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The Negro--Friend or Foe of Organized Labor?Lester B. GrangerPublishing Information
This is no longer an academic question to be disputed to hairline extremities by soft-handed theoreticians. It is an urgent problem facing the black man in the street every day, the answer to which will have tremendous effect upon the fortunes of Negro populations in every large city of America within the next ten years. Visible results may come even sooner, so amazing is the speed with which our national industrial picture is being transformed under the pressure of economic upheaval. Every day comes account of some new development in Negro-white labor relations-some new problem to be solved presently by black workers for their permanent profit or loss. A few months ago the staff of a New Jersey white daily newspaper protested to the publisher against unfair working conditions. They were members of the Newspaper Guild, and when their demands were not met they went out on strike. On the staff, and a member of the Guild, was a Negro editorial writer who had been given his chance and promoted from the ranks by the publisher personally. He refused to strike with his fellow union members, stating that the publisher needed him and he could not desert his employer-friend in this hour of need. In New York, on the other hand, sixty employees of a wholesale drug company went out on strike to protest the dismissal of three workers because of union activities. Among the strikers was a Negro who held an excellent job and stood high in the employer's favor. He walked out on strike, not because of any personal dissatisfaction, but because he resented the boss's attempt to break up the union-because he felt that his own job could not be safe unless his fellow workers were also secure. Which Negro acted wisely? Was the drug clerk a scatter-brained young fool, as his friends advised, to risk his own prospects in joining with his white fellow workers? Was the newspaper man a treacherous scab, to violate his union pledge and betray the strike for better working conditions? It is a question which comes up with increasing frequency to plague the Negro worker employed with a small concern where dose personal relationships are established between worker and boss. Such individual problems, however, fade into relative insignificance beside the huge problem posed before Negro labor in the mass. For generations organized labor for the most part has been indifferent, if not actively hostile, to participation by black workers. This has been partly due to race prejudice, and partly due to that group selfishness typical of craft unionism. Recently there has been a change of attitude. As the great mass of America's workers have gradually become more intelligent regarding the nature of the struggle between Labor and Capital, they have begun to realize the essential solidarity of interests of all labor. There has been a decided movement away from craft toward industrial unionism; there are signs that race prejudice is weakening. The partial success of the Randolph resolution at the 1934 A. F. of L. convention was one indication. A western local of the Railway Clerks Union recently defied the color bar of the International's constitution and admitted a Negro member. These and other events are faint cracks appearing in the solid wall of race prejudice which has heretofore baffled the attempts of Negroes to cooperate closely with white workers. Black labor's reaction to this new situation will largely determine the future of Negroes in the organized labor movement, and also influence the ultimate success of Labor's struggle against Capital. The individual cases of the Negro newspaper-man and the drug clerk are comparatively easy to judge. The former joined a union of fellow employees without color bar and pledged himself to support union action. He simply weighed the union's chances of winning and his own chances of finding another job against the ethics of the situation-and tossed ethics into the ashcan. The drug clerk, being younger and braver, kept faith with his fellow workers and his manhood. A different situation faces Negro workers in industries where they have become established without the support of organized labor, and where organized labor is now beginning to woo their membership, more from reasons of self-defense than brotherly love. For instance, in the city of Dayton, Ohio, locals of the International Moulders Union during prosperous years discouraged the applications for membership of Negro foundry moulders, using the obvious expedient of boosting initiation fees to a prohibitive figure. Negroes found jobs at lower wages in open-shop foundries where the company union plan of employee organization was effective in keeping out the A. F. of L. union. Lean depression years have starved the International's treasuries, and now the Dayton locals are soliciting as members the Negroes whom they once rebuffed. Black workers refuse to join and stand by the company union. There are a thousand colored foundrymen in that city, and upon their prosperity depends the economic security of black Dayton. What does that security demand-that Negroes repay the stupid prejudice of white moulders with an unrelenting opposition to organized action, or that they drop their justified grudge and seize this chance to establish better relations with white workers ? Can Negroes trust this gesture of friendship by the International, or do they seriously imperil their present jobs when they desert the company union? Traditional college-bred, white-collar leadership among Negroes has usually insisted the latter probability. A Chicago garment factory employs hundreds of Negroes, working and paying them by sub-union standards and offering them certain recreational and "welfare" services. