The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-01-23
FACE TO THE WATERFRONT!
BY BURCK

The colonial work is very weak Attempts to
form a Latin American seamens secretariat in
New Orleans and a Pan-Pacific Seamen's Secre-
tariat in San Francisco have not been success
full. At the same time we should not lose sight
of these tasks.
The necessity of special work among the youth
is no doubt underestimate No youth commit
tees exist In the last period the National Of
flee gave directives in this direction, but these
directives have not yet been carried out in life.
About "a per cent in the industry are youth,
but not long ago there was the idea that this
is not important because almost all seanen are
youth
Orgapizational Clarity Needed.
The preparations for struggles and working
out of demands is not carried over directly to
the ships and docks The organizations on the
ships and docks, wherever they exist are very
weak and hardly show any signs of life The
contacts with the ships are very weak. The
ship delegates, which according OF the reports
of the last Plenum are about ESQ., have no guild
ance whatsoever.
The difference between ship committees and
ship groups or branches of the Industrial Union
is not made clear. There is understanding
that ship branches are the lower functioning
gans of our union and that the ship commit
IS6 SllOulO NC oil OIBdl VI uIlGcu 1IOIlG dIlu
should be elected by all marine workers without
consideration of political and unioN affiliation.
1t is also not made sufficiently clear what are
the concrete duties of the ship branches and
ship delegates Such special concrete instruc-
tons must be worked out by the union and in
this way the lower organizations of the union
must be Systematically instructed The union
will be able to prepare and develop economic
struggles only when it will turn its face to the
ships and docks, when it will build up func-
tioning ship groups, when the delegates will be
constantly instructed in their work.
Only then will the union be able to feel and
know the spirit of the workers. formulate their
demands and mobilize them for struggles The
union will not hang in the air, but will be
real expression of the marine masses and or
gani0er of their fights. Therefore, the question
of building ship groups and concentrating the
main attention of the work directly to the ship
croups and docks is one of the decisive condi-
tons for development of struggles, for the fur
Their growth of the union and for the transform
ing of the union into a mass organization.
The International Seamen's clubs are only adj
ditions to the union office and can hardly be
called International seamen's clubs The work
in the International seamens club Is very weak,
not only from organizatonal point of view,
but also from the point of view of the neces-
Therefore it is natural that these International
seamen's clubs have no attractveness for the
marine workers and longshoremen 1t must be
especially emphasized that there are no language
departments, although colossal amount of for
eign ships visit the u S. Most of the foreign
ships visit San Francisco, New Orleans and New
York.
The official organ of the union, the Marine
Workers Voice." which in this period Is to be
not only the agitational weapon but the organ
national instrument in the whole system of
trade union work, comes out very irregularly.
For System In Finances.
The big mass of marine workers are unor-
ganized and this we should not forget. But,
according to the report at the last Plenum, the
Marine Workers Industrial Union has only
about 5000 members. Out of these only 1850
pay their dues more or less regularly, which
makes 1t difficult financially for the union to
carry on its work But the union did not in
stitute systematic recruiting drive
In some particular cases when the delegates
made some efforts in this direction, the results
were very good. At the last Plenum of the In
dustrial Union 1t was mentioned that on one
ship our delegate drew in in the period of three
months So members. On another ship in few
weeks he got 26 new members. With the or
ganzed efforts Of every member and Of the
whole union in this direction 1t is easy to i'm
agine what progress we could make in very
short time