The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 6
Background of Present Struggle.
A NUMBER of recent events in the labor movement have occurred which are strictly at variance with the "worker-employer co-operation" program mapped out for the labor movement by officialdom. It will be wekk here before listing the events which have disturbed the even tenor of life in official labor circles, to enumerate some of the actions and utterances of labor officialdom which furnish a background for the reactionary campaign and which gave notice of this offensive.
Writing in The DAILY WORKER for September 30 in the second of a series of twelve articles entitled "From Portland to Detroit," I listed a number of reactionary developments in official labor circles from the Atlantic City convention of the A. F. of L. up to that time. These are:
1. The failure of President Lewis to call out the maintenance men in the anthracite strike, the acceptance of a five-year agreement, abandoning the union shop, the acceptance of arbitration in principle, failure to utilize the violation of the bituminous agreement by the coal operators to bring them out in support of the anthracite workers.
2. Legalization of the "worker-employer co-operation" policy by the enactment of the Watson-Parker law, supported by labor officialdom and railway managers.
3. Failure of railway union officials to make any public opposition to the appointment by President Coolidge of known representatives of corporations to the mediation board provided by the Watson-Parker law.
4. The eulogy of this collection of Wall Street tools, individually and collectively, in the leading journals of the railway unions.
5. The welcome extended to a delegation of the fake British trade union leaders, organized by the leading British imperialist paper, the Daily Mail, by the executive council of the A. F. of L.
6. The organization of a "labor" life insurance company by heads of national and international unions with Matthew Woll as president.
7. The organization of a real estate corporation by a group of New York trade union official's.
8. The fight carried on by the A. F. of L. executive council against the proposed delegation to the Soviet Union, which was to be composed of trade union officials, labor editors, economists and attorneys for labor unions.
9. Sabotage of the Passaic strike, winding up with a public statement denouncing the strike as a "Communist enterprise" and attempting to stop further financial aid to the strikers.
10. Woll's article in the Photo Engravers' Journal (republished in the New York Times) proposing a conference of farmer organizations, labor organizations and BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS, under the leadership of Herbert Hoover, to devise ways and means for SAVING WASTE IN INDUSTRY.
11. The failure of the Chicago Federation of Labor to wage any kind of a struggle for the release of 91 members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union imprisoned for violation of an injunction against their strike.
12. The failure of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor to give even sympathetic support to the struggle of the Mexican labor movement against catholic feudalism and American imperialism.
13. The endorsement of the Citizens' Military Training Camps by the A. F. of L. officialdom and the public offer of its aid in popularizing them.
14. The attempt of President Green of the A. F. of L. to force a settlement of the furriers' strike, ignoring the basic demand for a 40-hour week.
15. The investigation of the furriers' successful strike ordered by the A. F. of L. ex.ecutive council in violation of all trade union custom and law.
The tremendous mass support received by the Passaic strike forced the A. F. of L. executive council to retreat from its original purely hostile position and accept the strikers as members of the United Textile Workers. It was smarting from this defeat when the A. F. of L. convention went into session.
Here it met a broadside from the hard-boiled open shop capitalists of Detroit, Who appeared to take seriously the purely platonic statements relative to organization of the auto industry by the officialdom. It was impossible in this situation, without abandoning all pretense of loyalty to trade unionism, for officialdom to refuse aid to Passaic, altho Vice-President Woll did his best to postpone consideration of the question.