Report to the People

This week the two great houses of U. S. Labor meet in convention--the American Federation of Labor at Cincinnati, the Congress of Industrial Organizations at San Francisco. In the 59th year of A. F. of L., the fourth year of C. I. O., the two in sum are bigger and stronger than ever. Between them they claim 8,000,000 members, or about one in five U. S. workers. As the largest organized economic minorities in the U. S., they have an enormous stake in the democracy in which they live, a corresponding duty to the People of whom they are part. This week, after their fashions, they report to the People.

Men and Mirrors. In The Netherland Plaza Hotel's gaudy, marbled Hall of Mirrors, A. F. of L. President William Green convened some 500 delegates for preliminaries to the second, working week of their convention. By reflection from the glassy walls, the delegates saw themselves for what they were: mostly middleaged, fattening, "safe" gentlemen with good cigars. Any businessman would have been at home with them. For they were businessmen who had made, and proposed to preserve, careers in unionism. From them and from their typical President Green came no radical proposals, no departures from the prime strategy of A. F. of L.: to get along as well as possible with Business, preening the Federation as a more desirable alternative to John Lewis and C. I. O.

A. F. of L. businessmen have done very well in the twelve-month just past. They took in $1,800,249, spent $1,697,376, had $546,504 in cash on hand Aug. 31. Their reported, dues-paying membership was up 383,267 to 4,006,354. Outside analysts always take union totals on suspicion, generally deflate the Federation's official figure by at least 1,000,000 to get at the actual, paid-up membership. But the most significant story of A. F. of L., 1939 was not in totals claimed or actual. It was where those reported gains were made.

Core of the Federation has always been its construction unions. Now the A. F. of L. membership base is shifting and widening. Biggest gainer--and biggest union in the Federation--is Dan Tobin's Teamsters, up 40,800 to 350,000. Coming up fast are the butchers, laundry workers, operating engineers, retail clerks, hatters. Tough, clever George E. Browne's stagehands (up 14,200 to 42,000) lost their fight to hog all theatrical performers (TIME, Aug. 21) but they have just won another and vital struggle to keep A. F. of L. supreme in Hollywood studios, downing C. I. O. in a Labor Board election by a big majority.

In good time the influx of new members is bound to show in new faces, new and more progressive policies at the top. But the dominant figures in A. F. of L. are still such old-line, hardshell, Laborites as the Carpenters' Republican Bill Hurcheson, the little photo-engraving union's tiny Republican Matt Woll, the Bricklayers' rich, potent Harry Bates. The man most likely to lead the new forces, when and if they break into power, is smart, Democratic Dan Tobin. It was open talk around the convention that he would go after Bill Green's job in 1940, striking a strategic bargain meanwhile with Hutcheson & Co., who are none too pleased with wishywashy Mr. Green.

But the man in the Cincinnati street was less concerned with what went on inside The Netherland Plaza than with what came out of it. Of most concern to most people is what the Federation does about:

1) Peace in Labor. The delegates applauded politely, Bill Green replied in polite noncommittal when they heard from Franklin Roosevelt that they and C. I. O. "must" reunite for the good of democracy and national unity "in this time of trouble and distress." Net advance toward reunion: nil.

2) Peace in War. Like everybody else, the Federation was for staying out of World War II. They favored Franklin Roosevelt's version of Cash & Carry, repealing the embargo on arms shipments to belligerents, "if it can be shown that such a step will not lead us into war." The delegates endorsed their council's recommendation that President Roosevelt offer his services as mediator in World War II. But they roundly denounced the continued exclusion of Labor from such pre-war agencies as the now-disbanded War Resources Board, demanded that Bill Green & friends be consulted on U. S. peace policy.

3) Labor's Law. Noticeably toned down but not abandoned was the Federation's attack on the National Labor Relations Board, along with demands that the Wagner Act be amended to deprive NLRB of power to rule against Federation unions. Inasmuch as NLRB lately has treated the Federation more tenderly, C. I. O. with less overt respect, Green & Co. might well rest content for the moment, hold the threat of renewed attack in Congress as a club over the Board.

Young Men in the West. Rallied around John Lewis in San Francisco were younger, far more explosive characters than those with Bill Green in Cincinnati. For if A. F. of L. is the old, awakened Right Wing of U. S. Labor, C. I. O. is still the aggressive Left. The operating base of Lewis & Co. is the mass-production industries which C. I. O. took by storm in 1936-37. But, like A. F. of L., Lewis organizers hunt wherever a prospective unionist is to be found. This week Lewis statisticians, eyeing the membership claim of the Federation, blew C. I. O.'s up from the 3,800,000 which Mr. Lewis optimistically reported last year.

First business of Labor's Left in convention was to hear President Lewis account for policy & program. Of Peace in Labor C. I. O.'s Lewis said not a word in his report. (Said his trusted headquarters assistant, young Walter Smethurst: "There is not a Chinaman's chance. . . .") Potent Vice President Sidney Hillman, lately restive under the Lewis yoke, arrived to demand a positive move toward reunion with A. F. of L., test his power against that of belligerent Mr. Lewis.

On Labor and War, John Lewis declared that Labor 1) abhors war; 2) calls on Franklin Roosevelt to mend his ways, consult the unions on his peace and defense policies; 3) insists that wartime wages rise with rising prices; 4) "preoccupation with foreign affairs must not be allowed to detract attention from unemployment and . . . internal economic insecurity."

Big news alike to Labor and employers was a sudden shift of C. I. O.'s position on the Wagner Act. Until lately, Lewis & Co. have defended the Act and NLRB against all comers. But recently the Board has recognized Federation crafts in plants where C. I. O. industrial unions already had bargaining contracts. Last month NLRB gave Homer Martin's weak (4,500 members) A. F. of L. automobile union a chance to compete with C. I. O.'s United Automobile Workers in Chrysler plants. Nothing came of it--Mr. Martin's decaying union won in only one Chrysler plant--but the precedent bothers C. I. O. So Mr. Lewis this week accused NLRB of kowtowing to A. F. of L. and Business, darkly rumbled: ". . . It becomes necessary to consider and weigh carefully whether the benefits of the Act outweigh the dangers which its administration inflicts upon organized labor."

Reds in Labor was a looming issue, in San Francisco and throughout the nation. Like a switch-engine bucking into a string of freight cars, the shock of the Moscow-Berlin treaty had already jolted Labor in the East (see p. 27), would inevitably reach the last caboose. Host to Lewis & delegates this week is Longshoreman Harry Bridges, whose marine unions harbor many a Communist. (That Communists per se do not necessarily disrupt a union, Mr. Bridges had just demonstrated by extending his contracts with Pacific Coast shippers, heading off a threatened general strike along western water fronts.) As he and many another C. I. O. leader well know, the feeling abroad that Communists in partnership with Naziism are no longer acceptable comrades in a democracy is a thunderhead that may grow into a storm. One of Mr. Bridges' convention guests is New York City Councilman Mike Quill, who last week declined to join the American Labor Party's denunciation of the Reds (see p. 27). How to replace discredited Communist officers and organizers without wrecking union structures is no small problem for such varied C. I. O. unions as office workers, agricultural workers, Atlantic seamen, telegraphers and radiomen (whose able president Mervyn Rathborne is Harry Bridges' No. 1 ally on the Atlantic Coast).

Before he turned Left and founded C. I. O., John Lewis in his mighty United Mine Workers used to berate the Communists with much ferocity. Would he now find it feasible or necessary to revive old tactics to fit the new world of Stalin and Hitler? That was the biggest, cloudiest question last week in Labor's stormy sky.

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