Shakedown Cruise: Paul Hall looks to the Presidency (of the AFL-CIO)
Landauer, Jerry
The Shakedown Cruise by Jerry Landauer At first glance the Seafarers International Union scarcely seems to be a promising platform from which to campaign for the presidency of the...
...Such victories are not won by persuasion alone...
...The speeches generated valuable, prestigebuilding publicity for Hall...
...American crew members Warren Messenger, Harry Kaufman, Fred Anderson, Luther Dills, and Harry Dorer contributed, respectively, $6, $5, $4, $10, and $14 to the union’s special political fund...
...the SIU gladly helps because Friedel is the second-ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee...
...Foreigners eager to earn the higher wages paid aboard ships flying the U.S...
...After the election several dozen labor leaders, including George Meany, retreated to the SIU’s spiffy training base at Piney Point, Maryland, to assess the reasons for Humphrey’s defeat...
...In the House Appropriations Committee, shipping subsidies command a sacrosanct status that eludes even the emotionpacked’ issue of “law and order...
...Fords,moreover, was particularly sweet...
...Hall’s educational apparatus is formidable indeed...
...The hardest salesmen for the American merchant marine on Capitol Hill,’’ she wrote admiringly, “a1-e those people educated in the SIU-Hall way...
...In July, for example, no less than a dozen important politicians showed up to address the union’s 14th biennial convention at Washington’s Statler Hilton Hotel...
...This was widely regarded as a sensible proposal, since the new department could not be expected to untangle the transportation mess if waterborne commerce lay beyond its jurisdiction...
...Hall’s chances have been improving ever since Walter Reuther eliminated himself by withdrawing the United Auto Workers from the labor federation to forge an alliance with the outcast Teamsters...
...Because his enhanced power within the labor movement is largely based on the war, Hall holds at least associate membership in what Secretary of Defense Melvin ,Laird has rechristened “the military-industrial-labor team...
...Furthermore, violence has stained the union’s reputation...
...to campaigners for the General Assembly in Virginia...
...But it cannot be said that SIU president Paul Hall is singlemindedly devoted to the needs of the unlicensed seamen who pay these countryclubsized fees...
...To join the SIU costs a minimum of $1,100-$300 in initiation fees, plus at least $800 to cover special assessments...
...In 1967, the Johnson Administration strained mightily to shift the subsidydispensing Maritime Administration from the Department of Commerce to the new Department of Transportation...
...to list them would make mincemeat of the union’s claim that all contributors to the political that all contributors to the political fund are merely “expressing their right to participate in the American political process...
...More important, the war gives Hall access to large sums of money, enabling him to become labor’s leading political financier...
...It fails, for one thing, to identify donors of $100 or more, as required by the Federal Corrupt Practices Act...
...To take care of this year’s Congressional contingent Hall dipped into the union political fund for $4,925...
...to municipal judges in Manhattan: to gubernatorial campaigns in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, and New York...
...From among foreigners manning the S. S. Transglobe, a ship carrying military vehicles, Hall’s agents scooped up $6,750 in one voyage, with such men as Gunvald Larsen, Oddbjorn Fritzoe, and Lars Alvin each “contributing” $500...
...In Paul Hall’s school, moreover, the faculty sits back listening while the students speak...
...In part, no doubt, Ford’s appearance was his way of thanking Hall for campaign gifts of $28,000 to the GOP Congressional Campaign Committee...
...In 1966, for example, Hall’s political fund pumped no less than $17,000 into the Baltimore campaign of Congressman Edward Garmatz (D-Md...
...The students, as former newspaperwoman Bentley has written, are members of Congress: the faculty consists mostly of men representing 39 independent unions belonging to the AFL-CIO’s Maritime Trades Department, which Hall heads...
...But, at 55, he remains a leading candidate to step up when AFL CIO president George Meany, 75, steps down...
...The SIU’s membership of 45,000 is relatively small, and its net assets of $462,913 hardly make it a financial giant of organized labor...
...The SIU’s clever Capitol Hill operatives also make friends for Hall in subtler ways...
...The pattern is invariable: only the names change...
...But 14 aliens “gave” $1,400-a11 in sums of precisely $100 each-and a number of Filipino nationals were induced to part with even more: $300 from Eugenio Betingue and $200 each from Jose Belang, A. B. Reyes, Ignace Hernandez, and Guidlerne Echevarria...
...Many of these ships, under charter to the Military Sea Transportation Service, are manned by SIU crews...
...His influence reaches not only into Congress and the executive branch, but into city councils and state legislatures as well...
...One swift blizzard of telegrams costing $3,419 (from the SIU political fund) helped to smother the plan...
...Western Planet, a tanker ferrying fuel from the Persian gulf to Vietnam, offers a glimpse of how SIU fund-raising operates...
...And, as Hall himself put it, “there’s nothing like an honorarium to make a guy show up...
...Aboard the s. s. Sea Pioneer, Tan Joek Kwang ($loo), Low Chuen Choek ($loo), Lim Bian Seng ($loo), Alejandro DeWindt ($ZOO), and Manuel Taguacta ($150) helped to swell the union’s political fund...
...chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee...
...Speaking to the team need not be taxing...
...without such massive help (plus at least $25,000 more from other maritime interests) Garmatz might well have lost a tough primary fight...
...House “debate” on the subsidy authorizations for fiscal year 1970 offers a particularly revealing example of the maritime lobby’s muscle...
...The Upholsterers belong...
...it was overwhelmingly defeated on the House flook...
...One vice president was recently convicted of what amounted to terrorism, and opposition from within is discouraged by occasional beatings when the presence of beefy musclemen at union meetings fails to suppress dissent...
...and from that committee, headed by Hall, to politicians who support Hall’s objectives...
...Discussion of the bill on the House floor consumed just six pages of the Congressional Record: of the 13 members who spoke, 10 regularly receive campaign gifts from the SIU...
...Once a week, through most of the year, a member of Congress comes down from Capitol Hill to address what might be called the “militaryindustriallabor team” of the maritime industry- assembled MTD leaders, plus guests from the Pentagon and the steamship companies...
...The overflowing political fund, equally important to his campaign for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, gives him easy access to leaders of both parties...
...Indeed, Hall may well succeedparticularly if the Vietnam war continues...
...Last year the SIU went all out for Senator Warren Magnuson (D-Wash...
...The work can be remunerative, for enough foreign seamen sail SIU ships to let Hall pay $500 or even $1,000 for an hour of any Congressman’s time...
...Presidential campaigns receive commensurately more...
...In the last campaign the shop churned out $3,200 worth of political propaganda for Congressman Emanuel Celler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee...
...For whether the hat-passing occurs aboard the Transglobe, the Sea Pioneer, the Cosmos Trader, the Western Hunter, or the Canton Victory, money flowing to the $1 million fund follows what might be called a viscous circle: from the federal Treasury to operators of ships chartered by the Pentagon: from the operators to alien seamen in the form of premium wages (men sailing in the war zone receive bonus pay...
...It contributes to mayoralty campaigns from Tampa, Florida, to Pompton Lakes, New Jersey...
...Logically, these subsidies ought to be a leading target of the Congressional economy bloc, for, despite the expenditure of $2.6 billion in the last decade, U.S.-flag ships now carry less than six per cent of America’s overseas trade...
...The few American seamen who contributed at all ordinarily tossed in a token $2...
...A new man must retroactively pay all assessments levied on the membership since 1940...
...from the seamen to waiting union collectors...
...Payday aboard the S.S...
...Some weeks ago the Appropriations Committee pruned $47 million from the Nixon Administration’s crime-fighting budget while adding $164 million to the same bill for ship construction...
...Early last year committees quietly working for Lyndon Johnson’s renomination received $50,000 from the SIU...
...One thing to be noted is that many, perhaps even most, of the 39 supposedly maritime-minded unions in the MTD are no more than casually concerned about the state of the merchant marine...
...Speaker John McCormack generally runs for re-election unopposed, so the union contributes to a McCormack scholarship fund instead...
...From the S. S. St...
...Two paydays spaced six weeks apart aboard the tanker S. S. St...
...There, according to secret union records, Paul Hall’s men financed a fish fry, sponsored a rally, printed posters, supervised campaign workers, picked up a $600 bill for postage, contributed $3,000 in cash to the campaign, and spent $279.93 to hire “protection service” for the candidate...
...The Filipino sailors manning the Western Planet signed aboard through the SIU hiring hall near Manila...
...and to collect, in the same year (1967), two salaries simultaneously-$ 11,056 from the international union and $21,326 from its largest constituent local...
...Every year, too, Hall’s union sponsors a trip to New York for Congressmen...
...The luminaries included House Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-Okla...
...On the contrary, Congress often votes more than the executive branch asks for...
...The amount “donated” by foreign sailors may be inferred from the meager contributions recorded for the union brass: Hall and A1 Kerr, the union’s secretary-treasurer, have not put in anything like $100 each...
...from them to a bank near union headquarters in Brooklyn where the money is deposited in the account of the Seafarers Political Activity Donation Committee...
...Japanese seamen hired in Yokohama must fork out still larger sums for the right to work on taxpayer-financed ships shuttling to the war zone...
...But the SIU opposed the transfer, fearing that control of maritime policy might shift from the maritime lobby (“one of Washington’s most powerful sub-governments,” according to former Maritime Administrator Nicholas Johnson) to a strong Secretary of Transportation...
...The combination of heavy campaign spending and clever lobbying gives Hall a hammerlock on maritime legislation and helps quench whatever Congressional curiosity there may be about the source of all his money...
...The Leather Goods Workers are represented...
...Though the recommendations of the House Merchant Marine Committee exceeded budget requests by $124.3 million, not one member rose to challenge the spending splurge...
...But in April of this year Hall’s lobbyists unashamedly bought $10,000 worth of tickets to Richard Nixon’s festive “victory dinner...
