LABOR: The Big Split

• Share

Last week was a big one for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, better known as I. L. G. W. U. The third edition of Pins and Needles, its famed home-talent satire, opened on Broadway. The rich, well-run union donated $235,000 to refugee aid. And I. L. G. W. U.'s executive committee tossed off a resolution on labor peace. If things go well for labor in the next few months, I. L. G. W. U.'s resolution may be called an important item in labor history. If things go badly, it can at least go down as a dire prophecy. The resolution announced that:

1) Peace between A. F. of L. and C. I. O. is now a primary† need to the well-being and progress of U. S. workers.

2) A. F. of L. had changed its position on the great labor questions—the industrial organization of mass-production industries, democracy in unions—that first brought about the formation of C. I. O.

3) Prospects for labor peace are nevertheless far from bright.

4) I. L. G. W. U. at its convention next May will consequently vote on the question of returning to A. F. of L.

That was good news for William Green, bad (but expected) news for John Lewis. For David Dubinsky, short, energetic, good-natured president of I. L. G. W. U., it was a good way of saying where, in his opinion, lay the responsibility for labor's split. Nobody in the labor movement doubted that I. L. G. W. U.'s 250,000 would follow President Dubinsky back into A. F. of L., just as they had followed him out of it into C. I. O. They stayed in line behind him when, last year, C. I. O. set itself up as a permanent organization and I. L. G. W. U. decided to play a lone hand. "We're independent," says President Dubinsky, "and we don't like it."

Storm Warnings. Behind I. L. G. W. U.'s move lay a growing conviction that labor's six-year record of growth was genuinely imperiled by labor's split. Good union men could look skeptical while businessmen complained loudly about the cost of A. F. of L.C. I. O. conflict. They could listen, polite but unimpressed, while politicians shuddered and sighed over the fearful feud of Bill Green and John Lewis. Last week Son Elliott Roosevelt talked long and earnestly over the radio about the Chrysler strike, suggested that John Lewis' inability to make peace with Bill Green indicated he was not all "he had been cracked up to be."

But nobody could question either the friendliness to labor of Nebraska's Senator Norris, or of his right to advise it. Still one of the most imposing landmarks in U. S. labor history is the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act, which improved the legal status of unionism, drastically checked the granting of injunctions against unions in Federal courts (average before it was passed: 100 a year). Last month Senator Norris let it be known: "I have worked with and for labor for 30 years and I am disgusted with the situation now. . . . There is something wrong with the leadership or they would get together."

Mayor LaGuardia, not an easily dismayed man, backed him up, rapped leaders who prolong strikes, declared that "the longer the division continues, the more irritation and wounds will be inflicted, and the scars will become permanent."