The Negro in Industry

...Local 8 remains lily-white...

...Negro employment is negligible in such major industrial plants as the General Motors and Ford plants in Atlanta, Hayes-King Aircraft Company in Birmingham and the big Ford assembly plant in Dallas, Texas...

...In September 1956, 2.5 per cent of the white civilian labor force and 6.1 per cent of the Negro civilian labor force were unemployed...

...In 1954, too, 17.6 per cent of all white families were living on an annual income of §2,000 or less- but 12..'> per cent of non-white families were living below that level...

...This article is adapted from a spccrli delivered at 'he National Civil Liberties Clearing House Ninth Animal Conference, held in Washington...

...These restrictions are, in effect, the key to the entire problem of the Negro worker...

...In heavy industry, as opposed to consumer manufacturing, the gains of Negro labor are most limited...

...The commitment of the national AFL-CIO to "help assure the implementation of the Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the public schools" was particularly meaningful in the light of attacks on this policy by some Southern unions...

...A union-shop clause is to be found in virtually all collective-bargaining agreements in the building and construction-trades industry...

...economic status...

...In the course of filing complaints before the President's Committee on Government Contracts, the NAACP had documented an industry-wide pattern of discriminatory employment practices including improper classification of Negro workers, wage differentials based on race, denial of apprentice and other training facilities to Negroes, and violation of seniority rights together with a lack of democratic trade-union representation...

...For many craft occupations, the only way a worker can be recognized as qualified for employment is to complete the apprenticeship-training program...

...much remains to be done--In labor, b\ management, and bv Federal, stale and local agencies -if I he Negro worker is lo gain equality of opportunity, in the North as well as the South...

...The only possible conclusion from the position taken by the President's Committee is that employers throughout the country may with impunity violate the anti-discrimination clause of a U. S. Government contract simply by entering into an agreement with a union which bars Negroes from membership...

...The President's Committee on Government Contracts says it has no jurisdiction in the case because Local 38 is not a party to the Government contract...

...A basic need today is to make possible the full realization of the individual Negro's talents and abilities in terms of industrial and engineering skills, to eliminate all the restrictions and limitations which prevent Negro youth from becoming highly skilled workers...

...More typical of the Southern industrial scene is the fact that Lockheed employs 2,400 white women but only seven Negro women, all in menial custodial jobs...

...The limited occupational diversification found at the Lockheed Aircraft plant is typical of the status of Negroes in other sectors of the growing Southern economy...

...Because unions perform certain managerial functions in this industry, the refusal to admit Negroes to union membership completely denies qualified Negroes the right to work in these trades...

...The Wisconsin Industrial Commission, which administers the state's extremely limited and weak fair-employment - practices statute, attempted to secure compliance with its decision after the union refused to admit the Negroes by initiating a court action...

...Local 38 remains in defiance of the decision of the Board and has refused to admit Negroes, however well qualified, into union membership...

...While this agency makes 110 direct subsidy lo apprenticeship-training programs, it cncouragcs and develops such programs for various craft unions which deliberately exclude .Negroes from apprentice facilities...

...The Federal Government, therefore, is directly subsidizing discrimination in the skilled trades wherever the trade union involved excludes Negroes from the training programs...

...During the last decade, this differential has been extended in both good years and bad, and a recent Labor Department report indicates that the ratio of unemployment among non-whites compared to whites may have been increasing since 1951...

...The claim of non-jurisdiction in the Cleveland IBEW case makes a mockery of the functioning of the President's Committee, since this case is paralleled by similar practices by building-trades unions all over the country...

...economy...

...Yet, it is clear that the building contractor, who is a party to the contract, is violating the contract's anti-discrimination clause because of the arrangement with the union...

...The most significant example during 1956 of the adamant, racist practices of some building-trades unions was the refusal of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 38, Cleveland, to admit Negro mechanics...

...The proportion of Negroes unemployed has been approximately twice that of white workers...

...the median wage of a Negro worker had risen to SI,589...

...The courts cannot compel the admission of an individual into such an association, and if his application is refused he is entirely without legal remedy no matter how arbitrary or unjust may be his exclusion...

...In 1939, the median Negro worker earned $364 a year...

...This is true for the printing trades, among machinists and metal workers, the various craft unions in the building and construction-trades industry, and many others...

...Management, labor, and Federal, stale and local governments have a long way io go in eliminating racial discrimination in the skilled trades and training programs The Negro in Industry By Herbert Hill Throughout U. S. industry, major technological changes are taking place that directly affect every wage-earner, white and colored...

...Among the 400.000 textile workers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, there is apparently not a single Negro employed as a weaver, spinner or loom fixer...

...The full meaning of these figures can be understood only in relation to the large and diverse Negro manpower available in the Marietta-Atlanta area...

...The number of textile workers employed in South Carolina was 48,000 in 1918 and 124,000 in 1950, but the proportion of Negroes in the textile labor force fell from 9 per cent to 4.8 per cent over this same period...

...The two Negro plaintiffs are appealing this decision in the State Supreme Court, for the Industrial Commission no longer has jurisdiction and appeals to the bricklayers' international union have brought no results...

...If we do not realize the Negro potential, American society will be denied urgently needed manpower skills and the Negro will be forced into an even more marginal position in the U.S...

...Additional U. S. Government participation in the apprenticeship-training field is promoted by the Federal Committee 011 Apprentice Training, pari of ihe Department of Labor...

