, laboratory, X-ray and other
costs.
"Sixty-eight is the real retirement age," Ander-
son asserted.
Both expected some health-benefit bill to pass,
though they were not certain of its form.
WMSMNOYON
IN THE SENATE DEBATE on the Kennedy minimum wage
bill. Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) talked lengthily about the
alleged "unconstitutionality" of extending coverage to workers in
what Goldwater calls ''intrastate" business. Sen. John F. Kennedy
(D-Mass.) replied directly:
"There is a tendency to wrap up this argument in very eloquent
constitutional terms, when actually what is at stake is the question
of whether those employers who are involved want to pay a decent
wage."
Again, Kennedy said:
'This is not a constitutional argument. This is an economic
argument. The employers who are going to be affected do not
want to pay this amount."
This is precisely the issue involved: the lobbyists swarming
Capitol Hill to get exemption for restaurants, hotels, big depart-
ment stores and wealthy retail chains are not really afraid that
the law will be declared unconstitutional. They are afraid of the
exact opposite — that the Supreme Court, where the precedents
are clear, will manifestly uphold the legality of a wage law apply-
ing to their employes.
That is the peril they fear — they would be compelled to pay $1
an hour, rising in steps to $1.25, and to pay overtime rates for
overtime work — and they hate and detest the prospect.
Goldwater, of course, candidly acknowledges that he would "vote
to repeal" the present wage-hour law. He admits that the present
law is "constitutional," but he's against it, too.
* * *
WITH SCARCELY ANY NOTICE from the press, a fine public
servant, Leland Olds, died a couple of weeks ago.
Olds was one of the men called to Washington by the late Pres.
Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve on the Federal Power Commission.
He believed in enforcing the law that established the FPC as a
regulatory agency, so he earned the hostility of many in the oil
and gas companies and in the interstate utilities. He was renom-
inated for another term by former Pres. Truman, but he was denied
Senate confirmation when his enemies dug up 20-year-old writings
to charge him with communism and socialism.
His known public record should have protected him against this
kind of assault, but it did not.
The steady disintegration of the regulatory agencies — the dis-
integration that led to the Harris House subcommittee inquiry
that was largely abortive, the disintegration that is expected to
bring a Senate inquiry headed by Sen. Warren Magnuson (D-
Wash.) — may almost be dated from the denial of confirmation to
Olds. It was taken by the industries as a sign that persistent
assaults on commission members would in the end pay off. An-
other FPC champion of consumers, Thomas C. Buchanan of
Pennsylvania, was forced to resign after his failure to win con-
firmation for another term.
The Madison Capital Times, noting that Olds died shortly after
returning home from church, inquired editorially: "Who would
have believed 11 years ago, in the whirlwind of charges against
this 'dangerous radical,' that he ever went to church?"
* * *
RALPH ROBEY, a columnist for the National Association of
Manufacturers News, finds the Republican convention platform
something less satisfying than he had hoped. He observes that the
GOP said it would put national defense, national "urgent needs"
and debt reduction ahead of "improving our tax structure," and he
thinks "the order of priorities is exactly backwards."
"Urgent needs" is too vague a phrase, he says, and paying off
the public debt is "not as important as tax rate reform." By
"reform," of course, he means "reduction" of taxes for business.
He does agree that the needs of national defense "must be met,"
but he apparently doesn't think that this should have been men-
tioned first. Defense needs can be met, he suggests, without larger
expenditures — certainly without larger expenditures that might in-
terfere with good old "tax reform."
HEALTH INSURANCE FOR THE AGED was listed as a major
goal of the August session of Congress by Sen. Clinton P. Anderson
(D-N. M.), left, and Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.), interviewed
on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service
radio program.
Page Eight
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGtJST 20, 1960
How to Buy:
Heavy Inventories
Lead to Price Cuts
By Sidney Margolius
THE ECONOMISTS, businessmen and administration spokesmen
who announced last January that this was to be the decade of the
"Soaring Sixties" are now running for cover. The predicted fabulous
boom never appeared. In fact, business is sagging, and merchants
and manufacturers are shading prices to move excess inventories
The result is some good buys in household appliances and furnish-
ings are available for careful shop-
pers. Here are types of. merchan-
dise on which you can make espe-
cially advantageous buys at this
time:
{Ttt/^B^ ^ | f Ipj^TI • Heaviest price-cutting is on
large appliances, especially refriger-
ators and washing machines.
• Furniture manufacturers and
retailers are shading prices and also
have brought out simplified, less
costly living room and bedroom sets,
sofa beds and metal dinette sets, to
combat the slump in that industry
• TV producers and dealers are
cutting prices especially sharply on
the 17-inch portable and 21 -inch
standard sets. When you shop, you're likely to find dealers trying
to convince you to take 19 or 23-inch models instead. They get
a larger profit margin on the bigger-screen sets. But the 17 and 21
inch sets are better value financially.
• A number of building materials are lower this fall, but ply-
wood prices especially have gone down.
Besides these reductions, September is a good month to find
cut-price sales on housewares, china and glassware; batteries
and other car equipment (specially priced in pre- winter sales);
piece goods; tools and hardware.
September is also the month food markets offer special prices
on canned goods to clear out last year's pack before this year's ar-
rives. This is an opportunity to stock up on food staples at savings,
IN KIDS' BACK-TO-SCHOOL CLOTHES, the big trend is to
blends of synthetics. It's a desirable trend. The newer synthetics
add dirt-resistance, wrinkle-resistance, durability and easy wash-
ability to the older fabrics like cotton, rayon, and wool. The "poly
ester" synthetics, which include Dacron, Kodel, Vycron and Tery
lene, generally are the most truly wash-and-wear and the strongest
fibers. They are especially desirable in a blend with cotton, or
in a less-expensive blend with rayon, for shirts and blouses.
Food is still the big cost-of-living problem this September
although prices will slacken off seasonably later this fall. Meat is
still relatively expensive with pork in relatively scarce supply. You'll
find some supermarket leaders on lamb, beef and pork shoulders.
Poultry — both broiler-fryers and turkeys — is in large supply this
month. Marketing of broilers and fryers is running a good 12
percent ahead of a year earlier, and prices are dropping.
A RECENT SURVEY by government home economists found
you generally need 2.4 pounds of ready-to-cook chicken to provide
a pound of lean cooked meat; 2.2 pounds of young turkey and 4.5
pounds of duck. Using recent prices, that means chicken at 55
cents a pound really costs you $1.32 for the cooked meat; turkey
at 59 cents costs you $1.30, and duck at 55 cents costs $2.48.
This fall look for the best values in big turkeys especially. They're
in heavy supply. Prices for big turkeys have been running a little
less than those for birds under 16 pounds. The large turkeys also
yield you more actual meat per pound.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius
HONOR LABOR DAY
. . . STAY ALIVE
Unions Spearhead Campaign
For Safe Labor Day Weekend
A revived interest in observing Labor Day with parades and picnics is reported from many parts
of the country in connection with the second annual campaign of organized labor and the Nationa]
Safety Council to cut into the heavy accident and death toll on the weekend that commemorates the
gains unions have won for workers.
Last year 438 persons — many of them workers — died in traffic accidents over the Labor Day
weekend. In addition, 91 men,^
$10,000 CHECK FROM AFL-CIO will finance month-long tour
by a top-rated USO entertainment unit to U.S. military and naval
establishments in Southern Europe and North Africa. First per-
formance of the "AFL-CIO Salute to the Armed Forces," featuring
10 nightclub and variety acts, will be given on Labor Day. AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany is shown presenting the federation's
contribution to USO Chairman Harvey S. Firestone, Jr.
women and children were drowned
and 84 lives were lost in other ac-
cidents. The tragic toll was called
i "desecration of the day" and a
'national disgrace" by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany.
This year's campaign to make
labor's own weekend, the "final
fling" of summer, a safe one is
being directed by Pres. James
A. Brownlow of the AFL-CIO
Metal Trades Dept., who was
named to the chairmanship of
the steering committee by AFL-
CIO Vice Pres. Richard F.
Walsh, chairman of the Commit-
tee on Safety & Occupational
Health.
Vice Pres. P. L. Siemiller of the
Machinists, vice president for la-
bor of the National Safety Council,
pointed out that "accidents certainly
don't have to happen."
The Safety Council has listed
eight pointers designed to help
drivers protect themselves on the
road not only over Labor Day but
throughout the year:
• Don't drive after drinking.
• Hold down speed. Adjust
speed to road, weather and traffic
conditions.
• Be courteous — give the other
fellow a break.
• Make sure you have enough
room to pass and that the way is
clear before changing lanes.
• Be on the lookout for trouble
at intersections, hills and curves.
• Kee# both hands on the steer-
ing wheel and your eyes on the
road.
• Don't drive too close to the
car ahead.
• Observe all traffic signs and
signals.
The Safety Council in addition
warned against fatigue, inattention
and distractions.
It also pointed out that most of
the drowning toll in the past has
been among children less than 4
years of age, teen-agers and young
men up to the age of 25. About 2
out of every 3 victims were alone
or with only one other person,
while deaths were particularly nu-
merous at unguarded or unpa-
trolled areas along lakes and rivers.
The steering committee has urged
safety during the weekend through
talks and .the showing of safety
films at local union meetings and
over radio and television broad-
casts, and with safety posters.
Meany urged all affiliates to par-
ticipate wholeheartedly in the cam-
paign for a safe holiday.
Label Week
Participation Urged
Full participation by the 13.5 million men and women of the trade
union movement in the annual observance of Union Label Week,
Sept. 5-11, has been urged by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler.
The labor officials expressed their views in letters to Joseph Lewis,
secretary-treasurer of the AFL-^ -
CIO Union Label & Services Trades
Dept., which sponsors the annual
salute to the*union label, shop card
and service button.
The department's more than
half a century of promoting the
symbols of trade unionism,
Meany declared, has been "of
valuable service both to union
men and women and customers.
You have helped promote pur-
chase of union products and the
use of union services, and at the
same time helped protect shop-
pers from inferior goods."
Schnitzler said trade unionists
should ' buy union all year 'round,"
declaring that when they do so "they
promote the making of products
under good working conditions at
good wages."
Marking the special salute to
trade unionism, governors and
mayors across the nation are ex-
pected to follow past practice and
issue special Union Label Week
proclamations.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, I>. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20. I960
Page Nine
Labor Turned Out the Vote for 6 Keef
NASHVILLE WOMEN worked hard, under the direction of the COPE Women's
Activities Division, to renominate Estes Kefauver (D) for the Senate. This picture
shows some of the volunteers who mailed 103,000 pieces of campaign information
and checked voters by telephone.
Tennessee Senator
Hails Role of COPE
By Gene Kelly
Nashville, Tenn. — The men and women of Tennessee labor de-
serve a big slice of the credit for the smashing primary election
victory of Sen. Estes Kefauver (D). "The Keef" said so himself.
"From labor, farmers and business people I have had wonderful
support," Kefauver said after getting 65 percent of all the votes
cast in a record-breaking Demo-f>
CHATTANOOGA WOMEN volunteered to staff 30 telephones to turn out" the
vote for Kefauver on election day. Here we see some of the 50 volunteers. Standing
at left are Carl D. Mills, local COPE coordinator and Mrs. Margueritte Burnette,
wife of COPE Director Earl W. Burnette.
cratic primary. "I want to express
my appreciation for the effective
efforts of labor, working through
their fine organization, COPE, and
its state director, Charles Houk."
During Kefauver's 12 years in
the Senate and 10 in the House
he made a record his supporters
said is based on liberalism in the
economic field, and of moderation
and tolerance in the civil rights field.
The Tennessee election was con-
sidered by observers as a test
of whether a nationally recog-
nized senator of Kefauver's cali-
ber, with his voting record, could
be driven from office in a south-
ern border state.
The senator won nomination for
a third term by overwhelming Cir-
cuit Judge Andrew T. ("Tip") Tay-
lor of Jackson County. Two years
ago Taylor made a strong race for
governor, and was considered a
good bet to win his next statewide
bid for office. But Kefauver
changed all that.
Labor precincts in Chattanooga
and Memphis voted for Taylor in
1958, against him in 1960. What
happened?
COPE made 60,000 telephone
calls, mailed 300,000 copies of
Kefauver campaign material, dis-
tributed 160,000 leaflets and
handbills, set up central files with
the names of 65,000 union mem-
bers, got many of them regis-
tered, and helped many turn out
to vote.
Labor was "at least four times
as effective" as ever before, says
one observer. More than 200 wom-
en volunteers contributed several
thousand hours of work.
"For the first time," says Dan
Powell, area COPE director, "we
were able to get . through to labor
people. The campaign became a
labor issue/'
And Stanton Smith, coordinator
of state and local central bodies for
the AFL.-CIO, adds this comment:
"We broke through the racial bar-
rier, for the first time in the South."
Labor, the women's division of
Kefauver's own campaign commit-
tees and Negro organizations
worked hard in the campaign to
renominate the liberal Democrat.
Kefauver ran a vigorous cam-
paign, emphasizing his hearings
on price "gouging" by the drug
industry and explaining his vot-
ing record. The race issue, raised
by supporters of his opponent,
fell flat on its face.
"This is by far the best job labor
ever has done in Tennessee," said
Smith, who has known Kefauver
since the senator first became po-
litically active in Chattanooga in the
middle 30's.
The job was started in May of
1959, when the executive commit-
tee of the state AFL-CIO endorsed
a broad education and registration
program. It was agreed that full-
time COPE people would be as-
signed to four major cities, and
central card files would be set up in
each.
Smith says the card file was the
key. Without it, there would have
been no checking of union regis-
trations, no extensive mailings,
no telephone campaign. It kept
200 members of the COPE
Women's Activities Division, and
some men, busy for weeks.
The WAD and the COPE co-
ordinators got new membership lists
from union locals, checked names
against voter registration lists, noti-
fied locals and individuals of the
names of those not registered. The
result was the highest concentra-
tion of registered voters in the
South, perhaps in the nation — 80
percent of union members, 70 per-
cent of the spouses in Knoxville,
raised from 50 percent by in-
tensive plugging.
Copies of three Tennessee la-
bor newspapers were mailed into
homes of union members, along
with a Kefauver picture story in
The Machinist, national weekly
of the IAM.
In Nashville, members of the
WAD typed 15,000 names on cards,
checked them in the city directory,
telephone book and voter lists. A
COPE precinct organization was
set up, lists of non-registered voters
sent to precinct captains, and a
registration drive conducted.
In Chattanooga, the WAD
produced a card file of 10,000
names. Fifty women volunteers
addressed 40,000 mailings, made
15,000 phone calls on election
day, loaned their services also to
Volunteers for Kefauver. Carl
D. Mills, of Boilermakers' Lo-
cal 656, was COPE coordinator
here.
The Knoxville card file was
brought up to date before election,
KNOXVILLE PLUMBERS' HALL was the scene of some of the election-day effort that went
into Kefauver's victory. By 8:30 a.m. some 60 women had arrived to help get out the vote. An
additional 55 men and women offered their services before the day was over.
and 50,000 items of information
addressed and mailed. On pri-
mary day, 96 women volunteers
worked on the telephones, and
other men and women acted as
car-drivers, baby sitters, and gen-
eral handymen. Members of three
women's auxiliaries and 17 local
unions made 16,000 phone calls.
The Knoxville COPE coordinator
was J. D. Porter, head of the
Knoxville AFL-CIO and COPE
chairman.
In Memphis, secretaries of lo-
cal unions manned the telephones
after a registration and informa-
tional campaign by COPE. W.
C. Burcham was the state COPE
man in west Tennessee, and AFL-
CIO staff representative W. A.
Copeland worked in that area.
For the state AFL-CIO, COPE
director Houk supervised the cam
paign. For the national COPE,
Mrs. Esther Murray was on the
scene.
'Hate' Campaign Rejected
A COPE report summed up the
campaign this way:
"Sen. Kefauver won renomina-
tion against bitter, heavily financed
opposition marked by the irrespon-
sible use of scurrilous literature de-
signed to inflame voters on the seg-
regation issue.
"The Tennessee campaign was
a clear example of what COPE
can achieve against the organized
forces of big business when the
basic, backbreaking work of
getting our members registered
and voting is pitted against a
flood of corporation monev."
Reuther Asks Program
To Forestall Recession
An all-out attack by government on the "human, social and
economic problems" resulting from automation and general tech-
nological advance in industry has been called for by Auto Workers
Pres. Walter P. Reuther.
At the same time, Reuther stressed in a statement delivered to
a Joint Economic subcommittee'*^
headed by Rep. Wright Patman
(D-Tex.), that positive action is
needed to achieve an annual growth
rate of 5 percent to end seven years
of "economic stagnation."
Achievement of a growth rate of
5 percent, Reuther said, would help
the nation to return to full employ-
ment and full production and create
an economic climate in which auto-
mation could be utilized "for hu-
man and social betterment/'
The UAW president emphasized
that automation, itself, is not ''pri-
marily responsible" for the nation's
current economic ills. The major
fault, he said, lay in the fact that
the economy "has failed to generate
the purchasing power necessary to
absorb the volume of goods and
services which we . . . produce."
As a result, he continued, the
nation is still feeling the after-
effects of a third postwar recession,
which he described as having been
"more severe than either of the
two which preceded it." Econo-
mists, he added, "are almost unani-
mous in their prophesies of still a
fourth decline, differing only as to
whether it is likely to begin this
year or next."
Reuther urged the subcommit-
tee to recommend remedial meas-
ures, including:
• Creation of a permanent gov-
ernment commission on technologi-
cal change.
• Area redevelopment for sites
hard hit by technological disloca-
tion.
• Relocation allowances for
workers who choose to leave chroni-
cally distressed areas.
• A higher minimum wage.
• Reduction of the standard
workweek.
• Establishment of federal stan-
dards, below which the states could
not fall, for the amount and dura-
tion of unemployment insurance.
"The major measure of an
economy's success," the UAW offi-
cial said, "must be the extent to
which it utilizes its productive re-
sources ... to meet human needs
and to fulfill human aspirations. No
amount of advanced technological
equipment serves its purpose if it
is not used, or if its use means only
that men and women are left with-
out the employment they want and
need."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. fc, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, I960
2 Courts Rule Against 'Runaway' Shops
Central Bodies Held
Labor's 'Vital Links'
State and local central
bodies are described as "The
Vital Links" which bind the
labor movement together in a
new pamphlet by that title is-
sued by the AFL-CIO.
The pamphlet, prepared by
Stanton E. Smith, AFL-CIO
coordinator for state and local
central bodies, spells out the
role of central labor councils
in the fields of legislation,
public relations, political ac-
tivity, community services, ed-
ucation, union label promo-
tion, organizing, mutual aid
and support of the labor press.
The central bodies "cannot
do the job expected of them
without the greatest degree of
support from the local un-
ions in their respective juris-
dictions," AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany declared in a
statement setting the theme
for the pamphlet.
Job
Unions Ask
Freeze in
Rail Mergers
Rail unions have asked the In-
terstate Commerce Commission to
enforce — for the first time — a 1940
law intended to provide job protec-
tion for employes in mergers of
railroads.
The Railway Labor Executives'
Association wants the ICC to re-
quire the Erie and the Lackawanna
railroads — as a condition of their
proposed merger — to guarantee
that none of the 27,000 employes
of the two systems will lose their
jobs or suffer a cut in pay for at
least four years after the merger.
This protection, RLEA At-
torney William G. Mahoney as-
serted in argument before the
full commission, is clearly spell-
ed out in the Transportation Act
of 1940.
With a half-dozen other major
railroad mergers awaiting approval
by the ICC or in the final stages of
negotiation, the commission's rul-
ing was regarded by both sides as
the key to the job security issue.
Mahoney, challenging the rail-
roads' claims that the no-firing de-
mand would impose a financial bur-
den on the merged systems, pointed
out that normal attrition such as
resignations, retirements and deaths
could be expected to provide more
job openings during the first few
years of the merger than the num-
ber of jobs the railroads want to
abolish through the dismissal of
workers.
Clothing Manufacturer
Told to Return to N.Y.
■
New York — An arbitrator's finding that a "runaway" clothing
manufacturer must open another plant here and pay $204,681 in
damages to 300 former employes who lost their jobs has been upheld
by Justice Arthur G. Klein of the State Supreme Court.
The manufacturer is Jack Meilman, who moved machines and
material last May from downtown^
Manhattan to a new plant in Coffee-
ville, Miss., paid for by a public
bond issue. The move was made
at night and over a weekend, while
Meilman was negotiating a new
contract with the Clothing Work-
ers.
ACWA Pres. Jacob S. Potof-
sky praised the court decision,
and an arbiter's ruling which it
upheld, as making it clear that
"a manipulating employer cannot
enter into a collective agreement
with a union and then proceed
with impunity deliberately to
violate its terms."
The arbitration award, Justice
Klein decided, was "bottomed on
uncontroverted evidence" and clear-
ly supported, in fact and in law, by
the record.
Facts 'Clearly Established'
"It has been clearly established,"
he said, "that the petitioner (Meil-
man) was a party to . . . agreements
. . . which subjected him to arbi-
tration. . . . No valid reasons have
been presented to warrant a find-
ing that the award was in any man-
ner improper."
Prof. Herman A. Gray, of the
law school of New York University,
made the award as temporary im-
partial chairman of labor relations
for the New York garment indus-
try. He conducted a hearing, which
Meilman refused to attend, and
ruled that the manufacturer -had
left town stealthily and in violation
of his contract with the union.
Used Three Labels
Meilman formerly made clothing
here under the name of Hickory
Clothes Inc., Record Clothes Corp.
and the Currick & Leiken Co. He
will appeal the Supreme Court de-
cision, it is reported, on a claim
that the arbitrator exceeded his
jurisdiction by ruling on a contract
that did not take effect until after
Meilman left town &nd a claim that
Meilman personally was not sub-
ject to the agreement.
ACWA told the court that
Meilman was a member and di-
rector of the New York Cloth-
ing Manufacturers' Exchange,
and was negotiating a new three-
year contract with the ACWA
New York Joint Board while
NEW PRESIDENT of AFL-CIO Union Label & Service Trades
Dept., Richard F. Walsh (seated, center) receives congratulations
from the department's secretary-treasurer, Joseph Lewis (left) and
Vice Pres. Joseph P. McCurdy (right). Standing, left to right, are
Union Label Dept. Vice Presidents John O'Hara, George Googe,
James A. Suffridge, Joseph D. Keenan and Arthur P. Gildea. Elec-
tion took place at Union Label Dept. meeting in Chicago.
negotiating "surreptitiously" to
move his plant to Mississippi.
The union said Meilman was
bound by the agreement which went
into effect June 1, 1960. The ar-
bitrator upheld this argument, and
the court upheld the arbitrator's
decision.
Strengthen Agreement
ACWA Pres. Potofsky asserted
that the rulings "strengthen the col-
lective labor agreement voluntarily
entered into as the very best means
for dealing with labor relations in
a free and democratic economy."
The two decisions "strike down
the actions of this employer," said
Potofsky, "who by stealth sought
to escape the obligations which he
voluntarily undertook.
"It is now established that any
employer who may be tempted
to engage in the same connivance
will have the law to deal with.
There must be law and order in
the industry
The damages awarded ACWA
for the stranded Meilman employes
were for lost wages and contribu-
tions to the welfare and retirement
fund.
Gray in his decision called mov-
ing the factory a "severe blow to
the continuing stability of the cloth-
ing industry . . . seriously damag-
ing in its immediate effects, but
even more serious in the conse-
quences of the example set by an
act of deception carefully planned."
UA W Contract Upheld
In Flight to Georgia
Detroit — U.S. District Court Judge Ralph M. Freeman, in a land-
mark action, has upheld the validity of a job security clause in an
Auto Workers' contract aimed at safeguarding workers against
"runaway" plants.
The court issued an order to Crescent Brass and Pin Co. here,
directing management to honor^
contract terms which spell out pro-
tections for its 48 workers against
loss of either their jobs or their
contract in the event the employer
moves his plant to a new location.
Hailing the court's action,
Douglas Fraser, co-director of
UAW Region 1-A, said it marked
the first time since the union be-
gan inserting job transfer clauses
into contracts 10 years ago that
a federal court had been called
upon to make the protective
clause "meaningful and binding."
Earlier National Labor Relations
Board rulings in this area have
proved ineffective, Fraser said.
The pivotal language in the
UAW agreement declares that "in
the event that the plant and/or any
of its operations are moved, or the
name is changed by any of the own-
ers, this contract shall continue in
effect until its expiration date and
all employes shall be offered an op-
portunity to /transfer also."
The case arose when Crescent
announced plans to move its en-
tire operation to Americus, Ga.
The announcement of the pend-
ing transfer came in the wake of
a strike by members of UAW
Local 408 over various griev-
ances. The strike, which is still
in progress, was ruled a legal
walkout in July by U.S. District
Judge Thomas P. Thornton, who
rejected a company plea for aw
injunction to halt the strike.
The company, after disclosing its
intention to move to Georgia, of-
fered employment to present em-
ployes, but at prevailing wage rates
ia the southern state rather than
those in effect under the UAW
contract. At the same time, man-
agement insisted that any workers
at the Americus site would not be
covered by the Auto Workers'
pact, which runs until Nov. 26,
1961.
The Auto Workers first sought a
court injunction to keep Crescent
from moving its equipment to
Americus. When this was denied,
the union returned to court to ob-
tain the order compelling Crescent
to respect the current agreement.
On the subject of the terms on
which management offered to
transfer employes to the new lo-
cation, Judge Freeman declared
that "the right to move to
Georgia isn't much of a right"
unless the terms of the contract
now in effect move to Georgia
with the worker.
According to Fraser, the effect
of Judge Freeman's order means:
• All of the present employes
must be given the right to accept
employment at the Georgia site if
the company goes through with its
plans to transfer its operations.
• All existing working condi-
tions, wages and fringe benefits in
the current UAW contract must re-
main intact.
• Any new employes hired in
Georgia will come under the terms
of the agreement.
Mitchell Calls Welfare Fund Act
'Shameful Illusion,' Urges Revisions
(Continued from Page 1)
ence in administering the law
"shows a substantial amount of
confusion and non-compliance,"
and asserted that as the law is now
written "neither its reporting nor
its disclosure purposes are being ef-
fectively achieved."
142,500 Descriptions Filed
Mitchell reported to Congress
that 142,500 plan descriptions
have been filed with the Labor
Dept., but indicated the number is
"many thousands short" of the full
total of plans falling within the
scope of the law. In addition, he
said, thousands of plan amend-
ments have not been filed; only
100,500 annual financial reports
have been submitted; and "obvious
defects and omissions are clearly
evident" in thousands of reports.
"Finally," he declared, "the
overall adequacy or accuracy of
• • • reports . . • cannot be ef-
fectively determined because of
the absence of rule-making, in-
vestigatory or enforcement au-
thority thus leaving the Secretary
of Labor, for all practical pur-
poses, powerless to uncover
abuses."
In his plea for an amendment to
give the Secretary of Labor the
right to instigate suits against ad-
ministrators who misuse funds,
Mitchell said that the act's present
reliance solely upon individual em-
ployes to bring administrators into
court is "unrealistic."
"Experience in other areas," he
told Congress, "has shown that em-
ploye suits alone are inadequate as
enforcement remedies. Unaided by
governmental authority to conduct
investigations and institute litiga-
tion, individual employes without
financial resources or legal experi-
ence can be easily intimidated,
made subject to reprisals and dis-
couraged from taking effective ac-
tion."
Mitchell said "some measure
of the validity of this criticism*
is evidenced by the fact that in
18 months of the law's operation
"only one lawsuit has been re-
ported in which individual! em-
ployes have sought to enforce
the publication requirements off
the act," and that only two other
matters involving alleged wiMuull
violation of the publication re-
quirements have been referred to
the Labor Dept.'s legal division
for possible action.
The "self-policing" philosophy of
the act, he said, has "greatly re-
duced its effectiveness."
In addition, he asked that the law
be amended to give the Secretary
of Labor authority to render inter-
pretations of provisions of the act,
pointing out that at present "no
governmental agency is authorized
to render binding interpretations
upon which plan administrator*
can rely."
'Right-to- Work 9 Laws Hit
As Harmful to Farmers
So-called "right-to-work" laws "can cut the income of
both farmers and workers," Chester Schrier, a prominent
Indiana farm leader declares in a pamphlet issued by the Na-
tional Council for Industrial Peace.
Schrier and a cross-section of agricultural spokesmen from
all parts of the nation emphasize the similarity between union
shop agreements and marketing agreements which assure
farmers a uniform price for their crops. "In both instances,"
Schrier points out, "the majority decide and the decision is
then binding upon all."
The pamphlet, entitled "Is the So-Called 'Right-u>Work'
Law a Threat to Farmers?," is available from the National
Council for Industrial Peace, 605 Albee Bldg., Washington
5, D. C.
Farmers Union Pres. James G. Patton; John S. Watson,
past president of the Associated Farmers of California; Blan-
chard Hall, past president of the Rutland County, Vt., Farm
Bureau, are among those quoted in the pamphlet as speaking
out against "work" laws and warning against attempts to
drive a wedge between farmers and organized labor.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960
Page Eleven
To Maintain Identity:
Texas Labor Votes
Political Action Plan
Dallas, Tex.— The Texas State AFL-CIO, in a move aimed at
maintaining labor's own identity in politics, has approved plans to
cooperate with other political groups sharing labor's goals and to
work for the election of liberal candidates regardless of party
affiliation.
Adoption of the strong political* the nominees of their
action position highlighted the state
labor body's annual convention
here at which the 1,000 delegates
overwhelmingly approved a series
of resolutions on a broad range of
fronts, but rejected efforts to raise
the per capita tax from its present
level of 8 cents per month.
The report of the convention's
Committee on Political Educa-
tion approved by the delegates
said that labor's drive on behalf
of liberal candidates will be best
served "if we make clear ... to
our friends outside of labor that
we want to maintain a clear la-
bor identity in our political activ-
ities/'
The report pointed out that for
the past 10 years the State AFL-
CIO has worked "to strengthen the
democratic process in Texas," and
said that labor had achieved the
"apparent restoration of the prin-
ciple that party officials are bound
18 ILO Compacts
Accepted by UAR
Geneva— A total of 18 Intl.
Labor Organization conventions
which had been ratified by either
Egypt or Syria will now be appli-
cable throughout the United Arab
Republic, the ILO has been notified.
Thirteen conventions were pre-
viously ratified by Egypt and now
are extended to Syria, including
those on forced labor, holidays
with pay, labor inspection and pro-
tection of the right to organize.
Five conventions which Syria had
ratified now apply also to Egypt,
including that on equal pay for
men and women for work of equal
value.
As a result of the UAR decision,
30 ILO conventions now apply
throughout the country.
party.
Pres. Jerry Holleman explained
that it was "just plain good politi-
cal sense" for Texas labor not to
lose its identity in the political
arena.
In the hardest-waged fight of
the convention, delegates turned
down three separate efforts to
raise the per capita tax. The ex-
ecutive board had recommended
an increase to 15 cents, the con-
vention's Constitutional Commit-
tee brought in a majority report
calling for a boost to 10 cents,
and a minority report favored a
12-cent per capita.
On a rollcall vote, the proposal
to raise per capita to 12 cents im-
mediately was defeated 62,509 to
49,318. A substitute move which
would have raised the per capita to
10 cents Sept. I, and to 12 cents in
another 12 months, lost by a roll-
call vote of 61,421 to 43,363. The
recommendation for a 10-cent per
capita failed on a voice vote.
In other action the convention
• Voiced overwhelming approv-
al of "sit-in" demonstrations in
public eating places and condemned
"unwarranted police actions" to
break up such demonstrations.
• Renewed the Texas AFL-CIO
plea that the program for import-
ing Mexican nationals to work on
U.S. farms be discontinued.
• Called for extension of mini-
mum wage law protection to agri-
cultural workers.
• Charged that the National
Labor Relations Board had turned
itself into an "instrument readily
available to management to defeat
legitimate labor organization."
• Reaffirmed Texas labor's de-
termination to win repeal of the
"right-to-work" law now on the
statute books.
APPRECIATION FOR labor's support of the Texas Rehabilitation
Center at Gonzales is expressed by Exec. Dir. Walter Richter at the
Texas State AFL-CIO convention. He presents a plaque to Pres.
Jerry Holleman, center. At right is Sec.-Treas. Fred Schmidt.
Unions in the state raised more than $90,000 for the program during
the past two years.
Governor Names Panel
To Act in Case Strike
Racine, Wis. — Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson (D) has named a three-
man public fact-finding panel in an effort to work out a solution to
the 22-week-old strike of 1,900 members of the Auto Workers
against the J. I. Case Co. here.
UAW Vice Pres. Pat Greathouse, director of the union's J. I. Case
£^£^^ addition to wage and fringe im-
provements, are union demands for
union security provisions, supple-
mental unemployment benefits, sev-
erance pay, and replacement of the
present company-supervised pen-
sion program with a jointly admin-
istered plan.
PICKET LINE protesting color bar at Glen Echo, an amusement
park in Washington, D. C, suburb,demonstrates labor and com-
munity backing for student sit-in leaders w r ho launched the protest.
Left to right are Exec. Sec. Roy Wilkins of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People; AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A.
Philip Randolph, who is president of the Sleeping Car Porters; AFL-
ClO Legislative Rep. Hyman H. Bookbinder; Laurence Henry and
Gwendolyn Green, student leaders. Greater Washington AFL-CIO
has voted unanimous endorsement of the protest
'complete cooperation
fact-finders.
The governor stepped into the
contract dispute after company
officials broke off negotiations
for a new contract. Declaring
that bargaining had "completely
broken down," he named the
panel and charged it with deter-
mining the facts in the dispute
and suggesting terms of a settle-
ment.
Appointed to the panel were
Nathan P. Feinsinger, professor of
law at the University of Wisconsin;
Dean Reynold C. Seitz, of the Mar-
quette University Law School; and
Prof. Edwin Young, chairman of
the economics department of the
University of Wisconsin.
Before naming the panel, the
governor had appealed to the com-
pany and the UAW to "get down to
the hard business of ironing out
your differences." His plea fol-
lowed failure of the U.S. Mediation
and Conciliation Service and the
Wisconsin Employment Relations
Board to bring about a resumption
of bargaining.
Greathouse wired the gover-
nor that the UAW was prepared
to resume negotiations at any
time, and urged Nelson to "use
the influence of the office of gov-
ernor ... to persuade the com-
pany" to return to the bargaining
table.
"It has always been the position
of the UAW," Greathouse said,
"that such disputes are best and
most desirably settled through di-
rect negotiations with the parties.
In this situation, that has been
made difficult . . . because of the
company's refusal to negotiate in
good faith or to negotiate at all."
Company Broke Off Talks
The talks collapsed Aug. 3 when
management advised the union it
could "see no basis for further con-
versations," the UAW official said.
The statement followed manage-
ment rejection of the union's lat-
est modification of its contract
demands.
The walkout against the farm
equipment manfacturer came Mar.
7 — more than a month after the
previous contract expired. At issue,
Newsmen of
25 Countries
Meet in Peru
Camp Huampani, • Peru — Some
75 delegates from 27 organizations
in 25 western hemisphere countries
are meeting in this resort center
near Lima to set up an inter-Ameri-
can organization of working news-
papermen and to determine its fu-
ture course.
The meeting, the First Inter-
American Congress of Working
Newspapermen's Organizations, has
as its co-chairmen Sec.-Treas.
Charles A. Perlik, Jr., of the News-
paper Guild, Luis Camera Checa,
and Roberto Martinez Merizalde,
officers of the Federacion de Peri-
odistas del Peru.
Attending are delegates also from'
groups in Argentina, Barbados,
Brazil, British Guiana, Colombia,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Puerto
Rico, Trinidad, Uruguay and Ven-
ezuela, as well as representatives
from exile organizations of news-
papermen from the Dominican Re-
public, Haiti, Paraguay and Cuba.
The Cuban group was invited when
the recognized organization in Fidel
Castro's domain denounced the
congress and announced it would
not attend.
Representing the ANG on be-
half of U.S. members are Perlik
and Vice Pres. Richard P. Lane
of Memphis, Tenn. ANG Vice
Pres. Eric R. I. Cawdron of Ot-
tawa, Ont., and Executive Sec.
Robert H. Buchanan of the To-
ronto Newspaper Guild are repre-
senting Canadian members.
The congress was set up by an
organizing committee composed of
delegates from newspapermen's un-
ions in the U.S., Canada, Argen-
tina, Colombia, Peru and Vene-
zuela.
Archbishop Defends
Rights of Teachers
San Antonio, Tex. — School boards which deny the right of public
school teachers to be active members of the Teachers Union and to
have reasonable job security are "guilty of tyranny," Archbishop
Robert E. Lucey said here.
The head of the Catholic archdiocese, in a statement printed in
the official archdiocesan newspaper,'^
the Alamo Messenger, urged school
boards to respect the rights of teach-
ers to organize, and to give them
better job tenure than from year
to year.
The newspaper said "there are
known to be a number of local
districts withholding teacher con-
tracts because the teachers are
suspected of belonging to local
chapters of the American Fed-
eration of Teachers."
Archbishop Lucey said in his
statement:
"It would seem that our public
school teachers can be subjected to
injustice at the hands of school
boards without too much difficulty.
"A teacher's tenure of office is
reasonably secure for one year, but
this is a fragile species of security.
"What protection does a public
school teacher enjoy against the
whims of a capricious school board?
Is anyone prepared to declare that
only saints get elected to school
boards? Humanity doesn't work
that way."
In San Antonio, the archbishop
went on, it is said to be dangerous
for a public school teacher to be an
active union member.
"If a little group of willful
men delay contracts for that rea-
son, they are guilty of tyranny,"
the prelate asserted.
"Teaching children is a delicate
science — noble, constructive, honor-
able. We look upon our public
school teachers with reverence and
gratitude.
"In our public school system
there is no room for tyranny. Hu-
man nature being what it is, our
teachers should have job security to
protect them from harassment."
To make teachers subject to
dismissal every summer, the arch-
bishop said, is a poor way to show
the high esteem in which they are
held.
"Let's give our teachers security.
They deserve it," he said.
"Governmental tyranny, whether
petty or massive, is always repre-
hensible. Civil authority by its na-
ture is bound to seek the common
good. Discrimination, persecution
and harassment should have no
place in government."
ILO Names Aide
To Work in Congo
Geneva — Appointment of
Henri Reymond of Switzer-
land, principal chief of divi-
sion and director of the Intl.
Labor Organization liaison
office with the United Nations
in New York, as labor ad-
viser in the Congo has been
announced by ILO Dir. -Gen.
David A. Morse.
Reymond, an ILO official
since 1931, will coordinate
ILO assistance to the Congo,
serve as labor consultant to
the chief of UN civilian oper-
ations, and be available to
advise the Congolese minister
of labor.
Page TveKe
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1960
Social Security Principle the Coal:
Senate Democrats Vow Floor
Fight for Health Care for Aged
By Gene Zack
Senate Democratic leaders pledged a vigorous floor fight to place health care for the aged under
the social security system, in the wake of Senate Finance Committee approval, by a 12-4 vote, of
a program of federal-state grants on a public relief basis.
Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Democratic presidential nominee, and Sen. Clinton P. Ander-
son (D-N.M.) introduced amendments calling for the same social security principle embodied in
the AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill'*
shelved in June by the House Ways
& Means Committee.
Earlier, Kennedy had labeled the
Senate committee's proposals as
"unsatisfactory," and his running-
mate, Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson (D-Tex.) described the
program devised in committee as
"inadequate" and called for enact-
ment of a "pay-as-you-go" health
care plan.
The Senate, nearing the end of
the second week of its unusual
post-convention session, is slated
to take up the health care issue
after completing action on a bill
to raise the minimum wage and
broaden coverage. Action on the
wage-hour bill has been slowed
to a crawl by what has amounted
to a virtual Republican filibuster.
The House, meanwhile, returned
to Washington a week after the Sen-
ate and ran into stalling tactics
which forced daily adjournment
after only minutes-long sessions
when Republicans protested the
lack of a quorum. Members of both
parties were advised in advance that
no rollcalls would be scheduled
until Aug. 22.
The Senate- Finance Committee,
headed by arch-conservative Sen.
Harry Flood Byrd (D-Va.), re-
jected liberal efforts to improve the
health care measure by adding the
social security principle. Then, by
a vote of 12 to 4 it approved a plan
for annual federal grants of $125
million to states to provide medical
help to old age assistance recipi-
ents.
These grants would be in addi-
tion to the matching federal funds
called for in the House-passed bill,
to provide care to the medically in-
digent in . states where legislatures
approve expenditure of state funds.
Senate Rejects Moves
To Torpedo Wage Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
against the Prouty amendment, 15
for it. Seven Republicans voted
against and 26 for it.
An amendment by Sen. Spes-
sard L. Holland (D-Fla.), which
would have virtually stripped the
bill of its provisions for ex-
tended coverage, was beaten 56
to 39. Hours later, the Senate
rejected an attempt by Republi-
can Leader Everett McKinley
Dirksen (111.) to substitute a
slightly liberalized version of the
weak House bill passed by a con-
servative coalition of Southern
Democrats and Republicans. The
vote on the Dirksen amendment
was 54 to 39.
Kennedy and Johnson carried
44 Democratic votes against both
attempts to drastically weaken the
bill. Twelve Republicans voted
against the Holland amendment and
10 GOP senators broke away from
their party's leadership to oppose
the Dirksen substitute. Nineteen
Democrats, mostly from the South,
supported the Holland amendment.
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.),
who acted as floor manager for the
bill while Kennedy tried to shake
off a sinus ailment, told the Senate
that passage of the Holland amend-
ment would be "a clear violation"
on the platforms of both political
parties "on which the ink is not
yet dry."
Both parties have pledged ex-
tension of coverage. The Demo-
crats specifically backed a $1.25
minimum wage while the Repub-
licans called for "an upward re-
vision in amount. 9 '
A legislative "slowdown" by the
Senate's conservative bloc resulted
in a week of intermittent debate
before opponents of the Kennedy
bill agreed to begin voting on a
long series of pending amendments.
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.)
served notice that, if the Holland
and Dirksen amendments were de-
feated, he was prepared to offer
more than 30 amendments whittling
away piecemeal at the bill.
The Kennedy bill, as reported
by the Senate Labor Committee,
is a modified version of the origi-
nal Kennedy - Morse - Roosevelt
bill, which would have extended
coverage to nearly 8 million
workers and raised the minimum
wage immediately to $1.25 an
hour.
It came before the Senate on
Aug. 10 with these major provi-
sions:
• Extension of coverage to an
estimated 5 million workers includ-
ing 3.5 million employes of retail
stores and service establishments
whose annual sales exceed $1 mil-
lion, 1 million employes of firms
covered by the wage-hour act who
are presently excluded because the
work they do does not directly in-
volve interstate commerce, plus
sizable groups of laundry workers,
local transit company employes,
telephone operators, seamen and
fish processing workers.
• For employes presently cov-
ered, the $1 minimum wage would
be increased to $1.15 on Jan. 1,
1961, to $1.20 the following year
and to $1.25 on Jan. 1, 1963.
• Newly-covered employes
would begin with a $1 wage floor
and move in three additional steps
to $1.25. During the same period,
their ceiling on hours before over-
time must be paid would be gradu-
ally reduced from 44 hours in the
second year to 40 hours during the
fourth year after passage of the
bill.
In contrast, the House-passed bill
limits the raise in the minimum
wage to a flat $1.15 and adds fewer
than 1.4 million additional work-
ers to the coverage of the law.
Retail stores operating in a single
state are exempt under a provision
including stores with a $1 million
in sales only if they have five or
more outlets in two or more states.
In addition, newly-covered workers
would not be covered by the over-
time provisions of the wage-hour
act and would be held to a $1 an
hour wage floor.
The House bill was a conserva-
tive coalition substitute for a
committee bill extending cover-
age to 3.9 million workers and
raising the wage floor to $1.25
in steps similar to the Senate bill.
In its haste to cut back the bill,
the House blundered and adopted
an amendment which could
have the effect of removing 14
million workers now covered
from the protection of the law.
In both instances, the health care
aid would be channeled through
public welfare departments which
set up their own stringent qualifica-
tions, including "means tests," for
eligibility.
At his Aug. 17 press conference,
Pres. Eisenhower reiterated his
stand against using the social secur-
ity system, under which employers
and employes would each pay an
additional one-quarter of 1 percent
in payroll taxes to finance health
care.
When a reporter pointed out that
it was unusual for Eisenhower's
"budget-conscious" Administration
to sponsor a program that would
make a sizeable dent in the Treas-
ury, while the Democratic plan was
a self-funding one, the President
retorted:
"I am against compulsory
medicine, and that is exactly
what I am against, and I don't
•care if that does cost the Treas-
ury a little bit more money there.
But after all, the price of free-
dom is not always measured just
in dollars."
The Kennedy-Anderson amend-
ments would extend health care
benefits to social security recipients
over 68 without any means or in-
come test. Approximately 9 mil-
lion of the nation's 15 million re-
tirees would thus be eligible.
The proposal would cover hospi-
tal costs for a maximum of 120
days a year, with the individual
paying the first $75 annually;
skilled nursing home care up to 240
days a year; home health services;
and diagnostic out-patient hospital
services, including X-ray and labor-
atory services.
Before approving the plan for
federal-state health care grants, the
Senate Finance Committee stripped
from the House-passed social secur-
ity bill provisions which would have
extended coverage to 150,000 self-
employed physicians, more domes-
tic employes and additional widows
and widowers, and which would
have added 600,000 persons to cov-
erage by reducing the length of
time a person must pay into the
fund to be eligible for benefits.
Kennedy Pledges Fight
Kennedy assailed the commit-
tee's version, declaring it doesn't
provide "adequate financing or pro-
tection for those who need it." He
pledged a floor fight "with all our
vigor" to enact a "good, effective
bill," linked to social security, to
protect old people from "the rav-
ages of chronic illness."
Johnson said the bill as cleared
by the committee "does not meet
this very compelling problem in the
prudent manner in which it should
be met." He added that "appro-
priating money out of the Treasury
in the hope that some or all of the
states might agree to a matching
procedure will not provide an ade-
quate program for the millions of
people who are in need."
Resumption of House sessions
turned the legislative spotlight
once again on the conservative-
dominated House Rules Com-
mittee, where three key measures
— school aid, housing and job-
site picketing — are currently
blockaded.
In addition, assuming the Senate
passes minimum wage and health
care measures which differ from
those already approved by the
House, these bills also would have
to run the Rules Committee gant-
let
09-OZ-S
MUSICAL SCORE for "Land of Promise;' the AFL-CICTs half-
hour film documentary to be telecast at 5 p.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 4
over ABC-TV, features a roster of outstanding folk music stars.
Top left is Ronnie Gilbert, widely known concert and recording
artist. Joe Glazer, popular folk singer and Rubber Workers Union
education director, is at top right. Below are The Tarriers, from
left, Bob Carey, Clarence Cooper and Eric Weissberg.
Labor Day TV Film
To Use Historic Data
Rare early etchings and original
prints depicting historic American
events will be a feature of the AFL-
CIO's documentary film, "Land of
Promise," to be shown at 5 p.m.
EDT, Sunday, Sept. 4, over the
ABC television network.
The half-hour film stars the cele-
brated actor, Melvyn Douglas, and
is a factual account of the de-
velopment of the American labor
movement in the light of events
shaping our nation's history. It is
the first television film ever made
especially to honor the American
worker on his own national holi-
day.
Three live-action camera crews
and more than 100 television
technicians were required to pro-
duce the film. The documentary
was produced in New York City
by Joel O'Brien Productions,
with the entire project under the
supervision of Al Zack, AFL-
CIO public relations director, and
Morris Novik, AFL-CIO radio
and TV consultant.
Bill Buckley, director of the film,
said that 100 pounds of processed
film had to be edited down to make
up the final two pounds of film in
the completed motion picture. Re-
searchers scoured liberaries and
historical associations, he added,
to secure the prints and etchings
needed for a special animation
process through which important
events spanning the years from the
Revolutionary War to the turn of
the century are portrayed.
Special Musical Score
He said the musical score for
"Land of Promise" utilizes early
work songs and traditional airs,
tailoring them to fit the special
dramatic needs of the film.
All American workers shown
in the film were photographed
actually on their jobs with spe-
cial long-distance lenses, previ-
ously used in filming the recently-
acclaimed motion picture, "Jazz
on a Summer's Day/' Buckley
said.
Featured in the film's musical
score are Joe Glazer, folk singer
and education director for the
United Rubber Workers; Ronnie
Gilbert, RCA-Victor recording art-
ist; and The Tarriers, a popular
vocal group in the folk music field.
Forand to Direct
Elder s-for-Kennedy
Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-
R. I.), author of the AFL-
ClO-supported measure to
provide health care for the
aged through social security,
has been named national
chairman of the Senior-Citi-
zens-for-Kennedy Committee,
it has been announced by
Sen. John F. Kennedy CD-
Mass.), Democratic presi-
dential nominee.
The organization, vthich
will have its headquarters in
Washington, will concentrate
its efforts on voters over 65
years of age.
In accepting the post,
Forand praised Kennedy's
leadership in pressing for
legislation on behalf of the
aged, including his sponsor-
ship in the Senate of a simi-
lar medical care bill and his
support of measures to pro-
vide housing for the elderly.
Kennedy- Johnson Backed
By AFL-CIO General Board
JOHN F. KENNEDY
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
.Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Saturday, August 27, 1960 * 7 «
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
^Greatest Possible Participation 9 :
Meany Urges United Support
Of Voter Registration Drive
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has rallied the 13.5-million-member labor federation for a full-
icale drive to secure maximum voter participation in the 1960 presidential elections, declaring that
tailure to register and vote is "a betrayal of democracy."
Moving swiftly to implement the massive voter registration campaign approved unanimously by
tie AFL-CIO Executive Council at the climax of its summer session in Chicago, Meany urged all
lational and international unions^
lo give effective support to the
program.
"Regardless of our individual
preference for parties and candi-
iates," Meany wrote the presidents
&f affiliated unions, "we can all
gnite upon one basic objective —
Ihe greatest possible participation
ki the election by all qualified
Americans."
The AFL-CIO president de-
clared that "it should be a mat-
ter of deep concern to us all
that hardly more than a bare
majority of the potential voters
actually cast ballots at election
time." He added:
"There are today more than 40
million citizens who are not even
registered to vote in their respective
this
is a
states. I submit that
betrayal of democracy."
Meany referred to figures com-
piled by the American Heritage
Foundation, a non-profit institute
devoted to encouraging an increase
in registration and voting, which
showed that the highest percentage
turnout of voters in the U.S. came
in 1952, when 62.7 percent of the
nations voters participated in the
presidential election.
This turnout is far below the
records achieved by other nations
of the free world. A Heritage
Foundation analysis of the free
world's voting patterns shows that
Austria leads with 95 percent voter
participation; Italy, 93.8 percent;
France, 89 percent; Turkey, 87.7
Kohler Guilty, 3,000
Ordered Reinstated
By Robert B. Cooney
The National Labor Relations Board, in a climactic decision
which may resolve the bitter, six-year Kohler strike, unanimously has
ordered the company to "bargain collectively" with Auto Workers'
Local 833.
Four of the five Board members held that Kohler converted what
had begun as an economic strike'^
into an unfair labor practice about
June 1, 1954 by granting a wage
increase to non-strikers without
consulting the union.
Member Joseph Alton Jenkins
filed a considerably stronger con-
demnation of the Kohler company.
The "totality" of Rotifer's long
opposition to unionism was ig-
(Continued on Page 5)
Election Will Serve
Nation 's Interests
By Saul Miller
The AFL-CIO has strongly endorsed and called for the
election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as "in
the best interests of the United States and of the labor move-
ment."
The federation's General Board urged all AFL-CIO members
to give the Kennedy- Johnson ticket "full and unstinting sup-
port" on the basis of the "sharp and clear" contrast between the
platforms, records and candidates of the Democratic and Re-
publican parties.
The General Board — composed of the representatives of 134
affiliated unions, trade and industrial departments and the
Executive Council — solidly endorsed the council's earlier recom-
mendation for support of the Democratic ticket in a 12-page state-
ment summarizing platform and voting record comparisons.
It backed up its position with a detailed comparison of the
party platforms with the AFL-CIO program and an analysis of
the voting records of Kennedy and Vice-Pres. Nixon.
The board's action followed a recommendation by the council
that it was "in the best interests of the 13.5 million members of
the AFL-CIO to take a forthright stand in the coming election"
and that Kennedy and Johnson should be endorsed.
The council said it predicated its recommendation on careful con-
sideration of the platforms, records and candidates of the respective
parties and on "the public pledge of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
B. Johnson to actively support and carry out their party's platform
if elected."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told a press conference that the
board endorsed the Kennedy-Johnson ticket with only one dissent-
ing vote cast by AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A. Philip Randolph who
maintained that labor cannot work effectively in the two-party
system and urged the formation of a labor* party. The federation
president said there is "no reason that I know of" why a labor
party should be formed.
In answer to a reporter's question, he said support for the ticket
was marked by a good deal of enthusiasm and that on the key
issue of economic growth, the Democratic platform "is much more
responsive" to labor's position than the Republican stand. The
GOP, he commented, claims there is no economic problem.
The board statement called Kennedy "intelligent, articulate and
forceful," adding that "on almost every issue between the money
interest and the people's interest — housing, schools, health and
all the rest — Kennedy voted with the people, Nixon voted against
the people."
Of Nixon the board said there is "good reason to believe that
Nixon would follow the general (foreign) policies of the present
Administration," the net result of which "has been a weakening of
the western alliance and a widening of the Soviet sphere of in-
fluence."
Kennedy, the board pointed out, has "no commitment to the
specific undertakings of the last eight years . . . (and) would not
(Continued on Page 12)
Congress Bows to Ike's Veto Threat,
Set to Pass Token Medical Aid Bill
By Gene Zack
The 86th Congress neared final passage of a token medical aid measure after a right-wing Re-
publican-southern Democratic Senate coalition, bowing to pressure from the medical lobby and the
Eisenhower-Nixon Administration, scuttled efforts to place health care for the aged under social
security.
With all but one GOP senator — Clifford P. Case (R-N. J.) — lined up solidly against the social
security approach, the Senate voted^
51-44 to reject the "pay-as-you-go
No. 35
percent; West Germany, 86 per-
cent; Greece and Indonesia, 85
percent; and Israel, 82.8 percent.
"Surely," Meany wrote union
presidents, "we can and should
give better evidence that we prize
our rights and respect our obliga-
tions as citizens of a free nation.
(Continued on Page 12)
method endorsed by the AFL-CIO.
It then passed an omnibus social
security measure calling for federal-
state subsidies to provide limited
health benefits through public wel-
fare — but only in those states
where legislatures vote increased
appropriations to match the federal
funds.
Earlier, the Senate handed
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon,
Republican presidential nominee,
a crushing defeat when it voted
67-28 against a proposal en-
dorsed by Nixon and introduced
by Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.)
to provide federal-state subsidies
to private insurance companies to
finance health insurance.
The full social security bill, of
which the "states' rights" health
provision was a part, sailed quickly-
through a joint conference commit-
tee where it had been sent to re-
solve differences between varying
Senate and House versions.
In advance of the Senate vote,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany as-
sailed the Nixon-Javits amendment,
declaring it "combines all of the bad
features" of bills endorsed earlier
by the Administration. Meany al-
so lashed at the Senate Finance
Committee measure later adopted
by the Senate, warning it would
create a new class of "medically
indigent" and require "proof of
poverty" before health care would
be forthcoming.
The health care measure reached
the Senate under the open threat of
an Eisenhower veto if the social se-
curity principle were adopted.
Following defeat of the AFL-
ClO-backed plan contained in an
amendment which he co-sponsored
{Continued on Page 11)
Fa«e Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, ASHIM TOX, D. C M SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
| Action Expected Soon:
\Postal Clerks Convention
iPaves Way for Merger Talks
St. Louis — The Post Office Clerks have approved a proposal clearing the way for merger talks
with the unaffiliated United National Association of Post Office Craftsmen and other postal clerk
unions.
The stated goal of the 18-point "Blueprint for Merger" — unanimously adopted at the 31st national
convention of the NFPOC here — is consolidating into a single AFL-CIO union of postal clerks.
Officials here said the action^"
makes amalgamation of the 100,-
000-member NFPOC and the 35,-
EILEEN BARTON, pretty recording artist, will join the USO enter-
tainment unit when it presents the "AFL-CIO Salute to the Armed
Forces" in southern Europe and North Africa next month. The
show was made possible by a $10,000 check from AFL-CIO pre-
sented by Pres. George Meany to USO Chairman Harvey S. Fire-
stone Jr. as an expression of labor's concern for the man in uniform.
Teachers' Convention
Backs Student Sit-ins
Dayton, O. — Strong support of student sit-ins by all who believe
in democracy for themselves has been called for by the Teachers,
meeting in their 44th annual convention.
Delegates representing 60,000 union teachers and other school
employes emphatically endorsed a resolution "commending and sup-
porting courageous students" who^"
took part in the sit-ins for school
integration in the South and assert-
ing that "if we believe in democracy
for ourselves, then we must sup-
port all people who honestly want
freedom."
Sit-in demonstrations are "peace-
able expressions of protest, by
young people against environmental
handicaps in seeking self-respect,
recognition and dignity," the dele-
gates declared.
At the same time the conven-
tion charged the National Educa-
tion Association with a "shame-
ful neglect of the principles of
democracy" in maintaining sep-
arate southern organizations for
white and Negro members. The
resolution called on NEA to fol-
low the AFT's example in pro-
hibiting segregated locals.
Some 750 delegates voted to
back James Worley, teacher fired
last year for refusing to file a lesson
plan with his superiors at Fox Lane
High School near Mt. Kisco, N. Y.
They approved a resolution urging
that the House Committee on Un-
American Activities be abolished,
and referred to the AFT executive
council a telegram of protest from
Rep. Francis E. Walter (D-Penn.).
The resolution asserted that the
House committee's recent hearings
in California had resulted in "ir-
revocable loss of dignity, reputa-
tion and jobs" of many Californi-
ans, especially probationary teach-
ers. Waiter invited the union to
"present the documented facts of
your charges" in sworn testimony
before the committee.
Pres. Carl J. Megel reported a
50 percent increase in membership
since he took office in 1952, and
set these goals for the next 10-
year period:
Increasing AFT membership to
100,000; teachers' salaries rang-
ing from $6,000 to $13,000 a
yearj statewide tenure laws in
every state; collective bargaining
for all teachers' unions; national
and state legislative programs to
make tenure and bargaining a
reality.
Megel said collective bargain-
ing for public employes is winning
wide acceptance. He cited a new
permissive bargaining law in Mas-
sachusetts, and the likelihood of a
collective bargaining agency elec-
tion in New York City public
schools.
000-member Post Office Craftsmen
"a certainty during the next year."
In response to an invitation from
the NFPOC executive board, the
Craftsmen reversed a negative find-
ing by their own board and en-
dorsed merger in principle at their
own convention earlier this month.
Discussions between leaders of
the two unions were expected to
get underway promptly — perhaps
before the wind-up of the NFPOC
convention here.
NFPOC officials said overtures
also will be made to the Postal
Transport Association and the
unaffiliated National Postal Clerks
Union, formed by NFPOC seces-
sionists who bolted the 1958 con-
vention at Boston.
NFPOC Legislative Dir. E. C.
(Roy) Hallbeck, slated to succeed
J. Cline House as president, pointed
out the language of the merger pro-
posal is broad enough to cover
these unions as well as the Post
Office Craftsmen.
It says a single clerks' union
would be best suited to work fori
needed legislation, oppose "unjust
administrative determinations and
decrees," handle grievances and
sign up new members.
Prefer Own Union
It precludes the idea of "one
big union" of all postal employes,
however. Delegates thus upheld
House's contention that clerks
would be better off with a union of
their own, affiliated with the Gov-
ernment Employes Council.
The proposal suggests that com-
mittees representing NFPOC and
other unions meet to work out or-
ganizational and financial details,
outline transitional steps and set a
date for a ratification convention.
In other actions, NFPOC's 1,000
convention delegates:
• Set as their "paramount goal"
the enactment of legislation to give
government employe unions official
recognition for bargaining purposes
and asked "maximum assistance"
from the AFL-CIO.
• Adopted the AFL-CIO Ethi-
cal Practices Code and its human
rights and civil rights programs.
• Charged the Post Office Dept.
with showing an apparent "ethical
and moral vacuum" in dealings
with the union and cited a "great
need for reform" in its labor re-
lations.
• Urged that the "enormous
amount paid in subsidies to trans-
portation companies for transporta-
tion of mails" be discontinued or
cut down.
The Department's "distribution
guide-lines" and work-measurement
programs, which set minimum rates
of production, came under heavy
fire as "speed-up" measures. One
resolution charged that these pro-
grams were instituted without due
notice to the union, despite the fact
that the Department's stated policy
calls for consultation with employe
organizations.
A convention speaker, Asst. Post-
master General Bert B. Barnes,
denied the speed-up charge but
conceded, "I would not be entirely
truthful if I did not tell you that
we hope to increase the produc-
tion."
Barnes defended Pres. Eisen-
hower's veto of the recent pay in-
crease for postal employes. Con-
gress passed the legislation over
his veto.
A leader in that fight, Sen. Olin
D. Johnston (D-S.C), told the con-
vention: "Among those who helped,
I don't seem to find Dick (Vice
Pres. Nixon), Arthur (Postmaster
General Summerfield) and Ike
(Pres. Eisenhower). But don't let
that disturb you ... I think that
shortly they will be but patrons of
the post offices in Whittier, Flint
and Gettysburg."
Connell Renamed Head
Of Photo Engravers
Louisville, Ky. — Wilfrid T. Connell of Boston was re-elected
president of the Photo Engravers at the union's six-day convention
here.
In a contested election, Connell defeated William J. Hall of Chi-
cago, the outgoing third vice president.
Others newly elected to high
office at the union's 59th annual
convention were Carl Risdon,
Washington, named fifth vice
president, and Daniel A. Streeter,
Jr., Los Angeles, and Edmond L.
La Bauve, New Orleans, who
moved up to third and fourth vice
presidents, respectively.
Re-elected to their previous posi-
tions were Denis M. Burke, New
York, first vice president; Frank D.
Smith, Toronto, second vice pres-
ident; and Ben G. Schaller, St.
Louis, secretary-treasurer.
The convention voted against
joining in proposals that could
lead to the formation of one un-
ion in the publishing industry.
Delegates indicated they were
protecting themselves against in-
vasion of other unions in the
plate-making field.
More than 100 delegates attended
the meeting. They heard Sec. of
Labor James P. Mitchell, in a major
address, estimate that there will be
an increase in the nation's labor
force from 70 million to 87 million
during the next decade. Mitchell
predicted there will be a "25 per-
cent betterment" in the standard of
living during that period.
The convention voted to meet
in New York in 1961 and in Chi-
cago the following year.
Radio, TV Schedule
Set for Labor Day
The nation's television view-
ers and radio listeners will
hear the full story of Ameri-
can labor's role in building
America over the Labor Day
weekend.
A half-hour public service
film, "Land of Promise,"
will be carried on the nation-
wide television network of the
American Broadcasting Co.,
on Sunday, Sept. 4. Auto
Workers Pres. Walter P. Reu-
ther will be on College News
Conference on ABC-TV the
same day at 1 p. m., EDT.
In addition, four AFL-
CIO officials will speak on
national radio networks on
Labor Day, Sept. 5. They in-
clude: Pres. George Meany
on the ABC network, 7:15
p. m., EDT; Reuther on the
Columbia Broadcasting Sys-
tem at 8:15 p. m., EDT;
Vice Pres. Al J. Hayes on
the Mutual Broadcasting Sys-
tem at 9:15 p. m., EDT; and
Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler on the National
Broadcasting Co. at 9:30
p. m., EDT.
VOLUNTEER WORK by members of Communications Workers helped turn out
record vote in recent primary elections in Wayne County, Mich. Twenty-five
telephone operators, all members of CWA Local 4000, donated their services to
call citizens to get out and vote. It marked third year in a row that CWA members
worked a weekend in order to have election day time off for the project, carried
out in conjunction with Wayne County Committee on Political Education. In
center photo, Sec.-Treas. Tom Brennan of Local 4000 confers with Helen Thigpen,
who directed CWA participation in the "get-out-the-vote" operation.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
Page Three
IV E Cites Losses:
Job Security Urgent,
Westinghouse Told
Employment security is the most urgent need of Westinghouse
Electric Corp. employes harassed by loss of jobs and reduced work-
ing time while profits boom and productivity climbs, the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers have declared.
In negotiations with the giant electrical goods firm, IUE pressed
its case for a better contract for^
Hits Byrd
the 60,000 workers it represents
by stressing these factors:
• IUE-represented employes
lost an estimated 60 million man
hours of work — the equivalent of
an eight-month shutdown — in the
four-year period ending last June.
This loss averaged $2,500 per
worker.
• Management increased its
profits from an estimated $2,400
to $3,100 a year per production
worker over a five-year period. At
the same time it put $70 million
into plant expansion and automated
equipment to get more production
with fewer workers.
Union negotiating committees
have been pressing Westinghouse
and the General Electric Co., the
other giant of the industry, for
improvements in wages, pensions,
and insurance benefits; and for
security against layoffs, short work
weeks, plant closings and job trans-
fers. Major objectives also include
supplemental unemployment bene-
fits and a union shop.
Virginia Labor
on
'Work' Stand
Richmond, Va. — The Virginia
AFL-CIO — aroused by the decla-
ration of Sen. Harry F. Byrd (D-
Va.) that he would defend "right-
to-work" laws against the repeal
promised by the Democratic party
platform — accused Byrd of "patent
duplicity" on the issues of major-
ity rule and party loyalty.
In a scorching review of Byrd's
record, the Virginia AFL-CIO re-
iterated labor's non-partisan posi-
tion and added:
". • . and we believe that peo-
ple who accept the label of a
political party to get into office
should have the moral fibre to
work with that party when other
of its candidates are up for
election,
"If the decision of the majority
within a party convention is not
considered binding on a politician,
it is quite likely that he does not
consider a majority decision any-
where else to be worthy of con-
sideration.
"Such an attitude indicates small
regard for the tenets of democ-
racy,"
Referring to his party's plat-
form pledge to repeal Taft-Hart-
ley Sec. 14(b), under which some
20 states preserve so-called "right-
to-work" laws restricting union se-
curity, Byrd said in a Senate speech
he would fight such repeal "with
all my strength and ability."
Virginia adopted its "work" law
in 1947.
The Virginia AFL-CIO reminded
Byrd of his comment that "right-
to-work" laws ". . . protect the
privilege of union membership for
those who wish to join."
Where was this protection, asked
the state group, when fire depart-
ment employes in Lynchburg and
Norfolk were threatened with dis-
missal if they joined the Fire Fight-
ers? State employes likewise lack
the right to join a union, it added.
The state AFL-CIO assailed
Byrd for opposing the payroll
deduction system for providing
medical care for the aged through
the social security system.
Byrd's record is mainly one "of
opposition," the state AFL-CIO de-
clared in suggesting that he con-
sider switching to the party for
The presentation to Westing-
house came as five unions in. the
General Electric - Westinghouse
Conference of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept. met in
Washington to hear progress re-
ports and discuss strategy.
Representing more than 200,000
employes of the two big firms are
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, Auto Workers, Machin-
ists, Technical Engineers and IUE.
All are asking major improvements
in contracts expiring in October.
The IUE said chief result of its
talks so far was a GE announce-
ment that management expects to
have "some proposals in our forth-
coming offer" aimed at lessening
job instability, a major problem in
the electrical manufacturing indus-
try.
At Westinghouse, the IUE
negotiators documented the un-
ion's proposal for a wage increase
of at least 3.5 percent with data
supporting these arguments:
• Real wages of Westinghouse
production and maintenance work-
ers rose 16 percent from 1954
through 1959 while real output per
man-hour increased approximately
25 percent.
• The trend of productivity will
be sharply upward in the future
because Westinghouse is devoting
increasing amounts of its capital
expenditures to mechanizing and
automating its plants.
• The 1960 wage pattern shows
that skilled workers in manufac-
turing and other fields have been
getting wage boosts of 15 cents an
hour and up. Average settlements
for all workers have been 9 to 9.5
cents, or about 4 percent.
The IUE committee also is
asking wage inequity adjust-
ments for white collar, skilled
and day workers. It wants cost
of living increases from 1955 to
1960 added to the base rates,
and a new formula, based on
1960 wages, providing 1 cent
change for each 0.48 points in
the index.
The negotiators said studies show
that total wages of production and
maintenance workers amount to
less than 20 percent of the value
of the goods they produce.
"The wage increases we propose
are not inflationary," the IUE com-
mittee asserted. "They represent
income that will be spent, and will
result in increased utilization of
excess plant capacity.**
IUE committees have given GE
and Westinghouse detailed propos-
als for employment security.
Reminding management that
the union has "repeatedly called
the problem" of unemployment
and short work weeks to its at-
tention, the committee asked
that jobs be made reasonably
secure by acting on the prob-
lems of automation; by giving
workers the right to move with
their jobs and take service cred-
its to new plants; by limiting the
contracting-out of work; by re-
stricting overtime work until
those on layoff and short work
weeks have been recalled; and
by providing supplemental un-
employment benefits and separa-
tion pay.
The committees reported that
GE jobs dropped more than 17,-
000, or 21 percent, from Decem-
ber 1955 to March 1960— from
84,373 to 66,905. Westinghouse
jobs dropped at 15 locations from
46,000 in June 1956 to 37,000 in
June 1960, a decline of 18.5 per-
which he apparently wants to work. J cent
FINAL WORK on the AFL-
CIO's half -hour documentary
film, "Land of Promise/' is done
at the New York City studios of
Joel O'Brien Productions. Top
photo from left, Cameraman
Richard Bagley, O'Brien and Di-
rector Bill Buckley look over
rushes of the film which will be
shown Sunday, Sept. 4, over the
ABC television network (consult
your local newspaper for the
time). At left, Technician Larry
Quartararo works at an anima-
tion stand with one of the many
early prints used in the film to
highlight historic events. First
TV film ever made especially to
honor the American worker on
Labor Day weekend, "Land of
Promise" stars Melvyn Douglas
and is a factual account of the
development of the American la-
bor movement in the light of our
nation's history.
Oregon Labor Votes Boycott
In Portland Newspaper Strike
Pendleton, Ore. — An intensified statewide boycott of the Portland Oregonian and Journal, locked
in a nine-month strike with AFL-CIO newspaper unions, has been called for by the fiftieth annual
convention of the Oregon State AFL-CIO.
The boycott was the keystone of a sweeping program of support for the Portland strikers voted
by the 400 delegates, who unanimously adopted a program lashing the "deliberate union-wrecking
tactics" of the Portland publishers.^
The program also called for
state and federal laws to outlaw
strike insurance and the importa-
tion of strike breakers, and a con-
gressional investigation of the anti-
union tactics employed by the Port-
land newspapers.
Earlier, delegates heard Gov.
New Pamphlet Cites
Labor Housing Role
Labor has fought for bet-
ter housing since the early
1930's because housing is
important to the individual,
the family, the community
and the nation, the AFL-
CIO says in a new pamphlet,
"Better Housing for a Better
America."
The pamphlet recounts
labor's part in establishing
the Federal Housing Admin-
istration to guarantee and in-
sure home mortgages, and
its continuing fight for a pro-
gram aimed at providing a
decent home for every family
regardless of race or income.
Copies of Publication No.
110 may be obtained through
the Pamphlet Div., AFL-
CIO Dept. of Publications,
815 16th Street N.W., Wash-
ington 6, D. C. Single copies
are free; additional copies
are 3 cents each up to 100;
others are $2.50 a hundred.
Mark O. Hatfield (R) sharply
criticize management of the
newspapers for refusals to have
the governor's office mediate the
dispute or conduct fact-finding.
Hatfield said that while it was
"discouraging" to have manage-
ment refuse to discuss a settlement,
he would "renew in every way
possible my efforts to settle the
strike." He called the nine-month-
old dispute a "festering spot" which
"damages the image of Oregon
throughout the nation."
State AFL-CIO Executive Sec.
James T. Marr told the convention
that "the deliberate union wrecking
by the Oregonian and Oregon Jour-
nal is the greatest crisis and chal-
lenge to confront the Oregon labor
movement since its infancy. We
cannot and will not relax for a
single moment until a fair settle-
ment is reached."
Rene J. Valentine, coordinator
of strike activities for all of the
newspaper unions involved in
the walkout, warned that Ore-
gon unions "will face their dark-
est days if the Portland pattern
of union-busting is successful,"
"What will happen to your
union if the pattern is estab-
lished by the Oregonian and
Journal — with all their influence
and control over men's minds?"
he asked.
Professional strikebreakers, Va-
lentine told the convention, have
been paid more than $400 a week
by the publishers in their all-out
effort to break the newspaper
unions.
In other actions, the convention:
• Called on all local unions to
set up a permanent and continuing
program of voter registration and
to keep union families well in-
formed in this election year.
• Urged removal of many in-
equities and restrictions in Oregon's
unemployment insurance law.
• Reaffirmed labor's support
for full and equal rights for all
citizens in labor organizations, in
the state and nation, and in inter-
national affairs.
• Demanded outright repeal of
the restrictive Landrum-Griffin Act.
• Assailed the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration for "abandoning" the
federal government's responsibility
for comprehensive development of
natural resources
• Urged enactment of a com-
prehensive state minimum wage
and maximum hours law, and at
the same time called for raising
the minimum and broadening cov-
erage under the federal Fair Labor
Standards Act.
• Endorsed the nationwide boy-
cott of Sears Roebuck & Co. stores,
called for by the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council because the company
fired 262 union employes in San
Francisco for refusing to cross a
picket line.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
LETTER CARRIERS Pres. William C. Doherty welcomes Sen.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Democratic vice presidential nominee, to the
union's 42nd convention in Cincinnati. He introduced Johnson to
the delegates as the individual most responsible for overriding Pres.
Eisenhower's veto of the government employe pay bill.
ITU Chief Sees Single
Union in News Industry
Denver — A flat prediction of merger of all unions and crafts in
the newspaper industry within five years was made by Pres. Elmer
Brown of the Typographical Union as the ITU opened its 102nd
convention here.
"Merger of the newspaper unions could best be described as a
spontaneous reaction by officials of^
the various crafts," Brown said.
"But it has been pressured by the
membership itself."
First - merger likely to occur,
Brown speculated, would be be-
tween the 31,000-member News-
paper Guild and the 112,000-mem-
ber ITU.
In his keynote speech, Brown
hit the "trend to monopoly in
the publishing and in the over-
all communications industry in
America" and emphasized that
"one strong organization of em-
ployes in our industry would be
able to fight off the attacks upon
our free, democratic unions more
effectively than can the several
crafts, trades and associations
comprising the printing trades
unions."
Brown also urged intensified ac-
tion in the 1961 state legislatures
to secure adoption of "anti-scab"
bills to prohibit the importation of
strikebreakers by employers.
Pres. Arthur Rosenstock of the
Newspaper Guild told the approxi-
mately 400 delegates that separate,
local bargaining by the ANG and
printing trades unions "has always
contained the seeds of dissent and
division and awaited only the neces-
sary circumstances for the publish-
ers to exploit this potential with
decisive, unified action."
After describing the publisher
combination that produced the
Portland, Ore., strike, Rosenstock
exhorted the ITU delegates: "Never
again must we be divided among
ourselves while the publishers are
united against us. And, as your
president told our convention, unity
of action can come only through
unity of organization."
At the next meeting of the
Presidents 9 Committee of Pub-
lishing Industry Unions, Rosen-
stock said, the Guild would pro-
pose that each international
union name three persons to a
working committee to try to
blueprint "one big union in the
printing, publishing and related
industries/*
Pres. Paul Phillips of the Paper-
makers & Paperworkers called for
organic unity, saying "I do not see
how we can afford the luxury of
continuing on our separate ways,
frequently in opposite directions
and at cross purposes."
Phillips referred to the merger
which created the Papermakers &
Paperworkers out of three separate
unions and noted that despite
problems it has proved successful.
Pres. Wilfrid T. Connell of the
Photo Engravers sounded a note of
difference, however, and reported
to the ITU delegates that his
union's recent convention had gone
on record opposing the formation
of one union. Principal reason for
this action, Connell said, was the
feeling of 1PEU members that their
historic plate-making craft was be-
ing invaded by other unions in the
printing industry.
However, Connell did not
close the door to further nego-
tiations.
Johnson Blasts Administration :
Letter Carriers Vow Fight
Against Hatch Act Threat
By Dave Periman
Cincinnati — Three thousand delegates to the Letter Carriers convention here angrily denounced
as "politically-inspired" an Administration attempt to oust NALC Pres. William C. Doherty from
the government service.
Doherty has been charged with violating Hatch Act restriction on political activities of govern-
ment employes because last May he signed — as an individual and without organization iden-
tification — a newspaper advertise-^
ment which urged Senate Majority
Leader* Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.)
to become an active candidate for
the Democratic presidential nomi-
nation. Doherty, who is a vice
president of the AFL-CIO, has been
on leave without pay since 1941
from his job as a Cincinnati mail-
man.
The first resolution acted on
by the convention — a pledge of
support to Doherty in his Hatch
Act fight — was accompanied by
a five-minute, cheering, foot-
stamping demonstration.
A similar demonstration the night
before had greeted Johnson in his
first appearance at a union conven-
tion since his nomination as the
Democratic vice presidential candi-
date.
Johnson ripped into the Admin-
istration for "fighting tooth and
nail" in an attempt to block Con-
gress from helping workers, farm-
ers and government employes.
The price of divided govern-
ment, Johnson said, has been
"accomodations and compro-
mises.. We have had to accept
the half-loaf theory because the
alternative was no bread at all."
Johnson told the Letter Carriers
that the Administration "which for
nearly eight years has been seek-
ing to return to the days of Mc-
Kinley and high button shoes," is
suddenly posing "as the shining
knight in progressive armor — at
least until Nov. 8."
But, he added, when the Sen-
ate passed the minimum wage
bill "the Administration had to
be battled every step of the way."
Referring to the Hatch Act
charges against Doherty, Johnson
declared: "We do not believe that
those who serve the government
have lost the elementary rights of
American citizenship."
Doherty, in his opening address
to the convention, charged Post-
master Gen. Arthur Summerfield
with having initiated the Hatch Act
charges in an attempt "to appease
his wounded vanity" because Con-
gress overrode Pres. Eisenhower's
veto of the government pay bill.
"Never before in our nation's
history," Doherty declared, "has
a Cabinet officer stooped so low
in an attempt to achieve personal
revenge. Never before has a
Cabinet officer wallowed so
shamelessly in the slime of per-
sonal animosity."
Summerfield, he charged, "is the
first Postmaster General in modern
times to try to make the suppres-
sion of free speech a way of life
in the postal establishment."
Doherty cited legislative gains of
recent years in the face of Admin-
istration opposition and called for
a program including:
• Restoration of multiple mail
deliveries to give the public the
postal service it should have.
• A union recognition law for
the government service.
• Health benefits and higher
pensions for retired postal workers.
• Curtailment of the "police-
man" role of the postal inspection
service which he described as a
"19th Century institution."
He called also for "amal-
gamation of all postal unions
into one big union," a demand
which was echoed in a resolution
adopted by the convention.
Moves by the Letter Carriers to
pave the way for amalgamation
have been supported by some of
the smaller postal unions but
have thus far been strongly op-
posed by the Postal Clerks, the
other big union in the field.
Another convention speaker, Sen.
A. S. (Mike) Monroney (D-Okla.),
tossed a verbal bouquet to the wives
of the Letter Carriers, many of
whom were in attendance.
Ladies Did It
He said their letters to congress-
men and senators in support of pay
legislation vividly brought forth the
human side of the issue. Mon-
roney added: "These ladies were
determined to get the pay bill
California State AFL-CIO Parley
Pledges Support for Farm Workers
Sacramento, Calif. — America's "forgotten people," the farm workers, were honored as heroes here
by the California State AFL-CIO convention.
The 2,000 delegates, representing 1.3 million AFL-CIO members, devoted a substantial portion of
their five-day convention to the problems of farm workers, and pledged full support to the organiz :
ing campaign now underway in California by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.
Twenty-five men and women, ac-^
tive AWOC rank and filers, came
to the convention hall directly from
the fields, still clad in their work
clothes, and were escorted to the
platform amid a welcoming roar of
cheers and applause which symbo-
lized ihe determination of labor
to make the organizing drive a
success.
Norman Smith, AWOC director
of organization, told the delegates
that "the labor movement has to
plead guilty to the fact that we
have neglected this problem far
too long/"
Then he described the plans laid
out by the national AFL-CIO to
make up for this neglect, saying
that "today I can come to you with
a record of accomplishments all
of us have had a hand in making."
A top official of Gov. Edmund
Brown's Democratic administration
told the delegates the current "agri-
cultural labor crisis has become one
of the great economic, social and
political issues in the life of Cali-
fornia."
John F. Henning, state director
of industrial relations, said the
crisis arose from "the determina-
tion of the heretofore abandoned
and scorned and rejected farm
workers to exercise their God-given
freedom of association by joining
AWOC."
"Never since the 1930's," Hen-
ning said, "has there been a union
campaign which has so touched the
heart of California labor, which is
more deserving of public sympathy,
of moral and economic support
than this crusade of impoverished
men and women to achieve and
obtain a minor part, just a tiny
share of the wealth of America."
In other areas, the convention
called for a broad program of social
welfare legislation, including a hike
in unemployment insurance bene- ^ are from the Steelworkers
fits from the present $55 weekly
maximum now in effect in Cali-
fornia to $70; a state compulsory
health insurance program, as well
as a health insurance program on
the national level; bold civil rights
measures; a state housing program
to supplement the inadequate fed-
eral program, and new labor legis-
lation to replace the Taft-Hartley
and Landrum-Grifrin Acts.
Re-elected without opposition
were Pres. Albin J. Gruhn, Sec-
Treas. Thomas L. Pitts, and Gen.
Vice Pres. Manuel Dias.
John Despol announced before
the convention he would not run
for reelection as the other general
vice president and this full-time post
was then abolished, being replaced
by a ninth vice president at large.
Jerry Conway was elected to fill
that job. Both Conway and Despol
through Congress — and they did!"
One of the early resolutions
passed by the convention proposed
legislation providing dental care
insurance for federal employes to
supplement the contributory medi-
cal and hospitalization program en-
acted last year.
"The high cost of maintaining
good dental health," the resolu-
tion stated, "is beyond the means
of the average letter carrier."
The resolution also pointed out
that dental insurance is becoming
an "increasingly important item"
in labor-management negotiations
in private industry.
Another convention resolution
pointed out that postmasters are
given official leave — without loss of
vacation or pay — to attend conven-
tions of their organizations. The
delegates asked equal treatment for
delegates to union conventions.
Nearly all of the NALC delegates
are using their vacation time to at-
tend the convention.
Upholsterers
Establish
New Council
Jupiter, Fla. — Creation of a new
governing body within the Uphol-
sterers — a council of delegates —
was voted here at a special con-
vention called to revamp the un-
ion's structure as a result of the
passage of the Landrum-Grirfin
Act.
The council of delegates,
comprising all seated delegates
to the union's convention, will
serve between conventions and
will be vested with authority to
vote changes in union law and
to consider and vote on members'
appeals.
Exempted from the council's area
of control will be the Question
of dues and the election of officers,
which are reserved to regular con-
ventions and to referendum ballot.
UIU Pres. Sal B. Hoffmann said
the union created the new councii
in anticipation of varying and new
interpretations of the Landrum-
Griffin Act, which for the first time
gives the federal government regu-
latory powers over internal affairs
of unions.
The convention — marking only
the second special convention since
the UIU's founding in 1882 — voted
unanimously to hold its next con-
clave in Cleveland in June 1962
to mark the 25th anniversary of
Hoffmann's election as president.
Future conventions will be held at
four-year intervals.
Pulp-Sulphite Picks
Segal as Treasurer
Fort Edward, N. Y. — Henry
Segal, for the past 13 years auditor
on the international staff of the
Pulp-Sulphite Workers, has been
named treasurer to succeed Frank
C. Barnes, who resigned because of
ill health.
A member of the union for over
23 years, Segal is a member of the
Operating Committee of the Com-
mittee on Political Education, and
has been a delegate to AFL-CIO
legislative conferences in Washing-
ton. His appointment as treasurer
becomes effective Oct. 1.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
Pag© Fir*
Kohler Guilty of Unfair Labor Practices
NLRB Orders 3,000
Strikers Reinstated
(Continued from Page 1)
nored by the majority, Jenkins
said, and it was this record of
Kohler's which "caused and pro-
longed" the strike.
Jenkins, in arguing that the find-
ing of Kohler's failure to bargain
in good faith and the remedy of
reinstating the strikers should go
back to the beginning of the strike
on April 5, 1954, declared that
Kohler ''never did accept the union
in good faith."
Kohler's record, he added, re
vealed a "firm and fixed intention
to undermine, weaken and even
tually destroy the collective bar
gaining relationship."
The board ordered the - " Wis-
consin plumbing fixture firm to
reinstate, with full seniority,
rank-and-file strikers who had
not been permanently replaced
before June 1, 1954.
The UAW estimates some 3,000
workers to be potentially eligible for
Reuther Says Blame
Pinned on Kohler
Auto Workers 5 Pres. Walter
P. Reuther welcomed the Na-
tional Labor Relations
Board's decision in the Koh-
ler case, saying it "fixed the
responsibility squarely on the
company."
Reuther said the company's
announcement that it would
appeal the decision through
the courts "is another indica-
tion of this company flouting
the law rather than living
within the law."
Kohler executive vice presi-
dent L. L. Smith labeled the
NLRB decision as "a very
bad one." Kohler attorneys
filed formal notice of court
appeal in Chicago.
Reuther also commented
that something obviously is
wrong when workers have to
wait over six years to get a
decision from the labor board.
reinstatement; 126 have died and
77 are denied reinstatement.
The NLRB also directed Kohler
to:
• Dismiss, if necessary, any
workers hired on or after June 1,
1954, in order to restore strikers
to their jobs.
• Place applicants on a prefer
ential hiring list if there are insuffi
cient jobs and pay lost wages to
eligible strikers beginning 5 days
after application for reinstatement
and until a job is offered.
• Furnish Local 833, on its re-
quest, with information on incentive
earnings.
• Offer 10 strikers immediate
occupancy of company-owned
quarters from which they were
evicted for striking.
• Offer jobs on request to 44
workers fired from the shell depart-
ment in July 1954.
The board upheld the finding of
Trial Examiner George A. Down-
ing, who conducted the hearings
over a period of four years, that
Kohler acted legally in firing 13
members of the union's strike com-
mittee because of their direction of
the strike from April 5 to May 28,
1954.
Chairman Boyd Leedom and
Fete to Mark Rail
Pension Anniversary
Chicago— AFL-CIO Vice Pres.
George M. Harrison, president of
the Railway Clerks, and Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell will be among
the principal speakers at a dinner
here Aug. 31 marking the 25th an-
niversary of the Railroad Retire-
ment Act.
Members Philip Ray Rodgers and
Jenkins made up a majority in over-
ruling Downing's recommendation
and upholding the firing of 64
strikers who took part in mass
picketing.
The majority said the April and
May picketing in 1954 had the pur-
pose of barring all access to the
plant and that other demonstrations
were coercive.
Members Stephen S. Bean and
John H. Fanning disagreed.
They held that Kohler condoned
the participation of strikers in
the mass picketing and so could
not use this as a reason for firing
them. They also said action
more specific than appearance in
a mass demonstration was needed
to justify firing on this ground.
The board also sharply criti-
cized Kohler's use of detectives,
finding unlawful surveillance of
members of Local 833.
The NLRB, commenting on Koh-
ler investigations of a labor board
counsel, said it saw "no justifiable
excuse for the employment of de-
tectives to spy upon and investigate
its attorneys. ..."
Four of the five Board members
— Leedom, Rodgers, Bean and Fan-
ning — handecl down the basic de-
cision in ruling that what began
as an economic strike after con-
tract talks broke down was con-
verted by Kohler into an unfair
labor practice strike.
This occurred, the majority said,
when Kohler granted a wage in-
crease of 3 cents an hour to non-
strikers about June 1, 1954, with-
out bargaining with the union.
This action, said the majority,
was calculated to undermine the
effectiveness of the union, vio-
lated the law and prolonged and
converted the strike into an un-
fair labor practice strike.
Jenkins took sharp issue with
the majority on this basic point.
He said the history of Kohler — a
decade and a half of company
unionism; "its illegal opposition"
to the UAW's organizing efforts;
its violation of the 1953 contract
with the UAW; its pay increase to
non-strikers; "its espionage," evic-
tion of workers from homes and
"spying" on a government attorney
— "all add up" to a pattern leading
to one conclusion.
And that, Jenkins said, is that
Kohler had "a fixed intent to
precipitate a situation which
would enable it to rid itself of the
union and has never deviated
from that purpose."
Jenkins said the strike which
began April 5, 1954, was "caused
and prolonged" by Kohler and he
would rule that an unfair labor
practice existed from that time. He
would have all the strikers rein-
stated, he added.
ABC Routes BCW
In 3 NLRB Votes
The AFL-CIO American Bakery
& Confectionary Workers have
scored three National Labor Rela-
tions Board election victories over
the Bakery & Confectionery Work-
ers, ousted from the federation in
1957 on corruption charges.
In Houston, Tex., employes of
seven wholesale bread and cake
companies voted 416 for the ABC
and 295 for the BCW. The victory
for the AFL-CIO affiliate wiped
out the last remaining BCW local
in Houston.
In Emporia, Kan., workers at the
Campbell-Taggart plant voted to
join the ABC by a vote of 22 to 2,
while in Blytheville, Ark., in a
hotly contested election, the AFL-
CIO union won by 18-16.
SHOWN AT FIRST MEETING in Chicago are delegates to the recently organized AFL-CIO Mid-
western Advisory Committee on Civil Rights. The new group is comprised of representatives from
six AFL-CIO state bodies. It will press for better housing, education, and public accommodations
for Negroes as well as explore charges of discriminations within the labor movement. At right rear
are Stanley L. Johnson, executive vice president of the Illinois State AFL-CIO, and Boris Shishkin,
director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil Rights.
Thompson Demands NLRB Head
Quit for Anti-Union Political Role
The resignation of National Labor Relations Board Chairman Boyd Leedom has been demanded
by Rep. Frank Thompson (D-NJ.) in a blistering attack on Leedom's "anti-union propaganda" in
connection with a partisan political campaign in behalf of Sen. Karl Mundt (R-S.D.).
Thompson, in a speech on the House floor, said Leedom's political activity on behalf of one of
the bitterest anti-labor members of the Senate, "raises grave questions of propriety."
He said that if Leedom did not
have "enough discretion" to re-
sign, in view of his political ac-
tivities, Pres. Eisenhower "should
call for his resignation."
Leedom, head of the independ-
ent, quasi-judicial NLRB, charged
with the impartial administration
of the entire body of federal labor
legislation, injected himself into
the campaign to re-elect Mundt
by signing a letter promoting funds
for Mundf s campaign in which he
made a broad attack on the labor
movement.
Leedom's letter called the South
Dakota Republican a "recognized
leader in the battle against en-
croachment of socialist schemes in
America," and said Mundt was fac-
ing an "especially tough campaign
since certain labor leaders have an-
nounced that he is on their purge
list (and) are making many thou-
sands of dollars available to his
opponent."
Questions Qualifications
Thompson, a member of the
House Labor Committee, charged
that the language used by Leedom
in the letter was "anti-union propa-
ganda." Leedom, he said, "has a
perfect right to hold anti-union
views and to expreess them," but
he questioned whether, under the
circumstances, he is "qualified to
head a quasi-judicial agency which
adjudicates disputes between un-
ions and employers."
"If I were a union man,"
Thompson declared, "I would
not want Mr. Leedom as my
judge. He has openly proclaimed
his anti-union bias."
Thompson pointed out that the
fund-soliciting letters, signed by
Leedom as "general chairman of
the Mundt-for-Senate Committee,''
were also signed by Rowland Jones,
Holleman to Help
Kennedy in Texas
Austin, Tex. — Texas State AFL-
CIO Pres. Jerry Holleman has ac-
cepted appointment as assistant di-
rector of the Democratic campaign
for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in
Texas.
Holleman will head the campaign
of the labor division as one of 11
assistant directors.
as chairman of a "men's division."
The New Jersey Democrat identi-
fied Jones as president of the Amer-
ican Retail Federation.
Jones has been "very active for
many years as an employer lob-
byist on labor legislation,"
Thompson asserted on the House
floor, and charged that "the
Lan drum-Griffin Act passed last
year testifies to his (Jones') ef-
fectiveness."
"Just what sort of a man is
Boyd Leedom," Thompson asked
his colleagues, "that he sees no im-
propriety in engaging in a political
fund-raising venture in partnership
with a lobbyist for an employer as-
sociation.
"Let me ask this: How would
employers feel if the chairman of
the National Labor Relations
Board engaged in fund-raising ac-
tivities on behalf of a senator nota-
bly friendly to unions and in con-
junction with union officials? I can
tell you: They would scream to the
high heaven. I would not blame
them."
Thompson said Leedom's parti-
san political activities on behalf of
the anti-labor South Dakota Re-
publican "suggests that fhe Hatch
Act may be in need of clarifica-
tion" to determine whether it af-
fects quasi-judicial agenices.
The act bars political activity by
employes in the executive branch
of the federal government, or any
government agencies or depart-
ments, but exempts from its pro-
visions "officers who are appointed
by the President, by and with the
advice and consent of the Senate,
and who determine policies to be
pursued ... in the nationwide ad-
ministration of federal laws."
Thompson said it appeared to
him that the language might
exempt from the Hatch Act only
those presidential appointees hav-
ing "major policy-forming roles,
rather than members of independ-
ent, quasi-judicial agencies who
carry out policies enacted by
Congress."
He pointed out that Leedom's
predecessors, as have the heads of
other quasi-judicial agencies, have
"without exception refrained from
actively engaging in politics while
members" of the board. He added
that "it is difficult to see how a per-
son administering these laws can
actively participate in partisan pol-
itics without casting doubt on his
own impartiality in administering
the law."
IBEW, Upholsterers Call
For Election of Kennedy
Two AFL-CIO unions — the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers and the Upholsterers — have endorsed the Democratic
candidacy of Sen. John F. Kennedy for the presidency.
In an editorial in the current issue of the Electrical Workers'
Journal, IBEW Pres. Gordon M. Freeman called on the
union's 750,000 members to work for Kennedy's election. He
described the Democratic standard bearer as the "best quali-
fied" man to lead the country, and said the endorsement
recognized the fact that Kennedy "has worked for the best^
interests of the majority of the people."
The Upholsterers broke a tradition of nearly 80 years'
standing when a special convention in Jupiter, Fla., endorsed
Kennedy and his running mate, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson.
The resolution praised the Democratic candidates and their
platform, and hit out at the GOP presidential candidate, Vice
Pres. Nixon, for his tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 1959
which sealed the McClellan so-called "bill of rights" into the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
No. 1 Job
THE NUMBER ONE JOB facing the trade union movement in
the next 73 days is the election of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
The endorsement by itself is meaningless unless the full ener-
gies and resources of the labor movement are put to work to
translate the statement of support into a reality on Nov. 8.
The next 73 days will be the testing ground. Let's get on with
the job!
Obligation of Citizenship
A TRADE UNION ENDORSEMENT of a political candidate
can be an important and meaningful move or it can be an
empty gesture depending entirely on whether or not union members
are eligible to vote.
In too many areas in this country union and non-union members
alike have not exercised the privilege of free men to participate in
the political decisions which affect every aspect of their lives by
marking a ballot on election day.
They have not discharged their obligations as citizens in a democ-
racy because they have not taken the few simple steps that would
transform them from observers to decision-makers: the steps in-
volved in meeting the simple requirements to become a registered
voter.
This country cannot mobilize its full effort to meet the Com-
munist challenge to democracy if its citizens default on their
democratic privileges. The trade union movement cannot move
towards its objectives of economic security, political freedom and
a strong democracy if its members do not participate in the politi-
cal decision-making.
This is the background of the AFL-OOs registration campaign,
a non-partisan effort to sharply increase the number of Americans
who will participate in the critically important November balloting.
Health Care Unsolved
A PLAN which fails dismally to meet the real health needs of the
aged, and in fact inflicts new indignities on our ailing elder
citizens, has been pushed through the Senate by the Dixiecrat-
Republican coalition.
Bowing to the whip-cracking pressure from Vice Pres. Nixon
and the White House, Republicans with one exception voted against
the key amendment to place health care for the aged under the
social security system. Their votes, plus those of the Dixiecrats,
gave the medical and insurance lobbies a victory.
But it is only a temporary and at most short-lived victory.
Americans will not tolerate this sabotaging of a proposal to meet
a fundamental need. The people want a comprehensive, dignified
and financially sound program of medical care for the aged — a
program that can only be accomplished through a social insurance
system.
The issue of health care for the aged has not been solved by the
Senate vote; it will play a major part in the election campaign. A
shift of four votes in the Senate would have provided the margin of
victory for a decent, meaningful program. Those votes can be
changed at the polls in November.
The Senate action does not solve the basic problem that confronts
hundreds of thousands of Americans: Can you afford to be 65?
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Me any, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey Wm. C. Doherty
Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
James A. Suff ridge O. A. Knight
Paul L. Phillips Peter T. Schoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, t>avid Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
£ AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Suhcriptions: §2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, August 27, 1960
No. 33
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dust rial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
The Job Ahead!
Kennedy's Labor Day Message:
Americas Labor Movement
Speaks for the Public Interest
The text of the Labor Day message of Sen.
John F. Kennedy follows in full.
MAY I OFFER MY CONGRATULATIONS
to the members of organized labor on this
1960 Labor Day.
American labor has insisted upon, and won,
the highest wages and best working conditions
in the world. You have not been content to sit
still and let well enough alone. You have shown
that high living standards can be won within the
context of freedom.
Yours has been a pragmatic movement basing
itself on achievement and progress rather than
on some abstract economic and political theory.
But you are not narrow and self-seeking. Samuel
Gompers once said:
"I do not value the labor movement only for
its ability to give higher wages, better clothes
and better homes. Its ultimate goal is to be
found in the progressively evolving life possi-
bilities in the life of each man and woman. My
inspiration comes in opening opportunities that
all alike may be free to live the fullest/'
This is still the inspiration of the American
labor movement. Our unions have fought for
aid to education, better housing, further develop-
ment of our rich natural resources and to save
the family-size farm. They speak not for narrow
self-interest, but for the public interest and the
people.
Their generosity and help reach abroad. The
free labor movement has played, and will con-
tinue to play, an important role in stopping Com-
munist aggression. Men drawn from the ranks of
organized labor are serving abroad as attaches and
technical assistants, bringing to the people of
other lands a clear understanding of America.
Your officers have established close contacts with
labor unions in Asia, Africa and South America.
The headquarters of the Kenya Federation of
Labor was built with AFL-CIO funds. Our
government should be making better use of such
services in letting the people of other lands know
that America is vitally concerned with the prob-
lems and needs of workers.
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING has always
been the bedrock of the American labor move-
ment. I hope that you will continue to anchor
your movement to this* foundation. Free collec-
tive bargaining is good for the entire nation. In
my view, it is the only alternative to state regula-
tion of wages and prices — a path which leads far
down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those
who would destroy or further limit the rights of
organized labor — those who would cripple collec-
tive bargaining or prevent organization of the
unorganized — do a disservice to- the cause of
democracy.
I wish it were possible to report on this Labor
Day that all is well with our democratic economy.
But not even the rose-colored glasses monoto-
nously peddled by the present Administration with
Madison Avenue slogans can hide the problems.
There have been two recessions within seven
years, and there are economists who believe a
third is coming. Unemployment is dangerously
high even on the national average. Workers in
many important industrial communities have been
still more seriously injured. Nor can we per-
mit economic stagnation to continue in distressed
areas. The Administration has played politics
with this issue — as well as with the minimum
wage, health care for the aged, school construc-
tion and housing programs.
EVERY WORKER WOULD DO WELL to
remember that the Administration twice vetoed
area redevelopment bills only to issue later pious
protestations of concern and calls for action by
Congress. America has had enough of such
hypocrisy. Certainly union men and women want
no more of it.
We need a clean sweep with a new broom to
make America worthy of its great ideals and
traditions. The new frontiers at home lie in
revitalized and beautiful cities with good homes
for Americans to live in. They present the
chance to make the plentiful products of our
farms and factories the real munitions in the
fight for freedom. They He in the conservation
and proper development of our natural and
human resources. In Gompers 9 words again,
they lie "in opening opportunities that all alike
may be free to live the fullest/'
The Presidency of the United States carries
heavy responsibilities, especially in these grave
times of international tension. Because I under-
stand this, I will always welcome the counsel
and support of the American labor movement.
We must return the government to the people and
make it serve the people. I pledge that, if elected,
I will not serve any special interest. I shall be
the President of all the people, and that includes
American labor.
In the crucial years - ahead, organized labor
will have much to contribute to the cause of
democracy. May I say, then, God bless you in
your efforts. May they be rewarded in the crea-
tion of a better world for all who seek freedom.
AIHL-OO .HEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C. t SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, l9ov
Pa gre Sevea
Morgan Says:
'Dirty Work' Seen in Scott's
Smear of Kennedy Foundation
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC comment
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network . Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
LET THE FLAG of good sportsmanship fly at
half mast — the dirty work of the presiden-
tial campaign has already begun. And it looks
very much as if the burden is on one of Vice
Pres. Nixon's top advisers, Sen. Hugh Scott of
Pennsylvania, to prove his charge that Sen. Ken-
nedy was playing politics
with an African scholar-
ship project.
The shoe, instead, is on
the other foot. The evi-
dence at hand tonight in-
dicates that it was the
Nixon campaign camp
which executed such a
power play that the State
Dept. was forced to re-
verse itself on the project
under circumstances which
Sen. William Fulbright
threatens to have his foreign relations committee
investigate unless Sec. of State Herter can furnish
a satisfactory explanation.
The plot, in brief, uncoils as follows: Some
years ago Tom Mboya, young labor and political
leader of Kenya, began with the help of Ameri-
can friends a program to educate East African
students in the U.S. The African-American Stu-
dents Foundation was formed to nurture it,
headed by a former Urban League official, Frank
Montero of New York. Things went slowly and
rather fuzzily until last year when 250 tuition
scholarships were lined up at several score U.S.
colleges for the 1960-61jerms. The 250 students
themselves raised an average of a thousand, dol-
lars apiece for living and other expenses. Left
was the problem of their transportation from
Africa.
Three separate times the foundation went to
the State Dept. for help and was turned down — -
once, notably, after Vice Pres. Nixon himself
had intervened in the case at the request of ex-
Brooklyn baseball star Jackie Robinson, a foun-
dation member.
LAST MONTH, Mboya asked Sen. Kennedy,
who heads a foreign relations subcommittee on
Africa, for help with the State Dept. The Demo-
cratic nominee didn't think he would have any
luck where Nixon had tried and failed but he
Washington Reports:
arranged to have the Kennedy Foundation, es-
tablished in memory of his older brother, page the
possibilities of raising private funds.
When this failed with other foundations, the
Kennedy foundation itself pledged $100,000 a
year for four years for the African students'
fares, with the proviso that the source of the
money remain anonymous, to avoid suspicion
of a political gesture in an election year.
On Aug. 13, as he was preparing to come to
the capital to accept a Kennedy fund check,
Frank Montero got a call from Jackie Robinson
who asked him to telephone James Shepley on
Nixon's campaign staff in Washington. Shepley,
on leave from Time Magazine, told Montero he
had high hopes of getting $100,000 from the
State Dept., urged him not to take the Kennedy
fund money. Two days later in Washington, Mon
tero said Shepley told him government funds were
available and asked him to call Robert H. Thayer,
in charge of coordination of international educa-
tion and cultural relations at the State Dept., for
confirmation.
When Montero finally got Thayer on the
phone, Thayer gave htm the confirmation and
then, amazingly enough, proceeded to explain
that the department had turned him down be-
fore because it did not approve of the way the
African-American Foundation was set up or
was handling its program* Despite the un-
explained reversal, Montero, who meanwhile
had accepted the Kennedy foundation aid, car-
ried away the definite impression that State
Dept. still disapproved of the program.
It was against this hitherto unrevealed back-
ground that the office of Sen. Scott — not the State
Dept. as would be customary — announced the
availability of the department's $100,000, con-
gratulating it for the gesture. Then, as if he were
carefully timing his moves, Scott himself charged
on the Senate floor that the Kennedy family
foundation money for blatant political purposes.
(State's offer was for a single year only) and he
questioned "the apparent misuse of tax-exempt
foundation money for blatant politicarpurposes."
As for Sen. Scott's charges, two of his own
Republican colleagues, Javits of New York and
Cooper of Kentucky, said they were not a proper
subject for Senate debate. And Democratic Sen.
Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota accused Scott
of reviving a technique made notorious by a late,
unrelated senator from Wisconsin — McCarthyism.
Humphrey, Wiley Stress Role
Of Foreign Aid to Block Reds
ADEQUATE FOREIGN AID could have pre-
vented the Communist takeover in Cuba
and can forestall similar moves in Africa, Sen.
Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.), member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on
Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public affairs program, heard on more than 300
radio stations.
Sen. Alexander Wiley, of Wisconsin, ranking
Republican on the committee, said on the same
program that the Senate should reinstate the $500
million cut from the program by the House.
"The amount we have for Africa in the cur-
rent bill is just a basic minimum," Humphrey
asserted. "If Africa goes Communist, the Com-
munist power in the world will become almost
insurmountable."
Humphrey was of the opinion, however, that
most such aid to Africa should be through the
United Nations, with the French, British, Ger-
mans, Italians, Belgians, Dutch and Japanese
sharing the responsibility.
WILEY NOTED that Pres. Eisenhower has
asked for $100 million for the mutual security
contingency fund to deal "with new crises as they
develop. The Congo was one of these crises*
The Administration has also asked for an addi-
tional $500 million for a development effoct to
deal more effectively with problems in Latin
America."
The Senate Appropriations Committee last
week approved $3,981,350,000 in new funds to
carry forward a strengthened Mutual Security
Program, and the Senate passed a bill setting up
a new aid program for Latin America. In acting
on the Mutual Security bill, the Senate committee
sustained the House cut in funds sought by the
President for military aid but restored funds
asked in other categories.
Wiley said that he was of the opinion that
our military defense now and what is planned
for the future is adequate to deter attack from
the Soviet Union. He listed the major items of
defense at the present and on the drawing
boards.
Stressing the non-military part of the foreign
aid program, Humphrey said: "It is my view that
had there been a regional type of economic pro-
gram in which we were an active participant along
with our neighbors in the hemisphere, Castro's
Cuba might never have happened. The poverty
of the people, the need of land reform, develop-
ment of industry and commerce, the social im-
provements were put off/'
He felt that the Organization of American
States is the best instrument for remedying similar
situations in other Latin American countries.
f]
WASHI NGTON
Willard Shelton, whose commentary on the Washington scene
nortnaily appears in this space, is on vacation.
"FROM THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS of Virginia to the
trail of the Cumberland Gap in Kentucky, tens of thousands of
Americans live in appalling poverty. Live? No, they hardly
exist."
This is not the exaggeration of a "do-gooder" or a "bleeding
heart" or a labor "boss" out to get a bigger cut # of dues money, as
the Chamber of Commerce would say. No, it is the calm statement
of a special reporter for the Washington Post sent by his newspaper
into the Appalachian region of the United States to tell the story
of what is happening to thousands of our fellow Americans in the
chronically depressed areas.
How long will it be before the conscience of our people is
moved to the point where we do something for the whole counties
that "are precariously held together by a flour-and-dried-milk
paste of surplus foods," counties of proud mountain folk for whom
"relief has become a way of life?"
THERE ARE HUNDREDS of communities in southern New
York State, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and
New England that have become ghost towns or are inhabited by
people living in abject poverty, people who exist only by virtue of
relief and federal handouts of surplus agricultural products that
are given away not because they constitute a decent diet but because
this is one way to -get rid of them. For one reason or another the
basis of their industry has dried up. They need help to get a new
start.
For five years Congress, under the dogged leadership of Senator
Paul H. Douglas, Illinois Democrat, has tried to do something for
these people.
In 1958 Congress adopted legislation that would have extended
massive aid to the distressed areas. The President vetoed it. Again
this year Congress passed a second bill calling for roughly $250,000,-
000 in aid. The President vetoed it for the second time, with the
open charge that the bill was an "election year" bill. Yet each
time the President reiterated his "concern" for the plight of the
distressed areas, declared that for five "consecutive years" he had
asked for "sound" legislation and promised his signature if Congress
would give him such a bill.
Here, then, we have a situation where Congress and the President
both want to "do something" but have been unable to get together
on what to do.
An excellent case can be made for the fact that the American
people have not been adequately aroused to the real tragedy of the
depressed areas. The Washington Post story is one of the relatively
few first hand reports that we have had. "Yet," says reporter
Julius Duscha, "one cannot forget the faces that have been hungry
for so long, the houses that have been unpainted for even a longer
time and the sense of despair which lingers over so many of the
valleys and ridges. It is hard for a visitor to forget people whom
the nation has so easily put as far out of mind as they are out of
sight."
There are others, however, for whom it is easy to forget — like
the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, which have been battling the Douglas bills with
vindictive persistence.
"Why should the successful be taxed to reward the unsuccess-
ful?" they ask. "Why help the depressed areas to compete with
your area?" "Why don't these people move out and get jobs else-
where?" "Why don't they help themselves?" "Why try to save
areas that are done for anyway?" In brief, "root, hog, or die."
The Eisenhower Administration doesn't go that far, of course.
But it has never sounded any heart-moving alarms that would
reach charitable America and spur it into action to help fellow
Americans as it has helped so many others. (Washington Window)
MUTUAL SECURITY PROGRAM must be strengthened to meet
growing world tensions, the ranking Republican on the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Alexander Wiley (Wis.),-left,
and a leading Democrat on the committee, Sen. Hubert Humphrey
(Minn.) declared on Washington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO
public service radio program.
'Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
Meany on Labor Day:
This Is Time for Action— Not Complacency'
TN KEEPING WITH AN HONORABLE tradition,
* America takes time out on Labor Day to salute the
nation's workers and to give sympathetic consideration
to their problems and goals.
The workers of this country have earned the confi-
dence and good will of their fellow Americans.
Through the instrumentality of their trade unions, they
have helped to raise the American standard of living
to the highest level of all time. In ways too numerous
to mention, they have made a significant contribution
to the strength, the*vitality and the progress of the en-
tire country.
You will find no red flags waving in the parades and
rallies that mark the celebration of this holiday. The
loyalty of American workers cannot be challenged or
impeached. They value freedom as their most precious
asset. They see iri the free way of life the only way of
life fhat holds any reliable promise of benefit to man-
kind.
This year Labor Day coincides with the formal open-
ing of the national political campaign. The three para-
mount issues of this campaign are identical with the
main concerns of the working men and women of
America.
Of first importance is the preservation of world
peace and freedom. On this, both parties — and in-
deed all Americans — agree.
For its part, labor is going to look behind the ex-
pressed goal and examine very carefully the methods
proposed by the candidates for attaining it.
American workers are determined that the mili-
tary power of our country must be built up in the
shortest possible time to a point of unquestioned
superiority. We dare not lag behind the forces of
aggression in missiles or in conventional arms, in
scientific progress or in space exploration. What-
ever the cost, we cannot afford to let the Communists
get the upper hand. We know that the only effective
deterrent against attack, the only- practical insurance
for world peace, is possession of sufficient retaliatory
force to discourage any aggressor from striking the
first blow.
It will take more than military power, however, to
keep Soviet Russia from extending her domain. Labor
wants America to recapture the initiative in interna-
tional affairs. We cannot fail to become alarmed at the
open intervention of the Communists in the trouble
spots of Asia, the Near East, Africa and even Latin
America. If our policy is to contain the spread of com-
munism, we have got to do a better job.
The most dangerous tendency in our country today
is to live in the reflection of past glory. No one has
greater faith in America than its workers. No one is
more deeply devoted to the American dream. But this
is the time for action — not dreamy complacency. We
must be realistic. We must face the fact that in recent
SchnitzMer's Message:
years America has lost ground, it has lost prestige and
it has lost some of the confidence that our friends in
the rest of the world formerly reposed in us.
Labor believes that our country has the resources,
the tools and the vigor to repair the damage and make
up the lost ground.
Responding to a New Emergency
It was only a few years ago that free Europe lay
virtually helpless under its post-war wreckage. For a
time it appeared that the Communists would be able to
move in and take over without a struggle. As a matter
of fact, they almost succeeded. But the United States
responded to the emergency with the Marshall Plan and
today Western Europe is still free and stronger than
ever before.
What is there to prevent us from applying the same
remedy to the new danger spots that have developed in
various parts of the world? These countries are des-
perately in need of economic and technical assistance.
We can supply what they need and save them from
being swallowed up behind the Iron Curtain, provided
we do not follow a policy of "too little, too late" and
provided we do not become paralyzed by fear of what
such a program will cost.
The costs can be met and will be met, if our na-
tional economy is encouraged to attain a healthy rate of
growth.
This brings up the second major issue of the cam-
paign and truly the main battleground. In the areas
of economic policy, we find a sharp difference in the
attitude and program of the opposing candidates.
Labor believes that economic stagnation represents
as great a threat to our national security as Com-
munist aggression.
We do not agree with the contention that the only
initiative for economic growth must come from pri-
vate sources.
There can be no justification, in our opinion, for
exposing the well-being of our people to haphazard
cycles of boom and bust.
On the contrary, we are convinced that the govern-
ment has a fundamental responsibility for maintaining
steady economic progress — to see to it that the wheels
of our factories keep turning, that enough jobs are cre-
ated for our constantly growing population and that the
farmers get a fair return for their crops.
The folly of laissez-faire — of a do-nothing govern-
ment policy — has become painfully evident in chron-
ically high unemployment, in staggering food sur-
pluses, in the depressed areas of our country, in the
shortage of schools for our children, in the lack of
decent housing, in the slums that breed disease and
juvenile delinquency and in the blighted industrial areas
of our cities.
These are fields where the government can act ef-
fectively. By so doing, it will stimulate the entire
economy.
If we elect a government which is willing to under-
take the responsibility of expanding the gross national
product at the rate of at least 5 percent a year, the re-
sultant prosperity will provide more than enough new
tax revenue to meet the nation's urgent needs, to pay
for a stronger national defense program and to finance
broader foreign aid.
On the other hand, if the incoming Administration
which we will elect in November continues to let things
drift, we may wind up in another depression which
would permit Soviet Russia to win without having to
fire a shot.
Finally, the voters must consider the crucial issue of
social reform. Fortunately, both party platforms agree
on the necessity for immediate action to end the na-
tional disgrace of racial discrimination. It is up to the
voters to hold both political parties to their platform
pledges. Whichever presidential candidate wins, there
must be a bipartisan drive in the next Congress for ef-
fective action to terminate the evils of racial discrimina-
tion. More than anything else, such action will serve
to restore the luster of the American image in the eyes
of the entire free world.
There are a number of other issues of importance
to the voters of this country. Wage earners, in par-
ticular, will want to compare the position of the can-
didates on health insurance for the aged, on removal
of unfair restrictions against labor and on improve-
ments in the Fair Labor Standards Act*
The AFL-CIO intends to take an active part in this
campaign. The issues are too vital, the stakes are too
high, for us to sit this one out.
We are encouraged by the fact that public interest is
running high in this campaign. Throughout the coun-
try we find a keen awareness that America now faces
its greatest challenge in history. As a first step, there-
fore, the AFL-CIO will do everything in its power to
bring out a record-breaking vote on Election Day.
Secondly, we will distribute to union members and to ■
anyone else, on request, the voting records of all candi-
dates for national office.
In making this material available to our members we
are fulfilling our obligation as trade union leaders to
help the workers of our country choose candidates who
can best guide America out of its present difficulties.
Exercise of Franchise Urged
That same obligation rests upon every individual
citizen of the nation. We do not presume to tell any
American worker, or any other American citizen, how
to vote. That is his own business and his own inalien-
able right.
My one appeal to all Americans on this Labor Day
is to exercise your right and duty to vote in accordance
with your own considered judgment.
Labor has full confidence that when the American
people go to the polls on Election Day they will justify
the faith of humanity in the democratic process and
place the reins of our government in good hands.
Labor Day Heralds Organizing Advances
i^kN THIS LABOR DAY, the trade union movement
is setting its sights on new advances in organiza-
tion during the coming year.
We believe that conditions will be auspicious for
further gains in union membership.
"I From all indications, the political climate will be
improved. While the 1960 campaign is just getting
under way, candidates endorsed by the AFL-CIO ap-
pear to have the edge. All the public opinion polls
point to the conclusion that America wants more lib-
eral, more progressive and more active government.
O At the same time, anti-labor forces are in retreat.
^ # The trend toward legislation restricting union ac-
tivities has lost its momentum. Now the emphasis is on
removing legislative curbs on legitimate union activi-
ties. The AFL-CIO has not only survived the scandals
resulting from the exposure of corruption within a few
organizations, but it has gained in stature, prestige and
public respect.
3 Equally important, we can look for a revival of
• industrial activity with a new administration in
Washington. It can safely be predicted that there will
be increased expenditures for national defense, housing,
education and road building. It can also be assumed
that the tight-money policy will be lifted. Once this in-
hibiting policy is removed, the national economy will
be able to move forward vigorously again with higher
employment and greater opportunity for sustained in-
dustrial expansion.
It must be pointed out that the AFL-CIO has not
been sitting back and waiting for a better break before
launching a strong organizational drive. On the con-
trary, during the past few years we have taken ad-
vange of every opportunity to organize workers and
we have succeeded beyond what could be expected,
considering the handicaps we faced.
The figures show that our affiliated unions have
enrolled more than a million new members since the
merger. However, the total membership does not
reflect this gain, because an equal number has been
lost as a result of high unemployment in the mass
production industries.
This condition, we trust, will be of short duration.
A higher rate of economic growth is essential to keep
America strong and it undoubtedly will be attained.
When that occurs, our past membership gains will be-
come fully apparent, as will our future organizational
opportunities.
The trade union movement must be ready to take
advantage of these opportunities. Our organizations
cannot be conducted as exclusive clubs. Their first
duty, as enunciated by the founder of our movement,
Sam Gompers, is to "organize, organize, organize!"
Just as America can maintain its strength only if it
keeps growing, so the American trade union movement
can remain strong only if it continues to organize and
enlarges its representation.
The AFL-CIO believes there wll soon be un-
paralleled opportunities for more intensive organiza-
tion in virtually every industry and every area of the
nation.
However, there are two broad fields where thus far
we have scarcely scratched the surface and where we
must make up for lost time.
First of these are white collar workers. The AFL-
CIO is now making a careful survey to determine what
new approaches and new organizing methods may be
necessary to bring the benefits of union organization to
millions of workers in this broad category.
Second are the workers employed by federal, state
and local governments. Some branches in this group
are highly and effectively organized. Others are vir-
tually without any union representation. This is an-
other huge reservoir of potential membership which we
can and must tap.
In a federation like ours, the prime responsibility
for organizing the unorganized rests upon affiliated
national and international unions. The AFL-CIO
itself can plan, it can point the way and it can assist.
We are doing this and we will continue to do so. We
will also do everything in our power to erase jurisdic-
tional difficulties which impede organization.
Let this Labor Day be the signal for a real forward
push in organizing the unorganized. The trade union
movement is on the mark, it is all set and ready to go.
AFL-CfO NE VS, WASHIN
, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
Page Nintf
American Nations Quarantine Trujillo
Labor Urged Action
To Curb Dictatorship
San Jose, Costa Rica — A chain-reaction of government moves
against the Dominican Republic swept through the Americas follow-
ing the unanimous condemnation of the Trujillo dictatorship by the
foreign ministers of the Organization of American States.
The U.S. and Mexico quickly broke off diplomatic relations, other
republics followed suit and the U.S.^
Congress prepared to act promptly
on an appeal from Pres. Eisen-
hower to wipe out most of the
Dominican Republic's sugar quota
in the U.S. market.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
called on Congress to give Pres.
Eisenhower the authority to cut
the Dominican Republic's sugar
quota. In identical wires to both
presidential candidates, the party
leaders in both houses, and to all
members of the House and Senate
Agricultural committees, Meany
said "America's self-interest and
world-wide reputation depend upon
appropriate actions to back its
words."
Organized labor for years has
called for the isolation of and
sanctions against the 30-year old
Trujillo dictatorship.
The Executive Council, meeting
in Chicago just a few days before
the foreign ministers took their ac-
tion here, reaffirmed its condem-
nation of Trujillo "for repeated
violation of human rights, civil
liberties and trade union freedom."
The AFL-CIO renewed its sup-
port of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions and the Inter-
American Regional Organization
of Workers (ORIT) in free labor's
appeal to the OAS to propose the
severance of diplomatic relations
and other sanctions against Trujillo.
The 4.5 million-member Intl.
Transportworkers' Federation,
at its convention in Berne, Swit-
zerland, a few weeks ago, pro-
tested the inprisonment of sev-
eral transport union leaders in
the Dominican Republic, Cuba
and Paraguay.
The Dominican problem came
to a head after last June's attempted
assassination of President Romulo
Betancourt of Venezuela.
An OAS investigating commit-
tee in July reported evidence which
supported Venezuela's charge that
Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo was
behind the attempted murder.
Thus, the foreign ministers of
the 21 American states gathered
here and considered actions rang-
ing from Venezuela's call for cut-
ting off Trujillo's country com-
pletely to a U.S. proposal for OAS-
supervised free elections to replace
Trujillo.
The Dominican delegation
walked out and left Costa Rica
after the remaining 19 ministers,
with Venezuela abstaining, found
the Trujillo regime guilty of
aggression against Venezuela and
moved to impose sanctions.
In a move which could have
far-reaching effects, Venezuela's
Pres. Betancourt then sent a tele-
gram of congratulations to OAS
Secretary Gen. Jose A. Mora on
the anti-Trujillo actions and in-
cluded a series of proposals, one of
which directly involved trade union
freedom.
Betancourt proposed that the
next inter-American conference,
postponed to 1961 and to be held in
Quito, Ecuador, formulate a treaty
which would clearly bar any gov-
ernment from the regional group-
ing which is "not elected by the
people." This was interpreted as
a warning for Cuba, which has
not had elections since Premier
Fidel Castro came to power.
Betancourt also proposed that
the treaty require member govern-
ments to recognize individual hu-
man rights and guarantee freedom
of the press and the right of poli-
tical opposition.
"It should also recognize,"
Betancourt continued, "the effec-
tive exercise of union democracy,
without which labor movements
assume a totalitarian character."
Betancourt said that a basic
step will be taken toward eradi-
cating dictatorship from this hem-
isphere when the "promoters of
coups" realize that a violent seizure
of power will be met with "an
asphyxiating ring of isolation" and
withdrawal of recognition.
Senate Restores Cuts
In Mutual Security Bill
The Senate has voted to restore all House cuts in the Mutual
Security bill except a $200 million slash in military aid.
Restoration of the House reductions, urged by Pres. Eisenhower
and the AFL-CIO, raised the total approved by the Senate to
$3,989 billion. Backing the appropriations, which were recom-
mended by the Senate Appropria-^
tions Committee, were 41 Demo-
crats and 26 Republicans; against
it were 15 southern Democrats and
11 Republicans.
Put back in the measure were
$150 million to restore the De-
velopment Loan Fund appropri-
ation to the full $700 million the
Administration had asked; $75 mil-
lion for defense support, making
the appropriation $675 million; $22
million which raised the technical
cooperation phase of the program
to $172 million, and $50 million in
special economic assistance to
countries which have not signed
military alliance treaties with the
United States, making the total
$257 million.
Ia addition, the Senate ap-
proved another $100 million
for the President's special con-
tingent fund to help meet the
cost of United Nations interven-
tion in the Congo.
Attached to the bill was an
amendment aimed at barring for- 1 aged in recent earthquakes,
eign aid funds from any country
which gives economic assistance- or
armaments to Cuba.
Another, sponsored by Sen.
Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), applied
the same restriction to any country
which the President had deter-
mined was giving military aid or
selling arms to any Latin American
nation "being subjected to economic
or diplomatic sanctions by the Or-
ganization of American States/*
Economic and diplomatic sanc-
tions were voted last week by the
OAS against the Dominican Re-
public.
The Senate also approved a sepa-
rate Latin American assistance
program the President had proposed
in his message to the reconvened
Congress. The bill would author-
ize the appropriation of $500 mil-
lion in economic assistance and
an additional $100 million to help
Chile restore the areas heavily dam-
HAORU WADA (center), general secretary of Zenro, the Japanese Trade Union Congress, is
shown conversing with AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler and George E. Leighty, chairman
of Railway Labor Executives' Association, at luncheon in Washington. Wada was honored by AFL-
CIO officials during visit to nation's capital while enroute home from meeting in Berne, Switzerland,
of Intl. Transportworkers Federation.
U. S. Labor Backs Mexican Protest
Of Gyp By Texas Cotton Growers
The American labor movement has pledged its full support to the government of Mexico in an
effort to prevent a group of cotton growers in the lower Rio Grande valley of Texas from evad-
ing a 50 cents an hour minimum wage required by international agreement for imported Mexican
nationals.
The U.S. Section of the Joint United States-Mexico Trade Union Committee notified the Mexican
Confederation of Labor (CTM)f-
that it stood behind the Mexican
government even if the latter went
to the length of denying Mexican
citizens to all of Texas.
Represented in the U.S. Section
are the AFL-CIO, the Mine Work-
ers and the railroad unions.
A little over a year ago, the U.S.
Labor Dept., at the urging of U.S.
labor, put into effect a wage formu-
la for piece-work which was de-
signed to assure almost all imported
workers minimum pay of 50 cents
an hour.
Although the employer farm
labor advisory committee ap-
proved the formula, some 16 of
the biggest cotton growers in
the lower Rio Grande valley
filed suit. In three cases, injunc-
tions were granted which re-
strained the Labor Dept. from
applying the formula.
The U.S. Section also said that
the Labor Dept. recently responded
to its urgings in blacklisting several
Rio Grande growers on grounds of
shortpaying their Mexican con-
tract workers and then falsifying
their records to cover up.
The growers won injunctions
against such blacklisting, which
would have denied them Mexican
workers. One grower court suit
also aimed to restrain the Mexican
consul from enforcing the bilateral
agreement, the U.S. Section noted.
The action of the Texas cot-
ton growers, UJS. Section Chair-
man Frank L. Noakes wrote
Mexican Section Chairman Fidel
Velazquez, amounts to "out-
right insurrection against the
laws of the United States by the
willful group in this one trouble
region of the country which has
consistently refused to recog-
nize that feudalism has ended
and the 20th century is now more
than halfway over."
Noakes is secretary-treasurer of
the Maintenance of Way Employes
and Velazquez is CTM secretary-
general.
A U.S. Section report sent to
Velazquez by Noakes observed
that most Texas employers have
come to recognize their responsi-
bilities under the bilateral treaty
and could "put the most effective
in the lower Rio Grande valley
to make them clean their house. 99
Texas uses far more imported
Mexicans than any other state.
Some 142,000 were used there in
1958 out of a U.S., total of 433,-
pressure on the bunch of outlaws 1 000 Mexicans.
House Probers Crack
Labor Dept. Secrecy
The House Government Information subcommittee, which has
been waging war on the secrecy curtain maintained by government
agencies, has smoked out the Labor Dept. on two cases involving
grower violations in the use of imported Mexicans.
The violations, uncovered by union officials in the field, involved
influential California growers. $ _ . „ ~ ~ ~
Prodding by the Moss group
Public inquiries on the cases
were rebuffed until the congres-
sional group headed by Rep.
John E. Moss (D-Calif.) began
poking at the curtain of author-
ity.
California growers last year used
a peak total of 83,000 Mexican
nationals under a U.S.-Mexico
agreement.
One case pursued by Moss grew
out of a complaint by a field rep-
resentative of the AFL-CIO Agri-
cultural Workers Organiziag Com-
mittee that Heringer Enterprises,
Oroville, Calif., violated the con-
tract covering imported Mexicans.
That company is run by Fred Her-
inger, a director of the California
Farm Bureau and head of its labor
committee.
A few days later, last January,
the government verified the viola-
tion and, after an appeal, the viola-
tion was confirmed. A second pro-
ceeding was launched to decide if
Heringer should be denied further
Mexicans. This ineligibility became
final in June.
Meanwhile, Moss wrote Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell that public
inquiries on the Heringer case were
being rebuffed by Mitchells San
Francisco office on grounds that
Heringers appeal would be pre-
judiced.
drew a letter from Under-Sec.
James T. O'Conuell that the San
Francisco office withheld infor-
mation because of a "misunder-
standing."
The second case was even more
submerged, involving a grower
twice found guilty of violations who
still is using Mexican nationals.
Last October, Sec.-Treas. Ernesto
Galarza of the Agricultural Work-
ers reported that the D'Arrigo Co.
was using a Mexican national on
construction Work in violation of
the bilateral agreement.
The union then charged that
DArrigo falsified payroll records
to cover up the misuse of Mexi-
cans. The union and the Moss
group unsuccessfully sought con-
firmation from the Labor Dept.
that he had bee« found guilty of
again violating the contract.
D'Arrigo, however, was certi-
fied to receive Mexican nationals
during 1960.
The Moss group on Aug. 13 re-
ceived a letter from the Labor
Dept. confirming that D'Arrigo had
been found guilty for the second
time last October of violating the
contract.
This was the first public acknowl-
edgment of the D'Arrigo violation.
A union request that D'Arrigo be
denied Mexicans remains ignored.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, I960
NAVY YARD WORKERS from Brooklyn, N. Y., converge on the District of Columbia National
Guard Armory for a meeting after calling on their congressmen and senators. Pictured are some of
the 1,700 metal trades unionists who are protesting the Navy's intention to build a new aircraft car-
rier in a non-union shipyard.
Brooklyn Navy Yard Workers
Protest Award to Non-Union Firm
By Gene Kelly
Navy union shipyard workers have solid Navy authority for a fight they are waging to build
a $293 million aircraft supercarrier in a Navy yard — Commodore Perry's famous slogan: ''Don't
give up the ship!"
The fight to "save the ship" started in July, when Pres. Eisenhower signed an order authorizing
the Navy to take bids for building the nation's biggest and newest carrier in a private shipyard in-
stead of a Navy yard. ^
The report that the job may go to
the Newport News Shipbuilding
Co., biggest non-union yard in the
country, galvanized union shipyard
workers. At the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, the AFL-CIO Metal Trades
Council organized a caravan and
led 1,700 workers to Washington
for a protest meeting with senators,
congressmen and Navy officials.
The protesters were assured by
New York's congressional delega-
tion that they will "fight to the
finish' 9 to get the President, and
the Navy, to change the decision.
Sen John F. Kennedy (Mass.),
the Democratic presidential nomi-
nee, told caravan members that,
since the Boston Navy Yard can't
get the contract, he would like to
see the ship built in Brooklyn.
The battle over the carrier
brought these other developments:
• A charge by Rep. Emanuel
Celler (D-N. Y.) that the President
evaded the "clear intent" of Con-
gress in passing the Vinsori-Tram-
mell Act of 1934 when he accepted
a Defense Department recommen-
dation that the ship be built by a
private yard on contract.
• An announcement by Rep.
Francis E. Dorn (R-N. Y.) that he
will sponsor an amendment to
change the Vinson-Trammell Act.
The law provides that major ships
must be built in turn at a public
yard, then at a private yard, with
cost not to be a consideration. But
the act gives the President authority
to change this sequence "if the pub-
lic welfare demands." Dorn's
amendment would take this author-
ity away from the President.
• A prediction by Pres. James
A. Brownlow of the AFL-CIO
Metal Trades Dept. that the Navy
will, unless overruled, award the
carrier contract to the non-union
yard at Newport News, Va.
Navy spokesmen were ques-
tioned vigorously at a meeting in
the Capitol conducted by Celler
as chairman of the bi-partisan
congressional committee. They
admitted this will be the first
time since the Vinson-Trammell
Act became law that a public
shipyard has been passed up for
its turn at building a carrier.
Asked by Celler and others to
Technical Engineers
Rap Landrum-Griffin
Toronto, Ont. — The head of the Technical Engineers has de-
nounced the Landrum-Griffin Act as a "reactionary device" to
cripple the trade union movement — especially the small local with
voluntary officers.
Pres. Russell M. Stephens opened the AFTE's 34th annual con-
vention with a promise that the^
18,000-member union would "do
all in our power" to amend the law
to remove the laborious and ex-
pensive duties falling on volunteer
union officials in the United States.
'The law isn't designed to pro-
tect rank and file union members,"
he said. "If it were, I would praise
it to the skies."
Stephens also expressed con-
cern about an attempt in Ontario
to classify all technicians under
the Professional Engineers Act
and ban them from collective
bargaining.
This bill was beaten back last
year but is expected to be re-
introduced at the next session of
the provincial legislature. Cana-
dian labor has warned that its pass-
age would erect a permanent bar-
rier to white collar organizing.
Stephens said the dominant is-
sues facing delegates would be
amending the constitution to "live
with the Landrum-Griffin law" and
beginning a mass organizing drive.
He also protested that thous-
ands of professional engineers
receive less pay than unionized
laborers because they permitted
themselves to be dominated by
management-run professional so-
cieties.
"The professional engineer is be-
coming exploited and underpaid,"
he said. "He is no longer an inde-
pendent contractor but a worker
who needs a union just as much
as the man at the machine."
delay sending out bidding invita-
tions until after Sept. 17, the Navy
spokesmen asserted no contract can
be let by that date but declined,
politely, to delay sending out the bid
blanks.
"We labored ceaselessly," Cel-
ler told the Navy and the Brook-
lyn delegation, "to get into the
Navy's appropriation bill an item
for the building of this carrier.
But the President, in his wisdom,
has seen fit to have the carrier
built in a private yard, to the
great chagrin and disappoint-
ment of the entire New York
delegation" in Congress.
"Tell your superiors," said Celler,
"that the fight has only begun.
We're going to fight to the finish,
clear up to the White House."
. Senators Kenneth B. Keating (R-
N. Y.) and Jacob K. Javits (R-
N. Y.) wanted to know why the
Navy did not feel the responsibility
of informing committees of Con-
gress interested in appropriations
about the decision to build the car-
rier in a private yard.
Admiral R. K. James, chief of
the Navy Bureau of Ships, said the
possibility was discussed at two
meetings with committee members.
The Navy has no intention of aban-
doning the Brooklyn yard, but pre-
fers to concentrate other work there
having to do with ship repair, he
said.
Fred A. Bantz, Under Secretary
of the Navy, said the Navy esti-
mates that the cost of building the
proposed carrier at a private yard
will be about $30 million less than
at the Brooklyn yard.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard com-
mittee, headed by Fred J. Sid-
nam, Patrick J. Honey, Edward
V. Dockweiler and Oscar A.
Rexer asserted that the cost
would be at least $25 million less
at the Brooklyn yard.
Pres. William Ryan, of Machin-
ists' District 44, summed up the
opinion of delegation leaders with
this statement at a rally of the visit-
ing unionists: "The New York Navy
Yard has been sold down the river
by the Navy Dept. and the Great
White Father at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue.
"The battle will depend on you
people, and your senators and con-
gressmen." "
Pay, Fringe Gains:
Non-Op Rail Pact
Benefits 550,000
Chicago — More than 550,000 railroad workers — members of 11
non-operating unions — will receive major health, insurance and va-
cation improvements plus a retroactive 5-cent hourly pay raise under
a nationwide agreement hammered out here.
A marathon 30-hour bargaining session wound up nearly a
year of off-and-on negotiations.^
The final agreement followed
closely recommendations made on
June 8 by a Presidential Emer-
gency Board. The railroads esti-
mated the cost of the wage and
fringe benefit provisions , as ap-
proximately equal to the 4 percent
wage settlement reached with most
operating unions.
Chairman G. E. Leighty of the
Railway Labor Executives' Asso-
ciation, who headed the non-ops
negotiating committee, said the
agreement was "the best possible
under the circumstances" but he
added that it "falls short of the
needs of the employes."
At the start of the negotiations,
the railroads had demanded that
the unions agree to a 1 5-cent
hourly slash in wages, claiming that
employes were "overpaid."
A major breakthrough, he
said, was agreement by the rail-
roads to provide a $4,000 group
life insurance policy to each ac-
tive employe, paid for entirely
by management.
This life insurance feature, which
will become effective Mar. 1, 1961,
had been strongly opposed by the
railroads who claimed the Railway
Labor Act does not require them
to bargain on this and other health
and welfare proposals.
Other major fringe benefit gains
negotiated by the non-op unions
include:
• Improved hospital, medical
and surgical benefits for depend-
ents to make them equal to the
benefits received by employes.
• A three-month extension of
these benefits to workers who are
furloughed.
• Two weeks vacation after
three years, instead of five, and
liberalization of qualifications for
vacation and holiday pay.
In addition to the five-cent
pay raise, which will be retro-
active to July 1, the accumulated
cost-of-living increase of 17
cents is frozen into the basic pay
rates. The cost-of-living escala-
tor clause is dropped from the
contract, a move which Leighty
said will allow "more flexibility*
in seeking future improvements.
Elsewhere on the railroad labor
scene, these developments took
place :
• Leaders of the five operating
unions reaffirmed their solidarity
in resisting railroad efforts to con-
duct separate talks on the hotly-
disputed work rules issue. Sept. 7
was set for a joint negotiating ses-
sion after the unions said the work
rule issues were so interrelated that
"they affect all the employes."
• Members of the Switchmen
voted better than 2-to-l to reject
a wage settlement with the nation's
railroads based on the 4 percent
patterns agreed to by the four other
operating unions. The Switchmen
have claimed that existing wage
inequities justify a higher increase.
Musicians Fight Sale
Of Films for TV Use
New York — The Musicians have launched a legal fight to pre-
vent Warner Brothers Pictures Inc. from releasing films worth more
than $11 million for television showing until it negotiates an agree>
ment covering the movie musicians who made the sound track.
In a petition filed in United States District Court here the AFM
pointed out that, under the terms ^ : *
Warners made a financial report
showing a net profit of $4.5 million
on sales and film rentals totaling
$66 million for the nine month*
ended May 28, 1960.
of contracts between the union and
Warners, films may not be shown
on television without prior negoti-
ations and the written consent of
the AFM. The union asked the
courts to issue temporary and per-
manent restraining orders.
Involved in the suit are 122
movies made after 1948. The
union's petition recites that "ac-
cording to information and be-
lief," Warners has an under-
standing with Creative Telefilms
& Artists Ltd., a Toronto agency,
under which $11 million would
be paid to Warners on Sept. 1
and all receipts over the first
$11 million would be split
equally.
AFM Pres. Herman Kenin said
he believes the courts will not "tol-
erate a callous disregard of a
pledged commitment to negotiate"
for prior consent before the tele-
vising of the films. The union
will pursue the same policy toward
any" other producers with whom 'it
has contracts, he said.
"If the court sustains our posi-
tion, as we confidently hope," the
AFM head continued, "adequate
re-use payments to the men who
played for the sound tracks of the
films will be a prerequisite in our
negotiations."
The union does not seek any
payments for itself, but has
negotiated in the past for pay-
ments to the Musicians' Trust
Fund to promote the use and
appreciation of live musical
entertainment, Kenin said,
i Shortly after the suit was filed,
Cost of Living
At New High
For 6th Month
The nation's cost of living edged
to a new high in July, the sixth
straight monthly increase,
The Consumer Price Index of
the Labor Dept/s Bureau of Lar
bor Statistics, in creeping upward
by one-tenth of 1 percent to 126.6,
recorded the smallest June-to-July
price rise since 1954.
The July CPI means that the
market basket which cost $10 in
the 1947-49 base period now cosU
$12.66.
At 126.6, the July CPI was 1.4
percent higher than a year earlier.
The July standing will mean a
pay increase of about 1 cent an
hour for some 105,000 electrical
workers and about 40,000 farm
equipment workers.
A companion report showed
that a seasonal reduction of 12
minutes in the factory workweek
caused spendable earnings to de-
cline by 36 cents to $81.23 for
a worker with three dependents
and $73.67 for a worker without
dependents.
This decline, plus the CPI slight
increase, cut worker buying power
by one-half of 1 percent
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D, C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1960
Page Eleven
Labor Hails Senate Version:
House-Senate Conference
Takes up Wage-Hour Bill
A House-Senate conference committee tackled sharply-differing minimum wage bills — on© de-
scribed by the AFL-CIO as "a significant milestone," the other branded "woefully inadequate."
Labor called on the conferees to support the key provisions in the Senate bill, steered to a 62 to 34
final passage vote by Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Although trimmed back
somewhat before final passage, it would bring more than 4 million additional workers under the wage-
hour law and raise the wage floor —
in a series of steps — to $1.25 an
hour.
The Kennedy-sponsored bill
contrasts sharply with the meas-
ure rammed through the House
by a Republican-Southern Demo-
cratic coalition before Congress
recessed for the political conven-
tions. The House bill contains
only token extensions of cover-
age and limits the wage floor to
$1.15 for those already covered.
Newly-covered workers would be
guaranteed only $1 an hour with
uo overtime pay requirement.
Although the conservative-dom-
inated House Rule* Committee
cleared the way for a conference
on the legislation, the possibility of
a deadlock remained in view of the
great gaps between the two bills.
Oppose Splitting Difference
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller and Special Coun-
sel Arthur J. Goldberg, co-chair-
men of the federation's Joint Mini-
mum Wage Committee, issued a
statement declaring that the House-
Senate conference "should not
mean a mere splitting of the differ-
ences between the two bills."
The Senate bill, they said, al-
though falling short of labor's
goals, "represents a significant
milestone on the road toward
achieving decent standards of liv-
ing and working conditions for
all wage earners. It will provide
greater protection for fair em-
ployers against unfair, wage-chis-
eling competitors. It will shore
up the economy of the nation
and of the individual states and
local communities by substan-
tially increasing the purchasing
power of low-paid wage earners."
Here is how the two bills com-
pare:
COVERAGE: The Senate bill
would extend coverage to an esti-
mated 2.5 million employes of re-
tail or service establishments hav-
ing gross annual sales of $1 million
or more. Stores in a chain doing
$1 million annual business would
be covered if the individual store
had at least $250>000 in sales. It
would also extend coverage to an
estimated 1 million workers in firms
engaged in interstate commerce
with annual sales of at least $250,-
000, even if some of the work did
not directly involve interstate com-
merce^ At present, a single enter-
prise may have some employes cov-
ered by the wage-hour law and
others who are not. Coverage
would be extended also to some
150,000 employes of laundries with
annual sales of $ I million or more,
about 100,000 seamen, more than
100,000 local transit employes,
more than 40,000 telephone switch-
board operators in small commu-
Token Medical Aid Bill
Cleared for Passage
(Continued from Page 1)
with Sen. Clinton P. Anderson (D-
N.M.), the Democratic presidential
nominee, Sen. John F. Kennedy,
charged that the veto threat was re-
sponsible for the Senate action.
'This vote demonstrates that if
we're going to have effective legis-
lation in this an4 other fields," the
Democratic standard bearer said,
"we're going to have to have an
Administration that will provide
leadership and a Congress that will
act."
As passed by the Senate, the
measure sets up a program of
federal grants to help states pro-
vide an additional $12 a month,
strictly for medical care, for the
2.4 million persons currently get-
ting state old age assistance. The
federal share would range from
50 to 80 percent, depending on
the per capita income of the
states.
The actual number of aged per-
sons who would benefit from such
a plan remains largely in doubt,
since before any federal funds can
be granted to any state, its legisla-
ture must approve participation in
medical care and appropriate addi-
tional funds.
Further, the number of those
benefitting would depend entirely
on eligibility requirements enacted
by the states. In the past, states
have set up stringent regulations,
including so-called "paupers' oaths,"
and other restrictions which have
excluded large groups, from bene-
fits.
Again, state legislative approval
of added appropriations would be
necessary, and the question of elig-
ibility for benefits would remain in
the hands of public welfare officials.
The Anderson-Kennedy amend-
ment vnould have extended health
care benefits to social security re-
cipients over 68 without any
means or income test, providing
hospital, nursing home, out-pa-
tient and home nursing care. It
would have been financed by an
increase of one-quarter of 1 per-
cent in the social security taxes
of both employers and employes.
As cleared by the Senate-House
conferees, and expected to win
quick approval on both sides of
Capitol Hill, the bill contained the
following changes in the basic so-
cial security law:
• Present limitations making
disability benefits available only to
those over 50, were dropped, so
that all disabled persons will be eli-
gible for assistance.
• The current restriction on
outside earnings, which allow a
person to earn up to $1,200
without losing any monthly bene-
fits, was relaxed. Under the new
formula, an individual earning up
to $1,500 will lose $1 of benefits
for each $2 of earnings over the
$1,200 limit; on earnings over
$1,500, the loss will be $1 in
benefits for $1 in earnings.
• Coverage was extended to
American citizens working in
Guam, Samoa, the Canal Zone,
and to citizens working in this
country for international organiza-
tions.
• Benefits for 400,000 surviving
children of covered workers were
raised.
Killed in conference was a Sen-
ate scheme to provide for retire-
ment of men at age 62 on scaled-
down benefits; House provisions
which would have liberalized work-
test requirements to make about
600,000 more persons eligible; and
a House-passed section extending
coverage to 150,000 self-employed
physicians, more domestic employes
and additional widows and widow-
ers.
nities and over 30,000 workers in
fish processing plants.
The House bill, through what
has been described as "a colossal
goof," adopted a hastily-drawn
amendment which could have the
effect of stripping 14 million
workers presently covered from
protection of the law. New cov-
erage would be extended only to
slightly more than 1 million em-
ployes of chain stores which
operate five or more retail out-
lets in two or more states.
WAGES: Under the Senate bill,
presently-covered employes would
be guaranteed a $1.15 minimum
wage on Jan. 1, 1961, $1.20 the
following year and $1.25 on Jan. 1,
1963.
The House bill would raise pres-
ently-covered employes to a $1.15
minimum with no further step-ups.
Newly-covered employes, under
the Senate bill, would begin with a
$1 wage floor, move up to $1.05 in
1962, $1.15 in 1963 and $1.25 in
1964.
Under the House bill, they would
receive $1 an hour, with no further
increases.
HOURS: Under the Senate bill,
there would be no ceiling on hours
the first year. Overtime would have
to be paid after 44 hours in 1962,
after 42 hours in 1963 and after 40
hours in 1964. Seamen, local transit
workers and fish processing em-
ployes would not be covered by the
ceiling on hours.
The House bill provides no over-
time protection for newly-covered
workers and none in the future.
While praising the Senate bill
as "a great improvement," the
AFL-CIO declared: "It is par-
ticularly unfortunate that hotel,
motel and restaurant employes,
, many thousands of whom are
among the lowest-paid wage earn-
ers in the country, will continue
to be exempt from minimum
wage and maximum hours pro-
tection under the terms of the
Senate bill."
VICTORY SMILE is flashed by Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Democratic presidential nominee, after Senate passage of his bill
raising minimum wage to $1.25 an hour, and broadening coverage
to give an additional 4 million workers wage-hour protection. Bill
was passed by 62-34 vote after major efforts to emasculate its key
provisions were beaten back.
Indiana 'Work' Repeal
Demanded by Ministers
Indianapolis — A group of leading Indiana Methodist ministers
has denounced the state's so-called "right-to-work" law and ur-
gently called for its repeal by the legislature.
The action was taken in a statement released through the Indiana
Council for Industrial Peace.
The ministerial group charged^ -
that the Indiana * 'right- to- work"
law constitutes a "denial of free-
dom" and seeks to destroy the col-
lective bargaining process between
management and labor.
"We believe in the democratic
process in labor-management re-
lations," the clergymen said.
"We believe that in the name
of freedom the present 'right-to-
work law' denies freedom, com-
pelling, as it does, all of indus-
try to observe open shop agree-
ments, thus negating free col-
lective bargaining." • • •
"We believe that the 'right-to-
work' law should be repealed in
order that workers may be
Plumbers' Apprentice
Program Wins Award
Lafayette, Ind. — Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell presented a
special certificate of merit to the United Association of Plumbers
& PipeJFitters for its "outstanding" educational and training pro-
gram.
The ceremony culminated the week-long seventh annual Appren-
tice Contest conducted by the^
union at Purdue University here
in which 97 winners of state and
provincial contests competed.
Referring to the efforts of the
Plumbers to prepare members for
the atomic age, Mitchell said:
"These young men here today,
the finest from their area, have
been given a wonderful oppor-
tunity. They will benefit Their
union will benefit. Their indus-
try will benefit And their coun-
try will benefit Change is the
servant of those who prepare for
it, and the master of those who
do not."
After exhaustive tests of their
mechanical skills and the knowl-
edge they have acquired of higher
mathematics, basic science and
practical engineering, the following
apprentice winners were chosen:
Plumbing — Walter A. Bohnen-
berger, Local 2, New York City,
first prize, $1,000; William G.
Baker, Local 635, Sault Ste. Marie,
Mich., second prize, $500; Paul
L. Smith, Local 78, Los Angeles,
third prize, $250.
Pipe Fitting — Charles M. Dunn,
Local 430, Philadelphia, first prize,
$1,000; Thomas Braden, Local
601, Milwaukee, second prize,
$500; Richard J. King, Local 464,
Omaha, Neb., third prize, $250.
Sprinkler-fitting — Bruno Polack,
Local 261, Chicago, first prize,
$500; Donald Sandberg, Local 669,
Washington, D. C, second prize,
$250; Francis J. Riegerix, Local
268, St. Louis, third prize, $100.
Not only the apprentices, but
their instructors as well, went
to school here. A total of 353
instructors employed in union
and public vocational schools
took special one-week courses
in the latest teaching methods.
The award ceremonies were at-
tended by 500 union officials, in-
dustry leaders and university offi-
cials. Spokesmen for the leading
contractors* associations were in-
troduced to the audience by UA
Pres. Peter T. Schoemann and
voiced high praise of the union's
efforts to give both apprentices and
journeymen advanced training.
neither compelled to work in an
open shop nor compelled to
work in a union shop except
through democratically deter-
mined labor-management con-
tracts."
The statement by the Methodist
ministers was in line with earlier
action and statements condemn-
ing the anti-collective bargaining
"right-to-work" laws by the Board
of Social and Economic Relations
pf the Methodist Church,
It was signed by the Rev. Lynn
Garth, pastor of Stull Memorial
Methodist Church of South Bend,
who is chairman of Christian So-
cial Relations of the 1960 North-
west Indiana Annual Conference
of the Methodist Church, and
other leading ministers.
Among those subscribing to the
call for repeal of Indiana anti-col-
lective bargaining law were Rev.
A. Summers Clark of Westfield;
Rev. Robert Smith of Indianapolis;
Rev. Vernon Bigler of Terre Haute;
Rev. Warren Anderson of Dyer;
Rev. Edward Boase of South Bend;
Rev. Robert Fields of Kentland;
Rev. Warren S. Saunders of Go-
shen; Rev. Lyle Loomis of West
Lafayette and Rev. Victor Ramsey
of Boswell.
The ministers said they issued
the statement because "we believe
that members of the clergy are
obligated by their calling to speak
strongly and forthrightly on all is-
sues affecting the rights of man.
To react timidly in the face of
controversy is moral and social
cowardice."
Operating Engineers
Re-elect Top Officers
Pres. Joseph J. Delaney and Sec-
Treas. Hunter P. Wharton of the
Operating Engineers were re-elec-
ted to four-year terms without op-
position in a referendum vote of
the union's membership.
Nine vice presidents and three
trustees also were renamed without
opposition. In the only contest
on the ballot, Vice Pres. Frank
Converse of Cleveland defeated
Ralph Bronson of Los Angeles by
a two-to-one margin.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, AUGUST 27. 1960
<i —
AFL-CIO Endorses Kennedy- Johnson
'Sharp, Clear' Contrasts Between
Democratic, GOP Platforms Cited
(Continued from Page 1)
be inhibited by loyalty to the mis-
takes of his predecessor."
Nixon's history as a "partisan
campaigner both for himself and
the national ticket," the board said,
''raises grave questions of his fit-
ness." Notirg that he had im-
pugned the loyalty of numerous op-
ponents including "a President of
the United States," the statement
added that "since- he is neither
fense, "scientific progress and "ex-
tending the frontiers of democ-
racy," the board asserted, adding:
"we cannot permit it to become 'too
late.' "
The AFL-CIO program presented
to both party platform committees
is "positive, practical and non-par-
tisan," and while labor recognizes
that neither party "has a monopoly
on wisdom or dedication to the
public good" the obligation exists
4-Point Action Program
To Support Endorsement
This four-point action program to give the fullest possible
effectiveness to the federation's endorsement of the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket was recommended to the AFL-CIO General
Board by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany as chairman of COPE
and James R. McDevitt, COPE director:
1 — That every national and international union, itself and
through its local unions, undertake a campaign to insure that
all members and their families are registered to vote; and in
addition, that each national and international union participate
fully in the AFL-CIO 1960 Registration Drive.
2 — That the analysis of the party platforms, party perform-
ance and candidates 9 voting records submitted to this meet-
ing of the General Board be given the widest possible circula-
tion among union members and the American people as a
whole.
3 — That a more intensive effort than ever before be made
to collect $1 voluntary contributions from union members for
the support of COPE-endorsed candidates for Congress and
state office.
4 — That all union members be urged to make additional
voluntary contributions to promote the election of the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket.
naive nor uninformed we must
conclude he knew better in every
case."
A comparative voting record
compiled by the Committee on
Political Education going back
to 1947 revealed that on 131
key votes Kennedy voted 91.6
percent "right" from labor's
viewpoint and "wrong" .02 per-
cent.
Nixon's record on 77 key votes
was 13 percent "right" and 76.6
percent "wrong."
The voting record covers civil
rights, civil service, consumer, edu-
cation, foreign policy, health, hous-
ing, immigration, labor, migratory
labor, minimum wage, public
power, small business, social
security, taxes, tidelands and vet-
erans.
Comparing the vice presidential
candidates the board said of Repub-
lican Henry Cabot Lodge that his
service in the United Nations "de-
serves the greatest approbation"
although limited by the "narrow-
ness of Republican policy." His
record in Congress, it added,
"suffers primarily at those points
when party policy took preference
over personal conviction."
Johnson was described as a "dom-
inant force" in the last three Con-
gresses whose leadership effective-
ness has been universally acknowl-
edged. While the AFL-CIO has
not agreed with Johnson's concept
of the role of Congress in a di-
vided government and has not
agreed with his entire voting record,
on balance he has a liberal record
that has become "increasingly
liberal with the years," the board
said.
The Administration selected in
November, it said, must be the one
best able to meet the problems of
protecting the nation from total-
itarian communism and strengthen-
ing the nation economically and so-
cially "to insure our position as
the bastion and exemplar of free-
dom as a way of life."
The record of the last eight years
is one of "too little" in the areas
of economic growth, welfare, de-
to measure the party positions
against the federation's program.
The statement reviewed the areas
where the differences in the party
platforms and records "are most
pronounced" as well as the ex-
pressed positions of the four candi-
dates:
Labor legislation: The Democra-
tic platform is "far superior" in
terms of labor's objective of making
promotion of free collective bar-
gaining the policy of the govern-
ment.
"Right-to-work" laws: Repeal of
the Taft-Hartley provision allowing
"right-to-work" laws is a "prerequi-
site to fair labor-management legis-
lation." The Republican platform
"in effect endorses" this provision;
the Democratic platform "pledges
its repeal."
Situs picketing: "The reluctance
of Republicans to correct a flagrant
injustice . . . defiies charitable ex-
planation."
Wage-hour legislation: The Dem-
ocratic platform "is in line with
our position that constant improve-
ments in the living standards and
conditions of employment of the
lowest paid, including farm work-
ers, is essential . . ."
Economic growth: The Republi-
can platform and candidate "have
embraced this concept with reluc-
tance and have been especially crit-
ical of growth-stimulating expend-
itures in the public sector of our
national economy." Such expend-
ditures must be greatly expanded
"for the security of the economy
and of America itself."
Civil rights: On issue after issue
non-southern Democrats "almost
invariably have voted in favor of
the civil rights position, whereas
only a third to a half of the Re-
publicans have done so. Time after
time Republicans have cast their
lot with the southerners against
civil rights in order to get southern
support for conservative or reac-
tionary economic programs." In
addition, "the present Republican
Administration has failed miserably
to support civil rights progress at
the executive level."
Social security: On health care
for the aged the Democratic plat-
form says "yes; the Republican plat-
form no. When it came to a test,
only one Republican in the Senate
supported the social security prin-
ciple."
Unemployment insurance: Only
federal standards can restore un-
employment insurance to its in-
tended function; the Republican
platform does not mention this
question, the Democratic platform
pledges their establishment.
Federal aid to education: "The
Republican predilection for local'
solutions effectively blocked action
and apparently will continue to
block it."
Aid for depressed areas: "The
Administration's rejection of a gen-
uinely effective program . . . has
condemned millions of Americans
to a protracted depression . . ."
Housing: The Republicans have
retreated from the position of Sen.
Taft who "acknowledged the pro-
priety of massive federal action in
the housing field . . . The Repub-
licanism of today is thus far less
enlightened than that of the man
who was once 'Mr. Republican' to
the conservatives of his party."
Foreign policy and national de-
fense: "We find with deep regret
that in the last eight years our
country has not lived up to the
objectives of either platform, and
that the claims made by the Repub-
licans for the Eisenhower-Nixon
policies have no foundation in fact."
Atomic energy and natural re-
sources: From atomic energy to
timberlands to TVA, the Republi-
cans in Congress and the Repub-
lican Administration "have sought
to promote private profit against
the public interest." The majority
of Democrats in Congress opposed
the Republican attempts in this
area.
Government employes: The rec-
ord shows that the "Democrats "are
more receptive to the principle
of fair and equal treatment for
workers in government service."
Congressional procedures: Al-
though neither party has a good
record on changes in Senate Rule
22 on filibusters, a majority of
House Democrats has always sup-
ported "proposals to restrict the
power of the Rules Committee,
while a majority of Republicans has
opposed such proposals."
Campaign Kickoff
Meany Rallies Affiliates
For Registration Drive
(Continued from Page 1) &
We must overcome the compla-
cency and indifference that have
clouded our election record in the
past."
The AFL-CIO official declared
that "faith in the democratic
process is the heart" of the trade
union movement. "We must
promote this principle in our
country as well as in our move-
ment itself," he continued, add-
ing that labor's registration cam-
paign "added to the efforts of
our affiliated unions will help
to demonstrate again our devo-
tion to the ideal of majority
decision."
Meany pointed out that, to in-
sure the success of the voter reg-
istration campaign, the Executive
Council had unanimously called on
each affiliated union to contribute
to a special AFL-CIO fund to be
used for its promotion.
The council urged unions to
base their contributions on the
basis of 5 cents per member.
Meany made it plain that the
campaign was not linked in any
way with the AFL-CIO General
Board's position on labor endorse-
ment, and that it was not connected
with similar registration drives be-
ing run by the Democratic and Re-
publican parties.
The labor movement has been
running registration drives for
many years, he said, as part of its
continuing interest in full exercise
of the franchise. The decision to
intensify the effort this year, he
said, stemmed in great measure
from the fact that surveys and spot
checks from around the country
uncovered "discouraging" facts on
09-LS-8
the number of persons who do
not register or vote.
The special registration drive will
be directed by Carl McPeak, AFL-
CIO coordinator of state legislative
activities, operating directly under
Meany.
Meany Brands GOP Candidate as
'Same Old Nixon We've Always Had'
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany blasted the "new Nixon" pitch being circulated by the Republican
Party and tagged the GOP presidential candidate the "same old Dick Nixon we ve always had."
Asked at his press conference — announcing the endorsement of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket by
the AFL-CIO General Board— if he thought there was a "new Nixon," Meany recalled the Vice
President's earlier campaigns.
"He's the same guy that ran
against Jerry Voorhis and Helen
Gahagan Douglas, and who called
Harry Truman a traitor," the AFL-
CIO president declared.
In his first bid for the House,
Nixon defeated Voorhis in a cam-
paign in which he attempted to por-
tray Voorhis, a liberal Democrat, as
holding the same views as the
Communists. He used the same
technique against Mrs. Douglas in
his Senate : race. In the 1952
presidential campaign Nixon in a
number of speeches raised by indi-
rection the question of former Pres.
Truman's loyalty.
Asked if he believed Nixon
would be surprised by the AFL-
CIO endorsement of Kennedy-
Johnson, Meany replied "if he
looked at his own record he
would surely be surprised if we
endorsed him."
The federation president told re-
porters there was no proposal be-
fore the board for support of the
Nixon-Lodge ticket.
He said he believed the endorse-
ment would have some influence
with trade union members because
it will cause them to take a look
at the record and stimulate them
to vote for the endorsed candi-
dates. He stressed that no one can
"deliver" the labor vote.
. The major emphasis in the en-
dorsement, he said, is on the presi-
dential candidate and the party
platform. Asked about Democra-
tic Vice Presidential Candidate
Lyndon B. Johnsons record, he
said he had a pro-labor record in
presently his record on labor could
be characterized as fair and middle-
of-the-road.
Meany stressed the importance
of having a liberal in the White
House in terms of securing adop-
tion of the major planks in the
Democratic party platform and
that the issue was tied up with
not having in the White House
"some one who threatens to veto
every piece of progressive legisla-
tion."
He said the issue in Congress was
not between the Democratic and
Republican parties on progressive
legislation because the Democrats
do not control Congress. Control
is in the hands of the coalition of
Dixiecrats and Republicans, he said,
and the Halleck-Dirksen line about
his early years in Congress and that I Democratic control is "hokum."
Vol. V
Itssed weekly tt
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, 0. C.
$2 a year
second cia« Posta* Paid at Washington, b. c Saturday, September 3, 1960
No. 36
GOP-Dixiecrat Coalition
Kills Minimum Wage Bill
AFL-CIO to Fight
Issue in Campaign
Nation Set
For Salute
To Labor
By Gervase N. Love
Labor Day in 1960 as it has
in other years is more than a long
week-end marking the end of
summer and the start of fall.
It is a day steeped in tradition:
The day on which American
workers through their unions
look back on the past year and
plan ahead for the 12 months to
come. It is a day that trade
unionists — increasingly more than
in the recent past — celebrate with
parades and speeches and picnics
for themselves and their families.
The Big Parade will be held in
New York. Last year, in the first
parade in 20 years, 115,000 union
members marched up Fifth Ave. in
an impressive demonstration of
labor's strength and solidarity.
Meany Is Marshal
This year it will be bigger than
ever. AFL-CIO Pres.. George
Meany, as grand marshal, is ex-
pected to lead some 175,000 union
men and women, 150 major floats,
200 bands and thousands of ban-
ners in the greatest labor demon-
stration in the history of the world's
greatest city.
Matthew Guinan, vice president
of the New York City Central La-
bor' Council and chairman of the
parade committee, said the parade
will start at 26th St. at 10 a. m.
and disband at 60th St. In the re-
viewing stand at 41st St. Meany
will join Gov. Nelson Rockefeller,
Mayor Robert F. Wagner, the presi-
dents of 12 international unions
and representatives of the three
major religious groups.
Cadillac Square in Detroit is
expected to be filled, as usual,
(Continued on Page 4)
Well, That's That!
'Land of Promise'
On 85 TV Stations
For the first time in labor's
history, nationwide television
will pay tribute to the trade
union movement over the
Labor Day weekend.
Eighty-five television sta-
tions across the country, af-
filiated with the American
Broadcasting Co., will carry
the specially-produced AFL-
CIO half-hour public service
film, "Land of Promise 1 '
(Check local papers for time
and station.)
The historical documentary
film records the development
of the American labor move-
ment in the light of the
events that shaped the na-
tion's history.
DRAW* POB Th«
AFL-CIO ncv^
8'Point Program Urged:
IAM Council Drafts
Anti-Recession Plan
St. Louis — An eight-point plan, geared to protect the million
members of the Machinists from mass unemployment as a result of
automation, has been voted here by the IAM Executive Council.
The council declared in a special automation report that unless
the increase in production and consumption keeps pace with the
rapidly increasing output per man-'^
hour, not only will those coming
into the labor force be unable to
find jobs, but those already at work
will be displaced.
"Increased productivity with-
out increased overall demand is
a clear-cut formula for recession
and unemployment," the report
warned.
The IAM bargaining program
of safeguards against automation,
based on a year-long study, will be
presented by Pres. Al J. Hayes to
the 1,500 delegates attending the
union's 1960 convention when it
opens at the Sheraton-Jefferson
Hotel here Sept. 6.
The union's formula calls for:
• Advance notice and consulta-
tion whenever employers plan major
automation moves.
• The right to transfer to jobs
in other plants, with adequate mov-
ing allowances which would also
cover living expenses, and losses
resulting from the sale of homes.
• Training for new jobs, or for
old jobs which have not been elim-
inated, at full pay and no expense
to the worker.
Preservation of previous rates
of pay of workers who have been
downgraded, and the mainlenance
of-a substantial part of the income
of those who have been laid off,
either through Supplemental Un-
(Continued on Page 15)
By Gene Zack
The AFL-CIO has pledged it will carry to the American people
this November its battle for a "meaningful" wage-hour bill, after
a coalition of conservative Republicans and southern Democrats
killed all hopes for enactment of minimum wage legislation by the
86th Congress.
The coalition — dominating a { &~
conference committee named to
iron out differences between the
widely varying Senate and House
versions of the wage bill — blocked
any attempt at compromise and
stubbornly insisted on the House
bill, denounced by organized la-
bor as "completely unacceptable*'
and a "political fraud."
Following collapse of the confer-
ence, Sen. John F. Kennedy, Demo-
cratic presidential nominee and
Senate sponsor of the labor-backed
wage bill, said acceptance of the
House version "would have consti-
tuted a deception to the millions of
Americans who ask and deserve a
much-needed improvement in their
economic lot."
In a letter to Kennedy, AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany ex-
pressed labor's gratitude for the
Democratic nominee's "devoted
efforts on behalf of a better wage-
hour law." Meany emphasized
that labor agreed with Kennedy
"that a meaningless bill is worse
than no bill at all."
"We are convinced," Meany
wrote Kennedy, "that effective,
meaningful wage-hour improve-
ments can and will be enacted
by Congress when there is strong,
positive leadership to this end in
the executive department.
"We intend to do our utmost to
insure that such leadership, which
you so ably typify, will be at the
nation's service next January."
The coalition's torpedoing of
(Continued on Page 16)
N. Y. Labor
Endorses
Democrats
New York — The 2 -mil lion-
member New York State AFL-
CIO has voted overwhelmingly
to endorse John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson, the Demo-
cratic candidates for President
and Vice President.
The 2,500 delegates to the
state body's annual convention
here adopted — with a lone dis-
senting vote cast by a delegate
from the 'Sleeping Car Porters — a
resolution on behalf of the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket which pledged
"the most active support to assure
their election next November."
The convention heard AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler
assail the Eisenhower Administra-
tion for having "set aside the trade
union movement at the federal level
as something non-existent and re-
fusing to put a trade unionist in a
policy-making position."
He charged that Vice Pres.
Nixon has gone around the
world encouraging workers "to
build strong trade unions," while
at the same time he has never in
his seven and a half years as
(Continued on Page 16)
City Worker Needs $103-$126
Weekly to Maintain Family of Four
By Robert B. Cooney
A city worker with a wife and two youngsters needs an jncome of from $103 a week in Houston
to $126 a week in Chicago if he is to maintain "a modest but adequate level of living." The
average weekly pay of factory production workers is $91; in retail trade the average is $69.
The range of living costs was contained in the Labor Dept/s updated model budget in 20 large
cities. The model budget has been tentatively revised to include postwar types of good and services.
With three kids, the city worker ^T~ 4 ~^ ™
.. . i t t i I 4 ily with two children under 18
living by the modest but ade-
quate" model budget would need
from $121 a week in Houston to
$148 in Chicago. With four or
more kids, he needs $136 in Hous-
ton and $166 in Chicago.
Compared to the income need-
ed to maintain the model budget,
Census Bureau figures show that
the median income of a city fam-
in 1958 was $109 a week. This
means half of such families had
more and half had less than
$109 a week in income.
Another Labor Dept. report
shows that the factory production
worker grossed earnings of $91 a
week last May. Other reports show
that the building construction work-
er averaged $121 a week and the
worker in retail trade averaged $69
a week.
The revised City Worker s Fam-
ily Budget, described by a Labor
Dept. expert as "a research study,
not a survey," was presented in the
latest Monthly Labor Review, pub-
lication of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
A Labor Dept. press release on
(Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
BRONZE BUST of Franklin Delano Roosevelt is presented to AFL-CIO Special Counsel Arthur J.
Goldberg (center) during dinner in Chicago honoring him for the major role he played in helping es-
tablish Roosevelt University 15 years ago. Shown left to right are AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Al J. Hayes;
Pres. George Meany; Goldberg; Roosevelt University Pres. Edward J. Sparling; and AFL-CIO Vice
Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky.
Broadened Labor Political Role
Voted by Wisconsin AFL-CIO
Green Bay, Wis. — A program of vigorous political action by the 350,000-member Wisconsin
State AFL-CIO in the November election campaign won strong endorsement here at the first biennial
convention of the state body.
The more than 1,200 delegates put their stamp of approval on a program calling for:
• An expanded registration and get-out-the-vote program for the state.
• Endorsements for re-election^
of Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson (D),
three other Democratic candidates
for state office, nine Democrats in
congressional races, and liberal
GOP Rep. Alvin O'Konski.
The action came after AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler,
in an address at the opening
session, assailed the Eisenhower-
Nixon Administration as one of
''drift, indecision and anti-labor
bias."
The Administration, he said,
has been '"leading America down-
hill" during its nearly eight years
in office, with the national econ-
omy "limping along" because of
White House policies during a
period when other industrialized
nations have been prospering.
'The total steel tonnage of Rus-
sia and its satellites is today greater
than the steel production of the
U.S.," Schnitzler said.
Dir. James L. McDevitt of the
AFL-CIO Committee on Political
Eduction, citing the voting record
of Wisconsin's congressional dele-
gation, urged the state labor move-
ment to "give us a repeat perform-
ance of what you did in 1958,"
when two new liberals were sent to
Congress in the wake of all-out
labor efforts.
McDevitt also ticked off the
"anti-labor voting record" of Vice
Pres. Nixon — Republican presiden-
tial candidate — during the time he
served as a congressman, senator
and presiding officer of the Senate.
Livingston Speaks
John Livingston, director of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Organization,
lashed out at Nixon for breaking
the tie vote in the Senate during the
Landrum-Griffin struggle last year.
The Nixon vote, he said, sealed the
Schnitzler Salutes
Union Theater Troupe
New York — "No single group has done so much for our armed
forces as members of theatrical trade unions," AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler told the cast of "AFL-CIO Salute to the
Armed Forces," a USO entertainment unit sponsored by the labor
federation.
Addressing the entertainers and^
guests at a small "bon voyage
party here, Schnitzler said: "After
a lifetime in labor, much of it
spent asking members of theatrical
trade unions to do something for
nothing, it is a pleasure to be able
to pay." The reference was to the
$.10,000 contribution from AFL-
CIO which made the month-long
tour possible.
Pres. George Meany earlier de-
scribed the show as "an expression
of labor's concern for the well-
being of Americans in uniform who
live and work in the ominous shad-
ow of wgrld tension and cold-war
conflict."
Foresees Warm Welcome
Noting the important work done
by the AFL-CIO through the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ion's Schnitzler assured the enter-
tainers of a w arm welcome through-
out their tour. 'The fact that you
represent labor will mean much,
both in diplomatic circles and
among working men and women,"
he said.
Schnitzler was introduced by
Leo Pedis, director of AFL-CIO
Community Service Activities,
which is charged with maintaining
labor's liaison in the social wel-
fare field. Also attending the affair
were Donald F. Conaway, AFL-
CIO representative on the USO
board; Richard F. Walsh, AFL-
CIO vice president and president
of the Theatrical Stage Employes;
Harry Van Arsdale, president of
the New York City AFL-CIO; and
Miss Virginia Paine, president of
the Television and Radio Artists.
Edward E. Bond, executive di-
rector of USO, expressed "sincere
thanks for the privilege and honor
of sending the AFL-CIO group to
our men overseas."
The show unit will travel a
"hardship circuit" of U.S. bases
rarely visited by stateside enter-
tainers. The show will open over-
seas on Labor Day and will play to
isolated posts in Italy and North
Africa. There will be a special
show for the Sixth Fleet somew here
in the Mediterranean.
so-called "McClellan bill of rights"
into the bill.
Gov. David Lawrence (D) of
Pennsylvania called for "that extra
5 percent of effort" by Wisconsin
union families to "match Wall St.
and its millions with hard work by
you in the wards and precincts."
In a sharp attack on the Re-
publican - southern Democratic
coalition, Lawrence said the 86th
Congress lacked "a working ma-
jority" of liberals to break presi-
dential vetoes, and stressed the
need for election of John F.
Kennedy as president and a liber-
al Congress to work with him.
In the election for executive vice
president and state COPE director,
John Schmitt, secretary of the
Brewery Workers in Milwaukee
and former State AFL-CIO board
member, won over Howard Pellant,
Auto Workers staff representative
and Democratic state assemblyman.
In other actions, the delegates:
• Voted continued economic
support for striking union members
at Kohler Co., J. I. Case Manu-
facturing Co., and Quikfreez.
• Called for action by the 1961
state legislature to prohibit the im-
portation of strikebreakers.
• Endorsed the nationwide boy-
cott of Sears Roebuck & Co. A
group of 50 delegates volunteered
during the convention's noon hour
recesses to picket the local Sears
store to acquaint the public with
the department store's anti-labor
actions in firing union members.
Switchmen Reach
Wage Agreement
Chicago — The Switchmen have
reached a wage agreement with the
nation's railroads, subject to rati-
fication in a membership referen-
dum.
The union accepted the 4 per-
cent pattern agreed to by the four
other operating rail unions — 2 per-
cent retroactive to July 1 and an
additional 2 percent on Mar. 1,
1961, along with inclusion of the
present 17 cents-an-hour for cost-
of-living adjustments in the base
wage. The 4 percent raise will add
an average of 11 cents to hourly
rates.
In addition, the union won the
right to submit to arbitration future
claims for correction of specific in-
equities in salary scales. j
Livingston Hails Results:
Over 250,000 Voted
Union in 12 Months
More than a quarter of a million unorganized workers voted
"union" during the 1959-60 fiscal year, to set a new high for any
fiscal year since the national AFL-CIO merger in December 1955,
an analysis of National Labor Relations Board figures indicates.
The mounting vote in favor of trade unionism was hailed by John
W. Livingston, director of the AFL-'^
CIO Dept. of Organization, who
declared that "despite three years
of an intensive anti-union cam-
paign, the majority of workers in
this country still desire union or-
ganization."
The rebound in the number of
workers who won union bargain-
ing rights during the last fiscal year
came in the face of efforts by the
National Association of Manufac-
turers, the U.S. Chamber of Com-
merce and other business groups
to use McClellan committee dis-
closures as a weapon against union
organizing.
It also came despite last year's
action by a conservative Repub-
lican-southern Democratic coali-
tion in Congress to forge new
restrictions on trade union activi-
ty through enactment of the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
NLRB General Counsel Stuart
Rothman said that in the fiscal
year which closed June 30 there
were 6,380 labor board-conducted
representation elections — an eight-
year high.
He added that the 1,839 NLRB
elections during April, May and
June was trie highest for any quar-
ter since the same three-month peri-
od eight years ago.
During the fiscal year, an analy-
sis by the Dept. of Organization
shows, 179,364 workers joined
AFL-CIO unions via the representa-
tion election route. This was the
highest for any complete fiscal year
since merger. The balance voted
for unaffiliated unions.
The extent of the rebound from
the period during which the anti-
labor campaign in the nation
reached its peak with passage of
Landrum-Griffin last year was un-
derscored by the percentage of col-
lective bargaining election victories
for AFL-CIO affiliates.
AFL-CIO unions hit a low mark
during the last quarter of 1959
and the first quarter of 1960, when
they won only 52 percent of all
elections. In the second quarter,
according to NLRB figures, they
increased their margin to 54 per-
cent.
At the same time, the number
of workers in units choosing
AFL-CIO affiliation also ad-
vanced to a new high of 57,633
during the April-May-June peri-
od. This was up sharply from
the 39,667 for the fourth quarter
of 1959, and 37,803 for the first
quarter of 1960. It was the
largest number joining AFL-CIO
unions in any quarter since the
NLRB began keeping separate
statistics for federation affiliates
in the summer of 1958. The
previous high was 54,382 in the
third quarter of 1958.
Livingston said that during the
second quarter of 1960 there was
a "substantial decrease" in the num-
ber of persons in units involved in
elections which pitted AFL-CIO
unions against each other. There
were only 6,200 workers involved
in such elections involving two or
more AFL-CIO affiliates.
This number, Livingston said,
was not only the lowest for any
quarter but was less than half the
average for the period since merger.
"Considering the fact that
AFL-CIO unions took part in
more elections than in any quar-
ter since merger," the Dept. of
Organization director said, "this
statistic may be the most encour-
aging of any in the NLRB re-
port."
Senator Backs Doherty
In Hatch Act Fight
Cincinnati — If Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield suspends
Letter Carriers' Pres. William C. Doherty from the rolls of the Post
Office Dept. because of alleged violation of the Hatch Act, "I'll ap-
point him that same minute to the staff of the Senate Post Office and
Civil Service Committee and carry him for the duration of his suspen-
sion in the- exact status he now has^ , , , _ 7T ; ; '
gobbledygook when it comes to
pay for federal employes.
A highlight of the convention
in the Post Office Dept."
That was the promise made by
Sen. Olin D. Johnston (D-S. C.) to
almost 3,000 cheering delegates at-
tending the 42nd biennial conven-
tion of the Letter Carriers here.
Johnston pointed out that "the
sole evidence against Doherty is
that he authorized the use of his
name as a private citizen in a news-
paper ad, together with a couple
of hundred other private citizens,
stating that Lyndon B. Johnson
would make a good President."
"His crime," he added, "was
that he got the postal workers
and other employes of the gov-
ernment a much-deserved pay
increase.
"Among those whom I can't
seem to recall as having helped
very much are Dick (Vice Pres.
Nixon), Arthur (Summerfield), and
Ike (Pres. Eisenhower), who soon
will be returning to their homes in
Whittier, Flint, and Gettysburg.
Please see that they are .given the
same prcmpt and courteous service
extended to other local patrons."
Housing for Retirees
Johnstons support of the Letter
Carriers' president and the NALC
legislative program was echoed by
Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-Tex.)
who said that the Administration's
"fear of inflation" is "so-much
was a report from a special com-
mittee investigating possible sites
for a housing development (to be
called NALCREST) for retired
members. A Florida resort area
is now under study, and the con-
vention voted to continue the work
of the committee and give it and
the NALC executive council au-
thority "to bring the program to
successful fruition" before the next
convention, to be held in Denver
in 1962.
Sec.-Treas. Peter Cahill, retir-
ing this year because of NALC
constitutional age limitations,
made his final report to the con-
vention, showing the member-
ship at a new high of 138,142,
He called the NALC "a sol-
vent, progressively effective trade
union organization."
Elected to succeed Cahill as
secretary-treasurer was Reuben
Kremers of Seattle, who has been
serving as assistant secretary-treas-
urer and building manager. James
Rademacher of Detroit was elected
to fill the vacancy created by the
elevation of Kremers to the higher
position. Doherty, Vice Pres.
Jerome Keating, and other incum-
bent resident officers were re-
elected.
AFL-CIO NEWS, VASHLNGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Page Three
City Worker Needs $1034126 Weekly
Model Budget Priced
In 20 Large Cities
(Continued from Page 1)
the article led off with a statement
that a "study" shows that a four-
person city family with annual
earnings of $7,000 to $7,500 has
an income 15 to 20 percent higher
than needed for the "modest but
adequate" budget. The expert con-
ceded this created the "misconcep-
tion" that this was a survey on
earnings and spending and in fact
"it was not."
Updates Last Budget
Relying on "trend data," the "re-
search study" updated the budget
which was last priced in 1951. It
was developed initially in 1946-47
at the request of Congress and un-
til now has dealt in terms of pre
war types of goods and services.
A comprehensive revision is un
derway and will include family ex-
penditure studies programmed for
1961 and 1962, the department
said.
The model budget is based on a
family of four persons, made up
of a 38-year-old breadwinner, a
wife and two children. The chil
dren include an 8-year-old girl and
a 13-year-old boy. The family lives
in a rented dwelling or near a large
city.
The model budget does not
show how families do or should
spend their income but rather
is designed to maintain a "mod-
est but adequate" standard of
living.
This model is developed from sci-
entific standards on nutrition, hous-
ing, health, etc., as well as what
people actually do with their
money.
. For example, the updated "mod-
est" budget was shown to cost
$6,567 for a four-person family in
Chicago, the highest of 20 cities
where it was priced.
Breakdown for Chicago
Breaking down the total, this
family would allot a total of $5,607
for its goods, rent and services. Of
this, $1,751 would go for food and
beverages, including 212 meals away
from home; $1,386 would go for
rent, heat and utilities; and $2,470 for
other goods and services. In addi-
tion $702 would go for federal and
state or local income taxes and
$258 for other costs* like life in-
surance, job expenses and social
security deductions.
For a worker with a wife and
three children, the cost of the fam-
ily's goods, rent and services would
be raised by 20 per cent to meet
the model Budget. With four or
more children, there would be a
37 percent increase, the depart-
ment said.
Thus, for Chicago, the four-per-
son family needs an income of
$126 a week; the five-person fam-
ily needs $148 and the family of
six or more persons needs $166 a
week for a "modest" living.
In Houston, where the model
budget costs less than in any
other city where it was priced,
the four-person family needs an
income of $5,370 a year or $103
a week.
Breaking down this total, $4,622
is needed for goods, rents and serv-
ices. Of this, $1,486 must go for
food and beverages; $941 for rent,
heat and utilities, and $2,195 for
other goods and services.
In addition, a total of $490 is
needed for taxes and $258 for other
costs like life insurance and job
expenses.
To calculate the cost of the model
budget for a Houston worker with
a wife and three children, the sub-
total for goods, rents and services
must be raised by 20 percent. Thus
he would need an annual income
of $6,294 or $121 a week the year
around.
For 6 or More $136
A Houston family of six or more
persons would need an income of
$136 a week to maintain the "mod-
est" level of living.
In only three cities out of the
total of 20 — in Atlanta, Houston
and Scranton — was it possible for
a four-person family with a real-
life median income of $5,690 in
1958 to meet the model budget.
The budget was priced, in late
1959, at $5,642 in Atlanta; at
$5,370 in Houston and at $5,693
in Scranton. In Baltimore, the
budget required $5,718 in income.
But in most other cities, a four-
person family required over $6,000
a year or over $ 1 1 5 a week the year
around to live at a "modest" level.
Family Income Shares By Fifths
"The test of our progress is
not whether we add more to
the abundance of those who
have much: it is whether we
provide enough for those who
have too little" F.D.R.
517
LOWEST 2ND 3RD 4TH 5TH lOWfST 2ND 3RD 4TH 5TH KWEST 2ND 3RD 4TH 5TH
THE INCOME SNARE OF THE NEEDIEST ROSE FROM MID-1930'* TO 1944 AND THEN WENT DOWN.
One-Fifth of American Families
Living Close to Poverty Line
One out of every five American families today is living "close to the poverty line — or below it,"
declared the AFL-CIO in calling for a domestic Point Four program.
The appeal came in an analysis of "America's Haves and Have Nots" in the latest issue of La-
bor's Economic Review, publication of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research.
The Review said Americans can be rightly proud that so many here are so much better off materi-
ally than in other countries.
"At the same time, we cannot
ignore the shameful fact that wide-
spread poverty still exists in ,the
United States today," the Review
said.
"In prosperous mid-1960, 7
million of our fellow citizens
were dependent on charity for
their existence,
'In addition, the lives of
nearly five times as many more
are blighted by incomes that are
just too low to sustain an Ameri-
can standard of decency."
The Review pointed out that, in
sharing the national wealth, the
rich have been getting richer while
the poor have been going downhill
in recent years.
Between 1944 and 1958, the Re-
view stressed, "the average real in-
come rise of the neediest fifth of
our (55.5 million) families was $80
while the rise for the top five per-
cent (with average 1958 incomes
of $25,280) was $1,900.
"This is spreading 'richness'
pretty thin — at the bottom."
Benefits for Wealthiest
Even this understates the afflu-
ence of the families at the top, the
Review pointed out. The average
income of the lowest fifth of the
families in 1958 was $1,460 or less
than $25 a week, compared to the
average of $25,280 for the top five
percent.
While the lowest income families
can hardly afford the necessities
of life, the Review said, those at
the top benefit from billions in
profits from the sale of corporation
stocks, real estate, "capital gains"
advantages and expense accounts,
all of which are not shown in
the government's personal income
figures.
"According to .responsible esti-
mates," the Review went on, "over
$10 billion annually has been re-
ceived via capital gains and illicit
expense accounts during recent
years."
The problem is pointed up even
more sharply, the Review said, by
looking at income distribution after
federal taxes.
"Despite the widely-held view
that the steep progressive rates of
the federal income tax drastically
'level down' the income share of our
highest bracket families, this, too,
is an illusion."
The Review observed that
"the after tax share of our
wealthiest families has actually
risen in recent years.
"From 1953 to 1958, the share
of the highest fifth rose from
42.6 percent to 43.7 percent,
Labor Dept. Study Shows Family of Four
Needs Income of $5,370-$6,567 Per Year
The following table, prepared by the Labor Dept., shows the government's estimates of the annual costs of the City Worker's
Family Budget, based on a four-person family, in 20 large cities as of autumn 1959.
City and
Suburbs
Portland, Ore.
St Louis
San Francisco ,
Scranton ,
Seattle . » . . t ■ ^
Washington, C , „■*■■■..
Goods, rents and services
Other
Per-
Total
Food and
Rent, heat
goods and
Other
sonal
budget
Total
beverages
and utilities
services
costs
taxes
$5,642
$4,840
$1,514
$1,151
$2,175
$258
$544
5,718
4,850
1,525
1,004
* 2,321
258
610
6,317
5,334
1,857
1,240
2,237
258
725
6,567
5,607
1,751
1,386
2,470
258
702
6,100
5,163
1,734
1,203
2,226
258
679
6,199
5,305
1,695
1,191
2,419
258
636
6,072
5,201
1,761
1,040
2,400
258
613
5,370
4,622
1,486
941
2,195
258
490
5.964
5,090
1,631
1,117
2,342
258
616
6,285
5,325
1,747
1,178
2,400
294
'666
6,181
5,165
1,647
1,150
2.368
258
758
5.970
5,048
1,853
1,013
2,182
273
649
5,898
4,970
1,825
954
2,191
258
670
6,199
5,264
1,889
1,012
2,363
258
677
6,222
5,182
1,746
1,046
2,390
258 .
782
6,266
5,271
1,694
1,298
2,279
258
737
6,304
5,341
1,795
1,079
2,467
294
669
5,693
4,834
1,758
871
2,205
258
601
6,562
5,602
1,844
1,293
2.465
258
702
6,147
5,199
1,684
1,226
2,289
258
690
after taxes, whereas the share of
the bottom fifth fell from 5.3
percent to 5.0 percent."
The Review said that the better-
off are doing better than ever be-
cause of special benefits from the
Revenue Act of 1954 as well as
such devices as income-splitting,
depletion allowances and other
loopholes.
While real incomes in all brack-
ets have been rising, the Review
noted, the climb since the end of
the war has been slowest for the
lowest — only 6 percent for the
poorest fifth from 1944 to 1958
compared to 10 percent for the top
fifth, thus reversing tie 1936-1944
trend.
Lampman Study Cited
The Review singled out the study
of low-income families carried out
by Prof. Robert J. Lampman of the
University of Wisconsin for the
Joint Economic Committee.
Lampman used a cash income of
$2,500 a year as the cut-off below"
which he classified a family of four
as of "low-income status" in 1957.
The test thus ranged from $1,157
for a single-person family to $3,750
for a family of seven or more.
"Based upon this stringent def-
inition," the Review emphasized,
"32.2 million Americans — 19 per-
cent of the total — were found to
be low-income persons' in 1957, a
generally prosperous year."
The Lampman study, the Review
also noted, excludes the millions of
families with incomes below the
amount needed to meet the govern-
ment's model budget for a "modest
but adequate" standard of living.
This latest budget required an in-
come ranging from $5,370 to $6,-
567 for a large-city family of four.
The Review said that the
Lampman study revealed these
characteristics of the poorest 32.2
million Americans: 21 million
were in families where the bread-
winner faced work at relief level
wages or no work at all; 8 mil-
lion were 65 or older; 6.5 million
were non-white; 8 million were
in families headed by females;
21 million were in families
headed by persons whose educa-
tion had slopped at the 8th grade
or earlier.
The Review called for a major
Point Four program at home to
provide more education; end dis-
crimination; spread unionism; aid
distressed areas; strengthen wage-
hour coverage; aid farm families,
build up social security and over-
haul the tax system.
Page Four
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, I960
Raps GOP Labor Stand:
Humphrey Rallies Democrats
To Keep R-T-W Repeal Pledge
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) f assailing so-called "right-to- work" laws as "part of a
continuing . . . attack on all rights of organized labor," has urged the Democratic Party to "stand
firm" on its platform pledge to "repeal the authorization" for such laws.
In a major speech on the Senate floor, Humphrey said the plank was "unequivocal" in declaring
that the Democrats would seek repeal of the "notorious and objectionable" Sec. 14-b of the Taft-
Hartley Act which allows states to^"
enact these "anti-collective-bargain
QUEEN OF LABOR DAY parade in New York City will be 21-
year-old Maryan Elizabeth Cinque, a member of the Office Em-
ployes. She earlier won the title of Miss Union Maid in the contest
sponsored by the Greater New York Union Label & Service Trades
Council on the basis of personality, union interest, intelligence and
appearance.
Labor to Mark Own Day
With Parades, Rallies
(Continued from Page 1)
with AFL-CIO members at the
end of their march down Wood-
ward Ave. Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy (Mass.), labor-endorsed
Democratic candidate for the
presidency, will deliver the prin-
cipal address to carry out a
budding election year tradition
inaugurated by former Pres.
Harry S. Truman and carried on
by Adlai Stevenson, Democratic
candidate for president in 1952
and 1956.
At Arlington Cemetery in Penn-
sauken township, N. J., just outside
Camden, another tradition will be
carried on at the grave of Peter
M. McGuire, the leader of the
Carpenters and co-founder of the
former AFL whose call for "a gen-
eral holiday for the laboring
classes" led to the first Labor Day
observance in 1882. Union offi-
cials, as they have for many years,
will lay a wreath on his grave.
Over the Labor Day weekend,
sermons on the meaning of labor
will be heard from the pulpits
of synagogues and churches in
all parts of the country. In many
cities special Labor Day masses
will be celebrated in Catholic
churches; in Washington, a
wreath will be laid at the statue
of James Cardinal Gibbons fol-
lowing the mass.
In a special Labor Day message
to workers in other countries broad-
cast by the Voice of America,
Meany reiterated American labor's
support of the legitimate aspira-
tions for freedom, especially those
of the "newly-emerging countries
of Africa." America must be
generous in its aid, he declared, to
help them solve their economic and
social problems.
"It was only a few years ago,*'
he recalled, "that Free Europe lay
virtually helpless under its postwar
wreckage. But the U.S. responded
to the emergency with the Marshall
Plan and today western Europe is
still free, and stronger than ever.
"There is no reason in the world
why we cannot apply the same
remedy to the new danger spots
that have developed in the world.
These countries are desperately in
need of economic and technical as-
sistance. We have the resources
to help them," Meany asserted.
We should do that, first and
foremost, as a purely human act
of help that is in line with the
generous tradition of service that
characterizes our American heri-
tage. If we do that we can help
them attain more rapidly the
political stability and economic
self-sufficiency that alone will
save them from being swallowed
up behind the Iron Curtain of
communism."
Meany told the workers in other
lands that labor in America has
earned the "confidence and good
will" of all Americans. In ways
too numerous to mention, he added,
workers have made "a significant
contribution to the strength, the
vitality and the progress of the en-
tire country."
There will be no Communist
flags at the parades and rallies,
he stressed, because American
workers "value freedom as their
most precious possession 9 ' and
"see in the free way of life the
only way of life that holds any
reliable promise of benefit to
mankind."
"American workers are deter-
mined that our country shall remain
strong enough to meet any eventu-
ality, any challenge that may come
from Soviet Russia and Commu-
nist China," he said. "We are de-
termined in this not only for our
own sake but for that of the entire
free world. The threat of world
communism has increased in seri-
ousness this past year and poses a
grave threat to the peace and tran-
quillity of the free world."
Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell
in his Labor Day message hailed
"the achievement of a spiritual and
material strength unparalleled in
history" but warned that "we must
strive harder to meet the challenges
that still lie before us."
ing" laws.
At the same time he ripped
into the Republican Party's
stand on labor legislation, accus-
ing the GOP of "doubletalk on
this important issue."
The Republican labor plank, he
said, supported 4, the right of em
ployers and unions freely to enter
into agreements providing for the
union shop," but predicated this
stand on "diligent" enforcement of
Taft-Hartley.
Although "on casual reading"
the GOP statement "sounds like
the Republican party has, at long
last, embraced the right of man-
agement and labor to agree to the
union shop," Humphrey said, the
qualifying phrase proves that the
GOP "intends to support 'right-to-
I work' laws."
Warns of Cynicism
The Minnesota Democrat stern-
ly warned colleagues in the party
that platform planks "should not be
fashioned with cynicism, to hold
up glowing promises to the electo-
rate before they ballot, and then
to be forgotten when victory is
won."
Recently Sen. Harry F. Byrd
(D-Va.), leader of the arch-conserv-
ative* wing of the party, declared
on the Senate floor that he would
fight "with all my strength and
ability" against any repeal of 14-b.
The Virginia State AFL-CIO sharp-
ly attacked Byrd's "work" stand,
and accused him of opposing vir-
tually all liberal legislation.
Humphrey charged that the en-
Union Men Win
8 Intl. Labor
Scholarships
Ithaca, N.Y. — Eight union mem-
bers have been awarded scholar-
ships for a two-year program of
study at Cornell University designed
to train them for careers in the
international labor field.
They will be the first group to
study here under the Intl. Labor
Training Program established ear-
lier this year by Cornell's School of
Industrial and Labor Relations.
The program calls for two semes-
ters of study at the university, fol-
lowed by a one-year internship with
a union or government agency di-
rectly concerned with international
labor matters.
While at Cornell they will
study the organization and ac-
tivities of the international labor
movement, comparative labor-
management relations and a
foreign language, and will ac-
quire a specialized knowledge of
some particular geographical
area.
Those selected included James
A. Blyler, former officer of Local
1-561, Oil, Chemical & Atomic
Workers, El Cerrito, Calif.; Thom-
as V. Miller, a member of Teach-
ers Local 616, Pittsford, N. Y.;
John J. Mutch, member of Retail
Clerks Local 655, St. Louis, Mo.;
Ronald H. Smith, president of
Communications Workers Local
7470, Lincoln, Neb.; John Szarej-
ko, president of Auto Workers Lo-
cal 980, Spotswood, N. J.; John C.
Thalmayer, an organizer for the
Upholsterers, Williamsport, Pa.;
Walter L. Townsend, officer of
Railway Clerks Lodge 1084, Cin-
cinnati; and Edwin P. Wilson, for-
mer member of the Seafarers and
now with the Dept. of Defense,
Falls Church, Va.
actment of Sec. 14-b, at the time
Taft-Hartley was passed over Pres.
Truman's veto in 1947, marked
the first time in history where state
law was made superior to federal
law. The section, he said, permits
the states to ''enact legislation con-
cerning union security that is more
restrictive than federal law," and
thus "override and nullify" the in-
tent of federal law.
Anti-Union Package
In the 19 states where '*right-to-
work" laws are on the books, he
said, they have been enacted as
"part of a general anti-union pack-
age," which also includes "restric-
tions against picketing, curtailment
of the right to strike, harassing laws
interfering with the internal opera-
tions of unions, and even restric-
tions on the amount of land a
union may lease or purchase no
matter what the need."
Passage of "work" laws, Hum-
phrey continued, also has been
"linked to the refusal to consider
legislation deemed necessary for
the betterment of labor" — including
increases in workmen's compensa-
tion benefits and unemployment
compensation coverage, state min-
imum wage laws, and legislation
protecting child labor and women
workers.
"In other words," the senator
declared, " 'right-to- work' laws
are passed generally not solely
for reasons of opposition to the
union shop but for reasons of
opposition to unions as such."
Humphrey also ripped into the
"right-to-work" slogan itself, term-
ing it a "fraud." He said this opin-
ion was sustained by state courts
in Idaho, Kansas and Washington
which held in substance that the
slogan was "deliberately intended
to conceal the purpose of this leg-
islation, which is to outlaw volun-
tary union shop agreements be-
tween management and labor
through collective bargaining."
Fire Fighters Put 40 c
Tax Into Constitution
Buffalo, N. Y. — Delegates to the 25th convention of the Fire
Fighters voted to make permanent a temporary 40-cent per capita
tax after nearly two days of debate.
The constitutional change was approved by a 3-to-l vote. The
per capita formerly was 25 cents, and was raised temporarily at the
last convention held two years ago'^ -
in Wichita, Kan. The lengthy dis-
cussion and a rollcall pushed back
other convention business.
Wider Activity Planned
Proponents of the increase in
payments to the international union
wanted the money for additional
research and legislative representa-
tion. Opponents said it could be
used more effectively at the state
and local levels.
In other action, the convention:
• Authorized negotiations with
federal officials to seek exemption
from the Land rum-Griffin Act,
contending "it was not intended for
firemen."
• Voted to ask the U.S. Labor
Dept. to change the fireman's job
classification from "hazardous" to
"hazardous-skilled."
• Demanded legislation for a
uniform workweek of no more
than 40 hours in both the United
States and Canada. The workweek
now ranges from 40 to 48 hours.
• Instructed locals to take the
position in negotiations that fire-
fighting is a skilled occupation.
Pres. William D. Buck re-
ported that prior to the conven-
tion, the union's executive board
expressed dismay that the Federal
Aviation Agency had found only
five of the country's 650 busiest
airports have adequate firefight-
Travel Association
Names Directors
The American Travel Associa-
tion, noting big gains in group
travel by unions and cooperative
organizations, has expanded its
board of directors and elected a new
slate of officers.
Wallace Campbell of the Coop-
erative League of the U. S. A. was
re-elected ATA president; Arthur
J. Goldberg, special counsel to the
AFL-CIO, was elected secretary;
and Pres. Arnold Zander of the
State, County & Municipal Em-
ployes, was elected ATA's treas-
urer. ^
ing equipment. The board said
it will seek remedial legislation.
The Fire Fighters trace the
founding of their union to Buffalo.
The city's Local 282, with 600
members, is host to the convention,
the first ever held in New York
state.
Thompson Hits
GOP for Civil
Rights Dodge
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
N. J.) has accused the Republican
Party of "duplicity and political
expediency" for publishing and dis-
tributing separate versions of its
1960 civil rights plank — a full copy
for the North and an abbreviated
copy for the South.
The publicity director of the Re-
publican National Committee, Lou
Guylay, confirmed the existence of
differing versions of the platform,
but insisted it was all a mistake.
Thompson charged that there
was a "blue cover" edition of the
plank circulated in the North
containing a statement that "to-
day, nearly one-fourth of all
federal employes are Negro."
This statement was omitted from
the "gray cover" version found
in the South, he said.
The New Jersey Democrat said
the incident points up that the Re-
publican Party had been forced to
' doctor" certain platform planks
"to appeal to voters on a sectional
basis." The Democrats, he said,
"say the same thing" on civil rights
and other platform planks to voters
in all sections of the country.
Guylay contended the "blue
cover" edition was a hastily-printed
document distributed at the GOP
convention. The sentence in ques-
tion, he said, was dropped without
public announcement before final
adoption of the platform by the
convention because there was u some
doubt" as to it? accuracy.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Page Fi*»
Labor's Year in Review:
For Union Members the Road Went Uphill
Labor Day Resurgence
Marked by Big Parades
By Harry Conn
rpHE AMERICAN TRADE UNION movement has been fight-
ing an uphill battle since Labor Day 1959. An ominous shadow
covered the Labor Day celebrations last year, a shadow of legisla-
tion written in the halls of Congress and signed by Pres. Eisenhower
—the Labor Control Act of 1959.
For the labor movement this action was allegedly directed against
corruption in a small segment of unionism. It was, in reality, a
gigantic broadside directed at clean, free, democratic trade unions
by "making Taft-Hartley worse/'
On the floor of Congress, Rep. John Dent (D-Pa.), a former
trade unionist himself, asked plaintively: "What has labor to be
thankful for this Labor Day?"
Working men and women could be grateful for their unions, if
for nothing else. And no one, no force was going to take this
away from them. They said this in New York on Labor Day
1959, when some 115,000 union members marched up Fifth
Avenue in one of the greatest demonstrations of labor solidarity
in history; in Detroit where, for the first time, a merged AFL-
CIO central labor body sponsored a giant parade and rally; in
Salt Lake City; on the West Coast; throughout New England
and in the South, too.
Labor not only faced a serious threat on the legislative front dur-
ing the year — the challenge in the economic arena was just as
critical. Almost as if the strategy had been worked out in some
smoke-filled room, major industries such as steel, railroads, ship-
building, shipping, meat, demanded harsh changes in prevailing
contracts on work rules. Management sought to knock out provi-
sions in agreements that had been won after long and bitter fights,
provisions that gave unions the strength effectively to represent the
membership.
With the work rule issue a focal point in the dispute, the nation-
wide strike of 500,000 Steelworkers was already two months old by
Labor Day 1959. The entire labor movement rose to their support.
First Kaiser Steel broke away from the solid management front
and came to an agreement with the USWA. Then, on Jan. 5,
after six months of holding out, big steel capitulated. Commit-
tees would study the work-rule situation but there were no con-
cessions on the part of the union. A healthy package increase
was won by the union, too.
Work rules also played a major part in the bitter 152-day strike
of 18,000 members of the Marine & Shipbuilding Workers against
eight East Coast yards of Bethlehem Steel. Again, work rules were
the central issue and the union blocked any major changes.
There were other highlights of the year:
• The strike of newspaper unions against two Portland, Ore.,
newspapers in which professional strikebreakers have been used by
management. This, in turn, has led to a nationwide campaign for
state legislation to block importation of strikebreakers across state
lines.
• The change of leadership of two key AFL-CIO departments,
the Industrial Union Dept. and the Building & Construction Trades
Dept. Replacing Al Whitehouse as head of the industrial union
group were Jacob Clayman and Nick Zonarich. C. J. (Neil) Hag-'
gerty assumed leadership of the crafts group when Pres. Richard
Gray announced his retirement.
• The unrelenting fight of the trade union movement for a long
list of legislation in Congress headed by efforts for a $1.25 mini-
mum wage, health care for the aged through social security, federal
aid to education, housing, etc.
• The key ruling by a California Superior Court judge who held
that the so-called "right to work" law would hurt the labor move-
ment and that the Machinists had the right to expel two members
who workedfor passage of the measure.
• Labor hit by rising cost-of-living and unusually high unem-
ployment most months of the year. Sec. of Labor James P. Mitchell
eats his "hat" when joblessness rises over 3 million in one month of
the year. Depressed areas created great hardships but the President
vetoed the second of two depressed area bills.
• With 262 union members fired from the Sears Roebuck &
Co. store in San Francisco for refusing to cross a Machinist picket
line, the Retail Clerks called for a nationwide boycott of Sears
stores across the country. The AFL-CIO Executive Council strong-
ly supported the boycott call.
• After almost 2Vi years on strike, the embattled Textile Work-
ers of Henderson, N. C, continue to man picket lines, determined
that victory shall not be denied them.
• John L. Lewis retired as president of the Mine Workers after
50 years in top leadership. He became president emeritus. Thomas
Kennedy succeeded him.
• William McFetridge retired as president of the Building Serv-
ice Employes; succeeded by David Sullivan, head of Local 32-B
of New York.
• Harry Bates retired as head of the Bricklayers; his sucessor
was Sec. John J. Murphy.
By Labor Day 1960, much progress had been made on a num-
ber of fronts. The trade union movement, however, is still driving
uphill to overcome those who would push it all the way to the bot-
tom and then crush it.
Millions of trade union members have shown their determination
that this shall not happen. (PA1)
LABOR PICTURE OF YEAR honors awarded annually by Press Associates Inc. went to this photo
of a segment of the big AFL-CIO rally in support of the Forand bill to provide health care to
social security beneficiaries, held in New York's Madison Square Garden. It meant a $25 prize for
Sam Reiss, veteran labor news photographer.
The 1960s, a Decade of Decision,
Hold Key to America's Future
By Alexander Uhl
ONCE A MONTH THE LABOR DEPT. calls
in the reporters and hands them a report on
what happened on the job front during the pre-
vious month.
The report is called, prosaically, "The Employ-
ment Situation," and tells the story of what hap-
pened to American workers in terms of the civil-
ian labor force, the employed and where they
were employed, and the number of unemployed
by age and sex.
In a sense the report is merely a statistical
compilation that is completely unemotional unless
you happen to be one of the statistics numbered
among the unemployed. Then it can be a real
jolt.
That jolt has come to millions of American
workers with more and more frequency during
recent years. It is likely to come as a jolt to mil-
lions more during the crucial decade ahead.
With our economy slowing down, with auto-
mation increasing, with our population steadily
growing and creating the need for more and
more jobs, the 1960 decade poses problems o£
supreme importance for all of us on the eco-
nomic front.
What is today's story as we go into this new
decade?
It is not too encouraging a story. AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany painted a pretty grim pic-
ture of it in his appearance before the platform
committees of the Democratic and Republican
parties during their July conventions. Here are
some of the startling facts he noted:
1. The civilian labor force during the past
seven years grew by 5.4 million while the number
of new jobs increased by only 3.4 million, leaving
a deficit of 2 million jobs.
2. The number of full time jobs has actually
gone down by 500.000 during the past three
years.
3. There are actually 2 million less jobs in
manufacturing, mining and the railroad industry
than there were in 1953.
4. The total number of manhours worked in
private industry is less today than it was in 1953.
5. There is a widening gap between our capac-
ity to produce goods and our actual production,
which means that a great part of our existing
plants are idle.
6. We will have to create 1.35 million civilian
jobs each year for the next 10 years if we are to
keep up with the job needs of our rising popula-
tion. Our average during the past 10 years has
been less than 800,000 new jobs each year.
For American workers this is serious business.
For American union members it is particularly
serious since the job losses of the past have been
particularly heavy in highly organized industries.
What are the factors that make the coming 10
years so vital for men and women who work for
a living?
Population: During the next 10 years millions
of "war babies" will be entering the labor mar-
ket. In all, there will be 26 million young work-
ers looking for jobs. By 1970 there will be 87
million Americans able and ready to work com-
pared with about 73 million today.
Rate of Growth: Labor and liberal economists
have repeatedly warned that our rate of growth
is not adequate to meet the needs of the future.
Between 1933 and 1953 our rate of growth was
5.5 percent. Between 1953 and 1959 it dropped
to 2.5 percent. Yet statisticians have estimated
that we must grow at least 4 percent each year if
we are merely to keep up with our increasing
population increase. It is for this reason that labor
leadership has emphasized over and over again
that the pace of our growth must be stepped up —
at least to 5 percent a year — not only to meet the
needs of our own people but if we are to with-
stand the challenge of Communist Russia.
Idle Machines: This unused capacity means
jobs — millions of jobs. It accounts in part for the
shocking fact that more than 2 million jobs have
been lost in the American economy since 1953.
There are fewer factory production workers — 1.5
million less — today than there were in 1953. Rail-
road jobs have dropped 400,000 during the same
period. Mining jobs have dropped 200,000. Most
of these jobs are lost — never to come back — be-
cause automation and technological changes have
destroyed them.
Automation: A few years ago the word "auto-
mation" was just an invented word for a new di-
mension of technological change. It represented
more than an improvement in machinery which
would enable workers to produce more goods
*than they had been able to produce before. It
represented a machine that actually would dis-
place the worker, or enable one worker to do the
work of perhaps 10 or 20 or even more.
On the basis of what is happening today the
"obsolete" worker will be discarded like an old
shoe that has outlived its usefulness.
It is happening already. More than one
"obsolete" plant has been shut down in recent
years and workers, many of them with a life-
time of faithful service, have been tossed out to
live for a time on unemployment benefits, to
lose their savings and eventually to become ob-
jects of charity.
This year's election in great part will center on
the problem of growth or stagnation. But more
than the 1960 election is involved. The next
decade will largely determine whether we, as a
nation, are to march forward with a dynamic,
growing economy or whether we will begin to slip
backward, as so many other nations have before
us, into a second or third-rate country. (PAIj
Pasr* Six
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. (C, S ATI R DAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1*60
Labor Bar 1960
f~\ VER THE YEARS American labor has observed Labor Day
v/ as a holiday dedicated to the worker, a day on which working
people can look back over the past with its injustices, its failures
and the successes that marked the building of the trade union move-
ment.
Trade unionism is the logical result of the workers' desire for
security on the job, a decent standard of living, education and equal
opportunity, dignity and the chance to participate in society as
respected citizens.
On this Labor Day 1960 the labor movement, in paying homage
to the past, rededicates itself to the basic concepts of justice, broth-
erhood and equality. In the continuing struggle to reach these
objectives there is no stopping, no resting. As Samuel Gompers
said 45 years ago, the working people "will never stop in their
efforts to obtain a better life for themselves, for their wives, for
their children and for all humanity. The object is to obtain com-
plete social justice/'
In 1960 the problems confronting the trade union movement
are problems requiring political solutions if the objective of "com-
plete social justice" is to be achieved. These are problems of legisla-
tion, of national economic policies, of administration and enforce-
ment of existing statutes.
Over the years the basic principles and objectives of the trade
union movement have evolved into a philosophy that holds that
whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property
rights labor unqualifiedly supports human rights.
This philosophy holds also that as long, as our government is
controlled by the people — and labor knows that free trade unions
cannot exist except under a democratic form of government — to
fear the participation of government in establishing programs to
serve all Americans is to fear the people.
Labor does not accept the proposition that the welfare of the
owners of property is inevitably equivalent to the welfare of the
nation. Business prosperity is essential to our economy but the
soundest basis for business prosperity is the prosperity of the
people as a whole.
It is against this background that labor is participating in political
education and political action — programs designed to elect to public
office candidates who will place human rights and the welfare of all
Americans at the top of the list, who will dedicate themselves to the
problems of stepping up economic growth so that there will be
enough jobs and so that America's productive power will be sus-
tained so that it can throw back the Soviet challenge.
In immediate terms this means the election of John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon B. Johnson to the presidency and vice presidency
of the United States.
That's the challenge of Labor Day 1960. That's the No. 1 job
for organized labor, a job that must be completed on Nov. 8.
What Affluent Society?
A CITY WORKER'S FAMILY with two children under 18 needs
from $103 a week in Houston to $126 in Chicago for a modest
but adequate level of living, the Labor Dept. reports.
Census Bureau figures show that in 1958 one-half of the urban
families with two children under 18 earned less than $109 a week.
Figures available from the department itself reveal that present aver-
age weekly wages in durable goods manufacturing as of right now is
$98; for non-durable manufacturing the figure is $82; in retail trade
it's $69 a week.
So much for the affluent society!
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlraan Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters; 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, September 3, 1960
No. 36
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publication*. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Thanksi
■LMOR's piOHEERS
' r v. ,
Mixed Values Stressed:
Church Groups Hail Workers
In Labor Sunday Statements
Fifty years ago, the AFL convention under the
presidency* of Samuel Gompers requested the
churches of America to observe the Sunday before
Labor Day or another as near thereto as possible
as Labor Sunday with appropriate sermons and
exercises, and as an occasion for special prayers
and dedication to the spiritual aims of the labor
movement.
Today, all major church groups observe this cus-
tom. The National Council of Churches of Christ
in the USA, the National Catholic Welfare Con-
ference and the Synagogue Council of America
each issue Labor Day statements. Each organiza-
tion encourages local ministers, priests and rabbis
to use this material in Labor Day or Labor Sun-
day addresses.
The article below is based on this year's state-
ments.
THE LABOR DAY statement of the Synagogue
Council, issued by its president, Rabbi Max M.
Davidson, points out that the holiday still has its
revolutionary message for the people not only of
the United States but the entire earth —
. . that in an abundant world, "no one need
lack the necessities and the comforts of mind and
body; that those who do the world's work ensure
the world's welfare and are entitled to their just
reward."
Rabbi Davidson recalled that modern rabbinic
and synagogal bodies "have reaffirmed consist-
ently the moral dimensions of human labor, up-
holding the right of every man and woman to work
in peace and dignity without discrimination."
"Spokesmen for Judaism have recognized the
right of workers to organize for their own eco-
nomic betterment and to engage in the process of
collective bargaining," he continued.
"This process has conferred upon millions of
men and women a new sense of their own dig-
nity and worth as individuals.
"The growth and prosperity of our country af-
ford patent proof of the practical results of in-
creasing the rewards of honest labor. As the
worker is given more time for study, for recrea-
tion, for physical and spiritual refreshment; as he
is able, with his family, to enjoy more comfort and
more educational opportunities; as his wages and
his hours become more favorable; as he has in-
creased his sense of responsibility and of creative-
ness in freedom, the United States has risen to
greatness, and this is the light we hold out to those
in darkness/*
THE NATIONAL COUNCIL of Churches
called on labor and the church "to recognize our
common tasks," as well as the unique responsi-
bilities of both, "in order that together we may in-
crease our service to God and to mankind."
Among these tasks, it went on, is "the achieve-
ment of racial fraternity with equal opportunity
for each person to attain the fullest possible growth
and use of his potential talents." -
"We face together the perplexity and chal-
lenge of a continuously changing economic order
which not only presents new opportunities but
creates new insecurities," it continued* "The
causes of these insecurities are largely economic
and social; but they affect the minds and spirits
of people and their solution must be found in
part in a renewal and deepening of our spiritual
lives. . •
"The churches must seek to guard against un-
due' concentration of power anywhere in society;
we look to the labor movement for the exercise
of restraint in the use of its power, and vigilance
in preventing the abuse of power by others. To-
gether with other responsible groups we can act
creatively to the end that society may be spared
those evils which develop when irresponsible
power has corrupted either an individual or an
institution." ^
THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC Welfare Con-
ference in a statement by Msgr. George G. Higgins,
director of the Social Action Dept., warned that
labor and management are on the defensive "and
collective bargaining (is) on probation before the
bar of public opinion" because many people,
rightly or wrongly, feel the public interest has been
ignored.
In this "alarming" situation, he warned thai
compulsory arbitration laws may be enacted in re-
sponse to public demand, but pleaded that all
such legislation be held off until the national
labor-management conference called by Pres.
Eisenhower at the behest of AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany "has had an opportunity to formu-
late its own recommendation."
"We sincerely hope that it will be eminently
successful and that it will eventually lead to the
establishment of continuing labor-management
conferences or councils in all of the major indus-
tries," he said.
Important as collective bargaining is, Msgr.
Higgins maintained, it is "not enough" and should
"be supplemented with new forms of labor-man-r
agement cooperation fitted to the particular needs
of individual industries and countries and designed
to safeguard and promote the common good."
Why Labor Backs Kennedy -Johnson
THE CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT
The Republican candidate, Richard M.
Nixon, has for eight years been Vice President
of the United States, prior to which time he
served four years in the House and two in the
Senate.
Nixon's vigor and shrewdness are beyond dis-
pute. He would undoubtedly be a forceful
President, who would grasp issues rather than
avoid them. The question is, in whose interests
would this decisiveness be exerted?
Insofar as international affairs are concerned,
there is good reason to believe that Nixon
would follow (perhaps more vigorously) the
general policies of the present Administration.
These policies have ranged from bluster and
brinkmanship to well-intentioned but ineffectual
personal diplomacy; their net result has been
a weakening of the western alliance and a
widening of the Soviet sphere of influence.
On domestic matters Nixon's record is even
more vulnerable. We in the AFL-CIO have
repeatedly declared that the strength of our
economy and the fulfillment of our ideals at
home is the essential prerequisite to the ulti-
mate victory of democracy in the world. We
have further set forth our conviction that these
goals cannot be reached by blind faith in the
curative powers of private enterprise; that on
the contrary, the federal government must take
leadership to insure their realization.
Nixon does not share this conviction. While
he has in recent months given lip-service to the
need for government action in such fields as
education, housing and public health, his votes
do not justify confidence that performance
will follow. Indeed, despite his recent identifi-
cation with the so-called "new" or "liberal"
wing of the Republican party, he has yet to be
recorded in that company on any division in
Congress. ,
In all candor it must also be noted that
Nixon's history as a partisan campaigner, both
for himself and for the national ticket, raise
grave questions of his fitness. Quibbles over
precise wording cannot conceal the fact that
Nixon impugned the loyalty of a congressman,
a nominee for the Senate, a Secretary of State
and a President of the United States in his
various electoral adventures. Since he is neither
naive nor uninformed, we must conclude he
knew better in every case. We find it difficult
to attribute such conduct to youthful exuber-
ance.
The Democratic candidate, John F. Kennedy,
was elected to Congress in 1946 (the same year
as Nixon) and is now in his second term in the
Senate.
Kennedy is intelligent, articulate and force-
ful; he, too, would use the powers of the Presi-
dency to carry out his program.
We in the AFL-CIO have had full opportuni-
ties to watch Kennedy's congressional career
at close range. Throughout his service in both
the House and Senate he has been a member
of their respective labor committees. He has
shown a keen and growing understanding of the
labor movement as such, and a warm apprecia-
tion of the problems and aspirations of working
people everywhere.
Kennedy's active concern with foreign affairs
actually antedates Nixon's, since it began be-
fore World War 11. But the greatest difference
between them in this area is that Kennedy has
no commitment to the specific undertakings of
the last eight years. Unlike Nixon, Kennedy
would not be inhibited by loyalty to the mis-
takes of his predecessor.
However, it is on the domestic scene that
the contrast is most dramatic. On almost every
issue between the money interest and the peo-
ple's interest — housing, schools, health and all
the rest — Kennedy voted with the people,
Nixon voted against the people.
Nor was Kennedy merely a passive partici-
pant. On more and more issues, as increasing
seniority gave him greater status, he was the
introducer and floor leader for legislation to
benefit workers and the nation.
It should be noted that on some matters
Kennedy did not always agree with the AFL-
CIO position, even though on direct labor is-
sues he was by our standards 100 per cent right
while Nixon was 100 per cent wrong. Good-
faith disagreements on some matters are in-
evitable, and should properly be taken in the
context of the record as a whole.
CANDIDATES FOR VICE PRESIDENT
The Republican candidate, Henry Cabot
Lodge, has been a devoted spokesman for
America in the United Nations since 1953.
Although limited by the. narrowness of the Re-
publican policy, his service deserves the great-
est approbation.
Until his defeat by Kennedy in 1952, he also
served in the Senate, where he was counted
among the more progressive Republicans. His
record in Congress suffers primarily at those
points when party policy took preference over
personal conviction.
The Democratic candidate, Lyndon B. John-
son, was elected to the House in 1937 and to
the Senate in 1948. Since 1955 he has been
Senate majority leader.
Johnson is the most influential figure to be
nominated for Vice President since the early
years of the republic. He has been the domi-
nant force in the last three Congresses. The
effectiveness of his leadership has been uni-
versally acknowledged.
For the unprecedented span of six years,
Johnson has borne the responsibility of Senate
leadership while the White House was held by
the opposing party. There have been times
when the AFL-CIO has not agreed with his
concept of the role of Congress in a divided
government; but the legislative gains t4iat have
been made despite that division were brought
about through his efforts and are to his credit.
In the same way, as the voting records show,
we have not agreed with Johnson in all particu-
lars since he entered Congress. But in balance
he has a liberal record; and what is more im-
portant, it has become increasingly liberal with
the years.
The AFL-CIO General Board, which strongly endorsed the
candidacies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, issued
the following statement concerning tabor's vital stake in the
November presidential elections:
The preamble to the AFL-CIO constitution commits the Ameri-
can labor movement to the fulfillment of the hopes and aspirations
of the working people of America "through democratic processes
within the framework of our constitutional government and consist-
ent with our institutions and traditions."
The constitution continues:
"While preserving the independence of the labor movement
from political control, to encourage workers to register and vote,
to exercise their full rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and
to perform their rightful part in the political life of the local, state
and national communities.' 9
It is in this spirit that we act. The need for intelligent political
action has never been greater than now. Before the next Adminis-
tration completes its term of office, the United States may be called
upon to take actions which will determine the life or death of free-
dom in the world.
Thus the American people must select in November an Adminis-
tration which can best meet the twin problems of our time: The
protection of our country and the rest of the free world from the
menace of totalitarian communism, and the strengthening of our
own society, both socially and economically, to insure our position
as the bastion and the exemplar of freedom as a way of life.
American labor has not lost faith in America. Our country is
still the greatest force for peace and freedom throughout the world.
Our concern is not that America is in second place today, but rather
that this could happen tomorrow. We measure the last eight years
not only by accomplishments but by shortcomings:
O America has had some economic growth — but not enough.
• America has improved the people's welfare — but not enough.
• America has strengthened its defenses — but not enough.
• America has made scientific progress — but not enough.
• America has extended the frontiers of democracy at home-
but not enough.
The record of these years is "too little." We cannot permit it to
become "too late."
The AFL-CIO has evolved! over the years a wide ran^e of
legislative proposals which we toelkve would insure the security
and prosperity of our nation, and the well-being of its people.
These proposals stress in particuBar our conviction that a sound,
growing economy in the HJnitedl Silates is indispensable to the
safety of our country and the free world.
Our program is positive, practical and non-partisan. We offered
it, word for word, to the platform committees of both political
parties, in the sincere hope that both would find it worthy of
adoption.
We recognize that neither party has a monopoly on wisdom or
dedication to the public good. Individuals in both parties have been
and will be supported officially by labor; and candidates of both
parties will win votes from AFL-CIO members, regardless of any
recommendations by the leadership. We would not want it to be
otherwise.
Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO has an obligation to report its find-
ings as to the party platforms and the candidates for national office.
We made our recommendations to both parties; now we must assess
what the parties actually adopted. A plank-by-plank analysis of the
platforms has been printed, and is available. The following are an
interpretive discussion of those areas where the differences in the
party platforms and party records arc most pronounced, and in
examination of the expressed positions (insofar as they existj of
the four national candidates. . . .
We believe the contrast in each case is sharp and clear.
Therefore it is the considered judgment of the General Board
of the AFL-CIO that the election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon
B. Johrfson as President and Vice President, respectively, is in the
best interests of the United States and of the labor movement; and
we urge our members to give them full and unstinting support, .
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER S, 1960
Democratic Platform Is Ii
Following is the plank-by -plank analysis of the
Democratic and Republican platforms, together with
a comparison with the AFL-CIO position, made by
the federation's General Board:
Labor Legislation
The Republican platform promises "diligent adminis-
tration" of both the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Grif-
fin Acts. Clearly labor can expect no move by this
party to mitigate the harsh burdens or obviate the
inequities of either act. On every close vote during
consideration of the Landrum-Griffin bill, however, a
majority of Republicans voted against sound, reasonable
and well-considered labor legislation, and the Presi-
dent and Vice President both intervened personally
to secure passage of a measure that was even worse
than the final version.
The Democratic platform unequivocally pledges re-
peal of anti-labor and restrictive provisions of both acts,
as well as adoption of an affirmative labor policy. This
is consistent with the record of Democrats in the Con-
gress, a majority of whom voted for sound labor legis-
lation on every close vote during Senate and House
consideration of last years legislation. In addition,
the Democratic platform specifically promises to
strengthen and modernize the Walsh-Healey and Davis-
Bacon Acts; neither of which is mentioned by the Re-
publicans.
AFL-CIO analysis: Contrary *to popular belief, we
do not ask nor expect legislation that gives special
privileges to trade unions. We do insist that the pro-
motion of free collective bargaining is and ought to
be the policy of the United States government. By
that standard the Democratic platform is far superior.
'Rigkt-to-Work' Laws
Although attempts to enact so-called "right-to-
work" laws have been defeated in several states in
recent years, these anti-labor laws remain on the
books in 19 states. In the guise of laws to benefit
working men, they are actually intended to cripple
union efforts to organize and to negotiate just bene-
fits for their members.
These state laws are effective against unions because
of Sec. 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which specifically
permits their enactment. Repeal of Sec. 14(b) is a
prerequisite to fair labor-management legislation.
The Republican platform in effect endorses Sec.
14(b).
The Democratic platform pledges its repeal.
Situs Picketing
The Republican platform takes no position on this
issue. Though the President has three times asked Con-
gress to pass corrective legislation (1954, 1958 and
1959), ranking Republicans on the Senate and House
labor committees have tried to prevent a bill from
being reported.
The Democratic platform pledges to repeal unreason-
able limitations on the right to picket peacefully. Of
the 20 Democrats on the House Labor Committee, only
two opposed reporting the situs picketing bill. The
favorable report of the Senate Labor subcommittee
on the bill had the unanimous support of the subcom-
mittee's Democrats.
AFL-CIO analysis: The reluctance of Republicans
to correct a flagrant injustice that was recognized even
by the late Sen. Robert A. Taft, whose bill created it,
defies charitable explanation.
Wage-Hour Legislation
The Republican platform pledges to increase the
minimum wage, in no specified amount, and to extend
coverage to several million more workers. Yet only
recently a majority of House and Senate Republicans
voted against a modest, extension of coverage and an
increase in the minimum wage to $1.25.
The Democratic platform pledges an increase in the
minimum to $1.25 an hour and extension of coverage
to several million additional workers. A substantial
majority of Democrats in the House and Senate have
supported this goal with their votes. The platform
also pledges "further improvements in wage, hour and
coverage standards" in the future, and calls for the
extension of wage-hour protection to farm labor.
AFL-CIO analysis: We believe a realistic increase
in the minimum wage and a meaningful extension of
coverage are essential both morally and economically.
We see no merit whatever in the arguments of the op-
ponents of this legislation. And we believe the Demo-
cratic platform is in line with our position that constant
improvement in the living standards and conditions of
icnt of the lowest-paid, including farm workers.
is essential if America is to fulfill its promise and re-
main true to its ideals.
Economic Growth
AFL-CIO recommendations to both parties stressed
the basic importance of steady economic growth. It
is not an exaggeration to say that this is the very heart
of our program.
The 50 percent drop in the annual rate of eco-
nomic growth under this Administration is terrifying.
It is terrifying because a continuation at this low
level will deny proper job opportunities to our grow-
ing population; will insure worse shortages of such
basic needs as schools, hospitals and housing, and
will enable the Communist world to overtake us in
military might and material resources.
With an adequate rate of economic growth we need
not fear any force; without it, we will rob democracy
of its sinews.
We believe it is the obligation of government, and
especially the federal government, to provide whatever
stimulus is necessary to bringing about the rate of
growth we need.
The Republican platform talks about "high priority
to vigorous economic growth" and then proceeds to at-
tack "artificial growth forced by massive new federal
spending and loose money policies." It proposes further
tax reductions for corporations as a foremost incen-
tive to economic growth.
The Democratic platform states unequivocally that
our economy "can and must grow at an average rate of
5 percent annually" and pledges the next Administra-
tion "to policies that will achieve this goal without infla-
tion." It reaffirms its support of full employment as a
paramount objective of national policy, and commits
itself to an end to the present high-interest, tight-
money policy.
AFL-CIO analysis: Here again we are gratified that
both parties acknowledged the need for faster economic
growth. It should be noted, however, that the Repub-
lican platform (and the Republican candidate) have
embraced this concept with reluctance, and have been
especially critical of growth-stimulating expenditures in
the public sector of our national economy. The AFL-
CIO has maintained that such expenditures, far from
being a danger, must be greatly expanded for the se-
curity of the economy and of America itself.
Civil Rights
Both the Democratic and Republican platforms have
properly been described as very strong on civil rights.
They are similar in most respects, although the Repub-
lican platform fails to endorse the sit-in movement as
such, and neglects to propose a federal Fair Employ-
ment Practices Commission. On congressional rules
the Democrats called for majority decision, while the
Republicans call for unspecified changes in Rule 22.
On substantive issues, however, both platforms are com-
mendable.
AFL-CIO analysis: The recent conventions demon-
strated clearly that both parties are split on the civil
rights issue. The Democratic split is more readily de-
finable and easier to understand. What is harder to
justify is the performance of many northern Repub-
licans.
On issue after issue — changing filibuster rules, in-
voking cloture, substantive and procedural questions
— non-southern Democrats almost invariably have
voted in favor of the civil rights position, whereas
only a third to a half of the Republicans have done
so. Time after time Republicans have cast their
lot with the Southerners against civil rights in order
to get southern support for conservative or reaction-
ary economic programs.
It must also be said that the present Republican Ad-
ministration has failed miserably to support civil rights
progress at the executive level. To cite just one ex-
ample, in the six years since the Supreme Court decision
on schools, the White House has yet to indicate ap-
proval of the decision.
Social Security
The Republican platform advocates a program of
health care for the aged "on a sound fiscal basis and
through a contributory system." But congressional
developments have made it clear that in the lexicon of
the President, the Vice President and the Republican
leadership, "contributory" does not mean as part of
the social security system. An overwhelming majority
of Republicans in Congress voted for a- state-federal
plan that either imposed a means test or set an income
limit for beneficiaries.
The platform also calls for "selective" increases in
0
mm
old-age benefits and promises substantial improvements
in provisions in relation to the handicapped.
The Democratic platform specifically calls for "med-
ical insurance upon retirement, financed during work*
ing years through the social security mechanism and
available to all retired persons without a means test."
A majority of congressional Democrats voted to writ©
such a program into law.
Also, the platform calls for a general increase in
old-age benefits, including a $50-a-month minimum;
a higher ceiling on permitted earnings, and more gen-
erous terms for the handicapped and disabled.
AFL-CIO analysis: Few issues are as clearly drawn.
Despite the intransigence of some southern Democrats,
which helped to frustrate legislative action, the ques-
tion remains: "Should health benefits for the aged be
provided through the social security system?" The
Democratic platform says yes; the Republican plat-
form says no. When it came to a test, only one Re-
publican in the Senate supported the social security
principle.
On other aspects of social security, the Repub-
licans still cling to a reluctant and gingerly approach;
the Democrats favor realistic improvements.
Unemployment Insurance
The Republican platform claims credit for minor
improvements in recent years, promises to strengthen
and extend benefits but fails to mention federal stand-
ards.
The Democratic platform clearly pledges to establish
uniform minimum standards in unemployment insur-
ance, and only the Democratic platform does so.
AFL-CIO analysis: The unemployment insurance
system has demonstrated its great value. Over the years,
however, the system has failed to keep pace with rising
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Page Nin*
The Nation's Best Interests
wage levels, has not been adequate to cope with long-
term unemployment and has been plagued by unfair
and unworkable eligibility requirements. Despite fre-
quent prodding by the present Administration, the
states have failed to bring their systems up to even the
suggested minimum levels. Only federal standards can
restore unemployment insurance to its intended func-
tion.
Federal Aid to Education
The Republican platform acknowledges the classroom
shortage but describes it as "temporary" and "de-
creasing." There is no factual basis for that description.
The platform opposes any large program of federal aid
to education, but does endorse federal aid to school
construction. Unfortunately, the record of both the
Republican Administration and Republican congress-
men offers little ground for optimism about even this
limited objective. On three key votes in the House in
1956, 1957 and 1960, a majority of House Repub-
licans voted against federal aid each time. In the Sen-
ate, a majority of Republicans similarly opposed the
only federal aid bill which the Senate has considered
in the last decade. Finally, Vice President Nixon him-
self cast the deciding vote against an amendment to
include $1.1 billion in funds for school construction
and teachers' salaries in the Senate bill.
The Democratic platform pledges federal aid for both
classroom construction and teachers' salaries. The
majority of Democrats in House and Senate have sup-
ported federal aid on all of the key votes mentioned
above.
AFL-CIO analysis: Here is an oustanding example
of a pressing need, in which the Republican predilection
for 4t locaP solutions effectively blocked action and ap-
parently will continue to block it.
Aid for Depressed Areas
The Republican platform favors "constructive fed-
eral-local action to aid areas of chronic high unemploy-
ment." There is nothing in the record of the party to
suggest that such action will be forthcoming in practice.
Area redevelopment legislation has been passed three
times by the Senate and twice by the House, only to be
met by Presidential vetoes.
The Democratic platform promises legislation sim-
ilar to that which was vetoed by the President.
AFL-CIO analysis: The need of long-suffering com-
munities for a helping hand from the federal govern-
ment has been evident for years. The Administration's
rejection of a genuinely effective program, despite the
pleas of many Republican members of Congress from
depressed areas, has condemned millions of Americans
to a protracted depression from which they are power-
less to escape unaided.
Housing
The Republican platform takes no position on pub-
lic housing. It favors adequate mortgage credit to en-
courage private housing, and calls for a continued
effort to clear slums and promote urban renewal. Many
examples could be cited to show that the Republican
party continually and traditionally opposes ^adequate
federal housing programs, but the record of the last two
years alone is sufficient. During this Congress the
President has asked for no public housing at all, and
only $225 million a year for urban renewal. In the
last two years there have been 1 5 Senate and five House
votes bearing directly on public housing and urban re-
newal. On 14 of the Senate votes and all five of the
House votes a majority of Republicans voted against
adequate public housing and urban renewal provisions.
The Democratic platform proposes a 10-year pro-
gram to restore our cities and provide balanced subur-
ban development, as many public housing units as
communities require, and pledges to support a housing
construction goal of more than 2 million homes a
year. On all. the Senate and House votes mentioned
above, a majority of Democrats voted in favor of
public housing and urban renewal.
AFL-CIO analysis: In view of the record, old and
new, it is unfortunate that the Republicans have re-
treated from the position of Sen. Taft, who acknowl-
edged the propriety of massive federal action in the
housing field. Indeed, Taft — with Senators Wagner
and Ellender — introduced and fought vigorously for
a housing program which still remains the basis from
which our proposals (and those of the Democrats)
have evolved. The Republicanism of today is thus
far less enlightened than that of the man who was
once "Mr. Republican ' to the conservatives in his
party.
Foreign Policy, National
Defense
The Republican platform correctly asserts that "the
sovereign purpose of our foreign policy is to secure the
free institutions of our nation against every peril, to
hearten and fortify the love of freedom everywhere in
the world, and to achieve a just peace for all of anxious
humanity." It fails, however, to recognize the gravity
of our present world position, asserting that "the
Republican Administration has demonstrated that firm-
ness in the face of threatened aggression is the most
dependable safeguard of peace'' and that "under the
Eisenhower-Nixon Administration, our military might
has been forged into a power second to none." The
Republican platform fails to recognize that during these
last eight years Soviet aggression and expansion have
not been stopped or even slowed down and that So-
viet military might is rapidly overtaking ours.
The Democratic platform correctly asserts that our
objective is not merely "to co-exist in armed camps on
the same planet with totalitarian communism; it is the
creation of an enduring peace in which the universal
values of human dignity, truth, and justice under law
are finally secured for all men everywhere on earth."
It favors negotiations with the rulers of the Communist
world "whenever and wherever there is a realistic pos-
sibility of progress without sacrifice of principle." The
Democrats promise to recast our military capacity "in
order to provide forces and weapons of a diversity,
balance, and mobility sufficient in quantity and quality
to deter both limited and general aggressions."
AFL-CIO analysis: It is fortunate that both parties
are in general agreement as to the objectives of our
foreign policy and the requirements of our national de-
fense. In this area the platforms must be counterposed
by performance. We find with deep regret that in the
last eight years our country has not lived up to the
objectives of either platform, and that the claims made
by the Republicans for the Eisenhower-Nixon policies
have no foundation in fact.
Atomic Energy, Natural
Resources
The Republican platform boasts of its accomplish-
ments in conservation and resource development,
pledges new water resource projects and promises con-
tinued conservation measures in fisheries, forestry, rec-
lamation and recreation. The party emphasizes cooper-
ation with local governments. But on the record, both
the Administration and the Republicans in Congress
have rejected public operations and publicly-financed
developments on the grounds that private corporations
should profit from them. From atomic energy to timber-
lands to TVA, the Republicans in Congress and the
Republican Administration have sought to promote
private profit against the public interest. Virtually the
only bright spot on the Republican record in this field
is the Mission 66 program to develop recreational areas.
The Democratic platform pledges development and
conservation of natural resources, stablishment of a com-
prehensive water resources policy, new multi-purpose
dam projects and a program of federal aid for pollution
control. It also favors development of regional giant
power systems from all energy sources to supply low-
cost electricity. The majority of Democrats in Con-
gress supported federal development of atomic energy,
opposed the TVA-busting Dixon-Yates contract, killed
the Republican effort to "give away" timberlands in
national forests, supported increasing federal grants for
water pollution control and advocated a federal Hells
Canyon dam project.
AFL-CIO analysis: Whether the national resources
— including atomic energy — should be developed pri-
marily for private profit or in the best interests of all the
people is a basic question for America. We believe the
public interest is and ought to be paramount.
Government Employes
The Republican platform urges employment, train-
ing and promotion for government workers based on
merit and an effective grievance procedure. It also
cites the need for salaries comparable to those offered
by private employers. The record of the Republican
Administration is not compatible with the party's sug-
gestion that salaries be kept abreast of those in" private
industry. Five times the President has vetoed federal
employe pay raises; the last of these was one of only
two of his vetoes which have been overridden.
The Democratic platform pledges a strengthened civil
service system and improved appeals system. It
promises a better ^program for recognizing merits of
individual employes. A majority of congressional Dem-
ocrats have consistently supported pay raise legislation.
AFL-CIO analysis: Neither party has adopted our
. proposal of a comprehensive labor-management law as-
suring government workers of the same rights enjoyed
by other workers. It is evident from the record, how-
ever, that the Democrats are more receptive to the
principle of fair and equal treatment for workers in
government service.
Congressional Procedures
The Republican platform pledges the party s best
efforts to change Rule 22 of the Senate — the so-called
"filibuster rule" — and other congressional procedures
that make unattainable "proper legislative implemen-
tation of constitutional guarantees." It is apparent that
the Republican platform has in mind only civil rights
legislation. The problem, however, goes far beyond
this one issue. In the last Congress, important domestic
measures such as aid to school construction, area rede-
velopment, housing and situs picketing have been,
blocked by the House Rules Committee, with Repub-
licans almost consistently voting unanimously to pigeon-
hole.
The Democratic platform calls for improvement of
congressional procedures so that "majority rule pre-
vails and decisions can be made after reasonable debate
without being blocked by a minority in either House."
It also calls specifically for rule changes to make cer-
tain that bills approved by legislative committees in the
House reach the floor without undue delay. A majority
of Democrats on the House Rules Committee have
regularly voted to report important legislation.
AFL-CIO analysis: Changes in congressional pro-
cedures to assure majority rule are an urgent priority
for the next Congress. Although neither party has a
good record on changes in the Senate's Rule 22, a
majority of House Democrats have always supported
proposals to restrict the power of the Rules Com-
mittee, while a majority of Republicans have opposed
such proposals.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
The Voting Record:
Kennedy Right 92%; Nixon 13%
"Let's look at the record" is a familiar expression in American
politics which will ring truer in 1960 than ever before.
The reason: for the first time both presidential candidates have
extensive voting records by which the people might judge how well
they have served the public interest.
Sen. John Kennedy and Vice-Pres. Richard M. Nixon both
are "on the record" as a result of their experience in Congress.
Both men launched their public service when they were elected
to the House in 1946. Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950
and Kennedy moved to the upper chamber in 1952. Nixon be-
came vice-president in 1953 and, in his capacity as presiding officer
of the Senate, has voted only in case of a tie.
Against this background, the Committee on Political Education
has selected 155 key votes on such issues as civil rights, education,
consumer welfare, taxes, housing, labor, foreign policy and so on.
The candidates were judged by labor's position.
Kennedy, on these key votes, was shown to have voted "right"
a total of 120 times and "wrong" just twice. Nixon was shown
to have cast 10 "right" votes and 59 "wrong" votes. On the
COPE scorecard, Kennedy was 91.6 percent "right" compared to
Nixon's 13 percent.
The voting records enable "profiles" of each candidate to be
developed from the way he voted over a period of time on a broad
range of issues. The records also allow a direct comparison of the
two men on specific votes. In addition, Nixon can be judged on
the basis of the tiebreaking votes he cast while presiding over the
Senate.
This is how Kennedy and Nixon stack up individually and in com-
parison to each other on a variety of issues:
CIVIL RIGHTS
Kennedy's record showed 12 "right" votes and no "wrong" votes.
Kennedy voted in favor of anti-poll tax bills, for an enforceable
Fair Employment Practices Commission and three times in the
Senate in support of efforts to change Rule 22 and curb filibusters.
When in the House, he voted to adopt the 21 -day rule to keep the
Rules Committee from bottling up liberal bills.
Nixon cast two "right" and three "wrong" votes. Nixon's "right"
votes came in support of anti-poll tax bills in the House in 1947 and
1949. His "wrong" votes came when he voted for a voluntary
rather than an enforceable FEPC and in twice voting against the
21 -day rule.
CONSUMER WELFARE
Kennedy, according to COPE, cast ten key votes in favor of
workable controls on prices and rents after World War II and
during the Korean War. He was absent on one such vote.
Nixon was recorded once in favor and seven times against con-
trolling inflation. He was absent on two key votes.
On the natural gas issue, Kennedy cast five key votes against
relaxing federal control over the prices charged by natural gas
companies, COPE noted. Nixon voted "wrong" once and was
absent once.
Kennedy and Nixon are compared easily in the consumer field.
On price and rent control votes when they were congressmen, there
were five instances when both were present and voting. All five
times — for example, to extend rent control in light of the Korean
emergency— Kennedy voted "right" and Nixon voted "wrong."
EDUCATION
Kennedy has had seven chances to vote on education. Six times
he voted in favor of legislation on scholarships, school construction,
teacher salaries and schools in defense areas. He was absent once.
Nixon has had two voting opportunities. He voted against aid
to education and teacher salaries on one occasion and was absent
on the other vote.
Kennedy and Nixon are separated by a crucial vote which oc-
curred last February. On an amendment which proposed $1.1
billion a year for school construction and teachers' salaries, Ken-
nedy voted against a tabling motion designed to kill the amendment.
The Senate vote ended in a 44 to 44 tie and Nixonvthen cast the
deciding vote to table and so kill the amendment.
TAXES
On income taxes, there were seven key votes to test Kennedy.
Six times he voted in the interest of low-income taxpayers and he
was absent once. Nixon had five opportunities and he voted all five
times in favor of higher-bracket taxpayers.
On legislation to close tax loopholes, Kennedy voted "right"
four times while Nixon voted five times to preserve the loopholes.
For example, on the oil and gas depletion allowance — the
biggest loophole of all— Nixon as a senator in 1951 was "wrong"
in voting against an amendment to reduce this allowance. Ken-
nedy in 1958 was "right?' in voting in favor of an amendment to
reduce the depletion allowance for taxpayers with oil and gas
income of over $1 million a year.
When the two men were both in the House,-there were five votes
on income tax changes. Kennedy was "right" and Nixon "wrong"
all five times, as on a 1947 bill to give a 60 percent hike in take-
home pay to the 1,400 taxpayers with incomes of $300,000 and
over and a 5 percent increase to the 46 million wage-earners making
under $5,000.
SOCIAL SECURITY
On key votes, Kennedy voted "right" five times and Nixon cast
AFL-CIO-BACKED DEMOCRATIC NOMINEES JOHN F. KENNEDY, LYNDON B. JOHNSON
In 1958, an amendment to raise public assist-
ance payments to the aged, blind and disabled by
about $5 a month died when the Senate vote
ended in a 40 to 40 tie. Kennedy was "right" in
voting for it. Nixon withheld his tiebreaking vote
and the amendment failed for want of a majority.
MINIMUM WAGE
On the one comparative vote, when both men
were in the House in 1949, Nixon was "wrong"
in voting for an amendment to eliminate 1 mil-
lion workers from federal wage-hour protection.
Kennedy was "right" in voting against the
amendment.
LABOR
Kennedy, measured by COPE on 22 key votes,
was judged to have voted "right" every time in
the interest of working people and union mem-
bers. Nixon was judged, on 8 key votes confront-
ing him, to have voted "wrong" seven times. He
was absent once.
"Nixon has failed to cast a single vote, 59
COPE noted "for fair labor-management rela-
tions legislation, equitable regulation of welfare
and pension funds, safeguards for Davis-Bacon
wage provisions, adequate unemployment com-
pensation or the relief of chronically-depressed!
areas."
In a 1947 vote on a bill harsher than the final
Taft-Hartley Act, Kennedy voted "right" and
Nixon "wrong."
In 1956, Nixon broke a 39 to 39 tie in favor
of an amendment to have the prevailing wage on
the federal highway construction program deter-
mined by state agencies rather than federally.
Kennedy was "right" in voting against it.
In 1959, the key Senate vote which sealed
the so-called McCleilan "bill of rights" into the
Landrum-Griffin Act ended in a 45 to 45 tie,
Kennedy was "right" in voting against it. Nixon
then broke the tie in favor of the move.
FOREIGN POLICY ^
Kennedy and Nixon had nearly identical voting
records when both were in the House in the 1 947-
49 period, COPE reported. Both supported the
Marshall Plan, Greek-Turkish aid, United Na-
tions' relief aid and so on. Since then, iheix
records diverge.
Kennedy, with the exception of one vote in
1951 to trim economic aid to Europe, has con-
tinued his support of economic and military aid
to America's allies, COPE noted.
Nixon, COPE reported, "has voted on both
sides of the question." COPE listed Nixon as
"wrong" on two especially critical votes — when
he voted against a wheat-for-India bill during the
1951 famine and when his vote helped defeat by
192 to 191 a $60 million economic aid-for-Korea
bill in January 1950. Kennedy voted "right" on
umiiiiiiiiMmiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiimmi
both of these issues,
MII|III.M..MnnUIIMIHIM.IHinn,MHmM..l..ltlM.M.. ll lhlU.. ll MMI.M.Mlin..lH.H.M,. ) H. l M, l Hill inillilll IimillHIUimillHIMHIUIIIIIIHIIIIIIHIIIimi • MfiMg
Comparison of Kennedy, Nixon Votes
Total
Number
Civil Rights 13
Civil Service 5
Consumer 21
Education
Foreign Policy 14
Health 4
Housing 11
Immigration D. P.s 2
Labor 24
Migratory
Minimum Wage 3
Public Power 12
Small Business
Social Security
Taxes
Tidelands
Veterans
KENNEDY
R W A
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
12
4
17
3
7
2
9
2
22
4
3
i0
3
5
10
5
2
1
1
2
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
2
0
1
NIXON
R W
2 3
0
o
2
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
10
1
5
1
5
1
7
1
1
5
1
2
11
3
2
A
0
0
3
0
1
1
0
0
1
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Totals
155
10 59 8
(Of 77 key votes Nixon
was 13 percent "right";
76.6 percent "wrong.")
two
votes.
120 2 <
(Of 131 key votes, Ken-
1 . jiedy was 91.6 per-
1 cent "right"; .02 percent
1 "wrong.") N
1 The votes cast hy Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon will not add up to the total listed for
i each subject Totals include votes for the 1951-52 period when Nixon was in the Senate and Kennedy
| in the House and the period 1953-60 when Nixon, as Vice President, cast only tie-breaking votes.
liiiiiiKVC jiifT:r;:: 1 —'"'I 1 . " i i / iji i' w iiii w iii » '■' ■ ■■ »■ ■' * i f) mmmmm i m mm mqmm
ilHIMIIIIHIffi
AffL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1960
Morgan Says:
In the Congo, Mired in Rumor,
Fear, Anything Can Happen
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
AS THE -UN's Ralph Bunche indicated in
Leopoldville, the Congo is mired in mis-
understanding, rumor and fear. In such a mental
swamp anything can happen and there are reasons
to believe that the situation is much more serious
than appears even on the surface — which is not
exactly glassy-smooth.
According to some esti-
mates, if the United Na-
tions Security Force does
not assert its authority un-
mistakably over all local
elements including Pre-
mier Lumumba's so-called
army within the next two
or three weeks, UN pres-
tige will suffer a possibly
fatal blow in Africa which
could easily redound to
the permanent advantage of the Communist bloc.
Apparently the Communist pull on the wobbly
Lumumba regime is greater than has been gen-
erally suspected. It is not that Moscow pushed
a button and caused the Congo crisis but rather
that it is capitalizing on chaos which its emis-
saries, like a swarm of wasps, are helping to
complicate and prolong, partly because the west-
ern Allies, including the U.S., have been so short-
sighted and unprepared.
AS LONG AS SEVEN years ago, while
Brussels was confidently saying and Washington
and other capitals were believing that all was well
in the Congo, the Communist bloc went to work
to intensify its contacts with Central Africa.
Special African study courses were added in half
a dozen universities, including Leningrad and
Prague. On the eve of independence, the Belgian
Communist party stepped up its activities.
It appears that as many as 125 Communist
bloc experts have arrived in the Congo. Some
of them have been flown in by Soviet cargo
planes ostensibly bringing in civilian supplies
under the UN operation. One of these recent
loads included, of all things for tropical Africa,
bananas.
These technical and political experts seem to
be gaining the ears of Lumumba's desperately
understaffed ministries and are apparently lean-
ing hard on the theme that there are bad white
men and good white men in the Congo — the bad
representing the vestiges of western imperialism,
the good from the magnanimous communist bloc
Lumumba's demands for the earliest possible
withdrawal of UN forces even though his own
25,000-man Force Publique has hardly graspec
the meaning of discipline, let alone law and order,
may hav£ been inspired, directly or indirectly, by
Communist advice. Lumumba, probably no Com
munist himself, fancies himself as a kind of king
of the Congo, including, of course, Katanga, and
eventually, some believe, as a liberator of Afri
cans south to the Cape of Good Hope.
• Many responsible western experts agree that
the UN force must stay on in the Congo until
some reasonably neutral internal stability is
achieved. How can this be done if Lumumba
withdraws the invitation under which UN troops
entered the Congo in the first place?
One theory has it that since they are there in
the interests of peace and security there is a strong
legal case for their remaining until and unless
Lumumba can demonstrate a capacity to main-
tain law and order.
He has strong — though not united — internal
opposition. The Congolese Senate, sitting with-
out a quorum, took a symbolic slap at him by
voting to ask UN forces to remain in the Congo
and intervene in internal strife.
There are many tragic ironies in this stormy
picture, perhaps the most cutting being the spec-
tacle of the West tending to take Lumumba's
currently left-inclined direction amid political
bedlam as proof the Congolese are incapable of
self-government when in point of fact the com-
munists were preparing for this and nobody
else was.
AFL-CIO Wins Praise For
Keeping Morgan Show
The Progressive, national monthly maga-
zine, has praised the nightly newscasts of
Edward P. Morgan over the ABC network
as "radio journalism at its best," and has
hailed as "good news" the AFL-CIO re-
newal of Morgan- s contract for another year.
Organized labor's "decision to continue to
sponsor Morgan — with no interference what-
ever — represents the kind of public service
by the AFL-CIO that also happens to be the
best kind of public relations," the magazine
declared.
Noting that the AFL-CIO gives Morgan
"a completely free hand to report and inter-
pret the news as he sees it," The Progressive
said the commentator "responsibly uses his
freedom in a way unparalleled by any other
newscaster . . ."
Washington ReporSs:
Next Congress
Because of
HP HE 86TH CONGRESS failed to enact a num-
ber of needed measures and as a result the
87th Congress has a big job before it, Sen. Mike
Mansfield (D-Mont.), majority whip, and Sen.
Clifford P. Case (R-N. J.), standing in for the
minority whip, Sen. Thomas H. Kuchei (R-Calif.),
agreed as they were interviewed on Washington
Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service
educational program, heard on more than 300
radio stations.
Case said that in the field of foreign affairs
"Congress acted in a responsible way as a whole,"
even though it "lagged about $1 billion a year
behind what we should have done in the field of
mutual security appropriations."
Both mentioned civil rights as the main ac-
complishment, but agreed more needs to be
done. Case said that "Rule 22 blocks effective
action by permitting almost endless debate."
and its removal must be the first main action
of the new Congress. It has affected progress
not only in civil rights, he maintained, "but
also social welfare, education, housing and all
tho rest."
Faces Big Job
One's Failures
Mansfield criticized the Executive Branch for
not using its authority in the field of civil rights.
The Senate majority whip also said that one
of the reasons Congress failed to enact much
needed legislation was because "we always had
the threat of a Presidential veto."
"If that threat is removed, we will be able to
enact worthwhile legislation next year," he added.
CASE, THE ONLY REPUBLICAN Senator
who voted for the Kennedy-Anderson amend-
ment to provide health insurance for the aged,
based on the social security approach, criticized
the bill as passed because it included "the ob-
jectionable means test."
Mansfield said more needs to be done on
minimum wage, housing, federal aid to educa-
tion, civil rights, defense and foreign aid.
Case added situs picketing, immigration, "un-
employment compensation, that is, broadening
the benefits and making mandatory a minimum
floor under benefits and coverage," and "in the
fields of railroads, legislation to protect passengers
and workers when trains arc discontinued by
arbitrary summary procedures."
WASHINGTON
Willard Shelton, whose commentary on the Washington scene
normally appears in this page, is on vacation.
IF YOU OR YOUR PARENTS are among America's "agiflg,"
you are enjoying "a high level of health" with 90 percent of you
either in ''good or fair" health. "More than 92 percent of you and
other aging have no medical problems that need attention.
If you had medical bills that ran anywhere from $ 1 ,000 to $3,000,
they wouldn't bother you a bit. Almost half would simply draw a
check for the necessary amount. Only a few of you would have to
mortgage the house or use that stock in the safe deposit box. Indeed,
most of you "can cope with a large medical bill by conventional and
personal means."
Half of you and your fellow oldsters have incomes of more than
$2,000 a year, 1 out of 20 has an income of more than $10,000
a year, and most of vou have assets of more than $10,000 over
your liabilities.
In brief, you are part of a "picture of a healthy and well-cared-lor
aging population in the United States," of whom only a relative
handful need help.
THIS HIGHLY OPTIMISTIC REPORT, purporting to picture
the condition of most of America's aging men and women, is the
product of a research study of 1,500 Americans aged 65 or over,
made by a team at Emory University in Georgia. It is now being
used as the basis for all-out opposition of the American Medical
Association to legislation that would help the aged meet their medi-
cal problems through an extension of the social security system.
It was used as the basis for a full page AMA advertisement to
attack the principle of medical care for the aged under the social
security system.
It was used as the basis for numerous editorials claiming that the
social security approach is unneeded and "socialistic."
REACTION HAS BEEN QUICK and in some cases angry. One
doctor, who has been a member of the AMA for 35 years, indig-
nantly denied in a public letter that the AMA spoke for him or for
the 170,000 physicians that it claims to represent.
A Columbia professor of sociology challenged the report and
called for a "scientific review" that would show how scientific it
really was and how far it "smacked" of public relations.
Sen. Pat McNamara, Michigan Democrat who is chairman of a
Senate subcommittee which has been investigating the problems of
the aged, issued a "fact sheet" that utterly 'contradicted the "re-
port" of how lucky America's aged are. This fact sheet, based on
nationwide hearings over many months, showed:
• More than 75 percent of persons over 65 suffer from chronic
conditions of ill health as compared with 41 percent for the rest of
the population.
• As of 1957-58 medical expenditures by the aged on a per
capita basis were 80 percent greater than those for all ages.
• In 1958, 60 percent of the aged had incomes of less than
$1,000; 45 percent had less than $500 in liquid assets and 30 per-
cent had no liquid assets at all with which to sit down and dash off
checks to pay for doctor bills.
• Including those with even entirely inadequate private insur-
ance coverage, only 42 to 49 percent of the aged have, any health
insurance and of these, 73 percent had only half or less of their hos-
pital costs covered.
• The aged enter hospitals more frequently than the general
population, their average length of stay is higher, hospital expenses
are higher among the aged, and the most frequent types of illness
hospitalizing the aged are the costliest ones to treat.