...Hall’s stable of speechwriters will instantly provide a text for those Congressmen who haven’t time to compose their own...
...The 52nd Assembly District Democratic Club in Brooklyn is the home base of John Rooney, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee handling maritime subsidies...
...Hubert Humphrey’s candidacy gobbled up at least $215,000 more...
...The campaign of Eddie Sapir for city councilman in New Orleans suggests the union’s extraordinary attention to the details of local politics...
...These and other eyebrow-raising practices of a poor union in a sick industry would surely disqualify a man less glib, brainy, and ambitious than Paul Hall from entertaining aspirations for higher office...
...Paul Hall and his maritime allies win defensive battles with equal ease...
...Since heavy intensification of the war in Vietnam in 1965 (and the inauguration of SIU fund-raising cruises in its wake), the SIU has ladled campaign gifts to no less than 150 Congressional districts...
...So do the Toymakers, the Office Employees, the Carpenters, the Meat Cutters, the Barbers, the Restaurant Employees, the Potters, the Bookbinders, the Grain Millers, the Distillery Workers...
...In return, the MTD unions are supposed to vote for Hall when the time comes to choose George Meany’s successor...
...His classroom is the elegantly paneled auditorium of the Transportation Institute, an organization set up by the SIU in downtown Washington to thump the drums for our “citizen-manned” merchant marine (nothing is ever said about those generous foreign sailors...
...The union clearly violates the law...
...Virtually any friendly Congressman can have $500 or $1,000 merely for the ’asking...
...But though the leaders of these unions may never have set foot aboard a merchant ship, they have all been pulled into Paul Hall’s orbit-by SIU money, by organizing help, or by the supply of burly pickets who help weaker unions beat off Teamster raids...
...Christopher, Hall was able to count on large sums from such vigorous trade unionists as Demetre Svolopolous ($loo), Seiei Tamashiro ($420), Ryoei Higa ($490), Seishin Ikehara ($460), and Motoyuki Nakasone ($440...
...Ironically, too, much of the political cash Hall controls comes indirectly from the taxpayers via the Pentagon...
...in just the first three months of 1968, six committees working for Magnuson’s reelection each received a check for $5,000...
...and Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich...
...So far, the union has little reason to rue Nixon’s victory, and it has reason to celebrate his appointment of Helen Delich Bentley to head the Federal Maritime Commission...
...Ford plugged for the broadening of subsidy payments to cover more of the ships manned by the SIU...
...to candidates for district attorney in the Bronx...
...Further help for friendly lawmakers comes in the form of free campaign literature from a union-owned print shop, called Log Press...
...But not all the seamen are American citizens...
...The war keeps at least 100 ships busy carrying fuel and supplies to Vietnam...
...He benefits from the requirements of Vietnam shipping, which swell the SIU membership rolls, and from the war-induced eagerness with which Congress doles out $200 to $300 million a year to keep the merchant marine afloat...
...chairman of the House Merchant Marine Committee...
...flag make up a sizable percentage of the crews, and aliens wanting work must open their pay envelopes to the union’s persuasive collectors...
...Illegality aside, the spectacle of foreign sailors giving up one-third of their pay to support candidates for political office in an alien land could be regarded as just another example of ingenious union fund-raising if it were not so clearly a result of the Vietnam warand if it did not cost the taxpayers so many millions of dollars...
...to trade heavily on the stock exchanges...
...Dozens of other Congressmen, from West Virginia to Wyoming, similarly benefited...
...He finds time to run hard for the top job in organized labor...
...He also pledged that the Nixon Administration would not propose building ships in cheaper foreign yards-a step that would weaken shipyard unions allied to the SIU...
...the club regularly receives union checks...
...If a Congressman heads a committee important to the SIU, he can count on unlimited cash, as well as union-provided sound trucks, literature, and doorbell-ringers...
...The Shakedown Cruise by Jerry Landauer At first glance the Seafarers International Union scarcely seems to be a promising platform from which to campaign for the presidency of the AFLCIO...
...But while the Pentagon budget is being scrutinized as never before, maritime subsidies somehow escape even a cursory critical gaze...
...All these rivulets build into a mighty money stream that no other AFL-CIO union, not even the million-member Steelworkers, can match...
...The greatest of these objectives-one shared by maritime management, which winks at Hall’s money-raising methods - is the extraction of more millions to subsidize the construction and operation of merchant ships...
...Nor does the SIU ignore local politics...
...to file personal expense vouchers for $52,470 in one year...
...Lawrence, for example, netted nearly $8,000 for the SIU’s political fund, including $500 each from such seagoing political philanthropists as Jintoku Toma, Jinyu Yariku, Tsubio Kohatsu, Seigi Uehara, and Koichi Miyazato...
...Sam Friedel’s Crosstown Democratic Club in Baltimore is always short of “walk-around” money to bring out the city’s heavy Negro vote...
...In 1968 Hall’s campaign kitty reached the astonishing sum of $1,028,458...
Vol. 1 • October 1969 • No. 9
