BATTLE TO END PREJUDICE IN UNIONS
‘By Evelyn Sell.
oo Negro workers. are caught in a vicious squeeze, On the one hand, the capitalist educational system denies them adequate train= — ing. Because of this, most Negroes are ill-prepared to meet the challenges. of an automated=nuclear age where special skills are needed, Unskilled jobs are rapidly vanishing and the inadequately educated, products of inferior schools, face an extremely bleak future, ve 7
.0n the other hand, even when Negroes do manage to acquire special training they are blocked from the best. jobs by the Jim Crow patterns which capitalists have created and nurtured for so long. The bosses have long used the successful divide-and=conquer technique to keep white and Negro workers from joining together in unions to protect the job rights of all, Even where unions do exist, anti-Negro propaganda and job competition under conditions of capi-~ talist insecurity have led mony unions to keep Negroes out of their ranks,
One of the major demands of the Freedom Now movement has been! "Equal Job Opportunities." . Mass demonstrations, economic boycotts and unrelenting pressure on businessmen and government officials
have succeeded in winning some jobs for Negroes, Militant. protests ‘ by Negro groups have opened up opportunities in apprentice training ~ programs, Unfortunately, the same pressures must be applied to union. leaders and misguided union members who have been able to . maintain a privileged position. in the working class only at the exe pense of the rest of the workers,
A good example of how racial discrimination operates: ina. labor union was provided by the New York City Plumbers Local 2, AFL-~. CLIO. The City Commission on Human Rights had requested a puilding contractor to hire some plumbers from a minority group. The contrac tor complied by hiring three Puerto Ricans and one Negro, When these four men showed up for work at the Bronx Terminal Market construction site, the 54 white plumbers and the 7 white apprentices walked off the Jobe The Run-Around
The union claims that the problem centers on the fact that these four men do not have union cards and, as good union members, plumbers refuse to work with nonunion men. The truth of the matter is that when these fully skilled workers applied for jobs the bosses told them, "We cantt hire you until you get a union card," and when » they applied for entrance into the union they were told, "We can't accept you until you have been hired by an employer," Given: the runaround by bosses and union, these four men were forced to work at nonunion jobs at a much lower rate of pay.
-As one of the Puerto Ricans said, "There finally has to be a break for us... All we ever get is the garbage work that nobody else wants to do,":
Outraged by the plumbers! refusal to work with Negroes and. . Puerto Ricans, members of the East Side and Bronx chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] have been picketing the union headquarters, They have blocked entrance into the headquarters by linking arms, lying down and sitting-in. Union bureaucrats: were unable to get into their offices and union members who tried to force their way through the picket line were immediately caught up in a scuffle that had to be stopped by watchful police,
A large force of police are keeping their eye on the picketing and have encouraged the white plumbers to lodge complaints against the civil-rights demonstrators, So far, the unionists have not done so although they stand across the street from their headquarters, glaring and mumbling at the pickets,
' One of the picket leaders, Blyden Jackson, told reporters, | "the day we let them in will be the day they go back to work with the three: Puerto Ricans and the Negro up at that . Bronx. construction site.
“amazing Genius"
On May 13, almost two weeks after the. white plumbers! walkout, Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, told delegates to the fiftieth anniversary convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America that strong measures were neces sary to end union discrimination against minorities, He proposed that unions discriminating against Negroes be placed under a trust~ eeship.or even be purged. by the: parent body, He said that unions. had long. shown an "amazing genius" in keeping Negroes out, Now is .. the time, for organized labor to show the same gemius in bringing Negroes into the ranks of the union movement,
The union bureaucrats'are among the last persons who should be appealed to for help in ending discrimination within unions, They aren't even militant on behalf of the white union members ~~ they wouldn't dream of fighting the bosses on the issue of Jim Crow, As a matter of fact, they have been co-operating with the bosses to stifle militant unionism and to keep Negroes out of the choice jobs,
_It is the white rankeand-file unionist, squeezed in his turn. between the profit-hungry bosses and the privilege-hungry union © bureaucrat, who has the most to gain by joining: in'a common struggle shoulder to shoulder with his black brothers, -It-is true that many white workers have been educated by capitalism to. discriminate against Negroes and other minority. peoplées,:. It is- also true that the industrial union movement in this country was built by similarly brain-washed white workers who learned in the heat of struggle that their best allies in the fight against: the bosses are Negro workers,
The rise of industrial unionism in the 1930's. came with a suddenness and vitality that surprised all but the revolutionary socialists who understood the true capacities of the working class, White and black joined together despite all the capitalist brainwashing to build the CIO, The future will bring the same common _ struggle against the same common enemies: the bosses and the union bureaucrats, The present Negro revolt is the opening stage of the. . titanic struggle between the working class as a whole and the capi-.. talist-system, ~ - a
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