In brief, the picture of a jolly, happy, carefree, relatively
wealthy aging population with only a relatively few needing help
does not correspond to the facts.
We may argue among ourselves how we shall help the aged with
their medical problems, but it is a tragic disservice to our nation to
pretend that the need is not there. (Washington Window — PAI)
THE 86TH CONGRESS left many tasks undone in minimum
wages, aid to education, health insurance, housing and other meas-
ures that must be handled by the next Congress, Sen. Clifford P.
Case (R-N. J.), speaking in place of the minority whip (left), and
Sen. Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.), majority whip, asserted on Wash-
ington Reports to the People, AFL-CIO public service radio
program. They spoke on the last program in the 1960 series.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 196©
Jodoin s Message:
Unemployment Main
Problem in Canada
LABOR DAY IN MANY RESPECTS marks the start of a new
year. The holiday season ends and many organizations and activ-
ities return to a more active period. As we enter this period the
Canadian labour movement faces many challenges. One of the
greatest of these — and one which we share with all Canadian citi-
zens — is the challenge of unemployment.
With the arrival of fall all too many Canadians know that they
face months of uncertainty; months in which they will wonder,
almost from day to day, whether or not they will have a job. Winter
unemployment has become an established but unwarranted part of
the Canadian economic picture. More recently we have been ex-
periencing conditions in which unemployment spreads into the
warmer months, and for many people is a year-round threat.
The challenge we now face with regard to unemployment is
indeed a serious one, and one which is in many respects different
to that of other periods. Most of us can recall the days in which
the country's whole economy slowed down and thousands of men
and women waited in line for jobs. Today the economy of our
country continues to operate at a high level, production is well up;
and yet, at the same time, we have hundreds of thousands of men
and women deprived of the right to work.
It has been estimated that the waste from unemployment has
reached the neighborhood of $3 billion. We are a rich country but
we cannot afford waste of this magnitude. And beyond the dollars
and cents loss is the far greater toll in human suffering.
These, then, are times of both challenge and opportunity which
call for thought and effort on the part of all sections of the com-
munity. As a labour movement we stand ready to do our part
and to co-operate with other groups. A year ago we made reference
to the intensive attacks being made from some quarters on the or-
ganized labour movement.
It may be that these attacks have now reached their peak but
there is new evidence of a desire on the part of some employers to
adopt a "let's push-labour-around" attitude. If they do follow
such a course it will indeed be unfortunate. Such a negative
policy will make no contribution to a better Canada; but will
rather interfere with the type of co-operation which is essential to
the future.
This may be an appropriate time to make the position of the
Canadian Labour Congress clear. We are prepared and will be
happy to co-operate with all other groups in meeting the challenges
which we, as Canadians, face in common. If, on the other hand,
there are to be efforts to undercut the standards established demo-
cratically in collective agreements, then the responsibility for the
conflict which will inevitably follow will rest on those who initiated it.
These are time in which our concern must inevitably go beyond
our own national borders. When the CLC held its biennial conven-
tion in Montreal a few months ago, we were hopeful of the approach
of a better international climate. Those hopes were quickly shat-
tered by the total failure of the Paris summit conference, later
supplemented by the Soviet's withdrawal from the 10-member dis-
armament conference in Geneva.
Hopes for Negotiations
We are still hopeful that fruitful negotiations may be resumed.
The world, in today's circumstances, cannot tolerate a situation in
which there is no serious attempt to begin solving these admittedly
difficult problems of disarmament leading to a lasting world peace.
We, as an organization representing such a large section of the
Canadian people, are keenly aware of the vital importance of these
matters and are anxious to make whatever contribution we can
toward a betterment of international conditions. In particular we
seek positive and constructive action toward universal controlled
disarmament.
It is regrettable that, on an occasion such as this, one should
find it necessary to devote so much attention to matters of this
nature; but they are problems which will not disappear simply by
being ignored.
As a Canadian organization we retain strong optimism in the future
of our country. We have faced and overcome problems before and
we can do the same in the future. The Canadian labour movement
has made a great contribution to the building of our nation and we
look forward to making further contributions in the year and years
ahead.
ILO Head Thanks U. S.
Labor for Peace Efforts
"American labor and the Intl. Labor Organization speak
in the same cause and act toward the same goals. Both are
concerned that the lives of men everywhere shall be bettered
in freedom, and that peace shall be preserved," ILO Dir. Gen.
David A. Morse said in a Labor Day message.
"I express the warm gratitude of the ILO for the strong
support and encouragement which has come to it from Ameri-
can labor since the organization's earliest days, and express
the confident hope that we shall continue to advance toward
our mutual goal of peace based on social justice," he said.
Becuon Labor Day:
ICFTU Contrasts U.S. Labor
Dynamism
ON THIS LABOR DAY the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions sends warm and
heartfelt greetings to the workers of the North
American continent.
Ever since the days of the pioneers your labor
movement has — through its sheer dynamism —
won the admiration of genuine trade unionists
throughout the world.
What impresses workers everywhere is that the
immense and vital power of the free labor move-
ment in North America has not been limited to
obtaining such excellent material benefits for the
workers. It has also dedicated itself to broader
aims serving the ideals and principles which the
peoples of the free and truly democratic nations
cherish.
What a striking contrast between your splendid
record of service to the workers — to hungry and
suffering humanity everywhere — and that of the
miserable stooges who direct the so-called trade
unions in the Communist countries.
Prosperity breeds prosperity, just as success
breeds success, and the world reaps a benefit from
a wealthy and progressive American economy.
On the other hand a recession, as that of a few
years ago showed clearly, provokes widespread
and disastrous repercussions, especially upon the
Oiler 2-Point Plan:
Red 'Stooges'
living standards of workers in the economically
underdeveloped countries which still depend
mainly on exporting their raw materials.
In the same way as the U.S. trade unions the
CLC, true to its steadfast traditions, meets these
rimes of challenge and opportunity with cour-
age and initiative. Canadian labor, too, seeks
not only to enhance the well-being of its mem-
bers but to make its own weighty contribution
towards building a better world for all.
We believe in freeing the- people from their
dread of nuclear warfare through agreement on the
banning of weapons of mass destruction within the
framework of general and controlled disarmament.
We re-affirm the right of all the dependent peo-
ples to decide their own destines.
We appeal to the governments of the advanced
countries to give as much aid as possible to the
underdeveloped countries.
We pledge our determined opposition to dicta-
torships of all kinds — Communist as well as those
of Franco Spain and of the other remaining
dictatorships.
We can realize all these aims. Let us continue
to march together under the banner of the ICFTU
toward a brighter and a better future.
Building Trades Call on U. S.
To Help Economy Grow
LABOR LOOKS FORWARD to the dynamic
expansion of the national economy in the year
ahead.
This goal must be achieved if America hopes
to provide effective leadership in the world
struggle for peace and freedom.
Our national defense cannot be adequately re-
inforced unless it is backed up by a strong, healthy
and growing economy. Prolongation of high un-
employment, low production and inadequate pur-
chasing power is bound to impair the ability of
our country to resist and prevent further Com-
munist aggression.
How can we assure the growth of our gross 9
national product at the rate of at least 4 percent
a year — the minimum necessary to provide jobs
for our growing population?
The Building and Construction Trades Dept.
suggests a program on this Labor Day that will
go a long way toward bringing about the indus-
trial revival our country needs:
• We believe the government's "tight money 9 *
policy must be shelved in favor of a new policy
which will encourage private enterprise to invest
in an expanding economy.
• We believe that the federal government
must meet its responsibility to invest in the con-
struction of urgently needed schools, hospitals,
research facilities, low cost housing, urban re-
End Appalling Waste 9 :
newal, better roads, modern airports and other
projects for community improvement.
From past experience, we know that the in-
auguration of a large-scale building program, both
privately and publicly financed, will give the en-
tire national economy a forward push it so badly
needs today.
It would be a mistake to assume that only
the construction industry would benefit. On
the contrary, basic industries like steel, lumber,
electrical appliances, textiles, furniture, autos
and many others would get a shot in the arm.
This is not a boondoggling program. Our
country has fallen far behind in its physical plant.
Nor can it be truthfully criticized as a "spending"
program. There is a vast * difference between
spending and wise investment. Investment of
private and public funds in const-ruction of homes
and facilities that our country and its people need
will pay off dividends — now and in the future.
It will provide millions of new jobs. It will
spur industrial production over a long-range
period. And finally it will produce greater tax
revenues that will make the program pay for
itself and for higher defense expenditures to
boot
Regardless of the outcome of this year's na-
tional elections, we are convinced that our gov-
ernment will have to take these steps toward a
more progressive and more rewarding future.
IUD Asks for an America
Free From Want and Fear
THE AFL-CIO INDUSTRIAL UNION DEPT.
extends its warm fraternal greetings to working
people the world over on this first Labor Day of
the 60's. In increasing measure, this holiday sym-
bolizes to the whole world the status and dignity
that can be achieved by free labor. We urge all
members of U.S. organized labor to participate as
never before in the democratic process that is their
heritage.
Despite the official optimism of the present
Administration, all is not well on the American
scene. The '60's have not even begun to soar
and already there are signs of a new recession.
Automation is rapidly spreading in the indus-
trial and commercial processes of the nation.
The great promise of this new development
has so far been blunted. Rapidly rising produc-
tivity is being translated into idle manpower
and idle plant instead of into rising living
standards, rejuvenated cities, better homes, and
the means of eliminating poverty.
More than 5 percent of our citizens willing
and able to work have been denied the opportunity
for gainful employment. About 20 percent of
America's fabulous industrial facilities lie idle.
At the same time, more farm families are being
driven from the land because of the ability of
our agriculture to turn out the food and fiber
needed to end poverty at home and alleviate hun-
ger abroad.
The great challenge of the ? 60*s is to end this
appalling waste within the American economic
system. Rising productivity can be translated
into an America free of want and fear. It can
be made a positive force for democracy through-
out the world. America's free workers are will-
ing, ready, and able to do their part and to prove
that they can produce as well for the needs of
peace as for those of war.
The IUD urges on this Labor Day that all
Americans exercise their right of franchise regard-
less of political outlook so that this election will
truly reflect the national will. It calls upon the
federal government to exercise special vigilance
so that no citizen shall unjustly be denied the
right of franchise.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Page Thirteen
At Costa Rica Meeting :
Latin States Reaffirm Unity
Against Soviet Infiltration
San Jose, Costa Rica — The foreign ministers of the American republics closed out their two-week
emergency conference here by signing a "Declaration of San Jose."
The seven-point declaration, in reaffirming the unity and authority of the Organization of American
States (OAS) and warning against Russian and Chinese infiltration in this hemisphere, caused a walk-
out of the Cuban delegation.
Anti-Trujiilo Action Hailed
The Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, in commenting on
an earlier action when the OAS
ministers voted sanctions against
the Dominican Republic and
caused a walkout of that delega-
tion, issued a message which said:
"It is especially gratifying that
the resolution approved at the
Costa Rica meeting reflected to
a remarkable degree the ICFTU's
views on action to be taken to
curb the cruel Trujillo dictator-
ship which has long denied to
the people of the Dominican Re-
public their legitimate human
rights and trade union rights/'
ICFTU Gen. Sec. Omer Becu
and Gen. Sec. Alfonso Sanchez
Madariaga of the Inter-American
Organization of Workers (ORIT)
had urged the action in messages
to the ministers.
Hemisphere Newsmen
Set Up New Congress
Lima — Delegates from a score of western hemisphere newsmen's
unions have organized a permanent federation to further inter-
American contacts and mutual interests.
They created the Inter-American Federation of Working News-
papermen's Organizations and adopted resolutions deploring re-
strictions on press freedoms in sev-'^
era! western hemisphere countries,
including Cuba. Adoption followed
bitter debate.
The press freedoms resolution
pledged inter-American solidar-
... ity. with journalists "who are
suffering under the most blatant
violations of human rights by
the regimes in Haiti, Paraguay,
Dominican Republic and Nicara-
gua.'' The congress denounced
"the oppressive measures of those
regimes against the press/' and
demanded restoration of free ac-
cess to and dissemination of news
and comments. It appealed to
world public opinion for support
of the "just cause of the perse-
cuted colleagues" in the four
countries named.
A resolution dealing with Cuba
read:
"The congress expresses its deep
regret in view of the fact that the
hopes for a free press in the Re-
TWUA Blasts
Wool Tariff
Offer bv U.S.
New York — The Textile Workers
Union of America has charged
that Administration tariff proposals
made to Great Britain, France,
Japan and Italy would lead to
"further destruction of the domes-
tic woolen and worsted industry
and raise clothing prices for Ameri-
can consumers."
In a letter to Secretary of State
Christian Herter, TWUA Pres.
William Pollock charged that the
Eisenhower Administration propo-
sals violate the Reciprocal Trades
Agreement, and urged that the plan
be withdrawn.
Pollock said his letter was
prompted by Administration re-
ports that the White House had
proposed a flat 38 percent tariff
on woolens and worsteds. This
would replace the present system
under which the duty steps up
from 25 to 45 percent when im-
ports exceed 5 percent of the
level of domestic production.
"Any rate reduction," Pollock
wrote Herter, 'will significantly
lower the safeguards established
in our country against the ' fur-
ther destruction of the American
industry/'
The flat 38 percent rate. Pollock
said, would result in a substantial
increase in clothing prices to the
American consumer because it
would provide domestic woolen
and worsted manufacturers with
"an immediate incentive to raise
their prices/' ,
public of Cuba that were aroused
after the overthrow of the Batista
dictatorship have not been realized,
but rather on the contrary tend to
fully disappear.
"Many democratic journalists in
Cuba have lost their right to ex-
press freely their opinions, while
some of them have been forced
into exile.
Appeal to Cuba
"In view of these developments
the Congress calls on the govern-! between the U.S. and Cuba and
ment of the Republic of Cuba to
go back to its early promises, and
secure freedom of expression to the
Cuban press/'
Sec.-Treas. Charles A. Perlik, Jr.,
of the Newspaper Guild, and Luis
Carnero Checa, of Peru, who had
served as co-chairmen of the com
mittee which had planned the ses-
sions here, were continued in office
in the permanent federation,
Perlik and Carnero Checa also
head a 13-member executive board.
Other members are: Vice-Chairmen
Enrique Garces of Ecuador, R. H.
Buchanan of Canada, Virgilio Za-
laya Rubi of Honduras, and Clif-
ton Neita of Jamaica; Sec. Alberto
Schtirbu of Argentina; Treas. Nich-
olas Pentcheff of the United States,
and Guillermo Garcia of Columbia,
Alfonso Morales of El Salvador,
Gonzalo Chapela of Mexico, Rich-
ard Lane of the United States, and
Ulric Mentus of British Guiana.
The board established seven
committees: trade union and pro-
fessional activities, Jose R. Chao
Monzon of Argentina; freedom
and defense of the press and
newspapermen, Roberto Marti-
nez Merizalde of Peru; exchange
of newsmen, Boleslaw Wierzbian-
ski of the United States; educa-
tional problems, unfilled; publi-
cation, Pbro. Jesus Hernandez
Chapellin of Venezuela; awards,
Miguel Perez Turner of Argen-
tina; and preparation for the
second congress, Hipolito Hin-
capie of Columbia.
The next congress will be held
at Bogota, Columbia, in two years.
The executive board choose Quito,
Ecuador, for its next meeting in the
first half of 1961.
Other countries represented at
the Lima sessions included Barba-
dos, Bolivia, Chile, Puerto Rico
and Trinidad. Haiti and Para-
guay were represented by exile
organizations.
The Lima sessions were boycot-
ted by a number of leftish-oriented
organizations which had launched
an abortive counter-move calling
for a July meeting in Venezuela
closed against North American
participation.
U.S. Sec. of State Christian
Herter called the declaration
adopted by a 19 to 0 vote — both
the Dominican and Cuban delega-
tions had left — a ''clear indictment
of the Castro government of Cuba
and particularly the role it played
in furthering Sino-Soviet efforts at
intervention into this hemisphere/'
Mexico issued a special state-
ment which said that, in her view,
the declaration was of "a general
character" and that "in no form
does it constitute a condemnation
or a threat against Cuba, whose
aspirations for economic improve-
ment and social justice have the
strongest sympathy of the govern-
ment and people of Mexico."
Cuba in Spotlight
Cuba was not mentioned by
name in the declaration, but the
emergency meeting and the final
statement came out of concern
over the relations between the So-
viet Union and the government of
Premier Fidel Castro and in light
of the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban
relations.
It was reported that prevail-
ing sentiment among the dele-
gates regarded the Declaration as
an invitation to Castro to seek to
resolve any difficulties through
the inter-American system. A
six-nation committee also was
created to conciliate differences
mediate in other Caribbean prob-
lems.
The ministers of Venezula and
Peru had reservations about the
declaration, which was signed by
their deputies. Venezulan Pres.
Romulo Betancourt quickly cabled
a message of unqualified support
of the declaration. It was the
assassination attempt against Bet-
ancourt a few months ago which
finally resulted in the OAS sanc-
tions against dictator Trujillo.
The AFL-CIO Executive Coun-
cil, at its meeting in Chicago a few
weeks earlier, had expressed hope
the foreign ministers would act
against dictator Trujillo's "repeated
violation of human rights, civil lib-
erties and trade union freedom"
and also on the "threat of Com-
munist infiltration and domination
through the activities of the Castro
regime in Cuba."
The AFL-CIO said it shared
with people throughout the Amer-
icas "deep concern over the now
dubious domination of the Cuban
revolution by Communist elements
and its complete political and eco-
nomic subservience to Soviet Rus-
sia and its satellite countries."
BUSHEL BASKET full of money collected at 102d convention of
Typographical Union in Denver is presented to Rene J. Valentine
(left), director of joint strike activity in Portland, Ore. Delegates
donated $1,667 to aid Portland newspaper strikers. With Valentine
are (left to right) R. C. Henrey of ITU Local 58, Multnomah, Ore.;
John M. Philbin, president of Chicago Mailers; and "Davey"
Crockett, New York Local 6.
ITU Pushes Drive for
Anti-Scab Legislation
Denver — The 102nd convention of the Typographical Union
launched a major legislative drive to stop strikebreaking as the 400
delegates approved a two-pronged ''anti-scab" program.
First phase of the legislative drive is for amendments to the federal
Byrnes Act to close loopholes that make it ineffectual in controlling
importation of scabs across stated — — ; ;
j mes I tracts with newspapers include a
' " "VxVt [ ckuse -calling -for local mcrnbcr-s-te-
type for advertisements where
matrices (mats) have been provided
locals all over the country to work
with other AFL-CIO affiliates and
central bodies in convincing 1961
state legislatures to adopt "anti-
scab" state statutes similar to one
in Pennsylvania.
Draft Model Law
A model state legislative act dis-
tributed to delegates would outlaw
recruitment of strikebreakers, pro-
hibit offering of employment to
habitual scabs, prevent habitual
scabs from taking jobs of workers
out on strike, outlaw the use of
scab-herding agents, and prevent
advertising for scabs without noti-
fying recruits in the ad that a labor
dispute is in progress.
Byrnes Act amendments are simi-
lar to these proposals, except that
they specifically deal with the of-
fense of transporting scabs across
state lines and sets up penalties of
up to a $5,000 fine and/or up to
two years' imprisonment for viola-
tion of the measure.
The legislative program was
developed by the Presidents'
Committee of publishing industry
unions, and the ITU convention
adoption of the program is the
first action taken to implement
the plan.
Major internal matter debated by
the delegates was a proposed con-
stitutional change on the issue of
"reproduction." The ITU has for
many years required that all con-
72
Countries Will See
'Americans at Work'
Four films in the AFL-CIO's "Americans at Work" television
series are currently being shown in foreign-language versions in 72
foreign countries, the United States Information Agency has an-
nounced.
The films, dealing with the work of the bookbinders, glassworkers,
plumbers and pipefitters and pot-'^
ters unions, are being carried on
television in 20 countries in Latin
America, 12 in Europe, 13 in the
Near East, 14 in Africa and 13 in
the Far East.
The USIA reported the book-
binders film to date has been
translated into Spanish, Persian,
Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu,
French, Burmese, Mandarin, In-
donesian, German, Danish, Ital-
ian, Norwegian, Icelandic and
have been translated into many
languages.
Additional films from the AFL-
CIO series are in the process of
being translated and shipped for
overseas distribution, USIA said.
In the U.S., "Americans at
Work" now appears on more than
1 50 television stations weekly, more
than 85 films highlighting the skills
of America's union membej»^in a
wide variety of industoHmive been
Japanese. The other films also produced in the series.
rather than copy for local typeset-
ting.
A special committee on repro-
duction recommended a constitu-
tional change which would allow
local unions to bargain out this
clause in return for a minimum of
2 percent of payroll devoted to a
national pension and retirement
program.
Delegates lined up at micro-
phones by the dozens for the better
part of two days to debate the prop-
osition. The committee recommen-
dation was based on the fact that
many locals had given up the re-
production clause for minor fringe
benefits and had not been diligent
in policing this contract item. The
change would give more latitude to
local unions in bargaining, but
would set a reasonable minimum
standard for alternative benefits to
be won in exchange for such
clauses.
The convention was not able
to take final action on the issue,
and resolved to put the matter up
to a membership referendum.
Results of the voting are not ex-
pected till some time in October.
AFL-CIO Mourns
Death of Tessier
The sincere condolences of the
AFL-CIO on the death of Gaston
Tessier, president of the Intl. Con-
federation of Christian Trade Un-
ions was expressed by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany in a cable to
Gen. Sec. Maurice Bouladoux of
the French Confederation of Chris-
tian Trade Unions.
"We believe your movement has
suffered a severe loss and all work-
ers a valiant leader," Meany said.
Tessier, 73, died in Paris follow-
ing an operation. He was the first
general secretary of the French
Christian trade unions and later
president before heading the inter-
national phase of the movement.
During World War II he was an
active member of the French Re-
sistance and a member of the Na-
tional Committee of the Resistence.
He served in the French Constitu-
ent Assembly in 1954, was named
to the Council of State in 1949 and
was a member of his country's dele-
gation to the United Nations ia
1954.
Page Fourteen
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C t SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
PRODUCTION PERSONNEL on the AFL-CIO' s film documentary, "Land of Promise," check out
historical details of the film with noted labor educator Mark Starr, fourth from left. The half-hour
film which stars Melvyn Douglas will be shown Sunday, Sept. 4, over the ABC television network.
(Check your local paper for time and station.) The motion picture, produced by the AFL-CIO to
honor the American worker on Labor Day weekend, is a factual account of the development of
the American labor movement. Above from left are Logan English, musical director; Sheldon
Stark, author of the film; Bill Buckley, director; Starr; Morris Novik, AFL-CIO radio and TV con-
sultant; and Al Zack, AFL-CIO public relations director.
Post Office Clerks Up Per Capita;
Hallbeck Chosen for Presidency
St. Louis — The Post Office Clerks wound up their 31st biennial convention here by electing their
veteran legislative director, E. C. (Roy) Hallbeck, to succeed J. Cline House as president.
In another major action, delegates voted a 5-cent monthly per capita dues increase to establish
regional offices — a move to keep up with the decentralization of the Post Office.
Hallbeck, 58, has been the union's legislative representative in Washington for 14 years. The
post, which is elective, is consid-^
ered the No. 2 job in the union,
which does not have official bar-
gaining status and depends instead
on Congress.
Key Role in Pay Hike
NFPOC officials credit Hallbeck
with having played a leading role in
winning congressional approval of
the recent 10 percent postal pay
raise over Pres. Eisenhower's veto.
House retired after two two-year
terms. Hallbeck was unopposed
for the top post.
The dues increase, from 70 to
75 cents a month, was approved
by a majority of nearly three to
one after sharp debate through
parts of three daily sessions. In
final form, it was pared down
from a 10-cent increase recom-
mended by the executive board.
The 5-cent rise, effective Jan. 1,
is expected to produce about
$50,000 a year.
The Post Office has been decen-
tralized into 15 regions. NFPOC
leaders felt this called for creation
of regional union offices manned —
perhaps full time — by district vice
presidents. Two have been on full-
time duty since April in a pilot
study.
"From the experience gained in
the pilot operations, we believe that
such expansion is both feasible and
practical," the board told delegates.
. . We believe that full-time vice
presidents would enable the federa-
tion to more effectively process
grievances, combat the work-meas-
urement system, expand organiza-
tional activities and implement and
improve our legislative efforts."
Setup Experimental
Officials said the 5-cent increase
will permit broader experimenting
with the regional setup until the
1962 convention at Portland, Ore.,
when Hallbeck is to recommend
specific constitutional changes.
Under convention directives, the
principal goals of NFPOC's new ad-
ministration will include legislation
to give the union official recogni-
tion by the government and steps
toward merger with other postal
clerk unions.
Practically, this last is aimed
at the unaffiliated Post Office
Craftsmen, with 35,000 mem-
bers (to NFPOC's 100,000).
Hopes that Pres. Joseph Thomas
of the Craftsmen would come to
the convention failed to mate-
rialize, but merger talks are ex-
pected to get underway shortly
at Washington,
NFPOC's broadly-worded merg-
er plan, approved earlier in the
convention, also held out some hope
for eventual reconciliation with a
dissident group that splintered away
after the 1958 convention and
formed the rival National Postal
Clerks Union. Its membership was
estimated here at 17,000 although
its leaders claim 35,000.
The split plainly still rankles
many NFPOC delegates, but they
cheered a prediction by Pres. Eisen-
hower's personnel assistant, Eugene
J. Lyons, that "many who deserted
will return."
Lyons — one of two "manage-
ment" men who addressed the con-
vention — said the President vetoed
the recent pay bill not because he
is against increases as such but be-
cause he was waiting for the re-
sults of a government-industry pay
study.
Following him to the platform,
Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-Tex.),
called the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration "the vetoingest Adminis-
tration of pay raises in history."
He dismissed the Administration
contention that the increase would
be inflationary as "just gobbledy-
gook," and described as "shocking"
the inference in the Eisenhower
veto message that postal unions had
forced Congress to give in.
N.Y. Campaign Gets
All-Out AFT Backing
Dayton — Delegates to the 44th annual convention of the Teachers
here pledged their full support to an all-out drive to win collective
bargaining rights for New York City's 38,000 teachers.
The convention voted full backing to Local 2's drive in the wake
of action by Mayor Robert F. Wagner (D) and the New York Board
of Education in agreeing to a rep-'^
resentation election.
Delegates acted after Pres.
Charles Cogan of Local 2 charged
that the National Education As-
sociation had opened an office in
New York City to help those op-
posing the AFT's representation
drive.
Carl J. Megel of Chicago, for
the past 10 years president of
the Teachers, was re-elected to a
two-year term in a hotly con-
tested election. He defeated Bill
Karnes of Phoenix, Ariz., a vice
president of the AFT, by 690 to
635.
Ten vice presidents were re-
elected to two-year terms, and six
new vice presidents were chosen
by the delegates, who used voting
machines in balloting for the first
time in the AFT's history.
In a resolution obviously aimed
at Chain stores practicing lunch
counter segregation in the South,
the AFT urgerf-Us members to pa-
tronize services and products
"known to be dispensed and pro-
duced by integrated and non-raci-
ally discriminatory establishments,
providing such products carry a
union label."
In other actions, the convention.
• Challenged the NEA to aban-
don racial segregation across the
country, with particular emphasis
on NEA units in the South which
are not integrated.
• Urged an intensification of the
program to keep students in school
to complete their formal educa-
tions.
• Called for repeal of New
York City's loyalty oath for high
school graduates, adopted during
the World War I period, charging
that the oath "serves only to ques-
tion their integrity."
• Strongly supported vocational
education, and urged boards of edu-
cation to hire the best teachers ob-
tainable in the vocational training
field.
Pres. Campbell Reports:
AFGE Hits Record
High in Resources
Cincinnati — Membership in the Government Employes is at a
record high and the union is in its strongest financial position in
history, delegates were told at the opening session of the AFGE's
17th biennial convention here.
In presenting his report to the convention, Pres. James A.
Campbell said there was a mem-^
bership gain of 11,000 since the
1958 parley.
Speaking on the second day of
the convention, Senate Civil Serv-
ice Committee Chairman Olin D
Johnston (D-S. C.) credited fed-
eral employe unions with obtaining
the recently-enacted law granting
a pay increase to government
workers. Johnston urged the Gov
ernment Employes to continue
their organizing efforts.
Free Riders Hit
* 'There are thousands of federal
employes who do not belong to any
organizations," Johnston said. "In
my opinion that is not right. They
are not doing their part; they are
taking a free ride on the backs of
those of you who are doing your
part.
"1 would like to say to them
here and now: 'Get in the game
— join up and do your part. 9 In
other words, if they expect to sit
at your table, they should pro-
vide part of the food."
At the opening session Campbell
told the delegates that three inde-
pendent organizations have indi-
cated their willingness to discuss
the possibility of merging with
the Government Employes. The
AFGE, he said, has invited a num-
ber of independent organizations
of federal workers to talk merger.
The convention passed a special
resolution urging Congress to act
on four bills of importance to fed-
eral employes before adjourning.
Telegrams were sent to Democratic
and Republican leaders in both the
House and Senate asking action on
bills to establish a health benefit
program for retired federal em-
ployes, increase travel and mileage
allowances, increase payments for
on-the-job injuries and deaths, and
provide liability protection for em-
ployes who drive on the job.
Democratic Victory Seen
Johnston predicted a Democratic
victory in the coming national elec-
tion. He said the Democrats would
retain control of the Senate and
win the White House.
The South Carolina Democrat
had high praise for the AFGE's
part in the successful pay raise
drive. "Your organization did
a great job of marshalling the
facts and presenting the case for
a raise, 9 ' he said.
Johnston also praised organ-
ized labor for bringing about a
shorter workweek and winning bel-
ter wages for the nation's workers.
He assailed the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration's opposition to the pay
raise, which was enacted over a
presidential veto, reminding dele-
gates that the White House used
the budget-balancing argument
against the pay increase.
Delegates to the convention were
faced with a record number of reso-
lutions on pay, retirement, person-
nel policies, legislation and other
matters.
TV Unions Agree On
Limited Bargaining Pact
Hollywood, Calif. — Joint bargaining in the fields of television
commercials and taped TV dramatic shows will be undertaken
shortly by two AFL-CIO entertainment unions — the Screen Actors
Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists.
SAG Pres. George Chandler announced here that members of the
Screen Actors, by a better than 10- 'f
1 margin, approved the joint bar-
gaining in a referendum ballot.
Earlier, the plan won approval from
delegates to AFTRA's annual con-
vention in Washington, D. C.
The proposal for joint nego-
tiations and joint administration
of contracts in the TV commer-
cial and taped entertainment
fields was put forward by SAG
as an alternative to a plan for
full merger of the unions sug-
gested by David L. Cole, na-
tionally prominent arbitrator.
SAG members, voting in the
same referendum, rejected the
Cole merger plan by a majority
of better than 82 percent.
The plan approved by the two
unions also calls for exploration of
the possibility of full interchange-
ability of SAG and AFTRA mem-
bership cards in the same fields
where joint negotiations will be
held; cross-crediting of pension and
welfare benefits in these fields; and
a continuing study of other areas
of cooperation.
CIVIL RIGHTS ADVISER to Sen. John F. Kennedy, Democratic
presidential nominee, is Frank D. Reeves, Washington, D. C, lawyer
and District of Columbia Democratic national committeeman.
Kennedy and Reeves are shown at Hyannis Port, Mass., where the
Democratic nominee conferred with many advisers and party leaders
on details of his election campaign.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Page FlfttHHi
Convention to Get Program:
JAM Automation Plan Aims
To Save Jobs, Buying Power
(Continued from Page 1)
employment Benefits, severance
payments or some other device.
• Provision for early retirement
with assurance of an adequate pen-
sion.
• Continuation of insurance
coverage and other fringe benefits
during periods of layoff.
• Negotiation of new job classi-
fications and pay scales wherever
automation has increased skill re-
quirements or responsibility, or has
imposed additional demands on
workers.
• An equitable distribution of
gains resulting from greater pro-
ductivity through a general wage
increase, more leisure time, or
in "some other socially desirable
fashion."
At the same time, the IAM ex-
ecutive council recommended that
the union press its demands for a
shorter workweek, or a reduction
in the workday "as rapidly as the
needs and resources of the nation
permit/*
The Machinists' study, on
which the eight-point program
was based, disclosed that automa-
tion is responsible in great part
for the tremendous shift from
blue-collar to white-collar occu-
pations, both in the US. and
Canada.
The report cited the Boeing Air-
plane Co., where the ratio of white-
collar to blue-collar workers has
changed from three-to-one in favor
of blue-collar workers 15 years ago
to the present three-to-two ratio in
favor of white-collar workers.
"The fact is," the IAM report
declared, "that the U.S. has become
the first industrial country in the
world in which the working class as
traditionally conceived is no longer
Technical Engineers
Vote Organizing Drive
Toronto, Ont. — The Technical Engineers have charted a new
organizing drive and elected a new secretary-treasurer to co-ordinate
the campaign in the United States and Canada.
Russell M. Stephens, re-elected by acclamation to a fifth term as
president of the 18,000-member union, said Edward Coughlin,
secretary-treasurer, will direct the^
new organizing drive.
Stephens said the AFTE felt pro-
fessional engineers, technicians and
draftsmen were better served by a
craft union than an industrial one.
He felt engineers and techni-
cians preferred a craft unit to
being a minority of a production
bargaining unit. The benefits of
craft unionism will be stressed
during the organizing drive.
The 34th annual convention of
the union also passed:
• A resolution asking for col-
lective bargaining rights for U.S.
civil servants.
• Per capita tax increases of
15 cents to finance the organizing
budget, and another 10 cents for
the general operations fund. x
• More than two-score amend-
Aonstrong Agrees
To 10-Cent Hike
Akron, O. — An agreement call-
ing for a 10-cent-an-hour pay in-
crease for 2,500 members of the
Rubber Workers has been signed
with Armstrong Rubber Co.
The increase, retroactive to Aug.
15, puts average hourly straight
time earnings at $2.79. It covers
workers in Armstrong's plants in
West Haven and Norwalk, Conn.,
Des Moines, la., and Natchez,
Miss.
ments to the union constitution, al-
most all of them technical, to per-
mit the AFTE to "live with the
Landrum-Griflin Labor Law."
• A co-ordinated bargaining
program to try and win uniform
contracts in upcoming bargaining
at eight plants of General Electric
Co.
The convention voted to assist
the Kearny, N.J., shipyard strikers
even though the dispute is over.
It also called on Congress to
improve the status of engineers
in naval shipyards, particularly
on basic pay, overtime and haz-
ard pay.
Although tradesmen get bonus
pay for work such as submarine
test dives, engineers receive no
extra compensation for hazardous
work at the naval shipyards.
The 76 delegates held the first
international union election in Can-
ada ever supervised under a U.S.
labor law. Although a secret ballot
was not necessary, the union vol-
untarily used such a procedure.
The convention elected regional
vice-presidents for the first time,
with a Canadian vice-president also
elected.
In Canada, the union decided to
push ahead with attempts to get
back into the Canadian Labor Con-
gress. The union was ousted four
years ago after a jurisdictional dis-
pute with the Machinists.
Postal Union Remembered
A Friend — and his Widow
Cincinnati — Not many people today remember the name
of Melville Clyde Kelly/
He's been dead since 1935. He had served 20 years in
Congress — a Pennsylvania Republican, a member of the House
Post Office Committee and a good friend of postal workers, a
very good friend.
The Postal Transport Association didn't forget Kelly — or
his widow. After the congressman died, the union voted a
special assessment and set up a fund to help Mrs. Kelly. This
was before the days of congressional pensions and insurance
benefits.
Every month for 24 years — until her death in 1959 — Mrs.
Kelly received a check for $95 from the NPTA as a token of
the gratitude and affection an earlier generation of union
members held for her husband.
During this period, there were no publicity releases about
the unique pension, no claim for credit by the union. The
story came to light only as a casual reference in the financial
report to the NPTA convention here.
the major element in the labor
force."
Here is a digest of the IAM's
findings in key areas:
CHANGING JOBS — Due to the
rapid introduction of automation,
many now employed as production
workers will have to transfer to
other occupations, and in many
cases to other sectors of the
economy.
In a number of cases, the ad-
justment may be "exceedingly dif-
ficult." Older workers will find it
hard to adjust to the new kinds of
jobs and minority groups may find
their entry into white-collar occu-
pations "even more difficult than
their entry into blue-collar" jobs.
HOURLY WAGES VS. WEEK-
LY SALARY — As work becomes
more and more a joint effort and
more machine paced, the possibil-
ity exists that group incentives will
replace individual incentive sys-
tems, and workers may be paid on
a weekly salary basis as it become
more "difficult to isolate, measure
and pay for small segments of in-
dividual effort.
NEED FOR AUTOMATION—
Labor has not called for any mora-
torium on technological change,
knowing that there are "tremen-
dous unmet needs in America,"
and that the nation needs to grow
in order to cope with the Soviet
challenge.
At the same time, businessmen
"cannot be allowed to be carried
away by the possibilities of cost
reduction and to forget social prob-
lems and personal hardships to
which rapid technological change
gives rise."
The union said the first step
should be to make certain "that
automation becomes a means to
abundance rather than depression,"
and called for the framing of both
government and private policies "to
achieve an expanding, growing
economy" that will cushion the im-
pact of automation and enable men
to find other jobs.
Canadian Jobs
Drop 11,000;
Parley Asked
Ottawa, Ont. — A counter-sea-
sonal increase of 11,000 in the
number of unemployed in Canada
between mid-June and July 23 is
evidence of "a shocking condition
which calls for immediate and
urgent government action," Pres.
Claude Jodoin of the Canadian
Labor Congress has declared.
Joblessness, which usually de-
clines during the summer, jumped
to 311,000, or 83,000 more than a
year earlier, according to the Do-
minion Bureau of Statistics.
Jodoin pointed out that at a
time when employment normally
increases, it has "deteriorated to
an alarming degree." Since the
figures were compiled, he added,
the country has moved closer to
the end of summer, when unem-
ployment normally increases.
"The outlook for this winfer
is, therefore, extremely serious,"
he continued. "It will not be
good enough for the government
to wait until the summer recess
is over and Parliament resumes.
The CLC has time and again
urged the calling by the federal
government of a conference rep-
resentative of management, labor
and all levels of government.
"Failure to take constructive ac-
tion to step up economic activity
and provide work will mean a ter-
rific waste and untold suffering. The
lime for such action is now."
STEELWORKER'S DAUGHTER, Betty Jean Tuttle, receives
check from USWA Educational Dir. Larry Boyle (left) covering
$3,000 scholarship awarded by Steelworkers' Dist. 29, Detroit.
Betty Jean, who will study for degree in science at University of
Michigan, is shown with her parents. Her father, Lawrence, is a
steward of USWA Local 2340, Detroit.
Postal Transport Union
Invites Merger Talks
Cincinnati — Delegates to the Postal Transport Association con-
vention voted approval of merger negotiations with other postal
unions and — by a one-vote margin — authorized the union's board
of directors to reconvene the convention to act on any merger
proposal.
NPTA Pres. Paul A. Nagle said >
he plans to open talks with both
the Postal Clerks and the Letter
Carriers, the two biggest unions in
the Post Office Dept. Last June, a
proposal to merge with the Letter
Carriers was rejected by NPTA
members in a referendum.
In other action, the conven-
tion dissolved the division struc-
ture of the organization and pro-
vided for direct election of con-
vention delegates. Previously,
each of the 15 NPTA divisions
held conventions and delegates to
the national convention were
elected at the division meetings.
Under the new structure, there
will be 11 geographical regions,
each headed by an associate na-
tional vice president.
The move for amalgamation of
postal unions got a boost from the
convention's principal speaker —
Sen. Olin D. Johnston (D-S.C),
chairman of the Senate Post Office
& Civil Service Committee.
Single Union Urged
''You can't have one big postal
service and not have one big un-
ion," Johnston declared. He pre-
dicted that "a Democratic Congress
next year will pass a union recog-
nition bill" — one of the chief leg-
islative goals of government em-
ploye unions. But he added: "You
can't hope for an ideal union recog-
nition bill as long as there are 16
postal unions that must be recog-
nized."
The convention sharply pro-
tested the action of the Post Of-
fice Dept. in breaking up the sep-
arate postal transportation serv-
ice and placing NPTA members
under local postmasters. The
transfers, Nagle declared, have
resulted in a loss of membership
and have created "very serious
jurisdictional problems with the
Postal Clerks."
The convention also urged Sen-
ate approval of the House-passed
•'anti-air lift bill" which would pre-
vent the Post Office Dept. from
transporting regular mail by air.
An unscheduled debate between
Assistant Postmaster Gen. Bert B.
Barnes and NPTA Industrial Sec.
Wallace J. Legge set off sparks at
the convention.
Barnes, in an address to the con-
vention, denounced as -a "sham" a
recent editorial in the union's pub-
lication, the Postal Transport Jour-
nal. The magazine, edited by
Legge, charged that NPTA leaders
were called to a conference by top
department officials on June 28 in
an effort to keep them away from
Capitol Hill where postal workers
were lobbying to get Congress to
override Pres. Eisenhower's pay bill
veto. The editorial also asserted
that labor-management relations
under Postmaster Gen. Arthur
Summerfield have reached "a new
low."
Barnes also claimed credit for
the Eisenhower Administration for
health, retirement, pay raises and
other benefits achieved in recent
years.
Angered delegates gave a
standing ovation to Legge when
he took the floor to answer
Barnes. After quoting another
Post Office spokesman as admit-
ting that the department was
aware of the union's activities on
Capitol Hill when it called the
conference, Legge blasted the at-
tempt to claim Administration
credit for legislative gains.
"We got these things through
trade union action," he told the del-
egates, "and the Post Office Dept.
opposed every one of them."
Stay in School,
Youth Urged
By Mitchell
"You owe it to yourselves and
to your country to return to school
this fall and stay in school until you
have graduated," Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell advised the youth of
America in his annual open letter.
Mitchell said the coming decade
will provide unprecedented oppor-
tunities for American youth, with
a particular shortage of trained peo-
ple in the 25-44- age group because
of the low birth rate of the 1930's.
"Thus, young Americans of
the 1960s will be able to ad-
vance faster than any similar
age group in history," Mitchell
pointed out.
It is especially important, he said,
that young people secure all the
schooling and training they can
absorb.
Mitchell observed that an esti-
mated 7.5 million of the new young
workers entering the labor force
during the 1960's will lack a high
school education, a lack which will
leave them ''seriously handicapped.**
Page Sixteen
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHING TON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1960
Coalition Kills Minimum Wage Measure
Meany Praises Kennedy's Stand
Against Fraudulent House Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
minimum wage legislation came as
the unusual post-convention session
of the 86th Congress raced toward
adjournment. In a feverish burst
of last-minute activity on Capitol
Hill there were these developments:
• Moving to salvage part of an
omnibus housing bill blockaded by
the conservative-dominated House
Rules Committee, Congress pushed
through a stripped-down housing
measure — tacked on to a minor
resolution — extending the home
loan improvement program for an-
other year, providing $500 million
for college dormitory construction,
and making $50 million available
for public facility loans.
• The House and Senate com-
promised on an omnibus appropri-
ation measure, key element of
which was restoration of $65 mil-
lion in Mutual Security funds
lopped off Pres. Eisenhower's re-
quest for foreign aid. The AFL-
CIO had urged that the full $190
million slashed from the Mutual
Security program be restored as
"essential for America's and the
free world's security.'
• Both houses approved and
sent to the White House a compro-
mise measure providing token as-
sistance, through public welfare
agencies, for the medically indigent
aged. The AFL-CIO had fought
unsuccessfully for medical care for
the aged as a matter of right,
financed through social security
taxes.
'Take-it-or-leave-it' Strategy
Congress passed and sent to the
White House a $3.96 billion appro-
priations bill which included funds
for 23 new rivers and harbors proj-
ects which Eisenhower had not re-
quested, and renewing work on
four other projects discontinued by
the Administration. Last year,
Eisenhower twice vetoed public
works measures, but the second
veto was overridden.
Collapse of the minimum wage
drive came after a week of meet-
ings between House and Senate
conferees. The coalition had based
its strategy on demanding the House
bill on a "take-it-or-leave-it" basis.
The House version would have
raised the minimum for those pres-
ently covered to $1.15, and would
have brought another 1.4 million
workers under the law's protection
— but only at a $1 minimum and
without any overtime protection. In
addition, a hastily-drafted amend-
ment, accepted on the floor, threat-
ened to remove 14 million workers
from wage-hour coverage.
By contrast, the labor-supported
Kennedy bill approved by the Sen-
ate would have hiked the minimum
wage from its present $l-an-hour
level to $1.25, by steps, and would
have brought 4 million additional
workers under its coverage for both
wages and hours.
Kennedy said he would go to the
American people with the story of
how the bill was scuttled, adding
that he would "come back and try"
to pass a meaningful bill in Janu-
ary.
Sad News for Millions
In his letter, Meany said the fail-
ure of the 'conference was "sad
news for the miflions of American
citizens whose only recourse in
their struggle for fair labor stand-
ards is the federal government."
The concern of the AFL-CIO,
he wrote Kennedy, "is not based
upon the immediate well-being of
union members" since "only a hand-
ful" of unionists would be directly
affected. "Our concern," he said,
"is to assure a measure of economic
justice for those who have no other
way to achieve it, and to bring our
nation as a whole closer to the
ideal of life, liberty and the pur-
suit of happiness for all."
In his pledge to carry the story
to the American people during
the presidential campaign, Meany
told Kennedy that "we intend to^.
make clear to the American peo-
ple the identity of those respon-
sible for the failure of this
legislative effort.''
He emphasized that Kennedy
"and the liberals in Congress
made every effort to compromise
in order to assure passage of a
meaningful bill," but that "those
efforts were rejected."
The special post-convention ses-
sion of Congress was dominated —
as it has been throughout the 86th
Congress — by a coalition of right-
wing Republicans and Dixiecrats,
who teamed up to pass the anti-
labor Landrum-Griffin Act last
year, and to blockade virtually all
of the liberal legislation spelled out
in the AFL-CIO's "positive pro-
gram for America."
When Congress came back early
in August, the AFL-CIO Executive
Council carted for action in five
key areas — wage-hour improve-
ments, medical care for the aged
through social security, aid to edu-
cation, housing and situs picketing.
Of these five, aid to education
and situs picketing were bottled
up completely by the right wing-
ers; wage-hour died in confer-
ence; the medical care program
was gutted under the threat of
an Eisenhower veto; and only a
stop-gap housing bill, devoid of
any slum clearance or public
housing features, was passed.
The virtual veto power wielded
by the right-wing coalition was par-
ticularly evident in the House Rules
Committee, where four conserva-
tive Republicans and two Southern
Democrats were able to throttle
liberal legislation;
Rep. Frank Thompson, Jr. (D-
N. J.), speaking for liberal House
Democrats, pledged that on the
opening day of the 87th Congress
"a determined fight will be made
to amend the rules ... so that the
outrageous domination of the Con-
gress by the Rules Committee will
be ended."
Eisenhower Torpedoes GOP Boast
Of Nixon's Leadership 'Experience'
Pres. Eisenhower has in effect torpedoed one of the favorite claims of Republican campaign
strategists: that Vice Pres. Nixon has acquired wide "experience" in leadership by participating in
major White House decisions over the past eight years.
At his Aug. 24 press conference, Eisenhower indicated, in answer to questions, that there was
some "confusion" and "haziness" surrounding Nixon's precise role within the Administration. But
the President made it plain that:
• No one in the Administration,
not even Nixon, "participates in
the decisions . . . except me."
• Although he has "all sorts of
advisers" and Nixon is "one of the
principal ones," he was unable to
give an instance in which any Nixon
ideas had been adopted by the
White House.
On this latter point, when a
reporter asked for an example,
Eisenhower said: "If you give me
a week, I might think of one.
I don't remember."' The Presi-
dent's Aug. 31 press conference,
at which the example was ex-
pected, was cancelled.
When first asked about Nixon's
role in decision making, Eisenhower
told reporters:
"Well ... no one participates in
the decisions. Now we just — I
don't see why people can't under-
stand this. No one can make a de-
cision except me — if it is in the na-
tional executive area. I have all
sorts of advisers, and one of the
principal ones is Mr. Nixon . . .
Now, just — when you talk about
other people sharing a decision, how
can they? No one can, because then
who is going to be responsible?"
Later, a reporter trying to clar-
ify the situation pointed out that
one of the issues in the campaign
would turn on GOP claims that
Nixon has had "a great deal of
practice at being President." On
that basis, Eisenhower was asked,
could he spell out the degree of
Nixon's participation in the Ex-
ecutive Branch of the govern-
ment.
The President responded:
"Well, it seems to me that there
is some confusion here, haziness,
Meany Named by
Bible Week Group
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has been named one of three hon-
orary vice-chairmen for the 20th
annual observance of National Bible
Week, Oct. 17-23.
Named to serve with Meany were
Mrs. E. Lee Ozbirn, president of the
General Federation of Women's
Clubs, and Richard Tucker, Metro-
politan Opera tenor.
National Bible Week is sponsored
by the Laymen's National- Commit-
tee, Inc., an interfaith organization
devoted to conducting a campaign
of public education in Bible read-
ing and to encourage regular at-
tendance at religious services.
that possibly needs a lot of clari-
fication.
"I said he was not a part of de-
cision making. That has to be in
the mind and heart of one m*m.
All right. Every commander that
I have ever known, or every lead-
er of a big organization, has needed
and sought consultative conference
with his principal subordinates.
"In this case, they are normally
Cabinet officers. They include also
such people as the head of GSA
(General Services Administration),
the Budget Bureau, and the Vice
President as one of the very top.
So the Vice President has partici-
pated for eight years, or seven and
a half years, in all of the consulta-
tive meetings that have been held.
"And he has never hesitated,
and if he had I would have been
quite disappointed, he has never
hesitated to express his opinion,
and when he has been asked for
it, expressed his opinion in terms
of recommendation as to deci-
sion. But no one, and no matter
how many differences or whether
they are all unanimous — no one
has the decisive power. There
is no voting. ... So Mr. Nixon
has taken a full part in every
principal decision*"
DOING THEIR PART to back up Committee on Political Activity,
delegates to New York State AFL-CIO convention in New York
City crowd around table to contribute their dollars to COPE drive.
Convention went on record with overwhelming endorsement of
Democratic ticket of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Kennedy- Johnson Get
N.Y. AFL-CIO Backing
(Continued from Page 1)
Vice President visited the AFL-
CIO building or talked to the
officers of the AFL-CIO.
Schnitzler also sharply attacked
Boyd Leedom, chairman of the
quasi-judicial National Labor Re-
lations Board, for having taken
part in a fund-raising campaign to
help re-elect Sen. Karl Mundt (R-
S. D.), one of the Senate's most
outspoken foes of trade unionism.
Leedonvs action, he declared, is
an example of "the state of moral
corruption in Washington today."
Kennedy, in his first speech to
a labor convention since the en-
dorsement of the Kennedy-Johnson
slate by the AFL-CIO General
Board, declared that he joins with
the American labor movement in
seeking "the elimination of poverty
and unemployment, the real estab-
lishment of America's position of
leadership in the world, and the
end of racial discrimination every-
where in our society."
The state body's resolution en-
dorsing the Kennedy-Johnson ticket
praised the Democratic Party plat-
form views on foreign and domestic
policies; singled out for special
commendation the section on hu-
man rights; hailed Kennedy for his
TWU Strike Shuts
Pennsylvania RR
Philadelphia — Twenty
thousand members of the
Transport Workers and the
unaffiliated System Founda-
tion struck the Pennsylvania
Railroad at 12:01 a.m. Sept.
1, in a dispute over contract-
ing-out of repair work to
private firms.
The walkout, first in the
Pennsylvania's 114-year his-
tory, shut down all operations
on the nation's largest rail-
road. The company imme-
diately furloughed 52,000
operating employes for the
duration of the strike.
TWU Pres. Michael J.
Quill said the strike was
forced by the collapse of
last-minute negotiations in
which the union had sought
pledges from the company
that it would end the con-
tracting out and grant union
demands for job classifica-
tions.
voting record "against the selfish
special interests of big business;"
and saluted Johnson for the meas-
ures which had been "engineered
to enactment" under his Senate
leadership.
"Because of the happy combi-
nation of this historic platform
and these energetic, forceful, in-
formed and able candidates," the
09-8-6
resolution declared, "the future
for the people of America and
the world already begins to look
less uncertain, to hold forth high
hopes to our nation and the free
nations everywhere."
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller (R),
who called for election of the GOP
ticket but who pointedly omitted
any mention of Nixon or Lodge,
warned that America's economic
growth is not keeping up with the
growth rates of the Soviet Union,
West Germany, Japan, Italy,
France, the Netherlands, Mexico
and Canada.
Mayor Robert F. Wagner (D)
delivered a sharp attack on the
Eisenhower-Nixon Administration.
"What a tragedy of paradoxes
and contradictions the economic
wizards of the Administration have
gotten us into," Wagner said.
"They have told us that full em-
ployment is inflationary, but they
have actually caused inflation by
encouraging unemployment.
"They told us that they knew
how to manage the federal finances
conservatively, but they have ended
up by making federal bonds more
speculative than common stocks,
and creating a near financial crisis
almost every time the Treasury
tries to float securities."
The convention unanimously re-
elected the four incumbent officers:
Pres. Harold Hanover, Sec.-Treas.
Harold Garno, Legislative Chair-
man Ray Corbett, and Louis Holl-
ander, chairman of the executive
council.
Kennedy Rips 'Icy Indifference' of GOP
Pledges to
Raise U.S.
Standards
Detroit — Before a wildly en-
thusiastic crowd of 80,000 in the
motor city's historic Cadillac
Square, Sen, John F. Kennedy,
Democratic presidential nominee,
launched a blistering attack on
Republican economic policies that
continue whittling away workers'
pay checks.
These "icily indifferent" poli
cies have produced a drop in na-
tional economic growth that has
cost every American family of four
a total of $7,800 in the past six
years, Kennedy said.
The Democratic nominee ham-
mered away on pocketbook issues
and what he called lack of real Re-
publican concern about them: un-
employment, short workweeks, au-
tomation, minimum wage and high
interest rates. This brought roars
of approval from the crowd, as did
Kennedy's references to foreign af-
fairs, education, medical care and
housing.
It was an eager, ready-for-
action crowd which gave the
Democratic standard-bearer its
greatest ovation when he said:
"I ask your help • . . the new
frontier is not what I am prom-
ising you; it is what I am asking
you to do,"
Kennedy spoke following a
streamlined parade which included
18,000 marchers. Since 1948 when
Harry Truman went on from here
to confound political pollster and
pundit alike, Democratic candidates
have launched their presidential
campaigns here. Truman drew a
crowd of 100,000. Adlai Steven-
son did about half as well in 1952
and 1956. The Kennedy magnet
which drew 80,000 buoyed Demo-
cratic hopes that they can carry
Michigan for their presidential can-
didate for the first time since 1944.
Kennedy drew amazing crowds
wherever he went. More than
5,000 were on hand for his late
night arrival at Metropolitan Air-
port after his visit jto Alaska; 2,000
more waited for hours at his hotel;
tens of thousands turned out to
hear him at labor rallies in Pontiac,
Flint and Muskegon.
Pockets of Poverty
"The American people are not
going to tolerate pockets of poverty
and chronic unemployment in this
land, or the decline on our farms,"
he told his Detroit audience.
"I know you agree with me that
racial discrimination must be elimi-
nated everywhere in our society —
in jobs, in housing, in voting, in
lunch counters, and in schools.
"We share a deep-seated belief
{Continued on Page 3)
Truman Hits GOP' 8
'Big Business Day 9
Marion, Ind. — While Dem-
ocrats salute working people
on Labor Day, Republicans
"have a day that is all their
own — Big Business Day," for-
mer Pres. Harry S. Truman
charged here.
In a searing Labor Day
assault on the Eisenhower-
Nixon Administration, Tru-
man said that "Big Business
Day" isn't marked on any
calendars "because the Re-
publicans celebrate it 365
days a year."
The GOP, he said, believes
"in special privilege for a
special class at the top of the
economic ladder." He added
that if Republicans had "a
real sense of decency," they
would be "ashamed to show
their faces on Labor Day."
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
S15,SJxtewth St. H.W.
$2 a year ' " Steaad Claee Poetaae Paid at Waablaiton, D. C.
Saturday, September 10, 1960
No. 37
Meany Gives Top Priority
To Labor's Election Drive
80,000 DETROIT UNIONISTS jam historic Cadillac Square to hear Labor Day speech in which John
F. Kennedy, Democratic presidential candidate, backed by AFL-CIO, flayed Eisenhower Administration's
"icily indifferent" economic policies which he charged have cost every American family of four more
than $7,800 in lost income over past six years. Kennedy drew record crowds at union-sponsored
functions in day-long campaign tour through Michigan.
Huge Parade
Keys Holiday
In New York
New York— The New York
Labor Day parade began at 10 in
the morning under a bright sun.
It ended 11 hours later in the
light of torches carried by the
marchers and giant flood lamps
which swept their still-jubilant
ranks and pierced the night sky.
It was the mightiest demon-
stration of its kind the city had
ever seen. About 174,000 trade
unionists and members of their
families paraded, led by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, as grand mar-
shall, and Harry Van Arsdale Jr.,
president of the city central labor
council. It was watched by some
600,000 people.
Union Label Weather
Even the weather wore a union
label. A few clouds and a gentle
breeze tempered the sun just
enough to make it a perfect day
for marching.
As night came on, amber lights,
specially installed for the parade,
spread a golden glow over Fifth
Avenue along the full line of march
between 26th and 60th Streets.
On every light post was a red, white
and blue shield bearing two Amer-
ican flags and an AFL-CIO banner.
All through the day and into
the night, proud unionists
marched on, shouting their slo-
gans, singing their songs, holding
aloft their banners proclaiming
faith and pride in their organiza-
tions and determination to help
{Continued on Page 1)
AFL-CIO Leaders Say:
Defense and Growth
Essential to Welfare
Strengthened U.S. defenses and a full-employment, full-produc-
tion economy are essential to the welfare of both the nation and the
world, leaders of the AFL-CIO declared in a series of Labor Day
radio broadcasts to the American people.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, in a speech carried by the
American Broadcasting Co., issued'^
an appeal for all-out voter partici-
pation in the November presidential
elections to give the nation "new
leadership . . . that will be more
progressive and more aggressive
(and) that will drive the do-nothing
reactionaries into retreat,"
In the face of the threat by world
communism to Americas "survival
as a nation," and with the national
economy "limping along at half-
speed," the country must make the
choice of whether to "stand pat or
go forward," Meany declared.
In other nationwide radio broad-
casts:
• Vice Pres. Walter P. Reuther,
on the Columbia Broadcasting Sys-
tem, called for mobilization of the
nation's resources to "get the mil-
lions of unemployed back to work,"
and the adoption of leadership "ca-
pable of launching America on a
new course of growth . . . equal to
the present challenge."
• Vice Pres. Al J. Hayes, on
the Mutual Broadcasting System,
said, that instead of simply praise
for American workers "we of labor
would prefer a little more sympa-
thetic consideration for our basic
problem — the problem of keeping
adequate food on the table, a secure
Victory for
Kennedy Is
No. 1 Job
St. Louis— AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany has placed top
priority on labor's participation in
the 1960 presidential campaign
and has issued a strong plea for
election of the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket.
Addressing more than 1,500
delegates to the Machinists' quad-
rennial convention here, Meany
declared that organized labor's No.
1 job in 1960 is to "stand up and be
counted on Election Day."
In a speech interrupted more
than 25 times by cheers and ap-
plause, Meany hit hard at the
failures of the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration and spelled out the
AFL-CIO General Board's detailed
reasons for endorsing John F. Ken-
nedy for President and Lyndon B.
Johnson for Vice President.
In the crucial elections this fall,
Meany declared, "neutrality is not
the answer."
The AFL-CIO president said
that before strongly endorsing
the Democratic ticket and calling
for its election, the General Board
carefully surveyed the eight-year
record of the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration and weighed the
voting records of Kennedy and
Nixon.
Referring to Nixon throughout
his speech as "the candidate^ of
(Sen. Barry) Goldwater," Meany
said the GOP presidential nominee's
voting record on direct labor issues
has been "100 percent wrong,"
while Kennedy's has been "100
percent right."
IAM Pres. Al J. Hayes, in his
keynote address, lashed out at the
"suffocating climate of anti-union-
ism that hangs over the heads of
(Continued on Page 8)
Unions Rap 1st Offer
Of GE, Westinghouse
New York — The General Electric Co's first contract proposal,
tendered after six weeks of bargaining, is "totally unresponsive to
the demands" of members of the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers, IUE Pres. James B. Carey declared.
The offer, which includes elimination of the cost-of-living clause
in the current contract expiring Oct.^
1, takes "several steps backward"
roof over our heads, and decent
clothing on our children."
• Sec-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler, on the National Broadcasting
Co., called for expansion of both
national production and national
income, declaring that "to strength-
en our economic power . . . has
become just as imperative an obli-
{Continued on Page 5)
and disregards the principle that
employes should be protected
against the ravages of inflation,
Carey added.
The IUE bargains for more than
25 percent of the 240,000 employes
represented by some 100 unions
with which GE is currently negoti-
ating.
A few days later the Westing-
house Electric Corp. offered the
union what was described as "a
bad carbon copy" of the GE pro-
posal by IUE Sec-Treas. Al Hart-
nett and Robert Nellis, chairman
of the union's National Westing-
house Conference Board.
The other five unions affiliated
to the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept/s General Electric-Westing-
house Conference joined the IUE
{Continued on Page 1)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1960
PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD STRIKE begins on enthusiastic note after three years of futile nego-
tiations as Transport Workers Pres. Michael J. Quill (center with hat) leads picket line at Philadel-
phia's 30th Street station. Striking maintenance workers including TWU members and members of
three other AFL-CIO unions, seek job protection and restrictions on contracting out work.
25,000 Members of 4 Unions Strike
Biggest Railroad for Job Security
By Dave Perlman
Philadelphia — Nearly 25,000 maintenance workers on the Pennsylvania Railroad, fed up with more
than three years of futile bargaining over job security issues, have dug in for what Transport Workers
Pres. Michael J. Quill predicted would be a "long, hard strike."
Manning the picket lines which have shut down the nation's largest railroad for the first time in
its 114-year history were members of three crafts affiliated with the AFL-CIO Railway Employes
Dept., along with TWU members.^
The issues are basically the same
for both groups of strikers — job
protection through curbs on farm-
ing out of maintenance work and
rules specifying and protecting
work assignments of the various
era Its.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, in
a nationwide television statement
later amplified in a press interview,
described the company position as
"reasonable" and said the strike
could be settled if Quilt "wants to
be reasonable."
Mitchell added that "this is the
first time in seven years I have ever
taken a position publicly pro or
con on management or labor."
Quill accused Mitchell of
"throwing the full weight of
with both side§" at the same table
to explain his proposals for a full-
scale study by the tripartite group
which would include union, em-
ployer, and either government or
public representatives. The plan
resembles in a number of respects
earlier proposals made by the five
operating brotherhoods but re-
Joint Study Indicated
For Rail Work Rules
Chicago — Railroad operating unions have served counter-pro-
posals on management in the thorny area of work rules amidst
growing indications that the entire problem would be referred to
a special presidential commission.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell met separately with top union and
management negotiators and then'^
jected by the railroads.
After an 80-minute meeting,
agreement was reached to set ujp
a 12-member subcommittee to con-
sider the plan further at a Sept. 14
meeting.
The operating unions brought
with them a series of work rule
proposals which they said would
bring conditions of train crews
up to those of workers in nearly
every other industry.
These included compenstation
for night work and shift differen-
tials, payment for layover time
away from home, full overtime pay,
and job protection for workers af-
fected by mergers and technological
changes.
They asked also for a voice in
determining the size, qualifications
and training of railroad train crews.
The chiefs of the five unions
involved — the Firemen & Engine-
men, Trainmen and Switchmen,
all AFL-CIO affiliates, and the
unaffiliated Locomotive Engi-
neers and Conductors— described
their proposal as being "in the
best interests of the public as well
as the industry/'
They said it is "in sharp contrast"
with management proposals for
rules changes which "would wipe
out 350,000 jobs, a half-century of
collective bargaining and seriously
impair the efficiency of a vital pub-
lic-service industry."
Railroads Sued on
Strike Insurance
New York — The Railroad
Trainmen, challenging the
legality of the rail industry's
strike insurance program,
have sued in federal court
here for $10 million in lost
wages and expenses arising
out of the recent 26-day
strike against the Long Island
Rail Road.
The union charged in its
brief that a tentative pre-
strike settlement was deliber-
ately scuttled by management
at the instigation of other rail-
roads and as a result of the
strike insurance program,
which paid the LIRR $50,000
a day during the walkout
BRT attorneys said the
strike insurance represented
an illegal pooling of railroad
revenues in violation of Inter-
state Commerce Commission
regulations.
the Eisenhower Administration
against the striking workers" and
warned TWU locals against
"further strikebreaking efforts by
pro-company government offi-
cials."
He charged Mitchell with "tor-
pedoing our efforts to settle the
strike with an honorable contract"
and said the effect of the labor sec-
retary's intervention has been "fur-
ther stalling" by the company.
Unneccessary contracting out of
maintenance work — often to non-
union firms — has been a major fac-
tor in reducing PRR employment
from 125,000 in 1950 to fewer
than 75,000 at the time of the
strike, union spokesmen declared.
They said the layoff problems have
become considerably worse since
June 1957, when the job security
negotiations got under way.
Union sources estimate that
the Pennsylvania stands to collect
$600,000 a day under the strike
insurance program of the nation's
railroads. Company officials
have refused to make public the
amount of insurance benefits
which are supposed to reimburse
struck railroads for all fixed costs
during a strike.
Anti-union charges made by PRR
management in newspaper adver-
tisements, statements to the press
and in letters to employes were
sharply attacked by Machinists
Grand Lodge Rep. E. W. Wiesner,
spokesman for the system federa-
tion affiliated with the Railway
Employes Dept.
He said: "Management is trying
to lead the public into believing we
'flouted' the Railway Labor Act
when it knows that we exhausted
all of its procedures before strik-
ing."
Oil Union Drives
For 18-Cent Hike
Denver— The Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers have served wage
reopening notices on the oil indus-
try, formally opening a drive for an
18-cent hourly general increase.
Knight said the 18-cent figure
was "more than justified" by pro-
ductivity gains and cost-of-living
increases since January 1959, date
of the last general increase in the
industry.
Sales,, Froductkeci Dojwn :
Danger Sign Seen
As Economy Dips
As economists expressed uncertainty over the nation's economic
health, the government for the second time revised downward its
estimates of business investment for this year, steel plants continued
at about 50 percent of capacity and business sales continued to
decline.
The most ominous warning came'f ; : : ~ : — •
with the estimate bv the Dept. of me " 1 °, f sl ?* 1 orders , ^ cause slu 8-
Commerce and the Securities and 8 ,sh . sales have resulted in mQXint '
Exchange Commission that capital
outlays lor plant and equipment for
1960 will total about $36.4 billion.
This is 12 percent above 1959,
but it' compares to what would have
been a 14 percent increase when the
government originally forecast a
$37 billion total. Last year's total
outlay was $32.5 billion.
The retreat from the early esti-
mates of business expansion plans
fired fresh concern over the*
health of the economy because
such expansion has a rippling
effect in producing orders for ma-
chine tools, equipment and so
on.
The government report, based on
surveys of business firms in late
July and August, offered no reasons
for the failure to meet the earlier
estimates of expansion plans.
A Wall Street Journal survey of
major steel consumers promises
"only a modest rise" in steel output
in the final four months of this
year. Steel output had slipped to
about 50.6 percent of capacity, the
Journal noted, and may go lower
befofe the year-end upturn.
The auto industry — which
takes about 20 percent of steel
production — is being relied upon
to spur a fall recovery. However
the plans of the auto makers are
uncertain because of the large
stocks of 1960 model cars in the
hands of retailers and the larger
proportion of compact cars which
require less steel.
In addition, the Journal reported
big steel users as planning a curtail-
ing inventories.
Despite the variety of predic-
tions and maneuverings geared to
the November election, econo-
mists of every hue seem to agree
that an economic problem of
recession proportions will face
the incoming administration in
January.
The Journal quotes a financial
economist as labeling the Eisen-
hower Administration's line as "half
hogwash and half wishful thinking."
A government economist, look-
ing at the tapering off of personal
income and retail sales, concluded
"It's not an optimistic picture/'
Harvard University Prof. Sey-
mour Harris was quoted as ob-
serving that the economy has
been defying "past cyclical pat-
terns." Unless the government
acts, he added, the nation "could
have a recession" next year.
Against this picture of the private
economy, the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration was seen moving to help
prime the pump to the extent it can.
This involves steps by the Federal
Reserve System to loosen credit;
the lowering of mortgage down-
payment requirements by the Fed-
eral Housing Administration; the
second-thought Administration ap-
proval of an extended veterans'
housing program; accelerated fed-
eral highway construction; prefer-
ence on government contracts lor
labor surplus areas, and some $339
million .in autumn soil bank rental
payments for the rural areas.
Court Closes Shipyard
To End Safety Hazards
Philadelphia — The Labor Dept., spurred by a Boilermakers local,
has used for the first time the injunctive powers in the Longshore-
men's & Harbor Workers' Compensation Act to close down a
company until safety hazards are corrected.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell obtained a temporary restraining
order in U.S. Dstrict Court here'^ -
against the Keystone Drydock &
Ship Repair Co. after Boilermakers
Local 329 had threatened to strike
unless the company complies with
government safety regulations.
Department safety inspectors ver-
ified union complaints that job haz-
ards uncovered on previous inspec-
tions had not been corrected, and
charged the company with viola-
tions which included:
• Machinery with unprotected
moving parts.
• Scaffolds without proper back-
railings and ladders with broken or
missing rungs.
• Use of temporary lights with
cords that had exposed conductor
wires.
• Permanent stairways with no
siderails or with siderails which
were decayed or rotten
another opportunity to get the com-
pany to comply with the depart-
ment's safety regulations.
Mitchell, in announcing the in-
junction action, declared the Labor
Dept. "will not tolerate unsafe con-
ditions maintained by those em-
ployers who choose to disregard the
law and endanger the lives of their
employes."
Corrigan reported that, as a
result of the restraining order
issued by Dist. Judge C. William
Kraft Jr., the company had put a
22-man crew of union members
to work repairing and replacing
unsafe equipment and facilities.
The temporary restraining order
stays in effect until Sept. 12 when a
hearing on a permanent injunction
is scheduled. It can be lifted before
Failure to equip all employes then only if the Labor Dept. certi-
entering holds which last contained
combustible liquids with proper res-
piratory protection.
• Use of portable electric tools
which were not properly grounded.
• Failure to provide adequate
first-aid facilities.
Local 329 Business Mgr. William
E. Corrigan told the AFL-CIO
News that the union's safety com-
mittee had repeatedly pressed man-
agement to correct the hazards and
had been given promises of im-
provement "which were not kept."
He said the union agreed to defer
a strike to give the Labor Dept. 4 tions.
fies that the hazards have been
eliminated.
The safety regulations and the
enforcement power are based on a
1958 amendment to the Longshore-
men's & Harbor Workers' Compen-
saton Act which was strongly sup-
ported by the AFL-CIO and its
affiliated unions in the field. Pre-
viously the government could only
recommend safety programs and
safety measures. The Bureau of
Employes* Compensation, which
administered the act, had no power
to issue enforceable safety regula-
AFl^OO NEWS, "WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, I960
Page TTiree
Labor Rally Draws 80,000:
Kennedy Flays GOP
At Detroit Kickoff
(Continued from Page 1)
in free collective bargaining, and
in the growth and development of
free and responsible unions. I am
proud of the fact that I was en-
dorsed by the AFL-CIO for I know
that the American labor movement
wants for America what I want
for America: the elimination of
poverty and unemployment, the re-
establishment of America's world
leadership, the guarantee of full
civil rights for all our citizens. For
the labor movement is people and
the goals of the labor movement
are the goals of all the people."
Economic growth is at the root
of America's problems, Kennedy
said. During the Truman Ad-
ministration, he pointed out, the
average annual rate of growth
was 4.5 percent; under the Re-
publican Administration it has
been 2.25 percent During the
past years of "drift and inde-
cision" America's rate of growth
was surpassed by almost every
major industrial nation.
A really healthy rate of growth,
the Massachusetts senator asserted,
would end the "gnawing doubts"
about national defense expenditures,
provide the best possible schools,
provide impetus for full employ-
ment and end shameful standards
of living for 32 million people who
exist on an average annual income
of $2,600 for a family of four.
Jackson Says NLRB
Heavily Anti-Labor
Youngstown, O. — Demo-
cratic National Chairman
Henry M. Jackson has
charged that the National La-
bor Relations Board has been
"packed" with men opposed
to trade unionism.
In a Labor Day address
here, Jackson accused the
Administration of "loading
the NLRB with men unfriend-
ly to labor" in order to "har-
ass the labor movement."
He called on labor to sac-
rifice and work harder in this
decade "so we'll be stronger
in the 1970s," pointing out
that despite their efforts, anti-
labor forces "couldn't stop
labor from organizing (and)
couldn't stop unions from
growing."
Kennedy took Pres. Eisenhower
to task for stating Aug. 10 that
auto production may exceed 6 mil-
lion and thus produce "really a very
fine year." "The facts of the mat-
ter are that we made 7.5 million
cars a few years ago," Kennedy
told the audience which included
many of Michigan's 260,000 unem-
ployed. "If this is 'a very fine year'
I don't want to see a very bad one."
"While these men are idle — while
these facilities are idle — we see
critical needs on every side of us
that could consume and absorb their
output, if only given a chance. We
see the need for schools, for high-
ways, for dams and power plants,
homes and hospitals, stronger* de-
fenses and a rebirth of our cities.
These projects need busy plants and
working men. We have the tools
« — the legislation and the programs
■ — to put men back to work and, in
1961, we are going to do it."
Kennedy said automation can
bring lighter work, lower prices
and better jobs "under a govern-
ment which cares for people — a
government which is unwilling to
have men thrown on the scrap
heap like obsolete machines."
Scare money and high interest
have also served as a brake on eco-
nomic growth, he declared. Inter-
est costs on a $10,000 30-year
mortgage have gone up $3,300 un-
der the Republican Administration,
Kennedy pointed out.
Democratic victories in Novem-
ber producing four or five additional
votes in the House and Senate can
assure passage of both a medical
care plan under the social security
system and a $1.25 minimum wage,
he said.
The Democratic nominee called
for an enlightened foreign aid pro-
gram of "sharing our plenty" and
decisive, responsive leadership to
produce an enduring peace.
Kennedy was preceded to the
platform by Auto Workers Pres.
Walter P. Reuther who urged his
listeners to face up to the challenge
of "extending the frontiers of hu-
man betterment."
Charging that America has had
seven years of "government by
clever public relations," Reuther
went on to describe Vice Pres.
Nixon as a candidate who has "had
his face lifted in Madison Ave."
The wrapping is brand new, he said,
"but it's the same bid merchandise."
"We are losing in Europe, Asia,
Latin America and in Africa not
because we are unequal to the
challenge," the AFL-CIO vice pres-
ident declared, "but because the
Administration does not see the
great opportunities for meeting it."
Reuther said America is heading
into a third recession because Re-
publicans are obsessed with a bal-
anced budget and an unbalanced
economy. "We have no deficits in
economic resources," he asserted.
'The deficits in America are the de-
ficit of leadership."
G. Mennen Williams, addressing
his last Labor Day rally as Michi-
gan's six-term governor, took dou-
ble-barreled aim at Nixon, describ-
ing the GOP nominee as "a man of
experience" in anti-labor and anti-
public welfare legislation who will
have no success in selling his "new
look."
"What is the record of this
new-old Nixon?" Williams asked.
"Out of 15 key management-la-
bor votes, he voted anti-labor 14
times.
"But Sen. Kennedy has an out-
standing pro-labor record. In the
last congress he was complimented
for pulling the anti-labor teeth out
of the Landrum-Griffin bill. On
33 key labor-management issues
since 1947, Kennedy has voted
right on every last one of them."
Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.),
said the defeat of Forand-type medi-
cal care legislation demonstrated
the great need for new Washington
leadership with vision, courage and
purpose. Also speaking was Michi-
gan Lt.-Gov. John B. Swainson,
backed by labor to succeed Wil-
liams as governor.
Freedom Faces
Red Challenge-Ike
The United States, where free
effort has produced living stan-
dards, working conditions and se-
curity that outstrip those of any
other society in history, is now be-
ing challenged to show that it can
"make progress in freedom," Pres.
Eisenhower said in his last Labor
Day message from the White
House.
The challenge, he explained,
comes "from an aggressive rival,
communism,' 1 which is based on
"an attitude of life diametrically
opposed to ours" and under which
"the individual worker is harnessed
to an enterprise directed by the
state."
"Their system is a powerful ma-
chine, capable and ruthless, but it
lacks one essential element: the
spark of freedom which Americans
hold most dear, and without which
no sustained or satisfying achieve-
ment is possible," he declared.
Eisenhower made no direct refer-
ence to the trade union movement
in his Labor Day message.
THREE OUTSTANDING LABOR figures have been reappointed to top Democratic National Com-
mittee posts. They are (left to right) Pres. George M. Harrison of the Railway Clerks, vice-chairman
of the committee and head of the labor division for the Kennedy-Johnson campaign; Sec. Joseph D.
Keenan of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, vice-chairman of the labor division; and Ar-
thur J. Goldberg, AFL-CIO special counsel, secretary of the labor division. Keenan will travel with
Kennedy during the campaign.
Hotel Workers Have Right to Wear
Un ion Pins, NLRB Exam inerRu les
Tampa, Fla. — Members of the Hotel & Restaurant Employes have the right to wear union buttons
and pins on the job, a National Labor Relations Board trial examiner has ruled. He found the Floridan
Hotel — one of Tampa's largest — guilty of an unfair labor practice for threatening its workers with
dismissal if they wore their union emblem.
NLRB Examiner John C. Fischer flatly rejected the management claim that a rule banning union
insignia was designed to avoid of-^
fense to hotel guests who include,
management attorneys asserted,
"officials from large firms and man-
ufacturing companies."
"The real purpose" of the rule,
the trial examiner declared, "was to
interfere with the rights of employes
and eradicate union representation
at the hotel."
The pins themselves were "in
good taste" and the single hotel
guest who allegedly protested
"certainly • . . does not represent
a true cross-section of the opinion
of the hotel guests," Fischer
pointed out.
Local 104 of the Hotel & Res-
taurant Employes, which had won
a NLRB representation election in
October 1959 and signed a contract
in February 1960, distributed union
pins to all members last March as
Kennedy and Johnson
'Needed,' Hoosiers Told
Indianapolis, Ind. — Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson have the "courage and vision" the nation must have to lead
it during the next four years, William McSorley, assistant to the
president of the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept.,
declared here.
Addressing delegates to the sec-^
ond constitutional convention of the
part of a drive for 100 percent
membership. At the time, 110 of
the 130 hotel employes were mem-
bers.
'Legitimate Activity'
A posted notice by management
banning the display of "badges of
any kind" was followed, the hotel
conceded, by warnings to wait-
resses, bartenders, maids, kitchen
employes, the bell captain and en-
gine room workers that they would
be fired if they continued to wear
their union pins.
Declaring that "the right of em-
ployes 1 to wear union insignia at
work has long been established and
recognized as a reasonable and le-
gitimate form of union activity,"
the NLRB examiner recommended
that the company be ordered to post
a notice disavowing the ban on
badges and promising not to in-
Indiana State AFL-CIO, McSorley
said the Democratic standard-bear-
ers in the November presidential
election can be depended upon to
help the country recover from the
present precarious international
crisis and to straighten out its do-
mestic plight.
"We feel we have lost so much
prestige in international rela-
tions," he said, "and with a stalled
economy with 5 million unem-
ployed, that we need men of vi-
sion to lead our people to a higher
standard of living."
McSorley took a verbal poke at
Vice-Pres. Nixon, who will open his
campaign here next week after a
sojourn in a Washington hospital.
"In every opportunity he has had
in Congress and as Vice-President,
Richard Nixon has always voted
against the interests of the working
people," he said.
Nixon was also criticized by Dal-
las Sells, president of the State
AFL-CIO, in his convention open-
ing address. He said that while
the Vice President was enjoying the
benefits of "socialized medicine" as
provided by hospitalization financed
by public funds, he was at the same
time helping the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration scuttle medical and
health legislation in Congress.
Turning to the Indiana political
scene, Sells told the delegates
the No. 1 goal of the state labor
organization is to repeal the In-
diana "right-to-work" law when
the legislature convenes next Jan-
uary.
The four-day convention had be-
fore it several proposed amend-
ments to the state labor body's con-
stitution, one of which would pro-
vide for biennial conventions at
times, and places, designated by the
executive board, and another to
change the convention voting pro-
cedure.
The latter proposal provides that
on questions before the convention
a rollcall vote would be taken upon
a request of 30 percent of the dele-
gates present and voting. Upon the
rollcall each delegate would be en-
titled to cast one vote for the mem-
bers he represents, but not to exceed
1,000 votes. The votes of an or-
ganization would be divided among
its delegates as it designated, other-
wise there would be an equal divi-
sion*
terfere with the right of employes
to take part in union activities.
Although conceding that there
could be "special circumstances"
under which an employer could
temporarily ban the wearing of un-
ion badges — where an "incendiary
atmosphere" existed or for the pur-
pose of "preventing violence" —
Fisher declared that no such cir-
cumstances existed at the Floridan
Hotel.
Virginia State
Labor Backs
Kennedy
Roanoke, Va. — Delegates to the
Virginia State AFL-CIO convention
unanimously voted endorsement of
the Kennedy-Johnson ticket, called
on affiliated locals to put on active
registration and vote drives and
doubled the per capita allotment
to the state Committee on Political
Education.
In other actions, the convention
called for legislation giving state,
county and city employes the right
to organize and bargain collectively,
urged passage of a law prohibiting
importation of strikebreakers, de-
manded repeal of the so-called
"stranger picketing" law and re-
affirmed opposition to the state
"right-to-work" law.
Delegates pledged support of
the nationwide boycott of Sears
Roebuck & Co. They also ap-
plauded a call for farmer-labor
cooperation by Virginia Farmers
Union Pres. John B. Vance.
The convention raised the per
capita payment to the state body
from 8 to 9 cents a month, with the
extra penny allocated to COPE.
Delegates voted to make it manda-
tory for all affiliated unions to pay
per capita tax on their full member-
ship.
Dyers & Printers
Get Pension Hike
New York — Some 1,700 retired
textile workers in the Dyers &
Printers Pension Fund will receive
an increase in benefits in Septem-
ber, the Textile Workers Union of
America has announced.
Benefits which now range from
$17.55 to $29.25 a month and av-
erage $25 will be boosted by $1.54
to $3.50, depending on length of
service, it was announced.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER I960
Make Xext 59 Bars Count
SEN. JOHN F. KENNEDY launched bis campaign for the presi-
dency in historic Cadillac Square in Detroit with a simple but
eloquent acknowledgement of organized labor's support of his
candidacy.
With the frankness, candor and honesty that contrast so markedly
with the empty and ambiguous generalities of his opponent,
Kennedy said:
"1 am proud of the fact that I was endorsed by the AFL-CIO
for I know that the American labor movement wants for America
what I want for America; the elimination of poverty and unem-
ployment, the re-establishment of America's world leadership, the
guarantee of full civil rights for all citizens. For the labor move-
ment is people and the goals of the labor movement are the goals
of all the people."
In his eight years in the Senate Kennedy has demonstrated and
recorded his belief that the "goals of the labor movement are the
goals of all the people. " On every issue where the fight was be-
tween the money interest and the people's interest — housing,
schools, health and all the rest — Kennedy voted with the people.
His reaffirmation in Detroit of his dedication to and belief in the
goals and objectives of the American labor movement and the com-
plete blackout of organized labor by Vice Pres. Nixon underline the
imperative need to mobilize trade unionists across the nation in
support of Jack Kennedy.
This means a redoubled effort to get every union member
registered and eligible to vote*
This means carrying the vital issues of the campaign — the issue
of economic growth or stagnation — to every place where trade
unionists live and work. This means a redoubled effort to collect
voluntary contributions to put financial muscle into the campaign.
And it calls for an intensive drive to get every unionist to the polls
on Election Day.
The final decision is only 59 days away. Make 'em count!
Cynical Obstructionism
THE POST-CONVENTION SESSION of the 86th Congress
was dominated by a cynical strategy of obstructionism com-
pounded in equal parts of the threat of presidential vetoes, the
reactionary Dixiecrat-Republican coalition and the perversion of
legislative rules and procedures.
The object of the stFategy was to block or kill important legis-
lation that would have benefited the nation — wage and hour
improvements, aid to education, meaningful medical care for the
aged, housing and situs picketing.
The Republicans, fully aware that Pres. Eisenhower would, veto
legislation dealing effectively with these issues and thus impair the
party's posture for the 1960 campaign, planned deliberately to keep
such legislation from reaching the White House.
This particular approach to "providing for the general welfare"
can be effectively dealt with in the Nov. 8 elections. The election
of Kennedy and Johnson will place in the White House a man
who fought for the legislation throughout the 86th Congress.
A liberal Democrat in the White House will mean a half dozen
or mote critical votes that fell by the^wayside. Coupled with an
increase in liberal congressmen and senators, the blockading and
strangling <$f legislation in the name of "traffic control" can be
effectively smashed and democratic procedures reflecting the will
of the voters instituted.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Me any, President-
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey t Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Suberiptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve .
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran .
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Vol. V
Saturday, September 10, 1960
No- 37
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
DRAWN FOR THE
/\FL-ClO NEW*
Federationist Editorial Says:
Basic Issue of the Campaign
Is America's Economic Growth
The following editorial by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany appears in the September 1960 issue of the
AFL-CIO American Federationist,
THIS ISSUE of the Federationist includes the
text of the General Board's analysis of the
party platforms and the national candidates. I
hope every niember of the AFL-CIO will study
this document, which in my opinion effectively
demonstrates why we are supporting the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket.
While the AFL-CIO consistently adheres to its
basic policy of refusing to bind itself to any poli-
tical party, we must of necessity evaluate the party
platforms in order that we can play our proper
part in a national election.
Contrary to what is said in some circles, there
is a genuine difference between the basic approach
of our two major parties; and the most dramatic
illustration of that difference is in the field of eco-
nomic policy.
The Democratic platform agrees with us that
our national rate of economic growth must be
much greater than it is now. The platform says
flatSy that it is &ie responsibility of the federal
government to make sure this growth takes
place.
The Republicans, on the other hand, give only
backhanded recognition to the need for growth;
and they generally rely upon private enterprise
to do it.
It is perfectly clear from the record of the last
eight years that private enterprise, even with all
the encouragement — I might almost say handouts
— it has gotten since 1953, will not and cannot
bring about the kind of growth we must have.
GREATER CAPITAL INVESTMENT,
greater productive capacity, higher manhour pro-
ductivity — and those are what the business com-
munity looks upon as economic growth — are not
enough. We need growth in terms of job oppor-
tunities and purchasing power, to make full use
of our bigger, more efficient productive capacity.
Only last month, Khrushchev predicted that the
Soviet Union would produce more steel than the
United States next year. And why? Not be-
cause the Soviet plant is bigger, but because ours
has been running at about 50 percent.
That type problem the Republican approach
will not solve.
The b>u e of economic growth is basic in this
election because it will decide whether we will
have prosperity or periodic recessions; enough
jobs for those who want and need work; pro-
ductive power greater than that of the Soviet
Union; and whether our prestige, as the lead-
ing nation of the free world, will grow or shrink.
This basic issue affects many others. A pro-
gram by the federal government to stimulate eco-
nomic growth — the kind of program set forth in
the Democratic platform — would involve more
schools, more housing, a stronger wage-hour law,
better medical care, aid to depressed areas and a
whole range of activities which we advocate and
which the Republicans oppose either in whole or
in part.
It's as simple as that. And on that simple but
fundamental basis, it seems to me that the election
of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket is of the greatest
importance to the welfare of ourselves, our move-
ment and our nation.
U.S. Richest but
A Lot Is Wrong
There are still a lot of things wrong in our
country. All we have to do is take a look at some
of them. We're the richest country in the world,
but we still have slums — slums that breed diseases
and crime.
We have the highest living standard in the
world, but we still have depressed areas where
people live in poverty without hope.
Our wage scale is better than that of any other
country, but there are still millions among us not
yet covered by any minimum wage law.
We have won social security for the aged, but
too many lack medical care insurance against the
illnesses that come with age.
We still have bad schools — overcrowded, build-
ings about to collapse, not enough teachers — and
poor pay for those we have.
And there is still segregation, and discrimina-
tion against minorities which must be eliminated
— in our schools, on the job, in the union — elimi-
nated everywhere.
Yes, we have come far — and we still have a
lot farther to go. America wouldn't be America
if we had ever stopped on the way (AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany in the AFL-CIO film "The
Land of Promise").
AFL-CIO mWS, WAmt^tQN. IX_C* SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1960
„,..-. y .. -- ■ . .. . ■ ,,,1,.^ ■ ■■ . . ... .. ,
Pa*e Flv
Morgan Says:
'Galluping' Indecision
Voters as Universe Quivers
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Motgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Lmten to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDTj
F" THE POLLS can be believed, the American
electorate has developed an extreme ease of
what might be called Galluping indecision. The
voters are fickle as fleas, or so the pattern looks,
jumping from one side to the other and lighting
nowhere long. Dr. Gallup s record speaks for
itself:
As the Congress recon-
vened last January, Gallup
pollsters asked their sam-
ples to assume the election
were immediate and to
choose between Nixon and
Kennedy. Published on
Jan. 24, the results showed
53 percent for the Vice
President, 47 percent for
the Massachusetts senator.
On Apr. 1 the findings Morgan
were exactly reversed: Kennedy 53 percent, Nixon
47.
By May 3 the Democrat had gained one point,
the Republican had lost one. Score: Kennedy 54,
Nixon 46.
Then, in the midst of the U-2 scandal and the
Paris summit crisis, there was a variation in the
question: It there is a summit meeting next year,
whom do you want to represent the U.S.? An-
swer on June 9: Nixon 49 percent, Kennedy 37
percent, undecided 14 percent.
On June 14 it was back to the presidential
choice and Nixon had nosed ahead, 5 1 percent to
49.
On July 5, just as the Democratic convention
waus getting under way, Kennedy had. recaptured
the lead, 52 percent to 48. Then after both par-
ties had chosen their tickets came the stunner
on Aug. 17: Nixon-Lodge 50 percent, Johnson-
Kennedy 44, undecided 6.
TWO WEEKS LATER, it was happily enough,
a dead heat: Democratic ticket 47 percent; Re-
publican ticket 47 percent; undecided still 6.
What causes these mercurial fluctuations? A
change in Sen. Kennedy's haircut? An above-
par rating for the Vice President on the Jack Paar
show? An imagined sibling rivalry with one or
the other? Status-seeking? Or the madness of
the dog days of August?
As We See It:
I, for one, do not Jia ve the remotest idea but
it is hard for me to believe that the population
is as impulsively indecisive as those figures tend
to indicate. What is, then, the real mood of the
country? I do not know that either but I am
going to have the outrageous presumption to
suggest what, in part, it should be:
A restiveness and a searching, in the knowledge
that no civilization has endured by sinking back
on its comforts and being satisfied with its achieve
ments.
A conviction that however exciting and impor
tant, triumphs in the conquest of outer space can
haye little lasting meaning and can prove to be a
dangerous diversion unless we spend more time
exploring the space between our ears.
THE THING THAT COUNTS, basically, is
man, his freedom and his security in a world
precariously balanced in the turbulence^of a scien-
tific revolution that threatens nuclear destruction
on, the one hand and a kind of laboratory-con-
trolled Utopia of health and plenty on the other.
The world balance quivers not only in the
whirlwind of scientific discovery but on the great
heaving surface of social and economic change.
To keep pace with this upheaval, to try not
only not to be buried by it but to influence and
guide it, we will have to make some sacrifices,
including, far more than we have, the luxuries
of prejudice.
When a fellow prisoner beat up a young white
student leader of Negro sit-ins in Florida the
other day in a Jacksonville jail he broke more
than his jaw; he drove deeper the crack in our
image in the Congo. When we demand of our
government, how come the Communists have
made such quick inroads in Africa we should
ask ourselves how costly is the custom of denying
the diplomats of a dozen new African nations
decent, desegregated places to live in the capital
of the United States. When a preacher dispenses
anti-Catholic or any other kind of bigotry, who
denounces him? Who cares about morality, jus-
tice and such?
TO DEAL WITH THESE and kindred matters
a society must have leadership and the careful
choice of this leadership is what a national elec-
tion is, or should be, all about. You would hardly
know it, at this stage of the campaign. The deci-
sion should go to the man who can summon the
best in us. If there is no summons, or if we don't
respond, we will deserve what we get, all around.
Biemiller Forecasts Reform
Of House Rules Committee
Andrew J. Biemiller, director of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Legislation, forecast some means of
reforming the House Rules Committee would be
found when the 87th Congress convenes in Jan-
uary. Biemiller made the prediction in an inter-
view on the recent short session of the Congress
in "As We See It," AFL-CIO public service edu-
cational program on the ABC radio network (1:15
p. m., EDT, Sundays).
"The Rules Committee has long been a stum-
bling block to the passage of liberal legislation/'
Biemiller asserted. "This is where the coalition
of reactionary southern Democrats and reaction-
ary Republicans has done its most effective work/'
Biemiller noted that the committee refused to
grant a rule in the recent short session that would
have given the House an opportunity to vote
on housing, federal aid to education and situs
picketing.
"It is supposed to act like a traffic cop," said
Biemiller, "but the Rules Committee has acted
to just plain stop traffic. That isn't the job of
a traffic cop. This is a reform that's badly
needed/*
Biemiller said that repeated threats of a Presi-
dential veto had strengthened the conservative
coalition in Congress.
"It is our definite feeling that with a new man
in the White House, especially if he is a hard-
driving, vigorous liberal like Senator Kennedy,
the fear and effect of a veto will disappear.
"And even more important, as Walter Lipp-
mann pointed out in a recent column, a vigorous
President ma,kes a great difference in the voting
habits of the congressmen themselves.' This was
evidenced many times in the past If there is a
vigorous leader in the White House, it is a lot
easier to pass a good, sound legislative program.
Easier for a President
"The point that Lippmann was making in par-
ticular was that people ask: 'Why couldn't Sen.
Kennedy find the four votes that were necessary
to shift to his side of the fight on the medical care
bill?' Lippmann's answer was that Pres. Ken-
nedy would have found it much easier to find
those four votes than did Sen. Kennedy."
Biemiller praised Sen. Kennedy, Sen. Winston
L. Prouty (R-Vt.) and the liberal members of the
conference committee on the minimum wage for
the fight they made in committee.
"We agree with Sen. Kennedy that it was better
not to have a bill than accept the inadequate
measure that the House demanded/' he declared.
SEAL OF CITY OF PHILADELPHIA is affixed to the Union Label
Week proclamation issued by Mayor Richardson Dilworth, left.
With the mayor are Josephine Mullin, secretary-treasurer of the
Pennsylvania Union Label Trades Dept., and Norman Blumberg,
business manager of the Philadelphia Central Labor Union.
Labor Urges Growth,
Strengthened Defense
Suifridffe Chides 'K'
For 'Cierk' Sneer
"It is far better to be a free grocery clerk
in America than to be the top dog in the
Soviet Union."
That's what Pres. James A. Suffridge of
the Retail Clerks told Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev in a letter to Moscow protesting
Mr. K's reported statement about Vice Pres.
Richard Nixon: "He is a fumbler. He is not
a politician, but a grocery clerk."
(Continued from Page 1)
gation as to reinforce our military
power. Both are essential to na-
tional security. . . ."
Meany told his radio audience
that the pride which working men
and women have in America "does
not blind them to the fact that there
are still many things wrong in it.'
He cited, in particular, depressed
areas "where people live in poverty
with little hope of improving their
conditions/' slums "that breed dis-
ease and crime;" and the fact that
"a shockingly large proportion of
American workers receive substand-
ard pay."
In addition, he said, the aged
still lack medical insurance against
costly illnesses; the nation's schools
are "dangerously overcrowded" and
its teachers are "miserably under-
paid;" and racial and religious dis
crimination persists.
Tut America to Work*
Reuther, president of the Auto
Workers, said "the struggle between
freedom and tyranny will not be
won by merely closing the missile
gap." Declaring there are "other
equally serious gaps" in America,
he said the primary task is "to get
America back to work."
"No amount of sugar-coated
public relations handouts," Reuther
declared, "can hide the brutal eco-
nomic facts that more than 5 per-
cent of the total work force is un-
employed and that millions of other
workers are only partially em-
ployed. Twenty percent of our
overall industrial productive capac-
ity stands idle."
He accused Pres. Eisenhower of
perpetrating a "cruel hoax" on the
American people by twice vetoing
distressed area legislation and then,
in the last days of the congressional
session, asking Congress to pass a
bill to help the areas of chronic
unemployment.
Hayes, president of the Machin-
ists, said the fact that American
labor has come "half-way toward
our goal ... of eliminating pov-
3rty" has "concealed the reality"
ihat most American workers still
lave failed to achieve adequate
inancial security.
The IAM leader cited a Dept. of
Labor report showing that the aver-
lge city family with two children
leeds an income of about $6,000
i year if it is going to attain a
modest but adequate level of
iYing."
"That means that a $3-an-hour
wage for a 40-hour week is barely
enough for a modest but ade-
quate level of living — if you have
only two children/' Hayes said.
He added that average earnings
in manufacturing industries in the
U.S. last year were only $2.22 an
hour, including overtime. More-
over, more than 8 million American
families have incomes of less than
$2,500 a year, he declared.
Growth Is the Key
Schnitzier declared that "eco-
nomic growth clearly has become
the key to national security and
national well-being," and charged
that America has been "handi-
capped by complacency and by lack
of imaginative leadership."
In the coming years, he main-
tained, the nation faces "serious
trouble" unless the economy ex-
pands so that an additional 4 mil-
lion jobs can be provided each year
to take care of the growing labor
force. At present, he said, one
worker out of every 20 is jobless,
and "if we ignore the warning signs,
unemployment will soon be dou-
bled."
The American people, he said,
"need no reminder of the disastrous
effecft of chronic mass unemploy-
ment. They are in no mood to let
the pattern of the 1930's be re-
peated in the 1960's."
Big Audience Sees
'Land of Promise 9
More than half the nation's
television viewers watched the
AFL-CIO documentary film,
"Land of Promise," over the
Labor Day weekend.
Carried by 92 television sta-
tions across the country, the
film was shown over the
American Broadcasting Co.
TV network and was seen in
every major city in the na-
tion.
The half-hour film was
made by the AFL-CIO as a
tribute to the American work-
er on his own national holi-
day. Produced by Joel O'Brien
Productions, "Land of Prom-
ise" starred Melvyn Douglas
and traced dramatically the
development of the American
labor movement in the light
of events shaping our nation's
history.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, ISjSO
1 Bar Association Reports :
Lawyers 'Confused 9 A fter
A Year of Landrum-Griffin
"Confusion and irritation" and extensive and disruptive investigations characterized the fkst year of
the Landrum-Griffin Act, according to a report approved by the Labor Relations Law section of the
American Bar Association at the ABA's annual convention in Washington. D. C
In a section-by-section analysis of experience under Landrum-GrifBn. the ABA report ranged from
the finding that bonding costs to unions have been "extremely heavy" to the contention that the
lawsuit harassment feared by un-$>
ions "has not materialized." I conclude that this provision "could
In other developments:
• The ABA labor law section
THOUSANDS OF VISITORS to Washington, D.C., public libraries
will learn more about the labor movement through special exhibit
set up by library and Greater Washington Central Labor Council.
Shown at opening of exhibit are (left to right), AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany; J. C. Turner, president of central labor body; and
Harry N. Peterson, librarian for the nation's capital.
Library Exhibit Links
Labor's History, Goals
The thousands of visitors to the public libraries in the nation's
capital will be given an opportunity, during the month of September,
to learn more about the labor movement.
That is the purpose of special labor exhibits set up in a coopera-
tive arrangement between the D. C. Public Library and the Greater
Washington Central Labor Council.'^
The exhibits will be at the main
library and several branches.
In ceremonies opening the dis-
play at the main library, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany said organized
labor is "most appreciative of the
opportunities afforded our members
and the general public to learn
more about. the history, the prob-
lems and the goals of American
labor."
Workers Must Know
Harry N. Peterson, librarian, said
the salute to American labor —
which opened on Labor Day — was
designed to show, among other
things, that "workers know they
must have a better understanding
of the world of which they are a
part, and take an active interest in
public affairs, for the sake of the
URWA Aid Urged in
United Fund Drives
Akron, O. — Rubber Workers
Pres. L. S. Buckmaster has called
on URWA members to actively sup-
port United Community Cam-
paigns to raise funds for health,
welfare and recreation services
through a once-a-year appeal,
v "Labor has learned through ex-
perience the important role that
voluntary health and welfare agen-
cies play in the community and
nation," he said.
present and the future."
The displays, he said, were keyed
to an AFL-CIO statement declar-
ing: "What we, the citizens of to-
day, do will shape the world our
children will inherit tomorrow. . . .
If they are to be free and secure
and enjoy happiness, we must lay
the groundwork. ... It is to build-
ing this better world that the AFL-
CIO is dedicated — to the ultimate
good of all mankind."
Meany expressed the hope that
through the library displays
"many persons will learn more
about the American labor move-
ment."
"Everyone should be familiar,"
the AFL-CIO president said, "with
what American labor has done to
begin the free American public
school system, and with what we
are still doing to build the schools
we so badly need and to increase
the salaries of teachers so that the
most qualified will be teaching our
children.
"Everyone should realize also the
contribution by American labor to
making the American standard of
living the highest in the world.
"Every person should be familiar
with what the American labor
movement has done in fighting
communism and corruption, and in
strengthening the free enterprise
system here and all over the world."
Bid For Tariff Aid Denied
Because of High Profits
High profits, and not high wages, are responsible for foreign
competition in the steel industry, the U.S. Tariff Commission
has ruled in effect in rejecting a plea from four American steel
companies for protection against foreign imports of barbed
wire.
The alleged threat of foreign competition was raised by the
steel industry last year during the record-breaking strike of
half a million members of the Steelworkers. The industry
intimated that wage demands by the USWA were "pricing
American workers out of the market."
The Tariff Commission — rejecting the plea filed jointly by
Atlantic Steel Co., Continental Steel Corp., Keystone Steel &
Wire Co., and Northwestern Steel & Wire Co. — pointed out
that between 1954 and 1959 the average price of barbed wire
sold by the American concerns "rose much more than did the
average cost of producing and marketing the product."
decided to press its drive for a con-
gressional study of methods used
by the National Labor Relations
Board in establishing its rules and
procedures. A majority of the five-
man NLRB had rejected the ABA
proposals. The ABA group re-
ported a receptive response from
both the Senate and House Labor
Committees.*
• The ABA section heard a
report that the Welfare and Pen-
sion Plans Disclosure Act of 1958
is deficient chiefly in the lack of
governmental authority to issue
official interpretations and the
lack of governmental enforce-
ment powers,
• Assistant Sec. of Labor John
J. Gilhooley, in a major speech be-
fore the ABA group, urged organ-
ized labor to embark on a "moral
crusade" by actively enforcing the
AFL-CIO ethical practices code.
This, he contended, would revital-
ize the labor movement and mini-
mize the extent to which the gov-
ernment will have to encroach on
union operations.
Prof. Clyde W. Summers of
Yale University, who presented the
report on Landhim-Griffln, com-
mented that the U.S. Dept. of
Labor in its interpretations had
tried to make "some sense out of
nonsense."
This is how the ABA reported
on the first year of L-G:
Reporting requirements. The six
types of reports required by the
law "present the most burdensome
task, both for those subject to the
act and those charged with admin-
istering it." The report said the
problems created are "numerous
and complex."
The ABA report said the law's
section on union officer and em-
ploye reports "bristles with uncer-
tainties as to who must report
and what transactions must be
reported."
The report said a "most serious
question" is raised as to whether
this section "violates the privilege
against self-incrimination." Ob-
servers are divided on this issue,
the report continued, going on to
Bonding requirements. "No single
provision of the act caused more
initial confusion and dismay" than
the one requiring the bonding of
those who handle union funds, the
report declared.
"This provision, which re-
ceived relatively little attention
in the legislative debates," the
report said, "was shortly seen to
contain a bramble of ambiguities
which threaten to make it un-
workable if not unbearable."
"Much confusion and uncertainty
remains," the ABA report said, de-
spite the Labor Dept.'s easing in-
terpretations and consultation with
unions and surety companies de-
signed to make it workable.
Rates High
"Surety companies, cultured in
caution," the report observed, "have
tended to fix rates which will be
certain to cover all eventualities
until experience guides are de-
veloped.
"As a result, the costs to the
unions have been extremely heavy,
in some cases six times that prior
to the statute."
Labor Dept. investigations. The
report said the number of cases up
for investigation reached 1,287 in
the first nine months. It pointed
out that "a letter suggesting a vio-
lation is enough" to launch an in-
vestigation, adding:
"The filing of an unfounded
complaint brings investigators who,
by their questioning of union mem-
bers, may create unjustified sus-
picions and fears. The investigator
often explores all possible leads be-
fore interviewing the union officers
against whom the charges are filed.
"By the time the officers have
an opportunity to demonstrate
that the charges are groundless,
the damage has been done. In
some instances, unsupported
complaints have been filed by an
opposition group within the union
for the purpose of discrediting
the officers and distorting the
democratic process.
"The very fact of an extensive
investigation inevitably creates a
Doherty Accepts FOE
Green-Murray Award
Miami Beach, Fla. — Historically, a free uncensored postal system
is "liberty's first creation and tyranny's first target," William C.
Doherty, president of the Letter Carriers, told delegates to the 62nd
annual convention- of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
Doherty, accepting the Eagles' annual Green-Murray Award for
leadership in the trade union field,^
declared that "freedom cannot exist
without a free and uncensored mail
service, and despotism cannot exist
with one."
The NALC president, an AFL-
CIO vice president and member of
the federation's Executive Council,
accepted the Eagles' bronze plaque
on behalf of the nation's 125,000
letter carriers who, he said, carry
out a "task that is essential to the
existence of liberty and the free
enterprise system."
Doherty paid tribute to the
FOE for having "led the way in
its concern for labor's problems
and its responsiveness to labor's
needs/' At the same time he
praised the fraternal organization
for devoting its energies currently
to jobs for people over 40, term-
ing this "one of the most pressing
problems of our day."
The Eagles' annual award is pre-
sented to labor officials who have
demonstrated outstanding leader-
ship and statesmanship. Previous
recipients include Al J. Hayes, presi-
dent of the Machinists; William L.
McFetridge, president emeritus of
the Building Service Employes;
Peter T. Schoemann, president of
the Plumbers; and George M. Har-
rison, president of the Brotherhood
of Railway Clerks.
The award is named for the late
William Green, president of the
former AFL, and the late Philip
Murray, president of the former
CIO.
cloud which is not easily dissipated,
but this is. aggravated when the
department refuses to disclose the
results of the investigation."
'Cloak of Secrecy'
The ABA criticized the stress on
catching violators rather than cor-
recting violations. The cloak of
secrecy surrounding investigation
reports inevitably irritates those
who try to comply but remain fear-
ful of making a mistake, the re-
port added.
The Dept. of Justice also drew
fire because it mixed criminal and
civil liability problems in its en-
forcement activities.
Court enforcement. "When the
act was passed, union spokesmen
expressed fear that unions would
be harassed by a flood of litigation
initiated by dissidents and crack-
pots," the report said, adding:
"This fear has not materialized*
Less than 25 published court de-
cisions have been found and* ques-
tionnaires to all members of the
(ABA) Section have turned up
11 other cases, most of them still
pending."
This small number of cases, the
report continued, produced little
"substantive law." It also was es-
tablished that the law has no effect
on events prior to the signing of
the law on Sept. 14, 1959, and that
other problems, especially in the
area of remedies, "have received no
illumination."
Grain Millers
Gain 15,000
Sugar Workers
Denver, Colo. — Membership of
the Grain Millers officially jumped
from 40,000- to 55,000 as delegates
to the union's seventh constitutional
convention here formally approved
affiliation of 15,000 sugar workers.
The sugar workers are members
of locals formerly directly affiliated
with the AFL-CIO and combined
in the Intl. Council of Sugar Work-
ers and Allied Industries. They
are employed in beet sugar opera-
tions in Colorado, Idaho, Michigan,
Minnesota and Washington.
With vice presidents of the Grain
Millers elected from geographical
regions, the convention approved
establishment of a special nation-
wide sugar region and confirmed
the election of Philo D. Sedgwick
as vice president from that district.
Sedgwick formerly headed the Su-
gar Workers Council. Other offi-
cers were to be elected later in the
convention.
Much of the convention's time
was taken up with constitutional
changes to conform with the
Landrum-Griffin Act,
Heading the scheduled list of
speakers were AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler; Pres. O. A.
Knight and Sec.-Treas. T. M. Mc-
Cormick of the Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers; Peter M. Mc-
Gavin, assistant to Pres. George
Meany; Executive Sec. Joseph
Lewis of the AFL-CIO Union La-
bel & Service Trades Dept.; Dir.
Andrew J. Biemiller of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Legislation; Dir. John
W. Livingston of the Dept. of Or-
ganization; and Pres. Earl Cross,
Colorado Milling and Eievator Co.
ARcfiio hp^^washington, p. c, Saturday, September 10, i960
Page Severn
Sunlight to Torchlight:
174,000 March in
Labor Day Parade
(Continued from Page J)
make a brighter future for their
country and the world.
There were floats expressing
pride in craftsmanship: fashion
shows by the Ladies' Garment
Workers and Hatters; perform-
ances by Musicians, Radio and TV
Artists and Actors; demonstrations
of the products and the tools of
many industries; samples of union-
made candy, delicatessen and bev-
erages.
Pride in Accomplishments
There were floats expressing
pride in union accomplishments:
housing developments, welfare pro-
grams, health centers, wage gains,
improved conditions.
Thousands of retired union mem-
bers marched with their organiza-
tions or rode with them in buses
and limousines, lending their voices
enthusiastically to the calls for
good citizenship and good govern-
ment.
Union scholarship winners and
groups of apprentices marched with
many organizations. There were
also union-sponsored Little League
teams, Boy Sdbut and Sea Scout
troops, Junior Air Patrol squadrons
and Civil Defense groups.
Preliminary estimates indicated
that the biggest numerical turn-
out was that of Local 3 of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers with 29,000 marchers.
The ILGWU had 26,000. Nearly
every unit exceeded its turnout
in last year's parade when a total
of 115,000 marched.
As in last year's event, the first
contingent was the theatrical divi-
sion, featuring members of all the
performing and technical unions
that make up show business.
There were fleets of stage
coaches, antique vehicles and space-
men from New York's Freedom-
land; a chorus of recording artists
singing a specially-written Labor
Day song; musicians playing every-
think from Dixieland to rock and
roll; Shakespearean actors, comed-
ians, clowns and animal acts.
Meany marched to 41st St. and
there took his place in the review-
ing stand. He was joined by other
leaders of national and international
labor, including Omer Becu, newly
designated secretary general of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions. Presidents of many unions
marched with their contingents and
then returned to the stand.
Fifty trade unionists from Africa,
Asia and Latin America, visiting
this country under various AFL-
C I O and government-sponsored
programs, were in the stands as
guests of the Labor Council.
Politicos Pay Tribute
National, state and city govern-
ment leaders also came to pay trib-
ute to labor. Among them were
New York's Mayor Robert F.
Wagner, Gov. Nelson A. Rocke-
feller and Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell.
The marchers were accompanied
by nearly 1 50 floats and 200 bands.
The theme of the parade was set
by the Central Labor Council's
AFL-CIO float bearing a giant
eagle with wings outspread over
the goals of freedom, brotherhood,
progress and equal opportunity.
"Register in order to vote,"
was the message most often
noted. A chorus line of 15 beau-
ties spelled out the words and
hammered away at the theme
with a dance routine the length
of the avenue. A Textile Workers
Union of America float carried
portraits of great presidents of the
past as a reminder of current
responsibilities.
Other floats dramatized major
issues of the day: the fight for equal
rights, health care for the aged, an
effective minimum wage law, fair
labor laws and the effort to achieve
a world free of fear and injustice.
Members of the Transport Work-
ers, on strike against the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad, came off picket
lines and carried their strike
banners.
Balloons and Doves Freed
Thousands of balloons and a
flight of doves were sent aloft dur-
ing the day. After dark, hundreds
of torches borne by marchers
marked the avenue far into the dis-
tance while the floodlights criss-
crossed between the skyscrapers
above them. -
Matthew Guinan, first vice pres-
ident of the Central Labor Council,
was chairman of the parade com-
mittee and Edward M. Menagh of
the IBEW was director.
84 MEMBERS of New York Newspaper Guild leave N. Y. Intl. Airport for four-week vacation in
London and Paris. Guild chartered airliner for vacation, arranged in cooperation with Astral Travel
Service and British Overseas Airways. Trip marked fourth time this year that groups of New York
Guildsmen made European tours.
AFGE Endorses Social Security
Coverage in Major Policy Switch
Cincinnati — In a major policy switch, delegates to the Government Employes convention en-
dorsed legislation which would give federal workers the right to obtain social security coverage in
addition to their present civil service retirement benefits.
Previous conventions had placed the AFGE firmly in opposition to any linking of the two sys-
tems — for fear that the effect might be eventual abolition of the civil service retirement program
which provides substantially greater^
benefits for long-term employes and
also requires a higher contribution
by both employes and the govern-
ment.
The resolution, adopted over-
whelmingly, noted that military
personnel and many state employes
have supplemental social security
coverage in addition to other re-
tirement benefits and urged that
federal employes be given the op-
tion of paying the social security
tax and coming under the program.
A close and heated contest for
election of national officers cli-
maxed the four-day biennial con-
vention.
James A. Campbell won re-elec-
tion to his fifth consecutive term as
national president by defeating
Thomas G. Walters, former opera-
tions director of the AFL-CIO
Government Employes Council and
now an official of the Civil Service
Commission, and Archie L. Oram
of St. Louis, an AFGE national
Proposals of GE, Westinghouse
Backward Steps, Carey Charges
(Continued from Page 1)
in rejecting or recommending re-
jection of the GE proposals as
"sadly inadequate."
Associating themselves with the
IUE stand were the Intl. Brother-
hood of Electrical Workers, Ma-
chinists, Auto Workers, Technical
Engineers and Steelworkers. The
USWA recently joined the coordi-
nated bargaining effort centered in
the IUD on behalf of workers it
represents in a GE-owned steel
plant at Coshocton, O.
Carey said General Electric's
wage offer — a 3 percent increase
on Oct 2 and a 4 percent boost
on Apr. 2, 1962 — is "substan-
tially below the increases which
other employers in the electrical
industry, far less profitable than
GE, are granting currently, and
does not meet the needs of GE
employes."
It would average 2.5 percent over
the three years of the contract,
compared to 3.5 percent in the past,
Carey said.
Other company proposals in-
cluded:
• Retraining opportunities for
"qualified" employes facing lay-offs
ly or temporarily" with pay at 95
percent of the old job rate. The
union said the plan would "almost
tear to shreds" the present contract
seniority provisions.
• An optional plan for drawing
lay-off or termination benefits based
on a week's pay for each year of
service with a minimum of three
years for eligibility. Such an em-
ploye could draw the entire amount
as termination pay and hunt an-
other job; use all or part for out-
side training in a new skill; or, after
using up his unemployment com-
pensation, draw on it for benefits
equal to half his normal weekly
pay, with anything unused payable
after a one-year lay-off.
• Increased pension benefits, in-
cluding liberalization of eligibility
qualifications, a 30 percent increase
in the employe's base pension fund
for pension credits accumulated be-
fore 1946, and an increase from
$55 to $65 in monthly payments to
employes retiring before being eli-
gible for social security or old age
assistance. The IUE's demand that
GE pay the full cost of the pension
program was ignored.
• Improvements in health insur-
ance benefits for both employes and
from jobs 'disappearing permanent-i dependents, including a waiver of ; April 1962,
payments by employes for one year
during a lay-off and total disability.
The IUE had asked for elimination
of all employe payments.
Hartnett and Nell is said the
Westinghouse proposal, made after
five weeks of bargaining, was
•'meager and inadequate." The
offer, for a three-year agreement,
had five main points:
• Job retraining or reassign-
ment to learn new skills for selected
employes with at least three years
of service.
• A lay-off benefits plan under
which a maximum of one week's
pay for each year of service would
be given employes laid off after
three years of service.
• Pay raises ranging from 4 to
11 cents an hour effective Oct, 17,
and 5 to 14 cents effective Apr. 16,
1962. Pres. Paul Carmichael of
Local 601 at the big Westinghouse
plant in East Pittsburgh, Pa., said
the offer amounts to less than 3
percent compared to the 3.5 per-
cent increase the union is asking.
• Increased retirement benefits.
• Improvements in hospitaliza-
tion and surgical insurance sched-
uled by steps on Nov. 1 and in
vice president. The official tally,
after Oram withdrew from the race
before the balloting ended, gave
Campbell 30,959 votes to 22,378
for Walters and 3,116 for Oram.
Walter's bid for the presidency
was a surprise development. Be-
fore the convention, he had been
endorsed by Campbell as a candi-
date for secretary-treasurer. When
the convention opened, campaign
material was circulated calling for
a ticket of Campbell and Walters.
After the balloting for national
president, Mrs. Esther F. Johnson
defeated two other candidates to
win re-election as secretary-treas-
urer.
Earlier the convention had voted
to raise the president's salary from
$12,000 to $14,000 a year and the
secretary - treasurer's salary from
$9,500 to $10,500. The union re-
ported an all-time high of 71,000
members, a gain of 11,000 since
the 1958 convention.
Two of the four federal employe
bills strongly supported by the del-
egates in a special resolution passed
on the opening day of the conven-
tion were adopted by Congress be-
fore adjournment. They established
a contributory health insurance pro-
gram for retired federal employes
similar to that now provided for
active employes, and liberalized
compensation payments for on-the-
job injuries or deaths of federal
workers.
Campbell said the AFGE will
press in the next Congress for en-
actment of the two bills which failed
to get final approval — an increase
in the per deim and mileage allow-
ances for federal employes who
travel on government business, and
broader liability protection for em-
ployes who drive cars on govern-
ment business.
Delegates repeated the endorse-
ment given by the 1958 convention
to a proposal by Campbell for a
joint congressional committee to
make annual recommendations on
adjustment of pay for federal white
coller workers. In other action, they
called for:
• Tax exemption on federal em-
ploye retirement benefits.
• Voluntary checkoff of union
dues.
• Retirement on full pension
after 30 years of service regardless
of age.
• Continued efforts to get un-
affiliated organizations of federal
employes to discuss merger with
AFGE.
• Crediting unused sick leave to
retirement benefits.
REGISTER NOW
VOTE LATER
YOU'RE
LOCKED OUT
of the
election UNLESS YOU'RE
A REGISTERED VOTER
FOR REGISTRATION INFORMATION . . .
Call your local union office or the city Board of Elections.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, I960
'Stand Up, Be Counted,' Meany Urges
JAM Delegates Told
Election Is No. 1 Job
(Continued from Page J)
working men," and emphasized that
labor cannot make effective gains
in any area "without more exten-
sive and more intelligent participa-
tion in politics.*'
He said it was "significant" that
the Canadian labor movement "has
already decided to solve its prob-
lems through the formation of a
new political party."
In the U.S., Hayes continued,
•'formation of a third political party
has npt yet been seriously consid-
ered," but if the two major parties
* 4 fail to serve the majority of our
people, it may well come to
pass that we, too, will have a third
political party" in this country.
For the present, the IAM pres-
ident emphasized, "we must of ne-
cessity continue to work for our
goals within the framework of our
present parties."
Meany hammered away at a sim-
ilar theme. "If we cannot do the job
we have to do for our people and
the nation except through creation
of a labor party," he declared, "then
I say: 'Let's go.' " But he stressed
the fact that such a move, even if
necessary, would avail nothing in
the 1960 campaign. This year, he
declared, "we must deal with the
situation as it faces us."
Sharp Contrast
Comparing the Kennedy-Nixon
voting records, Meany declared that,
the contrast has been the sharpest
in the domestic area. "On almost
every social and economic issue
vital to the public interest," he em-
phasized, "the Democratic candi-
date has voted on the progressive
side and the Republican candidate
on the reactionary side.
This does not mean that Ken-
nedy agreed with the AFL-CIO
position on every issue at every
point in his career. He did not.
But he has shown a warm and
growing appreciation of the prob-
lems and aspirations of working
people everywhere. He has dem-
onstrated effective leadership in
introducing and carrying the
brunt of the fight for progres-
sive legislation."
Meany was sharp in his criticism
of Goldwater, the arch-conservative
senator from Arizona, who recently
declared in a television appearance
that the Democrats have been de-
livering "political payola" in the
form of favorable legislation to the
labor movement in return for sup-
port on Election Day.
Goldwater, he declared, "repre-
sents clearly the philosophy of his
party." The Republicans, he said,
"would have nominated him as their
leader except that the party dosen't
carry its convictions that far."
Meany assailed the Republican-
Dixiecrat coalition in Congress
which throttled most labor-backed
legislation aimed at beefing up the
sagging American economy, put-
ting millions of jobless workers back
on the job, and legislation designed
to provide medical aid for the aged,
better housing, and an improved
educational system.
"What did the Dixiecrats get out
of the coalition?" he asked. "They
got the soft-pedaling of the Repub-
lican leadership on civil rights.
And what did Goldwater, (Sen.
Karl) Mundt, and (Sen. Carl)
Curtis get out of it? They got a
solid vote against every labor meas-
ure."
Meany also assailed Pres. Eisen-
hower for his appointments to gov-
ernment agencies, declaring that the
President "has not made one ap-
pointment of one single individual
who had demonstrated any sym-
pathy to the ideals and principles
held by the trade union movement."
During the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration, he said, "we have seen the
National Labor Relations Board
transformed into an outright anti-
labor instrument." He' said there
was one notable exception — its fa-
vorable ruling in the six-year Auto
Workers' strike against the labor-
hating Kohler Co. — but declared
"the timing of that decision bears
all the marks of political expedi-
ency."
Meany urged the delegates to
"go to work, get people regis-
tered, and see that they vote."
He added that "I don't believe we
even have to bother urging work-
ers to vote a certain way; if they
get registered and out to the poll-
ing places, I'm sure there will be
very few votes for Tricky Dicky."
Hayes, in his keynote address to
the two-week-long convention, said
that it was "unfortunate" that many
workers, both in and out of unions,
have failed in the past to exercise
their voting rights, and called the
general voter apathy "a sad reflec-
tion on the vitality of our democ-
racy."
He said it is "even sadder" that
a large proportion of those who
don't vote are union workers and
their families. "It is because we do
not get our potential vote out,"
Hayes asserted, "that the reaction-
aries have so successfully controlled
our state and federal governments
so much of the time."
Referring to the "anti-union
virus" which has spread through the
country in recent years, the IAM
president said that "we have never
in our history faced a more po-
tent, diversified, better-organized
and better-financed opposition than
the current anti-labor forces."
This drive, he said, "is aimed
not just at certain unions or spe-
cific union leaders, but at the
principle of trade unionism
itself."
Better Wage-Hour Law
Seen Waiting on Election
The AFL-CIO Joint Minimum Wage Committee has de-
clared that achievement of "meaningful" improvements in the
federal wage-hour law is now a "political problem," involving
the election of a Congress and an Administration that will be
"responsive to the people's needs."
Andrew J. Biemiller and Arthur J. Goldberg, co-chairmen
of the committee, reported to the 22 affiliated unions that col-
lapse of the House-Senate conference on the wage-hour bill
resulted from insistence of the House conferees on their bill
or nothing.
Describing the House-passed bill as "little more than a
gesture," they said it would have blocked further wage-hour
action for four or more years. "Ail these failures can be cor-
rected next January," they declared, "if the new Congress and
the new Administration are truly responsive to the people's
needs/'
UAW Acts to Regain
Kohler Strikers' Jobs
Detroit — The Auto Workers have taken initial steps toward
paving the way for some 1,700 widely-scattered members to return
to their jobs at the Kohler Co., near Sheboygan, Wis.
The National Labor Relations Board had ruled earlier that Kohler
failed to bargain in good faith and committed unfair labor practices
which prolonged the six-year old^
strike.
The UAW and its Local 833,
with which Kohler was ordered to
"bargain collectively," filed a blan-
ket reinstatement request on behalf
of the strikers.
In addition, the UAW has launch-
ed a campaign to notify all Local
833 members of the NLRB findings
against Kohler and of their rein-
statement rights.
UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey
urged Local 833 members to ap-
ply individually for reinstatement
through their union and to do so
immediately. He pointed out the
NLRB order required Kohler to
offer a job or pay lost wages be-
ginning five days after application
for reinstatement.
'Tor every day the Kohler Co.
ignores this government order,"
Mazey observed, "they'll owe a
day's pay to each Local 833 mem-
ber who wants to return to his job
and who has so applied."
Mazey said the UAW * has
planned membership meetings in
Los Angeles and in Sheboygan to
spread the word of the ruling and
facilitate a return of the Kohler
workforce.
The UAW has reported that,
P. O. Drivers Seek
Pension Changes
Detroit — The Post Office Motor
Vehicle Employes put retirement
improvements and a shorter work-
week at the top pf their legislative
program at the union's biennial
convention here.
Two hundred delegates, repre-
representing 5,000 members who
drive and service the Post Office
Dept.'s trucks and cars, asked that
the Civil Service Retirement Act
be amended to permit optional re-
tirement after. 25 years of service
regardless of age.
The workweek resolution
called for a reduction from the
present 40 hours to 35 hours a
week.
Lee B. Walker of Dallas, Tex.
was re-elected as president and Ev
erett G. Gibson, chief administra-
tive officer at the union's Washing-
ton, D. C, headquarters, as secre-
tary and legislative representative
Two vacancies were filled by the
election of Allen Northern of Buf
falo, N. Y., and Curtis C. Thomas
of Cleveland as vice presidents.
when the strike began in 1954, a
total of 2,779 Kohler workers
out of 3,308 in the bargaining
unit were UAW members. Since
that time, the total has been re-
duced to about 1,700 through
deaths, retirement and quits. A
total of 126 strikers died in the
six-year period.
Of the remaining 1,700, nearly
1,400 live in the Sheboygan area.
An additional 150 live elsewhere
in Wisconsin and some 200 now
live in 21 other states.
As the UAW organized the rein-
statement efforts, the Kohler Co.
moved into the courts to appeal the
NLRB decision. The UAW has
filed a court appeal against that part
of the NLRK ruling which denies
reinstatement to 78 strikers.
Fire Fighters
Protest Doing
Police Work
Buffalo, N. Y.— The Fire Fight-
ers have sharply protested the "mis-
use*' of firemen for law enforce-
ment work, warning that IAFF
members could be forced into
strikebreaking activities.
Delegates to the union's 25th
convention here adopted a resolu-
tion strongly condemning the prac-
tice by local public officials of or-
dering IAFF members "to direct
hose streams upon gatherings."
This practice, they said, could be
converted into a "weapon ... to
break up picket lines of striking
unions."
The 1,500 delegates from 900 lo-
cals in the U.S., Canada and the
Canal Zone said that in some in-
stances fire fighters were "given
clubs to do the work (of) law en-
forcement agencies.*'
In another resolution, the con-
vention restated opposition to
proposals for combining the du-
ties of fire fighters and police
officers. The union warned this
could "imperil the lives and prop-
erty of citizens."
Premium pay for overtime and
holiday work and hazardous duty,
and adequate insurance protection
against radiation hazards also were
called for by delegates.
William D. Buck of St. Louis
was re-elected president and John
Kabachus of Washington, D. C,
was re-elected secretary-treasurer,
The convention also renamed three
trustees and 15 district vice presi-
dents.
Ohio Democrats Urged
To Raise Compensation
Columbus, O.— The Ohio State AFL-CIO has called on the Ohio
Democratic party to endorse liberalization of unemployment and
workmen's compensation and to fight for a* $1.25-an-hour state
minimum wage law.
Appearing before the state Democratic platform committee,
Sec.-Treas. Elmer F. Cope urged^
that planks be included calling for
the outlawing of the importation of
strikebreakers into Ohio, and op-
posing discrimination in public and
private housing.
Ohio labor, calling on the Dem-
ocrats to oppose any increase in
the state sales tax, asked for a
comprehensive study of the tax
structure with a view toward re-
storing "some sense of fairness."
The State AFL-CIO noted that too
much of the revenue is raised
through such regressive levies as
sales taxes <4 in disregard of the
ability-to-pay theory."
In the area of a minimum
wage, Cope told the committee
that many Ohio workers are not
covered by federal standards for
wages and hours, and must "look
to the state for protection against
substandard wages and working
conditions."
The States AFL-CIO official cited
figures from the Ohio Bureau of
Unemployment Compensation
showing that more liberal benefits
could be financed by raising the
amount Ohio employers pay up to
the national average.
The BUC figures show that the
cost of unemployment compensa-
tion to Ohio employers in 1960 has
been 1.5 percent of payroll, com-
pared to the national average of 1 .9
percent. Among the nation's eight
largest industrial states, Ohio em-
ployers enjoy the lowest rate, while
nationally the state ranks 26th in
terms of the cost to employers.
Cope called on the Democratic
platform drafters to back an in-
crease in the unemployment com-
pensation weekly maximum to two-
thirds of the average wage of work-
ers covered by the law, and an
extension of the benefit period from
26 to 39 weeks.
In 1958 and 1959, he said, 203,-
031 workers exhausted their 26
weeks of benefits without finding
work. He said this was 25 percent
of the total jobless during that
period.
The state body urged that work-
men's compensation be broadened
so that injured workers would re-
ceive 75 percent of their average
weekly wage.
Joblessness Soars to '60 High of 5.9%
Vol. y
Issied weekly at
•15 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, D. C
92 a year
Second Class Poitaw Pali at Washington, 0. C Saturday, September 17, 1960 i7«@»i* No. 38
Machinists Vote to Endorse
Kennedy- Johnson Ticket
Record Is
'Shocking,'
Meany Says
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's rate of unemploy-
ment swung upward to a 1960
high of 5.9 percent in August, the
government has announced.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
said the "shocking" report shows
that six of every 100 Americans
are without jobs at a time when
apologists are boasting that em
ployment is at a "record high."
The nation is now paying "the
terrible price of high-interest, tight-
money policies" and the Eisenhower
Administration's refusal to stimu-
late the economic growth needed
"to put America to work — and to
keep her people at work," the fed-
eration president charged.
The 5.9 percent rate, adjusted
for seasonal influences, compared
to 5.4 percent for July. It has been
exceeded in postwar Augusts only
in the recession years of 1949 (6.8
percent), 1954 (6.0 percent) and
1958 (7.5 percent).
The government's report on
the job-picture blamed a "con-
centration" of early changeovers
in automobile models and the
continuing decline in steel jobs
for the fact that non-farm jobs
remained unchanged at 61.8 mil-
lion. Usually, non-farm employ-
ment jumps about 350,000 be-
tween July and August, the
Labor Dept. said.
The fact that high-level unem-
ployment is continuing to hit espe-
cially hard at family breadwinners
was confirmed by Seymour Wolf-
bein, Labor Dept. manpower expert.
Wolfbein told a press conference
(Continued on Page 3)
Kohler Offers
To Reinstate
1,400 Strikers
Detroit — The Auto Workers
have hailed as "a major break""
a sudden announcement by the
Kohler Co. of Kohler, Wis., that
1,400 strikers have been offered
reinstatement.
UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey
said the union is "elated" over
the development in the lingering
and hard - fought six - year - old
strike.
The National Labor Relations
Board in late August found Kohler
(Continued on Page 3 J
PICKET LINES were re-established at New York's Stork Club on
Labor Day after a court injunction was modified to permit informa-
tional picketing. Starting the line are, left to right, Pres. Harry Van
Arsdale of the City AFL-CIO, Sec.-Treas. A. Susi and Pres. David
Siegel of the N. Y. Joint Board of the Hotel & Restaurant Employes,
and Sec. Morris Iushewitz of the City AFL-CIO. (See story page 10)
Meany Tells Liberals :
U.S. Role Depends
On Election Result
New York — AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has defined the 1960
presidential race as "the most important campaign in the history
of the nation."
Addressing the annual dinner of the Liberal party of New York
State, the AFL-CIO leader said:
"The very future of this great na-'^"
tion will turn on what happens in
this campaign. Our leadership in
the free world depends on what
kind of government we get in Wash-
ington next January."
Kennedy Designated
The enthusiastic capacity audi-
ence heard addresses by Sen. John
F. Kennedy, Democratic presiden-
tial candidate who formally ac-
cepted the Liberal party designa-
tion, Adlai E. Stevenson and for-
mer New York Gov. Herbert H.
Lehman.
Meany said the trade union
movement cannot afford to look
upon this campaign "with com-
placency." Instead, he said Ameri-
can labor's approach to it is based
on "the cold hard facts of life which
are of concern to every American."
"The cold hard facts are that
our survival as a nation." he said,
"and the preservation of our free
way of life are threatened by
world communism. Our national
strength, militarily and economic-
ally, have not kept pace with that
of the Soviet Union and the satel-
(Continued on Page 11)
Convention Acts in
Thunder of Cheers
By Gene Zack
St. Louis — The Machinists convention has voted overwhelming-
ly to endbrse the Democratic presidential ticket of John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Acting on three endorsement resolutions submitted by 51 local
lodges ranging from coast to coast, the delegates representing the
million-member union shouted out a thunderous chorus of Ayes.
The vote was all but unanimous, with only scattered dissent, after
the 1,500 delegates heard major speeches from both Kennedy and
the GOP nominee, Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon.
Kennedy was accorded a tumultuous reception by the delegates
and by more than 10,000 members^ — ■
of the public who jammed the -m-m- t"1~^ -r
IUE Votes
Support of
Democrats
Miami Beach — "Enthusiastic'*
support of the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket was voted unanimously here
by 450 delegates to the ninth con-
stitutional convention of the Elec-
trical, Radio & Machine Workers.
The endorsement resolution,
urging the IUE's 400,000 mem-
bers and their families to "vote
for and to actively promote" the
campaign of the Democratic nomi-
nees, praised Kennedy for his 14-
year battle "for economic and social
advances and for a positive, con-
structive program of world leader-
ship."
At the same time, it was sharp
in its criticism of Vice Pres. Nix-
on, Republican presidential nom-
inee, declaring that "despite all
the face-lifting by Madison Ave.
experts, despite all the fence-
straddling and doubletalk," Nixon
remains "impervious to the needs
and aspirations of the working
man; callous to the educational
requirements of the nation's
(Continued on Page 12)
balconies of Kiel Auditorium here
Nixon drew a gallery audience esti-
mated at only 6,000. Both ad-
dressed the convention in early-
morning appearances.
The Democratic nominee — in
his first appearance before an in-
ternational union convention
since the AFL-CIO General
Board strongly endorsed his can-
didacy — pledged a broad-rang-
ing program geared to stimulat-
ing America's lagging economy.
Promising to "put men back to
work and keep them working,"
Kennedy said that only a "vital
and growing America" can "build
the strength necessary to keep
the peace."
Nixon called the task of win-
ning the peace "more important
than jobs, schools and homes," and
said that if elected he would make
certain that America's military
strength is given top priority "no
matter what it may cost."
There was sharp contrast be-
tween the receptions accorded the
candidates. Kennedy was greeted
by thundering cheers from dele-
gates and the galleries as he entered
the auditorium, moved down the
center aisle and mounted the stage.
Ear-splitting yells and applause in-
terrupted his 15-minute speech
more than 15 times. When he
finished, delegates staged a 20-
(Continued on Page 12)
NLRB Chairman Denies Anti-Union
Bias, Refuses to Disqualify Himself
A union move to have Chairman Boyd Leedom of the National Labor Relations Board dis-
qualify himself from hearing four picketing test cases because he headed a $50-a-plate political fund-
raising luncheon for Sen. Karl E. Mundt (R-S.Dak.) has been rebuffed by Leedom and the board.
'T am not disqualifying myself because I am not biased or prejudiced," Leedom declared.
The board took up the union request during a recess in the hearing and quickly denied it
Thomas E. Harris, AFL-CIO as-3> — —
sociate general counsel, initiated the
move in an "affidavit of personal
bias and disqualification" against
Leedom.
Harris acted as attorney for Lo-
cals 1 and 89 of the Hotel and Res-
taurant Workers, whose picketing
activity against the Stork Club in
New York is now before the board.
Harris presented as evidence
a $50-a-plate testimonial lunch-
eon invitation signed by Leedom
as "general chairman" of a
"Mundt for Senate Committee."
The Leedom letter pointed out
that Rep. George McGovern (D-
S. D.), described as "a protege" of
(Continued on Page \\)
Page Tw«
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
$5,000 CHECK from Auto Workers for relief of Chilean earthquake victims is presented to Pres.
Jorge Ailessandri of Chile by Daniel Benedict, left, assistant secretary of ORIT, the Inter-American
Regional Organization of Labor. At right is Gen. Sec. Wenceslao Moreno of the Maritime Confedera-
tion of Chile, an ORIT affiliate.
PRR Strikers Hail Peace Pact
As 'Landmark 9 in Job Security
Philadelphia — Unions representing nearly 25,000 maintenance workers on the Pennsylvania Rail-
road hailed the agreement ending their 12-day strike as a "landmark" in establishing job security in
the railroad industry.
Both the Transport Workers, representing the largest group of employes, and the System Federa-
tion of three other AFL-CIO unions said the settlement was close to the unions' demands. The strike
would never have taken place if^
the railroad had been willing to
settle on the same terms earlier,
they declared.
Wages were not an issue in the
strike which came after three
years of futile bargaining over
the continuing sharp reduction of
jobs and the increase in the
"farming-out" of repair work to
outside firms, often non-union
shops.
Union sources cited these gains
under the new agreement:
• The PRR agreed not to con-
tract out any work to non-union
shops.
• Management agreed to con-
sult with the unions before contract-
2 Portland Publishers
Drop NLRB Charges
Portland, Ore. — Publishers of two strike-bound daily newspapers
here have, at the suggestion of a National Labor Relations Board
official, withdrawn charges that the Portland Inter-Union News-
paper Strike Committee and three unions were guilty of supporting
an illegal strike and/or making illegal contract demands.
The NLRB regional director said'^T
the publishers dropped the charges
after NLRB told them it was "very
difficult to establish that the charges
had merit." His statement brought
this comment from Rene J. Valen-
Rieve,Canzano
Call Textile
'Fluff
Study
New York — The investigation
and report of the federal govern-
ment's Interagency Committee on
Textile Problems "apparently is the
Republican Administration's way of
fluffing off the problems" of the
industry, Pres. Emeritus Emil Rieve
and Vice Pres. Victor Canzano of
the Textile Workers Union of
America have charged.
The two were members of the
committee's advisory unit. Their
blast came upon the Commerce
Dept.'s release of the report, which
they called "an apologia for Eisen-
hower Administration policies
which made necessary the forma-
tion of the committee in the first
place."
The committee did not consult
its advisors, did not provide them
with copies of the report and
failed to carry out the task given
it by the Senate Commerce sub-
committee headed by Sen. John
O. Pastore (D-R.L), they said
*That function was to undertake
a study of textile industry prob-
lems," they declared.
tine, coordinator of the newspaper
union strike against the Portland
Oregonian and the Journal:
"The fact that the NLRB per-
mitted the publishers to withdraw
their charges instead of dismissing
them — as it has done in the case of
some charges brought by the unions
— supports our contention that the
Labor Board often is prejudiced
against labor unions.
The withdrawal proves, Valen-
tine said, "that the unions were
right in saying that the charges
were without merit or founda-
tion.'*
The strike started last Nov. 10
when the Stereotypers stopped work
after contract negotiations bogged
down. Other unions observed the
picket lines and voted to strike
after their own contract proposals
had not been met. The publishers'
charges were filed against Valen-
tine's committee and the Typog-
raphers, Mailers, and Newspaper
Guild.
Labor support of the strikers was
stepped up strongly after the AFL-
CIO Executive Council called for
nation-wide resistance to publish-
ers' attempts to smash the Portland
unions.
The unions have been publish-
ing a twice-weekly newspaper and
plan to make it a daily about Nov.
1. More than 10,000 readers have
signed subscription coupons for the
proposed daily, and concrete is
being poured in foundations for the
pressroom of a permanent Port-
land Reporter building.
ing out any work normally done by
its own employes.
• Under no circumstances will
work be contracted out unless the
railroad is able to demonstrate that
it would result in "substantial"
savings.
• A severance pay system, first
in the industry, was set up for
employes of the railroad's power
plants which are being abandoned
as obsolete. Employes with five
years or more seniority will receive
severance payments if they are laid
off as a result of the closing of
power stations. If they are trans-
ferred to other jobs they will be
protected for five years against
a pay cut as a result of the shift.
The section was made retroactive
to July 1 to cover employes of a
power station which had been abol-
ished since that date.
• More specific job descriptions
spelled out in the agreement, the
unions said, will save the jobs of
some 400 mechanics' helpers which
the railroad had claimed were not
needed.
• The company was required to
fill all job vacancies and forbidden
to use understrength crews, a ma-
jor complaint of the unions.
The settlement, hammered out
with the help of federal mediators
in a marathon session which lasted
until 3:15 a. m., Sept. 12, was
accompanied by a blast by Penn-
sylvania Board Chairman James M.
Symes against the right of railroad
workers to strike.
Strike Ban Asked
Symes called for Congress to ban
strikes in transportation "by requir-
ing binding arbitration in the rail-
road industry."
TWU Pres. Michael J. Quill said
the negotiations, which got nowhere
until the strike, proved that "only
the strike weapon can do the job."
He added: "I predict that it
will never again take three years
to negotiate an agreement."
Machinists Grand Lodge Rep.
E. W. Wiesner, spokesman for the
System Federation which also in-
cludes the Sheet Metal Workers and
the Blacksmiths, said "the railroad
could have settled on the same
basis at least a year ago if it had
made the effort to do so."
He said the final settlement "any-
way you look at it was a victory
for our unions."
$10 Million Damages Asked:
Trainmen Challenge
Rail Strike Insurance
New York — The railroad industry's strike insurance program —
which paid $50,000 a day to the Long Island Rail Road during its
recent 26-day strike and $600,000 daily to the Pennsylvania Rail-
road during its 12-day shutdown — has been challenged as an "illegal
conspiracy" by the Railroad Trainmen.
In a suit filed in federal district'^ : : ; — r
against a competitor would hand
court here, the BRT asked triple
damages totaling $10 million under
anti-trust laws for loss of wages to
its members during the Long Is-
land strike and for expenses and
strike benefits paid by the union.
The Trainmen contended also
that industry's strike insurance
actually represented an illegal
pooling of assets without appro-
val by the Interstate Commerce
Commission.
Named as defendants, in addi-
tion to the LIRR, were the Associa-
tion of American Railroads, the
Imperial Insurance Co., which was
set up in the Bahamas to adminis-
ter the program, and 32 participat-
ing railroads.
The union asserted that LIRR
management scuttled a tentative
agreement reached with the BRT
seven months before the strike be-
cause of pressure by other railroads
which feared that union-won gains
would develop into a nationwide
pattern.
Singled out in the union com-
plaint was the Pennsylvania, which
controls LIRR capital stock "and
which dominates its -labor policy."
Firm Profited from Strike
Held out as bait, the union
charged in its complaint, was a
promise of strike insurance pay-
ments which resulted in the LIRR
profiting from the walkout. The
Trainmen said the $1.35 million
paid to the LIRR gave it a greater
profit than it would have made had
there been no strike.
The railroad industry, which se-
cretly adopted its strike insurance
program more than a year ago, is
the third major industry to resort
to a pooling of assets to bail out
employers during strikes.
Some 400 daily newspapers
are covered by strike insurance
which guarantees them payments
up to $10,000 a day under a pro-
gram launched more than 10
years ago.
Nearly two years ago, a group
of leading airlines developed a so-
called "mutual aid pact" under
which lines that obtained "extra
business" as a result of a strike
over part of the profits to the struck
line. Although the Civil Aeronau-
tics Board initially approved the
agreement, it recently announced
that it would reconsider the issue
and hold new hearings.
BRT Pres. W. P. Kennedy de-
scribed the railroads' insurance pro-
gram as "a sword with which the
railroads threaten their employes."
He charged that it is "the reason
for the rash of strikes on the rail-
roads" because "it makes work
stoppages desirable to manage-
ment."
Declaring the BRT court chal-
lenge is "most meaningful to all
labor," Kennedy warned that "if
the railroads can set up a dummy
corporation in a foreign land un-
der the guise of insurance pro-
tection, while actually only pool-
ing resources, then any group of
businesses can do the same
thing.**
He warned that "then the only
effective strike would be a gen-
eral strike . . . where the whole
economy is paralyzed in one mas-
sive move."
Meany Asks SIU
To Drop Charter
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
acting under the provisions of the
AFL-CIO constitution, has asked
the Seafarers to withdraw the char-
ter issued to a group of New York
harbor scow captains formerly in
Local 355 of the Maritime Union'*
United Marine Division.
Meany ruled that issuance of
the charter "is in violation of the
constitution of the AFL-CIO."
"I therefore request," he added
in a telegram to SIU Pres. Paul
Hall, "that the SIU withdraw the
charter which it has issued to this
group and refrain from any further
effort to organize them into the
SIU."
The dispute involved a group of
scow captains who broke with the
NMU and picketed companies
which continued to honor NMU
contracts. The NMU in May asked
the AFL-CIO to enforce the no-
raiding section of the constitution.
Shipyard Ends Perils;
Reopening Is Permitted
Philadelphia — A shipyard closed by court order after a
Boilermakers local had threatened to strike against illegal
safety hazards has been permitted to reopen following major
repairs and agreement to correct all violations found by Labor
Dept. inspectors.
The case, involving the Keystone Drydock & Ship Repair
Co. here, was the first in which the Labor Dept. used the
injunction powers of the Longshoremen's & Harbor Workers'
Compensation Act to close a plant. This power to enforce
safety regulations was given the government in a 1958 amend-
ment to the law which was strongly supported by the AFL-
CIO.
Business Mgr. William E. Corrigan of Boilermakers Local
329 said the company, which had refused to meet the demands
of the union's safety committee, "has now completely changed
its attitude." Union crews were put to work correcting the
safety hazards after the Labor Dept. obtained a temporary
restraining order in U.S. District Court, he said.
Labor Dept. safety inspectors, who hurried to the shipyard
after the union served notice that it would strike in behalf of
on-the-job safety, charged the company with a long list of
law violations. These included unsafe scaffolding, machinery
with unprotected moving parts, stairways with decayed side-
rails, improper wiring and lack of first-aid facilities.
Some of the hazards had been noted in earlier inspections
but were never corrected.
AFL-CIO \E\FS. WASHINGTON. D. C. SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 17. I960
Page Three
Wage Spread Widens ;
Labor Dept. Report Shows
Economic Danger Signals
A Labor Dept. report that the real earnings of factory production workers have increased by 40
percent between 1947 and 1960 also contained evidence of recent economic drag and other warnings.
The report, which appeared in the Monthly Labor Review, showed that real earnings had climbed
markedly and steadily from 1947 to 1956, but then dipped during the "1957-58 recession and by
1960 showed only slight improvement over 1956
The report also showed that
the spread between the lowest-
paid workers and the highest-
paid has widened during the post-
war period to the point where the
low-paid earn less than half as
much as the high-paid.
The August 1960 job figures just
announced by the Labor Dept. re-
enforce the warnings contained in
the statistics of the postwar earn-
ings study.
The latest job report showed that
130,000 jobs in the steel industry
have been at least temporarily
wiped out in the past six months!
The latest decline totaled 11,000
between July and August.
The MLR study showed that the
steelworkers earned an average of
$113 a week in 1959.
Other unionized high-wage in-
dustries also showed declines. The
auto industry, tooling up for a
model changeover, dropped 74,000
jobs in August and these workers
had a weekly earnings average of
$108 in 1959.
In contrast, lower-wage indus-
UAW Sees Kohler Job
Offer as 'Major Break'
(Continued from Page 1)
guilty of committing unfair labor
practices in prolonging the strike,
and ordered Kohler to bargain col-
lectively with UAW Local 833.
The UAW on Sept 1 officially
requested mass reinstatement of
some 1,700 named workers in
line with the NLRB order to
Kohler.
Kohler has made no direct re-
sponse to this union request nor to
a further request for the reopening
of negotiations, a UAW spokesman
said.
Kohler, in notifying the 1,400
workers by mail that they should
apply by Oct. 3, made no mention
of the court appeal which the com-
pany has filed in an effort to over-
turn the NLRB order.
A UAW spokesman said the
company action may have been
inspired by the fact that under the
NLRB order Kohler, if it should
lose the court appeal, would have
to pay full wages to workers from
five days after application for re-
instatement unless and until jobs
were offered.
A simple calculation, figuring
1,400 workers at roughly $20 a
day, shows that Kohler might
have been liable for $28,000 a
day from the UAW action,
i The Auto Workers had launched
a campaign of notifying all "the
Kohler strikers of the NLRB deci
sion and urging them to apply for
jobs immediately. A meeting in
Los Angeles was planned and an
other mass meeting in nearby
Sheboygan preceded Kohler's an-
nouncement by three days.
"You have been very good sol
diers," Mazey told the Sheboygan
rally. "You have been devoted to
your cause."
Mazey told the Kohler strikers
that the NLRB ruling "proves
we were right and the company
was wrong from the very be-
ginning." The board's decision
and remedies were based on f aets
and events of the spring and sum-
mer of 1954.
Herbert Kohler, president of the
plumbing fixtures plant, said the job
offer was made because "with home
building starts showing signs of im-
proving after a slow period earlier
in the year and with the abandon-
ment of the strike, it is possible that
some striking employes, in addition
to the hundreds who have already
returned to their jobs, may wish to
come back. How many we don't
know."
The Labor Dept. said in its latest
employment report that home build-
ing was slipping between July and
August.
EXPERIENCE OF U.S. UNIONS with workers' education is shared
with two visitors from overseas at this AFL-CIO headquarters con-
ference. Left to right are: Paul Chu, staff official with the Intl.
Labor Organization at Geneva, who heads a workers' education
program for underdeveloped nations; AFL-CIO Education Dir.
Lawrence Ro^in; Russell Allen, education director of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept., and Hans Rag Gulati, assistant to the direc-
tor of the ICFTL r s Asian trade union training center at Calcutta.
tries were experiencing a chiefly
seasonal rise.
The apparel industry — with a
weekly wage of $56 in 1959 —
increased by 53,000 jobs in Au-
gust. The food industry, at ail
$86 a week average in 1959,
gained 100,000 jobs.
The Labor Dept. recognized the
trend in reporting the July-to-
August drop in average factory
worker earnings. The weekly aver-
age for all factory workers dropped
by $1.02 to $90.12 in August.
This was traced to a drop in over-
time in high-wage industries and "a
shift in the relative employment
weight of high and low-paying
industries," the August report said.
The Labor Review study of long-
term trends in earnings dealt with
the key factory workers who make
up one-fourth of the non-farm work
force.
The study — noting such side
gains as pensions, supplemental
jobless benefits and health and wel-
fare benefits — contained these chief
findings on the 1947-1960 trend:
• Factory earnings have risen
by about 80 percent, but deflating
this gain by the "large rise in prices
since 1947" reduces the gain in
"real" earnings to about 40 percent.
• "Although growth in factory
workers' real earnings has been
rapid during the postwar period as
a whole, the rate of growth has
been temporarily dampened or re-
versed during each of the three
postwar business downturns, with
the effects becoming progressively
greater in each succeeding reces-
sion."
• The gap between high and
low-wage industries has grown.
The last point was illustrated
by this example: In 1947, the
highest-wage industry (printing,
at $61.59 a week) was 75 percent
higher than the lowest-wage in-
dustry (tobacco, $35.01 a week).
In 1959, the highest (petroleum,
$117.38 a week) was over 100
percent higher than the lowest-
wage industry (apparel, at
$55.63).
The overall figures showed that
the factory worker averaged $49.97
a week in 1947 dollars, earnings
which were worth $52.32 in "real"
dollars when the 1947-49 cost of
living base is taken into account.
In 1959, the average totaled
$89.47 in current dollars and
$71.81 after being deflated for the
rise in prices to determine '"real"
wages.
In the nine-year period from
1947 through 1955, real earnings
increased by $14.51. In the four-
year period which followed, 1956
through 1959, the increase
amounted to $2.97.
ALES Lists Data
On World Labor
New York-^The American La-
bor Education Service has pub-
lished a new 16-page pamphlet,
International Labor Bodies, con-
taining basic information on the
principal labor organizations.
The publication summarizes the
nature and objectives of the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions, the international trade secre-
tariats and the Intl. Labor Organi-
zation. It may be ordered from
the ALES at 1776 Broadway, New
York 19, N. Y.; single copies, 25
cents; 100 copies, discount of 20
percent; 200 copies, discount of 25
percent, and 500 copies, discount of
40 percent.
'Sure We Believe in Action 9
DRAWH P-OR.THC
'Shocking,' Meany Calls
Jobless Rate of 5.9%
(Continued from Page 1)
that, in the total unemployed, "the
seasonal expectation calls for a drop
which is closer to 500,000."
Instead, the report showed a
decline of only 229,000 to a total
3.8 million jobless in August.
Of this drop, 215,000 was rec-
orded in the 14- through 19-year-
old bracket of "summer job-
seekers" who left the work force.
"Unemployment among adult
men and women held at about their
July levels — 1.9 and 1.1 million,
respectively," the report said. The
remaining 800,000 jobless are teen-
agers.
The report said that seasonal ex-
pectations called for "a larger drop"
in jobless teenagers than actually
occurred and for "some decline''
in jobless adult men in August.
Insured Joblessness Up
Adult joblessness was pointed up
in a separate report which showed
insured unemployment running
about 25 percent higher than a
year earlier. The report for July
showed a total of 1.7 million in-
sured jobless, with an increase of
50 percent in nine states and a
doubling of insured unemployed in
Ohio compared to 1959.
Later figures included in the job
report showed a less-than-seasonal
decline from July to a total of 1.65
million insured unemployed in the
week ending Aug. 13.
Both the total unemployed of
3.8 million and the 1.65 million
insured unemployed are about
350,000 higher than in August
1959.
The figures on those receiving
unemployment compensation ex-
clude workers who have exhausted
their benefits, workers who are in-
eligible for some reason and teen-
agers who lack prior work experi-
ence.
The long-term unemployed —
those out of work 15 weeks or
more — remained almost unchanged
over the month at about 800,000.
The 816,000 long-term jobless
compare to a total 783,000 in 1959
and to 1.65 million in the recession
year of 1958. But it still is con-
siderably higher than the 470,000
of pre-recession 1957.
Notes Longer Term
"Long-term unemployment con-
tinued to be higher than average for
non-white men and for men 45
years of age and over," the Labor
Dept. report observed.
While teenagers were finding
work "at about the same rate as a
year ago" even though there were
250,000 more of them in the work-
force, the unemployment rate
among men 20 years and over has
risen for three straight months, the
report said.
"This is the group that has felt
the main impact of recent employ-
ment cutbacks in steel, autos and
related industries.
"The unemployment rate for
married men, 3.4 percent in Au-
gust, continued to be somewhat
higher than the comparable rate in
1959 (2.9 percent)," the report
said.
Asked to summarize the August
job report, Wolfbein said:
"Employment in the United
States is moving along at a very
high employment plateau. Our
movement is being braked mostly
by the situation in steel."
The industry breakdown of the
payroll employment figures throws
some light on the nature of the
July-to-August changes.
The 53.4 million total was
boosted by a less-than-expected rise
of 165,000. The biggest increases
came with a seasonal rise of 53,000
in construction and a 156,000 hike
in manufacturing. However, with-
in manufacturing, durable goods
dropped by 51,000 while non-dur-
able goods increased by 207,000.
Thus the highly-unionized high-
wage transportation equipment
(auto and related) category de-
clined by 74,000 jobs, primary
metal (steel) went down by 11,000,
machinery by 11,000 and so on.
t/.S. ? Canada Highest
In Unemployment
Geneva — The United
States and Canada were the
only economically-developed
countries to report "unduly
high" levels of unemployment
in June, Dir.-Gen. David A.
Morse of the Intl. Labor Or-
ganization reported on the
basis of a worldwide survey.
The U.S. listed 6.1 per-
cent of its labor force out of
work and Canada 5 percent,
the survey showed. Gener-
ally, Morse said, the ILO
found employment through-
out the world "buoyant,"
workers' earnings "enhanced"
and price increases "modest."
Employment in most coun-
tries was at record levels, he
said, with joblessness at less
than 2 percent.
The 6.1 percent U.S. figure
was the rate before adjust-
ment for seasonal factors.
The seasonally adjusted June
jobless rate was 5.5 percent.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
[Democrat Is Endorsed:
RETAIL CLERKS take to the air to spread the "Don't Shop Sears" message across the skies of
metropolitan Philadelphia and New Jersey areas. Standing by the aerial banner are, from left,
RCIA Dist. Council 1 1 Pres. William Abramoff; RCIA Vice Pres. Earl D. McDavid, and Joseph
J. McComb, president of Local 1360 at Camden, N. J.
Building Trades Head
Backs Sears Boycott
Pres. C. J. Haggerty of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction
Trades Dept. has asked the department's 600 affiliated councils and
3 million members to support the "Don't Buy Sears Roebuck" cam-
paign of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, of state and central labor
bodies, and of local unions.
In a strongly worded appeal,
Haggerty called for full support of
the consumer boycott launched by
the National Chain Stores Commit-
tee of the Retail Clerks against Sears
for its anti-union policies.
At the same time Haggerty wired
Sears Pres. Crowdus Baker urging
"that you use your high office to
correct the anti-labor attitude of
your San Francisco store, and re-
store the 262 union members who
were summarily fired for support-
ing a bona fide picket line and per-
mit the self-organizing of your em-
ployes in all your -properties."
The head of the big AFL-CIO
department told affiliates he
would "appreciate all of our
councils and their affiliated un-
ions giving full support" in coin-
batting "anti-labor" attitudes of
the department store manage-
ment in San Francisco and else-
where.
"Write to Crowdus Baker, pres-
ident, Sears Roebuck & Co., 925
South Homan Avenue, Chicago,
III.," said Haggerty, "requesting
him to revise the present anti-labor
policy and to restore those union
members who were summarily dis-
charged for declining to cross a
bona fide picket line."
Sears has been deluged with let-
ters of protest from customers and
other consumers for discharging
members of the Retail Clerks and
other unions who observed their
contracts by honoring a picket line
when Machinists struck a Sears
service center last May. A Cali-
fornia court ordered the Machinists
back to work, and the unionists
were fired after reporting back.
Later the Machinists resumed their
strike.
Constant picket lines are being
maintained at the two Sears stores
in San Francisco, and an ob-
server sa?d: "You could throw
a cannon ball through the stores
and not hit a customer."
The Los Angeles local of RCIA
has blasted company policies with
radio and television messages, be-
sides picketing and handbilling
stores there.
Pueblo and Denver, Colo., locals
have handbilled every factory in
the area. RCIA locals in New
Mexico, Nevada and Arizona have
received the help of the labor move-
ment in doing a similar job.
Metropolitan New York unions
have placed the boycott message
at all subway entrances and exits.
Sears stores are being picketed, and
balloons are being used along with
floats in parades.
Airplanes are pulling "Don't
Shop Sears" banners over the
Camden-Philadelphia area and
the seashore resorts. During the
"Miss America" pageant, clowns
appeared on the shore boardwalks
with signs telling the Sears story.
Arbitration of the discharge of
144 RCIA members is under way
in San Francisco. U. S. District
Judge George B. Harris ordered
Sears to follow its agreement by
arbitrating. A union attorney said
the hearings are "only the first step"
in the fight for reinstatement of all
262 fired employes.
Labor Helps
Dedicate New
Cathedral
La Crosse, Wis. — "The era of
militant unionism is not over," Sec.
Joseph D. Keenan of the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
declared at cornerstone laying cere-
monies here for a new cathedral
named after St. Joseph the Worker.
In the principal speech at a cere-
mony attended by labor, church,
business and state leaders, Keenan
cited the "vast improvements" un-
ions have brought to workers but
rejected the argument that labor's
battle has been won.
"Despite the gains from collective
bargaining," he said, "millions of
people do not enjoy the benefits of
a decent minimum wage. You'll
find them on the big factory farms,
in laundries, in thousands of stores
across the country, and in plush
motels where $25-a-day rooms are
cleaned by 50-cents-an-hour cham-
bermaids."
Labor, Keenan declared, "will
never be without a cause. There
will be unmet needs that demand
attention. And in seeking to
fulfill these needs, the service of
labor is not restricted to its own
members, but extends to all parts
of the community, the nation and
the world."
Bishop John P. Treacy, who offi-
ciated at the ceremony, paid tribute
to the men and women in the labor
movement "whose pride and crafts-
manship made possible such a mas-
terpiece as this new cathedral."
He accepted a union card pre-
sented for the occasion by AFL-
CIO Regional Dir. Charles Hey-
manns on behalf of AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany.
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Philleo
Nash told the gathering that
"church, labor and government
share common social ideals."
Oil Industry 'Independent' Union
Faces Court in Election Case
The first government intervention in internal union affairs under the Landrum-Griffin Act took place
in an oil industry long characterized by company unions and company-dominated unions.
lt involves an election of officers conducted last February by the Independent Petroleum Workers
Union of Bayway, N. J., which Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell is seeking to upset in his civil suit filed
in U.S. District Court at Newark, N. J. The union, which represents Esso refinery workers, has filed a
reply and the trial date remains to^
be set.
Mitchell, charging irregulari-
ties, has asked the court to void
the election and order a new one
under his supervision.
Mitchell said there were a sub-
stantial number of excess ballots
printed, they were prematurely re-
moved from the packages, the safe
deposit box in which they were
locked up was freely accessible and
the ballots were removed before the
arrival of the loser's observers.
Just a week after the mail ballot
was completed last Feb. 19, Esso
workers gave the AFL-CIO Oil
Workers a plurality over the in-
cumbent unaffiliated union in a
multi-union representation election.
The National Labor Relations
Board election ended this way;
OCAW 597; IPW 533; Teamsters
136; Operating Engineers 32; no
union 1; void 1; challenged 40. A
total of 1,340 workers voted.
In the runoff vote, the OCAW
was edged out by the IPW, 699 to
647. The IPW picked up 166 votes
and the OCAW gained 50 votes.
The Oil Workers have charged
that Esso openly backed the Inde-
pendent union. They reported
that the refinery manager, Ross
Murrell, followed a routine prac-
tice in Standard Oil plants of cir-
culating a letter to all workers
asking them to support the un-
affiliated union.
Supervisors also were assigned to
buttonhole workers, the OCAW
charged.
Indiana Labor's Goal
Is Repeal of R-T-W
Indianapolis, Ind. — The Indiana State AFL-CIO ended its second
constitutional convention here with a withering barrage directed
at the legislators responsible for passage of the state "compulsory
open-shop" (right-to-work) law, designated repeal of the statute as
its number one legislative goal for^~~ ; _ r. ~ r
1961, .and unanimously endorsed N,xo "' th * „ presidential norm-
ausly
Democratic gubernatorial candidate
Matthew Welsh, who is pledged to
seek repeal.
In a strongly-worded resolution
which pointed the finger at 27 state
senators — all candidates for re-elec-
tion this year — who helped enact
the law, the convention said:
"As we approach election day
in this year of 1960, we strongly
urge our total membership, each
and every local union and central
body within the confines of Indi-
ana to expend every effort and
facility at their command to re-
move forever from our political
society the men and women who
would perpetrate upon the work-
ing people of Indiana this legis-
lative hoax, which in turn will
ultimately destroy the fruits and
protection of years of honest,
militant trade unionism."
In other action, the convention:
• Re-elected all its top officers
for a two-year term.
• Amended its constitution to
meet biennially, with election of
officers to be by rollcall vote at
conventions, instead of in state-
wide referendum elections.
• Granted 4 percent pay raises
for its state officers and field repre-
sentatives.
• Gave its executive board pow-
er to amend the body's constitution
should it conflict with federal law.
Helping enhance the political em-
phasis of the convention was a stir-
ring speech by Walter P. Reuther,
president of the Auto Workers and
a vice president of the AFL-CIO.
Reuther singled out for tongue-
lashings Vice Pres. Richard M.
nee, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.)
and Rep. Charles A. Halleck (R-
Ind.), House minority leader.
Calling the Vice President 'Tricky
Dicky," Reuther advised the con-
vention delegates to "judge a poli-
tician by the record, not by what
he promises."
He charged Nixon with voting
against federal aid to education
and with posing as an "expert on
world affairs because of the sad
domestic record of the Ike-Nixon
administration."
Of Goldwater, Reuther said: "I
hold no brief against Goldwater;
he's my publicity agent, and he has
the finest 18th Century mind in the
Senate. He is devoted to the one-
point program of the National As-
sociation of Manufacturers. He's
trying to repeal the 20th Century
and we're trying to live in it."
The auto union leader accused
Halleck of "high-octane hypocrisy."
Reuther promised the delegates
that Democratic Sen. John F.
Kennedy's election as President
"will move the seat of govern-
ment from Wall St. back to
Washington," and provide a fa-
vorable answer to the question,
"Can America gear itself to meet
the challenge of peace as well as
war?"
Installed for their second two-
year term were: Dallas Sells, presi-
dent; Max F. Wright, secretary-
treasurer; George Colwell and Ja-
cob R. Roberts, vice president, and
all members of the executive board
with the exception of Hsnry Price,
who was replaced by Ed De Groote,
and Earl Whitehurst, who was not
a candidate for re-election.
Physician Criticizes
AMA on Drug Testing
A prominent physician has taken the American Medical Associa-
tion to task for dropping its independent testing of new drugs.
In testimony before the Kefauver Senate Antitrust & Monopoly
subcommittee, Dr. Maxwell Finland of the Harvard Medical School
testified that most of the "combinations" of antibiotic drugs put on
the market by leading manufacture
ers serve no useful purpose and are
sometimes harmful.
He recommended to the Senate
investigators that a panel of "honest,
impartial" experts be set up to "eval-
uate" all new drugs before they are
put on sale.
Dr. Finland said the AMA in
the past had had a policy of test-
ing new medicines through its
Council on Drugs but became
"scared or sissy" and gave it up.
He said the AMA unit now is
limited to "writing statements
about the drugs, getting the in-
formation from the manufactur-
er."
The hearings, presided over by
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.),
have moved into exploration of the
antibiotic field in a familiar atmos-
phere of strenuous protests by Re-
publican subcommittee members
and drug manufacturers.
Senate Minority Leader Everett
McKinley Dirksen (111.), supported
by other GOP members, demand
that drug company witnesses be
excused from answering questions
about their pricing policies which
might reveal "business secrets."
Kefauver, backed by the Demo-
cratic majority, refused to give the
drug manufacturers "blanket per-
mission" to decide what informa-
tion is confidential and said each
request would be judged on- its
merits.
After the subcommittee staff in-
troduced evidence that the prices of
the four major antibiotics have re-
mained exactly the same for the
past 10 years, Kefauver com-
mented:
"I always marvel at how four or
five different companies making dif-
ferent products under different
methods in different areas all wind
up with the same price."
He asked Dr. Wilbur G. Malcom,
president of the American Cyan-
imid Co., how the various firms had
managed to get together.
"Mr. Chairman, we didn't get to-
gether. That's illegal," Malcom re-
plied.
"Well," Kefauver retorted,
"you didn't get together, but your
prices did."
Later the head of the Defense
Dept's Military Medical Supply
Agency, Rear Adm. William L.
Knickerbocker, ^bld the subcom-
mittee that "non-competitive" pric-
ing by American manufacturers has
forced the government to buy many
of its drugs from foreign countries.
He said the decision, which has
saved the government several mil-
lion dollars, was made because he
questioned the "realism" of the
prices asked by the American drug
industry and "the extent of genuine
competition" in the bidding.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, I960
Page Five
^ *- - ^ > saass^^ ns^Hn iw h iiiniiii Him hiii hi
THEME OF NEW YORK'S Labor T>ay parade, biggest in the history of the nation's trade union 174,000 TRADE UNIONISTS paraded up Fifth Ave. from morn-
movement, was set by this float of the city's Central Labor Council, stressing "equal opportunity, ing until after dark. Some 600,000 New Yorkers watched and
progress, brotherhood and freedom." Parade tradition was revived last year. applauded the 11-hour procession.
Labor s Legions March up Fifth Avenue
IT WAS AFTER DARK when this teen-age contingent, sons and LABOR DAY was a family day for New York
daughters of members of Retail, Wholesale & Dept. Store Local unionists including these members of the Building
1199, reached the reviewing stand, singing lustily all the way. Service Employes. The kids were as proud as
Their parents are pharmacists and hospital workers. their dads to take part in the big parade.
UNION LABEL was publicized in a lot of different GRAND MARSHAL of the parade was AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, shown here as he marched to the reviewing
ways, but this Ladies' Garment Workers display stand at Fifth Ave. and 41st St. Throughout the day, national, state and city government officials joined the union
was a real eye-catcher at the parade. leaders in watching the parade. The marchers were accompanied by nearly 150 floats and 200 bands.
Pag« Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
Trickle-Dowo Recession
I F THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION had exerted as
much effort to stimulating economic growth as to fabricating
explanations and alibis for the chronic high unemployment threat-
ening to envelope the nation in another recession, there would per-
haps be some basis for its claims to economic wisdom.
But the latest Labor Dept. report showing unemployment in
August at a 1960 record rate of 5.9 percent of the labor force reveals
with a shattering impact what's happening to the nation's economic
health.
In a month that normally produces a 500,000 drop in unemploy-
ment, joblessness declined only 229,000. Non-farm jobs which
normally jump 350,000 in August failed to show any change.
The 5.9 unemployment rate for August has been exceeded
only three times in the past 15 years — all in years when the nation
was in the grip of a recession.
And yet the Administration and GOP Candidate Nixon pound
away at the same line — that America has never been in better eco-
nomic shape, that there is more of everything, and that if we just
keep whistling as we pass the unemployment lines they will go
away.
This is a recipe for national suffocation.
The Eisenhower Administration has failed dismally in the eco-
nomic policy area. The Nixon campaign is dedicated to the same
policies. The answer is the election of Jack Kennedy, whose policies
on economic growth are in accord with the nation's needs.
Cheated Children
MILLIONS OF AMERICAN children are being cheated this
fall of a full-time education under the guidance of decently
paid teachers.
They are being cheated because of a political decision dictated
by the Eisenhower Administration and the Republican-Dixiecrat
coalition opposing federal aid to help provide enough classroom
space and assist in the payment of adequate teacher's salaries.
Despite its protestations of interest since 1953 and its lip service
to the need for a federal school aid program, the Eisenhower Admin-
istration has failed to make a single concerted effort .to secure legis-
lation of any meaningful scope.
The coalition opposition to a school aid program was effective
in killing legislation in the 86th Congress because of the firm
support of GOP House Leader Charles A. Halleck and the
doubletalk of Vice Pres. Nixon.
The GOP had in its power the votes to secure passage of a school
aid bill. All that was needed was a switch of a single Republican
vote out of four in the House Rules Committee to allow a confer-
ence committee to work out a compromise between House and
Senate passed bills.
Despite Nixon's well-advertised "intentions" of securing action,
the Republicans refused to produce the one vote on the Rules
Committee that would have sent the bill to conference and prob-
ably to final passage.
School aid is dead for another year, a victim of Republican
doubletalk and coalition politics. The millions of children who
are being cheated of their right to a good education cannot vote
but their parents can. They can and must hold responsible at
the polls the men who have denied their children what is rightfully
theirs.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Mintoa
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beime
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, September 17, 1960
No. 38
The American federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
You Never Looked Better
Afc-o©
NtvMi
Warper's Magazine Reports:
Secrecy Shrouds Meetings of
Business, Government Heads
NO ONE HAS ever succeeded in turning a pene-
trating searchlight on the Commerce Dept/s
little-known but highly influential Business Ad-
visory Council. An article in the current issue
of Harper's magazine does, however, point at least
a flashlight into what it calls "America's most
powerful private club."
In an atmosphere of secrecy — which not even
Congress has been able to penetrate — the biggest
of big business leaders meet regularly with the
leaders of government for closed door conferences
en matters affecting the nation's economy, wel-
fare and policies. Twice a year, top government
leaders are guests of the BAC at "work-and-play"
sessions at plush resorts where the lines between
business and social functions are blurred.
Hobart Rowen, business trends editor of
Newsweek magazine and author of the Harper's
article, points out that the Business Advisory
Council "has a unique privilege not accorded
to labor, agriculture, consumer, or academic
groups, or indeed to other business groups."
BAC membership, Rowen points out, "gives a
select few the chance to bring their views to bear
on key government people in a most pleasant,
convivial and private atmosphere. In a quiet cor-
ner • • . a major electrical manufacturer might
discuss atomic power problems with the chair-
man of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Or
a Wall Street underwriter, after a set of tennis
with a Federal Reserve official, may discuss inter-
est rates."
Although the link between business and govern-
ment leaders has been closest during the Eisen-
hower Administration, the Business Advisory
Council has been in existence for more than a
quarter of a century.
IT ORIGINATED as a not very successful
effort to bridge the gap between Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal Administration and the hos-
tile business community.
Until the outbreak of World War II, it lingered
as a largely social organization but then became
a major source for recruiting business and industry
leaders to fill responsible wartime jobs in govern-
ment. Since then, both Democratic and Republi-
can Presidents have turned to it as a source of
executive talent in emergency periods such as the
Korean action.
Rowen describes the BAC as "a tightlv-run fra-
ternity which lists some 160 of the most powerful
American business executives as its members."
Active membership is limited to 60. After
five years BAC members are eligible for "gradu-
ate" status. Appointment of new members,
nominated by a committee of past BAC chair-
men, is made after what Rowen describes as
"the toughest screening process in all of Ameri-
can business." BAC membership, a business
executive is quoted as saying, is "worth millions
in prestige."
At the "work and play" meetings, usually held
at the plush Homestead at Hot Springs, Va., there
have sometimes been more cabinet officers pres-
ent than were left in the capital.
Participants in the sessions are pledged to
secrecy and only occasionally have reporters been
able to pry loose a meaningful story of the de-
liberations.
On two occasions, Chairman Emanuel Celler
(D-N.Y.) of the House Judiciary Committee has
run into the stone wall of executive secrecy in at-
tempting to find out "how the council ticks." In
a 1955 report of his antitrust subcommittee, Celler
flatly charged the BAC with being a big business
lobby "which very definitely operates in violation
of the rules laid down by the Justice Dept. for
industry advisory committees."
EISENHOWER TAPPED three BAC leaders
for his first cabinet — Charles E. Wilson as de-
fense secretary, George M. Humphrey, for treasury
secretary, and Robert T. Stevens as secretary of the
army. Since then he has frequently turned to the
ranks of active BAC leaders for top-level appoint-
ments.
Rowen asserts that it was the BAC's indignation
over the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy's attack on
Army Sec. Stevens, a respected member of "the
club," which "helped to push McCarthy over the
brink in 1954 by supplying a bit of backbone to
the Eisenhower Administration at the right time."
Because the BAC has maintained so well its
cloak of secrecy, the question of whether key
public decisions are influenced excessively by
powerful private groups has seldom been raised,
Rowen notes. He adds:
"But the public should be aware that from
Administration to Administration, this elite group
has had a continuous privilege to participate in
government decisions with no public record or re-
view. And it should demand to know more."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. 1960
Page Sove»
Morgan Says:
Religious Issue Dogs Kennedy
But Some See Bigotry
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
DOGGING THE KENNEDY CAMPAIGN
like an unshakable shadow is the issue of
religion. Like the little man who wasn't there,
the problem was there again and nobody's wishing
could make it go away. Perhaps it was unrealistic
ever to think that it would, so deep and emotional
are peoples' views on it.
It lives on like a virus,
defying the antibiotics of
reason and unbias. And it
splashed back into the
headlines with the refusal
of Norman Vincent Peale,
a widely known and com-
mercially successful minis-
ter, and a group of other
Protestants, to take reli-
gion out of politics.
One great mystery about
the issue is what effect it
will have on the voters in November. One distin-
guished Washington correspondent thinks privately
it will lick the Democratic presidential nominee.
Another equally celebrated political pundit be-
lieves the issue will neutralize itself, hurting Ken-
nedy in the so-called Bible belt of the midwest,
helping him in the urban areas where liberal voters,
including Catholics, are more numerous.
But talk on the matter is confined to no one
place. On this first major campaign swing by
Sen. Kennedy, it has cropped up in Alaska and
Michigan, in Idaho and California and stops in
between. In southeastern Idaho where citizens
of the Latter Day Saints or Mormon faith pre- ■
dominate, a regional correspondent of the Salt
Lake Tribune said letters attacking the senator's
Roman Catholicism were numerous" although one
local Democratic candidate, himself a Catholic,
said he found the Mormons not unsympathetic
because of the common denominator of belonging
to minority groups.
One of the top Democratic officials in Oregon
told this reporter the intensity of anti-Catholic
feeling worried him and he pointed to angry letters
to the Portland newspapers on the subject. In
Spokane a businessman told me he and his wife
had received several pieces of vicious anti-Catholic
literature, including a dodger claiming the Pope
was preparing the conquest of the world.
Its We See It:
THE NEW DEMOCRATIC national chair-
man, Washington's Sen. Henry Jackson, who is
now traveling with the candidate, asks where the
money is coming from to finance these efforts.
Others have wondered how much coincidence was
involved in the fact that a southern Baptist
preacher who has opposed Kennedy's election
from the pulpit happened to be in Washington,
staying in the Mayflower Hotel suite of a large
gas company and visiting, among other places, the
office of the Republican national chairman. The
other day a man in Seattle told a political reporter
for the Seattle Times that he had just received a
copy of the phony Knights of Columbus oath* in
a rather odd manner. "I went to the bank to cash
a check," he said, "and I got it back with my
change."
Sen. Kennedy has refused to comment on
Harry Truman's Labor Day charge that while
Vice Pres. Nixon was taking a pious stand
against prejudice at the front door, the Republi-
cans were dealing in bigotry at the back door.
There has been some private Democratic head-
quarters fuming that this was indeed the case al-
though on their side the Republicans can claim,-
not without justification, that some Democrats are
playing the issue both ways by trying to corral
the Catholic vote while implying that a Protestant
vote against Kennedy is a ballot of bigotry. In
any event Kennedy headquarters welcomed Pres.
Eisenhower's news conference comment that "1
not only do not believe in voicing prejudice, . . .
I feel none."
For his part, Sen. Kennedy feels sensitive on
the subject and has privately expressed the wish
in somewhat redolent terms that discussion of it
would subside. But when he was asked in a TV
audience participation period in Seattle how he
proposed to counteract "the persistent attacks
leveled against you on your religion," he said he
didn't propose to counteract them but welcomed
questions on religious freedom, aid to education
and other matters
IT HAS NOT, of course, but Sen. Jackson, the
party chairman who himself is a Protestant and a
Mason, says he detects some evidence that bigotry
is beginning to backfire.
The example may or may not be typical but
in Eugene, Ore., a man told me his neighbor was
infuriated last Sunday when her pastor preached
a sermon against Catholicism. "We're going to
heaven," she said, "and there'll be some Catholics
there too. If we don't like it where do we expect
to °o then?"
WASHINGTON
One Million More Children
Increase Need for School Aid
VICE PRES. NIXON, campaigning in the Northwest, began the
delicate process of repudiating his President on the public power
issue.
He has repudiated him already on farm policy by the device of
coldly freezing out of his campaign Sec. of Agriculture Ezra Taft
Benson. He has repudiated him on defense policy in the famous
Fifth Avenue Compact with New -York's Gov. Nelson. Rockefeller.
Now the Vice President says, in a speech carefully prepared
for the power-hungry states of Idaho, Washington and Oregon,
that he would "put greater emphasis" on federal reclamation and
power projects.
* * *
THE RECORD SHOWS that the Administration has imposed
a "no new starts" policy on reclamation and public power projects.
The record shows that the Eisenhower-Nixon Administration suc-
cessfully fought and defeated the proposed high-level Hell's Canyon
Dam in the Snake River. The first conference held by Mr. Eisen-
hower's first Secretary of the Interior, the late Douglas McKay,
announced that the government would drop its opposition to turn-
ing over the Hell's Canyon site to a private power company. Every
Democratic effort in Congress to overrule the Eisenhower-packed
Federal Power Commission failed against rocklike GOP obstruction.
Nixon has been intimately connected with the Administration
that refused further federal funds for TVA expansion to meet its
growing needs, with the Administration that schemed to strangle
TVA by the Dixon-Yates deal that is still in the courts.
The record further shows that Nixon himself, in his six-year
career in Congress, voted five times out of six on rollcall votes to
weaken or kill public power and reclamation projects. In the famous
"do-nothing" Republican 80th Congress, he voted to begin the
process of starving to death the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Mr. Nixon as President would certainly be a more activist execu-
tive than Mr. Eisenhower — but if he really believed in a federal
public power philosophy, he couldn't get majority Republican sup-
port in either house of Congress.
His private utility backers are not backing him, certainly,
because they think he would do more as President than he felt
was essential to redeem the campaign oratory. They aren't sup-
porting him to advance the construction of great federal multi-
purpose power, navigation, flood-control and recreation facilities.
* * *
THE NAM NEWS attributes what it calls "victories" for "con-
servatives" in the post-convention session of Congress to five signifi-
cant factors. They are:
• "The power of the Southern Democratic-Conservative Re-
publican coalition."
• "The power of the House Rules Committee," which deter-
mines "except for extraordinary procedure what legislation can be
taken to the House floor for a vote."
• "President Eisenhower's veto power" and* veto* threats.
• "The legislative skill of leading conservatives. . . ."
• "The fact that much of the session was taken up with . . „
civil rights legislation" which "limited the time available" for other •
measures that "might otherwise have been enacted."
As political analysis, this is beyond cavil or contradiction.
It also reveals what needs to be done to get liberal legislation
passed — the removal of some of these weapons from the hands of
the self-styled "conservatives."
lOPULATION shifts and an increase of one
million more children in the nation's public
schools this fall make federal aid to education
more urgent than ever, Carl J. Megel, president of
the Teachers' declared on "As We See It," AFL-
CIO public service radio program heard on the
ABC network (Sunday, 1:15 p. m., New York
time).
"The problems this fall include the same ones
we've had for a decade" and failed to meet, Megel
said.
Paul B. High, social science teacher in the
Cleveland, O., schools, pointed out: "In large
cities there are enough classrooms in some
areas, but many are not in the right places.
There may be an overcrowded building here and
another building five or 10 miles away with
plenty of space."
Megel commented that "Fifty 'million people
have moved from the cities into the suburbs in
last 10 years. The recent census shows that the
large cities lost population."
A need of classrooms exists all over the nation
as a result, he said. In addition, "we need some-
thing like 30,000 additional teachers just to take
care of the new boys and girls."
"We have a teacher shortage," High re-
marked, "because of inadequate salaries and the
conditions under which teachers have to teach.*
The problems are complicated, Megel declared,
because "at the present ti me we have mpre people
living in city slums than we have on the farms.
Children come from an overcrowded home into
an overcrowded school building to be taught by
a harassed and frustrated teacher. Parents must
realize the effect on their children of overcrowded
classrooms, and underpaid teachers facing disci-
plinary problems."
Federal aid for school construction and teacher
salaries has failed in successive recent sessions of
Congress because of Administration failure to give
the proposals practical support, even threatening
a veto against most proposals made by Democratic
leaders, the union head asserted.
Megel argued for federal aid for school con-
struction in the next Congress. He said it is the
only answer because "most school revenue now
comes from property taxes, and this is becoming
an impossible burden. We have advocated fed-
eral aid because the federal government takes
74 cents out of every dollar from the communi-
ties^ and because a federal income tax distrib-
utes the cost according to ability to pay.
He quoted from a Health, Education and Wel-
fare Department pamphlet advocating that during
the next five years we raise the salaries of teachers
so that they average $7,800 and the following fivej
years $8,300. "If we could get salaries like that,
we wouldn't have much to worry about on that
score.** Megel said the national average for
teachers' salaries now is "around $4,300 to
$4*400.
REGISTER
YO UR 0
FAMILY
ATTENTION-GETTING poster, above, is one of a series being
used by the AFL-CIO in nationwide registration drive — first step in
massive get-out-the-yote campaign.
Page Elglit
AFI^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
How to Buy:
Use New BLS Family
Budget Judiciously
By Sidney Margolius
HPHE BUREAU of Labor Statistics' new estimates of family living
costs, besides showing what a modest standard of living costs
nowadays, can help with your own budgeting if you use these figures
judiciously.
BLS has estimated costs of a "modest but adequate" standard of
living for 20 cities. The mythical family is a father, housewife, boy
of 13, girl of 8. The costs run from
$5,370 a year in Houston, cheapest
city according to this estimate, to
$6,567 in Chicago.
Average for the 20 cities is
$6,084, or $117 a week including
federal, state and local taxes. These
costs were calculated last fall. Pres-
ent costs would be about $118 a
week.
This, of course, is noticeably
higher than the current average in-
dustrial wage of $91 a week. Can
even $118 a week buy a fairly good
standard of living? The answer is,
not in all respects.
This budget allows for a five-room
apartment or house for the family. The food allotment is $33 a
week or $1.17 per person per day, an achievable allowance if you
shop and prepare economically. Helen Lamale, of the BLS Divi-
sion of Prices and Cost of Living, explains that the food budgets
are based on a nutritionally-adequate standard.
The "transportation" budget is based on buying a three-year-old
car every three years, Mrs. Lamale reports.
THE CLOTHING BUDGET would allow the wife one heavy
coat and one light coat every four years, and papa one suit every
three years. The recreation budget allows the family to go to the
movies every other week, except for the boy, who would get in
three weeks out of four.
But the medical allotment is noticeably limited. BLS allows,
for example, only IV2 dental examinations and cleanings a year
for four people. BLS says this medical budget is based on what
seems satisfactory to families it interviewed. But if you do follow
the recommended two visits a year for each person, you'll have
a bigger cost than BLS allowed.
The other potential controversy is the lower food allowances for
southern cities. As in previous budgets, BLS allowed less for fuel
and clothing in the South. It's not generally known, but this time
BLS also allowed for regional food customs. It based southern
estimates on greater use of fish and poultry — cheaper than meat.
For the North, it allowed for more meat, and also more money for
baked goods. It considered that the southern custom is to do more
home baking and generally more home preparation of food.
Thus, living is not really as much cheaper in Houston and Atlanta
.compared to northern cities as the BLS estimates indicate.
Nor are actual costs in New York, Philadelphia and Boston as
much lower than Chicago as BLS indicates. It allowed more for
cars in Chicago, since car ownership is more usual there.
Rent controls in some areas have made a big difference in
living costs. With many New York rentals still under controls,
this big city actually has a lower living cost than most smaller ones.
BLS had to allow 37 percent more for rent in Chicago than in
New York.
With these exceptions, the BLS budget can be helpful for family
budgeting. You can't use it as a model because there is no exactly
"average family" in either needs or spending preferences. But you
can use it to see where you may be departing from "average," and
if that's where you want to depart.
For family budget purposes, if you eliminate the income but not
Social Security taxes, this mythical family of four would spend its
money this way:
Food 31.8%
Rent, heat, utilities 20.6
Clothing 10.3
Medical care 5.9
Transportation 9.1
Reading, recreation 4.0
Other goods and services . . . 13.5
Other costs 4.8
Best way to work out your own spending plan is to:
• Estimate your own expenses, using the BLS percentages as a
reference, but not as the final authority. You may have to spend
more for housing willy-nilly, or for food if your children are older,
or for medical care. Or you may have special family goals and
prefer to spend less in other departments. Certainly if you have less
income than the estimated budgets require, you may have to pare
the percentages spent for transportation, recreation and some of tlie
other categories.
• Keep a daily record of family spending. This is the only way
you ever will know where your money goes. Then you will be
better able to make it go where you want, rather than have it leak
away.
BLS estimates that the cost of its budget for a family of two would
be about 66 percent of the cost for four; for three, about 87 percent,
and five, about 120.
Copyright 1060 by Sidney Margolius
UNION MEMBERS get service in the fitting room of the Cleveland Union Eye Care Center, which
accommodates as many as 250 patients a day. , The work includes fitting of new prescriptions and
a steady flow of eye glass repairs and adjustments.
Cleveland Labor Cooperates:
Union Eye Care Center Serves
162,000 Families at Big Saving
CLEVELAND, O.— One year and 11,029 pairs
of glasses later, the Union Eye Care Center
of Cleveland is looking forward to doubling its
volume of business in the next 12 months.
Totally owned and operated by organized labor,
the center did $212,366 in business its first 12
months and offered glasses at as much as*60 per-
cent below prevailing retail prices in the Cleveland
area.
How did Cleveland labor get in the optical
business? William C. Lightner, president of the
center, explains it very simply:
"We felt the consumer was not getting a fair
break on optical prices, so we decided to do
something about it. We had heard of successes
in other areas and we felt we could do as well.
We did some checking and felt we could set up
in business if we had $25,000 worth of working
capital. We just went out and got it — the hard
way, 25 cents at a crack."
Lightner, an AFL-CIO staff consultant with the
Cleveland Community Chest and an active mem-
'I Was Appalled: 1
ber of the Auto Workers, teamed up with Ed
Moss, secretary-treasurer of Machinists' District
54. They sold affiliation fees to unions through-
out Cleveland on the basis of 25 cents per member.
It was slow going at first, but finally the idea
of low-priced eye care caught on and after nearly
a year of almost daily appearances at union meet-
ings throughout Cleveland, the Lightner-Moss
team realized its goal of 100,000 affiliation and
$25,000 in cash.
As the center enters its second year, it has
162,000 union families affiliated, and more than
250 unions. Plans are being completed for the
opening next month of a second center on Cleve-
land's West Side. A committee is selecting a
location for a third site on the East Side. At the
same time a number of larger suburbs are asking
for centers.
Any trade union seeking information about
the center can write to the Union Eye Care
Center, 1729 Superior Avenue, Cleveland 14,
Ohio.
Scientists Repudiate AMA Use
Of Survey on Medical Care
The following is excerpted from the Sept. 2
issue of Science, the weekly publication of the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science.
THE American Medical Association, which
found itself deeply involved in the Congres-
sional fight over medical aid to the aged, was under
attack for its use of a survey of the aged presented
before the fifth congress of the International Insti-
tute of Gerontologists held at San Francisco in
mid-August.
A widely distributed AMA press release said
the survey "emphatically proves that the great
majority of Americans over 65 are capably financ-
ing their own health care and prefer to do it on
their own, without government intervention."
The release said that "90 percent [of the
sample] could think of no personal medical
needs that were not being taken care of," and
that only "a relatively small percentage of those
who said they did have medical needs attributed
the failure to meet these needs to lack of
money."
The release credited James W. Wiggins and
Helmut Schoeck of Emory University as director
and associate director of the study and listed 16
university sociologists from schools throughout
the country as participating in the study.
Senators Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.) and Pat
McNamara (D-Mich.) began inserting in the Con-
gressional Record comments on the survey.
From Noel Gist of the University of Missouri:
"I participated in a study of aging to the extent
of supervising the interviewing of a sample of
rural residents in Missouri. . . . The news release,
by the use of my name . . . leaves the impression
that I endorse the conclusions presented.
"I do nothing of the sort. ... It was quite
obvious to me that the questionnaire sent to us
was a very poor one and seemed to be devised
by amateurs in research. But since we agreed
to do the interviewing for the program we com-
pleted the assignment."
From Clark Tibbits, chairman of the Executive
Committee for the Americas, International Asso-
ciation of Gerontology: "I was in the audience
when Professor Wiggins made his presentation.
I was astonished at the data and conclusions
reported.
'The basic figures on income, assets, and health
status differ by as much as 100 percent from those
reported by other studies during the past decade
and from figures available through such standard
sources as the Bureau of the Census, the Current
Population Survey, and the National Health
Survey."
From Wayne Thompson, of Cornell:
"When the paper was actually presented,
there was an immediate reaction on the part of
the audience, attacking its unscientific character,
and the ease with which Wiggins and Schoeck
jumped to untenable conclusions. The survey
was badly designed, poorly conceived and com-
pletely misleading. Not a single scientist pres-
ent jkt the meeting rose to support either Mr.
Wiggins or his paper."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
Page Nine
New Techniques Developed:
Labor's Registration Drive
Hikes Voter Lists in 14 States
Labor's non-partisan register-to-vote campaign, launched through nickel-a-member contributions by
AFL-CIO affiliates, has already sent registration totals soaring in hundreds of precincts in the 14 states
where the drive has been concentrated.
• State and local Citizens' Non-Partisan Committees are using all the traditional methods of spurring
voter registration and have developed some new techniques of their own.
Where state and local election '
laws permit, prospective voters
have actually been enrolled in
their own homes. House-to-
house canvassers spot the homes
or apartments where one or more
eligible adults are unregistered
and volunteers deputized as regis-
trars follow through to complete
the process.
Other deputized volunteers en-
roll voters at industrial plants, busi-
ness offices, at booths in depart-
ment stores and shopping centers
and through mobile units which
visit each neighborhood.
Carl McPeak, named by AFL-
Labor Welcomes New
AEC Radiation Rules
The Atomic Energy Commission has announced tightened radia-
tion exposure limits for workers in private industry — cutting present
exposure levels by two-thirds for many workers.
Organized labor welcomed the new regulations, which take effect
Jan, 1, 1961, especially since they require employers to display
in the workplace AEC posters in-'^
forming workers at the new stand-
ards and other vital facts. This was
a key union demand.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
late in August filed a strong protest
with AEC Chairman John C. Mc-
Cone over "needless delay" in put-
ting the regulations into effect. The
AEC acted two weeks later.
Meany had pointed out the
new standards were recom-
mended by a technical advisory
group in January 1957 and
adopted for AEC operations a
year after. Since then — two and
a half years later — the standards
had been proposed, for AEC li-
censees and hearings held and
yet they remained withheld,
Meany complained in urging
early issuance.
Pres. James A. Brownlow of the
AFL-CIO Metal Trades Dept. said
his department is "indeed pleased"
that the AEC has extended its own
standards to private industry. Un-
ions affiliated with the department
represent over two-thirds of all
unionized AEC employes.
The AEC, in establishing the new
exposure limits as recommended by
the National Committee on Radia-
tion Protection and Measurements,
quoted NCRP as observing the low- i
ering of levels does not mean pres-
ent levels cause damage. They are
aimed, it was said, to bring the
standards in line with "new trends
of scientific opinion and to reflect
awareness of the probability of a
large future increase in radiation
uses."
"The principal effect of the
amendments," said the AEC,
"will be to limit the life-time ac-
cumulated dose of radiation
workers to approximately one-
third the limits permitted under
the regulation as it now stands."
In a special poster which em-
ployers will be required to post in
a conspicuous place, the AEC in-
forms workers that the new regula-
tions cover limits on exposure to ra-
diation and radioactive material:
what to do in case of accidental ex-
posure; personnel monitoring, sur-
veys and equipment; caution signs,
labels and safety interlock equip
ment, and exposure records anc
reports.
"Of particular significance,'
Brownlow commented, "is the re-
quirement that employers must no-
tify the individual worker as well
as the AEC of any exposure which
he receives above the established
limits and periodically, upon the
worker's request, to furnish the em-
ployes information as to their ex-
posures."
Brownlow also called attention
to the AEC poster and stressed that
a worker could find on it the address
and telephone number of the AEC
Operations Office which has the re-
sponsibility for inspection of his
employer's facilities.
Like a Speed Limit
The AEC, in discussing the mean-
ing of the sharply-reduced levels,
said they should not be taken to
mean there is no hazard below the
limit and necessary damage above
it. Rather, it is more like a "speed
limit" which is set by the best ex-
pert judgment for the safe operation
of an automobile, the AJEC said.
The new regulations will cover
about 10,000 AEC-licensed firms
employing some 70,000 workers, it
was estimated. They will also cover
131 AEC contractors who, with the
AEC plants already observing these
standards, employ about 117,000.
CIO Pres. George Meany to direct
the registration drive set up by the
Executive Council at its August ses-
sion, emphasized that the crash pro-
gram supplements — but does not
substitute for — regular COPE regis-
tration activities.
Major areas where the campaign
is concentrated are cities in Cali-
fornia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Kansas, Michigan, Maryland, Min-
nesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New
York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wis-
consin where there is a heavy con-
centration of population — and
where voter registration and partici-
pation have been light.
Working with Other Groups
In these areas, labor is working
closely with other civic groups
through the non-partisan commit-
tees.
In California, an initial area of
activity because of an early dead-
line for closing of the registration
books, labor has given active sup-
port to the drive by the Community
Service Organizations to register the
state's large Spanish-speaking popu-
lat ion. McPeak said the original
goal of 100,000 new registered vot-
ers among this group has been sur-
passed.
Other drives have sought to
reach first voters who have come
of age since the last election,
shut-ins and families where only
the husband is registered.
More than 630,000 posters —
140,000 in Spanish — have already
been sent to state and local com-
mittees for the registration drive.
Public service radio and tele-
vision spot announcements empha-
sizing the importance of registra-
tion have been furnished as part of
the AFL-CIO's contribution to the
non-partisan citizenship program.
All Aids Utilized
Leaflets, sound trucks, buttons,
parades, telephone brigades, attrac-
tive "pickets, " all have been used
to spotlight the campaign.
Spurring the drive are what
Meany has described as the "dis-
couraging" results of surveys and
spot checks on the number of per-
sons who do not register or vote.
Even during presidential elec-
tion years, traditionally the high-
water mark of citizen participa-
tion, the United States ranks
among the lowest in the free
world in the percentage of its
population which goes to the
polls. In the 1956 election, where
participation was greater than
average, there were still 40 mil-
lion Americans who did not reg-
ister and therefore could not
vote.
Starting point in the AFL-CIO
registration drive, McPeak indicat-
ed, was a major effort to persuade
city and county officials to make
registration less difficult. In most
areas, he said, "there are not enough
registration places in convenient lo-
cations and these places are. not
open at convenient hours."
Free Baby-sitters
In areas where prospective voters
still have to go out of their way to
register, McPeak noted, labor and
cooperating civic groups are pro-
viding transportation and baby-sit-
ters to get people to the registration
centers.
"We don't ask how they are going
to vote," he emphasized. "We don't
tell them how to vote. We just
want to make sure that they are
eligible to vote."
14 States to Vote
On Survival Law
Constitutional amendments
aimed at assuring the continuity of
government in case of emergency,
such as a nuclear attack, will go to
referendum, votes in 14 states on
Nov. 8.
Dir. Leo A. Hoegh of the Office
of Civil & Defense Mobilization
urged ratification. He pointed out
that a long-range nuclear attack
could isolate areas into "islands of
survival" which would have to de-
pend for help on government at
other than the federal level. Civil
government must act now, he said,
to insure its own survival and to
prevent unlawful assumption of
authority.
The amendments will be on the
ballots in Maryland, Idaho, Kan-
sas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri,
Nebraska, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota,
Utah, South Carolina and West
Virginia.
TYPICAL OF 1N-PLANT registration drives conducted by AFL-CIO unions is this scene at the
big Midvale-Heppenstal steel plant in Philadelphia where Federal Local Union 18887 got manage-
ment's cooperation for on-the-job registration of workers. The goal: a 100 percent registered
vork force.
Role Set for
Union Women
In Vote Drive
A joint program for mobilizing
labor's womenpower for the elec-
tion campaign has been launched
by the AFL-CIO Auxiliaries and
the Women's Activities Div. of the
Committee on Political Education.
At a top-level meeting, officers
of the two groups agreed on full
cooperation and coordination of ac-
tivities at the national, state and
local levels.
First project on which the two
groups will work together is the
AFL-CIO's nationwide registra-
tion drive. Plans are being com-
pleted to extend the cooperation
to the election campaign and to
labor's continuing political edu-
cation program.
The blueprint for coordination
was drawn up at a conference at-
tended by COPE Dir. James L.
McDevitt; Deputy Dir. Al Barkan;
Wesley Reedy, assistant to AFL-
CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler; AFL-CIO Auxiliaries Sec.-
Treas. Elda Luebbert and Special
Rep. Marcella Beatty; and Margaret
Thornburgh, and Esther Murray,
directors of the Women's Activities
Div.
Each affiliated auxiliary has been
asked to call a special meeting if
a regular meeting is not scheduled
within a week to pave the way for
all-out help to COPE organizations
in each community.
Musicians in
Movie Studios
Rejoin AFM
Hollywood, Calif. — Musicians
employed in major Hollywood
movie studios, after two years of
working under a substandard con-
tract, have voted in a National La-
bor Relations Board election to turn
out the unaffiliated Musicians Guild
and restore bargaining rights to the
American Federation of Musicians.
The election was bitterly con-
tested, the AFM winning by a close
margin a majority of the nearly
1,000 votes cast.
AFM Pres. Herman D. Kenin
hailed the outcome as "a significant
victory for trade unions as well as
instrumentalists everywhere."
"It signals the speedy end of
dual unionism and provides the
kind of unity of purpose that
enables an honest trade union to
represent its members effective-
ly," he said.
"I am sure I speak for the vast
majority of our 265,000 members
when I say that we regard the elec-
tion results more as a reaffirmation
of musicians' unity than as a vic-
tory over other musicians."
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
Educationists
Discuss Union
Staff Training
Five different approaches to the
problems of training instructors for
union educational programs are de-
scribed in frank detail in the cur-
rent issue of Education News and
Views, publication of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Education.
George Brooks, education direc-
tor of the Pulp-Sulphite Workers,
writes of his union's pioneering ef-
forts in staff training — and of the
shifts in emphasis that have devel-
oped because of changing condi-
tions.
EI wood Taub of the Woodwork-
ers relates how his union success-
fully adapted the Pulp-Sulphite pro-
gram to its own needs.
Meatcutters' Education Dir.
Helmuth Kern discusses the one-
day leadership institute which the
union has used to develop "a
hard core ... of active, militant,
loyal . • . and responsible mem-
bers."
The Auto Workers' unique retire-
ment leadership training program is
described by George E. Odell, wTiile
Jules Pagano and Thomas J. Cos-
grove discuss the "new dimension"
in labor education developed by
the Communications Workers' staff
institutes held in cooperation with
the University of Chicago.
Ohio COPE
Backs Kennedy
Columbus, O. — The Ohio AFL-
CIO Committee on Political Edu-
cation at a meeting here unani-
mously concurred with the national
AFL-CIO's endorsement of Sen.
John F. Kennedy for president as
"in the best interests of the United
States and of the labor movement."
COPE also endorsed two Republi-
cans and one Democrat in contests
for the State Supreme Court. It
recommended the election of Judge
Kingsley A. Taft and Earl R.
Hoover, Republicans, over Joseph
H. Ellison and Judge James F. Bell,
Democrats, respectively, and of
Judge John W. Peck (D) over
C. William O'Neill (R), former
governor.
Both Democratic and Republican
candidates in a fourth statewide
contest, for state auditor, won
COPE endorsement.
I Elect Wellborn President:
ROY O. WELLBORN, left, is shown taking the oath of office as
new president of Grain Millers from retiring Pres. Sam P. Ming at
the union's seventh convention, in Denver.
Variety Finds 'Land of
Promise' Noteworthy
The entertainment field's weekly newspaper, Variety, applauded
the AFL-CIO's film documentary, "Land of Promise," terming the
coast-to-coast showing of the film a "noteworthy step" towards edu-
cating the postwar generation on the history of American labor.
Variety, in its issue of Sept. 7, reviews the half-hour film which
was shown on the American Broad- ^
casting Company television net-
work over the Labor Day weekend.
The review states that "Land of
Promise" lets the "postwar kiddies
of the inflation and two-car garage
era" know that American workers
had some heroes and "some mighty
hard times before things got so
good."
The Boston Herald of Sept. 3
saw the film as a "very appropriate
pre-Labor Day program based on
the progress this nation and labor
have made."
Variety praised a segment of the
film featuring a talk by AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany. It said:
"Rather than gloat on the union
movement's accomplishments, the
prexy takes the time to chide the
country on its slums and blighted
sections, where there isn't to this
day even the protection of a mini-
mum wage (migrant fruit-pickers,
etc.)."
Claiming the production "strictly
soft pedals the riots and wars be-
tween labor and management," the
review maintained: "This was one
time when a TV half hour had
every right to exploit violence, yet
stayed completely away from it."
The review pays tribute to the
film's musical score, calling it
"unique and effective, with a raft
of fine folk singers."
The Boston Herald said: "Be-
cause it was an AFL-CIO produc-
tion, it naturally credited many of
the gains to the unions, yet only
the most biased would call it un-
fair."
The review cited the film's "ex-
cellent introduction showing the
nation at work and at play, telling
of the contributions of labor to the
greatness of this country, and stress-
ing the point that unions have won
for the workers a chance to have
enough money and time to enjoy
their pursuit of happiness."
NLRB Hears Arguments in Four
Tests of L-G Picket Restrictions
The National Labor Relations Board has heard oral arguments on four test cases arising out of
the Landrum-Griffin Act's restrictions on organizational and recognition picketing.
The board said the cases, selected from a larger group, contained representative issues in the
interpretation of the L-G restrictions. These were the cases and the arguments:
• The Blinne Construction Co>
of Kansas City, Kan. and Hod Car-
riers Local 840 involves picketing
to protest an alleged refusal to rec-
ognize or bargain. The NLRB
trial examiner had held peaceful
picketing to be an unfair labor
practice, even if conducted by a
majority union.
The NLRB general counsel's at-
torneys argued that a violation has
occurred if a union failed to file for
an election within a reasonable
period of time, not to exceed 30
days, even if the union represents
a majority and even though the un-
ion may be picketing to protest the
employer's refusal to recognize the
union.
The union attorney, Harold
Gruenberg, argued that Congress
did not intend that majority un-
ions should suffer from the re-
striction. He said it was aimed
to outlaw minority union picket-
ing.
He also lashed the board's pro-
cedure on election petitions when
unfair labor practices have been
filed in the same case, as happened
in the Blinne case. He said the
practice of postponing the election
pending the outcome of the unfair
labor practice charges would force
the union to give up the charges in
order to meet the election petition
deadline.
• The Crown Cafeteria of Long
Beach, Calif., and Hotel and Res-
taurant Workers' Local 681. Here
the workers picketed to win recog-
nition and to appeal to customers
not to patronize the cafeteria. The
trial examiner found this a lawful
object and method and recom-
mended dismissal.
The general counsel's office ar-
gued that the union revealed its rec-
ognition objective throughout the
picketing. It therefore was unpro-
tected by L-G's "publicity" provis-
ion, it charged.
'Worthless' Safeguard
Ben Gettler, the union attorney,
charged that the general counsel's
approach would make the "publici-
ty" provision worthless as a safe-
guard for picketing. He argued that
the reality of most picketing is that
the union is seeking recognition or a
contract.
• The Stork Club in New York
City and Hotel and Restaurant
Workers' Locals 1 and 89. This
case involves issues similar to the
Crown case and in particular the
publicly-announced withdrawal of
a prior demand for recognition.
The trial examiner had recom-
mended dismissal, finding the un-
ion had withdrawn from recogni-
tion to the protection of "publicity"
picketing.
Ben D. Stein and Jerome B. Lu-
rie, for the union, demanded that
the board disclose under what cir-
cumstances the union could carry
out publicity picketing if it is found
the union acted illegally in the
Stork Club case. They pointed out
the withdrawal of the recognition
demand was effected in a letter to
the employer, with copies sent to
the NLRB and others.
• The Cartage and Terminal
Management Corp. of Chicago and
Teamsters' Local 705. In this case,
the examiner found the employer
had "offered recognition and ac-
cepted recognition, which the un-
ion refused." He found the union
violated the law by trying to im-
pose certain conditions on the em-
ployer.
Grain Millers Ask
New Role for NLRB
Denver — The Grain Millers have called for abolition of most of
the powers of the National Labor Relations Board.
The union, meeting here in its seventh constitutional convention,
overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for abolition of the
office and staff of the general counsel and transfer of the judicial
functions of the board to independ-^
ent labor courts.
The approximately 200 delegates
also:
• Endorsed the Democratic
presidential ticket of Sen. John F.
Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon B. John-
son.
• Approved the retirement of
Sam P. Ming, president of the in-
ternational since its charter by the
former AFL in 1948, and elected
Roy O. Wellborn, vice president,
as Ming's successor.
• Formally accepted merger of
some 15,000 sugar workers with
the Grain Millers.
Ming, a former flour mill worker
in Seattle who now resides in Min-
neapolis, AFGM headquarters, was
active in organized labor for 25
years. He said he was relinquish-
ing the post because "it is time to
turn the leadership over to younger
men."
Wellborn, long a labor leader
in Oklahoma City, Okla., takes
office Dec. 1 to serve out Ming's
unexpired term ending in the
spring of 1963. Wellborn was
elected in a spirited contest with
Joseph Klickna of Springfield,
111.
The resolution on the NLRB calls
for stripping the board of all func-
tions except that of conducting
representation elections, and con-
gressional re - evaluation of the
whole agency and its methods of
adjudicating labor problems and
disputes.
In its place, the resolution pro-
poses that special regional federal
labor tribunals with equity powers
be established to adjudicate dis-
putes in the labor field.
The resolution said: "Experience
since 1947 has also shown that an
administrative agency consisting of
the five members of the NLRB, ap-
proximately 150 legal assistants to
members and about 100 trial ex-
aminers cannot enunciate and equit-
ably administer a workable and
publicly acceptable national labor
policy under the existing laws. . • .
'Hopelessly Inefficient 9
"The board has become hope-
lessly inefficient in the disposition
of its case load. With more per-
sonnel than is available to the entire
federal judiciary and with far fewer
cases and less complicated issues
to resolve, the board has made a
mockery of the very purpose of ad-
ministrative law and administrative
agencies — prompt and expert de-
termination of controversies. . . .
"All too frequently the board's
decisions reflect appalling ignor-
ance of the facts of industrial life
only because of the voluntary self-
isolation of the board members
from those who might best enlight-
en them, the litigants them-
selves. . . .
"(We) firmly believe that the
degeneration and degradation of the
NLRB and the office of general
counsel are of such character and
depth that, even under a new na-
tional administration which might
ultimately replace all present mem-
bers and the general counsel with
new personnel, it will still be im-
possible to reconstruct these agen-
cies and rededicate them to public
usefulness."
This was believed to be the first
time an international union had
taken such a drastic stand against
the board.
The convention approved the
Democratic presidential ticket of
Sen. John F. Kennedy and Sen.
Lyndon B. Johnson following a
warning by AFL-CIO Legislative
Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller tha* 4he
United States is "beginning a seri-
ous recession."
Biemiller told the delegates that
"at least four major pieces of social
legislation that failed in Congress
this year would have become law if
Kennedy had been President."
He said "strong, positive lead-
ership in the White House would
have tipped the scales" and
"brought about passage of effec-
tive wage-hour legislation, fed-
eral aid to education, adequate
housing legislation and medical
care for the aged through social
security."
Instead, Biemiller said, the Ad-
ministration "including the Vice
President exerted strong negative
pressure to give the reactionaries
their margin of victory."
Nixon, he added, would be a
"stronger" president than Eisen- ,
hower but he would "apply that
strong grip . . . around the throat
of the labor movement and the
forces of liberalism in America."
Biemiller also warned the dele-
gates that under the Eisenhower-
Nixon Administration the country
is economically insecure and is now
again "beginning a serious reces-
sion."
The delegates endorsed a pro-
gram of raising the standards of
foreign workers as the best answer
to the problem of low-priced im-
ports.
Sen. Hennings, Battler
For Civil Rights, Dies
Sen. Thomas C. Hennings CD-
Mo.), for 10 years one of the Sen-
ate's outstanding liberals and a
leader in the civil rights and civil
liberties fights, died at his home in
Washington after an illness of sev-
eral months. He was 57.
He was operated upon in May
at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minn., for what was described as
an abdominal obstruction and had
not returned to Congress since.
In a telegram of sympathy to
Mrs. Hennings, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany praised the senator
as "a staunch and valiant liberal
who fought untiringly for the
achievement of full civil rights for
all," and as "a true public servant
and a great American,"
Hennings was chairman of the
Senate Rules Committee and of the
Judiciary Subcommittee on Consti-
tutional Rights. A highly-regarded
lawyer, he spearheaded the 1954
fight that resulted in defeat of the
proposed Bricker Amendment to
limit the President's treaty-making
power. He also made the "legal"
arguments in the Senate debate
over civil rights legislation in 1 957.
Son of a onetime Democratic
circuit judge in St. Louis, Hennings
served in the Navy in World War
II. He went to the Senate in
1950 and had the distinction of
being the only Democrat to oust
a Republican incumbent that year,
winning over Sen. Forrest C. Don-
nell by 93,000 votes.
AFL-CIO IVEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
Page Eleven
Bates Urges Drive for Kennedy;
Political Action Stressed
At Bricklayers Convention
Los Angeles — Full support and active backing of the AFL-CIO's political education program is
"our surest defense against oppressive, restrictive and reactionary legislation and the best means of
assuring enactment of vital and constructive labor-backed measures."
So declared Harry C. Bates, former president of the Bricklayers, in his final report to the union's
66th convention opening here.
Bates became president emeritus^
of the union last May. His ap-
pointed successor, John J. Murphy,
was elected to the presidency by
the convention. Bates retired after
serving as president of the union
for 25 years.
Community Campaigns Urged
Bates, calling for a community-
level campaign on behalf of Sen.
John Kennedy, Democratic nomi-
nee for the presidency, declared:
"In this presidential election
year, it is especially important to
enlist through COPE the widest
possible support for the candi-
dates friendly to labor and gen-
uinely concerned about the wel-
fare of the working people."
He said that "ilr-conceived poli-
cies stubbornly pursued by the
Eisenhower Administration have
prevented the American economy
from pulling out of the economic
recession," which started in 1957-
58.
California's Gov. Edmund G.
(Pat) Brown won a prolonged,
standing ovation from the more than
600 delegates when he predicted a
"magnificent victory for the Demo-
cratic ticket in November."
Under Republican rule, Brown
said, "big business has gained a
stranglehold on government pro-
curement," declaring that a
Democratic administration is es-
sential if this hold is to be
broken.
C. J. (Neil) Haggerty, president
of the AFL-CIO Building Trades
Dept., said there is "more democ-
racy in the smallest of our unions
than in Congress."
Rules Bottleneck Hit
He called for early actions on
union demands for a change in pro-
cedures which permit "a handful
of anti-labor congressmen ' to bottle
up labor-backed measures in com-
mittee, saying that at present "par-
liamentary trickery seems to be
more important than democracy in
our Congress."
Sec. of Labor James P. Mitch-
ell urged organized labor to in-
tensify its efforts before the next
Meany Calls Election
Key to U.S. World Role
(Continued from Page 1)
lite countries — and no amount of
campaign oratory and double talk
can make this reality disappear."
Speaking of Republican political
oratory, Meany said it was "an in
suit to the intelligence of the Amer
ican people to base a campaign on
the deceitful assertion that every-
thing is just okay at home and
abroad/'
The Democratic presidential can-
didate addressed himself to a defi-
nition of liberalism in a modern
society, a philosophy of govern-
ment which, he said, "is our best,
our only hope in the world today."
"Only liberalism can solve the
bitter problems this nation faces as
we enter the turbulent sixties," he
said. "And the only basic issue
in this 1960 presidential campaign
is whether our government will fall
into the conservative rut of dying
without daring or whether we will
move ahead in the liberal spirit of
daring and doing."
Nixon Line Assailed
Kennedy lashed out at the Nixon
line of "liberalism abroad, conser-
vatism at home," because, he said,
it misses "the basic concept of
American foreign policy."
"Our foreign policy can strike
through to the heart of the world,"
he stated, "only as it reflects a d?ep
passion for social idealism. That
is why Woodrow Wilson and Frank-
lin Roosevelt had such a vast im-
pact on the world — and that is why
Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles
are so widely admired."
Kennedy was introduced by Dr.
Reinhold Niebuhr of the Union
Theological Seminary, a Liberal
party vice-chairman.
Dr. Niebuhr is probably the out-
standing Protestant theologian in
the United States and is a world-
renowned philosopher.
In his introduction, he stressed
the. important contribution which
lay Catholicism had made to "the
great strength of America and
Western Europe." He pointed to
Chancellor Adenauer of Ger-
many and President De Gaulle
of France, both Catholics, to
Holland and Belgium where "De-
mocracy has been maintained by
socialism and Catholicism work-
ing together most of the time."
"American bigots ought to read
history," he suggested.
Stevenson, Democratic standard-
bearer in the last two campaigns,
said that "the task of this genera-
tion is the conquest of the future
and to awaken our nation from
this sorry season of stagnation and
stupor."
'A Little Fixing' Won't Do
•'After these eight torpid years,"
he said, "we have passed the point
where we can fool around the half
measures. Neither abroad nor at
home can we suppose that a little
fixing, a little whittling, a little good
fellowship, a pull and a pat will
solve our problems."
Lehman compared the Eisen-
hower Administration to the little
boy with his ringer in the hole of
the dike which "has tried vainly to
keep back the tides of the times."
"It has refused to see that the
ancient dikes," he said, "are no
longer equal to the task; that the
flood of events sweeping in from
all directions must overwhelm us
all unless we move forward vig-
orously and imaginatively, on the
broad fronts of human rights,
social justice and welfare, and
passion for peace."
In his address, Meany derided
Republican campaign talk about
"containing communism" and
asked, "where has there been any
success?"
"Let's see what is happening," he
said. "The President of the United
States has been openly insulted.
The dictatorships are using Ameri-
can soil to ferment propaganda
campaigns against us. Castro in-
sults America every day and still
we're told by Republican orators
that they have been successful in
upholding American prestige.
"And where do we stand on the
economic health of this country
which is closely related to interna-
tional questions? I say we are in
a bad situation economically. We
brought this to the attention of both
parties. We got a lot of attention
from the Democratic party and a
shrug of the shoulders from the
Republicans."
session of Congress to win pas-
sage of the common situs picket-
ing measure, and suggested the
union should concentrate its
organizing efforts in the held of
residential housing "if your un-
ion standards are to be pro-
tected."
Peter McGavin, assistant to AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany, ridiculed
recent charges by Vice Pres. Nixon
that the Democrats "paid off" or-
ganized labor for its support.
"We are guilty only if he means
that liberal Democrats are working
for increases in minimum wage, for
better housing and education pro-
grams, and for the needs of all
Americans, in return for our sup-
port," McGavin said. And the
Nixon-Goldwater team, he said, is
"paying off" its supporters too, "in
the form of anti-labor legislation."
Murphy, as the new Bricklay-
ers president, said his predeces-
sor, Bates, "has done more for
the benefit of this union and its
members than any other individ-
ual in our time."
Noting that Bates will continue
as an AFL-CIO vice president and
Executive Council member, Mur-
phy said the success of the Ameri-
can labor movement "has rested
largely on the shoulders of a few
men and to the list of those elected
few we long ago proudly added the
name of Harry Bates."
Four Unions
Give Backing
To Kennedy
Executive boards of four more
international unions have endorsed
the presidential candidacy of Sen.
John F. Kennedy (D), backing the
position taken by the AFL-CIO
General Board.
In convention actions reported
elsewhere in this issue, the Machin-
ists, the Electrical, Radio & Ma-
chine Workers and the Grain Mil-
lers all voted endorsement of the
Democratic ticket.
The Clothing Workers board,
meeting in New York, declared the
"nation stands at a crossroads as
important as any in our history,"
and said that while Vice Pres.
Nixon "has leaned far more on
the side of reaction than of prog-
ress," Kennedy "has consistently
taken the leadership in efforts to
improve our social welfare laws
and basic labor legislation."
Executive boards of both the
American Bakery & Confection-
ery Workers and the Brewery
Workers strongly endorsed the
Kennedy-Johnsou ticket and the
Democratic platform.
The ABC board, in Washington,
said it has concluded "that it is in
the best interests" of the union's
membership "to take a forthright
stand in the coming election."
The Brewery Workers board,
meeting at Cincinnati, gave its en-
dorsement at a session in which
Robert Kennedy, the candidate's
brother and campaign manager,
emphasized the importance of the
regfstration-to-vote campaign.
In a mail ballot, the Commu-
nications Workers board unani-
mously endorsed the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket k *as America's best
hope for regaining economic
strength at home and prestige
abroad.**
PRINTS OF THE FIRST 52 "Americans at Work" television films
are presented to the Library of Congress for its permanent collection.
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler made the presentation
at ceremonies in the office of the Librarian of Congress, L. Quincy
Mumford, right.
Library of Congress
Gets Labor Films
The Library of Congress, sanctuary for scholars and repository
of many of the nation's most valuable literary and cultural treasures,
will preserve for future generations the entire "Americans at Work"
television series.
Prints of the first 52 films, produced as a public service by the
AFL-CIO, were accepted with^
thanks by the Librarian of Con-
gress, L. Quincy Mumford.
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler, who made the presenta-
tion, told Mumford and other li-
brary dignitaries that the labor
movement is hopeful the films will
serve to acquaint posterity with
many of the crafts and hand skills
rapidly being lost through tech-
nological changes.
Mumford expressed the li-
brary's appreciation for the gift,
noting that many pioneering
works in the him industry have
been lost because their historical
value was not foreseen at the
time.
The Library of Congress also will
receive the balance of the 104 films
schduled for production, Schnitzler
assured Mumford. To date, 89 of
the 15-minute documentaries have
been completed for showing on 161
television stations in the United
States and 28 overseas stations of
the armed forces network.
In addition, many of the films
are being translated into 16 lan-
guages by the United States In-
formation Agency for showing in
72 foreign countries.
The labor-produced series has
won a number of awards, but
perhaps the most unique form of
praise came from an employer
who saw a preview of a film
which included scenes of his
workers on the job.
He was so impressed that he has
arranged to buy television time, im-
mediately before the public service
film goes on the air, to praise the
production and compliment the
people who made it.
Leedom, NLRB Chief,
Refuses to Step Aside
(Continued from Page 1)
liberal forces, is trying to unseat
Mundt in the November elections.
Leedom wrote that Mundt, in 22
years in Congress, has fought "for
economy and sanity in government"
and led "the battle against the en
croachments of socialistic schemes
in America."
The Leedom letter alleged
that Mundt is on the "purge list"
of "certain labor leaders."
Harris said in his affidavit that
Mundt is a prominent spokesman
in Congress "for the employer point
of view on labor relations issues."
He said Mundt has backed Taft-
Hartley amendments sought by em-
ployers and opposed by unions.
Anti-Union Propaganda Charged
Harris charged that Leedom, in
the fund-raising letter, associated
himself in general with Mundt's
views and also engaged in "anti-
union propaganda."
Harris also contended that Lee-
dom was associated in the Mundt
fund-raising appeal with Rowland
Jones, who was listed as "chairman,
Men's Division" and who, Harris
said, is president of the American
Retail Federation, an active lobby-
ing organization.
Harris stressed that Jcnes and the
ARF "lobbied actively last year" in
favor of Landrum-Griffin amend-
ments to increase the severity of
the Taft-Hartley Act's restrictions
on organizational and recognition
picketing.
The Leedom letter and the as-
sociation with Jones has raised
"grave doubts" as to the NLRB
chairman's impartiality general-
ly and, in particular, in the pic-
keting cases now before the
board, Harris declared.
Leedom promptly refused to step
down and later said:
"In all matters that have come
before me I have exercised a judi-
cial attitude. This I will continue
to do."
The board issued a "minute of
board action" in which it said it
found the Harris affidavit "insuffi-
cient on the facts alleged therein"
to establish bias on Lcedom's part.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell,
asked at his regular press confer-
ence whether he thought Lee-
dom had been indiscreet, replied
that Leedom "has made a good
chairman of the board." Mit-
chell added he did not want to
comment on a quaisi-judiciai
agency.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1960
I AM Endorses Kennedy- JohnsonTicket
Overwhelming Vote
Approves Candidates
(Continued from Page 1)
minute demonstration, snake-dan-
cing down the aisles and massing
20 deep in front of the podium.
Nixon, who entered the hall from
back stage, was greeted by polite
applause from the delegates, and
loud cheers from the galleries.
As the Nixon speech pro-
gressed, a contest appeared to be
developing between the diverse
groups. The galleries cheered the
mention of Pres. Eisenhower's
name, while delegates saved their
applause for references to Presi-
dents Roosevelt and Truman.
Kennedy, in a speech interrupted
repeatedly by cheers and applause
which echoed through the vast
auditorium, hit hard at the Eisen-
hower-Nixon Administration's op-
position to medical care for the
aged, slum clearance, aid to educa-
tion, minimum wage and "pro-
grams that are designed to halt
unemployment."
'There is no new Republican
Party, and no old Republican
Party," the Democratic standard-
bearer declared. "There is only
the same Republican Party which,
for half a century, has opposed
every single progressive measure de-
signed to improve human welfare
and reduce human misery."
Kennedy ticked off a long list
of GOP failures, including oppo-
sition to social security, adequate
workmen's compensation, mini-
mum wages and limitations on
hours of employment.
In 1960, he declared, "the need
to eliminate povery and hunger and
insecurity is as great as it ever
was." More than 4 million Ameri-
cans are unemployed, he said, "and
the jobs of millions more are in
jeopardy because of the steady re-
placement of men by machines."
"With your help," Kennedy told
the IAM, "we intend to return to
the principles of the Employment
Act of 1946 — to see to it that every
American who wants to work will
be able to find a job. ... To do
this we must speed up the growth
of an economy which in the past
eight years has been growing at
one-half the rate it did under
(former Pres.) Truman, and one-
third the rate of the Soviet Un-
ion. . . .
"With your help, we intend to
see to it that every American is
protected in his later years against
the ravages of disease and dis-
ability through a system of social
security insurance. • • .
"With your help we intend to
help the states of this nation build
the classrooms and pay for the
teachers which we must have if we
are to have an educational system
second to none. . . .
"And with your help we intend
to use the full legal and moral au-
Political Supplement
Reprints Are Ready
Reprints of the special four-
page section in the Sept. 3
issue of the AFL-CIO News
dealing with labor's endorse-
ment of Kennedy-Johnson
are now available without
cost from the Pamphlet Divi-
sion, AFL-CIO Dept. of Pub-
lications, 815 16th Street,
N. W., Washington 6, D. C.
The special section includes
the text of the AFL-CIO Gen-
eral Board statement spelling
out the reasons for labor en-
dorsement of the Democratic
candidates and a detailed
comparison of the voting rec-
ords of Vice Pres. Richard
M. Nixon and Sen. John F.
Kennedy.
thority of the federal government
to protect every American in the
exercise of his full constitutional
rights."
Nixon devoted most of his half-
hour address to international af-
fairs, declaring that the primary
task facing the nation is "meeting
the forces of slavery and commun-
ism and defeating them without
war." He paid tribute to the
American labor movement's con-
tinuing fight against communism,
declaring that no group in the na-
tion is "more aware of the Com-
munist threat, and its threat to
free trade unions."
The Vice President denied
charges by Kennedy that the Eisen-
hower-Nixon Administration has
represented special interests.
"I feel a deep concern for the
things you feel," he declared.
Nixon saluted the work done
by IAM Pres. Al J. Hayes, an
AFL-CIO vice president and
Executive Council member, in
his role as chairman of the fed-
eration's Ethical Practices Com-
mittee.
"When it becomes necessary to
enact legislation to protect work-
ers against the excesses of a few,
as it has been necessary to do,"
Nixon said, "the real job of clean-
ing up unions must come from the
inside as the Ethical Practices Com-
mittee has done."
The GOP presidential candidate
also saluted the contribution made
by Hayes and other labor leaders
to the President's Committee on
Government Contracts.
Nixon, chairman of the commit-
tee, in an oblique reference to the
burning civil rights issue, said that
'where tax money is used, every-
body who pays taxes is entitled to
an equal break in getting jobs."
Earlier, delegates laid aside a
proposal that the IAM back efforts
to form a third major political
party in the U.S. They called, in-
stead, for determined efforts by the
entire trade union movement to
impress on the two major parties
the necessity for implementing
party platforms to make them
"something more than campaign
promises."
Automation Guards
Delegates also put their stamp of
approval on an eight-point plan,
recommended by the IAM execu-
tive council, to protect members
from mass unemployment as a re-
sult of automation.
The collective bargaining pro-
gram calls for the right to transfer
to jobs in other plants, adequate
moving allowances, training for
new jobs at full pay, supplemental
unemployment benefits, early re-
tirement with adequate pension, and
equitable distribution to workers
of a fair share of the profits from
increased productivity.
A constitutional change designed
to bring increased stability to the
union's $2.5 million strike fund was
approved by the delegates, but must
still win ratification from the IAM's
million members in a referendum
later this year. The plan calls
for reducing benefits from the pres-
ent $35 level to $25 a week, pro-
viding for a cutoff when the fund
drops to $500,000, and assures con-
tinuation of reduced benefits from
the general fund.
The convention voted to set up
more than 2,000 older and retired
workers' committees — one in each
lodge throughout the U.S. and
Canada — to protect employment
rights of older members threatened
with layoff due to automation. The
committees would also develop pro-
grams to prepare older members
for retirement, and to represent
them on community-wide organiza-
tions.
NEW YORK LABOR leaders welcome Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson to a reception and meeting at Hotel
Biltmore. Mayor Robert F. Wagner accompanied the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Left
to right, Pres. Harry Van Arsdale of the City AFL-CIO, Johnson, Pres. Peter Brannan of the New
York Building Trades Council, Wagner, Vice Pres. George Brink of the Post Office Clerks, and Pres.
David Sullivan, Building Service Employes.
IUE Convention Votes 'Enthusiastic'
Support of Kennedy- Johnson Team
(Continued from Page 1)
youth; unconcerned about the
cruel privations suffered by the
aged, and only belatedly and op-
portunistically interested in the
economic crisis confronting the
farmer."
Before the endorsement, Ken-
nedy spoke to the IUE delegates
via video tape, declaring that in
November the voters will be "con-
fronted with a clear choice between
the standstill attitude of the pres-
ent Administration or progress and
vigor under Democratic leader-
ship."
Introduced by Symington
Kennedy recorded his message
during an overnight stop in St.
Louis, Mo., where he addressed
1,500 delegates to the Machinists'
convention. Introducing him on
the taped film, which was played
over a closed-circuit line to the IUE
convention, was Sen. Stuart Sym-
ington (D-Mo.), an honorary IUE
member.
Earlier, the convention heard
Rep. Chester Bowles (D-Conn.), a
chief architect of the "rights of
man" platform of the Democratic
Party, call for election of Kennedy
and Johnson to assure "a . new era
of growth, confidence and creative
action at home and abroad."
Stressing the "total inseparability
of foreign and domestic policies,"
Bowles told delegates from 300 lo-
cals in the U.S. and Canada that
"if we fail to raise our nation's rate
of economic growth, if we fail to
guarantee the civil rights of all our
citizens, if we fail to advance hu-
man welfare, if we fail to recapture
our sense of national purpose — then
we will most assuredly fail in our
relations with the rest of mankind."
'Decade of Decision'
IUE Pres. James B. Carey, de-
claring that the 1960's would be a
"decade of decision" for America,
said the choice the nation makes at
the polls in November might deter-
mine "whether or not this will
become mankind's last decade."
In his keynote address, Carey
called on the labor movement
and 'Its liberal allies" to "fight
back with a new and intensified
militancy" against the coalition of
big business and political reac-
tionaries to halt the wave of
"economic barbarianism" sweep-
ing the nation.
The IUE and all labor, Carey
said, must "counterattack not only
by registering and going to the polls
in unprecedented numbers, but by
voting for candidates who are men
of principle, men who will consci-
entiously reflect the will of the
electorate."
Bowles assailed both Pres. Eisen-
hower and Nixon as "leaders who
have lost touch with people" and
who have positioned themselves
"behind a barrage of tired slogans
against the interests of the poor, the
unemployed, the sick and aging."
The religious issue injected into
the 1960 presidential campaign
drew a stinging attack from Harry
Golden, editor of the Carolina Is-
raelite and author of three best
sellers including "Only in Amer-
ica." Attacks on Kennedy because
of his Catholic faith constitute "the
most un-American ideas we've had
since the days of Joe McCarthy,"
Golden declared.
With the IUE convention coming
in the midst of negotiations with
General Electric Co. and Westing-
house Electric Corp. for contracts
covering 155,000 workers, Carey
devoted much of his keynote to an
attack on what he termed a big
business "conspiracy to undermine
the living standards of the workers,"
declaring that corporation execu-
tives making $400,000 to $600,000
annually were guilty of "pushing
class conflict" when they sought to
depress real wages.
Carey and Sec.-Treas. Al Hart-
nett, who have headed the IUE
since its creation in 1949, were
unanimously re-elected to office.
The constitution was revised to set
the term of office at four years
instead of two.
09-LX-6
Both GE, Westinghouse
Face IUE Shutdowns
Miami Beach — -Both General Electric and Westinghouse have
been warned that they face shutdowns unless they change their
negotiating tactics and reach satisfactory agreements wtih the Elec-
trical, Radio and Machine Workers before current contracts expire.
The warning to General Electric came from the IUE-GE Nego-
tiating Committee, and to Westing-^
house from the lUE-Westinghouse
Negotiating Committee. Both met
after a regular daily session of the
ninth constitutional convention of
the IUE here.
The GE contract covering 75,-
000 workers expires Oct. 1. The
Westinghouse pact, covering 50,-
000 expires Oct. 15.
The IUE-GE Negotiating
Committee called for a meeting
of the IUE-GE Conference
Board in New York Sept. 30 to
approve "an agreement or close
down the plants until such time
as an agreement is reached."
The IUE-Westinghouse Nego-
tiating Committee recommended
that the conference board meet in
Pittsburgh Oct. 14 "to either ap-
prove a satisfactory agreement or
decide that there will be no work
in any IUE-Westinghouse unit on
Oct. 15, 1960."
A number of GE locals have al-
ready voted "no contract, no work."
The IUE-GE Negotiating Commit-
tee recommended that all other GE
locals vote by Sept. 25.
The union's proposals were
handed to General Electric June
13. Demands included supple-
mental unemployment benefits, pro-
ductivity wage increases, a union
shop, termination pay and a pro-
gram for income security.
Both Offers Rejected
GE made a counter-offer Aug.
30 which the IUE rejected as "un-
responsive to the needs of the mem-
bership." Westinghouse later made
an offer which the IUE termed "a
carbon copy" of the GE offer, and
that also was rejected by the union.
Both companies insist on the eli-
mination of cost-of-living pay
clauses, which the IUE estimates
has brought wage increases of 10
percent during the life of the ex-
piring contracts.
The convention later adopted
resolutions backing the recom-
mendations of the GE and West-
inghouse Negotiating Commit-
tees and pledging full support*
Vol. V.
IstMtf v*tkly at
H5 SIxtMRti St. H.W.
Vastlnftoit 6, 0. C.
w~«< ciau r«ta» PaJd at Waihiaftaa. •. c Saturday, September 24, 1960 « 7 <CZfr 17 No. 39,
Kennedy Ticket Endorsed
By Steel, Chemical Unions
Shun Khrushchev,
Meany Urges U.S.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has called on the American peo-
ple to give Premier Nikita Khrushchev of Soviet Russia "and his
puppets the cold shoulder" while they are in the United States
"under the guise of attending" the United Nations 15th General
Assembly.
Khrushchev has not come to this^
country as a guest or friend, but
"as a fanatical enemy," Meany de-
clared, adding that everything he
has said or done since his previous
visit "has been aimed at destroying
the freedom and security" of the
U.S.
"The American people want to
live in peace and friendship with
the Soviet people," Meany asserted.
"However, world peace and
freedom will not be helped but
seriously hurt if our nation's
press, radio, television, movies
and other media of mass infor-
mation play into Khrushchev's
hands by giving worldwide pub-
licity to his slanders and propa-
ganda antics.
"There is no reason whatsoever
for publicizing and advertising his
demagogic platitudes, hypocritical
slogans and hateful harangues.
Since he wrecked the summit con-
ference, the Soviet dictator has
behaved in a manner making him
utterly unworthy of extensive press
and news coverage.
"The free American news media
can best serve this nation and world
freedom by instantly exposing
Khrushchev's lying propaganda."
"He has forfeited every right to
any velvet treatment by an Amer-
ican individual or institution. The
best interests of the American peo-
ple and world peace require that
we give Khrushchev and his pup-
pets the cold shoulder."
Meany declared Khrushchev is
attending the General Assembly
with the intention of using the UN
as "the world's most powerful
sounding board" to spread "slan-
derous propaganda against our na-
tion and democratic way of life."
"He does not seek to promote
genuine disarmament," Meany
charged, "but only to undermine
the will and capacity of the free-
dom-loving peoples to resist Soviet
aggression and conquest."-
Everything Khrushchev has
said and done since appearing at
the 14th General Assembly,"
Meany said, "shows he is not
interested in reaching and abiding
by reasonable and honorable
agreements which alone can pro-
vide the basis for effective dis-
armament and lasting world
peace."
"The presence at the UN session
of the hated Quislings of the Soviet
puppet states (like Janos Kadar of
Hungary), who are coming under
Khrushchev's orders, is an added
insult to the free people of the
U.S.," Meany added.
"The entire record of the Soviet
dictatorship and its satellites in the
UN is one of insolent contempt for
the aims of the UN, flagrant viola-
tion of its decisions and consistent
refusal to aid its endeavors to help
the underdeveloped countries at-
tain well-being and security. Like
Stalin, Khrushchev is in reality an
enemy of the UN."
The AFL-CIO sharply con-
demned Khrushchev for his pre-
emptory action when he broke up
the summit conference on which a
large part of the world had pinned
its hopes for easing the cold war
and averting a hot war.
CHEMICAL WORKERS cheering and waving banners escorted
Sen. John F. Kennedy from their own convention in Atlantic City,
where he had made a speech, to the convention of the Steelworkers,
where he was scheduled for another address. Riding in the car with
Kennedy is USWA Pres. David J. McDonald. (Chemical Workers
convention story on Page 10, other stories this page.)
Th ree-Pronged Attack:
USWA Convention
Sets Jobs Program
Atlantic City — The 1.2 million-member United Steelworkers,
with half the membership idle or working part-time, tackled the
problems of preventing the recession in steel from spreading to the
rest of the country and of putting the nation back on full employ-
ment track.
There was no doubt as the
3,500 delegates to the union's 10th
constitutional convention met in
the giant auditorium here that con-
tinuing unemployment and under-
Building Trades Renew Campaign
To Legalize Jobsite Picketing
The AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. has launched a new full-scale campaign
to secure enactment of the situs picketing bill when the 87th Congress convenes in January.
In letters to 630 affiliated councils throughout the nation, BCTD Pres. C. J. Haggerty said the 3
million members of building trades unions must launch their situs picketing bill drive immediately,
as part of the 1960 election campaign.
Haggerty charged that "obstruc-^
tive tactics" were used to prevent
majorities in both the House and
Senate from adopting the measure
which would have restored to build-
ing trades unions their right to pic-
ket common job sites.
Declaring that "these obstructive
devices must be removed in the
next session of Congress so that the
majority can rule, "Haggerty called
on all of labor to "participate ac-
tively in the election of capable
members" of Congress.
At the same time he praised
Sen. John F. Kennedy's "valiant
fight" for the situs picketing bill,
and called for election of a Pres-
ident "who will utilize the powers
of the presidency — actively, af-
firmatively and vigorously — to
permit the majority to accom-
plish its will in the legislative
process."
Enactment of the situs picketing
measure, he said, is essential to
secure relief for 3 million building
tradesmen from the "inequitable
restrictions on picketing which were
imposed by the Taft-Hartley Act
and tightened by the Landrum-
Griffin Act."
Both major parties gave formal
support to the legislation in the last
session, the BCTD president said,
(Continued on Page 12)
employment, aggravated by ex-
panding use of automated equip-
ment, was the parley's major con-
cern.
USWA Pres. David J. Mc-
Donald, in his keynote speech,
called for a three-pronged ap-
proach to the overriding prob-
lem: Political action to insure
government policies dedicated to
economic growth, a legislative
program designed to produce a
4-day, 32-hour workweek, and
continuing talks with the indus-
try on setting up a shorter work-
week and sharing the benefits of
new technology.
The convention roared approval
of the political action approach
with the endorsement of Sen. John
F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon B.
Johnson and the Democratic party
platform. McDonald pledged an
all-out effort by the union to elect
the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
A few minutes after his endorse-
ment by the convention, Kennedy
told the delegates that before em-
barking on a campaign for a 32-
(Continued on Page 11)
Candidate
Hits Nixon
On Record
By Saul Miller
Atlantic City — Sen. John F.
Kennedy carried his presidential
campaign before two colorful,
cheering union conventions here
and came away with firm, enthu-
siastic pledges of all-out sup-
port.
He and his running mate, Sen.
Lyndon B. Johnson, won the unan-
imous endorsement of the 3,500
delegates at the Steelworkers' 10th
constitutional convention — dele-
gates representing 1.2 million Steel-
workers — and of 500 Chemical
Workers' delegates representing
90,000 workers.
His appearances at both conven-
tions here were marked by loud
and prolonged demonstrations com-
plete with placards, noise makers,
hats and buttons and pins galore.
It was nearly impossible to find a
delegate at either convention who
lacked a Kennedy insignia of one
type or another.
In his brief appearance first at
the Chemical Workers and mo-
ments later at the Steelworkers —
with placard-carrying Chemical
delegates accompanying him to
the second meeting — Kennedy
struck out sharply at the "stand-
pat, backward-looking" position
of the Republican Party and de-
clared the great issue is "those
who want to stay and those who
want to go; those who say yes to
the '60s and those who say no;
those who look to the past and
those who look to the future."
Kennedy, obviously countering
Vice Pres. Nixon's continuing at-
tempts to blur the image of the
Republican Party, pounded away at
the GOP record since the turn of
(Continued on Page 11)
1LGWU Gives Help
To 'Donna" Victims
New York — The Ladies'
Garment Workers have con-
tributed $2,500 to the relief
of victims of Hurricane Don-
na in Puerto Rico and have
called on New York affiliates
to add to the sum.
Sec.-Treas. Louis Stulberg
in announcing the gift pointed
out that the union has 6,000
members on the island. Re-
ports indicated they were in
the van of relief activities
immediately after the blow,
he said, and that the mobile
health unit given by the
ILGWU to its Puerto Rican
members two years ago ren-
dered outstanding service dur-
ing the emergent y.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, I960
W. Va. State
Labor to Work
For Kennedy
Charleston, W. Va.— The West
Virginia State AFL-CIO at a spe-
cial convention here formally en-
dorsed Democratic Senators John
F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. John-
son for president and vice pres-
ident, respectively, and pledged
"full and active support to assure
their election."
'There is wide difference in the
demonstrated philosophies of the
two presidential candidates," the
resolution said. On 131 key votes
on labor and other public welfare
issues, Sen. Kennedy voted right
92 percent of the time. Vice Pres-
ident Nixon, on the other hand,
voted only 13 percent right on 77
key issues.
"On numerous identical issues,
these two candidates were on op-
posite sides, Kennedy voting for
and Nixon against the working men
and women of this nation."
The convention also endorsed
Sen. Jennings Randolph (D) for
reelection; Democratic candidates
for the House in all six congress-
ional districts; W. W. Barron (D)
for governor and C. Donald Rob-
ertson (D) for state attorney
general.
Twelve Democratic and two Re-
publican aspirants for the state sen-
ate from 14 of the 16 districts were
given labor approval, as were 53
Democrats and 10 Republicans run-
ning for the state house of dele-
gates in 30 of the 55 counties.
In addition, the convention
adopted "A Positive Program for
West Virginia" which spelled out
organized labor's aims in the legis-
lature meeting next January. In-
cluded were new or improved legis-
lation in the areas of state and lo-
cal taxes, workmen's and unem-
ployment compensation, minimum
wages, state labor relations board,
and civil and human rights.
At 9-State Conference:
'The Hammer's Showing, Dick'
Most Airports Faulty,
Pilots' Study Shows
Chicago — Delegates to a union-sponsored conference on air
safety have returned a sharp indictment of inadequate airport fa-
cilities throughout the nation, declaring the problem is "immediate
and critical."
Airline executives, industry and government air safety specialists
participated as guests and speakers^
at the eighth annual Air Safety
Forum of the Air Line Pilots. The
three-day program, keyed to the
theme of improving airports for
safety in the jet age, covered air-
port fire and rescue equipment, ap-
proach and runway lighting and
markings.
During the conference the ALPA
released results of a survey of 170
airports which showed that "79 per-
cent had runways which should be
Canadian Rail Unions
To Take Strike Vote
Montreal — Unions representing 120,000 non-operating employes
of Canadian railroads prepared to take strike votes in the face of
flat rejection by management of the recommendations of a Federal
Conciliation Board — Canadian equivalent of a Presidential Emer-
gency Board in the United States.
The board had recommended^
hourly wage increases of 14.1 cents
over a two-year period and a fourth
week of vacation for workers with
25 years of service.
The nation's two big railroads—
the Canadian Pacific and the Ca-
Govt. Indicts
Expelled Ex-Officer
Tulsa, Okla. — A former officer
of Plumbers & Pipe Fitters Local
205 here, expelled when he failed
to answer charges involving finan-
cial irregularities, has been indicted
on eight embezzlement counts and
one charge of concealing union rec-
ords under the Labor-Management
Reporting & Disclosure Act of
1959.
He is Owen L. Lawson, who
was business manager, financial
secretary and treasurer of Local
205 until he failed to seek re-elec-
tion last January. Lawson did
not appear for a hearing set for
June 7 on charges brought by the
local executive board, and the
board's recommendation of ex-
pulsion was upheld by a member-
ship vote of 76 to 0, with 11 not
voting.
In Washington, Atty.-Gen. Wil-
liam P. Rogers said Lawson was
the first person to be indicted in the
U.S. under the 1959 act. If con-
victed, he faces a maximum pen-
alty of a $10,000 fine, five years
in prison or both on each of the
embezzlement counts.
nadian National — issued a joint
statement declaring that "all of
the recommendations" of the fact-
finders "are unacceptable to the
railways." While the CN system
is government-owned, its manage-
ment has a free hand in operating
the system.
Frank H. Hall, chairman of
the negotiating committee of the
15 non-operating unions and a
vice president of the Railway
Clerks, declared the board's rec-
ommendations were "the irre-
ducible minimum" the unions
would accept and announced
plans for a strike vote. He
pointed out that the award was
considerably short of the 25
cents an hour the unions had
sought.
Further mediation efforts by the
government are expected, but un-
der Canadian law there are no
existing legal barriers to a strike.
However in 1950 — the last nation-
wide rail strike — the federal gov-
ernment stepped in after nine days
with a special law sending the
workers back to their jobs and
directing compulsory arbitration of
unresolved issues.
The arbitration decision granted
virtually all of the recommenda-
tions made by the conciliation board
and rejected by the railroads, in-
cluding the union demand for a
5-day, 40-hour week with no loss
of pay, plus an additional wage
increase.
lengthened, 70 percent do not have
approach lighting, 98 percent lack
runway identifier lights and 42 per-
cent have no runway markings at
all."
Navigational facilities in the
terminal area, where the largest
number of aircraft accidents oc-
cur, are inadequate at most air-
ports, the union charged.
ALPA Pres. C. N. Sayen blamed
"the failure of the federal govern-
ment to appropriate sufficient
funds" for much of the inade-
quacies of airports.
An Eastern Air Lines pilot, Capt.
E. R. Watson of Miami, and a
Trans World Air Lines pilot, Capt.
J. L. DeCelles of Prairie Village,
Kan., shared the ALPAs annual
air safety award.
2 Pilots Honored
Watson was honored for his
"outstanding contributions to air
safety" as chairman since 1956 of
the ALPA's training plans com-
mittee, and as regional air safety
representative.
DeCelles, a union safety chair-
man, was credited with uncovering
evidence which exonerated a pilot
who had been blamed for the crash
of an airliner into a mountainside
near Albuquerque, N. M., in 1955.
At the conference banquet, Mel-
vin N. Gough, safety director of the
Civil Aeronautics Board, declared
that pilots are "the strongest single
force in furthering air safety."
Kennedy Proposes
Job, Growth Action
Charleston, W. Va. — The flesh-and-blood realities of recession and
economic depression were examined in their tragic and vivid detail
by representatives of nine hard-hit states at a Conference on New Jobs
and New Growth called by Sen. John F. Kennedy.
The Democratic presidential candidate, speaking to an overflow crowd
of 6,500 cheering supporters, pledg-^
ed that if the people elect him, they
can look forward to another 100
days of dynamic leadership to meet
the country's critical needs com-
parable to Pres. Roosevelt's famous
first 100 days.
He promised to submit to Con-
gress a five-point program which
would ally government and pri-
vate enterprise in a massive at-
tack on economic stagnation and
mass unemployment.
Editors, government officials,
representatives of organized labor
and others participated in the un-
precedented survey in depth of the
economy undertaken by the Ken-
nedy conference here in the heart
of the hard-hit bituminous coal
industry.
Barkin Co-Director
Research Dir. Sol Barkin of the
Textile Workers Union of America
was co-director of the conference.
AFL-CIO Assistant Research Dir.
Frank Fernbach headed a panel on
area redevelopment.
AFL-CIO unions participating
included the Oil, Chemical &
Atomic Workers, Glass Bottle
Blowers, Railroad Trainmen, Lo-
comotive Firemen & En<*inemen,
Steamfitters, Stone Workers,
Steelworkers, Ladies' Garment
Workers, Bricklayers, Newspa-
per Guild and Carpenters.
Also present were delegations
from AFL-CIO state and local cen-
tral bodies and local building trades
councils from such states as West
Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, In-
diana, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland,
Virginia and Kentucky.
Rep. Ken Hechler (D-W. Va.)
set the tone of the conference at a
panel on automation with the state-
ment that "organized labor has
done the most advanced thinking
in this field."
"It has been the type of think-
ing," he added, "that seeks to
meet the advanced needs of its
members but at the same time
frankly faces the constructive
needs of all the people and the
community as a whole/'
Gov. David L. Lawrence, Sen.
Joseph S. Clark and Rep. Daniel
J. Flood, all Pennsylvania Demo-
crats, deplored the "Pollyanna
philosophy from Washington."
Kennedy in his address pointed
out that nations all over the earth
are trying to wipe out hunger, pov-
erty and misery, and are looking
for leadership.
'The great question of our
time," he said, "is whether they
will look to Moscow to find this
leadership or whether they will
look to America.
"Only if America is growing —
and only if it is caring for the needs
of its own people — only then will
other nations know that the road
to progress is freedom's road.
His five-point program proposed:
• Development of public re-
sources which will make it possible
"for private enterprise to grow and
prosper."
• Stimulation of private invest-
ment "by eliminating Republican
hard money policies and high inter-
est rates."
• Federal aid for school con-
struction and teachers' salaries.
• Solution of the "growing crisis
of automation" through "nation-
wide conferences of industry and
labor to map a strategy for putting
displaced men back to work."
• Special assistance "to help
hard-hit areas to catch up."
AFL-CIO Backs Aden
TUC on Hostile Laws
The AFL-CIO has pledged its firm support to the Aden Trade
Union Congress in the latter's protest of the British colonial gov-
ernment's "anti-democratic trade union policy."
The AFL-CIO, in a cable to Aden TUC Gen. Sec. Abdullah-al-
Asnag, declared it would "take all actiorr" to back up the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-^
ions "in its activities of protest and
efforts to secure redress."
A two-man ICFTU mission flew
Aug. 18 to Aden, which is on a
peninsula on the Arabian coast at
the southern tip of the Red Sea,
and after an inquiry verified what
it called "victimization" of public
Sen. Douglas Is 'Evicted 9
By Company He Assisted
East Moline, 111. — Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.), campaign-
ing for re-election at plant gates, was evicted by management
from the parking lot of the American Machine & Metals Co.
here but union members coming out of the plant at the close
of the shift shouted encouragement as he continued his elec-
tion speech from a sound truck outside.
The senator, who has labor endorsement for re-election to
a third term, told the workers that "the company should ob-
serve the simple rules of fair play. We Democrats don't hate
big business, although big business frequently hates us."
Ironically, Douglas noted, the company that kicked him out
was a firm he had helped obtain a sizable defense contract
"that it otherwise wouldn't have got." He added: "FII even
help them get another contract. I believe in returning good
for evil."
Homegoing workers, members of Machinists Lodge 548,
stopped to call encouragement and shout, "Give 'em hell,
Paul."
servce workers and "oppressive leg-
islation" against the TUC.
The ICFTU mission — made up
of Nouri Boudali of the Tunisian
trade union federation (UGTT) and
Alfred Braunthal of the ICFTU'*
economic and social department —
found the colony's legislative coun-
cil had just passed a bill requiring
compulsory arbitration for many
industrial disputes and banning
strikes. Severe penalties were set
for violations, the ICFTU said.
The Aden TUC declared a gen-
eral strike Aug. 15 in protest of the
pending bill. The strike later was
called off and, the TUC charged,
1 80 innocent workers were fired for
taking part. In addition, the gov-
ernment withdrew the license of the
TUC's weekly journal.
The ICFTU in Brussels after
a report from its mission, an-
nounced it is taking steps "to
safeguard essential rights without
which a free trade union move-
ment cannot exist."
The four-year-old Aden TUC,
roughly 10,000 strong and an
ICFTU affiliate since it was formed,
appealed for the support of Amer-
ican labor in a cable which charged
the Aden government with contin-
uing its "anti-democratic trade un-
ion policy."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1960
Page Three
Says Company Interfered :
IUE Files NLRB
Charge Against GE
New York — The Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers have filed
charges of unfair labor practices against the General Electric Co.
growing out of current negotiations covering some 70,000 employes.
The union charged the company with interference in its internal
affairs and with intimidation of employes as the result of a series
of advertisements, letters and leaf-^
lets which urged its employes to
reject Sept. 25 as -the date for local
union votes on action to be taken
by the IUE-GE Conference Board
on signing a new contract or re-
fusing to work.
The present contract expires at
midnight Oct. 1. The union nego-
tiating committee, at the recent
Miami Beach, Fla., convention,
recommended that affected locals
which have not done so take a vote
on Sept. 25 on accepting whatever
James Pleads
Guilty to
Theft Charge
Newark, N. J. — Eugene C.
James, former secretary-treasurer
of the expelled Laundry Workers,
has pleaded guilty here to state
charges of conspiring to embezzle
nearly $1 million in union welfare
funds.
Also pleading guilty with James
was Louis B. Saperstein, a former
insurance broker, who allegedly had
withheld union insurance premiums
and split the money with the one-
time union official.
Superior Court Judge Alex-
ander P. Waugh set Oct. 26 as
the tentative date for sentencing.
The charge carries a maximum
three-year prison term and a
$1,000 fine.
The two men have been under
indictment for nearly three years.
Shortly after being charged with
embezzlement, James went on trial
in federal court in Chicago for fail-
ure to pay income taxes on his
share of the money siphoned out of
the welfare fund. He was con-
victed after unsuccessfully claiming
that since the money was stolen it
was not earned income and thus
not taxable.
contract the company has offered
at that time, or to vote "no con-
tract, no work."
The ultimate decision to strike
or not is vested by the IUE
constitution in the Conference
Board, which is made up of
elected representatives from each
local in a GE plant.
IUE Pres. James B. Carey and
John Callahan, chairman of the
Conference Board, charged that GE
"deliberately and without regard to
the consequences interjected itself
in the affairs of the union which
has been designated by its employes
as their sole bargaining agent."
"The company has yet to learn
that the members of the IUE are
in complete control of the union
and will run it as they see fit — not
as the company desires," they said
in a joint statement.
Meantime the Federal Me-
diation & Conciliation Service
said that two of its commission-
ers will sit in on negotiations
when they are resumed next
week.
The AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept. has made public a detailed
eight-page study spelling out the
success of supplementary unem-
ployment benefits in the steel, rub-
ber and" auto industries and assert-
ing that introduction of "a similar
plan in the electrical industry in
1960 should have high priority as
labor and management go about
their negotiations."
