Viewing page 33 of 56

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-4-

over and play dead for their masters, but on the contrary if forced, are ready, willing and able to fight back. The American workers have sought to maintain their standard of living during cold war periods. They are certainly going to fight for them now in this new period. This is what the bosses fear. This is why the workers and their unions must be controlled. The present labor marker leadership often squanders the abilities of the workers to fight back, does not utilize the membership to beat back the attacks. In the recent steel strike the workers' militancy and unity developed from the companies' attempts to destroy the work rules were fundamental in moving McDonald into the breach and keeping him there. There is no doubt that McDonald's present attitude is a far cry from the one he displayed prior to and at the outset of this strike.

The attacks and the sharp struggled by sections of the workers are giving strength to differences and new developments in the labor movement. Not all sections of the leadership are satisfied. Especially lower echelons which are closer to the workers. In the Labor Day Parade in New York the TWU marched under the banners calling for a third party. Quill never fell for the bunk that Kennedy or his bill was a boon to the workers. Curran also rejected the Kennedy myth, and fought from the outset against labor legislation. Gorman has raised questions on the peace issue and is tending to reject the cold war line. Randolph has opened up a magnificent fight for Negro equality within the labor movement. He is doing so on a more militant and advanced basis than ever before. He has called for setting up of the National Negro Labor Councils. More Negro trade unionists are speaking out on this than ever before. The walkout at the UAW convention indicated this sharply. The Illinois State Federation of Labor called for more advanced political action at the past AFL-CIO convention. Knight of the Oil and Chemical Workers union has blasted Meany on his anti-Negro position. Carey has done so also. Carey often varies on certain questions due to the specter of a UE history as well as a live UE in his industry. The UAW resolution dealing with the new international situation and welcoming the Khrushchev visits flies in the face of the AFL-CIO position as well as Reuther's own utterances. Harry Van Arsdale in New York has called for independent political action as an answer to attacks from the ruling class. The teamsters union has inaugurated a broad and militant fight-back against Landrum-Griffin. They have inaugurated a plan for developing a militant grass roots political machine to defeat foes of labor. That union has moved energetically in organizing the unorganized and has done so in the South. One word on Hoffa. Where he does good we should support him. Where he continues to indulge in malpractices we should expose him. He is neither the Messiah nor the Devil. Strains  and stresses still exist within the AFL-CIO due to the relationship of the CIO leaders to their members which is closer than that of the CIO-AFL. This closeness makes the CIO leaders more responsive to pressures. Here is a difference in tradition.

These and other trends and currents to the left warrant our most energetic support. It is one of the tasks of the conscious programmatic left to help build, expand, initiate such activities. In doing so to see how to unite these streams and to lead them to areas where they do not already exist and to direct them more consciously against the monopolies. In the course of working within these movements and around the pertinent issues of the day, we must see how to develop the form or forms in which a new and broader but conscious left will develop permanently in the labor movement. 

This, generally speaking, is the broader situation that the New York state labor movement finds itself in today. One can say categorically that the workers in New York City are in a far worse situation than the working class generally. The main problems that confront the workers in this city are low wages, enormous amounts of unorganized workers, high rents, and generally poor working conditions. In the upstate area and particularly Buffalo widespread unemployment still exists. Nine