ILGWU Repudiates Communists
Rich, J.C.
ILGWU Repudiates Communists By J.C. Rich WHILE the returns from Maine and Vermont aren't all in yet, the results of the pie convention elections held in several of the key locals of the...
...this is the Italian dressmakers' local, df which f.uigi Antonini, a thorn in the eye of all free enterprising comrades, is the manager...
...The word has gone out that there will be war retrenchment on the Standard convention features...
...But this is sn election story snd I stsrted to tell you about the Communist rout in Ixtcal 89...
...They discovered, for instance, that the Communists once insisted that this was an "imperialist" war and it didn't matter who won...
...to Communism,, The Communist, by the way, is a business agent of the local, but when he refused to break with the party-liners, the father was done with him and will not have him on his slate...
...Meany for the AH., said in a report on January 30 that the true increase is almost double the official one, or 43.5 per cent...
...I suppose it is to the credit of the garment workers and a mark of their common sense that this hodgepodge of sound and fury never got over...
...Even among trade unionists the majority are opposed to "feather-bedding...
...Its main points are that the official index is wholly inadequate on increase of food costs, which are 74 per cent instead of the official 40 per cent...
...This amendment was passed unanimously with tha assent of the Communist delegates participating in that convention...
...It remsins to be seen how much the industry and public members of the President's Committee will cut down the figure offered-by the labor members...
...He didn't, eh...
...They fished up some Daily Worker...
...The government index lists house furnishings as having gone up mm...
...He had to give up the problem...
...and hit the comrades in the face with a number of Blower's bright sayings...
...The labor members of the President's Committee, R. J. Thomas for the CIO and Geo...
...It's hard to tell how many votes the Communists got, for they rsn s "united front" ticket...
...The Real Cost-of-Living By BROADUS MITCHELL Research Director, ILGWU Y^ARS ago a statistician was studying the height of German men...
...There was a time when Local 89 nearly succeeded in inducting a Negro into It*"hi*mbmrrtp: It trasTdtscflvered that a certain colored dressmaker was able to speak Italian, and so Antonini claimed him for his own...
...The ' party of free enterprise, the virtue of Wall Street and the chastity of Union Square has lost out...
...The proipect it that not a tingle Comiiiiinitt wilt lie elected to any office within the grant of the electorate of the ILGWV, 310,000 ttrong, may their tribe increute...
...BE that as it may, what really tripped the Browan boys is the very same party line...
...ment union with the charge of Communism —and they will, come the next presidential elections —the rout of the Browder boys in the ILGWU will be refutation enough...
...Bloc voting b a simple and sensible enough thing...
...maybe some epidemic had weakened them...
...The big issues in the pre-convention campaign revolved about questions any garment worker will understand—issues like the Atlantic Charter, Teheran, Cairo, and other way points on the global ideology front...
...In those days the master minds of the Communist I'srty fomented strikes in defense plsnts so that on the day when Hitler invaded Russia, factories building planes which were to be sent to Russia were tied up...
...The report by the labor members, if accurate, means that the "Little Steel" formula confining wage increases to 15 per cent needs te be revised upward...
...If it is used to show what workers can get for their money, it leaves more to be desired...
...They charged that Dubinsky was a Hitlerite anti-Semite, so help me, a fascist Umbriago and a no-good, low-down Roosevelt non-supporter, and what's his stand on Teheran, did he tell you...
...In the Dressmakers' Local 22, Charles Zimmerman was reelected manager without an opposing candidate...
...However, he already has scored revenge 'of a sort...
...If the "Little Steel" formula is changed to allow for the whole increase in the cost of living, wage rates may be raised more than 28 per cent instead of being frozen at 15 per cent increase...
...If it is taken to show what hat happened to a given group of retail prices, it is remarkably accurate...
...The government index is too low, say the labor members, on the increase in rent, which has been 12 per cent instead of 3 per cent...
...What Do You Think IN the latest Gsllup Poll, 62 per rent of those questioned opposed "made work" and 17 per rent favored it...
...His native tongue was something out of Morocco, a tribal vulgate Spanish, it seems...
...This illustrates some of the uncertainties of statistics...
...This was brillisnt strstegy on the psrt of the geniuses running the I...
...Rich WHILE the returns from Maine and Vermont aren't all in yet, the results of the pie convention elections held in several of the key locals of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union show that David Dubinsky is in for a fourth term...
...He used the measurements taken by the Reichswehr when the men entered service...
...The latter have not yet voted at this writing, but in Local 62, the undergarment and negligee branch of the union, Samuel Shore, a Dubinrky partisan and bane and wormwood to the Communists in hit own right, was reelected manager by a vote of 8,320 to 152...
...So far as Dubinsky and the garment workers are concerned, however, there is satisfaction and vindication in the result...
...Thus did race prejudice come to the Italian dress local...
...Dave Dukinsky is just an old killjoy...
...No hoopla, no fun no Communists...
...Well, that shows you what he thinks of Russia...
...It was decided to place the disputed member in Local 22, since he did not feel at home in the Spanish speaking branch of the trade...
...A further test of these loyalties will come when the elections in Local 48 turn up...
...The rout started in Local 89, the largest in the International...
...The Bureau of Labor Sta- titties says stocking fast—that the-coat of- living- has risen since January, 1941, by only 23.4 per cent...
...This does not mean that tha Communists did not present an opposition to him...
...Zimmerman was able to prove that while the member in question spoke only s broken English, his Italian was even worse...
...In (hose days Marcantonio led a picketing line together with "We, the Mothers" around the White House, while Dubinsky urged all-out support of Roosevelt and Britain...
...Do you think a law should be paaaed stopping this practice...
