National Reports
EUBAUKS, BICKNELL & ROMER, SAM
National Reports Recuperating Johnson Plans for 1956 By Bicknell Eubanks DALLAS DOWN on the banks of the Pedernales, Lyndon B. Johnson, Democratic leader in the Senate, continues to recuperate...
...Since he became Senate Majority Leader, too, he has shown an ability to bring together on a national level the diverse elements of his party...
...It has doubled its size since the war, thanks to an astute business leadership which shifted from grain handling and flour milling to chemical research and a constant quest of new products and new markets...
...Texas Democrats are as divided as they have ever been since the great split in the New Deal administration, and the two feuding wings are led by close personal and political friends of Senator Johnson...
...But Teamsters Local 544, which Brennan headed and Williams served as business agent, represented four over-the-road truck drivers employed by the company: the Government used these four workers as the hook on which to hang a vigorous indictment...
...Chances are that he hasn't made up his mind...
...Connelly then passed out $1,000 checks to three other Teamster officials: Sidney L. Brennan, a vice president of the Teamsters international...
...The case itself hung on a technicality, since strike-breaking for money apparently is not a crime, notwithstanding its low place in labor morality...
...No one can honestly claim to know what his decision will be...
...Those who talk with him are witnessing a new sharpness, a piercing political perceptivity pointed up more finely by his hours spent in studying and in talking with visiting political leaders of his party...
...contract negotiations were always choppy and protracted...
...The mill workers have been members of United Mine Workers District 50 for many years...
...which includes over-the-road truck drivers...
...instead he and Moore met with Gerald P. Connelly, a Teamsters official of ill repute, who offered-for a price-to help end ADM's labor difficulties...
...Jack J. Jorgensen, president of Teamsters Joint Council 32 in Minneapolis, and Eugene J. Williams, a business agent for Teamsters Local 544...
...Johnson built his political reputation in Texas as a liberal, and he continues to carry weight with his old friends...
...Whatever course he follows, it will have a strong influence on Democratic party planning and policies...
...The back-to-work movement was an abject failure, with one lonely worker crossing the token picket line...
...His announced plan to have Congress carry out a constructive middle-of-the-road program in 1956 as an example of Democratic responsibility is being reflected in a moderate approach to the Texas problem...
...Governor Shivers wants Texas delegates free to do whatever they want after the convention...
...it included a seven-cent hourly raise to lure the men back into the plant, then an additional four cents to make Connelly look like an enterprising labor leader...
...At the moment, Senator Johnson is preparing to break off his convalescence for a series of public appearances...
...Connelly told the two company officials that the solution lay in replacement of the UMW local with a "more responsible" Teamsters union...
...Underworld Labor Tactics in Minneapolis By Sam Romer Minneapolis Archer-Daniels-Midland Company is a top-drawer Minneapolis firm with a primary interest in processing agricultural products...
...One of ADM's 111 plants is its linseed oil mill in Minneapolis, where 600 of the company's 4,600 employes work...
...He advised on the wording of "back-to-work" letters to strikers...
...A company official said later that Connelly had "conscientiously" sought to fulfill his part of the bargain...
...Instead, it cried bitterly that neither the company nor the union leadership had "guilty knowledge" that the Teamsters officials came under the law...
...In the spring of 1953, the negotiations erupted into a UMW strike which shut down the mill...
...Each has kept his political activity in separate fields-Senator Johnson operating nationally and Governor Shivers locally...
...Its annual report this year disclosed a net worth of $92 million, with annual sales of $221 million and net profits of $5.7 million...
...In any event, the Senator really has his work cut out for him...
...National Reports Recuperating Johnson Plans for 1956 By Bicknell Eubanks DALLAS DOWN on the banks of the Pedernales, Lyndon B. Johnson, Democratic leader in the Senate, continues to recuperate from the heart ailment which slowed him up last summer...
