On the Industrial Front
On the Industrial Front The World of Labor Paper Box Makers Threaten City-Wide Strike as Organization Meeting Is Called DECLARING that conditions in the paper box making trade have reached a...
...which has all of the characteristics of a "company union...
...Mass pickets are thrown around the few shops still working...
...The union will demand recognition by the employers and a general agreement as to working con-dtions, which will include a 44 hour week, with time and a half for all overtime, and a rate which will call for from $45 to $50 a week for the higher paid workers, with a minimum of $15 for the lowest...
...The great danger here lies in the fact that should these employers succeed by such covert methods, what will happen to the workers In other trades...
...The union contended that the Injunction could not be Issued under the provisions of the new law, and Justice O'Donnell sustained that contention...
...The state 48 hour law for women factory workers is evaded by calling the additional hours "overtime...
...It has supplied no work or pay for the jobless, which alone can stimulate mass consumption...
...At this time we call upon all workers, Socialists and their sympathizers to give moral support to the locked out members of the Motion Picture Machine Operators Union Local 306, who have recently been compelled to picket some 200 theatres in this city, because they have refused to accept tremendous slashing in wages and intolerable hours and working conditions...
...The company says that It will keep the 100 who have been scabbing and will give 200 of the 300 strikers jobs...
...He declared there is also a widespread conviction that simple Justice demands more orderly, more self-respecting methods of dealing with those who are unemployed through no fault of their own, arid that there is a determination to reap the benefits of a universal plan which will not only maintain for the workers a measure of purchasing power but which will also furnish to the employers an additional incentive to stabilize employment...
...We therefore call upon all workers and Socialists and all decent public spirited men and women to patronize only theatres employing members of Moving Picture Machine Operators Union Local 306 and to ignore the pickets of the so-called Empire State Motion Picture Operators Union, Inc...
...The League is again giving a class in pottery and a course In current events for domestic workers...
...This means blacklisting 100, just aa so many other southern strikes have ended...
...A 4 _--uu uaTiug lu wuin iu uadii'iiuLii will, inadequate ventilation and under filthy and crowded conditions...
...Attorneys for the General Defense Committee of Chicago and the United Mine Workers filed an appeal, in the case of William Hightower, 77 year old president of the Evarts Miners' Union, who was convicted In Montgomery county last November of alleged conspiracy to kill Jim Daniels, coal company deputized gunman...
...Acquittal in the "In meeting the evidence offered by the prosecution," declares a representative of the General Defense Committee, "the defense was placed at a tremendous disadvantage by the terrorlzatlon tactics used by the other side...
...The committee recommended, aa means of stimulating purchasing power "necessary to move our economic machine off its present dead centre," immediate expansion of necessary Federal public works, establishment of the six-hour, five-day week In all governmental industrial enterprises, creation of a labor board to Investigate the influence of labor-saving devices and legislation to protect continuity of employment, Congressional action to establish the shorter work week In the country's basic industries and creation of a commission to work out an adequate plan for unemployment Insurance...
...If this is not organized scabbery on legitimate organized unions, we are at a loss to know what is...
...His ruling was made when the Capital Fur Shop of Washington asked the court to enjoin a local of the International Fur Workers' Union from picketing Its shop with placards, accusing it of being unfair to labor...
...Pickets Serenade Public BALTIMORE — (FP) — Union musicians have found a way to dramatize a lockout...
...He served, several years ago...
...The Consolidated settled on a basis of the union agreement and the 44-hour week, but with arbitration of the wage question...
...For who else but a company union would sign agreements with employers to work for leas than one half of the union wages, to work from 12 to 14 hours a day, to work seven days a week, and with half of the necessary number of mechanics in the booths...
...We have settled with a little over 50 inside shops and their contractors, who number between 150 and 175 altogether," said Hyman Blumbcrg, vice-president of the Amalgamated and director of the strike...
...Because of this, certain persons who could have given important evidence hi behalf of Bratcher and his co-defendants, have been afraid to go on the witness stand...
...Passage of the act was largely the result of efforts by the National Committee on Labor Injunctions, organised by th« Civil Liberties Union...
...The arbitrator agreed upon is a former juvenile court judge, J. M. Moses...
