The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1944-10-26
BlunderS Peril Future Of
American Unions

HAS the CLIO, in setting up Mr.. Hillman's Political
Action Committee, stepped into a political BOBBY trap?
Responsible and experienced labor leaders, both in the
ALL and CLIO, are seriously raising this question. Through
out the labor movement, there is a growing fear among
cearsighted labor men that the CLIO, in its 1914 political
strategy, has Numbered into something which is certain
to bring incalculable harm upon the whole American trade
union movement.
Win or lose at the November polls, they believe, the
PAC has set in motion a wave of public anti-union ill-will
which will Unfortunately strike all labor unions during
the next four years.
For what the CLIO has done, in launching the PAC, has
been to throw overheard the most inviolable of American
trade union precepts. That precept has been never to en-
tangle the trade unions officially in the fortunes of either
of the two national political parties.
But now, under Hillman and Murray. the CIO has
~recklessly scrapped this time-tested policy. The PAC, for
all practical purposes, has made the CLIO a subsidiary of
the Democratic Party. With a trustfulness almost incred-
IDLE, it has united itself with the Democratic Party without
exactng any assurances or guarantee in return. 1t has
placed all its political eggs in a single political basket
the Fourth Term Basket of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On the surface, such pig-in-the-poke CLIO political
policies would seem unexplainable by any rule of trade
union experience, or even of good common horse sense.
Ever since the 1910 exit of John L. Lewis, who under
stood the difficult are of using politicians without being
used by them, the CIO has virtually ceased to be an indie
pendent self-sustaining labor movement, after the pattern
of the AFL or the Railroad Brotherhoods. For all practical
purposes, it has been a kept labor adjunct of the New Deal.
In return, it is true, the Roosevelt Administration has
showered the CLIO with its favors. In situations where the
Go has come in competition with the AFL or other unions,
it has invaribly given it the breaks.
The PAC is the unhappy product of this unnatural
marriage between the CIO and the Roosevelt Administra-
ton. When in 1913, the White House strategists deemed it
necessary to use the apparatus of the CLIO as a labor front |
for the Fourth Term draft the Go had no alternative !
but to obey. Mr.. Hillman snapped into action, and launched /
the PAC. He pledged the White House to deliver at the |
ballot box the millions of unconsulted unionists who. with |
New Deal aid, have been recruited into the CIO. Of course, |
from any consideration of long range labor interest, what /
the CIO is doing in this campaign is truly disastrous to (
American labors future.
Samuel Gompers, who was the architect of so much |
that is solid and enduring in the American trade union |
movement defined the accepted policy of the ALL unions 2
when he said:
Our movement has not asked and will not
ask at the hands of government anything which
the workers can and should do themselves. The
movement of labor is founded on the principle that
that which we do for ourselves. individually and
collectively, is done best" +
In violating these principles, the present CLIO leader |
ship is, of course, counting future disaster for all ORGANIZED
labor. The tragedy of the situation is that sound unions &C /
well as unsound are certain to suffer from the reaction of -
public resentment which is now greeting the PAC The
whole labor movement may be facing a serious after-elec-
ton setback, as a result of Mr.. Hillman's brash maneuvers
ALL members are acutely an painfully aware of the |:
~booby-trap which MI. HiLlman has put under the feet of =
American labor. AS one prominent AFT, Leader evnressoJ =
1t recently in off the record candor: The CIO is 1ousiro
up the whole situation for organized labor. and we ~
the ones who are going to suffer-
Reprinted without comment from The Labor Union" one of the
Nations Leading Labor Newspapers. Published at Da,tou oh NE
of September Is, 1944) O
POL Adv prepared and paid for by Republican State Central n
Committed