The Illinois standard. [volume], September 18, 1948, Page 5, Image 5

About The Illinois standard. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1948-1949

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
LOOKING AT LABOR
By ISABEL CARR
FATHER Brockmeier, a Catholic Priest and a union
printer by trade, set the tone this week for the 9th Con
stitutional Convention of the Progressive Miners of Illinois.
Meeting in Springfield, Sept. 13-19, delegates heard
Father Brockmeier, in the opening session, lash the Taft
Hartley Act . . . call for a
house-to-house campaign to
defeat Congressmen who
voted for it . . . berate those la
bor leaders who cling to old
party ties for the sake of politic
al handouts as traitors to labor.
Adam Chura, financial secy.,
Local Union No. 1, PMWA,
writes from Springfield that, “It
looks like a progressive conven
tion. . . . There is open disinter
est in Truman and Dewey. . . .
While there is no open campaign
ing for Wallace, there is unhid
den sympathy for the Wallace
ticket, resentment at the denial
of Civil Liberties and denial to
appear on the (111.) ticket. . . .”
CIO RESEARCH Director Her
mit Eby joins the University of
Chicago’s faculty this fall. CIO
Pres. Phil Murray has replaced
Eby with Stanley H. Rutten
berg, army vet who has worked
for the CIO since 1937.
INTERNATIONAL HARVEST
ER’S public “apology” for its
newest 9 per cent price hike was
strictly from hunger.
Fenced in by government anti
trust law charges for price-fix
ing and throttling of free com
petition in the Farm implement
industry, Harvester evidently
felt it necessary to clear itself
with John Q. Public. As usual
—labor was its whipping boy.
Blaming the price hike on la
bor costs is “a plain lie,” says
Grant Oakes, president of the
CIO Farm Equipment & Metal
Workers Union, who sees the
boost as “a naked profit grab
at the expense of both farmers
and workers.” Oakes summar
ized:
. . Implement prices had
already been boosted 37.9 per
cent since June 1945 . . . (and)
all wage increases could have
been covered by a 7.9 per cent
(price) increase over the last
three and one half year period.”
WHO’S WHO in Labor: Tall,
lean, taciturn Harold E. Nielsen
turned down his nomination to
the post of Director, District 1,
United Packinghouse Workers
(CIO), at the Packing conven
tion last June. . . . “What the
heck,” Nielsen says softly, an
Omaha twang running through
his speech. “I don’t have any
axes to grind ... I was happy
up in Cudahy Local 40 in Mil
waukee. . . , But I was drafted.”
“Aren’t many trade unionists
who got into the labor movement
the way I did,” Nielsen will tell
you. Nine years ago he sold the
filling station he ran in Omaha,
came to Milwaukee to work in
the Cudahy meat packing plant.
“Working conditions were mis
erable ... I didn’t know any
thing about unions. . . . But
about 10 of us started meeting
in a guy’s kitchen figuring out
how to set one up. . . . Guess I
never would’ve stuck it out—if
it weren’t for what Old Man Cud
ahy told me. ... He said we'd
never organize a union as long
as he was alive. . . . That kind
of got in my craw. . . . Now he’s
signed three contracts with us.”
President of Local 40 for six
years, organizer of one of the
first labor committees for Wall
ace there, Nielsen says he’s had
“a tough row of stumps” since
he took over his post in District
l’s union hall at 4758 S. Marsh
field. Every weekend he com
mutes to Milwaukee to be with
his wife and three teen-age kids.
ALL QUIET on the Midwest
ern Front in the 11th month of
Chicago Typographical Union
No. 16’s strike against Chicago’s
five daily newspapers. But in In
dianapolis, Sept. 15, lawyers for
the AFL International Typogra
phical Union opened their de
fense against NLRB charges that
the union had defied a Taft
Hartley injunction.
Cooling off is no
easier in Canada
OTTAWA (ALN)—A new na
tional labor code, which draws
heavily on the Taft-Hartley Act
for inspiration and was fought
by both AFL and CIO unions
in Canada, became law this
month.
Among labor’s many objec
tions to the new code is the pro
vision for a cooling-off period
before a strike may be called.
