The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-06-10
Whittier the Trade Union Bureaucracy?
By Joseph JACK.


We have had six years of pros
perity. Yet there has been no organ
ization drive of Importance under
taken in any industry whatever by
the A. f. of l.. leadership. On the
contrary, instead of the trade unions
registering big gains in membership,
as is usual during periods of pros
pclity, there was a tremendous de-
crease totalling over one half million
members.
Right now we have a virtual Ink
out of soft coal miners to enforce a
wage reduction. The employers real
izing the weak position of the trade
unions are taking the offensive.
There are several indications of a
new open shop drive even in the
strongly organized building industry.
We have the lockout Of the New
York plumbers organized and led
by the Building Trades Employers
Association. In Chicago we have a
lockout Of inside carpenters to en-
force a wage reduction,
Judicial Aid.
Turnout the country there is a
tendency on the part Of the govern
mental authorities to outlaw strikes,
by judicial decisions, by police inter-
ference. Even organization cam
paigns are being outlawed by injunc-
tions, as in the case of the traction
interests of New York against the
subway workers local union affiliated
with the Amalgamated Association of
Street-car and Railway Workers; the
Watson-Parker Law practically out
having strikes on the railroads; the
latest anti-strike decision of the SUI
preme court in the stone cutters case,
all this tends in the same direction.
The approval of the U. S. Supreme
Court of the war legislation embod-
led in the numerous anti-syndicnlist
laws, as manifested in the Anita
Whitney case stabilizes political re-
pressive anti-labor legislation on a
big scale and is a part Of the new
drive Of the employing class against
labor.
What has the trade union bureau
cracy done during this prosperity and
what is it doing now?
AS already pointed out there was
no organization drive on a big scale
undertaken by the A. F. of L. leader
ship. Instead the trade union bureau
cracy sought to profit, in the main
personally, through this prosperity
by investing the union treasures and
the workers savings. Thru so-called
labor banking and other financial
schemes into those industrial and
commercial schemes that yielded the
most profit and these for the most
part are industries where the work
ers are most exploited.
This was the main preoccupaticn of
the big trade union officialdom in all
these years of prosperity. It is
there that they sunk the union treas
uIies. The spare time they had they
spent hunting down the Reds, who
led the opposition against this treach-
tIOlS policy NOW Tie prosperity
seems to be waning and the employ
ers are once more taking the often
sive, but the trade union bureaucracy,
is not mobilizing the entire strength
of the labor movement in support of
the miners, who are in the front
trenches Of the trade union struggle
and to organize the southern coal
miners without which the miners
union is in danger of disastrous de-
feat.
The bureaucracy instead mobilizes
all the strength they can muster and
at the head of the Civic Federation,
led by Matthew Vol, carries on a
civil war inside the union to defeat
with the support of the employers,
the opposition to them led by the left
wing, by attempting to crush the left
controlled local unions inside the
needle trades.
Thus the center of TIE struggle is
not the defense Of the workers