Kaleidoscope of Labor
Mills, Robert
Kaleidoscope of Labor trade Union News of General Interest By Robert Mills In Waco, Texas, th* Chamber of Commerce haa been I interesting itself in the problem of labor. The ? Genera) Tire and...
...In March, 1942, he published a series of four articles, in the paper Chieh Fang (emancipation) at Yenan, expressing dissatisfaction with affairs in Yenan...
...Two of his Minnesota officials have filed affidavits declaring that locals of the ILWU, despite their no-strike pledge, would have gone out in sympathy for the Montgomery Ward strikers if the government had not stepped in when it did...
...Wang begged to cancel his membership in the Communist party on June 2. However, the affair had attracted too much public attention, and agents were sent to dissuade Wang from the decision...
...From May 27 to June 1, the Yenan Central Research Institute held a continuous six day session, trying to rectify Mr...
...A study by Richard A. Lester, done for the Committee for Economic Development, estimates unemploy-emnt during reconversion will be between 4,000,000 and Mau.000...
...It is expected that $4,000,000 a year will accrue to the fund for vacations and medical care for the 7fi,000 members of Locals 22, 60 and 89 of the ILGWU...
...it is certain he has done the labor movement no service...
...15, 16, 17...
...6,000,000,000 in unemployment compensation funda has been accumulated, but it is in 62 separat», mutually-exclusive funds...
...Sponsors, including Senator Aiken, Representative Jerry Voorhis and Thomas Mann...
...The ? Genera) Tire and Rojbber Company was prepared ? ety living wsges in its new plant in Waco, but the Cbeaii,«r didn't see eye to eye with that policy...
...Wang has now escaped to Chungking, I am informed...
...State Legialaturea will meet this year, ami the CIO-PAC, working with State Federations of later, plans to scrutinise every bill introduced...
...The article* in themselves were not important, about 2,000 words in all, chiefly complaining about the bad food, and were.written in a casual, chatty style...
...The chairman of the Central Research Institute took the trouble to answer his criticisms point by point, and there were four or five articles from the official Communist agents On the subject, published in a "special edition" of the paper Emancipation...
...The articles became the talk of the town, and a serious view was taken by the authorities...
...After a three-day and three-night deliberation, May 15-17, Wang was expelled from membership in the Anti-Japanese Writers Association, with the chairman, Mis* Ting Ling, announcing that it "was a general session of the literary circles, making a good reckoning of VVartg Shih-wei's Trotskyist thoughts, and a session of the greatest educational value in reviewing the surviving petit-bourgeois ideology among the writers...
...President Roosevelt, Jan Masaryk and Herbert Lehman, endorse the use of, -cooperatives in postwar reconstruction...
...The New York affiliates of the International ladies' Garment Workers' Union have pledged $150,000 to the Jewish Labor Committee's drive to finance a relief arsgraa in Europe and an anti-racist program here...
...The ? I.KB has established a precedent in its ruling ton the question of changing workers from salary to an hourly wage status...
...Chinese Trotskyism WaNG SH1H-WEI is a Communist party member of sixteen years' standing...
...They quoted an overheard conversation of two girl comrades walking in the open at night, criticizing the Communist party members, mentioned "the feeble, low voice of dissatisfaction of the youth of the lower ranks" wight be heard through more open criticism, and Anally criticized the discriminations in food and living between the higher and the lower ranks and be-•tween party members and non-members, proposed the situation should be "slightly" improved so as to obtain* greater co-operation, said that* there were "three classes of uniform and five classes of food," that he was not "sour grapes" because he himself was ..entitled to the "small kitchen," but that "the young students had two meals of thin congee, and when asked whether they had eaten enough were required to reply, 'We have eaten enough^' The articles produced a great commotion in Yenan, *"d for a month and half many people expressed sympathy with the writer's point of view...
...The fund is made up through employer contributions of 3V4 percent of payrolls...
...gJJM,000 is the committee's 1946 goal...
...Forty fou...
...Lehman, however, refused to distribute UNRRA supplies through cooperatives...
...The General Motors Corporation in Linden, New Jersey, made such a transfer of a large number of engineera and technicians who had selected a collective bargaining agent, arguing that company policy was to pay all unionized employees an hourly wage...
...The world-wide drive for the Freedom Fund for Cooperative Reconstruction fias netted $100,000 in this country, and a total of $1,200,000 in all free countries...
...If the |ey increase is accepted without consideration first of tie lower-paid workers' problems, the resolution de-saamdr i a clean-up of the Labor Party...
...The four articles were called Wild Artichoke, whose meaning, according to his own explanation, was that it was a kind of flower found on the mountainside of Yenan and that although it was slightly bitter in taste, it had certain medicinal properties...
...7, nos...
...It is ea eld practice of anti-laborites to insert clauses in eeerure and otherwise unimportant bills...
...Wang's thoughts, and, according to the published minutes found that Wang was unquestionably "a Trotskyist . . . practicing the same tactics as was once used by the Trotskyists in Soviet Russia...
...The material it reprinted in the magazine Ch'iinchung (The Matten), published in Chungking, vol...
...He translated Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and was once a corr-tributor to my magazine of humor, The Lunyu, and writes a quietly sarcaatic style...
...In San Francisco, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Harry Bridges' congregation, has signed a contract with distributors which pledges no strikes for three years, and renounces the moral right to strike for several postwar years...
...1 jibor unions in New Zealand have been vigorously tretesting a salary- increase from ?460 to ?760 yearly far members of Parliament, finance Minister Walter Nash and Railways Minister Robert Semple have been Utesa<l of disloyalty to labor principles in a resolution adapted by railroad workshop union members...
...It seems, though, that the ILWU is not entirely in agreement with Bridges' policies...
...Bridges, no doubt, has struck a great blow for Bridges' political future...
...As a result, the unemployed in some states and territories will not receive much help in the immediate postwar period...
...On June 3, Wang announced that "he was touched by .^he love of his most highly respected friends," and that "he formally and seriously took back the demand he had made when his mind was abnormal...
...The NLRB stated that the employer should have acted through the union, and that the transfer prejudiced the prestige and status of the employees affected...
...The Chamber managed to install one of its own men ss ptrtoimel manager in the new plant, and he has ar-rtnged to maintain the average wage at an inflation jstel of around f 18 a week...
...The purpose of the fund is to supplement relief of war-rsvaged peoples by aiding in the restoration of cooperatives...
Vol. 28 • January 1945 • No. 4