"The severe fluctuations in em-
ployment in the major electrical
companies during recent years
make the introduction of a sound
SUB program an especially press-
ing necessity," the study concluded.
The study was made for the
IUD GE-Westinghouse Conference
Members include the IUE, the Ma
chinists, Intl. Brotherhood of Elec
trical Workers, Auto Workers
Technical Engineers and Steelwork-
ers.
DETAILED EXPLANATION of the National Labor Relations Board decision finding the Kohler Co.
guilty of unfair labor practices was given more than 1,800 striking members of Auto Workers Local 833
and their wives at a meeting in the Sheboygan, Wis., armory. Reg. Dir. Harvey Kitzman (speaking),
Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey and local officers urged the strikers to apply for reinstatement to their jobs,
(Photo by Curt Nack, a Kohler striker.)
2 Rail Unions to Study
Possibility of Mergers
The AFL-CIO Railroad Trainmen and the unaffiliated Railway
Conductors & Brakemen have named committees "to explore the
question of amalgamation, affiliation or consolidation" of the two
unions.
In a joint circular to members, BRT Pres. W. P. Kennedy and
Pres. J. A. Paddock of the Con-^
ductors & Brakemen (ORCB) cited
decreasing employment in the in-
dustry and management attacks on
unions as factors which could lead
to "a closer alignment of the train
service organizations."
The circular emphasized that
the question of merger is still "in
the exploratory stage" and that
"it will likely be some time be-
fore any statement can be made"
on the committees' progress.
Both unions emphasized that the
financial condition of the two or-
Boyd to Direct
Rights Advisors
Harold B. Boyd, president of the
Virginia State AFL-CIO, has been
named by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany as chairman of the federa-
tion's Southern Advisory Commit-
tee on Civil Rights.
Boyd succeeds Stanton E. Smith,
past president of the Tennessee
State AFL-CIO, who is now serv-
ing at national headquarters as co-
ordinator of state and local central
bodies. i
ganizations and their insurance de-
partments is sound, declaring:
"We have been motivated, not
by financial interests, but by a com-
mon desire as evidenced by many
of our lodges and divisions to as
certain whether amalgamation . .
would result in better protection
for the members in view of the
problems which all concerned pres
ently face in this industry."
The Trainmen, with some 200,-
000 members in the United States
and Canada, and the Conductors
& Brakemen, with more than 26,-
000 members, are among the old-
est of the railroad brotherhoods.
The joint circular pointed out
that resolutions dealing with
amalgamation have been adopted
by both unions in recent years.
Noting that employment in the
railroad industry has dropped from
nearly 2 million at the close of
World War II to less than 800,000
at present, the joint statement de-
clared: "A further decline in em-
ployment is inevitable by reason of
mergers and consolidations of rail-
road systems and because of tech-
nological changes in the industry."
Sea Unions
Ask Safety
Ratification
The seafarers section of the AFL-
CIO Maritime Trades Dept. plans
to press for congressional ratifica
tion of the latest advances agreed
on at the Intl. Conference on Safety
of Life at Sea, held in London this
summer.
Joseph Curran, president of the
Maritime Union and co-chairman
of the MTD seafarers' section, said
the London conference produced
improvements in many areas even
though the outcome fell short of
the goals of the U.S. delegation
He listed these advances:
• On new passenger vessels on
short international voyages, life
boats supplemented by life rafts are
to be required for all passengers,
along with additional equipment,
• On all cargo ships, life rafts
for 50 percent of the ship's person-
nel will be required to supplement
the required 200 percent lifeboat-
age. <
• New motor lifeboats must be
propelled by compression-ignited
engines.
• Hand-propelling gear should
be restricted to lifeboats carrying
100 persons or less.
• Life jackets should not be ad-
versely affected by oil or oil prod-
ucts and should be of a highly
visible color.
• On cargo ships, rules on drills
were tightened.
• Steps were taken to insure
that portable radio gear is avail-
able to each group of lifeboats on
tankers.
The London meeting, Curran
noted, was the fourth since such
conferences were initiated after the
sinking of the S.S. Titanic in 1912.
Unity Bids Issued
By Postal Clerks
The Post Office Clerks, already
scheduled to begin merger negoti-
ations with an unaffiliated rival un-
ion, have extended invitations to
four other organizations of postal
clerks to consider amalgamation.
E. C. Hallbeck, newly-elected
president of the 54-year-old union,
sent identical invitations to the
Postal Transport Association, the
unaffiliated National Postal Clerks
Union, the unaffiliated National Al-
liance of Postal Employes and to
United Postal Workers locals in
Boston and Pittsburgh.
Already scheduled are talks be-
tween the NFPOC and the unaffili-
ated United National Association of
Post Office Craftsmen (UNAPOQ.
UAW Wins Settlement
In 6-Month Case Strike
Racine, Wis. — The Auto Workers have ended their six-month
strike against the J. I. Case Co. here, their ranks solid despite re-
peated management attempts to break the picket lines, with a con-
tract providing first-year increases averaging 12 cents an hour,
strengthened seniority rights and improved fringe benefits.
UAW officials credited a fact- ^~
finding panel appointed in Au-
gust by Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord
Nelson (D) with having mediated
the dispute, paving the way for
a settlement.
Members of UAW Local 180
voted 816 to 360 to ratify the two-
year agreement which provided:
• Wage hikes of from 8 to 17
cents, with a wage reopener after
the first year.
• Greater seniority protection
for workers through provisions for
transfer of workers to other de-
partments during periods of layoffs.
The seniority protection also as-
sures that strikebreakers brought in
by the company will be laid off be-
fore the firm's regular employes.
• Improvements in amount and
duration of hospital and medical
insurance.
• Triple pay for holidays in
place of the previous double-time.
• Greater job security through
changes in the discipline and dis-
charge provisions of the agreement.
• Authorization, for the first
time, for leave of absence to union
officers on union business.
• Higher piece-work guaran-
tees.
• Occupational, rather than de-
partmental, seniority for the skilled
trades.
The union did not win its de-
mand for a union shop, one of the
chief issues in dispute.
The company, which manu-
factures farm implements, re-
mained open during the strike
but was unable to induce more
than a handful of employes to
return to work despite television
appeals and threats, UAW offi-
cials "said.
University of Wisconsin Prof.
Nathan P. Feinsinger, prominent
arbitrator and former chairman of
the Wage Stabilization Board, head-
ed the fact-finding panel.
Labor Sets Up Committee
For Kennedy Campaign,
Representatives of 55 AFL-CIO affiliates and the railroad
brotherhoods have set up "Labor's Committee for Kennedy
and Johnson" to give meaning to the AFL-CIO endorsement
of the Democratic candidates in the coming election.
Its function will be to assist and supplement the efforts of
local and state labor organizations to secure the election of
Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Pres. George M. Harrison of the Railway Clerks was named
chairman. Chosen co-chairmen were Sec. Joseph D. Keenan
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Arthur J.
Goldberg, special counsel for the AFL-CIO. Eli L. Oliver,
economic advisor to the Railway Labor Executives' Associa-
tion, was elected secretary-treasurer.
Members of the executive committee to date are Walter P.
Reuther, president of the Auto Workers and of the AFL-CIO
Industrial Union Dept.; Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers; Pres. Peter T. Schoemann of the
Plumbers & Pipe Fitters; Pres. Joseph A. Beirne of the Com-
munications Workers; Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky of the Clothing
Workers; Pres. C. J. Haggerty of the AFL-CIO Building &
Construction Trades Dept.
The committee was organized at a meeting in Wash-
ington. Its headquarters are at 1801 K Street, N.W.,
Washington 6, D.C.
It is organized labor's first such approach to a presidential
election since the AFL and CIO merged in 1955.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1969
SINGING STAR Eileen Barton chats with AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler, left, and Donald F. Conaway, AFL-CIO
representative with the United Service Organizations, at "bon voy-
age" party for the cast of the "AFL-CIO Salute to the Armed
Forces,'' now on tour of U.S. overseas bases under the sponsorship
of the American labor movement.
UPP Convention Asks
Printing Trades Unity
By David Perlman
The Papermakers & Paperworkers, grown to 140,000 members
since the union was formed in 1957 by the merger of two formerly
competing unions, opened their second convention with a strong
endorsement of moves to unite all unions in the printing and paper
posal, would have been filled by
A resolution calling for continu-
ation of unity talks with other
unions was adopted unanimously
in one of the convention's first
acts. The presidents of the Typo-
graphical Union, Printing Press-
men and Pulp-Sulphite Workers
were among the scheduled speakers
at the Washington, D. C., conven-
tion.
UPP Pres. Paul L. Phillips told
the delegates that the union's
membership had rebounded from
heavy losses caused by the 1958
recession and now stands 10 per-
cent above the figure at the time
of merger.
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler, in a slashing attack on
the Eisenhower-Nixon Administra-
tion's "indifference" to the prob-
lems of the American people, told
the convention that the only way
labor could make its full voice felt
at the polls was <; to apply trade
union techniques, determination
and dedication'' to the task of get-
ting union members registered to
vote.
He reminded the Papermakers
& Paperworkers that the prob-
lems they had pinpointed in res-
olutions at their 1957 founding
convention — an inadequate mini-
mum wage, federal aid to schools,
decent housing for all Americans
—were even more critical in 1960
because '"nothing has been done
about them."
One of the unresolved issues of
the 1957 merger agreement, the
method of electing district direc-
tors who also serve as vice presi-
dents, sent the convention into a
night session for a prolonged de-
bate.
By a decisive vote, the delegates
overturned the recommendations
of the resolutions committee and
voted to elect district directors by
caucus of delegates from the dis-
tricts involved. Vacancies between
national conventions will be filled
by special district conventions to
be called within 60 days.
The committee's original propos-
al was that directors be nominated
at caucuses, with the full conven-
tion having the right to reject the
nominee and request the district
caucus to submit another name.
Vacancies, under the original pro-
would have been filled
the international executive board.
AFL-CIO Organization Dir.
John Livingston told the 1,200
delegates that the National La-
bor Relations Board, under the
Eisenhower Administration, "has
made the Taft-Hartley Act even
worse," He assailed the partici-
pation of NLRB Chairman Boyd
Leedom in political fund-raising
for Sen. Karl E. Mundt (R-
S. D.) and said appointments to
the board demonstrate the im-
portance of political action "since
it is the President who names
these boards."
Scheduled for action during the
convention was a resolution strong-
ly endorsing the Kennedy-John-
son ticket.
Phillips, in his keynote address,
warned that the trade union move-
ment faces a challenge in bringing
an understanding of the need for
trade unionism to younger workers.
"By 1965," he pointed out, "half
the people in the labor force will
. . . have no personal knowledge
of the 1930-35 depression.
"They cannot remember the
endless unemployment and the
misery and suffering. They will
not recall why the union move-
ment was reborn during that pe-
riod. Knowing nothing of the de-
pression, and faced with the con-
stant propaganda barrage of the
companies, they probably will be
apathetic or even hostile to un-
ionism."
Hits Economic Lag
Schnitzler warned of the danger
to the nation in the twin problems
of heavy unemployment and lack
of economic growth. He accused
the Administration of having "no
positive program of any kind" to
combat unemployment. The Re-
publicans, he charged, talk about
the increase in employment "with-
out mentioning that the reason for
this is the growth in population
and without mentioning that unem-
ployment has increased during the
same period."
Despite the rise in the labor
force, Schnitzler emphasized, the
total of man-hours worked dur-
ing 1959 was actually less than
in 1953.
Worst Since 1 928':
Smash Bigotry Forever Nov. 8,
Ex-Gov. Lehman Asks ILGWU
New York — Hope that the American people will repudiate religious bigotry at the highest national
levels was voiced here by former New York Governor and U.S. Sen. Herbert H. Lehman at a 50th
anniversary observance of the historic strike by 60,000 garment union cloakmakers.
The strike, regarded as the greatest single event in the history of the Ladies' Garment Workers,
was a direct assault on sweatshop conditions.
The strike was ended, after eight^T
weeks, by the first industry-wide
agreement in the apparel trades.
Known as the "Protocol of Peace,"
the agreement was one of the first
efforts in this country to establish
orderly labor-management relations
on an industry basis.
Citing the ILGWU as an ex-
ample of how people of different
color, creed and ethnic origin can
work together in "vibrant and
constructive harmony and in total
fraternal solidarity," Lehman said
the garment union has shown in
a practical way how integration
can work.
He expressed alarm over the
"current out-croppings of religious
bigotry in a way that has not been
equaled in my experience since
1928," drawing a parallel between
the presidential campaign of Al-
fred E. Smith and Sen. John F.
Kennedy.
"I trust and hope that the Amer-
ican people, that each and all of
you as union members and as cit-
izens, will respond, to this bigotry
in the best and finest American
tradition — by repudiating it, by re-
jecting it so overwhelmingly that
it will never again raise its ugly
shape on the national scene, wheth-
er in the form of anti-Catholicism.
anti-Semitism or anti-Quakerism,"
he told ILGWU members and of-
ficers.
ILGWU Pres. David Dubinsky
and Henoch Mendelsund, general
manager of the Cloak Joint Board,
shared the speakers' platform with
Lehman.
The garment union president
noted that the idealism of the cloak-
makers was born out of hunger,
sickness, exploitation and oppres-
ILO, Congo
Sign Pact on
Aid Program
Geneva — The newly-independent
Congo and the Intl. Labor Organi-
zation have concluded an agree-
ment under which the ILO will pro-
vide the Congo with expert labor
assistance.
Joachim Massena, the Congo's
Minister of Labor, and ILO Dir.-
Gen. David A. Morse met here to
approve the final terms of the pact.
The ILO, a specialized agency of
the United Nations, announced that
the first steps include the sending
"of experts to advise the committee
created by the Congo government
to examine the revision of social
security legislation — participation
in the organization of a course for
labor inspectors — creation of a
school to train office personnel —
provision of fellowships abroad to
train occupational health specialists
and labor inspectors."
The ILO also will aid in helping
the Congo government recruit labor
administrators.
In a brief ceremony, Morse
presented to Massena an ILO
report on Congo wage problems.
The report, which grew out of a
survey of 250 firms by economic
and statistical experts earlier this
year, aims to set criteria for es-
tablishing minimum wages in
various industries and regions.
Henri Reymond of Switzerland,
who has been dealing with Congo
labor problems as a member of a
group of consultants named by UN
Sec. -Gen. Dag Hammarskjold, soon
will return from his ILO liaison
post in New York to Leopoldville
to implement the ILO program.
sion. He reviewed the events of
the historic strike, concluding with
the opinion that his union had paid
a terrible price years later when
Communist leaders who had infil-
trated its ranks brushed aside rec-
ommendations for improving the
garment industry that had been
made by a special commission ap-
pointed by the then Gov. Alfred
E. Smith.
"We paid a terrible price, but
we learned a great lesson," he
said. "That lesson is that we can
give true and fruitful meaning to
our ideals only if we conduct
ourselves as responsible, mature
citizens in our Union, in our in-
dustry and in our community —
responsible to the workers, to
the industry and to the public."
In the course of his remarks
Dubinsky called on several hundred
union members who took part in
the 1910 strike to stand up and take
a bow.
A message addressed to the un-
ion by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany hailed the cloakmakers'
progress "from sweatshop to union
shop." "It is to the great credit
of the cloakmakers who came to
our land as immigrants that they
realized they owed a debt to the
community," Meany declared. He
expressed the opinion that the
cloakmakers, who sent the first la-
bor congressman to Washington in
1912, would do "as much and even
better in November 1960."
If the pioneers who led the
ILGWU in its early days could have
been present at the celebration, they
would have been proud of their
union, which today lives in an era
when it is able to mark the achieve-
ments of 50 years in the world's
most famous mecca of music, New
York's Carnegie Hall.
It was symbolic that the cele-
bration was the first event at the
famous and beautiful hall since it
was taken over by a non-profit
organization and saved from dem-
olition. The hall gleamed with a
fresh coat of white paint, and a
flower-decked stage lent a fes-
tive note to the proceedings.
These included, besides the fop-
mal speeches, a concert by the Sym-
phony of the Air (the former NBC
Symphony Orchestra) led by con-
ductor Alfred Wallenstein; several
groups of operatic arias and songs
by tenor Jan Peerce; labor songs_
performed by joint choruses of the
Italian Cloak and Suit Makers Un-
ion and the Cloak Out of Town
Department; and a dramatic episode
written especially for the occasion.
A huge 40-foot banner with a
mural drawn by Bernard Seaman,
noted labor artist, draped the wall
overlooking the stage of the halt
Tobacco Union Favors
2 -Nation Political Action
Montreal, Que. — The Tobacco Workers Intl. Union, meeting
here for its 12th convention, has decided to cooperate with the
AFL-CIO and the Canadian Labor Congress in the implementation
of their respective political action programs.
The convention, with Pres. John O'Hare in the chair has asked
American tobacco workers to help^
elect a liberal majority to Congress
and to send a "liberal and en-
lightened President" to the White
House. TWIU members are also
urged to contribute financially to
the COPE fund.
Also scheduled for action is a
Canadian delegates' political action
resolution more specifically appli-
cable to this country's situation.
The Canadian Labor Congress
is currently cooperating with the
Cooperative Commonwealth Fed-
eration and liberally-minded citi-
zens toward the formation of a new
left-of-center political party, whose
founding convention will be held
in Ottawa next August.
The convention condemned
the Eisenhower Administration
as being more preoccupied with
bookkeeping than with the welfare
of the American people. It called
for an all-out effort to elect a
liberal majority to Congress, es-
pecially in order to have the
Landrum-Griflin Act squashed.
The 175 delegates also adopted
resolutions calling for U.S. federal
aid to education and an adequate
social security program.
During its sessions the Conven-
tion took a one-day recess for a
CWA Officer Warned
To New Jersey CSC
Newark, N. J. — Mrs. Martha
Rehder of Cranford, vice president
of Communications Workers Local
1009, has been appointed chairman
of the Community Services Com-
mittee of the New Jersey State CIO
Council. Mrs. Rehder is a grad-
uate of CSC union counselling
classes and heads the Raritan Bay
community chest drive.
visit to the Canadian capital, Ot-
tawa, Ont.
It went on record as supporting
advances in automation, but main-
taining that such progress should
benefit all segments of the popu-
lation. It insisted the "hard-won
rights of the people" should always
be protected during the transition
period.
In order to cope with automa-
tion, the Tobacco Workers ap-
proved the principle of the 35-
hour workweek without loss in
take-home pay and purchasing
power for the workers.
The membership of the union
has been reduced from a top of
40,000 members to the present
37,000 level due to unemployment
in the industry.
I
Bi-Racial Housing
Grows, Report Says
New York — Whites in large
numbers are buying homes in
racially-mixed neighborhoods
regardless of whether they
prefer white or Negro neigh-
bors, according to the fourth
report of the Fund for the
Republic's Commission on
Race & Housing.
The report, published by
the University of California
Press as "The Demand for
Housing in Racially Mixed
Areas," concluded that Ne-
groes in northern metropol-
itan areas are less and less
subject to unfavorable eco-
nomic discrimination in home-
buying, and are getting equal
treatment in purchase price
and financing.
XFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1960
Page Five
N.Y. Cloakmakers Honor 1910 Pioneers
CARNEGIE HALL was filled to the topmost balcony for the 50th anniversary
observance of the famous Cloakmaker's strike of 1910, beginning of the end of the
sweatshop and the home workshop. Garment workers from New York, New
Jersey and Connecticut turned out for the celebration.
PRES. DAVID DUBINSKY of the Ladies' Garment Workers pays
tribute to the cloakmakers as pioneers in the growth of the ILGWU.
Seated on the platform are, left to right, General Mgr. Henoch Men-
delsund of the Cloak Joint Board and former Sen. Herbert H. Leh-
man (D-N. Y.)
HISTORIC PHOTO of the 1910 strike shows the unity which won for the workers.
Many of the signs were in Yiddish, the language of the immigrants who worked
long hours in crowded, unsanitary firetraps sewing expensive garments which
were sold in exclusive, high-priced stores.
FAMILIES WORKED at home and in crowded
tenements from early morning until late at night
before the union brought security into their lives.
This scene was typical.
PROTOCOL OF PEACE
In the
CIoaR Suit & Shirt Industry
of
NEW YORK CITY
SEPTEMBER 2, 1910
UNION PIONEERS, workers who participated in the historic cloakmakers walkout, were given an ovation as they were
introduced from the audience. Young men at the time, they have seen their union grow to heights of influence.
Their dedication was cited by speakers as an inspiration to a new generation of trade unionists.
a;
1
I
i
I
%
I
i
THIS IS COVER of famous Protocol of Peace, the
industry-wide agreement which ended the strike
and recognized the right of workers to bargain for
better conditions through their union. It is re-
garded as a landmark in union history.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. O, SATLUDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, I960
\Kon-\o< So 'New'
A "NOT-SO-NEW" Richard M. Nixon is emerging in the 1960
presidential campaign, a Nixon who is deliberately distorting
the record and obscuring issues in a calculated attempt to strike the
pose of an independent and blur his identity as an Old Guard
Republican.
In speech after speech across the country — and according to
press reports essentially the same speech — Nixon is campaigning as
though his voting record never existed, striving desperately to sound
like a "liberal Republican."
He pays lip-service to the need for government action in various
welfare fields. He goes solidly on record in favor of an improved
social security system. He has told union audiences that he is a
friend of labor.
The simple facts are that Nixon is no closer to the "liberal"
wing of the Republican Party than the McKinley Republicanism
he represents in domestic affairs.
Take Nixon's record on social security. Two years ago an amend-
ment to raise public assistance payments to the aged, blind and dis-
abled by about $5 a month was killed on a 40-40 tie vote. The
Vice President withheld his tiebreaking vote and the amendment
died for lack of a majority.
Take labor legislation. Nixon has failed* to cast a single vote
for fair labor-management relations legislation. In 1947 when he
was a member of the House he voted for the Hartley bill — a
measure harsher than the final Taft-Hartley Act. In 1956 he broke
a 39-39 tie vote in favor of a provision to yield to state agencies
the determination of the prevailing wage on federal highway con-
struction. In 1959, the vote that sealed the so-calfed McClellan
"bill of rights" into the Landrum-Griffin Act ended in a 45-45 tie.
Nixon broke the tie in favor of McClellan.
The record goes on and on. The AFL-CIO Committee on Po-
litical Education has selected a total of 155 key votes to measure
Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy scored 92 percent right; Nixon 13
percent.
Nixon's record is that of an unreconstructed Old Guard Repub-
lican. No matter how hard he tries to obscure and distort that
record he is a committed conservative of the same stripe and con-
viction as Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. On every tie-breaking
vote cast by Nixon on domestic issues as Vice President, Goldwater
was on the same side.
This is no "new Nixon;' This is the Goldwater philosophy
tricked out with a phony "liberal" front designed to mislead the
voters and obscure the basic issues.
Pattern for Progress
IN NEARLY ALL the reports of union conventions in this season
when many such meetings are held, three major themes have
been observable.
There is a strong tendency to emphasize political participation,
on the simple doctrine that unions are handicapped at the bargain-
ing table by hostile laws and by a cold if not hostile attitude in gov-
ernment, at either the federal or state level.
There is an awareness that organizing is still a principal and
inescapable function of free trade unions.
There is, finally, a general pattern of broader financial support of
unions in their constantly expanding functions through increases in
dues and per capita payments.
In short, programs are being laid down, and money to finance
the programs is being voted.
Down, Boy
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Me any, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Wm. C. Doherty
Chas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: §2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, September 24, 1960
No. 39
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
AFL-CIO new*
Congo Policy Backed:
Hammarskjold Wins Respect
As UN Assembly Reconvenes
UNITED NATIONS, N.Y.— The most fateful
session in the 15-year history of the United
Nations is now under way and upon its outcome
may well rest the future of this war-endangered
world.
Never before have there been assembled under
one roof so many heads of state, foreign ministers,
cabinet officials from every quarter of the so-
called civilized — and even "uncivilized" — world.
And with the physical presence of government
chieftains like the President of the United States,
Nikita Khrushchev and Jawaharlal Nehru, there
are the embodiments of the three ideologies which
hope to win that part of the world still politically
uncommitted.
Freedom, dictatorship and neutralism — these
are the doctrines which seek alliances and vic-
tories in a United Nations which now, with the
admission of 14 new African countries, can
truly be said to represent every quarter of the
globe.
The session of the General Assembly opened
with the defeat of the Soviet Union's attempt to
seize control of the Congo Republic, former Bel-
gian colony, which has floundered in freedom for
three months. It was followed by the election of
Frederick H. Boland of Ireland as president of
the General Assembly over Jiri Nosek, Czecho-
slovak Communist diplomat.
BUT AMIDST this "box-score" tallying, one
fact stood out — the imposing moral position which
Dag Hammarskjold, UN secretary-general, has
achieved in recent weeks.
During the mounting Congo crisis, one which
threatened to engulf all Africa in chaos or war,
Hammarskjold with consummate diplomatic skill
managed to quench Soviet attempts to violate UN
resolutions barring unilateral action in the Congo.
His reward has been the respect of the Af-
rican countries and the inevitable denunciation
by the Soviet Union. His accomplishment has
been to save the Congo specifically but, more
broadly, to give the African states the strength
to resist Soviet intrusion into the huge continent.
This is not to say that the battle is over. It has
been a skirmish victory. Soviet communism still
operates on the Leninist precept of "one step
backward, two steps forward."
icndous im-
portance to the new African states which seek to
create modern, viable economies.
But the delegations from these countries here
have seen for themselves, in the Congo crisis, that
Soviet aid means Soviet interference and intrigue.
The question now is — can they and will they act
upon that knowledge?
AMERICAN POLICY at the UN will be to
give new member nations an "education" and an
insight into Soviet foreign policy. To this end,
the U.S. plans to raise the question of Hungary,
overrun and crushed by Red army troops in
November, 1956.
Resolutions, reports, speeches demanding with-
drawal of Soviet troops from Hungary have been
flouted by Moscow for four years. It will be the
aim of the United States to ensure that Hungary
"will not be forgotten" and to demonstrate that
Soviet imperialism is as real today as western
colonialism was in the first half of the twentieth
century.
KEEP UP
WITH
THE
WORLD
Coast to Coast
on ABC
Monday thru Friday
7 P.M. Eastern Time*
sponsored by AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1960
Page Seven
Morgan Says:
Kennedy Entered Texas With
Trepidation, Came Out Elated
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
AN ESTIMATE OF A CROWD at a political
rally is about as reliable as the price of a
bauble in an Arab bazaar— the figure depends on
who is doing the bargaining. Since a candidate
is as dead as a beached mackerel at low tide if
he doesn't seem to be swimming in shimmering
schools of constituents, his'
henchmen contrive their
own population explosions
as estimates of his turn-
outs. And the opposition
is fully as quick to try to
damp down these calcula-
tions as duds. This conten-
tious double-edged tech-
nique is becoming known
in this 1960 presidential
contest as crowdsmanship.
Thus in Dallas the issue
was not Khrushchev, the
Congo or cotton supports but whether Jack Ken-
nedy actually outdrew Dick Nixon the day before
by 75,000 as Police Chief Jesse Curry said he
did. And the concern on the senator's plane was
not so much what the Vice President said in
Portland on public power but whether he pulled
more people into the streets than the Democratic
nominee did in Oregon a week before, which was
not much. The answers were partisan and suspect.
But while accurate numbers are elusive, the
quite intangible quality of the temperature of crowd
response, paradoxically enough, is more easily
read. And there is hardly a reporter following
the first fortnight of Senator Kennedy's national
campaign who hasn't found the mercury of his
popularity to be climbing.
Kennedy is known to feel, for example, a sub-
dued sense of elation over his Texas tour* Into
this curiously introspective and lonely starred
Correction, Please!
Morgan
state, which wears its pride not deep in its heart
but on its swaggering sleeve, Kennedy went with
almost palpable trepidation. He even made
nervous wisecracks about what he might be
getting into before he left the politically flecked
but friendly sunshine of California.
After all, for two successive presidential elec-
tions, the eyes and votes of Texas have been upon
the Republicans. Dallas, that air-conditioned,
chromium-plated citadel of 15th century thinking,
gave the Eisenhower ticket in 1952 the biggest
majority of any American metropolis but one
and still stubbornly maintains the only Republi-
can congressman in an otherwise solidly Demo-
cratic Texas delegation.
But, as a Negro Protestant preacher told the
Chicago Daily News' Peter Lisagor after the sen-
ator's independent declaration of conscience be-
fore a dubious ministerial association of Houston,
"Mr. Kennedy proved toTne to be a man nobody
would tell what to do — either the Pope or his
mother."
VETERAN TEXAS CAMPAIGNERS like
Sam Rayburn and Sen. Ralph Yarborough were
slack-jawed over the enthusiasm that their chosen
Massachusetts Yankee evoked from crowds across
the Lone Star State from the Rio Grande to the
Red River Valley. They vowed they had seen
nothing like it in Texas since the dawn of the
New Deal.
Will Kennedy's Texas tour be the hinge on
which his campaign swings to success, as did
Harry Truman's in 1948? Will the plasma of
popular applause sustain the confidence of the
nominee enough to match a powerful and shrewdly
calculated Republican campaign, which is not find-
ing great public disfavor either? Will Kennedy's
lonely, eloquent stand against religious prejudice
in Houston be enough to check what somebody
has called the fire-in-a-coal-mine fumes of big-
otry? Nobody can tell.
But as they may or may not say on Broadway,
John F. Kennedy has started a lively run in the
provinces. Whether the voting critics acclaim him
a national hit in November remains to be seen.
Dandy Word-Eating Machine
Given Nixon by Generous Dems
"/CORRECTION, PLEASE!'— a new cam-
^ paign bulletin of the Democratic National
Committee — cocked an ear when Vice-Pres. Rich-
ard M. Nixon said recently on Meet the Press:
"1 believe that the Social Security Act was a
major achievement; it is one that is to the credit
of those who supported it."
"Correction, Please!" in its first issue quoted
Nixon on social security as its leading "item" and
added this "correction:"
"In his six years in Congress, Nixon voted
against extensions of social security benefits four
times out of five."
CP listed two key votes. The bulletin cited
Nixon, in 1949, as voting to recommit a pend-
ing bill with instructions to substitute lower
benefits and less toverage and to cut out new
protection for disabled workers. In 1950, it
recorded, he again voted against disability
benefits.
CP also pointed out that when the strongly
Democratic Congress passed the Social Security
Act 25 years ago, 107 out of 115 Republicans
voted to gut the heart of the law — the system of
old-age and survivors' insurance.
Some 12 million American "senior citizens"
and their dependents now get benefits under the
social security system, CP reminded its readers.
Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.), Democratic
national chairman, said in unveiling "Correction,
Please!" that its purpose is "to set the record
straight on the outright lies, half-truths, dis-
tortions and misrepresentations spread by the
Republicans."
In subsequent issues, the bulletin has fol-
lowed the campaign trail of Nixon and his
running-mate, Henry Cabot Lodge, to provide
the public w ith the antidote of its "corrections.'*
On education, CP observed that Nixon told an
NBC Meet the Press panel he opposes federal
aid to raise teachers' salaries because it would
give the government the power "to control what
is taught."
CP pointed out some $689 million in federal
aid has actually gone to federally-impacted areas
in the past seven years, that about two-thirds of
it is used for teacher salaries and that "there has
never been a single charge of federal control oyer
curriculum."
IN ITS SECOND ISSUE, Correction, Please!
observed that Nixon recently said on a national
television program that he wants to campaign "on
the issues" and that he "never engaged in per-
sonalities in campaigns."
The bulletin listed a series of Nixon comments,
such as the following from the 1952 campaign:
"Stevenson holds a Ph.D. degree from
Acheson's college of cowardly Communist con-
tainment — the State Dept."
The references were to then Democratic nomi-
nee Adlai E. Stevenson and former Sec. of State
Dean Acheson.
In its third issue, Correction, Please! cited a
news story which quoted Nixon as having told the
Machinists' convention in St. Louis that real
wages had gone up 2 percent under the Truman
Administration compared to 15 percent under the
Eisenhower Administration.
The bulletin turned to official government
statistics to show that real earnings during the
Truman period actually rose by slightly over
14 percent.
Then it pointed out that while there was a 15
percent rise during the Eisenhower period, the
uptrend was 9.8 percent between 1953 and 1956
while the influence of Democratic policies still
had some effect. But, it said, the uptrend broke
under the weight of the "Eisenhower-Nixon eco-
nomic policies" and the rise in real earnings was
no more than 4.3 percent between 1956 and 1960. [
—m your=
WASHINGTON^
i
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports the not-astounding
news that the Administration's so-called medical care plan, which
was shoved through as a substitute for the Forand bill, is running
into "snags" and that many of th£ "needy old folks" who hope for
health benefits financed by a federal treasury handout "are in for
an unpleasant surprise."
In Arizona the "needy old folks" just aren't to get any federal
money, because local law prohibits the state from doing anything
on a medical welfare program, and matching funds are required.
In California there is already a state medical plan for people
on relief, but new legislation will be needed for the state to par-
ticipate in the plan as it might affect those now on the social
security rolls. The same thing is true of Illinois and New York.
All three states would have to raise more tax money to become
eligible for federal matching grants.
Texas now has no state health program, but the Journal says
probably some funds will be provided to make the state eligible
for grants to "charity" cases. The state law prohibits anyone on
the social security rolls from getting public assistance money for
any purpose.
From state after state the report is the same: There is little
likelihood of early and comprehensive action to set up new pro-
grams that would allow health grants to people who live on social
security.
"There's no real federal program. Congress couldn't reconcile
its conflicting viewpoints, so it passed the buck to the states," the
Journal quotes one state welfare administrator as "snapping."
A further discovered fact is that the cost estimates produced by
Mr. Eisenhower's experts were "unrealistic" and "far too low,"
because part of the program is an open-end one, with no limit
whatever on the claims of the states for federal matching grants.
There is the additional fact that the states have enormously ex-
panded their tax revenues and the expenditures since World War II
and that almost every state is now in a perennial fiscal crisis, with
potential sources of new taxes at the point of exhaustion.
★ * ★
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who felt compelled at
the Republican convention to slide over his differences with Vice
Pres. Nixon on the Forand approach, finally renewed an attack on
the Administration's substitute that Nixon supported.
He is campaigning for Nixon but he said the Eisenhower-
Nixon law didn't offer any ^real solution" to the problems of older
citizens who could be helped by "assurance of adequate health
insurance."
An elderly couple, he pointed out, might have to sacrifice a home
and exhaust life savings before becoming "eligible" for the "pauper's
oath" charity offered by the program.
Gov. Rockefeller, frankly, doesn't think he will bother to ask
his legislature to amend New York laws to participate fully in the
Eisenhower-Nixon system because he thinks a new Administration
in Washington may change the program.
There is "rising public awareness" of the problem of older peo-
ple, he said, and "I am convinced" that by popular demand there
will be "further action in this area of medical care."
★ ★ ★
ALL THE WEAKNESSES which state officials have now dis-
covered in the Administration program were spotted in advance
by those who supported the Forand bill approach — a program of
medical and health care financed through the social security system.
The Wall Street Journal now reports the dismal facts, but edi-
torially the newspaper during the session backed the Eisenhower-
Nixon program and rebuked labor spokesmen for challenging the
"charity" and "paupers oath" philosophy implicit in it. "Charity"
was a fine, honorable thing, the Journal said.
Charity in fact is unwelcome to most people who prefer to
pay their own way — and the charity offered by the Administra-
tion's health program has turned out to be distant if not cold.
CHESTER BOWLES, economic advisor the Sen. John F. Kennedy,
is welcomed at the Miami Beach convention of the IUE by Pres.
James B. Carey, left, and Sec.-Treas. Al Hartnett, right.
Pa«« Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1M0
How to Buy:
BLS's $117 Budget
Is $28 Above Wages
By Sidney Margolius
THE U.S. BUREAU of Labor Statistics is trying to discourage
people from comparing its latest estimate of modest living costs
for a family with actual average wages. The BLS staff has been
arguing in its publications that (1) the budget was made out for a
mature worker in his late thirties who, the BLS feels, probably earns
more than the average, and (2) this is not a "minimum" or "sub-
sistence" budget since you could live
on less.-
As of last October, the BLS
"modest but adequate" budget for a
family of four cost $117 a week in
a typical city, including taxes, com-
pared to average industrial wages
of approximately $89.
The government bureau argues:
"A family could live quite satisfac-
torily on less income than is repre-
sented by this budget . . . They
could, for example, give up their
automobile. . . . They might also
refrain from buying new furniture or
a TV set or a radio, etc."
Well, if that budget is not the
minimum it's not far from it. The meat allowance would permit
you about 1.5 pounds of meat or fish for supper for four people
and another half pound for lunch. The budget also allows just
3.5 eggs a day for four people, and that includes any you might
want to use for baking. Of course Papa could give up the three
cans of beer a week allowed him by this budget.
Papa can buy one topcoat every five years, one wool suit every
four years, a lightweight suit every five years, one pair of dungarees
a year, a hat every two years. Mama does slightly better on the
government budget. She's allowed a coat every two years and three-
fifths of a hat every year, rain or shine.
NO DOUBT you also can answer easily enough the argument that
this 38-year-old worker probably earns more than the average. The
fact is, in real life most workers earning the average wage don't
earn it 52 weeks a year every year. For one thing there's been a re-
cession about every four years with numerous layoffs. Too, the
mature worker often has more than the two children on which this
budget standard is based.
Having thus established, to our satisfaction at least, that a com-
parison of living costs with average wages is valid, we've done it.
Kate Papert, former New York Labor Department official, has
worked out for this department a comparison of the costs of the
budget and average earnings in 20 cities. The figures in the chart
with this article hit you right in the eye. They show:
• In only two cities — Detroit and Houston — are manufactur-
ing wages approximately equal to living costs, Miss Papert points
out. In most U.S. cities, wages run $7 to $42 a week less than local
living costs, and most typically are about $20 below this modest
living standard.
• There is little relationship between the level of wages and of
living costs in the various cities. This contradicts the general be-
lief that high wages make high living costs.
For example, wages in Boston are far below those in Minneapolis,
which we selected as typical in both living costs and wages. But
living costs in Boston are among the highest in the country. Detroit
has the highest wages but is only moderate in living costs. Houston
and Cleveland have relatively high wages but only moderate to
medium living costs. Scranton, Pa., has the lowest wages on the list
— 30 percent below typical Minneapolis. But its living costs are
only eight percent less.
Low wages in the South do not mean proportionately low
living costs, even though the BLS allowed a little lower budget
standard for the South (providing less for meat and clothing).
There's a gap of $25 a week between living costs and wages in
Atlanta.
Nor are living costs necessarily lower in small cities, as employers
sometimes maintain. Costs are higher than New York and Philadel-
phia in such moderate-size cities as Cincinnati; Minneapolis; Port-
land, Ore. and Seattle.
In fact, Miss Papert points out, while there is a great disparity
in various parts of the country, the difference in living costs is
comparatively small. "If you omit the cities with the lowest
and highest wages, the range in wages is 29 percent," she reports.
• In the seven months since the budget was priced in October,
wage-earners in some cities have done better in catching up on
living costs than in others.
On average, the cost of the budget has gone up about $1 a week
while wages have gone up about $2. Wages have gone up especially
in Houston (now $105.47); Baltimore ($96.22); Cincinnati ($99.92);
Washington ($98.90); Cleveland ($108.99); Pittsburgh ($111.56);
Portland ($98.36); St. Louis ($99.14); San Francisco ($107.36);
Seattle ($101.14). They've dropped a bit in Minneapolis, Atlanta
Detroit, Kansas City and Scranton. The other cities are the same
or a little higher.
In general, unionized wage-earners made greater gains than non
union this year in catching up on living costs. Almost four-fifths
of the workers who got general pay increases this year were cov-
ered by union contracts, although such union-represented workers
comprise only two-thirds of the nation's production workers.
Coj*>ri«ht by Sidney Margoliua
NORVIEW SENIOR high school in Norfolk, Va., was one of the first in Thomas Jefferson's state to
practice the democracy taught in the classrooms. Norview students are shown at lunch tables in
the school's cafeteria. There were 30 Negro children in bi-racial classes in Virginia's schools two
years ago; 103 last year; and there will be at least 140 enrolled this year.
Six- Year Report:
School Desegregation Moves
At Snail's Pace in the South
1AST MAY a 75-year-old Negro was b^dly
* beaten by two white men when he took three
Negro children to register for the first grade in
the Dollarway School District outside Pine Bluffs,
Ark.
This September, under the pressure of a fed-
eral court ruling, a six-year-old Negro girl was
admitted to a previously all-white school at
Dollarway.
While the six-year old girl will have to shoulder
the pioneer's burden in her area, some 15 other
school districts in the South also have under-
taken desegregation for the first time.
This is the nature and sluggish pace of deseg-
regation in the 1960-61 school year, six years
after the historic Supreme Court decision: a six-
year old girl in one place, a whole district in
another.
"The progress of school desegregation is still
hammered out in the courtrooms," commented
the Southern Regional Council in a special report
on the 1960-61 school year.
The snail's pace of actual desegregation can be
seen in the statistics compiled by the Southern
Education Reporting Service.
In the 1959-60 school year, 153 of 1,459 bi-
racial districts were desegregated; however, 127
of these were concentrated in west Texas.
This was the scorecard last year: Arkansas, 8
out of 228 bi-racial districts desegregated; Flor-
ida, 1 of 67; North Carolina, 7 of 174; Tennessee,
of 142; Texas, 127 of 720; and Virginia, 6
of 128.
There was no desegregation at all in five
states: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Missis-
sippi and South Carolina.
In higher education, however, Negroes are at-
tending formerly segregated, publicly-financed
universities in all but four southern states: Ala-
bama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina..
The 1960-61 school year is now shaping up as
a critical stage of the desegregation problem be-
cause of a wave of federal court actions which
has cracked the new southern defense of "token"
desegregation.
At Dollarway, for example, the Eighth Circuit
Court of Appeals criticized the school board for
producing, after six years, nothing more effective
than a pupil placement plan which was "a specu-
lative possibility wrapped in dissuasive qualifica-
tions." The admission of the Negro girl followed.
A major break occurred at Houston, which
has the nation's sixth largest school system. A
federal judge threw out as a "palpable sham
and subterfuge" the Houston school board's so-
called "salt and pepper" approach of integrating
a single school at each level this year.
He ordered a city-wide, grade-a-year plan into
effect. There were protests, but the city complied.
The judge handled the problem with firmness.
During a pre-referendum campaign on whether or
not the city should desegregate, the judge wrote
to the school board's attorney that "this is not a
popularity contest, but is the performance of a
duty which the law imposes."
in New Orleans, a federal court has allowed
By Robert B. Cooney
the school board until Nov. 14 to complete a plan
for admitting Negroes to all-white schools.
In the New Orleans case, the bench also acted
with decisiveness. When the school board failed j
to offer a plan for desegregation, a federal judge
drafted one himself. He and two colleagues then
found unconstitutional a group of ' state anti-
integration laws and cited the state attorney- \
general for contemptuous behavior during the I
hearing.
The Southern Regional Council warned against
the view that the new approach of "token" de-
segregation, which replaced massive resistance in
southern strategy, should be accepted as a first
step.
Where a desegregation plan has a built-in prin-
ciple to insure progress, such as Nashville's grade-
a-year plan, "there can be reasonable confidence
that segregation will come to an orderly end," the
council said, but warned that the so-called pupil
placement laws enacted in every state except
Georgia will proceed "no faster than the disposi-
tion of officials, the stresses of politics and the
fortunes of litigation permit."
Force Begins
"The process can be forced by organized effort
in the Negro community to multiply the number
of applications and this is . . . beginning to occur,"
the council said.
The council listed as the areas of chief interest
in this school year: New Orleans, Houston, Knox-
ville, the Florida scene and the Dollarway District
in Arkansas.
"The plodding gait of the law has tortured the
discontent which, this past winter, brought on the
sit-ins," the council said. "Now, finally, there is
the test at New Orleans this year and at Atlanta
and pafcsibly other places next year.
"The Deep South at last faces the demand that
it comply with the law. Perhaps the truth has
been that desegregation cannot move more rapidly
in the upper South, cannot break from the court-
room and be assumed as a community responsibil-
ity, while the Deep South is uncompromising.
"When desegregation breaches the Deep
South, the myth of Southern ability to defy the
law will have been fatally punctured; the con-
sequence could be an emotional release in the
upper South that would enable desegregation to
move without the lash of the law.
"if, on the other hand, the imminent crisis in
New Orleans is not overcome or even if New Or-
leans treads the bitter path of Little Rock between
1957-59, the prospects will be gloomy for the
South and for national self-respect."
The council said the South* s attitude of massive
resistance has bred a massive determination which
inspired the student sit-in movement to hasten the
pace of desegregation.
"The sit-ins succeeded, as nothing else had,"
the Atlanta-based council said, "in causing
white southerners to see Negro southerners as
individuals.
"This is, after all, the crux also of the case for
desegregation of schools; that the Negro child be
regarded and treated as an individual."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C„ SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1960
Page Nine
Gift of Labor, Business:
SS Hope Sails for Indonesia
To Share U. S. Medical Skills
San Francisco — A small but shining down payment on a healthier world cleared this port Sept.
22, Indonesian-bound.
It was the SS Hope, gift of American unions, industry and individuals, and the first in what is hoped
will become a great fleet of medical training ships, sharing modern medical knowledge and skills
with newly developing countries.
Using the Hope as a floating^ — ~ ~ *
framing center, a 72-person medi- traimn S to ex P and
cal team will spend two to six weeks
each in nearly a dozen ports of call
in Indonesia and South Viet Nam.
The team intends no frontal assault
on the enormous health problems
confronting the people of these
countries; rather, it hopes through
New York City
Labor Holds
Rights Session
New York — The need for en-
forcement of civil rights legislation
was stressed by Pres. Harry Van
Arsdale Jr. of the New York City
Central Labor Council at the first
Civil Rights Conference sponsored
by the city's union central body.
"Discrimination because of race,
creed or color," he told more than
500 delegates at an all-day session,
"is a much greater offense against
society than running through a red
light, and should carry penalties
proportionate to the offense."
Greetings From Meany
Van Arsdale spoke at a luncheon
meeting at which A. Philip Ran-
dolph, AFL-CIO vice president and
president of the Sleeping Car Port-
ers, described the work of the Ne-
gro-American Labor Council and
emphasized it "is not anti-AFL-
ClO." Greetings from AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany were extended
by Dir. Boris Shishkin of the feder-
ation's Dept. of Civil Rights.
Mayor Robert F. Wagner also
spoke.
Charles S. Zimmerman, chair-
man of the AFL-CIO Civil Rights
Committee and vice president of
the Ladies' Garment Workers, was
principal speaker at the opening
session. He expressed disagree-
ment with Randolph's contention,
advanced a few days earlier, that
on civil rights only Catholics can
effectively speak for Catholics, only
Jews can effectively speak for
Jews and only Negroes can effec-
tively speak for Negroes.
This philosophy, Zimmerman as-
serted, runs counter to the funda-
mental principle of brotherhood on
which non-discrimination in the
labor movement is based.
Panel sessions on housing, edu-
cation and employment following
the general meeting were marked
by lively floor participation.
to expand local medical
facilities and personnel.
k *From the standpoint of treat-
ment," Dr. Paul Spangler, chief
medical officer of the S.S. Hope
said, "we can't scratch the sur-
face. Our main objective is
training."
Dr. Spangler, a veteran Naval
medical officer, said that in Indo-
nesia there is but one doctor for
about 75,000 people — in all, 1,100
doctors for 80 million people.
"Medical help is spread thin.
They have no time for postgradu-
ate training; it's difficult for them
to keep up with medical education."
The S.S. Hope will offer the
hard-pressed Indonesian doctors an
opportunity to become acquainted
with medicine as it is practiced in
this country. They will be taught
by doing; selected cases ' will be
brought aboard, American and In-
donesian doctors will study them
together, plan programs of treat-
ment, carry them out.
Beyond medical doctors them-
selves, other sections of the Hope's
team will be working, afloat and
ashore, with medical technicians,
mid wives, and nurses, in an effort
to train still more helpful hands to
stretch available medical personnel
over the country's health problems
In addition to the 72-member
team that will remain aboard for
the full year of the ship's cruise,
other groups of physicians and
technicians will be flown in for
Labor's U SO Show
'One of the Best 9
A labor-sponsored USO
show presented at an isolated
radar installation in Spain has
been described by Air Force
personnel there as "one of the
best they had ever seen."
Lt. Col. Maurice W. Gou-
choe, commander of the
871st Aircraft Control and
Warning Squadron (USAFE),
expressed appreciation and
sentiments of the men in a
letter to AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany.
The AFL-CIO, in acknowl-
edging the letter, said labor
was honored at the opportun-
ity to salute America's service
personnel in such a tangible
fashion.
shorter tours of duty and to sup-
ply specialized instruction.
While American medical per-
sonnel will be 'offering advanced
learning to their Indonesian oppo-
site numbers, the Americans, too,
will be learning about health prob-
lems little known in this country.
Some may see their first case of
smallpox, which is still endemic in
Indonesia. About tropical diseases,
Dr. Spangler expects the Indo-
nesian doctors to teach the Ameri-
cans more than the Americans can
teach them.
The S.S. Hope is the first train-
ing ship sponsored by Project
HOPE, a program of the People
to People Foundation and signify-
ing "Health Opportunities for Peo-
ple Everywhere."
Former Hospital Ship
The ship, the former 800-bed
hospital vessel Consolation, was
taken out of mothballs, recondi-
tioned by the Navy and turned over
to the foundation without charge.
For training purposes, the Navy's
800-bed hospital has been modified
to 250 beds, Gynecological and
pediatric facilities have been added.
She will be operated, with San
Francisco as her home port, by the
American President Lines, without
fee. The $3,500,000 operating
budget, representing the cost of the
first year, is being raised by contri-
butions from unions — "very en-
thusiastic in their support," Dr.
Spangler said — from business and
industry and individuals.
More is needed to complete the
cost of operating the Hope. Once
that budget has been fulfilled, a new
ship could be added for a year for
each $3,500,000 raised.
Union Crew Aboard
For the union crew that operates
and sails the Hope, the tour pre-
sents still other unique problems.
When it signed on, it signed for
the full year. Since the ship will
stay in a single port for anywhere
from two to six weeks, the crew will
have more port time but wider re-
sponsibilities for keeping the Hope
spanking-white.
The steward's department, in ad-
dition to feeding the crew and med-
ical team, will be providing meals
for the ship's hospital wards. And
the engine-room crew will have
additional generators, air-condition-
ing and other equipment ordinarily
not found in commercial passenger
vessels.
NURSES ABOARD S.S. HOPE, AFL-CIO-supported floating hos-
pital ship which will bring medical aid to peoples of Southeast Asia,
inspect master control board before vessel sets sail from San
Francisco. Left to right are Nurses Joanne Acfelfing and Teresa
Campbell, and Chief Engineer C. A. Strohacker, member of Marine
Engineers Beneficial Association, Local 97.
MEMBERS OF AFL-CIO Seamen's Union of Pacific check equip-
ment aboard S.S. Hope in San Francisco harbor, before ship starts
tour of southeast Asian countries to provide up-to-date medical aid.
AFL-CIO has supported private campaign of People-to-People
Foundation which is financing the medical aid program.
IUE Convention Votes
Higher Minimum Dues
By Gene Zack
Miami Beach — A one-third increase in dues and per capita pay-
ments has won approval of the ninth constitutional convention of
the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers here.
Following a lengthy debate, the 430 delegates representing more
than 300 locals in the U.S. and Canada voted by a nearly two-to-one
margin to hike minimum dues from^
FIRST CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS sponsored by the New York City Central Labor
Council drew more than 500 delegates from New York area unions. Chairman Charles S. Zimmer-
man (.speaking) of the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Committee gave the main address at the opening session.
$3 to $4, and to raise the monthly
per capita payments to the interna-
tional union from $1.50 to $2.
The increases voted by the con-
vention still must be ratified by the
IUE's 400,000 members in a refer-
endum ballot later this year.
Under the new per capita pay-
ments, an additional 35 cents a
month would go into the union's
strike fund, and the remaining 15-
cent increase into the general treas-
ury.
The convention called on the
electrical industry, where employ-
ment has nosedived under the
impact of automation, to follow
the lead of the steel and meat-
packing industries and create a
joint labor-management commit-
tee to study the effects of auto-
mation, and to work out methods
whereby the benefits of increased
productivity can be distributed
fairly among workers, owners and
consumers.
"Contrary to optimistic predic-
tions that automation will mean
more jobs," a resolution declared,
"tens of thousands of jobs already
have vanished because of the intro-
duction of automated equipment."
. The convention noted that the
number of manhours worked in the
industry droped from 2 billion in
1953 to 1.8 billion in 1959— a de-
cline of 10 percent. At the same
time, the resolution continued, the
Federal Reserve Board's index of
real goods produced by the indus-
try climbed 20 percent in the same
six-year period.
"What we see for the future,**
said the IUE delegates, "are difficult
problems made more acute unless
labor, management and the govern-
ment come to grips with the need
for advance planning particularly
for the benefit of those workers
who will bear the most severe bur-
den of adjustment to change.
The IUE called specifically for:
• Advance planning to ease the
impact of automation on employes.
• A study of the skills that will
be needed, the training that affected
employes will require, and the me-
thods for providing workers with
income during the training period.
• Reduction in the hours of
work with no reduction in weekly
pay in order to help maintain full
employment in the face of increased
automation.
The IUE called for enactment of
legislation to maintain federal con-
troj over hazards created by atomic
energy, and for establishment of
standards for safety and occupa-
tional health. Only those states
adopting and implementing such
federal standards, the IUE declared,
should be eligible for grants-in-aid.
At the same time, the union an-
nounced it would press for negoti-
ation of safety and health clauses in
the new contracts.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. G, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1966
ENTHUSIASTIC ENDORSEMENT of Sen. John F. Kennedy (at
podium) was voted by the Chemical Workers convention in Atlantic
City after the Democratic presidential candidate spoke. At right
is Walter L. Mitchell, union president.
Rubber Workers Hail
Retiring Buckmaster
St. Louis — L. S. Buckmaster, retiring Rubber Workers interna-
tional president, choked back the tears and said:
"I don't quite understand how the Rubber Workers owe me any-
thing. I, my wife and my family owe a great deal to this union."
The revered union president's words were addressed to union
delegates who threw a surprise'^
party for him and presented him
with a new automobile, $2,000 in
bonds and check for $1,650 at
a banquet in connection with the
URW's 25th anniversary conven-
tion here.
Some 1,300 delegates and guests
also presented Mrs. Buckmaster
with a brown mink stole.
The presents, raised with
money from thousands of rank-
and-filers, were the union's way
of saying thank you to the lanky
AFL-CIO vice president who
will step down from the URW
presidency after 15 years,
Buckmaster, who also is an AFL-
CIO vice president, is 66. The
union constitution provides that he
retire at the end of the term in
which he became 65.
Buckmaster was overcome when
he became the center of attention
in a surprise feature of the conven-
tion banquet.
Looking at the scroll which was
presented to him as a tribute, he
said:
"The fact that I was a part of
this union, that I had a part to play
in it that none of you had an op-
portunity to play, does not really
make any difference. My wife and
my family went through all the
things that the rest of you went
through some 25 years ago.
"Many a time that «we didn't
have enough food on the table
or clothes for our children, but
this" union" made it possmle"for~ j
us, as it has made it possible for
many other people, to have a
little bit of pleasure in this life
and I do not see how the Rubber
Workers owes anything to us.
"We owe it all to the fact that
back there a long time ago a few
people had the courage to start
this union. I am glad to have
played some part in it and I hope
that this union lives forever."
The convention, which opened
Monday, was expected to vote en-
dorsement of the Kennedy- Johnson
ticket before adjournment.
"We hope to be able to give Jack
Kennedy a good answer to the
telegram he sent our convention,''
Buckmaster said.
In early convention business ses-
sions the delegates voted to:
. • Establish a skilled trades de-
partment.
• Rejected a proposal to create
a second vice presidency.
Still pending before delegates
was a proposal to increase dues by
$1.25 a month and to pay strike
benefits of $25 a week.
Pres. Mitchell Tells ICWU:
Automation Challenges Labor
To Organize, Bargain, Lobby
Atlantic City — Automation is having an ever-increasing impact in the chemical industry and an
aggressive organizing and collective bargaining campaign supplemented by a legislative drive for a
shorter workweek is needed to turn the tide.
That was the theme of Pres. Walter L. Mitchell's keynote speech to the 17th annual convention of
the Chemical Workers here, a convention of about 500 delegates representing 90,000 organized workers.
Mitchell displayed charts
showing an increase in chemical
production of 112 percent from
1947 to 1959 contrasted with an
increase of only 1 percent in the
number of production and main-
tenance workers producing the
chemicals.
In 1947, he declared, the ratio
of blue-collar to white-collar work-
ers in the chemical industry was
3 to 1. By 1959 the ratio had
dropped to less than 2 to 1 as
automation spread, Mitchell re-
ported.
He urged an "aggressive" col-
lective bargaining policy that will
include retraining programs, relo-
cation of workers, improved sever-
ance pay allowances, coupled with
a more aggressive organizing pro
gram and a legislative campaign for
federal policies to help protect
workers from the impact of auto-
mation — especially through the
shorter workweek.
The convention enthusiastical-
ly went on record in support of
the Kennedy-Johnson ticket after
giving a rousing demonstration
to Sen. Kennedy and approving
an executive board endorsement
recommendation sharply criticiz-
ing the record of the past eight
years.
Mitchell reported that in con-
trast with the last convention, when
the union treasury was empty, the
net worth of the organization is
now about $1.3 million as a result
of a 50-cent per capita increase
voted last year. He accounted in
great detail as to how the new
money was used.
The convention theme of
growth and strength" was stressed
in several areas. The report of
the union's executive board to the
convention emphasized new organ-
izing techniques to acquaint unor-
ganized chemical workers with the
union's record, and a recommenda-
tion for the formation of consoli-
dated bargaining units with 31 key
Auto Workers Aid
Get-Out-Vote Group
Detroit— The Auto Work-
ers have contributed $5,000
to the American Heritage
Foundation to help the non-
partisan organization in its
1960 campaign to get Amer-
icans to register and vote.
In a letter to David Sarnoff,
chairman of the foundation's
board of directors, UAW
Pres. Walter P. Reuther
hailed AHF's "constructive
efforts to encourage greater
citizenship participation in the
affairs of government"
The UAW, Reuther said,
has "an abiding interest in
such matters since we recog-
nize, as your organization
does, that the ultimate
strength and vigor of dem-
ocratic government depends
in large part on an informed
and politically active public. 9 '
Jewelry Union Names
Trustee in Providence
New York — The general executive board of the Jewelry Workers
has appointed a trustee to take over the affairs of Providence, R. I.,
Local 18 as a result of charges against the officers filed by Intl.
Pres. Harry Spodick.
" •Thentuover foilowed suspension of the local- last June as a result
of evidence of maladministration'^ . ~ " I ~"
said, "has been to place the mem-
bers of Local 18 and the inter-
in its affairs. George A. Aronov
was named special trustee and was
directed by the board to take "im-
mediate charge and control" of the
local's affairs and property.
A statement issued by the inter-
national union charged that the
officers of Local 18 had concealed
from the membership the nature
of collective agreements "the terms
and conditions of which are unfair
and below standards of working
conditions appropriate" for em-
ployes covered by collective agree-
ments; that the officers were "ne-
glectful, incompetent and indiffer-
ent" in their management of the
local, "having failed to pay per
capita to the international union,
having been and still are more than
three months in arrears in per cap-
ita, and having concealed from the
international union and misrepre-
sented for the past few years the
number of members who paid dues
and for whom per capita was to be
paid."
"The result of this flagrant
abuse of office/' the statement
national union in jeopardy. The
new administration of the Intl.
Jewelry Workers Union is deter-
mined to stamp out such condi-
tions in Local 18."
Spodick said he has every hope
that "a healthy state of affairs" will
be re-established in the local with
the appointment of Aronov and
with the aid and support of the
respected and legitimate organized
trade union movement in Provi-
dence and throughout Rhode
Island.
"This aid and support has al-
ready been forthcoming from some
areas in Providence, and it is ex-
pected that more assistance will be
extended," the board's statement
said.
Peter M. McGavin, assistant to
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, for-
merly was AFL-CIO monitor over
the international union, to which
autonomy was restored following
a realignment of leadership. _
areas designated for the develop-
ment of this new approach.
It reported that a department of
legislative and political activities
has been established and that its
director, Marvin Friedman, will be
assigned to Washington to carry
through the union's program in
these areas.
The ICWU Research Dept. has
been expanded to deal with health
and safety matters, specifically in
assisting locals in these areas and
in negotiating protective contract
clauses.
The board reported that the
union's "batting average" in Na-
tional Labor Relations Board
elections in the past 12 months
was .500, about the same as in
previous years.
Mitchell told the convention that
one of the problems facing the
union is the contracting-out policy
of employers, which has the effect
of decreasing the number of jobs
available to ICWU members.
In a special supplementary re-
port, the union's executive board
said on political action and legis-
lative goals that "we cannot and
will not accept the idea that gov-
ernment has no responsibility when
people are out of work, when peo-
ple are without homes, when they
are hungry, or at any time when
the people are unable to satisfy
their own needs."
-The report also sharply attacked*
the Eisenhower Administration,
charging that the voters had been
fed "big doses of tranquilizers . . .
all designed to put them to sleep
and to make them forget about the
real issues. We have had prom-
ises, slogans and excuses.
"What we have not had! is
action. . . . We have substituted
drift for leadership and a bal-
anced budget in place of a bal-
anced economy."
The board pledged an intensive
COPE dollar drive to support the
union's endorsement of the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket and help re-
solve the fundamental question of
"government's proper role in help-
ing to meet the real needs of the
people."
Machinists Vote Drive
To Organize 1 Million
St. Louis — A broad-ranging organizing drive to bring more than 1
million new members into the ranks of the Machinists was mapped
out at the IAM's quadrennial convention here.
More than 1,500 delegates, representing nearly 1 million 1AM
members, called for strengthening of general organizing activities
throughout the union. They point-^
ed to a report showing that nearly
200,000 workers currently are
"covered by IAM contracts, enjoy-
ing benefits that were negotiated
by the IAM, who are not and
should be members.'*
The convention approved a res-
olution calling for special attention
to office, technical and professional
employes, and urged that it be
made "mandatory" for local and
district lodges to set up active or-
ganizing committees. To imple-
ment these activities, the delegates
recommended recruitment of teams
of full-time organizers operating
directly under the vice presidents
in each IAM territory.
In another resolution, dele-
gates voted to establish a nation-
wide conference to help spur or-
ganizing and improve conditions
in the automotive repair indus-
try, and urged IAM Pres. AI J.
Hayes and the executive council
to step up efforts to bring trade
unionism to more than 1 million
non-union mechanics.
Expressing grave fears over "un-
fair competition from abroad,"
delegates approved a resolution de-
claring there was an increasing
tendency by firms profiting from
U.S. markets to "export jobs" by
moving their operations overseas.
They urged a congressional inves-
tigation of "international runaway
firms," including Remington-Rand,
which recently announced it would
move its standard and portable
typewriter production abroad.
In other actions, the delegates:
• Protested enactment of the
Landrum-Griffin Act and called
for its amendment or repeal.
• Urged enactment of a mini-
mum wage law of $1.25 with great-
ly broadened coverage *as one of
the first orders of business for the
87th Congress.
• Called anew for enactment of
federal minimum standards, below
which the states could not fall, on
the amount and duration ©f unem-
ployment compensation. Minimum
standards should include benefits
of at least 50 percent of average
earnings extending over at least 39
weeks, the IAM said.
• Asked Congress to pass leg-
islation outlawing any form of dis-
crimination in employment on ac-
count of age.
AFT Offers 5
Pamphlets on
School Topics
Chicago — A series of research
pamphlets bearing on education
problems, including those of teach-
ers both in the classroom and in
their community relations, has been
made available to the labor move-
ment by the Teachers.
Developed underlhe direction of
Dr. George S. Reuter Jr., the un-
ion's research director, they are
broad enough in range to be of
interest and concern to union mem-
bers whose children attend school
or Who are members of local school
boards,
Among them are "Personnel Re-
lations for Teachers," a guide for
teachers in their relations with par-
ents, school districts and school ad-
ministration, which sells for 20
cents; "Status of Equal Job Oppor-
tunity," a study of the 19 states
that have laws in this category, 10
cents; "An Educational Ranking of
the States," a study of how the
school systems of the 50 states rank
among themselves, 10 cents; "Cur-
rent Fears of Teachers," a study of
the economic, legal, physical and
moral fears of teachers, 15 cents;
and "Fiscal Independence \s. Fis-
cal Dependence in Major American
School Districts," a study of finan-
cial practices, 25 cents.
A list of additional pamphlets
with prices may be had from JReuter
at AFT international headquarters,
28 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago 4, 11L
===
Present Plans Ineffective:
USWA May Set Up
Own Health Centers
Atlantic City — The Steelworkers are "seriously considering" estab-
lishment of their own medical center projects unless the effectiveness
of present programs is rapidly improved.
In a foreword to a report to the 10th constitutional convention
based on an extensive study of the union's medical care insurance
programs, USWA Pres. David J.'^
McDonald said the scope of the
Steelworkers 1 present programs of
health care are inadequate, that
present carriers are failing to "con-
trol skyrocketing costs," and that
more insurance coverage could be
achieved without additional expend-
itures if the waste in present pro-
grams could be eliminated.
The special study, authorized at
the last convention, was critical of
doctors, hospitals and the insur-
ance carriers who are providing
health care for union members and
their families. It was prepared by
Dr. I. S. Falk, former director of
research of the Social Security Ad-
ministration.
McDonald said the study
showed that the insurance firms
were "ineffective in preventing
such abuses as unnecessary sur-
gery, unnecessary hospital admis-
sions and unduly long hospital
stays."
He said employers would be
asked to invest part of the steel in-
dustry's huge pension funds in
group-practice medical care cen-
ters, hospitals and other medical
care facilities. The union's health
care programs cover nearly 1 mil-
lion members and their dependents,
and cost $134 million a year.
The study compared present
USWA programs with group prac-
tice plans such as the United Mine
Workers fund, the Kaiser Founda-
tion health plans and the Health
Insurance Plan of New York.
It recommended a series of pilot
group-practice prepayment plans,
with salaried staffs in selected steel
areas, while working to improve
the effectiveness of present insur-
ance programs.
The union proposed to discuss
the situation with the steel industry
through the subcommittee on medi-
cal care of the joint Human Rela-
tions Research Committee, as well
as with representatives of the medi-
cal profession and hospitals.
In another report on insur-
ance, pensions and supplemen-
tary unemployment benefits, the
union disclosed that nearly 80,-
000 former steel workers are
drawing pensions at the rate of
over $55 million a year; that
more than $112 million in sup-
plemental unemployment bene-
fits (SUB) had accrued to un-
employed steel workers by the
end of May 1960; that premiums
under the insurance programs
totaled nearly $233 million in the
last completed insurance year.
The report warned that with in-
creased unemployment in the steel
industry, benefit payments under
SUB plans have increased sharply
since May.
"If the benefit payments continue
at the heavy July level for four or
five months," the report states, "the
weekly benefits being paid by sev
eral of the large companies will
be reduced by one-quarter. In
some cases even a fairly rapid re
covery will not avoid reductions by
next February or March."
Steel, Chemical Unions
Back Kennedy, Johnson
(Continued irom Page 1)
the century and tied it to the party's
candidate this year.
"Can you tell me," he cried to
a cheering audience at the steel-
workers, "not in the last eight years
but in the last half-century since the
STATEMENT REQUIRED BY THE ACT
OF AUGUST 24, 1912, AS AMENDED BY
THE ACTS OF MARCH 3, 1933, AND
JULY 2, 1946 (Title 39, United States
Code, Section 233) SHOWING THE OWN-
ERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCU-
LATION OF AFL-CIO NEWS published
Weekly at Washington, D. C. for Septem
ber, 1960.
1. The names and addresses of the pub-
lisher, editor, managing: editor, and busi-
ness managers are: Publisher, AFL-CIO,
815 Sixteenth St., N. W., Washington,
D. C; Editor, Saul Miller, 815 Sixteenth
St.. N. W-: Washington, D. C; Managing
Editor, Willard Shelton, 815 Sixteenth St.,
N. W., Washington, D. C; Business Man-
ager, none.
2. The owner is: (If owned by a cor-
poration, its name and address must be
stated and also immediately thereunder the
names and addresses of stockholders own-
ing or holding 1 percent or more of total
amount of stock. If not owned by a cor-
poration, the names and addresses of the
individual owners must be given. If owned
by a partnership or other unincorporated
firm, its name and address, as well as
that of each individual member, must be
given.) : George Meany, President, 815 Six-
teenth St., N. W., Washington, D. C;
William F. Schnitzler, Secy-Treas., 815
Sixteenth St.. N. W. f Washington, D. C
(principal officers).
3. The known bondholders, mortgagees,
and other security holders owning or
holding 1 percent or more of total amount
of bonds, mortgages, or other securities
are: (If there are none, so state.) NONE.
4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 include, in cases
where the stockholder or security holder
appears upon the books of the company
as trustee or in any other fiduciary rela-
tion, the name of the person or corpora-
tion for whom such trustee is acting ; also
the statements in the two paragraphs
snow the affiant's full knowledge and
belief as to the circumstances and condi-
tions under which stockholders and se-
curity holders who do not appear upon
the books of the company as trustees,
hold stock and securities in a capacity
Other than that of a bona fide owner.
5. The average number of copies of
each issue of this publication sold or dis-
tributed, through the mails or otherwise,
to paid subscribers during the 12 months
preceding the date shown above was 92,013.
Saul Miller.
Director of Publications.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this
16th day of September, 1960.
(Seal) Harold H. Jack.
Notary Public.
My commission expires January 14, 1965.
administration of Theodore Roose
velt, can you tell me of a single
piece of domestic social legislation
that served the people that has
been initially proposed by the Re
publican party?"
Nixon's Lip Service
The Steelworkers endorsement of
Kennedy came minutes before he
appeared in the great auditorium,
with about 1,500 persons in the
galleries joining the cheers of the
3,500 delegates on the floor. The
resolution declared that while Nixon
in recent months has "given lip
service to the need for government
action in such fields as education,
housing and public health, his votes
do not justify confidence that per-
formance will follow. Indeed, de-
spite his recent identification with
the so-called 'new' or 'liberal* wing
of the Republican Party, he ~ has
yet to be recorded in that company
on any division in Congress."
The resolution praised Kennedy
for ' his keen and growing under-
standing of the labor movement as
such, and a warm appreciation of
the problems and aspirations of
working people everywhere."
In a special supplementary re-
port by the Chemical Workers
executive board to the conven-
tion, endorsement of the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket was strongly
recommended, and the delegates
joined overwhelmingly in voting
their approval.
In both his appearances Kennedy
emphasized the differences between
the Democratic and Republican
Parties, citing what he said were
the negative, do-nothing slogans of
Republican campaigns — "Keep
Cool with Coolidge" — as opposed
to the New Freedom, New Deal
and Fair Deal of past Democratic
Administrations.
Kennedy to Speak Sept. 29 Over 10-City
TV Hookup Sponsored by N. Y. COPE
New York — A series of television broad-
casts in support of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket
will be sponsored by the New York State
Committee on Political Education over a 10-
city hookup.
A 30-minute television address by Sen. John
F. Kennedy on Sept. 29 at 10:30 p. m. will
launch the COPE series. It will be carried by
stations in New York City, Buffalo, Albany,
Binghamton, Rochester, Syracuse, Elmira,
Carthage-Watertown, Pittsburgh and Utica-
Rome.
Future broadcasts, State COPE Chairman
Louis Hollander announced, will include tele-
vision addresses by Adali Stevenson, former
Sen. Herbert H. Lehman, New York Mayor
Robert F. Wagner, and Gov. Abraham Ribi-
coff of Connecticut. Other programs may be
added.
Hollander said the telecasts are part of the
program approved by the State COPE organi-
zation in suport of the endorsement of Ken-
nedy and Johnson voted overwhelmingly at
the recent State AFL-CIO convention.
He said COPE will advertise the television
election programs "in every city and town with-
in the audience range of the stations."
In announcing the television series, Hol-
lander predicted that injection of the "religious
issue" in attacks on Kennedy will be "rejected
and repudiated" by the electorate.
He charged that the "apparent attacks on
Kennedy on religious grounds are nothing more
than a subterfuge being used by big business
interests and sweatshop operators to defeat
the Democratic nominees because of their lib-
eral views and policies on economic legislation."
Steelworkers Map Jobs Plan
To Meet Impact of Automation
(Continued from Page 1)
hour week he would prefer "to try
an administration which is dedi
cated to full economic growth.'*
The solution for the nation's
economic ills, he said, is an eco-
nomic policy of "going ahead at
such full blast so that in a 40-hour
week we would barely produce
what we could consume."
McDonald told reporters after
Kennedy's address that there is no
serious difference between Kennedy
and himself on this issue, that he
agrees with Kennedy that the ideal
situation is to seek greater produc-
tion to insure full employment.
Shorter Week Stressed
But "with the tremendous on
rush of automation," he added, "J
still think it is imperative that the
union, industry and the govern-
ment engage in some serious con-
sideration with the view in mind of
achieving full employment in steel
with a shorter workweek."
Kennedy declared that at a time
when there is a sharp rise in pro
ductivity in the Soviet Union,
"when we need all the steel that
we can get to take care of the popu-
lation, "which is increasing and
which will double in 40 years, I
should like to see the economic
and fiscal policies of this govern
ment directed toward stimulating
an economy so that the steel indus-
try works full time so that your
people will go back to work.*'
McDonald had reported that
135,000 Steelworkers were cur-
rently unemployed and an addi-
tional 350,000 were working less
than 40 hours a week. Taking
note of this situation, and that the
steel industry was working at about
50 percent of capacity, Kennedy
said:
"If the Soviet Union overnight
should knock out 50 percent of
our steel capacity, we would feel
that we were mined, and yet the
economic policies of this Admin-
istration have contributed to one-
half of our steel capacity being
unused" with resulting unem-
ployment.
On the bargaining front, Mc-
Donald told the convention that the
union is not going to reopen exist-
ing contracts to secure a shorter
workweek "but we are going to
talk" through the Human Relations
Committee about this problem. The
committee was set up as a result
of the 1959 steel strike to resolve
future problems arising in the in-
dustry.
Warning on Union Politics
Stressing that the union is not
opposed to automation, McDonald
declared the industry must remem-
ber that "only human beings have
purchasing power ... as automa-
tion progresses, hours of work must
be shortened in order to supply
jobs to buy goods."
McDonald told the convention
also that among the enemies with
whom the union has to contend
are employers who "intend to be-
come openly active in union poli-
tics," who are going "to try to get
elected to office in your union peo-
ple whose minds they cannot only
influence but whom they can ac-
tually control."
A number of union leaders who
addressed the convention after Mc-
Donald indicated this applied to an
opposition group in the union. The
opposition to McDonald, indicated
as about a dozen delegates, regis-
tered their feelings in opposing a
resolution praising the USWA pres-
ident for his strike leadership.
Their leader, Donald Rarick, took
the floor to dispute a report on a
strike at the Carrier Corp., in Syra-
cuse, N. Y.
His speech touched off a sharp
floor reaction indicating wide sup-
port for the union's leadership.
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, unable to make his
scheduled address to the conven-
tion, sent a wire congratulating
the union on its strike victory
and urged it to take advantage
of the opportunity to elect "lead-
ers who will not tolerate a back-
sliding economy, who will work
to insure that every American
who wants to work will be able
to find a job."
On the 1959 steel strike, Ken-
nedy in his speech declared that it
stemmed in great part from the
slowdown in the economy, that
when »there is a need for steel an
agreement can be reached.
In 1959, he added, the steel com-
panies found that half of their ca-
pacity produces as much steel as
the market is consuming and said
in effect, "We will not settle this
matter now. Let us decrease our
working standards. Let us stand
still. Let them strike, use up our
inventory, use up our backlog. Six
months from now we can go back
to work and produce, and our
profits will still be up."
'Leadership in Washington'
Kennedy, in addition, called for
amendment of the national emer-
gency disputes provisions of the
Taft-Hartley Act to give the Pres-
ident "the freest choice of all pos-
sible measures to be selected or
combined according to the need of
the particular situation."
The real problem in such dis-
putes, he added, is leadership in
Washington.
"Pious words about collective
bargaining did not bring about a
prompt settlement of the steel strike
in 1959," he said, "nor can pious
words about the healthy state of
our economy change the hard fact
that in this time of crisis much of
our productive capacity lies idle.'*
The officers' report to the con-
vention sharply stressed the un-
employment theme, declaring that
"if remedial measures are not taken
to correct the deplorable situation
in steel, it is plain that the depres-
sion in this industry will continue
to spread with disastrous conse-
quences to our entire economy."
The union pointed to the 1959
strike settlement as providing a
project of "major importance which
could change the entire pattern of
labor relations in the steel industry
and avoid similar industrywide dis-
putes in the future," the human re-
lations reseach committees.
Steel Strikers Got
$23 Million in Aid
Atlantic City — The half million Steelworkers who waged the
bitter 116-day strike to preserve their union from industry attack
received nearly $23 million in assistance from public and private
agencies.
In a special report to the USW convention, Sec.-Treas. J. W. Abel
described the closely planned striker-
relief program providing food, shel
ter and welfare services "that made
the strike endurable." The aid
from the agencies, he said, "ex-
ceeded by far the amount the union
poured into the districts and locals."
The report showed that 54,143 of
the 500,000 striking Steelworkers
applied for public assistance and
that 49,333 received aid valued at
$12.3 million.
The 35,000 strikers in New
York State received $9 million
in unemployment compensation
after the 49-day waiting period
required under the law.
The largest number of families
receiving surplus food in one
month was 105,114, with the food
valued at $1.4 million.
Voluntary agencies handled
8,517 cases and made available
$118,712 in assistance.
In addition, special union strike
relief committees provided addi-
tional services including agree-
ments on extension of credit on
mortgages and various types of
bills, handling of sheriff's sales and
other legal problems, and arranging
for medical care.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1960
Eisenhower Signs Bill:
GOP Health Plan
Hit Again by Labor
Pres. Eisenhower has signed into law the 1960 amendments to
the Social Security Act which an AFL-CIO spokesman has called
"keenly disappointing" to organized labor.
Although the amendments afford "some liberalizations" in social
security coverage, said Nelson H. Cruikshank, director of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Social Security,
they "fall far short of meeting the
needs of workers and their fami-
lies."
Included in the amendments were
those setting up token medical aid
for the aged, pushed through Con-
gress by the Administration and a
coalition of conservative Republi-
cans and southern Democrats. The
AFL-CIO had supported a broad
plan for health care, financed by
increased social security contribu-
tions, instead of the limited plan
for federal-state grants finally
enacted.
In a statement issued following
the White House signing, Health,
Education & Welfare Sec. Ar-
thur S. Flemming called the
amendments "another forward
step" for the social security sys-
tem. He said the medical care
provisions of the bill would be-
come available Oct. 1.
Flemming, in letters to the gov-
ernors of the 50 states, made it
plain, however, that state legislative
action is still necessary before fed-
eral grants will be made to provide
modest health care for senior citi-
zens who can provide proof of
poverty.
Pointing out that the "intent" of
the new law is "to encourage the
states to establish, improve or ex-
tend their programs of medical
services for the aged," Flemming
told the governors:
"If this intent is to be fully real-
ized, each state must determine
whether the legal base now sup-
porting its various assistance pro-
grams can encompass the new pro-
visions of law. If new legislation
is required in your state, I hope
that you will make the necessary
recommendations to your legisla-
ture at the earliest possible date."
Only three of the state legisla-
tures currently are in session.
Two others have recessed at least
until December.
In New York, Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller (R), issued a new criti-
cism of the Administration's medi
cal care program and hinted his
state would delay participation in
the plan until it knew whether the
next Administration would change
it. The Republican presidential
nominee, Richard M. Nixon, has
indicated his support of the Ad
ministration plan, while Democratic
presidential nominee John F. Ken-
nedy has vigorously supported the
social security principle.
No Real Solution
Rockefeller assailed both the
"needs test" required under the Ad-
ministration bill and the method for
financing out of general revenues
instead of by social security con-
tributions of workers and employ-
ers. "Frankly," the governor said,
"I do not regard it (the Adminis-
tration plan) as any real solution to
the great human problem of assur-
ing that the nation's senior citizens
have adequate health insurance."
In addition to the modest health
provisions, the social security
amendments signed by the White
House:
• Eliminated the 50-year age
limit for disability benefits, making
250,000 additional persons eligible
for benefits.
• Reduced the quarters of cov-
erage required for eligibility, bring-
ing the ratio to 1 out of 3, instead
of 1 out of 2, for employment
since 1950.
• Improved benefits payable to
children in certain cases, with some
400,000 children expected to re-
ceive an increase, and provided
benefits for certain wives, widows,
widowers and children not pre-
viously eligible.
• Modified the retirement test
so that a beneficiary can earn up
to $300 additional each year —
above the previous $1,200 ceiling
— while losing only 50 cents in
benefits for each additional dollar
earned. Above $1,500, each dol-
lar earned will result in a loss of
$1 in benefits.
Building Trades Rally
Behind Picketing Bill
(Continued from Page 1)
but the House Rules Committee
bottled up the bill and prevented
a floor vote, while Republican Ma-
jority Leader Everett McKinley
Bargaining Report
On Cost of Living
The current issue of the
AFL-CIO Collective Bargain-
ing Report is on a key subject
for union wage negotiators:
How much does it cost a
family to live reasonably?
The report presents in de-
tail the findings of the City
Worker's Family Budget
study of the U.S. Dept. of
Labor.
The key finding: An aver-
age of $6,130 a year ($118 a
week) is needed by a worker
to support a four-person fam-
ily on a "modest but ade-
quate" standard of living in
major American cities at
autumn 1959 prices.
A copy of the Bargaining
Report is available without
charge on request to the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Research, 815
Sixteenth Street, N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C.
Dirksen (R-Ill.) and Senator Barry
F. Goldwater (R-Ariz.) "prevented
Senate action."
Haggerty noted that Pres.
Eisenhower had repeatedly rec-
ommended such legislation in
messages to Congress, and Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell gave 'Vig-
orous support" to the measure
in the last session. However, he
added, Dirksen "cast doubt on
whether the President was cur-
rently supporting the bill."
The BCTD official sharply as-
sailed the National Association of
Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, the Associated Gen-
eral Contractors, the National As-
sociation of Home Builders, the
American Retail Federation and the
Farm Bureau Federation for their
opposition to easing picketing re-
strictions.
These opponents, Haggerty said,
"feared the judgment of the ma-
jority of the House, and Senate on
the merits of the issue."
Failure of the 86th Congress to
adopt the bill, Haggerty said, was
a "defeat for all, in and out of
Congress, who have fought to pro-
tect the standards of wages, hours
and working conditions established
by the trade unions in the building
and construction industry."
NOMINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY for President and Lyndon B. Johnson for Vice President
was voted enthusiastically at convention of New York State Liberal Party. Shown at dinner at which
Kennedy — national labor-backed Democratic Party candidate — accepted Liberals' nomination are, left
to right, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany; Kennedy; Adali E. Stevenson, former Democratic and Lib-
eral presidential candidate; and Liberal Party Chairman Alex Rose, president of Hatters.
Nixon Misquotes Kennedy, Draws
Fire for Twisting Detroit Talk
Vice Pres. Nixon, Republican presidential nominee, has run into a storm of criticism for a distor-
tion of a speech by his Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kennedy, on Labor Day in Cadillac Square,
Detroit.
Nixon, addressing the 1,500 delegates to the Machinists' convention in St. Louis, implied that Ken-
nedy had promised "100 percent" support to labor in order to "win votes."
The GOP candidate "quoted"^
Kennedy as having said: "What
the American labor movement
wants for America I want for
America; and what the American
labor movement opposes I oppose."
The New York Times and the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch promptly
printed both the advance text of
Kennedy's speech and an actual
transcript, to show that Nixon
had distorted the Kennedy re-
marks to make it appear that
Kennedy was promising subservi-
ence. The Washington Post also
reported the misquotation.
In addition, the Post-Dispatch
called the Nixon misquotation "a
rank case of misrepresentation,"
and "a disappointing reversion to
Nixon's indefensible tactics of the
past." Kennedy, in a speech to the
Steelworkers in Atlantic City, N. J.,
charged that the GOP candidate
"misquoted me" and "took out of
context" the Labor Day remarks.
The advance text of Kennedy's
Detroit Labor Day speech carried
this statement:
"... I know that the American
labor movement wants for Amer-
ica what I want for American: the
elimination of poverty and unem-
ployment, the re-establishment of
America's moral leadership, the
guarantee of full civil rights for
all our citizens. I know the Amer-
ican labor movement opposes what
I oppose: complacency, unemploy-
ment, economic stagnation, racial
discrimination and national inse-
curity."
What He Said:
Kennedy, who frequently departs
from his prepared text, actually told
his Cadillac Square audience that
"the goals of the labor movement
are the goals for all America and
their enemies are the enemies of
progress."
Nixon's distortion of Kennedy's
remark drew this sharp editorial
rebuke from the Post-Dispatch:
"It just goes to show what a
skillful debater can do by switching
about the little word 'what.' Where
the text of the Kennedy speech
said 'labor wants what I want,'
the Vice President misrepresented
his opponent as saying 'what labor
wants I want.' The change in
meaning is just about 180 de-
grees . . ."
Speaking to the Steelworkers,
Kennedy made it plain once again
that he felt organized labor shared
a common goal with other Ameri-
cans. The Democratic candidate
told the USWA:
". . . I know that organized
labor wants the things that I want
for the United States: they want
better schools and better hospi-
tals, and they want this coun-
try to move forward . . . organ-
ized labor opposes lethargy and
economic standstill and weakness
at home and weakness abroad.
"I think the working men and
women of this country want what
everyone else wants: they want this
country to be second to none; they
want this country to move."
Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre
Salinger, said Nixon's speech to the
lAM was "another example of Vice
Pres. Nixon misquoting Sen. Ken-
nedy as Nixon has misquoted others
in previous campaigns." Salinger
charged the GOP standard bearer
had distorted statements by former
Pres. Harry Truman and Adlai E.
Stevenson in their presidential cam-
paigns of 1948, 1952 and 1956.
Rich GOP Diplomats
Inept, Bowles Says
Miami Beach — The Eisenhower-Nixon Administration has been
accused of using ambassadorships as "political payoffs" for GOP
contributors without regard to the sensitivities of people abroad.
Rep. Chester Bowles (D-Conn.), former U.S. ambassador to India
during the Truman Administration, told delegates to the 10th an-
niversary convention of the Elec- 1 ^
trical, Radio & Machine Workers
here that the Administration con-
sistently named as ambassadors men
who found foreigners "both strange
and incomprehensible."
The Administration, he said,
decided that "the best man" it
could send as ambassador to a
large South American country
was a former official of the
Republican National Committee,
whose "own account of his inter-
ests and experience" was limited
to a listing of membership in 18
clubs — tennis, golf and social or-
ganizations.
As ambassador to Cuba "in the
critical waning days of the Batista
regime," he continued, the Admin-
istration "saw fit to dispatch an-
other party executive" who listed in
Who's Who that he was interested
in five tennis and golf clubs from
New York to Palm Beach.
"Is it any wonder that such men
find Asians Inscrutable,' Latin
Americans Volatile and irrespon-
sible,' and Africans 'childish'?"
Bowles asked.
"These are men who would be
equally ill at ease and equally out
of touch in a New England town
meeting, at an Iowa harvest din-
ner, or at a convention of working
men and women."
Rep. Rogers, Vets'
Friend, Dies at 79
Lowell, Mass. — Rep. Edith
Nourse Rogers (R), who with 35
years in the House had served in
Congress longer than any other
woman, died here after a short ill-
ness. She was 79.
Mrs. Rogers first went to Con-
gress in 1925 as successor to her
husband, John Jacob Rogers, who
died during his sixth term. She
was unopposed for an 18th term
at the time of her death.
lVoI. v
Issaed weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
92 a year
Seeond Claw Festw Pali at WashinatM. 0. C Saturday, October 1, 1960
" No. 40
Crowds Hail Kennedy Plea
For Nation to 'Move Again'
HANDS OF VOTERS reached out to welcome Sen. Kennedy as
he arrived in Akron on a tour of Ohio marked by record crowds
and tremendous enthusiasm.
GOP Dominance Challenged:
Political Revolt Stirs
New England States
By Gene Zack
Boston — A political revolution may be in the making in New
England — once considered a stronghold of rock-ribbed Republican-
ism.
A mounting disenchantment with the drift of the Eisenhower
Administration, coupled with growing discontent under what GOP
leadership still remains in the six-'^
state area, may provide a clue to
how most, if not all, of New Eng-
land's 40 electoral votes will go
this November.
Not since the middle years of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Admin-
Meany, Kennedy
Discuss Issues
This issue of the AFL-CIO
News contains a special four-
page section in which AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany and
Sen. John F. Kennedy dis-
cuss the major issues in the
1960 election campaign.
The special section, start-
ing on Page 7, covers the
wide range of critical and
complex issues at stake in the
election and concludes with
Meany recommending to all
AFL-CIO members that they
vote for the Kennedy-John-
son ticket.
Reprints will be available
without charge from the Pam-
phlet Division, AFL - CIO
Dept. of Publications, 815
Sixteenth Street N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C.
istration have the prospects for
a Democratic victory in this area
looked as bright. And even in
1936, when FDR carried 46 of
the 48 states, he was unable to
defeat the GOP in diehard Maine
and Vermont.
But times have changed in New
England. In the past six years,
Maine' has swung increasingly away
from Republicanism. The state has
elected two Democratic governors
in succession, a Democrat made po-
litical history in 1958 by being the
first member of his party elected
to the U.S. Senate, and two of
Maine's three congressmen are
Democrats.
First Democrat Elected
In Vermont, a "^Democrat two
years ago chalked up a first for that
state by winning the Green Moun-
tain State's lone House seat, while
the Republican gubernatorial candi-
date was barely staving off defeat.
The fact that the Democratic
standard bearer, Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy, is a fellow New Englander —
and the first presidential candidate
from this region since Republican
Calvin Coolidge in 1924 — has
added to his prospects. But his ap-
(Continued on Page 5)
Meany Hits
NixonClaim
On Growth
By Robert B. Cooney
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has taken sharp issue with Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon's claim
on the expansion of the private
sector of the economy.
Meany pointed out there now
are 500,000 fewer full-time jobs
than there were three years ago
and that the nation has "lost
more than 2 million jobs in manu-
facturing, mining and the rail-
roads."
"Is this 'expansion' — or is it de-
cay?" Meany asked in a signed
editorial in the October issue of
the American Federationist, AFL-
CIO monthly publication.
"It seems to be quite evident
that Vice Pres. Nixon- is unaware
of the real menace to America's
economic health — widespread' se-
rious unemployment now, with
more to come," Meany declared.
Nixon claimed during his na-
tional television debate with Dem-
ocrtaic candidate John F. Kennedy
on Sept. 26 that Eisenhower Ad-
ministration policies "resulted in
the greatest expansion of the pri-
vate sector of the economy that
has ever been witnessed in an eight-
year period."
In a parallel campaign debate,
Organized labor and a top Dem-
ocratic senator lashed Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell for an "unscrup-
ulous" use of statistics and for
"distorting the national unemploy-
ment picture." These were the de-
velopments:
• Steelworkers' Research Dir.
Otis Brubaker charged Mitchell
(Continued on Page 15)
surveys showing tremendously
favorable reaction to his first
national television debate with
Vice Pres. Nixon, Kennedy re-
peatedly hung a "conservative
Republican Party" label on his
presidential rival.
[Nixon campaigned through Ten-
nessee and West Virginia and was
scheduled to follow Kennedy into
upstate New York. Spokesmen for
the Vice President were reported
to be candidly upset about Nixon's
apparent nervousness in the TV de-
bate but to be "confident" that the
candidate would "do better" in the
remaining three debates, "espe-
cially" on the final foreign policy
discussion.]
*We Can Be Stronger'
Kennedy in Buffalo turned his
speech into a full-front assault on
the Republican Party and mocked
the Vice President's attempts dur-
ing the campaign to scrap the GOP
"slogans" of the past eight years.
"I will not permit Mr. Nixon
to escape from his party," the
Democratic nominee told the 20,-
000 people jamming the Memo-
rial Auditorium.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt
was a "good neighbor" to the
(Continued on Page 16)
Drive Catches Fire
In 3 Key States
By Willard Shelton
En route with Kennedy — Sen. John F. Kennedy carried his presi-
dential campaign into the key states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and up-
state New York proclaiming the Democratic Party as the party of
liberalism and pledging that if he is elected the United States will
"move again" to meet domestic problems and reassert leadership
of the free world.
Opening a final six-week drive in which he will concentrate on
the populous industrial states commanding a majority of the elec-
toral college votes, Kennedy was obviously heartened by what ap-
peared to be a spontaneous outpouring of hundreds of thousands
to hear him and greet him. ^ — ;
Encouraged also by widespread (^J^J^jp^ U"t(3 X*S'
Cheers Go
ToKennedy
Chicago — A roaring ovation
for Sen. John F. Kennedy was
the highlight of the opening ses-
sions of "a special convention of
the Carpenters here as the Demo-
cratic nominee and Vice Pres.
Nixon for the second time during
the campaign carried their presi-
dential bids to a big union
assembly.
The convention, called to bring
the Carpenters' constitution into
technical compliance with the
Land rum-Griffin Act, heard the two
presidential nominees just before
they met face to face in a CBS
studio here m the first of the four
television "great debates" scheduled
during the campaign.
The candidates were introduced
with scrupulous impartiality by Car-
penters' Pres. Maurice A. Hutche-
son, who thanked both nominees
for their appearance.
A move later in the convention
(Continued on Page 16)
GE Rejects Mediation by Governors
As IUE Contract Nears Expiration
By Dave Perlman
New York — Negotiations between the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers and General Electric
Co. moved toward a midnight Oct. 1 contract expiration deadline as management rejected proposals
to avert a nationwide strike through mediation, arbitration or fact-finding.
As the AFL-CIO News went to press, company officials scorned as "headline-seeking" an offer by
governors of states where major GE plants are located to attempt to mediate the dispute. The pro-
posal was ma\le by Massachusetts^
Gov. Foster Furcolo (D), who said
he was prepared to join with the
governors of New York, Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio and Kentucky to help
avoid a strike by nearly 100,000
GE workers.
Meanwhile IUE members vot-
ed by better than a two-to-one
margin to reject the company's
last contract offer and to endorse
the "no-contract no work" rec-
ommendations of their negotiat-
ing committee. The vote carried
by decisive margins in 50 of 57
locals, despite intensive company
efforts to block the action.
The IUE has filed unfair labor
practice charges with the National
Labor Relations Board, charging
GE with interference in internal
union affairs and intimidation of
workers in connection with the
votes.
GE, declaring it was unwilling
to put "any matter as important as
this into the hands of a disinter-
ested third party," rejected a union
offer to submit issues in dispute to
either arbitration or fact-finding.
, The offer was made in a letter
from IUE Pres. Jarnes B. Carey
and John H. Callahan, chairman
of the union's GE Conference
Board, to Ralph J. Cordiner, chair-
man of the board of GE. Cordi-
ner, along with other top company
officers, has remained aloof from
the negotiations.
(ConMtwed on Page 2)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, "WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
W ages Basic Issue:
2,400 Strike Braniff
After a Year of Talk
Dallas — Members of the Air Transport Division of the Railway
Clerks walked out on Braniff Airways Sept. 26 after almost a year
of fruitless negotiations.
The Clerks have jurisdiction over 2,400 Braniff employes who
are employed primarily in clerical, cargo, and ticket service. The
airline, with headquarters here,^"
serves 50 cities. Most of them are
STRIKE PLACARDS are passed out to Braniff Airways employes in Dallas as the Air Transport
Division of the Railway Clerks struck after nearly a year of futile negotiations for a new contract.
The union represents 2,400 clerical, cargo and ticket service employes.
GE Bars Mediation, Arbitration,
Fact-Finding as IUE Pact Ends
(Continued from Page 1)
Pointing out that IUE has al-
ready "made many concessions, but
GE has refused to modify its offer
in any material respect," Carey and
Callahan declared that the union
"is willing to put its proposals to
the test of public opinion and the
judgment of reasonable, impartial
men."
The union offered the company
a choice of either binding arbitra-
tion or non-binding recommenda-
tions of a fact-finding board.
After the company's turndown
of the union proposal, Furcolo
proposed mediation efforts by
the five governors to avert a
walkout. Carey pledged that he
would recommend to the union's
GE Conference Board— which
has authority to call a strike —
that action be delayed for 15
New Labor
Formed
In Caribbean
Body
St. George's, Grenada — Over 60
delegates from throughout the Car-
ibbean area have launched the new
Caribbean Congress of Labor by
approving a constitution and elect-
ing the governing officers at a
founding congress here.
The new CCL will succeed
CADORIT, the. Caribbean Area
Div. of the Inter-American Re-
gional Organization of Workers
(OR IT), hemispheric arm of the
Intl. Confederation of Free Trade
Unions.
Frank Walcott, general secre-
tary of the Barbados Workers
Union, member of the ICFTU
Executive Board and conference
chairman, was elected president
of CCL. He called for "patience
and toleration" of the new or-
ganization through its infancy.
Osmond Dyce, who was respon-
sible foj the preparatory work of
the founding meeting in his ca-
pacity as acting secretary of CAD-
ORIT, was elected secretary-treas-
urer.
Other top officers elected were:
John Rajas of Trinidad as first vice
president; Tossie Kelley of Iamaica
as second vice-president, and J.
Burke-King of St. Lucia as third
vice president.
Gen. Sec. Omer Becu of the
ICFTU told the delegates that "we
live in a small but fast-moving
world and if we are to keep pace
with it, we have no time to lose."
days to permit the governors to
act.
Within 24 hours, management
negotiators rejected the governor's
offer and described the mediation
effort as a "headline-seeking stunt."
Meanwhile other AFL-CIO un-
ions with GE contracts branded
company proposals unacceptable
and warned against its "divide and
conquer" tactics.
GE Offers Differ
Six unions affiliated with the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.'s
GE and Westinghouse Conference
compared notes and found that GE
has made proposals to some local
bargaining units which "have dif-
fered substantially from offers made
elsewhere."
The unions charged that GE's
tactic of making different proposals
in different plant locations "is a
typical company maneuver aimed
at destroying the solid front of the
unions."
In addition to IUE, the Machin-
ists, Intl. Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers, Auto Workers, Steel-
workers and Technical Engineers
have contracts at various GE in-
stallations. Most of the other
agreements expire during the first
two weeks in October.
Carey indicated that the chief
obstacles to an agreement are the
company's position on:
• Supplemental unemployment
benefits. The union asks an SUB
program comparable to that nego-
tiated in other industries. GE pro-
posed benefits only after an em-
ploye has been laid off for six
Texas Labor Gives
$3,000 to Retarded
Austin, Tex. — The Texas State
AFL-CIO has presented to the
Texas Association for Retarded
Children a $3,000 gift representing
contributions by unions and their
members throughout the state in
response to a pledge given at the
central body's convention last year.
A similar pledge has been made
for the coming year.
"Working men and women in
Texas have a special interest in
helping promote the splendid work
.being done by the TARC," State
AFL-CIO Pres. Jerry Holleman
said. "The problems of retarded
children in this state have been
overlooked for too long, and we
want to give every possible en-
couragement and help to this or-
ganization in its efforts to see that
necessary facilities and programs
are provided/*
months or is willing to terminate
his employment.
• Wages. The union described
GE's offer as the' "smallest in 10
years, although profits are at rec-
ord levels." The company also
asks abolition of the cost-of-living
escalator clause.
• Vacation and holidays. GE
admits improvements are needed,
says they should be paid for by the
workers out of the already inade-
quate wage offer made by the com-
pany.
in Texas and the Midwest and
South America, but it also has
profitable units in New York and
Florida.
According to C. L. Dennis, BRC
vice president in charge of the
strike, the basic issue is wages. He
denied company charges that the
BRC is interested only in obtain-
ing a union shop.
Clarence E. Robinson, the un-
ion's general chairman of Braniff,
also denied what he termed "com-
pany-inspired" rumors concerning
the union shop issue.
Wages Are Top Issue
"It is just one of eight major
issues," Robinson said. "The really
big issue is, and always has been,
wages. We want wages for our
members which will be comparable
to those paid in other cities by other
airlines. We are tired of being
second-class citizens at the pay
window."
The Clerks are seeking the fol-
lowing in order to put Braniff em-
ployes on a par with workers on
other airlines:
• 38 cents an hour in increases
spread over a three-year contract.
• 8 cents an hour to iron out
pay inequities.
• Shift pay differentials.
• Longevity pay of 1 cent to
10 cents an hour.
• Company to pay half the cost
of uniforms where it requires them.
• Severance pay.
• Union shop.
• Change in scope rules to pre-
vent juggling of jobs.
The company countered with an
offer of a 15 cent-an-hour wage
increase, but ignored all other is-
sues.
Dennis accused the company of
trying to inject the union shop "'as
some sort of a moral issue," so
that it could avoid talking about
wages. He said that a Braniff state-
ment that its wages are "in line"
with other airlines "is just not
true."
Other Contracts Better
"The two contracts we have
signed most recently, with Pan
American and Capital, have some
rates almost 50 cents art hour higher
than Braniff, in addition to other
benefits," he said.
"If the company really wants
wages to be 'in line;' if they really
are sincere," Dennis added, "they
need only offer our members a con-,
tract like the one we signed with
Pan American a few months ago
and I am sure that it will be ap-
proved."
Other AFL-CIO unions and the
Teamsters have promised cooper-
ation to the striking Clerks. In
addition, government agencies con-
cerned with the safety of aircraft
have been alerted.
Right of Union Members To Ratify
Contract Challenged by Railroads
Buffalo, N. Y. — Do union members have the right to vote on a contract agreement reached by
their union's negotiating committee and their employers?
That is the key issue in a U.S. District Court hearing on whether the Switchmen should be enjoined
from striking 17 western and southern railroads. The case is being tried here because the union
maintains its international headquarters in Buffalo.
The union had scheduled a strike^ -
of its 8,500 members for Sept. 19
after wage negotiations under way
for a year and a half collapsed,
but legal maneuvering by the rail-
roads delayed strike action at least
until Oct. 3.
In an application for a strike-
prohibiting injunction and in ar-
guments before Judge John O.
Henderson, the railroads con-
tended that union negotiators
should have the power to reach
contract agreements without sub-
mitting the prospective settle-
ments to the membership for
approval.
They claimed that a section of
the Switchmen's constitution re-
quiring membership ratification of
contracts and other matters is a
violation of Railway Labor Act
provisions calling for employers
and unions to appoint committees
with authority to negotiate.
The federal government has
stepped into the legal tangle on the
side of the railroads.
Entering the case as "a friend
of the court" and to "attend to the
interests of the United States," U.S.
Atty. Neil R. Farmelo, represent-
ing the Justice Dept., and the Na-
tional (Railway) Mediation Board,
filed a brief generally supporting
the railroads 1 position.
The government said the con-
stitutional provision requiring a
membership vote "amounts to a
repudiation of the basic obliga-
tion ... to bargain in good faith"
because it ties the hands of union
officers and prevents them from
exerting every effort to resolve
disputes to avoid interruption of
interstate commerce or the oper-
ations of the carriers as required
by the Railway Labor Act.
Switchmen's union negotiators
agreed in July to submit the rail-
roads' offer of the "pattern" 4 per-
cent wage increase over two years
to the membership in accordance
with the union's constitution.
In a secret mail referendum last
month, the rank-and-file voted by
a more than 3 to 1 margin to re-
ject the proposal because it failed
to correct a wage inequity between
the Switchmen and other operating
personnel.
Responding to the membership's
decision, the negotiating committee
returned to the bargaining table.
When the carriers refused to nego-
tiate further on the inequity dispute
the Sept. 19 strike date was set.
Guy E. Mallery, vice president
of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pa-
cific Railroad and a member of the
Western Carriers Conference Com-
mittee, testified that his committee
has full authority to negotiate for
all 17 railroads.
But he described the union ne-
gotiators as "messenger boys" who
do not have the authority to sign
an agreement.
"If every union required mem-
bership ratification, it would be a
chaotic, absolutely impossible situa-
tion," the railroad executive de-
clared. "You simply cannot bar-
gain with a union that requires
membership approval for every-
thing it does."
Lee Leibik of Chicago, regional
counsel for the Switchmen, ad-
mitted that the constitutional re-
quirement of membership ratifica-
tion "may not be efficient or busi-
nesslike," but he insisted that it is
the only basis for the democratic
operation of a labor union.
"Failure to submit such mat-
ters to a vote of the membership
would be dictatorial and auto-
cratic," Leibik told the court*
"This union's only sin is giving
the membership a voice in the
union's affairs."
He told the judge that member-
ship ratification is "a very common
provision" in the constitutions of
many labor unions.
"The union members have an
inalienable right to pass upon any
proposed agreement that affects
their working lives," he declared.
Judge Henderson reserved de-
cision on the petition for a tem-
porary injunction, but said he
would hand down his ruling by
Oct. 3.
GE, Westinghouse
Indicted 20th Time
Philadelphia — The two
giants of the electrical indus-
try — General Electric and
Westinghouse — have been
slapped with still another in-
dictment for price-fixing, a
criminal violation of the anti-
trust laws.
The new indictment, for
rigging the prices charged for
power capacitators, is the
20th obtained by the Justice
Dept. against leading manu-
facturers. The first in a se-
ries of trials is scheduled to
open Oct. 31.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Page Three
Sayre, Addy Get New Terms:
UPP Votes Per Capita Hike,
Re-elects Phillips President
The Papermakers & Paperworkers convention re-elected three of the union's four top officers, raised
the per capita tax by one-third, and chose an executive board closely divided between supporters and
critics of the incumbent administration of the 140,000-member union.
On the sixth day of the convention — a day longer than the sessions had been expected to last — the
delegates voted to adjourn and refer all pending resolutions to the incoming executive board.
Paul L. Phillips was unanimously^
re-elected president of the UPP,
which was formed three years ago
by the merger of the former Paper-
makers and the former Paper Work-
ers. Also re-elected without op-
position was Sec.-Treas. Joseph
Addy.
Contests developed for the two
other headquarters posts, that of
executive vice president, held by
Harry Sayre, and general vice
president, held by Frank Grasso.
Sayre, target of much of the op-
position's fire, won re-election by
a two-to-one margin. He defeated
Henry Paley, who had resigned
five weeks before the convention as
editor of the UPP's newspaper, Uni-
ted Paper.
Grasso, a leader of the opposi-
tion caucus, did not run for re-
election. He and his supporters
did, however, back Carleton Faler,
an international representative, who
defeated Charles Bridgwater, a
vice president and district director,
by a 618-592 vote.
In elections for district directors,
who also serve as vice presidents
and members of the executive
board, Grasso defeated George Pes
catore, the incumbent, as director
of the New Jersey district. In
cumbents won re-election in all
other districts except Reg. Ill (a
New York state area), where Intl.
Rep. Patrick W. Harte won the
post.
Victory Claimed
The opposition group, which
called itself the Better Union Com-
mitee, refrained from a direct chal-
lenge to Phillips and Addy but was
sharply critical of the role of some
other officials in several bargain-
ing and strike situations. The BUC,
a loose coalition which divided on
some issues, claimed a victory when
the delegates voted to elect district
directors, who also serve as vice
Wagner Lashes Nixon
In Talk to Pressmen
New York — A vote for Vice Pres. Nixon in his bid for the White
House "is a vote not only to revive but to ensure the continued
dominance of the reactionary coalition on which Dick Nixon rides
herd," Mayor Robert F. Wagner (D) of New York declared in a
speech at the 37th quadrennial convention of the Printing Pressmen
The mayor accused Nixon of be-^
ing "part and parcel of a reaction-
ary and unholy alliance" between
Republicans and southern Demo
crats in Congress. The "friends
and allies" have joined to support
repressive labor legislation, he
charged.
"The house of labor has found
its home in the Democratic Par-
ty," Wagtter maintained. "Every
piece of progressive federal leg-
islation in the field of labor
passed in this century was fos-
tered and finally enacted into law
through the efforts of Democratic
legislators."
Wagner was unable to appear
before the 1,400 delegates in per
son because of concern with se-
curity arrangements for heads of
foreign countries attending the
United Nations General Assem
bly. His address was read by City
Labor Commissioner Harold Felix.
Pres. Anthony J. DeAndrade
told the Pressmen their only hope
for protection against loss of jobs
because of technological changes
and restrictions imposed by anti-
labor legislation lies in harmony
between labor and management.
However, union members must con-
tinue their adherence to the prin-
ciple of militancy, he added.
Three elements will govern the
union's progress in the years to
come, he said.
He listed these as "recognition
of labor's and management's roles
as partners in industry," the realiza-
tion that organized workers are en-
titled to share in the fruits of their
labor, and investment of union
funds with a view toward "helping
management operate if and when
it becomes necessary."
DeAndrade forecast eventual
organic unity among all graphic
arts unions, serving notice on the
delegates that the union is look-
ing forward to drafting a docu-
ment which would accomplish
this objective and which would
be submitted to the membership
in a referendum.
He made the prediction despite
an attack on the Lithographers,
who withdrew from the former
AFL in 1946 and from the AFL-
CIO in 1958, and who had thrown
a picket line outside Manhattan
Center as the Pressmen met inside.
The officers' report showed a
gain of 10,621 members since the
last convention in 1956. It urged
the merger of small local unions
and the formation of joint coun-
cils as measures that would help in
organizing non-union workers and
in fostering greater unity and joint
action.
Other speakers included Pres.
Elmer Brown of the Typographical
Union; Executive Vice Pres. Wil-
liam J. Farson of the Newspaper
Guild; Pres. Harry Van Arsdale
Jr. of the New York City Central
Labor Council, and Sec.-Treas.
Joseph Lewis of the AFL-CIO Un-
ion Label & Service Trades Dept.
presidents, by caucus of delegates
from each district.
A constitutional provision for
two vice presidents at large was
modified to allocate one of the
posts to Canada, with election by
convention delegates from that na-
tion. Intl. Rep. J. S. Lambert won
that post. Chosen to fill the other
post was George O'Bea, an incum-
bent vice president. O'Bea led in a
four-way race on the first ballot
and was named by acclamation
after his opponent withdrew from
the runoff.
Delegates voted to raise the
union's per capita to $2 a month
— a 50 cent increase. An attempt
to substitute a 35-cent hike was
defeated on the convention floor.
Two guest speakers — Pres. Elmer
Brown of the Typographical Union
and Pres. John P. Burke of the
Pulp-Sulphite Workers — discussed
moves toward amalgamation of
unions in the publishing and paper
industries.
Brown called for establishment
of "one organization large enough,
strong enough and intelligent
enough to fight back the attacks
leveled at our separate organiza-
tions."
Burke, who told the UPP dele-
gates that his union convention
"voted against an out-and-out
merger, at least for the present,"
expressed hope that the two unions
could develop "some kind of a
working arrangement so that if
unions outside of this industry at-
tack one of these organizations, the
others will come to its assistance."
Steps toward actual merger,
he said, "should not be under-
taken hastily," and should be
preceded by a period of close
cooperation.
Brown praised Phillips and the
UPP for its support of the principle
of merger and declared:
"While we of the ITU will ex-
plore every suggestion for cooper-
ation, whether by efforts to have
contractual agreements expire on
the same date, by a federation or
joint council, we hold that depend-
ing upon any such loose federation
would be relying on too weak a
structure."
AT CONVENTION of Papermakers & Paperworkers, AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler chats with UPP Pres. Paul L.
Phillips. Schnitzler, in an address to the convention, called for
local unions "to apply trade union techniques, determination and
dedication" to the task of getting members registered to vote.
Rubber Workers Elect
Bur don to Presidency
St. Louis, Mo. — George Burdon, Rubber Workers organization
director, has been elected president of the union by delegates to the
URW's 25th anniversary convention here.
Burdon, 51, was chosen to succeed L. S. Buckmaster, URW
president for the last 15 years and an AFL-CIO vice president,
who stepped down on reaching re- 1 ^
tirement age. Burdon defeated '
Paul E. Bowers, URW pension
and insurance director, by a 1,156
to 463 vote.
Serving with him in the top URW
leadership will be Peter Bommarito
of Detroit Local 101 as vice presi-
dent, and Ike Gold of Akron, O.,
Local 7 as secretary-treasurer.
Bommarito defeated Jack
Moye of Akron Local 5, 1,200
to 411, to win the post left va-
cant by the death of Joseph W.
Childs last April. Gold pre-
vailed over Desmond Walker of
Mansfield, O., Local 17, who had
been secretary-treasurer for 11
years.
In his first talk to the delegates
after assuming the presidency, Bur-
don pleaded with the union's 180,-
000 members to "make political ac-
tion your first concern from now
until the November elections."
The delegates, who earlier in the
day had formally endorsed the
candidacies of Senators John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson,
roared their approval when Burdon
declared "we must elect a good
President and a liberal Congress"
Cost of Living Levels Off at Point
1.4 Percent Above August 1960
The nation's cost of living, after climbing upward for six straight months, leveled off in August at
a point 1.4 percent higher than a year ago, the Labor Dept. has reported.
At the same time, the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the spendable earnings
and buying power of factory workers declined between July and August.
The factory worker is worse off today than he was in August 1959 in terms of "real" spendable
earnings, the report showed. ®
These are the highlights of the
Consumer Price Index for August
1960 and the report on factory
worker earnings:
• The August CPI held at the
July level of 126.6. The CPI had
been declining last winter, reaching
125.4 in January. Since then, it
has risen steadily until it is now
1.4 percent higher than in August
1959.
This means the market basket
which cost $10 in the 1947-49 base
period now costs $12.66.
BLS Commissioner Ewan
Clague told a press conference
he foresaw no recession which
would bring down the index.
Rather, he expected a mixture of
influences which would keep it
steady or push it up.
Some 70,000 of about 110,000
workers whose wages are tied to
the August CPI under union con-.
tracts will receive pay hikes. A
1-cent-an-hour increase will go to
some 63,000 workers at the Mar-
tin, North American and Republic
aircraft companies.
• Spendable earnings of factory
workers, those left after deduction
of federal income and social se
curity taxes, dropped about 80
cents to $80.42 a week for a worker
with three dependents and to
$72.88 for a worker without de-
pendents.
"The decrease," according to
the government report, "reflected
reduced overtime pay in several
high-paying durable goods in-
dustries, fewer workers employed
in high-wage industries (partly
because of the automobile model
changeovers) and a seasonal in-
crease in employment among
lower-wage soft-goods industries."
The report said that with the
cost of living remaining unchanged
from July, factory worker buying
power was cut by about 1 percent
because of the drop in spendable
earnings.
• ''Real" spendable earnings,
which deflates the after-tax earn
ings to account for the increased
cost of living, continued to slump.
Using 1947-49 as a base, the
report showed that the "real"
earnings index of a factory
worker without dependents was
127.2 in June, 126.5 in July on
preliminary figures, and down to
125.1 in August, also prelimi-
nary. This figure was 125.8 in
August 1959.
The factory worker with three
dependents, with 1947-49 as the
base of 100, dropped from 124.8
in June, to 124.2 in July and down
to 122.9 in August. He was at
123.7 in August 1959.
and added that "I think John Ken-
nedy will make a good President."
"If we expect legislation to sup-
port us, we must make the right
decisions at the ballot box," he
cautioned. "I say the choice is
between progress and disaster, and
that the choice for progress is the
Kennedy-Johnson ticket."
Burdon also called for unity in
the union and asked the help of
all members in "building our union
and maintaining the high degree
of respect it has achieved."
The convention elected a 1 2-man
executive board which will serve
for two years.
Bricklayers
Cheer Call to
BackKennedy
Los Angeles — Nearly 800 dele-
gates to the 66th convention of the
Bricklayers vociferously cheered a
call by Pres. John J. Murphy to
give their full backing to the can-
didacies of Senators John F. Ken-
nedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Overwhelming support for the
AFL-CIO-endorsed ticket was indi-
cated by their standing to cheer
every mention of the Democratic
nominees by convention speakers,
However, they supported Mur-
phy in his contention that the union
should follow its past practice and
refrain from making any formal
political endorsements. None has
been made since the union was
founded in 1865.
The delegates turned down a
proposal for a union-supported
pension plan for all members,
agreeing with their officers that
the cost was too high. The pro-
posal, worked out after a year-
long study which the officers
were instructed to undertake at
the 1958 convention, would have
provided benefits of $27 a month
at a cost of $27 per member.
The issue was referred back to
the executive board for further
consideration.
Murphy was elected to succeed
Harry C. Bates, who had retired
since the last convention. Named
to serve with him were Sec.
Thomas F. Murphy (no relation)
and Vice Presidents William R.
Conners and Edward Gill.
Salaries of the officers were
raised by $5,000 a year. The presi-
dent's was increased to $35,000
and the secretary's to $30,000.
Page Foot
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
COFFEE BREAK refreshes Maurine Brown Neuberger, campaign-
ing with strong labor backing to succeed her husband, the late Sen.
Richard L. Neuberger (D-Ore.). She is strongly favored to defeat
the GOP candidate, Elmo Smith, a former governor of Oregon.
Maurine Neuberger
Favored in Oregon
Portland, Ore. — The most famous name in Oregon politics ap-
pears to be on its way back to the Senate.
Maurine Brown Neuberger, widow of the late Sen. Richard L.
Neuberger, is clearly leading at this point in her race with former
Gov. Elmo Smith, the conservative GOP candidate.
Mrs. Neuberger commands so^ ~
much bipartisan support and is so
strong, some observers believe, that
she may help to carry Oregon for
the Democratic presidential nomi-
nee, Sen. John F. Kennedy. Ken-
nedy did not arouse the enthusiasm
here that attended the visit of Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon.
The Republican organization
appears to have written Smith
off as a lost cause, and is
concentrating its major effort
on the contest for secretary of
state between Democratic State
Sen. Monroe Sweetland and the
appointed GOP incumbent, How-
ell Appling, Jr., Sweetland is
believed stronger, but this race
might go either way.
In the campaign for state treas-
urer, State Sen. Ward Cook, Port-
land Democrat, is given a slight
edge over Howard Belton, who was
appointed to the post last year by
Republican Gov. Mark O. Hatfield.
Both Cook and Belton are con-
servatives in their own parties.
The treasurer's office was vacated
when Pres. Eisenhower named Sig
Unander to the Federal Maritime
Commission.
If both Sweetland and Cook are
successful, Democrats will have a
majority on Oregon's three-man
board of control. Oregon has no
lieutenant governor and the board
is a unique instrument of state
government. It administers half
a dozen state institutions and its
members also sit as the State Bank-
ing Board and State Land Board.
Hatfield is chairman.
Congressmen Seen 'Safe'
Oregon's three Democratic and
one Republican congressmen are
considered "safe," although Rep.
Charles Porter (D) in the 4th dis-
trict is in a close race with Edwin
Durno, a former sports star.
Rep. Edith Green, Portland, is
the strongest of the Democrats. In
the primary election she polled the
largest vote for delegate-at-large
to the Democratic National Con-
vention, although Mrs. Neuberger
led the ticket in total votes. Oregon
is thus distinguished as the only
state where the two most popular
Democrats are women.
In the First Dist., Republican
Rep. Walter Norblad has a young,
inexperienced opponent in Marv
Owens. Norblad helped his an-
tagonist obtain an early release
from the U. S. Army so that Owens
could conduct a campaign. Owens
has virtually no organization and
no money.
In the Second Dist., Rep. Al Ull-
man is coasting to another term.
Labor is supporting Mrs. Neu-
berger, Sweetland, Green, UI1-
man, Porter and Cook. In
the race between Norblad and
Owens, labor is neutral.
Mrs. Neuberger and Smith are
conducting vigorous senatorial cam-
paigns. While Mrs. Neuberger
campaigns about the state in an ail-
ing 1953 auto, Smith flies his own
plane. The Republican candidate
recently led an aircade of private
planes carrying models, and a brass
band to stops in eastern Oregon.
Smith's chief problem has been
to minimize an extremely conserv-
ative voting record while he was
a member of the Oregon legis-
lature.
He has gone to some lengths to
explain why he was the only mem-
ber of the state senate to vote
against memorials supporting the
United Nations in 1949 and 1951.
He also has felt obliged to justify
his votes against civil rights bills
in 1949,^ 1951 and 1953; against
colored oleomargarine in 1949 and
1951; and against a bill raising
minimum salaries for teachers.
Opposed T-H Repeal
In 1949, he voted against a res-
olution urging Congress to repeal
the Taft-Hartley Act. In 1954, he
voted in favor of an intiative meas-
ure that Oregon voters looked upon
as a "foot in the door" for the sales
tax. The initiative was defeated
at the polls by more than 2 to 1.
Smith declares that he has "ma-
tured" since his days in the legis-
lature. In a recent speech he pro-
posed the establishment of a perma-
nent UN police force to be called
the United Nations Legion. He
also promises to bring more defense
dollars into Oregon, to work for a
bigger highway program for the
state and to obtain more new indus-
tries for it.
Mrs. Neuberger is pledged to
support medical aid to the aged
based on social security pay-
ments. She has lashed out at the
Republican tight money policy,
which she blames for the slump.
Labor Stresses Registration:
Colorado Works to Increase
Vote Trend Toward Liberals
Denver — Colorado trade unionists are hoping — with fingers crossed — that their state will elect a
solidly liberal delegation to Washington this year.
They have a good start toward their goal because four of the state's six senators and representatives
already are labor-endorsed man with good voting records and three of these incumbents seem safe.
Sen. John Carroll, who has voted right 31 times and never wrong by the COPE record, does not
have to stand for election this year.^
Rep. Byron Rogers (31 right, 1
wrong) and Rep. Wayne Aspinall
(37 right, 3 wrong) are veteran and
Competent vote winners in virtually
no danger of being defeated.
Predictions on the other three
races would be foolhardy at this
time. The races are:
• Lt.-Gov. Robert Knous (D),
labor-endorsed challenger to incum-
bent Sen. Gordon Allott (R), who
has 22 wrong and 1 1 right votes by
the COPE scoreboard.
• Rep. Byron Johnson (D), la-
bor-endorsed incumbent, with 10
right and no wrong votes in his one
term, is challenged by conservative
State Rep. Peter Dominick (R).
• Liberal, labor-endorsed Frank-
lin Stewart (D), is seeking to un-
seat Rep. J. Edgar Chenoweth (R),
veteran incumbent with 25 wrong
and 12 right votes as measured by
COPE.
In 1958, union members turned
out in extraordinary force because
a "right-to-work" proposal was on
the ballot, and this turnout no doubt
contributed to the overwhelming
Democratic landslide of 1958 in
usually marginal Colorado. These
unionists remain on the registry
lists unless they have moved and
failed to re-register. Therefore la-
bor went into 1960 with a record
high percentage of members already
registered.
COPE and the various unions
are carrying on systematic and
efficient programs at the pre-
cinct level to lift registration and
get out the vote in Denver and
the steel city of Pueblo. In the
smaller cities, the picture is spotty
except that the widely dispersed
railroad workers are showing
more political activity than usual.
This year the right-to-work issue
is absent, and there is some disap-
pointment in the performance of
the Land rum-Griffin Congress and
the present state legislature, which
has a substantial Democratic ma-
jority.
Senator Race Close
The senatorial race between
Knous and Allott is close because,
first Colorado traditionally is a nip-
and-tuck state between Democrats
and Republicans and, second, the
two candidates appear to be evenly
matched.
Knous is a proven vote getter.
His name has appeal because of
his own service in public life as
state senator and lieutenant-gov-
ernor, and his late father, Lee
Knous, served with distinction as
governor and federal judge. Allott,
no pushover, has had six years in
the Senate during which he has kept
his fences well mended.
Maximum labor and liberal
support and perhaps a general
Democratic trend, too, will be
needed to put Knous in the Sen-
ate. If he wins, the liberal bloc
in the upper house will gain a
competent and dependable mem-
ber.
Incumbent Rep. Johnson was
running ahead of his conservative
opponent, Peter Dominick, as of
the end of September. But all
observers agree that Dominick
could overtake Johnson in the home
stretch.
Liberal Byron Johnson's name
is politically seductive. (Some voters
confuse him with the politically po-
tent Rep. Byron Rogers and others
with the unbeatable ex-governor
and ex-senator, Ed Johnson). He
campaigns effectively. He's achieved
the "good man" label, has a large
corps of dedicated volunteer work-
ers and is well known.
Two things can work in Dom-
inick's favor. First, the district is
Colorado's Republican stronghold,
represented by a Republican for
more than 20 unbroken years prior
to 1948. Second, big money can be
spent to make the Dominick name
better known.
The district, once mostly agri-
cultural, now includes 200,000 resi-
dents of Denver suburbs — but
suburbanite votes are not safely
in the hands of either party.
In the 3rd Congressional Dis-
trict labor may play an important
role. There, despite the fact that
the district includes many thou-
sands of Steelworkers and other
unionists in industrial Pueblo, a
Vermont Democrats
Aim at Governorship
Montpelier, Vt. — Vermont's Democrats are hopefully training
their sights this year on capturing the governorship of this tradi-
tionally Republican stronghold.
At the same time, despite the fact that this state's three electoral
votes have always been cast for the GOP presidential candidate,
Democrats here see an outside^—— ' : : TT7
S. Babcock. In a four-man field,
Keyser succeeded in obtaining only
29.6 percent of the total vote.
• The fact that Kennedy, the
chance that neighbor John F. Ken-
nedy of Massachusetts may break
the Republican hold.
Four things encourage Green
Mountain State Democrats:
• In 1958, Democrat Bernard
Eddy came within an eyelash of de-
feating Robert T. Stafford for the
governorship. Leddy missed out
by only 719 votes, in an election
in which more than 123,000 votes
were cast.
• In that same off-year election,
William A. Meyer became the first
Democrat in history to win Ver-
mont's lone seat in Congress. Meyer
is opposed for re-election by Staf-
ford.
• A sharp split has developed
in the ranks of the GOP here, in
the wake of the Republican primary
in which Speaker of the House F.
Ray Keyser gained the guberna-
torial nomination by a scant 686-
vote margin over Lt. Gov. Robert
Democratic presidential nominee,
is a fellow New Englander has
greatly enhanced the chances for
the entire Democratic ticket.
So wide is the breach within Re-
publican ranks that high-placed
members of the party proposed to
Babcock that he head up an inde-
pendent ticket for the governorship
— in the apparent hope that the
votes cast against Keyser in the
primary would thus be kept out of
the Democratic column.
Babcock, however, has declined
to make the run as an independent
— a fact which Democrats say
brightens the victory prospects for
the Democratic gubernatorial nom-
inee, labor-supported Russell Ni-
quette, a former state senator.
conservative Republican, J. Edgar
Chenoweth, has held the con-
gressional seat for nine of the last
10 terms.
In 1958, Chenoweth narrowly
survived a challenge from Dem-
ocrat Fred Betz, who had beaten
Frank Stewart in the Democratic
primary. This year, Stewart demon-
strated increased political appeal
by swamping Betz in the primary.
A former state legislator with an
excellent record and firmly sup-
ported by the big bloc of Pueblo
unionists, Stewart may be the Dem-
ocrat who can successfully offset
Chenoweth's personal popularity
and unite the divergent Democratic
factions of the district.
In the presidential race, Colo-
rado is, as in the past, a marginal
state. It looks like a photofinish.
An encouraging factor for Sen.
John F. Kennedy is the fact he had
strong pre-convention support in
the state, so a minimum number of
Democrats are licking wounds of
disappointment.
In the legislative contests, the
Democrats should maintain their
handy majority unless a strong Re-
publican tide runs.
Connecticut
Labor Votes
Endorsements
Hartford, Conn. — Five Dem-
ocratic congressmen and the same
party's candidate for the state's
sixth seat were endorsed by the
Connecticut State Labor Council at
its legislative, political and educa-
tional convention here.
Gaining approval were three con- m
vention speakers — Representatives
Frank Kowalski Jr. and Emilio Q.
Daddario, seeking reelection, and
Judge William St. Onge, Democrat
nominated in the 2d Dist. following
the withdrawal of Rep. Chester
Bowles (D).
Also endorsed were Democratic
Representatives Robert Giaimo,
Donald Irwin and John Monagan.
After hearing a detailed anal-
ysis of the Democratic and Re-
publican state platforms from
Sec.-Treas. Joseph M. Rourke,
followed by a discussion of la-
bor's role in politics, delegates
voted to endorse the election of
a Democratic general assembly
with the understanding that local
centra] bodies are free to endorse
or refrain from endorsing specific
candidates from either major
party.
Gov. Abraham Ribicoff (D), a
major convention speaker, praised
the candidacies of Senators John F.
Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
for President and Vice President,
respectively, and described some of
the measures Republicans blocked
in Congress as the key campaign
issues.
Gus Tyler, political director of
the Ladies' Garment Workers, won
a standing ovation for a detailed
comparison of the voting records of
Kennedy and Nixon.
Wages, when compared with
prices and profits, have not in-
creased fast enough to keep indus-
try going at the high level needed
to insure expansion of the economy,
delegates were told by Leon Key-
serling, chairman of the President's
Council of Economic Advisers
under former Pres. Truman. He
predicted a slump next year if the
Administration's present policies
are continued.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Page Five
Political Revolt Brews in New England
Democrats Gaining
In GOP Strongholds
(Continued from Page 1)
peal here is based on more than
sectionalism.
To New England's voters, the
need for an acceleration of the
nation's economic growth is the
basic issue on which the cam-
paign will turn, for the common
denominator that binds these
states together is the nagging un-
employment and underemploy-
ment of its skilled workers.
In city after city, factories — par-
ticularly the once-booming textile
mills — stand idle, small stores stare
vacantly out into the business dis-
tricts, "for sale" signs dot whole
rows of homes in working-class
suburbs.
New England, perhaps more
than any other region of the
country, has been victimized by
runaway industry, which moved
en masse to the low-wage South
leaving behind deep pockets of
what the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration calls "areas of substantial
labor surplus" — a euphemism for
chronic unemployment.
Other plants — notably fabricators
and producers of machine tools —
have cut back production sharply,
while companies like Westinghouse
Electric Corp. have virtually halted
all operation at area plants, moving
production to automated facilities.
Jobless Rolls Soar
Unemployment compensation
claims throughout the region — a
grim barometer of the declining
economic fortunes of New England
< — currently are running at a rate of
143 percent over the same period
in 1959.
New England voter resentment
against the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration was brought into
its sharpest focus when the White
House vetoed depressed area leg-
islation in 1958 and again this
year. Both of these measures
would have helped the hardest-
hit communities to get back on
their feet.
But the disenchantment with the
GOP Administration goes deeper
than that: it goes to the very heart
of the Republican theory that the
burden for most social welfare pro-
grams should be carried by the
already overloaded states.
Kennedy has moved into the
vacuum created by the Administra-
tion's failure to move, and has
captured the imagination of New
England's voters with his pledge for
a program that will move America
forward both at home and abroad.
As a result, his campaign has
been greeted with mounting enthu-
siasm here.
In the highly - industrialized
states of Massachusetts, Connect-
icut and Rhode Island — with a
total of 28 electoral votes — the
Kennedy- Johnson ticket is fa-
vored to win heavily. New
Hampshire, which went for FDR
in 1936, 1940 and 1944, is ex-
pected to go Democratic again.
And the rising Democratic hopes
in Maine and Vermont could
complete the sweep if the Ken-
nedy boom continues at its pres-
ent pace.
Massachusetts Appears
'Safe' for Kennedy
Boston — The proven popularity of Sen. John F. Kennedy in his
home state, coupled with the exciting vote-getting ability of Spring-
field Mayor Thomas J. O'Connor, Jr., Democratic nominee for the
Senate, are expected to block the re-election bid of conservative
Republican Sen* Leverett Saltonstall.
If any state can be counted as'^
"safe," then Massachusetts with its
16 electoral votes must be consid-
ered securely in the Democratic
column, for Kennedy has swept
the state repeatedly in the past
in his successful campaigns for both
the House and Senate. There are
no indications that this will change
in 1960.
The Kennedy fever encoun-
tered in the Bay State is aiding
O'Connor's Senate prospects. He
has gained a reputation as a
"giant killer" by defeating recog-
nized leaders of his own party
in primary contests.
A veteran of six years in the
Massachusetts Legislature, O'Con-
nor upset a six-term Democratic
mayor of Springfield in the primary
three years ago and last month
trounced Democratic Gov. Foster
Furcolo for the honor of facing Sal-
tonstall.
O'Connor, 35 years old, bears
the strong Kennedy imprint in his
speech and manner, stumping from
one end of the state to the other
to hammer away at the theme that
peace and economic growth are in-
divisible. He has been endorsed
by Massachusetts COPE, which
pointed out that he voted 100 per-
cent "right" in his six years in the
legislature, compared with Salton-
stall's 36 "wrong" and only six
"right" in the Senate.
~The GOP senator has declined
O'Connor's invitation to take part
in a series of public debates —
similar to the Kennedy-Nixon en-
counters — on the campaign issues.
O'Connor is hitting hard on Salton-
stall's 4 'wrong" votes in the 86th
Congress on labor legislation, civil
rights, housing, education and de-
pressed areas.
Two signs point clearly to the
troubles of the GOP in Mass-
achusetts this year:
# Five of the state's eight in-
cumbent Democratic congressmen
are unopposed for re-election, and
a sixth — Rep. Torbert MacDonald
— has only token opposition. Dem-
ocrats are hopeful about picking up
two new House seats — the one left
vacant by the death of Edith Nourse
Rogers, and the one held by Rep.
Hastings Keith, where a bitter pri-
mary fight split the party.
• The GOP candidate for gov-
ernor — former Federal Highway
Administrator John A. Volpe — is
running away from the Republican
label, with campaign signs urging
the public to "vote for the man"
without mentioning his GOP affili-
ation. His Democratic opponent
is present Sec. of State Joseph D.
Ward, who won unanimous COPE
backing.
An all-out registration drive by
organized labor has lifted the
state's registration to an all-time
high — exceeding the 1956 peak
of 2.67 million.
Democrats are expected to re-
tain control of both houses of the
legislature. This will be important,
since the state is due to lose two of
its 14 congressional seats because
of reapportionment based on the
1960 census, and the legislature will
have to create new congressional
districts.
Maine Senate
Race Becomes
Close Battle
Bangor, Me. — The Democratic
tide in Maine, which has been ris-
ing steadily over the past six years,
may sweep Republican Sen. Mar-
garet Chase Smith out of office this
November.
Mrs. Smith, who three times has
beaten male opponents, this time
is faced with a formidable femi-
nine opponent: Lucia Cormier, mi-
nority leader of Maine's House of
Representatives.
Miss Cormier — daughter of a
veteran member of the Pulp-
Sulphite Workers, a former
school teacher, and a veteran of
12 years in the legislature — has
all-out labor backing in her Sen-
ate fight. A highly effective cam-
paigner, she is stumping Maine
on a grueling 18 -hour- a- day
schedule, scoring heavily with
such bread-and-butter issues as
aid to education, health and
welfare, depressed areas, and aid
to farmers.
Her victory prospects are en-
hanced by the widespread popu-
larity of Sen. John F. Kennedy
and the party's gubernatorial can-
didate, Rep. Frank M. Coffin.
Coffin the Favorite
One of the leaders of the liberal
forces in Congress, Coffin is rated
as an odds-on favorite to defeat the
GOP gubernatorial incumbent,
John H. Reed, former state Senate
majority leader, who succeeded to
the governorship a year ago on the
death of Democratic Gov. Clinton
A. Clauson.
Democrats are expected to
hold on to their two congression-
al seats, with John Donovan,
former administrative assistant to
Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, expect-
ed to win the race for Coffin's
post, and Rep. James C. Oliver
expected to win re-election in the
1st Dist. Observers see an out-
side chance that Democrat David
Roberts may upset GOP Rep.
Clifford G. Mclntyre in the 3d
Dist.
Although Republican voter reg-
istration still far outstrips Demo-
crats and independents, combined,
GOP strength has been waning
steadily since Muskie six years ago
became the first Democrat in mod-
ern times to win the governorship.
R.I. Democrats
Pick Pell for
Senate Race
Providence — A political new-
comer — liberal Democrat Claiborne
Pell — outstripped two veteran cam-
paigners to win his party's nomina-
tion for the Senate in the Demo-
cratic primaries here.
Pell rolled up a nearly 2-1 mar-
gm over former Gov. Dennis J.
Roberts. Trailing far behind — with
only 5 percent of the vote — was J.
Howard McGrath who had served
in the past as governor, U. S. sen-
ator, and U.S. attorney general.
The 41 -year-old Democratic
nominee will face Republican
Raoul Archambault, Jr., former
assistant director of the Budget
Bureau, in November for the seat
being vacated by Democrat Theo-
dore Francis Green, retiring dean
of the Senate.
In the hotly contested battle for
the Democratic gubernatorial nom-
ination, Lt. Gov. John A. Notte, Jr.,
defeated former Lt. Gov. Armand
Cote by a 16,000-vote margin.
Notte will challenge GOP Gov.
Christopher Del Sesto, whp is run-
ning for a second term.
THAT ISN'T CONFETTI that's drifting down from the offices of
the Kentucky State AFL-CIO (marked by a Kennedy banner) on
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon as his motorcade toured Louisville.
It's a shower of COPE voting records which illustrate the wide
gap between the Republican candidate's promises and his party's
performance.
New Hampshire GOP
Nurses Upset Fears
Manchester, N. H. — Spurred by an unprecedented registration
drive which added 17,000 new Democrats to the voting rolls in the
past several months, Granite State Democrats are trying to swing
one of the major political upsets this November.
At stake, in addition to New Hampshire's cluster of four electoral
votes, are the Senate seat currently^
held by right-wing Republican Sen.
Styles Bridges; the governorship
which the Republicans barely man
aged to hold on to in 1958; and
two GOP-controlled House seats.
The intensity of the Democratic
drive, and the fact that Republican
registrations have shown no marked
increase this year, has GOP lead-
ers frankly worried.
Publisher William Loeb of the
Manchester Union Leader — one
of the original supporters of Pres.
Eisenhower's bid for the presi-
dency eight years ago — in a se-
ries of bluntly worded front-page
editorials has accused his fellow
Republicans of having "grown
complacent."
"If the Republican Party does
not start to organize today," Loeb
wrote six weeks before election
time, "it is going to be a very sorry
and sad group of people when
Election Day comes in November."
Bridges — with eight straight
"wrong" votes and no "right" votes
in the 86th Congress, according to
COPE voting records, and a life-
time record of 36 "wrong" and
only 4 "right" votes — is facing the
strongest challenge in his political
career.
Hill Is Vigorous
Opposing him is Dartmouth Col-
lege Professor Herbert W. Hill, a
vigorous campaigner who 12 years
ago, in his only previous bid for
public office, barely dropped the
gubernatorial contest to Republican
Sherman Adams. The latter subse-
quently became the virtual assist-
ant president in the Eisenhower
Administration, only to quit under
fire two years ago in the face of
conflict-of-interest charges.
Backed by a revitalized Demo- '
cratic Party Jed by young lawyers,
real estate men and insurance brok-
ers, Hill is stumping up and down
the Granite State . in a bid to be
sent to the Senate to help enact the
liberal policies espoused by Demo-
cratic presidential nominee John F.
Kennedy.
Although political observers rate
Hill with having, at best, only an
outside chance to unhorse Bridges,
they see a better opportunity for
Democrat Bernard L. Boutin in his
bid for the governorship. Boutin
lost to incumbent Gov. Wesley
Powell (R) by a scant 6,000 votes
two years ago.
Democrats, pointing to their
17,000 new voters, contend that
they have "registered our margin
of victory" in the rematch with
Powell. The equation presup-
poses several things — mainte-
nance of the same votes Boutin
received in 1948, no greater voter
turnout for the GOP incumbent,
and support for Boutin by the
new Democratic registrations —
yet the upsurge in registrations
cannot be discounted.
Powell has just emerged from a
bitter primary fight with former
Gov. Hugh Gregg (R), in which
the incumbent won renomination
by a margin of only 1,155 votes.
The primary was a repeat of the
close primary contest between
Powell and Gregg two years ago f
and the GOP still shows the scars
of these two intraparty encounters.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
GOP Double-Talk
THE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN is striving desperately to
foster the impression that the Eisenhower Administration has
created the best of all possible worlds, striving so hard in fact that
it has become involved in statistical double-talk and outright
distortion.
On the international scene the critical danger points in Africa,
Asia and Latin America are non-existent in Republican campaign
oratory. Once in a great while Vice Pres. Nixon intimates that
there may be some difficulties but switches immediately into the
now monotonous refrain that he knows how to stand up to
Khrushchev.
Nixon's "kiichenmanship," in which color television is equated
with Soviet missile proficiency, has little relationship, if any, to
the problems of Communist beachheads in Cuba, disruption in
the Congo and the increasing Communist orientation of some of
the new African nations, the continuing crisis in Berlin or the
new crisis in Laos.
On the domestic scene the real and present economic stagnation
and the clear indications of an on-coming recession are likewise
non-existent in the Republican campaign. Instead the voters are
being bombarded with distorted comparisons of economic growth,
unemployment and wages during the Eisenhower and Truman
administrations.
The basic device in all the Republican comparisons is to arbi-
trarily select the years involved so that the figures come up with a
GOP-prosperity tinge.
For example, in comparing economic growth Nixon ignored the
yardsticks applied by non-partisan economists and included the
year 1946, a year of plant shutdowns for reconversion. Using the
normally accepted base period of 1947-52 for the Truman years,
the average annual growth rate comes up 4.25 percent compared
to 2.5 percent in the Eisenhower period.
Or take steel wages. Labor Sec. Mitchell told the Steelworkers
that their purchasing power increased $1.13 per week in seven
Truman Administration years compared to $28 a week in the seven
Eisenhower years. The union quickly nailed this one, noting that
Mitchell threw in the year 1945 when Steelworkers were on an
overtime 45-hour week so that the base from which the "gain" was
measured was abnormally high.
On unemployment the secretary was equally off-base. He
cited figures showing that 94 out of every 100 workers had jobs
in August. What's really relevant is that nearly 6 percent of the
work force was unemployed and that 6 percent figure is the one
that Mitchell's Labor Department uses to measure "substantial
unemployment," the description that applies to depressed areas
and gives them a priority on federal aid. The 6 percent figure
indicates that under the department's own definition the entire
nation could be described as depressed.
Nixon earlier in the campaign used a phony base to compare the
rise in real earnings and the figures quickly laid this distortion bare,
proving that real wages in the Truman Administration had actually
gone up 14 percent not the 2 percent cited by the Vice President.
Neither Nixon nor Mitchell or any other Administration official
has commented on the Labor Department's latest report on net
spendable earnings which shows that workers had less real income
to spend this August than a year ago.
This is the nature of the Republican campaign to this point —
a campaign designed to obscure the issues, blur the world crisis
and distort the basic statistics. The American voters won't buy it!
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
James B. Carey
Wm. C. Doherty
Ghas. J. MacGowan David J. McDonald
Wm. L. McFetridge Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
James A. Suffridge O. A. Knight
Paul L. Phillips Peter T. Schoemann L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David 7.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlmaa Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: §2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, October 1, 1960
No. 40
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers h>r any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Relax, I'm a Kitchen Expert
Behind Khrushchev's Ranting:
Soviet Imperialism in Africa
Seen Real Issue Before the UN
By Arnold Beichman
UNITED NATIONS, N. Y. — If Nikita
Khrushchev could have his way, the dateline on
this story would never again read "United Na-
tions" or "New York.'*
The Soviet dictator has embarked on a "rule-
of-ruin" policy which, if effectuated, would rob
the UN of any power, meaning and its very ex-
istence. That was the tenor of his address, duti-
fully echoed by the Soviet satellites— fire UN
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, abolish
the office itself, move the UN out of New York,
create a three-man supervisory body.
Such a program would extinguish the most Im-
portant international organization which has ex-
isted since the dawn of civilization, one which has
been fully supported from its inception by the
American labor movement and the world's free
trade unions.
The question asked here is why has
Khrushchev chosen a course which has out-
raged many of the UN delegations here,
whether anti-Communist or neutralist. Legally
he cannot alter the UN charter because his
proposals would necessitate a two-thirds vote
of approval by the General Assembly which he
cannot obtain and, if he did, could be vetoed by
any one of the five permanent members of the
Security Council.
The answer to the question of Khrushchev's
motive is, first that by asking for the impossible,
he can hope to achieve a "compromise" which
would still satisfy him. In other words, by asking
for an unattainable 200 percent, he might be able
to get 100 percent and thereby he would demon-
strate his sweet reasonableness.
Second, having suffered a major defeat — tem-
porarily — in the Congo Republic, he is determined
to see to it that such a defeat is not made perma-
nent. The only way he can do it is by paralyzing
the UN, robbing the secretary-general of any
power, and thus demonstrate to the new African
countries and anybody else that the UN can do
nothing to help them in case of attack, invasion
or subversion.
Third, he hopes to create a new kind of
"neutral" bloc, to be headed by Pres. Nkrumah
of Ghana assisted by Premier Sekou Toure of
Guinea. Khrushchev's address gave a new defi-
nition to neutrality which excludes a socialist
country like Sweden, for example, and any of its
citizens, specifically Hammarskjold. The only-
nations which Khrushchev will henceforth regard
as "neutral" are Asian or African countries not
yet in the Soviet orbit but where the Communists
are busy at work. Such a new kind of "neutral"
bloc would become the Soviet prong into emerging
Africa.
If Khrushchev can achieve these aims, the UN
would be unable to function in the next Soviet-
manufactured crisis. Neither the secretary-general
nor the assembly would be able to act or move
with the unending use of the Soviet veto in the
Security Council.
Stating it in its simplest form, the UN has
become a distinct hindrance to Soviet efforts
to infiltrate and establish its beach-heads in
Africa. Haid it not been for the UN, the Congo
Republic would today either have been taken
over, in effect, by Moscow or else would be in
the throes of a bloody civil war.
Another reason for Khrushchev's raucous abuse
of the UN, it is held in UN circles, is that he is
demonstrating to his Communist puppets now
attending the sessions that he is the toughest,
roughest, most audacious firebrand of them all.
But something which is beginning to disturb
delegations here is not just Khrushchev's all-out
assault on the UN. That was foreshadowed, ex-
pected and has occurred. What is troubling these
delegations is the U.S. optimism that Khrushchev
has suffered a tremendous defeat and that little
remains to be done but to watch the Soviet
dictator suffer the consequences of the frustration
of his evil design.
Actually, the issue is not whether Dag Ham-
marskjold stays or not. As far as the Soviet
Union is concerned, if the secretary-general can
be turned from an active political force into a
spiritual basket-case, Hammarskjold can stay on
forever. The real issue, and in fact the sole issue,
before the UN is Soviet imperialism now seeking
to overwhelm Africa. All the other issues which
Khrushchev has raised are secondary and peri-
pheral, including his always demagogic talk about
disarmament.
A Soviet spokesman inadvertently made it
clear that the Congo and Africa were Khrush-
chev's first and total concern and everything
else is just talking for the propaganda record.
What must be faced as fact is that the United
Nations is standing on shaky legs and that its
fate today rests in the table-pounding fists of
Nikita Khrushchev.
Meany, Kennedy Discuss
The 1960 Election Issues
To: ALL MEMBERS OF THE AFL-CIO
From: GEORGE MEANY, PRESIDENT
The AFL-CIO has enthusiastically endorsed the can-
didacy of Senator John F. Kennedy for President and
Senator Lyndon B. Johnson for Vice President.
This decision was based on their records and pledges
and on the Democratic party platform. It was reached
after careful analysis and thoughtful study. The decision
was based on what is best for America and her people
in this time of danger.
In its opening weeks the campaign has produced the
usual noise and excitement, a fair share of nonsense
and a great deal of confusion. The result to date has
been to obscure the basic issues, which the trade union
movement insists must be discussed in terms of the
critical world situation — the problems of America's
role as the leader of the free world; the problem of re-
casting our economic policies so that the nation can
once and for all time eliminate the boom-and-bust cycle
and mobilize its strength to meet the totalitarian chal-
lenge of communism; the problem of securing for all
Americans their basic democratic rights.
In the campaign to date, Senator Kennedy has been
vigorously addressing himself to these issues. His op-
ponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, has either
ignored them, brushed them aside as of no consequence
or, in some cases, actually distorted them.
The injection into the campaign of extraneous issues
intended to divert attention from the basic problems is
impairing the operation of our electoral process.
The AFL-CIO endorsed the candidacy of Senator
Kennedy because it believes that his position and the
position of the Democratic Party platform are the essen-
tial elements in a program to build a strong and free
America in the 1960s — an America capable of leading
the world to peace and freedom.
In accepting this endorsement, Senator Kennedy said,
* 4 I welcome the support of working men and women
everywhere and I am proud of the endorsement of the
AFL-CIO. For the labor movement is people. The
goals of the labor movement are the goals of all Amer^
icans and their enemies are the enemies of progress.
The two cannot be separated."
What are these goals? How does Senator Kennedy
believe they can be achieved?
Senator Kennedy and I have discussed these goals
and explored the complex problems involved. I have
set down major portions of these discussions with the
approval and authorization of Senator Kennedy as a
faithful representation of his views.
MR. MEANY: Senator, if you had to sum up in a
single sentence the major issues in this election cam-
paign, how would you do it?
SENATOR KENNEDY: I would put it this way,
Mr. Meany. We must strengthen America to meet the
Communist threat to freedom everywhere, and at the
same time complete the job of bringing real security
to the lives of all Americans.
And I am positive we can do it.
Our nation is blessed with resources and people
and a heritage of freedom that is unmatched any
place in the world. I say we can mobilize all of
thfc to do the job that cries out to be done.
I say America need never become a second-rate
power. We can in our time do all of the things that
need doing. All we need is the proper leadership and
the determination to meet the challenges of today.
MR. MEANY: Senator, do you think we really have
the potential to do everything that needs doing in the
world and in our own country? You know there are
some who say that we are biting off more than we can
chew.
SENATOR KENNEDY: Mr. Meany, I have never
lost faith, and I hope the American people never lose
faith, in the tremendous potential that exists in America.
If a foreign foe were ever responsible for cutting our
steel production down to fifty percent of capacity, for
example, this country would spring into action. Yet
today, because of our own inadequate policies, Ameri-
can steel production stands at fifty percent.
The fact is that our economic system today is not
providing us with the tools for doing the job that we
are talking about. The Soviet Union's economy, as you
well know, is growing at a rate estimated to be at least
two times as fast as ours. With the proper policies,
under the proper leadership, this country can establish
a rate of economic growth which will make it possible
for us to do everything that is necessary for national
1
defense, to give really massive assistance to our friends
and to the uncommitted nations of the world, and still
eliminate poverty once and for all in America.
MR. MEANY: I would agree, Senator, that those
are three vital objectives for all Americans. Let's
examine them. Have we done enough in terms of our
national defense?
SENATOR KENNEDY: No. We have allowed the
Budget Bureau, rather than our experts in national
defense and foreign policy, to make the decisions as to
how much is spent on national defense.
I say that those who oppose realistic expenditures
for national defense are taking a chance on our very
survival as a nation.
The only real question as I see it is, which chance,
which gamble, do we take — our money or our survival?
I am convinced that every American who can be
fully informed as to the facts today would agree to an
additional investment in our national security now
rather than risk his survival, and his children's survival,
in the years ahead.
In the years to come I would much rather take
chances on having people say we spent too much, than
to have them say we did not do enough and risked
America's very existence.
I am calling, in short, for an investment in peace.
And my purpose is to set forth the facts that every
American should have to back up this investment.
MR. MEANY: I am sure you know the record of the
trade union movement with respect to the menace of
communism and I am sure you know that we in labor
are willing to pay whatever it costs to protect freedom.
Because of this, the Communists have called us "war-
mongers*' and I am sure that they will call you a
"warmonger" too.
But as we see it, the only way to achieve peace, the
only way to achieve disarmament, the only way to
achieve an end to atomic tests and the production of
atomic bombs is from a posture of total strength.
SENATOR KENNEDY: I couldn't agree more.
MR. MEANY: But military defense isn't the sole
answer.
SENATOR KENNEDY: No. It is the base from
which we move to build a world at peace where
individual freedom is cherished. Our task is to rebuild
our strength, and the strength of the free world — to
prove to the Soviets that time and the course of history
are not on their side, that the balance of world power
is not shifting their way — and that therefore peaceful
settlement is essential to mutual survival. Our task is
to devise a national strategy — based not on 11th hour
responses to Soviet-created crises, but on a comprehen-
sive set of carefully prepared, long-term policies de-
signed to increase the strength of the non-Communist
world.
MR. MEANY: Well, in specific terms, Senator, have
we done enough to provide economic assistance to the
non-Communist world?
SENATOR KENNEDY: Of course we have not.
With the very survival of freedom involved, how can
we be satisfied with an expenditure of less than one
percent of our national product for this purpose. It is
true, of course, that the Congress in recent years has
provided even less than the President requested. But
this points up the lack of leadership about which I have
talked. First, the President never requested enough to
begin with, and then he failed miserably to obtain
adequate support in the Congress for even his meager
recommendations.
Our present foreign aid programs have neglected the
great visionary, partnership principles of the Marshall
Plan and Point-Four programs. These have been sub-
ordinated to narrow, expedient ends. What we need
is a program of long-range commitments; a program
that is planned to meet the welfare of the people of
the individual countries — their welfare as they see it,
not as seen by some individual sitting in Washington
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C M SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
6 ... We Can Do All of
unaware even of the cultural background of the nation
involved.
I need not recite the losses to the free world in coun-
try after country because we did not see in time the
nature of the problem. Do I have to spell out the
details of Guinea, Cuba, Laos and Tibet? To think
that the Monroe Doctrine would ever be effectively chal-
lenged! To think that the Communist menace would
move from 5,000 miles away from the United States
to 90 miles from the Florida coast!
MR. ME ANY: Some people say that we ought to
stop worrying about other people's problems when we
have so many of our own — like slums, depressed areas,
inadequate schools. Shouldn't these problems come
first?
SENATOR KENNEDY: There is no need to choose
one or the other. If we get this economic system going
the way it should, Mr. Meany, I am confident we could
make great progress in meeting both our international
obligations and our domestic needs.
MR. MEANY: Let's get to some of these domestic
needs now, Senator Kennedy. As a spokesman for
the labor movement I went before both political con-
ventions last July and I told of our deep concern that
our economic system is at dead center.
Let me take a minute to recite the situation. In the
last seven years we have gone backwards in America,
economically speaking.
Early in September, on the very day the Republican
candidates were telling the people that "they never had
it so good," the Labor Department reported that 5.9
percent of our labor force — almost four million workers
— was totally unemployed and that millions more could
not get a full week's work.
During the last seven years our economy has not
grown enough to keep pace with the young people
coming into the labor market and during the next ten
years that gap is going to be even greater.
SENATOR KENNEDY: To meet this very problem,
Mr. Meany, my advisors tell me we must create 25,000
new jobs a week every week for the next ten years —
25,000 new jobs a week for 520 weeks.
And I am convinced we can do it.
MR. MEANY: Okay, but how?
SENATOR KENNEDY: This problem we are dis-
cussing works both ways. In order to solve the prob-
lems we have talked about, we have got to have more
economic growth. It is also true that in order to have
sound economic growth, we have got to get about the
business of meeting our unmet needs.
As we produce steel for the housing we need, for the
schools that we need, for the roads, highways, airports
and hospitals — we provide both the jobs for our more
than 125,000 unemployed steelworkers, for example,
and we begin to cut into the disgraceful backlog of
unfinished business which we have accumulated over
years of stagnation.
MR. MEANY: You know, Senator, every time I
talk about the unfilled needs of America, somebody says
to me, as did a lady member of the Republican Plat-
form Committee in Chicago: "Where are you going to
get the money? Who is going to pay the bill?"
SENATOR KENNEDY: Well, first of all, Mr.
Meany, much of this can be done without costing the
Federal government a single penny. If we had the right
fiscal policies, we would make it easier for individuals
and private businesses to build the homes and factories
they neeci.
We can do it by increasing the purchasing power of
the people through things like an increased minimum
Not Enough Stepping Stones
wage, depressed area legislation, a fair employment
practices bill, more intelligent procurement policies.
But we must be willing to spend money when neces-
sary. We can afford to do so.
One basic difference between Democrats and Repub-
licans is that we always see both the value and thetost
in things, they see only the cost.
And remember this, when we increase the well-being
of American citizens, we increase their ability to pay
taxes.
Herein lies the .strength of our position of insisting
on the kind of economic growth America needs to
meet the Soviet challenge or, for example, to provide
the 25,000 new jobs a week.
To put it another way, Mr. Meany, subsidizing eco-
nomic growth is not a cost item, it is an investment.
MR. MEANY: Let's stick first of all to the non-finan-
cial items, Senator. What would you consider first on
the list?
SENATOR KENNEDY: There is one domestic issue,
Mr. Meany, which is really a world-wide idsuc — the
problem of securing once and for all full equality for
all our people. I am particularly proud of the civil
rights plank in our Democratic platform.
If there were no international problems, full civil
rights for all Americans would still be a major goal
because it is morally right. In light of today's world-
wide struggles for freedom, it is an absolutely impera-
tive goal. We do not go with clean hands to the United
Nations or to any part of the world as long as we do
not fully guarantee the equality of every American.
The next Democratic Administration, Mr. Meany,
will work at this problem and not merely make self-
serving statements about it. We will present legislative
recommendations to complete the job but, even more
importantly, we will use the tools now given us by the
Constitution itself and the laws already passed to make
the American promise come true for all its citizens.
It is a tragic fact indeed that, six years after the
historic Supreme Court decision on school segregation,
the President of the United States has not yet seen fit to
endorse that decision. Mr. Meany, I fully back the
Supreme Court decision and will do everything in my
power to have it implemented.
MR. MEANY: There is a related problem in which
I know you have shown much interest — the problem of
a democratic immigration policy.
SENATOR KENNEDY: Yes. I have sought, and
will continue to seek, changes in our immigration laws
so that we can bring to our shores, some additional
immigrants and also to eliminate from the law the
discriminatory aspects of it.
MR. MEANY: Some people say that with unemploy-
ment as high as it is, it is unwise to ease up on immigra-
tion.
SENATOR KENNEDY: I am familiar with that
argument. My position is we can do much more than
we are now doing in this field. Certainly a country
with 180 million people can easily absorb 250,000
immigrants a year. Remember, Mr. Meany, that only
a portion of these immigrants would be workers, and all
of them would be consumers of the goods which Ameri-
ca produces.
MR* MEANY: I believe that position is sound,
Senator, and we have supported liberalization of our
immigration laws.
Now, Senator, what is the outlook for action on
minimum wages? You know that we have come before
the Congress year after year asking that the federal
minimum wage be raised from the present obsolete
$1 an hour to at least $1.25 an hour, and we have asked
that the present coverage of the law be broadened so
that additional millions of workers would be given the
protection of this basic law.
SENATOR KENNEDY: I know your position well,
Mr. Meany. I can assure you that if I am elected Presi-
dent, I will continue to have a deep interest in keeping
the minimum wage up to date and in extending its
coverage to the maximum number of workers possible.
We would have made progress in the 86th Congress
if it had not been for the insistence by the Republican
Administration on limiting the increase to $1.15 and
its refusal to make meaningful progress on broadened
coverage. In the final days of the summer session of
the Congress, I had to make a difficult decision. I
could h^ve agreed to a token bill which would have
helped a few people here and there. However, because
passage of any minimum wage bill would probably have
foreclosed any further action for several years to come,
I preferred to see no legislation at all rather than an
inadequate bill that would have blocked effective action.
I can assure you, Mr. Meany, that completing the job
on the minimum wage bill will have the highest priority
during the next Administration if I am elected President.
May I add that you and the labor movement ought to
be commended highly for your selfless devotion to this
issue. Very few of your own union members will bene-
fit from improvements in this law. By your support,
you have demonstrated commendable sympathy for the
welfare of workers outside your own ranks. This is in
the best traditions of the labor movement.
MR. MEANY: Thank you very much for that com-
ment, Senator. We sincerely believe that every worker
in this country, whether a member of a union or not,
is entitled to a fair wage.
Back in 1955, Senator, we had the last go-round on
this legislation. I remember well how the present Ad-
ministration fought against the $1 minimum wage at
that time. They did everything they could to limit the
increase to 90 cents. It it were not for the splendid
work of men like you, the minimum wage during the
last few years might have been 90 cents, rather than $1.
SENATOR KENNEDY: I remember that fight well.
That 10 cent difference, Mr. Meany, may not loom
large in some people's eyes, but 10 cents an hour means
$4 a week for the lowest paid people in the nation. That
$4 a week is not just a statistic. During these last few
years that extra $4 has meant an extra quart of milk
each day or a pair of shoes for some underprivileged
child.
One of the most significant things that Franklin
Roosevelt ever said was in connection with the minimum
wage law and I have frequently quoted him. He said:
"The test of our progress is not whether we add
more to the abundance of those who already have much;
it is whether we do enough for those who have too
little."
MR. MEANY: Now Senator, may I ask your com-
ment on the outlook for federal aid to education?
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Page Nin«
Things That Need Doing'
SENATOR KENNEDY: Here again the attitude of
the present Administration prevented action. You will
recall that both houses of Congress passed separate
versions of aid-to-education bills. Neither one went
as far as I would like to go, but they represented prog-
ress. We were not able to complete action in August
because the Republicans failed to supply a single vote
in the House Rules Committee to permit a conference
to take place.
MR. MEANY: I recall that one of the reasons that
the Senate bill does not go as far as you like is that
Mr. Nixon cast a deciding vote to break a tie on an aid-
to-education bill.
SENATOR KENNEDY: Yes, an amendment was
pending which would have provided a federal grant of
$25 per school child to be used, at the discretion of the
state, either for school construction or teachers' salaries.
Mr. Nixon's tie-breaking vote killed that proposal.
With a new Administration, I am confident that we
will at long last make a federal contribution toward
solving the serious school crisis facing America. Re-
sponsibility for operating schools and for their basic
financing will remain with the states, but the federal
government must do its part to meet this national crisis.
We may still be ahead of the Soviets in total education
today, but they will soon overtake us if we do not get
on with the job.
Now, I would not worry about any other country
overtaking us in the field of education if that achieve-
ment were applied solely to the advancement of the
welfare of people. What bothers me is that the Soviets
have used their rapid advances in education primarily
to improve their scientific and military posture. Our
own scientists are doing magnificently and I do not fear
for the future, but it was a tragic day for America when
the Soviets beat us with their sputniks. That achieve-
ment was a warning to us which we have only partially
heeded. A Democratic Administration will be deter-
mined to make up for our wasted years.
MR. MEANY: As trade unionists. Senator, we are
especially interested in your views on legislation directly
affecting labor. We know of your fine record of 14
years of service on the House and Senate labor commit-
tees. And we also know of the excellent labor plank in
the Democratic party platform.
SENATOR KENNEDY: It is a good platform and
I am committed to it. I am convinced that labor has
contributed more to the economic health, the well-being
and the strength of this country than any other organized
group, in any other country, in any other period of
human history.
I am just as convinced that strong, free collective
bargaining is in the best interests of all the people and
of the nation itself. We must work to defeat legis-
lation designed to repress labor — to destroy its power
— and render the worker helpless to advance his own
welfare.
Mr. Meany, during all of the 14 years I have served
in the Congress, I have dealt with problems affecting
labor. I have come to know the labor movement well.
It is from this knowledge that I asserted on Labor Day
that "the goals of the labor movement are the goals of
all Americans." This does not mean, as Republican
distortions have suggested recently, that the labor move-
ment and I will see eye to eye on every single detail on
every issue. This has not been true in the past and
undoubtedly will not be true in the years to come. But
such differences will not obscure our basic agreement.
I am proud of the fact that I was endorsed by the
AFL-CIO for I know that the American labor move-
ment wants for America what I want for America:
The elimination of poverty and unemployment, the re-
establishment of America's world leadership, the guar-
antee of full civil rights for our citizens. I want to see
a strong labor movement because I believe the labor
movement works for the benefit not only of its own
people but for the general welfare.
MR. MEANY: Senator, I believe that kind of strong
labor movement is made impossible by measures such
as "right-to-work" laws. What do you think?
SENATOR KENNEDY: Let me make it clear once
again, as I have in the past, that — whatever office I shall
hold — I shall always be unalterably opposed to so-called
"right-to-work" laws at any level, federal or state.
And I shall oppose, as-i-have for 14 years, any and all
other such devices. As you know, Mr. Meany, I have
fought for legislation that will eliminate corruption in
both labor and management yet preserve and protect
the legitimate rights of legitimate unions. To achieve
that goal now means the elimination of some anti-labor
sections of the present labor laws. To that end, I am
unequivocally committed.
For example, I have fought to repeal the limitation
on the right of a union member to picket sites that re-
quire him to work side by side with a non-union
member.
MR. MEANY: Now, Senator, there's been much talk
about depressed areas in America.
What are we going to do about them?
SENATOR KENNEDY: There has been much talk,
but little action. The Congress did pass two bills in
the last two years, but both were vetoed by President
Eisenhower.
He thought we had gone too far, were spending too
much money. This is what I meant before when I said
we Democrats look at the value of things, while Repub-
licans look merely at the costs. If we had invested in
the communities that have been badly hit, many of
Shadow On the Graph
AFL-CIO
them would now be prospering — providing jobs for
our people, goods for our community, and taxes for our
government.
If our country were operating at its full potential,
many of these depressed areas would automatically be
helped, but even with a high level of activity, there will
always be some communities needing special help. We
must therefore have constructive laws on the books
which will permit us to help get new industry into the
community, retrain the workers who do not find it pos-
sible to leave, modernize community facilities, and to
do ail the rest that may be necessary.
MR. MEANY: And how about housing?
SENATOR KENNEDY: To meet the rapidly grow-
ing needs of our population, and to replace the unsuit-
able housing now in existence, we should be creating
more than two million units a year. This is a. rock-
bottom estimate of every expert in the field. Yet we
are building today at the rate of slightly over one mil-
lion a year.
That is one side of the question. The other is the
fact that many of America's most skilled workers are
unemployed or working part time. We can meet the
twin problems of unemployment and inadequate hous-
ing by adopting policies aimed at doubling the present
rate of building.
This means a change in our high-interest, tight-money
policy. This means a real program of middle income
and co-operative housing. This means the building, on
a mass scale, of public housing for our lowest income
groups.
MR. MEANY: In that connection, Mr. Kennedy, our
members have not forgotten that your opponent, Mr.
Nixon, back in 1949, voted against the public housing
program then enacted. I wonder whether Mr. Nixon
feels this would be a better country if we had never
built the hundreds of thousands of low-cost public hous-
ing units that have been erected since 1949?
SENATOR KENNEDY: I wouldn't know what he
thinks now. I do know that his party platform does
not call for any public housing. And I know that the
great majority of his party in Congress has consistently
voted against public housing provisions in the many
housing bills passed in recent years.
MR. MEANY: Now, .Senator, I want to discuss with
Pape Ten
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 19«#
6 . , • The Need Is for Leadership'
you one of the issues in which labor has had a particu-
larly strong interest. I refer to social security.
What are your views on this subject?
SENATOR KENNEDY: I know you have a strong
interest in this subject, and it is a good thing for all
America that you do. No segment of the American
society has worked harder for progress in this area.
This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of
the Social Security Act. On August 14, 1 had the great
satisfaction of celebrating that anniversary at Hyde
Park, the home and now the shrine of the architect of
that great act, Franklin Roosevelt. I told the thou-
sands of retired citizens who had also come to pay
homage to Franklin Roosevelt that the job which he had
set out to do in 1935 was not yet done. And no one
realized this more than President Roosevelt himself.
"This law," he said 25 years ago, "represents a corner-
stone in a structure which is being built, but which is
by no means complete."
Mr. Meany, it is my determination to help complete
that structure.
MR. MEANY: I know that you have been working
on that practical job. In the final days of the last
session of Congress, the AFL-CIO was pleased to sup-
port the Kennedy-Anderson amendment to the social
security bill to provide health benefits for the aged.
SENATOR KENNEDY: I appreciated that support
very much. We didn't win that round, but we will
next year. That amendment embodied the basic goal
of the well-known Forand bill. It recognized the cry-
ing need for action in the matter of health protection for
our aged. But it recognized that the proper way, the
efficient way, the dignified way, to do the job was to
use the time-tested system of social security.
Americans do not want charity; they do not want
government doles; they want to help pay for a system
of insurance so that when they retire they will be en-
titled to benefits as a matter of right. I will not stop
working for this until we get it.
MR. MEANY: I am glad to hear you say this. Some
people may think we have solved the problem by
passage of the bill this summer which provides some
meager help for those who are on public assistance, or
who can establish that they have no resources for health
care. We now must proceed to enact a basic social
security system of health benefits for the aged.
SENATOR KENNEDY: Yes, and with leadership
from the White House, I believe we will get it enacted
early next year. This year, the White House was used
to kill the proposal. Only one Republican joined the
44 Democrats who voted for my amendment.
Mr. Nixon opposed this logical extension of the
social security system and instead supported a proposal
that would have meant humiliating income tests, de-
pendence upon states that cannot afford to take ade-
quate steps, and — most important — would have re-
quired that the aged pay for the care after they have
reached retirement age, not before. Our plan is based
upon the social security system because we feel it makes
more sense to have people start contributing very mod-
est sums during their, working lives so that when they
retire they can live in security and in dignity.
MR. MEANY: This sounds like the basic fight over
social security back in 1935.
SENATOR KENNEDY: That's absolutely right.
Back in 1935, the Republicans tried to prevent enact-
ment of this wonderful system of prepaid insurance for
retirement income. But Roosevelt and his New Deal
colleagues prevailed. And in 1936, the Republican
candidate Alf Landon promised to work for repeal of
the Social Security Act if he were elected. B\it the
EUCT
KENNEDY
To: ALL AFL
The election of Senator Kennedy
and Senator Johnson is the Number
One job before the trade union move-
ment. The AFL-CIO endorsed Ken-
nedy and Johnson as in the "best in-
terests of the United States and of
the labor movement." Our job is to
translate that endorsement into vic-
tory on November 8.
As president of the AFL-CIO I call
on every affiliated national and inter-
national union to focus attention on
the real issues in the campaign and
to see that every union member is
provided with the essential informa-
tion as to where the candidates stand
on these issues.
But while knowledge -of the issues
is basic, it is equally important that
our members have a voice in the de-
cision. They must not only inform
CIO MEMBERS
themselves but must vote if they are
to discharge the basic responsibil-
ities of citizenship.
I am completely convinced that if
our members are informed on the
issues, and determined to cast their
vote on Election Day, the outcome
will be in the best interests of the
nation.
In this time of danger the future
of the nation and the future of the
trade union movement will be best
advanced by the election of Senator
Kennedy and Senator Johnson.
I earnestly recommend that every
AFL-CIQ member vote for the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket on November 8.
George Meany, President
people knew better, and Roosevelt was returned by a
landslide vote.
There are other things in social security we must do,
too. Benefits are still much too low. Dependents
deserve more liberal treatment. Our public assistance
provisions should be improved. There's a lot to be
done before we complete that structure F.D.R. started
25 years ago.
MR. MEANY: Related to social security is the mat-
ter of unemployment insurance.
What do you see there?
SENATOR KENNEDY: For years now I have been
convinced that we will never have a decent system of
unemployment insurance until we establish minimum
Federal standards. We have reached the disgraceful
situation where the average unemployed person receives
insurance equal to about a third of his regular wages.
The states are reluctant to improve their systems sig-
nificantly because of fear of interstate competition.
Here again, leadership from the White House could
obtain action in the Congress.
MR. MEANY: This brings me to the matter of taxes,
Senator. What changes are going to be needed?
SENATOR KENNEDY: Well, none for unemploy-
ment insurance, Mr. Meany. The present tax rates are
more than adequate. Higher benefits and longer dura-
tion of benefits will just mean that, in some cases, the
rebates to industry will be less. As to social security,
some tax increases will be necessary. For medical
benefits, for example, we believe that an increase of
a quarter of one percent for employes and-employers
will do the job. I know that American workers have
never hesitated to pay for this great social insurance
system we are building. For 23 cents a week, under
my amendment, they would receive hospitalization,
nursing home, home nursing and diagnostic care when
they retire. That's a pretty good bargain.
Now, as to general taxes for the housing, the de-
pressed areas, the hospitals, assistance to farmers, the
development of our rivers and harbors, for our defenses,
and all the rest, I have this comment: I believe that a
healthy rate of growth will provide the revenue to do
the things we need to do.
But if we must have more income to meet our obli-
gations, let's not be afraid to say so and to raise it. I
said in my acceptance speech that the new frontier I
talk about is not a set of promises; it is a set of chal-
lenges. We must do what must be done. If it means
higher taxes, I will never hesitate to ask for them.
Greater revenues, however, do not necessarily re-
quire higher tax rates. I will first act to close existing
tax loopholes where, the, experts say, we can recoup
billions of tax dollars.
MR. MEANY: Senator, throughout all of your an-
swers there run two major thoughts: First, that you have
conffdence that America can do the job and meet all
these goals and, secondly, that the great need of our
time -is for leadership to spur this nation forward.
SENATOR KENNEDY: Any student of American
history knows that when the American people have
been challenged they have responded. It has been a
tragedy for America that in recent years they have not
been properly challenged.
We have the resources; we have the people; we have
the great needs. Through proper leadership, we can
combine these and make another giant step forward in
American progress.
All over this country, as I have campaigned, I have
made that point. I have not tried to tranquilize the
American people into smug self-satisfaction. I have
told them the truth. I have promised no easy solutions.
I have said that we live in a time of grave danger, but
I have said too that we can conquer the new frontiers,
just as we/ have conquered every frontier in the past.
MR. MEANY: Senator, I am convinced that there
has never been a more important election in the history
of the United States. And it is because we have con-
fidence' in your ability to lead, that the AFL-CIO has
enthusiastically endorsed your candidacy for the
presidency.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER \ 1960
Page Elevf*
Morgan Says:
Cracks Show Up in AMA's
Portrait of Healthy Oldsters
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
SOMETIMES, UNFORTUNATELY, the hand~
out is quicker than the eye. Back in Au-
gust during the rump session of Congress that
well known benevolent and protective society,
the American Medical Association, issued from
its home base in Chicago a three-page bulletin
proclaiming "a national
survey" showed that the
great majority of Amer-
ica's senior citizens not
only are capable of financ-
ing their own health care
but prefer to do it them-
selves, "without federal
government intervention."
This handout, neatly timed
to emerge in the middle of
Congressional debate on
old age medical assistance,
naturally hit the headlines
and undoubtedly influenced many votes.
It's a pity that in their one-hour electronic
debate Candidates Nixon and Kennedy couldn't
have had the time to discuss this issue in detail,
including some of the interesting holes punched
in the AMA propaganda and the so-called survey
on which it was based. The study was made
under the direction of two sociologists from
Emory University in Atlanta, Professors James
W, Wiggins and Helmut Schoeck and financed
by a $20,000 grant from a subsidiary of the Wil-
liam Volker Fund.
Wiggins, it develops, is an unpaid consultant
to the AMA's medical economics department and
the fund, according to an AMA spokesman,- has
a "conservative outlook." It was after Wiggins
read a paper reporting his findings to the Interna-
tional Institute of Gerontologists in San Francisco
that fellow sociologists registered a reaction which
Correction Please!
Morgan
was anything but conservative. Nine out of 16
named as having collaborated with Wiggins pro-
tested his findings as improper, the questionnaire
poorly drawn or the sample of people questioned
as "loaded." The American Sociological As-
sociation is investigating.
The survey painted a glowing picture of a cheer-
ful, "healthy and well-cared-for aging population
in the United States," financially independent
with capital assets ranging for the majority from
$7,500 to above $10,000. Two-thirds of the re-
spondents, Wiggins and Schoeck reported, had not
seen or telephoned a doctor during the four weeks
preceding their interviews, and 90 percent indi-
cated they had_no unfilled medical needs.
This golden portrait of senior citizens in their
silver-haired years should be an inspiration to
the artists who produce calendars for life insur-
ance companies, but a sharp look shows the
pigment chipping away revealing embarrassing
tears in the canvas.
BETWEEN 25 AND 35 percent of the coun-
try's aged were totally ignored in the sampling, in-
cluding any receiving old age assistance, all those
in hospitals or similar institutions, and all Negores
and other non-whites. Nobody was asked how
he felt about the plan to provide medical care
by expanding social security payments. The
subjects interviewed represented a "quota" from
each section rather than an area sample, which
sociologists consider more valid.
Virtually repudiating the findings tftough he
cooperated in his area in the interviewing, Prof.
Noel Gist of the University of Missouri declared
"the data are being used deceptively for political
purposes. The persons interviewed represented,
in a sense, the financial 'elite' of the older popula-
tion."
There is abundant research to prove that the
majority of people cannot accurately judge their
own state of health. As of the moment, Emory's
Prof. Wiggins is sticking to his guns.
Nixon's Word-Eating Machine
Getting In Lots of Overtime
THE ^DEMOCRATIC National Committee has
charged that Vice-Pres. Richard M. Nixon is
trying "to stifle every vital issue of the campaign"
in his proposal that all discussion of America's
weaknesses be suspended during the current
United Nations session.
Correction, Please! — a new Democratic cam-
paign bulletin — devoted an entire issue to Nixon's
proposal and the reaction to it.
Correction, Please! quoted Nixon as saying on
Sept. 21:
"I do not think it serves the cause of peace or
freedom to talk, about America's weakness mili-
tarily, to talk about America's falling behind eco-
nomically, to indicate that America is losing the
battle of ideas throughout the world and that our
prestige is falling throughout the world."
And yet, the bulletin pointed out, Nixon only
last February said that "glossing over weak-
nesses which we may have, denying that they
exist, is not only naive, but it really is danger-
ous an today's world. . .
The Washington Post, observed the bulletin,
commented in a Sept. 23 editorial that if Nixon
succeeds in equating criticism of American mis-
takes with naivete toward Soviet designs, "the
country will be in for considerably more harm
than Mr. Khrushchev can do it."
The Wall Street Journal noted that Nixon had
labeled Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy
a "spokesman for national self-disparagement."
Actually, the Journal said, Kennedy has been
making the point that America "could be more
powerful and needs to be."
Kennedy was quoted by the bulletin as dealing
with the problem in this manner:
"Some people say it's wrong to say we could
be stronger — that it's dangerous to say we
could be more secure.
"But in times such as these, I say it is wrong
—and dangerous — for any American to keep
silent about our future if he is not satisfied with
what is being done to preserve the future."
Sen. J. W. Fullbright (D-Ark.), the bulletin
reported, charged that "Vice-Pres. Nixon is ask
ing the Democrats to join him in a conspiracy of
silence or of misrepresentation in order to mislead
the American people. . . ."
The bulletin also recalled that Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller (R) of New York said in June that
"I deplore any voices suggesting, by inference or
innuendo, that our national unity requires any
Stirling of debate."
IN ANOTHER RECENT issue, Correction,
Please! blasted top Republican campaigners for
now criticizing as "wasteful" the very Democratic
aid-to-depressed areas legislation which they once
praised and supported.
The bulletin said it was Kennedy's 10-state
conference in West Virginia on the problem of
chronic unemployment which inspired the Re-
publican "three-day barrage."
On successive days, Sen. Hugh Scott (R-Pa.)
said the Eisenhower vetoes of Democratic de-
pressed area bills were justified because they were
"wasteful;" Nixon called the bills "straight pork
barrel," and Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell said
the Democratic Congress failed to act on a "real-
istic" Administration bill.
Correction, Please! pointed out that, after the
1958 veto, the Democratic Congress reduced the
1960 depressed aid bill from $379 million down
to $251 million, compared to the Administra-
tion's $60' million program.
Mitchell told a Scranton business group 24
hours before the 1960 veto, the bulletin noted,
that the Democratic-passed bill was "good
enough so that any senator or congressman from
a state with areas of chronic unemployment
would have no alternative but to vote for it."
Scott voted for both the 1958 and 1960 bills
and even to override the 1960 veto, the bulletin,
reported. J
trs YOUR
7a
WASHINGTON
EN ROUTE WITH KENNEDY— The almost overwhelming im-
pact of national television was demonstrated forcefully in the sud-
den burst of campaign interest that followed the first Kennedy-
Nixon "great debate."
Veteran reporters had never seen anything \\\ ; the combined
fervor and size of the crowds that poured out in the Ohio and
Pennsylvania towns the following day to see Kennedy. Reports
from the Nixon campaign were that the Vice President drew very
large crowds in Memphis, Tenn., and Charleston, W. Va., but it
was not clear that the intensity of emotion was the same. At Akron,
O., in the armory, there was a high pitch to the roar of the over-
flow audience as Kennedy entered that was different from anything
this longtime traveler with candidates had previously heard.
Reporters who have been on the trail with the Democratic nomi-
nee since before the convention say Kennedy began to catch "fire"
in his Texas tour — just as Harry S. Truman "caught fire" in Texas
in 1948; but before the "great debate" there was nothing compa-
rable to. the Ohio-Pennsylvania journey.
The most impressive thing was not the crowds at the airports —
though 5,000 waited at Erie, Pa., at 11:30 p.m., and there were
packed audiences for set speeches. It was the lines of people —
storekeepers, housewives, workers in factories, women buying
groceries or shoes — who left their tasks to see the senator as his
cavalcade of cars and press buses wound through the towns and
in areas wjiere no speeches were scheduled.
* * *
THE CAMPAIGN, the senator's experts say, is extremely close,
and the election is still to be won or lost. But somehow in the face-
to-face clash of the TV debate, an emotional interest was aroused
to dispel what appeared to be almost public apathy. From this,
Kennedy cannot be the loser.
Some of the technical arrangements and personal touches involved
in the television debate had their elements of fascination. Writing
reporters were able to view pre-program final arrangements on
studio monitors for a few minutes, and they had a "pool" man to
report on the details when the program was on the air.
Mr. Nixon arrived a trifle ahead of schedule, seven minutes ahead
of Sen. Kennedy. The candidates were informed that when they
were speaking they would be full-face "on camera," but that they
could sip water or compose themselves otherwise with assurance of
privacy.
The Vice President gave an odd impression of in-studio nerv-
ousness, with Kennedy the more self-possessed. While waiting
for Kennedy, Nixon paced up and down. Kennedy took sips of
water during the program; Nixon patted and wiped his face with
a handkerchief. (The Vice President, with a heavy beard that
shows blacker under the red-eyed monster cameras, had expert
makeup help. Kennedy wears no makeup.)
They shook hands after the engagement, Nixon remarking that
they had had a "useful" exchange of views. Kennedy under re-
quests from reporters for concurrence declined to acknowledge
more than an "exchange of views."
The consensus on results was that the Vice President scored sev-
eral "debaters' points" against Kennedy but that on "imagery" and
impact the Democratic nominee came out very well indeed.
* * *
IF THE ELECTION is to swing on the question of which nomi-
nee has the depth and maturity as well as the program and spirit
to lead the country, Kennedy certainly could not have been said to
appear "naive" — the adjective Mr. Nixon had used against him
previously.
The Kennedy camp believes the senator has much to gain from
the debates, with three more scheduled. $ince he is less well known
that the Vice President, television's trick of making an instantaneous
impression on millions gives him an unparalleled opportunity with
the voters.
The Kennedy spokesmen think, further, that several basic argu-
ments favor the senator: The argument, for example, tying Mr.
Nixon to his Republican Party and its record. Without the de-
bates, he could not possibly reach so many voters with the declara-
tion that he is running as the Democratic nominee, proud of his
party's record of liberal legislation, while Mr. Nixon has tried to
suppress his Republican identification.
It is natural for the Vice President, acknowledging the COP's
minority status, to reach after Democrats and independents. But
there is also the fact that he has no answer to Kennedy's charge
that no new social or reform idea in half a century has been
supported by the Republican Party. The historical record is
unchallengeable.
Senator Kennedy may well add in the end that even if Mr. Nixon's
own record indicates that he would initiate or champion humanita-
rian causes, which it doesn't, he couldn't get Republican backing
in Congress.
Ptfr AMERICA TO WORK
Good workers ore good citizens . . , and good
citizens vote. Good candidates mean more jobs
and a busier, more prosperous America. Vote for
candidates who will safeguard your job and make
niore jobs for ^m^mfxyfqrk
Page Twelve
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
How to Buy:
Food Prices Due
For Seasonal Drop
By Sidney Margolius
LIVING WILL BE a little easier in October as prices of food, and
especially meat, decline seasonally. The supermarket won't
take as big a cut of your income. You'll also be able to buy family
clothing for a little less in the Fall sales beginning with the Colum-
bus Day coat sales.
A curious situation has developed in cars enabling sharp buyers
with a little cash to pick up 1960
new models or a good used car at
especially deep price cuts. Over
700,000 new 1960 models are still
in dealers' and factories' hands al-
though the 1961 models are ready
to come out October 15 — two weeks
earlier than usual.
Dealers also are loaded up with
used cars. The new compacts have
taken away many sales from the
used-car markets. Now many deal-
ers can't take in any more used cars
until they move present inventories.
So dealers are cutting prices on
both the 1960 leftovers and their
used cars, and in many cases also
are offering easier credit terms. (This is not necessarily to your
benefit since additional finance charges will cancel out potential
savings on the price cuts.)
The year-end price cuts on the 1960 models are made possible by
the extra allowances of $150-$200 that factories give dealers at this
time of year to move leftovers. That's why you now see dealers offer-
ing in their ads new 1960 models "at wholesale prices."
THESE REALLY ARE the old wholesale prices, with the dealer's
profit consisting of the year-end merchandising allowance. The
sale of additional accessories and equipment also bolsters dealers
profits.
Usually a car loses 29 percent of its value each year. Thus a car
worth $2,000, when new, normally will be worth $1,420 at the end
of the first year. The second year it loses 29 percent of that $1,420,
or about $410, and would have a market value of about $1,010.
Much of course depends on the condition of the used car and pre-
vailing market conditions.
Equipment prices listed by Car Fax, the car-price publication,
indicate that dealer's profit margin on automatic transmissions
runs about 17-19 percent. For example, the Ford automatic
transmission has a wholesale price of $172 including federal ex-
cise, and a factory-suggested list price of $211.
On other accessories the dealer's margin often runs 20-27 per-
cent. For example, the Rambler heater has a wholesale cost of $59
and a list price of $76. These figures can help you evaluate how
much of a price cut a dealer offers on optional equipment.
FOOD BUYS: Meat is a little cheaper this month. Pork, which
has been high this summer, will be arriving in greater supply from
now on through winter. The less-expensive cuts, such as the Boston
butt and picnic ham, are usually the lowest-cost sources of lean
meat, advises the New York Cooperative Extension Service. Whole
hams sometimes sell for less than the total of the parts. If a whole
ham is too big for you, the butt half has a higher proportion of lean
meat than the shank. When the two halves are priced about the
same per pound, the butt thus is better value.
Merchants also push cheese in October. Many people pay more
than they need to. Government studies have found that when pre-
packaged cheese and in-store packaged cheese are displayed to-
gether, almost two out of five people buy the pre-packaged even
though it costs ten cents a pound more.
Lamb has been reasonable this fall. One money-saving idea,
the extension service advises, is to buy the whole leg and ask the
butcher to cut it this way:
• cut through the shank bone, leaving about a pound of meat on
the bone which you can cube later to make a stew or curry;
• cut off several lamb steaks at the sirloin end of the leg;
• reserve the center section for a roast.
Broilers also are cheap this year, and supermarkets are featuring
specials on beef since marketings are increasing.
Copyright I960 by Sidney Margolius
(2®PE
ANCIENT TRIBAL" COSTUMES and western dress, mingle in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, at a rally
at Solidarity House, headquarters of the Kenya Federation of Labor, built with aid from the AFL-
CIO and its affiliated unions. Tom Mboya, general secretary of the federation, welcomes delega-
tions from all parts of the British territory.
Report From Africa:
:, Labor Center
Student
Help Train Kenya Leaders
By Theodore W. Kheel
NEW YORK — A building made possible by
AFL-CIO support has become the center of
communal activity in Nairobi, the capital city of
Kenya, British territory in East Africa where only
a few years ago the Mau Maus were terrorizing
the white and African population.
Now the march to independence, certain to-
come in the next one to three years, is led by
such oratorically persuasive and personable men
as Tom Mboya, the secretary of the Kenya Fed-
eration of Labor, who makes his headquarters
in Solidarity House, the name given to this build-
ing where thousands gather daily in union, educa-
tional, social and political pursuits and talk about
Uhuru, the word in Swahili for independence.
I was there recently as a member of an ad-
visory committee to the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
Foundation, which had generously agreed to
finance by airlift the transportation of 250
African students admitted to study in colleges
and universities in the United States.
The students' airlift, a dramatic and symbolic
expression of our ability and willingness to fulfill
Africa's greatest need — education and training for
independence — is the principal activity of a rela-
tively new organization known as the African
American Students Foundation.
This unique foundation stretches its hands
across the seas through its board of directors of
Africans as well as Americans. It has offices in
New York City and Nairobi, and Tom Mboya as
well as Julius Nyerere, who has just become
Prime Minister of Tanganyika, supervise the
African end.
The first airlift took place last year when 81
students came over, all from Kenya. This so in-
spired the Africans in Kenya, as well as such other
East African countries as Tanganyika, Uganda,
Nyasaland, Zanzabar, and the Rhodesias, that
more than 250 sought space this year. This is as
many students as will matriculate this year in
Makerere, the university in East Africa for all of
these countries, and many more than will enter
colleges and universities in the United Kingdom.
The day I arrived in Nairobi an orientation
meeting was being held at Solidarity House to
prepare the students for the trip here and to
answer their questions about living in the United
States.
Obviously they had to be told about segre-
gation and the rebuffs they might receive. 1 felt
very ashamed during this discussion. But so
great was their sense of adventure and espe-
cially their desire to learn in order to return to
help their country that no amount of hardship
could possibly discourage them from going.
The question and answer period sounded just
like that of any group of students getting ready
to go off to college. The girls wanted to know
what they should wear. The boys asked about
politics and rates of exchange. Everyone was
told to be prepared for lots of questions from
Americans about Kenya and Africa. One boy
wanted to meet the girl who was going to the
same college he was.
And there is a willingness, indeed an anxious-
ness, throughout Kenya and other African coun-
tries on the part of people who themselves are
illiterate to contribute their last few pennies to
make it possible for their sons and daughters
to* study in America. This is because they re-
gard education as their salvation in assuming
the responsibilities of independence.
It is the lesson of the Congo, and they are fully
aware of this. I heard it from the lips of tho
senior chief of the Kikiyus, the largest of the
tribes in Kenya. In the compound of huts where
he lives, 60 miles from Nairobi, as primitively as
his ancestors before him, this vigorous man of
92 told me, as we discussed the changes he has
seen through the years: "The most important
thing Tor my people is education."
Back at Solidarity House, as we watched Tom
Mboya turn from the students to a strike
meeting, telephone calls, small and large meet-
ings, and then back to fund-raising, we were told
that a group of Kikiyu tribeswomen had arrived
to perform a native dance for him.
Into the courtyard they came, in double file
with paint on their faces and wearing elaborately
colored costumes. Around their ankles they had
bracelets made of beer bottle tops which jangled
as they took short steps forward and backward,
advancing slowly and chanting all the while in
their native language. Ironically, Tom Mboya,
who comes from the Luo tribe, could not under-
stand what they were saying. I heard the trans-
lation he was given, and here it is: s
We have come to Tom's house.
We have heard about him.
Now we're here to see him.
I think every member of the AFL-CIO can
be proud of the help you have given the Kenya
Federation of Labor.
I know that it is appreciated because of what
I was told but more because of the effective use
the Africans ot Kenya are making of the build-
ing they have gotten through your generosity.
They are also modeling their unions along Amer-
ican lines and their ranks, now up to 80,000 mem-
bers, are increasing rapidly.
There is much need for organization, of course,
since wages are very low. But they know that
through education they can change their coun-
try and through organization their own lives,
and the help we give them through the Kennedy
Foundation support of the airlift or the AFL-CIO
aid for Solidarity House pays dividends far be-
yond anything we can even imagine.
All of the students have now arrived and are
off to school. I saw them in New York City
after they had been here a few days. They were
still scared but to me they looked just a little
more worldly-wise for the exciting experience of
flying from Africa, near the equator, to New York
while stopping on the way in Iceland. But they
all have much to learn about living in America.
All are short of funds and are hoping to be
able to get summer jobs next year to insure the
continuance of their studies.
AFL-CIO unions have done much to make this
possible for the students who came last year and
I know this will continue. So both here and in
Africa you are helping young Africans train to
become the future leaders of their country. That
will not only benefit them but us as well.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Page Thirtee*
At Brotherhoods 9 Institute:
Rails' 'Irresponsibility' Seen
Leading to Nationalization
Ithaca, N. Y. — A spokesman for rail labor has warned that "irresponsibility" by management
could lead to nationalization of the nation's railroads in the public interest.
Chairman G. E. Leighty of the Railway Labor Executives Association made it clear that nationaliza-
tion should be regarded only as "a last resort." But he declared that the industry's "self-destructive"
drive to abandon passenger train service and "the breakdown of collective bargaining in the rail-
road industry" show lack of cbn-^
cern for the nation's welfare.
Ready for the Kiek-Off
Leighty addressed an institute
attended by more than 100 top of
ficials of the five operating brother
hoods — the Trainmen, Locomotive
Engineers, Firemen & Engine
men, Conductors and Switchmen
The four-day program was spon-
sored jointly by the unions and
the New York State School of In-
dustrial & Labor Relations at Cor-
nell University.
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller warned the del-
egates that the nation is "in the
beginning of an economic de-
pression . . • but the present
Administration won't recognize
this."
Describing the last session of
Congress as "a record of constant
frustration," Biemiller said the na-
tion faces "real trouble" unless the
next President and the next Con-
gress carry out the mandate of the
Full Employment Act.
In other major addresses:
• Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
warned against management-im-
posed changes in work rules under
the guise of efficiency.
"Working men and women have
something akin to a property right
in work procedures and customs
engaged in for many years and re-
sulting from bargaining agree-
ments," Mitchell declared, "and
these rights should be modified or
forfeited by consent, not compul-
sion."
Declaring that modernization of
operation should be "in the interest
of competitive gain for all con
cerned," he said agreements should
be reached "by honest men seek-
ing just and imaginative solutions
without the pressure of contract
deadlines."
• A top management spokes-
man, Pres. Daniel P. Loomis of the
Association of American Railroads
blamed much of the industry's prob
lems on tax and subsidy preference
to competing forms of transporta-
tion. He attacked also what he
called "fumbling, misdirected and
haphazard government interven-
tion."
Leighty, in his address, declared
that "more and better — not less —
regulation in the public interest is
urgently needed, and I have no
doubt that eventually it will come
because the carriers must have such
regulation to protect themselves
from each other and the American
people must have it to protect the
public interest against the carriers."
Rail labor has given ''unquali-
fied support" to industry pro-
posals which would aid the rail-
roads 9 competitive position, he
declared, but has also taken the
leadership in the fight "to save
our great passenger train network
from willful self-destruction by
some railroad carriers."
Leighty charged the railroads
with using Railway Labor Act pro-
cedures "as an excuse to escape re-
sponsibility for honest collective
bargaining." *
"Apparently the railroads are
Stereotypers Hail Unity
For Newspaper Unions
Miami Beach, Fla. — A proposal which could lead to eventual
merger of all unions in the printing and publishing industry was
given overwhelming endorsement here at the 57th annual conven-
tion of the Stereotypers.
The union's 150 delegates approved a resolution calling for full
merger of newspaper unions "as 1
soon as expedient." As a first step,
the convention directed the exec-
utive board to "investigate and
speedily prosecute" a merger with
the Printing Pressmen.
Pointing to the long Portland,
Ore., newspaper strike, the reso-
lution said the pattern of im-
porting professional srtikebreak-
ers "shows the dire need for
trade union unity and solidarity."
Earlier, delegates heard Pres.
Elmer Brown of the Typographical
Union and Executive Vice Pres.
William J. Farson of the Newspaper
Guild repeat the pleas they have
been making at newspaper union
conventions for organic unity in
the industry.
Farson told the convention that
the sentiment for "one big union"
in the newspaper industry hts crys-
tallized in the past year in the face
of a mounting offensive against la-
bor bv management groups. Said
the ANG official:
"Publishers — emboldened by a
sympathetic government — have
mounted a massive, coordinated
offensive against the unions in
the newspaper industry, seeking
to cripple them, if not destroy
them."
The result of this offensive. Far-
son said, has been the greatest num-
ber of strikes in the newspaper in-
dustry since the postwar unrest of
1947.
The convention adopted a series
of constitutional amendments to
bring the laws governing the Stereo-
typers into conformity with the
Landrum-Griffin Act.
selfishly following this policy be
cause they believe they can get
more from the government and the
courts," he added, than through
direct negotiations.
Nov. 2 Is Date
Of Election
At Sikorsky
Bridgeport, Conn. — The Nation
al Labor Relations Board has set
Nov. 2 as the date of an election
to determine a union bargaining
representative at two Sikorsky Air-
craft plants now represented by the
Auto Workers.
Members of UAW Local 877
settled a three-month strike with
an agreement which management
promised to honor, once the ques
tion of representation is out of the
way.
Workers Recalled
Some of the more than 2,000
strikers have been recalled, and the
others will be called back within
45 to 60 days of the strike's end,
Local 877 has been assured.
The Sikorsky plants are the
last two in the United Aircraft
chain to settle a labor dispute
that once involved more than 30,-
000 workers. Management had
declined to sign a new contract
until NLRB settled the question
of representation with an elec-
tion.
The election was made necessary,
NLRB said, because of the claim
of a non-union group that it rep-
resents a majority of the workers.
UAW tried repeatedly to get an
election, but had to wait for the
Labor Board to set a date.
The Sikorsky" division plants are
in Bridgeport and Stratford, Conn.
When the strike started they em-
ployed almost 5,000 production
and maintenance workers.
Strikes of Machinist lodges and
another UAW local in United Air-
craft plants were settled earlier.
All started in June.
A
Indiana Churchmen
Urge R-T-W Repeal
Indianapolis — A group of prominent Indiana clergymen and lay
leaders has demanded "priority" action by the state legislature to
repeal Indiana's so-called "right-to-work" law.
The churchmen denounced the anti-collective bargaining measure,
which was enacted in 1957 in the face of widespread public protest,
as being a "compulsory open shop &~
law" that violates the rights of both
management and labor.
The group declared the "right
to^work" law should be repealed by
the legislature "as a matter of first
priority at its next session in Jan-
uary."
Studied Harmful Effects
The action condemning the re
strictive legislation was taken in
resolution adopted unanimously by
the Religion and Labor Fellowship
of Indianapolis. The council of
churchmen and lay members of In
diana's leading faiths acted after
searching study of the harmful
effects of the "right-to-work" law
on the state's economy and general
welfare.
As a result of its investigation
the council stated that "the Indiana
compulsory open shop law has not
attracted new industry that added
to the prosperity of the Hoosier
State."
This contention has been one of
the main arguments of "right-to
U. S. Must Boost Growth Rate
To Provide Work, Keyserling Says
The American economy must grow 5 percent each year to provide jobs for "younger people com
ing on the labor force and for older people who still want to work and cannot get jobs. It should
grow at such a rate also to absorb the new technology— the improvements in machines that force
people out of work unless the economy is growing fast enough."
Leon Keyserling, former chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and now chair-
of the Conference on Eco-^
man
nomic Progress, made this state-
ment in an interview on As We See
It, AFL-CIO public service educa-
tional program heard on the ABC
network (Sundays, 1:15 p.m. New
York time).
"During the past seven-and-a-
half years we've been growing
less than 2.5 percent a year,"
Keyserling said. "We're in a
period of stagnation, even though
there is talk of a boom. That's
why so many business forecasters
are talking about a recession
next year/'
The economist asserted: "It
seems to me that the Republican
Party thinks we can achieve growth
mainly by talking about it. The
Democrats believe we can achieve
growth by doing something about it.
Both parties agree on words; they
don't agree on deeds.
"Furthermore, the Republican
nomic growth mainly by saying to
the farmer on the farm, the working
man in the factory, the governor
in the state office, the mayor in the
city, 'You do it; don't rely on the
federal government.' The Dem-
ocrats don't believe in excessive re-
liance upon the government, but
they do believe that national attain-
ment requires national leadership.
"We're up against a totalitarian
system, Communist Russia, and
what does that mean? It means
a system which is highly organ-
ized, highly purposeful, thinking
in long-range terms, and under a
centralized leadership.
"We don't want that kind of
centralized leadership, but we
learned from World War II and
from the great depression that a
free society must also be able to
have leadership, must also have the
national purpose which people are
talking about now, and they must
Party thinks we can achieve eco- 1 do 'many things together — not as
individuals, but as 180 million peo-
ple working together. That's what
government means."
Building roads, schools, houses,
hospitals, taking care of other needs
of the people in an affirmative pro
gram would not mean an increase
in- taxes, Keyserling said.
"Such a program would increase
the tax take, not the tax rate,"
he asserted. "It is the only way
to avoid an inflation. He also de-
clared:
"The inflation that we've had
over the last few years occurred be-
cause we've had too much unem-
ployment, because we're* going too
slow, not too fast. During war-
time we had inflation, because our
economy was being pressed too
hard. In recent years, we've had
inflation because our economy has
been pressed too little. We have
to get back to that happy balance of
reasonably full employment of our
plants and manpower."
work" sponsors for retention of the
anti-labor law.
The church group said in its
resolution that the legislature
should repeal the law "in order
to restore the recognized right
and freedom of management and
labor to decide conditions of
work through the processes of
collective bargaining."
Repeal of the "right-to-work"
law is a major election issue be-
tween the Democrats and Repub-
licans in Indiana.
The Democratic nominee for
governor, Matthew Welsh, has de-
clared that if elected he will sup-
port repeal of the unpopular law
"as the first order of business**
when the legislature meets in Jan-
uary.
The Republican nominee for
governor, Crawford Parker, has
stated he will veto any measure
repealing the law, and will sup-
port even stronger curbs on labor.
The Religion and Labor Fellow-
ship resolution was the second re-
cent action by Indiana religious
groups in publicly condemning the
"right-to-work" law. Eleven lead-
ing Indiana Methodist ministers de-
nounced the law and called ur-
gently for its repeal in a statement
on Aug. 26.
Trout 'Farmers 9
To Vote on Union
The National Labor Relations
Board has ordered a representation
election among employes of the
fish farming" operation of the
Snalce River Trout Co., Buhl,
Idaho, rejecting the employer's
argument that the NLRB has no
jurisdiction because farm workers
are excluded from the Taft-Hartley
Act.
The NLRB granted the election
petition of Meat Cutters' Local 368.
The Board described the com-
pany's operation as the raising,
butchering, packing, freezing and
distribution of rainbow trout. It
said the Labor Dept. advised it
that "fish farming" of this type is
not within the meaning of agri-
culture as defined in the federal
wage-hour law, which the Board
uses as a guide and from which
farm workers also are exempt
Page Fourteen
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, I960
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE John F. Kennedy leans down to shake hands with
a delegate during the ovation which greeted his speech to the Chemical Workers convention in Atlan-
tic City. Delegates escorted him with placards and banners to nearby Steelworkers convention. Left
to right, behind Kennedy, are Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.), Pres. Walter L. Mitchell of the Chem-
ical Workers, New Jersey Gov. Robert B. Meyner, Steelworkers Pres. David J. McDonald and ICWU
Vice Pres. Thomas E. Boyle.
Chemical Union Asks Control of
Air Pollution, Exposure Hazards
Atlantic City — The Chemical Workers wound up its convention here with adoption of resolutions
designed to emphasize the union's concern with social and governmental matters — especially in the
area of health and safety.
The 500 delegates from 400 local unions in the U.S. and Canada voiced full support for the cam-
paign to relieve the air pollution menace in central Florida, where some 5,000 ICWU members, their
familes and communities are ex-^"
posed -to harmful fluoride vapors
and dusts from phosphate mining
operations.
Although a U.S. Public Health
survey, made at the union's request
in 1957, showed that the level of
contamination far exceeded safe
limits, neither the companies nor
governmental agencies have taken
corrective measures.
In the atomic energy industry,
where the ICWU has substantial
membership, a convention resolu-
tion called for creation of a "na-
tional committee on radiation
safety" which would make ob-
jective studies as to the hazards
of exposure to ionizing radiation,
and set up uniform standards for
the protection of workers and
public.
The union has assigned a staff
Top-Skilled Workers
Get TWUA Charter
New York — The most highly-skilled workers in the garment
industry, dissatisfied with their progress in a Joosely-knit profes-
sional association or club, have turned to organized labor as their
salvation.
They are some 2,000 patternmakers in Greater New York's
textile and dress fields, an organ-^
izing committee of which has been
member to work full time with local
union health and safety committees,
in addition to the advisory services
provided by its medical consultant,
Dr. Herbert K. Abrams of Chi-
cago.
On the international level, the
ICWU endorsed the ICFTU appeal
for "the democratic nations to stand
in readiness to resume disarmament
negotiations . . . and that any sav-
ings achieved through a lessening in
the armaments race should be used
to fight the only war we seek — a
world-wide war against poverty,
disease, hunger and ignorance."
Another resolution called upon
the governments of the U.S. and
Canada to support "without reser-
vation" the efforts of former co-
lonial peoples to achieve independ-
ence and a better way of life.
As a post-convention feature,
chartered as Production Pattern-
makers Guild, Local 1503 of the
Textile Workers Union of America.
*The patternmakers, despite their
skill and their contribution to the
industry as individuals or in loose
association, have found it most diffi-
cult to win the recognition they de-
serve and have finally determined
that only through affiliation with a
trade union organization can they
achieve this program," the founding
committee said in a statement.
"After thorough study of the
situation, we find that the Textile
Workers Union of America,
AFL-CIO affords us the best op-
portunity to work for and ac-
complish our objectives."
TWUA State Dir. Jack Ruben-
stein said the new local will be af-
filiated with the union's Greater
New York Joint Board and will
immediately start an organization
campaign aimed at enrolling- all
fully-skilled patternmakers under
the union banner.
The founding committee said the
new union's goals are to seek rec-
ognition and remuneration, "pri-
marily on the basis of their pro-
fessional skill and craft;" to be
accorded a status in keeping with
the contribution members are mak-
ing to the successful operation of
the industry; to cooperate with
other elements in the industry, and
to achieve more security.
In another area of TWUA ac-
tivity, Pres. William Pollock
asked Sen. John O. Pastore (D-
R. I.), chairman of a Senate sub-
committee that has been examin-
ing textile industry problems
since July 1958, to determine
if the report issued by a fed-
eral interagency committee after
a "study" is justified.
Pollock described the report as
"negative and evasive."
"Boiled down to its essentials,"
he charged, "the report is a thinly-
disguised apology for the very prac-
tices and policies of the Republican
Administration which prompted the
Senate investigation in the first
place."
more than 100 delegates traveled
to New York City for a one-day
conference on United Nations ac-
tivities that was jointly sponsored
by the World Affairs Center and
the ICWU Research and Education
Department.
After speeches by Sen. John Ken-
nedy, Rep. James Roosevelt and
COPE Dir. James McDevitt earlier
in the week, the discussion of la-
bor's role in political action was
rounded out by Donald MacDon-
ald, secretary-treasurer of the Ca-
nadian Labor Congress, who cited
how "eighty years of painful ex-
perience under the parliamentary
cabinet type of government" have
taught Canadian unionists "that we
cannot hope to strike a responsive
chord within the major existing par-
ties in our country."
For this reason, MacDonald said,
the CLC is sponsoring formation of
a new political party in hopes of
achieving broad social remedies for
growing unemployment and the
continuing legislative attacks on
.unionism.
Delegates responded to an ap-
peal by the convention COPE
committee and individually con-
tributed a total of $750 which
was sent to Sen. Hubert Hum-
phrey, for paying debts he in-
curred in his campaign for the
Democratic presidential nomina-
tion and for his current re-elec-
tion campaign in Minnesota.
By a nearly 3 to 1 margin in a
rollcall, the delegates voted to
change from annual to biennial
conventions, with Las Vegas, Nev.,
being chosen as the site for 1962.
All incumbents on the interna-
tional executive board were re-
elected to new two-year terms of
office. It was the first time in 12
years that officers had been re-
named without change or contest.
Walter L. Mitchell will be serv-
ing his third term as president
Sec.-Treas. Marshall Shafer has held
his post since 1952. The nine vice
presidents on the board are: Joseph
J. Donovan, Marshfield, Mass.;
John Gratz, E. St. Louis, 111.; James
Gallagher, Washington, D. C; Gor-
don Mcllwain, Toronto, Ont.;
Laron K. Judd, Louisville, Ky.;
William J. Sparks Jr., Baton Rouge,
La.; Thomas Boyle, Newark, N. J.;
Jack T. Swift, Los Angeles, Cal.,
and J. Harley Thomas, Atlanta, Ga.
End to Joblessness Urged :
USWA To Fight
Industry Attacks
By Saul Miller
Atlantic City — The Steelworkers will use every avenue to help
reduce potential strife in the industry but are determined to do
battle indefinitely if the steelmakers force another strike similar to
the 116-day battle of 1959-60.
This determination was spelled out in a series of resolutions and
speeches at the union's 10th con-^
stitutional convention here along
with a bargaining policy aimed at
eliminating the heavy unemploy-
ment which has idled 135,000 steel
workers and has another 350,000
working part-time.
Arthur J. Goldberg, the union's
general counsel, told the 3,500
delegates that the union faces at-
tacks from forces seeking to elimi-
nate industrywide bargaining by
law, and that despite the lessons
the industry should have learned
from the long strike, there is still
a general attitude pegged to the
idea of reducing the strength of the
union.
"I do not detect," he said, "as
much as I would like to see it, a
change in attitude on the part of
the great steel industry of Amer-
ica."
He added that there was a po-
tential to reduce industrial strife in
the harmony committees set up by
the strike settlement contracts and
urged that they be put into vigor-
ous operation.
The USWA bargaining policy
was mapped in series of resolutions
calling for a shorter workweek,
urging the industry to end its con-
struction and maintenance con-
tracting-out practices, an improved
and sound system of unemploy-
ment compensation based on in-
creasing benefits and liberalizing
SUB, and support and expansion
of comprehensive medical care
plans. The convention also urged
as a basic legislative aim simplifi-
cation and improvement in work-
men's compensation laws which
have been "eroded" by legislative
and administrative action.
Eisenhower Hit on Rights
The delegates adopted a strong
civil rights and civil liberties reso-
lution, which in condemning racial
discrimination hit out at Pres.
Eisenhower for his "failure to speak
out forcibly at any time during his
term of office in support of the
findings of the judicial branch of
the government" on the school de-
segregation and other civil rights
decisions.
USWA Pres. David J. McDonald
told the delegates that the union is
proud of its record of meeting the
problem of discrimination "head
on" and succeeding in "bringing it
under control."
He assailed the record of indus-
try as contrasted to that of labor
in the civil rights and civil liberties
field, declaring that "it is a matter
of record that in no single instance
has American industry- raised its
voice in support of the enactment
of any civil rights legislation."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
affirmed Goldberg's position on
the union-industry harmony
committees, declaring the effort
"hasn't got off the ground." He
offered his help to both sides to
get the committees into opera-
tion.
He proposed again a law which
would give the President the power
to set up a fact-finding board in
major labor disputes with the
power to subpena witnesses from
both sides, forcing both parties to
explain their stand on the issues in
a dispute before a public board.
The convention adopted a num-
ber of amendments to bring the
union's constitution into line with
the Landrum-Grifrin Act, including
new provisions for placing unions
under administrators. The dele-
gates voted approval of the placing
of an administratorship over Local
1408, McKeesport, Pa., on the
grounds that its funds have been
mismanaged to the point where the
local is approaching bankruptcy.
Suspended from office under the
administratorship is the local's
president, Anthony Tomko, a sup-
porter of Donald C. Rarick, presi-
dent of Local 227, McKeesport,
who is heading up a group oppos-
ing McDonald.
Appeal Denied
The convention also upheld ap-
peals committee findings against
Nicholas Mamula, president of Lo-
cal 211 of Aliquippa, Pa., another
Rarick supporter, that he had engi-
neered the expulsion of three mem-
bers who had filed charges against
him.
The delegates turned down pro-
posals to make any dues increase
subject to a membership referen-
dum vote and referred to a special
study group proposals to change
the procedure governing the nomi-
nation of international officers, dis-
trict directors and local officers.
Rarick, earlier in the convention,
filed charges with Labor Sec.
Mitchell claiming he had been de-
prived of his democratic rights at
the parley. The FBI is investigat-
ing the complaint. He has an-
nounced his intention of running
against McDonald in the referen-
dum election next year.
Rarick was denounced by
USWA Sec.-Treas. L W. Abel
after he was endorsed by the
opposition group. Abel said the
Rarick group is determined "to
weaken and destroy this union"
and pledged his support to Mc-
Donald.
Joseph Murray, son of the un-
ion's former president Philip Mur-
ray and a staff representative in
Dist. 16, also denounced the Rarick
group's endorsement of him as a
candidate for vice president on its
ticket. He asserted that the Rarick
outfit had nominated him in an at-
tempt to "trade on the name of my
great father" and charged "these
men are doing great harm to the
Steelworkers."
In his closing speech to the con-
vention, McDonald declared that
the incidents involving Rarick had
been blown up "out of all propor-
tion," that the opposition was in-
significant and that the "Steelwork-
ers were more united in this con-
vention than ever before."
Rarick's forces appeared to num-
ber something over a dozen dele-
gates.
Booklet Analyzes
Politics and Bias
An examination of the course of
"Prejudice and Politics" and the
interaction between them has been
published in a booklet of that name
as one of the Freedom Pamphlets
of the Anti-Defamation League of
B'Nai B'Rith.
The authors are former Mayor
Charles P. Taft of Cincinnati, son
of the late Pres. William Howard
Taft, and Bruce L. Felknor, execu-
tive director of the Fair Campaign
Practice Committee, both outstand-
ing Protestant laymen. The book-
let traces the growth and expansion
of racial and religious prejudice as
reflected in politics from colonial
times to the present.
Copies may be ordered from the
league at 515 Madison Avenue,
New York 22, N. Y. The price is
"\5 cents per copy.
AFL-CIO IVEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Page Fifteem
in Federationist Editorial :
Meany Raps Vice President
On Economic Growth Claim
(Continued from Page 1)
with "a most unscrupulous misuse
of figures" when the cabinet officer
told the union's convention that
the steel worker s purchasing power
increased $1.13 per week in seven
years under the Truman Admin-
istration compared to a gain of $28
a week in seven years under Eisen-
hower.
Brubaker pointed out that Mit-
chell used '"abnormal" figures to
make his case. He said Mitchell
used J 945 as a base, a year when
steel industry earnings were inflated
by overtime from a 45-hour week
thus raising the base from which
Mitchell figured the "gain."
Inflation in 1946 'Ignored'
He said Mitchell also "completely
ignored" the sudden inflation in
1946-47 which ate away most wage
gains, an inflation he charged to
the "precipitate" removal of price
controls under Republican pressure
and agaiast Democratic opposition
Mitchell also used a final earn-
ings figure of $113.16 a week to
calculate the gain under Eisen-
hower, Brubaker said. He noted
Mitchell gave no source and added
that the Iron & Steel Institute's
latest figure puts steelworkers'
weekly earning at $96.05Jn July.
• Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy CD-
Minn. ), chairman of the recent
Senate Special Committee on Un-
employment Problems, suggested
Mitchell might be renamed "the
Secretary of Propaganda" because
of his statements "distorting the na-
tional unemployment picture."
McCarthy said both Mitchell and
Health, Education & Welfare Sec.
Arthur S. Flemming have gone
"far beyond" the permissible limit
of cabinet participation in cam-
paigns.
"If Mitchell cannot keep his offi-
cial duties separate from his prop-
aganda efforts in behalf of Nixon,
he should resign as Secretary of
Labor," McCarthy declared.
Mitchell roused McCarthy's ire
when he issued an "analysis" of
the job picture to counteract the
10-state conference on new jobs
and new growth sponsored by
Kennedy at Charleston, W. Va.
Mitchells press release empha-
sized the August "record" of 68.3
million employed, while saying that
the 3.8 million jobless is "of serious
concern."
McCarthy charged Mitchell with
"distorting" the picture. The latter
failed to explain, McCarthy said,
that when he states that "94 out of
every 100 workers had jobs in
August," this is defined by Mit-
chell's own Labor Dept. as "sub-
stantial unemployment."
A 6 percent rate of joblessness
is the test by which an area is de-
clared to have a "substantial labor
surplus." The seasonally-adjusted
rate for August was 5.9 percent for
the nation.
Other Distortions Charged
McCarthy charged other "dis-
tortions" and said Mitchell should
be named "Secretary of Prop-
aganda" if he continues to speak
"irresponsibly."
• Press Associates, Inc., the la-
bor press news service, charged
Nixon with using "a neat statistical
gimmick" during the television de-
bate to show that the economy grew
faster under Eisenhower than under
Truman.
PAI pointed out that Nixon in-
cluded 1946 in his calculations, a
year of large-plant shutdowns to
reconvert from war-time to peace-
time needs.
Figuring the growth rates for
the 1947-52 period for Truman and
the 1953-59 period for Eisenhower
reveals, PAI reported, that the
average annual rate of growth was
4.25 percent under Truman and
2.50 percent under Eisenhower.
PAI said average unemployment
under Truman was 2.6 million a
year, compared to 3.2 million or
600,000 more on the average under
Eisenhower.
It said the average annual in-
crease in the real gross national
product — the measure of Amer-
ica's wealth in terms of goods
and services produced — was
$14.9 billion under Truman and
$10.8 bilSion under Eisenhower.
Meany, in taking issue with
Nixon's claim that the Eisenhower
policies produced the greatest pri-
vate economic expansion in any
eight-year period, said that "the
facts of life do not support" Nixon's
words.
"What does the Vice-President
mean by that claim?" Meany asked.
"Is he referring to greater pro-
fits for corporations or higher divi-
dends for stockholders?
"Is he talking about expanded
productive capacity — much of
which today stands idle?
"He (Nixon) certainly can't be
talking about jobs — real jobs. The
fact is that there are 500,000
fewer full-time jobs in America than
there were three years ago. And the
decline was even greater in the
'private sector' of our economy.
"Since 1953, our labor force has
increased by 5.5 million. But
fewer manhours of work are pro-
vided by the 'private sector' of our
economy today than were provided
seven years ago.
"We have lost more than 2 mil
lion jobs in manufacturing, mining
and the railroads. If it hadn't been
for an increase in public employ-
ment, we'd have even more jobless
than we have now.
' Js this expansion — or is it
decay?"
Meany warned that Eisenhow-
er policies "court catastrophe"
because they have failed to find
jobs for the 820,000 new workers
entering the labor force each year
at present. Over the next 10
years, he pointed out, the labor
force will expand by an average
of 1.4 million new workers each
year.
"This means," he declared, "we
must create 25,000 new jobs every
week for 10 years, just to keep
pace with this growth — and without
allowing for the job shrinkage
caused by automation and techno-
logical change."
Meany said America needs "pros-
perity in fact, not fiction." He
said Nixon seems "unaware" of the
real menace of present widespread
unemployment.
McCarthy Raps Mitchell
McCarthy said Mitchell "also
failed to mention that of the ap-
proximately 68 million jobs to
which he referred, 3 million are
part-time."
"He failed to make clear the fact
that 6 out of 100 people seeking
work today cannot find it and that
one out of every 10 workers today
is getting only a partial pay check or
none at all," he added.
"He failed to say that the rate
of unemployment today is higher
than it was even in the recession
year of 1954 or that, as a matter of
fact, the jobless rate today is higher
than it has been in 17 of the past
18 years."
McCarthy said that perhaps
Mitchell's "worst distortion" was
in attempting to make the jobless
rates among family breadwinners
"seem good." Mitchell had said
unemployment among married
men was "a little over 3 percent
— well below the national aver-
age."
Nixon 4 Afraid' of Federal Action
On Schools, Schoemann Charges
Vice Pres. Nixon's self-described "imaginative" new approach to the nation's school and education
problems is "essentially a program of half measures inhibited by the overriding fear of federal action,"
according to Peter T. Schoemann, chairman of the Committee on Education of the AFL-CIO.
Schoemann, an AFL-CIO vice president and president of the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters, labeled
Nixon's principal proposal for loans and grants to help states meet the interest costs of school construc-
tion bonds as "a warmed-over ver-^
LOAN FUND for use of pharmacy students at the University of
Washington is started with a $1,000 contribution from Retail Clerks
Local 330. Some 300 members of the local's pharmacy division
are graduates of the university. Local 330 Sec.-Treas. Stanley
Peters, left, presents the check to Dr. Henry Schmitz, president
emeritus of the university and administrator of the fund.
GOP-Dixie Combine
Blocks Civil Rights
A new civil rights study by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.
has pinned the "can't do" label on the Republican Party.
The party which claims political descent from Abraham Lincoln
can't deliver on its promise to fight for equal rights because of its
legislative alliance with the right-wing Southern Democrats, the
IUD charged. * —
cast against the bill in the House,
according to the report.
sion of an old Eisenhower sugges-
tion; one which would be unwork-
able in those areas most needing
aid."
He pointed out that the school
districts where the need is greatest
already have reached their legal
debt limits.
Nixon, in a renewed effort to
cut the cord linking him to the
Eisenhower Administration's rec-
ord, outlined his views in a "po-
sition paper'' which called for a
"total national effort" to meet the
nation's educational needs.
The Republican candidate de-
clared that the teaching profession
must attract "the best men and
women the nation has to offer" but
he flatly opposed the use of federal
funds to help raise teachers' sala-
ries.
He warned that "we have no
time to lose" and called for a na-
tional "sense of urgency" but added
that the effectiveness of any pro-
gram must be measured "not by
how much money is spent or how
fast, but rather by its effective im-
pact in stimulating and supplement-
ing local and private efforts."
To evaluate what is being or
should be done in the education
field, Nixon said, he would propose
a "permanent, top-level Commis-
sion on Education."
Nixon did call for expansion of
the college student loan program
and set as a target "a national
scholarship program for our ablest
secondary school graduates admin-
istered by, and its costs shared by,
the states on the basis of relative
ability to pay." The scholarships,
he said, should be based on "need
and competitive examinations." He
also suggested that Congress "con-
sider tax credits or deduction for
college tuition and expenses."
Schoemann pointed out, how-
ever, that Nixon's statement "is
full of references to the threats
of 'inhibitive federal control' and
'rigid federal control' and the
other stock phrases of the apos-
tles of federal impotency."
He described the Nixon state-
ment as "a typical plea for too
little, too late — a program of half
measures . . . Both the terms of
recent Democratic proposals for
federal aid and the history of fed-
eral aid," Schoemann declared,
"suggest that the issue of so-called
'federal domination' is a phony."
The study — entitled "The Civil
Rights Fight: A Look at the Legis-
lative Record" — explores party po-
sitions on key civil rights issues in
Congress and in the states. It finds
that the advances usually have come
under Democratic leadership, de
spite that party's "Bourbon wing."
IUD Pres. Walter P. Reuther,
in a foreword to the report, de-
clares the record "shows clearly
that the GOP-Dixie axis pene-
trates almost as deeply into the
area of civil rights as in that of
welfare legislation."
The IUD study documents this
by going behind the final rollcall
votes on civil rights legislation in
Congress to the real battleground —
the Rules Committee bottleneck in
the House and the filibuster threat
in the Senate.
In both of these key areas, the
IUD points out, a majority of Re
publicans could consistently be
found voting with the Southern
Democrats, just as the Dixiecrat
bloc voted with the GOP on eco
nomic issues.
At the state and local levels, with
few exceptions, "Republican-dom
inated legislatures have consistently
rejected fair employment practices
statutes. . . . The Republican record
on state FEPC belies the party's
claims of civil rights championship
and defies apology. The GOP align-
ment with business interests opposed
to nondiscriminatory hiring and
with anti-labor groups has brought
about the consistent surrender of
civil rights," the IUD study notes.
Spelled out are details of suc-
cessful Democratic-led battles for
strong FEPC laws in Ohio, Mich-
igan and California. In each
case, the opposition came from
the GOP.
In Ohio, after seven straight ses-
sions of Republican-controlled leg-
islatures had rejected FEPC, pas-
sage came in 1959 when the Dem-
ocrats had control of the legislature
for the first time in a decade. All
of the votes against FEPC in the
state Senate came from the GOP
ranks, as did 30 of the 31 votes
The IUD, charging that the Re-
publican call for civil rights legis-
lation during the August post-con-
vention session of Congress was
intended to block action on mini-
mum wage, health care and housing
legislation, pointed out that Repub-
lican leaders had voted against
many of the same "rights" proposals
during the regular session of Con-
gress.
The study also notes that the
GOP now has its own southern
wing, with five congressmen who
owe their election to "an ability to
out-Dixiecrat the Dixiecrats."
The report comments that "the
southern Republican Party is
more conservative and pro-segre-
gationist" than the Dixie Dem-
ocrats.
"America's Negroes," the doc-
ument concludes, "may be coming
closer to their goal of equal oppor-
tunity and human dignity but their
progress — either socially or eco-
nomically — cannot be placed at the
doorstep of the Republican Party
Mrs. Meyer To Get
AFL-CIO Citation
The AFL-CIO Murray-
Green Award will be pre-
sented to Mrs. Agnes E.
Meyer, writer and lecturer,
at a dinner in Washington on
Nov. 15, Leo Perlis, director
of AFL - CIO Community
Service Activities, has an-
nounced.
Mrs. TVIeyer will receive a
medallion and a check for
$5,000 in recognition of her
"lifelong devotion to the
causes of sound community
organization, health, welfare
and education," Perlis said.
The Murray-Green Award
was established in 1956 to
give recognition to persons
and organizations whose
achievements in the broad
areas of health and welfare
have inspired others to work
for the common good.
Page Sixteen
AFI^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1960
Kennedy Pledges Fight on Joblessness
Conservative GOP
Tag Hung on Nixon
(Continued from Page J)
American people, he said in the
layoff-ridden steel, automotive
and electrical products city of
Mansfield, O., that is when
"young Latin Americans" looked
to him as a "good neighbor to
Latin America." He added: "To-
day Mr. Castro has raised the
standard of Communism through
all of Latin America."
In Canton, O., he said: "I don't
believe in big government but I
believe in government meeting its
responsibilities. When 50 percent
of the steel capacity is unused,
when we are building 200,000
homes less than we should, when
there are 1.8 million children who
go to school part time; it is time
for the Democratic Party."
Sees Party Issue 4
In Erie, Pa., where upwards of
7,000 people waited at the airport
for an 11 p. m. plane landing,
Kennedy said the campaign was a
"struggle" between the Republican
and Democratic "concepts of gov-
ernment, which has been going on
for many years and continues in
I960." The question, he said, is
whether we believe that the cause
of freedom at home and abroad can
best be served by the Democratic
or the Republican Party.
At North Tonawanda, N. Y.,
a position paper set forth specific
differences between himself and
the Eisenhower Administration.
**I would have signed" the two
depressed areas bills that Pres.
Eisenhower vetoed, he said.
In another position paper, Ken-
nedy said in Lockport, N. Y., that
the "issue" of how far we extend
the powers of the federal govern-
ment is a "bogus issue."
Use Government to Help People
The federal government already
has enormous power through its
defense, housing, research and
other programs, and "not to use
these powers to help people is to
use them to hurt people. We
Democrats have believed at all
times and at all places in using the
federal government to help people."
A position paper pledged a seven-
point program to check the tide of
chronic unemployment that ever
since the 1958 recession has seen
unemployment stuck at above or
barely below a 5 percent rate.
The "goal" of full employment,
the Employment Act of 1946,
has been "forgotten" in the past
eight years, he charged. He
promised a renewal of attention
to the goal, pledged a labor-man-
agement conference on problems
of automation, and an end to the
hard-money, high-interest policies
of the Eisenhower Administra-
tion.
"I am not downgrading the
country," he said. "I want to up-
grade the leadership" that recently
has seen what he called the "de-
terioration" of our prestige in the
world.
"Much has changed" in the past
quarter century, he told a "senior
citizens' * meeting" in Buffalo's
Music Hall, but "one thing has not
changed."
"Tweiiiy-five years ago today,"
he said, "the Republicans in Con-
gress voted 95 to 1 to kill social
security, calling it an 'extreme'
measure. This year again only
a single Republican in the Senate
voted for medical care for the
aged."
"I don't believe it is 'extreme' to
relieve poverty and illness and de-
spair," he declared.
"What is 'extreme' is the fact
that 9 million Americans over the
age of 65 are trying to survive on
incomes of less than $40 a week.
And what is 'extreme' is the oppo-
sition of the Republican party to
every effort to bring help."
The GOP "failed to kill" the
key old-age pension section of
the 1935 Social Security Act, he
said, because "we had a Demo-
cratic President in the White
House using all the many powers
of that high office to ensure the
passage of his program."
"This year we had a Republican
Administration using all its powers
to destroy" the application of so-
cial security principles to medical
and health programs for the aged,
he declared.
In Lockport, N. Y., and in Am-
sterdam, Kennedy talked about
minimum wages, old age pensions,
depressed areas, "the 65 cents an
hour" for the average laundry work-
er. "I don't think it's too much to
ask a businessman who does a $1
million a year business to pay $1.25
an hour, $50.00 a week to his em-
ployees," 'he declared.
Furniture Workers
Endorse Kennedy
The executive board of the Fur-
niture Workers has unanimously
endorsed the Kennedy -Johnson
ticket as providing "strong, dedi-
cated liberal leadership ... in the
fight for freedom against Commu-
nist tyranny." The UFWA called
on its local unions to "work tire-
lessly between now and election
day ... to make the full weight
of the united labor movement felt
in this campaign."
ILG Starts Radio Series
Oct. 5 on Campaign Issues
The Ladies Garment Workers' 1960 Campaign Committee
has announced it will sponsor a series of 5 coast-to-coast radio
programs which will discuss and dramatize the campaign
issues.
The series will be broadcast every Wednesday at 10:30
p.m., EST, starting Oct. 5 over the ABC network.
Adlai E. Stevenson will be the featured speaker on Oct. 5;
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany on Oct. 12; Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt on Oct. 19 and Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, the vice-
presidential candidate, on Oct. 26.
Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic presidential candi-
date, will conclude the series on Nov. 2.
The series is being financed by voluntary contributions of
garment workers. Performers taking part in the dramatiza-
tions include Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Shelley Winters,
Tallulah Bankhead, Eva Marie Saint, Henry Fonda, Peter
Lawford, Edward G. Robinson, Melvyn Douglas, Ralph
Bellamy, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBERS of the Carpenters greet Sen. Kennedy as he arrives to address
the union's convention at Chicago. At left is Harry Schwarzer; at center, Joseph Cambiano. They
escorted him to a cheering ovation by the delegates.
Kennedy Gets Carpenter Ovation,
Asks Action on Unfinished Tasks
(Continued from Page 1)
to suspend the rules and have the
delegates endorse Kennedy's can-
didacy was ruled out of order by
Hutcheson on the grounds that
there was no such resolution before
the convention and that the con-
vention rules specifically forbid
discussion of partisan politics by
the delegates.
Hutcheson's ruling was accepted
by the delegates who made it clear
again, however, that the sentiment
of the convention was clearly be-
hind the Democratic candidate.
The first Kennedy-Nixon elec-
tion appearances before a union
convention, the Machinists' con-
clave in St. Louis last month, was
followed by a direct endorsement
of the Democratic nominee by an
all but unanimous vote.
Nixon was respectfully received
by the 1,600 delegates to the con-
vention representing 820,000 mem-
bers, who met in the Terrace Gar-
den Room of the Morrison Hotel
here.
Delivering in general the "basic
speech" of his campaign with which
reporters covering him have become
familiar, the Vice President also said
he had joined with the late Sen.
Robert A. Taft (R-O.) in seeking
to override the Denver Building
Trades rule that treats a strike on a
building site against a non-union
subcontractor as an illegal second-
ary boycott under the Taft-Hart-
ley Act.
Sees Same Goals
He said that his "goals" and Sen.
Kennedy's are the same — better
housing, better health, better health
protection in old age, and that the
differences are about "means." He
warned against unneeded federal
"spending" which he said would
"create" human misery, rather
than alleviate it.
He claimed a "good record" for
the Eisenhower Administration on
schools, housing and "real wages,"
repeating his statement at the Ma-
chinists' convention that real wages
had increased only 2 percent under
former Pres. Truman and 15 per-
cent under Eisenhower. He said
the Carpenters specifically had
fared "70 percent better" in the
Republican years.
The Nixon claim has been
sharply challenged by the Dem-
ocratic National Committee.
"I know Khrushchev," Nixon
told the Carpenters, "and I know
how tough the Communists are. 1
will insist that whatever funds are
necessary to maintain absolute
superiority in military strength must
be expended" to maintain "peace
and freedom."
Kennedy in an 11 -minute ad-
dress for which he was obviously
heartened by the tumultuous recep-
tion he received, bluntly said that
the "great debates" in which he
and Nixon were supposed to
engage had actually been going on
for half a century.
Kennedy Cites Record
The Democratic Party, he said
has "said 'yes' to the people." The
Republicans have nominated "Mc-
Kinley, Taft, Harding, Coolidge,
Hoover — and now we have today,"
he said.
"The government has a role to
play in social programs," he de-
clared "and I don't look upon it as
'taking money out of the pockets of
the people.' How many GI homes
would have been built without the
government guarantees of loans?"
He slashed at trie Republican
record on the committee-approved
housing bill of last session, citing
the votes of all four Republican
members of the House Rules Com-
mittee against sending the bill to
the floor.
"I'm not a 'Johnny-come-
lately' on the situs picketing bill,
either," he said referring to a
statement of Nixon's. "I know
what I mean — I mean to revise
the law to kill the Denver Build-
ing trades rules."
"I know Khrushchev, too," he
observed with irony, "and he is not
the enemy. He is 65; he is mortal
like other men. The issue is the
Communists' system.
"When we face our unfinished
business, this country will move
again," he concluded.
In a major speech the opening
day, Pres. William C. Doherty of
the Letter Carriers, a vice' pres-
ident of the AFL-CIO, called on
labor to "lift up its eyes," to aban-
don what he called "cubicle think-
ing," and to lead the world to the
"golden land of the future."
He said labor should "go big
league" in its communications with
the rest of America, to establish
newspapers and to "buy our own
television and radio station."
We must tell our story "over and
over again and in as many ways as
09-x-oi
possible," he declared, to let the
people know trie effectiveness of the
labor movement in combating Com-
munism and prevent confusion
about "our honest and justified
efforts to achieve equality and so-
cial justice."
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell
told the convention in a somewhat
unusual speech that the building
trades unions should go out and
organize, especially in the residen-
tial housing field.
He also termed the "right-to-
work" laws "phony" but declared
that regardless of who won the elec-
tion it would be impossible in the
foreseeable future to repeal Section
14b of the Taft-Hartley Act allow-
ing states to pass "right-to-work"
laws.
Says Congress Undemocratic
C. J. (Neil) Haggeny, president of
the Building & Construction Trades
Dept., charged in a speech that
Congress demonstrated in its last
session the undemocratic proce-
dures which it attempted to lay at
the doorstep of the labor movement
in the Landrum-Griffin Act. He
cited the action of the House Rules
Committee in killing legislation
and refusing the House the right
to vote on important legislation
including aid to education, situs
picketing and other measures.
The convention adopted a num-
ber of resolutions to amend and
revise the union's constitution to
bring it in line with the new labor
law. There were about 140 reso-
lutions before the convention.
Labor Warns U.S. on Brink of Recession
Vol. v
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6. D. C.
$2 a year
Second Clats Postage Paid at Washington. 0. C
Saturday, October 8, 1960
No. 41]
Kennedy Stumps Midwest
Calling for Strength, Jobs
4.8 Million
Seen Idle
In January
The United States is on the
brink of another recession and
the Eisenhower Administration
is doing nothing to head it off,
the AFL-CIO Economic Policy
Committee has charged.
"This situation has been de
veloping for eight months. . .
The economic lull that started
last February has continued," the
committee asserted in the current
issue of its publication, Economic
Trends & Outlook.
"Few lines of business activity
show signs of added- strength.
Trends point, instead, towards
weakening of sales, production and
employment. . . .
"The usual fall pickup has not
developed. Improvements in the
past several weeks have been
much less than normal for this
time of year."
The committee warned that with
3.8 million unemployed in Aug-
ust, continuation of the present
"lull" means 4.8 million jobless in
January, after the Christmas shop-
ping season.
Indicators Down
If business activities weaken in
the months ahead, it continued,
"there will be 5-5.5 million unem-
ployed in early 1961," with several
additional million people working
part time.
Here is the publication's sum-
mary of the economic indicators,
based on government reports of the
past few weeks:
"Industrial production has slip-
ped. Non-farm employment has
moved down. Unemployment has
risen. Business sales have declined.
(Continued on Page 2)
Yearbook Ads
By GOP Raise
Legal Furor
A political storm has been stirred
up by a Republican state commit-
tee's solicitation of $2,000-a-page
advertisements from corporations
for a GOP "yearbook" with the
clear suggestion it would "help"
Vice Pres. Nixon's campaign.
The solicitation went widespread
to corporations and said the ad
purchases could be legally made
and could be deducted as a busi-
ness expense for tax purposes.
(Continued on Page 2)
LOCKPORT, N. Y., crowd hemmed Sen. John F. Kennedy in when
he spoke from the rear seat of a convertible in western New York
State. The picture shows the presidential candidate with Mayor
Robert Wagner of New York City on the Democrat's first upstate
tour.
Kennedy in Uphill Fight:
Split Tickets Seen
By Grain Belt Voters
By Robert B. Cooney
Sioux Falls, S.D. — "Farmers are more interested in peace than
they are in prices."
This comment, expressed by a man in close touch with farmer
sentiment in the grain and corn belt and accepted as accurate by
other informed observers, indicates that a foreign policy crisis or
apparent crisis could help Vice^
Pres. Richard M. Nixon in Kansas,
Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota
in November.
A swing through the grain and
corn belt leaves the further im-
pression that otherwise many farm-
ers will remain torn until late in
the campaign between a pocket-
book protest and an increasing
anti-Catholic propaganda appeal.
Veteran political observers see
the farmer vote as decisive even
though it may. constitute a minority
of the total in a particular state.
As it now stands, observers
expect widespread ticket-splitting,
with Sen. John F. Kennedy in
an uphill fight in these tradition-
ally Republican states even as
Democrats increase party gains
otherwise.
The Democrats have a fighting
chance of retaining all four gov-
ernors' chairs. Four Republican
Says Nixon 's Stuck
With GOP Record
By Al Zack
En route with Kennedy — Sen. John F. Kennedy plowed through
normally-Republican areas of the Midwest calling for the full din-
ner pail as the answer to the Soviet threat.
We can't be strong enough to meet the Soviet challenge unless
we are first strong at home: that is the gospel Kennedy preached
and the crowds in the corn state where farm income is down and
factory jobs are shrinking, reacted with a roar.
It was a direct rebuttal to the Nixon "you-never-had-it-so-good"
line, and Kennedy urged those that believed Nixon to vote for his
opponent — "another Tom Dewey." But, "if you agree we can do
better," he continued, "if you be-3> —
lieve the balance of power is run- "]\T # IV T
INixonWoos
Liberals,
Dixiecrats
By Gene Zack
En route with Nixon — Vice
Pres. Nixon, campaigning on
both sides of the Mason-Dixon
Line, has almost abandoned the
Republican Party label in a bid
for conservative backing in the
South and liberal support in the
North.
Stepping up the tempo of his
presidential bid, Nixon sought to
formalize and cement the GOP-
Dixiecrat coalition in appearances
in southern states while still bidding
openly for liberal support in indus-
trial and urban areas in New York
and New Jersey.
The Vice President, speaking at
an early morning breakfast in New
York City, provided a clue as to
his possible reasons when he gave
several thousand New York "Inde-
pendents for Nixon-Lodge" this
formula for victory in November;
"In order to win," Nixon de-
(Continued on Page 12)
AFL-CIO Pledges Full Support
To Unions Forced into GE Strike
The full support of the AFL-CIO was swung solidly behind striking employes of the General
Electric Co. by Pres. George Meany after a meeting with representatives of unions having collective
bargaining relationships with the firm.
More than 70,000 members of the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers and 1,450 members
of the Technical Engineers were forced to the picket lines by the company's adamant refusal to
meet their needs of wages, job se-^~
curity and working conditions.
"The AFL-CIO will extend all
possible assistance to the unions
involved and their striking mem-
bers in their struggle to win a
fair and reasonable settlement,"
Meany said after the meeting,
Senate seats are up and observers
see a probable Democratic victory
in Iowa, a possible in South Dakota,
only a chance of a long-shot stun-
(Continued on Page 5)
ning against our country, if you
are concerned about steel produc-
tion at 50 percent of capacity and
the rise of Castro — then I want
your help."
The United States stands at a
crossroads, Kennedy said. He
coupled Nixon with Republicans
of the past — "McKinley, Cool-
idge, Harding, Dewey and Lan-
don, who even campaigned on
the single issue of repealing so-
cial security." But the road to
progress, to a better, stronger,
more powerful America which
could meet its obligations to his-
tory, was the path he chose, and
he said it was the path tradition-
ally chosen by the Democratic
party's greats — Wilson, Roose-
velt and Truman.
Much of this tour was spent in
economically depressed areas and
Kennedy said that these growing
islands of poverty "in the midst of
a rich, abundant America" were
a major, national problem.
Nixon, he noted, has also traveled
these areas. The difference between
them, Kennedy said, is that he sees
the suffering and want of families
struggling for the bare essentials of
decent life and Nixon sees the
(Continued on Page 12)
which was held in Washington.
"The strike can and should be
settled promptly in the public in-
terest as well as in the interest of
both parties.
"The way to a settlement is
clear — good faith bargaining by
GE with the striking unions.
"I appeal for such good faith
bargaining."
The strike was called after three
months of bargaining during which
both unions sought new agreements.
(Continued on Page 3)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTORER 8, I9t»
Yearbook Ads
By GOP Raise
Legal Furor
(Continued from Page 1)
Federal corrupt practice laws
forbid ' corporation or union con-
tributions or expenditures in con-
nection with" any federal election.
Carl L. Shipley, chairman of the
District of Columbia Republican
State Committee, hotly defended
the solicitations from corporations
as "one method of matching union
publications*' and COPE activities
but admits he is considering drop-
ping the project.
"I haven't thought it through,"
he said. "I may take it to the Dept.
of Justice or a Senate committee
and throw the whole thing — labor
union newspapers, convention pro-
grams and everything— in . their
laps."
Shipley insisted that the corrupt
practice laws contain a specific
exemption for corporation financing
of state political committees such
as his.
Democratic Reaction
W. John Kenney, chairman of
the D.C. Democratic State Com-
mittee, nevertheless promised to re-
port the "yearbook'* project to
Democratic National Committee
Chairman Henry M. Jackson, and
said that corporations would be
"well advised" not to purchase year-
book advertising because of corrupt
practices restrictions on political
expenditures of corporation funds.
Thomas E. Harris, associate
general counsel of the AFL-CIO,
challenged the view that corpora-
tion "advertising" purchases in Ship-
ley's "yearbook" were automatically
exempt under the law. One issue
might be how and to whom any
funds gathered were passed along
to "help" in the Nixon campaign,
he said.
Shipley said that his District of
Columbia project was "patterned"
after a similar plan in New York.
Asked what the committee
planned to use the money for,
Shipley said that the yearbook
would be published "some time
after January 1961." On rais-
ing money he said,
"We don't have to do it this
way. We can get plenty of
money otherwise; we'd rather
not.''
The solicitation of corporation
funds enclosed a letter from Robert
V. Fleming, president of the Riggs
National Bank, the capitals's big-
gest, saying:
"Republicans and Independents,
as well as some Democrats, are
deeply concerned about the future
of our country, and believe that
Dick Nixon Will provide the best
leadership. . . If you are one, here's
how you can help."
Pitch to Corporations
His letter pointed out that "cor-
porations such as Ford and Gulf
Oil are encouraging their employes
to become active in politics," and
said that "corporations . . . can
buy advertising space in political
publications." He adds that the
D.C. Republican solicitation "may
suggest another way in which com-
panies like yours can play a more
important part in supporting the
cause of good government."
The advertising solicitation speci-
fied that such advertising "sells
when it reaches the RIGHT
people," and that the yearbook
would "do just that."
Best of all, the circular assured
the businessmen, "you can take an
income tax exemption" on the cost
of "placing an advertisement for
your business" in such a yearbook,
"even though the ad is not devoted
to describing your products" and
was "used to praise a political
party."
'Give Me A Push'
Policy Group Warns
U. S. Near Recession
(Continued from Page 1)
Total wage and salary payments by
private industry moved down in
August, after increasing only slight-
ly in July. New orders for goods
placed with manufacturers have
been slipping since last December,
with significant declines in June and
July. The backlog of manufac-
turer's unfilled orders has been
falling since the end of 1959.
"Business outlays for new plants
and machines, which had been ris-
ing for 21 months, are now level-
ing off, according to government re-
ports. With about a fifth of indus-
try's plants and machines already
idle and sales pointing down — while
present installations of new ma-
chines are increasing industry's
ability to produce more goods, more
efficiently — business is expected to
reduce its investment outlays by
the end of the year or early in 1961.
'^Layoffs and short work-weeks
have been cutting the buying
power of a large number of fam-
ilies. If this situation continues,
reduced family buying power
will result in declining sales of
consumer hard-goods and other
expensive items in the months
ahead."
The committee recalled that a
similar "lull and weakness" of busi-
ness activities in the first eight
months of 1957 heralded the 1957-
8 recession, which saw unemploy-
ment rise to more than 5 million.
It declared that "expected small
increases" in federal, state and local
spending in the months ahead "will
not be enough to prevent a general
decline of sales, production and
employment," with business invest-
ment headed downward and sales
of consumer hard goods probably
slackening off.
"The economy is moving rapidly
towards another recession," the
committee maintained.
"A recession, under present con-
ditions, probably will mean greater
unemployment that at any time
since the depression of the 1930s.
"The reason is that the economy
never fully recovered from the 1954
and 1958 recessions. Unemploy-
ment is already considerably higher
than it was before the recession of
1957-1958 started. Joblessness has
been rising from one post-recession
period to another, ever since 1953.
Sees More Jobless
"Should another recession start
from the present high level of un-
employment, the number of jobless
will probably rise sharply to over
5 million — to some 7 percent, 8
percent or more of the labor force.
"Despite these threatening devel-
opments, Pres. Eisenhower and his
Administration are permitting busi-
ness activities to continue to weak-
en, regardless of production and in-
come losses and distress for a ris-
ing number of unemployed."
The committee declared that re-
cessions are not inevitable but are
man-made, "the result of wrong
policies and errors of judgment,"
and thus can be avoided. If they
do occur their damage can be re-
duced, "but to avoid recessions or
to reduce their impact, decisive
government policies and actions are
required," the committee main-
tained.
"Only weak government ac-
tions have been taken thus far,"
it added. "The Federal Reserve
Board has reduced the discount
rate from a high 4 percent to 3
percent, which is still high for
a period of weakening business
activities. Interest rates on busi-
ness and consumer loans remain
high.
"The placement of government
contracts has been stepped up
slightly. Some small increase of
funds has been made available for
road-building. In combination,
these government measures are
much too weak to lift sales, pro-
duction and employment, when
most business activities are weaken-
ing."
Government Spending Needed
The committee declared that "a
substantial pickup" in the place-
ment of government contracts is
needed now, plus "step-up of fed-
eral government expenditures to
meet the need for improved public
services" and a "further easing" of
interest rates on loans.
"If the Eisenhower Administra-
tion fails to head off ,a recession,"
it concluded, "it will be the job of
the new administration to act with
vigor in January to provide a boost
to sagging economic activities."
Readjusted 9 Out of Jobs:
GOP's Anderson
"Explains' Downturn
The Eisenhower Administration has come up with a new expla-
nation of the economic danger signals that point to a possible
new recession: the country is undergoing a "fundamental readjust-
ment."
In an obvious attempt to quiet recession jitters, Treasury Sec.
Robert B. Anderson told the an-
nual meeting of the World Bank
that the "readjustment" is the re-
sult of a "new environment"
brought on by Administration poli-
cies that have "struck down both
the fear and the fact of inflation."
Anderson predicted "that the
outlook for economic activity in
this country is favorable both for
the near future and for many years
ahead."
He paid passing attention to
unemployment and the low rate
of steel production as "trouble-
some," but said overall there is
on tap a "long period of sustain-
able non-inflationary growth."
An Administration report issued
a few days after Anderson's speech
jarred the general bullish tone. The
Budget Bureau's mid-year review
showed that the $4.2 billion sur-
plus foreseen last January by Pres.
Eisenhower has melted to $1.1
billion.
Part of the drop came from a
failure of corporate profits to match
the $51 billion forecast. The Ad-
ministration has revised its predic-
tion to $47 billion by the end of
the fiscal year, a figure equal to
the record set in fiscal 1959.
The Administration's report
indicated a heavy reliance on a
sharp upturn in business in the
closing months of the year, but
most economists look for no im-
provement, or even a downturn.
Anderson's speech was discussed
at length in the Administration, the
Wall Street Journal reported, by
the President, the head of the Fed-
eral Reserve Board and the Council
of Economic Advisers.
It contrasted sharply with the
CEA's monthly "Economic Indica-
tors" report for September which
revealed a number of danger sig-
nals, confirming to some extent
analyses that the economy is head-
ing downward and the possibility
of a recession is growing stronger.
The CEA indicators showed a
trend to shorter workweeks, a drop
in overtime hours, continuing high
unemployment, a lag in personal
income growth and a drop in in-
dustrial production.
Personal income in August
reached a new high rate of
$407.6 billion, but there would
have been no increase except for
the one-shot effect of a federal
pay increase opposed by the Ad-
ministration and passed over the
President's veto.
Despite the rise in employment
to new records in August, the sea-
sonally adjusted unemployment rate
rose from 5.4 to 5.9 percent of the
labor force.
Instead of rising in August as
it generally does, the average fac-
tory workweek slipped from 39.8
hours to 39.7 hours with a re-
sultant loss in overtime hours.
Rise in Jobless Claims
Points to 3rd Recession
An important economic indicator that has pointed to the
onset of the last two recessions is moving in the same direction
this fall.
The Labor Dept. reports that initial claims for unemploy-
ment compensation increased between June and September
this year, a circumstance that has occured only twice before
in the postwar period in 1953 and 1957.
The figures show also that the actual number of new job-
less claims in September is the largest number on record for
any postwar September, and is higher than the number of
claims during recession periods.
The June to September increases in 1953 and 1957 came
just prior to the onset of the 1954 and 1958 recessions.
Kennedy Says Govt.
'Admits Stagnation 9
Indianapolis — The Admin-
istration's revised estimates on
the federal budget for fiscal
1961 are an "official admis-
sion of the current state of
stagnation in our economy
Sen. John F. Kennedy
charged here.
The $2 billion the Budget
Bureau now admits the gov-
ernment will fall short in
revenue reflects a failure of
business to operate as pre-
dicted, the Democratic pres-
idential nominee pointed out.
This amount of money "would
have financed the Democratic
housing, depressed area and
federal aid to education 99
programs.
Meany Raps
Dominican
Sugar Deal
The decision of the Agriculture
Dept. to allocate the purchase of
321,857 tons of sugar to the Do-
minican Republic is a "flagrant
contradiction" of the action of the
American foreign ministers at their
San Jose, Costa Rica, meeting,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
advised Pres. Eisenhower.
The AFL-CIO is "shocked" by
the decision, which was made to
offset a cut of 700,000 tons from
the Cuban sugar quota, Meany
said.
Meany noted that the San Jose
meeting condemned the Dominican
Republic, ordered the breaking of
diplomatic relations and recom-
mended economic sanctions.
"This action was taken with
the favorable vote of the U.S.
delegation," he pointed out. "This
fact alone constitutes a moral
commitment to at least not in-
crease economic help to the Do-
minican Republic leadership.
'The AFL-CIO fully under-
stands and sympathizes with the
protests voiced in Latin American
trade unions and democratic circles
against this action on the part of
the U.S. government. We therefore
urge prompt reconsideration so that
no additional purchase of sugar
from the Dominican Republic be
authorized as long as the Domini-
can Republic is not readmitted as a
full-fledged member of the Amer-
ican family of nations."
Mississippi Labor
Supports Kennedy
Jackson, Miss. — A special con-
vention of the State Labor Council,
meeting on a day when Vice Pres.
Nixon was here for a campaign
speech, voted unanimously to af-
firm the AFL-CIO endorsement of
the Kennedy-Johnson slate and to
"work unreservedly" for its elec-
tion.
The board said the people of
Mississippi have for several weeks
been 4 *subjected to a deliberate
campaign of misrepresentation and
confusion designed to camouflage
the real issues in this- election."
Those responsible for the campaign,
it said, include the governor of
Mississippi, "other would-be dema-
gogues," and many newspapers of
the state.
AFI^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
Pa<re Thre#
Until Last Fired Is Rehired :
San Francisco Unions Vote
To Continue Sears Boycott
San Francisco — Until the last fired employe is rehired and made whole, and until Sears Roebuck
& Co. meets the conditions laid down by the AFL-CIO Executive Council, the labor movement here
has pledged itself to continue its boycott against the nation's largest general store.
This decision came from a special meeting of more than 300 local unionists and has been un-
animously reaffirmed by the San Francisco Labor Council.
The action followed on the heels£-
of Sears Roebuck's re-hiring of a
majority of the 262 union mem-
bers fired last May for respecting
a Machinists' picket line.
When Machinists Lodge 1327
reached an agreement on its con-
tract with the firm, Labor Coun-
cil Sec. George W. Johns de-
clared that the council's plans
would not be changed and that
it would continue the boycott.
To back up the council's pledge,
Johns said "a hard core of unions,
convinced of the necessity for con-
tinuing this fight," had committed
itself to maintaining indefinitely a
minimum boycott line at the two
centcent of the 2.1 million workers
San Francisco stores.
And to supplement the ''hard
core** line, the labor council is
calling on each local union to
pledge voluntary help with a min-
imum of at least four picket hours
per week.
Council Approves Statement
A statement approved by the
labor council denounced the com-
pany for the manner in which it
recalled the fired employes.
"In the very act of recalling
these employes, the company com-
Labor Support Pledged
To Striking GE Unions
(Continued from Page 1)
The IUE walked out at more than
50 GE plants in all parts of the
country.
The AFTE struck at Lynn, Mass.,
where the company terminated its
contract, and at Philadelphia. Its
members also are observing IUE
picket lines at six other locations.
Despite company claims, all
but a handful of IUE members
joined in the strike.
"This is a strike which we in the
union did not want," IUE said in
an advertisement in the. New York
Times.
'This is a strike we in the union
did not need. This is a strike
which we in the union tried, in ev-
ery honorable way we knew, to
avoid. This is a strike which can
be easily settled.
"This is a strike which the com-
pany apparently felt it needed to
convince it of the complete unac-
ceptability of its meagre proposal."
NMU Votes Backing
The Washington meeting was set
as the convention of the Maritime
Union, meeting in New York, voted
solid support for the IUE strikers
after hearing the issues discussed by
IUE Pres. James B. Carey, who
had led the union's negotiators dur-
ing the long and fruitless nego-
tiating sessions.
Only hours before, a move by a
three-man panel of the Federal Me-,
diation & Conciliation Service to
head the parties toward a settlement
had failed. Carey described the
session as "fruitless." John A.
Burke, head of the panel, reported
"no appreciable progress" and "no
change in position." Another meet-
ing was set for Oct. 7.
The principal issues in the bar-
gaining impasse are wages and job
security.
The union is asking a two-year
contract with a wage increase of
3.5 percent each year; continuation
of the cost-of-living escalator clause
which has been in the contract since
1955; a supplementary unemploy-
ment benefits plan similar to those
that have become standard practice
in other basic industries; seniority
protection in transfers, upgrading
and training for new job tech-
niques, with the right to arbitrate
disputes, and improved vacation
and insurance provisions.
The company's basic offer was a
three-year contract wtih a wage
increase of 3 percent immediately
and another of 4 percent on Apr.
