The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-11-15
Party Life
Communist Units
And the Problems
of the StOckyards

/
ditions in general in the stockyards.
Speed-up is SO great that it has be-
come second nature, SO to speak, as
far as the workers are concerned.
OF course, after a close check-up on
this, one can see why there IS such
Speed-up. Girls, as well as men
and women, fall out from the great
speed-up. There are even some
cases where workers have died right
on the bench or at the machine
where they were working. 1t is a
common thing to hear of a worker
losing a finger or a part of a hand
because of the dreadful Speed-up.
Why the speed-up? First the
packers have introduced such a
scheme as bonus, which is sup
posed to give the workers more pay.
This, of course, is in order to drive
the workers. They set certain
standard for a worker to do dur
ing an hour and even day. The
bosses have some workers as lead
ers on the job. This leader starts
out and the rest of the workers
have to keep up or the boss will
want to know what is the matter.
There are other methods which the
bosses use. Most of the plants
have no rest period during the
eight or ten hours of work. No one
is permitted to smoke on the job or
in the toilets. And in most of the
places the toilets are in another
building, and, if it is in a three
story building, it's always on the
ground floor. If worker has to
go to the toilet, as rule, he has
to wait and this is an injury to his
or her health. Most of the workers
who have worked any length of
time have stomach, piles or kidney
trouble. This in short, is some of
the conditions of the workers.
Now, the composition of the
workers: The majority are foreign
born Polish, Lithuanian, Mexican,
etc.. Negroes constitute about %
to IS per cent. Twenty percent are
young, white Americans. The con-
ditions also are based on different
nationalities. The bosses use this
to drive the workers, to make each
nationality hate the others. In the
face of all this, with wages being
reduced, speed-up on the increase,
the Section tackled the job of or
ganizing the stockyards workers.
How the Party and Y.CL. worked:
The Section Buro studied the con-
troll tasks of the District Conven-
ton, called a section membership
meeting, and also a meeting of the
Party and Y. c. L. members who
are working in the yards. We drew
up a plan of work which fitted the
given conditions in the yards. We
issued series of leaflets exposing
the concrete conditions in the
yards. Then, we began a series of
mass meetings in the neighborhood
of the yards, further exposing the
conditions. At the same time the
street units were busy canvassing
from house to house in the neigh
borhood of the stockyards workers.
Each month we checked up on our
work on section scale. I now
want to bring out some of the ex-
periences at our first check-up
meeting. Some of the comrades
spoke, after the section organizer
gave the report on some of the ex-
perienceS in the work, and how the
workers were recruited into the
Party. The comrades stated that
they thought that there was not
going to be real check-up; there
fore, they did not do any work, but
they pledged that from then on
they were going to do some work
THE result is that we now have
five Party units, two of which
are department units; we have four
Y. G. L. units, two of which are
also department units; we have or
ganized two locals of the Packing
House Workers Industrial Union;
we have built up good opposition
in the Stockyards Labor Council
and we are beginning some work
in the A. F. of L.
Our outlook for the near future
is to set up a well-functioning sec
ton of stockyards workers, to be
composed of Party and Y. C. L.
units in the yards. 1t is in the
light of the Open Letter and the
District control tasks that we en-
tered seriously into our work to such
an extent that we were able to get
the comrades to begin to become
conscious of Stockyards work. We
are today closer to the workers in
the yards than we have ever been.
In many cases our comrades are
looked upon by the workers as lead
ers in the yards. In some of the
departments we were able to win
ten-minute rest periods, in others
the right to smoke in the toilets.
AS result of this day to day work
we were able to raise the indigna-
ton of the workers against the
packers, which brought about the
8 per cent increase in wages. We
issued leaflets pointing out that the
bosses are preparing layoffs. When
the lay-offs took place, we issued
leaflets demanding jobs or relief at
the expense of the companies, so in
one case in one department the
bosses were forced to rehire the
workers. On the strength of this
we were able to work among the
workers that were laid off, and we
raised two demands: Jobs back and
the removal of a company stool
pigeon, Mr.. Talley, in Armour's
plant. In the next two days we is
sued leaflet saying What's the
Answer" AS a result of these leaf
lets we we're able to make contacts
with new workers and got them
down to our meeting right from the
yards. With this sort of progress
VIC will he alba To ctra,, ethan nl,r