Arkansas State press., 1958-08-01
The NAACP and Organized Labor
Continued from page five)

labor than there are dues paying members of the NAACP,
and they pay larger dues.
The Resolutions Committee which brought in this reso-
luton which was accepted by the Convention included among
It's members representatives of the Amalgamated Meat Cut
ters and Butchers, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees the
Chemical Workers, the Building Service Employees, the Ma
tional Association of Letter Carriers, the representative for
religious affairs of the national AFL-CIO, and a member OF
the American Federation of Teachers.
It is clear that, as a racial minority of about 10 per
cent of the whole population, many of whom are effectively
disfranchised in the South, the NAACP and Negroes working
for civil rights must have political allies in order to get
our legislative program adopted. Reactionaries will not be
our allies, while organized labor does help u.s. For example,
the national AFL-CIO has given a commitment to "help as
sure the augmentation of the Supreme Courts decision out
having segregation in education. Needless to say, neither
the National Association of Manufacturers nor the u. s.
Chamber of Commerce have given any such promise OF help
to the struggle for equal rights. In every state where fair
employment practice laws have been passed, the state branch
es of the AFL and Go have supported such legislation,
even though such laws f~orbidding discrimination apply to
unions as well as employers. In my own state of Connecticut,
for example, the State Federation of Labor and the State
Go Council supported our Fair Employment Practice law
with enforcement powers which was finally adopted and have
continued to give it support, although a union was the de-
PENDANT in one of the few cases that we had to bring to court
Unions make it possible for workers to get increased pay
to meet the increased cost of living, and to get more pay
and shorter hours of labor to match the increased produc-
tivty of new machinery and more effective forms of pro-
duction such as automation. Unions are needed to protect
workers against discrimination by employers who would
otherwise tend to favor the supservient kind of worker and
to penaize the man who had the courage to stand up for the
rights of himself and his fellow workers. Unions make it
possible to provide better pensions and retirement pay, and
some provision Tor hospital and medical expenses and cash
benefits for workers who cannot work because of illness or
non-industrial accidents.
Hardly any unions now have a constitutional bar a.
gainst Negroes as members. In fact, the only ones I know
of are the Masters, Mates and Pilots, and the Railroad Bro
therhoods. Even in such cases, we should fight the color bar
and not the Union. The NAACP recognizes that there are
many local unions, especially in the South but not only there,
and especially among the skilled workers in the building
trades, where the clear stand of the international unions a
gainst discrimination is not carried out in practice locally.
Accordingly the NAACP denounced all such forms of dis
elimination by the unions, particularly contracts which con-
fine Negroes to certain unskilled jobs in the factories.
We have a very able labor secretary, Herbert Hill, who
knows the union movement we'll He has been effective in
getting Negroes admitted to union membership where they
had previously been barred, and to better jobs in unionized
industries. Wherever union discrimination exists, it will be
helpful to get in touch with him through the national office
of the NAACP.
The Convention opposed the socalLed fright to work"