No Blind Date

This time there was a big If. Heretofore in annual conventions, the United Auto Workers, world's biggest union (membership: 1,077,899), had clamorously endorsed Franklin Roosevelt. Last week in Buffalo, 2,100 U.A.W. delegates soberly hedged on Term IV. The hedge: Franklin Roosevelt between now & then must prove he is still labor's man.

First Come. U.A.W.'s conditional pledge was no isolated action. It probably will be repeated at C.I.O.'s national convention, which meets Nov. 1. It came at the urging of C.I.O. President Philip Murray, who offered U.A.W. a seven-point program by which to judge their political friends.

How Served. Phil Murray's tests: > Stabilization of prices and limitation of profits.

> Full manpower mobilization but no labor draft.

> Passage of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill to expand the social security program.

>Repeal of the Smith-Connally-Harness Act.

>Assurance that the U.S. will not again "secede from the world."

> Enactment of anti-poll-tax legislation.

> Repeal of the freezing orders on farm labor.

U.A.W. mulled these, came up with their own five-point program, which made no mention of foreign policy. Added starters: repeal of the Little Steel (wage-stabilizing) formula; equal employment opportunity regardless of race or sex.

But though Phil Murray and his largest member union differed in detail, they were agreed on the main point. Summed up slender, serious Victor Reuther, U.A.W. resolutions chairman: "I do not believe that labor should make a blind date for 1944."

Most important part of the Convention was not what it formally resolved but what it revealed of Labor's feuds and fears. The 2,100 delegates bet, finagled and politicked in smoke-filled hotel rooms like a typical U.S. political convention, and talked like Labor's Town Meeting. The delegates elected Walter Reuther first vice president over Communist-backed Dick Frankensteen by 345 votes, then turned round and elected Frankensteen second vice president over Reuther's nominee, Dick Leonard, by about 300 votes. Apparently the rank & file seemed to think they could best protect themselves by perpetuating the U.A.W.'s civil war, thus keeping the balance of power in their own hands. Actually the U.A.W. went home from Buffalo no solid bloc for anything or anybody.

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