Under the procedure laid down
by the code, labor estimates a
minimum of 80 days will elapse
before it will be possible to
strike for wage or other de
mands.
The code also allows an em
ployer to challenge an estab
lished union each year to see
whether it continues to repre
sent a majority of the employes.
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UNION SERVICE
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1 -■-J)
AT HOUSE labor subcommittee
hearing, Pres. Albert J. Fitz
gerald of the United Electrical
Radio & Machine Workers (CIO)
holds up a copy of his union's
constitution to emphasize his
point that, like the U.S. Consti
tution, it is "against discrimina
tion for reasons of race, sex, or
political belief."
File $3 million
Taft-Hartley suit
against teamsters
NEW YORK (FP)—A $3 mil
lion damage suit charging Local
807, International Brother of
Teamsters (AFL) with violating
the Taft-Hartley Act will- be
filed here by five major truck
ing associations here.
The suit was announced while
about 6,400 teamsters here and
3,300 in Newark, N.J., continued
their walkout which started
Sept. 1 for wage increases, a
welfare fund, seniority protec
tion and other contract improve
ments.
The suit charges the union
with violating the Taft-Hartley
Act by using “coercion and vio
lence” against n®n-striking driv
ers. A similar charge against
the local was included in an un
fair practices complaint filed
with the NLRB by employers as
the basis for a possible injunc
tion.
Ask ballot reversal
Continued from Page 1
His car nearly hidden from
view by hundreds of admirers
who ran alongside, Wallace cir
cled the stands, stopping to shake
hands with some, waving, smil
ing. Delegations of trade union
ists carrying red flares, march
ing under the banners of their
unions, followed in a long, live
ly line behind Wallace’s car,
television and newsreel cameras
picked up the scene.
Hands reddened from clapping
sent applause ringing into the
clear, cool night sky again and
again as Wallace spoke.
“Any state which keeps the
Progressive Party off the ballot
is depriving the people of free
elections,” he cried.
With the decision of the Illi
nois Supreme Court, which re
fused to hear Progressive argu
ments for a place on the ballot,
“we have reached a showdown
between freedom and fascism,”
he contended.
“The fight for the ballot in
Illinois,” he said, “is also a fight
to defend the Constitution of the
U.S. If they destroy your right
to vote for the Progressive
Party, they subject you to taxa
tion without representation—
taxation for war preparations
without a chance to vote for
peace.
“If they steal your Progres
sive vote, they take your proper
ty without due process of law—
they take $1,000 a year in
higher prices from each family
without a chance to vote for a
rollback of prices to decent
levels.
“If they rob you of a choice
in this election, they destroy
your chance for freedom from
fear and want, regardless of race,
creed, or color. They pave the
way for attacks on the Negro
people and on other minorities,
not only in the South, but right
here in Chicago.”
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Parenthetically, in his attack
on the Republican-Democratic
deal to keep the Progressives
off the ballot, Wallace said he
hopes that "America . . . will
still include Illinois” on Nov. 2.
He said that the 7iolence he
encountered on his recent anti
segregation tour of the Suutb
did not shock him as much as
“the news of the stoning of Cur
tis MacDougall and the attempt
to rule the Progressive Party
off the ballot in Illinois.
“At the very time I was see
ing the fighting advance of the
people of the South toward
more democracy, I heard of the
blow to democracy struck in Illi
nois.”
Shifting his attention to the
recent decision of the CIO’s na
tional leadership to support Tru
man, Wallace declared:
“Dillon-Read and Brown
Brothers-Harriman (Wall Street
investment banking firms)
should finance the campaign of
the Democratic Party. . . . The
Pied Piper leaders of labor have
no right to ask for workers’ dol
lars to keep Truman’s Wall
Street gang in power.”
He recalled how Truman
broke the 1946 strike of the
packinghouse workers and the
coal miners and secured union
busting injunctions against Chi
cago’s striking printers and the
longshoremen.
He said that Truman, were he
actually opposed to the Taft
Hartley law, could remove Rob
ert Denham, the anti-Negro, an
ti-labor administrator of the law
whom he appointed.
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