Unity v. Progress

A comparatively pipsqueak strike in St. Louis reached the front page last week solely because the name involved was Henry Ford's. The United Automobile Workers called out the local Ford assembly plant, the principal grievance being alleged discrimination against union members in rehiring, after the seasonal layoff for new models. The plant normally employs only 600 men at this time of year, was making only 60 cars per day before the strike. And in spite of mass picketing by 500 other C.I.O. unionists, the assembly line continued to roll, though at considerably reduced speed. The significant automobile labor news of the week was made not in St. Louis,, not in any motor plant but in the minds of U. A. W. leaders in and around Detroit.

It was elusive news. The only tangible development was the decision by the "unity" group in the U. A. W. high command to make one more attempt to oust President Homer Martin and his "Progressives" at a special U. A. W. convention to be called by rank & file petition. But the terrific backstage struggle for union control appeared so significant that the country's No. 1 labor reporter, Louis Stark of the New York Times, went to Detroit for the entire week.

No raiser of Red scares is Reporter Stark, yet he was willing to put his name to the flat statement that the "Unity" campaign against Homer Martin was "directed from the New York headquarters of the Communist Party and put into motion here through the party's representatives, in association with those who follow the party's 'line.' " Spearhead of the Unity group is Wyndham Mortimer, who neither admits nor denies that he is a Communist but who is known to cleave to the "party line." An oldtime United Mine Worker, Wyndham Mortimer used to be favored by John L. Lewis over Homer Martin, and at the U. A. W. convention last August it was only personal Lewis intervention that saved his political life within the union. But Mr. Lewis has since shifted his firm support to the Martin "Progressives."

In union policy the two groups are clearly split on two major points. Whereas the Martin group is planning a big push on Henry Ford, the Communist "party line" is against a Ford showdown, feeling that at this time it would be disastrous. On the other hand the Mortimer group believes that in negotiating a new contract with General Motors it would be very helpful to have a series of short, controlled, harassing sit-downs and "quickies." And in the recent Fisher Body outlaw Sit-down (TIME, Nov. 29), the followers of the "party line" fought desperately, if futilely, to have the strike legitimatized by the union.

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