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union tries vainly to organize the Sopkin employees and meets the opposition of numerous influential Negro citizens. Critics of the International say that its past policy in Chicago toward Negro workers has been unsatisfactory, and that undercover discrimination exists in locals even today. They urge Sopkin employees to stick to the company union until the International gives more complete proof of what protection it can and will offer. "Any job," they say, "is better than no job at all- even a sweatshop job. Our lower wage is the employer's profit, and that profit insures our job security." One inspired Sopkin employee even rushes into print with an article entitled, "Thumbs Down On Unions!" The International's supporters and organizers denounce these "leaders" as paid mouthpieces of Big Money, or as short-sighted opportunists who betray the very cause they seek to protect. The International points to its record as one of the most liberal of all A. F. of L. organizations, to its membership of 6,000 Negroes in New York, to its rapid gains among the Negro workers of Cleveland and Philadelphia, as proof of the fact that the rights of colored union members would be fully protected. They warn that refusal of Negroes to join the organized movement now only widens the breach that may have existed formerly, and increases the danger that colored workers may be shut out of the industry almost entirely if and when Chicago is as successfully unionized as New York City. The air is black with charges and counter-charges, while, true to precedent, the Negro workers themselves give little or no serious thought to the problem which is ready to smack them in the face. So with the rubber workers of Ohio, the tobacco workers of North Carolina, the steel workers of Pennsylvania, the longshoremen of California-the list can be multiplied indefinitely of instances where Negro workers have problems similar to these thrust upon them for immediate decision. Their decision is not made more easy by the conflicting advice coming from disputant groups of "leaders." The defeatists lament that industry holds no future for Negro workers and urge a hasty retreat back to the farm. The middle-of-the-roaders advise Negroes to stick with the employers and the company union until Labor's fight has been won or lost, when they can choose their new allegiance. Professional labor organizers insist that Negro workers should rush pell mell into the A. F. of L. ranks at first opportunity. The truth is that none of this advice reaches the Negro's needs. It is perfectly true that there are industries where white workers, already organized, have fought bitterly the employment of Negroes and have barred them from unions. In such cases Negro labor has no alternative other than to stick with the employer and accept whatever protection is afforded by company unions. While accepting the company union, however, as a shelter in the time of storm, black workers must realize that the shelter won't last long- while the storm will. The company union does not, and cannot adequately protect the interests of workers, for it opposes the very things which true unionism seeks to produce-unity of all workers, freedom from employer interference, independence of leadership, and bargaining strength through numbers. Therefore, even when forced to accept temporarily the dubious benefits of the company union, Negro workers must still seek a favorable opportunity to force terms on organized labor and enter its ranks. Sometimes no pressure is needed, as in the case of the I.L.G.W.U., which realized some time ago the necessity of organizing the thousands of Negro garment workers in the East. Sometimes a bitter lesson must be learned by white workers, as with the San Francisco dock workers, who barred Negroes from union membership until colored longshoremen helped to break the docks strike of 1934--after which they were admitted to unions to prevent future strike-breaking. Again, in times of crisis, Negro labor often has a chance to drive a bargain with organized labor and force concessions previously withheld. For instance, Negro longshoremen of Los Angeles refrained from strike-breaking on condition that they would be admitted freely to the union and receive their share of work-a bargain made and kept by the union. Sometimes, for one reason or another, Negroes are unable or unwilling to join a union, but form separate organizations having an understanding with white workers regarding mutual protection of wages and hours. This is an arrangement adopted by motion picture projectionists in several large cities, but it is plainly a less satisfactory arrangement than full union membership. He is a light-hearted optimist indeed who believes that all of the problems of Negro labor can be solved thus directly. Neither diplomacy, stratagem nor threat is likely to have any effect, for instance, on the anti-Negro policy of the four railroad brotherhoods, aristocrats of American labor, which for fifty years have maintained an arrogant disdain for other groups of workers. There can be no parleying with the railway unions of the South which have bargained with railroad heads to put Negroes out of jobs- whose members have lain in ambush and murdered Negro trainmen in a terrorist campaign. Such unions as these--internationals and locals--Negroes must fight openly as enemies not only of black labor but of organized labor as a whole. Against them there is a weapon of defense which Negro labor has not used enough in the past-legal action. With millions of taxpayers' dollars going into railway construction and public works projects, it is possible as never before for skilled legal talent to find ways of bringing suits on behalf of black workers which might hold up appropriations until justice is given them. All of the above indicates the utter hopelessness of expecting the intellectuals and professionals of the race to plan the way for Negro labor. Their leadership is bound inevitably to end up in a blind alley of futile compromise. The Negro Workers' Councils created by the National Urban League are a frank recognition of this fact, and; an attempt to set up a form of organization in which workers, without the interference of outsiders, may meet to discuss their mutual problems and learn ways of facing them. They are a vehicle for wider spread of workers' education among Negroes, which is the first step toward workers' action. In Pittsburgh and Columbus, in New York and Newark, in Raleigh and Greensboro, in St. Louis and Kansas City, in Atlanta and New Orleans-all over the country these Councils are forming groups of black workers who are facing soberly a future of bitter struggle in the American industrial scene. They realize that there can be no neutrality for Negroes in this struggle. In any bitter conflict the neutral becomes the buffer, and Belgium discovered in 1914 how hapless is the buffer's fate. If Negro workers would avoid a similar fate they must choose shortly whether they will be friend or foe of organized labor. Essential to a proper decision is their understanding of the aims and methods of unions-- their realization that Negroes are not the only group unfairly treated by unions, nor the only workers dissatisfied with labor leadership. They must learn that organized labor and A. F. of L. are not necessarily synonymous, but sometimes antithetical-that to uphold the interest of the one may be to attack the plan of the other. In short, when Negro workers assume their own leadership and attack their own problems they will recognize that a blow at organized labor is a blow at their own safety. Only continued stupidity on the part of white labor leadership can prevent black workers from lining up with the cause of organized labor.
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