2, 1962, or an average of 2.3 per-
cent a year; a job retraining pro-
gram completely under company
direction for those whose employ-
ment is wiped out because of layoffs
or plant closings; improvements in
pension and insurance plans which
the union has called inadequate,
and discontinuance of the escalator
clause, which now accounts for 10
cents an hour in each employe's
wage.
GE also offered variations on its
basic offer which juggled but did
not increase wages or materially
improve other conditions.
The company's efforts after the
strike started to create the im-
pression that all unions with
which it bargains have settled
except the IUE were branded
"outrageous" by Nicholas Zonar-
ich, organizational director of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.,
following a meeting of the de-
partment's Westinghouse - GE
Conference Board.
A rundown showed, he said, that
only eight of some 80 non-lUE
bargaining units, representing 7,649
of the 100,000 workers for whom
conference members bargain, have
agreed on new contracts.
The settlements involved locals
of the UAW and the Machinists,
and in each case the basic offer was
fattened by additional concessions
on wages or fringe benefits, Zona-
rich said.
Many locals of other unions have
rejected the company offer and
taken strike votes, he continued.
Picket lines . are being observed by
members of the IBEW, IAM and
Technical Engineers where separate
bargaining units exist within struck
plants. In Louisville, Ky., the un-
affiliated Kentucky Skilled Craft
Guild, which only a few months
ago was raiding IUE Local 761, is
observing the picket line and co-
operating with the strikers.
The IUD meeting called the GE
offer a "takeaway program," de-
spite what might be in any local
offer. Zonarich declared:
"The company is up to its usual
tricks and, as usual, is attempting
to split the workers. It is strange
that this huge corporation can sud-
denly afford to make concessions
to some workers but not to others.
GE's game is transparent. It is
seeking to undertake a punitive
campaign against IUE and others
with the objective of restoring com-
pany unionism in its own plants
and throughout America.
"Just as the attack upon the
Steelworkers was frustrated this
year, so will this new anti-labor
attack be repulsed."
Some disorder was reported at a
few plants where scabs sought to
breach picket lines. But at Syra-
cuse, N. Y., deputies who outnum-
bered strikebreakers started fighting
among themselves and had to be
disarmed by local police.
mitted new transgressions against
decency and morality," it declared.
The statement charged the com-
pany with renewed disregard of its
union contracts, downgrading of
workers, suspension of employes'
rights, "and other actions demon-
strating the Shefferman technique
is far from forgotten." It went on:
"The long record of anti-
unionism on the part of the com-
pany , . . together with its con-
tinuing irresponsible and immoral
actions (in San Francisco), make
it obvious that the fight is far
from won • • . We now enter a
new phase of the boycott, with
the full recognition that what is
involved is a continuing boycott
against this immoral organization
directed toward the goals that
are now the national policy of
the AFL-CIO."
The council referred to the Au-
gust statement of the AFL-CIO
Executive Council calling for a
boycott until the company ends its
interference with employes' right to
self-organization and demonstrates
"good-faith acceptance of union
security clauses in its contracts."
With the Machinists back at
work, current figures indicate that
some 40 fired employes — mem-
bers of the Retail Clerks and the
Teamsters — have not yet been re-
called. Contract violations involv-
ing the fired clerks are in the pro-
cess of arbitration, but the com-
pany's attorney made it plain
throughout the hearings that the
company would not hesitate to
take any unfavorable decision into
court for review.
Hugh Haynie, Louisville Courier-Journal
Rail Clerks End Braniff
Strike with Pay Hikes
Wage increases up to $80 a month were won for more than 2,400
members of the Railway Clerks after a 10-day strike against Braniff
Intl. Airways. 0
The settlement was reached in negotiations at Dallas, Tex., the
company's headquarters, with the aid of the National Mediation
Board. Agreement came soorff—
after an emergency meeting of the
Association of Air Transport Un-
ions had been called for Washing-
ton by Chairman A. J. Hayes, pres-
ident of the Machinists.
Vice Pres. C. L. Dennis of the
Agency Shop in RTW
State Before NLRB
The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled oral argu-
ment to consider whether a company can be required to bargain
on the issue of an "agency-shop" contract in a state which bans the
union shop.
The test case, to be heard Oct. 27 by the full five-member board
involves a charge by the Auto'$> :
Workers that General Motors Corp.
has illegally refused to bargain on
the union's demand for an agency-
Keep Bible Week,
Meany Urges Labor
Participation of union members
in the 20th annual National Bible
Week, which will be observed Oct.
17 to 23, has been urged by AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany, who is
an honorary vice-chairman of the
observance.
"All of us ^ at all times need
spiritual guidance and assistance,"
he said. "This is especially true
in these days when so many im-
portant decisions must be made for
peace with justice in the world; for
solution of civil rights, housing,
education, social security, industrial
and other problems here at home;
for happiness within our families,
and harmonious relations with our
brothers.
"The Book of Books can pro-
vide the answers to our problems
as individuals, as groups and as
nations."
National Bible Week is sponsored
by the interfaith Laymen's National
Committee, Inc. The theme for
the week is "The Bible — Strength
of Our Nation." Chairman of the
observance is Edward C. Werle,
chairman of the board of directors
of the New York Stock Exchange. | for the next six months.
shop agreement covering GM plants
in Indiana.
While Indiana has a so-called
"right-to-work" law, state courts
have upheld the legality of agency-
shop contracts under which em-
ployes who do not join a union pay
a service fee normally equal to
union dues. The fee is considered
compensation for the union's col-
lective bargaining role on behalf of
all workers in the bargaining unit.
NLRB General Counsel Stuart
Rothman, supporting the UAW de-
mand that General Motors be re-
quired to bargain on the issue, has
taken the position that:
• Congress contemplated that
agency-shop agreements be legal in
all states as a solution to the free-
rider problem.
• The NLRB in the past, both
under the Wagner Act and the
Taft-Hartley Act, has upheld agen-
cy-shop provisions, although no
case involving a "right-to-work"
state has previously come before
the board.
Unions Refuse Pay
Loan to Railroad
Rail unions have politely but
firmly turned down the request of
the New Haven line that the rail-
road's 12,000 employes "loan" the
company 10 percent of their pay
Railway Clerks, who led the
brotherhood negotiators, and
Chairman C. E. Robinson of the
union's Braniff system organiza-
tion, said that under the agree-
ment 82 percent of all employes
will get increases totalling $70 a
month over three years, and 10
percent will get $80.
The first group will receive $20
monthly retroactive to Jan. 1; $5
retroactive to Aug. 1; $25 on Jan.
1, 1961, and $20 on Jan. 1, 1962.
The second group will receive $20
retroactive to Jan. 1; $10 retro-
active to Aug. 1; $30 on Jan. 1,
1961, and $20 on Jan. 1, 1962.
Skycaps will get 45 cents an hour
in pay boosts over the life of the
contract, with other employes av-
eraging 41 cents. The settlement
provided that all strikers be put
back to work within 15 days; most
of them were scheduled to return
on the two days following the agree-
ment.
Affected by the strike were the
air line's cargo and ticket services
and clerical staff. The walkout
was felt in some 50> cities, mostly in
Texas and the Midwest, but extend-
ing also into Florida and New
York and to South America.
Pledges of Support
Pledges of support were re-
ceived from other unions. Pres.
Joseph A. Beirne of the Communi-
cations Workers and Pres. Michael
J. Quill of the Transport Workers
urged Braniff employes represented
by their unions to respect the picket
lines, as have the unaffiliated Team-
sters. Backing also is being sought
from unions in South American
countries served by Braniff.
Expected to attend the meet-
ing of the Association of Air
Transport Unions were repre-
sentatives of the Railway Clerks,
IAM, Air Line Pilots, Transport
Workers, Air Line Dispatchers,
Flight Engineers and Auto Work-
ers.
The association was set up in
broad outline during the AFL-CIO
convention in San Francisco in Sep-
tember 1959 and was formally or*
ganized during the following winter.
Page Four
Boards of 2
Food Unions
Back Kennedy
The executive boards of the Meat
Cutters & Butcher Workmen and
the Packinghouse Workers have en-
dorsed Sen. John F. Kennedy for
President.
In announcing the decision the
UPWA board took at a meeting in
Chicago, Pres. Ralph Helstein said
the Democratic platform on which
Kennedy and his running mate,
Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, are cam-
paigning presents a "legislative in-
tention closely aligned with the re-
peatedly expressed national objec-
tives of our union."
While Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon and the Republicans are
''making gestures toward human-
izing their official doctrine," Hel-
stein said, nevertheless they "re-
main the loyal representatives" of
the business community. If the
powers of the presidency are given
to Kennedy, "the frustrating con-
gressional roadblocks which have
prevented the passage of needed so-
cial legislation for many years could
be bulldozed aside and new sources
of power tapped to move creaky
congresional machinery," he added.
'The consequences of a Nixon
victory," he warned, "would be
seized on by employers every-
where as the signal for ruthless
attacks upon our unions and on
the working conditions which we
have labored so hard and so
long to achieve."
The Meat Cutters board, meeting
in Philadelphia, unanimously called
on the union's 375 members in 450
locals to support Kennedy actively.
The board based its approval on
a study of "the comparative records
of and the comparative expectation
for action by the two presidential
candidates," and on an analysis of
the party platforms on which they
.are running.
In addition the union's leader-
ship urged locals, joint councils
and state branches to support can-
didates for congressional, state and
local offices who are endorsed by
COPE in their respective areas. It
also called for contributions of at
least $1 per member to COPE.
Canadian SIU
Locked Out of
100 Vessels
Montreal — A management asso-
ciation has locked out seamen on
100 Canadian Great Lakes ships
after the Seafarers struck one of
the five member companies of the
Lake Carriers' Association.
SIU Canadian headquarters, de-
claring that the limited strike was
decided upon so as not to endanger
the Canadian economy at a time
when the big fall movement of
grain is getting under way, sharply
criticized the management group
for halting shipping.
The strike was called against
the 36 ships of N.M. Paterson &
Sons, Ltd. Contracts signed with
association firms normally set the
pattern for some 14,000 Cana-
dian SIU members.
A key issue in the dispute is the
union's demand for a 40-hour week.
The employers' association has in-
sisted that seamen take a pay cut
as the price of a reduction in hours.
The union said the company pro-
posal would mean a $20 a week
reduction for deckhands.
CORRECTION
Two members of the Carpenters'
executive board shown with Sen.
John F. Kennedy in a picture used
on Page 16 of the Oct. 1 issue of
the AFL-CIO News were incor-
rectly identified. Pictured were
Lyle J. Hiller, left, and Henry W.
Chandler, center. The Wide World
photo agency caption accompany-
ing the photograph erroneously
identified them as Harry Schwarzer
and Joseph Cambiano.
REGISTRATION POSTER is ready for bulletin board of union
hall across street from General Motors Fleetwood plant after man-
agement rejected posters on company bulletin board. Left to
right: Local Pres. Joseph W. Gilmore, Jesse Wilson, delegate to
Wayne County AFL-CIO Council.
New Registrations May
Produce Record Vote
Unofficial preliminary reports indicate that in every area where
labor-sponsored Citizens' Non-Partisan Registration Committees
are at work, registrations for the November elections are reaching
all-time high records.
The cooperation of local committees with other non-partisan
registration groups thus portends a^"
new record vote when the people
go to the polls on Nov. 8.
The committees were set up by
the AFL-CIO' Executive Council at
its August meeting in Chicago and
are financed by a contribution of 5
cents per member from affiliates.
Their activities have been con-
centrated in areas of large popula-
tion in California, Illinois, Indiana,
Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mary-
land, Minnesota, Missouri, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsyl-
vania and Wisconsin. Local com-
mittees have been set up in scores
of communities under the over-all
direction of Carl McPeak, who
was appointed to direct the drive
by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Reports indicate that labors
campaign may account for about
50 percent of new registrations in
some sections.
California Achievement
In California, outstanding work
.was done by the Community Serv-
ice Organization, Inc., an associa-
tion devoted to helping Americans
of Spanish descent take their place
in political life. With the aid of
financing from the Citizens' Non-
Partisan Registration Committee,
this 14-year-old group was able to
place both full-time and part-time
registrars in the field who registered
138,717 new voters between Aug.
1 and Sept. 15 — most of them in
Southern California and the Cen-
tral Valley. Mrs. Erma Flores of
San Mateo personally enrolled
more than 2,300 new voters.
Indications are that statewide,
registration will show an increase
of 1 million over 1958. A pre-
liminary report covering five coun-
ties where the committee has been
active indicates a 616,000 jump —
Los Angeles County with a 460,-
000 increase; Alameda County,
54,000; San Francisco County,
36,000; San Mateo County, 32,000;
Santa Clara County, 44,000.
In Philadelphia a coordinated
registration drive added 177,000
new voters to the rolls. Mayor
Richardson Dilworth (D) lauded
the role of the local AFL-CIO
committee as "a major factor"
in attaining this goal and urged
it to continue "just as energetic-
ally in urging registered voters to
vote Nov. 8." The local drive
was led by Edward F. Toohey,
director of Labor's League for
Political Education, and Pres.
Joseph Kelley of the Philadel-
phia Industrial Union Council.
At the other end of Pennsyl-
vania, in Pittsburgh and Allegheny
County, 74,866 new registrations
were recorded. This resulted in
about 50,000 more than the Jan. 1
total of 862,397 registered.
In St. Louis County, Mo., reg-
istration jumped to an all-time
high of 338,500 with the help of
a total of 85,077 voters recorded
on Sept. 16, a day when the Citi-
zens' Non-Partisan Registration
Committee had 407 people at
work.
Local labor committees also
played major roles in helping set
new records in Ohio's three largest
communities.
Sharp Rise in Ohio
In Cuyahoga County (Cleve-
land) there were 839,632 regis-
tered, or 50,000 more than two
years ago; in Hamilton County
(Cincinnati), the figure was 452,-
926, compared to 397,889 in 1958;
and in Franklin County (Colum-
bus), it was 318,873 compared to
281,287 two years ago.
It is expected that 4 million votes
will be cast in Ohio on Nov. 8.
The total was 3.7 million in both
1952 and 1956.
The labor-sparked drive in In-
diana enabled Pres. Edward T.
Windham of the Indianapolis Cen-
tral Labor Council to persuade the
bipartisan Marion County Election
Board to expand registration facili-
ties because of jams during the
evening sessions of roving registra-
tion boards.
In addition, the Indiana Republi-
can State Committee blurted out
that it ''stands in amazement and
shock" at the use of union money
to finance voter registration, which
it claimed in a resolution was con-
fined to voters favoring Democratic
candidates.
'It seems strange," rejoined Pres.
Dallas Sells of the Indiana AFL-
CIO, ' that the press and the Re-
publican State Committee com-
mend the Jaycees and other civic
groups for their programs on regis-
tration, but condemns labor. We
in the Indiana AFL-CIO refuse to
become second-class citizens."
In eight Maryland areas includ-
ing Baltimore City, thanks at least
in part to organized labor, new
registrations jumped 138,717 since
Jan. 1, an increase of 13.6 percent.
In New Jersey, some 250,000
new registrations were obtained to
send the 1959 total of 2.7 million
above the 3 million mark.
Peace and Prices :
Fence-Sitting Farm
Vote to Swing Iowa
Des Moines — "The guy sitting on the farm swings the election,"
commented Eddress (Soapy) Owens, a strapping Auto Worker who
gets around his native Iowa as Democratic state registration chair-
man.
And, it appears from a quick survey of farmers and observers
in this corn state, that many farm-'$-
ers are sitting on the fence on the
farm.
Farmers are increasingly upset
over the cost-price squeeze but,
observers agree, there are other
factors that bother them.
Donald Murphy, respected re-
search director for Wallace's
Farmer, told the AFL-CIO News
that "all the evidence we have
been able to get is that Nixon
gains in a period of foreign pol-
icy stress. Kennedy gains when
they (farmers) begin thinking
about farm prices."
It is conceded by labor observers
that Sen. John F. Kennedy, the
Democratic contender, would need
a farmer protest vote to capture
this state's 10 electoral votes.
Gov. Herschel C. Loveless (D), a
popular figure commanding bipar-
tisan support, is a heavy favorite to
win the Senate seat vacated by
retiring Republican Sen. Thomas
Martin. Loveless is running against
State Sen. Jack Miller (R).
The gubernatorial race has stir-
red little surface interest and a close
contest is seen between Edward J.
(Nick) McManus (D) and Nor-
man A. Erbe (R):
Conservative Town Vote
The backbone of Republican
strength in this strongly Methodist
state is in the small towns, those
with populations ranging between
2,500 and 10,000 Observers say
the city vote splits about evenly
between the two parties, leaving
the farm minority with the balance
of power.
Murphy points out that Love-
less won in 1958 when he gained
55 percent of the farm vote and
58 percent of the city vote while
getting but 47.5 percent in the
small towns. In the special elec-
tion in 1959 in the 4th Congres-
sional district in south central
Iowa, the Republican candidate
recaptured the seat which a
Democrat had won for the first
time in 1958 when the GOP got
59 percent from the towns and
but 47.7 percent from the farm-
ers.
Ray Mills, president of the Iowa
AFL-CIO, and Owens saw improve-
ment ahead because of organized
labors registration drives in Iowa's
growing cities, but said that the
state's GOP tradition was strong.
If most farmers seem to be
indulging in the luxury of inde-
cision until time forces a choice
between economic self-interest
and a deeply-ingrained attitude,
farmer Harold Simon has made
up his mind. Clad in overalls
and bronzed by the Iowa sun,
Simon sat in his Ford truck off
Main Street in Anita in south-
western Iowa and talked freely.
"I consider myself a Republican/'
he said, but he planned to vote the
Democratic ticket. "Cattle prices
are down. Hog prices are not up
where' they should be," he added.
He complained, too, that reduced
income has put new tractors out of
reach.
Labor Drive Steps Up
Nebraska Registration
Omaha, Neb. — A determined union leadership rolled mobile
registration units into meat-packing plant areas here and in a few
days ran up 745 registrations.
Even with such results, union observers recognize they face a
hard battle in their drive to help elect Robert Conrad (D) and
uriseat Sen. Carl T. Curtis (R). $ —
For the governorship, the
Democrats are rated as having a
good chance of winning with
lawyer Frank B. Morrison over
a John Cooper (R), advertised
as a lawmaker-businessman-farm-
er.
Observers report that Curtis has
the advantage of a well-financed,
well-organized Republican organ-
ization in the vast "outside" areas.
The organization is said to have
been priming for this campaign in
the two years since Democrat
Ralph Brooks in 1958 pulled an
upset by winning the governor's
chair by four-tenths of 1 percent
of the vote. Brooks had entered
the Senate race against Curtis but
died of a heart attack Sept. 9,
just before the deadline for with-
drawal. Conrad, his aide, was
nominated by the state committee.
Labor probably is better or-
ganized than ever before for get-
ting out a large vote in Nebraska
this year.
Pres. Richard W. Nisley of the
Nebraska AFL-CIO, Larry Glynn,
year-round state COPE director,
and Nels Petersen, state secretary-
treasurer, planned registration work
up to the last minute Oct. 28 and
29 deadlines.
The railway unions, strong and
distributed throu ghout the "outstate"
areas, are working 'TOO percent."
There have been furious "feather-
bedding" attacks on rail unions and
^they also were hampered by pas-
sage of the Landrum-Griffin Act.
In Nisley s view, the Democratic
presidential ticket headed by Sen.
John F. Kennedy is a strong one.
It "could be the difference this
year," he said.
Glynn reported that coordi-
nated registration drives have
been mounted through central
labor bodies in the eight larger
cities "outstate." This can be
significant because of a legal
quirk that favors the GOP: Reg-
istration is required in order to
vote in towns with population
over 7,000, but in smaller pre-
dominantly Republican commu-
nities, one simply goes out and
votes on election day.
In Douglas County, where Oma-
ha and the world's largest livestock
and meat-packing center are lo-
cated, the state has one-fourth of
its population and unions have one-
half of their state membership.
Petersen, in describing how the
mobile registration units taken into
the Armour, Swift, Wilson and
Cudahy plant areas boosted regis-
tration 10 percent, made clear
there remained many unregistered
workers and they would all be
reached.
Another union representative told
how, when the Lincoln Chamber of
Commerce had registrars deputized
to sit in banks, the union responded
by having registrars placed in fire
stations throughout Lincoln.
AFI^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
Page Flv*
Right Winger at Bay :
Democrat Mc Govern Draws
Blood in Debate with Mundt
Sioux Falls, S. D. — Rep. George McGovern (D), hammering away at the voting record of Sen.
Karl Mundt (R), has drawn blood in what are known here as the "Big NT debates.
A Republican worker here said Mundt had been campaigning for his third term like a gentle-
man but got '"angry" up in Huron.
The Associated Press report of the debate, sponsored by the League of Women Voters and held
before an estimated 1,400 people,
showed that McGovern accused
Mundt of posing as a friend "but
more often than not voting against
the people." He cited pre-World
War II preparedness and rural
electrification.
Mundt on Defensive
According to the report, Mundt
was on the defensive in much of
the debate, but, angrily .denied
charges of isolationism and hostility
to the REA.
Mundt's voting record is gen-
erally that of a rightwing Repub-
lican. He is listed by AFL-CIO
COPE as having, from the stand-
point of labor, seven "right" votes
and 37 "wrong" across his Senate
career. The "wrong" votes in-
Kansas Labor Seeks
Votes at Every Door
Topeka — "Knock on every door."
This, according to Exec. Sec.-Treas. Floyd Black of the Kansas
AFL-CIO, is organized labor's approach in a systematic registra-
tion and get-out-the-vote drive reaching into working class wards
and precincts
Gov. George Docking (D), run-
ning against Attorney-Gen. John
Anderson (R), is bucking a strong
anti-third term tradition.
Frank Theis (D), a lawyer cred-
ited with putting the Democratic
Party "on the map" in this Re-
publican state, is running a vigor-
ous campaign against a previously
unbeaten Sen. Andrew F. Schoep-
pel (R).
The trade unions of Kansas
are supporting Docking and
Theis and backing it up with an
intensive and, to listen to the
rank and file, an enthusiastic
campaign.
Schoeppel, a two-term Senate
veteran, is one of the Republican
Party's extreme right wing. He is
listed in COPE record as having
voted 38 times against what labor
considers the public interest and
only three times "right."
The affirmative votes were on
farm supports, foreign aid and
armed forces integration. The
negatives included labor issues and
roll calls on public power, social
security, the natural gas and Dixon-
Yates "giveaways," interest rates
and war profits, public housing and
depressed areas.
Jim Yount, vice president of the
state AFL-CIO and coordinator of
the Committee on Political Educa
tion (COPE), said labor's non
partisan campaign would help pro
duce "the greatest registration in
the history of the state."
Mrs. Jean O'Gorman, a pretty
and vivacious young telephone
worker on whom no one is likely
to slam a*door, described a recent
evening's polling activity in eastern
Kansas.
Husband and Wife Team
Visiting 108 homes, pollers
counted 110 Democrats and 50 Re-
publicans, with 50 of the Demo
crats unregistered.
Mrs. O'Gorman, who has taken
60 days leave from her job as serv-
ice representative with Southwest-
ern Bell, is a member of Communi-
cations' Workers' Local 6327 in
Kansas City, Mo. and serves as
COPE's Women's Activities Direc
tor for Johnson County.
Robert P. O'Gorman, her hus
band, is an electrician at Jensen
Salsbery Laboratories and a mem-
ber of the Packinghouse Workers.
He said that when he and his
wife found no Democratic organi-
zation in their precinct, "we just
took hold and organized it." Both
now are precinct committeemen.
If there are political surprises
in Kansas, they will come out of
the hard, unsung work of people
like the O'Gormans in the con-
text of a changing state economy.
Kansas, long known as a wheat
and corn state, has been undergo-
ing rapid industrialization. In a
July report, Gov. Docking noted
that manufacturing payrolls for the
seventh straight year had made the
largest single contribution to per-
sonal income in Kansas.
Union membership reflects
the industrial growth. In 1939,
there were only 39,000 union
members in Kansas; by 1953,
there were 131,000, according to
a 1957 study by the National
Bureau of Economic Research.
The non-agricultural work force
now totals 550,000.
Political factors in Kansas in
elude declining farm income in the
western wheat regions and unem-
ployment, with some 35,000 job
less in June representing 4.2 per-
cent of the workforce compared to
3.0 percent a year earlier. Air-
craft cutbacks in Wichita and a
construction slump are behind the
job drop.
Observers agree that Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon at present seems
likely to carry the state.
While the Nixon-Kennedy con-
test is receiving more prominence
in the press, the state rivalries seem
to be generating more popular ex-
citement.
Black, in a comment supported
by other observers, said Docking
is "just a little bit ahead right
now" and that "from here on in,
Theis is going to pick up."
Docking, whose slogan is "fiscal
sanity," was described by a con-
servative observer as "tighter than
bark on a tree when it comes to
spending his own money and the
public's money."
Docking captured 56.5 percent
of the vote in 1958 in becoming
the first Democrat ever to win a
second term. No one has ever won
a third term.
Docking's popular appeal is said
to have increased greatly on such
issues as favoring a reduced sales
tax and medical care for the un-
derprivileged, but he may have an
tagonized such groups as the doc-
tors, motor carriers, publishers and
some party politicians. Docking
also backed the Forand bill.
Docking told the AFL-CIO
News he favored reducing the
sales tax because "it hits the
people who can least afford to
pay" and change the state in-
come tax because he would
"much rather tax the people who
can afford to pay."
He said he had opposed the so-
called "right-to-work" amendment
which was passed in 1958. "Right-
to-workers" are suspected of un-
happiness because he has not
sought laws to put the constitu-
tional amendment into effect.
Political observers saw Theis'
chances lying in his capacity for
hard campaigning, his work in
building up the state Democratic
organization and his ability as a
coiner of phrases."
eluded key votes on social security
public housing, interest rates, public
power and labor issues.
As a member of the now de-
funct McClellan special Senate
committee, Mundt worked close-
ly with Sen. Barry Gold water
(R-Ariz.) and Sen. Carl T. Curtis
(R-Neb.) to turn an investigation
of the Auto Workers' Kohler Co.
strike into a prosecution of the
UAW. The National Labor Re-
lations Board has ruled that
Kohler was guilty of unfair labor
practices.
When Agriculture Sec. Ezra Taft
Benson — whose very name turns
farmers purple — was tied to the
Republican Party by McGovern,
Mundt claimed that Democratic
presidential nominee John F. Ken
nedy voted for "our old friend,
Benson" three times as often as
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon.
Clifford Shrader, new president
of the South Dakota AFL-CIO
said Republican campaigners are
telling the farmers they always have
opposed Benson.
Shrader has continued the seven-
year old practice of discussing
trade unionism and showing COPE
films before farmer-labor confer-
ences co-sponsored by labor and
the Farmers Union.
McGovern Conceded Chance
Informed observers agree, with
varying degrees of certainty, that
McGovern has a good chance to
unseat Mundt. A well-placed ob
server, a registered Republican who
declined use of his name, said
prominent Republicans plan to vote
for McGovern because they have
had enough" of Mundt.
Gov. Ralph Herseth (D) is con-
sidered a good bet to win re-election
over Archie Gubbrud (R), former
speaker of the state House. Her-
seth is said to have gained con
servative support, while Gubbrud is
not considered a strong contender.
While farmer discontent over
prices may help Kennedy make
a "good" showing, an observer
said, South Dakota's Republican
tradition and predominantly Lu-
theran make-up at present seem
likely to give the state to Nixon.
Various polls tended to bear this
out.
A statewide poll published Sept.
28 in the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader
showed Nixon leading Kennedy
61 to 36 percent, with 3 percent
undecided; Mundt edging McGov-
ern by 50.6 to 47.4 percent (al-
though McGovern is thought to be
gaining) and Herseth over Gubbrud
by 48.4 to 46.3 percent.
Kennedy Victory Seen
George Adams, editor-publisher
of the Minnehaha County News at
Hartford and a Democratic con-
tender for county office, said he
believes McGovern is far in front
and that Kennedy will win the votes
of protesting farmers, women and
young farmers in debt.
Shrader is coordinating labor's
non-partisan registration and get-
out-the vote drive from the new
Labor Temple here. He explained
that a check during the 1956 cam-
paign showed that only one-half of
union members were registered to
vote.
Henry Walser, President of the
Sioux Falls Trades & Labor Assem-
bly, explains he has been a Republi-
can, but plans to vote "straight
Democratic" for this reason:
"As long as this Administra-
tion advocates anti-labor and
anti-poor, pro-rich policies, I
don't intend to go along."
Labor Supports United
Fund Drives, Meany Says
"Wholehearted endorsement" on behalf of the 13.5 million
members of the AFL-CIO has again been given to the United
Community Campaigns in anticipation of local drives for
funds throughout the country this fall.
"We in the labor movement believe strongly that we should
be — and we want to be — part of the community in which we
live and work," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany wrote Oliver
G. Willits, UCC national chairman. "We want to carry our
share of responsibility in community affair^"
Meany noted that the AFL-CIO, through its Community
Service Activities, participates officially in united fund and
community chest activities "on a day-to-day, year-round basis."
"This continuing cooperation is necessary in order to get
the job done," he added.
"The contributions made by union members are one of the
chief sources of support of united giving. To us, however,
it is not only a matter of giving, but of working as volunteers
as well, just like other citizens of the community."
Peace Tops Prices
As Grain Belt Issue
(Continued from Page 1)
ner in Kansas, and Republicans
conceded ahead in Nebraska.
Shape-up of Races
This is how the races are shaping
up:
Kansas — Gov. George Docking
(D), in 1958 handily re-elected as
the first Democrat ever to win
second term, is rated as better than
an even chance to win an unpre
cedented third term.
Docking, independent-minded
and proud that "nobody ever ac
cused us of being dishonest," pre
diets a close contest. He has been
outspoken against the state's so-
called "rlght-to-work" amendment
on the books; wants the sales tax
reduced because "it hurts the peo-
ple who can least afford to pay
and favors altering the state income
tax to "tax the people who can af-
ford to pay."
Frank Theis, a gangling law-
yer credited with putting the
Democratic Party "on the map 9 '
as state chairman, is running an
aggressive campaign against Sen.
Andrew F. Schoeppel (R), whom
he calls one of the last of the
"stone age senators."
Theis is given 43 percent in a
labor-sponsored private poll and he
hopes he can close the gap.
Iowa — Gov. Herschel C. Love
less (D), a popular executive who
attracts Republican support, is
considered virtually certain to cap-
ture the seat vacated by Sen.
Thomas E. Martin (R). His op-
ponent is Jack Miller.
The gubernatorial race between
E. J. ("Nick") McManus (D) and
Norman A. Erbe (R) has not at-
tracted great attention and figures
to be close.
South Dakota — Overshadowing
even the Kennedy-Nixon contest,
according to observers, is the sharp
battle between Rep. George Mc-
Govern (D) and incumbent Sen.
Karl E. Mundt (R), who is seeking
reelection.
Mundt Under Fire
McGovern, regarded as the first
formidable challenger Mundt has
ever faced, has been attacking
Mundt's voting record on rural
electrification, public power, social
security, foreign policy and other
issues. The two havq been joined
in oral combat several times on
television and have debated before
various groups.
The Sioux Falls Argus-Leader,
a staunch Republican paper, pub-
lished a statewide poll Sept. 28
which showed Mundt leading
McGovern, 50.6 percent to 47.4,
with 2 percent undecided.
Gov. Ralph Herseth (D), who
was elected in 1958 by 7,200 votes
out of a total of 260,000, held a
narrow lead in the same poll over
Archie Gubbrud (R), 48.4 to 46.3
percent.
The Kennedy-Johnson ticket is
shown in the same poll to be doing
better in the farm areas than in the
cities and towns, but the Democrats
trail Nixon-Lodge by 62.8 to 37.2
percent.
Nebraska — Sen. Carl T. Curtis
(R) is considered to be running
strong "outstate," where the Re-
publican State organization report-
edly has been building anew for
two years.
Robert Conrad (D), challenging
Curtis, could not get his campaign
under way until October because of
his late nomination.
Gov. Ralph G. Brooks (D), the
state's first Democratic governor in
18 years when elected in 1958, had
been seeking Curtis' seat but died
in September.
Conceded 'Good Chance'
In the gubernatorial race, Mor-
rison (D) is given a "good chance'*
of beating Cooper (R).
Organized labor has an intensive
Nebraska non-partisan voter regis-
tration drive under way, reaching
to the "outstate" cities and system-
atically covering working class
areas of Omaha.
The Packinghouse Workers
took mobile city registration units
into one area, and in a few days
some 750 new registrations were
recorded, with 700 of them
Democrats.
Donald R. Murphy, research
editor of Wallace's Farmer, which
blankets Iowa, pointed out that the
backbone of Republican voting
strength is in towns of roughly
2,500 to 10,000 population.
He sees the farm vote and the
city vote as divided almost evenly
between the parties. Pocketbook
issues have brought city and farm
voters closer together, as has the
increasing jobholding in cities by
farm people and their resulting ac-
quaintance with unions.
N. Y. State Gets
Wage Floor
Albany, N. Y. — New York's first
statewide minimum wage — $1 an
hour — went into effect Oct. 1, add-
ing about 700,000 workers to the
number previously covered by in-
dustry wage board orders. Among
those covered for the first time are
employes of voluntary hospitals and
other non-profit institutions.
Wage- board procedures still will
be used to set higher minimum
wages for specified industries, the
State Dept. of Labor emphasized.
Farm workers and domestic em-
ployes are the major groups left
uncovered by the new state mini-
mum.
Pa^e Six
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
Warning Flags Are Flying
THE REPUBLICANS' "PEACE" issue has faded away and now
the "prosperity" pitch appears headed in the same direction.
The Administration may call it a "fundamental readjustment,"
but the President's Council of Economic Advisers' monthly Eco-
nomic Indicators show a definite downturn in the nation's economy.
The recession warning flags are flying everywhere in the eco-
nomic system. They are the same signals that the Administration
ignored or dismissed in 1953 and 1957.
Unless the Administration moves to meet the threat there will
be new misery and suffering in America and a weakening of our
internal strength during a critical period in world affairs.
Sen. Kennedy is on record with a program to promote economic
growth and put the nation on a full employment, full production
basis. Vice Pres. Nixon is still talking about how "we never had
it so good."
The GE Formula
A C AREFULLY AND CLEVERLY planned five-year campaign
by General Electric has reached its climax in the strike forced
by the company on the members of the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers.
From the day it signed a new contract with the union five years
ago, the company carried on its campaign to destroy strong and
responsible unionism— the basic ingredient in industrial peace. The
company has used every technique of propaganda to undermine
the IUE, to disrupt normal labor-management relations.
GE's campaign is a direct and open attack on the principles
of good-faith collective bargaining. But in a larger sense it is an
attack on the national interest, for mature, responsible labor
relations is essential to the economic and political health of the
nation. •
The company has rejected proposals for mediation, fact-finding
and arbitration. It has clearly indicated it is willing to go to any
lengths to crack the union.
The labor movement and the entire nation have a vital stake in
this struggle. For the country cannot tolerate a return to the
cynical labor relations philosophy of GE.
The Two Candidates
DESPITE VICE PRES. Nixon's strenuous efforts to blur and
obscure the basic issues in the presidential election, an in-
creasingly sharp distinction between the candidates has come into
focus as the campaign picks up momentum.
Sen. Kennedy has sharpened his declarations on the fact that
America, the leader of the free world, is resting on dead center,
Kennedy's accurate, forceful pinpointing of the Administra-
tion's weaknesses and failures, his discussion of pertinent and
meaningful issues and his identity with the tradition of Wilson,
Roosevelt and Truman are all components in a positive, aggres-
sive campaign.
Nixon, meanwhile, presents two faces to the American voters.
In the northern states, where conservative Republicanism is a proven
failure, he talks of the man, not the party; he appeals to the "inde-
pendents" and he echoes a new version of "me-tooism" on basic
welfare issues.
In the southern states it's a different Nixon, it's the Nixon who
is a key element in the GOP-Dixiecrat coalition in Congress.
This sort of two-faced, all-things-to-all-men approach is more
recognizable. This is "Tricky Dick" Nixon, not the man to lead
this nation for the next four years.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, October 8, 1960
No. 41
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'Let's Move Forward Again'
* cl -CIO NE.W9
Fogarty Teils Doctors:
People Need A 'Reed Voice'
In All Health Care Programs
Rep. John E. Fogarty (D.-R. I.) recently de-
livered a sharp lecture to members of the medical
profession for their 19th century insistence on
having only doctors — not the consumers of health
services — participate in planning the nation's at-
tack on illness and disease. Following are ex-
cerpts from Fogarty's remarks, delivered at the
dedication of the U.S. Public Health Service's new
Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, Ga.:
THE SORRY TALE of needless death, crip-
pling and suffering won't be stopped by sim-
ply wagging a finger at the public and accusing
them of apathy, stupidity or perverseness.
I have been dealing with the public for a good
many years and I haven't found them apathetic
about health. If there are people so dumb or so
cussed that they want to be crippled or killed,
Fve never met them and I've met a lot of people.
Whenever the budget for health research
comes up, and whenever it looks like it might
be trimmed — as it always does these days — my
mail is flooded. And those letters don't come
from a bunch of scientists who want to ride a
gravy train.
They come from parents who have lost a child
from an incurable disease. They come from
friends, neighbors, relatives of those who are suf-
fering from a disease the scientists do not yet un-
derstand. The American people want life-saving
answers, no matter what it costs to get them, and
if they want the answers that bad, it stands to
reason they want those answers used once they are
found.
So let's get over this phony excuse of public
apathy and look at a few hard facts, the chief one
being that 19th Century health machinery doesn't
fit a 20th Century society.
A lot of people still seem to think that if they
have a good doctor, they can relax and rely en-
tirely on him to look after their health.
I'm a labor man and this attitude reminds me
of the line management used to peddle back in
those days — leave everything to the wisdom of
the managers and they'll see that labor and the
public are looked after. "'Industrial problems
are much too complicated for mere citizens and
workers to understand/'
Well, it's been a long time since that line had
any followers in the ranks of management, labor,
or the public. The people, through their govern-
ment,, labor, through its unions, together with
management, are all actively involved in the big
industrial issues.
Similarly, the big health issues of today are
so broad that they cannot possibly be solved by
any one group or profession.
If the city planners take no heed of health,
allowing our ears to be deafened by jet plane
take-offs and our lungs to fill with auto exhaust
fumes, can the medical profession alone protect
us?
Even in the specific attack against specific dis-
eases, there is good evidence that medical action
alone is not sufficient. Can it be that we are
sacrificing lives on the sacred altar of doctor-
patient relationship? Is it true that the individual
doctor in his office is the only one who can con-
trol our health destiny?
I can't believe that you have to know what
an antibody looks like to be able to judge
whether a plan for getting everybody to swallow
a candy pill is going to work. I'd like to see
the people who are going to get sick as well as
the people who will be paid for curing them
have a voice in such plans.
I'd also like to see them have a voice — a real
voice, not just token representation — on a lot of
other health issues: mass screening clinics to find
the people who need medical treatment but don't
know it; nursing home standards; organized home
care programs; environmental health plans, to
mention only a few that are usually dealt with
along strictly professional lines. I'd like to see
health officers' jobs be just as dependent on the
approval of the consumers of health services as
they now are on the approval of organized
medicine!
In calling for militant citizen action on health
issues, I do not underestimate the contribution
the medical men, individually and through their
professional organizations, have made and will
continue to make. The high level of health en-
joyed by the American people is powerful testi-
mony to the brilliant and dedicated service we
have received from the members of the medical
profession.
It is not they who have failed but we who have
failed by not recognizing that changes in the
makeup of our society and changes in the nature
of its health problems call for public as well as
professional action on an ever-widening area of
health issues.
AFT,-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, I960
Pas* Scvc«
Morgan Says:
Why Nixon Is Telling Voters
To Pick the Men, Not Party
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
A DEMOCRATIC VETERAN of both Eisen-
hower-Stevenson campaigns of 1952 and
1956 suggested the other day, not without a dash
of cynicism that the general and the governor could
have traded speeches from start to finish and the
election outcomes would have been the same. His
point was that the people
were voting, not on the
basis of real issues but for
the man, for the genial
general, the triumphant
warrior who had become
a champion of peace, and
no dikes of Stevensonian
declamation, no^ matter
how carefully and literately
raised, could stem the wild
flood of Eisenhower popu-
larity.
History may refine and
qualify that judgment but it dramatizes one of
Vice Pres. Nixon's Roughest problems in this cam-
paign — his personal impact. Largely because the
Democrats are the majority party — they are sup-
posed to outnumber Republicans across the coun-
try by seven or eight million — Nixon appeals to
his crowds to vote not for the party but for the
men, arguing that he and Henry Cabot Lodge
are best qualified by experience to "keep the peace
without surrender," as his phrase goes. "We are
Americans first. We are partisans second," he
told a screamingly partisan crowd on Long Island.
"So," he implored, "judge what I have to say on
the basis of what is best for America."
The theme, threadbare as constant repetition
is wearing it, is undoubtedly popular. Buf the
Vice President and his strategists know, pain-
fully and perfectly well, that they cannot count
on borrowing any decisive measure of Pres.
Eisenhower's still brightly burnished personal
popularity to go with it. And they are observing,
More Words to Eat:
not without concern, the magnetic draw that
Sen. Kennedy's personality seems to be having
at least on that part of the population directly
exposed to him.
THE VICE PRESIDENT'S position is further
complicated by the fact that as part of the Eisen-
hower Administration, on whose record he is
running, he must defend more than attack; he
must explain more than demand accountings. He
must, in short, act as counsel for the defense in-
stead of as prosecuting attorney and he seems to
be experiencing some difficulty so far in shifting
from the familiar role to the new one. The result-
ant Nixon pitch to the voters is a curious and
sometimes disturbing melange of ingredients
ranging from the banal to the broad-gauge stance
of responsibility, from the messily slashing innu-
endo to the cleanly-grasped point of a major issue.
He gave a breakfast of the nation's leading
magazine publishers in New York City carefully
reasoned arguments why the federal government's
intervention to correct a recession should be quick
but restrained.
Forty miles east of Manhattan, before a roar-
ing crush of Republicans who did not need to
be converted, the Vice President became a. kind
of political Billy Graham, evangelizing the faith-
ful raising the roof of a Suffolk County Sports
arena with a revival of passionate preachments
that are the golden texts of his campaign: "peace
without surrender;" the great moral goals of
American ideals; "experienced leadership to ex-
tend freedom throughout the world," etc.
This is one way of shooting adrenalin into the
-bloodstream of tired party workers but it can be a
dangerously numbing hypo against an alert assess-
ment of international problems and American
foreign policy. Some of the Vice President's more
critical observers argue that he is insulting the
public's intelligence with this approach, that
whereas Kennedy is not being exactly statesman-
like or oozing with substance in his speeches at
every stop either, he is using the needle to arouse
people whereas Nixon is dispensing the tranquil-
izers of complacency.
JTS YOUR
Dick's Arithmetic Tricky Too,
Correction, Please! Discovers
VICE PRES. Richard Nixon's arithmetic about
the increase in the country's Gross National
Product is misleading and his assertion about a
tax boost under the Democrats "an outright and
outrageous fabrication," the publication Correc-
tion, Please! has charged.
Quoting Nixon on taxes and Nixon on GNP,
the publication of the Democratic National Com-
mittee analyzed two recent Nixon statements to
illustrate what Chairman Henry M. Jackson re-
ferred to as "Nixmanship."
Chairman Jackson quoted Vice Pres. Nixon as
saying in his first television debate with Sen. John
F. Kennedy, his Democratic opponent for the
presidency:
"When we look at the growth of CNP (gross
national product) this year, a year of recovery, we
find it is 6.9 percent and one of the highest in the
world today.. There has been more growth in this
Administration than its predecessor" (Nixon
9/26/60).
Correction, Please! asserted that an increase
of 6.9 percent in GNP last year followed a de-
cline of 1.8 percent. It concluded:
The average for seven Eisenhower-Nixon years
is 2.4 percent, compared with an average of 4.6
percent during the Truman years 1947 to 1953.
No reputable economist, it pointed out, includes
1945 and 1946 in any comparison because they
were years of war and reconversion.
The publication said the Vice President's use of
misleading GNP comparisons is "standard Nix-
onese."
It goes together, said Correction, Please! with
the "you never had it so good" line and the "look
at how many people are working" line.
This conveniently overlooks, it said, "the
hard facts of slowdown in economic growth, the
relative improvement in Soviet growth, the num-
ber of unemployed, and the pockets of poverty
in many parts of the nation."
It cited these additional facts: AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany took sharp issue with Nixon, point-
ing out that there are 500,000 fewer full-time jobs
today than three years ago, with an additional 13.5
million jobs needed in the next decade for pupils
now in high school and college; Allen Dulles,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told
Congress last year: "If the Soviet industrial growth
rate persists at 8 or 9 percent ... the gap between
our two economies by 1970 will be dangerously
narrowed unless our own industrial growth rate is
substantially increased from the present pace."
ON THE SUBJECT of spending, Correction,
Please! said about Nixon's comment:
"To say that a $4,000-yearly-income family
"would have to pay almost $1,000 in taxes if Ken-
nedy is elected is an outright and outrageous fabri-
cation. It is a transparent and cheap attempt to
scare low-income voters. It is part of Nixon's
stump oratory that 'it is your money' that would
be spent."
The publication said that if Nixon's top figure
of $18 billion in spending were used, and taxes
were raised 20 percent to provide the money,
the $4,000 family's tax would go from $125 to
$150 a year if there were five in the family, and
from $245 to $294 with four in the family.
"Just where does the $1,000 figure come from?"
it asked.
WASHI NGTON
S 85
yili
MR. NIXON, who has been under heavy pressure from distressed
Republican right-wingers to "cut loose" on Sen. Kennedy, finally
"cut loose" in Philadelphia with an intimation that the Democratic
presidential nominee lacked the "courage'' to say the same thing
about civil rights in the South that he said in the North. The Vice
President is a resourceful man. not to be underrated, but this does
not seem a persuasive example of the kind of blood-and-guts cam-
paign the Old Guard would like.
Everybody who is running for national office is "in favor of"
civil rights. It isn't respectable to be "against" civil rights.
Communication is so fast and accurate that no candidate could
use seriously different words, from section to section, and get
away with it. Sen. Kennedy as a matter of fact spoke in Jack-
son, Miss., even before his nomination and set forth his attitudes
with adequate courage.
Mr. Nixon also took some jabs at Sen. Lyndon Johnson, who
is Kennedy's running-mate and whose Texas background creates
more immediate political difficulties on civil rights than does Mr.
Nixon's or Sen. Kennedy's. But Johnson is the senator who shep-
herded through the Senate two moderate civil rights bills that were
beyond the capacity of anyone before him, and he has repeatedly
said in this campaign that he would speak everywhere "not as a
Southerner, or a Baptist" but as "an American to Americans."
* * *
WHEN A NATIONAL POLITICIAN is playing the game of
challenging his opponent on civil rights, the thing that counts is
the nuances, the context of phrases. And on this, Mr. Nixon is
not invulnerable — not because he is "against" civil rights, which
he isn't, but because the calculations of the Republican strategists
make a heavy share of southern electoral college votes vital to
the GOP chances.
Reporters recently traveling with the Vice President noticed,
for example, that in the South Mr. Nixon said nothing about
Negro store "sit-ins" — but that in New York's garment center,
he found it expedient to speak very clearly in endorsement of
them.
He said in New York that a President should "call in the chain-
store leaders" whose lunch counters in the South remain segregated
"and get them to break down the barriers." (This is something
his own President, Mr. Eisenhower, has conspicuously failed to do.)
The unidentified man Mr. Nixon is always quoting as "asking
me a question" — an invisible little man who baffles traveling re-
porters — was represented in New York as inquiring:
"Why don't we leave the civil rights question to the states?
Why don't those stupid people in the South do something about
it?" And Nixon said he replied that civil rights was a national
problem, in all sections.
* ♦ *
THE LATTER IS EXACTLY the approach the Vice President
also used in the South. Southern audiences naturally applaud
the intimation that other sections are also at fault, as they are.
But in the South there was a subtle difference in how Mr. Nixon
leads up to the suggestion.
He pointed out that "I went to school in the South for three
years (Duke University in North Carolina) and so I know some-
thing about this problem."
The discussion was coupled with other campaign points appeal-
ing directly on economic issues to southern conservatives — who are
by no means noted for championship of civil rights. It was
coupled with the charge that the Democrats have "deserted" the
southern part of the party in their platform, and that the Repub-
lican Party is now the states' rights champion.
He said, "You know where I stand on civil rights," and urged
that the nation move forward — but the specifics are missing.
MUTUAL PROBLEMS of union finance were discussed recently
in Washington by AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler and
Joshua Levy (left), treasurer of Histadrut, the Israeli Federation
of Labor, during his visit to the United States.
Page Eight
ATLrCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
How to Buy:
Stores Are Pushing
'Teen' Credit Plans
By Sidney Margolius
AS YOU MAY HAVE OBSERVED, retail stores throughout the
the country are campaigning to get teen-agers to open up their
own installment accounts. The National Retail Merchants Associa-
tion reports that stores have found the youngsters are just as good
credit risks as adults.
The teen-age credit plans got a big push last year when Sears
Roebuck started "Young Adult" charge accounts in 18 branches
around the country. In recent years
Sears has become one of the leading
forces influencing people to buy on
credit, not only big items but even
smaller purchases like clothing, at
finance charges of 18-22 percent a
year. Now the giant chain is en-
couraging teen-agers into the same
habit.
Other stores are joining the drive
to start children in the installment
habit right from the beginning of
their earning-and-spending careers.
Such "teen" credit plans already are
in operation or under consideration
by one or more department stores in
nearly every major city, reports
Scholastic Magazine's Youth Letter.
Most of the stores with teen-age credit plans permit kids to start
them at age 14 or 15, but some will open up credit accounts even
for 12-year-olds.
The teen-age market is a lush one for merchants. These kids have
been brought up in a prosperous era. They're free spenders. Kids
of the new generation "push their parents harder than you pushed
yours," Dr. Robert Soldofsky of Iowa State University recently
pointed out.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports that in 1960 teen-
agers are expected to spend close to $10 billion to buy everything
from cashmere sweaters to Elvis Presley records. That's over $500
for each of the nation's 19 million teen-agers.
But the stores have another angle besides the immediate pick-
ings. They're looking to the future. They consider the plans
"good-will builders,' Seventeen magazine reported after a survey.
One retailer observed, "Today's teen-agers are tomorrow's house-
wives and family heads."
Another retailer quoted by Wall Street Journal said: "We're in a
credit economy now, and the sooner these kids know how to handle
credit, the better off they'll be."
Now that's just what's worrying consumer organizations and sav-
ings bankers. They think youngsters ought to be taught to manage
their money, not to buy things they don't have the money to pay for.
The spread of teen-age credit plans is "something like teaching the
young to use narcotics," charges one of the country's leading bank-
ers, Pres. Karl B. Schwulst of New York's Bowery Savings Bank.
The truth is, the retailers are not teaching the kids the true facts
about installment buying at all, especially the true interest cost they
pay on so-called revolving charge-account plans. Teen-agers really
should know that when they pay a carrying charge of 1.5 percent a
month on a "revolving charge" or "budget account," they pay true
per-annum interest of 18 percent.
A leading financial magazine, Financial World, points out that
•teaching the use of credit through installment buying is "the wrong
way around." The New York State Savings Bank Association points
out that there are wise uses of credit, such as financing a college
education, but teaching children "to go needlessly into debt" is not
one of them.
NOT ONLY are retailers encouraging kids to get the credit habit
by offering teen-age accounts, but they also get "teaching" materials
into the public schools. One such pamphlet provided for schools by
the Retailers Credit Bureau of New York, in cooperation with the
National Foundation for Consumer Credit, tells the teachers and kids
such things as:
"Credit is one of the dynamos of our economy. . . . Consumer
credit helps the individual to purchase goods or services which satisfy
many human needs. ... It helps many people buy goods and serv-
ices on pay-as-you-use plans."
Similarly, several thousand high schools throughout the -country
use booklets distributed free by the Commercial Credit Co. of Balti-
more, Md., which praise consumer credit as an important tool for
raising living standards.
The fact is, you yourself will be able to buy more goods in the
long run by budgeting ahead for big purchases, paying as much
cash as possible, and saving the finance charges of 12-24 percent.
And you teen-ager will be able to buy 18 percent more cashmere
sweaters if she buys for cash and avoids the credit charge on a
teen-age account.
Phelps' pamphlets also tell the high-school kids that "rates
charged for financing installment purchases are generally regarded
as reasonable." His pamphlets also defend the finance charges of
dealers and finance companies and deprecate the use of bank loans
for buying cars.
But the fact is, finance companies do charge true rates of 12-24
percent to finance new and late-model cars and appliances, and even
more for older used cars. In comparison, banks and credit unions
charge true rates of 8-12 percent on loans which you can use for
these purposes.
(Copyright 1*60 by Sidney Margoliua)
CLEVELAND LABOR gave Sen. John F. Kennedy a lively reception at AFL-CIO headquarters in
Hotel Hollenden when the Democratic nominee spoke at the party's annual "steer roast." The senator
is shown smiling at a remark by an Auto Worker local president. Mayor Anthony J. Celebrezze is at
the left of Kennedy.
'New Yorker 9 Telis How:
Kennedy Led the Gallup Poll,
'Cooking' Gave It to Nixon
AMERICANS ARE BEING "polled to death"
during this crucial election year and more
and more people are questioning whether this is
a good or a bad thing.
Perhaps, as pollster Dr. George Gallup main-
tains, public opinion surveys do not influence vot-
ing. He cites the case of Pres. Truman's victory
over Thomas Dewey in 1948, when Gallup and
just about all the other forecasters were wrong,
to prove his point.
On the other hand, Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon — and his opponent, Democratic Sen. John
F. Kennedy — take the polls quite seriously. "It
was the polls that defeated Bob Taft," Nixon said.
An acute "dissection" of the entire business of
polls is carried in the Sept, 24 issue of The New
Yorker Magazine. The author of the article,
Joseph Alsop, points out:
"Year in and year out, businessmen are the
chief customers of all pollers, and businessmen
tend to spend far more on market research if
they are persuaded that public-opinion science
is an instrument of truly micrometric precision,
capable of detecting the slightest change in the
public's taste in tail fins, packaging, or mar-
garine. Or candidates."
The logic of this conclusion would indicate
that although the businessmen may be the prime
source of income of pollsters, the political opin-
ion surveyors cannot afford to be too far off base
in their voting estimates lest their entire opera-
tion lose any aura of reliability.
Alsop, in his revealing analysis of public opin-
ion polls, does lay wide open this question of
reliability. He notes, for example, that in presi-
dential campaign polls since 1944 Gallup has
been close only once, once only pretty close, once
seriously far off, and once right off the beam. In
sum total, trjis is not an impressive picture.
Through some first-class newspaper sleuth-
work Alsop learned just how the Gallup poll
probably reached its conclusions which are fol-
lowed so closely by candidates, voters, colum-
nists and everyone else interested in the election.
It will be recalled that the first poll taken after
Kennedy and Nixon were nominated by their po-
litical parties was published on Aug. 17. It
showed that Nixon had 50 percent, 44 percent
favored Kennedy and 6 percent were undecided.
Later polls showed a swing giving Kennedy the
edge but that is not a part of this story, which
is concerned with just how the Aug. 17 results
were reached.
On the basis of his own discussions with mem-
bers of Gallup's staff, Alsop said that the raw
material on the polling sheets probably showed
that 1,600 persons in the entire country were
contacted. The breakdown was: 640 for Ken-
nedy, 610 for Nixon and 350 undecided.
Then how, one might ask, did Gallup provide
such a margin for Nixon?
"This mysterious process," says Alsop, "not
voluntarily revealed to the customers, may be de-
scribed as cooking the poll — though not as crook-
ing the poll, since each step in the process is
logically defensible."
The way Gallup "cooked" his Aug. 17 poll
is significant. He tossed out 320 ballots since
this would be the percentage of nonvoters.
This reduced the Democratic percentage be-
cause Gallup believes there are more nonvoting
Democrats than Republicans. Alsop said this
lost Kennedy 105 votes and Nixon 65.
Then, in the popular vote, there is a smaller
vote from the South which normally goes Demo-
cratic. So this, again, cut down on the Demo-
cratic vote. Finally, Alsop says, the leaders are
distributed in the direction they lead. This pro-
vided the final outcome of Nixon 50 percent,
Kennedy 44 percent and six percent undecided.
Alsop does not quarrel with the "cooking"
process. He just thinks in all fairness Gallup
should tell his customers the exact recipe.
But this hocus-pocus, give-a-few and take-a-few
formula — whether based on past history or not — •
would seem to leave the art of political poll-
taking rather far removed from the "science"
claimed by Gallup. (Public Affairs Institute —
Washington Window).
Box Score on Desegregation
The process of school desegregation moves slowly in some states, not at all in others,
summary by the Southern Education Reporting Service.
Here is a recent
State
Desegregated Bi-Racial
Districts
Negroes in Desegregated Schools
1956-57
1957-58
1958-59
1959-60
1956-57 1957-58 1958-59
1959-60
. 4 of 228
7 of 228
6 of 228
8 of
228
34 91 73
94
0
0
0
1 of
67
0 0 0
512c
No. Carolina ...
0
3 of 172
4 of 172
7 of
174
0 11 14
34
1 of 141a
2 of 141a
3 of 142
4 of
142
6a 19a 82
169
103 of 841
123 of 841
125 of 722
127 of
720
3,400 »3,600 3,250
3,300
0
0
3 of 128
6 of
128
0 0 30
103
Total
108 of 1,210a
135 of 1,382a
141 of 1^92
153 of
1,459
3.440a 3,721a 3,449
4,212
a — plus Oak Ridge.
(b) — almost all desegregation has been in west Texas. The Texas figures are estimates throughout; the decrease shown
for 1958-59 means nothing more than that a better estimate was made,
c — not a mark of tremendous progress, but a revelation that only a handful of whites stayed, with 490 Negroes,
in the Orchard Villa school near Miami.
Note: In Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina there has as yet been no desegregation
at all. >
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, I960
Pagre Nina
Regional Meeting Set for Tunis:
A frican Union Leaders Plan
To Speed Ties with ICFTU
Geneva, Switzerland — African labor leaders drafted plans to speed up the consolidation of their
links with the Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions at a two-day session here.
The consultative meeting was arranged by the ICFTU and chaired by Omer Becu, secretary general
of the international organization.
Tom Mboya of Kenya, Cyrille Adoula of the new Congo Republic, Ahmed Tlili of Tunisia and
Lawrence Katilungu of Northern'^
Rhodesia were some of the 12 titu-
lar and substitute members of the
ICFTU executive board and of the
Workers Group of the Intl. Labor
Organization's governing body who
attended the session.
The group scheduled for early
November in Tunis the ICFTU's
third African Regional Confer-
ence, which is expected to com-
plete arrangements to establish
an ICFTU African Regional Or
ganization.
The rapid march of events in
Africa and the shifts in the affilia-
tion arrangements resulting from
the accession, or approaching ac-
cession, to independence of many
African countries have complicated
the problem of welding the local
labor movements with the ICFTU
"Various aspects of the trade
union situation in Africa in the
ILO Meeting Studies
Jet Age Job Problems
Geneva, Switzerland — The problems of workers directly involved
in the new jet age are being taken apart for close examination at
an 18-nation session convened here by the Intl. Labor Organization.
Frank Heisler, airlines coordinator of the Machinists, and Pres.
Clarence N. Sayen of the Air Line Pilots are the AFL-CIO spokes-
men for American workers in the^
civil aviation industry.
Worker, employer and govern-
ment delegates together are review-
ing employment conditions of all
workers in civil aviation as well as
the specific problems of the hours
of duty and rest periods of flight
personnel.
The conference is the first at
which the ILO has had government
officials concerned with airline op-
erations sit down with representa-
tives of both the airlines and the
men and women employed in the
industry.
"This opportunity to meet with
worker delegates from other
countries and to get an insight
into their problems and to ex-
plain ours is proving to be a most
valuable experience," Heisler
said.
'This is my first ILO session and
I am getting a lot out of it. The
conference will be of help to all
of us if only because we are get
ting to know each other and to ex-
change ideas and information."
C. C. Jackson, observer for the
Intl. Federation of Air Line Pilots
Associations, expressed the same
idea at the ^conference when he
urged establishment of a perma-
nent ILO committee on aviation.
"It is unsatisfactory that, if we
make friendships here and examine
each other's problems, the whole
organization disperses overnight to
be convened in 1975 when we have
supersonic problems," he said.
"We ought to stress that gov-
Miami Bus Strike
Brings Free Rides
Miami, Fla. — The bus lines
are struck in Miami and Mi-
ami Beach by Street & Elec-
tric Railway Employes Local
1267, but the passengers
never had it so good.
They're riding free, after
three days on foot.
The deal is the result of an
agreement on a union pro-
posal whereby the strikers un-
dertook to make their regular
runs without pay, and the
companies to maintain the
vehicles but collect no fares.
It will remain in force until
the contract dispute that led
to the walkout is settled.
*We*ve agreed to do it for
the convenience of the pub-
aid Pres. W. O. Frazier
»f the union after members
approved the proposal by a
254-111 vote. "The strike is
still on."
ernments should be prepared to
put more money into the ILO so
that a permanent body or com-
mittee could be established to
anticipate industrial problems of
aviation."
The necessity of obtaining uni-
form conditions of work and pay
is an item on which the workers
are laying particular stress.
George Tobias, U.S. Dept. of
Labor official heading the U.S. gov-
ernment delegation, told the con-
ference that it furnished an oppor-
tunity "for a discussion of ways
and means to improve standards Qf
employment in all countries and to
narrow the gap between countries."
The impact of subsonic jets
on employment and the human
factors involved is getting close
scrutiny.
Interchanges of aircraft, now
developing rapidly among the Euro-
pean airlines because of the cost
of the new jets, is one aspect of the
overall problem. Worker spokes-
men are stressing that this is a de-
velopment which concerns the daily
life of both flight personnel and
ground workers of all categories,
and that their views must be taken
into account.
light of the movement's role in the
struggle against colonialism, racial
discrimination and dictatorships"
was one of the three items listed
for discussion at Tunis.
Listed for Agenda
Also listed for the agenda were
measures to reinforce Africa's free
trade unions and an examination
of the African economic and social
situation.
In a statement issued after the
meeting, the African labor leaders
hit out indirectly against the Soviet
attempt to by-pass the United Na-
tions in the Congo.
In calling for economic as-
sistance for the Congo in order
to avoid the economic stagna-
tion that generates unemploy-
ment, the African union leaders
insisted that all aid should be
channeled through the UN in
order to "safeguard the indepen-
dence and integrity" of the new
state.
They expressed "opposition to
any interference in the internal af-
fairs of the Congo" by any nation
or bloc of nations seeking to inter-
vene there by going "outside the
UN framework."
Ask Algerian Referendum
The statement also urged the
holding under UN supervision of
a referendum in Algeria guarantee-
ing the Algerian people "the free
exercise of their right to self-deter-
mination."
The group appealed to all trade
union centers in NATO countries
to impress on their governments the
need to avoid in any way providing
any aid to France for its war in
Algeria.
The South African govern-
ment's racial segregation policy
and denial of trade union rights
were also bitterly attacked.
The African leaders recorded
"satisfaction at the atmosphere of
understanding which prevailed dur-
ing the discussion and more par-
ticularly at the firm belief in the
ICFTU expressed by all on behalf
of the African workers."
IOWA'S CRIPPLED CHILDREN will have a vacation camp of
their own next summer near Des Moines, thanks to organized labor.
Some 500 members of building trades unions have donated well
over 4,000 hours of free labor and the Iowa AFL-CIO recently
issued a statewide appeal for funds.
HARRY E. O'REILLY
Union Wins Damages
From Runaway Plant
Philadelphia — A federal judge has ordered a "runaway" manu-
facturer to pay $78,000 in damages to the United Shoe Workers for
closing its plant here in violation of a union contract.
U.S. District Judge Harold K. Wood described the shutdown of
the Brooke Shoe Mfg. Co. plant at Philadelphia and expansion of
the company's non-union operation'^
at Hanover, Pa., as "a deliberate
scheme to avoid employing union
ized labor." Earlier this year, Judge
Wood ruled that a reshuffling of
top management of the company
did not invalidate a clause in the
union agreement guaranteeing op-
eration of the Philadelphia plant.
Declaring that the company's
action was "a violation of the na-
tional labor policy fashioned by
Congress" as well as a breach of
contract, Judge Wood ordered the
firm to pay the union:
Damages Plus Lost Dues
• $50,000 in punitive damages,
holding that the Shoe Workers' rep-
utation as a collective bargaining
agent was "gravely undermined in
the working community" by the
shutdown of the plant in violation
of the union contract.
• $28,011 in lost dues from the
33 workers employed at the Phil-
adelphia plant before it was closed.
The court found that $4,251 in
dues had been lost since the com-
pany moved its work to the Han
over plant in 1957. Judge Wood
then projected the loss of dues 20
years into the future, based on
what he described as the "minimum
life expectancy" of the company,
to estimate an additional $23,760
loss of dues income to the union.
The company, which an-
nounced that it will appeal the
decision, had argued that any
damages should be limited to the
period prior to Dec. 31, 1957,
the expiration date of the union
contract.
Rejecting this argument, Judge
Wood declared that it would be
"an unreasonable assumption, com-
pletely without foundation," to as-
sert that the contract would not
have been renewed in view of the
20-year history of collective bar-
gaining between the parties.
Harry O'Reilly, Labor
Veteran, Dies At 61
Harry E. O'Reilly, executive secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO
Maritime Trades Dept. and a veteran of more than 40 years in
the labor movement, died Oct. 2 at his home in Chicago — three
days after his 61st birthday.
From 1948 until the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, he had served
as director of organization for the^
former AFL. His death was
mourned by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany and Sec.-Treas. William F
Schnitzler in telegrams to his
widow.
"Harry O'Reilly's untimely pass-
ing has taken from the labor move-
ment a man whose qualities of
leadership have contributed im-
measurably to the well-being of
American workers," said Meany.
"He brought to every task the
complete dedication to principle
that represents the highest ideals
of our cause. As you know, he
was not only my colleague but a
valued friend of many years, and
I cannot adequately express my
personal sense of shock at his
loss."
Schnitzler described O'Reilly as
one "blessed with a rare combina-
tion of talents as an organizer and
an administrator."
"And he added to these a» breadth
of human understanding and a
warmth of personality that brought
out the best in others," he asserted.
"He played an indispensable role
in the progress of our movement,
but more than that, he was a friend.
His passing leaves a void that can
never be adequately filled."
O'Reilly was an enthusiastic la-
bor volunteer organizer from the
time he first joined a union at 17,
first for the Railway Clerks and
later with the Chicago Milk Driv-
ers Union.
Active In Chicago
He was still in his twenties when
he was named a general organizer
and assistant to the president of the
Chicago Federation of Labor,
achieving a success that won him
assignments of increasing impor-
tance.
William Green, then AFL pres-
ident, appointed him federation
midwest regional director in 1938.
In this capacity he served oi the
Chicago Regional War Labor
Board, acting as chairman of the
labor members, and was labor rep-
resentative for 12 states in the war
bond campaigns.
After the AFL-CIO merger, he
took on the job of coordinating the
programs of unions in the marine
field through the Maritime Dept.
In four years he built the depart-
ment membership from 10 to the
present 30 international unions and
directed the creation of a continent-
wide network of maritime port
councils in major ports through
which joint organizing and collec-
tive bargaining projects have been
undertaken.
Funeral services were held Oct.
5 in St. Cajetan's Church, Chicago,
with burial in St. Mary's Cemetery
there.
Students Get
Reprints from
Hillman Unit
New York — More than 2 mil-
lion reprint copies of outstanding
speeches and articles by national
figures have been distributed by the
Sidney Hillman Foundation in the
past seven years.
Under the program the founda-
tion makes available, as a public
service, copies of significant ma-
terial for classroom use in high
schools, colleges and universities.
The series has covered such
fields as civil rights, civil liberties,
labor, immigration, social welfare
and foreign affairs. Cost of re-
printing and distribution, under-
written by the foundation, has to-
taled about $60,000.
Among the authors of reprints
have been the late Sen. Richard
Neuberger (D-Ore.), Senators Ed-
mund S. Muskie (D-Me.) and
Wayne Morse (D-Ore.); George
Kennan, former UJS. ambassador
to the Soviet Union; and Nobel
Peace Prize Winner Lester B.
Pearson, leader of the Liberal
Party in Canada*
Page Ten
Give Jobs to
Handicapped,
Meany Urges
American unions, employers and
the general public have been urged
by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
to observe National Employ the
Handicapped Week, now under
way, not only during the period of
its observance but "throughout this
year and the years to come."
"There is nothing more impor-
tant to the well-being of America
than a program to restore to its
physically handicapped the dignity
of full productive and self-reliant
life," he said in calling for support
of the principle of helping the
handicapped.
"In no other field are the op-
portunities greater for construc-
tive action to increase America's
production and to improve the
welfare of its citizens."
The week's observance "can only
call attention to the handicapped.
This interest alone is not enough.
Jobs must be made available to
them — jobs for which they have
been trained and for which they
are qualified."
Meany asserted that handicapped
workers are entitled to "a chance
to prove their merit," and called
on industries and trades to give
them the "opportunity to be self-
respecting and self-sustaining citi-
zens" on the basis of their compe-
tence when placed in the right job.
Roosevelt Hits GOP
On Rights Inertia
Los Angeles — A civil rights meet-
ing sponsored by the Community
Service Dept. and the Fair Prac-
tices Committee of the Los Angeles
County AFL-CIO heard a sharp at-
tack on the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration's "lack of leadership" in
civil rights.
Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.)
called for "new and straightfor-
ward legislation," combined with
"forcef ul leadership" from the exec-
utive branch of government.
mm
1 Judge Bars Strike:
Switchmen to Fight
For Voting Rights
Buffalo, N. Y. — The Switchmen's Union will appeal from a fed-
eral judge's decision that a provision of its constitution requiring
membership ratification of contract proposals "frustrates the in-
tent" of the Railway Labor Act.
The question of whether members of a railroad union have the
right to approve contract terms was^~
V
iiiii
m pi mm
TBEl liTEDWAt
SPECIAL POSTER developed by the New Orleans AFL-CIO
points up labor's support of that city's United Fund Drive. It is
displayed by Frank Emig, left, chairman of the Central Labor Coun-
cil's Community Services Committee, and Central Labor Council
Sec.-Treas. Peter Babin, Jr.
Carpenters Vote Aid
To Organizing Drives
Chicago — An expanded organizing campaign was unanimously
approved by the 1,600 delegates at the special convention of the
Carpenters Union here.
The union's executive board was empowered to assist local
unions in organizing drives among the "non-union areas currently
threatening the welfare and se-$>
curity of our membership."
At the same time, Vice Pres.
William Blaier reported to the dele-
gates that the brotherhood intends
to combat vigorously any attempts
by other organizations to "pick
away" at the membership and juris-
diction of the Carpenters on missile
bases and other large-scale con-
struction projects.
In an unusual upsurge of po-
litical sentiment, the delegates
Randolph Stresses UN
Backing by New Africa
New York — Africa and the Communist satellite nations of East-
ern Europe share a common struggle against colonialism, A. Philip
Randolph declared here at a memorial meeting sponsored by the
Bulgarian National Committee.
Randolph, president of the Sleeping Car Porters and a vice presi-
dent of the AFL-CIO, told the gath-f
ering that "because freedom is in-
divisible, Africa cannot shake off
the yoke of the slavery of colonial-
ism and racism without weakening
the chains of the slavery of the new
Russian and Chinese imperialism."
The meeting honored the mem-
ory of Nikola Petkov, leader of the
democratic opposition in the Bul-
garian Parliament during the im-
mediate post-war period, who was
hanged by the Communists in a
brutal crackdown on all dissenting
viewpoints.
"New Petkovs must arise if
liberty is to live and the free
world survive," Randolph de-
clared.
BLF&E Policy Body
Asks Color Bar End
Cleveland — The 29-mem-
ber general policy committee
of the Locomotive Firemen
& Enginemen has unani-
mously recommended elimi-
nation of the color bar to
membership in the BLF&E
constitution.
The committee, which in-
cludes national officers and
representatives from each un-
ion district, said the union's
next convention will be asked
to delete the entire member-
ship qualification clause from
the constitution.
Soviet Russia's attempt to build
"a beachhead on the African con-
tinent" was blocked, Randolph said,
by refusal of the new African na-
tions to support the Soviet attempt
"to discredit the United Nations
and its able and resourceful secre-
tary, Dag Hammarskjold, brilliant-
ly assisted by Ralph Bunche."
Randolph declared that "any ac-
tion which results in undermining
the UN strikes at the very heart of
hope of the newly emerging free,
independent states of Africa. No
nation can properly claim to be the
friend of Africa and at the same
time attempt to strike down Af-
rica's best friend — the United Na-
tions."
Whether in Africa or Bulgaria,
"the denial of life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness to any human
being is a crime against God and
a sin against man," Randolph de-
clared.
CLFs Pitts Leads
Kennedy Drive
San Francisco — Sec. Treas.
Thomas L. Pitts of the California
Labor Federation will direct labor's
state-wide campaign for the elec-
tion of the Kennedy-Johnson presi-
dential ticket.
As state chairman of the Labor
Committee for Kennedy-Johnson,
Pitts will coordinate the activities
of regional committees.
overturned a committee report
and voted for the establishment
of political education machinery
in each state.
Pres. M. A. Hutcheson was em-
powered by the convention to ap-
point two representatives from each
state to set up non-partisan politi-
cal education committees under
the supervision of district board
members. The Resolutions Com-
mittee had objected to the resolu-
tion, introduced by Local 349,
Orange, N. J., on the ground that
no provision had been made, for
financing such activities and that
district board members would find
the task of supervision too "cum-
bersome."
Deny Discrimination
The convention rejected two
resolutions introduced by Canadian
locals calling for elimination of
racial discrimination. The report
approved by the delegates said the
purpose of the resolution was
praiseworthy but denied the exist-
ence of discriminatory practices
within the brotherhood.
Before adjourning, delegates
completed a thorough revision of
the union constitution to comply
with requirements of the Landrum-
Griffin Act, and acted upon 151
resolutions. At least half of the
delegates participated in debating
the various issues.
Hutcheson in his closing address
called the convention a "working
model of democracy."
Southern Textile
Workers Profiled
A "personality profile" of south-
ern textile workers, stressing the
economic and community forces
that deter them from union organ-
ization, has been sketched by Sol-
omon Barkin, research director of
the Textile Workers Union of
America.
Barkin, who has been connected
with textile organizing efforts for
more than 20 years, also discusses
the changes in "profile" that take
place when the workers do succeed
in forming a union.
The study was published in a re-
cent issue of the Labor Law Jour-
nal. Reprints are available from
the author at 99 University PL,
New York 3, N. Y.
the chief issue before U.S. District
Judge John O. Henderson when he
issued a preliminary injunction
barring a strike by 8,500 switch-
men on 17 western and southern
railroads.
The case arose when the Switch-
men's Union, which maintains its
international headquarters here,
threatened the strike for Sept 19
after its members rejected in a mail
referendum the carriers' offer of
the "pattern" 4 percent wage in-
crease over two years.
Attorneys for the railroads and
the National (Railway) Media-
tion Board sought an injunction
in the U.S. District Court, con-
tending that the constitutional
requirement of a membership
vote ties the hands of union nego-
tiators and prevents them from
exerting every effort to resolve
disputes.
The union, in fighting the in-
junction, argued that its members
have an inalienable right to pass
upon any proposed agreement that
affects their working lives.
In the first court test of this is-
sue, Judge Henderson agreed with
the railroads that "the negotiating
committee for the union, by virtue
of the constitution's restrictive lan-
guage, is not able to negotiate in
good faith."
A few hours after the decision
was handed down here, the Na-
tional Mediation Board announced
a tentative agreement between the
17 railroads and the union was
reached during negotiations in
Washington.
The proposal, described as "a
compromise" by Switchmen's Pres.
Neil P. Speirs, provides for the 4
percent in wage increases over two
years plus improvements in vaca-
tion and paid holiday qualification
periods and improved overtime
rules.
An ironic twist to the issue upon
which the injunction was granted
came when railroad and union ne-
gotiators agreed to submit the pro-
posal to the membership for con-
sideration in accordance with the
Switchmen's constitution. Mail ref-
erendum ballots were sent out and
the results are expected within 10
days.
Meanwhile the legal battle
over the members* right to vote
on contract matters will continue.
Speirs announced that the union's
attorneys will file an immediate
appeal from the District Court
ruling with the Second Circuit
Court of Appeals in New York
City.
Pressmen Smooth Way
For Printing Mergers
New York— Delegates attending the 37th convention of the Print-
ing Pressmen here have mandated their officers to take "swift and
conclusive" action to seek a single labor organization that would
serve an estimated more than half-million workers employed in the
printing and graphic arts industries.
Such action, delegates and speak-
ers Veiterated * during the five-day
convention, would strengthen or-
ganizing, collective bargaining and
legislative efforts of unions in the
printing, publishing and allied fields,
and discourage what was termed
"divide and conquer" techniques
by anti-union employers.
Leading the appeal for amalga-
mation was union Pres. Anthony J .
DeAndrade. He was joined by El-
mer Brown, president of the Typo-
graphical Union; Pres. Paul Phillips
of the Papermakers & Paperwork-
ers; William J. Farson, executive
vice president of the Newspaper
Guild; and Leo Feeney, vice presi-
dent of the Stereotypers. Nine res-
olutions adopted by the convention
also called for merger.
With Printing Pressmen mem-
bership in excess of 114,000 and
Papermakers & Paperworkers
membership at more than 140,-
000, these two international un-
ions might become the nucleus
of any amalgamation of 50
graphic arts unions.
In addition to claiming advan-
tages in organizing, collective bar-
gaining and legislative activities,
DeAndrade held that complete
unity would make it impossible for
struck concerns to get newsprint
and other supplies.
As an example, he cited the pres-
ent strike by 850 Typographical
and Newspaper Guild members,
mailers, stereotypers, pressmen, pa-
per handlers, photo engravers and
unaffiliated teamsters against news-
paper publishers in Portland, Ore.
There were suggestions that merger
action would prove successful with
division by craft under a depait-
mental plan.
Delegates heard how amalgama-
tion of unions representing printing
trades workers in Britain has
worked successfully. Richard W.
Briginshaw, general secretary of
the National Society of Operative
Printers and Assistants of Great
Britain, brought greetings from the
Printing and Kindred Trades Fed-
eration, with a total membership of
327,000 workers. He noted that
the federation has enjoyed success
in adjudicating disputes over craft
Installed in office for new four-
year terms were Pres. DeAndrade,
Boston; Sec.-Treas. George L«
Googe, Atlanta, and the following
vice presidents: Fred Maxted, Ham-
ilton, Ont.; Walter J. Turner, Los
Angeles; Alexander J. Rohan,
Washington, D. C; Patrick O. Sul-
livan, New York City; James Doyle,
Chicago; and J. Frazier, Detroit,
replacing Jack P. Torrence of Chi-
cago. All had been elected in a
referendum last February.
Pension Change Defeated
Members rejected a proposed
plan under which pension benefit
payments and per capita pension
payments would have been discon-
tinued beginning Jan. 1, 1961. The
plan also would have provided for
beneficiaries of deceased members
to receive the total amount of the
member's contributions to the fund
during the term of his member-
ship in the union.
Instead they approved a substi-
tute measure calling for a 22-cent-
per-month increase in per capita
payment into the pension fund for
the next year, subject to further re-
view by the union's executive board
at that time. Retired members at
present receive pensions of $32.50
per month.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
Pa-e FAevem
Administration Denounced:
Runaway Ships Pose
Key Threat to NMU
By David L. Perlman
New York — Delegates to the Maritime Union convention here
branded runaway shipping "the greatest menace to the jobs and
working conditions of merchant seamen" and greeted with pro-
longed applause a pledge of support from Sen. John F. Kennedy.
The Democratic presidential candidate wired the delegates that
"the runaway ship, like its counter-'^
part the runaway shop, is a hit-and
run operation which should be
stopped."
Farlier NMU Pres. Joseph Cur-
ran sharply denounced the Eisen-
hower-Nixon Administration for
its support of shipowners who reg-
ister their vessels under the flags
of Panama, Liberia and Honduras
"to evade labor costs, taxes and
safety regulations."
Curran described the United
States as "the only maritime na-
tion in the world in which the
dominant forces of government
actively oppose the maintenance
of a merchant marine adequate
to the nation's needs."
Since the union's last conven-
tion in 1957, Curran told the 500
delegates, the active American
merchant fleet has dropped from
1,154 ships manned by 60,700 sea-
men to 951 ships and 49,000 sea-
men. Ships flying the United
States flag, he said, "carried barely
10 percent of the nation's water-
borne foreign commerce."
The delegates, representing 40,-
000 NMU members shipping out
of 30 major ports, also:
• Gave an ovation to Pres.
James B. Carey of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, voted
"full support" to IUE members on
strike against General Electric and
charged the company with having
"forced this strike for the purpose
of attempting to stampede the
Curran Calls
L-G Charges
Intimidation
New York— With "any kind of
fair hearing," Sec. of Labor James
P. Mitchell's charges that the
Maritime Union violated the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act in its recent elec-
tions "will be thrown out of court
and exposed for what they are —
an effort at political intimidation,"
declared NMU Pres, Joseph Cur-
ran.
The charges were filed in U.S.
District Court here during the
NMU's convention and "were a
complete surprise to us," Curran
said.
"We have no idea what the
Labor Dept. is basing its charges
on," he added. "The department
has made no inquiries of us.
"For the last 20 years, NMU
elections have been administered
from start to finish by the Honest
Ballot Association. As far as we
know, the Labor Dept. has made
no inquiry of the association."
The NMU elections were held
over the two-month period between
Apr. 1 and May 31 in order to
give members whose work takes
them to all parts of the world an
opportunity to cast ballots. Chosen
in the referendum which Mitchell
has attacked, in addition to Cur-
ran, were the secretary-treasurer,
three vice presidents, three national
representatives and 67 agents and
patrolmen in 23 sea, lake and
river ports.
In his civil action, Mitchell
charged the union with failing to
insure the secrecy of the ballot;
illegally disqualifying candidates;
permitting electioneering at polling
places; using union funds to pro-
mote the candidacies of certain
aspirants, and failing to give equal
treatment to all candidates.
American public into voting for a
continuation of the anti-labor Re-
publican Administration."
• Denounced the Labor
Dept.'s use of the L an drum-Grif-
fin Act to challenge the NMU's
election procedures as the Ad-
ministration's "first major offen-
sive against the trade union
movement" and as bearing out
warnings that the Landrum-
Griffin Act was designed "to
harass and make impotent hon-
est and strong trade unions."
• Voted confidence in the
United Nations "as the one instru-
ment which can lift the fear of
nuclear war from the world and
can assure justice and the right of
free determination for people in all
colonial areas including those be-
hind the iron curtain."
The resolution, adopted without
dissent, denounced Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev's efforts to
"paralyze" the UN as "diplomatic
blackmail" reminiscent of the ac-
tions of Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany in destroying the League
of Nations.
• Called on American ship-
owners to join with labor to strive
to develop and promote "an ade-
quate American-flag merchant ma-
rine."
Hails Democratic Platform
Curran told the convention that
"neither organized labor nor the
country can afford another four
years of a businessman's adminis-
tration."
The Democratic platform, he
said, "is based on principles to
which we can give our full and
wholehearted support."
Curran added:
"The Democratic standard-bear-
er, John F. Kennedy, is a man who
is pledged to carry out the prin-
ciples of that platform and, in the
opinion of your officers, has the
ability and the will to do so."
Curran called on the delegates
to support "an all-out effort in
the field of political action . . •
to help restore the country to
paths of progress."
A report to the convention hailed
the development of cooperative re-
lations with the Seafarers Intl.
Union and the end of interunion
warfare which was "giving the
enemies of seamen on the water-
front and in government a field
day." The Intl. Maritime Workers
Union, jointly sponsored by the
SIU and the NMU, has success-
fully signed up "a majority of the
crews of some of the biggest run-
away outfits," the report noted.
Uniform Standards Urged
Curran, in his keynote address
to the convention, called for co-
operation with the Intl. Transport-
workers Federation in helping to
eliminate low wages and long hours
on all foreign flag vessels.
He called for a uniform world
standard of wages and conditions
for seamen to end the competition
between U.S. seamen getting $400
a month, $100-a-month seamen in
Europe and still-lower rates for
African or Asian crews.
"There has to be a revolution in
the world,'* Curran said, "not a
Communist revolution nor a Fascist
revolution, but a revolution against
the low wages being paid to work-
ers in the same industry around
the world."
NMU PRES. Joseph Curran greets Jonathan E. Grant, minister of
labor from Kingston, Jamaica, center, and his secretary, Sewell W.
Mowatt, left, at Maritime Union convention in New York City.
Michigan GOP Guts
Health Care for Aged
Lansing, Mich. — Gov. G. Mennen Williams (D) has "reluctantly"
signed a bill qualifying Michigan for federal funds to help the state
pay for medical care for needy persons over 65 after the Republi-
can-controlled state Senate "cut the heart out" of an already-com-
promised bipartisan measure.
The stopgap bill — expiring in six^
months — was enacted by a special
session of the legislature. It pro-
vides medical care, including home
nursing and physical examinations,
for some 60,000 persons now re-
ceiving state old age assistance
pensions. A more limited program,
with benefits roughly equivalent to
Blue Cross-Blue Shield hospital in-
surance, is provided for needy per-
sons not on the public assistance
rolls.
Democratic leaders sharply de-
nounced amendments forced
Robt.Noonan Dead;
Aide to Freeman
Robert E. Noonan, asistant to
Pres. Gordon M. Freeman of the
Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers and a veteran of virtually
a lifetime of service to the labor
movement, died of a heart attack
here at the age of 58.
He was a son of the late James
Noonan, IBEW president from
1919 to 1929, and also had served
as assistant to Freeman's prede-
cessor, the late Dan W. Tracy,
leaving on the latter's death in 1955
to become a labor adviser under
the Marshall Plan with headquar-
ters in Paris. He returned to serve
under Freeman.
Surviving are his widow, Ruth;
a son, a daughter and five grand-
children.
Jobless Aid Seen
Doomed to Failure
Monticello, N. Y. — The
federal - state unemployment
insurance system is heading
for failure in the face of ex-
panding automation, Pres.
Harold C. Hanover of the
New York State AFL-CIO
told a recent dinner of super-
visory employes of the State
Division of Employment here.
The system has already
proved inadequate by replac-
ing only 20 percent of wage
losses caused by joblessness,
he said, because it is made up
of two elements "puliing in
opposite directions."
On one hand, he explained,
it seeks to pay jobless work-
ers part of their lost wages,
and on the other provides tax-
saving devices for employers
which were aimed at stabiliz-
ing employment but have had
the effect of inducing them to
oppose payment of benefits.
through by the Republicans which
denied home nursing care and diag-
nostic medical services to persons
not on the public assistance rolls
and which make elderly persons
ineligible for the program if they
have children who, according to the
state's Social Welfare Dept., should
be able to pay the medical expenses
of their parents.
Lt. Gov. John B. Swainson,
the Democratic gubernatorial
candidate, denounced the GOP
cuts in the bill as a "poorhouse
approach 9 ' to medical care of
the aged and said the federal
measure which led to the state
bill was "a Republican fraud."
The GOP amendments, Swain-
son declared, "force each older
citizen in need of medical care to
submit to the indignity of asking
his children for money."
Single persons not on public as-
sistance rolls must have an annual
income of less than $1,500 and
liquid assets of less than that
amount. For married recipients,
the limit is $2,000.
A House-Senate committee of 10
members was set up to study the
operation of the program and report
to the new legislature which con-
venes in January.
Farm 'Factory 9
Workers Win
25c Pay Hike
Los Angeles — California's big-
gest "factory in the field" opera-
tion has signed a contract with
Packinghouse Workers Local 78,
which District 4 Dir. Joe Oilman
says "establishes the highest scale
of wages to be found under union
contract in agricultural field em-
ployment in the United States."
Following two UPWA-led strikes
during past seasons on the Bud
Antle, Inc. mobile carrot cello-
packing machine, a field factory
on which up to 90 workers are em-
ployed, negotiations were begun
this summer which led to a three-
year contract establishing, in the
third year, minimum rates of $1.60
an hour for women and $1.70 for
men. These rates are 43 cents an
hour above the rates paid when
negotiations opened in August.
Starting with minimum contract
rates of $1.35 for women and
$1.46 for men this year, the con-
tract provides for increases of 25
cents an hour over the three-year
term.
In addition, the contract pro-
vides time, and a half after eight
hours and for work done on Sun-
days and holidays, the union shop
and clauses on seniority and griev-
ance procedure with arbitration.
Urban League
Told of 'Heat'
Put on Labor
New York — The pressures put
on New York labor leaders "to
turn their backs" during the drive
to organize non-professional em-
ployes of voluntary hospitals last
year "would surprise you," Pres.
Harry Van Arsdale Jr., of the AFL-
CIO Central Labor Council, told
the golden anniversary conference
of the National Urban League.
Van Arsdale, an Urban League
national trustee, shared the plat-
form at a luncheon session with
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. A. Philip
Randolph, who called on union
leaders to move against racial dis-
crimination. AFL-CIO Reg. Dir.
Michael Mann presided.
Speakers at a later workshop on
"Extending the Frontiers of Civil
Rights" through teamwork by or-
ganized labor and the league in-
cluded Boris Shishkin, director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil
Rights; Francis C. Shane, execu-
tive secretary of the Steelworkers*
Committee on Civil Rights; James
E. Turner, fair practices director
of the Rubber Workers.
Traveling ITU School
Visits Local Unions
Indianapolis — The Typographical Union this fall is continuing a
unique ITU-wide educational program, an extensive series of
regional seminars held at geographical centers throughout the
country and Canada. The program was launched last March.
The eighth of the series was scheduled for Oct. 8-9 at Columbia,
S. C, another at Birmingham, Ala.,$> —
' Former general counsel for the Na-
tional Labor Relations Board, he is
an acknowledged expert on labor
law.
Technology, Too
Besides the tightly-scheduled two-
day educational sessions, the ITU
also arranges an evening exhibition
and lecture on the newest techno-
logical development in the printing
and publishing industry.
The ITU plans to cover most of
its 750 locals before the seminart
are completed. Seven of the edu-
cational sessions held earlier this
year covered more than 200 locals.
One was held at Toronto, Canada.
In addition to the meetings de-
signed for local unions, the ITU
holds an annual -week-long seminar
for its international representative*
at ITU headquarters here.
later in October, and two more in
November at Springfield, Mass.,
and San Antonio, Texas.
The seminars have been de-
scribed as "little ITU conven-
tions/' and all the union's top
officers and ITU headquarters
department heads participate in
them.
The union leaders talk about pol-
icy matters and procedures, and the
department heads discuss subjects
pertinent to their area, such as ap-
prenticeship, contracts and public
relations matters.
One of the highlights of the ses-
sions is the discussion of the Taft-
Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Acts
and other legal matters by the
ITU's general counsel, Gerhard P.
Van Arkel of Washington, D. C.
Page TVelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1960
Kennedy Lashes GOP's 8- Year Record
Urges Stronger U.S.
In Midwest Drive
(Continued from Page 1)
depressed areas and says America
is prosperous and content.
"Mr. Nixon has looked, but he
has not seen; heard but not listened.
When it comes to our economy,
he sees no evil, hears no evil,
speaks no evil. But the unpleasant
facts are there."
He tied Nixon tight to the Re-
publican label, although, he said,
Nixon "is reluctant to admit around
election time that he is a Repub-
lican." He said that a Nixon "posi-
tion paper," in an election year,
"cannot paper over his record or
the record of the Republican party."
His two most used examples
were Nixon's vote this year against
federal funds for teachers' salaries
and his 1949 vote against the basic
Housing Act, although the Vice
President now says the "Housing
Act of 1949 has worked well."
Kennedy's crowd in the Midwest
except for Indiana, were big, en-
thusiastic, happy and thunderous.
Louisville Had 200,000
The record for sheer enthusiasm
and noise went to Louisville where,
despite a two-hour delay and
drenching rain, the crowds were
estimated by police officials at 200,-
000 — twice those of Nixon who was
there two weeks earlier during the
noon rush hour on a Saturday with
sunny skies.
The Kennedy crowd broke po-
lice lines, surged over the candi-
date's car. It was led by a group
of college-age boys and girls, an
important factor in a state where
the voting age starts at 18.
In jam-packed courthouse square
Kennedy waded into the civil rights
issue again, calling denial of civil
rights a terrible waste of America's
greatest resource — her people. He
praised Louisville as having "set
an example to the world" by the
way it carried out the Supreme
Court school desegregation decision.
In Kentucky, Negro registration has
doubled this year.
Ahead of the Democratic can-
didate lay a heavy schedule in-
cluding his second TV debate
with Vice Pres. Nixon and a re-
turn to Kentucky. Behind lay
strenuous trips to Minneapolis,,
where he campaigned for Demo-
cratic Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey
and Gov. Orville Freeman; to St.
Louis, southern Illinois, south-
ern Indiana and southern Ohio.
He stumped the Lincoln country
charging that "the party of Lincoln
is not the party of Nixon." In one
18-hour day which included 15
speeches, three air hops and 125
miles of motorcading he followed
almost the same path that former
Pres. Truman traveled to victory
in 1948.
From an early-morning speech
in a cold drizzle in the Lincoln-
Douglas Square in Alton, on the
banks of the Mississippi, where
the last debate was held in 1858,
Kennedy preached the need for a
strong Democratic Party in pow-
er and pictured himself as a
Truman-type candidate and Nix-
on as the "Dewey" of today.
In the coal-rich fields around
Harrisburg, it was obvious that
things weren't good. From the
small houses with perfectly-tended
lawns came not only housewives in
aprons but men who normally
would have been at work during
these daylight hours.
Unemployment is running at 17
percent in this hard-hit area, which
would have benefited from the
twice-vetoed depressed area bill
which Kennedy strongly supported.
Evidence of the long-term unem-
ployment was the daily front page
box in the Harrisburg Daily Regis-
ter which starkly lists mines run-
ning the next day.
The Register for Oct. 3 didn't
report, incidentally, that a presi-
dential candidate was speaking
from the courthouse steps that
afternoon but 8,000 people were
waiting when the candidate arrived
two hours late, the result of the
near hopeless task of keeping to a
schedule made impossible by the
crowds and voters who "just want
to touch him."
Kennedy tied the unemployment
situation, the general economic
stagnation and the farmers' prob
lems together in many speeches, al
ways as part of the problem which
must be solved if America is to be
strong to meet the Soviet threat.
Country Needs Talents
"It is ridiculous," he said, "that
a nation which is in a race for its
life with Russia cannot find full-
time use for the talents and ener-
gies of 7 million people."
Pinpointing the enormous job
ahead, Kennedy underlined the
need — 25,000 new jobs a week
every week for the next 10 years
"in order to get jobs for your
sons and daughters," he said in
Carbondale, an area 60,000
young people had left in the last
10 years hunting employment.
Lashing at the "Republican veto"
and "bargain-basement approach to
economic problems," Kennedy
quoted Nixon's claim that the can-
didates "share the same goals but
differ on means." That, the Massa-
chusetts Senator said, was "non-
sense." "The goal is meaningless
if he refuses to take the only road
that will reach it."
There was frost in the political
air in Indianapolis, where Kennedy
was greeted by the smallest, cool-
est street crowds yet, with local
Democrats saying only, "Hoosiers
eat at six." A $100-a-plate dinner
drew 1,500 plus 10,000 in the gal-
lery.
In Pendleton and outside Mun-
cie he made unscheduled stops, the
latter at the Borg Warner plant
where 300 Auto Worker members
blocked the highway and were re-
warded with a speech.
In Anderson, perhaps inspired
by a big "going out of business"
sign on a store front in a block
where there were three "for rent"
signs, the candidate asked mer-
chants if they were satisfied with
business as it was, and turning to
farmers he asked them the same
question.
Welsh, Nixon Top Poll
The latest poll in which state
Democrats have confidence, taken
the last week in August, showed
Matt Welsh, Democratic guberna-
torial candidate, leading by 55 to
45 percent, with the exact opposite
the score for Nixon and Kennedy.
Hoosiers told reporters that Ken-
nedy is now running better than
when the poll was taken. How
much better was the big unan-
swered question. Registration is
climbing and the drive is still con-
tinuing and the answer may lie in
one set of statistics usually buried
on the back pages of newspapers.
In Terre Haute a middle-aged,
thin, well-tanned and not well-
dressed farmer leaning against the
stone wall near the county court-
house summed it up: How the
state goes, he said, "depends on the
price of corn on election day."
In Evansville, where three tre-
mendous factories now stand emp-
ty and silent in a state which has
lost 33,800 jobs in the last eight
years, the crowds don't need dia-
grams to understand Kennedy.
The state has not gone Demo-
cratic in a presidential election
since 1936 and Kennedy says,
"Give us a chance."
A BRASS BAND greeted Sen. John F. Kennedy when his caravan went through Brooklyn, a heavily-
Negro suburb of East St. Louis, 111. The Democratic presidential nominee stopped and greeted his
well-wishers, as the picture shows.
Nixon Woos Liberals in the North,
Appeals to Dixie Conservatives
(Continued from Page 1)
clared, "we need most of the
Republican votes, more than half
of the independent votes and
about 20 percent of the Demo-
cratic votes."
Apparently with this formula in
mind, Nixon, in a one-day foray
into the once-solid South, called on
Democrats there not to "vote the
party label," accusing the Demo-
cratic Party of having deserted the
South with the platform it fash-
ioned at Los Angeles in August.
The charge — never spelled out —
brought cheers from crowds in
Richmond, Va., and Charlotte,
N. C.
In pressing his drive for con-
servative southern backing, Nixon
contended that the GOP platform
is fashioned on "the principles of
Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson" —
the historic leaders of the Demo-
cratic Party. The principles es-
poused by these Democratic leaders
and carried forward in the GOP
platform, he said, are reliance on
individual enterprise and protection
of state's rights.
Shoe Unions
Get 8c Raise
In 30 Plants
St. Louis, Mo. — A strike of about
13,000 workers at 30 plants of the
Intl. Shoe Co. was averted when
the company and representatives of
two unions agreed on the basis for
a new two-year contract.
Affected by the settlement, which
is subject to ratification at the local
level, are more than 8,000 mem-
bers of the United Shoe Workers
at 20 plants and more than 4,000
members of the Boot & Shoe
Workers at 10 plants.
Basis of the settlement was a
wage increase of 5 cents an hour
on Jan. 1, 1961, and an addi-
tional 3-cent raise on Jan. 1,
1962.
The old contract expired at mid-
night Sept. 30. The settlement was
quickly reached the following day
after a committee representing lo-
cals from both unions accepted a
recommendation by the joint nego-
tiating committee to reject a com-
pany offer of 4 cents on Jan. I and
2.5 cents a year later.
Moving into the North, Nixon
changed his tactics sharply — using
one approach in predominantly Re-
publican silk-stocking districts of
New Jersey and another in heavily
Democratic New York City and in
New Jersey recession areas.
Conservative Approach
To large crowds which turned
out in beautiful fall weather to
greet his motorcade in such GOP
strongholds as Hackensack, Plain-
field and West Orange, Nixon
stayed with the conservative ap-
proach — telling Republicans he was
asking for their vote, not because
he wore the same party label as
they did, but because the Demo-
cratic policies would "turn the cal-
endar back" to the days of Roose-
velt and Truman.
To crowds in Democratic cities
— including recession-ridden Pater-
son and Elizabeth, N. J. — and to
a small noonday audience in the
canyons of New York's garment
district, Nixon shifted to the liberal
approach.
He dropped the line that, under
Democratic programs, "It's not
Jack's money they're spending — it's
yours." He asked that they con-
sider "not just the party, not, just
the label," but the "backgrounds"
of the candidates.
To the less than 10,000 work-
ing people who heard the gar-
ment center street talk, Nixon
recalled his own working-class
background, his family's poverty,
and his early struggles to get an
education. He promised that a
continuation of the GOP in the
White House would mean new
action to beef up the economy,
provide health care, improve edu-
cation, provide more jobs and
higher pay.
He was joined by New York's
Republican Sen. Jacob K. Javits,
who contended that it was "not
right for a man (presumably Dem-
ocratic presidential candidate John
F. Kennedy) to wrap around him-
self the exclusive mantle of liberal-
ism." Javits hailed Nixon as an
outstanding liberal.
The Vice President's plea to for-
get party labels was occasionally
made difficult by the fact that GOP
Sen. Clifford P. Case of New Jer-
sey, a candidate for re-election,
traveled with him during his day-
long stumping of that state, and the
fact that GOP Gov. Nelson A.
Rockefeller, a former critic of the
Eisenhower-Nixon Ad m i n ist rat ion's
conservatism, toured the New York
City area with the Vice President's
party.
In these two areas, Nixon
dropped his plea for utter biparti-
sanship, declaring that election of
the entire Republican ticket would
"enable us to have responsible party
government."
09-8-01
In Nixon's southern stops, he
hammered at the theme that the
Kennedy programs to ease the na-
tion's economic and welfare prob-
lems would raise taxes, put the fed-
eral government into control of
schools, force unemployment and
business failures, and drive up food
prices "25 percent."
Nixon's speeches all turn, in
time, to the questions of peace and
national security — and his claim
that America is ahead in the arms
race with the Soviet Union seems
to bring reassurance to the crowds.
The GOP candidate wins big
cheers with his pledge that this is
the strongest country, militarily, in
the world: that four more years of
a Republican Administration will
mean "peace without surrender";
and that Pres. Eisenhower "got us
out of one war and kept us out of
others."
Nixon's crowds, on the whole,
have been good. But twice dur-
ing his barnstorming in New
Jersey, his path crossed that taken
three weeks earlier by a Kennedy
motorcade — and in both of these
instances, Nixon came off sec-
ond best, crowdwise.
In recession-ridden Paterson,
only 10,000 turned out for the Vice
President — roughly half the Ken-
nedy crowd. And in Elizabeth,
also hard hit by unemployment,
Nixon's crowd was only 1,500 com-
pared to the 7,500 who had turned
out earlier for his Democratic
opponent.
iVol. V
Issied weekly at 815 Sixteenth St.. M.W.,
Washinfton 6, D. C. $2 a year
Saturday, October 15, 1960
t7*s^i7 No. 42
Kennedy Rips Nixon Stand
In Domestic, Foreign Fields
Legislation
Blocked by
Rules, Veto
Failure of the 86th Congress
to enact a wide range of progres
sive legislation has been blamed
by the AFL-CIO on the combina
tion of Pres. Eisenhower's con-
stant vetoes and threats of vetoes,
and on the misuse of congression
al rules by a coalition of conserv-
ative Republicans and southern
Democrats.
"In no recent Congress have so
many highly important legislative
measures been killed or crippled,
the trade union movement declared
in a new publication, "Labor Looks
at the 86th Congress," an analysis
of the two-year record of the House
and Senate.
Not one of the key measures
for which liberals battled — medical
care for the aged through social
security, federal aid to schools,
minimum wages, housing, depressed
areas, civil rights, and constructive
labor legislation — became law, the
AFL-CIO said, primarily because
Congress had become a "prisoner
of its rules."
Whether the 87th Congress
which takes office in January
will "turn in a better record of
performance," the publication
said pointedly, "depends on in-
creasing the liberal numbers in
the House and in the Senate, on
electing a liberal President, and
on making changes in the rules
of the House and the Senate so
that majority rule can more easily
prevail."
These changes, it added, "and
the future of needed legislation, are
in the hands of the voters."
In a companion study of the 86th
(Continued on Page 9)
5 More Major
Areas Named
As Depressed
The nation's depressed areas
were swollen to a total of 42 in
September as the government
added five more major industrial
centers to the list of areas with
a "substantial labor surplus."
This was the highest total since
July 1959. The number of
"smaller areas of substantial la-
bor surplus" remained unchanged
from the July 1960 total of 116.
The bimonthly report moved
these major centers into the sub-
stantial labor surplus — 6 percent
and over jobless — grouping: Bir-
mingham, Ala.; San Diego, Calif.;
Canton, O.; Muskegon-Muskegon
Heights, Mich., and Jersey City,
N. J.
The Labor Dept.-s survey of
(Continued on Page 3)
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL Candidate John F. Kennedy
was the breakfast guest of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in New York.
FDR's widow has taken an active role in campaigning for the
Kennedy- Johnson ticket.
3.4 Million Idle:
Jobless Rate Hits
Non-Recession Top
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's key rate of unemployment, adjusted for seasonal
influences, declined slightly to 5.7 percent in September — the high-
est non^recesion-year September since the end of World War II.
The 5.7 percent rate, down from the 1960 high of 5.9 percent in
August, has been exceeded in postwar Septembers only in recession
years. In 1949, it was 6.5 percent; 1 ^
in 1954, 6.2 percent; in 1958, 7.2
percent. Last year, during the steel
strike, it was 5.6 percent.
The September jobless rate has
been as low as 3.1 and 2.9 percent
in 1952 and 1953, respectively.
The Labor Dept.'s monthly re-
port on the job situation said
that, due mainly to seasonal in-
fluences, total employment
dropped by 500,000 to 67.8 mil-
lion and' unemployment fell by
400,000 to 3.4 million.
While employment was described
as "still a record for the month,"
the report showed a continuing job
decline throughout the crucial man-
ufacturing sector of the economy.
In Cincinnati, Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell told the Mine Workers'
convention that he foresaw a con-
tinued high level of employment
for the remainder of 1960.
Mitchell quoted the. September
job figures as the best ever for the
month and, of the 800,000 long-
term jobless, offered the approach
of "special assistance must be given
to attract industry to distressed
areas."
The steel industry continued its
decline, losing 6,100 jobs over the
month and a total of 140,000 this
year. Lumber and wood products
dropped 18,000 over the month,
and non-electrical machinery
14,600.
"Evidence of weakness" was re-
vealed in the apparel industry, the
Labor Dept. reported, with a de-
cline of 11,100 jobs when the in-
dustry usually experiences a sea-
sonal upturn.
Auto industry employment rose
79,500 as new car production got
underway and electrical machinery
rose by 17,800 jobs. The largest
(Continued on Page 3)
Meany Raps
False GOP
Statements
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has branded as "false and mis
leading propaganda" the Repub
lican claims that Sen. John F.
Kennedy and Vice Pres. Nixon
"stand for the same objectives"
on major foreign and domestic
issues in the presidential cam
paign.
Meany, in a coast-to-coast ra
dio broadcast over the American
Broadcasting Co. network, declared
there is a "vast gulf" between the
two presidential candidates, adding
that the GOP effort to de-emphasize
this gulf is ''clearly designed to lull
the American people into apathy
and to discourage voters from going
to the polls."
In the broadcast — first in a series
sponsored by the Ladies' Garment
Workers' Campaign Committee —
he forecast that the attempt to cre-
ate "false images" of the two candi-
dates is "doomed to fail" because
"the voters know the score."
The AFL-CIO president said
that "even a casual examination
of 'the major issues" demonstrates
that the Democratic and Repub-
lican contenders stand "poles
apart and that the voters do have
a real and important decision to
make next November."
Meany spelled out major differ-
ences between Kennedy and Nixon
in the foreign policy and defense
fields and in the areas of economic
growth, medical care for the aged,
and modernization of the archaic
House rules which permit the con-
servative Republican-southern Dem-
ocratic coalition to throttle liberal
measures.
He declared pointedly that for
the Republicans to claim that the
goals of Kennedy and Nixon coin-
cide in these fields "is to insult the
intelligence of the American voter."
In the ILG broadcast, Meany
said Nixon throughout the cam-
paign has "told the American peo-
(Continued on Page 11)
Tempo of
Campaign
Intensifies
By Willard Shelton
En route with Kennedy — In a
whirlwind trip from Ohio to the
Deep South and into Pennsylva-
nia and New York, Sen. John F.
Kennedy stepped up his cam-
paign against Vice Pres. Nixon
in slashing attacks on the Repub-
lican nominees record on do-
mestic affairs, foreign policy and
civil rights.
In Ohio's layoff-ridden Mahoning
Valley steel cities, he used his Sun-
day punch in challenging Nixon to
tell the workers of Youngstown,
Warren and Salem that "they never
had it so good."
In Warm Springs, Ga., Columbia,
S. C, and Pittsburgh the Demo-
cratic nominee spoke bluntly on
civil rights, saying "we must assure
every citizen of the full protection
of his constitutional rights and equal
opportunity to participate in every
phase of our national life."
In Pittsburgh he expanded a
foreign-policy attack on Vice
Pres. Nixon's programs, begun
earlier in Georgia and South
Carolina, charging the Vice Pres-
ident with boasting of being a
"risk-taker abroad" and of in-
viting the risk of war by "com-
mitting us to defense of two
rocks six miles off the coast of
China" — Quemoy and Matsu
— which the chiefs of staff admit
that under some circumstances
should not be defended and "are
indefensible."
"In 1952 the Republican Party
in Pittsburgh promised liberation
for Eastern Europe — and now has
a Communist satellite 90 miles off
the coast of Florida. This is the
parly of peace and prosperity?" he
asked derisively.
Everywhere the Democratic nom-
inee sought to tie the Vice President
directly to the Republican Party
record.
"I don't blame the Republicans
(Continued on Page 12)
Kennedy Drive Picking Up Speed
In 5-State Rocky Mountain Region
Denver, Colo. — The rising tide of modern liberalism which has characterized the Rocky Mountain
states during the past four years continues to swell, yet one month in advance of the 1960 election
it is difficult to estimate how much the gain will be this year.
At stake in five states — Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana — are 21 presidential elec-
toral votes, 11 House seats and four of the region's 10 Senate seats.
In the area as a whole, Nixon
would, have had the edge as of
mid-September. But in all five
states, Kennedy was gaining
ground as October began. By
mid-October it looked close in
each state — but the large number
of silent voters kept the fore-
casters guessing and a major
development in the campaign
could turn the tide in either di-
rection.
Kennedy's appearance in the
Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake
City late in September had a tre-
mendous impact on Utah and Ida-
ho voters. His first-round win in
the television debate series gave
him a leg-up in all states. Local
Democratic and labor campaign-
ers of most of the states have been
working effectively, although less
well financed than their opposition.
In the Senate races, the 10 seats
(Continued on Page 5)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1960
New IUE Peace Plan Rejected by GE
FULL SUPPORT OF AFL-CIO to striking General Electric workers was pledged at meeting attended
by, left to right, Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler, and representatives of other affiliated
unions representing groups of GE employes.
UTW Parley Backs Kennedy, Told
To Fight to Save 'Dying' Industry
New York — Textile workers must "fight to save an industry that is dying on its feet," Sen. John
O. Pastore (D-R. I.) told 380 delegates attending the 15th convention of the United Textile Workers
here.
Noting that foreign imports and technological changes have cost some half-million jobs since 1947,
Pastore held that the reason why American production is not protected by high tariffs is because
textile manufacturers plan eventu-3>-
ally to close down their plants in
this country.
George Baldanzi, UTW presi-
dent, also told delegates that if
something is not done quickly
about imports in the textile in-
dustry it will mean "disaster."
He cited imports from Japan,
Hong Kong, India and Pakistan
produced by workers at wages of
15 cents an hour, as against rates
High Court
Bars Appeal
In Blast 'Plot'
The Supreme Court has refused
to review the conspiracy convictions
of eight Textile Workers Union of
America members who drew stiff
prison sentences for plotting to
dynamite the plant of the struck
Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills at
Henderson, N. C.
The brief order left standing a
North Carolina Supreme Court de-
cision of Jan. 14 upholding the
conviction of the TWUA members.
Justice William O. Douglas was the
only member of the court favoring
a review. Justice Hugo L. Black
did not participate.
Given six to 10-year terms for
the conspiracy — although no dyna-
miting ever took place — were
TWUA Vice Pres. Boyd E. Payton
and Staff Representatives Lawrence
Gore and Charles Auslander. Four
strikers — Warren Walker, Calvin
Pegram, Robert Abbott and Johnnie
Martin — drew five to seven-year
sentences, and a fifth rank-and-filer,
Malcolm Jarrell, was sentenced to
three years.
TWUA Pres. William Pollock
expressed regret at the court's
ruling, declaring that "if the case
had been heard on its merits and
in an atmosphere devoid of the
hysteria which prevailed in Hen-
derson . . . their innocence would
have been established.
'The 'crime' for which these men
were convicted was a sham," Pol-
lock continued. "It was deliber-
ately fostered and nurtured by an
agent provocateur who is an ex-
convict with a grudge against the
union. Without him there was no
conspiracy. Even under his prod-
ding, nothing happened,"
of $1.20 per hour and more that
prevail in the United States.
"If this is allowed to continue,"
he said, "there won't be any textile
workers in our nation, but only
corpses."
Delegates unanimously adopted
a resolution endorsing the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket. They also
passed resolutions calling for the
employment of idle textile work-
ers and use of idle equipment in
this country's foreign aid pro-
gram; the election of candidates
pledged to enact $1.25 minimum
wage laws on the state level, and
efforts by the U.S. to bring about
world disarmament and abolition
of nuclear testing.
Pastore urged textile workers and
those in all other industries affected
by foreign imports produced under
substandard labor conditions "to
wage a legislative fight and support
candidates who will make it their
business to win higher protective
tariffs."
The Rhode Island Democrat, who
headed a special Senate committee
that recently completed a study of
the textile industry, reported his
committee had recommended plac-
ing higher import quotas by cate-
gories, but that the Eisenhower
Administration turned down this
proposal.
"We have to meet the threat of
communism, but why can't we do
so without destroying American
industry?" he declared. "The
worst thing we can do to retard
America is to foster a policy of
false security, to hold that Ameri-
can production is inexhaustible."
He maintained that "negative
thinking" has been responsible for
the situation on tariffs.
"This Administration appears to
be loaded with representatives of
big business who are evidently pre-
pared to liquidate consumer indus-
tries so they can buy heavy goods
as a method of expanding their
businesses," he declared.
He noted that Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy had placed himself on record
in support of the recommendations
of the Pastore committee.
With foreign imports at their
present high level and increasing
application of automated devices,
he declared, the textile industry
could produce all the nation's re-
quirements if it worked only six
months out of the year.
Pastore said that the only imme-
diate stopgap remedy, aside from
higher tariffs, would be a 35-hour
workweek for present pay.
Delegates re-elected Baldanzi
president and Francis Schaufenbil
secretary-treasurer for new four-
year terms.
Elected vice presidents were Her-
man Ackroyd, Jack Cipolla, Ken-
neth Clark, Frank Lyons, Philip
Salem and Frank Sgambato for the
New England area; Robert Cole,
Edward Hirschberger, Burt Hyman,
Joseph Krause, Louis Rubino and
Charles Sobol for the Middle At-
lanitc region; Johnnie E. Brown,
Everett Dean, William D. Howell,
Calvin Ray, William Silcox and Roy
Whitmire for the southern area;
and Roy Groenert and Roger Pro-
vost, respectively, for the Midwest
and Canada.
Courts, Police Asked
To Curb Picketing
New York — The General Electric Co., still represented at the
bargaining table by a second-string negotiating team, turned down
an offer by the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers to recess the
two-week strike and called for more court and police help to break
the solid picket lines of 70,000 GE workers.
The company stuck to its single^
"take it or leave it offer" despite
the collapse of its hopes to break the
strike — and the union — by keeping
its plants open for "loyal" workers.
Marching the picket lines with
IUE members were more than
1 .400 members of the Technical
Engineers in two locals at Lynn,
Mass., and a local at Philadelphia.
One of the striking AFTE locals is
made up of GE time and motion
study specialists. Company publi-
cists made no claims of any signifi-
cant production at the 55 struck
plants.
IUE Pres. James B. Carey gave
GE a six-way choice in a pro-
posal to recess the strike until
Nov. 7 to permit realistic nego-
tiations and a public report by a
mediation panel.
The IUE said the strike would be
suspended if the company showed
good faith in carrying on meaning-
ful collective bargaining by im-
proving its offer on any one of six
union demands:
• An annual wage increase of
3.5 percent during the period of the
contract. (The company has of-
fered an average of 2.3 percent a
year.)
• Supplementary unemploy-
ment benefits. (GE turned it down,
offered only a limited retraining
program.)
• Continuation of the cost-of-
living escalator provision. (The
company has insisted on abolishing
the clause.)
• A two-year agreement. (The
company insists on a three-year
contract.)
• Union shop. (Management
flatly refuses.)
The union proposal also asked
that a panel of mediators designated
by the Federal Mediation Sl Con-
ciliation Service make public rec-
ommendations for settlement of the
dispute by Oct. 31.
GE's rejection of the proposal,
a full-page advertisement sponsored
by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union
Dept. pointed out, marks the sev-
enth time a suggestion to avert or
settle the strike has been made or
GE Ex-Official Raps
Firm's 'Cold War 9
A former vice president
of General Electric, T. K.
Quinn, has described GE's
"cold war** against its union
workers as "neither tenable
nor excusable."
In a letter to Pres. James
B. Carey of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers,
Quinn criticized GE Board
Chairman Ralph Cord in er,
"my junior associate of other
years" for "his unwillingness
personally to meet with the
workers and their union rep-
resentatives."
He said GE's present offi-
cers have decided "this is a
strategic time to have a strike"
and "appear quite willing to
neglect the human considera-
tions.'*
accepted by the union and turned
down by management. These in-
cluded government mediation pro-
posals to extend the present con-
tract past the expiration date and
offers of mediation by governors of
states where GE plants are located.
Attacks on picket lines by club-
swinging policemen, hosing of
strikers in icy weather and har-
assment arrests of strikers were
among the byproducts of the
company's "open gate" policy.
Meanwhile the IUE's contract
extension with Westinghouse Elec-
tric Corp., the other giant in the
electrical industry, was scheduled
to expire Oct. 15 with negotiations
still deadlocked.
IUE Sec.-Treas. Al Hartnett ac-
cused Westinghouse of failing to
bargain in good faith, declaring:
"They've made the same proposal
given us by GE and have given no
indication of any change."
The IUE's Westinghouse Confer-
ence Board, representing more than
40,000 of the company's workers,
was scheduled to meet to consider
further action.
NMU Convention Brands Mitchell
Suit Last Licks of 'Vengeful GOP 9
By David L. Perlman
New York — A Landrum-Griffin Act suit brought by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell in an effort to
invalidate the Maritime Union's election of officers was branded as the "last licks" of a "vengeful
Administration" by delegates to the NMU's 12th convention here.
The 500 delegates unanimously voted "complete confidence" in the NMU officers and in the Honest
Ballot Association, the non-partisan good-government group which conducts the union's elections.
Mitchell, on the first day of the ^
union's convention, filed suit in fed-
eral court to set aside the referen-
dum vote by which NMU Pres.
Joseph Curran and 65 other union
officials were elected last spring and
have a new vote held under gov-
ernment supervision.
The delegates, pointing out
that the NMLPs elections have
long been considered "models of
democratic procedures," declared
that the Landrum-Griffin suit
"was launched by a vengeful Ad-
ministration out to get in its last
licks before it brings its sad rec-
ord of disservice to the nation to
a close."
The convention wound up with
adoption of a hard-hitting legisla-
tive program aimed at reversing
the decline of the nation's merchant
fleet.
The delegates called for enforce-
ment and "proper administration"
of existing laws intended to guar-
antee that U.S. ships will carry at
least 50 percent of foreign aid car-
go. They demanded also legisla-
tion to bring back under the Amer-
ican flag "runaway ships" registered
in Panama, Honduras and Liberia.
A resolution called for "a long-
range ship replacement program . . .
to prevent obsolescence of our mer-
chant marine and to retain skilled
workers in our shipyards."
In other actions, the NMU:
• Asked legislation to bring
merchant seamen under the wage-
hour law.
• Pledged a continued fight to
prevent the Budget Bureau from
eliminating the government's ma-
rine hospitals.
• Called for amendment of mu-
tiny statutes "in order to prevent
their use in labor disputes."
The convention voted a number
of constitutional changes, which
must be ratified in a membership
referendum before taking effect.
One change would set a four-
year term for national officers. It
would not affect the current terms
of officers who were elected for
two years.
Also adopted was a provision
which would require candidates
for national office to have served
at least one term as a union
branch agent, field patrolman or
patrolman.
Earlier the convention adopted
a resolution declaring that "the
Democratic Party and platform
hold the hope" of ending "seven
years of Republican misleadership."
It urged that "every merchant sea-
man continue and increase his po-
litical activity — including his vol-
untary contributions.**
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1960
Page Tkrf
Economic Review Finds :
Greater Buying Key
To Healthy Economy
A "vigorous national effort" is needed to produce a balanced
pattern in the American economy that will best utilize the nation's
growing labor force and its rapidly expanding productive capacity,
the AFL-CIO has declared.
The key to this program, according to the current issue of Labor's
Economic Review, monthly publi-^
cation of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research, is a "balanced growth of
consumer, government and business
buying."
At present, the publication point-
ed out, the American economy is
operating with "considerable un
employment and idle machines,"
because there are "too few cus
tomers with enough cash and credit
to buy the rising volume of goods
and services that can be produced."
"It was a developing lack of
balance between the economy's
ability to produce and actual
sales in the 1920s that brought
on the Great Depression of the
1930s," the Review said, adding
that although the "present gap
between inadequate sales and
productive ability is much small-
er than the nearly catastrophic
condition that existed in 1930,
nevertheless there is a significant
lack of balance" in the current
situation.
The publication pointed out that
the lack of balance has existed, ex-
cept for a few scattered months in
the past seven years, to produce a
serious "drag on the entire econ-
omy."
As a result of "inadequate sales,
production is considerably below
maximum levels," the publication
declared, as a result of which there
are currently close to 4 million un-
employed — nearly 6 percent of the
total labor force. In addition, 2.5
million more workers are being
compelled to work part time "be-
cause full-time work is not avail-
able."
Too Little Buying
The cause of the current situa-
tion, the Review said, is not that
America can produce too much,
but rather that "America buys too
little of what can be produced.**
As a result, manufacturing indus-
tries generally are using only about
80 percent of their productive
capacity.
The continuing lack of balance
New URW Chief
Fills Staff Posts
Akron, O. — Two new staff ap-
pointments have been announced
by George Burdon, newly-elected
president of the Rubber Workers.
Burdon named Kenneth Oldham,
a URW special representative for
the past two years, as the union's
pension and insurance director. . He
replaces Paul Bowers, who has been
reassigned as a field representative
of the union.
Another special representative,
Magne Repaal, has been named
assistant to the president. He suc-
ceeds H. D. Dawson, whose new
post will be URW contract-arbitra-
tion case analyst.
in the economy, the Dept. of Re-
search publication went on, means
"income loss and distress" for the
families and communities of the
unemployed and those who are
compelled to work part time. "In
addition," the Review said, "it
means that billions of dollars of
needed goods and services are lost
forever through the waste of job-
lessness, short-time work and idle
machines."
Analyzing the patterns of the
American economy, the publica-
tion pointed out that consumers
and government normally account
for 85 percent of total national pro-
duction. In recent years, it says,
these two groups "have not been
buying enough of the goods and
services that expanding productive
capacity and a growing labor force
can produce."
The drop in government buy-
ing was traced to the Adminis-
tration's reluctance to carry out
its responsibilities in the domes-
tic field in the wake of the Ko-
rean war. Cutbacks in national
defense outlays after the war
ended, the publication said,
"should have permitted some in-
creases in federal expenditures
for improvements in public serv-
ices." Instead, both defense and
non-defense outlays were pared
sharply.
In the past seven years, it said,
the federal government has bought
"considerably less goods and serv-
ices" than in 1953, adding that de-
spite this emphasis on low govern-
ment expenditures, federal budget
surpluses have been achieved in
only three of the past seven years
because "recessions and the slow
rise of sales, production and in-
comes have meant inadequate tax
revenues."
Consumer buying has been slow-
ing down, the Review said, because
of the combination of "relatively
low federal government expendi-
tures, tight-money and high interest
rates," mainly because of the slow-
down in the rise of consumer
incomes.
"The continuing gap between
lagging sales and the economy's
rapidly expanding capacity to pro-
duce has already caused persistent
joblessness and part-time work
schedules, idle plants and machines,
and frequent recessions," the AFL-
CIO publication declared.
What To Do
In order to close the gap, it rec-
ommended an increase in govern-
ment buying, stimuation of con-
sumer purchasing by raising the
buying power of the consumer
through a higher minimum wage,
an end to the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration's tight-money and
high-interest rate policies, and re-
vision of the tax structure to close
existing loopholes.
SIMULATED CLOCK FACTORY was set up by Communications
Workers to help train CWA members in time study techniques used
by management, during special course at FDR Camp, Port Huron,
Mich. Working with CWA in the time study training program
was Bertram Gottlieb, industrial engineer in AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research.
September Jobless Rate
At Non-Recession High
(Continued from Page 1)
job increases came in state and lo-
cal government, up 350,000 as
schools reopened and in retail
trade, up 94,000.
A warning was contained in the
sharp increase in the total of in-
sured unemployed, a conservative
but reliable indicator since it in-
cludes chiefly breadwinners who
have had work experience and
omits workers who have exhausted
their benefits.
Jobless pay claims totaled
1,764,000 for the week ending
Sept. 24 — 446,000 higher than
the 1.3 million in the comparable
week of 1959,
The marked increase in part-time
workers was put this way by the
report:
"The number of regular full-time
workers cut back to part-time in-
creased by almost 300,000 to 1.2
million from the third quarter of
1959 to the comparable period of
1960.
"Virtually all of this increase was
accounted for by an increased num-
ber of factory workers on short
workweeks — up from 300,000 to
600,000."
The report said "voluntary" part-
time employment continued to in-
crease, rising by some 300,000 over
the year as women and teenagers
took jobs in trade and service in-
dustries.
Jobless Rise Seen
Dr. Seymour Wolfbein, Labor
Dept. manpower expert, summed
up the picture of the past few
months by saying there has been "a
combination of relatively high lev-
els of employment and, at the same
time, a rate and a level of unem-
ployment which is by no means
satisfactory under any standard."
Asked to forecast the trend of
unemployment, taking into account
seasonal influences, Wolfbein said
the September total of 3.4 million
jobless will drop to 3.2 million in
October.
Unemployment will rise to about
3.8 million by the end of the year
and in January will hit 4.5 miltion,
he predicted.
Wolfbein saw as the "most im-
portant" part of the jobless picture
the fact that the long-term unem-
ployed — those out of work 15
weeks or longer — "has hung at
about 800,000" for some months.
The long-term jobless totaled
805,000 in September. This com-
pared to 736,000 in . September
1959; 1.5 million in the recession
year of 1958 and 456,000 in pre-
recession 1957.
He said long-term joblessness af-
flicted chiefly those in areas of per-
sistently high unemployment, older
workers and,- among younger peo-
ple, chiefly school drop-outs.
The employment figures showed
that manufacturing payrolls re-
mained virtually unchanged, ris-
ing by 59,000 to 16.5 million.
Average weekly earnings of fac-
tory production workers were
$90.68 in September, about the
same as in August.
END OF 1950=100
180
1952 1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
* MANUFACTURING CAPACITY,- ESTIMATED BY MeGRAW HIll, FOR END OF YEAR.
*• MANUFACTURING PRODUCTION, ADJUSTED FOR SEASONAL CHANGES.
SOURCE; FEPEJIA1 RESERYE BOARD AND M<GRAW-HILL PUBLISHING CO.
U. S. Lists 42
Major Areas
As Depressed
(Continued from Page J)
149 major employment centers —
Jersey City is a new addition,
making it now 150 — reflected an
economy emerging from reces-
sion in 1959.
The total of major depressed
areas was 76 in January 1959, 46
by July and 32 by November.
However, the total has been
climbing during 1960. It was at
31 this past January and moved up
to 33 in March, 35 in May, 37 in
July and then jumped to 42 last
month.
The number of smaller areas with
6 percent and over jobless also
declined during 1959 and turned
upward this year. The total was
107 in January, 109 in March, 113
in May and 116 in both July and
September.
Massachusetts Changes
The total of smaller areas re-
mained unchanged at 116 when
Southbridge-Webster, Mass., was
added and Thompsonville, Conn.,
was removed since it was redefined
as part of the Hartford area.
The new bimonthly listing of
areas with "substantial and persis-
tent labor surpluses" — with the di-
mension of time added to the level
of joblessness to qualify the area
for preference on federal contracts
— Was raised by one to 22 major
areas. Muskegon-Muskegon, Mich.,
was the area added.
The 74 smaller areas with a sub-
stantial and persistent labor surplus
remained unchanged from July.
The Labor Dept. said that its
surveys of employer hiring plans
as reported to local government
employment offices indicated
there would be little net change
in non-farm jobs "to late Au-
tumn."
"While about half the surveyed
areas expected some job gains over
the next few months," the report
said, "these increases, centered pri-
marily in seasonally-influenced non-
manufacturing activities, appeared
likely to be counterbalanced by cut-
backs in other areas."
The report said the sharpest in-
creases were anticipated in trade,
which is due to begin its usual pre-
holiday "upsurge" by November.
"In manufacturing," the report
continued, "the outlook over the
next few months hinges largely on
developments in the key automotive
and steel industries." Steel and
fabricated metal firms base their
hopes on orders from auto makers.
Here 's How Nixon Twisted
Workers 9 Earning Figures
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon has distorted for campaign
purposes the story of what's happened to the average factory
worker's real earnings under the Truman and Eisenhower
administration.
A careful check of the figures by the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research reveals that contrary to Nixon's oft-repeated claim
that real earnings increased only 2 percent in the Truman
years and 15 percent in the Eisenhower ^years, this is what
happened:
Between September 1945 and January 1953 gross weekly
earnings increased 18.3 percent; from January 1953 to August
1960 earnings rose only 13.7 percent.
For a family of four, net spendable earnings — after deduc-
tion of federal income and social security taxes — came to 13.3
percent more in the Truman years and 9.1 percent in the
Eisenhower years.
Nixon's distorted figures were obtained by comparing week-
ly earnings beginning in April 1945, when Pres. Truman first
took office. This was at the height of World War II, when
workers' earnings were swollen by overtime hours.
By taking September 1945, the first, postwar month, as the
logical starting point for measuring earnings in the Truman
years, the 18.3 percent increase shows up higher than the 1 3.7
increase under Eisenhower despite the fact that the Truman
period is five months shorter.
PRODUCTION
LAOS BEHIND
RISING CAPACITY
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15,
PITTSBURGH RALLY brought out overflow crowd to hear the
Democratic presidential candidate. Sen. John F. Kennedy lashed
into the Administration's record of inaction in this steel city, hard
hit by cutbacks in production.
Schnitzler Raps GOP
For 4 Do-Nothing' Policy
Continued high unemployment is the result of the Republican
Administration's policy of "sitting tight and doing nothing," AFL-
CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler has told midwestern trade
unionists.
Speaking before three State AFL-CIO conventions — in North
Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska — ^~
Schnitzler said the cooperative ef-
forts of dedicated trade unionists
can bring about an Administration
that would revitalize the economy
and bolster the nation's defenses.
Labor's voter registration drive,
Schnitzler declared, is an example
of trade union achievement which
should result in "the biggest presi-
dential election vote in history in-
stead of the relatively small per-
centage of voters in previous
elections."
In a message specifically directed
to the wives of union members,
Schnitzler declared "it does little
good for the breadwinner of the
household to vote for an Adminis-
tration pledged to improve condi-
tions for workers if the wife casts
her vote for a party that would take
away hard-won gains."
Families should "vote to sup-
port one another instead of can-
celling each other's vote at the
polls," he added.
Schnitzler called on union mem-
bers to "work, think and act" for
the benefit of the entire trade union
movement, and said "it was this mo-
tive of acting to benefit the whole
Labor Unit Hits
Campaign Bias
The 1960 election should be de
cided on the "basis of needs not
creeds," Labor's Committee for
Kennedy and Johnson declared in a
new leaflet, "Don't Let the G.O.P.-
lins Get You."
The committee, headed by AFL-
CIO Vice Pres. George M. Harri-
son, declared that "experienced
trade unionists know it is an old
trick of employers to drum up racial
or religious prejudice, hoping to
create discord and antagonism, and
take the workers'* minds off their
wages and working conditions."
Prejudice and bigotry must be
ruled out of the election campaign,
the leaflet said, urging that the truth
be broadcast to the "doubtful and
misinformed."
The nation needs strong, enlight-
ened, progressive leadership for the
1960s, the leaflet added, calling for
the election of the Kennedy-John-
son ticket. Copies of the leaflet can
be obtained without charge from
Labor's Committee for Kennedy
and Johnson, 1801 K St. NW.,
Washington, D. C
trade union movement" which led
to AFL-CIO General Board en-
dorsement of the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket.
Registration Cam paign Effective :
Montana Labor Pitches In
To Elect Liberal Candidates
Helena, Mont. — Montana, whose incumbent two senators and two congressmen have exception-
ally good voting records, will send two or three new men to Washington next January, since three
of the seats are up for decision in this year's election. As of early October, prospects are good that
two of the three contests will be won by labor-endorsed candidates, the third one is considered close.
Montana generally has elected liberal Democrats nationally for many years, but in state offices
the Republicans often hold the'^
edge. This peculiar division seems
to result from the fact that large
corporations concentrate their at-
tention on winning the state posts
and pay less attention to congres-
sional elections.
Lee Metcalf (D), labor-endorsed,
is attempting to step up from the
House to the Senate to replace re-
tiring, elderly Sen. James Murray
(D). Metcalf, with a COPE voting
record of 34 right and none wrong,
is running ahead of Orvin Fjare
(R), who served one term in Con-
gress in the early Fifties. Many
Republicans concede they can't win
this one. In addition to his con-
gressional record, Metcalf built a
name for himself in the Montana
legislature and on the state supreme
court.
Metcalf won handily in the
Democratic primary, defeating
such strong candidates as Cong.
LeRoy Anderson and popular
Ex-Gov. John Bonner. His rec-
ord, his effective campaigning
and the normally pro-Demo-
cratic slant of the state in con-
gressional elections make him
strong.
Seeking Metcalf's old House
seat from the western district of
Montana are labor-endorsed Arnold
Olsen (D), former attorney-general,
and George Sarsfield (R), a Butte
attorney making his first run for
office. Olsen, a liberal, should win
handily in the strongly Democratic
district. Some spot him as the top
vote getter in the western end of
the state.
Labor Backs Graybill
LeRoy Anderson, eliminated
from the House because of his un-
successful primary bid against Met-
calf, will be succeeded either by
labor-endorsed Leo Graybill Jr.
(D) or Jim Battin (R). Graybill
has never held public office, but has
served as an attorney for various
unions in Great Falls. His father
is Democratic national committee-
man.
Battin, who as a member of
the legislature voted right by la-
bor's score only 21 percent of the
time, will put up a good race
because the eastern district of
Montana leans Republican. How-
ever, this may be offset by the
fact that the National Farmers
Union, strong in the farmlands
of the district, is supporting Gray-
bill. It will be close.
Possibly the most talked-about
COPE Forces Working Hard for
Victory of Liberals in Utah
Salt Lake City — Election prospects look bright to Utah's liberal forces, but political history of the
last dozen years has taught these people to run scared all the time.
There is no U.S. Senate seat open this year, so political interest — aside from the presidential- race —
is focused on spirited contests for governor and for two seats in Congress.
The race for governor causes the most talk on the streets. Liberal Democrat William A. Barlocker,
labor-endorsed, is trying to unseat'^
incumbent conservative Republican
George D. Clyde.
Barlocker is described as a
poor boy who made a million
dollars in the rather unusual
business of raising and process-
ing turkeys. He has retained
that appearance fondly referred
to as "common as an old shoe,"
and he's handsome, too.
A great handshaker who flies his
own plane from campaign stump
to stump, this youngish candidate
contrasts sharply with Clyde, more
sedate in manner.
Barlocker's political background
is that of mayor of the small south-
ern Utah city of St. George. There
he accomplished the miracle of cut-
ting taxes 27 percent by broadening
the tax base. He built up his
town's tourist business, and ham
mers on the point that all of Utah
should mine more tourist gold.
Democrat Against R-T-W
Barlocker is squarely against
Utah's "right-to-work" law. Clyde,
classified as conservative but not
reactionary, has said that if the
legislature should pass a repeal
bill, he would not sign it but might
let it become law without his sig-
nature.
Barlocker pulled 23,000 more
votes than Clyde in their respective
primaries, in which both had oppo-
sition. The Democratic primary
attracted a total of 20,000 more
votes than the Republican event,
though there were more contests
on the Republican ballot.
Utah labor people happily
point out that a win for Barlocker
might set the stage for unseat-
ing Sen. Wallace Bennett (R),
former president of the National
Association of Manufacturers,
who has voted 35-3 wrong ac-
cording to COPE. Bennett must
run again in 1962.
In the 2nd Congressional Dis-
trict, which includes Salt Lake City
and some mining and steelmaking
areas, Rep. S. King (D), the labor-
endorsed incumbent with a 9-to-l
right COPE score, is seeking a sec-
ond term. His opponent is Sher-
man Lloyd (R), a distinctly con-
servative past president of the Utah
Senate.
Tight House Race
King in 1958 took the seat away
from conservative Rep. William
Dawson (R) who in turn had
taken it from liberal Reva Beck
Bosone (D) in 1956. King's one
term of service apparently has not
displeased his constituency and he
has made a name for himself as a
leading figure in the Latter Day
Saints (Mormon) church. But this
is a marginal district; no candidate
of either party is ever a shoo-in.
In the 1st District, labor has en-
dorsed M. Blaine Peterson (D),
former liberal legislator, over A.
Walter Stevenson (R), who devotes
many of his speeches to alarmed
comments on so-called "labor
racketeers." They seek the seat
being vacated by Rep. Henry A.
Dixon (R). A win for Peterson
would represent much progress but
Stevenson is young, personable and
better-known.
Legislative Split
In the Utah legislature, Demo-
crats now have a House majority
and the Republicans control the
Senate. The guess is that the
Democrats will hold the House and
have a chance of gaining a narrow
Senate majority.
No one seems willing to predict,
in either case, a repeal of the
"right-to-work" law during the next
two years.
Marginal Utah was much im-
pressed by Sen. Kennedy's recent
appearance in the vast Mormon
tabernacle, but no one is yet ready
to predict the final results. If re-
ligious bias exists, it will have less
effect in Utah, because the Mor-
mons know what it is to be perse-
cuted as a religious minority. Liv-
ing men can remember when there
was mistreatment.
Sensing victory but running
scared, COPE forces are work-
ing hard. A crew of women
workers has been active since last
November listing union members
by precincts, registering members
and distributing information.
Registration reached a* remark-
ably high level prior to the pri-
maries and COPE is striving to
register still more voters.
Utah must be viewed in the light
of its history. Mormons fleeing
from persecution at points further
east settled this area when it was
part of Mexico. By perseverance
and hard work they made the desert
bloom like a rose and wrote one
of the most spine-tingling chapters
in American history. In so doing
they developed resourcefulness, in-
dividualism and independence.
Today's Utah is modern and is
industrializing. It has its share of
chrome and glass. But even the
newcomers from other areas tend
to absorb much of the rugged in-
dividualism of the state. This
makes their votes even more diffi-
cult to count in advance than are
the votes in other areas.
campaign in Montana is that of
Paul Cannon (D) for governor and
H. H. Anderson (D) for lieutenant-
governor against Don Nutter and
Tim Babcock, Republicans, for
these respective offices. The state
is plastered with billboards for the
well-heeled Nutter-Babcock team.
Labor has endorsed the Demo-
cratic team on its record. Cannon
as legislator and lieutenant-gov-
ernor of the state has fought a
good fight for labor, several times
breaking tie votes favorably in the
Senate. Anderson has fought con-
sistently for labor bills in the legis-
lature. Nutter, on the other hand,
showed a distinctly, conservative
bent as a state senator and Babcock
was a leader in an unsuccessful
effort to petition the "right-to-
work" bill onto the ballot two
years ago. The race will be close.
This is where the corporations are
concentrating their efforts.
The legislature now has Demo-
cratic control in both houses (un-
der a Republican governor) but
some of the Democrats did not
vote with labor in the past session.
It is doubtful if the next legislature
will be much improved.
As in so many other states, the
Kennedy-Nixon race is unpredict-
able at the moment
Working in favor of liberal
candidates is the fact that Mon-
tana is an economically distressed
state. The casual traveler through
the magnificent state would not
notice it, but there is heavy un-
employment, population is static
(for a while it declined), per
capita income has been falling
and business and industry are in
a slump.
COPE is working valiantly in an
uphill job in Montana. As the elec-
tion year began, surveys of mem-
bership showed distressingly low
registration among members of
most unions. A full-time COPE
director, union staff employes and
leaders, and WAD volunteers went
to work on the problem. They es-
timate that close to 75 percent of
union members were registered as
of the close of registrations Sept. 23.
- The conservatives, too, have car-
ried out a registration program. Re-
sult is that the state as a whole has
substantially higher registration
than two years ago and perhaps a
record high number of citizens
eligible to vote.
Labor For Kennedy
In Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, Pa. — The Pennsyl-
vania AFL-CIO, through its COPE
committee, has enthusiastically en-
dorsed the candidacies of Senators
John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.
Johnson and approved Democratic
nominees for statewide office.
With other union groups, it is
participating in a newly formed La-
bor's Committee for Johnson and
Kennedy which will stage meetings
in all parts of the state.
Harry Boyer and Joseph F.
Burke, co-presidents of the State
AFL-CIO, said Vice Pres. Nixon is
shadowed by the record of the
Eisenhower Administration, "basic-
ally a record of opposition to the
growth and function of trade un-
ionism and to the real welfare of the
American people." The Democratic
Party, despite "inner conflicts,**
they asserted, "has demonstrated
its basic friendliness to a program
for the health, welfare and pros-
perity of the American people
which labor endorses."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 19*0
Page Ftf*
Kennedy's Strength Growing in West
Liberals in Rockies
Count on New Gains
(Continued from Page J)
are now held by three conservative
Republicans and seven liberal Dem-
ocrats. Five of the seven belong
to the Young Turk western bloc
which is beginning to write pro-
gressive history in Washington.
Two of the seven — James E. Mur-
ray of Montana and Joseph C.
O'Mahoney of Wyoming — are vet-
erans of liberal hue, both stepping
down this year.
In addition to replacing the two
veteran liberals, Rocky Mountain
voters have an opportunity this year
to displace two conservative Re-
publican senators — Gordon Allott
of Colorado and Henry C. Dwor-
shak of Idaho — who are seeking
re-election.
On average, a break-even is as
good as can be expected. Dwor-
shak appears to hold the edge in
Idaho. Keith Thompson, conserva-
tive Republican, appears to be lead-
ing in the race to replace O'Maho-
ney in Wyoming. In Montana,
Murray probably will be replaced
by equally liberal Rep. Lee Met-
calf (D). In Colorado, it's a toss-up
between liberal Robert Knous (D)
and the incumbent conservative,
Allott.
The House outlook is more
favorable. These five sparsely-
populated states send only 11
men to the House. Liberal
Democrats now hold seven of
these positions and conservative
Republicans the other four. La-
bor-endorsed liberals have any-
where from even to excellent
chances of picking up all four of
the seats presently held by con-
servatives. In only two of the
positions now held by liberals is
there a possibility of a conserva-
tive victory. Therefore, it is
most likely that the Rocky Moun-
tain House delegation will show
improvement.
The liberal tide prevailing in the
Rocky Mountain area caused the
election of liberal Senators Frank
Church in Idaho and John Carroll
in Colorado in 1956 and Senators
Frank Moss of Utah and Gale
McGee of Wyoming in 1958. Due
to personality considerations and
the strength of individual candi-
dates, the same rate of gain may
not hold this year, but the long-
range outlook is good.
Tide Is Liberal
Several factors account for the
liberal tide. The first is the vibrant
tone of expansion and growth which
characterizes most of the area.
Conversely, there are several pock-
ets of economic distress, in which
the people are disenchanted with
the do-nothingism of the conserva-
tives.
Those who want continued
growth of the area find themselves
almost automatically in support of
reclamation and other programs
which constitute the federal inter-
vention that conservatives oppose.
The big ranchers mostly remain
conservative, but the smaller farm-
ers who suffer from depressed
prices and who are particularly
thirsty for reclamation project wa-
ter are beginning to abandon their
traditional conservative postures.
Union members, while not so
numerous as in the eastern indus-
trial areas, have more influence
on Rocky Mountain politics then
the casual outside observer might
suppose. Comparatively few in
number, they are active in cam-
paigns in which relatively few
voters are involved*
Cooperation between members
of the various unions is at a rela-
tively high level. A certain unity
of purpose naturally prevails in
small towns having isolated local
unions.
NEWS COMMENTATOR Edward P. Morgan, whose nightly broadcasts are sponsored by the
AFL-CIO, was one of the panelists chosen by television and radio networks to quiz Sen. John
F. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon during the second of the "great debates" between
the presidential candidates. Shown, left to right, are Paul Niven, Columbia Broadcasting System;
Morgan, who represented the American Broadcasting Co.; Alvin Spivak, United Press International;
Hal Levy, Newsday; and Julian Goodman, National Broadcasting Co.
Labor Doing a 'Most Effective' Job
In Close Wyoming Election Races
Cheyenne, Wyo. — In Wyoming, organized labor is doing its most effective job in history in this
year's election campaign.
Even so, it will be difficult to win more than one out of the two Senate and House races in the
state this year.
The Senate seat long held by veteran Joseph C. O'Mahoney (D), who voted 25 times "right" and
only seven times "wrong" according^
to COPE, is being sought by Wyo-
ming's one present congressman,
Keith Thompson (R), and by labor-
endorsed Ray Whittaker (D).
Thompson, an out-and-out conser-
vative who voted 25 times "wrong'
and only 3 times "right" in the
House on COPE's reckoning, is
Democrats Running Strong Against
Republican Conservatives in Idaho
Boise, Ida. — The race of energetic, 31-year-old Ralph Harding (D) against previously well-entrenched
Rep. Hamer Budge (R) is providing the best show in this year's Idaho campaign.
Budge, who has voted 34 times wrong and twice right during his five terms in Congress, according to
COPE, won by two to one in 1952 and by more than 60 percent in 1954 and 1956. He slipped to a
55 percent margin in 1958, placing his seat just barely in the marginal category.
Harding, a former state legislator'^
who voted against "right-to-work
legislation, even though from a
rural area, and who has labor's
endorsement, is giving Budge a
tough enough race now that most
observers consider the prospects
fifty-fifty. Harding's campaign
centers on a polite yet scathing
attack on Budge's ultraconservative
record and his failure to secure
congressional support for an im-
portant reclamation project — Burns
Creek Reservoir — in the district.
The Farmer's Union disap-
proves of Budge's record, with a
score of two right votes out of
10 by its count.
Liberals who watch the workings
of Congress have a particular rea-
son for wanting to see Budge re-
tired. He's a part of the conserva-
tive coalition on the House Rules
Committee which keeps so much
progressive legislation bottled up.
The Idaho Senate race, in which
Robert McLaughlin (D), labor-en-
dorsed, seeks to unseat conservative
He/iry Dworshak (R), should fea-
ture Idaho politics this year but is
developing comparatively little in-
terest.
Dworshak, who has voted wrong
39 times and right 3 times by the
COPE record in his long tenure in
the Senate, has kept his local fences
mended. McLaughlin, 43, whose
past political record includes long,
service as district attorney in Moun-
tain Home and varied work within
the Democratic Party organization,
shows grass roots political ability.
While he has no legislative rec-
ord, McLaughlin has always been
friendly to labor and was a member
of the Hell's Canyon Committee
which did much work in attempting
to secure establishment of this vital
reclamation project.
Usually dependable polls show
McLaughlin right on Dworshak's
heels, but local observers believe it
will take a Democratic sweep to put
McLaughlin over.
Liberal Frank Church (D), holds
the other Idaho Senate seat and is
not up this year.
The state's other congressional
race features incumbent Gracie
Pfost (D), whom COPE scores as
voting right 33 times and wrong
twice in her service since 1952.
She is expected to defeat Thomas
Leupp (R), mayor of Nampa. Her
district is traditionally Democratic
(with many miners and lumber
workers in its populace), she is an
effective campaigner, and her oppo-
nent seems ineffective. * She won by
62 percent in 1958 and some say
she'll get 70 percent this time.
As in other areas, Idahoans
are not talkative on the presiden-
tial race but prospects are good
for Kennedy, who made a terrific
impression in his Salt Lake City
appearance late in September.
Idaho has about 25,000 AFL-
CIO members. In every substan-
tial town, central COPE organiza-
tions have been operating since
March, are- securing good coopera-
tion from the various unions, are
precincting every member, and are
driving hard for registration — which
in this state can be accomplished as
late as the Saturday evening pre-
ceding the election. In 1958, 90
percent of union members were
registered, thanks in part to the
presence of a "right-to-work" meas-
ure on the ballot.
Until Hawaii took the record
with a vote of more than 92 per-
cent of its eligible people in its first
state election, Idaho had the dis-
tinction of being one of the nation's
best-voting states. In both 1956
and 1958, approximately 78 per-
cent of the eligible people went to
the polls.
Ship Line Office
Workers Vote Union
Hoboken, N. J. — Clerical em-
ployes of American Export Lines,
most of whom are employed here,
have voted 180 to 123 for the Office
Employes in a National Labor Re-
lations Board representation elec-
tion.
well-known, personable, and an ef
fective campaigner.
Whittaker is a two-term county
attorney from Casper who widened
his acquaintanceship in the state in
a race against Thompson for the
House in 1958. He lost by 8,000
votes out of 120,000-odd. In this
year's campaign, he is standing firm-
ly on a liberal position, vehemently
speaking for repeal of Sec. 14B of
the Taft-Hartley Act. In fact, he
proposes scrapping the entire Lan-
drum-Griffin hodge-podge and writ-
ing a new law more fair to labor
Uphill Race
But Whittaker's race is uphill
Labor people think he is gaining
— but will not guess whether or not
he will gain enough to overtake
Thompson.
Labor has high hopes, how-
ever, of putting a liberal man in
the House seat Thompson is
vacating. COPE support is go-
ing to Hepburn Armstrong (D),
who has never held public office
but who bas campaigned vigor-
ously and who speaks out plainly
on labor-liberal issues. An en-
gineer and lawyer who made
some money in uranium and
other ventures, Armstrong for-
merly served the federal govern-
ment in overseas assignments. He
has made thousands of door-to-
door calls and seems to please the
people wherever he goes.
His opponent, William Henry
Harrison (R), grandson of the Pres-
ident of that name, is an old-line
conservative who served one term
in Congress a few years back. He
asserts labor should concern itself
only with legislation directly affect-
ing unions. Harrison is not con-
sidered a strong candidate, partly
perhaps because he lives much of
the time in California.
The forecast in these two races
may seem inconsistent, but Wyo-
ming always has tended to vote for
the strongest personality in any
election regardless of party label.
In the presidential race, *COPE
workers definitely believe Kennedy
has been gaining since the first TV
debate. The contest looks close in
Wyoming, but Kennedy supporters
keep their optimism under control
by recalling that Wyoming more
often than not goes Republican.
The state legislature picture is
dull. Democrats now have a nar-
row control in the House and the
Republicans have the edge in the
Senate, with a Democratic gover-
nor. The Democratic House de-
feated some pro-labor bills that the
Republican Senate passed, so this
year's COPE endorsements are well
split between the two parties.
COPE activities are more effi-
cient than in the past. The state
COPE coordinator has received
good cooperation from the locals,
volunteers have precincted mem-
bership lists and checked regis-
trations. Indications are that 85
percent of labor people will be
registered when the books close
Oct. 24.
Get-out-the-vote activities are
emphasized, particularly through
telephone campaigns. In Casper,
COPE workers made 12,750 tele-
phone calls to get out the vote in
the primary election, and the county
turned out the highest vote in his-
tory. The same campaign will be
conducted in various towns on
Election Day.
CWA Backs Ticket
With TV Shows
The Communications Workers
are backing up their endorsement
of the Kennedy-Johnson ticket with
two 15-minute television programs,
scheduled to be shown on 50 sta-
tions throughout the nation.
The first, "The Choice Is Yours,'*
uses film clips of contradictory Re-
publican statements and claims to
puncture the GOP's campaign argu-
ments.
A second film, "Speak Up for
Kennedy," presents regional reports
on the campaign by Democratic
Senators Clair Engle of California;
Paul Douglas, Illinois; Pat Mo
Namara, Michigan and Hubert H.
Humphrey, Minnesota, and by Gov.
Herschel C. Loveless of Iowa.
The films were financed by vol-
untary donations of CWA members.
AFT.-CTO NFWS. WASHINGTON, 1>. C, SATURDAY. OCTOBER 15, 1960
Pollyanna
VICE PRES. NIXON'S "y°u-never-had-it-so-good" campaign
theme has a particularly hollow ring tri light of the Labor
Dept.'s latest report showing the unemployment rate at the highest
level for any non-recession-year September since the end of World
War II.
The continuing high Unemployment — a chronic situation, with
the unemployment rate all through the year higher than in any
other non-recession postwar year — is only one of the economic
danger signals pointing toward a recession. The steel iindustry
operating at about 50 percent of capacity and the general trend of
industrial production are others.
Is this the strong America that Nixon keeps talking about, the
nation that is ready to lead the free world with 57 out of even
1,000 workers unemployed? .
America is in trouble. Sen. Kennedy is pounding away about
the need for a program, for action to get the nation moving again,
while Nixon whistles his way past the closed steel mills.
The GOP Will Get You!
IN THE SECOND television debate Vice Pres. Nixon attempted
to push further the image of an independent liberal in his con-
tinuing pitch for non-Republican votes. Vote for the man, not the
label, says Nixon, blithely ignoring the fact that the government
is organized and operated along political party lines.
The hard facts are that there are more Democratic than Repub-
lican voters in the nation, and Democratic strength in Congress and
in the states and cities has been on the increase since 1954. To
win a national election Nixon must draw normally Democratic and
independent votes away from Kennedy. Hence the above-the-party
stance which so ill-becomes one of the most partisan politicians of
our times.
Nixon's appeal is tremendously revealing of the entire nature
of his campaign. It is a campaign in which he is running away
from his own voting record, the record of the Eisenhower years
and the record of his party in Congress while at the same time
reassuring the President and his GOP colleagues that he's the
same old Dick Nixon.
This may be slick Madison Avenue tactics, but it is also cynical
deception by a candidate seeking the highest office in the world.
Reform 'Reform'
DURING THE LONG HEARINGS that preceded congressional
consideration of labor "reform" legislation a number of non-
union experts warned that imposing burdensome reporting regula-
tions on local unions would have the effect of driving out of office
thousands of unpaid local union officers and impairing the vigor
and democracy of these groups.
Now, with the Landrum-Grifffn Act one year old, the Labor
Department's Bureau of Labor-Management Reports comes up
with the evidence that the new law is having exactly the effect
predicted.
The bureau says it has received reports that "many local union
officers have resigned rather than assume the obligations imposed
by the new law" because of burdensome reporting responsibilities
and risk of legal proceedings "which might be. instituted against
them."
The agency voices its concern, declaring that these local union
leaders "must be reassured that there are no criminal penalties for
honest mistakes,"
Messrs. Landrum and Griffin: Please take notice.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Waiter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L, Phillips
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, October 15, 1960
No. 42
Th* American Federation of Labor and Congress of In*
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one ts authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'You Never Had It So Good'
Good Friend Growing Cool:
Soviet Move Into North Africa
Spells Trouble for Free World
By Arnold Beichmaa
UNITED NATIONS, N. Y.— One of the free
world's best friends, Pres. Habib Bourguiba
of Tunisia, has begun to cool in his friendship
and the danger of real war in North Africa has
become a grim reality, all this because of the
unsettled six-year-old conflict between France and
Algeria.
The most serious threat to any kind of stabil- -
ity in that embattled Mediterranean area is the
intrusion of the Soviet Union and Communist
China into the Algerian struggle against French
colonialism. Until recently, Moscow had done
little other than propagandize about the French-
Algerian battle in order not to antagonize Pres.
de Gaulle of France. In recent weeks, how-
ever, Premier Khrushchev has:
1. Conferred with leaders of the Algerian Pro-
visional Government at his country estate in Glen
Cove, L. I., 30 miles from the United Nations
meeting.
2. Pledged moral and material aid to the
Algerians and agreed in principle on de facto
recognition of the Algerian Provisional Govern-
ment to the extent of agreeing to receive an Al-
gerian resident representative in Moscow.
3. Given Algerian Premier Ferhat Abbas a
warm reception during a recent visit to Moscow,
following an earlier equally warm reception in
Peiping, captial of Communist China.
Sitting right on the hot spot is Tunisia, whose
leadership has consistently been pro-democratic.
Its trade unions were early members of the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Unions after a
sour-taste affiliation with the Communist World
Federation of Trade Unions. Bourguiba, when
he was just another exile, was an honored guest
and speaker at the 1951 AFL convention in San
Francisco.
SINCE 1954, when the battle was joined be-
tween French troops and Algerian rebels, Bour-
guiba has walked a tight rope. His country, even
more than Morocco, has been headquarters for
the Algerian Front of National Liberation. Be-
cause of his moral influence, he was able to keep
the Communists from involving themselves in the
conflict. Today, however, the pressure of events
has led him to state publicly that he will not
"rebuke'' the Algerians for taking aid wherever
they can get it. In fact he has gone even
further, saying he would favor aid for the Alger-
ians even from "the devil himself."
The tragedy of this story is that the leadership
of neither the Algerians, Tunisians or Moroccans
has been pro-Communist. In fact, Communist
influence in these Moslem countries, compared to*
others in Africa, has by and large been negligible.
Not only Tunisian trade unions, but those in
Morocco and the exiled Algerian trade unions
are ICFTU affiliates. Nevertheless, the long
and bloody conflict and the resistance of the
French government to the attempts of the UN and
Bourguiba at mediation have led to the present
menace of Soviet intrusion into North Africa.
The overriding problem is the attitude of
the United States towards the conflict. North
African leaders feel that if the U. S. were to
exercise moral leadership France would have
to listen. Western observers feel, however,
that de Gaulle will listen to no one, including
the UN. As a key partner in the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), France is an
American ally and to intrude into the Algerian
imbroglio might endanger relations with France,
says the State Dept.
Meantime, countries like Pakistan, Iran and
Thailand, allied with the U.S. in military agree-
ments, have begun to express their restiveness
at American "neutralism" in the Algerian war.
In a few weeks, the UN will be voting on a resolu-
tion calling for a plebiscite of the Algerian people
on the question of independence. This proposal
was made by American labor several years ago.
THE RESOLUTION, it can be safely pre-
dicted, will pass by an overwhelming majority
in any case. No matter what the UN votes,
de Gaulle has made it quite clear he will ignore
the action.
It will then be up to Asian and African coun-
tries, many of them recently liberated from co-
lonialism, to do something before Soviet penetra-
tion into North Africa becomes an accomplished
fact. If North Africa should fall into the Soviet
orbit, it would mean the outflanking of Europe
by the Communists and would be equivalent to
a major military disaster for the free worlds
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1960
Page Serta
Morgan Says:
Nixon, Lodge Playing Games
With Public on Foreign Policy
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EDT.)
IT SEEMS AS IF ages had passed since that
fresh, exciting early-morning moment in the
Chicago Stockyards in 1952 when Adlai Steven-
son made the revolutionary campaign proposal to
"talk sense to the American people." A lot of
nonsense has spilled from the speakers' stands
since then and the current
presidential conflict is rap-
idly becoming awash with
it. The principal flow for
the present is rushing
through Republican flood-
gates in the form of prop-
aganda which is danger-
ously and shamelessly try-
ing to obscure one of the
most vital issues of the
election: the status of U.S.
strength and position in
the world today.
". . . At this time," Vice Pres. Nixon declared
in his second "debate" with Sen. Kennedy, "Com-
munist prestige in the world is at an all-time low
and American prestige is at an all-time high."
As he spoke, Communist delegations at the
United Nations were still gloating over the bit-
ternessand dismay .created among the neutrals. by
successful U.S. opposition to the resolution calling
for renewed "contacts" between Premier Khru-
shchev and Pres. Eisenhower. Only hours after
the Nixon statement, the issue of a UN seat for
Communist China was postponed for another year,
but it was a costly victory for the American stand,
with a reduced margin of votes. And Khrushchev
was still tethered tightly to the Manhattan area
by State Department edict.
The pretext was "security" — his safety — but
would the government have bothered with such
a leash if the readings on the prestige meters were
what Nixon insisted they were? Was the "advice"
to broadcasting networks not to provide Mr. K.
a forum issued by an Administration snugly sure
of its world position? Have our prestige and
Correction Please*
power kept Khrushchev from opening the conti-
nents of Africa and South America to direct
Communist influence? Are we — to use the Vice
President's phrase — "extending freedom" in the
kingdom of Laos, where our expenditures for
military aid have been singularly lavish?
Instead of facing up to these problems — by
no means all of which the Administration is to
blame for — Nixon has been dealing with for-
eign policy as if it were a kind of sport spectacle.
Usually, to his campaign crowds, he equates it
in terms of a game. "We licked them 70 to
nothing," he will say. "That's a pretty good
score in football. It's better in international re-
lations." ©r he will offer, as proof our prestige
has not slipped, the fact that Pres. Eisenhower
drew cheering crowds in New York while Khru-
shchev drew booing ones.
The Vice President is too intelligent and well-
informed to dream of arguing within the counsels
of government that this is the safe, sound way to
evaluate and measure policy. But this is the way
he and Henry Cabot Lodge are playing the game
with the public so far.
Lodge brushed aside a reporter's question on
TV about the striking shrinkage in the vote we
could muster against Red China in the UN. We
won, he said flatly. The important thing is that
we won. That's like claiming victory in the fifth
inning. Sen. Morse, Oregon Democrat who is a
member of the U.S. delegation to this Genera
Assembly, says in effect that we'd better stop de
ceiving ourselves and prepare wisely for it because
the seating of Peiping in the UN is inevitable.
The general explanation for the Nixon-Lodge
stance on foreign policy is that you don't win
elections by telling people unpleasant things.
It is interesting to note too that both candidates
tend to become less reckless in their statements
face to face in these debates than in their separate
harangues from the stump. And the series will
furnish more people a sharper, deeper, longer look
at the qualities of the protagonists in this 1960
race than the American electorate has had in
almost all other presidential campaigns put to
gether, clear back to Washington's time. Under
those circumstances let us hope that neither can-
didate can afford not to talk sense from now on.
WASHiNGTON
Nixon's Indifference to the Facts
Gives Ammunition to His Foes
"CORRECTION PLEASE!" — the special
Democratic bulletin which has been following Re-
publican campaigners — has turned its fire on Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon, charging he continues to
ignore "the facts."
I The bulletin said Nixon "blithely ignored all
the facts" during his second television debate with
his Democratic rival when he said that "in every
index, there has been a great deal more perform-
ance and more progress than in the Truman Ad-
ministration/ 9
These, declared the bulletin, are the facts:
• "Gross national product (GNP) averaged
4.6 percent annual increase in Truman years, only
2.4 percent in Eisenhower-Nixon years.
• "Real wages (what your money will buy)
increased by 18.3 percent between September
1945, first month after war and January 1953,
last Truman month. This compares with increase
of only 13.7 percent between January 1953 and
August 1960, last month available.
• "Unemployment levels, on the average, were
1 million lower during Truman years than during
present Administration."
Turning to what it called other "Nixonisms,"
the Democratic publication recalled that the Vice
President also said during the debate that "this
economy is sound."
ON THE SAME DAY Nixon made this state-
ment, the bulletin said, the U.S. Labor Dept.
added five major production centers to its list of
areas with "substantial" unemployment.
The bulletin said that earlier in the week the
Budget Bureau scaled down its expected budget
surplus because of the "failure of business to live
up to forecasts."
Sylvia Porter, national economic columnist, was
quoted by the bulletin as writing several days
earlier that "we have been in a recession for some
months."
In another edition, Correction, Please!
scorched Nixon on his "program to combat
disease for the Sixties." Nixon had noted that
"federal support of the National Institutes of
Health increased from $60 million to $560 mil-
lion a year during the Eisenhower Administra-
tion," the New York Times reported on Oct. 3.
Correction, Please! listed a six-year record of
annual requests by the Administration- and the
larger amounts appropriated by Democratic Con-
gresses. Each successive year, the Administration
was willing to settle for the previous year's appro-
priation, the bulletin pointed out, adding:
"In these six years alone, the Congress appro
priated $433 million more than Eisenhower-Nixon
budget requests."
IN ANOTHER EDITION, Correction, Please!
quoted the New York Times as reporting on Oct.
4 that "Vice Pres. Nixon charged today that the
Kennedy farm prorgam would raise family food
costs 25 percent, reduce beef and pork supplies
to wartime rationed levels, put 2 million Ameri-
cans out of work and encourage Soviet agricultural
supremacy."
The bulletin then quoted two former secreta-
ries of agriculture as wiring these reactions to
Kennedy:
• "Mr. Nixon's outrageous attempt to scare
consumers with wild charges about effect on food
prices of your prudent and carefully thought-out
farm program is one of the cheapest political
tricks I have ever heard of." — Claude Wickard.
• "The Vice President's farm statements are
so extreme and so unfounded — so easy to punc-
ture and explode — that surely he will see the
need to get new farm advisers." — Sen. Clinton
P. Anderson (D-N. M.).
EN ROUTE WITH KENNEDY— The perhaps decisive influence
of the television debates between Sen. Kennedy and Vice Pres.
Nixon is now generally acknowledged. This has produced curious
reactions in the rival camps.
The Kennedy forces are certain that they scored such an ad-
vantage in the first debate that the Vice President cannot ever catch
up. They want more of the encounters, and later ones than the
Oct. 21 climax previously set. When they asked for a fifth confron-
tation, the Nixon forces showed decided reluctance but did not im-
mediately turn it down. It was uncertain whether an agreement
on date, terms and time was possible.
Observers tended to concur that the Vice President did better
in the second debate, and his advisers thought he might do better yet
in later ones.
The Kennedy people nevertheless were the ones taking the
initiative, very possibly because they believe that the senator
can never suffer by having great exposure of his personality,
which in public appearances in this campaign has proved to have
qualities of magnetism.
There is reason to believe, also, that by seeking a November net-
work appearance, the Democrats frankly hoped for more free time
to combat what they otherwise expected to be a Republican blitz
on paid time in the last two weeks. The Democratic Committee
frankly says that it cannot buy television time, for speeches and
"spots" that deluge the networks, on a scale comparable to Re-
publican purchases.
The Nixon camp originally insisted on the Oct. 21 cutoff date
for what was designed as the final of the four agreed appearances.
In asking a fifth, the Democrats renewed their pressure for a Novem-
ber date, closer to the election.
ALMOST UNNOTICED during the din of the campaigning, the
once-rebellious conservative Democrats of the South have dropped
totally the threat of last springtime that they would establish inde-
pendent electors to deprive the Democratic nominee of southern
votes and throw the presidential choice into the House of Represent-
atives.
Mississippi's Sen. James O. Eastland went on a statewide televis-
ion program to warn Democrats not to vote for an independent-
elector slate sponsored by Gov. Ross Barnett. He said that to do
so, if the Kennedy ticket were elected without southern support,
might result in depriving self-described southern Democrats of
their precious committee chairmanships.
The Texas Democratic Convention refused to endorse the na-
tional platform and adopted its own states' rights platform instead.
There is a possibility that Texas would go Republican, that other
southern states might vote for Vice Pres. Nixon — but the old-line
party powers all through the Deep South were lining up to prevent it.
Practically the entire hierarchy of Georgia and South Carolina
party leaders joined Kennedy when the Massachusetts senator
campaigned in the Deep South, and in Texas the battle-fury of
state powers is reported to be impressive.
The people around Sen. Kennedy did some blunt speaking about
the seniority system in Congress and about the House and Senate
rules to produce this result — and they were vastly helped on their
way by the television debates.
What will happen if Sen. Kennedy should win the election only
with the aid of the southern conservatives is another matter.
The hard fact is that changes in the archaic congressional rules,
giving conservative southern Democrats almost extortionate power,
will be required to allow passage of any significant new civil rights
legislation and of major parts of the rest of the Kennedy program — ■
on federal school aid, housing, the Forand bill and minimum wages.
* * *
THE MANAGEMENT of a presidential campaign involves logis-
tics of great complexity. There are matters of charter planes for the
candidates and 30-man staffs and hordes of traveling reporters; the
complexities of scheduling candidates into states and cities for
special local events when four hours later they may need to be 900
miles away; the arrangement for parade routes through cities, the
selection of dignitaries to join forces on the platform; the arrange-
ments to get out the crowds; the installation of traveling equipment
to grind out press releases and advance texts of speeches; and even
more important to produce quickly transcripts of what the candidate
actually said.
Mr. Nixon's entourage is exceedingly efficient. The Vice Presi-
dent generally arrives on time, delivers his speech, stays and moves
on according to schedule. His people are clean-desk men and the
Vice President cooperates wholeheartedly.
Sen. Kennedy's staff is equally efficient, but the Democratic
nominee is normally scheduled so tightly that to keep up in the
crush of the crowds is impossible — or at least has been impossible.
In one recent swing, Kennedy moved in 38 hours through six
states a total of 1,490 air-miles, plus hours of pounding bus-and-
motorcar cavalcades. His staff and reporters ended exhausted, with
two or three hours of sleep.
The senator was fresh and sparked with vigor. He has — surpris-
ingly — the gift of instant relaxation and sleep, and he is no fretter
or worrier. When he saw a roadside apple stand in Ohio, he stopped
the whole cavalcade to buy some baskets of apples.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 19*
How to Buy:
Don't Be Gouged on
Credit Life Insurance
By Sidney Margolius
IF YOU BUY A CAR on time payments, and sometimes even
other types of goods, the chances are that you also are paying
for credit life insurance without knowing it.
A survey by the National Better Business Bureau has found that
over half of all buyers of cars on installment plans also buy credit
life insurance without their knowledge or consent.
Kenneth B. Wilson, president of the bureau, says this happens
because many time-payment con-
tracts do not itemize the various
charges in addition to the price of
the car, but simply lump a charge
for credit insurance into the total
price of the car.
Credit life insurance nowadays is
required by most banks and finance
companies, and some installment
dealers, when you take out a loan or
buy on time. The insurance pays
off the balance of your debt if you
die before completing your pay-
ments. Lenders provide it chiefly
for their own protection. However,
it's not a bad deal for you if you
know you're paying for it, and
most of all, pay just a reasonable fee for it.
Credit unions, for example, provide credit life insurance for all
borrowers without any extra charge. Many banks and other rep-
utable lenders provide it at an extra fee of 50-60 cents for each
$100 borrowed. That's reasonable enough and is approximately
what the insurance costs them.
AT A COST TO YOU of 60 cents or less per $100 of debt,
credit life insurance does provide temporary insurance at a time
when you probably need it most. If anything happened to you, your
wife or co-signer won't have to complete the payments. It's group
insurance, so everybody pays the same rate with no medical exam.
Thus it's especially helpful for older people and those in hazardous
occupations or suffering from a chronic illness, who usually have
to pay extra for life insurance.
Whether you want credit insurance or not, you're pretty likely
to get it these days if you borrow or buy on time. This type of
insurance has soared from less than 2 million policies in 1948 to
over 35 million in '58, the BBB reports. Apparently half or more
of all families may be paying for credit life insurance right now
whether they know it or not.
But dealers and lenders who add credit life insurance to your bill
without your knowledge also often overcharge for it, the BBB study
finds. In fact, the price some sellers charge is scandalous. The Na-
tional Association of Insurance Commissioners found that over half
the companies selling this type of insurance paid out in claims less
than 20 percent of the premiums charged. Almost one third of the
companies paid out less than ten percent.
That means the fees for this insurance were rigged so that, for
every dollar charged for credit life insurance by these companies,
they paid less than ten to twenty cents.
The commissioners found that three insurance companies special-
izing in this type of insurance took in a total of $33,500,000 one
recent year and paid out in claims only $7,400,000 or 22 percent.
So you can see the extent of the gouge. You yourself very well may
have paid part of the $26,000,000 difference between fees charged
and amount paid out.
BESIDES INSURANCE companies, the people making the money
on credit life insurance are the dealers and loan companies who add
it to your installment contract. The commissioners' study found that
well over half the insurance companies paid in commissions, re-
bates or kickbacks, over 50 percent of the fees charged installment
buyers and borrowers for such insurance. Some commissions or
kickbacks ranged as high as 80 percent. If you had a balance of
say $1000 on the purchase of a car, and the dealer or lender tacked
on $22 for "credit life insurance," he was able to pocket $11-$17
of it for himself.
In fact, the compulsory sale of various types of credit insurance
has become a way that some lenders arid installment sellers get
around the legal ceilings on finance charges enacted by many states
in recent years. They have found a big fat loophole in the state laws.
Some of the finance companies have set up their own insur-
ance companies for the specific purpose of selling credit life in-
surance. The commissioners found that one insurance company,
a wholly-owned subsidiary of one of the largest national finance
companies, paid out only 21 cents in claims for every dollar it
took in on the sale of credit life insurance.
Now the state insurance commissioners want the companies to
limit their take to 50 percent of the premiums charged.
You have to protect yourself from this widespread gouge. It's
simple enough:
• Don't sign any installment contract if the dealer lumps all the
""Charges together without itemizing what you pay for various items.
• If the dealer does itemize a charge for "insurance" but doesn't
say what kind, then make him specify whether this is insurance on
the car itself, or credit life insurance, and how much he is charging
for each.
(Copyright I960 by Sidney Margolius)
OPERATION BABYSITTERS, a project of the AFL-CIO Citizens' Non-Partisan Registration Com-
mittee, was one reason why a record 176,732 persons were added to the voting rolls in Philadelphia,
Pa., during recent registration drive. This busload of volunteers canvassed the city reminding
housewives to register and providing on-the-spot babysitting services when necessary.
Sen. Morse Tells Nation:
Kennedy Has Fought Hard for
Strong Civil Rights Program
The following is excerpted from a special radio
broadcast by Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) on the
civil rights issue in the presidential campaign.
1WANT TO TELL YOU WHY I think it's so
important that Sen. Kennedy be elected Pres-
ident of the United States from the standpoint
of the civil rights issue as well as for many
other issues.
I have served with Sen. Kennedy on the Senate
Labor Committee and Senate Foreign Relations
Committee for a good many years, and I want
to say that in my judgment, we need a President
in the White House who will take a stand on
civil rights.
Keep in mind the fact that Pres. Eisenhower
has not up to this hour ever really indicated that
he supports the United States Supreme Court
decisions on the school segregation cases.
Where has Sen. Kennedy stood on this issue?
Time and time again in the Senate he has stood
shoulder to shoulder with those of us who have
been fighting for adequate civil rights legislation.
Take for example the matter of the filibuster.
Where does the problem of the filibuster and civil
rights come from? Well it comes, they say, from
southern Democrats — yes, from southern Dem-
ocrats supported, however, by a coalition of Re-
publicans who refuse to give us the votes that
we need in order to adopt what is called an
effective anti-filibuster rule in the Senate of
the United States.
Southern Democrats could not succeed in
their filibuster tactics if they did not have the
support of northern Republicans. Those of us
who are Democrats from the North and the East
and the West have been fighting to improve civil
rights legislation in the Senate of the United
States, and Jack Kennedy has always been in
the forefront helping us in that great fight.
Take for example the matter of Jack Ken-
nedy's position on poll taxes. He's been with
us in favor of the abolition of the poll taxes.
On federal fair employment legislation, Jack
Kennedy has stood with us. In fact, you cannot
name a civil rights issue in which we have not
had the support of the great senator from Mass-
achusetts.
Now let me in closing point out the import-
ance of presidential leadership. If we'd had a
President during the last eight years that had
given us the support that we got from Franklin
Roosevelt and from Harry Truman, we would
have made more progress in the field of civil
rights legislation.
After all, the White House exercises tre-
mendous leadership in these great issues, and
we need Jack Kennedy in the White House to
make perfectly clear to the people of the United
States and of the world that the 14th Amend-
ment means exactly what it says.
That in the United States there's going to be
equality of treatment henceforth for people ir-
respective of race, color or creed. And I speak
on this point as a Democratic delegate to the
United Nations General Assembly this fall. And
I want to say the most difficult obstacle that con-
fronts us in the United Nations is the failure on'
the part of the United States today to pass ade-
quate and effective civil rights legislation.
Most Newspapers Back GOP
Slate, As Usual, Study Shows
New York — The conservative Republican edi-
torial position of the nation's newspapers is run-
ning true to form in the 1960 campaign, with
support for Vice Pres. Nixon running about 4.5 to
1 in terms of total circulation.
However, the survey of newspaper endorse-
ments conducted by Editor & Publisher, the lead-
ing trade paper in the newspaper publishing field,
shows a fairly large number of dailies undecided
or uncommitted as of mid-September.
With 801 of the nation's 1,775 dailies re-
sponding, the figures show 5.1 percent of the
dailies, representing 47.1 percent of the total
circulation, supporting Nixon. Only 15.6 per-
cent, with 10.5 percent of the circulation, were
backing Kennedy.
There are 466 papers with a circulation of 10.7
million backing Nixon; 125 papers with a circula-
tion of 2.4 million for Kennedy.
Editor & Publisher reported that both nominees
are running behind the figures for Eisenhower and
Stevenson in 1956 in the preliminary poll.
The survey shows 20 states where NO Kennedy
support was recorded as of the time of the poll,
and only five where there was NO Nixon support.
The preliminary survey shows also that 243
newspapers with a circulation of 9.6 million are
neutral.
Since 1932 the majority of America's daily
newspapers have supported Republican presi-
dential candidates, with the percentage of
papers taking a GOP stand ranging from 55 to
67 percent. This does not indicate the pro-
portionate circulation support, which has been
much higher.
In 1952 Eisenhower was supported by 67 per-
cent of the papers compared to 14 percent for
, Stevenson; in 1956 the figures were 62 and 15
percent.
The wide press support for Nixon is reflected
in some degree in the letters-to-the-editor columns
of many papers, with a heavy percentage favoring
the GOP candidates.
Democratic National Committee officials indi-
cate that while many papers tend to publish let-
ters favorable to their editorial position, an im-
portant reason for the pro-GOP balance is the
lack of letters from Democratic supporters.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1960
Page Nlmi
Rules Imprisoned Congress, Labor Says
AFL-CIO Tells How
Liberals Were Beaten
(Continued from Page 1)
Congress, Andrew J. Biemiller, di-
rector of the Dept. of Legislation,
wrote in an article in the October
issue of the AFL-CIO American
Federationist that 1959 and 1960
were "two years of frustration/*
Following the sweeping Demo-
cratic victories in the 1958 elec-
tions, Biemiller wrote, "hopes were
high for a comparable increase in
the liberalism of Congress." He
added that these hopes — despite a
Democratic majority in the House
of 283 to 152 — were "unrealistic"
because of the conservative bloc.
Biemiller said that one of the key
factors in the defeat of liberal leg-
islation was the conservatism of
Pres. Eisenhower and the great
power of the veto. The GOP Pres-
ident, himself, pointed out repeat-
edly that he needed only "one-third
plus one" of the votes in either
house to block liberal measures,
since two-thirds votes in both
houses are necessary to override.
On the question of congression-
al rules, the AFL-CIO pamphlet
prepared by the Dept. of Legisla-
tion pointed out that in the House,
the "chief stumbling block" has
been the Rules Committee — made
up of eight Democrats, only six of
whom are "liberal or moderate in
their political views," and four Re-
publicans, all conservatives.
In order for major legislation to
reach the floor for consideration by
the other 425 House members, the
publication pointed out, Rules Com-
mittee approval is necessary. This
gives the committee "life-or-death
control" over key measures.
In the Senate, said the AFL-CIO,
"obstructionism ... is largely the
result of indiscriminate use" of the
rule permitting unlimited debate.
Because this rule "encourages fili-
busters," the publication continued,
the Senate labored for eight weeks
this year "to produce an innocuous
voting rights bill in place of mean-
ingful civil rights legislation."
Another technique used in both
Senate and House is the refusal of
committee chairmen to call meet-
ings or the tendency by some mem-
bers to filibuster within committee
meetings.
To halt these rules abuses, the
federation called for:
• A provision to end the House
Rules Committee's "absolute power
to prevent legislation from reaching
the floor for debate and action."
• A provision guaranteeing that
bills which have passed both Houses
will go to a conference committee.
• A provision to permit the
Senate to vote on a measure "after
reasonable debate."
• A provision for regular meet-
ings of committees and for limita-
tion of debate in committees.
In his Federationist article, Bie-
miller gave this "legislative obituary
record" for the 86th Congress:
Medical care for social security
beneficiaries — "Smothered" by the
right-wing coalition in the House
Ways & Means Committee, and
"slain by the same forces" on the
Senate floor.
Raising the minimum wage and
broadening coverage — "Gutted and
ultimately done to death" by coa-
lition forces in the House.
Federal aid to education — "As-
sassinated" by the House Rules
Committee "virtually single-
handed."
Aid to depressed areas — "Strick-
en down" by Eisenhower "after
heroically escaping the Rules Com-
mittee noose."
Expansion of urban renewal and
other public housing — "Maimed"
by Eisenhower's two vetoes in 1959,
"dispatched" by the Rules Commit-
tee in 1960.
Relaxation of job-site picketing
restrictions — "Talked to death" in
the Senate Labor Committee,
"throttled" by House Rules.
Civil rights — "Badly maimed" by
the coalition in the House, "crip-
pled" by filibuster in the Senate.
Copies of "Labor Looks at the
86th Congress," Publication 77B,
can be obtained from the Pamphlet
Division, AFL-CIO Dept. of Publi-
cations, 815 16th St., N. W., Wash-
ington 6, D. C. Single copies are
free.
Operating ' Engineers
Start Safety Program
The Operating Engineers have launched a nationwide job safety
program, with awards for employers as well as union members who
help reduce industrial accidents.
IUOE Pres. Joseph J. Delaney said the union's executive board
unanimously authorized a safety education program after accidental
deaths of IUOE members reached'^;
an all-time high of 220 in 1959.
Of this number, 1 1 1 were killed in
on-the-job accidents.
Delaney and Sec.-Treas. Hunter
P. Wharton outlined a five-point
program aimed at reducing the
number of serious on-the-job acci-
dents by at least 50 percent. The
program calls for:
• Two contests among IUOE
members for the best suggestions
for safety on the job — one for
hoisting and portable engineers, the
other for stationary engineers and
other branches of the trade. Prizes
will be in defense bonds — $1,000
for first place, $500 for second and
eight $100 bonds for third prizes.
CORRECTION
The AFL-CIO News on Oct. 1
erroneously reported that all but
two of the incumbent district direc-
tors of the Papermakers & Paper-
workers were re-elected. In addi-
tion to the two new directors listed,
George McGrew was elected re-
gional director and vice president
from Region 9, defeating the in-
cumbent, William A. KitteL
The winning suggestions will be
published in the union's magazine.
• An annual contest among em-
ployers. The employer with the
best safety record during the year
will receive an inscribed silver stat-
uette.
• A nationwide education pro-
gram for workers and employers
"giving the widest possible circu-
lation to basic safety concepts."
• Encouragement and assistance
to local unions in incorporating
safety regulations in contracts and
establishing joint labor-management
safety committees.
• "Intensive research into the
causes of serious accidents and ef-
fective methods to avoid them," to
be undertaken in cooperation with
employers, the trade union move-
ment as a whole and organizations
such as the National Safety Coun-
cil.
The five-member board to judge
the contests will include a repre-
sentative of the National Safety
Council, a representative of the
Labor Dept.'s safety division, two
employer representatives and Whar-
ton, representing the union.
TOP-LEVEL MEETING at the Pentagon to discuss problems in construction of U.S. missile bases
brought together labor and Defense Dept. officials. Around the table, left to right, are: Auto Workers
Vice Pres. Leonard Woodcock; Steelworkers Legislative Dir. Frank Hoffman; Nicholas Zonarich, or-
ganization director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.; Pres. Peter T. Schoemann of the Plumbers
& Pipe Fitters; Pres. Gordon M. Freeman of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Pres. C. J.
Haggerty of the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept.; AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany;
Defense Sec. Thomas S. Gates Jr.; Army Sec. Wilber M. Brucker; Air Force Sec. Dudley C. Sharp;
Defense Dept. General Counsel J. Vincent Burke Jr.; Machinists Pres. A. J. Hayes; and Defense Dept.
industrial Relations Dir. Samuel Silver.
Ike Renews Endorsement of L-G,
Mitchell Hails Law's Operation
Pres. Eisenhower has repeated his strong endorsement of the Landrum-Griffin Act, declaring that
a Labor Dept. report on the first year's operations "supports the judgment of those in the House of
Representatives who voted for the Landrum-Griffin bill to replace the weak and ineffective measure
approved earlier in the Senate."
Eisenhower's letter was in reply to one from Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell transmitting a report
from the Bureau of Labor-Manage-^
ment Reports, the bureau set up to
administer the new law.
Mitchell claimed that the law's
first year of operations has "brought
about a renewed awareness and par-
ticipation on the part of union mem-
bers in the affairs of their unions"
and "a restoration, where it has
been denied, of the democratic
rights of union members to manage
their own affairs."
He added that on the basis of
complaints received and investi-
gations initiated, "it is obvious
that . . . corruption and abuse of
power and position in the union
movement existed in only a frac-
tional minority of unions and
union officials in this country.
Our findings lead to the conclu-
sion that the vast majority of
labor organizations consist of and
are led by honest Americans
who, like the rest of us, deplore
the corrupt minority ."
The labor secretary noted also
the "high percentage of voluntary
compliance with the law" by the
labor movement.
Eisenhower's reference to the
House action recalled his nation-
wide television and radio address
urging House adoption of the Lan-
drum-Griffin measure over the
strong opposition of the AFL-CIO.
His comments on the Senate" version
were believed aimed at Sen. John F.
Kennedy, who led the fight in the
Senate for a less harsh and less anti-
labor measure.
The 88-page report covers the
various sections of the law and in-
cludes statistical tables on reports
filed, dues, initiation and other fees
and a summary of litigation and
bureau publications.
The bureau's report notes that
it "has received reports since last
September (that) many local un-
ion officers have resigned rather
than assume the obligations im-
posed by the new law" because
of burdensome reporting respon-
sibilities and the risk of legal pro-
ceedings "which might be insti-
tuted against them."
The average union officer, it con-
tinues, "must be reassured that
there are no criminal penalties for
honest mistakes. ... It would be a
disservice to the labor movement
and the nation to discourage people
from filling union offices because of
a f|ar of fines or imprisonment for
minor inadvertencies."
Cigarmakers Rallied
To Halt Job Losses
New York — Unionized cigar makers face the most critical period
in the history of the industry since the time of Samuel Gompers,
Mario Azpeitia, president of the Cigarmakers, told delegates at the
union's 32nd convention here.
He called for a two-pronged drive to head off wholesale unem-
ployment resulting from foreign'
imports and automation "while
there's still time."
Imports of cigars produced in
Puerto Rico under deflated wages
are making imminent the closing of
factories in the U.S., the cigar union
leader declared. As an example he
cited the Consolidated Cigar Co.,
which has as many workers em-
ployed at two Puerto Rican plants
as there are in the whole CMIU
and which, he said, is forcing the
closing of factories in the states.
"The picture looks bad, and
every sign points to the fact that
it's going to get worse," Azpeitia
said. "There is no reason why
wages in Puerto Rico should be
less than they are in the states,
and it's up to the federal govern-
ment to see that an adjustment is
made by equalizing the minimum
wages and fixing higher tariffs."
He reported that all the neces-
sary facts had been sent to the U.S.
Labor Dept. and "it's now up to
them to do something."
On automation, he warned that
newly introduced machinery is
threatening to turn domestic plants
into "ghost operations."
The CMIU is one of the oldest
labor organizations in the U.S., hav-
ing been chartered in 1864. As a
member of a trade union minimum
wage delegation which recently sur-
veyed working conditions in Puerto
Rico, Azpeitia was responsible for
getting wages of cigar makers in the
commonwealth doubled.
Others who addressed CMIU del-
egates included AFL-CIO COPE
Dir. James L. McDevitt and Joseph
Lewis, secretary of the AFL-CIO
Union Label & Service Trades
Dept. McDevitt called on delegates
to "do everything you can to help
elect candidates sympathetic to the
interests of organized workers."
The convention unanimously
endorsed the candidacy of Sena-
tors John F. Kennedy for Presi-
dent and Lyndon B. Johnson for
Vice President.
Azpeitia was re-elected to a
fourth four-year term, and the fol-
lowing were named to the interna-
tional executive board: Helen G.
Milberger of Scranton, Pa., first
vice president; Maude Lenz of
Richmond, Va.; Louise T. Thomp-
son, Boston; Mary Barber, Jackson- 4
ville, Fla., and Mauricio Torre,
Matias Corces, Louis M. Diaz, Jo-
seph Burrescia and Frank Diez of
Tampa, Fla.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1960
AMERICANISM AWARD of American Legion's Col. Francis Vigo Post in New York was presented
to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany at dinner attended by more than 1,500 guests. Seated, left to right,
are New York's Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who presented the award, Meany, and Pres. Harry Van
Arsdale Jr. of City AFL-CIO. Standing are the city's utilities commissioner, Armand D'Angelo, who
served as toastmaster, and Judge Paul P. Rao.
U. S. Can't Escape Leadership Role,
Meany Tells Testimonial Dinner
New York— "Whether we will it or not, the United States must be the leader of the world and we
cannot escape that responsibility," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany declared here.
The occasion was the presentation of an Americanism award by Col. Francis Vigo Post of the
American Legion at a testimonial dinner in honor of the AFL-CIO president.
In his speech to more than 1,500 guests, Meany said that the free world "must negotiate" with
the Soviet Union because "no man$ : :
must remember they have no
ethical concepts and if you be
Help,
in his right mind, knowing the de-
structive force in the hands of the
powers today, would say not to try
to negotiate for peace."
"However, in negotiating with
the Russians," he warned, "we
U. C. System
Needs
Carey Says
Las Vegas, Nev. — The unem-
ployment compensation system has
become relatively less adequate to
the needs it was designed to meet,
rather than more, Sec.-Treas. James
B. Carey of the AFL-CIO Indus-
trial Union Dept. said at the annual
meeting of the Interstate Confer-
ence of Employment Security
Agencies here.
The conference is composed prin-
cipally of officials of state unem-
ployment compensation systems.
Carey, president qf the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, urged
them to become a lobby for plan-
ning by government and private
agencies to make the system work
properly despite "unexpected and
unpredictable" turns of the econ-
omy.
He said improvements since
the 1958 recession "have been
too few, too far between and too
scattered to keep pace with the
needs of our growing economy "
In calling for still further im-
provements, he declared "unem-
ployment compensation benefits
should not provide a level of bene-
fits so low in amount and limited
in duration that they require a
drastic reduction in living standards
or that they forfeit commonly ac-
cepted amenities."
Asks Federal Leadership
**We in the labor movement, 3 '
Carey said in a speech read for
him, "believe that only the federal
government can take the lead in
attacking the problem on a wide
enough scope to be effective.
"We cannot assume that work-
ers deprived of their employment
by the disappearance of a whole
industry or set of industries can
expect to find substitute employ-
ment in so many weeks, and that
^unemployment compensation does
the job if it tides them over during
this period and cuts them off after
the period is over," he said.
lieve what they tell you, it is
your fault for believing, not their
fault for lying.
"We must negotiate from
strength. We won't get anywhere
unless they know we are strong
enough to deter aggression. This
fact transcends any other item in
our national program."
At the same time, he said, the
nation canot "afford an economic
tailspin."
Meany said that America must
demonstrate to the rest of the
world, particularly the uncommit-
ted nations of Africa and Asia, that
"our democracy really means some-
thing." He pointed out that the
American Revolution was unique
in that in revolting against tyranny
we did not replace it with a new
tyranny — like Castro for Batista in
Cuba — but with a real democracy.
"We must demonstrate that
every citizen," he said, "has his
full legal, moral and social rights
irrespective of his religion or the
color of his skin. The key to
America is freedom and to this
country came the oppressed of
all lands seeking relief from re-
ligious or economic oppression,
America has always been the
haven of the oppressed. And one
thing we must do is to loosen our
immigration laws which are un-
fair to certain peoples of the
world."
The award, a large silver tray
presented to Meany on behalf of
the Legion Post by Mayor Robert
ICFTU Backs UN in
Congo Intervention
Brussels — Sec-Gen. Dag
Hammarskjold of the United
Nations has been assured of
the full support of the world-
wide free labor movement in
a cable from Gen. Sec. Omer
Been of the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions
which also endorsed his
course of action in the Congo.
The ICFTU is submitting
a memorandum to all UN
governmental delegations ex-
pressing "deep satisfaction"
with the UN intervention in
the Congo and with the co-
operation it has received from
many member nations and the
specialized agencies.
F. Wagner, was engraved with the
following inscription:
"In recognition of his untir-.
ing efforts in safeguarding the
principles and ideals of Ameri-
canism and in appreciation of his
enthusiastic and unselfish devo-
tion to the cause of labor and
the interests of veterans."
Toastmaster was Commissioner
Armand D'Angelo of the New
York City Dept. of Water Supply,
Gas & Electricity and a former
official of Local 3, Intl. Brother-
hool of Electrical Workers.
Research Firm Finds:
7
Few Jobs Produced
By Indiana R-T-Jt
Indiana's so-called "right-to-work" law has virtually no effect in
attracting new industries and new jobs to that state, according to
a detailed survey by a prominent management research organ-
ization.
Forbes Marketing Research Inc. reported than only 60 of the
10,503 jobs created by industries f
which moved into Indiana since
enactment of the "work" law in
1957 can be credited to the ban on
the union shop.
The survey, made at the request
of the Indiana Council for Indus-
trial Peace, demolishes the principal
argument of "right-to-work" sup-
porters — that the compulsory open
shop boosts the state's economy by
attracting new industries.
To make the survey, the inde-
pendent research firm interviewed
officials of 55 new industries and
45 firms which conducted major
expansions of facilities during the
past three years.
The compares surveyed were
certified by the Indiana Dept. of
Commerce as "representative of the
more important new industry loca-
tions and expansion of Indiana fa-
cilities."
Ninety-three of the firms, in-
cluding all of the largest new indus-
tries, indicated that the "right-to-
work" law was not even a factor in
the decision to locate in Indiana.
Market locations, labor supply
and access to raw materials were
the principal factors listed by man-
agement.
Favorable 'Climate*
Favorable aspects of Indiana's
labor climate, including union and
employe-employer relations, pro-
ductivity, and employe attitudes
were cited by management as far
more important factors in the de-
cision to locate in the state.
Six of the seven new or expanded
firms which mentioned the "right-
to-work" law did not consider it
as the primary reason for locating
in the state.
The total number of new jobs
brought in by firms which even
mentioned the "wOrk" law as a
factor amounted to only six-tenths
of 1 percent of the jobs surveyed.
"We conclude, on the basis of
this study," the Forbes organiza-
tion stated, "that the 'right-to-
work- law has had negligible ef-
fect on the attraction of plant lo-
cation or expansion in Indiana."
The State Council for Industrial
Peace predicted that the survey re-
sults would bring "new demands
by responsible Indiana citizens'
groups on the state legislature to
give top priority to repeal of the
unpopular law."
Repeal is a major issue in the
November election, with the Dem-
ocrats strongly supporting abolition
of the "work" law and the Repub-
lican gubernatorial candidate op-
posing repeal and asking for out-
lawing of the agency shop as well
as the union shop.
In the overall evaluation of the
factors which made the 100 in-
dustries decide to move to Indiana
or expand their facilities, "right-to-
work" was not among the 10 major
reasons and ranked 32nd down the
list of 62 minor considerations.
Transportation, fuel, oil costs,
education and religious facilities
were among the factors which more
favorably impressed management
than the ban on the union shop.
It was estimated that the 100
firms surveyed in the Forbes study
covered 75 percent of the total new
industrial employment in Indiana
during the past three years.
Clamor for 'Work Law' Repeal Seen
Winning Indiana for Democrats
Indianapolis — Public clamor for repeal of Indiana's anti-labor "right-to-work" law is being given
a better than even chance of triggering a Democratic sweep of state offices and the legislature in
this traditionally Republican state in November.
Political experts believe the "right-to-work" issue may cut deeply into the present Republican
lead on the national ticket also, although newspaper polls continue to give Vice Pres. Nixon the -edge
to carry the state in the presiden-'^
tial race.
Observers now give Democratic
State Sen. Matthew E. Welsh a
commanding lead in his all-out bid
for the Indiana governorship.
Welsh's lead over his Republican
opponent, Lt. Gov. Crawford Park-
er, an out-and-out supporter of the
unpopular "right-to-work" law, has
been running consistently in the
55-45 percent bracket. Even most
polls by Republican newspapers
give Welsh the lead in the gover-
norship race, although by a nar-
rower margin.
The "right-to-work" issue also
is expected to assure Democratic
majorities in both houses of the
General Assembly. Such an out-
come presumably would result
in action by the legislature next
January tQ repeal the "right-to-
work" law, which has been in
effect in this industrial state since
1957.
Voter registration has broken rec-
ords in cities throughout the state,
largely as a result of a registration
drive by the AFL-CIO and feeling
over the injustices of the "right-to-
work" law. The evidence is that
registrations in working areas are
up sharply as a result of AFL-CIO
efforts. GOP registrations are also
up as a result of silk stocking ef-
forts. But there is in addition a
"wild card" registration indepen-
dent of both AFL-CIO and GOP
efforts. This "uncommitted" reg-
istration may be a factor as yet
unassessed in the overall result.
Registrations totalling 335,000 in
Marion County (Indianapolis) have
broken the previous all-time record
of 1952. A Democratic majority
of 60,000 in the Gary-East Chicago
industrial complex is expected to
result from the record registration
turnout. Statewide totals are still
unavailable.
Observers interpret the record
registrations as indicating a larger
than normal Democratic vote
throughout the state, both for the
national and state tickets.
One of the unanswered questions
about the election is what effect a
Republican national ticket victory
in the state may have in cutting
down the commanding lead the
Democrats hold on the state ticket.
Democrats Should Sweep
However, political experts be-
lieve that if Sen. John Kennedy
can hold Nixon's predicted majority
to around 100,000 votes, the Dem-
ocrats will sweep the state ticket.
The "right-to-work" law has been
thrust into the forefront this year
as a down-the-line party issue be-
tween the Democrats and Repub-
licans, and is the hottest election
issue that has struck the Indiana
political scene for many years. It
is expected to have a marked effect
on the Election Day outcome on
both the national and state tickets.
Organized labor has gone all-out
in efforts to oust the reactionary
incumbent Republican administra-
tion of Gov. Harold Handley and
Parker that enacted the "right-to-
work" law three years ago.
More than 1 million leaflets and
folders calling for election of a state
administration and legislature that
will repeal the "right-to-work" law
have been distributed during the
present campaign. An extensive
radio, TV and newspaper adver-
tising campaign is supporting the
drive for repeal.
Welsh, the Democratic nominee
for governor, has pledged in his
campaign:
"In my first address to the
General Assembly when I am
elected governor, I shall ask that
the rules be suspended so that the
first order of business can be
repeal of the right-to-work la*."
On the other hand, Parker, the
Republican candidate, who quarter-
backed the "right-to-work" law
through the legislature three years
ago, has stated that if elected he
will veto any repeal measure and
support new anti-labor legislation.
Both the Democratic national
platform and the state Democratic
platform this year pledge repeal of
"right-to-work" laws. By contrast,
the Republican national and state
platforms ignored the issue.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. CL, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, I960
Page Fle*rti
Rips False Propaganda:
Meany Sees Vast Difference
Between Candidates on Issues
(Continued from Page 1)
pie repeatedly that the U.S. is doing
very well in its national defense
program in this cold war period.
He sees no need for a change. He
is committed to support the record
of the present Administration."
Cause for Anxiety
Yet, the AFL-CIO president con-
tinued, "every impartial study of
our foreign and defense policies —
even the Rockefeller Brothers Re-
port — has found cause for serious
anxiety about the deterioration of
America's position in world affairs
and has called for important
changes." /
Kennedy has taken a similar po-
sition, Meany said, in urging an
overhaul of foreign and defense
policies, adding:
"He understands that in order to
assure peace, America must grow
stronger both economically and
militarily. He urges that America
do everything possible to achieve
such clear-cut superior power that
the Communists will no longer dare
to insult us or threaten the peace of
the world."
Meany was sharp in his attack on
Nixon in the economic policy field,
Meat Cutters
Hit Change in
Beef Grades
Philadelphia — The Meat Cutters'
executive board, warning that "ar-
tificial changes" in beef grades
would boost prices, declared the
union's opposition to efforts to
down-grade present government
standards.
The board pointed out that gov-
ernment grading standards provide
a standard whereby consumers who
are not experts on meat can easily
determine the quality of the meat
they buy.
The union said it supports re-
search and other efforts to im-
prove grading standards. How-
ever, the board warned, some
groups are seeking a change to
provide a higher grade for more
meat and thereby "allow a rais-
ing of price of this meat to the
consumer."
The Meat Cutters recalled that
it was joined by consumer, veteri-
nary medicine and other groups
earlier this year in beating back
attempts to suspend lamb grading.
assailing the GOP candidate for
saying that Americans "never had
it so good" despite "the long, con-
tinuing record of high unemploy-
ment, of millions of people perma-
nently out of work and the pros-
pects of even higher unemployment
in the coming year." He accused
Nixon of having no plans to cope
with this problem and declared that
the Vice President "disposes of it by
merely refusing to admit that there
is a problem."
Nixon, he continued, is merely
following the Republican plat-
form and the policy of the pres-
ent GOP Administration, which,
he said, "consists of sitting tight
and doing nothing."
By contrast, he praised Kennedy
for being "concerned about the
millions of permanently unem-
ployed," and for coming out with
a "strong" program of economic
action.
Meany said the Democratic pres-
idential nominee "favors investing
federal funds for building new
schools, for raising teachers' sala-
ries, for the eradication of slums,
for the renovation of blighted in-
dustrial areas, for the construction
of millions of new homes each year,
for airports, roads, scientific ad-
vancement and medical research."
He added that the trade union
movement "challenges Nixon's con-
tentions" that the programs ad-
vanced by Kennedy in these areas
would "cause excessive federal
spending and debase the dollar."
Declaring that organized labor
sees "a vast difference between in-
vestment and spending," the AFL-
CIO president declared:
"We believe it is wise to invest
the funds of the American people
in constructive programs that will
benefit them for years to come. We
further believe that such invest-
ments will not cause any drain on
the federal budget because they will
greatly stimulate private business
and create millions of new jobs,
thereby increasing federal tax rev
enues."
On the issue of medical care for
the aged, Meany was critical of
the GOP candidate for his backing
of a plan which would deny to the
nation's older citizens the "earned
right to health insurance," and
would force them to "meet an in-
come test" in order to qualify.
Kennedy strongly favors linking
health care for the aged into the
present social security system, so
that senior citizens "would enjoy
health insurance as a matter of
right, not charity," under a pro-
gram where there would be "no
hidden subsidies for private in
surance companies, no paupers'
oaths and no compulsion other than
paying taxes — a necessity which
even the Nixon plan cannot escape."
On the issue of the House
Rules Committee, described as
the "graveyard of all liberal leg-
islation," Meany quoted news re-
ports that Nixon recently de-
clared in Richmond, Va.: "I
favor leaving it just as it is. I
would not be for a change."
Meany called this "typical of Mr.
Nixon's whole outlook," and added
that Kennedy believes there must be
a "beneficial change ... in break-
ing the logjam in the House Rules
Committee."
Union Security Brings
Peace, Haggerty Says
New York — Unions and employers must "learn how to work
together" as a matter of national survival, Pres. C. J. Haggerty of
the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Dept. declared at
an industry meeting here.
Haggerty, addressing the New York Building Congress, said
employers can best serve their own^
interests "by learning to work with
unions, not against them
Citing the example of industries
"where labor and management have
learned to value and enjoy the fruits
of cooperation," Haggerty told the
employers' group:
"When we examine the special
Kennedy at Warm Springs
Raps Nixon for 'Hypocrisy'
Warm Springs, Ga. — Sen. John F. Kennedy made a cam-
paign pilgrimage to the late Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt's
"little White House" here, charging Vice Pres. Nixon with
"election-year hypocrisy" on health issues.
At the modest white cottage where Roosevelt recuperated
from infantile paralysis and where he later died, the Demo-
cratic nominee renewed a call for an "adequate" program of
medical care for the aged tied to the social security system.
He set forth a six-point program that also included federal
grants for medical schools, loans and scholarships for medical
students, greater research in health areas, hospital moderniza-
tion and individual aid to the handicapped.
He charged that health problems for eight years have been
neglected by a Republican Party "frozen in the ice of its own
indifference" — a quotation from Roosevelt's speech in 1936
accepting the Democratic Party nomination for a second term.
Kennedy scathingly attacked Nixon as having remained
silent while the Republican Party in the 50s "cut back" Demo-
cratic programs for water pollution control, hospitals, research
and medical education.
For the GOP now to offer a program "to combat disease in
the 1960s" and "boast of the increase for medical research,"
said the Democratic nominee, "is the height of election-year
hypocrisy."
circumstances that have made for
industrial harmony in these fields,
we find one common factor —
peace has come in every instance
after the firm establishment of
union security.
"It is a matter of good faith. The
employer proves his good faith by
giving a commitment in writing
that he will not attempt to wreck
the union or displace it. . . . The
union gives assurance of uninter-
rupted production, of greater pro-
ductivity, of efforts to promote the
business of the employer through all
channels available to a labor or-
ganization."
'Destructive Competition 9 Hit
The construction industry's "main
trouble," Haggerty said, "is destruc-
tive competition from non-union
employers — from the contractors
who underbid by cutting wages and
tearing down working conditions."
"As I see it," Haggerty added,
"there is only one answer to that
kind of unfair competition, and
that is organization. For that
reason the building and construc-
tion trades unions are determined
to organize as they never have or-
ganized before. We will not be
satisfied until all construction —
whether in the industrial, public
or residential fields — is fully or-
ganized in every section of the
country."
He called on employers to join in
making the building industry "a
working model of peaceful, co-
operative and mutually beneficial
labor-management relations."
AFL-CIO Ntws
Attack on Kennedy
Stepped Up by Nixon
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon returned to his native California in
a major bid for the prize of 32 electoral votes in a state generally
rated a toss-up in November.
The GOP presidential nominee continued to play his central
campaign theme: that the public should "vote for the man" instead
of the political party on whose plat-^"
form he is running.
As the campaign entered the
home stretch, Nixon sharpened
the intensity of his attacks on his
Democratic opponent, concen-
trating on differences with Sen.
John F. Kennedy over the Na-
tionalist Chinese-held offshore is-
lands of Quemoy and Matsu — a
difference which developed dur-
ing their second nationally tele-
vised debate.
The Vice President had stated
flatly that the islands would be de
fended against any Communist Chi
nese attack. His position was a
sharp departure from that of Pre£
Eisenhower, who in the past had
said the U.S. would defend the
islands only if an attack on them
was part of a Chinese Red assault
on Formosa.
At the same time that he de-
clared himself "flatly opposed" to
"handing over to the Communists
one inch of free territory," Nixon
was declaring in the televised de-
bate that "the few people on them
(the islands) are not too important.
Kennedy had called the islands,
located only five or six miles off
the coast of Red China and 100
miles from Formosa, "indefensi-
ble," and cited statements by Sec.
of State Christian A. Herter,
while he was undersecretary in
1958, that the U.S. should not
defend them. This position, he
said, was backed up by top mili-
tary leaders.
The Vice President — almost to-
URW Gives $12,000
For Rutgers Unit
New Brunswick, N. J. — Rubber
Workers Dist. 7 has undertaken to
raise a minimum of $12,000 for the
building fund of the labor unit at
the new Rutgers Institute of Labor
& Management Relations as a me-
morial to the late Joseph W. Childs,
long vice president of the union.
Each local affiliated with the dis-
trict is being asked to give two cents
per member per month from next
Jan. 1 until Dec. 31, 1965, under
a plan approved by the district con-
vention.
The drive for funds will be co-
ordinated by Dist. Dir. Joseph
Ugrovitch and a committee of dis-
trict officials headed by Pres. Angelo
Caruso. More than 200 interna-
tional, state, regional and local la-
bor bodies have contributed more
than $500,000 toward construction
of the labor unit.
Rockefeller, Nixon
Are Unglued Again
Elmira, N. Y. — Republican
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller
may be out on the campaign
trail for Vice Pres. Nixon,
but his disagreement with
both Nixon and Pres. Eisen-
hower continues to show
clearly.
In a press conference here,
Rockefeller was asked if he
subscribes to Nixon's views
that U.S. prestige abroad is
at an "all-time high." "I
would not make quite as flat a
statement as that," the GOP
governor declared.
Earlier, he blasted the
"poorhouse" method advo-
cated by both Eisenhower and
Nixon in meeting the health
needs of the aged. The gov-
ernor, rejecting the Admin-
istration's federal-state health
plan because it was tied to a
"means test," reiterated his
support for Forand-type leg-
islation, backed by Sen. John
F. Kennedy, to put health
care under social security.
tally abandoning other issues and
questions— turned almost complete-
ly to an effort to exploit the Matsu-
Quemoy issue.
He charged that Kennedy's views
were "dangerous for America and
dangerous to world peace," and
described them as "naive and wool-
ly policies" similar to those which
"led to the loss of China and the
war in Korea."
With the presidential cam-
paigns heading into its last cru-
cial month, Nixon's camp ap-
peared cool to an offer by two of
the television networks to sched-
ule a fifth debate with Kennedy
— an offer accepted quickly by
the Democratic presidential nom-
inee.
Nixon proposed, as an alterna-
tive to a fifth debate closer to elec-
tion time, that the Oct. 21 con-
frontation on foreign policy be
stretched out for two hours instead
of one. His aides also suggested a
televised debate between the two
vice presidential candidates — Dem-
ocratic Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson
and former United Nations Ambas-
sador Henry Cabot Lodge.
A few days earlier, Lodge had
rejected suggestions of a face-to-
face debate with Johnson.
Page TVelye
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1*60
Kennedy Sharply Attacks Nixon Stand
Says GOP Candidate
Risks Possible War
(Continued from Page 1)
and their candidate for saying,
•party labels don't mean anything;'
I would say it myself, because no
single piece of progressive legisla-
tion has been suggested by the GOP
in 25 years," he said.
Lists *Sharp Differences'
"There are sharp differences be-
tween Mr. Nixon and myself," he
insisted.
"I stand for a $1.25 minimum
wage, which Mr. Nixon says is ex-
treme.
"I stand for medical aid to the
aged through the social security
system, which he says is extreme.
"I stand for cleaning up our
polluted rivers, and the bill was
vetoed. We need housing, and the
bills were twice vetoed. We need
aid for depressed areas, and the
bills were twice vetoed.
"I would sign these bills."
Kennedy ended his tour, which
carried him into six states with a
total of 131 Electoral College votes,
in New York City for his third
television debate with the Vice
President. Ohio, New York and
Pennsylvania alone have 102 Elec-
toral College votes of the 269 need-
ed for election. He was scheduled
to fly at once to Michigan for a
"whistle-stopping" train trip, an-
other day in Pennsylvania, a quick
television panel interview in Wash-
ington, D. C, and an immediate
departure for his fifth trip into Ohio
in three weeks.
Kennedy's trip to the Deep
South was his first of the cam-
paign, and it was anounced that
he was the first Democratic nom-
inee in this century to make a
vote-seeking trip to South Caro-
lina.
Both in Georgia and South Caro-
lina, the state leaders of the Demo-
cratic Party massed to meet him
in an unusual display of party unity.
Gov. S. Ernest Vandiver of Georgia
introduced him at the Little White
House at Warm Springs, where the
late Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt
died, and five former governors
and Sen. Eugene Talmadge were
with him.
In South Carolina, Gov. Ernest
F. Hollings and Sen. Olin Johnston
met Kennedy at the Columbia air-
port and Hollings introduced him.
Local observers said Kennedy
seemed certain to carry Georgia
but that South Carolina was un-
certain, with Nixon attracting heavy
support as being "more conserva-
tive" on labor issues and federal
welfare programs.
Lashes Nixon on Rights
Speaking from the South Caro-
lina State House steps, in the heart
of the one-time Confederacy, Ken-
nedy pulled no punches on civil
rights, lashing out at the Vice Pres-
ident for "making a great show of
discussing" the issue in the South
but making "hardly the same
speech" he uses in New York.
"Up North he talks about legis-
lation. Down here he emphasizes
that laws are not enough," Kennedy
charged.
"Up there he stresses how quickly
he will act in all these areas. Down
here he says, 'I know this is a
difficult problem.' Up there he
criticizes the Democratic Party for
having nominated a southerner
(Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson) on the
ticket. Down here he omits the
civil rights plank in his own plat-
form," Kennedy continued.
*T don't think Mr. Nixon is fool-
ing anyone, North or South. I
think it is clear that if we are to
Tteve progress in this area — and we
must have progress to be true to
our ideals and responsibilities —
then presidential leadership is nec-
essary so that every American can
enjoy his full constitutional rights.
"Some of you may disagree
with that view, but at least I have
not changed that view in an elec-
tion year or according to where
I am standing. I don't send
Republican Sen. Hugh Scott of
Pennsylvania to campaign in the
North and conservative Republi-
can Sen. Barry Goldwater of
Arizona to come South, and I
say we don't need any of this."
In his Mahoning Valley swing,
the Massachusetts senator pointed
out that in 1952, when Gov. Adlai
E. Stevenson visited Youngstown,
steel production was at 104 per-
cent of rated capacity.
In 1960, after eight years of the
Eisenhower Administration, he said,
production in the Youngstown-
Warren area had dropped to "44
percent of capacity, with produc-
tion nationally down to 54 per-
cent."
He accused the Administration
of partial responsibility for the
"steel crisis" that saw one-third of
the industry's workers either jobless
or on parttime work, with 18,000
idle in the Mahoning Valley alone
and thousands of others on a three-
day workweek.
Before huge crowds that waited
for hours in public squares and at
airports — Kennedy's three-airplane
and bus caravan was nearly always
far behind schedule, partly due to
dense throngs that slowed the can-
didate's passage — the senator chal-
lenged the Republican thesis that
the country is in sound shape, with
high prestige.
'We Must Do Better 5
"I say we can do better and must
do better," he said.
"Thirty-five percent of our
brightest boys and girls never get to
college. We are turning out only
half as many doctors and nurses as
we need. The $9 billion agricul-
tural surplus is rotting away while
millions of Americans go to bed on
a substandard diet of 5 cents a day
for surplus foods.
"If you think we can do better,
if you think we must do better at
home and abroad, then I ask your
help, and we will get America mov-
ing again."
ENTHUSIASTIC CROWDS like this greeted Sen. John F. Kennedy on his tour of northern Ohio.
Here, at Warren, the Democratic candidate stands on the seat of his car to address the throng
which greeted him in the city's Courthouse Square.
Democrats Blister GOP Neglect
Of Cities, Nixon's Urban Program
Pittsburgh — A blistering attack by Sen. John F. Kennedy on the Republicans' "shameful record
of neglect" for urban problems climaxed a day-long national conference here on the plight of the
cities.
A dinner audience of more than 500 persons heard Kennedy, Gov. David L. Lawrence of Penn-
sylvania and other speakers rip into the GOP record and specifically assail an urban development
program unfolded by Vice Pres.'f^
Nixon two weeks ago.
Kennedy charged that the Re-
publican position on urban prob-
lems was "as consistent as it has
been negative." When the cities
turned to Washington for help in
solving these complex problems,
Kennedy declared, this is what the
GOP produced:
"On urban renewal — stall it.
"On low-rent public housing —
kill it.
"On moderate income* private
housing — bury it.
"On aid for public schools —
block it.
"On aid for hospitals — reduce
it.
"On mass transportation — ig-
nore it.
"On control of stream pollu-
Union Officer's Widow
Visited By Kennedy
Newport, Ky.— For Mrs. Al Steil of 1168 Park St., Oct. 6 will
always be a special day.
That was the day she entertained a presidential candidate in
her living room and shortly America's TV audience will be watching
that meeting.
Mrs. Steil, whose late husband^
was a grand lodge representative of
the Machinists, is a Gold Star
Mother. Her son, Vincent, was
killed in Germany.
Her guest was Sen. John F.
Kennedy and the living room of
the tiny house was packed with
television equipment and techni-
cians when Mrs. Steil and two of
her friends, Mrs. Mildred Shay
of Hamilton, Ohio, and Mrs.
John Wagner, also of Newport,
talked with the senator about war
and its awful price.
Their chat was recorded on elec-
tronic tape for use during the cam-
paign as were two other incidents
during the senator's brief visit to
Park street in Newport, accom-
panied by three press busses, a
convoy of police vehicles, and in-
numerable dignitaries.
Sees 95- Year-Old School
He spent nearly a half hour with
30 mothers of grade school chil-
dren in a 95-year-old school still
in use and he also visited on the
front porch of the home of John
McNamara, a 77-year-old social
security recipient.
The mothers knew the price of
inadequate school buildings and
they talked with the senator about
the need for new schools and fed-
eral aid to hard-hit school districts.
McNamara knew the price of med-
ical care, for he has exhausted his
savings and gone $600 in debt
since he broke his hip in a fall last
February. The senator described
his medical-care bill to McNamara.
But it was in Mrs. Steil's home
that the senator stayed the long-
est, talking with the three Gold
Star mothers. He, too, knew the
price of war, for his brother,
sister and brother-in-law were
among its victims.
Before he left, Mrs. Steil offered
him a cookie. "Is it home-made?"
he asked.
"No," she admitted, then added
brightly, "but it's union-made."
And the ladies kissed the senator
goodbye.
tion — abandon it.
"On air pollution control —
study it.
"On alleviating juvenile delin-
quency — research it."
The Democratic presidential can-
didate called for a five-point urban
renewal program achieved through
federal-city partnership" and in-
cluding a housing program for all
income groups, mass transportation
in which federal assistance would
be pegged to unified planning, pol-
lution control and recreational
facilities.
Lawrence charged that the Nixon
plan is typical of Republican "lip
service, or in this case mimeograph
service, to housing and slum clear-
ance every four years."
Earlier mayors of 12 major cities
had charged that Nixon's public
housing and urban renewal pro-
gram was "too little and too late"
and reviewed the futile efforts of
the past 7.5 years to get action from
Washington.
Boris Shishkin, secretary of the
AFL-CIO Housing Committee, rep-
resented the federation at the con-
ference. He declared in a state-
ment that the "housing needs of
American families have been a mat-
ter of complete neglect in the ex-
BSEIU Backs
Kennedy- Johnson
New York — The general exec-
utive board of the Building Service
Employes has endorsed the Dem-
ocratic ticket of Sens. John F. Ken-
nedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and
urged the membership to help elect
a liberal Congress as welL
"Our great nation is sorely in
need of leadership that is liberal,
vigorous and farsighted," wrote
BSEIU Pres. David Sullivan in an-
nouncing the endorsement in Serv-
ice Employe, the union's publica-
tion. "Kennedy and Johnson can
give us such leadership."
Sullivan said reports from inter-
national representatives, organizers
and local union officers indicate
"the overwhelming majority" of
members favor Kennedy and John-
son. He asked all locals to step up
the drive to collect voluntary $1
contributions to the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Political Educaioru
ecutive branch" during recent years
and that the cities cannot be re-
built "unless we raise our sights to
build far more homes than are be-
ing built today — at the very least,
09-21-01
the minimum of 2.3 million homes
a year."
Comprehensive programs must
be launched, he said, to bring good
homes within the financial reach of
the "disadvantaged," the families
of low and moderate income, the
Negro families and other minorities
and the elderly.
I ke's Expert Dons
Rose-Hued Glasses
Ann Arbor, Mich. — The
Eisenhower Administration's
stepped-up campaign to dis-
count the economic danger
signals popped up here in a
speech by Raymond J. Saul-
nier, who claimed that the
"economy is operating at a
very high level and will con-
tinue to do so."
Saulnier, chairman of the
President's Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers, told the 43d
meeting of the University
Press Club of Michigan that
on the basis of all the evi-
dence the economy "is in
good position to make a
major advance . . . this is not
merely a hope, but an ex-
pectation."
Reviewing the various in-
dicators, including industrial
production and unemploy-
ment, Saulnier declared "the
evidence will not permit a
conclusion that we are in a
recession."
Vol. V
Issued weekly at 815 Sixteenth St.. N.W.,
Washington 6, D. C. $2 a year
Saturday, October 22, 1960 No. 43
Kennedy Steps Up Attack
On Nixon 'Soothing Syrup'
SEA OF FACES and outstretched hands greet Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy at Sharon, Pa. The biggest crowd in the city's history turned
out to hear the Democratic presidential candidate lash the GOP's
"indifference" to the nation's critical unemployment problem.
'Silent 9 Voters Hold
Key in 4 States
Chicago — Four states of the Midwest, with a total of 71 electoral
college votes, also are the scene of battle for four Senate seats that
have been held for years by Democratic liberals. Three weeks be-
fore the election, the balance of power in the presidential race
seemed to be held by "silent" or "undecided" voters in each state.
Three of the Senate seats looked^ —
safe for the Democrats while the Wis.) when the latter still terror-
. fourth was considered in some
danger.
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri
and Illinois — these are the states
that have been represented in the
Senate by Sen. Pat McNamara, Sen.
Hubert H. Humphrey, the late Sen.
^Thomas C. Hennings Jr. and Sen.
Paul H. Douglas. Each of these
senators has been a major force in
the Democratic liberal rank.
Douglas is a distinguished
economist, sponsor of a bill to
force money-lending companies
to state interest rates on time-
purchased commodities in terms
of simple annual interest, a high-
ranking member of the banking
committee that controls housing
policy.
Humphrey is the ranking liberal
spokesman on the foreign relations
committee and a recognized leader
on farm policy and labor relations.
McNamara, a labor committee
member, resigned from the McClel-
lan special investigating committee
in protest against the political
operations of its Republican mem-
bers. He has headed a subcom-
mittee investigating the problems
of the aged.
Hennings, who died a few weeks
ago, was one of the few senators
who had the courage to oppose the
late Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-
ized more timid colleagues.
In all four of the states, city and
suburban registration has been
pushed to record or near-record
highs in preparation for the elec-
tion, and the new registrants seem
(Continued on Page 5)
lUE, Westinghouse
Agree on Contract
Pittsburgh — A three year
agreement covering 40,000
Westinghouse workers has
been approved by the IUE
negotiating committee.
The agreement calls for
wage increases ranging from
4 cents to 10 cents an -hour
effective immediately and a
similar increase on Apr. 17,
1962. The union also won an
eighth paid holiday and four
weeks of vacation for em-
ployes with 20 years service.
A total of 23 cents in costs of
living bonuses will be incor-
porated in the basic wage
structure.
Substantial improvements
were won in the areas of
pensions and health insurance
and a lay-off income plan was
established to benefit unem-
ployed Westinghouse workers.
Vice President's
All-Out Assault
Keys Final Weeks
By WiUard Shelton
. En Route with Nixon — Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon opened what his aides called the "decisive"
final three weeks of the presidential campaign with
a series of attacks on Sen. John F. Kennedy as
"naive," lacking in experience and short of com-
prehension of the nature of the Communist as-
sault on the free world.
From Connecticut to New York and Florida
and back to Delaware and New York again, the
Vice President charged up and down the Atlantic
seaboard that the Democratic pres-^ -
idential nominee failed to under-
stand the foreign-policy issues of
the campaign.
Fourth Debate
The two candidates were sched-
uled to end their week with the
fourth of their series of television
"great debates" from a broadcast-
ing studio in this city.
They had faced each other, from
a common platform, two days earli-
er at the annual Alfred E. Smith
Memorial Dinner at the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel here, a dinner billed
as "non-political" and held for
charity purposes, which was never-
theless marked by sharp barbs ex-
changed between the two rivals.
The Vice President in his cam-
paign carried an unremitting
counter-assault against Kennedy,
charging that Democratic criti-
cisms of Eisenhower administra-
tion policies reflected "woolly-
headed" thinking and "immatu-
rity."
In Buffalo, N.Y., where Kennedy
two weeks earlier had spoken from
the identical platform in Memorial
Auditorium, Nixon said that the
Democratic nominee did not un-
derstand the issue involved in dis-
cussion of the coastal islands off
China's mainland, Quemoy and
Matsu.
Not An Inch
"We must not yield an inch of
free world territory to the Com-
munists," the vice president said.
He accused his opponent of the
same "blunder" as former Sec. of
State Dean Acheson in 1950,
whom he accused of "writing
Korea outside our defense perim-
eter" and thus producing a Com-
munist attack.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., and in
Wilmington, Del., in the latter of
which the crowds approached an
enthusiasm comparable to those
that had greeted Kennedy, the Vice
President spoke about "what's right
with America."
In 1953, he said in Florida, when
the Eisenhower Administration
came to power, "we were in a war
in Korea that we were not allowed
to win. Now the war has been
ended, and we are at peace, and
(Continued on Page 11)
Fast-Paced Drive
Scores Failures
Of Administration
By Gene Zack
En Route with Kennedy — A fighting John F.
Kennedy — punching harder and with increasing
self-confidence at the record of "failures" of the
Eisenhower-Nixon Administration — moved into
high gear as the presidential campaign entered the
home stretch.
Hop-scotching the nation at a breakneck pace
— from Ohio's recession-ridden industrial com-
munities and economically depressed farm regions
to Florida's Gold Coast and on into New York
"^City, key to the 45 electoral votes
Ike, Nixon
Scored on
Civil Rights
New York — A blistering in-
dictment of the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration's civil rights record
was made here by leading Amer-
icans at a two-day National Con-
ference on Constitutional Rights
and American Freedom called by
Sen. John F. Kennedy.
It was the fourth of the Demo-
cratic presidential nominee's "cam-
paigning by conferences." Earlier
ones have covered agricultural
problems, employment and indus-
trial expansion, and urban prob-
lems.
Nearly 500 persons from 42
states heard outstanding politi-
cal figures, trade union repre-
sentatives and experts on civil
rights, housing, education, eco-
nomics and congressional pro-
cedures score the nation's Chief
Executive for failure to provide
the "leadership inherent in his
office." They also heard sting-
(Continued on Page 12)
Output Slump Marks
Ike's Third Recession
The nation's total output of goods and services — yardstick of
economic growth — declined by $2 billion during the second quarter
of 1960, the government has reported. The drop in the annual rate
is the first since the '58 recession except for the steel strike period.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany described the drop in production
as "the third recession since the'^ -
Eisenhower Administration took of-
fice" and called for a program of
"immediate counter - recessionary
activity by the federal government."
Meany pointed out that evi-
dence of a general business de-
cline has been apparent "ever
since last February, when sales
failed to meet business expecta-
tions and key industries started
which are the biggest single prize
in the election — the Democratic
presidential nominee found the size
and enthusiasm of his crowds grow-
ing apace with his intensified cam-
paign.
Increasingly Kennedy poured
a withering fire on his Republi-
can opponent, charging him with
feeding the American people
"soothing syrup" to hide the
"dangerous deterioration" of the
nation's military strength, the
slippage of its prestige around the
globe, and the decline of its
economy at home.
Increasingly he ridiculed Vice
President Nixon for announcing
that the GOP nominee would spend
the last three weeks of the cam-
paign talking about the ofTshore
islands of Quemoy and Matsu —
on which, said Kennedy, there is
no longer disagreement between the
candidates — and of ignoring the
menace of communism in Cuba and
the danger of its spread elsewhere in
Latin America.
At the same time he sharpened
his criticism of Nixon for refusing
to engage in a fifth nationally tele-
vised debate closer to Election Day
— pledging that he would adjust
his schedule to meet Nixon in an-
other face-to-face debate "any-
(Continued on Page 12)
to cut back production and to lay
off workers."
He charged that "for eight long
months the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration has sat idly and watched
the decline spread from one in-
dustry to another . . . (and) has
taken no decisive actions to head
off a general decline."
(Continued on Page 10)
Pag© Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
No Alternative, IUMSWA Told:
UTILITY WORKERS' convention in Washington, D. C, provided the setting for this huddle of
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzier (left), R. J. Thomas (center), assistant to AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, and William J. Pachler (right), new UWUA president.
Utility Workers Elect Pachler,
Endorse Kennedy- Johnson Ticket
Some 600 delegates climaxed the Utility Workers' 11th constitutional convention in Washington,
D. C, by endorsing the Democratic ticket of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
The delegates acted on a recommendation from the union's executive committee, which described
Kennedy and Johnson as the candidates most qualified to meet today's twin problems: safeguarding
the free world and strengthening America socially and economically.
In a key convention action, Sec.
Treas. William J. Pachler was elect-
ed to the presidency. He succeeded
Joseph A. Fisher, who retired after
serving in the top post since the
union was founded in 1945. Board
member Andrew J. McMahon was
named secretary-treasurer.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
delivered a strong political appeal
to the delegates, telling them "there
is no more important activity for
the trade unionist today than to get
out the vote."
Meany told the delegates that
the AFL-CIO General Board —
in endorsing Kennedy and John-
son — had to answer the question:
"Do we take a program of stag-
nation and retreat or do we take
a program of progress — a pro-
gram that plans for advancement
and jobs?"
Meany, stressing labor's "definite
stake" in the election, dealt in turn
with what he said were the three
Republican campaign lines.
To answer the GOP line that the
nation's prestige never was higher,
Meany said, one just has to follow
the United Nations debate and read
his newspaper. How can our pres-
tige be high, he asked, "when 90
miles off our Florida coast, the
Communists have established the
first Soviet beachhead in the west-
ern hemisphere?"
On whether the U.S. defense is
stronger than that of the Soviet
Union, Meany said he was unqual-
ified to speak and would defer to
the commander-in-chief.
Going Backwards
But on economics, organized la-
bor is qualified to speak as an
expert, Meany said, adding:
"We do know that the Republi-
can campaign slogan — 'you never
had it so good' — is just not true.
We are going backwards."
Meany ticked off the trend in
economic indicators as waning em-
ployment in the private sector,
high-level unemployment, short
workweeks, and the failure to pro-
vide jobs for an increasing work
force.
Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) de-
livered a fighting speech just before
the delegates endorsed Kennedy.
Church accused Vice Pres. Richard
M. Nixon of "serving up a potion
for Quemoy and Matsu mixed of
two parts demagoguery with one
part doubletalk." Church said Ken-
nedy had the sounder position and
is the man to "put in charge."
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzier, speaking at a testimonial
dinner in honor of Fisher, praised
Two Postal Unions
Agree on Merger
Two unions of postal clerks, rivals for more than half a century,
have signed a merger agreement described in a joint statement as
"a pioneering breakthrough in efforts to achieve greater labor unity
among post office workers."
The merger pact was signed by officers of the 100,000-member
AFL-CIO Post Office Clerks and$
the unaffiliated 35,000-member
United National Association of
Post Office Craftsmen.
Formal ratification of the
merger by the two unions, both
of which endorsed unification in
principle at tiieir conventions this
past summer, is expected by Mar.
1, 1961. The new group will be
known as the United Federation
of Post Office Clerks, AFL-CIO.
Pres. E. C. Hallbeck and other
officers of the Post Office Clerks
will retain iheir offices in the merged
organization. Pres. Joseph Thomas
of UNAPOC will become director
of organization and UNAPOC Sec.
Joseph V. Silvestri will be named
executive aide. Eight vice presidents
of UNAPOC and the organization's
treasurer will be regional organ-
izers of the new union.
UNAPOC, one of the oldest
postal unions, was formed in 1882.
The first local of the Post Office
Clerks was organized in 1900 and
chartered by the former AFL in
1906.
the retiring UWUA president for
his responsible leadership.
Turning to the . national political
scene, Schnitzier said labor is "thor-
oughly convinced that Sen. Ken-
nedy will give America the kind of
responsible and wise and vigorous
leadership that it so urgently
needs."
Acting on a wide range of reso-
lutions, the delegates called for cre-
ation of a National Committee on
Radiation Safety; insisted that bene-
fits and changes brought by auto-
mation be handled through nego-
tiation and urged contract protec-
tion on the practice of contracting-
out work. A broad, liberal legis-
lative program also was strongly
supported.
Marine Union For
New Strike Fund
New York — Action to halt construction of ships abroad by Amer-
ican shipping interests, and to provide for minimum replacement
of 60 ships a year and adequate repair of vessels in the U.S. mer-
chant marine, was demanded here by the Industrial Union of Marine
& Shipbuilding Workers of America.
Delegates to the union's 20th^
convention also approved estab-
lishment of a strike fund to guard
against future work stoppages like
that which paralyzed eight East
Coast Bethlehem Steel Co. ship-
yards for 152 days ending last
June. This strike, according to
IUMSWA officers, brought to a
halt a $700 million Navy ship con-
struction and repair program.
Warning that organized workers
in privately owned U.S. shipyards
are facing loss of their jobs because
of "hostile forces operating contrary
to the best interests of this indus-
try," IUMSWA Pres. John J. Gro-
gan told delegates there was no
alternative to a strike fund. He
noted that the union had been aided
in the Bethlehem strike by contri-
butions totaling $800,000 from the
AFL-CIO and other unions, and
held that such assistance would not
again be available.
Grogan told 300 convention
delegates that the Bethlehem
stoppage was an example of in-
dustry getting together "to force
employes out and make them
ever mindful that they are just
servants."
An officers* report noted that
during the past 14 years, marked by
tremendous expansion of the mer-
chant fleet, 896 vessels were or-
dered by American shipping inter-
ests from shipyards in foreign coun-
tries. It estimated the contract
value of this construction at $4,-
030,400,000, and asserted that this
represented a saving of about
$2.3 billion against what it would
have cost to construct the ships in
this country. It also held that the
IUMSWA had been "robbed" of 92
man-years of work as a result of
130 tankers built abroad.
In addition to calling for a curb
on U.S. firms' foreign orders and
an adequate replacement and repair
program, delegates asked the fed-
eral government to set up and main-
tain a research center aimed at
ensuring American shipyards the
benefit of technical advice and con-
sultation. A large number of Euro-
pean and Far Eastern nations al-
ready have such centers. The con-
vention also took the following
actions:
• Unanimously endorsed the
Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
• Approved a contribution of
$10,000 to aid members of the
Electrical, Radio & Machine Work-
ers in their strike against the Gen-
eral Electric Co.
• Revised the union's constitu-
tion to conform with the Landrum-
Griflin Act.
• Canceled out constitutional
provisions which require the union
to hold annual wage policy confer-
ences (previous contracts ran for
one year, while current agreement*
are for two and three years).
Strike Fund Plan
The strike fund voted by the un-
ion will be set up by local unions
contributing $1 per member per
month for an indefinite period.
This plan was worked out in pref-
erence to a per capita assessment,
which had met with considerable
opposition from the membership.
Convention delegates unanimous-
ly re-elected the following chief ex-
ecutive officers for a new four-year
term: Grogan; Andrew A. Pettis,
vice president; and Ross D. Blood,
secretary-treasurer. A 1 2-member
executive board was elected, in-
cluding the following: Michael J.
Carroll, New York City; Joseph
De Kieva, Pittsburgh; William En-
nis, New York City; Robert Kehoe,
Quincy, Mass.; Richard H. Lloyd,
San Pedro, Calif.; Joseph N. Town-
ley, Hoboken, N. J.; Edwin W.
Vinson, Baltimore; William M. Wil-
liams, Mobile; Dominic A. Maiese,
Camden, N. J.; Harold C. Williams,
Baltimore; Victor R. Leask, Bath,
Me.; and Charles Bell, Baltimore.
GE Turns Down New Union Offer
For Settlements of Nationwide Strike
New York — Negotiations between the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers and General Electric
management faltered this week, as the company refused to budge from its "take it or leave it" offer
which it put forth late in August.
With more than 50 GE plants across the nation closed by the walkout, an IUE negotiating com-
mittee headed by Pres. James B. Carey offered a new proposal Oct. 19 for settling the 18-day-old
strike. GE management brushed it^-
aside with a curt "no."
Meanwhile, at Pittsburg, the IUE
reached an agreement with West-
inghouse Electric Corp. providing
wage and fringe benefits for 40,-
000 workers represented by the
union.
IUE Sec.-Treas. Al Hartnett,
chairman of the union's Westing-
house Conference Board, said the
agreement came after the IUE had
submitted a new proposal on wages,
fringe benefits and working condi-
tions in an effort to avert a strike.
Effectiveness of the nationwide
strike against GE had been ham-
pered by the action of Leo Jan-
dreau, business agent of Local 301
in Schenectady, the big main plant
of GE which employs some 8,500
members of the IUE. Jandreau,
who had persuaded the local to hold
off striking until some four days
after other GE plants had gone out,
brought his local back to work on
Oct. 17.
GE plastered statements by the
Schenectady business agent in
full page ads in newspapers in
other GE plant cities. In addi-
tion, an unparalleled advertising
campaign directed at the strike
and at Carey filled columns upon
columns of space in papers
throughout the nation. Cost of
the ads obviously ran into the
millions.
While the company's ads pro-
claimed that the strike was without
support, picket lines and effective
strike machinerey kept GE out of
production in most of the plants
where the strike was in effect. But
in some few centers in addition to
Schenectady, the company had suc-
ceeded in blunting the effective-
ness of the walkout.
Even as the company was pro-
claiming that the strike had no
support among the members, the
union's 100-member GE Confer-
ence Board voted unanimously
in support of the union's efforts
to gain a satisfactory contract.
The conference board represents
each IUE-GE local. It gave the
negotiating committee full au-
thority to negotiate a settlement,
lashed out at Jandreau's sabotage
of the strike, and praised the sol-
idarity of the 55,000 strikers.
Carey had proposed to the com-
pany that the two parties agree on
an 18-month wage contract, pro-
viding a 3.5 percent wage increase
and minus the cost of living clause
which the union has been seeking
to retain in the new contract.
But Philip Moore, GE's chief
negotiator, knocked the offer down
during the course of a four-hour
meeting at the headquarters of the
U.S. Mediation Service in New
York. As the negotiations played
out, GE was seeking to break them
off until further notice.
Early in the parleys, which start-
ed last June, IUE proposed wage
increases, job security, the union
shop and increased pension and wel-
fare benefits. While the union and
the company are close on the pen-
sion and insurance programs, the
company's wage offer was less than
the union had asked, it refused to
grant the union shop, and it pro-
posed to remove the cost of living
escalator from the new pact
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OtTOBEtt 22, 1960
Page Tkre*
In Unanimous Decision :
Union Picket Line Discipline
Upheld by Wisconsin Court
Madison, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the right of unions to
enforce disciplinary action against members who cross picket lines, declaring that denial of this
power would make a union "a much less effective instrument of collective bargaining."
The state's highest court voided a restraining order issued by a lower court which banned locals
of the Machinists and Auto Workers from suing to collect fines levied under the union constitutions
after trial of the offending members.^"
The restraining order had been
based on a ruling of the State T-abor
Board that fines against members
who worked during a strike con-
stituted an unfair labor practice.
One case dated back to a 1956
strike by IAM Lodge 78 against
the Allen Bradley Co. Fifteen
members who deserted the strike
were tried by the local union,
fined $100 and expelled from
membership. Fourteen of the
group refused to pay the fine and
the union instituted civil pro-
ceedings to collect.
The other case is an aftermath
of the Allis-Chalmers strike in early
1959. UAW Local 248 sought to
collect fines of $15 to $100 levied
against 19 members who crossed
the picket line.
Unfair labor practice charges
brought against the two unions by
the employe? who had been dis
Kennedy Endorsed by
AFL-CIO in Illinois
Springfield, 111. — Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-lll.) urged the election
of John F. Kennedy and more liberal Democrats to Congress in a
major campaign speech at the third annual convention of the Illi-
nois State AFL-CIO.
Douglas, who has the endorsement of Illinois labor in his bid for
a third term, gave these reasons^
why voters here should support
the Democratic Party —
• "To get America off dead
center and start to move again.
• "To close the gap between
the needs of the country and the
sorry performance of the Republi-
can Administration
• "To break the 'unholy alli-
ance' between the Republicans and
Southern Dixiecrats in the Con-
gress,
Douglas, cheered by the 2,300
to 2,400 delegates representing 1.1
million unionists, reviewed the rec-
ord of presidential vetoes. He
noted that a veto or threat of veto
had killed area redevelopment, a
meaningful program of medical
care for the aged, and minimum
wage legislation.
During the same session in
which Douglas spoke, the state
AFL-CIO approved the action
of the AFL-CIO General Board
in endorsing Kennedy for Presi-
dent and Johnson for Vice Presi-
dent.
Another Democrat endorsed by
the Illinois AFL-CIO, Otto Kerner
who is seeking to unseat the incum-
bent Governor William G. Strat-
ton, received a warm welcome.
Demonstrations were staged for
both Douglas and Kerner. Strat-
ton, who spoke the day before, was
Illinois Convention
Hails FEPC Vow
Springfield, 111. — ". . . and I
won't be in Russia when the FEPC
bill comes up in the Senate."
This statement by Otto Kerner,
Democratic candidate for governor
of Illinois, brought a loud cheer
from the delegates at the third an-
nual convention of the State AFL-
CIO in the State Armory here.
Kerner, endorsed by Illinois labor,
referred to the Equal Job Oppor-
tunities Bill which was defeated in
the State Senate in 1959.
Incumbent Gov. William G.
Stratton, seeking a third term, was
on a junket in Russia when the
bill was up for final vote in the
Senate. Labor and the Democrats
claim that Stratum's presence could
have saved the measure from de-
feat. He had backed the equal job
proposal.
Equal job laws have been passed
in the State House of Representa-
tives, which has a small Demo-
cratic majority; but always fail in
the GOP-controlled Senate. Labor
leaders feel FEPC and positive
labor legislation will have a better
chance with Kcrna" as governor.
booed several times during his
speech by some delegates.
Kerner is running on a state
platform which favors a basic mini-
mum wage law in Illinois and an
increase of the federal minimum
and expansion of coverage; a state
labor board to foster full recogni-
tion of the rights of workers and
management in collective bargain
ing, and opposition to so-called
"right-to-work" laws.
The GOP state platform points
out that no restrictive labor laws
have been passed under Stratton's
administration and pledges a con
tinued and expanded program of
labor opportunities and benefits.
Andrew Biemiller, AFL-CIO leg-
islative director, warned that the
trade union movement in America
would be in trouble if Richard M.
Nixon is elected. He urged the
election of a sympathetic and liber-
al President. Biemiller, representing
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
lauded Douglas and Illinois Demo-
crats in the House for their votes
in favor of proposals of benefit to
wage earners.
Secretary Joseph D. Keenan of
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers, active in the campaign to
elect Kennedy, urged labor to form
a "truth squad" to trail GOP Sen.
Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Re-
publicans have been following
Democratic candidates, giving the
voters the alleged "truth" on issues
and promises. Keenan told the
delegates that Douglas and Sen.
Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.) are be-
ing opposed by "big money inter-
ests" — Douglas for his "truth-in-
lending" bill; Kefauver for his ex-
pose of high drug prices and profits.
In a series of resolutions the
delegates called for political edu-
cation on a year-around basis, ex-
tension of the period of unem-
ployment compensation benefits
and an increase in benefits, a
state minimum wage, equal job
opportunities for all workers,
higher garnishment exemptions
and a state income tax to replace
the present sales tax.
The convention also called for a
bill to be introduced in the 1961
General Assembly to make it il-
legal to import strikebreakers in Il-
linois.
Officers are Pres. Reuben G. Sod-
erstrom, Executive Vfce Pres. Stan-
ley L. Johnson and Sec.-Treas
Maurice F. McElligott. Warm
tribute was paid to Soderstrom by
the delegates. This parley marks
his 30th year of leadership of Illi-
nois labor.
ciplined and by Allis-Chalmers were
rejected by the National Labor Re-
lations Board before being sustained
by the state board and the state
Circuit Court.
In ruling that the state board
had no jurisdiction, the Wisconsin
Supreme Court declared: "Any at-
tempt by the states to regulate union
activity in such a way as to disrupt
the balance of bargaining power
between unions and employers
would be an invasion of a field of
regulation already pre-empted by
Congress."
The court added that "a union
without power to enforce soli-
darity among its members when
it resorts to a strike . . . is a
much less effective instrument of
collective bargaining than a un-
ion which possesses such power."
Business Rep. John Heidenreich
of IAM Dist. 10 hailed the Su-
preme Court ruling as "a historic
decision" upholding the right of
unions "to enforce, through the
courts if necessary, reasonable dis-
cipline on members who violate
their trust and oath of member-
ship."
UAW Reg. Dir. Harvey Kitzman
declared the decision could have a
far-reaching effect on the conduct
and success of future strikes in the
state.
Mitchell Asks Voiding
Of Local ILA Election
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell has
moved to void an election held last
April by the Banana Handlers'
Local 1800 of the Longshoremen's
Association.
Mitchell, filing a civil action in
the U.S. District Court in New Or-
leans, charged" that the union "failed
to give adequate notice of the time,
place and procedures for nomina-
tions; refused to allow members in
good standing to nominate candi-
dates for office" and "illegally dis-
qualified candidates for office."
GUEST BADGE at Iron Workers' convention is pinned on AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany by John H. Lyons, president of the 150,-
000-member union. Meany's address to the convention was a sharp
indictment of the Republican Administration's record. Vice Pres.
Nixon, he charged, represents continued economic stagnation.
Iron Workers Vote
To Support Kennedy
Delegates representing 150,000 members of the Iron Workers
opened their union's quadrennial convention with a unanimous, en-
thusiastic endorsement of Sen. John F. Kennedy as "a man with
courage, ability and liberal convictions . . . capable of rallying the
American people."
The endorsement was only the^
second ever given to a presidential
candidate in the union's 64-year
history. The only other candidate
supported by the Iron Workers was
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the resolution, submitted to
the convention by Pres. John H.
Lyons and the union's entire exec-
utive board, Kennedy was praised
for his opposition to punitive labor
legislation, his sponsorship of job-
site picketing bills, his support of
economic growth, education, un-
employment insurance, housing,
medical care under social security
and his sponsorship of minimum
wage improvements.
The 824 delegates gave a
standing ovation to AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany who called
on them to "play your part as
trade unionists ... to bring about
UAW Asks NLRB Act
Against Kohler Evasion
The National Labor Relations Board has launched an inquiry into
charges by the Auto Workers that the Kohler Co. has failed to com-
ply with the board's Aug. 26 order to remedy unfair labor practices.
The UAW, urging the NLRB to seek a court injunction against
Kohler, pointed out that Kohler failed to offer reinstatement to over
300 strikers named in the board's'^
job reinstatement order.
The UAW said Kohler also failed
to offer reinstatement on a Uniform
basis to all strikers when it set an
Oct. 3 deadline. Many strikers had
obstained jobs elsewhere and moved
from the Sheboygan, Wis., area
during the six-year-long dispute,
the union noted.
The NLRB in late August
handed down a decision which
found the big plumbing fixtures
firm guilty of a number of un-
fair labor practices. The board
ordered a variety of remedies.
Harvey Kitzman, director of
UAW Region 10, announced that
regional and Local 833 officials had
met with NLRB compliance divi-
sion chiefs in Chicago to discuss
the situation. The board in Wash-
ington confirmed it was looking
into the union charges.
The union charged that Kohler
has failed to supply strikers who
apply for reinstatement with infor-
mation on whether they would get
back their former or equivalent
jobs; a complete description of wage
rates and the new incentive system.
The union said Kohler has of-
fered reinstatement to some work-
ers on a 32-hour-week basis "so as
to retain strikebreakers." This not
only is the first short week sched-
uled by the company since mid-
depression days, but it violates the
NLRB order, the UAW pointed
out.
The union said Kohler has re-
sponded to its communications and
indicated it would offer occupancy
in Kohler : owned premises to evicted
strikers; reinstate other illegally dis-
charged employes and provide wage
data.
Refused to Meet
But, the UAW added, the com-
pany has refused to meet with the
union for the purpose of negotiat-
ing a new contract, for discussing
reinstatement cases and for dis-
cussing current wage and hour data.
The UAW said it therefore in-
structed its attorney to urge the
NLRB "to seek an injunction or-
dering the Kohler Co. to comply
immediately with the NLRB order
under pain of contempt of court." (
a change in the Administration
here in Washington."
Meany rapped Vice Pres. Nixon
as representing "stagnation and the
vested interests who, if they're al-
lowed to have thier way, will surely
bring this country down to eco-
nomic ruin."
Declaring that under the Eisen-
hower-Nixon Administration, "there
isn't a big corporation in America
that hasn't got its representative
here on the government payroll,"
Meany charged:
"The National Labor Relations
Board, I say quite flatly, is stacked
against labor at the present time
and if you have any cases there you
know that is true."
Turning to the international
scene, Meany told the delegates:
"I would like to say that American
prestige with the free nations of the
world is at the highest possible level,
but I can't say so. It's not true,
and anyone who follows interna-
tional affairs and international
events will say that it's not true.
And it's not going to be true until
we get a government here that looks
at the welfare of each and every
citizen in this country and not just
at the welfare of those who pull the
strings in Wall Street."
Declaring that "all of the labor-
hating forces in this country have
concentrated their efTorts in the
legislative field," Meany said to
the laughter and applause of the
delegates:
"This is the reason you are look-
ing at someone who never was po-
litical in his whole life but, v\ho
is political today!"
Haggerty on Rules
Pres. C. J. Haggerty of the AFL-
CIO Building & Construction
Trades Dept. told the convention
that the Rules Committee bottle-
neck in the House of Representa-
tives must be broken before jobsite
picketing and other labor-backed
legislation can be enacted. "We
elect congressmen so that they can
vote on measures and not sit back
and say, 'I can't vote, the bill is in
committee'," Haggerty declared.
Lyons and Sec.-Treas. James R.
Downes reported that, since the
union's last convention in 1956,
net membership increased by near-
ly 7,000 and the average wage and
fringe benefit gains negotiated by
the union totaled 72 cents per hour
during the four-year period.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, I960
OPENING OF LABOR headquarters for Kennedy in Camden, N. J., draws top political and union
leaders to ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Pres. Joseph J. McComb of Camden County Central Labor
Union holds up scissors in center, preparatory to giving them to New Jersey's Democratic Gov. Rob-
ert B. Meyner. More than 100 area labor officials attended ceremonies.
New Jersey Democrats Look to
Big Kennedy Win to Help Ticket
Newark, N. J. — New Jersey Democrats are hoping that the Kennedy coattails are broad enough to
carry their senatorial candidate to victory and help them capture at least two of the nine congressional
seats held by the GOP.
Barring a Kennedy sweep with a victory margin of at least 100,000 votes, incumbent Republican
Sen. Clifford P. Case is favored at this stage of the campaign to turn back his Democratic challenger,
Thorn Lord.
Case can expect to benefit from
New Jersey's proclivity for ticket-
spliting. He has picked up some
labor endorsements, although most
of the state's still-unmerged labor
movement is either officially neutral
or supporting Lord. Case is using
his civil rights record in campaign-
ing effectively among Negro voters.
Lord, a liberal Democratic
leader from Trenton and a bat-
tler for consumer interests, is
highly respected and well liked
by those who have worked with
him. But his victory hopes are
penned to a big Kennedy victory.
Conservative estimates show New
Jersey leaning to Kennedy. Labor
people active in the day-to-day
campaign say Kennedy's strength
appears to be on the upswing. They
are encouraged by a record regis-
tration.
In the congressional contests, it
would take a major upset to dis-
lodge any of the five Democrats
seeking re-election. The Demo-
crats on the other hand can taste
victory in one contest, see an even
chance of capturing another GOP
seat and can at least hope for two
more.
Best bet for the Democrats
would appear to be in the 8th Dis-
trict, which includes the unemploy-
ment-hit cities of Passaic and Pat-
erson. There, Gordon Canfield, a
highly-popular and generally liberal
Republican who could always count
on a safe margin of victory, is re-
tiring after 20 years in office. His
secretary, Walter P. Kennedy, de-
feated the Republican organiza-
tion's choice in a hard-fought pri-
mary which left still-unhealed
wounds. Unless the district's Re-
publican organization develops
some real enthusiasm for their
party's candidate, Democrat Charles
S. Joelson has an excellent chance
of winning.
Democratic hopes are high, also,
in the First District, which in-
cludes the Camden area. From
1926 to 1958, the district was rep-
resented by Charles A. Wolverton.
The fight to succeed him in the
1958 election was close, with Re-
publican William Cahill winning
by the narrowest of margins. Al-
though Cahill has considerable
labor support, earned by a "right"
vote on Landrum-Griffin, Demo-
crat John A. Healey is currently
rated an even-money bet.
Less optimistically, the Demo-
crats see a chance of picking up
the congressional seat of Repub-
lican George M. Wallhauser, a
first-termer whose district in-
cludes part of Newark. In the
6th District, which includes
Elizabeth, Rep. Florence P.
Dwyer is conceded an edge, but
not a shoo-in over labor-backed
Democrat Jack B. Dunn.
The Case-Lord race for the Sen-
ate has found Lord directing
most of his attack on the Republi-
can Party's record and Case run-
ning against the Dixiecrats.
The State CIO has endorsed Lord
as "the better of two good men."
While Lord appeared to have con-
siderable support at the State AFL
endorsement session, the organiza-
tion voted to remain neutral in the
campaign. Case has the active sup-
post of most building trades unions
and railroad brotherhoods and re-
cently won the endorsement of the
New Jersey Machinists' Council.
Both labor federations are
strongly , backing the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket and the local Demo-
cratic organizations are rolling up
their sleeves to support Kennedy.
Democrats Strong But:
4 Swing' History Rates
Missouri a Tossup
St. Louis — Missouri is the only state in the union which in 1956
reversed its judgment of 1952 and voted for Adlai E. Stevenson for
President after voting for Dwight D. Eisenhower four years earlier,
Setvenson's plurality was about 4,000 — and the race between Sen.
John F. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Nixon looks as if it may be equally
close this year,
The state is a border state, with
a population that is substantially
southern conservative in its rural
areas and a history of swinging be-
tween the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties according to the can-
didates and the issues.
It is generally conceded by ob-
servers that the Democrats seem
likely to elect a governor and other
state officials and probably will
elect the Democratic nominee, re-
cent Lieut. Gov. Edward V. Long,
over Republican Lon Hocker to
succeed the late Sen. Thomas C.
Hennings Jr. (D). Long has been
appointed to fill the Hennings va-
cancy by Gov. James T. Blair and
thus will have a treasured advan-
tage in seniority if he is successful
in his own right.
The Kennedy-Nixon race is
rated so close that one observer
deeply experienced in the state's
political cross-currents says, "I
wouldn't give you a dime either
way."
Republican National Committee
Chairman Thruston Morton on a
recent campaign visit here said that
GOP private polls showed Kennedy
with a slight lead. But the margin
is wholly indecisive and events of
the last two weeks admittedly might
swing the state.
Some observers estimate that
Kennedy must carry the state's two
big urban areas, St. Louis and
Kansas City and their suburbs, by
upwards of 200,000 in order to
overcome what they believe may be
a heavy rural vote for Nixon. But
West Virginia Seeks New Deal
In 'New Frontier' of Kennedy
By David L. Perlman
Charleston — West Virginia is expected to cast its eight electoral votes for the New Frontier of
John F. Kennedy in the fervent hope that it will bear a close family resemblance to the New Deal
of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In the cities and towns which share the dubious distinction of being listed in the Labor Depths
tabulation of "areas of substantial and persistent labor surplus," among the 276,000 persons whose
daily diet is shaped by the contents^
of the government's surplus food
handouts, the attachment to the
memory of FDR is more than mere
nostalgia.
The depressed conditions of the
present are a vivid reminder of the
great depression. And if condi-
tions are not quite so bad, Demo-
cratic campaigners make pointedly
clear, it is because of laws enacted
during the New Deal.
The stacks of anti-Catholic
literature which have flooded the
mail of this heavily-Protestant
state would appear to be a major
hurdle for the Democratic pres-
idential candidate. But informed
West Virginians discount the im-
pact and tell of cases where
ministers who started to raise the
religious issue dropped it like
a hot potato after having been
told off by indignant Demo-
cratic parishioners.
The prospects look good for the
re-election of labor-backed Sen.
Jennings Randolph (D) and the five
incumbent Democratic congress-
men whose voting records are listed
by COPE as 100 percent "right."
There is at least a possibility that
the Democrats will be able to pick
up the GOP's lone congressional
seat, although the incumbent is fa-
vored at this stage in the campaign.
