LABOR FACES STORMY DAYS
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Labor Faces Stormy Days By oswald garrison viLLard THE MOST important piece of labor news which has appeared for a long time found its way into the back pages of the leading newspapers on Dec. 18....
...Next to the CIO they have presented the most solid front for the New Deal, and have supported the President through thick and thin...
...They feel, moreover, that they have had anything but a square deal from the press or the President since Pearl Harbor...
...It does not help to say to them that they should have known that this was coming because it happened during and after the last war and that they should have considered that when they gave their support to our entrance into the war...
...They fear that the next Administration, whether Republican or Democratic, will be dominated more than is now the case by these conservative employer influences, and this adds naturally to their growing unhappiness and unrest...
...Roosevelt, they are appalled by the way he has surrounded himself, precisely as did Woodrow Wilson, the reformer, in the last war, with the heads of great industries...
...Event Of First Magnitude A revolt in the Railway Brotherhood against the head of the New Deal is certainly a political and labor event of the first magnitude—a first-page story...
...The AFL has avoided this mistake of committing itself so.deeply...
...He said his men were determined to hold the President to "his plighted word...
...It is true that the CIO, which under Mr...
...Labor's Prospects Are Black The loss of confidence in the President is not merely tied up with the railway wage dispute...
...They think the President could have prevented this unfairness, and, like so many liberal supporters of Mr...
...Harrison, there will be so serious a split in the President's labor following as to cause many more people to believe that the day is approaching when the President will find it wisest not to run for office again...
...It—especially the AFL— is not moving to get rid of the criminals that are in its ranks, or to do away with many shortsighted labor union policies which have turned large numbers of their fellow-citizens against it...
...What has happened is this: The President twice approved recommendations made by an emergency board that the railway men be given an 8-cents an hour increase, and then he was overruled by Fred Vinson, the Director of Economic Stabilization, who declared that the 8-cents-an-hour award was inflationary and therefore would not be given, and made a less satisfactory recommendation...
...Harrison put it: "The government had agreed to the 8-cents recommendation at one time, but later ran out on us...
...It is the same old story: bad administration and the habit of regarding every problem from the political point of view have alienated a wide circle of labor supporters of the President, precisely as he has lost the support of the farmers, the Negroes, and other large groups who swept him into office for his three terms...
...The day before, George M. Harrison, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, and an ardent supporter of President Roosevelt since 1932, declared that the railway employes were "thoroughly disgusted" with their treatment by the Administration in their wage dispute and are going to express their feeling at the next election...
...Said he, "I don't think it did the Democrats a damn bit of good the way they handled this thing...
...Their campaign contributions have been of enormous moment in the management of his campaigns, and if the other railway brotherhoods stand behind Mr...
...They are upset by the fact that the marvelous production of war materials is attributed chiefly to the industrialists, and that it has not been given adequate commendation for the tremendous part that labor has played in furthering the war effort so magnificently...
...They think that they see strong fascist tendencies coming to the front in this country—which they also ought to have foreseen as an inevitable result of our entering into the war...
...They are so far out that if the President is defeated, or even if he retires and does not run again, its prestige will be badly shattered...
...An Inevitable Result Labor feels that the relatively few strikes—fewer than are now happening in England where labor has been held up as a model—have been over-emphasized, and the attacks upon John Lewis multiplied to bring discredit upon the whole of labor, especially among the soldiers abroad...
...It knows, too, that this is not merely due to the course of the Administration, but also to some of its own blunders...
...Whether that is the correct view or not, in the situation they now face, when they recall the fact that seven states have passed anti-labor legislation, when they contemplate the Smith-Connally Act which they consider the hardest blow struck at them, they know that stormy days are ahead of them and that they will be very lucky if many of the gains they have made through the championship of Mr...
...As Mr...
...It is not yet prepared to put its own house in order as it should...
...It relates to other blunders, or worse, of the Administration...
...Roosevelt and the New Deal are not lost...
...Although its leadership has usually been by no means so able and independent as that of the CIO, it wisely refused to tie itself as definitely to the Roosevelt cause as has the CIO...
...The truth is that labor is desperately unhappy about its prospects for the future...
...Lewis' leadership contributed some $500,000 at one time for the President's election, still stands fast...
...If, therefore, the AFL leaders withhold their support, they will be in a much stronger position with their rank and file...
...Indeed, the CIO is out on a limb because of that absolute devotion to the President's interests...
...It knows that it is facing an even blacker reaction than it faced after the last war...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 1
