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The lessons of the coal strikes, in which the miners emerged victorious in a showdown fight with the Roosevelt Administration have penetrated deep into the consciousness of the American working class. The hypnosis that organized labor could not successfully challenge the powerful apparatus of the federal government has been largely dispelled. Less than two months after the fourth mine strike, the railroad workers voted by an overwhelming majority to set a December30 strike date in protest against the arbitrary action of Roosevelt’s economic stabilizer, Vinson, who had scaled down a wage award granted by a railway mediation board. On Christmas eve began the walkout of the steelworkers in protest against the refusal of Roosevelt’s War Labor Board to grant a retroactive clause dating from the termination of their agreement. Both of these conflicts were aimed directly at the government. Thus, on the heels of his settlement of the troublesome mine issue, Roosevelt found himself confronting a new and far greater labor crisis that threatened his whole wage freezing “stabilization” program.
A labor reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, commenting on the walkout of the steel workers, indicated the gravity of the developing crisis:
“The strike now ending is only a curtain-raiser to the head-on collision expected when the actual demands of the steel workers come to the WLB. Right behind the steel workers and equally pledged to break the (Little Steel) wage formula are the United Auto Workers of America who are heading for showdowns with General Motors and Ford; the Aluminum workers of America, who are demanding increases of the Aluminum Company of America; the Oil Workers International Union, which is preparing to take on the entire petroleum industry; the textile workers, likewise tackling a whole industry; the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, which is taking on the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, and many other CIO unions in various industries.”
These unions comprise the backbone of tie CIO concentrated in the strategic mass production industries of the country. The union leadership, although composed of docile lackeys committed to the support of Roosevelt, are under sufficiently heavy pressure from the ranks to be goaded into demanding some concessions in order to be able to hold their membership in line. But the rulers of this country, with their headquarters in Wall St. and their agents in Washington are not only unwilling to grant any concessions to the workers, they are determined to retake those gains which the unions had previously won. All the elements of a new labor crisis are already boiling to the surface.
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U.S. STEEL HEADS OPEN SHOP DRIVE
The policy of the dominant section of the American capitalist class, the most arrogant ruling class in history, was recently summed up by Benjamin F. Fairless, president of the United Steel Corporation. In a speech before the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce Fairleee informed his cronies:
“Gentlemen, our conviction is as firm today as it ever was that the right to work should not be dependent upon membership or non-membership in any organization.” (New York Times January 21.)
This is the classic formula of the open shop under which the billion dollar corporations prevented unionization of the basic mass production industries for many years by employing gangs of armed thugs to terrorize the workers. Some of the bloodiest battles in the history of the world trade union movement were waged over the elementary question of union recognition. The war has provided Wall St. with a convenient cover under which to wage its campaign for the return of the open shop.
LABOR OFFICIALS AND THEIR ROLE
It is precisely the role of the labor bureaucracy that has cleared the way for the mounting wave of reaction which now threatens the very existence of the unions. The mechanics of capitalist class rule and the role of the trade union bureaucrats in the epoch of imperialism were analyzed in the Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution:
“While the magnates of monopoly capitalism stand above the official organs of state power, controlling them from their heights, the opportunist trade union leaders scurry around the footstool of state Power, creating support for it among the working masses.”
For over ten years, the labor skates have carefully nurtured the legend of “labor’s friend” in the White House. The Greens, Murrays and Hillmans, screened Roosevelt’s responsibility for a whole series of anti-labor measures by directing their vapid criticism at the President’s hirelings. When Roosevelt found that his prestige had suffered irreparable damage after he had been forced out in the open by the coal miners and railroad workers — he discarded his mask and took the initiative in advocating repressive labor legislation. He was able to contemptuously ignore the spineless labor bureaucrats, knowing that they are organically incapable of breaking with their capitalistic masters.
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THE DRIFT AWAY FROM ROOSEVELT
As the workers became more and more disillusioned with Roosevelt’s demagogic promises they began to grope toward independent class action on both economic and political field. The adoption by a number of important unions of the demand for an escalator clause in their contracts signified a radical departure from the wage freezing policy of the administration. The unmistakable labor drift away from Roosevelt was evident in the recent elections. Sentiment for the formation of an Independent Labor Party was crystallizing in a number of important sections of the labor movement.
In order to divert this sentiment for independent political action into surreptitiou support for Roosevelt, Hillman and Co. organized the CIO Political Action Committee. So low had Roosevelt’s prestige fallen among the ranks of labor and so great was the sentiment for independent political action among a Powerful section of the CIO that the labor fakers had to pretend: (1) That no candidate would be endorsed who did not support the program of the CIO Political Action Committee; and (2) that the device of refraining from giving one or another capitalist politician endorsement in advance constituted independent political action by labor.
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THE INEVITABLE RADICALIZATION
As Roosevelt’s swing to reaction becomes more pronounced the gap between the bureaucrats hanging to his coat tails and the militant membership of the mass production unions will widen into an unbridgeable gulf. The die-hard monopolists are bent on crushing the unions. The drive of reaction will inevitably speed the radicalization of the American working class. This in turn will impel the labor bureaucrats to lean more and more on the repressive machinery of the capitalist state. The Manifesto of the Fourth International analyzes this process:
“The regime in the unions, following the pattern of the regime of the bourgeois states, is becoming more and more authoritarian. In war time the trade union bureaucracy becomes the military police of the Army’s General Staff in the working class.”
While the process of bureaucratization has proceeded to a greater or less degree in all the unions it has by no means been uniform or complete. A number of powerful CIO unions still retain a considerable degree of democracy due primarily to the militant tradition of the membership and the experience gained in the struggles to build the union. This is the Achilles heel of both the labor bureaucracy and their “friend” in the White House.
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