...James W. Moore, normally ADM vice president in charge of sales and a member of its powerful five-man executive committee, shelved the company's industrial relations director "for the duration" and took over strike strategy...
...It appears to be up to the Senator, therefore, to restore harmony to the Texas Democratic party...
...Whether or not Lyndon Johnson will try for the Democratic Presidential nomination next year is still a moot question down here...
...The strategy then envisioned a contract signed between the company and Connelly's union, which the UMW could not challenge because it is unable to use National Labor Relations Board facilities...
...But Connelly proved less than an effective organizer...
...For the first time in several years, the tall Texan is reaching deep into the intellect which made him a man marked for achievement in his early political career, although it was overshadowed by his great activity...
...During the trial, the defense made no attempt to deny that money was paid and money was received...
...Heading the liberal faction is another close personal friend of the Senator's and his political tutor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn...
...It is an approach which could keep the Lone Star Democrats from fragmentizing their party...
...But little of this acumen apparently has been exercised in the field of labor relations...
...Right now, he faces a critical problem in his own state party...
...The price for Connelly's services was $5,000 (incidentally, the same figure as Kerrigan's fee...
...If some of the strikers returned, Connelly promised, Teamster truck drivers would cross the picket line...
...Instead, a St...
...Paul industrialist who was an ADM customer sent the money to a fictitious corporation in Chicago headed by Connelly's son...
...2. Provide a moderate approach which might give the national party the effective counterpart of the self-declared dynamic conservatism of the Eisenhower Republican party...
...The defense now hopes that technical legal errors may bring a reversal on appeal, but no higher court can erase the stigma of strike-breaking...
...The way to do this, they decided, was first to get the men back at work-at least some of them...
...It took 80 minutes to convict all hands on all counts...
...But his political drive will be based more on thought and moderation than on the abundance of physical energy he showed in his climb to party leadership in the Senate...
...This silence, it should be noted, is horn not of condonation but of fear of the Teamsters' economic power...
...He made no effort to meet and bargain with the strike committee...
...It is no secret that Senator Johnson is taking advantage of his physical idleness to strengthen himself for the crucial session of Congress in the 1956 election year...
...Accordingly, the company announced that it was reopening its plant, secured an injunction limiting picketing and set in motion a back-to-work movement...
...In the future," Connelly told Kerrigan, "we'll use the same method-agree on a figure beforehand and then go through negotiations...
...Ray-burn and Shivers have feuded so bitterly that it seems almost impossible for them ever to get together...
...The company then returned to normal collective bargaining and the strike was settled in two weeks with the UMW firmly in control...
...He imported a New York attorney, Thomas Kerrigan, who had been recommended as "a good man" in this field...
...he even tried some house-to-house solicitation of individual strikers, offering union stewardship jobs as a plum to shift unions...
...At the head of the conservative faction is Governor Allan Shivers, long a good friend of the Senator...
...The sequel to this sordid tale of professional strike-breaking by a union official came last month when the four union leaders, the company and Moore were convicted of violating a Taft-Hartley Act prohibition against employer pay-offs...
...The kind of labor relations Kerrigan specialized in soon became evident...
...The money was not paid directly...
...While resting at his sprawling LBJ Ranch, however, he may accomplish two important things: 1. Provide the binder to hold the Texas Democratic party together long enough for it to manifest its true political strength in national affairs...
...The jury, which included three union members, made short shrift of these protestations...
...Connelly and Kerrigan then "negotiated" the kind of contract the Teamsters would get after the strike was broken...
...Unfortunately, the Minneapolis labor movement has remained silent on the case...
...Speaker Rayburn has called for a Texas delegation to the 1956 Democratic Convention which would be pledged to support the party nominees in advance...
...While the two men have never been identified here in Texas as necessarily "on the same team," they have carefully refrained from being maneuvered into opposite positions...
...Texas political observers, who have watched Johnson develop from a callow Congressman into a Senator of Presidential timber, see significance in the fact that "pedernales" means arrowhead...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 48