...But as the result of a sustained effort by the NAACP and the President and Southern Regional Director of the International Association of Machinists, Negroes will soon be admitted for the first time into the Lockhced apprenticeship-training program jointly conducted by the union and the company...

...This includes major construction projects erected with Federal Government funds such as six launching and control sites for guided missiles under construction for the U. S. Army and a large Veterans Administration hospital...

...The racially segregated local unions will be integrated by the international union— an important step toward elimination of the segregated work pattern within the plant...

...In addition, several Negroes were initially employed in production departments hitherto employing white labor exclusively, and for the first time segregation was eliminated in the all-Negro "labor department...

...By 1954...

...On June 18, the Community Relations Board of Cleveland, which performs the function of a fair - employment - practices commission, unanimously found Local 38 guilty of discrimination against Negro workers...

...Yet...

...An example of this is currently to be found in Cleveland, Ohio, where the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers absolutely refuses to admit qualified Negroes into its apprenticeship-training program...

...At the large Magnolia Refinery in Beaumont, Texas, a group of 32 Negro workers were promoted for the first time into the "process mechanical division," which had hitherto been all-white...

...As a result, skilled Negro mechanics are completely denied the right to work in construction installations in the Cleveland area...

...The court, without reviewing the issue of refusal of membership, held that the Commission order was an unenforceable recommendation and therefore not subject to judicial review...

...but the white worker now earned $3,174, still twice a> much...

...the white worker earned 1956, two-and-a-half times as much...

...But automation has a special meaning for Negro workers...

...Similar changes involving a lesser number of Negroes took place at the Gulf Oil Corporation, at the Shell Oil Company's plants in Houston, Texas, and at the Cit-Con Oil Refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana...

...Of 450 job classifications available to white workers, Negroes are to be found in no more than 30...

...At the present time, qualified Negro youth are being systematically excluded from certain apprenticeship-training programs jointly conducted by management and labor in the North as well as the South...

...The National Association for the Ad-\ anccment of Colored People lias repeatedly urged that all forms of public support (including the use of public-school buildings and other facilities) be withdrawn from discriminatory apprenticeship programs...

...Obviously, vocational and technical training is a basic element in fundamentally changing the Negro's Herbert Hill is labor secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People...

...An investigation by the NAACP at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation plant in Marietta, Georgia indicates that (as of January 1957) the company employs 1,350 Negroes out of a total work force of 18,000...

...Already one can cite many instances where a highly trained white man and a new machine have replaced many unskilled Negro workers...

...In these plants, if Negroes are employed at all it is in the most menial jobs...

...The trade union determines who is admitted into the training program and, therefore, who is admitted into the union...

...In the textile industry, still the basic industry of the South, Negroes remain in a highly marginal position...

...At the same time, only limited progress has been made in securing employment stability for the Negro worker...

...For this reason, labor, management and Government must work to eliminate current restrictions that prevent the admission of qualified Negroes into apprenticeship-training programs and other forms of vocational training...

...A most disturbing aspect of the great industrial development taking-place in the Southeastern states has been the serious inability of Negro workers to register any significant employment gains since the end of World War II in the manufacturing plants which arc transforming Southern lilc...

...It is essential that municipal and state fair-employment-practices commissions become directly involved in efforts to eliminate discriminatory restrictions in technical and industrial training programs...

...For the disparity in economic status between Negro and white wage-earners is all too clear...

...Because the racial policies of trade unions are often the decisive factor in determining the employment status of Negro workers, it is hoped that the national AFL-CIO leadership will soon proceed to eliminate anti-Negro practices in the ranks of affiliated unions, especially the building-trades unions, with the same vigor shown in cleansing organized labor of gangsters and racketeers...

...Even this represents an unusually large number of Negro employes in relation to the prevailing pattern in industrial plants in and around Atlanta...

...In the course of the litigation, the court held that: "Membership in a voluntary association is a privilege which may be accorded or withheld, and not a right which can be gained and then enforced...

...The Federal Government, through grants-in-aid from the U. S. Office of Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, provides funds which subsidize apprenticeship-training programs in the various states...

...Much credit belongs to the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, which established and enforced a new industry-wide policy prohibiting the so-called separate line of progression in collective-bargaining agreements and calling upon local afliliates lo eliminate discriminatory practices and segregated locals...

...On February 18, 1955, the Wisconsin Industrial Commission found Local 8 of the Bricklayers, Masons, Marble Masons Protective International Union guilty of racial discrimination in refusing to admit into membership two qualified Negro bricklayers, Robert Ross and James Harris...

...The Community Relations Board decision called for the admission of qualified Negroes and for the acceptance of Negroes into the apprenticeship-training programs conducted by the union...

...The fact that there is a great concentration of Negro workers in the ranks of the unskilled and semi-skilled means that the increasing introduction of advanced methods of production will result in the wholesale displacement of Negroes currently employed in unskilled jobs...

...most are working in two segregated departments...

...One of the most significant developments in Southern industry during the past year occurred in the oil-refining and chemical industry...

...Trade-union attitudes toward Negro labor in the South are invariably torn between the traditional humanitarian and democratic ideals of the American labor movement and the regional bias against integration and equality of opportunity...

...AFL-CIO policy declarations against racial discrimination in trade unions and the continued support by the merged labor movement for civil-rights measures are welcomed by Negro wage-earners...

...How do they operate...

...Application of this doctrine to a trade union would indeed have serious consequences in related situations elsewhere...

...This finding was the result of a long period of investigation and finally a public hearing on January 19, 1955...