Most — but not all — observers ex-
pect the Democratic gubernatorial
candidate, State Attorney Gen. W.
W. Barron, to run well ahead of his
opponent, a Republican who may
pick up a few confused votes be-
cause his name is Neely, although
he is not related to the late Demo-
cratic senator.
The wild card in this race is the
uncertain political effect of a bitter
Democratic primary battle in which
Barron's opponent charged he was
offered $65,000 to drop out of the
primary. A slander suit brought
by Barron was settled out of court
after the primary. Labor, hampered
by a Republican governor and con-
servative Democratic leadership in
the state senate, is backing Barron
as the best hope for unboUling
needed social legislation.
In only one of the congressional
races are the Republicans given
any chance of unseating a Demo-
cratic incumbent. The GOP is
staking its hopes on the marginal
Fourth District, which includes the
cities of Huntington and Parkers-
burg. In recent years, the district
has swung back and forth — Repub-
lican in presidential years, Demo-
cratic in mid-term elections.
Although it may be close, the
consensus of Democratic, labor and
newspaper opinion is that Ken
Hechler, college professor, author
('The Bridge at Remagen") and
1956 research director of the
Stevenson campaign will win re-
election to a second term.
In the 1st Congressional District,
a peninsula of steel and coal cen-
ters sandwiched in between Penn-
sylvania and Ohio, emphasis on
service to constituents is expected
to pay off in votes for GOP Rep.
Arch A. Moore Jr. His Demo-
cratic opponent, Stephen D. Narick,
has stepped up his campaign pace
and is likely to benefit from a
heavy Kennedy vote in the district,
which includes Wheeling.
The senatorial campaign has
found both Randolph and his
Republican opponent, Gov. Cecil
H. Underwood, criss-crossing the
state, battling for votes in every
mountain crossroads.
Underwood, described as "a
Nixon-type Republican," has paral-
leled the Vice President's campaign
tactics by accusing Randolph of
''running down" the state by em-
phasizing its problems and de-
pressed condition instead of "build-
ing up West Virginia" by talking
about the state's "good points."
Randolph, combining a genial
handshaking campaign with a fight-
ing liberalism at campaign rallies,
hits hard at Pres. Eisenhower's
vetoes of depressed area legislation.
There's optimism at state AFL-
CIO headquarters where two years
of emphasis on registration has
built the estimated percentage of
union members eligible to vote
from less than ,50 percent in early
1958 to 70 percent by the time of
the 1958 elections, to 90 percent
today.
Despite official neutrality in the
national race by the Mine Workers,
local and district UMWA organ-
izers are reported working actively
for Kennedy.
farmers as well as city voters are
rated by others as unusually unpre-
dictable this year.
St. Louis Registration High
Registration was heavily, in-
creased after the August primary in
both St. Louis and suburban St.
Louis County, where the trek away
from the city has followed the pat-
tern familiar all over the country,
but the Kansas City and Jackson
County registration was less spec-
tacular.
The race for the Senate, between
Long and Hocker, pits an outstate
Democratic banker, who had a
good labor and liberal record in
the State Senate, against a Repub-
lican corporation lawyer.
Hocker ran a losing race for
governor four years ago and was
supported by the influential St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. He is con-
sidered to be progressive and con-
scientious on civil rights issues, but
in the Senate he would be expected
to gravitate to the conservative Re-
publican wing on economic issues.
Missouri is one of the midwest-
ern states with a constitutional pro-
vision barring a governor from suc-
ceeding himself — and one of the
results is that it has not had a truly
distinguished governor for perhaps
half a* century. The job is con-
sidered a deadend street except in
years where the governor's term-
end coincides with expiration of
the term of a senator of the oppo-
site party.
Blair, after Hennings' death,
tried for nomination for the Senate
but was turned down by the Dem-
ocratic State Committee in favor
of Long.
The Democratic nominee for
governor to succeed Blair is John
i M. Dalton, who has labor and
liberal backing against Republi-
can Edward G. Farmer Jr. Ob-
servers say that it would take a
spectacular Nixon straight-Re-
publican Party vote to pull Farm-
er, and no such sweep is antici-
pated.
A few oldtime Democratic lead-
ers are sitting on their hands in
regard to Kennedy. Former Gov.
Phil Donnelly, who served two
terms — separated by four years in
accordance with the state constitu-
tion — is heading a Citizens Com-
mittee for Kennedy in the south-
central area, but former Gov.
Lloyd Stark, of the northeastern
counties, has been cited as saying
that the Democratic National Con-
vention platform is too liberal for
him.
Missouri's most notable Demo-
crat, former Pres. Harry S. Truman,
challenged in 1940 for the Senate
by Stark, is campaigning here and
elsewhere for Kennedy.
New Glazer Record
Spins for Kennedy-
Labor's Committee for
Kennedy and Johnson has
issued a new record by Joe
Glazer, "Ballads for Ballots,"
dealing with the issues and
candidates in the 1960 cam-
paign.
The record contains nine
songs recorded by Glazer,
education director of the Rub-
ber Workers. It is available
from the committee at 1801
K Street N. W., Washington
6, D. C, at $4 a record, with
reduced rates for quantity
order.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
Page Five
Liberals Hope to Keep 4 Senate Seats
Undecided Voters Key
To Victory in Midwest
(Continued from Page 1)
to fall into a few broad classes.
They are first-time voters, a great
majority of whom are believed to
lean strongly to Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy in the presidential race with
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon, or
they are working people and older
citizens who did not previously
take the trouble to register and
vote.
Humphrey in Minnesota and
Douglas in Illinois are believed by
local observers to be almost certain
of re-election, but McNamara is
in a tighter battle with Republican
Rep. Alvin Bentley in Michigan.
In Missouri, where newcomer Ed-
ward V. Long (D) and Lon Hocker
(R) are fighting for Hennings' seat,
Long is given an edge.
The Democrats are believed
. certain to pick up the governor-
ship in Illinois, where Circuit
Court Judge Otto Kerner is the
Democratic nominee against
Gov. William G. Stratton (R),
the two-term incumbent. Local
observers say Stratton will be
heavily scratched in normally
Republican downstate areas for
reasons involving local issues and
patronage jealousies.
Democrats in Missouri say they
will hold the governorship- being
yielded by James T. Blair, who is
not eligible for re-election. Demo-
crat John M. Dalton is expected
to defeat Edward G. Farmer Jr.
Republicans have not held the gov-
ernor's mansion since 1946, and
this was also the last year the GOP
won a U.S. Senate seat from the
state.
In Minnesota, however, two-
term Democratic Gov. Orville Free-
man is in the fight of his career
with State Sen. Elmer L. Anderson,
and in Michigan the Democratic
Party — which had won six straight
times with Gov. G. Mennen Wil-
liams — must prove that it can move
to another personality.
The Democratic nominee, Lieut.
Gov. John B. Swainson, is chal-
lenged by a hard-running Republi-
can university speech professor,
Paul D. Bagwell, who gave Williams
a tough race two years ago.
The four states have a total of
63 seats in the House of Repre-
sentatives almost evenly divided be-
tween Republicans and Democrats.
In Illinois, a Democratic sweep
would give the party marginal seats
now held by Republicans in sub-
urban Cook County and the Peoria
area, but changes are not otherwise
expected.
In the Kennedy-Nixon contest
for the presidency, which domi-
nates the thinking of voters in all
four states as the Nov. 8 election
date, nears, there are surprisingly
large numbers of voters who still
say they have not made up their
minds and bluntly refuse to tell
poll-takers their preferences and
intentions.
This "silent vote" appears to
range from 8 percent to as high as
12 percent — and in all the polls,
the "decided" voters have tended
to divide very closely. Neither
Kennedy nor Nixon is credited
with more than a 4-point lead in
polls in any of the four states. And
this can be wiped out by a 2-point
swing back or by a surge of un-
decided voters toward either candi-
date.
Within the past two weeks,
however, local political writers
believe they have spotted a trend
among the previously undecided
voters toward Kennedy. The
"silent vote," they say, is shrink-
ing, and it is gravitating toward
the Democrats.
For what it is worth, local polit-
ical reporters in all four states are
more willing to make categorical
judgments about the probable elec-
tion results than the local politi-
cians of either party. The report-
ers in Minnesota, Michigan and
Missouri say their states will go to
Kennedy, with Illinois still rated
a toss-up.
Big Registration Key
To Michigan Contests
Detroit — Encouraged by a huge registration of voters in the
state's industrial counties, Democrats here are looking for a full-
ticket sweep that would give Sen. John F. Kennedy the state's 20
electoral college votes, re-elect Sen. Pat McNamara and elect John
B. Swainson as governor.
Three weeks before the election,^
they concede, substantial numbers
of voters were either still undecided
or at least refusing to commit them-
selves publicly to either presiden-
tial candidate. This tendency to
silence worries Republicans as well
as Democrats.
Sampling polls of voter senti-
ment, however, seemed to show that
Kennedy had gained steadily since
the campaign began, with some for-
mer Eisenhower voters shifting
back to the Democrats, and with
new voters tending to be heavily
Democratic.
Labor was active in a registra-
tion campaign that saw the listed
voters in Detroit surpass the 1
million figure for the first time
Kennedy Waging Uphill Struggle
To Win 27 Illinois Electoral Votes
Chicago — Illinois, with its rich total of 27 electoral college votes, is now a battleground so closely
contested by Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon that neither side is claiming it
as "in the bag."
Kennedy is admittedly waging an uphill struggle. A month ago most observers believed that Nixon
would carry the state by as much as 300,000 votes despite heavily increased registration in suburban
Cook County (Chicago) and other^
metropolitan and industrial areas.
The Democratic nominee, how-
ever, had remarkable crowds in an
early October swing through the
downstate cities, where the Demo-
cratic vote has climbed in recent
elections in traditionally Republican
territory. Kennedy and the Vice
President are expected to return for
major campaign drives in both
Cook County and downstate areas.
The biggest factor that may
help Kennedy is the strength of
the Democratic state ticket in
races involving both the Senate
and the governorship.
Republican Gov. William- G.
Stratton is having heavy going in
his try for a third consecutive term.
The Democrats nominated a Cir-
cuit Court judge, Otto Kerner, who
is conceded to be their best nomi-
nee since Adlai E. Stevenson won
in 1948.
Stratton has made enemies
among his own Republican county
leaders. Even in Rockford, a GOP
stronghold which reporters say
Nixon will carry, Stratton is said
to be no more than an even choice.
One Republican state leader flat-
ly predicts that the Democratic
Cook County organization, cheer-
fully asisted by dissident Republi-
cans, will turn out such a huge plu-
rality for Kerner — as much as 600,-
000 — "that it doesn't make any dif-
ference what the rest of the state
does."
Sen. Paul H. Douglas, liberal
Democrat seeking his third six-year
term, is strongly favored over Re-
publican Samuel W. Witwer. In
1954 the GOP tried unsuccessfully
to defeat Douglas with an ultra-
conservative, a lobbyist at the state
capitol for small businessmen's
trade associations. Witwer is rated
something of a GOP liberal, but
political reporters say Douglas is
likely to win by upwards of 250,000
votes.
There is a "silent vote" in Illinois
as in other Midwestern states — a
substantial portion of still-undecided
citizens or citizens who aren't talk-
ing to anybody if, indeed, they have
actually made up their minds.
The state's 15 incumbent Demo-
cratic House members, 11 from
Chicago and four from the down-
state industrial areas, are expected
to hold their seats.
The increased registration, par-
ticularly among younger voters and
workers in once-solidly Republican
suburban areas, may endanger Re-
publican Rep. William L. Springer
in the 22nd Congressional District
and GOP control of the 20th Dis-
trict, where Mrs. Edna Simpson
briefly succeeded her husband, the
late Sidney Simpson.
One longtime Republican power,
Rep. Leo Allen of the 16th District,
is voluntarily retiring. For years
Allen has been ranking Republican
member of the House Rules Com-
mittee and a major instrument
through which conservative south-
ern Democrats and Republicans op-
erated their dominant House coa-
lition to block liberal legislation.
Edwin M. Nelson, the Democratic
nominee, is given a fighting chance
of taking the seat from Republican
John B. Anderson.
Downstate Democratic leaders
say Kennedy has a "good chance"
to carry Illinois despite the earlier
edge conceded to Nixon. Political
reporters also say they think a Ken-
nedy "tide" is beginning to move
that will sharply reduce the normal
downstate GOP pluralities.
In this case, a heavy Cook Coun-
ty Kennedy margin probably would
swing the state.
and registration in Wayne
County, which includes Detroit,
exceed the 1.5 million mark.
Registration also is heavy in Oak-
land and Macomb Counties, where
population has jumped, and in old-
er industrial cities.
The voting pattern in Michigan
in the past 1 2 years has shown ^he
Republicans winning for the presi-
dency while the Democrats, led by
Gov. G. Mennen Williams, carried
most or all of the state executive
offices and eventually captured both
U.S. Senate seats.
Two years ago Williams' victory
margin was slightly reduced by Re-
publican Paul D. Bagwell, a Mich-
igan State University speech teach-
er who was nominated again and
is making a hard fight against
Swainson.
The Real Issue
A key Democratic leader says
the real issue is whether Swainson
can take over the liberally-oriented
Democratic organization built by
Williams and help it survive the
change of leadership.
McNamara, seeking re-election
for a second term to the Senate, is
faced by Rep. Alvin Bentley, a
wealthy maverick Republican con-
servative who is closely identified
by his stock ownership and other
connections with General Motors.
The state's newspapers are encour-
aging questions about McNamara's
health — the senator underwent an
operation last July — but the Demo-
cratic nominee is campaigning with
great vigor and gives every appear-
ance of complete recovery.
McNamara has had a strongly
liberal voting record, while Bent-
ley is listed in the AFL-CIO
COPE record 3s having voted
wrong 30 times, right only 4
times on a wide variety of issues
covering school aid, depressed
areas, interest rates, foreign
policy, labor relations and many
welfare programs.
The Detroit News poll for Oct.
9 showed Kennedy in the lead over
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon for
the first time during the campaign,
but by a narrow and reversible
margin of 3 percentage points. Ob-
servers generally agree that Ken-
nedy will carry the state if he
sweeps Wayne County by a plu-
rality of as much as 450,000 votes,
which the registration figures indi-
cate is posisble.
Humphrey's
The Pivot in
Minnesota
Minneapolis — Sen. Hubert H.
Humphrey, liberal Democrat, has
been the dominant political figure
in this state since 1948, and the key
to other election results this year
may be the success of the senator
in seeking his third term.
It is generally conceded by polit-
ical observers that Humphrey has
a pronounced edge over his Re-
publican challenger, P. Kenneth
Peterson, despite a recent Minne-
apolis Star poll — usually regarded
as reliable — that showed a dip in
his personal appeal.
Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Demo-
cratic presidential nominee, and
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon ap-
pear to be in a neck-and-neck race
for the state's 11 electoral college
votes, with Kennedy forces claim-
ing a slight advantage.
Democratic Gov. Orville Freeman
is conceded to be in the toughest
race of his career in seeking a third
term against State Sen. Elmer L.
Anderson, a Republican whose rec-
ord is more liberal than that of
most GOP office holders in the
Midwest.
"Kennedy probably will run
behind Humphrey, but if he wins
he is likely to pull Freeman in
with him," says one local ob-
server who is considered a sound
judge. "If Nixon wins, he can
win only narrowly; Kennedy has
a chance to win big."
Registration has been substan-
tially increased in the metropolitan
areas with a heavy response from
potential voters visible after Ken-
nedy visited the state for the Demo-
crats' famed "bean feed."
Batteries of union members
manned telephones and dozens of
others went on house-to-house calls
to urge registration at local pre-
cinct houses in Minneapolis. In
St. Paul, a similar campaign was
slowed when the exhaustion of ap-
propriated city funds prevented the
extensive use of neighborhood li-
braries and schools for registration
purposes. Registration was ex-
pected to reach 280,000 in Minne-
apolis and 182,000 in St. Paul by
the Oct. 18 closing date.
As in some other midwestern
states, the Republican candidates
are showing some reluctance in
Minnesota to talk too much about
their GOP party label.
Humphrey, who made a hard run
for the Democratic presidential
nomination, is distinguished as one
of the ablest and most articulate
members of the Senate and is con-
sidered certain to play a major part
in Congress if he is re-elected and
Kennedy goes to the White House.
Opponent Called Humdrum
It would be a startling upset if
he should be beaten by a Republi-
can candidate who is generally re-
garded as humdrum.
Freeman faces trouble, however,
partly because he is one of the
governors who was forced to fight
for new taxes to carry essential
state services. Nearly every con-
scientious and liberal governor in
the country has been compelled to
face the necessity for new revenues,
and state taxation has been heavily
increased, far more so than federal
taxation in the postwar years.
A 100,000 majority for Ken-
nedy and the Democrats in the
iron range and in St. Paul is con-
sidered as likely to be enough for
tliem to carry the state against
normally Republican majorities
elsewhere. One observer said
that Minneapolis seems likely to
split evenly, although it often has
been Republican, and points out
that the Farmers Union — a lib-
eral farm organization — has been
gaining strength in the state.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. OCTOBER, 22. 1960
Politics and Principles
REPUBLICAN vice presidental candidate Henry Cabot Lodge
has "promised/' "pledged," or "predicted," depending on which
speech you read, to name a Negro to the Cabinet if the GOP wins.
Vice Pres. Nixon, pitching for conservative votes in the South, has
displayed excellent footwork on the Lodge "commitment" while
continuing to play both sides of the street on the civil rights issue.
On a recent television show a reporter put the Negro Cabinet
member question to Sen. Kennedy and received this reply:
kt l think we ought to pick the best people we can, the best for
each of the tasks. If the best person is a Negro, if he is white,
if he is of Mexican descent or Irish descent, or whatever he may
be, I believe he should get the job/*
And on enforcing Negro voting rights, Kennedy said:
"In my judgment the executive has full power to provide the right
to vote. I don't think there is any legal limitation-now, any lack of
weapons by the attorney general or the President to compel the right
to vote, if a major effort is made.
"It is my judgment (that) a major effort should be made in
1961 to make sure that there is no subterfuge, that everyone has
the right to vote, that no tests are used to deprive people arti-
ficially, based on race, of the right to vote."
So much for the record on civil rights.
Labor Supports the I . X.
ON OCT. 24 the United Nations will celebrate its 15th birthday,
a celebration that calls for greater support for the world organ-
ization than ever before in view of the new Communist attack.
The Khrushchev performance at the UN General Assembly is
part of a conscious plan to weaken the UN and transform it into
a relatively helpless organization, impaired in its ability to bring
economic stability and social advancement without tyranny to the
new nations of the world.
For the free world labor movement the UN has been a bastion
for the maintenance of world peace, a vehicle which could help in
the creation of new countries capable of growth in freedom.
The fight for the UN is not merely the fight by the free nations;
it is labor's fight as well. The AFL-CIO and the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions will continue to support and stand with
the UN.
The Golden Eggs
HOW MUCH HAM AND EGGS can you eat for $1,000? That's
what some 150 businessmen paid at a $ 1 ,000-a-plate breakfast
in Columbus, Ohio, to hear Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) plug
the GOP national ticket.
Was it worth it? No one could tell. The Columbus papers were
not permitted to send reporters. GOP officials ducked newsmen's
questions. The Cleveland Press reported that Goldwater insisted no
reporters be present.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the $1,000 price tag and
reported that the breakfast was held "in a sumptuously-appointed
hall on the estate of real estate man John W. Galbreath. . . The
Journal also reported that some "150 businessmen paid $1,000
each" for the pleasure of the ham and eggs and Goldwater.
It seems to us the Republican Party missed a good bet. Just think
of the crowds it could have drawn to a public meeting where
thousand dollars bills were exchanged for a platter of ham 'n eggs.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dttbinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subcriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, October 22, 1960
No. 43
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising m
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in (he name of the AFL-CIO.
Clearing the Path!
S8S$"*» D«AWN F<?f5 THE
AFL CIO news
Strategy ot Marx, Lenin, Stalin:
UN Role Familiar
To Union Foes of Red Tactics
By Arnold Beiehman
UNITED NATIONS, N. Y.— A onetime labor
official turned diplomat from a western country
who had watched Nikita Khrushchev at work in
the UN for 25 days said a few days ago:
"I simply can't understand why anybody was
surprised at Khrushchev's tactics. They're right
out of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Anyone who has
watched Communists trying to take over a labor
organization was seeing the same tactics being
used except on a wider scale."
In the aftermath of the stormiest — and most
dangerous — period in the UN's 15-year history,
it has become apparent that the Soviet dictator
operated according to the strategy outlined
more than four decades ago by Nikolai Lenin,
Bolshevism's founding father, in his seizure of
power in democratic Russia. (It has been for-
gotten that the Czar was overthrown by demo-
cratic forces in Russia who in turn were over-
thrown by the Bolshevik minority.)
. Any experienced trade unionist who observed
Khrushchev pounding his desk, hammering his
shoe, bouncing up and down with points of "dis-
order" would have recognized these as the same
tactics which Communists regard as routine in
trying to take over a majority-supported union
administration.
KHRUSHCHEV'S FIRST TACTIC was aimed
at paralyzing the UN, its presiding officer and its
secretariat; in other words, its administrative ma-
chinery. Second, he wanted to make the UN,
particularly to its new member nations from
Africa, ridiculous by robbing it of its dignity.
Third, by pressing significant popular issues —
disarmament or colonialism — in such a fashion as
to make immediate solutions impossible, he could
divide pro-democratic countries.
For example, he has demanded immediate free-
dom for all colonies and trusteeship territories.
Even with the best will in the world, immediate
independence would be unattainable. That doesn't
matter to a practitioner of Leninism-Stalinism.
The end result — splitting democratic forces — is
what counts.
At best, Khrushchev was able to count on a
minority out of 99 votes of the UN member
nations. But since, he and his satellite delega-
tions were well scattered over the Assembly
floor, their applause and jeers sounded like a
lot more.
A major work in Communist literature is
Lenin's " 'Left-Wing' Communism: An Int'antii
Disorder" in which he attacks those Communist
who opposed participation in "bourgeois parlia
ments" and who looked upon "parliamentarism ai
politically obsolete."
"As long as you are unable to disperse th
bourgeois parliament," he wrote in 1920, "an<
every type of reactionary institution, you mus
work inside them, precisely because in them an
still workers who are stupefied by the priests ah<
by the desolateness of village life. . . ."
KHRUSHCHEV'S MOTION for the dismissal
of UN Sec-Gen. Dag Hammarskjold asked that
a triumvirate run the UN, each one obviously
armed with a veto. That is also part of Lenin's
recommendations for subverting democratic insti-
tutions and is to be found in "State and Revolu-
tion."
Smearing and vilifying democratically chosen
leaders of democratic institutions is another
Communist tactic. That was why Khrushchev
over and over again made the most unprov-
able charges against Hammarskjold and Fred-
erick H. Boland, General Assembly president,
on the assumption that constant reiteration of
such charges would make them stick.
To practitioners of Leninism-Stalinism, the
immediate issue isn't important. It can be any-
thing.
The weakness of Khrushchev's opposition,
a weakness apparent to any trade unionist who
has fought Communists in his own union, was
that western spokesmen tried, to argue with the
Communist leader on the merits of the issue or
its parliamentary meaning. That, of course,
played right into Khrushchev's hands. However,
when anybody attempted to expose the Khrush-
chev strategy, his double talk, Khrushchev
pounded the table and made enough points of
order to stop that kind of oratory.
A Filipino delegate to the UN got a taste of
Communist billingsgate when he began talking
about the brand of colonialism which has enslaved
East European countries. He was rewarded for
his effort by being called a "jerk" by Khrushchev
(this was a euphemism for what the Soviet dicta-
tor really called him in Russian) and a "lackey of
imperialism." The Filipino never got his speech
finished anymore than did the U.S. spokesman
who wanted to make the point about Soviet
colonialism.
AFL-CIO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22. 1960
Pag:e Seven
Morgan Says:
Nixon Uncovers a Great Moral
Issue— Truman's Purple Prose
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EOT.)
HP HIS I960 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
■i- has been groping for a moral issue. And now,
thanks, fittingly enough, to the vigilant high-
mindedness of Vice Pres. Nixon himself, it has
one: crotchety old gentlemen should not corrupt
the morals of little children with rash language.
During the third Nixon-
Kennedy debate the Vice
President throated his an-
guished cry of protest
against Harry S. Truman's
unleashing of purple prose
before tender ears. He
sounded the "tocsin of
righteousness and piety"
that must have echoed with
approval through every liv-
ing room in America.
The Vice President saw
a moral fruit in this human
cactus plant and reached out to pluck it. The man
from Independence may not have been guilty of
treason, as Republican indictments of former
campaigns darkly implied, but his terrible tongue
could be blamed for juvenile delinquency. Nixon
was protecting a principle as safe and sancitified
as "motherhood" and he went at the job like a
"knight in shining armor."
HIS CHARGE SPEAKS most eloquently in the
plunging lance of his own words: "We all have
tempers," he said with gracious insight, ". . . but
when a man is President of the United States or
a former President, he has an obligation not to
lose his temper in public. One thing I have noted
as I have traveled around the country are the
tremendous number of children who come out to
see the presidential candidates. I see mothers
holding their babies up so that they can see a man
who might be President. I know Senator Ken-
nedy sees them too. It makes you realize that
Word-Eaters Go Mad;
Morgan
whoever is President is going to be a man that all
the children of America will look up to or look
down to. . . ."
"And I can only hope," Nixon concluded,
that should I win this election, "that I could
approach Pres. Eisenhower in maintaining the
dignity of the office, in seeing to it that when-
ever any mother or father talks to his diild, he
can look at the man in the White House, and
whatever he may think of his policies, he will
say 'Well, there is a man who maintains the
kind of standards personally that I would want
my child to follow.' "
When the Vice President finished that comment
there were loud hoots of derision from the press
room in New York where some 200 not neces-
sarily unprofane reporters were covering the de-
bate from television monitors. But of course these
irreverent pockets of cynicism should be dis-
counted, written off.
They missed the genuine article in 1952 when
it emerged from another TV screen in a "cloth
coat" and with a "cocker spaniel" on leash. They
missed it when strictly for patriotic over partisan
purposes, compromises with McCarthyism were
tried and men's and women's very loyalty to
country were recklessly questioned.
They missed it, this "silver peal of truth," on
both sides of the political street through bruising
campaigns, in the obfuscation of issues, in the
rape of the record, in the twin-bladed appeal to
bigotry cutting both ways.
But now, not a moment too soon, came the
Vice President's clarion call to decency, a warn-
ing rising, obviously, from the heart, against the
"contamination of little children," an appeal to
make the White House a shrine of respectability
whose occupant would be a living monument to
the highest ideals of America.
The Democrats can call off their truth squads
if they have any, for the rest of the route now
and the Republicans, if their opponents respond
as they should to this inspirational message, will
have no further use fof theirs.
wry YOUR^
WASHINGTON
je Mi
Nixon, Lodge, Ike, Rocky,
Get Into the Correction Act
NIXON CORRECTS LODGE on Negro cab-
inet member; Eisenhower corrects Nixon on
Quemoy-Matsu; Rockefeller corrects Nixon on
American prestige; Klein corrects Klein on Jew-
ish vote.
These were the latest formations displayed by
the Republican team, according to Correction,
Please!
The campaign bulletin of the Democratic Na-
tional Committee devoted a recent edition to hap-
penings in the GOP backfield and on the opposi-
tion bench.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon's running mate, "pledged" to a Harlem
audience on Oct. 12 that a Negro would be
named to the cabinet under a Nixon administra-
tion, the bulletin noted. Within hours, it reported,
Nixon was saying from California that he couldn't
make such a pledge.
Lodge then told a Virginia audience the next
day that what he said in Harlem were "my own
feelings" and not official GOP policy.
Nixon and Lodge met in Connecticut three days
later. Lodge, in leaving the meeting, told report-
ers the issue had not been discussed. Nixon met
with reporters and said it had been. Lodge later
said he still thinks a Negro should be in the cab-
inet, the Democratic bulletin reported.
If Nixon won't stand up to Lodge, how can he
be expected to stand up to Khrushchev, asked
Correction, Please!.
On the Quemoy-Matsu controversy, Correction,
Please! said the White House announcement that
Pres. Eisenhower and Nixon were in agreement
was "the Republicans' face-saving way of an-
nouncing that Nixon was now backtracking" to
the position of Congress which Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy has always supported.
On American prestige, Correction, Please! re-
called that Nixon said during the second television
debate with Kennedy that American prestige was
never higher and that of the Soviets never lower.
The bulletin observed that Gov. Nelson Rocke-
feller (R-N. Y.) was queried about the Nixon
statement and commented: "I wouldn't make as
flat a statement as that . . . one cannot but face
the fact that Soviet achievements in outer space
have built up their prestige relative to ours. I
think the same is true in many of their military
accomplishments."
On the Jewish vote issue, Correction, Please!
pointed out that Herbert Klein, Nixon's press
secretary, on Oct. 10 called attention to an Israeli
newspaper editorial which attacked Kennedy's
foreign policies and praised Nixon. The GOP
press release quoted Klein as saying the editorial
pointed up the fact of 2 million Jewish votes in
American and that, for Israel's sake, "they should
be cast for Vice Pres. Nixon."
The Democratic bulletin said three American
Jewish leaders criticized "this shocking appeal
for votes." The next day, it noted, Klein de-
scribed the press release as the work of an
"over-enthusiastic campaign worker."
"The Art of Cussing in the White House" was
also discussed by the Democratic bulletin. The
bulletin said Nixon delivered a "carefully calcu-
lated" soap-opera lecture on the presidency and
cussing during the third TV debate when a ques-
tion was raised about former Pres. Truman's use
of language.
A COLUMN by James Reston of the New York
Times was reproduced to rebut Nixon. Reston
said Nixon "in an obvious bid for the 'mom'
vote," suggested that Eisenhower doesn't cuss and
he, if elected, wouldn't either.
It is hard to believe that Eisenhower, as an
old soldier and golfer, does not utilize appropriate
language, Reston wrote. Ike is a poor putter, he
wrote and asked:
"Is it conceivable that, when he misses a two-
footer, he says, 'Aw, shucks'?"
EN ROUTE WITH NIXON— The "last three weeks is the
period in which the election will be decided, the Vice President
told audiences in Florida and Delaware in mid-October after getting
some bad news from New York State via Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
Nixon also became sharp and rough in his speeches, and the
Eisenhower Administration began a kind of resume-squad political
operation in which foreign policy decisions were fed to Nixon in
advance for campaign purposes.
The Administration's decision to apply unilateral economic sanc-
tions against Fidel Castro's Cuba, with the hope that various Latin
American nations would join us, was foreshadowed in Nixon's
speech to the American Legion convention in Miami Beach. The
Vice President phrased it by saying that "our goal" must be "to
quarantine the Castro regime in the Americas."
It was not until afterward that reporters learned that the gamble
of applying economic sanctions against Castro has already been
decided upon by the Administration, and that Nixon — although
apparently not Sen. Kennedy — had been informed.
Eisenhower had demonstrated, in his statements on the Chinese
coastal islands of Quemoy and Matsu, that he was giving full aid
and comfort to his Vice President in the political campaign. The
Administration went beyond propriety in giving Nixon the power
to announce flamboyantly that he was in favor of doing against
Castro precisely what the Administration had already decided to do.
* * ^*
THE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN previously had turned into
something increasingly crude, confused and contradictory.
Henry Cabot Lodge, the GOP vice presidential nominee chosen
on the ground that allegedly he can "stand up to Khrushchev,"
had twice made statements seemingly to say there would be a Negro
in the Nixon cabinet, although Nixon himself carefully avoided any
statement on civil rights before a southern audience in Florida and
Lodge was compelled to repudiate himself in Virginia.
Nixon chose Wilmington, Del., the home of the Duponts, to issue
a statement promising revision of our tax system "to stimulate
job-creating investment." He added to this a promise of ''sound
improvements" in handling so-called national emergency strikes,
but he also denounced Kennedy for suggesting that plant seizure,
as well as injunctions against unions, might be one of the desirable
"sound improvements."
Along the way, in Wilmington, he tacitly confessed that we
have come close to a recession in recent months. He called such
recessions "times of hesitation in our economic growth" — and
he said no word whatever about the 5.7 percent unemployment
rate reported for September 1960 by Sec. James P. Mitchell's
Dept. of Labor.
* * *
THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN is acknowledged by almost all
observers to be extremely close, but they also have found evidence
that Kennedy has gained strength in the heavily-populated indus-
trial states where the Electoral College vote is concentrated.
Rockefeller told Nixon, just before the Vice President launched
his drive of the last three weeks, that Kennedy had made sub-
stantial gains in normally Republican areas in upstate New York.
He advised Nixon to come into the state more frequently than had
been planned and to concentrate in the upstate and suburban areas,
while Rockefeller himself tried to cut down the normal Democratic
plurality in New York City.
A high-ranking Nixon adviser has told reporters that the Vice
President at present seems "sure" of only one of the big six states
—New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and California—
that can furnish nearly 200 of the 269 Electoral College votes
needed for election. The presumption is that Nixon is well in-
formed and this his speeches in Florida and Delaware set the pat-
tern for an attempt to turn the tide.
SALUTING WORK on behalf of health and welfare plans for un-
ionists, American Podiatrists' Association presented plaque to Wil-
liam J. Tullar (right), mid-west director of Textile Workers Union
of America, at APA convention in Chicago. With Tullar are Dr.
Abe Rubin (left), APA executive secretary; and Dr. Marvin Shapiro
(center^ past president.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
How To Buy:
November a Month
Of Clothing Sales
By Sidney Margolius
NOVEMBER IS A MONTH of clothing sales, especially of
women's coats and dresses. Also, you'll find cut-price sales of
blankets and piece goods.
If you're considering home improvements — note that lumber
prices, and especially plywood, took another sharp drop recently and
are selling at their lowest prices in two years.
But a peculiar situation has developed in shoes which the public
ought to know about. Although
leather prices have tumbled 16 per-
cent this past year shoe prices actu-
ally are higher than a year ago.
This department particularly rec-
commends checking the November
clothing sales for possible Christ-
mas gifts. Clothing items are reason-
ably priced this year, and are taking
a new tumble due to heavy produc-
tion of fabrics. Too, you'll get better
buys at sales in advance of the gift
season rather than in December
when stores maintain their prices.
Also, spreading out your Christmas
shopping will avoid going into debt
with its resultant extra finance
charges. Borrowing generally shows a sharp increase in December,
the Credit Union National Association reports.
Here are tips on November buying opportunities:
COATS: One useful new development is foam-lined coats. These
coats are lined with a thin plastic foam bonded right to the fabric.
This provides warmth with light weight, and adds wrinkle resistance
to the outer fabric. The new lining is being used to make raincoats
warm enough to wear in cold weather, and overcoats as light in
weight as spring topcoats. Prices are reasonable. Women's coats
of wool and Orion-acrylic knit jersey bonded to plastic foam are
available for $30-$35.
DRESSES, SKIRTS: In other cold-weather clothing, synthetic
"acrylic" fibers (often sold under such brand names as Orion, Cres-
lan and Zefran), are being blended with wool to provide some of
the best features of each fiber. Just as the blend of 65 percent
Dacron polyester with 35 percent cotton has become a standard
good blend for shirts and blouses, blends of 60-80 percent acrylic
with 20-40 percent wool are becoming a standard blend for warm
clothing for women and children.
For example, dresses of 80 percent acrylic and 20 percent wool
are widely available under $15. Schoolgirls' skirts in such blends
are available for $4-$5.
Another important advance in clothing becoming more widely
available are garments treated with stain-repelling finishes. Among
leading finishes of this type are "Scotchgard" and "Syl-Mer." Such
finishes cause spills from food, coffee, w,ater, etc., to stay on the
surface of the fabric. Thus they can be blotted off and don't stain
or spot. Moderate-price dresses and skirts now are available with
such finishes.
CAR BATTERIES: One suddenly-cold day soon many motorists
will phone service stations and AAA depots pleading for someone
to rush up a new battery. Battery efficiency can drop to as little
as 40 percent of normal at zero. Battery failures are a major source
of emergency calls, auto clubs report.
You can find some pre-winter sales of batteries. But even
more important is shopping batteries by specifications rather than
brand names. Prices for batteries of much the same quality vary
extensively.
Batteries are relatively reasonable this fall, with good grades of
6-volt sizes available at around $15 with your old battery. But
before you buy a new battery, have your old one tested. It may
need only a re-charge. Preferably before winter have a voltmeter
test rather than merely a hydrometer test. The hydrometer meas-
ures the strength of the acid in the cells. The voltmeter measures
the remaining voltage.
Your mechanic may ask you if you want a fast or slow charge. A
slow charge is generally safer but more bother because the garage
will have to lend you another battery meanwhile. Ordinarily a fast
charge won't harm a battery but there sometimes is more risk of
overcharging if the mechanic is not careful. A slow charge is gen-
erally considered safer.
In buying a new battery, the length of guarantee is only a
rough measure of quality, not a truly reliable one. Two different
manufacturers may guarantee batteries of quite different quality
for the same 24 months. More reliable standards of comparison
are the ampere-hour rating of batteries according to Society of
Automotive Engineers tests, and the SAE cold-start rating.
Some manufacturers print this information right on the battery
In other cases, you may have to ask the deafcT for these facts. Don't
be confused by the minute-ampere rating sometimes also shown on
batteries. The amp-hour rating is the one you want to look for. This
indicates the battery's ability to deliver power continuously over 20
hours. For example, a 100-amp battery ordinarily can be expected
to deliver five amps continuously for 20 hours.
THE SAE COLD-START rating shows the number of minutes
the battery will deliver 300 amperes continuously at zero degrees.
Heavy-duty batteries with silver cobalt have reduced failure due
to overcharging, consumer co-ops report.
ICqpyright i&tiU by Sidney Martfoliuaj
Help lor the Displaced:
Techniques Used
To Train Displaced Workers
ANEW AUTOMATIC training machine which
utilizes automation techniques to retrain peo-
ple who themselves are being displaced by auto-
mation has made its bow.
The new equipment takes advantage of man's
conditioned reflexes to speed the learning of man-
ual skills. The U.S. Post Office Dept. has placed
an initial order for 55 machines at a cost of
$115,000 to retrain postal clerks whose jobs have
been affected by new automatic letter sorting
equipment.
The Digiflex trainer developed by USI Robo-
dyne, a division of U.S. Industries, Inc., simu-
lates the keyboards required to operate office
and industrial automation equipment. It makes
use of a simple human reaction: when a per-
son's finger is pushed up, reflex action will
automatically cause him to try to push his finger
down again. By reinforcing this instinctive re-
action, the machine drastically reduces the
length and difficulty of the learning period.
"In a period when automation is bringing
changes in work techniques to many millions of
Americans employed in offices, shops, factories
and government agencies Digiflex — itself an auto-
mation machine — will serve to ease the nation's
adjustment to the new problem created by the
steady trend to automation," said John I. Snyder,
Jr., president of U.S. Industries, Inc.
"Digiflex is automation turning the full cycle;
instead of eliminating jobs it is automation help-
ing people to keep their present jobs and to pre-
pare for the new job opportunities in the age of
automation."
THE FIRST COMMERCIAL application of
the machine was designed to meet the specific
training needs of the Post Office Dept., where op-
erators of new automated mail sorting equipment
must channel letters to appropriate sorting bins.
Geared to this type of teaching need, the equip-
ment consists of three principal elements: (1) an
AUTOMATIC TRAINING machine which re-
trains persons displaced by automation is shown
in operation. The machine utilizes automation
techniques and human muscular reflex action for
faster training of personnel.
instructor's station; (2) a student's station; (3) a
special strip-film projector and related magnetic
tape sound system.
When the projector flashes an address on a
screen, an electronic impulse notes the appro-
priate code number, simultaneously raises on
each of the 10-finger student's station key-
boards the proper keys and produces the code
number audibly.
When the keys are raised on each student key-
board, reflex action causes the fingers to depress
those keys.
In an amazingly short time, the proper finger
response is automatically and permanently estab-
lished for the student. Further time is saved be-
cause the machine by-passes the usual process of
memorizing. Lights on the student's station and
on a panel at the instructor's station immediately
indicate whether each student's finger action was
correct or incorrect.
The Reporter Picks Kennedy,
Says We Are Sunk' With
The following editorial "The Only Choice" by
Max Ascoli is excerpted from the Sept. 29, 1960,
issue of The Reporter Magazine.
DURING THE PRESIDENTIAL campaign
of 1952, a candidate, whose election had
already been taken for granted or ardently advo-
cated by an overwhelming number of citizens
even before the campaign began, let himself be
transformed into a protagonist of the most veno-
mous, divisive partisanship. Yet Dwight Eisen-
hower was supposed to be a living symbol of
national and interallied unity.
It was also thought that the return to power
of the Republican Party would be a tribute to
our two-party system. Unfortunately, it so hap-
pened that a number of Republican politicians
did not cherish the prospect of Eisenhower's in-
evitable triumph. They wanted him to fight for
his election as if he had been one of those who
had opposed his nomination. They succeeded.
Who will ever forget those weeks? That
man, who looked so real, let himself be turned
into an image. What the image conveyed was
controlled by others.
The trauma of 1952 turned out to be particu-
larly shattering, for many of the darkest fears
that haunted us at the time were borne out by
later events. The prestige of the nation did go
down, the ties binding the alliance did loosen,
and all the time the manipulators of slogans never
stopped telling the people that everything was
going fine, that the Communist enemies were in
retreat, and, indeed, that their rout was going to
start any moment.
Now we can see the results during this presi-
dential election that does not succeed in captur-
ing popular attention, while so many other com-
peting shows are on the road or in faraway lands.
Khrushchev has been on the road for months,
and now he has come over here to celebrate the
constant growth of his power. In faraway lands
ludicrous things are happening, all somehow ar-
ranged or exploited against us — and the list is
just as long as it is sickening.
THE TWO PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
are competing for a receivership. No wonder
there is no swooning this time on either side.
Between the two young men, however, the dif-
ference could not be more radical. One stands
for the continuation of what we have, with all
the accompanying delusions and concealment of
truth. In fact, Richard Nixon is campaigning on
the issue of the growing American primacy at all
levels, military as well as spiritual.
The other candidate is laboriously fighting
his way from one unsolved crucial problem to
another, or struggling against one mean prej-
udice after another.
Fortunately, Jack Kennedy has a cool, unemo-
tional mind. He has an overwhelming number
of advisers, ready to provide him with their wis-
dom on all possible subjects, from opposition to
tailfins to the necessity of aligning our country
with the Afro-Asian bloc, thus letting the Atlantic
Alliance down.
But Kennedy is the kind of ageless young man
who knows that only he himself can be the
builder of his personality. He knows how to
address a crowd and yet keep his distance.
As our readers may gather, we are declaring
ourselves for Kennedy. With all respect to him,
we wish our choice were harder to make. This
election, which finds large sections of the public
still listless, is among the most momentous our
nation has ever had.
The very listlessness of the public is one of the
evidences of how critical the situation is. The
perhaps unprecedented gravity of the choice the
people will make on Nov. 8 can be put in these
very simple terms: We have a chance with Ken-
nedy, we are sunk with Nixon.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
' Pag:* Nina
Cement Workers Meet:
Schnitzler Assails
Soviet UN Tactics
Dallas — The United Nations in recent weeks has been getting a
dose of the same kind of Communist tactics used years ago in the
American labor movement, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler told the 10th international convention of the Cement,
Lime & Gypsum Workers here.
"And this 'rule or ruin' policy^
attempt in the American labor
movement won't work in the UN
either," he commented.
"If the Communists employed
the same kind of shameful tactics
in an American labor union today
that they are exhibiting in the
United Nations, it wouldn't take
long to throw them out."
He compared the methods used
by the Communists a decade ago
in organized labor with the table
pounding at the UN.
"First they try to beat an elec-
tion. They tried this with UN Sec-
retary-General Dag Hammarskjold.
When this fails, they holler 'fire
him' and they continue this, hoping
he will resign."
"American labor knows all of
these things," he added. "The only
thing the Russians understand is
strength, and American labor has
led the fight for a strong national
defense."
"American labor is one of the
few groups in America which has
stood up consistently for a strong
national defense and, at the same
CofC Changes
Health Line
To Block Bill
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
has urged business firms to provide
paid health insurance coverage for
employes when they retire and to
include workers already retired —
two items which unions have been
seeking to negotiate for some years
in the face of vigorous manage-
ment opposition.
But the CofC makes it clear that
its "conversion" didn't result from
sudden concern over the well-being
of retired workers. The business
organization frankly admits that its
goal is to head off medical protec-
tion for the aged through the social
security system — which it calls, of
course, "socialized medicine."
"The issue is certain to arise at
the next session of Congress," the
Chamber advised members in its
weekly, newsletter, "Washington
Reports."
"Successful private plans will
provide the Chamber with the
evidence it needs to combat the
compulsory approach," the news-
letter declared.
Nelson Cruikshank, director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security, noted that "the companies
to which the Chamber of Com-
merce's letter is addressed are those
that have refused to create such
plans through union negotiation.
The Chamber now advises them to
do for political reasons what they
would not do for humanitarian
reasons."
, Pointing out that even the best
private plans extend benefits only
to retirees with records of long and
continuous service and exclude a
widow after the death of the re-
tiree, Cruikshank commented:
"At best the Chamber's proposal
would help only a few, and at much
higher cost to . the employers.
"As usual, the CofC would cover
a nationwide need with a postage
stamp."
UNION JOINS CLC
Ottawa, Ont. — The Saskatchewan
Wheat Pool Employes Association,
with headquarters in Saskatoon,
has been accepted into membership
in the Canadian Labor Congress,
CLC Pres. Claude Jodoin an-
nounced here.
time, has expressed a willingness to
bear a tax burden to bring the de-
fense program about."
Schnitzler urged the 275 conven-
tion delegates to vote for Senators
Kennedy and Johnson in Novem-
ber and to urge their wives to do
likewise.
He lashed out at the high interest
rates established by the present Ad-
ministration and its lack of action
on schools, medical aid for the
aged, and other vitally needed
social legislation.
He told leaders of 129 locals at-
tending the convention: "We must
weigh our vote and our political
activity against whats best for the
organization, the labor movement,
and the consumers of this country."
Vice Pres. Richard Nixon will
not serve the needs of the nation's
growing working force, he warned.
"When he visited Africa a few
years ago, he told native leaders
there that they should form labor
organizations and fight Commu-
nists, but he has not said the same
thing to American leaders. He's
trying to be two people in two
places."
The Cement Workers are ex-
pected to endorse the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket. They are also
revising their international con-
stitution and discussing a per
capita increase.
Earlier they heard from Sen.
Ralph Yarborough (D-Tex.) who is
touring his native state on behalf
of the Democratic candidates. Yar-
borough stressed the need for an
accelerated program of technical
education for American youth, so
that highly-skilled engineers now
doing field work in the missile pro-
gram can go back to their labora-
tories and drawing boards for more
important work while others per-
form the basic jobs of technicians.
MODEL OF SUBMARINE George Washington, which fires Polaris missile, was presented to AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany in special ceremonies at AFL-CIO headquarters in tribute to organized
labor, which built the ship. With Meany are Vice Admiral W. F. Raborn (left), director of special
projects in Bureau of Naval Weapons, and Vice Admiral George F. Beardsley (right), chief of naval
materiel.
Labor-Management Drive Urged
On 'Shocking' Accident Toll
Chicago — Labor and management, working together, can accomplish a great deal more in the field
of safety than by operating separately and independently, AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler
told the National Safety Congress here.
Every union contract should provide for joint labor-management committees "to see to it that health
and safety standards are enforced," Schnitzler declared.
He described the nation's acci-^"
dent toll as "shocking," and added:
"When it comes to accidents on the
job, we feel that each one should
be investigated as carefully as a
murder."
Schnitzler praised industry ex-
ecutives for "beginning to see the
light . . . that safety precautions
are far less expensive than in-
creased insurance rates and dam-
age to equipment."
"Real cooperation," he declared,
"does not involve any real or fanci-
ful invasions of the prerogatives of
management. It should not entail
any higher costs to management —
certainly no higher than the con-
tinued financial drain of the present
high accident toll."
The AFL-CIO spokesman told
the safety congress that education,
research and legislation are needed
in addition to direct union-manage-
ment cooperation. Declaring that
"the whole field of occupational
disease is still virtually unexplored,"
Schnitzler called for a "broad in-
quiry" by the government "in the
near future with a view to protect-
ing American wage-earners from
unnecessary hazards."
Pointing out that each year some
500 new chemical compounds are
Philadelphia Clothing Workers
Dedicate Center for Retirees
Philadelphia — Some come to play chess, others to play bocce — the ancient Italian game of bowls
on an outdoor court. Some of the 800 retired members of the Clothing Workers who use the Charles
Weinstein Geriatric Center here come to study at adult education classes. Still others play or
learn to play musical instruments, paint, try their skills at new or old hobbies, read in the library
or chat with congenial friends over a game of cards.
The $1.3 million project, adjoin-^
ing the Sidney Hillman Medical
Center in the heart of Philadelphia,
is a living memorial to the late
Charles Weinstein, for 30 years
manager of the ACWA's Philadel-
phia Joint Board and a vice presi-
dent of the international union.
Both union and management
funds built the center, and top
officials of both union and man-
agement joined in the dedication
ceremonies. Thomas DiLauro,
Weinstein's successor as man-
ager of the Joint Board, heads
the center's board of trustees.
The vice president is Joseph B.
Seitchek, president of the Phila-
delphia Clothing Manufacturers
Association.
Speakers at the formal dedication
ceremonies included ACWA Pres.
Jacob S. Potofsky and many of the
state's political leaders — Gov. Da-
vid L. Lawrence (D), Sen. Joseph
S. Clark (D), and Philadelphia
Mayor Richardson Dilworth (D).
A gust of honor was Mrs. Charles
Weinstein, a full-time volunteer
worker at the center named for her
husband.
nation's growing realization that
the problems of our senior citizens
cannot be solved without a bold,
concerted program."
"If the federal government had
matched its vision with that of
Pamphlet Issued
On Medical Care
Millions of the nation's older
people "lack the medical care they
need and are humanely entitled to
have/' a new pamphlet on the is-
sue of medical care released by
Chairman George M. Harrison of
Labor's Committee for Kennedy
and Johnson has pointed out.
Entitled "Will You Be Able to
'Pay As You Go?' " the publication
is the second in a series of free
pamphlets giving labor's viewpoint
on key issues in the current presi-
dential campaign. It stresses that
the. only "correct, proper, reason-
able" method of meeting the prob-
lem is to make medical care for the
aged part of the social security
system.
Copies of the pamphlet may be
To Lawrence, the union-manage- ^obtained from Labor's Committee
ment center "is a symbol of the for Kennedy and Johnson, 1801 K
American conscience — and of this) St., N. W., Washington, D. C.
labor and many industries, the
plight of the elder citizen would be
far less critical today," he declared.
Rapping the Eisenhower Admin-
istration's medical care program as
"far short of what America needs,"
Lawrence added:
"I do not believe a person who
is 65 years old should have to
stand on a street corner and rat-
tle a tin cup so that he may get
the medical care he must have to
survive."
Potofsky, praising the pioneer
work of Weinstein in building the
union in the Philadelphia area, de-
scribed the new center as "a sym-
bol of the debt we owe to the old-
timers in our union."
The retired ACWA members,
he declared, "have earned the
right to have this center. It is
the way that we in the labor
movement have always tried to
solve our problems, not as a
matter of charity but as a matter
of right."
Clark pledged to work at the
next session of Congress for "a
new charter for the older citizens
among us — the right to live a life
of dignity, usefulness and inde-
pendence."
introduced for industrial use,
Schnitzler commented:
"Before a new medicine is per-
mitted to go into general circulation,
exhaustive tests are made to guard
against any dangerous effects to the
public. Would it not also be worth-
while to subject new substances and
materials used in manufacturing to
similar tests before workers are
exposed to unnecessary dangers?"
Schnitzler told the safety meeting
that the recent announcement that
the Operating Engineers will pre-
sent an annual award to the em-
ployer in the trade with the best
safety record "shows that the trade
union movement does appreciate
the help and cooperation of em-
ployers in protecting the lives and
health of the workers of this coun-
try."
N. Y. Labor Spurs
Peak Registration
New York — Registration in New
York City has reached an all-time
high of 3,622,200 thanks largely to
an unprecedented drive by the Cen-
tral Labor Council and its affiliated
unions. The big campaign will
now be directed to getting out a
large vote on election day.
Dozens and dozens of phones
were installed in the CLC main
office and in its four borough offices
for calling and reminding union
members to register. The phones
were manned by volunteers who
kept going from 9 A. M. to 9 P. M.
for the six-day period.
It was labor's insistence which
led to the city government agreeing
to extend registration by two extra
days, thus spreading the crowds.
Even so, the city Board of Elections
was unprepared for the flood of
registrants and a large number left
after waiting in line for as long as
two hours.
The CLC rented a plane. It flew
around the city towing a large sign
which read "AFL-CIO Says: Vote
and Register." Since the law bars
towing planes over the city proper,
the airplane flew along the water-
front and marginal highways at an
altitude of 500 feet during traffic
peaks. In addition, floats with
bands and vaudevillians concen-
trated on Times Square with a
registration message.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, "WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
15-Member Commission Set:
BENEFIT PERFORMANCE of motion picture "Ben Hur" was
staged recently in New York by Local 153, Office Employes, to raise
money for Xavier Institute of Industrial Relations Development
Fund. Left to right are Ben Cohan, left, secretary-treasurer of Local
153; Rev. Philip Carey, S. J., director of Xavier Institute, and How-
ard Coughlin, president of OEIU.
TWUA Hits Mitchell
Claim of 'Prosperity'
New Brunswick, N. J. — The Textile Workers Union of America,
in a bitter letter to Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell challenging his
recent campaign statements in this state, said its members and the
industry "have suffered severe blows at the hands of the Eisenhower
Administration."
"A secretary of labor cannot go^
around the state glorying in high
purchasing power among workers,"
declared TWUA Vice-Pres. Sol
Stetin, "when the number of jobs
in the textile industry has shrunk
from 65,800 to 31,100 in the eight
years of the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration and when there are over
145,000 New Jersey workers totally
unemployed and an additional 100,-
000 New Jersey workers employed
only part-time."
Stetin made public his letter to
Mitchell in an address before a
meeting of 55 delegates of the Cen-
tral Jersey Joint Board.
Stetin said New Jersey has
lost 52.7 percent of its textile
jobs since February 1951 and
that, nationwide, textile jobs have
plummeted from 1,365,000 to
957,000, or nearly 30 percent.
He charged the Administration
with having "frustrated" every
remedial effort: twice vetoing aid
to depressed areas; opposing fed-
eral standards for jobless pay; op-
posing a $1.25 an hour minimum
wage and failing to control im-
ports from low-wage countries.
Quoting Mitchell's press com-
ment that the federal government
should help Paterson's textile in-
dustry with "grants and funds" as
"the ultimate solution to such prob-
lems," Stetin asked:
"Where were you and our Re-
publican Pres. Eisenhower and
Vice Pres. Richard Nixon, when
Botany Mills of Passaic (5,000
workers), Forstmann Woolen Co.
of Passaic and Garfield (4,500
workers), N. J. Worsted and
Gera Mills of Passaic and Gar-
field (2,000 workers), United
Piece Dye Works of Lodi (1,000
workers) and dozens of Paterson
silk weaving plants were being
liquidated and were throwing
thousands of older workers on
the scrap heap because of bad
business conditions, southern mi-
grations and cheaper imports
which were straining the textile
industry and its employers?"
Welsh Raps R-T-W in
Indiana Election Battle
Indianapolis — Indiana Democrats, campaigning on a platform
calling for repeal of the state's so-called "right-to- work" law, have
found powerful political ammunition in a survey which rips holes
in the argument that the compulsory open shop attracts new in-
dustry to a state.
Matthew E. Welsh, the Demo-^
cratic gubernatorial candidate, has
pointed to the study of 100 indus-
tries made by the Forbes Market-
ing Research firm of management
consultants which showed that
"right-to-work" could be credited
with bringing in only 60 new jobs
to the state. Since the law was
passed, the state actually lost more
jobs from companies leaving Indi-
ana or closing their plants than it
gained from all new industries.
With the Republican guberna-
torial candidate, Crawford Park-
er, strongly opposing repeal and
calling for outlawing of the
agency shop as well, the cam-
paign battle lines have been
sharply drawn.
State AFL-CIO Pres. Dallas
Sells, in an address to the Indiana
Building Trades convention, re-
ported that the number of strikes
has increased 38 percent since pas-
sage of the law in 1957.
Sells emphasized that Parker,
who is presently lieutenant gov-
ernor of the state, was instru-
mental in blocking repeal of the
law at the last session of the
legislature.
4k Right-to-work" was a major is-
sue in the 1958 elections in Indi-
ana, when the Democrats swept to
control of the lower house of the
legislature in this normally-Repub-
lican state and captured a majority
of the state senate seats at stake.
Strongly supporting efforts to
elect candidates pledged to repeal
of the "work" law is the Indiana
Council for Industrial Peace, whose
members include prominent min-
isters, businessmen, farmers and
professional people.
Rail Unions Hail Agreement on
Rules Study as Forward Step
Unions representing 250,000 operating employes of the nation's railroads have hailed an agree-
ment to refer the controversial work rules issue to a special presidential commission as "a major
step toward the reestablishment of sound labor relations in the railroad industry."
Terms of the agreement — which mark at least a truce in attempts of railroad management to
pin the "featherbedding" label on union-won job and safety rules — were hammered out at a final
13-hour session in the office of La-^ - ; r~. TT T ^
ployes, joined by the Railway La-
bor Executives' Association, had
bor Sec. James P. Mitchell.
The agreement, signed by the
presidents of the Railroad Train-
men, Firemen & Enginemen,
Switchmen, and the unaffiliated Lo-
comotive Engineers, and Conduc-
tors & Brakemen, provides for a
15-member commission to be ap-
pointed by the President.
Five members will be named
on nomination of the unions, five
will be nominated by railroad
management, and the remaining
five, including the chairman, will
be selected by the President.
The study is scheduled to get
under way in January with the
target date for its report set as
Dec. 1, 1961.
In addition to railroad manage-
ment's demands for drastic changes
in work rules — including abolition
of firemen on freight trains — the
commission will study a series of
counter-proposals made by the oper-
ating brotherhoods.
The unions have asked for a
night work pay differential, pay-
ment for time* spent away from
home, improved overtime rules,
protection of employes against loss
of jobs or pay in mergers, and sta-
bilization of employment.
Both the union and management
negotiators issued statements prais-
ing Mitchell for his role in bring-
ing about agreement on the study
commission.
Mitchell, in announcing the
agreement, emphasized that the
recommendations of the commis-
sion would carry "great weight"
but would not be binding on either
party. The railroads originally had
demanded that the proposals of the
study group be mandatory.
Meanwhile, in another develop-
ment in railroad labor-management
negotiations, rail unions won the
first round of a court battle to pre-
vent loss of jobs as a result of
merger of the Erie and Lackawanna
railroads.
The Maintenance of Way Em-
U.S. Project Gets
Negro Electrician
Employment of a qualified Ne-
gro journeyman electrician for work
on a government building contract
in Washington, D. C, has been
announced by the President's Com-
mittee on Government Contracts.
The committee, charged with
supervising enforcement of a clause
in all government contracts pro-
hibiting racial discrimination in em-
ployment, credited the local chap-
ter of the Urban League with
"overcoming the difficulty in find-
ing a qualified Negro journeyman
electrician in a city in which Ne-
groes had previously been excluded
from such work." The applicant
was referred to the job by Local 26
of the Intl. Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers.
John Roosevelt, speaking for the
President's Committe, expressed ap-
preciation for the cooperation of
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
IBEW Pres. Gordon Freeman, Lo-
cal 26 Business Mgr. Robert Mc-
Alws^, and the contractors in-
volved.
ILO ADMITS GABON
Geneva, Switzerland — The new
African nation of Gabon is the
86th member state of the Intl. La-
bor Organization, ILO Director-
General David A. Morse has re-
ported. Gabon became a United
Nations member Sept. 20.
filed suit in Detroit against the In-
terstate Commerce Commission
charging that the government agen-
cy had not provided the full pro-
tection required by law against loss
of jobs by workers as a result of
the merger.
Pending a full hearing by a three-
judge panel, U.S. District Judge
Thomas P. Thornton ordered the
two railroads not to fire, lay off or
transfer any employe.
Judge Thornton said he was con-
vinced, on the basis of testimony by
BMWE Pres. Harold C. Crotty,
that the "bumping" of workers and
other job changes likely to result
from the merger could not be re-
versed without hardship and confu-
sion if the union won the law suit.
2 Billion Dip in Output
Marks Sag in Economy
(Continued from Page 1)
Warning that "the winter months
may bring sharply rising unemploy-
ment and economic distress to
scores of thousands of families,"
Meany declared "the time for
watching and waiting is long since
past."
Meany cited the drop in housing
starts, a rise of 400,000 in the
number of persons drawing unem-
ployment compensation, a downturn
in consumer spending and a leveling
off of business outlays for new
plants and machines as "ominous"
recession indicators.
The Eisenhower Administration,
notably Treasury Sec. Robert B.
Anderson, and conservative eco-
nomists view recent economic de-
velopments as a healthy "readjust-
ment" preparatory to further
growth.
Just before the overall report was
made public, the Commerce Dept.
reported that private housing starts
dropped 17 percent in September.
Earlier the Federal Reserve
Board had reported that the indus-
trial production index dropped last
month below the level at which it
had been holding most of the year.
The AFL-CIO called the housing
decline "disastrous."
"Fewer houses were started last
month than in any September in 12
years. As a matter of fact, housing
starts were as low as for any month
since 1949," declared AFL-CIO
Vice Pres. Harry C. Bates, chair-
men of the AFL-CIO Housing Com-
mittee.
"The tragic cutback in housing
activity,' 9 he said, "has occured
at the very time when expanded
housing construction should be
bolstering our sagging economy,
now headed toward another re-
cession."
Bates lashed the "Eisenhower-
Nixon Administration" for refusing
to reduce the record-high interest
rate for government-insured houses
and for talking about "satisfied"
demand when 40 million families
live in "slum tenements and rural
shacks."
The Commerce Dept. said hous-
ing starts, after a 10 percent pickup
between July and August, dropped
17 percent to an annual rate of
1,077,000 units in September. Jhis
was 29 percent worse than in Sep-
tember a year ago.
Federal Housing Administrator
Norman P. Mason blamed the Sep-
tember drop on Democratic "pie-
in-the-sky promises" which have
"wrongly persuaded" home buyers
"to hold off on buying."
Mason cited Democratic plat-
form proposals to reduce interest
rates and make government loans
"where necessary."
But Roger Tubby, Democratic
National Committee news director,
labeled Mason's statement as 'far-
fetched."
"I suppose," he added sarcastic-
ally, "the Republicans are going to
use the same argument to blame
us for the high rate of bankrupt-
cies and the 50 percent of steel
capacity."
Non-Union Restaurants
Ask Cash, Votes for Nixon
"Restaurant Voters for Nixon," in a fund-raising appeal
to restaurant owners, told them "this may well be the most
important political action of your lifetime" and explained why:
"This election is very important to you because of the vari-
ous proposals for a federal minimum wage law for restaurants,
ever-increasing social security taxes, unrealistic unemployment
compensation benefits, government-inspired inflation and more
government controls, all of which would make serious inroads
upon the free private enterprise system under which the res-
taurant business in America has grown and prospered."
The Hotel and Restaurant Workers identified almost all of
the individuals listed on the RVN letterhead as operators of
unorganized restaurants. Most of them were described as
anti-union.
The RVN sponsors were identified also as past and present
officers of the National Restaurant Association, a leading
power in the lobbying campaign against the Kennedy-Roose-
velt minimum wage bill. Thomas W. Power* who signed the
appeal as executive director of RVN, is NRA's Washington
representative.
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon, who voted in 1949 to knock
out one million workers from wage-hour protection, described
the 1960 minimum wage bill as "too extreme" in his first tele-
vision debate with Sea. John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy replied that he didn't think $1.25 an hour for a
worker in a store or company doing $1 million a year in busi-
ness was extreme at all.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
Page Eleven
Nixon Goes Ail-Out :
Slashes at Kennedy
On Foreign Policy
(Continued from Page 1)
we are the champions of the free
world."
"We can never stand pat," he
hold the American Legion conven-
tion in Miami Beach just after
Kennedy had addressed the same
audience.
"We face a ruthless enemy, and
there is no doubt that the Amer-
ican people will support the steps
necessary to increase our strength"'
in areas where the Soviet Union
has been "making strides," he de
clared.
If he should be elected Presi-
dent, he said, "there will never
be a dollar sign" on the level of
military strength judged neces-
sary for national security.
Nevertheless, he said, "we are
now the strongest nation in the
world and Mr. Khrushchev knows
it."
"Mr. Khrushchev is not an easy
man" to deal with, Nixon said
"If you make concessions without
a return, you make him harder to
deal with."
The Vice President announced
to the Legion that he believed steps
must be taken to "quarantine" the
Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, which
he described as a Soviet-dominated
"cancer" that could not be allowed
further penetration into the West-
ern hemisphere.
The Dept. of Commerce fol-
lowed the next day with an an-
nouncement of a United States em-
bargo on exports to Cuba except
for food and medicines.
Vows UN Veto of Red China
Nixon also intimated that if he
were elected President the United
States would exercise a United Na-
tions Security Council veto to pre-
vent admission of Communist
China to the UN.
He accused his presidential rival
of finding "everything wrong with
America." Kennedy, he said,
should "stop talking and start read-
ing" and "then he will know what
Pres. Eisenhower is doing," instead
of complaining about what Khrush-
chev is doing.
Eisenhower, he said in references
back to the campaign of 1952,
hasn't "lost 600 million people to
communism." The Administration
has "stopped one war" in Korea
"and stayed out of others."
The President, he told his audi-
ences, "didn't apologize to Khrush-
chev" in regard to the U-2 aircraft
incident over Russia and "hasn't
been making a fool of himself at
the United Nations" as Khrush-
chev did.
The Administration, he de-
clared, had worked through the
UN to preserve freedom in the
Congo Republic and has kept
American prestige high.
The real issue in the election, he
declared repeatedly, was "which
team" of candidates the people con
sidered best qualified to lead the
country.
Henry Cabot Lodge, the Repub
lican vice presidential candidate,
and he himself, Nixon said, "have
sat in Cabinet meetings and meet-
ings of the National Security Coun-
cil. We have participated in the
decisions "of the past eight years
and share the blame or praise."
"We both know Mr. Khrushchev
and the Communists; we know
how he reacts and we will not be
fooled."
Lauds Administration
"By every test," he declared, this
country under the Eisenhower Ad
ministration "has built more
schools, built more houses" and
progressed and grown more rapidly
than in the Truman years.
The Kennedy program means
more taxes, he said, "and it's not
Jack's money — it's yours" that the
Democrats plan to spend.
His idea, Nixon said, was not
to go to the federal government
to solve every problem but "to
start with the people and work
up" from there.
Nixon turned down Kennedy's
proposal of a fifth television debate
in November, just before the elec-
tion. The stress of demands for
campaign time, the Vice President's
spokesmen said, made a rearrange-
ment for another debate imprac-
tical.
The fourth debate on Oct. 21
was scheduled to be the last.
AFL-CIO Raps Limit
On Aged Meet Funds
The AFL-CIO has sharply protested that the White House Con-
ference on Aging, set for January, will be confined to wealthier
older citizens unless the Eisenhower Administration enables people
with low incomes to attend also by freeing funds made available
by Congress.
Nelson H. Cruikshank, director^
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security, informed Health, Educa-
tion and Welfare Sec. Arthur S.
Flemming that retired union mem-
bers appointed as delegates by their
state governors have been inquiring
about reimbursement of expenses.
Cruikshank pointed out that a
retired union member from north-
ern New Jersey has been offered
$25 to cover his travel, hotel and
eating expenses during the four or
five-day conference. This man's
only income is his social security
benefit and a $30 a month pension,
Cruikshank noted.
"Much has been said about the
intention of making the January
White House conference a 'grass
roots' conference," Cruikshank
said.
"If delegates, however, are ex-
pected to pay their own expenses
not only from New Jersey, but
from such far-distant points as
the west coast, the attendance at
the conference will automatically
be limited to those who are either
wealthy enough to cover their
own expenses or who come from
organizations or industries who
will pay such expenses.
"Consequently, it seems very
clear to us that the entire nature
of the conference may be deter-
mined by whatever provision is
made or not made for the payment
of delegates' travel and living ex-
penses."
Cruikshank asked for Flemming's
views on arrangements which can
be made "to assure that the confer-
ence can be attended by poor peo-
ple as well as by the well-to-do."
Cruikshank informed Flemming
that letters from state delegates
show that some have been notified
there will be no reimbursement for
expenses while others indicate that
only a small part of their expenses
can be recovered. The case of the
$25 offer to the New Jersey dele-
gate was given as one example.
The law which set up the White
House conference authorized pay-
ments of $5,000 to $15,000 to each
participating state for various activ-
ities involving the aging, including
payment of expenses to enable
delegates to attend the Washington
conference, Cruikshank added.
WHISTLE-STOPPING through the South, Sen Lyndon B. Johnson, Democratic vice presidential nom-
inee, greets huge crowd which jammed Atlanta, Ga., railroad station to hear candidate appeal for
support for Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
Labor Charges Nixon Distorts GOP
'Sabotage' of Distressed Area Aid
The AFL-CIO has charged Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon with misrepresenting the record on aid to
distressed areas and accused the Eisenhower Administration of having played "a shoddy game of lip
service and sabotage."
The charges were leveled in an article titled "How Distressed Area Aid was Sabotaged," appearing
in the October issue of Economic Trends and Outlook, publication of the AFL-CIO Economic Policy
Committee.
The AFL-CIO said both parties
in 1956 pledged aid for "those
stricken communities in which
chronic unemployment and under
employment exist in good times as
well as bad."
Candidate Eisenhower in 1952
told the jobless of Lawrence,
Mass., that "you will have a
friendly government interested in
these things," the publication re-
called. Eight years later, it added,
"there still is no federal aid and
the cancer of area distress con-
tinues to fester and spread."
This domestic problem is a ma
jor campaign issue, the publication
pointed out.
Nixon Charge Refuted
The AFL-CIO observed that
Nixon, in recent speeches in Penn-
sylvania and West Virginia and in
his television debate with Sen. John
F. Kennedy, has charged that the
Democrats defeated Pres. Eisen
hower's effort to pass "a law that
made sense" and one which prom
ised greater benefits.
"Since Mr. Nixon is now try-
ing to obscure and rewrite the
record of the last eight years, it
is a proper time to take a good
look at the facts," the AFL-CIO
declared.
The publication summed up the
story this way: "Although Demo-
cratic Congresses have twice en-
acted comprehensive measures to
relieve area blight, in 1958 and
again in 1960, they have twice been
vetoed by the President.
"In fact, every effort to achieve
a reasonable compromise has
been torpedoed by the Adminis-
tration."
The publication took issue with
Nixon by quoting him and then
citing the record.
"The idea of special legislation
to help distressed areas was origi-
nated by the Republican Adminis-
tration, not by Congress," Nixon
was quoted as saying Sept. 27 in
Charleston, W. Va.
Ignored by GOP
On the contrary, said the publica-
tion, the problem was ignored by
the Republicans when they con-
trolled both Congress and the White
House in 1953 and 1954. The
Administration viewed the problem
as a local self-help affair, it added.
It was the Joint Economic
Committee of the Democratic-
controlled Congress in 1955
which challenged the Administra-
tion, demanded federal recogni-
tion, launched an exhaustive
study and spelled out a compre-
hensive program, the AFL-CIO
said.
Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.),
chairman of the joint committee,
introduced federal aid proposals in
mid- 1955. It was this background
which inspired Eisenhower to say
in his 1956 Economic Report that
"the fate of distressed communities
is a matter of national as well as
local concern/* the AFL-CIO con-
tended.
The publication quoted Nixon as
saying during the second television
debate that the Eisenhower bill
would have given "more aid for
those areas that really need it, areas
like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and
areas of West Virginia, than the
one that Sen. Kennedy was sup-
porting."
In reply, the AFL-CIO de-
clared that "Mr. Nixon's projec-
tions are fictitious either because
of deliberate intent or because
of gross ignorance about the bills
he is comparing."
The AFL-CIO noted that no bill
proposed a specific sum for any
area and it wondered "by what
magic" the $78 million Eisenhower
program would provide more aid
than the vetoed $251 million pro-
gram asked by the Democrats or
the $390 million initially sought.
Jobless Rate Doubled
In 8 Years of GOP
Milwaukee, Wis. — The percentage of workers unemployed in the
U.S. has nearly doubled in the eight years of the Eisenhower-Nixon
Administration, AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. Andrew J. Biemiller has
told labor audiences throughout this state.
Speaking at meetings of central bodies in Milwaukee, Sheboygan
and Beloit, Biemiller called for§>
election of the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket, vigorously supported by the
AFL-CIO General Board, declar-
ing that only a Democratic victory
can save America from "its worst
economic depression."
When Pres. Eisenhower took
office in 1953, the AFL-CIO
spokesman declared, 3 percent of
the nation's working force was un-
employed. "This was accepted as
a normal condition," he said. "But
in the last eight years unemploy-
ment has risen to 6 percent — and
the Eisenhower Administration now
claims this is normal."
Biemiller said the labor force
can expect an increase of 1.3
million persons in each of the
next years, adding that "to offset
this, 25,000 new jobs a week
must be created just to take care
of the new work force."
He said the only way to solve
the employment problem is to give
America leadership through the
election of Kennedy and a strength-
ening of the liberal forces in Con-
gress.
He pointed out that the Republi-
can presidential candidate, Vice
Pres. Nixon, "is busy trying to tell
you that 'you never had it so
good.' " He declared thai "'the sad
part of the story is that our eco-
nomic system has been standing
still" in the Eisenhower-Nixon
years.
Biemiller declared that not only
has Eisenhower vetoed such meas-
ures as aid to depressed areas and
housing, but that the threat of his
vetoes has caused Congress to
water down or kill such measures
as medical care for the aged and
modernization of the minimum
wage.
Shoe Workers' Board
Endorses Kennedy
The executive committee and
general executive board of the
United Shoe Workers have endorsed
Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyn-
don B. Johnson for President and
Vice President, and pledged to work
energetically for their election.
'The election of Kennedy and
Johnson is necessary and vital in
order to assure America's future
welfare, prosperity and security,"
said Sec.-Treas. Angelo C. Georgian
in announcing the endorsement,
which was made known to the 60,-
000 members in a statement printed
in the union's monthly newspaper.
Page? Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1960
Kennedy Steps Up Attack on Nixon
Energetic Campaign
Draws Record Crowds
(Continued from Page 1)
where, any day, any hour," Ken-
nedy declared:
*T think it would be advanta-
geous for the people to hear us
discuss how we shall win the peace
and maintain our freedom, how
we shall build the economy of this
country, how we shall provide full
employment for our people. . . .
•Worth an Hour'
'That certainly is worth an hour
of Mr. Nixon's time in the last 18
days of the campaign."
Kennedy's slashing attack on the
Administration's defense posture
came in a major address to the
American Legion convention a
scant half-hour before Nixon ad-
dressed the same audience of 12,000
legionnaires and guests. The Dem-
ocratic nominee said he would as-
sign top priority in January 1961
to building "the military power nec-
cessary to keep our commitments
and stop the next war before it
starts," and hammered out this four-
point plan of action:
• "Immediate steps to protect
our present nuclear striking force
from surprise attack" by providing
the Strategic Air Command with
"the capability of maintaining a
continuous airborne alert."
• Stepped-up "crash programs"
on the Polaris submarines and Min-
ute Man missiles "which will even-
tually close the missile gap."
• Modernization of the nation's
conventional forces as "our only
protection against limited war." As
long as the nation has the airlift
capacity to rush only one division
to a trouble spot anywhere on the
globe, Kennedy said, "we are in
trouble."
• Reorganization of the Defense
Dept. to eliminate the "duplica-
tion of function" now existing in
the Pentagon.
In Ohio, where he invaded
normally Republican strongholds,
Kennedy drew good crowds —
and sustained applause — when he
criticized the failure of Eisen-
hower's "great crusade to end
corruption (and) to obtain govern-
ment 'as clean as a hound's
tooth' " — a phrase Eisenhower
first used in 1952 when Nixon
was under fire for a secret cam-
paign fund established by Cali-
fornia business interests.
At Columbus, a crowd estimated
at more than 100,000 jammed the
streets and stalled the Kennedy
motorcade, and later more than
150,000 stood on the State House
lawn and cheered Kennedy's blis-
tering attack on his GOP opponent
for telling the American people
"you never had it so good" at a
time when the national economy
gave signs of a new recession in
1961.
Touring Florida — only 90 miles
from Cuba, where the Communists
have gained their first foothold in
the western hemisphere — Kennedy
ticked off a long list of Admin-
istration faiKires in Latin America.
To several thousand people in
Tampa, and later in Jacksonville
to a crowd twice the size of one
Nixon had drawn just a few hours
earlier, Kennedy called for an end
to "open and warm backing of
dictators" in the continent to the
South.
The tumultuous reception ac-
corded Kennedy in New York City
— where an estimated million New
Yorkers turned out for a ticker-tape
parade from the Battery up Fifth
Avenue to Rockefeller Center — at
times took on the aspects of a tri-
umphal victory tour. Repeatedly
crowds broke through police lines
to press against Kennedy's car and
to shake the candidate's hand, while
the motorcade inched its way
through the dense throngs, the con-
fetti and ticker tape.
Later in the day, in a soaking
rainstorm, between 30,000 and 40,-
000 people jammed the square in
nearby Yonkers, shouting happily,
cheering and applauding as Ken-
nedy balanced precariously atop
the railing of the speaker's stand.
At virtually every stop, Ken-
nedy hammered away at such
domestic issues as mounting un-
employment, substandard hous-
ing, shortages of schools, inade-
quate minimum wages and un-
employment compensation bene-
fits, and the fact that millions of
Americans live on surplus food
packages that amount to only 5
cents per person per day.
At the same time, the Democratic
nominee continued to hang the Re-
publican tag around Nixon's neck.
"This country stood still when
McKinley was President, and when
Harding was President and when
Coolidge was President," he de-
clared, while it "moved ahead" un-
der the presidencies of Democrats
Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D.
Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
"DAYTON WELCOMES KENNEDY," the sign on the courthouse
read and the citizens of this Ohio industrial city demonstrated it with
cheers and placards*
Conference Rips GOP
Record on Civil Rights
(Continued from Page 1)
ing criticism directed at Vice
Pres. Richard M. Nixon for his
record on civil rights issues.
The most vigorous among a score
of attacks came from Democratic
vice presidential nominee Sen. Lyn-
don B. Johnson, and Charles
Abrams, former chairman of the
New York State Commission
Against Discrimination. They
charged that "default through inac-
tion" and "wanton neglect" of
existing crises have stalled exten-
sion of civil rights to all Americans.
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-
Minn.) was conference chairman.
In a message read to the parley,
Johnson said the whole world is
watching this nation "to learn
whether we are responsible enough
to assume the role of leadership in
which destiny has cast us."
"Millions everywhere are weigh-
ing our actions to determine
whether our high professions of
3-Point Economic-Defense Program
Proposed to Legion by Harrison
Miami Beach, Fla. — The nation's economic health and military power "go hand in hand," the AFL-
CIO told delegates to the American Legion's national convention here.
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. George M. Harrison told the Legion convention that "it is not political prop-
aganda . . . but inescapable truth . . . that America's position in world affairs has slipped. In the
struggle between democracy and Communist despotism, the balance of power has been shifting in
favor of Moscow as against the free<^
world."
Harrison substituted for AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany, ailing
with a cold, in continuing the tradi-
tional exchange of convention
speakers between the nation's larg-
est veterans' organization and or-
ganized labor.
The AFL-CIO spokesman, em-
phasizing that "the only thing the
Communist leaders respect is su-
perior strength," proposed the fol-
lowing three-point program:
• A crash program in missiles
and rockets "where we have fallen
behind."
• Full production and full em-
ployment to "support the kind of
defense program we need. Our
economy must grow and keep on
growing at a faster pace."
• "More effective cooperation
with all other nations that prize
human freedom and dignity and are
willing to work and fight for the
preservation of peace and liberty."
Harrison warned the American
Legion delegates that "the most im-
mediate danger we face is another
industrial recession that would
weaken the entire fabric of our na-
tion and sap our strength." He
added:
"Khrushchev and his puppets
can sneer at us when millions of
Americans are roaming the streets
unemployed through no fault of
their own, when production in a
basic industry like steel is down
to 50 percent, when we have a
desperate shortage of schools, a
lack of well-qualified teachers
and, above all, the casual indif-
ference of the government itself
toward these danger signs."
Declaring that "deeds speak
louder than words," Harrison urged
an expanded program of economic,
military and technical assistance
"to defeat Communist efforts to
win over vast areas in Asia, Africa
and even Latin America by decep-
tion."
He warned that racial and re-
ligious discrimination weakens and
divides the United States at a time
when unity is needed.
The "only certain way we know N
of preventing war is to keep our
guard up and to make certain that
we cannot be destroyed by surprise
attack," Harrison declared, adding:
"That we are determined to do. In
supporting the strongest possible
defense program, the workers of
America and the veterans of this
nation are making a vital contribu-
tion to peace and security."
democracy, justice and liberty are
merely pious phrases or whether
they are an inspiring reality," John-
son declared.
To succumb to hatred, bigotry
and intolerance "would be to do
Nikita Khrushchev's work," he
added.
Abrams charged the Eisenhower
Administration with failure to deal
with the housing problem which,
he said "has not only intensified
overcrowding, threatened the struc-
ture of American family life and
created a pattern of color segre-
gation in many of our cities, but
has brought the threat of lasting
stagnation and decay in central
city areas, segregation in our
schools, juvenile delinquency and
other social disruptions."
"It takes men of heart to
change the hearts of men," he
said. "A President who admits he
has no faith in statutory law to
eliminate prejudice cannot be-
lieve in a Fair Employment
Practices Law, which the Re-
publican platform advocates."
Abrams flayed Nixon's record as
evidenced by his Committee on
Government Contracts.
"This has done nothing to elimi-
nate discrimination in housing and
... is an eloquent index of the
administration's record in civil
rights," he said.
A practical program for stream-
lining Senate rules was set forth by
Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.). He
held that archaic and undemocratic
congressional rules must be changed
before any meaningful action on
civil rights and other vital issues
takes place.
Kennedy, visiting the conference
during a whirlwind schedule that
called for eight appearances in one
day, held that the U.S. Constitution
"rejects the notion that the rights
of man means the rights of some
men only."
Hyman H. Bookbinder, AFL-
CIO legislative representative, de-
clared that the principal job in the
remaining weeks of the election
campaign is to convince voters that
action on winning democratic pro-
cedures in Congress is "as much a
test of civil rights as substantive
legislation."
Urban League
Votes Award
To Curran
New York — The National Urban
League will present its 1960 Equal
Opportunity Day award to Joseph
Curran, Maritime Union president,
"for outstanding contributions to-
ward the Urban League goal of
equal opportunity."
Curran will receive the award at
a dinner Nov. 15 at the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel here. The event will
highlight nationwide observance of
Equal Opportunity Day, slated Nov.
19.
The special day is set aside an-
nually by the Urban League to
focus national attention on the
American ideal of equality of op-
portunity for all regardless of race,
color or creed.
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, urging trade union par-
ticipation, has stated: "This ob-
servance is of great significance
to organized labor for the AFL-
CIO is strongly dedicated to the
principle and practice of equal
rights for all Americans."
The Urban League is an organ-
ization devoted to improving op-
portunities for Negroes and bet-
tering race relations in America. It
is celebrating its 50th anniversary
this year.
RCIA Gets New Pact
In 300 Shoe Stores
Los Angeles — The Retail Clerks
have negotiated improvements in
salaries, commissions and fringe
benefits for employes of three shoe
store chains which operate 300
stores in southern California.
09-22-01
CWA Poll Gives
Kennedy 58.7%
The nation's voters will put
the Kennedy-Johnson ticket
in office in November with
the expectation that the Dem-
ocrats can do a better job of
solving the problems of world
peace, national defense and
unemployment, according to
a new CWA poll.
Through a carefully weight-
ed sampling technique that
has proved accurate in the
past, the union posed a num-
ber of questions to a broad
cross section of its members
in key voting centers across
the nation. The same tech-
nique was used in 1948 when
CWA predicted the election
of President Harry S. Tru-
man.
Asked to name a personal
preference the CWA members
went 58.7 percent for Ken-
nedy, 30 percent for Nixon
and 11.3 percent undecided.
" World peace" topped 13
issues rated by the members
on the basis of political im-
portance in the upcoming
elections. It was pegged at
19.2 percent. Other issues
high on the priority list were
national defense, 12.3; educa-
tion and schools, 11.2; high
cost of living, 11.0; foreign
policy, 10.7, recession and
unemployment, 10.4.
Vol. V
Issued weekly at 815 Sixteenth St.. N.W.,
Washington 6, D. C. 32 a year
Saturday, October 29, 1960
Kennedy Ridicules Nixon's
Prestige, Prosperity Claims
Coalition the Issue:
Kennedy VictoryKey
To Liberal Congress
Whether the 87th Congress is more effective and liberal than
the 86th depends almost wholly on the results of the presidential
race between Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon.
This is the conclusion of experienced observers who think in
' ^ terms of legislative results rather
J^)^^jp§ tIlan merely * n termS °^ ^ emocrats
Up Attacks,
Promises
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon
— giving strong indications that
he feels he is waging an uphill
fight for the presidency — has
harshly accused Sen. John F.
Kennedy of being "irresponsible"
and lacking "political courage."
At the same time he pledged
he would move within 24 hours
after the election to send Henry
Cabot Lodge, his vice presidential
candidate, to Geneva under "pri-
ority orders" to get long-stalled ne-
gotiations on a nuclear weapons
test ban moving again.
In a speech faintly reminscent of
Pres. Eisenhowers famed "I-will-
go-to-Korea" announcement of the
1952 campaign, Nixon said that if
agreement has been reached or is
in sight by Feb. 1, 1961, he would
meet at the summit with Soviet
Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev and
British Prime Minister Harold Mac-
Millan to work out final details.
Nixon's biting attack on Ken-
nedy came in an old-style whistle-
stop tour of six states — Pennsyl-
vania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michi-
gan, Iowa and Illinois — in the
course of which the GOP presiden-
tial candidate bluntly told Gov.
Cecil Underwood (R-W..Va.) that
(Continued on Page 12)
and Republicans.
It is a judgment based on their
analysis of the probable outcome
of House and Senate races ac-
cording to party — but also on the
predictable effects of the presi-
dential results on the most pow-
erful single force in Congress,
the ruling coalition of conserva-
tive Republicans and conserva-
tive southern Democrats.
Democrats have held both
houses of Congress for the last six
years, and with each election their
margins have been growing.
With a conservative President in
the White House, however, the
minority Republicans have co-
alesced into a tighter partisan
band in both chambers and they
have gained increasing aid from
southern conservative Democrats.
In the 86th Congress, the com-
bination of vetoes or veto threats
from the White House and the
coalition-controlled House Rules
Committee blocked or killed bills
for federal school aid, a stronger
minimum wage system, health care
for the aged, assistance to de-
pressed areas and comprehensive
housing.
White House Key to Action
The key to congressional action
in 1961, observers point out, in-
cludes the character and direction
of leadership exerted from the
White House in dealing with the
Dixiecrat-GOP coalition as well as
the party lineup.
Strictly in party terms, Dem-
ocrats are considered sure to re-
(Continued on Page 5)
6»Awn For thj
AFL-CIO nsw;
Registration Successful;
Labor Spurs Drive
To Get Out Votes
By David L. Perlman
Labor's non-partisan voter registration drive, described as "a
tremendous success" in the key cities throughout the nation where
the AFL-CIO concentrated its resources, will shift into a massive
get-out-the-vote drive for Nov. 8.
The door-to-door, telephone-to-telephone, car pool to polling place
techniques which have sent regis-^
tration to all-time records in com-
munities where working people live
will be used to encourage eligible
voters to cast their ballots for the
candidates of their choice.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
authorized continued AFL-CIO
Living Costs Hit All -Time High
As Output, Buying Power Drop
The cost of living has resumed its upward climb despite a continuing business downturn which
virtually all economists have labeled a recession.
The Labor Dept/s Consumer Price Index reached a new all-time high in September, rising two-tenths
of 1 percent from the July-August level. During the past year, the index has risen 1.3 percent with
the greatest rise over the last six months.
The buying power of factory^
workers' earnings took another dip
and, despite an increase in hourly
earnings over the year, dropped
six-tenths of 1 percent below the
September 1959 figure.
With the Consumer Price In-
dex at 126.8, this meant that the
market basket which cost $10 dur-
ing the 1947-49 base period now
costs $12.68.
Meanwhile, there were signs
that October figures will show a
further rise in the cost of living,
coupled with a possible increase
in the rate of unemployment.
Robert Meyers, deputy commis-
sioner of labor statistics, told news-
men that the rise in living costs
during September would have
been even higher if the price of
both used cars and end-of-the-
season new cars hadn't dropped
more than usual.* He said trans-
portation costs and the price of
clothing can be expected to show
an increase in October, and the
(Continued on Page 4)
support for the Citizens Non-
Partisan committees which have
been set up in a number of big
industrial states.
'The outstanding success of the
AFL-CIO Citizens Non-Partisan
Registration Committee is a matter
in which the entire labor movement
can take great pride," Meany said.
"We believe we have made a very
real contribution to the strength
of American democracy by helping
so many thousands of citizens to
qualify as voters.
"It would be sad indeed if this
work were to be wasted by the fail-
ure of these men and women to
exercise the right they have now
established. Therefore I have au-
thorized the continuation of the
registration committee as an elec-
tion day committee, and I urge all
those who worked so hard on regis-
tration to show equal diligence on
Nov. 8."
The same staff setup, under the
direction of Carl McPeak, will be
used for the vote effort, Meany said.
As in the registration campaign,
(Continued on Page 5)
Confidence
Grows in
Final Drive
By Willard Shelton
En Route With Kennedy — An
increasingly confident John F.
Kennedy carried his presidential
campaign into the final days with
slashing attacks on Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon and a stepped-
up appeal for the people to back
his program to "get America
moving again."
The Democratic nominee swept
in a concentrated week across the
Upper Midwest into New York
City, hitting at Nixon with ridicule
and open challenge, telling Repub-
lican and Democratic audiences
alike that there was a "difference"
between Nixon and himself, that
there was a "choice" to be made
between a candidate who says "we
never had it so good" and a presi-
dential challenger like himself who
says, "we can . do better, we must
do better."
Again and again he hit his
theme that Nixon, the Republi-
can nominee to succeed Pres.
Eisenhower, claims that Ameri-
can prestige is at an all-time high,
when U.S. government surveys
show in fact that our prestige
has slipped.
Repeatedly he spoke of federal
leadership to meet the problems of
school shortages and underpaid
teachers, of aid to depressed areas,
of inadequate wages.
"The basic Republican argument
against our programs," Kennedy
said at the traditional late-October
Ladies' Garment Workers rally of
250,000 cheering and surging work-
ers in Manhattan's garment center,
(Continued on Page 12)
New York Times
Endorses Kennedy
The influential New York
Times has editorially en-
dorsed the presidential candi-
dacy of Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy.
On foreign policy, the
newspaper found Kennedy's
approach to be "more rea-
soned, less emotional . . .
more imaginative, less nega-
tive than that of the Vice
President."
In the domestic field, the
editorial declared: "We be-
lieve that, with the prestige
of an election victory, Mr.
Kennedy could override reac-
tionary southern opposition
within his own party and con-
solidate an effective majority
behind a constructive pro-
gram."
The Times, traditionally an
independent newspaper, had
endorsed Pres. Eisenhower in
1952 and 1956.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. d, SATURDAY, OCTOBER », 1960
Hopes for Harmony:
IUE Ends GE Strike,
Hits 'Boulwareism'
New York— The Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers ended
a three-week strike against General Electric Co. after agreeing to a
three-year contract which the union hopes will bring about an era
of "mutual respect and harmony" at GE. At the same time, the
IUE voiced sharp criticism of "Boulwareism," the company's back-
ward-looking labor policy.
The settlement, reached on the
heels of an IUE agreement with
Westinghouse Corp., brought an
end to the walkout which had
stopped production at most of the
GE plants where the union held
bargaining rights.
Still on strike, as the AFL-CIO
Mews went to press, were two locals
of the Technical Engineers at GE's
Lynn, Mass., installation. Local
issues, including a company demand
for changes in seniority provisions,
were still unresolved. At a small
GE service shop in Augusta, Ga»,
the IUE charged that the 21 union
members have been locked out and
their jobs given to strikebreakers.
A statement by IUE Pres.
James B. Carey and members
of the union negotiating com-
mittee said the settlement would
have produced greater benefits
if Leo Jandreau, business agent
Dilworth Hits GE
Strike 'Blackmail 9
Philadelphia — Mayor Rich-
ardson Dilworth has served
notice on the General Electric
Co. that the city of Philadel-
phia won't be "blackmailed"
into breaking strikes.
Dilworth, in a speech to a
businessmen's group, de-
nounced GE threats to move
its plants out of the city un-
less Philadelphia's police
force was used to break
picket lines of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers.
He accused the company of
seeking to incite violence by
sending photographers to
take pictures of pickets. GE,
the mayor said, seeks to use
"political coercion and in-
timidation of municipal gov-
ernments" as a strike weapon.
When GE took out full
page ads in local newspapers
to denounce the mayor, Dil-
worth held a press confer-
ence in which he warned
that other cities could expect
the same treatment if GE
was successful in its "indus-
trial and political blackmail."
A GE representative who
falsely claimed to be a news-
paper reporter was ejected
from the room at the start
of the conference.
of Local 301 in Schenectady,
N. Y., "had not elected to play
the role of Benedict Arnold" in
the middle of the walkout.
The Schenectady local went on
strike three full days after other
locals, and returned to work Oct.
17. The action of the local at GE's
principal plant, the IUE said,
"served to reduce the union's bar
gaining power and therefore its
ability to serve its members better."
Other Benefits Listed
Under the settlement action, the
union and the company will work
out the details of a three-year con-
tract, with a 3 percent wage in-
crease now and another adjustment
in 18 months. The union will de-
cide soon whether it wishes the
1962 adjustment to be a wage re-
opener, or a 4 percent pay boost,
or a 3 percent increase plus an
eighth paid holiday and a fourth
week of paid vacation for workers
with 25 years of service.
Also included in the package
offered by the company and ac-
cepted by the union was a scries
of improvements in pension and
welfare benefits, and a form of ter-
minal pay under which employes
will receive one week's pay lor each
year of service.
The plan provides that workers
who are laid off can receive weekly
payments, at the rate of half their
credits, when their unemployment
compensation is exhausted. Laid-
off workers, when notified they
may be jobless for long periods,
can elect to leave the company and
collect all the terminal pay due
them. The union, on the other
hand, had been seeking a form of
supplementary unemployment ben-
efits.
While GE poured hundreds of
thousands of dollars into adver-
tising about a "synthetic" strike,
the union's ranks generally held
firm. Many plants were closed
tight to production workers,
and only in a very few was out-
put resumed at any significant
level.
The union reference to "Boul-
wareism" concerned what is de-
scribed as a "policy of feudal ar-
rogance toward workers and their
unions." It was developed by
Lemuel Boulware, a GE vice presi-
dent, as a means of "handling" the
unions with which the company-
deals.
While seeking to by-pass the
union on a day-to-day basis in deal-
ings with its employes, Boulware-
ism calls for the company to de-
velop one offer only in collective
bargaining, and to "take a strike"
if necessary to get it accepted.
Behind this policy rested a pro-
gram of tough talk with city offi-
cials in plant cities, and constant
pressure on police to keep plants
open.
Under these circumstances, the
union's membership succeeded
better than observers had expected
in cutting GE's production. Carey's
post-strike statement noted that
"Bouiwareism" had made the strike
long and expensive for manage-
ment, stockholders and employes.
He recalled that the company had
seven times rejected plans for
averting a strike or ending it quick-
ly. He added:
"Neither GE nor any corpo-
rate management in America
can gain solace from this strike,
for 'Boulwareism' failed either
to paralyze the union or to hyp-
notize the union's members into
automatic acceptance of manage-
ment's inadequate proposals."
Noting that a "new approach" is
clearly in order, Carey suggested
that if GE moves toward "a new
sense of statesmanship in its rela-
tions with the IUE, it will find the
union and its members ready for
full cooperation."
"Progress can indeed be the
most important product of this
strike settlement between GE and
IUE," the union concluded.
ILGWU Gives $20,000
To Surgery Center
New York — The Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers have given $20,000
to the fund to establish the Insti-
tute of Reconstructive Plastic Sur-
gery, planned for the New York
University Medical Center.
The gift raised the building fund
to $1.78 million, the goal being $2
million. The new institute will be
a world center for research and
professional training in reconstruc-
tive surgery, treatment of severe
burns and transplantation of body
tissues and organs.
NEW YORK— Pres. James B. Carey, left, of the Electrical, Radio
& Machine Workers, is shown with the federal mediators who
helped in negotiations leading up to settlement of the strike of
40,000 IUE members against General Electric Co. They are John
Burke, seated, and George McGahan.
Reuther Bids Big 3 to
Parleys on Problems
Detroit — Auto Workers Pres. Walter P. Reuther has asked the
Big Three automobile manufacturers to join in setting up a perma-
nent management-labor conference group to discuss — away from
the bargaining table — "the problem of economic growth, inflation,
import competition and technological change."
Such a conference, Reuther de-^
clared in letters to the presidents
N. Y. Guild
Sets Oct. 31
As Strike Date
New York — Newspaper Guild
members employed by New York's
seven major dailies have voted to
strike at midrught Oct. 31 unless a
new agreement is reached by that
deadline.
The tally was 3,315 for a strike
and 46 against. Affected in case
of a walkout would be the Times,
Herald-Tribune, World-Telegram,
Journal, Post, Daily News and
Mirror.
The ANG, which has some
6,000 members at the seven
newspapers, is seeking a 10 per-
cent wage increase, the union
shop, and improvements in pen-
sion, holiday and other contract
benefits. None of the employers
has made any offer except for
cutbacks in a number of areas,
particularly in union security.
The union rejected a proposal
made by the Times at a bargaining
meeting attended by representa-
tives of the Herald-Tribune, Post,
Daily News and Mirror to post-
pone the strike deadline from Oct.
31, when the current two-year
agreement expires, until Dec. 7.
Guild negotiators have been
told that if members of any other
union refuse to cross a picket line
at any paper it would be considered
a contract violation and all pub-
lishers will suspend publication.
The ANG is proceeding with
plans to publish a strike paper, if
necessary. Plans cajl for a 32-
page daily tabloid with 500,000
circulation to start.
of General Motors, Ford and
Chrysler, would be in line with a
proposal Pres. Eisenhower made in
a recent speech to the Auto Manu-
facturers' Association.
The President said "labor and
business leaders must sit down in
a calm atmosphere and regularly
discuss — far removed from the bar-
gaining table — their philosophy,
their needs and, above all, their
common responsibility to this free
nation/'
Reuther, pointing out that he
and other UAYV officials have
been saying much the same thing
for many years, suggested that
management "join with us to
provide a practical mechanism
for such efforts in the auto in-
dustry." He added:
"As we become accustomed to
pooling our efforts ... I have
every confidence that the common
purpose that unites us in that en-
deavor will improve the atmos-
phere at the collecting bargaining
table."
Industry spokesmen said only
that Reuther's letter is still under
study.
Hospitals Warned
On Low Wages
Ann Arbor, Mich. — The
hospital that pays low wages
will not get employes "slightly
worse" than other firms but
will end up with "the dregs
of the labor market," Dir.
George Ordione of the Uni-
versity of Michigan Bureau of
Industrial Relations told a
hospital management work-
shop here.
"The difference between
getting the worst employe
and the best is a matter of
15 percent in actual pay," he
said. "Yet the difference is
that the best employes will
produce twice as much (or
cost half as much) as the
worst. By paying 30 to 40
percent below the market you
buy ironclad insurance of ob-
taining the worst available.
"Pay policy, whether in
hospitals or elsewhere, indi-
cates that it's foolish to pay
the worst rates in town. It
costs more."
Indiana Negroes Urge
Repeal of R-T-W Law
Indianapolis — "Indiana Negroes for Repeal of_ 'Right-to-Work* M
has been formed in the Hoosier state to fight the compulsory open
shop law.
The Rev. Clinton Marsh of Indianapolis called on Negroes to
demand that the Indiana General Assembly give top priority to
repeal of the unpopular law.
Marsh said, "The 'right-to-work'
law has wrought its greatest injus-
tices on Negro workers. The law
makes the Negro worker the last
hired and the first fired."
The new committee listed seven
reason why it believes Negroes
should vote to repeal R-T-W:
• The importation of non-union
workers has resulted in salary cuts
for Negroes.
• The same men who back
R-T-W prevented enactment of the
Civil Rights bill.
• "Right-to-work" forces in the
state senate would not let the
FEPC proposals progress even as
far as committee hearings.
• Indiana's 'right-to- work' law
has brought unemployment to con-
struction trades, making the Hoo-
sier Negro the last hired and the
first fired.
• "Right-to-work" forces have
prevented enactment of minimum
wage and maximum hour laws
which would produce benefits to
laundry workers and other pre-
dominantly Negro trades.
• Contrary to claims by R-T-W
backers, the law has no fair em-
ployment provisions.
• In the majority of R-T-W
states, the Negro worker's average
wage is only 40 percent of the pay
of white workers.
The new organization has re-
ceived the personal support of the
Rev. Martin Luther King, presi-
dent of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, and Roy
Wilkins, executive secretary of the
National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People.
In a statement issued by the
committee, Rev. King said: "So-
called 'right-to-work' laws are
not intended to, and cannot ben-
efit the Negro worker. This law
is designed, instead, to worsen
his lot, to make his wages lower,
his hours longer, and to destroy
the labor unions which have
brought him a higher standard
of living.**
In a message to Hoosier Negroes,
Wilkins said: "Nothing could be
more dangerous to the economic
well-being of the entire Negro com-
munity than the so-called 'right-to-
work' law. The very people who
have blocked passage of a Fair
Employment Practices Act are the
people backing this deceitful law."
Wilkins also charged that the law
is the product of bigotry and
tyranny, and is anti-Negro.
Henry Walker, senior partner of
the law firm of Walker, McCloskey,
Dawson and Hatcher of East Chi-
cago, is vice-chairman for North-
ern Indiana; Dallas Sprinkles of
Evansville heads the Southern In-
diana group.
Meany Adds 7 to
Meeting on Aging
Seven new members of an in-
formal AFL-CIO committee to help
carry out labor participation in the
White House Conference on Aging,
to be held in January, have been
named by Pres. George Meany.
They are Research Dir. Solomon
Barkin, Textile Workers Union of
America; George Nelson of the
Machinists; James O'Brien of the
Steelworkers; and four AFL-CIO
staff members — Dir. Andrew J.
Biemiller of the Dept. of Legisla-
tion; Dir. Leo Perlis and Julius
Rothman of Community Services
Activities, and Don Gregory of the
Dept. of Public Relations.
The original members, who serve
also on the national committee for
the conference, are Eric Peterson
of the IAM; Charles Odell of the
Auto Workers; John Brophy of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.;
and Dir. Nelso- Cruikshank of the
Dept. of Social Security.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. OCTOBER 29, 1960
rage Thr<*
Landmark Agreement:
ILGWU Protects 400,000 with
Severance Pay in Plant Closings
New York — A nationwide severance pay program has been negotiated by the Ladies' Garment
Workers in a landmark agreement with employers of 400,000 ILGWU members.
The program — providing both lump sum and weekly benefits for workers whose employers go
out of business — will be administered by a joint union-management board of trustees headed by
ILGWU Pres. David Dubinsky.
Starting with $3 million trans-^
f erred from regional severance pay
programs r now in existence, the
fund is expected to grow to $10
million through employer contribu-
tions of one-half of 1 percent of
payroll.
Workers whose employers have
contributed to this fund for two
years or more will be eligible for
payments ranging up to $1,600,
based on a combination of aver-
age weekly pay and years of
service.
One-fourth of the worker's total
benefit will be paid in a lump sum
when his shop closes. The balance
will be paid out in weekly install-
ments until the worker finds new
employment, up to a maximum of
48 weeks for members with 16 or
more years of service. Weekly
benefits will run from a minimum
of $12.50 to a maximum of $25.
A worker who obtains temporary
employment would be able to have
his payments resumed within one
year of his first loss of employment.
Dubinsky declared the national
agreement would help to stabilize
the garment industry, which his-
torically has had a high rate of
business failures.
Immediately eligible for benefits
are some 2,000 employes of 30
dress manufacturers who have gone
out of business. Their section of
Fla.), a member of the House Pub-
lic Works Committee, said a work-
ing group from the Bureau of Pub-
lic Roads has been ordered to Flor-
ida to inspect projects on which
Cone Bothers were either prime
or sub-contractors.
Kelly, a Democrat, promptly
charged Cramer Avith attempting to
make political capital of the situa-
tion. The bureau already has had
a special inspection team in the
state which met with Kelly's corn-
mittee, he said, while the Public
Works subcommittee headed by
Rep. John A. Blatnik (D-Minn.)
has been investigating for several
months.
Anti-Union Contractor
Barred from Road Jobs
Tallahassee, Fla. — The Federal Bureau of Public Roads has
frozen all payments involving federal funds to the bitterly anti-
union Cone Brothers Contracting Co., Florida's largest highway
builder, as the aftermath of widespread charges of payoffs to state
road inspectors.
In addition, the State Road Dept.^
revoked the certificates of qualifi-
cation of the company and all its
affiliates and subsidiaries, including
the Tampa Sand & Material Co.
move that will bar them even from
bidding on new road jobs.
Eight State Roads Dept. engi-
neers who admitted to the State
Roads Committee, headed by State
Sen. Scott Kelly of Lakeland, that
they had received cash from the
contracting company through the
mail were discharged. Two others
who had been suspended were re
instated when they denied before
the committee that they had ac-
cepted any payoffs.
Records show that Cone
Brothers since October 1958 has
received 23 state road construc-
tion contracts involving $11.7
million. They were spread
through 11 counties.
The firm and its affiliates have
consistently fought union organi-
zation efforts. The AFL^CIO
Building Trades Council for the
Tampa area called a strike several
months ago in an effort to gain
recognition, with the Operating
Engineers, in view of the nature
of the work, the mo$t directly con-
cerned. Industrial construction
jobs on which concrete furnished
by a subsidiary was used have been
picketed with substantial support
from other crafts.
The investigation got under way
three months ago when it was re-
vealed that one of the Road Dept.'s
engineers had accepted the gift of
a house from a contractor.
Kelly's committee subsequently
seized Cone Brothers' records un-
der a court order and said it found
evidence of weekly payments of
$25 in cash, mailed in unmarked
envelopes, to the eight engineers.
The disbursements were listed on
the books as "expenses," commit-
tee spokesmen said. •
Rep. William C. Cramer (R-
LOCAL 32B ELECTS
New York — Thomas Shortman,
vice president for 19 years of Local
3$B, Building Service Employes,
has been elected president of the
38,000-member local succeeding
David Sullivan, new president of
the international union. Also elected
in a membership referendum were
Thomas G. Young, vice president,
and Donald Dore, secretary.
the industry has been covered by
one of the regional plans which
has been merged into the national
fund.
Protected by the new agreement
are members employed in the man-
ufacture of dresses, coats, suits
sportswear, blouses, infants' wear
and undergarments. ILGWU
spokesmen, said some additional
groups are expected to be brought
under the program as new con
tracts are negotiated. The plai
presently covers employes of some
12,000 firms.
Establishment of industrywide
severance pay marks the culmina
tion of a proposal first made by
Dubinsky at an ILGWU conven
tion in 1950. A few agreements
were reached in subsequent years
but the big breakthrough came
since 1958, when a severance pro
gram financed by a 1 percent era
ployer payroll contribution was ne
gotiated with dress manufacturers
employing more than 100,000
ILGWU members. Since then
nearly every union contract has
provided some type' of severance
pay.
The BLGWU said establish-
ment of the nationwide plan,
through spreading the risk over
a larger number of employers,
makes possible a lower contribu-
tion rate than some of the earlier
programs. The difference in em-
ployer contribution rates will be
channeled into other employe
benefit programs,
The 50-member board of trustees
-25 from the union and 25 from
management — chose ILGWU Sec.
Treas. Louis Stulberg as treasurer
of the fund. L A. Agree and
Joseph L. Dubow, both manage
ment officials, were named secre
tary and vice president respectively
Clothing 'Runaway 9
Reopens Union Shop
New York — A "runaway" clothing manufacturer, found guilty
by an arbitrator of breaking his union contract last May by moving
to Mississippi, has resumed his union shop operation in New York.
The action, a smashing victory for the Clothing Workers, will
restore to their jobs some 300 ACWA members who were thrown
out of work without notice. Their^
employer, Jack Meilman, had
shifted all of the equipment and
unfinished garments at the factory
of Hickory Clothes, Inc., to a new
non-union plant at Coffeeville,
Miss., which had been built for
him with a $360,000 community
bond issue.
The New York Joint Board of
the ACWA charged Meilman with
violating a contract provision which
prohibits a manufacturer from
moving his operations out of New
York without the union's consent.
Prof. Herman A. Gray of New
York University, impartial arbiter
for the men's clothing industry, up-
held the union and ordered Meil-
man to return to New York and
pay the union $204,000 in dam-
ages. A state court decision up-
held the arbitration award.
Under a new six-year agree-
ment between the ACWA and
Meilman, the manufacturer was
released from payment of the
damages on condition of his com-
pliance with the other terms of
the arbitration award. He was
required, however, to give two
weeks' vacation pay to each em-
ploye who' had been working in
his New York plant, amounting
to an estimated $35,000 to
$40,000.
In further compliance with the
agreement, Meilman gave up his
Mississippi enterprise and turned
the plant back to the town. He
agreed that all clothing manufac
tured by his firm would be made
in shops under contract to the un
ion's New York Joint Board.
Louis Hollander and Vincent
Lacapria, co-managers of the joint
board, hailed the settlement as vin-
dicating the union's contention
that an employer has responsibil-
ities to his employes. They de-
clared the agreement "immeasur-
ably strengthens the employment
standards of all workers through-
out the country."
Union Members Helped
Hollander said the union had
used "every legal means, including
court proceedings and an educa-
tional campaign among retailers,"
to bring the plant back to New
York. Union members had passed
out informational leaflets in front
of retail stores handling the- com-
pany's products.
Charles J, MacGowan
AFL-CIO Asks
Board to Okay
Agency Shop
The AFL-CIO has asked the
National Labor Relations Board to
order General Motors Corp. to
bargain with the Auto Workers
over the issue of an agency shop
for GM workers in Indiana — i
state with a so-called "'right-to
work" law.
The federation's position was
made in a brief submitted as the
NLRB opened oral hearings on the
legality of the agency shop, under
which workers are required to pay
a service fee if they don't join the
union which bargains for them.
Even after an Indiana appel-
late court ruled that the agency
shop does not violate the state's
"right-to-work" law, GM refused
to negotiate on the issue, claim-
ing the agency shop contradicts
the Taft-Hartley Act. The UAW
filed unfair labor practices and
the NLRB's general counsel,
Stuart Rothman, upheld the
union's position. Arrangements
were made to bypass the usual
NLRB trial examiner procedures
and take the case directly to the
full labor board.
In its brief the AFL-CIO de
clared "there is no rational basis'
for questioning the legality of the
agency shop in Indiana after
state court has specifically upheld
it. The only restriction of federal
law, the federation's attorneys de-
clared, is that employes can not
be required to pay dues to a union
unless they are given the privilege
of joining it. The agency shop
gives them this privilege, and ap-
plies only to those who refuse to
join the union, the AFL-CIO
pointed out.
Joining the UAW in the oral
argument were attorneys for the
Steelworkers and the Commer-
cial Telegraphers, both unions
with agency shop contracts in
force in Indiana.
Briefs supporting the union po
sition were also submitted, or
scheduled to be submitted, by the
Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers,
the Indiana State AFL-CIO and"
the Retail Clerks.
The National Association of
Manufacturers was given permis-
sion to file a brief supporting the
GM position.
Retail Clerks Back
Sunday Closings
The Retail Clerks have asked the
Supreme Court to uphold Sunday
closing laws for ''compelling 'social
reasons."
In a legal brief, the union says
its position "does not concern it-
self in any way with the religious
question involved," but maintains
that "a community day of rest . . .
makes positive contribution to the
health of the workers, the family
and the community. The RCIA
points out that the Fair Labor
Standards Act, which sets^a ceiling
on hours worked, does not protect
millions of Americans in retail
trade and other excluded occupa-
tions.
MacGowan,
Labor Pioneer
Dies At 73
Kansas City, Kan. — Charles J.
MacGowan, president emeritus of
the Boilermakers and a vice presi-
dent of the AFL-CIO, died at his
home in nearby Parkville, Mo., on
Oct. 25. He was 73.
His death removed another from
the thinning ranks of the pioneer
trade unionists who built the Ameri-
can labor movement.
A member of the Boilermakers
since 1909, he had served his union
in various capacities since 1917
except for one short interval. He
was international president from
1944 until his retirement in 1954,
when he became president emeri-
tus. He had been an AFL-CIO
vice president since the merger in
1955.
MacGowan's "untimely passing"
was mourned with "extreme sor-
row" by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany and Sec.-Treas. William F.
Schnitzler as taking from the labor
movement "a man whose leadership
has contributed so much to the
well-being of American workers."
"His dedication to the principles
that represent the highest ideals of
our cause," they said in a telegram
to Mrs. MacGowan, "will be re-
membered by all trade unionists.
He was not only our colleague but
a valued friend of many years and
words cannot adequately express
our personal sense of shock/'
Born in Argyllshire, Scotland,
he was taken by his father at the
age of 10 to Canada. There he
served his apprenticeship as a
boilermaker on the old Grand
Trunk Pacific Railroad and
joined the union. He moved to
the United States in 1913.
During his career he was assis-
tant to the president of the former
AFL Railroad Labor Dept.; a mem-
ber of the Railroad Adjustment
Board; an international representa-
tive of his union and international
vice president, holding that post
from 1936 until he was elected
president.
He became 13th vide president of
the former AFL in 1947, moved up
to 11th vice president in 1948 and
to ninth vice president in 195Q. In
addition he had served on the execu-
tive councils of two AFL depart-
ments, Metal Trades and Railroad
Employes.
In 1949 he was a member of
the AFL delegation to the founding
congress of the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions in London.
Two years later he was AFL frater-
nal delegate to the conventions of
the British Trades Union Congress
in London and the Intl. Transport-
workers Federation in Utrecht,
Holland.
Was UN Consultant
In other areas, he served on the
President's Labor-Management
Conference in 1945 and was a labor
consultant to the United Nations'
organization conference the same
year.
The funeral was held Oct. 28 at
Kansas City, Kan. The body was
to be moved to Chicago, where
services were scheduled for 2 p. m.
Oct. 31 at the Maloney Funeral
Home.
Surviving are the widow, Rose,
two daughters and a son.
Struck Airline Up
On CAB Charges
The Civil Aeronautics Board has
ordered a hearing on charges that
Southern Airways, whose regular
pilots have been on strike since
June 5, should forfeit its operating
certificates because of alleged mis-
management and failure to provide
scheduled services.
The Air Line Pilots charged that
the company has failed to bargain
in good faith and has set out to
destroy the pilots' union at any
cost
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, I960
LISTENING INTENTLY to Sen. John F. Kennedy are these union leaders, pictured when the
Democratic candidate for President spoke at a rally in Waiters' Union Hall, New York City.
Living Costs Hit All-Time High
As Output, Buying Power Drop
(Continued from Page 1)
usual seasonal decline in food
prices doesn't appear to be devel-
oping.
Administration sources were
quoted in the Wall Street Journal
as fearing that the seasonally ad-
justed jobless rate will rise in Oc-
tober above mid-September's 5.7
percent rate. The number of work-
ers drawing unemployment com-
pensation is currently running
about 30 percent above 1959
levels.
The normal seasonal drop in un-
employment between September
and October would be about 200,-
000. Any lesser decline would in-
dicate a worsening of the unem-
ployment picture.
The Administration's three chief
economic spokesmen — Commerce
Sec. Frederick H. Mueller, Teas-
Labor Press
Convention Set
For Detroit
The program for the Intl. Labor
Press Association convention, to be
held in Detroit, Nov. 17, 18 and
19, will be keyed to panel discus-
sions and workshops based on the
theme 'The Expanding Role of the
Labor Press."
The program has been planned
with the assistance of the Institute
of Labor and Industrial Relations,
University of Michigan-Wayne
State University.
A highlight of the convention
will be awards to 66 winners of the
annual Journalistic Awards Con-
test. Professors from the Uni-
versity of Michigan, who did the
judging, will conduct a workshop
based on their observations of the
378 entries.
Dr. Warren Miller, University
of Michigan, co-author of the
recent book, The American Vo-
ter, will analyze the election on
the basis of his research on
why people vote the way they
do.
"How the Labor Press Can Be
More Effective in Politics and
Legislation at the Point of Impact"
will be the subject of a panel led
by Walter Davis, education direc-
tor, Cleveland Local 880, Retail
Clerks. Andrew J. Biemiller, AFL-
CIO legislative director, will ex-
plain the AFL-CIO legislative pro-
gram for the coming year.
Another panel will be headed by
Lawrence Rogin, AFL-CIO educa-
tion director, who will discuss the
role of the labor press in the
union's program.
ury Sec. Robert B. Anderson and
Raymond J. Saulnier, chairman of
the President's Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers — have been active-
ly seeking to downgrade predic-
tions of top business economists
that conditions will get worse be-
fore they get better.
Mueller, addressing the Business
Advisory Council— an elite group
of the nation's most powerful busi-
nessmen and industrialists — said he
didn't agree with predictions by the
council's own panel of economists
that industrial production will take
a further drop. Saulnier, in a
speech to a bankers' group,
claimed that the ''next decisive
(economic) move will be an ad-
vance."
These politically keyed predic-
tions flew in the face of reports
and analyses by economists from
the ranks of business and the uni-
versities.
A panel of 13 leading^ business
economists, addressing a meeting
of professional economists, was
unanimous in voicing the belief
that the nation has entered a re-
cession that would grow worse be-
fore it became better.
The predictions included a de-
cline in non-residential construc-
tion, a drop in capital spending
and a drop in industrial profits.
In another setting, Dr. John Lin-
ter, Harvard economist, said "most
of the impact of this recession will
be felt after the turn of the year."
The onset of the recession, he said,
has been indicated by "several
months of sluggish sales, progres-
sively declining order backlogs, de-
clining profit margins and declin-
ing rates of inventory accumula-
tion."
With the continued rise in living
costs, the third Eisenhower Ad-
ministration recession appears to
be following the pattern of the
1958-59 downturn, which found
the cost of living going up despite
the depressed state of the economy.
The September figures showed
increases in every category except
transportation. House furnishing
rose six-tenths of 1 percent, apparel
prices rose 1 percent — topping the
all-time high in this category
reached in 1920 — and gas prices
averaged 1 percent higher, largely
because of substantial increases in
several cities.
Medical care inched up slightly
and stands 3.1 percent above a
year ago.
An estimated 100,000 workers,
mostly in metalworking industries,
will receive cost of living increases
under escalator clauses, nearly all
of them at the rate of 1 cent per
hour.
Arbitrators Back TWUA
In Dispute With Local
Front Royal, Va. — A three-man arbitration board has upheld
the Textile Workers Union of America in its dispute with Front
Royal Local 371 over the use of the local's funds to assist a
segregated school here.
The international union, in a move to conserve the local's assets
against possible misuse, had placed^
the local under an administrator
and was upheld by the recent inter
national convention.
The arbitrators ruled that:
• The local should not be per-
mitted to invest $8,000 of its funds,
or any other amount, in debenture
bonds to finance the segregated
school established by anti-segrega-
tion groups in Front Royal.
• The local should not be per-
mitted to contribute $500 a year
to a scholarship fund in which the
beneficiaries are to be restricted to
students at the segregated school.
• The local can award annual
scholarships provided they are open
to students in any of the three Front
Royal area secondary schools; they
must be awarded on the basis of
merit or need, and must not be
restricted to students in any par-
ticular school.
• The administratorship im-
posed by the international is to be
lifted as soon as the decision is re-
ceived and accepted, since both
parties had agreed that the arbitra-
tion was to be final and binding.
Local 371 accepted the decision
at a meeting, but asked that the
administratorship be continued un-
til Nov. 2 when new local officers
will be elected.
The arbitrators were William E.
Simkin of Philadelphia, the impar-
tial chairman; Arthur J. Goldberg
of Washington, AFL-CIO special
counsel, for TWUA, and Dr. Wil-
liam S. Lynn of Front Royal, for
Local 371.
Goldberg dissented from the
board's ruling on the third point,
permitting the award of scholar-
ships to students from any of the
three schools, on the ground that
it was beyond the arbitrator's juris-
diction.
AFL-CIO Makes Recommendations:
Tax Reforms Could
Yield $17 Billion
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has sent both presidential candi-
dates an 118-page study of the federal tax structure, including some
20 specific recommendations for its revision.
In an accompanying letter, Meany described tax reform as "an
issue of major importance" since it bears upon "the methods for
financing the programs advanced by*
the two party platforms."
"We estimate that our recom-
mended reforms for the individual
income tax would yield an addition-
al $12.4 billion and for the corpo-
rate income tax an additional $5.3
billion," he said, with no change
in present tax rates.
The fully documented study, pre-
pared by the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research, is ''essentially ... a pic-
ture of a highly inequitable tax
structure," Meany charged.
"It is very clear that the heav-
iest burden is being carried by
those whose income is solely from
wages and salaries," he contin-
ued. "Income from dividends re-
ceives the benefits of a special
tax credit, and income from cap-
ital gains is treated even more
favorably. Only a small fraction
of wage and salary income goes
unreported on tax returns, while
a much larger proportion of divi-
dend, interest and self-employ-
ment income escapes taxation.**
Special provisions for certain
types of income, together with the
expansion of some allowable deduc-
tions, have caused a continual "ero-
sion" of the tax base, Meany added.
For the individual income tax,
the AFL-CIO study's proposals in-
clude repeal of the dividend exclu-
sion and tax credit; a withholding
Unions to Get
L-G Forms
On Finances
All unions which have filed finan-
cial reports with the Labor Dept.
will in the future automatically re-
ceive blank reporting forms soon
after the end of their fiscal year.
Unions expected to have less than
$20,000 in receipts during the year
will be sent the short form LM-3,
while other unions will be sent the
long form LM-2. All unions will
receive a bulletin describing some
of the common errors made in fill-
ing out the first year's reports.
John L. Holcombe, commissioner
of the department's Bureau of La-
bor-Management Reports, discussed
the new system in a recent letter
to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Holcombe called attention to
a ruling which benefits local un-
ions whose parent international
union or intermediate body re-
ceives checked-off dues directly
from the employer. In such cases
the local union only has to count
that portion of the dues actually
received by it in order to deter-
mine its eligibility for using the
short form LM-3.
For example, if the dues checked
off by the employer during the year
and sent directly to the interna-
tional total $21,000, and the inter-
national returns $16,000 to the local
union after deducting $5,000 as
per capita payments and assess-
ments, the local union will be en-
titled to use the short form LM-3,
so long as its receipts from any
other sources do not bring its total
to $20,000.
In order for the local union to
take advantage of this interpreta-
tion, it is necessary that the higher
body's portion of the checked-off
dues go directly from the employer
to the higher body without pass-
ing through the hands of the local.
The parent or intermediate body,
however, must make a complete
financial report on the transaction.
system for at least some types of
income other than wages; revision
of capital gains taxes; repeal of
split-income provisions; tighter reg-
ulation of expense-account allow-
ances; elimination of stock option
privileges as a means of tax-avoid-
ance; repeal of the tax exemption
for state and local bonds, especially
those used for industrial piracy,
and an overhaul of other exclu-
sions, deductions and credits.
For the corporation income tax,
the study proposes repeal of deple-
tion allowances for oil and other
mineral producers; repeal of the
more liberal depreciation deduc-
tions enacted in 1954; tax relief,
"if necessary," for corporations with
annual incomes under $25,000, and
elimination of "special tax wind-
falls" to buyers of corporations
with heavy past losses.
Other Changes Proposed
Other proposals include a reduc-
tion in federal excise taxes "as soon
as practicable"; coordination of es-
tate and gift taxes to make them a
"more effective source of revenue,"
and an increase in (or elimination
of) the earnings ceiling on which
social security taxes are paid.
"Whether or not you agree with
these recommendations," Meany's
letter concluded, "it should be clear
that the federal tax structure is in
need of extensive reform."
Copies of "Federal Taxes" are
available from the Pamphlet Divi-
sion, AFL-CIO Dept. of Publica-
tions, 815 Sixteenth St. N. W.,
Washington 6, D. C. The book,
publication No. 108, is priced at
$1.50 per copy; $1.25 for 50 or
more; $1 for 100 or more.
Romualdi Named ILO
Delegate to Uruguay
AFL-CIO Inter-American Rep.
Serafino Romualdi has been named
U.S. worker delegate to the Intl.
Labor Organization's Inter-Ameri-
can Study Conference on Labor-
Management Relations, scheduled
for Nov. 3-12 in Montevideo, Uru-
guay.
Accompanying him as advisor
will be Seymour Brandwein of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Research.
Pardon Asked for
Sit-Down Leader
AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany has appealed to Geor-
gia Gov. Ernest Vandiver to
use his powers of executive
pardon to free Rev. Martin
Luther King, Negro minister,
from prison.
Meany charged that King
had been given a ''shocking
and unusual penalty" when
he was sentenced to four
months in prison on the
ground that participation in
an Atlanta sit-in demonstra-
tion violated the suspended
sentence the minister had re-
ceived earlier for driving with-
out a Georgia driver's license
— although he had a valid
Alabama license.
In a telegram to Vandiver,
Meany said intervention by
the governor would "sustain
confidence" on the part of
people around the world that
"fairness will prevail in Geor-
gia and that freedom will re-
main inviolate everywhere in
America."
King was later freed on
$2,000 bail pending an appeal
to a higher court.
AFLrCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C 9 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
Page Fi*#
(Continued from Page I)
it is the volunteer workers at the
block, precinct and community lev
els who are being depended on to
see that eligible voters actually go
to the polls.
While union members and their
wives form the nucleus of this ef-
fort, the citizens' committees spon-
sored by the AFL-CIO have en
listed broad community support in
many areas. There have been
cases where college political sci
ence professors and their entire
classes have taken part in the reg
istration canvassing as a project in
practical politics.
10 Million Rise Seen
With registration books now
closed in all but a handful of
states, the increase in eligible
voters is expected to approach the
10 million mark. A part of the
rise was expected, the result of the
growth in population. What was
largely unexpected, however, was
the extent of the increased regis-
tration in industrial areas, includ
ing cities which have lost popula
tion in recent years.
In many of these areas, local
newspapers and Democratic and
Republican leaders alike have
given the credit to labor's regis-
tration machinery.
The other significant factor has
been the increased registration
among minority groups.
In California, labor gave sub-
stantial support to the registration
drive conducted among Spanish-
speeking citizens by a civic group
called the Community Service Or-
ganization. Through this joint ef-
fort, more than 100,000 Americans
of Mexican descent were registered.
A CSO bulletin reporting the
success of the campaign declared:
"The chief reason for the com-
pletely unprecedented success of
CSO's voter registration drive this
year was the financial support pro-
vided by the trade union move-
ment. Both the California Labor
Federation and the national AFL-
CIO were extremely generous in
making funds available to our non-
political campaign. At the local
level, CSO chapters worked closely
with the unions on non-partisan
registration programs."
Indians Registering
In South Dakota, one of the
few states where the registration
books have not yet been closed,
labor is giving assistance to a non-
partisan drive by the National Con-
gress of American Indians which
estimates that there is a potential
of some 15,000 Indian voters in the
state, most of them unregistered.
A spot check of some of the
major areas where labor has been
most active in registration gives
this picture:
New York — Although the na-
tion's largest city has declined in
population, final registration totals
topped the previous all-time high
set in 1944. The city wide registra-
tion of 3.62 million is up 957,000
from 1958 and 331,000 above
1956.
Upstate, the sharpest gain has
been in industrial Buffalo, where
registration is 28 percent above
1958 — the largest percentage in-
crease of any major city.
Ohio — Cleveland, Cincinnati, Co-
lumbus, Toledo, Dayton, Youngs-
town and a score of smaller indus-
trial cities all chalked up significant
registration gains. Negro registra-
tion was particularly heavy.
Michigan — Detroit led the way
with 100,000 more registered
voters than in 1956 and 134,000
more than in 1958. Other industriaJ
Labor Gears Up to Get Out the Vote
Registration
Drive Hailed
As Success
ALL-TIME REGISTRATION record of more than 1 million voters
— resulting from labor-management teamwork in Detroit — is chalked
up on registration barometer by Walker Cisler, president of Detroit
Edison Co. Standing on ladder is Mayor Louis C. Miriani, while
Mike Novak (second from left), vice president of Wayne County
AFL-CIO, looks on.
areas also gained.
Illinois — New registration is ex
pected to add more than half <
million voters, with Chicago ac-
counting for more than 200,000
of the total.
Pennsylvania — Impressive gains
in Philadelphia, once a GOP
stronghold but strongly Democratic
in recent years, bring the statewide
total above 1958. With final totals
still incomplete, indications are
that the Democrats have taken a
statewide edge in registration for
the first time.
Indiana — Statewide registration
is up 100,000 over 1956, with the
heaviest gains in Indianapolis and
Fort Wayne. In addition to the
presidential race, labor has a strong
stake in getting out the vote needed
to elect legislators and a governor
pledged to repeal the so-called
\right-to-work" law.
U.S. Businessmen
Bungle Politics Role
Republican Party profes-
sionals are screaming in an-
guish over the bungling ef-
forts of some big business
firms to aid the GOP by
promoting so-called "public
affairs" programs to interest
their employes in politics,
according to an article in
The Reporter magazine.
It seems that too many em-
ployes are becoming inter-
ested in Democratic politics.
Declared a GOP "pro"
sarcastically: "Yeah, those
new public affairs people are
doing a great job — they re
registering 80 percent Demo-
crats." fc .«
Belatedly, some of the
companies quietly switched
to concentrating on manage-
ment and top supervisory
personnel who can be more
safely counted in the Repub-
lican column.
California — This growing state
turned out its previous record reg-
istration in 1958, when a "right-to-
work" proposal was on the ballot.
This year, registration is up 700,-
000 from 1958. Biggest increase
was in the Los Angeles area, where
there were. 185,000 new Demo
cratic registrations and 22,000
newly-registered Republicans.
Missouri — Statewide registration
is up 17 percent from 1958, with
St. Louis and Kansas City leading
the way. Residents of rural areas
are not required to register.
New Jersey — Industrial Newark
and Jersey City paced a statewide
gain of 240,000 registered voters.
The non-partisan blanketing of
areas where working people are
concentrated, with no attempt to
separate union from non-union
families or inquire into the political
affiliation of prospective voters, was
regarded as the most effective tech
nique developed by labor in the
registration campaign.
Similarly, in areas where the
get-out- the- vote campaign will
be geared to the community at
large, baby-sitter services, trans-
portation to the polls and peri-
odic checks on Election Day of
registered voters who have not
yet cast their ballots will be on
the same non-partisan basis.
The get-out-the-vote techniques
will vary from city-to-city, from
union-to-union. But the goal will
be the same — to bring about the
participation of all citizens in the
election of their government.
ILO Told Bulgaria
Breaks 2 Treaties
Geneva — The satellite Commu-
nist government of Bulgaria has
repudiated two Intl. Labor Organi-
zation conventions, or treaties, the
ILO has been notified here.
It will not carry out the conven-
tions which limit employment of
women on night work and provide
for the registration, insurance and
payment of benefits to unemployed
workers.
Kennedy Victory Key
To Liberal Congress
(Continued from Page 1)
tain organizational control of both
the House and Senate.
Their margin in the Senate —
66 to only 34 Republicans —
cannot possibly be overturned in
this election, in which only 34
seats are open. Of the 23 Demo-
cratic seats, at least 13 are be-
yond the hope of the GOP and
Democrats are favored in most
of the remaining 10.
Of the 11 Republican-held, 7
are considered likely to be retained
by the GOP, although one or two
may be very close.
The real Senate battlegrounds
are in eight states. Four are now
held by Democrats — Missouri,
Michigan, Delaware and Wyoming.
Four are held by the Republicans
— Colorado, Idaho, Iowa and
South Dakota. The results in these
races may be close and may well
swing in each state on which pres-
idential candidate wins, but Demo-
crats are considered likely to pick
up more than they lose, barring an
unexpected Nixon landslide in the
popular vote.
The present House, making allow-
ances for vacancies, includes 283
Democrats and 154 Republicans,
and the GOP would have to make
a net gain of 65 seats to claim con
trol.
GOP Sees 25-Seat Gain
Not even the most optimistic
Republican spokesman seriously
thinks that gains of this scope are
in sight. They say they are con-
fident of scoring a net gain of per-
haps 25 seats
Democratic spokesmen concede
that they are not likely to score net
gains of their own.
"After all, we practically reached
our saturation point in 1958 — un-
less there is a Kennedy landslide
that pulls in a number of our can-
didates in districts that are mar-
ginal but have historically been
Republican/' one party analyst
says.
In a presidential year some nor
mally Republican districts won in
1958 may "swing back" to the
GOP, but the Republican "mini-
mum" goal of 25 seats gained ap-
pears to be the maximum poten-
tial, says this analyst There will
be some Democratic victories to
offset losses, he observed.
"We expect the House results
to be somewhere between those
of 1956 and 1958, probably
closer to 1958," he claims. In
the House elected in 1956, Dem-
ocrats had control by only 31
votes; they controlled by 129
votes in the House chosen in
1958.
The impact of the presidential
results on the congressional pic-
ture, in either case, is likely to be
enormous.
A big Nixon vote will tend to
bring in northern conservative Re-
publicans and cut down the size of
the northern liberal Democratic
section of both House and Senate.
With Nixon, a conservative, in
the White House, there would be
no leadership designed to crack the
power of the Dixiecrat-Republican
coalition. The messages from the
Executive Dept. would presumably
be closely attuned to prevailing
conservative GOP opinion, and
any legislation recommended in
the school, depressed areas and
housing areas would be limited in
scope and possibly no more than
"token" legislation, it is expected.
A Kennedy victory, the observers
say, would be likely to produce
different results both in member-
ship and in the tone of messages
and leadership from the White
House.
A Kennedy win would help
northern liberal Democrats hold
their seats. In addition, Kennedy if
elected is rated as certain to make
a powerful effort to thrust aside
the legislative roadblocks that have
prevented action on domestic wel-
fare bills, in many of which he has
been directly involved.
Kennedy Would 'Push'
In regard to some of these bills,
Kennedy has said that a determined
push from the White House could
easily have produced the additional
four or five affirmative votes
needed to pass the legislation. He
has said he would seek to supply
such a push.
Persons close to the Kennedy
camp expect him to make a
special effort to regain support
of liberal and moderate south-
ern Democrats — as distinguished
from out-and-out Dixiecrats —
for economic liberalism. They
point out that as many as 50 of
the 100-odd southern Demo-
cratic House members used to
support welfare measures backed
by Democratic Presidents, and
they think Kennedy can recap-
ture many of these votes.
A Kennedy victory would be
considered likely to bring a deter-
mined effort to dilute the present
control of the House by the con-
servative Rules Committee. This
could be executed either through
increasing its membership or by
changes in the rules to alter or
limit the group's function.
In addition, some Democratic
liberals have long felt that some
reform is necessary in the seniority
system through which veteran con-
servatives keep control of key
Senate and House legislative com-
mittees.
They have also urged greater
changes than were possible in 1959
in the Senate's filibuster rule, which
allows foes of civil rights legisla-
tion to water down bills or kill
them entirely.
CWA Urges
Trips Abroad
For Members
Front Royal, Va. — The Commu-
nications Workers' executive board
has urged CWA local unions to %
sponsor low-cost trips to Europe as
part of a worker-to-worker program
of building international under-
standing.
The board, meeting at the CWA's
educational institute here, suggested
that chartered flights be arranged
with the costs met by local unions
and participating individuals. The
board commented:
"The link of understanding from
this kind of direct exchange build
strong bonds of international soli-
darir^that in the long run will be
the real basis for world peace and
the strengthening of the free world
in the principles of the democratic
way of life."
In other actions, the CWA board:
• Approved a continuing polit-
ical action program, including 15
telephone "register and vote" cam-
paigns in political centers of the
nation.
Set as an organizing goal re-
cruitment of 25,000 new members
before March 1961.
• Authorized a special program
to train new local officers in their
duties and responsibilities following
local elections this fall.
• Denounced the Castro dicta-
torship in Cuba as a betrayal of
democracy.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
Throwing Away Freedom
THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU has reported that on Election
Day 107 million Americans will be old enough to vote. It can
be safely predicted that about 40 million of these will not mark a
ballot on Nov. 8.
Millions of Americans who have attained voting age will be
barred from the polls because they have not satisfied state require-
ments as to citizenship, residence, registration or payment of poll
taxes. Others in institutions will not be eligible. And there is the
glaring denial of the ballot to residents of the District of Columbia.
But the greatest number of those who will not cast ballots on
Election Day are eligible in every respect; they are the victims of
their own apathy, of their failure to understand their responsi-
bilities in a democracy.
When people throw away the right to vote by failure to exercise
that right they are putting out the welcome mat for despotism,
tyranny and dictatorship. Without the democratic right to free
elections there are no other rights.
America's democratic heritage can be strengthened and nour-
ished at the polls on Nov. 8 by a record vote that will assure
the choice of the 35th President and the 87th Congress by an
overwhelming majority of eligible voters.
i
It Figures!
T SHOULDN'T COME as much of a surprise, but the hucksters
are for Nixon. A poll of advertising and public relations execu-
tives along Madison Ave. shows they favor Nixon over Kennedy
by a 2 to 1 margin.
With the great majority of the nation's daily newspapers editorially
supporting the Republican candidate and reports of the wide business
and industrial backing of Nixon, the picture is pretty much as the
AFL-CIO General Board laid it out back in August:
"On almost every issue between the money interest and the
people's interest — housing, schools, health and all the rest —
Kennedy voted with the people, Nixon voted against the people."
Election Day Means 'Vote*
AS A NEWS STORY elsewhere in this issue reveals, the AFL-
CIO non-partisan registration campaign has been a tremendous
success. The number of new voters enrolled is far greater than the
expected rise due to the increase in population. It is probable that
when the final figures are available, a greater proportion of the
American people will be qualified to vote than ever before in, our
history.
The AFL-CIO can well be proud of its part in this achievement.
We have made a substantial contribution to the democratic process.
But let's remember that registration is only the first step. It
is not an accomplishment in itself. What counts is the turnout
on Election Day.
Unless just as good a job is done Nov. 8, all the earlier effort
will be wasted. The millions of new voters — and the old ones,
too — must exercise their right and their duty as citizens.
We hope a great majority of these voters will support the Kennedy-
Johnson ticket. But more important than that is for an overwhelm-
ing majority to go to the polls. This is an undertaking not just for
a committee, but for ajl of us.
Cast your own vote, of course; and then do what you can to make
sure that your family, your friends and your neighbors cast theirs
too.
Desperation Passer
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer.
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F, Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlmaa Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAttonal 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V Saturday, October 29, 1960 No. 44
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dust rial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Meany In Federationist:
American Voters Must Make
A Most Momentous Decision
Following is the full text of an editorial by
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany on the major
political decision facing the American voters this
November. The editorial appears in the Novem-
ber issue of the AFL-CIO American Federationist.
IN A MATTER OF DAYS the American peo-
ple will make their most momentous political
decision of our time. Our country is at the cross-
roads and we must choose one of two paths — a
bold and challenging climb toward new heights,
or the deceptively easy-looking road of the last
seven years, which slopes slowly but steadily
downward.
In 1932 we faced a similarly momentous deci-
sion but the choice was easier then. The down-
ward slope had become a precipice over which
our economy had already plunged. But the 1960
choice is just as vital, for we are nearing the
precipice now, and the dangers that lie at the
bottom are vastly greater.
Since midsummer we have discussed in the
Federationist and elsewhere the reasons why the
AFL-CIO takes this view of the presidential con-
test. Let me restate them briefly.
Our country's prestige and the cause of free-
dom have suffered a depressing series of set-
backs in recent years. We have lost ground to
the Communist world in Asia and Africa; most
shocking of all, an ally of the Kremlin now
sits 90 miles off the coast of Florida. America's
warmest friends question whether our strength
or our resolution are equal to the task of lead-
ership. We dare not elect a candidate who en-
dorses and proposes to continue the policies
that led to these setbacks.
But to be stronger abroad, we must be stronger
at home. In seven years our rate of economic
growth has been cut nearly in half; our "normal"
unemployment rate has nearly doubled. Our
shortages of schools, hospitals and housing have
gotten worse. We have increased our productive
capacity, but a growing proportion of that capacity
lies idle because our capacity to consume has not
kept pace.
We dare not elect a candidate who endorses
and proposes to continue policies that have al-
ready brought economic stagnation and would
inevitably lead to depression.
I HAVE CONFIDENCE in the American peo-
ple. 1 am sure they recognize the facts; and I am
sure they favor the high road toward a greater
nation and the strengthening of democracy
throughout the world.
The greatest threat to a victory for progress
on Nov. 8 is the qualified citizen who fails to vote.
This is no time for a minority decision. This
is a y#ar, of all years, when every registered voter
has a solemn duty to cast his ballot. The out-
come should and must be decided by a clear
majority of all the people.
I urge every AFL-CIO union member, in
particular, to go to the polls. I urge him to
make sure his family and his neighbors do
the same. Even if you do not see the issues
as I do; even if you do not agree with the
AFL-CIO position, you must do your part
as a citizen*
Vote for your own choice, out of your own
convictions; but by all means, vote.
KEEP UP
WITH
THE
WORLD
Coast to Coast
on ABC
Monday thru Friday
7 P.M. Eastern Time*
* C-*-A y&r pyp*r tot focal fta*
sponsored by AFL-CIO
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29. I960
Papr Severn
Morgan Says:
Nixon Helping Kennedy With
His 'Unbelievable' Stands
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P, Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p, m., EDT.)
THE MAIN DEBATABLE POINT which still
intriguingly lingers between Vice Pres. Nixon
and Sen. Kennedy is the margin and the inclina-
tion of the undecided vote. This anonymous but
sizeable and decisive mass has the pundits, the
pollsters and the politicians alike in a tizzy. Bet-
ting odds have been
twitching back and forth
like a nervous pendulum.
For the moment they favor
Kennedy, though nobody
knows what the "religious
issue" may do to him.
The Vice President's
news secretary, Herbert
Klein, cited a series of
private polls showing Nix-
on with more strength
than the senator in Ten-
nessee, Pennsylvania and
Illinois and with gains at Kennedy's expense in
Texas and Ohio. But more stunning news is be-
ing made by a poll being conducted by the New
York Daily News.
According to the latest News straw vote sum-
mary, Kennedy leads Nixon by a significant mar-
gin of more than five percentage points — for the
bonanza of New York's 45 electoral votes. And
in a detailed, nationwide sampling of the so-called
Catholic vote, the Wall Street Journal reports a
strong trend for the senator which could swing
key states, with many who voted for Pres. Eisen-
hower now returning to the Democratic fold.
THESE DEVELOPMENTS may or may not
contribute to the tension and defensive atmos-
phere which reporters have sensed around the
headquarters of the Vice President. Such an in-
tangible cannot be accurately measured and may
be totally deceptive. But Republican strategists
who made such a point of the importance of
Nixon's starting the campaign as an underdog
are not exhuding pleasure from their political
pores over his apparent continued occupancy of
that position now.
The role of the attacker in politics is always to
Correction Please !
view with alarm, hoping to keep the defender
so busy on defense that he has no time to point
with pride. This the Democratic nominee has
done with wounding effect although in pointing
up faults and weaknesses he has not spelled out
in detail his own remedies.
History will have the final say but at this
point it seems possible that Vice Pres. Nixon
is helping Kennedy with this chore, making
him appear more credible because Nixon's own
stands on important issues have become so
unbelievable.
In West Memphis, Ark., the day after the first
Nixon-Kennedy debate, the Vice President said
it took federal leadership to realize such projects
as TVA and Grand Coulee. But his own record
on public power is consistently against such enter-
prises.
In Forest Hills, Long Island, the very next day,
Nixon praised the 1949 housing bill. He voted
against it in Congress.
In a major speech in St. Louis in June, he
scornfully decried "growthmanship." But after
a midnight meeting in New York with Gov
Rockefeller in July, Nixon embraced that liberal
Republican's urgent but not new warning that
the country should step up its economy to a 5
percent growth rate.
The Vice President once supported the Eisen-
hower Administration's efforts to repeal the Con-
nally amendment which now makes our member-
ship in the World Court all but meaningless. But
recently, under Sen. Goldwater's right-wing
pressure, he compromised his position.
While Kennedy himself amended his stand
on Quemoy and Matsu, Nixon first went far
beyond the Administration's own position, then
retreated to it, then had Admiral Radford
condemn Kennedy's argument as threatening
war. The admiral's own well-known philospohy
has included the advocacy of outright war
against Communist China.
Nixon has come out four-square against Harry
Truman's profanity and mens evening dress of
boiled shirt, white tie and tails. The piety issue
may lose him the Army vote and the formal dress
wear people have already protested that unless
the Vice President keeps his shirt on, they are
going to lose theirs.
irs mmg:
WASHINOTON
Nixon's Distortion Technique
Blurs Kennedy Views on Cuba
"W/" E MUST END our open and warmjback-
" ing of dictators. Our honors must be re-
served for democratic leaders, not despots. Our
ambassadors must be spokesmen for democracy,
not supporters of tyrants."
This is where Sen. John F. Kennedy stands on
Cuba and the problem of totalitarianism in Latin
America, according to Correction, Please! — the
campaign bulletin of the Democratic National ,
Committee.
"Let's look at the record on Cuba," declared
the Democratic bulletin in dealing with a recent
charge leveled by Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon.
Correction, Please! quoted Nixon as saying
in Allentown, Pa., after the fourth television
debate that "Kennedy's call for U.S. govern-
ment support of a revolution in Cuba is the
most shockingly reckless proposal ever made
in our history by a presidential candidate dur-
ing a campaign/ 9
The reference was to a Kennedy proposal that
the U.S. aid the non-Batista, anti-Castro forces.
Dictator Fulgencio Batista had ruled Cuba be-
fore Fidel Castro.
During the third debate, the Democratic bulle-
tin recalled, Kennedy had replied to Nixon that
"I always have difficulty recognizing my positions
when they are stated by the Vice President."
Correction, Please! then listed a series of quota-
tions by Kennedy on Cuba and the means by
which he would support ' freedom-loving Cubans."
Kennedy said in a speech in Tampa, Fla., on
Oct. 18, the bulletin pointed out, that America
muM end the practice of supporting and honoring
Latin dictators and that this nation's ambassadors
must speak out for democracy.
"And we must constantly press for free elec-
tions," Kennedy said, "in any country where
such elections are not held."
"We must also strongly support the Commis-
sion on Human Rights of the OAS (the 21-nation
Organization of American States) — a commis-
sion which can serve as a forum before which the
crimes and repressions of dictators like Castro
and Trujillo (ruler of the Dominican Republic)
can be brought to the attention of all the people
of Latin America/ 1
Kennedy was quoted as saying in Cincinnati on
Oct. 7 that the U.S. should be "encouraging those
liberty-loving Cubans who are leading the re-
sistance to Castro."
"We must attempt to strengthen the non-
Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile
and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of
overthrowing Castro. Thus far these fighters
for freedom have had virtually no support of
our government.'*
The bulletin pointed out that, at the OAS
meeting in Costa Rica this past summer, Sec. of
State Christian Herter publicly urged the OAS
member states to "clearly indicate our great con-
cern over Cuba's domination and encouragement
of Communist influence in the Western hem-
isphere.
The bulletin said the OAS refused to name
Cuba, adopted a "much milder" resolution which
simply condemned Soviet intervention, and sev-
eral delegates plainly said the resolution was not
aimed at Cuba.
This, the bulletin asserted, was one of the
United States "worst defeats."
EN ROUTE WITH KENNEDY— Twelve days before the elec-
tion, the consensus is that the contest between Sen. John F.
Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon is delicately bal-
anced, that a landslide for Nixon seems wholly improbable but a
landslide for Kennedy could develop, that the poisonous "religious
issue" has again become a significant factor, and that the television
debates have been an enormous, perhaps decisive asset to Kennedy.
A belated recognition of this latter fact was the obvious explana-
tion of Nixon's extreme reluctance to be pushed to a fifth debate.
Whatever debater's points may have been scored in their earlier
face-to-face clashes, Kennedy took advantage of the simple appear-
ances to establish his self-possession, his maturity, his grasp of
issues and his total capacity to "handle" Nixon.
They undercut and destroyed the legend that thjp Vice President
by virtue of "experience" and training, was 14 feet tall, a candidate
uniquely qualified. It was "exposure" for Kennedy, to use that
cant word, under ideal circumstances before an audience he could
not possibly have reached otherwise.
This observer has never been able to understand why Nixon
consented, why the Republicans in Congress allowed the Federal
Communications Act to be amended to allow free time and invite
debates for the two major-party candidates.
The debate agreement violated Nixon's (and Murray Chotiner's,
his former campaign manager) basic law, proclaimed publicly,
that the better-known candiate should never "debate" with the
less-well known, because the former merely furnishes an audience
for the latter that he could not get on his own.
Chotiner told Republican political schools that Nixon's initial
success, his startling upset victory over former Rep. Jerry Voorhis
(D) of California in 1946, came because Voorhis in over-confidence
agreed to a series of debates with the then-unknown 35-year-old
Nixon.
, * * *
THE "RELIGIOUS ISSUE" cuts both ways, of course. It must
be talked about because theologically conservative Protestant evan-
gelicals planned a new offensive for "Reformation Sunday," because
the three Roman Catholic prelates of Puerto Rico chose to "direct"
their parishioners not to vote for candidates of Gov. Luis Munoz
Marin's Popular Democratic Party.
Munoz Marin himself called this a "medieval" attempt to inter-
fere in the affairs of the political state. It is no worse, surely, than
theologically conservative Baptist clergymen preaching sermons and
holding prayer meetings for the defeat of a Catholic candidate—
any Catholic candidate — for the presidency, with no consideration
of Kennedy's own clear-cut position that, like Catholic government
leaders in European states, he would totally repudiate any effort
to control his policies.
But the "issue" is a factor, its existence has undoubtedly
checked the expected farm-state revolt against Eisenhower-Ben-
son policies.
The Vice President's strategists say that "looked at through
the electoral college lens," the "issue" on balance probably hurts
Nixon more than it helps him.
The Kennedy managers point to the general opinion that in the
absence of the "issue," Kennedy would sweep the country, so
that the Democratic candidate's defeat would simply show that an-
other generation must pass before ignorance and bigotry can again be
tested by the nomination of a Catholic for the nation's highest office.
* * *
FOR LIBERALS, the election decision is easy. Kennedy "would
sign those bills," as he has stated, that Pres. Eisenhower killed by ve-
toes or veto threats. These are on school aid, job-site picketing, medi-
cal care for the aged through social security, improved unemployment
compensation, minimum wages. It is easy to believe him as he
promises to get the country "moving again."
Nixon would inherit the Republican Party lacking control of
Congress and more conservative then when he entered office, and
he could not "move" even if he wanted to.
"It was just too nice a dav to work indoors, Mr. Hobart/
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
How to Buy:
Don't Be a Sucker
For 'Free' Lessons
By Sidney Margolius
WANT TO DANCE the hotcha? Do you look better in an over-
coat than a bathing suit? Want to develop a stunning figure?
Or even better, reduce without exercising?
Many moderate-income people have been led into signing con-
tracts to pay startling amounts of money as the result of "free ,?
lessons, "contests," and high-pressure salesmanship used to sell
dance lessons and reducing treatments.
Just because you win a contest entitling you to a set of "free"
dance lessons, don't think you're
really a brain, or even lucky.
You're really being set up as a
target for some high-pressure sales-
manship which could end in finan-
cial disaster. You could wind up
being the best dancer in the poor-
house.
One Midwest worker even got
into debt to the tune of several
thousand dollars for dance lessons,
and had to go into bankruptcy,
reports the Credit Union Bridge.
In Washington, D. C, three girl
government workers who earned
$3,500-$4,000 a year signed dance
lessons agreeing to take courses
costing them $750 to $1,000.
The girls claimed they had been high-pressured into signing the
contracts. But the contracts were held to be legal, and the studio
got a court order in each case compelling payment.
In St. Louis, a woman signed a contract to pay $150 for just a
series of facial "treatments" at one of the chain "health salons" that
have sprung up in recent years.
From a number of areas, complaints are rolling in from people
who signed up for dance courses and health-club memberships.
Public authorities have taken action in several cases to bar high-
pressure practices.
In Denver, a grand jury has been investigating complaints against
dance studios.
U.S. postal authorities also are investigating to see if the mails
are being used improperly for dance-lesson promotions.
In California, the State Consumer Counsel reports it is investigat-
ing complaints about health salons that go out of business. In St.
Louis, the Better Business Bureau reports that when two suburban
Slenderella salons closed, women who had signed contracts for
treatments could not get refunds, but were told to go to a downtown
branch for their treatments. The downtown branch, as has happened
in other instances, is inconveniently distant from their homes.
In New York, the attorney general obtained an agreement from
the Vic Tanney gyms to discontinue certain practices concerning
installment contracts and statements of salespeople. One of the main
problems was that contracts could not be cancelled. The operators
now have agreed that contracts may be cancelled within 48 hours;
that they will supply facilities nearby for completion of contracts
•if one of their places closes; that the word "free" will not be used
in ads unless something of value actually is given free; that they
will stop misleading statements by salesmen.
For example, the attorney general said, one of the complaints
was that people who signed installment contracts weren't informed
of the full extent of their financial obligations. The attorney general
also secured an agreement from the Arthur Murray, Fred Astaire
and Dale dance studios to discontinue selling practices about which
people had complained.
The New York attorney general even found that some dance
studios got prospects to sign contracts on the basis that they were
receipts for the free lesson.
The Federal Trade Commission also has issued a consent order
prohibiting Arthur Murray Inc., licensor of "Arthur Murray Stu-
dios," from using what FTC called "deceptive promotional schemes"
to attract customers, and from selling lessons "through deception
and coercion."
The FTC's complaint challenged various Arthur Murray promo-
tion schemes used in radio, TV and newspaper ads, such as zodiac
puzzles, and crossword, dizzy dance and "lucky buck" contests. If
you win, you purportedly get a gift certificate for a number of lessons.
But, says the FTC, these contests are really "bait" to get your
name as a prospect. The so-called contests, of course, are so simple
that almost anyone can "win." These practices also are forbidden:
• The use, in any single day, of "relay salesmanship," with or
without the use of hidden listening devices.
• The use of so-called "analyses," "studio competitions," "dance
derbies" and similar contests which are actually intended to get
the winner to buy lessons.
• The use of partly-blank contracts, and evading or refusing to
answer questions about the amount owed so that buyers are misled
about their financial obligations.
You can forward "free gift" cards to your local Better Business
Bureau or the postal authorities. They're making a collection of
them. But don't sign any contracts for lessons. If you want to learn
to dance or use a gym, call your local Board of Education's adult
education department. For a nominal fee of five bucks or so you
can join a dancing class or enroll in the adult gym class, or take
any number of other educational and recreational courses.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius
AN UNDERSTANDING for mutual activity in strengthening the Red Cross blood program is being
signed here by Dr. Sam T. Gibson, left, national director of the Red Cross blood program, and
Leo Perlis, director, AFL-CIO Community Service Activities. Standing are Ken Kramer, left, and
Henry Gunesch, Red Cross labor liaison representatives.
Labor's United Fund Gifts
Estimated at $150 Million
New York — Nearly $150 million was contrib-
uted by organized labor for the 1960 operations
of 28,000 voluntary health and welfare agencies
in the United States and Canada.
The money was raised through labor's partici-
pation in 2,200 United Fund and Community
Chest campaigns. Coordinating this effort for the
AFL-CIO is its Community Service Activities.
Employed on the staffs of local funds and chests
are 150 full-time labor representatives.
In addition, thousands of trade unionists served
as volunteer workers during the campaigns. In
many communities, labor representatives held key
positions such as campaign chairman or co-chair-
man.
Early reports on this year's campaigns indi-
cate a significant increase in labor's contribu-
tions. Stepped-up activities are reported in a
cross-section of cities.
In Akron, O., where they are having "the
biggest layoffs in years" in the two major indus-
tries, rubber and aircraft, forecasts were optimistic
for another successful drive. To offset the many
for whom there will be no payroll deduction, other
workers are stepping up their contributions to
meet a campaign goal of nearly $3.2 million.
The Labor Participation Committee, headed by
Oliver Lee of the Steelworkers, has 60 members.
The United Fund speaker's bureau has 10 labor
spokesmen. And the Women's Div. has 15 union
members of wives of unions putting up campaign
supplies and soliciting contributions.
In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., more than 50,000 people
turned out to watch labor's United Fund Cam-
Morgan Favored
Over Rock-n-Roil
Austin, Tex. — The AFL - CIO - sponsored
news broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan,
dropped by Station KNOW here for a rock-
and-roll program with 5-minute newscasts, are
now being heard over station KVET at 6:30
p. m.
Cancellation of the Morgan program created
a major stir in the Austin area. John McCulIy,
public relations director for the Texas AFL-
CIO, said "our telephone jumped off the wall"
with listeners calling to find out Vhy. Uni-
versity of Texas students circulated petitions
for Morgan's restoration, letters were written
to the newspapers, two other area radio sta-
tions asked to broadcast the program and "we
realized the broadcasts were having a greater
influence on public thinking than we had any
idea," McCully added.
paign parade. Later, some 300 labor representa-
tives attended a rally where Vice Pres. Joseph
Collis of the Newspaper Guild was featured speak-
er. Labor representatives serve as co-chairmen of
all divisions of the Wyoming Valley United Fund.
A big assist comes from 1,400 trained union coun-
sellors who, as year-round referral sources on
United Fund services, become expert solicitors at
campaign time in shops throughout the area.
In Phoenix, Ariz., 1,500 special posters read-
ing "We're digging deep for the United Fund,"
are being displayed on construction jobs and equip-
ment. Co-chairman of the drive is Central Labor
Council Pres. Richard B. Walsh.
Despite layoffs in the rubber and metal indus-
tries, first returns are good and enthusiasm is
high. Setting an example for union members
are full-time union officers and employes, all
of whom have made substantial contributions.
In New Orleans, La., stepped-up labor-manage-
ment cooperation in the United Fund Drive is
already showing results. In one steel plant where
only five out of 85 employes gave last year, 91
out of 93 made generous contributions this year.
Despite some layoffs in building materials and
steel, initial returns show increases.
In Detroit, birthplace of Federated giving, a
labor-sponsored campaign report luncheon had
Walter P. Reuther, AFL-CIO vice president and
president of the Auto Workers, as principal
speaker. Co-chairman of the 1960 campaign,
which has a goal of $17.9 million, is UAW Vice
Pres. Norman Matthews.
Worker Gifts Rising
In Providence, R. L, early reports indicated
labor men and women were improving their gifts
to meet a goal of more than $2.3 million, an
increase of $200,000. Community service repre-
sentatives are visiting plants and stressing the year-
round services of community agencies.
In Kansas City, Mo., where organized labor
originated fair-share giving, trade unionists are
among the top leadership in the "Heart of Amer-
ica United Fund Campaigns." Principal speaker
at a United Fund dinner for the four-county area
will be Vice Pres. John Cappell of the Retail,
Wholesale & Department Store Union, AFL-CIO.
And in Washington, D. C, a special "pace-
setter" campaign was conducted in the ranks of in-
ternational union offices. With only six out of 1 1
completed reports, the total is already over the
amount raised last year.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
Page Niitt
AFL-CIO Publication Says:
Medical Plans Fall
Short on Key Needs
A "large part" of worker need for medical protection is still
unmet despite the widely negotiated surgical and other medical
benefit plans, the AFL-CIO has reported.
Collective Bargaining Report, a publication of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Research, devoted its September issue to a review of
"Medical and Surgical Benefits."^
The report deals with the Steel-
workers' plan, with recent tremds
and with common provisions of
such plans as revealed by a gov-
ernment survey.
The Steelworkers Union found
that its program, primarily Blue
Cross and Blue Shield, is or "great
value" but still is "considerably
short of the goal.*'
The union believes "little
progress" can be made under
standard insurance coverage
since it feels the major steps
ahead call for "removal of cer-
tain limitations on the present
benefits, elimination of physi-
cians' charges over and above
the fee schedules provided un-
der the programs, and the estab-
lishment of effective controls
against unnecessary hospitaliza-
tion and physician services."
The Steelworkers said it was not
optimistic and added:
"Unless the medical profession
changes many of its basic policy
positions and practices with respect
to fees, and unless it accepts great-
er responsibility for holding down
costs and improving the compre-
hensiveness of benefits, we have no
alternative except to explore the
possibilities for achieving our goals
through newer patterns."
The alternative, declared the
union, is to work toward group
practice prepayment plans such as
other unions have.
The Steelworkers reported these
main weaknesses under private in-
surance plans:
• Lack of full service on cov-
ered care. The union said it has
for 10 years tried and failed to get
doctors to accept the Blue Shield
schedule as full payment for serv-
ices; fees continue to jump ahead
as the payment schedule is im-
proved.
• Inadequate control on unnec-
essary service. There is more fre-
quent hospitalization and surgery
under insurance plans, the study
showed in comparing Steelworker
coverage under both insurance and
group-practice plans.
"On hospitalization, the Blue
Cross plan had 135 hospitaliza
tions per year for 1,000 persons
covered as against 90 under the
Kaiser (Foundation Health Plans
in California). . • • On surgery
(excluding obstetrical), there were
69 cases for 1,000 persons under
Blue Shield and 33 under the
Kaiser plans."
Cover 41% of Cost
The Steelworker study also
showed that the insurance plans
fail to cover many medical services
and that its current program "cov-
ers on the average something less
than 41 percent of total family
health costs."
The AFL-CIO publication, look-
ing at the bargaining trends of re-
cent years on surgical and medical
benefits, found that medical cov-
erage is being broadened; benefit
levels are being raised; the em-
ployer increasingly is bearing the
full financing of' benefits; coverage
for dependents as well as the work
er is now nearly standard practice,
and continuation of coverage after
retirement is increasingly provided
for.
The AFL-CIO report also point-
ed out that a Labor Dept. study
of 300 large plans, covering 4.9
million workers or about 40 per-
cent of all workers under such
negotiated plans, revealed that 293
of the plans provide surgical bene-
fits, and 213 plans provide for
medical benefits other than surgery.
Iron Workers Raise
Per Capita Tax Rate
Delegates to the Iron Workers' convention voted unanimously
to boost their union's per capita tax for the first time since 1932.
Winding up the union's 31st convention, held in Washington,
the delegates re-elected incumbent officers headed by Pres. John H.
Lyons to new four-year terms.
Sen. John F. Kennedy, who ear-^
lier had received the convention's
unanimous endorsement, addressed
the 824 delegates by telephone
pledging leadership in meeting the
problems "of unused capacity, of
men out of work and searching for
work, of a great need for national
strength."
The Democratic presidential can-
ACWA Incumbents,
6 New V. P.'s Elected
New York — Pres. Jacob S. Potof-
sky, Sec.-Treas. Frank Rosenblum
and all incumbent vice presidents
of the Clothing Workers have been
reelected in a referendum vote in
which 141,294 members of 560
locals marked ballots.
Also elected were six new vice
presidents to fill, newly created
posts, raising the total to 23. They
were Thomas DiLauro of Phila-
delphia; Charles J. Garrahan of
New York; Leonard Levy of Los
Angeles; Sam Nocella of Balti-
more; Ruth V. Payne of Birming-
ham, Ala., and Peter Swoboda of
Frackville, Pa. The general execu-
tive board, composed of the elect-
ed officers, will meet Nov. 16 to
pick an executive vice president.
didate maintained the nation has
stood still in recent years.
"Bridges which should be built
are not being built, homes and
schools and hospitals that should
be constructed are not being con-
structed," he said.
>.
"We want a better standard of
living for our people. We want
the production which comes from
a government which is affirma-
tive and compassionate. We want
to carry on with increased mini-
mum wages and medical care for
the aged tied to social security,
stimulation to housing, stimula-
tion to building and the develop-
ment of our great natural re-
sources, and the strengthening
of our position throughout the
world."
For members of the union's "out-
side locals," the convention adopted
a $2 package increase in monthly
payments, including a 75-cent hike
in per capita from $2 to $2.75, a
$1 increase in the pension fund
payments and a 25-cent raise inj
the cost of monthly death benefit
stamps. Members of shop unions
and Navy Yard riggers' locals will
pay $1 a month per capita tax,
50 cents above the present amount
THE CHARLES J. MacGOWAN Boys' Club, named for the Boilermakers' late president emeritus,
will be built in Kansas City, Kan., with proceeds of a $500,000 fund-raising campaign to start this
summer. Community leaders have endorsed the project in tribute to MacGowan and the union.
The picture shows an architect's drawing of the building, which will be started in 1961, according
to plans of the Boys' Clubs of America.
Support the UN,
Becu Asks Unions
Brussels — Worldwide dem-
ocratic labor support of the
United Nations was urged on
all affiliates of the Intl. Con-
federation of Free Trade Un-
ions by Gen. Sec. Omer Becu
on the UN's 15th anniversary.
"The 15th anniversary is of
particular significance," Becu
said, "for it coincides with the
historic mission which the UN
has undertaken to save the
young Congo nation from an-
archy and misery, as well as
with attacks which the Soviet
government has made against
the UN and its secretary-
general (Dag Hammarskjold)
and with the Soviet attempts
to emasculate the UN by in-
troducing the veto into its ad-
ministration."
Patrolmen on
Rails Rename
Top Officers
Chicago — An increase in the
number of union shop agreements
to a total of 39 was reported to
the convention of the AFL-CIO
Railway Patrolmen here.
In addition to revising and im-
proving the organization's constitu-
tion, delegates elected William J.
Ryan to a third term as president.
Also re-elected were John V. Mac-
Donald, executive vice president,
and Cecil Smithson, secretary-
treasurer. Designated regional vice
presidents were J. C. Dotson, John
Connally, C. Young, Joe C. Reber,
John J. Hornack, J. E. Murphy,
George T. Cannon, Edwin E. O'-
Brien, F. G. Hughes, and A. E.
Fields.
The union's gains since the
last convention two years ago
include the signing of more than
a dozen railroads to agreements
with improvements similar to
those won by the "non-oper-
ating" railroad unions, including
a 5-cent hourly wage increase,
adding of cost-of-living adjust-
ments to the basic wage rate, and
vacation, holiday, health and
welfare, and life insurance bene-
fits.
Negotiations are pending on all
other carriers where the union has
representation rights.
Represented at the convention
was the recently chartered local
union of patrolmen on the Galves-
ton, Tex., wharves, where the or-
ganization by a unanimous vote
won bargaining rights recently in a
National Labor Relations Board
election.
Labor Women Form
Kennedy- Johnson Unit
More than 300 women trade union and auxiliary leaders through-
out the country have formed a Committee of Labor Women for
Kennedy and Johnson to carry the campaign directly to the nation's
working women and the wives of union members.
George M. Harrison, chairman of Labor's Committee for Ken-
nedy and Johnson, announced the<^
appointment of Esther Peterson,
legislative representative of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.,
as acting secretary of the women's
committee.
In the committee's first state-
ment, a nine-point summary of the
reason union families support Ken-
nedy, Mrs. Peterson declared:
"We hope our children will
have high ideals of honesty, serv-
ice and devotion. As president,
Kennedy would foster such
ideals. We do not want our
young people to think that tricky
tactics and slick words pave the
, road to success."
Harrison, an AFL-CIO vice pres-
ident and head of the Railway
Clerks, said the committee will pro-
vide speakers, leaflets and active
organizational support in the cam-
paign. v .
Among the leading trade women
leaders serving on the committee
Railroad Unit
Votes on Rise
In Per Capita
Chicago — A two-year organiza-
tion drive will be launched soon by
the American Railway Supervisors
Association provided local lodges
approve a 50-cent a month per
capita tax increase adopted at the
union's 25th convention here.
The half-dollar hike will go to
pay field representatives' salaries.
Results of the referendum vote will
be known about Jan. 1. The asso-
ciation represents about 7,000
workers on 87 railroads.
Changes in the union's constitu-
tion and by-laws were drafted by
the 131 delegates to comply with
the 1959 Landrum-Griffin Act.
Re-elected were Corresponding
Sec. Harold W. Wright and
Financial Sec.-Treas. R. Durdik.
Pres. James P. Tahney, only
chief executive in the union's
26-year history, is up for re-
election at the next convention,
to be held here in October 1962.
Speakers included Vice Pres. Jo-
seph W. Ramsey of the Machinists,
and George T. Brown, executive
secretary of the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Safety and Occupational
Health.
are Vice Pres. Bessie Hillman of
the Clothing Workers; Vice Pres.
Angela Bambace of the J^adies'
Garment Workers; District Direc-
tor Mary Hanscom of the Commu-
nications Workers; Caroline Davis,
Auto Workers; Pres. Virginia Tin-
dall of the AFL-CIO Women's
Auxiliaries; Esther Murray, east-
ern director, and Margaret Thorn-
burgh, western director of COPE's
Women's Activities Dept.; Pres.
Gertrude E. Gray of the Women's
Auxiliary of the Street Electric
Railway Employes, and Sec.-Treas.
Neva Brewer of the Ladies Society
of the Locomotive Firemen & En-
ginemen.
'Don't Buy
Sears' Drive
Is Continued
Settlement of the Machinists'
strike against Sears Roebuck & Co.
in San Francisco was a "partial
victory" resulting from the nation-
wide consumer boycott against
Sears and does not end the boycott,
said Pres. James A. Suffridge of the
Retail Clerks.
"On the contrary," he said, "we
will redouble our boycott activities.
We intend to support the San Fran-
cisco Labor Council in its an-
nounced intention to continue this
boycott until the last fired is re-
hired, and until Sears meets the
conditions laid down by the AFL-
CIO Executive Council."
The big retail chain has rehired
a majority of the union workers
fired last May for refusing to go
through a Machinists' picket line,
but the San Francisco Labor Coun-
cil said many have been down-
graded on inferior jobs and other-
wise discriminated against. The
AFL-CIO Executive Council, in a
statement adopted Aug. 13, called
on all labor organizations to stop
buying Sears merchandise "until
management ceases to interfere
with the self-organization of em-
ployes" and makes all fired em-
ployes whole again.
Charles Osterling, coordinator of
the RCIA Consumer Boycott Com-
mittee, accused Sears management
of "company activities reminiscent
of the dark ages of labor relations.**
More than 100 top RCIA offi-
cials will meet in Chicago Nov. 10
to expand boycott activities.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, TFASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, OCTOBER », I960
RETURNED TO OFFICE at the 20th convention of the Marine
and Shipbuilding Workers in New York City are Pres. John J
Grogan, center; Sec.-Treas. Ross D. Blood, left, and Vice Pres.
Andrew A. Pettis.
Utter, Swisher Named
By Safety Council
Chicago — Lloyd D. Utter, director of the Auto Workers' Indus
trial Safety Dept., has been elected vice president for labor of the
National Safety Council and a member of the organization's execu-
tive board.
He succeeds Vice Pres. L. P. Siemiller of the Machinists, who
remains a director and a member at^
large of the NSC executive com
mittee.
Vice Pres. Elwood Swisher of
the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Work-
ers was chosen chairman of the
Stereotypers
To Appeal
NLRB Ruling
Portland, Ore. — Local 48 of the
Stereotypers is expected to appeal
to the full National Labor Rela-
tions Board against an examiner's
ruling that the union refused to
bargain with publishers of two daily
newspapers here and tried to en-
force an illegal closed shop.
Martin S. Bennett, of the San
Francisco NLRB office, recom-
mended that Local 48 "cease and
desist" from violating the Landrum-
Griffin Act and resume collective
bargaining when requested to do so
by the Oregonian Publishing Co.
and the Journal Publishing Co.
The union's walkout last Nov.
10 was illegal, the examiner as-
serted, because Local 48 demanded
an "elaborate closed shop hiring
system" and insisted that foremen
be union members.
Union spokesmen said the nil*
ing will be appealed to fye NLRB,
and probably to the U.S. Supreme
Court because of the importance
of the principle involved. The
newspapers have continued to
publish with non-union help since
some 50 Stereotypers struck. An-
other 750 union employes have
refused to cross Local 48 picket
lines.
A committee representing the un-
ions has been publishing the Port-
land Reporter twice a week. The
paper plans to publish daily start-
ing Nov. 1. The Oregon Labor
Press, published weekly in Portland,
reported recently that an Oregonian
official announced his paper will
spend up to $1 million to regain
lost circulation and compete against
the daily Reporter.
In another development, the
Guild executive committee accepted
the resignation of three officers and
set Nov 11 for an election to pick
successors. The three were Robert
Schults, president; Joe Rigert and
Allan Delay, vice presidents. Schults
announced he has submitted his
resignation also as a Guild member.
council's labor division, with
George Brown, assistant to AFL-
CIO Pres. George Meany, named
vice chairman. Both were picked
as directors, as was Charles Fergu-
son, safety director of the Mine
Workers.
The Labor Day weekend safety
campaign conducted by organized
labor and the NSC played an im
portant role in cutting down the
anticipated highway death toll, ac-
cording to an evaluation in the
council's Labor Safety Newsletter.
"Actually, the influence and im-
pact of this (or any other) cam
paign cannot be evaluated in terms
of injuries and deaths prevented,
due to lack of suitable data," the
publication says.
"However, campaign activities
are one of the recommended and
accepted methods for preventing
injuries and there can be no ques-
tion but that many injuries and
deaths were prevented in view of
the scope of this campaign."
The death toll of 415 over the
holiday weekend showed a sharp
drop from the 461 auto fatalities
in 1951 despite 20 million more
cars on the roads. The AFL-CIO
role in the campaign was directed
by a committee headed by Vice
Pres. Richard F. Walsh. Partici-
pation by local unions increased by
25 percent over 1959, when the
first campaign was held.
Meany Urges
Labor Support
Urban League
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has issued a written appeal to all
unions to help support the National
Urban League in its efforts to
achieve equality of opportunity.
Meany's appeal came in connec-
tion with the Urban League's
Equal Opportunity Day on Nov. 15
which will be highlighted by an an-
nual awards banquet in New York.
Joseph Curran, president of the
Maritime Union and Charles G.
Mortimer, chairman of the board
of General Foods Corp., will re-
ceive the 1960 awards, Meany
pointed out.
Meany said that labor and the
Urban League have worked close-
ly for many years toward the
ideal of "equality of opportunity
for all regardless of race, color or
creed."
Employer Opposition Beaten :
Workers at Civil Aviation Meet
Keep Job Problems Before ILO
Geneva — Workers employed in civil aviation fought successfully here to keep their problems be-
fore the Intl. Labor Organization despite the stubborn opposition of the industry's employers.
The workers' group won the support of government delegates to force the adoption of four key
resolutions calling for action at the international level at the close of a two-week civil aviation session
convened by the ILO.
The government representatives^
also lined up with the workers to
assure adoption of a series of con-
clusions outlining the broad princi-
ples that should govern agreements
on the hours of duty and rest peri
ods of flight crew s.
"I think that the employers
seek to shut off the workers from
access to the facilities of the
ELO," Pres. Clarence N. Sayen of
the Air Line Pilots charged on
the conference floor.
Sayen and Frank Heisler, airlines
coordinator of the Machinists, were
U.S. worker spokesmen at the ses-
sion attended by a total of nearly
150 labor, government and employ
er delegates from 18 countries.
"We think that the ILO can make
a substantial contribution to solv-
ing some of the problems that are
specific to this particular industry,'
Sayen also told the conference.
All the votes that ended with the
employers on the losing end of 2-1
majorities centered on the key is
sue of whether the workers should
have the same protection as those of
other industries by having their
problems examined in the ILO,
ILO Action Urged
Sayen summed up the workers'
conviction that there should be con-
tinuing ILO action in the industry.
The ILO could make a "tremen-
dous contribution to finding solu-
tions" to its problems as they arise,
he maintained.
But for the employers such vital
questions as the fate of mechanics
and other ground staff and flight
crews made jobless by new aircraft,
the loss of work time or even jobs
by airline pooling arrangements,
were all "matters which are best
handled at the national or company
level," in the words of U.S. em-
Roofers Vote
To Support
Kennedy
St. Louis — Some 300 delegates
to the 15th triennial convention of
the Roofers, on a motion from the
floor, warmly endorsed Sen. John
F. Kennedy for president and urged
all members to work for his elec-
tion.
The delegates, representing near-
ly 21,000 members in about 240
locals, also reelected their officers
headed by Pres. Charles D. Aqua-
dro and Sec.-Treas. Melvin C.
Fink.
A few sections of the inter-
national union constitution were
revised to comply with the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act, and the 1963
convention was awarded to New
York.
Speakers included - Representa-
tives Melvin Price (D-lll.) and
Frank Kersten (D-Mo.); Mayor
Raymond R. Tucker of St. Louis;
Pres. John Reuter of the National
Roofing Contractors Association;
Mrs. Virginia Bradine of the
Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Label Dept.; Jack Braden of the
Union Labor Life Insurance Co.;
Pres. Arthur A. Hunn and Execu-
tive Sec. Joseph Cousins of the
St. Louis Area Building Trades
Council; Pres. Aloys P. Kaufman
of the Chamber of Commerce of
Metropolitan St. Louis; John N.
McElravey of the Armstrong Cork
Co., and Msgr. James Johnson,
St. Louis, president and general
manager of the Father Dempsey
Charities.
ployer delegate Joseph O'Brien,
vice president for personnel rela-
tions of the U.S. Air Transport
Association.
"The ELO exists to provide a
forum for dealing with social
questions affecting all industrial
workers," the labor representa-
tives said in their resolution on
future ILO action.
"By reason of its international
character and rapid technological
development," the industry has
raised for its workers "many and
varied social problems" that "are
likely to increase in the future,"
they added.
Although the resolution asked
merely that the conference call on
the ILO's Governing Body "to give
attention all such problems" in
whatever way it considered appro-
priate, the employers fought it
desperately.
But the workers won when their
proposal was adopted by a vote of
57 to 30, with two abstentions.
Other Resolutions
Other resolutions submitted by
the workers and adopted by the
conference over the opposition of
the employers included:
• A request to the ILO to study
the employment conditions of per-
sonnel in essential navigation serv-
ices to see if they are good enough
to attract the right people.
• A similar demand for an ILO
study to determine ways to assure
adequate new jobs or compensation
for flight and ground staff made
jobless by technological develop-
ments.
• A call for a review of meas-
ures for protecting airline employes
against claims of civil liability.
• A request for an assessment
of practices in various countries re-
garding the firing of hostesses be-
cause of age limits or marriage.
While recognizing the Intl. Civil
Aviation Organization's primary
responsibility for all questions con-
cerning safety, the conference ack-
nowledged that the ILO was also
concerned in the impact of hours
of work and rest periods on work-
ers.
In defining the principles which
should govern regulation of these
questions, the conference also said
that their application "should be
the subject of consultation between
the employers' and workers' organ-
izations concerned."
A safeguard clause stipulated
that nothing in the conclusions
reached should be used to seek an
amendment of any existing law,
regulation or contract giving "more
favorable conditions to the work-
ers."
Electricity, Gas Price
Gyps Blamed on FPC
A leading consumers group has charged that failure of the Federal
Power Commission to regulate the electric power and natural gas
industries is costing consumers $1 billion more for electricity and
millions more for gas each year than in 1952 because of rate hikes.
The Electric Consumers Information Committee, in its current
newsletter, charged that FPC has^
come to mean "Failure to Protect
Consumers."
The newsletter cited government
figures showing a rise of 65 per-
cent in field prices since 1953 and
a rise of 38.1 percent in the retail
price of gas since 1952.
The ECIC also charged that a
Republican campaign document
which talks of FPC "accomplish-
ments" since 1953 is "an out-
right deception" because the fact
is consumers have been "had."
The ECIC also recalled that
FPC Member William R. Connole
was "fired" this ' year after com-
piling a distinguished five-year rec-
ord. When this Eisenhower ap-
pointee "turned out to be a be-
liever in regulation in the public
interest, as required by law, he sim-
ply was not reappointed," ECIC
said.
ECIC, an information and re-
search group backed by power,
farm, labor, rural electric and
cooperative organizations, also
Painter Cited for Aid
To Israeli Training
New York — Pres. Jacob Well-
ner of the Brooklyn Painters Joint
Executive Council was honored at
a $50-a-plate testimonial dinner for
his activities in behalf of Boys
Town of Jerusalem.
The U.S. organization which sup-
ports the Boys Town presented a
citation honoring him for his aid to
vocational training for youth "re-
gardless of their race, creed or
national origin." Pres. Lawrence M.
Raftery of the Painters was the
principal speaker and Vice Pres.
Michael Di Silvestro was dinner
chairman.
charged that FPC has allowed utili-
ties to overcollect taxes from con-
sumers; it has violated the law's
50-year licensing limitation, and
has sanctioned underdevelopment
of resources by private monopolies,
Pennsylvania
$1 Pay Floor
Set in Stores
Harrisburg, Pa. — A statewide
minimum wage of $1 an hour lor
women and children in mercantile
establishments will become effective
Jan. 15, Sec. of Labor & Industry
William L. Batt Jr. ruled in accept-
ing the recommendations of a nine-
member wage board.
About 250,000 women and mi-
nors in communities of 10,000 to
500,000 population will be affected
immediately. In view of a recent
ruling by State Atty. Gen. Anne X.
Alpern that the 1959 Equal Pay Act
applies to both men and women,
Batt's action has the effect of estab-
lishing a $1 minimum for all work-
ers in wholesale or retail business
in the state.
Minimum wages and ovenime
regulations will be uniform through-
out Pennsylvania effective Jan. 15,
1962. Meanwhile the minimum
wage for learners under the new
regulation will be 85 cents an hour
and the overtime rate of time-and-
a-half will start at 40 hours. In
communities of less than 10,000
population, where the minimum
has been 75 cents, there will be
interim rates of 90 cents for ex-
perienced workers and 80 cents for
learners, with overtime starting at
42 hours.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. 0, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
Page ElerMi
Kennedy Lists Distortions:
Nixon 'Corrections'
Compound Error
Sen. John F. Kennedy, in answering Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon's "white paper" on alleged Kennedy "distortions," has cited
the Republican voting record — and Nixon's own votes — against
social welfare legislation.
In attempting to present "glaring errors," Kennedy said, Nixon has
succeeded in repeating "some of<^
the most glaring errors Mr. Nixon
has made in this campaign." Ken-
nedy said his reply could not possi-
bly cover "the total record of
Nixon misstatements, slurs and
distortions/'
Kennedy challenged Nixon to
help correct the record by answing
some 10 questions. For example:
"Why do you repeat the state-
ment that real wages have gone
up 15 percent during the pres-
ent administration compared
with only 2 percent in the pre-
vious one, when your own Dept.
of Labor figures clearly estab-
lish that the increase between
September 1945 (the first post-
war month) and January 1953
was 18.3 percent while the in-
crease between January 1953
and August 1960 has been 13.7
percent?"
When you insist that federal aid
to teachers* salaries means federal
control over education, Kennedy
asked Nixon, "are you aware"
that current federal aid to educa-
tion in federally impacted areas
has been free of such control and
the aid to education program
"which you killed with your tie-
breaking vote" explicitly prohibited
federal control?
Nixon, in his "white paper,"
listed alleged Kennedy "misstate-
ments and distortions" in the areas
of economic growth, resources,
agriculture, education, forestry, de-
fense, health, civil rights, housing,
the Quemoy and Matsu issue, the
minimum wage and aid to the aged.
Kennedy replied that the "facts"
UAW Urges
All to Expose
Hate Groups
Detroit — The Auto Workers has
urged that "every American, every
public official, every newspaper
and magazine" meet the obligation
to expose organized hate groups
"without fear or favor or without
personal or partisan preference."
The UAW, in an editorial sched-
uled to appear in the Oct. 28 issue
of Solidarity, the union's official
publication, noted that some tens
of millions of pieces of literature
are expected to be distributed "for
the purpose of stirring up anti-
Catholic religious bigotry in order
to defeat Senator Kennedy." Only
"an aroused and alerted people"
can stop the hate groups and pro-
tect America's moral credentials
before the world, it added.
The UAW said it has been the
target of "vicious falsehoods, fab-
rications and slanders" and added:
"As a victim of hate group
propaganda, we are deeply dis-
tressed and regret most sincerely
that a recent publication issued
by the UAW to counteract some
of this poisonous hate material
was misinterpreted. The publi-
cations that some have read into
this publication were not in-
tended.* 9
The UAW editorial said the pur-
pose of the publication was to stress
that religion was not a proper cam-
paign issue and that bigotry was
being used to obscure the real
issues.
"We respect the right of anyone
to disagree with us on those is-
sues," the UAW, "and to vote as
he chooses without in any way con-
sidering that his disagreement is
evidence of bigotry or intolerance."
presented by Nixon were more of
Nixon's "glaring errors."
Nixon charged Kennedy with a
"misstatement" when ihe latter said
in the first debate that Republicans
give "lip service" to medical care
for the aged and, in the second
television debate, that Republicans
"not only in the last 25 years, but
in the last eight years, have op-
posed . . . care for the aged. . . ."
Nixon said the facts are that
Democratic-controlled Congresses
rejected proposals by the Eisen-
hower Administration "to allow all
aged persons of moderate means
an opportunity to purchase pro-
tection" against illness and instead
favored "a compulsory program of
health insurance."
Cites the Record
Kennedy pointed out that 107
out of 115 Republicans in Congress
voted against the Social Security
Act of 1935.
"In 1949, Mr. Nixon and 110
other Republicans in the House of
Representatives voted to eliminate
benefits to persons who became dis-
abled," Kennedy declared.
In 1956, he added, the ' Eisen-
hower Administration opposed
lowering the retirement age for
women to 62 and also opposed
benefits for persons who became
permanently and totally disabled.
Until late this year, Kennedy
charged, the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration opposed any action on
health care for the aged and the
bill backed by Nixon failed to re-
ceive a single Republican vote
when it was considered by the
Senate Finance Committee.
Nixon charged Kennedy with a
"misstatement" when he said dur-
ing the second debate that Re-
publicans over the past 25 years
and in the last 8 years, "have op-
posed . . . federal aid to educa-
tion. • . ."
Nixon did not provide any
voting figures to show GOP sup-
port, but said this Administration
proposed bills annually from
1955 through 1960. He said he
and the President are on record
in favor of such aid. He neither
mentioned nor explained his own
tie-breaking vote against school
aid.
Kennedy pointed out that, in the
Republican-controlled 83rd Con-
gress, "there was no federal aid
to education bill."
In 1959, Kennedy continued, "a
threatened (presidential) veto pre-
vented any vote upon a school
bill."
In 1960, House Republicans op-
posed school aid, 92 to 44 and
Senate Republicans opposed it 22
to 9.
Among the challenges Kennedy
put to Nixon were these:
• "Why have you stated that I
support a minimum wage which
'official studies show would force
unemployment and business fail-
ures' when there are no such studies,
just Administration assertions that
this might happen — assertions like
those made by Republicans every
time an increase in the minimum
wage is proposed?'*
• "How can you call the vetoed
1960 Democratic bill on depressed
areas 'straight pork-barrel' when
your own Secretary of Labor, just
24 hours before the veto was an-
nounced, called the bill 'good
enough so that any senator or con-
gressman from a state with areas
of chronic unemployment would
have no alternative but vote for
it'?"
SMILES CAME READILY at a political rally in Scranton, Pa., for these participants: left to right,
COPE Dir. James McDevitt; Rep. Stanley Prokop, 10th District Democrat; AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany; and Sen. Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.).
Meany Tells Rally Labor's Big Job
Is to Cast Votes Against 'Stagnation'
Scranton, Pa. — The 1960 election is the "most important election in our time," and there is no more
important job for the trade union movement than to get out the vote "against stagnation" and "for
progress," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany told a rally here.
Talking to 3,500 persons who attended the "get-out-the-vote" meeting, Meany bore down hard
on the "prestige" issue, the economic outlook and the Administration's record on aid to depressed
areas.
This is a strange campaign, the
AFL-CIO president declared, be-
cause "if you feel that the prestige
of the United States has suffered in
the last five years and say so then
you are guilty of doing something
unpatriotic. The crime seems to be
in talking about the decline of the
U. S."
He told the union rally that
"I resent the idea that there is
something unpatriotic about tell-
ing the truth. I resent the idea
that the American people are
afraid of the truth. I believe
that the American people can
be -trusted to do the right thing
if they are told the truth."
Meany said that Vice Pres. Nixon
"with a perfectly straight face," has
told the nation that it is at the peak
of Eisenhower prosperity, that La-
bor Sec. Mitchell says "we never
had it so good," that Pres. Eisen-
hower talks of the record number
of employed.
"What they neglect to tell you,"
said Meany, "is that there are more
people."
Reviewing the general deteriora-
tion in the nation's economic health,
the impact of automation and new
technology and the growth in the
labor force, Meany charged that
there is "no sign that this Admin-
istration is even thinking about this
problem."
The nation needs 25,000 jobs a
week for the next 10 years to bring
about real prosperity and full em-
ployment, he said. If there is no
Administration action to halt the
economic slide the situation may
Hosiery Workers
Support Kennedy
Philadelphia — The executive
board of the Hosiery Workers
unanimously has called for the
election of the Kennedy-Johnson
ticket "and the end of divided,
stalemated government."
The board compared the voting
records of Sen. John F. Kennedy
and Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon
over the years and said it found
Kennedy consistently on the side
of the public welfare and Nixon
opposed.
On foreign policy, the union said
it "views with alarm how close this
Eisenhower - Nixon Administration
foreign policy has permitted the
drift towards war, through blunders
and ineptness siJch as the U-2 and
summit incidents."
well become "catastrophic," he
added.
On the depressed area situation
— Scranton is one of these areas —
Meany assailed Nixon's statements
that there would have been more
money in the Administration aid
proposal than in the bill vetoed by
Pres. Eisenhower. "This just is not
true," said Meany and Nixon is
either misstating the facts or is
guilty of "gross ignorance."
He noted that neither of the
bills had any money quotas and
that the bill supported by Demo-
cratic senators provided for
more funds as well as public
loans, and a retraining program.
The President's vetoes of de-
pressed area aid bills in the past
few years are the "biggest black
marks" on the Administration's
record, he charged.
This situation can be changed,
Meany asserted, by a concentrated
effort to get out the vote and for
trade union members to vote against
stagnation and for progress. This
is the only way to make America
strong and meet the Soviet chal-
lenge, he declared.
For and Asks Seniors
To Support Kennedy
Buffalo, N.Y. — Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-R.I.) has urged the
election of Sen. John F. Kennedy as president to assure the passage
of a Forand-type bill to provide medical care for the aged under
an expanded social security system.
Speaking at a rally of 3,000 Buffalo area senior citizens in Klein-
hans music hall, the sponsor of the'^
Forand ' bill declared: "The only
way to be sure of such legislation
is to have a friend on our side in
the White House."
Forand said he is not asking his
audience to vote for Kennedy be-
cause he is a Democrat. "I am
selfish enough to ask you to vote
for him because I want a Forand-
type bill to become a reality."
Kennedy, on a campaign
swing through upstate New York,
addressed the same group an
hour later and assured the senior
citizens that Forand-type legis-
lation is not dead.
"I want to make it very clear,
whether I am President or in the
Senate next January, we are going
to bring it up again and pass it,"
the Democratic standard-bearer
promised.
Forand, who is retiring at the end
of his present term after 22 years
in the House, said he has arranged
with Rep. Thaddeus M. Machro-
wicz (D-Mich.) to introduce a For-
and-type bill in the next session of
Congress.
The Rhode Island congressman
also attacked the medical care for
the aged bill that was passed last
summer as "a measly piece of legis-
lation."
This test, Forand asserted,
amounts to "a pauper's oath" which
would be given by states with vary-
anyone
ing requirements before
could obtain medical care.
The rally — biggest ever staged in
western New York for senior citi-
zens — was sponsored by the retired
members council of the Auto Work-
ers to mark the 25th anniversary of
the Social Security Act and the
10th anniversary of the first UAW-
negotiated pension payments.
Political 'Subsidies 9
Urged on Doctors
Is there a doctor in the
House?
There will be doctors all
over the House if the medical
rank and hie support a sug-
gestion that "ample subsidies"
be provided doctor-legislators
and that "friendly" candidates
be given "significant financial
support."
Dr. Ian Macdonald offered
the idea in the Los Angeles
County Medical Association
Bulletin.
Macdonald said senators
and congressmen hear from
doctors but never see "med-
ical money"at campaign time.
The "free ride" is over, he
said, suggesting that doctors
get into politics themselves
and bolster their political
power "by impressive giving
of money, without blanching,
for our own preservation."
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1960
Confident Kennedy Rips Nixon Claims
Appeals for Votes to
'Get America Moving'
(Continued from Page 1)
is "America cannot afford it." I say
"we can't afford another recession,'*
he said in his speech prepared for
delivery.
Hundreds of thousands lined the
streets in midtown Manhattan, on
Broadway, 34th St. and Seventh
Ave., as Kennedy moved to a sec-
ond rally in the city.
The crowd estimate of 250.000
contrasted sharply with the 8,000
persons reported by New York
newspapers who turned out for
Nixon two weeks earlier.
"We can't afford poverty. We
can't afford to overcrowd mil-
lions of families in broken-down
neglected, unsanitary firetraps that
produce disease and crime and ur-
ban decay," Kennedy declared.
"We can't afford overcrowded
schools with inadequate facilities
and underpaid teachers. We can-
not afford waste — the waste of
people through racial and re-
ligious discrimination."
In the coliseum on the Michigan
State Fair Grounds in Detroit, he
had directly accused the Eisen-
hower Administration of having
brought on a new recession. "The
leaders of the Republican Party
have spilled this country into three
recessions in the last eight years,"
he said.
"What does Mr. Khrushchev
think when he looks at the power-
ful United States using 53 percent
of our steel capacity?" he asked.
Kennedy campaigned almost to
the saturation point in the Midwest
before moving to New York for a
Clothing Workers' rally in Union
Square on top of the garment cen-
ter speech, and a last drive into the
normally Republican suburban
areas that have shown unmistakable
signs of disaffection with Nixon
and the GOP.
Heavy Schedule Ahead
Ahead of him lay a heavy sched-
ule of three days in Pennsylvania,
a two-day campaign in California
and a return Nov. 4 to Chicago for
a last speech in Illinois.
The prize in the states in which
he concentrated was a rich one —
a total of 167 electoral votes of
the 269 needed for election.
He began his sweep in the dairy-
lands and cities of Wisconsin,
moved into downstate Illinois in-
dustrial towns and the heavily Re-
publican Fox River Valley, then on
to Detroit and its suburbs.
His subjects were varied but the
theme was the same — "I say we
must do more," toward full em-
ployment and faster economic
growth, toward the education of all
children to their full potential,
toward re-establishment of our
trading abroad, toward restoration
of the farmer's place in our
economy.
He charged that Nixon had
"seriously misled the American
people" personally and through
Administration refusal to publish
government surveys acknowledg-
ing that neutrals and our closest
allies believe that Soviet military
strength has become the "mighti-
est" and that the so-called "gap"
is likely to remain or to widen.
The Vice President in the Oct.
21 debate, Kennedy pointed out,
had said that any such survey on
damaged American standing was
made "many, many months ago,
and related to the period immedi-
ately after Sputnik" — that is, three
years ago, in the fall of 1957.
In fact, Kennedy told his audi-
ences on the basis of New York
Times publication of stories and
text, a survey made only last sum-
mer revealed the tarnished prestige.
There was a new note of ridicule,
wit and sheer delight in political
battle in Kennedy's manner as he
campaigned.
"1 run with pleasure against the
Vice President," he announced
in fast-growing Monroe County.
Mich. He said the same thing
wherever he went, all over the
country, running frankly and with-
out apology as "the candidate of
the Democratic Party."
He could not remember a
single rime in Nixon's "14-year
career in the House and the Sen-
ate and as a voting Vice Presi-
dent," he declared cheerfully,
when the Republican candidate's
name" was attached to a forward-
looking piece of legislation or the
majority of the Republican Party
voted for it."
He charged that Nixon was hunt-
ing desperately for a last-minute
issue to raise and referred to the
Republican nominee's voting rec-
ord again to challenge Nixon's
campaign devotion to housing, so-
cial security and school-aid pro-
grams he says he favors.
In the shopping centers where
Kennedy spoke repeatedly, the
areas where city workers have
moved for suburban homes, the
nominee spoke of the obligation of
the government to make sure that
every child has the opportunity of
education to his full capacity.
If you have to pay for new
schools and better teachers' salaries
through local taxes, he told one
crowd, you will have to do it
through the property tax," and that
is the most regressive tax of all" —
the one a family breadwinner has
to pay whether or not he has a
job, on penalty of losing everything
he may have accumulated.
"We must tell Mr. Khrushchev
that a new generation of Ameri-
cans has come to power, and that
the country is going to pick itself
up," he said in a Republican
township.
"If you think we are doing
everything we should be doing — in
regard to our prestige, in regard to
economic growth, in regard to jobs,
in regard to medical care for the
aged, then you belong in Mr.
Nixon's camp.
"If you think we should do
more, then you belong with us,
and I ask your help."
A PAPER SNOWSTORM greets Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife as they ride up Broad-
way on the Democratic presidential candidate's recent trip to New York. The picture shows the
Kennedys riding in an open car in the financial district.
Nixon 'Reform' Program Assailed
As Disguised National Sales Tax
Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon, unveiling a position paper on labor and another on economic policy,
has proposed Taft-Hartley amendments to deal with major disputes and urged "reform" of the tax
system "to enhance personal incentives" and to "speed" investment.
Nixon's tax program was attacked immediately as "an attempt to soak the poorest in the name of
incentives for the wealthiest" by Jacob dayman, administrative director of the AFL-CIO Industrial
Union Dept. ^
On labor, Nixon restricted him-
self to proposing two Taft-Hartley
amendments. One would give the
President power to create a fact-
finding board in major disputes "at
any time he sees fit." At present,
a dispute must be deemed a "na-
tional emergency" before fact-find-
ing can be ordered.
The second proposal would em-
power a board convened under
Taft-Hartley to make recommenda-
tions before an 80-day injunction
is sought under Taft-Hartley's pres-
ent emergency provisions. At pres-
ent, the emergency fact-finding
board cannot make recommenda-
tions.
Nixon said his proposals aim
to clarify the issues for the pub-
lic before a major dispute be-
comes a national emergency and,
if this fails, then the presidential
board's recommendations can be
offered before the present 80-day
cooling-off injunction is invoked.
Nixon's 12-point economic policy
statement was presented as a speech
before the National Association of
Business Economists in New York.
It featured a National Economic
Council which would parallel the
National Security Council, "an early
warning economic intelligence sys-
tem" to guard against inflation and
recession, and "reform" of the tax
system.
The tax approach attacked by the
IUD is as follows:
"To stimulate the growth poten-
tial of our economy, we should re-
form our tax system to enhance
personal incentives and speed the
investment in new plants and equip-
Nixon Seeks Votes with Pledge
Of Summit Talks on Test Ban
(Continued from Page 1)
"we are putting the heat on now."
Nixon locked horns with Ken-
nedy on the latter's charge that
America's prestige relative to that
of the Soviet Union has been slip-
ping because of Republican poli-
cies.
Kennedy had dramatized his
charge by holding up before au-
diences a New York Times' story
of Oct. 25 headlined "U.S. sur-
vey finds others consider Soviet
mightiest."
"I say it's wrong and I say he's
got to retract it," Nixon told a
cheering crowd of 20,000 who
stood in the rain in Dayton, O. He
called Kennedy's campaign "one of
the most irresponsible" he had ever
seen.
"I say to my opponent to quit
running America down at home
and abroad," Nixon added. "We
are not going to move America
forward by running America
down."
On another front, the sparks con-
tinued to fly inside the Republican
command over vice presidential
candidate Henry Cabot Lodge's
"pledge" or "prediction" that the
Nixon cabinet would include a
Negro. The -latest happenings:
• Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-
Ariz.) said in a television appear-
ance in New York City that "blun-
der" might be the word to describe
Lodge's statements. Goldwater said
he has little interest "in what Mr.
Lodge wants or doesn't want."
• Sen. Thruston Morton (R-
Ky.), Republican national chair-
man, told a Rotary Club meeting
in Cincinnati that Lodge had put
the party in an "awkward" position.
Nixon, promising reporters he
would "turn on the heat" in the
crucial stretch drive, turned it off
in a speech billed by aides as proof
that Kennedy has been off base by
saying the Eisenhower Administra-
tion tried to get Chiang Kai-shek
to pull back from Quemoy and
Matsu.
Nixon's prepared speech for
some 16,000 at the Cincinnati
Gardens said that "Senator Ken-
nedy challenged me to deny this
and I do flatly, categorically and
emphatically. ..." He accused
Kennedy of "glaring error of
fact" and of being "irrelevant."
Nixon failed to include this in
his actual speech, explained press
secretary Herbert G. Klein, be-
cause crowd applause exhausted
the time. But Nixon "stood be-
hind" the text, he added.
This happened at the whistle-
stops:
• At Huntingdon, Pa., Nixon
described Kennedy as "the kind of
man Khrushchev could make
mince-meat of."
• At Johnstown, Pa., he said
Pres. Eisenhower vetoed two aid-
to-depressed areas bills because the
Democratic measures represented
"a shotgun when you needed a
rifle."
• At Springfield, O., Nixon said
Kennedy lacks the "political cour-
age" to point out that the Demo-
crats' farm plan would cause the
loss of 1 million farm jobs and
create "a nationwide network of
black markets."
• At Parkersburg, W. Va., he
said Kennedy's proposal to aid anti-
Castro forces had "rocked the
capitals of the world." Earlier, he
called this "shockingly reckless."
ment that makes jobs and spurs
productivity. -
"In this time of challenge to the
09-02-0 J.
American economy, taxes designed
in an earlier time, and still in the
law, to punish success are not only
obsolete, they hobble the economy's
advance. '
"A tax system moving toward
some revision in personal and cor-
porate rates, reform in depreciation
aUowances, a broader base for ex-
cises at a rate well below those now
in effect and protection of state
and municipal revenues — these and
other changes would contribute sub-
stantially to a better environment
for economic growth."
Clayman charged that, in pro-
posing a broader base for excise
taxes, "Nixon is seeking to
establish a national sales tax un-
der the guise of manufacturers'
excises and as a substitute for
present corporate and income
tax rates."
Nixon's program adversely affects
the mass purchasing power needed
to keep the economy rolling, Clay-
man said, declaring:
"It is nothing but an attempt to
soak the poorest in the name of
incentives for the wealthiest,"
To keep the economy efficient,
Nixon proposed an attack on "feath-
erbedding." This includes, he said,
4t bureaucratic waste and ineffi-
ciency" in government and also "the
make-work mentality still surviving
in some quarters of labor."
He included as well the pricing
practices of some firms and "infla-
tionary wage settlements in labor-
management negotiations that in-
volve overpaying ourselves for the
work we do."
Record-Breaking Vote Seen in Election
Vol. V
Issied weekly at 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.,
Washinftsn 6. D. C. $2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington
Saturday, November 5, 1960
No. 45
Meany Election-Eve Appeal
Lauds Kennedy Leadership
Kennedy
Given Edge
By Experts
By Willard Shelton
A record-breaking vote, with
between 65 million and 70 mil-
lion likely to go to the polls, was
expected as the fierce election
campaign between Sen. John F.
Kennedy and Vice Pres. Richard
M. Nixon neared its end.
National magazines, public
opinion pollsters and impartial
newsmen generally anticipated a
Kennedy victory, largely on the
basis of a belief that Kennedy had
forged ahead in heavily populated
industrial states where the bulk of
the Electoral College vote lies.
Nearly all observers acknowl-
edged, however, that the election
seemed extremely close, and a
Nixon victory would not be con-
sidered a surprise.
Observers thought that a Nixon
triumph, if it occurred, would
probably be narrow and that
only Kennedy had a good chance
of something approaching an
Electoral College landslide.
The results seemed subject to two
imponderables:
• The possible effect of the last-
minute intervention of Pres. Eisen-
hower, who campaigned massively
in the key states of New York,
Pennsylvania and Ohio. Nixon
clearly was hoping for a "ruboff"
of Eisenhower personal popularity
to aid him. The President openly
and repeatedly urged the election
(Continued on Page 12)
By Any Other Name
It's Still a Rose
Even the Republican Na-
tional Committee is hesitant
to use the Republican Party
label.
This came to light in a
memorandum to national
committeewomen, state and
county vice chairmen and
GOP women workers from
Mrs. Clare B. Williams, as-
sistant national committee
chairman.
Urging a flood of letters to
editors of newspapers across
the country, Mrs. Williams
cautioned them to "stress
Nixon-Lodge, not the Re-
publican Party." The expla-
nation was that this would
help pick up "the independ-
ent vote, which is what we
need to win the election."
SEN. JOHN F. KENNEDY stands on the hood of his auto in Los
Angeles in response to the cheers of a crowd that roared a welcome
from downtown streets. Southern Californians held signs aloft to
show how they feel about the Democratic candidate for President.
Congress in the Election :
Democrats Favored
To Keep Control
By Gene Zack
As the 1960 election campaign moved toward its climax Demo-
crats were strongly favored to retain firm control of the 87th
Congress, regardless of the outcome of the presidential race.
This view of observers, including AFL-CIO staff reporters and
special correspondents in key states across the nation, is reinforced
by virtually all of the pre-election^
polls.
The Republicans have a mathe-
matical chance, but only the most
partisan claim that they will re-
capture either the House or Senate.
The Democrats now outnum-
ber the GOP in the Senate by 66
to 34. Even if Republicans were
to pick up all the non-southern
Democratic seats at stake and re-
tain all 11 GOP seats up for grabs
they would still be four votes shy
of a majority. Neither side of
the equation is considered likely.
In the view of political observers
the Democrats are favored to main-
tain something close to the present
Senate division, with a possibility
of a one or two-seat change either
way. One additional seat would
give the Democrats an absolute
two-thirds control of the Senate.
The Democratic majority in the
House, making allowances for pres-
ent vacancies, is 283 to 154 — high-
est since the middle years of the
New Deal. It would take a switch
(Continued on Page 11)
Hits Nixon Stand
On Prestige Issue
The workers of America "seek strong and courageous leadership**
in the 60s and "they are convinced they have found it in John F.
Kennedy," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany declared in a nationwide
pre-election radio address.
Meany called the presidential election u the most important of
our time," and declared that it^
centers on two main problems:
'Politics' on
Job Ratio
Denounced
By Robert B. Cooney
The Eisenhower-Nixon Ad-
ministration's apparent reluctance
to reveal the October jobless re-
port until after the election has
been scored by AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany as "a bare-faced
attempt to suppress bad news for
political purposes."
In a nationwide radio address,
Meany said that information on
hand points strongly to the s fact
that the national jobless rate last
month rose to "above 6 percent—
a serious danger point."
The AFL-CIO president pointed
out that the Administration, in re-
fusing to release the figures early,
was breaking with a pattern which
it had set itself three times before
—in 1954, 1956 and 1958— when
the Administration "had good news
to report."
Meany's charge came as reliable
sources indicated more workers
would be collecting unemployment
compensation in the week before
the 1960 election than in any other
postwar pre-election week. And
a pending government report was
due to show that initial claims for
jobless pay — indicating fresh un-
employment — hit a new record for
the week ending Oct. 29.
(Continued on Page 2)
27 States to Choose Governors,
Switches Seen in Several Areas
By David L. Perlman
Voters in 27 states will elect governors on Nov. 8 and indications are that the presidential race
will be only one of several factors in determining the outcome.
In some states, clear-cut issues have developed such as opposing stands of rival gubernatorial
candidates on so-called "right-to-work" laws. In other states, the outcome appears to hinge on intangi-
bles such as local issues and the personalities of the candidates.
Of the 33 governorships held by&-
• "How can our country and
the rest of the free world be safe-
guarded against war and the in-
creasing menace of totalitarian
communism?"
• "How can we strengthen our
own society, economically and so-
cially, so that America can make
its most effective contribution to
peace and freedom?"
The AFL-CIO president —
speaking over the national radio
network of the National Broad-
casting Co. under sponsorship
of the AFL-CIO Committee on
Political Education — said the
1960 campaign presented the
American voters with a clear
choice between "sharply diver-
gent roads to reach the goals
that all America seeks."
Meany hailed Kennedy and the
Democratic Party for offering
America "a positive program of
hope and fulfillment." The Demo-
crats, he said, "see new opportuni-
ties opening up for America in the
future. They want to take advan-
tage of the new breakthroughs cf
science to provide a more reward-
ing and a more secure life for all
Americans."
'Desperation' Charged
In sharp contrast, he said, Vice
Pres. Nixon and the Republicans
have advanced "a program of des-
peration and defeatism." He
charged that Nixon and the QOP
"take a dim view." The want to
"hold on to the past for dear life,
with as little change as possible,
with only such progress as is forced
upon them," he declared.
(Continued on Page 12)
the Democrats, only 14 are at stake
this year, while 13 of the GOP's
17 governorships are on the elec-
tion block.
Pre-election polls and the
analysis of informed observers,
including AFL-CIO News staff
reporters and special correspond-
ents, give Democratic guberna-
torial candidates an excellent
chance of capturing several states
now held by Republicans, in-
cluding Illinois, the most pop-
ulous of the 27.
The same sources, however, show
Republican challengers making
strong showings in several Farm
(.Continued on Page 11)
Page Tw«
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
'Politics 9 on
Job Ratio
Denounced
(Continued from Page 1)
The October report each year
usually shows a comparatively fa-
vorable situation as business hires
for the long holiday period ahead
and as fall harvests put people to
work.
However, the hard figures of un-
employment compensation in 1960
— a conservative indicator of what
is happening to breadwinners with
payroll experience — are "extraor-
dinarily high," as one expert put it.
The government was expected
to report that initial claims rep-
resenting fresh unemployment
rose to 332,590 for the week
ending Oct. 29, making a total
of 1.7 million. This total com-
pares to 1.3 million in the com-
parable period a year ago dur-
ing the steel strike.
In the previous week, ending Oct.
22, the government reported new
claims for jobless pay totaled
322,000. This reflected layoffs in
primary metals, electrical equip-
ment and in machinery as well as
in some seasonal work.
Key States Hardest Hit
The largest layoffs in recent
weeks have come in such politically-
potent states as California, Penn-
vania, New York, Illinois, Ohio and
Michigan.
Total unemployment compen-
sation claims over the month
were running at a super-seasonal
pace, rising by 113,000 between
late September and late October.
In the past three election years,
either the Labor Dept. or , Pres.
Eisenhower himself has announced
improvements in the unemployment
situation before election day. This
contrasted with the Truman Admin-
istration in 1952, when figures
showing a postwar low in unem-
ployment came out on schedule
after election day.
A. U.S. Labor Dept. spokesman
said the October 1960 job figures
— compiled from household surveys
by the Census Bureau and from
payroll data by the Labor Dept.—
will be issued Nov. 10 or 11.
Kennedy Is
Praised for
His 'Courage'
Rev. Martin Luther King, in a
radio interview following his re-
lease on bail from a Georgia jail,
praised Sen. John F. Kennedy for
his "courage" in intervening on be-
half of the Negro minister even at
the risk of losing votes in Georgia.
King, jailed when a Georgia
judge ruled that his participation
in a sit-down demonstration for
civil rights violated the terms of a
Jraflic offense probation, said Ken-
nedy had telephoned Mrs. King to
offer his sympathy and that a Ken-
nedy spokesman had inquired about
release of King on bail pending an
appeal.
The minister declared, in a tele
phone interview over Station WLIB
in New York:
"His courage and his willing-
ness to take a stand in my unjust
arrest meant that he was risking
the possibility of losing a lot of
support in the white community.
Several have already resigned
from positions in the Kennedy
campaign in Georgia.
"If a man would do this while
the campaign is going on, it does
demonstrate that, if elected, you
can expect something forthright
and positive from him," King
added.
Despite Administration Optimism;
Most Economists
Predict Downturn
With unemployment already at near recession levels, surveys of
economists and experts reveal there may be dark days ahead for
the nation's business.
The only plainly optimistic view comes from the Eisenhower
Administration.
COST OF LIVING RISE despite economic recession is demon-
strated on chart by Robert Myers, deputy commissioner of labor
statistics, at Labor Dept. press conference. Living costs moved
up to a new all-time record.
Profits Hold Up Despite
Dip in Jobs, Production
Corporate profits in 1960 are expected to run close to the 1959
all-time record despite the drop in industrial production and
continuing high rates of unemployment.
On the basis of third quarter reports collected by the Wall Street
Journal and the First National City Bank of New York, profits
for the first nine months of 1960^
are running slightly behind 1959.
The National City Bank report,
based on the earnings of 764 cor-
porations, shows a decline of about
2 percent from the 1959 level for
the first nine months of the year.
The Wall Street Journal says its
survey of 462 companies indicates
earnings in the last three months of
1960 "may come close to equaling
those of the final 1959 period."
Economists indicate that prof-
Carpenter Leaders
Appeal Convictions
Indianapolis — Defense attorneys
for officials of the Carpenters Union
have filed appeals for a new trial
after a jury convicted them of con-
spiring with Indiana highway offi-
cials on right-of-way land deals
during a road building program.
Convicted on conspiracy and
bribery charges were Carpenters
Pres. Maurice A. Hutcheson, Gen-
eral Vice Pres. O. William Blaier,
and General Treas. Frank M. Chap-
man. Criminal Court Judge M.
Walter Bell set sentencing for Nov.
28. The sentences could range
from 2 to 14 years in prison and
fines up to $15,000 each.
Defense attorneys introduced
evidence during the trial that over
700 pieces of adjoining property
were sold to the state at a price as
high or higher than that received by
the Carpenter officials. The prose-
cution charged the officials paid
for advance information about pro-
posed road routes and sold land
to the state for a large profit.
Foreclosures Jump
4 Percent Over 1959
Foreclosures on non-farm
real estate in the first half of
1960 increased 4 percent
over the same period in
1959, the Federal Home
Loan Bank Board has re-
ported.
The increase is part of a
continuing trend in fore-
closures which have more
than doubled since 1950. In
the past six years foreclosures
have jumped from 14,854 for
the first six months of 1955
to 23,678 for the same pe-
riod in 1960.
its before taxes may reach $46.9
billion in 1960 compared to the
record $47 billion in 1959.
Corporate earnings in the July-
September period this year moved
up from 7 to 8 percent over the
third quarter a year ago, according
to both the Journal and the bank
letter.
However the third quarter of
1959 was dominated by the indus-
try-forced steel strike and other
disputes. The Journal notes that if
steel earnings are removed from
the picture for the third quarter
there was in fact a decline of 4.6
percent from a year ago. Steel
firms turned in losses for the third
quarter of 1959 but showed profits
based on limited operations this
year.
Of the 26 industry groups
listed by the Journal, nine
showed gains over the third quar-
ter a year ago while 17 regis-
tered declines. In the increase
group were chain grocers, finance
companies, food products, metal
and mining, movies and movie
theaters, office equipment, pe-
troleum products and utilities.
The National City Bank letter
said that what it called the "profits
pinch" was in part attributable to
"the existence of spare capacity in
practically every industry at home"
which, teamed ^up with worldwide
competition, "has weakened prices
in many lines and prevented needed
increases in others."
McLellan Named
To AFL-CIO Staff
Andrew C. McLellan, Inter-
American representative of the
Intl. Federation of Food, Drink &
Tobacco Workers Union, has joined
the AFL-CIO staff as associate
Inter-American representative.
A native of Scotland, McLellan
came to this country after World
War I and settled on the Mexican
border of Texas. He joined the
Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen,
later becoming an advisor to the
former Texas Federation of Labor
on the problem of Mexican farm
workers and a consultant to the
U.S. Section of the Joint U.S.-
Mexican Trade Union Committee.
He served as a representative of
the Inter-American Regional Or-
ganization of Workers (ORIT) in
Central America before joining the
1FFDTWU staff.
Dr. Raymond Saulnier, chair-
man of the President's Council of
Economic Advisers, believes that
business is "on a level, a plateau."
He saw "a very good chance" of
"another major advance before we
get anything like a recession/ 1
But Dr. John Lintner, Har-
vard University professor of
business administration, ex-
pressed the view that "a recession
of substantial proportions is in
the making."
Lintner pointed to a sluggish sales
picture, a drop in order backlogs,
profit margins and inventory levels.
Saulnier based his estimate chiefly
on the Federal Reserve Board's ac-
tion in expanding the lending power
of banks and reduced down pay-
ments on government-insured
homes.
The F. W. Dodge Corp., a firm
specializing in construction data,
polled 327 economists, most of
them with business and financial
firms.
The poll revealed that 67 per-
cent see a downturn ahead.
The most common factors
given for the forecasts of down-
turn were: lack of consumer de-
mand; overcapacity in many in-
dustries; a squeeze on profits;
high levels of unemployment;
expected cutbacks in capital ex-
penditures and the current inven-
tory readjustment.
Additional evidence of a down-
turn ahead came from several other
quarters.
The First National City Bank of
New York said in its monthly letter
that the recent "sideways" move-
Wheeling Steel In
Black at 49.1%
Wheeling Steel Corp.
earned a note of distinction
even as its profits and opera-
tions slumped during the
third quarter.
The Wall Street Journal
observed that Wheeling was
ahead for the year and com-
mented:
"In addition, Wheeling
joined a lengthening list of
steel companies which are
proving they can stay in the
black while operating at less
than half of capacity."
The company reported its
third quarter operating rale
fell to an average of 49.1
percent of capacity, com-
pared to 81.1 percent in the
June quarter.
ment of the economy "is giving
way to a moderate downturn."
The Wall Street Journal found
in a survey of 125 major com-
panies across the nation that
only a minority were planning
to increase their capital spending
budgets in the next year.
The Inland Steel Co. revealed in
its quarterly report that it expected
to remain operating at about 65
percent of capacity during the
fourth quarter.
"Our earlier expectations for in-
creased demand for steel in the
fourth quarter have not been real-
ized to date and we no longer an-
ticipate a significant rise during this
period," the report said.
Marine Unions Picket
Kingpin of Runaways 9
The Intl. Maritime Workers' Union has moved toward a show-
down with the shipowner it calls the "kingpin" of the "runaways"—
Daniel K. Ludwig.
The IMWU, formed by the Maritime Union and the Seafarers
to organize runaway ships flying the flags of other nations, has
continued successful picketing in<^-
Philadelphia of the Ore Monarch
and Ore Prince, which fly Liberian
flags in Ludwig's giant Universe
Tankships Inc.
The firm has asked the Philadel-
phia Common Pleas Court for a
preliminary injunction to stop the
IMWU and supporting unions from
interfering with unloading opera-
tions.
The IMWU charged unfair
labor practices and substandard
conditions in tying up the Ore
Monarch and Ore Prince. A
third Ludwig ship, the 45,500-
ton Ore Mercury, was diverted
from Philadelphia to Baltimore,
where longshoremen backed up
the union boycott but saw non-
union crane operators unload
almost all the cargo.
Universe Tankships Inc. claims
it has a valid contract with what it
calls the Global Seamen's Union.
The GSU was formed in 1959
under British law. Most Ludwig
ships reportedly fly the Liberian
flag and are manned by seamen
from the Cayman Islands in the
British West Indies.
The American maritime unions,
seeking to unionize ships owned or
controlled by American interests
though flying foreign flags, have
charged before the National Labor
Relations Board that the GSU is
a company union.
Ludwig reportedly owns about
50 of the world's biggest ships,
including the 106,400-dead-
weight-ton Universe Apollo,
through Universe Tankships and
National Bulk Carriers Inc.
Meanwhile the Maritime Union
suffered a setback in New Orleans
when a Louisiana state court issued
a preliminary injunction against the
picketing of the Empresa Hondur-
ena de Vapores, which runs Hon-
duran-manned fruit ships.
Clyde Mills Dies
In Water Mishap
Tallahassee, Fla. — Clyde Mills,
director of the Florida State Media-
tion Service, former federal con-
ciliator and active member of the
Typographical Union, was drowned
in the Gulf of Mexico after cling-
ing for 15 hours to a swamped boat
He was 60.
Doctors said his life might have
been saved had he been rescued a
few minutes earlier by boatsmen.
A native of North Carolina, he
was president of Columbia Typo-
graphical Union in Washington for
four years, resigning in 1934 to
join the U. S. Conciliation Service,
where he served for 15 years. On
the national level he helped settle
disputes in the steel, auto and coal
mining industries, and he played a
major role in maintaining peace in
many industries in the Washington
area.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
Pag© Three
Meany Raps Southern Airways:
CAB Asked to Halt
Strikebreak Subsidy
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has called on the Civil Aero-
nautics Board to halt federal subsidies to Southern Airways Inc.,
charging that government funds aire being used to finance a "strike
breaking and union destruction program."
The airline, which serves 52 cities in southeastern states, was
struck by the Air Line Pilots June^
5 after 10 months of unproductive
negotiations over wages, rules and
working conditions. The walkout
constituted a legal strike under the
Railway Labor Act.
Recently the National Media-
tion Board recommended a set-
tlement that was accepted by
the ALPA and, with one minor
exception, agreed to by the air-
line. The strike has continued,
Meany declared, because South-
ern management 'insists that
they will not return their regular
pilots to service but will con-
tinue to recruit and train strike-
breakers.'*
In a letter to CAB Chairman
Whitney Gilliland, Meany charged
that Southern "is under the naive
impression that the Treasury of the
U.S. government should be em-
ployed" for financing the strike-
breaking operation. In 1959, 41
percent of the airline's gross rev-
enue came from federal subsidy.
"To prolong the shutdown
Job Safety Asked
In Airline Merger
Four unions have asked the Civil
Aeronautics Board to require more
adequate job protection for em-
ployes before approving a merger
of Capital Airlines into United Air
Lines.
Spokesmen for the Air Line Pi-
lots, Railway Clerks, Machinists
and Air Line Dispatchers asked the
CAB to require the companies to
guarantee that present employes
will not lose their jobs or be re-
quired to take pay cuts as a result
of the merger.
The unions, in separate presen-
tations, said both the furlough al-
lowance and period of job protec-
tion provided in the merger agree-
ment between the two companies
were inadequate.
while management spends hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars"
of federal funds for this purpose,
he continued, "when there are
no bargaining issues between the
parties, is the greatest possible
abuse of a public franchise."
The AFL-CIO president pointed
out that under the Federal Avia-
tion Act of 1958 the airline is
entitled to federal subsidies only if
"honestly and efficiently" man
aged and if in compliance with the
Railway Labor Act.
Union-Busting Policy
This Act, Meany said, "restrains
the company from any interference
in the employes' choice of a repre
senting organization and requires
them to 'make and maintain' agree
ments" covering these employes.
"Despite these clear mandates," he
wrote the CAB chairman, "I am
informed that the management of
Southern Airways has systematical-
ly destroyed the representing or-
ganizations of their employes until
only the ALPA remains."
Last month, the CAB's Board of
Enforcement instituted fullscale
hearings into the unions charge
that Southern is operating illegally
and should be deprived of its oper-
ating certificates. The board said
there were "reasonable grounds to
believe that certain provisions of
the Federal Aviation Act . . . have
been violated by Southern Air
ways."
ALPA charged that the failure
of the company to bargain in
good faith coupled with its effort
to operate on a strikebreaking
basis violated the Railway Labor
Act provisions. It also contend-
ed that Southern's operating
losses of $367,290 for June and
July, caused by its heavy out-
lays for strikebreakers, violated
the FAA rule that its operations
must be "economical and effici-
ent."
Planners Laud Union
For Bronx Housing Idea
New York — The Meat Cutters union has been given the go-ahead
signal by the City Planning Commission to begin construction of a
$96 million middle-income housing project to rise, from a concrete
platform, above the Mott Haven Yards of the New York Central
Railroad.
The city planners went beyond^
formal approval to hail the 40-acre
project in the Bronx as presenting
"for the first time a proposal to
utilize 'air rights' over a railroad
yard for a housing development"
and as providing "needed middle-
income housing without displace-
ment of families or business estab-
lishments."
Present plans call for construc-
tion of 22 apartment houses, each
20 stories high, to be completed by
1964. The apartment buildings will
take up only 19 percent of the
project's area, leaving 81 percent
for landscaping, walks and play
areas for children.
Eighty percent of the cost will
be met by a 40-year, low-interest
mortgage provided by New York
State under its middle-income
housing law. New York locals
Labor Press Role
ILPA Meet Theme
Detroit — The theme of the Intl.
Labor Press Association convention
to be held at the Statler-Hilton here
Nov. 17, 18 and 19 will be "The
Expanding Role of the Labor
Press,"
of the Meat Cutters will advance
the balance necessary for con-
struction. The apartments will be
operated as non-profit coopera-
tives.
To build the novel project, which
will house 5,206 families, the union
is leasing the air rights over the
railroad yards at a cost of $750,000
a year for 60 years.
An estimated $6 million will be
spent to build a concrete platform
40 feet above the railroad tracks.
The platform will be at street level
and will be supported by huge col-
umns sunk into the railroad yard.
Noise No Problem
Noise or tremors from railroad
movement will be no problem, the
union states. The yards are pri-
marily storage centers and the
street-level platform will be con-
structed to prevent any sound or
vibration from penetrating.
Tenants in the cooperative will
pay a monthly carrying charge of
$27.88 per room and a down pay-
ment of $700 a room. The project
will be the fifth and largest the
union has built under the state
middle-income housing law.
AGREEMENT ON TERMS of new contract between Newspaper
Guild of New York and the city's major dailies was marked by
handshakes between (left to right) General Manager P. B. Stephens
of the Daily News; NYNG Sec.-Treas. M. Michael Potoker; NYNG
Executive Vice Pres. Thomas J. Murphy, and Vice Pres. Amory
Bradford of the Times.
Cement Union Hikes
Dues, Strike Benefits
Dallas — Delegates to the tenth convention of the Cement, Lime
and Gypsum Workers prepared for the uncertainties of the years
ahead by boosting their per capita tax and liberalizing strike benefits.
The 275 delegates from locals in the U.S. and Canada voted to
increase strike benefits, after six months on the picket lines, from
the present $25 a week to $50 a^;
week. This would immediately as
sist the union's Local 316, St
Louis, Mo., whose members have
been picketing a National Gypsum
Company plant for many months.
It also gave a greater measure of
security to scores of locals facing
bargaining tables next year,
The dues action raised the mini-
mum from $4 to $5 a month.
The union has completed a
two-year period "when employer
groups and demagogic politicians
have attempted to turn the clock
back" and destroy effective col-
lective bargaining, Pres. Felix
Jones told the convention.
"In the United States we have
witnessed government imposition
of a system of involuntary servi
tude upon the Steelworkers," the
report of the general officers stated.
'Tn Canada we have seen a pup-
pet legislature, under domination
of a provincial premier, arbitrarily
revoke the bargaining rights of the
Woodworkers and completely out-
law the union as such. Members of
our union in St. Louis, Mo., who
refused to accept the employer's
terms, have witnessed the deteriora-
tion of their bargaining rights
through the employment of strike-
breakers and scabs.
"This revival and use of injunc-
tions, slave legislation, and strike-
breakers warns us that the rights of
free workers are under bitter at-
tack."
Kennedy Endorsed
The convention was made repre-
sentative of the entire North Amer-
ican continent by the presence of
J. Refugio Avelar, secretary-treas-
urer and fraternal delegate of the
Mexican Cement Workers Union.
He was accompanied by J. Leonar
Construction Still
Risky, Tobin Reports
New York — Occupational haz-
ards continue to pose a difficult
problem in the building and con-
struction trades, Edmund P. To-
bin, president of the Union Labor
Life Insurance Co., said here.
Reviewing a number of claims
paid by the company in recent
months, Tobin reported the electro-
cution of an iron worker here who
was holding a jib crane to prevent
it from -swinging as it was being
towed by a truck as an example of
the potential serious injury and
death constantly facing building
trades workers.
Valderrama, who served as inter-
preter.
Among other actions at the con-
vention were:
• Delegates endorsed Sen. John
F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon John-
son for President and Vice Presi-
dent.
• A resolution was approved for
establishment of a ladies auxiliary
to the international union.
• The union constitution was
revised to comply with terms of
the Landrum-Griffin Act and to up-
date many features.
Most Union
Contracts Have
Sick Pay Plan
Most union agreements provide
for sick pay for workers absent
from work because of illness or
injury, according to a government
study of major contracts.
"Collective Bargaining Report,"
a publication of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Research, described the
results of a study of paid sick leave
which was reported in the October
issue of the U.S. Dept. of Labor's
Monthly Labor Review.
The AFL-CIO publication point-
ed out that pay for temporarily
disabled workers is of two types.
Group sickness and accident bene-
fit plans, the most common, pro-
vide less than full wages but do so
for an extended period. Paid sick
leave plans, less common, provide
full wages but for a more limited
period.
The sickness and accident ben-
efit plans usually are financed
through the purchase of insur-
ance or through a self-insured
fund built up by the employer.
The paid sick leave plans usually
involve direct payment by the
employer as part of the payroll.
The Labor Dept. study included
almost all union contracts covering
1,000 or more workers in effect in
1959. In all, 1,594 agreements
were studied, covering 7.2 million
workers.
Paid sick leave provisions were
found in 20 percent of the pacts,
covering about 20 percent of the
workers. Most of the contracts
lacking paid sick leave provided
protection through sickness and
accident benefit plans instead. An
earlier government study of negoti-
ated major health and welfare bene-
fit plans in 1958 found that 77
percent included such benefits.
N. Y. Papers.
Guild Agree on
$7 'Package'
New York — A last-minute agree-
ment on a new contract between
the New York Newspaper Guild
and the publishers of the city's
major dailies ended a strike threat
that would have cut off millions
of metropolitan area newspaper
readers from last-minute election
campaign news.
The basic agreement was made
between the NYNG and publishers
of the Times, Daily News, Mirror,
Journal-American, Herald Tribune
and World-Telegram.
It provided for a $7-a-week pack-
age over two years, with $3.50 ear-
marked for wage increases the first
year and $2.50 the second. Pen-
sions and welfare benefits will be
increased by 50 cents each year
and four weeks' vacation will be
granted after 10 years instead of
after the present 12 years.
The wage hike will not be an
across-the-board increase but
will be divided by the union
among different wage groups.
Guild negotiators agreed on a
separate offer from the Post call-
ing for an increase of $3 a week
the first year and a reopener on
wages for the second year, subject
to arbitration in case of failure to
agree. The Post claimed to be
paying more for hospital and medi-
cal insurance than the other papers.
Union negotiating committees
voted to recommend acceptance of
the agreement to their members
except for those representing the
Times, who said they would pre-
sent it for ratification without rec-
ommendation.
Wage, Health
Gains Won
By Sea Unions
San Francisco — Three seamen's
unions .representing 15,000 unli-
censed employes have won a 7 per-
cent wage hike in negotiations with
West Coast shipowners.
Involved in the negotiations,
which took place under a wage
reopener in the current three-year
contract that runs to Sept. 30, 1961,
were the Sailors Union of the Pa-
cific, the Marine Firemen, and the
Marine Cooks and Stewards.
The unions also won agreement
from the Pacific Maritime Associa-
tion that shipowners would treble
their 5-cent-per-day-per-man con-
tributions for medical programs.
Under the agreement, half of the
increased contribution will go to
establish clinics for pre-employment
medical examinations, and the other
5 cents per day will go toward free
eye examinations and eyeglasses.
ACWA Reports
Union Label Gains
New York — "Employer efforts
to obstruct our union label drive
by invoking provisions of the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act have been una-
vailing and the union's work in this
field has continued successfully,"
Clothing Workers' Pres. Jacob S.
Potofsky declared in reviewing the
union's first year's experience under
the new law.
Howard D. Samuel, director of
the ACWA union label campaign,
said the record of the first year
shows that half of the charges filed
with the National Labor Relations
Board by non-union companies
against ACWA were dismissed by
the board. The other half, he
added, were disposed of through
consent agreements.
ACWA campaign methods in-
clude handbilling in front of a non-
union store and before factory
gates, petitions distributed in plants
and sent to the store and resolu-
tions adopted at union meetings,
Samuel said.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, I960
American Unions Praised
As Civil Rights Champion
Lagos, Nigeria — The AFL-CIO is "the strongest and great-
est power and force behind the growing success of minority
elements in America, particularly the Afro-American group,
in their struggle for civil rights," Gen. Sec. L. L. Borha of
the Trades Union Congress of Nigeria declared on his return
from a visit to the United States as a guest of the AFL-CIO.
"Without doubt, the Negro problem is the strongest source
of weakness of the leadership America is giving the world
today," he said. "As long as this problem remains unsolved,
America cannot truly discover itself and be even 10 times
greater.
"It is for this reason that I pay tribute to the all-out fight
of the AFL-CIO to give to all Americans, regardless of color
of the skin, the status and opportunities of first-class citizen-
ship. ... I am convinced that only the American labor move-
ment can bring about the guarantee of a greater America of
tomorrow."
Borha, whose nation proclaimed its independence on Oct 1,
was particularly impressed during his U.S. visit by the Labor
Day parade in New York and by the "complete absence of
any desire" by U. S. unions to dominate the labor movements
of the new countries.
Labor Exiles Lead
Cuban Fight on Castro
David Salvador, general secretary of the Cuban Confederation of
Labor (CTC) who was ousted for his refusal to accept the dictates
of Cuba's Communist labor czar, Jesus Soto, is reportedly leading
a new anti-Castro underground group.
The organization is called the "30th of November Movement"
in tribute to the memory of Fran-<^
cisco Paez, a leader of anti-Batista
underground forces who was killed
Nov. 30, 1957.
According to Dr. Cesar Blanco,
Cuba's director of public safety
during the first few months of the
Castro regime and now a refugee
in Miami, Fla., the members are
fighting in the Escanbray Moun-
tains, in central Cuba, under the
leadership of Salvador and Manolo
Ray, who once was public works
minister under Castro.
The movement in addition is
organizing sabotage in the cities
and preparing armed uprisings in
various parts of the island.
Most of the members of the CTC
executive committee who were in
power when Castro seized the coun-
try and are now in exile in the
United States have organized a
group which claims to have wide
support within Cuba, especially
among older union members.
Fifty-six exiled union leaders, in-
cluding former officers of 24 na-
tional bodies or their local unions,
have issued a statement supporting
the program and activities of the
exiled CTC executive committee.
Meanwhile, an increasing num-
ber of union leaders who formerly
supported Castro are fleeing into
exile. Among recent fugitives was
Raul Suarez Q., former secretary
ICFTU Protests
Curbs by Franco
Brussels — The Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions has
asked the Intl. Labor Organization
to request the Franco government
of Spain to withdraw a recent de-
cree which whittles away still fur-
ther at trade union rights. A simi-
lar request was made directly to
Franco.
The decree classifies a number
of. "crimes" as "military rebellion."
Included are strikes and "other
similar acts when they pursue a
political purpose or cause serious
disturbance to public order.** It
also is directed against "those who
in any way join together, conspire
or take part in meetings, confer-
ences or demonstrations" intended
to "cause disturbance to internal
public order."
Alleged violators of the decree
will be tried in military courts un-
der the military code rather than
under the civilian legal code.
of the National Federation of Con-
struction Workers. Most of them
are joining the Frente Obrero Re-
volucionario Democratico Cubano
(Cuban Democratic Revolutionary
Workers' Front) which was re-
organized at a meeting in Miami
last month. Its general secretary
is Pascasio Lineras, formerly head
of the Textile Workers Federation.
Leaders of the Electrical Work-
ers Union voiced open dissatisfac-
tion against the Castro nationaliza-
tion policy last month following
seizure of the Cuban Electric Light
& Power Co. and were promptly
warned by the present Communist
leadership of the CTC that their
attitude is "counter-revolutionary."
They had asked that the national-
ized company pay for overtime and
lost vacations.
Residents of rented houses and
apartments in Cuba are feeling a
new economic squeeze as a result
of the Castro government's urban
renewal program making tenants
virtual owners of the property they
occupy.
The tenants must not only pay
to the government for periods rang-
ing from 5 to 20 years the same
monthly rent they had been paying,
but also the real estate and water
taxes that previously had been paid
by the owners.
At a press conference in Wash-
ington called by Victor G.
Reuther of the Auto Workers
on behalf of U.S. affiliates of
the Intl. Metalworkers Federa-
tion, four FORDC leaders who
came out of the Cuban labor
movement asked for the help
of American workers in throw-
ing out the Castro Communist
dictatorship.
They were Lineras; Jose A. Her-
nandez, ousted general secretary of
the Cuban Metal Workers and now
FORDC secretary of organization;
Mario Fontela, of the Agricultural
Workers, FORDC secretary of ag-
riculture; and Antonio Collada, the
revolutionary group's secretary of
foreign relations.
They predicted that the rapidly-
growing anti-Castro movement will
soon lead to an uprising heralded
by a general strike which will sweep
the Cuban leader and his Com
munist aides out of office and lead
to the establishment of a genuine
democratic government.
Meany Tells Africans:
Labor Seeks Algerian Peace
Through UN-Supervised Vote
American labor will "spare neither effort nor energy'' in seeking an end to the fighting in Algeria
through* a vote supervised by the United Nations, AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany assured North
African free trade unions in a letter marking the sixth anniversary of the Algerians' tight for
independence.
The anniversary, on Nov. 1, reminded Americans that it was only after seven years of a
Revolutionary War that "our co-^
lonial forefathers" succeeded in
establishing "an independent na-
tion and democratic land," he said.
"We are confident," he contin-
ued, "that it will not be long before
the Algerian people will also tri-
umph in their heroic struggle for
national independence and democ-
racy. The question is no longer
'if but 'when' the Algerian people
will be free and sovereign."
Meany's letter went to the
national labor centers in Algeria,
Morocco, Libya and Tunisia
which are affiliated with the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade
Unions.
m "As an ICFTU affiliate, the AFL-
CIO will spare no effort to help
rally free world labor for ending
the war in Algeria so that it can
attain its national freedom and join
with Tunisia, Morocco and Libya
in establishing a North African fed-
eration of free and democratic
peoples," he wrote.
He recalled the support Ameri-
can workers gave their trade union
colleagues in speeding the national
independence of Tunisia and Mor-
occo, and expressed concern lest
"the continued military conflict in
Algeria become a serious threat to
world peace and freedom."
"We have likewise realized," he
went on, "that the longer this colo-
nialism war continues, the graver
the danger of Communist penetra-
tion.
"By now it is abundantly clear to
liberty-loving peoples everywhere
that when Moscow pretends to sup-
port movements for national self-
determination outside the Iron Cur-
tain, it actually has other ends in
view, as demonstrated in the Con-
go.
"The Sino-Soviet axis seeks only
to distort and dominate these na-
tional independence movements for
the purpose of replacing the de-
clining old colonialism with the
new Communist colonialism, which
has shown its true face in Hungary
and Tibet."
Meany reminded the North Afri-
can labor centers that the AFL-CIO
has continually sought to have the
U. S. government implement in
deed this country's traditional anti-
colonial policies, and that it has
"repeatedly urged our government
to take the initiative for ending the
war in Algeria so that the French
and Algerian nations can live in
peace and friendship with each
other."
"Within a few weeks,'' he
wrote, "the 15th General Assem-
bly will be called upon to end
the war in Algeria through a
Nigeria Accepts
ILO Obligations
Geneva — Nigeria, which pro-
claimed its independence on Oct.
1, has formally accepted the obli-
gations of the Intl. Labor Organi-
zation constitution and thus be
comes the 87th member of the
United Nations' agency.
Acceptance of the constitutional
obligations is the only requirement
for affiliating with the ILO by a
nation which has been accepted
into UN membership, as Nigeria
was immediately after attaining its
independence.
Prime Minister Sir Abubakar
Tafawa Balewa notified ILO Dir.-
Gen. David A. Morse that Nigeria
remains bound by 15 international
labor conventions which the United
Kingdom had accepted on its be-
half.
UN-supervised vote. The AFL-
CIO urges every member-state
to support this democratic and
peaceful solution. This proposal
has also been heartily endorsed
by the ICFTU African affiliates
and the entire organization of
free world labor.
"Your organization can rest as-
sured that we of the AFL-CIO will
spare neither effort nor energy to
have the full prestige and influence
of America mobilized for UN ac-
tion, to end the war in Algeria and
speed Algerian national indepen-
dence and democracy."
Doctors Challenged
On Health Programs
Hollywood Beach, Fla. — Direct affiliation between labor-sup-
ported health plans and medical schools was proposed by Vice Pres.
Leonard Woodcock of the Auto Workers to the American Associa-
tion of Medical Colleges Institute here.
Woodcock is chairman of the board of governors of Wayne State
University, Detroit, and a member^
of its medical school committee.
He pointed out that "in city after
city, there is growing interest" in
group practice prepayment medical
programs with trade unions not
only interested but active.
"The growing labor involve-
ment in health care will unques-
tionably result in the establish-
ment of some new programs,"
he said. "The question is, what
will be their involvement with
medical education?
"I have long felt that these pro-
grams could greatly benefit by, that
they need, a close association with
medical education. To that end, I
want to take this opportunity to
make a specific proposal to you,
the nation's leading medical educa-
tors.
'1 know that the Community
Health Association (which the
UAW sponsored in Detroit) would
welcome a direct affiliation with a
medical school. I am convinced
that labor in many communities
would respond to leadership from
a medical school to develop and
finance one of these new types of
programs."
Unions are not after "bargain
basement prices or cut-rate serv-
ice," he emphasized, but want good
care and are willing to pay full
price for it.
Must Train for Tomorrow
Woodcock conceded that medi-
cal schools must seek "a degree of
harmony" with medical practice as
it is today,, but noted that they also
are obligated to train tomorrow's
doctors. Organized medicine's con-
cepts of medical organization and
payment have "not always been
right," he asserted, and have been
challenged successfully in the
courts, in Congress and in legisla-
tures.
"I cannot assess the extent to
which you in medical education
can accept these challenges," he
said. "But the doctor cannot es-
cape his destiny and medical edu-
cation cannot escape responsibility
for preparing him to deal with the
proliferating problems of tomorrow.
Problems Mounting
"Demands for more and better
medical care, for increased medical
productivity, for the rational re-
gional organization of hospitals, for
the modernization of medical prac-
tice and for better health insurance,
will be crowding in on medicine
from all sides. The question is,
will medicine and medical educa-
tion be able to cope with these
problems, much less offer leader-
ship in their solution?"
Woodcock warned the medical
educators that doctors must ac-
cept Social Security and labor
unions as facts of life. If the
physician is going to throw the
term "socialism" around, he
should learn its real definition
and stop applying the label to
"anything that threatens the
status quo," he added.
"Any responsible community
leader feels the pressures of the
crises in leadership," he said. 'The
world is bursting its bonds. New
challenges need the exercise of new
powers. If medicine is to go for-
ward and take its proper place in
these times, it must face its destiny
and deal with problems that are not
merely difficult but well-nigh over-
whelming. It is our common pre-
dicament, our common challenge.*
GE Seeking
Venue Shift in
Price Fixing
Philadelphia — The General Elec-
tric Co. and other big electrical
manufacturers indicted on charges
of price-fixing and rigging bids
have won a new delay in their
scheduled trial in federal district
court here,
The delay, granted by U. S. Dis-
trict Judge J. Cullen Ganey after
conferences with company and gov-
ernment attorneys, came after GE
asked that the trial be moved to
another city on the grounds that
a bitter conflict between Mayor
Richardson Dilworth (D) and GE
Board Chairman Ralph Cordiner
would prevent the company from
getting a fair trial in the area.
Dilworth accused the com-
pany of trying to "blackmail"
the city into breaking picket
lines during the recent strike by
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers under threat of moving
its plants from the Philadelphia
area. The company sharply at-
tacked the mayor in full-page
advertisements in the .city's news-
papers.
GE attorneys said Cordiner will
be their first witness.
Yarmola Takes Post
With Seafarers
John Yarmola, for 10 years a
staff member of the AFL-CIO
Union Label & Service Trades
Dept., has resigned to become an
international representative for the
Seafarers and assistant to SIU
Pres. Paul Hall.
Yarmola served as an editorial
writer for the Union Label Dept.
and assistant to Sec.-Treas. Joseph
Lewis. He recently had the assign-
ment of organizing local Union
Label Councils in Michigan.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, H. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
Page F\y
Truman Spoofs Nixon:
No Cussing, No 'Disloyal'
Democrats in Nixonland
Former Pres. Harry S. Truman has been cam-
paigning intensively from coast to coast for Dem-
ocratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.
Typical of the Truman campaign are these ex-
cerpts from this speech delivered in Oakland,
Calif., on Oct. 28, 1960:
T DO NOT FEEL BITTERNESS toward Rich-
■■■ ard Nixon. I feel concern and a touch of
pity. I have been wondering what he could do
after the election returns are in, when he has to
leave Washington on Jan. 20. He is too young
to retire, and he will have to have some kind of
a job.
At last I think I have come up with the answer.
In the southern part of this state is a remark-
able sort of amusement park, known as Disney-
land. This wonderful place is a matter of justi-
fiable pride not only to California but to the whole
nation. Mrs. Truman and I have visited it, and
found it most enjoyable. Khrushchev wanted to
see it, but they wouldn't let him — which was a
mistake, as it might have improved his disposition.
Now I think I have discovered what Nixon
can do. He has considerable gifts of showman-
ship, and the ability to create all kinds of illu-
sions. He should go into this amusement park
business and open one of his own, which we
could call Nixonland.
Nixonland would be an interesting place. It
would preserve many of the elements of the pres-
ent campaign in a sort of living museum. It
would become, in time, a national shrine for
Republicans, although Democrats would have to
pass a loyalty examination before they could be
admitted.
Nixon would be in charge of Nixonland per-
sonally, and he would be the guide for all the
Nixonland rides. Which he would do very well
— by the way — as he has been taking the Ameri-
can people for a ride for a good many years
One of the rules in Nixonland would be "no
cuss words" — because of the children there. Of
course, in Nixonland there would be nothing
to cuss about, because there our prestige would
always be at an all-time high — and we would all
be morally, spiritually, economically and militarily
stronger than anybody else anywhere.
Nixonland would also be very neat. In fact,
it would be as clean as a hound's tooth.
The first thing to do in Nixonland would be
Research Study Lists:
to take a ride on the Nixon train. This would
go — rather quickly — through 50-odd countries,
and you would see on the way "35 presidents,
9 prime ministers, 5 kings, 2 emperors, and the
Shah of Iran." The end of this ride would be
quite exciting, with howling Communist mobs,
and all the passengers would have to be rescued
by the United States Marines.
I can think of a lot of things we could do in
Nixonland.
ANOTHER POPULAR ATTRACTION
would be the great Nixon submarine ride to the
offshore islands. This submarine would go to
Quemoy and Matsu, but not to Cuba. In fact,
there would be a rule in Nixonland against men-
tioning Cuba. Anybody who mentioned Cuba
would have to get off the submarine and swim
home.
In the middle of Nixonland would be a papier-
mache mountain. This would be called "The
Summit." And on the top of the Summit would
be a kitchen. Every day at noon Nixon would
ride in a cable car to the top of the Summit and
argue with Khrushchev in the kitchen. And then
he would come right down again.
Some of the customers might ask what good
would this do? I am sure I don't know. In don't
know what good it did in the first place.
Another handsome feature of Nixonland would
be the "Republican National Bank" on Main
Street. Across the front of it they could put the
slogan, in gold letters, "We Always Balance the
Budget." But this exhibit would have to be care-
fully roped off to keep the public from going
behind the false front. If they did, they might
fall into the deep hole back there caused by
Eisenhower's 20 billion deficit.
There would be lots to see in Nixonland, and
fun for all — but nothing in it would be real.
And that is the danger we face. Nixonland is
not the real world. It is a world of dreams, con-
cocted to get your votes. It is a mirage, and if
we follow it our country will go down the long
easy road that leads to national disgrace — the
same road that has been traveled by all the nations
of histofy who preferred to dream dreams of
glory, and to live softly, instead of facing the
world as it is, rolling up their sleeves, and taking
the lead in man's unceasing struggle against pov-
erty and tyranny and war.
EXPERTS ON MEDICAL CARE for the aged meet with Mrs.
John F. Kennedy at her home to discuss a report prepared for the
Women's Committee for New Frontiers, a campaign study group
headed by the wife of the Democratic presidential candidate. Left
to right are Katherine Ellickson, assistant director of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Social Security; Mrs. Kennedy, and Elizabeth Wickenden,
social welfare consultant from New York City. Their subcommittee
was headed by Frances Perkins, former Sec. of Labor.
3 Democrats Agree:
10 Ways to Help Wipe Out
Discrimination in Housing
TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION AMERICANS
still suffer to some extent from housing dis-
crimination because of their race.
A Fund for the Republic report, Residence and
Race, written by Davis McEntire, professor of
social welfare at the University of California,
establishes 10 guides by which individuals and
communities may reduce housing discrimination.
Its recommendations are based on a three-year
research program by the Commission on Race
and Housing, which drew upon the experience of
some 50 experts.
The groups which still suffer to some extent
from housing discrimination, he writes, include
19 million Negroes, Japanese, Chinese and Fili-
pinos; 2.5 million Mexican-Americans; 1 million
Puerto Ricans; and 5 million Jews.
The 10 guides are:
1 — Attack discriminatory conduct rather than
attitudes. It is far easier to change people's
actions — by law or the pressure of public opinion
— than it is to change their attitudes; and their
attitudes will change in due course anyway.
2 — Change the social situation and thereby in-
fluence both decisions and attitudes. Argument,
however convincing, is less effective than expe-
rience — economic and legal pressure is more ef-
fective than attempts at persuasion.
3 — Influence decision-makers of housing —
builders, mortgage lenders, real estate brokers,
government agencies — rather than whole commu-
nities. The effort can thus be concentrated at
the key points and its effects will in time spread
out through the general public.
4 — Seek legislation that will give freedom of
action to persons who oppose discrimination.
Many people do not really wish to discriminate
but feel compelled to do so by the social pressures
of friends, neighbors, or relatives.
5 — Mobilize all citizen groups concerned with
discrimination to effect changes in law and con-
duct. In order to have an effect on long-standing
housing patterns, firm organization and dedicated
action are needed.
6 — Organize with the understanding that most
Americans have no firmly fixed convictions about
race, and will respond to enlightened leadership.
Though many Americans express racial prejudice,
this is often merely what they think is expected
of them, and they can often understand a fairer
outlook if it is presented to them.
7 — Promote association among members of ma-
jority and minority groups who are of compara-
ble economic and social position. Promote the
participation of minority people in community
affairs to break down their isolation.
8 — Create community situations in which mem-
bers of different racial groups can work together
to solve common problems — such as obtaining
better schools.
9 — Expand the supply of housing, especially at
lower price levels, to reduce competition for hous-
ing among racial groups. Competition over areas
for dominance by one race or another tends to
promote segregation and intensify boundary lines.
10 — Do not confuse problems of racial segre-
gation with problems of socio-economic segrega-
tion. Mixing neighborhoods by race does not
mean mixing them by social class too. Profes-
sional people who are Negroes have more things
in common with professional people who are white
than with non-professional Negroes.
Kennedy Committed
To Action on Rights
'THE DEEP moral commitment of Sen. John F. Kennedy, Demo-
J- cratic presidential nominee, to secure meaningful civil rights
legislation has been underscored by leaders of the Democratic
Party in a series of radio broadcasts.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, declaring that America needs a President
"who really feels something about people, who understands them,
who knows that laws are made for the benefit of people and issues,"
declared she was "very proud of the record" which Kennedy made
in the civil rights field and urged his election.
Former Sen. Herbert H. Lehman (D-N. Y.) hailed Kennedy as
a man who "believes deeply in civil rights," and who, at the Los
Angeles convention earlier this year, "urged, supported and fought
for the whole civil rights plank," adopted by the Democratic Party.
Earlier in the same series, Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) told his
radio audience that "time and time again" Kennedy "has stood
shoulder to shoulder with those of us who have been fighting for
adequate civil rights legislation."
Mrs. Roosevelt declared in the broadcast that while both the
Republican and Democratic platforms "promise more vigorous
action" on civil rights "there are significant differences" between the
positions of the two parties. She cited the following points:
• On the question of empowering the Attorney General to seek
civil injunctions against denial of any civil rights — a provision
knocked out of the 1960 voting rights bill by the Republican-
Dixiecrat coalition — the Democrats "flatly support" the plan while
"the Republicans hedge."
• The Democrats "support the elimination of poll taxes; the
Republicans don't even mention it."
• The Democrats call for a federal Fair Employment Practices
Commission; the GOP promises legislation "aimed at discrimination
in labor unions, but not at employer discrimination."
• The Democrats hail the sit-in demonstrations as "a signal to
all of us to make good at long last the guarantees of our Constitu-
tion," while the Republicans "merely reaffirm the constitutional
right to peaceable assembly."
Lehman said that it is the Democratic platform "that spells out
the clearest, the boldest, the most comprehensive civil rights pro-
gram to be conceived in recent times," and noted that during the
campaign Kennedy "has repeatedly affirmed his determination to
see that the pledges in that platform are carried out, with a mini-
mum of delay."
By contrast, he charged that Pres. Eisenhower "has never
declared his belief in the moral correctness of the Supreme Court
decision on segregation" and has "never placed the full force of
his prestige or office behind its implementation."
The former senator and ex-governor of New York said the
American voters, in choosing the next President, should "elect a
man who will so lead us that our nation will be known throughout
the earth as one which not only preaches freedom and 'equality,
but practices it."
He recalled that former Pres. Truman appointed the commis-
sion that made "the first basic report in modern times on the
rights of Negroes," ordered the abolition of segregation in the
armed services and provided the leadership under which the
Justice Dept. worked through the courts to abolish segregation
in universities "and then turned to the historic attack on segre-
gation in the public schools."
"Those who want to see real progress on civil rights," Lehman
declared, "should vote Democratic. They should vote for John
F. Kennedy. That is the only way they can give a mandate for all
the broad, vigorous and imaginative action that is absolutely neces-
sary to achieve full equality of treatment and full equal opportun-
ity for all Americans."
Pag« Six
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. fc, SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 5, 1960
i\ew Era, New Leader
ON NOV. 8 a great silence will settle over the nation as millions
of Americans individually turn voting machine levers and
mark ballots that will result in the collective judgment on the next
decade in American political life.
This election will mark the close of one political era and the
beginning of another during which the difficult and complex prob-
lems of the past several decades will most likely come to a climax.
In the privacy of the voting booth America will make a decision
that will affect not only Americans but also the fate of men
everywhere. For this is an election tied to peace, bread and
freedom for the world.
The candidates for the presidency have been fully exposed to
these issues. They have seen war, depression and tyranny. They
have served in the lower echelons of policy-making; now they are
seeking the leadership of the free world.
The leaders who guided the nation through the depression-
stricken thirties, through World War II and through the cold war
onslaught of the Communists are moving off stage. But they leave
the same problems, albeit in new forms and. shapes.
Severe depression and economic paralysis is not an immediate
threat, but the lag in economic growth and the unmet social and
welfare needs of the nation must be solved in the next decade if
bread and freedom are to remain secure.
An economically strong *nd free America is the best guarantee
of peace if the free world is to stem the unrelenting Communist
bid for world domination*
The next President of the United States inust seek new or
improved solutions in the economic, political and social areas.
There can be no military solutions in a period when man has
devised means of waging war that can wipe out the human race.
This is what's at stake in the election. The nation is at a critical
juncture. Its great heritage of democratic freedoms and economic
progress, its inherent strength, decency and humanity, must be
brought to bear on the decisions of the new era— to win a lasting
peace, to effect a decent standard of living for all, to preserve and
extend freedom.
