Trouble at Boeing

One of the most important factories in the U. S. today is the humming Boeing Aircraft Co. plant at Seattle, Wash. Boeing is turning out contract orders for 80-odd four-motored Flying Fortresses weeks ahead of schedule, will go into production in April on a whacking order for more than 500 additional Fortresses of a later model. Odds & ends in its $190,000,000 backlog include Douglas light bombers for Britain (manufactured under license), other British warplanes, and six Model 314 flying boats intended for globetrotting Pan American Airways.*

Last week the Boeing plant had quit humming, was sputtering. Boeing workers were embroiled in a bitter intra-union fight. The trouble at Boeing: Communism.

The union which controls 7,200 Boeing workers is Local 751 of the Aeronautical Mechanics Union, an affiliate of A. F. of L. Two months ago, the editor of the local's house organ, Aero Mechanic, got out a "sneak" edition loaded with dynamite. In it young, nervous Editor Clifford A. Stone had packed all the pent-up resentment of months. He charged that:

1) Business Agent Hugo Lundquist, Vice President Donald Keppler, other high-ranking officers of the A. M. U. local were Communists. 2) Lundquist and others were mishandling union funds. 3) An editorial board composed of Lundquist & friends had been dictating the Aero Mechanic's policies, inserting Red propaganda items, cartoons, squelching anti-Communist editorials and articles written by Editor Stone.

John ("Barney") Bader, 29-year-old president of the local, acquiesced to the demands of the members, appointed a trial board to investigate 1) Stone's charges against Lundquist, Keppler & friends; 2) charges against Stone and his helpers that they had defamed the Lundquist faction. Principals in the fight were meanwhile suspended. Last month, 2,000 members assembled to hear the first group of the trial board's reports and pass judgment. The meeting opened with music and drum majorettes cavorting on the stage, fell into a hush when the trial board began to read a report on Vice President Keppler.

The report was damning: testimony of Boeing men that Keppler had invited them to join the Communist Party; stories of secret C. P. meetings in the apartment of a mysterious "Miss Kay"; stories of Keppler and Lundquist organizing May Day parades. The court of union rank & filers voted to accept the trial board's verdict that Keppler was a Communist.

Last week the workers' court met again, to hear reports on Lundquist and others. Real boss of A. M. U., gaunt, yellow-haired, bespectacled Hugo Lundquist, was once slated to be A. F. of L. organizer in the West Coast aircraft industry. The trial board's recommendation was that he also be found guilty of Communism. In a meeting as stormy as the first one, friends of Lundquist mustered enough votes to overturn the board's verdict. The court also decided that Editor Stone was guilty of a technical infraction in failing to bring his charges before the members instead of hawking them in the bootlegged Aero Mechanic. At week's end, 21 other cases were still unsettled. Vice President Keppler was still suspended from office.

From headquarters of the International Association of Machinists went exasperated word that Local 751 had better houseclean itself of Communism, or the International would do it. Boeing officials, unwilling to intervene, only prayed that Local 751 would settle its mess and get down to work.

*Three of these boats, said the Baltimore Sun this week, have already been sold by Pan American to Britain for long-range patrol flights over the North Atlantic.

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