Rocking Chairs

Perilous to any new union is its arrival at the armchair stage, when leaders bred in strife must simultaneously run a going concern and keep their restive rank & file content. Last week the leaders of two

C. I. O. unions rocked to & fro, with their seats and their unions in peril.

Autos. In the driver's seat of United Automobile Workers of America is erratic Homer Martin, who has steered his union to contracts with all the major motormen save Henry Ford. That ex-Preacher Martin is a better evangelist than administrator is equally unfortunate 1) for U. A. W.,

2) for automakers, who willynilly have begun to face their relation with the union as a practical operating problem rather than an emotional issue, 3) for John L. Lewis, the prestige of whose C. I. O. is shaken when one of its key unions gets in trouble.

U. A. W.'s trouble was that Homer Martin could not get along with four of his five vice presidents, therefore suspended them (TIME, June 20). Last week he hailed them before his executive board in Detroit. The defendants understood that the final hearing was to be more of an execution than a trial, therefore stayed away and swapped charges with Homer Martin in the newspapers.

To 400,000 U. A. W. members who are more concerned with Depression II than with their officers' funds, the issues seemed remote indeed. President Martin & board found Vice Presidents Richard Frankensteen, Wyndham Mortimer, Ed. Hall guilty of conspiring with Stalinist Communists to wreck U. A. W., expelled them.* Convicted and suspended on the lesser charge of opposing the Martin clique's group insurance plan was Vice President Walter Wells.

The punished replied that Homer Martin had conspired with an anti-Stalin Communist named Jay Lovestone to "control and administer the affairs of the union," exhibited correspondence purporting to prove it. The quartet explained that they did not appear at the hearing to lodge these charges because 150 guards patrolled U. A. W. headquarters. They declared: "It is our understanding that we are to be brutally beaten and maimed, if not killed." In Manhattan, Comrade Lovestone complained to police that "Stalinist agents, under the direction of special experts of the Russian G. P. U.," had burglarized his apartment and stolen documents which later showed up in Detroit and in the Communist Daily Worker. Oblivious to their neglected Ford organization drive, to the disruption sure to accompany further war, the feudists this week proceeded toward a special convention and an attempt by the ousted rebels to oust Homer Martin. Meanwhile, John L. Lewis grimly followed their farrago, continued to consider whether he could & should step in, put some one else in Homer Martin's chair.

Ships. Whereas Homer Martin would like to be a Strong Man and run U. A. W. according to his lights, National Maritime Union's Founder Joe Curran is a Strong Man who believes unions should run themselves. Last week hamfisted Sailor Curran was in trouble, trying to preserve his belief and his union at one & the same time.

As in U. A. W., Communism actual or alleged was involved in violent, internal dissensions. As in the automobile industry, factionalism flared at the moment when Atlantic and Gulf Coast shipowners were beginning to accept the fact that a new union was on deck and had to be recognized. Unlike U. A. W., N. M. U.'s Communism, rooted down into the rank & file, was bitterly defended and attacked there.

The close of the union's first general elections brought N. M. U. feuds frothing to the surface last week. When the ballots were counted, Joe Curran, unopposed in the election, was nominally on top as president. But under him were four hostile members of the new national council of nine officers. Beefy, flaccid Fireman Jerome King defeated Communist Jack Lawrenson for secretary treasurer. Two others also were out & out anti-Curran men. A fourth leaned not so much against popular Joe Curran as against the Communist friends to whom he, though no Communist, turned for counsel in the union's early days. Eager to move in on Curran headquarters in Manhattan, move out Curran men and policies, Fireman King & friends were aware that the dissension was made to order for such N. M. U. enemies as A. F. of L.'s Longshoreman Joe Ryan, who yearns to regain command of eastern waterfronts. Said Fireman King: "I feel about the A. F. of L. like everybody else in this union. I say the hell with 'em." Said Joe Curran to his 50,000 members: "Don't be played for suckers." But Joe Curran, more of a democrat than an autocrat, believes that if a majority of his seamen want to be suckers, then suckers they should be without let or hindrance from the top. Whether he and N. M. U. can make this theory stick against such laddiebucks as Fireman King & friends remains to be seen.

A. F. of L. did not wait to see. It announced that Harry Lundeberg's Sailors' Union of the Pacific shortly will be chartered as the A. F. of L. union for seamen on all coasts, will join longshoremen, waterfront teamsters, licensed officers in a new Maritime Department. Eventual object is not only to run Sailor Curran off the eastern waterfronts, but to sink his western .friend and mentor, C. L O. Longshoreman Harry Bridges.

Harry Bridges also was in trouble with his own people last week. Having carried his "inland march" from his original waterfront stamping ground to the point where he bosses C. I. O. in California, he has encountered much antagonism among garment, auto, other unions. Last week the leaders of four Los Angeles locals (automobiles, rubber, garments, shoes) seceded from his California Industrial Union Council, charged that he was nesting with Communists. "We believe," said they, "that any one has a right to be a Communist or a Holy Roller or whatever they choose, but . . . they must give their first loyalty to their unions and not attempt to use the unions to further the end of any political party."

*Secretary-Treasurer George Addes was expelled last month.

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