In the past Americans have chosen wisely at the important turn-
ing points of history. We are confident they will choose wisely
again.
Charles J- MacGowan
CHARLES J. MacGOWAN will be mourned by -the entire labor
movement. No one ever considered him an "old-timer." He
was a pioneer not only in his youth, but all his life.
There is no yardstick by which one can measure a man like
Charlie MacGowan. He was a pillar of strength to the Boiler-
makers Union, which he served for many years as president, to
the Metal Trades Department and to the labor movement as a
whole.
He raised his voice seldom, but when he did it was strong and
decisive for the cause of progress and human freedom. The trade
union movement, which he helped to build, will long cherish a
warm remembrance of his courageous personality.
The Job Ahead
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and.
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, November 5, 1960
ISo. 45
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in tlie name of the AFL-CIO.
DRI\WM FOC YHS
AFJ.-CIO NEW3
'New Republic' Writer Says:
Kennedy Is a Liberal in the
Roosevelt-Truman Tradition
The following is excerpted from an article in
the Oct. 31, I960, issue of The New Republic
by James MacGregor Burns, entitled "John F.
Kennedy, Candidate on the Eve: Liberalism
Without Tears" Dr. Burns is author of an
earlier full-scale biography of Kennedy as a
presidential aspirant.
ON THE EVE of America's great choice, I
believe that John F. Kennedy in his campaign has
deliberately prepared the way for the most con-
sistently and comprehensively liberal administra-
tion in the history of the country.
Whether in the end he will, if elected, produce
such an administration is another question turning
on the nature of the next Congress, events abroad,
and other factors. But of Kennedy's absolute
determination to stand behind liberal policies, I
have no question.
For he has shown that determination in the
sternest test a politician can face — the crucible
of a presidential campaign. As in all campaigns,
there have been many advisers within the party
as well as outside urging Kennedy to soften his
line, to make concessions. He has not heeded
this advice.
Quite deliberately he has followed the Roose-
velt-Truman-Stevenson tradition in the party, and
where he has departed from his predecessors it
has been to take a stronger line rather than a
weaker one, as in the case of medical care, aid to
education, and civil rights.
THE NATURE of the Democratic platform,
the kind of political associates Kennedy has gath-
ered around himself, his articulation of liberal
ideas under fire — are well known to anyone who
has watched his performance. And here lies the
supreme irony of the role of liberals in this cam-
paign. For although they know all this, although
Kennedy has taken a liberal posture few would
have dreamed likely three years ago, many lib-
erals are in effect still sitting out the 1960 election.
Their main difficulty with Kennedy, I think,
is that he has been too successful — heir both
to wealth and great political opportunity, a hero %
in the war, a winner in all his political battles,
the possessor of glamor and good looks and of
great political qualities that seem not earned
but almost magically endowed. The trouble
with Kennedy is that he lacks liberalism's tragic
quality.
By liberalism's tragic quality I mean that so
many of its finest and most passionate causes,
like Spain, have been lost causes; that so many
liberal heroes have had their tragic denouements,
as in Lincoln's assassination, Wilson's defeat on
the League, and Roosevelt's death in office; that
the pursuit of great causes has often been far more
rewarding emotionally than their realization; that
the great achievements of liberalism have often
ended, desirable though they might be, in laby-
rinthine legislation and huge social-welfare bu-
reaucracies, as in the case of social security or
the TV A.
Kennedy today, in sharp contrast to Stevenson,
who from the beginning in 1952 and all through
1956 seemed to be fighting impossible odds, gives
the impression of being too much in control of
his fortunes and too much destined for success.
His seems to be a liberalism without tears.
It would be easy to say that Kennedy in
office will develop the passionate, evocative
qualities that this brand of liberalism demands,
just as Franklin Roosevelt did in the White
House. For the presidential office does work
its magic on a man. But in Kennedy's case
such a prediction might not come true. For
he is a different type of liberal from any we
have known. He is in love not with lost causes,
not with passionate evocations, not with insu-
perable difficulties; he is in love with political
effectiveness.
He knows, I think, that the liberal agenda of
the 1960's will be executed not simply in a dra-
matic "100 days" but in a thousand days of per-
sistent action, that the campaign to get the coun-
try moving forward will be fought in hundreds of
little, drawn-out battles in congressional commit-
tees and cloakrooms, in government bureaus and
United States embassies abroad.
SOME LIBERALS might find such an admin-
istration a bit dull, especially if it were successful;
few of us will be thrilled by the policy machine.
Yet I think there are many of us too who feel that
action is so vitally needed, so long overdue, on
so many wide fronts of national purpose that we
might be willing to sacrifice some of the intoxica-
tion of liberal evocations — as long as we knew
that federal aid to education, an FEPC, a start on
disarmament, more generous immigration policies,
and all the rest, were actually going into effect.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3. 1960
Page St vea
Morgan Says:
The Bile of Bigotry Seemed
To Flow a Bit Less Thickly
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday 7 p. m. EST.)
APPARENTLY THE BILE of bigotry flowed
a little less thickly than had been feared
from pulpits around the country on Reformation
Sunday. Many conservative Protestant pastors
did turn their sermons into what amounted to
campaign speeches against Senator Kennedy be-
cause of his Roman
Catholic faith. But many,
many others were silent
on the subject or in-
veighed strongly against
the spectacle of cloaking
religious prejudice with
the respectability of a
church service.
Assuming the nation-
wide spot checks by news
agencies presented a rea-
sonably accurate picture
of the atmosphere in which Americans worshiped
there is, perhaps, reason to be encouraged about
our ultimate approach to the religious issue in this
presidential campaign.
It has long seemed to me that one of the heavi-
est ironies in this situation was produced by ex-
tremists of the Protestant clergy themselves: they
warn darkly of papal interference in secular affairs
but the strongest attempt to influence votes in this
election has come not from the Vatican but from
them. If this approach is not downright hypo-
critical it is at best grotesquely inconsistent, suffi-
ciently transparent, surely, for reasonable people
to see through.
THIS RAISES THE QUESTION of how many
reasonable people there are and how clearly are
they able to see through not just biased sermons
but the blizzard of smear propaganda. The
November bulletin of the non-partisan Fair Cam-
paign Practices Committee says "since early
August only two days have passed on which the
committee did not receive at least one brand new
anti-Catholic tract in the range from scurrilous to
merely distorted. It also notes that "reverse
bigotry is now emerging as a growing problem"
Final Correction, Please f
and emphasizes the committee has denounced as
"vicious nonsense" recurring suggestions that a
"vote for Nixon is a vote for bigotry."
Perhaps one of the most sensible notes on
the subject was struck by a New York Presby-
terian minister, Dr. William Barr McAlpin, who
argued that "true freedom is not advanced by
keeping one member of any religious body out
of office." Nothing could be clearer, he said,
than Sen. Kennedy's assurances to uphold the
constitution. So, he asked, what religious issue
is being raised now? "No one is suggesting any
specific limitation on our religious freedom.
Rather than keeping a member of the Catholic
Church out of a particular office, we should
concentrate on specific religious issues when
they are raised."
Admittedly the bishops of Puerto Rico raised
one with their archaic action in ruling that a
vote for the commonwealth's liberal Gov. Munoz
Marin — himself a Catholic — and his party would
be a sin. Although the development has been
plainly embarrassing to Sen. Kennedy (it was men-
tioned in several Reformation Sunday sermons)
the reaction of responsible Catholic quarters in
the continental United States has been most inter-
esting, the more so because it proves that in ex-
pressions of thought on such an issue the Catholic
Church is anything but monolithic.
Some conservative Catholic quarters upheld
the Puerto Rican bishops. The liberal Catholic
weekly, Commonweal, strongly criticized them.
The Apostolic Delegate to the United States feels
that no such action "would ever be taken by the
hierarchy of this country." And Richard Cardinal
Cushing of Boston comments that "it is totally out
of step with the American tradition for ecclesias-
tical authority here to dictate the political voting
of citizens."
Both Republican and Democratic camps are
watching with sharp anxiety for new readings of
public sentiment on the religious issue.
Both sides might do well to heed the hopeful
counsel of a leading minister in Washington, Dr.
Duncan Howlett, a Unitarian who observed that
Catholics and Protestants know each other better
now than when the religious issue was revived a
year ago, and this clearing of the air has strength-
ened the country.
No Tranquilizers Can Conceal
Americas Drop in Prestige
HP HE DECLINE in America's prestige abroad
"reflects world-wide recognition that our po-
sition in the world has deteriorated, relative to the
Soviet Union," declared the Democratic National
Committee in a final barrage at Republican cam-
paigners.
Correction, Please! — the Democratic campaign
bulletin which has trailed Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon and his supporters with the avowed aim of
keeping the record straight — reviewed a dozen top
campaign issues in its final edition.
"Are the Republicans right in contending that
American prestige around the world is at 'an all-
time high'?" asked the Democratic bulletin.
"Sen. (John F.) Kennedy has repeated over
and over again that what he downgrades," the
bulletin pointed out, "is not America and its
people, but the kind of leadership that Nixon
represents.
"Loss of prestige abroad may not be important
in itself, but it reflects world-wide recognition that
our position in the world has deteriorated, relative
to the Soviet Union."
Correction, Please! said that no concealing of
government surveys "or tranquilizing statements
from Administration apologists" can change the
basic truth that America's standing in the world
has been altered in the past eight years.
The bulletin quoted James Reston of the
New York Times as writing that Nixon's "basic
theme adds up to a picture of the world that
no well-informed man would consider seriously
for a moment. It is good politics but it is bad
history. . .
Eric Sevareid, well-known news analyst, also
was quoted as writing that he is "astounded to
hear Vice Pres. Nixon proclaim that American
prestige in the world never stood so high!"
Correction, Please! said that America's reduced
prestige resulted from this nation's diplomatic
failures, retarded economic growth, and gaps in
military and scientific progress.
"Nothing that has been said by Kennedy during
the campaign is unknown to the Soviets," the
bulletin declared, adding:
"Sen. Kennedy believes it is urgent that Amer-
icans know the whole truth so that we can start
advancing again."
The bulletin observed that U.S. economic
growth, as measured by the gross national prod-
uct, averaged less than 2.5 percent a year com-
pared to over 4.5 percent during the Truman Ad-
ministration and that the Soviet growth rate has
been running at 8 to 9 percent.
The bulletin quoted columnist Walter Lipp-
mann as follows:
"There is no doubt at all that the position of
the Soviet Union in world affairs has . risen
greatly in the past 10 years. This is one of the
facts of life.
"The Soviet Union has risen from military
inferiority to military parity and from a close
containment its influence has expanded into all
the continents."
The bulletin also took up what it called the
Republicans' "you-never-had-it-so-good" propa-
ganda in the light of "the growing signs of a third
GOP recession;" Nixon's proposals on health,
education and housing; the Nixon criticism of
Kennedy's farm program, and the latter's public
position on the question of church and state
separation.
WASHINGTON
I
ON ELECTION EVE, Americans may well give a sober thought
to the fact that beyond the campaigns and the oratory, the tempests
of emotion loosed during a contest, an enduring truth remains:
We are among a handful of countries in the world where for nearly
two centuries — with one exception — our system has allowed a
peaceful transfer of power following peaceful elections.
Whatever the results, however elated the victors or grieved the
losers, the system works. No one talks revolution; there are no
armed plotters and activists scheming to upset the result of the
citizens' collective judgment.
People still sleep secure in their homes, they pursue their daily
tasks, they are safeguarded in their persons against arbitrary
action by any set of officials who may be temporarily elevated
to positions of authority.
Before the election, the Eisenhower Administration had begun
plans to facilitate the transfer of functions and power either to Vice
Pres. Nixon and his designated associates or to Sen. Kennedy and
his staff. This is in line with the precedent created in 1952 by
former Pres. Truman, who invited Gen. Eisenhower to name aides
who began to work immediately with the Bureau of the Budget,
the military, diplomatic and intelligence agencies, and with the
staff in the White House itself.
* * *
IN 1952, ALSO, Truman set the precedent for giving each of
the candidates regular briefings during the campaign on high-level
intelligence and diplomatic reports, and in 1956 Gov. Stevenson,
the Democratic nominee, was shown the same courtesy by the
Eisenhower Administration.
The system has worked with less effectiveness this year. Ken-
nedy's nomination of Stevenson and Rep. Chester Bowles (D-
Conn.) to receive briefings for him was rejected by the White
House. The Democratic nominee himself, however, received his
third briefing a week before election, at his own request
This is not merely a matter of courtesy. The security of the
country requires that there be no gap in the capacity of the govern-
ment to take instant decisions, and the President-elect must have
the basic information he needs either to consult during the pre-
inauguration period with Eisenhower or to make his own decisions
immediately after inauguration next Jan. 20.
* * *
MANY POLICY MATTERS involving domestic affairs, and to
some extent foreign affairs, necessarily were put in a state of abey-
ance from the time of the nominating conventions. The post-con-
vention session of Congress merely confirmed the deadlock that
had existed between the Republican conservative in the White
House and the more welfare-minded and activist Democrats on
Capitol Hill.
Events may move slowly even after inauguration, even if Ken-
nedy is elected and despite his own hopes for quick action on
programs that have long been stalled. A fully-manned and effective
staff working smoothly in the many departments and agencies of the
Executive Dept. is usually achieved only through experience and
the fires of testing.
The 1952 precedent is the only one we have in the last 28
years for a full-scale transfer of powers from an outgoing to a
newcoming Administration. Franklin D. Roosevelt repeatedly
succeeded himself, and Truman was thrust into office with no
chance previously for more than a Vice President's acquaintance
with problems, which is by no means the same thing as the
knowledge that comes through making actual decisions.
No popular democracy, based on almost universal suffrage, has
endured for more generations than ours — steadily broadening the
base of representation, steadily adapting its institutions to the
changing needs of the day. Injustices still nag at us to be corrected,
there is too wide a gap between the powerful and the impoverished.
But the system gives us leeway to think about these things and to
plan to correct them — and to do it through political machinery
that is fundamentally responsive to the popular will.
ACTIVE TRADE UNIONIST for over half a century, Nick Di-
Gaetano, retired member of Auto Workers Local 7, Detroit, re-
cently turned over more than 200 volumes of bound labor publica-
tions to Wayne State University's labor library. Left to right are
Local 7 Vice Pres. Mike Marasco; DiGaetano; Wayne County AFL-
CIO Pres. Al Barbour; Wayne State Archivist Philip Mason; and
Jack Skeels of university's Dept. of Economics,
Pag* Eight
AFL^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
Bow to Buy :
Social Security Is
Like Money in Bank
By Sidney Margolius
TKE BIG FIGHT over medical insurance overshadowed the fact
that Congress did pass several changes in social security, some
of special value to younger families. Most notably, the changes
increase financial protection for younger workers who become se-
verely disabled, and for families who lose their breadwinner.
Other changes enable some people previously denied benefits now
to get them, and ease the penalties
on beneficiaries who continue to
work.
The social security offices are dis-
tributing detailed information on the
changes. But let's see how, in gen-
eral, they affect family financial
planning.
You and your family ought to
know your social security benefits
as thoroughly as you know how
much money you have in the bank
For that's what social security really
is: money in the bank against the
day you might lose your income
because of disablement, death of the
family breadwinner, or old age
Young workers and their wives tend to pay little attention to social
security. They think of it as something for the old folks. Actually
social security increasingly is becoming the young family's chief
bulwark against disaster.
Here are the social security changes of perhaps widest importance,
and their potential effect on the family:
1 Severely disabled workers no longer need wait until age 50 to
get social security benefits. Thus all workers who already are
disabled, or chronically ill to the point where they can't engage in
substantial gainful work, are eligible immediately. Disabled work-
ers still do need five years of social security coverage, out of the
10 years before becoming disabled, to qualify.
But even if you are not disabled, you should realize that for
the first time in your life you are financially protected against such
a plight. Not even the most expensive accident and sickness
insurance policy sold by private companies could give you as
much protection as the new social security benefit.
In fact, since social security and the new veterans' benefits now
both provide protection against disablement, it's questionable
whether wage-earners any longer need to buy expensive individual
disability policies.
2 Benefits are raised for children. If your family breadwinner
should die, the children now will get increased payments. Like
the widow herself, each child will get three-quarters of the worker's
primary benefit instead of the former allotment of half plus an extra
quarter distributed among the children. The maximum family pay-
ments have not been increased. But families not getting the maxi-
mum now will get larger payments, and payments will not be reduced
as drastically when each child reaches 18; in some cases, may not
be reduced at all.
For example, take a widow with three children whose deceased
husband had an average wage of $320 a month (that is, wages that
can be counted toward social security credit). This would have
given him a primary benefit of $110 a month. Under the old law,
his family benefits theoretically would have totalled $275. But the
family would have bumped up against the $254 maximum for that
benefit class. And when the oldest child reached 18 under the old
rules, this family's benefit would have dropped to $220.
Under the new law, the maximum family payment is still $254.
But when the oldest child reaches 18, the rest of the family, in this
example, still will get $247.50.
Now that's valuable family insurance. It will take care of most
of a bereaved family's needs although it still needs some supplemen-
tation from union group insurance or private insurance.
TO SUPPLEMENT FAMILY social security, you can estimate
that $5,000 of life insurance will provide $50 a month for 10 years;
$10,000 will yield $50 a month for 20 years.
If you're a war veteran, you may not even need that much insur-
ance. A vet's widow with one child whose own total other income
(including her social security, but not the children's) is under $1,000
a year, would be eligible for VA payments of $75 a month plus $15
for each additional child. If over $1,000 but not over $2,000, she'd
get $60 plus $15 for each additional child.
A childless widow can get $60 from VA if her total other income
is not over $600 a year; $45 if over $600 but not over $1,200; $25
if over $1,200 but not over $1,800..
3 A number of changes help older people. Among them:
Some people who lacked sufficient coverage now can become
eligible for benefits with less coverage. For example, a worker who
will reach retirement age (65 for men, 62 for women) in 1961, pre-
viously needed about five years of covered work. Now he needs
only 314 years. Anyone previously told he didn't have enough
coverage should contact his social security office to see if he now
does qualify. This may especially help women who worked some
years but quit for family or other reasons. But the least any worker
needs is 1VS years of coverage.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Marguliua
AN ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION and complete cooperation were accorded the medical training
ship S.S. Hope when it arrived in Djakarta, Indonesia, as part of the People to People Health
Foundation program. Here Dr. Davis Durham, Wilmington, Del., ophthalmologist and one of the
volunteer medical men staffing the ship, gives an eye examination to Maj. Rismono Oesman of
the Indonesian army.
American Doctor Reports:
Indonesia's Welcome to HOPE
'Beyond All Expectations'
By Gervase N. Love
THE GOVERNMENT OF INDONESIA, its
medical profession, its people and even the
ambassadors from the Iron Curtain countries gave
the hospital training ship HOPE a welcome be-
yond all expectations when it dropped anchor at
the harbor side of Tandjong Priok, Djakarta, Oct.
19, Dr. William B. Walsh reported on his return
to Washington.
"In fact," he added, "three of the Iron Cur-
tain country ambassadors were so impressed by
what they saw on a visit that they made appoint-
ments for physical examinations."
The HOPE, a floating medical training cen-
ter, is the first fruit of Project HOPE— "Health
Opportunity for People Everywfiere" — an op-
eration by the People to People Health Founda-
tion which Walsh heads and which was en-
dorsed by the 1959 AFL-CIO convention in
San Francisco.
Its objective is to bring modern medical,
surgical, auxiliary and health techniques to the
physicians, nurses and technicians of underdevel-
oped nations so they in turn will be better able
to solve the multiple health problems that beset
so much of the world. It is financed by American
people, not by the U.S. government.
"We were a little concerned because nothing
like this had ever been attempted before," Dr.
Walsh said at £ Washington press conference.
But the Indonesians had spent three months
getting ready for us. They are paying all local
costs, which are considerable. They carefully
selected the patients for the clinical and training
work, and the day we arrived 22 nurses and 35
attendants moved in and are now living on the
ship.
"We were given so many parties and receptions
that we had to ask for a halt.
Welcomed By Medicos
"The reception by the medical profession was
so good that a week later we were asked to help
set up a teaching and training center at a new
hospital north of Djakarta built largely with dona-
tions from the Indonesian people."
NEWSPAPER COMMENT, Dr. Walsh said,
was "unprecedented" in its warmth.
"The 'HOPE' is far from an ordinary hospital
ship," the Indonesian Observer said editorially.
"She represents the hearts of a mighty nation, of
the man on the street, and the hope that she wants
to share with others . . .
"In this world where good will is usually
entwined in a never-ending length of string and
red tape, the simplicity and goodness, the im-
pact and the quality that the visit of this hos-
pital ship offers places this goodwill visit tops
on the list of mankind's hopes."
The Times of Indonesia, expressing gratitude
to Americans "for their interest in our welfare,"
said it will be "a long time before this act of
American generosity is forgotten."
The American medical men not only are
transmitting their skills and training to their
Indonesian counterparts but themselves are
learning from their 'students, Dr. Walsh said.
One thing they have learned is to recognize
leprosy, which they will encounter increasingly as
the HOPE moves further south. They also meet
many types of parasites which are unknown in
this country, and have come upon numerous cases
of a ty^pe of malignancy common in Indonesia but
rare in the United States.
There are many spleen operations, and so
many cases of kidney and bladder stones that
American and Indonesian urologists have started
a joint research project to determine the cause.
Four teaching conferences are held every morn-
ing aboard the HOPE, Walsh said, with about
200 Indonesians attending each. Evenings, he
went on, sessions are held in the Indonesian hos-
pitals — usually four of them, all as well attended
as the morning conferences.
Closed circuit television, over which Pres.
Sukarno was an interested spectator at an opera-
tion for removal of a spleen, has been an un-
expected help, Walsh reported.
"IF WE CAME HOME TOMORROW, Proj-
ect HOPE would still be a success," he declared.
"It has proved that we felt — that the people of
Indonesia and countries like it wanted help and
would welcome it. They showed they had a tre-
mendous thirst for knowledge."
So far, he said, there have been no major diffi-
culties, "though we expect to encounter them."
The project costs about $3.5 million a year to
keep* going, "and one ship isn't enough," he added
on the basis of admittedly limited experience.
The depth of the welcome was indicated by the
gift of three houses — in a country where housing
is scarce — as sort of a permanent outpost of the
training ship. A rotating staff of physicians, nurses
and technicians will be assigned there after the
HOPE has left to give continuing training, Dr.
Walsh said, and will be supported with drugs and
equipment from the ship.
He said all branches of the Indonesian govern-
ment have cooperated fully, adding that the Navy
has made a plane available for transfers of per-
sonnel and supplies.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
Page Nine
Warning from Portland:
Drive Opens to Curb
Professional 'Scabs'
A seven-union committee of newspaper unions, formed to unify
the 1 1 -month-old strike against the Portland Oregonian and Oregon
Journal, has opened a second-front drive for legislation to outlaw
professional strikebreaking.
"As of now, the campaign is officially underway," the group
declared in unveiling a "modern-
citizens' job protection bill" at a
press conference.
The new legislative subcommit-
tee of the Presidents' Committee of
Allied Printing and Related Trades
said in a joint statement that the
drive will proceed on several levels.
"It is our aim to have the bill
introduced in the more than
40 state legislatures which will
meet in 1961 and in the Cana-
dian provincial legislatures," the
group said.
The legislative group, headed by
Pres. Elmer Brown of the Typo-
graphical Union, said it also is
working with the AFL-CIO on a
federal measure with the aim of
making it part of labor's program
in the new 87th Congress.
Also on the legislative group
are Pres. Anthony J. De Andrade
of the Printing Pressmen and Exec-
utive Vice Pres. William J. Farson
of the Newspaper Guild. Vice
Pres. Alexander J. Rohan attended
the press conference for De
Andrade.
'The campaign has the full en-
dorsement of the AFL-CIO Execu-
tive Council and through it all of
the state federations of labor and
central labor unions," the group
pointed out.
The joint group said it was
formed out of the fear that the
spreading of the "Portland pattern"
would threaten the very existence
of the unions involved.
Grave Threat to Labor
The Portland strike, the group
said, not only is a "grave threat"
to the 800 members involved, but
to their fellow members and labor
in general.
The newspaper industry also
may be a testing ground, the group
warned, since the employer device
of a strike insurance fund has
shown up in the airline and rail-
road industries.
Over the years, the group said,
strikes and lockouts in the print-
ing and publishing industry have
been limited usually to one or two
crafts. But Portland marks the
first time the publishers in a major
city have elected "to take on" all
their unionized workers "in one
massive union-busting drive."
The group said several factors
made this possible: .
• Samuel I. Newhouse, multi-
millionaire owner of the Oregonian,
heads the second largest newspaper
chain in the nation and so is better
able to maintain a struck opera-
tion.
• Availability of "an ample
supply of professional strikebreak-
ers, many of whom came from the
stable of the notorious Bloor
Schleppey," who, the group said,
has for ten years made "a lucrative
IWA Board Backs
Kennedy, Johnson
Portland, Ore. — The Woodwork-
ers' executive board unanimously
has endorsed the Democratic slate
of Senators John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson.
IWA Pres. A. F. Hartung said it
was the board's "considered judg-
ment" that the election of Kennedy
and Johnson would best serve la-
bor's interests. The union has con-
ducted an intensive register and
vote drive among its members in
25 states, he said.
business" of supplying strikebreak-
ers.
• Indications that the two struck
Portland dailies received $1 mil-
lion from the strike insurance fund
of the Newspaper Publishers As-
sociation. This, the group said,
finances $350-$500 per week wages
and expenses of strikebreakers, cir-
culation and advertising losses, and
other expenses.
The group said it is seeking
the new federal and state legis-
lation because the Byrnes Act,
the federal anti-strikebreaker
law, enacted in 1936, and the
few so-called "little Byrnes Act"
laws in the states are ineffectual.
The Byrnes Act makes it a felony
to transport in interstate commerce
any person employed for the pur-
pose of interfering by force or
threats with peaceful picketing or
with employe rights to organize or
bargain.
The group said it obviously
would be difficult to show that a
person was being transported for
the purpose of interfering by force
or threats in a dispute.
The ''model citizens' job protec-
tion bill" would bar recruitment of
strikebreakers by persons or agen-
cies not involved in a dispute, and
it would bar employment of pro-
fessional strikebreakers.
Would Not Stop Hiring
The model bill would not stop
an employer from directly hiring
replacements for strikers as long as
they are not professionals and as
long as each such replacement is
informed that he will be taking the
place of a striker.
Members of the group said it
will be possible to define a "pro-
fessional strikebreaker." They work
in non-union shops in Oklahoma
City, Miami and Monroe, La., and
elsewhere and are made available
in the industry when needed, it
was pointed out.
Other unions in the joint group
are the Stereotypers, Photo En-
gravers, Bookbinders and the
Papermakers and Paperworkers.
HISTORIC AGREEMENT setting up special presidential commission to study and make recom-
mendations on work rules dispute between railroad operating unions and management was reached
at top-level meeting in office of Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell. Seated, left to right, are Pres. Neil
P. Speirs of the Switchman; Pres. H. E. Gilbert of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen; A. F. Zim-
merman, assistant grand chief of Locomotive Engineers; Pres. J. A. Paddock of the Conductors;
Pres. W. P. Kennedy of the Railroad Trainmen; Mitchell; Guy W. Knight, chairman of Eastern
Carriers' Conference Committee; B. B. Bryant, chairman of Southeastern Conference, and Theodore
Short, Western Conference chairman. Standing are Undersec. of Labor James CTConnell; L. B. Fee,
New York Central Railroad; C. A. McRee, Seaboard, and E. H. Hallmann, Illinois Central.
New Farm Program Urged for 60s
To End GOP 'Mismanagement 9
The Conference on Economic Progress has accused the Eisenhower Administration of "abysmal
mismanagement" of the nation's farm program and has called for a sweeping new approach that
would "substitute purpose for aimlessness, decision for default."
In an 80-page study entitled "Food and Freedom," the nonprofit CEP proposed a long-range
program for the 60s that would spell out maximum production, employment and purchasing power
goals for the nation's farms similar^
to the goals for labor and industry
contained in the Employment Act
of 1946.
Noting that the U. S. is "moving
perilously close to the third eco-
nomic recession within less than
eight years," the CEP charged
that "the farm depression has been
a powerful factor in the slowdown
of our overall rate of economic
growth and the severe long-term
rise in unemployment." It added:
"The abysmal mismanagement
of our farm productive resources
is a striking example of our per-
vasive default. For nowhere else
in our economic life is the con-
trast more glaring than in agri-
culture between unused 'sur-
pluses' and neglected needs, be-
tween so called overproduction
and genuine underconsumption.
Nowhere else is the challenge
more urgent to convert the new
Massachusetts Votes
Strikebreaking Ban
Boston — The Massachusetts Legislature, denouncing the use of
imported strikebreakers as leading to "industrial strife and vio-
lence," has ordered the registration of out-of-state strikebreakers
and of professional "scab-herders" who peddle their services to
employers.
The labor-backed bill was signed^
by Gov. Foster Furcolo (D) after
it reached his desk for the second
time. The first time around, the
governor — without vetoing the
measure — sent it back to the legis-
lature with the request that it be
amended to require also the regis-
tration of out-of-state pickets.
After both houses by over-
whelming votes refused to make
the change, Furcolo accepted the
legislation in its original form.
Although the bill falls consider-
ably short of the goal of banning
outright all professional strike-
breaking, it marks the first legisla-
tive breakthrough in this area in
recent years. Anti-scab bills were
passed earlier this year by the Lou-
isiana and Rhode Island legisla-
tures but were killed by governors'
vetoes.
The Massachusetts law requires
any person who arranges to furnish
out-of-state strikebreakers to an
employer to file a written report
with the state listing:
• The names and addresses of
persons hired or about to be hired
as strikebreakers.
• The total amount of salary
and expenses paid or to be paid to
each strikebreaker.
• The amount received by the
"scab-furnisher" for his services in
supplying strikebreakers.
Employers who contract for the
importation of strikebreakers are
likewise required to file detailed
reports. All reports filed are open
for public inspection.
.Maximum penalty for failure
to file is a $500 fine for a first
offense and a $5,000 fine for sub-
sequent offenses.
The law also bans employment
of a strikebreaker with the knowl-
edge that the strikebreaker has
been convicted of a felony within
the previous seven years.
technology into a positive asset.
The CEP study charged that the
Administration's farm policy has
been "almost totally lacking in any
great national purpose related to
conditions either at home or over-
seas.
Creation of farm surpluses in
the U.S. at a time when many
American families do not have a
balanced diet was serious enough,
CEP declared, but the existence of
these surpluses "when more than
half of the people in the free world
go hungry in a literal sense and
when millions are close to starva-
tion" created a condition "perilous
to us almost beyond description."
CEP called for an agricultural
program that would look into the
real needs and purchasing power
of domestic consumers in order to
lift all American families to a "sat-
isfactory" level of health; and
which would raise the level of agri-
cultural exports to help reduce the
food deficits in the underdeveloped
free world.
Asks Farm Job Program
At the same time it urged action
to insure full and efficient employ-
ment on the farm, with emphasis
on "encouragement of the family-
type farm," coupled with action to
provide jobs off the farm as auto-
mation continues to reduce the
need for agricultural workers.
The program, CEP said, would
be geared to keep income of farm
families moving upward at the
same rate as those of urban fam-
ilies. It pointed out that in 1959
per capita farm income nosedived
to $965 — less than 50 percent of
Stewards, Pilots
Settlement Urged
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has called on representatives of the
Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses
Association and the Air Line Pilots
Association to iron out problems
resulting from an application for an
AFL-CIO charter by the ALSSA.
The AFL-CIO has urged that
the court suits filed by the Pilots
against the Stewards group and its
president Kenneth Quinn be with-
drawn and that the dispute be set-
tled by the unions and the federa-
tion within the framework of the
AFL-CIO.
the per capita personal income for
the entire U.S. population.
The CEP "Food and Freedom"
study was prepared by a staff under
the direction of Leon H. Keyser-
ling, former chairman of Pres. Tru-
man's Council of Economic Ad-
visers. Copies of the pamphlet
may be obtained at 50 cents each
from the Conference on Economic
Progress, 1001 Connecticut Ave,
N. W., Washington 6, D. C.
Former FBI
Agent Blocked
As Monitor
A possibility that the Teamsters
Union Board of Monitors may soon
be compelled to agree to a union
convention, thus paving the way for
dissolution of the monitorship sys-
tem, was raised when a U.S. ap-
pellate court rejected a proposed
new chairman for the group.
Efforts of the monitors to hold
a hearing on charges involving
Teamsters Pres. James R. Hoffa
were previously blocked in appel-
late court, and the board was re-
duced to two members when Chair-
man Martin F. O'Donoghue re-
signed.
District Judge F. Dickinson
Letts, who established the monitor-
ship in January 1958 under a con-
sent order, then named Terence F.
McShane, a former Federal Bureau
of Investigation agent, as chairman
over union objections.
The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia up-
held the objections, holding that
they were based on "reasonable
grounds" because of McShane's
previous activities as an investi-
gator of the union. He had tes-
tified against Hoffa in a wire-
tapping cast.
The Board of Monitors, the ap-
pellate court said in a 2-to-l deci-
sion, was created with a provision
that both sides should agree on the
person named as chairman to pre-
side over members representing
plaintiffs and union.
Discussions have been proceed-
ing between spokesmen of the two
groups on possible terms of agree-
ment for a special union conven-
tion, previously blocked by Letts. '
Pape Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5. 1960
Forand Urges
Senior Votes
For Kennedy
Chicago — "I want you to help
me put Jack Kennedy in the White
House," Rep. Aime J. Forand (D-
R. I.) told 3,000 persons attending
Chicago's Senior Citizens Salute to
Social Security at the Medinah
Temple.
Forand said he is confident that
upon Kennedy's election health
care for the aged under the social
security system would become a
reality. He predicted that 90 days
after the beginning of a Kennedy
Administration a bill would be en-
acted.
Forand said that, though he is
retiring from Congress, "don't
think the Forand fight is dead.
It is very much alive." He urged
senior citizens to get out the vote
and write letters to friends and
relatives urging them to vote for
Kennedy.
Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.)
praised Pres. Roosevelt for estab-
lishing the social security system 25
years ago. He reviewed the record
of the Republican fight against so-
cial security and called for the elec-
tion of Kennedy and Lyndon John-
son, Illinois Sen. Paul H. Douglas
and Otto Kerner, Democratic can-
didate for governor.
Kefauver criticized GOP efforts
to hold up the drug price hearings
of the Anti-Trust and Monopoly
subcommittee. Despite these at-
tempts, he said, "our subcommittee
has made public a clear-cut — and
not very attractive — picture." He
added:
"... I believe that it is seri-
ously wrong when we, as a na-
tion, have the most wonderful
drugs in the world — and still
there are thousands of our peo-
ple who need them, but cannot
afford to pay for them."
Pres. William A. Lee of the Chi-
cago Federation of Labor said, " We
hear of so-called 'white papers' on
the issue of health care for aging.
All the white papers or blue papers
on this question add up to just so
much red tape unless we have lead-
ership that is not afraid to act vig-
orously on the things you are dis-
cussing here today."
Secret Weapon
Through Democratic Victory:
Nixon 'Discovery 9 of
Social Security Hit
Philadelphia — An AFL-CIO spokesman extended tongue-in-
cheek congratulations to Vice Pres. Nixon for belatedly "discover-
ing social security."
Nelson H. Cruikshank, director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Social
Security, told a senior citizens' rally here that Nixon's "election year
concern for the older people of<Sr~
America" is in direct contradiction
to his voting record in Congress.
Cruikshank also took sharp issue
with Nixon's new social security
"white paper" outlining the Repub-
lican candidate's "program for our
senior citizens."
"It has all the elements of a
liberal program," the AFL-CIO
expert said, "with one exception
— it fails to provide any money."
Cruikshank noted that Health,
Education & Welfare Sec. Arthur
S. Flemming had attempted to cor-
rect that omission by telling news-
men the Nixon program would cost
between $200 million and $300
million a year.
But, Cruikshank pointed out,
just one item in the Nixon blue-
print — extension of social security
4 Teamsters Cleared
In T-H Political Case
St. Louis — Four Teamster officials were acquitted here of criminal
charges involving contributions to candidates for federal office.
Acquitted were Teamsters Executive Vice Pres. Harold J. Gib-
bons; Legislative Dir. Sidney Zagri; and Pres. William Latal and
Sec. John Naber of IBT Local 688.
has never suc-^
The Justice Dept.
ceeded in obtaining a final convic-
tion against any union or its officers
on charges of violating the restric-
tions on union political action writ-
ten into the Corrupt Practices Act
in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley Act.
U.S. District Court Judge
George H. Moore directed the
jury to acquit the four union
officials on the ground that the
government had produced no
proof that the IBT had violated
the law when individual mem-
bers signed authorization cards
permitting the use of 35 cents
per month of their dues money
for political purposes*
The court held that there was no
evidence that the allocations "were
not entirely voluntary." He added
that if, as the government sug-
gested, the law prevents such an
allocation by union members, *i
should have grave doubts about the
constitutionality" of the law.
No Government Appeal
Because the government had
completed presentation of its case
before the judge directed the ac-
quittal verdict the Justice Dept.
will be unable to appeal the de-
cision, since this would violate the
against
double
constitutional safeguard
placing a defendant in
jeopardy.
A Justice Dept. spokesman
expressed doubt that the decision
would have any impact on any
other cases involving union
political activity which might
come up.
Judge Moore ruled that con-
tributions by a labor organization
to federal candidates are legal un-
der the Corrupt Practices Act pro-
vided they are made "from funds
voluntarily designated for such pur-
pose by all or a part of the individ-
ual members" of a union if there
is a bona fide accounting of such
funds and if the amounts of ex-
penditures do not exceed the funds
designated by the members.
The fund set up by Local 688
— from which contributions were
made to the late Sen. Thomas
C. Hennings (D-Mo.), Sen.
Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), Repre-
sentatives James Roosevelt (D-
Calif.) and Henry S. Reuss (D-
Wis.) — complied with all of these
provisions, the court ruled.
benefits to 2.6 million additional
persons — would cost more than $1
billion, even if they were given
only the $33-a-month minimum.
The only possible way Nixon
could make good on his pledge
at the cost estimate given by
Flemming, he said, would be to
raid the Social Security Trust
Fund. This, he added, "backs up
Sen. Kennedy's statement that
Nixon is leading a wrecking crew
against social security."
During his service in Congress,
Nixon voted "wrong" on eight sig-
nificant social security issues,
Cruikshank declared. Reading the
record on the Vice President, he
listed these key votes:
• A bill to nullify the effect of
a Supreme Court decision extend-
ing social security to an additional
750,000 people passed the House
in 1948 with Nixon voting for it.
• Pres. Truman's veto of the
bill was overridden with the help
of Nixon's vote.
• In April 1948, Nixon voted to
override a Truman veto of a social
security amendment excluding
newspaper and magazine vendors
from coverage.
• In 1949 and 1950, there were
four key votes on a bill to extend
coverage to some 3.5 million peo-
ple and raise benefits an average
of 77 percent On each of these
key votes, including an attempt to
recommit the entire bill with in-
structions to substitute a watered-
down measure providing lower
benefits, less coverage and elimi-
nating disability insurance protec-
tion, Nixon voted wrong. After all
the attempts to emasculate the bill
were defeated, Nixon turned around
and voted for final passage.
• In 1951, Nixon supported
the Jenner amendment which made
public assistance rolls in the states
subject to public scrutiny.
Cruikshank pointed out that
Nixon's opposition to social se-
curity is not surprising since the
basic social security system was
bitterly opposed by the Repub-
licans. Back in 1935, 107 of the
115 Republicans in Congress
voted against the old age and
survivors insurance program.
Cruikshank noted that the im-
provements which Nixon has op-
posed "he now hails as the ac-
complishments of his party."
R-T-W Repeal Seen
By Mrs. Roosevelt
Indianapolis — Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt warned the nation in a
speech here that so-called "right-to-work" laws are harmful to the
welfare of all working people, and should be repealed in the states
in which they have been enacted.
Mrs. Roosevelt denounced the anti-collective bargaining legis-
lation in an appearance before^
500 Democratic women leaders in
this city. She predicted that Indi-
ana's Democratic candidate for
governor, Matthew E. Welsh, will
be elected Nov. 8 and that the
state's three-year-old "right-to-
work" law will be repealed by the
legislature next January.
The "right-to-work" law is a
major issue in the Indiana elec-
tion campaign, with Democrats
supporting repeal of the com-
pulsory open-shop law, and Re-
publicans opposing repeal.
In her talk with the Democratic
women's group, Mrs. Roosevelt at-
tacked the validity of the "right-to-
work" law, said it has been a fac-
tor in holding back the nation's
economic expansion, and "hurts all
of the workers of your state." She
said "right-to-work" laws should be
repealed.
Mrs. Roosevelt told the Demo-
cratic women:
"Some years ago, under Repub-
lican leadership, Indiana passed a
'right-to-work' law. I think all of
you know that Sen. (Herbert H.)
Lehman and I have joined in a
committee to fight this law in many
areas of our nation.
"We have tried to make clear
just what this law really is. It
has no validity as to worker
'rights.' It simply damages the
workers' right to organize, and
I am glad you will have a gover-
nor in Matthew Welsh who will
lead the fight to repeal this law
which I feel hurts all of the
workers of your state.
"We are coming into a difficult
economic period. Not many have
thought about it, but you, in a
state where you have steel and the
automobile industry, must have al-
ready sensed what automation will
do to workers.
'Battle for Mankind'
"It is essential not only to re-
peal the 'right-to-work' law, but we
must have people in government to
plan, to do things, to see that
people will not suffer. It is a great
battle for mankind."
Mrs. Roosevelt addressed the
Democratic women at a luncheon
at which she was the honor guest
after addressing a meeting earlier
of the Indiana Teachers' Associa-
tion.
The widow of the late New
Deal President has led a nation-
wide fight for the past three years
against the anti-collective bar-
gaining "right-to-work" law. The
Democratic Party platform has
pledged repeal of Section 14(b)
of the Taft-Hartley Act, which
authorizes states to enact legisla-
tion that contradicts federal rec-
ognition of the union shop.
Mrs. Roosevelt is co-chairman
of the National Council for Indus-
trial Peace, a voluntary citizen's
group that opposes the anti-labor
"right-to- work" laws. Former Sen.
Herbert H. Lehman (D-N. Y.) is
her co-chairman.
The "right-to-work H law is an
election issue to greater or lesser
degree in the states of Indiana,
Vermont, Delaware, Kansas, Okla-
homa, New Mexico, Utah, Iowa
and North Dakota*
AFL-CIO Show Seen
By 10,000 Overseas
New York— "AFL-CIO's Salute to the Armed Forces," a USO
entertainment unit sponsored by the labor federation, recently
returned from a 15,000-mile tour of U.S. bases overseas.
# Nearly 10,000 servicemen at 17 isolated U.S. Navy and Air
Force bases in Spain, Morocco, Naples, and Sicily saw the show
headed by Eileen Barton, recording^
artist, and Johnny Woods, comed-
ian and first vice president of the
American Guild of Variety Artists.
The route they traveled is
known as a "hardship circuit" —
U.S. bases rarely visited by en-
tertainers from the States. The
tour was arranged as part of
the continuing AFL-CIO Com-
munity Service — USO program
on behalf of men and women in
the armed forces.
The troupe gave 13 performances
at U. S. bases in Spain to a total
of 4,630 servicemen, including two
at Torrejon, headquarters of the
16th Air Force.
In Morocco, the unit played to
4,000 servicemen and their fami-
lies at six bases of the 16th Air
Force and the U. S. 6th Fleet.
Largest audience was in Port Lyau-
tey, where 1 ,200 sailors at the U. S.
Naval Air Base saw their first state-
side entertainment in many months.
The day before, at Sidi Yahia, the
troupe played to a small but en-
thusiastic audience of 500 person-
nel stationed at the U. S. Navy
Communications Base.
The labor-sponsored entertain-
ment unit gave one performance at
NATO Fleet Headquarters in
Naples, and another at the 6th Fleet
Naval Air Support Base in Sigon-
ella, Sicily, which concluded the
30-day tour.
In Sigonella, the troupe played to
500 personnel and their families.
Captain W. J. Frazier, base com-
mander, wrote AFL-CIO Secv-
Treas. William F. Schnitzler: "On
behalf of all of us here, I thank you
and your organization for the won-
derful show, "Salute to the Armed
Forces."
The tour was made possible by a
$10,000 contribution from AFL-
CIO as "an expression of labor'i
concern for the well-being of
Americans in uniform."
SAG Ballots In
National Election
Hollywood— The 14,000 mem-
bers of the Screen Actors Guild
currently are balloting on top offi-
cers in the entertainment union's
annual elections.
George Chandler, incumbent
president, is unopposed for another
one-year term. Also unopposed
are the following non-incumbents:
Dana Andrews, nominated for first
vice president; James Garner, sec-
ond vice president; John Litel, third
vice president; Ann Doran, record-
ing secretary, and Frank Faylen,
treasurer.
There are 21 nominees for the
18 positions on the SAG board of
directors.
Ballots are returnable before
Nov. 11, and results will be an-
nounced at the Guild's general
membership meeting here Nov, 2L
AFL-€IO NEWS, WASHINGTON, f>. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1960
Page Etevea
Democrats Favored to Keep
Control of Senate and House
(Continued from Page 1)
of 65 seats — 40 more than realistic
Republican forecasts — to give the
GOP a one-vote majority.
Assessing the 437 House faces is
more difficult than appraising Sen-
ate contests since many elections
hinge on highly localized issues,
unpredictable local moods and the
personalities and backgrounds of
candidates.
In addition a large number of
congressional districts switch back
and forth between the two parties
every two years without regard to
general voting trends. And there
are about 90 "marginal" districts
where the incumbent won by less
than 55 percent of the vote.
The Republicans have put major
emphasis on these "marginal" dis-
tricts, and in addition are concen-
trating their efforts on three key
states — Indiana, Connecticut and
California — where, GOP strategists
contend, the Democratic victories
in 1958 were "disproportionately"
high, even in the face of the Demo-
cratic sweep.
In normally Republican Indiana,
for example, where the GOP had a
9-2 margin in the delegation, the
Democrats captured six new seats
two years ago. A major cause of
this stunning upset was a strong
protest vote against "right-to-work"
supporters. In Connecticut, Demo-
crats captured all six House seats
previously held by the Republicans,
while in California, they picked up
three seats to take control of the
delegation by a 16-14 margin.
In the Senate races, the Demo-
crats' best hope of picking up Re-
publican-held seats lie in these
states:
Colorado — Lt. Gov. Robert
Knous (D) had a slight edge in the
closing days of the campaign to
defeat Sen. Gordon Allott in his
bid for re-election.
Iowa — Democratic Gov. Herschel
Loveless was seen ahead of State
Sen. Jack Miller (R) in the race
for the seat being vacated by GOP
Sen. Thomas E. Martin.
Massachusetts — Mayor Thomas
J. O'Connor of Springfield, a sur-
prising Democratic primary vic-
tor, appeared to be pulling close to
veteran Sen. Leverett Saltonstall,
with Kennedy's drawing power in
his own state seen aiding O'Con-
nor's campaign.
By contrast, the Republicans
seem to be leading clearly in only
one race for a Democratic-held seat
— that of Wyoming's retiring Sen.
Joseph C. O'Mahoney. This race
Voters to Ballot for
Governor in 27 States
(Continued from Page 1)
Belt states in a bid to wipe out
Democratic inroads of recent years.
In four southern states — Arkan-
sas, Florida, North Carolina and
Texas — a Democratic gubernatorial
victory is the nearest thing to a
political certainty. It would be
ranked as a major upset if the
Republican candidate won in Mis-
souri or Wisconsin. In Michigan
Lt. Gov. John B. Swainson is
favored to move into the statehouse
being vacated by six-term Gov. G.
Mennen Williams.
In seven other states, which pres-
ently have Democratic governors,
election-eve odds were seen either
even or slightly but not conclusive-
ly favoring the Republican chal-
lengers. In these states — Iowa,
Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
South Dakota, New Mexico and
Washington — the pluralities rolled
up in the presidential contest could
tip the scale either way.
In Minnesota, Gov. Orville L.
Freeman is battling for an unpre-
cedented fourth term against an
aggressive Republican opponent,
E. L. Andersen, who has waged
a gloves-off attempt to split the
farmer-labor alliance in the state.
Republicans took out advertise-
ments in every rural weekly news-
paper in the state to attack Free-
man for having ordered the closing
of the Wilson Co. meat packing
plant at Albert Lea last year during
the Packinghouse Workers' strike.
Andersen has said he would have
used the National Guard to keep
the plant open for strikebreakers,
according to the Duluth Labor
World.
In Washington, normally a Dem-
ocratic stronghold, the re-election
of Gov. Albert D. . Rossellini ^is
considered because of local issues
to hinge on the margin of an ex-
pected Kennedy victory in the
state.
Labor in New Mexico is actively
working for the re-election of Gov.
John Burroughs, who has pledged
to veto any "right-to-work" law.
His GOP opponent, former Gov.
Edwin Mechem, is on record for
outlawing the union shop. This
race, as those in Iowa, Kansas and
South Dakota, is believed to be
close.
The Democrats are hoping that
any gubernatorial losses will be
more than offset by the capture of
governorships now held by Repub-
licans.
In no state are the Republicans
ahead by a margin that could be
considered safe. In several states
now held by the GOP, Demo-
cratic challengers are considered
odds-on favorites.
Otto Kerner, Democratic candi-
date opposing Illinois Gov. William
G. Stratton, has the endorsement
of several normally Republican
newspapers. Stratton, seeking an
unusual third term, narrowly
squeaked through four years ago
even though Pres. Eisenhower car-
ried that state by nearly 850,000
votes. His prestige has been hurt
by scandals involving other state
officials.
In West Virginia, where Demo-
cratic expectations are high, Wil-
liam A. Barron is strongly favored
to win the governorship being va-
cated by Republican Cecil H. Un-
derwood. There will be some
ticket-splitting, but it is expected
to work both ways.
In Maine, the Republicans hold
the governorship only because the
state does not elect a lieutenant-
governor. When Democratic Gov.
Clinton A. Clauson died last year,
the Republican president of the
state senate, lohn H. Reed, suc-
ceeded automatically to the post
and is seeking a full term this year.
Rep. Frank M. Coffin is favored to
defeat Reed and recapture the State-
house for the Democrats.
Stakes High in Indiana
For labor, the stakes are high
in Indiana, where Democrat Mat-
thew Welsh is running against Lt.
Gov. Crawford F. Parker, the man
considered most responsible for
blocking repeal of the state ''right-
to-work" law last year. Welsh,
strongly on record for repeal, is
expected to run ahead of the
Democratic national ticket and is
favored unless Nixon rolls up a
greater-than-expected plurality in
the state.
In Delaware, "right-to-work" is
also an issue, although the Re-
publican candidate, John Rollins,
has taken no recorded stand on
the union shop. The Democratic
candidate, former Gov. Elbert
Carvel, has repeatedly denounced
R-T-W.
pits GOP Rep. Keith Thompson
against Democrat Raymond Whit-
aker.
Rated as tossups, in the closing
days of the campaign, are the Sen-
ate races in Delaware and South
Dakota. In the former, incumbent
Democratic Sen. J. Allen Frear Jr.
is challenged by former GOP Gov.
J. Caleb Boggs; in the latter, in-
cumbent Republican Sen. Karl
Mundt is opposed by Rep. George
McGovern (D).
Three state races are so close
that the popular vote for Presi-
dent is expected to be the key
factor in determining the win-
ner. These are the races in
Kansas, Kentucky and New
Jersey, where all incumbents are
Republicans.
Sixteen of the 23 incumbent
Democratic senators are rated cer-
tain or odds-on favorites to win.
They include John J. Sparkman
(Ala.), E. L. Bartlett (Alaska),
John L. McClellan (Ark.), Richard
B. Russell (Ga.), Paul H. Douglas
(HI.), Allen Ellender (La.), Pat
McNamara (Mich.), James O.
Eastland (Miss.), Edward Long
(Mo.), Clinton P. Anderson
(N.M.), B. Everett Jordan (N.C.),
Robert S. Kerr (Okla.), Strom
Thurmond (S.C.), Estes Kefauver
(Tenn.), A. Willis Robertson (Va.),
and Jennings Randolph (W. Va.)
In addition, it would be regarded
as major upsets if Senate Majority
Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (Tex.)
or Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-
Minn.) were to be defeated, al-
though reports indicate these races
may be close.
Four incumbent Republican sen-
ators — Henry Dworshak (Idaho),
Margaret Chase Smith (Me.), Carl
T. Curtis (Neb.) and Styles Bridges
(N.H.) — seem likely to be returned
to office. A victory for Democrats
Lucia Cormier in Maine or Herbert
Hill in New Hampshire also would
be upset wins — although a Demo-
cratic tide has been rising in New
England in recent years.
In the three remaining races,
Democratic candidates Lee Met-
calf in Montana, Maurine Neu-
berger in Oregon and Claiborne Pell
in Rhode Island appear well out
in front in their campaigns for seats
currently held by their party.
Voters in 34 States Pick
Senators on Election Day
Following are the names of the major party candidates
for the 34 U.S. Senate seats to be filled in the election Nov. 8:
State Republican Democrat
Alabama Julian Elgin *J. J. Sparkman
Alaska Lee McKinley *E. L. Bartlett
Arkansas None *J. L. McClellan
Colorado * Gordon Allott Robert L . Knous
Delaware J. Caleb Boggs *J. Allen Frear
Georgia None *R. B. Russell
Idaho *Henry Dworshak Robt. McLaughlin
Illinois S. W. Witwer *Pau! Douglas
Iowa Jack Miller Herschel Loveless
Kansas *A. S. Schoeppel Frank Theis
Kentucky * John S. Cooper Keen Johnson
Louisiana Geo. W. Reese Jr. *A. W. Ellender
Maine *M. C. Smith Lucia Cormier
Massachusetts *L. Saltonstall T. J. O'Connor
Michigan A. M. Bentley *P. V. McNamara
Minnesota P. K. Peterson *H. H. Humphrey
Mississippi Joe A. Moore * James Eastland
Missouri Lon Hocker *Edw. V. Long
Montana Orvin B. Fjare Lee Metcalf
Nebraska *Carl T. Curtis Robert Conrad
New Hampshire *Styles Bridges Herbert W. Hill
New Jersey *Clifford Case Thorn Lord
New Mexico Wm. F. Colwes *C. P. Anderson
North Carolina .... Kyle Hayes *B. E. Jordan
Oklahoma B. H. Crawford *Robert S. Kerr
Oregon Elmo Smith Mrs. M. Neuberger
Rhode Island R. Archambault Clairborne Pell
South Carolina None * Strom Thurmond
South Dakota *Karl Mundt Geo. S. McGovern
Tennessee Bradley Frazier * Estes Kefauver
Texas John G. Tower *L. B. Johnson
Virginia Stuart D. Baker *A. W. Robertson
West Virginia C. H. Underwood *J. Randolph
Wyoming Keith Thomson R. B. Whitaker
* Incumbent.
NMU Files Answer
In L-G Election Case
New York — The Maritime Union has filed an answer in federal
court here denying without qualification all of the charges brought
by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell against the union's biennial elec-
tion held last spring.
In the pre-trial stage, the union sought to interrogate Mitchell
orally but the presiding judge di-^
rected that the union proceed first
with written questions.
Mitchell, moving under the Lan-
drum-Griffin Act, charged that
prior to the April-May election the
union "failed to insure the secrecy
of the ballot and violated the elec-
tion provisions of the act by other
conduct, including the violation of
its own constitution."
The suit also alleges that the
Governors Will Be Chosen
From These 54 Candidates
These are the Democratic and Republican candidates in the
27 states which elect a governor Nov. 8:
State Republican Democrat
Arizona *Paul Fannin Lee Ackerman
Arkansas Henry M. Britt *Orval E. Faubus
Delaware John W. Rollins Elbert N. Carvel
Florida G. C. Peterson Farris Bryant
Illinois *Wm. G. Stratton Otto Kerner Jr.
Indiana Crawford Parker Matthew Welsh
Iowa Norman A. Erbe Edw. J. McManus
Kansas John Anderson * George Docking
Maine * John H. Reed Frank M. Coffin
Massachusetts John A. Volpe Joseph D. Ward
Michigan P. D. Bagwell J. B. Swainson
Minnesota E. L. Andersen *0. L. Freeman
Missouri Edward G. Farmer John M. Dalton
Montana Donald Nutter Paul Cannon
Nebraska John Cooper Frank Morrison
New Hampshire . . . . * Wesley Powell B. L. Boutin
New Mexico Edwin L. Mechem *John Burroughs
North Carolina Robert L. Gavin Terry* Sanford
North Dakota C P. Dahl William L. Guy
Rhode Island * Chris. DelSesto John A. Notte
South Dakota Archie Gubbrud * Ralph Herseth
Texas William M. Steger * Price Daniel
Utah *George D. Clyde Wm. A. Barlocker
Vermont F. Ray Keyser R. F. Niquette
Washington Lloyd Andrews *A. D. Rosellini
West Virginia Harold Neely Wm. A. Barron
Wisconsin Philip E. Kuehn *Gaylord Nelson
* Incumbent.
union failed to provide adequate
safeguards to insure a fair election.
The NMU balloting was con-
ducted during a 60-day period in
the union's 30 port headquarters
to fill 76 national and port posts.
The Honest Ballot Association
conducted the vote.
H. Howard Ostrin, NMU coun-
sel, sharply criticized the Mitchell
charges as being "vague, general
and conclusory." He said a "myriad
of vital fact details which the de-
fendant must know to prepare its
defense" was missing.
Specifics Lacking
For example, he added, the de-
fendant must know the names and
addresses of persons who engaged
in the alleged violations, the dates,
times and places of the alleged acts
and the precise nature of the alleged
violations.
The NMU contested one charge
on constitutional grounds.
The union asserted that, if its
action in publishing in the "Pi-
lot," the union's newspaper, the
photographs and statements of
candidates violates the Landrum-
Griffin Act, then that law vio-
lates the free speech guarantees
of the U.S. Constitution.
The union pointed out that its
constitution requires the special
supplement, listing candidates in
alphabetical order with a photo-
graph and statement of each candi-
date, with the only restriction being
one against libel.
In a separate comment, the NMU
charged that Mitchell's suit, in
timing and technique, amounted to
"labor-baiting/* The union noted
that the charges were announced
while it was opening its convention,
that news media were informed
before the union, and that the
announcement was made in Wash-
ington while the suit was filed in
New York.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1960
Labor Backs Kennedy Leadership Role
Meany Assails Nixon
Stand on U. S. Prestige
(Continued from Page 1)
The choice facing the Amer-
ican people, said Meany, is be-
tween the road to "growth and
strength" charted by Kennedy or
the road to "stagnation" out-
lined by Nixon and "his Old
Guard colleagues."
"The workers of this country do
not believe America has reached
a dead end," he emphasized. "Like
their fellow Americans, they stand
resolute in the determination to
win the future for the cause of free-
dom. They seek strong and cour-
ageous leadership and they are con-
vinced they have found it in John
F. Kennedy."
Meany was sharp in his criti-
cism of Nixon's campaign claims
"that America is stronger than ever
before in history, that our prestige
has never been so high and that
our economy has reached an all-
time peak."
"If that were true," he asked,
"why should the American people
and the rest of the free world be
so concerned about the increas-
ing menace of Soviet Russia's
military and economic expan-
sion? Why should we have to
take insults and public threats
from (Soviet Premier Nikita)
Khrushchev? Why should the
new and uncommitted nations
pay more heed to the Kremlin
than to us?"
If Nixon's claim that "America
never had it so good" were true,
Meany continued, "why has unem-
ployment become so chronically
high? Why is the steel industry
limping along at 50 percent of ca-
pacity? Why are business condi-
tions generally so drab?"
The AFL-CIO president pointed
out that Kennedy is "on firm
ground when he emphasizes the
need to make up for lost time in
national defense and the urgency
for more vigorous action by our
government to out-distance Soviet^
Russia in military power," and in
pointing out that "actual polls,
taken abroad by our own gov-
ernment, show our prestige has
dropped alarmingly."
M America can achieve and
maintain unquestioned military
superiority," Meany said, "only
if we acquire the economic pow-
er to support it."
In this regard, he assailed Nixon
for telling a "big whopper" to the
American people in stating that "the
past eight years have been the
brightest in American history."
Meany predicted that forthcoming
unemployment figures would show
that the national jobless rate in
October shot up above 6 percent
— "a serious danger point" — and
cited a New York Times editorial
which "pointed to other danger sig-
nals" in the economy.
To meet these problems, he con-
tinued, Kennedy has outlined the
"definite and inescapable responsi-
bility" which the federal govern-
ment has "to start our national
economy moving forward again at
a healthy rate." The Kennedy pro-
gram calls for:
"Action — to build thousands
of new schools and raise teach-
ers' salaries.
"Action — to help finance con-
struction of at least 2 million
new homes a year for the next
10 years.
"Action — to spur scientific re-
search, to provide hospitals and
research facilities.
"Action — to restore our
blighted cities and remove slums.
"Action — to build new roads
and airports and vital community
facilities, to develop our natural
resources, to save our water sup-
plies from waste and pollution."
In addition, he said, the Demo-
cratic presidential candidate pro-
poses to step up farm income, raise
the minimum wage and broaden
coverage, and to restore the major
depressed areas of the country.
"These programs," said Meany,
"represent a major part of the un-
finished business of America, too
long neglected in the past. If we
can get started on them next year,
they will create millions of new
jobs and stimulate demand for the
products of all basic industries."
SEVENTH AVENUE was crowded with noonhour listeners when Sen. John F. Kennedy made the
traditional late-October garment center appearance during his New York visit. The Democratic
presidential nominee talked to an estimated 250,000.
Record-Breaking Vote Anticipated;
Experts Give Kennedy Slight Edge
(Continued from Page 1)
of "Dick and Cabot" (Republican
vice presidential nominee Henry
Cabot Lodge).
• The cutting edge of the "re-
ligious issue" involving Kennedy's
membership in the Roman Catholic
Church and the curiously large
number of "silent" voters who, a
week before the election, appar-
ently had not made up their minds.
In two of the seven major in-
dustrial states — New York and
Michigan — Kennedy was consid-
ered leading by a wide margin.
This would give him 65 of the
269 electoral votes needed for
victory.
Regarding the other five — Penn-
sylvania, Ohio, Illinois, California
and Texas, with a total of 140 elec-
toral votes — the experts disagreed.
The consensus was that Kennedy
would win most of them, which
with smaller states he is sure to
win would give him the election
Voters to Decide Wide Range
Of Issues in State Referenda
Arkansas voters will decide on Nov. 8 whether their state should provide minimum wage pro-
tection for workers not covered by the federal wage-hour law.
In Michigan, two big referenda issues will be a proposal to increase the state's sales tax and a prop-
osition to call a constitutional convention for the purpose, among other things, of revising organic law
to authorize a broader tax structure.
California voters must decide on^
a controversial water bond measure
which the state AFL-CIO is vigor-
ously opposing as a special-interest
proposal.
In Washington- State, a civil serv-
ice merit system proposal on the
ballot would write into law the
principle of union recognition for
state employes.
These are typical of issues that
in many states the people will
decide by direct vote. They deal
with such matters as continuity
of government in the event of
an enemy attack, home rule for
cities, legislative salaries, judicial
districts, tax assessments and
bond issues.
Conspicuously absent from the
state ballots are so-called "right-to-
work" propositions.
After the 1958 Republican elec-
tion debacle, in which "right-to-
work" was credited with bringing
GOP candidates down to crushing
defeat in California and Ohio and
boosting Democratic pluralities in
Colorado and Washington, leading
Republicans served notice that they
were strongly opposed to R-T-W
referenda in the 1960 presidential
election year.
The Arkansas State AFL-CIO
won a two-front fight to get the
wage-hour proposition on the bal-
lot.
First labor circulated petitions
and collected more than 41,000
signatures — nearly twice the re-
quired number. Then the state
federation successfully defended
the proposal against a court
challenge brought by hotel and
restaurant associations, retail
stores and other business inter-
ests.
If enacted, the new law would
establish an 80-cent minimum wage
and a 48-hour ceiling the first year,
90 cents and 44 hours the second
year and $1 and 40 hours there-
after. The state's only existing
minimum wage law is an ancient
statute setting a $1.25 daily mini-
mum for a nine-hour day for ex-
perienced women workers.
In Michigan, labor and labor-
supported Democratic candidates
are asking voters to reject a one-
third increase in the sales tax.
Also on the ballot is a constitu-
tional convention proposal which
labor is opposing because the con-
vention would automatically be
stacked against big population cen-
ters and the Republicans would
have disproportionate representa-
tion. Representation would be on
a basis of present legislative appor-
tionment, which is heavily gerry-
mandered against city voters.
The California AFL-CIO has
charged that Proposition No. 1
on the state's ballot, the water
bond issue, is a "plum" which
would benefit only giant land-
owners and speculators at the
expense of the taxpayers.
A drive led by the State, County
& Municipal Employes, actively
backed by the State AFL-CIO,
collected 110,000 signatures to en-
able Washington voters to act on
a proposition to strengthen the state
merit system, establish the princi-
ples of a grievance procedure and
seniority rights and authorize writ-
ten contracts with unions of state
employes.
but the contest was considered so
close that each big state might
swing on a few thousand votes.
The universal judgment was that
Kennedy's campaign since Labor
Day had sharply cut if it had not
overcome what was originally a
long Nixon lead.
The final week of the campaign
saw Kennedy increasingly on the
attack, Nixon apparently hoping
that the stepped-up Eisenhower
campaign would prove decisive with
voters.
Kennedy moved with banter
and apparent confidence into a
tour through 17 states, including
final visits to California, Illinois,
New York and Ohio, as he ham-
mered home his major themes.
He told vast crowds that Amer-
ica needs to "pick itself up and
start moving again." He charged
that Nixon was running from
the Republican Party label,
from his own conservative record
and the tight-money, economic-
slowdown record of the Eisen-
hower Administration.
He asked repeatedly how Nixon
could claim the capacity to "face
Khrushchev" when he didn't dare
go into a fifth television debate with
a rival candidate for the American
presidency.
Ike Takes a Hand
Kennedy twitted Nixon about
going into New York City, which
was admittedly hostile territory,
only in the presence of Eisenhower.
The Vice President battled hard,
claiming that his deliberately
planned strategy of hitting hard the
last three weeks was beginning a
counter-trend away from Kennedy.
He and the President entered
New York with the purpose of out-
drawing the great throngs the Dem-
ocratic nominee had gained a week
and two weeks earlier, and the
crowds were impressive.
Nixon scheduled a swift but
burdensome trip to Alaska to
redeem his promise to campaign
in "all 50 states" — despite the
apparent certainty that the three
Alaska electoral votes were un-
challengeably in Kennedy's col-
umn.
He had ahead a strenuous cam-
paign in his home state of Califor-
nia for the pre-election weekend,
fighting for the state's 32-vote elec-
toral college plum that his cam-
paign managers acknowledged were
essential to his election.
Many newsmen traveling with
the Vice President thought he
showed a sense of strain, an in-
ner tension, reflecting the rigors
of the campaign.
He apparently faced a difficult
problem in associating himself with
the Eisenhower Administration,
thus laying claim to the President's
support, while avoiding potential
loss of votes because of some Ad-
ministration policies.
This led him into quiet sugges-
tions and positive statements that
in effect repudiated certain Admin-
09-2-li
istration policies. One example was
a Nixon letter that clearly pledged
support of the Rural Electrification
Administration's tradition of low
interest rates, despite a seven-year
effort by the Eisenhower Treasury
Dept. and Budget Bureau to raise
the rates.
The weight and significance of
the vote on the "religious issue"
was considered by most observers
as unpredictable.
Kennedy repeated on a nation-
ally televised forum show, the Co-
lumbia Broadcasting System's Face
the Nation, earlier statements that
he believed as a matter of deep con-
viction in the separation of church
and state. "What more can I say?"
he asked.
The general feeling was that the
so-called "issue" would cut both
ways, with some anti-Catholics vot-
ing against him no matter what he
said, with other voters casting bal-
lots for him in protest of the use
of a religious test for office.
A vote of 65 million to 70
million citizens would for sure
pass the 62 million rolled up in
1956, when Eisenhower won his
second term, and the 61.5 mil-
lion of 1952. In 1948, when
former Pres. Harry S. Truman
won the election, fewer than 49
million people voted.
A heavy turnout was anticipated
on the basis of a growth in popula-
tion and unusually massive registra-
tion campaigns, which boosted the
number of people eligible to vote
far above the 1956 level.
Urban Vote Elects Kennedy
In Record- Setting Turnout
Frank Alexander for the AFL-CIO News
Pres.-elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy
yd. v
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Saturday, November 12, 1960
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington,
GOP Makes Gains:
Divided Government Ends
As Democrats Hold Congress
By Gene Zack
The American voters, spelling ah . end to divided government, have given Pres.-elect John F. Ken-
nedy a Congress in which his party retains a commanding majority.
The Republicans made some inroads at the polls into the top-heavy Democratic majorities of the
past two years on both sides of Capitol Hill. Nearly complete tabulations showed that the GOP
picked up two Senate seats and scored a net gain of 22 House seats.
Despite the Republican gains<^
the Democrats — with a 64-36 lead
in the Senate and a margin of 257
to 175 in the House with five
races undecided — kept firm con-
trol of the legislative machinery.
The strong Democratic majori-
ties in the forthcoming 87th
Congress contrast sharply with
the hairline control Pres. Eisen-
hower had when he came to
Nation's Jobless Rate
Leaps to 6.4 Percent
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's seasonally adjusted rate of "unemployment shot
upward to 6.4 percent in October, the third highest rate for October
in 15 years.
The Labor Dept. said unemployment rose by 200,000 to a total
of 3.6 million instead of dropping seasonally by that amount — a
shift of 400,000,
Dr. Seymour Wolfbein, Labor
Dept. manpower expert, said in
answer to questions at a press con-
ference that unemployment was
expected to rise to 4.1 million in
November, 4.2 million in Decem-
ber and about 5.25 million in Jan-
uary and February.
The total of long-term unem-
ployed — those jobless 15 weeks
or longer — swung sharply up-
ward by 200,000 to a total of
1 million. This was double the
total for pre-recession October
1957.
(Continued on Page 9)
35th President Wins Office
With Democratic Congress
By Willard Shelton
A record-breaking turnout of 67 million voters has elected Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
35th President of the United States, returning the White House to Democratic control after
eight years of Republican leadership under Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In an exceedingly close and hard-fought contest, the voters also elected a Democratic Con-
gress, cutting only slightly into the heavy margins piled up in the party's Senate and House
victories of 1958.
The effect is to give the same political party responsibility for both the executive and legis-
lative departments for the first time in six years and to give Kennedy the chance to seek
support for a new legislative program stamped with his own marks of leadership.
The Democratic ticket of Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson gained its victory by
winning huge pluralities in the cities of the big industrial states and in the Mid-Atlantic
area, by holding a substantial part of the South and three of the New England states, and
by picking up scattered successes in the Plains States and Mountain States.
The transition from the Eisenhower to the Kennedy Administration on Jan. 20, 1961, was
begun when Pres. Eisenhower offered full cooperation during the interim. Kennedy moved
quickly to name staff representatives to work in liaison with key government agencies,
including the State and Defense Departments and the Bureau of the Budget. He was also
to get intelligence summaries available to the White House.
In a statement acknowledging congratulations from Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon and from
Eisenhower, Kennedy repeated his campaign theme that "a supreme effort will be needed"
for the country to move safely ahead in the 1960s. He pledged "every degree of mind and
spirit" to the "long-range interests of the United States and the cause of freedom."
The election was so close that the popular vote was split almost evenly between the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket and the Republican slate of Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge. With almost
complete returns, Kennedy was credited with a hairline edge of approximately one-half of 1 per-
cent, and this was subject to revision as absentee ballots were counted belatedly in some states.
^ The Electoral College vote was decisive, with Kennedy having
an indicated total of 332 electoral votes to 191 for Nixon. An
additional 14 electors were chosen — in normally Democratic
Alabama and Mississippi — who had refused to bind themselves
in advance to vote for the Democratic national ticket and who
conceivably could cast their votes for Nixon or a token "third-
party" beneficiary, or for Kennedy.
As the returns poured in from the great masses of voters — the
total broke the previous record, set in 1956, by 5 million — these
were features that seemed to have marked the tide:
• Kennedy was successful in identifying himself as the Demo-
cratic Party nominee, advocating a liberal Democratic program,
and Nixon fell just short in his attempt to overcome the Republi-
can Party's minority status by a personal appeal to independents
and dissident conservative Democrats.
• There was this year, as in all recent presidential elections, a
tremendous amount of ballot-splitting. Democratic candidates for
the Senate and governorship lost in Massachusetts despite a plus-
500,000 plurality for Kennedy; Rep. Lee Metcalf (D) was elected
to the Senate in closely-divided Montana and Matthew E. Welsh
(D) was elected governor of Indiana although Nixon carried both
states, the latter by 200,000, and five Democratic congressmen
were defeated in Indiana.
• Democratic candidates for Congress nevertheless got a higher
percentage of the total vote, for the fourth straight presidential
election, than the national ticket.
• The anticipated "farm state revolt" never came off. Normally
Republican Plains States areas went solidly for Nixon, and in some
cases the victory was sufficient to bring in other GOP candidates
for governor, senator and the House.
• The so-called "religious issue" involving Kennedy's member-
ship in the Roman Catholic Church may have weighed heavily in
some sections of the South and in the farm belt and may have
{Continued on page 12)
7 No. 46
office in 1952 — control which
the GOP lost two years later.
In the past six years of divided
government the factor of a Republi-
can Administration was a blockade
to a broad range of measures pro-
posed by a succession of Democratic
Congresses. Vetoes or threats of
veto from the White House killed
or forced the watering down of
bills designed to bolster the econ-
omy and extend government serv-
ices in a variety of fields.
Ahead of the Democratic-con-
trolled Congress which convenes in
January will lie the immediate task
of assessing whether the current
decline in the nation's economy is
sharp enough to necessitate emer-
gency measures to put America
back to work.
In addition it will be faced with
decisions in the field of minimum
wage, school construction, aid to
depressed areas and medical care
for the aged — fields in which mean-
ingful action has been stalled for
(Continued on Page 3)
Meany Pledges Kennedy
'Wholehearted Support 9
The "wholehearted support" of the men and women of
the trade union movement has been pledged to Pres.-elect
John F. Kennedy by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
Expressing "warmest congratulations on your splendid vic-
tory," Meany said in a wire to the Democratic victor that the
Administration which takes office next Jan. 20 "deserves the
united backing of a determined American people" as it tackles
"the task of building a better and greater America."
In a wire to Vice Pres.-elect Lyndon B. Johnson, Meany
extended his congratulations and promised labor's full support
to the incoming Administration "as you undertake these new
burdens."
Pa«re Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Democrats Hold Senate Control, 64-36
No Change in
Conservative,
Liberal Ratio
A top-heavy Democratic ma-
jority will continue to rule the
Senate for the next two years
despite a Republican gain of two
seats. The Senate line-up in the
87th Congress will be 64 Demo-
crats and 36 Republicans.
Although the GOP captured pre-
viously held Democratic seats in
Delaware and Wyoming, the com-
position of the new Senate in terms
of liberals vs. conservatives re-
mained basically unchanged.
Democrats Win 21
There were 34 Senate seats up
for election this year — 23 of them
previously held by the Democrats
and 11 by the Republicans. The
final tally showed the Democrats
won in 21 contests, nine of them in
the South. The GOP was victori-
ous in 13 races.
The Republican victors in-
cluded Delaware's former Gov.
J. Caleb Boggs, who narrowly
defeated incumbent Democratic
Sen. J. Allen Frear, Jr., and GOP
Rep. Keith Thomson of Wyo-
ming, who outpolled Democrat
Raymond B. Whitaker for the
seat being left vacant by the re-
tirement of Sen. Joseph C.
O'Mahoney (D).
The voters sent four other new-
comers — three Democrats and one
Republican — to the Senate to fill
seats previously held by members
of their respective parties who de-
clined to seek re-election. They
include:
Oregon Victor
• Mrs. Maurine B. Neuberger
(D-Ore.), who was elected to fill
out the unexpired term of her late
husband, Sen. Richard L. Neu-
berger. A former member of the
Oregon legislature, Mrs. Neuberger
won handily over former GOP
Gov. Elmo Smith. Since Neu-
berger's death earlier this year the
seat has been filled on an interim
basis by Democrat Hall S. Lusk.
• Montana's Lee Metcalf (D),
veteran of four terms in the House,
where he has been one of the
leaders of the liberal forces. Met-
calf eked out a victory over Orvin
Fjare, a former GOP member of
the House, to succeed retiring Sen.
James E. Murray (D).
• Democrat Claiborne deB.
Pell of Rhode Island, a political
newcomer, who rolled up a better
than 2-to-l victory majority over
Raoul Archambault, Jr., a con-
servative who has served in Pres.
Eisenhowers Budget Bureau. Pell
succeeds veteran Sen. Theodore
Francis Green (D), who is retiring.
• Iowa State Sen. Jack Miller
(R) who defeated Democratic Gov.
Herschel Loveless for the seat left
vacant when GOP Sen. Thomas
E. Martin chose not to seek re-
election.
Replacements Needed
There will be two other new
faces in the Senate next year —
replacements for Senators John F.
Kennedy (Mass.) and Lyndon B.
Johnson (Tex.), victorious Demo-
cratic candidates for President and
Vice President.
Four key members of the liberal
Democratic forces in the Senate- —
Paul H. Douglas (111.), Patrick V.
McNamara (Mich.), Hubert H.
Humphrey (Minn.) and Estes Ke-
fauver (Tenn.) — won re-election by
sizeable margins. At the same
time, liberal GOP Senators John
Sherman Cooper (Ky.) and Clifford
MAURINE B. NEUBERGER
Oregon Democrat
<. ■ • •••
LEE METCALF
Montana Democrat
34 Senate Winners
Alabama — John J. Sparkman (D)*
Alaska— E. L. Bartlett (D)*
Arkansas — John L. McClellan (D)*
Colorado — Gordon Allott (R)*
Delaware — J. Caleb Boggs (R)
Georgia — Richard B. Russell (D)*
Idaho— Henry C. Dworshak (R)*
Illinois — Paul H. Douglas (D)*
Iowa — Jack Miller (R)
Kansas — Andrew F. Schoeppel (R)*
Kentucky — John Sherman Cooper (R)*
Louisiana — Allen J. Ellender (D)*
Maine — Margaret Chase Smith (R)*
Massachusetts — Leverett SaltonstaU (R)*
Michigan — Patrick V. McNamara (D)*
Minnesota — Hubert H. Humphrey (D)*
Mississippi — James O. Eastland (D)*
Missouri — Edward V. Long (D)*
Montana — Lee Metcalf (D)
Nebraska— Carl T. Curtis (R)*
New Hampshire — Styles Bridges (R)*
New Jersey— Clifford P. Case (R)*
New Mexico — Clinton P. Anderson (D)*
North Carolina— B. Everett Jordan (D)*
Oklahoma— Robert S. Kerr (D)*
Oregon — Maurine B. Neuberger (D)
Rhode Island — Claiborne deB. Pell (D)
South Carolina — Strom Thurmond (D)*
South Dakota — Karl E. Mundt (R)*
Tennessee — Estes Kefauver (D)*
Texas — Lyndon B. Johnson (D)*
Virginia— A. Willis Robertson (D)*
West Virginia — Jennings Randolph (D)*
Wyoming — Keith Thomson (R)
* Incumbent.
CLAIBORNE deB. PELL
Rhode Island Democrat
MARGARET CHASE SMITH
Maine Republican
CLIFFORD P. CASE
New Jersey Republican
PAUL H. DOUGLAS
Illinois Democrat
PATRICK V. McNAMARA
Michigan Democrat
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY
Minnesota Democrat
P. Case (N. J.) also were returned
to office.
Mundt Wins
On the conservative side, Re-
publican Sen. Karl E. Mundt of
South Dakota narrowly won re-
election in a close race with Rep.
George S. McGovern, while Sen.
Carl T. Curtis (R-Neb.) defeated
Democrat Robert B. Conrad, a last-
minute ballot substitute for the
late Gov. Ralph Brooks (D), Cur-
tis' former opponent, who died of
a heart attack midway through the
campaign.
Other GOP conservatives re-
turned to office included Sena-
tors Gordon Allott (Colo.),
Henry C. Dworshak (Idaho),
Andrew F. Schoeppel (Kan.),
and Styles Bridges (N. H.).
In Kennedy's home state of
Massachusetts, a strong tide which
gave the Democratic presidential
victor the Bay State's 16 electoral
votes failed to carry Democratic
senatorial contender Thomas J.
O'Connor, Jr., to victory over in-
cumbent Sen. Leverett SaltonstaU
(R). SaltonstaU won by a margin
of nearly 100,000 votes.
Governors to Name Replacements
For Kennedy, Johnson Senate Seats
The governors of Massachusetts and Texas will soon have to make interim Senate appointments
to replace their favorite sons who won election as President and Vice President.
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy — whose term as junior senator still has four years to run — is expected
to resign before John A. Volpe (R), winner of the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, takes office in
January. This will make it possible for Democratic Gov. Foster Furcolo to replace Kennedy with
a member of his own party,
Lyndon B. Johnson, re-elected
senator at the same time that he
won election as Vice President,
is reported planning to serve in
the Senate for the two-week pe-
riod between the time Congress'
convenes and he is sworn in as
Vice President.
In Massachusetts, speculation
centers on two incumbent Demo-
cratic congressmen — Representa-
tives Torbert Macdonald and Ed-
ward P. Boland — to succeed Ken-
nedy in the Senate. The interim
senator would hold office until the
next general election in Massa-
chusetts — 1962. The voters then
would pick a man to serve out the
remaining two years.
Under Texas law, the senator
named by Gov. Price Daniel could
serve only 90 days — until the
voters picked someone in a special
election to serve out the balance
of Johnson's six-year term. This
is the same procedure followed
four years ago when Daniel re-
signed from the Senate after win-
ning the Texas governorship.
There is no indication as to who
would get the interim appointment.
By Texas custom, the appointee
would not be one of the candi-
dates in the special election.
Among those reported con-
sidering entering the race for the
nearly-six-year term are Rep.
James Wright, considered to be
the favorite at this stage of the
game; Daniel, himself; liberal
Democrat Maury Maverick, Jr.;
Waggoner Carr, unsuccessful
candidate for the attorney gen-
eral nomination; and former
Gov. Allen Shivers, a so-called
"Eisenhower Democrat."
Because Texans must pay their
poll taxes in order to vote in any
election in the state, it was thought
the special election might be timed
to coincide with city elections
scheduled for April 1961. If John-
son were to remain in the Senate
until the new Democratic Admin-
istration takes office Jan. 20, the
90-day rule on the special election
would make a simultaneous city-
senate ballot possible.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Va»c Tlire«
Democrats Keep Firm Grip on Congress
Victory Ends
Division in
Government
(Continued from Page 1)
the past six years because of GOP
Administration opposition.
Underscoring the expectation
that Democratic majorities in
House and Senate would strengthen
Kennedy's hand in the enactment
of his liberal legislative program,
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-
Tex.), in a post-election interview,
promised early passage on his side
of Capitol Hill of a "good pro-
gram" tailored to the new Presi-
dent's specifications.
On the Senate side of Capitol
Hill, where a new majority leader
must be chosen to replace Vice
Pres.-elect Lyndon B. Johnson, the
incoming Administration received
similar assurances on its "New
Frontier" legislative program. Sen.
Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.), assist-
ant Democratic leader in the 86th
Congress, declared that "what he
(Kennedy) wants we'll do — or break
our necks trying."
Ray burn's statement — which
specifically listed minimum wage
modernization, schools, de-
pressed areas and medical care
— squared with Kennedy's pre-
vious indications that he would
move for action in these areas
in the first 90 days of his Ad-
ministration.
Before Congress can move on an
expected Kennedy program, how-
ever, it will have to face the prob
lems created by archaic Senate and
House rules which in the past have
killed or crippled key liberal legis
lation. In its analysis of the record
of the 86th Congress the AFL-CIO
charged that important measures
failed in the past two years because
Congress had become "a prisoner
of its rules."
Much of the criticism centers on
the House Rules Committee, origi
nally created to speed the flow of
legislation to the floor but which,
under control of a conservative
Republican-southern Democratic
coalition, has been used to gut
liberal bills or prevent them from
going to a floor vote.
Opening Day Fight
Reports indicate that when Con-
gress convenes leaders of the
House liberal bloc are set to wage
an opening day fight to curb the
Rules Committee's powers. It was
uncertain, however, whether this
would be an open floor fight or
whether the battle would be waged
within the Democratic caucus in
view of the slight reduction in
Democratic strength this year.
A showdown on this issue was
averted two years ago when
liberals reached agreement with
Rayburn that the Rules Commit-
tee would free measures ap-
proved by standing committees
within a "reasonable" time pe-
riod. The projected cooperation
of the committee was not forth-
coming.
Dominant figures in the Rules
Committee are Democratic Repre-
sentatives Howard W. Smith (Va.)
and William M. Colmer (Miss.),
arch-conservatives who have per-
sistently assailed and blocked key
portions of Kennedy's liberal pro-
gram.
Efforts to limit the committee's
powers would find a precedent
dating back to 1949. At that time,
on the day in which the 81st Con-
gress was organized, Democrats put
through a 21-day limit on the time
th^t the committee had to clear
legislation.
The 21 -day rule broke the grip
which conservatives had had on
the Rules Committee since 1937,
and opened the way for passage of
major liberal legislation.
PAUSING FOR A POSE during the marking of their ballots are
Vice Pres.-elect and Mrs. Johnson, who cast their votes in Johnson
City, Tex.
Kennedy Got Big Lift
From New York Labor
New York — Forty-five highly precious electoral votes were won
decisively by Pres.-elect Kennedy following what political observers
regarded as an outstanding campaign performance by organized
labor in state and city.
The big triumph came in the metropolitan area where the five
boroughs gave the Democratic win-^
ner an almost 800,000-vote major
ity over Vice Pres. Nixon. In the
state itself, Kennedy's majority was
more than 400,000 votes.
AFL-CIO unions in New York
City in early October had put on a
tremendous drive among workers
and their families for a big registra-
tion. That was universally -consid-
ered to have been highly success
ful. The next big question was,
would all those registrants vote?
Spot checks in different elec-
tion districts, particularly in areas
where workers reside, show that
about 90 per cent of registrants
balloted in the election.
The Kennedy campaign had been
aided immeasurably by the appear-
ance at numerous labor-organized
rallies of the Democratic standard
bearer. Two of the biggest meet-
ings were organized by the Liberal
Party in New York's crowded gar-
ment center, and by Locals IBE W
at Madison Square Garden.
So sweeping was the Kennedy
victory in New York State that
three new Democratic congress-
men were elected in upset vic-
tories over Republican candi-
dates. This is one of the few
states where the Democrats
gained House seats.
Cities up-state which traditionally
have gone Republican moved into
the Democratic column — Roches-
ter, Auburn, Batavia, Buffalo, El-
mira, Ogdensburg, Rome, Syra-
cuse, Utica were among the urban
centers which went for Kennedy.
In the registration drive, lists
were combed by hundreds of
trained union officials against mem-
bership lists to uncover unregis-
tered union members. Batteries of
phones were installed in borough
offices which were manned 12
hours a day from 9 a. m. to 9 p. m.
with calls going out either in Span-
ish or English as the case might be,
asking workers and their families
to register so that they could vote.
The New York City Central La-
bor Council set up a wives' division
and women were urged to concen-
trate on neighborhood supermar-
kets and housing developments on
a door-to-door canvass to get out
the registration.
Old fashioned techniques like
torchlight parades and somewhat
more modern tactics, an airplane
towing a registration banner, were
used. There were radio and tele
vision programs galore. Special
word was sent out to constituent
local unions to organize listening
parties for AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany's radio address last week in
which he urged support of the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket.
The payoff came Nov. 8. New
York State went Democratic for
the first time since 1944.
Puerto Rican
Voters Re-elect
Munoz Marin
San Juan, P. R. — Gov. Luis
Munoz Marin and his labor-backed
Popular Democratic Party have
been returned to office in a heavy
surge of votes.
Munoz. Marin was re-elected for
a fourth term, 456,380 to 249,590
for Luis Ferre, candidate of the
rival Republican Statehood Party.
His victory also carried in with him
all other candidates of his party.
Two other parties failed to get
10 per cent of the vote and thus
lost their status as legal parties
— the Catholic Action Party
with 51,590 votes, and the Inde-
pendentist Party with 23,550.
Munoz Marin won in the face of
pastoral letters from the island's
three Catholic bishops opposing him
and his party for supporting what
they called "anti-Christian policies."
The bishops had forbidden Catho-
lics to vote for the party or its
candidates.
The governor's party received a
shade less than the 60-odd percent
of the vote it has received in previ-
ous elections.
Majority in House
High Despite Losses
The Democrats retained an overwhelming majority in the House
of Representatives even though Republicans scored an unofficial
net gain of 22 seats.
The Democratic edge was 257 to 175, with 5 contests — involv-
ing four Democratic and one Republican seats — to be decided on
the basis of late returns and^ -
absentee ballots.
At the end of the 86th Congress,
the Democratic margin was 280 to
151 with six vacancies, three from
each party. All 437 seats were con-
tested in the Nov. 8 balloting.
With returns almost complete,
Republicans took over 29 Demo-
cratic seats while Democrats
captured 7 Republican seats,
giving the GOP a net gain of 22.
The great majority of Republi
can gains represented a recapture
of seats from freshman Democrats
who had won in traditionally Re-
publican areas in the Democratic
sweep of 1958.
The Republican comeback was
explained by experts as simply
reflection of the fact that a presi-
dential election turns out a larger
GOP vote than in off-years.
The Republicans recouped most
of their 1958 losses in the mid
western states.
These were the seven Republican
seats won by Democrats in the
1960 voting:
CALIFORNIA— James C. Cor
man (D), endorsed by the AFL-
CIO Committee on Political Edu-
cation and by railway labor, won
a traditionally Republican seat
from Lemoine Blanchard (R) in
the 22nd Dist.
IDAHO — Ralph R. Harding
(D), backed by COPE and railway
labor, pulled a stunning upset of
incumbent Hamer H. Budge (R) in
the 2nd Dist." as the state went
strongly Republican.
NEW JERSEY— Charles S. Joel
son (D), endorsed by the CIO, cap
tured the traditional GOP seat in
the 8th Dist.
NEW YORK— Otis G. Pike (D),
backed by COPE and railway la-
bor, upset Rep. Stuyvesant Wain
wright (R), a conservative mem-
ber of the Education and Labor
Committee, in the 1st Dist.
Joseph P. Addabbo (D), en-
dorsed by COPE, won the tradi
tionally Republican 5th Dist.
Hugh L. Carey (D), backed by
COPE and railway labor, defeated
four-term Rep. Francis E. Dorn (R)
in the 12th Dist.
WASHINGTON— Mrs. Julia B.
Hansen, with COPE and railway
labor backing, defeated Dale M.
Nordquist (R) for the 3rd Dist.
seat vacated by a Republican.
The Republicans won the fol-
lowing Democratic seats, most of
which are traditionally GOP but
which switched in 1958:
CALIFORNIA— John H. Rous-
selot (R) won the 25th Dist., once
represented by Vice Pres. Nixon,
from freshman incumbent George
A. Kasem (D).
COLORADO— Peter H. Domi-
nick (R) defeated liberal freshman
Rep. Byron L. Johnson (D) in the
2nd Dist.
CONNECTICUT— Horace See-
ly-Brown, Jr. (R), a former House
member, won the vacant Demo-
cratic seat in the 2nd Dist.
Abner W. Sibal (R) defeated
Rep. Donald J. Irwin (D).
INDIANA — George O. Cham-
bers (R) defeated Rep. J. Edward
Roush (D), who had COPE and
railway labor backing, in the 5th
Dist.
Richard L. Roudebush (R) beat
Rep. Fred Wampler (D), who was
backed by COPE, railway labor
and the Mine Workers, in the 6th
Dist.
Earl Wilson (R), a former House
member, defeated Rep. Earl Ho-
gan (D), who was COPE and
railway labor-endorsed, in the 9th
Dist.
Ralph Harvey (R), also a former
House member, beat Rep. Randall
S. Harmon (D), who was endorsed
by COPE and railway labor, in
the 10th Dist.
Donald C. Bruce (R) defeated
Rep. Joseph W. Barr (D), who was
backed by COPE and railway la-
bor, in the 11th Dist.
IOWA— James E. Bromwell (R)
won over Rep. Leonard G. Wolf
(D), who was supported by COPE
and railway labor, in the 2nd Dist.
KANSAS— Robert F. Ellsworth
(R) defeated Rep. Newell A.
George (D), who had COPE and
railway labor support, in the 2nd
Dist.
Walter L. McVey (R) beat Rep.
Denver D. Hargis (D) in the 3rd
Dist.
MAINE— Peter A. Garland (R)
defeated Rep. James C. Oliver
(D), who had COPE and railway
labor backing, in the 1st Dist.
Stanley R. Tupper (R) beat John
C. Donovan (D) in the contest for
the vacant 2nd Dist. seat.
MARYLAND — Charles McC.
Mathias, Jr. (R) defeated Rep.
John R. Foley (D) in the 6th Dist.
MINNESOTA — Clark Mac-
Gregor (R) upset Rep. Roy W.
Wier (DFL) in the 3rd Dist.
MISSOURI— Durward G. Hall
(R) defeated Rep. Charles H.
Brown (D), who had COPE and
railway labor backing, in the 7th
Dist.
MONTANA— James F. Battin
(R) defeated Leo Graybill, Jr. (D),
who was backed by COPE, railway
labor and the Mine Workers, for
the vacant 2nd Dist. seat.
NEBRASKA— Ralph F. Beer-
mann (R) defeated Rep. Larry
Brock (D) in the 3rd Dist.
Dave Martin (R) defeated Rep.
Donald F. McGinley (D), who was
endorsed by COPE and railway
labor, in the 4th Dist.
NORTH DAKOTA — Hjalmar
C. Nygaard (R) won the at-large
seat vacated by Quentin Burdick
(D) when the latter was elected to
the Senate earlier this year.
OHIO— William H. Harsha, Jr.
(R) defeated Frank E. Smith (D),
who was COPE-endorsed, in the
contest for the 6th Dist. seat.
John M. Ashbrook (R) defeated
Rep. Robert W. Levering (D) in
the 17th Dist.
OREGON — Edwin R. Durno
(R) upset Rep. Charles O. Porter
(D), who had COPE and railway
labor support, in the 4th Dist.
PENNSYLVANIA— William W.
Scranton (R) defeated Rep. Stan-
ley A. Prokop (D), who was en-
dorsed by COPE, railway labor and
the Mine ' Workers, in the swing
10th Dist.
George A. Goodling (R) defeat-
ed Rep. James M. Quigley (D),
who was backed by COPE and rail-
way labor, in the 19th Dist.
SOUTH DAKOTA— Ben Reifel
(R) defeated Ray Fitzgerald (D),
who had COPE and railway labor
backing, in the 1st Dist.
VERMONT — Gov. Robert T.
Stafford (R) defeated freshman
Rep. William H. Meyer (D),
WISCONSIN— Henry C. Scha'de-
berg (R) beat freshman Rep. Ger-
ald T. Flynn (D), who was backed
by COPE and railway labor, in
the 1st Dist
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, I960
JOHN B. SWAINSON
Michigan Democrat
OTTO KERNER
Illinois Democrat
MATTHEW E. WELSH
Indiana Democrat
GAYLORD A. NELSON
Wisconsin Democrat
ELBERT N. CARVEL
Delaware Democrat
Democrats Win 15 of 27 Governorships
Changes in Control
Shuffle Political Map
By David L. Perlman
Democratic candidates won 15 of 27 gubernatorial contests,
ending up with a net gain of one state, but the shifts in control
drastically reshuffled the political map. Adding holdover govern-
ships not at stake this year, the Democrats control 34 statehouses
to 16 for the GOP.
Seven states elected Democrats^ - Z ~ IT ~ ~
William G. Stratton, who
to replace Republican governors,
including Illinois where Gov. Wil-
liam G. Stratton was trounced in
his bid for a third term. Other
states captured from the GOP were
Delaware, Indiana, Nebraska,
North Dakota, Rhode Island and
West Virginia.
GOP Turns Out Six
Republican candidates in turn
won in six states which had Dem-
ocratic governors, including Pres.-
elect Kennedy's home state of
Massachusetts. The others were
Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, New
Mexico and South Dakota.
Local issues and personalities
so dominated the gubernatorial
races that no clear-cut pattern
emerged except the already-dem-
onstrated fact that the coattails
of presidential candidates have
limited carrying power and
ticket-splitting is prevalent in
nearly every state.
Anti-labor campaigns waged by
Republican candidates failed in In-
diana and Michigan but were suc-
cessful — along with other issues —
in Minnesota.
Despite a Nixon landslide in In-
diana, Democrat Matthew E.
Welsh, who pledged to seek repeal
of the "right-to-work" law, defeat-
ed the GOP gubernatorial candi-
date, present Lt. Gov. Crawford F.
Parker. Parker has advocated
tightening the ban on the union
shop. The race was so close the
Republican candidate for lieutenant
governor defeated Welsh's running
mate.
Victory in Michigan
In Michigan, Republicans who
had been frozen out of the state
house during the six terms of Gov.
G. Mennen Williams were unable
to block the election of labor-
backed Lt. Gov. John B. Swainson
to succeed Williams.
Gov. Orville L. Freeman (D)
was narrowly defeated in his bid
for an unprecedented fourth term
as Minnesota's governor. His suc-
cessful opponent, Elmer L. Ander-
sen, had attacked him for ordering
the closing of a Wilson Co. meat
packing plant during a strike by the
Packinghouse Workers last year.
The sweeping victory of Dem-
ocrat Otto Kerner in Illinois was
anticipated, but it gives the Dem-
ocrats a firmer political foothold
in a see-sawing state* GOP
Gov
succeeded Adlai Stevenson, nar-
rowly squeaked through to a
second term in 1956 and was
opposed for a third term by sev-
eral Republican newspapers.
Gov. Albert D. Rosellini (D),
who was reported "in trouble" in
his re-election bid in Washington,
surprised the pundits by running
stronger than his party's presiden-
tial candidate and surviving the
Nixon trend in the Northwest.
In Maine, however, Democratic
Rep. Frank M. Coffin ran an unex-
pected second to GOP Gov. John
H. Reed in the gubernatorial con-
test.
Midwest a Battleground
The Midwest was a hard-fought
battleground in the gubernatorial
races. Several farm belt Demo-
cratic governors who had made
political history during recent years
by breaking through traditional Re-
publican voting patterns went down
to defeat. Among these were Gov-
ernors George Docking of Kansas
and Ralph Herseth of South
Dakota. The Democrats also lost
the governorship they had held in
Iowa.
At the same time, Democratic
candidates William L. Guy in North
Dakota and Frank B. Morrison in
Nebraska were successful in re-
placing Republican governors even
though Vice Pres. Nixon easily
carried both states. While the last
elected governor of Nebraska,
Ralph Brooks, was a Democrat, his
death earlier this year gave the
governorship to Republican Lt.
Gov. Dwight Burney. In North
Dakota, Guy campaigned success-
fully on a platform that called for
a state income tax ti finance school
expansion.
In Wisconsin, with its mixture
of farm and industry, Demo-
cratic Gov. Gaylord A. Nelson
again demonstrated his vote-get-
ting ability.
So-called "right-to- work" laws
were a factor — although not a dom?
inant issue — in two states other
than Indiana.
Delaware elected Democrat El-
bert N. Carvel who, in a former
administration, signed the bill re-
pealing "R-T-W." New Mexico
voters narrowly elected former Re-
publican Gov. Edwin L. Mechem,
defeating Democratic Gov. John
Burroughs, a foe of "right-to-
work."
Governors Elected
Arizona — Paul Fannin (R)*
Arkansas — Orval E. Faubus (D)*
Delaware — Elbert N. Carvel (D)
Florida — C. Farris Bryant (D)
Illinois — Otto Kerner (D)
Indiana— Matthew E. Welsh (D)
Iowa — Norman A. Erbe (R)
Kansas — John Anderson, Jr. (R)
Maine— John H. Reed (R)*
Massachusetts — John A. Volpe (R)
Michigan — John B. Swainson (D)
Minnesota — Elmer L. Andersen (R)
Missouri — John M. Dalton (D)
Montana — Donald G. Nutter (R)
Nebraska — Frank B. Morrison (D)
New Hampshire — Wesley Powell (R)*
New Mexico — Edwin L. Mechem (R)
North Carolina — Terry Sanford (D)
North Dakota— William L. Guy (D)
Rhode Island — John A. Norte, Jr. (D)
South Dakota — Archie M. Gubbrud (R)
Texas — Price Daniel (D)*
Utah— George Dewey Clyde (R)*
Vermont — F. Ray Keyser, Jr. (R)
Washington— Albert D. Rosellini (D)*
West Virginia— William W. Barron (D)
Wisconsin — Gaylord A. Nelson (D)*
* Incumbent.
'Right-to-Work' Foes
Win in Indiana Races
Indianapolis — A strong labor-backed Democratic drive based on
the "right-to-work" law issue bucked a heavy Republican vote for
Richard M. Nixon here and won the Democrats the Indiana gov-
ernorship and majority control of the state senate.
The Democratic victory increased hopes here that Indiana's anti-
collective bargaining "right-to-^
work" law may be repealed by the
state legislature early in the coming
year. A hard fight was forecast,
however, because the gubernatorial
victory and the control of the state
senate did not carry with it control
of the lower house.
Matthew E. Welsh, the Demo-
cratic winner in the governor-
ship race, ran on a platform
pledged to make repeal of the
"right-to-work" law the first or-
der of business before the state
legislature.
Tabulations indicated that Dem-
ocrats were ahead in the Indiana
Senate with 26 seats against 24
held by Republicans. In the lower
house, however, Republicans were
indicated to be holding 53 seats
against 33 by the Democrats, with
14 others still undecided as the
AFL-CIO News went to press.
Welsh, who waged a vigorous
campaign on the "right-to- work"
repeal issue, won the governorship
with a majority of approximately
25,000 votes, while Vice Pres.
Nixon carried the state with a ma-
jority of 217,000.
The expected fight in the leg-
islature in January over repeal
of the "right to work" law was
complicated by the election of
State Sen. Richard Ristine, a Re-
publican who in the past has op-
posed repeal, as lieutenant gov-
ernor, a position which makes
him the presiding officer of the
State Senate.
The state AFL-CIO and a citi-
zens' group, the Indiana Council
for Industrial Peace, were credited
with aiding Welsh's victory as well
as Democratic control of the State
Senate. These groups waged a
vigorous campaign on the "right
to-work" issue issue during the past
several months.
Dallas Sells, president of the In-
diana State AFL-CIO, said: "We
have hopes that we will be able to
bring about repeal of this anti-labor
'right-to-work' law when the new
legislature meets. This is not an is-
sue on which all Democrats vote
for repeal and all Republicans vote
against repeal. There are Republi-
cans in the state legislature who are
also friends of labor and who would
like to get the 'right-to-work' is-
sue off the books for good."
Registration
Paid Off in
Pennsylvania
Harrisburg — Pres.-elect John F.
Kennedy was handed Pennsyl-
vania's 32 electoral votes by a 137,-
000 majority — the first Democratic
presidential candidate to carry the
Keystone State since 1944.
Groundwork for the victory was
laid months ago in an intensive
voter registration drive, sparked by
organized labor, which sent Demo-
cratic registration in Pennsylvania
above that of the GOP for the
first time since the Civil War.
Majorities of over 100,000 in
heavily industrialized Pittsburgh
and 326,000 in Philadelphia, plus
leads in other industrial areas, gave
Kennedy the margin of victory.
Another key factor in the Ken-
nedy victory was a switch in
traditionally Republican hard
coal areas which went for Ken-
nedy, largely in resentment of
the Eisenhower double veto of
depressed areas bills.
Much credit must be given to
the impact of Kennedy's person-
ality and hard-hitting campaign
stressing economic issues in this
state, whose rate of unemployment
is higher than the national average,
and where steel is operating at 50
percent of capacity.
It is difficult to assess the role
of the religious issue in Pennsylva-
nia since the central and south-
central rural areas of the state, its
"Bible Belt," are traditionally Re-
publican, though that issue may
have cost the congressional (19th
District) seat of the Democratic
incumbent, James M. Quigley, who
lost by 11,000 votes.
Prokop Lost Too
Pennsylvania also lost another
incumbent Democratic congression-
al seat, the 10th District, where
Stanley A. Prokop lost to William
W. Scranton.
These GOP congressional victo-
ries reverse the former Democratic
edge of 16-14 to a GOP edge.
In a hard-fought key congres-
sional contest, George M. Rhodes,
a Pennsylvania AFL-CIO vice pres-
ident, won a seventh term repre-
senting the 14th District.
Democrats retained control of
the Pennsylvania House of Rep-
resentatives with 110 seats.
Short of the Kennedy victory,
organized labor found its greatest
jubilation in the fact that the Dem-
ocrats picked up three State Senate
seats which enables them to split
the State Senate 25-25, with the
Democratic lieutenant governor,
John Morgan Davis, casting the
decisive organizational vote giving
Democrats control of the Senate
for the first time in 22 years.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Page Fh*
Election Brings New Leadership Tests
Both Parties Wrestle
With Unity Problems
The 1960 election marked a clear point of new departure for
both major parties.
For the Democrats, the immediate question is the effectiveness
of the new leaders, Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy and Vice Pres.-
elect Lyndon B. Johnson, in putting together a legislative program
that will command public support^
and congressional majorities that
will pass the bills.
For the Republicans, a renewed
and heated struggle seems in pros-
pect betwen right-wing conserva-
tives led by Sen. Barry Goldwater
(Ariz.) and the more modern-mind-
ed spokesmen represented by New
York's Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller.
The role to be played by Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon, which undoubt-
edly would be a powerful one if he
chose to claim a continued role in
public life, depends on his own de-
cision about his future.
Action in First 4 100 Days 9
Kennedy said during the cam-
paign that he would seek quick
and decisive action on a long list
of piled-up programs during the
first "100 days" of the Administra-
tion. These programs range across
both foreign and domestic policy.
The President-elect, however,
will face a Congress that in struc-
ture will be almost identical to
that of the 86th Congress that
refused to .pass the bills and one in
which the bipartisan conservative
coalition in the House, operating
through the Rules Committee, is
slightly strengthened.
Kennedy's task will be to furnish
an impetus to passage through all
the instruments at the command of
the White House.
Whether he will seek revision
of House and Senate rules to
weaken the stranglehold of con-
servative committee chairmen
who maintain power through the
seniority system presumably will
be decided in conferences be-
tween Kennedy and his legisla-
tive leaders, including Johnson,
House Speaker Sam Rayburn
(Tex.) and other veterans with
great prestige.
An all-out attack on the seniority
system may be labeled unlikely,
partly because the only observable
substitute would be a return to the
caucus system for naming commit-
tee chairmen that liberals revolted
against more than half a century
ago.
Less drastic steps are available,
including an increase in the size
of certain key committees and rules
revision to ease the clearance of
legislative proposals to the House
floor for action.
Rayburn said after the election
that action will be completed dur-
ing the first session of a Kennedy
Congress on federal school-aid and
depressed-area bills, on a new
minimum wage measure and a
medical-care bill tied, as in the
Forand bill, to the social security
system.
In the long run, the fate of
Kennedy's domestic program may
depend essentially on the prestige
he builds in grappling with the
whole range of problems that press
upon the office.
Style and posture are vitally im-
portant txT White House leadership
and Kennedy is certain to face
diplomatic offensives from the So-
viet Union seeking to test his cali-
ber. The totality of his foreign-
policy recommendations can great-
ly affect his leadership in other
fields.
The ultimate answer to the con-
servative coalition is to top it with
a liberal coalition that draws sup-
port broadly from the people and
from the groups that passed bills
during the reform periods of the
New Deal in Franklin D. Roose-
velt's first term — including south-
ern Democrats who voted with the
national party on both welfare and
economic proposals.
The battle for control of the
beaten Republican Party was
signaled with blasts from Gold-
water even before the election
returns were in as he issued a
public declaration that barely
skirted criticism of Nixon's cam-
paign tactics as "too liberal/'
In a post-election statement,
Goldwater assailed Rockefeller for
failure to carry New York for the
GOP and bluntly opposed Rocke-
feller's nomination for the presi-
dency in 1964. The senator, seek-
ing to stake out a claim for lead-
ership, demanded that the party
nationally adopt the totally con-
servative formula followed by the
GOP under his own domination in
sparsely settled Arizona.
An examination of the election
returns, however, indicates that the
Nixon formula was by no means
the failure Goldwater imagines and
that the Vice President's difficulty
in fighting for the populous states
that usually are decisive in a pres-
idental race arose largely from his
inescapable connection with the
conservative Eisenhower record.
Nixon came exceedingly close to
winning, if he did not actually win,
a majority of the two-party popu-
lar vote. He rolled up a vote total
far surpassing anything ever scored
before by a losing candidate and
only about 2 million short of
Eisenhower's 35.5 million piled up
in 1956 with the aid of the sudden
Suez crisis.
New Voters Attracted
Kennedy's success was in raising
the Democratic vote from Adlai
Stevenson's 26 million to about
33.6 million — simply by attracting
to himself new voters and voters
shown ordinarily to be Democrats
who switched to Eisenhower wholly
on personality and special-issue
grounds.
Nixon came so close to taking
at least four of the six big states
that gave Kennedy his Electoral
College plurality that his effort to
broaden his appeal by a campaign
directed to independents and 1
wavering Democrats, rather than
conservative Republicans alone,
must be rated a success even if not
a electoral one.
As for Rockefeller, his future
in the area of national office
seems likely to rest more on
whether he seeks re-election as
New York's governor in 1962
and wins the state for a second
time for himself than upon what
happened to Nixon in 1960.
If he runs and is re-elected, he
will be a power in the Republican
Party, although he may never get
support from the professional party
leaders elsewhere who vetoed his
desire to seek a convention nomi-
nation this year.
The fundamental problem of the
GOP may be that it has been left,
after the eight Eisenhower years,
basically more conseravtive both
in Congress and in positions of
state leadership than it was dur-
ing the Taft era. Except for Nixon
and Rockefeller, observers run out
of names when they speculate about
possible nominees for 1964. It has
no senators with national prestige
as creative leaders in foreign policy
and on domestic issues and it has
no governors except Rockefeller
in the big states that used to be
natural springboards to national
office.
NEW FIRST FAMILY takes a post-election stroll around the grounds of the home at Hyannis
Port, Mass., with President-elect and Mrs. Kennedy wearing victory smiles and daughter Caroline
just a little bit uncertain.
Humphrey Wins Heavy
Minnesota Majority
St. Paul, Minn. — The Nov. 8 election results produced mixed
emotions of gratifications and chagrin amoung members of organ-
ized labor in Minnesota.
Unionists were gratified to see the state's 11 electoral votes go
to Sen. John F. Kennedy, and the tremendous majority given
Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D) in<^
his successful bid for a third term
in the Senate.
Freeman, Wier Lose
But labor was saddened by the
defeat of Democratic Gov. Orville
L. Freeman, who was seeking a
fourth term, and disappointed by
the defeat of Roy Wier (D) con-
gressman from the 3rd District
since 1948.
Liberals and trade unionists
alike had some mild reason for
rejoicing over an apparent small
gain in the state House of Repre-
sentatives.
With the State Senate firmly in
the hands of a large Republican-
conservative majority (whose mem-
bers serve four-year terms and
hence will not be up for election
until 1962), it was essential to
labor that control of the Minne-
sota House remain safely liberal.
This now appears to be assured.
Freeman GOP Target
Primary reasons for the defeat
of the labor-endorsed candidate for
governor, observers agree, are
these factors:
• Freeman for the past two
years has been the special target
of the Republican Party and the
corporations that finance the GOP
in the state.
• Freeman's successful Repub-
lican opponent, Elmer L. Ander-
sen, St. Paul industrialist, succeed-
ed in amassing a campaign expense
fund of unprecedented proportions
in the state.
GOP Spent Freely
Veteran political observers unan-
imously agreed they had "never
seen anything like" the amount of
funds the Andersen campaign
committee was able to spend for
entire newspaper sections as well
as full-page advertising, scores of
billboards, and radio and tele-
vision time impossible to measure.
Significantly pinpointing the Re-
publican strategy of "Get Freeman
— never mind the others/' was the
fact that all other state constitu-
tional officers from Freeman's
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party
were re-elected.
And P. K. Peterson, Minneapolis
mayor, Humphrey's Republican
opponent who was supposed to be
the "top" GOP contender in Min-
nesota, was ignored by the Repub-
lican Party officials, concentrating
on defeating Freeman, to about the
same extent that he was ignored
by the voters on election day.
Kennedy Holds
Narrow Edge
In California
San Francisco — An agonizingly
"slow count" had supporters of
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy in
doubt for nearly 24 hours here
before the Democratic candidate
apparently captured the state's 32
electoral votes.
Kennedy's victory — by a scant
37,000-vote edge out of the near
record-breaking turnout of more
than 6 million votes — was subject
to a possible reversal on Nov. 14
when California's estimated 230,-
000 absentee ballots are counted.
The Democrats clung to their
16-14 congressional margin losing
the seat held by Rep. George A.
Kasam in the 25th Dist. but elected
James C. Corman to the previously
Republican-held 22d Dist. seat.
Electoral Votes
States
Kennedy Nixon
States Kennedy Nixon
Alabama
5(a)
Montana
4
Alaska
3
Nebraska
6
Arizona
4
Nevada
3
Arkansas
8
New Hampshire
4
California
32
New Jersey
16
Colorado
6
New Mexico
4
Connecticut
8
New York
45
Delaware
3
North Carolina
14
Florida
10
North Dakota
4
Georgia
12(b)
Ohio
25
Hawaii
3
Oklahoma
8
Idaho
4
Oregon
6
Illinois
27
Pennsylvania
32
Indiana
13
Rhode Island
4
Iowa
10
South Carolina
8
Kansas
8
South Dakota
4
Kentucky
10
Tennessee
11
Louisiana
10
Texas
24
Maine
5
Utah
4
Maryland
9
Vermont
3
Massachusetts
16
Virginia
12
Michigan
20
Washington
9
Minnesota
11
West Virginia
8
Mississippi
(c)
Wisconsin
12
Missouri
13
Wyoming
3
TOTAL
332
191
(a) Under state law, 6 other votes are unpledged.
(b) Under Georgia law, these votes could be withheld from
Kennedy.
(c) Electors with 8 votes are unpledged.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
The Kennedy Victorv
FOR THE NEXT FOUR years the government of .the United
States will be in the hands of a President and Congress of the
same party, a party which campaigned on one of the most liberal
and progressive platforms in American political history. This is
the central fact of the election.
John F. Kennedy vigorously identified himself during the cam-
paign with the policies of Democratic liberalism championed by
Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
The American people have chosen to return to these policies after
a decade of drift.
The Kennedy victory margin in the popular vote is razor-thin,
the smallest in over 80 years of American presidential elections.
But its geographical distribution, with heavy majorities in the
nation's large cities and neighboring suburban areas, reflects per-
haps the continuing urbanization of the nation and the concentra-
tion of urgent problems in these areas.
Of the conflicting patterns and trends in the voting — patterns
and trends which underscore the regional character of the nation
— one thing appears clear: The Democratic Party generally
showed a good deal more strength than its presidential candi-
date. This is reflected in the large majorities the party will com-
mand in the 87th Congress.
The gap in popular support between the Democratic Party and
the presidential candidate has existed in recent elections with Pres.
Eisenhower never able to transmit his own popular support to the
Republican Party during his eight years in office.
Of the factors that gave Kennedy his majorities in the large
cities in the nation, there appears to be a relationship between
the intensive registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns. In many
of these cities the margin for Kennedy was decisive in carrying the
state and giving him his lead in the Electoral College. Labor's
major campaign effort was in registration and get-out-the-vote
drives.
* * *
The election is over but the problems remain. There is new
national leadership and the beginning of a new political era as
Kennedy prepares to take the reins of office. The leaders who
guided the nation through the past 30 years are moving off stage.
Kennedy mapped a detailed program in his campaign to con-
quer the "New Frontier" of the 1960's. His victory and the Demo-
cratic control of the 87th Congress provide the basis for imple-
menting his program.
Johlessness-6.4 Percent
ANY LINGERING DOUBTS that the nation is in economic
trouble were shattered the day after the election when the
Labor- Dept. finally released a report showing that instead of
dropping an anticipated 200,000, unemployment jumped by the
same amount to 3.6 million and 6.4 percent of the labor force.
The 6.4 percent rate is the third highest for October in 15
years, including three postwar recession periods. On the basis of
the October report, unemployment is expected to top 5 million
persons in January and February.
To prevent the situation from worsening, the outgoing Eisen-
hower Administration and the incoming Kennedy forces should
initiate talks immediately on steps that can be taken in the next two
months.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
Executive Council
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V Saturday, November 12, 1960 No. 46
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
End of Divided Government
Magazine Reports 'Bitter Harvest: 9
Children of Migrant Workers
With Parents in Fields
« VT° U MAY THINK it couldn't happen to-
-■■ day," the readers of the 4.7 million-circula-
tion Good Housekeeping magazine were told in
the November issue, "but tens of thousands of
youngsters still reap the bitter harvest of back-
breaking toil, disease, injury and ignorance in the
fields of our land."
A. E. Farrell, in an article entitled "End Child
Labor Now," gave this portrayal of the life of
children of migratory workers:
"Housed in hovels, clad in cast-offs, they are
underfed, undereducated and overworked.
"They are viewed with suspicion and hostility
by the communities around them. They call no
place home. They are shunned by society to-
day and condemned to poverty tomorrow. They
were bora unlucky.
"These are the nation's youngest workers."
Farrell and a photographer visited migrant
camps in North Carolina in connection with the
story.
"We saw dozens of kids as young as seven
picking potatoes under a blistering sun.
"They were performing hard, adult labor,
working rapidly, mechanically, without pause,
dripping sweat as they stripped potatoes from
the plants," the article said*
Farrell said there are an estimated minimum
of 100,000 migrant children and there may be
two or three times that number.
THE WRITER pointed out that agriculture is
the only remaining "big business" in the nation "in
which children form a substantial part of the
labor force." And it is the only remaining big in-
dustry still exempt from child labor laws.
So, the author notes, the children in the fields
not only miss school, including local children
when "crop vacations" close the schools, but
they work in a dangerous industry.
Late in 1959, the author recalled, 12-year-old
Christine Hayes was picking potatoes with class-
mates on a farm near Blackfoot, Idaho, during a
crop vacation.
"Christine's pony tail caught in the whirring
parts of a potato-digging machine . . .
"The machine ripped off Cristine's scalp, ears,
eyelids and cheeks. Rushed to the Latter Day
Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City, Christine died,
despite the desperate efforts of a team of plastic
surgeons to save her," Farrell said.
In California, the author noted — the only
state to collect such statistics — over 1,000 chil-
dren were seriously injured while doing paid
farm labor between 1950 and 1957."
The author saw in North Carolina a migrant
camp "in which 40 or 50 people, men, women
and children, live in a single quotiset hut, griddle-
hot under the sun, with only burlap sacks strung
up on wires to provide 'privacy'."
The author quoted the San Jose (Calif.) Mer-
cury as charging that "village conditions in Pakis-
tan are no worse than in some California
camps. . • ."
FARRELL SAID that "much can be done" to
improve "the shocking plight of these children."
The author pointed out that a bill introduced
by Sen. Pat McNamara (D-Mich.) to apply a 14-
year-old minimum age for work on factory farms
died in the last Congress but will be reintroduced.
Unionization may help, the article said, and
many experts are supporting a federal minimum
wage for agriculture.
The farm bloc has "smashed" past efforts to
win a minimum wage, the author saicj, stress-
ing that "only public pressure will convince
Congress that it should act."
The author went on to suggest several ways in
which interested citizens could work on the prob-
lem in their communities.
"In our affluent America, with its tail fins,
credit cards and suburban complacence, it is easy
to forget that millions of us still, quite literally,
eat the fruits of the work of little children," Far-
rell wrote.
Perhaps that food will taste better, the author
said, if each person does his part to stamp out
the "dark age" blight of child labor still re-
maining.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Page Severn
Morgan Says:
Do-It- Yourself Campaign Sign
A Contribution That May
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
UNIMPORTANT ITEMS raked in from the
falling leaves of a reporter's notebook:
The 1960 presidential race may well go down
in history as the year of the do-it-yourself cam-
paign sign, the cardboard cliche on the side of a
soap box. It would be lovely to think that
these home-made, hand-
scrawled slogans blos-
soming above the hust-
ings from Hampton
Roads to Hawaii repre-
sented a great American
awakening in the garden
of politics. Despite some
reports to the contrary,
the Kennedy-Nixon race
certainly did seem to en-
gage an extraordinary
amount of public inter-
Morgan
est over the long, fatiguing route.
But whoever turns out to be the unsung genius
that first nailed a square stiff paper to a stick
and printed on it "Nix On Jack" or "I Can't Stand
Pat," I suspect that enterprising county chairmen
encouraged the idea lavishly, not only to give
traveling journalists the impression that the grass
roots were fairly oozing with home-grown en-
thusiasm for the right ticket, but to save a tidy
sum on printing bills.
SOME OF THE SIGNS WERE BITTER. A
few were snide and more than one had the blot
of bigotry on it. But for the most part they were
daubed with competitive warmth and enthusiasm,
a little like the insistently loyal homecoming pa-
rade signs at college. It was "yeah team" with
variations. In Lewistown, Pa., for instance, on
the Vice President's whistle-stop tour, one placard
cropped up reading, "Nixon, the thinking man's
candidate." Farther west, when Sen. Kennedy's
bus-and-motorcade was curving through the Alle-
ghenies outside Pittsburgh on a glorious Indian
summer Saturday, there materialized towns with
such wonderful names as Zelienople and Yellow
Dog. Naturally in the middle of the latter com-
munity, somebody hoisted up a sign proclaiming
they were "barking for Jack in Yellow Dog."
Crowdsmanship was a constant or rather a
constantly variable factor in the campaign. There
were those journalists who refused to take respon-
sibility for estimates themselves but accepted fig-
'Spur to Continued Action: 9
ures from any cop who would give his name and
rank, however wildly inaccurate the totals may
have seemed.
There were the more careful ones who might
be labeled the comparers. During the speech-
making they would seek out local scribes or
other eye-witnesses who might have a vague
notion of the time, the weather and other fac-
tors involved when the opposing candidate
made his appearance on the spot and then
weighty comparisons would be made between
the opponents' pulling power.
Three reasonably solid observations might be
made about the crowds. One is that on the whole
both Kennedy and Nixon drew impressively large
turnouts, though if there were some kind of spe
cial applause meters available to measure fervor
and devotion their needles might have been tilted
a little more in the direction of the Senator. The
second point is that in these seething masses of
humanity it is a near miracle that somebody,
notably including one of the contenders them-
selves, was not fatally trampled. Indeed the Vice
President was incapacitated by an infection of his
knee which he bruised in a crowd crush in North
Carolina. Finally it seems a sound axiom that
while big crowds do not necessarily mean you
are winning, small crowds probably show you are
losing or are at least in trouble.
UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST distinctive and
perhaps the most decisive aspect of the whole
campaign was the introduction of the confronta-
tion of the candidates on television, however
widely this series may have been mislabeled as
"great debates."
Though I am not sure they were, as some
of my colleagues vowed, the greatest step in
democracy since the invention of the secret
ballot, I do believe these appearances provided
a great boon in edifying the electorate.
I do not go along with the argument of some
of the sage observers of politics that the format
was disastrous. Certainly it was not perfect and
there ought to be a fair way found to eliminate
the repetitive and the shallow questions. But
what I think some^ of the critics overlooked was
the fact that the four debates provided millions
of voters their only real glimpse of the candidates,
and under competitive conditions that may have
proved revealing. There is a certain savagery
about American political campaigns and I think
these joint appearances before the eyes and ears
of the nation have a needed civilizing effect. I,
for one, hope they are here to stay.
Labor Dept. Reports Progress
By Negroes in Closing Pay Gap
SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT in the social
and economic status of Negroes and other
non-white American citizens has been reported by
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell.
Reporting to Pres. Eisenhower on a special
Labor Dept. study, Mitchell said:
"A notable development in the United States
in recent years has been the steady improvement
in the social and economic status of Negroes. In
education, type of work, income, housing and
other areas for which measures are available, the
historic differentials between whites and Negroes
have narrowed.
"This report, while measuring progress, per-
mits of satisfaction with past achievement only as
a prelude to determination to forge ahead with
vigor in opening the doors of opportunity ever
wider. It is not a basis for complacency but a
spur to continued action."
Here are some of the findings:
• There are almost 20 million non-white per-
sons in the United States, representing about 11
percent of the population, a somewhat higher
percentage than in previous years. Most of the
gain for the non-whites was due to a drop in their
death rate, although this is still higher than
among whites.
• Sixty years ago, three-fourths of the non-
whites lived in the rural South. In recent years
the proportion has changed to about one-third in
northern and western states; another third live in
southern cities and only a third are still in south-
ern rural areas.
• While the gap between whites and non-
whites in earnings is still considerable, Negroes
have narrowed it to a notable degree* During
' the last 20 years the average earnings of non-
white males have risen from 41 percent of that
of white workers to 58 percent, while the per-
centage of Negroes in professions and skilled
work has doubled.
• Educational statistics show the Negro "still
below the levels reached by whites, but rapidly
gaining." Since 1940 the number of Negro boys
and girls completing school has increased at more
than double the rate of white children. Between
1950 and 19? 8 the number of college students
increased by 49.8 percent with non- whites show-
ing an increase of 86.4 percent.
• While Negroes have made great progress
on the job front, they are still behind whites in
skills, with the result that unemployment among
Negroes is disproportionately high. The 1959
averages reveal a jobless rate of 4.6 percent for
w hites while that for non-whites was 11.5, or more
than double.
"Nevertheless," Mitchell commented, "I think
this study reflects a record of progress to which
we can point with some degree of satisfaction."
YOU*
WASMtNOTON
4l
BOTH MAJOR PARTIES arc amalgamations of great groups
of voters from widely separated sections with different political phil-
osophies, and after each election the party leaders are forced to
face the inherited problems arising from this fact. The Democratic
split is more widely observed because it arises from what often ap-
pears to be a clean-cut North-South breach, but the Republican
difficulty may be more deeprooted if not so dramatically obvious.
A case may be made that the Republicans are a minority party
that has not risen above that status since the election of 1928,
and have little prospect of expanding unless there is a different
leadership.
The two Eisenhower elections gave the GOP the presidency after
five national defeats, but did not bestow majority status on the
party as such.
In the deep depression of 1930 Democrats began an election-
year trend that the Republicans have never really overcome. In the
30 years since then, the GOP has won control of Congress only
twice — in 1946 and in 1952 — and it was unable to retain control
the next time the voters had a chance to speak.
The 1946 election was the "meat-shortage" freak immediately
after the war when psychological weariness with strain and sacri-
fice had set in and voters were irritated by Pres. Truman's early-
term difficulties in mastering the machinery of government.
Republican leaders freely conceded that if the election had come
even a couple of weeks later, a turn in the tide would have been
reflected. In 1948, of course, Truman won the White House him-
self, and the Democrats gained control of Congress again.
The 1952 GOP lead in Congress was attributable wholly to the
Eisenhower coattails. The lead was thin, the party immediately
began losing special elections, and the Democrats have now won
four successive general elections despite votes on the presidency
that in one case Eisenhower won and as between Sen. Kennedy and
Vice Pres. Nixon was exceedingly close.
* * *
Moreover, the Republican problem is complicated by the domi-
nant conservative philosophy of its senators and House members
in facing problems of economic adjustment and human welfare.
The people of our country live increasingly in heavily popu-
lated areas, almost all of them with piled-up accumulations of
problems involving housing, schools, water pollution, and social
service. The GOP philosophy in Congress is that these are
"local" problems.
The people, however, are burdened with state and local taxa-
tion that has risen incredibly more rapidly than federal taxation
and that is basically regressive, hitting hardest at those with least
income.
There are no state or local sources for the billions required to
rebuild America, and the mayors of the cities — who know the prob-
lems best — are almost unanimous in urging a far stronger federal
role. Mr. Eisenhower has said No, the Republican leaders in
Congress say No — and the answer does not win friends and in-
fluence voters.
Republican functionaries hope to make increasing inroads in
the once solidly Democratic South, and they are showing some
progress. They are doing it by identifying themselves with the most
conservative forces in southern political life — the intransigents on
civil rights, the businessmen who close plants when a union wins
bargaining rights, the Democratic reactionaries who think that
minimum wages and social security and federal leadership are
monstrous alien dogmas.
This is the wave of the past in the South, which is inevitably
going to be more thoroughly industrialized and where men of
good will must eventually seek the transition of relations between
white and colored races that sees the children of both better edu-
cated and the basic rights of all human beings acknowledged.
"LABOR'S VIEW of National Problems" was on the agenda recently
at Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The guest lecturer
was George T. Brown, assistant to AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany.
With Brown is Brig. Gen. Bruce Palmer Jr., acting commandant of
the college.
Page ESglit
AFL-CTO NFWS, WASHINGTON, I>. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBFR 12, 1960
How to Buy:
'Super' Anti-Freeze
Of Dubious Value
By Sidney Margolius
CAR OWNERS are being bombarded this Fall by a barrage of
TV and other ads promoting new "long-life" and permanent-
anti-freezes. We always thought that regular ethylene glycol was
a "permanent" anti-freeze. At least that's the way it always has
been advertised. But now these new products are being advertised
as really permanent, as well as longer-lasting.
The truth is, one reason for the
introduction of the new anti-freeze is
that one out of three motorists have
been taking the advertising for "per-
manent" anti-freeze literally. They
have been leaving it in their cars year
after year. This has reduced sales.
Too, the new compacts have smaller
radiators requiring about one-third
less anti-freeze. So business has not
been too good.
The new so-called all-year or
"never-drain" anti-freezes are notice-
ably more expensive. Two brands
cost $5 a gallon installed, compared
to $3.25 or less for standard ethylene
glycol. One, Dowgard, already in-
cludes the water. It costs $2.25 a gallon but you need more of it.
Thus, the new anti-freezes will cost about $7.50, or $10 in the
case of Dowgard, to protect a standard-size car's cooling system
down to zero degrees, compared to less than $5 for the traditional
ethylene glycol. That's for the typical 4.5-gallon cooling system.
Not only are motorists confused by the conflicting claims for
the new anti-freezes but so are servicemen. Some think the new
products may be useful, others see no point to them.
Our own investigation indicates there seems to be little or no
advantage in the new anti-freezes for their extra cost.
Let's see what they really are. There are two types of new anti-
freezes. One type is being promoted as an all-year product which
can be left in the radiator through the summer, but must be drained
after twelve months. This includes Dowgard, made by Dow Chem-
ical Co., and Prestone Long Life Coolant, made by Union Carbide
Corp.
The other type is Dupont's Telar, promoted as a "never-drain"
product which you can leave in indefinitely, unless it changes color
from red to yellow. This indicates that the solution has become
contaminated.
THE FACT IS, all these new anti-freezes are basically the same
ethylene glycol plus stronger rust inhibitors. Union Carbide says
frankly that it has added more rust inhibitor to make it last longer.
But Dupont claims the inhibitor in its new Telar anti-freeze is an
actually improved type. Still, all inhibitors are based on the same
borax or some other form of sodium borate as before.
The new Dowgard, in addition to ethylene glycol and a stronger
rust inhibitor, also contains about 45 percent water. You just pour
it into the radiator without adding more water. The water is not
ordinary water, but distilled water which has been "de-ionized" by
running it over an electrical hotplate.
Thus, all that the new anti-freezes basically provide for their
higher price is a beefed-up rust inhibitor. It isn't the ethylene
glycol in an anti-freeze that wears out. It's the rust inhibitor.
That and other reasons are why the manufacturers and also some
independent authorities recommend, or used to recommend, that
anti-freeze should be drained every spring, though many motor-
ists don't.
But why pay $3 to $5 more for anti-freeze with a longer-lasting
rust inhibitor that will take you through summer, when you can
buy a pint can of rust inhibitor to put in your cooling system in
the spring for 60 cents?
In fact, one company official, R. P. Bergan of Union Carbide,
considers it may be as effective to buy the cheaper standard ethylene
glycol as the new long-life coolants, even though his company
makes both. In fact, he says, as do other experts, that plain water
is a more efficient heat-transfer agent than ethylene glycol for sum-
mer when an engine may run very hot, especially in heavy traffic.
Too, there's a likelihood that it's safer to drain and flush the
radiator at the end of winter to remove the impurities, as car
manufacturers recommend, and as anti-freeze manufacturers them-
selves used to urge.
Thus, ordinary ethylene glycol drained after winter would seem
even to have an advantage over the new versions.
STANDARD ETHYLENE GLYCOL sells for anywhere from
$3.25 a gallon for the brand-name products installed by service
stations, to as little as $2.35 in the case of some private brands
of the consumer co-ops and service-station chains.
If you install it yourself, the price is as little as $2.39 or even
less for private brands. The private brands of reputable retailers
are generally the same quality — 95 percent ethylene glycol — as the
advertised brands. In fact, many are packaged by Dow and Union
Carbide for retailers to sell under their own brand names.
Some of the very low-priced ethylene glycols sold for well under
$2 may have been subject to quality watering (literally) and may
provide only 85 percent ethylene glycol. In that case it may be
safer to use a little higher proportion than ordinarily.^
Copyright I960 by Sidney Uargoliu*
Sponsored by AFL-CIO, Histadrut:
Students from 30 Nations
At Israeli Labor Institute
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — A new labor school
dedicated to training trade union leaders for
the nations of Africa and Asia has opened here
with 70 students from 30 different countries.
For six months these students will be exposed
to parallel programs in French and English cov-
ering a wide range of theoretical and practical
courses on the role of trade unions in a democratic
society and an insight as to how they can operate
in the new conditions on these continents.
The Afro-Asian Institute for Labor Studies
and Cooperation is a joint venture of the Israel
Federation of Labor— Histadrut — and the
AFL-CIO. The American Federation's Execu-
tive Council has voted to cover the costs of
half the scholarship funds used to support stu-
dents during their six-month training. Histadrut
is operating the school and will cover the other
half of the costs.
In a brochure describing the institute, Histadrut
declares the school has one simple purpose — "to
train cadres for leadership in the labor movement
of Asia and Africa."
But in addition to its specific purpose of train-
ing personnel for the labor movements of Africa
and Asia, the school is expected to "provide a
forum for the meeting of trade unionists and mem-
bers of cooperatives from different parts of the
world." This, say Histadrut, "will contribute to
an interchange of experience and ideas, and pro-
mote better understanding and cooperation among
free and democratically organized labor move-
ments."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany and Eliahu
Elath, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., are
co-chairmen of the institute.
ORIGINAL PLANS had called for courses of
study for 60 persons twice a year but 134 appli-
cations were received and the facilities were
extended to take care of 70 students.
The teachers and lecturers have been drawn
from leading academic circles in Israel, notably
Hebrew University and Histadrut A number
of guest lecturers from other countries, includ-
Four Freedoms Project:
ing Asia and Africa, have also been invited to
take part in the program.
Basic requirement is a secondary school edu-
cation or its equivalent, with preference given to
persons actively engaged in trade union or co-
operative work. Students are required to have
sufficient knowledge of either French or English.
Tuition, board and lodging are provided with-
out cost to students but the sponsoring organiza-
tions must provide for travel and pocket money
expenses.
THE SCHOOL'S PROGRAM will be pre-
sented in three stages. The first stage will cover
theoretical studies, including lectures, discussion
groups and reading under the instruction of the
teaching staff.
The second stage will cover field work includ-
ing extensive tours and inspection of trade unions,
cooperatives and various economic enterprises,
with special emphasis on projects in development
regions.
The final stage will cover specialization in
selected fields with each student applying him-
self to intensive study in the area related to his
work in his home country.
The program of studies includes subjects in the
area of cooperatives, labor economics and eco-
nomic development There will be about 300
hours of lectures and 400 hours of practical
experience by the time the six-month course is
concluded.
During the past two years Histadrut had con-
ducted a dozen seminars on specific subjects. The
institute is the result of the widespread interest
demonstrated at these seminars, Elath said.
English-speaking students have been enrolled
from Burma, Ceylon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana,
India, Japan, Kenya, Liberia, Nepal, Nigeria,
Northern Rhodesia, Philippines, Sierra Leone,
Tanganyika and Uganda.
French-speaking students represent Cameroon,
Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Daho-
mey, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Malagasy, Mali, Niger,
Sengal, Togo and Upper Volta.
Union-Backed Retirement Hotel
Set to Open in Miami Beach
THE FOUR FREEDOMS HOTELS project—
a new concept of living for trade union re-
tirees — will Feopen the President Madison Hotel
in Miami Beach, Fla., in December as the first
unit of a proposed coast-to-coast chain of union-
sponsored, non-profit residence hotels.
The hotel's reopening was announced by Wil-
liam R. Steinberg, head of the Four Freedoms
project and president of the American Radio
Association. "The authors of this project," he
said, "have believed for a long time that some-
thing beyond a pension plan is necessary and de-
sirable for many trade union retirees. A group
of unions banding together to pool their resources
have found the answer in the Four Freedoms
project."
THE PRESIDENT MADISON and each suc-
ceeding unit in the project will offer permanent
living with all of the pleasures of a vacation at an
all-inclusive cost of $125 per month per person,
Steinberg said.
More than 20 international unions, state cen-
tral bodies or other union groups or officials have
endorsed the hotels project.
The first unit is located on the ocean front
in one of Miami Beach's most desirable areas.
Its 205 guest rooms have been newly redeco-
rated and the entire hotel has been refurbished
with "extras" for the comfort of those of retire-
ment age. Each room will have a private bath,
radio, telephone and central air conditioning.
In some areas ramps have replaced stairs, doors
have been refitted without treads, non-skid floor
surfacing installed, handrails securely fixed be-
side bathtubs, and windows have been made easy
to manipulate. There will be nothing "institu-
tional" about a Four Freedoms Hotel; guests
will be free to come and go as they please and
will be able to transfer to other units as they are
opened.
Trained dietitians will prepare meals. The
spacious pool, only a few yards from the ocean,
and a sun deck will be used by the President
Madison guests. Inside the hotel there are rec-
reation rooms, hobby shops and a television
theater.
Among the unions or groups whose officers
have endorsed the Four Freedoms Hotels project
are the Maritime Union, Potters, Steelworkers,
Office Employees, Brewery Workers, Retail,
Wholesale & Department Store Union, Aluminum
Workers, American Radio Association, and
Woodworkers.
Also, the Leather Goods, Plastics and Novelty
Workers, Longshoremen, Sailors Union of the
Pacific, Laundry Workers, Masters, Mates &
Pilots, Broadcast Engineers, Machinists Dist. 15,
Electrical Radio & Machine Workers Dist. 4,
Stonecutters, New York State AFL-CIO, Florida
State AFL-CIO, Kings County (Wash.) Labor
Council and others.
"So you're Tom's boss! Pft heard hiin mention youi
name so often, Mr. Slav edriv err
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Page Nine
In Henderson Textile Strike:
Union Vows Faith
In Jailed Ueaders
Henderson, N. C. — Eight officers and members of the Textile
Workers Union of America, still protesting their innocence, have
begun serving prison terms ranging from two to 10 years for par-
ticipation in an alleged conspiracy to commit strike violence.
In an emotion-laden scene the unionists presented themselves
at the Vance County courthouse^
here following denial of a long
series of court appeals and failure
of a last-minute bid to Gov. Luther
H. Hodges for executive clemency.
Then, while hundreds of TWUA
members crowded around them
singing "Solidarity Forever,*' the
convicted unionists bade tear-
ful farewells to their families be-
fore being led to waiting police
cars for the trip to Central
Prison in Raleigh.
Imprisoned were TWUA Vice
Pres. Boyd E. Payton, the union's
Carolinas' director; TWUA Staff
Representatives Charles E. Aus-
lander and Lawrenqe Gore; Pres.
Johnnie Martin of Local 578; and
union members Warren Walker,
Calvin Pegram, Robert Abbott and
Malcolm Jarrell.
The eight had been convicted on
charges of plotting a series of dyna-
mitings in 1959 during the union's
long strike against the Harriet-
Henderson Cotton Mills. The dyna-
mitings never took place.
Farewell Dinner
The night before the unionists
began their prison terms they
gathered at the Vance Hotel —
headquarters for the union during
the strike which still continues at
the mills — for a farewell dinner
with strikers and TWUA interna-
tional officers.
In an atmosphere of deep gloom
the union paid tribute to the eight
men whose conviction, TWUA
Pres. William Pollock said, came
as "the climax of a long series of
injustices against Henderson tex-
tile workers."
Pollock appealed to "the many
people of North Carolina who
are greatly troubled by what is
taking place here today to raise
their voices in behalf of these
men toward the end that this
injustice will be remedied."
TWUA, he declared, "has com-
plete faith in the integrity of these
men. We are deeply grieved at the
hardships and sacrifices they are
about to undergo. We know they
will face their ordeal with the kind
of courage that has always marked
the struggle of textile workers for
social justice."
Pres.-Emeritus Emil Rieve, an
AFL-CIO vice president and Exec-
utive Council member, said: "This
has happened before and it will
happen again as long a^s there is
injustice against workers."
Said Sec.-Treas. John Chupka:
"We hope this will leave an im-
print on the consciences of all
Americans. These men are not
being punished for any crime.
They are being imprisoned for
what they believe in."
Speaking on behalf of himself
and the other men being imprisoned
with him, Payton told the gather-
ing:
"None of us has any desire to be
a hero or a martyr. We'd much
rather go home to our families.
But the struggle to build the labor
movement is just as worthwhile as
the sacrifices for Christianity. Let's
hold our heads high and face this
test with courage."
Later, appearing before tele-
vision and newsreel cameras, Pol-
lock' stressed that the unionists
were "victimized by a special agent
of the police" who, according to
the court testimony, attempted to
induce the men to bomb the main
offices of the struck plant and a
power substation.
The TWUA members, said Pol-
lock, were "indicted and tried with
extreme haste and were sentenced
to harsh and vindictive terms for a
crime that never occurred. It was
a crime that could not occur un-
less the state, itself, lit the fuse."
Payton, who joined Pollock in
appearing before newsmen, denied
on behalf of all eight strikers that
there was "any wrongdoing at
Henderson." He went on:
"There is no rancor nor bit-
terness in our hearts.
"Neither is there any burden
upon our consciences.
"We have nothing to hide. We
are not ashamed of any of our
actions in Henderson."
SOLEMN-FACED Boyd E. Payton (right), Textile Workers Union of America vice president, is
shown entering Henderson, N. C, courthouse before beginning long prison term with seven other
TWUA members for alleged participation in conspiracy to commit violence during strike against
Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills. With Payton are his wife and TWUA Se,c.-Treas. John Chupka.
Labor Dept. Issues
L-G Election Guide
"Electing Union Officers,"
a new 60-page illustrated
guide, has been mailed by
the U. S. Dept. of Labor to
each of the 55,000 unions
which has filed reports under
the Landrum-Griffin Act.
The new booklet was is-
sued by the department's
Bureau of Labor-Manage-
ment Reports in response to
what it described as "a heavy
flow" of inquiries about the
new law's election require-
ments.
The booklet is officially
designated as Technical As-
sistance Aid No. 5 and is
available on request, the bu-
reau announced, for distrib-
ution at union conventions
and conferences.
A number of Landrum-
Griffin cases involving union
elections are now in various
stages of legal action to as-
certain the scope and intent
of the law.
Nation's Unemployment Rate Soars
To Near-Record High of 6.4 Percent
(Continued from Page 1)
The key seasonally adjusted rate
of 6.4 percent, up from 5.7 per-
cent in September, has been ex-
ceeded only in two of the three
postwar recession years. The rate
was 7.1 in October 1958; 5.8 per-
cent as the recession eased in Oc-
tober 1954 and an exaggerated 7.8
percent during a coal strike in Oc-
tober 1949.
This was the unemployment pic-
ture which the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration refused to confirm be-
fore the Nov. 8 election.
The figures were published in
the Washington Post on Nov. 5.
The same night, Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell told the press
at a GOP rally in New Jersey
that the story of increased un-
employment was "completely
without foundation."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
wired Mitchell a request for re-
lease of the figures, saying that
"continued suppression" could
only be viewed "as deliberate de-
nial to public of pertinent informa-
tion on eve of election for patently
political motives."
Mitchell replied to Meany that
the figures would be issued "as
soon as . . . available and ready
for release."
Mitchell, apparently stung by
printed accounts of how the Eisen-
hower Administration had broken
the news of the seasonal drop in
unemployment just before election
day in 1954, 1956 and 1958, made
no mention of these unofficial
announcements but asserted:
"On the occasion of the past
three elections, the official Labor
Dept. figures were not compiled or
available for release until after the
election."
The overall job report com-
bines a household survey taken
early in the month by the Census
Bureau and end-of-the-month pay-
roll data compiled by the Labor
Department. Meany in past years
has asked several times for the
early separate release of the Census
Bureau figures.
The October job report showed
that employment fell by some
300,000 over the month to a
total of 67.5 million, still a high
for the month.
The report attributed the job
decline chiefly to post-harvest re-
ductions in agriculture.
Non-farm payrolls remained al-
most unchanged at 53.7 million,
with further cutbacks in factory
jobs offsetting seasonal gains in
trade and public school employ-
ment, the report said.
The report also noted a coun-
ter-trend in state insured unem-
ployment. Workers drawing un-
employment compensation in-
creased by 80,000 to a total of
1.7 million instead of declining
seasonally.
Workers on factory payrolls
dropped by 165,000 to 16.4 mil-
lion. The report said this drop
was greater than -seasonal, chiefly
because of declines in primary
metals, machinery, textiles and ap-
parel. Auto jobs increased, while
other changes were seasonal.
Bolstered by the callback of
auto workers, the factory work-
week reversed its decline and
moved upward from 39.5 hours in
September to 39.6 hours in Oc-
tober. _
Average weekly earnings of fac-
tory production workers rose by 63
cents to an October high of $91.48
and hourly earnings moved up by 1
cent to a record high of $2.31.
Teachers End Strike
To 'Build the Union'
New York — Striking school teachers here returned to their class-
rooms to "build the union" and consolidate their gains after a
one-day walkout, first in city school history.
Three prominent New York unionists, asked by Mayor Robert
F. Wagner to help mediate the teachers' grievances, agreed to meet
with the United Federation of^
Teachers, the Board of Education
and School Supt. John J. Theobald
to help solve the problems that
brought the walkout of the UFT,
which has almost 10,000 of the
schools' 38,932 teachers.
The three labor leaders .are Pres.
David Dubinsky of the Ladies'
Garment Workers, Pres. Jacob S.
Potofsky of the Clothing Workers
and Pres. Harry Van Arsdale, Jr.,
of the AFL-CIO Central Labor
Council.
School officials indicated they
are willing to give the teachers
three of their objectives — a
method for bargaining collec-
tively, sick leave for substitute
teachers and the checkoff of un-
ion dues.
The union walked out Nov. 7
and posted pickets at some 267 of
Greater New York's 850 schools.
Theobald announced the same
day that he was suspending 4,600
teachers who had failed to report
to their classes. Under the state's
Condon-Wadlin law, public em-
ployes who strike are subject to
instant dismissal. The superin-
tendent did not invoke the law but
acted, he said, under a school hoard
rule giving him authority to sus-
pend teachers for unbecoming con-
duct.
The strike ended when Wagner
announced that no teacher would
be penalized who returned to
work, and that the three-man la-
bor committee had agreed to
work with the union and school
officials in solving their differ-
ences.
The union's delegate assembly
agreed, after two hours of debate,
to return to work and build for
the future with the* help of the
united labor movement here.
The UFT said it walked out
because school officials broke a
promise to hold elections at which
teachers could choose a collective
bargaining representative. Theo-
bald said no such promise had been
made.
Union objectives include promo-
tional raises for teachers with spe-
cialized training; equalization of
salary increments (steps); and
duty-free lunch periods.
Detroit Times Bought,
Killed by Rival News
Detroit — A warning, tk don't touch anything," which greeted
Newspaper Guild members employed by the Detroit Times when
they reported for work at 3 a. m. on Nov. 7 turned out to be a
brutally abrupt announcement that their paper had been sold to the
Detroit News — and folded.
It was not until later in the day<^
that telegrams were delivered to
the homes of the Times' 1,400
employes telling them they were
out of work. The sale eliminates
388 ANG jobs, about 160 on the
editorial staff.
The callousness of the closing
announcement was made worse
when a News executive revealed
that no more than 10 percent of
the Times editorial staff would
be retained by the News man-
agement*
The sale — and closing — was an-
other in the series of deals in-
volving Hearst newspaper proper-
ties that have cost thousands of
jobs in the last few years. The
latest prior transaction was Hearst's
acquisition of the Gannett-owned
Albany, N. Y., Knickerbocker
News in mid-October and its
closing to set up a Hearst monopoly
in the city.
The telegrams firing ANG em-
ployes of the Times said that any
severance pay due them under the
Guild contract would be forth-
coming. The News does not oper-
ate under a Guild contract. The
price it paid for the Times was
not made public.
ANG Executive Vice Pres. Wil-
liam J. Farson, speaking in Wash-
ington, was sharply critical of the
"abrupt" and "callous" manner in
which Times employes were told of
the sale.
Page TeH
AFL-CIO NE\TS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
THE STATE CARPENTERS' COUNCIL of New Jersey paid up
its $10,000 pledge to the building fund of the Rutgers State Uni-
versity labor education center when this check was presented.
Pictured left to right are Council Pres. Raleigh Rajoppi, Sec.-Treas.
James Moss, and Dr. Irvine Kerrison of the Rutgers Institute of
Management and Labor Relations.
Nixon, Democrats Split
In Oregon, Washington
Portland, Ore. — Voters in Oregon and Washington elected a new
Democratic senator, re-elected a Democratic governor and gave
majorities to Democrats in the legislatures of both states.
But they also went along with voters in the majority of the 13
western states in giving their total of 15 electoral votes to the losing
candidate for president. 3>
Porter was defeated in Oregon's
4th Dist. by Republican Dr. Ed-
Liberals Lose Congressional Seats:
Nixon, GOP Run Strong
In Rocky Mountain States
Denver — Labor-liberal groups in the Rocky Mountain states lost ground in this year's general
elections in the five states — Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
All 21 of the region's electoral votes went to Nixon. Six of the region's ten senators are consid-
ered liberal, compared to a previous seven and only six of the region's 11 members of the House
of Representatives are in the same category compared to a previous seven.
The results are all the more enig-^
Oregon turned out of office one
Democratic congressman, Charles
O. Porter, and Washington elected
a new Democratic congresswoman,
Mrs. Julia Butler Hansen, to even
the score. In other House races,
six Republican and two Democratic
incumbents were re-elected and one
Democrat was leading.
Trend Bucked
This was the first time since 1912
that Washington had bucked the
national presidential trend.
Gov. Albert D. Rosellini of
Washington, whose administration
was challenged by Republican
Lloyd J. Andrews, was re-elected.
Political forecasters had expected
Sen. John F. Kennedy to lead
Rosellini by 100,000 votes in Wash-
ington, and to pull him back into
the statehouse by the slimmest
margin. . Instead, the voters re-
jected Kennedy and gave the gov-
ernor a healthy majority.
One of the most famous names
in Oregon politics was returned
to the Senate. Mrs. Maurine B.
Neuberger, widow of the late
Sea. Richard L. Neuberger,
handily won the Senate seat va-
cated by her husband's death.
Her opponent was former Re-
publican Gov. Elmo Smith.
Mrs. Neuberger had the endorse-
ment of labor. Political polls
showed that she was far ahead of
her opponent from the outset, de-
spite a leisurely, ladylike campaign/
She will be the 10th woman to
serve in the Senate and the first
from a Western state.
Clerks Cosponsor
Special TV Show
For the first time in television
history a labor organization will
participate in the sponsorship of an
entertainment spectacular when the
Retail Clerks cosponsor the Na-
tional Broadcasting Co.'s Dave Gar-
roway "special" Friday, Nov. 18.
The program will be televised
in approximately 150 cities across
the nation and will be seen at 9
p. m. EST.
The RCIA for several months
has been a participating sponsor of
Garroway's "Today" show, seen
five mornings each week over the
NBC television network.
win Durno, 61, a former All-
American basketball player. Porter
had served two terms.
Mrs. Hansen, a liberal Demo-
crat, bested Republican nominee
Dale Nordquist in Washington's
3rd Dist.
Washington's five Republican
members of Congress won re-elec-
tion without serious challenge.
They include another woman, Mrs.
Catherine May of Yakima. In the
7th Dist., Democrat Don Magnu-
son's race with Republican John
Stender, Seattle labor leader, will
remain in doubt until absentee bal-
lots are counted, although Magnu-
son now holds a slim lead.
Mrs. Green Wins Easily
Republican' congressmen re-
elected in Washington were Tom
Pelly, 1st Dist.; Jack Westland,
2nd Dist.; Walt Horan, 5th Dist.;
and Thor C. Tollefson, 6th Dist.
In Oregon's 3rd Dist., Rep.
Edith Green rolled up a 2-to-l
majority over Wallace L. Lee, Port-
land insurance man who favored
repeal of the federal income tax.
Mrs. Green was Kennedy's cam-
paign manager in Oregon and she
has been mentioned frequently for
a Cabinet post.
In the 2nd Dist., Democratic
Rep. Al Ullman was easily re-
elected. And in the 1st Dist., vet-
eran Republican Rep. Walter Nor-
blad beat Democrat Marv Owens
by nearly 2 to 1. Oregon now has
a two Democrat-two Republican
split in the House.
Gov. Mark O. Hatfield main-
tained his monopoly of the Ore-
gon Board ot Control with the
election of both his appointees,
Sec. of State Howell Appling,
Jr., and Treas. Howard Belton.
Appling's opponent was the
widely-known and respected Mon-
roe Sweetland, who was subjected
to a virulent smear attack in the
closing days of the campaign. Five
persons are under indictment for
political criminal libel because of
a pamphlet circulated throughout
the state accusing Sweetland of a
history of subversive and criminal
activity.
For Oregon Democrats, Sweet-
land's defeat was probably the most
heartbreaking aspect of the elec-
tion.
matic because COPE organizations
were at record high levels of effi-
ciency in all these states, and in
most areas Democratic Party or-
ganizations seemed to be in either
respectable or excellent condition.
Careful precinct by precinct
analysis of the returns may pro-
vide an answer, but a first glance
at the tally sheets shows crazy-
quilt, unexplainable patterns.
As reported in the AFL-CIO
News in October, most of the area
was conceded to be Nixon country
at the start, but there was con-
fidence that Kennedy was gaining
through the month of October. He
was given the edge in Montana, and
by many observers in Colorado, a
fighting chance in Wyoming, and
a prayer of hope in Utah and
Idaho. But Nixon won narrowly
in Montana, heavily in Colorado,
handily in the other three states.
Even more disappointing to
Mountain States liberals, who have
been sending increasingly liberal
delegations to Congress during the
past few years, were the results in
House and Senate races. Only one
bright point appeared in the five
states: labor-endorsed Ralph Hard-
ing (D) edged out conservative in-
cumbent Rep. Hamer Budge (R)
in Idaho, where incumbent labor-
endorsed Gracie Pfost (D) was re-
elected in a walk.
In Idaho, Sen. Henry Dworshak
(R) won neatly but not overwhelm-
ingly over labor-endorsed Robert
McLaughlin (D).
Standoff In Utah
In. Utah, it was a standoff. La-
bor-endorsed Rep. David S. King
(D) was re-elected. The other
House seat, which was GOP, re-
mained in doubt in the contest
between labor-endorsed Blaine Pe-
terson (D) and Walter Stevenson
(R). There was no Senate race.
Liberal William A. Barlocker (D)
failed to unseat George D. Clyde
(R) as governor.
In Montana, labor-endorsed Lee
Metcalf (D), managed to move up
from House to Senate, replacing
retiring Jim Murray (D). His old
seat was won by Arnold Olsen
(D), but Montana's other- seat
was won by Jim Battin (R) over
Leo Graybill Jr. The Democratic
candidate for governor, Paul Can-
non, lost to Donald G. Nutter (R).
In Wyoming, ground was lost
on two fronts. Keith Thomson
(R) moved up from House to
Senate to replace retiring Jo-
seph C. O'Mahoney (D). He
defeated Ray Whittaker (D), and
Thomson's House seat was won
by William Henry Harrison
(R).
In Colorado, largest of the five
states, labor-liberal people are puz-
zling over an unpredicted turn of
events. They lost by about 68.000
votes the presidential contest. They
lost an uphill fight by Robert
Knous (D) to unseat Sen. Gordon
Allott (R) by nearly as many votes.
They lost one of their three House
seats. Incumbent labor-endorsed
Byron Johnson (D), was swamped
by Peter Dominick (R).
Liberals failed by 5,000 votes to
replace incumbent Rep. J. Edgar
Chenoweth (R). Byron Rogers
(D) and Wayne Aspinall (D), both
returned to Congress in landslides,
as was expected.
Republicans Sweep to
Upset Victory in Ohio
Cleveland — Republicans regained control of the legislature as
Ohio became the only large industrial state to give its electoral
votes to Vice Pres. Nixon.
Nixon won Ohio's 25 electoral votes by a 269,000 margin and
swept Republican candidates for the legislature and Congress to
victory. « 3> —
The GOP victory was regarded
as a setback for the Ohio State
AFL-CIO's plan to push for a com-
prehensive legislative program when
the legislature convenes in January.
Labor leaders believe they will have
to concentrate more on fighting
against attempts to weaken unem-
ployment and industrial compensa-
tion laws and other liberal legisla-
tion than on trying for improve-
ments.
The Democratic rout was a
shock to political leaders, labor
officials and political pundits who
had predicted Ohio would give a
majority to Sen. John F. Ken-
edy and continue with Democrats
in control of the legislature.
Their predictions were based
mainly on increasing unemploy-
ment in the industrial areas.
The "religious" issue and public
rebellion against Democratic Gov.
Michael V. DiSalle's $350 million
Missouri Labor Help
Decisive for Kennedy
St. Louis— The efforts of the AFL-CIO, particularly in St. Louis
and St. Louis County, were responsible for carrying Missouri for
John F. Kennedy and a Democratic slate of state officers.
A Democrat, pledged to follow the liberal record of the late Sen.
Thomas Hennings, also was elected in the person of Edward V.
Long, lieutenant governor, who^
was appointed to Hennings' place
when he died.
The Republicans elected only
two to Congress from Missouri:
Rep. Thomas Curtis, the veteran
conservative from the 2d District
in St. Louis County, and Dr. Dur-
ward Hall of Springfield, who dis-
placed Rep. Charles H. Brown.
Two terms ago, Brown unseated
the ultra-conservative Dewey Short
in a surprise victory.
Proof of the labor efforts, John
Rollings, State AFL-CIO president
said, was in the fact that heavy
Democratic votes in Kansas City
and Jackson County, St Louis and
St Louis County overcame a large
Nixon vote outstate.
Labor had staged a tremen-
dous registration drive in Sep-
tember, putting a majority of the
almost 100,000 registered in the
St. Louis area on the rolls. But
for this effort, Missouri might
well have gone for Nixon* He
carried outstate Missouri by al-
most 100,000 votes but Kennedy
piled up enough in the metro-
politan areas to overcome that
edge.
Besides a sustained registration
drive there were 687 COPE work-
ers out on election day under the
direction of Pres. Joseph Clark and
Sec.-Treas. Oscar Ehrhardt of the
St. Louis Labor Council.
The "religious" issue apparently
affected the outstate vote but not
as badly as had been feared at the
start of the campaign. The most
harmful effect was the indication
that there may have been elected
a number of additional conserva-
tive members of the legislature
from rural areas. However, the
new Democratic governor, John M.
Dalton, has been friendly to labor.
Dalton won with almost a 300,000
edge as compared to less than
25,000 for Kennedy. Long defeat-
ed Lon Hocker, St. Louis Republi-
can attorney, by about 130,000.
tax increase program, approved by
the Democratic legislature, were
given as the reasons for the Re-
publican victory.
This was the first time that the
voters had a chance to express
themselves since the big tax boosts
went into effect. DiSalle and the
Democrats rode to victory in 1958
on the wave of opposition to the
"right-to-work" proposal,
O'Neill in Comeback
C. William O'Neill, whom Di-
Salle defeated for governor, made
a political comeback — despite la-
bor's opposition because he sup-
ported "right-to-work" in 1958,
O'Neill won a place on the Ohio
Supreme Court, defeating Judge
John W. Peck, a Democrat ap-
pointed by DiSalle.
In Cuyahoga County (Cleve-
land) Kennedy got a majority of
140,000. Democratic Representa-
tives Charles Vanik and Michael
Feighan, endorsed by COPE, won
handily. Republicans Frances P.
Bolton and William Minshall easi-
ly defeated COPE-endorsed oppon-
ents.
Most of the COPE-endorsed
candidates in Cuyahoga County
won in races for county offices and
the legislature. This also occurred
in Mahoning County (Youngs-
town), Summit County (Akron),
Lucas County (Toledo) and Lo-
rain County (Lorain).
But Democrats and labor lead-
ers had hoped for a higher Ken-
nedy margin in Cuyahoga, Ma-
honing, Summit and Lorain
counties. In Mahoning, Ken-
nedy had a 31,000 margin, but
his supporters had hoped for
40,000. In Lucas, DiSalle's own
county, Kennedy won by 12,000.
Democrats thought he would get
twice that. Kennedy carried
Summit County, home of the
Rubber Workers, by only 5,000.
Kennedy lost Hamilton County
(Cincinnati) which is usually Re-
publican, by 40,000. His support-
ers had hoped he would hold
Nixon even there. In Franklin
County (Columbus), Kennedy lost
by 51,000. This was a worse de-
feat than Adlai Stevenson's in 1 956.
Lorain County, where unemploy-
ment is high because steel mills
are operating at half-rate, gave
Kennedy only a 5,000 margin, half
of what had been expected.
AFL-CTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Page Eleven
Attacks on Labor Rebuffed:
Democrats Sweep
Michigan Elections
Detroit — The labor-liberal-Democratic Party coalition won
Michigan's 20 electoral votes for Pres. -elect John F. Kennedy and
gained ail statewide offices contested in Tuesday's election. Chosen
to follow six-term Gov. G. Mennen Williams (D) was the present
lieutenant governor, Democrat John B. Swainson.
Swainson, who had support of&
the Michigan AFL-CIO COPE,
had the toughest fight of the six
successful statewide Democratic
candidates, all of whom had labor
endorsement. They are: T. John
Lesinski for lieutenant governor,
Sec. of State James Hare, Att. Gen.
Paul Adams, Auditor Gen. Otis
Smith, Treas. Sanford Brown, and
U.S. Sen. Patrick V. McNamara.
Swainson was the victim of a
vicious campaign as his Repub-
lican opponent played a cruel
hoax on the state's 180,000 un-
employed by claiming that he
would create 100,000 jobs if
elected.
McNamara was returned by a
comfortable margin over his multi-
millionaire opponent, Republican
Alvin Bentley, who reportedly
spent thousands of dollars in try-
ing to wrest the seat from the
Democrats.
11 Democrats in Congress
The State V congressional dele-
gation remains at 11 Republicans
and seven Democrats. All seven
victorious Democrats had labor en-
dorsement, as did the 11 Demo-
cratic losers. Democrats beat back
a determined effort to win back
the 7th Dist. seat held by Rep.
James O'Hara. Democrats cam-
paigned hard in three close dis-
tricts, the 6th, 11th, and 18th, but
failed to knock over Republican
incumbents.
In the legislature, it appeared
that the new House of Representa-
tives will have 56 Republicans and
54 Democrats while the Senate will
remain at 22 Republicans and 12
Democrats. The House had been
split 55 to 55 during the last two
years. The Senate is lopsidedly
Republican because of the unrep
resentative makeup of its districts.
At present the 1 2 Democrats repre-
sent more people than do the 22
Republicans.
A school bonding proposal,
backed by labor, won handily.
A Republican effort to increase
the state's sales tax had a slim
lead in unofficial returns. Or-
ganized labor opposed the sales
tax increase because it hit hard-
est those least able to pay.
Michigan labor had no recom-
mendation on a series of changes
preliminary to calling a state con-
stitutional convention. The Mich-
igan AFL-CIO had opposed the
method of electing delegates to such
a convention because it would per-
mit a minority of the voters to
elect a majority of the delegates.
The new delegate set-up, however,
is an improvement over the present
structure.
The unofficial returns indicate
that the COPE-sponsored voter
registration probably contributed to
the Kennedy and McNamara vic-
tories and certainly could be cred-
ited with giving Swainson the edge
in his close battle.
Republicans Rebound
In Four Plains States
A resurgence of traditional Republican strength through the
grain and corn belt won a bloc of 28 electoral votes for Vice Pres.
Richard M. Nixon and recaptured top offices from Democrats,
i The belt includes Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.
With a Republican senate seat up in each state, the Republi-
cans fought off strong challenges
in Iowa and South Dakota and
retained all four seats.
With four governors' chairs at
stake, Republicans in Iowa, Kan-
sas and South Dakota recaptured
the top state offices. A Democrat
was elected in Nebraska*
GOP Gains Seats
In the congressional races, the
Republicans turned back recent
Democratic inroads. The Repub-
licans, whose advantage had been
pared to 1 1 seats to the Democrats'
9 in recent years, captured 17
seats to the Democrats' 3.
This is how the key races turned
out:
Iowa — In the major surprise in
the region, Gov. Herschel C. Love-
less (D) was defeated by State Sen.
Jack Miller (R) in his bid for the
seat vacated by the retiring Repub-
lican Sen. Thomas Martin. Love-
less won the governor's chair for
the Democrats in 1956 for the first
time since 1936. In the governor's
race, Norman A. Erbe (R) beat out
Edward J. McManus (D), who had
labor's endorsement. In congres-
sional contests, the GOP increased
its edge from 5 to 3 to a margin of
6 to 2.
Kansas — Gov. George Docking
(D), seeking an unprecedented third
term, was defeated by Attorney-
Gen. John Anderson (R). Dock-
ing, who was labor-endorsed, was
the first Democratic governor in
20 years when he won his first
term in 1956. In the Senate race,
Sen. Andrew F. Schoeppel (R) won
re-election over Frank Theis (D), a
labor-endorsed lawyer. In the six
congressional contests, Republicans
retained three seats and swept two
out of three Democratic seats.
Nebraska — Frank B. Morrison
(D), a lawyer running with the
endorsement of organized labor,
won the gubernatorial race over
John Cooper (R), a businessman
and farmer. The Democratic vic-
tory came with the aid of a sys-
tematic registration and get-out-the-
vote drive by labor. Gov. Ralph
Brooks, who died in September,
became the first Democratic chief
executive in 18 years when he won
a narrow victory in 1958. Sen.
Carl T. Curtis (R) won re-election
over labor-backed Robert B. Con-
rad (D). Of the four congression-
al seats at issue, the Republicans
retained their two seats and took
the two Democratic seats.
Mundt Edges McGovern
South Dakota — In a seesaw bat-
tle decided by late returns, Sen.
Karl E. Mundt (R) held on to his
seat against the strong challenge
of Rep. George McGovern (D).
In a close governor's race, incum-
bent Democrat Ralph Herseth was
defeated by Archie M. Gubbrud
(R), former speaker of the state
house. In the two congressional
races, the Republicans retained
their seat and captured the Demo-
cratic seat.
LATEST ELECTION RETURNS carried on news tickers are studied by AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany in his office at federation headquarters. Reports on progress of voting were analyzed by
AFL-CIO officials and staff members who traced progress of key races across nation.
New England Democratic Rise
Checked by GOP Resurgence
Boston — The Democratic tide which has been rising in New England in recent years has been at
least partially checked by a Republican resurgence at the polls.
Although Sen. John F. Kennedy captured 28 of the areas' 40 electoral votes — the first Democrat
to win any Electoral College support in New England since 1948 — the GOP wiped out the Demo-
cratic majority in the region's delegation to Congress.
In the 86th Congress, New
England had 19 Democratic rep-
resentatives and 9 Republicans.
This year the GOP picked up
two seats each in Maine and
Connecticut and the lone seat
from Vermont to bring the line-
up in the forthcoming 87th Con-
gress to 14-14.
The Republicans captured the
governorship of Massachusetts and
the Democrats took over the gov-
ernor's mansion in Rhode Island to
leave the gubernatorial lineup un-
changed at four Republicans and
two Democrats. There was no
change in the senatorial breakdown
as three GOP senators won re-
election and the Democrats held on
to their one seat which was up this
year.
Here is the state-by-state picture:
Maine — Incumbent GOP Sen.
Margaret Chase Smith easily won
re-election, defeating Lucia Cor-
mier, minority leader of Maine's
House of Representatives, in the
nation's first all-woman senatorial
contest.
In the gubernatorial race, Gov.
John H. Reed (R) piled up a 30,000
majority to defeat Democratic Rep.
Frank M. Coffin. The Democrats
captured the governorship six years
ago for the first time in modern
history and held it until the death
of Gov. Clinton A. Clauson a year
ago. At that time Reed, State Sen-
ate majority leader, took over.
Republicans Peter A. Garland
and Stanley R. Tupper won two
previously Democratic House seats
and the GOP held on to Maine's
other congressional district to com-
plete the Republican sweep of the
state.
New Hampshire — Despite an
unprecedented registration drive
which added 17,000 new Demo-
crats to the voting rolls this year,
the Republicans returned right-
wing Sen. Styles Bridges and Gov.
Wesley Powell to office by substan-
tial margins and held on to both
House seats.
Vermont — The GOP recap-
tured Vermont's lone House seat
which fell to the Democrats two
years ago, as outgoing Gov. Robert
T. Stafford defeated incumbent
Democratic Rep. William A. Mey-
er. The Republicans also retained
the governorship, electing former
Speaker of the House F. Ray Key-
ser to succeed Stafford.
Massachusetts — Although Ken-
nedy captured his home state's
16 electoral votes, the size of his
margin was not sufficient to carry
in the balance of the Democratic
ticket. GOP Sen. Leverett Salton-
stall defeated 35-year-old Mayor
Thomas J. O'Connor of Springfield
and former Federal Highway Ad-
ministrator John A. Volpe (R)
topped Democrat Joseph D. Ward
for the governorship. The state's
lineup in Congress remained un-
changed at 8 Democrats and 6
Republicans.
Connecticut — In the only na-
tional contests in the Nutmeg
State the Republicans regained two
House seats — electing former Rep.
Horace Seely-Brown in the 2nd
Dist. and Abner W. Sibal in the
4th Dist. Two years ago the
Democrats had swept all six con-
gressional races.
Rhode Island — The Democrats
held on to the Senate seat be-
ing vacated by retiring veteran Sen.
Theodore Francis Green as polit-
ical newcomer Claiborne deB. Pell
swept to a 2-1 victory over Raoui
Archambault, Jr., former assistant
director of Pres. Eisenhower's
Budget Bureau.
The Democrats also recaptured
the governorship as Lt. Gov. John
A. Notte, Jr., easily defeated the
GOP incumbent, Gov. Christopher
Del Sesto. Completing the Demo-
cratic victory, the party held on to
both of its seats in the House.
Liberals Score Victory
In Mid-Atlantic States
Three middle Atlantic states — Delaware, New Jersey and West
Virginia — followed pre-election predictions by re-electing two
liberal senators, Democrat Jennings Randolph (W. Va.) and
Republican Clifford P. Case (N. J.), while ousting conservative
Democrat J. Allen Frear, Jr. (Del.)
All three states gave their elec
toral votes to John F. Kennedy.
In the two gubernatorial elec-
tions — in Delaware and West
Virginia — liberal Democrats re-
captured two governorships
which had been held by the
GOP.
The Democrats picked up one
GOP congressional seat in New
Jersey.
These were the highlights in the
three states:
Delaware — Elbert N. Carvel, a
former governor and outspoken
foe of so-called "right-to-work" leg-
islation, won a narrow victory over
Republican John W. Rollins, who
had been silent on the "work" is-
sue. Ever since the legislature re-
pealed the state's "right-to- work"
law in 1949 — during Carvel's pre-
vious administration — anti-labor
groups have sought to reimpose the
ban on the union shop.
In the Senate race, the bulk of
business and conservative support
went to Frear, an ally and disciple
of Virginia's Sen. Harry F. Byrd,
but liberal Democrats apparently
backed the GOP candidate, Gov.
J. Caleb Boggs, to carry him to
victory.
New Jersey — Case again dem-
onstrated his appeal to independent
voters by coasting to victory in his
Senate race against Democrat
Thorn Lord. Labor endorsements
were divided betwen the two candi-
dates. In New Jersey, a district
held for 20 years by liberal Repub-
lican Gordon Canfield, who did not
seek re-election, was captured by
Democrat Charles S. Joelson. Un-
employment-hit Passaic and Pater-
son provided the victory margin.
West Virginia — As expected,
Randolph easily defeated Republi-
can Gov. Cecil H. Underwood in
the Senate race while Democrat W.
W. Barron captured the governor- '
ship. The six incumbent congress-
men — five Democrats and one Re-
publican — all won re-election.
Page Twelve
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1960
Kennedy Victorious by Hair-Line Edge,
Democrats Retain Control of Congress
Urban Areas Provide
Margin for Senator
(Continued from Page 1)
explained the disappearance of the once-heralded farm "revolt."
Conversely, Kennedy may have picked up strength in some areas
from both Catholic and non-Catholics in protest of use of a reli-
gious controversy in the campaign.
• In addition to carrying big urban cities such as New York,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis.
Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Democrats gained substantially
in the newer suburban areas surrounding such cities. This seemed
to reflect the gradual decentralization of industry in which workers
have followed their jobs and have continued to tend to support
the Democratic Party.
0 Johnson's extremely vigorous campaign in the South may
have been decisive in holding not *
only his home state of Texas for
the Democrats but also North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana,
with a total of 81 Electoral College
votes.
• Negro voters in northern
cities seemed to have voted heavily
for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket,
with Republican National Commit-
tee Chairman Thruston B. Morton
saying that only 10 percent to 12
percent had voted Republican.
• The heavy pre-election regis-
tration campaign by labor in big
industrial states m°.y have provided
another cushion for the margin of
victory by which the Kennedy
forces won and for the mainte-
nance of the general level of Demo-
cratic strength in Congress and
among state officials.
Kennedy won six of the seven
most populous states — New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan,
Texas and California — and lost
Ohio. The registration campaign
was vigorous also in New Jersey,
Maryland, Indiana, Missouri, Wis-
consin and Minnesota, all of which
went to Kennedy except Indiana
and Wisconsin.
Wage Floor
Fight Lost
In Arkansas
Little Rock — Arkansas labor lost
its bid to gain a minimum wage
law through a statewide referen-
dum, but it took the combined
efforts of a Rockefeller and a busi-
ness-big farmer alliance to defeat
the proposal.
Rockefeller Heard on TV
On election eve, Winthrop Rock-
efeller, brother of New York's Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) and
chairman of the Arkansas Indus-
trial Development Commission, ap-
pealed in a statewide television pro-
gram for defeat of the minimum
wage proposal.
Rockefeller said the proposed
l aw — setting an 80-cent state
minimum wage and a 48-hour
ceiling the first year — would re-
tard the state's industrial growth.
The proposition, put on the bal-
lot by initiative petitions circulated
by the State AFL-CIO, provided
for a gradual step-up to a $1 mini-
mum and a cutback in straight-time
hours of work to 40 by 1963. The
state's present minimum wage law
is an antiquated statute setting a
$1.25-per-day minimum for expe-
rienced women workers.
The minimum wage proposal
was defeated by a vote of 201,967
to 126,814.
State AFL-CIO officials said
conservative business groups and
the State Farm Bureau spent "un-
precedented sums" to defeat the
proposal, including heavy newspa-
per advertising.
Single Vote
Per Precinct
Wins Illinois
Chicago — Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy left the Cook County line
with a margin of more than 320,-
000 votes over Vice Pres. Nixon,
but the downstate tide slashed the
majority to a few thousand — less
than one vote for each of the
state's 10,015 precincts.
Kennedy's quip that he hoped to
ride to victory here on the coat-
tails of Sen. Paul H. Douglas and
Judge Otto Kerner, the Democratic
candidate for governor, was more
than a jest.
Douglas won a third term in the
Senate by some 425,000 votes,
while Kerner ended the third-term
hopes of Republican Gov. William
G. Stratton with a landslide jolt
of over 560,000 votes.
Conservative Cash Seen
Meanwhile Kennedy's "surplus"
was less than two-tenths of 1 per-
cent of the 4,800,000 votes cast.
Yet Kerner, Kennedy and Doug-
las campaigned together through-
out the state. What accounted for
the lop-sided difference in the vic-
tory margins?
Observers claim that the mem-
ory of Robert A. Taft is invoked
at each election here by a large
number of well-financed, conserv-
ative business leaders. Through
an organization known as the
United Republican Fund of Illi-
nois, heavy campaign cash was
put at the disposal of the Nixon
forces.
Squads of office girls "loaned"
by large business firms kept phones
jangling constantly in executive
suites with the message: "Dick
Nixon can win if he carries Illi-
nois."
At the Republican convention
last July, several leaders of the
United Republican Fund of Illinois
sentimentally favored Sen. Barry
Goldwater of Arizona as the pres-
idential nominee.
Much of the money of Chicago
Republicans was shipped down-
state to buy saturation radio, tele-
vision and newspaper ads.
The "religious issue" was the de-
termining factor in many downstate
areas. Thousands of southern Illi-
nois families have migrated from
Kentucky and Tennessee — both ad-
mittedly carried for Nixon because
of Kennedy's Catholicism.
The Illinois congressional dele-
gation is now 14 Democrats to 11
Republicans — the same ratio that
prevailed in the 86th Congress.
Edward Finnegan, a Democratic
labor attorney vigorously backed
by the Illinois State AFL-CIO
COPE, won by whisker in Chi-
cago's 12th District, formerly rep-
resented by the late Charles A.
Boyle.
New Leadership!
PRAVNM FOR. TMS
AFL-CIO news
Majority of Candidates
Backed by Labor Win
A majority of the candidates supported by organized -labor for
the Senate, House and governorships were elected in the Nov 8
balloting.
The endorsements include those of the AFL-CIO Committee on
Political Education, the political action groups of affiliated AFL-
CIO unions, Railway Labor Exec-3>
because of traditional policies of
not endorsing candidates for the
top national offices. No AFL-
CIO union endorsed Vice Pres.
Nixon.
Among the senators who were
elected with labor support were
Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.), John
Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.), Patrick
V. McNamara (D-Mich.), Hubert
H. Humphrey (D-Minn.), Edward
V. Long (D-Mo.), Lee Metcalf (D-
Mont.), Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.),
Clinton P. Anderson (D-N.M.),
Maurine Neuberger (D-Ore.), Clai-
borne deB. Pell (D-R.L), Estes Ke-
fauver (D-Tenn.) and Jennings
Randolph D-W.Va.),
Among the governors elected
with labor support were Elbert N.
Carvel (D-Dela.), Matthew E.
Welsh (D-Ind.), John B. Swainson
(D-Mich.), John M. Dalton CD-
Mo.), Frank B. Morrison (D-Neb.),
William L. Guy (D.-N. D.), John
A. Notte Jr. (D.-R. L), Albert D.
Rosellini (D-Wash.), W. W. Bar-
ron (D-W. Va.) and Gaylord A.
Nelson (D-Wis.).
Sikorsky Workers
Withdraw from UAW
Bridgeport, Conn. — Production
workers at the Sikorsky Div. of
United Aircraft Corp. here and in
Stratford have voted to withdraw
from the Auto Workers.
In a decertification election con-
ducted by the National Labor Re-
lations Board the workers cast
2,557 votes for no union and 2,192
for the UAW,
utives' Association and the United
Mine Workers.
In the 34 Senate races, 30 can-
didates were endorsed of whom
18 were elected.
In the 27 gubernatorial races
23 were endorsed and 13 elected.
In the House election, 337
candidates carried labor endorse-
ment from some or all of the
labor groups indicating support
of candidates and 187 were
elected. A few races are still
undecided.
In terms of COPE endorsements
alone, which are made at the state
and congressional district level by
state AFL-CIO organizations, a
majority of labor-supported can-
didates also were elected in the
senatorial, congressional and guber-
natorial races.
Issues are Key
Endorsements by labor groups
are based primarily on the record
or espoused program of the candi-
dates in terms of a wide number
of economic, welfare and labor is-
sues.
In a number. of senatorial, guber-
natorial and House races neither
candidate was endorsed by labor
groups. In a few areas labor groups
split on the question and both can-
didates for the office had backing
of some labor group.
The AFL-CIO and a great
number of its affiliated unions
endorsed Senators John F. Ken-
edy and Lyndon B. Johnson for
the presidency and vice presi-
dency. A few took no position
09-3X-U
Labor Target
Of GOP Bid
In Texas
Austin, Tex. — Texas moved back
into the Democratic column in
1960 to help provide the margin of
victory for John F. Kennedy and
Lyndon B. Johnson.
It appeared that the state would
wind up with about 52 percent of
the vote for the Kennedy- Johnson
ticket, a victory for which organ-
ized labor could claim a fair share
of credit.
In every area where labor had
substantial membership, intensive
get-out-the-vote campaigns played
an important part in the Kennedy-
Johnson victory.
In the last few days of the cam-
paign labor was made a target of
the Republicans and so-called
"Democrats for Nixon-Lodge." In
full-page ads over the state the
weekend before election the GOP
launched the familiar — at least in
Texas — anti-labor campaign, pri-
marily attacking Walter Reuther.
But this tactic failed to pay off in
1960.
As one Democratic campaigner
who had played a part in former
Gov. Allan Shivers' successful anti-
labor drives in 1952 and 1954 put
it: "I learned in 1956 that old dog
won't hunt no more.."
By Gene Zack
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy
has launched a series of top-level
conferences aimed at getting his
"New Frontiers" program off to
a fast start in January.
Vacationing at Palm Springs,
Fla., after the rigors of the long
campaign, Kennedy held a round
of meetings with top advisers and
then flew west to Austin, Tex.,
for a major policy conference with
his running mate, Vice Pres.-elect
Lyndon B. Johnson.
In the midst of his plans for
the incoming Administration,
Kennedy paid a history-making
courtesy call on his defeated
rival, Vice Pres. Richard M.
Nixon, at nearby Key Biscayne,
Fla. Kennedy later told report-
ers the meeting was designed to
renew the 14-year relationship
between the two men and to
di cuss "some of the problems
of transition" between the pres-
ent and the incoming Adminis-
trations.
Earlier the President-elect as-
signed Clark Clifford, former spe-
cial counsel to Pres. Truman, as
his liaison with the outgoing Eisen-
hower Administration to insure an
orderly transfer of power next Jan-
uary. After Kennedy names his
Cabinet members and other key
members of his official family they
are expected to participate with
Administration officials in talks on
changeover plans.
Record-Breaking Vote
In the background, election of-
ficials across the country continued
the slow final count of the nation's
record-breaking 68 million votes
with Kennedy clinging to a dwin-
dling lead of approximately 235,-
000 popular votes. The popular
vote margin promised to be the
closest since 1888, when Grover
Cleveland out-polled Benjamin Har-
rison by 90,000 votes but lost in
the Electoral College.
In California, riding the crest of
a wave of absentee ballots, Nixon
surged into the statewide lead in
a down-to-the-wire tabulation to
capture his home state's 32 elec-
toral votes. This trimmed Ken-
nedy's Electoral College edge to
300 votes — 31 more than he needed
for election. It was the narrowest
electoral margin since 1916, when
Woodrow Wilson won re-election
with a majority of only 11 votes.
The heavy vote turnout — an
all-time record of 63.4 percent
of the nation's nearly 107 mil-
(Continued on Page 7)
End of Bias
Held Matter
Of Survival
New York — We have "no
choice" but to eliminate racial
prejudice in this country, de-
clared Pres. Joseph Curran of the
Maritime Union at an Equal Op-
portunity Day dinner sponsored
by the National Urban League
here.
The fight for equality of oppor-
tunity for all races, colors and
creeds in this country is no longer
a battle of moral principles alone,
said Curran. Instead it is "a mat-
ter of national survival."
"Those who stand in the way
of genuine equality of opportu-
nity for all citizens are betray-
ing their country. Those who will
(Continued on Page 2)
Kennedy Plans Fast Start on Program
Meets With
Johnson on
Legislation
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W.
Washington 6, D. C
$2 a year
Second Clan Postage Paid at Washington, 0. C
Saturday, November 19, 1960
No. 47
Republicans Score Major
Gains in State Legislatures
Labor Pins Hopes
On 87th Congress
LABOR'S APPLAUSE went to Mrs. Agnes E. Meyer, recipient of
the 1960 Murray-Green Award for community service. AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany, left, congratulates Mrs. Meyer, who received
the AFL-CIO honor for her dedicated service to the American
health, welfare and education fields. Communications Workers Pres.
Joseph A. Beirne, right, presented the award on behalf of the AFL-
CIO Community Services Committee of which he is chairman.
Murray-Green Award:
Labor Honor Given
Mrs. Agnes Meyer
By Don Gregory
American labor presented its 1960 Murray-Green Award for
community service to Mrs. Agnes E. Meyer, author-journalist, at
annual ceremonies in Washington.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany lauded Mrs. Meyer as an "out-
standing lady" who has made notable contributions through her
work in federal aid to education^
and in other areas of social welfare.
More than 900 trade union offi-
cials and members saw Pres. Jo-
seph A. Beirne of the Communica-
tions Workers present the Murray-
Green medallion and a check for
$5,000 to Mrs. Meyer. Beirne is
chairman of the AFL-CIO Commu-
nity Services Committee, official
arm of the AFL-CIO working in
the nation's voluntary health and
welfare field.
Kennedy Hailed
"One week ago America reached
a bright new plateau in this strug-
gle for purpose and dignity with
the election of John F. Kennedy
to the presidency of the United
States," he said in presenting the
award.
"We in America stand with him
on the edge of the new frontier,
confident of our ability, under the
leadership of the President-elect,
to move America forward domesti-
cally and internationally."
Meany, in his first public ap-
pearance since the election, told
the gathering:
•'We expect the successful can-
didate to carry out the platform
in the days ahead when he takes
over his job as President of the
United States."
He said only those who opposed
(Continued on Page 2)
By David L. Perlman
Labor's hopes for meaningful improvement in unemployment
compensation, minimum wages and repeal of anti-union legisla-
tion rested more heavily than ever on Congress as a flood of con-
servative votes from small towns and rural areas washed away many
of the liberal Democratic beachheads in the state legislatures.
The two big exceptions were California, where labor-backed
Democrats retained and increased 1958 gains, and Pennsylvania,
where a previously Republican state Senate is now evenly divided
with a Democratic lieutenant-governor in a position to cast tie-
breaking votes.
Overall, however, the trend was^
a return to conservative domina-
tion of legislatures — a domination
built on legislative districts which
deny residents of big industrial
cities their proportionate share of
state representatives and senators.
In states where so-called
''right-to-work" laws were an is-
sue in the legislative and guber-
natorial elections, the results
were mixed.
Opponents of "right -to -work"
laws were pleased with the returns
from Delaware and disappointed
with the gubernatorial outcome in
New Mexico. Indiana, the chief
batleground, remained a question
mark as the Democrats won the
governorship and captured control
of the Senate, while the Republi-
cans took the lieutenant-governor-
ship and won the previously Dem-
ocratic House.
Key to Reapportionment
Control of the legislatures and
governorships will play a key role
in the reapportionment of congres-
sional delegations in the 25 states
which either gain or lose seats as
a result of shifts of population.
Here the Democrats were in better
shape since the three states with
the biggest change — California,
Florida and Pennsylvania — all have
(Continued on Page 8)
House Seat
Shifts Face
25 States
Twenty-five states which will
gain or lose congressional seats
in 1962 as a result of population
shifts face the politically - explo-
sive task of redrawing congres-
sional districts.
Final census totals, on which
the every- 10-years reapportion-
ment of Congress is based, gave
the biggest gain — eight new seats
— to California. Florida will have
four new seats and Arizona, Ha-
waii, Maryland, Michigan, New
Jersey, Ohio and Texas each gain
one.
The biggest loser is Pennsylva-
nia, which must eliminate three
seats. Arkansas, Massachusetts
and New York each lose two
seats and Alabama, Illinois,
Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine,
Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri,
Nebraska, North Carolina and
West Virginia each lose one rep-
resentative in Congress.
The 21 seats lost exceed the seats
(Continued on Page 8)
Labor Conference on Civil Rights
Urges 3-Point Program for Unions
Chicago — The AFL-CIO and its affiliates were urged to take three steps toward improving human
relations within the trade union movement by the 6th Labor Conference on Civil Rights held here.
In adopting the report of the parley's discussion group on 44 AFL-CIO Civil Rights Dept. Progress
Report" the 500 delegates recommended:
• That all national and international unions and state and city central bodies appoint persons to
work full-time in the field of civil^
rights.
• That the executive boards of
the AFL-CIO and its affiliates ex-
amine the anti-discrimination clause
provisions of their constitutions and
set up committees to study ways
to improve the enforcement powers
of those clauses.
• That local unions establish
procedures for handling civil rights
grievances, including provisions for
appeal to the parent union and
the AFL-CIO.
Boris Shishkin, director of the
AFL-CIO Dept. of Civil Rights,
told the progress report discussion
group that 14 international affili-
ates of the federation have set up
civil rights committees of their
own.
"Of these," Shishkin said, "six
international unions have also set
up their own internal staff ci\il
rights machinery since last Septem-
ber."
He also said that the number
of state central bodies which
have civil rights committees has
passed the 20 mark. To coordi-
nate and extend rights activities
of the AFL-CIO, regional advi-
sory committees have heen estab-
lished, Shishkin said.
(Continued on Page 8)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
1 Miirray-Green Award :
ON BEHALF OF the National 'Urban League, Pres. James B. Carey of the Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers presents an award to Pres. Joseph Curran of the Maritime Union for "outstand-
ing contributions to the Urban League's goal" of equal opportunity. Shown at the New York cere-
mony, left to right, are Martin E. Segal, dinner chairman; Carey, Curran, and Lester B. Granger,
league executive director.
Elimination of Racial Prejudice
Matter of Survival, Curran Says
• (Continued from Page 1)
not raise a hand to help toward
the objective are shirking their
duty," Curran declared.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany,
in a telegram to Urban League
Pres. Theodore W. Kheel, declared
that the labor movement "will not
rest until Equal Opportunity Day
marks not a future hope but a past
triumph."
Meany, congratulating the Urban
League on "another year of con-
structive achievement," and reaf-
firming the "close bonds" between
the two organizations, declared:
"When I had the great priv-
ilege of receiving your award
last year, I pledged the unremit-
ting efforts of the labor move-
ment to the advancement of our
common cause. I renew that
pledge tonight, for it is well for
us to remember, even when we
Yule Seal
Sale Backed
By Meany
The 1960 Christmas Seal , cam-
paign of the National Tuberculo-
sis Association has been endorsed
by AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
on behalf of the 13.5 million mem-
bers of the federation.
"I am certain," Meany said in
a letter to Pres. Herbert C. De-
Young of the association, "that
American union members will
carry forward the battle against
tuberculosis by buying and using
Christmas Seals."
Organized labor is proud of its
volunteer work and its record of
contributions in the annual cam-
paign, and the AFL-CIO presi-
dent is confident, he said, that
members will continue to sup-
port the efforts of the 2,500 affili-
ated local tuberculosis associa-
tions as part of labor's "ongoing
program of public service."
He asserted that despite great
advances in the fight against tuber-
culosis, 35 million people are al-
ready infected and must be pro-
tected from developing an active
form of the disease. ■
In announcing the AFL-CIO en-
dorsement, De Young expressed
thanks for the "substantial and
continuing support by organized
labor of the fight against TB, our
nation's Number One killer among
infectious diseases."
are celebrating our gains, that a
long, hard road still lies ahead.
'The last year has seen prog-
ress toward the goal of equal
opportunity. But no one in our
ranks or in yours can be satisfied
with that record: Racial discrim-
ination is still a powerful force
in American life. That force
must not only be defeated, but
must be destroyed."
Curran, an AFL-CIO vice presi-
dent, and Charles G. Mortimer,
president of General Foods, re-
ceived the League's 1960 Equal
Opportunity Day awards for "out-
standing contributions towards the
Urban League goal of equal oppor-
tunity."
This year, Equal Opportunity
Day falls on Nov. 19, the anni-
versary of Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address. It is a day intended to
remind Americans of the principle
of equal opportunity for all, regard-
less of race, color, religion or na-
tional origin.
Curran cited the NMU's long
history of opposition to racial dis-
crimination. As with the other
democratic safeguards written into
the NMU constitution, the princi-
ple of non - discrimination was
spelled out clearly, he said.
During the war years when some
employers felt they had a right to
reject NMU seamen because they
were Negroes, Curran recalled, Pres.
Franklin D. Roosevelt backed up
the union's position by stating:
"Questions of race, creed and
color have no place in determin-
ing who are to man our ships.
The sole qualifications for a
worker in the maritime industry
as well as in any other industry
should be his loyalty and his pro-
fesional or technical ability and
training."
The Equal Opportunity Day
award was presented the maritime
leader for the Urban League by
AFL-CIO Vice Pres. James B.
Carey, who remarked that "Joe
Curran has brought a lot more
equal opportunity into the mari-
time industry than any other man."
The dinner was attended by rep-
resentatives of business, labor, gov-
ernment and civic organizations.
Guests from abroad included Unit-
ed Nations^ambassadors from Ko-
rea, Haiti, Philippines, Costa Rica,
Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana and
Liberia as well as members of
delegations from Honduras, Iran
and other nations.
Mrs, Agnes Meyer
Gets Labor Honor
(Continued from Page 1)
the victorious candidate are raising
the issue of the lack of a mandate
from the people.
A telegram from Kennedy pay-
ing tribute to Mrs. Meyer as a "be-
loved and respected lady" was read
at the dinner.
In her acceptance address, Mrs.
Meyer expressed gratitude for the
laudatory speeches and said: "I
drank up every word as one who
has found an oasis after eight
years of wandering on a desert."
To Aid Africans
She announced her award check
will be contributed to the new
Afro-Asian labor training school
being established in Israel by the
AFL-CIO and Histadrut. She said
she plans to leave in the immediate
future for Israel to undertake a
study of Histadrut.
"We can well be grateful to the
Israelis and to our own labor move-
ment that so promising a link bet
tween the western world and the
newly independent nations has been
forged," she said.
Mrs. Meyer praised Histadrut as
"a unique labor union movement,"
and added:
"It was indeed due to Histadrut's
broad program not only for the
well-being of its membership, but
for the well-being of the whole
community, which made it possi-
ble for the state to begin its own
social and economic responsibili-
ties on a sound basis."
She said the Murray-Green
Award "has given me more satis-
faction than any other I have
ever received." Throughout her
career, she added, "the values I
cherished often coincided with
those held dear by the labor
unions."
In his presentation speech, Beirne
recounted Mrs. Meyer's effective
work over the years in dealing with
migratory labor, the public schools
and "anything else she saw that
needed federal attention."
He said her reports on federal
agencies handling social welfare
problems were "instrumental in the
creation of the present federal
Dept. of Health, Education & Wel-
fare."
Labor was honoring Mrs. Meyer
"for her outstanding contributions
to the welfare of all the Amer-
ican people," he said.
Beirne likened Mrs. Meyer's ef-
Higher Safety Standards Needed
To Reduce Crashes, Pilots Warn
Miami Beach — Delegates representing the pilots of the nation's 47 scheduled airlines met here to
assess the progress of their union and to set policy in fields ranging from collective bargaining to
problems of air safety.
As the Air Line Pilots opened their 16th biennial board of directors meeting — equivalent of a
convention — ALP A Pres. C. N. Say en called on the federal government to act promptly on warn-
ings by the union that higher safety^
standards are necessary to prevent
future accidents resulting from
compass failure.
Sayen told the 293 delegates! that
he has written to E. R. Quesada,
administrator of the Federal Avia-
tion Agency, pointing out that com-
pass error was at least a contribut-
ing factor in three fatal plane
crashes in recent years. In addi-
tion pilots have reported numerous
incidents of compass misdirection
which fortunately were detected in
time to avoid an accident.
To correct this hazard, Sayen
noted, the ALPA had made five
specific recommendations including
a proposal that a compass discrep-
ancy warning system be made man-
datory on all aircraft employing
electronic compass systems.
'To the best of our knowl-
edge," he wrote Quesada, "nei-
ther the Civil Aeronautics Board
nor the FAA has taken action
to implement any of these urgent
recommendations nor have any
effective steps been taken by any
government agency to prevent
recurrence of this type of acci-
dent."
In his report to the convention,
Sayen told the pilots that the long
strike at Southern Airways resulted
from the company's union-busting
philosophy. The strike must be
fought and won, he said, "with tra-
ditional weapons of labor, includ-
ing the picket lines." Warning that
defeat would encourage similar
tactics by other airlines, he told the
delegates: "The pilots of Southern
must be strongly supported. The
Southern strike must be won."
The union's membership was re-
ported at a record high of more
than 19,000.
During the two years since the
last convention report, pilots' pay
increased an average of 21 percent
or $2,670, the union reported. Sub-
stantial pension and other fringe
benefits were negotiated in addition
to the pay raises.
In an address to the convention,
Pres. Stuart G. Tipton of the Air
Transport Association of America
declared the industry has "entered
perhaps the most crucial period in
aviation history."
Deploring what he called "regu-
lation for regulation's sake," Tip-
ton said: "We can't continue indefi-
nitely to astound everyone with
our technological advancement and
service improvements on a starva-
tion diet of profits."
He warned that foreign airline
competition could be as harmful
to the U.S. airline industry as for-
eign flag competition has been to
the merchant marine.
forts to the AFL-CIO's community
service work, maintaining: **We
can point to the increasingly active
role labor is playing in the councils
of community life."
"Labor has worked hard for so-
cial progress," he added,, claiming
that none of the pioneers in the
labor movement "ever believed
that the answers to all our human
woes would be found in a pay
envelope."
He said the present^ leaders of
organized labor know that "trade
unionists are people first, citizens
first, husbands and wives, mothers
and fathers first."
Labor continues to act on this
belief as its community services
network strives to strengthen the
voluntary health and welfare
agencies across the nation, he
stressed.
Meany said the recent political
campaign emphasized that "Amer-
ica will be a good neighbor to the
rest of the world only if America
is a good neighbor here at home."
He said the AFL-CIO community
services program is "the phase of
our work which calls upon us to be
good neighbors."
Leo Pedis, AFL-CIO Commu-
nity Service Activities director, said
Mrs. Meyer's early work and writ-
ings "inspired the union counsel-
ling program of the AFL-CIO"
through which rank and file trade
unionists across the country serve
their community agencies. Pedis
was toastmaster at the dinner.
Also on the program were Eileen
Barton, star of the recent USO
tour, "AFL-CIO Salute to the
Armed Forces," who sang three
numbers, and Gene Archer of the
National Broadcasting Co., who
sang the national anthem.
High Court
Takes Appeal
On Reactor
The U.S. Supreme Court has
agreed to consider an appeal by the
Atomic Energy Commission from a
lower court ruling granting labor's
demand that construction of a nu-
clear power reactor in a heavily-
populated area be halted until safety
problems can be solved.
The construction permit issued
by the AEC to a group of private
utility companies authorized con-
struction of the giant reactor at
Lagoona Beach, Mich., within the
Detroit-Toledo metropolitan area.
Although admitting that there were
still "safety bugs," the AEC said
these would presumably be resolved
before the plant was completed and
that no operating permit would be
granted unless all safety standards
were met.
Three unions with members
living in the area — the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers, the
Auto Workers and the Paper-
makers & Paperworkers — argued
in federal court that the AEC is
required by law to determine
that nuclear plants can be safely*
operated before authorizing con-
struction.
By a 2-to-l vote, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of Co-
lumbia agreed with the unions and
declared:
"If enormous sums are invested
without assurance that the reactor
can be operated with reasonable
safety, pressure to permit operation
without adequate assurance will be
great and may be irresistible."
In appealing to the Supreme
Court, the AEC said insistence on
solving all safety problems before
construction begins could delay
atomic energy projects by "several
years."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
Page Three
State, Federal Action Urged:
Plight of Migrants
Stirs Conference
San Jose, Calif*. — The prospects for state and federal action to
raise farm workers and their families to first-class status were bol-
stered here by California's second annual Conference on Families
Who Follow the Crops.
The conference, sponsored by the Governor's Advisory Com-
mittee on Children and Youth and
attended by some 250 representa-
tives of union, civic, social welfare,
medical and farm groups, approved
a wide range of recommendations.
The conference proposed spe-
cific actions in the areas of
health, education, technology,
employment, housing, citizenship,
welfare and community action.
The conference was stirred by a
documented study of the ill-health
and disease which afflict farm
worker families.
$3 Billion Industry
The study, carried out by Dr.
Bruce Jessup of Stanford Univer-
sity at the direction of the State
Dept. of Public Health, described
conditions which prevail among the
65,500 migrant workers and their
families and among 57,000 other
seasonal farm workers in the state's
$3 billion biggest industry.
The Jessup study told of a four-
month old Mexican-American baby
recently treated for acute diarrhea
at a Palo Alto hospital.
This infant lived with a fam-
ily of ten people who slept on
two beds in a 9 by 12-foot can-
vas tent with a dirt floor. The
report said this labor camp was
in an apricot orchard within the
city limits of Mountain View in
the San Francisco Bay area.
The Jessup report also described
a survey last August, when investi-
gators found a labor camp of 1,600
people near Yuba City with no
medical facilities and no running
water.
Equipped with antiquated com-
munal toilets, the camp was the
scene of a severe diarrhea epidemic
which hit almost every family
while the survey was in full swing,
it was reported.
The camp also was riddled
with contagious skin infections,
acute tonsilitis, asthma, anemia,
tuberculosis, heart disease, arthri-
tis and other diseases.
The study also reported that only
four of the state's counties provided
any special medical facilities for
seasonal farm workers in outlying
areas. Health departments in 35
counties flatly refused to accept mi-
grants for medical care except in
emergencies.
'Time for Action*
Dr. Malcolm H. Merrill, state
director of public health, issued the
study, which soon became widely
publicized.
"It is high time for action," de-
Labor Dept. Issues
Revised Fact Book
The U. S. Dept. of Labor has
announced the publication of the
revised edition of "The American
Workers' Fact Book."
The popularly written book, first
published in 1956, contains infor-
mation on the labor force, labor
market, employment and unemploy-
ment, productivity, wages, earnings
and living standards. It also covers
social and labor legislation, unions,
labor-management relations and
foreign labor activities.
The book reveals, for example,
that 9 of every 10 gainfully em-
ployed workers have the opportun-
ity to build up retirement and sur-
vivor protection under the social se-
curity system.
The revised edition is obtainable,
at $1.50 per copy, from the Supt.
of Documents, U. S. Government
Printing Office, Washington 25,
D. C.
clared Gov. Edmund G. (Pat)
Brown (D) in saying that the health
study should inspire bold legisla-
tive action in 1961. He promised
specific proposals.
Dr. Garold L. Faber, Fresno
County health officer, in comment-
ing on the study, proposed a gov-
ernment-sponsored medical care
insurance program for farm work-
ers.
"The federal government sub-
sidizes farmers for not growing
certain crops — I believe that
seven ranchers in Fresno County
received more than $100,000 for
not growing cotton — so why not
subsidize the human resources,
the health of the farm laborers?"
Faber asked.
The conference delegates, in the
area of health, proposed a network
of state and local committees; abo-
lition of residence requirements
and a system of state and federal
grants.
Jobless Benefits Urged
John Wedemeyer, state social
welfare director, proposed exten-
sion of social security protection
to farm workers.
"Certainly, unemployment ben-
efits are needed here more than in
any other kind of work," Wede-
meyer declared.
Sen. Harrison A. Williams (D-
N. J.), chairman of a subcom-
mittee which has held grass roots
hearings on migratory labor prob-
lems, told the delegates the new
Congress would adopt remedial
measures.
He urged support of a program
covering education; crew leader
registration; a minimum wage;
child labor protection; better hous-
ing and a review of the system of
importing Mexican nationals.
OFFICERS of the Inter-American Federation of Working Newspapermen's Organizations met with
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany on a visit to Washington. Pictured left to right are Alberto Schtirbu
of Argentina, secretary; Newspaper Guild Sec.-Treas. Charles A. Perlik, Jr., executive committee co-
chairman; Meany; Luis Carnero Checa of Peru, co-chairman; and Nicholas Pentcheff, treasurer.
America 9 s Water Supply Fouled,
Unified National Policy Urged
The AFL-CIO again has warned of the continuing pollution of America's water supply and called
for "a national water policy solidly integrated with a national resources and energy policy."
"All these facets are elements of the stupendous central problem of providing America with the
foundation upon which to upbuild its material strength and its non-material enjoyment," declared
Labor's Economic Review, a publication of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research.
The publication discussed^
"America's Future Water Supply"
in its long-term aspect but also
commented on the coming National
Conference on Water Pollution,
Dec. 12-14.
The conference was set by Pres.
Eisenhower earlier this year in a
message in which he vetoed a $900
million, 10-year federal grants-in-
aid program to help municipalities
build sewage treatment plants. The
President called pollution "a
uniquely local blight."
The AFL-CIO noted that, al-
though it is represented on the
steering committee of the confer-
ence, this top group is dominated
by business and management.
"The importance of the im-
Water Pollution Parley
To Seek End of Blight
The National Conference on Water Pollution will be held Dec.
12-14 in Washington, D. C.
Pres. Eisenhower proposed the conference last February as he
vetoed an increase in federal aid for sewage plant construction.
The President called water pollution "a uniquely local blight."
In announcing the conference,^"
Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney
of the U.S. Public Health Service
pointed out that construction has
lagged far behind needs and "a
huge national deficit" in needed
sewage facilities has accumulated.
Some 1,000 representatives of
government, industry, labor and
civic groups are expected to take
part in the three-day meeting.
George H. Taylor, AFL-CIO eco-
nomist, is the only labor repre-
sentative on the 35?member
steering committee.
Panel sessions will cover the im-
pact of water pollution on public
health and economic development;
water resource management; legal,
financial and public responsibili-
ties of government and industry
and research and training needs.
Blatnik to Speak
Water pollution problems will be
discussed at a Dec. 12 banquet by
a panel composed of Senators Rob-
ert S. Kerr (D-Okla.) and Francis
Case (R-S. D.) and Representatives
John A. Blatnik (D-Minn.) and
William C. Cramer (R-Fla.)
It was a Blatnik-sponsored bill
which ran into the first Eisenhower
veto of 1960. The House upheld
the veto by a 249-to-157 rollcall
tally, failing by 22 votes to obtain
the two-thirds majority necessary
to override.
The labor-backed Blatnik bill
would have authorized $90 million
a year for 10 years for grants to
help communities fight water pollu-
tion. The existing program allows
grants of $50 million a year.
Democratic senators, includ-
ing presidential candidate John
F. Kennedy, sharply criticized
the Eisenhower veto. They said
the vetoed bill provided a mini-
mum of federal aid needed for
a problem requiring an inter-
state approach.
The Eisenhower veto message,
in calling pollution "a uniquely lo-
cal blight," said the promise of
large-scale federal aid "would tempt
municipalities to delay essential
water pollution abatement efforts
while they waited for federal
funds."
He said state and local govern-
ments and industry have "the
major responsibility for cleaning
up the nation's rivers and streams."
As for the federal responsibility,
Eisenhower said he was arranging
for the national conference to "help
local taxpayers and business con-
cerns" realize their obligations. He
outlined several other minor federal
roles as well.
pending conference," the AFL-
CIO declared, "is that its deliber-
ations will constitute a battle-
ground between those who re-
gard pollution as of purely local
concern and others who see it as
a menace to the nation's future
water supply, its industrial de-
velopment, economic expansion
and ability to provide out-of-
door recreational opportunities
to our growing population."
There are some 30,500 indus-
trial and sewage outlets into rivers,
streams and lakes serving about
100 million people. But, the AFL-
CIO noted, the wastes from only
about 76 million people have been
given any treatment.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
also was quoted as commenting
that "the world's cleanest people
. . . bathe with scented fats and
drink a factory's slime."
"Of course, our water company
cleans up the liquid for us — this
same liquid in which not even hardy
carp can live — by putting chemicals
in it to kill other chemicals from
upstream.
"The water is not, of course,
cleaned up again before it is put
back in the river, it is re-enriched."
Ike Vetoes Progress
The AFL-CIO said that, in addi-
tion to raw or partially-treated sew-
age, the nation's water courses
gradually are being made unfit for
drinking and recreational purposes
"by rotting vegetable matter, silt,
corrosive chemicals, industrial oil,
dead fish, acids, germs of myriad
kinds including viruses — of ty-
phoid, dysentery and cholera — can-
ning filth, dyes, radioactive wastes,
effluents from hospitals and mor-
tuaries, slaughterhouse leavings and
many other pollutants."
The first meaningful water pol-
lution control legislation was passed
in 1912. A Federal Water Pollu-
tion Control Act was enacted in
1948 and strengthened in 1956, but
a further strengthening fell before
the Eisenhower veto of 1960.
The AFL-CIO publication cited
statistics on water use, population
growth and water supplies and
pointed up the urgency of the prob-
lem by quoting from a House Pub-
lic Works Committee report which
accompanied the vetoed bill.
That report urged quick action
to build thousands of sewage
treatment plants to meet a "se-
vere" problem. The best econ-
omy, the report said, was to act
now so "we may not be forced
to spend vast sums in the future
on a crash program to provide
water sufficient for our very
existence."
Peter MeGavin
Elected to
Maritime Post
The executive board of the
AFL-CIO Maritime Trades Dept.
has elected Peter M. MeGavin, as-
sistant to AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany, as executive secretary-
treasurer of the department.
He succeeds the late Harry
O'Reilly, who died Oct. 2.
A native of Grand Rapids,
Mich., MeGavin worked in Detroit
auto plants as a youth and was ap-
Peter M. MeGavin
pointed a general organizer for the
former AFL in 1941. He returned
to the AFL organizing staff after
serving with the army in the south-
west Pacific during World War II,
and was assigned to Ohio, Illinois
and Michigan.
Promotion to regional director
for Western Pennsylvania and West
Virginia followed in 1949, and in
March 1953 MeGavin was named
assistant organization director for
the AFL. Meany later appointed
him as his assistant.
At the time of the AFL-CIO
merger in 1955, Meany retained
MeGavin as his assistant. He has
since served as a troubleshooter for
Meany.
He will assume his new position
Jan. 1, 1961.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
The People's Mandate
SEN. KENNEDY is wise enough not to be trapped into doubting
his mandate from the people because those who oppose his
program — and fundamentally opposed his election — keep pointing
to the closeness of the popular vote. He is not entering office as
50.2 percent President of the Unhed States. He will be endowed
with the full powers, and he would be less than faithful to his oath
of office if he did not exercise the full powers on the basis of his
conscience and convictions.
Abraham Lincoln was elected with only about 40 percent of
the popular vote, but when he was confronted with secession he
used all his powers — and, according to his enemies, stretched
them— to raise the armed forces necessary to prevent national
self-dismemberment. Woodrow Wilson was elected a minority
President in 1912, with fewer popular votes than the two Repub-
licans, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, who ran
against him, but Wilson's program was the New Freedom, and
he carried it through.
Kennedy in his first post-election press conference pointed out
that he- "went to the country with a very clear view of what the U.S.
ought to do in the Sixties. I'm going to do my best to implement
those views. ...
'The margin is narrow but the responsibility is clear."
Those attacking the validity of the Kennedy mandate for domes-
tic social reform and progress— and this is what they have in
m i n d_apparently want to hoodwink the people into believing
that under the American system the loser gets a mandate even
though his opponent wins the presidency and the power to put
through his program.
Political Manipulation
A LARGE DISCREDIT must be laid to the Administration for
its abuse of power in suppressing the dismal repQrt on October
employment and joblessness until after the election.
Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell, in response to a message from
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany, refused to issue the report in ad-
vance of the election, and said that the monthly release would be
issued at its usual time, which is around the tenth of each month.
The fact remains that in three previous election years, the
October basic statistics actually were broken in advance. Pres.
Eisenhower himself made public references to them on Oct. 25,
1954, on Oct. 29, 1956, and on Oct. 31, 1958— and in each case
the raw figures were released the next day.
This year, the raw figures were distinctly unfavorable, to the
Administration. Against the normal- pattern, the adjusted rate of
unemployment jumped from 5.7 percent to 6.4 percent— perilously
close to true recession levels.
The conclusion is inescapable: This Administration broke the
statistics in advance of the 1954, 1956 and 1958 elections, when
the figures seemed politically favorable to the party in power,
and refused to release them in 1960, when they were politically
unpalatable.
This partisan performance is a disservice to the work of career
officials. The release or suppression of basic government statistics
according to their presumed election effects is inexcusable political
manipulation.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /,
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Wiliard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney
David L.
Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, November 19, 1960
No. 47
The American Federation of Labor and C onst ess of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising ' in
any oj its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit'
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
'Hey! I'm the Referee'
A Teacher and an Idea:
'Unionism' in Classroom Informs
Students of Bargaining Process
The following is excerpted from an article
by Shirley Ward, past president of Teachers
Local 898, Boulder, Colo., which appeared in
The American Teacher, official publication of
the AFT.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS are turning out too
many citizens wholly ignorant of the fact that
free enterprise and our amazing standard of living
are not only the result of shrewd investment and
management, but of the process of collective
bargaining.
Students are usually surprised when this is
pointed out. Too often their response to the
term has been either indifference or suspicion.
Unless totally ignorant, they (even those from
labor background) generally assume a common
attitude: That collective bargaining inevitably
leads to the domination by labor over manage-
ment, that powerful labor leaders finally back a
defenseless management against the wall — to
plunder and dictate.
Somewhere along the way, they have missed
the essence of the process: The meeting to-
gether, on equal terms under the law, of the
representatives of both labor and management
for the purpose of jointly determining working
conditions and the definition of their relation-
ship.
I am worried, too, about the direction of public
thinking. The discrimination against public em-
ployes, the threat of right-to-work bills, the moves
of the Chambers of Commerce into the schools
through the so-called junior achievement programs
and business-education days.
All of these have combined to educate citizens
with half-truths about the American way of life.
They have left out the contribution of labor en-
tirely and deliberately. The schools, above all,
should teach the whole truth.
TO ACHIEVE THIS, I took three classes in
U.S. history and, in order to give the students a
better understanding of labor's problems, I al-
lowed each class to become a union for the three
weeks' study of the era.
After two to three days of defining terms and
general discussion, each elected a chairman, stew-
ard and secretary. The elections I conducted.
Then for two class sessions I remained out of the
room while the chairman conducted the following
business in a democratic procedure. They were
t;o decide:
Name of the organization; membership (union
or closed shop); termination of the agreement;
assignments for the three weeks; grading; absence
and tardy policy; late paper and homework pen-
alties; policy on non-participants in discussion,
and seating arrangement.
When this had been done, I returned to the
rbom, the representative of management, ready
to write a bargaining agreement on the above
items. I particularly stressed to the students, as
we began, that their chairman and myself were
on equal terms, that neither of us would dominate
the other.
I found, to my astonishment, that all classes
had truly come through with fair arrangements.
In anticipation of deadlock, we had decided that
arbitration would follow, but arbitration was
not necessary with any of the classes.
We set forth immediately upon our agreements
with seriousness. The chairman was to open the
class each day, the secretary take minutes and the
steward report the grievances.
I went about my teaching under the policies
contracted by the students.
At the conclusion we set a day in each class for
final evaluation. All three classes were in close
agreement. Positive conclusions were:
• Collective bargaining definitely improves
interest and morale of the workers and that the
democratic process in the labor union offers the
only real opportunity for choice and self-responsi-
bility within the corporate structure.
• The students noted the dangers inherent in
any such process: The need for education of the
membership; the necessity for the members to be
alert, participating and willing to compromise for
the betterment of all; and that leadership had to
be responsible, able and democratically selected.
The greatest joy I received from the entire
trial was that of seeing students come to a better
understanding of their society and ultimately of
themselves and their destiny.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
Paso Five
Morgan Says:
Kennedy's Leadership Qualities
Will Be Tested in White House
/rs YOUR
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC ^network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
TO A LOT of Washington correspondents, in-
cluding this one, it will no longer be "Hi, Jack"
but "How do you do, Mr. President." All the
strangeness of the transition seems somehow per-
sonally wrapped up in that important little alter-
ation of address.
The aura of the office
of chief executive of the
United States is awesome
and grand but no greater
than to fit the awful re-
sponsibility and power of
the office. It will take
some time to adjust to this
change of approach but it
is likely to take the Presi-
dent-elect less time than
his friends.
It is said that John F.
Kennedy has been running for the presidency
almost without surcease since he was so narrowly
defeated for the vice presidential nomination in
1956 in Chicago. This is just about true. And
for a while there were those of us who felt it was
just a kind of patrician compulsion, if you will;
more than a sport of course, but less than an
earnest quest. We were wrong. Perhaps it was
just a personal challenge at first, though I doubt
that now. The more Kennedy drove himself and
the small loyal knot of people with him, headed
by his still impish and sometimes impertinent
brother, Bobby, and an extraordinary young
Lutheran from Nebraska, Theodore Sorenson, his
closest aide, the more he strove the more he
seemed to want to strive and the more serious he
became — a sort of curious mixture between bold-
ness and caution cemented by a determination to
lead rarely seen in American politics.
He has that inborn quality of leadership, one
of the country's most respected pundits remarked
privately of Kennedy a few weeks before the
election. This does not mean, ipso facto, that
he will lead well. And to some he will be suspect
in this role because they remember him more
sharply as virtually a playboy of the not too
distant past.
But as a brilliant Harvard scholar remarked
during the Los Angeles convention last July
which Kennedy so thoroughly dominated, "there
comes a time in every serious-minded young
man's life, somewhere between his mid-thirties
and his mid-forties, when he pauses and asks
himself 'Who am I? Where am I going? What
do I want?' " This interval, he mused, came
Ms We See It:
to Jack Kennedy perhaps when he was near
death after an operation for a back injury in
the early 1950's during his first term as a sena-
tor. Some time along about then, the Harvard
man said, Jack stopped chasing fun and started
chasing the presidency.
Whatever the validity of that historical note, he
has pursued the office with ardor and a masterful
control of pace. To me, one of the most remark-
able things which Kennedy demonstrated during
the campaign — both during the primary stage and
after the nomination — was a courageous capacity
to strike back with purpose and yet restraint when
he was put on the defensive. I have mentioned
this before but perhaps it bears repetition. Stunned
by the virulence of the anti-Catholic sentiment he
encountered in West Virginia, he dropped every-
thing, flew to Washington to make a moving-
speech before the nation's editors about his be-
liefs, then made that one of the major offensives
of his campaign from then on. It took him only
48 hours over the Fourth of July weekend to
answer publicly Mr. Truman's crotchety doubts
about his experience. Then during the small cli-
max of crisis at the convention, he met Lyndon
Johnson on his home ground at the Texas caucus,
devastated him, won the nomination, then turned
around and summoned the Texan as his running
mate. (Parenthetically, despite all the dubious
ness over this combination, it may very well have
been the winning stroke for the way the electoral
votes broke down. Texas and the loyal areas of
the South, under Johnson's artful, sometimes
backstage cajoling, provided the margin against
defeat.)
ONE OF THE MOST moving events of the
whole campaign was Kennedy's lonely confronta-
tion of the Houston Protestant ministers and the
cool, controlled thinking-on-his-feet faculties he
displayed under fire. Maybe that should have
been the tip-off to the Nixon camp that he would
be an enormously formidable foe in the debates.
Will this make him a formidable figure in the
councils of the world? One must wait and see.
Some complain that behind the verily disintegrat-
ing aspects of his boyish smile, is a cold, arrogant
figure. That, too, will be tested in the cold,
lonely cockpit of the White House but one hopes
and feels that the qualities are of aloof strength
rather than any imperiousness.
A profound part of Jack Kennedy's education
was his exposure to nearly every corner of
America and his recoil before the pockets of
poverty and want he encountered in such states
as West Virginia. One suspects there is hu-
manity here and one waits eagerly to see the
shape of things to come as moulded by this
extraordinary young man.
U.S. Capitol Remodeling Project
Is Strictly An Ail-Union Job'
MEMBERS OF almost every building trade
union are working on the remodeling of the
Capitol. Robert A. Moyer, vice president of
Charles H. Tompkins Co., general contractors
on the East Front renovation, said that stone
masons, cement finishers, laborers, ironworkers,
operating engineers, electricians, steamfitters,
plumbers, plasterers, painters, carpenters, tile set-
ters and bricklayers are working on the exterior
and interior improvements. It is, he said, "an
all-union job."
Paul Frome, author of "Washington, a Mod-
ern Guide to the Nation's Capital, " recently
published, also said on "As We See It," AFL-
CIO public service educational program, that
the Capitol is undergoing its "greatest renova-
tion in history. The last great one was in
Abraham Lincoln's time when the dome was
erected on top and the statue of freedom on
top of that."
Frome said that "all of the original sandstone
features are- being copied in marble, with the
sculpture, design and construction under the guid-
ance of Paul Manship, who is perhaps our great-
est living sculptor today." Speaker Sam Rayburn
is mainly responsible, said Frome, since he pushed
the bill for the renovation through Congress.
Two painters who worked on the dome, Leon-
ard Armstrong, of Seat Pleasant, and Emory
Shine, of Washington, told of their work in a
broadcast from the headquarters of. Local 368.
Shine said that they had to chip off and sand-
blast 32 coats of paint from the dome, all applied
since that part of the Capitol was erected in 1865.
The final color now is off-white, he said, to match
the marble in the wings.
ARMSTRONG SAID that painters on the job
included a Greek, Lithuanian, Cuban, Puerto
Rican, Canadians, a -French Algerian and a num-
ber of Americans. Nine injuries occurred.
The exterior is now finished. Moyer said that
the work on the interior will not begin until after
the inauguration. •
Frome said that the renovation is being under-
taken to make the Capitol more attractive and
also to provide additional office space.
"The student of history has a field day here,"
he observed. "This is the building where
George Washington laid the cornerstone, where
Thomas Jefferson came to preside over the
Senate, and where Abraham Lincoln was the
first to lie in state in the rotunda after his
assassination at the end of the Civil War."
WASHINGTON
I
THE ISSUE of Electoral College reform has been raised in the
wake of the close race between Pres.-elect Kennedy and Vice Pres.
Nixon. Although as in the past the discussion may get nowhere,
it is a legitimate issue.
There are two basic evils in the system by which the President
is chosen, actually by the electors and not by the people directly.
One is the danger of a minority President — a candidate who
by a freak distribution loses a majority of the popular vote but
wins enough strategically situated states to get a majority in the
Electoral College or in the House of Representatives, if a contest
goes there. This has happened in two instances since the Civil
War — in 1876-77, when Rutherford B. Hayes became President
although Samuel Til den got a popular majority, and in 1888,
when Grover Cleveland had a popular majority but lost in the
Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison.
The second is the constitutional independence of each elector,
once chosen, to cast his vote for any person he wishes.
A Tennessee elector, chosen in 1948 on a pledge to Harry Tru-
man, actually voted for the Dixiecrat candidate, Strom Thurmond.
A Utah elector this year, chosen as pledged to Nixon, has talked
about casting his vote elsewhere as a "protest" of the system.
This irresponsibility of members of the Electoral College arises
from the constitutional convention of 1787, which thought that
theoretically wise men chosen from the states were better equipped
than the people to select the wisest of all as President. The system
was repudiated early in our history by the citizens, who demanded
that electors pledge themselves in advance. But the constitutional
power of the electors remains, an anachronism from the 18th cen-
tury, posing a constant threat that sometime defections by electors
in a close election may throw the decision into the House and
produce a genuine crisis.
* * *
THE TROUBLE about Electoral College reform is that fre-
quently the reformers propose to cure one potential inequity but
not another or to add a third.
One suggestion is that in each state, the Electoral College vote
be divided according to the relative popular vote instead of on a
winner-take-all basis. Thfe year, for example, Nixon would get only
a small majority of Ohio's 25 electoral votes instead of all of them;
Kennedy would get only a proportionate share of New York's 45
votes instead of all. As it happens, the end-result, the election of
Kennedy, would not be changed, but the Electoral College margin
would be closer.
This would not cure the distortion that arises from assign-
ment of Electoral College votes to the states according to the
total congressional representation of each. The smallest state as
well as the most populous has two senators: Nevada, Arizona,
Alaska and Vermont, therefore, are over-represented in the Elec-
toral College and New York, California and Illinois under-repre-
sented. It would still be possible for a candidate to lose the
popular vote and win in the Electoral College.
A second proposal is that the electoral vote of each state be split
according to congressional districts, the people of each district decid-
ing by majority vote how their elector shall cast his ballot, with
only two electors in each state — for the senators — chosen by state-
wide vote.
This would be vastly worse, for the congressional districts are
notoriously gerrymandered to give disproportionate power in the
House to rural and small-town residents and deprive urban and
suburban citizens of an equal voice. It would pile a new distortion
on top of existing ones.
A constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral system to
allow selection of the President by popular vote could be achieved
by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress and ratification by
38 of the 50 states.
DAVE GARROWAY, television star, takes Pres. James A. Suf-
fridge, left, of the Retail Clerks, behind the scenes at "Dave's Place"
during a break in filming a television "spectacular" at Rockefeller
Center, New York City. Suffridge's union co-sponsored the Gar-
roway program on the full NBC-TV network Nov. 18.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
The New U.S. House of Representatives
(Numerals denote district;
AL: At Large)
ALABAMA
1. Frank W. Boy kin (D)*
2. George M. Grant (D)*
3. George W. Andrews (D)*
4. Kenneth A. Roberts (D)*
5. Albert Rains (D)*
6. Armistead I. Selden, Jr. (D)*
7. Carl Elliott (D)*
8. Robert E. Jones (D)*
9. George Huddleston, Jr. (D)*
ALASKA
AL Ralph J. Rivers (D)*
ARIZONA
1. John J. Rhodes (R)*
2. Stewart L. Udall (D)*
ARKANSAS
1. E. C. Gathings (D)*
2. Wilbur D. Mills (D)*
3. James W. Trimble (D)*
4. Oren Harris (D)*
5. Dale Alford (D)*
6. W. F. Norrell (D)*
CALIFORNIA
1. Clem Miller (D)*
2. Harold T. Johnson (D)*
3. John E. Moss (D)*
4. William S. Mailliard (R)*
5. John F. Shelley (D)*
6. John F. Baldwin (R)*
7. Jeffery Cohelan (D)*
8. George P. Miller (D)*
9. J. Arthur Younger (R)*
10. Charles S. Gubser (R)*
11. John J. McFall (D)*
12. B. F. Sisk (D)'*
13. Charles M. Teague (R)*
14. Harlan Hagen (D)*
15. Gordon L. McDonough (R)*
16. Alphonzo E. Bell, Jr. (R)
17. Cecil R. King (D)*
18. Craig Hosmer (R)*
19. Chet Holifield (D)*
20. H. Allen Smith (R)*
21. Edgar W. Hiestand (R)*
22. James C. Corman (D)t
23. Clyde Doyle (D)*
24. Glenard P. Lipscomb (R)*
25. John H. Rousselot (R)t
26. James Roosevelt (D)*
27. Harry R. Sheppard (D)*
28. James B. Utt (R)*
29. D. S. Saund (D)*
30. Bob Wilson (R)*
COLORADO
1. Byron G. Rogers (D)*
2. Peter H. Dominick (R)t
3. J. Edgar Chenoweth (R)*
4. Wayne N. Aspinall (D)*
CONNECTICUT
1. Emilio Q. Daddario (D)*
2. Horace Seely-Brown, Jr. (R)t
3. Robert N. Giaimo (D)*
4. Abner W. Sibal (R)t
5. John S. Monagan (D)*
AL Frank Kowalski (D)*
DELAWARE
AL Harris B. McDowell, Jr. (D)*
FLORIDA
L William C. (Bill) Cramer (R)*
2. Charles E. Bennett (D)*
3. Robert L'. F. Sikes (D)*
4. Dante B. Fascell (D)*
5. A. Sydney Herlong, Jr. (D)*
6. Paul G. Rogers (D)*
7. James A. Haley (D)*
8. D. R. (Billy) Matthews (D)*
GEORGIA
1. Elliott Hagan (D)
2. J. L. Pilcher (D)*
3. E. L. Forrester (D)*
4. John J. Flynt, Jr. (D)*
5. James C. Davis (D)*
6. Carl Vinson (D)*
7. John W. Davis (D)
8. Mrs. Iris F. Blitch (D)*
9. Phil M. Landrum (D)*
10. Robert P. Stephens, Jr. (D)
HAWAII
AL Daniel K. Inouye (D)*
IDAHO
1. Mrs. Grade Pfost (D)*
2. Ralph R. Harding (D)t
ILLINOIS
1. William L. Dawson (D)*
2. Barratt O'Hara (D)*
3. William T. Murphy (D)*
4. Edward J. Derwinski (R)*
5. John C. Kluczynski (D)*
6. Thomas J. O'Brien (D)*
7. Roland V. Libonati (D)*
8. Daniel Rostenkowski (D)*
9. Sidney R. Yates (D)*
10. Harold R. Collier ( R) *
11. Roman C. Pucinski (D)*
12. Edward R. Finneean (D)
13. Marguerite Stitt Church (R)*
14. Elmer J. Hoffman (R)*
15. Noah M. Mason (R)*t
16. John B. Anderson (R)
17. Leslie C. Arends (R)*
18. Robert H. Michel (R)*
19. Robert B. Chiperfield (R) ::
20. Paul Findley (R) .
21. Peter F. Mack, Jr. (D)*
22. William L. Springer (R)*
23. George E. Shipley (D)*
24. Melvin Price (D)*
25. Kenneth J. Gray (£>)*
INDIANA
1. Ray J. Madden (D)*
2. Charles A. Halleck (R)*
3. John Brademas (D)*
4. E. Ross Adair (R)*
5. George O. Chambers (R)tt
6. Richard L. Roudebush (R)t
7. William G. Bray (R) *
8. Winfield K. Denton (D)*
9. Earl Wilson (R)t
10. Ralph Harvey (R)t
11. Donald C. Bruce (R)f
IOWA
L Fred Schwengel (R)*
2. James E. Bromwell (R)t
3. H. R. Gross (R)*
4. John Kyi (R)
5. Neal Smith (D)*
6. Merwin Coad (D)*
7. Ben F. Jensen (R)*
8. Charles B. Hoeven (R)*
KANSAS
1. William H. Avery (R)* •
2. Robert F. Ellsworth (R)t
3. Walter L. McVey (R)t
4. Garner E. Shriver (R)
5. J. Floyd Breeding (D)*
6. Robert Dole (R)
KENTUCKY
1. Frank A. Stubblefield (D)*
2. William H. Natcher (D)*
3. Frank W. Burke (£>)**
4. Frank Chelf (D)*
5. Brent Spence (D)*
6. John C. Watts (D)*
7. Carl D. Perkins (D)*
8. Eugene Siler (R)*
LOUISIANA
1. F. Edward Hebert (D)*
2. Hale Boggs (D)*
3. Edwin E. Willis (D)*
4. Overton Brooks (D)*
5. Otto E. Passman (D)*
6. James H. Morrison (D)*
7. T. A. Thompson (D)*
8. Harold B. McSween (D)*
MAINE
1. Peter A. Garland (R)f
2. Stanley R. Tupper (R)t
3. Clifford G. Mclntire (R)*
MARYLAND
1. Thomas F. Johnson (D)*
2. Daniel B. Brewster (D)*
3. Edward A. Garmatz (D)*
4. George H. Fallon (D)*
5. Richard E. Lankford (D)*
6. Charles McC. Mathias, Jr.
(R)t
7. Samuel N. Friedel (D)*
MASSACHUSETTS
1. Silvio O. Conte (R)*
2. Edward P. Boland (D)*
3. Philip J. Philbin (D)*
4. Harold D. Donohue (D)*
5. F. Bradford Morse (R)
6. William H. Bates (R)*
7. Thomas J. Lane (D)*
8. Torbert H. Macdonald (D)*
9. Hastings Keith (R)*
10. Laurehce Curtis (R)*
11. Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. (D)*
12. John W. McCormack (D)*
13. James A. Burke (D)*
14. Joseph W. Martin, Jr. (R)*
MICHIGAN
1. Thaddeus M. Machrowicz
(D)*
2. George Meader (R)*
3. August E. Johansen (R)*
4. Clare E. Hoffman (R)*
5. Gerald R. Ford, Jr. (R)*
6. Charles E. Chamberlain (R)*
7. James G. O'Hara (D)*
8. James Harvey (R)
9. Robert P. Griffin (R)*
10. Elford A. Cederberg (R)*
11. Victor A. Knox (R)*
12. John B. Bennett (R)*
13. Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (D)*
14. Louis C. Rabaut (D)*
15. John D. Dingell (D)*
16. John Lesinski (D)*
17. Mrs. Martha Griffiths (D)*
18. William S. Broomfield (R)*
MINNESOTA
L Albert H. Quie (R)*
2. Ancher Nelsen (R) *
3. Clark MacGregor (R)t
4. Joseph E. Karth (D)*
5. Walter H. Judd (R)*
6. Fred Marshall (D) ::
7. H. Carl Andersen (R)*
8. John A. Blatnik (D)*
9. Odin Langen (R)*
MISSISSIPPI
1. Thomas G, Abernethy (D)*
2. Jamie L. Whitten (D)*
3. Frank E. Smith (D)*
4. John Bell Williams (D)*
5. Arthur Winstead (D)*
6. William M. Colmer (D)*
MISSOURI
1. Frank M. Ka#sten (D)*
2. Thomas B. Curtis (R) ::
3. Mrs. Leonor K. Sullivan (D) *
4. William J. Randall (D) *
5. Richard Boiling (D)*
6. W. R. Hull, Jr. (D)*
7. Durward G. Hall (R)t
8. Richard Ichord (D)
9. Clarence Cannon (D)*
10. Paul C. Jones (D)*
11. Morgan M. Moulder (D)*t
MONTANA
1. Arnold Olsen (D)
2. James F. Battin (R)t
NEBRASKA
1. Phil Weaver (R)*
2. Glenn Cunningham (R)*
3. Ralph F. Beermann (R)t
4. Dave Martin (R)t
NEVADA
AL Walter S. Baring (D)*
NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. ' Chester E. Merrow (R)*
2. Perkins Bass (R)*
NEW JERSEY
1. William T. Cahill (R)*
2. Milton W. Glenn (R)*
3. James C. Auchincloss (R)*
4. Frank. Thompson, Jr. (D)*
5. Peter Frelinghuysen, Jr. (R)*
6. Mrs. Florence P. Dwyer (R)*
7. William B. Widnall (R)*
8. Charles S. Joelson (D)t
9. Frank C. Osmers, Jr. (R)*
10. Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (D)*
11. Hugh J. Addonizio (D)*
12. George M. Wallhauser (R)*
13. Cornelius E. Gallagher (D)*
14. Dominick V. Daniels (D)*
NEW MEXICO
AL Joseph M. Montoya (D)*
AL Thomas G. Morris (D) *
NEW YORK
L Otis G. Pike (D)t
2. Steven B. Derounian (R) :
3. Frank J. Becker (R)*
4. Seymour Halpern (R)*
5. Joseph P. Addabbo (D)f
6. Lester Holtzman (D)*
7. James J. Delaney (D)*
8. Victor L. Anfuso (D)*
9. Eugene J. Keogh (D)*
10. Mrs. Edna F. Kelly (D)*
11. Emanuel Celler (Q)*
12. Hugh L. Carey (D)t
13. Abraham J. Multer (D)*
14. John J. Rooney (D)*
15. John H. Ray (R)*
16. Adam C. Powell (D)*
17. John V. Lindsay (R)*
18. Alfred E. Santangelo (D)*
19. Leonard Farbstein (D)*
20. William Fitts Ryan (D)
21. Herbert Zelenko (D)*
22. James C. Healey (D)*
23. Jacob H. Gilbert (D)*
24. Charles A. Buckley (D)*
25. Paul A. Fino (R)*
26. Edwin B. Dooley (R)*
27. Robert R. Barry (R)*
28. Mrs. Katharine St. George
(R)*
29. J. Ernest Wharton (R)*
30. Leo W. O'Brien (D)*
31. Carleton J. King (R)
32. Samuel S. Stratton (D)*
33. Clarence E. Kilburn (R)*
34. Alexander Pirnie (R)*
35. R. Walter Riehlman (R)*
36. John Taber (R)*
37. Howard W. Robison (R)*
38. Mrs. Jessica McC. Weis (R)*
39. Harold C. Ostertag \R)*
40. William E. Miller (R)*
41. Thaddeus J. Dulski (D)*
42. John R. Pillion (R)*
43. Charles E. Goodell (R)*
NORTH CAROLINA
1. Herbert C. Bonner (D)*
2. L. H. Fountain (D)*
3. David N. Henderson (D)
4. Harold D. Cooley (D)*
5. Ralph J. Scott (D)*
6. Horace R. Kornegay (D)
7. Alton Lennon (D)*
8. A. Paul Kitchin (D)*
9. Hugh Q. Alexander (D)*
10. Charles R. Jonas (R)*
11. Basil L. Whitener (D)*
12. Roy A. Taylor (D)*
NORTH DAKOTA
AL Don L. Short (R)*
AL Hjalmar C. Nygaard (R)t
OHIO
1. Gordon H. Scherer (R)*
2. Donald D. Clancy (R)
3. Paul F. Schenck (R)*
4. William M. McCulloch (R)*
5. Delbert L. Latta (R)*
6. William H. Harsha, Jr. (R)t
7. Clarence J. Brown (R)*
8. Jackson E. Betts (R)*
9. Thomas L. Ashley (D)*
10. Walter H. Moeller (D)*
11. Robert E. Cook (D)*
12. Samuel L. Devine (R)*
13. Charles A. Mosher (R)
14. William H. Ayres (R)*
15. Tom V. Moorehead (R)
16. Frank T. Bow (R)*
17. John M. Ashbrook (R)t
18. Wayne L. Hays (D)*
19. Michael J. Kirwan (D)* . *
20. Michael A. Feighan (D)*
21. Charles A. Vanik (D)*
22. Mrs. Frances P. Bolton (R)*
23. William E. Minshall (R)*
OKLAHOMA
1. Page Belcher (R)*
2. Ed Edmondson (D)*
3. Carl Albert (D)*
4. Tom Steed (D)*
5. John Jarman (D)*
6. Clyde Wheeler, Jr. (R)t
OREGON
L Walter Norblad (R)*
2. Al Ullman (D) ;:
3. Mrs. Edith Green (D) ::
4. Edwin R. Durno (R)t .
PENNSYLVANIA
1. William A. Barrett (D)*
2. Mrs. Kathryn E. Granahan
(D)*
3. James A. Byrne (D)*
4. Robeft N. C. Nix (D)*
5. William J. Green, Jr. (D)*
6. Herman Toll (D)*
7. William H. Milliken, Jr. (R)*
8. Willard S. Curtin (R)*
9. Paul B. Dague (R)*
10. William W. Scranton (R)t
11. Daniel J. Flood (D)*
12. Ivor D. Fenton (R)*
13. Richard S. Schweiker (R)
14. George M. Rhodes (D)*
15. Francis E. Walter (D)*
16. Walter M. Mumma (R)*
17. Herman T. Schneebeli (R)*
18. J. Irving Whalley (R)
19. George A. Goodling (R)f
20. James E. Van Zandt (R)*
21. John H. Dent (D)*
22. John P. Saylor (R)*
23. Leon H. Gavin (R)*
24. Carroll D. Kearns (R)*
25. Frank M. Clark (D)*
26. Thomas E. Morgan (D)*
27. James G. Fulton (R)*
28. William S. Moorhead (D)*
29. Robert J. Corbett (R)*
30. Elmer J. Holland (D)* .
RHODE ISLAND
L Fernand J. St. Germain (D)
2. John E. Fogarty (D)*
SOUTH CAROLINA
1. L. Mendel Rivers (D)*
2. John J. Riley (D)*
3. W. J. Bryan Dorn (D)*
4. Robert T. Ashmore (D)*
5. Robert W. Hemphill (D)*
6. John L. McMillan (D)*
SOUTH DAKOTA
1. Ben Reifel (R)t
2. E. Y. Berry (R)*
TENNESSEE
1. B. Carroll Reece (R)*
2. Howard H. Baker (R)*
3. James B. Frazier, Jr. (D)*
4. Joe L. Evins (D)*
5. J. Carlton Loser (D)*
6. Ross Bass (D)*
7. Tom Murray (D)*
8. Robert A. Everett '(D)*
9. Clifford Davis (D)*
TEXAS
1. Wright Patman (D)*
2. Jack Brooks (D)*
3. Lindley Beck worth (D) :<
4. Sam Ray burn (D)* y
5. Bruce Alger (R)*
6. Olin E. Teague (D)*
7. John Dowdy (D)*
8. Albert Thomas (D)*
9. Clark W. Thompson (D)*
10. Homer Thornberry (D)*
11. W. R. Poage (D)*
12. James C. Wright, Jr. (D)*
13. Frank Ikard (D)*
14. John Young (D)*
15. Joe M. Kilgore (D)*
16. J. T. Rutherford (D)*
17. Omar Burleson (D)* .
18. Walter Rogers (D)*
19. George H. Mahon (D)*
20. Paul J. Kilday (D)*
21. O. C. Fisher (D)*
22. Robert R. Casey (D)*
UTAH
1, M. Blaine Peterson (D)tt
2. David S. King (D)*
VERMONT
AL Robert T. Stafford (R)t
VIRGINIA
1. Thomas N. Downing (D)*
2. Porter Hardy, Jr. (D)*
3. J. Vaughan Gary (D)*
4. Watkins M. Abbitt (D)*
5. William M. Tuck (D)*
6. Richard H. Poff (R)*
7. Burr P. Harrison (D)*
8. Howard W. Smith (D) *
9. W. Pat Jennings (D)*
10. Joel T. Broyhill (R)*
WASHINGTON
1. Thomas M. Pelly (R)*
2. Jack Westland (R)*
3. Mrs. Julia B. Hansen (D)t
4. Mrs. Catherine May (R)*
5. Walt Horan (R)*
6. Thor C. Tollefson (R)*
7. Undecided
WEST VIRGINIA
1. Arch A. Moore, Jr. (R)*
2. Harley O. Staggers (D)*
3. Cleveland M. Bailey (D)*
4. Ken Hechler (D)*
5. Mrs. Elizabeth Kee (D)*
6. John M. Slack, Jr. (D)*
WISCONSIN
1. Henry C. Schadeberg (R)t
2. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D)*
3. Vernon W. Thomson (R)
4. Clement J. Zablocki (D)*
5. Henry S. Reuss (D)*
6. William K. Van Pelt (R)*
7. Melvin R. Laird (R)*
8. John W. Byrnes (R)*
9. Lester R. Johnson (D)*
10. Alvin E. O'Konski (R)*
WYOMING
AL William Henry Harrison (R)
* Re-elected.
t Denotes change of party.
t Recount pending.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
Page Severn
The New Senate
CORDIAL HANDSHAKE is exchanged by Pres.-elect Kennedy and the man he defeated for office,
Vice Pres. Nixon. In a move designed to emphasize national unity, Kennedy interrupted his post-
election vacation in Florida to visit Nixon, vacationing at another Florida resort. Conference dealt
with orderly procedures for transfer of power from Eisenhower-Nixon Administration to new Demo-
cratic leadership.
Kennedy Aims for Fast Start on
Program; Meets With Johnson
(Continued from Page 1)
lion civilians of voting age —
slowed the tallying of votes in
close contests for congressional
races. The latest count on the
House gave the Democrats 260
seats to 176 for the Republicans,
with one race — for the seat held
by Rep. Don Magnuson CD-
Wash.) — still in doubt.
In races not settled until a week
after Election Day, the Democrats
captured a Republican-held seat in
Utah with the election of M. Blaine
Peterson, while GOP candidate
Clyde Wheeler, Jr. defeated in-
cumbent Democrat Victor Wicker-
sham. Two other incumbent Dem-
ocrats — Representatives Frank W.
Burke (Ky.) and Morgan Moulder
(Mo.) — narrowly won re-election in
late counting of ballots. (Recounts
have been asked in the races the
Republicans apparently lost.) The
Republicans thus took over 30 seats
which the Democrats held in the
86th Congress while the Democrats
captured eight GOP districts for a
net Republican gain of 22 seats.
There was also a possibility that
the Republican gains might be
trimmed slightly as two defeated
Democratic candidates filed recount
petitibns which could result in the
overturning of present standings.
The recount petitions were filed by
Rep. Edward Roush (D-Ind.), who
was defeated for re-election by 12
votes out of more than 213,000
cast, and by Dorothy O'Brien, who
lost to Rep. Noah M. Mason (R-
111.) by 1,713 votes out of a total
of 186,000.
The Democratic margin of 41
seats in {he House, coupled with
a top-heavy majority of 64 to 36
in the Senate, is expected to aid
Kennedy's bid for prompt ac-
tion in the 87th Congress on a
wide range of measures — includ-
ing minimum wage, school con-
struction, aid to depressed areas
and medical care for the aged.
The Kennedy Administration's
legislative goals were seen almost
certain to be the keystone of the
Boost Paper Minimums,
Labor Asks Mitchell
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has asked Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell to reconsider a tentative Walsh-Healey Act minimum wage
determination for the paper and paperboard container and packag-
ing products industry which labor has charged is "unduly low" and
based on an "unsound" splintering of the industry into four seg-
ments, each with a different wage^
floor.
Under the Walsh-Healey Act, the
Secretary of Labor is empowered
to determine minimum wages, based
on prevailing rates, for employes of
firms which do at least $10,000
worth of business with the govern-
ment. This is the first time the act
has been employed in the paper
container industry.
Proposed Minimums Hit
In a statement of exceptions filed
by the AFL-CIO and two affiliates,
the Pulp-Sulphite Workers and the
Papermakers & Paperworkers, labor
challenged the proposed establish-
ment of four separate minimum
wages— $1.20 an hour in the wrap-
ping products field, $1.30 in non-
textile bags, $1.37 in sanitary food
containers and $1.53 in corrugates
and solid fiber boxes.
Declaring that the divisions
were artificial and that a consid-
erable number of companies
manufacture products in two or
more of the categories, the union
statement of exceptions declared:
"By allowing splintering of in-
dustries into many separate seg-
ments for minimum wage pur-
poses, the Secretary (of Labor) is
inviting undue lengthening "and
complication of Walsh - Healey
determination procedures . • •
leading to an administrative mo-
rass and to unrealistic distinc-
tions which are largely artificial."
Labor also charged that each of
the four proposed minimum wage
determinations is "unduly low and
appears to be based on erratic and
inconsistent analysis."
The statement also pointed out
that the wage survey on which the
proposed wage floors are based was
made more than two years ago.
Texas conference between the Pres-
ident-eject and Johnson, who for
the past six years served as Demo-
cratic majority leader in the Sen-
ate. Also expected to be discussed
between the two leaders and House
Speaker Sam Ray burn (D-Tex.),
who was to join them at Johnson's
LBJ ranch, was the question of
revising the structure or power of
the House Rules Committee. Un-
der southern Democratic-conserva-
tive Republican control, the com-
mittee has been the graveyard for
much major liberal legislation.
Chairman Howard W. Smith (D-
Va.) said he was opposed to any
Rules Committee changes.
Efforts to keep alive the GOP-
Dixiecrat axis which has dominated
Congress for most of the past quar-
ter century have been launched by
Senate Minority Leader Everett
McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.), who
warned that the GOP would op-
pose or seek to modify depressed
areas and minimum wage legisla-
tion.
Dirksen denied that there had
ever been any formal "coalition"
between right-wing Republicans
and southern Democrats, but
added that he expected the two
groups to remain "in conformity"
with the conservative viewpoint.
Reinforcing the hope that the
Kennedy Administration would get
off to a fast start in the legislative
field, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell,
Jr. (D-N.Y.), apparently slated for
the chairmanship of the House
Education and Labor Committee,
put majority members to work
nearly two months before Congress
convenes, lining up study groups
for the presentation of legislative
proposals by Dec. 12 for considera-
tion when the new Congress opens.
2 Shoe Unions Join
In Pacts for 13,000
St. Louis — Two AFL-CIO
unions, the Boot & Shoe Workers
and the United Shoe Workers, have
negotiated a two-year contract with
the Intl. Shoe Co. covering some
13,000 workers in four states.
The agreement, reached after
members of both unions had voted
to strike if necessary, provides wage
increases totaling 8 cents an hour,
raises hospital benefits by 50 per-
cent, and liberalizes vacation and
holiday provisions.
ALABAMA
Lister Hill (D)
♦John J. Sparkman (D)
ALASKA
♦E. L. (Bob) Bartlett (D)
Ernest Gruening (D)
ARIZONA
Carl Hayden (D)
Barry M. Goldwater (R)
ARKANSAS
♦John L. McClellan (D)
J. William Fulbright (D)
CALIFORNIA
Thomas H. Kuchel (R)
Clair Engle (D)
COLORADO
♦Gordon Allott (R)
John A. Carroll (D)
CONNECTICUT
Prescott Bush (R)
Thomas J. Dodd (D)
DELAWARE
John J. Williams (R)
♦J. Caleb Boggs (R)
FLORIDA
Spessard L. Holland (D)
George A. Smathers (D)
GEORGIA
♦Richard B. Russell (D)
Herman Talmadge (D)
HAWAII
Hiram L. Fong (R)
Oren E. Long (D)
IDAHO
♦Henry C. Dworshak (R)
Frank Church (D)
ILLINOIS
♦Paul H. Douglas (D)
Everett M. Dirksen (R)
INDIANA
Homer E. Capehart (R)
Vance Hartke (D)
IOWA
Bourke B. Hickenlooper (R)
♦Jack Miller (R)
KANSAS
♦Andrew F. Schoeppel (R)
Frank Carlson (R)
KENTUCKY
♦John Sherman Cooper (R)
Thruston B. Morton (R)
LOUISIANA
♦Allan J. Ellender (D)
Russell B. Long (D)
MAINE
♦Margaret Chase Smith (R)
Edmund S. Muskie (D)
MARYLAND
John Marshall Butler (R)
J. Glenn Beall (R)
MASSACHUSETTS
♦Leverett Saltonstall (R)
fJohn F. Kennedy (D)
MICHIGAN
♦Pat McNamara (D)
Philip A. Hart (D)
MINNESOTA
♦Hubert H. Humphrey (D)
Eugene J. McCarthy (D)
MISSISSIPPI
♦James O. Eastland (D)
John C. Stennis (D)
MISSOURI
Stuart Symington (D)
♦Edward V. Long (D)
MONTANA
Mike Mansfield (D)
♦Lee Metcalf (D)
NEBRASKA
Roman L. Hruska (R)
♦Carl T. Curtis (R)
NEVADA
Alan Bible (D)
Howard W. Cannon (D)
NEW HAMPSHIRE
♦Styles Bridges (R)
Norris Cotton (R)
NEW JERSEY
♦Clifford P. Case (R)
Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (D)
NEW MEXICO
Dennis Chavez (D)
♦Clinton P. Anderson (D)
NEW YORK
Jacob K. Javits (R)
Kenneth B. Keating (R)
NORTH CAROLINA
Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D)
♦B. Everett Jordan (D)
NORTH DAKOTA
Milton R. Young (R)
♦♦Quentin N. Burdick (D)
OHIO
Frank J. Lnusche (D)
Stephen M. Young (D)
OKLAHOMA
♦Robert S. Kerr (D)
A. S. Mike Monroney (D)
OREGON
Wayne Morse (D)
♦Maurine B. Neuberger (D)
PENNSYLVANIA
Joseph S. Clark (D)
Hugh Scott (R)
RHODE ISLAND
John O. Pastore (D)
♦Claiborne deB. Pell (D)
SOUTH CAROLINA
Olin D. Johnston (D)
♦Strom Thurmond (D)
SOUTH DAKOTA
♦Karl E. Mundt (R)
Francis Case (R)
TENNESSEE
♦Estes Kefauver (D)
Albert Gore (D)
TEXAS
t*Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
Ralph W. Yarborough (D)
UTAH
Wallace F. Bennett (R)
Frank E.. Moss (D)
VERMONT
George D. Aiken (R)
Winston L. Prouty (R)
VIRGINIA
Harry F. Byrd (D)
♦A. Willis Robertson (D)
WASHINGTON
Warren G. Magnuson (D)
Henry M. Jackson (D)
WEST VIRGINIA
♦Jennings Randolph (D)
Robert C. Byrd (D)
WISCONSIN
Alexander Wiley (R)
William Proxmire (D)
WYOMING
Gale McGee (D)
♦Keith Thomson (R)
♦Elected or re-elected in 1960.
♦♦Elected in special election last June.
fBoth Pres.-elect Kennedy and Vice Pres.-elect Johnson will
resign their Senate seats. Replacements have not yet been named
by their respective governors.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NETJTS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1960
GOP Scores Gains in State Legislatures
Labor Faces Fight on
Social Measures
Key
(Continued from Page 1)
both Democratic legislatures and
governors.
Of 43 states which voted for
members of the legislature on Nov.
8, party control changed in one or
both houses in 12 states.
The GOP — in most cases mak-
ing a comeback from 1958 set-
backs — captured both houses of
the Ohio and Idaho legislatures,
won the lower house from the
Democrats in Connecticut, Illi-
nois, Montana, Wisconsin and
Wyoming, broke a tie to take
control in Michigan, and re-
gained control of the Senate in
South Dakota.
The only new gain for the Dem-
ocrats apart from Pennsylvania was
in Utah where they won control of
the Senate.
An AFL-CIO News survey gave
this picture from a cross-section of
key states:
CALIFORNIA— Two years ago,
the Democrats swept into control
of the legislature for the first time
in the state's history. Prospects
for continued improvement in so-
cial legislation — including a state
minimum wage law — were ad-
vanced when the Democrats picked
up two Senate seats to give them
a 30-to-10 margin and retained
control of the lower house. The
Democrats, still smarting under a
Republican redistricting of con-
gressional seats after the 1950 cen-
sus, will have eight new seats to dis-
tribute throughout the fast-growing
state.
COLORADO — Republicans
picked up seats in both houses, but
not enough to take control.
CONNECTICUT— Despite the
Democratic sweep, the Republicans
recaptured the House by a 56-vote
margin. Two years ago, the House
was slimly Democratic for the first
time since 1876. The return to
normal GOP control was almost
inevitable because of the lopsided
representation given to small towns.
DELAWARE— The Republi-
cans picked up six seats in the
lower house, but the Democrats re-
main in control with a 20-to-15
margin. The Senate remains 11-
to-6 Democratic. While party
designations in this state do not
always correspond to liberal-con-
servative divisions, whatever faint
danger there was of enactment of
"right-to-work" legislation has ap-
parently been ended by the guber-
natorial victory of Elbert N. Carvel
(D), a member of trie Delaware
Council for Industrial Peace, lead-
ing citizen group fighting "work"
laws.
ILLINOIS — Gov. -elect Otto
Kerner (D) will have to work with
a Republican legislature as the GOP
narrowly regained the House and
retained control of the Senate.
INDIANA — Labor is hoping
that the growing conviction of Re-
publican leaders that "right-to
work" is an albatross hanging heav-
ily around the neck of the GOP
will bring sufficient Republican
votes in the House to pass a repeal
bill. There are enough votes in the
Democratic - controlled Senate to
send it to Democratic Gov. Mat-
thew Welsh, who was elected on
a platform calling for repeal.
MASSACHUSETTS— While the
voters of this state were electing a
Republican governor, they also in-
creased the Democratic majorities
in both houses of the legislature
Democrats added four Senate seats
and 14 House seats.
MICHIGAN— The GOP picked
up one very important House seat
to end an even split and give them
a 56-to-54 margin of control. The
Republicans retained the Senate
control which is virtually guaran-
teed by the permanently-frozen ap-
portionment of districts.
MONTANA — Republicans cap-
tured the House, normally Demo-
cratic. But the Democrats held on
to the Senate, normally Republican.
