The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-14
Check-up on Our Control Tasks

The Open Letter set us the task of decisively
strengthening our work in the A. F. of L. and
other refornist trade unions. We can register
some serious beginnings of improvement in
this field. I have already spoken of the broad
scope of the movement for the workers I'm
employment Insurance Bill inside the A. F. Of
L. We. can record that the work of the revo-
lutionary oppositions under Communist direc-
ton is now the decisive leadership in approx
mately $50 local unions of the A. F. of L., with
a membership of from $4,000 to 10000. This
opposition work is improving in the most i'm
portant industries such as mining and steel.
In addition to those local unions in which the
revolutionary opposition has the support Of the
majority of the workers, there are serious
minorities in a larger and growing number of
unions. The weakest field in this respect re-
mains the railroad industry. Here we cannot
yet say that the Party has taken up the task
with full seriousness, nor even made consid-
cradle beginning. Throughout the work in the
A. F. Of L., the characteristic weakness remains
the formal character of the opposition work its
tendency to remain contact with participation
in union elections and formal debates, the
legalisn of the work, its failure to orientate
itself to the shops and establish its organiza-
tionsI base there, and it's weakness in develop
ing independent leadership of the daily struggles.
The most decisive advance in the trade union
field in the past year has been the emergence
of the revolutionary trade unions as real mass
organizations, directly leading the struggle of
90 per cent of all the strikers in this period,
and winning far higher proportion Of the
victories won by the strike movement Espe-
cially important has been the advances in steel,
agriculture, marine, as we'll as the serious ad-
vances in lighter industries, such as shoe,
needle, furniture, etc. Over 100000 new re-
cruits offset by fuctuation of about $1,000 gives
us at present about $4,000 members in the
revolutionary unions The increased stability
of these organizations is due to the fact that
they were built in struggle, that they are mas
tering the art of trade union democracy, are
developing their own responsible trade union
functionaries and exhibit growing and active
inner life.
The Unemployment Council movement was
only in its first beginnings in 1880. Four years
of rich experience in local, state and nationa
struggles and actions, the high points of which
were the great March 6, $780, Unemployment
Day Demonstrations, the National Hunger
Marches in 1881 and 1882 and the recent Ma.
tional Unemployment Congress in Washington
in February 1884, have crystallized real mass
organizations on nationwide scale In the
the Unemployment Councils, trade unions anc
all forms of mass organizations that support
the struggle for the Workers Unemployment In
surance Bill, there was organized representa-
ton of about 100000 workers In the Unem-
ploynent Councils, C.WA. Unions, Relief Work
ers Unions, ETC., there is comparatively stable
organization of from 10000 to 100000 In spite
of the fact, however that the Unemployment
Council movement under our leadership is the
predominant organizational expression of the
unemployed on a national scale, we must say
in many localities it exhibits the most serious
weaknesses. These weaknesses are both political
and organizational. Especially we have not fully
involved the trade unions in unemployed work
The Party has answered in principle all the
problems and found the solutions to these weak
neSses, but due to insufficient, direct political
and organizational leadership by the Party
from top to bottom units, sections and dis
tricts and the weak functioning Of the Party
fractions, the full benefit of our experience has
not been carried to the movement as a whole
The result is a big lag behind the possibilities
on a national scale, with the most dangerous
weaknesses in the majority of localities AS a
result, we see in many places new organizations
of unemployed, in which the left social-fascists
and renegade elements live off the capital of
our weaknesses and neglect. The movement