...This involves the belief that by supplying big business with Federal assistance, some of the money so supplied will percolate through to the people at the bottom of the economic heap...
...We have the market from 75 to 80 per cent organised now, and we will keep on until we have it 100 per cent...
...According to Manager Waldman, working conditions in the paper box making trade have grown j steadily worse since 1926...
...The Gayety Theatre recently reopened with a scab orchestra...
...although no overtime is paid...
...The statement of the labor committee follows: • • * The Socialist party, being a working class party, has at all times helped and participated in every struggle of organized labor on the economic field...
...Andrew J. BiemiUer, national organizer for the Socialist party, and the Amalgamated organizers...
...Now the union has been reorganized and is preparing to submit its demands to the manufacturers for the betterment of working conditions, or, If negotiations are not successful, to call a general strike In the paper box industry...
...Andrews cited the exhaustion of savings among the mounting millions of the unemployed and the increasing pressure for gifts and tax levies to sustain life itself among hundreds of thousands of families...
...On the Industrial Front The World of Labor Paper Box Makers Threaten City-Wide Strike as Organization Meeting Is Called DECLARING that conditions in the paper box making trade have reached a point where the factory workers must have a showdown with the manufacturers, Morris Wa'dman, manager of the Paper Box Makers' Union, issued a tall for a mass meeting Tuesday, Sept...
...Men and boys often work 55 and 60 hours weekly without additional pay...
...Large crowds gather every night to watch the unique picket line...
...At the same time it has given the general officers of the Amalgamated full confidence that like success can be won in the other markets, and that the Amalgamated can win back its former power and fighting spirit in the face of nation-wide depression, All strike meetings are well attended...
...Many paper box workers are women, Waldman said, who have to work for 50 and 52 hours weekly for meagre pay...
...It is the Baltimore branch of the New York firm of Cohen and Goldman, and represented one of the most stubborn elements in the opposition...
...Max Lerner, of the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, courses in public speaking for use in the labor movement, in Imperialism, in English, and in literature...
...Conferences with employers will be held this week, the results of which will be reported at the general meeting in Irving Plaza Tuesday...
...Clothing Union Winning Demands In Spirited Baltimore Strike tutITH the clothing workers of I W Baltimore In revolt and 5,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America out of their shops In the most stirring strike in a decade, bosses here are in a panic...
...In practice it has served only to protect or retrieve the fortunes of large financial and Industrial institutions...
...The awakening of thousands of former members of the Amalgamated, and the wholesale signing up of new members when the union sounded its call to fight wage cuts, has put new life into the whole labor movement in Baltimore...
...Now this firm, employing between 500 and 600 workers, signed the union agreement on the seventh day of the strike...
...A wide variety of courses includes an introduction to social philosophy by Dr...
...At that' time the lowest paid workers re-j celved $18 a week and the high-: est $90...
...17 The New York Women's Trade Union League will start Its ninth year of evening classes the week of Oct...
...Endorsement of unemployment insurance, made compulsory by legislation, has been voted by the executive board of the International Molders' Union of North America, as an Instruction to its delegates in the 1032 convention of the American Federation, of Labor...
...Since its inception, however, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation has contributed exactly nothing to the purchasing power so essential to business recovery...
...Two previous juries which tried Bratcber had disagreed...
...whereas, today, the highest paid workers get but $25 a week and this scales down to as low as $6 in the lower levels...
...Their workers go back to work at wage increases of from 10 to 20 per cent...
...The wage increase will affect all mills of the Stehli Silk Corp., however...
...New Anti-Injunction Law Upheld in First Court Test Justice Daniel W. O'Doanell, of the District of Columbia Supreme Court has upheld the new Norris-LaGuardla anti-Injunction law in its first court teat, the American Civil Liberties Union reports...
...A new group, the Workers' Dance Theatre, is a scholarship course Acquitted in 3rd Tried for Alleged Killing of Gunman HARLAN, Ky.—Despite all the efforts of the Harlan county prosecution to convict him, Fred M. Bratcber, union coal miner, was acquitted here when tried for the third time for conspiracy to murder Jim Daniels, deputized gunman, killed in a clash when Black Mountain Coal Company guards invaded Evarts on May 5, 1931, with the expressed purpose of shooting up the town...