NEW MEXICO— Democrats—
not all of them liberal — continue
to control the legislature but the
election of a conservative Republi-
can governor makes this a state to
watch for renewed "right-to-work"
activity.
NEW YORK— An all-out labor
effort in upstate cities including
Buffalo, Rochester and Utica
helped liberal Democrats pick up
seven seats in the lower house. In
New York City, the Democrats
gained another Senate seat. But
the Republicans, traditionally
strong in the small towns which
dominate the legislature, retained
control of both houses.
RHODE ISLAND— Strength-
ened Democratic majorities in both
houses plus election of a Demo-
cratic governor led state AFL-CIO
officers to predict "legislation set-
ting up collective bargaining for
state employes, increased and
broader coverage for minimum
wage, consumer protection laws
and strengthening workmen's com-
pensation."
SOUTH DAKOTA — Republi-
cans regained the Senate. State
AFL-CIO comments: "Labor faces
a very dismal two years."
WEST VIRGINIA — Outlook,
with a liberal Democratic governor
elected to office and continued
Democratic legislature, is "a fairly
liberal legislative program in the
1961 session," th« State AFL-CIO
reports.
WISCONSIN— The Republicans
recaptured the lower house and
retained the Senate, adding to the
problems of re-elected Gov. Gay-
lord Nelson (D).
About to Run the Gantlet!
Wide Range of Issues
Decided by Referendum
Two state referendum issues strongly opposed by labor carried
by narrow margins in balloting on Nov. 8, nearly complete tabu-
lations indicate.
Michigan voters authorized a Republican-backed increase in the
state sales tax from 3 to 4 cents — while electing a Democratic
governor opposed to a higher sales^
tax.
In California, a controversial
$1.75 billion water bond issue
which the State AFL-CIO had op-
posed as a "plum" for big land-
owners and speculators .barely
squeaked through.
On the bright side, voters in
Washington State approved a
civil service law which opens the
door to union recognition and
collective bargaining for state
employes. In New York, a
labor-backed proposal to raise
state subsidies for low-rent nous-
Civil Rights Meeting
Okays Positive Program
(Continued from Page 1)
He reported that in nine out of
10 cases of human rights com-
plaints, compliance is obtained by
prompt cooperation of the affiliate
involved. He outlined steps taken
by the AFL-CIO to strengthen its
civil rights compliance procedure
and gave in detail action on some
recent cases.
The report of the discussion
group on equal job opportunities
adopted by the parley noted that
general support for an Illinois
Fair Employment Practices Act
is growing. The report said
chances for passage by the 1961
session of the General Assembly
are good since Democratic Gov.-
elect Otto Kerner has pledged to
support a fair hiring bill.
Biggest single problem, outside
of getting two or three Republicans
in the State Senate to vote for the
bill, is education of the legislators,
business groups, labor and the gen-
eral public, the report said.
Keenan Honored
Joseph D. Keenan, secretary of
the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers and an AFL-CIO vice
president, was given the individual
civil rights award "in recognition
of distinguished and life-long serv-
ice in behalf of all who labor — of
all the needy — of devoted service
to organized labor's civil rights
and housing programs.*' Last year's
individual award went to Illinois
Sen. Paul H. Douglas (D).
John £. Cullerton, manager of
the Chicago Joint Board of the
Hotel and Restaurant Employes,
accepted the award for Keenan.
The IBEW secretary's message
to the parley said:
<( Let me assure you that the
leadership of the AFL-CIO will
continue to press for enactment
by Congress, without further de-
lay, of laws to carry out and
enforce the principles of free-
dom and justice set forth in the
Constitution and the Bill of
Rights. There is no place in
America for second-class citizen-
ship based on race, color or
creed."
Building Service Employes Local
73 was given a "distinguished civil
rights award" for its work in get-
ting anti-bias clauses in all of its
contracts and union services.
Other unions cited were Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store
Local 194; Packinghouse Workers
Local 247; Retail Clerks Local
1515; Meat Cutters Local 547; and
Mailers Local 2.
Before the parley opened, Mor-
ris Bialis, conference chairman
and a vice president of the La-
dies' Garment Workers, and Ja-
cob Siegel, chairman of the Jew-
ish Labor Committee, urged cre-
ation of a federal cabinet post
on human rights.
ing and urban renewal programs
was adopted.
Labor in North Dakota lost its
fight to keep on the statute books
a "full crew" law which required,
for safety purposes, a minimum
six-man crew on trains over a cer-
tain size.
Defense and Billboards
In other issues decided by the
voters, 14 states adopted civil de-
fense recommendations authorizing
the legislatures to provide for con-
tinuity of government in event of
enemy attack. Idaho voters de-
clined to lower the voting age to
19, Oregon refused to put further
curbs on highway billboards, Mis-
sissippi voters agreed but Arkansas
voters refused to make it easier
to close public schools to avoid
integration.
Michigan authorized a vote
next April on whether to hold
a constitutional convention and
eased the difficulty of getting con-
stitutional amendments adopted
by permitting approval in a ref-
erendum by a majority of the
votes cast for or against the
amendment. Previously it had
required a majority of the total
voting in the election.
Oklahoma voted against with-
holding state income taxes and
Georgia voters, deciding the cost
of marriage was high enough,
turned down a proposal to increase
the fees for marriage licenses by $1.
UAW Adds Wirtz
To Review Board
Detroit— W. Willard Wirtz, Chi-
cago attorney and arbiter, has ac-
cepted appointment as a member
of the public review board of the
Auto Workers succeeding the late
Dr. Edwin E. Witte.
Wirtz has been a member and
general counsel of the War Labor
Board, chairman of the Wage Sta-
bilization Board, and member of
the Illinois State Liquor Control
Commission.
The UAW established the review
board in 1957 to "police" union
ethics and to act on appeals of
members. The board has seven
i members.
House Seat
Shifts Face
25 States
(Continued from Page 1)
gained because the House reverts
to its normal membership of 435.
It has been temporarily at 437 as
a result of seats given to Alaska
and Hawaii when these former ter-
ritories were granted statehood.
If any state which is entitled to
additional representation fails to re-
district, the additional representa-
tive or representatives must be
elected at large on a statewide
basis in 1962. If a state which
loses representation fails to redis-
trict, all congressmen from that
state must be elected at large.
Beyond that, Congress has as yet
set no guidelines or requirements
for redistricting. In the absence of
some congressional directive, most
states where the legislature and
governor are from the same politi-
cal party are expected to redraw
district lines so as to give the in-
cumbent party the most and safest
congressional seats. Other factors
are involved, however, including
rural and small town versus big-
city areas and the political influ-
ence of incumbent congressmen.
In 14 of the states involved — the
Southern bloc plus California, Penn-
sylvania, Maryland, Missouri, Ken-
tucky and West Virginia — the Dem-
ocrats control the legislatures and
the governorships. The Repub-
licans have comparable control in
Iowa, Kansas, Maine and New
York.
In California, the Democrats
have the opportunity to recover
from the unbalanced redistricting
imposed by a Republican legisla-
ture after the 1950 census.
09-6I-U
One district set up by the
GOP, known as the "dumbbell
district" because of its peculiar
shape as it stretches across six
miles of Los Angeles, was de-
signed to confine as many Dem-
ocratic votes as possible into a
single congressional area. The
Democrats, who now have a 16-
to-14 edge in California's con-
gressional delegation, are likely
to end up with two-thirds of the
state's 38 seats in 1962.
The capture of a single seat in
the Pennsylvania Senate gave the
Democrats control of the legisla-
ture and of reapportionment, but
the hard facts of population changes
within the state may make it im-
possible to avoid the loss of some
Democratic seats.
In New York. Republican politi-
cal strategists are reported ready
with a plan to slice Democratic
seats from New York City and
combine two upstate districts now
represented by Democrats into one.
The 1960 census — and the re-
sulting redistricting — shows a con-
tinuation of the westward move-
ment of population and political
strength. The western states, led
by California, showed a 38.9 per-
cent population growth, more than
twice the national average.
The South, however, retains its
political strength in the House.
Gains in Florida and Texas made
up for losses in other states to keep
the representation of the 11 states
of the Old Confederacy at 106
seats.
High Court 1
To Review
Districting
The Supreme Court, reversing a
hands-off policy of 14 years' stand-
ing, has agreed to hear arguments
in a case seeking to compel state
legislative redisricting to end "gross
discrimination" against city resi-
dents.
The court decided to consider,
during its current session, a chal
lenge to the constitutionality of
Tennessee's state legislative dis-
tricts, which have remained un-
changed since 1901.
Since 1946 the court has repeat-
edly refused to intervene in cases
charging the "gerrymandering" of
either state or congressional dis-
tricts on the ground that the ques-
tion should not be settled by judi-
cial action but only in the political
arena.
A favorable decision for city
dwellers in the Tennessee case
could open the gates to a series
of court actions across the coun-
try to force wholesale redisrict-
ing. In many states rural areas
dominate state legislatures de-
spite the heavier concentration of
population in urban areas.
Assuming the courts ordered re-
districting on the state level, a
major overhaul of congressional
districts might eventually result
once the legislatures more accu-
rately reflected the concentration of
voters in the big cities.
Cities Support Action
The National Institute of Munici-
pal Law Officers — including legal
officials from cities in all 50 states
- — filed a brief in support of the
appeal for redisricting, pointing
out that legislative apportionments
"made when the greater part of the
population was located in rural
communities, are still determining
and undermining our elections."
As a consequence, the brief
continued, "the municipality of
1960 is forced to function in a
horse - and - buggy environment
where there is little political rec-
ognition of the heavy demands of
an urban population. 9 '
The municipal group, citing ex-
amples of what it called "rural
bias," pointed out that the 8 mil-
lion voters in New York City elect
only 90 members of the State As-
sembly, while 7 million voters up-
state choose 118 members. In
Connecticut, they continued, Hart-
ford has two representatives in the
State House for its 116,000 resi-
dents while Colebrook, with a
population of 547, also has two
representatives.
The case before the court was
brought by residents of Shelby
County, Tenn., who said the 50-
(Continued on Page 8)
Issned WMkly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Vol. y Washington 6. D. C.
92 a year %—«ni Class P<*tag« Paid at Washington, 0. C.
Saturday, November 26, 1960 17 » 7 No. 48
States Face 6 Work' Fights
In Aftermath of Elections
Full Powers
To Be Used
ByKennedy
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy in-
tends to exercise the full powers
of the presidency and assert ac-
tive direction of the executive
branch of the government, it was
revealed in Palm Beach, Fla.,
where he neared the end of a post-
election vacation interrupted by a
one-day trip to Washington for
Thanksgiving Day with his family.
Kennedy's attitude toward his
responsibilities as chief executive
was indicated to reporters by Clark
M. Clifford, who has been serving
as liaison man to establish arrange-
ments with the Eisenhower Admin-
istration for an orderly transfer of
authority next January.
Clifford, who was intimately
identified with the former Truman
Administration as special counsel
to the President, made these points
after lengthy discussions with Ken-
nedy:
• The President-elect probably
will not fill the White House post
of assistant to the President, which
under the Eisenhower Administra-
tion has been exceedingly power-
ful.
• Kennedy's White House staff
of policy-coordinators and personal
advisers will be smaller — "much
smaller" — than the 50-odd mem-
bers now serving Eisenhower.
• Kennedy will seek to obtain
"control of the Executive Branch"
by moving with dispatch to place
his own appointees in about 1,800
top-level, medium-level and other
policy-making posts.
The disappearance of the job
of assistant to the President
(Continued on Page 8)
tt
¥■
Battle Arena
50,000 Face Benefit Cut:
Recession in Steel
Drains SUB Fund
Pittsburgh — More than 50,000 jobless members of the Steel-
workers face a sharp pre-Christmas slash in -supplemental unem-
ployment benefits because of the deepening recession in the steel
industry, USWA Pres. David J. McDonald has warned.
McDonald said a 25 percent reduction in SUB payments is sched-
uled to be put into effect by U. S.f
Steel Corp. and eight other industry
giants in December because of an
"abnormal" drain on SUB funds
resulting from the protracted
slump in steel output. A few
smaller producers already have in-
stituted similar cuts.
UAW Denounces Kohler Co. Tactics
As a 'Masquerade' of Compliance
By Eugene A. Kelly
Detroit — The Kohler Co. not only has failed to deal fairly with 1,600 former workers but has
tried to persuade the National Labor Relations Board to approve its conduct and give it a "certificate
of compliance," the Auto Workers charged here.
UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey said UAW attorneys met with an NLRB aide after Kohler Co.
lawyers had met earlier with the same official in an attempt to "persuade the NLRB that it has lived
up to board orders" to reinstate^
UAW strikers and bargain collec-
tively with the union. The union
presented evidence seeking to sup-
port its charge that Kohler is not
in compliance.
Said Mazey: "Kohler has mas-
queraded at acting in good faith"
by a "surface approach" to meet-
ing its full responsibilities.
Mazey estimated that, since
the NLRB order against Kohler
was issued last Aug. 26, the com-
pany owes former strikers more
than $200,000.
"But, more important, Kohler
owes former strikers their jobs,"
he said. "There has been only a
faint gesture on kohlcr's part to
meet this important phase of the
NLRB order."
The UAW official gave this re-
port on the present status of the
union's six-year-old fight with the
Sheboygan, Wis., plumbing wares
firm:
Protest Pressed
Only a "fraction" of the 1,600
Kohler strikers are back on the job
in a capacity demanded by the
NLRB. Hundreds have not been
offered re-employment. Those that
were re-employed are working a
32-hour week — a schedule planned
by Kohler two weeks or so before
the NLRB order was announced
permitting the company to keep all
its strikebreaking employes on the
job.
Mazey said Harold A. Crane-
field, UAW general counsel, sent a
protest to NLRB Counsel Rothman
to "ward off Kohler's move to es-
cape" its responsibilities.
The evidence indicates, Crane-
field said, that the Kohler Co. has
tried to persuade NLRB officials
that it has fully complied with cer-
tain sections of the board order of
August while refusing to comply
with two other paragraphs pending
an appeal to the courts.
"Please be advised on behalf of
Local 833 that we strongly protest
{Continued on Page 7)
The USWA president said that
the impending reductions in job-
less aid "serve to emphasize again
the very real crisis in steel pro-
duction and employment," and
point up the need for prompt
action by the federal govern-
ment to implement the Employ-
ment Act of 1946 "to keep the
recession in steel from snowball-
ing into all other industries."
Ironically, the cuts in SUB bene-
fits will come almost on the heels
of an average 9.5-cent hourly wage
hike for USWA members still on
the job in basic steel. The increase,
effective Dec. 1, represents the sec-
ond round of economic benefits un-
der the 30-month contract signed
by the union and major producers
last January to end the 116-day
nation-wide steel shutdown.
$5 to $12 Cuts
For the 50,000 idled workers,
the SUB reductions will trim from
$5 to $12 a week from their unem-
ployment benefits. Under the SUB
agreement first negotiated in 1956,
the combination of regular state
unemployment insurance and SUB
is supposed to give a jobless union
member 65 percent of normal
earnings, but a complex financing
formula calls for a tapering off in
benefits when the funds dip below
fixed levels.
"The fact that the steel indus-
try has been in a protracted
production slump which has kept
{Continued on Page 3)
Drive Seen
For Repeal
In Indiana
Opponents of so-called "right-
to-work" laws scored substantial
gains in every state but one in
which "R-T-W" was an issue on
Nov. 8, but the tightest presiden-
tial election in history carried the
final decision into legislatures that
meet early in the coming year.
Efforts to repeal existing
"right-to-work" laws are expected
to be made in the legislatures of
both Indiana and Utah with repeal
possible but not certain.
In Indiana, success depends on
action in the Republican-controlled
house; in Utah, it hinges on the
action of Gov. George D. Clyde
(R), who has backed "right-to-
work" in the past.
Hope in Some States
The composition of the new leg-
islatures and state administrations
in Delaware, Vermont and New
Mexico raised hopes that antici-
pated renewal of attempts to pass
anti-union shop legislation in these
states will continue to be blocked.
A clear-cut victory on the
"work" issue was shut out in the
threatened states on Nov. 8 by
the narrow margin of Pres.-elect
John F. Kennedy's popular vote
and by the fact that the vote on
the "right-to-work" law was de-
fined by the position of candi-
dates for state office rather than
on a direct ballot referendum.
Republican Kansas, which ap-
proved a compulsory open shop
constitutional amendment in 1958,
was the single state in which op-
ponents of the anti-labor legislation
suffered a loss. Here, Democrats
who oppose "right-to-work" laws
lost both the governorship and a
number of key legislative seats.
The only bright spot in the Kansas
picture is the fact that Gov.-elect
John Anderson (R) is personally
not opposed to labor.
But even a Democratic sweep
(Continued on Page 8)
Rail Unions
Call for End
To Racial Bias
The leadership of the nation's
railroad unions has pledged to
"press with vigor" a drive to wipe
out racial discrimination in hiring,
promotion and union membership
in the railroad industry.
Chairman G. E. Leighty of the
Railway Labor Executives' Asso-
ciation said representatives of 23
railroad crafts adopted without dis-
sent a four-point resolution uphold-
ing the principle of equal rights.
The RLEA resolved:
• To seek equal rights "for all
workers in the railroad industry in-
cluding employment in all crafts
(Continued on Page 8)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
"SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY" displayed by union publications was hailed by Prof. Ben Yablonky
(at microphone) of University of Michigan's Dept. of Journalism, at Detroit meeting of Intl. Labor
Press Association. Seated are Marie V. Downey, managing editor of the Electrical Workers' Journal,
and Max Steinbock, editor of the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Record, whose publications
won recognition in 1LPA contest. At far right is R. C. Howard of Labor, president of ILPA.
Labor Press Judged Often Better
Than Dailies On the Great Issues
Detroit — In many cases the labor press is dealing "more effectively" with the great questions of
the day than does the daily press, the Department of Journalism of the University of Michigan has
observed in announcing the results of the annual Journalistic Awards Contest of the AFL-ClO's In-
ternational Labor Press Association.
Prof. Ben Yablonky, a member of the department's staff, declared:
"I have been greatly impressed^
with the professional quality of the
publications. They are generally
fine looking jobs, using attractive
formats, well edited and well writ
ten, indicating the publications are
relying more and more on profes-
sional journalists.
"The publications, too, display
a sense of responsibility to the
entire community in dealing with
questions which go beyond the
primary problems of the individ-
ual union — questions of war and
peace, of unemployment and
high prices, of health and old
age— questions which are the
concern of all Americans, not
just those of union members.
"And in many cases the publi-
cations deal more effectively with
such big questions than the daily
newspapers which ought to do a
better job considering their great
advantage in money and man-
power."
Internationals Cited
Among international union pub-
lications, the RWDSU Record and
the Electrical Workers' Journal
were singled out for their editorial
excellence. The IBEW publication
also received the award for the best
front-page format for magazines.
Labor, publication of the Railroad
Brotherhoods, received two top
awards, also.
Among state and local central
bodies, the Michigan AFL-CIO
won the top award for editorial
excellence. Three publications,
however, won two awards each:
the Chicago Federation News,
the Oregon Labor Press and the
Toledo Union Journal.
In contests among local union
publications, the American Aero-
naut, organ of Lodge 727, Ma-
chinists, received top award for
editorial excellence for newspaper
format, while 1199 Drug News of
New York, RWDSU, received edi-
torial excellence for magazines.
The Drug News also won the
award for the best front page.
A list of all winners follows with
signifying awards in the cate-
gory and others as winning cer-
tificates of merit.
INTERNATIONAL UNIONS
Editorial Excellence — News For-
mat— (1) RWDSU Record, N. Y.,
(2) Oil, Chemical and Atomic Un-
ion News and (3) The Machinist.
Editorial Excellence — Magazine
Format — (1) Electrical Workers'
Journal, (2) Service Employe and
(3) American Teacher.
Best Front Page — News Format
— (1) Labor Newspaper, (2) The
Government Standard and (3) Steel
Labor.
Best Front Page — Magazine For-
mat — (1) Electrical Workers' Jour-
nal, (2) Firemen & Oilers Journal
and (3) American Teacher.
Best Single Editorial — (1) Labor
Newspaper, (2) NMU Pilot and (3)
Catering Industry Employe.
Best Original Cartoon — (1) Sea-
farers Log, (2) Equity and (3)
Maintenance of Way Employes
Journal.
Best Feature Article— (1) UAW
Solidarity, (2) Textile Labor and
(3) Catering Industry Employe.
CENTRAL BODIES AND
TRADE COUNCILS
Editorial Excellence — News For-
mat— (1) Michigan AFL-CIO
News, (2) Milwaukee Labor Press
and (3) Service Union Reporter,
Los Angeles.
Best Front Page — News Format
— (1) Chicago Federation News,
(2) Toledo Union Journal and (3)
Detroit Building Tradesmen.
Best Single Editorial— (1) Chi-
cago Federation News, (2) New
Jersey Labor Herald and (3) Ore-
gon Labor Press.
Best Original Cartoon — (1) Ore-
gon Labor Press.
Best Feature Article — (1) Oregon
Labor Press, (2) Quarterly Review,
Los Angeles and (3) Michigan
AFL-CIO News.
Best Regular Special Column —
(1) Toledo Union Journal, (2) Mil-
waukee Labor Press and (3) Kern
County, Calif., Union Labor Jour-
nal.
Best Community Project — (1)
Toledo Union Journal, (2) Detroit
Building Tradesmen and (3) North
Bay Labor Journal, Santa Rosa,
Calif.
INDIVIDUAL UNIONS
Editorial Excellence — News For-
mat — (1) American Aeronaut, (2)
The Record, Local 1-2 Utility
Workers, (3) Electrical Union
World, Local 3, IBEW, New York
and (4) Overture, Local 47, Musi-
cians, Los Angeles.
Editorial Excellence — Magazine
Format— (1) 1199 Drug News, (2)
32B, Building Service Employes,
New York and (3) Boston Fire-
fighters Digest.
Best Front Page — News Format
— (1) The Record, (2) 32 Events,
Building Service Employes, N. Y.,
and (3) Air-Scoop, Local 148
UAW, Long Beach, Calif.
Best Front Page — Magazine For-
mat— (1) 1199 Drug News, (2) 32-B
and (3) 338 News, RWDSU, New
York.
Best Single Editorial— (1) Silver-
gate Union News, District 50, Ma-
chinists, San Diego, Calif., (2) 32
Events and (3) Salary Journal,
UAW, Local 300, Paterson, N. J.
Best Original Cartoon — (1) 338
News, (2) 32-B and (3) The Senti-
nel.
Best Feature Article — (1) Voice
of 770, (2) 1199 Drug News and
(3) Engineers News Record.
Best Regular Special Column —
(1) Dining Room Employe, N. Y.,
(2) The Garment Worker and (3)
The Voice of 770.
Best Community Project — (1)
Cyclone, Local 669, UAW.
ILPA Weighs Standards :
La bor Editors Plan
Expanded Services
Detroit — The Intl. Labor Press Association, credited with an
important role in the Kennedy-Johnson victory, stepped up its
continuing drive to expand and improve trade union publications.
The annual convention here attended by 250 delegates adopted
a new dues structure that would double the income of the associa-
tion, with the new funds earmarked^ -
to assist local unions in starting
publications and to help other
papers improve and expand. Some
of the dues increase would go also
toward accelerated regional confer-
ences and education programs all
geared to raise the standards of the
labor press.
The labor editors heard high
praise and an expression of "deep
gratitude" from Pres.-elect John F.
Kennedy for the role of the labor
press during the campaign. Ken-
nedy wired the convention:
Wire From Kennedy
"I have had the opportunity of
reviewing a number of union pub-
lications and I am convinced that
the astute handling of the election
issues brought new understanding
of their great significance to mil-
lions of union members across the
land. This could, in an important
measure, explain the success of
trade union political action this
year."
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
told the convention "there is no
part of our movement that has
greater potential value than the
labor press. It is, or ought to be,
the most effective single avenue of
communication between union
leadership and union membership."
He added: "Your organization
has worked valiantly and effec-
tively to root out undesirables
and outright crooks who have
masqueraded as labor publishers,
and to improve the editorial
quality of your member papers.
But I am sure you agree with me
that in the latter respect, espe-
cially, there is much that remains
to be done. I hope your conven-
tion will be the basis for further
progress."
ILPA Pres. R. C. Howard, busi-
ness manager of the weekly Labor,
in his keynote address said that he
"doubted whether anyone could
challenge the statement that our
standards are improving." He noted
that "even our critics admit this."
With the increase in dues "the role
of the labor press will be expanded"
to meet the needs of the future,
he asserted.
Bernard R. Mullady, ILPA sec-
retary-treasurer, in his report to
Kennedy Thanks Editors
For Coverage of Issues
Detroit — Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy has thanked the na-
tion's labor press for having brought understanding of the sig-
nificant election issues "to millions of union members."
In a telegram to the Intl. Labor Press Association conven-
tion here, Kennedy declared:
"Please extend to the officers and members of the AFL-CIO
Intl. Labor Press Association my deep gratitude for the un-
precedented support which the labor press gave to the Ken-
nedy-Johnson ticket during the campaign.
"I have had the opportunity of reviewing a number of union
publications and I am convinced that the astute handling of
the election issues brought new understanding of their great
significance to millions of union members across the land. This
could, in an important measure, explain, the success of trade
union political action this year.
"Victory at the polls, however, means that our job is really
just starting. The complexity of the problems which we face
in the 1960's and our attempts to meet them will require a high
degree of public understanding and public support. To this
end I look to the labor press as an essential medium of educa-
tion.
"The labor press has carved an impressive niche in its long
tradition this year. Individually, as labor editors, I extend to
you a warm salute and a heartfelt thank you for an excellent
job. May this year's ILPA convention be your most success-
ful."
the delegates said that the organize
tion's membership had been in-
creased to 333. During the year
40 applications were approved and
nine members were lost, largely due
to the publications going out of
business.
„ Liberal Mandate 9
AFL-CIO Legislative Dir. An-
drew J. Biemiller told the conven-
tion that "as far as the labor move-
ment is concerned we think there
is a mandate for liberal and pro-
gressive government and that it
ought to be carried out," as a re-
sult of the election.
Biemiller said that the critical
fact facing the country today is
America's stagnation in economic
growth. Unemployment has risen
to the point "to give us grave
doubts as to the future of the
country unless we take decisive ac-
tion," he added.
He predicted that there would
be 5 million unemployed in
January and a vital need of
pumping purchasing power back
into the economy including leg-
islation on depressed areas, fed-
eral aid to school construction
and teachers' salaries, minimum
wage, housing and a Forand-type
health bill.
"We lost some good members in
this Congress but the situation is
not hopeless," Biemiller said, with
the White House in new hands.
"But we are not looking for mir-
acles," he added.
If it had not been for religious
prejudice, Kennedy would have
been elected by a landslide, Dr.
Warren Miller, director of the
Political Behavior Program of the
University of Michigan, told the
meeting. "Only religious bigotry
made it a close campaign," he said.
"If Kennedy had been a Protestant
he would have won by the same
margins as Eisenhower."
Religion a Voting Factor
Miller's remarks were made dur-
ing a panel discussion on the sub-
ject, "Why People Vote the Way
They Do." He declared that sur-
veys by his organization showed
that only about 20 to 25 percent
of the normally Catholic Republi-
can vote went to Kennedy while
Democratic Catholics largely re-
turned to the Democratic fold. On
the other hand, Kennedy lost some
20 percent of the normally Demo-
cratic Protestant vote on the basis
of the religious issue.
Strike Looms Dec. 3
On Canadian Rails
Montreal, Que.— Some 110,000
non-operating employes bf major
Canadian railways may be forced
to strike at 8 a. m. on Dec. 3,
Vice Pres. Frank Hall of the Rail-
way Clerks has said here.
Hall, chairman of a negotiating
committee representing 15 unions,
said he made the announcement
with "extreme regret" but that the
workers had "no other course
available."
The unions are seeking wage in-
creases and improvements in work-
ing conditions. A board of concili-
ation handed down an award giving
the workers pay hikes totaling 14
cents an hour in two steps, but the
railroads refused to accept it. Min-
ister of Labor Michael Starr was
trying to bring the parties together
to avert a walkout.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
Page Three
Forecast for 1961:
Experts See Rise in Jobless Rate
Despite Business Activity Boost
Ann Arbor, Mich. — Unemployment is likely to increase next year even in the face of a modest
improvement in the economy, a leading economist has forecast.
Dr. Daniel B. Suits of the University of Michigan's Dept. of Economics, using projections that
have been reliable since 1953, predicted a slight increase in the gross national product while unem-
ployment hits a level of 4.3 million, compared to 3.6 million in October of this year.
The forecast was backed up by^"
a consensus of experts attending
the university's eighth-annual Con-
ference on the Economic Outlook.
Three-fourths of the 52 ex-
perts — most of whom serve as
economists and economic ana-
lysts in business, government
and industry — expect joblessness
to rise. The average forecast
was 4.2 million unemployed in
1961.
The great majority of the group
expected business to continue its
moderate decline for several
months before activity turns up
again.
The contributing factors cited
were lack of vigorous consumer
buying, especially "in durables like
automobiles; continued declines in
inventories and in new plant and
equipment; increased unemploy-
Job Safety
Duties Listed
By Brownlow
Harrisburg, Pa. — On-the-job
safety was described as "a three-
way responsibility" by Pres. James
A. Brownlow of the AFL-CIO
Metal Trades Dept. in an address
to the annual Occupational Safety
Conference of Pennsylvania's Dept.
of Labor & Industry here.
The employer, Brownlow de-
clared, has the obligation to pro-
vide a safe and healthful place of
work and safety-protected tools
and equipment, and to enforce
safety regulations fairly.
The worker's obligation is to
follow established safety prac-
tices and to avoid any action
which might harm him or his
fellow-workers, he added.
Government's obligation, Brown-
low said, is to provide sound in-
dustrial safety and occupational
health legislation, enforced through
"fully trained inspectors, well-paid
and not subject to political appoint-
ment or removal."
Atomic Problems Stressed
Earlier the conference heard
Leo Goodman, secretary of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.'s
Atomic Energy Technical Com-
mittee, charge that transfer of re-
sponsibility for some aspects of
radiation safety from the Atomic
Energy Commission to the states
jeopardizes the health and welfare
of workers.
Goodman said that labor will
seek repeal of the act providing
for the shift. He continued:
"We shall urge instead legisla-
tion to establish a separate fed-
eral agency to control and regu-
late radiation hazard from all
sources in cooperation with all
agencies throughout govern-
ment."
The conference was attended by
more than 500 safety engineers,
union and management safety di-
rectors and insurance company
representatives.
Harry Boyer, co-president of the
Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO and
a speaker at the conference, de-
scribed the annual meeting be-
tween labor and management rep-
resentatives as "vitally important."
He emphasized that "organized la-
bor strongly supports good safety
practices and necessary regulations
and rigid enforcement — by legal
means if required."
ment and decreases in family for-
mation and housing starts.
The mid- 1961 upturn was not
expected to be sharp. The experts
expected it to be prompted by in-
creased government spending, an
easier money policy and higher
consumer spending, especially for
services and housing. Inventory
replenishment and year-end plant
investment also are expected to
help.
Higher Living Costs Seen
The survey of the 52 participants
also disclosed that:
• On the cost of living, 82 per-
cent expect it to go up next year;
• On average hourly factory
earnings, 82 percent foresee an in-
crease, with the average forecast
arriving at $2.34 an hour in 1961.
It was $2.29 in September.
• On corporate profits before
taxes, 22 percent see an increase
ahead while 56 percent expect a
decline.
• On the gross national prod-
uct, 83 percent expect an increase
and 13 percent a decline. Most
foresee a GNP of between $504
and $515 billion, compared to a
rate of $503 billion for 1960's
third quarter.
Suits, using a mathematical
model of the economy, said the
GNP will rise about 2 percent
next year and total $515 billion.
Despite this improvement, he
predicted, many new workers
entering the labor force will be
unable to find jobs. He said the
labor force will rise to 71.4 mil-
lion but unemployment will in-
crease by 500,000 to 4.3 million
or about 6 percent of the work
force.
Suits, who last year correctly
forecast 1960 auto sales at 6.5
million, said total car sales next
year probably will decline 300,000
units to 6.2 million. He expected
non-farming housing starts to in-
crease by 200,000 to 1.4 million,
thanks chiefly to lower interest
rates.
His forecasts were based on as-
sumptions of no change in con-
sumer credit terms; a $4.5 billion
increase in spending by government
at all levels; a projected boost of $2
billion in government defense or-
ders next year; easing of the money
market; a drop of $300 million in
government interest payments.
Price Hikes Not Due to Wages
Prof. Simon Rottenberg of the
University of Chicago, substituting
for Auto Workers' Pres. Walter P.
Reuther, told the conference that
wage increases have not been re-
sponsible for inflation during the
post-war period.
Rottenberg said 93 percent of
the price increase occurring be-
tween 1946 and 1958 was concen-
trated in five years: 1946-48, 1950-
51 and 1956-58.
The mid-1946 to mid-1948
rise, he said, came from pent-up
consumer demand, fueled by
war-accumulated government
bonds and other liquid assets.
The mid-1950 to mid-1951 rise
resulted from the Korean War
and the mid-1956 to mid-1958
rise from "intensive" business
expansion.
Rottenberg said labor got less
than its proportionate share of
productivity gains, noting that pro-
ductivity rose over 37 percent in
the 1947-57 period while earnings
and fringe benefits rose 35 per-
cent.
NEW "HIGH" in crossing picket lines is achieved by management
of Trojan Powder Co., Allentown, Pa., which ferried personnel into
plant via helicopter after company was struck by Local 477 of the
Chemical Workers following expiration of old contract. Dispute
centers on wages, pensions, seniority, grievance machinery.
Steel Slump Brings
Cut in SUB Checks
(Continued from Page 1)
the operating rate at around 50
percent for more than half the
year," McDonald said, "has
added vast numbers of steel
workers to the unemployment
rolls and endangers the fund
from which the companies pay
SUB.
"Reductions in such payments
come only in abnormal periods of
long recession which our nation
cannot stand and for which meth-
ods must be devised to correct."
Since 1956 when the union first
negotiated the SUB program, the
USWA president pointed out, these
funds have poured $132 million in-
to the nation's economy to bolster
purchasing power in the steel areas
and to help cushion the shock of
Labor Protests NLRB Outlawing
Of Long-Legal Checkoff Clause
Organized labor has protested a National Labor Relations Board ruling that a union contract vio-
lated the Taft-Hartley Act because it contained a requirement that members must notify both manage-
ment and the union of their revocation of dues-checkoff authorizations.
The board ruled last October that because it contained such a provision, a contract between Mine
Workers Dist. 50 and the Boston Gas Co. did not constitute a bar to a representative election. The
ruling invalidating the UMW pact<p
was handed down on an election
petition filed by the Utility Work-
ers.
In a brief filed with the NLRB,
the AFL-CIO contended that
thousands of union contracts
contained similar provisions
based on a Justice Dept. inter-
pretation of Taft-Hartley 12
years ago. The federation warned
that if the board failed to over-
turn its ruling, "widespread dis-
ruption of peaceful labor-man-
agement relations would result."
Similar challenges to the board's
position were filed by three con-
stituent departments of the AFL-
CIO — the Industrial Union Dept.,
the Building & Construction Trades
Dept., and the Metal Trades Dept.
— and by 11 affiliated international
unions.
The AFL-CIO brief was sub-
mitted by General Counsel !. Al-
bert Woll and William S. Tyson.
It pointed out that in 1948 the
assistant attorney general reviewed
the language of a contract specifi-
cally calling for sending of written
revocation notices to both union
and employer and gave approval to
the language involved.
"For more than 12 years,"
the AFL-CIO brief asserted,
"labor and management have
relied in good faith on this inter-
pretation of the assistant attorney
general. It is plain that (he) did
not consider the notification re-
quirements to impinge upon the
employe's individual choice."
In the Boston Gas case, the
NLRB contended the UMW con-
tract violated the employe's rights
New Seamen 9 s Union
Wins Key Ruling
Philadelphia — The Intl.
Maritime Workers Union won
a key decision in its battle
to organize crews of "run-
away" ships when Judge Ed-
ward J. Griffiths of the Com-
mon Pleas Court here re-
jected a request for an in-
junction to halt the IMWU's
picketing of the 44,000-ton
Ore Monarch.
The Monarch, flying a Li-
berian flag and manned by
Cayman Islanders from the
West Indies, is owned by
D. K. Ludwig, acknowledged
"kingpin" of the runaways.
It has been tied up since Oct.
21. Lud wig's attorneys an-
nounced an appeal to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
because it required him to notify
the union, as well as the company,
of his intent to revoke a dues check-
off authorization.
The brief pointed out that pro-
visions similar to the one in ques-
tion are in "widespread use in in-
numerable labor-management con-
tracts" covering hundreds of thou-
sands of employes, and added:
"The AFL-CIO is disturbed by
the decision . . . because it is con-
vinced that unless this decision is
reversed labor unrest on a mam-
moth scale will result."
The IUD brief— submitted by
General Counsel Arthur J. Gold-
berg and Associate General
Counsel David E. Feller — point-
ed out that the NLRB, until very
recently, had "consistently held"
that the provisions of the section
dealing with the checkoff were
"entirely outside of its jurisdic-
tion."
The department contended that
the checkoff provisions were in-
serted in the Taft-Hartley Act only
in the section dealing with the types
of payments which management
could legitimately make to a trade
union and therefore were matters
for Justice Dept. rather than NLRB
supervision.
unemployment.
Without these payments, he
asserted, the two business down-
turns which have occurred in the
past four years — the 1957-58 re-
cession and the current slump —
"would have developed into run-
away depressions in many areas
of our nation."
McDonald emphasized, however,
that SUB is "no substitute for full
employment," and called on the
industry and the government to
join in devising means "to provide
the type of economic growth our
nation necessarily must have to
meet the challenge of modern
times."
"We need and must have pro-
grams in America to make the
Employment Act of 1946 more
than mere words on the law books
of our land," McDonald declared.
"We need schools, we need high-
ways, we need roads — not only to
maintain social progress but also
to insure the rate of economic
growth necessary for this nation to
keep pace in the modern world."
He also called on steelmakers
and the government "to consider
with us the need for a shorter
workweek" to help ease some of
the joblessness resulting from
growing automation.
DiSalle Calls
ature on
Aid to Jobless
Columbus, O. — Gov. Michael V.
DiSalle (D) has called the Ohio
Legislature into special session seek-
ing emergency action to extend the
duration of unemployment benefits.
DiSalle will ask the legislature
for a temporary extension — for the
fourth time in three years — of job-
less benefits from the present maxi-
mum of 26 weeks to 39 weeks.
There are currently 172,000 un-
employed in the state, DiSalle re-
ported, with the number expected
to rise to 200,000 by Christmas.
While the Democrats have a
majority in both houses until
January, when the newly-elected
Republican-controlled legislature
takes office, a substantial num-
ber of GOP votes would be neces-
sary to bring about passage by
the two-thirds margin needed
for the legislation to go into ef-
fect immediately. With only a
simple majority, the extension
would not be effective for 90
days*
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
Cause for Thanks
THERE IS something "extra"' to offer thanks for this Thanksgiv-
ing as the nation pauses to pay homage to its hardy forebears —
their courage, strength and persistence in building a new country.
The something "extra" is the process now under way of trans-
ferring power from an outgoing Administration that has held the
reins of government for eight years to a new regime. The process of
peaceful changeover of enormous governmental power based on the
decision of the voters is one of the magnificent achievements of the
democratic system.
Americans accept this changeover as normal and expected;
but millions around the globe gaze at this civilized dedication
to continuity and peaceful change in unbelief.
It is this demonstrated ability of democracy to survive and pros-
per, this transferral of power in an orderly and intelligent manner,
that adds something "extra" to Thanksgiving 1960.
The Great Gold Scare
PRES. EISENHOWER'S dramatic move to bring home de-
pendents of American servicemen abroad to "protect" the dollar
has centered attention on the complex problems of trade balances
and the movement of gold overseas.
The situation first came to the fore several years ago. In 1959
exports exceeded imports by $1 billion annually and the U.S. had
an unfavorable balance of payments of $3.5 billion. In 1960, as
a result of a major effort, exports will exceed imports by about $4.5
billion but the unfavorable balance of payments will still be about
$3.5 billion.
The 1960 deficit has not resulted from an increase in foreign aid
or military aid to American allies. It does not stem from expanded
U.S. private investment overseas or from increased American tour-
ism.
It results, in the main, from the transfer of foreign-held U.S.
dollars in American short-term securities from the U.S. to west-
ern Europe, where interest rates are higher. This move has been
characterized as "hot money in pursuit of high-interest rates."
The solution to this problem is not to bring back military de-
pendents from overseas posts, or to cut the foreign aid program, or
to get our allies to absorb some of the cost of our military aid
programs.
The solution rests in maintaining confidence in the currency by
restoring high levels of economic activity.
The Administration is hard put to admit that the reason fcjreign-
owned dollars are leaving the U.S. is because the American econ-
omy is sagging or because unemployment is rising or because in-
dustrial production is falling or because the United States has to ease
the money supply, thereby reducing interest rates to stimulate the
economy.
If the flow of foreign-owned and American-owned dollars to
western Europe is stopped, the balance of payments situation would
come back to manageable proportions.
This means action by the Federal Reserve System to bring
down interest rates on long-term securities — which would ease
business borrowing and mortgage lending — and strengthened
short-term rates which would increase the ability of the U.S. to
keep foreign-owned and American-owned dollars in the United
States.
The real way to restore and maintain confidence in the American
dollar is to restore confidence in the American economy — to get it
back on the move to full employment and full production.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee; George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, November 26, 1960
No. 48
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustriai Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Thanksgiving— 1960
■ V £
AFL-CiO*evys
'It's Cheaper to Die: 9
Doctors Lag Behind the Times,
Medical Care Scandal Grows
THIRTEEN YEARS AGO Bernard De Voto
compared the opposition of the American
Medical Association to government participation
in health care to that of a town which has heard
that a dam has burst and that the flood waters are
rushing toward it.
"The AMA has prepared to meet the flood,"
De Voto wrote, "by saying that it must not get
here, that the flood waters are communistic^ that
we shall all be lost if they reach the city limits."
Hostile waters are now everywhere pounding,
around the citadel of organized medicine itself.
Never before has the medical profession been
under such widespread attack. Never before has
its prestige sunk so low. Critical articles, essays
and books are appearing everywhere.
In one new book on the medical profession,
titled "It's Cheaper To Die," author William
Michelfelder asserts: "Millions of Americans
feel that medical service has deteriorated into
a business and the ideal of rendering care to
sick humanity has become tainted with the
opportunism of commerce."
Many factors have contributed to this attitude.
The staggering cost of medical care, which has
climbed faster than any other item on the con-
sumer price index, is the most important.
The expense of new techniques of treatment is
a main cause of steep medical costs, but doctors
are doing very well for themselves, too.
Also responsible for the growing antagonism
toward medical men is the shortage of doctors.
Past policies of the AMA have curtailed the num-
ber of physicians, and today there simply are not
enough to go around. Overworked doctors are
curt and abrupt with their patients. It is difficult,
if not impossible, to get a doctor to one's home.
Few patients are getting the kind of careful care
or attention they feel they are entitled to.
HOSTILITY to organized medicine has also
reached a peak because of the unyielding attitude
of the AMA toward highly popular and much
publicized proposals for government-sponsored
medical insurance for the aged. In addition, the
startling revelations of high profits and question-
able practices in the drug industry made by Sen-
ator Estes Kefauvers (D-Tenn.) Senate subcom-
mittee have been associated in the public mind,
justifiably or not, with organized medicine.
The rising bitterness in the consuming public
is reflected not only in the large number of
articles and books critical of the profession's
policies. It can be seen in the growing number
of malpractice suits against physicians, which
broke all existing records last year. It is on
view in the spread and success of comprehen-
sive medical plans such as the labor-supported
Health Insurance Plan of New York. It is ap-
parent in angry letters to the editors, and even
in jokes and cartoons of which the doctor seems
invariably to be the butt.
"It's Cheaper to Die" paints a good picture of
such widespread and insidious practices as fee-
splitting, kickbacks, incompetent or unnecessary
surgery, and commissions from diagnostic labo-
ratories. As specialists take over a larger propor-
tion of medical practice the use of fee-splitting
gimmicks between specialist and general practi-
tioner is becoming ever more common. Another
device being used more and more by doctors as
a greater number of patients is covered by insur-
ance is the hiking of fees over what is covered by
the insurance. A patient may, for instance, be
protected by surgical insurance which pays $200
for a certain operation. The physician, knowing
that the patient is covered for $200, will send a
bill for $350 on the assumption that the patient
can afford to pay the balance, whereas he would
have charged only $200 had the patient not had
insurance at all.
Whatever else they say, writers in this field
make one unmistakable point and the evidence
for it is overwhelming: the imbalance in the
doctor-patient relationship must be redressed.
The consumer must be given a far larger voice
in the economics of medicine.
The medical profession has not kept up with
the shifting social and economic conditions which
dictate a change in the traditional fee for service
system. The costs of medical care are now too
steep. Patients are no longer willing to accept
calmly whatever fee the physician sees fit to
impose. The abuses of the system have been too
many and are by now too well documented, and
the impression gained by the public of doctors as
men who are willing to become rich through the
misfortune of others is too well ingrained to be
easy to dispel.
Public Affairs Institute — Washington Window
AFLCTO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
Pagr^ Firm
Morgan Says:
Exotic, Poverty-Striken Haiti
Poses Positive Challenge to U.S.
{This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
IN AN INFORMAL straw poll taken in Port-
au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, just before our
elections, Haitians favored Senator Kennedy for
U.S. president over Vice President Nixon by
approximately five to one. Those who picked the
winner indicated they did so because they identi-
fied him with the Roose-
velt "good neighbor" pol-
icy and they had high
hopes a Kennedy adminis-
tration would "do some-
thing" for Haiti. The
United States has already
done a lot, financially
speaking, for Haiti — at
least $56 million worth of
loans, grants, surplus foods,
technical and other as-
sistance during the Eisen-
hower years alone — and
although much more must be done, it must be
done in a framework that will better help Haitians
do something for themselves.
This reporter has spent 10 days in Haiti, the
only French-speaking nation in the western hemi-
sphere, alternately dozing and looking. Perhaps
the dozing would have been more serene if the
looking had not been so startling. Today the
headlines stem from a cluster of little crises in
Central America. Tomorrow they could just as
easily spiral dangerously upward from the beauti-
ful, exotic, poverty-stricken, wretchedly-governed
country of Haiti.
lis physical position alone is enough to give
the steadiest statesman insomnia. It shares the
island of Hispanola uncomfortably and unhap-
pily with the rightist Trujillo dictatorship of the
Dominican Republic on the east and the leftist
dictatorship of Castro's Cuba is considerably
less than 100 miles away across a narrow strip
of the Caribbean to the west.
The only continuing institution in Haitian poli-
Morgan
tics is the army. There is no such thing as a bona
fide political party system. Regimes are changed
when dissident factions are powerful enough to
oust the ins. Haiti's nearly four million people
are 95 percent illiterate; they present the worst
population problem in proportion to arable land
in the western hemisphere; they are diseased and
undernourished and so is their economy.
Haiti's whirlpool of woes is not the fault of one
man or one faction but largely a legacy of violent
history: cruel exploitation by the Spanish and
French, costly freedom from the French a century
and a half ago and ensuing internal bleedings
indicted by competing black and mulatto leaders,
the brooding bitterness which still lingers after a
20-year occupation by U.S. Marines ended only
in the mid-thirties, and now the staggering prob-
lems of bringing a primitive even pagan society
into the age of jets, missiles, and the exploding
nationalism of dark-skinned peoples.
It would be hard to imagine an area more
ripe for violent change than the underprivi-
leged land of Haiti. Oddly, neither Castro nor
Khrushchev seems to have given major atten-
tion to Haiti — yet. But while the safety and
security of the hemisphere depend in part on
the health and vigor of this little third of an
island, there is a challenge to us Americans
here which rises above our own self-serving
needs.
HAITI IS SMALL enough so that it could,
under ideal conditions, be a kind of pilot plant for
improvement of all Latin America. It would take
so little, comparatively speaking, to get roads
built, the gashing wounds of erosion bound with
dams and reforestation, education expanded, in-
dustry established, agriculture balanced, health
improved. But conditions are not ideal. People
and problems have to be dealt with as they are.
Haiti is corroded with anti-American prejudice.
This flows largely from the "racial problem" and
the inevitable envy of the haves by the have-nots.
There are bright spots in the Haitian picture
which I hope to touch on in another broadcast.
But in the forefront of the turbulent Latin Amer-
ican panorama confronting President-elect Ken-
nedy is the big, throbbing fact of little Haiti.
Churches Advised to Expand Fight
For Protection of Migrant Labor
By Robert B. Cooney
A study group has recommended that Protestant churches throughout America — "in their fight
to eradicate social evils surrounding the use of migrant labor" — support the extension of all major
protective labor legislation to farm workers.
This recommendation, submitted to a three-day conference sponsored by the National Council of
Churches of Christ in Washington, D. C, included protection of collective bargaining, minimum
wages, jobless insurance, child la-^
bor and workmen's compensation.
Some 250 church, government,
social welfare and labor delegates
gathered from 34 states to attend
the conference.
The aim of the conference was
to frame "a 10-year master plan
that the Protestant churches will
set in motion to free migrants from
the shackles of economic, social
and educational deprivation."
The recommendations from the
various study sections covered the
fields of employment, education,
housing, health and welfare, re-
settlement and religious ministry.
The Rev. Shubert Frye of
Syracuse, N. Y., heading the
Conditions of Employment sec-
tion, reported that his group felt
the traditional emphasis on help-
ing the farm worker should be
shifted to providing farm work-
ers with the means to help them-
selves.
It was for this reason that his
group supported the right of farm
workers to unionize and the belief
that churches should support the
principle of collective bargaining in
agriculture while remaining neu-
tral as between growers and work-
ers.
In a separate development, the
second report of the President's
Committee on Migratory Labor
was made public.
16-Point Proposal
The President's Committee,
headed by Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell, listed 16 proposals for
state and federal action.
There was no mention of extend-
ing to farm workers the legal right
to organize and bargain collective-
ly. The question of extending the
federal minimum wage to agricul-
ture was listed as a research proj-
ect.
The President's Committee urged
federal review of foreign worker
import programs to prevent adverse
effect on Americans; elimination of
residence requirements barring mi-
grants from education, health and
welfare services; crew leader regis-
tration and extension of state dis-
ability and child labor laws.
In a panel discussion at the Na-
tional Council of Churches' con-
ference, Franz E. Daniel, AFL-CIO
assistant director of organization,
pointed out that an organizing
campaign is making headway
among farm workers in California.
"We have demonstrated that
migratory farm laborers can be or-
ganized. As a result of our efforts,
wages have been raised more than
$12 million in nine California
areas," Daniel said.
Sen. Harrison Williams, Jr. (D-
N. J.), chairman of a Senate Labor
subcommittee on migratory labor,
told the conference that the elec-
tion of a Democratic Administra-
tion promised "high hopes", for
legislative action.
Williams set as a goal a "de-
cent, adequate minimum wage,"
but said that "across the coun-
try we are advised this (the pres-
ent $1 an hour federal mini-
mum) would cause great prob-
lems." He said the result prob-
ably would be an arrangement
"incorporating in part the piece-
rate system where that prevails."
Williams also said that, with re-
gard to the once-proposed cut-off
age of 16 for child labor, this has
proved "unrealistic both in terms
of needs of farmers and it would
multiply the problem of young
people when their mothers and
fathers go to the fields."
Williams said the minimum age
would not be below 13 and that
provisions would be made to pro-
tect youngsters against hazardous
work and ensure continuity of
schooling.
WASHINGTON
Am
THE SUPREME COURT S AGREEMENT to review a lower-
court decision involving the legality of Tennessee's state legisla-
tive districts means that the high tribunal is going to take another
look 1 at an inequity that pockmarks the nation — the "rural gerry-
mander" that deprives city and suburban residents of equal rep-
resentation in almost all our legislatures, including Congress.
In the Tennessee case, residents of Shelby County (Memphis)
began court action charging that a predominantly rural legislature
has refused to revise the districts so as to take account of popula-
tion changes.
The state constitution commands the legislature to redistrict
every 10 years after each census, to correspond with the changes,
and the legislature has simply ignored the requirement. The
Shelby County residents say that as a result they now have one-
tenth the representation enjoyed by residents of rural counties.
The Supreme Court has never intruded in this field, taking the
viewpoint that the creation of legislative districts is basically a "polit-
ical" matter, not suitable for adjudication by the courts. In all our
history, no apportionment of either a state legislature or of a
state's districts for election to Congress has been upset by a U.S.
Supreme Court decision. In the most recent case, decided in 1946
and involving the congressional districts of Illinois, the ruling opinion
of Justice Felix Frankfurter warned against approaching this
"thicket."
* * *
WHAT IS OFTEN OVERLOOKED is that in at least one case,
involving congressional districts in Missouri, the state supreme court
did invalidate an inequitable apportionment approved by the state
legislature. The legislature could not meet quickly enough to re-
vise the districts in line with the court's decision, and the result
was that for one or two elections all Missouri congressmen were
elected by statewide vote.
Also often overlooked is the fact that the 1946 U.S. Supreme
Court's decision was reached by a close 4-to-3 vote.
A group of Cook County (Chicago) citizens went to a special
three-judge federal court seeking relief from a system that al-
lowed one Illinois congressional district to have more than
900,000 population while others had fewer than 300,000.
The special court said it would have had "no doubt" of its
power to outlaw these districts except for the Supreme Court prec-
edent, and the case was bucked up on appeal. In the high court,
three justices including Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas
said the districts should be invalidated. Three joined in the Frank-
furter opinion that the "political thicket" should be avoided. The
deciding vote was given by the late Justice Wiley Rutledge, who
declined to endorse Frankfurter's reasoning.
* * *
THE SUPREME COURT may decide in the Tennessee case
that it does not believe it wise to override the precedents. But
the dissenting opinion in the Illinois case was a powerful one, and
in the fullness of time the viewpoints of dissenters often have been
adopted as valid by a new majority.
The courts would not necessarily intrude deeply into the
"thicket" by invalidating legislative districts that are grossly and
manifestly inequitable in a popular government. They would
not have to attempt to spell out details of what would be accepta-
ble or to substitute judicial judgment for legislative decision in a
political field. The decision might swing on a matter of degree,
and might lay down merely broad ground-rules within which
political officials could exercise their rights freely.
Any major change in the state legislatures that reduced the al-
most nationwide "rural -gerrymander" would presumably have an
eventual effect on congressional districts, since a more fair repre-
sentation of urban residents in the states would lead to a more fair
apportionment of the lower house of Congress.
SERVICE RENDERED by Harry Avrutin (right), secretary-treas-
urer of Union Label & Service Trades Council of Greater New
York, in helping provide free public concerts, has won him citation
from non-profit Municipal Concerts, Inc. With Avrutin are Julius
Grossman (left), director of concert organization, and Al Knopf
(center), vice president of New York Musicians' Local 802.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
TRADE UNIONISTS studying under the international labor training program of Cornell University
were guests of AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler and the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs at
luncheon during two-day orientation session in nation's capital. Students, scheduled for eventual for-
eign service assignment, conferred with representatives of State and Labor Departments and Intl. Co-
operation Administration in program arranged by Harry Pollak, AFL-CIO international representative.
Big Three Auto Giants Turn Down
Ike's Proposal for Talks with Union
Detroit — The giants of the automotive industry have flatly rejected a proposal — originally made
here by Pres. Eisenhower — that labor and management hold regular meetings, not connected with the
collective bargaining process, to discuss mutual problems.
The suggestion was put forth by the President last month when he addressed a dinner meeting of
auto industry executives, and was followed up a few days later by Auto Workers' Pres. Walter P.
Reuther in letters to the heads ot^
the "Big Three" — Ford, General
Motors and Chrysler.
Turning down the proposal, Ken-
neth D. Cassidy, Ford's vice pres-
ident of industrial relations, said
his company did not believe that
acting in concert with the UAW"
would be "either sound or con-
sistent with the position and func-
tion that each of us has in the
American scheme of things."
GM also turned down the
Doherty Cleared
Of Hatch Act Charge
Pres. William C. Doherty of the Letter Carriers has been absolved
by the U.S. Civil Service Commission of charges that he violated
the Hatch Act when he authorized the use of his name in a pre-
convention advertisement urging Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson to be a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomi-
nation
" , . i, , , , t when informed that the charges
The charge, reportedly brought ^ been
by the Post Office Dept., had been
sharply denounced by the Letter
Carriers as a vindictive attempt at
retaliation by Postmaster Gen.
Arthur Summerfield because Con-
gress overrode Pres. Eisenhower's
veto of a pay raise for government
workers.
Doherty, an AFL-CIO vice
president, is technically subject
to Hatch Act restrictions on polit-
ical activities by government em-
ployes because he is on leave
without pay from his. job as a
letter carrier. Closing of the
case on the ground of lack of
evidence of any Hatch Act vio-
lation was announced by the
CSC's general counsel, Lawrence
V. Meloy.
At the same time, Meloy an-
nounced that charges also were be-
ing dropped against Dr. Walter
Baumgarten, Jr., part-time medical
officer at the commission's St. Louis
regional office, who signed a sim-
ilar public appeal urging the nomi-
nation of Adlai E. Stevenson.
"Thank God, we still have free-
dom of speech in the United States
of America," Doherty declared
Goldberg Elected to
Foreign Policy Group
New York — Arthur J. Goldberg,
special counsel to the AFL-CIO,
has been elected to the board of
directors of the Foreign Policy As-
sociation — World Affairs Center,
here.
The organization is a non-profit,
educational group.
Doherty said he regarded his
vindication as a "demonstration of
democracy." Earlier he had charged
Summerfield with being "the first
postmaster general in modern times
to try to make the suppression of
free speech a way of life in the
postal establishment."
Some observers regarded the
Doherty and Baumgarten decisions
as evidence of broader recognition
by the Civil Service Commission of
the right of federal employes to
express their opinions publicly on
political candidates and issues.
They saw it as a follow-through to
a precedent-setting case during the
1952 campaign when a federal
court reversed a Civil Service Com-
mission ruling that an employe who
wrote a letter to a newspaper on a
political issue was guilty of a Hatch
Act violation.
Commission officials, however,
refused to draw any general con-
clusions from the decisions, de-
claring that the line between the
right of employes to express per-
sonal views and the ban on parti-
san political activity is so finely
drawn that each case must be
judged separately.
The Hatch Act, ostensibly aimed
at keeping the career civil service
out of politics, has been repeatedly
criticized as making "second class
citizens" out of federal workers.
The principal postal unions have
called for outright repeal of the
law while the Government Em-
ployes, largest of the federal white-
collar unions, seeks modification of
the act.
proposal in a letter to Reuther,
the contents of which were not
disclosed. A rejection was ex-
pected shortly from Chrysler.
Eisenhower had told the auto in-
dustry officials that "labor and busi-
ness leaders must sit down in a
calm atmosphere and regularly dis-
cuss — far removed from the bar-
gaining table — their philosophies,
their needs, and above all their
common responsibility to this free
nation."
Following up on the President's
suggestion, Reuther proposed crea-
tion of a permanent "automobile
industry joint management-labor
conference," consisting of "top
level,* policy-making executives
from the automobile manufacturing
corporations and leaders of the
UAW at the policy-making level,"
to meet "at least four times a
year."
Reuther Urges Wide Talks
The UAW president urged that
subjects considered at the joint con-
ference should be "as wide as pos-
sible, covering the full range of
problems that involve our common
interest." He specifically ruled out
any discussion of collective bar-
gaining problems at these sessions.
Cassidy's letter of rejection
contended that Eisenhower's
principal concern, in suggesting
the series of conferences, was
"focused on the institution of
free collective bargaining, the
process by which the terms and
conditions of employment are
worked out for employes rep-
resented by the UAW and other
unions."
Ford, he said, has "from time to
time" met with UAW officials "on
an informal, non-bargaining basis
conducive to frank discussion" of
collective bargaining matters, and
would continue to do so. He added,
however, that the company would
not participate in the conferences
Reuther suggested because they
would be "expressly directed at
and confined to joint action on
matters outside the scope of col-
lective bargaining."
GATT Agrees To Act;
Sweatshop Goods
Trade Ban Sought
Geneva, Switzerland — The world's leading trading nations have
agreed here to take steps to end the flooding of markets with
sweatshop goods that cost jobs of organized workers.
Machinery to deal with what the economists call "market
disruption" was set up by the 38-member nations of the General
Agreement on Tariffs & Traded
during their three-week autumn
session.
The action was taken under the
prodding of the U.S. after the AFL-
CIO had pushed the State Dept.
to raise the issue of the low-wage
goods from areas such as Hong
Kong and Japan.
The trade group, called GATT
after the initials of their pact,
established a permanent commit-
tee on market disruption. It will
keep a watch on trade develop-
ments that foreshadow a market-
flooding situation and try to
head them off.
Regular consultations will be
held under the committee's auspices
between low-cost labor countries
and the nations which are threat-
ened by floods of imports from
them. Specific cases of market dis-
ruption will be investigated.
The decision to take concrete
action was the outgrowth of a re-
port by a working party set up at
last spring's GATT session. Bert
Seidman, economist with the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Research, attended
that session as an observer.
The Intl. Labor Organization
has just undertaken to work with
the trade body in collecting and
analyzing information on condi-
tions that produce sweatshop
labor and the impact they have
on trade. The situations in the
various branches of the textile
and clothing industries will be
the first to come under scrutiny,
the ILO said.
ILO experts will concentrate on
wages and employment, while the
trade organization staff will deal
with production and cost factors
other than labor, as well as with
trade flows and their impact on
economic activity.
Douglas Dillon, U.S. Under-Sec-
retary of state, first brought the
issue of market disruption out into
the open at a GATT session in
Tokyo last year. He warned that
the expansion of international trade
in an orderly fashion could be se-
riously compromised unless action
was taken.
Because of the political, eco-
nomic and social consequences that
floods of cheap labor goods had in
countries with better labor condi-
tions, these countries might be
forced to protect themselves by im-
posing import restrictions, he said.
The U.S. delegation, headed
by Charles W. Adair, Jr., of the
State Dept., welcomed the posi-
tive action taken by the trade
group. It opened the way to a
solution of the problem of how
to provide steadily expanding
markets for the exports of de-
veloping countries without up-
setting conditions in other na-
tions, it was stated.
At the same time it was hoped
that the work being undertaken
will help solve the issue of dis-
crimination by many countries
against Japanese goods.
The ending of this discrimina-
tion would lighten the burden of
those countries which try to help
Japan by not barring her exports.
Safe Machinery Issue
Placed on ILO Agenda
Geneva, Switzerland — The drive to protect workers from death
or injury from unsafe machinery was advanced another step at the
four-day session here of the Intl. Labor Organization's Governing
Body.
The 40 worker, government and employer members of the
executive unit decided to place the<f-
question of banning the sale, hire
or use of improperly guarded ma-
chinery before the 1962 Intl. Labor
Conference.
Spokesmen for labor had strong-
ly pressed at the last session of the
Governing Body for a start on the
drafting of international regula-
tions, but the decision to send the
problem forward to the ILO con-
ference was postponed.
One of the aims of the work-
er delegates is to get an inter-
national agreement that will
make it possible "to fix responsi-
bility for the use of unsafe ma-
chinery," Ruby Faupl, AFL-
CIO member of the ILO execu-
tive, had said.
The inclusion of the item of in-
adequately guarded machinery on
the 1962 Conference agenda "will
prove to workers everywhere that
the ILO is acting on their prob-
lems," Jean Moeri, Swiss chair-
man of the worker delegates, said
when the question was again raised.
Victory for Workers
The Governing Body's affirma-
tive decision was a victory for the
workers group and their new chair-
man, a veteran of ILO sessions.
The election of Moeri, secre-
tary of the Swiss Federation of
Trade Unions, by the workers to
succeed Sir Alfred Roberts as
chairman was announced to the
joint executive by Faupl.
Sir Alfred's departure after head-
ing the workers group for 12 years
was caused by the inability of his
own British union to continue to
spare him for ILO duties, Faupl
said. The American spokesman
paid tribute to Moeri as having won
the respect of all for his "humanity,
humor and understanding of the
problems and objectives of the
ILO."
A Soviet bid to inject Cold War
issues into an organization dedi-
cated to the non-political objective
of promoting social justice by
raising living standards was quick-
ly squelched.
Worker delegates joined with
the non-Communist government
and employer representatives to
vote down Soviet government
delegate Ivan Goroshkin's de-
mand that the ILO embark on a
program "to liquidate colonial-
ism and its disastrous conse-
quences in the field of labor and
workers' living conditions."
The Governing Body decided
over the objections of the U.S.S.R.
to go ahead with plans to set up an
Intl. Vocational Training Informa-
tion and Research Center.
The endowment fund for the
ILO's Intl. Institute for Labor
Studies in Geneva has now reached
$875,000, David A. Morse, the
93-nation organization's American
director general, announced during
the session. AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany was one of the endorsers of
the plan to establish the institute
because of the help it can give the
newly developing countries.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
Page Seven
Federal Programs Also Backed:
TWUA Urges NLRB 'Reform,'
Charges 'Shocking Delays'
New York — Sweeping "reform" of the National Labor Relations Board to end "shocking delays"
In the administration of labor-management laws has been urged by the Textile Workers Union of
America.
The union's 22-member executive council, holding its quarterly meeting at TWUA headquarters
here, charged that "the present malfunctioning of this vital agency is causing chaos in the area of
labor-management relations
The council declared the admin-
istrative delays were "inexcusable"
since Congress had appropriated
money for additional staff members
and had modernized the board's
procedures by making possible dele-
gation of the heavy workload in
representation cases.
In other actions, the TWUA
council:
• Urged the incoming Kennedy
Administration and the 87th Con-
gress to act "promptly on a bold
legislative program" early in 1961
which would include a $1.25 hourly
minimum wage with extended cov-
erage, area redevelopment legisla-
tion, federal aid to education and
housing, and medical care for the
aged based on the social security
system.
• Opposed industry suggestions
that depreciation allowances should
be eased, charging the proposed
changes would "yield a bonanza in
tax savings for textile corporations
but would not stimulate economic
growth."
• Called on Pres.-elect John
F. Kennedy to establish a textile
development agency to promote
the discovery of new industrial
and consumer uses for textile
products.
• Pointed to a heavy toll of in
plant accidents which it laid on
textile industry speedups and called
for establishment of joint labor-
management safety committees to
reduce such accidents "to the abso
lute minimum."
The TWUA executive council
said that the "inordinate delays" in
labor board handling of workers'
cases "constitute a monstrous denial
of justice to all parties and have in
Pilots Re-Elect Sayen,
Raise Strike Benefits
Miami Beach — The Air Line Pilots re-elected C. N. Sayen to
his fifth term as president and voted all-out support — backed up
by higher strike benefits — to Southern Airways pilots who have been
refused reinstatement by a union-busting management.
The ALPA's 293-member board of directors at its biennial meet-
ing here — equivalent of a conven-^
tion — approved a $60-a-month
raise in benefits to the 130 pilots
who have been replaced in what
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
described as a "strikebreaking and
union-destruction program."
The increase brings the strike
benefits for Southern pilots to a
range of $410 to $710 a month.
The higher rate was made retro-
active to the 120th day of the
dispute, which began June 5.
Although the original strike is-
sues were settled on the basis of
National Mediation Board recom-
mendations, the company refused
to reinstate its regular pilots. The
Civil Aeronautics Board has sched-
uled a hearing on union demands
that Southern Airways be deprived
F. M. Chapman
Of Carpenters
Dies at 55
Seattle, Wash. — Frank M. Chap-
man, 55, for six years treasurer of
the Carpenters, died here after a
protracted illness.
A veteran of 35 years in the trade
union movement, Chapman joined
a federal labor union of lumber
workers in Snoqualmie Falls,
Wash., in the mid-20s and later was
instrumental in bringing about the
affiliation of West Coast lumber
worker FLUs with the Carpenters.
Chapman became the first
business agent of Carpenters
Local 1845, Snoqualmie Falls,
and remained a member through-
out his lifetime.
In the early 50s he was named
West Coast coordinator for lumber
locals for the international and in
1954 was appointed director of the
union's Dept. of Organization.
Later the same year he was ap-
pointed treasurer to succeed S. P.
Meadows, who had resigned, and
was re-elected to the post without
opposition in 1954 and 1958.
He is survived by his widow,
Mrs. Esther Chapman, a daughter
and four grandchildren, all of
Seattle.
of its operating certificate and gov-
ernment subsidies.
Sayen was re-elected without op
position after supporters of James
M. Landis, a former chairman of
the Civil Aeronautics Board, failed
to muster the two-thirds vote needed
under the union's constitution to
permit a non-pilot to be placed in
nomination.
Landis received 4,694 of a total
of 11,498 votes cast.
In other elections, Capt. D. J.
Smith of Trans World Airlines was
re-elected to his fourth term as
treasurer. New officers chosen were
Capt. John Carroll of TWA, first
vice president, and Capt. Paul At-
kins of American Airlines, secre-
tary. The ALPA president serves
a four-year term; other officers are
elected for two years.
The convention, which moved
into an unscheduled second week,
also adopted a resolution calling
for amendment of the Federal
Aviation Act to limit the power of
the administrator and guarantee
consultation with interested parties
and full hearings before rules
changes are made. The union
asked also for the right of appeal
from the administrator's decisions.
In a related resolution, the
ALPA urged that administrators
of the FAA be drawn from the
ranks of civil, rather than mili-
tary, aviation. The present ad-
ministrator, £• R. Quesada, is a
retired Air Force general.
The delegates also heard critic-
ism of the CAB from a manage-
ment representative, United Air-
lines Pres. W. A. Patterson, who
charged that "most CAB members
are not men with aviation back-
ground but rather iise their po-
sitions . . . only as stepping-stones
to achieving other goals."
Texas Labor Backs
$4,000 Teachers' Base
Gonzales, Tex. — "Full support"
for moves to raise teachers' salaries
has been pledged by the executive
board of the Texas State AFL-CIO.
The board declared it was "ap-
palled" at the low salaries paid to
Texas teachers and called for an
immediate increase in teachers'
minimum pay to $4,014 a year.
flicted much suffering on the part
of workers who are victims of dis-
crimination, and bitter disillusion
among large numbers of employes
seeking the elementary rights of
self -organization."
The union called for both "im-
mediate relief" from the present
conditions and a study of longer-
range reforms.
Noting that a vacancy will soon
occur on the NLRB, the council
urged the appointment of an ad-
ministrator — rather than "merely a
partisan of either labor or manage-
ment" — who will be able to "meet
the administrative challenge from a
position of experience."
In its appeal to Kennedy for cre-
ation of a textile development agen-
cy, the TWUA charged that the
Eisenhower Administration has
"neglected the problems of the tex-
tile industry" and has "refused to
implement" recommendations made
last year by a Senate Commerce
subcommittee headed by Sen. John
O. Pastore (D-R. I.).
Textiles 'Stagnating'
The Pastore subcommittee found
that the textile industry has failed
to share in the nation's postwar
growth, the TWUA said, adding
that "the basic problem of the tex-
tile industry is its failure to expand.
Lacking the dynamism of other
basic industries, the textile industry
is stagnating."
The union's resolution on ac-
tion in the field of industrial
safety noted that although the
average injury-frequency rate for
all manufacturing industries has
fallen sharply in recent years, the
accident rate in the textile indus-
try has remained at the same high
level of 9 accidents per 1 mil-
lion man-hours which existed in
1954.
The TWUA charged that textile
manufacturers have generally been
so involved in speeding up textile
machinery that it has not main-
tained sufficient interest in "main-
taining safe operating conditions
and working habits."
Union Asks Aid to Win
Freedom for 8 in Prison
New York — The Textile Workers Union of America has
called on the entire trade union movement to support efforts
to secure the release of eight TWUA officers and members
now serving prison terms in North Carolina.
The eight unionists — including TWUA Vice Pres. Boyd E.
Pay ton — are serving prison sentences of two to 10 years on
charges that they conspired to dynamite plant property during
a strike at the Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills, Henderson,
N. C. The dynamiting never took place.
The TWUA executive council, at its quarterly meeting here,
called on unions to "appeal to the consciences of the people of
North Carolina and, through them, to the state authorities," to
"remedy the injustice" done the unionists. The council reaf-
firmed its belief that the men were innocent of any crime.
"TWUA does not regard these men as criminals," the coun-
cil said. "Rather we look upon them as martyrs to the cause
of labor."
Retail Clerks Vote to
Step Up Sears' Boycott
Chicago — The National Chain Store Committee of the Retail
Clerks voted at a special meeting here to "reaffirm and intensify"
the union's nationwide boycott of Sears Roebuck & Co* merchandise.
More than 100 leaders of RCIA local unions heard reports on
the struggle which started last May when Sears management laid
off 262 workers for honoring a<S>
picket line of striking Machinists in tior * to an AFL-CIO Executive
Council statement of last August
denouncing Sears' labor policies.
"We urge all members of organ-
labor and their friends," the
San Francisco.
The Machinists settled their
strike, but RCIA launched a "Don't
Buy Sears" campaign when man-
agement refused to rehire some em-
ployes, gave inferior jobs to others
and failed to bargain in good faith,
according to union charges.
Picketing To Continue
The RCIA leaders decided to
continue picketing Sears stores on
an informational basis; to advise
union members and the public of
Sears anti-labor policies; and to
step up demonstrations in various
cities aimed at cutting Sears' pa
tronage.
RCIA Pres. James A. Suffridge
said Sears must meet these condi-
tions before union objectives can
be achieved: end "Sheffer man-
type" coercion and corruption in
company-union relations; bargain
in good faith; grant union secu-
rity provisions at least equal to
those in contracts with Mont-
gomery Ward, largest Sears' com-
petitor; and clear up the San
Francisco problem stemming
from the improper firing of em-
ployes for honoring the Machin-
ists' picket line.
RCIA has more than 350,000
members. It has called their atten-
Training Conferences
Set for CSA Staffers
New York — The AFL-CIO Community Services program will be
highlighted in six cities across the nation with a series of regional
training conferences for local CSA representatives.
Announcing the meetings, the first of which was scheduled to
start Nov. 28 in Westbury, L. I., Leo Perlis, director of AFL-CIO
Community Service Activities, said^
148 CSA field staff representatives,
from 87 major cities are expected
to participate in the three-day
meetings.
The local CSA staff members
work full-time as labor representa-
tives with united funds and com-
munity chests to strengthen the re-
lationship between organized labor
and the network of community
health and welfare agencies, Perlis
said.
Designed to help the local CSA
men and women in the develop-
ment of community service pro-
grams, the conferences will focus
for the first two days on the prior-
ty programs of CSA, consumer
education and retirement planning.
The third day will be devoted to
blood-banking, also a priority, and
will feature top authorities in the
field. Perlis said there will be "full
discussion" of the agreement signed
Oct. 18 by the American National
Red Cross and AFL-CIO-CSA.
Conferences scheduled, their
dates and locations, are:
Island Inn, Westbury, L. I., Nov.
28-30, for CSA staff from New
England, New York and New
Jersey.
Hershey Hotel, Hershey, Pa.,
Dec. 12-14, for CSA staff from
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Mary-
land and the District of Columbia.
Kellogg Center, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, Mich.,
Jan. 16-18, for CSA staff from
Michigan.
Morris Inn, Notre Dame, Ind.,
Jan. 23-25, for field representatives
from Ohio and Indiana.
Coronado Hotel, St. Louis, Mo.,
Jan. 30-Feb. 1, for CSA staff from
six midwestern states.
Conferences also will be held in
the South and Far West, but dates
and places have not yet been set.
ized
statement said, "not to patronize
Sears-Roebuck stores until manage-
ment ceases to interfere with the
self-organization of employes, and
until it demonstrates good-faith ac-
ceptance of union security contract
clauses."
UAW Charges
Kohler Still
Defies NLRB
(Continued from Page 1)
any such determination," the union
counsel said.
"We assert that very few strik-
ers entitled to reinstatement upon
application . . . have actually
been reinstated to their former or
substantially equivalent positions.
Most strikers have been denied
the type of reinstatement required
by the board's order. Many .such
have been wrongfully denied any
re-employment."
UAW attorneys pointed out that
any indication by the NLRB indi-
cating approval of the company's
claim of compliance in any respect
might serve to upset a decree of
enforcement issued later by a fed-
eral court.
Close Scrutiny Urged
"The most elementary prudence
on your part," the UAW told the
NLRB, "would dictate the closest
possible scrutiny of any claim by
Kohler to have complied with parts
of the order . . . while it persists,
admittedly, in refusing to recognize
or bargain with Local 833 as also
required by the order, thereby ad-
mittedly continuing its defiance."
An NLRB spokesman said
neither the board nor its em-
ployes have made any commit-
ments to anyone; that the board
order against Kohler still stands;
and that the NLRB will take no
position in a matter over which
the courts have jurisdiction.
About 400 of the Kohler strikers
have been rehired by the company
on lesser jobs or for shorter work
periods, the union said.
Meanwhile UAW asked the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia to take juris-
diction over all appeals, and Kohler
management filed a petition to
transfer jurisdiction to the appellate
court in Chicago.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1960
Liberals vs. Conservatives:
Republicans at Odds
On Role in Congress
Republicans in Congress, still in the minority despite election
gains, are locked in a new struggle over the role the GOP should
play under the incoming Kennedy Administration.
The internal disagreements have been pointed up by post-election
statements by Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen
(111.), House Minority Leader^
Charles A. Halleck (Ind.) and Sen
Barry Goldwater (Ariz.), speaking
for the right-wing, and by Sen.
Cl fford P. Case (N.J.) and other
spokesmen for liberal forces.
The Old Guard leaders have
called for opposition to the Ken-
nedy Administration on social
welfare legislation and are seek-
ing to revive the coalition of
right-wing Republicans and con-
servative southern Democrats to
block the Administration.
By contrast, Case has urged GOP
members to join the Democratic
majority "in supporting construc-
tive legislation" and in "working
effectively toward social progress."
The degree to which one of these
opposing views might prevail may
depend, in large measure, on the
position taken by Vice Pres. Rich-
ard M. Nixon who, as the defeated
GOP presidential candidate, is now
titular head of the Republican
Party.
In the wake of the elections — in
which the Republicans gained two
seats in the Senate and scored a
net gain of 22 House seats — Dirk-
sen and Halleck contended that the
GOP-Dixiecrat coalition had been
strengthened and warned the Presi-
dent-elect that the conservatives
will "have to be reckoned with."
Halleck served notice that he
would oppose what he called "radi-
cal, wild-eyed spendthrift propos-
als," while Dirksen said that the
coalition would oppose or seek to
water down depressed areas and
minimum wage legislation.
Goldwater Declares War
Goldwater, sharply critical of
Nixon's losing presidential cam-
paign on the charge that the Vice
President did not stress Republican
conservatism, called for "top-level
discussions" to decide the course
the GOP should follow. Rejecting
the liberal views of GOP senators
on the eastern seaboard, Goldwater
said a merging of conservative
Democrats and conservative Re-
publicans into the same party
"would be desirable."
Case — re-elected to his second
term by the largest vote margin of
any Republican senator this year —
said the move to join with southern
Democrats "in attempting to block
progressive legislation ... is cer-
tainly not my view of what the role
of the Republican Party should be."
Urging support of "construc-
tive legislation," Case told fellow
Republicans: "We should not
block merely for the sake of ob-
structionism. The problems fac-
ing the country are real. Solu-
tions must be found, and we
should lend our support to efforts
to find sound and effective ones.
• . . The Republican Party can
make a vital contribution by . . .
working effectively toward social
progress."
At the same time, Case and lib-
eral Republican Senators Jacob K.
Javits (N.Y.) and Thomas H.
Kuchel (Calif.) announced their in-
tention to join in a fight to amend
the Senate's rules to make it easier
to end filibusters — usually em-
ployed by Dixiecrats to block civil
rights legislation.
In a joint statement, the three
said they would "support the Sen-
ate's right to act by majority vote
after reasonable debate," instead of
being hampered by present rules
requiring a two-thirds vote to end
a talkathon. A similar fight in
1959, in which GOP liberals joined
northern and western Democrats,
brought about a less sweeping
amendment in the Senate rules.
The dispute currently plaguing
the Republicans over the party's
future role is not expected to re-
sult in any open battle for lead-
ership similar to the challenge to
the Old Guard mounted by the
small bloc of GOP liberals in
the Senate two *y ears ago.
Kennedy to Exercise
Full Powers of Office
(Continued from Page 1)
clearly indicates that Kennedy
intends to function without any
policy-making "chief of staff'
serving as a bar between other
officials and himself.
The "staff system" under Eisen-
hower made Sherman Adams, the
President's assistant for six years,
almost a deputy, with wide power
to channel information and pro-
jected solutions of issues to the
chief executive.
In the early years papers that
reached Eisenhower were required
to move through Adams, whose re-
view and clearance were essential.
Magnuson Winner
In Close Election
Nearly two weeks after
Election Day, the final House
race was settled with the re-
election of Democratic Rep.
Don Magnuson (Wash.) by a
narrow margin.
Magnuson's victory meant
that the line-up of the House
in the 87th Congress will be
261 Democrats to 176 Re-
publicans — barring an over-
turn of any of the close elec-
tions on which recounts have
heen asked.
Adams was forced out of office
in 1958 and was replaced with Gen.
Wilton B. 'Persons, who has not
sought to exercise a comparable
authority. The "staff system," how-
ever, has largely remained, with
the agenda for Cabinet meetings
fixed in advance by a secretary who
was also responsible for receiving
and summing up written documents
indicating policy disagreements be-
tween Administration subordinates.
Clifford indicated that Ken-
nedy desired to maintain personal
contact with all close advisers in
the White House and to keep
himself accessible also to Cab-
inet members and other policy-
making officials.
Clifford said that selection of a
new director of the budget, to work
closely with present Budget Bureau
officials, probably will get top pri-
ority from Kennedy.
He said that about 80 officials,
including cabinet members, under
secretaries, assistant secretaries and
White House advisers, made up
the top level of appointments.
In the next category he placed
about 400 to 500 posts that include
policy-making functions although
the appointees rank below depart-
ment assistant secretaries. In a
third list he placed about 1,200
other jobs.
CIVIL RIGHTS AWARD to Joseph D. Keenan, secretary of the Intl. Brotherhood of Electrical
Workers and a vice president of the AFL-CIO, is accepted on his behalf by John E. Cullerton,
second from left, manager of the Chicago Joint Board of the Hotel & Restaurant Workers, at Sixth
Annual Labor Conference on Civil Rights held at Chicago. Left to right are Vice Pres. Morris
Bialis of the Ladies' Garment Workers, chairman of the conference; Cullerton; Municipal Court
Chief Justice Augustine Bowe, who is chairman of Chicago's Commission on Human Relations;
Hilton E. Hanna representing the Meat Cutters, and Jacob Siegel, chairman of the Jewish Labor
Committee.
Rail Unions
Call for End
To Race Bias
(Continued from Page 1)
and promotions in accordance with
their ability."
• To press "to secure the full
benefits of union organization for
all such workers without regard to
race, creed, color or national ori-
gin."
• To ask "all our affiliates to
take prompt and decisive action in
their separate organizations to bring
into effect the purpose of this reso-
lution."
• Endorsement of "the policy
resolutions on civil rights and civil
liberties adopted by the AFL-CIO"
at its last convention.
The resolution was introduced at
the RLEA meeting by the Hotel &
Restaurant Employes, which repre-
sents railroad dining car employes.
In other action, the RLEA called
for strengthening of farmer-labor
ties and expressed concern about
"the depression which has raged in
agriculture in recent years."
It pledged support to programs
to help "restore full parity of in-
come to the family farmers of our
nation."
Leighty said the RLEA meeting
also discussed legislative goals for
the new Congress, including safety
legislation, bills to block reckless
abandonment of passenger service
and the need to strengthen job pro-
tection for employes of railroads
which merge.
High Court
To Review
Redistricting
(Continued from Page 1)
year-old apportionment gave them
only one-tenth of the representation
of counties with much smaller
populations. Although the state
constitution requires redistricting
every 10 years on the basis of
population, they continued, the
legislature has ignored this com-
mand.
The decision to hear the re-
districting case came a week after
the high court reversed a lower
court's decision and ordered a
trial on a complaint by Negroes
in Tuskegee, Ala., that a 1959
redistricting plan was deliberate-
ly designed to exclude them from
voting in Tuskegee.
R-TW Repeal Drive
Seen in Indiana, Utah
(Continued from. Page 1)
in Kansas would have been but the
first step in a long legislative road
to removal of the "right-to-work"
amendment from the state constitu-
tion.
Indiana, Utah Victories
Signal victories were scored for
"R-T-W" repeal prospects in both
Indiana and Utah.
In Indiana, a strong anti-"right-
to-work" drive backed by the Indi-
ana Council for Industrial Peace
and organized labor elected Dem-
ocrat Matthew E. Welsh to the
governorship and gave Democrats
control of the state Senate. This
substantial victory was achieved
despite a 222,762 majority in the
presidential election for Vice Pres.
Nixon, a GOP sweep that ran well
ahead of pre-election predictions.
Using repeal of the "right-to-
work" law as a principal weapon,
organized labor concentrated its
big guns on defeat of the GOP
candidate for governor, Crawford
Parker, and on election of Welsh
and a Democratic majority in
the Senate. In the campaign,
Welsh pledged repeal of "right-
to-work," while Parker, who as
lieutenant-governor blocked re-
peal in the legislature in 1959,
said he would veto any repeal
measure.
Effectiveness of the "work" re-
peal drive as a campaign issue was
shown by these results: Welsh de-
feated Parker by 23,117 votes de-
spite Nixon's sweep of the state,
and ran ahead of Kennedy by over
75,000 votes. Parker ran behind
Nixon's commanding lead by 124,-
580 votes, indicating a storm of
ballot-splitting aimed at the for-
mer's defeat.
The Democratic victory in the
governorship and control of the In-
diana Senate — labor's two princi-
pal objectives — were moderated by
loss of control of the House and
the lieutenant-governorship.
GOP Votes Needed
Hopes for repeal of Indiana's
four-year-old "right-to-work" law
by the legislature next year depend
upon whether a sufficient number
of Republicans in the House join
with Democrats in seeking removal
of this unpopular law. Many GOP
leaders have expressed a desire to
get the "right-to- work" issue "off
our backs."
In Utah, prospects for repeal
were heightened by Democratic
capture of the legislature — the
Senate 14 to 11, and the House
36 to 28. This Democratic victory
was achieved despite the fact
that Nixon won the state by a
vote of 203,789 to Kenned \ s
168,016.
The chance of "right-to-work n
repeal in Utah, however, was jeop-
ardized by Republican capture of
the governorship. The Republican
victor, George D. Clyde, has op-
posed repeal of the law and could
09-92-11
act adversely on a repeal measure
approved by the Democratic legis-
lature.
Gains in Delaware
In Delaware, Democrats were
victorious in the governorship race
and retained control of both nouses
of the state legislature.
Gov.-elect Elbert N. Carvel
(D), a member of the Delaware
Council for Industrial Peace,
opposes "right - to - work" laws.
Another Democrat, Mayor Eu-
gene Lammot of Wilmington,
was elected lieutenant-governor.
Lammot opposes "right- to -work"
laws. Democrats won the state
Senate 11 to 6, and the House
20 to 15.
In New Mexico, Democrats
made gains in the legislature, both
in the Senate and House, but lost
the governorship to Republican
Edwin M. Mechem by a narrow
margin.
Vermont Holds Firm
Prospects for blocking "right-to-
work" legislation also continued to
remain bright in Vermont, another
prime target for anti-labor forces,
as a result of the election. The
two principal supporters of "right-
to-work" proposals in the state were
defeated in their bids for seats in
the state Senate. They were C.
Douglas Cairns, chairman of the
so-called Vermont Freedom of As-
sociation Committee, and Rep.
Richard A. Snelling, \*ho intro-
duced the last "right-to-work" bill
in the legislature.
GOP-Dixie
Axis Plans
Blockade
By Gene Zack
The Republican Old Guard
signaled a drive to keep alive the
right-wing coalition which has
dominated Congress for nearly a
quarter century as House GOP
Minority Leader Charles A. Hal-
leck (Ind.) conferred with two
key conservative southern Demo
crats.
Following a Capitol Hill hud-
dle with Rep. Howard W. Smith
(D-Va.), unofficial leader of the
Dixiecrat bloc, and with Rep. Wil-
liam M. Colmer (D-Miss.), Halleck
expressed confidence that the con-
servative alliance would continue
to function in the 87th Congress.
"We've seen eye-to-eye in the
past," Halleck told reporters, "and
I expect we'll see eye-to-eye in the
future."
Opposition Declared
The avowed goal of the coalition
is to block, or drastically water
down, the liberal program which
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy is ex-
pected to send to Congress follow-
ing his inauguration.
In any maneuver to check the
Kennedy Administration's pro-
gram, the powerful House Rules
Committee— of which Smith is
chairman and Colmer is the sec-
ond-ranking Democrat — would
play a major role. Created orig-
inally as a "traffic cop" to speed
the orderly flow of legislation to
the House floor, the committee
has been transformed into a bot-
tleneck for liberal legislation
under its conservative leadership.
In the 86th Congress, Smith and
Colmer lined up with four conserv-
ative Republicans — votes controlled
by Halleck — on the committee to
cripple a housing bill and kill meas-
ures on federal aid to education,
minimum wage and jobsite picket-
ing.
House liberals have discussed
ways of revising the structure or
power of the Rules body. Although
Kennedy has declared publicly that
the rules governing the House are
the concern of the House, he is
known to be anxious to avoid any
blockade of his "New Frontiers"
program.
Among proposals for curbing the
(Continued on Page 8)
UAW Wins
New Round in
Kohler Case
The U.S. Circuit Court of Ap-
peals for the District of Colum-
bia has denied a rhotion by the
Kohler Co. to transfer the com-
pany's appeal of a National La-
bor Relations Board ruling to the
Seventh Circuit Court in Chicago.
The ruling, upheld the argu-
ment of the Auto Workers that
the Washington, D. C, court
should have jurisdiction. Tbe court
ruled at the same time that the
UAW's petition for review of the
NLRB decision and the NLRB's
petition for enforcement should be
consolidated so that arguments may
be heard together on the issues.
The labor board issued an order
last Aug. 26 directing the manage-
ment of the Sheboygan, Wis.,
plumbing ware firm to bargain with
the union and offer jobs to most of
the 1,600 former employes who
struck the company in 1954.
UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey
earlier charged that Kohler not
only had failed to deal fairly with
many former workers but had tried
to persuade the NLRB that it has
complied substantially with the or-
der of Aug. 26 and should be given
a certificate of compliance, _
Vol. v
listed wMkty at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W,
Washington 6, D. C.
S2 a year
Smad Class Postage Paid at Washington, D. C.
Saturday, December 3, 1960
No. 49
Meany Hails Goals for 60s,
Hits 'Timidity ' of Methods
President's Group
Submits Report
..-■ ill " 1 1 .-111
What's Cooking?
bRAWN roiSTME
f\?L-C\Q NEWS
Food, Apparel Prices Spurt :
October CPI Soars
To a Record High
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's cost of living soared to a record high in October,
the government has announced. The increase is the biggest for
a single month since last April.
The Consumer Price Index, pushed by price hikes across the
board, rose by 0.4 percent above September to 127.3 percent.
The October CPI means the mar-^
ket basket which cost $10 in the
1947-49 base period now costs
$12.73.
"Contraseasonal rises in some
food prices, combined with higher
prices for new cars, most elements
of housing and women's and girls'
apparel, were the major factors in
the increase to a new high," the
Labor Dept. reported.
Wage increases will go to near-
ly 1.1 million union members
whose pay is tied to the October
CPI through escalator clauses.
About 975,000 workers, chiefly
in the auto and farm equipment
industries, will receive 2 cents an
hour. Another 80,000 workers will
receive hikes of about 1 cent an
hour.
The wages of some 500,000 steel
workers also are tied to the October
CPI under the contract signed last
January. The amount of the wage
change will turn on the still un-
determined costs of the new steel
worker insurance program.
A companion government report
showed that longer hours of work
and rising employment in the auto
industry boosted spendable earn-
ings by about 50 cents to $81.50
a week in October for a factory
worker with three dependents and
to $73.93 for a worker without
dependents.
Despite the rise in consumer
prices, the buying power of factory
workers' earnings was slightly high-
er in October than in September.
Both spendable earnings, which
means take-home pay after deduc-
tion of federal income and social
security taxes, and buying power,
which means take-home pay minus
the increased cost of living, were at
record highs for October, the re-
port noted.
Compared to a year ago, spend-
(Continued on Page 8)
A non-partisan President's Commission on National Coals has
outlined a series of. domestic and foreign objectives for America
in the 1960s in a report which AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
endorsed as to goals but criticized as speaking "only timidly" on
methods of attaining them.
The commission summoned thef — - ■
strength." The commission made
no flat recommendation on the
growth rate toward which the
nation should aspire, but ap-
nation to take action in such
fields as civil rights, medical care,
economic growth, housing, educa-
tion, automation and agriculture at
home; and foreign trade, aid to
underdeveloped nations, • defense
of the free world and support of
the United Nations in the interna-
tional arena.
Meany Differs on Remedies
Meany, a member of the 11 -man
commission named by Pres. Eisen-
hower last February, said the ma-
jority had "correctly described the
goals" toward which the nation
should strive in the next decade,
but added:
"The commission's report
marches right up to the issues,
always faces them boldly, then
often turns away without making
the necessary . . . proposals for
attaining" the ends which it be-
lieves necessary.
On the domestic front, the com-
mission — headed by Henry M.
Wriston, president of the American
Assembly at Columbia University
— called on America to work
toward:
• Progress in 'the field of civil
rights, with particular stress on
school desegregation and equal op-
portunities in employment and
housing.
• Mobilization of "private, cor-
porate, municipal, state and fed-
eral" resources to provide a higher
proportion of the gross national
product for education.
• Stimulation of national
growth "to provide jobs for the
approximately 13.5 million new
additions to the work force dur-
ing the next 10 years; to im-
prove the standard of living;
and to assure U.S. competitive
peared to lean strongly in the
direction of a 3.4 percent an-
nual improvement.
• Reduction of the cost of
medical care, extension of health
insurance "through both public
and private agencies," and a boost
in federal grants for constructing
hospitals and other medical facili-
ties.
• "Encouragement" of the states
to meet a "minimum standard" in
unemployment insurance for both
the "adequacy" of benefits and the
duration of payments.
• Development of a spund ag-
ricultural policy geared to reducing
oversupply, raising the nutritional
levels of American families, in-
suring a "fair return" to farmers,
and providing jobs for some 1.5
million farm operators now earning
less than $1,500 annually.
• Advance planning by indus-
try so that the introduction of
technological changes can be
achieved "with sensitive regard
for any adverse impact upon in-
dividuals."
• Allocation of a larger pro-
portion of federal funds for basic
research. The government now
spends only $800 million annually
in this area.
• Increasing the financial re-
sources of state and local govern-
ments.
• Insuring urban populations
more equitable representation in
state legislatures "where they are
now under-represented."
In the international arena, the
commission called for development
(Continued on Page 8)
ICFTU Joins with Christian Group
To Work for Democracy in Spain
Brussels, Belgium— The Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions has unprecedentedly undertaken
a program of active cooperation with another international labor organization in its continuing pres-
sure campaign against Falangist Spain.
The ICFTU executive board meeting here voted to work with the Intl. Federation of Christian
Trade Unions, popularly known as the Christian International, in a drive to topple Dictator Francisco
Franco from his seat of power in
Madrid
Unity of Labor
The significance of this step is
twofold:
First, Spain is a Catholic coun-
try and the Christian International
is a Catholic labor movement w ith
affiliates in different parts of the
world. It would be difficult indeed
to label this organization as Com-
munist, as Franco propagandists
have sought to label the ICFTU.
Second, it represents some
progress in a decade of nego-
tiations between the two demo-
cratic labor organizations to
work together on the interna-
tional front. *v
The ICFTU executive board
voted unanimously to prepare a
joint statement with the Christian
International and with their respec-
tive Spanish affiliates in exile call-
ing for intensification of a world-
wide campaign against Franco's
dictatorship.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
pledged full cooperation in carry-
ing out the principles of a resolu-
tion which called for sponsorship
of delegations of Spanish trade un-
ions in exile to visit unions in
western Europe and North Amer-
ica so that the support of the free
trade union movement for the cause
of Spanish labor can be revitalized.
The resolution also called for a
program of increased activity in
Spain to be undertaken with the
(Continued on Page 7)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER S, 1960
Economic Trends Warns:
Low Buying Power
Threatens Recovery
The nation's recovery from recession in the "soaring 60's" is
being hindered by the "dangerous illusion that the vast majority
of Americans have as much income as they need," the AFL-CIO
Economic Trends and Outlook has warned.
Asserting that the nation needs a more rapid rise in buying
power, the November issue of^"
METHODS FOR MEETING challenge of automation were discussed by Pres. Harold C. Hanover
(standing) of New York State AFL-CIO at shorter-workweek conference sponsored by New York
City Central Labor Council. Trade union leaders who participated in program are shown at head
table, including Harry Van Arsdale (second from left), president of New York City central body, and
Building Service Employes Pres. David L. Sullivan (third from left), chairman of city committee.
New York City Unions Set Drive
To Meet Impact of Automation
New York — Unions here have marshaled their strength to win action by government, industry and
labor to resolve the increasing problem of displaced workers resulting from automation. More than
250 labor leaders attending a day-long conference on the subject, "Unions Meet Automation," have
lined up in a drive to end what they termed "stagnation" by business in failing to prevent rising "auto-
mation" unemployment.
The conference was sponsored*^"
by the Shorter Workweek Commit-
tee of the New York City Central
Labor Council, established in the
spring of 1958. It drew representa-
tives from 80 local and international
unions in the New York area.
Cases Cited
Trade union leaders heard speak-
ers and panelists outline experi-
ences their unions have had with
workers who have lost their jobs
through automation.
A telegram to the conference
from Pres.-elect John F. Ken-
nedy declared: "Automation can
represent hope rather than de-
spair, can increase living stand-
ards rather than unemployment.
But it will require the ability to
adapt to the necessary changes
and a high degree of statesman-
ship. A meeting such as yours
can make important contribu-
tions to the solution of the prob-
lems automation raises."
The conference also received a
message from AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany, who was unable to
be present because of attendance at
a meeting of the executive board
of the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions.
"We Must Prod Business"
The assertion that the increasing
number of displaced workers is
costing the United States a loss in
prestige second in importance only
to its loss of prestige in interna-
tional affairs was made by Solomon
Barkin, research director of the
Textile Workers Union of Ameri-
ca.
"This is a period when we've got
to change things," he declared.
Calif i
*ornia Health Aid
Expansion Proposed
§acramento, Calif. — California will face a "crisis of unmet needs,
lowered quality of care and inflated costs" in its medical services
unless it begins planning at once for balanced expansion, the Gov-
ernors Committee on the Study of Medical Aid and Health has
warned in its report.
G. (Pat) Brown,%^-
Gov. Edmund
who appointed the 19-member
committee nearly a year ago, hailed
the report for its "depth, detail
and objectivity" and declared it
provided a "sturdy foundation for
planning a healthful future for Cali-
fornia."
The committee's findings includ-
ed:
• California, which now gradu-
ates 500 new physicians a year,
must raise that number to 750 with-
out delay by establishing a new
state medical school and expanding
other medical schools, and increase
the number of graduates to 1,340
a year by 1975.
• Regional advisory health
councils, composed half of medi-
cal profession representatives and
half of public members, should be
established to work through a state
health council to coordinate ex-
pansion of health services on a
regional basis and thus avoid "hap-
hazard" locating of new hospitals
which could waste as much as $1
billion by 1975.
• State insurance officials
require "grade labeling"
of medical insurance as a guide
to consumers and studies should
be started at once to devise fi-
nancial plans for extending "pre-
payment for health services • . .
to cover substantially the entire
population" of the state.
• State health and welfare de-
partments should be merged; over-
lapping state health services should
be reorganized with the aim of
making all public health services
available through "one door" at
the county level.
The committee pointed out that
Californians spend $2 billion a year
on medical services, 75 percent of
it through private channels. Group
medical practice coupled with pre-
payment "may become the pre-
dominant means of providing medi-
cine in the future," it declared.
Brown has already announced
he will ask the 1961 legislature
for funds to begin work on a new
state medical school in San Diego
and to establish some jnethod
of coordinating and planning
new hospital construction.
"We've elected Kennedy to the
White House to do things. But we
must also prod American business
to do things, to do its share." He
held that business has not only
failed to act on automation, but has
resisted everything that would make
for a balanced economy and for
industrial growth. He said that
organized labor's task is "to gener-
ate enough interest and concern
and .alarm to win action."
"We cannot allow the invest-
ment in human beings to be lost,"
Barkin declared.
Harold C. Hanover, president of
the New York State AFL-CIO,
told unionists that the problem "is
whether the American people and
our free society will be subjected to
vast dislocations during the next
10 or 12 years." He asserted that
a shorter workweek, longer vaca-
tions and earlier retirement for
workers will not come automatical-
ly, but that labor and government
will have to work together to win
these objectives.
Major Goals Set
The Shorter Workweek Commit-
tee proposed major goals aimed at
getting management and business
to meet what the committee calls
their "social responsibility." These
included: consultation between la-
bor and management before
changes are made in production
or personnel; introduction of in-
novations on a gradual basis; fhe
finding of other jobs or provision
for training allowances.
Other goals urged were provi-
sion through contracts for sever-
ance pay for employes displaced
by automation; compensation for
increased responsibilities; creation
of new jobs and adjustments in
wages and prices when increased
productivity is involved; the shorter
workweek.
Pres. Harry Van Arsdale, Jr.,
of the city labor council, under
whose auspices the Shorter
Workweek Committee was es-
tablished, pointed out that there
have been numerous conferences
on automation followed by re-
ports by research experts and
economists on the results of these
conferences. He asserted that
a "harvest of shame" would pre-
vail in every shop in the nation
if unions were not on the scene
to protect workers.
Trends, published by the AFL-CIO
Committee on Economic Policy,
pointed to an eight-year "pep talk"
by some economists, commentators,
columnists and even by Pres. Eisen-
hower himself that more buying
power would be somehow "infla-
tionary."
"No one would pretend," it said,
"that consumer buying power is the
only significant factor in today's
economy. But those who have an
honest concern for the problems of
today and tomorrow should view
with alarm the growing misconcep-
tion about the ability of the average
American to buy what can be pro-
duced."
5 Percent Growth Needed
The publication asserted that
American living standards must
continue to improve if America is
to achieve a healthy 5 percent eco-
nomic growth rate.
"Neither economic health nor
better living standards can be-
come a reality," it said "if there
is not a steady real increase in
the buying power of those who
earn wages and salaries.
"America needs much better
public services. America needs
to overcome poverty. But Amer-
ica also needs a more rapid rise
in buying power if it is to move
forward through the 60's with-
out disastrous recession losses."
Economic Trends saw danger in
the fact that the weakness in U.S.
consumer buying power is "con-
tinually underplayed" while "a
dangerous illusion continues to
spread." The publication declared:
Not Enough Momentum
"Consumer income is at an all-
time high, is the report on every
side . . . But conditions, and the
statistics themselves, illustrate that
even high levels of consumer in-
come, high wages and high employ-
ment figures are just not providing
enough momentum or enough buy-
ing power for the 1960 economy.
"Confident or not confident, the
individual American consumer has
not much more wherewithal for
buying than he had a few .years
ago."
Soft spots in the economy, the
AFL-CIO publication asserted, in-
clude these: slipping output, slug-
gish increases in sales, weakening
inventories, discouraging employ-
ment reports, and a mass of other
"economic indicators of trouble."
Personal income reached an
all-time high of about $408 bil-
lion for the third quarter of I960.
But the average yearly rise in
buying power of after-tax per
capita income, said the publica-
tion, has slowed down to 1.2
percent in the past four years —
a slowdown that "cuts the for-
ward momentum of the econ-
omy."
Reports of high wage levels, it
continued, seldom emphasize the
fact that average weekly earnings
have been wavering below last
January's level of $92.29.
Three Key Factors
"Weekly net spendable earnings
of a factory worker with three de-
pendents stood at $81 in Septem-
ber 1960, but because prices had
risen, real buying power was be-
low. September 1959. Factory pay-
rolls fell still further in October."
The publication asked: "Why
then is there such a widespread
illusion in America that almost
everyone really has enough money,
or, as an editorial in the New Re-
public recently remarked in pass-
ing, 'most people in our affluent
society are still affluent'?"
At least three major factors have
contributed to the mistaken belief
that Americans are mostly all rich,
the Review said.
It listed these: an eight-year
barrage of misinformation about
inflation has emphasized that wages
and other income were abnormally
and often "dangerously" high; the
so-called wage-price spiral was er-
roneously blamed for every rise in
the consumer price index despite
the fact that unit costs of factory
production workers' wages actually
went down; the constant compari-
son of today's record levels with
yesterday's performance, instead of
today's or tomorrow's needs.
"Many who have clear evi-
dence that they are not well-to-
do have been reading every day
that most Americans are," Eco-
nomic Trends said. "It is not sur-
prising that the illusion of riches
has spread."
There have been vast improve-
ments, it said, since the 1930's,
when "one third of a nation was
ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-
fed." But by 1960 standards, it
pointed out, "at least one-fifth
of this nation is in the category
of ill-housed, ill-clothed and ill-
fed."
It recalled the fact that nearly
30 million Americans were in
spending units with incomes of less
than $3,000 a year in 1958; that
millions of non-farm workers can-
not even get the benefit of a $1
minimum wage because they are
excluded from coverage of the fed-
eral wage law; that 1.6 million
Americans working on farms av-
erage $600 a year from all sources
of income.
Public belief in pressures from
consumer buying power was height-
ened, the publication asserted, by
Pres. Eisenhower's plea in 1957
that Americans "buy carefully"
lest they "fan the fires of inflation.**
Even at that time, it said, what
America needed was more, not less
buying power. A few months later
the President suddenly called for
more buying. And in the last few
months of the Eisenhower Admin-
istration, there has been a "desper-
ate political effort to hide" economic
inadequacy, including a "distorted
press release" about the Depart-
ment of Labor's city worker's fam-
ily budget, the periodical asserted.
IUE Fights Texas
Picket-Line Case
Tyler, Tex. — Lawyers for two
leaders of the Electrical, Radio &
Machine Workers here have asked
the Texas Supreme Court to set
aside contempt convictions on
charges of violating a temporary
order restricting picketing at the
local General Electric Co. plant.
Judge Looney Lindsey of Gil-
mer, Tex., sentenced James Pierce,
IUE international representative, to
serve three days in jail and pay a
$100 fine. Raymond J. Beall, chief
steward of IUE Local 782, was
ordered to serve two days in jail
and pay a $100 fine. The men
served three hours of their sentence
before being released by order of
the Supreme Court.
An order by Judge Connally Mc-
Kay of Tyler had prohibited unlaw-
ful acts in connection with picket-
ing. Pierce and Beall, along with
other IUE members, set up a peace-
ful picket line during the strike.
Management contended they
blocked the exits. The union as-
serted the court order was void
because it violated rights of free
speech and assembly.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1960
Page Tli re*
Injunctions Called 'Inadequate' :
Church Study Group Urges
T-H 'Emergency' Revisions
New York — Overhaul of the Taft-Hartley Act to give the President an arsenal of weapons with
which to deal with so-called national emergency strikes has been recommended in a unique church-
sponsored study based on last year's 116-day shutdown of the basic steel industry.
The study, sponsored by the National Council of Churches, said that the record-breaking steel dis-
pute proved that the existing emergency disputes procedures of Taft-Hartley have been proven "inade-
quate and should be revised."
Compulsory Arbitration Rejected
At the same time the report op-
posed compulsory arbitration, de-
claring such a move would be
"quite unthinkable."
The study — prepared by a
special committee headed by
Charles P. Taft, former mayor
of Cincinnati and chairman of
the council's Dept. of Church
and Economic Life — said a va-
riety of governmental procedures
would prevent either manage-
ment or labor from "devising
strategy (to) improve unfairly its
own position
Under the existing emergency
disputes section of the law the
President has only one course of
action in a major dispute: the or-
dering of the union to vacate its
strike for a so-called "cooling-off
period" of 80 days.
Taft's committee also urged ma-
jor changes in the law's provisions
AMA Fires a Warning
Across Kennedy's Bow
The American Medical Association, stepping up its warfare
against proposals to place health care for the aged under social
security, has served warning on Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy it
will use what it calls medicine's "tremendous strength" to battle
such legislation in the 87th Congress.
"Ornery," Says Truman
Addressing a meeting of the as-
sociation's House of Delegates in
the nation's capital, AMA Pres. E.
Vincent Askey labeled health-care
legislation "a step toward socialized
medicine," and contended that the
Kennedy margin of victory was
"so narrow" that it did not consti-
Deadline for
Hillman Award
Is Announced
New York — The Sidney Hillman
Foundation — created by the Cloth-
ing Workers to honor the memory
of the union's first president — has
announced its 11th annual compe-
tition for outstanding contributions
to the literary and dramatic arts.
Prize awards of $500 each are
being offered in the fields of daily
and periodical journalism, fiction,
non-fiction, radio, television and
motion pictures. In particular, the
foundation is seeking contributions
dealing with the protection of in-
dividual liberties, improved race
relations, a strengthened labor
movement or the advancement of
social welfare and economic se-
curity.
Deadline for entries is Feb. 3,
1961. Entries should be addressed
to the Sidney Hillman Foundation,
15 Union Square, New York
3, N. Y.
AFL-CIO Praised
For Welfare Aid
New York — Organized la-
bor has won new praise for
the role it plays in support-
ing voluntary health and wel-
fare agencies.
In a nationwide television
program exploring voluntary
fund-raising, carried on the
American Broadcasting Co.
TV network, news commen-
tator John Charles Daly sa-
luted the AFL-CIO as the
nation's "single largest" group
of contributors. Trade un-
ionists give nearly one-third
of all the funds of these
agencies.
Appearing on the program,
Leo Perlis, director of AFL-
CIO Community Service Ac-
tivities, outlined labor's sup-
port of both the independent
funds and those which join
together in united funds and
community chests to avoid a
multiplicity of campaigns.
tute "a mandate for any massive
program of social change."
In New York, former Pres.
Harry S. Truman acidly branded
the medical lobby as a "mean and
ornery" group which "has always
been against anything that was for
the welfare and benefit of ordinary
people."
(The AMA, he said, "was
against Roosevelt, it was against
me and now they are going to
be against Kennedy on every
forward-looking step he goes to
take.")
High on the agenda at the four-
day session of the House of Dele-
gates, governing body for the 179,-
000-member doctors' group, was a
proposal to devise a single nation-
wide voluntary medical insurance
program in an effort to blunt the
drive for health care legislation.
Hospital Group Warning
The scheme drew immediate op-
position from the American Hos-
pital Association and the Blue
Cross Association, largest single in-
surer in the health field. Both
groups registered objections to the
AMA plan to include commercial
insurance companies, contending
these private firms would receive
preferred treatment.
Speaking for the two groups,
Assistant AHA Dir. James Hague
declared "we don't believe in com-
mercial health insurance," and cau-
tioned that adoption of the AMA
proposal "could lead only to weak-
ening the Blue Cross-type opera-
tion."
Despite the opposition, the 5,000
doctors who make up the House
of Delegates voter unanimously in
favor H>f the proposed nationwide
voluntary health insurance plan
that would "coordinate the efforts"
of commercial and non-profit in-
surance firms.
The resolution raised the old
AMA battle cry that "medicine con-
trolled by the federal government
under a compulsory system would
result in inferior medical care, red
tape and high costs." It added:
"Voluntary health insurance is
the primary alternative to a com-
pulsory governmental program. . . .
Current social, political and econo-
mic developments compel a new
and revitalized effort to make vol-
untary health insurance successful."
The AMA and most of the
commercial insurance industry,
with the active support of the
Eisenhower Administration, led
the fight in the 86th Congress
which succeeded in blockading
the AFL-CIO-backed Forand bill
to finance health care for the
aged through social security.
dealing with the appointment of a
Board of Inquiry. The study called
for giving the President "discre-
tionary powers" to:
• Order early intervention by a
"non-political" board.
• Determine the "form and ex-
tent of mediation" employed by the
board.
• Authorize the board to make
"public recommendations" as to
the area of settlement, if the board
"concludes that such a step is nec-
essary."
The study prepared for the Na-
tional Council of Churches said
that the long steel dispute "high-
lights a growing concern that col-
lective bargaining, as we know it,
can prove to be an adequate instru-
ment" for the solution of "public-
interest" disputes. It added:
"It seems clear enough that
our society, though still main-
taining the basic right to strike,
has advanced to the point where
work stoppages will increasingly
be felt to have outlived their
usefulness."
The report, designed to probe
the "ethical implications" of the
steel stoppage, was sharply critical
of both labor and management for
taking such firm positions almost a
year in advance of the shutdown
that they "created a serious road-
block to bargaining."
It also criticized the nation's
newspapers, magazines and radio
and television networks for "inade-
quate treatment" of the negotiations
and for failing to make any "objec-
tive evaluation" of the issues in
dispute.
On the government's role, the
report said that the White House
"threw its weight, first on one side
then on the other," until a settle-
ment was achieved "under heavy
White House pressure" when Vice
Pres. Nixon and Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell brought industry and
union negotiators together.
PROBLEMS of state employes were discussed by these speakers
at the 22d annual convention of the Pennsylvania State Employes*
Council, AFL-CIO, in Harrisburg, Pa. Seated left to right are
Reuben H. Miller, council president; Dir. James L. McDevitt
of the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education; and Pres.
Arnold S. Zander of the State, County and Municipal Employes.
Pennsylvania Employes
Seek No-Strike Repeal
Harrisburg, Pa. — Repeal of the state law which prohibits com-
monwealth employes from striking will be urged on the legislature
in 1961, delegates decided at the 22d annual convention of the
Pennsylvania State Employes' Council. .
Repeal is high on the list of goals adopted by some 200 union
representatives. So is a pay boost^
of $2 a day for all state employes;
civil service status; and inclusion
of state workers in the unemploy-
ment compensation system.
19 Points Framed
These objectives were listed in a
19-point program adopted by the
convention. Also included were
uniform working conditions; hos-
pital, surgical and medical bene-
fits; overtime pay at the rate of
time and a half; safety protection
for Pennsylvania government work-
ers; and expense payments for on-
the-job injuries.
Reuben H. Miller, state council
president, conducted the sessions.
Speakers included Dir. James L.
McDevitt of the AFL-CIO Com-
mittee on Political Education and
Pres. Arnold S. Zander of the State,
County and Municipal Employes.
"Labor is not interested in pa-
tronage, political power, or a third
political party," McDevitt said in a
report on labor's part in the elec-
tion of John F. Kennedy as Pres- cerned."
ident and Lyndon B. Johnson as
Vice President.
He said the nation urgently
needs a $1.25 minimum wage
law; a bill to help restore eco-
nomic health to workers in de-
pressed areas; medical care for
the aged tied to social security;
expanded public housing; strong-
er civil rights legislation; and
changes in the Taft-Hartley and
Landrum-Griffin Acts to give
unions equal rights with employ-
ers at the bargaining table.
McDevitt once was president of
the former Pennsylvania Federa-
tion of Labor.
Zander told the delegates that
undue restrictions on political ac-
tivity by government employes put
them in the status of "second class
citizens."
"It is likely," the union president
said, "that continued recruitment
into public service of high caliber
persons cannot be maintained if
they are put in an inferior status as
far as citizenship rights are con-
AFL-CIO, Red Cross Agreement
Aims at National Blood Program
Organized labor has taken a "strong initial step" toward establishment of a national blood program
by entering into a statement of understanding with the American National Red Cross in this area,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has declared.
In a letter to the presidents of national and international unions and state and local central bodies,
Meany urged affiliates to work with local Red Cross blood centers — or to cooperate with other types
of blood banks in areas where no^
Red Cross blood facilities exist —
to "strengthen and expand existing
services."
National Program Sought
Meany pointed out that the "lack
of a comprehensive national pro-
gram of blood banking is a major
concern of organized labor," add-
ing that the AFL-CIO convention
in San Francisco in 1959 pledged
its support to the Joint Blood Coun-
cil, of which the Red Cross is a
member agency, in a drive toward
"development and maintenance of
a national blood program."
Noting that the AFL-CIO has
commended the Red Cross for
its system of regional blood cen-
ters, Meany said that the state-
ment of understanding was en-
tered into because this regional
system "provides a workable pat-
tern for furnishing blood to sub-
stantial numbers of sick and in-
jured at no cost."
"The growth of blood banking
in our nation during the last 10
years," Meany wrote to the officers
of affiliates, "has given rise to a
number of problems. Standards
are needed in the procurement,
processing and storage of blood.
Blood should be available to any-
one needing it, at the lowest pos-
sible cost, preferably without
charge.
"There is a need for research on
blood and its products, and a need
for the participation of organized
labor and other interested citizen
groups at all levels.
"We are opposed to any trend
towards commercialism in blood
banking.
"There is no shortage of blood,
only a lack of an effective means
of providing it on an equitable
nationwide basis."
The statement of understanding
—signed for the AFL-CIO by Leo
Perlis, director of Community
Service Activities, and for the Red
Cross by Dr. Sam T. Gibson, direc-
tor of the ARC's blood program —
commends the Red Cross for its
broad utilization of representative
citizen groups, its stand against
segregation of blood by racial origin
and its high standards of medical
supervision.
For its part, the Red Cross sa-
lutes the AFL-ClO's interest in im-
proving the blood bank system and
recognizes the Community Services
arm of the federation as the "con-
stituted organized labor channel for
cooperative relations."
Labor Plays Role
In Day-Care Meet
Improvements in day-care serv-
ices for the children of working
mothers were recommended at a
National Conference on Day-Care
for Children by 500 representatives
of labor and community organiza-
tions, meeting in Washington, D. C.
Delegates adopted an action
program at the conference, spon-
sored by the Children's Bureau of
the Dept. of Health, Education &
Welfare and the Women's Bureau,
Dept. of Labor. Among the labor
participants were Julius Rothman,
AFL-CIO Community Service Ac-
tivities, and Mrs. Esther Peterson,
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1960
Deafening Silence
HP HE WISE MEN in control of affairs have not explained why
* living costs are moving upward steadily at the same time that
chronic, persistent high-rate joblessness is also rising.
A few years ago, in the second Eisenhower recession, the
economics students were concerned about this phenomenon.
They wrote survey pieces suggesting that we had come upon new
and mysterious times, because the pattern violated the general
rule that prices tend to fall during periods Of recession. Today
the silence in the daily press is deafening.
There is a rate of joblessness that approaches genuine recession
levels — 6.4 percent — and an all-time high in living costs has hit us
simultaneously. The factors add up to a major inherited problem
for the incoming Kennedy Administration.
The Steel Strike Study
A SURVEY GROUP named by the National Council of,
Churches, headed by Charles P. Taft, has produced a thought-
ful study of the 1959-60 steel strike and the implications of such
industrial conflicts. Mr. Taft, whose honorable experience with
such problems goes back to the bitter struggle of Steelworkers 20
years ago in seeking recognition from Tom Girdler of Republic
Steel, will not object to questions about, the adequacy of his report.
One question arises from the fact that the Taft report does not
specifically mention the calculable advantage to the giant steel com-
panies in forcing a strike in the industry.
The contract was about to expire, and the industry knew it, and
it poured out steel enough to meet all advance orders. When the
116-day strike was ended, the inventories of buyers were still high
enough so that all backed-up demands were met in a few weeks,
and since then the industry has operated at a sharply reduced
rate.
It is difficult to believe that the companies were not aware of such
facts and prospects. It is difficult to believe that they did not know
that without a strike they would have been forced to layoffs — and
that with layoffs the workers would be entitled to unemployment
compensation and company-paid supplementary unemployment
benefits (SUB). With a strike, the companies were not liable for
SUB and their tax ratings for unemployment compensation did
not suffer. Their inventory situation was adjusted and they still
made a profit.
A second question about the Taft report involves a certain under-
emphasis on the steel industry's demand for work-rule changes
that confronted the union with a choice of fight or surrender.
Work-rule changes involve highly complex and intricate issues
that nevertheless are reducible to bread and butter for flesh-and-
blood American families. They are issues that may be properly
handled in easy-going conferences between industry and labor,*
away from the pressures of the bargaining table, if industry will
agree that labor has a right to speak about them. The fact re-
mains that for the Steelworkers union, when the time came last
year, they had to be handled under the pressure of company
demands and an expired contract that could be met with picket
lines — or nothing.
Mr. Taff s commission needs to go beyond the ground it covered,
generous and equitable as it was in its attitudes, before it grapples
with the root-causes of such a thing as the steel strike.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B: Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
6. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publico lions: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Pedman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, December 3, 1960
No. 49
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers tor any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
Won't it Ever Stop?
Priest Writes in Common weal:
Solidarity in Kohler Case Should
Sober Employers, Inspire Labor
The Kohler Co. strike of the Auto Workers
is now in its seventh year, and it is still entangled
in litigation. In this discussion, excerpted from
an article by the Rev. Charles Owen Rice in The
Commonweal, the advice is given that unions
are well advised to fight to the bitter end to
defend the rights of workers;
By Charles Owen Rice
WHEN THE United Automobile Workers
struck the Kohler Company on April 5,
1954, everyone knew it would be a long, hard
strike, but no one realized just how long and
how hard.
A look at the background shows .that the labor
troubles of the Kohler Company are not of recent
origin.
That heavy-handed paternalism and its in-
evitable accompaniments of favoritism and
arbitrary decision characterized Kohler before
the big changes wrought in employer and
worker psychology and relationship by the de-
pression, the New Deal and the rise of modern
industrial unionism is no cause for wonder; but
it is highly unusual that the changing times
brought no change in company attitudes, and
there is the root of the trouble.
In 1933, Kohler workers organized under an
AFL federal charter, and the company in coun-
tering followed a common pattern of the day by
forming the rival Kohler Workers Association, a
company union. The AFL local union struck for
11 weeks in 1934 and in the course of that strike,
company guards fired into a crowd at the main
gate, killing two and injuring thirty. After the Na-
tional Guard broke the strike, and the company
broke the AFL union, the Kohler Workers Asso-
ciation easily won an election. Kohler had 20
years of peace, but what most accounts of the
present strike seem to miss is the fact that the
KWA itself eventually turned against Kohler. The
members in 1951 voted to affiliate with the Auto
Workers, but the company would not unbend
even to its own creature.
The UAW did not win bargaining rights, nor
a contract, until 1953. That first contract was a
poor one, without even a seniority clause, and
when its one-year term drew to a close the UAW
demanded improvements. Herbert V. Kohler
would give them nothing, since in his words,
"You don't have to give them anything to bar-
gain." An NLRB examiner later called it, "bar-
gaining not to reach but to avoid agreement."
Kohler laid in an arsenal of guns, clubs and tear-
gas equipment; and his hired detectives and pho-
tographers maintained "illegal surveillance" not
only on workers, organizers and strangers but
also eventually on officials of the NLRB and
the Senate committee.
The union trimmed its demands and even kept
its members at work five weeks beyond the con-
tract termination date, but Kohler was adamant
and the strike was on.
AT A COST of $10 million the UAW kept
faith with the 2,000 strikers and supported them
until, after two years, hY sadly advised the bulk
of them to find work elsewhere.
Formal complaints brought the labor board
into the controversy. Six million words and nine-
teen hundred exhibits were compiled, and in 1957
Examiner George A. Downing issued a report
condemning the company, and finding for the
union. The matter went to the full board, and
in August of this year a final decision was handed
down, giving virtually complete victory and vindi-
cation to the strikers and their union; at least
on paper.
The crux of the decision is the determination
that this strike, which began as an economic
strike, became an unfair practices strike after
June 1, 1954 because the company offered a
wage increase to non-strikers without consult-
ing the legal bargaining agent, UAW Local
833. Members of the NLRB were split only
because one wanted to sustain the union in
everything.
Kohler spokesmen condemned the NLRB rul-
ing and immediately appealed it to the U.S. Court
of Appeals vowing that if they lost they would
take it to the Supreme Court.
Local after local of the Textile Workers
Union of America in the South and a few
scattered locals of other internationals in the
North have been destroyed by tactics similar
to those of Kohler. No industrial union, how-
ever big, can feel safe and unthreatened.
On the other hand, while the UAW's persist-
ence, its victory in the NLRB and its prospect of
almost certain eventual victory in the Supreme
Court do not banish the various threats to union
survival, they should cause other willful employ-
ers to think twice before following the Kohler
course of action. And they should encourage
other unions, and their members, to stand fast
and pursue every remedy at hand, no matter how
many years or how great pains are required, when
dealing with scofflaw industrial power.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1960
Page Five
Morgan Says:
World's Cdlored Peoples Wake,
Louisiana Racists Damage U.S.
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network, Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
¥ AM BEING HAUNTED by a news picture
taken during last week's Mardi Gras of
madness in New ^Orleans. It shows a young
mother, with a tow-headed baby boy in her arms,
observing the rabid rites of a festival of hate by
screaming taunts at the integration of four little
Negro girls into the first
grade of the city's schools.
Veins stand out on the
woman's neck in a purple
passion, her eyes are
blackly blazing and her
mouth is a quivering livid
hole gushing with strident
epithets. Her small son is
looking away over her
right shoulder.
Here was a woman who
saw her civic duty and did
it with all the blindness and hot feeling of a black
peasant of Haiti possessed by the pagan ritual of
voodoo. There undoubtedly was no question of
her sincerity. But it was the sincerity of savagery
based on the pathetic but poisonous belief that
somehow evil spirits would rise from the daintily-
dressed Negro girls to invade and damage the
persons of her own children.
This is a picture which should haunt the coun-
try. For in its twisted ignorance and carbolic
prejudice it is as deadly in its way to our security
and well-being as a nuclear warhead. This lady
from Louisiana is not herself to blame for her
act. It stems from dark animal fears that have
been nurtured by demagogues and demented
minds for turbulent centuries of human history.
Indubitably she felt her taunts and screeches were
saving her family from some kind of fate worse
than death but in reality by her behavior she
could not have made their future more insecure.
If he is to survive and prosper, her son can-
not look away over a protective shoulder as
he grows up. His mother, like a priestess of a
discredited jungle religion, was trying to hoot
down facts that he is going to have to live with.
These facts are not only woven into the legal
fabric of the United States, they are rooted in a
growing reality — a reality in which Negroes
and other minority groups are not only going
to demand but see their demands fulfilled for
recognition as human beings.
This is what the rude awakening of Asia and
Africa is all about. This is what the, on the whole,
Ms We See It:
remarkably restrained and intelligent striving of
the Negro community of our own country is con-
cerned with. No amount of the cruel nonsense of
apartheid or white supremacy, whether in the
Union of South Africa or the parishes of Louisi-
ana, none of these stubborn little walls of racism
is big enough to stem long the tide of the dark-
skinned majorities of the world in their reach for
full human rights.
Why should white men cringe in fear at this
spectacle? They should better direct their fears,
tinged perhaps with guilt, at the consequences
should they continue to be irresponsible in leading
and guiding other races to equality of opportunity.
Such abandonment of leadership can only com-
pound such dire consequences as have been wit-
nessed from Little Rock to Leopoldville.
One of the most agonizing twists in the New
Orleans situation is that the anguish and suf-
fering of it were such a needless waste. De-
segregation is already an established and legal-
ized fact even though in some parts of the land
it is still no more than a token fact, and it is
only a matter of time before Negroes are able
to realize the civil rights of first class citizen-
ship guaranteed them by the constitution. Tin-
horn politicians, bigots and racists may be able
to delay this realization by playing on the fears
and- prejudices of immature citizens; they may
be able to delay it but they cannot stop it. The
tragedy of it all is that each community seems
to insist on a Little Rock of its own before it
can accept the lesson.
UNDER THE light-headed leadership of a
sometime entertainer, Governor Jimmie Davis,
the state government of Louisiana went on a jag
of legislative delinquency designed to wreck the
public schools rather than desegregate them. Now
there are some signs of hesitation. Anticipating
that the Supreme Court would throw out the
state's attempt to interpose itself between the fed-
eral government and the New Orleans school
board, Louisiana Congressman Otto Passman
nevertheless says that through such proceedings,
"we may have gained valuable time." Valuable
time for what? For further weakening the fabric
of American society? There is an extravagant
irony in Passman ? s own position. As a ranking
member of the House appropriations committee
he has an almost wanton penchant for slashing the
foreign military and economic aid budget. Yet his
stand as a white supremacist is costing the country
incalculably more. This is the kind of wounding'
waste which the New Orleans housewife and the
nation can least afford. Encouragingly enough a
courageous federal judge and local school board,
among others, seem to realize this.
Quadrupled Inspection Force
Needed in Food and Drug Fight
ITS YOUR
WASHINGTON
A SPOKESMAN for the Food & Drug Ad-
ministration declared in a radio interview
that the agency needs an inspection force at least
four times its present size "before we are any-
where near adequate" to keep unsafe or impure
products off the market.
Wallace Janssen, public information director
for the agency, said its present force of 500 in-
spectors can check only "a fraction of 1 percent"
of the $70 billion worth of merchandise for which
it is responsible. He was interviewed on the AFL-
CIO public service radio program, As We See It,
carried on the American Broadcasting Co. net-
work.
Janssen said recent food and drug investi-
gations have unearthed examples of "counter-
feit drugs" sold at cut-rate prices to some
pharmacies with no identification of the manu-
facturer. He said there has been "a flare-up
in this racket" in recent months and the agency
has launched a nationwide investigation.
Other investigations, Janssen said, have uncov-
ered drugs and mechanical devices which falsely
claimed to be effective in treating ailments rang-
ing from heart disease and cancer to obesity.'
A ROUTINE inspection resulted in the seizure
of 23.5 tons of contaminated fish at Boston, he
told Harry W. Flannery, AFL-CIO moderator of
the program.
Janssen said the agencies' staff has been in-
creased in recent years but still is far from the
target set by a special citizens' committee which
made a study of enforcement activities in 1955.
Since then, he said, "Congress has given us some
new obligations and we think we will have to
more than quadruple the size of the FDA before
we are anywhere near adequate to cope with this
job."
As an example of the agency's expanded re-
sponsibility, Janssen cited the color additive
amendments to the Food & Drug Act passed at
the last session of Congress. The changes in the
law were made necessary, he said, when it was
discovered that coloring matter previously pre-
sumed to be safe had been found to be potentially
harmful when used in large quantities.
Under the new law, he said, the agency has
the responsibility for determining the amount of
coloring matter which can safely be used in
foods, drugs or cosmetics.
While manufacturers or distributors sometimes
challenge FDA actions in seizing or banning im-
pure products, Janssen commented, "we win about
99 out of 100 of our cases/'
re
Wieewid^SAeHert
A STUDY of how Great Britain's Conservative Party, the Tories,
revitalized itself after its 1945 and 1950 election disaster is running
in the Wall Street Journal. The suggestion is made that the success
of the British conservatives may hold "clues" for the Republicans
in the United States; the Tories have now won three straight na-
tional elections and they are firmly established in power, while the
opposition Labor Party is badly split and appears to have little pros-
pect of a quick recovery.
"Clues" there are for the Republicans in the Tory comeback, and
there are some Republican leaders who would know how to take
lessons from the British example. This element is .not represented,
however, in the GOP leadership in Congress.
Rep. Charles A. Halleck, the Indiana partisan who played a
dominant role in blocking moderate reform and welfare measures
in the 86th Congress, has served public notice that he intends to
try to do it again. He says that he and the southern Democratic
chairman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Howard W. Smith
of Virginia, see "eye to eye" about stopping what obviously will
be a Kennedy program for action in the fields of minimum wages,
school aid, housing and health care.
On the Senate side, the GOP leader will continue to be Sen.
Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, who had less success in the
upper chamber in blocking legislation than Halleck in the House — .
but not because he did not rally all possible Republicans to vote
steadily with the most conservative southern Democrats. The Senate
rules simply do not permit the conservative coalition to function as
efficiently to prevent liberals from passing bills even when they are
in a majority.
There is not the slightest indication that Messrs. Halleck and
Dirksen a*re interested in receiving any "clues" to political success
from the British Conservatives.
* * *
RAY VICKER'S STUDY in the Wall Street Journal emphasizes
that the British Tories moved to destroy the party's "old image of
being the big business party of defeat and depression." They
"looked to the future, not the past. Unabashedly they adopted some
welfare ideas espoused by the Labor Party. ..."
The British Tories did more than this. They adopted in toto
the national health insurance system that a Labor government
had installed, which Republicans here still call "socialized medi- '
cine" without seeming to comprehend that to British conservatives
the label seems preposterous.
They aimed no legislation against labor unions, as Republicans
did in 1947 and as they voted to do last year in cooperation with
southern Democratic conservatives. In effect, as Vicker emphasizes,
"they took over Labor's program, only promising to handle it
better."
* * *
THE BASIC FACT is that the Conservative Party in Britain is,
and has been more* than once in its history, considerably more
liberal than the Republican Party in America — or at least than the
majority of its spokesmen in Congress and state and county leaders
are.
Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller is trying to do something to revi-
talize the GOP by saying it is, or should be, respectable for Re-
publicans to favor federal school aid and health care for the aged
under social security. Sen. Clifford Case, a liberal just re-elected
in New Jersey, wants the party to modernize its attitudes. But
Sen. Barry Goldwater, an Arizona reactionary, is the hero of most
of the men in control of the party machinery.
The applause Goldwater got for his Platform Committee pro-
posals last July in Chicago was deafening, whereas Rockefeller got
a barely polite reception. There is no liberal revolt looming on the
scene for the Republicans.
A BRONZE PLAQUE in recognition of Max Greenberg's "devo-
tion to the highest ideals of the labor movement" and "in appre-
ciation of his outstanding leadership" was presented to the president
of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at a testi-
monial dinner. Shown in the picture, from the left, are Greenberg;
RWDSU Sec.-Treas. Alvin E. Heaps, and AFL-CIO Sec-Treas.
William F. Schnitzler.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER S, I960
To Stimulate Growth 9 :
SCREEN STAR KIRK DOUGLAS is shown in scene from new motion picture, "Spartacus," which
Hollywood AFL-CIO Film Council, comprised of unions and guilds representing 24,000 film industry
employes, is promoting across the country as an answer to "runaway" American movie productions.
Douglas, producer of the picture, filmed it in U.S. in belief that the time saved in utilizing Hollywood
skills would offset lower wage scales paid in European studios.
Film Council Boosts
U. S.-Made 'Spartacus 9
Hollywood — Thousands of AFL - CIO members, representing
dozens of crafts in the motion picture industry, have turned them-
selves into voluntary press agents for the motion picture "Sparta-
cus," which they have hailed as an answer to "runaway" American
movie productions.
The campaign behind "Sparta-^
cus" is being spearheaded by the
<S>-
Hollywood AFL-CIO Film Coun-
cil, comprised of unions and guilds
representing more than 24,000 em-
ployes of the film industry.
Charge 'Runaway' Trend
In recent years, the entertain-
ment unions charge, there has been
a growing trend by American pro-
ducers to film pictures abroad in
order to escape American wage
standards. The Film Council said
the mounting runaway problem has
resulted in severe unemployment in
the American film industry.
The film company headed by
Actor Kirk Douglas, star of
"Spartacus," decided to make the
motion picture in this country in
the belief that the time saved
through utilizing the skills of Hol-
lywood craftsmen would offset
the more advantageous wage
scales prevalent in European
studios.
The Film Council, declaring that
"Spartacus" might prove the "turn-
ing point in the drive against run-
away production," said union mem-
bers are engaged in volunteer press-
agentry for the picture to* bring it
to the attention of fair-minded pro-
ducers and distributors as well as
to the attention of millions of union
members and their families.
Civil Rights Training
Urged for Local Unions
Cincinnati — A proposal that labor develop its own civil rights'
training course for local union officers was explored here at the
first conference of AFL-CIO national and international union staff
representatives in the civil rights field.
Sixteen civil rights specialists met with the staff of the AFL-CIO
Dept. of Civil Rights to report on^
the advancement of equal rights
within the labor movement and in
private and public employment.
Broad Action Urged
They agreed that more AFL-CIO
affiliates should establish civil
rights committees of their own,
and that each such committee be
provided with a full-time staff; that
each affiliate should extend com-
mittee action from the national
level to the local level with the help
of local unions; and that technical
assistance and specific guidance
should be given local unions in de-
veloping positive programs of then-
own.
Fraternal guests included
Emanuel Muravchik and Jacob
Schlitt of the Jewish Labor Com-
mittee, who proposed a training
course for local union officers;
and Harry Fleischman of the Na-
tional Labor Service, who report-
ed on new civil rights materials
available for union use.
Dir. Boris Shishkin of the AFL-
assistants, Theodore E. Brown and
Donald Slaiman, detailed the com-
pliance procedure of the AFL-CIO
Civil Rights Committee and the
activities of two regional advisory
committees, representing 13 states
in the South and 6 in the Midwest.
Charles C. Webber, AFL-CIO
religious relations representative,
reported on his department's steps
to advance the AFL-CIO civil
rights program in labor and the
community.
Others at the conference included
Harry Alston of the Packinghouse,
Food and Allied Workers; Vice
Pres. Frank Evans of the Allied
Industrial Workers and Theodore
Thomas, AIW international repre-
sentative; H. L. Mitchell of the
Meat Cutters; Leo Kramer, State,
County and Municipal Employes;
William Oliver and Eugene Wilson
of the UAW fair employment prac-
tices department; Charles Chavers
of the Ohio UAW staff; Richard
Wadi of Cleveland UAW; James
Turner, Rubber Workers; Ken
Peterson and Richard Carter, Elec-
CIO Dept. of Civil Rights and two trical, Radio and Machine Workers, drive,
Ellison, Backer
Head AFL-CIO
In Arkansas
Little Rock, Ark. — George Elli-
son of the Glass Workers has been
elected to the newly-created post
of full-time president of the Arkan-
sas State AFL-CIO and Bill Becker
of the Meat Cutters to the new po-
sition of secretary-treasurer.
They won election, by a margin
of some 17,000 votes to 11,000 for
their opponents, at the third state
constitutional convention here. Sam
T. Selby, Steelworkers, was re-
elected as vice president-.
Ellison, of Ft. Smith, has been
state executive secretary. He suc-
ceeds Wayne Glenn, retiring presi-
dent. Becker, of Hot Springs, has
been treasurer. Selby is from Ben-
ton, Ark. The changes were ap-
proved by delegates who amended
the constitution and also chose 17
other members of the executive
committee.
The convention adopted resolu-
tions calling for a reduced work-
week for fire fighters of 56 hours
and a minimum wage of $300 a
month; repeal of the state "right
to work" law; aid in organizing all
unorganized state employes.
AFL-CIO Unions
Beat Back Raids
Danville, 111. — Two AFL-CIO
unions have beaten back attempted
raids by unaffiliated labor organiza-
tions here.
In the first, the Machinists turned
back a raid by Mine Workers Dist.
50 in a -contest at the Danville
General Electric Co. plant where
the IAM has held bargaining rights
for nearly 1,200 employes since
1955. The Machinists polled 673
votes to 288 for the UMW in a
National Labor Relations Board
election.
In the second election, the
Packinghouse Workers, repre-
sentative of approximately 300
workers of the Tee-Pack Co. for
two years, defeated the Team-
sters by a vote of 162 to 126.
John F. Schreier, assistant direc-
tor of the AFL-CIO Dept of Or-
ganization, and William Widman,
AFL-CIO auditor and a long-time
resident of Danville, assisted in
both campaigns.
Participating in the IAM cam-
paign were Daniel Healy, director
of AFL-CIO Region XIV, and
Field Representatives Henry Henry,
Al Bradt and Rudy Eskovitz, while
Ed Haines, assistant director of
Region XIV, aided in the UPWA
BCTD Proposes 10
Legislative Changes
A 10-point legislative program, keyed to rapid revival of prosper-
ity in America, has been approved by the Executive Council of the
AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Dept.
"This legislative program," the Building Trades group declared,
"is designed to stimulate healthy economic growth and to increase
employment. It is in line with the^
basic legislative objectives of the
entire labor movement. It also
squares with the announced goals
of the new Administration.
'Unfinished Business'
"In a very real sense, our pro-
gram provides a fresh start on the
'unfinished business' of America.
It will entail substantial federal in-
vestments, but these will be offset
by increased federal revenues and
will return incalculable dividends
in national strength and national
security."
The 10-point program and the
department's comments follows:
• On-site picketing — "This was
the number one legislative objec-
tive in the last session of Congress,
which failed to live up to the com-
mitments of leaders of both parties
to bring it to a vote. It remains
our number one objective. The
purpose of this legislation is to re-
store to building trades workers
the same rights to protect their
jobs and standards by picketing
as are enjoyed by other workers.
"These rights were taken away
from building trades workers by
the Taft-Hartley Act. This injus-
tice was recognized by Pres. Eisen-
hower, who on three separate occa-
sions urged Congress to correct it
by passing legislation to permit
on-site picketing.
"The bill to accomplish^ this pur-
pose was sponsored in the last
Senate by Pres.-elect Kennedy, who
repeatedly has pledged himself to
lead the fight for its enactment.
With bi-partisan support assured
in the next Congress, we are hope-
ful of victory at last."
• Federal aid to education —
"We urge a broad program of
federal aid to education, in-
cluding school construction and
improvement of teachers' sala-
ries. The need for such action
is no longer debatable. It is a
must for national security and
national progress."
• Housing and slum clearance
— "We strongly advocate a housing
program aimed at the construction
of at least 2 million units a year
for the next 10 years. This will re-
quire considerable expansion of
federal mortgage guarantees at
sharply reduced interest rates to
home purchasers. Emphasis should
be placed on providing low-cost
housing and homes for middle-in-
come families. The program must
also be supplemented by housing
aid for the elderly and by an effec-
tive slum-clearance and rehousing
program, both urban and rural."
• Minimum wage — "We fully
endorse legislation to increase the
federal minimum wage to $1.25 an
hour and to broaden coverage of
the law to millions of low-paid
workers now excluded."
• Medical care for the aged
— **Wc favor enactment of an
insurance program tied to the
social security system to protect
older citizens from the heavy
costs of adequate medical care."
• Davis-Bacon amendments — •
"The Davis-Bacon Act, providing
for the payment of prevailing wage
rates on federally-financed projects,
urgently needs amendments to
bring it up to date."
• Aid to distressed areas — "A
prompt start is necessary on a pro-
gram similar to that adopted by the
last Congress, but vetoed by Pres.
Eisenhower, for the restoration of
industrial activity and the creation
of thousands of new jobs in com-
munities where unemployment has
become acute."
City Decay Is Evident
• Urban renewal — "The decay
of our cities is self-evident. Mod-
ernization and renewal programs
need encouragement and assistance
from the federal government."
• Community improvement—
"Likewise, many communities need
federal help to improve- their phys-
ical plant and services, to provide
clean and adequate water supplies,
to eliminate pollution, and to pro-
vide recreational facilities that will
curb juvenile delinquency."
• Airports and roads — "Many
old airports have been outmoded
by the jet age. Congress should
enact a broad new airport construc-
tion bill. This is vital to national
defense as well as to development
of peace-time transportation. The
federal road construction program
has not proceeded rapidly enough.
We urge that funds be made avail-
able so that road construction can
be speeded up."
Pres. C. J. Haggerty, of the de-
partment also announced that its
annual legislative conference has
been set for Mar. 20-24, 1961, in
Washington and more than 3,000
delegates are expected.
Poll Tax Drive Key to
Senate Race in Texas
Austin, Tex. — A drive to get as many union members as pos-
sible to pay up their state poll tax by Jan. 31 has been launched by
the Texas State AFL-CIO.
Sherman Miles, legislative and political education director, told
the state federation's executive board here that an intensive poll
tax drive in 1957 made it possible^
for the Democrats to elect Sen.
Ralph Yar bo rough, and a similar
drive will be necessary to elect a
successor to Sen. Lyndon Johnson,
Democratic Vice President-elect.
Miles said certain interests hope
working people will not pay their
poll taxes in an "off year." From
1952 to 1953 there was a 38 per-
cent drop in tax payments in the
14 major Texas counties. The
1957 campaign by labor held the
decline in the major counties to 1 1
percent while the state as a whole
declined 21 percent, Miles said.
The executive board approved
a campaign to raise funds for the
Texas Rehabilitation Center at
Gonzales Warm Springs for the
third consecutive year. First do-
nation was in the form of a
$5,000 check from the Chance-
Vought employes' charity fund
through Auto Workers' Local
893.
The state federation agreed to
call on union members to state
their preferences for Senate candi-
dates with the proviso that only
the state COPE can make a final
recommendation of a candidate to
be supported. Among the 15 can-
didates listed on a sample ballot
are former Sen. William A. Blakley,
Rep. Wright Patman (D), Rep.
Frank Ikard (D), Maury Maverick,
Jr.; former Rep. Martin Dies, and
former Gov. Allen Shivers.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1960
Page Seven
ILO Mission Finds :
U. S. Labor 'Strong Force 9 in
Economic and Political Life
Geneva — Trade union rights in the United States "are secure and freedom of association is a
reality'' with few exceptions, according to Intl. Labor Organization freedom-of-association investi-
gators.
The study of freedom of association in the U.S. was the first made under a resolution adopted
by the ILO Governing Body providing for a continuing survey in ILO member-states to be made
at the invitation of their govern-^
ments. The mission was headed
by John Price, chief of the ILO's
Freedom of Association Survey
Div., and spent from March to
June 1959 in the U.S.
The report, "The Trade Union
Situation in the United States," has
just been made public by ILO Dir.-
Gen. David A. Morse. It notes
that the labor movement in the
U.S. is a "strong force participat-
ing in the economic, social and
political life of the community."
The mission found a "stiffening
of employers' attitudes 99 toward
union contract demands which
took the form of "efforts to curb
their power, limit their effective-
ness and make it more difficult
for them to establish themselves
in new fields. 99
"It is a contradiction to accept
freedom of association in principle
but to oppose the organization of
a union in a particular plant or to
deny it recognition," said the re-
port. "The concern of many em-
ployers at the growing power of the
trade unions can be understood, but
from opposing the growth of trade
union strength to opposing the ex-
istence of the unions may be only
a step.
"While the mission was struck
by the extent to which trade unions
were being criticized at the time
of its visit," the report observed,
"it does not seem that their exis-
tence is imperiled. In other words,
there does not appear to be a cli-
mate of opinion in which any fun-
damental attack on the principle of
freedom of association is to be
expected.
"On the contrary, the very
existence of the strong trade
union movement in the U.S. is
one of the guarantees that free-
dom of association will continue
to be respected in the future.' 9
Furor growing out of allegations
made before the McClellan com-
mittee was near its height when
the mission was in the U.S.
It met with AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany, Labor Sec. James
P. Mitchell, union leaders and
members at all levels, government
officials, leaders and members of
employer organizations and experts
in labor-management relations. It
visited 23 cities in different parts
of the country.
No "Profound Hostility 9
"Whatever criticisms there may
be of so-called 'excesses' on the
part of the unions," it said in its
report, "there does not seem to be
any profound hostility among the
general public to unions as such.
The report included a study of
labor laws and their operation, an
examination of the relations be-
tween unions and employers, and
an analysis of union administration.
In addition it described the Ameri
can scene and gave a brief history
of the U.S. labor movement.
"The law certainly lays down
the principle of freedom of as-
sociation and establishes machin-
ery for its protection, 99 the report
said, "but on the other hand the
trade unions contend that it does
not fully safeguard freedom of
association in practice. 99
The mission came to no conclu
sion as the fairness or reasonable-
ness of the "conditions and restric-
tions" it found imposed on the
basic union right of organization,
Ethics Codes Cited
The report noted the high level
of democracy in U.S. unions, cited
the AFL-CIO Codes of Ethical
Practices as weapons against cor-
ruption and to safeguard democ-
racy, and observed that barriers
against Negro membership have
ICFTU Spurs Drive
To Democratize Spain
(Continued from Page 1)
Christian International, including
radio programs to the Spanish peo-
ple and the possibility , of setting up
a radio station to broadcast these
programs.
It called upon ICFTU affili-
ates in countries which provide
financial aid to Franco, meaning
primarily the United States, to
press for the stopping of such
aid. The ICFTU has already
gone on record that it will boy-
cott any international organiza-
tion, such as the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, if it should
accept Franco Spain into mem-
bership.
In a special report on Spain, the
ICFTU pointed out that despite
the fact Franco has proclaimed
himself a champion of anticommu-
ICFTU To Look Into
Moroccan Repression
Brussels — The Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions is send-
ing a mission to Morocco to inves-
tigate harsh police repression of a
strike demonstration at Larache
which resulted in three deaths and
several wounded.
The police measures, which also
included the arrest of several union
officials, are further evidence of in-
creasing government interference in
legitimate trade union activities,
free labor spokesmen maintain.
nism, in actual fact the Commu
nists have remarkable freedom of
movement inside Spain, and radio
broadcasts and other propaganda
emanating from Communist coun
tries are not interfered with.
Obviously the existence of a
"Communist danger" is indispen
sable to the regime in its trading
on certain sympathies in the free
world, the ICFTU said. Thus it
is that Spanish people, and work
ers in particular, have no other
sources of information than the
Spanish press and radio, which are
entirely controlled by the govern-
ment, and, paradoxically, Commu-
nist broadcasts directed towards
them from behind the Iron Curtain.
The report also pointed out
that the economic situation in-
side Spain had deteriorated
sharply, with unemployment and
wage-cuts growing in intensity.
To stem the growing dissatisfac-
tion, the Franco regime has in-
tensified repressive measures in-
cluding intimidation and terror
and large-scale arrests.
ICFTU General Sec. Omer Becu
warned that if Franco, approaching
70, should suddenly die, the world
might find itself with another Cas-
tro regime, and "We don't want a
Cuba in Europe." That is why a
union of democratic forces against
Franco has been formed to help
assure that any future transfer of
power would be in a pro-demo-
cratic direction, he indicated.
dropped sharply in the last few
years. It noted, however, that the
bars still exist in some parts of the
country despite efforts of interna-
tional unions and the AFL-CIO
to eliminate them.
Particular note was taken of the
plight of agricultural workers, who
are left unprotected by the laws
guaranteeing the right of organi-
zation to other* workers.
"It was suggested to the mis-
sion," the report said, "that Ihe
fact that farm workers are ex-
cluded from the bulk of social
legislation has been interpreted
by many people as meaning that
the official policy of the U.S.
and of the state governments is
to deny them any right of associ-
ation at all. This, however, is
an extreme position which it
would be difficult to justify."
Hungry, Exploited Migrants are
America's 'Harvest of Shame'
"We live anywhere — in a tent — under a shade tree — under a river bridge. We drink water out of
a creek or anywhere we can get it. Five or six families drank out of one cup — a tin can—
anything else. We are to blame. We tolerate that stuff."
So spoke a migratory farm worker in "Harvest of Shame," an hour-long documentary telecast
nationally over the Columbia Broadcasting System and narrated by Edward R. Murrow.
In the wake of the telecast, grow-f"
er protests to CBS were countered
by an appeal from the National
Consumers League to CBS Pres.
QUARTER CENTURY of service to the trade union movement
and community affairs expended by Robert A. Rosekrans (second
from right), assistant director of AFL-CIO Community Service
Activities, was saluted by labor and social leaders at luncheon in
New York City. Left to right are Richard A. Walsh, president of
the Stage Employes and an AFL-CIO vice president, Msgr. John J.
O'Donnell, pastor of Guardian Angel Church, New York City;
Rosekrans; and Mrs. Sylvia N. Rachlin, executive vice president
of Special Social Services, New York City.
Frank Stanton "to stand firm
against the immense pressure which
is and will be exerted ... by cor-
poration agriculture." NCL Gen.
Sec. Vera Waltman Mayer congra
tulated CBS for rendering "a great
public service."
Strike Meeting Shown
The documentary unfolded the
problem by following the north
ward trek of migrant families in
the east coast stream. It showed a
strike meeting of the AFL-CIO
Agricultural Workers Organizing
Committee in California. It closed
with the return of the East Coast
migrants to Florida,
At the California strike meet-
ing of cherry pickers, workers
stood and aired their grievances.
The worker who complained of
the lack of drinking water and
of the unsanitary conditions,
went on to say:
"If we'd stick together and
say we won't do it, we won't
pick your cherries until you give
us some rest rooms in the field
for the ladies and some for the
men — and some water fit to
drink, we won't pick them. We'd
get them."
Murrow pointed out that farm
workers are denied the federal
guarantee of the legal right to or-
ganize and bargain collectively.
Agriculture has been exempted
from almost all social welfare and
Breadwinner-less
Families on Increase
Ann Arbor, Mich. — One of
every eight families in the Detroit
metropolitan area had no wage
earners when the University of
Michigan made a survey early this
year.
The university's Detroit Area
Study has reported that the pro-
portion of such families increased
from 7 percent in 1955-56 to 12
percent in 1960.
Four out of every 10 families
whose heads were 60 or older had
no wage earner when the survey
was taken. Among younger fam-
ilies, the proportion was less than
1 in 20.
labor legislation, it was noted by
Murrow and others interviewed on
the program.
Pres. Charles Shuman of the
American Farm Bureau Federation
expressed the view that "the agri-
cultural worker needs to have the
right to have jobs — freedom to
move about — freedom to quit if he
doesn't like it — freedom to pro-
test — freedom to negotiate where
they are organized.
'The right to strike at the time
of the harvest," Shuman added,
ought to be regulated in some man
ner."
The program showed a weary
woman of 29 kneeling in the
field. She explained she earned
$1 a day, less than it cost her to
feed her 14 children, and the
reason she could not afford to
put the youngest in a nursery. A
camera shot of their one-room
quarters focused on a mattress
and it was explained the holes in
it were made by rats.
1 feel sad," commented Labor
Sec. James P. Mitchell as he was
interviewed by Murrow.
"I feel sad because I think that
it is a blot on my conscience as
well as the conscience of all of us
whom society has treated a little
more favorably than these people
"They certainly have no voice
in Congress and their employers
do have a voice. Their employers
are highly organized and make
their voice and terms and condi-
tions known to our legislators. I
know of no greater pressure lob-
bies, so-called, in Washington than
the farm group. . . ."
Growers 3 Double Standard Hit
Mitchell pointed out that the
government protects the farmer
against loss on certain crops and
the farmer accepts this "govern-
ment largess" while exerting "tre-
mendous" pressures against aid to
farm workers.
"It is morally wrong, it seems
to me," Mitchell declared, "for
any man, any employer to ex-
ploit his workers.
"In this day and age, I don't
think we should tolerate it."
Murrow closed the program by
observing that "only an enlight-
ened, aroused and perhaps angered
public opinion can do anything
about the migrants."
'The people you have seen,**
Murrow commented, "have the
strength to harvest your fruit and
vegetables.
"They don't have the strength to
influence legislation. Maybe we
do."
2 Union Bodies
Vote Support
For Hutcheson
The executive council of the
AFL-CIO Building & Construction
Trades Dept. has given a unani-
mous vote of confidence to Vice
Pres. Mauriee A. Hutcheson, presi-
dent of the Carpenters, who has
been sentenced to a prison term in
Indiana of from two to 14 years
for alleged bribery.
The BCTD council decided that
Hutcheson should continue to serve
as a vice president of the depart-
ment pending final outcome of the
case, declaring: "We are convinced
that he will be cleared of the
charges against him in the appel-
late courts."
Hutcheson and Carpenters' Vice
Pres. William Blaier drew similar
sentences growing out of an alleged
state highway scandal. Both are
free on $5,000 bail each pending
arguments Jan. 4, 1961 on defense
motions for a new trial. They plan
an appeal if the motion is denied.
Earlier, the Carpenters' 12-
man executive board, meeting in
Indianapolis, Ind., expressed
"complete faith and confidence"
in the two union leaders. Hutche-
son and Blaier were convicted,
the board said in a statement,
"not because the state proved
its case, but rather because they
are union officials in an anti-
union state."
In addition to the prison terms,
Hutcheson and Blaier were fined
$250 each and were barred from
voting or holding public office for
five years. A third Carpenters'
official, Treas. Frank M. Chapman,
was convicted along with Hutche-
son and Blaier. Chapman died
Nov. 16 in Seattle, Wash.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3. 1960
Meany Hails Proposed Goals,
Attacks 'Timidity 'of Methods
(Continued from Page 1)
of a world position "neither defen-
sive nor belligerent" and dedicated
to seeking to ease tensions so that
the "safeguarded reduction of arm-
aments" can be attained. It speci-
fically called for:
• Joining with other free world
nations in "seeking a gradual re-
duction of tariffs and quota re-
strictions • . . while safeguarding
the national economy against
market disruption (and) destruc-
tive competition as the result of
grossly lower unit labor costs."
• A "substantial increase" in
the amount of foreign aid to the
newly emerging nations^ "to be
equitably shared by the major free
nations."
• Maintenance of a firm stand
in Berlin and in any other areas
where America's "commitments
and interests are squarely opposed
to those of the Soviets."
• Maintenance "at whatever
cost" of strategic and tactical forces
strong enough to deter the Commu-
nist powers from surprise attack
and to cope with major or limited
military aggression.
• Enlargement of "personal and
cultural contacts" with the Com-
munist nations.
• A "step-by-step" advance in
the area of disarmament, beginning
with suspending nuclear testing un-
der a safeguard agreement and aim-
ing toward eventual control of nu-
clear weapons under "effective in-
ternational inspection."
In his separate views, Meany was
sharp in his criticism of the ma-
jority for placing so much reliance
on private initiative and incentive
and on the expansion of the roles
of state and local governments to
meet the new needs, declaring that
while these were "important," the
"failure to recognize" the superior
resources of the federal govern-
ment "would doom many of these
worthwhile roles."
The report, he said, "grudging-
ly recognizes the role and re-
sponsibilities of the federal gov-
ernment," but sees it "only as a
last resort."
He also expressed himself in
disagreement with the "hasty opti-
mism" shown by the commission
in the call for enlarging contacts
with people behind the Iron Cur-
tain. Meany said that "little harm"
would result from exchanges of
artists, scientists, actors and pro-
fessional technicians.
But he warned there would be
great damage if the heads of gov-
ernment-controlled organizat ions —
like the Soviet so-called trade
unions — were welcomed as non-
governmental delegates and "per-
mitted to gain respectability and
legitimacy in the eyes of the free
world."
Timidities' Listed
The AFL-CIO president ticked
off this list of "timidities" in the
commission's report:
ECONOMIC GROWTH — The
commission, he said, "tends to ac-
cept as valid" the projected 3.4
percent growth rate, despite the
fact that many sound economists
feel the nation "can, should and
must grow" at an annual rate of
Conservative Coalition
Lays Plans for Blockade
(Continued from Page 1)
Rules Committee reportedly under
consideration are:
• Dropping Colmer as a Dem-
ocratic member because he bolted
the Kennedy- Johnson ticket to sup-
port a slate of "unpledged" electors
which won in Mississippi.
• Increasing the size of the
committee by two members to per-
mit appointment of two more Dem-
ocrats and break the present six-six
liberal-conservative tie.
• Making the Speaker of the
House and the Majority and Mi-
nority Leaders ex-officio members
of the committee, to make it more
responsive to the leadership.
• Enacting some time limita-
tion, similar to the 21 -day rule
used in the 81st Congress, to open
the way for breaking the committee
stranglehold and permit the full
House to vote eventually on meas-
Kennedy Selects
Williams, Ribicoff
Pres.-elect John F. Ken-
nedy has announced the se-
lection of the first two top-
level members of his official
family.
In rapid-fire order, Ken-
nedy picked Gov. G. Mennen
Williams of Michigan as As-
sistant Secretary of State for
Africa, and Gov. Abraham
A. Ribicoff of Connecticut as
Secretary of Health, Educa-
tion & Welfare.
Williams served a record-
breaking six terms as the
Democratic governor of
Michigan before declining to
seek re-election this year.
Ribicoff, now in his second
term as Democratic governor
of the Nutmeg State, was the
first governor in the nation
to support Kennedy in his
bid for the presidency.
ures approved by standing com-
mittees.
Following his conference with
Smith and Colmer, Halleck told
newsmen that he was opposed to
any of the suggested changes in the
makeup and responsibilities of the
Rules Committee.
Meanwhile, Kennedy returned to
the nation's capital from his post-
election vacation in Palm Beach,
Fla., following the birth of his son
— John F. Kennedy, Jr. — and
plunged into a round of top-level
conferences with party and other
leaders, interspersed with visits to
his wife and the baby at George-
town General Hospital.
Cabinet Selection
The Kennedy talks centered on
the twin subjects of the orderly
transfer of power from the outgoing
Republican Administration and the
major task of selecting his Cabinet
and other key members of his offi-
cial family. He was scheduled to
meet Dec. 6 with Pres. Eisenhower,
for the first time since the election,
to discuss the changeover.
There were strong indications
that the Kennedy Administration
plans to push for speedy approval
of federal aid for school construc-
tion and legislation to liberalize the
minimum wage law.
Rep. Adam Clayton Powell
(D-N.Y.), slated to become chair-
man of the House Education &
Labor Committee, said after a
meeting with Kennedy at the lat-
ter's Georgetown residence that
he would try to have these meas-
ures through committee and
ready for consideration within the
first 30 to 60 days after Congress
convenes.
Powell also told newsmen the
President-elect favored swift expan-
sion of a government program of
free scholarships for African stu-
dents desiring to study in the U.S.
4.5 to 5 percent — a rate sufficient
to insure achievement of its
goals."
CIVIL RIGHTS — The commis-
sion's call for "additional muni-
cipal, state and federal legislation"
to insure private employment op-
portunities "timidly stops short of
supporting the only realistic legis-
lative step: an enforceable federal
Fair Employment Practices law,
supplemented by similar state and
local laws."
The report sets a 1970 goal
for desegregation in higher edu-
cation, "but astoundingly sets no
time goal at all for desegrega-
tion of publicly supported
schools," urging • only "progress
in good faith." By 1970, Meany
said, "all Negro children must
have available to them the op-
portunity to attend all local
schools, subject only to meeting
uniformly administered academic
standards."
TAXES— The report calling for
new tax sources for state and
local governments "should go one
step further and recommend a
federal income tax credit to the
states ... as a means of assuring
a sound, equitable way of raising
additional revenue, rather than en-
acting regressive sales and excise
taxes."
EDUCATION— The report pro-
poses only federal supplemental
funds to states whose per capita
income is inadequate, and provides
other states only with federal funds
on a matching basis. "What
America needs," Meany said, "is
federal grants to all states with
further supplemental funds to those
states whose per capita income is
too low."
MEDICAL CARE — In the
field of health care for the aged,
which Meany called "easily the
most pressing problem in this
area," he charged that the re-
port "refuses to take the next,
necessary step and say such in-
surance should be extended
* through the tried and proved so-
cial security system."
UNEMPLOYMENT STAND-
ARDS — The call merely for "en-
couraging" states to meet minimum
standards "fails completely to rec-
ognize" the fact that in the past
eight years the states have had
"almost no record of success" when
faced with requests from the White
House for voluntary improvement
in the amount and duration of
benefits. Meany urged enactment
of federal standards "requiring the
states" to meet these goals.
Year-Around
Labor COPE
Activity Urged
Utica, N. Y. — Organized labor
should remain politically active
throughout the year instead of con-
centrating only on the election
campaigns, Louis Hollander, chair-
man of the Executive Council of
the New York State AFL-CIO,
declared here.
Speaking at a conference spon-
sored by the Greater Utica AFL-
CIO, Hollander pointed to the nar-
row margin of Pres.-elect John F.
Kennedy's victory in November as
a major reason why labor "cannot
slacken its pace or cease its interest
and activity in this area."
Hollander said that labor must
continue to work on the "political-
economic" front, adding:
"Otherwise we run the risk of
finding many major aims of labor
and the community as well — in
the fields of education, employ-
ment, housing — coming out on
the short end of the votes in Con-
gress and in the state legislature."
Everyone has the right to freedom \
of opinion and expression:
H
R
D
Dec.
Oth.
"For the people of the United States as zee// as for people everywhere,
the United Nations Universal- Deekration of Human Rights is a
significant beacon in the steady march towards achieving human
rights and fundamental freedoms for alt. "
J
Nation's Cost of Living
Soars to a Record High
(Continued from Page J)
able earnings were about 2 per-
cent higher and buying power
was about 0.5 percent higher.
The cost of living, at 127.3
percent for October, was 1.4 per-
cent above October of 1959.
The Labor Dept. said that higher
food prices were to blame for over
40 percent of the 1.4 percent over-
the-year increase. In the non-food
groups, the report said, nearly two-
thirds of the advance was due to
Labor's Goals
Broad, Pitts
Tells Forum
San Francisco — Trade unionists
are interested in a broad range of
social aims and "refuse to conform
to the idea that they should . . .
pursue only narrow economic leg-
islative goals," Thomas L. Pitts,
secretary-treasurer of the Califor-
nia State AFL-CIO, declared here.
Addressing a meeting of the
Commonwealth Club, a nationally
famed forum, Pitts challenged those
who would depict labor as a group
concerned only with "special in-
terests" in legislation affecting col-
lective bargaining, job opportuni-
ties, employment security programs
and related social insurance needs.
Citizens First
Instead, he said, trade unionists
are "first and foremost citizens and
private individuals," and as such
have embraced legislative activities
aimed at correcting such problems
as illness, the needs of the aging,
housing, community facilities and
consumer concerns and support
such diverse programs as the im-
plementation of equal rights and
development of the nation's natural
resources.
Pitts said that die state labor
body's goals in the 1961 session
of the California legislature in-
clude protection of the rights of
workers to organize and bargain
collectively; support for the right
of unorganized farm workers to
receive social and economic pro-
tections enjoyed by unionized
workers; improvement of unem-
ployment and disability insur-
ance; modernization of work-
men's compensation standards;
and health care for the aged tied
to the social security system.
higher average prices for most com-
ponents of housing, particularly
higher shelter costs.
The CPI has been rising steadily
during 1960.
The index was 125.6 in Novem-
ber of 1959. It dipped to 125.4 by
January but since then moved up-
ward, remained unchanged at 126.6
between July and August and re-
sumed its climb.
09-s-si
As for the 0.4 percent hike from
September, the Labor Dept. had
this to say:
"The 0.6 percent increase in
food prices reflected primarily
higher prices for foods for home
consumption, although prices for
restaurant meals also advanced.
"Higher prices for eggs, most
fresh fruits, tomatoes, pork, milk
and bread contributed materially
to the rise.
"Seasonal factors were to some
extent responsible for the increase
in average prices of eggs, milk and
some fresh fruits. However, higher
prices for grapefruit and tomatoes
reflected extensive damage to Flor-
ida crops by the September hurri-
cane.
"Higher pork prices stemmed
from the large reduction in the
spring pig crop in response to low
prices for hogs at that time."
The index for all foods, the
report said, was at 120.9 percent
or 2.1 percent above a year ago.
This is figured against a 1947-49
base of 100.
The Labor Dept. reported that
the transportation index rose by 1 .0
percent over the month as new
model cars hit the market; hous-
ing went up by 0.2 percent as fuel
use increased; the apparel index
rose seasonally by 0.4 percent and
the medical care index jumped 0.3
percent as a result mainly of higher
hospitalization insurance rates and
despite a drop in the cost of pre-
scriptions and drugs.
Vol. V
Issied weekly at 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.,
Washington 6, D. C. *2 a year
Saturday, December 10, 1960 1*^^17 No. 50
Slump Hits 51 Job Areas;
Kennedy Spurs Aid Drive
Rail Strike
Prohibited
In Canada
Ottawa, Canada — Canadian
railroad workers have been de-
prived by their government of the
right to strike and have been or-
dered by the authorities to work
under a wage freeze for the next
five months.
Hours before a strike deadline
the Conservative government
pushed through legislation sus-
pending the right to strike until
May 15.
The government wage freeze
came in the face of a recommen-
dation by a conciliation board for
a 14-cent increase in a two-year
contract — a recommendation
which the unions accepted but
management rejected.
Frank H. Hall, chairman of the
joint negotiating committee of 17
non-operating unions representing
110,000 workers, said the unions
would obey the law. But he warned
that there could be "no meaning-
ful negotiations" with the rail-
roads during the life of the special
act passed by Parliament.
The May 15 deadline in the spe-
cial legislation is timed to follow the
report of a Royal Commission
which is probing Canada's trans-
portation problems.
25 Cents Asked
The non-operating rail unions,
arguing that their wage rates had
fallen steadily behind those paid in
the durable goods industry, had
sought an increase of 25 cents an
hour. After the railroads rejected
the 14-cent recommendation of the
government-appointed conciliation
board, the workers voted 92 per*
cent for a strike.
Passage of the no-strike legisla-
(Continued on Page 3)
Court Rules
VerbarPact
Binds Sears
Seattle — A federal court has
ruled that Sears Roebuck & Co.
here is bound by a verbal contract
with the Retail Clerks and must
submit a dispute over wage in-
creases and union security provi-
sions of the contract to arbitration.
U.S. District Judge Paul Boldt
handed down the arbitration order.
The Retail Clerks hailed the ruling
as "another victory over Sears' anti-
union policies."
This year Sears, for the first time
in 20 years, refused to put into
effect wages and working condi-
tions agreed to by other Seattle re-
tail stores. The union sued, claim-
ing Sears was part of a multi-em-
(Continued on Page 6)
GOV. ABRAHAM RIBICOFF of Connecticut, left, slated to be
Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare in the Kennedy cabinet,
meets with outgoing HEW Sec. Arthur S. Flemming at a luncheon
conference in Washington.
Labor's Task 4 Has Just Begun
Legislative Drive
Urged by Meany
The decision of the American voters in electing John Fitzgerald
Kennedy as the nation's 35th President "must be translated into
legislative action in 1961," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
declared.
Meany, in a signed editorial appearing in the December issue
of the AFL-CIO American Feder-f
ationist, declared he was "reason-
ably confident" that the program
for national progress contained in
the Democratic platform and sup-
ported by Kennedy "will be favor-
ably received by the new Congress."
Labor Support Asked
The AFL-CIO president called
on the 13.5-million-member trade
union movement to work actively
in support of the legislative goals
contained in the platform. He
added:
"If we do, I feel sure the No-
vember victory will become a
continuing triumph, not just for
the labor movement, but for all
America."
Meany said that the trade union
movement could take "modest
pride" in the outcome of the elec-
tion, "despite the closeness of the
vote," because there was "reason
to believe that our pre-election
registration campaign qualified
many of the new voters whose
influence was decisive in a number
of crucial areas."
But, he warned organized labor,
"we cannot Waste time in self-
congratulation. Our task is not
over; it has just begun."
The trade union movement,
Meany said, took part in the 1960
election campaign "on the basis
of a program . . . which the Dem-
ocratic platform and the Democratic
candidates generally adopted, but
which the Republican platform and
the Republican candidates generally
rejected."
He said the program — "de-
signed to end the economic stag-
nation our country has suffered
for seven years ... in which our
rate of economic growth was cut
in half and our 'normal' rate of
unemployment doubled" — was
designed to meet the nation's
needs in such fields as housing,
(Continued on Page 8)
Task Force
To Draft
Program
By Willard Shelton
A special committee to draft a
major federal program to aid de-
pressed areas has been named by
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy with
the assurance that the subject will
be high on the legislative prefer-
ence list of the new Administra-
tion.
As Kennedy met for the first
time since the election with Pres.
Eisenhower and otherwise con-
tinued preparation for the change-
over when he is inaugurated, Sen.
Paul H. Douglas (D-Ill.) was ap-
pointed chairman of the 10-member
committee on areas with chronic
joblessness and economic distress
and Myer Feldman, Kennedy's own
legislative aide in the Senate, was
named staff secretary.
The committee was announced
just two days before a Labor
Dept. report revealed a sharp
jump in the number of major
employment areas with jobless-
ness ranging above 6 percent.
Its membership of industrialists,
union officials, legislators and others
is drawn largely from West Vir-
ginia, but Kennedy made it plain
that the program it produces is to
be applicable to all areas suffering
from heavy unemployment.
Cabinet Members Named
Meanwhile, in addition to having
a long private conversation at the
White House with Eisenhower,
Kennedy continued the process of
building his top-ranking official
family by announcing two more
cabinet members and a director of
the Bureau of the Budget, who at
once began conversations with
comparable officials of the outgo-
ing Administration.
• Rep. Stewart L. Udall of Ari-
zona, rated as one of the ablest
younger liberals in the House and
an early Kennedy supporter for the
Democratic nomination, was an-
(Continued on Page 8)
Production
Cutbacks
Take Toll
By Saul Miller
One-third of the nation's 150
major industrial areas were suf-
fering from substantial unem-
ployment last month as cutbacks
in manufacturing made their im-
pact across the nation.
The Labor Dept. reported that
unemployment increased "to
some extent'' in three-fifths of
the areas, adding nine major
locations to the list of those with 6
percent or more of the work force
unemployed.
The bi-monthly report showed
51 areas with substantial unem-
ployment compared to 42 in Sep-
tember 1960 and 32 in November
1959. Two years ago during the
recession there were 83 such areas.
Jobless Rise in 1960
The progressive rise in unem-
ployment in major industrial areas
in 1960 is revealed by the depart-
ment's reports showing a low of 31
in January with a rise to 33, 35,
37, 42 and 51 in subsequent two-
month periods. The total of 31
substantial unemployment areas in
January 1960 was the lowest since
November 1957.
Earlier in November, the La-
bor Dept. reported that the na-
tional unemployment rate had
jumped to 6.4 percent for Octo-
ber, the third highest October
rate in 15 years. Actual unem-
ployment was reported as 3.6
million.
The November report showed an
increase also in unemployment in
the smaller job markets with a net
jump of 7 to a total of 123. In
November 1959 the total for small
areas with 6 percent or more un-
employment was 112.
The smaller areas have followed
a pattern similar to the larger areas
since the first of the year, with a
January report of 107 and a rise to
116 two months ago.
The Labor Dept.'s report said
that the latest survey "showed the
(Continued on Page 8)
Economic Slowdown in U. S., Canada
Weakens Foreign Aid, ICFTU Says
Brussels, Belgium — The slowdown of economic growth in industrial countries and "the persistence
of considerable unemployment in North America," meaning the U.S. and Canada, is endangering the
future of assistance to underdeveloped areas of the world, the executive board of the Intl. Confedera-
tion of Free Trade Unions has warned.
In a resolution, the board called^
for:
• Increased efforts to foster in-
ternational economic cooperation
and lowering of barriers to inter-
national trade.
• International agreements to
stabilize markets of primary prod-
ucts, which are what most African
and Asian countries depend on for
their income.
• Increased financial and tech-
nical aid to developing countries.
International balance of payments
difficulties which arise in industrial
countries should be met by "inter-
nal adjustments, but should not
lead to reductions in assistance to
developing countries."
In addition, the ICFTU praised
United Nations activities in the
(Continued on Page 7)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1960
A FAREWELL SALUTE to George V. Allen on his retirement as U.S. Information Agency director
was paid by agency employes who are members of Government Employes' Lodge 1812. The picture
shows, seated left to right: Stella Omohundro, Allen and Harold Cohen; standing, Lodge Pres. Bernard
Wiesman, USIA Personnel Dir. W. H. Weathersby, Anthony Carlisle, Eugene Corkery, and USIA Asst.
Dir. Edwin Deckard.
—
Oil Workers Schedule
600 Bargaining Talks
Denver — The Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers union has called
for simultaneous bargaining on some 600 expiring contracts in the
oil industry during the week of Dec. 19-23, a period designated by
the union as "Collective Bargaining Week."
The contract goal is the 18-cent-an-hour general pay raise pro-
posed by the OCAW's bargaining^
policy committee after a series of
regional conferences earlier this
year. These conferences were at-
tended by delegates representing the
union's 90,000 members in the oil
industry.
OCAW Pres. O. A. Knight de-
clared, in explaining the purpose of
the simultaneous negotiating ses-
sions:
No Witch-Hunt
On L-G Act,
Official Says
Boston — "Honest union officers
will not be penalized for honest
mistakes," Commissioner John L.
Holcombe of the Labor Dept.'s Bu-
reau of Labor-Management Reports
told a labor law conference here.
In an address before the second
annual Conference on Labor-Man-
agement Law at Northeastern Uni-
versity, Holcombe said the bureau
had a "wholehearted desire to pro-
mote voluntary compliance" with
the Landrum-Griffin Act. A signif-
icant portion of the bureau's pro-
gram, he said, is aimed at offering
technical assistance to the organi-
zations affected by the new law.
He added that "it would be a
disservice to the labor movement
and the nation to discourage
people from assuming union of-
fices because of fear of fines or
imprisonment for minor and un-
intentional reporting mistakes.
"The average, dedicated local
union officer," Holcombe con-
tinued, "must be reassured that
there are no penalties for honest
mistakes. A union officer will be
penalized only for willful violations.
Criminal penalties apply to making
a false statement in a required re-
port, knowing it to be false, or will-
fully concealing, withholding, or
destroying books, records, reports,
or statements which must be kept."
In describing the bureau's inves-
tigative policies, he said there
would be no "witch hunts or fish-
ing expeditions." However, he
said, "while we stress cooperation,
we will not compromise our duty
to weed out and punish those few
who intentionally and willfully
violate the law."
We want every oil company at
the bargaining table at one time.
We want them to know that oil
workers are united behind this drive
for 18-cent-an-hour general in-
creases, and we want to give them
a chance to act — singly or collec-
tively — on this request without the
need for waiting for the other com-
panies or otherwise passing the
buck."
Several oil companies have of-
fered a 5 percent wage increase
in a two-year contract, which
Knight described as "the first
signs of movement in negotia-
tions."
The 5 percent proposed raise
would average about 14.5 cents an
hour but would freeze wages during
the period of the contract. The
union, in addition to asking a high-
er across-the-board increase, wants
a reopener on wages within one
year.
The union said the average
straight-time wage in the oil refin-
ing, pipeline, production and mar-
keting industry is currently $2.83
an hour.
TV Contracts
Hike Pay for
Performers
Hollywood — The first joint nego-
tiations in history by the Screen
Actors Guild and the Television
and Radio Artists with employers
of television performers and an-
nouncers have resulted in an agree
ment providing substantial wage in-
creases for more than 20,000 in
dustry workers.
The agreement contains a new
basis for calculating payments for
all performers in TV commercials,
the unions said. The new formula
regulates payments not only on the
number of times a commercial is
used but also on the number of
viewers, in units of millions or half-
millions.
The SAG national board of di-
rectors approved the new terms
unanimously and directed that they
be submitted to 14,000 members
in a nation-wide secret mail refer-
endum. The AFTRA national
board, meeting in New York, Chi-
cago and Los Angeles, voted to
recommend approval at local mem-
bership meetings. AFTRA also
represents about 14,000 industry
workers. Some workers are mem-
bers of both unions.
Bargaining talks had been held
by the two unions with the Colum-
bia, National, American, and Mu-
tual broadcasting systems, and with
TV producers and agencies.
Flight Engineers Seek
Airline Training Plan
New York — The Flight Engineers re-elected all officers except
one at their annual meeting here, and authorized appointment of a
special committee to prepare a standard flight engineer training
program to be used in future negotiations with the airlines.
Chosen for another term were Pres. Ronald A. Brown, Vice Pres.
Harry S. O'Brien, and Sec.-Treas.^
Henry J. Breen.
Glenn Iverson was elected tech-
nical vice president succeeding
Boyd S. Moore of Montreal. Moore
has returned to his flying post with
Trans Canada Air Lines, but agreed
to accept a consultant position as
technical assistant to the president.
Don Byrne joined the FEIA staff as
a full-time employe rather than a
consultant in public relations.
Standard Training Sought
Oscar Bakke, director of the Bu-
reau of Flight Standards of the Fed-
eral Aviation Agency, addressed
the final session.
Delegates agreed that a special
committee should prepare a stand-
for future contract negotiations.
"It has become apparent," the
officers said, "that the only way
we are ever going to get compe-
tent training programs on the air-
lines is to negotiate them . . .
since the companies, in the in-
terest of dividends, will give as
little training as they can get away
with."
The union reported it has paid
expenses of 13 flight engineers as-
signed to assist civil aeronautics
teams investigating 10 airline acci-
dents in the first 10 months of this
year. The 13 are among the 110
specialists that FEIA will offer to
send anywhere in the world to help
find the cause of accidents, the
ard training program as the basis | union said.
AFL-CIO Assails Doctrine:
'Brown-Olds' Policy
Reaches High Court
The AFL-CIO has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the
"Brewn-Olds" formula for punitive reimbursement of dues and fees
in cases where the National Labor Relations Board determines union
security or hiring hall agreements are illegal.
In an amicus curiae brief filed with the court, the AFL-CIO
urged the high tribunal to reverse^"
a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
which has upheld the formula in
a case involving a local of the
Carpenters Union.
The brief noted that eight ap-
peals courts have had an oppor-
tunity to pass on the remedy.
Six have flatly rejected it and
another has ordered only partial
enforcement. The eighth case is
the one currently before the high
tribunal.
The Brown-Olds formula, stem-
ming from a case involving a com-
pany of that name in 1956, in terms
of its underlying assumptions and
its actual application "is opposed
to reason, to history, to empirical
data, to congressional policy and
to the pronouncements of this
court," the brief declared.
Based on False Assumption
The formula is based, said AFL-
CIO General Counsel J. Albert
Woll, Associate General Counsel
Thomas E. Harris and Theodore
J. St. Antoine, on the NLRB's as-
sumption "that workers would not
join unions but for the existence of
union security arrangements, a
proposition plainly at variance with
history and recent empirical data."
The board's "inevitable coercion"
doctrine, the brief added, has been
insulated "from any contact with
the disturbing world of reality" by
board actions refusing to consider
evidence "which would contradict
factually the conclusions reached
through its unreasonable infer-
ences."
The application of the remedy
of a mass refund of dues and
fees, the AFL-CIO lawyers ar-
gued, is an "abuse of the board's
discretion to frame appropriate
orders," with a "mechanical for-
mula" substituted for an informed
approach to the complexities of
labor-management relations.
The remedy, the brief added "is
essentially punitive rather than
remedial" and is applied in terms
of a "meat axe" or a "big stick" — •
these terms being used by NLRB
personnel.
Rejected in 6 Courts
In every one of the six circuit
courts where the formula has been
"assayed in its pure form," tha
lawyers said, "unalloyed with mis-
conceptions about its scope or with
other extraneous considerations, the
board's doctrine has been rejected."
The brief noted that as of Aug.
1, 1959, nine months after the
NLRB undertook "full utilization''
of the formula, a mass reimburse-
ments remedy had been applied in
about 30 final orders issued by the
board. A survey of 11 of these
awards, the brief declared, showed
two awards of funds substantially
greater than the union treasury in-
volved, three approximately equal
to the treasury, five substantially
smaller than the treasury and one
of an insignificant amount.
"Nothing could more effec-
tively destroy the balance of
bargaining power," the brief said,
"than the continued applications
of this pernicious board doctrine
which could easily strip of finan-
cial resources or drive deeply into
debt nearly half the unions it
affects."
Wage, Pension Gains
Avert Potters 9 Strike
East Liverpool, O. — Wage conference committees of the Potters
have ratified and signed new two-year agreements improving wages
and conditions of 5,000 workers at nine general ware plants and
2,000 workers at five chinaware plants.
The pottery agreement was reached just before a strike deadline.
The chinaware pact provides the < S > "
first pension plan in that portion of
the industry.
Union Pres. E. L. Wheatley said
five manufacturers agreed to pay
1.5 cents per dozen into a pension
fund for all chinaware shipped as
of Jan. 1, 1961; to pay $9.67 per
month per employe into a health
and welfare fund into which em-
ployers and union members for-
merly paid $3.19 each per month;
to pay an additional 3 cents an hour
in wages as of Dec. 1, 1961; to add
Thanksgiving to the list of holidays,
The employers are Sterling
China-Wellsville China Co. at
Wellsville, O.; Mayer China Co.,
Beaver' Falls, Pa.; Buffalo China
Co., Buffalo, N. Y.; Walker China
Co., Bedford, O.; and Jackson
China Co., Falls Creek, Pa.
The other agreement, with the
U.S. Potters Association, provides
a 3-cent wage increase as of Dec. 1*
1961; improvements in the health
and welfare plan; and clarification
of seniority clauses.
It covers workers of the Hall
China Co. here; Harker Pottery
Co., Chester, W. Va.; Edwin M.
Knowles China Co. and Homer
Laughlin China Co., both of
Newell, W. Va.; French-Saxon
China Co. and Royal China Co.,
Sebring, O.; Salem China Co., Sa-
lem, O.; Taylor, Smith & Taylor
Pottery Co., Chester, W. Va.; and
he Canonsburg Pottery Co., Can-
onsburg, Pa.
Pajama Plant
In Mississippi
Votes Union
West Point, Miss. — The Clothing
Workers have broken through a
hostile and anti-union tradition of
this northeastern Mississippi town
to win a National Labor Relations
Board election and bargaining
rights for 300 employes of the
Knickerbocker Mfg. Co., makers
of men's pajamas.
The victory — by a 157-to-131
vote — came on the union's third
try at organizing the plant. A
nucleus of union supporters in
the plant "never gave up" despite
two election defeats, the ACWA
said.
ACWA Vice Pres. Gladys Dicka-
son, co-director of the union's
Southern Organizing Dept., said a
major factor in offsetting anti-
union propaganda in the commu-
nity was a letter written to Knicker-
bocker employes by officers of
ACWA Local 307 in Booneville,
Ind., whose employer is associated
with the owners of the Mississippi
plant The letter described the bene-
fits Local 307 members have re-
ceived through organization.
AFLCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1960
Page Three
AFLrCIO Researchers Report:
Wage Incentive Programs
Losing Ground in Industry
So-called wage incentive plans — under which wages are geared to either individual or group pro-
duction — are losing favor with both workers and management, according to the AFL-CIO Dept.
of Research.
The department's monthly publication, Collective Bargaining Report, notes in its November issue
that the use of wage incentives has declined from a post-World War II high despite the active
efforts of some management con-^ —
sultant firms to "sell" piece rate or
bonus systems as a means of boost-
ing production.
The research publication re-
ports that unions in several in-
dustries have been able to elimi-
nate incentive systems through
collective bargaining and substi-
tute an hourly wage structure
which provided fatter pay enve-
lopes for all workers, including
those who had been receiving the
top rates of incentive pay.
Follow-up studies have shown
that productivity did not drop as
a result of the changeover and that
management fears proved largely
unfounded.
Most Workers on Straight Pay
Based on Labor Dept. surveys,
the Dept. of Research estimates
that only one-fourth of production
workers are presently under a wage
incentive plan. In non-manufac-
turing fields, AFL-CIO experts es-
timate that fewer than 10 percent
of workers are under an incentive
system, even considering commis-
sions on sales as a form of incen-
tives.
Careful policing of contracts by
unions in industries which have
traditionally been under incentive
systems has minimized abuses. The
overall experience, however, has
been that incentive programs gen-
erally have fallen short of meeting
either management's objective of
increasing production or the work-
ers' goal of higher pay.
Still another factor tending to
downgrade the use of incentive
systems the AFL-CIO publica-
tion points out, is the advance in
technology in which the pace of
production is set largely by the
capacity of the machine.
Collective Bargaining Report
points out that "where output de-
pends on machines rather than on
worker effort, there is little room
for wage incentives for the work-
ers."
Spurt During War
The big spurt in wage incentive
systems came during World War
II, the publication notes. "During
the period of wartime wage con
trol, unions frequently cooperated
in the installation of an incentive
program as a means of obtaining
increased wages. Government
agencies also encouraged incentive
programs in the belief that they
would contribute to needed in-
creases in wartime production."
In practice, there is no evi-
dence that incentive systems bring
higher wages than regular hourly
Conservative Coalition
Kills Ohio Jobless Aid
Columbus — A coalition of Republicans and conservative Demo-
crats has killed a Democratic proposal to alfow jobless workers to
draw a maximum of 39 weeks of unemployment compensation in-
stead of the present limit of 26 weeks.
The Ohio legislature met in special session, called by Gov. Michael
V. DiSalle (D), to act in the face off
continuing unemployment and ex
hausted benefits. The governor at
a joint session of the House and
Senate made an impassioned plea to
the legislators to help the jobless
and not to let politics color their
judgment.
Presented first as an emergency
measure in the Senate, it needed
22 votes for passage, got the votes
of 20 Democrats, was opposed by
11 Republicans.
The Democrats then submitted
the bill as a regular measure, to take
effect 90 days after signature by the
governor. It passed the Senate,
18-13, but lost in the House, 68-59.
A constitutional majority of 70 was
required in the lower chamber.
AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. Elmer F.
Final Rites Held
For Mrs. Haywood
Taylorville, 111. — Funeral services
were held at St. Mary's Catholic
Church here for Mrs. Kate Hay-
wood, widow of Allan S. Haywood,
executive vice president of the for-
mer CIO at the time of his death
in February 1953.
Mrs. Haywood died Nov. 22 at
the age of 69 at St. Vincent's Me-
morial Hospital — where an operat-
ing room had been donated by the
CIO in memory of her husband.
Burial was in the Oak Hill ceme-
tery where Allan Haywood is in-
terred — a cemetery dominated by
the life-size statue of a coal miner,
an early martyr of the Mine Work-
ers, the union Haywood joined
when he came from England to
work in the Illinois coal mines in
1906. He and the former Kate
Dewsnap were married in 1909.
Survivors include a son, Albert
Haywood, and a daughter, Mrs.
Kathleen Lusk.
Cope said primary responsibility
for the defeat rests with the Re-
publicans. With a "few praise-
worthy exceptions," GOP mem-
bers "voted overwhelmingly
against all efforts to help the job-
less," Cope asserted. A minimum
of support from them would, he
said, have meant "badly-needed
aid" to thousands of worker
families.
Labor will make another attempt,
when the regular legislative ses-
sion begins in January, to have the
benefit period extended permanently
from 26 to 39 weeks. Democrats
had a majority in the last session,
will be in the minority in the coming
session.
The latest state report shows 141,-
642 jobless workers receiving com-
pensation, with 27,245 additional
workers filling new claims. So far
this year, 59,285 Ohio workers
have been dropped from the com-
pensation rolls.
At the current rate of exhaus-
tions, an estimated 10,000 more
workers will be dropped from the
insurance rolls in January.
pay scales in comparable indus-
tries or plants. The Dept. of
Research notes that wage incen-
tives are less common in the
Pacific Coast area than any other
region. The West Coast is also
the area in which worker earnings
tend to be the highest.
Management, too, has found that
incentive plans breed their own set
of problems. A substantial per-
centage of companies surveyed re-
ported that waste was greater under
incentive systems, that quality de
teriorated and the number of griev
ances increased.
To emphasize that incentives can
be bargained out of a contract
without loss of pay to workers,
Collective Bargaining Report pre-
sents two "case studies."
Plan 'Bargained Out'
One, in the paper converting
industry, involves a company with
several thousand workers in seven
plants in four states. A long-stand
ing incentive plan was "bargained
out" nearly five years ago. The
agreement provided that the aver-
age hourly incentive earning for
each wage group was made the
straight hourly rate, which would
be raised by an 8-cent general
wage increase. Workers below the
new base rates were brought up to
the level and workers above the
rate were guaranteed the rate they
had been earning plus the 8-cent
increase. It was felt that normal
job transfers, quits, promotions and
retirements would in time eliminate
the differentials.
Careful follow-up surveys
showed:
• No decrease in production.
• Less feeling of "pressure" t<
produce.
• A significant decrease in
grievances and improved relations
with supervisors.
• Less friction between workers
and less complicated bargaining
problems.
After five years, neither the un-
ion nor management regrets the
change.
The other case study deals with
the potash mining negotiations
early this year in the Carlsbad,
N. M., area in which five AFL-CIO
unions were involved in negotia-
tions with six companies, each with
its own incentive system. Some
workers were receiving up to 30
cents an hour less than employes
of other companies doing similar
work.
Again, inclusion of a general
wage increase and protection
against loss of earnings brought
about an agreement after long and
complicated bargaining.
The Dept. of Research publi-
cation reports that after six
months under an hourly pay sys-
tem "production has remained
high . . . workers and manage-
ment seem to be well satisfied."
THE SAMUEL GOMPERS SCHOOL, a new elementary and
junior high school in Madison, Wis., was the scene of this presenta-
tion of a portrait of the school's namesake. Marvin Brickson (at
right, holding picture), executive secretary of the Madison Federa-
tion of Labor, made the presentation to School Supt. Philip Falk, left.
Samuel Gompers School
Dedicated at Madison
Madison, Wis. — The new Samuel Gompers School has been dedi-
cated here, honoring a labor pioneer whose formal education was
cut short at the age of 10 and who became an ardent advocate of
public education.
It is for this reason that "it is fitting and proper that a school
building should be named, after the^
founder and first president of the
American Federation of Labor,"
said Marvin Brickson, executive
secretary of the Madison Federation
of Labor.
Some 250 persons attended the
dedication of the new school, which
opened in early October for nearly
500 students. When additions are
completed, the school will operate
as an elementary and junior high
school.
Brickson presented to the
school a portrait of Gompers
which had hung in the former
Labor Temple here from 1921.
The federation had the picture
reframed and added a bronze
plaque so it would make an ap-
propriate gift for the school.
Alexander ("Scotty") Younger of
Carpenters' Local 314, a longtime
member of the school board, ac-
cepted the gift for the board.
Brickson, in a brief talk, de-
scribed Gompers' early hardship*
and later achievements. Gompers,
he recounted, was born in England
and was brought to America at the
age of 13. His schooling ended out
of economic necessity at the age
of 10 and, even while helping to
build the Cigar Makers union and
the AFL, he continued his own
learning and strongly supported
public education.
Postal Unions Name
Merger Committee
Two unions of postal workers — the Post Office Clerks and the
Postal Transport Association — have set up a committee to seek
agreement on merger, an action they predict will pave the way for
a union recognition law for federal employes.
Pres. E. C. Hallbeck of the 100,000-member Post Office Clerk*
Paul A. Nagle,f-
and NPTA Pres
whose union has 25,000 members,
will head the 10-member commit-
tee scheduled to meet Jan. 3, 1961,
and "to remain in session until a
merger agreement is reached."
Last spring, NPTA members
turned down in a referendum a
proposal for merger with the Let
ter Carriers which had been strongly
supported by Nagle. The union's
convention this summer, however,
directed the NPTA's board to con
tinue to seek unity among postal
organizations.
If negotiations between the two
AFL-CIO affiliates are success-
ful, the result could be a three-
way merger in 1961. The Post
Canada Prohibits Railroad Strike,
Imposes Five-Month Wage Freeze
(Continued from Page I)
tion came just 12 hours before the
Dec. 3 strike deadline.
Conservative Party Premier John
Diefenbaker tried to defend his gov-
ernment's action in a national tele-
vision appearance in which he
agreed that the right to strike was
inherent to democracy and insisted
the rail workers were not being
deprived of that right
Canadian Labor Congress Pres.
Claude Jodoin in a public address
challenged the Prime Minister's
statements. "Mr. Diefenbaker is
not telling the railway workers
they can't strike," he said. "Oh,
no, he's telling them you can't
strike now, maybe some time in
the future but not now."
The Liberal Party, the official op-
position in Parliament, fought the
Conservative Party's proposals but
representatives of the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation, who
have labor backing with one re-
cently-elected New Party member,
recalled that in 1950 the Liberals
in power were faced by a similar
situation and forced compulsory
arbitration on the rail employers.
Some political observers saw
the government's action as giving
new impetus to the drive for a
third party in Canada. Labor
support for the New Party —
which now unofficially carries
that name — is growing rapidly.
Office Clerks and the unaffiliated
35,000-member United National
Association of Post Office Crafts-
men already have signed a merg-
er agreement, subject to ratifi-
cation by UNAPOC members in
a referendum set for January.
Meanwhile the Post Office Clerki
announced that the executive board
of the United Postal Workers union
in Boston has unanimously ap-
proved affiliation with the postal
clerks, subject to membership rati-
fication next month.
The 800-member local originally
was affiliated with the Government
& Civic Workers Organizing Com-
mittee of the former CIO and is
now a part of the State, County &
Municipal Employes. The SCME
has made it clear that it has no
objection to affiliation of the group
with an AFL-CIO postal union.
In their joint statement announc-
ing appointment of a merger com-
mittee, Hallbeck and Nagle pointed
out that "a major objective of fed-
eral employes has been enactment
of labor-management legislation to
provide for recognition by the gov-
ernment of employe unions as tho
bargaining agents for their mem-
bers."
They asserted that the "multi-
plicity of organizations claiming to
represent sizable segments of fed-
eral employes" has been a major
factor in blocking such legislation.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, I960
Fif Hi Birthdar
THIS PAST WEEK the AFL-CIO marked its fifth birthday on
the figurative eve of a major change in the national political
climate.
On Dec. 5, 1955, when the federation was born in the historic
merger in New York City of the AFL and CIO, the political climate
was at the best unpromising for the accomplishment of the labor
movement's goals.
The national Administration was in the hands of the conserva-
tives. The country had been shaken by the recession of 1954-55.
There was an almost complete lack of leadership for legislation
to promote economic growth, to meet the acute needs of the na-
tion in the critical social and welfare areas.
In addition, there were within the Administration and in Congress
anti-labor forces who were mobilizing to weaken and destroy the
united trade union movement.
Since 1955 the AFL-CIO has weathered political attacks, eco-
nomic recessions, legislative assaults and a sustained industrial cam-
paign designed to weaken its affiliated unions.
But in the past five years the labor movement has progressed in
the political area against strong odds, helping to maintain and ex-
pand the liberal bloc in Congress in 1956 and 1958, and this year
aiding in the victory of Pres.-elect Kennedy.
The changing character of American industry, marked by a faster
pace toward automation and technological changes and the growth
in the size of the labor force, has brought new problems for the
trade union movement.
As it enters its sixth year the AFL-CIO is a strong, going or-
ganization despite the increasing bitterness of the anti-labor at-
tacks and the internal stresses and strains as it strives to blend
into fuller cooperation the various elements that make up the na-
tional labor center.
The incoming Kennedy Administration holds the promise of a
new era in American life, an era in which many of the goals and
aspirations of the merged labor movement may come to fruition.
Action— Art Last
THE BASIC ANTAGONISM of the outgoing Eisenhower Ad-
ministration to an aid-for-depressed-areas program and its gen-
erally conservative and restrictive economic policies have contrib-
uted to dangerously spreading unemployment.
The Labor Dept.'s latest report showing more than one-third of
the nation's major job areas with unemployment exceeding 6 percent
is a direct reflection of the lack of positive action when the number
of chronically depressed areas was at a lower level.
Pres. Eisenhower's veto of depressed area aid bills in 1958 and
1960 allowed these economic ills to go untreated. Now they
have become aggravated and have spread.
Pres.-elect Kennedy, who showed a deep awareness of the prob-
lem during his campaign, has moved quickly to get the machinery
moving for congressional approval of a program to aid chronically
distressed areas. His special committee headed by Sen. Paul H.
Douglas (D-Ill.), an author of the Eisenhower-vetoed legislation, is
intimately acquainted with the facts and should move just as quickly
toward some long overdue action.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzer, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, December 10, 1960
No. 50
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dusinal Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers tor anv publication in the name of the AFL-CIO
A Proud Record!
DRAWN T=0^ THR
AFL-CIO news*
'Work tor ML
Beirne Cites Need for Creation
Of Federal Automation Bureau
The following is excerpted from an address
by AFL-CIO Vice Pres. Joseph A. Beirne,
president of the Communications Workers, to
the 1960 Southeastern Conference on Current
Trends in Collective Bargaining at the Univer-
sity of Tennessee:
THE CREATION of a Federal Bureau of
Automation would contribute to establishment
of a proper climate within which we could all bet-
ter face up to the problems created by automation.
I see this Bureau, among other things, acting as
a clearing house for knowledge and insight into
the Jcinds of problems which exist and examina-
tion of possible solutions, as well as considering
public policies which might be necessary to meet
special situations.
It would not seem unreasonable that such a
bureau would offer the suggestion that in certain
industries the transfer and retraining commitment
could not be handled by existing companies and
could best be handled by some kind of state or
federal system of subsidies.
The important thing is to establish public rec-
ogntion of the depth and scope of problems ac-
companying the wonder of automation. The es-
tablishment of such a federal bureau would ac-
complish this end.
A responsible management official properly
oriented to human values should insist on writing
into all collective agreements, in his particular
plant or industry, an expression of concern
regarding automation and would reduce to
writing assurances that all would be done to
minimize human suffering. This would include
not only a determined statement that auto-
mation would be scheduled at such times and
in such a manner as to minimize displacements,
job downgradings, etc., but that each worker
would be offered retraining, transfer or other
opportunities to accommodate himself to
changes wrought by automation.
Further our whole concept of unemployment
compensation must be radically revised. The
idea that unemployment compensation terminates
at some point is a basically invalid concept. The
first 26 weeks of a worker's unemployment is no
more or less important than the second 26 weeks.
Unemployment compensation should be paid dur-
ing a worker's complete unemployment, provided
he is ready and willing and able to work. Need-
less to say, existing levels of compensation are
totally inadequate and as the possibility of wide-
spread unemployment increases, these levels must
be made more realistic. *
SURELY A COUNTRY which can take onto
itself the responsibility of penetrating outer space
can take onto itself the responsibility of providing
work for all its citizens or the alternative of un-
employment income which will contribute ulti-
mately to maintaining the kinds of purchasing
power necessary to keep the economy going. The
loneliness of the unemployed worker and his
abandonment by society must be terminated once
and for all. There is no economic or human
justification for this situation. He is not alone.
What happens to him is the concern of all of us.
The last suggestion I direct to the American
worker rather than to any other segment of
society. He must shake himself loose of all
traditional concepts of immobility both geo-
graphically and with respect to job content. He
must be willing and eager to accept retraining
possibilities and, if necessary, move from one
geographical area to another. This is a difficult
thing to ask, particularly of mature workers,
but the economic problems created by auto-
mation will not be met unless this degree of co-
operation is obtained from workers affected.
So you see, I have outlined a three-level area
of responsibility:
• Public responsibility
• Management responsibility
• The worker's responsibility.
The best time for all of us to start moving is
before the problems become intense. I'm shocked
at the manner in which we have accepted almost
chronic unemployment in this country. I hope
it is not indicative that we have become so dull to
human suffering that we will continue to accept
it into the future. Surely, current unemployment
levels in this country should be a great enough
stimulus to thrust us forward to seek some new
answers. The, American labor movement stands
ready to do its part. I trust that management and
the public are equally responsive.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY. DECEMBER 10, 1960
Page Fivq
Morgan Says:
Embitteredlllinois GOP Leaders
May Blemish People's Decision
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC cotnmen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE has called Pres.-
elect Kennedy a coward, in effect, for not re-
sponding to a request from the Louisiana legisla-
ture for comment on the school desegregation fight
in New Orleans. The Tribune's professed con-
cern for civil rights in the South might be touching
if it were not tinctured
with extreme and explo-
sive political cynicism.
The World's Greatest
Newspaper, to quote its
own narcissistic masthead,
is about as genuinely heat-
ed up over the welfare of
minorities in the city of
Murdi Gras as the Ku
Klux Klan is burning over
the fate of the American
Indian. The Tribune's Morgan
prime interest at the moment is to discredit the
Democratic Party in the state of Illinois and if
Sen. Kennedy can be belittled in the process, so
much the better.
The editorial denouncing Kennedy for "weasel-
ing" in his refusal to comment on the Louisiana
situation while it was still before the courts sug-
gests the blueprint of a plan to create confusion
and ugly doubt over the outcome of the presi-
dential election, and for ulterior purposes. Ken-
nedy spoke out clearly enough for the need of
protecting and expanding civil rights during the
campaign. If he failed to act on this need as
President it would be tragically disappointing.
But no such failure is implicit in his canny dodg-
ing of a trap of blackmail by declining to reply
to a demand from segregationist legislators for
his reaction to what they, in their own interpre-
tation of objectivity, chose to label the "judicial
tyranny" of New Orleans. The Tribune's motives
can be measured by the fact that while it taunts
the senator for lack of sincerity and courage in
his silence it has nothing whatever to say about
the silence of the man most eminently in position
to exert moral leadership in the Louisiana crisis —
Mr. Eisenhower. He is President of the United
States and Sen. Kennedy is not, yet.
It is that adverbial dangle, "not yet," which
provides the link between the Chicago Trib-
une's benign interest in the civil rights problem
in the South and its noisy crusade, under head-
Ms We See It:
lines as black as thunderhcads, against alleged
election frauds in Illinois* So thin was Ken-
nedy's victory margin over Vice Pres. Nixon —
31 electoral votes; less than 200,000 popular
vofes — that the withdrawal of Illinois' 27 elec-
toral votes plus a similar development in one
or more southern states could reverse the out-
come or at least throw the decision into the
House of Representatives.
On paper there is a possibility of some such
combine coming to pass. Some segregationist
Southern politicians, including Louisianans, have
been trying to threaten Kennedy with it unless he
promises to go slow on civil rights. He has made
no such promise and thus far has thwarted
their only pitch in the picture — an attempt to
bargain for a compromise of principle on civil
rights. But, says the New Republic, "if com-
promise is held off the market, (the Southerners)
are not in business for a minute — and they
know it."
-BUT WHAT, THEN, about the shadow cast
over the outcome in Illinois? The lame-duck Re-
publican election board has already delayed certi-
fication of a Kennedy victory (by little' more than
8,000 votes) on a technicality. And Gov. Stratton,
defeated for reelection, made something of a to-do
with the declaration that Illinois could withhold
its electoral vote if tangible evidence emerged of
vote fraud in Chicago's Cook County where some
irregularities have been noted and where the
Tribune has concentrated its hue and cry.
If vote fraud exists it should be exposed in
Cook County or anywhere else. The Demo-
cratic attitude is that if a recount is called for
it should be done statewide because if there
was cheating the Republicans downstate did
more of it than the Democrats and Kennedy, if
anything, would gain in a corrected count. If
this is cynicism it can hardly match the cynical
game the Republicans are reportedly playing.
One informed Democrat's reaction from Chi-
cago to Stratton's announcement today was the
observation that "he is just trying to make a
deal with the boys (of the incoming state Demo-
cratic administration) on patronage and maybe
there'll be some sort of accommodation. The
upshot in national terms? Absolutely nothing
changed," this source insisted. The Tribune-
GOP play (in which two other Chicago Repub-
lican papers have joined) is quite clearly
according to a number of sources to try to dis-
credit the Democratic machine so they can
clobber it in the state in 1962.
East Zone Workers Fought
Wage Cuts, Newscaster Says
WORKERS in the Communist East Zone of
Germany demonstrated against wage cuts a
number of times in the last year, August Soetebier,
broadcaster for Radio in the American Sector
(RIAS), reported on "As We See It," AFL-CIO
public service educational program, heard on the
ABC radio network.
Soetebier, 45, and a former newspaperman, said
that the workers — forbidden to strike — quit work
for two or three hours in protest against reduc-
tions. He said that the demonstrations were halted
by police and state security forces.
The radio man warned against proposals to
terminate or modify RIAS broadcasts in the in-
terests of West Berlin peace.
Soetebier broadcasts a program each week-
day morning at 5:30 from RIAS to workers in
East Germany. He informs them in advance
of proposed increases in their work norms,
names and describes spies in factories and
otherwise keeps them informed of trade union
news in the Communist zone.
Another weekly program on RIAS tells East
German workers about trade union activities in
West Germany, the United States and elsewhere in
the West.
'The younger generation in the East Zone,"
said Soetebier, "doesn't know much about the
free, labor movement. Only the people who re-
member the period before 1933 — before Hitler
came to power — have seen how the free trade
union movement operates. We have to tell the
young people in the East what free unions are."
Another RIAS program, a radio university,
gives East German young people the facts about
history, politics and economics.
"They don't get textbooks from the West and
get a very, one-sided education from their schopls,"
Soetebier reported, "and so we give them the op-
portunity in the evening to hear famous professors
from West Germany."
SOETEBIER SAID that the Communists jam
RIAS programs both on a local and national basis.
To offset this, RIAS programs are sent not only
from West Berlin, but also from Munich and
another station on the Bavarian frontier.
The Communists also attack RIAS in their
propaganda, Soetebier said. Posters on billboards
and fences, stories in the newspapers and mes-
sages on radio tax receipts accuse RIAS broad-
casters of being war-mongers, spies and liars.
Soetebier said that current Communist policy
in the cold war against West Berlin is to harass
with "small things such as holding up vehicles
on the autobahn coming into Berlin, and hold-
ing up vessels on the canals. It is difficult to
counteract these tactics.
"But we in West Berlin believe that so long as
the West stands behind us, we can stand these
harassments. The Russians are now picking at
us and trying to make us nervous but I do not
believe they will risk a war."
WASHINGTON
A CASE MAY BE MADE that in any Administration the tone
and approach are reflected accurately in the conduct of the Dept. of
the Interior, which means in the character and fundamental approach
of the Secretary. It was perhaps not wholly a coincidence that in
the first days of the Eisenhower Administration the famous quota-
tion — "We are in the saddle as businessmen in a business Admin-
istration" — came from his first Secretary of the Interior, the late
Douglas McKay.
Stewart L. Udall, the able young Arizona congressman who has
been chosen for Interior by Pres.-elect Kennedy, can be expected
to restore the great days of the department when it was concerned
with the proper development of the natural resources of the
country, the faithful development of conservation and recreation
policies, an alertness to the public interest as distinguished from
subservience to private greed.
In the Theodore Roosevelt Administration, which was marked by
the first great surge of effective conservation work, Gifford Pinchot
was the Chief Forester and head of what became the Forest Service.
His influence was broad, because through his labors in government
resources commissions he gave guidance to the conservation policies
of the entire executive branch of the government.
Harold Ickes was surely one of the strong men of Franklin D.
Roosevelt's Cabinet, with both an instinct for preservation of public
rights in the public domain and a relish for combat that made him
happy to battle fiercely with critics of the Administration, who were
powerful and legion.
* ♦ ♦
"TAKE A GOOD LOOK at it, because if the Republicans get in
it will be the last dam dedication you'll see," said Harry S. Truman
as he spoke at the ceremonies celebrating completion of the Hungry
Horse Dam in Montana in 1952 — and it was a campaign prediction
that stood up.
In all the eight years of the Eisenhower Administration there was
no drive for creation of a multipurpose federal power project com-
bining flood control, power generation, recreation facilities, irriga-
tion and fertilizers. The long-standing Interior Dept. fight to save
the Hell's Canyon site from the low-level dams of the Idaho Power
Co. was abandoned.
Douglas McKay had fought his own battles, as governor of
Oregon, with Idaho Power, and there is reason to believe that he
would have continued to battle on Hell's Canyon if he had been
permitted to do so. If so, he was overruled — and the taint spread
through the government.
On the rural electrification co-ops, the Dept. of Agriculture tried
to force up the interest rates. In regard to the Tennessee Valley
Authority, Mr. Eisenhower called its expansion a prime example
of "creeping socialism," and the Dixon- Yates conspirators were
encouraged to try to seize TVA territory. On transmission lines
from federal dams, the government tended to try to force co-ops
into wheeling agreements with private utilities that wanted to take
ownership at the bus bar. In public lands, licenses were granted
for "mining" operations that produced no mining but denuded
the land of its timber.
* * *
TODAY THE NORTHWEST is starved again for power and
New England has been starved for years. The Missouri River rages
in floods every Spring and Fall, carrying away the precious topsoil
and wasting a cumulative hundreds of millions of dollars in less
serious kinds of damage. The water table is dropping year by year.
The National Park trails in many areas have gone untended since
the years of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
There is a desperate need to speed up the search for practicable
ways to use water from the sea. The public lands policies must
be revitalized and the wilderness areas that remain must be pre-
served as a trust for future generations that otherwise can never
know the America that confronted the pioneers.
Udall possesses, in common with Gov. Abraham A. Ribicoff of
Connecticut, who will be Kennedy's Secretary of Health, Education
and Welfare, the reputation of an effective liberal, interested in
getting things done and willing to fight to achieve them. He need
have no fear that he will lack opportunities, for the encroachment
of private interests on the public domain is as old as the nation, and
the need for reaffirmation of broad and creative policies is urgent.
Meany Calls for Support
Of Crusade for Freedom
The voice of Radio Free Europe "must continue to speak
loud and clear" to the peoples of the captive nations, AFL-CIO
Pres. George Meany has declared in a statement supporting
the Crusade for Freedom fund drive.
Meany urged "all Americans to .give the greatest possible
support" to the campaign to raise funds for Radio Free
Europe, which he described as "a powerful ally in the battle
against international communism."
Emphasizing that labor is "unalterably opposed to totalitar-
ianism in any form," the AFL-CIO president said Radio Free
Europe's "broadcasts to the captive nations behind the Iron
Curtain have kept truth alive in many thousands of minds."
"We cannot afford to relax our efforts at a time when the
survival of human liberty hangs in the balance," Meany de-
clared.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1960
JOINT DOCTOR-UNION committee to work toward improving quality and lowering cost of medical
care was approved at meeting of trade unionists and representatives of Pennsylvania Medical Society
in Hershey, Pa. Left to right are: Joseph F. Burke, co-president, Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO; Dr.
Russell B. Roth, chairman of medical body's board of trustees; Steelworkers' Staff Rep. Bernard
Greenberg; Medical Society Pres. Dr. Thomas W. McCreary; and Ladies' Garment Workers Vice
Pres. William Ross, manager of Philadelphia Dress Joint Board.
<8>
Pennsylvania Doctors,
Labor Pioneer on Care
Hershey, Pa. — Organized medicine and organized labor have
agreed to the establishment of a joint statewide committee of doctors
and labor representatives to work on problems affecting the quality,
availability and cost of medical care.
The plan was approved at a two-day joint union-medical con-
ference held at Hotel Hershey under^
the sponsorship of the Pennsylvania
Medical Society.
First Met in 1958
It was the second time that such
a conference involving the two
groups had been held. The first
meeting, in 1958, was sponsored by
the Ladies' Garment Workers.
Agreement on creation of the
permanent liaison committee was
reached by 50 representatives of
labor unions in the state and 50
doctors after Dr. W. Benson
Harer, vice chairman of the Penn-
sylvania Medical Society's board
of trustees, called on both groups
to "pioneer" in this field.
"We must try to find all possible
ways of providing and obtaining
good medical care at the lowest
possible cost," Dr. Harer said. "This
can be done only if both the medical
profession and consumer groups are
willing to experiment a bit — to
pioneer.
"There is nothing sacred about
the status quo. We must forget
about how things were done in
the past and learn how they can
be done under present social and
economic conditions."
During the two-day conference,
doctors and unionists discussed five
critical areas of health care. They
included community services and
health education of interest to both
groups, permanent health centers
and hospitals, health insurance
coverage, liaison between medicine
and labor, and health care for the
aged.
Among those participating in the
discussions were Dr. Thomas W.
McCreary, president of the state
medical group; Harry Boyer and
Joseph F. Burke, co-presidents of
the Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO;
Mrs. Anne R. Somers, research as-
sociate at Haverford College; and
Dr. Wendell B. Gordon, chairman
of the Council on Medical Service,
who served as conference chair-
man.
ABC-Morgan Launch
College Essay Contest
A visit to New York City, including a visit to the United Na-
tions, and a trip to Washington to work with the ABC news team
covering the presidential inauguration will be the prizes awarded
the boy and girl winners of an ABC Radio Network-Edward P.
Morgan College Essay Contest.
The contest, a 600-word essay^
on the subject "What Do You Most
Want the United States to Do at
Home and Abroad in 1961?" is
open to all U.S. college undergrad-
uates. It was announced jointly
by Robert R. Pauley, vice president
in charge of the ABC radio net-
work, and by Morgan, whose five-
day-a-week news program is spon-
sored by the AFL-CIO.
Youth's Stake Great
In announcing the contest, Mor-
gan said: "Pres.-elect Kennedy says
the country must move ahead to a
new frontier. Those who have the
greatest stake are America's youth.
It is fitting that they should be
asked what they want the United
States to accomplish at home and
abroad in the '60s."
The contest runs through Dec.
.28. The judges, in addition to
Morgan himself, will include
Emmet J. Hughes, former pres-
idential assistant; John Crosby,
nationally syndicated columnist
for the New York Herald Tri-
bune, and Dr. Paul A. McGhee,
dean of the general education di-
vision of New York University.
The winners, one boy and one
girl, will be flown to New York
on Jan. 18 to lunch with indus-
try leaders, visit the United Nations,
where they will meet with officials,
and attend a Broadway show. The
following day, they will meet with
government and labor leaders in
Washington and take part in cover-
ing the inauguration. Morgan will
work with the young people and
use the winning essays as % a part
of his broadcasts.
Judging will be on the following
basis: content (up to 70 points)
and form (up to 30 points). En-
tries should be mailed to America
in the '60s Contest, P. O. Box 12E,
Mt. Vernon 10, New York.
'At Work' Films
Now in Thai, Urdu
Four films from the AFL-
CIO television series, "Amer-
icans at Work," have been
translated into a total of 18
different languages by the
United States Information
Service for showings overseas.
The bookbinders and glass-
workers' shows are in 17
tongues, the potters in 14 and
the plumbers in nine.
Arabic, Indonesian, Man-
darin, Thai and Urdu are
among the languages in which
the program can now be
heard. It is also broadcast in
English each week over more
than 170 domestic TV sta-
tions.
OEIU Calls
For Study of
Automation
The executive board of the Office
Employes has called upon Pres.-
elect John F. Kennedy and the new
Congress to establish a federal com-
mission to study the increasing
growth of automation in the clerical
field and to recommend steps to
ease its impact upon workers.
Transistorized computers are re-
placing the huge, costly electronic
machines of a few years^ ago and
are having a far greater effect on
employment, the OEIU board de-
clared. Many traditional office oc-
cupations are threatened with ex-
tinction, it said.
The board proposed that the
federal commission, when estab-
lished, should consider setting up
training centers for displaced
clerical workers to enable them
to learn how to operate the new
devices. Also necessary, the
board added, is a shorter basic
workweek.
A similar commission should be
created in Canada, where the prob-
lem is equally great, the board
said.
OEIU Pres. Howard Coughlin
presided over the session, which
met in Washington.
Clerks Win Election
In Drugstore Chain
Los Angeles — A coordinated
drive by five Southern California
locals of the Retail Clerks has
brought about the organization of
eight drugstores in the Fox-Mc-
Gowan chain.
Votes in representation elections
held in five cities gave the RCIA a
52-to-22 victory.
In 'National Emergency 9 Disputes:
NLRB Member Raps
'Inflexibility' of T-H
Providence — The "inadequacy" of the emergency dispute provi-
sions of both the Taft-Hartley and Railway Labor Acts has been
sharply criticized by National Labor Relations Board Member John
H. Fanning.
Addressing the 12th annual dinner of the Labor-Management
Guild of the Thomistic Institute of^
Providence College here, Fanning
called for modernization of the two
laws to give the President a "choice
of procedures," including possible
seizure of an industry, in major
disputes.
At the same 'time he ruled out
"resort to such drastic solutions
as compulsory arbitration," de-
claring such a course would
mean "the end of free collective
bargaining, at least in certain
critical areas of the economy."
Fanning, declaring that the emer-
gency disputes provisions of the
two laws "have proved by and
large unsuccessful," called for
enactfhent of legislation spelling
out new procedures to:
• Keep the President informed,
either by a special administrative
assistant for labor or by the U.S.
Mediation Service, of "all labor
disputes that have emergency po-
tential."
• Empower the President to ap-
point a board of inquiry if he de-
termined that "a strike or threaten-
ed strike would be a danger to
the health and safety of the nation."
• Instruct the board to investi-
gate and make recommendations to
the President and, in cases of "se-
rious hardship," authorize the board
to order show-cause hearings that
would focus on "the reasons why
the parties refused arbitration."
• Authorize the President to
"enter into agreements" with labor
and management "to provide for
temporary maintenance of service
in essential areas."
• Authorize the President, in
case of a strike, to seek an injunc-
tion, seize a company or industry,
put into effect the recommendations
of the board of inquiry, or take
other steps which might help settle
the dispute.
The existence of a plan under
which the President has the op-
tion of choosing from an "arse-
nal" of weapons, Fanning said,
would encourage both sides to
settle the controversy themselves
"in the fear that the presidential
course of action might be disad-
vantageous to them."
Although the NLRB member was
critical of both laws for their "in-
flexibility" and their attempt to
"limit and formalize presidential
action," he reserved his harshest
comments for Taft-Hartley, de-
scribing the emergency disputes
provision "a poor presidential
tool."
'Abhorrent to Labor 5
The injunction provision is "ab-
horrent to labor" and "contributes
in no way to resolution of the un-
derlying dispute," he said, and the
fact-finding board, "unable to make
any recommendations, serves no
purpose at all since its report mere-
ly re-emphasizes the known fact of
labor trouble."
Fanning also dealt with two other
vital areas of challenge facing la-
bor and management in the '60s —
automation and arbitration.
He described automation as "the
most challenging problem in labor
relations for the current decade,"
and suggested that federal and state
governments join with labor and
management in conferences "to ex-
amine social and economic aspects
of the impact of automation."
Effective long-range planning
for technological changes, he
^said, can best be achieved "in an
atmosphere apart from the emo-
tional climate of the bargaining
table."
Referring to the rapid increase
in the inclusion of arbitration in
labor-management contracts
coupled with recent Supreme Court
decisions granting broad jurisdic-
tion to the arbitrator, Fanning en-
visioned a growing long-range em-
phasis on "the concept of arbitra-
tion as a process for developing a
system of private law to regulate
the life of the factory."
Court Orders Sears to
Arbitrate Seattle Dispute
(Continued from Page 1)
ployer bargaining unit operating
under what is known here as the
"Dorsey plan."
The court upheld the union
and directed that the dispute be
submitted to arbitration. The
resulting contract, if put in writ-
ing will be the first written union
security agreement with Sears
since it adopted what RCIA calls
its recent "policy of harassing
unions."
One of the main issues in the dis-
pute was Sears' refusal to observe
the union security provisions of the
oral agreement with RCIA Local
1207. The local asked for arbitra-
tion under the contract, but Sears
denied it was bound. Judge Boldt
held otherwise.
Boycott Continues
A boycott against Sears merchan-
dise, sanctioned by the RCIA Chain
Store Council and supported by the
AFL-CIO executive council is con-
tinuing and will be intensified over
the holidays, the union said.
A union spokesman said Sears
has been following a policy of
reaching agreement only when it
has to, and then on an "under the
table" basis as much as possible.
An arbiter's ruling here spell-
ing out union security provisions
would open the door to legitimate
security agreements, he pointed
out, in other negotiations with
Sears.
The local contract covers more
than 150 Sears employes.
In boycott activities, RCIA has
staged demonstration picketing of
numerous Sears stores, distributed
bumper stickers and leaflets, and
published an. advertisement headed
"Memo to Stockholders" in the
Wall Street Journal.
Long Anti-Union Record
In the ad, RCIA Pres. James A.
Suffridge told stockholders of the
long history of anti-union activity
by Sears management, including
the role formerly played by Nathan
ShefTerman, professional manage-
ment "consultant" in labor rela-
tions policies.
The memo cited three exam-
ples of these policies — the sudden
overturning of union security
agreements in stores from Alaska
to Illinois; the firing of San Fran-
cisco employes; and what is
termed "brain washing" tech-
niques used against employes who
have expressed pro-union feel-
ings.
In August U.S. District Judge
George B. Harris, of San Francisco,
ordered the company to arbitrate
the discharge of 144 RCIA mem-
bers.
AFLrCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1960
Page Scvea
ILO Asked to Act;
ICFTU Charges Repression
Of Free Unions in Morocco
Brussels, Belgium — The Intl. Confederation of Free Trade Unions has voted to file a complaint with
the Intl. Labor Organization against the kingdom of Morocco, charging government interference with
free trade unionism.
The ICFTU executive board, meeting here, earlier heard a first-hand report from a special ICFTU
mission to Morocco which reported that it had been barred by police from pursuing an investigation
into alleged violations of traded
union rights, that one of the two
mission members had been arrested
and finally expelled from the coun-
try.
An ICFTU resolution charged:
• That the government is guilty
of "violent, repressive measures"
against striking trade unionists.
• That "repeated and unjusti-
fied seizures" are repeatedly made
of the newspaper of the Moroccan
Union of Workers.
• That trade unionists are ar-
rested and held for months on end
without trial and in disregard of
Morocco law.
• That public employes are
pressured "in such a way as to
hamper their freedom to join or-
ganizations of their own choice.**
At stake is the future of the
Moroccan Workers Union (UMT),
members. It is held that the Moroc-
can government is determined to
wipe out the UMT, headed by
Mahuoub Ben Seddik, who was a
guest speaker at the AFL-CIO con-
vention in San Francisco in 1959.
Recently, an opposition union,
called the General Union of Mo-
roccan Workers, was organized with
unofficial government sponsor-
ship. ICTFU estimates that this
organization has possibly 100,000
members.
The current crisis arose in mid-
November when UMT negoti-
ations with employers in the
small fishing town of Larache
broke down, resulting in a strike.
A UMT official assigned to help
the strikers was arrested but re-
leased the same day. When the
an ICFTU affiliate, with 600,000 strike continued, the police moved
U.S. Economic Dip Seen
Threat to Foreign Aid
(Continued from Page 1)
Congo and deplored Soviet attacks
on Sec. General Dag Hammar-
skjold and the U.N. structure. It
pledged support to free trade un-
ions in Indonesia, Korea, Aden,
Morocco and Japan which suffer
government harassment.
Other ICFTU statements adopt-
ed were:
• A call for adoption of eco-
nomic sanctions by the U.N. if the
South African government refuses
to change its apartheid (race seg-
regation) policies.
• A call for a meeting in the
Free Labor
Group Formed
In Caribbean
Brussels, Belgium — A new ICFTU
regional labor organization has
been born at America's back door.
It is the Caribbean Congress of La-
bor, combining the trade union or-
ganizations in islands still under
colonial rule, British, French and
Dutch, with a combined worker
membership of about 150,000.
Cuba and the Dominican Repub-
lic are excluded.
Although the Congress held its
first organizing meeting in Septem-
ber in the island of Grenada, it was
granted formal affiliation, plus
ICFTU financial assistance, at the
ICFTU executive board meeting
early this month.
Larger Role Set
Originally, the Caribbean organ-
ization, which replaces the Carib-
bean Area Divisjon of ORIT, was
projected to parallel the creation
of the West Indies Federation, com-
prising 10 British island posses-
sions, which will become a sover-
eign country, completely independ-
ent in about two years. It includes
the large islands of Jamaica, Trini-
dad and Barbados.
The labor congress, however,
will eventually include labor
groups in other colonies such as
British Guiana, British Hondur-
as, Bermuda, Bahamas, tfie
Netherlands Antilles and Sur-
inam, French Martinique and
Guadeloupe.
President of the congress is
Frank I. Walcott, secretary of the
Barbados Workers Union and an
ICFTU executive board member. N. W., Washington 8, D. C.
near future of trade union centers
in North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation member countries to deal
with the problem of embattled Al-
geria. The ICFTU has called for
an end to military aid from NATO
for French military action in Al-
geria and a referendum to allow
the Algerian people to vote on their
future.
The board also voted support
of the AFL-CIO protest to the
U.S. Dept. of State on the in-
crease in the sugar quota for the
Dominican Republic and wel-
comed the decision of the Or-
ganization of American States
to impose collective sanctions
against the Trujillo dictatorship
in the Dominican Republic.
It called for negotiations between
the Indonesian and Netherlands
governments on the future of West
Irian, a disputed area in the Indo-
nesian archipelago.
It also gave support of self-
determination, including the right
of secession from the Federation
of Rhodesia and Nyasaland "with-
out delay" for the peoples of those
areas. The federation includes
Southern Rhodesia and is a part
of the British Commonwealth.
The board took into affiliation
trade union organizations from
newly independent countries in
French-speaking West Africa, a
new national center in Finland and
a federation of South African
workers.
Local Urges Gifts
To Solidarity Fund
Workers' Education Local 189
of the Teachers has called on mem-
bers in the United States and Can-
ada to make their annual Christ-
mas contributions to the Solidarity
Fund of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions.
In a letter to members employed
by unions and educational institu-
tions on worker education pro-
grams, Pres. Ben Segal said the
money is used to provide scholar-
ships for African and Asian union-
ists to attend ICFTU schools in
Kampala, Uganda, and in Calcutta.
India. Other unionists may send
contributions, Segal said, to Mrs.
Lee Stanley, 2930 Porter Street.
in. Two strikers were killed and
an unknown number wounded,
and the UMT official was re-
arrested.
Apprehensive of a nationwide
UMT strike in protest, the police
undertook what an ICFTU state-
ment labeled "a program of in-
timidation against UMT officers
throughout the country."
The UMT asked the ICFTU
headquarters for help and a two-
man mission — an ICFTU official
and a Belgian lawyer — were dis-
patched to Morocco Nov. 25.
Earlier, ICFTU General Sec. Omer
Becu had been told by the Moroc-
can director of the cabinet, who
made a special trip from Paris to
Brussels, that his government would
cooperate in the proposed investi-
gation.
Two Men Deported
However, when the ICFTU team
arrived in Morocco, they found
their way to Larache barred by the
police. The lawyer was arrested
for three hours in Tangier, then
taken to Rabat. From there, both
men were put into a plane and
deported.
In recent weeks, Moroccan pol-
icy, according to observers, has
taken a pro-Soviet turn. A squad-
ron of Soviet Mig jets has been
purchased by the government and
it was recently reported that a
shipload of arms had been delivered
by the Bulgarian government. The
French government said the weap-
ons were intended for Algerian
nationalist forces.
An even deeper interna] issue
in Morocco is the charge that
the UMT is "anti-royalist" and
that with its political supporters,
the newly-organized National Un-
ion of Popular Forces, is seeking
democratic changes in the gov-
ernment's monarchical structure,
including land reforms and a
basic constitution.
ICFTU Board
Calls Special
March Parley
Brussels, Belgium — A special
meeting of the Intl. Confederation
of Free Trade Unions' executive
board has been called for Mar. 13,
1961, in order to consider reorgan-
ization plans and new staff appoint-
ments to the international labor
body. AFL-CIO Pres. George
Meany attended the sessions which
voted to convene the extraordinary
meeting, although normally the
ICFTU board meets semi-annually
in late November and July.
Reason for the special session
was the failure of Pres. Arne Geijer
and General Sec. Omef Becu to
follow through with the reorganiza-
tion plans on instructions voted by
the ICFTU executive board last
summer.
Becu presented a reorganization
program to the board. It went un-
discussed, however, because the
ICFTU top officers proposed that
the program be further studied
by an ad hoc committee. This
would have delayed all imple-.
mentation of the program at least
until next July.
Most board members expressed
keen disappointment at the delay,
which they said would slow down
essential activities, especially in the
vdtal areas of Africa.
Meany Named to Head
ICFTU Solidarity Fund
Brussels, Belgium — AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
been elected chairman of a key ICFTU body, the Intl. Solidari-
ty Fund Committee. The AFL-CIO leader has been an ICFTU
executive board member since the organization was founded in
December 1949.
The committee administers the multi-purpose fund, to which
ICFTU affiliates contribute voluntarily, for use in various trade
union projects — organizing campaigns, trade union education,
relief— throughout the world. Primarily, the money is used
in areas of the world where free trade unionism is just starting
or is weak, such as Asia and Africa south of the Sahara.
Most of the money has come from European and North
American ICFTU affiliates. The AFL-CIO pledged and has
just fulfilled a contribution over a three-year period of $1
million.
The Solidarity Fund Committee is a sub-group of the execu-
tive board and approves or disapproves applications for funds.
As a standing committee, it meets during board sessions.
Meany presided over the meeting for the first time Dec. L
He succeeds Sir Vincent Tewson, who retired a few months
ago as general secretary of the British Trades Union Congress.
Social Security Meets
Only Half of Living Cost
Social security payments to the average retired couple cover about
half of what is needed for a "modest but adequate" level of living
in the average American city.
The Labor Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that budg-
etary needs in 20 cities for a retired couple, both 65 or older range
from a low of $2,641 in Houston,^
Tex., to a high of $3,366 in Chica
go. The overall average is $3,042
a year.
The absolute maximum social se-
curity payments for a man and his
wife, both of whom worked and
earned top salaries, is $240 a month
or $2,880, which would barely
cover the Labor Dept. budget.
However, full payments of this
kind are in a minority.
The average payment for a re-
tired man and wife as of June
1960 was $123 a month, or
$1,476 — less than half of the
overall average budgetary needs.
A man with full social security
credits plus an allowance for a wife
who has no social security credits
would bring a maximum $180 a
month, or $2,160, considerably be-
low the BLS budget.
Normal Living
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
said that its budget was not a "min-
imum subsistence" budget, but one
based on "the cost of a healthful,
self-respecting manner of living
which allows normal participation
in community life."
It assumes that the couple is in
reasonably good health, that they
live alone in a two or three-room
rental dwelling, that the home is
equipped with a gas or electric
cook stove, a mechanical re-
frigerator and small electrical ap-
pliances, that the wife does all of
the cooking and most of the
cleaning and laundry and that
most of the income of the retired
family is tax exempt because of
its source or is not enough to
require tax payments.
The cost of rent, heat and utili-
ties, which represent slightly more
Canada Living Costs
Reach Record High
Ottawa — Canada's cost-of-
living index has reached a
new high of 129.6 percent of
1949 prices, a gain of two-
tenths of 1 percent since Oc-
tober and a rise of a full two
points during the past five
months.
Living costs in the United
States are also at a record
high, although the base period
does not permit exact com-
parison. The latest index for
the' United States was 127.3,
based on a 1947-49 base pe-
riod as 100.
than one-fourth of the total, ranged
from $595 in Scranton, Penn. to
$1,067 in Chicago.
Food and beverages accounted
for about 29 percent of the budget
and was lowest for cities in the
South and highest for those in the
Northeast, Pittsburgh was at the
top, with food costs of $956 a year.
Clothing, housefurnishings, trans-
portation, medical care and similar
services ran from $1,174 in Atlan-
ta, Ga., to $1,410 in Chicago.
They represented 42 percent of the
budget. Variation in medical costs
was considerable among the 20 cit-
ies with an overall difference of
$144 between the lowest, Scranton
at $222 a year, and the highest,
Los Angeles, at $366 a year.
Transportation costs, ranging
from $133 to $195 a year, were
lowest in Philadelphia, New York
and Boston, where public transpor-
tation is used more frequently than
private automobiles.
Federal Jury
Indicts Hof fa in
Fraud Charge
Teamsters Pres. James R. Hoffa
has been indicted for a third time
by a federal grand jury — this time
with two other persons on charges
of misusing union funds in promot-
ing a Florida real estate scheme.
The new indictment was returned
in Orlando, Fla. and announced in
Washington by Attorney Gen. Wil-
liam P. Rogers. Named with Hof-
fa, and facing maximum sentences
if convicted of five years imprison-
ment and $1*000 fine on each of 12
counts, were Henry Lower, presi-
dent of Sun Valley Inc. and former
Teamsters business agent in De-
troit, and Robert E. McCarthy Jr.,
former branch manager of the Bank
of the Commonwealth in Detroit.
Hoffa was previously indicted,
tried and acquitted of wiretap-
ping charges and obstruction of
justice. The new indictment is
the third in a four-year period.
The federal grand jury charged
that in March 1954 Hoffa, Lower
and McCartney devised a scheme
to defraud four Detroit labor unions
and others by inducing them to pur-
chase land from Sun Valley Inc.
through means of false pretenses
and promises. The indictment
charges violation of mail and wire
fraud statutes.
Page- Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10. 1960
Meany Asks
Strong Drive
For Key Bills
Goldberg Appeals to NAM:
Industrial Warfare
Held Danger to U.S.
New York — The National Association of Manufacturers was
urged to help "end the cold war which exists between labor and
management in America today" by joining with labor to work out a
program recognizing the "mutuality of interest" between the two
groups.
The proposal came from Arthur^
J. Goldberg, AFL-CIO special
counsel and general counsel of the
Steelworkers, in a speech to the
65th annual Congress of American
Industry.
Goldberg told the assembled
businessmen and industrial leaders
that unless "labor and management
jointly adopt programs and proce-
dures to better labor-management
relations, they will both be in jeo-
pardy. "
He,, renewed his call for a Na-
tional Council of Labor-Man-
agement Advisers to "help restore
that sense of common purpose
which we had during World War
II . . . and which we need so
desperately now."
Reviewing the widening gap be-
tween labor and management in the
last few years and the positions
taken by both sides, Goldberg de-
clared that one fact emerged, that
"the American industrial scene is
not one in which poor, downtrod-
den, profitless business enterprises
have every last penny extracted
from them by powerful labor un-
ions or their political allies in gov-
ernment."
One of the essentials of the
American system, he said, is that
so long as there is no general pat-
tern of imbalance between labor
and management "we do not inter-
fere to redress every individual in-
stance of economic disequilibrium."
A critical reason for bridging the
growing gap between labor and
management, Goldberg added, is
the global cold war which requires
America to "remain superior in all
respects" to the Russians, including
industrial and military strength. He
noted:
"If we were really at peace and
not menaced by the Kremlin,
we could, perhaps, continue our
traditional practices and carry on
our traditional quarrels. But we
are not at peace, and our whole
way of life is being challenged
... we simply cannot afford the
luxury of the division and polari-
zation of viewpoints which exist
between" labor and management.
In renewing his call for a na-
tional council, Goldberg stressed
that it would be tripartite, consist-
ing of an equal number of repre-
sentatives of labor, management
and the public and would "advise"
and "recommend" to the President
programs to advance the goals of
both labor and management.
Kennedy Names Group
On Area Aid Program
'Here's One I Vetoed Twice'
Slump Hits 51 Areas
As Job Crisis Grows
(Continued from Page 1)
nounced for Secretary of the In-
terior.
• Gov. Luther Hodges of North
Carolina, former textile operator,
was named for Secretary, of Com-
merce.
• David E. Bell, Harvard Uni-
versity public administration ex-
pert and onetime White House aide
under former Pres. Truman, was
announced for director of the
Budget Bureau.
Seven additional cabinet posts
and dozens of other top-ranking
policy-making jobs remained to
be filled as Kennedy marked his
days with a long round of pri-
vate conferences and moved care-
fully in making his key selec-
tions.
His conversation with Eisenhow-
er was far longer than anticipated
and was followed by other meet-
ings involving Clark Clifford, Ken-
IUD Asks Program
To Halt 'Recession'
The Executive Committee of the
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept.
has called for a "direct attack" on
the current "full-blown recession."
The committee called specifically
for a "broad-based temporary tax
cut aimed at increasing the net
spendable income of America's
great mass of wage and salary earn-
ers," adding that such action would
"clear the shelves of excess inven-
tory" and bring "rising industrial
activity, employment and tax reve-
nue."
The committee also urged feder-
al standards of unemployment com-
pensation, action to bring down
long-term interest rates, an ex-
panded program of public works
and an end to punitive labor legis-
lation and reversal of National La-
bor Relations Board policies.
The current outflow of gold, it
said, is in part "due to recession at
home" and should not be used for
"denying action to end unemploy-
ment and stagnation at home."
nedy's liaison man in arranging a
smooth transition 4 of government,
and Eisenhower's top assistant,
Gen. Wilton B. Persons, and Eisen-
hower aides in the defense and for-
eign policy fields.
All signs indicated that the out-
going and incoming administra-
tions were cooperating with maxi-
mum friendliness in arranging the
transfer of power and responsibil-
ity on Jan. 20.
Kennedy announced the ap-
pointment of the Douglas com-
mittee on depressed areas with
the reminder that during the
West Virginia Democratic pri-
mary campaign he had pledged
that he would, if elected, within
60 days "send to the Congress a
program to assist West Virginia
to move forward."
The selection of the Illinois sen-
ator as chairman of the group was
taken to indicate that proposals
worked out would probably go be-
yond the Douglas-Payne depressed
area bill of 1958 and the Douglas-
Cooper bill of 1960, both of which
Eisenhower vetoed.
Douglas, principal sponsor of the
measures, had somewhat modified
the bill both years before final pas-
sage in an unsuccessful effort to
meet the veto threat.
Main Objectives Listed
The committee is now given by
Kennedy the task of developing a
program with these major objec-
tives:
• Spur economic growth in areas
of chronic unemployment.
• Encourage new job opportuni-
ties in such areas.
• Remove handicaps to full de-
velopment of the nation's industrial
potential.
• Stimulate investment in new
industry.
Miles C. Stanley, president of
the West Virginia State AFL-CIO,
is a member of the committee, as
is Michael F. Widman, assistant to
the president of the unaffiliated
Mine Workers.
(Continued from Page 1)
customary fall pickup in employ-
ment had failed to materialize in
some areas and had dropped below
seasonal expectations in others."
Employer estimates on future
hiring requirements, the report
added, pointed to a temporary
rise in employment in some areas
prior to the holiday shopping
season "followed by a perhaps
slightly more than seasonal de-
cline in non-farm payrolls to
mid-winter."
Labor Dept. officials have es-
timated unemployment in Janu-
ary and February 1961 will jump
to about 5.25 million.
The nine areas newly classified
as "areas of substantial labor sur-
plus" are Bridgeport and Water-
bury, Conn.; South Bend, Fort
Wayne and Gary-Hammond-East
Chicago, Ind.; Spokane, Wash.;
Hamilton-Middleton, Ohio; Steu-
benville-Weirton, Ohio-W. Va.; and
Sah Bernardino-Riverside-Ontario,
Calif.
Four major job areas were shifted
from the 6 to 9 percent unemploy-
ment rate to the 9 to 12 percent
category: Muskegon - Muskegon
Heights, Mich.; Atlantic City, N. J.;
Erie and Pittsburgh, Pa. Johns-
town, Pa., was added to the group
with 12 percent or more unemploy-
ment. The Wilkes-Barre-Hazleton
area and two areas in Puerto Rico
are the other three in this group.
(Continued from Page 1)
education, minimum wages, med-
ical care and area redevelopment.
"We warned that stagnation could
become recession unless these meas-
ures were undertaken promptly,"
Meany continued, and added:
"The shocking unemployment
figures for October — withheld until
after Election Day in a transparent
political maneuver — justified our
warning. They were even worse
than we had predicted.
"This emphasizes the fact that
our program was not devised for
partisan political purposes, or as a
campaign document. We meant it
when we drew it up, and we mean
it now.
"I am reasonably confident that
this program will be favorably re-
ceived by the new Congress."
Meany in the editorial took note
of the fact that the coalition of con-
servative Republicans and southern
Democrats "frustrated our efforts"
to win congressional support for
similar legislation during the 86th
Congress. Republicans have claimed
this right-wing bloc .has been
strengthened since the GOP cap-
tured two additional seats in the
Senate and 22 more House seats
in the November elections.
New President an Ally
Meany said that while the coali-
tion "has been slightly strengthened
on paper," it will operate in the
87th Congress "under entirely
different circumstances."
"This time," the AFL-CIO
president declared, "the President
will be an opponent, not an ally,
of the obstructionists.
"This time the President will
rally the nation for progress, not
reaction.
"This time the President will
be a man who has personally
fought for wage-hour improve-
ments, old-age medical care, area
redevelopment, aid to education,
and public housing."
He cautioned labor that "we,
too, must do our part," and not
put the entire burden on Pres.-
elect Kennedy.
"As these and other issues again
come before Congress," he said, ,
"we must arouse ourselves and our
fellow-members in their support."
Consumer Income Seen
Key to Economic Growth
San Francisco — A band of hardy unionists, close to 150 strong,
set out in this city to explore the mysterious workings of economic
growth, the recent presidential campaign's most hotly disputed
issue.
They were warned, right at the outset of the California Labor
Federation's four-day Labor Edu-^
cation Conference, that the failure
to put to work a planned program
of expanded growth could cost the
nation by 1965 some $454 billion
in goods and services and as much
as 23 million man-years of em-
ployment.
Leon H. Keyserling, president
of the Conference on Economic
Progress and once chairman of
former Pres. Truman's Council
of Economic Advisers, told the
explorers that the average Amer-
ican family could expect $6,250
more income between 1960 and
1965 under a high rate of growth
— about 5 percent per year —
than under the 2.5 percent rate
that marked the past seven years.
He charged that the low rate of
the Eisenhower years had cost the
nation 15 million man-years of
employment, a loss of $3,500 in
the income of the average family,
Stanley H. Ruttenberg, director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research,
told the conference that the key to
economic growth could be found
in the state of consumer income.
Sagging income, whether measured
in wages, per capita income or
spendable earnings, was a major
factor in the recessions that have
marked the past decade, and con-
sumer income would shape the na-
tion's growth in the decade ahead,
he said.
Ruttenberg called for govern-
ment spending programs to meet
real unmet needs of the Ameri-
can people as the basic means of
stimulating the economy to a
higher level of growth.
He cited the needs that have been
passed over, first because of war,
then later by Eisenhower Adminis-
tration policy: education at all lev-
els, low and middle-income hous-
ing, rebuilding of the deteriorating
core of the nation's cities, develop-
ment of transit, health and hospital
services and facilities.
Growth Would Boost Revenue
While the short-run answer calls
for deficit spending, Ruttenberg
said, the substantially expanded rate
of growth would produce increased
tax revenues more than adequate
to meet the cost over the long run.
If necessary, a tax cut in lower in-
come brackets could be utilized to
supply the initial boost.
Dr. Earl F. Cheit, professor of
economics at the University of Cali-
fornia, sounded a note of dissent.
Expansion of the nation's programs
dealing with most sources of eco-
nomic insecurity does not hinge on
expanding the nation's growth rate,
he declared.
Failure to bring unemploy-
ment and workmen's compensa-
tion, health insurance, and old
age security programs to more
adequate levels is not a failure
arising from the country's lack
of money — "the cost relatively
is trifling,'' he said.
CofC Expert Sees
Unemployment Rise
The chief economist of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
has predicted that unemploy-
ment in the early months of
1961 will "average higher
than in 1960 and be trouble-
some."
Emerson P. Schmidt, an
extremely conservative econo-
mist, said at the Chamber's
annual business outlook con-
ference that the nation is un-
dergoing a "mild readjust-
ment" that will probably last
through the first half of 1961.
The downturn, according to
Schmidt, will produce reduced
production and income, with
the gross national product —
the sum total of all goods
and services — declining 1 to
2 percent.
v l y Usiri weekly at 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.,
t Y OI. V Wa*talnjton 6, D. C. $2 a year
Saturday, December 17, 1960 17*4^*, 17 ]\ 0# 51
Joblessness Climbs Again,
Hits Record for November
Peak of 5.3 Million
Seen in February
CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS wait for new owners in the lobby of the AFL-CIO Building in
Washington, D. C. Approximately 140 stockings, filled by members of Local 2, Office Employes,
and other federation employes, were turned over to the Salvation Army for needy children aged 5
to 12. Pictured left to right: Mrs. Robert G. Van Vranken, Salvation Army volunteer worker;
Mrs. Gordon Swyers, Salvation Army brigadier; Cleomine Lewis of Local 2, chairman of the stocking
project; and Earl Ball, union shop steward.
Farm Union
Drive Hailed
By Churches
San Francisco — The National
Council of Churches has rallied
its 40 million members behind
the AFL-CIO drive to organize
migratory farm workers, and has
called for legislation extending to
migrants the protection of mini-
mum wages and the right of col-
lective bargaining.
Delegates to the council's fifth
general assembly here unanimously
endorsed a general board policy
statement calling for "continuation
of current efforts at responsible
and democratic labor organization
among these workers."
The Means: AWOC
The AFL-CIO Executive Council
earlier this year announced crea-
tion of the Agricultural Workers'
Organizing Committee which has
initially centered its activity on
bringing the benefits of trade un-
ionism to agricultural workers in
the rich California farm country.
In a series of key civil rights
actions, the council:
• Praised parents and religious
leaders supporting school deseg-
regation in New Orleans who "at
great personal risk and sacrifice
have stood firm in the Judeo-
Christian and historic American
traditions which uphold the dig-
nity and worth of every individ-
ual, without regard to race or
color."
• Called on the church, em-
(Continued on Page 12)
Cabinet IS early Completed;
Goldberg Chosen
Secretary of Labor
By WiUard Shelton
Arthur J. Goldberg, special counsel to the AFL-CIO, has been
designated as Secretary of Labor by Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy announced the appointment to reporters from the front
door of his Washington, D.C. home, with Goldberg standing by his
side.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
accompanied Goldberg to the Ken-
nedy home where the Secretary-
designate joined the President-elect
for the announcement.
Kennedy praised Goldberg, who.
has been general counsel of the
Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO In-
dustrial Union Dept., as "one of the
country's leading experts" in the
complexities of industrial relations,
and a man who has shown "intelli-
gence, wisdom and intuition."
The President-elect paid par-
ticular tribute to Goldberg's skill
in devising the "effective and suc-
cessful procedures" under which
Communist - dominated unions
had been expelled from the
former CIO, and said the steps
"marked a major setback to
Communist infiltration of Amer-
ican democratic institutions."
He also praised Goldberg's role
as counsel to the AFL-CIO Ethical
Practices Committee.
Goldberg pledged himself, with
Kennedy, to strive energetically to
eliminate the causes of unemploy-
ment, and the Secretary-designate
also pledged that he would admin-
ister the labor laws "vigorously,
fairly and without fear or favor."
Outgoing Labor Sec. James P.
Mitchell, in a telegram to the man
designated as his successor, warmly
saluted Kennedy's appointee and
declared the President-elect "could
(Continued on Page 12)
By Robert B. Cooney
The ranks of the nation's unemployed swelled by 452,000 be-
tween October and November, pushing the total jobless to 4,031,000
— a record high for postwar Novembers.
'The trend in unemployment is upward — we see nothing in the
offing which will bring unemployment down," commented Dr.
Seymour Wolfbein, Labor Dept. manpower expert, in releasing the
November job report.
Wolfbein forecast that unemployment would peak at 5.3 million
in February. Whether a spring upturn results from the expected
job rise in Easter trade, outdoor construction and agriculture "will
be one of the acid tests of the^ "
economy," he said. Failing an up-
turn, the jobless total could hit 6
million, he added.
The twofold task facing the econ-
omy next year, Wolfbein pointed
out, will be not only that of reab-
sorbing the jobless but of finding
additional jobs for a net increase of
1.25 million in the civilian work
force.
The November job report showed
the key seasonally adjusted rate of
unemployment remained virtually
unchanged at 6.3 percent. It was
6.4 percent in October.
The 6.3 percent rate — meaning
63 of every 1,000 workers were
looking for work and could not
find it — has been exceeded in post-
war Novembers only by the 6.5
percent in the 1949 recession. It
compares to the 6.2 percent in
November of the 1958 recession.
Jobless Rate Erratic
The jobless rate has moved up-
ward in rather erratic fashion since
May, when it was at a near-low
for the year of 4.9 percent.
Wolfbein said he and two other
economists who recently testified
before the Joint Economic Com-
mittee had arrived independently at
the judgment that the current
downturn dated from last May,
just after the usual spring improve-
ment.
He viewed as "very serious" the
fact that during 1960 some 500,000
jobs have been wiped out in manu-
(Continued on Page 12)
Bold Plans
Urged to
End Slump
San Francisco — The American
economy is bogged down in a re-
cession "for the third time in
seven short years," and Pres.-
elect John F. Kennedy must ex-
ercise "energetic leadership" to
end the downturn, AFL-CIO Re-
search Dir. Stanley H. Rutten-
berg has declared.
Addressing the Commonwealth
Club of California, a nationally
famed public opinion forum, Rut-
tenberg warned that the burgeoning
recession may push joblessness up
past the 6 million mark — more than
7 percent of the labor force — by
early 1961.
Gloomy Picture Painted
The new recession, he said, com-
ing "hardly before the last vestiges
of the slump of 1957-58 had been
swept away," indicates that despite
the so-called business "recoveries,"
the nation has been "moving fur-
ther and further away" from max-
imum employment and production
goals.
Ruttenberg painted this gloomy
picture of the economy: Industrial
(Continued on Page 3)
Trainmen, Conductors Unions Reach
Basic Agreement on Merger Pact
Two of the nation's oldest railroad brotherhoods — the Railroad Trainmen and the Railway Con-
ductors & Brakemen — have reached agreement in principle on merger, subject to membership
ratification.
The Trainmen, with 200,000 members, is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The 25,000-member
Conductors' brotherhood is unaffiliated. The merged union will retain AFL-CIO affiliation.
Pres. W. P. Kennedy of the
Trainmen announced approval of
the amalgamation formula by his
union's board of directors, which
met at Cleveland. At the same
time. Conductors' Pres. J. A.
Paddock reported from Cedar
Rapids, la., that the ORCB board
had also voted approval.
Some details of the merger are
still to be ironed out by a subcom-
mittee to be named by the two
union presidents. The basic plan
was drafted by a committee of the
top officers of the two organiza-
tions which began talks in Septem-
ber. Resolutions endorsing the
principle of amalgamation were
adopted by recent conventions.
Final approval of the merger
must be given by the membership
of each union in referenda votes
expected to be held early in 1961.
The joint announcement de-
clared: "The key principle of the
merger is the maintenance of each
craft and class of employes repre-
(Continued on page 11)
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Consumer Purchasing Rate SIoivs:
Higher Worker Buying Power
Seen 'Essential' to Recovery
A meaningful increase in the buying power of American workers — who purchase nearly 70
percent of the nation's total output — is "essential" to help lift the nation out of the current recession,
the AFL-CIO has declared.
A "major reason" for the present economic slump, according to the current issue of Labor's
Economic Review, monthly publication of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research, has been that "people
have not been able to buy enough^
of the consumer goods and services
SPECIAL COMMITTEE named by Pres.-elect Kennedy to work
out depressed area program for the new session of Congress is
shown at its first meeting in Charleston, W. Va. Chairman Paul
H. Douglas (D-Ill.) is shown at center rear; to his right is Myer
Feldman, slated to be associate special counsel to Kennedy in the
White House, who is top staff officer of the group. West Virginia
State AFL-CIO Pres. Miles Stanley is a member of the committee.
Douglas Speeds Action
On Area Redevelopment
An area redevelopment bill will be among the first pieces of major
legislation presented to the 87th Congress when it convenes Jan. 3,
Sen Paul H. Douglas (D-IU.), chairman of Pres.-elect John F.
Kennedy's special task force on distressed areas, has indicated.
Moving quickly to meet the problem of chronic joblessness in
100 labor markets across the na-^
tion, Douglas called the 17-member
task force into session in Charles-
ton, W. Va., and followed this
meeting up with a series of closed-
door hearings in the nation's capi-
tal.
'Time For Action*
Douglas, who co-sponsored two
area redevelopment bills vetoed by
Pres. Eisenhower in 1958 and 1960,
declared that "conditions of chron-
ic unemployment have been studied
at great length and at considerable
depth" in recent years.
"I believe strongly that the
time for action is now," he said.
The senator issued an appeal for
bipartisan support for a new area
redevelopment measure which he
said would be presented "at the
opening of the 87th Congress."
Seven Republicans representing
Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West
Virginia — three states pockmarked
with areas of chronic depression —
promptly pledged their cooperation,
declaring in a wire to Douglas that
they were "pleased to know that
Pres.-elect Kennedy considers this
problem to be urgent enough to
become one of his first orders of
business."
Six of the seven — Senators Hugh
Scott (Pa.) and John Sherman
Cooper (Ky.), and Representatives
Ivor D. Fenton (Pa.), James E.
Van Zandt (Pa.), John P. Saylor
(Pa.) and Arch A. Moore, Jr. (W.
Va.) — voted for the Douglas area
bill in the 86th Congress. The
seventh, Rep.-elect William Scran-
ton (Pa.), was elected to his first
term in Congress in November.
As the special task force opened
Recount Yields
Wickersham Win
Oklahoma City — Democrat Vic-
tor Wickersham has won re-election
to Congress in the 6th Dist. on the
basis of a recount of the 140,000
ballots cast in the November elec-
tion.
Wickersham. who trailed Repub-
lican Clyde Wheeler, Jr., by 188
votes in the original tabulation,
picked up 257 votes in the recount
to win by a 69-vote edge.
The overturn of the election cut
the GOP's net gain of House seats
to 21, and made the lineup in the
new House 262 Democrats to 175
Republicans.
its hearings, Douglas emphasized
that the group would concentrate
its efforts on helping areas of
chronic labor surplus and will not
delve into the broader problem of
dealing with the current economic
downturn.
