The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1950-05-25
Union Card Holds Promise, Not
Threat To Belgian Workers Of Today

brussels, DelSluIn \LI ~ - SAn
years ago a union card to Bel
gian worker would have been q
passport to eternity. The bearer, II
caught, would have been destroyed
in short order by a German firing
squad. Today Brussels is the new
world capital of labor, home of the
recently-founded international Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions.
The Belgian worker today who
has no union card is the exception,
not the rule. For in this tiny land,
one-fourth the size of Pennsylvania
and with a population of only 81
100000, live we'll over 100000
militant, card-carrying trade union
lists.
Gone are the bleak, unhappy
wartime days when Belgian work
ers found their free unions abolish
ed, only to be supplanted by the
generally Stunned Union des Trav-
ailleurs Manuels ct Intellectuels
manual and Intellectual Workers
Union), company union in its
lowest form run by the bloody syn
dicate headed by A. Hitler.
Leaders of the Belgian labor
movement can well appreciate its
reborn freedom. First there is Paul
Finet, president of the Internation-
al Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, who was forced to flee to
England in 1941, where he made
broadcasts to Belgium and other
occupied countries for the British
Foreign Office, and then headed
the office of the merchant marine
for the Belgian government-in-
exile. In England he helped set up
a trade union center to keep the
Belgian labor movement alive.
Then there is Auguste Cool, who
saw his union crushed by the Nazis,
went underground, and despite the
harrassment Of the Gestapo main
tanned contact with other labor
leaders and prepared for liberation
of his country.
Armand Cole, head Of the Lib
eral Trade Unions, was third Bel
gian labor leader whom the Ger
mans could not stop. Cole, too,
went underground, was captured
and rebuilt from scrath after Bel
gium was liberated. Of this trio,
only Cole was not at the London
Congress of the international Con-
federation of Free Trade Unions,
but he too expressed pride and
pleasure at the choice of Brussels
as ICFTU's permanent home.
Young, dynamic, the new ICFTU
is dedicated to the cause of a free
labor movement and is democracy's
bold answer to the Communist
dominated World Federation of
Trade Unions, which floundered ON
the rocks of Russian intrigue after
futile attempts by western trade
unions to live and work with the
Stalinists. AS its name implies,
ICFTU rejects totalitarianism in
all forms, and is dedicated to at
tainment of economic security with
out loss of individual freedom.
The new confederation was form
ed when the Red-controlled WFTU
gave stubborn opposition to the
Marshall plan, the United States
generous program for reviving a
war-depleted Europe. "Bread
Peace, and Freedom" was the chal-
longing cry of ICFTU at its incep-
tion. The Marshall Plan appears
likely to attain these things for
Europe's war-weary millions.
Writing of the conflict between
the lCFTU and the WFTU, David
Dubinsky, president of the Inter-
national Ladies Garment Workers
Union-AFL, said in Aprils issue Of
Foreign Affairs magazinei
"We are fighting for the hearts,