...Educational work Is being done by Charles Ervln, editor of the Advance...
...Every night from 7:30 to 8:30 union musicians, on a large truck, carrying placards announcing the lockout at the Gay-ety, circle round and round the block in which the theatre is located playing funeral marches...
...Meanwhile Myrtle Caiden, 21, remains in a serious condition aa the result of a police attack on a picket line...
...The proposed legislation, now ready for introduction, would require employers to set aside for a reserve [fund a small, fixed percentage of their payrolls in the same manner as under the existing workmen's accident compensation laws...
...They are reluctant to risk the possibility of a life term in prison...
...as impartial chairman of the industry in this market...
...FRANKFORT, Ky...
...WASHINGTON...
...A militant spirit is rampant among the workers...
...There are only two big shops now holding out...
...As in this instance, shall "incorporated" unions with state charters be permitted to exterminate the free independ------1— .i---- a , u - _____l____ IUL utgCUliMUVIW \Jk UlC ..win, id and the gains for which they have struggled for decades...
...High Point Striker* Win Pay Boost, Face Blacklist HIGH POINT, N. C. — (FP) — The strike of the Stehli silk mill, which has been marked by such police brutality to girls and women, has ended with an agreement which provides for a 19 per cent increase in wages but gives no protection to the active workers in the strikers' ranks...
...Women'i Trade Union League Classes Oct...
...After three years of the depression, the plans of government agencies have been ineffectual "and conditions have constantly become worse...
...I refer particularly to the Indictment of eight men for conspiracy to murder immediately after they had testified for the defense in some of the trials...
...Support Motion Picture Operators Union, Labor Committee Urges rpHE labor committee of the So-I cialist party, through Samuel E. Beardsley, chairman, and Joseph Tuvlm, secretary, this week Issued an appeal in behalf of organized motion picture machine operators who are picketing some 200 theatres...
...The sanitary conditions in the smaller paper box factories are worse than any other organized trade, Waldman said, employes 1____J__ _____1...
...Particularly is this true during periods of depression, when the employing class uses every means in its possession to rob the workers of their gains and standards achieved through years of struggle by reducing the wages, Increasing hours and other important gains are being taken from the workers...
...Sees U. S. Public Backing Plans for Jobless Insurance LAKE GEORGE, N. Y.—Public approval of plans (or unemployment insurance is growing rapidly and bills will be introduced in more than 30 state legislatures and in Congress next January, declared John B. Andrews, secretary of the American Association for Labor Legislation, at the closing session of the Silver Bay Industrial Relations Conference...
...Labor Sees Scant Hope for Folks At the Bottom IN Its recent report, the Committee on Unemployment of the Central Trades and Labor Council of Greater New York reported that It could see little hope for "the people at the bottom of the economic heap...
...The Reconstruction Finance Corporation is a practical application of this theory...
...The report continued: "The corrective formula for this condition advanced by the present political and large business interests is to stimulate enterprise from the top down...
...The employers in this instance have availed themselves of the assistance of the so-called 'Empire State Motion Picture Operators Union, Inc...
...They will probably never be able to work for Stehli and perhaps be blacklisted throughout the state...
...More than 1,000 pickets stormed the Consolidated Garment Company, defied a squadron of police reserves, and pulled the shop, for example...
...The company claims that it has sent much work to northern mills while the strike has been on as an alibi for not taking all strikers back...
...27, at 6 P. M., at Irving Plaza, Irving Place and East 15th street, Manhattan, to formulate demands upon the employers., Shop meetings have already been held in sections of Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn, and the sentiment among the paper box workers generally is almost unanimously in favor of a city-wide strike, unless definite concessions are made by the manufacturers in respect to working conditions, recognition of the union, and hours of work and pay, according to the trauci a. Efforts to intimidate workers have been made by some employers, It is stated, who fear the results of a strike at this time such as the paper box industry suffered from a few years ago in which the employers were victorious, but only after considerable loss...
...who are at best serving the interests of the employing class in this industry...
Vol. 14 • September 1932 • No. 13
