LABOR IS SERIOUS ABOUT CO-OPS

...At first it took the form of passing ineffective resolutions at labor conventions encouraging members to become interested in co-ops...

...But there it rested and nothing very concrete was accomplished in bringing the two great movements together...

...Single most important recommendation was the proposal to establish a department of consumers' cooperation "with a full-time executive and the necessary staff...

...A broad program of cooperative development to meet consumer problems has been outlined for postwar years...

...sound educational practices should be followed by the unions through organization of buying clubs and through expansion into stores managed by trained supervisors...

...Primarily, however, this is a job for labor...

...Commenting on the report, Elmer E. Milliman, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Em-, ployes, declared, "Now we are ready to go...

...This Is Labor's Job Declaring that if workers are to have any voice in the control of the quality and price of goods they spend their money for "they must combine their power in cooperatives, just as they combine their labor power in unions to control their conditions of work," the report asserted that "when workers and other consumers, through their cooperatives, control the means of production in any line of goods, they can prevent monopolies and powerful interests from exploiting them by charging excessive prices...

...A labor division is being established to carry on the work so vitally needed to make organized labor co-op conscious...

...Milliman has been leading the fight for an aggressive cooperative program within the AFL...

...Two years ago the UAW, after several years of study of consumer problems, hired Donald Montgomery, former Consumers' Counsel of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, to head up its Consumers' Division...

...Labor Is Serious About Co-ops By MILES McMILLIN ONE of the most encouraging trends in organized labor in late years has been the realization that the improvement of the worker's economic position cannot be confined only to the problem of wage rates...

...How remarkable is best illustrated by the action of the American Federation of Labor taken at its 1944 convention and by the earlier program launched by the United Automobile Workers of the CIO, the largest single union in the world...

...This department, the Council recommended, should work in "close collaboration with the Cooperative League of the U. S. A.," the educational organization of America's cooperative movement...

...members of local unions should be trained to develop cooperative organizations and this training should be had through the Co-op League...

...In the past the unions have emphasized the getting of more money for their members, with little or no attention to the very substantial economic benefits to be gained by a judicious use of the pay check...

...Collaboration Pledged In a 2,000 word report on consumer cooperation the powerful AFL Executive Council recommended far-reaching steps in cooperative activity for its millions of members...

...Serious consideration of this problem on the part of union leaders has led inevitably to the cooperative movement and the possibility of broader participation in cooperative activity by union members...

...The rise of new and progressive leadership in both the unions and cooperatives, however, has brought a remarkable change in recent years...

...We will now be able to develop the administrative machinery to insure against the mistakes made years ago...

...If they tackle it with the same energy and determination they are devoting to political organization, they will accomplish far more valuable and lasting benefits for themselves...

...The co-ops themselves are taking a long step in the direction of cooperation with organized labor, a step that is all the more remarkable because of the known anti-labor bias among some of the large farm cooperatives...