"Measures to deal with chronic
conditions," the Illinois Demo-
crat said, "are not primarily ef-
fective as across-the-board anti-
recession measures, although in
the long pull they may have an
important influence on the busi-
ness cycle."
In addition to working on area
redevelopment legislation, the task
force was reportedly drafting pro-
posals for an emergency program
which Kennedy could set in motion
the day he takes office. A com-
mittee spokesman said the group
was considering alternatives for im-
mediate help which could be start-
ed with presidential action. They
include:
• Increasing the amount of sur-
plus food available to indigent fam-
ilies. During the presidential cam-
paign, Kennedy repeatedly assailed
the fact that surplus food packages
distributed to these families pro-
vided only 5 cents worth of food
per person per day.
• Granting additional conces-
sions to firms in depressed areas
bidding for government contracts.
• Launching certain public
works projects which have been
authorized by Congress but not
started by the Eisenhower Admin-
istration.
• Setting up a rural redevelop-
ment program under existing legis-
lation.
• Revising the federal highway
program to get more road projects
under way in areas with high
unemployment.
Stressing the "urgency" of the
problem, Steelworkers' Pres. David
J. McDonald, in a letter to Doug-
las, pledged the union's "whole-
hearted support" for the area re-
development drive. McDonald re-
ported "serious unemployment" in
the steel and iron ore industry.
"Had distressed areas legisla-
tion been . . . signed by the
President** two years ago, the
USWA president said, "I have no
doubt that much of the current
blight in our communities would
be a matter of history. We would
at least have made a start at solv-
ing some of these problems."
that can be produced.
In the past several years, the
review pointed out, there has been
a marked slowdown in the rise of
consumer buying power. From
1947 to 1956, it declared, per cap-
ita buying power rose at an average
yearly rate of 2.3 percent. In the
past four years, buying power has
inched forward at a rate of only
1.2 percent.
Rising Income Needed
Rising real income, the AFL-CIO
publication said, is essential not
only for the growth of consumer
markets but also to "provide work-
ing people with a share of the gains
of improving productive efficiency."
Output per manhour has been
rising at an average yearly rate
of about 3.1 percent to 3.4 per-
cent since 1947, according to
Labor Dept. figures cited in the
review. It forecast productivity
increases ranging from 3.5 to 4
percent annually in the period
ahead "if automation continues
to spread and if the economy
operates in high gear."
The increase in productivity, the
publication went on, means that
goods can be turned out with fewer
employes and at a lower unit cost
to the manufacturer. It added that
unless workers received an increase
in real income to stimulate the
sales of goods, the nation will be
faced with "widespread layoffs.**
The needed rise in sales can
come, in addition, from "substantial
increases" in the expenditures by
federal, state and local governments
for more adequate public services
and through increased business in-
vestment in new plants and ma-
chines, the review said.
"But," it added, "at the founda-
tion of the economy is the con-
sumer, who accounts for about 70
percent of total national produc-
tion. And substantial increases of
consumer spending are required, if
sales and production are to rise
fast enough to maintain prosperity."
Strong Unions Essential
Strong unions and effective col-
lective bargaining, according to the
publication, "are essential for the
dynamic wage policy that an ex-
panding American economy re-
quires." It called on management,
"from the viewpoint of economic
good sense," to share the benefits
of rising productivity equally with
workers and consumers.
At the same time, the AFL-
CIO publication called for "spe-
cial government efforts ... to
lift the wages of the millions of
low-wage workers** — including
migrant farm workers, and em-
ployes in retail trades and serv-
ices — "whose families cannot
achieve a modest standard of liv-
ing from the inadequate earnings
of their breadwinners."
It called specifically for action
to raise the minimum wage to at
least $1.25 an hour and to extend
coverage to millions now excluded
from protection, along with "spe-
cial government efforts" to protect
the wages and conditions of migra-
tory farm workers.
Major Gains Won
By Studio Musicians
Hollywood, Calif. — Members of the Musicians employed by
major motion picture studios recently ratified a new three and one-
half year contract raising wages and providing unprecedented
protections for job opportunities.
The contract was the first negotiated by the AFL-CIO affiliate
regained
since it regained representation
rights last September from a dual
local which had obtained certifica-
tion in 1958.
The safeguards written into the
contract to assure continuing em-
ployment were two:
• All films produced in the
United States or Canada will be
"scored," or have the music writ-
ten in, in the U.S. or Canada.
The union said this resulted
from the practice, particularly
among smaller firms, of having
music tracks made by low-cost
labor in foreign countries for use
in firms otherwise made entire-
ly in North America. The AFM
does not object to, and never
has, the use of foreign-scored
music in foreign films or in U.S.
films made abroad.
• All television films will con-
tain only music scored live, in ac-
cordance with the contract. The
use of canned music, which until
a few years ago accounted for an
estimated 98 percent of all TV
film music and killed numerous
job opportunities, is thus banned
under the new agreement.
The contract in addition calls
for wage increases of 5 percent
on Oct. 1, 1961, and 7 percent
on Nov. 1, 1962, and 3 percent
employer contribution to a pen-
sion fund effective Nov. 1, I960.
About 1,200 AFM members are
covered by the new agreement.
'Marked Advances'
Union spokesmen hailed the pact
for its "marked advances" over the
agreement negotiated by the un-
affiliated Musicians' Guild, the pre-
vious bargaining agent.
The Musicians Guild grew out
of an insurgent move among movie
studio musicians and led to an
NLRB vote in 1957 which gave the
dual union representation rights.
The instrumentalists reversed them-
selves after only two years and
turned out the unaffiliated union
in a bitterly-contested election two
months ago. At the time, AFM
Pres. Herman D. Kenin said the
union regarded the results "more as
a reaffirmation of musicians' unity
than as a victory over other
musicians."
Unions Fight
Weakening of
Oregon Law
Portland, Ore.— The Orgeon
workmen's compensation program
is superior to most other state pro-
grams because injured workmen
have received 93 cents out of every
dollar paid into the fund, compared
with a national average of 62 cents,
the Oregon AFL-CIO points out in
a new informational pamphlet sent
to every union in the state.
Between 1947 and 1957, employ-
ers paid $151 million into the state
fund and $140.6 million went to
injured workers, the pamphlet says.
The report is being used by the
state AFL-CIO as a weapon to com-
bat a law change proposed by insur-
ance companies, which axe hoping
to get the Oregon legislature to kill
the employers' liability act and set
up a "three-way" system of insur-
ance under which trial by jury
would be eliminated in case of
dispute.
Democrat Is Seen
For Thomson Seat
Cheyenne, Wyo. — Democratic
Gov. J. J. Hickey is expected to
name a Democrat to fill the Senate
seat left vacant by the death of
Sen. -elect Keith Thomson (R), who
died here of a heart attack at the
age of 41.
Thomson, who was ending his
third term as the state's lone con-
gressman, defeated Democrat Ray
Whitaker by a wide margin in the
November election.
Appointment of a Democrat
would lift that party's margin in
the Senate to 65-35, leaving the
GOP with a net gain of one seat
from the 86th Congress.
Among those being mentioned
prominently for the post, in addi-
tion to Hickey himself and Whit-
aker, are Tracy S. McCraken,
Cheyenne publisher; and Walter B.
Phelan and W. A. Norris, Ir., both
members of the state legislature.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Page Three
Economists Testify:
Tax Cut Proposed
In Recession Fight
By Gene Zack
Two private economists, declaring the nation is in the midst
of a new recession, have indicated a reduction in income taxes may
be necessary to halt the downward spiral.
The view was expressed by Joseph Pechman, director of studies
on government and finance at the Brookings Institution, and Charles
L. Schultze, Indiana University^
economist, in testimony before the
Joint Congressional Economic
Committee.
'Most Rapid Cure'
Sen. Paul H. Douglas ©-III),
committee chairman, also held out
the possibility that a tax cut may
be, needed, calling it "the most
rapid cure" but not the only one
for the present decline. He added
that if the nation pulls out of the
slump by March or April, a tax cut
may not be necessary.
The committee was called into
session in advance of the 87th Con-
gress to weigh the impact of the
third recession since the Eisen-
hower Administration took office
nearly eight years ago.
Peter Henle, assistant director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Re-
search, told the committee that
the latest unemployment figures,
showing 6.3 percent of the work
force idled, "reveal a seriously
deteriorating picture."
"From the viewpoint of those
who work for a living," the AFL-
CIO spokesman said, "the nation's
economic health is ailing, and ac-
tion is needed to alleviate the dis-
tress caused by unemployment and
to create more jobs throughout the
economy."
Pechman warned the committee
it should be ready to recommend
a temporary tax cut "if the situation
gets much worse," adding uiat he
saw no need for such action at this
point. The Brookings Institution
economist said the recession has
been under way for about six
months.
"The real test of the severity of
a recession," he told the commit-
tee, "comes in the second six
months, and we are just entering
this period in the present cycle. It
may be noted that the most recent
data on manufacturers' shipments
and orders, department store sales,
and insured unemployment are by
no means reassuring."
Schultze, attributing much of
the current weakness of the econ-
omy to federal budget policies,
which he said are aimed at pro-
ducing excessive budget sur-
pluses, advocated either a slight
reduction in tax rates or some-
what higher government spend-
ing to rebuild the nation's econ-
omy.
Henle told the committee that
recent increases in unemployment
have seriously affected "those who
need jobs the most" — married men
in the prime working age group.
Labor Dept. jobless figures, he said,
"reinforce the conclusion that un-
employment has become a stubborn
national problem, demanding na-
tional attention."
Meanwhile, Sen. Barry Gold-
water (R-Ariz.), a leader of the con-
servative right wing of the GOP,
blamed rising unemployment on
Democratic Party platform prom-
ises and on Pres. -elect Kennedy's
"hesitation"- in naming his Cabinet
and other key personnel.
Goldwater Hits Democrats
"From the day last July that the
Democrats promised the moon in
order to court voting blocs," Gold-
water said, "confidence in the
healthy progress of the American
economy has been declining.
"Business activity has been in-
creasingly sluggish, investments
have been made at a" slower rate,
and as a result of these concrete
indications of serious concern
about the reckless economic pro-
posals of the Democrats, unemploy-
ment has continued to grow."
TWU Wins Pact to Ease
Impact on Tug Oilers
New York — Oilers on diesel-engine tugs serving seven railroads
in the Port of New York have voted for an agreement which will
abolish their jobs after they retire on pension or quit with, separation
pay.
The agreement, negotiated by the Transport Workers, climaxes
a long fight by the union to save^
the jobs of oilers whose steam tugs
have been replaced by diesels.
Other tug lines had spurred the
union to a last-ditch fight when
they declared the oiler's job un-
necessary.
Lockout Charged
Members of TWU Local 1463
voted 74-23 to accept a settlement
which would ease the blow for
veteran oilers. Under the agree-
ment, 71 oilers with 19.5 or more
years of service may accept 50
weeks of separation pay or keep
working on harbor tugs until they
reach 65 — pension age on all lines
except the Baltimore & Ohio, where
the retirement age is 70.
Oilers with less than 20 years of
service but more than six years may
Elkins to Head URW
Skilled Trades Dept.
Akron, O.— Edward R. Elkins,
who has been in charge of the
Rubber Workers' political educa-
tion program for the last five
months, has been named director
of the union's Skilled Trades Dept.
by Pres. George Burdon.
The skilled trades post was es-
tablished by the international con-
vention in September.
get separation pay based on their
years of service.
The argument over oilers' jobs
on diesels became heated last year
when one tug line fired all such
workers. The argument spread to
the railroad-owned tugs and got
into court when the union men
said they had been locked out by
their employers.
The union then secured a tem-
porary court order preventing the
railroads from abolishing any jobs
until the court had an opportunity
to hear all the facts in the dispute.
Unless an agreement was reached
within a reasonable time, it was
considered likely that the court
would remove its injunction, and
the oilers' jobs would be abolished,
the union said.
The agreement is effective Jan.
1, 1961, under the Railway Labor
Act. It is the first of its kind in
the country, according to TWU.
Those who decide to take separa-
tion pay will get pay for a 40-
hour week on this scale: for six
years of service, six weeks pay,
ranging up to 50 weeks' pay for
those with 19.5 or more years.
The parties agreed that the agree-
ment will affect steam tugs when
they become dieselized.
PETER HENLE, assistant director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Research, is shown (second from left)
as he waits to testify before a Senate-House economic committee on ways of moving the U.S. economy
forward. Other economists shown are Robert Triffin of Yale University, left, and William W. Tongue,
Jewel Tea Co.
Labor Urges Kennedy Leadership
To Lift Economy Out of Recession
(Continued from Page 1)
production is now 4 percent below
last January "and probably will fall
further;" nearly 20 percent of the
nation's industrial plants now stand
idle; the gross national product is
declining; 6.4 percent of the civilian
labor force was unemployed in
October; and "there is nothing on
the horizon to give confidence that
a turnabout s6on will be under
way." m
Despite claims by some who op-
posed Kennedy that the closeness
of the popular vote left the Presi-
dent-elect without a mandate for
action, he said, the incoming Ad-
ministration has a "very positive
mandate" from the American peo-
ple in the form of the Employment
Act of 1946.
That act, he said, "commands"
the leaders of the federal govern-
ment "to utilize all of the great
powers at their disposal in a
concerted effort to achieve and
to maintain 'maximum employ-
ment, production and purchasing
power'."
Ruttenberg expressed confi-
dence that Kennedy "will not
ignore this mandate."
The AFL-CIO spokesman urged
the new Administration, as soon as
it takes office on Jan. 20, to insti-
tute emergency steps to bolster the
sagging economy, including:
• Federally - supported unem-
ployment benefits for those whose
jobless payments have become ex-
hausted and for others who have
never received any unemployment
compensation.
• A^IO percent increase in ben-
efits under the social security
system.
• Prompt aid to small business
by lowering the normal tax rate on
the first $100,000 of profit "without
reducing the total corporation tax
rate."
• Acceleration of the placement
of contracts for the purchase of all
normal government supplies and
for the construction of public
works. State and local govern-
ments, he said, should be "urged"
to take similar steps.
He also proposed a "quick and
temporary" tax cut, involving sus-
pension of all withholding taxes for
two months, if joblessness hits the
7 percent mark.
These measures Ruttenberg said,
"if quickly implemented, will re-
verse the slump, restore business
confidence and encourage higher
levels of private investment."
He recalled that, as a result of
the 1957-58 recession, the federal
government incurred a budget
deficit of over $12 billion in fiscal
1959 largely due to severe reve-
nues losses resulting from falling
incomes and declining business
profits."
He added that "the quick resto-
ration now of a high level of em-
ployment and production — plus es-
sential reforms of the federal tax
structure — will increase public rev-
enues sufficiently to underwrite the
cost of a higher level of public
spending."
Ruttenberg also recommended
that the Kennedy Administration
revitalize" the Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers so that it can "start
now to establish goals and objec-
tives determining the necessary lev-
els of personal consumption, pri-
vate investment and governmental
expenditures ... to assure the
maximum and wise use of the great
physical and human resources of
America."
The Long-Range Program
The AFL-CIO research director
said that in the wake of the emer-
gency program, the new Adminis-
tration should undertake long-range
measures "to help maintain a rap-
idly rising economic growth rate
and eliminate maladjustments that
periodically beset the economy."
This program, he said, should
include:
• Raising the minimum wage
to $1.25 an hour and broadening
coverage.
• Establishing federal standards
for the amount and duration of
unemployment compensation ben-
efits, coupled with extension of the
law's protection.
• Liberalizing benefit levels un-
der social security.
• Financing medical care —
"particularly for the aged" —
through social security.
•. Giving attention to such
"long-neglected needs" as the na-
tion's schools, distressed areas,
housing, urban renewal, and aid to
communities to build essential pub-
lic facilities.
America's need in 1961, Rutten-
berg said, is "energetic leadership
by the federal government to get
our manpower fully employed, to
get idle plants back to work, and
to provide essential public services
to meet the needs of a growing and
confident nation,''
Both the short-range and long-
range programs outlined, he added,
will "stimulate private enterprise by
helping raise consumer income and
spending, by creating new demands
for the products of private business,
and by increasing vital public serv-
ices upon which the expansion of
private undertakings depend."
Olive Pickers 9 Strike
Wins 50 Percent Raise
Valley Springs, Calif.— Olive pickers at the B & L Ranch near
here have won a union shop and a 50 percent wage hike after an
eight-day strike.
The settlement, climaxing a series of breakthroughs by the AFL-
CIO's Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee during the fall
fZ^^ fr° 8 ^ aran >!^ S ffceived higher rates as a result of
AWOC representatives the right of
access to workers on the job.
The first test of the agreement
came shortly after the settlement
when the grower needed 30 addi-
tional skilled pickers to complete
his harvest. He asked the union to
refer members to the job.
At the start of the harvest, B
& L had been paying $1 for each
38-pound box or "lug" of olives
picked. When the AWOC called
the workers out on strike, man-
agement first offered $1.25, fi-
nally agreed to the $1.50 price
asked by the union.
In other areas, a series of pattern-
setting AWOC strikes brought up
the rate from $1 for the more com-
mon 33-pound lug to $1.25, with
premium rates up to $2 a lug for
more difficult picking and larger
boxes. The union estimates that
4,000 California olive pickers re-
AWOC action.
Several growers have already
agreed to the union's proposal that
negotiations for next season's olive
picking be started well in advance
of the harvest season.
Lost Time on Strikes
Stays Low in October
Idleness resulting from strikes
was 1.75 million man-days in Oc-
tober, or 0.19 percent of working
time — the lowest level for October
since 1957, according to a govern-
ment report.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported that 250 stoppages involv-
ing about 120,000 workers began
in October. Another 200 stop-
pages, continuing from September,
involved about 50,000. Total strike
idleness was 1.75 million man-days,
same as in September, BLS said.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Affiliates Win
581 Elections
In 3rd Quarter
AFL-CIO unions took part in
1,146 representation elections dur-
ing the third quarter of 1960 and
won 581 of them. The National
Labor Relations Board's latest sta-
tistical summary shows that there
were 37,803 workers in bargaining
units voting for representation by
AFL-CIO affiliates.
Using a short-term comparison,
the July, August, September vic-
tory totals showed a sharp dropoff
from the near-record second quar-
ter, when 57,633 workers in 704
bargaining units chose AFL-CIO
representation.
Over-the-Year Gains
Over a nine-month period, how-
ever, there have been more victories
involving more workers won in
1960 than during the comparable
period in 1959.
The nine-month totals show
1,808 elections won in 1960 as
compared with 1,720 in 1959
and 132,610 persons in bargain-
ing units choosing AFL-CIO af-
filiates as compared with 117,354
during the 1959 period. AFL-
CIO unions also filed more peti-
tions and participated in more
collective bargaining elections
this year.
In one category, contested elec-
tions involving two or more AFL-
CIO affiliates, the third quarter of
1960 showed an improvement over
the second quarter, according to
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Organiza-
tion. There were only 57 repre-
sentation elections in which AFL-
CIO affiliates competed for bar-
gaining rights and only 5,364 per
sons were involved in the bargain
ing units. This was the lowest for
any quarter since merger.
Union Group
Views Role of
United Nations
New York — Twenty -nine trade
union delegates were given a first-
hand look at "The United Nations
in a Time of World Crisis" at the
seventh annual School on World
Affairs sponsored by the American
Labor Education Service.
The delegates, representing 14
unions and including visitors from
Canada, the Philippines and Japan
met with UN officials and took part
in discussions led by experts on the
international trade union move-
ment, education and world prob
lems.
Among the speakers and discus-
sion leaders at the week-long insti-
tute were Exec. Dir. Clark Eichel-
berger of the American Association
for the United Nations; Assistant
Dir. George Guernsey of the AFL-
CIO Dept. of Education; ALES
Dir. Eleanor Coit; Prof. John Stoes-
singer, Hunter College; Prof. Rob-
ert Scalapino, University of Cali
fornia; Prof. Goodwin Watson
Columbia University; William
Kemsley, director of the New York
office of the Intl. Confederation of
Free Trade Unions; Mildred Kiefer
of the American Travel Associa
tion.
UN officials who participated in-
cluded Under Sec. Brian Urquhart;
William Epstein, chief of the Con-
ventional Armaments section, and
H. E. Habib Bourguiba, Jr., Tu
nisia's delegate to the UN.
Ike Names Wallace
To Labor Dept. Post
Pres. Eisenhower has given Wal
ter C. Wallace a recess appointment
as assistant secretary of labor for
employment and manpower, filling
the vacancy left by the resignation
of Newell Brown in mid-November.
Wallace, who has been with the
Labor Dept. since 1955, has been
serving as executive assistant to La-
bor Sec. James P. Mitchell.
Opposes 'Centralization:'
Election Brings Old
Warnings from NAM
New York — The National Association of Manufacturers has
served notice on the incoming Administration of Pres.-elect John
F. Kennedy that the businessmen's group will not abandon its cam-
paigns for less "centralization" in Washington and more ''freedom"
for individuals and state and local government.
The NAM also made it clear that^
it will continue to attack union bar-
NEW CREDIT SYSTEM, minimizing time and stressing com-
petency, has streamlined Typographical Union's apprenticeship
system. Change was introduced to overcome lag in replacing
craftsmen and in anticipation of sharp rise in younger workers in
1960's. Here Mrs. Janice Love (left) and Mrs. Mary Derleth (right),
instructors in ITU Bureau of Education, grade papers with
assistance of Mrs. Alice Link (center), detail clerk.
New ITU Credit System
Streamlines Training
Indianapolis — The 109 -year old Typographical Union, with a
tradition of apprenticeship training almost as old as the union, has
pioneered again by introducing a credit system of grading ap-
prentices.
Under the new approach, explained ITU Pres. Elmer Brown, time
as a determining factor is mini-^
mized and competency is empha-
sized.
The apprenticeship training sys-
tem was streamlined with the aim
of overcoming a lag in supplying
replacements and to meet the burst
of young workers which the gov-
ernment has forecast for the 1960s.
6- Year Maximum
The present, the maximum pe-
riod of apprenticeship in the three
printing classifications — printer,
typesetter machinist and mailer —
is six years. Through upgrading,
an apprentice could be advanced
a total of 24 months and reduce
the full term to four years.
Under the new credit system,
which includes safeguards
against too rapid completion, an
apprentice may complete his
training in as little as three years.
An apprentice can advance him-
self through credits gained in on-
the-job training, training in new
processes at centers maintained by
some 100 ITU locals and by ITU
correspondence courses.
The new credit system, Brown
said, was designed "as an incentive
for apprentices to meet the chal-
lenge of technological developments
in the printing and publishing in-
dustry." He stressed the feature of
minimizing time and emphasizing
competency as most likely to ap-
peal to apprentices with initiative
and ability.
54,000 Trained
The ITU has trained some 54,
000 apprentices in recent decades.
A recent survey, however,
showed that apprentices in train-
ing lagged 35 percent behind the
number needed to replace crafts-
men lost by death, retirement or
for other reasons. Thus, of every
three persons leaving the trade,
only two were ready to replace
them.
The work - force boom ahead,
with the government estimating
that 29 million more workers will
be entering the labor force in the
1960s, was another reason for
streamlining its training system,
the ITU noted. The greatest growth
will be in the 18 to 25-year old
bracket.
The ITU, Brown says, has only
one thing to sell and that is "ex-
pert craftsmanship." The union
function of trade education makes
it possible for the ITU to assert,
he said, that "a union card is the
highest guaranty of competency."
Gerald A. Walsh, director of
industrial relations, union em-
ployers section, Printing Indus-
try of America, said the new
credit system has introduced flex-
ibility by giving recognition to
special aptitudes and supplemen-
tal training.
Brown in turn paid tribute to the
employers' spirit of cooperation in
accepting the ITU training rules.
Rail Fireman
Cited; Saved
Fellow Worker
San Francisco — William C. Petti-
john of Bakersfield, employed on
the Southern Pacific's San Joaquin
division for seven years, has been
named "fireman of the month" by
the Locomotive Firemen and En-
ginemen.
Pettijohn, 35, was cited for sav-
ing the life of a brakeman on a
Southern Pacific freight train while
it crossed the Tehachapi Moun-
tains. Serving as a locomotive fire-
man, Pettijohn entered the diesel
engine rooms when some diesel
units failed and found the head
brakeman on the floor and the unit
filled with thick smoke fumes.
Brakeman Recovered
Pettijohn gave artificial respira
tion until a flicker of life showed
in the unconscious man. He con
tinued his efforts while the train
continued to Camarillo, where
firemen administered oxygen and
took the sick man to a hospital,
where he was confined for a month
Pettijohn repaired the train's
diesel units and continued on his
run to Los Angeles. Praise for
his efforts in saving a life came
from the train engineer, the
brakeman himself and BLF&E
officers.
Railroad management recently
conducted a massive campaign to
convince the public that the job of
a fireman on a diesel locomotive is
unnecessary — "f eatherbedding,'
they called it.
gaining patterns and to demand
'"regulation" of labor organizations.
Delegates to the NAM's 65th
Congress of American Industry
here were told they should plan
"vigorous and determined action"
to counteract many pressures that
will be exerted on the new Admin-
istration in the direction of "more
spending, more federal action in all
fields" and allegedly "more regi-
mentation and control of business
and more favoritism for organized
labor."
This advice came from Charles
R. Sligh, Jr., NAM executive
vice president, who told the busi-
nessmen that "nothing is sure in
the 87th Congress" but also as-
serted that expressions of public
opinion on issues such as gov-
ernment spending, tax reform
and regulation of union affairs
depend on how effectively the
NAM makes known its views.
Taming of what Sligh called
union monopoly power, which
raises our costs of production,
prices us out of markets and results
in inflation" could not be obtained,
he said, "unless the public and law-
makers understand how such power
distorts the operation of our econ-
omy."
Sligh was joined by Rep. Wil-
liam E. Miller (R-N. Y.), a mem-
ber of the House Judiciary Com-
mittee, and Gov. Ernest F. Hollings
(D) of South Carolina in sounding
an alarm about the anticipated role
of government.
Miller held that "a tightening
web of centralism threatens to
choke off our freedom and secur-
ity." He suggested that the ideal
mission of the federal government
would be "dedicated to reducing
spending and controls, eroding tax-
ation, balancing budgets and less
bureaucracy."
Goldberg a Speaker
Earlier, delegates heard Arthur
J. Goldberg, special counsel to the
AFL-CIO, urge the establishment
by the federal government of a na-
tional council of labor-management
advisers. He suggested this new
council might focus attention on
labor-management problems and
"reverse the trend of division and
polarization" that has marked the
two groups' viewpoints."
At a symposium on "The Eco-
nomic Challenge of the New Age,
Nat Goldfinger, AFL-CIO econo-
mist, told delegates that the United
States is failing to maintain the
proper rate of economic growth
consistent with its needs.
He shared a panel discussion
with Don Paarlberg, special assist-
ant to Pres. Eisenhower; Dr.
David M. Wright, professor of eco
nomics and political science at Mc-
Gill University, Montreal; and Ar-
thur Rosenbaum, economic re-
search manager at Sears Roebuck
& Co.
Although Wright did not men-
tion government specifically, he
warned against "gigantic welfare
expenditures." He also held that
in the face of continued inflation,
management "has not sufficiently
resisted labor union demands for
over-large wage increases."
Rosenbaum, whose company has
been involved in a prolonged and
bitter dispute with the Retail
Clerks, said "a better understand
ing" on the part of union members
as workers would "help impose
restraint on union leadership" in
posing demands which are "eco-
nomically unjustifiable."
Dr. Simon Ramo, a space and
industrial scientist who talked on
'intellectronics," defined the word
as signifying a "partnership" of
man and electronic machines. He
predicted that ''intellectronics"
would eventually be applied not
only to technology and engineering,
but also to law, medicine, politics,
banking and credit, education and
international language.
Other Speakers Heard
Other speakers and the substance
of their remarks were:
• Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-
Ariz.): "The impairment of the
U.S. gold reserve and adverse in-
fluences on the nation's economy
are the result of national poli-
cies which have discouraged hard
work and thrift and industry by
confiscatory federal tax policies by
permitting wage increases in certain
industries with no reference to pro-
ductivity increase."
• Stanley C. Allen, board chair-
man of the National Cash Register
Co.: "In all history no country ever
attempted to do so much for so
many (other nations) and asked for
so little in return."
• L. A. Peterson, president of
Otis Elevator Co., called on labor
to accept "a responsible attitude
for the economic consequences of
its demands upon management,"
and to "discontinue promotion of
the idea that labor and management
are natural born enemies."
USIA Union
Pays Tribute
ToG. V.Allen
Members of the government em-
ployes' union at the U.S. Informa-
tion Agency have expressed their
appreciation to George V. Allen,
agency director until his retirement
Dec. 1, for "helping develop a
career service" for USIA foreign
service officers.
, Officers of Government Em-
ployes' Lodge 1812 released the
text of a letter citing Allen for his
"cooperation with union officials"
and his efforts to "promote greater
stability in federal employment."
They include Lodge Pres. Bernard
Wiesman and Liston Oak, Harold
Cohen, Eugene Corkery, Betty Us-
tun, Anthony Carlisle and Stella
Omohundro.
Relationship Lauded
Wishing Allen well in future em-
ployment, lodge leaders expressed
their "keen appreciation of the re-
lationship with you" which the
union has enjoyed since its begin-
ning almost three years ago.
"During this period," they
wrote Allen, "our lodge has been
able confidently to assure agency
employes that you and your staff
have welcomed rather than re-
jected our efforts to assist in de-
veloping a career service" to
make the agency more effective.
The lodge also paid tribute to its
own international union for its ef-
forts in "strengthening the prestige
and efficiency of the merit system
and the inducements of a career
service." It said: "As agency em-
ployes look forward to a new ad-
ministration, we have reason to be
grateful for the contribution of
AFGE and other AFL-CIO unions
toward the stability of federal
employment."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Page Flv«
DRAMATICALLY TELLING the story of how a central labor body serves as
"a vital link" in binding together the labor movement, Detroit Public Library put
on display some of its collection of labor materials for a month's showing.
Upper left, officers of the Wayne County AFL-CIO dropped in at the library to
take a close look at the exhibit and Mrs. Roberta McBride is showing them a
copy of the AFL-CIO Education News, one of the items on display. Pictured
(left to right) are Sec.-Treas. John F. Williams, Pres. Al Barbour, Library Director
Ralph A. Ulveling, Mrs. McBride, and Vice Presidents Mike Novak and Alex
Fuller. Helen Sisson and Mrs. McBride, shown top center, members of State,
County & Municipal Employes Local 1259, arranged the exhibit which takes up
six cases. Officers of Local 1259 (upper right) are Board Member Florentina
Marquis, Pres. David Cooley, Delegate Elizabeth Moore and Sec. Sherman Ander-
son. At lower left, Director Ulveling, Mrs. Sisson, and Herbert T. McCreedy,
AFL-CIO regional director, examine one of the cases. A full case was devoted
to the Central Labor Body and its 47-year-old weekly newspaper, Detroit Labor
News, which Sec.-Treas. Williams, Editor Hal DeLong and Pres. Barbour examine
with interest in the picture at lower right.
Library Displays Tell
Detroit Union Story
Detroit, Mich. — The Detroit Public Library, from its vast store
of labor materials, this fall staged a month-long exhibit dramatizing
the role of the central labor body in binding the trade union move-
ment together.
The display was union-arranged, too, for the city's library work-
ers are 100 percent organized as^
members of State, County & Mu
nicipal Employes Local 1259. Of-
ficers of the Wayne County AFL-
CIO were conducted on a tour of
the exhibit by Ralph A. Ulveling,
library director.
The display was built around the
history of the Wayne County AFL-
CIO, one of the largest central bod-
ies in the country with more than
325,000 members in 323 locals.
Three Won Fame
It included photographs and bio-
graphical notes of three Detroiters
who wpn national renown in labor
circles — Richard Trevellick, first
president of the Detroit Trades As-
sembly which by 1865 represented
16 unions; Joseph* A. Labadie, the
"gentle anarchist," first correspond-
ing secretary and statistician of the
Detroit Council of Trades & Labor
Unions and later first president of
the Michigan Federation of Labor,
and Frank X. Martell, president of
the Detroit & Wayne County Fed-
eration of Labor from 1919 until
his death in 1955.
Current activities were shown
through photographs of the cen-
tral body's education, community
services and COPE committees and
in an issue of the AFL-CIO Edu-
cation News & Views opened at an
article, "Studying Labor at First
Hand," which describes a day spent
by William Hill Jr., an Eagle
Scout, with Vice Pres. Mike Novak
of the county body.
Show 'Rat Gazette'
Featured were two unusual news-
papers. One, the Rat Gazette, was
founded in 1839 and was the first
labor paper to be published in the
state. The other, the Detroit La-
bor News, dates from 1914 and
claims to be the oldest local labor-
owned paper in the country.
From the historical files of the
Typographical Union came a
copy of the local's 1886 consti-
tution stamped "Property of J. A.
Labadie" and a comparison of
rates showing how the scale has
climbed from 40 cents an hour
in 1864 to $3.44 an hour at
present.
Other items included the charter
granted in 1889 to Letter Carriers
Branch 1 and the 1886 constitution
of the Detroit Trades & Labor
Council calling for the abolition of
child labor, a shorter workday, re-
form in prison labor laws and the
right to boycott.
Some of the display dealt with
the three AFL-CIO international
unions which have their headquar-
ters in Detroit — Auto Workers,
Maintenance of Way Employes and
Mechanics Educational Society of
America. It also covered the unaffil-
iated United Plant Guards and
Foreman's Association.
Photographs and publications tes-
tified to the manifold activities of
some of the larger unions affiliated
with the county body, while an-
other exhibit showed photos of stu-
dents taking competitive tests for
the first scholarships awarded un-
der a Wayne County AFL-CIO
program instituted this year.
The Detroit Public Library has
what is regarded as one of the
country's most important collections
of labor materials, ranking with
those of the U.S. Labor Dept.,
Library of Congress, Johns Hop-
kins University, New York Public
Library, and Wisconsin State His-
torical Society Library.
Curran Raps Use
Of Foreign Planes
New York — Pres. Joseph
Curran of the Maritime Un-
ion has wired Pres. Eisen-
hower that NMU members
find it "difficult to under-
stand" why dependents of
American military personnel
overseas sent home to curb
the outflow of American dol-
lars are being transported by
foreign airlines — which pre-
sumably are being paid in
dollars.
Curran protested that the
Defense Dept. has banned the
use of "subsidized ships of
the American merchant ma-
rine (which) are available for
this task." He urged the
President to order reconsider-
ation of the Defense Dept.'s
policy.
Ogar Named Aide
To Gov. Swainson
Lansing — Thaddeus ("Ted")
Ogar of Detroit, editor of the Mich-
igan AFL-CIO News, has been
named press secretary to Gov.-elect
John B. Swainson (D) when Swain-
son takes office Jan. h
Ogar has edited the weekly AFL-
CIO newspaper since 1947. He
has been a member of the Detroit
Newspaper Guild, Auto Wofkers'
Local 174, and the Television and
Radio Artists for most of that time;
a delegate to city and county AFL-
CIO central bodies; a Democratic
precinct delegate; and a vice presi-
dent of the Intl. Labor Press Asso-
ciation.
Active with Detroit civic groups,
including the Council of Churches,
Ogar also is a member of the
department of communication for
the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.
He has taught journalism at UAW
leadership training institutes since
their inception, and has appeared
on UAW radio and television pro-
grams. Ogar and his wife are
parents of four children.
Labor Backing Pledged
Family Service Groups
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has promised that organized
labor, through its community service activities, will continue to
work with family service agencies on all programs which strengthen
and support family life.
In a statement published by the Family Service Association of
America along with those of 23 in-<f
dustrialists and other community
leaders, the federation president
said labor has long shown its re-
gard for family service organiza-
tions by supporting them with
money and manpower.
Labor Support Reaffirmed
"The family service agency,"
Meany said, "is a practical affirma-
tion of our deep conviction that
the trade unionist is, first and fore-
most, an individual human being
. . . entitled to every opportunity
for the realization of his human
potential.
"The AFL-CIO, through its
community service activities, will
continue to work with family
service agencies toward this vital
goal."
Labor's regard for cooperation
with community agencies was
traced by Meany to the first con-
stitutional convention of the AFL-
CIO in 1955, when delegates
unanimously approved "programs
which strengthen and support fam-
ily life, and help to assure for each
child the fullest mental and physi-
cal development."
Labor's support of family serv-
ice agencies has been expressed,
Meany said, through its "generous
contributions to United Funds and
Community Chests" and through
the participation of union members
on boards and voluntary commit-
tees of family agencies.
"This is an expression of labor's
conviction that participation in
community services is the best way
its members can discharge their
duties fully as citizens," Meany de-
clared.
He pointed out that, while the
AFL-CIO speaks for working men
and women, the problems of family
life are not confined to workers —
they affect all economic and social
strata of life.
"The one problem that comes
immediately to mind," Meany said,
"is juvenile delinquency. No one
can dispute that this problem is on
the rise. It seems equally irrefu-
table that good family counseling
can make a significant contribution
to its prevention."
While much of labor's effort
in advancing child welfare,
Meany said, has been directed to
legislation and public agencies,
the labor movement "long has
been committed to a belief that
strong, voluntary, privately-sup-
ported facilities are a major bul-
wark against citizen apathy" and
neglect, and against such prob-
lems as delinquency.
In the final analysis, the federa-
tion head asserted, "democracy
means in the simple words of the
Bible that we should help our
neighbor." And in helping our
neighbor, labor has come more and
more to recognize the need for
"skilled professional help in dealing
with human problems," Meany
said.
Steffen of Potters
Joins Rutgers Staff
New Brunswick, N. J. — Robert
A. Steffen, former president of Pot-
ters Local 45 in Trenton and a 1 3-
year veteran of service in the un-
ion, has been appointed to the staff
of the Institute Labor Program at
Rutgers University.
Steffen joined the Rutgers labor
program in 1957.
Pa*e Six
AFL-CIO M WS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Roots of Recession
THE RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT in November 1960, the
highest rate for the month in 20 years, underscores the serious
economic situation in which the nation presently finds itself. Econ-
omists of all shades of political opinion are agreed at this moment
that the nation is in trouble, whether they call it a "mild readjust-
ment," a "downturn" or a "recession."
The AFL-CIO Executive Council on Feb. 15, 1960, declared
in an analysis of the economic situation at that time that "unless
present policies are reversed, the economy's forward advance,
marked in the first half of 1960, will start to slacken by mid-1960.
Most lines of economic activity will be slowing down or declining
by the end of the year."
The restrictive economic policies of the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration were not changed or reversed and the nation in fact has
moved into severe economic troubles before the end of the year.
On another occasion, in early 1957, an analysis of the various
factors at work made it possible for the AFL-CIO to call the turn
on the recession of 1957-58.
The AFL-CIO finds no particular jubilation in such a record on
economic trends. The policies adopted by the Eisenhower Admin-
istration could lead nowhere but to economic stagnation marked by
cycles of recession and short-lived, incomplete recovery.
One of the first jobs facing the incoming Kennedy Administration
will be to reverse these policies and to stimulate the economy so
that the nation can pull out rapidly from its current slump and move
on to realize its potential of full employment and full production.
Man's Freedom
IT IS TRADITIONAL at this time of year to evaluate the nation's
progress in achieving civil rights and civil liberties for all of its
citizens, as well as to pay homage to the institutions created to
protect and extend these rights and liberties.
This past week has marked the anniversaries of the signing of the
Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution and the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The mere fact that both of these documents are in existence
tends to further the cause of civil rights and civil liberties. But
it requires a constant dedication to the causes set out if liberties
and freedom are to be preserved from attacks by totalitarians.
It is against this background that an AFL-CIO amicus curiae
brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States takes on
additional significance. ' The brief urges the reversal of a Court of
Appeals decision upholding the barring of a worker from a naval
installation because of undisclosed "security requirements" causing
the worker to lose her job with a private employer. The discharge
on "security" grounds was made without any kind of hearing.
The Circuit Court decision has placed in jeopardy the jobs of
thousands of American workers and allowed blackening of their
reputations if they are to be arbitrarily denied access to government
installations on security grounds.
In the tradition of the continuing battle to maintain civil liberties
in a full and meaningful sense the AFL-CIO brief declares:
"As a labor organization, the AFL-CIO is directly interested
in seeing that union members are not deprived of the means of a
livelihood through unconstitutional procedures. In a larger sense
we are interested in seeing that no American is deprived of a full
exercise of his constitutional liberties and that the nation is not
deprived of a sense of fair play that is essential to a democratic
process."
Not Much Warmth in this Yule Log!
Official Weekly Publication-
of the
American Federation of Labor" and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suff ridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
* Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, December 17, 1960 No. 51
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
CPAWK FOR.THB
AFL-CIO news
In Coming Decade:
Public, Private Policies Needed
To Spur Nations Growth Rate
The following is excerpted from an article
in the December issue of the AFL-CIO Free
Trade Union News written by Stanley H. Rut-
tenberg, director of the AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research:
TOP ECONOMIC EXPERTS assure us that
the resources are available and that rapid eco-
nomic growth can take place in the next decade,
if there is no major war or depression and if the
United States government pursues policies de-
signed to encourage this development. The prom-
ise of tomorrow is an abundant economy operat-
ing smoothly for the benefit of a much larger
population in a secure nation in the free world.
Here are some of the factors that will influence
growth:
• Population and Labor Force: Over 200 mil-
lion people will live in the United States by 1970
— that means a labor force of about 90 million.
There will, therefore, be an adequate labor force
for an expanded economy and — at the very same
time — a need for an expanded economy to provide
for the requirements of a much larger population.
• Education and Training: Additional invest-
ment will flow into the increase of knowledge and
training of the United States population. Skills
and know-how of the workforce will improve.
Research and technology will also be fostered
• Natural Resources: The United States has,
for the next 10 years, enough resources to achieve
the goals it seeks. While present conservation
programs need improvement, prospects for the
next decade point to an adequate supply of water,
minerals, etc., for the nation's needs.
• Productivity: Total output per worker has
gone up at varying rates during this century. Be-
tween 1947 and 1953 private output per manhour
went up at an average yearly rate of 4.2 percent.
Between 1953 and 1959, the average yearly rise
was 2.6 percent — during a period of slow growth
which suppressed the rise of productivity. Poten-
tials for the next decade are possibly in between
those two rates — say about 3.5 percent. The
total result of all the economic factors mentioned
— education and training, raw materials, capital
and manpower — will probably add up to a faster
productivity rate than the long-range past or even
the immediate past.
• Plant and Equipment Efficiency: Both rising
capacity and the increasing efficiency of plant and
equipment per dollar invested will enable the
United States economy to continue its expansion
at a more rapid rate. There are estimates that
by 1970, for example, private industry will be
using $1.40 worth of investment in private plant
and equipment to produce $1 worth of output
compared with the $2 investment needed for $1
of output in 1929.
The U.S. labor movement believes that if
these factors and others that enter into the
growth picture are properly utilized and if pri-
vate and public policies are designed to foster
growth, the United States will achieve what now
seems to be necessary for the benefit of the
whole population — about a 5 percent growth
rate.
What does that 5 percent mean? It means
about a trillion dollars worth of output by 1970
— enough to take care of the needs of a growing
population at home and to help our friends in
other parts of the world. There would be avail-
able for national security almost twice as much
money as there was in 1960 — for defense, for
military aid, for economic aid, and other national
security expenditures. Thus even a greater
amount spent maintaining United States strength
and aiding other nations of the world would not
need to be a burden on the total economy.
THIS 5 PERCENT growth rate means that
there would also be almost twice as much money
available for education, for welfare, for public
service needs — for water supplies, community fa-
cilities for improving our cities and rural areas,
for conservation, for recreation facilities — twice
as much as is available now.
This means that more money would be avail-
able for better training in new skills, for retraining
of workers whose jobs have been displaced by
new technology, for helping workers and commu-
nities affected by other economic dislocation, for
keeping unemployment at low levels and for rais-
ing employment levels to keep pace with the
population rise.
The expansion of the United States economy,
therefore, at the 5 percent growth rate talked
about at such length by United States political
candidates, is a positive goal that would be
helpful to the people of this nation and to
peoples of other free nations.
Achievement of this rate does not call for
changing our political or economic system, but it
does require focusing United States public atten-
tion on the need to adopt public and private poli-
cies to foster growth at as rapid a rate as possible.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER IT. 1960
Pa#c So
Morgan Says:
Aroused Public Can Demand
Decent, Adequate Health Care
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
THE TRUTH IS OFTEN an elusive article.
It would be less difficult to pin down if the
people in the information business would try
harder to penetrate prejudice, pretense and prop-
aganda. The fact that we don't try^hard enough
is reflected in the surprise and sometimes the
downright outrage which
accompanies the publica-
tion of a report correct-
ing some popular miscon-
ception or revealing some
shocking condition which
had been festering under
cover.
Recent days have pro-
duced interesting exam-
ples of these situations in
the field of health. The
fact that they have been
published in magazines of mass circulation should
make their revelation more important because of
their exposure to and, one hopes, their impact
on large audiences.
Look magazine prints an article which answers
a resounding, carefully-documented "yes" to the
title question: Does Socialized Medicine Work in
Britain? Time magazine brought to national at-
tention the "plight of foreign doctors" in this
country. This latter story is a complicated and
little-known problem which merits more attention.
Sketchily, the situation is this: the U.S. for some
time has had a serious doctor shortage. Medical
schools are not turning out young MD's fast
enough to meet the demands and needs of a
burgeoning population. Many hospitals are
understaffed.
Some limited relief to this problem has come
since World War II in the form of young foreign
doctors eager to study in the United States. This
serves a dual purpose because when they go home
they will raise medical standards there and con-
tribute more to the world's health.
Obviously, some system and basic standards
for this operation had to be worked out. Some
hospitals have shamelessly exploited these vis-
iting doctors, using them as flunkies, preventing
the proper training they need to handle patients.
Three years ago the American Medical Asso-
ciation, with the American Hospital Association
and other appropriate groups, created a council
to set standards for and give qualifying tests to
foreign-trained doctors.
Complaints inevitably arose that the tests were,
in many instances, an unfair measure of the
doctor's knowledge and worth, that the questions
As We See It:
were "tricky," misleading. Something of a furor
was created last Thanksgiving week when it be-
came known that a woman doctor from the Phil-
ippines in a municipal hospital in New York's
teeming Bronx faced discharge from her job arid
possible deportation because she had failed a
September council test — despite the fact she had
an "outstanding" straight-A rating at her hospital.
Of a total of some 9,500 foreign physicians now
studying in this country, nearly 2,000 were in the
same boat; they too had flunked.
UNDER TERMS of their visas they would
have to go home if they could not continue train-
irfg. To say nothing of the difficulties compound-
ed for understaffed hospitals, this presented the
State Dept. with a migraine diplomatic headache;
many of the visitors came from such restive areas
as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Under pressure, the AMA decreed that those
who failed the September exams could take them
again in the spring, remain with their hospitals
until next July 1 — but there was an ironic hand
under the rubber glove: They could not treat
patients in the interim, meaning they could hardly
do more than change bed linen and run errands,
and in future foreign doctors wanting to study
here must take these tests even before they leave
home.
The AMA argues there can be no double
standard for doctors working in the U.S. but
it seems to me a vital question here is whether
the AMA is not creating a double standard in
reverse deliberately prejudicial to these foreign
medical men and women.
An officer of the New York State Medical
Society says the tests may have been more at
fault than the students who failed them. The
wife of a surgeon in Brooklyn writes me that
performance on the job is not taken into ac-
count for these doctors who come at great per-
sonal sacrifice from India, Iran, Egypt, Israel
and other far places to study. An evaluation
of performance should be more meaningful, she
holds, than mass testing in an unfamiliar lan-
guage and with questionably composed ques-
tions. "Can the AMA really determine 'good
patient care'," she asks, "on the basis of such
a test?"
The AMA's own answer to that question is
"yes." But there is nothing necessarily sacred
about that answer. An aroused and inquiring
public can demand a more substantial justification
of procedures.
An aroused and inquiring public can do a lot
of things — including correcting the image of the
ogre the AMA has tried to make out of Britain's
national health service. Thes:e two articles I men-
tioned in Look and Time are valuable but too
infrequent assists in this process.
Future of Africa Called Hopeful
Despite Handicaps, Shortages
DESPITE HANDICAPS and hardships, the
future of Africa is hopeful, Maida Springer
of the staff of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs
declared in a broadcast for the ABC radio
network.
Mrs. Springer, interviewed on the federation's
public service program, As We See It, expressed
her belief that the emphasis of the newly emerging
nations on education of the people promises a
bright future for the continent.
Describing the Nigerian independence celebra-
tion, which she attended as a guest of the Nigerian
government, Mrs. Springer said:
"It went on for days and days. ... It was an
extremely impressive and orderly ceremony to .
watch, with all of the thousands of people com-
ing from all over. Yet even in a crowd, where
)ou couldn't move a car through, you would
have this feeling of politeness."
To meet the critical shortages of doctors, ad-
ministrators, engineers and other professionals,
she said, "Nigeria has thousands of students
around the world" training in skills needed in
their native land.
Many of the new nation's leaders, she declared,
were educated in the United States.
ONE OF THE MOST encouraging develop-
ments in Africa, Mrs. Springer noted, has been
the fact that in Tanganyika — still under British
rule — there are "Europeans, Asians and the Afri-
can majority standing together in a single move-
ment for independence." The nation's three eth-
nic groups, she said, are united under the banner
of the Tanganyika African National Union.
Africa has developed a number of outstand-
ing leaders, she noted, most of them "the first
generation in their families to be literate."
Despite their handicaps, native leaders have
acquired a world comprehension and can meet
on equal terms statesmen from other nations.
Mrs. Springer pointed out that there are still
many pitfalls for Africa, that there are both colo-
nial and newly-independent governments in which
real freedom does not exist and political opposition
is not tolerated.
The needs of African nations for education,
industrialization, roads and transportation can't
be met overnight, she indicated. But she told the
program's moderator, Harry Flannery, she is
hopeful and confident that they will be met.
ITS YOUR
WASHINGTON
PRES.-ELECT KENNEDY'S problem in revitalizing the many
federal regulatory agencies is strikingly revealed by a court case
in which the Federal Power Commission was rebuked in scathing
terms for what the court intimated was a commission failure to
protect the public from extortionate gas prices.
The case involved the Hope Natural Gas Co. and a group of
other companies, and the FPC awarded a permanent certificate
for New York natural gas sales at prices above 23 cents per
thousand cubic feet. The Public Service Commission of New
York challenged the certificate, basing its objection on earlier
Supreme Court decisions in which the FPC had been reversed
in similar cases.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D. C, with three
judges speaking unanimously, bluntly pointed to the most recent
of these Supreme Court decisions — the so-called Catco case.
* * *
IN THE 1959 CATCO CASE, Judge George T. Washington
wrote for the Circuit Court, the FPC had been specifically warned
against issuing permanent certificates for gas at "suspiciously higher"
prices without having in its record a clear finding that the rate was
"required by public convenience and necessity."
The Supreme Court had said in the Catco case, Washington
continued, that allowing initial sales of gas at a high price may
lead to a "windfall for the natural gas company with a consequent
squall for the consumers." The process of letting the gas company
install the high prices, while the FPC investigates later whether
they are "just and reasonable," means that the review is subject
to "inordinate delays" and is without the protection to consumers
that they can get refunds of money paid if the rates are finally held
to be extortionate.
The Supreme Court pointed out that approval by the FPC of
a higher-than-usual rate may result in a "triggering of general
price rises" in the area. It said that the FPC has a right to
issue a higher-price certificate but only under conditions so "that
the consuming. public may be protected while the justness and
reasonableness of the price • • • is being determined" under
procedures that follow.
The Supreme Court "expressly" stated again, Washington re-
minded the FPC, that it was "the intention of Congress that natural
gas shall be sold ... at the lowest possible reasonable rate con-
sistent with the maintenance of adequate service in the public
interest."
* * *
AT THIS MOMENT in his opinion, Washington struck out on
his own. He said the Circuit Court believed that the Catco decision
was intended to tell the FPC that the phrase the "public interest"
during a period of rising natural gas prices "demands a real admin-
istrative effort to hold back prices." There was nothing in the
record. presented in the new Hope case, he declared, that "would
justify the conclusion that the commission has adequately per-
formed this duty."
There could scarcely be a stronger judicial rebuke to a regu-
latory agency. The court said that the FPC had been ordered
previously not to allow rising gas prices without protecting the
interest of the consumers but once again had failed in its duty.
How did such a situation come about? Mr. Eisenhower, repeat-
edly declined to reappoint FPC members who had shown in earlier
decisions that they took the commission's regulatory role seriously.
Mr. Kennedy will find that this situation prevails, in greater or
lesser degree, in many regulatory agencies and agencies with quasi-
judicial powers. Under Mr. Eisenhower their membership has
changed, or attempted to change, the ground rules, and they have
become at least partly the creatures of interests they were intended
to regulate.
Some new legislation may be needed, a thorough congressional
inquiry is certainly needed, and some new agency members are
needed as the terms of present members expire.
'Why should I eat? It only gives me more strength to make more
money to buy more food!*
rage Eight
AFL-CTO NEWS. WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 19611
How to Buy:
Living Costs Seen
Leveling Off in 1961
By Sidney Margolius
FAMILIES STRUGGLING with the steep prices of food this
winter can look forward to a breather: living costs will level on
for 1961.
Not that you can expect really lower costs this year. Food and
housing prices will remain near their present high levels. But you
will be able to find relatively good buys in clothing, household
equipment, some building materialr
and used cars. For homeseekers,
mortgages will be more available this
year, with interest rates slightly lower.
For renting families there will be more
vacancies, with rentals leveling off
near present rates.
The most stubborn money prob-
lem for your family in 1961 will be
climbing medical costs. These have
been rising at the rate of almost five
percent a year for the past ten years.
To help you take advantage of
1961 trends, this department has pre-
pared an item-by-item price forecast.
This can save you money by showing
which foods promise to be comparatively best buys thjs year, and
which household and other goods offer low-priced values.
IN FOOD, you can expect beef and veal will be plentiful and
cheaper in '61. Best buys in beef this year will be the grass-fed
lower grades used mostly for hamburger, pot roast and stew. But
pork is in scarce supply and will be expensive.
Besides beef, poultry will be cheap this coming year, especially
broilers, fryers and turkeys. Eggs, however, have been expensive
this past year and will continue to be expensive in '61.
You will need to watch prices of canned fruits and vegetables.
Some of these, including frozen orange concentrate, will cost
more this year, and can make inroads on your budget. Look for
higher prices for canned peas, but the same or lower prices for
canned snap beans, spinach and limas. Use canned orange
juice, tomato juice, grapefruit juice and blends as alternatives to
1961's higher prices of frozen Crange juice.
Fresh fruit, especially apples and pears, will be expensive until
the 1961 crops are harvested in the second half of the year. In
fresh vegetables, tomatoes will cost you a lot this year, lettuce more,
but cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli will be cheaper.
HOME APPLIANCES: Refrigerators are the No. 1 bargain for
1961, with both factories and retailers cutting prices as much as
$50 in recent months. The type growing in popularity is the com-
bination refrigerator-freezer with automatic defrost,*now accounting
for half of all purchases.
Another buying opportunity for '61 is the reduced prices on
electric ranges. Improved models of these and gas ranges have
been developed, with most gas ranges now- equipped with automatic
oven lighting and oversize simmer burners, reports George C. John-
son, of the U.S. Labor Department.
Families planning home improvements will find 1961 a little
better year to install new heating equipment and plumbing fixtures,
with prices dpwn slightly. Lumber, and especially plywood, have
been selling at relatively low prices. Prices of roofing materials
also have been reduced.
Houses: For 1961, there will be easier mortgages, more fore-
closures (more families are losing their homes), and no decrease
in prices. But construction costs at least are leveling off from
the steady boosts of about 3 percent a year for the past ten years.
The big problem in buying a house this year is the steep price of
land. Johnson reports that typical prices in 1947 were $9000
for the house and $1000 for the lot, a total of $10,000. Today the
house costs $14,000 and the lot $3000. Total: $17,000. Land
used to comprise 10-12 percent of the value of a house. Now it
takes 16-18 percent.
Actually, Johnson believes, the price of suburban land has
been pushed up by an artificial shortage. Owners of unimproved
land are holding on for even higher prices, he reports.
BUT THE DECEPTION of higher prices and higher mortgage
rates concealed by longer mortgages, is tragically costly to your
family finances and aspirations. The present typical payment of
$98 a month for 29 years means you pay a total of $34,000 in
interest and mortgage principal. This compares with a total of
$28,000 to pay off the typical 26-year mortgage on the similar
1947 house.
You will be able to get a mortgage for a slightly lower interest
rate in 1961. Early in 1960, the prevailing rate in most areas was
close to 6.25 percent, and often 6.5. As we enter 1961, the pre-
vailing rate in most parts of the country is 6 percent, and less in
the Northeast (about 5.75), reports the National Association of
Real Estate Boards.
The growing rate of foreclosures As an ominous sign for 1961,
and a warning against assuming heavy mortgages. Government
figures show that there has been a steady increase in foreclosures
in recent years. The latest figure of 2.34 foreclosures for every
1000 mortgaged homes is a jump of 78 percent in six years. The
foreclosure situation is reported to be especially serious in Florida.
There, many houses have been bought with low down payments
by young families seeking employment.
Copyright 1960 by Sidney Margolius {
Democracy's Need tow Dissent:
Labor Press Countervailing Role
Vital to Preserve Open Society
At a recent convention of the Intl. Labor
Press Association in Detroit, a dinner meeting
speaker was Guy Nunn, director of the Auto
Workers* Radio-Television Dept. and a widely
respected radio-TV commentator. Excerpts
from his remarks follow:
XTXVfJ ARE SITTING within two or three hun-
l cred yards of this nation's latest newspaper
corpse. The disappearance of The Detroit Times
is a loss which its readers will survive — and, con-
ceivably, even profit from.
But in one brutal swing of the knife — in the
middle of the night — with no fore-warning — 1,400
men and women were cut out of their livelihoods*
The distance between that act of almost calcu-
lated cruelty — and the requirements of elementary
decency — is a symbolic measurement of how far
we have yet to go before we can call this a humane
society.
This city is the first of its size to be stripped
down to a single morning and a single afternoon
paper. It seems inevitable that others will follow.
INS is gone, and there are better bets by far
around than the long-term survival prospects of
UPI (United Press International).
The intensifying pressures toward monopoli-
zation of the sources of public information —
and the visible rise in the power of a narrow
set of interests to coerce public bodies through
the creation and control of public opinion —
places a moral burden on the labor press which
goes far beyond its obligations to union mem-
bers alone.
However riddled with technical shortcomings
it may be, the labor press has become, practically
speaking, the only countervailing source (with
anything approaching mass circulation) of fact
and opinion which can even partially offset the
impact of ownership through the commercial
media.
Property is infinitely more sophisticated in the
arts of refined class warfare than are the unions
. . . and infinitely less scrupulous.
A UNION MUST function not only with a high
degree of membership consent; it must also, with
increasing frequency, in crucial conflicts with em-
ployers, depend upon some measure of public
understanding and approval of what it seeks.
At this point, what is already an uneven power
struggle becomes a pre-fixed match. The public,
Fraud Cry a Smokescreen:
as referee, has been bought without even knowing
it. The public has been denied even the rudi-
ments of reasonable judgment. It has been denied
the facts.
It isn't only — as Liebling put it — that "what
newspapers call pigheadedness in a railroad
conductor is what they call devotion to prin-
ciple in a railroad president." This kind of
systematic inversion of values is old hat to all
of us — but some of us might be shocked to see
how deeply the inversion has penetrated — not
only in the schools, but amongst union members.
Orwell's nightmare of ncwthink isn't so wild
a flight of morbid imagination when you overhear
what is being put into young minds as attitude-
formation material concerning unions. It isn't
wild at all if you play back some of the incredible
economic illiteracy which depth analysis has
turned up in the minds of routine American work-
ing people.
There is a staggering job before the union press.
It isn't only a job of self-preservation for organized
labor through education — but a job of preserving
some kind of open society, of keeping the doors
of effective dissent ajar.
COMMUNICATION? Ownership has it run-
ning out of its ears — visible, audible, reenforced
at every turn — in the press, in the technical maga-
zines, in the .club, in every business or profes-
sional publication. The line is clear and strident
every hour of the day. Communication: it is
the source and cement of group strength.
The last estimate I saw of what corporations
are spending annually in just public relations
(over and above their $10 billion a year in con-
ventional sales advertising) ran upwards of $2
billion. This is just maintenance money, to keep
the machinery of information and opinion-shaping
well-oiled — and obsequious beyond the normal
servility of the butler toward the baron.
. No one in his right mind would suggest that
the labor movement should try to match that kind
of expenditure in communication, but surely,
something like $10 per member per year would
be a modest and workable start.
And we had better start. Every recent study I
have seen of the effectiveness of union leadership
communication with the ranks has scared the pants
off me — and it's cold outside!
Bankruptcy of Illinois GOP
Held Real Reason for Defeat
Herewith is an editorial from the Chicago
Federation News, organ of the Chicago Federa-
tion of Labor, commenting on "fraud" and
"foul play" charges of Republicans about the
results of the Nov. 8 election in Cook County,
III:
THERE'S A PECULIAR atmosphere develop-
ing in comment on American politics since the
election. The story goes this way: "The big city
voters are controlled, and if the political bosses
can't control enough votes, they steal what they
need. And something ought to be done about the
city vote, anyhow — all of those people voting
against candidates who have the blessings of our
newspapers. How dare these voters — so many
of them with little education and wearing work
clothes — cast aside the clean-cut characters we
endorse? Why, some of them even talk broken
English.'*
We hold that you can't be politically bankrupt
in a large city and then cry "foul" every four
years when your candidates are rejected by voters.
And you can't abandon those who live in slums
and seek through their votes to have their lives
brightened, and then accuse them of being pawns
of politicians, or worse, without judgment or
honor. For though they may lack the education
or the niceties of those who curse Chicago on the
brokers' special to Lake Forest, at least their votes
are individually equal to those cast by those who
avoid contact with them.
Of course, thieves should be found and pun-
ished, whether the loot is votes or coats, but
guilt is not the special province of the cities or
people of any race, creed or country of origin.
There's nothing sacred about the city's limits
that confines all evil within, as anyone knows
who has traveled downstate. The person who
migrates to our city from the farm is still the
same individual and the family that moves to
the suburbs doesn't suddenly gather morals with
the mortgage.
We think it's immoral to abandon people be-
tween elections and then shout "Stop, thief!" when
they ignore the pleadings of the party that avoic
action on the problems of the very voters npw
called tools of the "machine."
YOU CANT PRATE about being the party of
Abraham Lincoln during the campaign and then
kill a bill providing for Equal Job Opportunities
in the legislature.
You don't tell people the week before Nov. 8
that they're entitled to all the good things in life
and then defeat attempts to establish a decent
minimum wage in Illinois.
You can't promise a better life for those in the
slums one week and then vote against housing
legislation when the roll is called.
Undoubtedly there were a few strange events
in the Nov, 8 election. The actors were bi-
partisan, performing in Chicago and downstate,
Republicans and Democrats. The biggest crime
of all is the abandonment of people BETWEEN
elections.
When those now protesting the overwhelming
defeat of their candidates in Chicago come up
with positive programs and proof that there's
meaning in what they say, there's a chance to win
back confidence of voters. Blanket charges of
election fraud cannot cover up bankruptcy in
program and performance.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Page Nine
Basic Rights Denied:
c
Labor Hits Use of
Secret Informers
"Several hundred thousand" American workers have been "placed
in a situation where their jobs may be lost and their reputations
blackened" by the Administration's "arbitrary" use of loyalty-
security programs, the AFL-CIO has charged.
In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, the federation challenged
the half dozen different security^
programs, applying to groups in
both federal and private employ
ment, on the grounds that the use
of statements by secret informers
constitutes "a denial of some of the
basic rights guaranteed by the U.S.
Constitution."
The brief— filed by AFL-CIO
General Counsel J. Albert Woll,
Film Unions
Win Pact On
Commercials
New York — The Screen Actors
Guild, the Screen Extras Guild and
the New York. Film Producers As-
sociation have reached agreement
on a new contract which for the
first time sets special rates for ex-
tras who demonstrate products in
television commercials.
Under the agreement a new clas-
sification of "product extra player"
is established, with a minimum
rate of $55 a day retroactive to
Nov. 16. This rate will rise to
$70.83 daily on July 1, 1962.
In addition the pact calls for
additional compensation immedi-
ately for "product extras" when
the commercials are re-used. The
same added payments will go to all
extras on TV commercials after
July 1, 1962.
The agreement calls for a con-
tribution by the producers of an
amount equal to 5 percent of all
earnings for pension, health and
welfare plans, retroactive to Nov.
16. The agreement runs to June
30, 1964, with reopening rights in
1963.
Associate General Counsel Thomas
E. Harris and Theodore J. St. An-
toine — was entered in connection
with a case brought by Cafeteria
and Restaurant Local 473 against
the Defense Dept.
The case stems from De-
fense Dept. withdrawal of secur-
ity clearance of Rachel M.
Brawner, a short order cook
working for a private employer
providing cafeteria service at the
Naval Gun Factory in the na-
tion's capital. The order ex-
cluding the union member from
the naval installation for undis-
closed "security requirements,"
and without any hearing, resulted
in the loss of her job with the
private contractor. '
The Defense Dept., in refusing
to give details on the information
it received concerning Mrs. Braw-
ner, contended she was "merely
being denied access to government
premises." The AFL-CIO called
this "arbitrary conduct . . . incom-
patible with -due process of law"
under the Constitution.
Attacking the fact that the rea-
son for Mrs. Brawner's discharge
was left "wholly unelucidated," the
brief pointed out that it was possi-
ble that "security reasons" to some
naval officers "might encompass
the exclusion of a particularly en-
ergetic union organizer."
The AFL-CIO sharply criti-
cized "the myriad loyalty-security
programs and their array of secret
informers" as having been in-
effective, declaring: "So far as is
known, there has been uncov-
ered by these procedures not one
single spy or saboteur or revo-
lutionary."
NLRB Modifies Rule
On Wage Data to Unions
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that an employer
cannot be required to furnish detailed wage data requested by a
union if it would be "unduly burdensome, time-consuming and
expensive" to do so.
The decision modifies the NLRB's long-standing policy that a
company must furnish wage statis-^
tics requested by a union for col-
lective bargaining purposes.
A three-member panel of the
NLRB unanimously adopted the
recommendations of* a trial exam-
iner absolving Westinghouse Elec-
tric Corp. of unfair labor charges
dating from 1958 negotiations with
the Electrical, Radio & Machine
Workers.
Westinghouse, in response to
an IUE request for detailed in-
formation on employment, hours
worked and average straight-time
AFL-CIO Salutes
Swedish Visitors
Twelve top leaders of the Swedish
Metal Workers Union who had
been visiting steel, machine and rail-
road shops in this country were
honored by the AFL-CIO at a
luncheon in Washington.
The visitors were the guests in
this country of the Auto Workers,
Machinists and Steelworkers. They
were led by two members of their
executive council, Valter Widell
and Sture Lagnefeldt. AFL-CIO
Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler,
who was the luncheon host in the
absence of Pres. George Meany,
emphasized the long friendship be-
tween the Swedish and U.S. labor
movements.
wages of employes in 23 bar-
gaining units, going back several
years, furnished only generalized
data which the IUE said was
inadequate. The NLRB general
counsel agreed with the union's
position and issued a complaint
charging the company with re-
fusal to bargain in good faith.
The trial examiner, William F.
Scharnikow, accepted company
statements that its records were so
kept and located that it would have
been extremely difficult to compile
the information and that it would
have taken a clerk approximately
200 man-hours to prepare the data
for just one of the bargaining units
involved.
'Undue Burden' Cited
He held, therefore, that while
the wage data requested was rele-
vant to the bargaining, the "undue
burden" on the company was suffi-
cient grounds for declining to fur-
nish the requested breakdown.
One member of the NLRB panel,
Philip Ray Rodgers, declined to
pass judgment on whether the data
was relevant to the bargaining. He
declared that the evidence of "un-
due burden" made it unnecessary
to decide that point. The other
two members, Joseph A. Jenkins
and John H. Fanning, accepted the
trial examiner's findings in full.
BRAZILIAN LABOR LEADERS, who will be hosts to the April 1961 convention in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, of the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), visited AFL-CIO head-
quarters during a study tour of U.S. labor organizations. Left to right are: seated, Pres. Antonio Mag-
aldi, Sao Paulo Pharmaceutical Workers; Pres. Luis Pereirz Menossi, State Trade Union Council; AFL-
CIO Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitzler; Pres. Lourival da Portal Silva, Sao Paulo Petroleum Products
Distribution Employes; Jose Ribeiro, executive board member, State Trade Union Council; standing,
Pres. Manoel Siiva, Northeast Federation of Food Industry Workers; Pres. Domingos Alvarez, State
Federation of Metallurgical, Mechanical and Electrical Workers; Serafino Romualdi, AFL-CIO inter-
American representative; Henry Rutz, AFL-CIO international representative; and Pres. Dacyr Gatto,
Federation of Clothing Workers.
Grain Millers
Top Teamsters
In Idaho Plants
Burley, Ida. — The Grain Millers
completed the rout of the Teamsters
from potato processing operations
of the J. R. Simplot Co. by an
overwhelming victory in a National
Labor Relations Board election at
the firm's Shelley plant here.
The defeat was the second the
Grain Millers handed the Teamsters
in less than a month. Earlier, the
AFL-CIO affiliate had ousted the
Teamsters from Simplot's big Cald-
well, Ida., plant.
At Burley, where the Team-
sters had had bargaining rights
for 14 years, the Grain Millers
received 114 votes and the Team-
sters 40 votes in the production
and maintenance unit with six
for no union. In a laboratory
unit, the tally was 14 votes for
the Grain Millers, 2 for no
union and none for the Team-
sters.
At Caldwell the workers turned
out the Teamsters after 17 years
of representation by a vote of 521
for the Grain Millers, 162 for the
Teamsters and 10 for no union.
Officials of the Grain Millers
were impressed by the fact that in
the three bargaining units, with
over 1,000 eligible voters, and de-
spite the fact the company had
boosted wages at Caldwell by 10
to 18 cents an hour a week be-
fore the voting, only 18 employes
marked ballots for no union.
The Caldwell workers have been
chartered as Grain Millers Local
291, with Local 296 representing
the two bargaining units at Burley.
Both locals are preparing to elect
officers and to open negotiations
for contracts.
AFGE Protests
'Hazardous' Move
Government Employes Lodge
No. 12 has made a public protest
against the U.S. Labor Dept.'s
plan to assign 400 government
workers to a downtown Washing-
ton office building which it called
"hazardous and substandard."
The union urged Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell to inspect the
10-story Mather Building and to
"spike" the proposed move.
Mitchell is an honorary member of
Lodge 12.
Lodge Pres. Adrian Roberts said
the union has, for the last several
months, called the Labor Dept.'s
private attention to the "deplorable
conditions" in the building and
finally made the matter public
when the department approved the
use of the building as a govern-
ment office. An antique fire-escape
on the building was condemned in
1944 but since has been painted
and is still used, Roberts said.
Pollution Meet Flunks
Water-Cleanup Test
By David L. Perlman
A National Conference on Water Pollution, called by Pres.
Eisenhower at the time he vetoed a bill to step up federal aid to
communities for sewage disposal plants, agreed that the nation's
water supply should be kept as clean as possible but failed to reach
agreement on how this could be best accomplished.
Despite efforts by conservation^
groups and spokesmen for civic
organizations such as the League
of Women Voters, the conference
"failed to come to grips with the
real issues," said George H. Taylor,
AFL-CIO representative on the
conference steering committee.
Rep. John A. Blatnik (D-Minn.),
sponsor of the vetoed bill to ex-
pand the federal government's
anti-pollution role, told the confer-
ence that he will introduce in the
new Congress a major bill provid-
ing:
• Greater federal research.
• Expanded federal jurisdiction
over all navigable waters.
• Increased federal aid to com-
munities for construction of waste
treatment plants.
• Establishment of a separate
agency in the Dept. of Health,
Education & Welfare to handle fed-
eral water pollution programs.
Blatnik told the 1,145 delegates,
the largest group representing
industrial firms, that industry's
opposition to federal pollution
control legislation is "short-
sighted. " He warned that "the
pollution problem is worse than
ever, costing the nation over $1
billion a year in lost resources."
Andrew J. Biemiller, director of
the AFL-CIO Dept. of Legislation,
emphasized in a paper delivered
at the conference that labor
"strongly feels that the national
anarchy in water pollution control
policy and programs must be
ended."
Rejects TLocaP Tag
Rejecting Eisenhower's descrip-
tion of water pollution as "a
uniquely local blight," Biemiller
called on the conference to sup-
port an expanded federal program
geared to regional river basin au-
thorities. His statement, read to
the delegates by AFL-CIO Legis-
lative Rep. Jack Curran, warned
that "this conference can be re-
corded as just another study group
or it can be the catalyst for in-
formed and wide debate on the
question of what must be done and
how best to do it."
The key resolution paid token
tribute to the federal grants-in-
aid program — which the Eisen-
hower Administration has sought
to discontinue — as having pro-
vided "a valuable stimulus to
control of stream pollution. " The
final report stated, however, that
"no agreement was reached as
to extension of authority of the
federal government in the area
of water pollution control."
At the final report session of the
principal conference panel, after
an appeal by a delegate from the
conservation-oriented Izaak WaN
ton League for stepped-up activi-
ties, a parade of industry repre-
sentatives insisted that the pollu-
tion problem has been "exagger-
ated" and that it was proper and
desirable to reserve certain streams
for industrial use.
A delegate from the New York
State League of Women Voters
came to the microphone, gave a
one-sentence evaluation of the con-
ference and sat down. She said:
"The trouble with this confer-
ence is that there are more in-
dustrialists here than fish."
Harrison Sees
Action On
Ignored Issues
Cincinnati — The pressing prob-
lems of the last eight years, which
have been "left on the doorstep"
of the Kennedy Administration by
the Eisenhower regime, have^ some
chance of solution in the next few
years, Pres. George M. Harrison
of the Railway Clerks told the Cin-
cinnati Bar Association in a post-
election talk.
Saying that labor supported Ken-
nedy and helped elect a majority of
its endorsed candidates, Harrison
predicted that the Kennedy Ad-
ministration will act quickly and
decisively to mobilize our military
might to meet the Soviet threat
and will reactivate U.S. national
and moral resources also.
It will put more emphasis on
Latiri American affairs, and on the
problems of the free nations of
Europe, he said.
"There are special areas," said
Harrison, "where I am certain
it will act with promptness —
education, adequate medical care
for the aged, and aid for de-
pressed areas have top priority."
• Harrison told the lawyers that
he suspected the new Administra-
tion's solutions to many problems
"will come as a great shock to
newspaper readers" who have been
under the impression that Kennedy
was not really elected, or that it
would be much better if the nation
continued to follow the policies of
the outgoing Republicans.
Page Ten
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
m w
I Warn of Rampant Technology:
Free World Auto Workers
Seek Controlled Progress
Paris — Organized automobile workers in the Free World have moved to strengthen themsehes
against the growing and uncontrolled power of the international automobile corporations.
At a meeting here under the auspices of the Automotive Dept. of the International Metalworkers
Federation, a trade secretariat, delegates warned that the dominant corporations in the industry must
adopt "a greater measure of social responsibility into (their) production and investment decisions."
Some 2.5 million workers are rep-^
LABOR SEC. JAMES P. MITCHELL, whose term of office expires
Jan. 20 with the exit of the Eisenhower Administration, receives
a plaque presented on behalf of Labor Dept. employes in Wash-
ington. Mitchell is pictured with James E. Dodson, center, ad-,
ministrative Assistant Secretary of Labor, and Associate Supreme
Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., right, guest speaker at a
farewell dinner for Mitchell.
UAW Skilled Unit Sets
Bargaining Plans for '61
Chicago — Auto Workers' Pres. Walter P. Reuther told 1,000
delegates to the 8th Annual UAW Skilled Trades Conference here
there will be no compromise of cost of living and annual improve-
ment factor clauses in UAW contracts in 1961 negotiations.
"When we sit at the bargaining table in 1961," Reuther said, it
will be dangerous and unrealistic,^:
it will be nonsense, for the em
ployers to think of tampering with
the cost of living and improvement
factor clauses." ^
m The UAW president pointed out
that since 1948 increases through
the living cost escalator have
amounted to 51 cents an hour, and
improvement factor hikes total 61
cents an hour.
Strike Fund Set
Reuther declined to list any spe-
cific demands for 1961, saying it
will be up to the 3,000 delegates
at the special wage-hour meeting
scheduled Apr. 26-29 in Detroit to
formulate bargaining goals for
1961. He said the union has a
strike fund of $40 million to back
up the demands to be voted at the
parley.
The Skilled Trades Conference
voted to present the following de-
mands for consideration at the
April meeting —
• A shorter workweek.
• Paid lunch period of a half-
hour.
• Four weeks vacation with
pay.
• Reduction of the age limit for
retirement.
mv Double time to be paid for
all overtime, with triple time for
Sundays and holidays.
• An increase in supplementary
unemployment benefits (SUB) for
the duration of unemployment.
• Curtailment of overtime, al-
lowing overtime only on essential
TWU Negotiates
Pay Hike on PRR
Philadelphia — The Transport
Workers Union has negotiated a
two-step wage increase for the
15,000 non-operating employes it
represents on the Pennsylvania
Railroad.
The agreement, similar to the
nationwide settlement reached by
the rail brotherhoods with other
railroads, provides a 5-cent increase
retroactive to July 1, 1960.
On Mar. 1, 1961, the union will
have the option of an additional
6-cent increase or applying the
money to a new health and welfare
program.
Wages were not an issue in the
TWU's 12-day strike against the
Pennsylvania Railroad last Septem-
ber. The strike and the subsequent
settlement dealt only with working
rules and job security issues.
jobs and then only by union agree-
ment.
• Improved pensions to include
cost-of-living increases and fully
employer-paid health insurance.
• A national minimum wage
scale for the industry.
• Payment for health and wel-
fare insurance programs by the
employers.
'Moonlighting' Outlawed
A proposal to outlaw "moon-
lighting" — the practice of holding
a second job — was adopted by the
skilled trades delegates. They re-
solved that all UAW pacts should
carry this clause:
"That no employe covered by
this agreement may work for
another employer or be self-
employed in the trade, nor will
the company hire any employe
who is working for another em-
ployer and, upon such violation,
the employe will be considered
an automatic quit."
A resolution on outside contract-
ing cited a lack of contract language
protecting the jobs of skilled trades
workers and called for clauses to
prohibit contracting by employers
of outside plumbers, electricians,
etc., unless by agreement with the
UAW.
Vice Pres. Richard T. Gosser,
director of the Skilled Trades Dept.,
said all jurisdictional pacts and no-
raiding agreements of the UAW
and building trades unions would
be observed. Another union
spokesman said the proposed clause
was aimed at protecting present
work situations.
NLRB Delays Hit
UAW Sec.-Treas. Emil Mazey
criticized the National Labor Rela-
tions Board for long delays in the
Kohler Co. strike and in the union's
unfair labor practice suit against
Wagner Iron Works, Milwaukee,
Wis. He said changes are needed
in the Taft-Hartley Act, including
penalties on a company official
found guilty of hiring spies and
"stool pigeons" in labor cases.
Leonard Woodcock, UAW vice
president, said the union should
consider demanding wages on a
salary rather than an hourly ba-
sis. He said the salary payment
system would help the union or-
ganize all employes of a com-
pany. He explained that salaried
employes get certain benefits pro-
duction workers do not get, ex-
tended sick leave, for example.
resented in the Dept.
.Chairman of the conference was
Victor G. Reuther, assistant to
AFL-CIO Auto Workers Pres. Wal-
ter P. Reuther. Also attending
were Nat Weinberg, UAW special
projects director, and Herbert
Kelly, president of the Ford Wind-
sor (Canada) UAW local.
Other national auto unions rep-
resented were from Belgium, West
Germany, France, Great Britain,
India, Italy, Japan, Holland, Nor-
way, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden,
South Africa.
'Grave Concern'
A policy statement issued by the
55 delegates said that recent de-
velopment's in the automotive in-
dustry must be viewed "with grave
concern not only by automobile
workers but by workers every-
where, as well as by governments
attempting to implement full em-
ployment policies which may be
thwarted by events in the automo-
bile industry." These developments
are:
• Enormous expansion of ca-
pacity by the world auto industry.
Not only are the dominant compa-
nies enlarging existing facilities but
they are locating new plants in
areas of the world where such pro-
duction has been practically un-
known hitherto.
• The most advanced tech-
nology possible is introduced, re-
gardless of wage levels paid in
these areas, and "thus a common
technology tends to be applied in
the face of vast differences in
wages and social benefits."
• Growth of the world auto
market is lagging far behind this
expansion program. The gap be-
tween capacity and demand is re-
flected in intensified international
competition and in, current wide-
spread layoffs and reduced work-
weeks in major auto producing
countries such as the United States,
Britain, France, Germany and Can-
ada. The extent of this unemploy-
ment is "aggravated by the indus-
try's extraordinarily rapid techno-
logical progress."
• There are signs that the auto
companies hope to pit auto workers
in each producing country against
those in other oountries in a com-
petitive struggle for the inadequate
supply of job opportunities in a
contracting market.
"Workers have been openly
threatened," said the statement,
"that their jobs will be moved to
other countries unless they give
up the struggle to improve their
living standards."
• An additional complicating
factor is the possibility of future
dumping of motor cars by Commu-
nist countries, including the Soviet
Union and Czechoslovakia, which
have growing auto industries.
The conference pointed out that
the auto industry decisions in pro-
duction and investment have im-
mediate effects on workers in sup-
plier industries such as steel, rub-
ber, glass, textiles, electrical equip-
ment and machine tools.
Impact Is International
"As these industries raise or low-
er production," the statement said,
"in response to changes in demand
from the auto corporations, entire
national economies are affected. As
a result of the growing importance
of automobiles in international
trade, changes in the automobile
market have tended increasingly to
make their impact felt across na-
tional boundaries."
Result of these developments,
the IMF conference said, was
the growth of protectionist sen-
timent among workers in some
producing countries who feel
their jobs can be protected only
by erecting tariff walls against
car imports from other countries.
Instetad of protectionism, the
delegates called for "vigorous ap-
plication of full employment poli-
cies and rising wage levels in each
of the industrialized countries so
that more of their workers will be
able to buy cars, together with
greatly increased economic aid to
the developing countries so that
their living standards may be raised
as rapidly as possible."
By harmonizing, to the maximum
extent possible, wages and social
benefits of auto workers every-
where, this would limit "the ability
of the international automobile cor-
porations to play their divide-and-
rule game with the auto workers of
the world."
Delegates reported that signifi-
cant progress had been made in
many countries in recent years in
reducing the workweek and gaining
increased paid vacations and holi-
days.
Singled out as a recent ex-
ample of by-passing auto labor's
viewpoint was the failure of the
Ford Motor Co. to arrange a
discussion with unions represent-
ing Ford workers in all affected
countries before the company de-
cided to buy up the shares of
stock in its British Ford subsidi-
ary presently held by individuals.
"That decision will undoubted-
ly," said the conference, "have ma-
jor consequences for workers in
Ford operations not only in Britain
and the United States but in other
countries as well."
Morgan Commentaries
Gain Critic's Praise
Edward P. Morgan's observations on the political campaign were
"the most hard-hitting on the airwaves" according to Jack Gould,
radio-tv columnist of the New York Times.
Morgan, an American Broadcasting Co. commentator, is spon-
sored by the AFL-CIO on a five-nights-a-week 15-minute news
program.
Gould said, "In the general pre-
occupation with the glamors of tel-
evision one of the more enduring
and useful contributions of broad-
New York Workers Set
Bargaining Rights Fight
New York — The State, County and Municipal Employes dis-
trict council has called on its 49 affiliated local unions arid 30,000
members to help raise $100,000 for a wide-ranging informational
campaign to win "full collective bargaining rights for city
employes."
Jerry Wurf, council executive^
director, said the money will be
used to inform the public about the
"problems of city workers, the crit-
ical shortage of many essential city
services, and the enormous waste
of city funds . . . resulting from
the failure of Mayor Robert F.
Wagner (D) to implement the col-
lective bargaining machinery he es-
tablished" by executive order in
1958.
The union started its program
with a morning radio broadcast
three days a week; spot an-
nouncements for broadcast sev-
eral times a day; and newspaper
ads with the union district coun-
cil's message. Plans for a tele-
vision show are in the program-
ing stage.
Wurf said AFSCME unions are
concerned about inadequate sal-
aries, lack of promotional oppor-
tunities, delays of up to five years
in agreed-on pay increases, and in-
security as some of the funda-
mental problems of city employes.
"This is not," he said, "a one-
shot deal to resolve a few irritating
grievances. We are beginning a
program, which we will intensify
throughout next year," to win full
collective bargaining rights" and
meet the problems caused by the
city's failure to "come to grips with
them" at the bargaining table.
"Enormous waste" of city
money has been caused, the un-
ion man charged, by the con-
stant necessity for training new
people to replace those who drop
out because of low pay.
casting — the thoughtful commen-
tary over the radio — has tended to
be relegated to a place of relative
unimportance."
Words, Ideas Supreme
Morgan and three other men —
Edward R. Murrow, Raymond
Swing and "Alistair Cooke — have
shown, however, said Gould, "that
radio commentary is infinitely more
satisfying than its TV counterpart
. . . The primary blessing of radio
is that it restores words and ideas
to a place of absolute supremacy
in commentary."
The New York Times writer
said that the men mentioned
showed a "grace of language"
and had the advantage of not
trying to write "an editorial in
Macy's window."
Gould said that Morgan prima-
rily does his own legwork "and it
shines through in the authoritative-
ness of his evening commentary
over ABC. fiis judgment of mat-
ters of news importance is extreme-
ly sound and mature. And his
delivery is subdued without any
overtones of electronic cant." His
commentary "is sober and discern-
ing with many a fresh twist of
phrase. . . . Under the pressure of
a daily deadline his independent
performance is all the more re-
markable."
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Page Eleve*
On Price-Fixing Charges:
Electrical Giants
Enter Guilty Pleas
Philadelphia — General Electric Co., Westinghouse Electric Corp.
and 17 smaller manufacturers have pleaded guilty in federal court
here to criminal antitrust charges involving price-fixing and rigged
bids on multi-million dollar sales of heavy electrical equipment.
The guilty pleas, avoiding lengthy public trials, gave the Justice
Dept. its greatest antitrust victory^
in many years. Sentences, expected
to be imposed early in 1961 by
U.S. District Judge J. Cullen Ga-
ney, could result in heavy fines for
the companies and possible jail
sentences for individual defendants,
including several company vice
presidents and division managers.
Triple Damages Possible
General Electric, which earlier
had pleaded not guilty to all
charges, switched to guilty pleas on
six charges and was allowed to
plead no contest to 13 other
charges. Westinghouse switched to
guilty pleas in seven cases, pleaded
no contest in 12 others. Maximum
sentence is a $50,000 fine on each
charge for either corporations or
individuals, plus a year in jail for
individuals.
The guilty pleas opened the
gate to triple damage suits by
purchasers who contracted for
equipment unaware that both the
price and the firm which was to
submit the low bid had been
determined in advance at secret
meetings among officials of the
supposedly competing companies.
The victims, according to the
series of indictments handed down
by four federal grand juries during
the past year, included federal, state
and municipal governments as well
as private utility companies and
several industrial concerns.
The indictments alleged that
some of the firms helped narrow
control of the market by refusing
to sell component parts to possible
competitors or artificially jacking
up the prices.
In all, 29 companies were in-
dicted and 10 of the smaller firms
were allowed to plead no contest
to all charges.
All of the indicted companies
had originally sought to plead no
contest — which would not be con-
sidered as evidence of guilt in civil
damage suits brought against them.
Judge Ganey, at the urging of the
Justice Dept., refused to accept no
contest pleas until the government
had gotten the 19 companies to
plead guilty to the major charges
against them.
In the final proceedings, the Jus-
tice Dept. dropped charges against
one of the indicted General Elec-
tric vice presidents, Arthur F. Vin-
son. One of the Westinghouse of-
ficials, W. C. Rowland, refused to
change his not guilty plea in one
case and will stand trial.
Judge Ganey praised the head
of the Justice Dept.'s antitrust
division, Robert A. Bicks, and
his assistants for "a splendid job"
in the case.
GE later issued a statement that
company officials who admitted vi-
olating antitrust laws had been ei-
ther demoted, given pay cuts or
shifted to jobs with no responsibil-
ity for setting prices.
Attorney General William P.
Rogers declared in a statement that
the cases involved "as serious in-
stances of bid-rigging and price-
fixing as have been charged in the
more than half-century life of the
Sherman Antitrust Act."
Rail Unions Agree to
Principles of Merger
(Continued from Page 1)
sented by the combined organiza-
tion. This will insure that the wages
and working conditions of all mem-
bers will be fully protected."
Final approval of the merger
would end an overlapping of juris-
diction which has on occasion
strained relations between the Con-
ductors, founded in 1868, and the
Trainmen, organized in 1883. Each
of the organizations has both con-
ductors and brakemen as members.
In addition to the two union
presidents, the committees which
reached the merger agreement in-
cluded:
For the Trainmen — Assistant to
the President Charles Luna, Sec-
Treas. W. E. B. Chase, Vice Pres.
R. H. McDonald, and Assistant
Sec.-Treas. W. L. Hill.
For the Conductors — Senior Vice
Pres. L. J. Wagner, Sec.-Treas. C.
H. Anderson, Vice Pres. S. W. Hol-
liday and Vice Pres. Val Simons.
UNION-MEMBER ACTRESSES model union-made clothes at a union fashion show staged by the
Ladies Garment Workers in Wall Street to open a nationwide "buy more union label garments" drive.
The pretty models are members of Actors' Equity. Here they rally 'round a union label poster as
financial district crowds wait to see the show before the recent East Coast snowstorm. ILGWU is
holding outdoor fashion shows in many cities promoting sale of label garments to holiday shoppers*
Trade Unions
Urged to Back
1961 'Dimes'
The AFL-CIO enthusiastically
endorses the 1961 March of Dimes
labor service division campaign,
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has
said in a letter to all federation
affiliates.
In requesting support of national
and international unions, state and
local central bodies, and federal la-
bor unions, Meany said contribu-
tions will be properly credited by
directing them to the National La-
bor Division, March of Dimes, 800
Second Avenue, New York 17.
'The recent heavy incidence of
polio cases, particularly the epi-
demic in Rhode Island, directs our
attention to the necessity of our
full support of this program," he
said. "Our brother members and
their dependents are the prime
beneficiaries of the many services
provided by the March of Dimes."
The letter reminded members
of recent progress in the field of
research. In addition to the de-
velopment of Salk vaccine, the
March of Dimes has financed the
research that developed the re-
cently approved Sabin oral polio
vaccine, which will be ready for
distribution soon, Meany said.
Chairmen of the national labor
division are George E. Leighty,
David J. McDonald, John J. Gro-
gan, William Pollock, Howard
Coughlin, Lee Minton and Meany.
PLANS FOR 1961 AFL-CIO Industrial Engineering Institutes are hammered out at meeting in AFL-
CIO headquarters. Seated (left to right) are Fred Simon, industrial engineer, Agricultural Implement
Dept. of Auto Workers; Dante Verayo, labor education center, University of Philippines; Norris Tib-
bets, industrial engineer, University of Wisconsin School for Workers; William Kuhl, research and
education director of Boilermakers; Bertram Gottlieb, AFL-CIO industrial engineer; Ann Dunne, sec-
retary; Richard Humphreys, research and education director, Allied Industrial Workers; Russell
Allen, AFL-CIO Industrial Union Dept. education director. Standing, same order, are Kermit Meade,
UAW time study and engineering director; and Peter Henle, assistant director, AFL-CIO Dept. of
Research.
ILGWU Fashion Show
Takes Label to Brokers
New York — Broadway came to Wall Street when the Ladies*
Garment Workers staged the first performance of an outdoor fashion
show designed to promote the purchase of women's clothes and
other union-made garments as Christmas gifts.
A noontime crowd of financial district denizens whistled their
approval as a dozen models, mem-^ -
bers of Actors' Equity, displayed
chic fashions during a pleasant in-
terlude in the December weather
at Broad and Wall Streets, with
the Stock Exchange as a backdrop.
The models carried the union
label message to 22 other shopping
centers in Manhattan, the Bronx
and Brooklyn. Shows of the same
type were scheduled for pre-Christ-
mas showings in the East, Midwest
and West Coast areas.
New Life Injected
It was the union's way of putting
new life into an industry affected
by fluctuations in buying habits.
The outdoor fashion showings
will take almost $100,000 of the
$1 million fund which ILGWU
has provided to promote union-
made clothes bearing the union
label. The fund is financed by
union members at the rate of $3
a year per member.
When the show opened, Wall
Street crowds stopped to watch the
models posturing on a float.
A running commentary on the
advantages of union label dresses
as Christmas gifts was provided by
Beverly Bruce of the show cast.
Members of ILGWU's union
label department distributed the
latest example of help for the har-
ried male shopper — a wallet-size
card on which to record dress
sizes and significant dates for "the
woman of your choice," as Miss
Bruce phrased it.
The fashion show was one phase
of the ILGWU campaign to pro-
mote greater consumer awareness
of the union label among shoppers
at Christmas time, and other im-
portant buying seasons.
Hundreds of volunteers from
union locals helped make the
shows a success by distributing
leaflets and novelties throughout
the country.
In metropolitan New York, ac-
tivities were coordinated by the
ILGWU union label department
under Vice Pres. Julius Hochman,
and a committee headed by Vice
Pres. Harry Greenberg, manager of
Local 91. Other committee mem-
bers were Shelley Appleton of Lo-
cal 23, Morris Kovler of Local 35,
Israel Breslow of Local 22, Mat-
thew Schoenwald of Local 62, and
Vice Presidents Louis Nelson, man-
ager of Local 155, and Charles
Kreindler, manager of Local 25.
Vacations in Europe
Sponsored by IUE
Two European vacation trips for
members are being arranged by the
Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers. Full cost of each three-
week trip by chartered plane will
be $580 per person.
The trips are being arranged in
cooperation with the American
Travel Association, with arrange-
ments handled by Ben Segal, IUE
education director.
Labor Urged to Support
Essays on Handicapped
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has called on all state cen-
tral bodies to again participate in the national essay contest
sponsored by the President's Committee on Employment of
the Physically Handicapped.
In the 1960 contest, 42 state AFL-CIO federations spon-
sored expense-paid trips to Washington, D. C, for their state
winners. The high school students who visited the nation's
capital as guests of the trade union movement toured the
AFL-CIO Union-Industries Show, where they were introduced
to Pres. Eisenhower.
Gordon M. Freeman, president of the Intl. Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers and vice chairman of the President's Com-
mittee, has reported that most of the states which participated
in the 1960 contest, plus some of the remaining states which
did not take part, have indicated their desire to play an active
role in the 1961 program.
Pape Twelve
AFL-CTO NETTS. WASHINGTON, D. C. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1960
Joblessness Zooms to November High
Factory Workers
Hardest Hit by Rise
(Continued from Page 1)
facturing — the sector "which really
swings the economy."
The bulk of these job losses,
he added, took place in the
metal-working industries — 160,-
000 in steel, 100,000 in auto and
100,000 in machinery. This un-
employment, Wolfbein said, hits
"the major breadwinner — the
factory worker."
The November job report said
that "manufacturing employment
dropped by 150,000 — twice the
average amount for this month — to
16.2 million in November."
It contained another warning
pointed out by Wolfbein — that job
declines, though not large, are "fan-
November Jobless
Record in Canada
Ottawa — Canada's unem-
ployed rose to a total of 429,-
000 in mid-November, a
postwar record for the month,
the government has reported.
The jobless total reflected
an increase of 61,000 from
mid-October and was 11,000
higher than a year earlier.
The new record compared to
318,000 jobless in November
of the 1957-58 recession,
which reached a modern
peak of 637,000 by the fol-
lowing March.
ning out beyond the metal indus-
try." For example, eight of 10
non-durable goods industries listed
in the report showed job drops.
He singled out still another omi-
nous trend in the report, noting
that state insured unemployment
rose by 300,000 in November to
nearly 2 million. This was an 18
percent hike, 2.5 times the usual
rate of increase for this time of
year.
Jobless Idle Longer
The report also showed that more
jobless are going without work for
longer periods and that more work-
ers under age 45 are falling into
this group.
In November, nearly 1 million
workers were classified as long-
term unemployed — out of work and
seeking it 15 weeks or longer, al-
most unchanged from October.
The long-term jobless total far
exceeds most postwar Novembers
and is second only to the 1.2 mil-
lion total in the recession of No-
vember 1958. In pre-recession
November 1957, the long-term job-
less totaled 523.000. In Novem-
ber 1959 it was 784,000.
The report said the short-term
unemployed — those jobless less
than five weeks — totaled 1.8 mil-
lion or 45 percent of all unem-
ployed. A year ago this group
accounted for 50 percent of the
total.
Total employment in November,
the report showed, declined by
300,0Q0 but was nevertheless a rec-
ord for the month at 67.2 million.
Wolfbein observed this was the
eleventh straight month that total
employment set a record for the
month. This posed a puzzler for
government observers, he said,
since it parallelled widening unem-
ployment.
Contrasted With 1958
He contrasted this with the ex-
perience of 1958, when each
month's employment total fell be-
low the comparable period for
1957.
The net employment drop re-
sulted from the usual autumn cut-
back in farm jobs, down 581,000,
more than offsetting the 272,000
rise in non-farm employment. How-
ever, since the survey week includ-
ed election day, the gain in non-
farm jobs was "largely due" to the
temporary employment of election
workers in local government, the
report said.
A few days before the Novem-
ber job report was released, Pres.
Eisenhower was reported by Rep.
Tom Curtis (R-Mo), a White
House visitor, as concerned over
the high rate of unemployment.
Curtis said the President also
expressed concern over the "falloff"
in the gross national product. They
both felt, he added, that the econ-
omy was "quite solid."
Light Enough for Both
Goldberg in Labor Post
In Kennedy Cabinet
(Continued from Page 1)
not have made a better appoint-
ment."
The Kennedy selection of
Goldberg was made as the Presi-
dent-elect was safely assured of
his Electoral College majority
with the collapse in several states
of scattered Republican charges
of irregularities or "fraud" in the
popular vote on Nov. 8.
Earlier, Kennedy had announced
other choices for the Cabinet and
for major sub-Cabinet posts, to
take office when the new President
is sworn in Jan. 20.
He named Robert S. McNamara,
president of the Ford Motor Co.
and a 44-year-old registered Re-
publican who nevertheless has fre-
quently supported Democrats, as
Secretary of Defense.
He chose Dean Rusk, president
of the Rockefeller Foundation and
a one-time Assistant Secretary of
State under former Sec. Dean
Acheson, for the key job of run-
ning the State Dept.
Also named with Rusk were
Council of Churches Supports
Farm Worker Organizing Drive
(Continued from Page 1)
ployers and labor to join in an
"intensified effort" to end job dis-
crimination against minority groups.
• Affirmed support for student
"kneel-in" demonstrations in south-
ern churches to protest against seg-
regation in worship.
• Urged immediate modifica-
tion of federal-state programs pro-
viding aid to dependent children to
•'prevent discrimination" similar to
that taking place in Louisiana
where the legislature cut off aid to
illegitimate children in a move al-
legedly aimed at thousands of Ne-
gro children on public relief rolls.
Layman Elected President
The council, representing 34
Christian churches, elected J. Irwin
Miller, a businessman from Co-
lumbus, Ind., as its new president.
Miller thus becomes the first lay-
man to head the Council of
Churches in its 10-year history.
In 1959, while serving as vice
chairman of the Division of
Christian Life and Work, Miller
won approval of a resolution as-
sailing so-called "right-to-work"
laws. At that time, Miller de-
clared: "I do not believe the
principle of 'right-to-work' laws
is good for society."
Dr. Charles Webber, director of
religious relations for the AFL-
CIO, was re-elected to the general
board and was renamed to the
board of the Division of Christian
Life and Work.
The council's resolution on mi-
grant labor expressed "deep con-
cern for the wages, living and
working conditions" of the seasonal
agricultural workers, adding that
"we rejoice at evidences of grow-
ing general concern for improving
the conditions under which these
agricultural migrants live."
Protective Legislation Urged
"We note with approval," the
statement went on, "the creation of
a permanent President's Committee
on Migratory Labor. We encour-
age more vigorous efforts in behalf
of federal and state legislation to
extend the federal minimum wage;
to improve housing facilities,
health, education and welfare serv-
ices; and transportation safeguards
for migratory farm workers.
"We urge the continuation of
current efforts at responsible and
democratic labor organization
among these workers. We favor
extending to them by law the
right of collective bargaining and
access to the services of the
National Labor Relations Board
on a par with other wage workers
in industry.
"We call upon employers of
Christian conscience to encourage
and stand with these workers in
their efforts to gain human dignity,
self-respect and economic security
through the well-tested device of
union organization."
In the civil rights field, the coun-
cil called on member churches to
carefully examine their "own po-
sitions and practices on discrimina-
tion in employment and declared
that "justice and efficiency" call for
employment and promotion on the
basis of "individual capacity, char-
acter, training and experience,"
without regard to race or religion.
The council, largest Protestant
church grouping in the nation, ap-
proved a message of greetings to
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy, first
Roman Catholic ever elected to the
presidency, and to his running-
mate, Vice Pres.-elect Lyndon B.
Johnson.
Chester Bowles for Under Secretary
of State and Adlai E. Stevenson as
U.S. ambassador to the United Na-
tions.
The four remaining Cabinet
posts to which Kennedy must an-
nounce his choice are Treasury,
Agriculture, Justice and the Post
Office Departments. There was
every prospect the list would be
completed, or nearly so, before
Kennedy left Washington for
Palm Beach, Fla., to spend the
Christmas holidays with his wife
and children.
Rusk, a 51 -year-old Democrat
who has not been active in party
politics, has remained close to
world affairs as head of the Rocke-
feller Foundation, which is deeply
involved in economic and social
developments in many countries.
Bowles Drafted Platform
Bowles is a former ambassador
to India and former governor of
Connecticut as well as presently a
member of Congress. He played
a major role in drafting the Demo-
cratic National Convention's liberal
platform as head of the Committee
on Resolutions.
Stevenson, twice his party's
nominee for President, has an
enormous world reputation as
an American statesman of the
first rank. He appears assured
of a major policy-making role in
his UN post rather than merely
administrative tasks.
McNamara rose rapidly to head
the Ford company after entering
its service after World War II.
Goldberg, a 52-year-old Chicago-
born lawyer, has spent his entire
professional career in the field of
labor law, becoming general coun-
sel of the former CIO in 1947.
He served as a major in the Army
during World War II attached to
the Office of Strategic Services. He
is a trustee or director of numerous
labor and philanthropic organiza-
tions including the Fund for the
Republic and the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace.
Sporadic but persistent Repub-
lican "bad loser" efforts to upset
the Kennedy election victory last
November seemed to have col-
lapsed as officially certified re-
sults from all 50 states showed
that the Democratic nominee had
300 votes in the Electoral Col-
lege to Vice Pres. Nixon's 223.
Fourteen electors from Missis-
sippi and Alabama, who had run
as uncommitted for either major-
party nominee, announced that they
would vote for Sen. Harry F. Byrd
(D-Va.).
Civil Liber!)
Group Urges
RenewedDrive
New York — The American peo-
ple have been urged to make their
influence felt in the drive to insure
civil rights for Negroes and main-
tain the nation's historic principle
of the separation of church and
state.
In the 40th annual report of the
American Civil Liberties Union
— released on the eve of the 169th
anniversary of the Bill of Rights —
ACLU Executive Dir. Patrick Mur-
phy Malin declared that if Amer-
ica wants a free society "it will
have to be maintained by the peo-
ple."
Endorsing the Negro lunch-
counter "sit-ins" and other legal
measures being used to win
equality, Malin wrote that people
"could privately do a lot more
than they are now doing" to
hasten the end of racial discrimi-
nation "without waiting for gov-
ernmental action." In any case,
he emphasized, what federal,
state and municipal governments
do in the civil rights field will be
determined by the pressure ex-
erted on them by the people.
In the same manner, Malin ob-
served, citizens play a key role in
the area of separation of church
and state, noting that people often
nullify this principle "by the pres-
sures they bring to bear on their
officials." He said this was espe-
cially true in regard to education.
Repeating the ACLLPs position
that the House Un-American Ac-
tivities Committee should be abol-
ished, Malin called it a "serpent in
our demi-paradise of a free demo-
cratic government and a free so-
09-m-zx
ciety," and declared it "can be
scotched only by the people,
through their representatives."
In the civil rights field, the ACLU
report said that even though the
platforms of both major parties re-
flect an increasing demand for
progress toward equality, it cau-
tioned that the nation "cannot re-
alistically expect further federal
legislation at more than a snail's
pace."
The White House and the Justice
Dept., the report added, have am-
ple powers at present to act in the
areas of southern voting and edu-
cation and in northern housing to
insure meaningful improvements.
ARTHUR J. GOLDBERG
Designated as Secretary of Labor
in Pres.-elect Kennedy's Cabinet.
* - -5
S ill Ss w till
If lllf
Vol. V
Issued weekly at
815 Sixteenth St. N.W
Washington 6, D. C.
$2 a year
Saturday, December 24, 1960 , 7 jy Q -2
Second Class Postage Paid at Washington. D. C.
Kennedy Promises
Action on Economy
Wage, Area Bills
Magazine Blasts AM A :
British Health Plan
A Success, Look Says
Look magazine, torpedoing American Medical Association propa-
ganda about "socialized medicine," has declared that "every inde-
pendent survey" made of Great Britain's 12-year-old National
Health Service has found it to be an "overwhelming" success.
Edward M. Korry, Look's European editor, author of a study in
depth of the British health care^
program, declared in an article in
the Dec. 20 issue of the magazine
that it was "necessity, not social-
ism," that brought the health plan
into being after World War II.
"The crucial choice the Brit-
ish have made," Korry wrote, "is
to place health on the list of
essential services — just as we do
with education, sanitation, water
supply, the police and the armed
services. It's a life-und-death
matter, the British say, and they
have acted accordingly."
The magazine — with a national
circulation of more than 6.3 mil-
lion — said that in 12 years the
British health program had:
• "Crossed out the financial
factor in the doctor-patient rela-
tionship without affecting medical
standards."
• "Meant fairer distribution of
health for all classes, regardless of
income."
• "Done wonders in distributing
physicians more equally around
Britain."
• "Brought order out of the
chaos of the British hospital sys-
tem. By laying down national
standards, centralizing purchases, by
standardizing wages and by pro-
viding much-needed equipment,
NHS has provided greater effi-
ciency."
The Look article charged the
AMA with being "hostile" to any
(Continued on Page 8)
Jobless Aid
Issue Faces
Congress
The deepening recession fac-
ing the U. S. is expected to focus
national attention on the federal-
state unemployment compensa-
tion system early in the 87th
Congress.
Stanley Ruttenberg, director
of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Re-
search, in a recent address to the
Commonwealth Club in San Fran-
cisco, pointed to the growing eco-
nomic crisis and called for a com
bination.of emergency actions and
long-range reform of the compen-
sation system.
The Wall Street Journal, in a
recent study of the jobless pay
program, described it as "an in-
tensifying national problem" be-
cause of the "already-long lines
of jobless workers." The Jour-
nal warned that, under present
conditions, "it's touch and go"
whether the funds had enough
available money to pay the bene-
fits the jobless will have coming,
and expressed concern because
the funds in 11 states were at
dangerously low levels.
Pinning their hopes on Congress
will be the growing army of un-
employed — an army which stood at
more than 4 million by the Labor
Dept.'s November count and which
threatens to soar above the 6-mil-
lion mark by early 1961.
3 Problem Areas
Involved in whatever action Con-
gress takes will be three major prob-
lem groups:
• The more than 600,000 work-
ers who exhausted state unemploy-
ment compensation benefits in the
past five months without having
found other jobs.
• The 2.3 million insured un-
employed, whose benefits range
from a low of $26 a week in
"right-to-work" South Carolina to
a high of $55 in California, and
whose period of coverage runs
from as little as six weeks in "right-
to-work" Indiana to as much as 39
weeks in Oklahoma.
• Some 1.3 million more of the
current jobless who are not covered
at all by unemployment insurance.
Not since the recession of
1957-58 has Congress deliberated
on some sort of system to supple-
ment jobless benefits and thus
stave off the harshest effects of
unemployment.
At that time the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration pushed through Con-
gress a Temporary Unemployment
Compensation Act that permitted
those states wishing to join the pro-
gram to borrow federal funds and
extend the compensation period by
50 percent, at the rates currently
prevailing in each state. Only 22
states took advantage of the pro-
gram.
The 87th Congress is expected to
(Continued on Page 8)
To Be Submitted
By Gene Zack
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy and his top Democratic colleagues,
expressing concern over mounting unemployment and the "lack of
vigor in the economy," have pledged «eaxly action on aid to dis-
tressed areas and minimum wage legislation.
The leaders of the incoming Administration, winding up two days
of intensive talks at Palm Beach,^-
Fla., also forecast speedy action on
measures providing for federal aid
to education, housing and health
care for the aged.
Flanking Kennedy at a press con-
ference were Vice Pres.-elect Lyn-
don B. Johnson, House Speaker
Sam Rayburn (D-Tex.), and Sen.
Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.), expected
to be chosen to succeed Johnson
as Senate majority leader. Rep.
John W.. McCormack (D-Mass.),
House majority leader, was unable
to join the meetings but was sched-
uled to receive a briefing from Ken-
nedy.
Cabinet Completed
The President-elect arrived in
Palm Beach to spend the Christmas
holidays with his family and im-
mediately completed his Cabinet
appointments by announcing his se-
lection of J. Edward Day, 46-year-
old Los Angeles insurance execu
tive, as his Postmaster General.
Before leaving Washington, Ken-
nedy had designated:
> Robert F. Kennedy, 35, his
brother and campaign manager, for
the post of Attorney General.
• C. Douglas Dillon, 51, a Re-
publican and currently the Under-
secretary of State, to serve as Treas-
ury Secretary.
• Gov. Orville L. Freeman (p-
Minn.), 42, as Agriculture Secre-
tary.
In the sub-Cabinet field, Kennedy
tapped Rep. George S. McGovern
(D-S.D.), to be director of the Food-
for-Peace program and named By-
ron (Whizzer) White, Denver law-
yer and one-time Ail-American
football star, to be Deputy Attor-
ney General.
Kennedy Officially Elected
While Kennedy moved forward
with the dual job of planning for
the incoming Administration and
insuring the orderly takeover of
the reins of government from Pres.
Eisenhower, the Electoral College
(Continued on Page 3)
Rules Fight
May Break
In House
The rate of progress of much
of Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy's
"New Frontiers" legislation may
be influenced greatly on Jan. 3,
1961, when the 87th Congress
convenes and the House decides
on its procedures for the coming
two years.
It is on this first day that the
House may grapple with a prob-
lem that has engaged congressional
leaders for nearly a quarter cen-
tury: the determination of the role
and the authority of the powerful
Rules Committee.
Under the current procedures, the
committee has almost absolute pow-
er to kill, delay or water down leg-
islation since virtually every major
measure must win majority approv-
al of its dozen members — less than
3 percent of the full House — before
the other members have a chance
to debate and vote on it.
Created originally as a "traffic
cop" to speed the orderly flow of
legislation from committees to the
floor, it has been transformed
into a "super-committee," hold-
ing its own hearings, blockading
measures or requiring wholesale
changes in key provisions as the
price for allowing bills to go to
the floor.
This shift in the committee's role
has been brought about because a
coalition of conservative southern
Democrats and Republicans has
ruled the committee since the mid-
308, with the exception of a two-
year period in the Truman Admin-
(Continued on Page 2)
Come On Out, Scrooge —
L-G Okays Christmas
The Landrum-Griffin Act "does not prohibit traditional
Christmas festivities and charitable contributions," Labor Sec.
James P. Mitchell has assured both labor and management.
Mitchell, repeating the reassurances he gave a year ago, said
that the charitable activities of labor unions "are not restricted
as long as they are conducted in accordance with the organiza-
tion's own constitution and by-laws."
Similarly, Mitchell ruled that the law does not affect the
exchange of gifts by employers and unions and said this ap-
plies to "Christmas parties at which an employer or union
provides the gifts and entertainment."
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1960
OFFICERS OF STATE CENTRAL bodies across the nation hear AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
discuss legislation in the 87th Congress at a conference in the nation's capital. Conference also dis-
cussed the prospects for passage of key measures in the 47 state legislatures which meet in 1961. One
day was devoted, also, to problem^ and relations of central bodies.
May Set Pattern:
Fight Over Rules Committee Role
May Break in House Opening Day
(Continued from Page 1)
istration when the rules were
changed to curb its powers.
The power of the Rules Commit-
tee was demonstrated in the 86th
Congress when four Republicans
and two southern Democrats, team-
ing up to deny a majority vote,
buried housing and situs picketing
bills and delayed aid to depressed
areas and civil rights.
Even after bills reach the floor,
the House is not always free. When-
ever it becomes necessary to send
differing House and Senate versions
of legislation to conference commit-
tees to resolve disagreements, a
single objection to a conference
sends the disputed measure back
to the Rules Committee, where it
can be killed.
Thus it was in 1960 that the
committee's right-wing coalition
was able to kill federal aid to
education even though majorities
of both House and Senate had
passed such legislation.
Existing rules provide at least in
theory several methods for bypass-
ing the committee:
• By bringing bills up on the
consent calendar. This requires
unanimous approval and thus one
member can block action.
• Through suspension of the
rules, which requires a two-thirds
vote, that is difficult to get on con-
troversial legislation.
• By a discharge petition, which
requires the signatures of a consti-
tutional majority of House mem-
bers — 219. Discharge petitions are
rarely successful; only two bills
brought to the floor through this
procedure have ever become law.
Many House members who
would vote for a measure if it
came to the floor are reluctant to
sign a discharge petition, contend-
ing that it is a challenge to orderly
procedure.
• By employing Calendar Wed-
nesday, a procedure under which
the Speaker calls the chairmen of
legislative committees in the alpha-
betical order of their committees.
The major fault of this method
is that general debate and consider-
ation "of all amendments must take
place on one day, permitting op-
ponents to attack it solely through
dilatory parliamentary maneuvers.
When the depressed areas bill was
considered this year on Calendar
Wednesday, nine procedural roll
calls and the reading of the Jour-
nal consumed nearly six hours be-
fore debate could even begin.
Platform Favored Change
The Democratic Platform adopt-
ed in Los Angeles called for amend-
ing of House rules "to improve
congressional procedures so that
majority rule prevails."
A broad range of changes has
been suggested, with the nature
of the proposals depending on
URW Contract Eases
Impact of Automation
Akron, O. — A union-management agreement designed to protect
the jobs and incomes of workers with the advent of automation has
been announced jointly here by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and
Rubber Workers' Local 2.
The agreement, reached following four weeks of negotiations,
spells out a plan for upgrading^
workers whose former jobs might
be eliminated by installation of new
equipment. Local Pres. Clarence
Adkins said the move should main-
tain the work force at its present
level of 1,450 employes.
At the same time, company and
union negotiators worked out new
piecework rates that will at least
match, and in some instances sur-
pass, the present income level, Ad-
kins said.
Modernization Set
The agreement with the URW
clears the way for a multi-million-
dollar modernization program in-
volving the installation of tire ma-
chines designed and built at Good-
year and which incorporate the
company's latest techniques in tire
building.
Last October the company
warned the URW it might have to
close its plant unless output effi-
ciency could be brought up to the
level of factories in other parts of
the country.
Following the settlement Ad-
kins declared that the employes
had "faced up to this challenge."
He added that ' this agreement,
reached with the help of the
union's Tire Division representa-
tives, signifies a great step for-
ward in keeping production and
jobs in Akron."
Australian to Head
ILO Labor Institute
Geneva — Sir Douglas Berry Cop-
land, Australian educator and dip-
lomat, has been named first director
of the Intl. Labor Organization's
Intl. Institute for Labor Studies.
The appointment, announced by
ILO Dir.-Gen. David A. Morse, is
effective next May.
two quite different views of the
Rules Committee's proper role.
Those who believe the committee
should be a "traffic cop" only, with
no power to pigeonhole or kill bills,
have suggested:
• Drastic reduction of the num-
ber of signatures required for a
discharge petition.
• Provisions for House debate
after a legislative committee has
reported a bill for the second time.
• Requiring the committee to
send a bill to the floor within a spe-
cified time period.
This latter suggestion, in effect,
calls for restoration of the 21 -day
rule which prevailed in the 81st
Congress. With this rule on the
books, the Truman Administration
was able to break the conservative
coalition's logjam and win passage
of anti-poll tax, housing, minimum
wage and rivers and harbors leg-
islation.
Not all congressmen, however,
support the "traffic cop" theory.
Some view the committee as an
agent of the majority party — as
the committee was prior to 1937.
Those who hold this opinion feel
the committee should be com-
posed and empowered so that its
powers will be used to facilitate
enactment of the majority party's
legislative program.
Their suggestions include:
• Elimination of minority party
members.
• Increasing the number of ma-
jority party members.
• Placing the Speaker on the
committee to break the present tie.
• Making the Speaker, the Ma-
jority Leader and the Minority
Leader all ex-officio members of
the committee.
Any one — or possibly a combina-
tion — of these methods could be
adopted, and a change would speed
progress on legislation the Ken-
nedy Administration is expected to
present to the 87th Congress. The
battle, if it comes, will be settled
quickly, with no more than an hour
of debate before a showdown vote
on the House floor.
Jobs in Michigan
Turn on Sharp Growth
Ann Arbor — Michigan's econ-
omy will have to grow at nearly
twice the current national rate in
order to provide full employment
for its residents during the Sixties,
according to Prof. Paul W. Mc-
Cracken of the Univesrity of Mich-
igan School of Business Admin-
istration.
McCracken, a former member
of Pres. Eisenhower's Council of
Economic Advisers, emphasized the
need for stepped-up growth in re-
leasing a report on taxation pre-
pared by nine out-of-state experts
from universities and business
groups.
OCAW Wins Boost
For 9,000 at Sinclair
Denver — Nine thousand Sinclair Oil Corp. workers will receive
a 14-cent hourly raise under a new contract negotiated by the Oil,
Chemical & Atomic Workers. The union expects the pattern to
spread quickly to nearly 500,000 more oil industry employes, organ-
ized and unorganized.
Sinclair, the only company which^
bargains on a nationwide basis with
the OCAW, was the pace-setter in
1959, when the last round of pay
raises were negotiated. OCAW ne-
gotiating teams are currently en-
gaged in nearly 600 separate bar-
gaining sessions with individual
plants of the nation's major oil
companies. The union bargains for
more than 90,000 workers in the
industry. *
Key to the settlement, OCAW
spokesman indicated, was com-
pany acceptance of the union de-
mand that the contract be re-
openable at any time on 60 days'
notice. Several other major com-
panies had offered a 5 percent
increase — equivalent to 14 cents
— coupled to a two-year contract
without free reopeners.
OCAW Pres. O. A. Knight said
the 14-cent general increase "is four
cents short of the goal set by our
National Bargaining Policy Com-
mittee last summer, but we feel that
it is the best that can be obtained
under present circumstances."
He said the bargaining commit-
tee has approved the agreement and
the union is "confident that it will
serve as a pattern and spread to
all other companies."
OCAW Vice Pres. B. J. Schafer
headed the negotiating committee
which reached agreement with the
company during four days of in-
tensive bargaining at Kansas City,
Mo. The contract will be sub-
mitted to OCAW members at Sin-
clair plants for ratification in a
nationwide referendum.
In addition to the general wage
increase, the union is also seeking
adjustment of inequities for groups
of craftsmen it represents on the
West Coast, where the union says
wages have been "below par."
'Partial Strike' Wins
Renewed Bargaining
Detroit — Agents of the Detroit Mutual Insurance Co. have agreed
to temporarily suspend their unique "partial strike" during renewed
negotiations with the company for a first contract.
The 130 members of the Insurance Workers, who voted over-
whelmingly for the partial strike after six months of deadlocked
contract talks, had been providingS>-
uninterrupted service to the com-
pany's policyholders during the
strike, but had refused to write any
new policies.
"Our struggle is with the com-
pany, not with its customers,"
IWIU Vice Pres. Arthur H. Hig-
ginson declared.
The agents had reported daily to
their offices each morning during
the strike to service policyholders
— and had spent the afternoons on
the picket line.
Mediators Helped
Agreement on resumption of neg-
otiations, worked out with the help
of federal mediators, came after the
union had charged the company
with refusal to bargain- in good
faith.
While the strike is the first of its
kind, a partial precedent was set
during an earlier dispute with the
Prudential Insurance Co., when
union members carried out a slow-
down to enforce their bargaining
demands. The issue of the legality
of the slowdown reached the Su-
preme Court in 1959 and the court
ruled in effect that if a union has
a right to strike, it also has the
right to partially strike.
NMU Members Ratify
Constitutional Changes
New York — Maritime Union members have ratified, by a three to
one margin, a major revision of the NMU's constitution, including
longer terms for national officers and new eligibility requirements
for candidates for office.
In balloting conducted over a four-week period in 30 seacoast
ports, major river routes and the^
Great Lakes, 10,385 votes were cast
for the changes to 3,449 opposed.
Announcement of the results was
R. E. James, Sugar
Union Leader, Dies
Prairie Village, Kans. — R. E.
James, a former president of the
Sugar Workers Council and a vet-
eran union organizer, died recently
at the age of 79.
James, who helped organize the
Sugar Workers Council, made up
of federal locals of workers in the
beet sugar industry, served as presi-
dent of the council for several years.
The council has since merged with
the Grain Millers.
An organizer for the former
AFL since 1937, James was a mem-
ber of the AFL-CIO organizing
staff until his retirement in 1957.
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
and Sec.-Treas. William F. Schnitz-
ler, in a wire of condolences to his
widow, described James as "a dedi-
cated trade unionist."
made by the Honest Ballot Asso-
ciation, a good-government group
which conducts ail of the NMU's
elections.
Major changes in the new con-
stitution are:
• An increase in the term of
office of national and port officials
from two years to four. The
longer term does not become effec-
tiive until present terms expire in
June 1962.
• StifTer qualifications for can-
didates for national office. They
will be required to have served at
least one term in a subordinate port
office before seeking one of the
NMU's top national offices.
In addition, candidates for na-
tional office in the 40,000-member
union will be required to have their
nominating petitions signed by 100
members instead of the previous 25.
There is no change in the pro-
vision that the Honest Ballot Asso-
ciation conducts all union elections.
The constitutional changes were
proposed by the NMU's convention
in October.
AFLCIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24. 1960
Kennedy Pledges
Wage, Area Action
(Continued from Page 1)
made his choice as the 35th Presi
dent official.
The electors, meeting in the
50 state capitals, cast their votes
almost as dictated by the people
more than a month earlier. Ken-
nedy received 300 elector votes;
the unsuccessful GOP candidate,
Vice Pres. Nixon, received 219;
and Sen. Harry Flood Byrd (D-
Va.), leader of the Democratic
Party's conservative wing, re-
ceived 15 votes — six from un-
pledged electors in Alabama,
eight from unpledged electors in
Mississippi and one from a Nixon
elector in Oklahoma.
Hawaii's three electoral votes
went to neither Kennedy nor Nix-
on, pending a decision by the
House. Nixon had been certified
the winner by 141 votes on Nov
10, but since then official recounts
have put Kennedy in front by 56
votes, with some precincts still to
Pilots Back
Recorders
On Aircraft
Chicago — The Air Line Pilots
have given a quick endorsement to
plans announced by the Federal
Aviation Agency to require instal-
lation of aircraft sound recording
devices on all planes as an aid to
accident investigations.
ALPA Pres. C. N. Sayen noted
that the union's recent conven-
tion had adopted recommenda-
tions calling for the use of both
sound and flight data recording
devices "to more accurately pin-
point the causes of accidents."
The recommended recording de-
vices, Sayen said, would provide
pertinent engine information and
flight factors such as direction,
speed, altitude, mechanical failure,
coupled with an "indestructible" re-
cording of all sounds in the . air-
craft.
Goldberg Hails Choice
Of Robert Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy, selected to
be the Attorney General in the
new Administration, will carry out
his duties "with great distinction,"
Labor Sec-designate Arthur J.
Goldberg has declared.
In a telegram to Kennedy ex-
pressing his "heartiest congratula-
tions" on the appointment, Gold-
berg expressed the belief that "the
country will benefit from your vig-
or, intelligence, professional ca-
pacity and high sense of public
duty."
be checked. The House, which
makes the official canvass will
choose which set of electors to
count.
At the press conference which
followed the two-day strategy ses-
sion between Kennedy, Johnson and
the congressional leaders, the Pres
ident-elect told reporters that the
meetings dealt with a broad range
of subjects.
In speaking of the five specific
areas of legislation, Kennedy
made it plain that he was not
giving any one of the measures
priority over the others, describ-
ing all of the key proposals as
ones covering areas which re-
quired speedy action. There was
"a general agreement among us,"
Kennedy said, "about what is to
be done."
Johnson told reporters he antici
pated "early and sympathetic con
sideration" of the Administration
proposals and a "successful session
with good cooperation" between the
legislative and executive branches
of government.
The President-elect also dealt at
length with the role which Johnson
would play in the incoming Admin-
istration. He said the Vice Presi-
dent-elect would take over chair-
manship of the President's Advisory
Council on Space and would have
responsibility for overseeing work
of the President's Committee on
Government Contracts, which seeks
to eliminate discriminatory employ-
ment practices on government con-
tracts.
Kennedy also told reporters he
foresaw a broader role in the Ex-
ecutive Branch for Johnson and
declared he would work with his
Vice President on matters of na-
tional security, defense and inter-
national relations, particularly with
countries of Latin America.
Reporters were told that the or-
ganizational problems of the 87th
Congress came up casually during
the two-day conference. Kennedy
took a hands-off attitude toward
rules changes in the House and
Senate, saying such matters should
be decided by the members them-
selves.
He declared, however, that he
was anxious that the procedures
of Congress "will permit a ma-
jority of the members of the
House and Senate to work their
will, but the form of procedure
is up to the House and Senate."
Rayburn said that Kennedy had
taken "the wise position" on House
rules and Mansfield declared that
while he favored amending Senate
procedures to make it easier to shut
off filibusters, he would prefer to
get the Kennedy program well un-
der way before tackling this issue.
PRES.-ELECT KENNEDY and AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
are shown with Arthur J. Goldberg, left, designated as Secretary
of Labor in the new Administration, at the door of Kennedy's home
as the Cabinet appointment was announced.
New York State Labor
Raps Anti-Strike Law
Albany, N. Y. — Major new protection for workers in both public
service and private industry will be asked of the legislature by the
New York State AFL-CIO in 1961, delegates to the annual legis-
lative conference have decided.
Meeting here at the DeWitt Clinton Hotel, union representatives
aimed their guns at the state Con-^
Just in Time for Christmas
don-Wadlin law, which prohibits
strikes by public employes and
agreed to seek increased benefits in
unemployment insurance, work-
men's compensation and sickness
disability.
, $1.50 Minimum Sought
Also included in New York la
bor's 1961 legislative program are
these measures: outlawing importa-
tion of strikebreakers in labor dis-
putes; closing loopholes in the rent
control law; bringing the state min
imum wage to $1.50 an hour and
eliminating "cumbersome and out
moded" industry wage boards; re
storing income tax personal exemp
tions to the 1958 levels or increas-
ing present exemptions at least to
$725 to compensate for living cost
increases over the past 12 years.
Raymond R. Corbett, legislative
chairman for the state body, said
labor's proposals were spelled out
this week at hearings in New York
City of the Joint Legislative Com
mittee on Industrial and Labor Con-
ditions.
In the field of labor relations,
the state federation feels it is
"high time," Corbett said, that
workers for non-profit orgniza-
tions, for government and for
public authorities are "granted
the same rights of collective bar-
gaining, grievance procedure and
impartial arbitration" of con-
tracts which workers in private
industry have had for a quarter of
a century or more.
, He listed employes of non-profit
hospitals, school teachers, social
workers and similar employes as
among workers now denied basic
citizenship rights.
The latest court test of the state
anti-strike law upheld the law's con-
stitutionality but the court called the
Condon-Wadlin law "too severe and
restrictive, 1 ' Corbett said.
"The Condon-Wadlin law is
still, as it was when enacted, a
piece of discriminatory, one-
sided, senseless legislation. It
utterly fails to take into account
the needs of public employes to
bargain collectively and to be pro-
tected by normal labor-manage-
ment agreements," he said.
The program adopted by the
Union Label Council
Set in Mohawk Valley
Utica, N. Y. — Formation of a
Mohawk Valley Union Label &
Service Trades Council, to promote
union-made goods and services
among the 50,000 AFL-CIO mem-
bers in the Greater Utica area, has
been announced by Samuel J. Tala-
rico, president of the Greater Utica
AFL-CIO.
AFL-CIO conference called for the
elimination of "periodic political
logrolling" in bringing state insur-
ance benefits in line with increased
living costs and wage scales.
This would be accomplished by
setting benefits at a ratio based on
average full-time weekly wages of
workers covered by state compen-
sation laws — preferably at two-
thirds of the average.
Corbert called the workmen's
compensation bill, enacted in
1959 to provide protection for
those workers whose employers
fail to comply with the law and
do not have the required insur-
ance, "phantom protection." It
has no specific date, and will be-
come effective only when the
fund reaches $300,000, he said.
The conference urged legislation
to give real protection" to such
workers. It urged repeal of the
"harsh" new disqualifications in
jobless insurance enacted at the
1960 legislative session and a return
to the six-week disqualification
period adopted by the U.S. Labor
Dept. during the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration.
Inland Steel
To Continue
Full SUB Pay
Pittsburgh — The Steelworkers
have reached an agreement with
Inland Steel Co. under which full
supplemental unemployment bene-
fits (SUB) will be paid through De-
cember, and probably through the
following months, to about 1.000
laid-off workers with two years'
seniority or more.
The agreement makes Inland the
only one of nine major steel pro-
ducers not reducing SUB payments
in December. The other companies
are proceeding under a contract
formula which provides that, when
the SUB fund falls to 75 percent
or less of "maximum financial posi-
tion," benefits to laid-ofT workers
may be reduced.
Inland is in a different position,
management and union said, be-
cause it has reinstated "past con-
tingent liability payments" to
strengthen its SUB fund. The un-
ion agreed to a one-vear extension
to Nov. 30, 1961.
Last month USWA Pres. David
J. McDonald warned that a "very
real crisis in steel production and
employment" might reduce SUB
payments in December for as many
as 50,000 jobless steelworkers. The
fund was negotiated by the union
in 1956 to supply workers with a
supplement to state jobless benefits.
Government Acts
To Stay Evictions
Memphis, Tenn. — The U.S.
Dept. of Justice has asked federal
court here to protect the civil rights
of 400 Negro tenant farmers threat-
ened with eviction Jan. 1 by land-
owners after the tenants registered
and voted in Fayette County, Tenn.
The court set Dec. 27 as the date of
a hearing.
Attorney-Gen. William P. Rogers
said his department asked U.S. Dis-
trict Judge Marion S. Boyd for a
temporary injunction to halt the
evictions and a permanent injunc-
tion barring eviction "or any other
economic reprisal" because share-
croppers' families exercised their
right to register and vote.
The complaint was the third filed
in Tennessee, Rogers said, under the
1957 Civil Rights Act. It named
82 defendants, including 45 land
owners, 24 merchants and one bank
for alleged acts of "intimidation,
coercion and economic discrimina-
tion.
Pension, Welfare Fund
Investment Discussed
San Francisco — The knotty problems of hew best to invest union-
negotiated pension and welfare funds came in for close examination
here in the final session- of the California Labor Federation's four-
day labor education conference.
Nearly 150 unionists sat in on the discussion that heard Prof.
James Longstreet of the University*^
of California suggest that these
funds offer a logical source for
making capital available for risk-
taking on the "new frontier," though
he acknowledged that pension trus-
tees also face the primary — and
often contradictory — obligation to
safeguard the funds to insure pay-
ment of the pensions the funds were
set up to provide.
"Social Purpose" Urged
Harry Polland, San Francisco
labor economist, urged greater con-
sideration of "social purpose" in the
investment of pension and union
funds to provide the union member
and the community something
better than they had before.
He cited broadening invest-
ment of both pension and union
money in housing, through co-
operative developments as well
as residential mortgages, health
and medical facilities.
Carroll J. Lynch outlined the
widening scope of pension fund in-
vestment, especially into corporate
common stocks, both as a cushion
against changes in the economy
and, if possible, to reflect changes
in the purchasing power of pen-
sions.
He and Longstreet agreed that
the growing accumulation of pen-
sion funds invested in such holdings
tended to immobilize huge and in-
creasing amounts of money and
that fiscal agents for these interests
tended either to disenfranchise the
stockholders whose funds are in-
volved or to reaffirm management
in its control.
Longstreet said that, with the
growth of institutional investors, the
usual capital market is being by-
passed. If risk capital is not avail-
able from these investors, it may
tend more and more to come from
internal corporate funds and to
further enlarge already large cor-
porate interests, he warned.
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON. D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1960
The Greatest Gift: Peace
AT CHRISTMAS I960 there is greater evidence than ever before
in recorded history that there is no alternative to peace; that
nuclear war means extinction.
The peace of the world is still to be won and with it the good-
will to men that is a prime condition to peace. Bjit there can be
no real and meaningful peace without freedom and liberty. In too
many parts of the world today there is only the quiet terror of men
and women wondering why they cannot move in the direction of
^peace and freedom without the weapons of oppression being loosed
against them.
The labor movement, since its inception, has dedicated itself
to the ideals of humanity summed up in the Christmas message.
On this Christmas it rededicates itself once again to the task of
building a real and lasting peace based on freedom and justice
throughout the world.
At this Christmas, marked by an important transferral of power
from an outgoing to an incoming Administration, there is new hope
and a new determination that the ideals of peace with freedom can
be achieved.
This determination stems in great part from the promise of the
recent election campaign in which Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy's
major theme was that the 1 nation would "move forward again" and
give leadership to a world anxiously seeking peace and freedom.
This Christmas marks a new era and a new tempo. The period
of drift and indecision is past. A new forceful and positive lead-
ership, dedicated to the cause of a meaningful peace, may start
us again toward the realization of mankind's centuries-old dream.
Anticfiiated and Outmoded
THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE has finally discharged its func-
tions as set out in the Constitution six wfeeks after the Amer-
ican people registered their choice on the 35th President of the
United States. Besides confirming the victory of Pres.-elect John F.
Kennedy, the only beneficiary of the Electoral College meetings
was Sen. Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, a sometimes Democrat.
Sen. Byrd ran for no office, neither the presidency nor the U.S.
Senate. Yet under the procedures of the antiquated and outmoded
Electoral College, he received 15 votes for the presidency.
The proper function of a democracy depends upon full par-
ticipation in elections by all citizens and upon the representative
character of legislative assemblies. There are many imperfections
in our processes involving registration laws, poll tax statutes and
gerrymandered districts. But the Electoral College system which
governs the election of the President and the Vice President is
one of the most severe imperfections.
The AFL-CIO is flatly on record by convention action for the
direct popular election of the President and the Vice President of
the United States and the abolition of the Electoral College system.
In light of the 1960 election situation, it becomes more important
than ever before that the Congress of the United States and the state
legislatures initiate steps toward amending the Constitution to
achieve this goal.
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Wm. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
♦Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
1 Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David /.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publications: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perimaa Eugene C Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.30 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, December 24, 1960
No. 52
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO.
To Cripple Labor Weakens Democracy:
Clergyman Discounts Alarmist
Fears of 'Power' of Big Unions
(The following is a reprint of "The Yardstick"
a syndicated weekly column written by Msgr.
George G. Higgins, director, Social Action Dept.,
National Catholic Welfare Conference, and dis-
tributed by NCWC.)
By Msgr. George G. Higgins
OROF. HANS J. MORGENTHAU of the Uni-
versity of Chicago was quoted in this column
as having said in his recent book, The Purpose of
American Politics, that the U.S. government "is
in full retreat before the onslaught of power" be-
ing exercised by big business and big labor and
that, when the chips are down, is incapable of
enforcing the law against recalcitrant unions and
corporations.
In commenting on this statement, I expressed
the opinion that while there is much to be said
for Prof. Morgenthau's point of view, it is possible
that he is exaggerating the ability of labor and
management to thwart the government in the
exercise of its responsibility to safeguard the pub-
lic interest and promote the common good.
In support of this opinion, I should like to
call attention now to a recent publication of the
Intl. Labor Office, The Trade Union Situation
in the United States, the report of a four-man
ILO mission which was invited to this country
last year by Labor Sec. James P. Mitchell to
carry out a factual survey relating to the free-
dom of labor to organize and bargain collec-
tively.
This report (copies of which can be purchased
for $1.25 from the Washington Branch Office of
the ILO, 917 Fifteenth Street, N.W., Washington
5, D. C.) does not address itself to the specific
problem posed by Professor Morgenthau in his
thought-provoking study of our national purpose.
It does, however, go into the related question as
to whether or not unions have gained acceptance
in the United States and whether or not they are
here to stay.
What the report has to say on this subject does
not, it seems to me, lend support to Prof. Mor-
genthau's angry contention that big labor (big
business is not being considered here) is riding
high, wide and handsome in the United States and
needs to be brought to time.
I MIGHT ADD that the ILO report to which
I am referring is probably the most reliable study
of its kind ever made in the United States. The
four ILO experts who drafted the report traveled
up and down the United States for several months
last year consulting with government officials,
labor leaders, employers, labor economists, and
other experts in the field of labor-management re-
lations. They also studied a great mass of printed
material bearing directly or indirectly on the sub-
ject of their study.
I am disposed to take them rather seriously,
then, when they state that "it would seem as if
the trade unions in the United States operate
in a social system they accept, but which does
not fully accept them." Elaborating on this
point, they go on to say that "although the
place of the trade union movement is secure,
it is still too soon to say that the general public
firmly believes trade unionism to be a desirable
and necessary feature of American life" and "it
would probably be true to say that the number
of people outside the trade union movement
who accept the trade unions exceed the number
of those who believe in them."
If this is an accurate summary of "the trade
union situation in the United States" — and I think
it is — Prof. Morgenthau's complaint against the
unions would seem to be in need of greater re-
finement.
So long as "the number of people outside the
trade union movement who accept the trade un-
ions exceeds the number of those who believe in
them," there would seem to be little likelihood
that organized labor will be able to control the
government or evade the sanctions of the law
even, assuming as I do not, that it was disposed
to do so.
WHAT I AM SAYING, in effect, is that the
time has not yet come for the government to "put
labor in its place." It would make more sense for
government officials — and for all the rest of us —
to follow the advice of Sec. of Labor Mitchell,
who, in addressing a farewell dinner given in his
honor recently by several hundred career employes
of the Dept. of Labor, stated very eloquently that
anything that might be done to cripple the labor
movement or to hamper its normal growth and
development would be a great disservice not only
to the working people of this country but to the
very cause of democracy itself.
This was sound advice from a dedicated public
servant who rightfully enjoys the widespread
reputation of being perhaps the greatest Secre-
tary of Labor we have ever had and one of our
ablest practitioners in the field of labor-manage-
ment relations.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24. 1960
Page Five
Morgan Says:
Deep Soul-Searching Raises
Hopes for End to Prejudice
Morgan
(This column is excerpted from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the AFL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m., EST.)
HP HE PARALYZING VIOLENCE of a winter
-■- storm reminds me of the violent convulsions
the country is undergoing as it struggles with the
harsh, bitter conflict of racial prejudice. If you
stop to think, this parallel is not so strange as it
may seem.
The storm the Negroes
are struggling against as
they inch forward to grasp
their full constitutional
rights as first-class citizens
— this deep disturbance
must be broken down into
the intimate, bitter, mov-
ing pictures of personal
experience which comprise
the whole. At a seminar
on human relations at the
University of North Caro-
lina in Chapel Hill, I had
the rare privilege of examining some of these
poignant portraits of private human problems.
To stretch the image further, I felt as if I were
looking at fragments of a vast mosaic which
earnest people were trying to put together on an
uneven surface. Just as one fragment would seem
to fit, the surface would quiver and push it out of
place. Here are some of the pieces, candidly dis-
played by Negro and white students of 23 South-
ern colleges and universities attending the semi-
nar:
One day after city buses had been desegregated
in Charlotte, North Carolina, a white girl, who
thought she believed passionately in equal rights,
ran home from school in tears. There had been
one empty seat on the bus next to a neatly-dressed
Negro woman and the girl could not summon the
courage to take it. .
At a dormitory bull session in Chapel Hill,
eight students were discussing segregation.
Suddenly one of them, from Georgia, clapped
his hands to his face and rocked back and forth
on the bed. "I know you're right," he cried
to the others. "I know segregation is wrong.
But I cannot bring myself to reject what I've
been reared to believe." . . .
Saturday, at one of the seminar workshops, a
As We See It:
young man from Duke University hesitantly con-
fessed: "Why, I've never even shaken hands with
a Negro." Quietly, a North Carolina U. Negro
freshman extended his hand across the table. For
agonizing seconds, the hand hung there. Then
slowly, tensely, the veins standing out on his neck,
the Duke man took it. . . .
RESTLESS TO BREAK AWAY from a back-
ground of aristocratic Southern prejudice, another
white student joined a mixed construction gang
last summer. Though they were better skilled
and one or two of them even had more educa-
tion, the Negroes were classified as common
laborers, who could not claim the higher pay of
the white carpenters — though they often did the
latters' jobs.
This same North Carolina University student,
who had never traveled north of Richmond,
Virginia, in his life before, recently went to
New York. There in a bar he fell into lively
conversation with a man about, among other
things, poetry and literature. The man was
colored. Hurrying back to his hotel at 2:30
a. in., the student burst into his room, and ex-
citedly woke his traveling companions. "Listen,
fellows," he shouted, "I've just met a cultured
Negro." . . .
The fragments are innumerable. There was the
Negro exchange student in Germany who mused
that German students could enjoy in the U.S.
rights and privileges which Negroes and other
Americans had fought for against the Nazis in
World War II but which he and his dark-skinned
fellows had to come abroad to taste.
Some of the fragments are beginning to fit. The
white girl on the bus later joined Negro sit-in
demonstrators. The handshake broke the ice for
the Duke and UNC men and the two of them
spent much of a seminar reception talking to-
gether.
The mosaic of understanding has only been
begun. Such seminars as this one on human
rights at the University of North Carolina quicken
the process. But they can't even be held in the
Deep South where they are needed the most. And
there is so much to do and so little time to do it
in, against the world's rising storms of racial
strife.
American Legion Would Back
Strengthened Defense System
T> RES. -ELECT KENNEDY will get the sup-
port of the American Legion if he determines,
after a study, that our defense structure should be
improved, the new national commander of the
Legion said in a broadcast for the ABC radio
network.
William R. Burke of Los Angeles, interviewed
for the AFL-CIO public service program, As We
See It, said Legion members have a keen interest
in the national defense and in the health of the
U. S. economy.
Many thoughtful Americans have been propos-
ing that the nation not only give careful thought
to national defense, but also increase the. defense
effort in some areas, said Burke.
"Pres. - elect Kennedy, as commander-in-
chief (of the Armed Forces) is going to have
to evaluate what is the defense posture of the
U. S. If it requires improvement, then I know
he will recommend it and I know that Amer-
icans, including the AFL-CIO and the Amer-
ican Legion, will support it," he said.
Burke was asked his opinion about the order to
return many dependents of servicemen to this
country from abroad and Kennedy's campaign
suggestion that the nation should send a "peace
corps" overseas.
The Legion presently is studying the order to
return dependents to this country. Burke said.
"We want to determine whether the returning
of the dependents will mitigate against the main-
tenance of a high level of morale," he said. "If
the economic situation is as serious as outlined,
other steps . . . recommended by the President,
ought to be taken.
"Other areas, of government that maintain de-
pendents overseas likewise should restrict depend-
ency travel. The American people who spend $2.8
billion abroad annually in luxury travel should be
requested to cooperate with the government in
halting the flow of gold.
"There are other things which can be done.
I would expect this is just the first step in a
review of what is the mutual security program of
the United States in regard to western Europe."
The new Legion commander said Pres.-elect
Kennedy's suggestion for a "peace corps" would,
if "properly developed," have "a great deal to
recommend it."
The peace corps plan was to send properly
prepared young Americans overseas to teach by
example the advantage of a free society. Burke
recalled that he himself was active in a University
of California at Los Angeles group called the
University Religious Conference. The conference
later helped develop Project India, which trained
UCLA students to meet students from India on
a basis of friendly understanding.
Harry Flannery, program moderator, recalled
that the Legion and the U. S. labor movement
have maintained friendly relations for many years.
The Legion, Burke said, has many labor posts,
with members from AFL-CIO unions and others.
Also it has a rule against involvement in labor
disputes and in politics. An active organizer of
Legion labor posts in California, said Burke, was
C. J. ("Neil") Haggerty, president of the AFL-
CIO Building and Construction Trades Dept., then
executive secretary - treasurer of the California
State AFL-CIO.
your
WASHINGTON
PRES.-ELECT KENNEDY'S principal attention as he prepares
to take up. his new responsibilities obviously must be centered in
the areas of foreign policy and national security. But there are two
chores in the area of plain housekeeping that he should seek to
complete early in his Administration.
The first is to persuade Congress to give statutory status and
authority to the Committee on Government Contracts, the activities
of which he has already said will be assigned to the supervision of
Vice Pres.-elect Johnson. The second is to carry through his indi-
cated intention of obtaining the creation of a Dept. of Urban Affairs,
headed by a secretary with Cabinet rank.
The Committee on Government Contracts exists at present only
by executive order and is hung loosely under the White House
structure. Its stated objective is to make sure that business firms
having lucrative government contracts do not practice racial and
religious discrimination in their employment policies.
It has, however, no authority conferred by Congress and it
has no enforcement powers whatever. It must do its work solely
by informal investigation and persuasion.
It could well be that Mr. Kennedy does not wish to open his
Administration with a bitter civil rights battle. On government
contracts, however, he has precedents from both Mr. Truman and
Pres. Eisenhower in asking that Congress give legislative sanction
and authority to the committee's operations. A renewed recom-
mendation from an incoming President might give the push needed.
£ * * *
AS FOR THE CREATION of a new full-scale department in
the field of urban affairs, headed by a Cabinet member, we have
evidence that a new President can get results when an outgoing
Administration failed or showed disinterest.
Mr. Eisenhower in 1953 asked Congress for establishment of a
Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare to pull together activities
previously scattered through many independent agencies and bu-
reaus or tied into existing departments where they had no proper
place. Congress responded almost instantly, and the department
is in existence.
Mr. Truman for years had requested exactly this step and
Congress turned him down. The principal reason seemed to be
that the legislative leaders knew Mr. Truman intended to appoint
Oscar Ewing, then director of one of the independent agencies,
as the first secretary, and Congress was hostile to Ewing because
he had advocated national health insurance. This was an un-
worthy motive because Ewing was an able and devoted public
servant, but it existed.
Mr. Kennedy has no observable reason to think that as a new
President he would be denied, for political or personal reasons, a
new government department the creation of which he strongly
recommends.
* * *
THE MAJORITY of the American people now live in cities or
their suburbs. They have massive problems involving housing,
streets, sewers, schools, slums, urban redevelopment, and they have
no resources adequate to meet these problems alone.
At the federal level they have no spokesman, no single official
of top rank, who can coordinate federal programs of assistance,
guidance and technical help; who can talk to Congress as the
acknowledged representative of the people living in cities.
A great deal of money already is funneled out to assist the cities
in various projects, but it goes out without coordination and almost
in a haphazard way. In such a situation, waste is almost inevitable
and the vital element of centralized planning is absent.
Our existing departments headed by secretaries of Cabinet rank
have been created, one by one, when the need for them became
apparent. The need for a Dept. of Urban Affairs is urgent.
•••• •••:•••:;••:•:;!::
G. E. LEIGHTY, president of the Railroad Telegraphers and chair-
man of Railway Labor Executives' Association, leaves after a visit
with Pres.-elect Kennedy at latter's home in Washington, D. C. Pres.
Michael Fox of the AFL-CIO Railroad Employes Dept. and Pres.
Harold C. Crotty of the Maintenance of Way Employes also took
part in the meeting with the President-elect.
Page Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1960
NEW CHARTER of the Philadelphia Council of the AFL-CIO was greeted with smiles of congrat-
ulation at the first meeting of the merged central body. Left to right are Henry A. McFarland, AFL-
CIO regional director; Pres. Norman Blumberg, of the council; Joseph Kelley, recording-financial sec-
retary-treasurer; R. J. Thomas and John D. Connors, of the AFL-CIO; William Taylor, assistant
AFL-CIO regional director.
PhiladelphiaAFL-CIO
Chartered in Merger
Philadelphia — Merger of the Philadelphia Central Labor Union
and the Philadelphia Industrial Union Council into the Philadelphia
Council of the AFL-CIO was completed at a charter presentation
meeting.
Delegates elected officers and received a charter from R. J.
Thomas, assistant to AFL-CIO Pres.^
George Meany. Thomas gave the
oath of office for Norman Blum-
berg, new president; Joseph Kelley,
new recording-financial secretary-
treasurer; 18 vice presidents, and
four trustees.
Speakers were Thomas; John D.
Connors, assistant to Meany; Dir.
James L. McDevitt of the AFL-
CIO Committee on Political Educa-
tion; Pres. James Tate of the Phil-
adelphia City Council; Henry A.
TerzickNamed
As Treasurer
Of Carpenters
Indianapolis — Peter E. Terzick,
editor of The Carpenter mag-
azine for 17 years, has been named
general treasurer of the Carpenters.
Terzick's appointment was made
by Pres. M. A. Hutcheson and ap-
proved by the executive board to
fill the vacancy created by the death
Nov. 16 of Treas. Frank Chapman.
Born in Rossland, B. C, Canada,
Terzick worked his way through
the University of Washington by
toiling in the woods of the North-
west. Later he became a natural-
ized citizen of the United States.
From 1937 to 1943 he edited the
Union Register, still published
weekly by the Carpenters' Western
Council of Lumber and Sawmill
Workers at Portland, Ore. He was
also secretary of the union's Puget
Sound District Council.
Headed Labor Press
Terzick came to Indianapolis in
1943 to work for the Carpenters'
official journal. He has been presi-
dent of the Intl. Labor Press Asso-
ciation, president of the Indiana
State Association for Adult Edu-
cation, and a vice president, Amer-
ican Forestry Association.
Terzick comes from a trade
onion family — his father was ac-
tive in the Western Federation of
Miners.
The December issue of The Car-
penter was the last to be printed
in the Carpenters' printing plant
in Indianapolis after 45 years of
continuous publication there. The
January issue will be produced in
Washington, D. C. The editorial
offices will remain in Indianapolis
until the unions general office
moves to Washington.
McFarland, AFL-CIO regional di-
rector and William B. Taylor, his
assistant.
McDevitt praised local union or-
ganizations and members for their
work in helping to register voters
and to turn out voters Nov. 8 for
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy, Vice
Pres.-elect Lyndon B. Johnson and
other labor-endorsed candidates.
Letters of greeting were read
from AFL-CIO Sec.-Treas. William
F. Schnitzler and Mayor Richardson
Di I worth (D).
Vice presidents are Harry Block,
Thomas DiLauro, Joseph Hueter,
James Jones, Russell Miller, James
Shannon and John Spillane, nom-
inated by the former IUC; John
Burke, Rudy Carraccio, Robert
Gray, Henry Highland, Raymond
Lavin, Robert Lyons, Isidor Me-
lamed, William McEntee, Fred
Rauser, William Ross and I. Her-
man Stern, nominated by the former
CLU.
Trustees are William Miller,
Joseph Lynch, Marie Hutchinson
and Tom Martin.
Negotiations on details of the
merger were conducted over a
period of several months by Thomas
and Connors. The merger agree-
ment had been ratified separately
by the two former central bodies.
Baldante to Head
URW District 7
Akron — John Baldante, field rep-
resentative for the Rubber Workers
since 1939, has been named director
of URW District 7 with head-
quarters in Trenton, N. J. His ap-
pointment was announced by Pres.
George Burdon at the close of a
nve-day executive board meeting.
Baldante, 57, will begin his new
duties Jan. 1 as successor to Joseph
Ugrovitch, acting director. Bal-
dante, a URW representative in
District 7, was the first president
of URW Local 134 in Seymour,
Conn., and has been on the URW
field staff since 1939.
Also announced was the reap-
pointment for two-year terms of
these other, directors: Carl Swartz,
Akron; Salvatore Camelio, Boston,
Mass.; Floyd Robinson, Rock
Island, III.; Floyd Gartrell, Long
Beach, Calif.; Norman Allison, To-
ronto, Ont.; and Ray C. Nixon, At-
lanta, Ga. Rex C. Murray was
named organizational director suc-
ceeding Pres. Burdon.
Bookstaver
To Head New
Department
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
has appointed Alexander Book-
staver of the Ladies' Garment
Workers as director of the newly
established AFL-CIO Dept. of In-
vestment.
The department was authorized
ALEXANDER BOOKSTAVER
by the AFL-CIO Executive Council
last Aug. 15 at its meeting in Chi-
cago. In establishing this new func-
tion of the AFL-CIO, the council
said that a realistic educational pro-
gram would help channel union re-
serve funds into government insured
and guaranteed loans for both con-
struction and mortgages.
The council said there was a
great social need and demand for
decent housing in all areas of the
country, which went unmet during
the extended period of high interest
rates and which shows no immedi-
ate signs of improvement. The
present allowable rates of interest
on government insured and guaran-
teed mortgage loans appear ade-
quate, the council said, but the dis-
counts demanded by lenders from
the face amount of mortgages have
raised the effective rates to usurious
levels in many areas.
Investment of union funds in this
mortgage market, the council said,
could serve three purposes: an ade-
quate return on union funds; the
social purpose of helping build
necessary homes and the necessary
community service of adding a de-
gree of stability to the building and
construction field.
Bookstaver will take over his new
duties on Jan. 15. He has been
with the ILGWU since 1956 as in-
vestment and real estate consultant.
Prior to that time, he had been a
vice president of the Amalgamated
Bank in New York and had 25
years of banking experience in the
New York area.
Reuther Tells Rights Group:
Bias Keeps Negro in
'Constant Recession'
Detroit — Discrimination at the nation's hiring gates keeps Negroes
in a "constant recession," Pres. Walter P. Reuther of the Auto
Workers declared here at a public hearing held by the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission.
The commission, which had previously held hearings in five
southern and five northern or bor-^ -
der cities, came to Detroit, a spokes-
man said, to see how the cily has
handled problems arising out of
discrimination in housing, educa-
tion, administration of justice and
government - related employment.
Dr. John A. Hannah, president of
Michigan State University, is chair-
man of the six-man bipartisan group
established under the 1957 Civil
Rights Act.
The commission to date has
probed denial of voting rights in
Montgomery, Ala., and New
Orleans, education discrimination
in Nashville and Gatlinburg,
Tenn., problems of discrimina-
tion in public and federally-as-
sisted housing at hearings in New
York, Washington, Chicago and
Atlanta, and has held general
hearings similar to Detroit's in
Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Reuther cited major progress
made by labor in opening up job
opportunities for Negroes, but
sharply criticized the major auto
companies for refusing to agree to
anti-discrimination clauses in their
union contracts and for failing to
hire Negroes for office jobs.
Cites General Motors
Noting that General Motors has
not put one Negro in a white collar
job, Reuther declared: "This is an
intolerable, disgraceful situation."
Hannah later told newsmen that
the Big Three auto companies had
been offered a chance to present
testimony, but had declined.
Reuther told the commission
that the new Administration and
Congress should act quickly to
open up "new frontiers of em-
ployment opportunity."
Criticizing Pres. Eisenhower for
having failed "to speak out affirma-
tively in support of Supreme Court
decisions on school desegregation,"
Reuther said White House failure
to provide moral leadership "con-
tributed substantially to the massive
resistance" policies in the South.
He called for a program includ-
ing:
• Federal legislation establishing
a permanent Fair Employment
Practices Commission.
• Carrying out Democratic plat-
form pledges to use the full powers
of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957
and 1960.
• Congressional investigation of
discrimination in apprenticeship
programs in all areas of the nation.
• Technical and financial assis-
tance to school districts facing spec-
ial problems of transition to deseg-
regation.
• An end to the use of federal
funds for segregated housing.
• Changes in congressional pro-
cedures "to restore majority rule."
Declaring that in the absence of
fair employment legislation "there
are still many employers who hire
Negroes only when there are no
other workers available," Reuther
pointed out that "unemployment
among non-whites generally runs
just about double the rate for
whites. It is always a recession for
Negro workers."
Discrimination against the Ne-
gro, Reuther said, "begins long
before he approaches the hiring
gate. In most cases it begins
when he is born into a family
enjoying about half the annual
income of the average white
family."
"Even in our northern cities, the
Negro child is born into a black
ghetto, a slum or near-slum of over-
crowded, inadequate housing," he
said.
"All too frequently he goes to a
school inferior to that attended by
the average white family in the
same city. All too frequently he
drops out of school too soon —
either because his family needs
whatever money he can earn or
because he knows that, even if he
continues, his opportunities of get-
ting employment of as high a level
and with as much pay as a white
person with the same educational
accomplishments are very limited.'*
Reuther declared that civil rights
programs should be accompanied by
programs to establish full produc-
tion and full employment under
which "an open society dedicated
to equal rights can flourish."
New Booklet Outlines
Landrum-Griffin Act
Hope for the future of equitable labor legislation lies in the
hands of a Congress which will "refuse to be misled by false
slogans" and will restorer "proper balance of economic power
between unions and management," the AFL-CIO has reported
in a booklet called Landrum-Griffin.
The booklet is based on a series of articles by J. Albert
Woll, AFL-CIO general counsel, first printed in the AFL-CIO
Federationist from May through August 1960. Divided into
sections dealing with the "bill of rights/' union reports, internal
controls and Taft-Hartley Act amendments, it has a detailed
index and an explanatory introduction.
The "bill of rights" section deals with dues, initiation fees
and assessments; the right to sue; the right to see copies of con-
tracts and a check list of suggestions for local union members
and officers.
Other sections tell about reports and "conflict of interest"
situations; new rules on election of officers and bonding roles;
picketing regulations, "hot cargo" contracts and prehire con-
tracts.
The booklet expresses the hope that the courts will give a
reasonable interpretation of the law, and for a labor board
"more sympathetic than at present" to worker interests.
Copies of Landrum-Griffin are available from the Pamphlet
Division, AFL-CIO Dept. of Publications, 815 Sixteenth
Street, N. W., Washington 6, D. C. Single copies of the book,
publication No. Ill, are free. Additional copies are 15 cents
apiece for up to 100 copies, $9 for each 100 copies.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, I960
Pa^e Seven
Kennedy Appointments Praised;
Soviet Blamed for Fomenting
Racial Hatred in Africa
New York— The Soviet Union is fomenting and financing racialism in Africa directed against whites
as part of the Communist campaign to establish its hegemony over the continent, Jay Lovestone,
director of publications of the AFL-CIO Dept. of Intl. Affairs, charged here.
Addressing the Italian-American Labor Council, Lovestone said that as the "menace of^ racialism
recedes in the Free World, Moscow is inflaming Africans against whites in the Free World."
This is being done through the^
Communist-front World Federation
of Trade Unions, the Intl. Afro-
Asian Solidarity Committee, and
the World Peace Council, he de-
clared.
Guest of honor at the labor
council luncheon was Ambassa-
dor Egidio Ortona, permanent
representative of Italy to the UN,
who said that the Khrushchev
assault upon the UN was intended
to weaken the respect and pres-
Reapportionment Case
Appealed to High Court
Michigan State AFL-CIO Pres. August Scholle has asked the
U.S. Supreme Court to consider his suit to force equitable redistrict-
ing of the state Senate.
Appealing from a 5-to-3 ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court
holding that the courts are powerless to interfere with legislative ap-
portionment, attorneys pointed out^
that since the state court's decision,
the U.S. Supreme Court had:
• Agreed to hear arguments in
a suit brought by Tennessee city
dwellers seeking redistricting of the
rural-dominated legislature.
• Reversed a lower court action
dismissing a complaint brought by
Negroes in Tuskegee, Ala., charg-
ing racial discrimination in a re-
districting law.
Both elements were present in
Michigan, attorneys asserted in the
request for a hearing by the Su-
preme Court.
Pointing out that there are 13
times as many people living in
Scholle's state senatorial district as
in the least populous senate district
— as contrasted with a maximum
10-to-l under-representation in the
Tennessee case — -the petition de-
clared:
"The underrepresented voters
of Michigan, as those of Tennes-
see, and of Alabama and else-
where, cry out to this court to
be heard — against the invidious
discrimination that makes a
mockery of their right of fran-
chise, against the subtle as well
as overt dilution of their votes
as otherwise guaranteed by this
court under the 14th Amend-
ment."
Pointing out that the urban areas
which are discriminated against in
the apportionment of legislative dis-
tricts are also those in which there
is the largest proportion of Negroes
and other minority groups, the pe-
tition declared that the legislative
malapportionment "reflects racial
discrimination in result, if not nec-
essarily in intent."
The statement submitted by coun-
sel for the state AFL-CIO chal-
lenged the validity of a 1952 con-
stitutional amendment which per-
manently "froze" the existing sena-
torial districts. Although previous
to the 1952 amendment the districts
were supposed to have been based
on population, they had not been
reapportioned since 1925 and were
heavily disproportionate by 1952.
Since then, the statement declared,
the malapportionment has become
worse and if present population
trends continue, 1970 will find some
districts with 25 times trie popu-
lation of others.
The lawyers asked the U.S. Su-
preme Court to rule on whether
the 14th Amendment, providing
due process and prohibiting states
from denying any person "the
equal protection of the laws,"
prohibits the establishment by a
state of* legislative districts grossly
unequal in population or "lack-
ing any discernible, rational, uni-
form, non-arbitrary and non-dis-
criminatory basis of representa-
tion whatever.'*
tige of the world body among
the newly-admitted African coun-
tries.
"If, however, we resist the Soviet
Union's attempts to undermine the
organization," he said, "we will find
that she will withdraw from her ex-
treme position of criticism in the
awareness that too many assaults,
too many vicious attacks, against
the UN will alienate her from the
sympathy of the large mass of the
new member countries."
Appointments Praised
The Italian diplomat had high
praise for the appointments by
Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy of
Dean Rusk, Chester Bowles, Adlai
E. Stevenson and G. Mennen Wil-
liams to top State Dept. posts. He
characterized these designations "as
"an impressive effort on . the part
of the incoming Administration to
stress to the world America's tire-
less belief in international coopera-
tion, in constructive and enlight-
ened leadership."
Another speaker was Anna Keth-
ly, former minister of state in the
ill-fated Imre Nagy government
which came to power during the
1956 Hungarian revolution. The
Nagy government ruled only briefly
before Communists tanks and guns
crushed the revolt. Nagy was sub-
sequently executed.
Mrs. Kethly pleaded for the
Free World to remember the
plight of Soviet-dominated coun-
tries in eastern Europe and said
that "a just solution of the Hun-
garian problem is a sine qua non
for the achievement of world
peace." She praised the Italian
government and the American
labor movement for supporting
the struggle for a free Hungary.
The luncheon was part of the
Italian-American Labor Council's
annual conference. The council
consists of trade unionists of Ital-
ian origin. Its president, who was
re-elected, is Luigi Antonini, first
vice president of the Ladies' Gar-
ment Workers.
TURKISH TRADE UNION LEADERS, free for the first time to
visit the United States, present a hand-made tile to AFL-CIO Scc-
Treas,. William F. Schnitzler as a fraternal gift from the Turkish
Confederation of Trade Unions to the AFL-CIO. Making the
presentation, left to right, are: Hasan Ozgunes, Celal Beyaz and
Burhanettin Asutay.
Six Turkish Unionists
Visit Key U. S. Cities
Six Turkish trade union leaders have arrived in the United States,
accepting an invitation originally extended eight years ago by a vice
president of the Meat Cutters, Leon B. Schachtcr, then labor adviser
to the U.S. Economic Mission in Turkey.
Their visit is regarded as a sign that the new Turkish regime has
scrapped the program of harass-^
ment and enforced isolation of un-
ions which marked the last years
of the administration of deposed
Premier Adnan Menderes.
Several of the visiting union-
ists, all members of the executive
council of the Turkish Confed-
ertion of Trade Unions, had been
imprisoned for their union activi-
ties and their unions had been
barred by the government from
affiliation with the Intl. Confed-
eration of Free Trade Unions.
The federation has since joined
the ICFTU.
The Turkish unionists — Hasan
Ozgunes, Celal Beyaz, Burhanettin
Asutay, Bahir Ersoy, Ahmet Aras
and Hasan Akaga — will visit a num-
ber of industrial centers in the U.S.
under the sponsorship of the Intl.
Cooperation Administration.
The group visited the AFL-CIO
WARNING THAT MOSCOW is fomenting racial hate in Africa was sounded at annual conference
of Italian-American Labor Council in New York. Left to right are: Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky of
Clothing Workers; Egidio Ortona, Italian Ambassador to the United Nations; Anna Kethly, former
Minister of State in Hungary's brief-lived free government; Jay Lovestone, director of publications
for the AFL-CIO Dept. of International Affairs; Luigi Antonini, president of the council and vice
president of the Ladies' Garment Workers, and Manlio Brosio, Italy's Ambassador to the U.S. The
council is made up of American trade unionists of Italian origin.
ICFTU Asks U.N.
Algerian Inquiry
Brussels — The Intl. Confeder-
ation of Free Trade Unions, ex-
pressing deep shock at "the appall-
ing loss of life in Algeria," has asked
the United Nations immediately to
investigate recent disorders in the
North African country seeking its
independence of France.
ICFTU Gen. Sec. Omer Becu
said reports from the General Un-
ion of Algerian Workers (UGTA)
indicate that hundreds of people
have been killed and wounded in
riots involving Algerians and
French settlers opposed to Algerian
independence.
'The free labor movement pays
tribute to (French) Pres. <Ie Gaulle's
continuing efforts in favor of self-
determination for the Algerian peo-
ple," he went on, "but "we do not
undestimate the strength of the re-
actionary colonialists forces which
now appear to be indulging in sheer
terrorism."
George Lodge Asked
To Stay in Office
Pres.-elect John F. Ken-
nedy has asked George C.
Lodge, 33, son of the unsuc-
cessful Republican vice presi-
dential candidate, to stay on
as Assistant Sec. of Labor for
Intl. Affairs until next June.
The decision to keep Lodge
on after the Kennedy Admin-
istration takes office was based
on the fact that Lodge's one-
year term as chairman of the
governing body of the IntL
Labor Organization will not
expire until June.
headquarters and presented a hand-
made Turkish tile to AFL-CIO Seo
Treas. William F. Schnitzler as a
gift from Turkish labor to the
American labor movement. Sec-
Treas. James B. Carey of the AFL-
CIO Industrial Union Dept. was
host to the group at a luncheon
given by the department.
Lane Kirkland
Is Appointed
Meany Aide
Lane Kirkland, research and edu-
cation director for the Operating
Engineers, has been appointed exec-
utive assistant to the president of
the AFL-CIO.
Kirkland, who was formerly as-
sistant director of the AFL-CIO
•':': : : : : : x : :v'>x : : : x ; : : : : : ; ::::':'::
LANE KIRKLAND
Dept. of Social Security, will take
over his new duties shortly after
the first of the year, AFL-CIO Pres.
George Meany said.
Kirkland has been with the Op-
erating Engineers since 1958. He
is married, has five daughters and
makes his home in Silver Spring,
Md.
ACW Names Samuel,
Brandzel as Aides
New York — The executive board
of the Clothing Workers has named
Howard D. Samuel assistant to
Pres. Jacob S. Potofsky and Sol
Brandzel assistant to Sec.-Treas.
Frank Rosenblum.
Both Samuel and Brandzel are
veteran ACW staff members.
Samuel has been director of the
Union Label Dept., the Sidney Hill-
man Foundation and the union's
political activities. Brandzel, before
joining the national staff about a
year ago, was assistant manager of
the union's Chicago Joint Board.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NE\TS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1960
British Health Plan
A Success, Look Says
(Continued from Page 1)
health care program, and added:
44 It has concentrated tremendous
propaganda efforts on discrediting
the British system and in blocking
any form of a national health pro-
gram here." Look then gave this
point-by-point answer to the AMA's
"criticisms" of the plan in opera-
tion in Britain:
1. Although the AM A claims
"there is no free choice of doc-
tors . . . anyone can choose any
NHS doctor in his district as his
regular physician." Since 97 per-
cent of British medical men are
in NHS, "choice is not limited."
2. It is not true that British doc-
tors are "forced to take too many
patients to make a living." The
maximum number of patients a
doctor may have is 3,500, the aver-
age is 2,267. Doctors receive the
same fixed annual fee, based on the
number of patients, but those with
between 500 and 1,500 patients re-
ceive a higher rate per patient.
"This encourages the physician not
to take on too many patients."
3. British doctors are not "forced
to seek private patients" to sup-
plement their incomes. NHS "has
been so popular that the percentage
of income from private practice" is
•'very small." Physicians in Brit-
ain "are better off financially than
before the war." Independent com-
mittees review their incomes peri-
odically, and recommend raises to
maintain professional status.
In addition, doctors get extra
payment for maternity services, for
treating temporary residents, for
training assistants, for clinic work,
for school and factory sessions and
receive "liberal expense-account de-
ductions, generous pensions and
mileage allowances in rural areas,"
and "special hardship allowances"
go to elderly doctors with few pa-
tients and to young men starting out
in practice.
4. It is untrue that "patients
receive inadequate care from
overworked doctors." Independ-
ent studies show that "doctors
are generally working fewer
hours" and there is "no shortage"
of medical men.
5. The AMA is wrong in saying
that "the medical standards of
British practitioners are below"
those of the U.S. "British doctors
refute the charge vigorously. They
also note that, under NHS, de-
bates over fee splitting, unneces-
sary surgery and similar questions
that enliven U.S. medical periodi-
cals have practically ceased in
Britain. Such abuses are no longer
necessary."
6. If the health plan "interposes"
the government between patient and
doctor, British medical men "rarely
complain of any interference." In
general, doctors "control their own
discipline," and a physician "runs
afoul of the government only for
unethical practices."
"All that NHS has done is to
remove the financial factor from
the doctor-patient relationship.
The records that the NHS doctor
is obligated to keep are more
than offset by the gain of not
having to send out bills. He can
now prescribe any treatment to
his patient, with medical need —
not financial status — as the sole
yardstick."
7. At the beginning, the insured
medical care program "brought an.
influx of hypochondriacs to doc-
tor's offices," but this has now
tapered off.
The main cause of the initial
heavy demand, however, was not
hypochondria but "the flood of
pent-up demands" for adequate
care. The biggest cost of the pro-
gram today is for filling prescrip-
tions, but in British eyes these costs
"prove the need for NHS."
Private Doctors Reap
Subsidy, Expert Says
The American public subsidizes doctors in private practice to the
tune of $8 billion annually by providing them with hospital build-
ings, equipment and personnel to carry out what is both a profes-
sional service and "a private, competitive business," Michael M.
Davis, nationally known medical economist, has declared.
Fifty years ago, Davis declared,^
the voluntary non-profit hospitals'
in the country served "charity pa-
tients" almost exclusively, and
medical staffs "gave their services
to these patients without charge."
Today, he added, 80 percent of the
440,000 beds in these voluntary
hospitals are for patients "who pay
their doctors directly or through an
insurance plan."
The capital investment in the
beds occupied by paying patients is
roughly $7 billion — an average of
Smith to Succeed
Kennedy in Senate
Boston — Gov. Foster Furcolo
(D) has announced he will ap-
point Benjamin H. Smith II, for-
mer Democratic mayor of Glouces-
ter, to the Senate seat being va-
cated by Pres.-elect John F. Ken-
nedy.
Smith, 43, was a classmate of
Kennedy's at Harvard and served
as a lieutenant in the Navy during
World War II. He will fill the
Senate seat until 1962 when a spe-
cial election will be held for the
balance of Kennedy's term which
expires in 1964.
In Palm Beach, Fla., Kennedy
was described by Pres. Sec. Pierre
Salinger as ''extremely pleased" at
Furcolo's decision to name Smith
and praised the "cooperative spirit"
shown by the outgoing Bay State
governor.
$70,000 worth of buildings and
equipment placed "without charge"
at the disposal of each of the 100,-
000 physicians who make use of
these hospital facilities, he pointed
out.
The medical economist said
that "we subsidize the doctors in
addition" by providing him also
with the free use of nurses and
other personnel for the . care of
his private patients. For each of
the 100,000 doctors involved, he
continued, this is an additional
$10,000-a-year subsidy — a total
of $1 billion annually.
Davis contended that "we sub-
sidize the private practice of doc-
tors to a greater degree than any
other body of professional practi-
tioners."
Harvard Sets Date
For Union Course
Boston — Harvard University has
announced the 29th session of its
Trade Union Program, an intensive
13-week course for union officers
and staff representatives. The ses-
sion will run from Feb. 22 to May
19.
A new course in health and wel
fare program administration has
been added to the curriculum at the
suggestion of the Trade Union Pro-
gram Alumni Association, made up
of the more than 400 union repre-
sentatives who have completed the
program since it was initiated.
LIFE-SIZE ANIMALS such as these are delighting children at the Louisville Free Public Library,
thanks to the Kentucky State AFL-CIO. Miss Gladys Spain, art teacher at Louisville Central High,
made the seven papier-mache animals for a State AFL-CIO exhibit at the Kentucky State Fair .at
the request of Scott Cole of the federation's education and research department. Federation
Executive Sec.-Treas. Sam Ezelle then had them sent to the library children's department. The most
popular animals — the Tired Lion, the Cub-Carrying Kangaroo and the Cross-Eyed Giraffe.
Conpensation
'Experience'
Rating Assailed
Trenton, N. J. — The New Jersey
State Industrial Union Council has
called on the state legislature to re-
ject proposals for increasing the
maximum unemployment compen-
sation insurance tax under a pro-
gram linked to the present "expe-
rience-rating" system.
Denouncing the "experience-
rating" provisions of the present
law, which lowers taxes for compa-
nies with few compensation claims,
IUC Pres. Joel R. Jacobson said
the system "constitutes a built-in
incentive for the employer to seek
to deny benefits to every claimant."
Enactment of a proposal to re-
tain the present system and raise
the tax, Jacobson said in letters to
all members of the legislature,
"would place an even more dis-
proportionate burden on the shoul-
ders of the state's smaller employ-
ers," and would mean "fewer and
less benefits" for jobless workers.
As an alternative, the IUC
urged adoption of a proposal to
increase the tax base from the
first $3,000 in earnings to $3,600.
Jacobson called this "a fairer
method of financing. 99
N. J. Council Seeks
New Health Plan
Newark — Executive board mem-
bers of the New Jersey State In-
dustrial Union Council have author-
ized council officers to seek estab-
lishment of a medical-surgical bene-
fit plan providing fully-paid bene-
fits for ailing workers and their
families without additional pay-
ments to doctors.
State Pres. Joel R. Jacobson and
Sec.-Treas. Victor Leonardis said
the intention is to help launch a re-
placement for the Blue Shield plan,
under frequent attack for what the
two men called "too frequent and
unjustified increases" in rates.
The two officers said they will
also seek repeal of a New Jersey
law which provides that the Medical
Society of New Jersey must ap-
prove appointment of 51 percent
of all trustees, as well as operations
of medical-surgical insurance plans.
Automation Breeds
New Safety Problems
Saginaw, Mich. — Automation
tends to reduce most types of on-
the-job accidents but it may create
a new set of problems, according to
a National Safety Council consult-
ant, Glenn Griffin.
Griffin told a University of Mich-
igan conference that "boredom and
frustration" by the tenders of auto-
•mated equipment .may lead to acci-
dent-provoking carelessness.
Recession Spotlights
Crisis in Jobless Aid
(Continued from Page J)
deliberate a broader proposal — one
which would appropriate federal
funds so each state would pay ben-
efits of at least half the claimant's
wages, up to a maximum of two-
thirds of the state's average 1959
weekly wage, for a period not ex-
ceeding 39 weeks. The effect would
be to raise temporarily both the
amount and duration of benefits.
At the same time, Congress
may take up' the question of
those who have already exhausted
their benefits and are still job-
less. One suggestion has been
to cover these idled workers, as
well, on the same basis, recom-
puting their weekly amounts to
take into account the higher bene-
fit levels.
Such a program, congressional
supporters indicate, would not only
help ease the recession's impact on
jobless families but would pour in
federal funds to provide a substan-
tial increase in sagging consumer
buying power and thus prevent a
further spread of the economic
decline.
Federal Standards Urged
Behind any such emergency
measures will continue to loom the
question of permanent reform of
the jobless benefit system — a re-
form which will take a longer pe-
riod of time to become effective
because states would have to bring
themselves into conformity.
In recent years Congress has
been asked, on several occasions,
to greatly broaden coverage un-
der the unemployment insurance
system and to enact federal stand-
ards, below which the states
could not fall, dealing with the
amount and duration of benefits,
and setting out standards on wage
qualifying requirements.
The most common standards sug-
gested are those put forward two
years ago by the labor arid public
members of the Federal Advisory
Council on Employment Security
calling for benefits equal to at least
half the individual's normal wage
or two-thirds of a state's average
weekly wage, whichever is less, for
a flat 26-week period.
New York Unions Join
In New Pharmacy Plan
New York— A non-profit chain of pharmacies, serving only
members of sponsoring unions, will be set up here as a pioneering
step to bring down the high cost of prescription drugs.
Medstore Plan, Inc. has been launched by 13 unions and welfare
plans in the New York area with a combined membership of
350,000. Each of the sponsors in-^
vested $1 per member to launch
the project.
Pres. Paul Hall of the Seafarers,
acting chairman of the Medstore
board of directors, said he expects
a number of additional unions to
join the program by the time the
first retail outlet is opened in mid-
Manhattan early in 1961. The
time table calls for opening phar-
macies in each of the city's other
four boroughs shortly thereafter.
Sponsors expect the non-prof-
it operation to make possible
savings of at least 30 percent on
prescription costs. A further
goal, Hall indicated, is to develop
data on which to base a prepay-
ment drug insurance program to
meet the costs of prescriptions
in the same manner as hospital
and other medical expenses.
To help bring this about, Hall
stated, Medstore will cooperate
with the Health Insurance Plan of
Greater New York in research into
family utilization and costs of pre-
scription drugs to "develop the
actuarial basis for a sound insur-
ance program for drugs."
He emphasized that the program
"is not designed to replace the
neighborhood drug store."
The new Medstores will not have
lunch counters and will not com-
pete in the wide range of non-
pharmaceutical products now car-
ried by most drug stores.
yd. v
Itsitd weekly at 815 Sixteenth St., M.W..
Washington 6, D. C. *2 a year
Second Class Postage Paid at Washlnaton, D. C.
Saturday, December 31, 1960
No. 53
High Unemployment Poses
Challenge for 1961 -Meany
Hope Seen Under
New Leadership
T>R*WK F oR. THE
AFUC10 news
As Congress IS ears Opening:
Kennedy Promises
To Promote Growth
By Gene Zack*
The 87th Congress prepared to open its session Jan. 3 against
the backdrop of a pledge by Pres. -elect John F. Kennedy that his
new Administration would seek to "return to the spirit as well as
the letter" of the Employment Act of 1946.
The new Congress — which the Democrats control by margins of
65-35 in the Senate and 262-174 in<S>
the House, with one House race
still undecided — is expected to re-
ceive specific proposals early in the
Kennedy Administration to check
the deepening recession.
Kennedy, Vice Pres. -elect Lyn-
don B. Johnson and top Democratic
congressional leaders recently ex-
pressed "concern" over mounting
unemployment and the "lack of
vigor in the economy." They fore-
cast early action on distressed
areas, minimum wages, health care
for the aged, aid to education and
housing legislation.
(Continued on Page 7)
Commission
Begins Rail
Rules Study
A 15-member presidential com
mission has begun an historic 11-
month search for a solution to
the railroad industry's bitter work
rules dispute — away from the
pressure of the bargaining table.
The commission, equally di
vided among labor, management
and public members, will be head-
ed by Labor Sec. James P. Mitch-
ell whose appointment as chairman
had been urged by both unions and
management. Mitchell was the mid-
dleman last October when a nation
wide railroad strike was averted by
the agreement to ask the Presi-
(Con tinned on Page 2)
The "No. 1 challenge" facing the nation in 1961 is to "put
America back to work," AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany has declared
in his annual New Year's statement.
American labor, he said, believes the coming year will mark "the
beginning of a new era of progress" both for the nation and for the
cause of world freedom. At the^ :
same time he cautioned that the
first few months could bring
"troublesome" unemployment at
home and a "series of crises"
abroad.
The nation's trade unionists,
he said, "see many grave prob-
lems facing the nation in the next
few months; but we look for-
ward to a vigorous, imaginative
effort to solve them which will
bring new enthusiasm to our peo-
ple and a new push forward to-
ward the achievement of the
American ideal of a good life
for all."
Meany declared: "As Franklin
D. Roosevelt proved so dramati-
cally 28 years ago, the distress of
the moment is easier to endure
when the people have hope for the
future. We believe the new Ad-
ministration will inspire that feeling
of hope."
Emergency Action Urged
America's goals in 1961, Meany
said, should include:
• "Emergency" measures to
meet the problem of mounting job-
lessness in order "to avert wide-
spread hardship."
• Enactment of area redevelop-
ment legislation, minimum wage
improvements, health care for the
aged, aid to education and compre-
hensive public housing which, in
the past, have been "blocked by a
reactionary coalition in Congress,
buttressed by a deeply conservative
Administration."
• Vigorous action by the new
Administration "to restore our de-
fenses, re-invigorate our foreign pol-
icy and re-examine, in the most
practical and tough-minded way,
our relationships both with our al-
lies and with the Soviet bloc."
• Prompt congressional action
to legalize jobsite picketing of
multi-contractor projects by build-
ing trades unions. "Nearly every-
one favors it," Meany said, "but it
has been repeatedly shunted aside."
• Correction of the overall pol-
icy of the National Labor Relations
Board "which for nearly a decade
(Continued on Page 8)
Prices Inch
Upward to
New High
By Robert B. Cooney
The nation's cost of living
edged upward to a new record
in November, the government has
reported.
The Labor Dept.'s Bureau of
Labor Statistics said the Consum-
er Price Index rose by 0.1 per-
cent between October and No-
vember to 127.4. This was the
ninth increase of 1960.
The November CPI means the
market basket which cost $10 in
the 1947-49 base period now costs
$12.74.
The latest increase was due to
a counter-seasonal advance in
food prices — the first October-
to-November food price rise
since 1951 — and an increase in
the cost of services. The latter
boost was traced to higher movie
prices and hikes in hospitaliza-
tion insurance premiums.
A companion report on net
spendable earnings showed the buy-
ing power of factory workers is
about the same now as it was five
years ago.
Robert J. Myers, deputy com-
missioner of BLS, told reporters
(€ontinued on Page 8)
Executive Council
Will Meet Jan. 5
The AFL-CIO Executive
Council will hold a special
one-day meeting on Jan. 5,
Pres. George Meany has an-
nounced.
The session, the first of the
new year, will be held in
AFL-CIO headquarters in
Washington.
Page Two
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
TRIPARTITE COMMISSION set up to seek solution to work rules dispute on the nation's railroads
meets with the President at the White House. Seated, left to right: J. E. Wolfe, Chicago, Burlington
& Quincy RR; Labor Sec. James. P. Mitchell, chairman of the commission; Pres. Eisenhower; S. C.
Phillips, Locomotive Firemen, and J. W. Fallon, Switchmen. Standing: Thomas A. Jerrow, Great
Northern Railway; Harry F. Sites, Trainmen; B. B. Bryant, Chesapeake & Ohio Railway; Daniel
P. Loomis, Association of American Railroads; Francis J. Robertson^ Russell A. Smith and Charles
A. Myers, public members; A. F. Zimmerman, Locomotive Engineers; Sherman W. Holliday, Con-
ductors, and Guy W. Knight, Pennsylvania RR. John T. Duniop, a public member, was not in photo.
Secretary-Designate Sets Goals :
Goldberg to Stress
Growth, Labor Peace
The Labor Dept. in the Kennedy Administration will place special
emphasis on the improvement of labor-management relations and
a faster rate of growth in the American economy.
These major goals were pinpointed by Sec. of Labor-designate
Arthur J. Goldberg at his first press conference since, announcement
of his selection by Pres. -elect John^
Mitchell Heads Study
Of Rail Work Rules
(Con tinned from Page 1)
dent to appoint a tripartite com-
mission which will make non-bind-
ing recommendations.
The commission, which met
briefly at the White House, will
meet again on Jan. 6 and is sched-
uled to make its final report by
Dec. 1, 1961. Mitchell has ex-
pressed the hope that the process,
of fact-finding and study will make
possible a negotiated settlement
before that date.
Mitchell is. one of five public
members on the commission. The
others are Harvard Prof. John T.
Duniop, a prominent arbitrator;
Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology economist Charles A. Myers;
Francis J. Robertson, Washington,
D. C, attorney and arbitrator, and
Russell A. Smith, Ann Arbor,
Mich., arbitrator.
To be referred to the commis-
sion are the sharply differing con-
tract proposals submitted by the
five operating brotherhoods and
by management.
Rail management, after a mas-
sive propaganda buildup aimed at
pinning a "featherbedding" label on
railroad workers, has submitted pro-
posals seeking a virtually free hand
to eliminate jobs, change the mile-
age-pay ratio and do away with
long-standing work rules which the
unions insist are essential to safety.
The operating unions have coun-
tered with demands for major im-
provements in working conditions,
including a night differential, stand-
ard overtime provisions, payment
for time spent away from home and
other benefits long established in
other industries.
Chiefs of the five operating un-
ions declared in a joint statement
that the commission members are
faced with 4 *a historic challenge.**
They added:
"Efficient and safe rail opera-
Mitchell to Open^
New York Office
See. of Labor' James P.
Mitchell has announced that
he will open an office in New
York City on or about Feb.
15, 1961, to provide consult-
ing services to several indus-
trial and business concerns.
The secret an "s consulting
activities will be in addition
to his chairmanship of the
Presidential Railroad Com-
mission announced by the
White House recently.
tions, adequate earnings and ade-
quate profits are important con-
siderations as we enter into this
study but so, too, are the human
values of a man's job, his craft
and traditions and his oppor-
tunity to build a future in an im-
portant industry."
They said Mitchell's willingness
as. outgoing, Labor Secretary to ac-
cept the assignment ''illustrates
once more his dedication to public
service and his sincere interest in
the workers of this great nation."
Labor members of the presiden-
tial commission, all officers of their
respective unions, are: A. F. Zim-
merman, Locomotive Engineers;
S. C. Phillips, Firemen & Engine-
men; S. W. Holliday, Conductors;
H. F. Sites, Trainmen, and J. W.
Fallon, Switchmen.
Military Kin
To Return on
U.S. Transport
The Defense Dept. has assured
Maritime Union Pres. Joseph Cur-
ran that it does not contemplate
using foreign airlines to transport
families of military personnel being
returned to the U.S. under the cur-
rent program of cutting the number
of dependents overseas.
The assurances came in response
to a telegram which Curran sent to
Pres. Eisenhower in the wake of
press reports that some families had
returned on foreign planes.
Deputy Assistant Defense Sec.
Thomas C. Werbe, Jr., wrote Cur-
ran that the flight in question was
made up of "dependents not en-
titled to government transporta-
tion, " and that "the funds for the
flight were not government but
rather the private funds of the
travelers/'
Rail Unions Ask Public
Protection in Mergers
The nation's rail unions, warning that the current wave of rail-
road consolidations will set back the' entire economy, have called
for a freeze on all pending merger proposals until "adequate safe-
guards" for the public interest are enacted.
The Railway Labor Executives' Association sharply criticized
approval given by the Interstate^
Commerce Commission to a series
of job-cutting railroad mergers in
recent years and described the lack
of concern for the adverse effects
on workers as "shocking and insidi-
ous."
Rail ^transportation, the RLEA
declared, "should properly be the
responsibility of a public agency
that is aware of the needs of an
expanding economy — an agency
that is not ridden with bureaucratic
incompetence and dominated by the
interests it is supposed to regulate/*
Declaring that the loss of
thousands of jobs which accom-
pany railroad mergers results
from termination of railroad
service to vast areas of the na-
tion, the RLEA said continued
mergers ''would leave our rail-
road network so greatly curtailed
that it would not be able to meet
the future transportation needs
of the nation.'*
'The only people who benefit
from consolidations are the finan-
ciers and stockholders who control
the railroads." the union leaders
added.
"Essential sectors of the world's
greatest system of railroad trans-
portation are being chopped to
pieces by financial interest groups
to gain immediate personal profits,*'
the statement charged.
The RLEA said consideration of
the public interest in rail mergers
has been steadily weakened since
the Transportation Act of 1940
replaced the 1920 act which was
designed to preserve competition
and maintain existing -routes of
commerce.
While the specific provisions of
the 1920 law may not be applicable
to present conditions, the RLEA
said, "a return at least to the public
interest philosophy of the 1920 act
is needed.'*
Texas Apprentice
Contest June 14-17
Ft. Worth, Tex. — The eighth an-
nual union-management apprentice-
ship contest of the Texas plumbing
and pipe fitting industry will be held
here June 14 to 17, 1961. Some
200 apprentices, instructors and
union and management officials are
expected to participate.
F. Kennedy.
Goldberg told reporters that he
had received letters congratulating
him on his appointment from Ar-
thur H. Motley, president of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and
Charles R. Sligh, executive vice
president of the National Associa-
tion of Manufacturers.
Cooperation Accepted
Goldberg '•gratefully accepted"
their offers of '"full cooperation,"
pointing out that the Labor Dept.
is not a '"class department" but
"promotes the welfare of all Amer-
icans."
He said in his letters to Motley
and Sligh:
"I am hopeful that during my
tenure of office the Dept. of Labor
will be able, in addition to perform-
ing its usual functions, to make a
substantial contribution in two
vitally important areas: the im-
provement of labor-management re-
lations and the growth of the Amer-
ican economy."
The Secretary-designate in re-
ply to questions referred to his
years dedicated to the improve-
ment of labor-management rela-
tions and to his deep belief that
this relationship can be improved
by more effective communication
between business, labor and gov-
ernment.
He termed the unemployment
situation "serious" and pointed out
that Kennedy was especially quali-
fied in this area in terms of his leg-
islative experience and his specific
work on bills dealing with unem-
ployment problems. He reaffirmed
that the Employment Act of 1946
must continue to have a significant
part in setting a national economic
policy calling for maximum pro-
duction and maximum employment.
Praises Mitchell
Goldberg said he expected to
achieve improved liaison between
the Labor Dept., the Commerce
Dept. and the President's Council
of Economic Advisers and reported
that he had received a cordial
wire on his appointment from
Commerce Sec. -designate Luther
Hodges.
Goldberg praised Pres. Eisen-
hower's Labor Secretary, James P.
Mitchell, for an "outstanding job"
and said he had invited Mitchell to
advise on future functions of the
department. He told reporters that
he has a tremendous respect for
the career service built up in the
department and that he will con-
tinue to respect this service in per-
sonnel appointments.
On future relationships between
the labor movement and the Labor
Dept., Goldberg stressed that the
labor movement has always main-
tained its independence from the
government and that "the labor
movement will be making its de-
cisions by itself as it should."
Asked about his role in regard
to the charges involving the Team-
sters Union, Goldberg replied, "I
will enforce the laws 1 am responsi-
ble for administering with vigor and
fairness, without fear or favor and
with common sense.'*
He said he will sever relation-
ships with his law firms in Wash-
ington and Chicago and with all
of his clients as of Jan. 1. There
will be a "complete, definitive
and final severance," he stressed,
adding "I do not expect to re-
turn to this practice when I leave
the government."
He emphasized also that he will
have no deferred retainer or com-
pensation arrangements with former
clients or his former law firms after
Jan. 1.
When he became general counsel
of the former CIO in the late 40*s,
he disposed at that time of his stock
in private investments, such as it
was, he said, and invested in real
estate holdings. He added that he
plans to remove from himself any
power of decision and direction of
such holdings in the future.
Goldberg has acted as special
counsel of the AFL-CIO, general
counsel of the Steelworkers and
general counsel of the federation's
Industrial Union Dept. In addition,
he has represented as special coun-
sel, Washington counsel or on an
individual case basis about a dozen
affiliated unions of the AFL-CIO.
Survivors of Ship Fire
Seek to Halt Layoffs
Brooklyn — Congress and Pres.-elect John F. Kennedy will be
asked by the Brooklyn Metal Trades Council to provide some kind
of temporary work for 4,000 yard workers facing layoffs because
of the disastrous fire on the carrier Constellation, Council Pres.
Ralph G. Henry said.
Council members, already con-^
cerned by a drop from 16,000 to
13,000 in yard employment, hope
the Kennedy Administration will
reverse the policy of awarding ship-
building contracts to private yards
instead of Navy yards.
Last August the council sent a
2,000-worker caravan to Wash-
ington to plead with the Navy to
divert more work to the Brook-
lyn yard. Caravan members
said at a public hearing they
feared the Navy would award a
$300-million contract for another
new carrier to the Newport News
(Va.) Shipbuilding Co., biggest
non-union yard in the country, at
Newport News, Va. It is the
second contract in a row to be
awarded to a private yard.
Late in 1960, said Sec. Edward
Cespedes, the Navy announced
award of the contract to the New-
port News firm. Pres. Eisenhower,
acting under the federal Vinson-
Trammell Act of 1934, set aside a
section of the law calling for alter-
nate contract awards to a public
shipyard, then to a private yard in
turn. He passed over the Navy
Yard here Cespedes said, on rec-
ommendation ot* the Defense Dept.
and over the objections of the AFL-
CIO Metal Trades Dept., the un-
ions involved and New York con-
gressmen and senators.
Henry will ask the council to
endorse a request of the New
York fire commissioner for au-
thority to inspect Navy shipyards
for fire hazards.
Unions in the council are the
Patternmakers, Technical Engi-
neers, Cranemen, Foundry Work-
ers, Pipe Coverers, Sheet Metal
Workers, Coppersmiths, Machinists,
Painters, Operating Engineers, Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
Riggers, Pipefitters, Civil Police,
Government Employes, Carpenters
and Welders.
AFT^CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
r*-r Three
'Touch a Worker . . . You Touch a Hero'
Valor Commonplace
At Constellation Fire
By Gene Kelly
Brooklyn — Touch a shipyard worker and you were pretty sure
to touch a hero the day a raging volcano of fire and smoke burned
the heart out of the world's biggest warship, the carrier Constella-
tion, under construction at the Navy Yard here.
The New York Naval Shipyard, commonly known as the Brooklyn
Navy Yard, is, to the men in the^
shipbuilding trade, a union yard.
And the 49 workers who died, and
those who were injured, and the
4.000 who escaped with their lives,
are union people, many of them.
They are government workers, too,
all covered by civil service.
The 49 dead represent almost
every union on the Metal Trades
roster — painters, carpenters, elec-
tricians, ironworkers, machinists,
sheet metalmen, cranemen, rig-
gers, pipefitters, welders, boiler-
makers, to mention a few.
They died in action, Navy admi-
rals said at a memorial service
attended by almost 10,000 survivors
and their families, as surely as if
they had been in a^ship at war.
And the Constellation, when she
is repaired and finally put into
service, will carry with her a bronze
honor roll commemorating the 49
inen who were the first to die on
the $250 million flattop.
Worker Into Hero
So you come to the yard whose
backdrop is the Williamsburg
Bridge and the Empire State build-
ing and the world famous skyline
along the East River. And you
come away with the conviction that
terrible danger and deep tragedy
can transform an ordinary working-
man into a hero by some magic of
human chemistry.
Eddie Cespedes, secretary of the
Brooklyn Metal Trades Council
who has worked 18 years as a
Brooklyn Navy Yard apprentice
and journeyman machinist, put it
this way:
"I can't think of the right
words to tell you about the brav-
ery and the coolness and the
courage of the men who saved
that ship."
And Allen Graham, civilian as-
sistant to the Navy production offi-
cer, said:
"Heroism was commonplace
on the Constellation. You get
cynical in a job like this, but
what I saw was enough to restore
my faith in human nature."
Mike Cervino, of Carpenters'
Local 2031, doesn't look like a
hero and doesn't feel like one. The
only heroes he can identify are the
firemen ^ho groped their way, with
and without masks, in the choking
smoke below decks and in 3,000
unlightcd compartments to drag out
the living and the dead. But Mike
worked for hours to save his fer-
lows, went home and came back to
work some more.
The men who manned the cranes
on the dock where the Constellation
is being built didn't feel like heroes
either. But they lifted hundreds
of trapped workers to safety off the
ship's bow and stern by an in-
genious combination of gangplank
and painters rig, high in the air.
All are members of the riggers'
local, Iron Workers' No. 683.
Crane Operator Saved Many
Robert Adams used his 75-ton
crane on the after end of the ship
to take off 75 men at a time when
the four gangplanks on the 1,047-
foot-long vessel were clogged with
escaping workers. Then the city
firemen came, and Adams moved
them to the flight deck with their
hoses and masks, and stayed at his
post doing rescue chores the rest
of the day.
James Hinkle did the same kind
of a lift-rescue job from his crane
at the bow. And Carl Erickson
operated a 16-foot boat to bring
out rope lines, gas masks, breathing
apparatus, oxygen tanks, acetylene
torches to the sides of the ship
where trapped workers were ham-
mering for attention inside the steel
hull and rescuers were cutting holes
to get them out.
"One guy had his hand out a
hole, and we threw him a line,"
said Erickson. "Then we tied a
cutting tool on the line, and he
burned a big enough hole in the
side to wiggle out, with some
other fellows.
"Out of one hole they took out
45 men. One of the men they got
out was my brother Walter, a ship-
fitter. The guy that got him out
was Hinkle. After about six hours
I couldn't take the smoke any more,
and I had to leave the dock." The
Ericksons are white, Hinkle a
Negro.
There was Tony Mazza, of Car-
penters Local 2031, who took a
flashlight and led 23 men to safety
through the inky blackness of the
smoke below decks, then went back
to find more of his missing men.
Mazza is a leading man, or
A FINAL TRIBUTE to the 49 workers who died in the fire aboard the aircraft carrier Constellation
was paid by most of the 4,000 survivors, and their families, at memorial exercises held in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard three days after flames ate out the heart of the huge vessel.
cil intend to continue the union
crasade for more safety in ship-
building, better housekeeping, less
emphasis on economy where safety
should be the first consideration.
The yard has set up a disaster
committee of vthich Henry is a
member. It hopes to raise per-
haps $50,000 to help destitute
families deprived of a breadwin-
ner.- Meanwhile the unions, the
Navy and other agencies are
moving to protect the rights of
the injured and the dead, and see
that families are aided in getting
alfl the survivor benefits to which
they are entitled.
Eight of the dead were members
of Sheet Metal Local 401. Other
locals lost one or more members.
All will meet soon to discuss the
future of the yard.
supervisor, and could have fled to
safety at the first alarm. But he
stayed for hours, and after a doctor
patched up his injuries, he reported
back to work two days later.
The morning the fire started, six
days before Christmas, Cervino was
on the flight deck with a "closeout"
party, inspecting .finished compart-
ments. He saw jet fuel on the deck,
and Navy Lt. Vito Milano with his
clothing soaked with fuel.
Other witnesses said a fork lift
truck, moving a barrel used to keep
burnable trash off the deck, hit a
steel plate and the razor-sharp plate
sliced the nozzle off a 500-gallon
tank of highly inflammable fuel.
The fuel seeped down an elevatOT
shaft or holes in the deck, hit a
"hot plate" where a welder was at
work, and exploded into flame. The
flame fired scaffolding that covered
most of the forward end of the
flight deck, and soon the fire was
out of control.
"I saw the fuel on the deck,"
said Cervino, "and figured it was
just another oil leak. But then I
saw Lt. Milano trying to plug up
the leak, and he was covered
with oil. So I hollered at some
of the men to get back, and after
awhile I hollered at everyone to
get off the ship — the tank might
blow up."
The tragedy was the worst in the
history of the mammoth Brooklyn
Yard, opened in 1801. In addition
to burning and smothering the life
out of 49 men, it injured more than
200, hospitalized 50, caused dam-
age estimated in the tens of mil-
lions to the Navy's newest capital
ship.
Milano, in charge of hull con-
struction on the Constellation, told
a Navy Board of Inquiry there had
been 42 fires on the carrier since
early 1960. In every case workers
had put out the blaze with extin-
guishers before the Navy Yard's fire
unit got there, he said.
Many in Compartments
The latest fire looked like a minor
one too, survivors said.
Some witnesses told Metal
Trades officials that the fire was
almost out when one extinguisher
ran out of fluid.
Someone gave the alarm, but
many of the 4,200 men on boaid
were far below decks and appar-
ently did not hear it or could not
find their way out.
"Usually when the lights go out,"
said Cespedes, "the men just sit in
the dark and wait for them to come
on again. They have been told not
to panic, and not to run out, but
to stay put. This time the Sights
were put out, on purpose or by
accident, and a lot of men sat in
the dark until the smoke got so
thick they couldn't find their way
out.".
The Constellation has thousands
of feet of gangways and corridors
and more than 3,000 compart-
ments. Some of the workers locked
themselves in the compartments
and waited for rescue parties. Many
escaped, but some did not.
Cespedes and Pres. Ralph G.
Henry of the Metal Trades Coun-
HEROES BY THE SCORE were concealed behind the smoke
pouring from the blazing aircraft carrier Constellation, afire at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard. Workers performed epic feats to help 4,000
workers, most of them members of Metal Trades Council unions,
to escape the flames and blinding fumes, but 49 workers trapped
below decks died in the inferno just six days before Christmas. The
Metal Trades Council is seeking to raise $50,000 to aid families
deprived of breadwinners. In photo above, a fireboat at the left is
shown pumping water onto the flames from under the carrier's
stern. Damage is expected to run to tens of millions.
Ship Unions
Agree to Pact
On Bargaining
New York — A group of maritime
unions whose contracts cover Amer-
ican-flag shipping on all coasts has
announced creation of a National
Committee for Maritime Bargaining
to function in contract negotiations.
Agreement on the committee was
reached at a conference called here
by the Marine Engineers* Beneficial
Association. A joint announce-
ment said it would enable the un-
ions to operate <; in full cooperation
and with effective mutual assist-
ance*' in negotiations.
Among the unions represented at
the session, besides MEBA, were
the Longshoremen, Seafarers, Mas-
ters, Mates & Pilots and Office
Employes.
J. M. Calhoon. gecretary-treas-
urer of MEBA. was named chair-
man of the bargaining coordination
committee, and Charles Crooks,
president of MM1P, was named
secretary.
The unions said they had
adopted the principle of national
collective bargaining as "the only
practical means of dealing with
the peculiar, complex conditions
of the maritime industry."
The joint statement charged the
American Merchant Marine Insti-
tute, largest of the various associa-
tions of shipowners, with ' support"
of runaway shipping and a policy of
Subordinating" the welfare of the
entire industry to the "narrow in-
terests" of the major oil companies
and subsidized operators.
The statement said the commit-
tee will not interfere with the "ju-
risdiction, autonomy or authority
of Any international, its districts or
affiliates . . . nor their collective
bargaining contracts."
Page Four
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
\ew Year 1961
AT THE BEGINNING of a New Year there is normally a new
hope and a new determination that the problems of the pre-
ceding year will move toward a solution. There is the widespread
feeling of a clean slate on which mankind may start afresh and-
write a new record.
As we take stock, we find America in the grip of a serious
economic problem. Unemployment is high and is expected to
go higher during the early winter months. Economic activity is
generally bogged down. It makes little difference how the situa-
tion is described in terminology; it adds up to a serious economic
problem for the American people.
The state of our economy influences directly the state of our
world leadership, , for an economically impaired America cannot
exercise the role of leadership in the Free World. So, at the begin-
ning of 1961, we must first solve the problem of returning America
to a posture of economic health and strength from which we can
help master the varied problems facing the. world.
And at the beginning of 1961, as at the beginning of so many
years in the past decade, there are danger points that may erupt at
any moment.
There is a new element, however, at the beginning of 1961. On
Jan. 20 a new Administration will take power in the United States.
This new Administration has indicated that it understands the depth
and the seriousness of the problems and that it is striving for solu-
tions — solutions based on positive action and positive leadership.
This is the hope of 1961 — that new voices and new ideas will
produce a new climate, that the "new frontier" will be conquered in
the name of peace and freedom.
The Program Is the Issue
WHEN THE 87TH CONGRESS convenes on Jan. 3, it will
face a basic decision that may affect the progress of the Ken-
nedy Administration's legislative program — the question of proce-
dures in the House of Representatives.
Every parliamentary body needs rules of procedure. They are
needed to protect the rights of individual members and of both the
minority and the majority. They are needed to provide for a sys-
tem of orderly and intelligent consideration of legislative proposals.
The real danger is that rules may become so hardened by inter-
pretation or subject to misuse that they tend to obstruct rather than
to facilitate the legislative process.
In the House of Representatives the hardening of parliamentary
procedures is most vividly seen in the situation in the Committee
on Rules. This committee, originally conceived to facilitate the
handling of legislation and to put it on an orderly and fair basis,
has over the years become transformed into a committee dealing
with the substance of legislation, a unit controlled by a conserva-
tive coalition that may refuse to route bills to the floor.
The Kennedy Administration's program, as outlined during the
campaign and as presently being formulated by the leaders of the
new Administration, will be to some extent similar to legislative
proposals that in the 86th Congress were stymied because of proce
dural regulations in the House.
It is essential that the 87th Congress write a sound legislative
program to meet the serious problems confronting the nation at
home and abroad. The House itself is responsible for its rules —
but in some manner or other, whether by rules changes or otherwise,
the way must be cleared for proper and full consideration of legis-
lative proposals on their merits by all of the members of the new
Congress.
It Works Fine, Except at the End of the Line
Official Weekly Publication
of the
American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations
George Meany, President
William F. Schnitzler, Secretary-Treasurer
Executive Council
Walter P. Reuther
Win. C. Birthright
David Dubinsky
Emil Rieve
M. A. Hutcheson
L. S. Buckmaster
Richard F. Walsh
James A. Suffridge
Paul L. Phillips
George M. Harrison
James B. Carey
*Chas. J. MacGowan
Wm. L. McFetridge
A. J. Hayes
Jacob S. Potofsky
Lee W. Minton
O. A. Knight
Peter T. Schoemann
Harry C. Bates
Wm. C. Doherty
David J. McDonald
Joseph Curran
Joseph D. Keenan
A. Philip Randolph
Joseph A. Beirne
Karl F. Feller
L. M. Raftery
• Deceased
Executive Committee: George Meany, Walter P. Reuther, George
M. Harrison, James B. Carey, Harry C. Bates, David J.
McDonald, David Dubinsky, William F. Schnitzler
Director of Publica-ions: Saul Miller
Managing Editor: Willard Shelton
Assistant Editors:
Robert B. Cooney Eugene A. Kelly Gervase N. Love
David L. Perlman Eugene C. Zack
AFL-CIO Headquarters: 815 Sixteenth St., N.W.
Washington 6, D. C.
Telephone: NAtional 8-3870
Subscriptions: $2 a year; 10 or more, $1.50 a year
Vol. V
Saturday, December 31, 1960
No. 53
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of In-
dustrial Organizations does not accept paid advertising in
any of its official publications. No one is authorized to solicit
advertisers for any publication in the name of the AFL-CIO t
Fund tor Republic Study Shows:
Board Bolsters
UAW in Politics, Bargaining
HPHE PUBLIC REVIEW BOARD of the United
Auto Workers has strengthened the UAW as
a political and collective bargaining organization.
This report comes from Dr. Jack Stieber, direc-
tor of Michigan State University's Labor and
Industrial Relations Center.
He believes the UAW's increased strength stems
from the fact that the leadership has submitted
its decisions to review by a body of impartial and
distinguished citizens. This action has increased
its stature in the eyes of the membership and the
public, Stieber points out.
His views are contained in a new pamphlet,
"Democracy and Public Review," published by
the Fund for the Republic.
Other contributors include Dr. Walter Oberer,
the first executive director of the board and now
professor of law at the University of Texas and
Michael Harrington, a member of the staff of the
Fund for the Republic.
The UAW Public Review Board, established
by the union's constitutional convention in
1957, "represents the broadest grant of author-
ity over its internal affairs ever voluntarily given
by a labor organization to an outside body,"
Stieber states.
In an examination and evaluation of the board's
accomplishments, he reports: "The board's record
to date has not borne out the fears of labor's
friends, the expectations of its enemies or the
fondest hopes of the UAW leadership."
HE NOTES THAT the board has scrupulously
refused to exercise jurisdiction over cases which
might even remotely impinge on collective bar-
gaining policies or interfere with UAW leader-
ship's control over its own staff.
In fact, he explains, the board's respect for
the union's own constitution has caused it to be
criticized by two groups: union leaders who claim
that the board has been too technical and too
legalistic in adhering to constitutional procedures
and by those who think the board should look
beyond the union's constitution to assure fair-
ness and equity in cases that come before it.
Stieber stresses that while the board hews to
the existing constitution of the union it has not
hesitated to question some of those provisions.
"The most important role of the board, that
is* as a body to which any union member could
appeal an adverse decision of the International
Executive Board, was almost lost sight of in the
sea of high-sounding rhetoric which accom-
panied the Public Review Board's creation,**
says Stieber.
"Perhaps the board's greatest contribution has
been the creation of an increased awareness and
respect on the part of the UAW leadership for the
importance of due process as set forth under the
union's own constitution."
Using the board's own words from its first
annual report, he says "The Public Review Board
has helped to bring home to the UAW leader-
ship the difference between rule by men, no mat-
ter how honest and well intentioned they may bo
and rule by law and under law."
THE MERE EXISTENCE of the board has
had a beneficial impact on the union, according
to Dr. Stieber. The International Executive Board
exercises greater care in considering appeals and
the appeals committees are more conscientious in
preparing them. He also noted that increased
attention is being paid to the drafting of amend-
ments to the constitution and to the elimination of
inconsistencies among constitutional provisions.
Considered inadvisable by Dr. Stieber was the
UAW's request that the Public Review Board in-
vestigate charges against the union made by the
Republican members of the McClellan Commit-
tee. He pointed out that the McClellan Com-
mittee hearings had found no support of these
charges.
"It is doubtful . . . whether a public Review
Board decision in favor of the union would add
much to the record of the McClellan Committee,"
he said. "True, the decision of a group as dis-
tinguished and impartial as the Public Review
Board might be accorded greater consideration
than the report of a divided Senate committee.
Against this must be balanced the possible dimi-
nution in the prestige of the board as a result of
its being injected into a battle with such heavy
political overtones."
Harrington, in his chapter in the new pamphlet,
points out that while the Review Board has not
been a miraculous solution for all problems of
union democracy, it has been a spur and a comple-
ment to those democratic tendencies which do
exist.
"In this sense," he said, "I think it can be
characterized as an enormous success."
Oberer has written a chapter on "Union Democ-
racy and the Rule of Law." He considers the
need for impartial review, the problem of bigness
and the functions of public review.
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
Page Fiv#
Morgan Says:
America Needs Sense of Justice
To Meet Issues of Colonialism
Morgan
(This column is excerpte/t from the nightly
broadcasts of Edward P. Morgan, ABC commen-
tator sponsored by the A FL-CIO. Listen to Mor-
gan over the ABC network Monday through
Friday at 7 p. m. t EST.)
ON THE SUBJECT of colonialism, United
States policy in the United Nations suffers
a split-personality problem not unlike the schiz-
ophrenia both the Democratic and Republican
parties suffer in trying to attract votes above and
below the Mason-Dixon line at the same time.
To win support in both
North and South the par-
ties take equivocal stands
which really please neither
area. In the UN, the U.S.
has been piously embrac-
ing the principle of free-
dom for the emerging
African nations while prac-
tically — though by no
means solidly — siding with
our European allies who
are still identified with the
lingering vestiges of colonialism on the Dark Con-
tinent. Result: satisfaction for nobody except
the Communists who ruthlessly exploit our incon-
sistencies to further their own particular brand
of imperialism.
To illustrate what a pretty pass things have
come to, the United States felt obliged to ab-
stain when the UN General Assembly voted
89-0 for an Afro-Asian resolution calling for
"speedy and unconditional end to colonialism."
Among our fellow-abstainers were such free-
dom-loving regimes as Franco's Spain, Trujillo's
Dominican Republic, and the racist Union of
South Africa. A member of the U.S. delegation,
Mrs. Zelma Watson George, a noted sociologist
who happens to be a Negro, said afterward, "I
wanted to crawl under the table when we ab-
stained." One of the Republican Party's most en-
lightened senators (would there were more like
him in both parties), John Sherman Cooper of
Kentucky, criticized his own Administration for
the abstention.
WHY DID WE TAKE such a position? The
official explanation is a lot of diplomatic double-
talk about "difficulties of language and thought"
in the resolution which might negate the UN
charter. The real reason is we were trying to
play ball with our western European allies who are
still having some colonial difficulties, notably
Britain and France.
Appreciation of our allies' problems is a
laudable exercise. In fact it is vital. Perhaps
the top priority item on the Kremlin's agenda
is to shatter the Western alliance. But the
From Soup to Nonsense:
question arises of whether in giving understand-
ing to our European friends we aren't lacking
firmness and consistency in terms of basic
policy and whether we aren't moved more by
expediency than decisions that are necessary
in the long run.
That is an academic question and there has
recently entered the fine pragmatic hand of the
Pentagon to prove it. A few weeks ago the re
public of Guinea came up with a resolution in
the Trusteeship Council condemning segregation
in South-West Africa, which has been under man
date to the segregationist government of South
Africa.
Some members of the U.S. delegation, notably
including Oregon's volatile, but brilliant Sen"
Wayne Morse, sensed the importance of care
ful consideration * of this move by Guinea, not
only because of the moral principle involved but
because neutralist Guinea, a two-year old veteran
of African independence, is being ardently and in
some respects successfully wooed by the Com
munists.
The State Dept. found the original resolution
unacceptable but finally indicated reluctant ap
proval of a compromise which Morse had helpec
work out with the Guineans. Before the vote,
signals were suddenly changed and the U.S. ab-
stained. Morse was understandably furious.
The U.S. abstained again when the resolu-
tion passed the Assembly. An American spokes-
man said the delegation had objected to a pro-
vision calling for sending a UN committee to
investigate racial problems in South-West Af-
rica — presumably in violation of the Union of
South Africa's "sovereignty" over a so-called
domestic matter.
But Morse had already revealed the real reason
The Defense Dept. is trying to secure a missile-
tracking station in South Africa and put the pres-
sure on State not to rock the boat with the
apartheid regime in Capetown.
There is a limit, surely, to expediency and if
we are going to pay any attention to principle
at all, that limit may sometimes have to stop
short of the range of, say, an Atlas missile. The
Western alliance must not fall but its retention
cannot be at the price of alienating the so-called
neutral areas of the world.
What we need, as one internationally-mindec
Democrat has put it, is a growing sense of justice,
a determination to make the right decisions — how-
ever tough — not just the ones considered politi-
cally feasible.
This is easier said than done. Whether the
Kennedy Administration can lead the alliance
along these lines remains to be seen. The hope
fully operative factor for 1961 is that there are
men in this new regime who are determined to try.
With Firm but Cautious Tread,
Let's Journey Into Year Ahead
By Jane Good sell
TN betweenish and betwixty,
That was Nineteen Hundred Sixty.
Life was full of -stress and strain;
We lived in the eye of a hurricane.
All around us tempests swirled,
And trouble bubbled round the world.
Still, when all is said and done.
We had our share of games and fun.
Castro ranted, Khrushchev rumbled,
And the summit meeting crumbled,
Yet from Nome to New York City
People chirped a silly ditty
Of a yellow polka-dot,
Teeny-weeny, you-know-what.
Tiros twinkled in the sky;
Beehive hairdoes towered high.
THE Pittsburgh Pirates romped to fame
By winning the Series' seventh game.
David Susskind quizzed Nikita,
And the movies cast "Lolita."
Investors mourned the market's fall;
Dieters guzzled Metrecal.
Lumumba and Kasavubu split;
The Armstrong-Joneses' butler quit.
Election night was long and late;
'Twas the closest vote since '88,
But Kennedy tots on Easter dawn
Will roll their eggs on the White House lawn.
And now that '60s almost done,
Let's set our sights on '61:
LET'S hold our thumbs for luck and wish
For a world less tense and feverish;
For banishment of the common cold
And clues to the rainbow's pot of gold.
Let's hope and trust we'll be allowed
Some silver linings without a cloud,
And yet, however hard we plead,
The New Year won't come guaranteed.
We'll get no news leaks in advance;
We'll simply have to take a chance.
Life's a sail without a chart
(The world's no place for the faint of heart)
And so, with firm but cautious tread, %
Let's journey into the year ahead.
— /rar your
WASHINGTON
i Jm
JAMES M. LANDIS, a former Harvard Law School dean and
former member of several regulatory commissions, had handed
Pres.-elect Kennedy a report on the recent functioning of such
agencies that is devastating and unanswerable in its charges of
abuses, inefficiency and generally tawdry procedures.
He has also proposed a series of sweeping reforms that Mr.
Kennedy may or may not accept, although he called the Landis
analysis "important and impressive."
The Landis report, coupled with the still-pending work of a
Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. John Carroll (D-Colo.), never-
theless offers the hope that the work of the powerful federal gov-
ernment administrative and regulatory agencies may be reformed,
revitalized and lifted to a level of prestige as well as respectability.
* * *
ANY REALISTIC OBSERVER of federal government as it
actually operates recognizes that the agencies deal with questions
that are at least quasi-political if they are also quasi-judicial.
The issue of how stringently an agency shall regulate remains
unavoidably a political issue — and the industry that sees its
prices held down in order that consumers may be protected is
going to apply unremittingly for help from those who can pres-
sure or influence the agencies.
All Presidents are bound by the basic laws that not more than
three out of five, or four out of seven, members of an agency may
be members of the same political party. But in the Eisenhower
Administration, this technicality has often been met by the neat
device of appointing Democratic minority members who — just by
chance — happen to have been pro-Eisenhower Democrats.
In one recent case, Eisenhower sent to the Senate the nomination
of a "Democrat" who actually had made a seconding speech for
Vice Pres. Nixon's renomination at the Republican National Con-
vention in 1956.
In such cases, one may question whether the Administration
itself is not setting the ethical tone that later makes its appointees
lax in their own ethical standards.
* * *
WHAT WE HAVE SEEN across many years, however, is poli-
tics that has gotten crassly out of hand.
Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, the mellifluous orator who
presides over the Senate Republican minority, coos quite pub-
licly that he will continue to approach agency commissioners in
behalf of any constituent who comes up the pike with a favor he
wants, a license he covets.
In the Dixon- Yates scandal, a White House official telephoned
the chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission to ask
postponement of a hearing — a presumably quasi-judicial hearing
involving points of law as well as of fact — pending a House vote a
day or twt) later on Dixon-Yates.
Almost any lawyer with a client seeking a favor feels free to
call on commissioners, entertain and dine them, establish "friendly
relations," furnish free air transport to holiday spots where trade
associations foregather.
Mr. Landis suggests that the rules be clarified to make it per-
fectly clear that all this is out — now and forever. He suggests
longer terms for agency members, bigger salaries, larger expense
allowances, the creation of an atmosphere comparable to that
surrounding a federal judge.
He suggests revision of the operations of the agencies so that
commission members are allowed to act as appellate judges instead
of petty trial hearing officers.
Hejhas a good many other recommendations, many involving
tremendous economic interests, and these may or may not prove
practical. Adoption of reforms that lift the judicial standards of
agencies would be excellent for a starter.
EVERY CHRISTMAS Joe Longo, a member of Auto Workers'
Local 116 in Brooklyn, N. Y., plays Santa Claus to GIs he doesn't
know. This year, with the local's help, he sent out 20 gift packages
featuring cookies and candy. The packing crew shown above
consists (left to right) of Billy, 10 and Joe, Jr., 12, his sons; Longo
and Harry McKay, a helpful friend of the boys. Longo started
custom because, in the depths of the depression, unknown bene-
factors aided his family.
Pape Six
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER SI, I960
It Was a Troublesome Year For Labor
Unions' Hard Work Triumphed
Over Many of 1960 's Difficulties
By Harry Conn
All signs pointed to 1960 as a
troublesome year for organized
labor — and the signs were largely
borne out.
In his New Year's message
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany
predicted that "labor's job will
not be easy" in 1960. However,
he added, "we can and will make
this a year of battle, a year of
victory." The AFL-CIO General
Board endorsed Sen. John F. Ken-
nedy for President and Sen. Lyndon
B. Johnson for Vice President and
this ticket was victorious. Labor's
registration and get-out-the-vote
campaign were recognized as hav-
ing helped in the triumph.
On the legislative front, few vic-
tory flags could be hoisted. Labor-
endorsed measures such as de-
pressed area legislation, minimum
wage, housing, health care for the
aged through social security fell
either before a presidential veto or
the Republican-Dixiecrat coalition
in Congress.
Economic Hardship
Union men and women suffered
during the year, too, as unemploy-
ment and the cost of living re-
mained at a high level. Large
pockets of depression were scat-
tered through a number of states.
The collective bargaining arena
was not one in which victories
came easy, either. The Steel-
workers finally won their fight on
work rules and other issues but
only after 114 days on the picket
line. Railroad unions also were
able to stave off similar demands
of the carriers and a tripartite
commission was appointed to
study the issue of work rules.
Here is a month-by-month review
of 1960 from the files of Press
Associates, Inc.:
January
Social Security marks its 20th
anniversary of initial benefits. . . .
Portland newspaper strike receives
national attention. . . . Steelworkers'
victory in nationwide strike hailed
by labor. . . . John L. Lewis retires,
named president emeritus of Mine
Workers. . . . Union economists
question Administration prosperity
talk. . . . Rail unions fight feather-
bedding charges in rallies across
country. . . . Trainmen remove
color bar. . . . Kefauver Senate
probe shows Americans milked by
drug profits. . . .
February
Packinghouse Workers get strong
labor backing in Wilson strike. .
Job picture brighter as steel mills
fire up. . . . Pres. Walter P. Reuther
of Auto Workers says recovery
temporary; urges stepped-up eco-
nomic growth. . . . Pres. Richard
Gray resigns as head of AFL-CIO
Building & Construction Trades
Dept. . . . Carolina law expert
shows how "work" laws retard in-
dustrial gains. . . . Senate passes
education measure as Nixon op-
poses strong bill. . . . AFL-CIO
Maritime Dept. blasts anti-Israel
policy of U.S. Navy. . . AFL-CIO
Executive Council asks consumer
cabinet post. . . . Murray-Green
award announced to Agnes Meyer.
. . . Meany says Nixon committee
drags feet on racial discrimination.
. . . United Textile Workers' moni-
torship removed. . . . New Republi-
can drive to pin something on UAW
squelched. . . . Packinghouse Work-
ers win 25 cents, settle Wilson
strike. . . . C. J. Haggerty named
to succeed Gray as head of Building
Trades Dept. . . .
March
Jacob Clayman, Nicholas Zonar-
ich named to head Industrial Union
Dept. . . . Business shows uneasiness
as cracks appear in economy. . . .
House unit okays situs picketing
bill. . . . Kaiser, Steelworkers hail
first "fruits of progress" meet. . . .
Sen. Richard Neuberger (D-Ore.)
dies suddenly. . . . Wilson strikers
get jobs back over scabs in crucial
arbitration ruling. . . . Raddocks,
Trade Union Courier hit by heavy
fines. . . . Revolt by local leaders
opens against B&C's Cross. . . .
IAM Pres. Al Hayes warns against
new attacks on unionism. . . . AFL-
CIO movie stars hit bricks in first
actors' strike in film history. . . .
Maritime unions press fight against
"runaway" flag ships. . . . Carpen-
ters local bails out furniture com-
pany in New York. . . . Housing
starts drop to another low. . . .
Building Trades Conference hears
four presidential hopefuls: Ken-
nedy, Humphrey, Symington and
Johnson. . . . Administration rejec-
tion of Forand bill sets stage for
crucial showdown. . . . Unions seek
laws to stop commercialized strike-
breaking. . . . North Carolina AFL-
CIO backs Negro sit-ins. . . .
April
Democrats, Republicans split on
what to do on unemployment. . . .
Factory workers' income drops, liv-
ing costs mount. . . . Supreme Court
upsets NLRB ban on minority rec-
ognition picketing. . . . UE raids
crushed by AFL-CIO unions. . . .
Clothing Workers win wage boost
for 125,000 members. . . . GOP
Old Guard assails labor leaders for
stand on medical care for aged. . . .
Red Cross in tribute to AFL-CIO.
. . . Bloor Schleppey fined $500 in
Pennsylvania for importing strike-
breakers. . . . Kennedy defeats
Humphrey in West Virginia pri-
mary. . . . Unemployment up,
weather blamed. . . . Businessmen
trying to kill Douglas bill exposing
usurious interest rates. . . . Screen
Actors Guild wins right to share
TV earnings. . . . Meek civil rights
bill passes Congress; AFL-CIO asks
stronger measure next year. . . .
Dirksen tries to block drug probe.
. . . Supreme Court says manage-
ment must bargain on work rules.
. . . Rail traffic up 50 percent; jobs
off 50 percent. . . .
May
Cost of living reaches new record
as Nixon calls inflation "blunted."
. . . Two unions picket Arab ship;
urge "freedom of the seas." . . .
Rubber Workers' Vice Pres. Joe
Childs dies suddenly. . . . Paper-
makers, Pressmen sign declaration
of unity. . . . AFL-CIO Commen-
tator Edward P. Morgan wins Hill-
man Award. . . . Financial weekly
charges U.S. agencies "lulling" pub-
lic with "rosy" economic reports.
. . . Bates retires as head of Brick-
layers; Murphy succeeds him. . . .
McFetridge retires as BSEIU presi-
dent. . . . Senators Clark, McCarthy
cap six-month study with bill to
meet recession dangers. . . . Carey
tells GE stockholders stock option
gimmicks "immoral." . . . Canadian
Labor Congress backs proposed
Farmer-Labor type party. ... At
IUD legislative meet Reuther asks
U.S. help aged, needy at home and
abroad. . . . Schnitzler tells Com-
munity Services meet that Forand
bill is vital, hits Ike's "political
hoax." . . . President vetoes aid for
depressed areas. . . .IBEW makes
major gains in Western Electric
pact. . . . Meany says labor behind
Ike in summit crisis. . . . Locomo-
tive Engineers' Brown retires; Da-
vidson his successor. . . . Labor
Sec. Mitchell tightens safety rules
for transportation of migrants. . . .
GOP-Dixiecrat coalition again kills
depressed areas bill. . . . House
passes $1.3 billion housing bill. . . .
June
Factory workers' productivity
continues to rise. . . . Textile Work-
ers Union of America endorses
Kennedy. . . . McDonald sees dis-
mal steel industry outlook. . .
Meat Cutters to build housing
project over N. Y. railroad yard.
. . . AFL-CIO asks atomic energy
law changes. . . . Dirksen, Gold-
water fight minimum wage bill. . . .
World sea unions agree on joint
action to fight "runaway" ships.
. . . Indiana Democrats oppose
"work" law. . . . Chandler named
Screen Actors Guild head. . . .
AFL-CIO charters agricultural
workers organizing committee. . . .
Kennedy pushes compromise mini-
mum wage bill. . . . New York
unions move into drug field to fight
high prices. . . . Curran re-elected
head of NMU. . . . U.S. unionists
aid Chilean earthquake victims. . . .
July
AFL-CIO asks Democrats for
strong planks on national defense,
civil rights, jobs. . . . Labor-backed
Quentin Burdick (D) wins North
Dakota Senate seat left vacant by
death of Sen. William Langer. . . .
Rail carriers reject study commis-
sion on work rules. . . . Pickets
back at Stork Club. . . . Rep.
Graham Barden (D-N. C), House
Labor Committee chairman, retir-
ing. . . . Labor gives testimonial
dinner to Sec. of Labor Mitchell.
. . . Congress overrides presidential
veto, gives pay raises to federal
'How Do I Get to Be a Member?'
workers. . . . AFL-ClO hails liberal
Democratic platform. . . . Demo-
crats nominate Kennedy and John-
son. . . . Meany asks GOP to adopt
liberal platform. . . . Republicans
nominate Nixon and Lodge. . . .
Union Label Pres. John J. Mara
dies. . . . Machinists win Lockheed
strike. . . .
August
John Mara named to succeed
father as head of Boot & Shoe
Workers. . . . Meany lambasts
GOP unconcern with unemploy-
ment. . . . Kefauver wins renomi-
nation in Tennessee. . . . 25th
anniversary of Social Secrurity Act
marked. . . . Textile Workers Union
of America protests GOP tariff
proposals. . . . July job picture
grim as unemployment stays above
5 percent. . . . Goldwater fights to
block situs picketing bill. . . . AFL-
CIO launches biggest registration
drive. . . . AFL-CIO endorses Sears
boycott. . . . Court ruling upholds
job rights in runaway plants. . . .
Byrd says Democratic platform too
pro-labor. . . . Congress asked by
Reuther to attack automation prob-
lems. . . . AFL-CIO General Board
endorse* Kennedy-Johnson ticket.
. . . ITU convention hears plea for
unity of newspaper unions. . . .
Kohler found guilty; NLRB orders
company to resume bargaining, re-
instate strikers. . . . 1LGWU sets up
job severance plan. . . .
September
Labor spearheads drive for un-
precedented voting. . . . Congress
adjourns after Republican-Dixiecrat
coalition kills major measures. . . .
Kennedy, Meany, Reuther sound
calls for jobs in Labor Day
speeches. . . . Record crowds cheer
Kennedy in Michigan cities. . . .
Pennsylvania Railroad on strike for
first time in 114 years. . . . Labor-
supported mercy ship "Hope" sets
sail. . . . Anti-union business groups
seen behind religious smear of Ken-
nedy. . . . Factory workers' in-
come down for third time in three
months. . . . Lush profits on drugs
again exposed at Kefauver hearings.
. . . ILGWU celebrates 50th anni-
versary of strike that broke sweat-
shops. . . . Political activities by
unions setting new marks in cam-
paign. . . . Burdon succeeds retiring
Buckmaster as Rubber Workers'
president. . . . Papermakers re-elect
Phillips. . . . Kennedy-called con-
ference on jobless stresses plight of
depressed areas. . . . Kennedy
blames GOP for failure to boosl
economy, cut employment. . . .
Wall Street Journal says we're al-
ready in a recession. . . .
October
Indiana clergymen call for
prompt repeal of right-to-work. . . .
Nixon prosperity line blasted by
Meany, Johnson and the facts. . . #
Sen. Murray (D-Mont.) accuses
Goldwater. Nixon of attempted
huge land giveaway. ... 2 million
workers won wage boosts during
1960. . . . Kennedy hits "bread and
butter problems" as Nixon defends
House Rules Committee. . . . Car-
penters recreate pioneer village by
giving their skills and money. . . .
AFL-CIO backs IUE strikers
against GE; Meany asks "good
faith" by company. . . . Harvester
shutdown costs 25,000 jobs. . . .
AFL-CIO economic study shows
Administration sowed depression
seeds through economic policies.
. . . UTW's Baldanzi warns on tex-
tile imports. . . . High court turns
down convicted Henderson strikers,
but TWUA pledges to "vindicate"
them. . . . Unemployment second
highest for year. . . . Nixon, other
GOP leaders make labor leaders
targets during campaign. . . . RR
brotherhoods, carriers accept Presi-
dential "rules" commission. . . .
Runaway clothing plant forced to
return to New York. . . . IUE,
Westinghouse reach accord. . . .
IUE, GE settle strike. . . .
November
Election Day economic statistics
mostly bad news for GOP. . . .
Third GOP recession here, official
U.S. statistics show. . . . Massa-
chusetts law demands strikebreak-
ers register. . . . Kennedy promises
help to depressed areas. . . . Re-
publicans smother bad news of re-
ported jobless rise. . . . Eight Hen-
derson, N. C, textile strikers go to
jail for crime that "never occurred".
. . . Peter McGavin named execu-
tive secretary of AFL-CIO Mari-
time Trades Dept. . . . Labor helps
provide decisive margins for putting
John F. Kennedy in White House.
. . . Democrats hold on to House
and Senate but lose some seats. . . .
1960 railroad employment lowest
in modern history. . . . Meany says
AFL-CIO believes Kennedy will
carry out platform. . . . Kennedy
salutes labor press for its role in
his victory. . . .
December
President's commission supports
many labor goals, but Meany de-
cries '"timidity" in programs. . . .
One-third of major industrial areas
now have "substantial" labor sur-
plus. . . . GE, Westinghouse and
other electrical companies admit
price-fixing. . . . Trainmen and Con-
ductors move toward merger. . . .
Group named to plan newspaper
union unity. . . . Merchant marine
jobs drop to lowest level in 35
years .... National Council of
Churches calls for unionization of
migratory workers. . . . November
jobless at 4 million is 20-year high.
. . . Kennedy names Goldberg Sec-
retary of Labor. • • •
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
Pa*e Seven
New CEA Chairman :
Heller Sees Growth,
Jobs as Key Goals
One of the primary goals of the Kennedy Administration will be
to "put the economy back on the track of full employment and
satisfactory growth," according to Prof. Walter W. Heller, named by
the President-elect to be chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers.
Heller's statement came after^
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Kennedy, announcing appointment
of his new CEA chief to reporters
at Palm Beach, Fla., pledged that
he would "revitalize" the Council
of Economic Advisers as part of
a program of developing "the hu-
man and natural resources of this
country, of our productive capacity
and that of the free world."
The President-elect declared that
"I intend that we should return to
the spirit as well as the letter of
the Employment Act of 1946," un-
der which the CEA was first consti-
tuted. Kennedy added that the
economic reports of his Adminis-
tration would "deal not only with
the state of the economy but with
our goals for economic progress."
'Maximum Employment*
The 14-year-old Employment Act
calls on the federal government to
promote "maximum employment,
production and purchasing power"
and Kennedy's views appeared to
indicate a vigorous use of this
statutory power;
Heller, a professor of econom-
ics at the University of Minne-
sota, stressed the fact that the
nation has undergone "six months
of economic recession and three
and a half years of lagging em-
ployment and growth."
The basic problem, the incoming
CEA chief said, is the "incomplete
recovery from the 1957-58 reces-
sion," in which the economy moved
upward to a top point which was
still nearly $25 billion below "the
full potential of the economy."
As a result. Heller said,, the na-
tion is dealing with more than "a
soft economic. situation of the past
six months; it is a problem of
eliminating basic slack in the econ-
omy that is retarding our economic
growth."
The Purpose of Growth
A key to the direction in which
the Administration may move in
the months ahead may be found in
Heller's recently-stated views on a
higher rate of economic growth in
which he has emphasized that the
uses to which this growth is put
are as important as the rate of
growth.
Heller recently told the National
Conference on Social Welfare that
if the economy expands merely in
a "self-indulgent scramble for ma
terial goods," this new economic
abundance might intensify many of
the nation's social problems.
''But devoted in generous meas-
ure to investment in human be-
ings — in their education, training,
health and well-being— economic
growth can become synonymous
with improvement in human wel-
fare," he declared.
46 Equadorian Unions
AffOiate with ICFTU
Guayaquil, Ecuador — Sixty-eight delegates representing 46 unions
and labor societies in Guayaquil and the coastal provinces of Man-
abi, El Oro and Los Rios set up the Ecuadorian Regional Confed-
eration of Free Trade Unions at a meeting here and unanimously
voted to affiliate with the Inter-American Regional Organization of
Workers (ORIT) and the Intl. Con-<3>
federation of Free Trade Unions
The successful establishment of
the new organization marked a
turning point in the struggle for
leadership in the Ecuadorian labor
movement, in which until recently
the Communist influence was vir-
tually unchallenged.
The blow was the second the
Communists suffered in 1960. Ear-
lier the Soviet-leaning Sen. Pedro
Saad, who had represented the
Recount To Pick
Indiana Winner
A special House committee has
voted unanimously to recommend
that no congressman from Indiana's
6th Dist. be seated in the 87th
Congress pending a full recount of
the vote.
The committee's action in the
disputed race between incumbent
Democratic Rep. J. Edward Roush
and Republican George O. Cham-
bers is scheduled to go to the full
House for approval.
The official Indiana certification
of results gave Chambers the seat
by a margin of 12 votes. Subse-
quent corrections of county returns
reduced Chambers' plurality to 5
votes- and a recount of absentee
ballots in one precinct by House
committee investigators gave Roush
a 2-vote margin.
The committee, declaring it
"could not fairly decide which of
the candidates has the majority of
the votes and was elected," recom-
mendeo that the House direct a full
recount of the entire vote and that
neither man be seated pending the
outcome.
coastal region for 14 years, was de-
feated for re-election.
The area's free trade unions took
their first step toward a convention
in May, when with the cooperation
of ORIT three months of labor
education courses began in Guaya-
quil.
By the middle of July a coordi-
nating committee of union leaders
was organized, again with ORIT
cooperation and on Aug. 24 it held
a consultative convention out of
which came a determination to
work for organization of the region-
al confederation.
The delegates chose Victor A.
Contreras of the Handicraft
Workers as president; Hernahan
Ugarte of the Electrical Workers
as vice president and J. Ernesto
Ronquillo of the Telecommuni-
cations Workers as secretary.
Fraternal delegates to the organ-
izing convention included Julio
Etcheverry Espinola of ORIT and
Edgar H. laquin N. of the Colom-
bian Confederation of Labor.
Wyoming Governor
To Take Senate Seat
Cheyenne, Wyo. — Democratic
Gov. J. J. Hickey has announced
he will resign as governor in order
to accept appointment to the Senate
seat left vacant by the death of
Sen.-elect Keith Thomson (R).
Hickey will turn over the gov-
ernors mansion to Wyoming Sec.
of State Jack Gage (D) some time
after Jan. 3, when the term of
retiring Sen. Joseph C. O'Mahoney
(D) officially ends. Gage will then
name Hickey as the new senator,
the governor said.
HI MOM PROJECT of the Communications Workers, an annual
feature of the Christmas season sponsored by the union and its
locals as an AFL-CIO Community Service activity, gave more
than 500 service men and women in all parts of the world free
telephone calls to their homes. The fortunate ones included Frank
Poindexter (top), who called from Fairbanks, Alaska, to his wife,
Louise, in Washington, D. C.
Kennedy Vows Action
To Spur Employment
(Continued from Page 1)
Before the Kennedy program
goes to Congress, however, the leg-
islators are scheduled to receive
Pres. Eisenhower's final State of
the Union Message, Economic Re-
port and Budget Message. All of
these messages are expected to be
presented by the outgoing Admin
istration before Kennedy takes the
oath of office Jan. 20 as the nation's
35th President.
Immediately ahead of Con-
gress lay the problems of organ-
izing for the coming two years
and the possibility that rules
fights could erupt on one or both
sides of Capitol Hill. In the
House, any such battle would
center on the powers of the Rules
Committee, while a Senate dis-
pute would involve efforts to curb
filibusters.
Kennedy's pledge to use federal
powers under the Employment Act
of 1946 — which makes it a con-
tinuing federal responsibility to
promote "maximum employment,
production and purchasing power
— came as he announced his selec-
tion of Prof. Walter W. Heller of
the University of Minnesota as
chairman of the Council of Eco
nomic Advisers.
Air, Navy Chiefs Named
The president-elect, in other sub-
cabinet appointments, named:
> Eugene Zuckert, former
Atomic Energy commissioner, as
Secretary of the Air Force.
> John B. Connally, Jr., Fort
Worth, Tex., lawyer, as Navy Sec-
retary.
> Rex Whitton, 62, chief engi-
neer of the Missouri State Highway
Dept., to be Federal Highway Ad-
ministrator.
• Roswell Gilpatric, 54, a New
York lawyer and former Under
Sec. of the Air Force in the Truman
Administration, to be Deputy Sec-
retary of Defense.
• Paul H. Nitze, 53, who served
as State Dept. policy planning chief
in the Truman Administration, to
be Assistant Secretary of Defense
for International Security Affairs.
• Elmer B. Staats, a career gov-
ernment employe, to continue as -
Deputy Director of the Budget
Bureau
• H. W. Brawley, executive di-
rector of the Senate Post Office
and Civil Service Committee, to be
Deputy Postmaster General.
Space Race Discussed
Kennedy interrupted his two-day
Christmas holiday for conferences
with key advisers in Palm Beach,
Fla., on plans to expand America's
exploration of outer space and to
overcome the Soviet lead.
Meeting with him were Johnson,
who has been assigned by the Pres-
ident-elect to be chairman of the
National Aeronautics and Space
Council and Sen. Robert S. Kerr
(D-Okla.), who is in line for the
chairmanship of the Senate Com-
mittee on Aeronautical and Space
Sciences.
Kennedy also discussed meth-
ods for strengthening State Dept.
representation abroad with Treas-
ury Sec-designate C. Douglas
Dillon, currently Under Sec. of
State in the Eisenhower Admin-
istration, and with Rep. John J.
Rooney (D-N. Y.), chairman of
the House Appropriations sub-
committee which considers State
Dept. funds.
In the nation's capital, mean-
while, reports continued that the
House might engage in a brief
opening-day fight on control of the
powerful Rules Committee by a
coalition of conservative southern
Democrats and Republicans. More
than half a dozen different proposals
aimed at achieving that goal are
under consideration.
Issue in Senate Too
At the same time some Senate
Democrats and Republicans were
weighing the prospect of forcing a
first-day fight to amend Rule 22
which would make it easier to shut
off filibusters — the device usually
employed or threatened by southern
Democrats to block or water down
civil rights legislation.
Rule 22 was amended two years
ago to permit two-thirds of those
present and voting to invoke "clo-
ture" and end debate. Prior to that
time, it took a constitutional two-
thirds of the total Senate to bring
a measure to a vote.
Liberals have been seeking
something closer to a simple ma-
jority for ending filibusters after
time has been allowed for a thor-
ough debate.
Railway Study Finds
Active Job Healthier
St. Louis — Preliminary findings
in a study that involved thousands
of members of four railroad unions
indicate that men who hold seden-
tary jobs are more liable to coro-
nary heart disease than those whose
work calls for greater physical ac-
tivity, Dr. Henry L. Taylor of the
University of Minnesota told the
American Heart Association at a
meeting here.
Canadian TV
To Present
Labor Series
Ottawa, Ont. — The Canadian
Broadcasting Co. will present half-
hour television programs on the
Canadian labor movement and its
leaders on four consecutive Wednes-
days starting Jan. 1 L
Each showing on the network's
•'Explorations'* series will begin
10:30 p. m. EST.
The first program is subtitled
'The Present" and is designed to
show the position of the labor
movement today. Participating will
be Pres. Claude Jodoin of the Ca-
nadian Labor Congress; George
Burt, Canadian director of the Auto
Workers; Dir. Larry Sefton of Steel-
workers Dist. 6 and Huguette
Plamadon, Quebec provincial rep-
resentative of the Packinghouse
Workers.
The second, on Jan. 18 deals
with the relationships between
different unions and national la-
bor centers. Taking part will be
CLC Executive Vice Pres. Wil-
liam Dodge; Fred Dowling,
UPWA Canadian director, and
Pres. Roger Mathieu of the Con-
federation of National Trade
Unions.
The local union and its leaders
will be examined on Jan. 25, with
the focus on a USWA local in
Hamilton, Ont., and the Bricklayers
in Toronto.
The final program will deal with
labor's future in Canada. It will
include one U.S. participant —
UAW Pres. Walter P. Reuther,
selected because of his special in-
terest in Canada. Also appearing
will be CLC Executive Vice Pres.
Stanley Knowles; Pres. William
Smith of the Canadian Brotherhood
of Railway, Transport & General
Workers, and CNTU Gen. Sec.
Jean Marchand.
IBEW Mission
Seeks To Aid
West Indians
New York — A "good-will" mis-
sion from Local 3 of the Intl.
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
recently returned from a study tour
of the West Indies determined to
seek liberalization of U.S. immigra-
tion laws and fight exploitation of
Caribbean workers by "runaway"
American business firms.
The 10-day visit by a delegation
of Local 3 officers and members to
Jamaica and the Virgin Islands was
undertaken to develop closer ties
with the people of the West Indies
and a deeper understanding of their
problems.
Business Manager Harry Van
Arsdale, president of the New
York City Central Labor Coun-
cil, headed the delegation which
included officers and staff mem-
bers of several other AFL-CIO
unions, educators, employer rep-
resentatives and 32 members of
Local 3's Lewis Howard Latti-
more Progressive Society.
After meeting with labor and
government leaders from through-
out the West Indies and U.S. for-
eign service officials in Jamaica,
the delegates urged that "every pos-
sible aid" be given to help improve
working conditions in the islands.
They adopted resolutions urging:
• Liberalization of U.S. immi-
gration laws to permit more than
the present 100 immigrants from
Jamaica to enter the United States
each year. At present, there is a
backlog of 20,000 requests.
• A program by the AFL-CIO
and the Intl. Confederation of Free
Trade Unions to end exploitation
of workers by "runaway" American
firms. They were told by West
Indies labor leaders that many of
the American firms in Jamaica are
bitterly anti-union and exploiting
workers at wages as low as 14 cents
an hour.
Page Eight
AFL-CIO NEWS, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1960
Labor Asks Action to Revitalize Nation
Unemployment Crisis
No. 1 Challenge in '61
(Continued from Page 1)
has not been in line with the basic
principle of the National Labor Re-
lations Act that collective bargain-
ing ought to be encouraged."
• "Revision and improvement"
of labor-management statutes, many
sections of which are "inequitous."
Meany said there is a "pressing
need for thoughtful, unemotional
and complete overhauling so as to
translate the nation's avowed belief
in free collective bargaining into
workable terms."
• Better understanding between
labor and management "away from
the bargaining table."
The challenge of putting Amer-
ica back to work, the AFL-CIO
president said, "must be met, not
wily to assure the well-being of
our people, but to provide the
moral and physical strength we
must have as leader of the free
world in the fight against com-
munist aggression."
This "much-needed" turning
point, he continued, "cannot come
too soon." For nearly eight years
the economy has been in "a dan-
gerous state of stagnation" during
which it has grown "at barely half
the pace of former years" and has
"failed to provide jobs for our con-
tinually increasing work force," he
declared.
Legislation 'Vitally Needed'
Organized labor has pressed, par-
ticularly in the last two years, for
action "on a wide range of vitally
needed domestic measures . . . that
are necessary in themselves, and
which would at the same time stim
ulate the national economy to
greater growth."
Now that the congressional
coalition "stands alone," Meany
said, "there is ^ood reason to
hope" for action on these pro-
grams which the incoming Ad-
ministration "has cited ... in
discussing its legislative plans."
Meany warned that passage of
these measures will not mean that
"all the nation's problems will auto-
matically be solved ... but we do
believe they will be attacked with
vigor and effectiveness, and that
some progress will be made."
Because the effects of any new
legislation "will not be felt imme-
diately," the AFL-CIO president
said, "there will be an interim pe-
riod that may be troublesome
enough to demand emergency ac-
tion." He cited steadily rising un-
employment in recent months, the
indication of an "especially severe"
post-Christmas drop in jobs, and
an anticipated increase in the num-
ber of long-term jobless who have
exhausted unemployment insurance
without finding jobs.
On the international scene, he
said, the nation could expect "no
easy solutions to the complex
problems of Africa and Asia; the
threat to West Berlin; the ques-
tion of international trade and
our gold reserves; the status of
our defense establishment, or our
scientific standing."
He expressed confidence, how-
ever, that out of the new Adminis-
tration's actions would come "more
effective aid to the allied and 'neu-
tral' nations who need it; a more
realistic policy toward the totali-
tarian enemy; and a vastly stronger
defense to back up that policy."
•Decay' in Relations
On the subject of labor-manage-
ment relations, Meany declared
there has been "an erosion, a gen-
eral decay" in recent years. "What
at one time appeared to be the
promise of better mutual under-
standing has not materialized," he
said. "The attempts by the AFL-
CIO to meet this problem have been
rebuffed, directly or indirectly, by
management."
He expressed confidence that the
new Administration would "dili-
gently pursue" the objective of bet-
ter labor-management understand-
ing "already outlined by the nomi-
nee for Secretary of Labor," Arthur
J. Goldberg.
"That objective," Meany said,
"has our wholehearted endorse-
ment, and we will cooperate to
the fullest in its attainment."
The AFL-CIO president con-
ceded it is "inevitable" that there
will be disagreements between man-
agement and labor, but said they
should be "confined to the imme-
diate issues, and should not involve
attempts by one side to destroy the
other."
Averas© Weekly Earnings or Factory
Production Workers With 3 Dependenfc
1956 fo Dole, by Mombs
40
'SO
imtiniiil.l o
to
• 10
1956
1957
WfTTO STATES DEPARTMENT Of 1AB0B
UttCAU OP lABOft STATISTICS
1958 1959 1960
1 tATEftT C H0RTH8 ARE PRELIMINARY
Rise in Cost of Living
Wipes Out Pay Gains
Oil Workers' Campaign
Broken on Dutch Aruba
The oil interests and the anti-union government of the Dutch
island of Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela, have combined to defeat
a strike by the Petroleum Workers Federation of Aruba, according
to word received in Washington.
Management tactics throughout the dispute bore a strong resem
blance to those used by some U.S.^
employers to defeat union organiz-
ing efforts — the creation of a com-
pany union and the signing of a
contract, a campaign of defamation
against the legitimate union and
arrest, jailing or deportation of
union leaders.
The Intl. Federation of Petro-
leum Workers, the international
trade secretariat in the industry,
IUE District Meeting
Set for Puerto Rico
Newark, N. J. — Leaders of New
York, New Jersey and Puerto Rico
locals of Dist. 4 of the Electrical,
Radio & Machine Workers will
open a continuing program on the
theme, "New Frontiers for Puerto
Rican Workers," at a meeting in
San Juan, P. R., Jan. 23-29.
On the agenda are attendance at
minimum wage hearings, introduc-
tion of the district pension plan,
discussion of job placement and
organizational assistance.
helped the PFW mount a campaign
to gain recognition after the com-
pany signed an unsatisfactory con-
tract with the Lago Employes Coun-
cil, the company union. The
Caribbean Congress of Labor ap-
pealed to the company to respect
the democratic right of its workers,
but in vain.
The strike was touched off
when J. A. Hernandez, secretary
of the union and a member of
the executive board of the Inter-
American Regional Organization
of Workers (ORIT), was dis-
charged by the company. He is
a Venezuelan and his deporta-
tion was ordered.
Later Rosendo Vlaun, president
of the union, was arrested without
charges against him and has been
held for a month without bail.
The 1FPW, ORIT and the Intl.
Confederation of Free Trade Un-
ions gave full support to the strike
and will continue to back the union.
(Continued from Page 1)
that a chart illustrating the long-
term trend shows how the upward
movement in prices tends to "whit-
tle away" wage gains.
The. November report demon-
strated this point for the past
year. Although spendable earn-
ings were slightly over 1 percent
higher than in November 1959,
the rise in prices over the year —
1.4 percent — wiped out the gain
and left buying power almost
unchanged, the report disclosed.
In November, spendable earnings
— what remains after deduction of
federal income and social security
taxes — dropped to $80.95 a week
for a production worker with three
dependents and to $73.39 for a
worker without dependents. The
decline, which measured 23 cents,
was attributed to shorter hours of
work.
Cut in Buying Power
'The decline in spendable earn-
ings," the report said, "together with
the slight increase in consumer
prices, resulted in a reduction of
about one-half of 1 percent in
factory workers' buying power."
The November CPI will mean
cost-of-living increases for some
225,000 workers whose union
contracts include an escalator
clause tied to the national index.
Injury Rate Down
In Manufacturing
There were 11.9 disabling inju-
ries for each 1 million man-hours
worked in manufacturing during
the third quarter of 1960, the Labor
Dept.'s Bureau of Labor Statistics
has reported. This compares with
13.4 injuries during the comparable
period of 1959 and is only slightly
above the record low for the quar-
ter of 11.8, set in 1958.
The third quarter rate was higher
than the 11.1 injuries in the second
quarter of 1960 but the gain was
described as "the usual seasonal in
crease." For the first nine months
the injury per million man-hours
rate was 11.4 as compared with
12.1 the previous year. An injury
is considered disabling if the work-
er is unable to work a full shift the
day after the injury.
The majority of workers, chiefly
employes in the meat packing in-
dustry and the aircraft and missile
industry, will receive a 2-cents-an
hour increase.
A 1-cent hike is scheduled for
employes of Republic Aviation as
well as for employes of a variety
of smaller metal-working firms
Some 10,000 metal workers will
receive increases of 3 cents an
hour.
Some 25,000 members of the
Retail Clerks in Los Angeles Coun
ty retail food stores will receive an
8-cents-an-hour hike under a con
tract provision calling for an ad
justment based on changes in the
Los Angeles CPI since November
1958.
Jodoin Calls
For Steps to
Halt Downturn
Ottawa — There is "no excuse for
the suffering and waste" brought
about by Canada's heavy unem-
ployment. Pres. Claude Jodoin of
the Canadian Labor Congress has
declared in a New Year's message.
Describing Canada as a nation
which is "young, vigorous and the
possessor of tremendous natural re-
sources," Jodoin said the challenge
of 1961 calls for "courage and
imagination — not complacency/'
The CLC president predicted
that the emergence of Canada's
••New Party" during the coming
year will "inject new thinking
and new drive into the political
life of Canada . . . and offers
a new opportunity for various
sections of the community to
work together in common inter-
est."
While Canadian labor has been
active in bring about the forma-
tion of a major third party, Jodoin
declared that unions are not seek-
ing "a dominating role."
Declaring that Canada is "lag-
ging behind in providing jobs for
a growing population," Jodoin s;ml
the nation owes a responsibility to
its young people. "This is one of
the great challenges we face in
1961 and we must make this ihe
year to put the Canadian economy
back on its feet."
The "bitter disappointments" of
the past year in the international
scene, he added, "must not dis-
courage us from continuing to work
toward a world in which all may
live in peace."
09-u-sx
Potofsky, Hanover Hit
N. Y. Sales Tax Plan
Albany, N.Y. — Labor members of a commission named by Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller (R) to draw a blueprint for economic growth
in New York State have dissented sharply from recommendations
for a state sales tax and denial of unemployment insurance to
strikers.
Pres. Harold C. Hanover of the^~
State AFL-CIO and Pres. Jacob S.
Potofsky of the Clothing Workers,
the two union representatives on
the 15-member Commission on
Economic Expansion, also attacked
a recommendation for labor par-
ticipation in programs which might
involve inducements to new indus-
try on the basis of low wages or
inferior labor standards and with
a proposal to amend the state's
"full crew" law for railroads.
Jobless Area Aid Backed
Hanover and Potofsky joined
with the commission majority in
supporting proposals calling for:
O Assistance to areas of heavy
unemployment through priorities
in state technical and financial
aid programs, subsistence allow-
ances during retraining of unem-
ployed workers who have ex-
hausted their jobless benefits and
special, consideration in location
of state offices and facilities.
• Greater efforts by cities, with
state and federal aid, to encourage
rehabilitation of over-age factories
and lofts.
• Expanded union-management
apprenticeship programs and great-
er job and training opportunities
for Negroes, Puerto Ricans and the
elderly.
A suggestion that a state sales
tax be considered as an alternative
to a higher income tax was rejected
as "unwise" by Hanover and Potof-
sky. They declared:
••The sales tax is notoriously
unfair. It would place another
heavy financial burden on low-
income families and allow those
best able to pay to escape their
fair share of taxes. . . . If addi-
tional revenue should be needed,
it should be raised by plugging
existing tax loopholes and through
fairer methods of taxation such
as income, inheritance and gift
taxes."
The two labor members called
the proposal to deny unemployment
compensation to strikers — even aft-
er a substantial waiting perir-d —
"completely unjustified." They de-
clared the effect would be to * 4 weak-
en labor unions and strengthen
i anti-union employers in the state."