...It seems that in the last convention the ILGWU, an amendment is the union constitution was passed te permit what it ' called "bloc voting" in the locals...
...When the Tories, who are nature's noblemen as Browder will tell you, again try to smear the gar...
...Luigi Antonini was'reelected manager by 17,805 to 467 rotes, a mighty close call for Luigi...
...Nobody can put swift war changes in precise figures...
...What's YOUR opinion...
...Those were the days when Roosevelt was a "fascist war monger," and opposition lo Nazism was wa matter "of taste...
...The labor report is a document of mote than 75 pages and casts a flood of light on wartime changea in cost of living...
...This is most striking in clothing but applies also to house furnishings, food, and housing...
...It means that where then are a dozen candidates to be chosen out of a field af a hundred or more, the member has an opportunity te vote for an entire slate by marking a cross in one circle, as he would with a straight ticket in a political contest This the Communists supported as an amendment to the constitution, evidently hoping that it would enable them to elect entire administrations with the least effort As it turned out, the bloc voting did elect entire administrations, but not of the Communists' choosing...
...Campaign literature wihch he is helping distribute carries a cartoon depicting his father as a rat, whatever the genealogists will make of-it...
...Maybe the babies of that generation had been badly nourished...
...Dubintky's adherents pulled a nasty trick on the Communists...
...There is a controversy between the Government's Bureau of Labor Statistics and the labor representatives on the President's Cost of Living Committee whether the cost of living is still in its stocking feet or standing on high heels...
...This is the Italian Cloakmakers' local, and such are the stresses of war and factional divisions that two leaders of that local, the parents of two grown sons, felt themselves constrained to renounce their offspring because one had turned to AaCJauuUhl thB.Qihex...
...S. branch of the Comintern, but they hate to be reminded of it...
...No explanation seemed sufficient...
...The Communists clamored for unity and were ready to dismember any president of the 1LGWU limb from limb, particularly if his name was David Dubinsky...
...They ran a full slate for the other offices and conducted a hot campaign, the most intensive to date, The result was that the administration slate walked in, with 12,004 to 6,002 votes...
...On clothing, the report holds that consumers' costs have risen 72.2 per cent since 1941, more than double tha 33.7 per cent shown in the government index...
...Well, then, the vote was 17.805 to 467, snd the Doily Worker didn't cry "we wux robbed" exactly...
...The Communist will therefore noT**be elected when the administration wins, as is expected...
...Questions such as whether a $6.76 garment is in truth only a $4.75 item or vice versa were properly disdained as outside the immediate interest of a dressmaker...
...49 per rent favored a law stopping it and 30 per cent are against fcsch a law, according te the poll...
...They combined with the fsscists against Antonini, and when you say fascist in an Italian local, you mean regular, full-blown, dyed-in-the-wool, castor-oil-snd-blackjack Mussolini fsscists, and none of your economic royalists...
...It merely charged that the workers had been "herded" to the polls by the business agents, which, I suppose, is a terrible ciime...
...AS for other racial and language groupings in the garment locals of New York, the results of Locals 62 and 22 cast their shadow in advance of coming events in Local* 9 and 117...
...The balloting was secret, however, and the regimented members had a chance to get hep with their heartless herdsmen if they wanted to...
...The likelihood is that there will not be a single Browder boy among the 850 delegates when the convention of the ILGWU opens on May 29 in Boston...
...It's something to be able to prove to the world that decent trade unionism can stand up to the wiles of Communism and all its skills in perversion snd lick them to a standstill by ordinary democratic procedures...
...The party liners, unable to confuse the voters with an avalanche of candidates and slates, failed to elect even t fellow-traveler to date, to believers in the two-psrty system such as you know the Communists to have become, this is a sad blow...
...They insist thst Dubinsky played s mean trick when he hit below the psrty line...
...What the Daily Worker failed to detail in its exposure was the fact that this is a local in which the grouping is by language...
...The question waa: "Some labor unioas make jobs for more of their members by requiring employers, to hire more men than are actually needed to do a particular job...
...A hot jurisdiction fight developed when Charles Zimmerman, an equally thorny barb to the comrades from Thirteenth Street, staked a claim on the colored brother in behalf of the general Dressmakers' Local 22 of which he, Charles, is manager...
...The Daily Worker exposed shsmeful discrimination in this locsl against the Negroes, for of its 37,000 members not one is of the colored race...
...Many of these hinge on the purpose of the official index...
...per can L* According" to the labor suWeyTlhT* actual increase has been more ths.n 62 per cent...
...He tried to explain it in every way he knew how...
...This waa a drop for the Communists from previous elections when with a smaller number participating, they got a larger vote...
...Technical questions, and others not so technical, are involved...
...This, dear sirs and brothers, is sad to contemplate...
...The labor report considers higher prices in black markets, increased taxes on workers, war bonds and other savings, which decrease the amount that workers have to spend for living...
...Later on, another statistician discovered that in the year in question the German army began to measure men in their stocking feet instead of with their boots on...
...lif«*is earnest...
...It got snarled on a twist of the party line...
...The official index does not allow for disappearance of cheaper items and shift to higher priced lines...
...Life is real...
...He was astonished to find that in a single year the average height fell off :it of an inch...
...All that it dam is apply the party system of voting familiar in general elections to union balloting...
...Whether or not thoae of the labor membera of the President's Committee are accepted it la clear that the "Little Steel" formula, if it applied when announced, ought te be revised now...
...Yet nearly 18,000 of them voted for the administration ticket and only 467 for the combined Fascist-Communist slate, which ought to tell something or other about the sympathies and loyalties of Italian-Americans...
Vol. 27 • February 1944 • No. 9
