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-5- percent of the Buffalo workers force is permanently unemployed. In Schenectady the GE company still is moving sections of its work elsewhere. On top of this bad situation, 30,000 steel workers are on strike, and thousands of others laid off due to the strike. In the city, unemployment often forgotten still persists with some 300,000 still out of work and with a greater number collecting various forms of relief. The richest state. People's capitalism. The welfare state. The people are partners in capitalism? Every month tens of thousands of the partners in New York people's paradise line up to collect surplus food, the modern 1960 breadlines. If all this wasn't bad enough, we have Rockefeller, the all-American boy, for Governor. Not too many years ago the working class in our city enjoyed the benefits of high levels of organization, high pay scales and a considerable section of the trade union movement under left leadership. This large left trade union bloc was able to win decisive benefits for all the workers in our state, and to have an impact nationally. New York is the only state in the union where unemployment insurance starts after seven weeks of a strike. This law is very handy to the steel workers who are presently out some fifteen weeks. Alongside of this powerful bloc of unions stood a relatively large influential Communist Party which ws able to elect its own candidates to the City Council, as well as influencing politics in a left direction. These forces helped to bolster center unions and tended to check social democracy and its influences, the main features of the the needle trades industries. With the advent of the cold war and the ensuing policies and practices outlined previously the left in New York was almost demolished in the labor movement. Social democracy emerged as a more influential feature of the New York City labor movement. Using the cold war and anti-communism as its main line, it was able to divide the working class of New York which was a multi-national, multi-racial grouping, especially the Negro grouping which was growing rapidly and a Puerto Rican grouping also rapidly on the ascendancy. The corruption of social democracy in the face of ruling class pressures guaranteed the Negro and Puerto Rican workers being subjected to economic degradation. It made easier for the monopolies to set up an almost fantastic manpower pool of low paid unskilled workers. Because of this pool many additional small scale light industry sprang up and many existing industries made quick use of this. For instance, hotel, restaurant, and laundry. Very often in the new industries deals were made either not to organize or phoney unions were established. New York City being the center of monopoly capital with its headquarters of billion and multi-million dollar corporations was quick to see this financial bonanza and exerted tremendous pressures to keep things this way. Between the pressures of the ruling class and the subserviences of the social democracy the huge numbers of Negro and Puerto Rican workers were held in economic bondage, and thus tended to blunt the development of the entire trade union movement in the city. Today New York City stands nineteenth on the wage scale in the country. The Negro and puerto Rican question today is the Number 1 question concerning the New York City labor movement. To the extent the labor movement moves on this question concerning the New York City workers, all of them, will benefit. The workers of New York City have paid and are paying a bitter price for social democracy. Sweatshops which pay less than welfare rates exist, unpoliced contracts are normal practice, the growth of unorganized scab shops are phenomenal. The excellent Perlo report with its voluminous data graphically indicates in specific figures the results of these deficiencies. This report reflects Marxist initiative and clairvoyance. Right wing social-democracy in the past period and even the present period helped to develop and maintain the cold war atmosphere. During the Khrushchev visit the Dubinsky-Rose group attempted with all their power to subvert the positive impact of these events, and to rekindle the cold war spirit. However, the Negro and Puerto Rican workers in the city have no intentions of remaining in economoc bondage, and as a result of this most brutal exploitation (often taking the form of pitting Negro and Puerto Rican against one another as exists in
